Catfight in cowboys’ land

Argentina is since long a mourning country desperately seeking in its past after the pride and strength necessary to conquer a better place in a tough, modern world. But the search has not been easy or even rewarding because the country’s past is a revolving amalgamation of giant lies, dark myths and huge frustration.  

And most of the Argentinean society resembles today to and old, sad lady refusing to accept her youth’s exquisiteness and beauty are gone for ever and that not even a blind prince is going to knock on her door.  

That’s why it is interesting to see what happens next Sunday when two women will be fighting for the presidential post. One is Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the wife of the leaving leftist president, and the other is Elisa Carrió who is said to endorse centre-left views.  

Maybe Deputy Carlos Kunkel is right when he says to El Clarin that the time has come to make a real revolution à la Peron which brings social changes and stronger institutions.  

Argentina will nevertheless need a strong president capable to solve the upcoming problems in the economy, health care and education, the very same problems that almost made the state and the country collapse in 2001.  I hope the winner, despite its gender, really is fit for the job and does it well. The world wants to stop crying for Argentina.  

Is Sweden ready for a non-white governor?

Al Jazeera brings me this morning the news about the victory of Bobby Jindal, the first Indian-American to be elected governor of a US state. By promising to stop political corruption, cut taxes and improve schools he won a primary election to lead Lousiana.

Being immigrant and conservative is endeed becoming a successful combination around the world. The darkest skin you have and the darkest blue ideology you profess, the better the Political Establishment will like you, such is the example of Ms Nyamko Sabuni, who enjoyed the top and a post at the right goverment by hunting and demonizing immigrants at the same time she claims her vision of Sweden is “of a tolerant, humane society, rich in diversity and characterised by respect for the basic freedoms and rights of the individual“.  

In contrast to America, in Sweden governors are not elected by the people. They are nominated by the central government and they do not have that much to say. I would like to have it the American way and I would like to pilot the County of Östergötland into a new modern era.

But I wonder if I really could be successful in such an election campaign. Here, and in most of Scandinavia, being an immigrant is often met with disapproval, and that circumstance in combination with “antilagom”-leftist convictions is hardly going to earn you the masses’ support.

But, who knows, if Mr Bobby “Piyush” Jindal could became the first non-white Louisiana governor since the 1870s, why could I not become the first “svartskalle” (the Swedish ethnophaulism used as a slur to refer to foreigners with black hair) serving as “landshövding” (the Swedish word for governor) and help to brake down the psychological status of exclusion and the racist structure of the Swedish society?

I’m definitely equipped to substitute Mr Björn Eriksson, so he can enjoy life as a pensioner and get more time (he needs it) to improve his blogging skills at the Swedish daily Expressen.

I would certainly use better all the rooms in the Castle of Linköping. I have far more children than him and all of them demand a lot of space. And I would not only talk affectionately about integrating immigrants in our multicultural society, I would transform most of the castle into a safe haven for hundreds of immigrant families hiding in Östergötland. So, my friends, would you vote for me?

White brutes’ politics

 

Switzerland, the European racist democracy where one in five people cannot vote because it is a civil right not given to inhabitants without the right (read: white) ethnic background, is on Sunday going to elect a new parliament. The white sheep party, also known as the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), is going to become powerful enough to kick out the black sheep they so ferociously hate. The SVP is certainly going to change Switzerland’s image from a country of idyllic mountains and peaceful chalets, into a kind of Orwellian “Animal Farm” where nobody but the biased beasts are in command.

Aldo is free!

    

The Colombian newspaper El Tiempo announces today that Aldo has regained freedom. The dog’s kidnappers leaved him at a vet’s office in Bogotá. Now we’re waiting for the far-right government and the far-left guerrillas to follow the example and release all their prisoners and kidnapped victims during the dirty, meningsless war going on the last 20 years.  

The jailing of black Sweden

At the beginning of October, the International Herald Tribune published a column written by Orland Patterson, a professor of sociology at Harvard. In his piece “The jailing of black America”, Patterson analyzes why America has more than 2 million citizens behind bars and why Black Americans constitute half of this country’s prisoners.

Reading him I started to wonder why so little is said about the jailing of black Sweden, the country where I live since many years.

Immigrants are here also incarcerated at far more times the rate to the white Swedish population. And this is as well having a catastrophic effect on immigrant communities and neighborhoods in many cities. But, nothing is said about it, nothing is discussed on this topic in the Swedish press.

I do think however that Orland Patterson’s analysis is accurate when he points out that it is wrong to claim that the horror of the American prisons is solely the result of white racism. The lack of power among the immigrant population in Sweden is not exclusively the product of a racist and discriminatory system. It is also the result of the immigrants’ lack of interest in fighting against it.

The sad true is that white hegemony in America, or in Sweden, or in any other place in the world, is achievable only when the none-white citizens consent to be the target of it. So, the question you must ask yourself is: Am I a part of the problem or a part of the solution?