“Riots are caused by police doing their jobs”

 

Last night was yet another flare-up in infamous Stockholm ghetto Tensta. A crowd of 50-something masked thugs were hurling rocks and molotov cocktails at police and fire fighters. But noone was killed and police only had to fire warning shots in the air, so no big deal. Ho-hum, in the “new normal” of Sweden.

What makes it noteworthy is how state media Stockholm P4 chooses to frame the situation. Apparently, police has been putting efforts into quelling local gang activity by making some arrests in the past weeks. So the headline becomes:

  

“Major police operations cause of the riots”

The subheadline reads: “It’s not surprising”

  
So… A riot is caused by the police upholding the law. It is not caused by a big group of thugs deciding to make molotov cocktails and toss them at the police.

This treacherous way of framing such reports is designed to lead to the subconscious conclusion: “Well, if the police would just stop doing their job, then there would be no riots.”

And a battered woman’s black eye is caused by her having burnt the eggs. It is not caused by the violent husband, because she brought it on herself. Right?

Police: Yes, there ARE No-Go Zones in Sweden

 
The issue of whether there are No-Go Zones in Europe or not has been somewhat controversial, mainly because the term has not had a clear-cut definition when applied to civilian cities. 

The original term is military lingo for hot areas controlled by the enemy, where it is suicidal to venture without sufficient firepower to match that of the enemy. This describes the situation of police officers pretty well; you have to enter the area in force or stay out, since a lone patrol car WILL be attacked.

Jacob Ekström is a police officer working in these areas. He has this to say in the latest issue of Forsking & Framsteg, the premier scientific journal in Sweden:

“The situation is slipping from our grasp,” he says about infamous enclaves Tensta and Rinkeby. “If we’re in pursuit of a vehicle, it can evade us by driving to certain neighborhoods where a lone patrol car simply cannot follow, because we’ll get pelted by rocks and even face riots. These are No-Go Zones. We simply can’t go there.” [My bold]

The article goes on to chronicle the rapid rise in gun-related violence in a country that was essentially unarmed up until just 15 years ago, the evolution of criminal gangs and clans from the middle east as an alternative societal structure, and how the “exclusion areas” (i.e. ghettos) have grown from 3 in 1990 to 156 in 2006.

The reporter brought the status report by Ekström to Lars Korsell, researcher and head of the organized crime unit att the national crime prevention bureau.

“Yes, it is pretty sensational that there are enclaves where Swedish law no longer applies,” Korsell replied slowly and ponderously.

I encourage you to read the article in full using Google Translate or similar; it is sobering to get a comprehensive overview based on hard, solid facts and statistics.

Then there’s the religious interpretation of No-Go Zones. It is my understanding that parts of London, Paris and other major European cities with large muslim populations have a shadow justice system based on Shariah Law. Posted signs prohibiting alcohol, music, revealing women’s clothes etc. enforced by volunteers patrolling the streets, sometimes even wearing vests bearing the name “Shariah Police”.

   
 

When I wrote about the police report of 55 No-Go Zones last year, I was referring to the former. To the best of my knowledge, there are no Shariah patrols in Sweden. But there are several essentially lawless areas where the police concedes that they have indeed lost control. There are also a few areas that I’m not certain why they made the list, to be honest. Such as Täby; a well-to-do white enclave outside Stockholm that is hardly known for drive-by shootings. Still, the bulk of the list is accurate in my opinion.

But what has been most striking is that there have been literally hundreds of Swedes popping up in various places claiming it’s all made up. The emails I have received and the forum posts have been so similar in wording it’s tempting to put on the tinfoil hat and suspect some kind of concerted effort. But by whom? And to what end?

Things really kicked off in January, when there was a guy on Fox News that made the ludicrus claim the entire city of Birmingham, the second largest in the UK, was a shariah-controlled No-Go Zone for non-muslims. He has since issued a public retraction and apology. 

This, the horde of leftist trolls decided, meant EVERYTHING was a figment of the imagination. Suddenly there were no clan-controlled areas, no sharp increase of arson, no need for ambulance drivers to wear bulletproof vest and riot helmets, or anything else mentioned in any of the articles that have been published on the matter… All because one guy made a dumb claim.

