My Choice for TIME:s Man of the Year

This... is... a repost. 

Don't like those words? Try and imagine Morgan Freeman uttering them in a cold, matter-of-fact, disappointed mode.

The Richard Dawkins Foundation - no, this is not going to be a long, dogmatic rant repeating the oft-told arguments against religion - wrote two moons past about the reasons, or pseudo-reasons, behind the Taliban shooting of 14-year old student and - yes - blogger Malala Yousufzai. Allegedly, the girl had openly expressed dislike for the movement in question and praise for secularism and, wow, president Barack Obama of the United States. Those among her ranks in other countries, particularly the somewhat older who have only then attained the preferential degree of insight and confidence in forming one's own opinions, express more profanic and outrageous statements every day. We may not all share the motives behind the current counter-insurgency in Afghanistan which, like most conflicts in this dull and beautiful corner of the world have drained a multitude of lives, mostly of young boys, the same as in the days of Genghis Khan's extermination war against Khwarezm, Alexander's campaign to subdue Sogdia and Bactria and Cyrus' fatal fall-out against the Scythians. 

However, those of us who believe in the invisible, non-material order or prime mover called Enlightenment may share a common outrage such a blatant attack on a free and prosperous society which no country will ever achieve under the auspices of such irrational, grim, scheming brutes who have with this vile attempt on a courageous and independent spirit once more, and more loudly declared their true and unerasable colours. My preferential counter-statement would be, adhering to these principles of Enlightenment as I claim, what this justification would do to us once universalized. What if each one of us were given the right to put a cap of lead - preferrably two, so I won't have to countenance the kind of person I may have in mind ranting any more jibberish from a hospital bed - into every skull that expresses contempt or praise for that which you consider paramount or unacceptably repulsive? In the approximate words of John Stuart Mill; No definition of liberty was ever so monstrous, no act would it not justify to penalize against, except maybe that of thinking undisclosed thoughts without ever uttering them.

Think about it. "She did no like us, she no like god, she like Barack Obama, so she should die." Excuse? A well-meaning lift, a cocked gun and a bump in the road ("Man, there ain't no bumps") would make a less insulting explanation for having shot an unarmed civilian, let be a child, in the face. The mere fact that these rebels (making a disgrace of that word as well) are named from the Arab word for student (talib) is just deplorable.
I do bet many Pakistanis and Afghans have more or less undisclosed thoughts - about the Taliban or the warlords, of Karzai's and Zardari's positively corrupt, non-secular and rather authoritarian governments (fortunately at an end shortly, though their successors are not like to prove better), of the West, the East, of their own vision and preferences for a future country, most of which, I would bet, contains a degree of peace and want of this fear of disclosing their thoughts. Very few of us truly desire restaints on thought, though many may have desire not to hear opinions they do not share, or even approve of measures of violence against such fixed chains of sounds or dots of colour (words and images). Open attacks, verbal and physical and sometimes unprovoked, on everything from Gay Pride marches (in Kabul... 2034?) to corresponding nationalist and xenophobic gatherings in so-called free countries most gravely underline this fact. All of us do not favour the same system of government no more than we share a similar view of the best way of living, though I would insist on the success of democracy (or no government at all), but very few openly rant against this precious and seemingly omnipresent freedom of thought, at most at an "unnecessary" fraction of its expressions.

By chance or extraordinary achievement (of which Obama has already had his) ordinary citizens find their heroes. Pakistan has had a female Prime Minister (who irrationally had to explain the dangers of childbearing when assuming the office), twice, and perhaps one day a President as well? The product of that perilous Bhutto womb is like to try for it soon, regardless.

The Taliban, not alone in this but perhaps more than other forces in the current state of chaos which has wrapped its arms about rural Afghanistan and much of Western Pakistan, desires an emirate of silence and fear, and will arguably stop short of few measures to realize such a state of affairs. Though both coalition and insurrectionist forces try to harness the liking of the populace they mean to shape along their ideological current, they will fail. But as the retreat of NATO and ISAF forces have already commenced and will have reached something of a goal in just two years, with Taliban forces multiplies in strength compared to a decade ago, when the country was freshly delivered from the arms of indiscriminately suppressive, mysterious and technophobic autocrat Mohammed Omar and his al-Qaeda allies, the question of the future is haunting. When the Taliban ruled the nation from Kandahar, it is said, streets South of the frontline were fairly safe from bombings and drive-by shootings and children such as Malala were not sprayed with sulfuric acid in the face as they went to school. 

But those who commit those acts of terror are prescribers of such an order, to the same ends, and to the greater end of a society where their perverse ranting and rambunctuous piety will not be broadcasted to foreign television sets (none were allowed under their rule). Under the Taliban, girls did not openly attend school, nor did most boys; nor did their elders, the women, compose part of Parliament, nor was there a Parliament worthy anything of the definition, or less so than the Etàts-Generáuxof l'Ancien Regime in France, which, as we who recognize the figure 1789 know, did prove an actual restraint to King Louis' kingly powers. The Taliban leadership recognize no such restraint - being absent in their final revelation to their favorite illiterate businessman - only the sanction to rule by any means by an all-knowing, omnipotent dictator of their own, which allegedly has chosen them, of all people, to exact the exact form of government and code of morality they have subscribed to. Are they sure this god doesn't want his little soldiers to try shoot themselves first, in the mouth, at a set date and time, to see if they are really destined to cleanse the chosen lands from the infidels, domestic and foreign? For a true martyr, prepared of sacrifice when there is nothing to gain in the currency of a maimed or dead enemy, it would make a fair test. And, my fair guess, resolve the region of a lot of obstacles in a heartbeat. Make sure to set it at automatic, so you don't screw up as when you take aim at young teenagers' faces. Faces you shouldn't look at, according to your sacred mores. Remember?

Our desire to withdraw responsibility from inflicting further crimes against the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan will not ensure a sustainable future, although it may appear obvious from previous and numerous examples that a country cannot be altered against its will by external forces. The Taliban is to a great extent such an external force, a crusade for willing martyrs and faithfuls, who provides most of those in the movement who can actually read the Quran; doubt it not. The brutes will not cease to torture and torment adults and children, men and women to achieve and uphold the codes of conduct prescribed by their imaginary celestial order even if every single foreigner leaves or subscribes his arms to the local government. I would for one not be willing to stand there once the currentrégime will dissolve. But it must, and it will, though preferrably when these child-murdering profligates has been weakened in their ranks to the edge of a Humpty Dumpty fall. Their attempts and excuses are pathetic, their only strength lying with the common human groundwork of superstition and preference for anything but no-order. Decisively, the hands and mouth of the Taliban golem has screwed up, big time. It is for those of every colour, caste or creed who desire something else than their preferred emirate of silence to seize the moment.

For Malala's comments of a 14-year old's life under Taliban rule, you find them here. To find out what TIME actually contributed to her heroic efforts, click here.

Alright, I'll try...

... and make a single-sentence rant. The gruesome, god-loving thieves of hands and feet are on the rise in Mali, especially in the North, where we do what we want, as you who've enjoyed the scavenging Yorkshire Police's hunt for the Ripper in Red Riding will recognize (no point trying understand that reference if you haven't - but do give them a try!), only here it's no matter of corruption, greed and "personal interest", but the big thing, the official guidebook/code of law ruling the fates of all, irrespectible of whims, creed and zeal - and yes, we're absolutely certain that our interpretation of his divine, all-loving will is just absolutely positively incorruptible, as are those who we rely on for its translation into human conduct and its apparation.

(Just deplorable!)

Afterbirth;

First, a late Christmas gift, a reading list of recommended literature for my enemies. Most of it can be obtained freely, too, so you won't have to tie yourself to a chair with one hand as you cut the second off with a butcher's knife.

