"It's Sad As Hell" - Swedish Ambassador Admits, We're "In The Process Of Dismantling Democracy"

Sweden"s new ambassador to Iceland has sparked a major controversy after warning that Sweden is "in the process of dismantling democracy" and could be on a slippery slope towards technocracy or a dictatorship.

Håkan Juholt, a former leader of the centre-left Social Democrat party and ambassador to Iceland since September, made the comments in an interview with the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.

"How old is your son? Four?" he asks the reporter.

"When he is old he won"t be living in a democracy but in a technocracy, or a dictatorship. It"s sad as hell. I am sorry to say it, but I am 100 percent sure. We are in the process of dismantling democracy."

Later in the interview, he says:

"I don"t think the threat is a dictatorship with tanks rolling on Sergel"s Square (a well-known square in central Stockholm), but an expert rule where we do not let the citizens" values govern the country. Democracy is slipping through our fingers. Fewer people want to be elected, the parties are toning down their ideology.

Sure, I see a risk that it may become a dictatorship in the long run."

His brutal honesty in a diplomatic role appears to have ruffled more than a few feathers...

As The Local reports, Juholt did not elaborate on the comments, which have sparked criticism in Sweden.

"It"s remarkable. It is the role of ambassadors, and the role of the government, to deliver an accurate image of our country and promote our country in the world," Culture and Democracy Minister Alice Bah Kuhnke told the TT newswire, but said it was up to the Foreign Minister to comment further.

Margot Wallström responded she would not "argue with one of my ambassadors" in public.

"He will probably have to explain his thoughts himself," she said, speaking to TT at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.

"He will probably also soon learn, I would think, what it means to be an ambassador."

All of which is very odd because the establishment told then-candidate-Trump how utopian Sweden was when he criticized it?

Swedish Government On Verge Of Collapse After Admitting 'Accidental Leak' Of Entire Nation's Info

Sweden’s government is being quietly rocked by a major scandal. So far the market has paid it little regard, but, as Citi warns, it may soon escalate...

Sweden appears to have accidentally leaked the details of almost all of its citizens. And now it"s getting worse as the leak happened in 2015, but only emerged last week. As The Indepedent reports,

The leak allowed unvetted IT workers in other countries to see the details of people registered in Swedish government and police databases.

It happened after the government looked to outsource data held by the Transport Agency, but did so in a way that allowed that information to be available to almost anyone, critics have claimed.

The opposition is seeking to boot out the ministers of infrastructure, defence and the interior – Anna Johansson, Peter Hultqvist and Anders Ygeman, respectively – for their role in outsourcing IT-services for the Swedish Transport Agency in 2015.

Prime Minister Stefan Lofven admitted Monday his country and its citizens were exposed to risks by potential leaks as a result of the contract.

"This is a disaster," Swedish PM Lofven said. "This has exposed Sweden and Swedish citizens to risks."

The minority government has said that contract process – won by IBM Sweden – was speeded up, bypassing some laws and internal procedures in a manner that may have led to people abroad, handling servers with sensitive materials.

As Reuters reports, the scandal has raised questions about the way it has been handled within the government. The security police informed the Justice Ministry in late 2015 but Lofven said he only found out about it early this year.

Lofven said Anna Johansson, minister of infrastructure and responsible for the Transport Agency, had not passed information on to him.

Johansson on Sunday in turn blamed one of her former state secretaries for not informing her about the scandal.

"I wish I had been informed earlier," Lofven said while adding he had no plans to fire any ministers. "I have full confidence in them (ministers) until I say otherwise."

However, as The Independent notes, the centre right opposition Alliance, comprising the Moderate, Centre, Liberal and Christian Democrat parties, has taken aim at Lofven"s cabinet...

"It is obvious (they) have neglected their responsibility. They have not taken action to protect Sweden"s safety", Centre party leader Annie Loof told a news conference.

Parliament is in recess but the opposition parties will submit a request to the speaker to summon legislators for a vote within 10 days.

If the opposition gets a majority the ministers will have to resign, a likely outcome as the nationalist Sweden Democrats have said they will support a vote of no-confidence.

"There are only two alternatives, either a new election or he himself (Lofven) resigns," Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Akesson said.

"It feels like it"s possible, yes," Anna Kinberg Batra, leader of the Moderates said.

As Citi notes, SEK has strengthened so far this week and no dramatic headlines seem to be impacting the currency yet, but some political noise may be on the way.

IBM Sweden says it never comments on relations with clients. The government said it had no comment pending a later statement, which Swedish Prime Minister Lofven just announced that he will hold a press conference on July 27th at 10am CET.

Finally we wonder how long before Sweden blames Russia for leaking this 2-year-old secret.

