A question of moral values?

I must say I don’t mind people going to bars, getting drunk and doing silly things like kissing and hugging one another. Not even when the people that are kissing each others are a close assistant of the prime minister and a political reporter in national television TV4. But a lot of people apparently do, strangely enough. I get particularly tiered from listen to the leader for the Christian Democratic Party Göran Hellström when he is complaining about lack of moral values in the leadership.

The Swedish princess Victoria recently said in an interview that she never feel relaxed anymore when she is out in public since everybody has a mobile phone with a camera nowadays. I would suggest that Ulrica Schenström gives that a thought and invites the reporters to her home instead, next time.

The problem is something different from moral values. Ulrica Schenström, as we now found out, is apparently in charge of national security. So far prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has not been able to tell if she removed her duties to somebody ells before she went out drinking. This suggests that she probably didn’t. Considering the amount of attacks from Fredrik Reinfeldt and his collegues on the former government for not handling the Tsunami-situation in a proper way one would think the new government would be more careful with those issues.

On the other hand: Lars Danielsson, assistant of the former prime minister Göran Persson, still can not tell what he was doing during the first day after the Tsunami. If there had been a new Tsunami this weekend we would at least have known afterwards about how Ulrica Schenströms spent her night, thanks to modern discrete mobile phones. I am not sure if that is something to be grateful of or not.

Sources (unfortunalty all i Swedish): Aftonbladet and Expressen, yesterday and Expressen today)

Estonian nurses preferes to go abroad

Earlier this month I also attended a conference about migration in Tartu in Estonia (a beautiful town, by the way). It was part of the Decent Work-project and in connection with Solidar (in Brussels) and the Olof Palme International Centre (Stockholm.

Not many migrants go to Estonia, the problem is rather the opposite. Many skilled Estonians go abroad, e g nurses that works in Sweden. This is of course a lot easier nowadays when both Sweden and Estonia are members of the EU. But the stream of workers leaving the country might cease with increasing wages and better living standards in the whole of Baltic region.

Still I think Estonian needs to look upon migration in a more positive way; the conference showed clearly how many participants (particularly those from the trade unions) wanted to only se the problem. Strangely enough since there are very few wanting to go and work in Estonia. I believe that this country needs migrants in order to develop, just as all other countries in Europe. And that they rather should try to attract migrants in order to get economic growth and a more stimulating business sector. But we, particularly the trade unions, need to cooperate about migration workers and how to protect their rights. Right now the main focus would be those that goes from Estonia to work in Sweden. But in future it might as well be the other way around.

What good can EU external co-operation do?

In the beginning of this month I went to Brussels for a seminar about EU and external co-operation. The seminar was arranged by European Journalism Centre, EJC.

57 per cent of the money in the world spent on development aid is provided by the EU countries. But it was quite clear from the information we got that there are many things that needs to be discussed about how the money is spent. Still, even though things are slowly changing, it is often security rather than humanitarian aid and support for development of human rights. And often old colonial relations that different countries want’s to keep and possibilities of good business relations, rather than a try to find out were the help is mostly needed. Still of course it’s a good thing that the EU-countries coordinates the work, a process that will lead to more effectiveness so that not every country operates everywhere but rather focuses on certain areas.

Former president of the EU-parliament Joseph Borrell (see picture) is now chairman of the EU-committee on Development. The EU parliament want’s to have a deeper involvement in the process of deciding and evaluating and this is possibly a good thing to strive for, not that more or less everything is decided by the EU Commission. Borrell was very critical particularly about how security issues dominates EU:s concern about the situation in Darfur. H.E. Mahamat Saleh Annadif (second picture), permanent representative of the African Union to the EU and former State Minister of Chad, was critical about the way EU still supports it's own agricultural sector. His message was that this needs to be changed if the EU really means something with helping to reduce poverty in Africa.

