Angående utvisande av återvändande IS-medlemmar

English version can be found here: https://joakimhenberg.blogspot.com/2019/02/on-deportation-of-returning-isil-members.html

Det har varit mycket prat den senaste tiden om att utvisa medborgare som slagits för Islamska Staten (IS). Idag dök en sådan diskussion upp på mitt jobb precis när jag skulle hem, vilket gjorde att det var vad jag tänkte på hela vägen hem. Så här är vad jag tycker om saken: det vore en dålig idé av flera skäl.

För det första, att upphäva personers medborgarskap och utvisa dem skulle vara en rasistisk policy. Det kanske inte är omedelbart uppenbart. Jag menar, varför ska vi tvingar ta hand om folk, som inte ens är födda här, som gör hemska saker? Förtjänar de ens medborgarskap? Varför ska det vara vårt problem?

De är legitima bekymmer, men de är luriga på det viset att de kan leda dig in i en fälla som gör dina argument rasistiska. Att vilja att dåliga människor blir bestraffade är helt okej, men vi behöver vara försiktiga med exakt hur de blir bestraffade. Låt oss säga att en immigrant med medborgarskap begår några hemska brott: mord, sexuella övergrepp, rån och andra hemska saker. Vi vill inte ha henom här, eller hur? Men låt oss säga istället säga att personen inte var immigrant, en svensk Breivik till exempel. Ska vi deportera den personen? Vart i så fall?

Och där har du det. Om immigranten deporterad har vi olika lagar baserat på ursprungsland, kanske till och med etnicitet, oavsett om man är medborgare eller inte. Alla immigranter vore då andra klassens medborgare, vilket vore rasistiskt.

För det andra, att deportera personer är ett dåligt straff. Men vi vill ha bra människor här. Folk vi kan lita på, som bidrar till samhället. Det är väl den sortens människa vi vill ha som medborgare, eller hur?

Det är inte fel. Men fundera över det här: att flytta till ett annat land är svårt. Man behöver skaffa sig ett hem och ett jobb fort. Sedan behöver man lära sig språket så fort som möjligt, skapa sig ett helt nytt socialt nätverk och möta främlingsfientliga människor. Men är det värre än år av rättegångar och fängelse?

Om du vill se våra medborgare som stöttat IS straffade, bra, men är att tvinga dem att flytta verkligen straffet du tänkte dig? Skulle det inte vara bättre att tvinga dem att ta ansvar för sina handlingar inför lagen?

För det tredje, det vore usel utrikespolitik. Att ha bra utrikesrelationer är inte en dålig idé. Det underlättar handel, minskar etniskt våld, säkrar fred, skapar allianser och antagligen en myriad andra trevliga anledningar.

Så var händer med de relationerna om vi börjar skicka krigsförbrytare och terrorister till andra länder? Skulle du vilja ha fler av dem i ditt land? Inte? Andra länder vill inte ha dem heller. Varför skulle de ta emot personerna vi utvisar?

Knappt någon gillar IS, inte jag och antagligen inte du heller. But svenska medborgare som kommer tillbaks efter att ha slagits för IS är ett svenskt problem, så låt Sverige ta hand om det. Tvinga dem möta lagen.

Armistice Day

I’m not going to write out any sources for this since this is mostly just my own thoughts and should be taken as such. Many, if not all of the issues discussed here have been simplified for argument’s sake. While I do want to write about everything here in detail, this would be more than I’m willing to do with this article.

This is a very special day. As you might know, the first world war, or the great war, ended exactly a hundred years ago today at 11:00. This is a war that to my mind changed the world more than any other war in history. Much of the world we live in today is shaped by this war by one way or another. But so what?

Many of us who are fascinated by history get asked this question. So what if some “important” war ended a hundred years ago? What do events from over a hundred years ago have to do with today? Why should I care about events from a time hardly any of us have lived through? This is not an article berating people to care about history more though. I don’t want to do that. Rather, I want to share some of my thoughts on what we can learn from it. Because I see this war as a sort of birth of our modern world as we know it.

