Reinfeldt skämmer ut Sverige

Som många vet genomfördes en reform i Lissabonfördraget om att se till att kommissionspresidenten utses efter att ta hänsyn till parlamentsvalet (lite som att talmannen bör ta hänsyn till valresultatet när han utser någon till att bilda regering, fast det kanske inte finns något juridiskt krav på att talmannen måste göra det, bara en defacto regel eftersom riksdagen inte hade godtagit något annat).

Flera år sedan deklarerade EU parlamentet att man ansåg att kommissionspresidenten skulle väljas ifrån en lista av toppkandidater som de europeiska partigrupperna utsett.

Detta var välkänt sedan år tillbaka, samtidigt valde de stora partigrupperna att utse toppkandidaterna med början förra året.

För EPP som M och KD är med i valde man Juncker. I smyg bojkottade dock Moderaterna omröstningen under EPP-konventet (Reinfeldt har tidigar uttalat sig vara mot europeisk parlamentarism).

I vilket fall drevs valrörelsen med klar deklaration om att kommissionspresidenten skulle bli en av partigruppernas kandidater, inklusive uppmärksammade artiklar i Svenska tidningar.

Moderaterna var iofs mot parlamentarismen sedan länge, men då de inte deklarerat sitt motstånd mot den nya ordningen med kandidater till kommissionspresidentsposten tydligt under valdebatten till EU-parlamentet, gick samtliga väljare som röstade EPP och röstade på Juncker (lite som en röst på Moderaterna i riksdagsvalet är en röst på Reinfeldt som statsminister).

Nu velar Reinfeldt tillsammans med Cameron och Orban om att stödja Juncker, trots att det varit tydligt att i parlamentsvalet var en röst på M eller KD en röst på Juncker. Renfeldt bör skämmas över det uppenbart antidemokratiska i detta.

Hur hade det sett ut om talmannen inte tog hänsyn till valresultatet när han utser statsministern och tog någon utomstående, eller om den brittiska drottningen inte tog hänsyn till resultatet till det brittiska parlamentsvalet och valde en annan än partiledarna som kämpat om posten?

Reinfeld skämmer ut Sverige i Europa och visar sitt ansikte som antidemokrat.

Swedish PM Misses the Point...

According to media reports such as for example [1], the Swedish PM Reinfeldt seems annoyed with the EU budget proposal voting by the MEPs from Sweden.

The PMs main gripes seems to be that the the parties in Sweden has another line in the Swedish Riksdag, and that this would somehow be confusing. The PM then misses the main idea about having two chambers in the EU lawmaking process. There is ONE chamber representing the states, and therefore the parliaments and governments of the states, this is known as the Council of Ministers. Then, there is a directly elected chamber called the European Parliament, whose purpose is to do the best job they can for Europe, without being shackled by national politics.

The Swedish PM did not seem to be confused when municipal council members in the surrounding municipalities of Stockholm where against congestion charges and the main party voted for these in the parliament.

It should be added that it is a ridiculous amount of energy being put into the debate about the EUs long term budget, the initial proposal from the commission was to raise the budget with roughly 3%, a budget that is only 1% of the total GDP of the member states. We can all multiply, and 0.03 * 0.01 = 0.0003, so the fight is really about 3 hundreds of a percent of the GDP (0.03%). This is really a piss in the Nile in the greater picture. It seems that the main reason for cutting the EU budget is simply to cut in the EU budget.

Time for the freedom of movement

In many places around the Union, government debt is rampant, unemployment growing and especially for the young. However, many states are screaming for work force in both white and blue collar areas.

There is ample opportunity for utilizing the freedom of movement and get a job elsewhere.

If you are unemployed, and living in one of the debt-struck states. Investigate wether you can get a job in for example Germany, Sweden or the Netherlands. Not only would you get a job, but you would save your government (and therefor your fellow tax paying neighbours) from handing out unemployment benefits.

Elections in Sweden

In General

In last day's elections, the Swedish government lost their majority of seats (down to 172 from 178 (175 needed for a majority)) in the parliament. Though their proportion of votes rose from 48.24 % to 49.3 %. In general then, I would say that the Alliance government did a better election than the last one, but other factors conspired against them.