And for those who would have something more of their two minutes of hate, I recommend thorough study of my more thorough comments on the Malala Yousufzai shooting two months past. It's way better than this merely stubborn cr**p.

Happy Holidays, once again! And may the end of the continuation (as we say when the three days of Christmas is past as well as future) end in a shriveling, sacrilegious, (a)stounding New Year's Eve. But more time for that later... *<B-):::

This Ungodly constitution

Today is Christmas, and 'tis weekend was the one when the vote was decided, the vote which would solidify the future of Al-Misr as either chaotic or steer its course the way of Morsi's and the Muslim Brotherhood's and the Wahhabis' preferred Islamic Emirate. After offering the usual condoleances on this date once devoted to the great Sol, Helios' Roman counterpart, I would venture into condemning most solemnly the results and the premises. The new Egypt, adding to already existing grievances and cracks in a body which has experienced the most since the days of Narmer, the great constitutor, will by the blessing of its electoral majority be brandef from infancy with the exuberatingly intolerant features just laid before the public to vote on, a vote as disgraceful as the very notion of faith as a constitutor of the decisively unknown.

Freedom of religion, the notion I have already disgussed, will now most ungodly be outlined in the new supreme governing document, for separation betweeen state and religion will not, and only for the Abrahamites of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Religious laws outlined by scholars of faith will apply for all, with separate doctrines supposedly sanctioned by the creed of Jesus and Moses for these separately "protected" entities. Now I ask, on a tour to this great Egypt, so greatly rememberer and disgussed long before any Christian, Muslim or even Jew set his foot on this Ancient-during-Antiquity soil, which one will I be subject of? Shall I even be allowed to enter? To consider any human of any particular faith opinions since birth, to deem these factors subject to immovable and irrerasable body chemistry is the most gruesome reflection of the spirit of intolerance, now on this merry date so grimly exposed in the developing world as well as the supposedly developed one. Our precious, religious bodily fluids, now and always under attack by ungodly, unjoyous secularine.

The same scholars that have merrily and publicly argued the positions of segregating beaches so as to keep the sexes separate, to drive a wedge between father and daughter, husband and wife, fiancée and fiancée, to erect a Saudiesque Egyptian Prohibition of alcohol based on (or do I think too much of these people's self-discipline?) these bigots' own preferences, and even the seemingly pointless as well as reprehensible idea of covering the "ungodly" (to my non-existing Christian self as well, I assume) Sphinx in a waxen layer. 

This suggestion of a sham of a constituting document, better fit, or rather not for the times of Moses, St Augustine and Abu Bahkr ought to be embalmed in wax so thick it can just barely be read, for nobody should "have" to read it, as a remnant of the days when it was adopted by a liberated people with the common audacity of elevating their faithfulness beyond the sphere of contained harm into a beacon of irrationalitarchy (irrationalitycracy doesn't work as well, but sounds like "crazy"). 

Egypt did not see the very first dawn of the Arab Spring but has guided the Great Revolt against authority and the ways things were meekly done yesterday, and now aspiring to guide it back into a still unbreakable era of stagnation it is indignantly necessary for the conscience of those freeminded to expose and erase this fact by pointing the finger at its every single daunting occurence. I am certain that Jesus bar Joseph, as well as the worshippers of Sol would stubbornly agree.

And yes, the powers of presidency have been greatly expanded so to revive much of the glory of the Pharaoh. Combined with the fundamentalist approach, it's a real horrorshow for those interested in Bronze Age absolute monarchy-theocracies. A real horrorshow, prostrating brothers... As the word of god himself put it, conveniently brought to us by men, all legislation belongs to him, and thus to those who wrote the thing.

Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays! *<:-D::::

A Mecca for the creator of poetry - much more so than the Bible, which is more for tedious history book dustbins like myself - a Hell for the purveyors of constitutional law, and their involuntary customers. Including myself, should I ever visit the land of the Pharaohs who never knew a word of this. Like myself... *<B-):::

Postscript: Now that isn't entirely true. While the rulers of old Egypt and the builders of the ungodly Sphinx knew little of the "word of God", I have memorized certain passages I find evocative, including this highly recommended Sura, the 109th. Unfortunately, it is very short and thence placed at the end (or is it the other way?). No matter which, readit!

Mind is Liberty's first battlefield

This night, I had a marvellous dinner, despite for a sordid lack of salmon, which was entirely self-chosen. Just minutes earlier, I had an unpleasant conversation with my father which again outlined that democracy is most necessary to, pardon my sense of melodrama, "defend" as well within the democratic paradigm. The subject in question was the United Nations, which my brother denounced as equally ludicrous as its shorter-lived and, decisively, less successful predecessor. In 1950, less than five years later, Kim Il-Sung's regime crossed the border into South Korea and for the next three years conducted a war on, amongst a series of nations, the newly formed United Nations for the cause of extending his absolute power to the whole of the Korean peninsula. This was, in my father's opinion, merely a matter of "perspectives", both the commence of the war and Kim Il-Sung's dictatorial position. I exposed the ludicrous in the thesis by stating, for a suggestion, that the fact that Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 is a matter of who you ask (I left out Stalin for the moment). My brother then suggested ironically the Holocaust might also be a matter of "perspective". No more than that is true is the ghastly claim that history is a matter of ideological creed. Predictably, father repelled him, to then assume the position repelled. The DPRK (North) is an oppressed and subverted (by other countries) nation, no less democratic than "free world" democracies who so unjustly abhor it. Kim Il-Sung is not at all an authoritarian leader, nor does he hold any such title as the worldly recognized (and, I dare say, outlaughed) office of Eternal President. The images of concentration camps, supposedly housing over 200,000 of its subjects ("citizen" is an unfit term, just like "republic", as the government here is less a public matter than anywhere else on the globe) is a slanderous cover-up concealing a much more pleasant reality of serfdom. The horrible suppression of dissidents and supposed dissidents and their families through internment, medical experiments, deliberate starvation, public executions, euthanasia, eugenics and reports of gassings, including of children in designed camps (to quote the great Christopher Hitchens, "This may remind you of something") are idle propaganda. Dictatorship is a myth, as the purpose of authoritarian leaders always are the benefit of their subjects. Liberal democracy is a reprehensible myth, as worse as the totalitarian regimes it polarizes itself against.


"You're like those right-wing conservatives, who watch Fox News."
"I don't watch Fox." (And neither do you, hence making the claim rather questionable.)
"You sounds like Fox."
"As I've said, I don't watch Fox, and hence I cannot make any claims based on Fox." (I have watched an Internetbound and rather good FN panel debate between libertarians from outside the network, including Harvard's goodly Jeff Miron, but that's rather off-topic.)
"You sound like... you sound like those... those foxes, whatever." Period. Strength and force. I live pre-Enlightenment, when arguments were not yet in fashion. Hence, again, making my definition of "left" and "progressive" questionable indeed.


Or, as the point may have sought to prove, the United States and other Western countries are just as disgusting and oppressive, such as in, I quote, "suppressing abortion". Yet the United States, all the 50 United States, have more liberal abortion laws than Sweden, where it is all-banned after the 18th week (designed as "terminating pregnancy" if deemed necessary), whereas in the US terminating a pregnancy outside the womb, so-called partial birth abortion, was legal until the 2003 ban (in my opinion rightly; whatever your opinions of this practice, I would make the case that if homicide is not federally regulated, nor should infanticide). To take this for an example, I would deem the call for a dictatorship to safeguard the right to abortion as quite ludicrous. Authoritarian regimes are much more consistent in regulating and outlawing abortion, including Ceausescu's well-meaning, altruistic, impoverishing, deeply corrupt and plastic bag-wielding rule of horror in Romania. The Nazis, on contrary, overturned the German abortion ban in 1933, hence making them, I suppose, a gilded examplar of this "authoritarian abortionist" choice of humanism and welfare. The DPRK, similarly, conducts forcible abortions, hardly making it a country of "choice" - of, well, anything, ever. I believe in choice. Hence, I am a "right-wing conservative". I believe in Voltaire, in Montesquieu, in John Stuart Mill, men of reason and argument, not loud-mouthed authoritarian content rooted in the current disposition of the senses. Which, if "conservative", would make the position of old right-wing regimes such as that of Louis in France rather interesting. Are they "left" now, responsible and caretaking? And would that not redefine the term "progressive" into an oxymoron?

