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I
may have written one successful book - with the strong editing help of
American friends such as Mog Decarnin - but I am not a good writer. Particularly
not in English!
Yet, I love writing
- as an escape from the problems of the world - or in the delusion that
they can be solved on my laptop screen. It was the same kind of delusion
that brought me to the barricades at the American, Russian and South African
embassies in my youth - that somebody "over there" were actually
listening!
Most of my writings
are in Danish papers. In addition I have over the last 25 years written
a yearly Christmas letter (often 40-150 pages long) to all my old school
friends.
To my American friends I often send long e-mails instead to avoid cutting
down so many trees.
Here are a some samples:
"Trying
to get life in balance .....with Americans"
A letter on European vs. American ecology. Since I live in the US half
the year I have noticed how Americans have fallen behind in environmental
awareness. So I wrote this to tell my friends about the enormous progress
I see on European store shelves. Feel free to edit it and publish it in
your own language under your own name in college papers etc. to help spread
the ecological awareness. But remember to send me an e-mail copy of your
version!
"On
seeing oppressors as victims"
Picking up a hitchhiking mass murderer and hitchhiking myself with a Jewish
girlfriend leads to a large scale executioner of people in mass graves......
a bizarre day in my life well worth sharing with others.
On
the welfare state: "Fighting for more vacations..... or women power
bringing a country to its knees"
With the cradle-to-grave insecurity Americans live in - the institutionalized
and growing inequality - and the crime it breeds - some are searching
for alternatives.
In this e-mail Jacob Holdt shows American friends an alternative: - how
the Danes love the security of their welfare state so much that they at
times shut their whole country down to fight for even more of it.
No wonder when you hear how it allows them 6 weeks - or even 1 year long
- paid round-the-world vacations - while more and more Americans work
"like slaves" to make ends meet during their 1-2 week
vacations.
Development
aid and racism
The Danes are the world's most generous providers of foreign aid - presently
giving 7 times as much per capita as Americans. Yet, Jacob Holdt is one
of the strongest Danish critics of the racism often involved in the way
Denmark gives aid to developing countries and shows an alternative way
of doing it.
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