First off, let’s get some basics out of the way. The war began the 28^th of July 1914, a month after and as a consequence of the assassination of Austrian arch duke Franz Ferdinand in the city of Sarajevo in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was fought between two sides, one called the Entente, or the Allies, the other being the Central Powers. It ended, as stated previously, at 11:00 the 11^th of November 1918 with different armistices signed from late September, the last one between Germany and the Entente. There, some facts and dates are out of our way now.

So it’s four years of bloody conflict. How has that changed the world? Although this war was particularly bloody, we’ve had plenty of other conflicts both longer and bloodies than this. What’s so special about the Great War?

Let’s start simple with borders, governments and such. Well, they changed. Before the war we had three emperors, a sultan, plenty of kings, and as far I can tell only four republics among the warring countries. Emperors, kings and a sultan, doesn’t that sound a bit archaic for the 20^th century? After the war and as a direct result of it we had no emperors, no sultan, still plenty of kings and plenty of republics. This shift has a deeper meaning than just changing who runs stuff. It has to do with a word you might have heard in the news these last few years: nationalism.

Franz Ferdinand’s murder was planned by and executed by nationalists. Nationalist movements and fervor were widespread before the war but absolutely exploded because of it, especially if we look to the 20^th century as a whole. If we define nationalism as a people wanting to govern themselves, which I would say is fairly correct, that can get pretty strange in a place like Sweden that’s already governed by swedes and mostly inhabited by them as well. But instead imagine yourself in a country where your leader and the ruling class doesn’t speak your language or even seem to care about the prosperity of your region, your home. Wanting your people to govern themselves seems pretty tempting now, doesn’t it? Empires fell during the 20^th century, four of them between 1917 and 1923 as a direct effect of the war. Nations around the world ruled by foreigners saw that and took note.

Nationalism wasn’t the only idea used to oppose the ruling elite. For some it wasn’t just national independence which should be opposed, but also the idea of a ruling class itself. 1917 saw two major revolutions in Russia, one to bring down the emperor, and one to put the Bolsheviks into power to create the world’s first communist country: the Soviet Union. If you didn’t know, communism was to play a big part in the world politics of the 20^th century.

How about the mere art of war? This goes back to the French Revolution, because Napoleon is famous for a reason. The nobility of Europe got somewhat of a scare when the revolution came and it seemed like nothing could stop it. Since ancient times most of the world was ruled by one kind of ruling class or another. Military officers were people generally from this class who commanded soldiers. France now had a people’s army and their job wasn’t to keep the lower classes in check. This made the lower classes wanting for the army to succeed, and were welcome to join in the hundreds of thousands. This wasn’t how armies were supposed to operate. It was too dangerous for the nobility. This is a big part of why Napoleon was as successful as he was. European politicians wanted little to do with war after Napoleon, at least regarding war on equal terms.

Another thing happening before the Great War was the Industrial Revolution. I won’t go into it much here, but technology, economy and industrial production skyrocketed during the 19^th century, which led to an enormous amount of innovations and a population boom that keeps on going to this day. These innovations included many weapons that were effectively used by empires to keep subjected peoples in check all over the world. You could travel all over the world quicker with said weapons with iron horses (trains) and new, fancy ships not powered by sail or oars. 

Now let’s combine the two. Let’s have a war between royal families, not rarely related to one another, after a global population boom where the governments are the richest in the world leaving many able young men free to be sent towards the enemy with the newest and deadliest weapons the world has to offer! Cannons were bigger, rifles were more accurate, planes, machineguns and radios existed and the agricultural tool barbed wire proved good at managing both cattle and enemy soldiers.

Many were woefully unprepared for this. The UK only managed to send almost 250 000 troops to protect Belgium against a German force many times that size and Austria-Hungary found themselves in a logistical nightmare trying to suddenly invade Serbia and defend against Russia at the same time. French soldiers march into modern war with red pants and blue jackets, not something you see much of today. Hardly anyone had proper winter uniforms, since the war would be over by Christmas, leading to hundreds of thousands freezing to death. No one knew how to attack anything without thousands dying when both sides had these new weapons.

