The DnD Sanctuary

This list of Swedish words (http://www.thelocal.se/galleries/Culture/ten-literal-swedish-words/) correspond nicely to Norwegian words (that have all except  8) , don't know about Dutch or German. [Well it should be a list, but to maximise click-throughs/annoyance it is a carousel instead. Keep on clickin']

3. Tjuvlyssna (eavesdrop): afluisteren/abhören (something like offlistening/offhearing, I suppose)

6. Sugrör (straw): rietje/Strohhalm (reed/straw, and I know that rör also means reed/straw besides pipe, so really this isn't nearly as different as claimed anyway; I believe Germans also say Trinkhalm, i.e. something like drinkstraw)

Walrus? We call those animals Morse...

Or those are Sea Lions?

Tjuvlyssna (eavesdrop, lit. thief listen): afluisteren/abhören (something like offlistening/offhearing, I suppose)

I would say that "belauschen" would come closer. "Abhören" relates rather to what some three-letter agencies do.

Norway has been a Nato member since the inception of Nato

NATO membership will be the next logical step for Finland and Sweden following their signing of a Host Nation Support Memorandum of Understanding with NATO, says the chair of the Russian Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee. The comments by committee chair Aleksey Pushkov were reported Wednesday by the state news agency Itar-Tass.

The fissure eruption took place between Dyngjujokull Glacier and the Askja caldera, a statement from the Department of Civil Protection said.

The area is part of the Bardabunga system.

"Scientists who have been at work close to the eruption monitor the event at a safe distance," the statement added.

"The Icelandic Met Office has raised the aviation colour code over the eruption site to red."

It added that no volcanic ash had so far been detected but a coast guard aircraft was due to take off later to survey the site.

Quote

NATO membership will be the next logical step for Finland and Sweden following their signing of a Host Nation Support Memorandum of Understanding with NATO, says the chair of the Russian Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee. The comments by committee chair Aleksey Pushkov were reported Wednesday by the state news agency Itar-Tass.

The battlelines have been drawn. The war in the region is not an if but when, and the plan is to have a unified front against Russia.

The stadium is empty of the Assyrians. The place is desolated. The wind is howling like a hammer. No one is here, and it is not surprising. Assyriska FF has neither training nor match today. Yet there is a parallel to make, a connection extending from the safe streets of Sweden to the infernal Iraq.

For the first time in almost 2,000 years, the church bells have stopped ringing in Nineveh. The city is empty of Assyrians. The place is desolated. The wind of evil howls like a hammer upon the minority who now face extinction. The people have been forced to choose between escaping, converting to Islam - or die.

What once was called Assyria? Now there is only Assyriska, the team that has been the stateless peoples national football team for forty years.

This autumn, the Assyrians are fighting two great battles. Both are about survival. There are more than 3000 kilometres between Södertälje and Nineveh - the new and old capital of the Assyrians - but there is no difference between this club and this people. [...]

Assyriska are in the bottom of the league and still without a victory in Södertälje Football Arena - but the loss of the home is worse than the losses at home. The Assyrian award-winning journalist Nuri Kino explains:

– Our people - Assyrians, also called Syriacs and Chaldeans - and the Yezidis, were previously the majority of the Nineve Plain, which is emptied of its population. Our churches are being destroyed, our women and children are being kidnapped. It is enough. The world needs to open its eyes.

How serious is the situation?
– Alarming.

While the Assyrian Federation of Sweden is actively working to shed light on the difficult situation of the Assyrians, Kino runs the global campaign "A Demand for Action." Together with members in 15 countries, he is working to get refugees sheltered.

Kino is doing his best to get the world to act. So does the supporters of the club.

A few weeks ago, Assyriska went to the Swedish capital to face Hammarby at Tele2 Arena. The supporters wore shirts with the Arabic letter "N", the same letter as the terrorist organization IS painted on the Christian homes in Iraq, just like the Nazis did to the Jews during The Holocaust. "N" stands for ”Nasrany”, which means Christians.

Kino talks about a reaction to this action:
– The priest Ashur Elkhouri published a picture of himself where he bows his head for his national team for what it did during the game against Hammarby. Normally, a priest bows his head only to God, so evidently the feelings were very strong. I was at a meeting in a church in Los Angeles when the game was played, and the action made many in the church cry. [...]

The team captain David Durmaz tries to pinpoint the problem. He played in Assyriska during the time in Allsvenskan and thinks that the club has a very different spirit now compared to ten years ago. Back then, the short passings were a bit faster, the sharpness a bit edgier, the organization a bit more more professional. Now Assyriska creates chances without winning. Now they have to turn the tables as a united club. But off the field?

– On the way to our last game against Degerfors, our midfielder George Makdessi showed me a YouTube clip on his cellphone. His own cousin, with the same last name, completely exhausted and wounded by gunshots is lying in a bed. An IS-flag is seen and someone asks him in Arabic what his name is, what army he was an officer for ... After a while, the clip ended. George said that the man's father had received photos a few days later. The pictures are showing the man lying in bed – beheaded.

Nah, the situation in the North is stable. Russia could pose a credible temporary threat to the Baltic States. Russia could take these small countries faster than allies could react, a potential instability, but strategically that wouldn't make sense. Not only is Russia overall militarily weaker in this region, the benefits Russia is reaping from the friendly relationship far overwhelm the benefits, military or otherwise, from an invasion. In other words, not only would it fail, it would be stupid even if it succeeded.

the Iceland threat that's been on again and off again is back on again (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28977773).

Two pieces of news for you: 1. The motives behind wars are often stupider than politics in general. Surely you acknowledge that politics in general demonstrate below average rationality. Wars are even more stupid.

2. Russian aircrafts have violated Finland's airspace three times just this week. The airspace violations have gone up from monthly to almost daily.

MOSCOW, August 5 (RIA Novosti) - US cargo ship USNS PFC Dewayne T. Williams is expected to arrive in the small Norwegian village of Namdalseid on August 10, bringing heavy tanks, armored personnel carriers and landing crafts, the local Adresseavisen newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The cargo will include third-generation main battle tanks of the M1A1 Abrams type. This new, heavier equipment will replace trucks and personnel carriers which were previously stored in the mountain bunkers of Central Norway.

Local defense sources, cited by the Norwegian Aftenposten newspaper, say that the US’ decision to change war equipment stored in Norway was made on the basis of experiences from Iraq and Afghanistan.

If I were mistaken I'll buy you a beer.

Quote from: jax on 2014-08-29, 19:59:50

If I were mistaken I'll buy you a beer.

Yeah, totally compensates for the war. Thanks!

(I don't even drink.)

Btw, third piece of news is Russian submarines spotted from passenger ferries between Finland, Estonia, and Sweden http://www.delfi.ee/news/paevauudised/eesti/ainult-delfis-video-tallinki-laevareisija-jaadvustas-laevast-moodunud-allveelaeva.d?id=69635869

I think that in Swedish a suckstraw (as in a real straw made out of some kind of grass-like plant) and a suckpipe could both be the exact same word? That is, a difference with the English word straw might be purely imaginary and a consequence of switching to paper and plastic, except that in English it's a drinking straw rather than a sucking straw.

Western media is quite silent about this. News of this type are of maximum importance in the Baltic countries.

The Olympics that no one seems to want is down to just two candidates.

Oslo became the latest city to drop its bid for the 2022 Winter Games after the Norwegian government rejected financial backing for the project on Wednesday amid concerns the games were too costly — a decision the IOC said was based on "half-truths and factual inaccuracies."

Oslo's exit leaves Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan, as the only two contenders.

Oslo is the fourth city to pull out of a race that has been thrown into turmoil in the wake of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, where the overall price tag was put at $51 billion, scaring off politicians and taxpayers and leaving the International Olympic Committee with a major image crisis.

Aside from the lack of public support (ask Brazil about the World Cup and Olympic projects), the IOC laid out a list of ridiculous demands as part of what would've been Oslo's bid.

First, the IOC wanted to meet the king prior to the opening ceremony. Next it wanted never-ending drinks payable to the royal family or the Norwegian Olympic Committee.

Okay, well yeah, I guess. VG mined the 7,000+ pages of requirements from the IOC, and most pertained to security. The following do not.

Car and drivers for all IOC members.
Diverted and prioritized Olympic traffic
Dedicated Olympic traffic lanes, not to be used by regular people
"IOC members will be received with a smile on arrival at hotel"
Hotel bars must be open “extra late” and can only serve Coca-Cola products
All conference rooms must be kept at exactly 68 degrees
“All furniture should be OL-shaped and have Olympic Appearance”

Finally, the IOC “proposes the closure of schools, and the local people are encouraged to take vacations.”

Thus far Stockholm, Sweden, Krakow, Poland, and Lviv, Ukraine, have all pulled their bids. The only bidders left are Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Beijing, China. If all else fails, there's always Sochi, Russia.

What language is that in the video at vimeo?

Edit: The Swedish military gave a press conference (http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=103&artikel=5999819) too. The funniest sentence in the statement is this: "Det vi med säkerhet kunnat utesluta är en konventionell u-båt." It translates as "What we can exclude with certainty is a conventional submarine ship." So, it certainly wasn't a conventional submarine ship.

There is a convertible car/sub.

Eventually that division was superseded by introducing the härad or Herred, which was the term in the rest of Scandinavia. This word was either derived from Proto-Norse *harja-raiðō (warband) or Proto-Germanic *harja-raiða (war equipment, cf. Wapentake). Similar to skipreide, a part of the coast where the inhabitants were responsible for equipping and manning a war ship.

