And Twitter.com CEO Dick Costolo, said Wikipedia’s blackout is: “… just silly. Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish.” Who’s foolish now poop head?

Should these laws ever go into effect, even if rewritten, sites like mine may never see the light of day again. Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, WordPress, and even Google will have one hellava of a time.

But, first a public service announcement from Senator Chris Dodd, president of the MPAA {Motion Picture Association of America}:
“Only days after the White House and chief sponsors of the legislation responded to the major concern expressed by opponents and then called for all parties to work cooperatively together, some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns, rather than coming to the table to find solutions to a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging.

It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.

A so-called “blackout” is yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals. It is our hope that the White House and the Congress will call on those who intend to stage this “blackout” to stop the hyperbole and PR stunts and engage in meaningful efforts to combat piracy.”

I never knew Hollywood hated gimmicks!

For more reading about the United States Congressional bills titled HR 3261 and S968, visit:

Learn More

Information on H.R.3261 – Stop Online Piracy Act at OpenCongress.org

EFF Blacklist

Information on S.968 PROTECT IP Act at OpenCongress.org

In Fight Over Piracy Bills, New Economy Rises Against Old

Reddit /r/SOPA FAQ

Problematic language in the bill pointed out by a redditor.

Video examination of bill’s language.

Get Involved

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Petititon to Stop SOPA Legislation

List of companies that have expressed support for SOPA or PIPA.

List of companies that have expressed concern with SOPA and PIPA.

Take Action Checklist at Stop American Censorship.

Contact Your Representative with info and a widget to find them by EFF and Wired for Change.

Directory of Representatives

Senators of the 112th Congress

Helpful info on making phone calls to your Senator or Representative.

SOPAOpera.org keeps track of where your Congressmembers stand on PROTECT-IP and SOPA.

And a very funny but serious video about the consequences of these laws. Thanks to A for sending it to me.

The irony if this video is taken down for copyright violation.

I am updating my Blogroll and want to include all of you awesome folks.   Your only requirement is that your blog is about Sweden in some way.

Topics to love…and hate:

• Fashion
• Design
• Food
• Beer
• Dating
• Life
• Babies
• Feminism
• Bantering
• Travel

Your blog need not be in English or Swedish either as there are many great writers in Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and German that I’ve stumbled across.  You don’t have to be in Sweden either.

Post your link and a blurb about your website and I will update my blogroll and publish an Awesome Bloggers List soon. And do add Lost in Stockholm to your blogroll if you haven’t already. :-)

The comic Scandinavia and the World put the butter shortage best:

There is a problem buying real butter, smör, at the grocery stores. Not Bregott, or Lätta, or some fake margarine that Swedes loves so much, real butter is nowhere to be found. I first thought the shortage was restricted to certain regions because of shipping issues or something mundane.

Nope, Swedes are evidently on a fat-high roll; they are addicted to butter, high fat milk and yogurt.

Seriously, an entire nation of kanelbullar and potatis eaters without butter? Kill Julia Child again.

When I was at Hemköp yesterday, I took a photo of this letter. I missed the bottom half where it discusses the low-carb diet.

According to the newspapers and the dairy industry, the reasons for the empty shelves are that people are into the LCHF diet and that over the last 20 years consumption has declined for full fat, “natural” products.

It makes me wonder how much butter people have to eat to cause a national shortage. Would a low carb diet really be the cause of it? You would be eating butter by the kilos to cause a smörbrist (butter crisis)!

I will blame butter smearing contests as the root problem. Too many Swedes going wild and smearing butter on each other like life size smörgåsar. Definite likely problem. Solution? None really, except buy knäckebröd in the millions of tones and use the butter-smeared people as a dip.

The other ‘real’ reason for the butter shortage is the lack of demand for high fat products. Butter sales have been falling for years and exports increasing. Twenty years ago, Sweden used to ship 25,000 metric tons of butter across Europe. This year so far it is only 1,100 tons. Now, we need to import cream from Denmark. Not daelig.

Here is Sweden’s dairy production for last year:
348,000 cows yield an average 8329 kg milk / year
which yield…
1 million ton of drinking milk
263,000 tons fil and yogurt
110 000 tonnes of cream
103 000 tonnes of cheese
49,000 tons of milk powder
18,596 tons of butter
via NA.
We really need more butter…

I hope the issue will be resolved in time for the holiday season because I want to make lots of cookies. High fat, high carb, delicious cookies.

