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2012-04-20

Bettervision 2012: Estonia

Similar to Hungary, Ott Lepland from Estonia wants us to stop and listen. To observer and just be is a therapeutic meditation that helps you get rooted with "now". The moments you are able to block out past and future are moments of euphoria. He doesn't sing it, I speak from experience. People should do it on a regular basis. It is an important ingredient for a better world.




Listen to the horizon
Listen to how far it takes you
Listen to what the wind has to say
Listen
Watch as darkness approaches
Wait – the light remains within us
Listen to how your land breathes
Listen

Listen to what has fallen silent
Just listen to these simple moments
Listen – the heart too has a voice

The path has passed into shadow
I look and keep on looking
Silence has the power to resound
I wait for you here, halfway there
Listen to my voice calling you

Listen to what has fallen silent
Just listen to these simple moments
Listen – my heart has a voice

Listen

2012-04-13

Bettervision 2012: Hungary

A better world begins with listening to our hearts, defeating hatred, accepting differences as a source of enrichment. This is the message of the Hungarian entry, a strong candidate for Bettervision 2012.


The whole big world is just one place
You can say it’s all the same
You may feel hatred’s it sows
We can show it’s no way to go

This is the sound of our hearts, if you listen
This is a zeal from above and it can say it all
This is a fever they can’t take away
This is the sound of, the sound of
The sound of our hearts

The sound of our hearts
The sound of our hearts

Harmony can be achieved
Just find some way to get connected
Differences may not be wrong
They enrich the things that we know

Different faiths, different views
All we can do is to turn them in key

This is the sound of our hearts, if you listen
This is a zeal from above and it can say it all
This is a fever they can’t take away
This is the sound of, the sound of, the sound

This is the sound of our hearts, if you listen
This is a zeal from above and it can say it all
This a fever they can’t take away
This is the sound of, the sound of
The sound of our hearts

The sound of our hearts
The sound of our hearts

2012-04-09

Unemployed Vagabond: It is so bad at home...

Physical security. It's one of the basic needs of humans. But as Antarctic hikers and Mt Everest climbers prove, every individual have a different pereception of what is acceptable security. It is easy to understand that large numbers of people flee from war zones. Yet some insist on staying, even though their lives are in imminent danger.
    "Ah, Oklahoma!" the other man said, finally putting the pieces together. "Yes, Oklahoma City. It is a dangerous place?"
    I couldn't imagine what he was talking about. Cowboys? Indians? "Dangerous?"
    "Wasn't there a bombing"
    "A-? Oh, right. Yeah, well, there was one bombing."
    "But it was a very big bombing, yes? Many pople killed."
    "Sure, it was very big. But it was one bombing almost ten years ago." We were in occupied Palestine and this guy was worried about Oklahoma being dangerous? I supposed that was what happened if you knew nothing about a place except its bombings.

It is difficult to set a universally defined threshold as to when someone decides to just pick up and leave. I see three degrees of uncertainty associated with leaving, which is part of the formula deciding when to leave. They are:
    Things are so bad for my physical health and/or mental health and/or economy (all three are interrelated anyway), that I can not imagine my current situation as sustainable, therefore I must leave and...
    1. ...I have found a new and better place to go to, all is set up.
    2. ...where I'm going I have a social network to take care of me while I attempt to get on my own feet.
    3. ...must face the unknown in a desparate hope that I find a way to support myself (and my family).
The lower the degree of uncertainty, the lower the threshold to move. Leaving at a third degree uncertainty is usually invoked only when you find your health in imminent danger and see absolutely no way that the current situation will improve on its own. And that's when you get the "unemployed vagabond".

The world operates with two distinct flavours of unemployed vagabonds - that is, people with no fixed income who travel and thus lack basic physical, mental and economic security. They are "War Refugees" and "Economic Refugees". The war refugee has been recognized for so long that the term "refugee" is usually perceived as refugees from a war zone specifically.

Economic Refugees have also been around for quite a while. The Great Transatlantic Migration from 1836 to 1916 was greatly an economic escape from Europe to The Promised Land of North America. Similarly, many Africans risk their lives trying to cross over to Europe, because a small chance of surviving, and still have no clue as to what awaits on the other side, is somehow better than the status quo.

More recently, during Iceland's economic crisis beginning 2008, many people got on the ferry to Norway in search for a new life. Greeks have found their way to the United Arab Emirates. Mexicans have been migrating to the USA for a long time. Now, Americans are finding their way to Ecuador. Irish find their way to Canada.

The list goes on and on. And it's about economy:


"I didn't leave Cuba for political reasons, I left for economic reasons"
"An economy run into the ground because of what?"
"Because of the government of Cuba"
"I see now that you're not as dumb as you sound"

While a country's economy greatly affects its people, Hans Rosling has shown some tremendous statistics about the difference between rich and poor within each country as possibly more important than the difference between countries. Local politics play as much a role, if not more, than international politics.

