July Blog

During the last two weeks we have had no cause for complaint about the weather.

It has been glorious - sunny, not excruciatingly hot, and above all, not a drop of rain. But before this latest spell of good weather, it was another story. After a dismal winter and a pathetic spring, we were really looking forward to a turnaround in June. But no, we had to accept that we were experiencing global cooling in our part of the world and June was quickly nicknamed "Juneary" by the locals.

On the positive side we have had something to talk about and I have been able to indulge in my pet peeve - the unreliable weather forecasts. It infuriates me that they have such a low level of accuracy.

One of my retirement projects is going to be the monitoring of the weather forecasts to de-termine how dependable they are. Going by my casual observations in Vancouver I have concluded that the forecasts are wrong about half of the time. This makes me wonder if taxpayers could not save a lot of money by Environment Canada getting rid of some of its 6 000 employees and using a dice for predictions instead.

I know that it is clearly much harder to predict weather patterns along the coast, but I find it annoying that the weather reporters never admit their mistakes. Instead they surf over their short-comings with their Hawaiian shirts and evasive glib.

I don't know if the situation is any better in Sweden, where the last winter was the warmest ever, or at least since 1756 when temperatures started being recorded. But it is refreshing to see that the weather service, SMHI, at least apologizes for their misses in the Annual Report. Further-more SMHI has just installed a supercomputer that has six times the power of its previous one. During each 24-hour period, four meteorological computations will project the land weather and two computations will project weather at sea. I have never before seen as detailed weather maps. There are even forecasts that can calculate how much wind power a specific wind mill can be expected to produce during the next few days.

Back in Vancouver, the bad weather and the lousy forecasts have filled a void in dinner conversations what with real estate prices stalling and putting a damper on Vancouver's No 1 conversation topic!

June Blog

The Olympic Games in Stockholm, in 1912, were the first to fulfill Baron Pierre de Coubertin's original idea. For the first time since the modern Games had started in 1896, all continents were represented at the games with the 2 504 athletes competing in the same stadium.

The ultimate dream of the founder of the Olympics was that it would not be “the winning, it's the taking part and competing well that counts". Only amateurs were to be allowed and there was not to be any political involvement.

I myself feel it is important to make a distinction between the competition and the inauguration. While the competitions should be all about sportsmanship and nothing else, the inauguration of an Olympic Game is in essence all about politics. It is a spectacle to showcase the host country at its best. A boycott of the inauguration is now being widely discussed as one way of protesting China's human rights abuses. A Dagens Nyheter sports columnist suggests that the athletes should even be spared from parading in this charade and it should instead be the Swedish IOC board members Gunilla Lindberg, Pernilla Wiberg and Arne Ljungqvist walking around with the Swedish flag by themselves. This will surely not happen but I promise this discussion will come up again before the Russian Winter Olympics in 2014.

I think the Dalai Lama has the right idea. He does not want to stop the games, but to allow legitimate protests. The United States and some 60 other countries boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980 to protest the invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviets and their allies did the same with the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. The only ones who suffered were the athletes.

The International Olympic Committee has been very upset about the protests along the Torch Relay this year. It should, however, be noted that the Torch Relay was not part of the original Coubertin idea, but a much later clever public relation gimmick by the Nazis for the Berlin Olympics in 1936. It is essentially a political spectacle just like the inauguration and should as such be open for protests.

If there is something that the IOC should be upset about, it has to be the fact that China has not honored its human rights commitments. Just like the Nazis never fulfilled their promise to allow German Jews to compete in their games, something that the IOC also chose to ignore. On the whole the International Olympic Committee does not have much of a track record when it comes to ideals (as detailed in Sverker Lindström's Det stora sveket. Den olympiska rörelsen i diktaturens tjänst.) and the Olympics have essentially become all about money. Today many of the athletes are amateurs just by name while sportsmanship continues to take a beating as ever more sophisticated performance enhancement substances evolve.

Baron Pierre de Coubertin is probably turning in his grave in Geneva, while his heart, that was buried separately in a monument near the ruins of ancient Olympia, is breaking to pieces.

Swedish Press June 2008 Issue

The Olympic Games in Stockholm, in 1912, were the first to fulfill Baron Pierre de Coubertin's original idea. For the first time since the modern Games had started in 1896, all continents were represented at the games with the 2 504 athletes competing in the same stadium.

The ultimate dream of the founder of the Olympics was that it would not be “the winning, it's the taking part and competing well that counts". Only amateurs were to be allowed and there was not to be any political involvement.

I myself feel it is important to make a distinction between the competition and the inauguration. While the competitions should be all about sportsmanship and nothing else, the inauguration of an Olym- pic Game is in essence all about politics. It is a spectacle to showcase the host country at its best. A boycott of the inauguration is now being widely discussed as one way of protesting China's human rights abuses. A Dagens Nyheter sports columnist suggests that the athletes should even be spared from parading in this charade and it should instead be the Swedish IOC board members Gunilla Lindberg, Pernilla Wiberg and Arne Ljungqvist walking around with the Swedish flag by themselves. This will surely not happen but I promise this discussion will come up again before the Russian Winter Olympics in 2014.

I think the Dalai Lama has the right idea. He does not want to stop the games, but to allow legitimate protests. The United States and some 60 other countries boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980 to protest the invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviets and their allies did the same with the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. The only ones who suffered were the athletes.

The International Olympic Committee has been very upset about the protests along the Torch Relay this year. It should, however, be noted that the Torch Relay was not part of the original Coubertin idea, but a much later clever public relation gimmick by the Nazis for the Berlin Olympics in 1936. It is essentially a political spectacle just like the inauguration and should as such be open for protests.

