Twitter deteriorates memory

Working memory – the ability to recall things over a short period of time – could be the key to success, according to Tracy Alloway, a psychologist at Stirling University.

She says Facebook may actually improve working memory while Twitter may work against it and contributes to some people’s lack of success.

I guess Twitter is not financing her research, but it can explain why Mona Sahlin, the Social democratic leader in Sweden, has been so unsuccesful since she stopped talking to real people on the streets of Stockholm, and started instead twittering to the citizens of cyber space.

Read the news article in The Independent here.

Islamization will not stop the intifada

Islamization of rebellious suburbs in Paris has had a soothing effect on those young men and women who two years ago were behind a wave of fires there, according to the French sociologist Yamin El Soum.
– Islamization of these neighbourhoods gives some moral framework for young people. You can think what you like about it, but it is a fact, the sociologist says to Aftonbladet.se.

The problem with cars and buildings burning in several Swedish cities is, as I said earlier on this blog, not a problem that is going to be solved by the police.  

And it is not a problem the state should outsource to religious agents. Both Jesus and Muhammed must be kept away from this kind of political businesses. The intifada we have seen in Sweden the last weeks is a political answer to the failure of the Swedish state to deal with stigmatized communities.

Before the right under the leadership of Mr Fredrik Reinfeldt took over the political power in Sweden, researchers, politicians and the media talked openly about the structural racism in the Swedish society and how it forces citizens with immigrant background into poverty and depending on the welfare state’s good will.

But with Mr Fredrik Reinfeldt and his black-skinned Nyamko Sabuni as Minister for Integration and Gender Equality in power, that kind of discourse and knowledge has been banned. The right’s mantra goes: Immigrants can only be grateful and happy, they are after all now living in the best country on earth; if they fail they only have themselves to blame at.

Reinfeldt and Sabuni utter nothing about racism but they keep on saying that “the overall goal of the Swedish government is to combat exclusion, with a particular focus on employment, education and security.”

But three years later, the jobs aren’t there, the schools and teachers lack resources, and the inhabitants of many suburbs still can not have security because police force and the judicial system even now are white reservoirs. Well, the fires should make Reinfeldt and his team realize that it always has a price to let down hundreds of thousands of people.

Mona must bite the bullet and do like Fredrik

In only one year’s time it will be elections in Sweden and S-leader Mona Sahlin must introduce some drastic changes in her communication strategy if the party is going to improve its appalling statistics (see footnote).

Mona Sahlin must as soon as possible let the public know, specially the young voters, what she stands for. She needs to get more involved in national and international issues in order to become more visible and to be able to promulgate the Socialist ideology and values, which enhance democracy, human rights, law, peace, security and equality.

But, what’s more urgent, Mona Sahlin must bite the bullet and follow the example of the flourishing leader of the Conservative party and Prime Minister, Mr. Fredrik Reinfeldt. The sooner she does it, the better results the Social democrats will get on September 2010.

She must in particular show respect to what has already been created by her antagonists. That was Fredrik Reinfeldt’s winning model last election to convince lots of social democrats that he is not a treacherous guy.

Four years ago, he succeeded in making the working class and the middle class believe that he was not at all going to rapidly change the political (social democratic) heritage, which functions as the basic frame of the welfare state apparatus in Sweden.

Fredrik Reinfeldt convinced many Swedes that he was not going to turn society upside down through a radical shift; he was just going to improve it and make it more efficient.

Mona Sahlin must now convince the public that she is not going to take Sweden back to the point where Fredrik Reinfeldt took over.

She needs therefore to (m)odernize her rhetorical strategy. Mona Sahlin must stop focusing on generating feelings in the audiences and instead, just like Reinfeldt does, start using a rhetoric characterized by objective reasoning and a neutral facial expression.

Since she was elected to lead the party, Mona Sahlin has been surrounded by YES-men and well-mannered advisers who lack political astuteness. She needs to renew her staff and start working with more daring, proactive strategists if she really wants to convince a majority of Swedes of the high merits and political brilliance of the Social democratic programme.  To use Facebook, YouTube and Twitter it’s simply not enough!

FOOTNOTE: A survey conducted by Synovate on behalf of the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter, shows today a record weak support for the Social Democrats (S) in Stockholm.

Only 21.6 percent of the people support S, which is the worst result since universal suffrage was introduced in Sweden, says a source at Synovate. And the trend is following developments in the country.

Who owns Regina Lund’s body?

The Swedish singer Regina Lund is shocked. Youtube decided namely to stop her music video for the single “I’m invisible”. The reason? In the video, Regina Lund uses her naked body to become visible in the infotainment arena, expecting to reach larger audiences and make more money.

- I think I’m mature enough to use my naked body as a means of expression. My body is just a tool to prove something. I am a female Jesus, crucified naked at the end of the video. There are, after all, naked men, naked Jesus statues in churches worldwide, says the singer to the tabloid Expressen.

It’s really that simple? That a 42 years old European woman has the right to assert her own body, confiscate it or make it a public commodity whenever she wishes it and for any reason?

As Foucault stated 1977: “The body is molded by a great many distinct regimes; it is broken down by the rhythms of work, rest and holidays; it is poisoned by food or values, through eating habits or moral laws; it constructs resistances.” (Foucault: A Critical Reader)

Regina Lund’s mouth-watering, naked body, like all bodies, is specifically marked by its existence and her particular habits, predilections and misadventures. Her body remembers and creates everyday unique memories.

Regina Lund wants us to believe that she with the video is claiming power and self-determination; that she, by embodying the icon of the male, naked Jesus, is attempting to stress women’s control over their bodies and sexualities.

As a middle-aged man, I of course appreciate the erotic appeals in her video. I’m glad for her willingness to satisfy my needs by letting me watch over and over such a blissful loss of self.

But even so, it’s difficult for me to understand how a woman like Regina Lund, equipped to control her sexual and financial economies, in order to make money reduces her body, that adorable, private surface of libidinal and erotogenic intensity, into a purchasable, public commodity?

All women do not need to be feminists. And I do not expect Regina Lund to be that. But a middle-aged, literate woman, who besides singing also writes poems and plays theatre, should know when she is constructing the image of the female body as a spectacle. She should understand the social and political practices that have constructed her astonishing, naked body and the meaning of it in the public sphere.

Guillou’s rage will kill his name

Few things are so depressing than to become the spectator of two aged, respected men coming to blows in the public arena. This kind of sinister entertainment is offered these days by Newsmill, the debate forum currently preferred by the economic, cultural, political and white élite in Sweden.

Swedish journalists Peter Bratt and Jan Guillou, who together in 1973 exposed an illegal spy organization inside the Swedish military (the so called IB affair), use now the best of their writing skills to scratch at each others’ honour.

Reading their debate I come to think about the movie “The Gladiator”. Jan Guillou bears a resemblance to Commodus in the way how he also lacks the four chief virtues: wisdom, justice, fortitude and temperance. But Guillou has as well ambition, which as Commodus puts it: “can be a virtue when it drives us to excel”.

Peter Bratt is more like Marcus Aurelius; he knows both that it’s stupid to sacrifice bulls after you already have won the battle, and that an empire’s or a man’s glorious destiny is always so fragile and a whisper is enough to make it vanish.

To finish, just another quote from the movie, that one when the slave Juba says to Maximus:

“You have a great name. You must kill your name before he kills you.”

The two icons of investigative journalism in Sweden, Peter Bratt and Jan Guillou, should stop before their self-pitying rage kills their names.