So much for blaming Jews for everything. Here's a cut and paste to trump the latest goofy conspiracy cut and paste. (ooops my bad - Jewish sounding name for author. BUTTT I don't know too many Keiths who are Jewish. This is a real dilemma. Maybe he changed his first name from Knish?)
Swedish Voters Reject Euro
Referendum Overshadowed by Foreign Minister's Assassination
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, September 14, 2003; 5:20 PM
STOCKHOLM, Sept. 14 -- Swedish voters today appeared to reject adopting the common European currency, the euro, in a referendum overshadowed by the assassination last week of the popular, pro-European foreign minister, Anna Lindh.
Initial exit polls by the Swedish public television station SVT showed the "no" vote leading with 51.8 percent compared with 46.2 percent for the pro-euro "yes" side. Some 2 percent of the ballots were reported to be blank, confirming, at least initially, the prediction of some analysts that many Swedes might choose to cast their ballot as a show of support for democracy after Lindh's death on Thursday , but were still undecided about the euro issue.
"I thought about this for I don't know how long," said one undecided voter, a 32-year-old junior high school teacher, voting under an unseasonably sunny sky in the western part of the capital. "I chose a blank ballot. I decided I can't decide. But I wanted to use my right to vote."
Incomplete returns from 5,525 out of 5,976 districts reporting showed the vote against the euro even higher, at 56.6 percent. But those tabulated returns did not include any districts in Stockholm, where the "yes" vote was expected to be higher than the rest of the country. Some far northern districts, which were tabulated early, were running as high as 80 percent against the euro.
Political analysts and some weekend opinion polls suggested that the stabbing of Lindh by an unknown assailant in a central Stockholm department store on Wednesday might create a last-minute surge of support for the pro-euro campaign. Lindh, who died Thursday, was one of the most prominent of the pro-euro campaigners, and her picture had been featured on many of the huge billboards around the country urging Swedes to vote yes. Those posters have now become makeshift shrines.
If the exit poll results are confirmed by the official tabulations, expected later tonight, they would suggest the pro-euro side did make up some ground, after trailing badly for most of the campaign. But in the end, Swedes appeared not quite ready to jettison their local krona for the leap into the common currency experiment -- which now numbers 12 European countries -- fearing it would jeopardize their cherished tradition of neutrality and threaten the country's relative economic prosperity and generous welfare-state benefits.
Sweden has traditionally had a stand-offish attitude toward European integration, only joining the European Union in 1995 after a similarly divisive referendum a year earlier. The country, which fought its last war in 1814, was neutral in both World War I and World War II, and never joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The pro-euro side included the government, the business community, and the media, and today's "no" vote, if confirmed, would mark a sharp, and in Sweden, unparalleled, public rejection of the country's political establishment. "This is the first time this has happened in Sweden," said Mikael Gilljam, a political scientist at Goteburg University. "Swedish people normally obey their leaders. It will be interesting to see how the political establishment handles this."
The "no" side was a mixture of former Communists, the far right, and environmentalist Greens, as well as ordinary Swedes observing that the country's economy is surpassing the average in the euro zone.
Proponents of a "yes" vote had argued that joining the euro would mean increased trade that would allow Sweden to continue generous welfare benefits for its nine million people. But that argument was largely undercut by the euro zone's current sluggish performance. Some countries like France and Germany now are chafing under the strict rules of the European Union's so-called "stability pact," which dictates how large a deficit countries using the euro are allowed to run.
Critics of joining the euro apparently successfully argued that by joining the common currency, Sweden would lose control over its monetary policy and be subjected to financial rules crafted in Brussels, the European Union's bureaucratic headquarters.
"They're trying to do something the same as in the United States, but it won't work here," said a 52-year-old Swede who runs his own building and construction business and voted "no" today. Referring to attempts to further integrate Europe economically, he said, "The cultures here are too different. There are only three currencies in the world -- the dollar, the pound and the yen. I don't want all the bureaucracy either."
Even the "yes" voters expressed some ambivalence . "I did say 'yes'," said one woman, a retired nurse. "Like everybody, I was thinking it's very, very difficult. Nobody had the answer, what's right and what's wrong. I want to believe it's the right thing. But even the experts are divided."
The only three countries of the EU now outside the euro are Sweden, neighboring Denmark, which turned down the euro in 2000, and Britain. The Swedish rejection might embolden the euro's opponents in Britain, and increase pressure on Prime Minister Tony Blair to delay holding a referendum in the United Kingdom.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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