Je pense, donc je suis

The publication Descartes never published and that came out first after his death was called Le Monde or The World. It contained his physico-mathematical world view and featured the heliocentric theory. Galileo was in trouble at the time for this and Descartes decided not to publish. That happens to be the same name as Gideon Rachman used when he recently changed the name of his blog on FT.com. Maybe he also has things that he cannot say until posthumously? The problem of world politics might be in the same developmental level as science was in the 17^th century?

The Dieting Problem

There was recently a debate in the press about the ethical problem of society giving the individual rules to follow concerning his/her health. The reason is of course that there are societal costs involved. Smoking is such a habit that is being phased out in society seemingly successfully. Over weight (BMI=25-30) and obesity (BMI larger than 30), however, is a more sensitive subject. BMI=weight in kg/square of height in m).

I recently had a reason to research the topic of dieting. It occurred to me that the reason for the veritable jungle of dieting advice on the net and the literature is that making controlled experiments would be very difficult where you both find out which calorie deficit you should use for optimal results and on top of that which type and composition of the food to use. To do this with one single person of the same age is for example not possible. It would have to be performed on large cohorts of individuals where compliance for a standardized diet would be impossible to achieve. The problem is of major importance due to the large proportion of people that are overweight and that try to diet.

Knowing that liver glycogen is first made available when you start to fast followed by muscle glycogen which makes the dieter very happy initially because glycogen binds water, up to 4 liters in a 70kg male, which gives initial weight losses that are substantial. What is not clear from available information is how the glycogen is rebuilt, if it happens when the weight increases due to water accumulation rather than fat. It is conceivable that it can happen continuously or that it happens after the diet is over and the dieter searches his/her equilibration weight.

Thanks to detailed information on food products and databanks with food energy information it is possible to find out where your break even point is in the energy consumption of your sedentary life. Online calculators can be used to calculate your basal metabolism rate from your sex, age, height, weight and for calculation on how much energy you have to remove to get a certain weight loss per week. As a rule of thumb a pound of fat has 3,500 calories which means that you have to lose some 500 calories a day to drop 0.45kg per week. The Microsoft Excel program makes it very easy to do these chores. Losing a kilogram a month on fasting 300 calories per day would be something many people could easily do in this fashion.

The break even point, ie practicably a level of calorie intake that accounts for your basic life without exercise, can then be used to arrange for a given life style that can be maintained in this fashion. After all, it occurred to me, taking responsibility for what you eat is approximately the same problem as brushing your teeth.

I could not find information on what level of weight loss per week would be optimal. However, it is mostly recommended that people should not diet faster than half a kilogram per week. Not more than 10% of your starting weight over 6 months. The reason for this is that higher levels of calorie deficit per day than about 500 might induce a starvation mode. This is when the body starts using energy more efficiently which means that the weight loss would decrease making it less optimal for more dieting pain.

Detailed information on this important issue would be useful due to the enormous impact on the psychology of dieting. Starvation mode is dangerous because you burn lean tissue rather than fat because the body lowers the amount of the more metabolically active muscle tissue. Exercise during dieting is beneficial for avoiding the starvation mode. You can find programs calculating energy consumption for various types of exercise over your sedentary level on the net. If you walk, you use about 1 calorie per minute for every 1km/hr you walk.

Dieting regimes often discuss the possible effect of the proportion of protein, carbohydrate and fat in the diet. Hard data for this are hard to come by but it is known by athletes that a high carbohydrate containing diet where the fat content percent is about 20 is optimal. A 70kg male needs about 32g protein per day to repair. The reason for this is that higher glycogen stores are built in the muscles which give the athlete a higher durability and thus trainability. This can obviously be important for people that in general move about during the day. They will be less tired at the end of the day. However, eating becomes more boring.

Who is most aggressive: the US or an average of 10 Muslim countries?

In my last post I found out the 7% of so called Muslim radicals thought it was perfectly OK to bomb the World Trade Center in New York in 2001. It is possible to compare this with the present sentiments in the US nationwide on bombing nuclear installments in Iran.

Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll asked 900 registered voters nation wide on April 2010 the question:

"Do you support or oppose the United States taking military action to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons".

65% supported this idea and 25% opposed it with about the same numbers in a poll from September 2009.

CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll asked 522 adults nation wide on February 2010 the question:

"What do you think the United States should do to get Iran to shut down its nuclear program: take military action against Iran now, use economic and diplomatic efforts but not take military action now, or take no action against Iran at this time?"

23% wanted military action now up from 13% in 2006. Economic and diplomatic actions were thought in 63% of the cases with the same number 2006. No action was answered in 12% of the case which is down from 21% in 2006.

With this simple analysis the US is more aggressive, assuming the same loss of Iranian lives as in New York. Now there is the difference that the US does not do terrorism or deal in proxy warfare with Israel. Media is thus creating a situation where a preparedness for war against Iran is maintained for the sake of world peace. This is happening despite the fact that analysts and Robert Gates of the Defense Department says it is impossible to attack Iran. We are thus performing psychological warfare against Iran to maintain our interests in the Gulf.

The scenario is complicated by the situation Israel is facing. The Israelis seemed in the last analysis have a zero tolerance for Iranian nuclear weapons. The question then is if Iran is trying to lure the West into a trap where there are no real nuclear weapons but rather only the nuclear energy facilties they claim they have? The same trap Saddam Hussein used. Then again, most analyses indicate that it is not possible to attack Iran so there should not be a problem actually. George Bush did not do it, nor will President Obama.

In other words, an aggressivity of 7% in Muslim countries against the US is probably what one has to expect and can not be a reason for assuming a threat to world peace. We are left with a terrorism threat.

It is Election Time in Sweden

People tell me that voting is mostly for what will be done in the future, a vision, and not as a payment for achieved results. I'm going to watch this phenomenon. It is the first time I follow an election in a politically prepared fashion. However, if 'Alliansen', the four right of center parties, is not getting a new mandate I will begin wondering whether politics works at all any longer. They took us passed the financial crisis excellently and this should be rewarded.

Alliansen's vision is apparently that people should be able to work. I worry a lot about one thing concerning work in Sweden. 'Svenskt Näringsliv' said the other day on DN.se that there has not been any additional jobs created in the civil society for the last fifty years. It is the same absolute amount. Since they pay for the lot and have paid with increased productivity for the expansion of the public sector, this is very alarming. Is it possible to change this trend? David Cameron thinks this is possible in the UK and launched his campaign on the so called "Big Society".

With this in mind, and with my experience, I wish there will be no more expansion "under the surface". There should not be any money for this. I sincerely hope this is not the "job-line" politicians speak about. The mere thought that the so called 'outsideship' is going to be removed in this fashion makes me very concerned. If all new jobs in the world will be absorbed by China and India, maybe it is best to realize that this might mean setting up a citizen wage for the 'outsideship'. I have severe problems understanding what a "motprestation" might mean when there are no jobs that people will pay for around. Who would supervise this? My fear is that a slave society within the society will form instead. I have already seen examples of this.

Angela Merkel hardly campaigned during the last election. Does she have a point? Do we need to engage people not normally interested in politics? Does campaigning demonstrate an ability to govern? Obama's campaign might be a negative example of this. Party program information is available on the Internet all through the mandate. It is an important question since polling information is also available during the mandate and has shown that the Red-Greens have been most popular for most of the time since 2006.

In Sweden they don't talk as much about a small state and a large state as they do in the US. The state is supposed to contain more of altruistic people. I don't know how significant this difference is and if it is the cause of the stagnant private sector. The population of Sweden might lack civic society minded people for expanding this vital sector. Perhaps it is our education system where talented adventurous and entrepreneurial individuals don't get enough attention which is something Jan Björklund, the education minister, is trying to change right now. Sweden might paradoxically be a little too altruistic for its future health?

Found this article from June 2010. The outsideship, utanförskapet, was 1.1m 2005.

Vacation V

I grew up during the summers in archipelago settings and have become affectionate to the scenery one finds on the west coast of Sweden. I once said this to my father when I visited him in the US, he became a US citizen and made his PhD over there on Ralph Waldo Emerson, and he told me he preferred "skogarnas dunkla mystik" or the "somber mystique of the forests". He spent his life in Wisconsin in an area not dissimilar to northern Skåne.

