Thread: Obama is visiting sweden 04/09-13 - 06/09-13

The president of the United States of America is visiting Sweden tomorrow, and will stay here for two days.
That's great and all BUT it's creating a hell for us citizens in Stockholm, what the hell!
They are evacuating the city more or less, all important roads are blocked, NO ONE has permission to fly near Stockholm, NO ONE may use the water around the city, all wells are welded shut. Commuting? FORGET IT! (EVEN AMBULANCES WILL GET BLOCKED!)

The police is getting (almost) unlimited power to do whatever "they need" without any permissions etc. USA is also bringing some attack jets with them.
The worst part I think is that if Obama would get sick, they would need to evacuate Swedens biggest hospital, I mean, is it worth offering 100s of peoples lifes if Obama would get sick? NO.
Other than the 700ish guards Obama is bringing with him, he will use 2000 (out of total 20000) Swedish police officers...

They are also closing our by far biggest airport in Sweden, for TWO DAYS!!!
This is going to really hurt alot of people that need to get to and from work, even DOING work in Stockholm, people go to schools in Stockholm, this will affect about 2 million people (we got around 9million people in Sweden total) severely.

They are using 1 10th of our whole national police force for this event, and for what? He is not even supposed to do anything special here!
Why the heck can't they just be somewhere in the desert or and open area where they actually can protect the president with a 100X lesser cost, and 100X more control over the situation? and without causing this insanely stupid chaos for us ordinary citizens.
This is the biggest blockade in Sweden, EVER!

Seriosly, I'm just mad and wanted to write it out, CHEERS /// FESTER

Originally Posted by Fester

The president of the United States of America is visiting Sweden tomorrow, and will stay here for two days.
That's great and all BUT it's creating a hell for us citizens in Stockholm, what the hell!
They are evacuating the city more or less, all important roads are blocked, NO ONE has permission to fly near Stockholm, NO ONE may use the water around the city, all wells are welded shut. Commuting? FORGET IT! (EVEN AMBULANCES WILL GET BLOCKED!)

The police is getting (almost) unlimited power to do whatever "they need" without any permissions etc. USA is also bringing some attack jets with them.
The worst part I think is that if Obama would get sick, they would need to evacuate Swedens biggest hospital, I mean, is it worth offering 100s of peoples lifes if Obama would get sick? NO.
Other than the 700ish guards Obama is bringing with him, he will use 2000 (out of total 20000) Swedish police officers...

They are also closing our by far biggest airport in Sweden, for TWO DAYS!!!
This is going to really hurt alot of people that need to get to and from work, even DOING work in Stockholm, people go to schools in Stockholm, this will affect about 2 million people (we got around 9million people in Sweden total) severely.

They are using 1 10th of our whole national police force for this event, and for what? He is not even supposed to do anything special here!
Why the heck can't they just be somewhere in the desert or and open area where they actually can protect the president with a 100X lesser cost, and 100X more control over the situation? and without causing this insanely stupid chaos for us ordinary citizens.
This is the biggest blockade in Sweden, EVER!

Seriosly, I'm just mad and wanted to write it out, CHEERS /// FESTER

Ah, so the USA and Obomber is working with Sweden showing them the way to progress the police state. Poor, clueless Swedes....

Originally Posted by 14Russian

Ah, so the USA and Obomber is working with Sweden showing them the way to progress the police state. Poor, clueless Swedes....

++1 Sweden's been a good little lap dog for the last two decades, so it's rewarded by something that international media referred to as a "brief stopover". Certainly not some grand state visit.

Basically short of joining NATO Sweden has done everything the US wants, in every area of its existence. It's gone from an independently minded state, to a US puppet and it makes me for one, feel sick.

Not going to rant about it because I am tired, but I am more ashamed of my nationality for every day that passes.
Everything I used to be proud of, has been thrown out.

And judging from the pictures on RT (Swedish media didn't bother covering it) the only people who bothered to protest against Obama during his visit, were immigrants; Arab speaking people like Iraqis, Syrians and Palestinians.

The visit was so lame that there is not even anything to discuss about.