If there is something that the IOC should be upset about, it has to be the fact that China has not honored its human rights commitments. Just like the Nazis never fulfilled their promise to allow German Jews to compete in their games, something that the IOC also chose to ignore. On the whole the International Olympic Committee does not have much of a track record when it comes to ideals (as detailed in Sverker Lindström's Det stora sveket. Den olympiska rörelsen i diktaturens tjänst.) and the Olympics have essentially become all about money. Today many of the athletes are amateurs just by name while sportsmanship continues to take a beating as ever more sophisticated performance enhancement substances evolve.

Baron Pierre de Coubertin is probably turning in his grave in Geneva, while his heart, that was buried separately in a monument near the ruins of ancient Olympia, is breaking to pieces.

Swedish Press May 2008 Issue

In the May'08 issue of Swedish Press you can read Canadian Bob Cox’s thoughtful and fun LastWord about his Swedish Culture Shock.

When the Vikings wanted to tell us something, they had to do it in stone. In this issue we also tell you about these messages in the form of runes and about a runestone safari in Sweden. True fans will go to great lengths to check out runes and there are many discoveries to be made.

In the hills of Colombia in South America there are many stone monuments that date back to centuries before the Spanish conquest of the New World. A few of them look very much like the prehistoric representatives of the God Thor that have been found in Iceland. One of the stone monuments is especially interesting because its headdress features what appears to be runic inscriptions. Skeptics have suggested that the runes could have been carved by modern Scandinavian tourists, but it is unlikely as they are evident on the photographs of the monument from as early as 1863. Similar Viking graffiti has been found on the stone lions in Venice and here it has been verified as authentic carvings by Vikings.

Just like it took many centuries to prove without any doubt that the Vikings reached the American continent, it could take a long time to produce the ultimate proof that the Vikings actually also reached Mexico and Columbia in South America, a thesis launched by several scholars.

According to the Sagas, Ari Marson and his eleven ships never reached Greenland because they were blown off course, but they reached a land where they were "much respected" by the inhabitants.

The Swedish-born Mexican researcher, Gustavo Nelin feels that the description of the "god" Quetzalcoatl, who is said to have appeared around the year 1000, as a middle-aged white man, with long red hair and a grizzled beard, sounds very much like what Ari Marson must have looked like.

Add to that that he is sometimes depicted wearing a sort of medieval clothing favored by the Norse, that he taught the inhabitants to use metal and argued against human sacrifice and it sounds just like a Chris-tianized Norseman. The word Quetzalcoatl means "flying serpent" and that is just what the Vikings called their ships.

Some of the First Nations people in the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Colum-bia are blue-eyed and fair-haired as are the Mandan Indians in Minnesota. Both people have legends similar to the Columbians, of Viking-like white men with beards arriving on their shores and settling down.

Thor Heyerdahl in the book No Boun-daries claims that the Vinlanders lived pri-mitively and left few traces of their existence behind them. Nevertheless Heyerdahl was a true believer of a wider presence of Vikings in North America and he even came to the defence of the much questioned Vinland Map, and such “Norse” artifacts as the Kensington runestone and the mysterious stone tower in Newport R.I..

I have not taken a stand on this issue. But I continue to find the subject truly fascinating and am constantly on the search for more evidence.

Have a nice May!

Anders

April issue of Swedish Press

One of the inspiring things about this job are the interviews. Some are lots of fun to do, others are more challenging. This month’s interview in Swedish Press was something I had been looking forward to for a while because Jan Guillou is such an iconic figure in Sweden. Controversial as he is, there are few Swedes who do not pay attention to what he has to say. And he had more to say then we had space for.

One of the things I asked Jan Guillou about was the difficulty he had had getting a U.S. visa. He told me about the last time he was on US soil.

“My wife and I were going for Christmas to Tahiti. Only the Air France plane that left from Paris had to go down in Los Angeles for fuel and we thought that was no problem, but not any longer, now everybody had to go through passport control. And I was arrested there.”

Guillou was taken into a troubleshooting room where there were already about 30 “Arab-looking” men waiting for their turn. He was desperate to get back on the plane to his wife, so he did something he “would feel ashamed about later”.

“I walked up to these guys and I said this must be a mistake because as you can see I am a white man. Those were not of course the words I used. Instead of white man, I said Scandinavian citizen. They started to deal with me before the others. They checked the computers again and said I had to be expelled. It was all very polite and we came to the conclusion that the best thing was to expel me on the Air France plane. Because the alternative would be to empty a whole 747 and identify my luggage.”

On his way home, Guillou was back in the same room, and this time it was serious. “I said last time we found a brilliant solution and let’s do the same thing but they said it was different this time as we were going to cross over US territory. Eventually we worked out the same solution.”

When the movie Evil, based on his book, was selected among the five finalists for the Academy Awards in Hollywood, it took Guillou two and a half weeks to get a visa, but by then the director of the film had given Guillou’s invitation to his own wife.

Jan Guillou believes that his visa troubles are the fault of the Swedish secret police who “have forwarded information that does not have to be true, but it is enough with a suspicion”. His espionage conviction from 1973 was taken off the Swedish criminal register after 25 years. Then there is his position on 9-11. Guillou walked out from the Göteborg Book Fair in 2002 in the midst of the three minutes of silence that had been proclaimed throughout Europe to honour the victims of the attacks. Defending his protest in an article in Aftonbladet, Guillou wrote "the U.S. is the great mass murderer of our time. Only the wars against Vietnam and its nearby countries claimed four million lives. Without any minute of silence in Sweden".

