Name and shame

There's clearly something wrong with the laws in this country when guys like the scumbag in this article is walking around as a free man. And working a new job, no less. (The article is in Norwegian, but I'm sure that all of you reading this, if you're not Norwegian, have people just as scummy in all of your own countries too.) It's so wrong that it's actually possible to deliberately scam people out of their money - inflict economic harm on others for your own personal gain - and risk no legal sanction for it as long as it's done the right way. Well, 'right'. And they call it 'business'. Shit. What kind of business is that that doesn't produce anything, not even money, just numbers? Fuck 'em.

Now that the harm is done, what IMO is also really wrong with our laws is that Aftenposten in this article is - I presume - not allowed to name the guy in their article. Since he hasn't been convicted of anything, it's probably slander if they do. Fuck that shit too. People like this should be named and shamed. All of Bergen should be plastered with posters of this guy. And I would really like to know where this guy works now so I can avoid that institution at all costs.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to know that. Fortunately, in our brave new world of information everywhere I'm sure someone will be able to suss the guy out and start a group, or whatever, against him on Facebook. I'd theoretically consider joining that group.

Fadervår forbedret

En svært forbedret utgave av Fadervår. Denne liker jeg. Kan nesten overveie å begynne med aftenbønn nå. ;-)

Fader vår, la din bok holdes lukket, prakk den ikke på oss for vi er opplyste og gjennomskuer dens falskhet. La dens vold være historie og plag oss ikke mere for vi er et sekulært samfunn.

Fra en kommentar i diskusjonen under denne artikkelen i Aftenposten.

Luke 6:41

I know, you don't often find me quoting the bible on this blog. Or anywhere else, for that matter. But right now it says exactly what I want to say.

Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

Has anyone else been following the debate - if that's the word I want - on what to do about the recent assault rape epidemic here in Oslo? Fabian Stang, our mayor, said something sensible on the issue this weekend ... that maybe we should consider trying to get some kind of control of the asylum seekers (quite a few of them probably no longer asylum seekers, but illegal immigrants) who are committing an absolutely grotesque percentage of these criminal acts. Of course the PC brigade was immediately up in arms and frothing at the mouth, as per usual, over this hideously racist idea. :-(

The amazing thing is that these people really don't see the logs in their own eyes. They critize Stang for branding a whole group as criminals, and stigmatizing people by generalizing in this way. I disagree with that, I don't think Stang is stigmatizing these uncivilized barbarians, I think they manage that just fine on their own. But what I want to point out is how their argument then continues. It's pretty amazing.

Let me see if I can sum it up here. I've seen this argument, if that's the word I want, pop up a number of times in the past few days. This problem has to do with attitudes that men have. Rapes happen because men need an attitude adjustment. Here it's explained over eight paragraphs. Men are the problem.

Stigmatizing whole groups and overgeneralizing is a really bad thing, mmkay?

Popcorn, anyone?

An interesting article in Aftenposten online today about movie theaters in Oslo and their development over the years. From movie theaters to popcorn machines. :-) Good reading and some interesting points raised. You should read it. :-)

WHY can't there be a rule ...

... that says that before you can write about something in the newspapers, you have to show that you actually understand what you're talking about?

This happens all the time, I've ranted about it before too, maybe not in so many words, but it's part of what I mean when I talk about how debates are skewed because we focus on the wrong things. We can't discuss matters properly when the starting point is wrong; we end up talking about the wrong things. Here's a good example. Inger Anne Olsen, who I usually never agree with, writes about children produced through surrogacy and the difficult legal situation surrounding them.

Information for foreigners: Surrogacy is illegal in Norway, which means that this difficult situation is created by the parents who use surrogacy - it's legal in a number of US states, it's legal in India, so they blithely assume that Norwegian authorities will just accept the fait accompli when they show up with their babies. Fortunately it's not quite that easy.

