Well this is amusing. Aftenposten's Ingunn Økland explains why independent intellectuals are no longer needed - academics and other experts fulfill all our foreign policy explanatory needs:

A few years ago culture editors such as Eva Bratholm in Dagbladet and Cathrine Sandes in Dagsavisen would actively encourage Norwegian authors to take positions on political world events. What do the intellectuals believe?

This would sound out of place today. The occupation of Iraq and Muslim fundamentalism doesn't exactly call for independent writers with a lot of zeal and little professional knowledge. The majority of Norwegian authors have long acknowledged this, which is probably why the tradition after Bjørnsterje Bjørnson, Arnulf Øverland and Jens Bjørneboe lies mostly unused. When even the official Norway is critical to for instance the war in Iraq, the need for counter-cultural involvement is even less.

Yeah, that is what being counter-cultural is all about - voicing the same opinions as everyone else. Now that everyone agrees about the important issues, from the lowest reporter to the PM himself, all debate is at an end, and the need for freethinkers is gone. That's what motivated Bjørneboe and Øverland to voice unpopular opinions, I'm sure of it - the love of unanimity.

This is another one of those views that make sense only from the inside of a tiny mental bubble. I'm one of those "independent writers with a lot of zeal and little professional knowledge" the current situation "doesn't exactly call for". I'm a lowly self-taught web pundit with an audience of close to none who write just for the hell of it, not because I hope to make a difference, but because I want to, and must, and can, and because I'm right and they're all wrong. Økland will just have to trust me - the view looks quite different from out here.

To boast of the absence of cranky amateur contrarians in the debate over Iraq and the war on terror is to admit total failure. It is to admit that consensus pressure among Norwegian academics and intellectuals has managed to kill one of the stronger forces in human nature - the desire to disagree. That is a recipe for irrelevant blather, and that is just what we have gotten.

I'm a nobody, but for what it's worth, count me in with the counter-cultural freethinkers of our past.

Who needs "professional knowledge" when we have the web and can read it for ourselves, warts and all?

Oh, the elitists need to "explain it" to us, we're ignorant. We don't see the "nuance." Of course we'll agree w/them once they lay it all out for us.

Gee, where have I heard that before????

But you do have readers. Check: Pravda.Ru, Justin Raimondo.
Keep on, adversity makes strong!

As one wit once said "those that can do; those that can't teach"

Kjell: "But you do have readers. Check: Pravda.Ru, Justin Raimondo."

Lol - you're joking, right? That guy really is a creep.
Of course I have readers. 3-500 a day or so. Very few Norwegians, though.

Bjørn...

True, in the same category as these "free spirits", and a couple of them would have loved to disagree with you. Remember the first book(s) I read by Jens Bjørneboe (history of bestiality), personally this was a book that channeled me from Tom Clancy's techno-thrillers to Nietzsche and other great German literature.

The lack of Norwegian authors that do not express their views about world politics is probably because of money(not offend mass readers), or worse, cultural decline.

Bjørn, you say you are a nobody? you know this is not true, probably this web site won't change the world and its ways, but it certainly makes a good alternative to aftenposten and Dagbladets rabble.

I'm against the war in Iraq, and I did not like the war against Yugoslavia. This however, does NOT make me an America hater or naive to terrorism (to those who wonder).

The "intelligensia" that embraced nazism, or alternatively communism, and have supported every blood-thirsty third world dictator as long as he hates America, is approaching the goal: the end of dissent.

Isn't that sweet.

We've always been at war with America.

A few years ago I saw a television news report on Norway's health system. The report was very positive. The Norweigans who were interviewed said that Americans don't understand Norway. Norway is a very conformist society that values consensus and economic equality. The notion that someone who is wealthy would receive better healtcare than a poor person was unacceptable. Then they interviewed a computer entrepeneur who was trying to build a very large home and his neighbors were very upset and were trying to stop the building. They acccused him of acting "American".

It appears that Norway also values intellectual conformity. Bjorn, you are acting American!

Personally, I think one of the really frightening aspects is just this: When the elitists, the media, an overwhelming majority of politicians are all in agreement, from what we can see down here, something is usually fishy. We see very few voices of dissent from anyone in these categories, and if they exist, they get close to no coverage in the media. What is unusual when such a situation occur, is that an overwhelming majority of the public seems to agree, and are marching along with those mentioned earlier.

Even in the days of NSDAP, public opinion wasnt THAT consolidated, despite complete control of the media & what voices were allowed to have their say. Still, what we learn in school, is that they were brainwashed, while our media is fair & free, and we could never experience anything like brain-washing here.

The first part is mostly true. When our own public is in FAR greater agreement than they were, on what is complicated & extremely important issues, I think it is great reason to question the second part.

Do not falter, keep going, you are a beacon in the dark. It makes feel good to read something
different from the standard and whitewashed so-called authorized version of the events in the world written by our so-called informed and correctly-thinking elites.
Long live Bjorn Staerk's blog !

Just think, if you're really lucky, maybe you'll go from not being needed to being outlawed. Nah, Europeans would never allow that. It's just the US that's full of fascists and police-state advocates, right?

http://www.eursoc.com/story.php/eid/294/aid/447

Seriously though, you seem uncommonly clear headed for a European, but you still don't get it.

The counter-cultural involvement in Norway today comes from the right.

Keep up the good work Bjørn.

"Of course I have readers. 3-500 a day or so. Very few Norwegians, though."

I don't know why you have a lack of Norwegian readers: perhaps most of them disagree with your politics. Being in the minority is not automatically honorable, of course, but being in the minority and trying to convince others of the virtue of your position openly, honestly, calmly and above all rationally is a position that, it seems to me, must be close to the definitively virtuous democratic position (not to give you a swelled head; you're probably still a jerk in some way, although I haven't seen any evidence of it here. Ah, those sneaky Norwegians).

However, 300-500 readers is nothing for a citizen to sneeze at; how many people does the average person influence or communicate with? That glass looks half full to me.

It's a good thing Aftenpost is full of shit. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to live in that world.

http://www.cs.iastate.edu/~cwkeller/focuscheckboard/messages/613.html dimlyfingeringwelcomed

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