from the hip

For the third time there are riots and street fighting in Oslo over the conflict in the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinians. A demonstration against Israel at the Israeli embassy in Oslo turned into a regular street fight when demonstrators threw bottles and stones, and fired fireworks at the police.

As they have one two previous occasions, the police responded with tear gas and spread the crowds. Then the violent demonstration turned into more or less undisciplined street fighting, breaking windows, beating up bystanders, and wrecking havoc on the usually quiet and peaceful city of Oslo.

Norwegian public opinion has increasingly turned in a pro-Palestinian direction over the last few years. Some of the leading newspapers, most notably the once liberal Dagbladet, are relative extremist in its pro-Palestinian view-points. Also, the current left-wing government of the Social democrat party and the Socialist party is pro-Palestinian in its orientation.

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One of Norway’s largest newspapers, Dagbladet, today implicitly accuses Norway’s Prime Minister, Mr. Jens Stoltenberg, of having dished out false promises for 20 years about men’s rights to a paid leave following child births. This is an issue of great concern to many in Norway working for greater equality between men and women.

Every third father, approximately, does currently not have this right in Norway. Men only get this if the mother of the child has worked during six of the ten last months preceding the birth of a child.

The newspaper accuses Stoltenberg very smartly, without actually stating it explicitly, by publishing two news articles side by side on the internet version of the newspaper. One of the articles contains an interview with Mr. Stoltenberg dating from March 1987, 20 years ago. There, as a young and rising star in the Norwegian Labor Party, he strongly argues in favor of men’s right to a paid leave following child births is a very important issue.

The second article, posted right next to the first, states that time is running out for Stoltenberg. While not commenting itself, Dagbladet lets a veteran-member of the Labor Party in Norway, Britt Schultz, say that this reform is overdue, and that there has been a lot of symbol-politics about this, but that symbolic politics do not produce results. Even without comments from the paper itself, this seem to be a pretty strong statement by the paper.

So. There it is. 20 years of talk and no action. That’s a lot of talk.

Nicely done by Dagbladet. Actually.