Exceptional arrogance

This week Obama held a speech on the situation in Syria. Among other things, he said this:

“My fellow Americans. For nearly seven decades, the United States has been the anchor of global security.”

Not an anchor, but the anchor. Just to clarify. On he went:

“This has meant more than forging international agreements. It has meant enforcing them. The burdens of leadership are often heavy, but the world is a better place because we have borne them.”

I’m sure the person who wrote this speech felt pretty pleased after finishing that last sentence. Making the world a better place, even under the burdens of leadership. It makes it sound as if the US as a country has done the world a great favour merely by existing amongst us. We should be grateful. 

Trashing nature

Yesterday I saw an empty can of cider, a paper cup, a soda can and lots of plastic previously used to store food. As well as some toilet paper, a couple of plastic forks and chocolate wrappings. It was all lying in a ditch, within throwing distance from car windows or hikers on the way to the mountains. It will probably take more than 500 years for all this to disappear on its own. If it disappears at all.

All the plastic that’s ever been thrown into nature, is still there. Plastic was introduced to us in the 1950s, and much of it is simply not degradable. It collects pollutants which can be spread in the food chain when animals confuse the plastic for food. Birds and animals can be hurt or die if they come in contact with this waste, which we’ve intentionally thrown away. 

Just be yourself

Every human being plays many parts. If you’re at home with your parents, you play one part. If you’re with your friends at school, you play another. If you’re at work, you engage with people you might not otherwise talk to. If you’re with your boyfriend or girlfriend, you’ve got yet another role to play. Or maybe you play several at the same time.

So what does it mean, then, to “be yourself”? Which self does this advice apply to? Or is everyone thought to have a basic feeling of the self, which will always be there, no matter what the situation? And then you adapt it according to circumstance. Maybe that’s the way it is.

What I know is that I don’t know how to be myself. I don’t what this is supposed to be.

Maybe difficulty in certain social settings makes it harder to acquire all those roles that we are supposed to handle so well. I don’t know. The different roles I play isn’t something I think actively about. I don’t think many do. It just happens automatically. You adjust to the situation. Some merely adjust better than others. 

Life is a big mix of experiences, desires, expectations, relations. They’re all interlinked and they constantly change. I think I’ve always thought about it in the way that everyone has a core that’s static. Everything that happens around us is fluent, but that basic feeling (some might use the word ‘soul’) stays the same. But maybe it isn’t like that at all.

Maybe we simply are our experiences. Our desires, relations, etc. Which means that we are in constant change, and at the same time can constantly change things around us. In way that makes it better. Or maybe it just complicates it even more. It’s still hard to know what to think when people say: just be yourself. Because whatever relations one might have with other people, only one thing is certain: the one and only person I’ll always have to live with, is myself.

This little post is inspired by this TED talk by Julian Baggini.

The Rendition Project

I may have mentioned this before, but it’s worth repeating: The Rendition Project is now live and you can see all the stuff we’ve been working on here.

The Project is a collaboration between Kingston University and the University of Kent. Along with many others, I worked as an intern on this project for several months. Its aim was (and still is) to gather all the information available relating to rendition and secret detention, in one place. This one place is the website that was recently launched, and it’s become an amazing resource.

Working on the Project, we had to collate an enormous amount of information – on flights, detainees, detention centres, country complicity, and torture methods. You could say that it’s not the most uplifting of subjects. But it felt good to know that we were contributing to spreading awareness about some of the worst human rights abuses of the past decade. Hopefully it’ll help to hold the guilty to account, and to release those still imprisoned without any charge put against them. Like the 89 men cleared for release in Guantánamo who still are not allowed to go home. 

Bertrand Russell: Why I am not a Christian

Today, I sat next to a priest on the tube. He was wearing his white collar, and I could feel myself hesitating slightly before taking my book out of my bag. For a split second I thought that it might be disrespectful for me to pull out Why I am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell. But then I realized that was nonsense and started reading.

I don’t know how popular Mr Russell was during his lifetime (though I can imagine many disapproved of his views), and neither do I know how well-known he is today among the general public. He was born in 1872 and died ninety-eight years later in 1970. He was a philosopher, mathematician, historian, and profound social critic, among other things. There are a great many people, I think, who’d do well with reading some of his writings. Why I am not a Christian is a selection of his essays and lectures, most of them written during the first forty years of the 20th century. Still, the aspects of the issues he confronts are just as relevant today. Unfortunately.

CSC torture link challenges Norway’s ethical reputation

This is the latest blog I wrote for the Reprieve website – I’m currently a communications intern at this awesome organisation. Spread the word!

