from the hip

Paris Hilton is in Copenhagen today and for a few more days. She is apparently promoting her line of products (bags produced in her name by PH Europe, to be sold in more than 80 countries worldwide) at some fashion event in Copenhagen. She is together with Benji Madden, her rocker boyfriend.

And Copenhagen seems to love her. She creates chaos, says the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet. Especially the media are wild. They are all full of pictures and articles about Paris Hilton, and the TV-stations have shows going where Paris Hilton says “I love Copenhagen” (I think that is about all she has said, so far), and where spectators are interviewed about why and how much they love Paris Hilton.

It is all slightly insane. I mean, so far she hasn’t done anything, and hardly said anything?

I wonder: Will the city remain standing if she shows up tomorrow without her undies?

In Denmark, body paint is becoming fashionable among pregnant women. They go and get their bodies painted, and then, next, get themselves photographed. This is a nice way to create very special and sometimes even spectacular memories of their pregnancies.

I think the pictures are stunning. Very beautiful, and with some very intriguing designs also!

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The Icelandic band Sigur Rós has recorded a somewhat unusual music video for a song entitled “Gobbledigook”. The video has lots of nudity (what is known as “frontal nudity” in the US). As a result, it will be banned on MTV and has been removed from YouTube.

The movie may be interesting because of the nudity - it has both nude males and nude women. It may also be interesting because of lots of pubic hair - a new trend? In Iceland?

However, the most interesting aspect of this is the marketing aspect. We have seen Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton, and others using sex videos and nudity to become world famous. Is this possible for a band with a music video too? If it has lots of nudity?

Also, the media world is changing, and this video may well illustrate how relatively unimportant traditional media channels are becoming - even YouTube, when it chooses to censor. My bet is that this video will go viral, and that it will be one of the most viewed music videos this year.

It is still art? Who knows? However, the new album, which this song is from, is called “Nude”, so at least it reflects the title of the album.

What remains to be seen is whether sex sells, and whether the group will be able to reach their intended audience with this content or not?

We will see!

PS: Oh, and the video? You can find it on the homepage of Sigur Rós:  Here.

A Norwegian agent of the National Security Authority was sentenced in Norway a few days ago for downloading and storing child pornography. He actually did this at work! Aftenposten writes:

The man, who did not have an Internet connection at home, used two years before his arrest in March 2006, sitting in a former NATO bunker in Kolsås and filling 99 CDs with child pornography, involving the abuse of minors as young as four to five years of age.

.. The NSM worker had the highest security clearance at the time, with access to top secret material when arrested.

The NSM’s own control system picked up the abnormal network traffic on their service server, and notified police.

The secret agent actually had compiled a collection of 600 films and 1750 images of hard-core child porn while on the job.

I guess secret agents aren’t all like James Bond after all?!? Sad, sad.

Telegraph (newspaper, UK) reports that increasing numbers of middle-aged men are going off sex, according to relationship experts. They report it is an universal trend, but I suspect it may only be a British trend:

Counselling and sex therapy charity Relate says it has seen a 40 per cent increase in men who simply cannot be bothered to make love to their wives and partners.

The findings are a world away from just ten years ago, when hardly any men contacted them with a loss of libido. The main sufferers who call its helpline with the problem are generally aged between 30 and 50 and are married.

Peter Bell, Relate’s head of practice, said: “Men used to come to us with impotence – now known as erectile insufficiency – but Viagra has sorted some of that problem. What we have is a lot of men who say, as women did in the 1950s: ‘I can have sex but I do not want to. It’s not rewarding’.

An English professor thinks he has the explanation:

Professor Michael King, of the Royal Free and University College Medical School in London, has completed a study into mental illness across six countries which found that the rate of major depression and panic syndrome was highest among men in the UK.

I am not able to question his conclusion. But I do feel sorry for all those beautiful, attractive, suffering English ladies out there. And I feel confident that there must be men, somewhere within the common labor market of the EU, who may be convinced to move to the UK to help them out.

After all, there must be lots of fun to be had in the once Great Britain these days. And if the natives are not willing to do it, somebody has to…

Awaiting your mail, ladies!

The Austrain Incest Case

Father Confesses to Horrific Crime. He held his daughter prisoner and abused her for decades. In the most spectacular kidnapping and incest case in Austrian history, a man has confessed to having held his daughter hostage for 24 years and siring seven children with her. (Der Spiegel)

Austria Stunned by Case of Imprisoned Woman. With his Mercedes-Benz and his fine clothes, Josef Fritzl looked every inch a property owner, neighbors in this tidy Austrian town said Monday. Even when running errands, they said, he wore a natty jacket, crisp shirt and tie. (New York Times)

The Family Man of Amstetten: Double life of a pillar of Austrian society. How did the perpetrator of one of modern Europe’s most horrific crimes convince his neighbours he was a respectable man? (The Independent)

Josef Fritzl: a shrewd liar and an obsessive tyrant. Casual acquaintances knew Josef Fritzl as a jovial fellow who liked to drink beer and enjoyed a bawdy joke.

But former neighbors say the man accused of imprisoning his daughter and fathering her seven children ran his household like a dictator. Piece by piece, a picture is emerging of a shrewd liar and an obsessive tyrant. (International Herald Tribune/AP)
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The case about Josef Fritzl, the Austrian that kidnapped his own daughter and kept her in a small underground apartment, behind seven locked doors, for 24 years while he abused her both sexually and in other ways, represents, to me, evil in a pure, undiluted form. Not only bad, evil acts, but systematic, organized evil.

