Author Archives: David Weman

About David Weman

The founder of A Fistful of Euros. He is Swedish, and was born in 1980. Works as a translator and subtitler.

Anna Lindh 1957-2003

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She passed away in the early morning.

The murderer is still not caught. They have the murder weapon though, so maybe this won’t be another giant screw-up like the Palme investigation.

Apparently they think it was premeditated. The murder may or may not have to do with politics, but the circumstances, especially using a knife rather than a gun, suggest to me a lone perpetrator, nothing organized.

Lindh was seen as an unusually talented foreign minister and politician. Apart from everything else, it’s a great loss for the Social Democrats. For all Swedes, I suppose.

Anna Lindh stabbed

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Anna Lindh, our foreign minister (and G?ran Persson’s heir apparent) was repeatedly stabbed this afternoon in a exclusive department store in Stockholm. She’s seriously wounded. The assailant is unknown and still at large.

Palme all over again. God…..

Update: According to the latest report, “Her condition was serious but not life-threatening, police spokeswoman Stina Wessling told AFP Wednesday.” Thank God.

Update 2: As far as political implications… It will have an effect on Sunday’s referendum insofar that all campaigning is supended for now. I’m sure it’ll boost the yes side to some degree, (she was a leading proponent, and the anti-establishment sentiment that has propelled the no side might be turned to its opposite) but probably only marginally, at least now that it appears she’ll survive.

Update 3:

I don’t really have any idea at all. Whatever.

PKK ends ceasefire

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PKK ended its five year ceasefire a couple of days ago. This is very significant, and very terrible.

There’s been a lot of progress in Turkey, but the kind of moderation and impovement of the Turkish attitude and treatment of its Kurdish minority that would put the conflict completely to an end was several years away. Unfortunately, I believe those things, and democratic reforms in general, are now less likely. And of course, new hostilities will be very, very very bad for the poulation of eastern Turkey.

It’s likely the Turkish military will committ atrocities, which will make the prospect of opening negotiations about EU membership more remote, which will make the forces of reform weaker, which will make EU membership even more distant, etc ad infinitum.

One good thing is that a lot of reforms have already been implemented in the last year, most lately the military was stripped of their considerable political power, but the reforms need to be implemented on the ground, not just on paper.

As far as I can tell, the media hasn’t paid much attention to this story, which is sad and also odd since, unlike say the war in Congo, another (scandalously)underreported story, it has obvious geopolitical ramifications, even short-term ones, since, as Tacitus has pointed out it might further destabilize Turkey’s neigbour Iraq.

I’m hardly an expert on Turkey. I will look for quality analysis on the subject and update this post if I find something.

Around the Blogs: CAP etc

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I finally got around to looking at the Guardian’s new campaign blog, KickAAS, which is dedicated to abolishing agricultural subsidies, certainly a laudable goal., and while I don’t know if it’ll be a regular read, it’s surprisingly non-boring. It’s also interesting as a phenomenon, especially for those buying into the hype on poli blogs.

Via their comments section I discovered ideosyncratic conservative Back40’s blog, where was delighted to find a coherent and reasoned defense of CAP*, probably the first time I’ve seen such a thing. The blog’s full of original takes on original choices of topics. (except when talking about ‘the liberal media’.)

Who knew agricultural subsidies could be fun?

Less fun is the news that Matthew Yglesias will do all his political blogging on The American Prospect’s staff blog – unaccredited. I join his commenters in wondering why they didn’t give him his own blog, which would presumably get them more of his considerable readership, and thus get TAP more revenue and exposure. Especially since he on his own has posted more frequebtly than all TAPPED contributors combined.

This is sad since Yglesias was one of my favorite’s bloggers and this will obviously not be the same thing.

Update: Henry Farrell gives us a nod (thank you!) and responds to Iain’s post. In comments, ‘Doug’ made this brilliant observation, that I gotta reproduce here:

“There?s an interesting article to be done on what fantasies European integration evokes from local paleocons. In Britain, it?s apparently Guy Fawkes. In Poland, it?s godlessness, Communism and abortion. In Hungary, it?s Jews and maybe Germans. In Germany, it?s waves of invaders from the East. There?s probably a specific set for almost any EU or soon-to-be EU country that would tell outsiders a lot about the neuroses in national history. And these, in turn, tend to draw on political tropes that are so old fashioned you wonder what steamer trunk someone lifted them out of.”

In Sweden, of course, it’s an evil neoliberal plot to destroy the welfare state.

*The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.