I'm not a fan of this law and expect it will end up being abused as much as civil forfeiture in the US. That said, it is interesting to see a stop and frisk law that actually targets wealthy people for once.
We’re already starting to see some weird consequences of a closely related law change that allows the authorities to immediately seize assets from people with unpaid debts. For example, there was a news report recently of a woman who lent her car to a friend who was in debt. He was stopped by the police and the car was seized. She complained and could prove she was the legal owner of the car. But that didn’t matter. The authorities sold her car anyway and gave the money to the guy’s lenders. Now they’re saying this was not a mistake and you should be very careful who you lend your car to.
How far does that go to? If you rent a car and get stopped by police does that allow police to seize and sell the car? What if you are driving company car? Company plane?
Probably not. Swedish juris prudence is a bit illogical. Laws typically apply very differently depending on your social standing, and the discrepancy being illogical is usually not an effective counter argument.
Doesn't Target wealthy people. It targets unexplained wealth. Actually wealthy people will be able to show a bank account statement or say "My father is X" or whatever and get out of it. It is targeting thieves who are running around with stolen goods, but it will actually affect people who have conscientiously saved and flaunt their few pieces of a hard-earned luxury.
I can't read the article. But it doesn't seem to be targeting wealthy people. Because if you are known to be wealthy, then your luxury items can be explained.
What in the actual F is going on. I sincerely hope my cursory reading of the law was wrong. This law[1] seems pretty much to be a presumed-guilty-until-you've-proven-yourself-innocent thing.
Seems they've entered some kind of reverse Minority Report middle ground, where they don't have to prove you committed a crime. If there is reasonable suspicion that a crime was committed for you to own that Rolex, it's gone. Possibly that means "you couldn't prove it was acquired legally."
There goes any chance of me returning to Sweden, I guess. This is going downhill fast.
> The Oresund bridge between Denmark and Sweden, which opened in 2000, made illegal firearms and drugs easier to transfer.
> Ten years ago Sweden, with 10m people, had one of the lowest rates of gun violence and murder in Europe. It now has one of the highest
Is Denmark known for illegal firearms and drugs export? The way it's written it's almost blaming Denmark for its issues. And besides, wasn't that 20 years ago. Surely the illegal firearms and crime would have flooded right in, starting in 2000 until 2010. What happened 10 years ago that started this crime wave?
> law came into force allowing them to detain people flaunting ostentatious luxury goods
There is also no way this law won't be abused. Everyone is looking at US cops robbing people in plain daylight of cash and are horrified. Except, other countries' government officials which are getting very excited by such prospects, it seems: "We too, can rob people!"
I live in Malmö, on the Swedish side of that bridge. The police quite regularly stops local youths on their way to Denmark with guns and grenades. The Danish minister of justice recently referred to them as “Swedish child soldiers” and threatened to close the border.
So yes, most Danes would probably object to that characterization.
Also living in Malmö, and the Oresund bridge does share some “blame”, but only because its an actual open border to the schengen area.
From what I’m told, people ride trains through europe with weaponry from eastern europe, where black market arms are easier to acquire, through a combination of leaky borders and post-war redundant stock.
In Australia, and I expect most western countries, it’s pointless discussing immigration without acknowledging it is being used as a lever by business to suppress wages and working conditions in the destination country, and that to do so immigrants are arriving under legal conditions that limit their ability to negotiate fair treatment and mean they live without political representation.
The deteriorating social conditions observed are not a consequence of there being more foreigners, but of deliberate policy decisions to make it more difficult for immigrants in some visa categories to prosper and fully participate in society,
a deliberate decision to extract max value from people for minimum reward
A lot of immigrants come as refugees from war torn countries, they already have problems, and their new country might not provide resources to help them deal with those problems well, especially the kids. They’ll be fine in one or two generations, but right now is trying for them and their new countries, and there is definitely blow back from that.
I’m not sure the economic lever really exists, but then again it might just be where I live since those immigrants are usually making lots of money as techies while the refugees aren’t really seen as sources of cheap labor (although the adults invariably get entry-level jobs while teenagers need help to integrate, work not being an option by the standards of the areas they settle in).
