Royal Bravitude

Although the French Presidential campaigns don't formally start until April, they're already in full swing. For reasons beyond my understanding, my favourite of the bunch, Parti Socialiste candidate Ségolène Royal, is campaigning in a region you normally wouldn't consider part of the French electorate: China. During her stay in China she managed to invent a new word, much to the amusement of newspaper Le Monde. Speaking of the Great Wall of China, she stated:

Comme le disent les Chinois, qui n'est pas venu sur la Grande muraille n'est pas un brave. Qui va sur la Grande muraille conquiert la bravitude.

Which roughly translates into "As the Chinese say, [he] who did't come on the Great Wall is not a brave [man]. [He] who walks on the great wall conquers bravitude." The new word in question, if you haven't guessed already, is "bravitude," which would make both George W. Bush and Stephen Colbert proud. Royal might actually have meant bravoure, "bravery." Though, Ségo's campaign staff is now claiming she actually intended to invent a new word, with the supposed definition "fullness of bravery." Sheesh.
It's bad enough she's canoodling with the Chinese Communist party, now she's re-inventing the French language?! I'm not an expert in French by any means, but I'm rather sure there's some sort of body that regulates the French language...oh yeah, L'Académie française.
Well, linguistic issues aside, she remains my fave, as she does have a rather redeeming quality: she's not Nicolas Sarkozy.

The Video Game Presidency

With Playstations, Wiis and whatnots out on the market, you'd think US President George W. Bush would have plenty of entertainment readily available (granted that he probably received mostly lumps of coal this past Christmas). Instead, he has decided to go for another round in the ultra-realistic video game known as the Iraq war. The video game is in fact so realistic that it does not end when you kill the maniacal tyrant of an end boss. Instead, the game goes into a very special "caught in civil war crossfire" mode that has the potential of lasting hundreds of times longer than the few weeks you spent on the first few levels. With 3300 coalition troops and countless Iraqi lives lost, how many extra lives does Bush think he has?

The answer to that question appears to be somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000, which is the increase in the number of troops Bush is expected to propose as part of a "surge" to, once and for all, secure Baghdad and end the Iraqi civil war. The problem is that those 30,000 troops won't magically appear out of thin air, and recruitment levels are, not suprisingly, rather low. Instead, the increase has to be accomplished primarily by extending the tours of some of the troops already in Iraq, and to start the tours earlier for others in America.

Quite understandably, most Americans and non-Americans alike are not happy with the Iraq war, and those of us who thought the war was a stupid idea to begin with are even less happy with the war than one imagined possible when it first began.
I think it's high time to recognise reality. This is not some computer game where you can type in a cheat code or just restart the level. This is war, and no matter how noble and necessary one may find it, it was always going to be an incredibly difficult, if not impossible, undertaking. Bush's handling of the war, which, if one was being unreasonably kind, could be summed up as being not particularly good, hasn't exactly made that undertaking any easier. This proposed surge isn't going to end the civil war, how could it? Almost four years have gone by with little progress made since the fall of Baghdad, and the US military is becoming more and more strained every day. How is a surge going to counter that? There are only two options: standing in the middle of a civil war, or getting the hell out. It's a horrible, horrible conclusion to have to reach, but it is reality. A liberal democratic Iraq, free of tyranny and opression, a shining beacon of liberty in the Middle East, would certainly have been a sight to see. But it's not going to happen, at least not by military means and not for a very long while.
The recently installed 110th Congress, which seem to be at least slightly saner than the 109th, had better rein in the President and unplug the console.
Game over.

The House That Money Bildt

The hits just keep on coming for the new Swedish government. Two ministers have already been forced to resign, and a third one might join the fray soon. Former Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister Carl Bildt (of the Swedish right-wing Moderate Party) has gotten himself into quite a bit of trouble. After leaving the Prime Minister's office in 1994, Bildt was rather active in foreign policy, particularly in the Balkans, where he served as a conflict mediator and as co-chairman of the Dayton Peace conference. In addition to that, he also did quite a bit of work in the private sector, serving on several company boards. It's one of those boards that's causing Bildt a world of hurt.

