Posted on 01/29/2005 6:50:34 AM PST by franksolich
Norway Set to Reopen Embassy in Iraq January 26, 2001 Norway is preparing to reopen its embassy in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, 10 years after it was closed at the start of the Gulf War, the foreign ministry announced Friday. Norway, a new member of the U.N. Security Council, was appointed this month to lead the world agency's sanctions committee on Iraq. Foreign Minister Thorbjoern Jagland said Oslo needs first hand information from Iraq. ''To be able to do the most independent evaluation possible of the conditions in Iraq in connection with our work on the Security Council, we want to reopen a diplomatic representation in Baghdad,'' he said in a printed statement
..(more)
(Excerpt) Read more at globalpolicy.org ...
A delightful country, Norway, and Norwegians some of the finest people in the world.
If one wishes to be on the "Norway Ping List," please pign or e-mail me--but alas it is pretty much guaranteed to be a low-intensity ping list, because nothing much happens in Norway.
Norway is the Nebraska of Europe; a decent-sized country in square footage, clean spacious scenery, and highly-literate, well-educated, well-mannered people.....the problem being, there are just not many people.
Oops, sorry.
Moderator--could you move this post to "chat"?
I had it set wrong; my apologies, sir.
Ping
Yes, and the have kuminost cheese and pickled herring, two epicurian delights which are hard to find in America.
Props to Norwegians.
Many nations and cultures have pickled herring. They were most plentiful in the Baltic sea but are somewhat fished out there. But not gone by any extent. Pickling meant the herring could be transported inland in barrels.
Of course. All of Scandanavia for example. Kuminost/nokkelost cheese seems only to be available from Norway these days.
Actually, I always wondered what the "national dish" of Norway was, assuming it was some sort of salt-water fish or reindeer.
The largest general ethnic group in Nebraska is the "generic" "Scandinavian"--but from surveys of these people here, it appears 99% of them are of Danish descent, the other 1% being Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faeroese.
Danes are cool, and good cooks, excepting for fish.
Well, sir, there was a Norwegian prowling around Free Republic earlier in the week, alleging that Free Republicans are "anti-Norwegian," and so I decided to do something about it.
I know, I know, I know, Norway is broadly considered part of the decadent "Old Europe"--but in blunt fact, when examining their contributions to the War Against Terror, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, it appears Norway is doing somewhat more than its own proportional share.
Norway's ambassador to the Free Republic, eurotwit, gave the statistics, and for a country with fewer people than many American cities, and where public enthusiasm for the War Against Terror is lukewarm to cold, the Norwegian contribution is remarkable; the numbers were on a Free Republican thread where a Norwegian was griping that it seems politically-incorrect to harvest whales, and politically-correct to kill wolves.....as one can imagine, those scarce rare few Norwegian threads here cover all sorts of territory.
My error, sir.
I work nights, and this had been posted in the morning, when I was sleepier than Al Gore's wife you-know-whatting with her husband; just not all here.
That news-release was from January 2001; it came from a search on Google, and I had entered all the information for posting on Free Republic, when, ooops, I noticed the date.
Too late, because I was about ready to keel over from lack of sleep. But in the future, when describing Norway, I will be more diligent, more thorough, about "timeliness."
However, sir, it does seem odd that one of the very first items in Google, about Norway, is a four-year-old news-release.....as if not much happens there.
Right, sir, the Norwegians are good people, great people, the problem being there are so few of them, just as with Nebraskans. Substitute reindeer for bison, and water for prairie, and Norway is exactly like Nebraska.
I have lived in many parts of the world--a "free-lance" wanderer, one might say--but have never been to Norway. It is however one of my ambitions in life, to spend a winter in Svalbard, which must be utterly fascinating.
But, in a more-serious vein, I am confident that there is more to Norway than meets the eye, and their contribution to the War Against Terror deserves commendation.
"Danes are cool, and good cooks, excepting for fish."
===
Well, then, they must not eat lutefisk, eh? LOL!
There is just a thing about fish, Madam. I have no idea why, but I really loathe fish, and cannot even endure the odor of it wafting through the air.
Since this is Nebraska, with 6 cattle for every Nebraskan, and with Colorado to the west of us, one is used to all sorts of really sordid odors, but man, fish is so high up on the list, the "second-worst" odor is so far down it does not even count.
I ate fish one time in my adult life, but it took a great deal of pressuring. I was in a railway compartment with a colonel in the Ukrainian "state" police (a lot of stripes on those sleeves), and he insisted upon "feasting" me--even the "bad" Ukrainians tend to be hospitable--but I adamantly balked at the fish. When he had me pinned against the window of the passenger-compartment, and was reaching for his baton, I figured, well, I had better eat the fish.....
You know, Madam, another thing that fascinates me about the similarities of Norwegians with Nebraskans is that in military recruitment, the overwhelming majority of Nebraskans going into the service select the Navy (and the really good ones, the Marines); this is anecdotal evidence only, but it does seem that circa 50-67% of them go into the sea-faring services, even though salt-water is not part of the Nebraska "culture."
No problem at all. I was bummed to know that it was an error.
"highly-literate, well-educated, well-mannered people.....the problem being, there are just not many people."
Don't worry. The lean hungry barbarians from the South, with their alien superstitious "religion," will take care of that little problem soon enough.
hinckley buzzard
++++
Lutefisk and lefse bump!
++++
Folks on the Iron Range actually Like rutabages...can you believe it? They put them in lot of stuff.
Ugh!
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