About the Department of Justice and users of twitter.

This is my mail to the US department of Justice, concerning their recent attempts to extract profile information about users of Twitter.
You can send mail here:
http://www.justice.gov/opcl/contact-us.htm

Hello.
I am a Norwegian citizen living in Norway, and as such I have no rights as a judicial subject in your country.
However, recent developments have made me, and many others subjects of your legislation none the less. It has been brought to public attention that the department of justice seeks private information about twitter users who voice their support for WikiLeaks.
While I don't mind you knowing my full name and oppinions it disturbs me a great deal that you feel a need to covertly gather intelligence about political activists using their democratic right to free speech via the internet.

For this reason I feel the need to write to you, and tell you who I am and what I stand for.
My full name is [removed for reasons of google and spam and so forth, disclosed in the mail though], I am a librarian working at the largest public college in Norway where I'm a liason librarian for the department of education (serving 3.500 students and 300 teachers).
I also have a master's degree in contemporary history.

With regards to WikiLeaks I have advocated both on twitter and elsewhere that all citizens have a natural right to know everything their elected officials and their policy making employees are doing on their behalf. It is in fact the foundational principle of republicanism (res publica). Anyone who seeks to stand in the way of this right is an enemy of democracy.
I have participated in a public debate in librarian media in Norway, and supported the Norwegian Library Association in their condemnation of the move by the Library of Congress to block WikiLeaks. You can read summary of my position here: http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=no&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bokogbibliotek.no%2Findex.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26view%3Darticle%26id%3D1466%3Ademokrati-bibliotek-og-wikeleaks%26catid%3D1%3Aaktuelt(translated from Norwegian by google translate.)
I have also on numerous occassions tweeted my views on WikiLeaks (as well as several other issues of potential interest to you). My tweets can be read at http://twitter.com/gird_09

It frightens me that someone like me, with my belief in freedom of information, right to privacy and free speech can be such a threat to your system that you feel the need to persecute, slander and prosecute us to the full extent of your ability. They only way I, and my brethren pose a threat to your way of life is if you insist on keeping secrets from the public and pursuing policies that are detrimental to your own people's interests. Your nation was after all founded on the principles of democracy, openness and human rights. A far cry from how you are perceived in the world today. Did you ever stop to consider why?

Bookcrossing

I found a book the other day. On the street that is.
It wasn't a book for me, so I left it for someone else, after taking a picture of it.

I had nearly forgotten about the phenomenon of bookcrossing, or liberating books, but as a librarian I am naturally very positive to the idea. You take a book you liked, and slap a sticker on, and place it somewhere in public. Someone takes it home, reads it, and leaves it for the next person. I've never done it myself, but after being reminded I will. Not sure which book yet though.

It's a good practise for many reasons. First of all you get to do something nice for someone you don't know, which is always good. Secondly it's about books and books you love, not about peddling goods for cash. I've done that for a living and I can tell you that selling books is rarely about loving books. Giving them away, or lending them out, is much better.

Read more here:
http://www.bookcrossing.com/
And, readers in Oslo, here are the books that have been liberated in our fair village:
http://www.bookcrossing.com/hunt/17/100/31053

Nyt Norge threatens legal action against blogger

The Norwegian blogger Christoffer Biong is being threatened with a lawsuit by the government financed initiative Nyt Norge (enjoy Norway). The case is a result of Biong's use of Nyt Norge's logo for his adbusting campaign against what he rightfully sees as a distorted campaign.
Using a corporate logo in this fashion is a well established means of political expression, and should be protected by free speech. If you can't use a corporate logo to protest their actions your means of expression are seriously hampered. This is especially true if the corporation is run by the government - and in turn our money.

We should make sure that these pictures recieve the attention they deserve, and that this turns into a public relations blunder for Nyt Norge. I would've never heard of these pictures if they didn't threaten legal action. Smart huh?

So here are the pictures they've got their panties in a bundle over:

Axis and Allies 1940

Finally! It's out, and I own it. The newest Axis and Allies that is, Europe 1940. Axis and Allies Pacific 1940, and Europe 1940 can be combined into a single huge game, that devastates any previous version.

You may not know, but I'm a big fan of strategic boardgames, and I've been following axis and allies since 1992 or thereabouts. (I guess it's hardly a shock considering my preternatural interest in WWII.) I've played every single version since the "classic" - except from D-day and Guadalcanal, and I've mostly loved them. I don't have any idea how many hours I've spent rolling dice and picking off plastic enemies. The only one I didn't care too much for was Battle of the Bulge, and figured that these limited campaigns aren't really my thing. Which is also the problem I had with the previous incarnation of Europe and Pacific. While I did use the rules for combining the game that were floating around the internet I wasn't really pleased with it. I want true global warfare, not theatres.

So, after I bought Pacific 1940 a great deal of my time has been spent checking for updates on Europe 1940. Waiting impatiently and speculating about it. No more! I've played it now. That is, I skipped Europe, and went straight for the global rules.

And I am very pleased. The game feels like "classic" AnA, but bigger and better. The boards and rules fit together like they were designed to be used together, unlike the last version. And I love the italians and french, and the new way the chinese work. Even more so I love the rules for neutrality, and the way the axis can more or less bide their time with the Soviet Union and the United States.

There are a few things missing, or that would have been better in a different way.
The soviet troops are too similar to the italians, in color. I don't see why they stuck to the brownish soviets, when they could've easily made them the red color of the japanese in AnA Pacific. Red soviets I would've loved.
(I see that a lot of peope were annoyed that the french and the soviets share design on several units. Personally I don't care. As long as I can tell them apart they could've used whatever design they wanted to for the french. It's not like they're going to be a huge factor at any point anyway.)
I also miss money. I hear that most players don't use the money, and prefer to write the numbers down instead. I however prefer to use the little paper pieces. Not a big deal though. You can cannibalize an earlier game, or print your own.
I also think the new battle board is horrendous. We made our own, that you can flip over, so that each player has a board with defender on one side and attacker on the other. The gameboard is so massive it's more practical to have a battle board each.

I've only played the game once, with three players, and I can't wait to play it again. It's by far the best version yet.

(Yes, I should've had more pictures, but I was too busy playing to really bother with a camera.)

For my sake, please!

