Gnomeline Newsflash

- Good evening we welcome you to this evenings newsflash from Gnomeline, the ultimate network for broadcasting gnomenews! With us today we have the distinguished professor Svinhufvud, who practically is an expert on everything!

- Thank you, thank you! You think to highly of my humble person!

- You claim, professor Svinhufvud, that we do not take the terrorist threats seriously enough?

- That's right! I think that the focus has been put in the wrong direction!

- How do you mean?

- Well, everybody seems to focus on muslims in general and specifically in women dressed in Burkhas and Niqabs. I think that is a mistake. The real threat is much more close!

- How is that?

- Everybody seems to look into the wrong kind of disguise. It is actually there right in front of us, but we don't see it...

- What do you mean?

- I'm talking of these frequently occurring imposters of St. Claus! They are everywhere and disguised beyond recognition. For instance look at the guy behind me, if it is a guy, you couldn't really be sure of that! He has a beard and hair that hides all his features. And, most important, he hands over a parcel! Nobody could tell what's in it! Could be a bomb! Could be anthrax! No one knows...

- We thank professor Svinhufvud for bringing this to our attention...

- I will take action against this... you can be sure of that...

- Thank you professor...

Cabinet Meetings in Strange Places

Today I was enjoying myself with a simple crossword, when I suddenly realize that the pic in the middle is of a Mongolian Cabinet Meeting, held in late August 2010. It seems like President Elbegdorj took the initiative in response to the disaster that hit Mongolia this winter, in the form of the white zuud, which killed around 20 percent of the live-stock. Zuud is the Mongolian word for different forms of disaster. The white zuud is connected to snow, which normally is rather scarce in Mongolia. The climate is arid and Ulaanbaatar, for instance, has approximately 300 sunny days a year. Climate Change has during recent years increased the amount of snow during winter and as a consequence animals can't graze, but will starve, as they can't reach the grass.


In October 2009, the island republic of the Maldives the President Mohammad Nashhed set up a Cabinet Meeting beneath the surface of the sea, in order to protest against the consequences of Climate Change that threatens to make the islands of the Maldives disappear from the face of the Earth. What seems to be a small matter in the industrialised world, is a matter of life and living space in the Maldives.

In early December 2009, the Nepalese Cabinet held a Meeting, led by Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, on 5,300 meters altitude, in front of Mount Everest, to protest against Climate Change.



"The Himalayas are important not only for the people of Nepal but for 1.3 billion people who depend on waters from the mountains for their livelihoods." said the Prime Minister.

These three snap-shots from different places on the planet show how hard Climate Change might hit different parts of our world. Cattle, sheep, goats and horses starve to death in Mongolia - the Maldives will disappear - disaster might result from vanishing glaciers in the Himalayas. The irony of it is that the people who gain to most at the present, from this state of world affairs, will probably not here when the descendants of the Mongolians, Maldivians and Nepalese reflect on what went wrong with Western Civilization. They are simply tougher then we are...

A Happy Republic without a Head of State

Original poster for French movie Ridicule by Patrice Leconte 1996.

There is a French movie from the 1990s called Ridicule, by director Patrice Leconte. The story plot is basically that an engineer from Northern France goes to Paris, in order to get a permit and funding to drain a swamp and this way develop the area economically. He spends an awful lot of time envolving in absurd practices at the court of Louis XVI. Nothing of what he is forced to do att court has anything to do with the real purpose of his stay there. That is the absurdity of the whole situation.
Similarly, we poor Swedes nowadays has to watch the feudal rites of our head of state and his family preparing for the wedding of their oldest daughter. As Sweden is a monarchy, the head of state is selected by a kind of breeding process. Sorry to say that makes the so called blue-blooded royality all the more degenerated as time passes by. To be polite - they do not represent the intelligencia of the country. The process seems to bring the least fit to the job. Therefore the process itself is a failure!
So howcome we do proceed in this clear folly? Why do Swedish tax-payers have to pay for the up-coming wedding? How can the Prime Minister give away state property to the newly married? The Haga castle is in the process becoming a restricted area where ordinary Swedes may no longer walk freely, instead the newly married will dwell there behind barbed wire and security guards. To my recollection there is a Swedish law which says that it is illegal to give away state property...

Louis XVI executed at Place de la Révolution 1793, in Paris.

To return to Patrice Leconte's masterpiece Ridicule, the problem that the engineer met at court was neatly solved by the French Revulotion, occuring just a decade later. We, the Swedish people, have the chance to get rid of this ridiculous and sorry excuse for a head of state once and for all. We had the chance in 1848, 1870, 1914 and in the 1970s, but we missed it. Don't miss it again!
A Swedish political scientist proposed, a couple of months ago, that it would be rather easy to turn Sweden into a republic. The simple solution would be to abolish to head of state position right now and replace it with... nothing. As citizen CG Bernadotte does close to nothing constitutionally, it would be very easy to hand over those redundant tasks to the Prime Minister and the Speaker of the Parliament. And we have a constitutional innovation, replacing the political dinosaur of monarchy!
Why wait? It is like facing a necessary surgical operation, if you wait it only gets worse!

Make Sweden a Republic Now!

Silvia Bernadotte, born Sommerlath, in one of her hats.