He also rejected the notion that the attacks were "an attack on us all" countering that the attacks were only "an attack on U.S. imperialism."The last question that I always end all my interviews with is “What have I forgotten to ask?” This is because everybody has a story they want to tell and sometimes they have not had the chance to do that in the course of the questions we put to them. This is how Jan Guillou answered my last question:

“I never never remember any interview. I have a delete button in my head. When I hang up this telephone I will have forgotten this conversation. This is no disrespect for my fellow journalists. Not at all. On the contrary my principle is that I have never been asked any of these questions before, it is being asked for the first time and I can put myself in a condition that I really believe this. That comes from being interviewed all the time.”

I found this refreshing and, indeed, I did feel that this person, who is regarded as a bit arrogant and as having a huge superiority complex, showed a great deal of respect throughout the long interview that we unfortunately had to cut down quite considerably. Among other bits, we had to cut down some of Jan Guillou’s controversial political views, like his criticism of Israel and the war on terrorism.

So do read the interview in the April issue of Swedish Press!

Swedish Press March 2008

I just found out that the actress and author Eva Dahlbeck has passed away in February. She had been on my list of future interviews ever since I took over Swedish Press. I was sure her fascinating life would make for a good story, and furthermore I had a personal interest in her as she was my father's cousin. It is sad that the interview never materialized.

Eva Dahlbeck (born 1920 in Saltsjö-Duvnäs on the outskirts of Stock-holm) was a smart blond, and one of Sweden's most popular and successful actresses in the 40s and 50s. Ingmar Bergman described her as his "battleship of femininity" and cast her in many strong female roles where he could also utilize her playful streak. She often co-starred with Gunnar Björnstrand like in Waiting Women (1952) where their scenes are played out largely in a lift stuck between floors, during which time they achieve new insight into their marital difficulties. Their playful teamwork has been compared to that of Katherine Hepburn and Gary Grant.

In its eulogy Washington Post writes: "Ms. Dahlbeck might be best remembered for ‘Smiles of a Summer Night’ (1955 - and you can see a scene on YouTube), which has endeared itself to generations of filmgoers for its delicate comic touches and delirious romanticism. The film helped launch Bergman's international reputation. Ms. Dahlbeck played a central role as a stage actress of advancing years who manipulates her two pompous lovers, a lawyer (Gunnar Björnstrand) and a military officer (Jarl Kulle)."

In 1962 Eva Dahlbeck starred as William Holden’s wife in the espionage thriller The Counterfeit Traitor. She got the Eugene O'Neill Award for her theatre work and shared a Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival with Ingrid Thulin, Bibi An-dersson and Barbro Hiort af Ornäs for So Close to Life (1958), a bleak Bergman drama.

Eva Dahlbeck retired from acting in the 1970s to concentrate on writing. She wrote poetry, plays and more than a dozen novels. She admitted that one of the characters in a novel was based on Ingmar Bergman, who "has an erotic relationship with everything around him - with nature, people, things, indeed with everything that happens. It may appear as if he is involved in some universal act of love that is sometimes fruitful and sometimes destructive.”

She also wrote the gruesome screenplay to Arne Mattsson's film The Yngsjö Murder (1966), based on a novel about incest and murder.

Eva Dahlbeck was married to the dashing pilot and commander Sven Lampell who organized the Red Cross aid flights to Biafra during the war in Nigeria. She moved with him to Geneva when he was appointed a Red Cross Chief Delegate.

On one of my latest visits to Stockholm I managed to get hold of the Lampells’ phone number and called them in Hässelby Villastad. Sven Lampell explained that Eva was suffering from Alzheimer's and an interview was out of the question. Eva did come to the phone and she sounded fine, but her last words "Anders, it's too late" still ring in my ears.

In this issue we bring you an interview with Björn Bayley who was one of the first people we interviewed (in November 1986). He now joins the small and exclusive club consisting of Max von Sydow, Ann-Sofie von Otter and Olle Wästberg who have been interviewed twice in Swedish Press.

February Issue

I have never called in to a talk show on radio but the other day as I was listening to the car radio on my way to a meeting I was quite tempted to get in on a discussion on CBC on whether children would become more productive if they got to start school an hour later. No, I don’t have an opinion on this particular issue but something else related to productivity at school. And I never called in to add my two-cents worth so I will use this forum for my rant instead.

When talking about making kids more productive at school, a very important element to consider, in my opinion, has got to be nutrition. And a sure way to ensure that kids have enough energy to get them through school is to provide a nutritious meal at school. Both the United States and Sweden have national lunch programs in public schools to ensure that students get a proper meal that gives them enough energy to tackle their afternoon classes.

In Canada some private and certain public schools do provide cooked lunches, and some even have breakfast programs, but at the majority of schools children bring their lunches from home. By all accounts a typical lunch consists of a sandwich, a sweet drink, (very often carbonated), fruit and a treat. Or in some cases students are given money to buy a lunch.

Many parents are really creative about the lunches to ensure that their kids don’t chuck everything but the treat, but it is not so easy to come up with something that is nutritious, yummy and keeps fresh. I can quite understand why so many egg salad sandwiches, that have been sitting unrefrigerated, end up in the garbage bin.

Studies have shown that a kid, or indeed an adult, is more alert and efficient if he or she has had a real lunch. It is not rocket science. An investment in nutritious lunches gives a good return. So why doesn’t schools and employers provide them?

