Thus Spoketh Terje

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1. Loki

   Bah, humbug.

   9. May 2007 @ 10:49 ( Permalink )

2. svava

   Ditto…

   9. May 2007 @ 10:51 ( Permalink )

3. Terje Phlegmont Mendoza

   Humbug? So you’d have prefered the Morgenthau Plan, then?

   Weirdos…

   9. May 2007 @ 13:43 ( Permalink )

4. Loki

   Oh, I’m quite fine with European integration, I just don’t see what it has to do with us. We’re not members, so why pretend to celebrate what is a completely artificial and, quite frankly, rather silly attempt at an holiday in a Union we’re not even part of? I mean, honestly, only the bureaucrats in Brussel and fanatics actually keep track of when it IS, much less makes a point out of celebrating it.

   But hey, have yourself a blast. Me, I’ll celebrate the 17th instead. At least the history of the NORWEGIAN national-state isn’t covered in blood.

   9. May 2007 @ 16:03 ( Permalink )

5. svava

   Huff, det der var hardt sagt, Loki. Feire Europadagen din du, lillebroren min. Støtter deg.

   9. May 2007 @ 17:23 ( Permalink )

6. Lotta

   I don’t give a damn about either holidays, excepting the fact that I get a hundred percent raise on the 17th, and that makes my wallet very happy. And I don’t have to go to school on the 17th, so that beats the 9th anytime of the month.

   Still; I really couldn’t care less for the reason why I get the day off. Patriotism for anything but your favorite football team is bogus and sometimes just a little sickening

   9. May 2007 @ 18:05 ( Permalink )

7. Loki

   Patriotism? It’s got little to nothing to do with patriotism, however, it’s rather closely related to gratitude for living in the just about only country on Earth where the way I currently live is not only affordable but actually encouraged by the government, and showing proudness of that. Come to think of it, I guess you could call that patriotism. So nevermind. ^^ Go celebrate your favourite bunch of men surrogate-killing other people’s favourite bunches of men by kicking at a white and black ball of leather and air, if you want to, but I’ll prefer my motivations by far. Heck, I’ll even prefer Terje’s.

   “Huff, det der var hardt sagt, Loki. Feire Europadagen din du, lillebroren min. Støtter deg.”

   XD Imponerende nedlatende omsorg. *tomler opp*

   9. May 2007 @ 19:03 ( Permalink )

8. Lotta

   Anything else would have shocked me to the core

   10. May 2007 @ 09:48 ( Permalink )

9. Loki

   Maybe I should have said anything else just to shake you up a bit, though, if you’re going around celebrating an athletic-team chosen completely at random that devotedly, it certainly couldn’t hurt.

   10. May 2007 @ 12:04 ( Permalink )

10. Ole

    Loki, for the record, slik som Russland holder på så tror jeg vi skal være glade for EU, eh? (Naturligvis, EU er jo med på å provosere putinistene, men allikevel…) Men vi burde naturligvis holde oss utenfor unionen, og vi burde også få fremforhandlet at EØS-land IKKE skal betale mer for å få være med i EØS-avtalen enn EU-land gjør for å få være med i EU. Fuck you, Bulgaria.

    10. May 2007 @ 16:10 ( Permalink )

11. Loki

    Eg er veldig glad for at EU finst, eg, som sagt, eg er “quite fine with European integration”. Er at ME absolutt skal ta del i det eg (mildt sagt) misliker.

    Oh, and fuck you, Bulgaria.

    (Not ’cause I really mean that, but because it was such a catchy way to end a comment. Of course, this parantheses has spoiled that, so now I have to try again.)

    Oh, _fuck you_, Bulgaria.

    10. May 2007 @ 17:35 ( Permalink )

12. Lotta

    You make it sound like I sat down, closed my eyes and picked a team out of a list, Loki. The process, all though not by very much, was a little more complicated than that. It’s like you choosing to support Joss Whedon because he makes the best telly shows. I chose Arsenal and Rosenborg because they played the best football (and because RBK is the nearest club, so I kinda had to anyways, but them being the best did help).