The present head of state in Sweden, CG Bernadotte, is married to a woman, that reached her social position thanks to her father, Walther Sommerlath, who joined the National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei Auslands Organization (the Nazi Party’s foreign organization) on 1 December 1934, in São Paolo, Brazil. This was at a time when it was very unusual for Germans living more or less permanently abroad to join the Nazi Party. According to journalist Mats Deland those who joined this abroad department was urged to be active members. In the year 1939 Walther Sommerlath purchased a factory located in the Cottbus area of the German capital Berlin. This mainly industrial area was until 1938 dominated by Jewish factory owners. That changed after the Cristall Night that year. The problem is how the acquisition was acheived – Under what kind of circumstances did it take place?

Document showing Walther Sommerlath's entry into the Nazi Party in December 1934.

Silvia Sommerlath, herself, claim that the family was stopped from leaving Germany, when they wanted to return to Brazil. This makes the acquisition of the factory interesting. Silvia claims that as her father and mother returned to Germany in 1935, the factory was already in her father’s possession. Or was it two different factories?

Walther Sommerlath dancing with his wife.

This is indeed a very interesting question, as the Swedish monarchy is quite well-known for its links to Nazi Germany, and the present head of state’s frequent statements on how good rulers the Sultan of Brunei and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia are. In fact, they act and behave as virtual role models for a good and benevolent leadership, all according to CG Bernadotte…

CG Bernadotte decorating his dear friend, the King of Saudi Arabia Abdullah bin al-Azziz.

Doesn’t this tell us something about how the Bernadotte family view democracy and the people? Make Sweden a republic immediately!

Republic now!

We Swedes have been waiting long enough now, since the usurpator Gustav Eriksson Vasa by a coup d'etat abolished our electoral kingdom in 1521, and enforced hereditary monarchy. Interesting enough it was in those years that the Florentinian diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli wrote Discorsi, which is a book built on the claim that the republic is superior to other ways of governng a state. Of course, being Italian, you cannot argue that the republic is not a superior rule, and still claim to be an intellectual.

Machiavelli's main argument for not utilize republican rule was that some states had a population that was not yet ready for republican rule. The people had been living under such circulstances that were characterised by authoritarian, not to say tyrannical rule, and as a consequence they were not yet ready for the relatively free republican rule.

Before 1521, we Swedes elected who should be the ruler, but after the coup d'etat of 1521, we are sort of stuck with hereditary monarchy. Are we Swedes not yet ready for republican rule? Do we still have to breed ur head of state?

Some claim that the royal family is very good international PR for Sweden. We live in Europe and after the First World War the obligation of having a monarch was taken away and the republican rule was allowed in Europe again. Of course it never disappeared completely, which the Second and Third Republics of France is valid evidence of. The cruzial point, however, is that the majority of newly independent states, after WWI, are republics, not monarchies. Why is that?

First, hereditary monarchy is undemocratic and suggests that all people are NOT equal. Actually, the royal family is worth more than an ordinary Swedish citizen. The royal family has got blue blood. To my understanding only some crabs have blue blood, because the blood does not contain hemoglobin, but hemocyan. The Swedish royal family stems from a French lawyer, Henri Bernadotte, which does not seem that far above ordinary citizens. And Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, himself was a republican, he claimed.

Second, after all Sweden has been a democracy since 1921. Shouldn't we have reached the point of being able to deal with republican rule now and abolish monarchy once and for all?

Third, hereditary monarchy in Sweden has a bad track record. The beginning was not good with the coup d'etat of Gustav Eriksson Vasa. There was a second coup d'etat in 1680, when the King Karl XI took absolute power and stated that he no longer needed to listen to the Riksdag. The third coup d'etat was in 1788, by Gustav III. Luckily, a Swedish hero, Johan Jakob Anckarström, put him out of his misery in 1792. Furthermore, Gustav V tried to reach for power in 1914, but failed. At this point it would have been prudent to turn Sweden into a republic, but the opportunity passed by. So why wait until one of these half-wits try to make another coup d'etat?

Fourth, an interesting suggestion surfaced a couple of months ago, claiming that there was no need to replace the King with a President, simply because Sweden actually operates rather good without a functioning head of state. The little what is left of power, instigated in the monarchy, could easily be transfered to the Prime Minister and the Speaker of the Riksdag.

Why wait? Do it now? Abolish this inferior ruling system now?

The Dangers of Pub Life

Experience taught Ridfrek that mooning in a pub during dart competition was a very bad idea indeed. Already Pavlov taught us that sensitive beings may have their behaviour altered by using rather easy mechanisms.

Horseshoe Crab

The horseshoe crab is an ancient speicies that exist in four main forms. It can be traced as far back as Devonic or Ordovician time periods. It may be called a crab or crustacean, but in reality it is more closely related to spiders and scorpions. The photo above show the form of horseshoe crab that may be found in the Gulf of Mexico.

Above there is a drawing showing the horseshoe crab seen from above and below. It has five pairs of legs (each one equipped with a pincer) and the tail is not dangerous, but provides the creature with something close to a rudder. The horseshoe crab uses it to turn over if it finds itself on the wrong side. The male horseshoe crab is about 2/3 of the size of the female. This creature is one of the oldest living on the planet.