Author: pelshvalen (Page 29 of 44)

Takk, Ketil Bjørnstad, takk!

14.02.2017 / pelshvalen

Verden som var min var faktisk også min, i hvert fall noe av den. De ytre hendelsene, flyene som datt ned eller ble kapret, Francos død, de fryktelige latinamerikanske diktaturene, Palestina, som jo var et stygt åpent sår den gang som nå, Maos død, fiskerigrensen, Alta-vassdraget, Jimmy Carter, oljen, … alt det delte vi alle.

Men musikken var også min. Den hadde jeg nå for det meste glemt, men jeg har ligget og lest de vel 1000 sidene med ikke minst Ketil Bjørnstads egen musikk på øret. AKPs kulturtyranni gjaldt også for meg, slik det rammet alle som ikke nøyde seg med svensketoppen, samtidig som AKP også bidro stort til en veldig kulturell frodighet.

Ketil Bjørnstad har brakt meg tilbake til noe jeg selv knapt kan huske, mitt liv. Jeg oppdager at jeg har vært så travelt opptatt av å leve at jeg ikke har giddet legge levd liv på minne. Ketil Bjørnstad bringer mye tilbake til meg, samtidig som han minner meg om tanker og observasjoner som også jeg har gjort.

Det er ikke lett å være både menneskekjær og annerledes, å være både innenfor og utenfor, eller rettere sagt hverken det ene eller det andre.

Med fare for å fornærme ham, ville jeg ha ønsket ham velkommen til pelshvalenes rekker, om det ikke var for at pelshvalsamfunnet eksisterte lenge før meg, uavhengig av meg, og vil fortsette å eksistere så lenge det finnes folk på jorda.

Ketil Bjørnstad understreker flere ganger at han ville for mye. Både musikk, poesi og prosa. Han ville tilhøre både sin egen og forgangen tid. Han ville ha trygghet og frihet, havn og det villet havet, urban kultur og isolasjon. Var det for mye forlangt? Innen bokas siste punktum, har det sneket seg inn en mørk undertone: en dyster forsmak på neste bind? Jeget, Ketil Bjørnstad, stikker fingeren i halsen og spyr på nyttårsaften til det neste tiåret.

Jeg tror han vil mye med denne boka, kanskje for mye. Mens jeg leste, kom jeg stadig på “Jag vil tacka livet” av Violeta Para, som jo begikk selvmord, slik Radka Toneff skulle gjøre i 1982. Hans bok er en takk til dem han husker med varme. Siden han ikke har til hensikt å utlevere dem, minner takksigelsene mest om takkekort til bryllupsgjester. Utallige figurer passerer revy som pappfigurer. Men som leser ser jeg dette nettopp som et uttrykk for hans autentisitet: Han skriver om tiden, om seg selv, og han kan ikke la være å si “Takk!”

Dette er derfor ikke – teknisk sett – hans beste bokkomposisjon. Man dras gjennom mer eller mindre interessante hendelser i kronologisk rekkefølge. Men man leser videre, ikke minst fordi – der man minst venter det – slår den store forfatteren her og der gjennom med en aldeles nydelig liten perle begravd i historien.

Jeg vil til slutt understreke at den som skriver Verden som var min på en så ukunstlet måte er intet mindre enn forfatteren av Jæger, noe av det beste som noen gang er skrevet på norsk, slik jeg ser det. Det var komposisjonsteknisk bombe, det!

New year next year?

31.12.2016 / pelshvalen

Looking back, the wonderful 2013 documentary Inequality for all, in which Professor Robert Reich humorously and with endless patience explained a few very basic economic facts about what is absolutely vital for a healthy capitalist society, seems prophetic indeed. Many of the US citizens he interviewed for the film spoke their mind back then, and have presumably cast their votes now.

Those that did not vote for Mr Trump, should have paid better attention when the film was released. Or maybe the US media, as opposed to The Guardian (review), did not inform the US electorate about it?

The non-Trump media scathingly refers to Trump voters as, at best, victims of “populism”. The word populism is generally used in a pejorative sense, but I shall quote a definition I found in Wikipedia today. Interestingly, it is not pejorative.

