June 15, 2019

SWEDEN: It’s Time For Sweden To Admit Explosions Are A National Emergency. Some 50 Explosions By Islamist Were Reported In The First Three Months Of 2019 Alone.

Quillette News
written by Paulina Neuding, Quillette’s European editor
Tuesday June 11, 2019

The bomb exploded shortly after 9 a.m. Friday in a blast that ripped through two apartment buildings and could be heard for miles. Twenty-five people suffered cuts and bruises and 250 apartments were damaged. A nearby kindergarten was evacuated. Hospitals jumped into disaster mode. Photos from the scene show rows of demolished balconies and shattered windows. It was ”absolutely incredible” that no one was severely injured, a police spokesperson said.

It is the kind of news we usually associate with war zones, but this bombing took place in Linköping, a peaceful university town in southern Sweden. Remarkably, it was not the only explosion in the country that day; another, seemingly unrelated, blast was reported in a parking lot in the city of Gothenburg earlier in the morning. Three explosions have been reported in Malmö since Tuesday morning. As of this writing, no arrests have been made.

Sweden has experienced a sharp rise in explosions in recent years, predominantly related to conflicts between warring criminal gangs. The use of explosives in the Nordic country is now at a level that is unique in the world for a state not at war, according to police. In response, the government issued a first-ever ”amnesty for explosives” in the fall of 2018, allowing people in possession of such weapons to hand them over to police with immunity. But this didn’t stem the tide: some 50 explosions were reported in the first three months of 2019 alone—an average of more than one every other day and an increase over the same period in 2018, a year that saw a record number of more than three blasts per week.

While explosives have become a weapon of choice among the country’s gangs, the effects of such violence are hardly confined to criminals. In the past four years, fatalities include a 63-year-old man who unknowingly picked up a hand grenade lying in the street; an 8-year-old boy who was asleep when a hand grenade was thrown into the apartment where he was staying; and a 4-year-old girl killed in a car bombing.
2011- Dec 5, 2018. Source: Swedish Public Service TV
There has been a corresponding marked escalation in gang-related shootings, which increasingly take place in broad daylight. Sweden had 45 deadly shootings in what police refer to as ”criminal environments” last year, which is an increase by a factor of 10 in one generation. In contrast, neighbouring Norway has less than three. Deadly shootings per capita in Sweden are now considerably higher than the European average. And systematic witness intimidation, paired with a code of silence in the country’s socio-economically weak immigrant areas, has made this type of crime difficult for the Swedish legal system to tackle.
The foreign-born gangs they speak of are Muslim gangs or Islamic sharia patrol gangs used to terrorize ALL non-Muslims as a way of IMPOSING Islamic sharia law. (emphasis mine)
The rise in gang violence and other types of crime—including sexual offenses and a wave of robberies against children—has had far-reaching implications for Swedish society. In a country which boasts ”the world’s first feminist government,” a third of young women now report feeling unsafe going out at night. A recent survey in the country’s three largest cities showed that safety is now the main priority for Swedes who are looking to buy homes. Crime emerged as a top priority among voters ahead of the election to the European Parliament in May.

According to the prevailing ideology of the Swedish political establishment, this wave of violence, which is baffling to many European neighbours, should not be happening. A longstanding cornerstone of the country’s political conversation dictates that crime must be understood in socio-economic terms, and that welfare provisions are a cure-all against violence and social unrest. Yet Sweden is one of Europe’s most generous welfare states.

Instead of seeking refuge in ideological wishful thinking, the Swedish government should focus on reforming a criminal justice system that was built for a more peaceful society. To name but one issue: young criminals receive remarkably soft sentences. For example, a 16-year-old convicted of an execution-style killing at a Stockholm pizza restaurant in 2018 was sentenced to three years in institutional care for young people. The country also has one of the smallest police forces per capita in the EU.

