Currently the world is in full Olympic Games-hysteria. Everywhere you look you see something about the games. It’s difficult to open a newspaper without seeing headlines about the athletes doing whatever it is they do. It’s impossible to turn on the boob-tube without seeing something about the current status of [whatever] game is currently in swing.

And I’m tired of this hysteria.

Now, before I go into full grouchy-cynic mode let me say that I admire what the games stand for. Unity, respect, health and understanding other people are just some of the things the Olympic Games supposedly promote. I like those things. I like them a lot.

But the Olympic Games have become a hollow shell of it’s own former self. Especially this year, when one of the most oppressive regimes in the world pay hosts to the spectacle. A lot of good things can be said about China, but equally many (or more) bad things can also be said about them. The complete disregard for human rights and free speech in China makes the games even more hollow.

I watched parts of the opening celebrations when they happened a few days ago, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how virtually every one of the performers in the spectacle essentially had a chinese gun to their heads. Either they performed perfectly so China could show their communist superiority to the decadent west. If you fell or were out of sync with the rest of the performers, then maybe some unspecified nastiness might occur to your person when the cameras stopped broadcasting.

Even if we manage to disregard the inhuman behaviour of china for a moment I still feel that the Olympics have forgotten it’s core values. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if at least 60% of the athletes are on steroids of some kind. The olympics haven’t been about sportsmanship for at least two decades - these days second place is the first loser, and provided you can get away with injecting yourself with whatever is at hand then you’ll be a winner.

Add to this all the stupid nonsense that media cooks up as tie-ins. I mean, what the hell does arranging Swedens largest flashmob have to do with the olympics? Not a single goddamn thing, but since it occurs right now they’ve found every single stupid excuse to make it a sportsfan-related event.

And every year the host have to outperform the previous host. This is most obvious in the opening ceremonies, but everything has to be more than last time. Bigger arenas, bigger this, bigger that. More this, more that. So forth and so on. It just bothers me that we can spend these resources while millions of people still can’t read or lack clean water.

(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.

… but I don’t really know about what. A lot of things I need/want to write about are pretty local in tone, at least as far as the global community goes. Most of it is Sweden-related.

For example, I’m still completely aghast that the minister of justice here in this country apparently thinks bribery and corruption is an acceptable and completely tolerable policy. At least if the briber is wealthy enough to pay off real big.

The story behind this is the same one that has been causing reality to distort for quite a while now. The police officer Jim Keyser, who got a well-paid job at the global mediamaffia, caused some stir a few weeks (months?) back. Beatrice Ask, the swedish minister of Justice, basically said that she approved of it, and said it was nice that the “competence” among swedish police-officers is at a level that it allows them to use it for their own personal gain. This is the same minister who wants to allow the mediamaffia to completely undhindered pursue filesharers and also wants to introduce complete data-retention in order to spy on her own voters.

Completely crazy. The only real conclusion I can draw from her insane statements is that she’s as corrupted as everyone else involved in this ludicrous pursuit.

Another thing that is causing frustration in my head is religion. I’ve been meaning to write something about why I find religion so crazy and backwards. The trick though is to manage to do it with a somewhat maintained level of grammatical and vocabular style. As it stands, my thoughts on religion are usually peppered with some very rude curses. I really don’t give two hoots if I offend some bibletoting fundamentalist wackjob out there, but I don’t want to stoop to their level either.

And finally, I’m still working on my pro-FOSS posting. It’s been on ice for a while, but I might thaw it out tonight and have another go at writing about FOSS, why I like it, why I want to promote it, why I think more people need to leave proprietary software behind and the direct as well as long-time advantages it will have for every human on this planet!

Yes, I can be quite pompous. Whatever.

I found this satirical little writing about how bread is the unknown killer of today, and even though I laughed at it a more serious part of my brain reminded me that even though it’s satire, it actually showcases pretty well the attitude our media and governments display to us.

(Wow, that was a long sentence. Sorry!)

I’ll quite a bit from it so to whet your appetite.

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.

2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.

3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations.

4. Every piece of bread you eat brings you nearer to death.

Replace “bread” with “terrorists” and all of a sudden it no longer reads as satire. It reads as something that Fox would broadcast on their news.

