Gästen

Beyond the Bedroom

Gästen

Skrivet av Olav S. Melin Onsdag, 20 Mars 2013 14:10

Op-ed columnist from The New York Times, Frank Bruni writes in this column about the challenges of the Catholic church and the new pope Francis:

"On the far side of all the church scandals and all its misspent energy, these Catholics still see a fundamental set of values, a compass, that they don't want to lose touch with or give up on."

IT was too much to hope that after the white smoke rose and the TV anchors began nervously filling time and the cameras lingered for what seemed an eternity on that balcony over St. Peter's Square, the man who stepped onto it would be someone open to revisiting the most archaic, obsolete matters of Roman Catholic doctrine. The group electing him was assembled by the last two popes, both conservatives. Its choice was bound to be more carbon copy than new page.

But it's not too much to hope that the man who did appear there - and who has lived a willfully humble material existence until now, and took the name of the poor's patron saint - will change the church's emphasis. That's the great opportunity before Pope Francis, whose biography and style make him an ideal candidate to point the church toward a new conversation and a better focus for its spiritual energies. To have it dwell less in the bedroom, more in the soup kitchen.

It's time for the church to stop talking so much about sex. It's the perfect time, in fact.

It's on matters of sexual morality that the church has lost much of its authority. And it's on matters of sexual morality that it largely wastes its breath. By insisting on mandatory celibacy for a priesthood winnowed and sometimes warped by that, by opposing the use of contraceptives for birth control, by casting judgment on homosexuals and by decrying divorce while running something of an annulment mill, the church's leaders have enraged and alienated Catholics whose common sense and whose experience of the real world tell them that none of that is wise, kind or necessary.

The church's leaders have also set themselves up to be dismissed as hypocrites, unable to uphold the very virtues they promulgate. Just weeks before the conclave, the most senior Catholic prelate in Britain, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, resigned his post, forgoing a trip to Rome and a vote on the next pope, because he'd been accused of, and admitted to, sexual misconduct. His case suggested the potential loneliness of a Catholic clergyman's circumstances, and those circumstances, in the eyes of many Catholics, cast priests as odd, flawed messengers and counselors on the subject of a person's intimate life.

The new pope's own story includes a bold lesson on Catholics' estrangement from, and defiance of, church edicts in this regard. More than 90 percent of Argentines identify themselves as Catholic, and in 2010, as the country's politicians debated the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage, Pope Francis - who was then a cardinal, and arguably the most prominent church official in the country - lobbied vociferously, even venomously, against that proposed law. He called it nothing less than a "plan of the devil." It nonetheless passed, with some observers speculating that the stridency of his opposition worked in its favor. Argentina is now one of 11 countries that have legalized gay marriage. Two of the others, Spain and Portugal, also have populations that are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, at least nominally.

The child sexual abuse crisis, of course, has factored mightily into the church's eroded credibility on sexual morality. And the media's sustained examination of that crisis has made it difficult for church leaders to redirect attention toward the church's concern for economic justice, its ministry to the needy and the extraordinary work that many of the church's servants perform on those fronts.

But new cases and new revelations are ebbing or certain to ebb. Fewer cardinals and bishops now indulge the kind of denial that protected molesters and abetted cover-ups. And there's not a watchful parent anywhere who would unquestioningly let a son or daughter go off with Father Bruce for long periods of time. Years ago, such permission aggravated the problem: priests - men of God - were trusted in situations where no other adult with an unusually intense interest in children would be. That epoch is over, that innocence lost.

POPE Francis comes along at an opportune juncture. There's a growing consciousness and worry about inequities of wealth in a world in which the estimated 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty, with an income of $1.25 a day or less, outnumber the roughly 1.2 billion Catholics.

That desperation is fertile territory for the church, whose voice is most persuasive and essential on the landscapes of hunger, homelessness, sickness, war. To many Catholics, active and lapsed, the beauty of the faith and the essence of Jesus Christ reside in a big-hearted compassion that has been eclipsed and often contradicted by church leaders' excursions into the culture wars.

