Rostere

Ugh. I've really had a lot to do lately (and no time to reply to anything), but I'm really feeling the urge to straighten this mess of a thread out. Especially irritating is that obyknven does not seem to understand the etymology behind "Sverige"/"Sweden" - "Svenskar"/"Swedes" are etymologically identical to "Svear", "Suiones" and so on. The map with "Svear", "Götar" and "Gutar" reflects cultural divides that exist to this day, all within the confines of one nation. None of these groups has ever "disappeared". "Svear" has meant "Swedes" is Swedish since the dawn of written history (note however that additional groups such as the Götar are included among today's Swedes - previously, Sweden was simply known as "the kingdom of the Svear and Götar" so it's just a simplification). I also don't understand why obyknven talks about Gothicism and then lists books by modern Swedish authors who give a negative historical account of the theory? Gothicism was a 19th-century pseudoscientific phenomenon and has had about 0 adherents outside the fringe-right since about 1910. Finno-Ugric tribes were certainly not the forefathers of most of Swedes today, but certainly to the (native) population roughly somewhere above the yellow area in the map above, which is called "Norrland" and roughly corresponds to the Swedish part of Lapland. Today, the Finno-Ugric Y-DNA haplogroups are represented in Finland and in the Baltic countries, also being the largest Y-DNA group in some parts of Russia, corresponding to those parts where these peoples lived before the migrations of the people carrying the Y-DNA R haplogroups from today's Ukraine. This is a map of where you can find the Finno-Ugric genetic heritage today (Y-DNA haplogroup N). The "Svear" and "Götar" were certainly Indo-European tribes, who settled in Sweden during the invasions/migration which spread the R1a and R1b Y-DNA haplogroups in Europe. It's also well established that these made migrations/conquests southward, which in Gothicism is erroneously identified with pretty much everything from the fall of the Roman Empire to the establishment of all Germanic peoples, while in reality the relatives of the Svear and Götar were already living from the Black Sea to the Netherlands. The largest part of Swedish genetic heritage however comes from the proto-Europeans who lived in Sweden before the migration of the proto-Gothic/proto-Germanic tribes in about 1000-2000 BC who came to name the country (map of entire Europe found here and here). Meanwhile, Sweden is known in Finnish as "Ruotsi" and called similar names in the Baltic languages. The etymology of this comes from (Old) Swedish, where the prefix "roths"/"rods" (lacking better typography) meant "related to rowing". We know that two Varangian (Varyags in Slavic languages) guards in Byzantinian employment in 839, when inquired about their ethnicity, replied that they were "Rhos", more specifically Rhos of Swedish origin. Read more here and here. The prefix is still present in the names of many places on the east coast of Sweden. "Rhos" was possibly simply what the "vikings" who travelled eastward called themselves. The fact that there are runestones in Sweden telling about the deeds of Swedish Varangians in the east, and that the earliest known East Slavic historic record speaks of Swedish Varangians subduing the Finnic and Slavic populace in 859 (at the height of the Viking period, at exactly the same time the English started to pay "Danegeld") should speak for itself. So the "Rus" in "Russia" is really originally from what the Swedish seafarers from around today's coastal Uppland called themselves. Note that "Varangian" just like "Viking" is a profession, and not an ethnic group. Also, I have no idea about where obyknven gets the notion of Swedish education portraying vikings in that light. Since I have actually went through Swedish education I can say he couldn't be further from the truth.

I really wouldn't restrict that to applying only to "this day and age". One must surely make the observation that power is not an end in itself. Having control of a people by starving them to docility is like taking ownership of a jet plane, disassembling it, crating it, and leaving it in your loft. It is the mark of a psychotic disposition, not greatness. I think that goes without saying.

The polonium essentially means that a country must have backed the murder of Arafat. He obviously had many enemies in Israel, but it's more likely that the actual poisoning was performed by a Palestinian. I think it's very unlikely that the polonium was obtained from any country other than Israel. BTW, here's a report on the leaked Russian investigation: http://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/killing-arafat/experts-question-russian-arafat-findings-2013118102237239238.html Apparently Russia's foreign ministry made efforts as to make it not look like a polonium poisoning...