With time we learned what came to be called Combined Arms Warfare, where a military operation is carried out by using many combat arms simultaneously. Doesn’t that sentence sound quite modern? Could those words come out of the mouth of an emperor or sultan in your imagination? After a while we had large scale chemical warfare, air wings, tanks, ideas about the military we still use today, and many, many corpses. This is the war that shaped modern warfare. It’s not noble or adventurous. It’s simply something to be avoided if you can. 

I’ve often heard people describe the Great War as “actually more of a European war.” This is sadly not the case. To put things into perspective, more people died in the East African Campaign during the Great War than in today’s Syrian Civil War so far. It wasn’t just East Africa though. Other places the war was fought in include Cameroon, Togoland, South-West and North Africa, Sinai, Palestine, Caucasus, Mesopotamia, Arabia and on the high seas and many islands over the world. These are the non-European places. In Europe we didn’t just have the Western Front either. The Balkans, Eastern and Italian Fronts and the Gallipoli Campaign were not small theatres of war. This was a world war.

Thinking it was a European war because it was fought mainly between European powers (forgetting the Ottoman Empire) I would say is equally as erroneous as it focuses on just who made the big decisions. The war was fought by people from every continent except for Antarctica. Indians, Australians, Arabs, Japanese, Congolese, Azeri, Algerians, Canadians and Tanzanians fought and died during the war to name a few. This really was a world war.

The effects of the war can be felt and seen to this day. It didn’t mark an end to colonial rule, but it did start a decline of the colonial powers’ grip over the world. Many nationalist movements over the world did not lose steam or die down. One region this could be felt was the Middle East. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the many different peoples previously ruled by them hoped for a future of independence. But this was sadly not to be for everyone. Much of the Middle East was divided between the British and French, who did not to an excellent job ruling there. Promises of independence made during the war to Arabs and Zionists were simply discarded and explained away. This goes as far as one of the goals of the terror kind-of-state ISIL was to reverse the changes the British and French did to the region. While I certainly do not support ISIL, they do have a point there to say the least. Much needs to be done to repair the damages the war brought to the world.

Let’s talk feminism! Now, the Great War certainly didn’t create or lead to first-wave feminism, since it had already been around for a good while. But the war saw a big change in women’s role in society. The waring nations sent many of their men to war. After a while women had to be allowed to work in factories and such for both the economy and front line to hold. Not surprisingly this was met by protests, but no catastrophe happened because a woman did a “mans” job. This left women advocating for more rights in a powerful position and if you look at when women’s suffrage was introduced in Europe and North America you’ll see that many countries that was between 1917 and 1925. A continuation of this can be seen from 1944 onwards for the rest of the world with World War Two going towards its final phases and later coincides with second-wave feminism. So do you like to have women in the workforce? This first happened large scale in modern times during the Great War, contributing to the fight for equality.

And last, but not least in my incomplete list of important changes the Great War brought to the world: facial hair. Before the war, facial hair was rather popular. After the war you’d see many more men with clean shaven chins. This has a surprisingly simple reason to it. As stated previously, the war saw the introduction of large scale chemical warfare. This made gasmasks a necessity on many fronts. Most facial hair caused gasmasks to not be able to seal around your face, making them useless. So despite orders, many soldiers shaved to, well, not die a horrible death. After a while the standing orders to have facial hair were removed and after the war most soldiers returned home without magnificent beards and mustaches. Fashion often looks to the military for inspiration, so facial hair had to be left behind as a relic of the 19^th century.

This has been a quick and far from complete overview of how the Great War affected our world. I hope you learned something. One of the subjects I wanted to but didn’t cover here was medicine. You’ll just have to read up on that on your own, if you’re not too squeamish about shell shock, grievous wounds and facial disfigurement (which would be quite understandable). And try this thought: what did you do late summer/early autumn of 2014? If we go back a hundred years, one of the worst wars in history has been raging since then. Much suffering was brought to the world. Millions have died, millions more were wounded. But now the guns are quiet. Civil wars are still going on and not quite everyone across the world stopped shooting at each other, but the Great War is over.

