contexploration

On Friday London's mayor Ken Livingstone was suspended from office by The Adjudication Panel for England. His offence was comparing a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard. Read Jonathan Freedland’s comment on this case from The Guardian [May 2005].

For more on one central character in Freedland’s piece, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, see The Observer’s revelation on the British Foreign Office’s black propaganda program. The IslamOnline website, which Qaradawi supervises as chief scholar, endorses the “burning” and “stoning” of gays: “The jurists of Islam have held differing opinions concerning the punishment for this abominable practice [homosexuality]. Should it be the same as the punishment for fornication, or should both the active and passive participants be put to death? While such punishments may seem cruel, they have been suggested to maintain the purity of the Islamic society and to keep it clean of perverted elements.” Step into the bizarre and read Qaradawi’s teachings here.

Salman Rushdie wrote this piece in the Toronto Star in May 2005. A truce between religious and irreligious world views would have a chance of working only if it were reciprocal and the world's religions “agreed to value the atheist position and to concede its ethical basis, respect the discoveries and achievements of modern science, even when these discoveries challenge religious sanctities, and if they agreed that art at its best reveals life's multiple meanings at least as clearly as so-called ‘revealed’ texts.”

Bernard-Henri Lévy writes an open letter to the American Left in The Nation: “I found a curious lifelessness, a peculiar streak of timidity or irritability, when confronted with so many seething issues that in principle ought to keep them as firmly mobilized as the Iraq War or the so-called 'American Empire'." This echoes the conclusions from Joan Didion’s Political Fictions [highly recommendable]. When populism is at the wheel, is there any hope for visionary politics? Has the satisfaction of the self-centredness middle class been put higher than the hopes of achieving social justice in America?

In Norwegian: Only 29 percent of Norwegians believe in God, according to a recent opinion poll by Norsk Respons. (The statistics from Psykologisk Institutt (NTNU, May 2005) showed that only 20 percent of Norwegians consider religion "important in their life”.) To a certain extent, this torpedoes one of the central arguments put forth by “Gjønnes-utvalget” that “85% of Norwegians” are members of the State Church. The Governments commission concluded that the Church ought to be separated from the State, but wanted to keep a privileged “Folkekirke” (“People’s Church”) regulated by a new, specially designed law. The Norwegian State Church receives over 3 billion Norwegian kroner [450 million dollars, 400 million euros] each year from the state and municipalities. The property of the Church is worth over 4 billion kroner, according to the state entity set up to administer it, Opplysningsvesenets Fond [PDF]. How long should Norwegian politicians keep on speculating when the time it right to separate State and Church? The suitable point in time was 1814.

Finally an editorial in Morgenbladet that makes sense! Lena Lindgren provides an excellent deconstruction of the Norwegian right wing populist party “Fremskrittspartiet”. Not only does the party’s strategy of popularity-at-any-cost draw up a division between “our people” and “the others”, but it also scorns “the elite”, “the intellectuals” and ”the politicians”. (I might add that the party has previously directed this “Reaganomic” scorn “downwards” as well, towards single mothers and welfare recipients.) Lindgren writes: “This explains the populist parties’ attraction to nationalism and religion.”

(I have this letter to the editor on print in Morgenbladet. Another entry is in this week’s issue of Ny Tid.)

Posted by contexploration at 06:30 AM | Permalink

Hvorfor uttrykker vi ikke støtte til vår allierte?
http://www.slate.com/id/2136714/
Av Christopher Hitchens, Washington D.C. tirsdag 21. februar 2006
[Dette er en uoffisiell oversettelse. Korreksjoner mottas med takk.]

[Go here to read my entries in English.]

Sett at en paranoid, religiøs sekt med en hemmelighetsfull leder bestemte seg for følgende taktikk: Dersom sekten ble utsatt for kritikk i pressen ville den umiddelbart ta hevn ved å kidnappe et barn. Dersom sektleder personlig også ble kritisert, skulle to vilkårlige barn drepes. Ville mediene være skyldige i ”selvsensur” dersom de avstod fra å publisere noe som kunne tenkes å provosere sekten? Vel, ja: Mediene ville ha bedrevet selvsensur, men få hadde i et slikt tilfelle insistert på at ytringsfriheten måtte benyttes i hele sin utstrekning slik den er nedfelt i vår amerikanske ”First Amendment”. Konsekvensene for sekten og dens leder hadde imidlertid også blitt alvorlige. Alle siviliserte mennesker hadde betraktet den som hatefull og farlig. Det hadde blitt satt i verk tiltak for å begrense dens makt. Man ville gjøre sitt ytterste for å forsikre seg om at en slik taktikk ikke ble tatt i bruk av andre fanatikere.

Det mest oppsiktsvekkende med den pågående Kystallnatt rettet mot Danmark (og også mot ambassader og borgere av andre europeiske stater) er at den ikke har resultert en økt avsky mot religionen som unnskylder og beordrer handlingene, men fremmet en økt aktelse for den! Et lite, demokratisk land med fri presse, åpenhet og mangfold, har blitt utsatt for en hatkampanje av løgner og vold, inkludert brudd på internasjonal lov og all diplomatisk kutyme. Likevel er det ingen i vår amerikanske administrasjon som tar det på seg å uttrykke det åpenbare: At vi står side ved side ved danskene i mot den hets, utpressing og sabotasje som de blir utsatt for. I stedet har all medfølelse og bekymring tilsynelatende blitt tilbudt de som frembrakte hele spetakkelet til å begynne med: de fanatiske demonstrantene som brøler og skriker av glede mens ambassadene til demokratiske stater blir antent i hovedstedene til bedrøvelige diktaturer. La oss for all del forsikre oss om at vi ikke sårer disse vandalenes følelser!