Btw, third piece of news is Russian submarines spotted from passenger ferries between Finland, Estonia, and Sweden
http://www.delfi.ee/news/paevauudised/eesti/ainult-delfis-video-tallinki-laevareisija-jaadvustas-laevast-moodunud-allveelaeva.d?id=69635869

A foreign (=Russian) submarine is said to have stranded somewhere in Stockholm archipelago and sent out an SOS signal.
Uppgifter: Skadad rysk ubåt utlöste försvarslarmet (http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=5994814)

Once again, a short anatomy about how disinformation works in our "trusted" media. :)

Disinformation nr.1:

Quote

Btw, third piece of news is Russian submarines spotted from passenger ferries between Finland, Estonia, and Sweden
http://www.delfi.ee/news/paevauudised/eesti/ainult-delfis-video-tallinki-laevareisija-jaadvustas-laevast-moodunud-allveelaeva.d?id=69635869

Whatever have been spotted by whomever, there was never an evidence that it was of Russian origin.

Disinformation nr.2:

Quote

A foreign (=Russian) submarine is said to have stranded somewhere in Stockholm archipelago and sent out an SOS signal.
Uppgifter: Skadad rysk ubåt utlöste försvarslarmet (http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=5994814)

Sweden’s signal intelligence agency, knows nothing about the alleged SOS signal.

Are you anatomising me rather than "our" media?

Sweden's agencies *admit* nothing about the signal. There's a difference...

Quote from: ersi on 2014-10-28, 12:21:19

Are you anatomising me rather than "our" media?

I'm rather anatomising "our" media.
As for speaking about you, it doesn't came as a surprise that you were in hurry to bring the misguiding headlines while you didn't bother to mention about the "fixed/updated newsbit".

As for the alleged Russian SOS signal: http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/forsvaret-inget-ryskt-nodsamtal-bakom-ubatsjakt/

"undisclosed sources" by the media you say?
Worthless allegations which can't be verified and aren't worth the paper they are written on.
With other words a simply method to spread disinformations/lies with minimal risk to get caught. It's an often used method by "our" media lately.

This is actually one of the first batches of banana that was sent to Norway. It had the weight of 3000 kilos and came in crates/boxes. One of the persons in this picture is Christian Mathiessen, the founder of Norways biggest fruit importer, Bama. Norway was actually the second country to import bananas in Europe, after the UK. It’s very interesting that before global trading became as it is today, people really didn’t encounter many products that weren’t made locally. Seeing an item made in China must have seemed exotic to someone living in Mexico during 1832.

The bananas in the photo are Gros Michel bananas. Gros Michel, often known as Big Mike, is an export cultivar of banana and was, until the 1950s, the main variety exported to the United States. His variety was once the dominant export banana to Europe and North America, grown in South America and Africa. In the 1950s the Panama disease, a wilt caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum, wiped out vast tracts of ‘Gros Michel’ plantations in South America and Africa, but the cultivar survived in Thailand. The original ‘Gros Michel’ is said to have a unique fragrance. The Panama disease inflicted enormous costs and forced producers to switch to other, disease-resistant cultivars. However, new strains of Panama disease threaten the production of today’s most popular cultivar, Cavendish.

Portugese sailors brought bananas to Europe from West Africa in the early fifteenth century. Its Guinean name banema, which became banana in English, was first found in print in the seventeenth century. The original banana has been cultivated and used since ancient times, even pre-dating the cultivation of rice. While the banana thrived in Africa, its origins are said to be of East Asia and Oceania. The banana was carried by sailors to the Canary Islands and the West Indies, finally making it to North America with Spanish missionary Friar Tomas de Berlanga.

The Nordics were like the Yanks as they go bananas and like emotional children. I am not seriously concerned and you would think this was 1939 all over again. Talk about us in the West losing the plot.  :lol:

in Sweden you can buy a submarine over internet no problemo.

Make sure it'll fit in your bathtub. :D

Make sure it'll fit in your bathtub. :D

Assassin (21) got fined for not killing

The contract killer got 10,000 kroner in fines for not killing. Police believe it was fraud against the client.

The 21-year-old had received up to 60,000 kroner from a same-aged man to kill a 17-year-old he was in love with. The 17-year-old had rejected the advances.

The contract killer took the money and knives, but never performed any murder. Now the client is sentenced to two years in prison for having ordered the killing, while the assassin is fined for not having done so.

Cheated customer
Police believe he deliberately cheated the contracting party and thus was guilty of fraud.
- He was fined for having enticed a man to disburse money under false pretenses, said District Attorney Per Halsbog in Vestfold and Telemark public prosecutor.

The deceived client claims he paid assassin 60,000 kroner, who claims to have received 40,000 kroner.

- Just wanted the money
He was fined for having received 18,000 kroner. The basis of the fine is a violation of Penal Code Section 270, fraud provision.
- The investigation showed he never had any intention to kill. He only wanted the money, says Attorney Per Halsbog.

"Why is he still alive? '
Buyer nagged at him several times to finish off murder pact he thought the two had agreed on. In an agitated SMS exchange he wrote:
"Why is he still alive??? Are you not able do a job !!!" "He should have been killed !!! Stop making excuses. Why the hell is not it done?" and "Yes, you do it now! You got damn enough money now !! Run in a knife or something"

Eventually the assassin said that he would only beat up 17-year-old, but he had a buddy who could commit murder if he got another 30,000 kroner.

- He only kept talking to get more money, says Attorney is Halsbog, who also was the prosecutor in the case against the client.

Sweden's Security Service Säpo posted its first tweet on Friday [two weeks ago], with a cheeky enough message to make headlines across Sweden.

A group of tourists spent hours Saturday night looking for a missing woman near Iceland's Eldgja canyon, only to find her among the search party.

Is that Mad mag still going??

Losing and finding yourself in Iceland, Missing woman unwittingly joins search party looking for herself (http://www.torontosun.com/2012/08/28/missing-woman-unwittingly-joins-search-party-for-herself)

Quote

A group of tourists spent hours Saturday night looking for a missing woman near Iceland's Eldgja canyon, only to find her among the search party.

No proof it was Russian krake the head scramblers have effected you!

“Violent crime in Glasgow is less about gun crime than it is in some other cities. Knives, feet and fists prevail here," says Professor Mike Nellis.

An ex-social worker and expert in criminology at Strathclyde University, he was deliberating on a damning report (http://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/UK-Peace-Index-2013-IEP-Report.pdf) by the UK Peace Index that names Glasgow as Britain’s most violent urban centre.

Just 24 hours after Glasgow City Marketing Bureau launched their campaign to rebrand Glasgow, the city was saddled with the title of ‘Britain’s most violent area’ - another scar on the reputation of the city, scored next to its previous moniker of
‘Murder Capital of Western Europe........’

Glasgow has been ranked as the UK's most violent area in a new report. (http://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/UK-Peace-Index-2013-IEP-Report.pdf)

Problems with gangs and knife crime contributed to the rating in the UK Peace Index (http://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/UK-Peace-Index-2013-IEP-Report.pdf) produced by the US and Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).

The index has drawn together more than 10 years of data, looking at levels of violence across the country as well as the cost to the economy.

Areas were ranked according to the number of homicides and levels of violent and weapon crime, public disorder and numbers of police officers per 100,000 people.

The report describes Glasgow as "the least peaceful major urban centre in the UK", with London and Belfast in second and third place.

[glow=black,2,300]Scotland has the highest homicide rate of any of the four UK nations, as well as the highest violent crime rate, at more than 1500 per 100,000 people, the report (http://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/UK-Peace-Index-2013-IEP-Report.pdf) said........[/glow]

The Bible is also available in lolcat (http://lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Main_Page).

"The North"?

Anyway, in English I would recommend The New JPS Translation (http://www.amazon.com/The-Jewish-Bible-Translation-Traditional/dp/0827603665). In Dutch I'd stick with the seminal translation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statenvertaling). Skip the awful New Testament, except maybe Mark. It's not worth it.

It is the most Christian city I've ever lived in

This once small town was famous for taking in more Iraqi refugees than the US and Canada combined during the first Iraqi war,

All that said there are a few subtle indicators that there is a religious life. You can hear people talk in buses about religion [...]

Immigrants to Scandinavia are significantly more religious than the natives, ...

I wouldn't be surprised if there were a cognate for inheems, although its meaning might be subtly different.

( Einheimische vs. Eingeborene )

Words like 'natives' and 'tribes' (and in Norwegian/Swedish 'village') have rarely been used on Europeans, ....

There are some subtle (and not-so-subtle) differences between Norway and Sweden. Swedish has 'inhemsk' (in-home-ish). I guess that is the distinction in the two German words as well, based on the roots, but I wouldn't bet on it as false friends lurk.

Since Sweden has largely lost the use of 'in-born' (native) clumsy phrases like "domestically born" are used instead.

Me, as an immigrant, feel free to create my own language. If that unsettles the natives, so much the better.

Swedish (and rarely Norwegian) has urinvånare (urinnvåner, which has a Swedish feel to it, Norwegian would be urinnbygger, which is still rare), though it too has fallen out of fashion for "first people, few in numbers, need special protection" or indigenous. By Wikipedia I see the preferred term in German is indigene Völker. That can hardly be indigenous. Danish use aboriginer, while Dutch the more inheems inheemse bevolking. In Swedish it is ursprungsfolk, or in Norwegian simply urfolk. Icelandic frumbyggjar, frum- I had to look up, it means ur-.

