|
|
Blog Feeds
Anti-Empire
Human Rights in IrelandPromoting Human Rights in Ireland
Lockdown Skeptics
Voltaire NetworkVoltaire, international edition
|
Latest news from Sweden: Rattvisepartiet Socialisterna's election campaign national |
miscellaneous |
news report
 Wednesday September 04, 2002 16:34 by Finghin - Socialist Party
 Here is the latest news from the Swedish election campaign. Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna is the sister party of the Socialist Party. Greetings from Luleå! Elections are quite different in Sweden than in Ireland. For example every party have an 'election cottage' in the centre of the town where they just all sit around and hand out the occasional leaflet. It looks like a circus, with all the hacks from the 8 establishment parties all chating with each other etc. No parties do canvassing at election campaign apart from ourselves, at least they learned something from Ireland! Posters are also not too prominent here, but again the Swedish have copied the Irish and plastered the place with posters and stickers. Today had quite a bit of activity. We were phoned by the council telling us to remove our 'cottage' because it was 'ugly' and too big. We measured it and is was in fact smaller that many of the other parties cottages. So we called the media to protest against this, this was much to the disgust of some people in the Liberal Party and the Centre Party. They called us 'Communists' and said we made up the whole situation. We got quite a bit of media attention by it. We were on the local TV news on 3 channels and will probably be all over tomorrows papers. Joe Higgins TD was up here for the past few days, he left yesterday. His meeting went well, he talked about the Nice Treaty and the Water Tax campaign as well as his time he has spent in the Council and the Dáil. He also got much attention in the media, an interview he had was broadcast on the radio today and a large article and photo appeared in the newspaper. The campaign is going well, we are concentrating in the north of the town and are very optimistic in getting a seat. On the day I arrived they passed their target of selling 1000 manifestoes,which is twice as much as they sold 4 years ago at the last election. In the last election we missed out by approx 100 votes. In the national election. Going by todays polls, it looks like the Social Democrats are losing votes to the Vanster Partiet (left Party) and that the Left parties (Social Democrats and Vanster) are neck and neck with the Right wing parties. It looks like the Greens might be in the balance of power or the Social Democrats will enter into coalition with one ot the Right wing parties. Not being able to speak Swedish is not a big problem,most people seem to be able to speak English and are not offended if you speak it to them. I have to get up at 5am to canvass at a hospital tomorrow! I'll try to keep you all updated as the campaign goes on. Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna (Socialist Justice Party) are the Swedish section of the Committee for a Workers' International, the international organisation to which the Socialist Party is affiliated. For more information on our international organisation go to www.worldsocialist-cwi.org |
printable version
Digg this
del.icio.us
Furl
Reddit
Technorati
Facebook
Gab
Twitter
|
View Comments Titles Only
save preference
Comments (15 of 15)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15And this is posted to indymedia, rather than a Socialist Party mailing list, because...?
Are people not interested in what goes on in other countries. Also a number of SP members went to help Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna in the election campaign.
Fair enough, if some Irish SP members went to Sweden to help out their sister organization, then please feel free to use indymedia as your
in-house organ.
-Are people not interested in what goes on in other countries. Also a number of SP members went to help Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna in the election campaign.
There's about two sentences of 'international news' in there, the rest is like some hitherto undiscovered Cliff Richard movie - "Summer Holiday in Sweden".
"Hey guys, let's put on the election RIGHT HERE"
"It would have worked too if it hadn't been for you meddling CWIers!"
Either that or some weird version of 'What I did on my summer holidays"
"One morning it was bright and sunny so we went to the beach and I collected twenty seashells and gave out 300 leaflets and then we all went for ice-creams."
I don't want to seem too harsh, but this is the kind of post that's probably very interesting if you're a member of the CWI or, er, that's it. There's not enough information about the general political situation in Sweden for anybody else - I'm none the wiser about the major political debates, differences between the main parties, or anything like that.
Ray, I know you have ideological problems with elections but dont have a heart attack!
There is international news there. There is info on the national election that is also taking place. The Irish comrades are concentrating on the local elections. As you can read we are confident of getting a seat in Lulea.
The posting also gives an insight into election campaigns in other countries.
Ray, you don't like the posting because:
1. you have ideological problems with elections,
2. unlike any other group on the left in Ireland the SP is a part of a genuine international organisation with support from ordinary workers around the world.
The reason I don't like this posting is because it has practically no news value. I'm sure its interesting if you're a member of the CWI (just as a member of the WSM might be interested in the anti-election campaign there) but honestly, there's nothing there for anyone else.