Pope Francis could pull back on those excursions. He'd be wise to, and he's well positioned to. In Argentina he was known in part for his rejection of material wealth and his concern for those without it. He opted for a simple apartment over a baronial residence. Did his own cooking. Rode the bus. Advised supporters not to travel all the way to Rome for the ceremony in which he became a cardinal.

The money necessary for the trip, he told them, was better donated to a good cause.

And during his first 48 hours as pope, he clung to that sort of humility, riding with other cardinals in a minivan rather than alone in a papal chariot. The vigor with which fellow cardinals and Vatican spokesmen heralded this suggested their eagerness for a new image for the church and their understanding that the pivot from Benedict XVI to Francis - from furs to frugality - might provide it.

It's a gilded enclave that Francis is entering, one of grand rooms, majestic artwork, regal costumes. From my time on the papal plane a decade ago, I remember sumptuous meals wheeled up to the first-class section where Vatican officials sat. They ate well.

And that has turned off many Catholics: the perception that these officials are coddled, arrogant and out of touch. Francis could challenge that and, in doing so, have a real impact.

I know more than a few Catholics who, despite no other involvement in the church, make it a point to have their children christened. I always figured them to be superstitious. They're hedging their bets.

But there's more to it. On the far side of all the church scandals and all its misspent energy, these Catholics still see a fundamental set of values, a compass, that they don't want to lose touch with or give up on. The church's stubborn attachment to certain negotiable traditions and unenlightened positions has distanced them, but they're not entirely gone. It'll be interesting to see how, and if, Francis tries to bring them back.

Finland is a hostage of its history

Gästen

Skrivet av Olav S. Melin Onsdag, 27 Februari 2013 11:24

I gästkolumnen skriver Alexis Kouros, chefredaktör för Helsinki Times, om sin egen erfarenhet av krig och om Finlands roll i historien:

"I have been in a war and I want to share with you the two most important things I learned form it. One: Wars are unfortunate mistakes and primitive acts of violence. Two: There are no winners in any war.

Finland, as a young nation, has had its share of conflicts. While the people have been able to forgive and forget the brutal civil war to a great extent, memories of the two wars with Russia have been kept alive with painstaking effort.

When a few years ago Ilta-Sanomat published a special "Winter War" supplement, the whole first edition of the magazine was sold out in just a few days. Additional prints also sold out swiftly. The 68-page supplement, among other heroic tales of war, told the touching story of a seven-year-old girl who became the symbol of the child victims of the Winter War- 70 years ago! Later the newspaper published a second supplement about the "Continuation War" with similar success. Every year new books and reports are published about the two Finnish wars fought more than half a century ago. They all sell very well.

Listening to the radio on my way to work, I heard a broadcast about a project to erect a monument in memory of the Finnish Winter War against Russia. At first, I thought I was listening to one of those "This Day, 50 Years Ago" archival broadcasts, until I heard that the €1.7 m monument, to be placed in Kasarmintori, is to be inaugurated in 2015 and is protected by no less than former President Ahtisaari.

Why would a Nobel peace prize winner want to be the guardian angel of a war memorial? And why would Finland, in 2015, want to erect yet another monument in memory of a war fought 75 years ago? This is certainly one of the important dilemmas in Finland today; that of attitude and direction. The conflict between looking back and moving forward.

At a time when war monuments are being uprooted to museums and graveyards, we are erecting yet another one in a central square. Why can't we build a monument in celebration of the 75 years of peace and friendship that has existed between Russia and Finland? Why can't we celebrate the huge amount of benefit our neighbour is bringing us in the form of business co-operations and tourism.

Today, Russia is the main trade partner of Finland and every year record number of Russians visit Finland, spending millions of Euros in shopping and services. Yet according to a Russian documentary, the Finnish media is the most anti-Russian press in the world. All we hear about Russia is negative news. There is even a word for Russian (ryssä) is considered an insult in the Finnish language.

The ability to forget is probably more important to individuals and societies than the ability to remember. Fixation on the past is as disabling a disease as dementia.

In fact, fixation on the past is one of the main symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSS); an ailment common in soldiers back from the battlefield. Seeing threats where there are non, is another symptom of this disease.