Norwegian uses bygg(e(r)), building (build (builds/builder)) instead, as does Icelandic. Bo would be the equivalent of Wohn, by* a town or a city, which of course in Swedish as in German is stad (or simply -sta(n)) or Stadt. Norwegian sted and English stead instead means small settlement (in Norwegian it primarily means place, as it once did in English, and in Dutch stede I see). By comparison in Swedish it is by*  that means small settlement.

Quote from: jax on 2015-02-17, 09:04:24

Me, as an immigrant, feel free to create my own language. If that unsettles the natives, so much the better.

We might as well rename the forum :right:

Doesn't ursprungsfolk tend to mean the Saami people instead? :left:

The Dutch words stad and stede are (originally) different inflections of the same word.* Also note that to me the form stede sounds positively archaic, while the reduced form stee sounds merely old-fashioned. This is part of the widespread apocope of the de at the end of such words pretty much since Early Modern Dutch. Cf. slede → slee (sleigh), mede → mee (with), etc.

* Actually they still are. One city is a stad, two cities are twee steden. But the word stee (place, farm) has split off and the plural is steeën. In older texts the word stad is also often used to mean a more generic place.

Farm, farmyard doubling as town, city can also be found in the Norse word garðr. Current gard, gård only means farm, English yard means yard, while Russian gorod and -grad means city.

Norwegian uses bygg(e(r)), building (build (builds/builder)) instead, as does Icelandic. Bo would be the equivalent of Wohn, by* a town or a city, which of course in Swedish as in German is stad (or simply -sta(n)) or Stadt. Norwegian sted and English stead instead means small settlement (in Norwegian it primarily means place, as it once did in English, and in Dutch stede I see). By comparison in Swedish it is by*  that means small settlement.

Might be a false friend. In german there is:
Stadt - town, city
Staette - place

So Proto-Germanic *stadiz (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Germanic/stadiz) which more speculatively is derived from Proto-Indo-European *stéh₂tis (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/steh%E2%82%82-) (the * in front of stadiz and stéh₂tis indicates that these words are linguistic guesswork).

Vikings debating it's the must boring thing in earth...
:lol:

Whoa, and there I thought you could only get this stuff handily summarized from paper. (Then again, it's Wiktionary…)

stead (n.)
Old English stede "place, position; standing, firmness, stability, fixity," from Proto-Germanic *stadiz (cognates: Old Saxon stedi, Old Norse staðr "place, spot; stop, pause; town," Swedish stad, Dutch stede "place," Old High German stat, German Stadt "town," Gothic staþs "place"), from PIE *steti-, suffixed form of root *sta- "to stand" (see stet). Related to stand.

raiding Portugal

Quote from: Macallan on 2015-02-25, 10:37:45

raiding Portugal

I could tell you how so simply we stopped barbarian Viking raids, had I the patience for that. But I don't, maybe other time.

"We" were Moors at the time of the Vikings.

You, sir, inhabit the third class — those who believe what they believe because they believe it, regardless.

While Portugal may have escaped Moorish suzerainty, it didn't escape it's influence: Either you know your own history or you don't!

Why such anti-historical vehemence? (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?action=reporttm;topic=481.116;msg=35983)

About Portugal and Vikings: I'm immensely proud about our Moor's heritage. See? no Vikings at all...

Vikings are not even of secondary importance in building Europe. They are a simple curiosity, with no impact at all in culture, war, economics, politics or anything else you may want to consider. Tales about their voyages and explorations are simple anecdotes that may be a part of Saxon's imagination but with no correspondence with reality.

They were seen as small thieves that attacked defenseless small villages up into the rivers due to their rudimentary boats that could float in shallow waters.

You may like to see a movie with an Andalusian Moor that goes captive to the Viking's land (I don't remember the title). It shows well the difference of level between both.

Saxons may not have ventured much down to Portugal until their descendants in recent times, but other Germanic tribes did, and conquered and kept the Iberian peninsula for centuries until they handed it over to the Moors.

A change of theme then. What about Stockholm Design Week/Furniture&Light (http://www.dezeen.com/events/2015/stockholm-2015/)?

Quote from: jax on 2015-03-09, 17:12:15

A change of theme then. What about Stockholm Design Week/Furniture&Light (http://www.dezeen.com/events/2015/stockholm-2015/)?

We should have a yawn smiley here. Ah, this one comes close
:faint:

A clash between Sweden’s progressive foreign policy and the harsh realities of the Middle East has escalated with Saudi Arabia’s withdrawal of its ambassador after Stockholm tore up an arms trade agreement between the two countries.

Accusing Sweden’s foreign minister of “flagrant interference” in its internal affairs, the Saudi foreign ministry said it was recalling Ibrahim bin Saad al-Ibrahim in protest over Sweden’s criticism of its human rights record, which it said was “harmful to the kingdom”.

Comments by Margot Wallström, the foreign minister, represented a “flagrant interference in internal affairs, which is not accepted in international conventions,” it added, according to an official statement carried by state news agency SPA.

Stockholm was apparently bounced into terminating its decade-long weapons memorandum with the Saudis after they blocked Wallström from making a speech on human rights to Arab leaders.

Norway is not in the EU, and thus not in this survey, but an independent one has been made for Norway and Sweden, and while slightly less enthusiastic than the Swedes, the Norwegians were much the same.

(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.spectator.co.uk%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F03%2F104482277.jpg&hash=bfd7280138d6afdc5bcfca4f264e26e3" rel="cached" data-hash="bfd7280138d6afdc5bcfca4f264e26e3" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/104482277.jpg)

A few weeks ago Margot Wallström, the Swedish foreign minister, denounced the subjugation of women in Saudi Arabia. As the theocratic kingdom prevents women from travelling, conducting official business or marrying without the permission of male guardians, and as girls can be forced into child marriages where they are effectively raped by old men, she was telling no more than the truth. Wallström went on to condemn the Saudi courts for ordering that Raif Badawi receive ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for setting up a website that championed secularism and free speech. These were ‘mediaeval methods’, she said, and a ‘cruel attempt to silence modern forms of expression’. And once again, who can argue with that?

The backlash followed the pattern set by Rushdie, the Danish cartoons and Hebdo. Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador and stopped issuing visas to Swedish businessmen. The United Arab Emirates joined it. The Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, which represents 56 Muslim-majority states, accused Sweden of failing to respect the world’s ‘rich and varied ethical standards’ — standards so rich and varied, apparently, they include the flogging of bloggers and encouragement of paedophiles. Meanwhile, the Gulf Co-operation Council condemned her ‘unaccept-able interference in the internal affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’, and I wouldn’t bet against anti-Swedish riots following soon.

Yet there is no ‘Wallström affair’. Outside Sweden, the western media has barely covered the story, and Sweden’s EU allies have shown no inclination whatsoever to support her. A small Scandinavian nation faces sanctions, accusations of Islamophobia and maybe worse to come, and everyone stays silent. As so often, the scandal is that there isn’t a scandal.

Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador and stopped issuing visas to Swedish businessmen.

These were ‘mediaeval methods’, she said, and a ‘cruel attempt to silence modern forms of expression’.

A typical case of needing to know the questions to make any sense of it at all. Such negativity toward immigration from, say, Australia would be surprising. Presumably the "border" states are negative toward immigrants from respectively North Africa, the Middle East, and Russia. I do wonder what's up in Czechia. Russians too?

No fewer than 72 percent of Swedes said they were either fairly positive or very positive towards immigration from countries outside the European Union, with an even greater 82 percent welcoming immigrants from other EU countries. 

No other country came anywhere close, with only 48 percent of the citizens of the next most open countries, Croatia and Spain, saying they felt positive to immigrants from outside the EU.

On average, a solid majority of 57 percent of European citizens described themselves as either fairly or very negative to immigration from outside the EU, with just 35 percent in favour.

you had half a million in Vietnam against all those amateurs and you looked and acted just like those Frenchies

Third, we won the actual war. Our "democratic" politicians surrendered, and consigned a million or more Vietnamese to death… To appease the likes of you! (You're damned right I'm resentful.)
That, sir, is one of my country's most reprehensible acts.

Just to make sure I'm reading this right. You're not saying the war was reprehensible, but rather that the surrender was. Right?

Quote from: ersi on 2015-05-24, 21:25:53

Just to make sure I'm reading this right. You're not saying the war was reprehensible, but rather that the surrender was. Right?

The so-called peace and the abandonment of our allies. Mere money would have been enough help to them, since they were a well-trained and effective force by then. But our Congress cut them loose… Wars are always expensive.
Were there strategies that were too brutal? On both sides, probably yes. And there were atrocities committed by both sides. Such is war.

If you're committed to only wars of self-defense, your understanding of human nature is deficient: How could there be a war of self-defense if your commitment were widely shared? :)

So, I guess your question boils down to: Were the political aims of the U.S. involvement in Viet Nam rational?
Is that a correct reading, ersi?

You were supposed to be there on high sounding morals and the usual contradiction.

But doesn't help you one iota as it is filed under corruption and incompetence.

More temperature-related deaths happen on moderately cold or hot days, rather than during heatwaves or freezing spells, according to researchers who studied mortality rates in 13 different countries in a paper published in The Lancet medical journal.

