4/06/2009

Rage, fury…

about J. Stiglitz here (from Indiana!) and see his homesite here.


Found an article by the American economist Joseph Stiglitz on the economical crisis “Capitalist Fools” about “five key mistakes – under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II – and one national delusion,” and the reading of it made me think.


For ordinary people, the man on the street, maybe realizing what he/she has had to go without, forsake, and probably is forced to go without further * because of the politics that has been pursued (and realize the results of this politics) must be very hard. Where and how does this anger get expression? How is this (justified) disappointment (for the deceit and treachery to the man on the street) expressed?


Some people use denial to escape the anger?


Similar things exercised by people in power occur in other countries on this earth and have occurred during history.


What have they led to?


* But I am not sure that people should HAVE to forsake as much as they are probably going to be told... The governments here and there COULD do more for the ordinary man in this crisis!?? And then I don't mean just food and shelter or a roof over the head as we say!

4/05/2009

A little about the history of spanking in Sweden…


In the Wikipedia article about House spanking you can read (in my amateur-translation):

“House spanking was earlier a punishing method that meant that the master, housefather and housemother had the right to corporally punish (spank) children and servants. The wife was also subordinated to her husband [or if she wasn’t married she was subordinated to her father her whole life if I remember right? So talk about oppression].


The house spanking reflected the pre-industrial society where accessible sanction methods principally consisted of corporal punishment and death penalty [death penalty is forbidden in Sweden]. Since the nineteenth century this has become replaced with paying money and incarceration in Western societies.


Some Swedish county laws from the Middle Age said that the master (housefather) had the right to spank his wife, his children and servants ‘with moderation’ [and what was ‘moderate’?].


However, in the 1734 year law there were no regulations about the man’s right to spank his wife. Different soldier’s regulations came the years 1664-1833 and there the right for the housefather and housemother to spank their servants were regulated [they were allowed to spank their servants].


1858 the right to use house spanking was reduced to spanking employed boys under 18 years and employed girls under 16 years. This was abolished entirely in Sweden 1920.”

According to the Wikipedia-article on “Spanking” you can read about Sweden that

“Parents’ right to spank their children was abolished 1966 in Sweden. An explicit ban is valid since March 15, 1979.”

This means that the penalty directions about assault and battery in the Criminal Code in Sweden even includes child spanking. School spanking was banned 1958 when the new Volksschule was introduced.


House spanking was definitely forbidden 1920, when the housefather’s right to corporally spank juvenile employees was abolished. Ship’s officers’ right to spank ceased 1922.


Investigations have shown that the attitude towards spanking has changed powerfully during the twentieth century in Sweden. For instance 53 % of the adults were positive to corporal spanking of children 1965 compared to 11 % 1994.


I have used these sources: “House spanking” (or husaga), “The old Farmer society” (or det gam la bondesamhället), “Spanking” in English and “Aga” in Swedish, “The Criminal Code” and about the Swedish “Volksschule.”


All sorts of spanking should become banned wherever they occur in this world. No matter what society, religion etc. that allows or uses it.

See Miller on what happens around the world in for instance Rwanda, former Yugoslavia (Serbia), Afghanistan etc.hits on her site about spanking.

And I want to add that I don't think all people here in Sweden spanked their kids, wives, servants even if they were allowed during history. But unfortunately a lot did I guess. Because it was societally approved of. And it was the same all over the world in ancient times?

How do we deal with societies, religions etc. still allowing these things today? And on how many places in this world do such things still exist and are seen as natural?

By pointing out and showing how harmful these things are? By referring to recent findings in research and science? And not least by expressing our outrage when we hear about such things? By trying to use arguments against it? Not with showing more of the same to them (how tempting this would even be)? But no, I don't say that this is easy!

If I had more time now I would search for research showing how harmful spanking is (for instance for the brain). But here are links concerning child abuse and brain damage on Alice Miller's site. For instance see this letter by a Norwegian man. He for instance mentions "the CIC-study" or "The Children in Community Study" from New York.

My maternal grandmother grew up in a strictly religious family, they were Laestadians, and I think they used corporal punishment. And other forms of abuse to. Hypocritically talking about love and for the children's best and such things.

And all those examples, no matter how big or small the religion, society, culture, tradition, party or group supporting or using these methods or what sort of society,group, tradition, culture, should be pulled into light and condemned. Even single individuals using it, not belonging to any particular group.

Not just some of them should become brought to light, but as many as possible. And many people have also started doing this. Writing about cases occurring even in our civilized world. Yes, we should continue talking about those things and bring them up. And maybe do it even more than we do!?