It was out here on Hönö where my physical period began. I was trying to study to become a physician in Linköping but found it difficult. Then I did not know but I have since found out that people inhibit my learning with TTDE. In any case, back in Hönö, with inhibited intellectual abilities, I turned to physical activities. I would not be surprised if this would be a normal response to such treatment? I realized that I with my background in medicine and research and without references I could try to become a personal trainer or equivalent.

I remember jogging during the winter here on Hönö without making any progress. As a matter of fact my first jog on a distance of 5 km was my fastest one. As with the intellectual disabilities I now know why. People can control my muscle function. At the time I continued my training. My mother did not want me to stay here at Hönö so I moved to Bergsjön and was dependent on welfare which led to that I found a job as a nurses aid in Kungsbacka and my training was biking to and fro to Kungsbacka from Bergsjön. At the end of my two month placement half time someone started giving me back ache when I biked. People started to mob me at work as if I was not welcome anymore and therefore I quit. I then realized I would never become a physician here in Sweden.

I had studied karate for a while in the US for exercise so I decided to take it up. There where no furniture in my apartment and I slept on a thin mattress on the floor and my appartment thus became my dojo. The dojo is a place for Zen Buddhism worship that is karate exercise and there are rules for how to enter and leave the dojo just like in a Catholic church. A dojo is kept very clean and I used fresh clothes for every two hour training pass and showered.

Karate is a very intellectual exercise and like classic ballet, which I studied the theory of during this time, training is performed by practicing complicated movement series called katas. You start with the simplest one and when this is mastered you move on to the next one. I thought this might become a way to earn a living if nothing else a healthy and inspiring way to live one's life. I had become a seeker. I trained very hard and got an excellent physique. It actually happened that I got help, against my will, with movements with TTDE on a few occasions. It is possible to guide the introduction of a new movement with a recorded one something I guess all elite gymnasts, ballet dancers and the like utilize these days. Not to mention practicing your golf swing. Of course without saying anything because it is sooo secret. These TTDE encounters during training and sexual harassment with TTDE during this time explained to me that TTDE existed.

After two years of karate training and one and a half year of sexual harassment I was brutally forced to end all training and both motion program and theoretical knowledge is suppressed and gone. Yes, to this day when I study someone is erasing or hiding my knowledge for me which makes progress very slow. The knowledge I got of TTDE obviously changed my world view and perhaps one of the most important results was that I got a feeling that some is preventing me from entering the work market with TTDE and negative information.

During this time I was looking for work at the work employment agency and received welfare. However, at one point the welfare agency stopped communicating with me, something they are required to do by law. I then realized by this event and many others during the time that I was not really receiving a real welfare but was on some other kind of money. I did not accept this, left my apartment, since I did not have legal money, and went to Mölndal, where I grew up and went to school, instead to get real welfare. They did not take me in and sent me back to Bergsjön. I was then punished with five months of closed psychiatric care at Lillhagsparken in Göteborg for the second time.

My father then unfortunately died of prostate cancer and Parkinson's disease at the age of 76 so I inherited money from him which saved me from the dungeons of the welfare system to Hönö. This was five years ago. I don't know if he knew what a tremendous service he did to me? I would like to comment that 'socialtjänstlagen', or the social law of Sweden, is written to prevent slavery. What I encountered is a new form of prisonhood that some people seem to benefit from. As I have detailed before, this is not over yet for me. I still have these people in my body.

Vacation IV

Gunnar Hökmark is writing on his blog lately on how to make Europe competitive in science and innovation. The question is if there is something in Europe that could make a difference. The smart money seems to be on a non-federal Europe which would mean that we will be different from the US and China in that respect. The motto of EU is "United in Diversity" and I guess we would have to use this concept somehow.

To me it is obvious that the Anglo-American philosophy that gave rise to capitalism and relative freedom for people also gave rise to the most prestigious universities and the best scientific crews. If you recognize the fact that biologic diversity must play out in political systems you are on the right path. There is in other words no reason for wavering on this concept despite collectivistic assaults. This means removing the socialism gradient in Europe.

How this can be possible while maintaining the EU motto is a difficult question. Because we would have to learn what diversity is healthy and which is not. In this context it is good to remember the East German experiment in a language compatible setting. The "ossies" are still not up to speed after investing €1.3tn. They only perform up to 70% of the West Germans. The societal texture has to change. Since a lot of people live outside of the traditional Western Europe this is a problem but perhaps a problem that if it can be solved would eventually make Europe competitive.