This I identify as the most primitive, the most babeish form of contending with government. Infinite authority and oppression is justified as long as it serves your ideological creed; revolution and change is an imperative when it is not. Which, I would say again, proves that government must be based on reason, not emotion. Dictatorship is emotional, mystic; constitutional government is rational, especially when it goes against the preferences so sordidly locked in combat with reason itself.

Not unlike my litmus test; ask the one who doubts the ethos of democracy (or no-government) what sort of politics would be preferrable under an authoritarian system, and then ask again what is his or her politics. You're unlikely to hear separate accounts, and yet if not, what does this mean? The spirit of democracy and, more important in theory, liberty, has to be defended from those who would trade their both their accounts and, infinitely worse, mine for the qualities of a Führer, a Vozhd, a Caudillo, or a Lider Maximo (the title Castro assumed in 1959 after becoming just that). This is the paradox of any democratic system; in a tyranny, a single man (and, indeed, perhaps his retinue of followers) dream to rule the fates of many. In a democracy, the same is true for millions, who compete in having their voices heard in the tempest of legislation; what is to be banned and suppressed, what is to be ordained and enforced, and what is to be left in the boring, shrinking grey chasm between the burning battlefields. Liberty is, indeed, quite boring, and I most stoutly believe it has won among the masses only where it has proven itself more practical, rather than as a matter of ideological preference. This is indeed a dangerous predicament, as we might live to see within millennia, if not centuries.

Camus once said to an authoritarian-minded friend; "I will always protect your right to life. But if I'm placed before the execution squad, you'll have to condone my murder." On this soil, throwing off my desire of control of other's matter of affairs and their choices in life, I submit my moral supremacy before those who would rather have democracy defined as their current state of mind.

For an interesting compilations on the many claims of the friends of the DPRK, see this probably infamous tag on Reddit. Or, if you haven't, Hitchens' discourse on the "Axis of Evil" regimes (a term I deplore, but you'd hardly question it after giving it a thorough look, or I'm not sure about anything) is a must-see, though it's guaranteed to send some chills, through your backbone or (once you tell me) mine = 7

Governing as reason. Imperfect, but increasingly rational, predictable, and controlled.

Governing as a state of mind. ("Screw you, the guy who knows your desires had a bad morning.")

Censorship - may not alter your life in a significant way

(För Kalle Anka, hoppa ner till den röda texten.)

After two surly posts I really hesitated in writing, doubting whether my mind really held any conceivable answer to the problem, I'll now just shut up on guns, money and pornography and indulge in what I do best; a heinous rant of my own outrage over current dealing with freedom of speech and its perpetual war against the right that negates all other rights.

Which, putting it briefly, has seen a remarkably poor year in Swedish society, reaching a climax this autumn. First, to my great joy, manga artist and translator Simon Lundström was aquitted from all charges by the Supreme Court of Sweden in June for the possession of supposedly child-endangering images of half-humanoid infantile characters with saucery eyes and scant protection against the readers' eyes. I'm nearly there again, so I tactfully ask, with Cicero's famous question in mind; Cui Malo? To who's injury? Do not give the pretense to speak of my security, or that of my friends and family. A writer or artist has no credible responsibility for the feelings induced and, yes, misused by those indulging in their work. Remember Mark Chapman reading Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye as he silently waited on the sidewalk for New York City police to pick him up? Or Anders Breivik, only a year ago, claiming (at least when it came out the other side through the headlines) that Lars von Trier's Dogville "may have" influenced the conception of his wicked scheme? Now, Salinger and von Trier may both be taken for loonies, but they have no greater moral complicity in these crimes than the parents of these men, and many others like them, for providing seed and womb to the very dawn of their existence. That is also causality - one act irreplacably preceding another - and it is by no means equated to culpability. If so, every person who ever met with a (future) mass murderer or assassin without breaking his (or her) skull and strangling him on the spot might be considered complicit. But then, again, it's easier to blame Salinger or von Trier. Or Simon Lundström, especially for crimes which, with exceptionally few restrictions, are the works of parents, of aunts and uncles, brothers and the friends or partners of the same. Weird Japanese comics and the queer people over here who indulge in such filth are quite more dispensable as a whole, are they not?

Now, a comic book series more familiar to the Swedish audience and thence perhaps more justly judged would be Tintin. My personal reflections of this is dubious. I do find the humoristic depictions of the USSR, Belgian Congo and, yes, the United States and their respective peoples of the first three albums to be quite ludicrous, though it is inescapable to much of the humor of the time and, frankly, the points that Hergé wanted to draw. Elections were, as we know, pointless and concocted ahead, and there was indeed a very effective network of secret police in the land of the Soviets with its mind set to hamper free speech, and even the murder of millions. For this randomly unsublime but justified critique Hergé deserved no apology that was ever ask from him, which he humbly provided nonetheless.

My favorite example, however, would be one from Tintin in America, where a disraught bank clerk notes to two horse-mounted police officers in a small rural city how he arrived at work to find his manager dead, the safe plundered. As the word escaped, the clerk noted, "seven negroes were swiftly hung, but the culprit got away". Since my editions were outsold a few years ago, the quality of paper has lowered substantially, prices have gone up and, lesser to the account of financial hardships since it has one more letter, the noun "negroes" has been substantiated by the Swedish equivalent of "hobos" or "tramps" as the last word in this sentence. Can you honestly conceive a more ignorant, foolhardy way (though I doubt Hergé's point was completely unknown to the censor-translator - just insignificant) to trample on this, for an early 1930s serial, brave and still remarkably amusing passage exposing and condemning the ludicrous violence of mob lynching - at that time a problem much of the present and in need for a good critique. Of course, that purpose is mostly gone, but does that clear all reasons to have Hergés message cleared of the paper? I think not. I deem it an insult, to his mind as much as the integrity of the free word.

"Insulting?" "Dangerous?" Who is to decide? We could just... scrap the whole scene you know. That way nobody "has" to see it ever again. Or think for himself, in this or any other matter.

If you don't like Tintin, write an angry editorial and try to gain my attention on the same terms. If I don't like it, or parts of it, I think I'll know soon enough without someone needing to remove the evidence from existence. Few men piss me off as much as Bienvenitu Mobutu, the Belgian who now seems to have devoted a significant share of his mature existence to have Tintin in Congo banned under Belgian law (and, to take a brave guess, with a mind to using a potential success as stepping stone to an all-EU ban which would force me to clear part of my library for the stoves or, as some have suggested, a retroactively condemning hate speech museum). This man has actually stated, proudly it seems, that while the European community of Hergé's youth did not see the need to ban and burn popular culture not in line with the views of its rulers (a premise that takes an increadible amount of ignorance and lost knowledge in 20th century history to even consider valid), so must we.