Here's a link which goes directly to the 108-page Swiss medical report: http://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/killing-arafat/Swiss-forensic-report-Arafat-death-201311671255163780.html Yeah, it's been very much suspected/known he was murdered, which is probably why Al Jazeera went to such lengths to document this. However he had a lot of enemies in Palestinian society, which is why the current Palestinian officials are not really pushing this very hard... However polonium is very hard to come by, it would be interesting to know about how the killers obtained it.

Currently: Just finishing a bottle of Marsala wine and having a glass of Braastad XO by the side. Later this evening I will visit a bar I was running 2 years ago, it will be exciting to see how things have turned out lately (the number of different beers are now over 100 I hear).

If you don't like isometric games, maybe you shouldn't be here. Seriously. I guess next, you will travel to Belgium and complain to the monks at the Chimay abbey you're disappointed that they won't brew a lager...

This was linked by Bill Gates on Facebook: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0

I'm sure Baruch Goldstein didn't actually kill those people he gunned down while they were worshiping then.Goldstein was a member of the Kach party. I'm not aware that the Kach party was itself involved in the attack. JDL is a US organization, this happened in Israel, not US. It's worth noting that there were thousands, may be tens of thousands of attacks from the other side. Let's look at the "number of attacks" statement. "Thousands"? "Tens of thousands"? That is perhaps the most deranged stuff I have read here on this this week, and that is with competition from certain trolls. I know we have differing opinions on some matters, but here you've really got to get a grip on reality. Here are casualty statistics from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Note how ten times as many children have been killed on the Palestinian side. Here's a list of Palestinian suicide attacks for you to peruse. Now I'm not counting attacks such as rock throwing, destruction of property, and so on. In that case, I'm sure it's quite possible we would actually reach over 1000 attacks in one year, from both sides. However the attacks from Israelis would likely be even higher (I can say that with certainty about the last few years at least), so in a blame game where it's "worth noting" which side commits the worst atrocities it's of no use to you. Note that this kind of violence almost exclusively occurs in the West Bank, and not inside Israel. Hm, I wrote a response to this but I accidentally closed my browser... Did you edit away something from your post? Anyway I think you lack a bit of perspective here. In this case as in many areas of life it's important to be able to look outside of your own perspective and see yourself in the shoes of other people. Let's discuss a hypothetical scenario: The worst predictions of the right-wing nutjobs comes true, and Muslim mass-immigration to the US is a fact. Not before long, when millions have flooded into the blessed American homeland do they proclaim their own independent state on the soil of Texas, the Islamic Caliphate of Texasistan. Obviously this is an unacceptable to any true Christian American patriot, so a resistance is formed (which earlier was brutally suppressed by the Democrat-controlled IRS. The current president is a female, liberal, communist African-American closet Muslim who obviously is not going to do squat to help the brave Texans). A bloody civil war is fought which ends with the ethnic cleansing of a majority of Texans from their native homeland. Most end up interned in squalid refugee camps in California*. You are among a minority which is left on occupied Texan soil. However you live in an area with a majority "native" American population, so the Caliphate chooses to wall you up instead of making you a citizen of their new nation, who would on paper have the same rights as a Muslim, including voting rights (the Muslim inhabitants of the Caliphate would constitute a minority if the let the refugees back, and let you vote, so that's a no-go scenario). A few Texans continue a desperate but completely inane violent struggle. Now would you think that in this situation we would see symbols offensive to Islam and extremist ideologies, similar to the ones you linked to above? Or do you think all Texans would submit to their new Muslim overlords? Do you think the Texans would negotiate for the few worthless "occupied" scraps of land they still held on to, while more and more was being walled of for Muslim settlements? Of course the sensible option would be to push for both groups of people to co-exist peacefully, but how many Texans do you think would follow that route? What would you do? Trying to strip Palestinians of their human rights because of the behaviour of some makes you come across as having the shallow problem-solving mentality of a 6-year old. You can only ever solve problems by addressing their cause. Of course people are going to be pissed off and be easy prey for extremist ideologies if they've lost everything. What would you do if you lost your homeland? *Yes, I know California does not share a border with Texas, but it makes for a better story.

