Posts, August 2004:

The NRK report on Ester Kristoffer: When I wrote about NRK's story on Ester Kristoffer in April, I hadn't actually seen the news report myself. Now I have, (even found myself in two of the shots), and I've made a transcript. Here's the Norwegian version, and [...]

Haakon Børde, satirist (for real!): John Øyvind Welle got an "annoyingly polite" reply from NRK's Haakon Børde about his mysterious flag day claim. In a rant about all that is wrong with America, Børde wrote that Norway has a national flag day on July 4 [...]

NRK's Israel network story revived: It's time to revive a case I mentioned in April, when NRK aired a report accusing the Israeli embassy of supporting a secret network among Norwegian Christians to counter media criticism of Israel. A project I was involved with, two [...]

SAIH and NSU responds: I asked a few people to comment on my post about SAIH's support for the anti-Bush ad. SAIH withdrew the support, but seemed rather half-hearted about it. Maria Serafia Fjellstad, who heads the Student Parliament at NTNU, agrees, and writes [...]

Modular design in politics: In computer programming (and related disciplines) we have a principle called modular design. Good software should be written as modules (classes/files/functions), each of which does a small number of related things very well, and does it as independently of other [...]

Student charity supports anti-Bush ad: In June I wrote that Norwegian left-wingers are raising money to buy a full-page ad in the Washington Post to explain that the people of Norway disagrees with the way George W. Bush runs the war on terror. This is [...]

Anti-Islamic views - the debate continues: I was beginning to worry that my post on anti-Islamic extremists would be ignored, but a whole bunch of blogs have picked up on it. (Thanks, Gary.) Eugene Volokh writes that it is "obvious stuff at one level, but still [...]

Denmark's Abu Ghraib: The Danes have been having their own little torture scandal this summer. A Danish officer, Annemette Hommel, face charges after an interpreter accused her of mistreating prisoners during interrogations. Iraqi prisoners were refused water, kept in uncomfortable positions, and generally [...]

Galtung predicts war in Azerbaijan: Bruce Bawer was foolish enough to go to a Johan Galtung lecture at the University of Oslo yesterday, about where "the next war" will be. You haven't begun thinking about the next war yet? The neo-cons certainly have, and Galtung's [...]

Pakistani Islamist to visit Norway: Here we are discussing Islam and Europe, and along comes this: Qazi Hussain Ahmed, a Pakistani Islamist politician, has been invited to speak in Oslo. Ahmed is the leader of Jamaat-e Islami, a large Islamist organization, and Muttahida Majlis-e Amal, [...]

More on banning Islam: I don't usually reply to comments with a post, but this one falls in line with other disturbing posts and comments I've read in blogs lately, so it's as good excuse as any. Phil from Florida has made a handy [...]

Haakon Børde, satirist: In the war on anti-American stereotypes everyone has a part to play. Some, like Bruce Bawer in today's Dagbladet, take straight aim at popular anti-American myths, hoping to change people's minds with good, honest arguments. Others prefer to use satire [...]