What's up with the rioting in Stockholm?

[Surlethe]

Reuters

(Reuters) - Hundreds of young people have torched cars and attacked police in three nights of riots in immigrant suburbs of Sweden's capital, shocking a country that has dodged the worst of the financial crisis but failed to defuse youth unemployment and resentment of asylum seekers.

On Tuesday night, a police station in the Jakobsberg area in northwest Stockholm was attacked, two schools were damaged and an arts and crafts centre was set ablaze, despite a call for calm from Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.

"We've had around 30 cars set on fire last night, fires that we connect to youth gangs and criminals," Kjell Lindgren, spokesman for Stockholm police, said on Wednesday.

The riots were less severe than those of the past two summers in Britain and France, but provided a similar reminder that, even in places less ravaged by the financial crisis than Greece or Spain, state belt-tightening is toughest on the poor, especially immigrants.

"We see a society that is becoming increasingly divided and where the gaps, both socially and economically, are becoming larger," said Rami Al-khamisi, co-founder of Megafonen, a group that works for social change in the suburbs.

"And the people out here are being hit the hardest ... We have institutional racism."

The riots appear to have been sparked by the police killing of a 69-year-old man wielding a machete in the suburb of Husby this month, which prompted accusations of police brutality. The riots then spread from Husby to other poor Stockholm suburbs.

"The reason is very simple. Unemployment, the housing situation, disrespect from police," said Rouzbeh Djalaie, editor of the local Norra Sidan newspaper, which covers Husby. "It just takes something to start a riot, and that was the shooting."

IDENTITY CHECKS

Djalaie said youths were often stopped by police in the streets for unnecessary identity checks. During the riots, he said some police called local youths "apes".

The television pictures of blazing cars come as a jolt to a country proud of its reputation for social justice as well as its hospitality towards refugees from war and repression.

"I understand why many people who live in these suburbs and in Husby are worried, upset, angry and concerned," said Justice Minister Beatrice Ask. "Social exclusion is a very serious cause of many problems, we understand that."

After decades of practicing the "Swedish model" of generous welfare benefits, Stockholm has been reducing the role of the state since the 1990s, spurring the fastest growth in inequality of any advanced OECD economy.

While average living standards are still among the highest in Europe, successive governments have failed to substantially reduce long-term youth unemployment and poverty, which have affected immigrant communities worst.

Some 15 percent of the population are foreign-born, and unemployment among these stands at 16 percent, compared with 6 percent for native Swedes, according to OECD data.

Youth unemployment in Husby, at 6 percent, is twice the overall average across the capital.

The left-leaning tabloid Aftonbladet said the riots represented a "gigantic failure" of government policies, which had underpinned the rise of ghettos in the suburbs.

As unemployment has grown, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats party has risen to third in polls ahead of a general election due next year, reflecting many voters' worries that immigrants may be partly to blame.

ASYLUM NUMBERS RISING

While many of the immigrant population are from Nordic neighbors closely tied to Sweden by language or culture, the debate has tended to focus on poor asylum seekers from distant war zones.

Out of a total 103,000 immigrants last year, 43,900 were asylum seekers, almost 50 percent up from 2011. Nearly half of these were refugees from fighting in Syria, Afghanistan or Somalia, and will get at least temporary residency.

Among 44 industrialized countries, Sweden ranks fourth in the absolute number of asylum seekers, and second relative to its population, according to U.N. figures.

Policing in Stockholm has already been the focus of controversy this year, with allegations that police were picking out darker-skinned immigrants for identity checks in subway trains.

"The young people say: 'I'm getting chased and harassed by the police anyway. So I might as well do something (to be harassed for)'," said local editor Djalaie.

Ask, the justice minister, acknowledged the problem by promising that police would get closer to the local community.

On the streets of Husby, daily life appeared to be returning to normal on Wednesday, but police planned to put extra night-time patrols on the streets. Some shops reopened, despite broken windows. There was at least one burnt-out car, but many had already been removed.

