Illusion? I heard some Swiss risked (ahem) their lives and broke the law to do the moral thing. It basically points out that some individuals chose to live with a clear conscience. Paul Grüninger does not refute Zuger's post.
Yup, there were alot of these guys. But the fact that there was an "illusion" at all is amazing for the fact that CH is "neutral".... But I certainly agree that during all instances of hate or genocide there are those who do the right thing.
Closing your eyes isnt neutrality. Its not wanting the bother of fixing the problem. But it was mainly the Swiss governments fault who were all buddies with the Nazi's..... Politicians have a great history of making up the mind of the nation, even if it wouldnt be popular.
And 50 years after the end of WW2 hostilities this happened... Christoph Meili
We can't judge Switzerland for something that happened 70 years ago... we have the luxury of time, comfort, and fat ar5es sitting on leather sofas
We can judge what happened 10 years ago though... b4stards, eh?
I work for big bank and I'm sure that Jew's teeth in some way contirbutes to my comfortable fat ar5e sitting on my leather sofa... but how they handled it until recently sucks.
Edit: death threats and kidnap threats to Mr Meili soon after his "escape"
HA HA!
I know judging people for that far back is useless. Im just making the point that neutrality has been (and always will be) bent or misused no matter how smart it sounds.
By not deciding to take a side, they have taken the side of the stronger.
A friend told me of a proverb from the south:
"Hell has a place for those who stay neutral in the face of evil."
Another hearsay: Analysis of the composition of gold in Swiss banks show a high level of mercury. Mercury was mixed with gold for tooth fillings.
Can anyone confirm or deny this?
This is all going miserably off topic, but I would say it was the implication that the Swiss wore lederhosen that really upset them...
Actually, spring run-off has nothing to do with alpine deglaciation, it has to do with annual precipitation. Switzerland could have no glaciers, but if they got the same average precipitation each year, there would be no difference in the amount of water.
The deglaciation would affect the greater surface albedo of the mountains, which would cause the snowpack to melt off quicker in the spring. Though, Switzerland doesn't have a huge snowpack like, say the western US and Canada that feeds the rivers though the summer. Additionally, IIRC Switzerland gets most of its precipitation during the summer.
Neutrality means accepting lederhosen, abfab.... No matter how tight..
As nicely explained in "Between the Alps and a hard place":
http://www.amazon.com/Between-Alps-H.../dp/089526238X
(the customer review is a good synopsis)
So, let's see, CH turned away 30'000, and let in 25-30'000.
Conclusion: whatever.
Great conclusion.
Though the US never claimed neutrality. I'd love to segway to Operation Paperclip , but that would be totally off topic.
I agree 100%. What I meant was that the illusion of Switzerland being a safe haven didn't last long. People were being turned back at the border and people like Grüninger who did the right thing were punished.
Phos, we are on the same page for this.
Oh but they did, until Pearl Harbor. Sure, there was lively debate if the US should intervene, but up till Pearl, the non-interventionists won out.
So they never claimed it, but their actions fit the bill.
Gold bars are .9999 pure Au. So the 0.0001 should be high in Hg (mercury) ?
Let's see, how is gold won... oh yes, amalgamation with Hg (or worse, with cyanide... Zyklon B anyone ).
Nowadays refining is done by electrolysis. Can't vouch for WWII era methods.
So, I'd say whatever Hg found might as well be from dentistry gold as from "primitive" gold extraction.
Down near the middle of the Wikipedia entry mentioned above:
"Mercury was once used in the amalgamation process of refining gold and silver ores . This polluting practice is still used by the garimpeiros (gold miners) of the Amazon basin in Brasil and by illegal miners in South Africa ."
Conclusion: inconclusive.
EDIT: have to revise that "inconclusive" to "highly unlikely" as in BS
- Mercury evaporates before gold melts
- silver amalgam was used for fillings (still have two in my mouth), not gold. Especially not for gold teeth.
- for gold to be certified .9999, it has to pass the "Königswasser" (H2S04+HNO3) test
- A little bit further down the Wiki entry:
Gold mining
Mercury was historically extensively used in hydraulic gold mining, in order to help the gold to sink through the flowing water-gravel mixture. Thin mercury particles may form mercury-gold amalgam and therefore increase the gold recovery rates. Large scale use of mercury stopped in the 1960s. However mercury is still used in small scale, often clandestine, gold prospection. Total use of mercury in placer mining in California has been estimated to more than 4500 tons (10,000,000 lbs). [[35]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28element%29#cite_note-34)
Mercury was also historically used in silver mining. [[36]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28element%29#cite_note-35)
As to cyanide: anybody remember Omai ?
While on cyanide, let's put that rumour to rest that Zyklon B was developed by Hoffmann-Laroche.
Define irony: "Zyklon B was originally developed as a pesticide by Fritz Haber , a German Jew who emigrated in 1933."
No they just always claim to be torch bearers of world freedom and justice
Eeerm? What? We were supplying guns, ships, services, food, and technology to the Brits, well before the Peral Harbour. Not to mention the US was battling a A sectret Western Hemispehere war against the "fifth column" from 1934 till the time WWII started.....
Also, the reason the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour again stemmed from the US's support for the UK, when we prevented the Japanese from gaining access to Indonesian oil-fields. Thats why the bombed the pacific fleet.....
Neutrality? The US has ALWAYS taken sides......
Hmm, you have a point there.
Lend-Lease Act: March 11 1941
Pearl Harbor: December 7 1941
9 months can be interpreted as "well before", albeit 1.5 years after the start of WWII.
This is a very interesting documentary about a bank that dealt with Germany. Not a Swiss bank, as such, but a bank located in Switzerland, The Bank for International Settlements (the bankers bank).
Not only due to great mountains, and banking secrecy, or having large drug firms. Switzerland has a large number of low-profile firms laypeople have rarely heard of, which are critical in some industries, for example, all the nozzles in US liquid handling robots in biochemistry are made by teccan instruments, in some obscure village here, and Roche bought up the polymerase chain reaction patent early, which is the single most important technology for biotech today (permits rapid cloning). Now all PCR unit makers have to pay them royalties, millions of these machines are sold.
Europe in general, is on the decline, but this effect will show itself last here in Switzerland. They are small, flexible, and can adjust to whatever happens, will survive or at least do well in the period where the other European economies will stagnate. Good place to stake a claim.
Mike
You forget to mention the Swiss’s bourgeoning dildo market, and its proprietary 'Erosilator' model that the French have been trying to copy for years!!!!!! Biotechnology can be copied and cloned, but theres only 1 'Erosilator'....... The Swiss have done it again! They have invented the ONLY sex toy endorsed by Ruth Westheimer (Dr. Ruth).
Confoederatio Helvetica!!!!!!! Rich in sooo many ways......