Populism is a political style of action that mobilizes a large alienated element of population against a government seen as controlled by an out-of-touch closed elite that acts on behalf of its own interests. The underlying ideology of the Populists can be left, right, or middle. Its goal is to unite the uncorrupt and the unsophisticated (the ‘little man’) against the corrupt dominant elites (usually the orthodox politicians) and their camp followers (usually the rich and the intellectuals). It is guided by the belief that political and social goals are best achieved by the direct actions of the masses. Although it comes into being where mainstream political institutions fail to deliver, there is no identifiable economic or social set of conditions that give rise to it, and it is not confined to any particular social class.

On the basis of that definition, I’d say people would do well to vote populist.

However, assuming, as most of us do over here, that Mr Trump is even more corrupt (if possible) than the average US politician, and even less concerned (if possible) with the plight of “der kleine Mann”, I’d say the problem lies not with the voters, but with the fact that his voters actually believed that Mr Trump cared about them. And why did they do that, I ask? My question is rhetorical, of course, because I know the answer, as do you, I hope, so I won’t spell it out.

I too am worried about what havoc the dangerously reckless and ignorant Mr Trump will wreck after 20 January. But above all, it saddens me that far too few have understood the lesson to be learnt from his victory. It is not, repeat – NOT – that the majority of US voters are more fundamentally racist, misogynist and sexist than voters in other countries. Nor are they more stupid and easily duped.

The lesson to be learnt is not really very difficult. The problem is that neither on this side or on your side of the Atlantic do people want to learn it. It hurts. It’s like finding out that Father Christmas is just a fairytale.

I can only repeat: Start by watching Inequality for All, and pay close attention.

We must all hope that as many as possible of us will live to see next year’s New Year.

Encryption when sharing information

21.12.2016 / pelshvalen

This post is indented as a sequel to the previous one, which I believe should apply to everyone. I repeat: If we all look after our digital privacy, as we look after our health, say, we shall be protecting the social scientists and journalists who are sticking their neck out to tell us what we need to know.

This post, however, will be for those who are actually at risk, i.e. the social scientists, journalists and non-violent political activists who provoke the political powers that be.

***

To send a file to somebody else, when you want to be sure that only the intended recipient can read it, you could of course simply password protect it, but passwords can easily be cracked. Besides you would have to send the password, and the message in which you send it could be intercepted.

An alternative is to use 7zip – which is available to all major operating systems. With 7zip you can encrypt the file. You would do this if you want to transfer a large file, or several files, via your cloud service. You would still have to convey the password though.

The most commonly used way to protect the privacy of email is with PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). The program PGP itself is not free, but there is a free alternative, based on the so-called OpenPGP standard.

Now if you use an email client that provides PGP support — and yours may very well do so, although you do not know it — you should study its documentation. If not, you should consider changing your email client.

Wikipedia has an article comparing email clients. Search on the page for PGP and you will find a table that might be useful to you. If you normally only use Webmail, you might consider starting to use a dedicated email program (“email client”).

PGP’s alternative to the issue of passwords is a set of “keys”: One “private key” which only the sender possesses, and one “public key”, which can be published openly on the net yes, on the net! The sender AND the recipient must know each other’s public keys, and this is where your software comes in.

Your software should be able to generate both keys and store them. It imports and stores also the public keys of people with whom you want to communicate, and keeps track of what messages are to be sent to or received by whom. Finally it should check incoming keys, and encrypt and decrypt as needed.

The hitch is obviously that the recipient must also be using PGP encryption. But PGP has grown pretty universal, cross-platform and is inherent in many application. However, as with all software, new versions tend to be incomprehensible to older ones. (Compatibility issues can often be solved by altering settings.)

Most of us are not yet used to using PGP for email, though, so though it can easily be handled by our email programs, it may take a while before we all catch on.

At any rate, do not be discouraged, because once you have your keys properly stored and have understood how to use them, encrypting your stuff (with the proper software) is not difficult at all!

Encryption

18.12.2016 / pelshvalen

To me, the word “encryption” sounded sinister until very recently, when I realised I’d have to take the consequences of what we are seeing these days. And guess what: digital protection – even encryption – isn’t difficult at all. There are programs that do it all for us. I believe that what I am proposing in this and the following post need not even make a dent in anybody’s wallet.

In view of the medieval state of race relations in the US, and bearing in mind Mr Trump’s penchant for decisive action, I think we should not place too much trust in the rule of law in the US, for instance. It’s a good idea to be prepared.

In general, in a world that is increasingly being governed by individuals who label political opponents as “criminals” or even “terrorists”, we should think of the consequences of such labels, not necessarily for ourselves – at least not yet – but for reasons that I will return to a few paragraphs further down.