Alikalay Adan, a youth worker who had tried to mediate between police and rioters, criticized police for "coming out here screaming and with batons drawn", but said some of the local community must share the blame.

"Everyone is like a family out here, and it is sad when a few destroy everything and give the area a bad name."

(Additional reporting by Simon Johnson, Niklas Pollard and Mia Shanley; Writing by Alistair Scrutton; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Is it the usual story? Immigrants shut out from participating in an ethnically homogeneous society by institutional racism?

[Decue]

Something like that. With a touch of police brutality of course.

[Mange]

Something like that. With a touch of police brutality of course.

"Police brutality"? You mean the nonsense Megafonen and the likes are spreading? The police have been very restrained, have mostly protected the rescue services and used non-intervention tactics. I've yet to see any evidence of police brutality (if anything, the Swedish police has too little authority to act in these kinds of situations). It's thanks to the residents of the areas (such as Husby) who have patrolled their neighborhoods and guarded preschools and schools that yesterday night was relatively calm.

[energiewende]

I'd say this counts as police brutality. Talk about kicking a man when he's down...

[Decue]

Something like that. With a touch of police brutality of course.

"Police brutality"? You mean the nonsense Megafonen and the likes are spreading? The police have been very restrained, have mostly protected the rescue services and used non-intervention tactics. I've yet to see any evidence of police brutality (if anything, the Swedish police has too little authority to act in these kinds of situations). It's thanks to the residents of the areas (such as Husby) who have patrolled their neighborhoods and guarded preschools and schools that yesterday night was relatively calm.

Yeah, I am extremely ironic, same as "Immigrants shut out from participating in an ethnically homogeneous society by institutional racism" (unless I am mistaken of course).
I mean the normal nonsense and lies some groups are spreading when they want to justify their vandalizing or general douchebaggery.

[Mange]

Reuters

(Reuters) - Hundreds of young people have torched cars and attacked police in three nights of riots in immigrant suburbs of Sweden's capital, shocking a country that has dodged the worst of the financial crisis but failed to defuse youth unemployment and resentment of asylum seekers.

On Tuesday night, a police station in the Jakobsberg area in northwest Stockholm was attacked, two schools were damaged and an arts and crafts centre was set ablaze, despite a call for calm from Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.

"We've had around 30 cars set on fire last night, fires that we connect to youth gangs and criminals," Kjell Lindgren, spokesman for Stockholm police, said on Wednesday.

The riots were less severe than those of the past two summers in Britain and France, but provided a similar reminder that, even in places less ravaged by the financial crisis than Greece or Spain, state belt-tightening is toughest on the poor, especially immigrants.

"We see a society that is becoming increasingly divided and where the gaps, both socially and economically, are becoming larger," said Rami Al-khamisi, co-founder of Megafonen, a group that works for social change in the suburbs.

"And the people out here are being hit the hardest ... We have institutional racism."

The riots appear to have been sparked by the police killing of a 69-year-old man wielding a machete in the suburb of Husby this month, which prompted accusations of police brutality. The riots then spread from Husby to other poor Stockholm suburbs.

"The reason is very simple. Unemployment, the housing situation, disrespect from police," said Rouzbeh Djalaie, editor of the local Norra Sidan newspaper, which covers Husby. "It just takes something to start a riot, and that was the shooting."

IDENTITY CHECKS

Djalaie said youths were often stopped by police in the streets for unnecessary identity checks. During the riots, he said some police called local youths "apes".

The television pictures of blazing cars come as a jolt to a country proud of its reputation for social justice as well as its hospitality towards refugees from war and repression.

"I understand why many people who live in these suburbs and in Husby are worried, upset, angry and concerned," said Justice Minister Beatrice Ask. "Social exclusion is a very serious cause of many problems, we understand that."

After decades of practicing the "Swedish model" of generous welfare benefits, Stockholm has been reducing the role of the state since the 1990s, spurring the fastest growth in inequality of any advanced OECD economy.

While average living standards are still among the highest in Europe, successive governments have failed to substantially reduce long-term youth unemployment and poverty, which have affected immigrant communities worst.

