William Shepherd

In the days before Ronald Reagan, Academics developed concepts like Domino Theory to justify the use of force in faraway places like South-East Asia. Most of the ideas were variations on the theme of defending the world against The Communist Menace. But the Reagan People improved on the rhetoric with the notion of an Evil Empire to describe the Soviet Union…and the idea of a Terrorist State.

But it was Bill Clinton’s speechwriters who first coined the phrase Rogue State…with Failed States coming later. Rogue States…like Iraq…threatened US Security while Failed States…like Haiti…required US Intervention to save them. Shame about the Mess that got left behind.

Most Americans manage to overlook the fact that under US Law their country fits the category of Terrorist and Rogue State better than most. In American academic circles it has long been accepted that the rest of the world regards the USA as the leading rogue state and a threat to their existence. Foreign Affairs Specialists write it as a fact.

But Noam Chomsky is now going round the studios telling Americans that they are also one of the best Failed States as well…and suggesting there might be a connection between the two facts. On this the American People do not need much persuading. The overwhelming majority of Americans take the view that their country has a Democratic Deficit…a gap between public policy and public opinion…although being well to the right of the People, the political parties are unwilling to accept this. And Democratic Deficiency is a key measure of the Failed State.

This brings me to Sweden. Not too big. Not too small. Just the right size…but bottom of the Rogue State and Failed State leagues…alongside New Zealand and Switzerland. To be Small or Not To Be Democratic At All? If State Research were conducted along similar lines to Medical Research millions of research dollars would have poured into statistical analyses of these league tables. Particular attention would have been directed to states that altered their size and shape by acquisition or dismemberment. The statistical findings would have been incontrovertible. Size matters…and a population of a few million is great news for the State’s inhabitants...and the neighbouring states too.

Then our State Researchers would have moved on to Confederations and…the coming thing…Diasporas. Business Researchers have discovered by studying the data that Financial Portfolios suffer from Diminishing Returns and the more items they include the worse they get. The Optimum Portfolio Size is six to ten…which might be true of confederations too.

If I lived in Vermont I would like to know if it were better for my family to live in a Province of a Large Failed Rogue State or as part of a Confederation of Successful Small States at the foot of the Rogue State League. It is good to see this question is now on Vermont’s Agenda. One day we may be grateful for the Academics who invented the concepts of Rogue and Failed States. So much research to do…so little being done. To conclude here are two extracts from Speculation Past in The Rise & Fall of the Swedish Green Party (1982-1997).

After allowing the Norwegians to secede peacefully and create a new country on their Atlantic Seaboard at the beginning of the century, the remaining eight million Swedes continued their virtuoso display of war avoidance diplomacy - a skill acquired during the early years of the 19th century when Napoleon’s troops were establishing military bases along the estuaries of the rivers running out of Central Europe into the Baltic Lakes.

By the time the governments of the European Colonizing Companies embarked upon The Great Folly of employing their young men as cannon fodder in 1914 Little Sweden was well rehearsed in the Art of Non-Alignment. It knew all there was to know about weaving and bobbing and keeping your head down, and had learned how to avoid slaughtering its youngest, strongest, best and brightest men. It had become a small sensible Nation-State that remembered its imperial pretensions of bygone days and understood that nothing awaits warring empires...be they hailed as Victors of the War or Winners of the Peace…except their exhaustion, their division and their subsequent brief but glorious Golden Age…echoes of Leopold Kohr in The Philosophies of Misery…perchance even Plagiarism.

On my 60th birthday and on the stroke of midday…and there were clocks striking all around me…I strode into the Grand Hotel in Stockholm and ordered myself a pot of coffee to drink in the foyer while awaiting the departure of Waxholm I for Ljusterö at 1300 hours. The coffee was much too strong and I take care to avoid attending concerts or walking around town with a full bladder so I drank just two of the four cups in my silver coffee pot before paying thirty one crowns...exchange rate 13.4 to the pound…and strolling across the street at 1250 hours to my waiting Water Taxi. I left no bank notes in my wake to gladden the hearts of swooping waiters. It did not escape my notice that the Grand Hotel has a policy of waiters and not waitresses in their foyer. I wonder why?