Many Canadian friends are astonished when I tell them about the balanced lunches, that every kids got at school when I was growing up in Sweden. The school lunches to be served the following week were posted in the local papers so that parents could plan dinners at home accordingly.

Similarly when I started working, there was a beautiful cafeteria where a free lunch was served every day (not to speak of an indoor pool, sauna, billiard room and more). Workplaces that did not have their own facilities provided lunch coupons for their employees to have a proper lunch at a nearby restaurant.

Sadly things have also changed in Sweden. Some municipalities have introduced fees for school lunches and there are widespread complaints about the poor quality of the food in some areas. Subsidized lunches at work are also no longer the rule because of changes in tax regulations.

But that does not change my belief in a good meal for all in the middle of the day.

January Issue

The War Against the Bath Tub. Never heard of it? Then you may also be unaware of the War Against the Potato and the War Against the Street, writes Kristian Karlsson in the Swedish magazine NEO.


The journalist notes the vast amount of resources allocated to the war against terrorism, despite the fact that to date terrorism has killed an average of only 200 people each year, while between 300 and 400 Americans die each year in their bath tubs, 640 fatally choke on food and 6 000 are run over when they try to cross the street.


Kristian Karlsson does not want to down-play the threat of terrorism, but questions the measures used in, and the cost of, the war against it. Clearly tongue-in cheek, he argues that wars against the bathtub, the potato and the street would be far more cost-effective, while the war on terrorism is a bit of an overkill.


But historically this has been the norm and there are many examples of “overkill” in the face of a threat, whether real or perceived.


During the Cold War people in Sweden were put in alert mode by measures like the brochure entitled If The War Comes that made the monthly test of the air-raid alarm, sound really sinister. Almost 70 000 air-raid shelters were built all over Sweden, 7 000 of them in Stockholm, in preparation for a potential nuclear attack from the “east”. Most of the shelters were incorporated in residential buildings, but there is also a huge one at Slussen, and a gigantic one in Vita Bergen, that was to serve as the command centre for the civilian defence in case of war.


Plans detailing the location of the closest air-raid shelter as well as the exact location in the country that citizens were to be evacuated to, were posted at the entrance of each residential building by the civil defence authority.


The threat of war was taken more seriously by some than by others. My grandfather, who was a retired military man, decided that it was a good idea to have a residence in the small village up north, where the residents in his area were to be evacuated, all ready for himself and his wife. Since a son of his was likely to be conscripted, my grandfather also included a daughter-in-law and her young children in his plans. He proceeded to put in a classified ad in Östersunds Tidning that read "Commander Neumüller with two wives and three children would like to rent three rooms in case of evacuation ...". The ad was an instant success in the satirical paper Grönköpings Veckoblad that noted the two wives. My grandfather never got the funny part.


Anyway, after my coffee-loving grandfather’s death we also found more than a hundred bottles filled with coffee beans stored away in his cellar. Overkill?


As for all those shelters, most of them are today used for parking and storage. No new shelters have been built since the early 1990s, and should the strategic situation change, it is believed that there would be a time period of up to ten years to construct enough additional shelters to protect the bigger population of today.

December Issue

Hard to believe it but, yes, Christmas is soon upon us and it is once again time for candles, decorations, parties, trees, wide-eyed children, gifts galore, great food and...lutfisk.

What is lutfisk, some of you may ask. Many people who know what it is, wonder how this poor man’s fare from the olden days has managed to survive and get a headlining role at the Christmas table.

Lutfisk - literally lye fish - has its origins in the period of fasting in pre-reformation times. It is cod that is dried and then boiled until it tastes of hardly anything at all. If it wasn’t for a faint smell of fish and a subtle fish flavour, it could pass off as anything at all.

Some people love lutfisk. I eat it when I have to and I actually enjoy the accompanying white sauce, the mustard sauce, the green peas and whatever else this culinary tradition dictates, but I find it hard to understand that the bland dish can be defended from a culinary point of view. or as author John Anderson put it in a Swedish Press interview: “Scandinavian recipes are handed down from mother to daughter, through the generations, for no apparent reason at all.”

This is how Roger Welsch, a professor of English, described his lutfisk encounters in a Norwegian-American home (in the World & I, December 1987):

“I had begun to realize that for the single most important meal of the year for this family, they were about to eat something they not only didn’t like, but actually found disgusting. And they offered invitations to share this horrible food only to those who were born or explicitly accepted into the family circle.”

As Welsch is also an anthropologist, he could not but help reason that “the lutfisk had nothing to do with nutrition, taste, convenience, or expense; the lutfisk meal was a recharging of cultural batteries, a single moment in the year when the family remembered its past, its humble past.

Whether lutfisk tasted good or not, whatever the inconvenience of obtaining, preparing, and eating the stuff, it had an almost religious importance far exceeding all other considerations.

Even more important than the lutfisk itself was the ritual that surrounded it. That is, it was not simply that it was lutfisk every year, it was lutfisk every year. Whatever other changes there were in the family be-tween Christmases - death, birth, marriage, divorce, prosperity, economic collapse, or alienation - there was one thing that could be counted on - lutfisk, a food that stood as so distinctive a landmark in the annual regimen that it could never be mistaken for any other meal of the year, could never be eaten casually.”

July Issue

Just back from a quick visit to Sweden, I am filled with many spontaneous observations as well as one small insight.

First for my observations. The Stockholm summer streets are teeming with pretty girls and all of them are not blond. Beautiful girls in Sweden now come in all colours and ethnic backgrounds.

For the first time in many years, I did not see any anti-immigrant graffiti.

Yes I did see some overweight people but obesity is still not as commonplace in Sweden as it is in North America.