Open Letter to Reporters without Borders

The reputable press organization Reporters without Borders (reporters sans frontières) have issued an open letter to wikileaks citing them for what the see as reckless behaviour in releasing 77,000 confidential documents. You can read it here: http://en.rsf.org/united-states-open-letter-to-wikileaks-founder-12-08-2010,38130.html. Naturally, I disagree with them, and I sent them an e-mail about it, as should you rsf@rsf.org. I decided to also publish my views here, as I believe it is an important issue. So here goes:

I have just finished reading your "attack" on wikileaks, and I must say I am a bit disappointed.
While I realize that a great deal of the difference between your organization and wikileaks is a result of differing values, with regards to the legitimacy of the state itself and its methodology, I do find your approach a bit lacking in focus.
I am of course fundamentally respectful of your work to further press freedom and end censorship and alike, but when you claim that wikileaks' release of documents gives the various authorities around the world legitimate reasons to monitor the internet and keep internet activists under surveillance it smacks quite a bit of backwards logic. That would be like saying that the government can legitimately keep journalists under surveillance because some of them publish confidential materials. There is no legitimacy in such a policy and there never will be. It seems to me that you as an organization should rather focus on that instead of running errands for the Obama administration in taking down Wikileaks.
Also, this issue touches on fundamental issues in state theory, and the philosophical reasoning for a democratic system. The question remains whether a state should be allowed to keep secrets from their own people, while resting on the "legitimacy" the same people provides? Or rather, should a government answer to its people, and be ready to defend its policies without secrecy and threats of legal action? Democracy is founded on the right to overthrow the government should it lose legitimacy, by peaceful means or otherwise. With the excesses we see today, with more than a million dead in two wars, mostly civilians, we as citizens are in our rights to expose and criticize government policies. We have a fundamental right, and even obligation to protest against heavy handed and illegitimate state behaviour, by any means we have at our disposal.

Additionally your arguments seem a bit willy nilly considering that you untill recently praised wikileaks for leaking documents pertaining to Guantanamo and the incident known as "collateral muder". There is no fundamental difference between this most recent release of documents, and these earlier instances. The only difference is in the respose from Obama and his cronies.

Organizations such as your own will continue to reap the benefits of wikileaks' work in the future, as well as suffer the collective punishment of the authorities. The question you should ask yourself is simply, whose side are you on? I'm not implying that you should stand by wikileaks regardless, or that this issue only has two sides, but if you are in favor of press freedom, you cannot turn your back on wikileaks in this matter, and claim that they are the reason why the government is cracking down on freedoms. The government is cracking down on freedoms, because they are protecting their own power, despite lacking legitimacy and a system of principles to back them. All they have is force, and the people's fear of force - in whatever form it takes. Place the blame where the blame is due.

Privatized Propaganda

My political view are well known to anyone who's frequented this blog, or otherwise been subjected to my opinions. They're not really the subject of this blog however, I just wanted to tone an ever so little black flag before I get started on my subject: privatized propaganda warfare.

Over the last year or so wikileaks has become the most publicized actor in an ongoing information war between peace activists and various governments of the world. Wikileaks ofcourse has been responsible for leaking a great deal of classified material pertaining to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and this upsets the people responsible for sending troops to this wars.
Wikileaks however is not the only opposing actor in this war against government information monopolization and spin doctoring, and the war is not new.

I have previously posted the cultural terrorist manifesto, as well as a video by Emergency Broadcast Network - and both of these posts concern the same ongoing information war. What EBN, the Grey Wolves and Wikileaks have in common is that they represent a phenomema or ideology often dubbed infoanarchism. An ideology they also share with the swedish Pirate Party and several other groups and individuals - including yours truly. The main motto for this loose movement of people is "information wants to be free". If you're into revolutionary romanticism we can call this an "information guerilla". It's a quite accurate description.

In other words it as an ongoing insurrectionist campaign being waged between state forces and comercial media with huge budgets and established channels of communication and technology on one hand, and volunteers with highl improvised means of communication and distribution on the other. In many ways this is an example of assymetric warfare, or fourth generation warfare, but on the information front rather than on the classic battlefield.

Assymetric warfare is seen by many as the most important tendency in modern conflict and it is usually typified by regular military units with training and technology going against a guerilla with little or no training and little common ground with their enemy. Usually wars are fought over territory or ideology, or both, whereas an information war is waged in the field of public image and credibility and over a strictly ideological goal.

The interesting thing is however what history teaches us about what happens when a large military system takes on a guerilla. Quite often the "weaker" party succedes, and the government must accede to loss. Whether we are talking about conflict of force, in the cases of the american revolution, the vietnam war or Gandhi's campaing to oust the brits from India - or we are talking about popular protest movements such as the civil rights movement in the sixties. To retain some shred of legitimacy a government cannot trample the rights of its citizens lest it become a dictatorship. So this wikileaks bout is something of a pickle for the authorities. They must attack the activists while trying to come out as the party that takes care of the public interest. Wikileaks must be made out to look like they are thugs, criminals, sociopaths and evildoers, rather than concerned citizens. Once people start questioning why the government so often feels the need to take on their own citizens, whose will they supposedly draw their legitimacy from, the authorities are quite simply fucked...

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions, maybe while you check out this wonderful little rap about wikileaks.

Wikileaks, the falcon and the snowman.

This week Wikileaks has released approximately 90,000 classified documents garnered from sources within the massive US defence. Pentagon and the White House are consequently angered to the point of bursting like lemmings, and have naturally initiated a search for the "traitor" in their midst. However, it seems that several thousand employees had access to these particular documents, and the search for the culprit may not be as easy as it is to find the un-american in "24". It is going to take time, and it's going to involve quite a few people.

This of course leads my mind to american intelligence in general. Of course the expression itself became an oxymoron with the invasion of Iraq because of their quite laughable work, but organizations like CIA, NSA, SS (secret service in case you didn't know) and the FBI have a long history of fuck ups. During the cold war their ranks were so littered with sleepers and walk ins that it's not much of an oversight to say that they lost the intelligence war against the Soviet Union. This history of incompetence goes back even further, to the days of OSS (office of strategic services), who were so easily spotted while under cover that the joke was that OSS was an acronym for Oh, So Social. Despite their efforts to make you think otherwise, the american intelligence agencies really are laughable compared to their counterparts in other countries.