There's no analysis of the election, no discussion of the main debates, all there is is a report of what the CWI members have been doing. I don't know how many different ways I can keep saying this, but this report is like a postcard. Its great if you know the people involved, pointless if you don't know them. This is the kind of report that would gone down a treat on an internal mailing list, in your internal bulletin, or maybe in your paper. It just doesn't have a broad enough appeal for indymedia though.
I think that the posting has got the same degree of "broad appeal" as any WSM posting, I believe that both parties have the right to post articles. I also don't think that we need an ideological gauliter on Indymedia.
The heading on the original posting gave it away. This was posted as the latest news from the RS election campaign
This article never pretended to be about the general political sitication in Sweden. However it does touch off it.
This article does have broad appeal. It gives a good insight into the election campaign in sweden.
Ray is right.
The people who use Indymedia are (for the most part) intelligent. If they want news on the Swedish election, they can look up the Swedish Indymedia. This is Indymedia IRELAND and unless the article has some connection to the Irish situation, then it does not belong here.
If you don't like it don't read it! If you like it do! Simple. The problem is ray if everything you don't like was removed there would be nothing left at all. And nobody reading it.
The problem with 'if you don't like it, don't read it' is that it pushes good stuff down the newswire. Basically if it isn't on the front page people are unlikely to read it. If there is a policy of "post whatever you like" then the vast majority of the newswire will be made up of spam, cross-postings, cut-and-paste jobs from mainstream media and personal rants. The short lifespan so far of indymedia.ie has provided ample evidence that there are plenty of people around willing to fill the site full of such stuff. The new user will come to the site, have a look around and say to herself "this site is full of crap" and never come back. The site will die and all the hard work of the collective will have been pissed against a wall.
This is aside from the fact that every new item on the newswire puts an extra load on the server, every time somebody downloads an irrelevant article, the whole site suffers. As soon as Dada is up and running there will be the opportunity to upload video clips. If people start putting up videos that have as little relevance to the objectives of the site as some of the articles do, the site will fall over real quick.
I actually agree with what Chekov is saying, although I'm not sure how it fits this case.
A report by some Irish activists on a Swedish election campaign they are involved in is news. You might argue that it's news which is of interest to quite a limited number of the people using indymedia, but that's true of a lot of the genuine news content here.
For that matter I think that the report on the Swedish anti-election campaign some Swedish anarchists are running which was posted here a few weeks ago is news too. Although a case could be made that that particular post didn't have an Irish angle and so should really have gone on Swedish indymedia or the international site.
Part of the problem is that when someone criticises a post the responses go back and forth between 'this post should not be criticised' and 'no post should be criticised'. Chekov was addressing the second argument.
As far as this particular article is concerned, you'll notice that I didn't call it spam, call for it to be removed, or anything like that. I did question the broadness of its appeal because, as it stands, I can't think of anyone outside the SP who'd be interested in reading it.
That's not because its about elections, or about Sweden. Anarchists may not take part in elections, but it doesn't stop us enjoying them as a spectator sport. And an article about the Swedish elections from an Irish perspective could be quite interesting, and I wouldn't question its place on the newswire.
The trouble is that this particular article doesn't say much about Sweden, or about the elections. It is pretty much exclusively about what the CWI are doing in the elections. It doesn't talk about the issues, about how they differ from Ireland, about Swedish attitudes to the EU, or the war, or immigration - all things that I'd quite like to hear about, as would (I'm sure) many other people on the newswire. Instead it just talks about what the CWI members have been doing. Interesting if you're in the CWI, possibly very interesting if some friends of yours are part of the group that have gone over - but nothing for anyone else. I really think this is something more appropriate to an internal mailing list than to indymedia.
(as for the article from the Swedish anarchists, you'll notice I criticised that too)
I don't speak swedish or spanish or korean for that matter. Therefore saying I should look up a swedish indymedia doesn't work. Its the same with the italian posting yesterday too.
The title said excatly what the post was. If I see a post I don't like I simply don't go into it. Fair enough about re postings but this wasn't reposted. And if the case is it should effect Ireland should the front page about the 3 million workers in Rome have gone up? Should the war in Iraq be mentioned?
keep fightin that good fight
the response to this INTERESTING (i.e not a copy and paste from some formally republican group/leftist vs anarchist/psuedo anarchobohemian shit) posting about sweedish political banter ,is the usual "fuck off indymedia is for people with long hair only"
im off to see the godfather.its on telly nowABUSE OF THE NEWSWIRE TO PROMOTE NETWORK 2