As must we, yells the mirroring call from Hungary, where deputies from a certain opposition party with an ofttimes illegal, jackbooted paramilitary wing notes that the depictions of mistreated Roma children in The Castafiore Emerald are way too sympathetic and hence misrepresenting their true nature. As anyone who despises Mr Mobutu (the live one) and Jobbik as two faces of a similar phenomenon might have shown, though few grasped the opportunity, the very touching part where Tintin shares a moment with his to-be best interracial friend Chang, enlightening and entertaining each other of Belgians' and Chinese's prejudicial anecdotes against each other's rather distantly related cultures. The mutual nature of hatred and fear is almost always insufficiently exposed, I think. Swedish Liberal columnist Johan Norberg did broadcast his impression of the scene, which hardly goes against the decisively so dangerous trend of these days of tolerance. Under the very wings of this trend, the library of Stockholm's House of Culture in September reassigned the immensely popular books - not merely the now-censored and widely discussed Congo album - to a different compartment, with a mind to the universal purpose of censorship - decrease and limit the readership. Confine them, contain them, broadcast a message that this savvy, asexual, rather improductive journalist is... tolerable, but less so than yesterday. Just a precaution. In a few years, good, ordinary people may "have" to "need" him "no more", and take on where the Marshals Mobutu (the Belgian) and Miri took the first step.

The reaction from mainstream media and political establishment was immediate and ruthless, and the action was repelled within hours, the figure responsible once stubbornly treading into sunlight now making a Nixonesque retreat by renouncing and resigning his positions. Days after, the chairman of the Afro-Swedish Legue - an organization quite sadly described by artist Makode Linde as "one I learned about through some kind of anti-free speech lawsuit" - defended the censorship under the Newspeakian pretext of "discussion" and denounced arguments against this suppression as naturally derived from inborn, racial qualities. If that is what you seriously think, sir, then you are a fool and a racist. Quite reassuring once you say it, refreshing even, but again I mostly draw horror from the passages in fiction when the plot did actually solve itself, when a worse resolution was conceivable. (Which is why I now like George R. R. Martin, when it usually doesn't.) The efforts to stem the seemingly relentless tide of Tintin will not end in even the freer societies, though they will be naturally unsuccessful for as long as the books remain read and admired by the hundreds of millions who constitute the naturally silent, now unusually loud and usually decisive majority.

Now, only a week ago, newspaper stands virtually exploded with the grim message that Kalle Ankas Jul ("Christmas with Donald Duck") is for the first time since... well, my blogging lifetime, to see a major change, and I don't mean the late, rather insigificant previews for upcoming 3D high-definition titles (Hansel and Gretel now in motion capture animation - none of the actors were harmed by climbing into the plastic makeshift stove for the epic final battle), but of the first and prime of the many, under ordinary circumstances, irreproachable subjects. From six days and into an unforseeable (but not unchangable, I would remind you) future, three characters will be omitted from Santa's unforgettable workshop, and hence the sight of about half the Swedish people. If not pre-announced, it would still have been duly noted, with the most discussed one being long since as lodged in the public memory as the chessboard paint - which is, by the way, entirely unscientific. Blasphemy! Magic! It is the black doll, so merrily rushing down the helter skelter to self-reliantly stomp her behind on the "approved" stamp, expose it to the audience and then roll along who, apparently, may now be noted only in "hindsight". Fortunately we have, as the Chinese discovered long ago, YouTube to deliver even after a purge dangerously insulting and propagandistic characters and moments such as these.

This sudden, unprovoked and deeply partial and cowardly act has been defended by Swedish branch of the Disney Corporation as they "do not alter the plot in a significant way". And, being their property, I cannot condemn the act as illegal. But I can, knowing this will only hurt the bulk of every party involved, display my disgust and loud-mouthed intemperance. This is wrong.

We didn't have time to say Goodbyes - but thanks to the technology by which I write this editorial, I may now look back at the figure you were and always will be to me  = )

Asides from the black doll, the preceding "blonde Aryan curls" meets "American housewife in the making" doll will also be omitted. Paradoxically, the three ranks of Nazi dichotomia for the future Greater German Reich seems equally represented (superior slaves, inferior slaves and corpses) as the third one too controversial for today's audiences was, not entirely unsurprising, the old wooden male, bearded and pointy-nosed with hence (is there such a thing?) stereotypically Jewish features gently muddling along in a wooden wheelchair-looking apparatus, shoving his hands forth as if to take something (or give it away), large puzzled eyes looming as if at some danger ahead.

Of course, the great sack, purposedly an inconvenient metaphor for the Holocaust. Let's cut it out altogether, and Santa's midget-demeaning helpers (or, as has already been suggested, are they not child labourers? Are we not "progressed" enough to "leave" that "behind" us?). And the sexual inequality amongst the workshop's employees, and the animal cruelty against the reindeer, and Santa's uninspiring bodily shapes, his hooting, so uncomfortable (well, try it in a social environement and within shortly, people will start react different from you in this moment), or just stick to the way things have been before lesser writers dared to interfere with works of their superior equals. It's bad enough that fewer and fewer Tolkiens and Disneys seem to be born, and I for one sould not waste a moment of distaste on his wonderful productions if a disgraceful membership card from the American Nazi Party could be unearthed. The artistic work is the only merit of an artist, and if he was the most bloated bigot and racist to ever have an Oscar (he left a world which had placed 22 on his shelf) and whatever his beliefs on politics, the value of his fellow man and the price of individual dignity, I can see a lot to sympathy with when I look back on the unscathed works that man left behind after too short an existence in my service.

Censorship - May not alter the plot of mankind in any significant way.

Just make sure somebody knows how his legacy was before the minds of opposition - in this regard a very vile, wicked thing - saw fit to introduce the old, rusty scissors of fear. People of fear tend to do a lot of stupid things - yes, I have been re-indulging myself in Harry Potter and the wisdoms of Remus Lupin - there's an idol for those of you who think Dumbledore's too much a vile schemer with a long, crooked nose. Unfit for the children of today, mayhaps? Unfit for the children of tomorrow? How are we to know?

I will still demand an answer from the Disney Corporation, and from the people who were barely alive when scenes as everlasting and decent as these were still actually made, and waiting to be made. The sound will call, for it is just and widely appreciated; Cui Bono? To whose benefit?

The Damocles Gun

Do I trust my fellow man? And do I trust my government? Whereas the first question would earn a more evocative, extensive answer, though between two options I would lean towards a "yes", the second one must undoubtedly, unwaveringly, unquakingly be faced with a stubborn "no". This conclusion was reached by Aristotle, popularized by Enlightenment philosophers and most eloquently argued by Alan Alda's everlasting Senator Arnie Vinick in NBC:s West Wing; "The Founding Fathers didn't set up a government based on trust. They could have designed a government based on trust in our ability to govern fairly but they knew that power corrupts so they invented checks and balances. That was genius. The Founding Fathers did not want me to trust you and they did not want you to trust me." This idea, at least as old as the Roman Revolution (of 509 BC), was not one of the "right", but of the far, "far left", and if those labels of the French Revolution have now jumped the fence to take each other's places, I'll stick with the Enlightenment - as a generic principle.

The now centuries-old issue of gun rights was this year resurfaced twice after ghastly crimes against human rights committed by individuals most brutally exposing and exploiting this lack of "trust" in government's powers to restrict their use to itself. Now I would ask, with a utilitarian viewpoint in mind, which country has the most restrictive and least liberal gun laws - Germany or the United States, and which has had the most "restrictive" and least "liberal" past? Now, you may call me for begging the question, or presenting the evidence of one fact as a premise for another, or simply dissuade the conclusion as a personal argument for guns. I don't own guns; I cannot recall I've ever fired one (the things we do for Dionysios) but as I said in an earlier post, the arguments of legislation must venture beyond the personal and personal desires, lest we are to venture down the boggy road towards totalitarianism. My quarrel with gun control would rather be that it doesn't ban guns, but rather restricts their use to the most prolific killer in history; the state.