This history of incompetence makes me think of one of Sean Penn's early films, the Falcon and the Snowman. Usually on film the CIA and similar organizations are portrayed as labyrinthine conspiratorial agencies full of hardcore toughies with the latest in technology, death squads and intelligence gathering gadgets. Whether they are up against innocent civilians in the ridiculous Enemy of the State or even the slightly more realistic Three Days for Condor Condor, or they are defending freedom against horrible soviets in ... Errr... I don't think I've ever seen a film where the CIA are the good guys except for comedies or James Bond. Even good ol' boys in the US prefer to see their very own CIA as the enemy. And it's no wonder. You don't want these people on your side. Just look at their work in Chile back in 1973. In the real world espionage isn't quite so sci fi-ish or fancy, and their agents are hardly as kewl as in the movies. (True, the do have technological monsters like Echelon in their service, but the CIA still can't catch Bin Laden. Not that it would matter much if they did. People are pissed off at the US for a reason. Bin Laden isn't Cobra Commander you know...)

The Falcon and the Snowman is a film about a pair of walk in spies (played by Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton) and their follies as they hand over documents to the KGB in exchange for monetary attention. While most films involving espionage of some sort feel the urge to include gun fights and explosions, and the occasional cleavage, this film is quite realistic. Intelligence work is mostly analysis and catalogueing documents. Very few of the people involved with intelligence work go to embassies and sleep with beautiful russian women to whom they reveal their secrets. (Though the latest espionage debacle between the US and Russia may have you think otherwise...) It's a good film, despite David Suchett's appearance as the russian spy master. You really get a feeling for how difficult it is to discover a leak, catch the perpetrator or get the needed evidence to prosecute. The two spies live the good life for quite a while there, despite being flamboyant and complete amateurs.


The Falcon and the Snowman is based on the real life story of Christopher Boyce, a former student turned spy. As I said the various intelligence agencies were riddled with operatives handing over information to the Soviets. Some of them were never caught, but some were. In the end Boyce is found out and has to go to jail for what he's done, and I am quite certain Pentagon will go to great lengths to have their man in the Wikileaks case as well. How many people's feet they will step on during the investigation is a matter of some concern. We also know that they won't exactly shy away from disregarding the persons rights once he has been arrested, as they have done with Bradley Manning, supposedly responsible for blowing the whistle on the Collateral Murder episode. But chances are it's going to take quite some time, and it's going to be very embarrassing to the investigators. As if the leak itself wasn't enough.

There is one fatal difference between Boyce and the sources in this case though: that of motivation. Boyce was supposedly motivated by greed the wikileaks sources are motivated by their justified outrage over US behaviour in Afghanistan and Iraq. I say fatal bacause it's a hard blow to the legitimacy of american war efforts. It's not OK for the US defence to keep their oversights secret, and it's not OK to portray the whistleblowers as traitors. The US was once founded by people who wouldn't stand for unjust treatment of civilians by imperialists, and those values seem to have been forgotten since.

The US authorities claim that Wikileaks is a threat to national security, but we all know what they're really threatening: national secrecy. If the government is really founded on the people its legitmacy wouldn't suffer from openness around the methods they use in war, or the consequences thereof. It is founded on military might, threats and violence however, Obamas response is all the more logical. The campaign in Afghanistan and Iraq was never justified, nor were the methods employed and the continued secrecy surrounding these issues add insult to injury. Obama should worry more about the casualties his soldiers are piling up, and less about saving face over leaks of documents pertaining to his predecessor.

If you want to donate money to wikileaks follow this link:
http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Special:Support

I have my eyes on you, you pervert!

I use a tool that allows me to see what keywords people search for when they end up here at Thulethinks. I write blogs about strange subjects, and accordingly I get a bit of traffic from various strange google searches. Nothing like the kinky zanyness that turns up in Batcheeba's analysis, but still.
- man pubic hair torture
- hot stories first time handjobs
- erected boys
- snuff tortureporn
- torture mutilation rape snuff young girl story
... and so forth. Things you don't want people to know you play with your genitals to.

Very funny. What's even more funny, and quite frightening too, is that the tool that allows me to see these keywords also allows me to see the poor people's IP-addresses and locations, as well as OS and browser and so forth.
Imagine what a person with some real computer knowledge to do to harvest information. Imagine what corporations can do, or the authorities. I mean, I'm a total n00b when it comes to the information superhighway, and I can access this information with a click...

It's time to be paranoid.

KALIGLIMMER

In case you are one of the few people who hasn't noticed, me and Batcheeba are currently involved in a new blog venture called Kaliglimmer. It's a blog where we review underground music and art in a variety of genres (and other material should we feel that it fits the bill). You might find it interesting.

The adress is http://www.kaliglimmer.blogspot.com.

Incidentally, for those who care about these things, Kaliglimmer is a mineral otherwise known as muscovite. A nearly translucent, mostly black and very fragile mineral - and very beautiful. In Norway it is known as kråkesølv (crow's silver). Kali is of course the hindu god of time and death (as well as a whole bunch of other things), and I suppose Kaliglimmer means that it shines like Kali's aura or something like that. As per our obsession with crows, Kali and shiny things - as well as beauty where others see worthless junk, the name fits the blog.

Be sure to contact us if you have material you want reviewed.

Space Battleship Yamato and the golden age of the Emperor.

If you're lucky, or a complete nerd you've seen the early anime series from 1973 called Space battleship Yamato, or Starblazers. It's a real classic, and paved the way for many later shows. In particular Macross (westernized as part 1 of Robotech), which was indeed in many ways a parody of Space Battleship Yamato, stylistically, thematically, and story wise - even down to the level of color schemes for heros and villains. I first saw Space Battleship Yamato when I was about six years old, and later when I was 11 - and then again as an adult. While the show certainly stands well on its own two feet, and is surprisingly little outdated, there are a few elements that fascinate me today, as a historian, that I didn't notice as a kid.

Like many science fiction and fantasy narratives there is an underlying element of romanticism in this show, but in this one the symbolism is even more potent and obvious than usual. Firstly, consider the name and theme of the series. Yamato, the legendary battleship from WWII rises out of the mud to defend Earth from invaders. Yamato is of course not just a ship, it is a term refering to ancient Japan, and the ship was given this name to symbolize the return to ancient values and traditions in a modern age.