Obama has travelled on to St Petersburg to meet up with Russian gays.

I am interested in some insights about current political situation in Sweden. Do many citizen support the government? Are there good alternatives?
Being a big fan of Karlsson-on-the-roof, I care about Sweden a lot.

Originally Posted by maxmixiv

I am interested in some insights about current political situation in Sweden. Do many citizen support the government? Are there good alternatives?
Being a big fan of Karlsson-on-the-roof, I care about Sweden a lot.

Yeah you asked about that before, didn't you?

Sweden has undergone a massive political change over the last 20 years. In the past it was a welfare state, jobs for everyone and a mixed housing markets where you could either rent a good publically owned flat, or buy a house. Lots of large state owned companies, along with international companies selling steel, wood, technology and cars... Most people were social democrats and preferred a mix of capitalism socialism. Anti-imperialism was the big fashionable topic for a few decades, peaking with Olof Palme.

However in the 1990s the social democracy approach lost favour and media changed drastically to supporting economic and poltical liberalism in the 1990s. So almost everything that the state owned was sold out, welfare benefits were tightened up to the level that they are not better than anywhere else the Northern part of the EU. It's hard to get a job for young people with no experience.

Since the mid 1980s there has been mass immigration of refugees; per capita more than anywhere else in Europe, I think. So there is now a very marked split between the original population (with Northern looks) and people with African and Middle Eastern looks. Unfortunately Sweden (which was isolated and has a homogenous culture) is hard to integrate into, for people with such different background and looks. Many of them can't find jobs and are living off benefits. This causes huge resentment for everyone involved. Immigrants from other European countries quickly blend in on the other hand.

Also; in the last 15 years or so, Sweden has become very pro radical social ideas like homosexuality and feminism. You cannot open a paper without reading stories of this. Many people like me think these questions are blown out of all proporitions and they have replaced anti-imperialism and multiculturalism as media's favourite topics to promote. Sweden's media is very one-sided, due to being a small country / language. If you want a different opinion you have to turn to media in some other country / language or go online.

Citizens support the government up to a point. Traditionally the trust in government is very high, and actually, they are not corrupt. Sweden is brutally Big Brother esque in the way that the state knows EVERYTHING about you. People have such high trust in the state though that they just don't mind it (apart from me, I hate it...)

There is almost no economic privacy in Sweden and media can easily confirm that politicians live like average people and could not/would not engage in corruption. So corruption is not an issue. However there is a big split between regular people and politicians on immigration. It's easily the most controversial question. Very few people really want it on the scales at which it happens, yet it continues year after year. Many people become anti-government on account of this question.

People are not ready to join NATO, but the shift away from genuine neutrality, towards the USA agenda has been quite obvious, again since the 90s.
The views on this shifted massively after TV commercialised in the 1990s.

Because media is so one sided in reporting on issues - you never read the alternative view, just the "official" view, a lot of the real debate and serious journalism takes place online, on various special sites and in a sort of national forum.

Sweden was quite unique for most of the 20th century. In the era in which Astrid Lindgren who you like was active (she was a flaming social democrat by the way - very passionate). However this era is probably disappearing, and Sweden will shortly be nothing but a generic EU country in the cold outskirts of Northern Europe...

Thank you Hanna, but I wonder what had triggered such a sudden change. Something happened at 1990, didn't it?

Have the government some explanation, why the massive immigration is necessary?

Originally Posted by maxmixiv

Thank you Hanna, but I wonder what had triggered such a sudden change. Something happened at 1990, didn't it?

Have the government some explanation, why the massive immigration is necessary?

Yes something happened in 1990 as you probably noticed in Russia, lol!

The big thing that happened was that socialism fell so MASSIVELY out of favour. In the span of a year or two, in Sweden, peoples entire worldview was shifted. It certainly happened to me. The only way you could have avoided it was to never open a paper, watch TV or listen to radio. I'm sure everyone who is Russia saw all this to a much more extreme degree. But Sweden went through the exact same steps, without people actually having any serious grief against the state. There was no shift in government during the 1989-1994 era... It just happened anyway! People weren't even unhappy with the state.. They were just carried away from the fallout of the events in Eastern Europe.

