Jacob Christensen

In case you should wonder what Umeå University looks like in late spring, this may give you an idea.

Very inspiring indeed.

I may as well admit it: At one point I, too, bought “The da Vinci Code” hoping for some nights’ entertainment. I managed to read all of 10 (ten) pages of it and it has been bothering my bookshelves ever since. I turned my attention to Agatha Christie’s – yes, Agatha Christie – “The Big Four” instead.

“The Big Four” is a completely improbable, but highly entertaining tale of four shady characters – one American, one French, one Chinese and the really mysterious and scary “Number Four” – and their quest for World Domination. And it speaks volumes about English xenophobia.

But back to “da Vinci”: Hating the book is a sign of Good Taste but in this post, Juan Cole suggests that “da Vinci” a) does in fact tell us something about the conflicts in modern societies and b) seems to have a surprising parallel in the Muslim world.

Cole’s post is hereby recommended.

Berlingske Tidende said it:

Nothing could stop the triumph of the unusual Finns.

That might count as the understatement of the year. The Guardian has the sordid details, while Foreign Policy – yes, Foreign Policy – uses two blog posts to comment the result of the ESC.

Berlingske Tidende is kind enough to provide us with a link to YouTube

Listen and see for yourself.

Today, the Swedish Prime Minister’s assistant secretary Lars Danielsson decided to take a long vacation.

In Sweden, this is known as “taking a time out” (without a dash) and was introduced as a political concept back in 1995 when Mona Sahlin had her hopes of succeeding Ingvar Carlsson as chairman of the Social Democratic Party and Prime Minister thwarted in a bizarre scandal involving among other things a Toblerone chocolate bar.

In an article in Friday’s edition of Svenska Dagbladet, Mr. Danielsson declared that he had spent December 26 2004 with his family and maintained that he had taken active measures to stay in touch with the Swedish Foreign Office.

Hans Dahlgren of the FO on the other hand maintains his version of the course of the day in which Mr. Danielsson did not call the FO. Unlike Mr. Danielsson, Mr. Dahlgren has produced telephone records to substantiate his version.

So – what about the rumours about you-know-what?

Svenska Dagbladet’s political editor Göran Eriksson has an interesting perspective regarding the rumours about Lars Danielsson and Helen Eduards and if Eriksson’s version of this part of the story is basically right, then it tells a lot about the relationship between the Swedish Foreign Office and the Prime Minister’s Office.

First, a little background: Since Laila Freivalds took over as Foreign Minister following the murder of Anna Lindh in 2003, stories about unease in the Foreign Office have hit the frontpages of Swedish newsmedia at regular intervals. We have had complaints about the minister, complaints about politically motivated appointments of diplomats and finally the conflict over who bungled the handling of the Tsunami disaster.

A common theme has been that the FO has felt that it has lost political weight relative to the Prime Minister’s Office to the degree that it has become an agency of the PMO rather than an independent authority. Lars Danielsson has been identified as the main actor at the Prime Minister’s Office with Helen Eduards as the PMO’s main agent within the Foreign Office.

This makes Eduards an obvious target for attacks from frustrated career diplomats and sexual innuendo is an effective (or at least well-tested) way of undermining her authority in the organisation even if Lars Danielsson and eventually the Prime Minister are the real targets of diplomat resentment.

The appointment of Jan Eliasson as Foreign Minister doesn’t solve this problem: Eliasson is a career diplomat, not a politician with an independent base and he cannot restore the Foreign Office’s position vis-à-vis the Prime Minister’s Office.

In fact, there are many reasons why the FO will have a smaller role in Swedish Foreign policy compared with former times and not all of them have to do with Göran Persson’s style of governing. But the Prime Minister – be it Persson or Fredrik Reinfeldt – will need to address the role and organisation of the FO if he wants to avoid serious conflicts between the FO and the PMO.

As part of the entertainment surrounding the electoral campaign, Dagens Nyheter has prepared a lifestyle party test. Basically you answer a number of questions about your lifestyle and the test reveals your real political identity.