The well-documented incident in Landskrona last year where two police officers were cornered by a mob of 50+ thugs and the fellow officers were ordered NOT to enter the area due to the risk of riots… Suddenly didn’t happen. Neither did the inofficial courts of Södertälje. Or the spike in rapes that now puts Sweden at #2 in the world. Or the #1 spot in the world for school arsons. All of it, poof, gone.

Anyway. To deflect yet another storm of leftist trolls howling about the fictious nature of No-Go Zones, I’ll round off by adding the list of sources I usually copy & paste in my response. The trolls invariably go quiet or get even more belligerent. The number of factual responses to date: Zero. 

Most sources are in Swedish but can easily be run through Google Translate by anyone.

 

Typical leftist Internet troll 

• National newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, explicitly using the term “no-go zones”:

http://www.svd.se/opinion/ledarsidan/55-no-go-zoner-i-sverige-minner-om-parallellsamhallen_4051399.svd

• National newspaper Aftonbladet on the rampant ISIS recruitment taking place in these areas:

http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article20427940.ab

• Dr Magnus Ranstorp on the rapid growth of radicalized Islamists (in English):

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/23/from_the_welfare_state_to_the_caliphate_sweden_islamic_state_syria_iraq_foreign_fighters/

• An article about the police incident deserting their own and ceding control to criminals in Landskrona. They literally use the term in the headline, adding that the police are now pulling out of the area:

http://hd.se/landskrona/2014/07/28/kriminella-far-fritt-spelrum-i/

• The local police chief explaining why the officers are not to exit their vehicles and make arrests:

http://www.hd.se/lokalt/landskrona/2014/07/28/brottslighet-kan-lagforas-inifran-polisbilarna/

• More from the police chief on how they now deal with the area:

http://hd.se/landskrona/2014/08/01/polischef-svarar-om-prioriteringar/

• Also, if these areas do not exist, why is the ambulance union demanding military-grade protection gear to enter them?

http://mobil.svd.se/nyheter/ambulansfacket-kraver-skyddsutrustning_svd-4094045

• Another article interviewing the ambulance union chief on why they need bulletproof vests, helmets and similar gear:

http://magasinetneo.se/artiklar/det-ar-definitivt-ett-nytt-fenomen-att-vi-ar-sa-utsatta/

As for the police report, it clearly states that there are indeed informal courts and parallel justice systems (page 12, third paragraph (3.4.3)). Anyone who has read about Södertäljenätverket knows how broad the extent of this clan-based influence can be.

http://polisen.se/Aktuellt/Rapporter-och-publikationer/Rapporter/Publicerat—Nationellt/Ovriga-rapporterutredningar/Kriminella-natverk-med-stor-paverkan-i-lokalsamhallet/

The vehicle checkpoints are mentioned on page 15, fourth paragraph (3.5.3). 

On page 13, second paragraph (3.4.4) you find the frequent attacks on police. Here is just one of many news stories on how police have to install shatterproof glass on their vehicles because they get rocks hurled at them whenever entering these areas: 

http://www.svt.se/nyheter/regionalt/abc/nya-super-rutor-ska-skydda-polisen-fran-stenkastande-gang

There are numerous newspaper articles, police reports and even Youtube videos by the gangs themselves bragging about how they’re chasing off the cops from “their” area, but I think this list should be enough. 

But of course, the trolls are free to believe all this is made up. My humble suggestion is merely putting that stance to the test by wrapping yourself in an Israeli flag and taking a walk through Rosengård, Husby or Biskopsgården a nice saturday evening and see what happens. Any takers?

Sweden used as warning example by Norway police

  
As a current resident of Sweden, I sometimes find myself questioning my own sanity. All these problems I blog about are right there in the open for anyone to see and getting worse by the year, yet media and politicians act as if everything is hunky-dory. Most people on the street also appears to be completely oblivious to details like the enormous increase of burning cars in the ghettos, the 1472% increase in rapes and the ever bolder gangs choking their enclaves with drugs and violence. 

So I find myself wondering, am I missing something? Why aren’t people reacting? Is it really reasonable that so many are in a state of denial? Or am I somehow misinterpreting all this?

That’s why it’s oddly reassuring that the neighboring Nordic countries are in the same boat. Denmark has voiced concerns about the utterly weak background check of immigrants from the middle east, fearing radical Islamists entering Sweden as asylum seekers with the intent of building Scandinavian terror cells. My very first post on this blog was about a Danish politician openly pleading for Sweden to come to its senses.