I’m precognitive. In case you’re not into fancy terms, that means I can see the future. It doesn’t work for everything, but let me show you one example of what will come.

Commercials on television, for example. While today they’re fairly acceptable in the future they will simply consist of a very loud voice shouting the name of the company they’re advertising over and over.

For example:

AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM

and so on. I just chose Amazon as an example. Please don’t sue me.

Accompanying this symphony of madness the screen will flash out the logo of the company in epilepsy-inducing batches. Commercials will also be much longer, probably fifteen minutes or so per commercial. Per hour there will be less than five minutes of actual programming, the rest will simply be these commercials.

—

And speaking of programming. Since people of the future will have mush for brains, the entertainment will have to be reduced in order to fit their limited attention-span.

The only form of entertainment that will survive will be what we currently call “reality-shows”. In the future they will simply be called “reality” and everyone will blindly follow it. Instead of contestants or participants we’ll probably just use red or blue dots to indicate what’s going on. I mean, after all, conversation will require those mushy brains to work and that can’t be expected of the audience, right?

The red and blue dots will bob around the screen while a commenter similar to sports-commentators we have today will explain the intrigue.

Something like this:

“Oh, one of the blue dots is really angry since one of the red dots messed around with a yellow dot, even though they were engaged. Then all the red dots decided to vote the green dots off the island, but the orange dots staged a mutiny and killed all the brown dots”

And so on.

—

Okay, so I can’t actually predict the future. But what we have on television today is simply a less reformed version of the above. And if you don’t like my prediction, well, I suggest you rent either Idiocracy or They Live. Both are vastly under-appreciated movies.

Yeah, the topic pretty much says it all. I think a lot. My brain is rarely quiet. Unless pre-occupied with something needing immediate attention it tends to fall back on common, heavy and almost unanswerable topics.

Most of these topics can roughly be categorized either as “What’s Wrong With The World Today?” or “What’s Wrong With Me?”

—

Let me give you an example of a subject falling under the World-category that I think a lot about these days: Television. Karl Marx once said that religion is the opiate of the masses. Now, I totally agree with this –”religion” is also one of the many subtopics of the World-category that I think about– but I also think that technology that emerged in the mid-20th century has given us another opiate with which to dull our senses: Television.

When television started receiving wide commercialization and globalization in the 1970’s and 1980’s people (mostly parents) were worried that this thing would corrupt the minds of the young ones. Personally I think that television of that era is incredibly naive and innocent compared to the multiheaded dragon we have today, but none the less it was the seed for the abomination that now blares from millions of boob-tubes around the world.

Over the last two years or so I’ve become almost convinced that television is one of the pillars of what’s keeping humankind from evolving. Television of the early 21st century has become a drug, something to dull our senses so we stay docile and keep consuming. Television is the medium used to subdue people, keep them from asking questions, questioning authority and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

I don’t like using the word “conspiracy” because that word has become associated with nutters and people wearing tinfoil-hats to keep the rays out, but in a way television has become a conspiracy. A de-facto conspiracy, if you will. A conspiracy where we are bombarded with commercials, braindead “reality”-series promoting the lowest common denominators, celebrity gossip, sitcoms, generic humor, generic sadness, generic genericness. Everything fabricated and disguised as entertainment. Homogenated into a weird painting almost resembling reality but not containing one single ounce of it.

This conspiracy extends to some extent to the Internet. The numbing continues here. Look at blogs, for example. Most of the worlds most popular blogs continue the trend of television. Celebrity gossip, fashion, makeup. Admittedly this is medication that netizens themselves fabricate for themselves, but I think that we’re so fond of it simply because we’ve (and by we I mean you and me, the regular joe) been conditioned to think that it’s important. Since we believe it’s important we continue the indoctrination over onto a medium that isn’t controlled by higher-ups, and this in turn slowly corrupts this fabulous new medium after a while.

Everyone is expected to watch television. Unless you follow whatever current nonsense is being broadcast, you’re shunned by the rest of the tribe. If you don’t even own a television you’re considered a freak, an outcast, someone not to be trusted. I have a friend who a few years back tossed out his television due to lack of interest. When the swedish agency that registers ownership of televisions (yes, we have one of those) called him and asked if he’d registered ownership he of course replied that he didn’t own a television. Essentially they then treated him as a liar and a cheat.

