Sweden an oil free country by 2020?

I thought the topic was Switzerland, I got ?'em mixed up, as I am watching Mississippi Burning and posting simultaneously late at night. Well it was good for a chuckle, I could delete it all. However I have found specifics as to Sweden benefiting from the Nazis, but nowhere near to the same degree.

During the war, Sweden was openly pro-fascist. However, Sweden was one of the more cooperative countries of the neutrals. The high grade Swedish iron ore formed the basis of a strong and profitable connection between Sweden and the Nazis. The Nazis regarded this supply of ore as vital. So vital, in fact that the Nazis delayed the invasion of the Low Countries in order to invade Denmark and Norway first to protect the shipping route for the Swedish ore.
S & K bearings was another Swedish company that enjoyed a profitable relationship with the Nazis. S & K also presented a special problem for the United States, as the US was equally dependent upon S & K for bearings. S & K did its best in delaying production for war munitions in its US plants. Such a situation presented the Roosevelt administration with a dilemma. The US could impose sanctions on S & K, Sweden, or both. The sanctions would most likely result in a reprisal by S & K in further limiting the production of bearings and disrupt the production of war munitions. A second option for the administration would be to seize the plants for the duration of the war. Such a move would only further the charges of the rampant communism and socialism present in the administration by FDR's critics. The only other option was to allow S & K to continue with business as usual, which was the course followed. Regardless of who won the war, S & K was sure to win big by supplying both sides with bearings.
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/goldp5.html

Sweden also profited from the Holocaust. It is known that Wallenberg's relatives made money converting Nazi gold into Swedish crowns and that Sweden provided iron ore and ball bearings to the Nazis. Swedish documents reveal that some Swedes actually sided with the Nazis and volunteered to fight for Hitler. Some Swedes were members of the Waffen SS and served in police battalions.
A committee was established by the Swedish government in 1997 to investigate the transfer of Nazi gold to Sweden during the war. It is reported that Sweden received 38 tons of gold from Nazi Germany (worth today US $430 million). Many Swedish companies, such as Ericsson, AGA and Hasselblad Cameras, as well as the country's paper and wood industries traded with Nazi Germany. Swedish jewelers bought stolen diamonds, which were smuggled into Sweden by civil servants working at the German legation in Stockholm.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Sweden.html

A bit more:

Sweden and the Myth of Benevolent Socialism

From 1934 to 1974, 62,000 Swedes were sterilized as part of a national program grounded in the science of racial biology and carried out by officials who believed they were helping to build a progressive, enlightened welfare state...In some cases, couples judged to be inferior parents were sterilized, as were their children when they became teenagers.

Sweden lobotomized perhaps 4500 "undesirables," in some cases without the consent of their families:

Sweden also "forced hundreds of ?'mentally deficient' Swedes to let their teeth rot after being force-fed candy in dental experiments."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dieteman/dieteman33.html

Well they both start with "S" and those pesky Europeans all look alike to me anyway. :wink:

Sweden also permitted the passage of German troops across northern Sweden for quicker access to Narvick, Bodo and other somewhat isolated, but vital population centers in Northern Norway. This was crucial for the German's quick seizure of Norway and defense against Allied operations against narvick. Hardly the action of a neutral country -- facilitating the conquest of another neutral Scandanavian state (and in this case one that (then) had only recently escaped Swedish rule).

By contrast, the Norwegians and the Danes were heroic.

I bet Norway was none too pleased!

Thanks to both for these valuable responses.

However, I'm still somewhat confused what all this has to do with their atcual decission to become an oil-free country.

But maybe my confusion´is only due to the fact that I live in the successor country of a country which was ruled for 12 years by Nazis.

We're just ventillating because we think Sweden is a bit full of itself, hypocritical, and forgetfull of its sordid role during WWII. Swedish proclamations with respect to contemporary political correctitude don't impress me much.

I grew up in Michigan where, until I was 14, I thought dumb Swede was one word. Nothing to be proud of in that, but it is a reminder that Sweden and Swedes have not always been seen as the paragon of perfection they would have us believe.

Okay, Nazis and Switzerland are always are got point to ventilate .... and bashing Europeans helps per se.

I would never bash you Walter. You are patient, good humored, Thoughtful, informative , and - even when you put your finger nin my eye, you do so gently (and I often deserve it).