Taking thus into account the potential history of dictatorship, genocide and state terrorism that never took place in Enlightenment republics such as the United States and Switzerland - or the hibernated Medieval monarchy Sweden, to be fair - countries conceived from the unity of an idea rather than a national group (or, the only worse alternative possible, many such's) I would claim that whereas a maniac with the hands on a gun and fertilizers may kill seven, or 28, or 69, or 178 people, the same lunatic with a gun monopoly could just as well, and have been known to cause the same outcome for millions. This fact is proven even today in states such as Syria and Sudan, governments of "trust", where all demanded for the continuation of the current state of affairs is the silent consent of its average property-citizen. The most common assault and murder weapon in Sweden is a sharp object, especially in the latter case a knife, yet we see no call for restrictions on knives - or fertilizers. Possibly because it would be, soothing or alarming, an impossibility as well as implausible. They're too bloody inescapable. Yet, Sweden has very liberal gun laws, and among the very highest guns-per-person quota of any country - Finland was third last time I checked - just no constitutional right to keep or wield them; not much unlike our constitutional right to free speech, which in 1999 saw a sudden, unhampered and ignominiously unfought setback when new anti-child pornography legislation was pushed through the Riksdag, legislation which not long ago saw a Swedish translator convicted for this ghastly offense for no other reason than possessing a few books with sexually suggestive images of children, possibly not even human, who don't exist and hence cannot be harmed by any culprit, no matter how unsound in his nature. Let me say that now, to reinforce my belief in my favorite amendment, which is sordidly overlooked because of its (overbroad, at least) infinitely more famous neighbor; the children in my head are not protected by any law I recognize, no more than Tarantino's characters are protected by American laws against violence and murder. Thank god - I mean James Madison and his conservative goons - for that.

But no - James Madison was not among the "conservative" of the delegation that drew up the Bill of Rights, the three words that (along with most of the other 17 amendments) have put in inerasable ink much of that which is good and sound and enlightened about the United States.

The cradle of the American Revolution is New England, and contrary to the opinion of the average European, and perhaps even the average American, this would be the place where "the right to keep and bear arms" (unless referring to "a keep" and "a pair of bear arms") is most restricted, which is not really true. I would claim Vermont to be, along with the least violent states of the union, the most gun-liberal (hence placing the orthodox US dichotomia of "conservative" versus "liberal" on its head), and until not long ago the only one where any person could carry in public a handgun (be it a UZI) without a license. "Vermont carry" is almost universally recognized as a desire for slacker legal control, and have during the last years seen triumph in Wyoming, Alaska and Arizona. With the exception of the latter state, now widely known for the shooting of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords last year (who did actually favor the change, and publicly filed a letter denouncing notoriously crime-ridden Washington DC:s famously strict gun control laws) they are also known as among the safest in the US. There is a reason why "Vermont carry" has reached a certain progress, and why in these states (as I just explained). The homicide rate (including manslaughter) in 2010 in Vermont was 1,3 per 100,000 citizens, a steady rise from 0,3 in the 1960s. In Sweden, where the rate conversely has dropped for the last two decades, it is now slightly lower at 1,03 (sources here, here and here). If calling for Obama to introduce federal gun laws (as if the President had the power to enact laws, hence proving a certain ignorance in not only the US checks and balances, but also in the principles on which every democratic constitution is founded) is thence logical, then by that reason restrictions on the purchase of knives in all the free world would seem logical. Or they're just too bloody inescapable. Take into consideration then, again, that Sweden has among the more liberal gun laws in the world, yet a fairly low murder rate, hence mirroring Vermont's position.

They were long before these laws became reality, but the conclusion I would draw is this; violent offenders don't follow the laws, laws follows the events of the past. As for the issue of gun control, I believe it to be the perfect state issue, being one not explicitly delegated to federal authorities as stipulated in the tenth amendment. If Connecticut and Colorado so wish to pull the rein straighter, is perfectly understandable, not to say "necessary". I cannot imagine, in any case, the rights of "hunters and fishermen", the common proviso when suggesting a limitation on the seemingly unlimited right to bear arms, to be infringed in any near-forseeable future. The need to pull Alaskans, Vermonters and Wyomingans into it on account of "the need for action" seems far less warranted. Personally I can't really tell. I might be persuaded to give up my right to wield deadly force for that pledge from everyone else, but certainly not to one who insists upon keeping it for himself. Legislation grows out of the gunbarrel, based on violence or the threat of it, and to call on violence to be imposed to in potentia limit the onset of violence is indeed a dangerous remark. Still, it's a bit old-fashioned, don't you think? I'd say Jefferson got the hang of it rather correctly when designing the Virginia Constitution and this inspiring (for the later capital-C Constitution) passage; "No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms (within his own lands)." What lay within the parenthesis was subsequently omitted.

“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”

― Robert A. Heinlein

Or are they really? What do you think?  = 7

Obelix Shrugged

[Update: As of December 29, it has come to my attention that the tax in question has been scrapped by order of the French Constitutional Council.]

"If you saw Obelix... knees buckling, sweat running down his chest, still trying to keep that pointy, gargantuan boulder up with the last of his strength; what would you tell him to do?

I'd ask him where he's carrying that god-damn thing all the time. Or I'd ask the writer what the hell he's doing. Obelix isn't supposed to complain. It's half his personality, you know? That and his boar-only cuisine."

It is likely to assume that Friedrich Hayek was not very influenced by Randian ethics. In his colossus The Constitution of Liberty, the Austro-English-American economist opens the chapter entitled "taxation" with an apology, where he states his views are likely to be so unpopular among his readers and inflame his critics that he juxtaposedly wishes he had not included it. Yet, he stresses it holds beliefs he considers almost factual (in the discipline of economics, hardly anything is) and important in understanding the message as a whole. In time, a sufficient millions of readers seemed ready to forgive.

I will myself follow with an apology to the French people. A French citizen I would, alike Marine Le Pen (if she stuck to her promise) not have voted in the second round of last presidential election, and I claim to have good reasons for it. Sarkozy's outspoken economic agenda might be closer to mine, but in a weak field Hollande would be the more statesmanlike character, with a hope for broad support and joint efforts to reorganize the bloated French bureaucracy and slash its unmeagre deficit. As it is, I cannot bring myself to condone either (though I might have, if Marine or her spry-to-be-84 father was the alternative) and I believe in George Carlin's unorthodox statement that those who jam in their votes are more responsible for what comes out, as opposed to the commonly stated opposite.

As it came to pass, and against the expectations (or express wishes) of many, Hollande won, and his Parti Socialiste could rejuvenated and merrily ride into Chamber and Senate on a wave of massive opposition to Sarko, clearly the greatest mistake ever to head the Fifth Republic (now in a strong field - though I can hardly say I "admire" either De Gaulle, Pompidou, Giscard-d'Estaing, Mitterrand or Chirac, they were all statesmen). Now, as part of the package to save the republic, the great-great-great-grandchild of the revolution has offered a claim on up to 75 % of every French income, compared to a marginal rate of 50-something in Scandinavia (reformed in Sweden in the late 1980s under the principle of "keeping half your wage"), 45 % in Germany, the United Kingdom and Australia, 35 % in the United States (federal; excepting state taxes), 33 % in New Zealand, 29 % in Canada (federal), 15 % in the Czech Republic and 11 % in France's trilingual neighbour, Switzerland (federal). Fringe candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who crusaded against laissez-faire under the chants of "Robespierre!", "Saint-Just!" and "Humans first!" (what would we put under the guillotine secondly? Goats?) in a campaign which saw him tearing at Le Pen in an apparently engaging third-party debate - every extreme in France seems equally happy to compete in praising its sanguinary revolution for its ultra-radical and nationalist zeal  - stated he would gladly enact the free world's first maximum wage by confiscating all incomes over 360 000 euros. Quite a blade of steel in the neck of the French economy as we know it. But that was the deliberate message.