>The impulse behind it is a sense of helplessness over a long-term rise in violent crime. Ten years ago Sweden, with 10m people, had one of the lowest rates of gun violence and murder in Europe. It now has one of the highest, averaging a shooting a day. In 2022, 62 people were shot dead; last year it was 53.
Sweden has super strict gun control laws.
This is a pretty good case for the argument that the low levels of gun violence that Europe used to enjoy were more due to cultural values instead of strict laws.
So, as in america, again, you're guilty until you prove you're innocent, by either wasting a lot of money on legal costs, or alternatively, letting them steal whatever they took from you...
You're looking at income inequality, not wealth inequality. While Sweden has relatively low income inequality, it has extremely high wealth inequality.
Indeed. The low income inequality is in many ways a contributing factor to the high wealth inequality, since it is virtually impossible to become wealthy in Sweden just by working hard and earning a salary.
Virtually no 'normal' jobs have a salary much above $200k. Whereas in the US that salary is quite achievable for a lot of people by just working your way up in a normal corporation. Even CEO salaries in the biggest Swedish companies rarely break $1m and if you break $2m you have among the very highest salaries in Sweden.
"There is no consensus on the main cause of this surge in violence"
If I am not misunderstood, the consensus in Sweden and globally is that the situation is caused by lax immigration policies and taking in too many immigrants who have not been able to integrate to the society.
Are you saying that the violence is caused by the immigrants directly or indirectly?
I can’t say for Sweden but in the Texas immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than citizens[1]. There doesn’t seem to be a good source of data for the US as a whole.
I live in Sweden and the issues of lack of integration are eerily similar to those that affect the UK (where I was born and raised 80s-10s); pockets of extremely isolated cultures living in essentially parallel societies.
First, migration is too inclusive and too exclusive of a term. For example it would exclude a second generation individual- and if we are suggesting that religion is an issue, those tend to be more radical than their migrant parents.
It would also include people who already have a job and then move to Sweden.
In the UK, second generation migrants are often more spoiled and act worse than their comparatively entrepreneurial and industrious parents.
Then, to conflate matters even further there’s the issue that these parallel societies typically are poorer than the middle-class areas of the host country; and a correlation between wealth and crime is really strong.
So, it’s too reductive to claim anything relating to migration here. It’s an impossible conversation, and filled with conflicting personas in data and it is therefore difficult to contextualise with statistics.
No, it's not too reductive to claim that immigration has lead to problems. It's quite plainly obvious at this point.
The only reason why ones mind will struggle to grasp this is because you understand that there are severe consequences for openly criticizing immigration. Your mind will conjure "nuances" to allow you to avoid confronting the idea that something has to change, and allow you to remain socially, financially, even legally safe. As you live here in Sweden you will be aware of the number of people sentenced to prison for criticizing immigration, due to the hate speech legislation here.
It's too reductive to claim that immigration didn't cause problems, and it's too reductive to claim that immigration is the source of most of the problems.
The cause is a single genetically and socially society allowing mass immigration but not changing society to match the newcomers and/or not selecting newcomers based on culture similarities and/or not bridging the divide.
When you make a mass immigration commitment you need to follow it up with tons of work/money/education/discussion. That's why it fails in Europe but succeeds elsewhere. Then they make it impossible to succeed by limiting discussion and calling it hate speech.
North America has two different approaches. Leave who you are behind and become an American. Keep who you are and become Something/Canadian. Sweden wants it both ways.. leave who you are behind but never become Swedish.
Integration is a two-way street. I've known many people born in England, France, Germany who feel excluded from education opportunities, workplace opportunities, healthcare and general civil society because of their family origin, cultural background and pure skin colour. Probably also how they speak in the UK. This issue is much less in new world countries (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand).
Let people into society and they will be part of it. Exclude them and they will form their own societies which you will have far greater issue with.
