#just so you know: they received a lot of criticism in germany for reporting pro-russian
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Favourite two parts from the new German interview with Zelenskyy.
1) The interviewer asks him with which leaders he's close with (on a personal level). Zelenskyy names several people, including BoJo, Duda and Macron: "Macron always tells me: Write me on WhatsApp or just call me."
2) Also: Our chaotic smol president is our chaotic smol president. At the start of the war he had only 1 or 2 of his now famous green T-Shirts and he lost them (or gave them away / gifted them to someone - he isn't sure). But he got T-Shirts from all kind if sources (soldiers sent him T-Shirts as well as companies who specifically designed / made T-Shirts for him). He says, people still want to sent hin T-Shirts but right now he has enough (20-25, but isn't sure).
Honorable mention: Zelenskyy spoke Russian in the interview. Can't wait for little kremlin troll brains to explode after that. 😏
#him losing his shirts fits so well with his chaotic and forgetful personality and from all the stories olena told#HOW can you loose tshirts if you're basically at the same place all the time 😂#i think we should all give andriy way more credit for taking care of ze 😄#and the macron part#their love is so strong 😂❤️#macron duda and bojo are the official political husbands#somewhere in canada trudeau is crying after that interview#also how ze mentions that his relationship with scholz got better over time and more responsive and open and helpful#even scholz is falling for ze's charme#zheka secretly using Ze's phone and writing all of them a message#just so we're clear. he's MY husband. you're just the harem.#expectation is andriy. he's the other official husband. we share custody.#btw: besides that nothing really new in the interview#he was very emotional during several parts#and some of the questions were just 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️#didnt expect much from ZDF#just so you know: they received a lot of criticism in germany for reporting pro-russian#or pro-putin#or using russian Propaganda terms and things#or publishing russian Propaganda without context or like a fact or things like that#theyre problematic#of course not all the time and all journalists#but a lot of times and several journalists#same applies for their talkshows and discussion rounds#most of them are problematic because they mostly give pro-russia people a platform and let them spread Propaganda and lies#and do nothing about it#so you totally dont miss anything if you dont watch the interview#also some people pointed out that the german translation is not 100% good
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ANKARA, Turkey — The Latest on the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi (all times local):
11:15 p.m.
President Donald Trump is criticizing the Saudi operation that killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi, calling it one of the “worst cover-ups in the history of cover-ups.”
Trump tells reporters in the Oval Office that he’s expecting a full report on the killing soon.
But he says, “They had a very bad original concept” and it was “carried out poorly.”
He calls the events after Khashoggi’s death “the worst cover-up ever.”
Saudi Arabia has claimed Khashoggi, a writer for The Washington Post who wrote critically about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, died accidentally in a brawl at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.
But Turkish officials say a 15-men team tortured, killed and dismembered the writer and say Saudi officials had planned the killing for days.
___
10:50 p.m.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri is scheduled to speak at a high-profile investment conference in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.
Hariri’s appearance, announced Tuesday, was not previously listed on the agenda, and comes as Saudi Arabia is under mounting pressure over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi officials in Istanbul earlier this month.
Hariri, a dual Lebanese-Saudi citizen, resigned from his post last year during a visit to Saudi Arabia in a speech that many Lebanese suspected was given under duress. Hariri later returned to Lebanon and his post following French mediation.
He has visited Saudi Arabia and has met with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since then.
Several Western business leaders and officials withdrew from the Saudi conference after Khashoggi’s killing, the circumstances of which remain under dispute.
___
10 p.m.
The widow of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, who died from radioactive poisoning in 2006, says the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi should be a wake-up call about the deadly behavior of authoritarian states.
Marina Litvinenko says her husband’s murder may have led some governments to think “it’s just so easy to kill people” without provoking a strong response.
Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian agent turned Kremlin critic, died in November 2006 after drinking tea laced with polonium-210 at a London hotel. Britain says he was murdered by Russian intelligence, likely with the approval of President Vladimir Putin.
Marina Litvinenko said the death of Khashoggi and the poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal in England were evidence that her husband’s death had not deterred governments from seeking to silence their critics.
She said “it’s very important to react (to) any kind of behavior and crime. Because if you will make nothing happen today, you will just be not sure what might happen tomorrow.”
___
8:15 p.m.
The United Nations says Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stands by his earlier call for an independent and transparent investigation into the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq reiterated Tuesday that the secretary-general can initiate an investigation if key parties request it or if there is a legislative mandate from a U.N. body.
Saudi Arabia said early Saturday that Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, was killed during a “fistfight” in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. an explanation many countries have questioned.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with state-run Anadolu Agency on Tuesday that “If a request for an international investigation is made … we would cooperate.”
Haq said that did not constitute a formal request from Turkey’s government, which Guterres would need to consider authorizing an international investigation.
___
7:30 p.m.
Turkish state media say investigators found three suitcases, a laptop computer and clothing inside a car belonging to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
State television TRT reported that Turkish crime scene investigators inspected the vehicle on Tuesday for possible evidence in the slaying of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Authorities discovered the car at an underground garage on Monday.
Saudi Arabia has said Khashoggi was killed in a fistfight that broke out inside the consulate. Turkey says he was the victim of a planned killing.
Turkish authorities have not found the journalist’s body.
___
7:10 p.m.
Foreign ministers from the G-7 group of industrialized nations say the explanations offered for the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi leave many questions unanswered and those responsible for the death must be held to account.
A joint statement from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, along with the European Union, condemned Khashoggi’s slaying in the “strongest possible terms.”
They called Saudi Arabia’s confirmation of the writer’s death inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul a first step toward full transparency and accountability.
The statement issued Tuesday reiterated the need for a thorough, credible and prompt investigation done with the full collaboration of Turkish authorities.
The G-7 ministers say Khashoggi’s killing demonstrates the need to project journalists and to reaffirm the right to free expression.
___
6:45 p.m.
The European Union’s top diplomat says the bloc is working with the group of seven most industrialized nations to coordinate a response to the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Tuesday that “the European Union’s reaction from now on will depend on the next steps that will be taken by the Saudi authorities.”
Mogherini told EU lawmakers that foreign ministers are working with their G7 counterparts on “further steps and statements to be taken together.” She did not go into detail about those steps.
She called on the Saudi’s “to provide all the information they have about the case and to ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.”
Lawmakers described Saudi explanations about Khashoggi’s death as a “cover-up and a “white-wash.”
___
6:30 p.m.
Turkish officials say President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised family members of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi that Turkey would do all it can “to shed light on the murder.”
The officials said Erdogan on Tuesday called Khashoggi’s son, Abdullah, to express his condolences, and also spoke with other members of his family.
Erdogan told family members that he was “deeply saddened” by his death and that Turkey would follow up the incident. The officials provided the information on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
Saudi Arabia has said the journalist, a critic of the Saudi royal family, was killed in a fistfight. Erdogan said earlier Tuesday that he was the victim of a “savage murder” that was planned days ahead.
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6:15 p.m.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence says the death of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi “will not go without an American response.”
Pence said CIA Director Gina Haspel is in Turkey reviewing the facts of what Pence called a “brutal murder.” He offered condolences to Khashoggi’s family.
Speaking Tuesday in Washington at an event hosted by The Washington Post, Pence would not elaborate on what a possible U.S. response would be. Khashoggi, a Post contributor, lived in Virginia.
Asked if the U.S. would sanction members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family if they were found to have been complicit, Pence said that’s a decision for President Donald Trump.
He says Trump will make a decision that reflects the values and national security interests of the nation and will “make sure the world knows the truth.”
___
6 p.m.
Lawmakers in Spain have rejected proposals to halt arms exports to Saudi Arabia after a debate.
Conservative and ruling Socialist lawmakers argued Tuesday that jobs in the defense industry needed to be protected. They rejected non-binding proposals by far-left and smaller parties calling for a weapon export freeze. The pro-business Citizens party abstained.
Spain chose last month not to risk a $2.1 billion contract for five navy frigates in a job-hungry region when it went ahead with a bomb shipment to Saudi Arabia that members of Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist government had tried to stop.
The prime minister is expected to brief lawmakers on the issue on Wednesday.
Western countries have been rethinking their dealings with the Gulf kingdom amid international uproar over the killing of dissident Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul earlier this month.
___
5:30 p.m.
Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have received the family of killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi and expressed their condolences.
The royals received the journalist’s son, Salah, and his brother, Sahel, at the Yamama Palace in Riyadh on Tuesday. A friend of the Khashoggi family told The Associated Press that Salah has been under a travel ban since last year. The individual spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal.
Prince Mohammed has come under mounting pressure, with critics suspecting he ordered the high-profile operation or at least knew about it. Saudi authorities say they have arrested 18 suspects and dismissed senior officials.
The prince appeared briefly at an afternoon panel Tuesday alongside Jordan’s King Abdullah II, but made no public remarks.
–By Aya Batrawy in Riyadh
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4:40 p.m.
The leaders of Sweden and Denmark are reacting after Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saudi Arabia murdered Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi after plotting his death.
Stefan Lofven, Sweden’s acting prime minister, says “it seems very credible that something terrible has happened there, something horrible.”
However, Lofven refrained from commenting further pending more facts, Sweden’s TT news agency reported.
In neighboring Denmark, Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen is summoning the Saudi ambassador and said the meeting would be held “as soon as possible.”
He said, “there are still a lot of unclear questions and I believe it is fair to give the ambassador the possibility to explain himself.”
Samuelsen had earlier said there would be no official Danish participation in an investment conference in Saudi Arabia as “a natural consequence of the actual situation.”
____
3:15 p.m.
A U.S. official says CIA Director Gina Haspel is in Turkey to review the case of slain Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi. The official was not authorized to discuss the trip and spoke only on condition of anonymity.