"I get to keep one half of the last ones? Sacre-bléu! I emigrate to the Belgae!"

Unsurprisingly, Frenchmen who either didn't vote for Hollande or now realize their self-sacrifice refuse to take part of the burden. Business magnate (Luis Vuitton) Bernard Arnault did not wait long to fly the border into Belgium, the kingdom erected in the aftermath of the Vienna Congress to keep the French and the Republican at bay. In this bastion of reaction, the top rate is a meagre 50 cents per euro. Days ago, renowned actor and Academy Award nominee Gerard Depardieu followed, shunning the politics of his lifelong home by departing it.

I am absolutely convinced the illustrious actor will not starve even if every one of his many annual euros left a mere 25 cents for personal use. But I am also convinced that he would do just as well without a few of his fingers. Who, I must ask, is fit to bring such an evaluation into practice?

A policy enacted only to harm for no gain is indeed worse than the sadism whose object is the pleasure of the self. A maximum wage is the beacon of such sentiment, and indeed does little good (compared to the options) to the revenue it would supposedly fuel. Asides from alluded moral objections, it will draconially and gradually diminish the total income of any nation, and I am yet to see credible humanitarian or ecological justifications for an entirely state-dominated economy, or why it would serve any purpose other than increasing the power of the mighty and pleasing the bias of the indifferent. This is, partly, true of excessive marginal rates, as the Swedish Social Democratic government stubbornly put it when undertaking the mentioned reform, raising the "floor" of the income tax considerably while cutting the ceiling to a top 50-51 %, against orthodox Socialist doctrines, and perhaps to the dismay of the "lesser" man. The corporate tax, flat as the floor of Saint Peter's, has seen a cut in the same agenda from 57 to a mere 24,6. The Liberal-Conservative government's proposal trimmed it slightly lower and hence, billionares may now tax a mere 22 % by channeling their incomes through a corporation - remarkably lower than what the quintessential low-income earner pays.

The current path, heralded since Napoleon's non-laissez-faire capitalism and consistently throughout fifty years of big government etátisme under overlapping Gaullist or Socialist administrations, now designed to by "temporary" measures to ensure and secure the financial future of Europe, will lead the French economy to the dry brink of the garbage disposal, unbenownst of what you care of Obelix' back. He can afford it, of that I am certain, but in all honesty, can France? It is indeed revealing that the citizens of every one of France's lower taxed equals has been granted a more efficient public administration, more viable economic progress and a better standard of living for the average man and woman. The unproven axiom of taxation as the fundament of a sound fiscal policy does not fare well when it is France, not Switzerland, France, not Canada, France, not New Zealand, France that suffers from all the symptoms, now labeling some of them medication. If you believe the Swiss are better off for staying out of the EU, or from having "no immigrants" (hence proving you haven't been to Switzerland), or from being a superior species of space aliens, or from an overload of natural resources - all of which hardly needs to be questioned - double or triple the toll mentioned and you will still be far from the draconian rates of France, yet perhaps see some of the universal rashes caused by unsound management. I am yet to see an argument why the principles of economic liberalism could not work as well in France, or Italy, or Sweden. They have before, when we escaped the drought of mercantilist regulation to enter two hundred years of general growth of transactions, the weight of purses, and the quantity and quality of living years.

I believe that the existence of a state warrants physical protection, universal health insurance coverage, and education accessible for all (though I believe that without necessarily harming accessibility, private ownership and tuition fees may provide a better outcome at higher levels). But I am also convinced that, to the benefit of the French privy coffers, progressive brackets ranging from say 20 to 49 percent, properly paid and organized, will fuel its welfare state just as well, and eventually with revenues greater and confidence improved in the ambiguous beacon called "society".

On the long-fought topic regarding the morality of taxation I will add only two brief conclusions. One; human beings are sovereign and must, if considered to be free, decide over the products of their labour as much as over the source of it. Voluntary consent must reign in every non-violent relationship, also those who, no matter how unfeasible, concern economic transactions. Two; states are sovereign over their sphere of recognized authority and may hence tax activities within these boundaries, under any rule the lords of the state may see fit. Taxation is not slavery, for the core of slavery is not the absence of wages (as history has shown, "slave" and "millionare" are congruous not only in logic, but also in experience) but of choice. A law requiring you to perform work, remunerated or not, may be considered forced labour or even slavery. Placing a fee on voluntary labor within a given zone or territory is not. This is one of the points I mean to stress in the opening quote. Atlas doesn't have to carry the earth, and when and wherever he must, I'll be out of there ("Oh no, a gh-gh-ghastly dictatorship" - Woosh!)

Being critical to authority, lest when and by whom it is deemed unbenevolent to all, is not patriotic. But patriotism is not a Swedish virtue, and I do not hold it, for reasons rooted far below those of taxation and the power of the state apparatus.

The question is, how will the Gauls fare? And will we now see a bulk of harsh resistance in Belgica?

If you would believe Wikipedia...

... and you may (with discretion), four of the first five presidents of the United States (all but Adams, the only to reach 90) made smoking use of hemp during their lifetime. So did Andrew Jackson and the great constitutor, Benjamin Franklin. Three of the six men reached age 84, only Washington fell short of 70, and all managed re-election. In fact, so far no president who is known to have smoked cannabis or its derivatives has been ousted by the electorate in a second-term bid, last reconfirmed a month ago. Taylor, however, died two years into his presidency at a mere 65 while Franklin's namesake Pierce was ousted from the Democratic ticket in 1856, much due to lifelong alcoholism (and a probable long-time depression from seeing his last surviving child's head tear off in a train accident at the onset of his one term).

Federal bans of narcotic substances sprung out from the 1950s, and was firmly established only through Ronald and Nancy Reagans re-escalation of the War on Drugs in the 1980s. If the Founding Fathers were condoning the use of drugs, however, their voices certainly called through the wall of prohibition to reach famous names such as Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Al Gore, Sarah Palin, John Edwards, Michael Bloomberg, Ed Koch, George Pataki, David Paterson and Barack Obama.

Just Say No to this man. But keep the Bill of Rights, please. What if, just what if Madison came up with any of the phrases for the first Ten Amendments while under consumption?

Benjamin, a smoker of hemp and alleged inventer of the phrase United States of America. How many shady deals has he overseen from the face on the 100-dollar bill?

Link here.

And yes, I'm aware that all the Presidents mentioned but Pierce also held slaves, and that it does not constitute an argument why they should not be prosecuted today for drug use as well. However, this is not a rant of how hemp and its consumption should be made legal, merely a Reaganesque reflection of how great men as Washington, Jefferson and Madison and their achievements may have become had they not indulged in the (apparently) recreational use of substances whose suppression is now considered paramount in almost all the free world. Pierce's failing struggle with alcohol is a good example of a soul whose achievements were hardly hampered by the fact it was "hempered".

End the War!

Stop messing around with WMDs... again B-/

Today or yesterday, President Barack Obama has renewed his calls for the use of force against Assad, should his regime resort to chemical weapons of mass destruction. Though it would doubtlessly mark a turn of page in this sanguinary conflict, I'm disrought to again be reminded we are past this one. Over 30,000 Syrians have died in the past eighteen months not because of WMDs, nor will the use of them make a substantial change in the death poll (though survivors will have considerable horrors to complain about, for years to come) but from Conventional Weapons, the Number 1 killer in essentially every conflict since the dawn of man (well, if you give starvation and disease a break). The prime enemy of the health and dignity of the people of Syria without any competition on the periodic table is lead, and even if the cannisters are ignominiously deployed, that fact will stand until the end (the Ba'athist regime's programme for developing nuclear weapons being abandoned long since, jolly good we might reflect as of now).