Edit - some examples - Several in the UK grew up in areas with poor schooling because of where they were born (places cheap enough for immigrants to move to). One who for similar reasons (poor local health service as a child) believes they have avoidable ongoing health issues. Black man im the UK cant flag a cab because they just wont stop for him despite being well dressed in a suit. Turkish-parent German feels pushed into 'workplace training school' (sorry I don't know the term) rather than university because of his background - had to do an extra 2 years of study "just because my parents are from Turkey". French woman of notth african ancestry felt she had to leave the country because she is constantly asked "where are you from" and they won't take "France" as an answer. Common thread is none of these people (all well spoken, well dressed, educated, well mannered) feel they had a chance at being part of mainstream society in their country of birth.
Integration of randomly arrived (as opposed to selectively chosen and well-educated) Muslims has proved nigh impossible everywhere in the world of "unbelievers".
As far as the UK goes, Hindus and Sikhs, who look every bit as exotic and dark-skinned as Pakistanis, are on average richer than white Britons and also societally very successful.
If there is some kind of "pure skin colour"-based racism at work, it somehow didn't stop them from reaching the upper class within generation.
The problem of this conversation is that "immigration" is treated as one single, amorphous thing.
What kind of immigrants are we talking about? What was their income, their skills, their ability to speak the local language, what jobs could they get once they arrived in the country? Answer all those questions, and depending on your answers we may find a completely integrated, successful migrant or someone who lives generally excluded from society. Skin color and religion may play a role sometimes, but they are typically far from being determinant.
For that matter, I am a dark skinned immigrant in the country I live in. I also speak the language fluently, am highly educated, and make around 3x the median local income. Of course, I never experienced racism. Change some of those social attributes, and I bet the outcome would be different.
Canada is cracking down on immigration but they tend to attract higher education immigrants which even if they have a religion, they are more likely to be more secular in their day-to-day.
Muslims make up 10% of 2016 and later arrivals followed by 14.04% of their Non-permanent residents. Christianity, Secular and No Religion beat those numbers.
From what I understand, Sweden numbers are in 80% of immigrants are Muslim but this is all news articles and such, I'm unable to locate hard numbers.
Comparing Canada to Sweden I think is false comparison.
I wasn't trying to compare Sweden to Canada, just refute the argument it's impossible to integrate large numbers of Muslim immigrants into a Western population.
But since you brought it up, 14% of 1 million immigrants into a country with a 40M population is somewhat comparable to 80% of 100,000 immigrants to a 10M population country. And it's not 80%, the majority of Swedish immigrants are repatriating Swedes.
Maybe Sweden needs to start eating more Shawarma. It's super popular here in my part of Canada. Helps employ Arabs and acclimatizes Canadians to them.
Canada doesn't accept refugees, they accept highly educated immigrants. That is very different. A very large fraction of immigrants to Sweden can't even read in any language, it is very hard to employ such people or educate them as you have to start with the basics for adults, but it is hard to learn such fundamental things that late in life.
That is not a refutation, though. Canada is fairly selective when it comes to immigrants. Europe receives whomever the people smugglers can get across the water, and the demographic difference in parameters such as literacy or sympathy to radical versions of Islam is absolutely vast.
I don't think any Swede wanted conditions in Syria to get so bad that mass numbers of people felt they needed to leave their homes, friends, and livelihood in order to survive, so no, I don't think Swedes wanted this mass immigration.
But it happened. So what next, kill them all? Starve them in concentration camps? Isolate them on islands with no hope at all of integration or work?
If only there were some way to unite the nations to set up a better system that could prevent decades of internal war and conflict, or set up a treaty for how to handle refugees.
Perhaps even just some sort of union of all the European countries to jointly and equally share the load when refugees come.
I'm not apportioning blame just saying that what's happening now is feeding a future of separate societies that probably everyone would rather avoid.
I don't believe the average Swede wanted mass immigration but there were immigration policies in place that were put in place by Sweden's leaders on behalf of its people that weren't questioned until later. You are where you are now - you can't unring a bell. You have to deal with the issues of the future now not the issues of the past
Is it the fault of the native population for not wanting to mix?
A weird fact about Sweden is that if a popular vote was ever held on immigration alone, we would never have had this situation. The polls on the issue have always been in majority "against" mass immigration. So for some reason democracy doesn't work over here. Maybe you've had better luck where you're at.
