politics

9/11 and the Peace it Brought

11 September 2013 by villia Leave a Comment

I remember 9/11. My mom called me from another country and told me to turn on the TV. Turn on the TV? She didn’t have the same stations I did, so I was confused. What station, I asked? Any. Doesn’t matter, she replied.

The image appeared on the screen just in time to see the first tower collapse. Then the other. I saw them coming down more often than I care to remember. Endless replays of the collapse of western civilisation. I didn’t understand why, but I did understand that the world would never be the same again.

Afghanistan was attacked shortly afterwards. Nobody was surprised, nobody saw anything wrong with it. What happened next surprised everyone.

The president called for a worldwide summit on peace. Every nation on earth was invited. Religious and humanitarian organisations were represented. As thousands of delegates arrived in New York in the summer of 2003, we didn’t expect much. We’d seen too many peace talks go wrong. There was the Israel/Palestine thing, the Al-Queda thing. Clashes of civilisations and religions. Surely, this would fail like any previous attempts at world peace. But it didn’t.

It succeeded because we had seen the horrors of war and hatred.

A massive plan of redistributing wealth, basic healthcare worldwide and clean water was laid out. It was a huge undertaking, but the effects are clear. With world hunger almost eradicated, we have managed to remove the reasons for people to radicalise. The world isn’t perfect, there are still clashes here and there, but there are no wars between nations. No civil wars.

The road to global prosperity is long and winding, but we are on the right path. Thanks to politicians that chose peace in the early weeks of 2003. Just imagine what the world would be like if 9/11 had been used to justify endless wars, like some conspiracy theorists were predicting at the time.

The text above is wishful thinking after the fact. Naive, some may say. But if we stop dreaming of peace, we’ll never have it. Let’s hope that the ultimate legacy of 9/11 will indeed be peace and understanding, not endless wars.

1917 or 1968?

20 June 2013 by villia Leave a Comment

“Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him.” – says the Guardian.

Michael Hastings was best known for his 2010 article in the Rolling Stone magazine about General Stanley McChrystal. The general was forced to resign from his post as commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan as a result of the piece.

So, we know Michael Hastings wasn’t your average reporter. He dug as deep as the story required and wasn’t afraid of angering the establishment. And he had the “wrong” friends.

But should he have been concerned for his life? Did the government kill him? We are the good guys, right?

He died in a car crash. His car, apparently a Mercedes (details are sketchy) was wrapped around a tree and it caught fire. Immediately, the web was flooded with conspiracy theories. Not surprising, given the circumstances.

He was disliked by the establishment. He was apparently working on a piece relating to the NSA scandal, so the timing is interesting. Mercedes generally manufacture quality cars that don’t catch fire on impact. The U.S. government is unlikely to be thrilled about yet another leak, scandal or anything that will complicate their situation even further.

Whether the government killed Hastings or not, it is interesting to see how people are not shocked by the idea. People are not surprised at all. Indifferent even. It seems to indicate that we have reached a point in history where people expect the worst of the authorities. Believe their elected leaders will do anything to silence inconvenient voices. We are either living in a sick, totalitarian world, or the authorities have behaved in such a way that the general population believe they live in such a world.

This wasn’t always the case. Somewhere along the way, it all went horribly wrong.

We elected them. We live in a democracy. Elected officials should work for us, but everyone seems to have forgotten about that.

Streets around the world are flooded with people demonstrating against their governments. From Turkey to Brazil and beyond, the world seems to be going through a great shift. People are waking up to the fact that things are not as they seemed. We don’t live in democracies after all. Liberty was sacrificed on the altar of fake security a long time ago.

But will this be another 1917 or 1968? Will the powers be toppled like they were in Russia, where an initially well meaning, but ultimately more corrupt leadership doomed a nation to a century of poverty, lies and persecutions? Or will it be like 1968, where no governments were toppled, but a slight shift in values and norms was temporarily achieved? Or will it be 1989, where oppressive governments will be toppled and people will be able to live in relative freedom for a while, until the next generation, that never knew the hardships and the corruption, takes over and starts abusing their power?

It’s hard to tell, but the summer of 2013 will probably be up there with the ones mentioned above. And rightly so, because if we can’t trust the people we elect into power, because the system makes it easy to abuse said power, it is time for change. Real and lasting change.

Here is hoping we get it right this time.