Getting rid of our pathological social disabilities is the key to a healthy future. El pacto de olvido (agreement to forget) was a fundamental cornerstone around which the democratic future of Spain after the civil war was built. What we need today is a global pacto de olvido. In fact many of the countries which fought against each other in the second world war, such as France, Italy, Germany and Britain, are now in excellent terms with each other.

The war I participated in, where my birth country Iran defended herself agianst the aggression of Saddam Husein's Iraq, lasted eight years. This is twice as long as the Second World War. Casualties were also plenty, up to a million people for each side. Today, just over 20 years later, the two countries and people are in excellent terms. People think of Saddam as the cause of the war, not the Iraqi nation. We can almost certainly agree, that it was also up to Stalin to start a war against Finland and the soldiers fighting it had probably no animosity against Finns per se.

Of course we must learn the lessons of war. Let me also make it clear that I respect and value the sacrifices given to keep Finland independent, but at the same time, fixation on events which happened more than 70 years ago, are harmful to that independence and blur our clear thinking today.

We had a fight with our neighbour more than 70 years ago, so what? Lets get over it!"

The Blight of Return

Gästen

Skrivet av Olav S. Melin Måndag, 21 Januari 2013 12:42

The Op-Ed Columnist Roger Cohen writes in the New Yok Times about the sitaution in the Middle East:

A COUPLE of years ago I had an exchange with the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, that went like this:

"You're working for a two-state solution?"

"Correct."

"And Hamas is not."

"It is true."

This fundamental issue, at the core of the division of the Palestinian national movement, endures. As John Kerry, President Obama's nominee to become secretary of state, prepares for office and talk stirs for the umpteenth time of a push for Middle East peace, it is critical to confront the problem, whose dimensions have recently been underscored.

First there was Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader, and his awful speech on his first visit to Gaza last month. "Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north," he declared. In other words, forget compromise on the 1967 lines with agreed land swaps: Annihilation of the state of Israel remains the goal.

Then there was Mohamed Morsi. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi, now the Egyptian president, was chief of the Brotherhood's political arm. This week it emerged that in this role in 2010, he said: "We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews." He called Zionists "bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs." And he called for all Palestine to be freed.

Morsi's vile anti-Semitic remarks are of a piece with the old blood libel: Jews with horns, Jews with tails, goats and devils defiling Christian women. And nursing children on hatred? Instilling hatred in the innocent is tantamount to instilling self-destruction.

And so it has been. When the United Nations called in 1947 for the partition of Mandate Palestine and the establishment of Jewish and Palestinian states, the proposed Palestinian state occupied about 42 percent of the territory. Arab armies went to war and lost. Today, with the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians stand to get about 22 percent of the land under any two-state peace. The annihilation ambition has been a recipe for Palestinian defeatism, victimhood and loss.

Wide swaths of the Palestinian leadership have drawn the lesson. The West Bank, under President Mahmoud Abbas and Fayyad, has seen dramatic change over the past several years. New policies - of nonviolence, responsible governance, elimination of militias, central control of security and economic growth - have been embraced to lay the groundwork of statehood, a state explicitly envisaged as existing side-by-side in peace and security with Israel.

The achievements in Ramallah have been widely lauded, including by the World Bank, but Israel has held back, one reason for its current isolation. Rather it has pursued West Bank settlements, to the dismay of Obama, who, according to a Bloomberg column by Jeffrey Goldberg, is convinced that, "Israel doesn't know what its own best interests are." The settlement expansion is indeed self-defeating. It precludes the two-state peace Israel needs to remain a democratic and Jewish state. But it is in line with the platform of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, which says that, "Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel."

Netanyahu may be returned to power in elections this month at the head of an even more right-wing coalition. The ambition to hold all the land is not the exclusive preserve of certain Palestinians. Extremes feed on each other; a majority in the middle is ready for a reasonable compromise that places the future above the past.

That, in part, is what the two-year-old Arab Spring has been about: the future over the past. However faltering (what revolutionary movement was ever smooth?), the awakening has been about overcoming an Arab culture of victimhood, conspiracy and paralysis in the name of agency, engagement and debate. The dinosaurs of the Palestinian movement, like Meshal, should take note.