Haspel’s visit Tuesday comes a day after U.S. President Donald Trump said he was not satisfied with Saudi Arabia’s explanation of Khashoggi’s death three weeks ago in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.
Saudi Arabia said he was killed in a fistfight, but Turkish officials said the 59-year-old Washington Post columnist was attacked and killed by a 15-man Saudi team.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he wants Saudi Arabia to allow 18 suspects that it detained for the journalist’s killing to be tried in Turkish courts.
____
By Deb Riechmann in Washington, D.C.
____
1 p.m.
Turkey’s president has urged Saudi Arabia to reveal who ordered the “savage murder” of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul, and said the 18 Saudis suspected of carrying it out should be tried in Turkish courts.
Addressing lawmakers of his ruling party in Parliament Tuesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says all those responsible for the killing must be punished regardless of rank — from the person who ordered his death to those who carried out the killing.
He asked: “where is the body of Jamal Khashoggi?” For the first time, Erdogan also confirmed that a body double of Khashoggi was used as a decoy after he was killed.
Erdogan’s speech came as skepticism intensified about Saudi Arabia’s account that he died accidentally in its consulate in Istanbul.
___
12:40 p.m.
Turkey’s president says Saudi officials started planning to murder Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi days before his death in Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday that the Saudi officials began plotting against Khashoggi in late September, days ahead of his disappearance after he entered the consulate on Oct. 2.
Erdogan’s comments contradicted Saudi accounts that Khashoggi died accidentally in a “fistfight” in the consulate.
____
12:25 p.m.
Saudi Arabia says organizers will be signing deals worth $50 billion at the start of a major economic forum in Riyadh.
The Future Investment Initiative forum, which began on Tuesday, is the brainchild of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It’s aimed at drawing more foreign investment into the kingdom and to help create desperately needed jobs for its youthful population.
The deals will be in manufacturing, transportation and other fields.
Prince Mohammed was not immediately at the forum when it started.
The forum last year proved to be a glitzy affair that drew more international business attention to the kingdom. This year’s event meanwhile has seen business leaders drop out over Khashoggi’s Oct. 2 slaying.
___
11:10 a.m.
A high-profile economic forum in Saudi Arabia has begun in Riyadh, the kingdom’s first major event on the world stage since the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul earlier this month.
The Future Investment Initiative forum, which began on Tuesday, is the brainchild of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It’s aimed at drawing more foreign investment into the kingdom and to help create desperately needed jobs for its youthful population.
Prince Mohammed was not immediately at the forum when it started.
The forum last year proved to be a glitzy affair that drew more international business attention to the kingdom. This year’s event meanwhile has seen many top business leaders and officials drop out over Khashoggi’s Oct. 2 slaying.
____
10:35 a.m.
Turkey’s foreign minister says his country would cooperate with international bodies if they were to launch an independent probe into the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi.
In an interview with state-run Anadolu Agency, Mevlut Cavusoglu also said Tuesday that Turkey has not shared evidence concerning his death at the Saudi consulate with any country but added that there may have been “an exchange of views between intelligence organizations.”
Saudi Arabia has said Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi royal family, was killed Oct. 2 in a “fistfight” with officials sent to encourage him to return to the kingdom. Turkish media and officials say the 59-year-old Washington Post columnist was killed and dismembered by a 15-man Saudi hit squad.
Cavusoglu said: “If a request for an international investigation is made … we would cooperate.”
____
10:20 a.m.
The Turkish president is expected to announce details Tuesday of his country’s investigation into the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, as skepticism intensified about Saudi Arabia’s account that he died accidentally in its consulate in Istanbul.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he will “go into detail” about a case that has shocked the world and raised suspicions that a Saudi hit squad planned Khashoggi’s killing after he walked into the consulate on Oct. 2, and then attempted to cover it up.
Top Turkish officials have said Turkey would clarify exactly what happened to Khashoggi and a stream of leaks to national and international media has increased pressure on Saudi Arabia, which is hosting a glitzy investment conference this week that many dignitaries have decided to skip because of the scandal. ”
4:31 PM EDT PM EDT
Trump Says Saudi Operation ‘Worst Cover Up Ever’ ANKARA, Turkey — The Latest on the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi (all times local):
#Journalist Jamal Khashoggi#President Donald Trump#Saudi Operation#Saudis&039; Killed Journalist#“the worst cover-up ever.”
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How Europe Is Fighting Back Against Fake News
http://styleveryday.com/2017/08/22/how-europe-is-fighting-back-against-fake-news/
How Europe Is Fighting Back Against Fake News
From new fact-checking software to fining Facebook and shaming Twitter, Europeans hope to prevent a tide of disinformation from influencing national elections and spreading hate.
The latest bit of fake news to hit Europe was, actually, just a joke.
“Big Ben to be renamed Massive Mohamed from 2018” ran the headline in the story, widely shared, with accompanying outrage, on Facebook. “Not being funny, this will cause civil war!” posted one incandescent user, unaware that the post, first put online Aug. 15, came from The Rochdale Herald, an Onion-style news parody site.
It’s easy to laugh, but governments across Europe are starting to take fake news very seriously.
Amid fears that online disinformation may have influenced last year’s Brexit vote and recent elections in the Netherlands and France, European governments and ordinary citizens are taking action to counter the spread of news that is misleading, disingenuous or just plain wrong. At the same time, efforts are underway across Europe to crack down on hate speech, as worries that online vitriol — anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic tirades — may be poisoning political debate and feeding extremist groups across the continent.
The approach varies from country to country and reflects local concerns. Germany is particularly worried about hate speech and neo-Nazi slogans spreading online. Nations bordering Russia or with large Russian-language minorities are mainly concerned about Moscow-based propaganda being used to destabilize their democracies. And governments from London to Lisbon and Paris to Prague are worried propaganda, fake news and just poor journalism are undermining trust in government and the mainstream media.
Things in Europe aren’t quite as bad as the U.S. Research by the Computational Propaganda Research Project at the Oxford Internet Institute in the U.K. found that fully 50 percent of news stories circulated online in the United States in the lead-up to last year’s elections could be classified as “junk news,” defined as not meeting basic standards of accuracy and professional journalism. The equivalent figure ahead of recent presidential elections in France and Germany was 20 percent.
“Things are bent here, but in the U.S. they’re already broken,” is how Ehsan Fadakar, a Swedish journalist and head of social and third-party strategy at the Scandinavian Schibsted Media Group, puts it. “We’ve learned a lot from what’s happened in the U.S. and are now better equipped to deal with fake news before it breaks us.”
Another major difference between Europe and the United States is the source of the dubious online reporting. While alt-right news sites akin to Breitbart or the overtly white nationalist Daily Stormer do exist in Europe (Breitbart has bureaus in London and Jerusalem but so far has not come through on plans to launch French or German-language versions in Europe) much of the fight against fake news in Europe focuses on Russia.
Early this year, the Czech Republic’s interior ministry, concerned about the proliferation of dubious Czech-language sites with links to Russia, launched the Center Against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats, tasked with identifying and countering fake news. In Ukraine, a group of lecturers, graduates and students from Kyiv’s Mohyla Journalism School operate the highly respected Stopfake.org fact-checking website that publishes stories and web videos denouncing dubious claims made (mainly) by Russian-backed media, such as false claims that the Ukrainian government is run by neo-Nazis. Several such fact-checking sites exist across Europe, including the East StratCom Task Force, set up by the European Union to counter “Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaigns.” East StratCom points to Russia’s investment of nearly $1 billion in its state-controlled media operations, including RT, the broadcaster that targets audiences outside of Russia.
“We got lazy and made budget cuts to public broadcasting and investigative journalism while Russia was increasing funding,” said Marietje Schaake, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, speaking at an event in Brussels May 3 to celebrate World Press Freedom Day.
What distinguishes Russian-backed fake news is not just its funding, but its professionalism. Outlets like RT and Sputnik — an online Russian news site that operates in dozens of languages across Europe and Asia — mix “hard news, well reported and sourced, with fake and junk news,” says Lisa-Maria Nicola Neudert, a researcher for the London-based Computational Propaganda project. Neudert notes that news from Russia was given a separate category in their research to illustrate the difference.
Jessikka Aro, a Finnish investigative journalist with public broadcaster YLE, knows a bit about the dark side of Russian fake news. Her investigations into so-called “troll factories” in Russia — where info warriors, many with the direct support of the Russian government, spread social media propaganda targeting audiences in Western Europe — led to furious online attacks against her. Aro became, in her own words, a “troll magnet,” leading to virulent online abuse, death threats and, yes, fake news stories.
“They accused me of being a drug dealer, a terrorist sympathizer, of being a threat to Finnish national security,” she tells THR. “Even people I knew began to attack me online and send death threats.”
Aro, who is working on a book on her experiences — titled Vladimir Putin’s Troll Army — sees parallels between what has happened in Finland and developments in the U.S., saying the fake news phenomenon is poisoning mainstream political debate.
“What you saw in (President) Trump’s reaction to Charlottesville, blaming ‘all sides,’ this has already happened in Finland,” she says. “The propaganda against the so-called extreme left has created a fake argument trying to divide people into two groups. It has so politicized and polarized issues, like the issue of immigrants, that it has become impossible to comment on them without being labeled as an extremist.”
The Finnish government has noticed, and has set up a new police task force to focus on online hate. Several police investigations concerning threats against Aro are currently underway. Aro acknowledges that awareness of the issue has improved but believes more regulation and tougher laws are needed.
