Violence in Sweden

There are a lot of things happening in Sweden that makes everyone who is not Swedish feel very uncomfortable.

The most recent of them is the attack to immigrants by about 100 masked people in central Stockholm. Although it appears that Sweden is welcoming immigrants it is rather clear to someone who lives here that a large fraction of people do not like them. The attacks that took place today are not the first. They happen, perhaps at a smaller scale, almost weekly. But it is a policy in Sweden that violence should not be reported. Central Stockholm and Uppsala, as well as many other Swedish towns, are accommodating immigrants from many countries, including Syria, Afghanistan, Romania, etc. One sees them on the streets. You can't go to a supermarket without seeing beggars often staying outside in the cold. Many people "help" them by giving them tips but even this is hard because the Swedish government adopted the policy of discouraging people from using cash, the intention being to force everyone use credit cards. Some beggars are now carrying credit card readers so they can accept credit card donations from people. But many people would rather not see anyone who looks darker than them. And since they cannot express their opinion openly, they put on a mask and beat street people up.

I know some people who work for the Uppsala city council who tell me that the phenomenon of attacking Syrian refuges camps is not uncommon. "I've never heard anything about it", I said. "You won't", they replied, "because the attacks are not reported." Apparently, only when something leaks out one finds out officially. Otherwise, it's hard to know what's going on. A few weeks ago there was this mass sexual attack in Cologne, Germany, from the other side: that is, by migrant people. Someone I know in Uppsala told me, around the beginning of the year, that similar things have been taking place in Sweden. "I can't believe it", I said. Again, the answer was "they are not reported". And, indeed, 2 weeks ago something leaked out. There were sexual attacks, by migrant youths but police did not make the information public. When the BBC found out they questioned the chief of the Swedish police who admitted that information is not released.

It happens both ways. Regardless of whether Swedes attack immigrants or the other way around, one cannot always find out: these attacks often don't make the news. Not by negligence; but by design.

In 2013, the now infamous Stockholm riots took place. A relatively high proportion of immigrants and second-generation immigrant residents, including a substantial number from Somalia, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Iraq instigated a mini-revolution by burning cars, throwing bricks, vandalizing, etc. Somehow, this was thought to be against the image that Sweden is portraying towards the outside world so it was not reported. When it leaked out, police declared it was terrorist groups. Although one may call such acts terrorism, it's not the kind that take place elsewhere. Apparently, the revolting migrants were expressing their frustration for their segregation and attacked innocent, of course, people. Just like in Paris suburbs a few years ago, at a smaller scale. As for segregation, it is rather obvious that many people who don't like typical Swedes are being kept apart. There is a neighborhood in Uppsala, Gottsunda, where they put immigrants. When we first moved to Sweden and were looking to buy a house we were explicitly warned not to go to Gottsunda. Such racist comments I thought existed only in Texas (and had experienced them). But Sweden, in some sense, is even more racist.

Back in 2011, when we had just moved to Sweden, there was this infamous mass killing in Norway by that human monster called Anders Breivik. The day after the killings, several people in Sweden started posting on Swedish newspaper sites, anonymously, their support for Breivik. I remember I got a call from Stockholm and was told to take a look at what they were saying. With the help of Google Translate, I read several of their comments and was appalled and scared. Good to know, however, I thought, that many people around me in Sweden support Breivik and would kill those whom they consider responsible for supporting immigrants. But my thought was quickly overturned: the Swedish newspapers decided to censor the readers' comments by deleting them and by closing their sites for a couple of days. They also created filters and other gadgets so that readers can't post anonymously (and, who knows, censor those who expressed their sympathy for Breivik).

Taking the train to and from Stockholm, one encounters some sad angry youth in neo-Nazi uniforms and tattoos: SS tattoos on their shaved heads. The reaction of passengers is to ignore them. I think they are scared, but I can't tell because they don't discuss it. I met Nazi demonstrations in Uppsala a few times. In 2010 or 11 there was this riot at the center of Uppsala by a bunch of angry young Nazis with pictures of blond men chasing black people. I approached one of them and asked him what's up. He said "we're against immigrants because they steal our jobs". I replied that "I'm an immigrant too and have the job of a professor in the University." I think I was aggressive and the young Nazi got scared. He replied  "it's only black immigrants we don't like. White Europeans are OK." "But I'm American", I said. He looks at me and says "It's OK, Americans are white Europeans." I didn't finish my sentence when a cop approached me and told me to get away.