The main reason to that the proportion of votes went up, and the seats went down is of course that the Sweden Democrats passed the 4 % hurdle for getting parliamentary seats. With their votes now being included in the full results, the Alliance was able to raise their number of votes and lose seats.

I have some hypotheses that I would like to play around with, these are in no way based on any real data, so I have to admit that I am speculating about this, but in any case:

The red-green opposition, decided to join together to meet the alliance. This meant that the Left Party (formerly the Communist party), was guaranteed seats in the government in the case of a red-green victory. Many Social Democrats who, would refuse to vote at the Alliance therefor jumped ship and voted on the Sweden Democrats, anything to prevent Lars Ohly, the leader of the Left party from becoming a minister.

Since I am a scientist, I need to be honest and stress once again this is speculation and not based on any real "voter flow" data, but I think it is an entertaining thought anyway.

Sverigedemokraterna

For those who wonder, the SD-party is a party who have a rather inflamed rhetoric about immigration. They are against Union membership for Sweden, and do in general have a leftish social model. Some call them the extreme right, but not so much for them actually being to the right, but rather them having their roots in an organisation nicely named Bevara Sverige Svenskt or Keep Sweden Swedish. These are as could perhaps be guessed from their name in general seen as neo-nazis (and the organisation certainly had connection to various national socialist people and movements) and thus the extreme right (not that the nazis where particularly right-oriented in their politics, but anyway...).

The party claims to have washed themselves clean from their past (I suppose in a similar way that the Left party washed their communist past clean (their party leader is has literally admitted to being a communist)).

In Täby

In the municipality of Täby, just north of Stockholm (a place I have a special connection to, even though I live in the Netherlands), the Moderat majority was lost. Overall the Moderates lost 11.2 % while the Liberal People Party, gained the same share. The main reason for this being local politics, and most likely being rooted with the fact that the Moderates sold of a public school (no problem with that) for virtually nothing (9.2 MSEK or roughly 1 M€) (big problem with that), the Täby council ended up in court and was found to have broken the law (sv) when selling of the public property. Despite the verdict, the council refused to do anything about it.

Obviously, people are not happy if you hand over tax-payer property without just compensation. Thus, we can see the voters verdict of this in the local elections of Täby today.

WTF: Screw the Swedish Embassy

Great service for Swedes, not living in Sweden! Applying for a new passport or identity card has the trivial cost of 150 €, compared to doing it in Sweden for 50 €.

This is absolutely ridiculous. I would also say a hinder for the free movement of people in Europe!

Stupid decisions from the EP

Renate Sommer and Peter Liese, MEPs, has just introduced new regulation (see here for a summary in swedish), which strangely passed, where food package markings in joule will be removed, the only marking left will be the kcal (a completely arbitrary unit).

The definition of calories also varies between:

• Kilogram calorie, also written Calorie or Cal (with a capital C). The energy needed to warm up one kg of water by one degree C.
• Gram calorie, cal with small c. The energy needed to warm up one gram of water by one degree C. One thousand of these are written as kcal.
• Pound calorie, which is the energy to warm up one pound of water by one degree C.

So, by forcing away the joule, they are adding confusion to the food labelling (which calorie are they referring to?) and they are assuming that the Unions citizens are stupid and do not understand what a joule is.

Further, why is it difficult to know that a man needs 10 MJ of energy and a woman 8 MJ (as compared to 2500/2000 kcal (or should we say Cal to add to the confusion?))?

What is next? Will Renate Sommer want to dismantle the metre and revert to national foot and inches?

It would be better if they just decided to ban the use of kcal, Cal and cal on the packaging completely. People are not stupid and will adapt, especially if you consider that most people managed to switch to the Euro without to many problems.

Peter Liese also writes [en] that the regulation will not patronise the citizens, but that is exactly what they do when they remove the branding in joules. I and the rest of the citizens are apparently to stupid to understand what a joule is according to Peter. Thank you for not patronising us!

Stupid Media and Honduras

Why do media keep on insisting on using incorrect terms, for everything that has happened in Honduras the past week?