Some 15 percent of the population are foreign-born, and unemployment among these stands at 16 percent, compared with 6 percent for native Swedes, according to OECD data.

Youth unemployment in Husby, at 6 percent, is twice the overall average across the capital.

The left-leaning tabloid Aftonbladet said the riots represented a "gigantic failure" of government policies, which had underpinned the rise of ghettos in the suburbs.

As unemployment has grown, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats party has risen to third in polls ahead of a general election due next year, reflecting many voters' worries that immigrants may be partly to blame.

ASYLUM NUMBERS RISING

While many of the immigrant population are from Nordic neighbors closely tied to Sweden by language or culture, the debate has tended to focus on poor asylum seekers from distant war zones.

Out of a total 103,000 immigrants last year, 43,900 were asylum seekers, almost 50 percent up from 2011. Nearly half of these were refugees from fighting in Syria, Afghanistan or Somalia, and will get at least temporary residency.

Among 44 industrialized countries, Sweden ranks fourth in the absolute number of asylum seekers, and second relative to its population, according to U.N. figures.

Policing in Stockholm has already been the focus of controversy this year, with allegations that police were picking out darker-skinned immigrants for identity checks in subway trains.

"The young people say: 'I'm getting chased and harassed by the police anyway. So I might as well do something (to be harassed for)'," said local editor Djalaie.

Ask, the justice minister, acknowledged the problem by promising that police would get closer to the local community.

On the streets of Husby, daily life appeared to be returning to normal on Wednesday, but police planned to put extra night-time patrols on the streets. Some shops reopened, despite broken windows. There was at least one burnt-out car, but many had already been removed.

Alikalay Adan, a youth worker who had tried to mediate between police and rioters, criticized police for "coming out here screaming and with batons drawn", but said some of the local community must share the blame.

"Everyone is like a family out here, and it is sad when a few destroy everything and give the area a bad name."

(Additional reporting by Simon Johnson, Niklas Pollard and Mia Shanley; Writing by Alistair Scrutton; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Is it the usual story? Immigrants shut out from participating in an ethnically homogeneous society by institutional racism?

The spark of the current rioting is said to be the killing of a 69 year old man in the Stockholm suburb of Husby. At 6 PM on March 13, police arrived at the scene after an emergency call about a man who had threatened people with a machete. Police arrived at the scene and tried to negotiate with the man, who by then had returned to his apartment in which there also was a woman. The negotiations failed and two hours later the police decided to enter the apartment as they deemed the woman could be in jeopardy. When the police entered the apartment, the man lunged at them and the police threw a chock grenade to distract him. That failed and the police opened fire in self-defense and the man died. Early statements by the police said that the man had been severely wounded and taken to hospital where he died but that was later amended to that the man had died at the scene.

Megafonen ("The Megaphone"), an organization that describes itself to strive for social justice (though it's against the so-called Järvalyftet, an initiative by the City of Stockholm to improve the conditions of living in vulnerable districts), refers to the killing of the 69 year old man as a "murder" and that the rioters wants justice. As is usual in a case like this, the police has started an internal investigation into the shooting (which of course will determine the chain of events above). Megafonen has declared that it's not enough and has said that it wants an apology from the police as well. Though I'm unaware of any evidence that Megafonen has instigated or even been involved in the rioting, they've made some questionable statements and refused to condemn the rioting.

The vast majority of the people living in the affected areas are of foreign background and there's a high rate of unemployment. The causes are quite complex. Though discrimination is a factor to some degree, Sweden is a generous country to refugees (according to UNHCR, Sweden, together with Malta and Lichtenstein, has the highest number of asylum seekers per capita: UNHCR), the country has largely failed with the integration and thus also failed to seize the potential of the immigrants. There are also high thresholds to the labor market in Sweden.

EDIT: According to the Expressen tabloid newspaper, around 80 youths have gathered in the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby, some with bats and pit bulls so it looks as if there could be another night of rioting.

