Mats Sjöberg

Why I sold my iPhone

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 00:00:01 +0300

My one year iPhone contract with Sonera ended recently and I had a chance to reassess my mobile phone situation. I had long been unsatisfied with the iPhone because of two reasons, one pratical, one philosophical.

The practical problem was that since I had switched to use only GNU/Linux I had no way of synchronising with my computer, or even simply copying over some files. I partially overcame the last problem by using a podcast application on the iPhone which downloaded new podcast episodes directly over WiFi. But if I wanted to transfer new music I had to borrow my girl friend’s Windows-laptop and use iTunes.

There are some efforts, partially successful, to enable free software systems to talk to the iPhone, however Apple seems to actively prevent any third parties from syncing with their devices, so any successful syncing might break in the next iPhone operating system (iOS) update. Contrast this to most other phone companies, who generally do not support GNU/Linux, but also do not actively prevent the use of third party software.

My second gripe was that of controlling the software on the device. As a programmer I often wish to solve a problem by making my own programme, e.g. I could never find an alarm clock application to my liking and wanted to make my own. In order to make an application for the iPhone, I would need to pay Apple $99 each year for the iPhone developer programme, even if only to run it on my own device. I might afford that sum, but it is a matter of principle that I should be able to control the software on a device that I own without any further permissions or payment.

This kind of control is frightening, especially in combination with Apple’s efforts to bring the same controlled environment to more general purpose computing devices such as the iPad. This was one of the reasons which got me thinking more seriously about software freedom and switching all my machines to GNU/Linux. (At the moment my Thinkpad and my Mac mini both run Debian “squeeze”.)

The iPhone was kind of the “last hold-out from the old era” for me. For economical (and partially ecological) reasons I just didn’t want to throw it away — so I stuck with it for some time. Then a co-worker offered to buy if from me since it was unlocked now (officially by Apple, since my one year contract had expired).

So now I’m back to my old Nokia 6290. It runs the horrible S60 variant of Symbian, and I consider it mostly as a “dumb phone”. The operating system on the device is probably as non-free as the iPhone (even if Symbian itself has been open sourced recently), but at least it works with my Linux system, and I can develop and install free software on it.

I intend to use this phone temporarily until a suitable, more open and software freedom-friendly phone turns up. Hopefully one that runs mostly free software. At the moment I am waiting for the upcoming MeeGo operating system, and the first devices based on that. Nokia is said to be working on one for this year. If that turns out badly, I’ll probably start looking at Android-based phones. There is a project called “Replicant” which tries to create a 100% free software stack for Android phones.

Finally, below, I have listed some nice free software that I have installed on my new (old) S60 phone:

Symbian OggPlay is a GPLv2 licensed music player that supports ogg and flac and many other formats. It scans the phone for supported music files, very handy.

Mobidentica is an identi.ca client for S60 under the Apache License 2.0. The author, Tommi Laukkanen, has a lot of other cool free software for S60 on his website.

Feels great that I can at least install software now without first asking permission from Steve Jobs!

Notes on eCryptfs PAM problem

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 00:00:01 +0300

I recently noticed that I can no longer create new users or change passwords on my laptop running Debian “squeeze”. I get an error message indicating that

authentication information cannot be recovered

After some digging around I realised that the problem is connected to the PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) system and some changes I made earlier to its configuration in order to encrypt a ~/Private/ directory with eCryptfs. I had followed the instructions in the Debian reference. It turns out that those instructions are outdated, the problem was fixed by removing my changes and running pam-auth-update where I just selected the ecryptfs module.

June 5, 2010

A parallel of principles

Fri, 14 May 2010 00:00:01 +0300

I stumbled across an interesting blog post by Benjamin Mako Hill from last year. It discusses the dichotomy between “open source” and “free software”, i.e. between those within the FLOSS community who emphasise the practical benefits of the distributed, open development method and those who talk about the users’ rights and freedoms. Benjamin Mako Hill makes an interesting argument in favour of talking about software freedom instead of “open source”: software freedom is about the statement of principles while open source makes empirical claims which may or may not be true.

To put the argument more pointedly: if you are a FLOSS enthusiast, are you ready to start supporting closed source systems if research shows that the closed development method in fact produces better software? For example, security expert Steve Gibson recently argued persuasively on his podcast that there is no real difference in security between the closed and open source software development methodologies.

