#11 – Santa Claus is Fake

December 23, 2011 //

Let’s just say I haven’t attended this blog of mine for quite some time. I’ll get back on track in a short while.

Just one quick thing before the holidays begin; there is no Santa Claus. Christmas gifts are provided from your parents and various relatives (and they usually phone each other prior to Christmas to make sure they don’t all give you the same video games, toys or whatever it is you asked for in your letter to Father Christmas).

Should there be a person looking as Santa Claus in your house at christmas, it’s most likely one of your parents goofing around. You’ll probably do the same to your own kids once you have them. The practical reasons for this behavior are hard to comprehend even for grown ups.

#10 – It’s Not Always What You Do; What Matters is How You Defend Your Actions

October 12, 2011 //

…though, seriously, unless you’re dating a retard, a douche or both: come up with a better argument than this one. Otherwise you might get into serious trouble.

#9 – Even Though Blue Prints are Provided, People Still Make Stupid Mistakes

July 15, 2011 //

Simon Kuper, an author of magnificent books and a football writer at the Financial Times, wrote this piece on the statistics and, in the long run, economics of international football. This passage is sort of my favorite:

Given that you can hire perhaps 30 statisticians for the £1.5m that the average footballer in the Premier League earns each year, you’d think it might be worth paying some nerds to study these questions. Nonetheless, to some degree football’s suspicion of numbers persists.

Kuper refer to one fundamental truth about the contemporary world of international sports; statistics, data, sane economic thinking, long term decisions and common sense for business will get you the title further down the road. Okland Athletics did it. Boston Red Sox copied the Moneyball success and brought their first World Series victory to Fenway Park since, well, the First World War.

Rule of thumb is always to listen to statistical nerds. If they tell you the probability to be struck by lightning is close to none at all if you’re indoors in a standard rented apartment located in the central area of a big city, then fear not thunder. Just go by your business.

This rule of thumb should apply to the world of professional sports. Sadly for many sports fans, it does not.

#8 – Fucking People Over For 90 Years Can Make You the Crown Prince of the Global Economy

July 4, 2011 //

The Soviet Union failed miserably. There’s no denying it. Russia these days is a country run by villains and thieves in the aftermath of communism gone worse.

On the other hand: China, an entirely different story.

I won’t get in to the bidding war on who’s to be pinned as the greatest murderer in the name of communism, but China and the Soviet Union rank as the front runners. Should China trail, they’ll pick it up in the long run since the Cold War ending had most of the competition tossed out of the window. Even though communism has fainted in China due to market and global economy integration these past 22 years, the party in charge (the CPC) celebrated its 90th birthday on July 1.

Yeah, that’s the same one where Mao Zedong (responsible for the deaths of millions of Chinese citizens) held the post as chairman for 33 years. Li Peng fronted CPC in 1989 when the military cracked down the protests on Tiananmen Square (Chinese government claim 241 people died; NATO intelligence has the death toll at 7000 people).

A thing of the past, you’d say. And, granted, you are right. Present President Hu Jintao has not unleashed the military in public spaces throughout the Chinese capital (though he supported the Tiananmen crack downs back in the day). Beijing even hosted the Olympics three years ago. A booming economy and a vast and steady increase of consumers put China next in line to surpass the U.S. as leading force in the global economy.

A leader still fucking its citizens over, that is.

Liu Xiaobo, fighting for democracy and openness in China, is sentenced to eleven years imprisonment. Chinese artist Ai WeiWei was recently released from jail. Well, sort of:

Asked if he’d been mistreated during his imprisonment, he paused, then replied: “I really can’t say anything. Sorry.” (Quote from Newsweek)

It took them 90 years, but eventually the CPC made the impossible possible; turns out you can eat the cake and still have it lying around yet to be eaten.

#7 – Margret Thatcher is a Person to Love (Sometimes)

June 13, 2011 //

Sarah Palin was quoted in the Sunday Times.