And see Jonathan H. Pincus on societal approval in "Hitler and Hatred."
I want to add that I think it's possible to recover! But it probably demands a lot of work (a work that COULD have been avoided and years of our lives that shouldn't have become wasted!).

Addition after lunch:see links about childhood abuse and its consequences for the latter health (not least the somatic)

4/04/2009

Demands and expectations…

…on different people. Are they the same?


Some Swedish voices on current "affairs" here:

”However, the highest up in trade and business get through the criticism gallantly because they have no moral capital to lose.”


“The moral laws in this world look like this: the ones fighting for equality always have to carry a much bigger responsibility than the ones fighting against it [right wing people get through the criticism while left wing don’t. And it’s like this it looks all over the world: you have higher demands on the ones that are supposed to be nice and think on other people. Or rather, lower or no demands on those that aren’t supposed to care about anybody else, or how you express this!?].”


“The very most of the power that is exercised in a society is produced through the economical owner conditions as we know.”

But in this world you put higher demands on those with less power and resources. And it seems to be the same all over the world (the power uses dividing and ruling as a method). Struck me on a bike ride that the Norwegian General Practitioner Anna-Luise Kirkengen talks and writes about power imbalance and what this means. With a few words this means that the one with more power has more responsibility. This doesn't mean though that the one with less power can do whatever he or she wants to the on with more power.


The more money and property you have the more power you have. Pippi Longstocking said something in the style:

“The stronger you are [the more power you have] the kinder you have to be.”

Those who have most money, property, things are they the kindest, nicest, most caring? How have they gotten their money, property, things? With what means?


The Swede Ingvar Kamprad for instance were not there for his kids I think. But he had a wife taking care of them and the home. And she stayed there for him too…


How many men of all the men in this world would back up a woman in that or a similar way? How many women haven’t had to choose between a possible career and a family?


What do we live on this earth for? What and how much should we have to sacrifice?


Addition in the evening: See earlier posting “What sort of self image – and self-esteem? On bonus and compensation scandals…”

It’s more okay when some people are bullies. Then we don't even see it many times?

Elites, or we have to live together…

the first spring flowers.

In a letter to the press a person wrote that the society has become an arithmetical problem. People are crouching by everything they read in the newspapers (the financial crisis) wondering how everything shall end.

It seems as people with a need for a work, public welfare or service are the only ones that are costing money in these days. Old people are costing, children are costing, and workers are costing and so on.

Machines, managing directors, board of director pros, EU bureaucrats/politicians and bank palaces are on the contrary necessities and are seen as investments for the future. No, such things and those people with fantasy earning aren’t seen as costs! Isn’t that strange? But the grassroots are seen as costs.

People are mostly a nuisance - and think how expensive they have become. Can the society, if we follow the logic of today, really afford ordinary inform, weak people?

I mean, the writer writes, can one see the man as an asset or are we book valued only as costs in those eras of accountants, where humanism and humanity only have become a question for the private familiar sphere.

Earlier one had an ambition to anchor political decisions in the citizens. This was seen as natural in a representative democracy. Things are decided above our heads. By people who knows better (they think). What’s the opposite of democracy? Dictatorship?

Is this also neo authoritarianism?

Today the decisions are a process between political representatives and different special interests (lobbyists), above all on the private financial side.

A journalist wrote about a film festival here in Sweden, in an article with the heading “We have to live together”, with films like “The Planet” and “Wall E”, “Marie Antoinette”, “La Zona”. Films exploring big societal differences between people.

About the global elite of the Homo sapiens entrenching themselves behind security gates and walls. Security firms are keeping them away from the congregation. Rage is boiling in the ones kept on distance. Our era’s real power elites enrich each other and are fighting for its right to have their hundred of millions in pensions. The moral question is never posed because they don’ understand the meaning of it or understand the word.

To be ethical and decent doesn’t give profits neither on wage or pension accounts in the strict hierarchical private trade and industry life’s Casino bar.

4/03/2009

Survival of the fittest, what persons deserve freedom, and what persons get it?


Is it true that it should be (are) the most adaptable (flexible) who survives best? And the less that have most problems surviving?


If we should examine people in higher positions, earning more money then the average, what would we find? That they are the most flexible or adaptable, more than most of those under them? Or can they be very inflexible, no especially adaptive, rigid, stiff? (Do many of them have more means hiding this too?)


But it’s not impossible that many of them want to believe that they are superior and deserve their position and wealth?