Any of you still contemplating voting for Hillary, what the hell's wrong with you? So. Obvious warnings of an attack were ignored, requests to arm security personnel was denied, and once the attack was happening the CIA crew on the scene were denied to intervene. So do you attribute this to incompetence, or...?

I would regard peaceful settlement as positive, even with the effect of diseases and such. Having knowledge of the surroundings and wildlife must have been very important, integration of Indians into burgeoning settler societies would have been a huge boon. Sadly, the European settlers in America ended up mostly killing the Indians and driving them off their land by force. That was of course a huge catastrophe. It's interesting to see the same thing happening in slow-motion in Israel/Palestine today.

You wouldn't be the only one doing that. A lot of Swedes work in Norway as well... Which really is kind of bizarre. We get the Poles here to do our construction work, and then travel to Norway to do theirs. It's funny how the global economy works.

See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. 1600: "We can't allow the Dutch settlers. This island already has its own culture, one based upon its ancient Algonquian Lenape antecedents." 1624: "We can't allow the British here. This city already has its own culture, one based upon its founding Dutch antecedents." 1710: "We can't allow the German Palatines here. This country already has its own culture, one based upon its founding British antecedents." 1850: "We can't allow the German and Irish Catholics here. This country already has its own culture, one based upon its founding Protestant antecedents." 1865: "We can't accept Africans as equal citizens in our society. This country already has its own culture, one based upon its founding European antecedents." 1921: "We can't allow the Southern Europeans, Jews and Asians here. This country already has its own culture, one based upon its founding Northern European antecedents." In every age there has been people like you making arguments to conserve the current society. Yet now in 2013 I bet you disagree with all your historical counterparts. How would New York... or New Amsterdam.. look if only the Dutch had ever moved there? Change is inevitable, and mixing cultures together often makes progress possible. It would be absolutely hilarious to see you as a Native American, willing to "lock 'n' load" to deal with the British, Irish and Germanic "illegal aliens". Would you have shot your own ancestor as they landed on American soil? Would you have shot the British in 1624? The Germans in the 18th century? The Irish in the mid-19th century? Quit your hypocrisy already, and accept that in the end, foreign immigrants provide room for growth or increased competition, ultimately perfecting your society. The only rational thing you could do otherwise by your own logic is to travel to your nearest Native American reservation, apologize, and shoot yourself in the head because you would not even exist if your forefathers had not broken against your own ideals. Secondly, most of the countries where refugees come from are not wrecked by their inhabitants - they are in such a bad shape because of policies of much more powerful countries, who first conquered them directly during the age of imperialism, and the set them free with artifical borders under the rule of their own puppet dictators. Regarding "enforceable ideal" I think multiculturalism is just (loosely speaking) letting the inevitable happen, and hopefully giving as many people as possible an edge in a global, multicultural society. I don't think you understand the essence of the Roman Empire. The central idea was that anyone could become a Roman citizen. It could not have grown as large as it became without embracing multiculturalism. You've got to understand that even in it's early stage, when the Roman Empire was expanding from being just Rome and then a handful of cities, it was accepting wildly foreign cultures, creating influences true multiculture style on what we today call "Roman society". In many places, there was no "country" in place before the Romans got there, just an inhomogeneous mess, which still was absorbed quite painlessly into the Roman Empire. Regional differences were far deeper than they are today. It would be entirely impossible to achieve this without embracing the multicultural paradigm. With the standards of 2000 years ago, Pax Romana meant multicultural heaven during the majority of it's history. To be honest, I can totally connect the rise of the Roman Empire to multiculturalism, but I have no idea what it's fall has to do with it. You are perfectly right about the difference between the US and most European nations - there being no "American" racial ethnicity is a great asset now and increasingly in the future. If some group of people could claim to be "true" Americans, the US would see a lot more xenophobic politicians. When everybody is clearly descended from immigrants, the hypocrisy of xenophobia becomes much easier to see. Also, you can wave the American flag in support of free speech or any other principle on which the US was founded. In Sweden, free speech is at least as important as in the US, but the Swedish flag is associated since the late 19th century with the notion of a Swedish ethnic group or people (even earlier, it would have been associated with support for the Swedish king). So sadly but rightfully, displaying the Swedish flag randomly here is considered a bit "taboo" and people will think you are either a racist or a clueless tourist. An example: the webstore for the popular Norwegian OnePiece has clothes with the US flag, the French flag, the Norwegian flag, the Danish flag and the Finnish flag. You might then expect to find the Swedish flag there as well, but nope. If somebody ever wears Swedish colors, it's connected to sports or with a sports "look" and doesn't feature the flag explicitly. (The current Finnish and Norwegian nations are much younger, and as such their flags are much more closely associated with their independence, and the celebration of the fact that they exist as sovereign nations at all) I wouldn't say Switzerland is a successful multicultural society today, although it certainly has been historically. You think Japanese culture is already accessible anywhere? Excellent. That must mean that the elements of Japanese culture are already considered completely accepted by your society.