And then, sometime later, we saw more riots of neo-Nazis, probably from the so-called "sverige demokraterna" party. The funny thing was that they had asked support of Greek Nazis from the equivalent "golden dawn" Nazi party. They brought them to Sweden for support!

The times are very fearsome. There is violence from all sides and it's rather clear that violence will escalate. I'd rather know than be in darkness. So I don't appreciate the censorship of information in Sweden. The Police view is that they should not "disturb" people by revealing that there was violence, rapes, murders, etc. But not all agree. It is silly and irrational not to know the truth. Take, for instance, the pre-war Jewry in Germany. Many of them were in denial that something bad would happen to them. Would it not have been better if they knew so they could get out while the could? When they finally found out what the true intentions of the Nazis were it was too late.

P.S. The latest response by Swedish government: Deport 80 thousand immigrants.  Previous response (4 weeks ago: fence borders.)

The silence of the Vatican, I

In April 1994, a Catholic priest, Athanase Seromba, promised safety to 2000 men, women and children in his church in Rwanda. These people expected to find refuge in Seromba's church from the atrocities which left a million people dead (the infamous Rwandan genocide). The people asked Seromba to pray for them. Instead, he ordered a bulldozer bring down the walls of the church, while the 2000 lives were in it, killing most of them. The ones who survived were shot by Seromba himself.

Nevertheless, Seromba continued working as a priest. In July 1994 he moved closer to the Vatican. He went to Italy and worked as a priest in a church near Florence under the name Anastasio Sumba Bura. He did so until 2002 when he was forced to surrender to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). In 2006 he was found guilty of mass murders and was sentenced to just 15 years of prison.

This is but one example of the complicity of the Catholic Church in the Rwandan genocide. Did the Vatican know? It is believed that, indeed, it did. But even if it did not, the Vatican keeps an eerie silence for the happenings in Rwanda. In fact, the Vatican has never taken back its statements defending Seromba before his conviction.

It appears that the Rwandan genocide is not high up in the priority list of Vatican apologies. It doesn't matter now. The Vatican has to deal with peadophilia and sexual abuses, offering lukewarm apologies to its European victims. Africans can wait for later. For now, the Vatican keeps (once more) silence...

Today's article from the Guardian:

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For Rwandans, the pope's apology must be unbearable

If sexual abuse in Ireland warrants his contrition, what contempt is shown by the Vatican's silence over its role in genocide.

If you are an Irish Catholic, and have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a priest, you were recently read a letter from Pope Benedict that tells you: "You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry. I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated."

For any practising Catholic in Rwanda, this letter must be unbearable. For it tells you how little you mean to the Vatican. Fifteen years ago, tens of thousands of Catholics were hacked to death inside churches. Sometimes priests and nuns led the slaughter. Sometimes they did nothing while it progressed. The incidents were not isolated. Nyamata, Ntarama, Nyarubuye, Cyahinda, Nyange, and Saint Famille were just a few of the churches that were sites of massacres.

To you, Catholic survivor of genocide in Rwanda, the Vatican says that those priests, those bishops, those nuns, those archbishops who planned and killed were not acting under the instruction of the church. But moral responsibility changes dramatically if you are a European or US Catholic. To the priests of the Irish church who abused children, the pope has this to say: "You must answer for it before almighty God and before properly constituted tribunals. You have forfeited the esteem of the people of Ireland and brought shame and dishonour upon your confreres."

The losses of Rwanda had received no such consideration. Some of the nuns and priests who have been convicted by Belgian courts and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, respectively, enjoyed refuge in Catholic churches in Europe while on the run from prosecutors. One such is Father Athanase Seromba, who led the Nyange parish massacre and was sentenced to 15 years in jail by the tribunal. In April 1994, Seromba helped lure over 2,000 desperate men, women and children to his church, where they expected safety. But their shepherd turned out to be their hunter.

One evening Seromba entered the church and carried away the chalices of communion and other clerical vestments. When a refugee begged that they be left the Eucharist to enable them to at least hold a (final) mass, the priest refused and told them that the building was no longer a church. A witness at the ICTR trial remembered an exchange in which the priest's mindset was revealed.