Well, I have been found out.

Or maybe not: An earlier try at another test made me a supporter of the Centre Party (with the Liberals coming second) while a similar attempt with Süddeutsche Zeitung’s electoral barometer made me a supporter of … the German Left/PDS! (I suspect that my position on abortion and education explained the latter result).

How to put this in the shortest possible way? Okay, I’ll try this:

The parliamentary inquest into the Swedish government’s handling of the 2004 Tsunami disaster has focused on the actions of Göran Persson’s right hand man Lars Danielsson during the early hours of December 26.

Danielsson has failed to give a convincing description of his whereabouts and contacts during the morning and day, and the government has blocked attempts by the Constitutional Committee of the Swedish parliament to gather information about telephone calls made to and from the Prime Minister’s Office, access records from the PMO and so on with the argument that publishing this kind of information would endanger Swedish security.

It was also noted that the Social Democrats rejected attempts made by centre-right members of the committee to summon Helen Eduards, who is a political secretary in the Foreign Office and who often works in close co-operation with Mr. Danielsson, for questioning.

And so rumours about Mr. Danielsson and Ms. Eduards started to circulate in the tabloid sphere and the right-wing blogosphere. The politically spicy bit is that the two latter links are to blogs written by members of the Liberal Youth Federation.

Last week, a commercial radio station broke the media silence – albeit in a convoluted way – and today the political hounds were released when Eduards in an interview with Sveriges Radio complained about the coverage. In an interview to be published in a Swedish magazine, Eduards also criticises a number of newspapers for not publishing her version of the story.

Marita Ulvskog, the ever-subtle party secretary of the Social Democratic Party, immdiately put the story to political use by claiming that the spreading of rumours about Mr. Danielsson and Ms. Eduards was part of a political campaign waged by the Liberal Party and demanded a public excuse by the chairman of the Liberal Party.

I don’t think that it takes a political scientist to see that what the Social Democrats really want is to use any means to stop further investigation into Mr. Danielsson’s actions on December 26 and the blogging story is a gift from heaven (or the internet, if you like) to the Social Democrats.

In my opinion Ms. Eduards is a sideshow in the context even if sexual innuendo is a classic strategy for smearing women in high positions. And in a broader perspective it is interesting and rather scary that you see this kind of innuendo used in a modern society. (Try Googling “Helen Eduards” and see for yourself. You have been warned).

But we are still left with some mysteries regarding the handling of the Tsunami disaster which could still trouble the Social Democrats during the election campaign:

• What did Lars Danielsson do during the morning of December 26 and why?
• Why doesn’t Danielsson want to explain his actions and why is guarding him so important that the Social Democratic Party has gone to extremes to stop the investigation?

One explanation could be that Mr. Danielsson – and the entire political and administrative leadership – bungled the handling of the disaster but in a typically Swedish fashion do not want to assign responsibility for any mistakes or wrongdoings.

Another possible explanation is that the Social Democrats don’t want any publicity about what is essentially a troubling valence issue (competence in office) in an electoral campaign.

Oh, and maybe the guy just had a hang-over after celebrating Christmas and is afraid to say so in public. This is Sweden, after all.

Four months to the elections. It could turn out to be a very long summer.

If you prefer the headline in plain English, it goes something like:

Rumour, of all evils the most swift

My Latin, unfortunately, isn’t what it used to be.

This could be interesting.

In an interview with Dagens Nyheter, Lars Ohly made it clear that his party wants the present agreement between the Social Democrats, the Green Party and the Left Party replaced by a proper coalition government if the three parties win a majority in the elections this September.

Such a coalition would follow the example of the Norwegian three-party government that took office after last year’s elections but be a novelty in Swedish politics. Ohly threatens to force a repeat election if the Social Democrats reject his demand.

If you only know Sweden from this blog, you may be under the impression that politics are important in this country.

Wrong you are.

What really occupies the Swedes is – not politics, not soccer, not even sex, but this:

The Eurovision Song Contest!