Social Darwinism, survival of the fittest, is about blaming the one who is a failure, who don’t succeed! With your success or failure you have proved if you are as good as other people or less good! If you deserve a decent living or not!


Strikes me once again; empathy is said to be one of several risk factors for burnout according to science.


Thought about inconsequence (arrogance, cynicism) in rhetoric (in politics, on the net in debates there etc.), an inconsequence making you totally confused and thus unfortunately entirely mute. Who is the stupid here? It must be me (primary defense?).


Neoliberals have told me that if nobody wants my product: my piano-playing, piano teacher work, then those things has to die. If nobody is willing to pay me for those things, goodbye with it.


But if a neoliberal try to sell his products or services as an own manufacturer with little or no success, then the failing success has with something else to do then with the need for or quality of his product, something it had in my case though. It’s nothing wrong with their product or what they want to sell (compared with my “product”), but the fault lays somewhere else, on taxes, the society, the government.


How is it with the logical thinking?


When the power has succeeded to make us, the grassroots, fight they have succeeded! People won’t see the ruling class or what they are doing if the grassroots are fighting between themselves. Forces try to make us believe that we have the same chance as those wealthy. Playing on the false hope defense.


The “weak” can die or something? Who are loyal with them? Loyal with the losers?


The wealthiest, richest and with most power join in groups of lots a different kinds to support each other (and most of those are men too), they organize themselves in closed and (often) secret groups. Loyal to each other?


But who are loyal to us. How do we, the grassroots, deal with this? By trying to be awaken to things, not let the power divide and rule! Who are going to protect the weak groups in society? (who are the weak and where does he weakness comes from?).


From where comes limitless needs? Can those ever become filled?


In the blogposting “Political mathematics” you can read that demands on cars, TVs and cell phones have decreased in the global financial crisis paths. The need for school education, glaucoma and cataract surgery and changing diapers are on the other hand unchanged from losses of demands on the market. But the government doesn’t think it can afford looking so those needs are covered- we have a crisis for God’s sake! The message from the secretary in charge is that we have to prioritize.


But the truth is that the government has prioritized differently for how the money shall become spent. New and more an more gloomy prognoses are published almost weekly about how drastic the cuts that will become forced on the general welfare. The needed money is almost exactly the money the tax cuts are for work! This means that 30 000 people will lose their jobs. 30 000 persons whose jobs are needed everyday, everywhere in the country. They are at risk of losing their jobs because the government doesn’t think if can afford them!


The Left party, as the envious bores they are (as the blog owner calls herself and her friends), has initiated an investigation how the tax cuts for work are divided among people in different income groups. Just to check if it really is the low and middle wage earners who are the most benefited by those tax cuts.


If it is like that, something the government readily claims, there is some sort of demand stimulus in the reform that at least isn’t totally crazy in a recession.


But it isn’t like this.


As a matter of fact more than 52 percent of the tax cuts for work go to the highest paid third part. They don’t need to increase their consumption. They will in all likelihood not do this to any significant degree. People on these income levels save the money they get over and the money neither lead to jobs nor to tax revenues.


The lowest paid on the contrary are made do with 8 percent of the tax cuts total value.


The 15 billion Swedish Crowns it’s about here could have become used better. A billion could have one to the lowest paid. While 14 billions needed for keeping the staff in the health care, child care and school could have gone exactly to those things.


It should, in contrast to using them to even more increase the already highly paid peoples’ space for savings, have become used to keeping the unemployment down and the employment up – something that actually should have been highly prioritized given the general state on the labor market.


This would in turn have held 30 000 publicly employed peoples’ consumption up and kept the economy going. Instead they are at risk of becoming thrown out into the low income slough on a really lousy dole or being forced to change account from the municipality town’s wage office to the social welfare office.


And the needs for the tasks the employed in the municipality are doing won’t disappear as said before.

So it will probably become the fired assistant nurses, children’s nurses, the teachers and home helps that have to step in and take care of their old tasks unemployed when the local governments service can’t afford it or haven’t time for it.


Why is the government doing this bizarre prioritizing? Have they misjudged the situation? Have they failed?

Hardly. This IS the bourgeoisie policy. This thesis the blog owner has developed together with another woman in an article linked here.


This is what Naomi Klein calls the prerequisites for Shock therapy?? A real or an caused crisis, where people in shock have nothing to put against.


But information is shock resistant as Klein also writes.


From another article "Bourgeoisie strategy": The refusal to intervene from the right government’s side isn’t due to lack of wisdom, but a logical consequence of the bourgeoisie political agenda.