To make a quick personal aside, the reason why I initially switched from Windows 98 to Linux, and later from Linux to Mac OS X as my main operating system was purely from this practical standpoint. I liked Linux and open source, but I found Mac OS X to be even better quality-wise, e.g. with better usability. However, my recent switch back to Linux was made from a principled standpoint, since my priorities had changed. I know the usability won’t be quite as good as on the Mac and I might have to work harder to get things to work, but since my priority is now software freedom I can live with that.

My main point, however, is to make a parallel that I thought of while discussing politics with a friend over a few beers recently. My friend lamented how political discussions are nowadays always framed around economic arguments, hiding or perhaps forgetting the original values of the political groups involved. In the typical argument, a certain policy should be adopted because it will increase economic growth or reduce expenditures, not because it is the most just or ethical alternative. This is especially distressing for the democratic left — which I believe has the strongest ethical arguments. Organising a society in a way that distributes wealth more equally might be an economically superior solution, or it might not (of course it also depends on how you measure economic success). In the end the goals are not economical or technological superiority but social justice and software freedom. These are statements of ethical opinion, not empirical claims. I think this is important to remember, both in software and politics.

May 14, 2010

Installing Linux on my Apple TV

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:00:01 +0200

I mentioned in an earlier blog post that I have an Apple TV with the unofficial (from Apple’s point-of-view) XBMC add-on, but it is still running inside the Apple-provided system. Well, I recently inadvertently OK’ed an Apple TV update which of course broke the XBMC installation, I would have to install it all over again.

This is when I decided to take the “logical” step and replace the Apple TV system (some version of Mac OS X) with Linux since I was not using it anyway. Also, I always had to start XBMC via the Apple-provided system — in Linux I would be able to start XBMC directly.

I basically followed the steps from these notes on wiki.eple.us. Currently the newest Apple TV update (needed in the Boot EFI extraction stage) seems to be:
http://mesu.apple.com/data/OS/061-7495.20100210.TAVfr/2Z694-6013-013.dmg

There were some minor errors in the documented steps, which are easily identified while doing them. Unfortunately I have already forgotten what they were :) Also be careful with the dd commands so that you don’t overwrite your harddrive instead of the USB stick! One should never blindly copy-and-paste super-user commands (i.e. running as root or prefixed with sudo).

The only problem I really had was getting XBMC to start after installing Ubuntu. I incorrectly diagnosed the problem as related to X and the Nvidia driver. In fact it turned out that XBMC was missing a library and was leaving crash-logs where this information could be easily found! After realising this, it was easily remedied by installing the missing library.

Otherwise the process was time-consuming but not hard. However it is still not for the faint-of-heart, you could be messing up your Apple TV :) Anyway, I’ve had my Ubuntu+XBMC system running now for a few weeks, and it works very nicely!

February 23, 2010

Web page updates

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:00:01 +0200

I (again) updated the backend part of my web page. My old solution using an SQLite database was a bit over-engineered. Now I just keep the list of blog posts updated by hand — I don’t post very often anyway. I use GNU Make to update the changed files. I write all my posts using Markdown as before, but I added a preprocessing script that generates HTML entities for some symbols I use often. For example three dashes becomes an — (—) and two back-ticks a left double quote “ (“). The syntax is the same as used in LaTeX.

While I was at it, I also updated the CSS a bit. I now have a simpler menu at the top of the page. I also made the font specification a bit more specific.

February 7, 2010

Making the great switch

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0200

I have always been a fan of open source software, and I used Linux as my main operating system for several years around 2000. However at some point I started using Mac OS X more and more (first an iBook, then an iMac and now a Mac mini). It had the same nice unix-features that I had become accustomed to in Linux but everything was more nicely designed and with great usability.

Recently I have however started to think more about the ethics of free software and decided to switch back to Linux, or GNU/Linux as the Free Software Foundation prefers to call it. It is not the most pressing ethical question of the day — compared to wars, poverty, and human rights issues — but it is one close to my personal interests and one that is quite easy to do something about.