Before any specific issues can be addressed the Swedish government must acknowledge the severity of the matter. In the past few years, the rise in violent crime in Sweden has attracted growing attention from international media. How has the Swedish government responded? By launching an elaborate PR campaign for foreign audiences that plays down the challenges—especially those in the country’s immigrant areas. Nothing will change if the government continues to respond to the reality in the streets with cynical rhetorical spin.
National Review
written by Douglas Murray
Wednesday June 12, 2019

Readers may recall a kerfuffle in February 2017, which now seems like the long, distant past. It revolved around President Trump riffing on the question of migration in front of a rally of his supporters:
You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this. Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.
As it happens, nothing had particularly happened the night before in Sweden itself. Rather, the president appeared to be referring to a segment he had seen on Fox News the previous evening, in which a journalist reported on the social and criminal problems that Sweden had been having as a result of the unchecked migration that peaked in 2015.

But such is the tenor of the times that the dominant response to the President’s statement was to ridicule it, especially by highlighting what a nirvana Sweden allegedly is. In other words, much of the political and media class in America and around the world decided to take part in covering up the problems which sudden non-European migration had brought to Sweden. In their desire to lampoon Trump they ended up colluding in a falsehood.

Just how false can once again be seen from the most recent work from Paulina Neuding, one of the most indispensable journalists not just in Europe but anywhere else. In recent years Neuding has, among other things, been keeping a tally of “explosions” in Sweden. Not metaphorical ones, but actual ones. So strangely self-censoring is the Swedish press that when explosives are used (including grenade attacks, among other hitherto un-Swedish activities) they are either ignored or reported merely as “explosions.” Some of these do turn out to be accidents, but a great many do not, and the unwillingness of most of the media (local and international) to look into these events is one of those things that I predict historians will look back at and just whistle.
The foreign-born gangs they speak of are Muslim gangs or Islamic sharia patrol gangs used to terrorize ALL non-Muslims as a way of IMPOSING Islamic sharia law. (emphasis mine)
As Neuding reports, in just 24 hours, there were three explosions in the city of Malmo, in southern Sweden. This included a bomb which ripped through two apartment buildings on Friday evening. The scale of this assault (which is mostly the result of violence between foreign-born gangs) is such that Neuding says that it is time for Swedes to admit that they have a national emergency on their hands.
They won’t, of course. Because there is almost no political or media desire to face up to or even report these problems because they fear that to do so would give ammunition to political parties which have long warned about such problems. It would also open up a debate over whether the migration and asylum policies which Sweden has enacted in this past generation are remotely wise or sustainable. Anyhow — one for the history books, most likely. But an interesting reminder that after the titters have died down, events do grind remorselessly on.
Deutsche Welle (DW) News, Germany
written by Staff, AP, and Reuters
Monday June 10, 2019

Swedish police say officers had no choice but to shoot and injure a man who was acting threateningly at Malmo central station. The man has been taken to the hospital and the train station has been evacuated.

Swedish police said on Monday that officers shot and injured a man at the central station in the southern city of Malmo.

The man was exhibiting "threatening behavior" and officers had no choice but to shoot him, police were quoted by the TT news agency as saying.

Malmo station evacuated
  • Police did not give details about the purported threats.
  • The man was the only person injured in the incident and has been taken to the hospital.
  • The station has been evacuated and train services have been halted.
  • A bomb squad has been deployed to the station.
More police

Malmo police said it was increasing its presence at public areas across the city after the incident.

"This presence will remain in place until police know more about the incident at the central station," police said.

Recent attacks: Sweden has seen multiple attacks in public places in recent years. Two people were killed and four were injured in June 2018 outside an internet cafe in Malmo when a man opened fire on the group from his car.

Sweden also saw a wave of arson attacks in August of last year in Gothenburg, which, like Malmo, is located near the Swedish-Danish border.


PragerU published on Apr 20, 2017: How Is Muslim Immigration to Sweden Working Out? We've read and watched the news of Muslim immigration overwhelming Sweden. But how bad is it really? See this firsthand account from documentary filmmaker Ami Horowitz, who shows why increased Muslim immigration is leading to a spike in rapes and other violent crime.

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Politico
written by Paulina Neuding, Editor-in-chief of the online magazine Kvartal
April 16, 2018

Shootings have become so common that they don’t make top headlines anymore.

STOCKHOLM — Sweden may be known for its popular music, IKEA and a generous welfare state. It is also increasingly associated with a rising number of Islamic State recruits, bombings and hand grenade attacks.

In a period of two weeks earlier this year, five explosions took place in the country. It’s not unusual these days — Swedes have grown accustomed to headlines of violent crime, witness intimidation and gangland executions. In a country long renowned for its safety, voters cite “law and order” as the most important issue ahead of the general election in September.

