The availability of books is not the same as reading them, nor reading the same as understanding them

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.”

I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.

Historien er ikke noe som tilhører fortiden.Historien finnes inne i vår bevissthet, og kanskje også i vår ubevissthet, det er den varme strømmen av levende blod som motstandsløst bringes videre fra en genreasjon til den neste.

faen ta (at jeg elsker) deg

han lever
for henne
jeg dør
av det

jeg vet mye
jeg vet hvorfor
stjerner lyser
og hvor lenge
en elefant
har barnet sitt
i magen
jeg vet hvordan
man leser noter
og hvordan man
bøyer verb
på samisk
jeg vet hvordan
man trøster en venn
og hvilke låter
som får alt til å
stoppe litt opp
jeg vet
hvilke farger
som er pene sammen
og hvordan man
reparerer en
gammel sykkel
men jeg vet ikke
hvordan jeg får
deg
ut av hjertet
når hele kroppen
skriker at du må
bli

jeg liker ordet kvinner
men enda bedre
liker jeg ordet
søstre
vi kjemper bedre
når vi står sammen
og løfter hverandre
opp og fram
akkurat slik søstre skal

Sannhet har ingenting å gjøre med antallet mennesker som er overbevist (Paul Claudel)

AIDS is the biogenetic equivalent of the atom bomb.

The "Manhattan Project," the secret program to develop the bomb,
had its beginnings in 1939 with a letter from Einstein
to President Roosevelt alerting him that German physicists had
recently entered an historically new realm in their research
and would someday be capable of creating an explosive, based
on the splitting of the atom,
that would be unimaginably more destructive than any other weapon
ever known to mankind.
From that moment on, it was a certainty that the weapon would be built
—and used — someday.

I don't know when the virus that would kill by destroying the human
immune system was first conceived in some scientist's brain.
But intelligence reports indicate that the actual laboratory
experiments — at Fort Detrick, Los Alamos and Cold Spring Harbor —
began during the 1960s.

/

The federal agency responsible for controlling the outbreak of epidemics,
the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, recently circulated a secret
memo to its top officials
estimating that one out of eight children born in America today
will die of AIDS before they reach the age of 50.

A secret CIA report has concluded that twenty-five percent of Americans
now showing symptoms of AIDS are in their early twenties —
which means they contracted the disease while teenagers.

"For every documented case of a young person testing positive
for the HIV virus," the CIA report continues,
"there are 1,000 others who carry the highly active virus,
without even being aware of it." ( . . )

..Jean Denezet, one of the French bankers who was present
during McNamara's 1970 speech on population control, told Le Figaro,
the newspaper most closely aligned with the French government:
"World financial crisis will become virtually inevitable.
Political consequences, just like in 1930, will be serious, but this
time they will take place in the Third World."

Denezet made other remarks that Le Figaro chose not to publish.
Here's the rest of what Denezet said in 1983:
"Horrible things are going to happen in the Third World — and
there is nothing to do, but just let it happen.

Three and a half billion people are going to be plunged into a Hell
worse than the Middle Ages."
(Note the reference to the Middle Ages, with its oblique overtone of
another Great Plague.)

Denezet knew what he was talking about. Since 1983,
Africa has indeed been Hell worse than the Middle Ages.

According to Dr. E. O. Idusogie, of the FAO regional office
in Accra, Ghana, "about 100 million people in Africa are suffering
from malnutrition (a euphemism for starving);
AIDS carries away thousands every day, and civil wars in the region
are causing chaos, confusion and a total breakdown of even
the most meager sanitary conditions."

In 1989, Dr. Bernard Debre, a member of the French National
Assembly, was interviewed by Paris Match upon his return
from a tour of the continent.
"Africa, engulfed by AIDS, is in a terrible situation because
the disease thrives upon fragile populations;
practically all (black) Africans are infected with malaria and
parasites. … In Zaire, when we do blood tests, one out of four
is contaminated with AIDS.
All of the African countries are hit, and in some countries …
terrible proportions. Congo, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Cameroon, are
severely hit. Zaire or Burundi may die."
He estimated that perhaps thirty or forty percent of the populations
were already infected with AIDS.
"Poverty in Africa makes a serious fight against AIDS almost
impossible."

While in the U.S., men with AIDS outnumber women with AIDS by
seven to one, in Africa it is a family disaster.
Women in Africa are more likely than men to die of AIDS.
Four out of five AIDS sufferers in Zimbabwe are women.
Among women in Africa, AIDS is spreading 100 times faster
than in the U.S.
According to an intelligence report, new, more virulent strains
of the AIDS virus are surfacing. These have appeared in
thousands of cases where persons tested showed false-negative
results. It is believed that HIV testing simply did not identify
the new strains.

[ fulltekst >

Orda hennar hadde vekt noko i han, noko han ikkje visste hadde vore der: Ei gleda over å eiga makt og samstundes tena folket!

While he was alive, it felt as if the old man had cast a spell on us all, making our way of life feel hopeful, decent and strong, like it would last forever. His unshakeable belief in it all made me think we could defy the outside world. I wore that belief like a protective cloak. I was a proud little Spartan.

The meaning of each election is the promise of the next one.

Tida går i ring. Du kallar ho notid, du menneske, tida di her på jord.

Dei reddast for usedde makter under og over jord, bad sine bøner, lærde kvede og tonar. Dei tilbad jorda og ottast dauden, og kjende trong til ein frelsar. ...

Mennesket er dømt til å leva i si eiga tid, der fødsel og død er som skilde av grindestolpane i eit led. Imellom ligg lagnaden, den som kan gje ein opplevinga av tusen vårar - og kanskje frostnetter. Slik kan mennesket møta verda, og alle har si eiga vandring etter ukjende stigar.

Å fortolke livet under kristendommens lys er å velge ut noen stjerne og ignorere andre. Det er å ta på seg ett par briller, og la de andre ligge. Erkjennelsen av at perspektivet, og dermed også svaret, kunne være annerledes, og også t det ville la seg argumentere for, må være en grunnleggende del av ydmykheten på kristendommens vegne. Vi har ikke det fullkomne svar eller den fullkomne sikkerheten. Virkeligheten er for stor, for rik, for variert til at en kan mate den inn i en vitenskapsmaskin og komme ut kun med ett mulig livssyn. Derfor er det fullt mulig å være nihilist, buddhist, muslim, humanetiker. O selvsagt kristen.

Og hvis vi først skal håpe, er det tross alt mer håpefullt å regne inn en Gud enn å tro på politikerne og vår egne evner til å forbedre oss selv og samfunnet.

Ofte er det en enkeltsetning som slår meg i bakken. Det ande overser, kan være det vi legger merke til. Og omvendt. Som da du så meg i øynene og sa: Du kommer til å gjøre noen veldig lykkelig. Det tok meg et sekund å forstå hva den setningen betydde. At den betydde: noen - men ikke meg.

Det siste, idealet om det enkle livet, handler blant annet om mindre fokus på det materielle, på status og eiendeler, og mer fokus på det som har betydning i livet. Skreller man bort uvesentligheter, står man igjen med et ganske enkelt stillas, og det stillaset kan bære livet.