As the full extent of his actions has been revealed - the torment to which he exposed his daughter for almost a quarter of a century, raping her and fathering her seven children in that little cave - I have become more and more perplexed. How can this be? How is such behavior possible in our time and age? How can a man become such a monster? And at a more practical level - how could a thing like this go on in a civilized, well-regulated society for 24 years?

A man claiming to be protecting his family, but obviously also a man who knew this his style of protection was more than a little at odds with socially accepted forms of protection. While his lawyer may be able to see good things in Fitzl, I really do not.

We are starting to learn a little bit about his past. It sheds considerable light on the question of how he became the monster. It offers, possibly, at least the beginnings of a seemingly plausible psychological explanation for his monstrous crimes. The Independent writes:

In an interview, the sister of Fritzl’s wife, Rosemarie, a woman identified as 56-year-old Christine R said that Fritzl had been brought up by a single mother with an explosive temper who resorted to violence to control her child.

“Josef grew up without a father. His mother raised him with her fists,” Mrs R said. “She used to beat him black and blue almost every day. Something must have been broken in him because of that. He was unable to feel any kind of sympathy for other people. He humiliated my sister for most of her life.”

He grew up being systematically subjected to and controlled by violence. But even so, the case still makes me perplex. The reason is that Josef F. at the same time was so much more than a monster, in other settings, with other people. He was evil incarnate, but also a smiling, respected, and somewhat successful businessman who amassed a fortune of 4 million dollars or so.

Over the years, more than 100 people have rented rooms and apartments from him. Seemingly without having much of a clue as to what went on. Apart from one person, that is, who has admitted to knowing about sexual abuse. But he was scared of Josef F. and did not dare to report it to anyone. Also, it has become known that Josef’s brother had a key to the basement.

Lately, after the case has become public, we have also seen a number of old, unsolved crimes resurfacing. An unsolved murder, several unsolved rapes. So far, the ties to Josef F. are speculative. But it would not, I guess, be very surprising if they turned out to be real. According to Der Spiegel, he raped his own daughter in front of her his and her children. So why should anything be a surprise?

So there was Josef F. the beast, and there was Josef F. the family man, and Josef F. the businessman. Possibly Josef F. the murderer and rapist. The multiple faces of Josef F. And the smiling face with the evil behind.

The little we know about his background, so far, may perhaps begin to explain, partly at least, the monster. However, explaining how the monster could coexist, seemingly with easy, with the other faces of Josef Fritzl, is a bigger challenge.

More about this case:

The Independent: The Making of a Monster

No need to be surprised when a house of horrors turns up on a quiet provincial street

Josef Fritz in the news

New York Times: Austria Stunned by Case of Imprisoned Woman

Painting a portait of Austrian incest suspect Josef Fritzl

Guardian (UK): How many more of our missing are stuck in some underground prison? (Expert view)

‘Every little thing she did, her father would hit her’

The Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard has created a piece entitled “Margaux Hemingway”. In Norwegian newspapers it is more often referred to as “the vagina arm”.

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The minister of justice in Norway has proposed criminalizing the purchase of sexual services. The law proposes imposing fines and up to six months in jail for anyone convicted of paying a prostitute for sex. The law is in line with a “Sex Purchase Law” passed by neighboring Sweden in 1999, which has been the subject of intense interest in Europe and elsewhere.

Justice Minister Knut Storberget said in presenting the proposed law: “People are not a commodity and criminalizing the purchase of sex would make it less attractive for human traffickers to look to Norway.”

I am not sure I like the law. I don’t really know how smart it is to criminalize people for buying sex. But at least that part of the law I respect. The part I have strong objections to, is the part that says that the law should apply to Norwegians visiting other countries as well. This is strange as a legal principle.

I mean, if a Norwegian drive a car at 160 km/hour on a German highway, this is legal in Germany but illegal in Norway. But people do not get punished for it when they return home to Norway. Same for smoking cannabis in Amsterdam. And so on. But now the government proposes that when a Norwegian does something in a foreign country that is legal in that country, he is to be punished when he returns home?

And, in addition to the very strange legal principle involved, there is also the almost impossible situation with respect to implementation. Are Dutch policemen supposed to look out for Norwegians buying sex, when that purchase is legal in the Netherlands? And the same in other countries, of course.

So, seems to me, the only people who will be punished for this are the ones admitting to have done it - some honest guys - and people who are informed about by friends that can’t be trusted or enemies, and then some few others more or less randomly.

To me it seems strange and not very smart to put in place a law that punishes the honest and rewards informers. Is that how the socialist government in Norway wants Norway to become?

Today there was a big meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, about the bare breast (”Bara Bröst” in Swedish) movement. The topic is why naked female breasts provoke some people so much.

The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet has an interview with one of the participants, feminist Nour El-Refai says that “I think people should let women’s breasts in peace. We women should be allowed to de-sexualize our breasts if we want to. We are not to blame for the sexualization of breasts. A de-sexualization of breasts would increase my freedom as a woman.”

Nour firmly believes that the bath house protests of the bare breast movement in Sweden represent a good approach for the movement, as they are visible manifestations that attract attention.

She says de-sexualization of breasts is important in order for the sexes to be able to act natural: “I do not get wet by watching the naked breasts of a man, so why should it be that way for men?”

The feminist movement in Scandinavia has been very successful in a large number of areas. Now a growing number of feminists, especially in Sweden and Denmark, want to fight for the right to behave as men do with respect to their bodies. They essentially want to be able to be topless wherever and whenever men are allowed to be topless. In public bath houses, at the beach, and similar places. They also want to be able to take off their shirts on the soccer field after a match, like the men do. And so on.

A short statement of their goals in English can be found on one of their blogs. Also, Washington Post has had an article about this movement. And here is a Wikipedia article (unfortunately in Swedish).