The topic of crime is sensitive, however, and debate about the issue in the consensus-oriented Scandinavian society is restricted by taboos.

To understand crime in Sweden, it’s important to note that Sweden has benefited from the West’s broad decline in deadly violence, particularly when it comes to spontaneous violence and alcohol-related killings. The overall drop in homicides has been, however, far smaller in Sweden than in neighboring countries.

Gang-related gun murders, now mainly a phenomenon among men with immigrant backgrounds in the country’s parallel societies, increased from 4 per year in the early 1990s to around 40 last year. Because of this, Sweden has gone from being a low-crime country to having homicide rates significantly above the Western European average. Social unrest, with car torchings, attacks on first responders and even riots, is a recurring phenomenon.

Shootings in the country have become so common that they don’t make top headlines anymore, unless they are spectacular or lead to fatalities. News of attacks are quickly replaced with headlines about sports events and celebrities, as readers have become desensitized to the violence. A generation ago, bombings against the police and riots were extremely rare events. Today, reading about such incidents is considered part of daily life.

The rising levels of violence have not gone unnoticed by Sweden’s Scandinavian neighbors. Norwegians commonly use the phrase “Swedish conditions” to describe crime and social unrest. The view from Denmark was made clear when former President of NATO and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in an interview on Swedish TV: “I often use Sweden as a deterring example.”

In response, the Swedish government has launched an international campaign for “the image of Sweden” playing down the rise in crime, both in its media strategy and through tax-funded PR campaigns. During a visit to the White House in March, Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Löfven admitted that his country has problems with crime and specifically shootings, but denied the existence of no-go zones. Sweden’s education minister, Gustav Fridolin, traveled to Hungary last week with the same message.

But the reality is different for those on the ground: The head of the paramedics’ union Ambulansförbundet, Gordon Grattidge, and his predecessor Henrik Johansson recently told me in an interview that some neighborhoods are definitely no-go for ambulance drivers — at least without police protection.

Swedes are not prone to grandiose manifestations of national pride, but the notion of a “Swedish Model” — that the country has much to teach the world — is a vital part of the national self image.

Since crime is intimately linked to the country’s failure to integrate its immigrants, the rise in violence is a sensitive subject. When the Swedish government and opposition refer to the country as a “humanitarian superpower” because it opened its doors to more immigrants per capita during the migrant crisis than any other EU country, they mean it. This has resulted in some impressive contortions.

In March, Labor Market Minister Ylva Johansson appeared on the BBC, where she claimed that the number of reported rapes and sexual harassment cases “is going down and going down and going down.” In fact, the opposite is true, which Johansson later admitted in an apology.

Similarly, in an op-ed for the Washington Post, former Prime Minister Carl Bildt described the country’s immigration policy as a success story. He did not elaborate on violent crime. After repeated attacks against Jewish institutions in December — including the firebombing of a synagogue in Gothenburg — Bildt took to the same paper to claim that anti-Semitism is not a major problem in Sweden.

“Historically, in Sweden it was the Catholics that were seen as the dangerous threat that had to be fought and restricted,” Bildt claimed, seemingly unaware that the laws he cited also applied to Jews. Intermarriage was illegal and hostility was based on ideas of Jews as racially inferior. Bildt’s attempt to relativize current anti-Semitism with odd and inaccurate historical arguments reflects how nervously Swedish elites react to negative headlines about their country.

Another spectacular example is an official government website on “Facts about migration, integration and crime in Sweden,” which alleges to debunk myths about the country. One “false claim” listed by the government is that “Not long ago, Sweden saw its first Islamic terrorist attack.”

This is surprising, since the Uzbek jihadist Rakhmat Akilov has pleaded guilty to the truck ramming that killed five people in Stockholm last April and swore allegiance to the Islamic State prior to the attack. Akilov, who is currently standing trial, has proudly repeated his support for ISIS and stated that his motive was to kill Swedish citizens. He also had documented contacts with international jihadis.

The government’s excuse for denying the Islamic terrorist attack in Sweden is that no Islamic group has officially claimed responsibility. Given the importance these days of fighting fake news, the Swedish government’s tampering with politically inconvenient facts looks particularly irresponsible.

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