One of the refugees asked: "Father, can't you pray for us?" Seromba replied: "Is the God of the Tutsis still alive?" Later, he would order a bulldozer to push down the church walls on those inside and then urge militias to invade the building and finish off the survivors.

At his trial, Seromba said: "A priest I am and a priest I will remain." This, apparently, is the truth, since the Vatican has never taken back its statements defending him before his conviction.

In the last century, Catholic bishops have been deeply mired in Rwandan politics with the full knowledge of the Vatican. Take Archbishop Vincent Nsengiyumva. Until 1990, he had served as the chairman of the ruling party's central committee for almost 15 years, championing the authoritarian government of Juvenal Habyarimana, which orchestrated the murder of almost a million people. Or Archbishop André Perraudin, the most senior representative of Rome in 1950s Rwanda. It was with his collusion and mentorship that the hateful, racist ideology known as Hutu Power was launched – often by priests and seminarians in good standing with the church. One such was Rwanda's first president, Grégoire Kayibanda, a private secretary and protege of Perraudin, whose political power was unrivalled.

The support for Hutu Power was therefore not unknowing or naive. It was a strategy to maintain the church's powerful political position in a decolonising Rwanda. The violence of the 1960s led inexorably to the 1994 attempt to exterminate Tutsis. These were violent expressions of a political sphere dominated by contentions that Hutu and Tutsi were separate and opposed racial categories. This, too, is one of the legacies of the Catholic missionary, whose schools and pulpits for decades kept up a drumbeat of false race theories.

This turning away from the Rwandan victims of genocide comes at a time when the Catholic church is increasingly peopled by black and brown believers. It is difficult not to conclude the church's upper reaches are desperately holding on to a fast-vanishing racial patrimony.

Perhaps it is time Catholics forced the leaders of their church to deal with a history of institutional racism that endures, if the church is truly to live up to its fine words. Apologies are not sufficient, no matter how abject. What is demanded is an acknowledgment of the church's political power and moral culpability, with all the material and legal implications that come with it.

The silence of the Vatican is contempt. Its failure to fully examine its central place in Rwandan genocide can only mean that it is fully aware that it will not be threatened if it buries its head in the sand. While it knows if it ignores the sexual abuse of European parishioners it will not survive the next few years, it can let those African bodies remain buried, dehumanised and unexamined.

This is a good political strategy. And a moral position whose duplicity and evil has been witnessed and documented. For, it turns out, many people, scholars, governments and institutions inside and outside Rwanda are excavating their own roles in the genocide. The Vatican stands as an exception, its moral place now even lower than that of the government of France for its enduring friendship with genocidaires.

Intelligent designers deny the need for a designer

Recursivity: The Fruitlessness of ID "Research"

A heated discussion in Shallit's blog, where, for the first time I realized that there are supporters of the Intelligent Design movement, a spin-off of creationism, claiming that Intelligent Design does not require a designer or the supernatural (god, etc.)

This is in sharp contrast to the main writings of ID. Indeed, ID is defined as

the assertion that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as It is a modern form of the traditional teleological argument for the existence of God, but one which avoids specifying the nature or identity of the designer. The idea was developed by a group of American creationists who reformulated their argument in the creation-evolution controversy to circumvent court rulings that prohibit the teaching of creationism as science. Intelligent design's leading proponents – all of whom are associated with the Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank, believe the designer to be the God of Christianity.

It's the article written on Wikipedia by, obviously, Intelligent Designers themselves. One of the main proponents of ID, W. Dembski, is a theologian/philosopher at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and all his writings, talks and work incorporate and propagate christianity very heavily. (He is also trying to use mathematics to support the ID religion but his papers are laughable.) However, someone, writing under the name Joe G and posting in Shallit's blog, insists that (oh yes, he's a bit repetitive):

ID doesn't require the supernatural.
Does ID require a belief in "God"? No.
ID does not require a belief in "God".
ID does not require the supernatural.
All IDists are not religious.
I am an IDists and don't care about religion.
ID does not say anything about worship- nothiung about who, what, where, when nor how.
ID does not say anything about giving service.
ID is not based on any religious doctrine.
ID does not say anything about the supernatural.
ID does not require a belief in "God".
So the bottom line is ID is religious if and only if we change the definition of religion.
The designer could be "God" and that would not mean ID is religious.
ID does NOT argue for the existence of "God".
What IDists do does not have any impact on ID.
IDists have not written that ID is an argument for the existence of "God".
ID is about the DESIGN not the designer(s).
The Wikipedia entry on Intelligent Design can be refuted to any ID FAQ posted on pro-ID websites.
They should be sued for posting such nonsense and then perhaps they would think BEFORE they publish.

