…это больше не 42, как утверждает «Автостопом по галактике». 350 намного важнее и актуальнее для нашей планеты сегодня. Почему? Узнайте на www.350.org (на русском!).

Отличная вышла в «Акции» статья про российскую нефть: «Русская нефтяная идея».

Заодно можете и мои заметки прочитать: про транспорт, про компьютер каждому ребёнку.

Starting last Monday (June 25) I work at the Traffic and Environment Unit of the Roads and Traffic Office of the Technical Services Administration of the City of Lund (uff, what a vertical structure, haha!).

Me and my friend, classmate, flatmate and a fellow esperantist Camille are planning the first pilot university course on Mobility Management. Swedish government financed this project through its climate investment programme (KLIMP). The course is directed to our fellow classmates at LUMES and so me and Camille will directly experience consequences of our work ourselves, in the autumn semester. So we better make it right, otherwise everybody will hate us!

Having said this about enormous responsibility that I feel, I just love this job! Modern office in the city center (50 meters from the railway station), extremely nice and friendly colleagues, sincerely devoted to the issue of urban transport sustainability, some of our friends also working in the same unit part-time (counting vehicles on the roads, making calls to new residents of Lund, doing their internships, etc), and – of course! – my boss, Anders Söderberg, who is the nicest!! He really puts a lot of efforts to make sure that me and Camille feel welcome and comfortable here, and that all conditions are provided for our productive work. He's extremely friendly and supportive, it's a great pleasure to work with him. We also have the most interesting conversations with him about Swedish culture and politics during breakfast or lunch time. I had a chance to work with him before, at the ECOMM 2007 conference this spring, so I knew it was going to be nice. Besides, he was a chairman of Hållbart universitet, a student environment organisation at the Lund University, that I'm a board member of now… It's nice to feel such inter-generational continuity! ;-) Oh, and because it's a small world, some years ago he was applying for a job at Greenpeace Nordic and having an interview with Martina Krüger, who was my supervisor for an internship project I was doing at Greenpeace the past two weeks (a study on electricity producers in Sweden).

Well, now I better get back to my interesting project! I'll keep you updated, if you keep reading my notes on Facebook! ;-)

Среди прочего ещё и потому, что можно забесплатно поехать на знаменитый Фестиваль Роскильде в Дании, цена билета на который обычно исчисляется сотнями евро. В этом году перед сотнями тысяч зрителей там будут выступать Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Beastie Boys, Björk, The Arctic Monkeys, Muse, The Arcade Fire, The Killers, My Chemical Romance… И я там буду среди друзей-эсперантистов! КРУУУУУТООО!!!!!!!

---

It's great to be esperantist!..

Besides all the other reasons also because one can go to the famous Roskilde Festival in Denmark absolutely for free (usually the ticket costs couple of euros). This year Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Beastie Boys, Björk, The Arctic Monkeys, Muse, The Arcade Fire, The Killers, My Chemical Romance and others will perform live in front of hundreds thousand spectators… And I'll be there with my esperantist friends! COOOOOOOL!!!!!!!

---

Estas bonege esti esperantisto!..

Krom ĉiuj aliaj kialoj ankaŭ ĉar oni povas tuta senpage iri al la fama Roskilde-festivalo en Danio (kutime bileto kostas centojn da eŭroj). Ĉi-jare tie muzikos Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Beastie Boys, Björk, The Arctic Monkeys, Muse, The Arcade Fire, The Killers, My Chemical Romance kaj aliaj – antaŭ centoj da miloj da spektantoj… Kaj mi estos tie kun miaj amikoj-esperantistoj! MOOOJOOOOSEEEE!!!!!

The second chunk of the mega-post which began here

(The English translation has been provided by my sister, Elena Izyumenko, to whom I’m very grateful!)

The last post ended with me full of doubts about the politics in general and the green politics in particular. But, of course, knowing some people like Tomas Nilsson and others that I’ve met at the Green Party here, and seeing the way how Miljöpartiet actually works — all that gave me a new hope and a cause for more optimistic view on green politics. And the last drop of antidote against the cynicism was that Saturday’s course and especially the Lotta Hedström's presentation. I finally sort of separated in my mind what had happened with the ‘Union of Russian Greens’ in Russia and what is going on here in Sweden in Miljöpartiet…

But let’s get back now to the Lotta’s presentation. She was talking about the present day’s ‘triple solidarity’ which lies at the foundation of all Swedish Green party’s work:

• Solidarity with all the people around the world,
• Solidarity with future generations,
• Solidarity with non-human nature (animals, plants, ecosystems, landscapes).

The main ‘global’ issues for the Green party in this context are: Peace, Food, Environment, Solidarity (especially in the context of human rights; by the way, Lotta is sure too, that the explosions of buildings in Russia was accomplished by the domestic security service, fulfilling the government’s order to create a cause for a new war in Chechnya), Power (here such concepts as geopolitics, terrorism, globalization all become involved and intermixed) and, of course, the Struggle Against Poverty. Well, I won’t choke up your mind with politics any longer (especially because I’ll be back with this topics a couple of paragraphs below), unless if you are really interested in this topic — in this case you may write to my private address or in the comments to this post — we’ll discuss it together! ;-)

After the meeting (I was like bursting with inspiration!) me and Tomas hurried to visit the local esperantist Kalle.

On Sunday on the way to Småland Nation (five hours of vegan cooking orgy and a non-stop eating, there will be a post in my blog about this some time in the future) Tomas was telling me about his own vision of the green ideology (he is an author and co-author of a number of books on this topic, the last of which will soon be published by the Miljöpartiet’s office in Gothenburg). Exciting!

On Monday evening there was a long-expected meeting of the Green Students (or Gröna Studenter in Swedish), very similar to the Saturday’s course, but three times shorter and exclusively for the youth. Twenty four persons attented! I also contributed to his high number: my classmates made up almost a half of the participants. Ulf spoke again in the first part with the similar story (but this time in English) about the history of the party and its youth wing Grön Ungdom and the Green Students (the latter being a more recent development). He skilfully added his personal history with Miljöpartiet to the general narration. Then I was given an opportunity to tell about the emergence (it happened only a couple of months ago, when I had come to the Green party here and had been one of the participants of this process) and activities of the Green Students in Lund.

The second part of our meeting was guided by Karolina Algotsson from Malmö. She introduced green ideology a bit differently than Tomas. It would be interesting to discuss it with both of them (Tomas left Lund one day before, on Sunday), but I quite liked her vision too. I especially liked ideological link between ecology, diversity, decentralization, collectivism/solidarity, individualism and queer. And, of course, an overarching importance of such concepts as life quality, wellbeing, happiness… ‘This is what it’s all about!’, the final lines from this short video came to my mind. Early and eco-anarchists (including my favorite thinkers of this intellectual movement Peter Kropotkin and Murray Bookchin) were mentioned by Karolina among the main sources of green ideas!

To be continued…