Until the end and back again
Defiant to the last man
‘Til there’s nothing left
To fight against
No surrender

My father happened to be in Stockholm this weekend, and happened past Medborgarplatsen where the swedish Pirate Party was demonstrating the FRA-law going into practice. He took these photos, sent them to me and figured someone might like them. So, here they are. Feel free to spread these in any which way you feel is proper, and if you give credit then give credit to my father (Tim Senften) and a link to his website.

I wish I could’ve been there too and show my support for protesting against this heinous law that promises to corrupt much of our personal integrity online.

The last week saw a large bit of controversy in the housing cooperative where I own my apartment. In Sweden co-ops are organized into something called “Bostadsrätter” and are traditionally organized into non-profit communities that act as a legal entity. This organization takes is responsible for the communal areas (laundry rooms, mowing lawns, etc) as well as making sure the property and houses are maintained and cared for. As with most organizations these have a board and the members vote and assign the members of the board. It’s not particularly complicated.

However, this last week two members of the board felt that they had the right to dictate how people decorated their patios and exteriors. The area I live in consists not only of apartment-housings, but also of duplexed houses in rows. These have exterior patios, and as with any place where people live they tend to become rather personalized and individual. People park their bikes there, decorate them individually with lights, furniture and flowers. Nothing special.

Well, apparently two of the board-members felt that the area needed a more uniform look and took it upon themselves to remove flowers, bicycles and whatever other ornamentations they felt violated the “proper” look and feel of the area. Flowers were thrown away without informing the owner of the unit it belonged to, bikes were moved away to other areas and furniture was removed without warning.

Essentially people woke up one morning to find that someone had removed their stuff. When it was found out that two members of the board had done this –with the arrogant attitude that they somehow had the right to do it– well, to call it a “shitstorm” would be quite an understatement.

I attended a meeting the other day where outraged apartment and duplex-owners asked why the board felt it stood above not just common ethics but also the law itself. The two board-members who had performed this heinous act refused to justify their actions with any response other than maintaining the attitude that the area needed a uniform look and feel to keep property values at the current (somewhat high) levels. They did not feel that they had broken any rules or laws, and maintained the opinion that people had themselves to blame for not presenting a uniform appearance outside of their homes.

When I asked if the two persons felt that they (as representatives of the board) were entitled to additionally step into our homes and start dictating how we arranged our furniture, what clothing we wore, or how we cooked our meals in order to maintain a certain “look and feel” of the community, I was met with very avoiding answers and a general stonewalling from not only the two members of the board – but from the entire board itself. Most other members of the community who attended the meeting agreed with me – where did the right to individuality and privacy end simply because the board-members felt they were entitled to arbitrarily throw peoples stuff away?

I left the meeting feeling that it was probably just a matter of time before board-members would use a master-key to enter our homes making sure we didn’t break away from the uniform look and feel they felt we should present to visitors.

—

Except of course, this never happened. I’m just feeling more and more that what’s happening in this country on (and the whole world!) is that individuality is less and less appreciated. Rather than encouraging individuality, we’re forcing people to conform to a homogeneous ideal. I simply used the concept of my housing cooperative to explore the concept.

We’re surrounded by politicians and corporations who feel more and more threatened by us and by the Internet.

The corporations (most obviously represented by the media-maffia) feel threatened since people now have the power to distribute their own creative works with none or very little cost. This threatens a business-model that’s built on not creating anything, but by controlling the flow of creativity from others. The Internet has rendered record companies virtually obsolete, since musicians now can distribute their own music.

Politicians feel threatened by the Internet since it allows limitless communication. No longer do we have to rely on the filtered and controlled information that they allow us through controlled outlets such as radio and television. Instead we can communicate endlessly, and with immediate reaction. Blogs and chats and direct interaction between citizens threaten to overthrow their empire of bureaucracy. This is unacceptable for them, since they want to maintain the status quo where they can use a system they control against the majority of the citizens.

Add to this mix a lot of greed and stupidity and you have a recipe for a dystopian future where the most amazing invention humankind has ever created (the Internet) is being used to control the vast majority for the benefit of a small clique of self-appointed elite.

One of the most common thing proponents of a draconian society uses is the phrase “if you’re clean you have nothing to worry about… ” which implies that if you’re a law-abiding citizen you should simply accept this invasion of privacy and loss of rights they’re trying to push on you.

Imagine a future society where everything you do is monitored. Not even George Orwell in his wildest imagination could’ve dreamt up such a horrible dystopia, and it’s all thanks to corporations and politicians corrupting the beautiful internet for their own hidden agendas.

