The Banana Monarchy

You know it already - Sweden wanted Julian Assange extradited from the UK to charge him for sexual harassment. The UK agrees, and mr. Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy. In the background lurks the US - the charges against Assange appeared less than two weeks after Assange had published chunks of classified US diplomatic cables. The US wowed to take revenge, but since Assange is not yet imprisoned, Bradley Manning - the true hero of this story - is tortured in stead.

This afternoon Ecuador has granted Assange asylum, and moreover accused Sweden of having a politicized juridical system, which of course has caused a lot of furore in this haven of hypocrisy. Our foreign minister Carl Bildt who is known not only to bring peace to the Balkans but also to bring death and destruction to Sudan and Ethiopia through his oil business, tweeted angrily about it. Not that I take his tweet much more seriously than al Shabaab's or Dimitry Medvedev's. I bet they are all friends on Facebook.

Please note: I do not believe that Julian Assange has harassed anyone and should get away with it. I do find the allegations against him ridiculous, and I fully agree with the Ecuadorian analysis of our juridical system. Sweden is working on behalf of the US. Most countries who show this degree of dependency are called banana republics, but since are proud to sport a royal house, Sweden must be classified as a banana monarchy.

According to the attorney, Assange during a brief stay in Sweden stayed in some female aquintancies' apartment, and coerced at least one woman into having sex against her wishes. A truly disgraceful behavior, true, but do not think it is illegal in Sweden, unless you are wanted by the US. There have been several cases during the last year where our highest judiciary signalizes one thing - men's violence against women is not a crime. Hovrätten is the highest juridical instance for this type of crimes in Sweden and its judgings are considered predicative.(Links below are in Swedish)

In February 2011 four men, four men who had been convicted at lower court for prostituting a 14 year old girl had their sentences amended - two of them were freed. The girl got no compensation whatsoever.

In a case from 2005 which is more similar to the allegations against Assange, a 40 year old man also got a leaner sentence in the Hovrätten than in lower courts, for sexually abusing a 13 year old girl. Specifically, the Hovrätten did not want to charge him with rape, but with sexual harassment, and lowered the compensation to the girl.

Earlier this year two men were found guilty of luring women from Romania to Sweden to prostitute them here, but alas the Hovrätt did not find it proper to call it trafficking. These men were sentenced with 9 months and 2 years in jail.

Ultimately, a patriarchal society rests on a reliable hierarchy within the family - a drunk paterfamilias attacked his woman with a Samurai sword and almost took her life. Not enough to charge him with murder, said the Hovrätt and lowered his sentence form 8 to 5 years in jail. This happened earlier this year.

In this context, what sentence would a crime like the one Assange is accused of get? If found guilty he would maybe have to pay a few thousand Euros in compensation - after all the victim is neither trafficked, nor under aged or anything, and he didn't use a samurai sword to get into her pants.

The thought that any Swedish man would be searched for abroad for a crime that our judiciary finds so utterly unimportant is ridiculous. And quite frankly I would be glad if the resources spent on trying to convict Assange were spent on some other male suppressing women around him. They are not so hard to find, actually. There must be some other reason Sweden wants him extradited.

And what reason might that be? Ask Bradley Manning, who is bearing Assange's cross. The US wants him, of course. But our media are so lame. Ecuador have publicly stated that they have asked both Sweden and the UK for guarantees that Assange is not extradited to a third part. Carl Bildt did not comment on that, and no reporter made him say if Sweden has received such a proposal, if it has denied it and why, if that is the case.

All in all, it is a pretty nice example of the decay in morals and politics in Sweden. If Julian Assange should go to court, he should at least be allowed to do it in a country with a working judiciary.

8th of March - the anti corruption day

It is the International Women's Day, and I find myself being an angrier feminst than ever. I am born 1980, and it seems to me that we have already passed the Peak Democracy, sometime around 1995. Society is definitely more traditional, more conservative and more male dominated than it was ten or fifteen years ago.

One example of this is the horrendous rulings by the Swedish Supreme Court. Two weeks ago the court ruled that the men who had bought and sold a 15 years old disabled roma girl in the center of Malmö were free of guilt, and the girl was probably lying. One of several similar cases where men who have been convicted in lower courts for crimes against women are freed in the supreme court.

Utter rubbish, that can only only be explained with one thing - when men commit crime against women, or Swedish against immigrants, judges rule as mildly as possible. Maybe becasue they are all Swedish males themselves.

The Swedish legislation in these matters is strict, and a lot of efforts have been made at combatting this kind of crimes with harder legislation. But the supreme court seems to hold an opinion of their own, that sexual crimes are not really crimes, and in a court the judge's opinion weighs heavier than the politician's.