I am going to Sudan in July and hope to stop in England on the way. I am just hoping Mrs Thatcher is well enough to see me as I so admire her.

You’d fear, since Thatcher is considered to be the earthly bride of Satan, that the former British prime minister would back this up, embracing Palin as a potential candidate to the US presidency. Shaking hands with Thatcher, a former Reagan friend, would be a huge deal for Palin’s yet to be revealed campaign.

As it turns out, Thatcher can be a person to adore. According to the Guardian, an ally to Thatcher passed on the Iron Lady’s view on Palin:

Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts.

#6 – If You Bomb a Nation’s Planes and Rocket Launchers, You’ll get to Sell New Ones When You’re Done!

March 21, 2011 //

An alliance of states is bombing Libya in order to get Colonel Gaddafi to step down from his ruling of a nation in devastating turmoil; the peaceful and successful nationwide uprising in Egypt and Tunisia has taken another turn in Libya as armed rebels fight the Libyan military. And we shouldn’t fool ourselves here. Colonel Gaddafi is indeed a mad man with a horrifying track record of beating down dissidents and opponents in Libya.

What’s odd though is the joy spread in western nations as the United Nations allowed the bombings of Libya to occur. Joy, you say. Isn’t that a strong word to use? Perhaps it is, but it’s not uncalled for. Political pundits, elected officials and some ministers of state have aired the opinion that bombing is the only choice if Colonel Gaddafi is to step down.

This, of course, is not true. You have a tremendous amount of choices, where peaceful and massive protests are the best one. Bombing is convenient and fairly easy. To calm his fellow Americans, Barack Obama said ground troops in Libya were out of the question. Reports say a big piece of Libya’s air force burst in explosions during the first hours of attack. Should the bombings continue there won’t be much left of what was once a fairly strong military force.

Maybe this will lead to Colonel Gaddafi stepping down. And, sure, that’s a good thing. But my point is this: we’ve sold the military equipment and guns and planes and Rocket Launchers to this guy in the first place, now we blow it up. The next guy (they’re always guys, a woman won’t be leading Libya in the near future) in office will have to buy new ones. Let’s say some prominent arms dealers will get a $60 billion deal with Libya?

Suddenly the joy in bombing isn’t that hard to understand.

#5 – If You Give a Couple of Senior Citizens the Opportunity, they will cut Down Your Trees

February 25, 2011 //

This one I caught on the news. A bunch of senior citizens were invited to a kindergarten. The aim was to practice some gardening techniques on trees situated in the children’s playground. Nothing out of the ordinary, you’d say.

Well, think again. Things went sour.

The senior citizens got excited, or perhaps agitated. According to this article (in Swedish) the gardening group found a tree to be rotten. Or, so they thought. They went medieval on the tree with a chain saw only to discover nothing was wrong with the tree. On the contrary, come autumn and the tree would have brought pears to the kids. “We’ll never let senior citizens back again”, said a woman from City hall organizing the visit. The leader of the senior citizens said:

It got a little out of hand. But that’s how it is when you evaluate. Sometimes you get it wrong.

If senior citizens of the world unite and get organized, we’re in deep trouble.

#4 – Keep Every Important Conversation to Things You Actually Know Something About

February 2, 2011 //

This I knew about Egypt prior to this week of turmoil: The pyramids are there, and at night lights from the highly populated banks of the river Nile can be seen from outer space. That would be about it. I am a journalist, an educated man, known to know at least tiny bits of many things.

Yet for some reason Egypt has totally slipped my mind.

I’ve since caught up with the news flow and have, as many others, followed the reporting from Cairo live on al-Jazeera. Still I would have a hard time telling you who’s who and what’s what in the current demonstrations. For sure I wouldn’t be able to map out what will come next. It’s simply embarrassing not to know and, far worse, it could ruin my reputation as a Know It All.