It could start innocently enough. Think about it, virtually every computer today has a webcam – either built-in or attached through a cable. What if some politicians decided that every webcam had to be monitored via a government-installed piece of software? Just to make sure that you’re a law-abiding citizen. I mean, if you’re law-abiding you have nothing to hide, right? Just install the software and we won’t suspect you of anything. If you don’t install it, then that automatically means you have something to hide, and they will decide without informing you what kind of freak you are – even though you just wanted to maintain the right to privacy.

This is why you need to vote for your local Pirate party. If there is none, you need to start one. Before it’s too late, before commercial and political interests have corrupted our society into the one I describe above.

Jag har för mig att citatet som jag använt som rubrik kommer från Waynes World. Brydde mig aldrig om det konceptet, men citatet är ett av mina favorituttryck och jag använder det när helst nåt är fullständig orimligt.

Den här gången hävdas det att Tomas Norström inte var jävig. Det är tingsrätten som slår fast detta, och går därmed ut offentligt och bekräftar att de är antingen

A. Korrupta.
eller
B. Fullständigt pantade.

Det är inte heller omöjligt att tingsrätten är både och. Jag tycker det är uppenbart för vem som helst att han var genomrutten. Det här stärker inte mitt förtroende för det svenska rättsväsendet, som verkar ha fler hål än en schweizerost.

Om Tomas Norström inte är jävig så väntar jag på att en hord med apor kommer att spruta ut ur min röv precis vilken sekund som helst.

Alltså, ni måste läsa den bloggen som heter “Ingers Blogg”. Det är en underbart läskig och satirisk blogg som skrivs av två fundamentalistiskt kristna bibelviftande karaktärer. Läs den, och kom ihåg att även om den är satir så finns det människor som hyser liknande åsikter i verkliga livet. Roligt är också att KD själva försöker fördöma den här bloggen, säkert för att den tar upp mindre trevliga aspekter av många kristdemokrater och deras åsikter.

UPPDATERING 090601: Nu har masken fallit och upphovsmannen (“Johannes”) har tagit ordet från munnen. Både bra och tråkigt, jag fann satiren enormt underhållande.

Den här rutan från Berglins tycker jag perfekt summerar svensk elitpolitik inom det röda och blåa blocket idag. Den fick mig att skratta högt första gången jag läste den.

Jag har knyckt serien så den inte försvinner. Vill ni läsa den i sin helhet, KLICKA HÄR

Yesterday I took this brief snapshot of a Coke can.

My original plan behind this was to talk about how I distrust anything that a corporation says, and that I have taken to assuming that the truth is the exact opposite of anything a corporation says either on their product or in their advertising. This stems from my deep and convinced opinion that literally NOTHING is true in any of the commercials we’re bombarded with on the boob-tube.

For example, whenever some company has produced some shaky handicam-commercial featuring a dentist saying that THIS toothpaste, RIGHT HERE will make your teeth whiter and whatever, my instinct tells me that this entire thing is a carefully planned and executed ruse. I simply assume that the alleged dentist is in fact an actor claiming to be a dentist, and the commercial is cleverly planned to look like a spontaneous spur-of-the-moment recording despite not being it at all.

Thus, I distrust anything corporations say.

The print on the can says “Produced in Sweden” and I had originally planned to write a cynical post about how it most likely is NOT produced in Sweden, based on the aforementioned gut-instinct.

However, I realized that there was something much more interesting to this simple can.

Sweden is part of the European Union, EU for short. I don’t like EU, never have, probably never will. I tend to (very cynically) say that the EU managed to do peacefully what Hitler tried with war, which was to unite Europe into one nation. Yes, it’s a gross simplification but none the less it’s fairly close to the truth. I’ve always felt that the unofficial goal of the EU is to reduce patriotism inside it’s member-countries and instead turn everything into a gray faceless mush, a blend of all the countries.

However, while thinking about this simple little red aluminium can I realized that in many ways, EU had managed to do the opposite.

Due to the free trade available, it’s in many ways cheaper for many companies to simply produce something in a country where labor costs are lower than in Sweden, and then import it. And this is probably true in many ways, and I think there are literally thousands of companies who do it. Yet somehow, it’s become a mark of quality to show that a product has been produced domestically rather than imported from a cheaper country.

In a way, I think this has strengthened the swedish patriotism. Maybe swedes have started taking greater pride in products that are actually produced in Sweden rather than imported from some cheaper country? Because I see this everywhere, and it’s especially true about goods that you eat or drink. It’s impossible to walk into a grocery store and take a look at the meat-section without noticing that every single package of meat proudly proclaims to be domestic. Swedes shun meat that come from odd countries, and this is a result of the Mad Cow-scare a few years back.

