Pause

I'm going to New York for a week, and the blog will probably not be updated in the meanwhile. I'm also hopelessly behind in translating my Swedish posts into English. This is due to a heavy work load. Hopefully I will be able to do something about this soon. Keep your eyes open!

Whose responsibility?

In SvD I read that Amnesty demands that Lebanon should stop discriminating Palestinian refugees. Is this news? No. Furthermore Amnesty says

that the responsibility for the refugees situation lies not only with the Lebanese government, but also with Israel, other countries in the region and the international community

Is this news? No. Noone is surprised that Amnesty, as usual, thinks that Israel is to blame. Somewhat surprising is that they for once blame not only Israel.

Now I just wonder...what exactly is Israel expected to do? What should Israel have done differently in the past?

Scenario 1) Israel is expected to let Palestinian refugees return to Israel. The original 726.000 refugees have become millions. Hence the effect of this scenario is that the Jewish state is turned into yet another (the 57th I believe it is) Muslim state, and thereby we're back to square one - Jews in minority are persecuted for religious reasons. Precisely that was the reason that Jews fled to Israel 100 years ago.

Justice demands that the Palestinian refugees either are allowed to return or get compensated for lost property. Of course! But it is about time for the world in general, and the racist left in particular, to view the conflict in its entirety. It didn't originate with the expulsion of Arabs in 1948, it goes back much further in time than that.

There are three refugee problems in this conflict:

• Jewish refugees from Europe. Over two millions.
• Jewish refugees from the Arab world and Iran. Approx. 900.000.
• Arab refugees from Israel. Approx. 726.000.

All of these have been forced to leave all their belongings and all of them should have the same rights, and those who claim that justice is the way to peace (which I unfortunately believe is an illusion) should realize that all these rights in that case must be satisfied simultaneously. Israel can only gain from justice being made, but it's not going to happen. My fathers parental home in Hungary was plundered when his family was deported to Auschwitz, and he never received a penny compensation. In Poland the value of the real estate alone, that was stolen from Jews during the war, is estimated to $30 billions. Not a nickle there either. In the Arab world huge assets were confiscated, especially in Baghdad. Guess how much compensation has been paid from there...

Scenario 2) Israel is to blame because they should never have expelled the Palestinians. After 28 years of Arab terror, in the middle of a fierce war, in which the Arabs brag about the bloodbath they're about to make, when the largest Jewish city (Jerusalem) is surrounded and besieged and the Jews there lack necessities, when Jews are thrown out of Hebron and Gaza, when Israel for its mere survival is forced to depend on voluntary crews flying in disassembled howitzers and Messerchmitts from Czechia, then you're expected to...well, what? To set up courts and try each Arab individually?

And why war in the first place, you think? The brown (after the colour of the nazis shirts) left is fond of picturing the UN partition plan of 1947 as being deeply unfair. The Jews were given 55% of Palestine. Lucky for the brown left, not many people have the energy to read the partition plan. The Jewish state (not the Jews) was allotted 55%, of which most was (and is) unarable desert. But the important thing is that no land at all was to change owners. The borders were drawn with respect to demography. Arabs in Israel were to stay and keep their land, Jews in the Arab state were to stay and keep their land. Does that sound unfair? Maybe the Arabs were afraid that the Jews would treat them the way Jews were treated in Arab countries...

So forgive me for not being upset when Amnesty reports:

...there are families of 10 who are forced to live in a single room. The homes often consist of barracks out of corrugated sheet metal without proper roofs, ventilation or sanitary facilities.

Here is a picture of a Jewish refugee camp in Israel in the 50s:

I mentioned in an earlier post that Israels former president, Moshe Katsav, is a refugee from Iran. He lived in a tent camp like this, and his baby brother, Zion, drowned two months old, when the tent camp was flooded. But who knows about such things in Sweden? Hardly anyone, because Jews are never refugees in the eyes of our leftist media.

Saving the oceans

Markus Hoffman, agronomist at LRF, wrote in Brännpunkt about the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commissions meeting.

The oceans are severely threatened. I mentioned some measures that I think ought to be included in the debate:

• Construct wetlands! They are a good way to capture nitrogen, particles and phospor before the water reaches the ocean. Wetlands also have a high biodiversity.
• Cultivate mussels! Mussels clean the ocean water, and they are nutritious.
• Harvest filamentous algae! By removing the algae before they are degraded, we can counter the problem of oxygen depletion. The algae can also be used in various ways.
• Less fishing! Of course.

Sicko Gothenburg

I realize that translating everything I write is too time consuming. Therefore I will shorten some parts here and there.

Roland Poirier Martinsson in todays Expressen discusses Michael Moores film Sicko, the American health insurance system and, above all, the (non-)reporting about Moores film that goes on in Swedish media.

If you disregard the most one-eyed fans, it's today commonly accepted that Michael Moore uses lies too eagerly for his films to be trustworthy. This observation has nothing to do with his political standpoint. That his role has switched from that of the debater to that of the joker and is moving towards that of the clown is entirely a consequence of Moores juggling during the cutting of his films. It's strange that this development seems to have gone unnoticed by Swedish journalists. You get the impression that they, instead of critically examining the bluffer Moores contribution to the debate, rejoice over it and want to spread it.

Martinsson thinks that what should have been reporting about a film (that should have been a documentary), instead has become a splendid opportunity for the leftist Swedish media elite to argue against privatization in the health care sector.