Bildt was on the board of directors for a Swedish investment company called Vostok Nafta, primarily focused on investments in oil and gas in the former Soviet Union. About 90% of those investments are in the Russian gas giant Gazprom. Upon resigning from the board last October to become foreign minister, Bildt cashed in some 500,000 euros in stock options he received in salary as a board member. Chump change in the grand scheme of things, but it causes several problems for Bildt. First of all, he wasn't entitled to keeping the stock options at all upon his (voluntary) resignation, but had to request a special decision from the board to allow him to keep them. If you're a member of the "new workers party," as the Moderates campaigned on last year, that won't fly (nevermind that he would truly be deserving that much cash for attending a grand total of four board meetings!). Secondly, there's a potential conflict of interest as Gazprom wants to build a gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, which at some point has to be contemplated by the Swedish government. 500,000 euros cashed in by the Foreign Minister of said government are thus looking rather suspicious in that light.

In predictable upper class twit form, Bildt himself has reacted as if he's being the victim of left-wing media witch hunt, claiming to be entitled to that money and that anyone suggesting otherwise is guilty of "partisan politics." Not only that, but he seems to be under the impression that by accepting the (rather well paid) position of Foreign Minister, he has made an enormous sacrifice almost messianic in proportions. It's certainly understandable that being a Minister in a government requires a certain arrogance and belief in one's ability to do the job, but Bildt really takes the cake.
Prosecutors are looking into the legality of Bildt's actions. Maybe they're perfectly legal, maybe they're not. Politics is all about perception, though, and the perceptionon on the western shores of the Baltic Sea is that Bildt is yet another corrupt minister in a government that campaigned on being exactly the opposite. I used to have a lot respect for Bildt, if not for his domestic policy, at least for his work in foreign policy. After this latest scandal, however, it's hard not to look at his foreign policy achievements and wonder how much of his actions were influenced by his private sector commitments.
Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt took quite a gamble when he decided to appoint Carl Bildt to the position of Foreign Minister. Looks like Reinfeldt rolled snake eyes. Regardless of the legality of the actions of the Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt ought to resign.

New Swedish Government Stumbles Out Of The Gate

The new centre-right Swedish government is off to a good start. Five days old, and already two scandals, one of which threatens to force one of the new ministers to resign.

The new Swedish Minister for Foreign Trade, Moderate Maria Borelius, has apparently illegally hired a nanny, and failed to pay taxes for it. Her excuse? She couldn't afford it. Which would perhaps be believable, if it weren't for the fact that she's a millionaire. With the Moderate Party campaigning as the "new worker's party," perhaps the millionaire's club would do well not to piss on their voters. Just a suggestion.

The other scandal is that two other ministers, Minister of Culture Cecilia Stegö Chilò and Minister for Migration Thomas Billström, have both neglected to pay TV license fees for 16 and 10 years, respectively. One may question the merits of having TV licenses and public service television at all, certainly, but perhaps ministers in the cabinet ought to follow the laws, or at least have the good taste of following the laws until they've had them repealed. As far as civil disobedience goes, this is not exactly refusing to sit in the back of the bus, this is just a matter of a few rich persons who'd rather spend their money on redecorating the interior of their yachts.

Add to that the surprise appointment of former Moderate Prime Minister Carl Bildt as Foreign Minister. Within minutes of the press conference starting, Bildt, who is an old-school Moderate, as compared to the more centrist new Moderates like Reinfeldt, started criticising the new government's domestic policy platform and suggested immediate tax cuts. Bildt will be excellent on foreign affairs, I have no doubt, but it remains to be seen whether he and Reinfeldt will be able to get along.

So, all in all, not a very good first week for Reinfeldt. On the plus side, he has about four years to convince the Swedish people his cabinet is not made up exclusively of upper-class twits. If he can't, he'll end up back in the opposition.

