oslogirl

Grocery Store Wars

2005-06-03T23:43:00.000-07:00

Grocery Store Wars

I´m off to Barcelona tomorrow for six days of summer happiness and don´t know how much access I´ll have to the Internets while I´m gone.

So, until next Friday, I leave you with: Grocery Store Wars.

Enjoy! (And choose organic.)

Prostitutes and beggars in Oslo

2005-06-03T17:26:00.000-07:00

Prostitutes and beggars in Oslo

Prostitutes and beggars are getting to be an ongoing theme here at Oslo Girl. One-tenth of you are painfully aware of this, having arrived here via a dubious Google search. Can´t say I´m too sorry to those of you whom I´ve inevitably disappointed. (And Up Yours to all of you who have arrived here searching for nudie shots of little girls. Creeps.)

Besides increasing traffic to this site, there is a good reason I keep writing about prostitutes and beggars: During this past year, from my point of view, they have drastically changed the face of Oslo. Some native Oslo-nians might object-- the problem has kind of crept up on us-- but I´m sure any tourists who regularly visit Oslo will notice the difference as soon as they take their first stroll down Karl Johan this year.

As I´ve written earlier, the market for prostitution in Oslo is close to being flooded thanks to the recent arrival of so many prostitutes from Africa and Eastern Europe. Same goes for beggars. Just last summer, it seemed that the only people begging in Oslo were drug addicts. Today traditional drug addict beggars have to compete for their 10kroner with beggars from abroad. In some areas of town, you can´t walk 20ft without passing a man or woman on their knees with their hands out.

It´s one thing to be bothered by the appearance of our city being inundated by prostitutes and beggars. It´s far more disturbing to consider the fact that many of our new arrivers have not come here by choice. Human trafficking, be it of women or beggars, is a huge problem. There can be very little doubt that there is not a lot trafficking at play in Norway when it comes to prostitution. It is virtually impossible to stop, however, considering that prostitution is legal here.

Less likely, but not inconceivable, is the fact that many of the beggars who have arrived have been sent here by organized criminals who are taking advantage of the lax laws and supposedly abundant wealth of our land. You know, beg for as much as possible and then give a cut of your earnings to the big guy. Trafficking of the poor. As of today, although rarely enforced, begging is against the law in Norway. It is likely, however, that the Penal Code in Norway will soon be changed in order to decriminalize it.

The Oslo Police believe in the plausibility of both forms of trafficking. In a controversial attempt to curb the growing problem, they have recently issued a suggestion to amend the Immigration Act in Norway to bar foreigners from prostituting and begging. This would entail denying suspected prostitutes and beggars entrance into the country, as well as banishing those already in the country-- thus making it unattractive for potential traffickers to horde people into Norway. A similar law has been in effect in Finland for the past few years with positive results.

I think the amendment is reasonable for several reasons. First of all, it will make it easier for the police to hinder human trafficking to Norway. Yes, it just means that these women may be trafficked somewhere else in the world, but we Norwegians have to take one thing at a time and focus on what´s going on here first. Secondly, it would drastically clean up the streets of Oslo. As of today, there are too many prostitutes here. They are aggressive in their competition for johns and I have witnessed many men feel downright uncomfortable walking through certain streets of Oslo. When it comes to begging, I think it´s pretty obvious that too many beggars will lead many of them to crime. Thirdly, I am positive to the legalization of prostitution and the decriminalization of begging but I´m not sure I believe them to be universal rights. I know I´m on shaky ground here, but my reasoning is this: If we as a society choose to allow prostitution and begging in order to cut down on other crimes, does this automatically mean that people who are not members of our society should be allowed to do so?

The most obvious con to the amendment is that it may open up for racism. If non-Norwegian citizens are barred from begging, isn´t it more likely that a Swede will easily get away with it while dark-skinned Norwegians will regularly get harassed? There are probably ways to avoid this, like making prostitutes and beggars be able to prove their citizenship when "on the job," but is it worth it? Quite possibly.

The main objection I´ve heard from politicians (on Tabloid on TV2-- haven´t found it online!) has been that we need to focus on the well-being of prostitutes and beggars. I absolutely agree. I don´t, however, find this to be mutually exclusive to the suggested amendment. In many ways, disallowing prostitution and begging may be a good thing for many of the people who are here against their will. Either way, a suggested amendment to the amendment may be to keep in mind that we´re dealing with human beings here that may be in need of help before they are shipped back home...