The data suggests that immigrants to America have lower crime rates than Americans but European immigrants have higher crime rates than Europeans. This reflects the relative criminality of all four groups.
It's not that straightforward, though. US is much better at attracting highly educated and highly productive workers because of considerable higher wages and demand for labour than in Europe. While Europe is more of a fallback options for people who can't do better (I mean relatively of course as proportion of all immigrants).
Sweden is the opposite to Texas in many ways. One of them is that here immigrants do commit far more violent crime than natural citizens, on a per-capita basis.
Saying that all immigrants behave the same across the world is like saying all groups of people are the same.
The failure of Syrian, Afghan, and Iraqi immigrants to integrate into Swedish culture is well documented. They exist almost as a separate society within Sweden now, unlike immigrants in Texas.
>In a national address on Thursday night, the prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, said it was “a difficult time for Sweden”, blaming “political naivety” and “unsuccessful integration”.
Would successful integration be like in Texas where most Anglos have little knowledge of Tejano culture?
Or perhaps you mean the Anglo immigrants who moved to Mexican Texas and promised to follow Mexican law and become Catholic but after they gained power they declared independence as a pro-slavery country, then after economic failure decided to join a neighboring country?
The Amish are successfully integrated into Pennsylvania, right? Even though they exist almost as a separate society?
>The impulse behind it is a sense of helplessness over a long-term rise in violent crime. Ten years ago Sweden, with 10m people, had one of the lowest rates of gun violence and murder in Europe. It now has one of the highest, averaging a shooting a day. In 2022, 62 people were shot dead; last year it was 53.
The Amish are not shooting people or forming violent gangs, comparing the two is not really a good example. In fact your comparison makes the point that the real reason for the problem in Sweden is the culture of the immigrants and not just the fact that they are immigrants or live as a separate society.
The Amish are deeply non-violent, and have no problem existing alongside the rest of the country. The same is not true in Sweden.
>Or perhaps you mean the Anglo immigrants
It wasn't colonized by only people of Anglo-Saxon origin, but people from all over Europe including Eastern Europe.
But yes, Texas was created in the same way that Mexico itself was created and that almost every other nation was created.
I think almost every Swede would consider it to be a bad thing if the same thing happened in Sweden.
I was asking you to explain what appropriate integration would mean when you write 'They exist almost as a separate society within Sweden now, unlike immigrants in Texas.'
We know there there are multiple almost separate societies in Texas, so if that's your touchstone, I don't understand it.
Brownsville, at 94% Hispanic, is a lot different from Galveston.
Regarding 'deeply non-violent', I urge you to consider that pacifism is not the same as non-violent. For example, "The Amish Keep to Themselves. And They’re Hiding a Horrifying Secret" / "A year of reporting—an exclusive partnership between Cosmo and Type Investigations—reveals a culture of incest, rape, and abuse." at https://www.typeinvestigations.org/investigation/2020/01/14/... .
So, what does successful integration look like to you, in the Texas context?
> by only people of Anglo-Saxon origin
Since we were talking about Texas, I was using the localized term, which https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo#United_States correctly describes as "In many parts of the United States, especially those with high Latino populations, the term "Anglo" is applied to white Americans who are not of Latino origin. ... a synonym for non-Latino whites; that is European Americans, most of whom speak the English language, even those who are not necessarily of English or British descent."
I don't think you know enough about Texas to make substantive comparisons about societal integration.
You can define sexual violence in a lot of ways, it's a pretty loose term, I know there are some people who would consider non-consensual arm touching or strong language to be sexual violence. Most people will say that sexual violence and straight up murder via guns and knives are different things though.
I'm not saying that the Amish don't have crime or any problems, but that article doesn't have data to show that the rate of sexual violence in the Amish community is higher than in secular communities or other religious communities like Hasidic Jews or Buddhists. Let's not even attempt to talk about sexual violence in the Syrian, Afgan, or Iraqi immigrant communities in Europe.