Which isn't to say that the centre-left Social Democrats haven't had their fair share of corruption. But that's one of the reasons they lost this time around. You can't campaign against it, only to be exposed for being exactly the same a freakin' week later!

Swedish Elections: Postmortem

Last post on the Swedish parliamentary elections, promise!

So Reinfeldt's gambit paid off. The "new", more left-wing Moderate Party had its best elections, ever, while the Social Democrats had their worst elections, ever. The right-wing bloc won a narrow seven seat majority in the Swedish parliament. SDP leader Göran Persson will, quite understandably, step down as prime minister and party leader.
It remains to be seen what a coalition government led by Reinfeldt can accomplish. Having stepped to the left in the campaign, the Swedish center-right parties will have to sacrifice large portions of their agenda. Which won't make their normal constituencies particularly happy. Personally I quite like Fredrik Reinfeldt, although I have my reservations about some of his coalition partners. The Liberal People's Party in particular, who've campaigned on quasiracist themes such as mandatory language tests (and, while the right-wing bloc overall was successful, the LPP suffered heavy losses). Hopefully only campaign posturing.
Thankfully, the truly racist Sweden Democratic party was nowhere close to gaining seats in parliament; unfortunately they were a lot closer than four years ago.

Swedish Elections: Election Day

My blogging will be utterly sporadic for a while more, as I have a ridiculous amount of stuff to do.

So today's the day. Sweden will be holding their elections. The latest polls seem to suggest the right-wing bloc have a commanding lead, and if those numbers hold, Fredrik Reinfeldt, party leader of the Moderate Party (the largest right-wing party in Sweden), is the probable new prime minister of Sweden. It will follow one of the dirtiest election campaigns in Swedish history (from both sides), and, in the bizarroland that is Sweden, Reinfeldt will have accomplished this by moving his party significantly to the left. In other countries, it's usually the left having to move to the right to win (see Clinton and the Democrats, Blair and Labour). Somewhat paradoxally, one of the MP's alliance parties, the Liberal People's Party, have made a lot of noise about restricting immigration during the same campaign. This all will make for an interesting four years, as a right-wing Swedish government will have to feature at least four parties (see my previous post on the elections) with somewhat different agendas. The SDP, should they end up in opposition, will be sure to use that to their advantage; I don't expect them to be down for long.

Swedish Elections: Ugly, Ugly, Ugly

Never have so many people flung so much dirt in so little time. Well, if you don't count every other election held, like, ever.
But this year's Swedish parliamentary elections seem dirtier than previous Swedish elections, at the very least in recent times.

The dominating party in Sweden is the Social Democrats (SDP), who have been in government almost continuously since 1940 (they were in opposition only between 1991 - 1994 and 1976 - 1982). In recent years, the party have formed a minority one-party government, while being backed up by the Left Party and the Greens in parliament to form a voting majority.
The Swedish government's tepid response to the tsunami disaster in late 2004, when about 550 Swedes died, caused major outrage^[1] and drew heavy criticisms from just about everyone; the investigations into the failings of the government on this issue are on-going as we speak...write. Several key officials in the government had to resign over it, including foreign minister Laila Freivalds and head of the Office of the Prime Minister Lars Danielsson (as recently as last week, with only a few weeks to go 'til the elections).

The Left party have concerns of their own, as they lost their charismatic party leader Gudrun Schyman, who, while controversial, also proved to be a voter magnet. And thenGreens are always balancing on the edge of the 4% threshold^[2]. Some polls suggest the Left Party may fall under that 4% threshold as well. The Swedish left is in a bit of a bind, in other words.
The right-wing bloc, consisting of the Moderate Party, the Liberal People's Party, the Centre Party and the Christian Democrats, is thus eager to finally get back into government. If they ever had a chance of doing so, this year would be it. Although, the Christian Democrats are also precariously near that 4% threshold in recent polls, as they too lost a charismatic leader in Alf Svensson.
Polls so far suggest the two blocs are dead even, with the right-wing bloc occasionally ahead, and it seems this will be a race to the bitter end.
Oh, and as always there's a plethora of small parties, vying to get enough votes for seats in parliament. Right-wing extremists, BitTorrent leechers, former reality show stars, you name it. They all have a party.
The stage is set, time to get dirty!