With this in mind the scene where the Yamato rises out of the mud, guns first, it's easy to see this as a potent image of the old martial traditions of Japan being resurrected from the dirt, to provide the last ditch defense the ship also attempted in real life. The historic battleship Yamato was famously sent on a suicide mission in april 1945, but was sunk just south of Kyushu. During her four years of service she only fired her main guns once, in 1944. In the show the rebuilt Yamato rises into the air, and blows an enemy carrier into dust. The symbolic vindication of WWII Japan could hardly be more obvious. The show is in fact, rare as it might be, a resurrection of a resurrection myth. It makes the historian in me salivate. Seriously, it does.

But let's start at the beginning. The very first scene of the series depicts a battle near Pluto. Alien intruders enter our solar system, and a fleet attempts to repel them. They fail, and we are shown how the commanders of the fleet are torn between fighting on honorably, or returning to earth to defend the planet. One commander makes a futile suicide run against the enemy in true kamikaze fashion, refusing to face dishonor over losing the battle, while the admiral of the fleet turns around - wiser but perhaps not as honorable. After the battle has been lost we are shown how Earth is bombarded with meteor bombs, strikingly similar to the atomic blasts over Nagasaki and Hiroshima during WWII. We are told that the radiation levels are so high that life on earth will be extinct within a year, unless the invaders are countered and humanity finds the planet Iscander. Cue Yamato, commanded by the aforementioned admiral. Cue vindication. Cue revenge. After fighting off the attacking carrier the admiral declares "This is the Yamato we've been waiting for so long." We are then shown a fictionalised (but mostly accurate) account of the sinking of "the ship of japanese men", as witnessed by the admiral. Indeed.

So where am I going with this? Am I going to claim that Space Battleship Yamato is some sort of secret vindicationist nationalist plot to sully the minds of japanese youth by way of anime? Hardly. Quite the opposite in fact. While certainly militaristic and resurrectionist the series is also humanistic and positive in its outlook. The admiral points out that the tragedy of Yamato was that she was a ship born to fight, but that now her mission is changed. She is no longer a vessel of destruction, but on a mission to save and defend all humanity. Not just Japan.

Let's look at the psychology of this. In the early seventies the young adult generation had been born just after or just before the nuclear attack and the fall of the empire. Their parents had perhaps fought in the war, and lost. The ideology of imperial Japan had been discredited, and the country humiliated by occupation. People were faced on one side by the shame of defeat, and on the other by the shame of knowing that the Japanese emperor and his government had caused anguish to so many people, in the name of old fashioned imperialism. Space Battleship Yamato addresses both these issues. The ship repels the attackers and gives hope of victory, without bringing death and suffering to humanity. Additionally it allows the crew of the ship to resurrect a part of the humilitad Japan, and bushido, while using it for good. The survival of humanity rests on a Japanese warship. The admiral who returned to earth and faced defeat, rather than die fighting, gets to save mankind. The kamikaze mentality of his colleague is honored, but with an emphasis on the futility of his attack. Had he retreated his efforts could have proven a great deal more meaningful - and been a celebration of life rather than death. It's all very beautiful. In fact someone should write a book about the symbolism in this series. It would be voluminous, and I certainly can't cover it all here.

This sounds like a recipe for success in post war Japan, but in fact the show failed miserably in terms of popularity. First the format was cut down, then it was cancelled outright. It wasn't until the huge success of Star Wars that the show met with success, first as Starblazers and with american voices, and then as new episodes in Japanese. After that again is cast for a multitude of other shows, featuring ships flying in space, strange aliens attacking earth and so forth. Without Space Battleship Yamato, we would never have seen the legendary Voltron, G-force (american version of Gatchaman), Macross/Robotech and other lesser known series.

It's a very good show, and it deserves its legendary status, and that's my final thought on this subject. I'm not so much into anime or manga in fact, despite my nerdyness, but this series will stay with me for quite some time. I leave you with a link for part one of episode one courtesy of youtube. Enjoy. (Unfortunately embedding has been disabled.)

Symbols of Oslo pt. 2: Hermes

Time for part two of my exploration of obscure symbols on Oslo's buildings. One might expect to find the previously covered symbol, the Swastika, it has atleast a tenuous link to Norwegian culture and history - in addition to its universal appeal and geometrical structure. If I were to say that one of the most absolutely most common ornamentations in Oslo depicts the greek god of communication, magic, economy and theft, you might be puzzled. However it is true. Hermes and his caduceus staff can be seen on so many buildings in Oslo it would be an impossible task to cover them all in this blog.

As mentioned, Hermes was the god of communication, theft, magic and commerce, of which the latter is the most important reason we find his countenance on buildings all over the world. As a god of commerce he is an excellent symbol for the stock exchange, and he is indeed placed on a pidestal outside Oslo Stock Exchange, pointing upwards for eternal growth. It's very common depiction of Hermes. Why he is firmly placed on a breath of air emerging from someone's decapitated head is beyond me. Admittedly I'm not as well versed in Greek myth as I'd like to be. If anyone has a clue, let me know. There is another Hermes on the other side of the building, and it's also worth a mention, though I couldn't be bothered including a picture of it here.

As a god of commerce he also adorns Christiania Glasmagasin, one of the most well know and early department stores in Norway. Christiania Glasmagasin, despite its name and upper class appeal is a shopping mall, and I doubt many of the people who do their shopping there notice Hermes above the door main entrance where he looks absentmindedly across the street where Christian IV points decisively at the ground. If I had to rest above the entrance to a shopping mall I'd probably want to avert my gaze from the vulgarians below me too. It's a really beautiful bust though. (There is such as thing as an unattractive bust dear reader...)

OK, so shopping malls I can understand. In the provincial village Trondheim there is even a mall named after him: Mercursenteret. Mercury of course being the roman name for Hermes. The next one is a mystery though. Smuget is a restaurant/bar/stage in Oslo well known for its stand up shows and various events, and for some reason they have a huge full statue of Hermes resting above the main gate, next to Poseidon. I have no idea what they're doing there, and it's not like they're subtle in any way. I can only guess whatever institution was there before Smuget had some link to commerce and shipping, but I don't know. Not gonna be bothered trying to find out either. It certainly is one of my favorite depictions of him however.

