This BBC story is hardly shocking, but nevertheless very sad.

Imagine a 12-year old boy being sent to this American military base, put in jail, not tried, but seen upon as an "illegal enemy combatant".

I found this quote from a Pentagon spokesman interesting: "Age is not a determining factor in detention. We detain enemy combatants who engaged in armed conflict against our forces or provided support to those fighting against us"

So if the US finds in the future a 5-year old caught in the middle of a terrorist organisation, and the US then finds reason to believe that this 5-year old is supporting the terrorists and might talk, giving the US military some important information, will then the US military put this 5-year old in jail?

The US lack of respect for the rights of children is deeply aggravating. Guess what countries has NOT ratified the International Child convention. The number is less than 5.

I have known for quite some time that it IS possible for me from my broadband internet connection at home to log on via some proxy server to the university network and then go on to sites like JSTOR and, because the University Library has a license there for students and staff members of our University, I have full access to all these tens of thousands of articles.

Before, I have always gone to the computer labs at the faculty in order to download articles and then I would e-mail them to myself, and when coming home, scan the .tiff files with my OCR program and then use the files in my research. However, now I can do all this at home because I figured out how to set up that proxy server!

Our university library spends millions each year on this kind of access to electronical databases. I have access to Encyclopædia Britannica, Oxford English Dictionary (a big work, over 20 volumes, costing thousands of dollars to buy in paper version), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy and many many other services.

I am so priviliged that it is scary. The amount of information I have access to is staggering... I better make good use of it.

I heard on BBC world service today (an excellent service, btw) that the environmentalists who are fighting against the construction of a major dam in Belize have lost their legal case.

I have heard about massive dam building in China (Three Gorges Dam), the Sardar Sarovar Dam in India, and others, and with the added controvery of this dam project in Belize, I am starting to wonder what is Really going on here. Are we just using too much electricity, and this electricity has to be produced somewhere?

Is dam building, despite its flaws and danger to the environment, the best option? What are the alternatives? Nuclear plants? Alternative souces of electricity?

Who are lobbying for these huge dam projects? Who are the opponents, and why are they opposing it? Is it true that the displaced people are not offered sufficient help? If so, what is the government's rhetorics when asked about those displaced people? Why are there so much secrecy around these dam projects? Why are there so much controversy over all kinds of figures related to these dams; to their Real costs of construction, to how much electricity they Will produce, to how many people will be Affected, to how the environment will be affected. What is the government's role in this? Again, is development turning into destruction for the many in order to make life better for the few? If so, what then?

Here is a poem by John Keats I have written a short essay about for my English literature studies. I really like it. It is Very romantic, tho, lol. Like this painting which was made some years later (1893).


La Belle Dame Sans Merci

O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful --- a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew;
And sure in language strange she said,
'I love thee true.'

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream'd --- ah! woe betide! ---
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried --- 'La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!'

I saw their starved lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill side.

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering;
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

The Norwegian intelligence agency PST has asked at least two universities in Norway, among them the University here in Bergen, to deliver lists of all students from outside the European Union, the US and Canada to them.

The list includes the following information: Name, address, date of birth and country of origin.

In the War against Terrorism such measures are a part of Norway's way of securing itself. This I might accept, but what I do not accept is the partiality.

IF the Norwegian Police Intelligence agency really wants to show that they are not putting suspicion on anyone, they should at least ask for such information from ALL foreign students studying at my university.

Studvest, a student newspaper from the University of Bergen, asked an officer from the PST:

"Why are you only asking for students from non-western countries?"

- "That is rather natural, when we know how the global threath of spreading of Weapons of Mass Destruction is. We must narrow our search."

An Iranian student on the list is not very worried about the procedure in itself, but has two questions:

Why only us coming from non-Western countries? And what is done with this list? Will it be made available to US intelligency?


Note 1: The students themselves were not informed about the University giving this information to the intelligence. When asked why this was not done, the director of education at the University answers "We do not have any routines for this".