Norway isn’t too pleased either, and they dare speak openly about the problems brewing in the cities of their neighbor.

In a new report called “Oslo 2022,” the Norwegian police explicitly use Sweden in general and the town of Södertälje as a warning example. This prompted Aftonposten, one of the major Norwegian newspapers, to do two articles on Sweden’s out-of-control immigration.

In the first part, Norwegian reporters traveled to Södertälje outside Stockholm. Entitled “We all live in the same town, but not in the same world,” the article chronicles a town in complete segregation where the immigrants gain ground every year and everyone who can escapes. Violence, drugs, lawlessness and decay eats away at the town like a cancer. 

“Why is this allowed to happen?” the reporter asks.

“Because the Swedes are weak,” says 36-year old Simon Melkemichel. “The Swedish identity will be wiped out in 20-30 years.”

The second part is called “Sweden has lost control over their immigration” and has representatives for the Norwegian government comment on the fact that, well, Sweden has lost control over their immigration. What makes it noteworthy is the difference in tone compared to the Swedish political debate.

As in Denmark, the Norwegian leftist worker’s party have a very different view on immigration than the Swedish sister party Socialdemokraterna (currently in power). In Norway and Denmark, they make a point of restricting the inflow and checking the backgrounds carefully. 

In Sweden, there are literally no limits, and any background check beyond scratching the surface is considered racist and shut down by management as has been repeatedly revealed by bloggers like Merit Wager. 

Not surprisingly, the police report and the articles have ruffled quite a few feathers in Sweden’s political and medial elite. But equally predictably, the Swedish response is not to acknowledge the problems, but to whine about the mean Norwegian pseudo-fascists having the gall to criticize Sweden’s enlightened stance.

While it doesn’t do squat to fix anything, it’s at least reassuring that I’m not the one losing my mind.

Increased tax subsidies for politically correct media

Tax money at work

On Dec 9 last year I translated a random snapshot of the biggest newspaper in Sweden. The headlines alone spoke for themselves. It was, simply put, an orgy of political correctness, obvious attempts at emotional manipulation and general national self-loathing. In other words, a typical Swedish newspaper on any given day.

As more and more readers are waking up to the fact that they’re being manipulated, the readership of practically all mainstream newspapers have dropped like a rock in recent years.

Swedish newspapers have seen the circulation decrease from almost 5 million in 1987 to 3 million now, with the trend even appearing to accelerate. The sharp drop in recent years coincides with the meteoric rise of nationalist party SD (5,7% in 2010, 12,9% in 2014, now polling at 18-19%) which may have something to do with the mainstream medias continuous smear campaigns against the party.

Of course, a big part the explanation for decreased newspaper circulation is also found in the digital revolution. By that I am not referring just to the online presence of traditional mainstream media (which they are primarily using as a cash cow focusing on glib entertainment and gossip).

No, the big Kahuna of the Swedish digital revolution is the broad rise of alternative web-based media that is increasingly taking the place of the MSM. And the reason is simple enough: People know for a fact that they get half the truth (at best) in the newspaper; to get the full story you HAVE to go online and see what the regular journalists left out.

Three examples:

1. A black man and his toddler son was attacked on an overpass by a group of young men. The man was severely beaten in front of his child and the gang tried to toss him off the overpass into the traffic below. “RACIST ATTACK!!” bellowed the newspapers, once again wringing their hands over the rise of white supremacists in Sweden.

Yes, it was a racially motivated hate crime. But the attackers were arabs and the white supremacists were once again fictional. This became evident within hours of the incident once citizen-reporters got the facts from police, but Swedish newspapers to this day make references to the attack as a white-on-black hate crime.

“Afrophobia” to blame for the hate crime. Let’s march against whitey!

The victim himself says the perps were also non-white. Oops.
Note that the “afrophobia” march was announced two days after the victim made the statement above.

2. The famous mosque fire in Eskilstuna this past christmas, where word of a white supremacist throwing a molotov cocktail into a packed mosque echoed across the world as a chilling example of how the nice Swedes had inexplicably embraced “Islamocide”. Mainstream media whipped up a frenzy with the implicit point aimed at anyone voting SD, with citizen candle marches, “love bombings” (Don’t ask. It’s facepalm-inducing.) and public condemnation by leading politicians with culture minister Alice Bah Kunkhe snagging top price by shrieking about “hate crimes” before the police had barely set foot on the scene.