My friend, the mighty Hasan Ramic, is an astonishing writer with tons of knowledge in the fields of hip hop and dancehall (and everything in between). For many years I was afraid to let out how little I knew about the artists he spoke about. I could – as I do these days – have said ‘seriously dude, I have no fucking idea who Vybz Kartel is’; yet all I could master a couple of years ago were variations of the phrase ‘oh, yeah, I’ve heard about him. He’s OK, I guess’.

I was a music critic by trade. I had to lie to keep face. Oh, the glory of pop cultural anxiety. It’s brought down men and women far more intelligent than me.

The best part is there’s always a way out of an embarrassing situation. Each time somebody asks me for my thoughts on Egypt, I answer simply by talking about social media. It’s interesting, I say, to see that this is one of the first really important Facebook fueled revolutions (this, I’ve been told, is partly true). No discussions about Mubarak. No discussions about the Islamic Brotherhood. I am safe. Talking about social media is easy; I can keep such a discussion alive for ten minutes without losing face. The person I talk to will consider me to be a bright person.

There are those who’d say this is a childish way of social interaction. They are, of course, spot on. But sometimes it’s utterly important to keep a straight face in any given hierarchy. In order to remain successful, one must always uphold the image of success.

#3 – Never Fear to #talkabouit

December 24, 2010 //

On a trip to Sweden, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange slept with two Swedish girls. Afterwards they accused him of rape. Mr. Assange now spends Christmas in house arrest in Britain, awaiting extradition to Sweden.

I bring this up because the case against Mr. Assange has sparked a movement in Sweden. The Twitter hashtag #prataomdet (in English:#talkaboutit) aim to find a language in which we speak about sex in a way “that isn’t stifled by shame; we need to think about our boundaries as well as others’. Something is going to change. We are going to dare to #talkaboutit”. A recap taken from prataomdet.se:

In connection to a conversation regarding the media coverage of the Assange case, Swedish journalist Johanna Koljonen started to tweet, openly and intimately, about her own experiences of drawing lines and negotiating gray areas in sexual situations. Hundreds followed Koljonen’s example on Twitter under the hashtag #prataomdet (”#talkaboutit”). As a result of this, several Swedish magazines, newspapers and other media outlets are publishing pieces on the subject. In a matter of days international media, such as The Guardian, Die Welt, BBC World Service, Norway’s Dagbladet, Finland’s Helsingin Sanomat, and others have followed.

It’s immensely satisfying, horrible and scary to read all the stories now being published in blogs, in Swedish news papers and, still, on Twitter. Horrible and scary since they are stories about forced sex and rape; satisfying because they are stories that needs to be told – and understood. Because everything you’ve heard is true: Sex is terrific. It really is. Yet sex can be complicated, perhaps more complicated than any other form of interaction with others. In worst case scenario, sex is devastating, and in fear of what might happen if you do, you say nothing and keep what happened to yourself and remain hurt for many years or even a lifetime. When someone you trust or love forces you to do something you didn’t want to, the pain is unbearable.

The #talkaboutit movement is an incredible show of courage. All of you who dare to tell your most private stories are my heroes, and you will always and forever remain heroes.

#2 – If You Punish a Victim of Rape, You Can Get a $60 Billion Weapons Deal With the US!

December 20, 2010 //

Rape is not specifically criminalized in Saudi Arabia. Should there be a legal case, the rape victim is often punished as well. All women, regardless of age, must have a male guardian; a Saudi Arabian woman under the age of 45 years old can’t even open her own bank account.

We’re talking horrifying reality, yet this is nothing compared to the incident in 2002, when religious police stopped school girls from leaving a building on fire since they weren’t properly dressed.

15 girls died. Burned to death. Fanaticism is swell, wouldn’t you say?

This, we all agree, should be opposed by the rest of the world. There should be sanctions and furious outrage. If you, as a nation, treat women like this, we shall not, can not stand – it is our moral obligation as people of the world to make it stop. Well, let’s just say that’s not the case.