Coming soon:

2005-06-01T17:04:00.000-07:00

Coming soon:

The Norwegian police have recommended that foreigners should not be allowed to beg or to prostitute themselves in Norway. Norwegian politicians highly disagree. Oslo Girl finds uncommon good sense in the police´s suggestion and typical doublespeak and bamboozletalk from the mouths of the politicians. Alas, she has been too sick for the better part of the past week to blog about it. Hopefully, she´ll be feeling up to it tomorrow.

Memed!

2005-05-25T06:23:00.000-07:00

I´ve been memed!

Dear Hjorthen has tagged me with a meme after mine own heart.

How many books do you own?
I have no idea. Lots and lots. And I recently inherited five boxes of books with more to come.

What was the last book you bought?
Solar Lottery by Philip Dick and After the Quake by Haruki Murakami.

What was the last book you read?
I´m almost finished with American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I´m also working on Virtual Unrealities by Alfred Bester and The Genius of Language edited by Wendy Lesser.

Name five books that mean a lot to you, and that you´ve read more than three times.
Hmmmm. I´ve read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf around three times thanks to good English classes in high school and college. There are a lot of books I´ve read twice that have meant a lot to me: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner... Maybe I´ll read them again one day.

Challenge five people to fill this out in their blog:
Aight, I hereby pass the torch on to Dr. Pants, Kirsebæret, Androida, Fjordman and my dear sister.

Forced marriages in a Politically Correct World

2005-05-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

Forced marriages in a Politically Correct World

Welcome to Politically Correct World, where acts that would merit unequivocal condemnation if committed by white males are viewed in a very different light when the offenders belong to an "oppressed group."

...

"Honor killings" may be relatively rare; but a recent study by the German government found that half of the country's Turkish women are pressured into arranged marriages—often to men they have never seen before the wedding—and more than one in six say they were forced to marry.

...

Misogyny and gay-bashing—religiously motivated or not—still exist in Western societies as well, though at least they are widely condemned by the mainstream culture. We should be able to say, loud and clear, that the modern values of individual rights, equality, and tolerance are better—and just say no to multiculturalist excuses for bigotry.

Hear hear!

from Multiculturalism: It's Different for Girls, by Cathy Young

Check it out!

Forced marriages in Norway

2005-05-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

Forced marriages in Norway

"You and you and you and you are witnesses to the fact that I must now kill my daughter in order to regain the honor of this family," says an Iraqi man, apparently to four people, in Norway. You see, his 17-year-old daughter kept trying to divorce the native Iraqi to whom she was forced to marry, which would be a major scandal in the family.

A report released by the Human Rights Service on Tuesday revealed that there has been an sharp increase in arranged marriages for second-generation compared to first-generation immigrants in Norway. Ole Jørgen Arnfindsen, editor of the think tank HonestThinking, uses the report to show how Statistics Norway may have skewed their numbers to predict less immigration to Norway than seems to be the actuality. There is an excellent debate going on at Bjørn Stærk's on the relationship between forced marriages and immigration and how Norway should handle it.

Forced marriages are a huge problem here. I used to volunteer at the International Red Cross in Oslo, and around three years ago, I helped with some translation work for the Forced Marriages Hot-Line they run. Many of the calls they receive are from young second-generation girls who fear their parents are going to marry them off when they visit "the homeland" during their summer vacations from school. This is a critical situation, because once the families are abroad, there is virtually nothing the Red Cross or anyone can do to help the girl. If the family wants her to marry uncle Aqbah, then she's probably going to have to go through with it, unless she manages against all odds to run away, hitchhike from her village and make it to a Norwegian Embassy or to a women's shelter, which is pretty unlikely. And, thanks to disturbingly lenient family reunion laws in Norway, uncle Aqbah usually gets to join the family back to Norway, where he can screw his young niece/wife to his heart's content.

In a court in Drammen yesterday, the Iraqi man, who threatened his 17-year-old daughter in front of 4 people, was convicted to 10 months in prison. His son/her brother got 8 months. This is the first time an immigrant has been convicted in connection with a forced marriage case, and there is some talk that it will act as a preventative to other immigrants who may be contemplating to force their daughters into marriage. This may be an excellent step in the right direction.

We can only hope.

Added: I was never privvy to any case information (which is highly confidential) while I helped out at the Red Cross. Uncle Aqbah is fictional.

Added 2: The Human Services Report and the debate going on at Bjørn Stærk´s has more to do with arranged marriages (with foreign citizens) than with forced marriages. I should have been more clear in this post about the distinction between the two. Arranged marriages aren´t necessarily bad, but I think there are many many more cases of forced marriages therein than we are aware... And we need to be more aware of them and make it clear that forced marriages will be punished. Clear?
Also, see debate at Dagbladets Politikkblogg (in Norwegian).