I asked him to modify the Wikipedia article (and also tell Dembski and the others about his non-beliefs in gods and religion). But he shies away from doing so. Wikipedia is a public document which can be changed if the information provided is not correct. However, Joe G will not do that. And even if he attempts to do so, leading IDists will not allow him. The reason is simple: ID is a religion, not a science. Scientific entries of Wikipedia welcome modifications (and they become better and better) and corrections of mistakes. But ID is of theological nature and, as such, it relies on faith and dogma.

A dangerous holocaust denialist with childish arguments

They [western powers] launched the myth of the Holocaust. They lied, they put on a show and then they support the Jews. The pretext [the Holocaust] for the creation of the Zionist regime [Israel] is a lie … a lie which relies on an unreliable claim, a mythical claim, and the occupation of Palestine has nothing to do with the Holocaust.

These are the words uttered by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a couple of days ago, to his worshippers at Tehran university, during the Quds (Jerusalem) Day rally, the regime's annual display of solidarity with the Palestinians.

Death to Israel!

cried his supporters in unison. This is not the first time Ahmadinejad denied the Holocaust. His usual claims are these:

"I belong to the university, I am an academician. I am interested in a scientific approach. I raise the question: In WWII over 60 million people lost their lives. Were they not human beings? Why is it only the Jews we focus on? If this a historical event then we should conduct research on it to make sure it is a reality. Why is it those who ask questions are being persecuted? Whereas we can question God, freedom, democracy, we are not allowed to question the Holocaust. If this happened, where did it happen? Did the Palestinian people have anything to do with it? Palestinians leave under threat, losing their lives. You might argue the Jews have the right to have a government. But where? Not by displacing a whole nation."

It is easy to see that Ahmadinejad is totally irrational: The first thing he mentions is that he is an academic. This is the usual tactic of those who do not have real arguments; they use their "scientific hat" to impress the audience. Second, he seems to want to deny the Holocaust, not because of the event per se, but because of other crimes and deaths that took place during WWII; and because he "feels" for the Palestinians. The fact the Palestinians have no state is NOT a reason for denying the Holocaust. This is absurd; irrational. Third, he claims we are not allowed to conduct a scientific investigation on the Holocaust. He is ignorant. There is probably more evidence of the Holocaust’s details than for any other genocide in history. Not only we have survivors, we also have details written and recorded by the Nazis themselves who wanted to satisfy their weird perversions in trying to extinguish a people. Fourth, nobody, in a free nation (unlike Iran), prohibits anyone to question the Holocaust, Democracy, God(s), whatever. It is in his nation where people are not allowed to question certain things like Allah's existence, Ahmadinejad's right to be a president. All his claims about the "myth of the Holocaust" return to the same point: Give Palestinians a state.

I happen to agree that Palestinians should have a state. But what does this have to do with a historical event like the Holocaust? It is as if Ahmadinejad is saying:

"I am going to deny the Holocaust as long as Palestine is not a sovereign nation. When that happens, I will withdraw and, perhaps, withdraw my claims that Holocaust did not take place."

The science of psychology must have studied these kind of people: those who are stubborn upon an issue and will be stubborn and adamant about it until they receive the reward they want. Children act exactly this way, until their parents fullfil their favours. But Ahmadinejad is, as far as we know, an adolescent. Yet he behaves exactly like a spoiled child.

What's unique about the Holocaust? Michael Fridman commented on it recently. There are denialists of all kinds of things (genocides, wars, terrorist acts, etc) but the Holocaust, according to Michael, is unique. Because it is simultaneously the most well-documented genocide in history and the most denied one.

On a positive side, several protesters in Iran did not agree with Ahmadinejad. "Death to the dictator", they cried, while marching in Teheran. Strikingly, one of the strongest calls for opposition participation in the Quds Day protests came from Hojatolleslam Sayyed Hassan Khomeini, grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution. In a thinly disguised rebuke to the hardliners, Khomeini called Quds Day "a day for the oppressed to resist against the oppressors", implying that it is also a day of protest against repression and oppression in Iran.