While I was growing up, before the 90s, it was essentially the opposite: Unless you wanted to be a social pariah, you had to support anti-imperialism, peace activism, solidarity with anyone who was oppressed, class consciousness and these types of ideas. In a way it was just as one-sided as it is now; just the opposite side of the spectrum.

As for the Cold War; Sweden was neutral and it was practically religious! We were SO anti-war. The papers + most people felt that between the two super powers, they were equally corrupt, but for different reasons. The Soviet Union had allegedly abandoned true communist/socialist ideals (with "socialism in one country" and people being unjustly imprisoned). As for the USA; obviously it is/was imperialist in the extreme, morally corrupt and totally un-principled (which media did not hold back about in those days).

Intellectual people and media tended to be more left leaning and give the USSR the benefit of the doubt. Likewise people in the business community leaned towards the USA. Interestingly there was a lot of business with Eastern Europe, which put many in the business community in a split-loyalties position. For example my family.

Then the floodgate opened in 1989.... EVERY day there was some horror story of something that had happened in Eastern Europe. Orphans, mentally disabled, minorities, the spying of the Stasi and the corruption of Ceaucescu. Just about anyone who wasn't mainstream seemed to have been brutally mistreated under socialism. People from Eastern Europe were constantly given airtime to tell their horror stories. I particularly remember this rather extreme woman called Slavenca Draculic who literally toured the country presenting about how awful it had been to live in Eastern European socialism. The story that stuck with me: There was only one size of tampon available in Belgrade, lol. You think "communism must be so darn incompetent, if it can't even produce proper tampons and loo paper... So let's ditch this!

I think most who were around in those days remember the pictures of extremely drab flats and people complaining "the state forced me to live in this dump of a place and refused to fix it up", then all the misdeeds of Stalin were "revealed", i.e. whole peoples relocated, made to carry out slave labour etc. The personality cult of Ceaucescu and his cheesy wife showed how vulnerable these ideologies are to abuse. Everybody was extremely surprised at the backwardness of the rural areas of Eastern Europe. We had been told that technically advance kolkhozes and similar were busy producing food according to the latest clever plan. Then you saw the pictures of grannies looking like they were out of the 1930s digging potatoes by hand, and empty shelves in the food stores.
I had visited several Eastern European countries, but never saw/realised any of this. Personally I felt a bit cheated or duped.

So anyone who had been a socialist or communist repented and washed their hands of it. Some official people actually denied that they had ever believed in it. In order to "prove" how they changed, even the social democrats and communists (who promptly changed their name to the Left wing party supported acts that went totally against their ideology - just to prove themselves. There had been a pioneer organisation in Sweden but it just closed down. Nobody stuck around and parents did not want it for their kids.

The swing of media/journalism was unbelievable. The same journalists who had previously reported enthusiastically from Havana or Moscow suddenly had nothing but abuse stories and overnight supported neo-liberal ideas! Their ideological stance was obviously a seed in the wind and not rooted in anything other than what people around them seem to believe. They kept "exposing" proof of various high-profile people who used to holiday on the Black Sea (considered ultimate proof of being in bed with the USSR!) and church officials who had been close to to the Lutheran Church in East Germany on which the tide had seriously turned.
First May parades went from a big deal to just a side thought.

Then in case anyone had any illusions left, some really shady people from Eastern Europe turned and behaved like total crooks.
There were stories of human trafficking, brutal murders etc. Medias' explanation: Communism made them be like that because it doesn't have regard for human values and life.

In Sweden everybody seems to move en-masse and so the whole country just shifted direction because of what had happened in Eastern Europe. Even though things had been fine in Sweden - no corruption, abuse, restrictions or shortages. It was a functional blend of the two systems.

