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This piece has also appeared in the Dhaka periodical "The Daily Observer" : www.observerbd.com/2014/11/16/54950.php

Writer-translator-video artist-cultural curator, Kristian Carlsson was born in 1978 in Malmo, Sweden, and began writing poetry at fifteen. He made his publication debut in 1996 and has published 20 books in Swedish -- ranging from poetry to prose to conceptual pieces. He also writes original fiction in English, published in several magazines in England, USA and Canada, and in 2013 the thematic prose collection "Small Press, or Else: (Dracopis Press) was published. -- "The Daily Observer"

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As a country, Sweden in some strange way has managed to obtain for itself a reputation as the realm of human rights and human dignity. Such a cool trade mark, a wet dream for Wall Street wannabes; and to the serious Mad Men admen it ought to be like the cracking of a tough nut, if them boys were only sharp enough to pinpoint the degree of falsification in the statement.

I'm not even gonna mention the oppression and assault made on the indigenous people in the north of the country, by the state, the municipalities, and the people.

My own family comes from an industrial village in the South, very small though, in an international perspective. There, a century ago, the value of a factory worker still was one tenth of the value of a farmer, and half the value of the farmers' legally oppressed field workers. The industry was surrounded by peasant pasture. This was in the lifetime of my grand-grandparents, who outlived World War I in our so called neutrality.

Despite compulsory education being imposed in 1842, and in 1882 expanded to 6 obligatory years in school for all children, the village teacher reckoned it would be better if the factory workers' kids, instead of learning to read and write, took turn going into town to, without salary, sell produce for the profit of the teacher. Year after year, class after class.

My grandmother was born out of wedlock, and her only friend in school was also a bastard child. At the age of fourteen, my grandmother immigrated to the United States, with a man in his fifties, who had already made his life in the US. But you didn't want her here, and after weeks on the transatlantic liner, she was refused to enter your country.
The factory in my village had flourished by allowing the workers some credit so that they could survive in spite of lousy salaries; the dept was then inherited and no one could ever leave. The factory was all gone in 1912, but the spirit of taking from the poor was still in the loop long after that. For centuries, the workers had built their own houses, and, to begin with, owned them and inherited them, but not the land they stood on. As late as in the 1950's the henchmen of the count who owned all the land, took a house away from it's owner by claiming the return of a small, no, tiny, debt. After that there weren't even a handfull of the worker's houses in the village that the count still hadn't been able to take away from their owners. In the village church, there is a slope at the end of the graveyard, where my ancestors were dumped in an anonymous mass grave with the other workers, to save space.
Sweden's reputation continued to find its odd and unfair progress. The neutrality of Sweden in World War II was maintained for some sixty years as a false truth. For instance, the Nazis were allowed to have their base camp in Sweden in order to invade Norway across the border.

And in the seventies homosexuality was still regarded a disease in Sweden, so, in protest, gay people started call in sick to their workplace.
In 2013 it was revealed that the local police in the third largest city in Sweden, single-mindedly had made a secret directory of all relatives and relations of Romanies, a.k.a. Gypsies. And continuously expanded it.

The neutrality and open-mindedness of Sweden continues to be an international brand. Still there are documents revealed in the Wikileaks, proving a profound collaboration with the United States on facilitating the random spying on people's personal content online.
In the trade marked Sweden of today, there are policemen caught on film calling people racist names in the shadow of darkness, and using excessive violence at demonstrations, also on minors, in full daylight. But no policeman is ever held accountable. When I was a teenager a friend of mine was taken away alone in a police van, and inside it got beaten and threatened in a desolate street. It was an ordinary evening, we hadn't done anything suspicious; the guilt was by association. Swedish people still think such things are a myth, but it is an experience shared by many.

And in 2014 I still have friends who are Swedish citizens but nonetheless are refused to take part in the welfare system because they are of African, or Arabic descent. It is all up to the kindness of the individual social worker, and there isn't much kindness to be seen today.

We just had elections in Sweden, and for the parliament about 13% of the people voted for the main racist party. 83,3% of the citizens had voted, so it's not on the count of misrepresentation. In my small election district almost 20% voted for the racist party. That is a reality I will have to come home to. The amount of people who always have fancied saying "I am not a racist, but..." are now fully out of the closet.

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from I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS by Maya Angelou, released September 24, 2014

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The Bushwick Book Club Brooklyn, New York

We started in January 2009 playing songs written in response to Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. We haven't stopped since. We've written & performed songs inspired by everything from "On The Origin of Species" to Dr. Seuss to Raymond Carver. There are BBCs popping up nationwide now. Bushwick Book Club Seattle started in 2010 & is run by Geoff Larson. Our nerdy dare-devilry knows no bounds. ... more

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