Many of our rulers are willing to resort to what we in the west recently (i.e. pre-Snowden) considered “the unthinkable”, to stay in power and, in many cases, to improve their financial leverage.

There is also a rising number of people who are learning the tricks of cybercrime. For all you know, your next-door neighbour might be one of them, in which case he or she may be particularly interested in your WIFI network.

Most of us are not terrorists or criminals, although we might be leftist or Moslem or environmentalist or black or even Mexican. We might, however, be deeply dissatisfied with our rulers, and we might even be organised, say in an activist civil rights group. Organised opposition has always been regarded as a threat, or at least a nuisance, by the powers that be, and is now becoming increasingly risky. In many countries, of course, it has always been deadly dangerous. What’s new is that the number and potency of tools to penetrate people’s private (digital) worlds have grown exponentially over the past years.

What’s new, too, is that year by year, in all countries, law enforcement and secret services are being given wider powers to use these tools. This is quite understandable because, after all, there is a real threat of terrorism, and there is a real and growing threat of serious cybercrime.

Meanwhile, political improvement is contingent on our all understanding as much as possible of what goes on. Some journalists, social scientists and whistle blowers are putting their necks out to protect us by uncovering the crooked acts of cynical rulers and magnates. By doing so, they risk their lives in many countries, and in others, including mine, they risk finding themselves without a job.

We need them. We desperately need them! Only by knowing what is actually going on, by being able to dismiss false rumours, libel and “post-truth” propaganda (see Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year), do we have any chance of improving the world we live in. They – the journalists and social scientists – hopefully know how to protect themselves, but by doing so, they will inevitably seem suspicious: “Why is NN encrypting his stuff? Why is that woman using a VPN server? Are they terrorists?”

Since they are trying to protect us, the least we can do is to try to protect them, in essence by protecting ourselves.

If only to protect our bank account information, password lists, copies of passport and driving licence, intimate letters and pictures etc., we should start thinking about digital personal protection. When we started using email, in my case in the late eighties, it seemed very difficult. We had to put a lot of effort into it. These days, it’s all so easy that kids are social media experts before they can add and subtract. Did we think this was the way it would always be? If so, our thinking was flawed: Sic transit gloria mundi.

Sooner or later, the alternative to using only pen-and-paper may well be to encrypt everything; computers, phone calls, email, social networking – the lot!

Meanwhile, there are a few very basic steps we should take, apart from everything we hear every day (e.g. being wary of links in emails and on websites). The measures cost us a few extra seconds, but then again – let us not forget how very, very much more time-consuming everything was, just ten years ago.

Text messaging encryption. Thanks to Edward Snowden, Signal has become quite a hit. It’s so seamless that once you’ve installed it, you won’t notice you are no longer using your phone’s stock SMS app, except that it’s faster and doesn’t hang.
Wifi router protection
Wifi routers must be new enough to yield so-called WPA2 protection (at least).
“Anti-virus” software
You should not rely entirely on Defender, if you are using Windows. There are several excellent and powerful anti-virus protection schemes that are free.
VPN (Virtual Private Network)
If privacy protection is an issue for you — and to my mind it should be, if only for the reasons given above conceal your IP address. This is probably one of the most important steps to take if you are a fact-hunting dissident. Many services provide access to VPN servers in various countries, and competition is fierce. Most of the best services are no entirely free, though, or rather, those that are tend to plague you with adds or restrict your bandwidth. On the bright side, most of them now require no technical know-how, just that you press a button. There are numerous lists of “best VPN” services, free and non-free.
Storage on external drives
Store as little as possible on computers, tablets and smartphones. (Plug in your external drive and move private stuff to it, then remove the external drive at once.) If you don’t use cloud storage, this should do (assuming your computer doesn’t have digital parasites lodged in its entrails, your external hard drive is securely stored and never leaves the house, and the house never burns down).

Cloud storage

Most people use cloud services these days, if only to transfer files. Besides, people are often more or less unwittingly constantly connected to their operating systems’ “Store”, storage spaces, sharing services, etc.and to social services.

