The European Union was once hailed as a beacon of peace. "Once" was, last time, last year, precisely one month past, when the Union was bestowed the highest acclaimed award for Peacemakers, preciously kept by such heroes, shining or dubious, as Henri Dunant, Mandela and Henry Kissinger. In Sweden, the Norwegian decision to match this prestigeous award with the (to many) dubious recipient was met with particular ignominy, much due to last years' struggle by elements within the same Union to curtail the use of
snuff.
Do you find snuff is disgusting and that that is an excuse for legal action? Well, a century past, a lot of people like you, within and without the Union harboured the same faithful creed on, well, gays for instance. And some kinds of sex. Lots of kinds of sex. Not to mention alcohol; that particular whim has sort of survived the Age of Reason, the end of Prohibition, and every other trial conceivable. Alcohol, I dare say, is dangerous, but only banned under the auspices of tyranny. Not here. Not in the "free world". Now, I ask, do you think snuff is more dangerous? Have you tried snuff? If not, you don't know what you're missing. It's not a particularly pleasant experience,
I.M.O., but I do not see any reasonable cause why it should be generally suppressed - that is, in a personal context, used by consenting adults or adolescents. Snuff or snus, unlike cigarettes, has the tremendous capacity of a droner - only here it actually works - of only harming the people who deserve it. Obviously, some of you may miss my demise due to lip cancer (not a common cause of death here either, I kid you not) while others may cheer it, but that does not make my life subject to your whims or creeds or ill desires.
Suicide is not an excuse for enslaving those who would commit it. As a French expert (without experience) put it, snuff is "not sexy" and thence, its use should be legally suppressed by all (reasonable - fines and steel bars make the job as well as camps and bonfires) means. Not sexy? Legal action? By all means, establish a Committee of Public Sexiness and let's see what kind of abuse you can work out. I'd prefer you to just work out, as that has the capacity of making your mind work as well.
Now keep the issue of snuff in mind and small committees making grand changes in the lives of others as I unevocatively move on to the next subject.
Julmust - another commodity dangerously hampered by its lack of credibility in the English language. Apparently, it's unsafe at any drinking speed, and cannot be reformed. Swedes, a rather small people (:D) indeed, drinks about 50 million litres of Julmust each year. Its contents are not known to cause intoxication (until spiked) and the equivocal excuse, that it contains food coloring and is not to be labeled beer due to that non-alcoholic status, is just plain stupid.
Dangerously unsafe at any degree of sexiness - unless you add alcohol.
Wanted: participants for a committee experiment in the excesses of unwarranted power. Stupidity and prejudice against the unknown may grant preference. (Unbeknownst to you, the decisions of the committee will only be published as a warning to others.) Salary is rather self-chosen, with the risk of those who pay getting upset.
In this, I reach a very brief but old-as-the-trees excuse regarding the issues of legislation and power. It's called the
Zimbardo-Stanford experiment nowadays; Google it, if you don't recall, or do not own that knowledge for your recalling. The point as I get it is, place some subjected to the unmutual power of others, and they will behave nasty and ignore their unpreciously bestowed civil liberties. This is, in short, the problem of tyranny, for those who don't find the idea of slavery or semi-slavery unappeasing in itself. Those ruled must in some sense be in charge over those who rule, or suffering and barbarity will follow. Heads will be shaved, and other heads will roll. Toilets will be scrubbed with bare hands. Men will turn to heat for other men to enjoy or suffer, into sweat on their brows. We of the free world are prone to think ourselves rid of barbarity and oppression, or at least reduced it to the whims of criminals, but as far as the institutions of power are concerned we have only come to change them, and the tides of indifference tends to wheel advance the other way - if yet at a slower pace when humans ferociously steep it backwards under the cry of swift progress. In this process, the importance of the vote - universal, exercised and direct - cannot be overestimated. I will have the power to f*ck with the decision-makers of the Union, or they will surely f*ck with me. Pardon the French (for I will not, especially not those who thinks I must be sexy or else be punished).
The EU, until proper democratic-federal institutions are instated, will inexorably suffer from this very dilemma. For some inspiration, look across the Western sea to the tree-old constitution of that insignificant democratic republic the despotic kings of Europe (including our own Gustav) once invested their strength, their money and, in at least two cases, their lives in creating. Fortunately, my committees of Public Sexiness and Against Food Color are too dried of initiative and willpower to find their "peace" under attack. Idleness, after all, is the disease of tyrants as well.
(I would never sink as low as to claim the EU a prison, but then take into account that the participants in Zimbardo's experiment had the power to leave their "prison" just as well as I. In the end, they didn't have to. Will you?)
By the way, Julmust is a soda, and thence will not be touched by the new regulations. Those were a scaring number of hours. Just think about it, and ask if the dragon may yet scorch you for as long as it is not restrained.
