How did Sweden become Europe's capital of gun crime? - Mark Webb
When I think of Sweden, I think of blonde hair, IKEA, ABBA, Bjorn Borg and meatballs. I think of an ordered society, one with a very high standard of living and I think of places of outstanding natural beauty. These things also come to mind for many people I'm sure. Sadly, things have changed and today Sweden is now the capital of European gun crime. There's more gun crime related deaths in Sweden that in any country in Europe (4 million when the Euro average is 1.4). In the year 2021 there were 342 reported non-accidental, non-suicidal shootings, resulting in death. That figure doesn't count police involved shootings. In the Swedish city of Malmo they have had 298 shootings from 2014-2021. In 2020 they had 41 gun murders in one year in one small neighbourhood. Many of these are broad daylight shootings. People (often teens) being shot in public places, town squares, parks and while in cafes. The weapons used being AKs or automatic pistols.
These are the official figures. Unofficially and off the record, both the police and those who know the word on the street are saying that there are many more shootings, stabbings and even bombings, that go unreported and uninvestigated.
For years now Sweden has suffered from higher than average crime rates, when compared to other EU countries, especially those crimes of a violent nature; assaults, sexual assaults, hate crimes etc. Rape is at an all time high.
The Swedish Police have tried to be proactive. They have had firearms amnesties. One in 2013 where 15,000 guns were handed in, in the south of the country. Swedish Police took 1,180 guns off the streets in 2018 and in a gun amnesty, also in 2018, they saw 12,000 firearms handed in. The law in Sweden is strict on weapons ownership. For guns it's over 18s with a clean record, reason for wanting a weapon, have to pass a safety course, be vetted, be a member of a gun club. Weapons such as hunting and target rifles, shotguns, all needing a license, checks etc. Also requiring a license are all air guns, airsoft weapons, paintball guns, you even need a license to own and use a starting pistol. All blade carry is banned except a Swiss Army knife, and only then if you are over 21. Pepper spray is legal but a special permit is required to own it. The gun laws in Sweden are strict and they are getting stricter. All this has done is to punish firearm's owners. As always it's easier to have a crack down on the lawful, the legally owned and the licensed.
So the question is, why all the gun violence? One fifth of the population of Sweden (total population 10.4 million) were not born in Sweden (some 2.7 million non-ethnic Swedes. They are immigrants and refugees from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Turkey etc. Coming into Sweden at a rate of 110,000 per year. Mass unchecked immigration took place in the recent past with Sweden taking more refugees (per capita) than any other country in the EU. In amongst the immigrant population, slipping in under the wire, have been ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Muslim Brother and others of the Jihadist ilk. Now the blowback from that has 44% of Swedish voters saying that immigration is the number one political issue. The Swedish PM said in early 2022 that Sweden had failed to integrate its immigrants. The far-right and mainstream parties of all shades are turning increasingly anti-immigrant. The immigrants are in 60 areas, labelled 'areas of concern', huge estates that have high quality social housing. They have benefits, aid, support etc, and they can take a state pension at 61. They get free education, health care and a reduced travel rate.
The response to this Swedish hospitality has been Middle Eastern style rioting, grenade attacks, and car burnings. Stockholm currently has 15 gang disputes all raging at the same time. Drugs imported over the border from Denmark are fueling the gang violence. With 17,000 kids a year dropping out of school before the age of 16 and tens of thousands of parentless refugees coming into the country, there's an ample amount of new blood. There's 5,000 Euros to be made a week for a young person selling drugs in Sweden. Big money.
The Swedes had a reputation for being the least racist people in Europe; neutral, accepting and peaceful. It seems that their hospitality has not been repaid. Sweden is the only country in Europe where gun deaths are rising. Let's be logical, this isn't about guns, and it's not about race and colour either, it's about culture and perspective. There's a chronic lack of education in the immigrant community. They have the lowest grades and the highest levels of unemployment. If you insert a huge percentage of people from another culture into your culture in a very short space of time this is what you get; 2,500 shootings in 5 years (2016-2021). Gun crime is out of control. Murder was a rare thing in Sweden, now it's an everyday event.