Pursuit of all of the land, with its accompanying "right of return," is a form of perennial victimhood, one that has spawned some 4.7 million Palestinian refugees, several times the number who were driven from their homes in the war of 1948. The right of return would be better named the blight of return. It is a damaging illusion that distracts from an achievable peace in the name of Palestinian children and grandchildren nursed on hope. There is the possibility of compensation, but there is in history no right of return. Ask the Greeks of Asia Minor, the Turks of Greece, the Germans of Danzig and Breslau (today Gdansk and Wroclaw) - and the Jews of the Arab world.

When I was in Cairo recently, I saw a senior Western official who meets regularly with President Morsi. She told me she has no doubt of his belief in Israel's right to exist and the urgent need for a two-state peace. Power is responsibility; it can change people. The United States should test Morsi by pressing him hard to forge Palestinian unity in pragmatism. That would remove an Israeli excuse for oppression that tramples on the Jewish state's own best interests.

Is Growth Over?

Gästen

Skrivet av Olav S. Melin Torsdag, 3 Januari 2013 14:27

"Is Growth Over? The answer is: less than we think." Op-ed columnist Paul Krugmaof of The New York Times writes aobut visions for a new year:

The great bulk of the economic commentary you read in the papers is focused on the short run: the effects of the "fiscal cliff" on U.S. recovery, the stresses on the euro, Japan's latest attempt to break out of deflation. This focus is understandable, since one global depression can ruin your whole day. But our current travails will eventually end. What do we know about the prospects for long-run prosperity?

The long-term projections produced by official agencies, like the Congressional Budget Office, generally make two big assumptions. One is that economic growth over the next few decades will resemble growth over the past few decades. In particular, productivity - the key driver of growth - is projected to rise at a rate not too different from its average growth since the 1970s. On the other side, however, these projections generally assume that income inequality, which soared over the past three decades, will increase only modestly looking forward.

It's not hard to understand why agencies make these assumptions. Given how little we know about long-run growth, simply assuming that the future will resemble the past is a natural guess. On the other hand, if income inequality continues to soar, we're looking at a dystopian, class-warfare future - not the kind of thing government agencies want to contemplate.

Yet this conventional wisdom is very likely to be wrong on one or both dimensions.

Recently, Robert Gordon of Northwestern University created a stir by arguing that economic growth is likely to slow sharply - indeed, that the age of growth that began in the 18th century may well be drawing to an end.

Mr. Gordon points out that long-term economic growth hasn't been a steady process; it has been driven by several discrete "industrial revolutions," each based on a particular set of technologies. The first industrial revolution, based largely on the steam engine, drove growth in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. The second, made possible, in large part, by the application of science to technologies such as electrification, internal combustion and chemical engineering, began circa 1870 and drove growth into the 1960s. The third, centered around information technology, defines our current era.

And, as Mr. Gordon correctly notes, the payoffs so far to the third industrial revolution, while real, have been far smaller than those to the second. Electrification, for example, was a much bigger deal than the Internet.

It's an interesting thesis, and a useful counterweight to all the gee-whiz glorification of the latest tech. And while I don't think he's right, the way in which he's probably wrong has implications equally destructive of conventional wisdom. For the case against Mr. Gordon's techno-pessimism rests largely on the assertion that the big payoff to information technology, which is just getting started, will come from the rise of smart machines.

If you follow these things, you know that the field of artificial intelligence has for decades been a frustrating underachiever, as it proved incredibly hard for computers to do things every human being finds easy, like understanding ordinary speech or recognizing different objects in a picture. Lately, however, the barriers seem to have fallen - not because we've learned to replicate human understanding, but because computers can now yield seemingly intelligent results by searching for patterns in huge databases.

True, speech recognition is still imperfect; according to the software, one irate caller informed me that I was "fall issue yet." But it's vastly better than it was just a few years ago, and has already become a seriously useful tool. Object recognition is a bit further behind: it's still a source of excitement that a computer network fed images from YouTube spontaneously learned to identify cats. But it's not a large step from there to a host of economically important applications.

So machines may soon be ready to perform many tasks that currently require large amounts of human labor. This will mean rapid productivity growth and, therefore, high overall economic growth.