Now, if you ask me how politicians should motivate people to change it seems like laborating with Europe as a global player in competition with the US, China and India might not work. It might be easier to use the motto. Start national competitions for excellence? Europeans are good internationally in soccer. This is unfortunately counter productive for creating centers for excellence like they have in the US. Propinquity is very important in science. But who knows, perhaps a unique way of localization of science could be fruitful?

How does one remove socialism? This is of course as easy as winning the election in Sweden that is due in September.

Vacation II

Was not very lucky with the weather. Three consecutive days of rain. Studied On Liberty of John Stuart Mill from 1859 instead. Darwin published his book Origin of Species 1859 and it is interesting to examine whether the 'survival of the fittest' that was in the air influenced Mill in his book with his idea of 'freedom to the people unless it means harm to other people'. After all evolution of society via eccentricity is along the same lines as the development of more successful species.

So far I found out that Mill knew about Darwin but he did not think time had proven his thesis just yet. That would indicate that he was not influenced by Darwin's idea directly. I don't know if Mill's ideas made the same splash as Darwin's on the discussion of the era but it is less probable that Darwin was influenced by Mill. However, at this time it had become established beyond doubt that societal development was driven by great individuals of science that broke intellectual ground which would mean that the influence that stimulated Mill was of a more general character.

“The modern regime of public opinion is, in an unorganized form, what the Chinese educational and political systems are in an organized; and unless individuality shall be able successfully to assert itself against this yoke, Europe, notwithstanding its noble antecedents and its professed Christianity, will tend to become another China.” This a conclusion of Mill's from On Liberty. Apparently Mill did not want to see a development of Europe in the direction of collectivist China. One can see the same discussion in the New York Times today where the US, wary of the relative decline of the Western civilization, worries that Asia will take over.

Mill did not discuss the relationship between the US and Britain but Ralph Waldo Emerson, who lived across the pond during exactly the same time, was more upbeat in his estimate. He vouched for self-reliance. Don't read too many books. Create instead! We still hear the echoes of this in the current "innovate away from the competition". In Mill's time it was the British Empire that was in decline. Now it is the Western civilization. Will Asia become the next United States in world development? In other words, will collectivism take over? Collectivism on crowded areas vs. individualism on an expanse?

Vacation

I can't remember that the news and opinion flow has been so low as now during my soon two and a half year blogging on political science. It is a good time to take a little time off.

So far I have been writing on money that I inherited and my blog has been independent politically. I have gone through the field of political science systematically and I am beginning to gravitate towards a social liberal stance. From now on I will continue to blog independently on American pension money that I earned while working as a biomedical researcher during 9.5 years in Philadelphia between 1984 and 1993.

This means that I will be a tax payer. I mention this because as I earlier have said some people are abusing me for ten years now by placing me in a mental swamp of human noise. They are giving me some ailments too to make me feel bad and older than I am. It is going to be interesting to see if I will get a different treatment while actively contributing economically to society. Not that I think a person being forced off the work market by some kind of mafia should not get a decent treatment.

Today I got myself a pair of decent jogging shoes because I will spend a week trekking the coast line. Like doing a week in the mountains. My first impression is that I probably have to start taking care of my body a little. I got pain in my legs. Physicians still claim this is beneficial for our health to exercise. Have a nice vacation to all of you!

So maybe I'm not a Russian spy, but who in Sweden set me up as an information gatherer without my knowledge?

So after University of Pennsylvania security, or the FBI, or whoever they were, shot me to pieces my wife told me in tongues that she did not want me at home. I had in principle only two ways to go. To Wisconsin where my father and stepmother lived or back to Sweden where my mother lives and I had some other family. At that point in time I had a feeling that my ultimate problems emanated from Sweden and went back to see if I could find any answers. I knew something was wrong. People had used the TTDE on me, and even if I did not realize that it existed, there was an eerie feeling. I was mentally exhaused.

It so happened I returned to my mother's 60 year anniversary party in 1993 and I met relatives and friends. However, coming back was like moving around in a padded room. I had lost the abiliity to talk reason with people. I was a new kind of pariah.