Hear a few examples from the news:

SvDs Anna-Lena Haverdahl writes that Moores
film ”should send shock waves” to Europe, since it shows how bad it can ”get if private profit-making entirely rule health care”.

Aftonbladets Wolfgang Hansson
is afraid of a Swedish import of the sickest health care in the world - if it comes here "we're in trouble".

Expressen directs a question to Social minister Göran Hägglund in connection to the opening of the film: ”What do you have to say to those who are worried that Sweden is moving in the direction of the USA?"

SVTs Agenda claims that Sicko ”shakes up the debate about public or private health care in Sweden”.

Kalla Fakta, TV4, makes a note that Sicko ”with its disclosures of the flaws in the private health care has shook the USA”.

TT describes the topic of the film as a "struggle between good and evil" - guess where you find the evil?

The same drift is repeated almost everywhere. I left many examples out.

The problem with American health care is, according to Martinsson, not in the privatized health care, but in the health insurance system (read his article).

I myself have in several rounds worked in the Swedish health care (as late as this year). In the Swedish post I give a glimpse of what it looks like where I worked the last time, at a home for 7 mentally handicapped people in Gothenburg.

What I expose is

• ineffectivity. Most of the day you actually do nothing at all.
• laziness. Some things that need to be done are left unattended, just because the personnel is lazy.
• chaotic lack of personnel. People call in sick very often, due to private problems.
• nonchalance. Sometimes they don't call in sick, they just don't bother to come.
• fraud. Some persons are entitled to personal assistance by the Social Insurance of Sweden. Money is paid to the care administration from the Social Insurance of Sweden, in compensation for the personal assistance that these persons have received. In order to improve the economy, false reports of personal assistance are produced. Money received for no work performed...

I give three suggestions on how to improve the situation:

• Higher salaries, to get personnel.
• Cut down on personnel. There is very low work load.
• Fire people who don't do what they're being paid for. Unfortunately this can't be done in Sweden, because of our employment regulations.

I also give two links about Michael Moore:

Moorelies

Moorewatch

Selimovic is lying in our face

In todays editorial blog in SvD the director of the Radio Theatre, Jasenko Selimovic, replies to an earlier post by Per Gudmundson. It's about the radio play Between This Breath and You, by Naomi Wallace. The play is about a Jewish woman who has had lungs transplanted from a Palestinian killed in battle.
Gudmundson claimed that this is yet another variant of the ancient myth about Jews performing ritual murder. Selimovic denies this, saying:

Gudmundson has (according to what he says himself) not listened to the play, but is sure that this is an ”antisemitic play”. How can he be if he hasn't listened to it?

[...]

Nowhere, not in a single place, not in a single sentence does the play say anything about organ theft, nor does it say who would in that case do the stealing. The donated lungs of the main character might equally well have been donated perfectly legally as they might have been stolen, bought or whatever. The play just doesn't tell.

The very point with Wallaces Between This Breath and You, is namely to leave a hole for the listener to fill. And when information is left out, people usually fill that information gap with their own prejudice and worldview, just like Gudmundson does. By putting together some second-hand information and other peoples interpretations of the play with his own worldview, he draws bizarre conclusions and sees ghosts where there are none. His way to approach this play is a perfect example of how prejudice arises. A piece of information, that never was uttered, about where the organs in the play came from, is turned into ”organ theft”, background information about the origin of the play is turned into ”a story of how Israel steals organs from Palestinians”, and everything ends in accusations of ”antisemitism”. Shouldn't Gudmundson demand of himself to check the material before he makes such wide interpretations and accuses somebody like he does?

[...]

The Radio Theatre has, on its web page, somewhat clumsily and misfortunately formulated the background of the play, and has therefore removed the sentence. Not because we discovered that we're antisemitic, but because a misfortunate formulation should be corrected. This still doesn't give Gudmundson the right to blindly drop accusations of antisemitism in a play he hasn't listened to.

Apparently no claim has been made about organ theft. That part has been fantasized by Gudmundsons subconscious antisemitism!

...or?

This is what could be read at SRs web page (link removed by SR) on October 7:

Between This Breath and You is about the conflict between Israel and Palestine and is based on the disclosure that corpses of Palestinians killed in battle have been transported away and secretly used for organ donations to Israeli patients.

And this is what Selimovic calls "clumsily and misfortunately formulated", but not at all a claim of organ theft.

Lessing as roundabout dog - The Academy in rage!

I venture to publish a cartoon with Doris Lessing as a roundabout dog. What a sacrilege, huh?




Now i expect to see the Swedish Academy run amuck, with Horace up front!

Benny Morris on a visit to Sweden

The Israeli professor of history Benny Morris will hold an open lecture in Gothenburg on Tuesday. Morris is both loved and hated for his historic research on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He has revealed truths uncomfortable for both Israeli and Arab official versions of history. This will be interesting!

Gothenburg: Tuesday October 16

Time: 6.15 PM – 8.00 PM
Göteborg University, Room: Linnésalen in Mediahuset (=Media house),
Open lecture: Recent Israeli-Palestine history (Camp David, the intifadas).
Seminariegatan 1B Göteborg

Stockholm: Wednesday Oktober 17

Time: 2.30 PM-3.30 PM
Stockholm University, Dep. for Middle Eastern Studies
Invites to an open discussion with Benny Morris
Place: Kräftriket House 3 Room 3:239