Today is the International day for Victims of Torture, and I thought it might be a good idea to at the very least write an article concerning some forms of torture.

Reading through Amnesty International’s 2008 Report is not directly joyful reading — so many crimes against humanity, so much oppression and torture around the world. The problem is that many of us, who are more fortunate, just close our eyes and tries to pretend all these horrors aren’t real. Well they are real, and I think it’s important that we highlight them and do what we can to stop it.

In my last article I wrote that I am more naïve than I would like to think I am, and that might be visible in this article as well. But I don’t care, I might not be able to change a thing in the world, I won’t be able to save a person from torture — but that doesn’t mean I should accept that it happens. I think it’s our responsibility to do what we can and for me that is to spread the word as much as I can.

Amnesty’s ‘08 report is almost 400 pages long and I haven’t read through it all, so I thought it might be a good idea to just focus on one country for now and I chose China. I’ve written about China before and with the Olympic Games just a few weeks away I thought it was a good country to start with since they do not uphold the human rights. More about the Olympic Games later.

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Nineteen Eighty-Four. That’s our future, that’s the life we’re going to live from this day forward.

The Swedish parliament voted on the FRA-bill today at 9:30pm, 143 for and 138 against (1 gave up her vote). This is a joke; it’s a slap in the face of democracy and I just lost a lot of faith in the Swedish political system.

Call me naïve, but I had no idea the government would run over their own members and the parliament like this. I’m not talking about the result of the vote, I expected it to be accepted, but what I didn’t expect was the way the issue was dealt with.

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Today was the day for a rather long debate in the parliament about the controversial FRA-bill. Seven hours of debating, back and forth between all the seven parties that hold seats in the parliament.

The voting for the bill will take place tomorrow, and the debate didn’t clearly indicate which side will win. It looks like the bill is going to be postponed to make some changes and then voted on at a later date. This is not a good idea, it’s already been postpone before, when it was last debated a year ago — we need a decision, more time won’t change something that have been the same the last 365 days.

However a few interesting things were debated and I thought I would highlight some of them.

It was a debate that had two very different tones from the two sides. It’s not often a debate is so polarized in the Swedish parliament, at least not that I’ve seen (I watch SVT 24’s live coverage of parliament debates quite often, which is kind of like our C-SPAN). Anyway, the Alliance for Sweden, consistent of four center-right wing parties, used fear like never before. You heard the words and references to terrorism, Al-Qaeda, Weapons of Mass Destruction, 9/11, London bombings, Madrid bombings, the attacks on the Danish embassy, the security for Swedish UN troops in Afghanistan, the assassination of JFK and the two political assassinations of the former Prime Minister Olof Palme (1986) and the former Minister for Foreign Affairs, Anna Lindh (2003).

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We live in a strange time, when the word “terrorism” can change any laws, and even a constitution. Later this week that might happen here in Sweden.

The Riksdag (Parliament of Sweden) will vote on a new law, the so-called FRA-law. The law in its essence will give FRA (Försvarets radioanstalt — Swedish National Defence Radio Establishment) the right to monitor all electronic communication in Sweden, including e-mails and phone calls. They will also have the right to store any information and search through it as they like without any court order.

Right now the FRA are allowed to listen to radio waves for foreign military threats, for the nation’s security. The new law will change this so that they are allowed to monitor even wired communication as well as leaving out the “military” part in the legal text. We’re moving towards an Orwellian society, or have we already moved there?

Why is this scary? Well first of all, this will change our constitution, since the new laws will render parts of the constitution useless — however they are not changing the actual constitution since that would require a much longer process.

What’s even scarier is that all authorities that are involved in the security of the nation have spoken out against the proposed legal changes.

The following are three quotes translated from Swedish to English by me, a link to the PDF-file where the quote can be read in its entirety can be found at the end of each quote.

“The bill will result in an integrity infringement that can’t be found anywhere else in the world.”

“It’s completely foreign in our constitution to give the government or the Government Offices of Sweden the authority to, in a political order, make the conclusive decision about monitoring telephone communications.”