Because of a few high profile cases, there was quite a bit of debate of this issue earlier this year. Feelings ran high, of course. Didn't make the debate any better; rather the opposite. There were a lot of assumptions made that either were blatantly wrong or didn't make sense, which, as you can imagine, drove me up the wall sometimes. :-) One of the wrongheaded assumptions that keep popping up is about the fact that the rules about who is the mother of a child, and who the father, are supposedly so rigid in this country. (Although they're the same rules as almost everywhere else, AFAIK.) The woman who gives birth to the child is its mother; her husband is its father, unless some other man should actively dispute this. This is, according to the surrogacy advocates, so incredibly old-fashioned and behind the times. How is it possible for a woman whose DNA is in a baby to not be the mother? How dares the state deny her her rights!!1 o_O

This is what so many people don't get, and it seriously annoys the shit out of me. Olsen doesn't get it either. She really takes it a step further though - she writes, get this:

The rule about the mother has its roots in simple biological conditions. The rules about who the father is cement monogamy as the ideal, preserves male control over the woman's offspring and her body, and also preserves society's need for system and order.

WTF??? I consider myself a feminist, but seriously, Olsen needs to get her head out of her ass.

She's vaguely right about the last point, but not for the reason she thinks. And she's right about the first point too - but again, for a different reason than she thinks. Here's the deal, and I don't know how it's possible to not understand this:

Parents don't have rights. Children have rights - parents only have duties. Any child has the right to parents, but no parent has any rights to a child. Not in this country. That's why we call the Child and Parent Act simply the Child Act for short - because it regulates the rights of the child and the duties of the parents, and the former are the most important. Since Norwegian children have various rights, first and foremost the right to have parents and to receive proper care from them, the state, whose duty it is to maintain these rights, must have some way of enforcing them. In other words, legal parents must be provided - eg, the state must know where to place the paternal responsibility, it must know whose these duties will be in the eyes of the law. Therefore, pater est. Because the law really only cares about the law. The state gives the child legal parents - people who are legally obliged to provide the care the child needs. What more is the law supposed to do?

The surrogacy advocates seem to be struggling with the misapprehension that the law can regulate biological parenthood. What can I say, they're wrong. The law is what we have for the legal stuff. And if you're a parent, it doesn't give you any rights. I have to say I think it's pretty incredible that someone can be so involved in this debate, and so much a part of it, that they actually go all the way to producing a child via a surrogate mother, and they still don't understand this basic point.

Kinda makes you wonder about some people.

In other news, I'm curious to see who will be named for this year's Nobel Peace Prize tomorrow. Thorbjørn Jagland was on the Daily Review tonight talking about how living up to the Will is such a big priority for the Committee. So I'm fully expecting their choice to be something seriously fucked up. :-D

Noe å huske

Et interessant innlegg i Aftenposten har gitt opphav til en ganske interessant debatt. Der har en av deltakerne skrevet en kommentar som jeg synes er så bra at jeg ikke bare vil huske den for fremtiden, men jeg vil gjerne dele den med verden også. :-)

Før du leser videre nedover, husk at:

å ikke samle frimerker er ikke en hobby,
å overleve er ikke en måte å dø på,
AV er ikke en TV-kanal,

å ikke spille fotball er ikke en sport,
tomrom er ikke en planet i bane rundt Sola,
fred er ikke en form for krigføring,
og ateisme er ikke en religion.

Så hvorfor identifiserer ateister seg da som ateister?

Fordi ateisme er som å ikke samle frimerker i en verden der nesten alle samler på frimerker; der nesten alle studerer sine samlinger for å finne ut hva som er rett og galt og hvilke lover man trenger; der de starter kriger med hverandre over hvor på et brev frimerkene skal sitte og hvilke kanter de burde ha; og hvor nesten alle tror at Posten skapte universet.

I en slik verden ville nok afilatelister fått en identitet ganske fort.

Les absolutt debattinnlegget også, det er verdt det.

Kongekommentar

Den temmelig utrolige Amal Aden sto frem som lesbisk i et intervju med Aftenposten for et par dager siden. Kudos til henne - hun er en viktig trailblazer og kan forhåpentligvis bidra til å gjøre livet litt lettere for andre innvandrere som ikke finner seg til rette i en monolittisk kultur. Av en eller annen grunn var det lagt kommentarfelt under artikkelen. Pussig. Men der hadde folk i hvert fall både det ene og det andre de ville dele med verden. En anonym kommentator som kaller seg JanGoesBananas hadde ukas beste. Si hva dere vil, jeg digger denne. Humor på høyt nivå.