I have always been using Linux, at work, and on one or both of my laptops. But I wanted to switch my main system: the Mac mini. I tried a triple-boot setup, since I also had Windows XP installed for (very) sporadic gaming. I never got the booting to work as I wanted (i.e. in just one level of selection) since the Mac has it’s own strange EFI system instead of the BIOS of PC’s and a BIOS-compatibility mode is needed for the other operating systems. Finally, when I at some point managed to make the Linux system unbootable, I decided it would be easier to just wipe the drive and have only one operating system: GNU/Linux :)

Ubuntu on a Mac mini

I am now using Ubuntu 9.10, i.e. the “Karmic Koala” as my only operating system on the Mac mini. I try to use only free software on it, but unfortunately the graphics adapter needs a proprietary driver by Nvidia. It works quite well on the Mac mini, however I haven’t tried the wireless since I don’t need that (it would also require another proprietary driver, which Ubuntu offers to install).

The only problem was the sound which required adding model=imac24 to the options snd-hda-intel line in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf. (The helpful tip is from this blog post by Victor Costan.)

Transferring my stuff

The next challenge was to import all my stuff from my Mac backup. I had everything important backed up using Time Machine to an external drive. I thought this would be easy since it seemed to make a complete snapshot every time with hardlinks for files that had not changed. It turned out to be much more complicated. Read this blog post by Carson Baker on Time Machine on Linux. I contemplated making a Perl script to go through all the linked steps, but I realised it would be easier to start up the Mac OS X installation CD and use the tools from there to copy the newest snapshot to a regular directory structure. This worked nicely, the OS X installer allows the user to start a terminal session before installing anything.

Another minor hassle was to copy around the modified and original versions of photos from the iPhoto structure. The iTunes file structure is pretty straightforward so no problem there. Only that I could no longer find the iTunes database as an XML file for which I had a Rhythmbox conversion script (see itunes-to-rhythmbox-ratings and scroll down). Fortunately I had a Rhythmbox database on my laptop for a slightly older version of my database, so perhaps only a few hundred of my stars ratings got lost.

An unsolved problem is how to open iWork files. The files are very verbose XML documents so it should not be impossible. The text from Pages documents I simply extracted by a short sed command removing all XML-tags. Unfortunately the numbers from Numbers are not so easy to extract, they seem to be given as properties to the XML elements. I don’t have anything important in those files fortunately.

Also the e-mails from Apple Mail are stored as separate emlx files which neither mutt nor Evolution seem to be able to import. Again, the files themselves are easily readable and searchable with for example grep, so that is good enough for me.

Interfacing with my other Apple devices

I also own an Apple TV which requires that you run iTunes in order to be able to sync with it. Fortunately the XBMC project solves that dilemma. A much bigger problem is my iPhone which is similarly locked to iTunes. But I seldom actually need to sync my phone with the computer. I don’t need to sync my contacts, and if I did I could use my Google account or similar. The same goes for the calendar. Also podcasts can be downloaded directly to the phone.

The only problem is if I buy new music on my computer. Maybe it’s time to start revisiting those old classics in my music library and save some money :) Using iFuse and libiphone it should be possible to do syncing with Linux, but unfortunately this broke since Apple changed the format of the internal music database with the iPhone OS 3.0 release.

Conclusions

Summing up, the switch to Ubuntu Linux worked pretty well. Of course it would have been easier had I planned this beforehand, then I could have exported for example the iWork files to more compatible formats. Also I might have taken a “flat copy” of the Time Machine snapshot. In my future technology purchases I need to make sure that I only buy stuff that works with GNU/Linux and preferably has free drivers as well.

November 16, 2009

Thoughts on the iPhone

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:00:01 +0300

After much deliberation, considering the alternatives, I finally bought an iPhone 3GS when they became available in Finland late this summer.

I had given up hope on Nokia because of the horrible S60 operating system. Google Android looked promising, but the handsets available were not very good, and the OS still needs some maturing. The Palm Pre with the webOS made me hesitate for a while, because the user interface seemed very well thought out. I had the opportunity to try out the Pre while visiting Florida this summer for a conference, and I have to say that the hardware felt very cheap and plastic. Also having used an iPod touch for some time I didn’t feel that the choice of third party applications was even close to that of the iPhone.

Getting the iPhone I had to transfer my phone number from the old operator to Sonera, which currently has a monopoly on iPhones in Finland. Sonera for some reason did not start the process of moving the number until I had physically received the phone (and called to complain!), so I was stuck with a glorified iPod for more than a week until my number was transferred. Not very smooth operation, Sonera ...