TLS/SSL protocol
Respectable cloud storage services use a TLS/SSL protocol for data transfer (HTTPS://). That isn’t much, but better than nothing.
Encryption
Some services encrypt your stuff already before it leaves your computer. They say that you risk nothing and that they have “zero-knowledge” (about you and your stuff). This sort of service is used by companies. But why not do your own encryption before uploading anything to your cloud. with good software, it’s a cinch! So:
- What is good software? Since good encryption depends not on your software, but on the algorithm used by the software, the software you want will depend on whether it is easy to use, can relate to your operating system and serves your needs in other respects. Leading encryption programs all use basically the same algorithms, the best known of which is AES (developed some 20 years ago).
- Veracrypt is one such (free) cross-platform program (i.e. for Mac, Windows, Linux, but not for mobile systems). I am mentioning it not least as it is the program used in the following link which I am including to demonstrate how very easy it is to encrypt whatever files you want to keep out of any private or public eye: encouraging demonstration

Phones and tablets

Being an open system, Android is more vulnerable to malware attacks than are IOS devices. Over the past two years or so Android has been rocked by some pretty serious security issues, e.g. “Stagefright”. So serious were they, in fact, that phones that come with Marshmellow (or newer) installed are supposedly encrypted by default (!) Yes, you read correctly, by default. In other words, Android is not taking any chance, nor should you, so encrypt!

Encryption
Older phones, with Android versions from Gingerbread up, can optionally be encrypted. Details about how to do this may vary depending on your phone and version, but this guide gives an idea.
IOS phones have been encrypted by default for a while. Older phones can also easily be encrypted.

Flash drives

Some people will want to encrypt their entire computer. If so, they will probably have used their operating system’s tools for doing this. (BitLocker on Windows, and FileVault on MACs). Encrypting flash drives is, if anything, all the more important since they tend to get lost or forgotten.

The same tools as for computers
BitLocker (Windows), FleVault (Mac)and, again, Veracrypt, can encrypt flash drives (USB sticks).
Here is one of many guides.

In my next post I shall touch upon sharing (most importantly by email) with PGP.

Scylla and Charybdis

05.11.2016 / pelshvalen

My compatriots seem unable to talk about anything else, so great is their dread of waking up on Wednesday to learn that what they consider … – actually, I’d better not say what they consider him – … anyway, that he will turn out to be the world’s most powerful man.

The media here is unequivocal, to my regret, disregarding a whole set of human foibles, one of them being that a human being inevitably tends to consider the bad guy’s counterpart a good guy.

On the other side of the globe, however, the US side, I suspect that apathy has settled in. I wish to send a greeting to fellow humans “over there”, as we used to say back in the 1890s and in the decades between the two world wars, when hordes of my countrymen fled from poverty to the States:

This is your chance, man! Pull up your socks and turn your country around. Start work now! Today! Look beyond Scylla and Charybdis. What you want is an honourable future for your country. Tell them you no longer accept the shame of your country’s universally known human rights record. A country so rich in natural and financial resources, with such wonderful universities! Yet so many destitute people, lousy schools and ignorant citizens. Such appalling treatment of blacks! So much brazen racism! So much narrow-minded, sanctimonious bigotry!

Your system isn’t working, quite simply. It never will. Something’s got to change, or the whole structure will topple. The United States’ resistance to change is almost as pathetic as that of some religious fanatics’ with whom I am sure you don’t want to be compared.

Look to Canada, for instance. If they can do it, so can you. Right?

Digital perdition

05.11.2016 / pelshvalen

You do have your password ready, don’t you?

Do you have more than one email account? Each requires a password, of course. So do your websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter accounts… And your bank account – that goes without saying – each of your bank accounts.

Take comfort, it’s just a matter of time before banks will give up providing online services: too risky. Too many accounts are being hacked, and banks can’t endlessly afford to cover their clients’ losses.

And where is your internet service provider? At a café? You’re in luck then, because you won’t have to remember the very intricate password of a private router. Only, you may be out of luck, because there are a lot of accomplished hackers waiting and watching over open networks, ready to send you a key logger with which to capture the password to your bank accounts. You won’t even notice, most probably, but from then on, your PC will be remote controlled.

True, your cloud service looks after you and sends you reassuring messages: Not to worry, everything you write on your screen will be carefully stored. If you throw a temper tantrum and hurl your device at someone, or if a hacker ruins it, don’t worry, be happy, nothing is lost.

