[link] (bbc.co.uk)

Quotes:

"Israel doesn't want peace. Only through resistance and power will we recover our land" - Refugee in Gaza City

"Alongside him, Khalid Albatsh said: "This means more intifada, more unity. We need the UN to enforce its resolutions.""

What Israel, the US and the world need to do is to give a sense of hope to the hopeless. Even tho I guess it is tough to do so when you only view palestinians as a bunch of terrorists ...

Anger leads to desperation and desperation often leeds to violence. And thus, the bloody spiral will go on.

Axis of what? Uni-lateral approaches to everything?

I read this quite good editorial in Aftenposten, a respectable, conservative Norwegian newspaper today. Here is a sketchy translation of the editorial.

Sharons Triumph

Hardly ever before has a prime minister been given greater political and practical victory in the White House than what prime minister Ariel Sharon did under his meeting with president George W. Bush wednesday.

Sharon got support for his Gaza-plan together with an american approval that important settlements on the occupied West Bank shall belong to Israel and a US-supported rejectal of the palestinian refugees right to return to the areas they were driven from.

All this prime minister Sharon got in exchange of a promise to give away something most Israelis do not want: The israeli settlements on the over-populated Gaza stripe - along with some unimportant settlements on the West Bank. And the best of it all seen with Sharons eyes: He got all this without having to negotiate with a single palestinian.

President George W. Bush used just a few sentences to what is a major turn-around in US middle-east politics. By accepting that Sharons government practically speaking annex occupied area and single-handedly define future borders the US accepts undisputed breaches on the international law and equally clear breaches on UN security council resolutions.

President Bush has acted unwise and at the same time sent a strong signal to the rest of the world that the US openly stands for a political set of double standards. The many americans who ask themselves why the country's credibility is so low in large parts of the world - not least in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East - have now received their answer.

USAs president also showed how little trustworthy he is for the cooperation partners of the super power. The most disappointed Tony Blair have reason to be. He was the one who insisted that the socalled Roadmap should be made public to show the world what weight there will be put on the Middlt East-process. Also to the UN, EU and Russia this is a punch in the face. They have put prestige on the Roadmap that Bush now has teared apart in the view of the whole world society.

To the palestinians this is both a provocation and a humiliation. Many of them will be put decades back to the time when the palestinians were neglected as a people with legitimate demands and rights. President Bush now shows a total lack of understanding for recent palestinian history and view of reality. Then it is time to remember that when the world society finally accepted the palestinians as an equal partner it was because it was impossible to neglect them if there is to be found a peaceful solution.

This is then how it is now. That is why it is dangerous to peace when president Bush has given green lights to prime minister Sharon for a plan that dictates a "solution" to the palestinians. Then it is of little help that the president is hailed as a great statesman by the israeli prime minister. Sharon has achieved his goals in his determined fight against all that resembles the establishing of a sustainable palestinian state.

Again the USA demonstrates a mixture of obstinacy and bad judgment. This time it is the palestinians that are to suffer. While the rest of us have to ascertain that again the Bush administration leads a policy that makes this world more dangerous."

I apologize for the bad translation, but I think most of you will get the point in this editorial. Here are a few links to English-languaged comments on this issue:

EU to hold new Middle East talks
Sharon's triumph is Blair's defeat
Analysis: New start in the Mid-East?
Blair backs Israeli pullout plan

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What do you think of Sharon's new unilateral approach? Is it a good step forward, or will it just lead to more violence?

Bush is tough-guy and says the US military is prepared to use "decisive force" in Iraq. The US has angered the Sunnis and if they kill the Shia religious leader Sadr they will get the Shiites against them as well. Future might even be strong cooperation between Sunnis and Shiites against this common "enemy" and a worsening of the situation for the US and other troops occupying the country.

Two fronts, how will the US handle this? What will happen with the handover of power to the Iraqis in June?

I am getting increasingly worried about this conflict.

As a comment to one of my updates Luke Cholerton (UK) launched the idea of having something like TIG World Service internet radio station where young TIG members from around the world discuss and report on news events.