Han skriver:

Jeg har sansen for og synes hun er tøff jeg. Og jeg synes veldig synd på hennes legning. Ikke fordi hun er homofil i seg selv, men fordi hun er nødt til å bo sammen med ei annen kvinne for å leve ut legningen sin. Hun vil fort finne ut hvor vanskelig det er og hvor jævlig vi menn har det med mas og tjas daglig. Begynn å drikk, Amal, det hjelper noe. Lykke til!

Antitheism funny

Something I came across at Aftenposten's online debate section, Debate Central, in the 'other religious debates' forum. There are a couple of theists over there - far fewer than on American sites, but still some - who always pop up with the same lame arguments over and over. In this thread one of them mentioned a time that he went with some friends to do some door to door preaching. This apparently touched a nerve with a guy in the opposite camp. He posted a long reply which is so hilarious that I just have to copy it here. It made me laugh out loud, literally. What a great guy. :-D Sorry that it's in Norwegian, but, well, it is what it is. Babelfish can help you, I guess. If you read Norwegian, then prepare to be entertained ... ;-)

Jeg ser at noen allerede har nevnt noe om dette, men du har hittil bare ignorert dem, og jeg vil gjerne ha et ordentlig svar for dette er noe som har irritert meg i årevis, og spesielt etter at jeg flytta ut på landsbygda i Hedmark.

Med hvilken rett er det dere trenger dere på andre mennesker i deres hjem for å påtvinge disse det dere måtte lide av av vrangforestillinger og mentale kortslutninger?
Hvor er respekten for andre mennesker og deres privatliv siden dere gjør dette uavlatelig?

Jeg har opplevd at folk fra Jehovas vitner - selvsagt ubedt - med den største selvfølgelighet kjør bil rett inn på MIN gårdsplass, og ut velter både to og tre personer (en gang var det faktisk fire!) som overhodet ikke bryr seg filla om jeg ikke vil ha dem her.
Og når de først har kommet seg inn på gårdsplassen er det så å si umulig å få dem vekk herfra. Jeg har en del dyr og dette er kjærkomment å spasere rundt og vrøvle ivei om mens de venter på den rette anledning til å fyre løs fra hofta med noen lamme og innøvde setninger fra bibelen, og "om jeg noengang har tenkt over disse tingene".
Nei, jeg har aldri tenkt over disse tingene, jeg er heller ingen ubetalt guide i en offentlig dyrehage.
Jeg er nemlig hjemme hos meg sjæl på min egen eiendom, og det jeg trenger aller minst er en bøling hjernevaska støllinger som kommer og forstyrrer meg for å snakke om ting som bryr meg helt nederst på ryggen.
Det er stadig vekk både voksne og barn som kommer og spør om de kan få komme inn og hilse på dyra mine, og selvsagt får de lov til det og så lenge de ønsker, men jeg vil ha meg frabedt at dyra skal brukes som et skalkeskjul for å snakke om Jesus.

Jeg har aldri i hele mitt liv oppsøkt Jehovas vitner, Fildelfia eller hva-de-nå-måtte-kalle-seg av kristne retninger. Ikke i deres forsamlingslokaler og enda mindre i deres private hjem.
Jeg har heller aldri invitert en eneste kjeft fra verken Jehovas vitner eller andre ondsinnete kristne avarter til å komme og bable til meg om ting jeg ikke er det spøtt interessert i. Men likevel tropper dere fra Jehovas vitner, og enkelte andre, med ujevne mellomrom opp, presser dere inn til meg og plager, ja faktisk PLAGER, meg med tanketomt og innlært vrøvl, og om jeg kan bidra med noen kroner til dette eller hint. Jehovas vitner er spesielt flinke til å dele ut trykksaker og etterpå komme med regla om "de koster jo litt å trykke, så om jeg vil...."

Nei, jeg vil ikke det!
Jeg forlanger at dere holder dere borte fra MIN eiendom og MITT hus. Dere har ikke noe her å gjøre!