[K. A. Pital]

The conditions for working poor immigrants in Europe's major cities are hell. Perhaps limbo - next to the hell conditions of their home country. So it is very easy to spark a riot when you live in hell or next to hell. There's literally nothing holding you back.

The cause might be insignificant, might be even fabricated. Might be someone's provocation. Or a police provocation. Or anything at all.

When you live in hell, everything is acceptable. Every form of revenge that you can choose, every single one of them, especially the easy ones like torching cars. You think that people never think about burning the fuck down cars of the rich fucks, which is to them just about everyone with a fucking car, whenever there's a possibility to do so? You think people never think about torching the nearest shop, government building or whatever? You are severely mistaken in that case.

And though Europe ranks high on wage equality between men and women, the equality in wages between citizens and immigrants is a totally different story. This is why the car-burning pattern has been a nigh universal phenomenon from France through Germany and to a great many other nations.

[cosmicalstorm]

They have a youth culture that strives to create it's own anarchy-state within the suburb. There is a strong culture glorifying gangsterculture. Firetrucks are tricked out on false alarm and get pelted with rocks, sometimes they will drag a giant block of rock onto a passage-way and hurl it down on the fireengine. Emergency workers have been pelted with rocks for years in these areas and often need police assistance. The police are hated and attacked everydag, the hate stands in absolutely no proportion to any actual police brutality.
The immigrant population of Sweden is offered what is possibly the most generous welfare in the world, free dental care, free health care, free school, $1000-$2000/month in various social benefits. To blame this is "hellish conditions" or something similar is nonsense. They want anarchy with regional warlords instead of this hateful government.

[ray245]

And though Europe ranks high on wage equality between men and women, the equality in wages between citizens and immigrants is a totally different story. This is why the car-burning pattern has been a nigh universal phenomenon from France through Germany and to a great many other nations.

Hmm, which country rank the highest in terms of equality in wages between citizens and migrants?

[Mange]

The conditions for working poor immigrants in Europe's major cities are hell. Perhaps limbo - next to the hell conditions of their home country. So it is very easy to spark a riot when you live in hell or next to hell. There's literally nothing holding you back.

The cause might be insignificant, might be even fabricated. Might be someone's provocation. Or a police provocation. Or anything at all.

When you live in hell, everything is acceptable. Every form of revenge that you can choose, every single one of them, especially the easy ones like torching cars. You think that people never think about burning the fuck down cars of the rich fucks, which is to them just about everyone with a fucking car, whenever there's a possibility to do so? You think people never think about torching the nearest shop, government building or whatever? You are severely mistaken in that case.

And though Europe ranks high on wage equality between men and women, the equality in wages between citizens and immigrants is a totally different story. This is why the car-burning pattern has been a nigh universal phenomenon from France through Germany and to a great many other nations.

I wouldn't say that the suburbs of Stockholm are "next to hell". The housing in the suburbs in question were built between 1965 and 1974 in the so-called Million Program which was a social housing program with the aim of building one million homes and which was initiated to resolve the acute shortage of housing which existed in the fifties and sixties as well as to improve the standards of living. The housing stock had often poor standards (some apartments even lacked toilets). The apartments in the Million Program were built to high standards (while much of the old housing stock was torn down) using a standardization of the building process with prefabricated concrete slabs. A third of the apartments were in high-rises (which admittedly looks drab, it was quality before aesthetics), a third in two-three floor buildings and the remaining third in small houses. The areas with high-rises soon became unattractive and people started to move away which led to a social decline in those areas. The areas (not all of which are suburbs) are usually quite neat and are generally safe. They're nothing like a housing project in the Bronx or anything.

It's not the cars belonging to "rich" people that are being burnt, but their neighbors' cars. As cosmicalstorm indicated, police and rescue services are being called out on false alarms and subsequently attacked, something the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brottsförebyggande rådet, BRÅ. An agency under the Ministry of Justice) refers to this in a report (PDF in Swedish) as "police fishing". In the same report, BRÅ writes that according to the police, some youth living in such areas wants to distance themselves from society, believing they own their areas and wants to undermine societal functions.