I don't dislike Europeans - only Icelanders, Swedes and Greeks (the Swiss can also be a bit hard to love.). Italians are truly the salt of the earth; Germans are better organized and more polite versions of most Americans; the French are interesting, agreeable (sometimes) and, in their sense of themselves as the rightful center of things, just like Americans; Spaniards are fascinating in their reserve and occasional strangeness. The British are deceptive - on the surface familiar, but underneath very unlike us, but engaging all the same.

To come back to the actual topic, Sweden is regarded as one of the best run countries in the world. After all the negative reactions and mudslinging, it is tops or near the top when measured against other nations.
It has long-range plans that other countries should look at instead of attacking Sweden.
----------------------------

Sweden is tops or second in official statistics. The reason may be the
politicians that run Sweden for a long time. They have a 'social conscience' and they act instead of just talking.

Example of poor government: USA.


Overall top 10 by EPI Score

1 New Zealand 88.0
2 Sweden 87.8
3 Finland 87.0
4 Czech Republic 86.0
5 United Kingdom 85.6
6 Austria 85.2
7 Denmark 84.2
8 Canada 84.0
9 Malaysia 83.3
10 Ireland 83.3
-------------------
28 United States 78.5
......................................................
Overall bottom 10

133 Niger 25.7
132 Chad 30.5
131 Mauritania 32.0
130 Mali 33.9
129 Ethiopia 36.7
128 Angola 39.3
127 Pakistan 41.1
126 Burkina Faso 43.2
125 Bangladesh 43.5
124 Sudan 44.0

Top 5 Environmental health

1 Sweden 99.4
2 France 99.2
3 Australia 99.0
4 United Kingdom 98.9
5 Finland 98.8
---------------------------
13 United States 98.3



http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1693431,00.html

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I don't have much faith in those stats, the UK and
and Australia almost the same re: "Environmental health"?

The UK is way more polluted and crowded and environmentally ?'used up' than Australia.

That's just one aspect of Environmental Health.

I think the observation includes more than just one aspect of the thing - quite a lot in fact. The main point is that the list in question is produced by organiuzations with a partiucular perspective, and that the results of their 'analysis' are laced with their often unstated biases and value judgements. This sort of stuff should be read with a great deal of skepticism and not simply be swallowed whole by credulous people -- particularly when the results so clearly violate common sense and perception.

The list itself and the associatedd numerical scores imply a degree of fineness in the measurement that quite obviously defies both the facts and rational interpretations of them.

From the article:

OK, but that in no way either addresses or diminishes my point. Universities are full of self-appointed "researchers" grinding our papers to advance their careers and political views. Few of them prove particularly accurate in the real world. Many involve the most dubious of statistics, masquerading subjective judgements in meaningless numerical indices.

For example -- "... ranked 133 countries according to how they tackled domestic and world problems and met targets." What domestic and world problems? Whose targets? Whose standards and criteria for the rankjing?
The subjectivity here is sufficient to drive through any particular conclusion you may wish for.

Finally, on what basis does this methodology yield meaningful distinctions on a scale involving one part in a hundred?

Sure. That's always the case, to some extent. The same can be said about ranking countries by their per capita GDP, for example.

I would argue that economic figures have a considerably higher potential to more accurately reflect underlying conditions for a number of reasons:

They are much more quantifiable.

They are often less politicized.

They are produced by central banks and other large financial institutions which are more sincere in their intent, and have better more accurate and more specific sources of data.

Anyway, I think we should talk about Switzerland again, so I can bring back all my bitches about Swiss banks and the Jews

Nah, you'd have to put per capita GDP PPP in relation to suicide rates....

Oh, and talking about sterilizations and lobotomies...

I actually learned in the Holocaust Memorial Museum about the sterilization programs in the USA. For example, under Oklahoma's Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act of 1935, the state could sentence compulsory sterilization as part of their judgment against individuals who had been convicted two or more times of crimes "amounting to felonies involving moral turpitude." Compulsory sterilizations of the mentally disable and mentally ill continued in the USA in significant numbers until the early 1960s, and, overall, some 64,000 sterilizations were performed in the USA.

As for lobotomies: Dr. Walter Freeman, the inventor of the "ice pick lobotomy", alone performed lobotomies on about 3.500 "patients", in some cases without the consent of their families.

But I'm off-topic. So... we were bashing Sweden, I presume?

I suggest we develop an objective international index of the bashability of countries large and small. Too often the big and obvious choices here get an undue share of the bashing, simply due to the laziness and inertia of the bashers themselves. No matter how well organized and motivated a well-intentioned basher may be there just isn't time energy and even information enough to give places like Iceland, Malta, Andorra, etc. their due. Indeed, this thought gives me some comfort as I bash Sweden.