VG has published the excerpt I was looking for about Karl Rove's obsession with Swedes, from Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack. I'm translating back into English here, so I'm still interested in the original text:

As the highest ranking Norwegian-American in the White House - and perhaps the only one - Rove was convinced about the historical duplicity of the Swedes, who invaded Norway in 1814, and governed the country until 1905. It was an old grudge, and was a continual joke between the President and Rove.

Did Rove say that he disliked Swedes because of the union, or did Woodward add that as the likeliest historical source of an anti-Swedish grudge? Whoever it was is misinformed about the nuances of intra-Scandinavian sentiment. There are no bad feelings among Norwegians over the union with Sweden. Apart from the fact that the union began in 1814 and ended in 1905, this part of Norwegian history is hardly even remembered. Norway was sufficiently independent, politically and culturally, that history text books avoid the role of Sweden almost entirely. This is true also for the 400 year union with Denmark up to 1814, (Norwegian history education is based on the principle that the history of Norway came to a pause in 1397, and resumed in the late 1700's), but at least you can detect traces of negative nationalist feeling against Denmark. There's nothing like that aimed at Sweden over the union, not even as a joke.

Then there's Jämtland and Herjedalen, two areas of land the Swedes conquered in the mid-17th century and never returned. This is remembered, though only as a joke. I may have told before of the Norwegian who explained about Jämtland and Herjedalen to a Serb, as an example of how nations can live in peace despite ancient conflicts over land. The Serb looked at him and said, "They stole your land?! And what are you going to do about it?"

If a well-informed person like Karl Rove does have a bad opinion of Sweden, it would be because of its neutrality during WW2, which involved turning back Norwegian refugees at the border (in the early part of the war), selling large amounts of iron ore to Germany, and granting passage for German troops into Norway. Contrasted against Norway's more courageous military and civil resistance, this part of Swedish history is looked down on in Norway. As well it should. The neutrality continued during the Cold War, and is part of the diplomatic tradition Hans Blix comes from, so in moderate amounts this would actually be a relevant grudge.

But for anyone who cares, this passage means either that Rove makes jokes Woodward doesn't understand, that Rove was referring to Swedish neutrality, or that Rove grew up on his grandpa's wild heroic tales about the time he singlehandedly faced off an army of Swedes armed only with a razorblade and a toothpick. I kind of prefer the last explanation, though it's probably not true.

My own hunch is that this is another example of anti-Swedish feeling in right wing US circles where for some reason Sweden serves as sort of a proxy for the Scandinavian welfare state that the US right wing hates a lot.

This dislike is against more than the excesses that Scandinavians themselves have second thoughts about but against core principles that pretty much every Scandinavian I've known (small sample, it's true) supports.

hmmmm....... let's see......... hundreds of years ago Sweden took over parts of Norway. Sweden never returned the land. How come we're not seeing Norwegian suicide bombers in Stockholm? After all, their land was stolen! The humiliation must be intense!

"My own hunch is that this is another example of anti-Swedish feeling in right wing US circles..."
Believe me Michael, there is no anti-Swedish feeling in right wing circles or in any circles in the US. We Americans simply don't care much about Europeans. We were pissed off by the French for their duplicity, and most of all, for their surrendering to whoever invaded them. Otherwise, we don't care.

According to my mother, my Norwegian grandfather, who came to the US in 1904 with his parents, always kept a strong dislike of the Swedes. When my mother sent my sister off to an exchange year in Sweden, she turned to me and said, "Your grandfather is probably rolling in his grave now."

It could well be that this attitude was frozen in some emigre families, but quickly dissolved among those who stayed in Norway.

Jãmtland & Hãrjedalen - Never Forget... I have never forgiven the swedes for this - the hour of revenge will come on the last day!! Hehe..

Amusing angle from one of the men behind the Watergate.

(BTW Bjørn, is the problem corrected now? Hope it is!)

"We Americans simply don't care much about Europeans."

OT, but, I to the extent that this is true, it might be one reason why W didn't have more luck in bringing Europeans on board for the neocon excellent adventure in Iraq.

* or that Rove grew up on his grandpa's wild heroic tales about the time he singlehandedly faced off an army of Swedes armed only with a razorblade and a toothpick. *

No Real Norwegian(tm) would admit having to arm himself to send off the dirty Swedes.

Seriously, this had be chuckle.

As some unnamed Norwegian diplomat said about Woodward's book after commenting on this claim, "We just have to hope that the rest of what Woodward writes is better founded in fact."