Which is how it should be in a democracy... at least how it is supposed to work on the paper.  The 20th century showed that political power over the courts lead to tyranny. In the 21th, the independence of courts have turned into a problem. Not only in Sweden - I remember a seminar in Buglaria where environmentalists asked a juridical expert what to do about corruption within the juridical system. The answer was that very little can be done, since politican for good reasons are banned from controlling judges.

When corruption gets into the heart of the juridical system it easily gets very entrenched. The price for that is, as always, paied by those with the weakest voice in society. Like environmentalists, minorities and women. This day is for them all.

Which is why I would like to use this occasion to propagate for a Swedish writere whod edicated her life to the defense of all voiceless people in society - Elin Wägner. She wrote a number of novels, a lot of political writing, and was an activist against war between the world wars. If women like her had power and not only influence, the world would be a better place.

Read about Elin Wägner at Wikipedia
... and on Maladets!

Stockholm's cheapest latte

I spend my mornings in front of the radio these days. Just minutes ago, a journalist told that a caffe latte costs only 10 SEK (1 EUR) in the Swedish parliament café. In a normal café, including at the universities a similar beverage would cost three times more. Why? Because the parliament staff have ordered the café not to charge more for the latte... originally they wanted cheap  lunches, but that is unfortunately forbidden by law.

I don't know if the café is open for citizens in Stockholm... if anyone can go there for a cheap caffe latte, I guess it isn't corruption...

In Sweden everyone pays one Euro  for their coffe. The homeless get 1,5 dl brewed coffee for their euro, the members of paliament get 3 dl latte.



Picture from Flickr, by avlxyz. License: Share Alike

Bulgarian feminism

Feminism might be one of the values where Bulgaria and Sweden differs most. Women are not neccesarily more opressed here. Quite on the contrary i have seen many women in Eastern Europe in positions preserved for men in Sweden, like conducting orchestras, trams or families. But it is rather hard to find Bulgarians that are outright feminist. In Sweden, on the other hand, even the christian right calls themselves feminists. Anyway, the newly elected Bulgarian parliament will, for the first time in the country's history be headed by a woman - Tsetska Tsacheva from GERB .

She is a lawyer from the beautiful city of Pleven, where she has a disputed track record. Pleven's mayor Najden Selenogorski from the liberals SDS claims that she failed to defend the public interst in favour of private interests in her positions as juridical consult of the community. the case is not settled, though.


Some more polticians from the former powerholders are being sentenced for corruption. Today ex-deputy Fidel Beev from DPS have been senteced to three years of jail by the city court of Sofia. The process has probably not ended.
Guilty as he might be, I am a little worried about this newfound zeal. I really hope that Borisov and the new politicians can separate betweeen bad, or even disastrous politics from criminal activities.

The support behind GERB seems to be big right now, in the political class at least. Even DPS, Beev's party and GERB's arch enemies, have stated that they might support a GERB government.

Source: mediapool.bg

Democracy is coming...

Democracy is a strange thing, in deed. Svetla Dimitrova, head of the election authority ЦИКЕП (read TsIKEP), have written a letter to the Parliament, expressing her discontent with a statement from the parliament dating to the 13th of April.

The parliament was not pleased with ЦИКЕП's proposal to raise the barrier for coalitions to 8 %, and as I understand this is what this is about.

The parliament which is increasingly defiant since the third government party, the conservatives, tend to go against their coalition partners in the parliament, and rather vote with the parties in the blue coalition.

With an 8% barrier, the blue coalition would risk ending up outside the parliament. According to the last polls* I've seen the blue coalition have around 6%. Most analyst's sees this proposal as a try from the government to unduly use their legislative power agianst the opposition.

ЦИКЕП's decision was eventually faulted by the administrative court, which is the highest instance in this case.

One could quite easily see a pattern here: The government parties and certain authorities vs. the parliament, the local authorities in Sofia and the administrative court. the pattern i strinkingly similar to the situation in Republic of Moldova, but there the parliament is under control by the communist government.

For sure there are also business interests tied to the government, I would guess that there are interests tied to the opposition as well. The economedia group, which published the high class newspapers capital and Dnevnik, are very close to the blue alliance opposition.

Many bulgarians engaging in the politics expect some kind of silent revolution from the elections, by voting in new voices in the parliament. The defiant parliament is already now appearing as somehow less corrupted than the institutional establishment.

Now, the point of Svetla Dimitrova's letter is that ЦИКЕП is the responsible authority in this case, and that it is not the parlimentary majority's role to mix up in her work... this is a point that can be argued I think.

The Bulgarian constitution prescribes a very high degree of independence for different institutions, much higher than in Sweden for example. Much critique has ben aimed at the juridical system, but in fact the Bulgarian politicians have very small power to change anything, since they are banned form interfering with the courts.

In this case one democratic principle - the power comes from the elected parliament is ocunteracted by another principle, fundamental to liberal democracy - the independence of courts and other instutions. Democracy is a complex thing. In deed.