Kalla dem vad de är

Den här artikeln innehåller exempel på rasistiska skällsord och andra extrema yttranden.

Okej, den 9 september är det val. Det är snart. Jag har egentligen bara ett enda budskap till dig. Gå och rösta! Det spelar ingen större roll vilka du röstar på denna gången, om det blir S, KD, V, M, MP, L, C, FI, PP eller annat, så länge det inte blir SD, NMR, AfS, SvP eller annat nynazistiskt parti.

Du läste rätt. Jag säger och menar att Sverigedemokraterna (SD) är nynazister. För mig är detta väldigt uppenbart och jag ska försöka visa dig varför här genom att titta lite närmare på varför SD finns och varför de har vissa av de policys de har.

En anledning till att kalla SD nynazister är för varifrån de kommer som parti. De grundades som parti 1988 av flera svenska nynazister^[1], bland annat Gustaf Ekström, en före detta Waffen-SS soldat som in i sin död 1995 var övertygad nazist^[2]. Detta tar de gärna avstånd från idag^[3] och vi kommer till varför senare. Flera av de tidiga i SD var tidigare även med i Bevara Sverige Svenskt (BSS) (samt Framstegspartiet, Svensk socialistisk samling, Vitt ariskt motstånd och det kortlivade Sverigepartiet). BSS i sin tur hade kopplingar till både Nordiska Rikspartiet och Nysvenska rörelsen och var inspirerat av europeiska organisationer så som brittiska National Front och franska Front national (idag Rassemblement national).^[4] Sverigedemokraternas nazistiska kopplingar går alltså på många håll ändå bak till Andra världskriget, ibland längre.

En annan anledning till att kalla SD nynazister är för i vilken miljö deras nuvarande ledare blev medlemmar. År 1995 fick de en ny partiledare, Mikael Jansson, och det bestämdes då att partiet ska utåt vara rumsrent.^[5] De hade redan då och skulle komma att vara inblandade i flera skandaler, som att ta med handgranater till tal hållna av politiska motståndare, att hålla tal hos Nationalsocialistisk front framför naziflagga och iklädd naziuniform, samt alla de mängder av rasistiska uttalanden gjort av diverse medlemmar, stora som små. Men innan 1995 gick inte detta emot deras image, och den förändringen har varit långsam. Flera av partiets toppolitiker blev medlemmar innan den här processen började, Jimmie Åkesson inkluderat, och blev då alltså lockade av hur partiet var innan. Också många av de topppolitiker som blev medlemmar efter 1995 har varit involverade i skandaler där de uttalat sig eller agerat djupt rasistiskt eller antisemitiskt. Senast i år lämnade en stor del av SD partiet för att bilda sitt eget Alternativ för Sverige (AfS), med sitt namn inspirerat av tyska nynazisterna Alternative für Deutschland. Igår såg jag även en reklam ute på stan där de skröt om att vara det enda partiet som försöks avsätta ”Stefans regering” den här mandatperioden. Att försöka avsätta en demokratiskt vald regering är inte ett tecken på demokratiska värderingar enligt mig. Det har varit en långsam process att göra SD rumsrent och den är inte klar på långa vägar.

En tredje anledning till att kalla SD nynazister är för hur deras politik passar väl in i den medvetna strategi nynazister har runt om i världen. Länge och ofta har nazister velat uttrycka sina åsikter öppen inför allmänheten för att alla ska se och höra. Man vill göra sin åsikt hörd och det är det de flesta tänker på när de hör ordet ”nynazist”. Men många har märkt att man kommer snabbare framåt med extrem politik och lyckas värva fler om man håller tyst om de mest radikala delarna och försiktigt och medvetet presenterar sina åsikter som inte så hemska egentligen och rent av ganska vettiga. Med tiden kan man föra in de nyvärvade medlemmarna i sin faktiska ideologi, för bland det värsta de kan göra för sin rörelse är att visa den ideologin öppet.