I normally would wake up around 7AM, do my hair and makeup, wear something stylish (something which could not be said for the rest of the 30,000 campus population) and eat Special K and watch the news on a tiny 15inch tv.

That morning, I woke to terrible dreams. Instead of watching tv, I ate breakfast and in a hurry made the hike to Hindi class at Dwinelle Hall.

Class started at 8.10AM. At 8.15AM, our professor asked if there was an update. There was. “I heard the World Trade Center has fallen. Planes flew into it.” It was true, but no one could believe or know it was true, we didn’t have access to a TV in that classroom.

Photo courtesy of The New York Times

At 9AM when class ended, we all ran out to the main lecture halls in Dwinelle. Students and faculty had set up live feeds from CNN into the largest lecture hall and in smaller rooms. The voices of CNN anchors boomed throughout the corridor.

“It appears the United States is under attack.”

“This video footage is horrifying.”

“At 10:28 this morning, the North Tower of the World Trade Center Collapsed. One hour before, its sister building collapsed.”

“The United States has just announced the closure of US airspace for any and domestic and international flights. It is advised to stay home and not travel until further notice.”

Our minds were in a whirlwind. California may believe it is the beautiful, offbeat daughter of America, but she was a bit slow to catch up on reality. Three hours slow and a continent away from the capital and financial centers of the country.

I ran to my 9:30AM class which happened to be about mass communication. We spent the hour watching feeds and the professor discussing it. The irony was, no one understood the calamity of what happened.

After class, I call my parents who informed me everything was essentially a lockdown on the East Coast. Dad returned home from work early. Friends in Jackson Heights, NY were okay but switchboards across the nation were jammed.

It was psychedelic. In a city that propelled the use of illicit substances to trip out and “be a color,” we all across America were tripping out on the news and the potential ramifications.

Who did this?

Why?

Why?

I attended my last class in Geography from 2:00-3:30PM. Our professor took attendance was a primadonna. He said what happened today “was no big deal” and no is allowed to leave the class early. He was an ass who was clueless.

The remainder of the day, I watched TV. It was devastating to watch the city I visited throughout my childhood covered in ashes and fallen glass and souls. My life was and is, belonged to the East Coast, not California.

When President Bush addressed the nation in the early evening for California, it was a definite sign of him pulling together and being the president he needed to be.

…

Two years later we entered a country that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. In fact, Al Qaeda did not exist under Saddam Hussain’s regime because if anyone is going infiltrate his country and take his people, it’s going to be his own Baath party.

On that fateful day in April 2003, I was living France and at the internet cafe when students started screaming, “we got him, we got him!” “Who?” “Saddam, that motherfucker was hiding in a bunker.”

Wow, is the war over then? Do we go home? Will we stop seeing dead American soldiers in caskets being loaded onto American cargo planes and dropped off like luggage?

The news shown in France and Europe was tragic, depressing, and violet. What Americans saw on TV was G rated or on occasion PG rated. There was the rhetoric of freedom fighting and fighting the good fight regardless if people disagreed. American television was polarized; the Murdoch empire broadcasted the washed up patriotic, good American fight. The most any America saw were heated debates between the war hawks (those who supported the war) and blind doves (those who disagreed with an Iraqi war and were as a result, unpatriotic and treasonous).

On television in France, I saw a war that had no chance to end. That no amount of “known knowns and known unknowns” would save the lives of our American men and women and destroy Al-Qaeda.

Nothing really mattered though. Truth was overrated and security paramount. Stripping rights of Americans became the norm (the librarians rebelled to submitting information to the government). Those of brown colored skin and hard-to-pronounce names with funny hats were outcasted in what became the next wave of hatred towards immigrants. We did it to the Irish, the German, the Japanese, the Chinese, and now it was the Pakistanis, Indians, Sri Lankans, Afganis and Iraqis all rolled into one. We were the same to the news media and the lackadaisical Fox News addict.

My country lost all sensibilities and rational and turned against its own. Our sentiments were overwrote by fear and ignorance. Our soldiers, mainly young men, fought tour after tour, only to know the Bush administration wanted to exact cuts on their armor budget and ship soldiers by cargo.

We are fascinated by our own mortality and celebration of death.
We are fascinated by wars which occur on foreign lands and American flags we raise high.
We are easily swept up in fear and the unknown.
We forget our past lessons and past sadness.

Today, we should not forget. It is a day to honor the lives lost on the ground and in the air. Above all, it is a day to honor the men and women who serve for our nation and die for our country, regardless whether the war was right or wrong.