Is Sweden A Failed State?

Authored by Judith Bergamn via The Gatestone Institute,

• The Swedish state, in true Orwellian style, fights those Swedish citizens who point out the obvious problems that migrants are causing.


• When police officer Peter Springare said in February that migrants were committing a disproportionate amount of crime in the suburbs, he was investigated for inciting "racial hatred".


• Currently, a 70-year-old Swedish pensioner is being prosecuted for "hate speech", for writing on Facebook that migrants "set fire to cars, and urinate and defecate on the streets".

The security situation in Sweden is now so critical that the national police chief, Dan Eliasson, has asked the public for help; the police are unable to solve the problems on their own. In June, the Swedish police released a new report, "Utsatta områden 2017", ("Vulnerable Areas 2017", commonly known as "no-go zones" or lawless areas). It shows that the 55 no-go zones of a year ago are now 61.

In September 2016, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven and Minister of Interior Anders Ygeman refused to see the warnings: in 2015, only 14% of all crimes in Sweden were solved, and in 2016, 80% of police officers were allegedly considering quitting the force. Both ministers refused to call it a crisis. According to Anders Ygeman:

"... we are in a very difficult position, but crisis is something completely different. ...we are in a very strained position and this is because we have done the biggest reorganization since the 1960s, while we have these very difficult external factors with the highest refugee reception since the Second World War. We have border controls for the first time in 20 years, and an increased terrorist threat".

A year later the Swedish national police chief is calling the situation "acute".

In 2015, only 14% of all crimes in Sweden were solved. In 2016, 80% of police officers were allegedly considering quitting the force. Nonetheless, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven (pictured above) refused to call it a crisis. (Photo by Michael Campanella/Getty Images)

Sweden increasingly resembles a failed state: In the 61 "no-go zones", there are 200 criminal networks with an estimated 5,000 criminals who are members. Twenty-three of those no-go zones are especially critical: children as young as 10 years old are involved in serious crimes there, including weapons and drugs, and are literally being trained to become hardened criminals.

The trouble, however, extends beyond organized crime. In June, Swedish police in the city of Trollhättan, during a riot in the Kronogården suburb, were attacked by approximately a hundred masked migrant youths, mainly Somalis. The rioting continued for two nights.

Violent riots, however, are just part of Sweden"s security problems. In 2010, according to the government, there were "only" 200 radical Islamists in Sweden. In June, the head of the Swedish Security Service (Säpo), Anders Thornberg, told the Swedish media that the country is experiencing a "historical" challenge in having to deal with thousands of "radical Islamists in Sweden". The jihadists and jihadist supporters are mainly concentrated in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö and Örebro, according to Säpo. "This is the "new normal" ... It is an historic challenge that extremist circles are growing," Thornberg said.

The Swedish establishment has only itself to blame for it.

Thornberg said that Säpo now receives around 6,000 intelligence tips a month concerning terrorism and extremism, compared to an average of 2,000 a month in 2012.

Some of the reasons for the increase, according to terror expert Magnus Ranstorp of the Swedish Defense University, is due to segregation in Sweden"s no-go zones:

"... it has been easy for extremists to recruit undisturbed in those areas. ...the prevention measures have been pretty tame... if you compare Denmark and Sweden, Denmark is at university level and Sweden at kindergarten level".

Asked what the increase in people supporting extremist ideologies indicated about Sweden"s work to combat radicalism, Interior Minister Anders Ygeman told the Swedish news outlet TT:

"I think it says little. This is a development we have seen in a number of countries in Europe. On the other hand, it shows that it was right to take those measures we have. A permanent centre against violent extremism, that we have increased the budget to work against violent extremism, that we have increased the security police"s budget for three years."

There may be even more jihadists than Säpo thinks. In 2015, at the height of the migrant crisis, when Sweden received over 160,000 migrants, 14,000 of them who were told that they were going to be deported disappeared inside Sweden without a trace. As late as April 2017, Sweden was still looking for 10,000 of them. Sweden, however, has only 200 border police staff at its disposal to look for them. One "disappeared migrant" was Rakhmat Akilov, from Uzbekistan. He drove a truck into a department store in Stockholm, killing four people and wounding many others. He later said he did it for the Islamic State (ISIS).

Meanwhile, Sweden continues to receive returning ISIS fighters from Syria, a courtesy that hardly improves the security situation. Sweden, so far, has received 150 returning ISIS fighters. There are still 112 who remain abroad -- considered the most hardcore of all -- and Sweden expects many of those to return as well. Astonishingly, the Swedish government has given several of the ISIS returnees protected identities to prevent local Swedes from finding out who they are. Two Swedish ISIS fighters who returned to Europe, Osama Krayem and Mohamed Belkaid, went on to help commit the terror attacks at Brussels airport and the Maelbeek metro station in the center of Brussels, on March 22, 2016. Thirty-one people were killed; 300 were wounded.