Eller, kanskje du i stedet er av den oppfatning at alt dette kaoset ble utløst av en liten avis i København? Håpløst vrøvl og masochisme! Det var de arrogante danske mullaer som tålmodig spredte karikaturene verden rundt (ja, forbudet mot å fremvise tegningene gjelder ikke for mullaene) helt inntil de omsider provoserte frem den ønskede reaksjonen mot økonomien og samfunnet som er deres eget vertsland. For sikkerhets skyld inkluderte man også en tegning som aldri tidligere hadde blitt trykket i Danmark eller noe annet sted: Den viste Muhammed som en gris, og påstås å ha blitt sendt til en dansk mulla av en anonym bølle. Dette hykleriet er skammelig, kvalmende og det lar seg ikke unnskylde. Den opprinnelige tilbakeholdenheten mot avbildninger av Muhammed var tilsynelatende nokså aktverdig fordi det var et ledd i kamp mot bruk av bilder i gudsdyrkelse. Se nå hvordan dette prinsippet blir fullstendig invertert: Rykter om karikaturer i et lite, avisdesliggende land er nok til å fetisjere Muhammed fullstendig og gjøre denne ikonisme til en utløsende faktor for pøbelatferd. I skrivende stund har antall døde oversteget tredve mennesker. En mulla i Pakistan har utlovet én million dollar og en bil til de som dreper en av tegnerne. Tro ikke et sekund at denne oppfordringen til drap kommer til å straffeforfølges av statene som gjerningsmennene har tilhold i.

Hva kan være mer avskrekkende og kynisk enn dette? Noen islamister har, vel og merke, kommet med et tilbud om en slags byttehandel: Dere kan gjøre narr av ”vår” profet, så kan vi fornekte ”deres” holocaust. Selv om sammenlikningen hadde hatt noe for seg (og jødiske bøllegjenger hadde vært i full sving med å vandalisere muslimske butikker og ambassader...) er en slik byttehandel fullstendig krenkende. Kanskje man burde være takknemlig for at holocaust kun tilbys å bli fornektet, i stedet for å bli etterlyst, slik som man ser i en del islamistisk propaganda. Det er kun moralske døgenikter som antar at antisemittisme bare utgjør en fare for jødene. Erfaringene i fra Det tredje riket er i høyeste grad levende hos europeerne nettopp fordi det rasistiske tyske regimet den gangen også lykkes i å slakte millioner av ikke-jøder, inkludert utallige tyskere under dekke av at de var "medløpere" i den innbilte "jødiske verdenskonspirasjonen". Det har seg slik at jeg har tidligere forsvart David Irvings rett til å ytre seg, og det er i sannhet skandaløst at han i dag befinner seg i fengsel i Sveits for sine holdninger. Men mitt forsvar for ytringsfriheten er i det minste absolutt. De som oppfordrer til drap og brannstiftelse, derimot, er ikke i stand til annet enn å trekke et infantilt glis ved tanken på at ”two wrongs make a right”.

De utspekulerte [islamistene] kommer kanskje til å bli et større problem i fremtiden enn de åpenbart ondskapsfulle og sinnsforvirrete [islamistene]. Om ikke lenge blir det tvilsomme uttrykket ”islamofobi” smuglet inn i USA. Alle som anklages for islamofobi kommer til å bedt om å holde kjeft, og avstå fra vår grunnlovsfestede rett til å bedrive religionskritikk. De som vil bli beskyldt for dette vil få bevisbyrden veltet over på seg. En artikkel fra New York Times kunne fortelle om hvordan ”amerikanske muslimske ledere” introduserer denne taktikken: De har ”lykkes med å bygge effektive organisasjoner og oppnådd større grad av integrasjon enn sine europeiske trosfeller. [Amerikanske muslimske ledere] tolker karikaturene som en del av en større bølge av global islamofobi, og har oppfordret europeiske muslimer til å benytte det samme begrepet.” De verdensomspennende islamistisk voldsopptøyene benyttes med andre ord som en slags ”avledningsmanøver” til å smette inn et skjult trussel til den amerikansk opinionen.

Du har for eksempel kanskje lagt merke til tilbakevendingen av formuleringen ”halvannen milliard muslimer”? For et par år siden måtte jeg vende meg til anklagen om at jeg ved å forsvare Salman Rushdie hadde fornærmet "én milliard muslimer”. Det går tilsynelatende inflasjon i dette tallet. Men vær oppmerksom på den underliggende trusselen i formuleringen. Store tall tilkjennegir ikke bare trygghet, men en advarsel. Hvor mange danske eller jødiske fritenkere finnes det? Du vet svaret. Uttrykket ”halvannen milliard muslimer” handler om massepsykologisk utpresning.

