Left is right

Today is election-day in our country. We're gonna elect members for our parliament and government for the next four years. I have to make up my mind about which party to vote for.

The election is serious stuff. That’s when we do our duty as citizens. We dress up in our best suit and tie and walk with dignity to the poll place. Not anymore. That’s the way my grandparents did it, the generation who had lived through the war, and really understood the value of democracy.

But it’s still important to vote, even though we show up in washed-out jeans and black T-shirts, to put the ballot in the brown envelope. I agree with the election analyst in radio who said: If you don’t vote, you effectively give half of your vote to the guys you don’t like.

Our political landscape Is quite different from e.g. the United States, where the options are only right wing (Democrats) and ultra-right wing (Republicans). We have a much richer fauna of political parties to choose from. We have the right-wing parties (two of them), the Christian-democrats, the social democrats, the socialist party, the left-liberal party, the environmentalists, and the communists.

Usually, but not always, I have voted for the social democrats, the Labor Party. They’ve been in the government office for eight consecutive years now, and I think they need a break. Some years in opposition would be good for them.

I support the general idea of a society of equal opportunities, free education and free health care, and just distribution of wealth and prosperity (and I’m happy to pay about 50% income tax). Therefore, I can’t really imagine voting for the right wing, or any party in their coalition.

So who should I vote for?

Maybe I should vote for the communists this time. I like some of the ideas of Marx and Engels, but experience has shown that the system doesn’t work very well in practice. Marxism doesn’t fit with human nature. I don't want to be ruled by the communists, but it’s good to have one or two of them in the parliament, as watchdogs and whistleblowers, when the bonds between right-wing politicians and Big Corp become too tight.

Yes, I think I’ve found a solution.

But wait, we have two communist parties; the China-communists and the real (Soviet) communists. Hmm … there’s still a choice I need to make.

And after all, the ballot is secret; I won’t tell what I’m actually going to vote >:)

(I took the picture last week, in the Russian ghost town Pyramiden. The Lenin statue is still there, more than 20 years after the fall of the Soviet regime. I guess nobody have bothered to remove the statue in such a remote location.)

Arctic magic

Last week I was up north, in our archipelago in the Arctic at 78 degrees North.  The archipelago is basically the continental shelf lifted above sea level.  It’s one and half times the size of Denmark, and more than half of it covered by glaciers. The rest of the land is free from snow and ice in the summer.

One week away from the modern world, away from cell-phone coverage and wireless networks. It was the last week of midnight sun, and still light around the clock. We stayed in a nice and comfortable ship that took us around in the fjords. When I woke up one morning and pulled the curtains to the side, the first thing I saw was a Beluga playing outside of the window.

It’s cool to hike around with geologists, because they know everything about the landscape we pass; how and when it was made. Layer-cake mountains and rivers, valleys and fjords, carved by the glaciers of the ice ages.  Present-day glaciers flow slowly from the mountains to the fjords. Sometimes ice bergs break off the front of the rugged ice, and exhibit the bluish ice core.

In the morning we went by Zodiaks to work, from the red and white ship to shore. There were smart and shy students, and loud professors with big egos, and everything in between. All of them were nice people. We had a great time.

We hiked over shorefaces and plains with scares flowers, into the valleys, and up in the mountain sides. At interesting exposures we stopped to study the rocks, and to get a lecture by an expert. The outdoor classroom, as stunning beautiful as it can possibly get.

Polar bear scouters armed with rifles were ahead of us and out to the sides. This is the kingdom of the polar bear. It’s his home, we are only visitors. We must behave according to this. 

The polar bear is the perfect raptor, waiting patiently by the seals breath holes, climbing vertical cliffs to get to the bird nests, and running twice as fast as Usain Bolt. The polar bear is the king of the Arctic, and one of the few raptors that hunt humans.

The Arctic is magic, the Arctic is addictive.  I had to get home before I got stuck.  But I’ll be back >:)

(I took more than a hundred pictures last week. Above are just a few of them)