Here’s some assorted hopes I have for the immediate as well as the distant future.

* I hope Obama isn’t a corrupt liar like most politicians who’ve managed to climb that high up on the ladder. I hope he actually WILL change the US and get America back to being a respected country rather than being the hateful, religious fear-monger it has devolved into for the last ten years or so.

* I hope that we will understand our own economy better. What an amazing clusterfuck these last few months have been, and it’s all our own fault.

* I hope that society strengthens itself. I have no faith in the current society we’ve built, but I hope that some day there will be a reason for me to have faith in this society again. A good reason, not the hollow bullshit reasons that get kicked around today.

* I hope that humanity tire of style and go back to producing substance. Sadly I’ve found the election i the US so amazingly hollow that I’ve barely followed it. It’s sad to see through the facades created by PR, marketing and spindoctors. It’s sad that everything has to be designed, massproduced, streamlined.

* I hope that we can all leave this delusional business with religion behind us. We don’t need religion. It is an anchor around our collective necks. It is a device meant to keep us from excelling. It’s a prison for the mind.

* I hope that I find some pursuit in my life to strengthen my spirit and make me happy. I hope that I find some purpose with myself, and that I find a deep feeling of satisfaction with who I am, what I achieve and where I’m going. I hope that I become a less bitter, cynical and frustrated person than I am today.

* I hope that the world experiences more love, happiness, fellowship and compassion than ever before. If not, we’re all royally screwed.

* I hope that my happiness returns to me.

* I hope that our politicians stop treating us as potential terrorists. I hope they stop with the FUD they spread, and I hope they stop ignoring us and start listening to our opinions. As long as they’re ignoring us, there’s no democracy. I also hope that if our politicians continue to ignore us, we as a people rise up and take that power away from them. With force if necessary.

* I hope I find my passion for writing again. I miss it. I miss it a lot.

* I hope to see more friends visiting my home.

Anyone remember Jerry Fletcher? He was the main character of Conspiracy Theory, a surprisingly good movie that was released back in 1997. Jerry was extremely paranoid, obsessed with Cather in the Rye, and every day he scanned the news trying to figure out the ways we were all being screwed.

I realized a few minutes ago that in a way, I’ve become just like Jerry.

Instead of reading the news and accepting what’s written there as truth, I’ve become so distrustful of both our fearless leaders as well as media in general that I no longer read the news. Instead, I scan through it trying to figure out what’s really going on, and in what way are we being lied to and cheated today.

See, most people live under the illusion that media is there to expose injustice and call out the politicians when they try to pull a fast one on us the people. I sadly realized a few years back that this was simply a naive illusion. Instead, media had slowly morphed into a mouthpiece for politicians, and that it was much more profitable to simply report everything at face value. Even worse, a lot of our beloved media today are more interested in simply pushing the latest celebrity-gossip or having us worry about a thousand different useless things, rather than actually doing what media traditionally does.

And this scares the Jerry Fletcher inside of me. Because I want to be able to trust the people elected to lead me. I want to trust the media that prints news. I want to believe that I live in the best possible world, created by people interested in creating a great place to be a human.

But there isn’t a single shred of evidence indicating this to be truth. Instead, I have less faith than ever before in my leaders, and what little trust I had in the media has dwindled and disappeared the last three-four years or so.

I’ve been thinking about our fearless leaders a lot today. As many others I’m worried that Sweden has begun it’s slippery descent into totalitarianism when our elected politicians voted through the FRA-law.

The thing though that worries me isn’t that it might be abused. My heart already knows that it’s a virtual fact, that such a leaky law with so many double-clauses and vague definitions will be abused. I’ve accepted that, and in time I will adapt my living-style to these new premises.

Neither am I worried or upset that everyone in favor of this law - all the way up to the head of state himself - is desperately trying to smooth things over and make people forget about all this. Whatever their motives were, they’re now acting in accordance with whatever motivated them to vote this bastard through. If their motives were sinister, then of course they will try to make people forget. If their motives were noble and they realized their mistake, then of course they’re trying to smooth things over in order to save face and hopefully some kind of political reputation. In short, they’re doing what humans have done for centuries - screw other lesser humans over and then try to justify it. Nothing new there.

No, what worries and upsets me is that our elected leaders have no faith in us, the people who voted them into office. We’re expected to behave like sheep and every four years dutifully vote the next bunch of fear-mongers into office. We’re not expected to actually have any opinion.

