+2 votes
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in Politics & Government ✌ by

Below is the link, the heading is "Defence pamphlet shows how population can prepare in event of attack and contribute to country’s ‘total defence.' " 

Everyone between the ages of 16 and 70 is advised to be ready to come to Sweden's defense! Sweden was neutral during WWII, and Wikipedia says she has been neutral for more than 200 years, since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815.

The USA is definitely less stable than in prior decades...what is your estimation of the situation in Europe now?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/21/sweden-distributes-be-prepared-for-war-cyber-terror-attack-leaflet-to-every-home?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=275691&subid=9741964&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

2 Answers

+2 votes
by

Maybe Sweden is (rightly) worried that the Russians would like to get their Eastern European empire back, and that warfare might spill over onto Swedish territory.

BTW, I heard that one way the Swedes kept Nazi Germany from thinking of invading was by letting it be known that they would blow up the Swedish iron mines in the event of an invasion. Germany needed the iron trade with Sweden for its war effort.

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Tink it is intriguing that Sweden may have used that threat to blow up Sweden's iron mines upon invasion from Germany. Wikipedia has an informative article on "Sweden in WWII," which mentioned that sale of iron to the Nazis...along with various other ways Sweden helped BOTH sides.

I had just read your immigration comment before coming upon "Sweden in WWII," and I noted that Sweden accepted virtually all of Denmark's 8,000 Jews as refugees, thereby saving them from the Nazi concentration camps.

+2 votes
by

I think neutral  is a wee bit of a stretch when describing Sweden during WWII. When Germany invaded USSR, Sweden allowed them to use it's railways to transport everything from howitzers and tanks, to anti-aircraft weapons and associated ammunition from Norway to Finland.  Several hundred Swedish soldiers volunteered to fight on the German side during the war. Some worked as guards at Treblinka, the concentration camp.  In the not too recent past it also came to light that Sweden also enjoyed the profits of doing business with the Nazis. It is emerged that some of the gold handled by its central bank, the Riksbank, had been looted from Jews by the German Nazis.  Hard to come to terms with that, especially when such magnificent Swede's such as Raoul Wallenberg  who, as a Swedish diplomat granted refugee status to some 20,000 Hungarian Jews by issuing them with Swedish passport.

There are many people who dislike the current American administration, especially former well regarded Marine Corps General turned Secretary of Defense James Mattis.  He pulled no punches when he scolded much of Europe for not living up to it's agreement to maintain it's defense numbers and strength as a NATO member.  Many of these nations as it will be seen have done little to dedicate a percentage of it's GDP as they were supposed to, dedicating it instead to social programs.  By comparison the U.S. spends in excess of 600 Billion on it's defense.

I know.....spending money on social programs makes you appear very inviting, and bright and shiny...a sort of moderate utopia and, you can do that, but it will often come back to bite you in a very severe way and Sweden learned that just a short while ago when an undetected submarine or submarines, entered it's sovereign oceans and came quite near it's shores.  They couldn't detect it because they were not equipped and so.....if there is a lesson here it is two fold.  The first is to bring your nation up to speed.  You had better start modernizing and improving your defense capabilities.  Secondly and just as importantly, as a Veteran, I find many prevailing attitudes in Europe to be smug and elitist.  They thumb their noses at the U.S. calling us warmongers and worse, but if/when that Russian bear ever decides to cross the border of some European country in the future, (and history constantly shows us that man is bent to that end), they are going to be hauling their ass-ets, for the cover of the American umbrella for protection.

So, ultimately.....a little wake up call Europe.  You had better get off your hands.


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Freeranger, I read your comments over twice...a lot of valuable information and the kind of information I was hoping for. Maintaining neutrality involved compromises and some unholy contradictions too. I hope Rooster and Tink see your answer...I did not know that about James Mattis and will prolly look for more information on him now.

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@Virginia : Sweden has sat back on it's hands for so long that they are not even close to being prepared for any kind of confrontation. From within or from elsewhere. Russia being one problem and their inept handling of immigrants the other.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/02/violent-crime-in-sweden-is-soaring-when-will-politicians-act/

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These are sex crime statistics for Sweden. Up about 50% in 10 years.

image

I've seen it claimed that the apparent increase is due to Swedish laws having changed the definition of rape or molestation, but if that were the case, one would expect to see a sudden uptick, not a steady increase.

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Rooster your information pretty much confirms the impression of Freeranger...and Tink, that means all the social spending has not helped the sex crimes...

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I think the real reason for the increase is that not enough Swedish women have started wearing burqas.

The Swedish authorities are covering up, much as the German authorities tried to cover up the mass molestations in Cologne and other German cities that occurred on New Year's a couple of years ago.

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bit of irony regarding the group that put together your chart....surprised you didn't jump on it.  "Brottsförebyggande rådet, usually shortened to its Swedish acronym Brå"

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There is indeed irony that the Brottsförebyggande rådet, or Crime Prevention Council, observed the sex crime rate in Sweden increase 50% in 10 years.

But maybe I'm being unfair. Perhaps without their efforts, sex crimes in Sweden might have increased 100%.

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Tink, are you serious, or is that tongue-in-cheek about Brå? Needs a wink or smiley face? ;)  :D

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Brå is indeed the Swedish acronym for that organization, Virginia, but in Swedish the bra you are thinking of is behå.  ;) :)  Besides, Brå was Freeranger's comment.

But yes, I was kidding about the 100%.  What I was not kidding about is their coverup regarding not telling who is responsible for the increase, as well as stretching the horizontal axis of their graph to make the upward slopes of the curves look less drastic.

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Tink, what I was actually asking...this statement of yours, were you serious or tongue-in-cheek?

"But maybe I'm being unfair. Perhaps without their efforts, sex crimes in Sweden might have increased 100%."

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@ Virginia, yes I realized what you meant after I posted, and went back and added a clarification. :)

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Tink, do you have a sense of why so much of the world seems to be engaging in all that now? Something deeper than "Oh, PC movement"...and I saw it first-hand through the instance I told you about yesterday...why whole nations allow their standards to be pulled down into something dense and dark through immigration?

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Virginia, I think PC in all its forms is used by the Left as a means of attaining or maintaining political power.

I don't think there was a deep, dark conspiracy to invent PC for that purpose, I think they took advantage of it as it developed and then extended it to extremes to suit their purposes, much as, say, the Nazis used and extended existing anti-Semitism to suit their purposes.

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Hmmm...perhaps another example of your observation that in their extremes...radical L meets/merges with radical R around the back door or something like that...:sick:...prolly conditioned upon people's gullibility, and thinking distorted by fear...or maybe mob mentality? I'm not sure on that but it's not wholesome...

Oh; another thought...do you think Angela Merkel was trying to give the illusion that her immigration policy was working okay, so tried to hide the sex crimes? Political popularity agenda, in other words?

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Yes, I think Merkel and other German leaders tried to hide the sex crimes because those crimes did not fit the PC narrative.  But unfortunately for her, the lie she was trying to perpetrate was too colossal to succeed, and it cost her dearly in the subsequent election.

That's an example of why extreme PC types strive for total control over sources of information.

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Received, Tink...one wonders why her advisors did not help her there, remind her the of the news service and thus the unlikelihood of people buying into that kind of lie...

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 this might be the appropriate moment to insert Vonnegut's '61 satirical short story Harrison Bergeron, and what happens to fertilized PC and the people who embrace it.

https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Bergeron_djvu.txt

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Freeranger!!! According to the link, the Vonnegut story dates from in 1961???

In the context of what I have been learning recently about events at Evergreen State College in Washington State, that story is chilling...

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