why forbidding thoughts is a bad idea

Being a liberal i have always had problems with forbidding thoughts.  And now when doing some research into “climate gate”  i stumbled upon a blatant example.

During 22 years from 1984 to 2006 Sweden had a “thought ban” on nuclear reactors.  It was forbidden to design nuclear power plants or calculate costs for running these plants. This was one of the consequences of a referendum in 1980 about the future of nuclear power in Sweden. (One could note that this was a strange referendum, 3 options existed but none of them was an yes. They where all about stopping nuclear power in Sweden.)

So where are we now 30 years after this referendum? Well we are trying to stop emission of greenhouse gases, mostly focused on reducing carbon dioxid. One of the easiest and quickest ways to do this is to build more nuclear power plants and phase out the ones fueled by coal.

Sure and what about all the nuclear waste we have to keep secure for 10.000 years? Thats a relevant question and leads me to why i wrote this article.

There are “new” (They where first described in the 50’s and some where running in the 60’s!)  types of reactors that instead of using uranium as a fuel uses thorium. In the process they can transmute our old reactor waste. That is they reduce the waste we already have produced! The result is nuclear waste with a half-life time of less than 100 years. So the waste only needs to be stored for 100’s of years instead of 10.000+ years for conventional nuclear waste.

The Chinese and the Indians are already doing serious research into thorium based reactors and an US-Russian consortium is adapting thorium based fuel so it can be used in the reactors we already have built. A lot of this research have been done in the 30 years Sweden in principle banned nuclear research. Yes 30 years. It was first in 2009 that the Swedish government again started to give grants to nuclear power research.

This thought is not new, already in 2004 the Swedish newspaper DN published a debate article (Sorry it’s in Swedish) written by Niklas Ekdal covering this subject.
One could just wonder where Sweden would have been today if they used at least some of the approximate 20 billion SEK  that went into designing a long term solution to the waste problem into nuclear power research instead of forbidding all thoughts about constructing new reactors…

And bye the way, thanks for the comments on the Swedish blog “Klimatbluffen” that gave me the idea to write something about the Swedish “thought ban” before finishing my article about green nuclear power plants.

more on drugs and harm reduction

Today the Swedish minister of public health Maria Larsson announced that she would like it to be possible for the Swedish state to buy drugs.

The situation in Sweden today is that the police has to arrest someone carrying a new designer drug to have a sample to analyze she want’s to rationalise things buy letting the goverment proactive buy drugs for analyze and by that means spead up hte process of criminalizing the new drugs.

And finally she says the classic statement that shows that she has missed the whole pont: “The discussion about drugs must be brought up at the kitchen table and in schools.” It will not work! Today the Swedish official stance is that all drugs are “killers” and that you immediatly will get addicted and fall out of society. But the kids are not stupid, they see friends using drugs, they do research on internet and they discuss with their peers. And the conclusion for many of them? That the state and other authorities are lying! (There is a open letter to the minister stating the same thing here.)

So the day when we really need to warn about a new drug or a bad batch the kids will not listen.

In the modern transparent society we need to have policies based on evidence and facts, we also need to regain trust from drug users, drug abusers and teenagers at risk. This is one part of what i call harm reduction. Another Swedish blogger commented on that here.

Another part is needle exchange programs for those who inject drugs. There has been a trial program for over 20 years in the Malmö/Lund region and the other day there where an evaluation of the program. The conclution was that the needle exchange program did not help. But read this comment from the top medical officer handling epidemic diseases in the region:

(Translated from Swedish, se the link above for the original.)

“Last year 25 persons got HIV from sharing needles, 24 of theese live in Stockholm”

Mind you Stockholm does not have a needle exchange program… And one! case in the rest of the country, and we don’t even know if he is from the region with the needle exchange program. Not starting with needle exchange programs right away is just cynical!

And then we havn’t even considerd all the other possibilities of vaccinations against hepatitis, health checks and actually meeting and building up trus amongst the abusers.