Again, within hours information started seeping out about the hard facts, and soon it became increasingly obvious it was a kitchen fire out of control. But someone had chosen to claim a phantom arsonist was to blame, and not a single person stepped forward to admit that it wasn’t a hate crime when the media storm raged. Instead, the imam used the opportunity to wail about islamophobia and revel in the victim-hood.

This was known by all who, for example, read independent news site Fria Tider. They interviewed the lead police investigator, who confirmed there were no signs of the fire being intentional just a few days after the incident. But the regular newspapers kept on beating the hate crime-drum in utter disregard for reality, and even today – when the case is firmly closed and deemed entirely accidental – the papers continue to refer to it as “proof” that muslims are persecuted.

3. A Swedish woman was brutally gang-raped by eight men on an overnight cruise between Stockholm and Helsinki a month ago. “Swedish Men” were the perpetrators, according to the newspapers. They illustrated the story by using phantom silhouettes rather than actual images, with the silhouettes bearing clearly nordic facial profiles.

Once again, the truth was just a click away. The men were Somali and Afghani citizens, not Swedes. One would think that the regular reporters would have reacted to the fact that the police had to wait for translators before they could interrogate the perps, but why let such petty details derail a good horror-story about the evil of white Swedish men?

“Eight Swedish Men…” 

Aftonbladet vs. Reality

“Prosecutor: Aftonbladet is lying, the rapists are not Swedish.”

These were just a few recent examples where the actual facts are readily verifiable for anyone with 2 minutes to spare, but the traditional media players naively insist on playing the readers for fools. In the age of Internet, it’s like a child with strawberry jam all over his clothes and face trying to convince the parents it was the dog and not him who made off with the jar.

So… People are deserting traditional media in droves to get their information online instead. This is causing the media and the political elite to panic. How to keep the propaganda flowing, when fewer and fewer are willing to pay to have their intelligence insulted? Why, force them to pay for it anyway through the tax system, of course.

Culture minister Alice Bah Kunkhe has announced she’s fast-tracking an overhaul of the media subsidy-system. The motivation: “…[this initiative] can be seen an acknowledgment that the parties jointly agree to take responsibility in an acute crisis for a central part of our democracy.” 

 

That would be the political parties that created an anti-democratic cartel for the explicit purpose of locking out SD, the third largest (and soon to be second largest) party in parliament. 

 

As part of the reform package, they’re abolishing the parliamentary assigned press support council, and instead leave the doling out of tax funds to the Swedish equivalent of the FCC. This is a non-parliamentary government organ, where the decision-making process is opaque and the political control tighter. It may have something to do with how the aforementioned Fria Tider, one of the foremost alternative media sites, qualified for government support under the previous rules. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that Fria Tider just might see that support revoked before long.

 

Meanwhile, Culture minister Bah Kunkhe just last week appointed known anti-SD activist Anette Novak as the head of a new task force on shaping “Media Policy of the Future”. She is openly hostile towards alternative web media, and was previously the editor in chief of leftist newspaper Norran where she enforced unprecedented censorship and has publically debated for broad measures to shut down the ability for readers to comment on news stories.

So… That sounds like a fine choice for a task force supposed to evaluate “…the public’s need for comprehensive information and the individual’s ability to be democratically involved”. Furthermore, “the proposals [from the group] should aim at promoting the possibilities for the public to take part of journalism that is characterized by diversity, balanced news reporting, quality and specialization”. 

Since they’ve already adopted George Orwell’s Newspeak, why not implement the Ministry of Truth outright and be done with it?

 

Swedish employment office recruiting for ISIS

The Swedish national employment office has been running an extensive “establishment pilot” program for years, where the thousands of new arrivals from MENA each week are supposedly being helped find jobs. The tax-funded pilot services are often carried out by countrymen on a consultant-basis with the intent of bridging the gap into Swedish society.