The support for a commonly financed welfare is strong in the Swedish people. Too strong for the bourgeoisie parties to win sympathies on open talk of cuts and privatizations. But the right’s political agenda, that more and more of social security, nursing and care shall become financed privately hasn’t changed, only its rhetoric.


The bourgeoisie government has already made deteriorations in unemployment, health care and parental benefits.


At the same time many of the authorities which are the citizens’ immediate meeting with the welfare systems, as the employment offices and the regional social insurance office have gotten powerfully reduced subsidies and become reorganized from the bottom. The new, harder rules to get those benefits are hard to understand both for the citizens and the employed, people have to wait unreasonably long for payments and the staff is pressed to their utmost.


It’s natural that such a development leads to an increase in dissatisfaction and distrust against the common welfare systems. The ones that have opportunities will seek themselves to supplementing, private insurances to compensate for the deficiencies in the common systems. This is encouraged by the right government. The strategy is to create support for a gradually liquidation of the loyal, tax financed welfare systems through sabotaging them.


Warning bells are working full steam about an approaching welfare crisis and economists as well as local politicians are appealing to the government to intervene. But the secretary in charge says the municipalities have to prioritize. En clair this means that the government encourage to cuts in the school, child care, health care and geriatric care. At the same time as the safety systems and the authorities administering them are undermined; the government intend to let the school and health care collapse.


That the right government uses the economical crisis with the aim of carrying through a fervently coveted system shift becomes more and more obvious.


Local politicians, no matter what party, have the ungrateful job to cut the already hardly harassed welfare sector.


The government wash their hands and instead concentrates on creating laws and decrees favoring private alternatives for all our welfare. Thus the ring is raked for private health care companies and insurance companies taking over where the public have “failed.”


Instead of trying to get support for its privatization politics, through arguing, the government is prepared to sacrifice not only citizens health care but also the possibility for the staff in the welfare sector to carry their work through.


The government’s passivity under the ongoing recession isn’t about ignorance about what to do. What sort of visions does a government have that cut the taxes with 100 billion Swedish Crowns and encourages the local politicians to prioritize among sick, old and children? In fact it’s high time that the right government tells the Swedish people what it wants to carry through and they should become forced to argue for this.


So true!


I dislike this government from deep, deep in my heart.

4/01/2009

A menace to the health of children – Memphis Academy of Health Science…


Two videos etc. about the Memphis case you can find here.

Read about “Memphis Academy of Health Sciences is a Menace to the Health of Children.
And see about this school here.

Paula Flowe writes:

“Girls are whipped on their hands with a leather strap wielded by Principal Curtis Weathers -- a 6' 6" former football player. The girls to be whipped await their turn while the audience watches in anticipation. As he swings his belt, Mr. Weathers counts off 10 strokes. If the victim, out of fear or pain, retracts her hand, the count starts over again. If she cannot make it through ten strokes, she is suspended and must try again the following Friday. She is not allowed to resume classes until she successfully completes the hand-beating ritual. The psychological effects on a child undergoing such an experience -- or witnessing it -- can only be guessed, and the high risk to the delicate anatomy of the hand cannot be over-stated.


Girls are also beaten on their buttocks. When Ms. Biles, President of Middle School, does the honors, the paddle is her weapon of choice. The victim moves to the center of the floor, grasps the back of a chair and assumes a rump-presentation posture, whereupon Ms. Biles, delivers five swift blows to the buttocks.


It should be noted that the human buttock area is an erogenous zone, and research scientists have long recognized that abuse to that region can cause sexual confusion, low self-esteem and a host of other long-term issues. When done to a non-consenting adult, it constitutes sexual battery.


The paddling of boys, done by Mr. Weathers, has a few added features. He first looks down into the boy's pants to be sure he hasn't padded his seat with extra clothing. Anything that might cushion the blows is removed. Then, he typically grabs the waistband or belt of the boy's pants and jerks him into position for the paddling. This upward hoisting of the garment, causes child's genitals to be jambed against the body. This is a form of sexual bullying commonly referred to in youth culture jargon as a ‘wedgie.’ The effect of a ‘wedgie’ on a male's genitals is similar to that of being grabbed. When the student is in position, Mr. Weathers whacks him repeatedly with the paddle. Mr. Weathers has two paddles which he has affectionately dubbed, ‘The Terminator’ and ‘Mr. Wood.’"

How horrible!

Krugman on Swedish TV about the financial crisis...


Also read about that "Thousands of Young People Demonstrate at Capitalism" in London. And also see about "Put People First."