But - and this is the crucial question - who will benefit from that growth? Unfortunately, it's all too easy to make the case that most Americans will be left behind, because smart machines will end up devaluing the contribution of workers, including highly skilled workers whose skills suddenly become redundant. The point is that there's good reason to believe that the conventional wisdom embodied in long-run budget projections - projections that shape almost every aspect of current policy discussion - is all wrong.

What, then, are the implications of this alternative vision for policy? Well, I'll have to address that topic in a future column.

Pohjoismaat yhteiseen puolustusrintamaan

Gästen

Skrivet av Administrator Torsdag, 3 Januari 2013 14:17

Ottaako pohjoismainen puolustusyhteistyö vuonna 2013 uusia askeleita eteenpäin, kun Suomi on NORDEFCO:n puheenjohtaja? Kysymyksen esittää Magman kolumnisti Kari Arola.

"Todennäköisesti näin käy. Nimittäin sen jälkeen kun Norjan pääministeri Torvald Stoltenberg julkaisi vuonna 2009 kaikkiaan 13-kohtaisen raporttinsa yhteistyön tiivistämisestä pohjoismaiden kesken ulko- ja turvallisuuspolitiikassa, ja yhteistyö saatettiin NORDEFO:n (Nordic Defence Cooperation) alle, on tapahtunut suuri asennemuutos. Aika on ollut otollinen uudelle ajattelulle.

Nyt pohjoismainen puolustusyhteistyö nähdään todelliseksi vaihtoehdoksi ensimmäistä kertaa satoihin vuosiin. Sen nimeen vannottiin myös viime vuoden lopulla valmistuneessa Suomen turvallisuus- ja puolustuspoliittisessa selonteossa, vaikka se ei ylläkään vielä solidaarisuuden lupaamiseen naapurimaille. Yksittäiset poliitikot ovat menneet jo selontekoa pidemmälle ja halunneet velvoittavaa valtiosopimusta Pohjoismaiden välille.

Pääministeri Jyrki Katainen sanoi selonteon julkistamisen yhteydessä pohjoismaisen yhteistyön tiivistämisessä olevan konkreettisesti kyseessä yhteiset hankinnat, koulutusyhteistyö sekä osallistuminen kansainväliseen kriisinhallintaan.

Suomi osallistuu muiden Pohjoismaiden kanssa Islannin ilmatilan valvontaan. Onko pidemmälle menevä yhteistyö tarpeen ja mahdollista olosuhteissa, joissa Pohjoismaat ovat tehneet omat turvallisuuspoliittiset valintansa omasta historiastaan ja geopoliittisesta asemastaan käsin?
On.

Siitäkin huolimatta, että Norja, Tanska ja Islanti ovat Naton jäseniä. Suomen ja Ruotsin ulkopolitiikat taas ovat nojanneet liittoutumattomuuteen. Maat ovat kuitenkin lähentyneet Natoa solmimalla kumppanuussopimuksia. Suomi, Ruotsi ja Tanska ovat EU:ssa, ja kaikki Pohjoismaat tarkkailijoina Länsi-Euroopan unionissa WEU:ssa.
Kylmän sodan maailman jäätyä taakse globaalissa ympäristössä geopoliittiset kahleet eivät kurista Suomeakaan entiseen tapaan. Nyt Suomi voi pohtia turvallisuuspolitiikkaansa uudesta asetelmasta. Suomen ei tarvitse enää kätkeä turvallisuuspoliittisia näkökohtiaan verhon taakse. Siitähän oli kyse ainakin osaksi Suomen Eurooppa-ratkaisussa, vaikka EU-jäsenyyttä ja euroakin perusteltiin yksin talouspoliittisilla syillä. Suomi sijoitettiin selkeästi Länsi-Eurooppaan, jonne se totta vie kuuluu.

Suomen ja Pohjoismaiden sotilaspoliittista ja turvallisuuspoliittista asemaa on katsottava Itämeren alueen näkökulmasta, mutta myös arktisen alueen näkökulmasta. Pohjoisen alueen strateginen merkitys on kasvamassa, kun mielenkiinto arktisiin merireitteihin ja niiden hallintaan kasvaa. Jäämeren rantavaltiot panostavat omaan suorituskykyynsä.