This leads to the next one, which is just a block or two away from the stock exchange. It's a more subtle ornament than the former three, and I have no idea what it's doing on that particular building - which houses a military academy. Hermes was a god of many things, but invasion, murder and anguish were not among his attributes. The building is located in an area of the with quite a bit of history, and it's not unlikely that there was some kind of trade house or something there at some point. After Oslo burned in 1624 the town was moved here by the danish king and renamed Christiania in honor of himself (this is also the reason for the aforementioned statuary pointing to the ground). In every other respect it's a rather unassuming building, but any building with a Hermes on it is close to my heart.

Not far from this one there is another one, in Fred Olsens gate. It's a more modern depiction, but I don't know how new, could look like the twenties or thirties judging by style. I would guess Art Noveau anyway, I'm not an expert. This one was brought to my attention by a friend of mine who also has interests in the world of occultism. I don't have much to say about this one,except that it's really nice, and that it's just one of many really cool ornaments on this particular building. Some of them even look overtly occult. Such as the child holding a winged globe just to the left of the Hermes. Incidentally the bulding also houses an outlet of the scammers in UFF, where you should never spend money if have any form of conscience whatsoever. And, yes, the sun was out the day I took the picture, and my camera isn't exactly state of the art. That shadow annoyed the hell out of me.

Now for the caduceus, the snake staff Hermes often carries. For some reason it has become a symbol of pharmacies and medicine, and can often be seen on medical buildings, such as hospitals and drug stores. Most likely this is due to a misinterpretation of the symbol as a variation of the other snake staff, the rod of Asclepius, which is actually relevant to the medical profession as opposed to the caduceus. I'm not going to say much about this quite common symbol, because a list of pharmacies would be tedious - and would further this rather strange misapproproation. The Caduceus is not just a symbol for Hermes of course, but it's probably been more associated with him than the other greek gods over the years, and I don't think it's an oversight to say that in most cases (except of course in the medical ones) it's safe to assume that the staff represents Hermes. This first one is located just across the street, more or less, from the military academy and housese Datatilsynet, a public institution responsible for monitoring the use of surveillance and data storage and so forth. So the Hermes reference is certainly apt, though I do suspect that this building is much older than the institution it houses.

A case where the caduceus is clearly linked to Hermes is on the aforementioned Christiania Glasmagasin, where there are in fact several of them. They're not very big, but you can clearly make them out near the western entrance. Neither is it as conspicuous, but there is certainly no doubt as to what it is.

So anyway, that's it for Hermes. I'm sure you should be able to spot a few of these on your own, and I haven't covered all the ones in Oslo either. They are quite numerous, and if you live in a city of reasonable size, and with a little history I'll bet money there's atleast one Hermes there. Keep your eyes peeled and your camera charged.

The Swastika

Considering that I have recently posted two blogs about the swastika, more or less directly, I think it would be appropriate to post something about the symbol itself. Origins, meanings and so forth. As a symbol nerd, I have something of an obsession with this dangerous and alluring piece of graphic.

As mentioned in the blog about Thule the national socialists operated on the assumption of cultural dissemination. That is to say, in this context, the swastika had a singular origin, and was spread to the rest of the world via contact or colonisation. They saw this is parallelling the spread of architectural features like pyramids.

And, yes, you can find pyramids (or similar shapes) as well as swastikas around the world, but the assumption that this a result of contact is ungrounded. You can find pyramid, or similar, shapes in cultures as distinct as the Aztec, Greek, ancient Egyptian, Babylonian and even during the Japanese Kofun period. The fact is you can find burial mounds in every part of the world, and the evolution of smaller mounds into larger more elaborate mounds is well documented. This form of burial is also linked to cultures with a high level of centralized religion and strong state authority. So the pyramids don't tell us about ancient contact, but about social structures.

Likewise with the swastika. If you study the graphics of the swastika with an evolutionary mind you can see that it's a very simple symbol. Imagine yourself in the bronze age - with a creative mind and no written language to express yourself with. You need to develop a set of pictograms detailing the world around you. There is a natural progression of expression. The simplest form of graphic is a dot. The next level would be a line. In order to progress from there, and make the line more complex, you can either bend it into an angle, or make two of them. If you really want to get advanced you can combine them into a cross shape.

The swastika is a natural progression from there, and you can choose to intpret it as either four angles put together, or a cross with angles on it. You could even say it's a prototype for the more advanced cross enlosed by a circle. Either way it's a very natural early pictogram. It is both remarkably complex and incredibly simple. But still not simple enough that low brow skinheads manage to get it right all the time. How many times have I seen a swastika sprayed on a wall, where one of the angles point the wrong way or with similarily inane failures? Too many to count... And you wonder why neo nazism seems to attrack drop outs?

If you would want to play the devil's advocate for the idea that these cultures must've been in contact with each other you would say something like "Yeah, sure, simple, but all the cultures used the swastika as a symbol of the sun. How can that be?" And yes, this might be true. We can only make guesses about the meaning of early symbols, but let us work under the assumption that they are all in fact sun symbols (while sometimes this meaning has certainly been further evolved into different levels). This certainly seems to be the general consensus.

It is generally assumed that language evolved beyond the level of grunts and ughs as humans gained access to abundant sources of food. The reasoning is that when humans had time to relax and think about other things than running around trying to stab animals to death or wonder where there was some good fruit, they started thinking about abstract things. What are the stars and the moon, and the sun? How are the heavenly bodies linked to my life? What is the meaning of all this? And so forth. This led to cave paintings and early symbols as a form of cultic expression. Later when the agricultural revolution paved the way for urbanization and more complex socities with organized religion and trade the need for more complex pictograms also arose. And in fact the oldest occurences of swastikas we know of were found in the Mohenjo Daro region, where the oldest city culture also arose.

While spoken language is about direct communication written language is in fact primarily a storage medium. Even long before the portable USB stick humans found that they needed to convey and store communication across distance and time. Numerous theories highlight the link between trade and math or the alphabet, but this is supposed to be about the swastika and the sun. The agricultural revolution brought about two very important changes that are relevant to this topic: sun worship and pictographic writing. It is easy to surmise that one of the earliest symbols one would need to express would be the sun itself. And in all the various early cultures we see the sun symbolised by very "primitive" symbols. The swastika, a cross in a circle, a circle with a dot in the center, and so forth. Written language was created to convey abstract ideas rather than everyday gossip, and the most important abstract ideas around would be numbers (lines and dots) and the sun (evidently one step higher in terms of complexity). The fact that the swastikas arms seem to depict a form of motion could also be seen as symbolizing the sun's link to the four seasons of the year.

