There is but one race - the human race

It's been a while - but I'm not giving the bloging up. In september we had general elections here in Sweden. And ended up with a new political party in our parliament. A party that got in there because of their populistic ideas about immigrants and people of other cultures and ethnicity. I find this a huge failure and feel ashamed of my own country. We will all have to live with the consequences and we all need to take responsibility for making it right. The question is how to do that?

Reed Joseph Conrad The heart of darkness or almost anything by Sven Lindqvist, what specifically comes to mind is Utrota varenda jävel (Exterminate All the Brutes), which starts like this:

You already know enough. So do I. It is not knowledge we lack. What we lack is the courage to recognize what we know and draw the conclusions.

 

For me - when it comes right down to it - the heart of the matter is that we are all human and that is all that really matters. Or in the words of Edward James Olmos, at the UN headquarters in 2009 in his capacity as one of the leads of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica:

I still find it incredible that we still use the term race as a cultural determinant. To this day—you should have never invited me here because I detest what we’ve done to ourselves out of a need to make ourselves different from one another—we’ve made the word race a way of expressing culture.
There’s no such thing and all you high school students bless your heart for being here. You are a hundred champions right now that are going to go out understanding this. The adults in the room will never understand it. Even though they’ll nod their heads and say you’re right they’ll never be able to stop using the word race as a cultural determinant.
I just heard one of the most prolific statements done by one of the great humanitarians. He’s really trying to organize and bring us all together and he used the word race as if there is a Latino race, an Asian race, Indigenous race, Caucasian race or a Latino race.
There is no such thing as a Latino race, there never has been, there never has been. There never will be. There is only one race and that is what the show brought out. That is the human race period.
Now the pressure comes, why did we start to use the word race as a cultural determinant? The truth is that over six hundred years ago the Caucasian race decided to use it as a cultural determinant so it would be easier for them to kill another culture. That was the total understanding, to kill one culture from another culture. You couldn’t kill your own race so you had to make them the “other” and you to this day—I’ve spent thirty-seven years of my adult life trying to get this word out and now I am done and well prepared as the admiral of the Battlestar Galactica to say it to all of you—there is but one race. That is it.
So say we all

So say we all!

That without which not

What is essential to you? What makes you happy, content, gives you the feeling that life is good? Have you ever thought about what is a necessary, indespensable condition for you? Your sine qua non?

Sine qua non = something absolutely indispensable or essential

Lunar landscape

A couple of weeks ago I saw my first glacier. Kind of majestic the way it seemed to be rolling down the mountainside. It was Icelands second largest glacier - Langjökull and we were driving through the highlands on a dirt road about 750 meters above see level. When we stepped out of the car the wind almost knocked me over and even though the moon has no atmosphere and therefor no wind, I'm rather certain that a lunar landscape wouldn't be very different. Anyway, if you ever get the chance, take a trip to Iceland and do it before the glaciers melts away completely.

Last Chance for the Wild Tiger?

This is the year of the tiger. I was born in another year of the tiger. All my life I have been completely fascinated by them. Today there are only about 3200 tigers left in the wild. I donate to contribute to the efforts to save them. You should too!

Nemesis

Did I mention I think David Gray is a genious. His music is somehow subtly profound and the lyrics like a punch to the gut. Like Nemesis:

'Neath an avalanche - soft as moss
I am a creeping and intangible sense of loss
I'm the memory you can't get out your head
If I leave you now
You'll wish you were somewhere else instead

I'm the manta ray - I'm the louse
I am a photograph they found in your burned out house
I'm the sound of money washing down the drain
I am the pack of lies baby that keeps you sane

Gates of Heaven are open wide
God help me baby I'm trapped inside
Feel like I'm buried alive

I'm the bottom line - of the joke
I am an ecstasy - spilling like bright egg yolk
I'm the thoughts you're too ashamed to ever share
And I am the smell of it - you're trying to wash out of you hair

Gates of Heaven are open wide
God help me baby I'm lost inside
Feel like I'm buried alive

Possibilities limitless
Just give me something that's more than this
One shot and I'll never miss
I'm the babe that sleeps through the blitz
I am a sudden and quite unexpected twist
I am your one true love who sleeps with someone else
I am your nemesis
Baby I'm life sweet life itself

At the moment

John Mayer's Perfectly Lonely and Edge of Desire and You Take My Troubles Away with Dan Wilson and Rachel Yamagata is my choice on Spotify at the moment. And of course Paperweight with Joshua Radin and Schuyler Fisk. David Gray's new album Foundling is next in line. Am I going to like it as much as the last album Draw the line?

Dear John is worth seeing, if not for anything else then at least for the story of John and his father. Southland is getting a third season and soon Stargate Universe is back with season two. While I'm waiting I'm going to give The Wire a chance. See if I can figure out why people (and critics) think it is so well written and so well made.

Reading

On the "to read" list for this fall:

One Bullet Away by Nate Fick - I've already read 2/3 of this book. Nate Fick is an ex Marine Corps officer who have done tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq. If you've seen Generation Kill you know who he is. It's a very well written book that gives the reader a good idea of what Nate Fick experienced during the war but also a look inside the Marine Corps. To me it's a book about a person who joined the armed forces because he wanted to make a difference in the world and found himself in the middle of a war nobody really thought would happen and that he didn't sign up for. It's about leadership and teamwork. And like Nate himself was told: "There are only two kinds of people in the world - those who piss in their wetsuits and those who lie about it" (I love that metaphor).

Which are you?

Continuing on the same theme:
Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer - about a millionaire sports star who joined the U.S Army after 9/11 only to be killed in Afghanistan. The U.S Army tried to conceal the truth about his death: that he in fact was killed by friendly fire.

I guess war history has always interested me, history lessons about WWII got my attention while Swedish kings were immensely boring. Afghanistan and Iraq haven't quite made history yet but I think we all need to learn as much as we can about what's going on, so that we hopefully never do it again. It's is also interesting to learn more about what goes on behind the obvious and what we are shown by the press or on the news. Maby all things are not what they appear to be and we need to educate ourselves so that we can form own opinions.

I also saw a really good movie on this theme a couple of weeks ago. I stumbled upon it, due to the fact that I'm having a little bit of a Channing Tatum obssesion at the moment. Stop-Loss is about soldiers returning home from Iraq thinking they have done their duty only to be arbitrarily forced to go back by the army. Apperently this happens a lot.

I'm also going to read Richard Dawkins, both The God Delusion and The Greatest Show On Earth mainly because intelligent design and creationism kind of p-ss me of. Read more about Dawkins here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins

Finally, I'm also going to read more about something that I'm also very interested in - genocide history. Waiting in my bookshelf is the brick Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur by Ben Kiernan. In the review of the book on the webbpage for Yale University Press you can read: "Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present, focusing on worldwide colonial exterminations and twentieth-century case studies including the Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s mass murders, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. He identifies connections, patterns, and features that in nearly every case gave early warning of the catastrophe to come: racism or religious prejudice, territorial expansionism, and cults of antiquity and agrarianism. The ideologies that have motivated perpetrators of mass killings in the past persist in our new century, says Kiernan. He urges that we heed the rich historical evidence with its telltale signs for predicting and preventing future genocides."

So that's my plan for this fall.

Courage

“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't do what you want to do!

For my unconquerable soul

Saw Invictus tonight. Truly inspiring, both Nelson Mandela himself and the fact that sports (here in the form of rugby) can unite a nation with such a history as South Africa. The poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley lingered like a subtle thread throughout the film:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Feels like a good thing to share in this first post.