The legal system has also gotten involved in France. On May 4, the Paris prosecutor’s office opened a inquiry into what it terms “false news in order to divert votes, use forgeries and false receipts,” following a complaint by now-President Emmanuel Macron. Macron charged that documents published on internet forum 4chan purporting to show Macron had a secret offshore account in the Bahamas were forgeries released in what his complaint says were part of a deliberate “campaign of digital disinformation” intended to destabilize the French election to benefit Macron’s challenger, the far-right politician Marine Le Pen. (In fact, Le Pen did mention “an offshore account in the Bahamas” in the final TV debate with Macron). The documents themselves have since been debunked as fake by The Observers, the fact checking division of news channel France 24.
The German government has gone one step further. On June 30, the German parliament passed a new law targeting social media platforms themselves, imposing fines of up to $57 million (€50 million) on the likes of Facebook or Twitter if they do not delete illegal, racist or slanderous comments and posts within 24 hours of being notified to do so. The law, according to Bitkom, a national association of German digital media companies, will cost the social media platforms around $622 million (€530 million) a year in extra costs for oversight and personnel, a figure Facebook has called “realistic.”
Neudert of the Oxford Institute says the impact of the German law is already being seen online, with a sharp decline in fake news stories being posted to Facebook accounts.
“It’s a great law and one I think should be adopted across Europe,” says Aro on the German legislation.
But there have been critics. The Czech initiative has been attacked as an Orwellian “ministry of truth” by the country’s own president, Milos Zeman. Zeman, who is viewed as strongly pro-Russian and likes to style himself as the Czech Donald Trump, has compared efforts to identify and combat fake news to the sort of state censorship the country experienced under communism.
In Germany, many worry fake news legislation will impinge on free speech and lead social media platforms to overreact by taking down any and all posts that could be deemed offensive. This point hit home earlier this month when Facebook deleted a post from popular television journalist Dunja Hayali. In the post, Hayali mimicked the rude tone, and spotty grammar, of a user who was insulting her online. Facebook later apologized for overreacting.
While Facebook has responded, at least in Germany, Twitter has so far shown less inclination to adapt to local regulation. Israeli-German comedian Shahak Shapira says over the past six months he’s reported more than 300 examples of hate speech on Twitter to the company, tweets such as “let’s gas some Jews,” which violate Germany’s laws against defamation, public incitement to violence or Holocaust denial. He received 9 replies and none of the tweets were removed.
On Aug. 7, Shapira spray-painted (in wash-away chalk) the offensive tweets in front of Twitter’s German headquarters in Hamburg. The video he posted of the action went viral, generating more than 250,000 views.
youtube
“Twitter didn’t respond, they don’t give a shit,” Shapira tells THR. “Most of the tweets I sprayed are still online.”
While many European governments are looking to regulation to combat fake news, others are putting their hopes on technical solutions. Full Fact, a London-based independent fact-checking organization, is developing software tools to allow journalists to carry out automatic fact-checking of claims made online, on TV or in live interviews with politicians. The tools, says Mevan Babakar, project manager at Full Fact, analyze statements and compare them to a database of verifiable facts — if a politician claims a spike in crime committed by immigrants, say, the software will link directly to the relevant data from police statistics. The tools are already being tested by select media organizations and Full Fact hopes to roll them out more widely in 2018. The group is backed by a mix of crowdfunding, donations and sizable funding by two billionaires: the Hungarian-born investor George Soros, and the Iranian-American eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
Babakar compares Full Fact’s software to “building an immune system” against fake or misleading claims. But she notes that debunking alone does not necessarily stop junk news from spreading. Full Fact was among the first to debunk several claims made during the Brexit campaign — including the notorious one made by Brexiters that the U.K. sends £350 million a week ($450 million) to the EU — but they continued to be cited by politicians and pundits alike. Neudert of the Oxford Institute notes that some studies show debunking online news stories can actually increase their popularity, as users repost the fake news in order to counter what they see as an effort by the mainstream media “to suppress the truth.”
And, notes Neudert, purveyors of junk news are getting more sophisticated in the way they package and distribute their disinformation. Late last year, RT spun off In The Now, a youth-focused, irreverent news show on its regular channel, as a stand-alone online video service, serving up content for YouTube, Facebook and Twitter with the company’s Russian government affiliation nowhere to be seen (other than a page buried on RT’s website).
And earlier this year RT actually launched its own project, FakeCheck, targeting what it identifies as fake news.
“The goal is to weed out and correct any egregious bias, misinformation, or misstated facts within a particular news story by means of basic journalistic fact-checking,” a spokesperson for RT told THR.
“RT has become much more careful,” says Russian journalist Alexei Kovalev, who runs his own independent debunking site, Noodle Remover.
He cautions, however, that RT’s efforts to fight fake news may, in fact, be just another way to disseminate false or misleading information.
“Their FakeCheck project is ridiculous,” he says. “It is one-sided and totally in line with everything else they’re doing — like basically being the Syrian government’s mouthpiece or trying to embellish the Kremlin’s international reputation. … Overall, the whole thing is just another testimony to the fact that the very term ‘fake news’ has lost its value. It is being used by Donald Trump and Russia’s Foreign Ministry to the same end. Every time they’re being criticized or hear something they don’t like, they just yell loudly: It is fake news!”
Vladmir Kozlov in Moscow contributed to this report.
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How Sweden's Feminist Foreign Minister Is Dealing With The Age Of Trump
WASHINGTON ― Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström is used to her strong convictions making her job harder.
After she announced that Sweden would become the first Western European power to recognize Palestine as a state, Wallström faced condemnations from Jerusalem and Washington. When she criticized Saudi Arabia’s draconian restrictions on women and flogging of an imprisoned blogger, she earned the ire of Swedish business leaders worried about their country’s lucrative trade with the kingdom. Israeli officials continue to snub her, and it took an intervention from Sweden’s prime minister and its king to defuse tensions with the Saudis.
Still, the minister has remained firm in her views, proudly championing a foreign policy that puts a high value on principles ― particularly gender equality ― not just pragmatism.
President Donald Trump poses the greatest challenge yet to this principled diplomacy. With the U.S. now run by a man who sees foreign affairs as a game of transactions, narrowly defined national interest and wall-building, figures like Wallström must decide how to protect their vision while maintaining good relations with Washington. As the U.S. and U.K. grow more isolationist, the future of international cooperation increasingly relies on small but determined countries such as Sweden.
“We have seen so much of populism, polarization, protectionism and all of these isms ... that lead our world, as I see it, in a wrong direction and will not help us to create more jobs and more wealth and everything that we want,” Wallström said in an interview with HuffPost last week, during her first trip to Washington since Trump took office.
“And more peace!” she added.
Without direct condemnations of the president, Wallström offered a broad defense of the internationalist worldview Trump and his allies in Europe call obsolete.
“We see countries turning inward, thinking they can just look after their own interests, but there are few problems or challenges that one country can solve on its own,” she said. “I don’t think that there is a way back to something that existed. We have to live in this world. And I think our children and grandchildren will not forgive us if we cannot come together.”
Sweden wants to work with Trump on issues like fighting the so-called Islamic State, European security and humanitarian crises. Wallström was in town to attend a meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.
But there’s no denying the disconnect between Stockholm and Washington. Wallström’s left-wing, avowedly feminist government is already subtly highlighting it: Its ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, criticized Trump’s depiction of the U.N. in January, as Sweden took up an influential position on the Security Council; the following month, Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lövin posted a tweet apparently mocking Trump’s all-male photoshoots. Three weeks ago, Sweden pledged $22 million to the global health organizations Trump has targeted with his ban on U.S. support for groups that even discuss abortion.
Powerful men in elected office “often start by taking decisions that restrict the movement of women or how women dress or violence against women, so that is also something they seem to have in common, and that worries me a lot,” Wallström said, in an indirect reference to Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently decriminalized some forms of domestic violence.
As the face of Sweden abroad, Wallström bears the greatest responsibility for her country’s relationship with the new U.S. administration. And the biggest Trump-Sweden moment so far was a reminder that stability is far from assured. On Feb. 18, the president told a Florida rally that Sweden proved his point about the danger of accepting refugees: “You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” Trump said. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”
It was quintessential Trump: It turned out there was no incident, and he was referring to a Fox News report in which an expert misled viewers about an increase in crime since Sweden began accepting refugees.
After declining to comment in the immediate aftermath, Wallström now says she wants to use the news peg the president provided.
“We are trying to use [it] to just give a more balanced picture of Sweden,” Wallström told HuffPost. “It’s maybe difficult [to integrate refugees] in some places, but it is not out of control. ... I don’t know where they got that from.”
Sweden has introduced new border controls in the wake of the refugee crisis and participated in a controversial deal with Turkey to reduce the flow of people moving into Europe. But it continues to accept large numbers of asylum-seekers ― 29,000 in 2016 and up to 45,000 this year ― and offer them generous social support.
“We just have to get the numbers down so that we can manage,” Wallström said, noting that Sweden had received an exceptionally high number of young refugees, who require greater state care. “But we are not changing our rules or laws on exactly what you can get. We want to continue to be able to take care of all the refugees and asylum-seekers in a decent and dignified way and to have them fully integrated.”
For some on the anti-immigrant right, like Breitbart and pro-Russian news outlets that frequently spread untruths about refugees to stir up tension in Europe, Sweden’s border control could be seen as a vindication. But Wallström doesn’t buy that. Whereas right-wing politicians say European centralization is one source of the crisis ― preventing countries from rejecting migrants wholesale ― Wallström says the trouble is too little European coordination.
“This would not have been a problem at all if we had together in the European Union shared responsibility,” Wallström said. Ultra-nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland have been stridently anti-refugee, increasing the burden on others like Sweden and Germany.
There’s now a government-wide challenge to false portrayals of the situation. In Washington, Sweden’s high-profile embassy is running events with the tagline “Safe And Sound” to argue that societies don’t have to sacrifice openness, diversity and liberalism for the sake of security. The campaign’s first event was the launch of a major exhibit on how refugee integration works in Sweden ― featuring a high-ranking U.S. Department of Homeland Security official. Asked at the opening about language in Trump’s Muslim bans that presents anti-refugee measures as important to protect women, Åsa Regnér, the minister for gender equality, noted that levels of violence against women in Sweden have remained relatively constant in recent years.
