Life in the Provinces
I was passing through a Norwegian public transport station recently, and saw this ad on the screens:
Roughly translated: "His first 100 days threaten 100 years of advancement in children's rights. Donate by Vipps [payment app] 100 to 2230."
"Redd Barna" on the end literally translates as "Save the Children" but it's also the proper name of a Norwegian charity org. On their website is a bit more description.
Da den amerikanske presidenten tiltrådte, stanset han all amerikansk bistand – en beslutning som over natten frarøvet barn over hele verden livsviktig mat, medisiner og beskyttelse. Hans første 100 dager truer 100 års fremgang for barns rettigheter. Nå trenger barn over hele verden at du blir med å kjempe. Bistandskutt og bistandsfrys har satt barns liv i fare. Uten nødhjelp og bistand står millioner av barn overfor en usikker fremtid. Vi i Redd Barna nekter å la dette skje, og vil fortsette å kjempe for at alle barn skal overleve, lære og være trygge.
On one level this is just another begpost with crying children, by a more serious source (still not very serious, Redd Barna was also doing Greta Thunberg nonsense about climate change).
On another level I'm annoyed by the persistent low-level dishonesty and lawyer-speak. It's not enough to simply say that Trump has stopped funding and children are starving, no, Redd Barna feels the need to say there's some "children's rights" that were "advancing" or "developing" thanks to specific recent innovation, and Trump "threatens" these "rights".
On another level I once again get the feeling that Norway is an American province. (Most of the world is American provinces.) Here's a Norwegian organization writing in the Norwegian language inside Norwegian buildings to ask for more money to Pooristan, and it's framed around the American president, because it's so dependent on American money. Redd Barna says it will have to close operations in 40 countries, because of Donald Trump. Redd Barna says it will be unable to serve 8-12 million children, because of Donald Trump. Redd Barna has become an American appendage, which speaks Norwegian for legacy reasons.
Which brings me to another recent bit of Life in the Provinces.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has faced calls to respond after the Trump administration cut funding to seven Australian universities. The administration's move came after US agencies asked Australian researchers to justify why they should continue receiving American research grants. The cut of funding could leave a $600 million hole in the efforts of Australian researchers, with the US the largest research partner of Australia.
That's a lot of money. This sort of thing keeps happening. Trump pulls some funding, and a foreign country scrambles to respond because apparently some sector of their industry was living off the American money hose.
Further down the article we have this talking head:
"The federal government must push back on the Trump administration's blatant foreign interference in our independent research in the strongest possible terms," NTEU president Alison Barnes said.
I do not think those words mean what you think they mean. Is this the Curse of Babel?