To make a long story short--I am still a pariah. On top of this I have been made a mentally ill person. They actually tried to suggest I should ask for help with my depression while still in the US but I knew I was not depressed. It is actually interesting that it is not possible to make a person depressed, ie true melancholic, with TTDE. What a splendid way for Human Destruction Inc. to get rid of people? They might even take their own lives, to bring down costs, if they have not already been transferred to the tax payer.

My conclusion is that whoever set me up in the first place is keeping me, their human waste product, away from society via what I call Human Destruction Inc., an organization of people dedicated to keeping a person down by various methods inluding TTDE.

My life as a potential Russian spy--I'm asking what you would think?

As I read about the 11 Russians caught by the FBI in the US, I could not help thinking about my own life. It so happens that I did not think it was possible to be a spy any longer. That it is, is actually good news.

When in 1998, I found out about TTDE, the technology that does not exist, it occurred to me that I all of a sudden had the explanation for many strange events that had happened to me since around 1970.

One of the first was during my reading of Alexander Solchenisyn's The Gulag Archipelago. Once when I stood up from my reading chair I suffered from acute hypotonia and my blood pressure fell so much that I fell to the ground and even hit my head in the floor. Normally such hypotensive bouts are much lighter and can be reversed by taking a lower position.

I performed very well in school around 15 years of age and was interested in science and medicine. Probably more in science in general since I did my first compulsive work-apprenticeship arranged by the school in a laboratory at Astra Pharmaceuticals in Mölndal where I lived and went to school. Or so I thought at least until I realized that I was placed in the animal housing department for the two week placement. One day I would have had an opportunity to visit a real laboratory for a day at least but the lab I was directed to was empty. No one came to meet me.

The next year I wanted to practice as a physician but I got a placement at a course for nurses aids instead at the hospital. One day we were introduced to hearing aids in a darkened room where I all of a sudden fainted and vomited on the floor. Never happened before or after again. Hearing aids makes me think of the hearing hallucinations many of us encounter these days.

These events have made me believe that people in Mölndal where engaged in having me "logged" via TTDE from early years and that this is something that has been going on for all my life. I have been walking around as a walking talking video camera to these people.

The list of events like the once described are plentiful all through my life. One of the more dramatic was that I found out that if I placed my motorcycle accidents on the map the sites formed the stars of the Big Dipper (Karlavagnen, Stora Björn as in Russian bear?) making me understand that someone might have aided me in these accidents in various ways.

In medical school I had problems with studying also. Interestingly, my course in pediatrics went very well and might have served as a measurement of my abilities. As I write right now I am intellectually and memory inhibited to a certain extent and I have a feeling that whoever has had me logged over the years have modulated my intellect variably over the years.

By attribution my feeling is that the people responsible for controlling me have had a character of sour socialists. Was I a Russian spy without knowing it? My father, who was a naturalized American citizen might have had the same problem in his later years according to some information that I got recently and by his charading while I lived in the US.

My years in Philadelphia in the US at the Wistar Institute was in a large lab run by a Polish born scientist that also directed the Institute. I made quite a career there and stayed almost ten years until I was shot in pieces partially by the aid of TTDE, an easy target not yet knowing about it. I have understood that my wife and collaborator at the lab had knowledge of TTDE. My children, who I tried to warn for the technology, after I found out about it, don't dare to discuss it. I would never have gotten children had I known.

Political leaders in the West?

Right now we have President Obama in the US and Chancellor Merkel in Europe. The leaders of the pack.

Obama have been criticized for being un-American and accused of not being legally American, growing up in Muslim Indonesia as he did. A US president have to have been born in the US. If it was to appease the Muslims, it apparently did not work. It is a funny rule because a person can be born in the US and raised in Venezuela. One of the ten casualties attacking Israelis on the Mavi Marmara recently was also born in the US but raised in Turkey.

However, Angela Merkel is born and raised, educated to a physicist, in East Germany. A country that was left of Lenin politically. Unlike in the US, they apparently don't have rules against people leading Germany being born and raised in foreign enemy land.

I am not claiming that the West's current ailments depend on its choice of leaders but it sure is a strange coincidence. Just now they are fighting about who has the right economics. Economics depend on psychology to a great extent and after the financial crisis, when US dominance is down, I guess we just have to accept that differences are going to shine through to a larger extent than before. World economics might be utopic.

I thought "meat glue" was turned down by the European Parliament?

Meat glue = the-ever-closer-union-choir of the EU

How long time is reasonable for an election campaign?