Og denne taktikken har ikke vært helt uten suksess. Det amerikanske utenriksdepartementets informasjonssekretær Karen Hughes er sitert i den overnevnte artikkelen fra New York Times: ”De amerikanske muslimske talsmenn har større troverdighet i den muslimske verden enn min stemme som offisiell pressetalsmann, ettersom de snakker deres tros språk og kan dele sine opplevelser av å praktiserer sin religion fritt i Vesten. De kan være med på å forklare hvorfor karikaturtegningene er så krenkende.” La oss først slå fast at omtrent alle ”stemmer” i hele verden har større troverdighet enn denne ignorante Bush-tilbedende talskvinnen. Mener det amerikanske utenriksdepartementet nå at USA for all fremtid kun skal være representert i den muslimske verden av muslimske amerikanere? Før vi får svar på dette, burde vi i mellomtiden ikke tillate at én Wahhabi-dollar fra Saudi-Arabia går til oppretting av madrass-skoler på amerikansk jord; Det burde ikke tillates at det deles ut én fundamentalistversjon av Koranen i vårt fengselssystem. I hvert fall ikke før kirker og synagoger og bibliotek for fritenkere tillates i hver eneste av de stater som har latt sine ambassadører i USA hetse Danmark. Hvis vi først skal akseptere denne avsindige versjonen av ”respekt”, må vi i det minste kreve full gjensidighet.

Så gjenstår det fortsatt Danmark: et lite demokrati som på modig vis satte seg opp mot Hitler og forsøkte å forsvare jøder så vel som seg selv. Danmark er et medlem av NATO og er et land som har sendt sine tropper for å bidra i forsvar og gjenoppbygging av Irak og Afghanistan. Hva er takken de får fra Washington? Ikke et ord av støtte, men i stedet ussel mumling om unnskyldning overfor de som har angrepet danskenes frihet, økonomi, borgere og ambassader. Det er skammelig. Dette må da i sannhet være en kampsak som bør plukkes opp av de amerikanere som har ment at USA er for lemfeldig og arrogante overfor dens allierte? Det føles bedrøvelig at det har tatt så lang tid for meg å ta tak i dette, men jeg lurer på om noen andre også føler seg kallet til å stille opp foran den danske ambassaden i Washington, på sivilisert og stille vis, for å markere vår støtte til våre venner? De som liker denne tanken bes kontakt meg på christopher.hitchens@yahoo.com. De som tilfeldigvis befinner seg i andre byer med danske konsulat eller ambassader kunne kanskje på eget initiativ ta side for anstendighet i denne saken.

OBS: Hitchens ledet en solidaritetsdemonstasjon foran den danske ambassaden i Washington D.C. fredag 24. februar. Les mer på hitchensweb.com. Det vil holdes liknende støttemarkeringer for Danmark og ytringsfriheten i tiden fremover: London lørdag 25. marsToronto, Chicago, San Francisco. Personlig ønsker jeg å komme med mitt eget syn på disse initiativene i et senere innlegg. - HS

Posted by contexploration at 04:21 PM | Permalink

Så lenge man ikke tar stilling til religion som ideologi kan man selv ende opp med en retorikk og en politikk som har som premiss at de religiøse har rett i sine innbilninger. Både islamofobene, dialogtilhengerne og de ”islamofile” vil mislykkes i sine bestrebelser. Suksess - i forhold til et multikulturelt norsk samfunn og et fredelig, demokratisk Midtøsten - har den samme resepten: Sekularisering, livssynsnøytral rettstat og alliansebygging med muslimske demokrater.

Et besynderlig karaktertrekk ved islamofober er at de praktiserer en bokstavtro tolkning av en religion som de selv frykter. Fremskrittspartiets Per Sandberg sa i en Holmgang-debatt at Mulla Krekar ikke burde ha satt sin fot innenfor dørene på utestedet Smuget i forbindelse med sin boklansering ”fordi det ble servert alkohol der, noe som er forbudt i følge islam”. Carl I. Hagen proklamerte foran menigheten Levende Ord i Bergen at Muhammed ønsket å ”rekruttere barn i en kamp for å islamifisere verden”. Da den norske ambassaden i Damaskus ble angrepet og ødelagt ble Hege Storhaug i Human Rights Service intervjuet av TV2 Nyhetene [4.2.] foran moskeen på Grønland. Der gikk hun til angrep på islam og mente at Muhammed må ha vært pedofil fordi det står i Koranen at han giftet seg med en 9-åring jente.

Men også de politikere som kommer muslimene i møte trår feil når de inngår i justering av en trosretning som de selv ikke tilhører. Etter et møte med immigrasjonsministeren Beverly Hughes i London kunne tidligere statsråd Erna Solberg slå fast at ”islam må moderniseres” (Aftenposten). Hun mente at den norske staten burde stille krav om hvem som skulle få lov til å bli imamer. Tony Blair, George W. Bush og andre vestlige ledere gjentar gang på gang at salafi-jihadistene ikke representerer ”den ekte og sanne islam” men en ”pervertert” eller ”forvrengt” versjon.