The public health experts studied 74 million deaths in 384 locations between 1985 and 2012, including in Sweden, Canada, Japan and the UK, and discovered that cold weather was responsible for 7.29 percent of all deaths, while heat was a factor in only 0.42 percent.

But the study showed huge differences between nations, with Brits almost twice as likely to die during cold weather (7.8 percent of deaths) compared to Swedes (3.8 percent). In fact, Sweden fared better than nearly all the other countries surveyed as part of the research, with only Taiwan, Brazil and Thailand reporting a lower percentage of deaths linked to moderately cold weather.

Wonder what is worse in Sweden. Dying of cold or boredom?

Very selective. Street fights are not all over this city (and nothing like places like Los Angeles, etc) but certain places. Sweden has a long history of being boring whether you like it or not. No doubt bright info fact by decades of letist ideology.....

???

Not that you would know it due to your limited grey cells dear osteoporosis supporter. This country was not ready for a war. Our Prime Minister tried to avoid having one knowing full well the history of WW1. He travelled to see Hitler twice and you come out with this drivel? We were badly bombed  in the major cities and large numbers died in the air attacks. By the end of the war the cost ran us into the ground not just in lives but infrastructure, rail, everything. Money was borrowed from America and not paid off until modern times so you made a profit from WW2 we did not. War although delayed by us was coming and the Polish agreement had to be followed while your lot stayed out for ages so we fought on virtually alone.  You are an embarrassment to your fellow countrymen and as you are a terror supporter an unprincipled oaf. Your misuse of historyand rat bag stuff at the lowest is disgusting. Shame on you!
…............
Well you are a generally typical ex-colonist mjsmsprt40! Any excuse to have guns and i know ell about farmers. When the Wild West gradually faded you had no great traditions like other countries so the gun was kept as some kind of worshipping item needed to defend, etc. Your country is gun mad and why there are police problems and you need over 200 million guns for defending yourselves? Uh? And you preach you are a modern, great example to the world and have a myriad of excuses for guns at home. Well why do other places in the world nt need to follow that poor example!? It doesn't give a very good impression of a country to be so up to the necks in this utter nonsense. The good things over there get spoled by the mass gun hysteria and excuse used for them.
….........
Talk about nut job land with even children in on the cowboy freakery. Safety for school/ What a terrible admission that one is and anyway doesn't help with school shootings being so frequent. Brought it on yourselves. You don't have to make head shaking incidents they are part of society.
…..........
That one about Russian planes leaning on Finland. How about the US navy leaning on mainland China? Considering you are in hock to that country seems a bit stupid.
…..........
Don'y worry jax the land of the free and home of the brave will deal with Saudi Arabia contradicting ex-colonial principles.........
….........
How can you be so infantile? Oh you like trying to be funny but fall back on the old hoary one about digging at the USA. It is so damn easy the way you act and you simple cannot answer the points about the police. It has been going on for ever over there and it is only nowadays it is getting more predominance and for very good reasons.

If your police cannot run after an unarmed man without gunning him with several bullets they are not trained right. The same applies to 30 odd officers shooting over 130 bullets at 2 unarmed in a car then that idiot on the bonnet pumping in dozens.  Every so often we see because of modern tv, mobile phones, etc, police beating people up sometimes more than one carrying out the battering, choking or whatever. Recently a documentary gave an insight into some mental institutions where the unifromed guards do not take on board the occupants have mental problems and beat them up and worse. It is obliviously a deep problem you have with cops.  Hey does anyone over there remember foot patrols instead of convoys of cars?
................
Imagine someone from nutjobland calling some other person elsewhere naive or zombie like! Sharing success is anew one for ex-colonists.

This is the last chapter of the Elop effect (http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/08/coining-term-elop-effect-when-you-combine-osborne-effect-and-ratner-effect.html).

Both songs were written by Swedes, as were a number of other entries, so victory was imbedded.

Honestly I think it is good they got gutted. They had a toxic company culture, worse than Apple. We wouldn't want to be in a world ruled by "connecting people". That applies to the now-dead handset division, I've had no dealing with the rest, if they were any better.

(I think, in this case, I should follow the sensible advice of George Washington: "Avoid foreign entanglements" — specially the squabbling between petty European states! :) )

....and people like RJ, Belfrager and Krake who spend all their time telling us how much worse we are at running the world than their respective countries were when they did it.

Amen, Brother Oakdale.

Now we try to be the world's policeman/mommy, and look what we get. An enormous military budget (necessary if you're going to have influence in the far corners of the world) and people like RJ, Belfrager and Krake who spend all their time telling us how much worse we are at running the world than their respective countries were when they did it.

Yup!
What do you suppose the chances are that Scotland, Portugal or Germany would like to foot the bill (in money, equipment and troops…) so we can retire and enjoy our dotage? :)

between 20-30 millions of people killed as a result of US interventions around the world since WW2

The U.S. is responsible for between 1 and 1.8 million deaths during the war between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, by luring the Soviet Union into invading that nation.

The news that Russia’s eastern Zabaikalsky region would grant 115,000 hectares of land to the Chinese company Huae Xinban under a 49-year lease stirred up a maelstrom of controversy and anxiety in Russia.  A survey conducted by Rosbalt shows that 50.5% of that news agency’s readers fear such a deal “provides fertile ground for China’s colonization and then annexation of Siberia, and for a major war.”

Quote from: ersi on 2015-08-02, 16:01:14

between 20-30 millions of people killed as a result of US interventions around the world since WW2

Quote

The U.S. is responsible for between 1 and 1.8 million deaths during the war between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, by luring the Soviet Union into invading that nation.

Obviously, the Soviet Union bore no responsibility for what happened. Gotta love studies!

According to one theory, all the trouble with Germany is due to the fact that Germany was the only major European power who never got a chance to run overseas colonies like others did. But I don't buy that theory. Germans had their chance long before there were any overseas. They ran the Hanse and colonised Czech, Prussia, and two Baltic countries beginning from the 12th century.

If you refer as "Germany" anything before the unification in 1871 it gets tricky. It is possible to claim a continuity from then to now (Imperial Germany, Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, Federal Republic of Germany/German Democratic Republic, Re-Unified Germany), but harder to claim a continuity before that.

An enormous military budget (necessary if you're going to have influence in the far corners of the world) and people like RJ, Belfrager and Krake who spend all their time telling us how much worse we are at running the world than their respective countries were when they did it.

Bomb Portugal!

Quote from: Jimbro3738 on 2015-08-03, 18:02:50

Bomb Portugal!

Worthless, you never did it, you never will do it. Sissies.

Portugal was--- from our standpoint-- never worth the bother. It's a country known for fishing the Grand Banks as well as a country known for going to the bank to borrow. But Portugal hasn't been a credible power since the days when Portugal and Spain were trying to divide the world between them with the aid and assistance of the pope at that time.

The first major force was the Hanseatic League that in German lands covered only the Northern Germany and the Netherlands.

Quote from: ersi on 2015-08-03, 12:21:24

The first major force was the Hanseatic League that in German lands covered only the Northern Germany and the Netherlands.

Note that its language, Low German, is a lot closer to Dutch than High German. Nowadays the differences appear a lot more immense.

Some would say that Dutch is not a different language, but rather yet another German-speaking country like Austria and (most of) Switzerland, adding to the splintered self-identity of Germans.

Some would say that Dutch is not a different language, but rather yet another German-speaking country like Austria and (most of) Switzerland, adding to the splintered self-identity of Germans.

Harrogate is the happiest place to live in Britain, according to a survey by a property website.
The spa town topped the poll for the third year in a row in the Rightmove report, which asked 24,000 people how they feel about where they live.
Shrewsbury was ranked second, with Ipswich third and York and Chester completing the top five.
Inverness came highest in Scotland, in sixth, with seventh-placed Llandrindod Wells the top Welsh location.

If you use a language-based continuity you would get into what German(ic) should be, including what Frenzie mentioned, even the English, the Franks, the Rus, and the Vandals if you cast the net wide enough.

More than 100 Syrian refugees have crossed the Arctic border into Norway from Russia on bicycles, exploiting a loophole in the country's border regulations.

[...] The Storskog border station -- just two hours drive from the Arctic City of Murmansk in Russia's far north -- is Norway's only legal border crossing with Russia.

According to border agreements, it is illegal either to cross the border on foot or to give someone without papers a lift, a problem Syrian refugees have sidestepped by using bicycles.

"It is not news to us that tourists cross the border on bicycles, but recently we've also started to see some asylum seekers coming by bicycle," Gøran Stenseth, one of the border officials, told the local Sør-Varanger Avis newspaper.

So far this year, 133 asylum seekers have entered Norway though Storskog on bicycles. According to local police, most of them are Syrian refugees.

“You can say that maybe about five to 20 people try it a month. There have been a couple of people who have tried by bicycle. The rest are being driven over in Russian cars. It’s very easy for them to cross – they can just sit in a Russian car, and come into Norway. And it’s legal.”

According to Sør-Varanger Avis, a local newspaper, 133 asylum-seekers have used this method in 2015, most of whom are Syrians.

How this obscure border crossing came to be a magnet for Syrians is not yet clear. Pettersen said his colleagues perform only the most perfunctory interviews with refugees, before putting them on one of the twice-daily planes to the immigration police in Oslo.

I walked into Greece from Turkey, a border passing with the same restriction, they didn't stop me.