Det finns många organisationer inom nynazism och extremhögern runt om i världen. De delar väldigt ofta åsikter, men fokuserar på olika frågor utåt. Jag kommer använda termen ”extremhögern” eller liknande för att beskriva händelser och organisationer i USA för att deras sådana rörelser har ofta funnits där längre än vad nazism har. The Unite the Right rally var en demonstration organiserad av extremhögern i Charlottesville förra året som få har missat. Under demonstrationen ropades saker som ”Jews will not replace us” (“judarna kommer inte ersätta oss”), ”Blood and Soil” (”blod och jord”), ”Hail Victory” (”hell seger”) och “Gas the kikes, race war now” (”gasa judarna, raskrig nu”).^[6] Du kanske ser själv att detta är några väldigt nynazistiska saker att ropa. I efterhand har många från extremhögern sett på demonstrationen som en förlust, för de tappade väldigt mycket förtroende av allmänheten på grund av det, exemplifierat av följande post från forumet /pol/ på hemsidan 4chan.org där extremhögerpolitik ofta diskuteras:

Jag lämnar den oöversatt för all slang den innehåller. Men i stort säger den att de ska ta avstånd från öppen KKK/nazi-extremism och istället fokusera på små, realistiska mål, samt att alltid hålla de långsiktiga målen hemliga med syftet att nå den genomsnittliga amerikanen.

Att försköna sina extrema åsikter för allmänheten och hålla sina slutmål hemliga är ingen ny strategi. Här är ett citat taget från en intervju med Lee Atwater, som var politisk rådgivare för Ronald Reagan och George H. W. Bush, från 1981: 

"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger'  -- that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites."^[7][8]

“Du börjar med att 1954 säga ‘Neger, neger, neger.’ 1968 kan du inte säga ’neger’ längre – det skadar dig. Bakslår. Så du säger saker som bussning, statsrättigheter och allt sådant. Du blir så abstrakt att du pratar om att sänka skatter, och alla de här sakerna du pratar om är helt ekonomiska saker och en biprodukt av dem är att svarta råkar värre ut än vita.” (Övrs. av mig)

Min poäng med att visa dessa liknelser mellan olika högerextrema rörelser är visa dig att de är alla samma rörelse. De är alla samma stora sällskap. De hjälper varandra^[9], besöker varandra och skriver gott om varandra. De må inte alltid vara sams eller ha exakt samma åsikt, vilket leder till att många små organisationer ständigt bildas. Och de vet att association med nazism är dåligt för dem. Kallar de sig själva för ”nazister” så tappar de stöd. Följande termer är några av de som har dykt upp eller använts under åren för att beskriva en liten variation i deras ideologi: nationalism, neonationalism, socialkonservatism, nationalkonservatism, högerpopulism, nationalpopulism, identitarism, alternativa högern (altervative right eller alt right), vit makt, vit nationalism, etnonationalism, nativism, reaktionism och neoreaktionism.

Självklart betyder dessa olika saker och det ligger i deras intresse att förstora upp skillnaderna så mycket som möjligt. Fast ofta i vårt nuvarande politiska klimat används de för samma stora grupp människor som enligt mig mer korrekt kan beskrivas med följande termer: nazism, fascism och extremhöger, med eller utan ett ”ny-” innan, som du vill.

Detta gäller även i Sverige. Nordiska motståndsrörelsen (NMR), AfS och Svenskarnas Parti (SvP) må vara platser för mer öppen rasism och antisemitism, medan SD är den snälla, polerade fasaden utåt, till för att locka allmänheten in i deras ideologi. Därför anser jag att Sverigedemokraterna är ett nynazistiskt parti. Därför anser jag också att de är ett hot mot vår land, folk och demokrati. Så snälla, gå och rösta! Och rösta inte på SD eller annat nynazistiskt parti!

Om du inte vet vad du ska rösta på har jag ett tips som jag fick höra via min sambo härom dagen:
- Skriv en lista med de olika partiernas namn.
- Stryk det partiet du allra helst inte vill rösta på.
- Stryk det partiet du allra helst inte vill rösta på av de som är kvar.
- Upprepa tills du antingen har ett alternativ kvar eller en tillräckligt kort lista för att bestämma dig för något.

