havard simensen

Iraq holds provincial elections on January 30th. Local candidates are defying threats from terrorists and proxies of theocratic states. The assassinations of some political leaders before the elections do not seem to hinder the Iraqi people’s enthusiasm for taking part in the vote. The situation in the country is still fragile, however. Even though the level of violence has dropped to its lowest since the war to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003, we will surely see setbacks in he future. Yet, despite the bloodbath of the last few years, the Iraqi people have never strayed from the path of representative government. Our solidarity should be with the people of Iraq, slowly building a democracy in the heart of the Middle East.

Continue reading "Stand by Iraq" »

Posted by håvard simensen at 06:39 AM | Permalink

Iraq has been on brink of the abyss. After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein it involuntary became the world center of terrorist pilgrimage. But despite its dreadful hardships, we can see the emergence of a new Iraq. Our solidarity should be with the Iraqi democrats striving to rebuild their country. As violence continues to decline, and as Iraqis continue to opt for national unity and democracy, there is hope for the future. Here are some quotes reflecting the latest developments:

Continue reading "Iraq: Reverting to its natural role as one of the world’s great nations" »

Posted by håvard simensen at 08:04 AM | Permalink

Our democratic societies were founded on words of tremendous effect: Without the vocabulary of the Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is difficult to imagine what our world would have looked like today. But note: In these documents there is no obligation to love one another, or to believe in any God. Equality before the law is not the result of emotional pleas to show loyalty. The fundamental rights enshrined in the above-mentioned texts are the result of an understanding of the limits of politics. Americans are patriots not because they are asked to be so, but because the foundation of their republic was one of the few momentous accomplishments of humanity. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are worthy of patriotism. To administer this legacy is the privilege of American politicians. In the business of politics, principled thinking should triumph emotion, as was done when the United States of America was born.

Continue reading "Faith in Obama" »

Posted by håvard simensen at 08:00 AM | Permalink

Last year, during the first Muhammad cartoons controversy, the Islamists staged an organized assault on the economies and interests of Denmark and Norway. Danish and Norwegian embassies in Iran, Syria and Lebanon were fire-bombed. Death threats were issued against the Danish artists who made the drawings and to the editors who published them. In Norway, the editor of the Christian weekly Magazinet had to live under round-the-clock police protection. Crowds armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons attacked the base of Norwegian peacekeeping soldiers in Afghanistan. Consumer boycotts were organised in a series of Middle East countries. In Pakistan, offices of Danish and Norwegian businesses were vandalized. The day of the destruction of the Danish embassy in Beirut, the Secretary General of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, specified the mission of the Islamists as such:

Continue reading "Giving in to Islamists didn’t save the Swedes" »

Posted by håvard simensen at 07:58 PM | Permalink

We were invited to the San Felipe Pueblo, Katishtya, New Mexico, where we attended the Green Corn Dance. The Pueblo of San Felipe is a Native American tribe part of the Keresan speaking people. In the town square, a group of twenty or so men stood in the centre, singing, to the beat of a gigantic pounding drum. Hundreds of dancers circled the singers, using gourd rattles to accompany the beat. Many held sprigs of evergreen. The male dancers wore white buckskin moccasins, white kilts and red body paint. The upper torso, arms and legs of the men were nude. The female dancers had black shawls, red belts and were barefooted. Dust covered the thousands of spectators who stood quietly watching the dance, in front of their houses, from balconies, rooftops and the alleys leading to the square. Their insistence on not transforming it into a tourist extravaganza – by not marketing it, and by prohibiting the use of cameras, sketching or recording equipment – made the celebration unique. Being among the few non-natives in the pueblo, my girlfriend and I might perhaps have felt a bit out of place, but there was neither any extraordinary hospitality granted us, nor a trace of hostility from anyone we talked to.

Continue reading "To be alike is to think alike" »

Posted by håvard simensen at 08:00 AM | Permalink

One summer afternoon at St Hanshaugen in Oslo, I was sitting on a bench contemplating the sunset and life, when suddenly Erling, the furniture builder, jumped out from behind some bushes and sat down next to me. He was in an exceptionally good mood. This summer he had been out of town in his studio in Hønefoss working consistently on a log of oak, making tables and chairs for his affluent clients:

Continue reading "Stop the love hype" »

Posted by håvard simensen at 08:00 AM | Permalink

In honour of the resilient Iraqi democrats who strive to make Iraq a peaceful, multi-ethnic country, I quote some of their words, four years after the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

Continue reading "In the words of Iraqi democrats" »

Posted by håvard simensen at 12:41 PM | Permalink

Here are some quotes from the international debate on European multiculturalism:

Continue reading "The debate on European multiculturalism: More links" »

Posted by håvard simensen at 01:48 PM | Permalink

The Iraqi-Norwegian couple, Inger Østenstad and Hawdan Salih Jaf, criss-crossed Iraq for a year in 2004. Their notes resulted in the book Reiser i krigens skygge (roughly translated Journeys in the shadow of the war) published in Norway in 2006. The book gives valuable insights into life in Iraq. As Hawdan Salih Jaf himself is a Kurd originally from Slemani, the authors were able to travel and get first-hand information through conversations with relatives and friends from all sects and levels of Iraqi society. As the security situation deteriorated, the people of Iraq rejoiced at the toppling of Saddam Hussein, feared the growing Islamist terrorism and were frustrated by the failure of the American reconstruction effort.