On väistämätöntä, että arktisen alueen taloudellisen ja sotilaallisen merkityksen kasvaessa Pohjoismaat arvioivat aiempaa syvällisemmin yhteistyötään.

Turvallisuuspoliittisessa ajattelussa on siirrytty yhteistyövaraiseen toimintaan. Vähiten siihen ei pakota puolustusmenojen edessä oleva kasvu ja materiaalisen valmiuden parantaminen. Tästä näkökulmasta pohjoismaisen yhteistyön tiivistäminen on järkevää, tosiasiassa ainut reaalinen vaihtoehto.

Mitä vastavuoroinen puolustusyhteistyö on ja mitä tarkoittaa käytännössä solidaarisuusjulistus toisille Pohjoismaille?

Aika on kypsä tällaiselle pohdinnalle ja uusien vaihtoehtojen esittämiselle.

Toivottavasti se saa vauhtia, kun keväällä pohjoismaiset parlamentit keskustelevat samaan aikaan puolustusyhteistyöstä. Tuollainen keskusteluviikko on hankkeilla.

Jos Pohjoismaat löytävät, kuten toivottavaa on, saman kestävän perussävelen turvallisuus- ja puolustuspolitiikalleen, se voi olla siemen pohjoismaisen ulottuvuuden kasvulle muillakin elämänalueille varsinkin, kun euroalueen liitokset natisevat.

Maailma muuttuu. Kylmän sodan asetelmasta on jäljellä vain varjo. Tanska ja Ruotsi taistelivat suurvalta-aikoinaan 1500- 1700-luvuilla liki määrättömästi. Norja on ollut valtioliitossa milloin Tanskan, milloin Ruotsin kanssa, ja Suomen pääkaupunki on ollut Tukholma. Pohjoismailla on yhteistä historiaa runsaasti, sotaisaa ja rauhaisaa.

Nyt tarvitaan viisautta katsoa Pohjolaa kokonaisuutena aikana, jolloin Nato on muuttunut ja Varsovan liitto on vain kylmän sodan muisto ja jolloin Pohjoismaiden kansallinen intressi on yhtä aikaa koko Pohjolan intressi."

Sverige struntar i oss

Gästen

Skrivet av Olav S. Melin Måndag, 17 December 2012 11:31

Gästkolumnist denna gång är  Stefan Lundberg, som är reporter vid Hbl och ex-korrespondent för Dagens Nyheter i Stockholm och Dagbladet i Oslo:

De svenska mediernas intresse för Finland har på några år rasat till närapå noll. I dag är det bara Sveriges Radio som håller sig med en korrespondent i Helsingfors, som dock också bevakar resten av Norden.

Det är inte många år sedan Dagens Industri hade en fast korrespondent i Finland. Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Aftonbladet, Expressen, Göteborgsposten och TV:s Rapport höll sig med fasta medarbetare i Helsingfors. Själv skrev jag för DN åren 1984 - 2010. En titt i gamla dagböcker visar att det i allmänhet blev 15 - 25 artiklar och nyhetsnotiser per månad, som mest till och med över 40. De fördelade sig på utland, ekonomi, kultur, sport , resor och lättare grejer på tidningens motsvarighet till Hbl:s Dagboken.

Försiktigt räknat blev det nästan 5 000 artiklar under åren.

Kollegan Jan-Anders Ekström som skrev för SvD höll ungefär samma takt.

Det blev mycket om Finland. Viktiga händelser inom politik, ekonomi och kultur bevakades kontinuerligt. Det gjordes reportage om strukturomvandlingens följder på landsbygden, om det ryska inflytande i gränstrakterna, om turismen i insjö-Finland...

I dag stjäl de svenska tidningarna på sin höjd någon enstaka nyhet från HBL:s webbsida och skriver lite om den. Men gedigna reportage och intervjuer med intressanta finländare bjuds den svenska publiken inte på.

På slottet och utrikesministeriet där man - också på 80- och 90-talen - månade om "Finlandsbilden" förargade man sig över att de stora svenska drakarna gitte hålla sig med finlandssvenska stringers i stället för att skicka över "riktiga rikssvenska korrespondenter", som en av UM:s dåvarande presschefer brukade uttrycka sig.