To experts like her, this scapegoating of immigrants is a clear misrepresentation: Misogyny does take specific and troubling forms in migrant communities, but it’s deceptive to pretend that closing the borders will lead to equality. “We know that there is violence in the [ethnically Swedish] majority, and there is also violence among the first and second generation of immigrants, and we have to really understand those and take targeted measures,” Regnér said. “I feel we have to speak of both things.”
The refugee policy is only one part of how Sweden’s approach veers from Trump’s policies.
Wallström’s government proudly funds efforts to include more women at the U.N. peace talks on Syria, and she doesn’t buy Trump-style suggestions that the West embrace strongman Bashar Assad. “It ought to be for the people of Syria to decide who should be their leader ... but the confidence will be affected by the fact that so many war crimes have been committed,” she said. Sweden recently used its temporary U.N. Security Council seat to try to punish Assad for his use of chemical weapons.
With Russia boosting its presence in the Baltic Sea and violating Swedish airspace, Wallström’s government has reaffirmed its commitment to Sweden’s traditional nonalignment. At the same time, it wants Putin to respect the international norm of territorial sovereignty ― in Ukraine and in Sweden’s neighborhood. Stockholm has boosted its defenses, including by reintroducing conscription. “We have to be very clear about our policy toward Russia: When you do things like the illegal annexation of Crimea or the aggression in eastern Ukraine, then we will adopt a policy that includes sanctions,” Wallström said.
This kind of commitment to principles entails costs ― to prestige and to delicate, important relationships. Wallström acknowledged reports that the anti-ISIS coalition has killed hundreds of civilians since Trump took office, urging accountability for those who have potentially committed war crimes. And she slammed Turkey, the key to the E.U.’s refugee plans, for its crackdown on civil society and increasingly heated rhetoric about European governments.
A Social Democrat, the minister thinks the global left can still recapture popular support despite the rise of groups ― like the Front National in France and the far right in the U.S. ― who successfully pitch a mix of ultra-nationalism and popular, traditionally left-wing state spending.
“We lost our vision more than anything else. We have not been able to describe the tasks in front of us,” Wallström said. She wants greater focus on the state’s role in tackling wealth gaps, climate change and future sustainable development.
Without that focus, voters see globalization as necessarily causing the growing inequality economists like Thomas Piketty have warned about, Wallström said. “It’s ironic, of course, that it’s the very wealthy people who seem to be elected.”
As the interview concluded, the minister prepared to head to the big anti-ISIS summit. After all the talk of principle, Wallström made a little show of Trump-era pragmatism ― her press secretary offered a printout of information about Sweden’s success. First topic: the ease of doing business there.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2o64jhu
0 notes
Text
How Sweden's Feminist Foreign Minister Is Dealing With The Age Of Trump
WASHINGTON ― Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström is used to her strong convictions making her job harder.
After she announced that Sweden would become the first Western European power to recognize Palestine as a state, Wallström faced condemnations from Jerusalem and Washington. When she criticized Saudi Arabia’s draconian restrictions on women and flogging of an imprisoned blogger, she earned the ire of Swedish business leaders worried about their country’s lucrative trade with the kingdom. Israeli officials continue to snub her, and it took an intervention from Sweden’s prime minister and its king to defuse tensions with the Saudis.
Still, the minister has remained firm in her views, proudly championing a foreign policy that puts a high value on principles ― particularly gender equality ― not just pragmatism.
President Donald Trump poses the greatest challenge yet to this principled diplomacy. With the U.S. now run by a man who sees foreign affairs as a game of transactions, narrowly defined national interest and wall-building, figures like Wallström must decide how to protect their vision while maintaining good relations with Washington. As the U.S. and U.K. grow more isolationist, the future of international cooperation increasingly relies on small but determined countries such as Sweden.
“We have seen so much of populism, polarization, protectionism and all of these isms ... that lead our world, as I see it, in a wrong direction and will not help us to create more jobs and more wealth and everything that we want,” Wallström said in an interview with HuffPost last week, during her first trip to Washington since Trump took office.
“And more peace!” she added.
Without direct condemnations of the president, Wallström offered a broad defense of the internationalist worldview Trump and his allies in Europe call obsolete.
“We see countries turning inward, thinking they can just look after their own interests, but there are few problems or challenges that one country can solve on its own,” she said. “I don’t think that there is a way back to something that existed. We have to live in this world. And I think our children and grandchildren will not forgive us if we cannot come together.”
Sweden wants to work with Trump on issues like fighting the so-called Islamic State, European security and humanitarian crises. Wallström was in town to attend a meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.
But there’s no denying the disconnect between Stockholm and Washington. Wallström’s left-wing, avowedly feminist government is already subtly highlighting it: Its ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, criticized Trump’s depiction of the U.N. in January, as Sweden took up an influential position on the Security Council; the following month, Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lövin posted a tweet apparently mocking Trump’s all-male photoshoots. Three weeks ago, Sweden pledged $22 million to the global health organizations Trump has targeted with his ban on U.S. support for groups that even discuss abortion.
Powerful men in elected office “often start by taking decisions that restrict the movement of women or how women dress or violence against women, so that is also something they seem to have in common, and that worries me a lot,” Wallström said, in an indirect reference to Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently decriminalized some forms of domestic violence.
As the face of Sweden abroad, Wallström bears the greatest responsibility for her country’s relationship with the new U.S. administration. And the biggest Trump-Sweden moment so far was a reminder that stability is far from assured. On Feb. 18, the president told a Florida rally that Sweden proved his point about the danger of accepting refugees: “You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” Trump said. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”
It was quintessential Trump: It turned out there was no incident, and he was referring to a Fox News report in which an expert misled viewers about an increase in crime since Sweden began accepting refugees.
After declining to comment in the immediate aftermath, Wallström now says she wants to use the news peg the president provided.
“We are trying to use [it] to just give a more balanced picture of Sweden,” Wallström told HuffPost. “It’s maybe difficult [to integrate refugees] in some places, but it is not out of control. ... I don’t know where they got that from.”
Sweden has introduced new border controls in the wake of the refugee crisis and participated in a controversial deal with Turkey to reduce the flow of people moving into Europe. But it continues to accept large numbers of asylum-seekers ― 29,000 in 2016 and up to 45,000 this year ― and offer them generous social support.
“We just have to get the numbers down so that we can manage,” Wallström said, noting that Sweden had received an exceptionally high number of young refugees, who require greater state care. “But we are not changing our rules or laws on exactly what you can get. We want to continue to be able to take care of all the refugees and asylum-seekers in a decent and dignified way and to have them fully integrated.”
For some on the anti-immigrant right, like Breitbart and pro-Russian news outlets that frequently spread untruths about refugees to stir up tension in Europe, Sweden’s border control could be seen as a vindication. But Wallström doesn’t buy that. Whereas right-wing politicians say European centralization is one source of the crisis ― preventing countries from rejecting migrants wholesale ― Wallström says the trouble is too little European coordination.
“This would not have been a problem at all if we had together in the European Union shared responsibility,” Wallström said. Ultra-nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland have been stridently anti-refugee, increasing the burden on others like Sweden and Germany.
There’s now a government-wide challenge to false portrayals of the situation. In Washington, Sweden’s high-profile embassy is running events with the tagline “Safe And Sound” to argue that societies don’t have to sacrifice openness, diversity and liberalism for the sake of security. The campaign’s first event was the launch of a major exhibit on how refugee integration works in Sweden ― featuring a high-ranking U.S. Department of Homeland Security official. Asked at the opening about language in Trump’s Muslim bans that presents anti-refugee measures as important to protect women, Åsa Regnér, the minister for gender equality, noted that levels of violence against women in Sweden have remained relatively constant in recent years.
To experts like her, this scapegoating of immigrants is a clear misrepresentation: Misogyny does take specific and troubling forms in migrant communities, but it’s deceptive to pretend that closing the borders will lead to equality. “We know that there is violence in the [ethnically Swedish] majority, and there is also violence among the first and second generation of immigrants, and we have to really understand those and take targeted measures,” Regnér said. “I feel we have to speak of both things.”
The refugee policy is only one part of how Sweden’s approach veers from Trump’s policies.
Wallström’s government proudly funds efforts to include more women at the U.N. peace talks on Syria, and she doesn’t buy Trump-style suggestions that the West embrace strongman Bashar Assad. “It ought to be for the people of Syria to decide who should be their leader ... but the confidence will be affected by the fact that so many war crimes have been committed,” she said. Sweden recently used its temporary U.N. Security Council seat to try to punish Assad for his use of chemical weapons.
With Russia boosting its presence in the Baltic Sea and violating Swedish airspace, Wallström’s government has reaffirmed its commitment to Sweden’s traditional nonalignment. At the same time, it wants Putin to respect the international norm of territorial sovereignty ― in Ukraine and in Sweden’s neighborhood. Stockholm has boosted its defenses, including by reintroducing conscription. “We have to be very clear about our policy toward Russia: When you do things like the illegal annexation of Crimea or the aggression in eastern Ukraine, then we will adopt a policy that includes sanctions,” Wallström said.
This kind of commitment to principles entails costs ― to prestige and to delicate, important relationships. Wallström acknowledged reports that the anti-ISIS coalition has killed hundreds of civilians since Trump took office, urging accountability for those who have potentially committed war crimes. And she slammed Turkey, the key to the E.U.’s refugee plans, for its crackdown on civil society and increasingly heated rhetoric about European governments.
A Social Democrat, the minister thinks the global left can still recapture popular support despite the rise of groups ― like the Front National in France and the far right in the U.S. ― who successfully pitch a mix of ultra-nationalism and popular, traditionally left-wing state spending.