Update 3: Eston Kohver has been placed under arrest by Moscow court. He is suspected of spying and has to sit 2 months until his case is investigated. In case of conviction for this crime, Russian law prescribes 10 to 20 years jail http://www.interfax.ru/russia/395367

It will be a gateway to information on Scottish culture and history that will allow millions of people to view unique documents including manuscripts of major Scottish writers such as Robert Burns and Walter Scott, fascinating official reports on many subjects, thousands of films on life in Scotland, and — bringing things up to date — memorabilia from last year's referendum on Scottish independence, among many others.

The National Library of Scotland is going to digitize about a third of its collection.

I suppose that the English will decide what third would be and Scottish will applaud and be thankfull...

Now how is that Belfrager for an example of arrogant, emotional nationalism?

Cuckoo Land.

I suppose that the English will decide what third would be and Scottish will applaud and be thankfull...

Hmmmm.... I have a question. The term "Jacobite" gets thrown around quite a bit here.

Only by rj and that's because the only place they exist is in his head.

But there do seem to be Papists… (The "stopped clock" phenomenon?  :)  )

people like him instead slip into that hoity toity attitude because he and them cannot answer.

arrogance, self-righteous and ignorance

I take it, RJ, that Scots democracy is not -despite much longer practice- much better than what you accuse us ex-colonists of… :)

I think that it must be an huge increasing for the Estonian-Portuguese multilateral economic relationship. :)

The prime minister, who has faced strong pressure from pro-European Tories to highlight the benefits of the UK’s EU membership, will speak out during an appearance at the Northern Future Forum in Reykjavik, Iceland.

He will use the chance of a summit in a European capital outside the EU to issue a point-by-point challenge to the claim by the Leave campaign that Britain could negotiate a credible relationship with Brussels from outside the EU.

Cameron will focus on the “Norwegian option (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/mar/16/eu-exit-norway-option-costs-thinktank)”, often cited by the Leave campaign, which has allowed Oslo to enjoy access to the single market without joining the EU.

“The prime minister believes it is important to highlight the questions Britain would face if it left the EU and followed Norway’s model (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/oct/28/the-norway-option-what-is-it-and-what-does-it-mean-for-britain),” a No 10 source said. Downing Street pointed out that Norway is the 10th largest contributor to the EU budget and is bound by the rules of the single market without any say in the decision-making process (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/27/norway-eu-reality-uk-voters-seduced-by-norwegian-model).

O do not think it should just be routinely accepted that Scotland would want to be in the EU.

The economic benefits are significant.

What are your thoughts on EU membership? The economic benefits are significant. What is the downside?

The ones in business tend to be overwhelmingly pro-EU. The unemployed and economically unproductive tend to be against.

Quote from: jax on 2015-11-05, 22:29:14

The ones in business tend to be overwhelmingly pro-EU. The unemployed and economically unproductive tend to be against.

You mean Belfrager and company?

Not to speak about Sex, certainly a waste of economically productive time...

In a filmed promo clip uploaded to the Twitter account of an editor at Canada’s Maclean’s Magazine on Monday, new Canadian PM, Justin Trudeau, was asked which of the Baltic nations is his favourite. Trudeau answered, saying “that’s not a thing”.

In addition to the Baltic States being Canada’s NATO partners, there are over 100,000 Canadians of Baltic heritage.

Trudeau has had numerous challenges with foreign policy gaffes. Earlier in 2015 he was unable to identify what NATO’s Article 5 was when asked by reporters and later mocked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a dispute over hockey.

No one ever speaks about Groenland...

It seems they aren't a colony but an "autonomous country" whatever that is...

In short, colonies. There's clearly the main/centre versus other/periphery relationship in every case, historically conqueror versus conquered. The word for it used to be colony. Since there's no other word invented for this meanwhile, the word for it is still colony.

In 13th century, Pope Innocentius III announced Northern Crusades. Germand and Danes conquered Livonia (Latvia) and Estonia. Swedes conquered Finland. That's how colonisation worked at that time.

In short, colonies.

The only advancement in this area was made by the Portuguese "Estado Novo" when we started calling to colonies "ultramarine provinces", integrant parts of the Nation. But, of course, you're not aware of this nor I expect you to be.

Yes, I agree. "Autonomous country" it's a farse. Real countries don't needs adjectives. "Country" says it all.

Kongeriget Danmark (eller Danmarks Rige) er et konstitutionelt monarki, som består af Danmark i det nordlige Europa og statens to selvstyrende områder: øgruppen Færøerne i Nordatlanten og øen Grønland, som geografisk hører til det nordamerikanske kontinent men geopolitisk til Europa.

Quote from: ersi on 2015-12-19, 20:19:18

In short, colonies.

We tend to think of colonies as non-self-governing entities. Of course there are degrees of everything, but in any case the former colonies have become decreasingly that which we think of when we say "colony" over the past half century.

Ahh, the good times. When even pagans obeyed to the Pope...   :)

Quote from: Belfrager on 2015-12-19, 21:31:18

Ahh, the good times. When even pagans obeyed to the Pope...   :)

Yes, the Roman Catholic period in Scandinavian history. Lots of conquest on religious terms and forcible conversions with fire and iron.

Renaming a former colony to "land" or "country" as if on a par with the mainland (which is also called "land" or "country") makes the colonial relationship between the mainland and periphery ambiguous. This only serves to wipe the colonial past under the rug, while keeping it in effect in practice. It makes the colonisers feel they are not colonisers anymore. Self-deception.

Take away the lack of autonomy, remove the profit, and you haven't got a colony in any kind of traditional sense.

As far as the renaming and whatnot goes, the respective things that happened (some islands to become municipalities within the Netherlands, others to become countries within the Netherlands but without de jure independence from the Netherlands) were the result of what is supposed to represent the will of the local people. That is, they had a vote on it and chose to become countries within the kingdom. The only thing I can tell you is that there are preciously few Netherlandic Dutch people around there nowadays, which incidentally is another difference with a traditional colony, which would have a constant stream of fresh administrators etc. coming in from the motherland.

This doesn't change the fact that for the time being they are colonies or, if you like, former colonies, but it's shorter to say colonies without any loss of accuracy of meaning.

You're welcome to try to change English practice, but in the meantime prepare to communicate with a lack of clarity. :P

"Colony" may seem anachronistic, but it's well-defined and straight to the point.

Quote from: ersi on 2015-12-21, 12:44:23

"Colony" may seem anachronistic, but it's well-defined and straight to the point.

It's precisely because the word colony is well-defined that these aren't colonies. When an obese person loses weight they may not be skinny just yet, but there comes a point when they cease being obese.

Being a colony is the fact that the country has a motherland which exploits it or determines its autonomy/independence.

You are saying that colonies have ceased to be colonies by mere passage of time.

Really, it takes a severance of the colonial relationship to end the status of colony and to gain political and economic self-reliance and independence.

Curaçao chooses to be one of the four countries that currently constitute the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It could also freely choose to leave the kingdom.

The Netherlands could similarly leave the Kingdom of the Netherlands, for example to become a republic, leaving the Kingdom to the other three constituent countries — wouldn't that be fun? ;)

No, the primary aspect is autonomy and self-determination. An real colony couldn't possibly be "one vote away from independence." It would need something like an armed revolution. The passage of time plays a role too, ...

Quote from: ersi on 2015-12-21, 15:18:09

Really, it takes a severance of the colonial relationship to end the status of colony and to gain political and economic self-reliance and independence.

But what if a de jure change wouldn't de facto change anything? I mean that both ways. In the former colony of Belgian Congo, most of the industry and such was still controlled by Belgian companies. I believe the common term for that type of relationship is neocolonialism. In contrast, the in your view still-colony of Curaçao is effectively completely independent except for its disproportionally strong navy. Note economically, for example, that Curaçao's currency is the Guilder, not the Euro. (And a Netherlands Antilean Guilder that has been separate from the Dutch Guilder since 1940, mind you, not since the introduction of the Euro in 2001.)

Speaking about Baltic States, I read that Estonian Airlines stopped flying. Nice stewardesses they had.

Are you aware, ersi, that no American airlines have every been "profitable"… :)

I am aware that Americans do these things wrong as a matter of principle.

National airlines are not meant to be profitable. Insofar as they are a strategic function, they have to be there. Just like digestion or breathing has to be there, no matter how inefficient or unprofitable. Does it make sense to economise at the expense of your own digestion? Does it make sense to outsource your breathing so you can spare your own lung muscles?

Eh? When did America not get entangled in other places and their business?  For Heaven's sake!

The UK, from 1939-1942.    :coffee:

Quote from: Colonel Rebel on 2016-02-05, 12:20:49

The UK, from 1939-1942.    :coffee:

I think "the Colonel" means something like "Be careful what you wish for…" :)

Too many have been "invited" to Syria! Guess who...well, it's the dual red, white and blue.

You mean invited themself, in breach with international law which evidently doesn't apply to everybody.

Now the great hypocrite country

An English colleague was prompted to send Captain Maughan a letter telling him: 'Your country's (Scotland) a welfare state paid for by the English middle classes.'

this small country

Groan. A tipsy Yank comes on here to snipe at my country.

Not once over the years on Opera then here have I ever got direct answers to the list of negatives on your country.

damn ignoring the millions there who are suffering and so on

Many Scots did so much for you[r] place but it got corrupted by, well corruption on vast scales.