[Siege]

Why do they want to do that though? That sort of behavior doesn't usually come out of nowhere, after all.

[K. A. Pital]

The question is, how much do they get?

I've seen people - working poor - who get five hundred euros and pay half of it in rent and other expenses, that with a dependent person.

So had I been in such position, I'd have nothing but hate, hate and pure hate for everyone even marginally richer than myself.
And of course, maybe welfare is generous, but I don't think they get more money than working poor. And food is not cheap these days, no. But that's me. I keep my hate high even when I'm well above the poverty limit, but anyone who's been there once will never forget, never forgive.

[Mange]

The question is, how much do they get?

I've seen people - working poor - who get five hundred euros and pay half of it in rent and other expenses, that with a dependent person.

So had I been in such position, I'd have nothing but hate, hate and pure hate for everyone even marginally richer than myself.
And of course, maybe welfare is generous, but I don't think they get more money than working poor. And food is not cheap these days, no. But that's me. I keep my hate high even when I'm well above the poverty limit, but anyone who's been there once will never forget, never forgive.

The Swedish welfare system (or maintenance support as it's referred to here) is based on national criteria and is the responsibility of the municipalities. Maintenance support covers personal expenses (food, hygiene, clothing, leisure and toys for children) and joint household expenses (a minimum of one newspaper subscription, telephone/cell phone expenses, television license and other consumables). Rent is not included but is paid by the social services. This is the minimum that the municipalities must provide but you can also apply for other expenses. Many municipalities also include home insurance, Internet fees (and the National Board of Health and Welfare is preparing new guidelines in which Internet access is a basic necessity) and/or tickets for public transport.

This year, the minimum the municipalities must grant a single person per month for living expenses according to the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare is 2,950 SEK (€343) and 930 SEK (€108) for household expenses for a total of 3,880 SEK (€451) (the rent is, as I wrote earlier, not included but is paid separately).
For two people living together, the minimum is 5,230 SEK (€608) for personal expenses and 1,040 SEK (€121) for joint household expenses for a total of 6,270 SEK (€729) per month.

The amount the parents receives for children depends on the age of the child/children. Children below one year of age receives 1,610 SEK (€187) per month for personal expenses. It's assumed that older children have their lunch at their day care/kindergarten/school (lunch for children in day care and schools are free of charge according to Swedish law). Children between one and two years of age receives 1,800 SEK (€209). Children three years of age receives 1,550 SEK (€180). Children between 4 and 6 1,730 SEK (€201). Children between 7 and 10 2,410 SEK (€280). Children between 11 and 14 2,840 SEK (€330). Children between 15 and 18 3,250 (€378). Children still living at home at between the ages of 19 and 20 receives 3,280 SEK (€382). Adult children living at home receives 2,950 SEK (€343).

Then, as I mentioned above, the maintenance support for joint household expenses also increases depending on the number of people living in the household. From 930 SEK (€108) mentioned above to 2,120 SEK (€246) for a household of seven people. Thus a hypothetical family consisting of two adults and two children (one aged three and one aged seven) would receive a minimum of 10,770 SEK (€1,253) plus rent.

It's also important to point out that all parents receive 1,050 SEK (€122) in child benefit per month per child under the age of 16 from the government. Parents who have more than one child also receives a large family supplement. When the child turns 16 and if the child is enrolled at high school, the child benefit is turned into a study allowance (the total for the hypothetical family above including child benefit and large family supplement would thus be 13,020 SEK or €1,514 per month plus rent).

EDIT: Perhaps I should add that the night was relatively calm.

[madd0ct0r]

I'm well above the poverty limit, but anyone who's been there once will never forget, never forgive.

or instead will smugly look down on the people still sturggling and say "I made it through my own hard work, you all just need to work harder. scum"

Class solidarity isn't a universal.