Essentially that’s how my thoughts on television go. On and on I think about subjects like that, trying to deduce what they bring or take from our society.

—

Another thing currently rolling through my head is the topic of “therapy”, probably best categorized under the “What’s Wrong With Me?” As any regular reader knows I suffer from anxiety-related depression and am currently taking medication to combat this. A few years ago I regularly attended therapy and it helped me a bit, but after a while I felt that I was only rehashing the same old things without making any progress, and slowly started reducing the amount of therapy I exposed myself to.

Therapy is a funny word. Really, it’s just a fancy word for talking. There are of course various forms of therapy, with therapists focusing on different methods of making the subject themselves realize things. I think that being a therapist is kind of similar to wrestling smoke - if you manage to get a grip you’re really, really good, but getting there is slow and difficult progress.

But in it’s most basic form therapy is simply talking about the things that make you hurt inside. And this makes me wonder; have we lost so much of our ability to communicate with each other that we have to designate certain individuals and certify them simply in order to be able to talk to them about how we feel?

Isn’t it kinda weird when you think about it? We have SPECIAL PEOPLE that we talk to. Any alien species coming to earth would probably be thoroughly confused by the concept. After realizing what purpose it served it would then assume that we’re a very primitive species who lack the skills to communicate with each other, and thus have to educate people to do it for us.

Because, that’s what I think one part of therapy boils down to. Communication. Have we become so distanced from ourselves that we’ve deprecated the most basic of our requirements? Because that’s what I view communication as - a requirement. Requirement not only to feel good about issues that trouble ourselves, but also sharing issues that trouble others.

Usually we talk to close friends, parents, relatives, sometimes even complete strangers. But maybe we’re losing that capability? I know I’m not good at it myself, being a very introverted individual when it comes to confrontational and direct communication.

Therapy is also about finding what works for YOU, the individual in need of help. In my case, my blog has over the years become the best therapy for me.

—

There, I hope that wasn’t too scary.

This is a very minor (and major at the same time) gripe, but I don’t understand why society still is so deeply unequal and unfair.

SvD (a major newspaper here in Sweden) reports that our former minister of justice Thomas Bodström has been threatened. Thomas Bodström is actually a lawyer currently working with a case where one of Swedens most famous opera-singers has been accused of raping someone. I really don’t give a shit about the details of that case, since it has quickly become a media-circus of almost OJ Simpson-esque proportions.

Thomas Bodström is probably one of my least favorite politicians in this country, and strong in the running for one of my least favorite politicians in the world of all time. There’s probably a lot of jackasses out there who thinks he’s the awesome, but in my opinion he’s essentially a sociopath moron who somehow got into power.

But, I digress.

No, my gripe is that no matter how vague a threat all stops are pulled out to protect him. Because he’s famous, he’s a celebrity, he’s a politician. The police is very mum about what kind of threat, but confirms that one such does exist. They’ve added heavy security to make sure he’s not harmed. We don’t know what kind of threat it is, it might be Al Qaida or it might be some drunk yahoo with a disposable cellphone thinking he’s performing the ultimate practical joke.

None the less, all stops are pulled out to protect him.

If I called the police and told them that I’d been threatened with bodily harm or even death they would simply tell me to call back WHEN this purported assailant showed up. They wouldn’t post cops outside my apartment door to make sure I didn’t get shot when I went outside to check my mail or take out the garbage. Because I’m a nobody. I’m not famous, I’m not a celebrity, I’m not rich. I’m expendable.

Shouldn’t a decent society provide equal protection for everyone regardless of social standing? I think so. But then again, there’s a lot of things wrong with our world today. Hundreds of thousands of people lack clean water in Africa, for example.

I like living in the northern part of Sweden for a variety of reasons.

Among those are:

I grew up in this climate, and this is where I feel at home.
I like the surroundings.
I like most of the people who live here.
Most of my friends live within not too large a distance.
My parents live only a few hours trip away.
Etc etc etc.

But one of the major reasons I live in what people who’ve never been here imagine is an arctic wasteland is the winters. We usually get proper winters up here, and my childhood was filled with nothing but snowy, white christmases. Winter was a period of intense cold, I admit, but it was also a season of intense human warmth. When we ventured outside it was to go bobsledding or having snowball-wars.