Men det er ingen som innbiller seg at hverken Bush, Blair eller Solberg har studert Koranen. Hva slags troverdighet har de - som ikke-muslimer - når de forkynner at den ene eller den andre retningen av islam er den rette? De velmenende dialogtilhengerne resonnerer slik: Ettersom islam må anses som én av kildene til terrorisme, må også islam være en del av løsningen. Den britiske etterretningstjenestens forsøk på manipulasjon av den arabiske opinionen gjennom ”black-propaganda” er basert den samme teorien. The Observer avslørte høsten 2005 at britiske etterretningsmenn deltok i teologiske diskusjoner på arabiske nettsteder i håp om å justere islamsk jihad i en ikkevoldelig retning.

Tankegangen til dialogtilhengerne er dypt problematisk. Er det ikke mer hensiktsmessig å vedkjenne at etisk fjernstyring i form av religion er avskyelig i seg selv, i stedet for å forsøke å kaste seg inn i en kamp om fjernkontrollen? Når politiske ledere søker dialog med religiøse ledere, burde de gjøre det med utgangspunkt i den sekulære rettstatens spilleregler som sikrer livssynspluralismen. I liberale demokratier er det individer som har rettigheter, ikke religioner. Hvis en sammenslutning av mennesker med personlighetsspaltning skulle ha krevd to stemmesedler i Stortingsvalget i stedet for én, hadde ikke politiske ledere gått deres ”tro” i møte og sagt: ”Ja, dere skal få to stemmesedler hver, men husk å fylle ut to selvangivelser også.”

I tillegg til de islamofobe (som demoniserer islam) og dialogtilhengerne (som ønsker en fredelig islamversjon), har man en tredje gruppe aktører i det politiske spektrum. Denne grupperingen foretrekker åpent en allianse med den mest potente islamtolkningen. Disse kan man kalle for islamofile.

I Storbritannia har globaliseringsmotstanderne i Socialist Workers Party (SWP) alliert seg med islamister fra Det muslimske brorskap i kampen mot amerikansk ”imperialisme” i Stop the War Coalition. Alliansen arrangerte gigantiske demonstrasjoner mot de militære intervensjonene som hadde til hensikt å kaste Taliban og Saddam Hussein fra makten. SWP og islamistene står også bak George Galloways ”Respect” - partiinitiativet som sikret Galloway parlamentsplass i 2005. Under en demonstrasjon foran den israelske ambassaden i London ga en av SWP-arrangørene ordre om at de sekulære kvinnene burde dekke til håret sitt i solidaritet med de ”muslimske søstre” som deltok (Solidarity 3/6).

Den norske avdelingen av SWP heter Internasjonale Sosialister (IS). Selv om Internasjonale Sosialister er en del av antikrigsbevegelsen er de ikke pasifister. Finn den freudianske glippen i denne lederartikkelen fra IS-avisen Gnisten: ”Siden makt er det eneste språket elitene forstår, må antikrigsbevegelsen i og utenfor Irak derfor vise krigsmaktene at det er farligere for de å bli enn å rømme. USA har vist seg sårbar. Motbevegelsene bør angripe." Og i den samme lederartikkelen kommer det en våt drøm til syne; "Dersom USA pådrar seg et Iraksyndrom, som følge av et fatalt nederlag, vil det kunne vekke, ikke bare en ny venstreside, men en ny bølge av revolusjoner."

I Klassekampen 10.2. kunne man lese at Internasjonale Sosialister oppfordret venstreaktivister til å stille opp i demonstrasjon mot karikaturtegningene (”Still opp for muslimene”). Sammen med lederne av Rød Ungdom og Attac mente Andreas Ytterstad at venstresiden måtte protestere mot ”hetsen” av islam. I demonstrasjonstoget i Oslo lørdag 11.2. - der de tildekkede kvinnene gikk bakerst i en separat seksjon og flere unge menn gikk maskert - kunne man se IS’ere holde opp paroler som ”Stopp krigen – Stopp den rasistiske hetsen” mens de andre demonstrantene ropte ”Allah er stor”.

De muslimske organisasjonene hadde på forhånd frarådet sine medlemmer å delta i demonstrasjonen. Internasjonale Sosialister valgte å støtte de anonyme arrangørene. Oppfordringen om å ”stille opp for muslimene” var med andre ord misvisende. Når enkelte venstreradikale velger å ta islamistenes side i forhold til tegningene, tar de også stilling i en intern diskusjon iblant muslimer.

I en hjerteskjærende appell fra det sekulære, irakiske kommunistpartiet fra 15. januar ber man de amerikanske og britiske styrkene forbli i Irak inntil sikkerhetssituasjonen bedres. (Partiet var imot intervensjonen.) Kommunistpartiet skriver: ”Vi er dessverre nødt til å fastslå at de irakiske, demokratiske kreftene ikke har mottatt effektiv støtte fra den internasjonale venstresiden. Man har forholdt seg som observatører heller enn å delta aktivt for å utøve innflytelse på situasjonen i Irak, spesielt med tanke på utviklingen av demokrati i en tid hvor demokrater og patrioter har akutt behov for mangesidig støtte og solidaritet.”