[cosmicalstorm]

I expect that when court cases start to appear over this, we will learn that many of the perpetrators don't have anything like a reasonable motive for going out and attacking firemen and ambulances, shining laserpointers into the eyes of police. Probably it will be as was the case with the London riots, lots of young people looking for some action.
If I arrived in Sweden as a young adult with little or no former education, lacking the ability to read and write, I would not be surprised if I had ended up with a group of people like them. I certainly don't subscribe to the notion that I would have been able to get a job and an education worth something had I been born in the outskirts of Mogadishu.

[Eleas]

Something like that. With a touch of police brutality of course.

"Police brutality"? You mean the nonsense Megafonen and the likes are spreading? The police have been very restrained, have mostly protected the rescue services and used non-intervention tactics. I've yet to see any evidence of police brutality (if anything, the Swedish police has too little authority to act in these kinds of situations).

Hilarious. All you need to do is to look at the standard righttard sites such as Newsmill to see how the police view the entire incident: as horrible assaults on the police which should stop before someone gets hurt or even -- le gasp -- killed.

But wait, the less-than-fascist might say, wasn't the whole debacle at least partially sparked by the fact that the cops killed someone? That, or the fact that police (among others the Stockholm part of the force) are known to view "buset" (perps) in general and immigrants and particular as subhuman? Well, the policeman in the article might grudgingly admit, of course immigrants are people too. After a fashion.

It's thanks to the residents of the areas (such as Husby) who have patrolled their neighborhoods and guarded preschools and schools that yesterday night was relatively calm.

That's possible. Of course, they have more to lose: they have something invested into a Sweden that still has some sort of use for them. The youth is in a different fix. They know there will be no jobs (hell, there are few enough jobs to go around for those of us that aren't systematically pushed into enclaves with druggies and criminals and told to stay there), and they know they're viewed with contempt by the powers that be. Hell, they know their role as scapegoats perfectly well (for those of you disinclined to trust Google Translate, this article by an SVT journalist who was told that the major evening tabloids are paying serious cash for kids to film themselves setting fire to cars).

And why not? If you're excluded (which has already been established -- suburbian kids "of that sort" by and large aren't welcome in the inner city) and if the suburb's youth centers are being systematically dismantled (also factually correct), then what do you do with your resentment and all that spare time? You sit and wait for something to happen, something to make sense. For a call to some kind of action. Maybe not the right thing, maybe not the proportionate thing, but something to validate your situation.


There was a good article written on the matter, and I tried my hand at translating it. It's uneven, choppy even, but it deserves reading so I'm posting it here. Apologies in advance for the length.

That's why I cut the fire hose

Comrades, it is best to immediately embark on a different path, shake us free from the dark night that enveloped us and leave the darkness behind us. The new day already dawns will find us fast, alert and decisive.
--Frantz Fanon (1)

The suburbs are burning. Someone's throwing stones at the police, firefighters and ambulance drivers. Someone else cuts off a fire hose. Long before the fire goes out, the morning papers' blackest headlines have been written more or less by themselves.

Stone-throwing in Malmö, car fires in Gothenburg or school fires in Stockholm. Similar events in the suburbs of Paris, London or Berlin. Or the same events, geography reversed, in the United States where the poor live downtown and the rich in the suburbs. The assault on civilian society is growing more common. At least it's easy to believe that when you read the morning papers.

Often it will be just snippets or short articles with war headlines. But sometimes media comes to a halt, tries to understand. In the chronicles, on editorial pages and in debates. Pundits informed to varying amounts, with varying degrees of connection to the neighborhoods they are trying to describe, search for an explanation. Some talk of widening gaps and structural problems. Other about welfare dependency and increased fundamentalism. Some further argue that integration has failed. But no one has, as far what I know, managed to provide a credible and understandable explanation of the attacks on society's representatives. Why do some attack paramedics? How can someone burn down their own school?

One of the most prolific pundits is author and journalist Lars Åberg who addressed similar events in the suburbs several times in different morning papers, mainly Sydsvenska Dagbladet. Åberg concludes one of his texts, this time in the Daily News, with an unanswered question:

The need for liberation movement is great. But what kind of society is that they advocate, which attracts firefighters to their neighborhoods in order to throw stones at them professionals? (2)

I thought I'd be kind enough to answer his question.