Honestly just look at real crime statistics for different communities, including the Amish, the data speaks for itself.
typeinvestigations is a partisan publication, I would not cite their investigative reporting for the same reasons I wouldn't cite Fox News. They are more likely to be motivated by racial hatred of white people than they are to actually be seeking the truth.
WRT Anti-Amish sentiment, yeah that's pretty messed up! tbh your arguments just seem to be making more of a case AGAINST multiculturalism, I'm not sure if that's your intent. This shows that even in the case of a completely nonviolent, insular community, harassment and hatred towards an out-group is inevitable. So why the heck do Swedish politicians think it's a good idea to allow a community of people with a very different culture and who DONT have a strong belief in pacifism to live in their country without integrating?
From that wikipedia article:
>Due to the Amish belief in pacifism, Amish victims of these crimes rarely retaliate.[4]
Sorta makes my point about the Amish community.
>So, what does successful integration look like to you, in the Texas context?
Comparing border towns with the rest of the state is a little unfair as people living there are very likely to be people with strong ties to Mexico (i.e. they physically go to Mexico often) and the least likely to assimilate. If Sweden shared a border with Syria then it would be a little more understandable for people living on the border to keep close ties with Syrian culture. Even just a little ways away from the border towns though Texas towns are much better integrated and similar to the rest of Texas and the US.
Texas border towns are undeniably MORE integrated than the case we're talking about in Sweden though. I was in Brownsville a few weeks ago and it's still pretty much America: everyone speaks English and it's taught in schools, the people still are pretty much American.
So to answer your question: I would expect the Syrian case to be at least more integrated than what it is, something more like a normal Texas town that's not on the border. e.g. Kingsville. High proportion of ethnically Latino people but still very much American in culture.
> I'm not saying that the Amish don't have crime or any problems,
Nor do I believe that's your point. It was a caution that pacifism isn't the same as not being violent.
Many Americans, Amish included, consider physical violence against children as part of proper childrearing, while Sweden is famous for being the first country to ban it.
So no, don't equate pacifism with not being violent.
And I asked elsewhere here, "Are there really no forms of violence which are concentrated in highly segregated ethnic Swedish neighborhoods?"
> and the least likely to assimilate
I infer you haven't heard the phrase "we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us." Some of those Tejanos came from families which were in Texas before its succession in the name of slavery.
New Mexico has families who speak Spanish at home and who can trace their local ancestry back to the 1600s.
So if you think you can explain away Brownsville as being a border town, then look to Santa Fe and ask what "assimilation" really means.
> everyone speaks English and it's taught in schools
How does knowing English reveal the level of integration?
As the Wikipedia page points out, the Amish "maintain a degree of separation from surrounding populations, and hold their faith in common, the Amish have been described by certain scholars as an ethnoreligious group, combining features of an ethnicity and a Christian denomination", and "Most Old Order Amish, New Order Amish and the Old Beachy Amish speak Pennsylvania Dutch".
Yet it also says "almost all Amish are functionally bilingual in Pennsylvania Dutch and English."
> the people still are pretty much American.
I think we have very different lenses. Of course they are Americans.
Tejanos, Amish, the Diné, Native Hawaiians, Puerto Ricans, Haredi Jews in New York, most Tlingit, the Gullah, and Cajuns are all pretty much American.
Tell me again what you think assimilation and integration should look like?
For that matter, I grew up in Miami. Half my schoolmates were Cuban immigrants, or children thereof. Most of these immigrants were refugees. The first generation struggles, and tends to stay with others like them. The second generation is bilingual, and able to navigate both cultures.
Like, I wanted to go on a date with a girl but her Cuban-born parents wanted me to come over first so they could grant permission. I had to bring my Spanish-speaking father as a translator because the girl's parents didn't speak English well enough and I didn't speak Spanish well enough. You really could lead a normal life in parts of Miami speaking only Spanish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_migration_to_Miami tells me that over half the county now has Cuban origin.
So don't you go tell me they weren't American, or go thinking that the US is some sort of uniform society. That dog won't hunt.
Are Sweden Finns, who speak Finnish as their mother tongue, or the Samí, not Swedish?
Based on my experience, Syrian refugees to Sweden haven't been there for long enough for the integration you want, just like the Cuban refugees around me when I was a kid.
