Another tragedy in Afghanistan

Unfortunately, my Senior Project topic has become more relevant because of the recent death of a young boy from Norway.

The Norwegian soldier Claes Joachim Olsson (22) was the driver on board in a CV9030. A CV9030 is a light tank, which is faster than a normal tank, but with less armor. Olsson was killed yesterday when his tank ran over a road bomb. Luckily, the two other soldiers who also were in the same tank survived with only light injuries. Earlier, there has been a debate about whether Norway should or shouldn’t use armored tanks in these areas. Probably, the two other soldiers would not have survived if the vehicle wasn’t a tank.

Olsson is the fifth Norwegian soldier who has died during service in Afghanistan. He was popular among his fellow soldiers. Olsson was devoted to his duty and a good human being and soldier. Read more about the sad story here .

Nutcases and psychopaths, ore real Americans?

In 2008 during the presidential election journalist and documentary filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi made a HBO documentary called Right America: Felling wronged -- Some Voices From the Campaign Trail. In the documentary Pelosi follows the John McCain campaign and interviews mostly conservatives who didn’t wanted to have Barack Obama as there president. Many of the statements in the documentary are hateful and racist. The documentary shows how ignorance and religion can encourage these hateful and racist statements.

For instance There is a young guy who carries a T-shirt where he have written “No to Socilism," When Pelosi tells him he's misspelled socialism and asks him to define it, the boy says "basically, it's like the views of Hitler. It's between like communism and -- I don't know what the other word is."

There is one clip from a church where the priest takes a political stand, and encourages the congregation to vote for the Republican Party.

If you are interest in religions role in American check out this the documentary also made by HBO and Pelosi.

After watching both documentaries I think that Pelosi has a very peculiar way to make documentaries. She almost only films short interviews with people, where they come with some short statements. Pelosi does not take us viewers too these peoples’ homes, or show us why these people think what they think. I find Pelosi’s documentaries quite superficial and I wish that she had gone more “in depth” during her work with the documentary.

However Pelosi raises many interesting issues, and she manages too show us the fact that America is a diverse country with many different citizens. And let us not forget, there are over 50 million people in America who don’t want Obama as their president. Some of them are right-wing extremists, who have meanings that are hateful and racist. An issue that I find quite scary is those right-wing extremists get more and more support here in Europe. There have never been as many right-wing extremist in the European Parliament as now. And the same politicians get more and more support in countries all over Europe.

By the way, Alexandra Pelosi is Nancy Pelosi’s daughter. Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.