First it turned out an SDP operative had been sending anonymous e-mails, ridiculing and making libellous comments about MP leader Fredrik Reinfeldt.
Then there was the spying scandal, where a member of the Christian Democrats attempted to infiltrate the SDP by posing as an activist (although doing so badly enough to get caught).
And now an operative with the Liberal Party has allegedly hacked into SDP computers, getting hold of data on, among other things, SDP election strategies, travel itineraries for the Prime Minister and security details of several government officials. The hackings have taken place over the span of a year. The scandal broke just this week, and Swedish papers are already drawing comparisons to Watergate.
What effect, if any, will this have on the outcome of the elections? I haven't a clue. Between now and September 17, all bets are off. Anything can happen. For all I know, given this apparent win-at-all-costs strategy everyone seems to be employing, the losing side may attempt a coup d'état on September 18.

Aah, Democracy. It truly brings out the best in us, doesn't it?

^[1] To be fair, some of that outrage being politically motivated, though most of it being quite genuine.
^[2] A party needs at least 4% of the nationwide popular vote (or 12% in one of the 29 electoral districts) to gain seats in the Swedish parliament; this is to avoid a multitude of small parties with only one or two seats that would make it difficult to form a government. Thus if your party wins more than 4% of the vote, you're apportioned a certain number of seats on the basis of your popular vote. If your party wins 3.9%, you get no seats at all.

People Powered Politics, Connecticut Edition

I've been following American politics for quite a while, and this Tuesday's primary election in the small US state of Connecticut was certainly one of the more interesting events in recent times. In fact, it was so interesting even French TV network TV5Monde reported on it in their nightly newscast last night, much to my surprise.

Three term Democratic senator, 2000 vice-presidential nominee and 2004 presidential candidate Joe Lieberman lost his party's nomination for the midterm elections in November. He lost to a political novice, Ned Lamont, whose only previous experience as a candidate was city politics and a failed bid for the Connecticut state senate.

How does a long-term, scandal-free and relatively popular senator, with the support of the party establishment, lose against a challenger no one's even heard of a year ago, in a country where some 95% of all non-retiring incumbents are re-elected? In fact, this past May, Lieberman led Lamont by an insurmountable 65% - 19%!
Lieberman's almost unconditional support (with some token criticism) of President George W Bush in a time when only about two persons in the entire US actually approve of him couldn't have helped.
Another essential reason is the war in Iraq. As the war has gone from bad to worse to hell on earth, Lieberman is one of few still supporting the war, being enthusiastic about it even. Contrary to conventional wisdown and spin, discontent with the war alone would not been an issue enough to defeat Lieberman. That said, without the war in Iraq, there would have likely not been a primary challenge to begin with.

Of course, one cannot forget the biggest reason for Lieberman's loss: Lieberman. By all accounts, he seemed to have run an extremely inept primary campaign, which included him announcing mid-June that he if he didn't win the primary, he would still run in the general election as an independent, a terrible performance in the primary debate, and generally making statements to the effect that he "owned" his seat in the Senate and that the voters had little right to take it away from him. All in all, not an effective campaign strategy.

The Republican candidate for Senate, Alan Schlesinger, is a non-entity. Not only is Connecticut heavily Democratic, Schlesinger has to fight off a gambling scandal, involving him incuring massive gambling debts under an assumed name. In other words, the winner of the Democratic primary would likely be the winner of the general elections as well.
But the story doesn't quite end there. Lieberman, immediately after conceding the race, announced his candidacy for the election in November, as a candidate for his own newly formed party, "Connecticut for Lieberman", the plan being to win over enough Republicans and independents to win in November. I don't think he has much of a shot, though. A poll taken prior to the primary indicated that in a three-way race, Lamont and Lieberman would be tied at 40% each (and Schlesinger receiving a paltry 13% of the vote). This was before Lamont was a winner and Lieberman was a loser, and this was before the entire Democratic establishment unconditionally backed Lamont (by virtue of him winning the primary). Lieberman has also lost most of his Democratic campaign staff, and building a new staff from scratch with only a few months to go will be a difficult task indeed.