“We lost our vision more than anything else. We have not been able to describe the tasks in front of us,” Wallström said. She wants greater focus on the state’s role in tackling wealth gaps, climate change and future sustainable development.
Without that focus, voters see globalization as necessarily causing the growing inequality economists like Thomas Piketty have warned about, Wallström said. “It’s ironic, of course, that it’s the very wealthy people who seem to be elected.”
As the interview concluded, the minister prepared to head to the big anti-ISIS summit. After all the talk of principle, Wallström made a little show of Trump-era pragmatism ― her press secretary offered a printout of information about Sweden’s success. First topic: the ease of doing business there.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2o64jhu
0 notes
Text
How Sweden's Feminist Foreign Minister Is Dealing With The Age Of Trump
WASHINGTON ― Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström is used to her strong convictions making her job harder.
After she announced that Sweden would become the first Western European power to recognize Palestine as a state, Wallström faced condemnations from Jerusalem and Washington. When she criticized Saudi Arabia’s draconian restrictions on women and flogging of an imprisoned blogger, she earned the ire of Swedish business leaders worried about their country’s lucrative trade with the kingdom. Israeli officials continue to snub her, and it took an intervention from Sweden’s prime minister and its king to defuse tensions with the Saudis.
Still, the minister has remained firm in her views, proudly championing a foreign policy that puts a high value on principles ― particularly gender equality ― not just pragmatism.
President Donald Trump poses the greatest challenge yet to this principled diplomacy. With the U.S. now run by a man who sees foreign affairs as a game of transactions, narrowly defined national interest and wall-building, figures like Wallström must decide how to protect their vision while maintaining good relations with Washington. As the U.S. and U.K. grow more isolationist, the future of international cooperation increasingly relies on small but determined countries such as Sweden.
“We have seen so much of populism, polarization, protectionism and all of these isms ... that lead our world, as I see it, in a wrong direction and will not help us to create more jobs and more wealth and everything that we want,” Wallström said in an interview with HuffPost last week, during her first trip to Washington since Trump took office.
“And more peace!” she added.
Without direct condemnations of the president, Wallström offered a broad defense of the internationalist worldview Trump and his allies in Europe call obsolete.
“We see countries turning inward, thinking they can just look after their own interests, but there are few problems or challenges that one country can solve on its own,” she said. “I don’t think that there is a way back to something that existed. We have to live in this world. And I think our children and grandchildren will not forgive us if we cannot come together.”
Sweden wants to work with Trump on issues like fighting the so-called Islamic State, European security and humanitarian crises. Wallström was in town to attend a meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.
But there’s no denying the disconnect between Stockholm and Washington. Wallström’s left-wing, avowedly feminist government is already subtly highlighting it: Its ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, criticized Trump’s depiction of the U.N. in January, as Sweden took up an influential position on the Security Council; the following month, Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lövin posted a tweet apparently mocking Trump’s all-male photoshoots. Three weeks ago, Sweden pledged $22 million to the global health organizations Trump has targeted with his ban on U.S. support for groups that even discuss abortion.
Powerful men in elected office “often start by taking decisions that restrict the movement of women or how women dress or violence against women, so that is also something they seem to have in common, and that worries me a lot,” Wallström said, in an indirect reference to Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently decriminalized some forms of domestic violence.
As the face of Sweden abroad, Wallström bears the greatest responsibility for her country’s relationship with the new U.S. administration. And the biggest Trump-Sweden moment so far was a reminder that stability is far from assured. On Feb. 18, the president told a Florida rally that Sweden proved his point about the danger of accepting refugees: “You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” Trump said. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”
It was quintessential Trump: It turned out there was no incident, and he was referring to a Fox News report in which an expert misled viewers about an increase in crime since Sweden began accepting refugees.
After declining to comment in the immediate aftermath, Wallström now says she wants to use the news peg the president provided.
“We are trying to use [it] to just give a more balanced picture of Sweden,” Wallström told HuffPost. “It’s maybe difficult [to integrate refugees] in some places, but it is not out of control. ... I don’t know where they got that from.”
Sweden has introduced new border controls in the wake of the refugee crisis and participated in a controversial deal with Turkey to reduce the flow of people moving into Europe. But it continues to accept large numbers of asylum-seekers ― 29,000 in 2016 and up to 45,000 this year ― and offer them generous social support.
“We just have to get the numbers down so that we can manage,” Wallström said, noting that Sweden had received an exceptionally high number of young refugees, who require greater state care. “But we are not changing our rules or laws on exactly what you can get. We want to continue to be able to take care of all the refugees and asylum-seekers in a decent and dignified way and to have them fully integrated.”
For some on the anti-immigrant right, like Breitbart and pro-Russian news outlets that frequently spread untruths about refugees to stir up tension in Europe, Sweden’s border control could be seen as a vindication. But Wallström doesn’t buy that. Whereas right-wing politicians say European centralization is one source of the crisis ― preventing countries from rejecting migrants wholesale ― Wallström says the trouble is too little European coordination.
“This would not have been a problem at all if we had together in the European Union shared responsibility,” Wallström said. Ultra-nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland have been stridently anti-refugee, increasing the burden on others like Sweden and Germany.
There’s now a government-wide challenge to false portrayals of the situation. In Washington, Sweden’s high-profile embassy is running events with the tagline “Safe And Sound” to argue that societies don’t have to sacrifice openness, diversity and liberalism for the sake of security. The campaign’s first event was the launch of a major exhibit on how refugee integration works in Sweden ― featuring a high-ranking U.S. Department of Homeland Security official. Asked at the opening about language in Trump’s Muslim bans that presents anti-refugee measures as important to protect women, Åsa Regnér, the minister for gender equality, noted that levels of violence against women in Sweden have remained relatively constant in recent years.
To experts like her, this scapegoating of immigrants is a clear misrepresentation: Misogyny does take specific and troubling forms in migrant communities, but it’s deceptive to pretend that closing the borders will lead to equality. “We know that there is violence in the [ethnically Swedish] majority, and there is also violence among the first and second generation of immigrants, and we have to really understand those and take targeted measures,” Regnér said. “I feel we have to speak of both things.”
The refugee policy is only one part of how Sweden’s approach veers from Trump’s policies.
Wallström’s government proudly funds efforts to include more women at the U.N. peace talks on Syria, and she doesn’t buy Trump-style suggestions that the West embrace strongman Bashar Assad. “It ought to be for the people of Syria to decide who should be their leader ... but the confidence will be affected by the fact that so many war crimes have been committed,” she said. Sweden recently used its temporary U.N. Security Council seat to try to punish Assad for his use of chemical weapons.
With Russia boosting its presence in the Baltic Sea and violating Swedish airspace, Wallström’s government has reaffirmed its commitment to Sweden’s traditional nonalignment. At the same time, it wants Putin to respect the international norm of territorial sovereignty ― in Ukraine and in Sweden’s neighborhood. Stockholm has boosted its defenses, including by reintroducing conscription. “We have to be very clear about our policy toward Russia: When you do things like the illegal annexation of Crimea or the aggression in eastern Ukraine, then we will adopt a policy that includes sanctions,” Wallström said.
This kind of commitment to principles entails costs ― to prestige and to delicate, important relationships. Wallström acknowledged reports that the anti-ISIS coalition has killed hundreds of civilians since Trump took office, urging accountability for those who have potentially committed war crimes. And she slammed Turkey, the key to the E.U.’s refugee plans, for its crackdown on civil society and increasingly heated rhetoric about European governments.
A Social Democrat, the minister thinks the global left can still recapture popular support despite the rise of groups ― like the Front National in France and the far right in the U.S. ― who successfully pitch a mix of ultra-nationalism and popular, traditionally left-wing state spending.
“We lost our vision more than anything else. We have not been able to describe the tasks in front of us,” Wallström said. She wants greater focus on the state’s role in tackling wealth gaps, climate change and future sustainable development.
Without that focus, voters see globalization as necessarily causing the growing inequality economists like Thomas Piketty have warned about, Wallström said. “It’s ironic, of course, that it’s the very wealthy people who seem to be elected.”
As the interview concluded, the minister prepared to head to the big anti-ISIS summit. After all the talk of principle, Wallström made a little show of Trump-era pragmatism ― her press secretary offered a printout of information about Sweden’s success. First topic: the ease of doing business there.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2o64jhu
0 notes
Text
How Sweden's Feminist Foreign Minister Is Dealing With The Age Of Trump
WASHINGTON ― Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström is used to her strong convictions making her job harder.
After she announced that Sweden would become the first Western European power to recognize Palestine as a state, Wallström faced condemnations from Jerusalem and Washington. When she criticized Saudi Arabia’s draconian restrictions on women and flogging of an imprisoned blogger, she earned the ire of Swedish business leaders worried about their country’s lucrative trade with the kingdom. Israeli officials continue to snub her, and it took an intervention from Sweden’s prime minister and its king to defuse tensions with the Saudis.
Still, the minister has remained firm in her views, proudly championing a foreign policy that puts a high value on principles ― particularly gender equality ― not just pragmatism.
President Donald Trump poses the greatest challenge yet to this principled diplomacy. With the U.S. now run by a man who sees foreign affairs as a game of transactions, narrowly defined national interest and wall-building, figures like Wallström must decide how to protect their vision while maintaining good relations with Washington. As the U.S. and U.K. grow more isolationist, the future of international cooperation increasingly relies on small but determined countries such as Sweden.
“We have seen so much of populism, polarization, protectionism and all of these isms ... that lead our world, as I see it, in a wrong direction and will not help us to create more jobs and more wealth and everything that we want,” Wallström said in an interview with HuffPost last week, during her first trip to Washington since Trump took office.