Capitalism was obviously not losing a SECOND taking advantage of this situation.
The state in Sweden owned some very well run enterprises that were now up for grabs. There were a few years during which EVERYTHING was privatised and sold out. Regular people were totally unable to follow what was going on, or understand the long term impact. As it worked out; prices became much higher and service or quality did not improve. In many cases the state and tax payers had to bail out the new private (often foreign) owners. I found the trains in Ukraine and Belarus be more punctual and less crowded than in Sweden right now, just as a comparison.
They even eventually sold out quite a few schools to foreign owned corporations that can make profit from educating kids in state schools!

The IMF and similar started to heave praise over Sweden as you can imagine, for "reforming in time".

Although about 30-40 per cent still voted for the social democrats or the Left party, they are no longer recognisable in their bland ideology which is just the centre of things. All parties are essentially representing the same ideas nowadays and severel politicians changed over to another party because there is no longer any clear ideological boundaries.


As for the immigration: It started with Palme wanting to accept refugees from right wing dictatorships. I was very young then, and am not really fully up to scratch on it. But I think Chile was the first big wave of refugees, followed by Iranians who thought that their socialist revolution was hijacked by islamists.

I was told in school that reproduction rates were so low that immigration was needed simply to keep the country running. The other supposed reason at the time, was solidarity... and benefits of multiculturalism (in the 1980s) in our extremely homogenous country. They sure achieved that, in record time!

My views on it is that Sweden's been in gentle decline since about the 1960s taking a sharp turn downwards in 1990.
Nowadays it's an extremely secular country with no religion and no ideology apart from political correctness. Class differences are growing every year, and there is a new underclass of people who even look different (i.e. immigrants/refugees).

It's really quite extreme and it's very much a social experiment in the making, with all the extreme things going on.

Thanks, Hanna, for your sad story. I never imagined that USSR's fate could influence so much a capitalist state.
As I understand there was no dramatic change in standards of living, so you "had suffered" more ideologically than physically.

Originally Posted by Hanna

Yeah you asked about that before, didn't you?

Sweden has undergone a massive political change over the last 20 years. In the past it was a welfare state, jobs for everyone and a mixed housing markets where you could either rent a good publically owned flat, or buy a house. Lots of large state owned companies, along with international companies selling steel, wood, technology and cars... Most people were social democrats and preferred a mix of capitalism socialism. Anti-imperialism was the big fashionable topic for a few decades, peaking with Olof Palme.

However in the 1990s the social democracy approach lost favour and media changed drastically to supporting economic and poltical liberalism in the 1990s. So almost everything that the state owned was sold out, welfare benefits were tightened up to the level that they are not better than anywhere else the Northern part of the EU. It's hard to get a job for young people with no experience.

Since the mid 1980s there has been mass immigration of refugees; per capita more than anywhere else in Europe, I think. So there is now a very marked split between the original population (with Northern looks) and people with African and Middle Eastern looks. Unfortunately Sweden (which was isolated and has a homogenous culture) is hard to integrate into, for people with such different background and looks. Many of them can't find jobs and are living off benefits. This causes huge resentment for everyone involved. Immigrants from other European countries quickly blend in on the other hand.

Also; in the last 15 years or so, Sweden has become very pro radical social ideas like homosexuality and feminism. You cannot open a paper without reading stories of this. Many people like me think these questions are blown out of all proporitions and they have replaced anti-imperialism and multiculturalism as media's favourite topics to promote. Sweden's media is very one-sided, due to being a small country / language. If you want a different opinion you have to turn to media in some other country / language or go online.

Citizens support the government up to a point. Traditionally the trust in government is very high, and actually, they are not corrupt. Sweden is brutally Big Brother esque in the way that the state knows EVERYTHING about you. People have such high trust in the state though that they just don't mind it (apart from me, I hate it...)

There is almost no economic privacy in Sweden and media can easily confirm that politicians live like average people and could not/would not engage in corruption. So corruption is not an issue. However there is a big split between regular people and politicians on immigration. It's easily the most controversial question. Very few people really want it on the scales at which it happens, yet it continues year after year. Many people become anti-government on account of this question.

People are not ready to join NATO, but the shift away from genuine neutrality, towards the USA agenda has been quite obvious, again since the 90s.
The views on this shifted massively after TV commercialised in the 1990s.