I must say I am impressed over the short and sweet election campaign in the UK. Just a little over a month and three televised debates. In Sweden we seem to have a little over half a year of this eternal nagging.

Thoughts on Communications

Sweden is a small export oriented country that is highly dependent on how it is linked to other countries in the world. The volcano Eyjafjallajökull debacle has given us a feeling, some say, of how life without flights would be.

People say that we should fly less in the future. I must say that the idea of flying is so powerful that I cannot imagine a world without flights. People say that we should replace flying with trains, for the environment's sake.

High speed trains have the advantage that they don't start at a position outside the city and that they are more comfortable in other ways. However, people say that in a small country like Sweden with a dispersed population they will not be economical. We dont know how they will work in the winter either. The Swedish Press so far doesn't seem to be able to make up their mind if it is a good investment to pour 200bn crowns into this project or not. Apparently it is advicable to start out with smaller test lines for evaluation if there is enough people that would use it for it to function.

Then there is the car. This absolutely ideal vehicle for furthering the quest of the individual. I look forward to electric cars. According to The Economist the engines are going to sit on each wheel and the suspension has therefore to change dramatically. Such a car was envisioned already a hundred years ago by Ferdinand Porsche.

My conclusion is that trains are perhaps good between the larger cities but then the car and the airplane would be used elsewhere. In due time these modes of transportation will be environmentally exquisite.

Republicans are back on the eve of Obama's first year review

Today we learned that the US senate seat of Ted Kennedy, who fought all his life to get health care to all, now is taken by Scott Brown a republican in a change that indeed jeopardizes just the health care bill of Obama. He thanked John McCain in his acceptance speech so McCain got some sweet revenge for the loss in the election. According to Huffington Post it was a protest vote. People are angry about Wall Street and about Health Care, which is a little strange because Massachusetts have health care for all thanks to the former Republican Governor Mitt Romney.

This happens as pundits are writing reviews for Obama's first year. I have only read that of The Economist which I like because it was positive. I also think Obama did well this year. He had to fight a little when the adoration of the election era weaned off but only really erred on his Afghanistan war which I unfortunately think will be a mistake. I think he was worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize for having created a new more positive world mood and having ended the use of torture for interrogations. However, giving a war speech for the ceremony did not rhyme well.

I did not even vote for Obama because I adhered to the foreign policy of Robert Kagan that fueled John McCain's candidacy. However, something happened in the world after the financial crisis and I now firmly believe that the Democrats should be in power due to the fact that this harmonizes best with Europe. Obama is the obvious leader still with a strong mandate and I hope he will get reelected in 2012.

One of the more significant events last year is probably that Obama and his administration have learned that China is no friend. Although Asia is regarded as a bonanza economically problems are brewing. Japan and the US now are at odds about a military base at Okinawa. I have not seen that yet but I still hope that we will have a trans-Atlantic president back, which for example would mean that Obama lends an ear to the Green movement in Europe.

Obama's Middle East approach probably went OK. However, people complain that he told Israel to completely stop their settlements which he had to retract from. I guess he learned that Israel is completely fixed on the problem with Iran and have little interest in the Palestinian question at the time. Solving the Iran problem would take care of Hamas and Hizbollah in their humble opinion. Obama's Turkish speech was probably partly aimed at building a possible bridge to Iran via this route. There might be some potential in this approach. If Iran gets the bomb, it is good with a more positive relation.

Obama was also helped by the fact that Iran got internal problems after the reelection of Ahmadi-nejad. Who knows, perhaps the democracy movement in Iran was in part fueled by Obama's stretched out hand gesture at the beginning of his presidency. If I was an Iranian, I would also think more of improving my country than fighting the infidel if the outside pressure is relieved. Removing sanctions rather than strenghtening them might further enthuse the Green Opposition movement for possible change to the better in Iran. However, making sanctions stronger seems to be what is currently in the mind of the establishment.

Before the election in Iran there was no consensus from Obama's administration to bomb Iran to delay the possible production of an atom bomb. Looking into the future the perhaps highest probability is that Iran will make a bomb and this is supposed to change things in the Middle East. How this is going to change things differently from the already present nuclear situation in Pakistan is unknown to me, perhaps via less transparency, but it must be considered one of Obama's toughest challenges for the remainder of his presidency.