MY OWN COSMIC POLICE

But let's start from the beginning. When I grew up, the globe was divided into the West, the East and the Third World. Half of Europe lay behind a wall, no one celebrated their matriculation in Prague, and what submarines were there hinted at an imminent invasion from the Soviet Union. The Canaries were an exotic travel destination and a classmate who traveled to Australia was that day and age's local equivalent of Christer Fuglesang.

There were two television networks but no cell phones. We shouldn't even talk about the Internet. My only decent source of information was the British music magazines I bought at the Central Station in Stockholm.

The world is still divided. But in a more diffuse manner. Instead of three parts, there are many more. The boundaries are not only between countries but also within. Most major cities have small enclaves of both first and third world inside the city limits.

There are no exotic destinations left. Show me a remote, inaccessible place on the other side of the world and I'll show you a few backpackers and maybe even an all-inclusive resort for that type of connoisseurs who do not see themselves as tourists. Not even space travel is particularly exclusive anymore when an ordinary Swedish guy can become an astronaut and float weightless via webcam.

As much time as I previously devoted to finding information, I today devote toward opting out of information. I have three phone numbers and twelve e-mail addresses. The number of newspapers I glance through I do not dare think about. I have blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and an app that repeatedly tells my social media where I'm physically at. As if it would make any difference.

I can and will be reached around the clock from around the world. I have daily discussions on everything from everyday concerns to life's big questions with people I do not know other than to their avatars and who live in places like Berlin, San Francisco, Osaka and Rio de Janeiro. At least I think that they live there.

It is a free and open world. Despite Sept. 11. At least for me and other privileged, well-educated and relatively wealthy people. But unfortunately it does not look so to everyone.


THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COSMOPOLITAN COIN

The cosmopolitan discourse is about human rights. About morality and ethics. About rationality, culture and values. About how the world is getting smaller. Distances are shrinking. Values homogenized. Borders and barriers demolished. "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned (3)," as two of the world's first cosmopolitans, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, one time wrote.

Cosmopolitanism is also about the West's relationship to what Frantz Fanon once dubbed the "Third World (4)", that is, the poorest third of the world's countries. The question of our responsibility for the suffering and injustice. About our relationship to other cultures, other religions, different values and different ways of living. About our obligations. Cosmopolitanism could best be described as the moral dimension of globalization.

But the cosmopolitan coin also has an opposite face. At the same time a parallel process is underway, one that is essentially the opposite of what I just described. New frontiers and barriers arise. Distance increases. Comprehension decreases. There is localization instead of globalization. While some travel unhindered, others are increasingly tied to specific locations. While a designer, musician or entrepreneur in the computer games industry feels more fellowship with a contemporary Tokyo or Rio de Janerio than with their neighbors, there rises a third world, or rather several third worlds, in our midst.

Mobility is a clear class marker. Can you move freely or are you tied to one place? Do you communicate with the world or just your physical neighbors? Or even with them? Zygmunt Bauman argues that the privileged live "in time", untouched by the room's physical limitations, while the others live "in space", where time is empty and nothing ever happens (5).

During current Minister of Social Security Ulf Kristersson's time as city commisioner of Stockholm, the city pulled the monthly commuter passes for such citizens as received financial assistance, what used to be called welfare. Some suburbs are a 40 minute journey from the city center. Without access to public transport, you have no way to move. Without work, you have nothing to do. You are literally stuck in a place where nothing ever happens. Localized rather than globalized. No one can leave, but everyone gets in. If they want to, that is.

So why not a trip to Tensta Konsthall, with a stop for a little open-air market in Rinkeby center and a bit of social tourism in the bargain? Unlike the residents there, I can leave when I get tired.

