This last week a minor crisis has emerged in the relations between Sweden and Israel.

It started with an article in the evening paper Aftonbladet about suspected organ harvesting from Palestinian prisoners in Israel. A bit of to and fro ensued with the Israeli government demanding condemnations the Swedish government would not supply.

I just found a good article from the public service television, Diplomatisk fnurra blev allvarlig kris - rapport | svt.se, that I have translated. It explains some about Swedish freedom of press and so on which might be interesting.

(If we have some "Sweden coverage" symbol, insert it here.)

part of the Special Country Focus on Sweden - Nomad

 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS 

I will hold this short and sweet.

Rules of the game
Proportional elections, 4% threshold, 19 seats. Easy to register party, the real obstacle to enter is that new parties have to distribute ballots to the poll stations. Seats are distributed in accordance to list-order, except if candidates get enoguh votes on them personally to pass a threshold. In the EP-elections that is quite common.

Promoted by afew

Inspired by conversations here, I drew on my political experience and structure up a flow chart for when public opinion matters.

Scenario: You are a politician and about to vote for or against a bill. A group of citizen makes you aware of their displeasure with your attitude in the question at hand. The question is: does it matter? Follow this simple flow chart and find out!

The rules of the election game differs from country to country, but I assume that there are some meta rules, on the EU level. Rules that specify what methods of distributing seats are accetable to the EU. And such.

I have no idea where to find these, so I´ll just pose the question and see what pops up.

With poll!

Inspired by Franks latest diary, I started wondering how many that has actually read the Lisbon treaty.

I have not read the treaty myself. As is often the case I rely on second-hand sources. Now this might be even funnier if we cross it with point of view on the Lisbon treaty.

I have subdivided "read" into a) full extensive read, crosschecked with Nice to understand everything and b) read some. Their is of course gray-space between those two also, but I think it will suffice.

Now vote:

Shergald has kept up an impressive series of reports of the ongoing suffering in what was once the British Mandate of Palestine west of the Jordan River. The latest one created a meta-discussion on the lack of comments which produced this comment from metavision:

metavision:

The fact that Palestine diaries don't get enough attention is sad and I think it reflects our helplessness to make a difference.  

Helplessness is no good, m'kay? So, what can we as fairly bright citizens of the EU do to at least affect change in the EUs part of this? Well, there is an EP election this spring and I have some thoughts about it.

This is how I understand the current financial situation. Correct me if I am wrong. As I understand it the financial markets are right now somethink like:

• Company A owns company D billions, that debt is insured by company B.
  
• Company B owns company C billions, that debt is insured by company A.
  
• Company C owns company A billions, that debt is insured by company D.
  
• Company D owns company B billions, that debt is insured by company C.

Suddenly everyone has realised that no one has the billions. Oh, and they do not either know exactly how the others debt/insurance situation looks.

Recently learnt about Females in front. I will just quote them:

Females in front

250 million women in the EU. Not a single one good enough?
 
During the coming 12 months, four politicians will be appointed as leaders of the European Union. For fifty years now, the picture of European political leadership has remained the same. It is time for a change. International top posts should always go to the most competent candidate. There are 250 million women in Europe; it should not be too hard to find qualified candidates among all these.

Version 1: The Brainstorm

This is something I have been mulling over.

Problem: the European Parliament (EP) has the broadest support and least power among the EU institutions.

So what is the solution? The treaty path is blocked by a combination of forces. The treaty path is not relevant to this diary anyway, as I am going to ask: What can we do about it?

Means: The European parliament has an election in 2009. Elections is somewhere were we get to vote, but more than that, they are an opportunity to influence the discussion.

Suggestion: We write a European Manifesto for Greater Democracy in the EU (and title it something with more schwung)! I am envisioning a document that we can get prospective parliamentarians and parties and possibly even EP party groups to sign, stating at the bottom line "If elected, I will not vote to [something1] unless [Council/Commission] agrees to [something2]". Possibly this statement is repeated n times with [something(n)] unless [something(n+1)] as a recurring theme.

On the Salon Socialism diary an exchange between Migeru and DoDo prompted me to look up the class background of swedish Soc Dem leaders. Here is the exchange:

Migeru:

DoDo:

However, even in Europe, the direction of socialism for step-by-step reforms through the parliamentary route, e.g. Social Democrats, historically favoured policies building up a wide middle-class. Myself, I think the self-defeating nature of this project could have been seen on the onset: the have-some will have a tendency to defend what they have, and hope they will rise further, thus a significant part will end up supporting the have-mores against the have-nones. Worse, when the party leaders themselves rise up the social ladder, there will be a tendency to view issues and weigh their importance from their current (or hoped-for even higher) position. (And to those who'd protest: a tendency of course doesn't mean that everyone is incapable of social solidarity, only that that realising [apparent] class interests is the easy route.) Thus to a large extent I view the current doldrums of the European centre-left and the plague of Third Wayism as a logical consequence of core Social Democrat strategy from at least 60, but perhaps 120 years ago.