Internasjonale Sosialister og lederne av Rød Ungdom og Attac har tatt stilling. Andre sosialister og sosialdemokrater burde også ta stilling, men for de irakiske og muslimske demokratene, for utvikling av rettstater som tillater religionskritikk. Konfrontasjon med religiøs totalitarisme har for lengst blitt et globalt fenomen. Uten en prinsipiell stillingtagen til religion som ideologi og sekulær rettstat som motsats til tyranni kommer den norske venstresiden til å fomle inn i et minefelt som den ikke fortjener å komme helskinnet ut av.

En versjon av denne teksten stod i Ny Tid 24.2.6. Tegn abonnement her. Lenker: Erna Solberg ”islam må moderniseres”; Black-propaganda i The Observer; "Dekk til håret!" Solidarity 3/6; "Motbevegelsene bør angripe" leder i Gnisten mars 2004; ”Still opp for muslimene” Klassekampen; Appell fra det irakiske kommunistparti. Les også et tidligere innlegg.

Posted by contexploration at 12:08 AM | Permalink

In Part II of The Pope’s Encyclical letter, he separates the duties of the State from the duties of the Church:

“The just ordering of society and the State is a central responsibility of politics. […] Fundamental to Christianity is the distinction between what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, in other words, the distinction between Church and State. Love - caritas - will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbour is indispensable.”

This Saturday there was an incredible letter to the editor on print in Aftenposten (“Selvmord kunne vært unngått” 18.2.). The writer is a mother whose son committed suicide. She accuses the public system - hospitals and institutions - of being responsible for her son’s death. There’s a sentence in the letter that is both desperately naive and unbearably tragic:

“Somebody has to take responsibility when a person takes his own life.”

This cry symbolises a notion that is common in Scandinavian social democracies: “If something has gone wrong, there must be a department or state unit somewhere who’s not doing their job.” The State is seen as something for the people, by the people, but sometimes this trust is way out of proportion.

A period in my life a few years back reminds me of this rhetoric of state compassion, and the reality of life on the street for the few genuine outcasts of our Nordic, bureaucratic paradise. Together with a friend I spent half a year working on a project to start an XML-based Semantic Web venture, releasing public information to the citizens through the Internet. “Broadcasting for the twenty first century”. We were in need of an office, and we were offered space at an organisation working for the homeless in Oslo. This organisation was a project initiated by squatters. They had managed to get funding from Oslo municipality - including one waged position. Their goal was to smooth the entrance into the housing market for the “ressurssvake” – people that because of their powerlessness or general convictions were living outside of “the system”. My friend and I could use a room in their offices in exchange for assisting them when setting up their organisation structure and giving counsel on other dealings with the civic bureaucracy.

The squatters had occupied their own building not far from the offices where most of them lived. This was an old building by Akerselva owned by the city. It was considered useless. The Municipality had planned to demolish it. The squatters had broken into the building and established their own codes of behaviour there. Most of them were anarchists, sleeping on mattresses, going to flee markets and bringing back old furniture, climbing the roof and flying a huge black flag for everyone to see. The use of drugs was prohibited. Junkies were chased away. Many of the squatters dropped by our offices daily.

After a few weeks we got to know them better, and we learned a few things about their life. It was outside of every ordinary understanding of life in Oslo. They had real enemies (neo-Nazis and foreign mafia), they used violence if necessary, also in demonstrations. They didn’t trust the police, whom they considered fascists. Their distrust was not out of place. Most of them called themselves “activists”. Activism was a political lifestyle. When I asked some of them why they weren’t interested in trying to get a job (because they were certainly in constant need of money) they tried to explain to me that working for the capitalist system was a “disease”, or that they were too busy planning the next demonstration or showdown with some teen Nazis they had discovered at a shopping mall outside town.

According to Norwegian state regulations each “disadvantaged” person is entitled to a minimum of $ 670 a month (€ 520) in social welfare. If you’re a registered citizen you get this - without regard to your personal situation – as long as you bother to apply and accept it. But a lot of the squatters weren’t receiving social security. They had their own reasons for not applying in the first place. Some were youngsters and had run away from their foster families – fake Christians “brothers and sisters” that they despised wholeheartedly. Others were ideologically against the welfare system and refused to “submit” to any type of bureaucracy imaginable. Then there were some that had gone underground from other reasons; some had taken the law into their own hands; others were threatened because of clashes with foreign mobsters, which they owed money or had somehow deceived.

The days of the squatter were long. It was impossible for them to plan far ahead. Hardly any of them had cell phones, there was no access to the Internet in the squat house, and only one Internet-connected computer at the offices we shared. (I mention this because today so many practical things are dependent on these necessities: How do you apply for work? Pay your bills? How do others get in contact with you?) But the squatters knew life on the street. They were up-to-date on all activity in the city, they knew what office buildings were left unattended, and they could always tell the good junkies from the evil ones, they knew where the gangs of immigrant thugs hung out. (One week when we were there, three of them were stabbed, in three unrelated incidents. Two were hospitalised, one came back the next day, proclaiming his leather jacket “holy” because the stabber wasn’t able to pierce through it.)

When talking to the squatters you always had the feeling that they might not be telling the truth… that they were half paranoid half hunted… that they weren’t giving you their real name… that life was precious. A couple of them were Muslims or Straight Edgers, but most of them were drinkers, they hung out at the local bar. They stayed up late and got up late.