Swedish news outlets have reported that the Swedish towns that receive the returnees do not even know they are returning ISIS fighters. One coordinator of the work against violent Islamist extremism in Stockholm, Christina Kiernan, says that "...at the moment there is no control over those returning from ISIS-controlled areas in the Middle East".

Kiernan explains that there are rules that prevent the passing of information about returning jihadists from Säpo to the local municipalities, so that the people who are in charge in the municipal authorities, including the police, have no information about who and how many returned ISIS fighters there are in their area. It is therefore impossible to monitor them -- and this at a time when Säpo estimates the number of violent Islamist extremists in Sweden in the thousands.

Even after all this, the Swedish state, in true Orwellian style, fights those Swedish citizens who point out the obvious problems that migrants are causing. When police officer Peter Springare said in February that migrants were committing a disproportionate amount of crime in the suburbs, he was investigated for inciting "racial hatred".

Currently, a 70-year-old Swedish pensioner is being prosecuted for "hate speech", for writing on Facebook that migrants "set fire to cars, and urinate and defecate on the streets".

With thousands of jihadists all over Sweden, what could be more important than prosecuting a Swedish pensioner for writing on Facebook?

Central Bank Shell Game: What Sweden's Negative Interest Rates Do To Consumers

Authored by Nick Kamran via LettersFromNorway.com,

Sweden’s welfare state supposedly allows for success while providing a safety net for those unable to keep up with the market. In principle, it is an ideal state, achieving a utopian like state. However, Sweden’s touted economic success has come at the expense of the Krone (SEK) and long-term sustainability. Riksbank, the Swedish Central Bank, like their European contemporaries, have undertaken experimental policy, driving real and nominal interest rates below zero.

Not All Growth is Equal

Since 2014, Swedish deposit rates have been negative. Not only has overall negative real interest rate policy affected housing, but it also drove Swedish consumers deeper into debt. Embarking on the dual mandate policy may have staved off recession it created greater problems for the future.

Sources: The Swedish Central Bank (Riksbank), The World Bank and the OECD

Although current deposit rates are negative, at a record low of -1.25%, and the latest GDP print came in above forecast, at 2.3%, the growth rate has been tapering since 2015. Sweden’s “hot” GDP growth, relative to the region, could be attributed, not to industrial growth, but rather increased government spending, funding social programs. Additionally, with no incentive to save, consumer debt has taken off, along with the housing prices, while disposable income lagged. Swedish household debt is now at a record high. Hence, the Swedish growth story is not organic but rather a borrow and spend one.

Source: The IMF Working Paper WP/15/276 by Rima Turk

The Riksbank Shell Game

Swedes, like Norwegians, are victims of the “exchange rate versus housing price shell game.” The SEK received today for the sale of their inflated flats has fallen 30% against the US dollar (average USDSEK in 2014 was 6.86 vs. 8.95 on March 15, 2017). Stockholm housing rose 31% during the same period in SEK terms, negating the recent gains over the same period. The SEK fell 23% against gold in the same period.

Hence, the “Swedish Model” is under attack. The egalitarian underpinnings, unwinding with the negative rates, are driving a wedge into Swedish society, creating extremes on both sides of the economic spectrum. The rampant consumerism, encouraged by artificially low rates, continues to widen the wealth gap. Coincidentally, the middle class deteriorated the most between 2014 and 2015: the same time that deposit rates took a dive. Furthermore, the negative savings rates are driving the average person to “gamble” on speculative investments instead of saving, building a future over the long term.

No Pain No Gain

Recently, inflation has been heating up. Near zero from 2013 to 2015, it edged up to almost 1% in 2016, and printed1.8% in February. Much of it is supply driven: rising import prices attributed to a falling SEK. The real interest rates, currently at -2.3% (Repo Rate – Inflation), fell -.4% since last month. At some point, Riksbank will either have to raise rates or the government will have to intervene to avert a currency crisis.

Interestingly, Sweden is one of the most economically diverse nations in the world, ranking fourth in economic complexity. Historically, Sweden has been an industrial and innovation powerhouse with firms like ABB, SKF (ball bearings), Astra Zeneca, and H&M. An economy like Sweden’s could more easily adjust to a sustainable interest rate than almost any nation. Although there would be a short-term housing bust, the money would quickly flow into the other and diverse industries, creating new opportunities rather quickly (there is precedence).

