/feb

The linchpin of the Swedish model is an alliance between the state and the individual that contrasts sharply with Anglo-Saxon suspicion of the state and preference for family- and civil society-based solutions to welfare. In Sweden, a high-trust society, the state is viewed more as friend than foe. Indeed, it is welcomed as a liberator from traditional, unequal forms of community, including the family, charities and churches.
At the heart of this social compact lies what I like to call a Swedish theory of love: authentic human relationships are possible only between autonomous and equal individuals. This is, of course, shocking news to many non-Swedes, who believe that interdependency is the very stuff of love.
Be that as it may; in Sweden this ethos informs society as a whole. Despite its traditional image as a collectivist social democracy, comparative data from the World Values Survey suggests that Sweden is the most individualistic society in the world. Individual taxation of spouses has promoted female labour participation; universal daycare makes it possible for all parents – read women – to work; student loans are offered to everyone without means-testing; a strong emphasis on children’s rights have given children a more independent status; the elderly do not depend on the goodwill of children.

▻http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/10/swedish-model-big-society-david-cameron

Syria has made a curious transition from US ally to violator of human rights | Mehdi Hasan (The Guardian)
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/19/syria-us-ally-human-rights

In the war on terror America was happy to send suspects to Syria. Now the US cries torture Source: The Guardian

Syria has made a curious transition from US ally to violator of human rights | Mehdi Hasan
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/19/syria-us-ally-human-rights

In recent weeks, US officials have been falling over one another to denounce the brutality of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. President Obama has accused it of committing “outrageous bloodshed” and called for Assad to stand down; Hillary Clinton has referred to the Syrian leader as a “tyrant”; Elliot Abrams, deputy national security adviser under George W Bush, has called Syria a “vicious enemy”.

I can’t help but wonder what Maher Arar must make of such comments. Arar, a telecommunications engineer born in Syria, moved to Canada as a teenager in 1987 and became a citizen in 1991.

On 26 September 2002, he was arrested at JFK airport in New York, where he had been in transit, on his way home to Canada after a family holiday abroad. Following 13 days of questioning, the US authorities, suspecting Arar of ties to al-Qaida based on flawed Canadian police intelligence, “rendered” him not to Canada, where he lived, but to his native Syria, from where his family had fled 15 years earlier.

For the next 10 months, he was detained without charge in a three-foot by six-foot Syrian prison cell where, according to the findings of an official Canadian commission of inquiry, he was tortured. Arar says he was punched, kicked and whipped with an electrical cable during 18-hour interrogation sessions. He received C$10.5m in compensation from the Canadian government and a formal apology from prime minister Stephen Harper for the country’s role in his ordeal.

A decade on, the question remains: why did the US deport Arar to a “vicious enemy” country run by a “tyrant”? Was it because Canada couldn’t use torture to interrogate Arar, so they decided to send him to Syria, which would?

Shame on Europe for betraying Greece | William Wall | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/14/europe-betraying-greece?CMP=twt_gu

The behaviour of the EU states towards Greece is inexplicable in the terms in which the EU defines itself. It is, first and foremost, a failure of solidarity.

The “austerity package”, as the newspapers like to call it, seeks to impose on Greece terms that no people can accept. Even now the schools are running out of books. There were 40% cuts in the public health budget in 2010 – I can’t find the present figure. Greece’s EU “partners” are demanding a 32% cut in the minimum wage for those under 25, a 22% cut for the over 25s. Already unemployment for 15-24-year-olds is 48% – it will have risen considerably since then. Overall unemployment has increased to over 20%. The sacking of public sector workers will add to it. The recession predicted to follow the imposition of the package will cause unbearable levels of unemployment at every level.

In addition the “package” demands cuts to pensions and public service pay, wholesale privatisation of state assets – a fire-sale, since the global market is close to rock bottom – and cuts to public services including health, social welfare and education. The whole to be supervised by people other than the Greeks. An entire disciplinary and punishment system.

I may be a pensioner, but I won’t stop protesting | John Catt | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/11/john-catt-protesting-civil-liberties

Having listened to arguments for and against my judicial review against the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Metropolitan police on Thursday – who branded me a “domestic extremist”, placed me on a database and secretly recorded my activities merely because I attend demonstrations and make sketches – I feel more resolute than ever about safeguarding our civil liberties.

I am 87 and have been protesting for some 70 years or more. I am retired and live in Brighton not far from where I grew up in Shoreham. Right from my formative years, I stood up against oppressive and unjust behaviour. When I was 14 I worked as a farm labourer in Coombe, Sussex. Most of the workers were elderly; the younger ones were off fighting in the second world war.

The workers were not being paid on time, and one day we were made to wait in the pouring rain for a very long time for our wages. I demanded that the farmer paid up straight away; it was the first time I spoke up for the rights of others and I have been doing so ever since.