Now, after a few weeks of using the iPhone as my sole phone I am still very satisfied with it. Trying an old Nokia N95 for a few minutes last week felt like going back in time at least a century, even though technically the N95 has similar specs to the iPhone. The user experience is really very important, even for a geek like me :) I find myself using the “smart phone” features much more often than in my previous phones simply because it is easy and fun to use.

My main complaint about the iPhone would be the restrictions and how the development platform is closed. As I understand, even if I want to develop an application only for personal usage, I would have to pay the $99 fee for the iPhone Developer Programme. This is why, as a developer, I still root for the more open platforms such as Android, and potentially Nokia’s Maemo. Maybe, in time for my next phone purchase in 2–3 years time, these platforms will be mature :)

September 19, 2009

Web page update

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:01 +0300

As an obsessive-compulsive geek I am constantly seeking the “optimal” way of doing things. Regarding my web site this has meant moving from a self-hosted php site to a very light web site with the blog part on Blogger, then Wordpress.com and then everything on a self-hosted Wordpress site.

Now, I am finally back to basics with everything on my own web page. Everything is static html generated by a Perl script from an SQLite database which I populate from simple Markdown formatted text files using another Perl script. Now I finally have control of every detail on my site, just as I like it :)

September 14, 2009

Finnish iPhone prices

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0300

Sonera has released its iPhone prices for Finland. The cheapest regular plan is called “Small” and gives you 100 minutes of talking, 100 SMS messages and 100 MB of data for 31,69 euros/month. With that plan the 8 GB iPhone costs 159 euros and 16 GB 245 euros. In addition you are stuck with Sonera for two years.

More interesting is their “Minun Sonera” option for the iPhone, which is a plan that you can customise yourself. Then the phone will cost 429 euros (8 GB) or 519 euros (16 GB). For example in my case I probably don’t need 100 SMS’s or 100 minutes of talk, but more data would probably be useful.

But I will still wait at least until they have a 32 GB version for sale before I start considering getting an iPhone :)

June 29, 2008

Naomi Klein in Helsinki

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0300

I went to see Naomi Klein when she held a lecture last week (5.6.2008) in Helsinki University Metsätalo. I was there fifteen minutes early and the room was already full and we were told that they cannot let people in anymore, it would be too “dangerous”... well after a while they still let some more people in so I managed to squeeze in :)

The talk was really good, however nothing new if you have read the book. Here is a description of it if you understand Swedish. Professor Heikki Patomäki was there as well joining the discussion and offering some critique even though they agreed on the central issues.

The very unsharp and fuzzy mobile phone picture to the right is just to prove that I was really there :)

June 11, 2008

My new iPod touch

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:00:01 +0200

My old 4th generation (click-wheel) iPod finally died. Its hard drive started to give me problems, every second iTunes-sync or so it failed. I had been waiting for a 16 GB iPod nano, but it still seemed to be far away. A friend at work had bought an iPod touch and its user interface seemed very nice... and a 16 GB version was available. So I finally decided to get one!

I have to say, now after many weeks of use, that I am pretty satisfied with this iPod. The interface still seems “wow” after so many weeks, and it functions nicely as my music player, calendar, notepad (when I don’t have my paper notepad close by) and e-mail and web surfing when away from my computer (and WLAN is available). I also watch an occasional video on it. Using VisualHub it is very easy to convert for example DivX videos which are then directly copied to iTunes and synced to your iPod the next time. VisualHub is not free, but it’s very easy to use. The conversion of course always takes some time...

Also the Google Maps software is really nice, and it works without WLAN if you have previously checked the same spots on the map. This is very handy if you need to recheck some streets when you are out-and-about.

If I have to pick some negatives it would be the lack of any tactile controls for the music player. At least a real volume slider or wheel as in the iPhone would have been nice. Also why can’t the notes application sync for example with the notes in Apple’s Mail?

Now when I have this device, carrying around an additional phone seems a bother. The iPhone now seems like a much more attractive idea... maybe when my Nokia gets “old” :)

March 5, 2008

Civil war in Gaza was planned

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:00:01 +0200

David Rose, “The Gaza Bombshell” in Vanity Fair, April 2008:

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

An interesting side-note is that Elliott Abrams was convicted for the Iran-Contra scandal, and later pardoned by George Bush Sr. It has also been alleged that he was involved in the failed coup attempt in Venezuela in 2002 [The Observer, April 21 2002].