I'm 3/4th scandinavian, and until recently, I thought I was 1/8th Swedish. My mom always told me that my dad was 1/4th Swedish. But, I now find out, he was 100% Norwegian (in spite of being born in Minnesota).

So that still leaves me 1/4th Danish (Rasmus Neilsen married a German/Dutch/English woman, and the percentages aren't known).

But when Rasmus was asked to spell his name, Neilsen, he would defiantly say "That's 's-E-n', not 's-O-n', I ain't no damn Swede!"

How do you tell if a Swede is level headed? The snoos runs out of both sides of his mouth.

"Snoos" (Snoose?) It's what my mom called the chewing tobacco dribble. She knows lots of Swede-slurs. I don't know if there's any general animosity between Scandinavians, or Scandinavian immigrants in America. All I know is that Grandpa HATED Swedes!

Re Mr. Farris' comment on American disinterest in Europe:
"OT, but, I to the extent that this is true, it might be one reason why W didn't have more luck in bringing Europeans on board for the neocon excellent adventure in Iraq." Perhaps one might want to think about the "root cause" of our disinterest of late. The European media either condemns the US for what we do and don't do with little regard for consistency - or promotes outright lies and half-truths. The question isn't so much that the US should understand Europe as that Europe should understand that it can't expect to be taken seriously when they make little or no effort to be honest. I could quote examples of outright lies, half-truths or unfair condemnations but you get the picture.

As to the topic of animosity between Norway and Sweden, I can only speak from the perspective of Sweden. The Norwegian Joke is the equivalent of the Polish Joke in the US. It is fashionable to think of Norwegians as byfannens (country bumpkins). In addition, many Swedes dislike the nationalism of the Norweigians. I don't know if this attitude is reciprocated.

Suzanne: Yes, Norwegians are more nationalistic than Swedes. Probably because we are a young nation and gained our independence less than a century ago.

Swedes are by far the most Politically Correct of the Scandinavian nations, on the other hand.

http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum/

Back in 1987, my ship, USS Butte, had a pair of Norwegian Navy exchange officers assigned to my department. They spoke English well enough to understand jokes in it, which is to say very well indeed.

One evening underway, during my nightly meetings with my division officers and chiefs, I said something in the "Hern g'hern g'herndern" manner of the Swedish Chef. Both Norwegians broke up laughing, identifying my impression of "da Svedish chef, from da Moopets!" I was amazed and asked if they watched the Muppet Show in English or if it was dubbed into Norwegian. They said they watched it in English - it wouldn't be funny in Norwegian.

These same guys had plenty of Swedish jokes. Reminded me of the Aggie jokes you hear from A&M alums.

I'm not following you, Bjørn. The quote clearly says that ROVE had a grudge about HISTORICAL DUPLICITY of Swedes, not that Norwegians (which Rove isn't) have any grudge about Swedes. As for ill-feelings about the historical [political] duplicity of our esteemed neighbours, I believe you'll find it's not uncommon among Norwegian politicians even today. It neither started nor ended with WWII. The under-the-surface enimity between the Swedish and Norwegian Socialdemocratic parties still is pretty much of an open sore, while many conservative politicans are stil on a slow boil from being outmaneouvered in matters of economy. Reading up on Nordic foreign policy and the players autobiographies will show you that many are still smarting from what they feel were dirty play by their Swedish counterparts in cases ranging from trying to find a common Scandinavian base policy for pre-war neutrality through postwar issues such as Scandinavian defense cooperation, NORDØK and many many more.

The non-politic average Norwegian citizen (below 50?) couldn't care less, of course. But for anybody studying Nordic politics during the last century, the historic ill-feelings can't be missed.

I am reminded of the fight song of St. Olaf's College in Minnesota. I believe it goes something like this [clearing throat in order to bellow]: "Ten thousand Swedes ran through the weeds chased by one NORWEGIAN!!!"

I am married to a Norwegian woman and I've heard a lot of Swedish jokes. I like this one: Did you hear that there was an electrical outage in Stockholm and 15 people were trapped on the escaltor in the department store for hours!

That said, I think it is all in fun. Although, if you go to the military museum in Oslo you can see the Krag rifle which my father-in-law tells me is the reason that the Swedish Army did not attempt to reoccupy Norway.