I ask the world community to stop mess around regarding the use of certain weapons considered, and not without causes, but insufficiently reasonable such's, to be particularly prepostrous. Men and women will die every day until Assad joins them, or miraculously survives detention or finds himself kicked out of the country alive, as his less sanguinary counterparts in Egypt and Tunisia respectively (I find both conclusions rather unlikely). The short route there goes through an airborne assault with sufficient forces - bases exist in Turkey and Israel - and wiping out Assad's Air Force. The shift in allegiance of the Syrian airspace would make a tremendous difference in the daily terror experienced by so many civilians, and the most important change in territorial gain as the ground conflict (between actually fighting forces) is concerned. Act now, or make clear you will not, and state the noble principles underlining your decision.

Lead, along with gunpowder, the chief torturer of the Syrian people.

See President Obama's first statement on the matter below. Unfortunately, it contained no hint of resolution for the conflict which, after all, is half a country (at best) struggling against its better half. Have we really gone so powerless as to refrain from considering a solution to this bloodletting, or are the arguments - ofttimes noble; just look at the Founding Fathers - of the anti-interventionists really prevailing? I cannot detect much a hint of the latter.

Finally, as it should be, a quote, which I wish had been in the President's statement, preferrably also in Portuguese.

"Obviamente, demito-o!"

(General and presidential candidate Humberto Delgado's answer to a journalist asking on his stance on Prime Minister Salazar in 1958. Delgado lost the election, and his life, but the words live on, though not yet professed regarding the butcher lion.)

And for my previous post, in case you haven't read it.

Best Debate Conclusion Ever

Few men of the last century could elicit such elusive, evocative and eloquent debate moments such as this. The critical moment appears at 1:36, if you must hurry. Though richer than ever before, in human and economic terms, the world is significantly poorer now than just a year ago  = /

R.I.P. Christopher

(1949-2011)

The freedom to... what?

This is a re-post of my baby of two months on the freedom of religion - if you've already pondered through it, please skip on to something else on this wide, worldly web while I thrive in the filthy depths of my soul wondering what to write next.

The lastest months have seen a fierce internal struggle of the multiple intellects within my greater intellect. Fierce, an inconsiderate word perhaps, but it has cost me time, drained energy and lost me a twinge of sympathy within a few souls who didn't really agree, or cared to understand. I now am of the opinion that freedom of religion is a superfluous fiction, by which I do not mean to say that religious speech or absence of the same is not worthy our protection, by every force necessitated by the enemies of this most noble right, which indeed goes beyond the right to worship a supreme being. My dilemma is rather put like this; presume we have the means and rights to express, unrestrained, our opinions through free speech, press, assembly, opinion, movement and so forth but with no specific paragraph as to where religion is concerned, and then conjure a scenario in which one or many individuals are suppressed from participating in a religious gathering.

Can you really conjur it? All the freedoms mentioned may, and factually have been restrained and are so today in every country on earth, if yet subject to a court of law (or individuals over which such judgment will loom) but even a cell offers freedom of movement from the bunk bed to the altar and neither literature or (save for the issue of noise or commotion) prayer should countenance further restriction of a liberty already closely cropped, not in my opinion.

Can you not? If so, will you one day be prepared to claim freedom of religion as rationally unjustified? The concept to which I strive to arrive is to denote, as the US Bill of Rights did in 1791, the concept of religion and its justification(s) in the public sphere to an entirely private matter, freedom of religion altered to the almost as famous but far less invoked issue of separation between state (i.e. legislation) and religion ("church" is not merely enough - all matters of faith ought to be included, including the ghastly idea of banning towers related to specific denominations; yes, I mean the one so grievously undertaken by my favorite democracy), a "wall of separation", as of Jefferson's words to the Connecticut Methodists who so anxiously and asked for his support in the matter. In order to safeguard against laws related to such matters the issue of faith must be mentioned in the constitution in the first place, a most viable Catch-22 and exception which I will hereafter ignore, but which is as utterly necessary as it ought to be alone in that regard.

Faith is an argument for many things, still, and do not believe that fact is restricted to the areas of the world where it is an imperative. For those familiar with the (possibly Rawlsian) concept of positive and negative liberties, I would put it into one, single pitiful sentence as follows; the negative rights vested in the freedom of religion, or freedom of worship as it might more humiliously be defined, are already vested in every other liberty commonly mentioned (except by their thus self-evident opponents). The concept of being allowed to express any thought or notion, if yet not in every way conceivable, just as that of bodily integrity and protection against its unwarranted violation both make a very strong defense against any attempt to circumvent or hinder a religious or spiritual gathering, just as much as a political or social one. If, however, faith is invoked to safeguard the compliance of others for exercising self-defined positive rights, I will not care to defend the right of its application, as that does precisely harm and attack that same openness and concept of bodily integrity with a bulwark of "respect" for divinely mandated oppression and bigotry. The right not to see or hear me invoke disgusting, insulting denials of the credibility or plausability or desirability of such holy things as - divine revelation, virginal procreation, men who descend into caves or their sub-conscious to converse with archangels, goblins, sprites, Santa Claus or so-called divine scriptures (which, by their content, seems to have been plagiarized by many angels when a remarkable update of a faith is to be mandated - perhaps along with the relaxation of divine Copyright) - is an absurdity and not a right. To submit another to genital mutilation or other, more or less irreversible religious rites or education against his or her will, is an abomination and not a right. To carry clothing or attire prescribed by a power of speculative influence or existence when reason-based arguments say otherwise or, much worse, ask (echoing Al Capone's famous statement, with a kind word and the looming gun of tribal violence) another to do that for the sake of your faith, is a cry for bigotry and not a right. Religions have no rights, no liberties, they mandate no privileges to its bearers in any public sense. Until 1970, the contrary was a legislated fact in Sweden, a sad such which still linger on embodied as the commonly accepted notion of the rights of religions and the respect they demand and which arrive about a hundred billion miles of good arguments before their ability to reinforce them with facts.

Written by me on the subject on Historum.com:

What is freedom of religion?
My personal standard, until I have been taught another sense on the matter, is that the term "separation between state and religious matters" (including of legislation and minarets, for instance) is preferrable to "freedom of religion". Not that I do not respect the latter; it is not by accident that Hoxhaist Albania, the world's first Atheist state was one of the worst regimes of post-WWII Europe, possibly the very worst, which also persecuted vegetarians, for instance, by forcing workers and schoolchildren to consume pork in an inhuman attempt to enforce defiance of Muslim doctrines. But I am concerned whether law is to touch on the matter at all and consider faith a matter of special breed worthy a special brand of protection. Vegetarians, such as myself, are not protected in this special way, to play on an already given example, though it is implicit by other rights granted. Forced consumption of anything of a value repulsive to the consumer would be considered abuse at the very least (I do not even believe it has been tried at Gitmo), but it doesn't mean there ought to be a "freedom of diet".

If the laws of men - and women, to an extent ever rising - are to rest on the soil I have now cared to crop a little its role in the context should be restricted to the mark of separation (but not opposition, which itself implies a subjective viewpoint) from all matters subjective, metaphysical, spiritual, and ostensibly godly. Religious discourses set in a secular setting must, as everything else, be handled by the gloves and tongs of secularism. Because if the right to freely express or mark distance from a notion contradictory to one's own, it is not only a problem of faith. If, however, faith in a celestial dictatorship or imagined order (which is not to say it does not exist) is ever used to condone privileges and support absent from the unfaithful it is indeed not much commended by the principles of any secular constitution or order.

Universal freedoms and liberties can make a living without the presence of religion - which, by the present consensus of faith and unfaithful, makes a remarkable bulwark for further abuses of human rights and freedoms. Mr Jefferson - build up that wall! All incursions from either side are only gifts for past very dark indeed to the favor of remaining speculations which, if yet more immortal than humankind itself, constitute no better argument than a gunbarrel does.