Now the employment office has been forced to do an emergency shutdown because it turns out the consultants have been more focused on scams, recruiting for ISIS and setting up Swedish terror cells than finding jobs. The program has been in effect since 2010 and has been heavily criticized since the start, but this tax-funded debacle sowing the seeds of societal destruction has been allowed to run unchecked until now.

“The problems became numerous and also directly criminal. The magnitude of the whole thing is organized crime, intimidation, trafficking and extortion. People are trading registered addresses to enable welfare fraud and generally cheating the whole system,” says employment office director Mikael Sjöberg.

“We have indications that there has been recruitment attempts and contact situations to various violent fighting groups. It’s not a question of employment agency to investigate, but in such times, we leave it to the security police SÄPO.”

According to news site Fria Tider, the cost for this service was 4,3 billion SEK in 2014 — a not insignificant chunk of the total 865 billion budget.

But… At least the plug has been pulled on the program, and the “consultants” now have to go back to recruiting pro bono.

I still can’t help wondering about the Swedish employment office in Africa (!) though…

Copenhagen shootings increase Scandinavian tensions

Just weeks after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, a gunman opened fire with an automatic weapon at a free speech-event in Copenhagen killing one and injuring three. The big name of the event was Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who has been living under death threats and secret service protection for eight years since creating a “blasphemous” image of the Prophet.

Danish police believes the gunman was targeting Vilks, and that he was the same shooter who later attacked a synagogue killing another person. The man was killed in a gunfight with police early this morning. More details will be forthcoming during the day, but at this time everything points to the same twisted hate that set the stage for the Paris massacre.

It seems twisted hate is coming from all directions now. Just this friday, three white supremacists were arrested outside the offices of newspaper Expressen. Fortunately, police were able to intercept them before anyone was hurt, but it is widely believed the attempt was in response to an expose of prominent female figures in the shady neo-nazi underworld.

BUT… This is not to be confused with the previous smear campaign by Expressen. A crew of extreme leftists made up by convicted violent felons hacked personal information of those opposed to the open-border immigration policy, and the newspaper happily hung lots of people out to dry for their political convictions. One person is dead and many more have been severely harassed as a direct result that campaign.

That’s the same criminal group that is now providing newspaper Aftonbladet with hacked personal information for their currently running campaign against private citizens. Simply put, the tiny percentage actual racists (i.e. people of the manifestly insane idea that people of certain skin color are superior than others) are used as justification to set up huge databases of sensitive, personal information of the 98% who are not racist, but simply disagree with the current political situation.

To make matters worse, the group is openly bragging about the vast expanses of personal data they have acquired, and make no secret that they intend to use it for blackmail and public shaming. “We’re the Swedish STASI!” they happily bragged on Twitter. It’s like handing a loaded machine gun to an ape.

The justification for this blatant breach of all standards for integrity is that they have registered as a “journalistic research agency” and now make good money selling illegally obtained personal information to whoever wants to cause harm to anyone disagreeing with their leftist views. The media and the law turns a blind eye, because hey, it’s just soulless orcs deserving whatever they get.

I’m no psychologist, but I’ll go out on a limb and claim that it’s this kind of thing that drives MORE people to become radicalized. If you can’t trust authorities to shield you from invasion of privacy and even physical harm, you get angry and disillusioned. And easy bait for secretive “defense leagues” that talk about protecting you from the bad guys, but in reality is just a front for the true extreme right forces. If you keep yelling “Racist!” at people long enough, eventually some of them will step up to meet your projection.

So, besides the rapidly growing number of ISIS-returnees biding their time in Swedish sleeper cells, we have a lovely cocktail of bad stuff going on:
Imported hate against muslims carried out by immigrant christians fleeing the middle east, hate against jews carried out by immigrant muslims from the middle east, leftists blaming everything on “racists,” but thanks to their collateral damage-rate of 98% or so only succeeding in turning otherwise decent young native Swedes to the dark side of true racism and bigotry.

Sweden is rapidly turning into a pressure cooker. I fear for what will happen when the first major act of terrorism goes off here.

UPDATE: Swedish press is now blaming Vilks for the attack.

Screen capture from newspaper Expressen:

Underlined: “The Swede’s drawings of the Prophet Muhammad’s face has now claimed a life in Denmark”

Not to be outdone, newspaper Aftonbladets main stories below:

Headline left: “Vilks raises fury – across the globe”

Headline right: “The police officers pointed their machine guns at us”

Way to put the focus on a barbaric act of terrorism that has claimed two lives so far: blaming the victim and criticizing police for following standard procedure in a dangerous situation.