Ouch, by those charts and these IMF projections I'd really say the UK is in a pickle.

Culture is constantly changing. I'd say that every culture on Earth is a product of previous cultures mixing. Of course a nation will have common laws (obviously), language if that is necessary. Ideals and traditions will be different, but I'd say that a place where different traditions and ideals can meet and interact is a great place for thinkers and philosophers, indeed a great place for any individual to reflect on values and morals. With regards to 2 - in an increasingly connected world, people move around more often. The best place in such a world is the place with the highest tolerance for any foreign culture. It's a question about if you want to be ahead of the pack, or if you want your country to be the isolated xenophobic **** of the world. Essentially it's kind of like the old struggle of mercantilism/protectionism vs. free trade, but with cultural ideas. Every country WILL eventually become more tolerant of foreign cultures in the long run. At least every successful country. In 200 years from now, the world probably won't consist of small communities unwilling or incapable to interact with each other over small cultural differences. More likely a person would be able to travel, live and do business anywhere without feeling racism or prejudice. You make it sound like countries will end up with no culture at all. Point four is really a misunderstanding. In world shaped by multiculturalism, the "great stuff" in Japanese culture will be accessible anywhere and not be uniquely "Japanese" or confined to the Japanese islands in any way at all. Indeed, the interesting things in Japanese culture will have intermingled and been reinterpreted by other cultures in ways we couldn't even have imagined today. In a multicultural world, instead of cinemas everywhere playing the same locally produced movies over and over again (France anyone? lol), they would have a broad repertoire with productions from all over the world, something new every screening. None of the great stuff about any culture will disappear. Instead, the awful stuff which came along with that same culture will disappear, being replaced/influenced by elements from another culture. It's kind of like capitalism or evolution, but with art/ideas. Cultures mix, nobody buys the bad mixes, everybody buys the good mixes. All this stuff about the horrors of multiculturalism is also a spit in the face to the Americans of this forum. They live in a country which essentially is the largest and longest "experiment" in multiculturalism in history - the mix of European cultures which some hundred years back would have been thought completely, fundamentally incompatible. In the 19th century, the immigration of Catholics was a great issue and people talked about how the lazy, inferior and immoral Catholics would be unable to integrate into American society. Today it's the same thing all over with Muslims. I think that the American multiculturalist experiment has been a resounding success and that we should learn from that. Yes, that is essentially the problem: when you in the name of multiculturalism import people (although technically, they import themselves) who don't like or understand the ideals of multiculturalism themselves. Immigrants should face an ultimatum on arrival: this is our society, accept and tolerate it or we'll send you right back to where you came from with no further procedure. A funny and ironic example of this is from a friend of mine: many years ago in his primary school, they held a "school election" - common in Swedish schools, a mock election where the results are published so the students can see which party would be in power if they were the voters. Anyway, "Sverigedemokraterna" - Swedish Democrats, the Swedish nationalist party, won only two votes. Later he found out, interestingly, that those votes had come from two immigrants - one Somalian and one Eritrean. They both wanted desperately that SD would kick out the other ethnic group, and were completely convinced that their own ethnic group were paragons of society whom SD surely wanted in Sweden.

This is interesting: the US seems to have made a much better recovery from the financial crisis. I wonder why that is?