You log in with a password at work, I suppose, and if you make purchases on the Internet, each of them has to be confirmed with a password, two in fact – one to the company from which you are making the purchase, and one for your bank. They’d better not be identical, you know, and they’d better be “strong”. Strong passwords are per definition impossible to remember, non-pronounceable, non-readable and defying all mnemonic tricks, the sort of thing only a sadistic teacher would ask a pupil to memorise.

You probably purchase all your airline and train tickets online. Guess what: You will need passwords each time. And you’d better have a printer ready, because if you don’t you wont be able to access your tickets when you need them, i.e. at the airport – unless of course, you remember the password.

I have to log on to my library every once in a while. It demands not only a password but a user name I never remember. Speaking of user names, one of my electricity suppliers insists on using my long- deleted passport number as my user name and will not allow me to change it. Needless to say, it requires a password too. In fact all my electricity accounts do – I have three of them.

I also have Kindle and iTunes accounts, each requiring passwords, and Goodness knows how many tablets and computers on which to read my Kindle books, all password protected, as is my mobile phone. Mind you I have four phone service accounts – depending on where I am in the world. And I look up words in various dictionaries that require passwords. Many people use Spotify, Netlix and or other streaming services. Guess what they demand: PASSWORDS.

My bicycles are locked with passwords – keys get lost. Believe it or not, I can still get into my car with a key, though.

I haven’t tried dying yet, but I am sure I will need a password to do so. What really worries me, though, is that my poor children will need a password to get rid of my earthly remains.

But hope on the way. On Wednesday, the US will have a new president. Regardless of who that president will be, he or she will probably inaugurate a near password-free era. Unless you are terminally ill or get run over by a reckless driver – you are likely to live to see the lifting of the password tyranny that haunts us all.

Fingerprints on touchscreens will replace passwords, and people will be glad – nay, relieved – to submit their fingerprints and be free of the password tyranny.

If your next president has a pronounced dislike of Russians, Mexicans, homosexuals, leftists, Wikikileakists, rightists, Kurds, Iranians, Moslems or Jews, not to mention critics, universal fingerprinting will be very useful, won’t it.

From a cairn

26.10.2016 / pelshvalen

Under a grey sky, I made my way up the steep hill – more like a cliff – to the local Bronze Age cairns. A small sign, planted by a representative of the Directorate of Cultural Heritage, explains that the cairns are about 3000 years old and that most Bronze Age cairns in this country are far from where their builders lived. They are in high, out-of-reach places overlooking the sea.

I clamber up this barely visible track a few times every year, for the view of the river delta below and the mountains beyond followed in the distance by more blue mountains.

What on earth could have induced Bronze Age farmers – for apparently people had turned to farming by then – to lug the dead body of their chieftain up such a steep incline? According to the sign, his body would have been incinerated, placed in a stone cask and covered with stones, most so large that no single man could carry them.

Evolution has not changed us much in 3000 years, I am told. New-born babies today probably look exactly as they did back then, aside from being bigger. Those men – who knows if women followed them up the hill – would have felt awed, as I do every time I get to the top. Maybe they thought that from his sheltered stony bed, the dead man would see what they could not see from down in the valley, and would somehow warn them of impending threats.

At the graveside of somebody who died 3000 years ago, with an entirely different outlook than was his, I gaze at the great river and the tremendous expanses before me, and feel that here and now, I understand everything.

Even under a grey sky, I am bathed in light up here. I realise at last my mistake: It is not so much the ignorance of the Trump-voters that should worry us, as the legitimacy of their anger. True, there is no doubt that Donald Trump is terrifyingly ignorant and reckless. He’s the sort of man who shouldn’t be given a driving licence. But he speaks for a very large number of people, so large a number, that perhaps we should sit back and listen. What are they saying? Why are they so angry?

Moreover, I think he’s right about his opponent’s being an international liability; not more so, albeit, than were previous US presidents.

Trump’s voters claim they have been disinherited. The American dream is no longer theirs. Trump blames immigrants, Obama, women… whatever have you, and the rest of us are appalled. But at the end of the day, the facts are clear: Hillary will not even begin to address the claims of America’s countless dispossessed. She will not redress her country’s past wrongdoings against Latin America, not to mention the Middle East, for which the US of all configurations has so many crimes against humanity to answer for that there will never be forgiveness. She will continue as her predecessors, making havoc of the Middle East and raising the number of dispossessed people in her own country.

Let’s face it: The US is a mess. The country is doing well again, financially, but a large segment of its population is not benefiting from its recovery after the meltdown.