(Unless we talk of the real Bond intro - bring it back, please! = )

On the suppression of the rewarded sex

Being an issue of controversy and of spit cutting air to fluttering mouths I have so far stayed out of rebelling against my prime love-to-hate parcel of Swedish legislation. But I will not easily sit idly by as the Liberal Women of Sweden (well, the chairwoman at least) have now risen behind the idle calls to extend the ban on rewarding sex workers to every corner of the globe. As if liberal principles had not already determined that the ends does not always commend the means, that Swedish law applies to Swedish soil only, making the calls for such an amendment a cry from the crest, into a wilderness beyond the walls of parliamentary authority, geographical and social. Joint efforts must be made to stem the trade of new slavery, which is truly an abomination, but in this the pitiful law mentioned will play no part. That is not an opinion.

Let me say it once more; I do not condone trafficking, or the domestic use for any purpose of men or women, minor or adults, against their explicit desire. But trafficking was never the spirit of anti-prostitution legislation, and no lawmaker or philosopher adhering to the principles of logic can claim that was the case when the Congress* of Sweden re-introduced the ban on remunerated extramarital sexual favors fourteen years past. Since then, two countries have followed; Norway and Iceland. In the former case, the law explicitly penalizes against offenses committed outside the boundaries of the country which erected the statute. In the latter, taking off your clothes in an erotic, uncasual manner has been banned as well - at least, that is, in a house of public accomodation. Cash is King; King Herod it would seem, by the definition of gracious protectoress Johánna. If the slacker laws of Finland, which only consider sex purchased from victims of trafficking to be suppressible, all the North but jovial Denmark has been cast into an abolitionist kettle along where we have once more rejoined Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the majority of the United States to consider the trade in sexual favours (for bills and coins that is, or dope; food, cigarettes or half a lifetime of increased fiscal security is sort of tolerable) a matter of state. Every one of the countries mentioned have laws against rape and sexual abuse, as do every other country. I would even remark that most countries where rape within marriage, for instance, is legal (Tunisia, for instance) are abolitionist. Criminal behavior is not so much the issue as the prime agent of every piece of anti-sex legislation in history; morality.

French sex workers protesting the Hollande administration's plan to re-criminalize their clients, bringing my interest to the interests of sex workers themselves. Like Prohibition and the Russian revolution, abolition tends to be pushed mainly by an élite with scant regards for wishes expressed by the people concerned.

Morality.
Here is another word; property.
Power entails property, and in my opinion they are inseparable. I also believe, being born post-Enlightenment and two years past President Bush's famous statement of the end of totalitarianism ("blowing away like leaves from of an ancient, lifeless tree") that my body belongs exclusively to me. It is not ours, no more than my rights are our rights. To deem human rights as communal implies they are alienable and can be given away by consensus, a disturbingly authoritarian notion.

Free sexuality, the right of everyone to fuck with with whomever so desirest for any reason, has been suppressed in ink as well as practice since the rise of civilization, but almost nowhere and at no time as much as where Abrahamic religions have prevailed. For the last centuries and decades, it has experienced a renaissance which has since not seen renewed pressure. Religious dogma will not return (for long) in the public sphere, so why should limitations on my right to live and fuck freely? Freedom of information can, roughly, be estimated by the distance to the closest pornographic magazine, divided with the density of population. The adjoined calls for restrictions on pornography and striptease, to mention two activites once commonly attacked by the purposed opponents of equality, now by its most stubborn forebearers, is even more disturbing. The greatest foulness of "right" and "left", fear of free flow of bodily fluids and monetary value, herein joined in unholy matrimony.

The common excuse given for this renewed suppression of this free sexuality of ours is called violence against women. Yet the laws mentioned, tactfully, recognize no specifics of gender on either seller or buyer, nor should any law ever. And as statistics have so often recognized, nor are the buyers or sellers of these favors of a sexual nature solely either men or women. Of young prostitutes in the Nordic countries, males compose a majority. Not a few cases, or a significant minority, but a majority! How can a law ever be based on the claim of an absolute when no absolute exists, or even a generic trend? Prejudice would seem a branding of insufficient heat. I would claim that a 40-year old male, add "millionare" and "teetotaler" to be safely beyond any reasonable discussion of consent, purchasing or selling a night of passion from his absolute equal in these qualities, can impossibly constitute violence on women, nor can it sensibly constitute violence at all, nor could anyone derive its consumption from the need for a higher value; yet, his crime is of equal value to the legislator. How can this be? Have our lawmakers set out to redefine the fairly everlasting boundaries of sex and violence?

Making the act legal. Images such as these, from brothels as well as private homes, were showered by criticism and hushing when unearthed by 19th and 20th century archeologists. Under neo-abolitionist laws, this depiction might have spared the participants of legal proceedings.

Violence is a misnomer, for the heart and soul of the term is force; rape, abuse, torture, assault and homicide are all defined by the singular interest from the act, the reduction of victim into an object whose interests are below the culprit's judgment. Any of these acts carried out between a consenting pair ceases to be an act of violence and, mostly, a crime, as it should it be. The legality of having sex, of killing yourself, of stripping, of slapping or restraining your partner for as long as consent lasts must be fought for towards an everlasting establishment of preservation. Short of permanent bodily harm or the loss of limbs, I think any unenforced sexual pleasure is beyond the reasonable boundaries of government. To consider an act between two (or three, or fourteen) consenting adults by definition inconsensual because of the exchange of a material value is as foolish as to deem it consensual because of the absence of such a compensation, another queer evaluation implied by current legislation. Further to that, if you think the abuse of trafficked women and men is more illegal in Sweden than in Germany, place a camera before the disgusting act you may have in mind, press record, and think again. Or just paint the damn thing. Or be daring and call for the abolition of pornographic images and movies as well, and mind the erection of your spine when you call us all to pause the tape of sexuality and play it in reverse. Consent must govern, alone. That is the spirit of the revolution whose purpose once was to establish the freedom of mind and body on this issue of sex, to which I most strongly adher. The law should not be concerned, politics should not be concerned, was the rallying cry when sodomy laws (solely for men engaged in "carnal knowledge" with other men, like King Gustaf himself) were overturned in Sweden in 1944. This principle was sordidly overlooked when a suppression as old as the "oldest profession" was resurrected in the last year of this century of allegedly unhampered liberation.

My body, my despotism. At least if I am a human being deemed capable of reasonable judgment. Any power infringing on this implies property, and no more than a slave of one who break our laws will I be one of those who make them, or deny that may come to pass in the proudest republic of public consent. The same public consent that has merrily sanctioned, by silent approval, a lot of tyrants, before and evermore.
Non Serviam.


((And please, do not insult your intellect by claiming to yourselves, or me (well, if you'd like to ;) that this is about my personal urges. I have no personal interest in being a sex worker or to benefit one (for the moment), but to suggest that I must support the suppression of activities I may not personally indulge in, or even condone, would mean I have to favor prison sentences just as much for hockey, charter travels to Bulgaria, same-sex sexual activities (thought we were past that one), haggis and most brands of red wine, to mention a few. That sort of thinking sort of digust me, and implies a totalitarian state where all activites must be either enforced or downstruck.))

* = Admitting that I translate "Riksdag" into "Congress"; the literal translation being "Congress of the Reich" or "Congress of the Realm", with the suffix -dag being derived from old German "tagen" which translates as "to gather", "to have congress". An interesting reflection, it would seem now  = )

For a debate (unfortunately rather one-sided) on the topic, click here.

"Why is it a crime to buy or sell something you can give away for free? Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. Why isn't selling fucking legal?"

George Carlin