I conclude this article with Hans Rosling's 2007 statistics about poverty:




2012-04-06

Bettervision 2012: Russia

Unline most party songs in Eurovision, Russia's contribution is an invitation to a communal dance. The message being, let us ALL be happy. Ordinarily, party songs is not what I wanted to include in Bettervision, but I needed to make an exception here, as even Russia has made a very unexpected exception to their own contribution: The lyrics are not in Russian, but in the Udmurt language. This makes me very happy, and I would love to party with these Udmurt grannies!


I am spreading a tablecloth carefully, waiting for my sons
Let the dough rise and warm our hearts
Party for everybody, dance
Come on and dance
Come on and dance
Come on and boom, boom

The house is full of my dear children, who have just returned
The house is full of my dear children, who have just returned
I am going to put on a green dress and a red shawl
I am going to put on a green dress and start dancing

We wanna boom boom boom, we wanna party party
We wanna boom boom boom for everybody

Party for everybody, dance
Come on and dance
Come on and dance
Come on and

Party for everybody, dance
Come on and dance
Come on and dance
Come on and boom, boom

The cat is happy, the dog is happy
The cat is happy, the dog is happy
We are in a wonderful mood and very happy
We are in a wonderful mood, oh joy

We wanna boom boom boom, we wanna party party
We wanna boom boom boom for everybody

Party for everybody, dance
Come on and dance
Come on and dance
Come on and

Party for everybody, dance
Come on and dance
Come on and dance
Come on and… boom, boom

Party for everybody, dance
Come on and dance
Come on and dance
Come on and

Party for everybody, dance
Come on and dance
Come on and dance
Come on and boom, boom, boom, boom

2012-04-03

Latvian brain drain

I have reasons to take a pinch of salt with anything served by a mass media outlet such as RT. They like to exagerate, make a big deal out of things, in order to gain viewers. But in this case, they do have a point.

The most resourceful people are the ones who can most easily leave the country and find better pay elsewhere. Of course, working in a different country gives valuable experience. Provided, of course, that the person then comes back home to use this experience in developing the country.

This is one of the things that came up in Pamela Olson's Fast times in Palestine: Palestinians with education and experience from other places in the world return to Palestine to help improve the conditions there.

What a country needs in dire times is not a brain drain, but bold people who find a way to use the current situation as a strength. Hjörtur Smárason stayed in Iceland when the bubble burst in 2008, and has since become a world leader of "Recession Marketing", which seems to be exactly what the world needs right now.

2012-04-02

Project: Unemployed Vagabond

What's the documentary about?

Norwegian national TV recently broadcast a documentary called "Please, please, please" about, well... that's my first problem: What is this documentary really about?

In the online description and related article, it's about Romanians, i.e. citizens of the European country Romania. However, the contents of the article, the introduction in the documentary itself as well as the closing, the host speaks about the Romani people.

Government officials interviewed are very clear about them speaking of Romanians (Norwegian "rumener"), even when the journalist keep turning it into something about the Romani people (Norwegian "romfolk" or "romanifolk"). One police officer emphasizes that we really are talking about Romanian citizens, even though this is still an unfair use of terms, since there are also many Romanian citizens in Norway that are not beggars.

In the related article to the documentary, it begins with Romanians, while the journalist keeps discussing Romani people.

Some will claim that the specific Romanian citizens who come to Norway as vagabond beggars are, indeed, Romani people, the documentary keeps jumping back and forth between the two so often, that it's sometimes difficult to distinguish the two. It is this kind of documentary that supports the Romanian government's claim that the Romani people must change name.

As such, the documentary brings up a specific social issue, pretending that the same social issue belongs to only a specific group of people of which we are confused about whether we should refer to them for their nationality or ethnicity - and closing with words about similar "issues" within the same ethnicity in Norway.

So what was it about again?
"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."

The documentary spends a lot of time referencing an ethnicity and/or nationality, both of which bring unjustice to others within the same ethnicity or nationality. This injustice was recognized by a police officer, who seemed to lack a good term for the people in question at less than ten syllables. Spending so much time of the documentary focusing which term to use, and ignoring other groups of people doing the same thing, takes attention and energy away from the acual issue at hand.

So here's what it really is about:

1) The economic and social situation in someone's home is experienced to be so bad, that
2) the person leaves home and family to a strange country with no prior arrangements for employment,
3) with the only hope to be able to beg for money on the street,
4) where they also sleep,
5) send some of their earning back to their family, and
6) residents of the new country see beggars as a problem, even when it is legal.

The last issue spawns the documentary meant to highlight the first five issues.  So I wish to take a closer look at remaining issues. But that must wait till another article.