Note 2: Odd Einar Dørum is Norway's minister of Justice, and he is also a member of my party, the Liberals. Knowing several central people in the party, I am considering doing a open questioning within the party on this practice. However, I suppose that all principles of integrity of privacy of individuals will fall to the ground. Not only because we "must defend our own ministers", but also because the socialists, part of the opposition within the Palriament, are already shocked about this practice and would like to make a formal questioning on it in Parliament. I guess all members of our party has then the 'role' to protect our minister and the practice and claim that nothing could have been done better.


Politics make me SICK.

Last night while reading a book, I took 2 hours off and saw American Splendor.

What I found the most interesting afterwards was to see people's different reactions to it. Here are a few quotes from imdb:

"I have hard time seeing why this movie is rated so highly by so many viewers. It shows an uninspiring life led by a failure of a person over the years, and that's about it. We get little character development and little humour, but then we get a lot of slow-moving scenes depicting mediocrity of a random guy."

"I can say that i have never been so disappointed in a movie, it's a very slow movie that never really takes off and honestly I don't get why it's regarded to be a comedy.

I could just as well just start following any guy on the street and probably see more interesting things."

"He managed to create an entirely new storytelling method, using a lightly-considered media and telling stories of great weight and humanity, owing in equal parts to his pessimistic nature; a life as a `real person' working as a filing clerk until his retirement; and, as Pekar himself puts it, that, `Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.' The story is told dramatically with actors portraying Harvey and those close to him in life, including his wife, the depressive philanthropist Joyce Brabner, their adopted daughter Danielle, and friends like self- proclaimed Nerd Toby Radloff, who talks like The Simpsons' Database".

Having worked in a hospital archives myself for over a month I knew exactly what kind of monotony Pekar went through. Only, he spent a lifetime in that archive, I went back to my studies after the christmas vacation.

I was one of those who really liked the movie. True, it lost a lot of its touch towards the end, became too self-conscious in a way, but I nevertheless liked it. I liked the appearance of the real Harvey Pekar, who, yes, is an eccentric person, much harder to like than the guy acting Pekar in the movie.

Pekar is the usual invisible guy working somewhere. Having no board positions in NGOs, having no organizational ties at all, but sitting at home reading a lot and listening to jazz music. But he still came to know some people, Robert Crumb included, and he did several appearances on the David Letterman show. (Mostly to be made fun of, though).

Personally I spent a lot of the movie just asking myself "Why does he not have more ambitions? Trying to get a new job? What is going on in his head?!" and then I asked myself - why not? I mean, there is a man for every job. Someone got to be the archives clerk, or stand in the convenience store (like I did myself for 18 months untill yesterday when I suddenly quit with immediate effect).

Do I identify myself with him? Yes, to some degree. Like him, I "know people", I know several members of the Norwegian parliament, I can move things if I want. The problem has been the lack of ambition. So what if I cannot put through some bill to the parliament? So what if I cannot write a truly inspiring e-book and send links to friends from around the world who could then feel motivated for their own lives? So what if I am not an up-and-coming young guy holding countless positions in organizations?

We all, me included, like to bash at the mediocre people, those holding numbing jobs. But what we, and they most of all, forget is that ANY individual, in any society, with any background, have a lot of chances in life. Especially we semi-rich spoiled people in the socalled developed countries. (I suppose that any person who can eat himself full every day is rich; richness does not require a Maserati in the garage).

Anyone with an internet connection, be it the slippers-wearing geek whose knowledge of php is better than his mother tongue, or a person working with collecting garbage on the streets every morning, can express him/herself to a wider audience. We all have a voice. I guess we should use that voice to a much higher degree. Well, should? Could, if we want to :)

I quit my work today. With immediate effect.

I will never again work in a store, bookstore, or whatever like that.