I assume all the Syrian kids are learning Swedish in school, just like my Spanish-speaking classmates learned English at school. (Or is the Swedish education system worse than the Miami one of the 1970s and 1980s?)
In Germany the opposite is true[1]. I don't think it's wise to lump "immigrants" together as a group. The composition of immigrant populations varies a lot between countries (or even cities) and as with any individual criminality depends on factors like socioeconomic background. The specifics of immigration matter.
That article is about _arrests_ not crimes committed.
Undocumented folk are arrested less frequently, but that doesn’t necessarily mean fewer crimes are committed.
It could just as likely be that undocumented folk probably live in areas with fewer police stations. Or that crimes caused by undocumented folk to other undocumented folk go unreported and don’t lead to arrests.
Unfortunately nothing is cut and dry when it comes to crime stats :(
The profile of the average Swedish immigrant is different than the average US one. Many EU countries have counted and have seen immigrants commit disproportionally more crime.
"[Gang violence] is concentrated in highly segregated immigrant neighbourhoods. In Husby, a suburb of Stockholm, more than 80% of the population are migrants or the children of migrants, most of them from Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Turkey."
https://www.economist.com/europe/2020/11/28/why-sweden-strug...
Do you have a counter-factual source showing that immigrants are not more violent in Sweden?
They say people with 2-foreign born parents are overrepresented in the statistics of crime suspects. Does that translate to guilty of crimes? Maybe, but I would place money that racism and discrimination especially in more homogenous societies plays a part. People generally are averse to change and it's understandable that they feel loss and apprehension when they see their society under transformation, especially by people who look different than them, dress differently, speak a different language and eat different foods. But immigration can be a gain in other ways.
> They say people with 2-foreign born parents are overrepresented in the statistics of crime suspects. Does that translate to guilty of crimes? Maybe, but I would place money that racism and discrimination especially in more homogenous societies plays a part.
With that logic, I don't know what sort of statistic could even convince you.
As an aside, one uses prosecution (instead of guilty verdicts) simply because the statistics for prosecution are available.
That does not show that immigrants are more violent.
Gang violence is not the only form of violence. Are there really no forms of violence which are concentrated in highly segregated ethnic Swedish neighborhoods?
And there are non-violent crimes.
Another question is, are the numbers of immigrants who do not live in highly segregated immigrant neighborhoods with gang violence? It looks like over 1 million people in Sweden were born outside of Europe, or 10% of the population. They can't all be involved in violent crimes.
The Wikipedia entry for Husby points out the crime rates increased 'after the closure of the closest police station to Husby, in Rinkeby, in 2014. The station was reopened on the first of September 2023.' The Economist article you linked to was written in 2020.
Which leads me to wonder if immigrant neighborhoods were under-protected, which would place at least some blame on government failure rather than the people living there.
A lot depends on who the immigrants are. You are obviously going to get more problems if they are say criminals from some war zone as opposed to PhDs coming to teach at the university etc.
I think that may be because Texas gets Hispanic immigrants, whereas Europe gets immigrants from Islamic regions that have been disrupted by either the U.S. or Russia (mostly the U.S. though).
There should be an UN resolution that says: "You start a war, you take the immigrants."
The problem is not immigration or too many migrants, but rather the fact too many of them lack educational background you need to be successful in modern Western society. Mostly it's young men who arrived as asylum seekers without much education who fail to integrate and get marginalized.
Not really. I'm yet to see statistics which show highly educated migrants who come for work causing major issues. It's only a particular type of migration that causes issues with crime.
Is that based on any evidence? I'm not familiar enough with the situation to know what the causes are, but I am aware of the long long history of scapegoating immigrants for any and all problems, so I'm inherintly a bit skeptical of that assumption.
Unfortunately, the opposite effect of being afraid to acknowledge crime by immigrants is also present. It looks like the government is unwilling to publish data that would resolve that question but here are some clues from Wikipedia [1]:
"58% of men convicted of rape and attempted rape over the past five years were immigrants born outside of the European Union"
"of 100 suspects of murder and attempted murder using firearms, 90 had one parent born abroad"
"Most of the increase is related to gang violence in vulnerable areas in Sweden which are areas with [...] a large immigrant population"
If you take men from the dark ages and drop them into a deeply secular and free society you are asking for problems.