    And quite frankly; what’s wrong with Bulgaria? XD

    10. May 2007 @ 18:35 ( Permalink )

13. Loki

    RBK is the nearest club, that’s equally, probably more, irrational as the patriotic ideas you accused me of.

    And yes, I choose to _support_ Joss Whedon because he makes the best telly shows. I do not, however, expect to have a day off because of that, nor do I celebrate his birthday. What he does is entertain me and fill my life with interesting and fun things to do. While that is indeed worthy of a lot of praise, that is not worthy of celebration on any level approaching what we’re here talking about: the very things that made my life as I lead it *possible*.

    10. May 2007 @ 18:50 ( Permalink )

14. Terje Phlegmont Mendoza

    “Oh, I’m quite fine with European integration, I just don’t see what it has to do with us. We’re not members, so why pretend to celebrate what is a completely artificial and, quite frankly, rather silly attempt at an holiday in a Union we’re not even part of?”

    Celebrate and celebrate…
    Besides, I don’t see the harm in paying hommage to dear old Robert Schuman’s declaration of his plan of integrating the French and German coal and steel industries in an attempt to prevent further wars to be waged by the two states against each other. And it seems as if his idea was quite effective, too, as there hasn’t been such a war since his proposal was put into effect. Although, granted, that might be related to the three bloody wars they fought in the preceeding 80 years.

    “I mean, honestly, only the bureaucrats in Brussel and fanatics actually keep track of when it IS, much less makes a point out of celebrating it.”

    Heh, fun fact: There are fewer EU bureaucrats in Brussels than there are in the municipality of Copenhagen, or Oslo, for that matter. I’ll grant that you’re correct on that fanatics part, though.

    “Men vi burde naturligvis holde oss utenfor unionen, og vi burde også få fremforhandlet at EØS-land IKKE skal betale mer for å få være med i EØS-avtalen enn EU-land gjør for å få være med i EU.”

    The EEC (if I remember this correctly, which I should, no matter how much of a moron I am) is a free loader organisation. We get all the benefits of a EU membership — access to the European Market — without any of the disadvantages — or if we have any of them, they’re greatly reduced, such as the surrendering of sovereignty. So that the EU charges us quite heavily for this? No big surprise, really, especially as we’re pretty much more dependent on them than they are on us, no matter how important Norwegian natural gases might be for the energy industry of some EU members.

    And Eu members do pay quite substantial prices for their membership, although this price isn’t always paid in money.

    Also, if they didn’t charge us this much, how else would they be able to subsidise French agriculture?

    11. May 2007 @ 01:49 ( Permalink )

15. Lotta

    For the record, I never said or intended to say or even tried but failed to say that I deserved a day off because of football. Just seemed like there was some misunderstanding.

    11. May 2007 @ 10:20 ( Permalink )

16. Loki

    I didn’t say you did, you just chose to use your fascination for soccer as an example of something you’d rather celebrate than the fact that you live on one of (if not the most) successful democratic nation-state in the world in terms of peace and living-standards. Which I reacted to.

    11. May 2007 @ 12:39 ( Permalink )

17. Lotta

    Putting words in my mouth, are we?

    I would very much like to celebrate the fact that I’m living in a nation with democracy and high living-standards. In fact, I do it every day - as I celebrate football every day as well. I do not, however, see the point in taking a whole day off so that people can empty out all their pompous, patriotic “we’re the best in the world” crap. I feel ashamed of the 17th as it exists today, ’cause it could be a good day, and for some, it probably is. Where I live, the whole thing comes off with a grand fart-smelling burp.