I liked this idea a lot and am now wondering whether there are some others who would like to be a part of such a project.

It would require some equipment from the different journalist groups (mp3 recorder, computer, internet connection) as well as a server to host the streaming but I think it is quite doable if we got a dedicated team on this.

So, what do you think? Is it a good idea? Would you want to participate?

I have been experimenting a bit with shoutcast, where I am now listed when my server is up. On the internet radio station (which can have a total of max 25 listeners (128kbit per second sound quality so you would probably need broadband internet connection)) I play mostly electronical music these days because I am in that mood :)

You are welcome to listen to the channel, either tuning in through shoutcast or directly here.

- Today, when every man with a few resources can be his own radio host, discussion forum manager or publisher..

Communication is the key. To human development, understanding and not the least to our being able to communicate feelings and thoughts to each other.

I have for years had this secret fascination for subcultures and their special use of language. I guess it all started when I several as a young teenager read this book about posters from the 1920's or something. Graphic arts and how some of the different poster designers played jokes on each other. Subtle small jokes. Later on, as I ventured into different subcultures myself (RPG, M:TG, comic books, MUD, Computer Gaming (CyberAthletes), Student Democracy &etc) I learned to appreciate just how strange some of these cultures are.

What makes a sub-culture? If you belong to a certain gang of people who watch Quentin Tarantino movies or Star Trek and build a fan culture around that, is that sub-culture? Or is the House DJ movement a sub-culture? Here in Bergen, in a typical high school you have divided a class into different groups. Like "there is the skaters, there the party-goers, there the read-it-alls who like to ask the teacher difficult questions, there the Hip Hoppers, there the death metal boys (with painted skulls on their T-shirts)" and so on. Within each group, there is a language of signs. A language - this I find for some reason utterly fascinating, and this update is an exploration of this topic.

Culture.

When I earlier used to travel around Europe and, for instance, visited students in the university city of Leuven in Belgium, I used to love going to their faculty clubs and bars and see the differences in style, expression, language and sometimes even personality.

Are the law students like X, the political science students like Y, and the business management students like Z? We DO see differences. When I went to Leuven, or Salamanca (Spain) or Bristol (UK) or Uppsala (Sweden) and saw students there I did notice the differences. Ok, sidetrack. My point is the question of identity. Do we identify ourselves with a certain group? If so, do we adopt a certain language of signs? Signs here in the widest possible definition.

Does this language also close certain parts of our mind? If we belong to the death metal rock group in high school and we see someone who headbangs while listening to some psy-trance or goa music, how does this enable/disable true communication between us? And here I have not even Begun to talk about social class, religion or ethnicity!

I have elsewhere written loads on political issues, so I will leave politics out of this for now.

Music.

In 1997, back when I was this teenager who wanted to be a writer, I started on a story about this stage magician by the name of Abraxas who once during a show suddenly disappeared. Out of the awkward silence that emerged once he did his disappearance trick and - - did not return there emerged an electronic music group called AXS. Out of the vacuum created by this real magician playing to be a mere show magician there came these magicians of music who were standing behind wheels of steel and like druids in eras gone were mixing their potions. They could describe the most beautiful lotus-flower with the sounds they produce. ... Anyway, arrrgh!

That story was yet another story half-finished one.

The DJ scene has, as well as the skaters, the grafitti artists (NOT the taggers) and the computer gamers been of a major interest to me. The culture builds a certain set of language. I remember going to concerts in 1998 or 1999 with groups such as Röyksopp (who later became stars with their Melody AM album), or seeing the way the grafitti artists used cultural codes as references in their art here in Bergen. And these last months when I have been going deeper into the world of electronic music I start to appreciate more and more this language that the music and the whole culture around it expresses. (No, I do Not mean glow-sticks or the drugs talk here haha!)

I must admit that I think the political world or the culture of the "socially responsible" people is in some ways too limited in the development of language. Often, the policitians instead use phony language or just saying one thing while they mean another. Youth NGOs do also need to develop their language, and I think TIG is overall a great tool for all of us in this respect. Let us develop this language further and also our tolerance to those with other languages, other sets of code.