It's worth remembering that it almost came to war between Norway and Sweden in 1905. My great aunt - who was six years old at the time - wrote in her memoirs that she remembers talk of war vividly. And there was quite a bit of resentment for quite a while following this, spilling over into WWII. It's entirely possible that Karl Rove's (great) grandparents harbored that kind of resentment against Swedes - I've seen lots of examples of Norwegian-Americans taking with them a "frozen" version of things when they left Norway.

By all accounts, Woodward is very accurate in his journalism, so I'm not inclined to dismiss this depiction of Rove out of hand. On the other hand, it's a little weird to hold a grudge against Blix for something that happened nearly 100 years ago.

Leif Knutsen is entirely correct in pointing out that it almost came to a war between Norway and Sweden in 1905. Both countries were fully mobilized and partially on a war footing for months. The relative strength of the Norwegian army and navy has in modern times never been stronger than they were at this point. The armed forces had been thoroughly modernized over the previous 20 years: The stark thruth is that the Storting was preparing for war.

Neither did the tension die out all of itself with Norway's independence. Large scale Swedish army exercizes were held, training for a possible attack westwards. Well into the twenties Norway was still maintaining and building fortifications meant to protect against a possible Swedish invasion. This has all been forgotten by the younger generation, but in effect Norways south-eastern border as far north as Trøndelag was a smaller-scale Maginot-line.

As a personal comment, my experience with expatriate Norwegians is that they, let's say, maintain a rather "higher state of alert" vs. Sweden than us who stayed at home.

GT: We have a high state of alert concerning jokes. If you think about invasion, I would be more concerned with the ongoing muslim colonization of Europe than with Sweden....

http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum/index.php

Ali:

Thank you for explaining Norwegian nationalism. I happen to think this type of nationalism is admirable - much to the dismay of my Swedish father-in-law...

"As some unnamed Norwegian diplomat said about Woodward's book after commenting on this claim, 'We just have to hope that the rest of what Woodward writes is better founded in fact.'"

I think the hope is a vain one. Whenever I read something in the media (or a book by a JOURNALIST) AND the subject matter is something with which I am very familiar, I always find many errors. If journalists (who are usually not experts in their field, they just think they should be) make many errors that I can catch, why should I trust their accuracy on the things where I lack expertise?

Colin Powell has blasted the book. And while he is hardly an unbiased source, he was one of the sources for the book itself... (http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2004%20News%20archives/April/21%20n/Powell%20rejects%20assertions%20in%20Woodward%20book.htm)

I don't know if Woodward (61 years old) is simply no longer at the top of his game or if he just allowed his own biases to write the story and then looked for supporting evidence when writing it. Either way, I wouldn't make much out of any of his comments.

"We Americans simply don't care much about Europeans."

Well, this is a bit harsh, but it has some truth to it. Out of my friends who do pay attention to international affairs, most are more concerned with the growing countries in the Pacific than European countries (with the UK being a major exception). If the Japanese and UK leaders had come out against libertating Iraq, it would have had slightly more impact. However, even then, not much. While our government has a mixed record, the American people almost always will support any decisive war to eliminate a tyrant.

So maybe OT is right... But it isn't so much that Americans won't consider other perspectives, facts can change our minds. However, when we believe we are right (and most of us believe liberating Iraq was the right thing to do), we will act even if every other country in the world supports keeping the tyrant in power. So I suppose my main disagreement with OT is that we don't care if Europeans (or others) disagree; but we still care about Europeans and other people when they infrequently cross our minds.

Understanding Scandinavian relationships is simple: Swedes = "Intellectuals", Danes = City Slickers, Norwegians = Okies, Finns = Crazy. Based on 72 years of observation by this Norwegian-American.

Well, so here it is. I am a norwegian living in Sweden, and my impression is that a dumber people than the swedes is hard to find..
But they think norwegian sound funny (they hardly understand a word), and think we are always happy...
But I could live with the deficient intellect, if it were not for their lacking sense of humor..

In the boader scheme of things the differences between Norway and Sweden are unimportant - both standard versions of the two languages are pretty much mutually intelligible. There is as much difference between the different dialects of Norwegian as there is between standard Norwegian and standard Swedish - basically they are all variant dailects of one Norse language family.The peoples share the same peninsula, climate, genetics and traditional religion and both have very fine developed traditional fiddling traditions!. More importantly they share a similar political heritage - that of European social democracy. The latter should be borne in mind particularly when concerning contemporary current affairs - namely that in Europe there remains (despite Thatcher, Kohl, Bildt, Syse, etc.) a popular social democrat consensus with regard to foreign policy. French foreign policy - whatever it's nationally selfisn motives, has still sustained a broader popular European position (shamefully ignored here in Ireland by Ahern and Harney's FF and PD coalition - but there again
we only constitute 3.5 million of the total EU population). This will be a perennial and persistent cause of disagreement between Europeans and Americans, rooted, as I understand it, in the widely differing paradigms and intellectual world views held between the two continents.