Trump’s voters love him because of his outspoken anger. Finally, somebody dares swear and curse at the establishment. People who have not lost out in the shift from factory to Silicon Valley find him repulsive.

I myself find him repulsive, but I tell myself now: Beware: He is a rebel. Can’t you see his similarity to James Dean?

At this point of my analysis, I am cautiously descending the incline, golden leaves falling slowly around me like great big snow flakes. The birch trees, guarded by stern, unaffected pine sentinels with drooping branches, are preparing for the long winter night, trembling already, discarding their lace underwear.

Pines are like the people who used to inhabit these parts: Unsentimental, unsmiling and unforgiving, like Trump’s voters.

Attempt at making a list

12.10.2016 / pelshvalen

And now for all the good things, the things for which those who believe in a God have reason to offer thanks. Such a list, my friends, is called for, to prevent us from weeping all day and all night over Aleppo and all the little dead children there; an energetic list, to the accompaniment of drum rolls and waving flags, while happy children prance around dressed in their Sunday best.

We hear items from the list every day. In the lift on my way up to work, for instance:

– At least it’s not snowing.
– Better than in Aleppo, for sure.

Or in the lift on my way from work:

– Weekend at last! My wife is away with some friends, and I’m going to get drunk with mine.
– My children are away, so I’m going to read that book, at last.

No, that won’t do. If there is no rain in Aleppo, humanity’s tears will drown the place unless we can do better. So let’s pull our socks up, shall we!

– My begonia is still blossoming, in October, would you believe it? It’s so very beautiful; a hybrid of course. It reminds me that though species in the wild are dying, one by one, due to drought or whatever, we – humans, I mean – will always be able to create new and wonderful hybrids.
– … which will be available to those that can afford to keep a gardener, or something.
– Well, I’m sure there’ll be botanical gardens here and there, at least in big cities.
– Yes, and zoos. You know, in theory we can probably clone any of the popular mammals before they become extinct: lions and whales and tigers and stuff.
– … and we would not have to clone those horrible snails…
– I’m afraid they’ll be among the last to go.
– Oh dear. Well, at least there are still a few birds left in the country, and I’m off to the country for the weekend.
– Leaving your beautiful begonia?
– I’ll have something to look forward to coming back to, won’t I? Have a nice weekend.
– You too.

But I, the furry whale, have a better candidate than begonias to promote as a generator of happiness: Violin quartets. Violin quartets do not need rain or for that matter sun or fertile earth or even concert halls. Violin quartets only need violins and sheet music and a room that can accommodate four people, and me of course, who wants to listen.

But when the forests die and when almost all violins have been burnt in towns like Aleppo (compare Warsaw under WWII – a topic of many films) there will be neither violins nor paper on which to print the notes to be played … Aleppo again!

Why – in heaven’s name! – why Aleppo, again and again? What about Niger? What about all the countries of the Sahel, where death by drought and starvation is the order of the day, where sub-human Bocoharamists put people out of their misery when poverty has finished doing it’s business.

– Your dog had puppies? Why congratulations!!
– Wait, I’ll show you. Hold on, I’m a bit slow with this mobile phone stuff… oh yes, here they are.
– Oh my goodness! How unbelievably adorable!

Innova

21.08.2016 / pelshvalen

– Dere leverer hva slags tjenester, sa du?

– Vi finner den beste!

– Den beste hva?

– Personen til jobben.

– Altså et rekrutteringsbyrå?

– Nei vet du hva! Man rekrutterer til renovasjonsarbeid, ikke til skikkelige jobber, jobber det er verdt å ofre noe for, og…

– Er du arbeidsledig, er du kanskje villig til å…

– …vi har virkelig et flott konsept, og jeg vil forferdelig gjerne ansette min eldste og beste venn som statist.

– Statist? Men…

– Tro meg, du vil ikke klage på lønnen. Jeg regner med at du som skuespiller lever fra hånd til munn.

– Men jeg fikk da…

– Nå skal du høre: For å være Statoil-sjef, for eksempel, hjelper det lite å ha gode karakterer. Det er det uendelig mange som har. Det vi trenger er folk som oppfyller en viss profil. Det er lett å påvirke resultatene av en personlighetstest, særlig hvis du har tatt et par, så vi har designet en ny type test. Vi skal ikke spørre kandidaten hvordan han ville ha reagert i en gitt situasjon, vi skal presentere ham med situasjonen.