Swedish police further neutered

“Dialogue police” sent forth to grill hot dogs with the rioters and convince them to see the errors of their way. I am not making this up. This is real in Sweden. Google it!

The police officers of the future are facing steep challenges, as the criminal gangs continue to gain ground in Swedish society and keep getting better armed by the day. But new recruits should be mostly concerned with not stepping on any cultural or ethnical toes, apparently.

Starting this month, police training has moved from the old Stockholm Police Academy to a place called Södertörns Högskola. This “school” is known for many things. One of them is the principal Moira Wright’s infamous thesis “Gender and Text”, in which she argues that hard, scientific facts are “patriarchical” in nature and should be disregarded in favor of gender-correct theories whenever the two collide.

In what can only be a complete coincidence, Södertörn also consistently ranks at the absolute bottom of all institutes of higher learning in the country.

The school has also gained some notoriety for trying to revive the “race biology” concept, in which groups of people are assumed to have certain qualities based on the skin color. The Nazis were kind of big on this bulls**t, as you may recall. Of course, this time it’s “whiteness studies” being put forth as the focus, where all white people have a given share of guilt for all ills in history and should be condemned accordingly. The program is led by Tobias Hubinette, an immigrant with multiple convictions for violent hate crimes against whites (summary and court docs linked here). A 1996 quote from newspaper Creol sums up his ideology pretty well:

“Let the white race […] perish in blood and suffering!”

Perhaps not surprisingly, Södertörn is also ground zero for the politically correct journalists of tomorrow. The result is obvious to anyone used to balanced news reporting. This translated and analyzed sample from a regular Swedish newspaper last month doesn’t require further explanation of the phenomena of which I speak. Remember, this is the country where journalists can seriously claim that the Ferguson looting was “the evolution of democracy“.

So, as of last week, this is the esteemed seat of higher learning that will teach the police officers of tomorrow how to deal with well-armed gangs. The focus will be cultural sensitivity, gender awareness and other “enlightened” soft studies. But there will be a little bit of real police training too, principal Wright assures us as an afterthought.

“There will be shooting ranges, and there will be practice rooms for both bank robbery and… Everything you can imagine!” (Direct quote)

The same day she said that, the Stockholm Västerort police department announced they are replacing all vehicle windshields with super-hardened glass as the kids in the “exclusion areas” amuse themselves by hurling rocks at the patrol cars whenever they enter. In the linked video above, officer Erik Hasselrot describes one such recent attack in Husby.

“We managed to get our arms up to protect our eyes [when the rocks smashed the windshield] … But then we had to leave the area and call for reinforcements. We couldn’t drive our vehicle.”

Well, at least the young ones settle for just throwing rocks and chasing off the police officers on foot.

Sweden’s 38 000 mutilated girls

The Swedish welfare agency Socialstyrelsen estimates that some 38 000 girls have already been subjected to severe mutilation of their private parts, with another 19 000 being “in danger” of the procedure.

The procedure is the removal of parts of the female anatomy, so that no pleasure can be derived from sex as an adult. The procedure is usually done with a razorblade or simple knife without anasthesia. More info on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting and female circumcision, can be found on WHO and Wikipedia.

This barbaric practice is common in Africa and has followed the tide of immigration to Sweden. FGM is of course illegal, but since Sweden has a knee-jerk response to drop anything questioning the religious customs of any immigrant, virtually no enforcement or tracking is in place to protect the girls. The report linked above is an estimate, since noone has the guts to actually address the issue. When local health workers try to sound the alarm about the rise in FGM, the decision-makers wring their hands and start mumbling about “personal integrity” to avoid the risk of being portrayed as “racist” in the media.

The result is that absolutely nothing is done to protect these girls from lifelong mutilation, right here, in a presumed civilized country governed by just laws intended to shield children from exactly this type of thing.

Meanwhile, the main issue being discussed by the “feminists” in Sweden is the need for affirmative action to force more upper-class women into the board of directors of the country’s publicy traded corporations.

Because that’s where the dire and urgent need for action is.