Happily the city of Helsingborg has realised this, congratulations for doing something right in figthting the downside of drugs!

I have had some feedback on my post the other day about errors in the translation of official EU documents translating “drug use” to “drug abuse” when translating to Swedish and Danish. Some have asked me in private: “But shurly it must be a misstake on that page or a misstake by that translator” But no this is systematic.

For you that are billingual check out another English page and it’s Swedish translation. Note that “drug use” have turned into “Narkotikamissbruk” (Drug abuse in Swedish). The danish page is here, there the phrase is translated into “narkotikamisbrug”. And there is several examples all over those pages.

Please submit komments! And if you find any more misstranslated pages please let me know. Naturally not only pages related to drugs. All systematic translation errors are interesting, i will do something about them even if they go against my political compass. Cause it is so totally wrong to change the meaning of a text!

And to them who dissagree with my vievs above, would you fell ok if Swedish documents with “drug abuse” where to be translated into documents stating “drug use” instead? This is a 2 way street you know…

a small report from the drug liberal czech republic

A strange (For anywhere else in Europe besides Holland) incident happened yesterday.

I was sitting with my friends at a local “hospoda” (Czech for pub) chatting and drinking a couple of Gambrinus (a Czech brand of lager) when a police officer came in and ordred a beer. In his uniform… (I guess that is strange enough in most countries.)

He walked over to a table and chatted with one of the local guys and afterward he sat down with his friends. Not so strange maybe, but add the following into the scene:

• Several packages of large rolling paper where scattered around the table.
• Several boxes of cigarettes had pieces torn of to be rolled up as “filters”.
• A number of half cigarettes with that typical twist on the top so the tobacco would not fall out.

To me that is a big indication of what is going on, not to mention the fact that they where going outside for a smoke once in a while. (Remeber here in the Czech Republic there is no ban on smoking in pubs, bars and restaurants…)

A little bit later another local at the pub walked over to the table and discreetly received a small package of marijuana, not bothered at all with the police officer sitting half a meter away.

That how totally open the drug scene is here in Prague. And a lot of downtown bars and discoteques have clean horisontal mirrors in the toilets so you have a clean surface to split your cocaine on. So dope apparently isn’t a high priority here.

I guess the police concentrates on hunting people who actually hurt others or steal, instead of hunting pot and cannabis smokers or people buying sexual services. This liberalisation is going on all over Europe except in Sweden, reports Henrik Alexandersson. I guess the Swedish government will scream like hell when the Danes start opening coffe shops in Copenhagen, only 20 mimnutes by train from Swedens third city Malmö.

By the way, The Economist have a good article about The war on drugs and liberalisation of narcotic related laws.

trafficing and giant lizards

Reading the Swedish online tabloids is getting on my nerves (yes i know i should stop instead of complaining…) The other day it was a fabricated story about a mind reading machine. And now today in an article about a fossile of a pliosaur aka. predator X in Svalbard. They managed to place Svalbard in Scandinavia. Well it is quite a long way from the Scandinavian Peninsula to Svalbard…

In another article someone is upset about prostitution on one of the boats inbetwen Sweden and Latvia. And they call it trafficking.

Human trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, harbouring, or receipt of people for the purposes of slavery, forced labor (including bonded labor or debt bondage), and servitude. (Definition frrecruitmentom wikipedia.)

Well i guess there could be cases where trafficking wictims are transported or recruited on the boats, but prostitution is the act of selling sexual services. And trafficking is the slave trade. So could we please keep the two things seperate so we know what we are talking about, that would help much more that whining in a tabloid.

how to take two stories and make a horrifying device

Well Aftonbladet a Swedish tabloid has made it again. This time by combining two different technological advances, and then combining them in an article to make it seem like researchers have invented a mind reading machine.

First they write four sentences about a British experiment where scientists have managed to discover where in a virtual world a subject is using a MRI to scan the brain. (Yes they are noisy, and claustrofobic you would notice if someone where scanning you…) Basically just reading out a trace of your spatial abilities. BBC have written about if here.