My friend and I found a few things that could make life easier for them. Many of them were without cash, which meant that they simply didn’t eat meals on a regular basis. We set up a deal with a chain of bakeries (Åpent Bakeri) to pick up leftover bread and pastries in the afternoon after closing time. We borrowed a car and drove by two shops, twice a week, bringing huge plastic bags of food back to the squatters and others hanging around at the office. We managed to get a hold of an old electrical stove so that they could make some sandwiches, and finally we organised free breakfasts twice a week. (In an inspired moment my friend concluded that the root of all the squatters’ problems was to be found in the fact that they never got up early in the morning. We soon discarded that theory.)

Our own XML-project was going down the drain. We had a series of meetings with people in business, the universities and the media, but somehow we weren’t able to build support for our majestic technological revolution. Maybe it was because our project was too “ahead of our time”, we speculated. Maybe our credibility was hampered by the fact that we didn’t have anything substantial to present - only ideas and hand-drawn sketches? We didn’t even have our own computers at the time! Only Kristen Nygaard and Dag Wiese Schartum showed somewhat form of interest. Nygaard had a heart attack and died.

More and more of our time was invested in the practical challenges at the office. Bringing food, cleaning up, writing new clauses for the squatter organisation. Occasionally, a business company or some health institution would call the organisation and “offer” the squatters their excess furniture. We would jump with joy, gather a group of people, rent a van and spend the whole day moving cupboards and old slimy bathtubs back to the squat house. I remember we once moved fifty pairs of antique slalom skies from the basement of an old sports legend. We brought the skies down to the squat house. I pondered the odds (and political implications) of anarchists going downhill skiing.

After half a year we had to evaluate our situation. We were both broke. We had somehow become absorbed by the logistics of “fighting poverty”. There is nothing especially heroic in this labour: You carry things, you spend a lot of time waiting for other people, and you clean up after others. Finally, we had to abandon our project and concluded that if we were going to fight poverty we might as well get a job. That way at least two people “fought their way out of poverty". A week later we were doing carpentry in homes around Oslo.

I have often thought of how different people treated us when we were with the squatters. Some were completely cool and friendly, like the young employees at Åpent Bakeri, gladly lending a hand, and without ever projecting an air of tragedy around us. But others took the “empathetic” stance, like the Christian charity workers we met. They placed themselves above the poor. (Sometimes I suspected that seeing suffering might make them feel good.) When I watched the movie “The Motorcycle Diaries” I could easily identify with the hypocrisy of religious charity in the scenes from the leper island. “You want help? Sure, but then you’re obliged to submit to our ethical indoctrination.” This is extortion, not empathy.

My experience made me speculate that charity is not just another strategy to achieve a just society, like the Pope claims, but that there is a real opposition between the two. Does having more of one mean less of the other? When George W. Bush won the presidential election in 2004, some studies showed that “moral values” were among the most important reasons for the president gaining eight million new voters since the 2000 election. A Norwegian politician at the time commented the US Election Day studies with these words: “Americans like to talk about moral values. We prefer to pay for them.”

In this quote, there is in fact quite a lot of disillusionment, which usually creates a good environment for sane political judgements. The State, through its bureaucracy, cannot make people happy or make them kind, but it can abolish poverty. Even compared to highly religious societies, social democracies tend to give more economic support to disadvantaged societies as well: Foreign Policy put the Commitment to Development Index 2005 together with the World Values Study and found a correlation between a country's level of foreign aid (including aid from private benefactors) and its level of secularisation. In industrial countries with high levels of religiosity, the level of foreign aid was lower.

The Pope writes:

“Hope is practised through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God's mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness.”

Socialist and social democrats can’t accept injustice as God’s mystery. A social democratic society is one where all receive their share of the goods of the society. Justice needs to be done in this life, with the help of the State, not in an imagined afterlife, with the help of God. This said, I wish that the indifferent and just approach of the State in Scandinavian countries could be combined with a renewed confidence in individual accomplishment. Ultimately one has to take responsibility of ones own life.

FURTHER READING: Four writers on Iran. Stop the love hype.

Posted by contexploration at 09:59 PM | Permalink

"The World Changed, But the Left Stayed the Same": Cristovam Buarque has an insightful conversation with Fernando Henrique Cardoso (president of Brazil from 1995-2003). In it, they discuss the limits and possibilities of the Left – from a Brazilian perspective. What can be accomplished today? Today, the ones who suffer the most at “those human beings who don’t even serve to be exploited; they are the ‘marginalized’. They are not even an army of reserve.”

Fernando Henrique feels the Bush administration presents democracy in a "missionary" way, while in democracy you have to have a predisposition to accept the other: “When the value is that sort of fundamentalism, [you] have no path that leads to saying, ‘Let’s build a road so that I can advance more than he. Let’s build a common road.’”

Malcolm Bull ponders the causes of genocide in this disturbing book review from the London Review of Books. Prosecuting individuals for genocide has proved extremely difficult: Evil may not have a "face”. The origins of genocide have been endlessly debated. Perhaps the problem is “the related concept of citizenship?” Bull asks. Where there are no rights without duties, and no duties without rights, it is axiomatic that those who do not perform duties relinquish their rights. “Jews, the handicapped, and others who supposedly did no productive work, were the victims of this particular equation in Nazi Germany.” The question that arises from such a shocking theory is: Was it the human “egalitarian revolution” that created the possibility of both altruism and genocide? Bull writes: “One sentence rarely found in the annals of human history is: ‘And then they killed all their servants.’”