– Og hvordan vil dere gjøre det?

– Det er der statisten kommer inn i bildet!

For eksempel: Kandidaten kommer til mitt kontor, men jeg vil invitere ham til lunsj på en restaurant. Der skal vi møte en tredje person. Problemet er bare at jeg av medisinske grunner ikke kan kjøre. Det må han gjøre. Vi har litt dårlig tid, fordi tredjepersonen bare har satt av 20 minutter til oss.

– Og jeg skal være tredjemann?

– Nei, du skal være mopedisten som svinger inn på veien rett foran oss og som holder 40 km i timen.

– Du vil at han skal kjøre meg ned?

– Hehe, nei, jeg vil helst unngå det, men du er inne på noe. Vi forventer at han skal være temmelig kreativ for å få deg av veien for å rekke møtet. Og dersom vi faktisk rekker det, så skal du igjen dukke opp.

– Blodig og forslått for å kreve revansj?

– Nei, som utidig bror av ham vi skal møte.

– Utidig?

– Ja, han vil låne penger av sin eldre bror, og det interesserer ham midt bak at broren sitter i et viktig møte. Pinlig for storebror, selvfølgelig, ikke minst siden brødrenes gjenlevende veldig rike mor er glad i lillebror. Det som er litt spesielt med ham – med deg, altså – er at han – du – har på deg en Behring Breivik T-shirt. Du trykker altså bokstavelig din begeistring for Behring Breivik på ditt bryst.

– Og du vil at «kandidaten» som du kaller søkeren, skal slå meg helseløs! Hva skal man med fiender når man har slike venner?

– Nei, vi er bare opptatt av å velge ut kandidater som respekterer trykkefriheten. Nå? Vil du ha jobben?

– Hva gjør man ikke for å forsvare trykkefriheten?

Good guys?

07.08.2016 / pelshvalen

Once, very many years ago, I had the temerity to argue a point of law with a public prosecutor. I say ‘temerity’, for one thing because he was a prominent public prosecutor whom I held in awe. More importantly, though, I knew nothing of law, and was arguing merely on the basis of what I thought was ‘just’. I thought, back then, that I knew the difference between justice and injustice.

He kindly listened to me for a few minutes and then suddenly flared: “Do you really imagine that any of this is about ‘justice’!”

I shall never forget that, not least since I have since learnt that my interlocutor was a man with an acute sense of justice.

For some years now, the world has been watching the painstaking deletion of what was once a proud and highly civilised nation: Syria. We have witnessed in dismay (or looked away ) as Syrians were starved, executed, tortured, poisoned or exterminated in other ways day after day, month after month, year after year. How many years has this been going on now?

Where are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? Do you see the dividing line between justice and injustice in this particular picture? I don’t.

Let’s say that Assad is a callous dictator. There is certainly no doubt that the Syrian authorities cracked down viciously on peaceful demonstrators back when it all started. The viciousness stunned us all, whereas the demonstrators insisted in going to their death unarmed.

I remember how, reading the paper over a coffee break at work, I felt tears welling to my eyes and, looking up, met the equally tearful eye of my colleague, who said – and I nodded – “surely, the Syrians must be the bravest people on earth!”

Do you remember? Demonstrating was suicidal in Syria, yet thousands and thousands did. Why? Why did they insist on demonstrating knowing that they would be shot at and that no demonstrating could force the authorities to satisfy their demands. What was their strategy?

Of course I don’t know, but maybe in a decade or four, we will learn that indications had been given to opposition leaders that certain governments would be interested in intervening, directly or indirectly, in the event of a Syrian debacle.

Meanwhile, let us look at the opposition. Assad is the press’s pet hate these days. Assad’s forces have engaged in chlorine warfare, we read, and there is every reason to suspect that the past Sarin massacres were perpetrated by ‘him’. I repeat: I have no sympathy with Assad, but what on earth can you say in the defence of the “opposition forces” who are holding the population hostage?! Do you really imagine that they want ‘democracy’? Do you really think, still, after all these years, that these guys are the good guys? Grow up: It’s not as though with Assad gone, the good guys will have their day.

However, that does not mean that there are not millions of honest and, not least, kind, brave and generous Syrians out there, most of them homeless, of course, like the Jews of old, and more recently, the Palestinians.

God help us for the mess we have all made of the Middle East!