Posted in politics, thoughts, Uncategorized | Tagged istanbul, murder, peace, politics, revolution, thoughts, war

Out of Sync

4 June 2013 by villia Leave a Comment

We live in an ever changing world. We can never stay in one place, because standing still is losing out to others that keep moving. We are losing if we are not winning.

This mentality is destroying the future. Our one planet is being exploited on a scale never before seen. We are genetically modifying plants, risking whole ecosystems. We are peeling layers of the earth, whole forests, to get to whatever resources lie underneath. Tar sands that help us fuel our cars that could have run on different energy if we’d been interested in researching alternatives. Bauxite to make aluminium to build weapons and cola cans, because we can’t be bothered to recycle.

But it’s not just the future we’re destroying. We are so focused on progress and profit that we won’t hesitate to destroy the past if a few bucks can be earned. Inner cities are neglected, left to degrade and are then sold to developers that bulldoze the whole thing and build luxury apartments for the few that can afford them. History and identity makes way for profit.

I just finished editing a video I shot on Saturday with the great singer-songwriter Rik van den Bosch. His message is so relevant, so strong, that I have decided to share the video here and now. It hasn’t been made public and I hope he will forgive me, but with Istanbul in the grips of massive riots because the government is out of sync with their people, I feel that this needs to be heard. They started out protesting against a public park being destroyed to build a shopping mall. Rik sings about his old neighbourhood being erased and the people having to relocate. We were standing in his old streets, looking at the boarded windows and graffiti. Him telling me about how his grandparents had met on that spot and about the old lady that used to… you get the idea. A street full of memories, waiting for the bulldozers.

Here is the first verse, and the video:
“I’m living on the ghost side of town
They’re turning everything upside down
They tear it down to the ground, when I’m not around
and the people they keep moving out, to the outskirts of town”

Religion and Society

1 March 2013 by villia Leave a Comment

The writing of Under the Black Sand is in the final stages. Sentences are being polished and paragraphs shortened. Whole scenes are being deleted without mercy, if they drag along or don’t add to the story. Here is one which is still in, but only just. It may very well be cut before the book is completed. This is a lecture on society and religion by the protagonist.

—

The university was close to the cemetery but Peter was running late anyway. He walked briskly onto the podium and took centre stage. He looked over the audience and smiled at his flock. He raised his hands, like the Messiah they clearly needed. He gave himself a few seconds to get into the mood, to remember how he wanted to start. And it made for a good drama.

‘God created man in his image. Then He created the woman as an afterthought because the dude needed someone to play with. It also probably occurred to Him that it was kind of stupid that all the animals were created in pairs, except for man.

‘Our society is built on this rubbish. We are born, we go to Sunday School, we get married in a Church in front of God that forgot to create a woman and then we live happily ever after with that one and same person until we die and meet the maker in a Church. Oh, and you better make sure that this other person is of the opposite gender because same sex relationships are bad and perversive unless you are serving God. Then all talk about gender and age becomes irrelevant as the servants of God enjoy the sweet taste of youth.

‘We were not designed to live with the same person our whole lives. It’s not called wedlock for no reason. Notice the lock? Men were supposed to spread their genes as far and wide as possible and women were supposed to pick the best genes available at any given time. It would be an evolutionary disaster to stick with one person your whole life. And pretty boring, if you ask me.’

He smiled at an oh such a cute redhead. He also noticed a few faces looking at him in disbelief.

‘Right, you don’t believe me? How many of you have had a relationship problem? You’re pretty young so that may still be in the future, but believe me, it will come. What once was pure bliss will turn into a boring routine. He will ignore you, instead of being all over you. When you say something, he will make mumbling noises and not hear a thing. When you kiss him good night, he will quickly look away from the computer and allow you to kiss him on the cheek before going back to the game he’s playing or whatever. The horrible thing has happened. Boredom has settled in and the relationship has begun the inevitable downward spiral. And believe me, you will be divorced within a couple of years or doomed to waste your life with someone that doesn’t appreciate you.

‘How can this happen? Let me try to explain. Tell me, what is your favourite food? I’ll use lasagne for argument’s sake. You love it but it’s a pain to make so you only eat it once a month or thereabout. Still, every time you have lasagne you love it. How can you ever get bored with lasagne? You would think that it’s impossible, but it’s easy. Here’s how.

‘Your rich uncle dies, leaving you a fortune. You hire a chef to cook lasagne every day for you. Great! Lasagne every day. What can possibly go wrong?’

He looked at a few faces in the audience.