President Mauno Koivisto gick ännu längre. Han föreslog för de svenska chefredaktörerna att de finlandssvenska korrarna skulle ges sparken.

Det är sant att flera av de svenska tidningarnas korrespondenter på den tiden satt i samma korridor på Hufvudstadsbladet.

Koivisto & Co ansåg att det gav en skev bild av Finland och tyckte att Sverige behandlade Finland nedlåtande när man nöjde sig med andra rangens journalister. I bland hände det att Stockholmsdrakarna skickade över någon för att rapportera om Finland "med svenska ögon". Det var inte heller så bra för det visade sig ofta att de reportrarna hade ännu mindre förståelse för finlandiseringspolitiken än vi som var uppvuxna med den.

Intresset för Finland började mattas av en bit in på 2000-talet. Det hängde naturligtvis ihop med järnridåns fall och tidningarnas sviktande ekonomi. De beställde allt mer sällan någonting av sina Helsingforsbaserade medarbetare. Exempelvis DN sade 2010 upp stringeravtalen med nästan alla sina korrespondenter över hela världen.
Mitt sista jobb för tidningen blev ogjort när Stockholm bad mig skriva högst 800 tecken om det förestående riksdagsvalet. Valet bevakades sedan av Finlandsbördige Brysselkorrespondenten Henrik Brors.

Samtidigt som de svenska tidningarna har övergått till att bara sporadiskt bevaka Finland har det finländska korrespondentnätet i Stockholm hållits nästan oförändrat.
Vårt intresse för Sverige håller i sig oberoende av konjunkturerna.

Officiellt sägs det att kontakterna med Sverige är täta och goda. Visst hålls det paneldebatter på Hanaholmen och Pohjola-Norden och Kulturkontakt Nord ordnar seminarier och författarkvällar, men hur mycket av det når busschauffören i Stockholm, grundskoleläraren i Göteborg eller handelsman i Karlstad?

Under självständighetshelgen reste jag med Viking till Stockholm och försökte snappa upp någon rikssvensk röst bland passagerarna. Kanske var det en slump, men jag hörde inte en enda. Samma "hobby" brukar jag syssla med när jag flanerar längs Espen eller handlar på Stockmann eller Akademen. Det är ytterst sällan man numera snavar över en svensk familj som tagit en billig kryssning med "Finlandsbåten". Trafiken över Östersjön är ensidig.

Utvecklingen är naturlig. Ett land som nästan aldrig nämns, vare sig på gott eller ont, upphör att existera i grannarnas ögon.

Utrikesministeriets pressavdelning presenterar en imponerande lista över utländska korrespondenter i Finland. Men synar man den närmare så är de flesta frilansare utan någon uppdragsgivare. Bland dem som uppger sig ha en uppdragsgivare är en stor del stationerade i sina hemländer eller i Köpenhamn och Stockholm.

Det vore intressanta att veta hur många Finlandsartiklar som under det senaste året publicerats i Elektronik i Norden, i turkiska Cihan News eller i Dar Al Hayat-Beirut och hur många inslag korrespondenten för ungerska Duna TV har skickat hem från Finland.

Från min aktiva tid som korrespondent brukade vi hänföra största delen av korrarna på listan till "Gentlemen of the Free Drinks". Diplomatbjudningar och cocktailpartyn - med tilltugg - intresserade mer än presskonferenserna.

Men kanske allt inte är så illa trots allt. UM:s numera pensionerade veteraner fick till hälften som de ville. De finlandssvenska korrespondenterna är borta.

Our hard drives, ourselves

Gästen

Skrivet av Olav S. Melin Måndag, 26 November 2012 11:46

Cyberspace gives people more than an illusion of protection. But at the end it doesn´t work. That´s the point in the column, written by op-ed columinst Frank Bruni at The New York Times:

"ASK yourself: if Anthony Weiner had been sitting on a bar stool when his libido flared, would he have reached out and flashed someone? Taken off his shirt, then taken off even more?