— Justitiedepartementet - Ministry of Justice
[link to PDF]

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Antidepressant drugs (SSRIs) have gained a large amount of support in the medical community the last several years, but it has also been surrounded by some controversy. Antidepressants are now one of the most prescribed drugs in the western world, and it’s becoming more and more common to prescribe it to our children and teenagers.

A new Meta-Analysis study published in Public Library of Science, PLoS Medicine, researched how effective these drugs really are. A meta-analysis study is when you take several studies done on the subject and combine them to get a more accurate result. In this case the researchers took all the published studies as well as some unpublished studies on antidepressants and placebo. So why use unpublished data? This is what the researchers had to say:

“Conventional meta-analyses are often limited to published data. In the case of antidepressant medication, this limitation has been found to result in considerable reporting bias characterized by multiple publication, selective publication, and selective reporting in studies sponsored by pharmaceutical companies.”

This is one of the many reasons why I personally hate the pharmaceutical companies; they often don’t publish studies and research when it doesn’t support their own cause. We’re talking about people’s health here, and in this case depression which effects 1 in 6 people during some part of their life and can lead to suicide.

So what did this latest study conclude? They found that antidepressants are not nearly as effective as we’ve previously been led to believe — in fact they are below the limit of the recommended criteria for clinical significance.

“Then they showed that there was virtually no difference in the improvement scores for drug and placebo in patients with moderate depression and only a small and clinically insignificant difference among patients with very severe depression.”

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I was reading about holiday celebrations and came to think about how little non-Scandinavians know about how we celebrate here in the European North. Today it’s the 24th of December, or Christmas Eve, and this is in fact our day of celebrations, not the 25th as the majority of the world celebrates.

Here in Sweden Christmas isn’t much of a Christian tradition, although some Christians do have a little crib on display in their homes. We call the celebrations for Jul, or Yule as it translates, and today it’s Julafton — Yule’s Eve. Our ancestors celebrated Jul long before they converted to Christianity and most of our current traditions date back to that time.

A Christmas tree (Julgran) is the center of the Jul decorations in a Swedish home, and they do look more or less the same as they do all around the world. Outdoors decorations aren’t as common over here though, and they are often rather discreet. A few candles or lights in the windows to light up the dark month of December, and maybe a snowman or a snow lantern outdoors. It’s very rare to see a house entirely dressed in lights as you often see in the U.S.

Our Santa is referred to as a Jultomte, tomte being a mythical creature in the Scandinavian folklore. Traditionally the Jultomte is dressed in gray but in later years this has changed to the more commercially red clothed Santa. He uses the front door to enter the house instead of the classic chimney, and he doesn’t put presents in socks during the night but rather give the presents directly to the children. Usually children gets to open one or two presents each on the morning of Julafton and then saves the rest of the presents to the evening the same day.

The Jultomte has been the primary gift giver in our traditions for about a century, before that it was Julbocken, Yule Goat, that gave the children their gifts. Julbocken still has his place in many Swedish homes, under the Christmas tree together with the presents. He’s usually made out of straws or wood. The most famous Julbock is the Gävle Goat, which has a tradition of being (illegally) set on fire every year.

Food is another tradition that varies very much from country to country. Here in Sweden a classic Julmat, Christmas smörgåsbord, includes baked ham as the main course. Herring, salmon, Swedish meatballs and Janssons frestelse (a dish including potatoes and sprats) are other classic side dishes — as well as different kinds of salads.

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Lately I’ve started to get a real interest in typography, the art of type design. I’ve read a few books on the subject and I realized that my old blog design could do with a few changes. So here it is, my new design, which is more or less only text based — although I will put some design in the top right corner since I feel that there’s something missing.

I’m also working on a few other projects at the moment. My main website, my portfolio over at silverglimth.com, is getting a complete redesign as well. I was first going to make it into a more business oriented website but since it looks like my company is put on hold I will just spice it up a bit.

A friend of mine is starting up a large project that will be released to the public in a while. It’s going to be interesting to be there from the start and make sure everything is working correctly before the big launch date. So far a few “sneak peaks” have been released, and if you’re interested you can have a look at this tutorial I made on how to create badges like this one.

Another thing I’m working on from time to time is a new website about one of my main hobbies, World War II. I spend several hours daily reading books and doing other research on this, enormous, subject. So far it’s mostly just reading books, searching the net and watching old WWII movies — but hopefully there will be some WWII-themed travels in the future. Not sure when, or if, I get the site up and running, but it’s an ongoing project I have for myself for now at least.