What upsets me is that our elected leaders are treating us like children. They don’t deign to explain why they claim that the law is good, they just stonewall us and say that we don’t understand it. Just like a bad parent who’d rather not try to explain something to an inquisitive child and instead gives some bullshit reason and then say “that’s the end of this discussion”.

I’ve long maintained that much of the democratic system in most western countries are carefully designed machineries that give us one single “power” and that’s it. Our only input into who runs the world is through the vote, and in every other effect we the people are simply uninteresting children. We’re supposed to sit quiet and not make a fuss, and when we make a fuss our inept parents simply tell us how they want things. They don’t give any reason, they don’t explain anything. They simply treat us like dumb children.

I’m certain that many politicians in their naivety actually believe they’re trying to protect us. That’s the really scary part. Sure, I’m certain as well that there’s way too many politicians whose only interest lies in acquiring power and money, and then keeping those at whatever costs. But I hope and think that most people who participate in the absurd race of politics do so with the intention to do good.

The sad thing though is that through their ineptitude, naivety and unwillingness to listen to the people who put them in power, they’re enabling the darker kind of politician to pursue the oppression of the people.

Sweden is becoming a nannystate. One where our leaders believe they’re protecting us from some imaginary threat, or from ourselves. What they’re really protecting us from is freedom and evolution.

(I’m not sure if I’m back to writing or not, but I just can’t hold my anger and frustration about the latest political madness that’s been approved here in Sweden. Beware that there will most likely be plenty of foul language ahead.)

As surely anyone in this country (and even outside of it) knows Sweden yesterday passed the so-called “Lex Orwell” law, aka the FRA-law.

To say that this is stupidity on such a grand scale we’ll need a new tool and unit to measure it is quite an understatement. Personally I feel like I want to go to the swedish parliament and bitch-slap the shit out of every single one of the morons who voted yes for it. I also want to smack the living jeezus out of the wankers who weren’t even there, in this case some 60+ people.

Every single politician except one lone hero followed the party-line of voting for it. This is to all of you who voted yes: YOU SUCK, you’re a bunch of goddamn cowards and are not worthy to smell my shit!

So, why is this law such a bad thing? Well, I’m just going to list the tip of the iceberg here.

* It’s incredibly vague. The law talks about “yttre hot” (Swedish for “outer threats”) but makes only half-assed attempts at defining them. The old boogeyman called terrorism is waved in the face of everyone who doesn’t immediately nod their head off, even though Sweden has never been a target of terrorism. For any swede to think Sweden is a target for terrorism is ridiculous hubris. Sweden is such a neutral country that in comparison Switzerland seem like an extremely opinionated nation.

* The naivety among politicians about how technology works is nothing short of astounding. Do they really think that there’s something like one huge cable going in and out of the country? Go to some lame website like myspace and I guarantee you that the traffic passes in and out of the country through at least seventeen different pipes.

* The naivety among politicians about how technology works is nothing short of astounding. Yes, I know I said it once already, but it’s such a big issue that it deserves to be mentioned twice. Provided this law will be used to track those vaguely defined “outer threats” then the assumption is that terrorists use standard email, never encrypt anything and don’t use any codes at all. Seriously, how much of a failure as a terrorist do you have to be to be dumb enough sending emails with things like “are you going to place the bomb at the presidents car today”? If you did, you wouldn’t last as a terrorist more than five seconds before you accidentally shoot yourself in the face.

Which leads me to…

* Since the threat of terrorism is purely symbolic the only purpose for this constant wiretapping will be to keep track of domestic threats. And since the law is so vaguely formulated you can bet your sweet patootie that everyone with money, power or a government job will want access to the logs and contents. The first ones will of course be the mediamaffia, who will happily corrupt anyone they can in order to keep fighting for their “rights” or some bullshit like that. Not to mention that the anonymity for whistleblowers or informants will be completely gone. No one will ever again question authority, because they can no longer be sure who reads the logs. Additionally, to even mention the phrase that “innocent people will have nothing to hide” is plain idiocy. Even if you’re “innocent” you will change your habits if you know that you’re being supervised. And innocence is highly flexible. Who knows what will be defined as innocent in ten years? What is a minor crime today might be punishable by death in a decade, thanks to the fact that the government can keep constant watch on everyone.

* The fact that this law even passed makes me think that the yes-voters can be classified as one of three kinds of politicians:

1) The coward who doesn’t dare to oppose the party-line.
2) The moron who doesn’t know better.
3) The dangerous one who actually wants to implement a totalitarian state where the citizens are under constant surveillance similar to the former East Germany (DDR). The one who welcomes it, since he or she is safe knowing they’ll be more equal than the rest of us.