Highly doubtful. And it's just as doubtful that if he'd been flirting with a groupie across a restaurant table, rather than on Facebook, he would have talked as dirty as he did. Too many potential eavesdroppers.

But cyberspace unleashed him, goading him to boldly go where no would-be New York City mayor should. And cyberspace undid him, creating an indelible record of where he'd traveled, and in what manner of undress. In lieu of eavesdroppers whom he could have disputed, he had digital footprints that he couldn't deny, and they traced a path not to Gracie Mansion but to political ruin.

Like Tiger Woods and so many others before and after him, Weiner met up with what may go down as the greatest contradiction of contemporary life: how safe we feel at our touch pads and keyboards; how exposed and imperiled we really are.

That's the contradiction that David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell are now coming to terms with, and the oxymoron brought to mind by the imprudent escapades of these two - along with the Tampa socialite with diplomatic "inviolability," the other general with too much time for e-mail and the F.B.I. agent who made a mannequin sandwich of himself - isn't "military intelligence." It's "electronic privacy."

There's no true, dependable privacy when we're tapping or typing. And on one level we're conscious of this. Major scandals, minor news stories and the plots of police procedurals remind us, time and again, that the seemingly evanescent communications through our smartphones, tablets, laptops (how presciently named!) and personal computers aren't evanescent at all. They live on, float around and can be reeled in by a lawyer with a subpoena, a hacker with an agenda or a run-of-the-mill technician just letting his curiosity get the better of him.

But this awareness is more a faint beep at the edges of our thoughts than the screeching siren it should be. It doesn't fully sink in, because it's so dissonant with how protected and anonymous a cocoon we seem to inhabit when we're texting, e-mailing or surfing the Web. A neighbor has no eyes or ears on what we're up to. Neither does the co-worker in the adjacent cubicle, the pregnant woman nursing a decaffeinated latte at the next table or, for that matter, the significant other snoozing just a few inches away.

There's a thrilling sense of isolation and permission, and the dim threat of eventual discovery is apparently no match for it. If it were, the example of the disgraced Congressman Mark Foley would have stopped Weiner, and the trials of the displaced Gov. Mark Sanford would have given Petraeus pause.

THE Petraeus drama reflects the enticements and betrayals of our new, disembodied modes of discourse. The come-ons, the flirtations, the stalking, the alleged harassment: all were abetted by the deceptive cloak of cyberspace, and all were immortalized there. It's a story of people not just behaving badly but e-mailing badly as well. Has that now become a distinction without a difference? Have the lines entirely blurred?

Cyberspace gives people more than an illusion of protection. It gives them nerve, freeing them to engage in a kind of explicit and assertive dialogue that two people sitting across from each other, or even talking on the phone, would in most cases be too shy to broach. It allows for false fronts, a false bravado and, with both, a false, reckless velocity.

Back in the era of a Jane Austen novel, a suitor put pen to paper, his pace slow, his pauses frequent and the reply - itself written in longhand - probably weeks away. Romance had a rhythm that accommodated reconsideration. It had a built-in cooling-off period.

The sexting, cyber-assisted hookups and online affairs of today have nothing of the sort. They unfold at the speed of impulse, in part because they have such a hypothetical, provisional aspect, negotiated as they are in a cloud of sorts, no contact required. But their weightlessness is paired with their durable record.

That contradiction covers more than romantic overtures and erotic play, and anyone who sees nothing of himself or herself in the digital heedlessness of Petraeus or Weiner is focusing too narrowly on the sex.

Be honest: when's the last time you tossed off a snide aside about a colleague or a secret about a friend in an e-mail whose retrieval would cause you not just embarrassment but actual trouble? A week ago? An hour ago?

You did it despite all the instances when you or someone you knew had mistyped the address at the top of an e-mail - such an easy error, given the way our precocious devices assume our thoughts and finish them for us - and the message had landed where it wasn't supposed to.

You did it despite the knowledge that an employer with no compunction about intrusion could be spying.

And you did it because that glowing and treacherous screen in front of you is somehow the greenest light of all, persuading you that you're alone with your malice, your mischief, your game of pretend. After all, how could a communion so faceless prompt a brutal unmasking?"