Join the new world

Dear members of DNS, I will hereby declare my candidacy in the election of a party president in Democrats of New Sweden.
I will first present to you my past so that you will know who you are voting for, and I will try not to make it a history lesson.

I joined Erepublik over half a year ago, in early February. I came here with some IRL friends. We were totally new to everything. The first thing I noticed was that the forum Flashback had created a party and that it was pouring in new citizens from Flashback every day, all of them joining the party baring their name; Flashback Sweden (FBS).
Sweden was enormous in terms of population back then, so you could say that you felt a sense of security and calm to live in the colossal e-state Sweden.
I created this newspaper, first it was called Syndikatet, and I started to publish some rather foul articles criticizing FBS. As I mentioned, I was new and blind.

After a while, when I had spent some time reading through comments explaining why I was wrong and doing some research myself, I quickly saw that my articles was based on mere assumptions. My ways at that time was not justified at all, and so I took the critique in and I decided to delete the articles. I started to publish more serious and thought-through articles about issues that mattered to me. But I didn’t give up on my goals criticizing the government. “If there is no one criticizing your work, there is no way you can get better at whatever you do” a fellow FBS member told me and I wanted to repay the favour, and so I did.

Through my work as a journalist I came to know a lot of good people, people of power and intellect, people that had influence.
Then, in late April came the war with Denmark. This conflict lies deeply rooted in me and it can still provoke strong feelings if I think of all that happened back then.
The new war module had just been released the previous month and everyone was eager to test it. Norway, our closest ally, had just attacked Finland and thus blocking Sweden off from a choice of a direction through which to expand, leaving only one option; Denmark. The president in Denmark saw the destiny of his people and did everything to haste the Swedish attack. A lot of slander was exchanged. I wanted the insanity to stop and also save the Danish community, so I moved to Denmark to do just that. In Sweden my friends wished me good luck even though some of them didn’t agree with the reasons of my acts. Some called me a traitor, some called me a saviour.
I did know that the attack was inevitable but it wasn’t about that it was about making a statement, founding my principles and acting through my beliefs.

The hole operation was a total failure, it was based on cooperation and I found nothing of that in Denmark. It was all a doomsday-parade in Denmark, a true downfall.
The Danish president Grev Per was, and still is, a very close friend to me, but when I felt so turned-down by him I didn’t regard him as a friend anymore. I was a broken man, my reputation in Sweden was greatly damaged and I lost many friends. I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing, so I decided to follow my beliefs in true friendship, and I made peace with Grev Per, Skinke and others I had lost, repairing what was left and turning to what was important for me.

I created Hypogeum, a Sunday coffee drinking society for intellectuals, I recruited a couple of bearded friends and we started to sculpt what was to become The Swedish Nobel Prize. I wrote more passionate, trying to get conflicts and other situations in the e-world filtered through my thoughts and opinions and publishing even better articles. I made more friends in other countries and without knowing it, three months passed and Sweden was searching for a new minister of foreign affairs.
I needed to get into politics. This meant sacrificing my political independency as a journalist and I therefore decided very careful of which party to join. I came to the conclusion that the party that represented my views the best was DNS, a party of many active and intellectual citizens. I saw the opportunity and I seized it. With all the contacts throughout the e-world I became the Swedish minister of foreign affairs.
I have recently made the more “community focused” Erepublik Tutorial Comic and I plan to continue working with that and helping the Erepublik community to flourish, like it did in “the old days”.

I set out into the e-world with the words of Abraham Lincoln; “Am I not destroying my enemies if I make friends out of them?” and so I formed my very own golden law through which I act in all situations: “Friendship above all else!”
This is the essence of my philosophy, and it will be the essence of my party presidency in DNS too.

I am not going to tell you what to vote on. I’m simply representing myself and telling you to chose wisely, and very careful. Know what you are voting for.

FRIENDSHIP ABOVE ALL ELSE!
- Josef Stark