Swiss right-wing take the lead in election

White sheep’s are kicking out a black sheep on the posters for SVP in Switzerland. One of five persons in Switzerland has a foreign origin, and the posters are widely criticised as expressing racism.

The expensive election campaign is partly paid by national companies, and SVP stepped forward and is now the biggest political party in Switzerland, according to preliminary results from Sunday.

Still, in spite of growing size and support, SVP as other right wing populist parties wants to be seen as the underdog; representatives are always talking about how they are oppressed by the establishment. I suppose Switzerland, just as Sweden and most other countries are kicking out people that commit crimes if they are citizens in another country. So what’s the point? Actually the very same message has also been delivered from similar parties in other countries. Somehow it doesn’t matter if the things they are telling are true or not, it is enough if people want’s to believe it’s true.

The picture shows how antiracist groups want's to kick out SVP instead.
Source: Articles would be found all over Europe, e g BBC

1 of 10 needs money from migrant workers

A new report provides figures on approximatly how much money migrant workers in the world provides their families and their native countries with. One out of ten of the world population depends entirely on these money.

The total figure, according to IFAD - International Fund for Agricultural Development - is 3 000 billion US dollar for 2006, far more than former figures from the World Banks. There are possible 150 million migrant workers in the world, most of them occupied with unskilled works such as construction, domestic work and agriculture. For some countries this money is of a tremendous importance, it is 31 percent of the GNP in Moldavia. Philippines have possible the most migrant workers in the world compared to the size of the country.

There are a trend to look upon these transactions in a positive way. The problem is the costs for transactions, they should be reduced according to IFAD. The same was suggested by Global Commission on International Migration, GCIM, , a former initiative in the UN-system with a Swedish chairman, former Swedish minister Jan O Karlsson.

The Swedish trade union confederation LO have a more sceptical view of the problem. I quote from a report "Migration and labour market" (only in Swedish) that was presented last year (2006):
"It can be discussed if these flows, remittances, is something positive or negative. It is know that economy get a push forward but it can also be so that the pressure for transformation gets less which can lead to that necessary structural transformations in the country delays or doesn’t take place at all.” (My translation).
I have read those lines several times. To me it is cynical to not se the individual instinct to try to improve life basically as a positive force. But of course we need to discuss collective bargaining as well in order not to dump the wages.

Source: E24 and IFAD. My picture shows migrant workers from Burma working in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.

"Only Swedish Art in Swedish municipalities"

The Sweden Democrats, sd, (right wing populist party focusing on anti-immigration in general and anti-Islamism in particular) will possible have a fair chance of getting into the national parliament in next election 2010. The party got almost 3 % of the votes in the last national election (2006) and is represented in almost half of the municipal councils. This is not so much compared to similar parties in Norway and Denmark. But the Sweden Democrats has grown fast, the votes more than doubled from 2001 to 2006.

In general it has been said that the party has no intentions of change the politics in the municipalities since most of the decisions considering migration will be taken in the national parliament. But the more representatives the more publicity and the better the party will be known to the public by next national election.

This weekend the representatives of the party will get together for a conference to discuss guidelines for the work in the municipalities. A document has been presented at the Internet (Sweden Democrats, only in Swedish). It is quite clear that sd tries to be more precise about what it really means to adapt sd-politics in a local context. Suburbs with many refugees should not count on more money (even though it´s known that the problems are social rather than cultural), activities promoting crime should concentrate on reducing the amount of migrants, schools should not let pupils with a different confession than Christianity be out of school on religious festivals, no public support to migrants organisations (unless they promise not to preserve migrant culture), test to make sure migrants speak proper Swedish, public information will not be provided in other languages than Swedish. Additional to this it’s said that public art should always reflect national or local heritage.

There is an interview with me on this subject today in Svenska Dagbladet a local daily in Stockholm (in Swedish). In the picture, from left: Jimmie Åkesson, chairman in sd, vice chairman Jonas Åkerlund and Anna Hagwall, 2:a vice chairman.

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I will soon start to share some of my texts in English as well.