For the future, I hope we can come to reconciliation with Iraq and Afganistan. That we allow them to build democratic countries with the assistance of the UN and America. That we educate the Americans on Islamic communities and religion. That not every burka is a bomber. That not everyone who dissents is unpatriotic. And that not every country is immune to terror.

Readings:
http://timeline.national911memorial.org/
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/us/sept-11-reckoning/viewer.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/us/sept-11-reckoning/immigration.html
http://www.dn.se/webbtv/nyheter/livesandning-dnse/ – Live feed
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/sa-lite-visste-vi-en-manad-efter-daden – Slideshow
http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/boom-sen-finns-ingenting-kvar_6457496.svd
1,667 Times Square-Style Attacks Every Year
Five unforgettable stories from Ground Zero
Fem vanliga konspirationsteorier

That mouse. He probably has an Interpol Most Wanted warning now. Traveling without papers. Tisk tisk.

He>

Please beware the book is disturbing and promotes terrorism, violence, and chemical warfare.

He also posted a video on Youtube about the European Declaration of Independence from the Knights Templar. The video is gone now but possibly available at other sources.

Update: Earlier in the afternoon, a shooter opened fire on young teenagers on the small island of Utöya, west of Oslo. He has killed several teens and many jumped off the island and swam away. The shooter is now arrested though his name and motives are not released.

Two bombs went off in the government quarter in Oslo, Norway. Two people are confirmed dead and 15 injured.

No terrorist groups have claimed responsibility but the attacks appear to be directed towards the Norwegian government.

Last week, three bombs exploded during rush hour in Mumbai, India. No grouped claimed responsibility. However, security officials believe it was the work of Pakistani terrorist group.

You can read more in Swedish at DN, DN photos and Svenska Dagbladet. In English, you can visit Reuters and The New York Times.

I can mail the books to you but you will have to pay shipping. Worth it if you’re in pumpkinland
Sweden with no good bookstores.

Plus, I have a few DVDs for sale too, scroll to bottom.

All books are 50kr or 3 for 100kr.
…by the way seriously cheap for books in English. :)

English Books
Candace Bushnell – One Fifth Avenue (same author as Sex and the City, great summer reading)
Douglas Adams – The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Waris Dirie – Desert Children
Philip Pullman – The Golden Compass
Philip Pullman – The Subtle Knife
Jhumpa Lahiti – Unaccustomed Earth
Anita Kaik – The Lazy Girls Party Guide
KC Cole – mind over matter
Euripides I – Four Tragedies
F Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
Philip K Dick – Do Androids Dream of electric Sheep? (the bok Blade Runner is baded on)
Saga of the Volsungs
99 Classic TV-Series for People in a Hurry
Michael Moore – Stupid White Men
William Shakespeare – The Comedy of Errors
Carl Sagan – Cosmos
Åsne Seierstad – A Hundred and One Days (a journalist’s story of the war in Iraq)
Frederick Forsyth – The Cobra
Khaled Hosseini – The Kite Runner
30 minute Vegetarian Meals
The Swedish Cookbook

Swedish Books
Steig Larsson – Män son hatar kvinnor
Jens Lapidus – Snabba Cash
Håkan Nesser- En Helt Annat Historia
Håkan Nesser- Berättelse om Herr Roos
99 Filmer du Slipper Se

Different Priced Books
Nya Mål 3 – Swedish book for SFI, Folkuniversitet, or Medborgaskolan – 150kr
Mario Varas Llosa – Det Gröna Huset (the Noble Prize winner) – 150kr
Harry Potter Series, Books 1-7 – 600kr

Movies for Sale
Sideways – 50kr – great movie about the last hurrah before a wedding set in Southern California wine country
Arrested Development – 450kr for three seasons – The series will be restarting AND with a movie. Get caught up with all three seasons
The Simpsons – Season 8 – 150kr
Titanic – 20kr – Just get it away from me!
Six Feet Under – Season 5 – 150kr – The last season to a drama set in a funeral home. If you love Dexter himself, well, he’s one of the stars in this show to.
The Bourne Identity – 20kr
Sex and the City – 30kr – Perfect for a chick flic night.
Thank You For Smoking – 30kr – Great movie about a tobacco lobbyist. “I do it for the mortgage.” Don’t we all…

If you would like any of the books or movies, contact me and we can meet in Stockholm somewhere or I can mail them to you.

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