Why has gun crime proved to be so lethal? According to gunshot surgeon Dr Ardavan Khoshnood of Malmo Central hospital, the gunshots are mostly to the head. Sweden has no law against wearing a bullet resistant vest, hence the practice amongst gang members is widespread. Thus, the shooters aim for the heads and necks of their gang rivals. Unsurvivable wounds result - a gunshot to the head has only a 5% survival rate. Of course it's not all gang members getting killed, a young mum was hit and killed by a stray round from a gunfight in 2019, and a schoolgirl was killed in the cross fire as she walked to school in 2022. A young female hostel worker was knifed to death trying to break up a fight in an immigrant hostel; stabbed in the heart by a Somali.
There's a perfect storm of events. The incoming population has no loyalty to Sweden, or to Swedish Law, and they don't speak the language. Sweden was a peaceful society, having not been to war since 1814 they are simply not used to such levels of crime, violence and terrorism. The people arriving are coming from war-torn countries and they have been in war zones, either as fighters or victims, driven into mental illness by combat exposure. A sizeably number of the 'new citizens' of Sweden have become foreign fighters, travelling back to the Middle East to fight in the Jihad, then returning yet again to safety in Sweden. Yet people have been afraid to speak out about all this for fear of being branded a racist.
Sweden has been neutral for 200 years; sending peacekeepers but not going to war. Now the war has come to them! They imported it.
Why does this matter? Sweden is in the process of joining NATO. It was stopped from doing so by Turkey who objected as a number of Kurdish organisations, considered terrorists by the Turks, are based in Sweden. It was estimated by Swedish Police that around 200 jihadists were in Sweden in 2007, now here are thousands of them. There's been 'lone wolf' attacks by Muslim men driving cars and trucks into crowds. In a recent 2022 poll, 48% of Swedes said they were deeply concerned about terrorist attacks. Around 1 in 5 white native Swedes say they support far-right parties and will vote for them. It's an election year in Sweden. We'll see what happens. Sweden is unstable. As a new NATO member right now they might do more harm than good. Other NATO allies relying on Sweden to support the anti-Russian effort will need to watch their backs! Neutral Sweden is no longer neutral.
Bring on the Recession
In the Second World War the UK produced some of the best aircraft in the world. We beat the mighty Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain and prevented a German invasion. This was thanks to our brave pilots, including our allies, and it was also because we had the necessary engineering and design skills. When the war was over we got back on our feet by churning out cars and motorcycles for the export market; we even produced our own atomic bomb.
The scientists and engineers who made this possible are all dead now and the skills that they passed on to their apprentices are in danger of being forgotten.
Years ago I was working in Peterborough where they have a steam railway called the Nene Valley Line. The enthusiasts who run the railway were having difficulty finding a locomotive engineer. That's understandable because steam is an obsolete form of power, but we are also short of electrical and mechanical engineers.
In the UK the change from being an industrial economy to a service economy has gone too far. Germany and France have similar economies to us but they have preserved much more of their manufacturing base. This transformation was inevitable given the industrial rise of Japan and China, but it was aided and abetted by our greedy bosses.
Capitalism is not nostalgic. Big businessmen don't care if we import everything as long as they make a profit. The Tories are now offering farmers £100,000 to retire, so that they can import cheap food from abroad, and 'redevelop' our countryside. Having destroyed our industries they now want to destroy our agriculture. Instead of being a nation of farmers and skilled craftsmen we will all work for Amazon.
Now that we have left the EU the Tory dream of the gig economy is becoming a reality. First they will get rid of what they call Red Tape; employment protection laws, and health and safety regulations. Then the will introduce American-style 'hire and fire' policies that rob the working man of all dignity.
If the Tories are not stopped soon we will lose our skills and be dependent on imported goods and labour. We are already facing massive price increases for gas and oil. Liz Truss, who used to work for Shell and presuamably has shares in the company, is borrowing an estimated £150 billion to pay the energy companies. This collosal sum will be paid back out of taxation. In other words, we are being bribed with our own money.
