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20. april 2006
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I wrote some time ago that Norway's junior government coalition partner the Socialist Left (SV) had a campaign going to start a consumer boycott of Israel. The list of supporters for the anti-Israeli initiative included practically the entire left, except the Labour centrists (who, thankfully, are the ones really running the country), and the campaign received enormous media attention, also abroad.
A few months later, it's clear that the boycott has been a total fiasco:
None of the importers or businesses interviewed by newspaper Dagsavisen had noticed any impact from the controversial boycott. An information campaign by SV listing products and companies that consumers could boycott was sent to party organizations around the country, but the 50-60,000 brochures have not had much effect after two months.
"What, is there a boycott? I haven't heard a word about it," Bjørn Selboe, who works for an Oslo fruit and vegetable importer, told Dagsavisen.
"We haven't noticed a thing. If we had, I would know," said information chief Hanne Linnert of the BAMA Group, supplier of oranges, potatoes and peppers to the massive Norgesgruppen grocery chains.
Norwegians aren't as stupid as their politicians.
10:05:19 PM 
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Sir Lawrence Freedman, Professor of War Studies at King's College London, asks whether the ethnic conflict in Iraq is really a civil war, as one is commonly defined.
Comparing Iraq today to the real civil wars in America, post-revolution Russia and finally the Lebanese civil war, he finds that Iraq today is more like the ethnic conflicts in Ireland. Freedman also argues the real danger in Iraq is not that it is heading towards civil war, but that it can end up without a viable central government.
Countries in which there is no effective central government but local warlords using loyal militias to protect their local interests are not uncommon in the Third World, for example in Somalia.
This is the sort of scenario that is more likely in Iraq than a classical civil war, because the Shia majority should always be able to crush any opposition forces drawn from the minority Sunnis.
A far greater risk is that the levels of routine violence reach such a point that the state, even if still notionally backed by coalition forces, is unable to provide a basic level of security to its people and the country implodes.
Undoubtedly the proclamations of "civil war" will not be put to rest by such arguments.
6:15:44 PM
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The Norwegian media is surprisingly obsessed with American news, be it the antics of Hollywood celebrities or anything negative about American politics. So I feel pretty certain that the following two items will not make it into the Norwegian media.
First, jobless claims have fallen sharply, indicating a continued improvement in the labour market.
The Labor Department reported Thursday that new applications filed for unemployment insurance dropped by 10,000 to 303,000, the best showing since the beginning of April. The level of new jobless-benefit filings suggest that the labor market is maintaining decent momentum.
Last week's decline was steeper than analysts were expecting. Before the report was released, they were forecasting claims to fall to 308,000.
Second, and maybe more puzzling, the US experienced a drastic decline in death rate in 2004.
The 2 percent decrease, reported by the National Center for Health Statistics, came as a shock to many, because the U.S. is aging, growing in population and getting fatter. In fact, some experts said they suspect the numbers may not hold up when a final report is released later this year.
Nevertheless, center officials said the statistics, based on a review of about 90 percent of death records reported in all 50 states in 2004, were consistent across the country and were deemed solid enough to report.
The center said drops in the death rates for heart disease, cancer and stroke accounted for most of the decline.
"We were surprised by the sharpness of the decrease. It's kind of historical," said statistician Arialdi Minino, lead author of the report.
It is noted that the death data is preliminary.
6:06:17 PM
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© Copyright 2006 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.05.2006; 13:04:42.
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