Towards the cathedral

... and as we came nearer to Cathedral square, the sun started to break through.

Public space

Back on Gedimino, we watch people walking...

Radio favourites

I listen to a lot of Swedish radio, you probably know by now. Some real favourites from this weekend are the following:

Konflikt (as usual) on European jihadists. I was in a recent discussion on this live, about how to target recruitment candidates with soft policies and whether it is worth targeting ideological hardliners at all. Also how isolated hardliners seem to be, historically and philosophically, while still taking up a large part of the public debating space and consciousness... - interesting poignant issues all of them.

and

Teologiska rummet (Theology room?) with Jan Hjärpe and Mohammed Fazlhashemi discussing the role of man's free will in Islam, adding to the philosophical dimension of the discussion above also. Both gentlemen really come through in this discussion format too, leaving me as a listener feeling truly enlightened and wiser.

Happy Orthodox Easter!

All across the orthodox world, this weekend is actually Easter. BBC has some photos to show.

More reading

As usual, the selection is determined by my personal interests.

So I start today with an interview with a biographer of Sir Vidya Naipaul. I have long held the strong opinion that recent decades of English-language fiction and writing has a strong tilt towards the subcontinent, and Naipaul was an early representative of that trend.

A Finnish artist has placed burqa-clad women in a Nordic forest...

An Iranian-american artist exhibits in Århus, with a monumental depiction of Iran in 1953.

The National takes a look at the future of culture in Abu Dhabi Saadiyat Island.

I would like to call attention to the work of ECPAT against sexual exploitation of children.

Svenska Dagbladet highlights the importance of developments in Kirkuk and Iraqis attending a course on post-conflict conciliation in Finland.

Aftonbladet calls for Sweden and Carl Bildt to follow in the footsteps of Jimmy Carter and start a dialogue with Hamas.

While Svenska Dagbladet is more sceptical to the political developments in the Middle East. Al-Jazeera also discusses the issues of Arab unity and regional trends.

Also new Abu Dhabi paper The National takes a look at the regional human rights agenda.

BBC reports on Human Rights Watch criticism against the situation of women in Saudi Arabia. Saudi blogger Fouad has been freed, BBC reports.

Middle East Reports looks at the connections and conflicts between the ruling AKP and the Alevi community.

BBC continues to look into the food crisis in Egypt.

BBC also writes of the dream of a Palestinian village.

Samantha Power recently visited Stockholm. Her position as Anna Lindh professor at Harvard University gives her a strong connection with Sweden, regardless of her US-political affiliations.

Merete Mazzarella writes for Svenska Dagbladet on the burden of generations of family (dynasty) entrepreneurship.

Hans Ingvar Roth writes on global democracy, oil and the middle class...

BBC reports on the strengthening hardliners in Iran.

Swedish radio reports on a German-Afghan spy scandal, perhaps kicking in the wrong direction...

Anders Lago, the mayor of Södertälje, has visited the US Congress and spoken of the responsibility his town takes for refugees from Iraq. Here he is interviewed by Svenska Dagbladet.

Swedish media has published pictures of a planned Swedish wartime currency - in me raising more questions than giving answers... Currency is trust, and who would trust and use this and who one could trust to use it, in dire times of occupation, I really don't know.

Gedimino

Walking down Gedimino prospekt, the main street of Vilnius, with shopping and banks and government buildings.

Back out in the open...

Coming back outside, the wide open spaces and trees and air were almost surreal in their serenity.

Long lost belongings

Seeing the lost personal articles under the glass flooring was heartbreaking.






69, 73

Dim lighting

Trying to show you the chamber and it's special ambience. Finding one's feet across the fiber glass floor covering also gives a feeling of needing to step carefully, adding to the spooky sense of the vaults.

Tracing steps

The strongest feeling came perhaps from the personal objects of victims, exhibited in the dim chamber... These rows of people entering represented by shoes was especially suggestive.

Execution chamber...

Eeriest and most gruesome of all is the basement execution chamber. Somehow the ambience is permanently disturbed by the fate of the people once brought there to never leave again.