Du måste inte nödvändigtvis tycka om de du röstar på, bara tycka bättre om dem är de andra. Och jag anser att inte rösta eller att rösta blankt är en dålig protest. Det må vara av fina anledningar, men det gör dig bara tyst, så att ingen lyssnar på dig. Bättre då att ge dem så lite plats i riksdagen, landstingsfullmäktige och kommunfullmäktige som möjligt. Rösta!

Äring och fred
Joakim Henberg

Källor:

[1] - https://www.expressen.se/kvallsposten/har-bildar-nazisterna-partiet-sd--i-malmo/
[2] - https://www.aftonbladet.se/ledare/a/GW256/sds-nazirotter-ar-varre-an-vi-vetat
[3] - https://www.expressen.se/debatt/sluta-anvanda-nazismens-forbrytelser-som-slagtra-i-debatten/
[4] - https://expo.se/arkivet/2003/04/bakgrund-bakom-den-demokratiska-fasaden
[5] - https://expo.se/fakta/wiki/sverigedemokraterna (läst 2018-09-01)
[6] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcoYKuoiUrY
[7] - https://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/opinion/impossible-ridiculous-repugnant.html
[8] - https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/ (innehåller hela intervjun i ljudfil)
[9] - https://www.metro.se/artikel/minst-14-sd-politiker-har-gett-ekonomiskt-st%C3%B6d-till-nazistparti

[*] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx4BVGPkdzk (inspiration till artikeln)

The Armenian Question

The question has resurfaced again, as it so often does. Was what happened to the armenian people mainly in 1915 a genocide? Germany now officially thinks so. And Turkish president Erdogan responds with calling it blackmail. Personally, I don't quite understand Turkey's stance in this since the solution seems so easy: blame it on the Three Pashas. I know it takes a bit more than that, but bear with me.

This has some history to it, so for those of you who don't know these events took place during the World War I, also called the Great War, which raged from 1914 to 1918. The Ottoman Empire, which ruled over much of the Middle East, entered the war late 1914 when Enver Pasha, the Minister of War, disguised two German warships as Ottoman and attacked the Russian Empire without informing the rest of the cabinet. Basically he tricked the whole empire into war, a war that would dissolve said empire. Towards the winter that year he launched a campaign into the Caucasus Mountains to attack the Russians, but he didn't give his soldiers proper winter clothing, this proved disastrous to say the least. Numbers differ here, but generally you could say that out of the whole Third Army, roughly 118 000 people, more than half of the Ottoman soldiers never returned home, and more than half of those froze to death. This, the Battle of Sarikamish was but the first battle of a war that would continue for years. Enver Pasha, who also led the attack and forced his troops to attack against impossible odds, blamed the whole failed attack on the Armenians.

Some background on minorities in the Ottoman Empire, I'm going to try to keep this simple: the empire was big. At its height the corners of the empire was in today's Algeria, Ethiopia, Iraq and Hungary, as you can imagine this includes a whole bunch of minorities. But this was in the 17th century. By the time of the Great War mostly only the Middle East was under Ottoman rule, and the Balkans had successfully rebelled only recently. This leaves four major ethnicities left in the empire, namely the Turks, Arabs, Kurds and Armenians. The Arabs has a fascinating story of their own during the war, so I won't cover them here. And of course there are many more ethnicities here, but these are what I see as the main players in this.