So what are my thoughts on all this?

My emotions are quite clear. I think this law is a frontal assault on democracy. While I don’t think that we will live in an Orwellian dystopia within the next week, I am scared that the slow erosion of democracy has started.

My emotion around all this is more Animal Farm than Nineteen-Eighty Four, but the concept is the same. A sham democracy. A faux democracy. A democracy only in name, bolstered by lofty sayings and using television and media to blind the public and keep them sedated.

I’m afraid that Sweden is started down the slippery slope towards a totalitarian government, just like old DDR or various other countries around the world, such as Belarus or even Saudi-Arabia.

I thought that I had misread something. I hoped that I had misread something. I wanted to know that I had misread something somewhere, and that this wasn’t what had actually happened. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what had happened.

A lot of people will probably remember that in 2005 the hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. FEMA got a lot of very sharp criticism for the way it handled that disaster, as did the Fearless Leader George W. who opted to strum his guitar rather than get his hands dirty.

Now, back to current events. No one has missed the news about the raging wildfires going on i California. I’ve seen the Gubernator himself go on television to assure everyone that resources will be spent on rebuilding peoples homes as quick as possible. Personally I’m somewhat confused, didn’t anyone remember the fires that happened a few years ago? As far as I can tell these huge wildfires in California isn’t something rare, apparently it happens with a few years space between them.

FEMA recently held a press-conference defending itself and patting themselves on the back for doing a much better job than back in ‘05 with the Katrina-disaster.

The only problem was that the entire thing was completely arranged.

From Wikipedia:

FEMA came under intense criticism when it was revealed that a press conference on the California wildfires of October 2007 was staged. Deputy Administrator Harvey E. Johnson was answering questions from FEMA employees who were posing as reporters. Many of these questions were “soft ball” questions, intentionally asked in a way that would evoke a positive response giving the impression that FEMA was doing everything right. In this way, any scrutiny from real reporters (many of whom were only given a 15 minute notice) would have been avoided. Press Secretary Dana Perino later criticized the agency for this. Fox News aired the staged press briefing live. No one was fired.

FEMA-employees posed as journalists asking questions, while real journalists weren’t invited. The only contact real journalists had was through a conference-call to the shindig, and they were barred from asking any questions. In short, this was a completely fake arrangement designed only to make FEMA look better.

In my eyes this is yet another step that the US government is taking towards a dictatorship styled on what Stalin did in the Soviet Union. I’m pretty sure that the land of the free and the brave will soon be turned into something straight out of Animal Farm, with all the George W-clones running around shouting “four legs good, two legs bad” and making sure that some are created more equal than others.

What FEMA did was propaganda. It was a lie. It was not an accident, and only due to the US now being so heavily based on lies do they get away with a “oops, our bad” rather than having heads roll.

It’s a sad day for democracy and freedom in the USA.

Found through Slashdot

Sorry about the silly rhyme/pun that serves as the topic for this entry. I just couldn’t stop myself.

A few days ago Aftonbladet (a large Swedish semi-tabloid that I refuse to link to) hosted an online chat between its readers and the minister of Industry (at least I think that would be the english-language equivalent to “näringsminister”) whose name is Maud Olofsson.

Maud is a politician I detest with all my heart. Every time she says something it just sounds like a lie. I have no trust in her whatsoever, and the party she represents don’t enjoy a lot of trust from me either. No, Maud seems to be one of those oh too many politicians who are equipped with two tongues: one that speaks the unofficial truth and always seem to be very quiet, and one that never shuts up and always is ready with a two-faced answer to any question and always has some meaningless propaganda ready to dispense when people get critical.

The funny thing is that a few days ago it was discovered that this online “chat” between Maud (article in Swedish, in a different newspaper) and the readers of this rag actually was a complete fabrication. I call it “chat” since it’s really more like a Q&A with either a politician or celebrity. You ask a question, and hopefully they answer yours.

Anyhoo…

Yes, this was a complete fraud since the person people were chatting with WASN’T Maud. They were instead talking to her media-secretary who pretended to be Maud. This was discovered when another newspaper of much smaller size than Aftonbladet found it somewhat strange that they managed to interview her while she supposedly sat and chatted with the readers from another newspaper.

When this was later leaked to the public a large debate about accountability took place. I immediately felt that Maud had cheated her supporters and also cheated the whole country. I found it rather amusing in a dark and foreboding way about how she is very vocal about accountability in a persons online presence, and is a supporter of the draconian data-retention laws that a large number of Swedish politicians are pushing for — yet she feels herself to not have to be honest with people, and can instead have people pretending to be her.