So at the same time people around the world started to get the idea that there was a link between the sun and the growth cycles of their crops, they also started developing pictograms. This does not mean that they were in touch with each other from the get go, even though cities also came with trade routes and cultural contact. Still, at times you do come across theories of dissemination in modern publications and with differing levels of credibility or evidence. I have heard that some archaelogists claim that early northern religion was inspired by phoenician traders, based on the fact that the earliest stone carvings in sweden depict a type of ship that was common in the mediterranean, but has never existed in Scandinavia, and the motif of twin gods - also common in that particular area. On the othern end of the scale you have Thor Heyerdahl with his ideas that polynesia was settled from south america - based on similar observations. He has of course been proven wrong by genetics, but maintained his ideas as long as he lived. If you go even further out you find Von Dänicken and his chariots of the gods. Wildly ammusing to read, and so very very preposterous. Still, modern theories of contact have long since abandoned the idea that culture arose in a single area, and the spread. For some reason however many linguists seem to be lagging behind and are still working under outdated assumptions about a first language, on which all later languages are based.

With time the swastika became a common symbol in some parts of the world, primarily asia, while it was replaced by other symbols in other parts of the world. Specifically the christian cross became the primary symbol of divinity in the western hemisphere, and the swastika disappeared from use (even though a tenuous link exists in the so called celtic cross or sun cross, whish is also a pre christian solar symbol similar to the swastika in many ways, with the angles replaced by a circle). When the swastika resurfaced centuries later, it was under the sanskrit name and in some cases links to european paganism and a strong political content. In other cases it was used simply because of its qualities as a good luck charm in asia or in architecture, and as such it was quite popular until this meaning was overtaken by the more well known polical use.

And we all know the end of the story, in the western hemisphere. The swastika has been so strongly linked to genocide that it is nearly impossible to use it in any other context. Despite groups like "reclaim the swastika" and numerous organizations using it because of its pre-christian meaning. Even non western religious groups find that symbol's controversial links are hard to swallow for Europeans. You can imagine what happened when the Raëlians tried to establish themselves in Israel. Their logo is none other than a star of david intertwined with a swastika - as pictured. Things are slowly improving however, and once again it is becoming possible to have an interest in pagan symbolism and myth, without being accused of nazi sympathies. This is a development I personally welcome. I do however disagree with the rhetorics that claim that the Swastika was stolen by Hitler. You can't steal a symbol, it's there for everyone, and we all have equal rights to use them. No single entity can claim ownership of the swastika, not nazis, not paganists, and not hindus - not even Coca Cola. Use it to your own advantage, and as you see fit. It's not a corporate logo, and it's not copyrighted. With this in mind I leave you with this picture I took at bronseplassen in Lillesand, Norway a couple of years ago. They seem to have the idea.

Symbols of Oslo pt. 1: Fascism

Of the many ornaments one can see on buildings in Oslo there are several with a more obscure meaning than one would perhaps expect to see, and there are some with meanings that have been somewhat altered since the buildings were erected. People usually don't notice these symbols, but if they would, they might be surprised to find what looks like nazi and fascist symbols.

Perhaps the most well known, and debated ornament is Sommerrogaten 1, just by the national library. The building was built in 1931 as the corporate hq of Oslo Lysverker, now known as Hafslund. An electrical company. While Hitler and the NSDAP had adopted the symbol several years earlier in 1920 the symbol was still widely used by a flurry of other people around the world, as any google search for "Coca Cola + Swastika" will tell you. The reason the swastika was used on this gate is probably due to the symbolic link to prechristian religion in Norway. The swastika was supposedly a symbol for the god Thor, a thunder god. A thunder god is an apt symbol for an electrical company, especially during the twenties and thirties when viking and nordic symbols were still popular in Norway. Naturally many of these, such as the swastika, were discredited during the occupation of the fourties.

However the swastika can be found on other buildings in Oslo, as well as in the rest of Norway, such is this one - which is indeed on Karl Johansgate, just by the central train station. While Sommerrogaten is located a bit away from the city center, this building is right smack in the middle of everything. The busiest shopping street in Norway, not far from the largest train station in Norway, on the same street as the parliament and even the royal palace. Still, nobody seems to notice. Next time you're down there, just look above the 7/11 signs, and be baffled. I don't really know anything about this building, but I would guess it's a simple use of geometrical ornamentation without much consideration put into it. Notice that this one is sinistroverse, while the one on the gate and the one used by the NSDAP was rectoverse.

A more direct link to fascism can be found at the norwegian supreme court a few blocks away. One of the entrances is adorned with a pair of fasces, a lesser known fascist symbol, but the one the movement got its name from. The fasces is in use around the world by police (such as in norway), the US congress and courts, and it's not really strange. This form of the fasces is otherwise known as a lictores rod and was a symbol of authority in the roman empire, as it was carried (almost like a badge, but much more concretely) by a group known as the lictores. The lictores were a form of special judges, who were allowed to apprehend, trial and execute suspects, much like Judge Dredd. Their historic and symbolic link to modern police and courts is evident. Mussolini and his boys however adopted the symbol for two reasons. The first being the physical construction of the rod: sticks tied together for strength were seen as symbolic of how the early fascists saw themselves - as groups of individuals banded together. And that is how they got their names Fasci de Combattimento: combat groups in more plain language. Secondly the fasci was a symbol of the roman empire, which the fascist yearned to ressurect.

There are other symbols too to be found, that are certainly not directly linked to fascism, but have been so indirectly through their connection to facist regimes. Specifically the Iron Cross and the Eagle. These symbols too can be found on buildings in Oslo. These eagles look especially totalitarian - and considering that they look like they're perched on a pair of death runes (another symbol avidly used by the national socialists) I feel they belong in this blog. The picture is a bit small here, but right click on it and select "view image" for a better look. I have no idea what this building houses, but it is located a few blocks from the norwegian parliament (the Storting) and looks incredibly ominous. I think this fine little neoclassical doorway might just be my new favorite doorway in all of Oslo.