Når skal dere opptre med normal folkeskikk og ikke trenge dere på og forstyrre folk som ikke vil forstyrres?

Does this guy rock or what. :-D

I call sexism ...

... on those who call discrimination on the proposed ban on burkas in this country.

Just to be clear: When I say a proposed ban, the context is that a politician has gone public with her opinion that there should be a ban. So that first sentence isn't really correct. It just sounded really good. ;-) But this woman wants to open the debate and I totally agree about that. My opinion is as follows.

I don't think this ridiculous and oppressive item of clothing should be banned in itself. Yeah, sure, women suffer these indignities and that's real sad and all, but most of them are religious nutcases themselves, so my sympathy is limited. It's the same reason why it's a wasted effort to try liberating Afghanistan from the Taliban. Anyway.

I don't think either the burka or the niqab should be banned. Here in Norway, it's really the latter we should be talking about, because nobody really wears burkas here. But the niqab is a reality. It should not be banned in society in general. It should be banned in schools and universities, though. Of course, any employer must be allowed to deny employees the right to wear it. And also, it should be illegal for any woman wearing a niqab to enter a bank. Any woman wearing a niqab who attempts to enter a bank should be arrested immediately.

If this doesn't become law, it's gender discrimination, and that's illegal in this country.

What, are you laughing?? STFU, I'm totally right. If a man wearing a ski mask goes into a bank, what do you think happens then?? So why should a woman get away with it? Religious discrimination my ass.

Oh, you don't say ...

From Aftenposten on Sunday, December 27th. My translation.

- The Pope is vulnerable
The Vatican admits that pope Benedict XVI is vulnerable to attacks. It is impossible to protect the pope against assaults of the type that took place during the mass on Christmas Eve, says a spokesman.

Huh. Isn't that odd. I can think of at least one ... entity ... that ought to be able to protect Herr Ratzinger from pretty much everything.

Huh.

Bookcrossing in Berlin

Check out this article from Aftenposten earlier this month (click to enlarge):

It's about a non-official BookCrossing zone in Berlin, where you can leave and pick up books from the hollowed out trunks of the trees you see in the picture. What a great idea. I'd love to see that one day. The article's in Norwegian, obviously; I tried googling around a bit but all I could find in English was pretty much this. Weird. I may be doing the wrong searches, I guess. But it's a great idea, anyway. :-)

Thank you so much to my friends KAS and trilltrall for clipping and saving the article for me while I was on vacation!! It's so appreciated, thank you so much. :-)

In other news, Tronsmo are having their annual backyard sale this weekend. It rocks, check it out if you're in Oslo. More info on my book blog, here.

Just when I thought it was safe ...

... Nina Karin Monsen pops out of the woodwork again. I am SO sick of that stupid cow now. I was hoping she'd have crawled back under the rock she came out from, but no such luck. When I opened today's edition of Aftenposten while peacefully eating my lunch, there she was. And in an unexpected place - Si ;D, ie 'Say It', a page set aside for teens, and teens only, to express their views. Rarely has the Si ;D page's corner's sometime title been more apropos: 'The Fossil Corner'. Monsen is indeed a fossil, a relic of a bygone age. I can't remember reading the letter that she is responding to. But it doesn't matter, she's just regurgitating more of her inane drivel. How does she keep getting away with it?? 'Philosopher' my shiny metal ass. Don't we have any real philosophers in this country? Aren't they embarrassed by being associated with this person? Why doesn't a single one of them ever speak out against it? :-(

A word of explanation: Monsen is an opponent of the new Marriage Act that we now have in this country whereby same-sex marriages share equal status with hetero marriages. Yawn. I support the law simply because I am in favor of equal rights in society, and gay people aren't asking for anything to be taken away from anyone else, they just want a share in what straight people already have. That's obvious, right? Nope, not if you're a great big idiot like Monsen. She won an award recently - a freedom of speech award that she was given on completely false grounds, but that's another story - and part of that was a sum of money, namely 400,000 crowns. That's, let's see, about $65,000. Guess what she's spending the money on. Nah, you won't be able to guess that. I credit my readers with more sense. ;-) She's using it to finance a lawsuit against the Norwegian state, a lawsuit which will determine whether she and her husband are still married. o_O Yes, seriously. I can think of SO many ways that that money could have been better spent. There are people starving in this world. Dare I say it, little children, that Monsen claims to care soo much about, are starving to death right this moment. But hey, be my guest, lady. Flush your money down the toilet for all I care. Just don't expect people to take you seriously afterwards.