UPDATE: The story as reported on Aljazeera: 'US plot against Hamas’ revealed.

March 4, 2008

My new laptop: Thinkpad X61s

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 00:00:01 +0300

So I finally bought a new laptop computer, which I have been planning to do for some time now. I was first thinking of buying another Mac (my previous laptop was an Apple iBook), but then a friend introduced me to the Lenovo Thinkpad X61s which I finally picked. I did think about it for some time, both models had their pros and cons.

The MacBook of course runs my favourite operating system, Mac OS X, on the other hand it’s white and a bit too large and heavy since I was really looking for an ultraportable computer. I know that you can get it in black, but I couldn’t get over the fact that you have to pay a premium for that. Not so much that I couldn’t pay it financially, but than everyone would know that I had paid for “just a colour” :)

The Thinkpad on the other hand is very light and small, just the optimal size for me. And it’s black :) Maybe not as stylish as a MacBook, but I do think that Thinkpads are one of the better looking PC laptops out there. The biggest minus is of course that there is no Mac OS X.

One further reason for picking the Thinkpad was that almost “everyone” nowadays seems to have a MacBook - when I had my iBook years ago I was one of the few in my workplace. So I guess I have to be different again :) Another reason is that I have been testing Ubuntu a bit on my PC at home and I wanted to use it more. I guess I have been missing the geeky adventure of using Linux :)

In a later blog post I will describe my experience of using Vista and Ubuntu on my laptop. And some Linux tips as well :)

UPDATE: Fixed Thinkpad and MacBook links since they were broken.

October 28, 2007

Motkulturfonden

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 00:00:01 +0300

Jag hittade en intressant finlandssvensk blog: Motkulturfonden. En hel del intressanta inlägg där, t.ex. Konsumtionen och kontradiktionen.

Undrar just vem de är...

September 30, 2007

Flying Dog Beer!

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 00:00:01 +0300

I hadn’t noticed before that they have Flying Dog beer in Kaisla in Helsinki. It was really good! Thanks to Johan for pointing this great American brewery out.

The Flying Dog brewery has a strange connection to the writer Hunter S. Thompson as well. As you can see their porter is called Gonzo Imperial Porter :) The guy who makes their labels, Ralph Steadman, has also illustrated many of Thompsons articles and books.

[Photo by Niklas.]

September 30, 2007

Back from WSOM 2007 in Bielefeld

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 00:00:01 +0300

I returned from the WSOM 2007 conference held in Bielefeld, Germany a week ago on Friday. The conference site has a gallery of pictures from the first three days, and I put up some of my own pictures on Flickr.

The conference, or rather workshop, on the Self-Organising Map, was really nice, with many interesting topics. The city of Bielefeld was nice, however I was surprised to see that most buildings in the old city looked so new. Many were of course repainted and renovated, but I was expecting a lot more of “old” in the old city. The churches were nice though. And the Sparrenburg Castle was really interesting, with a great guided tour.

September 16, 2007

Work, buy, consume, die

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:00:01 +0300

Join a hilarious adventure of a life-time! Photo of cool stencil art. [Photo by Niklas.]

August 17, 2007

HBL: USA inkonsekvent gällande terrorister

Sun, 13 May 2007 00:00:01 +0300

HBL hade en bra ledare idag: Inkonsekvenser i kriget mot terrorn urholkar legitimiteten. Ett utdrag:

Personer misstänkta för mindre brott och på lättare grunder ruttnar bort år efter år i Guantanamo Bay. Posada Carriles kan dricka Cuba Libres i Miami med sina kumpaner...

May 13, 2007

My new Nokia 6290

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 00:00:01 +0300

So I finally bought a Nokia 6290 after much deliberation :) I still think that the user interface could be more polished, but I decided that I can live with that. The different preferences for example are sometimes hard to find because they are spread out in different places with many levels of submenus. However it makes up for some of its faults by being quite customisable, even though that’s not a very good usability design :)

I of course tend to compare the 6290 with my previous phone: a SonyEricsson K700i, which was a great phone with a well designed UI (but it’s navi-button started to jam). But of course comparing the user interfaces is a bit unfair since the 6290 is a much more advanced phone, almost a computer, and the interface needs to be much more flexible.