The last thing on DN use the word decree for something that they also write is approved by the Honduran congress. A decree is an order from the head of state taking the form of law, similar to an executive order in the US. But, in this case apparently a lawfully elected congress can issue decrees, I really do not follow.

The second part is of-course how quick everyone was to react and condem the ousting of the former Honduran president, calling it a military coup d'état. While it is true that the military carried out the ousting, this was done after order from the supreme court that issued the order after the former president Manuel Zelaya. It seems many states and organisations had a knee-jerk reaction with trying to condem the event without knowing what it was about (including the EU), many others (the OAS, US et al.) keep on with trying to punish Honduras for their actions that seem to have been conducted according to the Honduran law.

The rule of law is central to a civilized society and I am actually a bit shocked that the OAS now require that the Honduran supreme court decision should be declared null and void, and that the safeguards in the Honduran constitution that prevents presidents from becoming dictators should not have been acted on.

There have been several recent developments that are worrying in Honduras, such as arrests and extended curfews, but this according to media here. Considering that the DN article (linked above) use the term opposition when they refer to street-protests, I do not trust a single word from Swedish media about this. Other technically legal problems are of course that Honduras for example does not seem to have a defined procedure to impeach or get rid of a president that is breaking the law. Flying the ex president to Costa Rica was probably not the smartest thing, and the ex-president should have the right to be tried in a court, but even the presidents party members in the congress voted to get rid of him, which would at least say one or two things about the president himself.

In general, what I think is that the fact that the congress and supreme court is able to dispose a misbehaving president is probably a good thing (most European states are parliamentary democracies, meaning that the head of state must have support of the parliament), while most of the American democracies have directly elected presidents that rules over a cabinet or the government (European presidents/kings/queens typically have no real power, and the governments are headed by a prime minister).

OK, enough ranting for now... sorry for not putting more work into the entry.

Time to Rethink the EP Elections

In June we will have new elections for the European Parliament, the only directly elected institution of the Union. As usual, we can expect that the participation will be low.

This year I will vote in the Netherlands, though I am not sure which party yet, but I have some rough ideas at least. This is a fundamental issue, a citizen has the right to vote in the state where he is registered as resident.

In the interest of further integrations, I believe that it is the duty of every citizen that lives outside their home-state to vote in the local elections.

The problem that I can see now, is that the parties in the European Parliament are not very clearly laid out to the citizens. For most Dutch voters, they will go and vote on the same party that they voted for in their national elections. This in terms mean that the questions that will be brought up in the elections will be very specific to the state itself, that is certain questions will be debated in Sweden, some others in Netherlands, but there is no uniform election platform.

I believe that it is time for change, we should ban all national parties from participating and enforce that any party that signs up to the elections must be represented under the same name in at least several of member states. This would prevent voters from thinking nationally wen they cast their vote and start thinking European.

Ryssland

Nästan ingenting i media om Unionens gemensamma agerande mot Ryssland. En liten artikel på DNs huvudsida som snabbt blev ersatt med utländska nyheter om det USAianska presidentvalet.

I England fick the Telegraph in rubriken: "Brown fails to make EU punish Russia" . Ganska intressant eftersom Storbritannien aldrig ville ha några direkta sanktioner och att EU faktiskt bestraffade Ryssland med att avbryta samtalen och att skicka 200 observatörer till Georgien (de 200 observatörerna är en bestraffning i den meningen att det bör få Ryssland att skämmas en hel del).

Med andra ord, när Unionen visar sin enighet (och i min åsikt är detta en milsten i den gemensamma Europeiska utrikespolitiken) skiter media I det, för det är inte intressant att rapportera om när Unionen fungerar väldigt bra. Om USA hade gjort samma sak (avbrutit samtal inriktade på ett avtal med Ryssland) så hade förmodligen rubrikerna i både Engelsk och Svensk press varit i stil med "Bush bestraffar Ryssland hårt" eller något I den stilen.

Det som EU har gjort är ju en sak som kan leda till bättre folkligt stöd för Unionen, så det känns som en ganska viktig sak att rapportera om, och medan jag hade förväntat mig att Aftonbladet och The Sun inte hade brytt sig (Anna-Lisas nya silikon-pattar är nog mycket viktigare för att sälja lösnummer) eller att de hade vänt det hela uppochner (som the telegraph, men mer extremt), så hade jag förväntat mig mer av DN och SvD. BBC har dock faktiskt rapporterat ganska nyanserat om det hela.