It took Europe a century to leave Christianity behind.
I think we have different ideas of what it means to leave Christianity behind.
The Church of Sweden was the state church until 2000. I think the monarch is still required to be Lutheran.
The Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Denmark is the state church of Denmark.
The King of Norway was the head of the Church of Norway until 2012, and "separation ... remains incomplete" quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway .
Spain didn't separate church and state until the 1970s.
Ireland gave special status to the Catholic Church until the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution Act 1972, and Church influence over schooling remains an issue.
Charles III is the titular head of the Church of England.
I've been trying to show you that states having an official church of state, or religion doesn't exclude the concept of 'secularism', if that is mainly to be understood as the possibility to live ones life free of that, without too much trouble.
The thing is in most islamic states that's not a given. Especially abandoning Islam itself.
That's an absolute NO-GO in most of them, because the 'noble' Quran forbids it, by penalty of death. Even if some of these states don't employ this literally, they do nothing to reign in their fanatics, harassing the heretics, because shrug, it's their own fault.
Do you know people who did this, abandoning Islam, and how they have to live, even far abroad, because of that?
You may point to Dubai, but I think it's a big sham, mostly attracting 'soldiers of fortune', to make it look good.
What is vile here is the 'nobleness' of the Quran, and how it is used to justify the 'viralness' of it. It's a thing favouring the development of behavior equal to rabies.
Why is that so important to you? For me it's irrelevant, because I could have left that behind as soon as I got aware of that sillyness.
Which I actually didn't until a few years later, because of 'opportunity costs'.
Took me 2 hours ping-ponging between desks in different offices, because loss of taxes, which federal government, state, county, city, and church did not want.
But that was all. No further harassment.
As far as I know, this has been the case in most of Europe for several hundreds of years, in one way or another. I have some doubts regarding Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland and Poland in these matters and timing, but not much more.
In most if not all islamic countries someone would have put a Fatwa on me, like I was rabid, for that percieved heresy.
Just being able to say: "No, I don't want this! Leave me alone!" is how it should be, overriding any other concern.
If you don't get this and expect me to refute every single point of your pedantry into all eternity, you're riding a dead horse as in the german word "Paragraphenreiter".
Immigration policy is one factor, but it's too easy to blame everything on a single group in society. While Sweden's immigration debate gets lots of attention abroad, other problems like our corrupt private school system and cocaine use among the wealthy don't make as many headlines.
If I'm not mistaken, the decades of economic liberalism and dismantling of social support systems has made a lot of people very worried about their future, and as usual the rich and powerful blame immigrants (or some other weak minority group) as a slight-of-hand to distract from the actual issues.
Just because two things cause problems, that doesn't mean they are equally problematic.
Like, it took over a year to build the new storm sewer system in town. It caused problems, like having blocked off roads and sidewalks and construction noise.
Yet I wouldn't equate that to the systemic problems in the rail system caused by privatization while also over-funding the road network.
this is true, but equally just because something is less problematic does not mean it should not be fixed. stopping elites abusing society is a fairly intractable problem. shutting the borders to societies with pre-modern values is not
No, but one shouldn’t take high impact statements about what the “consensus” is on any issue from random comments on the internet without any justification.
The second sentence is justification. I don't mind if people don't just accept my conclusion based on the comment, it's just a comment, a small piece of the puzzle in someones mind.
It’s not a justification though. That’s what I’m saying.
Just because the left doesn’t mention an issue, doesn’t mean that a consensus is reached.
No political party really talks much about school shootings in the US nowadays, but that doesn’t mean the consensus is young white men are naturally school shooters.
Do you think all comments need to be articles in length? My original comment contains an idea, and a justification. It really is almost platonic in how simple it is actually, schoolbook example.
You might feel that the justification is inadequate, but instead you began talking about how my comment doesn't "prove" anything, and now that it doesn't contain justification at all.