Towards the end of the 19th century there was a series of massacres of Armenians by the ruling Turkish elite as a response to a growing Armenian nationalist liberation movement, so there was some resentment over this by early 20th century. And what happened in the years prior to the Great War was a series of Balkan wars, which ended with many provinces in the Balkans leaving the Ottoman Empire to create their own independent states, as previously stated. The Armenians and Kurds saw this and began to wonder if they should perhaps govern themselves as well and began looking for ways to achieve this. When war broke out with the Russians, many Kurds and Armenians joined or otherwise helped the Russians in this fight in the hope that Russia would support Armenian and Kurdish independence. This was seen as traitorous by the Ottoman government. Their response? Disarm all Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman forces and use them as labour, start killing off many able bodied young Armenian men and arrest and/or kill over two thousand Armenian intellectuals around the empire. What then started was a mass deportation of most of the Armenian population with the purpose of stripping the Armenians their ability to organize any kind of opposition to the Ottoman government. What this mass deportation included was death marches through the Syrian deserts, starvation, confiscation of property, concentration camps and straight up massacres. The death toll of these events is hard to say exactly. The low estimate is the official Turkish one at 300 000 dead, the high estimate is that of Armenia, at 1 500 000 dead.

Is this genocide? The official story of Turkey today is that these mass deportations didn't include deliberate killing, but that seem to clash with many witness reports, some of those Turkish, any many Turkish officials who protested at the time against what some called the "annihilation" of the Armenians.

So where does this put Turkey today? Are they responsible for genocide? I would ultimately say no, they are not. The genocide was orchestrated by the three men who pretty much ruled the empire at the time, namely Mehmed Talaat Pasha, Ismail Enver Pasha and Ahmed Djemal Pasha, collectively known as the Three Pashas (Pasha is an honorary military name given upon being promoted to the rank of Mirliva). I mainly blame them for what happened. And if you hadn't noticed, the Ottoman Empire doesn't exist today. After the war the Three Pashas fled into exile and Turkey got caught in a war for independence with Mustafa Kemal, also known as Atatürk (who hated Enver Pasha by the way), leading the Turks to victory and establishing the Republic of Turkey, the one that exists today.

This creates a bit of a conundrum as to how responsible modern Turkey is, and what it seems to have ended in is an acknowledgement by Turkey that bad things happened, but they refuse to agree to the word "genocide". And they have arguments for this, some more or less solid. But their arguments are not as strong as the ones of the Armenian people. One thing Erdogan said yesterday was "The countries that are blackmailing us with these Armenian genocide resolutions have the blood of millions of innocents on their hands.", referring to the Holocaust and the Herero and Namaqua genocide. The difference in my eyes is that Germany has without a doubt owned up to that, but I have yet to see that attitude from Turkey. Apologies for atrocities made by generations before have to my knowledge been a pretty good thing for the apologizing nations.

So back to my point, the way I see it, the best way for Turkey to get past this is to clearly apologise as a people while at the same time laying the blame with the individuals who planned and executed the whole thing, the Three Pashas.

This has been my slightly condensed view and thoughts on a very big and complicated, so I assume you will not agree with everything written here. If I have made any mistakes here, please let me know. Anyway, if nothing else, I hope this at least can be some food for thought.

Prosperity and peace
Joakim Henberg

On the Subject of No

After hearing Bunny Wailers message of love, peace and well being for all the people of this world at Liseberg the other day I can't help but to feel compelled to write. Though his words rang with a will for world peace and everyone working together for a better world, my thoughts lately have been on a more personal side of love, the one of sexuality and respect for your fellow man, and a serious problem that's finally been more openly discussed in the general public.

A few weeks ago I attend West Pride here in Gothenburg and for the first time walked in a Pride parade. These last few years I've made an extraordinary journey through myself with my own sexuality and I felt it was about time I participated more activlely outwards and started using my voice. There was some confusion on with section of the train my small company of friends should walk in, but we ended up not inaccurately with the polyamorous people. It felt good proudly walking there in front of everyone with my wonderful girlfriend in hand beside me, but I'm going to be frank with you, we would have walked even prouder in a BDSM-section.

The BDSMf*-scene is a world wide place of society where you'll find people with an amazing sense of integrity, respect and open-mindedness, because these things are absolutely vital to the lifestyle. You cannot have sadomasochism or bondage without an enormous respect for safety and the dangers that may arise. The integrity of every participant is paramount, both in form of feeling comfortable in the situation and that this side of you will not be public knowledge in a world where an essential part of you is taboo and often not protected against discrimination. And in that part of society where people will meet and support each other and create a forum for sexuality you would be nowhere without an open mind and an acceptance of others attractions. All this creates a place where you would be respected as you would nowhere else, but also a collection of people whose expertise on sex and safety is probably as high as it can ever be. Of course there are rotten eggs in this basket as well. BDSMf is not one monolithic thing and there are about as many versions of it as there are participants, and not att participants and good people, which leads us to the problem I mentioned earlier.