Wherever you go you see signs of wealth and well-being. You see it in the form of solid investments in infrastructure. Whether it is new housing or highway tunnels, everything is done with quality. You never see tilted signs or broken fences like you do here. What you do see, however, is more garbage in the streets so Stockholm is slowly losing its reputation as a clean city.

You also get a feeling of how well Swedes are doing when you visit their homes. Everybody seemed to be renovating, some for what seemed to be the second or the third time. And their kitchens and bathrooms are much snazzier than what we are getting when we order the more expensive "European" alternatives.

What fascinated me most about all the renovations was that they were being carried out primarily by builders, plumbers, electricians and handymen from Poland. Everybody seemed to have an inside track to Poles who charge substantially less than Swedes, even those charging "under the table". The black and grey markets are booming according to a recent report from economists at the Riksbanken central bank. As much as 67% of cash transactions can no longer be accounted for and that means that these illegal or semi-legal sectors have increased their share of Sweden's Gross National Product from 3.8 to 6.5 percent.

There have been small pockets of Poles working in Sweden during the last twenty years or so, but now they seem to have become the preferred builders everywhere. The Poles work part of the year in Sweden and then go back for lengthy vacations with their families in Poland. And ironically there they renovate their houses with the help of the even less expensive Rumanians, who have now also started making their way to Sweden.

Sweden is not the only country where Polish handymen have made a name for themselves. In France dashing young Polish plumbers almost have a cult status and this has given a boost to French tourism in Poland.

This is not quite how it is in Sweden. Here you hear people compare "their Poles" at dinners (like serfs were compared in another century?) Everybody has a Pole story, like the couple who moved into an apartment that had been renovated by a team of Poles, only to find out that the apartment had also served as housing for a big group of Poles whose parties had become famous throughout the building.

Recently the Swedish labor movement managed to stop a construction company from employing Poles for a large housing project in Vaxholm. Public opinion was on the side of the Poles who would have done the same job for SEK 39.90 an hour compared to the union rate of SEK 137.

Have a nice July

Anders

April Issue

There is a fun new Swedish book out that takes a nostalgic look at our recent past.

Endangered Species (Utrotningshotat, Bokförlaget Max Ström) lists 50 items like typewriters, "thick" televisions and ashtrays that are disappearing. Johan Tell also includes fax machines, sugar bowls, hotel keys, overhead projectors, tape recorders and telephone booths in his book. With a perhaps more Swedish perspective he also includes wall-to-wall carpeting, top sheets, cinemas, venetian blinds, land-based phones, garbage chutes, telephone books and air travel tickets on the endangered list. The book is bound with a cover in velour, another thing that is on the way out.

It is fun to see things you loved in their modernity but that have not been on the radar screen recently. The book also gives a perspective on the things we now surround ourselves with and regard as absolutely essential. Many of these contraptions "that you could not live without" will eventually disappear.

I can still remember the old-fashioned records and what a difference "singles" and other 45 rpm records made, before the high fidelity LP records (33 rpm) made them obsolete. Then came the joy of recording your favorites from the radio with a cassette deck until the advent of the CD. At last we were going to get music of, until then, unheard of quality that would remain the world standard in eternity!

What did we know - then came MP3 and then the iPod. What next?

It's the same thing with videos, cameras and computers. The moment you purchase them they are already becoming dated if not obsolete. Several Swedish museums are now collecting some of these “modern” things to be able to give our history back to us one day.

From a Swedish Press horizon I remember what a difference just the fax machine made. You no longer had to rely on the snail mail when you were in the middle of a deadline. Now we only get nuisance faxes and wonder if we should get rid of the fax machine and just use email.

When we took over the Swedish Press it had what was thought of as a state-of-the-art IBM typesetter which really was a glorified typewriter with a one line memory so that it could create straight margins. We also used a wonderful old machine that, with an input of photographic solutions and the turning of discs with different fonts, created the headlines in different sizes. The texts, the headlines and the photographs and illustrations were then waxed by a machine and attached to a layout sheet that was brought to the printer. Today everything is done on computers and emailed to the printer that could be located anywhere on the continent.

The first scanner we bought cost $3 500. Today you can get a much more advanced one for less than $100.

In the 1970's after I had written a book on the world's most expensive antiques (Gårdagens Rariteter, Rabén & Sjögren) I turned it around and wrote a book on Future Antiques (Morgondagens Antikviteter, Rabén & Sjögren) that looked at things that would eventually become antiques. Many Swedish papers reviewed my book, but the funniest comment came from the satirical paper Grönköpings Veckoblad. In a fake news story their eternal criminal Hildor Peterzohn was taken to court for advertising "future antiques" and then only delivering empty milk cartoons and worthless packaging material to the high-paying respondents. In his defence, Mr. Peterzohn referred to my book and the judge decided to stay the charges for fifty years so that one could indeed see if Peterzohn's claims were correct.

Today you do have to pay a fortune for an original tetra pak milk cartoon!

Have a really nice April
and Happy Easter! Anders

Sometimes an item in the Swedish Press leads to a lot of letters and phone calls from readers. One such item was the interview with Sweden's foremost living inventor Håkan Lans (April 2005). And the issues that were brought up did not have anything to do with Lans’s inventions, but with his legal battles in the United States. There was evidently a set up to rob this Swede of one of his major inventions, and despite a brave fight put up by Håkan Lans and his supporters in Sweden, it appears that the perpetrators are getting away with it.