There are a few other things going on but I’ll reveal more of that later on.

Since my company is on hold for now I’ve started thinking about getting myself some higher education. Right now it’s leaning towards getting a Bachelor’s degree in Science, specialization System Analysis (and probably take one more year to get a Master’s degree). I more or less just need to figure out what city I want to live in, since I can get into any Swedish University I want (in that field at least). The only requirement I have is that Sanna will be able to study what she wants as well in the same city. I’m actually rather surprised at my sudden interested in getting a degree. I have my wife to thank for that, she’s so encouraging and very interested in getting a degree herself.

Happy Holidays!

More Hip Than Hippie is one of my favorite podcasts. It’s a brilliant weekly podcast about the environment and sustainable living. The two women that hosts the show, Dori and Val, are funny and educational without being boring or pointing fingers towards the not-so-perfect listener.

You will get a lot of tips and ideas in these hour long podcasts. Everybody can do something to help the planet and humanity, without sacrificing the comfort of your living. Dori and Val, and their listeners, offers us a “teenie weenie greenie” each week on how you can make those small changes in your life.

For me one of the best parts is hearing the listeners ideas and comments, Dori and Val have a huge listener base from all over the world and it’s fun to hear what people are doing locally to change their communities.

If you like beer or chocolate (more or less neither for me, I only eat Green & Black’s chocolate and I don’t drink beer) then you’ll hear about all kind of different labels and breweries.

This is what they say about their own show:

Dori and Val tell you everything you wanted to know about living a green lifestyle that is more hip than hippie. It’s upbeat, informative, and at times rather funny. (Yes, we shave).

Head over to morehipthanhippie.com

There’s a rather lively debate here in Sweden right now about corporal punishment of children, or aga as it’s called here. Earlier this week parents accused of hitting their child were found not guilty, which has caused an uproar from organizations such as BRIS (Children’s Right in Society) and from the Children’s Ombudsman. Here in Sweden we have a very clear stance on corporal punishment, we were one of the first countries in the world to make it illegal in 1979. Since then many of our fellow European countries have followed, outside of Europe the situation is totally different. So I decided to conduct a little study of my own and see how the world as a whole looks upon corporal punishment.

I must say that I was chocked at what I found, outside of Europe there are only two countries where corporal punishment is illegal, New Zealand and Israel. Some other countries have tried to make it illegal but been unable to, and in some other countries there are different laws depending on what state you’re in, the US and Australia are two of those.

I love maps, and you will probably see more of them here in the future, so I decided that the easiest way to grasp this story was with a map - so I went ahead and made one. (I will upload this one to Wikipedia soon as well.) Take a moment and click on the map to view it in full size.

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This boy is one of the world’s youngest political prisoners. When he was named a Tibetan Buddhism spiritual leader by Dalai Lama, at the age of six, the Chinese government imprisoned him.

On 14th May 1995 Dalai Lama named the six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima the 11th Panchen Lama, the second-most important monk in Tibetan Buddhism. The tradition is that the Dalai Lama names the Panchen Lama and the Panchen Lama then name the new Dalai Lama, when the previous one has passed away. This is an ancient tradition that has been followed for over 600 years.

A few days after Gedhun Choekyi Nyima had been selected as the new spiritual leader he was arrested by the Chinese government. He and his parents haven’t been seen since, that was in 1995 and he is now 18 years old. Right after the arrest the Chinese government appointed their own Panchen Lama, Gyaincain Norbu, through a lottery.

The Dalai Lama has never accepted this “official” Panchen Lama and most Tibetan Buddhists do not acknowledge him as a spiritual leader but merely sees him as a puppet acting for the Chinese government. In secrecy they still praise Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the real Panchen Lama.

The safety of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima and his proper religious training is of particular concern for me. I, therefore, appeal to all governments, religious and human rights organizations for their intervention in ensuring the safety and freedom of the young Panchen Lama.

His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, Dalai Lama XIV

Organizations like Amnesty International and EU governments as well as the US government have tried their best to free Gedhun Choekyi Nyima without success.

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