People Powered Politics

Wow. Now that's a demonstration!
Depicted on the image to the left^[1] is just a scant few of the 2.4 million who were out demonstrating in Mexico this past Sunday.
They were out marching in favour of leftist presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who lost by 0.58% against right-wing conservative candidate Felipe Calderón a few weeks ago (López Obrador got 35.31% to Calderón's 35.89%, the difference being approximately 244,000 votes out of about 30 million votes cast between the two candidates, according to the official count). López Obrador has not accepted defeat, however, alleging irregularities in the voting process and hence demanding a recount. Florida 2000 anyone?
The outcome will ultimately be decided by a special tribunal called Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación, whose primary purpose is deciding electoral disputes. Certifying the validity of the presidential elections also falls within its jurisdiction, and it's within the tribunal's discretion to order a recount or an entirely new election.

2.4 million. Mexico has about 107 million inhabitants, meaning approximately 2.2% of the entire Mexican population was out demonstrating. I wonder what, if anything, could inspire that kind of passion in 2% of the Finnish population...oh yeah, Lordi. Though, perhaps that's a sign of just how well off we are in Finland...or how bad things are in Mexico. Whoever ends up winning the elections certainly has his work cut out for him.

The Wikipedia entry has more information on the elections.

^[1] Update: The picture was removed from the website I was linking to, so I removed it here as well.

Newt Gingrich: Jackass

Is there a bigger jackass in politics today than Newt Gingrich? I mean, apart from every other politician.
He rose to fame as the brains behind the Republican take-over of the US congress in 1994. He was subsequently elected Speaker of the House and made Time Magazine's Man of the Year. It's all downhill from there. After a government shutdown, ethics charges and leading the charge to impeach Clinton, all the while having an affair himself, he resigned from the house altogether in 1998.

Okay, this is all well and good (and lord knows I left out some of the nastier stuff about his personal life, which can be found elsewhere), although it's nothing new. However, these recent comments (via Political Wire) about the conflicts in the Middle East are new:

Gingrich said in the coming days he plans to speak out publicly, and to the administration, about the need to recognize that America is in World War III.
...
"This is World War III," Gingrich said. And once that's accepted, he said calls for restraint would fall away...
...
There is a public relations value, too. Gingrich said that public opinion can change "the minute you use the language" of World War III. The message then, he said, is "'OK, if we're in the third world war, which side do you think should win?"

My God. People are dying left and right, and this guy's worrying about the PR value? How brazenly cynical a human being must one be to think of death and destruction in those terms? Can such a person even qualify as a human being? I'm by no means a naïve person and I'm well aware that politics is a dirty business, but this really takes the cake.
So, thought of the day: Newt Gingrich is a jackass.

I Do Solemnly Swear that I Will Unfaithfully Execute the Office of President...

Over at Washington Monthly, Steve Brennan writes this interesting article: High Infidelity - What if three admitted adulterers run for president and no one cares?. The three adulterers referred to in the title are Newt Gingrich, John McCain and Rudy Guiliani (the later two being considered the frontrunners for the Republican nomination). The article is well worth a read, particularly if you recall all the hoopla surrounding Bill Clinton's penis. I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning.
Personally I'm of the opinion that a person's sexual escapades are quite irrelevant with regards to a person's ability to serve in higher office (assuming said sexual escapades are within the boundaries of the law, of course). Don't get me wrong; if you cheat on your wife, you're a douche bag. Yeah, that means you too, Bill.
But while it may cost you your marriage, it shouldn't cost you your job.