    11. May 2007 @ 13:48 ( Permalink )

18. Ole

    Terje, we don’t get ALL the advantages of full membership. We only get access to the market, nothing more. We don’t get farming subsidies, we don’t get money to help further cultural projects, we don’t get money to build roads that hold an acceptable standard. Norway have, according to Wikipedia, paid 1167 MILLION € since 2002 to get access to the free market. That’s over 200 million € a year. I can’t manage to find out how much Bulgaria pays for it’s EU-membership, but Britain payed 12 million £ (more or less 16 million €) to the EU in 2003, and got back over half of that sum. I doubt Bulgaria, the cheap bastards, payed as much as 10 million €, and they almost assuredly got more than 10 million € from the EU to help build up the infrastructure.

    (Well, I have to admit that the Wiki-article was fuzzy, it might have been that Norway, Luxembourg and Iceland together had payed 1167 million €, but from the comments in the article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area) I interpreted it as just Norway.)

    11. May 2007 @ 14:20 ( Permalink )

19. Ole

    Fuck, I misspelled “paid” as “payed” constantly through that post, and noticed it the moment I posted it. I am ashamed, truly.

    11. May 2007 @ 14:24 ( Permalink )

20. Loki

    How your local community celebrates the 17th of May, Lotta, is completely and utterly irrelevant for whether or not you celebrate it and should also be irrelevant for _how_ you celebrate it if you dislike their way of doing so.

    And, actually, I think we should be very proud of the 17th of May as it exists today. There’s not a lot of other nations that both celebrate a national holiday and do it in such a peaceful and, well, I actually think you can also call it admirable, way. The ones that do shoot up a lot of useless firework, have parades to show off their military’s latest tanks, and planes flying in formations. We have childrens going through the streets waving flags and blowing whistles.

    11. May 2007 @ 16:22 ( Permalink )

21. Terje Phlegmont Mendoza

    “We only get access to the market, nothing more.”

    Call me simple, but I don’t think access to the European market is a small thing. For example, according to SSB the Norwegian exports to the EU in 2004 alone was worth more than 64.000 million USD, if I still know how to read statistics.

    “We don’t get farming subsidies, we don’t get money to help further cultural projects, we don’t get money to build roads that hold an acceptable standard.”

    And why the fuck should we? We’re the richest goddamn country in the world, for chrissakes! Also, it’s called a “free trade agreement”; if we want the benefits of a political union, we should enter into one. Personally, I’m rather fond of our sovereignty — the price we’d have to pay for such “benefits” as the ones you describe above — and I’m a little too ambivalent towards the EU to be entirely comfortable with that.

    Besides, the agriculture subsidies are mainly three to keep the French happy.

    “The ones that do shoot up a lot of useless firework, have parades to show off their military’s latest tanks, and planes flying in formations. We have childrens going through the streets waving flags and blowing whistles.”

    One of my flatmates used that exact same argument earlier today, when one of my other flatmates said he disliked May 17. And it’s a good point, I think. Much better to parade our children than our guns, for the children are the future, and frankly, our guns probably ain’t gonna scare anyone no matter how much we parade them back and forth.

    13. May 2007 @ 23:25 ( Permalink )

22. Ole

    Terje, Terje, I’m not saying we should get those things. I’m only responding to your claim that we “get all the benefits of a EU membership” by being in the EEC. Which is obviously false, unless you want to argue that the other benefits aren’t benefits because we would lose our sovereignity over them, but that is a rather stupid (if still marginally valid) point, if you ask me.

    14. May 2007 @ 14:43 ( Permalink )

23. Loki

    I actually wrote “childrenS”?!

    I’ll go perform the appropriate ritual suicide now.

    Or, no, wait, I’m not deservign of rituals, I’ll just end it.

    CHILDRENS. O.o *shudders*

    14. May 2007 @ 15:37 ( Permalink )

24. Terje Phlegmont Mendoza

    “I’m only responding to your claim that we “get all the benefits of a EU membership” by being in the EEC.”

    Ugh, silly me. What a stupid thing to claim.

    Ritual suicide suddenly sounds like a good idea…

    14. May 2007 @ 20:42 ( Permalink )

25. Loki

    It does?

    Hm.

    That’s disturbing.

    14. May 2007 @ 22:36 ( Permalink )