Monday, April 26, 2010

Things We Learned on Twitter This PM---Politics in Swedish School Elections




We were only going to post one entry today, so I don't go overboard and post 14 entries per blog as I did this last week. We also normally post "What I Learned on Twitter This P.M." on Wednesday, but this was too good to pass up.

Imagine if you're school election, in a place like Georgetown, SC, were to be held with each candidate being backed by a certain political party!

I remember the school election my senior year at our high school in the Roanoke, Va., area in 1987. Cheryl (psedonym) was running against Mark (psedonym) as it turns I would later find that as adults one was a Democrat and one was a Republican, but we didn't know this at the time.

Mark beat out Cheryl who was the incumbent junior class president in what I believe was a close race.

Can you imagine if this were done with local political parties got involved?

Well, apparently, that seems to be what they are proposing in Sweden! According to Radio Sweden's Twitter page, the youth wings of Sweden's political parties and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions have issued a joint call for local councils to take on such a measure.

Many schools have decided to ban political parties for fears that it would include the far-right Sweden Democrat Party (no that is NOT a typo- the radical right-wingers in Sweden are a part of the Democratic Party, which for those of you in Uzbekistan is not the way it is here in America).

Anders Krape who heads one of the governmental organizations in favor of political parties in the classroom told Radio Sweden that his support for the motion was based on the fact that high school students couldn't be sheltered from xenophobia. He added that it was best for students to learn how to argue against such archaic ideals politically.

PS_This is the first story we're reported about concerning Sweden since the parliament in Stockholm passed a bill regarding the Armenian matter which angered the Turkish government earlier this year. I am a Turkish-American, but I generally refrain from getting into the highly toxic political dispute between most people of Turkish and Armenian persuasion over very violent events which occured in eastern Turkey in 1915 since my views have actually been disputed by virtually everyone (Turk and Armenian alike) though I have referred to the issue as a 'Rashomon Nightmare.' And, I stand by that.

SIDEBAR_ Joe Eskenazi of "The San Francisco Weekly" is reporting in an article I also found out about through Twitter that the City of San Francisco, lead by supervisor David Campos, is actually going to introduce legislation calling for a boycott of Arizona since state has passed a highly-controversial new immigration law.

I personally oppose the Arizona law myself as it will only lead to more paranoia and xenophobia towards Hispanics, but this seems to be a bit extreme as well. Does this mean we should all quit drinking Arizona Iced Tea?--- (well, it is actually brewed in Canada!).

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