On Gender Equality in Finnish Politics and The Swedish People's Party

The Swedish People's Party of Finland elects a male chairman over two more qualified female candidates, not weeks after the Finnish Left Alliance replaced their female chairman with a male one. Clearly, the best qualification for politicians in the first country in Europe to allow women to vote is having a penis.
(Though, Finland has more gender equality than many other countries. We have female president, and briefly also had a female prime minister.)

The really sad part of it all is that the Swedish People's Party was the first Finnish party to field a major female contender for president in '94: Elisabeth Rehn, incidentally also one of the world's first female defense ministers.
Compare that to the presidential election of 2006, when SPP fielded a conservative boring old man with disastrous results (Rehn proceeded to the second round of voting, where she received about 46% of the vote. Lax managed an unimpressive 1.6%; coming in seventh in the first round).

Happy birthday!

Yesterday, on June 3rd 2006, the Montenegrin parliament declared Montenegro independent, following a referendum held on May 21 in which 55.5% voted for ending the union with Serbia. Big fan of self-determination as I am, I can only say congratulations to the people of Montenegro.
In many respects, Montenegro already enjoyed a large degree of independence, but it's nevertheless welcome news.

People a lot smarter than I have speculated as to how this may impact the future of Kosovo. Personally I'm of the opinion that full-on independence is the only way to go.
Kosovo's status is set to be determined before the end of this year. We'll see what happens.

Algore4prez

Occasionally I shall comment on the political goings-on in that global superpower located on the North American continent. And when I'm done calling for Stephen Harper's resignation, I'll have a few choice words about the USA as well.

It's never too early to start worrying about who the next leader of the free world will be. Assuming there's still a free world to lead by January 20th 2009, my money is on former Vice President Al Gore.

I'm not a big fan of Hillary Clinton. She's a bit too eager to compromise her ideals to get a few more votes. Paying lip service to the far right ain't gonna win you the presidency, senator Clinton; the far right will not vote for you anyway, and you will only have succeeded in alienating your base. True, the same critique could be levelled at Al Gore and his presidential run of 2000. But the new and improved 2006 version of Al Gore is badass.

Clinton has been the presumptive Democratic nominee for quite a while now. It's hard to keep track of all the people who are either considering or have already outright said they're running. John Kerry has apparently been running since about November 5 2004, as has John Edwards. And a bunch of other guys are running as well. None of them stand a chance against the Clinton juggernaut.

Except Al Gore. He could pull of a Nixonesque comeback.
Then Vice President Richard Nixon, narrowly defeated by John F Kennedy in 1960 and then spending years in the political wilderness only to return and win the presidency in 1968 in the midst of an unpopular war. 40 years later, history may repeat itself. Although, Al, a word of advice: If you hear anything about a break-in at the Watergate, don't get involved.

Al Gore's new documentary about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, is generating a lot of buzz. I submit that we need a guy in the White House who cares about environmental issues. The current tenant clearly does not. Gore not only cares about the environment, he made a friggin' movie about it! Now that's commitment.

While Gore claims not to be interested in running, he has yet to unequivocally take himself out of the running.
How's this for a ticket: Al Gore and Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold. Heck, I'd move to the US and apply for citizenship just to be able to vote for that ticket.

Keen-eyed readers will probably realize that I'm not American, and may wonder why I would care at all. To which I say, why shouldn't I care? This is the leader of the free world we're talking about, after all. We would be living in a remarkably different world today if Gore had won in 2000 instead of that other guy, wouldn't you say?
Not to mention, American politics is infinitely more interesting than Finnish politics.

Keen-eyed readers will probably also notice I haven't mentioned any potential Republican candidates in this entry. Too which I say, don't make me laugh. George Allen? Bill Frist? No. Just no.
And John McCain? Doing the same triangulating BS as Clinton.

Finally, as we all well know, Al is also the inventor of the Internets (yes, both of them), and for that he shall have my eternal allegiance.
Unless he decides to invade Finland, in which case I will be slightly upset.