"Civilization, Society and Religions" - In the open exchanges of letters between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud from 1932 the psychological causes of war are discussed in full. Freud admits his “Utopia” is a community of men who had subordinated their instinctual life to the dictatorship of reason. This would create a unity of men, even if there were no emotional ties between them. Today, in 2006, this is still the only hope for world unity and peace - unless you are religious.

Posted by contexploration at 12:55 AM | Permalink

Every day for the last two weeks I have seen the Norwegian and Danish flags being burned by angry mobs in cities all over the world. There have been death threats to the satirical artists, to the editors who published the drawings, and to citizens of Denmark and Norway who happen to set foot in countries with a frantic strain of violent religion. Some of these people live under round-the-clock police protection. The embassies in Damascus and Beirut have been torched and destroyed. Crowds armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons attacked the base of Norwegian peacekeeping soldiers in Afghanistan.

Perhaps one might expect Norwegians and Danes to feel “offended” by the threats they have been subjected to. Perhaps one might see Norwegian and Danish demonstrators take to the streets to protest against these organized attacks and attempts of humiliation? But no, most people feel that they just can’t take this idiocy seriously.

Here in Norway the status is the following: A obscure Christian weekly called ”Magazinet” republished the Danish Muhammed cartoons in January. The publication is owned by a Scandinavian sect called Livets Ord. The Norwegian government has worked diligently trying to calm the situation, expressing regret that religious sensitivities have been offended but at the same time explaining that the cartoons are well within the laws of a liberal democracy.

On Friday [Feb. 10] the editor of Magazinet himself, Vebjørn Selbekk, issued an apology for printing the drawings at a joint press conference with Mohammad Hamdan, the leader of the most influential Islamic organisation in Norway.

Despite all this, anonymous organisers managed to issue an appeal for a protest rally the following day. All major Muslim leaders and imams in Norway urged Muslims to stay away from the demonstration. But on Saturday around 1500 people marched through the streets of Oslo chanting, “God is great!” and “Stop the insult to our Prophet!” Some of the demonstrators had masked their faces with headscarves. The women in the march were conveniently assigned a separate section at the back of the procession.

There is simply no way to accommodate these fundamentalists. They perfectly represent the very essence of religion. It’s not enough to apologize; it’s not enough to point to the fact that they themselves have every single right to satirize the secular, Scandinavian societies and torch as many flags as they wish. Their demand is that you should submit, but they will not be fully satisfied until you actually agree with their religious ideology.

To justify a need of violent response to a few drawings, one has to make use of a psychological trick to change the economy of the communication between the fundamentalist ideology and the world’s secular societies. How can making a drawing be considered "as offensive" as threateing to kill people? The rhetorics of victimization is essential. That's why, even after an official apology of the publisher, the drawings are reprinted and distributed by the victims themselves!

Then how can one 'stop the insult to the Prophet'? The purpose of the riots is part of a wider agenda. You’ve heard the claims before: There is a global Judeo-Christian conspiracy to “persecute” Muslims; Liberal democracy itself is a “fundamentalist ideology” that represses the Islamists’ right to create Sharia-based societies. So then islamists are “right” to issue death threats, attack embassies and use terrorism as a means of “self defence” or “resistance”…

The leading cleric of the theocratic dictatorship of Iran, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, held a sermon broadcasted on national radio on Friday. Khatami called on his followers to stop attacking the foreign embassies. But consider this revealing segment of his statement: “I feel that they want their embassies to be set on fire so they can say that they are innocent. Take this excuse away from them.” Is there a better example of projecting one’s own motives onto others?

Posted by contexploration at 03:31 PM | Permalink

NATIONALISM: In Eurozine.com, Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt has an interview with Mihajlo Markovic and Vasilije Krestic about the 1986 “Memorandum”, by many considered a program for Serbian Nationalism in the prelude to the Croatian and Bosnian Wars. Markovic was at that time a leftwing Marxist, while Krestic was a rightwing nationalist. How could two such opposing worldviews unite in the notorious 1986 “Memorandum”?

Eriksen and Stjernfelt's answer is that “[Markovic and Krestic] both share the idea that the local events at the beginning of the 1990s cannot be explained by that which lies closest to hand – by local and contemporary causes and interests – but rather through causes distant in space (Markovic) and time (Krestic).” Is this synthesis an example of a new link between far Right and far Left after the fall of the Berlin Wall? Today the extremes are united in scepticism towards representative democracy across a series of positions, Eriksen and Stjernfelt write: “anti-globalization, regionalism, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-liberalism, anti-Europeanism.”

CONSPIRACY THEORY: From the front page of the Egyptian Al-Ahram there’s a link to this speculative article “asking” who is behind the wave of kidnappings in Iraq. Because many of the kidnapped foreign workers had been “performing work they viewed as beneficial to the Iraqi people” the writer suspects that paramilitary units run by the Americans could be behind the crimes: “Is it far-fetched to wonder if the groups who launch attacks and perform executions are actually intelligence plants such as the [CIA-sponsored] Scorpions?” Sadly, this type of conspiracy theory is typical of the Arabic press.