Then they continue with copying the content of a FOX News article about  “Future Attribute Screening Technology” (FAST) which is a technique to monitor how nervous a person is. This is all done by analyzing sweat, temperature, micro movements and breathing. Far from mind reading… (Also they manage to claim that it was a British invention when it in fact was American, also called MALINTENT developed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

So by this simple method people can now be scared of riscing having their minds read.

Naturally the blogers got it right. For example here and here.
By the way, no idea to whear that foil hat. It will be dectected too..

The liberati is here

So finally we in the Liberati have published our five point declaration defining what the Liberati is and our view of the future of liberal politics in Sweden.

The Liberati has allready stired up a loot of feelings in the Swedish blog sphere. Mostly a lot of nit picking regarding the name and the persons engaged. But also over the fact that the core of Liberati has some strict criteria for who will be part of it. (The core that is or you might call it the steering committee.)  But come on, we are starting a new movement in Swedish politics and for this to become effective we need a tight group that meets frequently and discusses the core aspects that Liberati will be focused on.  It’s just not doable without some steering and especially not if there is to many chefs stiring the same pot.

And there is also a lot of people sceptical to the fact that the founder is the Swedish artist and philosopher Alexander Bard. People being sceptical due to this don’t really know what they are talking about. I have rarely meet anyone so bright and motivated as Alexander, and mostly everything he have touched he has excelled with. I’m totally confident that the same will happen with the Liberati.

So please have a look at our five point declaration above and give me some feedback!

Update: I guess i should inform you that the liberati homepage is now officially launced.

a settlement regarding the swedish surveillance law

Information i have received indicates that there have been a settlement regarding the Swedish surveillance law. Which so far seems to be fairly good news.

As i have heard the new law will still force operators to hand over all their traffic over Swedish borders, but with the following changes:

• Only the parliament and military will be able to order searches for traffic. Not other government agencies, police or the secret police as was the case before.

• All searches must be approved by a special court before implemented.

Well this is much better than before, but there still is some issues with the writing in the law that was really bad before. Lets hope they change that to in the final version that is expected to be presented to the parliament in December.

So it seems like the hurricane amongst bloggers in Sweden did pay off, even if i think some people wont rest before the law is ditched alltogether. But the jury is still out, i won’t call them back until i have read the actual law…

Aftonbladet writes about the law here

And expressen here

(In Swedish, use google translate as usual.)

Update:

Some other thoughts and articles about this:

Swedish newspaper DN

Svenska Dagbladet

A new integrity hostile Swedish law on it’s way?

It’s only gone a couple of days since the Swedish parliament voted yes to a law forcing all operators with cables or fiber over the Swedish border to send a copy of all signals to a huge spy center ready to tap into all communication.

I have barley managed to settle down a bit after the last law and have started to sketch on some post Lex Orwell business plans (More about that in a later post, things are a little bit to raw to publish yet. But when i’m ready i will publish Lex Orwell countermeasures here and on Infotropic’s homepage.) when i heard about “Dir. 2008:71 Översyn av lagen (2002:297) om biobanker i hälso- och sjukvården m.m.”
(Directive 2008:71 a review of the law regarding biological samples in the health sector”.) A quote from this directive is “analysera vilka behov de brottsbekämpande myndigheterna har av att kunna ta vävnadsprover från PKU-biobanken i beslag.” (to analyze which needs the crime fighting authorities have to seize tissue samples from the PKU-biological samples)

The thing is that since 1975 a blood sample has been taken from every newborn child in Sweden, this sample is used for research about Phenylketonuria (PKU) and is stored for use in future research. In total about 3.3 Million Swedes have blood samples in this register.

That is our government is now starting to think about how to collect these samples to enable a DNA register covering more than a third of the Swedish population!
Surely a wet dream for the state and the police, but is this level of control something we really want? Why not issuing a GPS receiver to every citizen that transmits location data to a central location registry right away? It would save lots off effort when fighting crime and also lowers the number of DNA profiles you have to check against the national DNA register.