Shame on you, Maud! You are a true and shining example of why we as a people should mistrust most of the politicians who currently rule our country according to an agenda which they seem to make up as they go along. I really hope that this event will lead to your downfall.

EDIT: Fiksd som stranj speling erorrs.

… annoy the living crap out of me right now. I’m at a loss to muster the energy to write in-depth about them though.

The first one is how Swedish media is reporting about how thousands of swedish homepages were hacked by malevolent turkish hackers. I’ve read a few articles in the daily rags about it, and each and every one of them does the same thing: make it sound as if it was a coordinated attack on Swedish interests.

Which it wasn’t. Apparently it was a competition between two rival blackhat-crews to see who could crack the most sites. They didn’t care if it was a Swedish, English, Russian or a goddamn Martian homepage. They just wanted to add up the numbers.

—

Another thing that makes me want to grab something deadly and go postal is this nonsense about Jammie Thomas and her conviction. Sonys lawyers made the claim that copying a record YOU have bought to YOUR own harddrive is piracy! Absolute and complete madness. Any sane person would say otherwise, but apparently most judges and courts work in some kind of crazy parallell universe. This is just another step in the direction that the mediamaffia wants us to believe and accept - that we don’t own purchased goods, we just purchase a license to use it. It’s even worse in the proprietary software-world, there it’s a reality and have been for a decade at least. Buy Windows and you don’t buy Windows - you buy a proprietary license where Microsoft decides the rules.

That’s the future if people keep buying the mediamaffias “products”. The recording industry hasn’t realized that the Internet and open communication have made them completely obsolete. They are selling a product which is no longer needed. The interesting thing that my good friend Andreas originally suggested several years ago –and a theory which I whole-heartedly believe– is that it’s not about lost profit. No, in fact it’s all about lost CONTROL. The mediamaffia is afraid of losing control over what music people listen to, and thus losing control of the entire industry. They want to keep deciding which artists get popular, and keep shoving crap like the latest Britney-record down the throats of people. They’re scared that people will realize that there are other alternatives.

No, the recording companies have gone the way of the dodo. They just refuse to realize it yet. Band don’t really need them anymore either. Look at what Radiohead is doing. I think it’s absolutely awesome. Radiohead never cared much about the business-and-numbers side of pop music, and they have a dedicated following. They severed their ties with the obsolete industry and are doing it for themselves, selling their album straight to the fans and letting the fans decide what the price is.

In the olden days bands wanted a recording contract for two major reasons: to get recorded, and to get distributed. It wasn’t until bands also realized that by selling records they could get rich that money also became a part of the equation. But ask any genuine musician what they want, and they will answer that they just want people to listen to their music. If you can make a living off of it then that’s great. The way I see it it’s the phonies and posers that get into music to make a buck.

Today you can rent a studio for relative cheap. Hell, there’s tons of community-run studios where you can record a demo cheap or even for free if you’re buddies with the engineer. Record a 2- or 4-song demo. Then get a cool domainname on some hosting, slap a somewhat coherent website there with the demo for download. After that start marketing it through Myspace or what other services you like. No record company involved anywhere.

After that it’s evolution. If your band sucks no one will listen. If you’re fresh and funky, listeners will drop in.

—

Third thing that bugs me are jerks who abuse generous principles. I’m thinking of the moron who my father blogged about the other day. The right to public access is an almost holy principle in Sweden. It’s extremely generous and allows people to enjoy the beautiful nature of Sweden provided you follow some (in my opinion) basic rules of respect. These include picking up after yourself, not disturbing animals and not acting like a complete tool when interacting with the environment.

Yet there’s always dingbats who feel that they don’t have to follow these very basic rules. They leave their crap behind and don’t give two shits about what happens with it. They act as if they can only use the generous aspects of the rules without the equal responsibility.

Therefore it’s heartwarming to see that there actually exists decent people who do the right thing. To whoever picked up after that jackass - I salute you.

EDIT: Ironically enough it would seem that I really DID have the energy to write about them. Hmm, I guess once the floodgates are opened there’s no going back.

Via this somewhat humorous Userfriendly-strip I learned that the UK has a new law. Basically the law makes it a crime to not decrypt encrypted data when requested by authorities as part of a criminal or terrorism-related investigation. If you refuse, you face jail since you’re obstructing justice. ArsTechnica has a better write-up about the law.