Unity in the Union

I must say that the EU reaction and display of unity against imperial Russia and the support of Georgia is more than I hoped for. Although I would have wanted to have seen harder measures being taken by the Union; I did not expect the Union to show as much unity as they did.

The unity is far more worth than harder measures, so this is very good news indeed. I would like to thank the council for the best action taken in several years.

I wonder what this will do for the Unions approval rating?

FRA Issues

The proposed law of allowing the Swedish national defence radio establishment FRA to scan any internet traffic leaving Sweden has brought up a lot of protests. Today hundreds gathered outside the riksdag in protest against it.

Although I am worried, I have strong hopes in that the European court of human rights will overthrow the law in the end, as it constitutes massive surveillance of all citizens without discrimination. That is, having wire taps on certain internet connections (i.e. all traffic to and from a specific end point IP address) might be reasonable for the police in order to fight crime; but what the law will introduce is generic deep packet inspection and searching for keywords in all traffic bound to a non swedish destination (for example gmail, hotmail or any other site outside the state). Note that interior traffic is in many cases routed past the borders due to the nature of the internet, so spying on foreign traffic only is impossible to guarantee technically.

Also, monitoring the traffic into other EU states would be spying on their allies and neighbours. The European integration has bound the states and citizens of Europe together, and more and more Europeans are moving to other states, so the deep packet scans will even if they can be guaranteed to only target foreign traffic automatically pick up traffic between thousands of Swedes (100k living in the UK for example), which was not the purpose of the law.

I will not rehash everything here as so many other bloggers have done that already, but the fact that the law proposal which is inherently unconstitutional and not compliant with European law has made it so far suggests that there are problems in the Swedish law making process.

Firstly, I would say that it is now more important than ever before that a constitutional court is established with the role to try law proposals on their compliancy with the Swedish constitution and European law.

The second item that is of interest is that the parliamentarians that have suggested that they oppose the law is more afraid of the party whip than of the people that have elected them. The entire affair has lead me to see the advantage of a majority based system such as the one in the UK. Not that I like that kind of system in general since it result in a massive misrepresentation in the parliament in the UK. What Sweden need now, is a federal constitution that introduce a bicameral parliament. On chamber would then have proportional representation, and then the second would be a majority elected senate and thus directly responsible to the people. Such a senator would be possible to discharge at any time following a vote of no confidence in the district the person was elected in.

As a side note, despite that the current government is doing a great job in general, I would be happy to see it fall because of this.

Science...

Usually I do not write blog entries just reporting on other blogs, except if I have something important to add. But in this case I make an exception. One of the better technical blogs out there, Arstechnica, just published an article about the difference between science and pseudo-science. Most important of all, they take up Homeopathy as an example of pseudo-science.

I have always been annoyed that there are homeopathic shops (both in Netherlands and Sweden), and the government is not doing anything about it. You should of-course be able to sell the stuff, but not in a way that gives an impression that it actually have any healing power.

Head now to Arstechnica and read about the the pseudo-science involved.

Ahhhhhrg!!!

Jag blir mer och mer rädd, vart är vi på väg?

Försvarsministern introducerade just ett förslag som skall ge FRA rätt att övervaka ALL kabeltrafik som går ut från Sverige. Det innebär varenda webbsida du läser (förutom de i Sverige), varenda e-brev du skickar ner till fastlandet med mera. Och om du har e-postservern utanför Sverige, gäller detta även all e-post du skickar inom sverige, eftersom denna kommer gå i kabel över statsgränsen.

Det värsta är dock Oldsbergs newspeek inspirerande uttalande: "Ett viktigt steg för att förbättra skyddet för den enskildes integritet i vårt land."

Staten deklarerar därmed att "två plus två bir fem", men det blir inte sannare för det....

Star Trek Influences

Holm's blog, stardate 60386.5

Some time ago I watched a show on the discovery channel that actually got me thinking quite a bit. The programme was about how Star Trek had changed the world. The show was led by none other than William Shatner, captain of the USS Enterprise in the original series.