The self-inflicted situation in AfPak and future nuclear capabilities in Iran must be considered as high risk nuclear proliferation problems. We will have to get used to this risk or face a major war situation with very dim prospects for the future. It seems inevitable that this problem will eventually mature during Obama's watch.

Most Important Issue?

Gunnar Hökmark » Arkiv » Ett Gott Nytt År!: "I Afrika och i Asien ser vi de politiska konsekvenserna av ett ekonomiskt allt mäktigare Kina, de investeringar som görs i Europa av såväl Kina som Ryssland, med i båda fallen ägande nära kontrollerat av den politiska makten ger nya intressen och nya säkerhetspolitiska utmaningar. Ryssland står med Gazprom närmare Europas centrum i dag än vad Sovjetunionen någonsin gjorde med militär förmåga."

I think Hökmark is making a very important point in this paragraph of his latest blog post. It is understandable that Western press is emphasizing the terrorist bit now when there is desperate need for a reinforced support for the Afganistan war, however, over all it has since 9/11 been reasonably stable on this front. Obama have had Fort Hood and an aborted flight 253 attempt but feel free to compare this with Finland.

The fascist style retaliation against the Muhammad caricature painter is really bothersome in principle but a professional police act abolished the threat. Both in Europe and in the US the protection systems can't be said to be entiredly dyfunctional. What fascinates me is how these few terrorists are undressing Westerners at airports, now seemingly down to the last thread. Muslim fundamentalists must feel very content. 100 nicabs in Denmark against all travelers in airports.

No, I refuse to sing the song we are terrorised by terrorists. The situation seems to be very much under control.

The Eternal

Det eviga - Wikisource:

"Väl formar den starke med svärdet sin värld,
väl flyga som örnar hans rykten;
men någon gång brytes det vandrande svärd
och örnarna fällas i flykten.
Vad våldet må skapa är vanskligt och kort,
det dör som en stormvind i öknen bort."

This is the first verse of a poem by Esaias Tegnér that was published in 1810. Tegnér was impressed by Napoleon. It could be interesting if the poem is read with Obama in mind instead. The Swedish Radio selected this poem for the New Years Eve celebration of 2009. Since most of the readers of my blog will not listen to P1 at that time, I take the liberty to point this out today.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

It has been a very interesting year indeed. Looking ahead it was good to hear a relaxed and self confident Fredrik Reinfeldt today in his Christmas Speech. There is no doubt in my mind that he today, with his experience and personal popularity, is the best candidate to lead Sweden during the next period.

I'm confident that the tide will turn in the favour of the Alliansen. I earlier thought that a positive outcome of the COP15 deal could boost the Red-Greens but it does not seem to materialize in this fashion. Reinfeldt had a horror story from the COP15 meeting of a Green party member that thought that the world should follow the scientists and that democracy was not important. There is a lack of realism in such proposals and this should translate to caution in our own election.

Cosmology?

I'm sorry, this is amateur's night, because I will tell you about my joy yesterday when I found out that I can retain my own preference when it comes to cosmology.

I don't know about you, but I definitely prefer a universe that always has existed. The creation does not exist. The Big-Bang theory claims that time and space all starts at a given point. As I said this does not suit me at all. It is counter intuitive for me.

However, there are so called cyclic models of our cosmology that for example state that Big Bangs are followed by Big Crunches in eternity.

Albert Einstein was one of those that in the 1930s suggested this kind of cosmology. It was disproven but recent discovery of dark matter and dark energy have apparently made it more likely again.

Political Science Break until January 1, 2010

Heard Reinfeldt on the news today. He claims it is going to be a referendum on the "work-line" in September. I really hope this will work.

On the positive side is Reinfeldt's popularity as prime minister and the job-well-done he received from Europe. On the negative side is the double on the 'Försäkringskassan' and the lack of relative clout on the climate issue.

I guess the COP15 is going to be like it will be. I have made my conclusions about what to do. The world population issue must have priority and in the light of the dismal results on CO2 suppression from the Kyoto protocol miracles are needed for serious effects in the near future.

President Obama is moving his troops to Afghanistan and will hopefully get somewhere in Congress with his Cap and Trade and Health Care bills.

I will take a healthy break from politics until January 1, 2010 and continue with my work on Religious Humanism in the mean time.