Two months ago I congratulated the China Chapter of International PEN on their campaign to stop the persecution of bloggers in China. A little notice in an inside page of the Financial Times mentioned rejoicing after Hao Wu, the Chinese filmmaker and author of the Beijing or Bust blog went free after being held in jail for 140 days without charge. Rebecca MacKinnon of Harvard’s Global Voices blog has been campaigning for his release. Good on Ya Becky! The media should keep their distance. Here is a Beijing or Bust blogpost from earlier this year.

‘Recently I had a huge argument with my mother. The unreasonable requests from her were so obviously morally wrong and I shouldn’t even have to explain my stand. Instead I kept on calling her back apologizing for my behavior and comforting her. What could I have done? She’s my mother. This made me think about censorship in China. The comments from Chinese readers to my previous post Do I Have to Take A Stand? mainly expressed annoyance and incomprehension at the West’s criticism of China. So did most of the Chinese bloggers I’ve read thus far.

I sensed the existence of a defensive argument from my compatriots - This is our family business; leave us alone! That’s the same argument I used with my ex…an American advocating Tibetan rights and preaching all the other liberal media’s criticisms of China. I explained that the Chinese are very defensive about these criticisms because in our modern history we’d been repeatedly humiliated by Western Colonial Powers; in addition, we Chinese believe in A son doesn’t complain about his mother’s plain looks, and a mother doesn’t pick on a son’s destitution.

My own advice to American Bleeding Hearts in Nepal and Tibet would be to stop imposing yourselves upon the long-suffering local peoples just because it’s fun hanging out in the Himalayas...and feels good saving victims to boost your own low self-esteem. I loved the few weeks I spent in Kashmir in the early summer of 1974. Your energy and concern is desperately needed back home in the United States of America. In terms of civil liberties and freedom of thought the USA is higher up on Noam Chomsky’s list of Failed States than China. But those ignorant of their own ignorance are hard work. A wise man can learn from a fool but not the other way about.

It is hard to know how to deal with tipping at the best of times. There are those of my acquaintance who avoid the better establishments because of their fear of the withering glance and the dismissive shrug. Not even Basil Fawlty can cure them of their fear of posh places. I explain that they will never set eyes on these people again and that the glancee is worth quite a few of the glancers. But to no avail. However I have had the occasional success with my policy approach which is what gives me the confidence to be qualm-free in such situations.

One can have a policy for anything. Indeed if you are wise you will have policies for most things. A policy is a set of general rules to apply to particular circumstances. Its value is enormous. Instead of working out what to do you make a straight choice whether to apply the policy or not. It can cut down the energy and anguish by ninety percent. My Drinking Policy is not to until the sun goes beneath the yardarm. My Tipping Policy is not before seven in the evening and a carefully calculated ten percent from then on. I waive the policy for exceptional service…good or bad…and when I wish to avoid talking about it and prefer to do the done thing whatever that might happen to be.

Charity is the job of the rich. Solidarity is the way of the poor. Today I am poor. Tomorrow I will be rich. Of course waiters are poor and depend on tips to make a living wage. Let them rely upon the largesse from their rich clientele. My drop in the ocean will not improve their prospects. Besides unless you know a hotel's Waging and Tipping Policy you cannot take an informed position. But this tithe of mine does not necessarily get spent inside the establishment. It is as likely to go to the lad selling the Big Issue ten yards down the street.

Anyway it was my Best Deal Policy and not my Tipping Policy that was in force at the Grand Hotel…after application of my Selecting Appropriate Policy policy. My reason for taking coffee at the Grand Hotel was because it is the cheapest place when Operant Conditions are taken into account. The better class of Hotels and Coffee Houses provide customers with copies of the Daily Newspaper. The very best take a pride in their piles of crisp unopened copies of New York’s Herald Tribune and London’s Financial Times. Either of these would set me back the price of a pot of coffee. But in fifty minutes I can make my way through both publications.