Continue reading "Debriefing the citizens of the republic of fear" »

Posted by håvard simensen at 05:05 PM | Permalink

At last, it looks like the debate on multiculturalism in Europe is gaining momentum. A series of articles in different journals and newspapers attempt to highlight the watering out of vital principles of liberal democracy. The European version of multiculturalism has up until now taken the form of parallel monoculturalisms, through the creation of immigrant ghettos within every state itself.

Continue reading "Debate on European multiculturalism is gaining momentum" »

Posted by håvard simensen at 10:00 AM | Permalink

A few years back, the British newspaper The Observer uncovered a black propaganda program initiated by the MI6. British intelligence officers were to spread Islamic messages on extremist websites and throughout the Middle East. They wee also to support moderate clerics. The propaganda – while distinctly anti-Western – was designed to make a call for non-violent jihad. British “intelligence” experts were supposed to spend their working hours posting theological considerations in the Jihad Blogosphere… I doubt if this would have been a wise investment of British tax-payers’ money. Creating ethical consensus through the guise of religions is problematic in itself. Why would one want to join the wrestle for the remote control?

Posted by håvard simensen at 12:12 PM | Permalink

The Norwegian equivalent of September 11th – the double theft of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” and “Madonna” – has been reversed. Two years ago the paintings were stolen from the Munch Museum in Oslo in broad daylight. Two armed men broke into the museum, ran away with the paintings and jumped into a waiting car. On Thursday, police in Norway recovered the paintings.

Posted by håvard simensen at 08:47 PM | Permalink

Europe’s model of multiculturalism is a model of Europe itself. Every European nation has had a violent birth. Even the establishment of the new nation states of the Balkans in the 1990s did not occur peacefully. The organisation of Europe has traditionally been multicultural, but it has been a mosaic of parallel cultures, not a continent of intermingled diversity. The borders in Europe are not randomly drawn, but were actual security barriers erected to prevent slaughter after centuries of horrific wars.

Continue reading "The origins of European multiculturalism" »

Posted by håvard simensen at 08:00 AM | Permalink

[Satire]. Congratulations on another week of excellent activity! We have managed to create mayhem in Mumbai, Baghdad, Beirut, Haifa and Mogadishu. Thank you to all those who took part. I know many of us may have perished during this working week, but congratulations to them as well! They helped raise the number of dead and thus contributed to even higher levels of mourning. There can never be enough blood and guts flowing in the streets of the world. But even though the number of dead and dismembered have increased steadily lately, there is still room for improvement. Take my advice to heart. Maybe we can boost the efficiency of our organization? There is no need for any pause in our activity now that we are on such a nice roll.

Continue reading "Humanity – Lovers of death and destruction" »

Posted by håvard simensen at 08:00 AM | Permalink

The mullahs who hold power in Iran claim to know the will of God, and demand that all citizens must follow the “law of God,” which in Iran’s case refers to Islamic law based on the Koran. If the Islamic clergy are unsure of what position God would take on a certain matter, the question is resolved by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. If you take the ayatollah’s word for it when he says that he knows best what God wants, then this way of deciding law is a perfectly reasonable way of organizing society. If not, then the Ayatollah is a liar, and Iran is, in fact, a dictatorship.

Continue reading "Four writers on Iran" »

Posted by håvard simensen at 08:00 AM | Permalink

The Norwegian underworld has an obsession with Edvard Munch (1863-1944). Not only because his art works are expensive and incredibly easy to snatch from low security art institutions, but also because certain key figures in the criminal circuit have a personal dedication to the artist. Some of them have studied Munch and his art for years. This gives their undertakings a certain mythological flare. Recently, the Madonna and a version of The Scream were stolen from the Munch Museum in broad daylight. Two armed men broke into the museum and ran away with the paintings. A theory that has been put forward in the media is that the two men acted on orders from another criminal, the man behind the March 2004 NOKAS break-in: The commando-style robbery of a NOKAS cash service center in Stavanger resulted in a dozen men getting away with nearly 70 million kroner (€ 7 million/$ 8.5 million), leaving one police officer dead. The Norwegian police speculates that the man behind the planning of the robbery later might have paid for the theft of the two Munch paintings to divert resources from the police hunt and secure possession of a wild card to reduce his sentence if he ever got caught, which he eventually was. But today the paintings are still missing, and the NOKAS men are all in prison.

Continue reading "Edvard Munch Mania" »

Posted by håvard simensen at 10:15 PM | Permalink

CARTOONS: Monday there was an InterCity debate at Kafé Stenersen about the Norwegian Government’s handling of the cartoons controversy. In the panel was Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, Carl I. Hagen, the leader of Fremskrittspartiet (the right wing Populist Party), Torbjørn Røe Isaksen, the leader of the youth organization of the Conservatives and Olav Dag Hauge, the head of the inter-religious delegation sent by the Norwegian Government to meet the cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi in Quatar after the controversy broke out. Present in the audience was also Vebjørn Selbekk, the editor of the small Christian weekly Magazinet that printed the cartoons in Norway in the first place.

Continue reading "Hope and disillusion at Kafé Stenersen" »

Posted by håvard simensen at 10:37 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.”

Continue reading "Justice, poverty and squatters" »

Posted by håvard simensen at 09:59 PM | 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.

Continue reading "Please don’t eliminate the source of my oppression" »

Posted by håvard simensen at 03:31 PM | Permalink