Constant wars since 1945

ps. my quotation is from the Bible

Groan. A tipsy Yank comes on here to snipe at my country. Not once over the years on Opera then here have I ever got direct answers to the list of negatives on your country. Much of your history has a good import from Scots and more damn principled one than say the Irish or Italians. Of course you have a big country of course and the negative side is unfortunately too many big heads in it as well.Creating wars, misuse of politics, damn ignoring the millions there who are suffering and so on.  The millions f decent ex-colonist folk who have been loyal have also been misused, lied to and their loyalty fiddled with. England helped create the days of Empire but the proportion of Scots who administered it was well above the game. Many Scots did so much for you place but it got corrupted by, well corruption on vast scales.

Mind you, I am aware that one cannot put all Yanks in the same hermit mind you have they are too busy struggling to keep going and deserve better. So for all the boasting about your land from your warped brain just look at the history concocted by your corporate misuses of the decent people. Constant wars since 1945 and although imperialism has slipped into history you are getting into massive debts trying to keep your alive. In truth you could learn many basics from a number of small countries that are not financial, crime ridden, military police styled cops  with constant mass murders (nearly one for every day of a year) along with a 5-figure total of the gun dead!

The size of a country is nothing it is what goes on and you had better look closer at yours before you mouth elsewhere and make a fool if the decent ex-colonists her and well, locally!  :P

ps. my quotation is from the Bible.

There is NO country as nationalistic as your own!

Why do you keep opening bases threaten people, creat wars and disturbance ever since 1945?

We never took a stance to control the whole world but you DO as if some inbuilt right.

This is a map of the British Empire.

Well there was a very inserting poll about two weeks ago that said that most Scots wanted to stay in Europe. However when they were asked would they want another Referendum on independence they overwhelming said no.  We practice democracy here Colonel and if there was an overwhelming clamour in a State in nutjobland all hell would break lose and not be allowed.

Oak, I would say this to you. The BBCNews and the Guardian are in the same corner. Lord Reith the great early pioneer of the BBC will be revolving past the speed limit in his grave.

Care to post the link?

That's extremely unlikely, Colonel… I suspect you've been reading too much dystopian fiction. :)

Our currency will no longer be the world's reserve currency by then (heck, it may not be in 5 years). That has been the key to our monetary scheme/empire. When the monetary scheme/empire falls, there is no way to keep up the military bases that we have throughout the world.

in comes the Southern attempted maverick with the laugh that in years to come there will be 50 independent States over the pond. Yeah right and as much chance as me blowing kisses at smug mouth, Sturgeon. The real rulers of the ex-colonies will ensure that is a no-no and for a change in the imperial waste of money when there are so many Americans internally struggling that will only happen of the place goes belly up in debt or there is a second revolution.  :doh:

Expected that stuff from Luxor

away and play your bagpipes boy!

In Internet slang, a troll is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion, often for their own amusement.
(from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll))

It says that the video is not available at my location. Yet another website to whom a part of EU is third world.

Please also note that you are accessing a site which is designed for and targeted to U.S. audiences and is governed by and operated in accordance with U.S. laws.

In a time of massive political unrest in Iceland, the open-democracy party has extended its lead as the nation’s most popular choice for the next general elections, with a record of 43% support.

(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Ficelandmonitor.mbl.is%2Ffrimg%2F8%2F76%2F876500.jpg&hash=18dcc257ae9d8cf89e26b37ac9dac271" rel="cached" data-hash="18dcc257ae9d8cf89e26b37ac9dac271" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/frimg/8/76/876500.jpg)

The current government parties – beleaguered by the current worldwide Panama Papers scandal – lose out in this latest poll.

21.6% percent would vote for the Independence Party, 11.2% for the Left-Green Movement, 10.2% for the Social Democratic Alliance, 7.9% for the Progressive Party, and 3.8% for Bright Future.

According to its manifesto, the Pirate Party stands for direct democracy, freedom of information and civil and political rights.

15.5% of people said they would not vote, 14% were undecided and 13.9% would not give an answer.

A new Gallup survey published yesterday showed that 81% of Icelanders want Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson to walk the plank.

The International Modern Media Institute was founded in 2011 with the aim of bringing together the best functioning laws in relation to freedom of information, expression and speech, reflecting the reality of borderless world and the challenges that it imposes locally and globally in the 21st century.

The institute is founded first and foremost on the back of its namesake parliamentary resolution (Icelandic Modern Media Initiative) which was unanimously adopted in the Icelandic Parliament 16th of June 2010, with the aim of making Iceland a journalistic safe haven, protecting both freedom of expression as well as freedom of information. The parliamentary resolution has received great support for it is obvious we need a new standard to implement not only in Iceland but also around the world.

So, how did the three phone calls go yesterday?
So, there was one from Turkey from a woman who didn't speak too much English. So, that was a fairly brief conversation. It was cut off. I don't know whether she hung up, or what happened. Then there was a guy from Britain. An engineer from Britain. And we had a long chat for about 10 minutes. He just asked about what life is like in Sweden, etc. And the third caller just hung up. So, I think there are a lot of people, like you, they just call to see if this actually works. So, for full disclosure, I should let you know that I'm a reporter for the Associated Press, the news agency. And I'm writing a story about this. I just signed up for the service to see how it works, and how many calls I would receive. Just to really understand how they set it up.
[Laughs] Right, OK. So, this is supposed to be a tourism campaign, and we have one journalist calling another journalist.
[Laughs] Yeah, I'm not sure that's what they intended! Which magazine do you work for?
I'm with Adweek.
OK. Cool.

The words after the colon are the words of the blacks. They said that.

You folks are going to destroy yourselves, even after all the help the U.S. has given you…

You folks are going to destroy yourselves, even after all the help the U.S. has given you… (Assuming that ersi, Howie and Belfrager are representative…! Of course, they're not. Nor am I representative of the American electorate.)

What do you do against ISIS and Russia…? Putin and al Bagadii?

You manage to personify all negative prejudices an European can have towards Americans.

War after war created […]

You manage to personify all negative prejudices an European can have towards Americans.

A reviewer from the American Art News stated at the time that "Dada philosophy is the sickest, most paralyzing and most destructive thing that has ever originated from the brain of man." Art historians have described Dada as being, in large part, a "reaction to what many of these artists saw as nothing more than an insane spectacle of collective homicide."[10]

Years later, Dada artists described the movement as "a phenomenon bursting forth in the midst of the postwar economic and moral crisis, a savior, a monster, which would lay waste to everything in its path... [It was] a systematic work of destruction and demoralization... In the end it became nothing but an act of sacrilege."

Not at all, he's the only American Dadaist I ever found...

Cites or argument, please?

Oxford, MS, could benefit from @Belfrager (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?action=profile;u=4)'s wine pub

When Europe is overrun by the Islamic fundie lot ...

Unfortunately, Belfrager would not benefit from Oxford ...  :wine:

Health-promoting effects of the Mediterranean diet have been in focus for decades, whereas less interest has been given to existing healthy dietary habits within other Western cultures. […] A healthy Nordic food index, consisting of traditional Nordic food items with expected health-promoting effects (fish, cabbages, rye bread, oatmeal, apples and pears, and root vegetables), was extracted and associated with mortality by Cox proportional hazard models. […] In conclusion, an index based on traditional healthy Nordic foods was found to be related to lower mortality among middle-aged Danes, in particular among men. This study indicates that traditional, healthy food items should be considered before public recommendations for major dietary changes are made.

In conclusion, an index based on traditional healthy Nordic foods was found to be related to lower mortality among middle-aged Danes, in particular among men

Wau, I'm impressed how such conclusion demonstrates the Mediterranean diet to be worst than the Nordic "diet".

That's really not what they were saying

:sst:  I'm afraid each hourly time zone is 15° wide. (360°/24h)

Bear in mind that it makes no changes to the matter because my statement is still valid whereas yours are false to put it mildly...

Quote

That preamble has drawn vituperations from Lavrov, his ministry's chief spokesman Alexander Yakovenko, the Duma's and Federation Council's foreign affairs committee chairmen Konstantin Kosachev and Mikhail Margelov, and other Moscow officials. Politically, they object to the Estonian parliament's references to the 1991 and 1992 documents that mention the "Soviet aggression against Estonia in 1940," "illegal annexation," and "decades of occupation." Those formulations are not included or cited in the Estonian parliament's June 20, 2005, document. But its mere reference to the earlier documents that include those formulations seems beyond official Moscow's capacity to come to terms with its history.

source (http://www.jamestown.org/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=30572&no_cache=1)

How many evidences like the above (written in English) do you still need? 1?, 5?, 10?, ...?
Or do you think all those articles have been written and published (that of the BBC included) by KGB agents?

And since we are at it let me quote you:

Quote from: ersi on 2016-09-03, 11:01:21

You know wrong. Estonia and Latvia had territorial claims against Russia until Merkel forced us to renounce the claims. Meaning, "friendly fire" from within EU forced us to formally renounce claims to independence. Thank you very much!

Let's compare your statement with what BalticTimes has to say:

Quote

As compared to 2005, the wording of the border agreements has remained unchanged
source (http://www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/34439/)

In 2005 Merkel wasn't in office and the border agreements have remained unchanged in 2014 compared to 2005.

So, who tells the true and who makes false allegations? BalticTimes? Ersi?

The United States Must Be the World’s Policeman
source (http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-united-states-must-be-the-worlds-policeman-1474412665)

Subject-specific lessons – an hour of history in the morning, an hour of geography in the afternoon – are already being phased out for 16-year-olds in the city’s upper schools. They are being replaced by what the Finns call “phenomenon” teaching – or teaching by topic. For instance, a teenager studying a vocational course might take “cafeteria services” lessons, which would include elements of maths, languages (to help serve foreign customers), writing skills and communication skills.