‘You’re right. After a few days of eating lasagne, even your favourite food starts to get a bit tired. You get bored with it. A few days later, you’re sick of it and you can’t stand the sight of lasagne. It used to be your favourite and now you can’t stand it!

‘Lasagne is still great. It’s just that too much of a good thing is no good. Same with relationships. Your partner is still fantastic, still the person you fell in love with and couldn’t get enough of in the beginning. The best thing to ever happen to you. But an overdose is still an overdose.

‘Religion has taught us that we are supposed to be true to one person our whole life. Society has told us that our partner should be roughly the same age. Everyone seems to have an opinion on what we do in our bedroom, and who we do it with. And it better be a shared bedroom, because it is economically impossible for most people to live apart. Religion and stigma has a lot to answer for.

‘The thing is, we don’t have to believe in God to fall into the traps set by his servicemen. Our whole system is an unnatural set of rules, agreed on by old men with a political agenda. Our current system is a fabrication. Their vision of what life should be like. Look around you and you will see that we live by rules created by people, no more intelligent than you are. In many cases, they were less intelligent and a lot more ignorant.

‘Our system is not a law of nature. We made those rules ourselves and they have, in many cases, nothing to do with the human spirit or how we would naturally like to live.

‘The best way to preserve the status quo is to have people’s attention diverted away from the source of this nonsense. We have christians against muslims, catholics versus protestants, communists versus capitalists. It’s a cockfight and as long as the cocks are focused on killing each other, the owners, the ones that set the fight up, are safe.

‘The system relies on conflict and misery. We have feminists fighting old farts. Should the woman be allowed to work or should we lock her up in the kitchen? Why even bother to ask the question? Why should we doubt for one moment that women have the same rights as men? They can do whatever they want. Make their own choices. The thing is, they usually don’t want the same things we do. They are different, because evolution had other plans for them. And don’t think that is a bad thing. Just like I may prefer red apples and someone else green ones, they may prefer shoes to cars, pink to blue, or blue to my pink.’

He looked at her when he said red and she smiled ever so slightly back.

‘It’s all about choice and accepting who we are. Not what some old book says we should be. Whenever I’m not sure about why we do certain things and behave in a certain way, I imagine the purest form of human society. What would a caveman do?

‘Looking at the stone age, we see people living in larger groups than we now do. Yes, we live in cities, but we are isolated from most of the people around us. Cavemen lived with their extended families. There was no nuclear family. Men went out hunting while…’
The redhead hung on his every word. It would be a great evening.

—

Now it’s just seeing if the scene adds depth or drags on. Time will tell.

Opening Doors

18 July 2012 by villia 1 Comment

When faced with a hard decision a few months ago, a good friend told me I was opening doors and that could only be fun. She was right, but I listened to the nay-sayers that said I didn’t have what it took. What was I thinking? I had no place in that world! I had a life, a family to take care of. I should be old enough to know my place. I had said that I would start with volunteering and only get paid if I got elected. Volunteering? At your age? That is crazy talk. If you were eighteen… as if age has anything to do with passion. As if making money was the only measurement of success.

And what if I didn’t get elected? They believe that would be failing, while I saw it as an experience either way. But it is easy to do nothing, and so I am still here. That door may have closed or it may still be open, but other doors have opened up. They always do. Thing is, we are never out of options. There are always choices and it’s up to us to grab our chances.

So, I didn’t go into politics. For better or worse. I did finish my debut novel though. More or less. There are still a few rough edges, but that is because I want it to be perfect. Not because there is anything wrong with it. The doors to a political career opened up briefly, I peeked through them and was intrigued, but untimely didn’t dare to take the leap. But the door to a writing career may still be open. It will probably remain open as long as I can write, and feel like doing a whole lot of it.

I have held out two blogs up to now. Both in Icelandic. Both more focused on politics and current affairs than on anything I was doing. While it is necessary to comment on what is wrong with the world, and I did have a lot of readers at one point, I feel that I must communicate what’s in the heart. Head is full of ideas, but they all come from the heart to begin with. This blog will be rough, unpolished, unapologetic and naive.

You will be able to follow the progress of the novel and my general thoughts and ideas as they are born. Because, like the Pirate Parties that are popping up everywhere show, the times they are a changing. No information is witheld. We say what we think and share ideas of how we want the world to be. I may post ideas for new stories or twists and I may continue rambling on about how the world needs to get a grip.

This door to my mind is open. Welcome. I hope we’ll learn something together.