“And more peace!” she added.
Without direct condemnations of the president, Wallström offered a broad defense of the internationalist worldview Trump and his allies in Europe call obsolete.
“We see countries turning inward, thinking they can just look after their own interests, but there are few problems or challenges that one country can solve on its own,” she said. “I don’t think that there is a way back to something that existed. We have to live in this world. And I think our children and grandchildren will not forgive us if we cannot come together.”
Sweden wants to work with Trump on issues like fighting the so-called Islamic State, European security and humanitarian crises. Wallström was in town to attend a meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.
But there’s no denying the disconnect between Stockholm and Washington. Wallström’s left-wing, avowedly feminist government is already subtly highlighting it: Its ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, criticized Trump’s depiction of the U.N. in January, as Sweden took up an influential position on the Security Council; the following month, Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lövin posted a tweet apparently mocking Trump’s all-male photoshoots. Three weeks ago, Sweden pledged $22 million to the global health organizations Trump has targeted with his ban on U.S. support for groups that even discuss abortion.
Powerful men in elected office “often start by taking decisions that restrict the movement of women or how women dress or violence against women, so that is also something they seem to have in common, and that worries me a lot,” Wallström said, in an indirect reference to Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently decriminalized some forms of domestic violence.
As the face of Sweden abroad, Wallström bears the greatest responsibility for her country’s relationship with the new U.S. administration. And the biggest Trump-Sweden moment so far was a reminder that stability is far from assured. On Feb. 18, the president told a Florida rally that Sweden proved his point about the danger of accepting refugees: “You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” Trump said. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”
It was quintessential Trump: It turned out there was no incident, and he was referring to a Fox News report in which an expert misled viewers about an increase in crime since Sweden began accepting refugees.
After declining to comment in the immediate aftermath, Wallström now says she wants to use the news peg the president provided.
“We are trying to use [it] to just give a more balanced picture of Sweden,” Wallström told HuffPost. “It’s maybe difficult [to integrate refugees] in some places, but it is not out of control. ... I don’t know where they got that from.”
Sweden has introduced new border controls in the wake of the refugee crisis and participated in a controversial deal with Turkey to reduce the flow of people moving into Europe. But it continues to accept large numbers of asylum-seekers ― 29,000 in 2016 and up to 45,000 this year ― and offer them generous social support.
“We just have to get the numbers down so that we can manage,” Wallström said, noting that Sweden had received an exceptionally high number of young refugees, who require greater state care. “But we are not changing our rules or laws on exactly what you can get. We want to continue to be able to take care of all the refugees and asylum-seekers in a decent and dignified way and to have them fully integrated.”
For some on the anti-immigrant right, like Breitbart and pro-Russian news outlets that frequently spread untruths about refugees to stir up tension in Europe, Sweden’s border control could be seen as a vindication. But Wallström doesn’t buy that. Whereas right-wing politicians say European centralization is one source of the crisis ― preventing countries from rejecting migrants wholesale ― Wallström says the trouble is too little European coordination.
“This would not have been a problem at all if we had together in the European Union shared responsibility,” Wallström said. Ultra-nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland have been stridently anti-refugee, increasing the burden on others like Sweden and Germany.
There’s now a government-wide challenge to false portrayals of the situation. In Washington, Sweden’s high-profile embassy is running events with the tagline “Safe And Sound” to argue that societies don’t have to sacrifice openness, diversity and liberalism for the sake of security. The campaign’s first event was the launch of a major exhibit on how refugee integration works in Sweden ― featuring a high-ranking U.S. Department of Homeland Security official. Asked at the opening about language in Trump’s Muslim bans that presents anti-refugee measures as important to protect women, Åsa Regnér, the minister for gender equality, noted that levels of violence against women in Sweden have remained relatively constant in recent years.
To experts like her, this scapegoating of immigrants is a clear misrepresentation: Misogyny does take specific and troubling forms in migrant communities, but it’s deceptive to pretend that closing the borders will lead to equality. “We know that there is violence in the [ethnically Swedish] majority, and there is also violence among the first and second generation of immigrants, and we have to really understand those and take targeted measures,” Regnér said. “I feel we have to speak of both things.”
The refugee policy is only one part of how Sweden’s approach veers from Trump’s policies.
Wallström’s government proudly funds efforts to include more women at the U.N. peace talks on Syria, and she doesn’t buy Trump-style suggestions that the West embrace strongman Bashar Assad. “It ought to be for the people of Syria to decide who should be their leader ... but the confidence will be affected by the fact that so many war crimes have been committed,” she said. Sweden recently used its temporary U.N. Security Council seat to try to punish Assad for his use of chemical weapons.
With Russia boosting its presence in the Baltic Sea and violating Swedish airspace, Wallström’s government has reaffirmed its commitment to Sweden’s traditional nonalignment. At the same time, it wants Putin to respect the international norm of territorial sovereignty ― in Ukraine and in Sweden’s neighborhood. Stockholm has boosted its defenses, including by reintroducing conscription. “We have to be very clear about our policy toward Russia: When you do things like the illegal annexation of Crimea or the aggression in eastern Ukraine, then we will adopt a policy that includes sanctions,” Wallström said.
This kind of commitment to principles entails costs ― to prestige and to delicate, important relationships. Wallström acknowledged reports that the anti-ISIS coalition has killed hundreds of civilians since Trump took office, urging accountability for those who have potentially committed war crimes. And she slammed Turkey, the key to the E.U.’s refugee plans, for its crackdown on civil society and increasingly heated rhetoric about European governments.
A Social Democrat, the minister thinks the global left can still recapture popular support despite the rise of groups ― like the Front National in France and the far right in the U.S. ― who successfully pitch a mix of ultra-nationalism and popular, traditionally left-wing state spending.
“We lost our vision more than anything else. We have not been able to describe the tasks in front of us,” Wallström said. She wants greater focus on the state’s role in tackling wealth gaps, climate change and future sustainable development.
Without that focus, voters see globalization as necessarily causing the growing inequality economists like Thomas Piketty have warned about, Wallström said. “It’s ironic, of course, that it’s the very wealthy people who seem to be elected.”
As the interview concluded, the minister prepared to head to the big anti-ISIS summit. After all the talk of principle, Wallström made a little show of Trump-era pragmatism ― her press secretary offered a printout of information about Sweden’s success. First topic: the ease of doing business there.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2o64jhu
0 notes
Text
How Sweden's Feminist Foreign Minister Is Dealing With The Age Of Trump
WASHINGTON ― Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström is used to her strong convictions making her job harder.
After she announced that Sweden would become the first Western European power to recognize Palestine as a state, Wallström faced condemnations from Jerusalem and Washington. When she criticized Saudi Arabia’s draconian restrictions on women and flogging of an imprisoned blogger, she earned the ire of Swedish business leaders worried about their country’s lucrative trade with the kingdom. Israeli officials continue to snub her, and it took an intervention from Sweden’s prime minister and its king to defuse tensions with the Saudis.
Still, the minister has remained firm in her views, proudly championing a foreign policy that puts a high value on principles ― particularly gender equality ― not just pragmatism.
President Donald Trump poses the greatest challenge yet to this principled diplomacy. With the U.S. now run by a man who sees foreign affairs as a game of transactions, narrowly defined national interest and wall-building, figures like Wallström must decide how to protect their vision while maintaining good relations with Washington. As the U.S. and U.K. grow more isolationist, the future of international cooperation increasingly relies on small but determined countries such as Sweden.
“We have seen so much of populism, polarization, protectionism and all of these isms ... that lead our world, as I see it, in a wrong direction and will not help us to create more jobs and more wealth and everything that we want,” Wallström said in an interview with HuffPost last week, during her first trip to Washington since Trump took office.
“And more peace!” she added.
Without direct condemnations of the president, Wallström offered a broad defense of the internationalist worldview Trump and his allies in Europe call obsolete.
“We see countries turning inward, thinking they can just look after their own interests, but there are few problems or challenges that one country can solve on its own,” she said. “I don’t think that there is a way back to something that existed. We have to live in this world. And I think our children and grandchildren will not forgive us if we cannot come together.”
Sweden wants to work with Trump on issues like fighting the so-called Islamic State, European security and humanitarian crises. Wallström was in town to attend a meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.
But there’s no denying the disconnect between Stockholm and Washington. Wallström’s left-wing, avowedly feminist government is already subtly highlighting it: Its ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, criticized Trump’s depiction of the U.N. in January, as Sweden took up an influential position on the Security Council; the following month, Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lövin posted a tweet apparently mocking Trump’s all-male photoshoots. Three weeks ago, Sweden pledged $22 million to the global health organizations Trump has targeted with his ban on U.S. support for groups that even discuss abortion.
Powerful men in elected office “often start by taking decisions that restrict the movement of women or how women dress or violence against women, so that is also something they seem to have in common, and that worries me a lot,” Wallström said, in an indirect reference to Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently decriminalized some forms of domestic violence.
As the face of Sweden abroad, Wallström bears the greatest responsibility for her country’s relationship with the new U.S. administration. And the biggest Trump-Sweden moment so far was a reminder that stability is far from assured. On Feb. 18, the president told a Florida rally that Sweden proved his point about the danger of accepting refugees: “You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” Trump said. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”
It was quintessential Trump: It turned out there was no incident, and he was referring to a Fox News report in which an expert misled viewers about an increase in crime since Sweden began accepting refugees.
After declining to comment in the immediate aftermath, Wallström now says she wants to use the news peg the president provided.
“We are trying to use [it] to just give a more balanced picture of Sweden,” Wallström told HuffPost. “It’s maybe difficult [to integrate refugees] in some places, but it is not out of control. ... I don’t know where they got that from.”