The glass fiber covering of the sand floor shows relics of those whose lives ended in this sad spot.

It get's only worse...

Details from the solitary confinement cell where prisoners were tortured with ice-cold water...

Readings tips again

I have quite a lot this week (and some older material too) that I would like to share.

I'd like to start this week with BBC's photos of Druze at the Israeli-Syrian border. A written report on the same theme here.

Dagens Nyheter has met Åsne Seierstad to talk about her most recent book The Angel of Grozny. Swedish radio reports on power struggles growing in Chechnya.

Patrick Seale writes for Gulf News on Sarkozy's Mediterranean Union.

Gulf News also wrote about films in the Gulf film festival.

Again from Gulf News, the lives and situation of Muslim women is discussed. On a similar theme, Gulf News interviews Fatima Rafsanjani. BBC reports on a case in Yemen were a young girl gets a marriage annulled.

BBC reports on a women's rights campaigner in Iran.

From Turkey, al-Jazeera reports on new protests against ruling AKP. Swedish radio interviews AKP-parlamentarian Haluk Özdalga on the political crisis in Turkey. BBC here reports on the freedom of expression in Turkey and the focus on the "insulting Turkishness". Svenska dagbladet interviews a Turkish comedian.

The discussion on food prices and globalization continues in Al Jazeera.

BBC shows photos of protests in Egypt, on themes of food prices, against the government. Swedish radio reports on the threat against the government in the food crisis in Egypt.

In IWPR, and Iraqi woman tells of her family's life in Baghdad. BBC reports on a journalist being freed.

Swedish radio's Konflikt last week was on Afghanistan.

Svenska Dagbladet writes on falafel and the symbolism of ethnic food in conflict situations.

Rarely in focus here but very much so globally and in Sweden today is China. Svenska Dagbladet here interviews an Uighur dissident in China when visiting Sweden. BBC tells the story of Tibetan exiles in India.

Maciej Zaremba in Dagens Nyheter writes critically on the issue of islam and freedom of speech. I am not sure I agree with him, but the discussion is important.

Perry Andersson traces the history of Cyprus and the conflict on the island for London Review of Books.

My sense of absurdity is tickled by this BBC description of the Kosovo phone system. and funnily, it has mattered practically to me, but that's a long story.

Eurasianet reports on a Neolithic site outside Urfa where German archaeologists are excavating. If we had had more time when we were there alsmot 1 1/2 years ago, we could have gone to the site (but no digging in the winter), but unfortunately we didn't.

Svenska Dagbladet interviews Swedish lawyer Elisabeth Massi Fritz, known for representing women in difficult situations, especially in honor-tainted cases.

Dagens Nyheter had an article on the traces of the Second World War in Finland.

Layers of history

In patches you could see these layers of old paint on the walls.

Prison cells

The cells, wrongly, look quite roomy on photo like this. They really weren't. But the wardrobe-style one's I showed below where even worse. :-( We suspect they were painted on becoming a museum, though.

The dungeons

Images such as these are difficult to comment..., even if it probably looked and felt and smelled a lot worse in the bad old days...

Outside memorial

These memorials were placed outside in the street in front of the museum.

Prison surroundings

The neighbourhood seems almost supernaturally calm...

Memorial wall

Surrounding the building are engraved the names of those who sat there once...

Baltic freedom

The coming pictures I will show you are on a very heavy theme, from the Vilnius KGB prison, a downtown basement. So even if this is a blurry shot, I want to start here, with a light in the tunnel.

Lithuanian food

Our week in Lithuania and Belarus was dominated (at least on the culinary front) by very traditional rustic eastern european fare.

Here you can see soup, served in a bowl of black bread, followed by potato pancakes (I ate any number of variations on this, with bacon, with salmon, with mushrooms...) and finally some sort of stew with boar (I think it was).

NB this was not a single meal all of this food, but each of the pictures features a meal for one person!

Last images from Minsk

My photos of Minsk are running out now, so just some last images here, including swanky Hotel Europe and the town hall.