Time to steal some ideas from Obama

Openness and transparency in politics is important. Very important. It gives indications of how legitimate a political system is. It gives us better possibilities to check whether the politicians are doing the job they already promised us they should do. The more secretive, the more suspect, in my opinion. New technologies are giving politicians new … Continue reading →

Stories to read

Bissy, bissy days, very little time to blog, unfortunatelly. But I’ve read lots of great stuff recently, and wants to share some of my favorite links. Recently, I wrote an article in Morgenbladet about a new law proposal that seems to make EU less transparent. While writing that article, I became aware of these two … Continue reading →

Norway according to Margot Wallström

For those of you interested in EU, gender equality, Norway, blogging (what a strange mix, kind of like me…), you have to read Vice-president in the European Commission, Margot Wallström’s blog post, and even more importantly, take a look at the comments. She went to Norway a few weeks ago to participate in the debate … Continue reading →

The Euro blogosphere

For those of you interested in the EU/Euro/European blogosphere, Jon Worth has an excellent blog post about the movers and shakers. Start feeding your RSS reader! (Worth says that blogs that don’t have RSS feeds are not included, so if you write about European issues and you still haven’t gotten a feed, shame on you! … Continue reading →

Why there are no .eu domains in the “land of otherness” (Norway)

Last week, we could read that 300 000 .eu web domains were created in 2007, two years after the domain was created. According to the European Commission, .eu is the fourth most popular Top Level Domain (TLD) in Europe (after .de and .uk) and the ninth most popular TLD worldwide (after .com, .net, and .org, … Continue reading →

Report about EU’s ICT policy

I got myself some a nice piece of bureaucratic reading this evening. Today, the Norwegian EU Delegation published a report about EU’s ICT policy. I’ll get back when I’ve done some further reading – just one quick observation – why is this report published in Word, instead of PDF?

Who do I call if I want to call Europe?

I’m at the European Council meeting in Brussels right now, and have a draft of the presidency conclusions in front of me. Since almost all publications report on the big political issues such as Eu’s ambitious environmental goals, I thought it could be good to look at some other issues, such as my personal favorite … Continue reading →

About EIT, the Koran movie and dirty editors

Some quick but good links is all I got time for today: The European Parliament has approved the establishment of EIT – the European equivalent of MIT. Commission President José Manuel Barroso says that “EIT is set to become an important feature of Europe’s innovation landscape”. I’m curious to see how this EIT invention will … Continue reading →

8th of March for IT-girls

Living in Brussels, there are different ways to celebrate the International Womens Day, depending on your interests. Power Women attend this conference today, such as Condoleezza Rice, American Minister of Foreign Affairs. Women with less fancy titles and less abilities to start a war, such as myself, attend a “power lunch” with these people tomorrow. … Continue reading →

Safer Internet, according to European teenagers

What do teenagers think is safe Internet behavior? And what would they advice their peers to do and not to do? Well, a bunch of European 14-17 years old have given a lot of thought on the subject, and on the Safer Internet Day in Brussels a few weeks ago, they presented their ideas. I … Continue reading →

Free speakers get EU protection

Freedom of speech is a hot topic these days, and those who speak more freely than others (or about more controversial issues, such as Islam), can now expect to get protection from EU. Few days ago, I wrote about Aayan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch politicians who is living with constant death threats on her shoulders, … Continue reading →

Innovation and PISA from a Norwegian perspective

I was playing around with some red threads yesterday, and it occurred to me that these two things are related – PISA and innovation. Yesterday, EU published a press release for the European Innovation scoreboard 2007 – a summary of the situation in the 27 member states. Guess what – Norway is doing quite badly … Continue reading →

Security fund for individuals threatened by terrorists

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the previous Dutch politician, is the one who suggests this, according to the Guardian. She has been living under tight police protection since the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an Islamist extremist in 2004. Hirsi Ali’s outspoken criticism of Islam has resulted in several death threats. In 2006 she … Continue reading →

New Norwegian site for the Data Retention Directive

The controversial EU directive, the Data Retention Directive (in Norwegian, Datalagringsdirektivet), has gotten its Norwegian website. Check it out and inform yourself, this might become part of Norwegian law. This site is started by a privat person, Simon Eriksen Valvik Update: Here are some more sites that are dedicated to the Directive (Norwegian and international): … Continue reading →

Why can’t there be a female EU president?

Everyone is talking about a female American president, but seems to have forgotten that EU has never had a female top leader. Why not? Because the male leaders are chosen undemocraticly by other men, says Margot Wallström, Vice President in the European Commission in a very frank interview in Times. Nikolas Sarkozy was quick to … Continue reading →