Hey,
as you probably noticed, I haven’t written for quite a while. Now, how could that happen? Is it that nothing interesting has happened to me, so that I haven’t had anything to write about? Quite the opposite!
Let me begin by updating you a little bit on what has happened since last time. As you can read in the last post, we from the Left Alliance made quite a fuss about the support of “democracy” in Belarus by quite a lot of Norwegian organizations. And it all ended up with them changing their mind, removing the main reference to the controversial candidate from their website and putting a disclaimer on the main page saying that those organizations that have signed their petition do not support the rest of whatever can be found on the webpage…. sounds quite bizarre to me, and I think it effectively has meant that they can’t go anywhere with that site.
But that was not all…
Secondly, a great debate in the university newspaper has ended. It all started when some time in late November they had a story on the Norwegian military drafting young men out of university. I, in the name of the peace organization Blindern Fred, sent in a statement saying that we perfectly well could understand those youngsters that didn’t want to have anything to do with the Norwegian military, given its current participation in various wars. And then I tipped them that moving to Sweden to study with all likelihood would put them outside of the sphere of control of the Norwegian military, and that clogging the military up with administrative paperwork would be one good idea to protest its current actions.
Since then, we got a few answers, and I had to answer those again. It all ended with them starting an organization, apparently with the only realistic goal of being able to attack whatever we or I might say to the press in the future….
Well, and then on a totally different note, my book has finally been placed in the library of Douglas, which means quite a lot to me, given that it in Douglas I did my research. I haven’t received an answer from everybody yet, but according to the librarian, there is little likelihood that I’ll be “tared and feathered” once I get back there. And I do plan on going back there this summer. If everything works out, that might end up being an even longer journey through Mexico, etc. .
Also, I’ve started teaching again. The two main themes this time are the relationship between production and the development of society (ever heard of that guy called Karl Marx before?), and British history (does “industrial revolution” ring any bells?). When I heard of the themes, I started thinking someone must have been monitoring my activity before they put me to these assignments. But it might also just be coincidence. Anyways, it looks like the next 6 weeks of teaching will be great fun!
At the same time, I will be stressed as I haven’t been for quite some time: within the next 6 weeks, I’ll be flying to Hamburg, Bodø, Tromsø and Bergen (the latter three are in Norway). I can’t make it to Copenhagen and I neevr made it to paris, although I also had people asking me to go there within the last month. In many ways I believe the way that politically active are silenced in Norway is by sending them back and forth so they’ll spend more time on board of various airplanes or in board meetings in obscure little villages somewhere far north of the polar circle, than actually getting to do anything to really change things.
Now I have already promised myself that this will be my last semester doing that kind of stuff. But I think not much short of moving to another country will be able to ground me – at least for a while.
And while I’m at it, I would like to apologize to a very good friend of mine who I classified as something he felt was “lower” than a friend in this blog some months ago. He took that very serious, while I hadn’t given it too much thought at all.
Leave a Reply