Im a Swede living in Stockholm. Norweigan indeed sound funny and they are always happy. I could evenr never take a Norweigan seriously if he spoke in Norweigan. @ is pronounced "alfakrull" in Norweigan, so that would be "curly-alpha" in English. Sounds stupid doesnt it? The we made up some for Norweigans: Guleböj = yellow bend = which is a banana. Swedish word is regular banan.

Norweigans do not work and they do not have any incentive whatsoever to work since they just drill for oil and take the Friday off if they really decided to work at all.

Of course we are jelous about the Norweigan oil since we actually have to work to make a living, creating inventions and multinational companies such as the bearing, IKEA, free newspaper metro and so on. Larges Norweigan invention must be the gas station combined with hot dog stand that we have everywhere in Sweden provided by Statoil.

Whenrever Im in Norway Im happy to see that Norweigans prefereebly drives old Saab and Volvos.

It’s not only the actual union, as such, that makes the average Norwegian dislike Swedes. The Norwegian “hate” against Sweden is based on two things, of which the famous “lillebrorskompoplex” is the major one. “Lillebrorskomplex” could roughly be translated as “baby brother complex”. This refers to the commonly known fact that Norwegians, always throughout history, have felt like baby brothers to Swedes. Let me explain the Norwegian “lillebrorskomplex”. Sweden has always had a strong industry – Volvo, Saab, IKEA, H&M, Tetrapak etc, and famous artist like ABBA, the Cardigans, Europe etc. Norway had only a fishing industry until the 1960s. Norway was in fact a development country until 1960s. Then they found oil, and the tables turned. Suddenly Norway had a stronger economy than Sweden (and this is true even today). But, and here is the big but, even though Norway is a richer country than Sweden today, the average Norwegian still feels like a baby brother. And this has to do with the knowledge that the Norwegian economy is based on one thing and one thing only – oil. It’s kind of difficult to base your national pride on the ability of foreign engineers to drill holes in the ground (among them a lot of Swedish companies who helped building the oil rigs). But, let us not entirely forget the union – the union ads another dimension to the Norwegian grudge against Sweden. So, all taken together, the Norwegian dislike is based on two things – the outrageous actions of Swedes against Norwegians in past, and the present Norwegian “lillebrorskomplex”.

I am a Swede myself and I love all the five nations of the North (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland).

I do understand the their language aswell as Danish. They are all very similar and belong in the Norse Language Family.

And for every Sweden joke we have twenty Norway jokes. ;) No, but honestly I love our brothers and sisters in the west.

What is funny is that the "lillebrorskompleks" as described above now seems to be reversed. And no wonder, it must be increasingly hard for the bitter Swedes to watch Norwegians restore a little of the old glory by overtaking them in various fields ranging from national economy to performance in the Summer Olympics (Sweden has been non-performing in winter sports for a number of years).

All the time accompanied by the continous deterioration of the Swedish Zloty..

Well, Finnish is an ugric language and devilishly difficult. But Finland is just as lovable as the rest of the Nordic countries. And Helsinki? That's one romantic city.

Hei Erik,

Yes i agree with Øyvind that Finnish belongs to the Baltic-Finnic group of the Finno-Ugrian/Uralic language family. The major languages of this group are Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian. In fact educated Finns can understand some Estonian and vice versa, but i believe the difference is much greater than say the difference between Danish and Norwegian ( see
Øyvind -I don't always disagree with you LOL ).

You mentioned Icelandic - this is also a nordic language which is a subgroup of the Germanic languages which in turn are related to the indo-iranian languages like Farsi/persian which I believe Ali Dashti speaks...Ali, man fikr mikonam keh shoma zabaneh Farsi khub sohbat konid, jadid?)
Icelandic by the way is most closely related to Faeroese and Norwegian.An interesting character of icelandic is its uniformity, ie. the absence of dialects -- well i guess if you live on a big island which is cold and wind-y ?( Ø...Vind ??? ahem! ;) ....you kind of stick together with each other and don't get isolated enough to start your own dialect like they do in Norway or Sweden or anywhere else...kind of one of the perks for living on a big island LOL.