I'm certain there are many other examples of fasces and swastikas in Oslo (and so forth), and that these are just a few. The park area Vigelandsparken along with Gustav Vigeland's museum just by it is even worthy of a blog post all to itself, with its numerous swastikas or swastikalike symbols, alongside neoclassical statues and pan germanic romanticism. Given time I might return to this subject at some point. Incidentally one of the few grand projects shared by nazis and social democrats in Norway. The planning of the park was started before the war, while the german occupational government broke the ground, and the post war government finished it. Other similar projects were discarded after the war, and some cases buildings and statues erected during the war were destroyed. The supreme irony of this "cooperation" is of course that the swastikas a the museum are mixed with atleast one Star of David. Only goes to show that a symbol, just like history, might be more than meets the eye.

The Golden Age of King David and the First Temple

The recent action against an unarmed civilian flotilla heading for Gaza with humanitarian aid has appalled a world, and divided oppinions as to the conflict in Israel/Palestine once again. It's not the first time, and certainly not the last. We're talking about a conflict so old and documented it's second to none. Just look at how a term like philistine (palestinian) has entered the english language as an insult implying someone uncouth and uncultured.

To an atheist like myself it is hard to see what these people are fighting over. They have different names and languages, and so what? What is the reason these two peoples can't "just get along"?

The answer lies in the ever elusive concept of myth. More specifically national restoration myths.

Nationalism is a rather complex phenomenon, and I'm not going to go into depth on it. However, myth is a central concept in nationalism, while not necessarily the reasoning behind the ideology. All nations have stories that they feel is central to their understanding of their own identity and are vital for national cohesion. One example is how americans identify with the pioneers and pilgrims who shaped their nation. It is a myth cycle upheld and reinforced through rituals, such as thanksgiving. The myth of the revolutionary war is reinforced through indepence day. These myths also come with a set of perceived values, that are central to the idea of the nation itself: independence, hospitality and family. These values are central to the american idea of life.

This is mostly unproblematic, and only when the myths and values are teamed up with a program for social change or national irredentism something negative and potentially deadly starts to happen.

The most recently well known example of deadly irredentism occured in World War two, when Germany attacked its neighbours with the pretense of wanting to unite germans that had been divided after World War one. This war of national restoration was paired with internal restoration of perceived germanic values. The result was genocidal mania and a war that cost over 50 million lives over six years. More recently we witnessed how Kosovos position on national myth cycles turned ethnic conflicts in Serbia into a potential for ethnic cleansing and civil war.

In the case of Israel we have a strong national myth cycle, reinforced through countless years of existence as diaspora around the world, and persecution, pogroms and discrimination in various shapes and forms. While jewish culture enriched the various contries it existed in, through literature, music and philosophy the diaspora was always self aware of its removal from the holy land. When the Balfour congress, in 1917, decided to create a homeland for jews it was against this background. This was at a time in history when nationalism was seen as a potential way to solve problematic conflicts, and states like Yugoslavia, Poland, Checkoslovakia, Finland, Hungary and Austria were formed to be homelands for various oppressed nations in Europe. Israel had to wait however, because no obvious location for such a nation could be found. While it was decided that Israel would be located in Palestine, it was allready full of people, and other locations (Madagascar, Brazil...) were equally problematic - and unwanted by the Zionist Federation. Eventually it was decided that Israel would in fact be located in Palestine, which is after all the promised land of jewish national myth - Canaan. And in 1948, after quite a bit of trouble and terrorism and fighting, Israel came into existence as a modern state. That's when the real trouble started...

This was for purposes the equivalent of opening up a box of wasps and sticking your penis in there while shaking the box. Palestine had been occupied for quite some time by palestinians, and they had their own perception of the matter. Not only was there a great deal of land to argue over, there was also myth. Particularily myths associated with Jerusalem/Al Quds. Jewish myth focuses on the restoration of the temple on temple mount, only problem is that the Al Aqsa mosque lies there, and that mosque is equally important to palestinian national identity. This is a point of contention so strong that archaelogists are literally trying to prove which culture was there first, by excavating the mount. Israeli extremists want to tear down the mosque, while many palestinians fear that the excavations are actually undermining the mosque in order for demolition. Until the temple of Solomon is rebuilt, the Messiah cannot come, and you really do want him to come.

This is where we enter the land of national restoration myths, or golde age myths. The general idea, that you can find in any and all nationalist political movements around the world is that "once we were glorious, but someone or something took it away from us, and now we need to restore those days". The golden age we are speaking of is the time when the tribes were united under king David. The tribes fell and were spread as diaspora around the world, and now it is up to us to rebuild the past. Quite physically rebuild in this case actually, the symbolism could not be any clearer. The ahistoric ideas of something original and unblemished is central to this kind of thinking. It was even a major part of american electoral campaigns this recent fall. Obama and McCain both spoke about taking america back from Wall Street, and even "back to main street USA". The America they wanted to return has of course never existed, except in blockbuster films and romantic literature about Davy Crocket, or the suburbs before the blacks moved there. It was quite comical to hear these visions, but restoration myths can be quite scary when paired with the notion of an enemy of restoration - such as the jews were to the nazis, the kulaks to the communists, the palestinians to the zionists or communists to McCarthy, or zionists to islamists. It's a really explosive combination.

Most Israelis and Palestinians would be perfectly happy to live next door to each other, send their kids off to the same school and go to see the same lame american romantic comedies, but there are those who are too enthralled with myth to see realities in front of their nose.

To complicate matters further jewish national myth is intertwined with evangelical christian myths, concerning the second coming of christ. Christian extremists around the world support the israeli cause in because Christ cannot return untill the jews have returned to Canaan. I'm not a theologian, but the scriptural basis for these assumptions sound wafer thin to me. I even hear a norwegian pastor speak of secret bases in the desert with a pre-assembled temple waiting to be brought in and rebuildt on the temple mount by way of helicopters. At an unspecified time a signal to demolish the temple would be given, and the palestinians would be exterminated by force. God only knows how this person can continue to recieve tax money to support his cult. Thankfully he is not representative of most christians, though many enough follow his logic.

I can see no end to this conflict. Three out of the five major world religions have their various myths tangled up in a few square miles of estate in Israel and the west bank, and they're not about to agree. "OK, we can sacrifice this symbol in exchange for that one." That's not how it works. People tend to get irrational over myths, and sometimes they even kill for them.