Part of the reason why this justifies the idea that a consensus actually has been reached, is that the left used to extol in length the benefits of immigration, and how Swedes are terrible people that need diversity to get anywhere. It turned out that was wrong, and now the country is heading away from reasonably being called a developed country any more. The focus of the leftists in control is instead to feverishly moderate the discussion so no one begins talking about __mass remigration__, what Sweden actually needs, and they do this by talking about limiting migration, even deporting some criminals. (the consensus, ding ding)
Not every comment need be an article, but the internet would be better if every comment has actual justification and not just statements.
I said “prove” at first, but I should’ve said “justifies.” It’s a better word for this.
An equally plausible reason for the left not talking about immigration is that there is not a giant migrant wave as there was in the mid-2010s and the lax migration policies are already in place.
My original comment contains justification for the idea presented. I don't understand why this is controversial to you? Why do you hold that my original comment does not contain justification? It clearly does.
Moving on to the real discussion, not this infernal semantic journey you've taken to embark upon.
If it was equally plausible that mass-immigration is currently not openly condoned by left-wing politicans, because the migrant wave isn't currently hitting europe and the lax migration policies are already in place; then why was the left so willing to talk about being pro-migration __before__ the migrant wave? The lax policies have been in place in Sweden since the 70:s.
What has happened, is that the disaster of the policies is now so plain and obvious, that not even professional liars can reasonably stand in the tv-broadcast and talk about it enthusiastically, it is a disaster for everyone involved and no one pretends it's not. Instead, all the politicians can do is ignore the problem while they silently try to alleviate as many small aspects of the disaster as possible, so people don't wake up to just how poorly this country has been run.
Are you suggesting that if OxyContin was available without a prescription that we would see less theft, car breakins, vagrancy, indecent exposure, etc?
one of the issues with drug prohibition is that it throws the baby out with the bathwater and consigns the man on the street to whatever dealers think will sell the most effectively: i.e. whatever is strongest without killing people or drastically fucking them up.
when drugs are legal people get more choice and - as shown with tobacco - people tend to favour weaker options. if cocaine were legal, people would likely be taking something closer to what you get from chewing the leaves. this could even just be regulated to be the case
It seems this is in between the civil forfeiture as it is applied in some places in the US (police seize mostly cash, immediately, regardless of any documentation the owner might show, and can keep it unless the owner goes to court and successfully argues for it back), and the unexplained wealth orders of the UK, which if I recall correctly involve needing to convince courts to approve the seizure first, involve a chance for documentation, and are primarily used for major properties. With this, it seems police can seize goods immediately, but have to return them unless they can convince the courts otherwise.
But, this is police seizing goods, and seemingly mostly small personal goods. How are people supposed to prove they acquired those lawfully on demand, immediately? While walking somewhere, can you provide documentation for how you acquired for all your clothes (yes, the photo apparently shows clothes being seized)? Your phone? Your laptop? Any jewellery, which might have been inherited?
And, if this is somehow to combat street violence, why is the only concrete example of a seizure given in the article of someone with a watch and cash at an airport? For that matter, if the person was carrying that much cash at an airport, presumably involving an international flight, how were already-present currency controls not applicable? If she declared the cash, that would have involved some documentation; did they seize it anyway? If she didn't declare the cash, surely it could already have been seized?
Or is this simply a matter of seizing possessions and arresting people who aren't read as being in the right class position to be carrying those possessions?
It sounds like this law will be used to target drug gangs and organized crime. Regardless, I don’t see how it can be applied without discriminating against minorities. I highly doubt the woman at the airport, who the article states was stopped for having expensive jewelry, was white and Swedish.
If the police stopped you on the street and asked how you were able to afford a MacBook or XYZ, would you be able to “prove” it?
Do you carry your payment slips with you? What if the item in question is deemed too expensive for your role?
Yes, you could probably pull up your work email or show the bank deposits, but my point is that this is an arbitrary standard that cannot be consistently enforced.
In Sweden you have a personnummer and tax data is available to practically everyone. And that's the main measure they use for everything. So I'm pretty sure that the police use this data to get an idea of what you can and can't afford.