Yet, discussing the present-day middle-class is worthwile even from a Socialist perspective. I will state an idea others indicated in a stronger way: with the collapse of the Eastern Block, the wide middle-class has "done its duty" for the upper-class, maintaining it is no longer felt as necessary: thus the wealth capture from above, thus the stagnating or reduced middle-class incomes, thus the erosion of the middle class and the growth of the new underclass: the service class.

This is the elephant in the living room of left politics, isn't it? The European Social Democrat and Labour parties are morphing into social-liberal parties partly through generational replacement of the successful working-class leaders of 30 years ago with their middle-class scions.

I think it is appropriate for middle-class "liberal professionals" to be "left" but they probably shouldn't lead the left.

With a hattip to Gaianne and DeAnander, here is a lazy quote diary from Orlov. With a poll!

The actors: Promusicae is a trade group representing the Spanish recording industry.

Telefónica is a huge telecommunication company that among other things serve as an internet service provider to persons in Spain.

The charge:

According to Promusicae, those persons were using the KaZaA file exchange program (peer-to-peer or P2P) and providing access in shared files of personal computers to phonograms in which members of Promusicae held the exploitation rights.

The demand:

It [Promusicae] therefore sought disclosure of the above information in order to be able to bring civil proceedings against the persons concerned.

I saw this in todays Salon:
metavision:

Not new, but worth repeating http://dailypaul.com/node/2406

Printing more money is the Fed's typical answer, but we are on the verge of runaway inflation. We have printed so many dollars now that we are at parity with the Canadian dollar for the first time since 1976. Since the Fed stopped publishing M3, which tracks the total supply of dollars in the economy, we can't even be sure how many dollars they are creating. Reported inflation is around 2%, but the method for calculating inflation changed in the 1980's, largely at Mr. Greenspan's urging. Private economists using the original method find actual inflation to be over 10%, which matches more closely the pain consumers in the real economy feel.

It poses some questions:

1. Did the way of calculating inflation in the US change in the early 80'ies?
   
2. What has the inflation been in terms of the old standard? Or what was the inflation of the 70'ies in terms of the new way of calculating?
   
3. Is inflation even calculated the same way in different countries?

Promoted by Colman

I have come to believe full employment (everyone who wants a job, has a job) as a goal is essential to the left regaining its moyo. As long as we have a substantial unemployment the right is going to use it as an argument to lower taxes, lower regulation and such in order (so they claim) to increase employment. The far-right (the ugly parties) are going to claim that it is the foreigners fault, who take our jobs either oversea or here. If the lefts only answer is that those propositions are false but have no own agenda to get full employment the right will keep on winning.

I have come to realise that when it comes to the economics of employment I have a lot of questions, and few answers.

I will start where I think I know something and work myself towards were I know I do not know. Between we will pass some unknowns...

This is more of a sketch then anything else, and I hope I get some answers in the comments.

From the diaries ~ whataboutbob

Just heard (Wed. 7/18) swedish radio news about the earthquake and nuclear power plant accident in Japan. Apparently the spill was larger then first reported (no numbers) and IAEA has encouraged Japan to be more open about nuclear power. No surprises thus far.

Now comes the real news (to me anyway).

From the diaries ~ whataboutbob. Back from the front paged and bumped because it is still active. --Jérôme

I wrote a comment I like to expand on.

DeAnander has drawn up the playing field of the nuclear debate.

As seen from that drawing and comments there are all kinds of pro- and anti-nuclear stances. So just to make things interesting I would like to know: How many reactors do you think we (as in all the world) should have around 2030?

I made a comment:

In Sweden it has recently surfaced that during the EU summit in Gothenburg 2001, swedish police acted on faulty intelligence provided by american services.

and was asked to expand it into a diary.

I figured the easiest way was to translate key portions of the article by the researcher in question, docent (sort of junior professor) Hans Abrahamsson at Peace- and Conflict-studies at Gothenburg university.

In todays Guardian, Merkel explains her plan to pass the constitution.

In a discussion some time ago it was suggested that the might of DKos mainly stems from an ability to direct donations to candidates.

I think it was Colman who asked about the laws concerning political donations. As the laws differ it might be a big or little hassle to try to direct donations. If this is efficient in a european setting is also a good question.

By accident I stumbled upon what the rules are in Sweden.

Earlier parts:
Swedish politics: Rascism, Scandals and Piracy (Part 1: Rascism)

Swedish politics: Rascism, Scandals and Piracy, Part 2: Scandals

Finally, the last installment of my election coverage in Swedens election (it was in september). I know that you have been eager for the Piratpartiets election analysis and future plans. Well, here it is:

From the diaries ~ whataboutbob