Håkan Lans is the inventor of both the computer mouse and the computer color graphics as well as the GP&C position system that, in the future, will make air, maritime and all other methods of travel securer, because unlike GPS, it does not only show you your position, it also shows you the position of everybody else in your vicinity, hence making radar redundant.

Håkan Lans’s troubles started when he was contacted by some US lawyers offering to help protect his GP&C system from any infringement. Lans was not interested but the persistent lawyers then offered to help him with his Colour Graphic system, against 33 percent of the takings. In short order they collected $20 million from Japanese companies that were using Lans’s invention without paying a license.

In 1997 the lawyers proceeded to sue eleven US computer companies for the same thing, but they sued in Håkan Lans's company name rather than in his own name. The cases were subsequently thrown out on this technicality and Lans was ordered to not only pay the court costs of the infringing companies, but also the fees of his own incompetent attorneys - an estimated sum of SEK 100 million!

"The sum total of the attorney fees has so far not been specified, but it was big and widely exceeded Lans's pecuniary paying ability. In a settlement proposal for the payment issue - from the defendants - the patent for the position indication system was therefore, although implicitly, suggested as payment! Lans was urged by his own lawyer to accept this proposal," writes a Swedish legal expert in an essay where he discusses three hypotheses about the judgement.

"The first one is that the judgement was correct and in due order - that justice has been done. The second is that the judgement was a result of a lack of attorney skill, a shortfall in the process. The third hypothesis is that the judgement was a planned miscarriage of justice. The conclusion of the reasoning is that the miscarriage of justice hypothesis is much more likely than the other ones."

All of the infringing computer companies have now withdrawn their claims for compensation, except Dell and Gateway, but Lans's own US lawyers are still demanding between SEK 10 to 20 million. He has sued them, but in October the Federal Court rejected his appeal of the court case that went so terribly wrong (just a week after the hearing rather than the three months that is the norm in similar cases, almost like it was a foregone conclusion). Interestingly, none of the North American media took up the case or even seemed to mind.

Every computer has Håkan Lans's patented colour graphic system, but now manufacturers will get away without paying a license. Even worse, the legal process has delayed the worldwide implementation of the GP&C system (to the delight of the radar industry) that could prevent collisions resulting in a loss of life, and allow for a much safer and denser air traffic.

February issue

Sweden had nothing close to a white Christmas, and the Baltic icebreakers were hanging around idle. Then came the devastating January storms that had already played havoc in the rest of Europe where people now are bracing themselves for another summer heat wave like the one that killed thousands in Britain and France a couple of summers ago.

The Nordic countries, in the meantime, are worrying about a new ice age.

The North American west coast was hit by a bad mixture of cold and wind that took out 3 000 trees in Vancouver's Stanley Park, and punctured the gigantic inflated roof of the B.C. Place Stadium, to the measured glee of eastern Canada that was enjoying balmy golf weather While the rising temperatures on the West Coast have been welcomed by the burgeoning wine industry in Oregon, Washington State and British Columbia, in California, a rise of another 4ûC in temperature will, according to some experts, mean the end of wine production in Napa Valley.

Even the continent of Africa experienced unheard of rain and flash floods that wiped out bridges and roads, while, in an ironic twist, not adding anything to the diminishing water flow in the Niger or the Nile or the ever-lowering water table.

The only good thing to come out of this havoc is that Òclimate changeÓ has now become front page news. There are, however, still many politicians and certain media that seem to be in denial and any connection to global warming seems to be taboo in many circles. You have to wonder why. As early as in 2005 various academies of science in 11 countries, including the U.S., in a joint statement declared that "the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action".

Just like the tobacco companies "manufactured uncertainty" for years about the link between smoking and cancer, the oil lobby is successfully holding off any regulations by maintaining that global warming is unproven. Witness President BushÕs statement that "restrictions on greenhouse gases will destroy the U.S. economy".

With whacky weather now on our door-step, one can only hope that statements like these are seen for what they are and that this year brings a more sober look at what we are doing to our planet.

Have a nice February!

Anders


PS. Swedish Press has helped start a campaign for a Canadian stamp honouring Raoul Wallenberg at a recent Raoul Wallenberg Day in Vancouver. The Swedish diplomat saved as many as 100,000 people condemned to certain death by the Nazis during World War II. Raoul Wallenberg disappeared on January 17, 1945, in Hungary and was subsequently imprisoned in the Soviet Union. An honorary citizen of Canada, USA and Israel, he would have celebrated his 95th birthday this year. Sweden, Israel, USA and many other countries already have stamps in his honour, so now it is CanadaÕs turn. You too can help by writing to the Stamp Advisory Committee of Canada Post Corporation, 2701 Riverside Drive, Suite NO420, Ottawa ON K1A 0B1 asking for a Wallenberg stamp!