Sergei Eisenstein says hello. Also, this is another favourite of mine among modern Russian movies. For history buffs, there are also absolutely awesome Russian WW2 movies which sometimes use ACTUAL uniforms and locations. I can recommend the Seventeen Moments of Spring miniseries among others. Never seen his movies. However, "Come and see" by Klimov is also gem. I do not feel the need to watch another war-movie after that one. You are totally right, I forgot that one. I can't believe I did, it's kind of a cult classic around these parts.

That's a bit of a contradiction, isn't it? Multiculturalism implies they don't have much use for your culture. In my definition, multiculturalism implies full intermixture of the cultures in question. I don't really understand your statement at all. I think you're talking about some form of cultural apartheid. Multiculture is not where one homogeneous culture assimilates another homogeneous culture. Multiculturalism is where the meeting of two cultures allows intermixture where both access the full heritage of each other. Of course, the Swedish culture will never be exactly the same as before, but neither will that of the immigrants. The point of multiculturalism is to achieve an internationally connected and extrovert ("cosmopolitan") society, which will augment relations (business and diplomatic) with foreign countries, accelerate the flow of ideas, make a potential hub for multinational companies and organizations, in a society which is ideally suited to make full use of the ever-increasing interconnectedness we see in the world today. Through the connections with people from other parts of the world, I can have acute awareness of societies and events occuring anywhere. I can sit one minute and discuss the issue of Kurdish regional independence with my hairdresser who just a week ago was in Iraq caring for Kurdish Syrian refugees, the next hear first hand about recent changes to US society from an American stepmother. Then on TV I have a program where ambitious immigrants from South East Asia discuss recent changes, opportunities for business and investment in that region in Swedish. The multicultural society is a burgeoning meeting-place which is brimming with opportunities and inspiration for new expressions of art. This is heavily emphasized also in education: Swedish children always learn at least three languages through school, and in secondary school there are lots of opportunities for learning multiple others. Exchange studies and more language studies are taken by a majority of engineering students where I live, in order to become a more valuable asset for multinational companies. Participation in humanitarian voluntary work in developing countries is very quickly becoming an important merit for business students hoping to gain vital experience in these countries before they work for companies establishing themselves there. Couple this with an almost perverse emphasis on international travel (which I admit I get sick of myself sometimes) where people think you must be poor and/or unambitious if you stay in Sweden during vacation. So multiculturalism is not an accidental circumstance - it is highly intentional and the focus of the entire goverment and society. The opposite of a multicultural society would be where none of these connections would be available. You would only have the same people with the exact same background, incapable of learning or creating something truly new through exchanges with each other. Any type of exchange with other cultures would be tough due to the impossibility to bridge the differences. There would be none of the synergies or crucial connections which comes with a multicultural society. When abroad of meeting foreigners, monoculturalists would be unable to participate actively in the societies they visit and the exchange would be more akin to that between zoo animals and tourists than that between equal human beings. When people dismiss multiculturalism they don't often think about how horribly backwards and impossible the alternative would be. When you do so, opposing multiculturalism sounds about as futile as opposing science. A lot of these thoughts are behind why I think that nationalism and intolerance are the most obviously outdated ideologies of the 21st century. When I said that I don't like the immigrants who won't accept our laws and culture, I meant the ones who refuse what is perhaps the core value of Swedish society - the tolerance, the will to include and accept, the appetite to take any element you like out from foriegn culture and make it your own; the paradigm of multiculturalism itself. That, in itself, is all that we must necessarily share in a multicultural world.

Sergei Eisenstein says hello. Also, this is another favourite of mine among modern Russian movies. For history buffs, there are also absolutely awesome Russian WW2 movies which sometimes use ACTUAL uniforms and locations. I can recommend the Seventeen Moments of Spring miniseries among others.

Please Obsidian, make a sensible invented language. If you don't have the time, I'll do it for you.

Indeed, you would expect people who have paid a small fortune to smuggle themselves to a distant foreign nation to be hard-working, ambitious and respectful of the culture in their new home countries. Still, I don't see how whether they have personally recently immigrated should be the only deciding factor. Surely anyone who holds citizenship in another nation can be deported? Once again I must say I'm very positive towards immigration and multiculturalism, but I don't like the elements who don't respect our laws and culture.