Hence, instead of undertaking experimental rate policy, Riksbank and the Swedish government should be engineering a soft landing or a “controlled crash,” adjusting taxes and policy to ensuring a smooth transition to sustainability for the general population. There is precedent from Iceland that already exists.

It is clear that the negative rate experiment is neither sustainable nor helpful to economic growth. It only inflates bubbles while widening the wealth gap in Swedish society. A once prudent and financially conservative people are now getting drunk on debt, wrecking their futures. The very premise of Swedish society is under attack. Nevertheless, it does not appear that this policy will abate anytime soon. There seems to be one lever in the Central Banker’s control room: interest rates. If anything, they may get more aggressive with it.

Meanwhile, Rioting Breaks Out In Sweden

It would appear the mainstream media (along with several celebrities and Swedish politicians) is going to be apologizing to President Trump once again.

Having spent the entire new cycle trying to ignore the immigrant crisis facing Sweden, and pin the ignorant tail on Trump, both Dagbladet and Expressen reports riots breaking out in the highly immigrant concentrated Stockholdm borough of Rinkeby, Sweden with police firing warning shots as 100s of young people throw stones and burn cars.

During the evening hundreds of young people gathered in the center of Rinkeby, well known for its high concentration of immigrants and people with immigrant ancestry.

In June 2010, Rinkeby was the scene of riots and attacks against the local police station and Rinkeby is the region in which the "60 Minutes" crew were attacked in 2016.

The problems Sweden faces integrating large numbers of Muslim immigrants is a subject on which Nordstjernan columnist Ulf Nilson has written many times. His warnings of increasing radicalization among Sweden’s Muslims – warnings he started to broadcast a decade ago – now seem eerily prophetic in light of an Associated Press investigation that found Stockholm to be a breeding ground for jihadists among Swedish Somalis.

According to the AP report, which first ran Jan. 24, an al-Qaida-linked group is busy recruiting anti-government fighters among Somali youths living in Rinkeby. A suburb of Stockholm, Rinkeby has earned the nickname of “Little Mogadishu” because of the number of Somalis living there. Rinkeby is also the center of the recruiting efforts of al-Shabab, a group with ties to al-Qaida.

Rinkeby is a known problem area in Stockholm. It was here NRK journalist Anders Magnus was attacked with stones last spring, and here the police never go in the evenings without reinforcements from other patrols according to Dabladet. A freelancer the newspaper spoke to, described the situation as serious.

BREAKING: Massive riots happening now in Sweden. Stockholm in flames. Trump was right again!https://t.co/ZQa9Res2tu pic.twitter.com/9Qm3idTS9O

— Tennessee (@TEN_GOP) February 21, 2017

"I"ve been in some turmoil, but this is something extra. It looks like a war zone here", he was quoted as saying .

Freelance Photographer Janne Åkesson has also been at the site Monday night and early Tuesday. "They threw stones at police and police fired warning shots. I got out when it was at its worst" he said to Dagbladet. He added that there were many youths with hoods and hats on.

"It was very chaotic. I have seen much in Rinkeby: they burn cars all the time - unfortunately this was beyond the ordinary."

* * *

As Expressen reports (via Google Translate):

The alarm came to the police at 20:18 on Monday evening. A police patrol should then have been in the area for disposing of a wanted person.

In connection with this began several people at the subway throwing stones at police.

There appeared a number of young people threw stones at the police patrol. I do not know how many it concerned, but there will be several people anyway, says Lars Bystrom, spokesperson at the Stockholm police, told Expressen TV.

Police patrol on the site must have felt so constricted that they were forced to fire warning shots in connection with the stoning. The police will then have withdrawn from the location.

Photos of the site, one can see how many cars are on fire, and emergency services are on site to extinguish them.

7-8 cars have been burned in the area. We move back and forth, it never stands still at such incidents but we have good resources in place, says Lars Bystrom.

According to information are about the emergency services have requested reinforcements from Sollentuna and Brännkyrka.

At 22:20 the police attacked a second time by the youth gang. It was about a planned, concerted attack where the young people rushed towards the police and threw stones.

A police officer was hit by a stone on his arm, but it is unclear how seriously injured he was. Police headlining the event as assaulting a police officer and rioting. No person should even have been arrested in connection with the stoning.

Police EMS Units have been blocked from entering...

EMS Units are blocked and unable to get in to render assistance to the injured#RInkebyhttps://t.co/X99l8ocbzV pic.twitter.com/fFJfZrVtaI

— TrumpTracker (@DaveNYviii) February 21, 2017

*  *  *

How long before Schumer starts crying for the poor immigrants of "little Mogadishu"? And how long before CNN manages to blame Trump for tonight"s riots?