I firmly believe that we all need to put our foot down and stop this slippery slope into a society where everyone is constantly monitored.

I started by sending a mail to socialstyrelsen (The national board of health and welfare) asking for how i can withdraw all my samples from the Swedish PKU register and at the same time destroy all other blood samples for me and my family that might be stored at Swedish hospitals. If you are a Swede (Or born in Sweden after 1975, or ever have given a blood sample in Sweden!) please do the same. Contact socialstyrelsen@socialstyrelsen.se and ask for information.

Note to foreigners, mail to all Swedish branches of government both paper and electronic are public. That is it have to be properly registered, answered and afterwards the public (and press) has access to this information. If enough people request information regarding this, there for certain will be even more press covering this.

Note i first read about this news here (Site in Swedish, let google translate loose on the page.).

The day that Swedes lost their integrity

Today i realised that the Swedish law enabling the government to monitor all communication over Swedish borders will almost certain come true. And im sad, not sad i’m crying. Crying like hell cause i haven’t stuck out my neck to do anything about it.

People who know me know that i cry, i remember crying a lot in University cause i was in love with a rape victim who due to that couldn’t love me back. Some friends back then even called me the “crying guy”. I cried when the wall fell. I have cried over loved ones i sometime cry singing touching songs and i haven’t felt a bit quilty over that fact.

But today i feel quilty, big time. I fell guilty for not taking part in this battle, for thinking that so many others are fighting this law better than me. I have stuck out my head loads of times before. Defending nazi’s right to express their opinions, for hookers right to talk for them selves and not being stigmatized, that pedofiles need help and not stigma and for GLB rights, defending the Swedish underground magazine flashbacks right to publish on the Internet, equality and a lot of other hot and not so hot issues.

But this time i have only been patting the odd people in government that where risking their carriers on going against their own government. Cheering when other bloggers did the right thing, but i have done virtually nothing myself.

My 2 year old son will grow up in a society where the Swedish government can tap in to everything he will ever communicate and when he asks me how things could end up this way i can only answer:

Among other things it was due to me, i didn’t stick my neck out. I’m one of them to blame, sorry Maxwell but i wasn’t there when you where to young to take care of your interests. Please forgive me for not trying hard enough. But some of my friends did, they are heroes. My heroes and please Maxwell never take anything for granted! Stick your head out for things you believe in, make me disappointed, make me cry and make me mad! Fight for the things you believe in, but never take your freedom for granted! Never ever!

And i’m going to tell him the story of our heroes in parliament and also the story of those center partists taking credit for “improving the law”, the improvement is polish and doesn’t change the fact that everyone in Sweden and those communicating with swedes will be constantly wiretapped.

I’m so inclined to go down to the herna on the corner and get really pissed, lean on some Czech’s shoulder and cry. They have lived in a society which could only dream of being able to do what the Swedish government will be doing. So they would understand, buy me another drink and try to cheer me up. Tell me that nothing is impossible, they managed to reach freedom and that the Swedish people can do the same. I won’t listen i will be occupied with my own guilt, but they are right. There is still some hope that this nightmare some day will end.

The only reason why i’m at home writing this instead is that i want to see the referendum tomorrow morning, follow the whole thing to it’s end and be able to explain the whole issue to Maxwell. To tell him why his parents where so upset and what was more important than him watching Pingu on the computer that day when he was two.

To my heroes i love you and your courage! Continue to struggle and i hope that i will be able to help you more in the future. I just have to stop crying and stop feeling sorry for myself.

Some links in Swedish follow, unfortunately google cant translate the URL’s so you have to cut and paste. But it’s worth the effort!

An analysis of the decision in parliament

Oscar Swartz – Liberal betrayal – connect the cables!

Josh – Is this democracy?

PS: Please feel free to add more links in the comment’s, i’m to upset to link to everything that should be here! And if you know how to fix the google translation issue tell me so i can give proper translation links.