Despite its small size and relatively small voice in world politics, Norway is extremely wealthy. This is mostly because of the oil discovered in the 1970s, the profits of which are kept in the Government Pension Fund (better known as the Oil Fund), administrated by Norges Bank. The Oil Fund is at present worth nearly 369 billion pounds.

Importantly, strict ethical guidelines have been put in place to ensure that this money isn’t used for or doesn’t contribute to human rights abuses. The Council on Ethics – established by Royal Decree in 2004 – evaluates whether investments in certain companies are inconsistent with the guidelines, and the Ministry of Finance makes a decision on the basis of their recommendation. This has led to the banning of several companies, including Lockheed Martin Corp for their production of cluster bombs and Wal-Mart Stores Inc for their systematic infringement of human rights, in addition to nineteen companies for their production of tobacco. As a result, the Oil Fund’s global reputation is very good, and Norway is in many ways able to punch above its weight.

I cannot believe I still have to protest this shit

There is a lot to be amazed about in a US election campaign. The candidates, their views, the money involved, the ads, the extent to which it’s covered by international media – it’s like a circus in every sense of the word. There’s Rick Perry appearing as the (somewhat unwilling) clown, with Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain as (more willing) side-kicks. Mitt Romney is an elephant – too “big” for the setting, seemingly clumsy, but trying to blend in as best he can. If there’s anything remotely religious going on, Rick Santorum’ll find his place, Michele Bachmann by his side. Ron Paul might be one of the lions – restricted to a much too confined space, though with a voice quite different from the others. And Barack Obama is the gymnast, walking on a thin line above their heads, with the upper hand, though shaking slightly.

The trial of 22 July

This has been a very special week. It has felt like going back in time – back to 22 July last summer, and the weeks following what happened on that day.

It’s odd, as a Norwegian, to see something happening back home being given so much attention in other countries. Because we don’t usually show that well on a global scale – we’re just a tiny, pretty insignificant place in the far north. But what happened in Oslo and on Utøya on 22 July last year can’t be described as such. It was the most horrendous thing that most of us have ever experienced – even for people like me who weren’t directly affected by it. Re-living the feeling that absorbed the country last summer is not pleasant, but absolutely necessary.

On the first day in court this week, one of the judges were dismissed from participating. The reason? On 23 July last year he wrote, on Facebook, that the perpetrator deserved the death penalty. He had probably, like the rest of us, just woken up to the news that nearly 80 people had been killed, many of them teenagers. The number had increased by about sixty during the night. It was hard to understand, and we reacted differently. Calling for the death penalty was his reaction, and I’m sure others thought the same. But because of that, he has no place in a Norwegian court of law – capital punishment, even suggesting its necessity, is not tolerated. Period.

I completely agree.

Becoming a Londoner (kind of)

I’m slowly getting used to working in central London. I get on the train in the morning (alternatively: squeeze on with a million other people), and I trek my way through the business district, dodging important-looking men and women in suits, briefcases swinging by their sides, trying not to get run over by a bus, or cyclist for that matter.

I’ve got to say, I don’t feel like I quite belong in their world. And I’m pretty sure I never will.

Still, it’s fascinating to see how London functions in this area. It’s fun to study people and try to guess what they do for a living – they all look the same. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for originality or creativity, at least not in the manner of appearance. Just like I felt so very visible while living in Ecuador, being a head taller than everyone else (and a gringa), I involuntarily stand out here with my green jacket with the yellow Pippi Longstocking-pin attached to its front.

There’s one particular phenomenon that has caught my eye – jogging lunch breaks. Every day when I go out to get something to eat around 1 o’clock, I constantly have to watch out for sweaty, panting people who are actually going for a run in their lunch hour. And it’s not like two or three people every day – it’s a whole bunch of them! And I’m thinking, is this really the only time you can do this? Are you that busy? Should you maybe re-think how you live your life? And when do these people eat? Don’t they get hungry like the rest of us?

London’s fascinating on so many levels. And it might just be my small town ignorance shining through, but one of these days I’ll stop one of them and ask them all those questions. They’ll probably think I’m just as weird as I think they are. And that’s completely fine.

Torture by music

A few days ago I listened to a great BBC report called Torture by Music. It tells us the story of Ruhal Ahmed – a British citizen who spent two years in Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre – in addition to other detainees and guards, both at GITMO and around the world.

I remember a class I took on US foreign policy while at university, where one lecture was devoted to torture and how it has been used as an interrogation technique in the ‘war on terror’. This is also something I’ve continued studying through the project on rendition I’m currently working on as an intern. My teacher told us about various torturing methods: sleep deprivation, waterboarding, forced positions, extremely loud music, and so on. I remember him saying: Forced positions…Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? How can that be torture? Then he made us all stand up, and slightly bend our knees. It doesn’t take many seconds until you realize that being forced to stand like this for hours on end can be excruciatingly painful.