Oh... concerning the earlier posts in this thread about the tiff and spat between norway and schweden ... I agree with Ali Dashti, that them folks up there in them cold lands better be worried about them mohammedans being up to no good LOL. In some of the earlier posts i noticed that some peØple , notably Mr. Øyvind of Norge had ungenerously attempted to discredit Mr. Ali Dashti's exposition of the link between the civil unrest and chaotic situation in the beautiful swedish city of MalmØ to the overwhelming presence of islamic elements and the budgeoning growth of muslims with all their attendent violent dispositions and predispostions? Let me see if i can locate that thread..well anyway, i recall you were commenting on how Ali was trying to use the MalmØ situation in sweden to paint a broad brush on all muslims and islam -- really ! does Ali even need the case of Malmø to indict Islam and the violent disposition of pious muslims? (I hate to digress from the topic of this thread, but permit me to finish err i loose my train of thought). Such tender loving concern you have of Ali tarnishing the good name of Islam and islamists surely qualifies somebødy to become the spøkesman of alJazeerah or maybe even alManaar Televisiøn....oh just whø oh whø might that persøn be ? Hmmm mayhaps sømeone with a leftist an apoløgistic tendencies hø hø hø LøL???
While we are musing let us read the following ample evidences as to how the violence has some interesting relationship to the presence of the islamisk element/factor in Malmø ( oh the articles touch on europe too):

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1079089/posts
( immigration, multiculturalims, islam...in sweden out of control )

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/001680.php
( swedes arrest islamist terrorists/ malmoe etc..hmm i wonder why its not those nasty hindus, or buddhists, or taoists or bahais or jews that are running amok ...herrrrooooo Oeyvind ? )

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1293993/posts ( women stoned to death in france...why europe is loosing faith in Islam ....oh ye leftists and apologists ..ye who are of little faith LOL )

http://biblia.com/islam/war.htm ( islamic reason for holy war, and strife to explain why expatriates engage in violence in their host societies..oh people with an Oeyvinian complex would try to explain it otherwise, maybe it's the difference in climate and the food thats causing our islamists guests to throw a tantrum LOL ?)

http://www.lilliput-information.com/itte.html ( article on jump in crime associated with influx of islamist immigrants...i wonder why they don't have a corresponding jump in criminality with increased influx of other groups, like the hindus, buddhists, taoists, animists, bahais, mormons, catholics, jews and other denominations.........oh those naughty Danes have failed to integrate the muslims. Muslims don't integrate, their religion ensures that they ghetto-ize, it is their god given mandate to cannibalize the host society to their superior creed/cult kapisch !?)

O.k...I have been real busy lately , but will catch up with you on the Darfur stuff in the other thread. Remember that one where you slyly disavow the misbehaviour of islamists in Sudan?

angel of truth
anjo da verdade

þakka þú og Gleðileg jól og hamingjusamur nýár

It's a common norwegian feeling that Sweden should not return Jemtland, herjedalen og Bohus (Ranland) until the people who lives there wants to become a part of Norway again. Jemtland which is the biggest part, has it's own flagg and is very proud to be Norwegians in Sweden (Nordmenn).

The Norwegians in Sweden is also a reason for peace and closer connections between the 2 countries.

There is no bitterness for Jemtland and the other parts. Instead Norway has many supporters and friends in Norway. Some Swedes are not jealous when Norwegians do well...but proud..

Both Norway and Sweden has Nationalism, but these types of are very different, and is probably one of the reasons why Norway joined the allied in WW2 while Sweden was... eh... neutral?

What I find odd about Karl Rove and his thing about the Swede's is that his
grandfather's wife is listed as being born in
Sweden in the 1910 and 1920 American census.
Hmm... Dising' your ancestor, shame on you
Karl Rove .

Reading through all your comments just makes me angry. As far as ACTUAL Norwegians talking about their like/dislike for Swedes goes... Alright, I can deal with that. But when the 'Swedish-Americans' or 'Norwegian-Americans' talk about what it's like to be Swedish/Norwegian, what it's like to live here, and our relationship with our neighbours, it's just rediculous. You're not Norwegian. You're not Swedish. Stop claiming to know something about a country that most 'Norwegian-Americans' and 'Swedish-American' haven't even visited, most of 'them' don't even speak a word of Swedish/Norwegian.