For the last two winters there hasn’t been a proper winter. Even though Umeå is fairly high up on our globe the last two winters have been absolutely abysmal. Just a few days ago we celebrated christmas, and there was virtually no snow outside. What resemblance of winter existed was provided by frozen bits of water that just a few days earlier had been melting snow. The grey remnants of lawns accentuated this lack of wintery-ness.

I’m really tired of this. I have yet to subscribe to the most hysterical of hand-waving environmentals who claim the earth is dying, but something seems to be very wrong here. Yeah, I’m not so ignorant that I don’t know that we’re FUBARing our environment on a daily basis, but I take all the hysterical warnings with a fair bit of salt. I know that compared to a lot of people my own fossil-fuel footprint is virtually non-existent (I don’t own/drive a car, for example) but I do say that there’s something wrong when winters that used to be covered in a meter or more of snow now is covered in… well… no snow at all.

I’m tired of seeing snow falling, and knowing that a few hours later it’s just going to melt into slosh that’ll make my feet wet when I take the dog for a walk. I’m tired of knowing that at night, when the temperature falls ever so slightly over into freezing, that the same slosh will turn into dangerous icy areas just waiting to break bones and damage knees. I’m tired of knowing that this will only be exacerbated by the stupidity of the people in charge who insist that throwing rough gravel on top of the ice helps prevent slipping, when in fact it merely adds to the danger.

Whatever happened to the winters that I used to know when I move to Umeå about five years ago? I don’t recall my first winter here being anything like this one. Now, instead, the gray, boring snowless winters of southern Sweden has become a norm even up here.

I try to be optimistic about this. But I do wish that the weather could decide on what it wants to be, because I’m tired of the ice covering the walkways. I’m tired of not being able to take a proper walk because I’m too scared of breaking my neck or causing general injury to my precious body.

So, dear weather. If you’re gonna be warm, then BE WARM, goddammit! Don’t do the snow-thing for a day, then thaw it into muck and freeze it to ice the same night. Despite being a northerner by genetic and birth I do like warm weather. Maybe not Orlando, Florida-warm but none the less I like warm weather.

And snow and cold works equally well for me. I’m very adaptable. I like snow. I like walking in snow. I like well-plowed walkways and I like a bit of chill nipping at my nose. I like taking a good walk and coming home with a slightly numb face from the cold. That’s a proper winter if you ask me.

But I don’t like this inbetween-nonsense. It’s currently +5 degrees celsius outside. This is ridiculuous. It’s too cold to wear shorts, but it’s too warm to snow. Just this ice, with a layer of melted water to make it REALLY dangerous walking outdoors. On top of that, sprinkled gravel since some yahoo in charge (despite my angry emails to the contrary) still thinks it’s a good choice as slip-prevention.

Please, decide on a season and stick with it.

(I saw on the weather the other day that it’s +3 degrees in Jokkmokk, where my parents live. That’s absurd beyond description.)

One again I paste the picture from about two years ago when I slipped on the stupid gravel and cut a nice gash in my hand. I’m sure that this is going to happen again.

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

There’s a movie coming out in December called “The Golden Compass” starring among others Nicole Kidman. It’s apparently based on the first book in a trilogy by a british writer named Philip Pullman. So far I haven’t paid much attention to it, other than dismissing it as a Narnia-ripoff by some movie-studio, cynically designed to separate viewers from their money.

This was until about ten minutes ago, when I learned that Philip Pullman is a convinced atheist, and that the trilogy of books (called His Dark Materials) is the anti-narnia. Mr Pullman even went so far as to say that his books are about killing the image of God inside childrens minds.

I like him already!

Of course, this has got all the biblenuts panties in very large twists, and of course they’re outraged that someone has the temerity to dare to question their “thruth”, and are warning good bible-waving christians all over the world that OMG THIS MOVIE WILL CORRUPT OUR CHILDREN AND MAKE THEM REJECT OUR DEPRECATED RELIGION OMG.

I read the Narnia-books when I was a kid. I’ve read them at least once when I was an adult. Regardless of my age I always got annoyed that Narnia essentially was hidden propaganda for christianity and God. Thus, I like this Philip Pullman-guy a lot now, and I’m contemplating reading these books just to give support for him. I’ll probably watch the movie as well.