Am I the only one who thinks that this is yet another step towards a full-blown Orwellian society? In Sweden we have a whole bunch of politicians who are jonesing for complete data-retention of all Internet-traffic. They want to pick apart our lives in order to prevent “terrorists” from doing nasty things. They push every button on every lobbyist they can, and of course the mediamob loves this since they want to buy themselves into the system and chase filesharers as they see fit.

Politicians keep using the same old trite and tired methods to coerce the people into accepting this: if you don’t have anything to hide, then why hide it?

Of course they purposefully miss the point. It’s all about having the right to privacy. The right to be left alone. The right to not be suspected of a crime you didn’t commit - because that’s what’s going to happen. The politicians in charge want to make everyone a potential terrorist, and then using the laws in a frivolous manner decide themselves when and what constitutes a crime.

Encryption was a way around that, but our fearless leaders in their infinite lack of wisdom apparently decided that only criminals want privacy. Now, that’s a fact in that country. Anyone who uses encryption has become a criminal. Even if you decrypt your data when requested you’re still being treated as a potential crook and bandit.

—

In related matters I read that the first verdict has come in one of the numerous filesharing-trials in the US of A. Jammie Thomas was accused of filesharing, and was convicted and ordered to pay US$222000. Absolutely outrageous, at most she should be made to pay 20 bucks. Yet another show of how greedy corporations abuse the legal system.

There’s a blogpost over at one of the major Swedish newspapers detailing the madness. It’s obviously useless to people who don’t speak Swedish, but I wanted to link there anyway.

Något som helt har gått svenska medier förbi är hur Danmark för nån vecka sen upphörde att vara en demokrati och istället tog sina första stadiga steg mot en övervakningsmanisk diktatur.

Detta skedde samtidigt som man införde en mycket omfattande datalagring i hela landet. Man gjorde detta för att hålla sig synkroniserade med det vansinne som bl.a. våran egen Thomas Bodström var stark förespråkare för i EU. Det som är skrämmande är att Danmark har tagit det hela ännu längre och vill totalitär-övervaka varenda sak som händer på nätet.

Syftet med detta är givetvis extremt luddigt formulerat. Det är allting från “terrorism” till snatterier som tydligen skall förebyggas genom att danska staten tar bort individens rättigheter. Jag gissar att staten kan tolka in precis vad de vill i sina kriterier, och därför anser jag att Danmark har upphört att vara en demokrati där man sätter individens rättigheter i fokus. Istället har man blivit en diktatur där all makt utgår från staten, inte tvärtom.

Man övervakar all epost, alla chatter och all webtrafik som sker. Bor du i Danmark kan du alltså från och med den 15e September bli åtalad för i princip vad som helst - oavsett om du gjorde det eller om din dator var infekterad med en trojan.

Om man bortser från rent tekniskt varför det här är vansinnigt (man ska tydligen lagra VARENDA IPv4-paket som passerar inom eller genom landets gränser! Hur i hela fridens namn ska det gå till?) så är det här dessutom en våldtäkt på individens rättigheter.

Enda stället jag överhuvudtaget läst om detta är via Oscar Swartz. De etablerade medierna har givetvis varit väldigt tysta om detta, och jag antar att det är en kombination av okunskap och ointresse från deras sida.

Det som är extra skrämmande är hur danska justitieministern kör med det eviga “har du rent mjöl i påsen”-argumentet. HÖR UPP KÄRRINGJÄVEL! Det handlar inte om “rent mjöl i påsen”, det handlar om de mänskliga rättigheterna, individens privatliv och det faktum att i en modern demokrati ska man inte behöva fundera huruvida ett epost-meddelande kanske kan tolkas som “instiftan till terrorism” eller vad ni nu kallar det. Det handlar om att man är oskyldig tills motsatsen bevisats, något som inte verkar tas på speciellt mycket allvar i Danmark.

Oavsett om man “tänker” göra nånting eller ej spelar ingen roll. Att jaga brottslingar genom övervakning leder ingenstans, men det verkar inte ni tröga och korrupta politiker vilja förstå.

När en dansk fackförening inom datorbranschen i protest skickade ut CD-skivor med krypteringsverktyg blev de omedelbart behandlade som misstänkta brottslingar. Danska justitieministern sa om detta:

“För mig förefaller det som att det bara är en mycket begränsad grupp som har nytta av detta. Nämligen de personer som har begått eller planerar ett begå allvarlig brottslighet och som försöker dölja sina spår”

Om du har en såpass svartvit syn på det hela - då ska du inte vara justitieminister! Du ska jobba som gatsopare, för där är soporna antingen på gatan eller i påsen.

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