Sweden

Sweden Seeing the Reality of “Diversity”

Featured image This morning I stumbled across a Tweet linking to an Australian “60 Minutes” segment about the unassimilable migrants that are causing the crime rate and other social dysfunctions to soar in Sweden. Turns out the episode is seven years old, but since we don’t see Australia’s “60 Minutes” here (and our CBS “60 Minutes” won’t touch this subject with a ten meter pole), I doubt little has changed in the »

Sweden Goes Nuclear

Featured image Sweden is making a major move into nuclear energy: Uranium mining is set to return to mainland Europe as the region seeks alternatives to Russian nuclear fuel and Sweden pushes to treble its atomic energy capacity, the country’s climate minister has said. Sweden has lots of uranium: Romina Pourmokhtari, who last year became the youngest cabinet minister in Swedish history at the age of 26, said there was a parliamentary »

What’s the Matter With Sweden?

Featured image The following story was related to me by a former Governor of Minnesota, who was of Norwegian descent. A number of years ago, a Norwegian dignitary (the Prime Minister, I think) visited Minnesota. Talking to our governor, the Prime Minister tut-tutted about Minnesota’s crime rate, saying that there was much less crime in Norway. Minnesota’s governor replied, “We don’t have a crime problem with our Norwegians, either.” That anecdote came »

Swedish Tax Cuts In the Works

Featured image Not so long ago, American leftists held up the Scandinavian countries, especially Sweden, as exemplars of left-wing success. But times have changed. First, Sweden took a right turn away from its former, almost-socialist policies. (Although, to be fair, Swedish officials always bristled at the suggestion that their country was socialist, or anything like it.) Next, Sweden opted for freedom during the covid epidemic. As always, freedom was anathema to American »

From Sweden, a Covid Postscript

Featured image Sweden was an outlier during the covid epidemic, in that its government did not order a nationwide shutdown. This policy did not please much of Sweden’s establishment, as represented by The Local, which has been pro-lockdown. So this Local article is notable, in that it recognizes a basic fact about covid mortality that should have been obvious all along: At one point in May 2020, Sweden had the highest Covid-19 »

Sweden Swinging to the Right?

Featured image Sweden held national elections today, and like the United States in 2020, counting the votes has been halted for the night, with about 250,00o votes still outstanding—a significant number in Sweden though probably not enough to alter the outcome, which right now appears to favor four center-right parties over the center-left parties by a razor-close 176-173 margin in Sweden’s parliament, the Riksdag. The trouble with Sweden is that it is »

What Disinformation?

Featured image Sweden has established a new Psychological Defence Agency to combat potential Russian disinformation, the London Times reports. The agency hasn’t actually spotted any Russian disinformation yet, the article says, but it knows where to look: Staff at the agency, which has its headquarters in the western city of Karlstad, are working in a nation increasingly plagued by polarisation and mistrust. Next week, parliamentary elections will take place in a climate »

Total Defense

Featured image The world has cheered Ukraine’s determined resistance to Russian aggression, and even liberals have no problem with Ukraine’s government passing out automatic rifles to citizens. But some argue that Ukraine hasn’t gone far enough, that its government should not have waited for an invasion to arm its populace and encourage resistance to an invader. The example of the Finns’ armed and effective defense against Russia’s 1939 invasion has been cited »

Sweden gives up on the “Swedish experiment”

Featured image As we have noted often on Power Line, Sweden took a different approach to the Wuhan coronavirus than that of its neighbors and, pretty much, the rest of Europe. It eschewed harsh lockdown measures. The hope was that Sweden could avoid an economic meltdown. There was also the hope that Swedes might fairly quickly develop herd immunity to the virus. However, it’s important to note that Sweden did not go »

Assessing Sweden’s response to the coronavirus

Featured image Some are touting Sweden as a success story, relatively speaking, when it comes to dealing with the Wuhan coronavirus. For example, this story in the British press claims that “Sweden got the last laugh on coronavirus.” Unfortunately, Sweden’s high number of per capita fatalities attributed to the virus is no laughing matter. Per capita fatalities number 578 per one million people. That’s comparable to the U.S., the UK, and Italy, »

Reported U.S. coronavirus cases soar, deaths from the virus increase

Featured image The number of daily reported cases of the Wuhan coronavirus in the U.S. increased by three fold in the past month. As we approached mid-June, around 20,000 new cases per day were being reported. Now, the daily number is averaging around 60,000. (All numbers cited in this post are from Worldometer.) Some of the increase is due to more testing. But last week, testing reportedly plateaued. Yet the number of »

The Sweden-Norway “experiment” — comparing pandemics and economies

Featured image A month ago, Sweden decided not to mandate a lockdown in response to the Wuhan coronavirus. Instead, it decided to keep restaurants, cafes, and schools open. It issued guidelines that stated: Everyone in Sweden is urged to stay at home if they are at all sick (even a mild cough or sore throat), practice social distancing, avoid non-essential travel within the country, work from home if possible, follow good hygiene »

The Wuhan coronavirus in four countries

Featured image In this post, I want to discuss pandemic related developments in four countries I have mentioned from time to time on Power Line. They are: Austria, Sweden, Singapore, and South Korea. My post draws no conclusions. I leave it to readers to draw, or not draw, them. All numbers I cite are from Worldometer. Austria has partially reopened its economy. It did so a little more than a week ago. »

Sweden’s coronavirus numbers vs. America’s

Featured image A reader with a PhD in engineering and 35 years experience in advanced data analysis wrote to us regarding Sweden’s experience so far in dealing with the Wuhan coronavirus without locking down the country. He reports: I did a quick look at the data coming out of Sweden with the data obtained from Worldometer, and have plotted the data on a per capita basis (positive cases vs 1M population) for »

What about Sweden?

Featured image I have started to track Sweden’s numbers of Wuhan coronavirus reported cases and reported deaths. Why Sweden? Because it is taking a different approach to dealing with the virus. Instead of locking down, Sweden is keeping its restaurants, cafes, and schools open. Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says he’s relying on the good judgment of Swedes to carry their country through the pandemic. Good judgment or not, Sweden’s approach means »

New Social Science of Note

Featured image I try to keep up with some social science, partly for the amusement value, and partly because social science is sometimes useful for proving the obvious (which is also amusing). But I’ve been falling behind in posting highlights, so it is time to catch up. First up, do you think it is really necessary to prove that good looking people enjoy a lot of advantages in life? Apparently this proposition »

A$AP Rocky found guilty but isn’t sentenced to jail time (which he wouldn’t have served)

Featured image I wrote here about the assault case against rapper A$AP Rocky, who, while in Stockholm, beat up an immigrant to Sweden for the sin of following him around and disobeying instructions by the rapper’s body guard not to do so. Swedish authorities arrested Rocky and two members of his crew and held them in custody pending trial, pursuant to Swedish law. At the urging of Kanye West and his Kardashian »