Anyway ... this woman is very religious, basically a fundie xian, and that's why she's so anti-gay. I don't buy for a second that she actually cares about the kiddies. If she does, she argues in their favor incredibly badly. None of her arguments hold water. It's amazing that she has the gall to call herself a thinker. (And to accuse others of 'thought failure', too ... but again, that's another story.) Today I'm mostly pissed off that she seems to not know and/or understand anything about history. She actually writes, in her letter in the paper today, that modern society is one giant adult conspiracy. o_O The new laws only give adults equality with adults. Of course they do!! Children have never had and will never have 'equal rights' with adults. And why should they?? They are not our equals, so why should they have equal rights? As adults we can and must care for them and make decisions for them ... and certainly that fact, which I will take to be indisputable, means that they cannot possibly be our equals in the eyes of the law. And as for this whole adult conspiracy thing, WTF is that about? You don't have to go back all that far before the concept of childhood didn't even exist. And then she ends her communication by saying that it's a bad thing that some adults see their own children as possessions or slaves. Yeah, that would be a bad thing if it was true. Do you want some coffee with your straw man, Monsen?

I just can't stand the way this whole issue has been debated. Oh, and just to make one thing clear: I don't have anything against Monsen believing the way that she does. I disagree with her, and I think she's full of shit, but I'm perfectly fine with her thinking that way. I just don't see why she has to be such a bitch about it. And I really resent the way she's fucked up this debate by making us all discuss the wrong questions. She, and those who agree with her, claim that the question we need to discuss is whether kids are screwed up by gay parents, with the underlying assumption that yes, they are. It's such a damaging environment for kids, no male role models, it's so unfair to the innocent children, etc, etc. She says that children with gay parents 'start life with a handicap' and so on. And as a result of all the hateful nasty things she says and the awful way she expresses herself the debate has become about gay people and what does who think about them and homosexuality is a bad thing (say some) and homophobia is a bad thing (say others) and, and, and. But this is turning the discussion upside down. These are kids that don't even exist yet - that's what we're discussing. So why are we talking about whether or not gay couples are capable of giving a child the love and care that it needs? The question we should be asking is this: is the experience of having parents of the same sex so traumatising to a child that it is better for that child to never be born?

That's a whole other question, isn't it?

But I will say this: I understand completely why Nina Karin Monsen does not want that question answered.

Norwegian headlines

This one is for my American readers. :-)

Newspapers in this country have printed various foreign newspaper and magazine covers over the past few days as part of their coverage of the election results. I'm sure some, hopefully many, American papers have done the same. But Norway is - fortunately - a tiny insignificant nation on the edge of nowhere, and our newspapers are of little interest to anyone but ourselves ... so I'm sure you won't have seen any Norwegian cover stories anywhere. Which is why I thought I'd share these. I thought it might be nice to see some physical evidence that people here are happy for you too. :-) Plus that bottom cover is actually really cool design-wise too.

This first one is from Dagbladet, which is the second largest print newspaper in the country. Online I think they're the biggest. It is a tabloid, in every sense of the word, published daily. On November 5th, however, they actually published two issues. That pretty much never happens. When their regular issue went to the printers the result of the election wasn't clear, so later in the day they published this second ... we might as well say celebratory issue.

My translation:
'A longed-for change'
Obama crushed McCain
LANDSLIDE TONIGHT
Here is the US' new first family
This is how the US will be under Obama

This second one is kind of clever. :-) Plus, the design is actually really nifty.

This is from Aftenposten, which is what, the third biggest paper, but the most prestigious and respected one. The one where you're surprised to find a typo. ;-) It is a tabloid in format only and is published twice daily on weekdays, mornings only on weekends.