However, for the sake of all the people who have to live in the vicinity of this specific hot piece of real estate, let's hope that these religious dimwits die out as soon as humanly possible. It is a sad affair, and I really hope palestinians and israelis can find a way to live together in peace in times to come. How, I don't know.

Torture porn wasn't always comedy hour.

So called torture porn films, such as Hostel (2005) and the neverending series of Saw films are very popular these days. Basically these films are all about showing an astonishing number of ways to dismember and murder humans, usually with a healthy helping of puritan moralism and poetic justice. In many ways they even have common ground with the right wing vigilante films of the eighties, and would make Ronald Reagen proud, if somewhat sick to the gut. However things weren't always so. There used to be a time when if you said torture and porn in the same sentence, people thought you were talking about something very underground and very nasty. I am talking of the elusive phenomenon of snuff films.

I was first made aware of snuff when I saw the film Hardcore (1979) in my youth. The film is about a father, portrayed by the class a actor George C. Scott who searces for his run away daughter. She's fallen prey to the vile and seeding underground of pornography, and his conservative christian morality can't really cope with that. As he goes undercover and infiltrates the darker side of porn he stumbles across snuff: women being raped and murdered on camera for the sexual pleasures of the audience. And all the torture and abuse is authentic. The film told the story about snuff from a perspective that makes it seem like a real and credible phenomenon. Quite uncomfortable to think of. But snuff was not something the director had come up with on his own. He was in fact drawing on a long tradition of movie making, even without taking on screen death into consideration.


Rumors of snuff films had allready been around for quite a few years, starting around the days of the Manson-trials, in the very late sixties. However the film that brought snuff rumors to main stream attention was the aptly titled Snuff (1976), which claims that the end of the film is exactly that - snuff. The viewer bears witness to rape and onscreen mutilation and finally murder, all done in guerilla style and made to look real. And people believed it. This scene was appended to a less than mediocre proto slasher film, trying to exploit the enduring moral panic generated by the Manson murders. Supposedly the last scene demonstrates how the fictional murders were carried out in real life. It was a very effective marketing ploy, and a grade c pile of crap was suddenly the talk of the country, and made millions. To the more trained eye however the acting and scenes of mutilation look about as real as Michael Jackson's nose, but certainly completely devoid of morality. Snuff was exploitation in every meaning of the word. And that we can like!


An exploitation genre was born. The year after saw the release of several films with this theme, among them one of my favorites. A strange and nightmarish, yet arty, film called Last House on Dead end Street (1977), about a gang of miscreants whose forrays into underground SM porn turns into snuff. Another near legendary exploitation film that claims to show onscreen death is Joe D'Amatos Emanuelle in America (1977), which shows Laura Gemser investigating a supposed film showing soldiers raping and murdering civilians. The film in the film is depicted in a quite realistic and credible way, and shows some nasty footage, of scenes that could place in any war near you. It's not real though, and the most shocking moment in the film is the scene where a woman administers a hand job to a horse. I shit you not. It's completely out of place, and probably quite illegal. D'Amato was never one to shy away from a bit of controversy.
Soon after persistent rumors claimed Cannibal Holocaust (1980) was depicting real human death. In fact actors had to go on a witness stand to prove that they were still alive, and some of the effects were required to be demonstrated in front of a judge. Gruesome as the film is, the director did not have people killed to make it.

Rumors about the existence of the real deal were persistent, as they still are. Investigations into the matter by british and american police unearthed nothing however. Still, umpteenth generation vhs copies of Gini Piggu 2: Chiniku no Hana (Guinea pig 2: flowers of flesh and blood, 1985) was to up the ante another notch. The films director, Hidesho Hino, was something of a prankster and a media critic as well as extreme film affecionado. His first Gini Piggu film, aptly titled "the devil's experiment" and the sequel both depict, supposedly real, extreme torture of a girl, captured on film - and it's certainly the most realistic looking torture and dismemberment I have ever seen as such. The sequel however was the most effective of the two because of its conscious use of the percieved snuff formula. A young girl is kidnapped, tortured, dismembered and killed by what is evidently a complete nut job in a samurai helmet. The torture even quotes some elements from the earlier film Snuff, in a fitting visual tribute. The underground nature of the film meant that it was distributed by copying, and when one such low grade copy was seen by Charlie Sheen a moral media panic ensued. The FBI investigated, and aquitted the film. While the effects look impressively real they don't hold up to professional scrutiny - and of course it did help that Hidesho Hino could verify the film as fake. A few years later he released the making of Gini Piggu on dvd.


A fascinating side note about Gini Piggu needs to be mentioned. The film shows terrible scenes of bodily harm and death, such as a man plucking out the girls eye ball before licking on it, etc - and despite this there is not a single nipple portrayed in the film. The girl is covered by a blanket at all times, and we can surmise that Hidesho Hino does this to lampoon the double standards of comercial film: violence is OK, sex is not. He steps over the line of course, by portraying a level of violence that is rarely seen as ok on film, or in any other medium, but he still keeps it clean. No nipples, no sex and no pubic hair. Seeing how modern torture porn does the same thing without the same level of tongue in cheek self awareness is quite hilarious after watching Hidesho Hino's masterpiece.

Still to this day, not a single real snuff film has surfaced. That is, not a single film that depicts the deliberate death of a person, made for profit and sexual pleasure. There are numerous on screen deaths out there, but these are all captured for the personal pleasure of the perpetrator, by accident by news teams or by terrorists. As such they don't qualify as snuff. Still, the trope is incredibly poweful, thankfully, and until the first real snuff film emerges us eurotrash folks can enjoy our exploitation films drawing its energy from the supposed seedy phenomenon. Some of these films are quite excellent too. Occasionally there have been more comercial attempts at cashing in on snuff myths, such as the aforementioned Hardcore, as well as 8mm (1999) wich casts Nicholas Cage in a role not too dissimilar from Scott's in Hardcore. There is also the mediocre bordering on good film Tesis (1996). Tesis is a spanish flick portraying a female film student who stumbles upon an underground group producing snuff films. All these three are worth a watch, even if you're not into trash. In fact there are so many films that cash in on snuff, that it would be hopeless to list them all. One film however that is probably worth a mention is the recent snuff movie (2005), which blends modern torture porn with a story concerning snuff. Despite the initial fears that snuff movie is a snuff version of scary movie the film is not a silly comedy best left to rot and fester in a ditch somewhere... Atleast not for that reason.