The campiest show on this side of the Atlantic will hit the flat-screen tv sets later this week in its 51st edition. The semi-finals (!) are later today and the finals on Saturday.

Sweden – represented by veteran pop artist Carola – has to compete in the semi-finals while Denmark – represented by newcomer Sidsel ben Semmane – somehow managed to gain direct qualification to the finals.

Beyond the music, both artists are interesting for other reasons.

Carola – her last name Häggkvist has been irrelevant to the general public in this part of the world for twenty years – is a fundamentalist Evangelical and her views on religion and especially homosexuality has not always gone down well with segments of the Swedish public. You wouldn’t be surprised to find an artist like Carola in the U.S. but in a Scandinavian setting, she is a little outside of the mainstream.

While Sidsel is a fairly usual Danish name – it’s the Danish form of Cecilia and as such a very apt name for a singer – her last name, ben Semmane, isn’t Scandinavian at all: One of her grandparents was Algerian.

Oh, and by the way: The Swedes play on several horses. Estonia and Switzerland are represented by Swedish artists in this year’s contest. This is nothing new. Last year’s winner Elena Paparizou was born in Sweden by Greek immigrants and has competed in the contest for both Sweden and Greece.

For more on the Song Contest, follow Mike Atkinson’s column in Slate.

&uotIn an interview with Swedish television tonight, a spokesman for the Israeli government attacked the Swedish government and claimed that among European countries Sweden was the country most hostile towards Israel.

The attack follows the decision to grant the Refugee Minister of the Palestinian Authority Atef Adwan a visa to visit Sweden. Through Sweden’s membership in the Schengen Agreement Adwan’s visa also allowed him to visit a number of countries in the European Union even though the E.U. has decided to ban members of Hamas from entering the E.U.

According to reports, the German chancellor Angela Merkel was less than happy with the Swedish decision and Adwan’s visit to Germany has caused minor irritations as he was received by backbenchers from the Social Democratic and Liberal parties.

During his visit to Sweden, Adwan met representatives for the Green and Left parties as well as low-level representatives for the Social Democratic Party while representatives for the opposition centre-right parties rejected invitations.

Among the leading Hamas members, Adwan appear to be a relatively moderate voice which may help explain why the Swedish Consulate in Jerusalem decided to grant him a visa to Sweden. The Swedish Prime Minister has denied claims that the Swedish government was in any way involved in the handling of the visa application.

On the other hand, Göran Persson’s argument that authorities should distinguish between the Hamas as such and persons linked with Hamas may come across as rather odd given that Adwan holds an exectutive position in a Hamas-led government.

The application seems to have been cleared with immigration authorities in the other Schengen member countries but Swedish authorities may – for whatever reason – not have come entirely clear about Adwan’s affiliation with Hamas and position within the PA during the clearing process.

Speculations continue on all sides.

No, they were not celebrating the Norwegian Constitution Day but protesting against the Danish government’s proposals for social and labour policy reforms in a series of demonstrations carefully planned and organised by the Danish TUC and supported by the Social Democratic Party.

According to news reports some 70.000 turned out on the traditional venue for political protests, the open square in front of Christiansborg Castle, while around 30.000 people participated in demonstrations around the country. (The police estimated the turnout in Copenhagen to about 35.000 people.)

The main focus for the protests were the proposals to lower benefits for unemployed 25-29 year olds and to increase the age limit for the special Early Retirement Benefit.

Two interesting observations: The chairman of the Social Democratic Party, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, appeared in the crowd in Copenhagen, and the Social Democrats and the Danish People’s Party engaged in a fight over which of the two parties would be most likely to support the government’s plans to make cuts in the Early Retirement Benefit.

In this case the intention behind this war of words is to place the blame for possible cuts with the other party. The complication arises because the Danish People’s Party is the government’s parliamentary basis while the government has declared that it would not pass a social and labour market policy reform without the active support of the Social Democrats. Finally, the SDP and the DDP compete head to head for the blue-collar vote. Food for game theorists.