I love reading. I always have. I read everything; history, biographies, crime novels, classics.
One of my favourite things in the world is to find new authors. To try something new, find out that I love it and then discover that the author has wrotten many more books. It is like striking gold or finding oil.
A few years ago I found Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
I saw a book called ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ and was about Biafra. I think it was 2007. An amazing book. I have always liked authors that have the ability to ‘write big’.
Chimamanda Ngozi does that. She writes big. It doesn’t matter if she describes a small thing or a detail, it is always written as it was the most important thing in the world.
“I think you travel to search and you come back home to fond yourself there”
Today she has written five books and a number of short stories. She has received awards and lroces for her books all around the world. Her real breakthrough internationally came with her third novel, Americanah’ which tells the story of a young Nigerian woman who emigrates to the United States for a university education and stays for work.
The book was named one of the top 10 books of the year by New York Times. I fully agree, it is a fantastic piece of storytelling. A very important book, telling a story not known. On of my favourite quotes from Americanah is, “Racism should never have happened and so you don’t get a cookie for reducing it”. It is so true.
Adichie has been called “the most prominent” of a procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors that is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to Africal literature.
Today Nigeria is the hottest literary country and Chimamanda is the authors’ equivalent of Beyoncé. She is the thing.
Another famous quote from Chimamanda is, “There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable”.
She is a superstar and a hero among stars on the litterature sky right now. She is also a very passionate feminist and has become one of the leaders and spokespersons of a new modern wave of feminism in Africa. She has said on feminism and writing, “I think of myself as a storyteller, but I would not mind at all if someone were to think of me as a feminist writer… I’m very feminist in the way I look at the world, and that world view must somehow be part of my work”.
If you haven’t read her novels, start now. Before she becomes a Nobel Prize winner. It is just a matter of time.
Former Swedish Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carl Bildt, has today written an interesting article about the new digital world in one of the leading Swedish newspapers.
Bildt has as Head of the Global Commission on Governence Internet, just presented the ORCD report “One Internet”.
Carl Bildt och OECD:s generalsekreterare José Ángel Gurría.
Here is a non-official translation of the article from todays’ Svenska Dagbladet:
‘Sweden presented in 1994 the first natuonal IT Commission Report called “wings to human ability”. Many experts and politicians were doubtful and wondered what we were actually doing. They claimed that Internet was a tool for experts, individuals and nerds, probably a trend that would pass, and hardly something that politics and public debate should deal seriously with. Such was the tone of many comments.
Carl Bildt, former Swedish PM and Minister of Foreign Affairs
But the Swedish IT Commission in 1994, was nationally and internationally groundbreaking. No other country had made any similar strategy at the time. And through deregulation and research efforts, Sweden was clearly in the starting blocks. GSM technology for mobile telephony had just made his entrance.
The historical Swedish 1994 Report on Internet
The Swedish IT Commission set up a long-term and ambitious goal: in 2010, Sweden would be in the international top level in the use of new information technology. It was not the technology that was the center of the work – it was instead the society’s use of the width of the technology.
Today this report from the IT Commission is a center piece of the Internet Museum in Stockholm, and my e-mail exchange with President Clinton as Prime Minister is displayed at the Newseum in Washington. And in many respects, developments since then actually overachieved the goals we set for more than two decades ago. But now we face a new and more pervasive stage.
Carl Bildt sent the first official e-mail between two national leaders when he e-mailed President Bill Clinton in 1994
Over the past two years I have led a broad independent international commission on Internet issues. We have listened and discussed in Stockholm, The Hague, Bangalore, London, Seoul, Ottawa, Accra, Palm Springs and Amman, and this week we present our report for the OECD in the debate Cancún.
I have said that we are entering in the fourth industrial revolution. I think there is more wrong than right. I think we are in fact at the beginning of the historical shift from the industrial to the digital age, and that this means a lot more than just another industrial transformation.
On sensationally short time the internet has become the major world infrastructure. And now the network faster than becoming the infrastructure of every other infrastructure in our communities’.
Here is a link to the report “Global Commission on Governence Internet: One Internet” (click here): https://www.ourinternet.org/
The last 15-20 years Customs administrations all around the world have changed their control strategies from traditional controls to risk management.
Approximately 10-15 years ago we also started to think about the fact that if we can manage the risks better identifying high risks and doing more efficient controls through risk based profiling and targetting to detect our control objects, then what should we do about detected low risks. Compliance Management was born.
This meant that we moved away from looking at procedure and transaction for low risk operators and concentrate about the operator. The idea being that an operator meeting certain pre-determinded criteria and requirements, can voluntary apply for a specific low risk status. The company must show that the compliance level is acceptable and Customs validates this trough a set of measures. The compliance levels are then monitored and improved through an active partnership with the aim to minimize risks. The low risk company gets in return a different control programme – thus a different treatment – and a set of benefits related to speed, predictability, service and cost.
This means that the important questions in relation to a company is not anymore what type of goods are you importing or exporting or what customs procedures do you use, but instead: who are you?
This is what we call, identity management. It is more importnst ehat your company identity is and how we identify you, than what you are doing with your transactions on a daily basis.
Identity management is a growing megatrend that we saw all around us in different sectors the society.
In the future we will develop new levels of versions in relation to identity and compliance management. We have just seen the start of this process.
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