I did watch Star Trek when I was younger, the reason for this was my already big interest in space and astronomy. I never really realised until now what influence the show has had on me. Take for example my federalistic stance in politics, I am now pretty sure that this comes from me watching Star Trek, seeing the United Federation of Planets at works in a farly optimistic view of the world. Star Trek is also a show preaching the wonders of technology (this is what the Discovery programme focused on), and this is something that has definately shaped my life.

It should come as no suprise for those that know me that my stance is basically that the solution for most of the problems that we are facing in the world today lies in technology. Technology is infact the ultimate solution and salvation.

Technologies that have been directly inspired by the series are for example the mobile phone, QuickTime and the jet injector (known as the hypospray in Star Trek). There are several more examples of Star Trek inspired technology that exists today or is under development.

Now the only thing I am missing is those lovelly warp drive engines. I refuse to believe people who say it cannot be done. I'll hold my hopes for the unification of gravity and quantum mechanics, hopefully we will get negative gravity, or some energy efficient way to manipulate the gravitational field with magnetism (OK, now I am ramling about stuff that I do not even have the slightest idea of, so I'll stop while I still can).

Live long and prosper!

ITER Agreement Signed

Finally after so many years the EU, US, China, Russia and South-Korea have signed an agreement to build ITER, an international experimental tokamak fusion reactor.

The reactor will be the first step to working fusion power, and it will be succeeded by the DEMO reactor in about 30 years.

The fusion fuels available on the earth and in the rest of the solar system will basically last longer than the sun itself. This is a great leap forward for mankind and will in the end give us clean, safe and cheap energy.

I'm Back... Well Kinda

Some people might be wondering about what's going on and why the blog has not been updated for a long time.

Well, I have moved back to the Netherlands again and started work. Unfortionatelly, my work prevents me from being involved in politics. I will however try to write about technology whenever I have a chance to.

I am truly sorry for any inconveniances my absence have caused.

Happy 9th of May!

The heading really say it all. Happy Europe Day!

Swedish Consulate Grants Visas to Members of Terror Organisations

The Swedish consulate in Jerusalem just granted high ranking minister in the Palestinian government, and member of the terror organisation Hamas, a visa to the Schengen area; this while the French government denied giving visas to Palestinian MPs from Hamas.

The Swedish government will not meet with the terrorist who is invited to attend a meting with Palestinian groups in Malmö, but the event has put further strains on the Swedo-Israeli relations that was severely damaged after the Swedish foreign ministry pulled out the Swedish Air Force from a multi-national exercise in Italy. The exercise had been planned for months and was canceled when the ministry came to know that the Israeli Air Force had been invited to attend.

Of-course, this post is not really here to complain about Hamas, but rather the sloppines of the Swedish government in handeling visas. Interesting in this event is that a Schengen visa gives access to all of Schengen, including France; which by the way should have been asked about any objections to the issuing of visas. It is time to rethink how visas are issued to the EU, and centralise the procedure to the Union.

Bibliography
Dn.se

Stop Moving Around!!!

Although, while the heading could refer to me since I am moving to much it seem, what I am talking about is the European Parliament that is forced to move back and forth between Brussels and Strasbourg.

ELDR MEP Cecilia Malmström (who by the way fought against both software patents and the fascist data retention directive and is one of my favourite MEPs), has started a petition with the goal of making the commission take up the question. All that is needed is a mere one million signatures. Please sign her petition and help end the nonsense.

The petition is available on http://www.oneseat.eu/

Council member fired

The Swedish member of the Foreign Affairs Council, Laila Freivalds has been sacked as of today (although she claim that the decision was hers, more likely she was sacked by Swedish prime minister Göran Persson). The reason for this is her involvement in shutting down the Swedish nationalist party Sverigedemokraterna's web page.

After the page was shut down, she denied any involvement in the affair and placed the blame on one of her employees who allegedly acted on his own accord. However, after an investigation was started on the unconstitutional behaviour of the ministry of foreign affairs, documents surfaced that made it clear that the minister was informed about the issue before it happened.

This is a great day for friends of liberty and Europe.