I fully think there should be some type of citizenship test for immigration. With questions like "Is it OK to beat your wife?", "Can religion justify killing someone?" and so on. Of course it would be easy to cheat on if you knew anything about sensible morality is about, but immigrants would get a sense of what their new country will require out of them. I think any immigrant convicted of serious crimes should be immediately deported. What is the worst that could happen; they are just getting a free one-way trip to their home country. On the other hand I am very positive to immigration largely speaking, I just don't want the people who don't agree with the foundations of our legal society.

You are not going to be able to reduce the federal budget deficit, let alone the national debt, without some very very deep budget cuts over several years. Cesca's analysis requires some extreme sleight of hand by back dating programs that Obama approved in his first budget into Bush's last budget, That analysis has been refuted multiple times and people still don't see thru the nonsense. But let's look at what he's done overall shall we? From the White house budget office And here's how Obama deficit spending compares to the previous presidents dating back to 1990 with forecasted deficits thru the end of Obama's second term. But that is an old chart with projections for 2011, 2012... In reality, the deficit is shrinking (if you count 2012 as being on the same level as 2011, in reality it is diminutively higher...). You are indeed not going to reduce the deficit entirely without some drastic measures... The deficit is just slightly smaller than the entirety of Social Security plus Medicare, or the entire federal discretionary spending. With the tax income you have, there literally won't be anything left almost regardless of what you cut, assuming the goal is zero deficit and no tax raises or other sources of income. What I fear is that the real disaster might occur if these austerity measures are set into place... By "sleight of hand" i take it that you mean not "back dating programs that Obama approved in his first budget into Bush's last budget" but attributing the stimulus which was approved during Bush's last fiscal year but under Obama's presidency to Bush. Like I said in my first post, I am not necessarily trying to attribute any shrinking of the deficit to Obama. On the other hand I'm trying to say that things are slowly, slowly getting better, or were at least when I wrote my original post. Keep in mind also that the relevant statistic is debt as part of GDP, which is possible to reduce while still running deficits all the time.

The growth of government spending during his first term has been the slowest since before 1982. I'm not necessarily attributing this to him, I'm just saying that even if things are bad now, they're heading in the right direction. Here and here are useful diagrams, by the way. Some of the politics baffle me, like how the deficit in the 2012 enacted budget was larger than both the deficit in the Democratic and Republican plan (but still on the right track compared to 2009). Obamacare or whatever you'd like to call it seems insane to me, a kind of "cargo cult universal healthcare" which will really help to bring out the worst in the current American healthcare system. I guess Obama has good intent but I don't think Obamacare will achieve what he is aiming for. In discussions, people seem to subconsciously believe that Obamacare is "like UHS" in some way, and that it will bring Americans something similar to UHS which will have some cross-party support, but this couldn't be further from the truth since none of the cost efficiencies associated with UHS are inherent in Obamacare. Things will get more expensive for everyone as far as I can see.

I've no doubt there's enough revenue to pay the debt. But without borrowing more, something else will not get paid. So in the unlikely event of discussions still being frozen in a few days, which payments do you think the government will postpone? Or alternatively - at which (dis)approval rating will the GOP fold? A Gallup poll quoted in one of the articles above gives them only 28%.

I'm surprised there isn't a thread for this yet. So, what do you think could happen? Is a debt default even possible constitutionally? Are there senators who believe a default might be a good thing? After all, if nobody is willing to borrow money to the US, it would be impossible to maintain a big government and military, so that's another way of cutting the budget. Who will suffer from the eventual effects (it would seem the Republicans already do)? A bit down on this page, there's an interesting S&P 500 scenario analysis. While I think most people agree that a delay in interest payments would be catastrophic, is the entire debate making a hen out of a feather since the US will pay it's debts regardless of the impending debt ceiling (instead delaying other payments)? Anyway, with every day this continues, the likelyhood of increased interest rates gets higher. The US will likely get to pay more to borrow in the future, as will almost everybody else, even if the effect will be concentrated on the US. Personally, I think it's unlikely that anything dramatic will happen, and a last-minute agreement will take place in the next few days. The most likely effect will be just another drain on the economy among many others.