Swedish Gestapo

Without as much as a whisper in the media, the Swedish intelligence agency SÄPO quitely switched employers on New Year’s day. I would have missed it myself, if not for some alert Facebook users sounding the alarm.

SÄPO, Säkerhetspolisen, translates to “Security Police” and has been the covert backbone of Swedens police force protecting the citizens against terrorists and extremist plots for decades. Like all police, they were at least in theory unpolitical, with citizen safety being the only concern.

Well, not anymore. On Jan 1, SÄPO was separated from the regular branches of the police. They no longer answer to the public, but instead report directly to the minority government.

This is a common structure in dictatorships. The regular, uniform-clad police handle regular crime, while the security forces move in the shadows to protect the interests of the government rather than the people. Nazi Germany is a well-known example, where anyone opposed to the Führer was sure to be under close watch and eventually “disappear” if getting too vocal.

Now, before the tinfoil-hat crowd gets too worked up, this is not the situation in Sweden today. There are no jackbooted death squads dragging people away in the dead of night.

However, it is concerning that a democratic government would choose to adopt the same framework favored by dictatorships. Why the change?

It is also concerning in light of the vastly expanded authority of SÄPO to conduct surveillance against the citizenry. The hotly debated and contested FRA-laws grant SÄPO unlimited access to all phone, web and postal traffic, the right to place cameras and audio bugs in “non-public settings” and other goodies for anyone not concerned with personal freedom and integrity.

The law was also recently changed so that SÄPO can, at its sole discretion should they deem the matter “urgent,” call upon the military to fight domestic targets. The only prerequisite is that the targets are classified as “terrorists”. Which is not that far of a stretch from Prime Minister Löfvens claim that nationalist party SD is “antidemocratic” and “fascist”.

Again, I want to stress that there are no signs of political oppression today beyond the civil stigmatization. Political dissidents get shunned, excluded from unions and subjected to hate crimes by extremist left activists. But they are still allowed to speak freely, and there are no government agents busting down doors for thought crimes.

So why bring out the toolbox that enables it?

Swedish police targeted by gangs

Torched police vehicle from yesterday. Photo: Björn Andersson.

It can’t be easy trying to uphold the law in Sweden these days.

On one hand, you’re routinely harassed by gangs when you enter the “exclusion areas“. It can be simple routine things like spitting, hurled insults and scratched patrol cars to being pelted with rocks or attempts to blind you with green lasers while driving.

While outright attacks like the one in Landskrona last year are rare (a crowd of 50+ thugs had two officers cornered — and the police commander didn’t dare send in backup, fearing “escalation”) the severity and frequency of these incidents increase as the gangs grow larger and ever bolder.

On the other hand, there’s the mainstream media standing by, ready to document the slightest misstep on the officers’ part while simultaneously providing an endless well of excuses and sob-stories for the REAL victims: the gang members. What can you expect from a journalist that in all seriousness argues that store looting is taking a noble stance for “democracy” and wishes she could participate?

Meanwhile, these are also the same journalists that howls the loudest for “accountability” by the police when something bad DOES happen. And since the top layers of the police are now infested with rubber-spined political animals, the only thing a regular street cop can rest entirely certain of is this: No matter what happens, they will be the ones thrown to the wolves.

Well, now it appears the gangs are upping the ante. Blowing up court houses and firing machine guns into police stations isn’t enough. The new trend is to map out the individual officers’ personal information, following them home and scoping out their families in a clear effort to intimidate and discourage serious police work.

Photo: Jan Wiriden

Erik Nord, police commander in Gothenburg says he sees a trend where police officers are subject to harassment and persecution.

“There is a trend of harassing cops, following them when they are on their way to and from work, find out their names and where they live. A subtle way to convey unspoken intimidation, with the intention that the police should not be ‘too zealous’ in their work.”

Erik Nord says that reports of such police harassment have been reported in several places lately, but they are more common in some areas.

“Above all, this phenomenon is found in the large city suburbs. When you start mapping out the names and faces of the policemen, you can exercise both threats and harassment. But we are now also seeing it in small towns in Sweden.”

Local newspaper GT reports about 20 incidents of arson and repeated assaults on emergency personnel in Gothenburg over the past few weeks, including an assault on a patrol car by 20 masked thugs. The gangs then celebrated the new year by shooting fireworks directly at police officers, the paper reports (video here).