Finland schools: Subjects scrapped and replaced with 'topics' as country reforms its education system (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/finland-schools-subjects-are-out-and-topics-are-in-as-country-reforms-its-education-system-10123911.html)

The commander of the Estonia Navy has resigned after customs officials said they found smuggled alcohol and cigarettes aboard an Estonian ship taking part in NATO operations on the Baltic Sea.

I don't understand how a war vessel can be searched by customs officials.

Quote from: Belfrager on 2016-11-26, 14:05:54

I don't understand how a war vessel can be searched by customs officials.

I thought the same thing.

Quote from: ersi on 2016-11-26, 15:04:20

Quote from: Belfrager on 2016-11-26, 14:05:54

I don't understand how a war vessel can be searched by customs officials.

I thought the same thing.

I'm not really sure what else you'd expect?

but not that the ship gets searched.

...and military police. The latter would probably be responsible for this kind of thing.

@krake If you want to make Estonia look bad,

I don't think anything got lost in translation, but much could have gone lost in reporting, because our reporters are usually some high school students and when they stick with the career, they remain at high school level. Even though this is the kind of news that should have been assigned to some real journalist.

(https://www.thelocal.se/userdata/images/article/40acac5d283251a2ae5dfabe70bab9e97227a34aacdd9146066383a5603a9968.jpg)

Bishop Anders Arborelius with Pope Francis in the Vatican in 2016. Credit: L'Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo via AP/TT
In a historic appointment by Pope Francis on Sunday, Bishop Anders Arborelius was the first ever Swede to become a cardinal.
(https://www.thelocal.se/page/view/tag/)In a surprise announcement on Sunday, Pope Francis named a total of five new cardinals, from Mali, Laos, El Salvador, Spain – and Bishop Anders Arborelius from Sweden. 
 
READ ALSO: Pope Francis holds Catholic mass in secular Sweden (https://www.thelocal.se/20161101/pope-francis-greets-catholics-in-secular-sweden)
 
Except for Spain, all countries are peripheral in the Catholic world. Particularly Sweden, with its strongly secular profile, stood out, said Douglas Brommesson, a political scientist at Lund University who has studied the role of the Catholic church in international politics.
 
"But this is somewhat in line with the Pope's way of thinking. He has named cardinals in countries that are poor or that are located far away from Rome previously. It is likely a way of getting perspectives from other countries than the typically Catholic countries," Brommesson told TT newswire.
 
"I suppose this is a great encouragement for the Catholic church in Sweden. The Pope visited Sweden recently (https://www.thelocal.se/20161028/why-the-pope-is-visiting-sweden-francis-lund-malmo), and Sweden has in a short period of time ended up at the centre of the life of the Catholic church. That is, of course, encouraging," he added.
 
READ ALSO: Pope: Why Swedish men look for non-Swedish women (https://www.thelocal.se/20161102/pope-why-swedish-men-look-for-non-swedish-women)
 
Apart from being the first ever Swede to be appointed as cardinal, 67-year-old Anders Arborelius became the first Catholic bishop of Swedish descent since the reformation in the 16th century in Sweden when he was named Bishop of Stockholm in 1998.
 
The cardinals belong to an elite group of members of the Catholic church, acting as the closest advisors to the Pope. Cardinals aged under 80 are also allowed to take part in the naming of a new Pope, which is why the Catholic church aims for having approximately 120 cardinals aged under 80.

Kaspar Korjus, managing director at e-Residency, Enterprise Estonia, said that the initiative was about creating a "borderless digital nation".
-
Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid said that her nation was "the only truly digital society," underpinned by the state.

Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid said that her nation was "the only truly digital society,"

There is no cloud, only somebody else’s computer.

The responsible director has been found guilty in criminal court of the whole affair, and sentenced to the harshest sentence ever seen in Swedish government

She was docked half a month’s paycheck.

On 30 August, an international team of researchers informed the Estonian Information System Authority (RIA) of a vulnerability potentially affecting the digital use of Estonian ID cards. The possible vulnerability affects a total of almost 750,000 ID-cards issued starting from October 2014 [...] The ID-cards issued before 16 October 2014 use a different chip and are not affected.

79% of Swedish 2 years olds have used the internet.

Nice bridge at 2:20. :P

OSLO (AFP) - Breaking with tradition, nearly all ambassadors of the world's nuclear powers will not attend this year's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony which honours efforts to ban atomic weapons, the Nobel Institute said Thursday.

Russia and Israel will be the only exceptions, with their ambassadors due to attend.

"They clearly received instructions to express their reservations towards ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) and the global treaty" to ban weapons of mass destruction, the head of the Nobel Institute, Olav Njolstad, told AFP.

The Peace Prize was awarded on October 6 to ICAN, a coalition of non-governmental organisations lobbying for a historic treaty banning atomic weapons, which was signed in July by 122 countries.

The article itself (click the link under the video) seems to have been fixed. Video title is still the same though. :)

Spotify was founded by Swedes Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon in 2006.
Their home country and Switzerland do share common points: They both have a history of neutrality, have great skiing stations and stunning nature. But they also have plenty of differences, including different languages, and that one of the two countries is located in Scandinavia, while the other is, well, not.
READ ALSO: Ten things you should never say to a Swede (https://www.thelocal.se/20141112/ten-things-you-should-never-say-to-a-swede)
But confusing the two is not an uncommon mistake, and it does not only happen in anglophone countries. In Spain, 'Suecia' and 'Suiza' are rather too close for comfort, as are China's 'Ruidian' and 'Ruishi'.
In fact, ask any Swede or Swiss person if they have ever been subject to people confusing their country with "that other European country", and you will get a lot of nodding heads.
Last year, a Swiss airline even launched a competition aimed at ending the never-ending mix-up by offering to take 24 winners on a tour through the non-existing 'Swederland' (https://www.thelocal.ch/20171102/sweden-or-switzerland-airline-aims-to-end-confusion-with-trips-to-swederland).

• Republic of Equatorial Guinea
• Republic of Guinea
• Republic of Guinea-Bissau
• Independent State of Papua New Guinea
• Co-operative Republic of Guyana
• French Guiana

Congrats Finland. And Estonia is behind all its neighbours. Luckily I have already managed to visit the happy Finland this year for a few days so I am not too unhappy http://estonianworld.com/life/estonians-arent-particularly-happy-scoring-63rd-world/

Norwegians are so happy (last year they dethroned the Danes who had monopolised the chart for years

It's an as unimpressive building

...the top 5 destinations of the Baltic Sea and Scandinavia region are:
1. St. Petersburg;
2. Flam;
3. Tallinn;
4. Geiranger;
5. Copenhagen

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Lithuanian authorities on Tuesday “strongly” urged consumers, especially public servants, not to install the app of a popular Russian taxi-booking service because it may unlawfully be collecting user data.

Rytis Rainys, head of Lithuania’s National Cyber security center, said they were running “various tests” of the Yandex Taxi application.

[...]

Aram Sargsyan, Yandex’s global strategy director, told the Baltic News Service agency that the company “processes and stores data of (European Union) users strictly according to EU regulations” — but said it was willing to submit itself to a check.

A Swedish Air Force jet fighter crashed Tuesday near an air base in southern Sweden after striking several birds as it was about to land, Sweden's Armed Forces said.
source (https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/swedish-air-force-jas-39-fighter-jet-crashes-57302969)

Quote

A Swedish Air Force jet fighter crashed Tuesday near an air base in southern Sweden after striking several birds as it was about to land, Sweden's Armed Forces said.
source (https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/swedish-air-force-jas-39-fighter-jet-crashes-57302969)

"Birds down Swedish fighter jet. Russian ornithologists suspected."

Then you take plane home from either Bergen or Oslo. You spend a weekend or a week, and you have "done" Norway. Next year New Zealand.

Several bars in downtown Reykjavík ran out of beer while serving thirsty US sailors and marines who were in port over the weekend participating in the NATO military exercises Trident Juncture.

Bars in downtown Reykjavík ran out of beer serving thirsty US sailors and marines

(https://www.thelocal.no/userdata/images/article/168312f52b15e84fbe393f1577c07bcd8e48098df9dba5b5e178e3faf5b2f0f0.jpg)

An armed man has robbed a bank in the world's northernmost settlement on Norway's remote Arctic archipelago of Svalbard but he was caught shortly afterwards, authorities said on Friday.

The heist was the first ever bank robbery in living memory in the territory, which is located in the Arctic Ocean, about halfway between continental Norway and the North Pole.

For lack of an extraction plan:

"Our vision is that by 2020 no one should be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo car."

"Our vision is that by 2022 no one should be able to escape from a new Volvo car."

With the costs of payments, insurance, and repairs, owning your own car can be a hassle. Vilnius-based car-sharing startup CityBee relieves you of these concerns by letting you easily rent a car through its app, starting at just €.14 per minute.

[…]

After acquiring all the planned vehicles, the Lithuanian startup will become one of the largest providers of car-sharing services in all of Europe, alongside giants like DriveNow, which is owned by BMW and has 6,000 cars.

''We had been monitoring suspects during the World Cup, round-the-clock, and we saw these five athletes on a regular basis with organised criminal groups, both before and during World Cup," Mr Csefan said, adding that a total of 120 people were involved in investigations and seizures, and 16 locations had been searched.