Now from tomorrow I will go and search for another job. :)

Tonight was the monthly meeting of refugees and Norwegians participating in the norwegians-refugees twinning project run by the Bergen office of the Red Cross. We are some Norwegians who volunteer to meet once a week with a refugee who has gotten the right of abode and work permit in Norway (that is, not just asylum seekers, but ones who have been granted asylum), and we are then linked with a refugee. "My refugee" is a 25 year old guy from Afghanistan. Let us call him Karim. He speaks Dari and comes from some village in Afghanistan. His wife speaks Pashtu and is a Sunni Muslim while he is Shia muslim, and according to him it is quite unusual that a couple from each side of this split meet and get married. I do not know his background, why he had to flee from Afghanistan, but he tells me that now it is only his parents who are living there, while all his siblings and himself are abroad; Canada, Germany, Norway, etc.

Tonight there was a social gathering of these Norwegians and "their refugees". (I hate that term, but I dont know how to put it otherwise). I met some very interesting people from Africa there. One was a politician from Congo who had had to flee the country late last year and Now had been living in Norway for a few months. He was already learning Norwegian, and is really eager to start building a new life here. Another was a woman from Sierra Leone who, when I told her I had last year done some research about Sierra Leone (debt relief campaign), she almost started crying and told me that "they" had killed her husband and her children, and they had also cut off her right arm. The man from Congo showed me marks on the back of his head where he had been tortured.

I was stunned. I felt ...

I do not know.

I still feel stunned, I guess.

[We ought to be thankful for what we have]

I was just reading an update before when I really got angry.. I got angry because the update reminded me of so many stories I have heard, and things I have seen, which all add up to: The West thinking that they (well, we, because I am part of it) are better than the Rest!

Here in Europe we are having 10 more countries joining the European Union later this year. Now the rich european union countries are using all in their powers to make sure that people from these new countries (Poland, the Baltic states etc) are NOT to be allowed to look for a work in our countries.

My country, Norway, is in fact one of the last countries who have not made such rules which I think are just abusing some "weak spot" in the legislation. The whole POINT of the European Union is that there are to be, among other things, free movement of workers. But no, now Germany, France, and many other countries are pissing in their pants because OH MY! some Polish worker might come and take our jobs from us!

I am sick of it; I nearly Puke! Here we are, living in our riches, our welfare, and we have been exploiting other countries for centuries, and now we are making FUN of them. On behalf of these countries in the European Union I apologize to our friends in Eastern Europe. I hope that we will be more conscious about our own actions, and our own view of other people.

And no, it does not stop with the Eastern European countries. Because - do you remember Cancun? How the discussions broke down because the rich countries First wanted to force through "the Singapore issues" before willing to cut down on our own farming subsidies? Singapore issues, mainly = opening up markets in the south so that our big corporations can come in and take over the whole market, voila, and earn even more money.

I KNOW that I am too negative here, and at the same time I DO know that i have only skimmed the very surface of injustice that is going on in this world.

In a way I hope that one day we in the West will experience our Nemesis, for surely have we committed Hubris again and again.

This morning I was watching on BBC news that Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, has been in Georgia to "offer support" to the new Georgian president. The new President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, was until recently living in the US, where he took his Law education.

According to Washington Post, this "rose revolution" in Georgia will lead to possible further changes in other post-Soviet states. The US has, according to BBC, spent over 60 million US$ on training Georgian troops, and Georgia has already helped the US in return by, among other things, sending Georgian soldiers to Kosovo and Iraq.

Now, without losing our sensibility in adding up the pieces, I still see a clear picture showing up. The US is bent on controlling much of the EurAsian region. First Afghanistan, where US oil companies now are free to build pipelines of oil (which has been an issue for years during the Taliban regime). In Iraq, US companies are heavily involved. Georgia now has a president on Very friendly terms with the US. The US can now go to Moscow and put pressure on them. My point is that the US is very interested in having a very strong geo-political power base in that region. Why? Oil. (Ooowww, am I just another conspiracy breeder, then?!)

The talk of the media is that Powell is in Moscow to have "frank discussions with a friend and partner", and that a major issue is Russia's record of democratic practices. But is this really the case? According to BBC, one of the US points is that Russia should withdraw their military camps in Georgia. Of course, this is a legitimate issue. But personally I doubt that the true issues of human rights and democracy will be the top of the notch disagreement topics. The people of Chechnya is but one issue which I doubt will become headlines.

But please, Mr. Powell, prove me wrong!