November issue

Was it Steinbeck or was it Hemingway? Or was it actually neither of the two? Won-dering what I am talking about? Read on for a mini scoop. Every year around Lucia, Swedish newspapers tell the story of how the Swedish Lucia once managed to scare a Nobel Laureate in Literature out of his wits. And each year there is speculation on which literary giant it was and whether the story is at all true. All Nobel Prize winners stay at Stock-holm?s Grand Hotel (that you can read about on page 30). As the prize ceremony takes place on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel?s death, the winners also get to experience the Lucia celebration that takes place on December 13. Many of them have no idea what Lucia is all about so they are taken by surprise when they are woken up by young voices singing Santa Lucia and white-clad maidens serving them coffee and buns. The memory of Lucia with candles in her hair is probably one of the most exotic memories they bring home with them from Sweden. But for one Nobel Laureate in 1930, the Lucia experience, exotic as it may have been, was less than pleasant. The Ameri-can author Sinclair Lewis was a heavy drinker and he had reportedly also suffered from bouts of delirium. Nobody knows exactly what went through his mind when he was woken up on a dark morning by a white-clad blonde with candles in her hair and the sounds of a melancholic song about driving out the darkness in the world with light (it was lucky he did not understand the words). What we do know is that Lewis panicked big time. He screamed out loud and hid his head under the blankets as Lucia and her attendants made a quick retreat. It was really embarrassing, said my mother. She was the Lucia. Fluent in English, German and French, she was at that time the secretary to Mr Segerstr娬e, the legendary head of Grand Hotel. As my mother was also pretty, she was the natural choice for Grand Hotel?s Lucia for several years in a row. I still have autographed copies of books by Pearl S Buck, Eugene O?Neill and John Gals-worthy that she received from the authors. But there is nothing in that collection from Sinclair Lewis. Whenever the story about the author who was scared by the Lucia is told in Swedish papers it is connected to either Ernest Hem-ingway (1954) or John Steinbeck (1962). But now you know that it took place already in 1930.

October issue

During my latest weekly phone call to my daughter in Sweden, she casually mentioned that she was going to take a couple of days off work to go to Lisbon with some friends for an extended weekend. Why? “Well I have never been there,” she said. A few months ago the same group of girls took off for Barcelona. It is something that strikes me every time I go to Sweden - the young people there are really well-travelled.

I am amazed at the number of Swedish kids we bumped into in, for example, Cochin, India, that we finally made it to just a couple of years. Australian kids also seemed to be everywhere we went.

On the other hand you don't see that many North American young people around. Kids here don't seem to travel that much. One of the reasons for this is the perhaps the longer distance and higher cost of going to another country. In Europe there is Ryanair, the no-frills airline, that at times offers flights from what it calls Stockholm (Skavsta, 100 kilometers away) to London Stanstead for as little as $20. In North America discount airlines don't seem to fare very well.

Of course it is not necessary for North American kids to travel to another country. There is so much to explore on this vast continent. But I wonder how many young people do that. I once ran into a young architect here in Vancouver who had never been to Seattle, a three-hour car trip away.When I came of age in Sweden, travel was relatively expensive and crossing the Atlantic was a big deal, but all young people tried to make it to Copenhagen that gave you a glimpse of the continent.

From an educational point of view there are great benefits to visiting different countries. I was reading about a recent survey in which 11 percent of young citizens of the U.S. were unable to point to their own country on a map. The location of the Pacific Ocean was a mystery to 29 percent, Japan to 58 percent, France to 65 percent and the United Kingdom to 69 percent.

"Geographic illiteracy impacts our well-being, our relationships with other nations and the environment, and isolates us from the world," says National Geographic President John Fahey.

I think one of the problems for American kids is that the world is not considered a safe place. Ironically though, the few North American kids you see in Europe, often happen to be girls. Could that be because the boys have other priorities like getting their first set of wheels? Or is this another case of girls getting ahead of boys?

-And how long have you lived in this country? I was asked by a Swede whom I had just met at a party in Stockholm a few years back. I was quite taken aback by the question, asking myself if it was my German-sounding surname or that I had acquired somewhat of an accent in my Swedish that prompted such a question. But the guy was just making conversation and considering that almost 15 percent of the population of Sweden has an immigrant background, there was a fair chance that I could also have my origins in another country.

With such a large immigrant population, it is no surprise that related issues are such a hot topic in Swedish media. Immigration is of course not a new phenomenon in Sweden. Through the centuries groups of immigrants from different parts of Europe have made their home in Sweden. What is new is the sheer volume of the influx of recent years as well as the very varied backgrounds of the recent immigrants, many of them coming from distant lands that most Swedes had not even heard of not too long ago.

At the time my great great grandfather came to Stockholm from Austria to start a brewery, immigrants were quickly assimilated. Today integration has become a real nemeses for Sweden, something that is very descriptively laid out in the (for Swedish Press rather expensive) in-depth article we bring you this month, that better than anything else we have seen describes the situation right now. It is well worth reading (and you find it at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/magazine/05muslims.html?ex=1296795600&en=722dbb00a718b0f9&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss)!

There is one thing that I disagree with in Christopher Caldwell’s Islam on the Outskirts of the Welfare State and that is his statement that “no one expects the Social Democrats to be chased from power any time soon.” This could well happen on September 17 and you can read about the run-up to the nail-biter election on page 9.

Even though I have lived away from Sweden for 24 years now, I will of course never regard myself as anything other than a full-blown Swede. It is a different matter here where, after all these years, I still feel like an immigrant, however well assimilated I am. I think I am like many Swedes I have encountered in North America who are well integrated in the society here but who still tightly hold on to their ancestry. I have even met many descendants of the first major emigration wave to North Ame-rica a hundred years ago - when Sweden lost a full fifth of its population - who are still fiercely proud Swedes even though they do not speak a word of the language and have never set foot in the country.

Have a nice September
Anders


You had also asked for background information, but I am not sure how one should do it? Should I rewrite my CV or what do you think?:

CV for Anders Johan Fredrik Neumuller

Born: April 8, 1946 in (Solna) Stockholm, Sweden

Parents: Agneta (née Countess Horn af Åminne) and Architect SAR Hans Fredrik Neumüller

High School: Graduate of Norra Real, Stockholm 1967

Language studies and internships: United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy

University studies: Law, Business Economics, Psychology, Information Techniques (Uppsala) and Economics (Lund), 1967-1970.