Sweden has introduced new border controls in the wake of the refugee crisis and participated in a controversial deal with Turkey to reduce the flow of people moving into Europe. But it continues to accept large numbers of asylum-seekers ― 29,000 in 2016 and up to 45,000 this year ― and offer them generous social support.
“We just have to get the numbers down so that we can manage,” Wallström said, noting that Sweden had received an exceptionally high number of young refugees, who require greater state care. “But we are not changing our rules or laws on exactly what you can get. We want to continue to be able to take care of all the refugees and asylum-seekers in a decent and dignified way and to have them fully integrated.”
For some on the anti-immigrant right, like Breitbart and pro-Russian news outlets that frequently spread untruths about refugees to stir up tension in Europe, Sweden’s border control could be seen as a vindication. But Wallström doesn’t buy that. Whereas right-wing politicians say European centralization is one source of the crisis ― preventing countries from rejecting migrants wholesale ― Wallström says the trouble is too little European coordination.
“This would not have been a problem at all if we had together in the European Union shared responsibility,” Wallström said. Ultra-nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland have been stridently anti-refugee, increasing the burden on others like Sweden and Germany.
There’s now a government-wide challenge to false portrayals of the situation. In Washington, Sweden’s high-profile embassy is running events with the tagline “Safe And Sound” to argue that societies don’t have to sacrifice openness, diversity and liberalism for the sake of security. The campaign’s first event was the launch of a major exhibit on how refugee integration works in Sweden ― featuring a high-ranking U.S. Department of Homeland Security official. Asked at the opening about language in Trump’s Muslim bans that presents anti-refugee measures as important to protect women, Åsa Regnér, the minister for gender equality, noted that levels of violence against women in Sweden have remained relatively constant in recent years.
To experts like her, this scapegoating of immigrants is a clear misrepresentation: Misogyny does take specific and troubling forms in migrant communities, but it’s deceptive to pretend that closing the borders will lead to equality. “We know that there is violence in the [ethnically Swedish] majority, and there is also violence among the first and second generation of immigrants, and we have to really understand those and take targeted measures,” Regnér said. “I feel we have to speak of both things.”
The refugee policy is only one part of how Sweden’s approach veers from Trump’s policies.
Wallström’s government proudly funds efforts to include more women at the U.N. peace talks on Syria, and she doesn’t buy Trump-style suggestions that the West embrace strongman Bashar Assad. “It ought to be for the people of Syria to decide who should be their leader ... but the confidence will be affected by the fact that so many war crimes have been committed,” she said. Sweden recently used its temporary U.N. Security Council seat to try to punish Assad for his use of chemical weapons.
With Russia boosting its presence in the Baltic Sea and violating Swedish airspace, Wallström’s government has reaffirmed its commitment to Sweden’s traditional nonalignment. At the same time, it wants Putin to respect the international norm of territorial sovereignty ― in Ukraine and in Sweden’s neighborhood. Stockholm has boosted its defenses, including by reintroducing conscription. “We have to be very clear about our policy toward Russia: When you do things like the illegal annexation of Crimea or the aggression in eastern Ukraine, then we will adopt a policy that includes sanctions,” Wallström said.
This kind of commitment to principles entails costs ― to prestige and to delicate, important relationships. Wallström acknowledged reports that the anti-ISIS coalition has killed hundreds of civilians since Trump took office, urging accountability for those who have potentially committed war crimes. And she slammed Turkey, the key to the E.U.’s refugee plans, for its crackdown on civil society and increasingly heated rhetoric about European governments.
A Social Democrat, the minister thinks the global left can still recapture popular support despite the rise of groups ― like the Front National in France and the far right in the U.S. ― who successfully pitch a mix of ultra-nationalism and popular, traditionally left-wing state spending.
“We lost our vision more than anything else. We have not been able to describe the tasks in front of us,” Wallström said. She wants greater focus on the state’s role in tackling wealth gaps, climate change and future sustainable development.
Without that focus, voters see globalization as necessarily causing the growing inequality economists like Thomas Piketty have warned about, Wallström said. “It’s ironic, of course, that it’s the very wealthy people who seem to be elected.”
As the interview concluded, the minister prepared to head to the big anti-ISIS summit. After all the talk of principle, Wallström made a little show of Trump-era pragmatism ― her press secretary offered a printout of information about Sweden’s success. First topic: the ease of doing business there.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2o64jhu
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Text
How Sweden's Feminist Foreign Minister Is Dealing With The Age Of Trump
WASHINGTON ― Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström is used to her strong convictions making her job harder.
After she announced that Sweden would become the first Western European power to recognize Palestine as a state, Wallström faced condemnations from Jerusalem and Washington. When she criticized Saudi Arabia’s draconian restrictions on women and flogging of an imprisoned blogger, she earned the ire of Swedish business leaders worried about their country’s lucrative trade with the kingdom. Israeli officials continue to snub her, and it took an intervention from Sweden’s prime minister and its king to defuse tensions with the Saudis.
Still, the minister has remained firm in her views, proudly championing a foreign policy that puts a high value on principles ― particularly gender equality ― not just pragmatism.
President Donald Trump poses the greatest challenge yet to this principled diplomacy. With the U.S. now run by a man who sees foreign affairs as a game of transactions, narrowly defined national interest and wall-building, figures like Wallström must decide how to protect their vision while maintaining good relations with Washington. As the U.S. and U.K. grow more isolationist, the future of international cooperation increasingly relies on small but determined countries such as Sweden.
“We have seen so much of populism, polarization, protectionism and all of these isms ... that lead our world, as I see it, in a wrong direction and will not help us to create more jobs and more wealth and everything that we want,” Wallström said in an interview with HuffPost last week, during her first trip to Washington since Trump took office.
“And more peace!” she added.
Without direct condemnations of the president, Wallström offered a broad defense of the internationalist worldview Trump and his allies in Europe call obsolete.
“We see countries turning inward, thinking they can just look after their own interests, but there are few problems or challenges that one country can solve on its own,” she said. “I don’t think that there is a way back to something that existed. We have to live in this world. And I think our children and grandchildren will not forgive us if we cannot come together.”
Sweden wants to work with Trump on issues like fighting the so-called Islamic State, European security and humanitarian crises. Wallström was in town to attend a meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.
But there’s no denying the disconnect between Stockholm and Washington. Wallström’s left-wing, avowedly feminist government is already subtly highlighting it: Its ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, criticized Trump’s depiction of the U.N. in January, as Sweden took up an influential position on the Security Council; the following month, Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lövin posted a tweet apparently mocking Trump’s all-male photoshoots. Three weeks ago, Sweden pledged $22 million to the global health organizations Trump has targeted with his ban on U.S. support for groups that even discuss abortion.
Powerful men in elected office “often start by taking decisions that restrict the movement of women or how women dress or violence against women, so that is also something they seem to have in common, and that worries me a lot,” Wallström said, in an indirect reference to Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently decriminalized some forms of domestic violence.
As the face of Sweden abroad, Wallström bears the greatest responsibility for her country’s relationship with the new U.S. administration. And the biggest Trump-Sweden moment so far was a reminder that stability is far from assured. On Feb. 18, the president told a Florida rally that Sweden proved his point about the danger of accepting refugees: “You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” Trump said. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”
It was quintessential Trump: It turned out there was no incident, and he was referring to a Fox News report in which an expert misled viewers about an increase in crime since Sweden began accepting refugees.
After declining to comment in the immediate aftermath, Wallström now says she wants to use the news peg the president provided.
“We are trying to use [it] to just give a more balanced picture of Sweden,” Wallström told HuffPost. “It’s maybe difficult [to integrate refugees] in some places, but it is not out of control. ... I don’t know where they got that from.”
Sweden has introduced new border controls in the wake of the refugee crisis and participated in a controversial deal with Turkey to reduce the flow of people moving into Europe. But it continues to accept large numbers of asylum-seekers ― 29,000 in 2016 and up to 45,000 this year ― and offer them generous social support.
“We just have to get the numbers down so that we can manage,” Wallström said, noting that Sweden had received an exceptionally high number of young refugees, who require greater state care. “But we are not changing our rules or laws on exactly what you can get. We want to continue to be able to take care of all the refugees and asylum-seekers in a decent and dignified way and to have them fully integrated.”
For some on the anti-immigrant right, like Breitbart and pro-Russian news outlets that frequently spread untruths about refugees to stir up tension in Europe, Sweden’s border control could be seen as a vindication. But Wallström doesn’t buy that. Whereas right-wing politicians say European centralization is one source of the crisis ― preventing countries from rejecting migrants wholesale ― Wallström says the trouble is too little European coordination.
“This would not have been a problem at all if we had together in the European Union shared responsibility,” Wallström said. Ultra-nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland have been stridently anti-refugee, increasing the burden on others like Sweden and Germany.
There’s now a government-wide challenge to false portrayals of the situation. In Washington, Sweden’s high-profile embassy is running events with the tagline “Safe And Sound” to argue that societies don’t have to sacrifice openness, diversity and liberalism for the sake of security. The campaign’s first event was the launch of a major exhibit on how refugee integration works in Sweden ― featuring a high-ranking U.S. Department of Homeland Security official. Asked at the opening about language in Trump’s Muslim bans that presents anti-refugee measures as important to protect women, Åsa Regnér, the minister for gender equality, noted that levels of violence against women in Sweden have remained relatively constant in recent years.
To experts like her, this scapegoating of immigrants is a clear misrepresentation: Misogyny does take specific and troubling forms in migrant communities, but it’s deceptive to pretend that closing the borders will lead to equality. “We know that there is violence in the [ethnically Swedish] majority, and there is also violence among the first and second generation of immigrants, and we have to really understand those and take targeted measures,” Regnér said. “I feel we have to speak of both things.”
The refugee policy is only one part of how Sweden’s approach veers from Trump’s policies.