Newsweek & the Freedom of the Press

2005-05-19T20:39:00.000-07:00

Newseek & the Freedom of the Press

I haven't blogged about the Newsweek scandal until now because I've had a hard time taking a stance on it. Things started to fall into place today when I read David Brooks' op-ed in the NYT. Highly recommended read.

Brooks is revulsed by the various reactions in the blogosphere to the scandal. He points out that most of the right side of the blogosphere reacted by bashing Newsweek over its poor journalism. (Tor Andre blogs that this is the angle most Norwegian bloggers covering the story have taken-- is there a connection?) Yes, it's a very big deal that Newsweek may have used a faulty source. But were people killed as a result? Hardly.

The left side of the blogosphere, according to Brooks, has aimed its fury on the possibility that the article might actually be correct. This has occured to me, too. I mean, is it such a far stretch of the imagination? Is flushing the Quran down the toilet really that much worse than smearing fake menstrual blood on captives' faces? Or making them simulate masterbation? These are all pretty gruesome methods of torturing religious fundamentalists. But stories of torture and abuse are already so well-known in these circles that the Newsweek article shouldn't make that much of a difference to anybody, be it bloggers or demonstrators in Afghanistan.

Yesterday, trying to sort out my ideas on the scandal, I wrote a comment on Jan Haugland's perceptive post on the topic. "It´s frightening to imagine what the reaction would have been had Newsweek´s journalists been able to claim reliable sources. Another scapegoat situation? Say the story had been 100%-withoutta-doubt true. Do you think Newsweek would have stood up against, amongst others, the Pentagon and persisted in it´s story? When several soldiers had already been killed 'as a result' of it? I can´t help but feel that the moral of the story is to avoid reporting dangerous events. And by dangerous, I mean stuff that will piss off those ever-ready rioters."

And there's the gist of it. I find all forms of torture inexcusable, including flushing the Quran down the toilet. But does it justify killing 17 people? Fuck no. Brooks sums it up much more eloquently: "These are the extremists, the real enemy. Let's keep our eye on the ball."

The question I'm left with: Have these extremists successfully managed to quell the freedom of our press?

Hipp hipp, HURRA

2005-05-17T17:09:00.000-07:00

Hipp hipp, HURRA

Today is the 17th of May, Norway's national holiday. Today, everyone in Norway puts on our finest clothes and gather on the streets of our nation where we wave flags and shout hipp hipp, HURRA! hipp hipp, HURRA! We watch parades and buy balloons and we eat as much candy and ice-cream and drink as much soda and champagne as our hearts desire. Meanwhile, the royal family (minus the king this year, who is recovering from heart surgery) stands on the royal balcony and waves to the ecstatic masses. It is all a very big deal.

I normally celebrate the day by going to a traditional 17th of May breakfast, a gathering of close friends all dressed up early in the morning where we eat a traditional Norwegian breakfast consisting of salmon, herring, scrambled eggs, etc and where we drink a lot of beer and champagne. From there, we go out and observe the masses and drink more beer or champagne and wave flags and make merry.

This year, I celebrated in the usual way, but I replaced my small Norwegian flag with a medium-sized American flag and walked around the streets just outside of Oslo waving my American pride. You see, I may be half-Norwegian, but I'm also half-American, and damned if I don't want to show how proud I am of my heritage on the 17th of May! I think I provoked some close-minded Norwegian hicks (bønder, we call 'em), but I felt that my American flag set off the beauty of the surrounding Norwegian flags quite nicely. Hipp hipp, HOO-RAY, I yelled.

All right, I could have done that, but I didn't. All I did today was split a bottle of wine with my boyfriend after we got off work this morning and then sleep for close to ten hours.

There has been a lot of hooplah here in Norway concerning which flags should be permitted on the 17th of May. The 17th of May committee in Oslo announced a few months ago that only Norwegian flags will be permitted on the 17th. Well, you make a stupid rule and you'll get a stupid reaction. Counties all over the country responded by inviting people of non-Norwegian descent to wave their own flag on the Norwegian national day, you know, to show that Norwegians love foreigners and everyone's welcome here and blah blah blah.

There is a valid reason for the debate. Norway actually has two national flags: the Norwegian and the Saami flags. Oslo, for some reason, doesn't want to wave the Saami one on it's main streets. An idiotic ruling that, as said, has created an idiotic reaction.

I couldn't really imagine flagging the ole stars 'n stripes on the 17th. Not because I don't love America, but because it's the 17th of May and not the 4th of July. But hey, you feel the urge, you go right ahead. Wave your American, Pakistani or Somali flag. Seems fairly moronic to actually forbid you...