Military service: Personnel officer (Second Lieutenant) at A1 (Army) and F3 (Air Force) in Linköping (1971-1972).

International studies: Diploma in International Marketing and Advertising (with Distinction) at the College for the Distributive Trades, London, England (1972-1973).

Art Director: Scandecor International, Uppsala (1975-1978) in charge of developing new products and new motives for the parent company as well as several of the subsidiaries of the world’s largest producer of commercial posters, graphic and other products as well as Hallmark Cards in all the Nordic countries.

Consultant: The Creative Department of Anders Neumueller & Co Inc., Vancouver BC. (1982-1992), marketing, advertising and design for Dollar Rent a Car and companies in Vancouver and Seattle.

Publisher: Swedish Press, Vancouver BC, (1986-), redesigning, lay out and editorial for the only Swedish monthly in North America.Scandinavian Press, Vancouver BC, (1994-), founding, design and editorial for the only magazine with news from all the Nordic countries in English.

Consul: Honorary Consul of Sweden (2005-) in Vancouver for British Columbia and Yukon Territory.

Author: Posters! (Bra Böcker and Trevi 1978), God Jul (Bonnier Fakta 1980, 1985, and the biggest Christmas book bestseller in Sweden), Den Perfekte Gentlemannen (Bonnier Fakta 1981), Gårdagens Rariteter (Rabén & Sjögren 1981), Morgondagens Antikviteter (Rabén & Sjögren 1982), Herr Svensson antar jag (Bonnier Fakta 1982), Tändstickor - konst och lek (Bonnier Fakta 1983), Snart är det jul igen (Bonniers Junior Förlag 1983), I Fiammiferi - collezionismo curiosita e giochi (Mondadori 1984).

Volunteer: Presented Swedish news on the Scandinavian Journey television program in Vancouver and Calgary (1988-1998). Organized Sweden Day (1987), Swedish Festival (1992), and the committee that became the Sweden House Society that bought and created the Scandinavian Center in Burnaby BC (Vancouver). President of the Swedish Charitable Association (1995-2005) that maintained a Swedish Program and teacher at UBC, and that has financed and supported many Swedish and Nordic projects in British Columbia.

Family: Wife Hamida (born Jamal in Kampala, Uganda 1950) Editor of Scandinavian Press (and former head of information at SCC Swedish Cooperative Center/Utan Gränser in Stockholm) and daughters Mina (born in Stockholm 1978), lawyer living in Stockholm och Sofia (born in Stockholm 1981) studying at Langara College and Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver.

Citizenship: Dual Swedish and Canadian (since 2003) citizenship.

Office: Swedish Press Inc., 1294 West 7th Ave., Vancouver BC V6H 1B6, Phone: 604-731-6381

Consulate: Consulate of Sweden, 1480-1188 West Georgia Street, Vancouver BC V6E 4A2,Phone: 604-683-5838, Fax: 604-687-8237, Email: sweden@radiant.net

The news from the Middle East is so depressing that I would prefer not to follow it at all. So many thoughts come to mind as I see the events unfold. One of them is that no-one is lily-white when it comes to war. There are naturally two sides to this story, just as with anything else. What are regarded as terrorists by one side are hailed as freedom fighters by the other. This was also the way things were when the state of Israel was in its infancy. The Stern Gang that assassinated Folke Berna-dotte was described as a group of terrorists by Swedes, but to Israelis they were fighting for their country's right to exist.
In May 1948, Bernadotte was appointed United Nation mediator in Palestine. He succeeded in achieving a truce in the first Israeli-Arab war. On 17 September 1948, a few days before his second plan for a political solution was to be presented to the UN, the Swedish Count was killed. Bernadotte’s assassination is documented in Kati Marton's book A Death in Jerusa-lem (1994). He was shot together with his deputy the French colonel, Andre Serot. According to the Stern Gang, Bernadotte had to be eliminated "because he disturbed our national ambitions". The Israeli government declared that it was "adapting rigorous and energetic measures to bring the assassins to justice to eradicate this evil". But this has never happened. According to the Israeli paper Yediot Ahronot, that has investigated this historical event, Captain Moshe Hillman, who was Bernadotte's Israeli coordinating officer, witnessed the murder. He did inform his superior, Major Moshe Dayan, about what had taken place but was told to "take no notice...we have not seen anything and we have not heard anything."
Yeshoshua Cohen who held the gun be-came a good friend of "the nestor of the Israeli state", David Ben Gurion. The lea-der of the Stern Gang who issued the order to kill the Swede was Yitshak Shamir who later became Prime Minister of Israel. As President of the Swedish Red Cross, Folke Bernadotte, a father of two, had a few years earlier liberated some 30 000 prisoners from Nazi death camps in Germany. About 11 000 of them were Jews. It is also interesting to note that it was Folke Bernadotte who was originally chosen for the mission to rescue the Jews in Budapest but he was unable to get a visa from Germany to transfer to Hungary. Hence it was left to Raoul Wallenberg to carry out this monumental task.
We have not come very far in these al-most 60 years. We have still not learnt that violence does not lead to peace. Only ne-gotiations do. Our thoughts go out to the innocent people on both sides of this conflict who have to endure so much suffering.

Have a nice August

Anders Neumuller,
Editor

PS. Many people have wondered why Folke Bernadotte's name is not among the Swedish gentiles honored with a plaque for saving Jews at the US Holocaust Me-morial Museum in Washington DC. When Folke Bernadotte’s godson, the Swedish King, was going to visit the Museum in 1995, the Museum promised to correct this, but as far as I know it has never happened.