Otherwise I’m pretty satisfied with my new phone. There is even a version of PuTTY for Symbian OS available, and I installed it and it worked perfectly. I even managed to log in to a server and start irssi :)

April 16, 2007

Parliamentary elections today in Finland

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 00:00:01 +0200

Today parliamentary elections are held in Finland. It is always fun to read reports in foreign forums, e.g. BBC: Finland votes in tight election Al Jazeera: Voting begins in Finland elections

It it interesting to see how their analyses differ. While BBC seems to think that the main battle is between the Centre party and the Social democrats (SDP) - i.e. who will win and get the post of prime minister - Al Jazeera thinks that the Centre party is safely in the lead and that the battle is between SDP and the National Coalition (conservatives) for the second place, which would increase chances of joining a government coalition. Al Jazeera seems to be closer to what is said in local analyses, and is probably closer to the truth. Also, their comment at the end is quite accurate:

Its [Finland’s] main political parties differ little on substance, with broad agreement on foreign and domestic policies.

I’m in total agreement :) For example the conservatives (currently in opposition) have conceded that the current government (SDP + Centre) have had exactly the same tax policies that they themselves have proposed. Not much room for democratic choice there it seems. And people wonder why especially young people are disenchanted with politics and think that voting doesn’t matter...

I personally have already voted beforehand. I hope that support for one of the mid-sized parties will help to move the main parties in the right direction. A long shot, I know, but if you don’t use your democratic rights you can’t complain afterwards. (And I intend to complain :)

March 18, 2007

My new SGI O2

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 00:00:01 +0200

They were giving old SGI O2:s away at my work place, so I just had to get one. It’s a truly classic unix workstation, which had quite advanced media capabilities for its time. It’s also known as the body of “Erwin” in the User Friendly comic :)

It works great with my PC monitor and keyboard + mouse (using a USB-PS/2 adapter). The only strange problem is that some of the keys work differently. The most annoying thing is that Ctrl and Caps Lock have switched. Of course I could plug in the original keyboard, but that would take additional space on my desk.

February 15, 2007

BBC: Internet freedoms threatened

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 00:00:01 +0200

BBC NEWS columnist Bill Thompson has a great article on how Internet freedoms are being threatened. A quote:

The freedom of expression that was once available to users of the Internet Protocol is being stripped away. Our freedom to play, experiment, share and seek inspiration from the creative works of others is increasingly restricted so that large companies can lock our culture down for their own profit.

February 5, 2007

Armenian genocide with quotes?

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 00:00:01 +0200

An Armenian writer that wrote about the Armenian genocide that took place in 1915 has been shot dead in Turkey. I hope this event will get Turkey to look seriously at their extreme nationalists, and what they are promoting. What really caught my eye though was how BBC wrote “genocide” — i.e. with quotes around genocide, as if the matter was somehow in question.

January 19, 2007

I graduate, finally!

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:00:01 +0200

Now I have it on paper! Master of Science in Technology (MScTech) is the complicated degree name in English :)

December 14, 2006

The Armenian genocide and freedom of speech

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 00:00:01 +0300

It was recently announced that the Nobel Literature prize will be awarded to Orhan Pamuk. Although the prize is given for his literary accomplishments, it will also be seen as a political choice — sending a signal to Turkey that has prosecuted him for “offending Turkishness” because of his statements on the Armenian genocide. In Turkey it is forbidden to acknowledge that a genocide took place. So this prize will be seen a strong statement supporting freedom of speech. And I personally agree, that such laws — restricting the freedom of speech — should not be allowed in a (potential) EU country.

But ironically enough, the French parliament recently adopted a law that would make it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide. Now this is of course also a signal to Turkey - but one that restricts the freedom of speech in a current EU country just as harshly! This must be seen as extreme hypocrisy in Turkey. Personally I agree that denying the Armenian genocide is wrong, but expressing such a view — or opposing — should not be against the law. Pamuk himself, as an honest intellectual, is naturally opposed to the French law. Freedom of speech should apply not only to views that we like, but also those that we do not like, otherwise it has no point!

October 15, 2006