Because media is so one sided in reporting on issues - you never read the alternative view, just the "official" view, a lot of the real debate and serious journalism takes place online, on various special sites and in a sort of national forum.

Sweden was quite unique for most of the 20th century. In the era in which Astrid Lindgren who you like was active (she was a flaming social democrat by the way - very passionate). However this era is probably disappearing, and Sweden will shortly be nothing but a generic EU country in the cold outskirts of Northern Europe...

LOL! Funny post. All of that is what social democracy is - socialism with 'capitalist' elements except it's not capitalism, per se. It's crony capitalism. How is it capitalism when the media is practically a monopoly. They are not Swedish and the PM is not Swedish, either, really. Sweden has been taking away people's rights and trying to join other Western countries in administering a police state. Besides multiculturalism and 'liberalist' removal of rights, the country is also going into the drain in other ways. The most recent explosion of granting asylum to Syrian refugees is this continued destruction of the state. They will do like the rest and just print more money (to pay for things). From what I've read of Swedes, they are as deliriously inept and clueless as many Americans and other Westerners. As long as they are told, 'the economy is okay', they ignore all the problems. It is what I consider the epitome of stupidity. (Deleted. L.)

Originally Posted by 14Russian

LOL! Funny post. All of that is what social democracy is - socialism with 'capitalist' elements except it's not capitalism, per se. It's crony capitalism. How is it capitalism when the media is practically a monopoly. They are not Swedish and the PM is not Swedish, either, really. Sweden has been taking away people's rights and trying to join other Western countries in administering a police state. Besides multiculturalism and 'liberalist' removal of rights, the country is also going into the drain in other ways. The most recent explosion of granting asylum to Syrian refugees is this continued destruction of the state. They will do like the rest and just print more money (to pay for things). From what I've read of Swedes, they are as deliriously inept and clueless as many Americans and other Westerners. As long as they are told, 'the economy is okay', they ignore all the problems. It is what I consider the epitome of stupidity. (Deleted. L.)

Once again you leave me completely perplexed as to what ideology you actually support.
I don't see any consistency at all. All I can detect is some extremely strong nationalistic vibes (anti-immigration). If you are going to deliver strong diatribes like this you should be aware that they make no sense at all unless you explain what national or ideological background you have. As it is, it just seems like you despise everyone, particularly immigrants..

Originally Posted by maxmixiv

Thanks, Hanna, for your sad story. I never imagined that USSR's fate could influence so much a capitalist state.
As I understand there was no dramatic change in standards of living, so you "had suffered" more ideologically than physically.

Yes, I took the opportunity to get all my feelings about this off my chest, didn't I ! What a rant! Hope some of it was of interest...

As for the demise of the USSR:
Yes - it sent waves outside it's own borders, and even Eastern Europe. Across the developing world and to people with leftist sympathies in Europe and America.

I am fascinated and shocked by what everyone in the USSR area went through in the 90s. It must have been like the rug being pulled from right under your feet and being pushed from a rather elevated position into the gutter! Not to mention the economic hardship and day-to-day struggle everyone went through. Adding the slack from seeing the country's accomplishments being dragged in the mud and factories that were supposedly built for the people by the people being auctioned off to oligarchs and foreigners. And the older generation that had believed in the ideology discovering that they spent 70 years working towards something that was then just stamped on... and living on a dirt poor pension after they spent their lives trying to build communism.

But apart from all that, the USSR left a power vacuum in large parts of the world. It left an ideological vacuum, a military vacuum and an economic vacuum. Countries like the USA became smug and thought it had the right and ability to dictate how every single country in the world should be run. As we've seen from one war leading into the next for the last two decades.

China has not stepped into the super power vacancy, and Russia is not able to at the moment. USA is on the way to either self destruct economically, or became a right wing dictatorship, or both.
It's scary times we live in. One thing I liked with the USSR was that it's foreign policy was grounded on principle/ideology. You could guess what the reactions would be. Whereas with the USA and China it completely lacks any principle - all about short term economics and power.

Whereas with the USA and China it completely lacks any principle - all about short term economics and power.

USA, China, modern Russia - they are all same to me, and quite predictable