The headline is a kind of pun. The United States of America in Norwegian is Amerikas forente stater. Wheras forandre, as you see here, means change. So it's a kind of double pun since change is the word Obama himself has used so much. To keep that double meaning in transferring this headline to English, I would translate it as The Altered States of America. :-)

Well ... nifty, anyway. :-)

Have a great weekend. :-)

Det er det jeg sier ...

... verden går til hælvete. Når man ser hva det er for slags folk som befinner seg blant 'morgendagens ledere', så blir man ikke akkurat mindre sikker på at det er den veien det går.

I dag er Ingeborg Gjærum, leder for Natur og Ungdom, gjest i Aftenpostens relativt intetsigende sommerspalte Sommergjesten. Identiske spørsmål stilles til en serie ikke veldig kjente personer. Hu hei.

Gjærum er jo, på tross av hva det følgende indikerer, en person med en viss politisk innflytelse. Og ikke usannsynlig kommer hun til å få mer av dette snarere enn mindre i fremtiden. Det er bare å håpe at hun blir litt smartere med årene også. For ærlig talt: det skulle ikke være lov å ha så liten innsikt i hvordan saker og ting fungerer når man faktisk er leder for en av landets viktigste miljøorganisasjoner. Vi får nesten håpe at det er Aftenposten som har klippet vekk alt det smarte hun sa.

Det er svarene på to av disse standardsspørsmålene som jeg reagerer på. Jeg blir oppgitt og faktisk nesten litt forbanna. Er det mulig å kjenne så lite til statsforvaltningen og forstå så lite av hvordan ting henger sammen, i denne personens stilling?? Eller tenker hun rett og slett bare ikke før hun svarer? (Hvis sistnevnte: sorry, det holder ikke.)

Først, etter en meget overflatisk skumlesning av intervjuet, la jeg merke til svaret hennes på følgende spørsmål: Hvis Norge ble republikk, hvem burde bli president?

Gjærum svarer:
Det viktigste ville jo vært at vi fikk en president som brukte makten sin på å sette grenser for norsk klimaforurensing [...].

Er det MULIG!!?

Hvis Norge fikk en president ville denne personen overhodet ikke ha noen makt til å gjøre noe som helst!! Han eller hun ville bli AKKURAT som kongen, bare dårligere forberedt og sannsynligvis med langt mer pinlige familieforbindelser. (Ja, faktisk.) Makta i Norge ligger i Stortinget, og Regjeringen styrer landet!! Å innbille seg at NOE SOM HELST kom til å forandre seg på den fronten med en eventuell innføring av republikk her i landet (gud forby!!) vitner om en ganske pinlig uvitenhet om norsk statsforvaltning. Den norske presidenten, hvis en slik skapning noensinne skulle oppstå, ville ikke ha 'makt' til å gjøre en dritt annet enn å innvie sykehusfløyer og åpne nye broprosjekter og lignende langdryge ting av rent symbolsk betydning.

Dette syntes jeg egentlig var ille nok. Men så leste jeg litt mer av intervjuet, og jaggu hadde ikke jenta prestert å klekke ut av seg noe enda dummere.

Aftenposten spør: Hvor høy må bensinprisen være for at du skal kjøre mindre bil?
Gjærum svarer: Nå har jo ikke jeg lappen, og jeg bor sentralt i Oslo, så jeg er jo velsignet uavhengig av bensinprisen.

Ja, for bussen, den kjører jo på luft og kjærlighet!!! >:-(

Jeg skal innrømme at det etter den ovenstående fadesen følger et litt mer intelligent utsagn om at vi må gjøre oss mindre sårbare for høy bensinpris ved å kjøre mindre bil og ved å bedre kollektivtilbudet. Dét er jo riktig. Men disse tingene henger jo sammen! og den første delen av svaret gir inntrykk av at hun ikke eier innsikt i den siden av saken. INGEN er 'uavhengig av bensinprisen'. Tvert imot bestemmer bensinprisen, eller rettere sagt oljeprisen, ALT i samfunnet vår. ALT er avhengig av den. Det kan være vanskelig å få øye på til tider, men det er sant allikevel.

Det er ikke oppmuntrende å se at lederen for en av landets mest innflytelsesrike miljøvernsorganisasjoner ikke ser ut til å være i stand til å se det.