But it’s not limited to dead animals chopped up and placed in neat plastic boxes. It goes for fruit and vegetables too. Sure, people buy apples from the Netherlands and same goes for tomatoes – but the first instinct is to look for Swedish apples and tomatoes. We look for the native alternatives, and only when we can’t find them do we shrug and sullenly go for the imported variety.

And now it’s spreading to other products as well. I’ve seen stamps of this on bags of potato chips, or ketchup. It’s quickly becoming a very important thing for producers to slap on their product, since people are becoming more and more distrusting of imported goods.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to everything. Sweden imports a good deal of the crap we buy and consume, and none of our auto-makers are Swedish any longer. Both SAAB and Volvo have been owned by American interests for at least ten years now and are Swedish only in name and heritage.

And sure, much of the reason for choosing domestic products when it comes to foodstuff is simply to avoid unknowns. We don’t know how the beef and pork that’s imported from Poland came to be. We don’t know what’s inside the milk from Germany. But at the same time, it’s becoming a way to embrace our own nationality.

With all that said, there is of course no way for the Average Joe to know if it’s really true. Sure, the Coke-can might say it’s been produced in Sweden, but there’s no way for us to know. For all we know, it might be imported from Romania and then poured into a pre-printed can. The beef that claims to be from Swedish cows might as well be from cows where the rules concerning growth-hormones and genetic tampering might be laxer, and then imported and slapped with a big ol’ lie of being produced in Sweden. There is no way for consumers to know, and we have to accept this statement at face-value since we’re left with no choice.

So in a way, it circles back to my distrust of corporations after all!

Jag läser att Beatrice Ask vill tvinga operatörerna att lagra information om IP-adresser i minst sex månader. IPRED visade sig ju vara ganska tandlös när operatörerna vägrade kompromissa kring sina kunders integritet och vägrade behålla informationen, och nu vill Beatrice Ask som den duktiga marionett hon är att det här hålet ska tätas så att hennes kompisar/arbetsgivare i upphovsrättsmaffian ska få sina önskningar tillgodosedda.

Det upphör aldrig att förvåna mig hur ingen fattar att Sverige sedan den 1a April är en fascistisk stat. En stat där kommersiella intressen går hand i hand med de statliga, och där kommersiella intressen tillåts forma hur samhället ska vara uppbyggt.

Jag finner det också absurt att så få av de som röstade in Fascisterna Borgarna till makten nu bara står och ser dumma ut. Trodde de verkligen att borgarna skulle hålla sina löften om att t.ex. inte jaga en hel ungdomsgeneration? Hahaha, herregud så naivt.

Det enda man kan lita på med borgarna är att man inte kan lita på dem. Det kan ni skriva opp.

I don’t trust cops. This stems from a deep distrust of the police-force in large.

It rarely has anything to do with individual cops, since by and large I’ve been treated decent by cops in my few encounters with them. I still don’t trust cops since I feel that the organization is deeply flawed and mismanaged. The legal system in Sweden has some rather odd peculiarities, such as having a higher scale of punishment for poaching a moose than raping a woman, and this is the system that cops have to follow.

I’m certain that the vast majority of cops are perfectly nice people. I’m certain that they believe they’re doing the right thing, keeping criminals at bay and serving the public. My distrust is with the organization and how it’s used and abused by politicians with ulterior motives.

With that said, there are of course dickhead cops as well. Cops who become cops simply because they want the power, that they believe cops are above the law and better than normal people. Today I encountered such a cop.

I was at my local grocery-orgy and as I was about to enter I noticed someone had parked a large non-descript late-model Volvo almost literally right outside the entrance. People were having trouble getting around the car since it blocked the flow of people.

As I wondered what kind of asshat had done this a beefy-looking female cop came out of the supermarket with loaded bags and opened the rear of the Volvo, after which she started loading said bags into it. She acted incredibly brusquely, not minding that she occasionally shoved into people as they were trying to file around the car. She was wearing her uniform, so my guess is that the car was either a civilian cruiser or her own personal vehicle.

An elderly lady approached her carefully, and I believe she inquired why the officer had parked at such an inconvenient location.

Normally it’s strictly forbidden to even drive vehicles this close to the entrance since it’s a walkway and designed to only be accessible by foot. Apart from this female cop the only vehicle I’ve ever seen so close to the store is the security-people when the store is closing – and even they stop at a respectable distance from the entrance to allow the flow of people to be unhindered.

I couldn’t hear the reply the cop gave her, but I heard her tone of voice. It was annoyed, overly self-assured and implied that the old lady should mind her own goddamn business and leave better people to their own devices unless they wanted a beating by nightstick. The elderly lady backed off, the cop finished her loading and drove off.

So, thank you, unknown female police officer for making sure that everyone there understood that cops are arrogant dickheads who feel the rules are for everyone except them.