The justice system and law here in Sweden is seriously lacking in both protection of the participants and expertise on the subject. Lately there have been popping up many newsreports of rapes done in the name of BDSM where the rapist has gone free, here's one example (all links in swedish today). The handling of cases like this has gotten a lot of critisism, not the least from the BDSM-scene. The thing I hear the most is the wish for the law to be altered so that sex must require a consent in some form or negligence of damage caused to that person, and I love that this is finally being discussed, not to mention it being discussed this openly. But the biggest reaction of the BDSM-scene is another. Earlier this week I attended my first meeting with the BDSMf-group of the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU) (for which I am not a representative, just to be clear) and the main concern there was the same as mine, the amount knowledge that judges and attourneys possess of these types of sex is frighteningly low.

The kind of activities we're talking about when we say BDSM can be dangerous. Dangerous to the extent of the worst case senario if done wrong being death (though extremely rare and far from acceptable). We know this and I won't go into here why we like this stuff, but we also have adapted to it. Like a said earlier, there's enormous respect for safety here and we accomplish this through the abbreviation SSC. It guides pretty much all our activities, and since law doesn't seem to apply to us we are very strict on this. SSC stands for Safe, Sane and Consensual:

• Safe as in "how might this be dangerous?" and "can I use some form of safety through devices or tecniques that removes or minimizes that danger?". For instance, everytime i tie someone up I have a special kind of scissors at hand at all times in case of emergency. Things like that.

• Sane most often applies to how activities might affect people around and the participants themselves. There can be things you really want to do but it would be reckless in its raw form. For instance, if you drive someone to tears and then leave him or her there and do nothing else, you would have failed on the sane-part in my book.

• Consent is perhaps the most relevant here. We deal with that mostly in two ways. First the participants talk to each other to establish what they want out of it, things they don't want to do, would do if asked and generally getting a feel of each other to make things easier and more fun. This part can be shortened if done at a club as there are other people around that can come to your aid if needed.
  Secondly there are safewords. A safeword can be anything really, a word you otherwise wouldn't use during sex (not "stop", "no" or something like that), humming a melody or even a nonvocal signal of some sort. If tied up and cannot speak, some hold keys or a rubber ball in their hand to simply drop. The idea of a safeword is that when spoken all activities stop at once, you abort the play because something is wrong. Two words often used as safewords are "red" and "yellow" and are often house rules in clubs, "red" for stop and "yellow" for pause.

This is how safety is done in the BDSM world and this is what the justice system does not understand. If you're doing bondage or having rough sex with someone and don't have a safeword, "stop" means stop, "no" means no. Negligence of that is not acceptable, it's rape. And I can tell you it's scary to know that if I would rape somebody, I would get away with it. Of course, I would be shunned by the whole community and generally hated, but there would be no jailtime and no fine for me to be paid. And when attourneys and judges use words like "dominanssex" ("dominance sex") it screams lack of knowledge and we in the know cringes from how poorly educated they are on the subject. (Is dominance sex opposed from submission sex? Are you then having different types of sex with each other at the same time? This is not a term used in the scene as it would be confusing.)

Anyway, these are some of my thoughts and opinions on the ongoing debate. I've been wanting to speak up on this ever since i saw this wonderful and inspiring article, I do have some knowledge and experience here. But at the same time it's scary to know that we are operating outside the protection of law, but I have high hopes that this might change soon. Debates like this can make societies better places to live in.


Prosperity and peace
Joakim Henberg


*BDSMf stand for Bondage, Discipline, Dominance, Submission, Sadism, Masochism and Fetishism. It encompassed A LOT of different sexualities and versions there of.