Wise men approach life with a sense of mystery and wonder. Tom Lethbridge’s discoveries with his long pendulum of a timeless zone beyond death may eventually turn out to be the best theological argument for being mindful with your life. But for the moment life remains the damndest thing. Toni Pinschof once told me that the best neighbours a peasant farmer can have are Jehovah Witnesses. They believe that the Day of Judgement might come at any moment. So they act accordingly and are on red alert in anticipation of his arrival. This, Tony explained, is good for the neighbouring farmers because whenever they need to borrow anything they find it in immaculate condition.

Sixty years ago it would have been impossible to predict that I would be spending my 60th birthday on the island of Ljusterö in the Stockholm Archipelago. Even a month ago I would not have bet on it…although my daughter asked me to thank Alan and Magdalena for taking the pressure off her. You can reasonably expect to know where you will be tomorrow…but ten years from now…twenty five years? The Arrow of Time is strange too. It puzzles physicists.

Time should be symmetrical according to their equations. There should not be an arrow at all. If you know your birthday you should know your deathday. But in practice all you know is that you are one day closer each morning. The present is everything or nothing. The future has yet to come and the past has vanished. The priests try to cut the Gordian Knot by reference to higher authority…a sacred book or a divine being. Take no heed for the morrow, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof is their best shot…heed our words and your reward will be in the hereafter.

The main argument against suicide is never knowing what the next day brings…which is why suicides increase in the spring. You despair in the winter…but hope for better things. Come spring nothing changes…so hope vanishes. Such macabre concerns were abandoned yesterday afternoon as m/s Waxholm I picked her way between the Hallberg-Rassys…and the restaurant on Skeppsbron that sunk last night…to take me to my birthday party on Ljusterö.

Over to port lay Skeppsholmen where the Af Chapman is moored…the best situated youth hostel in the world. On the far side of the island is Benny Anderson’s studio…unbeknown to the Aussie backpackers. An hour out we docked at Vaxholm…capital of the Stockholm Skärgård. It took two and a half hours from Grand Hotel to Grundvik on Ljusterö as we made our way round the islands stopping at a dozen small jetties for passengers to disembark and be greeted and welcomed to the country homes of friends or family. More than half of Stockholmers have a place in the country.

We were nine to dinner and seven to sing the traditional Swedish birthday song ‘Jåg mår han levar...’ which wishes the Birthday Boy or Girl ‘many happy returns of the day’ but means literally ‘may you live…’ It is sung three times before ending the sentence with ‘…for a hundred years’. It could stop there with the traditional three cheers but there is another verse. ‘Och då ska han skjutas…’ three times…before ‘…i en skottkära fram.’

Swedes find this uproariously funny. Much Swedish humour is Situation Comedy…a good example of this is Fawlty Towers where John Cleese is forever thwarted in his neurotic attempts to control, stay organised and organise others. We have that here with a firing squad and the indignity of it all. But there is also a witty play on words. Skjuta means ‘to shoot’ and ‘to push’...with skjutas the passive ‘to be shot’. Adding the final line changes the meaning from ‘then he’ll be shot’ to ‘then he’ll be pushed…forward in a wheelbarrow’. Our Happy Birthday is tame by comparison.

There were only seven singers because the Birthday Boy does not sing his own praises and 5-week old boys are excused…although Andrew and Elisabet’s son Jonathon joined in anyway. Jennie and Jeremias’ 3-year old daughter Alva would have us singing all evening. But I was volunteered to sing to her at the piano the next day instead. And so I did. Mor’s Lilla Ulla…and a brown björn she befriends in the forest much to the alarm of her mother.

By mid morning a work party was in full flow painting the house so Alan and I persuaded ourselves of the necessity of driving to the building merchants for vital supplies…and the price of scaffolding. On the way back we called in at the local store for worms and snus…a 200-year old tradition introduced by a French Queen. Snus is placed between lip and gum…unlike the worms…which are placed on a hook and fed to passing pike. Allegedly Jeremias caught an 18-inch gädda but ate it before I could verify the fact. So I am unable to vouch for the truth of this fisherman’s tale.