Wallström’s government proudly funds efforts to include more women at the U.N. peace talks on Syria, and she doesn’t buy Trump-style suggestions that the West embrace strongman Bashar Assad. “It ought to be for the people of Syria to decide who should be their leader ... but the confidence will be affected by the fact that so many war crimes have been committed,” she said. Sweden recently used its temporary U.N. Security Council seat to try to punish Assad for his use of chemical weapons.
With Russia boosting its presence in the Baltic Sea and violating Swedish airspace, Wallström’s government has reaffirmed its commitment to Sweden’s traditional nonalignment. At the same time, it wants Putin to respect the international norm of territorial sovereignty ― in Ukraine and in Sweden’s neighborhood. Stockholm has boosted its defenses, including by reintroducing conscription. “We have to be very clear about our policy toward Russia: When you do things like the illegal annexation of Crimea or the aggression in eastern Ukraine, then we will adopt a policy that includes sanctions,” Wallström said.
This kind of commitment to principles entails costs ― to prestige and to delicate, important relationships. Wallström acknowledged reports that the anti-ISIS coalition has killed hundreds of civilians since Trump took office, urging accountability for those who have potentially committed war crimes. And she slammed Turkey, the key to the E.U.’s refugee plans, for its crackdown on civil society and increasingly heated rhetoric about European governments.
A Social Democrat, the minister thinks the global left can still recapture popular support despite the rise of groups ― like the Front National in France and the far right in the U.S. ― who successfully pitch a mix of ultra-nationalism and popular, traditionally left-wing state spending.
“We lost our vision more than anything else. We have not been able to describe the tasks in front of us,” Wallström said. She wants greater focus on the state’s role in tackling wealth gaps, climate change and future sustainable development.
Without that focus, voters see globalization as necessarily causing the growing inequality economists like Thomas Piketty have warned about, Wallström said. “It’s ironic, of course, that it’s the very wealthy people who seem to be elected.”
As the interview concluded, the minister prepared to head to the big anti-ISIS summit. After all the talk of principle, Wallström made a little show of Trump-era pragmatism ― her press secretary offered a printout of information about Sweden’s success. First topic: the ease of doing business there.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2o64jhu
0 notes
Text
How Sweden's Feminist Foreign Minister Is Dealing With The Age Of Trump
WASHINGTON ― Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström is used to her strong convictions making her job harder.
After she announced that Sweden would become the first Western European power to recognize Palestine as a state, Wallström faced condemnations from Jerusalem and Washington. When she criticized Saudi Arabia’s draconian restrictions on women and flogging of an imprisoned blogger, she earned the ire of Swedish business leaders worried about their country’s lucrative trade with the kingdom. Israeli officials continue to snub her, and it took an intervention from Sweden’s prime minister and its king to defuse tensions with the Saudis.
Still, the minister has remained firm in her views, proudly championing a foreign policy that puts a high value on principles ― particularly gender equality ― not just pragmatism.
President Donald Trump poses the greatest challenge yet to this principled diplomacy. With the U.S. now run by a man who sees foreign affairs as a game of transactions, narrowly defined national interest and wall-building, figures like Wallström must decide how to protect their vision while maintaining good relations with Washington. As the U.S. and U.K. grow more isolationist, the future of international cooperation increasingly relies on small but determined countries such as Sweden.
“We have seen so much of populism, polarization, protectionism and all of these isms ... that lead our world, as I see it, in a wrong direction and will not help us to create more jobs and more wealth and everything that we want,” Wallström said in an interview with HuffPost last week, during her first trip to Washington since Trump took office.
“And more peace!” she added.
Without direct condemnations of the president, Wallström offered a broad defense of the internationalist worldview Trump and his allies in Europe call obsolete.
“We see countries turning inward, thinking they can just look after their own interests, but there are few problems or challenges that one country can solve on its own,” she said. “I don’t think that there is a way back to something that existed. We have to live in this world. And I think our children and grandchildren will not forgive us if we cannot come together.”
Sweden wants to work with Trump on issues like fighting the so-called Islamic State, European security and humanitarian crises. Wallström was in town to attend a meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.
But there’s no denying the disconnect between Stockholm and Washington. Wallström’s left-wing, avowedly feminist government is already subtly highlighting it: Its ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, criticized Trump’s depiction of the U.N. in January, as Sweden took up an influential position on the Security Council; the following month, Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lövin posted a tweet apparently mocking Trump’s all-male photoshoots. Three weeks ago, Sweden pledged $22 million to the global health organizations Trump has targeted with his ban on U.S. support for groups that even discuss abortion.
Powerful men in elected office “often start by taking decisions that restrict the movement of women or how women dress or violence against women, so that is also something they seem to have in common, and that worries me a lot,” Wallström said, in an indirect reference to Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently decriminalized some forms of domestic violence.
As the face of Sweden abroad, Wallström bears the greatest responsibility for her country’s relationship with the new U.S. administration. And the biggest Trump-Sweden moment so far was a reminder that stability is far from assured. On Feb. 18, the president told a Florida rally that Sweden proved his point about the danger of accepting refugees: “You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” Trump said. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”
It was quintessential Trump: It turned out there was no incident, and he was referring to a Fox News report in which an expert misled viewers about an increase in crime since Sweden began accepting refugees.
After declining to comment in the immediate aftermath, Wallström now says she wants to use the news peg the president provided.
“We are trying to use [it] to just give a more balanced picture of Sweden,” Wallström told HuffPost. “It’s maybe difficult [to integrate refugees] in some places, but it is not out of control. ... I don’t know where they got that from.”
Sweden has introduced new border controls in the wake of the refugee crisis and participated in a controversial deal with Turkey to reduce the flow of people moving into Europe. But it continues to accept large numbers of asylum-seekers ― 29,000 in 2016 and up to 45,000 this year ― and offer them generous social support.
“We just have to get the numbers down so that we can manage,” Wallström said, noting that Sweden had received an exceptionally high number of young refugees, who require greater state care. “But we are not changing our rules or laws on exactly what you can get. We want to continue to be able to take care of all the refugees and asylum-seekers in a decent and dignified way and to have them fully integrated.”
For some on the anti-immigrant right, like Breitbart and pro-Russian news outlets that frequently spread untruths about refugees to stir up tension in Europe, Sweden’s border control could be seen as a vindication. But Wallström doesn’t buy that. Whereas right-wing politicians say European centralization is one source of the crisis ― preventing countries from rejecting migrants wholesale ― Wallström says the trouble is too little European coordination.
“This would not have been a problem at all if we had together in the European Union shared responsibility,” Wallström said. Ultra-nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland have been stridently anti-refugee, increasing the burden on others like Sweden and Germany.
There’s now a government-wide challenge to false portrayals of the situation. In Washington, Sweden’s high-profile embassy is running events with the tagline “Safe And Sound” to argue that societies don’t have to sacrifice openness, diversity and liberalism for the sake of security. The campaign’s first event was the launch of a major exhibit on how refugee integration works in Sweden ― featuring a high-ranking U.S. Department of Homeland Security official. Asked at the opening about language in Trump’s Muslim bans that presents anti-refugee measures as important to protect women, Åsa Regnér, the minister for gender equality, noted that levels of violence against women in Sweden have remained relatively constant in recent years.
To experts like her, this scapegoating of immigrants is a clear misrepresentation: Misogyny does take specific and troubling forms in migrant communities, but it’s deceptive to pretend that closing the borders will lead to equality. “We know that there is violence in the [ethnically Swedish] majority, and there is also violence among the first and second generation of immigrants, and we have to really understand those and take targeted measures,” Regnér said. “I feel we have to speak of both things.”
The refugee policy is only one part of how Sweden’s approach veers from Trump’s policies.
Wallström’s government proudly funds efforts to include more women at the U.N. peace talks on Syria, and she doesn’t buy Trump-style suggestions that the West embrace strongman Bashar Assad. “It ought to be for the people of Syria to decide who should be their leader ... but the confidence will be affected by the fact that so many war crimes have been committed,” she said. Sweden recently used its temporary U.N. Security Council seat to try to punish Assad for his use of chemical weapons.
With Russia boosting its presence in the Baltic Sea and violating Swedish airspace, Wallström’s government has reaffirmed its commitment to Sweden’s traditional nonalignment. At the same time, it wants Putin to respect the international norm of territorial sovereignty ― in Ukraine and in Sweden’s neighborhood. Stockholm has boosted its defenses, including by reintroducing conscription. “We have to be very clear about our policy toward Russia: When you do things like the illegal annexation of Crimea or the aggression in eastern Ukraine, then we will adopt a policy that includes sanctions,” Wallström said.
This kind of commitment to principles entails costs ― to prestige and to delicate, important relationships. Wallström acknowledged reports that the anti-ISIS coalition has killed hundreds of civilians since Trump took office, urging accountability for those who have potentially committed war crimes. And she slammed Turkey, the key to the E.U.’s refugee plans, for its crackdown on civil society and increasingly heated rhetoric about European governments.
A Social Democrat, the minister thinks the global left can still recapture popular support despite the rise of groups ― like the Front National in France and the far right in the U.S. ― who successfully pitch a mix of ultra-nationalism and popular, traditionally left-wing state spending.
“We lost our vision more than anything else. We have not been able to describe the tasks in front of us,” Wallström said. She wants greater focus on the state’s role in tackling wealth gaps, climate change and future sustainable development.
Without that focus, voters see globalization as necessarily causing the growing inequality economists like Thomas Piketty have warned about, Wallström said. “It’s ironic, of course, that it’s the very wealthy people who seem to be elected.”
As the interview concluded, the minister prepared to head to the big anti-ISIS summit. After all the talk of principle, Wallström made a little show of Trump-era pragmatism ― her press secretary offered a printout of information about Sweden’s success. First topic: the ease of doing business there.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2o64jhu
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