On 14 February, the population of Nigeria, Africa’s largest democracy, were supposed to go to the polls to elect a new president. This election might have proven a watershed in Nigerian history. For the first time, the opposition had a realistic opportunity to take over from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which has held power ever… Read more »
Search Results for: what
The Effect of Proposed US Arms Supplies to Ukraine
A report published on Monday by the Atlantic Council, the Brookings Institution, and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs that calls for the US to supply Ukraine with arms has generated a lot of discussion on both sides of the Atlantic. Written by eight high ranking former US diplomats, defence and military personnel – Ivo… Read more »
Always an Immigrant, Never Norwegian
Immigrants have become integrated into Norwegian society with degrees of success that range between two possible extremes: strong attachment and total alienation. In debates about integration, ethnicity and country of origin are often claimed to be the key factors for determining whether or not integration will be successful. Other important factors are seen as secondary…. Read more »
Legality and Courtesy
In his opinion article in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten on 21 January, Per Edgar Kokkvold (secretary general in the Norwegian Press Association) stated the obvious, “It is people who must be protected – and who are protected under current legislation, under the law that prohibits discriminatory or hateful utterances, persecution or insults based on religion… Read more »
Can we Comprehend the Incomprehensible?
In 1945, most of us believed that genocide could never happen again. What happened to Jews and Roma (Gypsies) made such a strong impression on us that we believed that the time was definitively past when people murdered each other simply because they belonged to different races or followed different religions or philosophies of life.
More on the Waning of War
On 22 December I reported in this blog on an article by political science professor Øyvind Østerud 18 December in the leading Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that attacked Steven Pinker and ‘large parts of peace research’ for using ‘relative numbers’, i.e. numbers weighted by population, to assess long-term trends in the severity of war. In my brief… Read more »
Surveillance Under Control?1
We cannot make do without surveillance, and even political actors must expect to be kept under observation if they espouse extreme positions. But we must keep surveillance under control. This article tells the story of the information about me that had lain in the files of the police security service and to which I gained… Read more »
Are Norwegian Oil Companies making Civil Wars More Likely?
East Africa has become the latest hotspot for oil-and-gas discoveries, but the reserves are located in countries characterized by weak state institutions and social unrest. A number of African countries – several of them with significant Norwegian assistance – are on the threshold of becoming major producers of oil and gas. Does this mean that… Read more »
After Charlie Hebdo: We Must Never Cease to Protect the Rights of People who Provoke and Challenge
Why do satirists and critics of religion have to be so provocative? Why must they publish images that they know to be offensive to some people’s beliefs and traditions – and that brutal extremists may use as a pretext for terrorist acts? That such questions are asked is understandable. But for many reasons they must… Read more »
How did the Paris Killers Acquire their Guns?
At present we have very little information on the guns used last week by Saïd and Chérif Kouachi to commit a massacre at the offices of the publication Charlie Hebdo; and by Amedy Coulibaly in several shootings in Paris. They were armed with Kalashnikov pattern guns, however as nearly 200 different versions of the Kalashnikov… Read more »