EURO-OPTIMISM: In an article from The Boston Globe Christopher Shea makes the case for Euro-optimism after a reading of Jonas Pontusson’s new book ''Inequality and Prosperity". European economies are doing well, poverty levels are at a third of poverty levels in countries like the U.S., Canada and the U.K. A recently published report from London School of Economics [PDF] showed – surprisingly – that social mobility for children of low-income parents is higher in Scandinavian countries than in the U.S. and the U.K. Climbing the ladder in “flexicurity land” is easier. You can find a description of the benefits of life in a social democracy in Robert Kaiser’s comment from Finland: "If We're So Rich and Smart, Why Aren't We More Like Them?” (Washington Post). You can also take a look at this entry where Seattle writer Rob Salkowitz appeals to American liberals to defend economic security.

MORGENBLADET'S ORIENTALISM: The Norwegian weekly Morgenbladet’s latest editorial see the media’s response to the violent cartoon-riots as a case of “Orientalism”. There’s an element of truth to the riots, writes Bendik Wold, as religion protests the “lack of humanity” in our societies. Morgenbladet represents a new type of leftist populism that labels the U.S.A. as “the worlds most dangerous state” and views the Scandianvian societies as being under a “neoliberalist” economic occupation. With this fixation it is hard to spot other anti-democratic, imperialist ideologies. What would Bendik Wold have written if the burning of American flags in Cairo had lead to riots in Washington D.C. - including the destruction of the Egyptian embassy by some mad hillbillies? I doubt that Morgenbladet would have called such a rampage “legitimate”. Where is the real Orientalism here?

Posted by contexploration at 10:49 PM | Permalink

Kwame Anthony Appiah's 'Cosmopolitanism' - Kwame Anthony Appiah has written this essay explaining his understanding of “Cosmopolitanism”. He writes that the cultural pessimists' claim that cultural imperialism “structures the consciousnesses” of those outside the West is a theory that treats people “as blank slates on which global capitalism's moving finger writes its message, leaving behind another cultural automaton as it moves on”.

Appiah criticizes the Unesco’s convention on the protection and promotion of cultural diversity: The ethics of globalisation should take individuals - not cultures - as the proper object of moral concern. In a review of the book John Gray writes that Appiah’s “value-pluralism” undercuts the claims of all universal moralities, including liberal morality. Gray concludes that cosmopolitanism has very little bearing on the issue: “The point is that one cannot avoid making a moral judgment, and this inescapably means accepting or rejecting certain religious beliefs. Those who favor gay marriage--as I do--do so because they reject the belief that being gay is in any way bad or wrong.” But then again, maybe Gray is wrong. How should you approach another person’s homophobia, for example? Most will try to make the case for tolerance in a discussion with a homophobic person, but cosmopolitans will eventually leave the bigots with their wild hang-ups intact. Doesn’t this type of respect for an individual’s prejudice represent a healthy alertness against moral imperialism, which is close to what Appiah calls “cosmopolitanism”?

In an excellent article from Neue Züricher Zeitung, Seyla Benhabib writes on changing attitudes in Turkey, where internationalisation, strengthening of the rule of law and multiculturalism is an interconnected process. The society is “experiencing a transition from ‘equality’ understood as ‘sameness,’ to ‘equality’ understood as ‘equality in diversity’” she writes. The article gives a hopeful view of the Copenhagen criteria as a guide to Turkey’s entry into the European Union.

An article from The Guardian points to a report that says Britain’s multiculturalism is making the country more tolerant: “Racist incidents are diminishing fastest where immigrants and their families are most established, while it is the parts of Britain with least experience of immigration - the rural areas, on the whole - that are the most hostile.”

To understand the limits of freedom of speech in Norway in relation to racism better, read the two central Supreme Court verdicts: "Kjuus-saken" PDF, 1997 and "Sjølie-saken" 2002 [plenumsavgjørelser/norsk].

The Iraqi Communist Party has issued an interesting and gloomy statement where it says that: “We have to note, with regret, that the Iraqi democratic forces have not received, in their difficult struggle, effective solidarity and support from international forces of the left. As a result, most of the latter have unfortunately been rendered observers of events, rather than exerting positive influence on the ongoing struggle over the future course of developments in Iraq, especially in supporting the struggle for a democratic prospect, at a time when the Iraqi patriotic and democratic forces are in urgent need for such concrete and multifarious support and solidarity.” The Party opposed the military intervention in 2003, but now supports American military presence until security is established.

To experience love “one must constantly drink anew from the original source, which is Jesus Christ, from whose pierced heart flows the love of God” according to Pope Benedict XVI’s ‘Encyclical Letter’. It is an interesting read, not only because of the pope's fixed ideas about the nature and origin of love (“eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence”), but because it contains a discussion of the limits and possibilities of charity and justice, which is important to address from a secular standpoint as well. The key to reading this letter is to treat it as a text written by any cultural theorist. Note that the commandment to “love of neighbour” is in a constant scuffle with the need of practical “indifference” on the individual level as a key to co-existence within the “cosmopolitanism” that Appiah envisions.

Posted by contexploration at 06:00 AM | Permalink