Our best hope is that the coming recession will force a change in economic policy. Our brainwashed public usually does as it's told by the Sun and the Daily Mail, but a period of deep austerity might just spur them into action.
Sanctions Folly
The United States uses sanctions, or economic warfare, to enforce its foreign policy. They can throw their weight about because the US is the world's biggest economy and the foremost military power. They are also self-sufficient in gas and oil, and they can feed themselves with their own produce.
The same blessings do not apply to the United Kingdom. We have sadly depleted armed forces, and we import half of our food and fuel, but our delusional government follows the US like a faithful puppy. The sanctions we are levelling against Russia are hurting us more than them. We could have signed long-term contracts with Gazprom and Rosneft that would have given us gas and oil at the same advantageous rates as India and China. Instead we have made an enemy of Russia just to placate the US.
We are currently waging economic war on Russia, Belarus, China, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, and Venezuela. None of these countries are any threat to us; we are targeting them for human rights abuses or simply because they have defied America.
It's time that we faced reality. We are no longer a great empire on which the Sun never sets. We are a European country like France or Germany. We are part of the G7 group of nations and we are a nuclear power with a seat on the UN Security Council. We are a leading economy with good social services and transport links, but we are not in the same poweful position as the United States and it's time we realised it.
The last time we acted as an imperial power was the Suez fiasco of 1956. We invaded Egypt, together with France and Israel, without American permission and were ordered out by a furious President Eisenhower (pictured). Faced with the threat of American sanctions our delusional prime minister, Anthony Eden, was forced to obey. That was before the 1973 Yom Kippur War when the Zionists hijacked American foreign policy by bribing corrupt Congressmen with dollars donated to Israel by the American taxpayers. An ingenious scam that persists to this day.
The Falklands Conflict was a legitimate British response to an invasion in which America had no interest. Our task force defeated the Argentine expeditionary force at great costs in blood and treasure. Our Harrier jet fighters performed brilliantly but the loss of a quarter of our navy showed the vulnerability of ships to missile attack.
Our interventions in the Balkans, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan were part of NATO offensives that did nothing for the UK, except to flood us with refugees. We should have minded our own business in the past and we should certainly do so in the future.
Beware of Experts
Rishi Sunak, the defeated contender for the prime minister's job, wanted to maintain high rates of tax but the victorious Liz Truss (pictured) promised immediate tax cuts. At the same time the Governor of the Bank of England raised interest rates to control inflation, but most economists thought that he had left it too late. All of these people are highly educated and surrounded by economists and statisticians, but the truth is that none of them know what's coming. The target interest rate was calculated by the BOE to be 2% but it's actually 10%.
Of course there are many reasons for our predicament; the pandemic shutdown, the war in Ukraine, the disruption of Brexit, and green taxes, have all played their part. But I can't help feeling that the global capitalist system needs a recession every so often. Every time that the working class enjoys a period of prosperity a recession puts them back in their place.
The current wave of inflation will eventually subside because "what goes up must come down." When people reduce their spending prices will fall. And the fighting in Ukraine will end when the West runs out of money to support Zelensky and he flees to Israel.
This is contrary to expert opinion. Liz Trust thinks that Ukraine is winning the war, and she predicts that tax cuts will revive our stagnant economy. At the moment the pound is nearing parity with the dollar. A further decline in productivity could force a fall in the value of the pound which would increase the cost of imports and increase inflation.
We will get over this crisis just as we got over the Oil Crisis of 1974 and the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. Economics is not just about theories and calculations, it's also about resources and industrial potential. The UK is an advanced nation with world class universities. At present our relationship with the EU is strained but eventually we will negotiate a proper deal with the world's most successful trading bloc. Our proximity to the mainland will prove more powerful than the petty nationalism of the Brexiteers.
In the meantime we will struggle to pay for our food, fuel and mortgages. In other words we will get poorer for five or ten years before we recover. The moral of this story is beware of experts, be as self-sufficient as possible, and keep out of foreign wars.
Bill Boethius Blog
https://billboethius.blogspot.com
Nation Revisited
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