In all honesty, as an actual Swede, I can tell you that, as an example, this is how it generally goes here. Both countries are very proud. Proud on their own behalf and proud on the other country's behalf as well. Why? Because we come from the same area, we share history et c. In competitions, as a Swede, I first and foremost root for Sweden. The I root for Norwegians and Danes. Why? I can't really explain it. That's just how it works.

The Swedes-Norwegian jokes... They work exactly the same on both sides. Swedes make fun of Norwegians and vice versa. They're even the same exact jokes, only modified to suit either nationality. Do we hate Norwegians for making fun of us? No. Do I think they hate us for making fun of them? No.

Most Norwegians harbor hatred for the Swedes deep down.

I am not so sure the Swedes feel the same way about us (given Rebecca's comments), but I can tell you for a fact that many Norwegians harbor deep resentment of Swedes.

So Woodruff and the Americans here are right.

Living not far from the Norwegian border, I have spent a lot of time in Norway. In the beginning the reason was simply grand scenery’s and in later years mountaineering and visiting Swedish friends who lived in there.

I do have some experiences with Norwegian dislike of Swedes but I can not say that it is representative for the average Norwegian view on Swedes and Sweden. What I have noticed though is that most of these people do not really know where the negative feelings originate from. Most of them were not even born at the time of the dissolution of the union nor the Second World War so I guess it must be inherited or taught. However, there should be no reason for today’s Norwegians (or American Norwegians for that matter) to feel any dislike of today’s Swedes.

Hi

Being a broadcaster i find this great fun that people can hate each other, we in England have been making fun of the scots the Irish the Welsh for years. I have to and back all Norwegian clames that Sweden is crap... They dont even want to give Norwegians work, But being Norwegian has told me and showed me how proud as a nation we really are!! Norwegians rule the world just look at Radio!

First, I just want to say that nationalism disgusts me. It makes no sense to feel more for someone just because you are from the same geographic area, its absurd to be honest. Support people for their beliefs, political or religous, and their way of acting on that belief makes more sense.
I dont have any feelings for "Norwegians" what so ever, I have a n exchangestudent from Norway in my class, and yes, she talks funny, but she's a nice person, that's all. It's not like "ooooh, shes nice, then all norwegians must be nice"...
And on "the muslim threat", I hate that there are extrimists, muslims, catholics or Zen-buddhist. I dont hate the extrimist himself/herself, since Im sure they've just been brainwashed growing up(as all of us in some matter).
There are as many examples of catholic extrimist killing doctors who perform abortions, as there are "honour-killings" in europe.
And btw, I think there are more swedish-related ppl in Minnesota then norwegian, I've got a few relatives there.

Hei Marcus,

".........And on "the muslim threat", I hate that there are extrimists, muslims, catholics or Zen-buddhist. I dont hate the extrimist himself/herself, since Im sure they've just been brainwashed growing up(as all of us in some matter)........."

...i'll like to comment on the above statement re: extremist Zen-Buddhists.....buddhism in and of itself hardly allows for any extremism, since its very philosophy, tenets and practise aims at self detachment.

There are some of us ( moi , for example ;) who are vociferous and rather forceful in our rhetoric, but we draw the line at that ie. rhetoric - we hardly translate wordage into acts of violence unlike your 'peace-loving', 'gentle' muslim extremists ( and perhaps an occasional 'christian' fanatic.

Beyond that you hardly ever find a 'buddhist-extremist' running amok on the street of amsterdam, knifing and beheading an opinionated Dutchman or for that matter plotting to blow up the jewish synagogue in Upsalla or Malmoe in Sverige!

Tack,

Sister Prasad Meenachi Bhagavatam

Marcus:

First, I just want to say that nationalism disgusts me. It makes no sense to feel more for someone just because you are from the same geographic area, its absurd to be honest.

How nice to see indoctrination working so well in Sweden...

Please, keep posting. I love ignoring taunts unsupported by facts.

previous post was adressed to "Zlatan Svensson".
And Kim, that about Zen-buddhist was more of a joke. Buddhism is in my opinion one of the more sympathetic religions.
And back to Zlatan, as I said, we're all a bit brainwashed, the person you are have nothing to do with you, it's only the result of genetic heritage combined with your upbringing, but that's rather philosophic and i dont want that discussion.

Marcus,

O.K.....fair enuf. May Allah bless you :)

Sister Prasad Meenachee Bhagavatam
Temple of Goddess Sri Sri MahaDevi Saraswati

Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Samma Sam Buddhasa

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Classical Values: Searching for the root cause of cultural bias, March 11, 2005 03:51 PM

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