stockholm en

God Jul (Merry Christmas) from a sunny winter-morning Stockholm.

It pleases us to extend our Season's Greetings to all babelians, and we also link to Adriano Farano's post about 2008.

The launch at Dront Restaurang & Bar in Stockholm was a pleasant affair. With a lovely buffé and good drinks the new Café Babel community was presented.

The concept of Web 2.0 is actually not that common in Sweden, most parts of our bloggosphere are, despite our reputation of having a rapid adoption of technology, rather similar to when it all started some years ago. Café Babel provides Swedish bloggers with a previously unimagined platform for expressing their ideas to a much larger audience while getting more hits.

Join the community by clicking here!

Café Babel gives a new addition to Swedish media, as we need to see more parts of Europe and understand other parts of the European experience than just what happens in the European institutions.

Now this cannot be achieved by proper funding, and the next step is to start up a drive for gaining the capital needed. But the launch evening gives good hope, and the partying went on.

Now we have our own group on Facebook!

If you are interested in Café Babel and Sweden, please do join our group. You will receive news and interesting information, while being able to receive invitations to events and participate in discussions with other Babelians.

Check out the event site for the launch of the Café Babel community while you are at it.

On Monday September 10th, Waldemar Ingdahl has been invited by Humanistiska Föreningen (the student association of the humanities) at Stockholm University to speak about the European Union, European media and to answer the question if there is a common European public debate.

Ingdahl will also describe the Eurogeneration and Café Babel.

The speech will be held at Gula Villan (the yellow villa) on the Frescati campus. Gula Villan is the headquarters of the student association and situated behind the university library.

The bar opens at 18h00 and Ingdahl's speech starts at 19h00

Café Babel Stockholm provides its first content to cafebabel.com.

It is Waldemar Ingdahl that writes the View from the ground section Demonstrations against closing the door to Iraqis in Not another Nordic Malta- yet by Thomas Huddleston.

In the article Huddleston and Ingdahl write about the Iraqi refugees in Sweden. While the Iraqi refugee crisis is global in scope, only 4% have sought protection in Europe, mostly in historical safe-haven Sweden. Recently Sweden called for help from the EU and tightened its asylum rules, fearful of shouldering the burden for a migration crisis on a potentially Mediterranean scale. Why should Europe’s small share be such a big deal?