On Saturday, June 13, one of the largest law enforcement searches in Latvia's history took place in ABLV Bank-related addresses, Latvian Television reported on June 13.

[...]

In 2018, the Latvian State Police opened a criminal case on possible money laundering schemes at ABLV Bank, which was then undergoing a liquidation process following U.S. allegations of large-scale money laundering.

Latvia's anti-corruption force was in action January 28, 2020, with a raid on the offices of ABLV bank.

Later in the day the LETA newswire reported the raids were related to suspicions of the laundering of several hundred million euros through ABLV Bank.

[...]

Bauska did not specify in which specific criminal case involving ABLV Bank the searches were conducted on Saturday, as there are dozens of pending cases, but the investigation is very complicated and extensive.

Nice to have news from the Baltic countries

Do you have any individuality or you are all the same thing?

Belgazprombank is majority owned by Russia’s state-run Gazprom natural gas company and Gazprombank, which is affiliated with it. The raid on the bank highlighted growing frictions between Lukashenko and the Kremllin.

Sweden: Churchbells ringing at night due to technical failure

Russia puts Estonia on the “unfriendly” countries’ list

The Russian authorities have started compiling a list of countries that are deemed “unfriendly” towards it – and Estonia is one of them.

Nobody wants anything to do with him.

https://youtu.be/eM4otIAZIps

There is a tradition for opera in Eurovision.

You ask your local government about that. The European routes themselves predate the EU, but the EU part-funds infrastructure projects through cohesion funds, and TEN-T road/rail/sea routes, including the North Sea–Baltic Corridor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea%E2%80%93Baltic_Corridor), are priority routes. But it is the member countries that actually build them (ot procure tenders).

Rail Baltica is different, in that it is managed by RB Rail AS (https://company.lursoft.lv/en/rb-rail/40103845025), equally shared by the three Baltic rails. That isn't all that unusual for transnational projects, e.g. the Øresund Bridge is 50% owned each by Swedish and Danish state companies.  It is unusual in the degree of EU funding. Normally the EU funds maybe 20%, but with Rail Baltica the percentage is far higher. Indeed according to the this article (https://www.railtech.com/policy/2021/03/17/1-56-billion-of-cef-funding-to-railways-rail-baltica-included/) Rail Baltica just got 90% of EU total extra funding. Not bad for three countries comprising 1.3% of the EU population. (5.6% of total CEF transport budget, plus whatever was the regular Rail Baltica funding, still pretty good).

1.56 billion of CEF funding to railways, Rail Baltica included (https://www.railtech.com/policy/2021/03/17/1-56-billion-of-cef-funding-to-railways-rail-baltica-included/)

(https://www.railtech.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Rail_Baltica_North_Sea_Baltic_Network-1024x576.png)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auoFY5sULM8

If the Estonian government doesn't want to fund a fairly small and cheap upgrade to the Pärnu branch, that indicates that they don't value it highly, not that they have been bamboozled by the EU.

So what is happening in those barely populated areas linked to the North Atlantic ocean?

During the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting 2021 in Reykjavik, Iceland, the Council approved its first-ever strategic plan, which lays out a framework for the Council's work in the next decade.

“The smart road to be built in Põlva is Estonia’s first average speed measurement solution in an open environment,” said Mart Suurkask, the CEO of Bercman Technologies.

The new smart road section is about 2.7 km long with an average speed measurement capacity and includes 14 smart pedestrian crosswalks on Kesk and Jaama streets in Põlva. These pedestrian crosswalk solutions are equipped with number plate recognition cameras to measure the average speed of cars and have signs with changeable information at the start and endpoints of the smart road section.

The quintet of Nordic and Baltic countries at the top of the Index – Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Estonia – continues to serve as a democratic model where freedom of expression flourishes, while Moldova (40th) and Bulgaria (91st) stand out this year thanks to government change and the hope it has brought for improvement in the situation for journalists even if oligarchs still own or control the media.

In the case of Estonia, once again emerging Europe’s leader on the index and the only country in the region where the press freedom situation is considered “good”, the report says that “the political environment [in Estonia] has been characterised by a relative neutrality towards journalism and few verbal attacks, which has contributed to journalists being able to hold politicians accountable without fear of persecution.”

Lithuania (ninth), Czechia (20th), Latvia (22nd), Slovakia (27th), Moldova (40th), and Croatia (48th) are rated as “satisfactory”, with press freedom considered “problematic” in Armenia (51st), Slovenia (54th), Romania (56th), North Macedonia (57th), Kosovo (61st), Montenegro (63rd), Poland (66th), Bosnia and Herzegovina (67th), Kyrgyzstan (72nd), Serbia (79th), Hungary (85th), Georgia (89th), Bulgaria (91st), Albania (103rd), and Ukraine (106th).

Quote from: Frenzie on 2022-10-19, 07:48:53

Quote from: ersi on 2022-10-19, 06:52:54

These are oligarchs by themselves, not agents in somebody else's pocket.

Someone like Musk does have massive business interests in China. I'd imagine he wouldn't want to rock the boat too much if he can help it.

Sure. Being an oligarch does not necessarily mean being completely sovereign, even though some oligarchs imagine themselves to be such. Musk (and more so Murdoch) is a businessman, some moves a are bad for his business so he either does not do those moves or attempts to undo them when he discovers it was a mistake.

Ever since Berlusconi pocketed enough telemedia he thinks he is invulnerable, which is quite justified thinking on his part, because he has really been through everything basically unscathed, retaining all the liberties and access to power, and is now 86 years old, i.e. a life lived merrily and still ongoing.

In contrast, all Russian oligarchs are Putin's vassals who must sacrifice own wealth for him when the time is at hand, which is right now. The most sovereign oligarch is Putin himself. Schröder is a well-paid foreign agent, not some unwitting useful idiot. Schröder's case qualifies for treason 100%.

Until last month, not many people were aware of the political warfare programme at Norway’s Arctic University in the northern city of Tromsø. But then, officers at the Norwegian Police Security Service arrested one of the researchers, claiming he was a Russian spy.

There is a striking irony in the fact that Moscow may have successfully infiltrated the very programme that investigates so-called “greyzone” activity — subversive actions by hostile states that fall below the threshold of formal conflict. But this arrest should also serve as a warning for academics across the world, whose work across borders and collaborative instincts make them particularly vulnerable at a time of rising geopolitical tensions.

José Assis Giammaria, purportedly a Brazilian citizen who has a masters degree in strategic studies from the University of Calgary, had specifically requested to work on the greyzone programme. It is also likely that he was interested in Tromsø as a centre of research on the High North, an increasingly contested region on Russia’s doorstep where melting Arctic ice is opening new sea routes and allowing access to rare minerals.

Giammaria gained a position in much the same way academics usually find employment: he was recommended to Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv, professor of security studies who leads the greyzone programme, by colleagues in Canada. She scrutinised his references and his University of Calgary credentials, which all seemed entirely in order.

“He got a lot of praise when I checked references,” Gjørv told Norwegian media. “He expressed an interest in the security policy situation in the north”. She described him as a quiet and slightly shy man who did not share much information about himself. Now Giammaria is being held by Norwegian security services, who say he’s a Russian illegal — a spy operating under deep cover, rather than posing as a diplomat. The investigative network Bellingcat has already alleged that he is actually Colonel Mikhail Mikhushin of the GRU, Russia’s foreign intelligence service. He has denied all the accusations against him.

A Twitter photo from the Mykolas Romeri University shows one of the suspected spies with his colleague Marc Lanteigne, an associate professor at the Arctic University of Norway. It was the two of them who came from Tromsø and were supposed to represent the university.

The conference on hybrid threats took place on September 29 and 30 in Vilnius. The suspected spy was trained to find weaknesses in hybrid threats such as pipeline sabotage. The EU-Hybnet conference project is financed by the EU.

Among the main objectives of the conference was to find out what to do if the country’s gas pipelines are blown up or the entire electricity grid is paralyzed. The lawyer of the suspected spy, Thomas Hansen, told the daily “VG” that the suspect is in shock and does not understand the accusations against him.

To start with, Tartu decided to experiment with on-demand transport in the region. Organising a regular bus route in its sparsely populated surroundings is unreasonable. But according to Tambet Matiisen, Head of Technology at the ADL, this challenge was a perfect opportunity for self-driving cars: it is often easier to achieve driverless mobility on smaller highways than in dense urban settings. Combining these considerations, and with the participation of several technology companies, Tartu ran a widely popular experiment between 26 on-demand stops connected by 66 km of roads.

This pilot provided both the city and other participants with valuable information about future challenges before such a transport system could be applied more widely. Mr Matiisen recalls, for example, how they quickly realised that using traffic lights for navigation is suboptimal.

SNP MSP Natalie Don had introduced a private member’s bill to the Holyrood in 2022 in which she said the failure to pardon the women “prolongs misogyny”.

The proposed Witchcraft Convictions (Pardons) (Scotland) Bill would have pardoned those convicted under the Witchcraft Act 1563.

One X user said: “Where’s the compassion for all those that were turned into newts by witches.”

Another said: “If this is your priority then your constituents are being robbed of their taxes.”

A Scottish government spokesman said: “Natalie Don’s member’s bill was withdrawn when she was appointed as a minister as it is a parliamentary rule that Scottish ministers do not promote member’s bills. Ministers have no plans to legislate in this area.”