There is a localization happening among the elite as well. That one, however, is optional. The most extreme form of elite localization is the so-called gated communities. Tiny walled communities where only the residents have access. But they, unlike say the Stockholm welfare recipients, get to leave whenever they want. Going around the world and meet people with similar values and similar preferences in just about every country on Earth. With the possible exception of North Korea.

Oh, they do get to meet people with different preferences and values too. But they decide for themselves if they want to leave their CCTV monitored world. They get to decide who is allowed to visit. A gated community is the localization of the poor suburbs inverted. Anyone can leave, but no one enters. Or, as Bauman puts it:

The elite have chosen isolation and pay for it lavishly and willingly. The rest of the population finds itself cut off and forced to pay the heavy cultural, psychological and political price for their new isolation (6).

Bauman (7) describes how globalization tears down walls, barriers and national boundaries of goods and capital, businessmen and academics. Concomittant is the rise of new barriers in the form of tougher immigration laws and zero tolerance policies. In other places, and for completely different people. The refugee might pay many times more for a berth on a stinking, unworthy and overfilled smuggling vessel than the businessman pays for their first-class ticket on a plane flying the exact same distance.

But note that it is not often people without employment who enjoy freedom of movement. The globalization is about goods and not necessarily people. Nowadays, we can freely apply for jobs in all the European Union member countries. But if you are born outside, you're not certain to get in in the first place. And if anyone feels that you're not working, you may be sent home even if you are an EU citizen. Or deported from France for no other reason than being Romani.

While goods circulate freely the control of individuals increases, a trend that has become increasingly clear since September 11. In the 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell, new walls have been erected and old boundaries have become even more difficult to cross. Such as between Israel and the West Bank, around the European Union and between the U.S. and Mexico.

Today is the dividing line between people is less and less about culture, about religion or language. It's about some being part of a sphere of relative economic prosperity and others not. These limits run both between and within countries.


THE CITY'S CONDEMNED

The poor part of the world now has representatives within all major European cities. Often within the most worn and most miserable neighborhoods and suburbs. Often with a population from other parts of the world, in many cases hailing from former colonies. But not always. Naturally, every country has a poor indigenous population as well. The real estate market and political decision shove low-income citizens, the less educated, the ill and the addicted together and into the least attractive parts of town.

Bauman (8) suggests that the urban terrain is the stage of a war over space. A war that sometimes culminates in riots and vandalism. Powerless, displaced residents in areas stuck outside both welfare and globalization are creating their own levees in the form of aggerssion, in the form of attacks on civil society. This is often described as a systemic problem, but at the same time it involves the same territorial claims as when, for instance, a gated community is built in another part of town. It's about taking control of one's own territory. Determining who has access and who does not. To decide what is allowed and what is not.

Dick Hebdige describes it as:

Following the eternal custom of the bricoleurs they use for the purpose any material they can lay their hands on – rituals, dressing strangely, striking bizarre attitudes, breaking rules, breaking bottles, windows, heads, issuing rhetoically challenges to the law (9).

Some go so far as to equate attacks against civil society with civil war. In the book "Expectations of Civil War" Hans Magnus Enzensberger interviews a social worker in the suburbs of Paris:

They have already destroyed everything, the mailboxes, the doors, the staircases. They have demolished and looted the polyclinic where their smaller brothers and sisters are treated for free. They do not recognize any rules. They smash medical and dental clinics to bits and pieces and destroy their schools. If they are provided with a soccer field, they saw off the goal posts (10)

Enzenberger warn of situations such as these are signs of an impending civil war in which the population of the suburbs gets up and revolts. A sneaking civil war. Without clear combatants. Where it is difficult to distinguish friend from foe, or even talk about friends and enemies. A civil war that begins with minor vandalism, littering, a broken elevator and graffiti. That continues with burning cars, totally destroyed schools and merciless attacks against "anything that works". What the next step in the escalation is we may not have seen yet.


JIHAD IN ROSENGÅRD?

Bernard Lewis (11) shares the fears of an impending conflict. According to Lewis, it is not class division and inequality that drives the conflict. It is Islam. Lewis believes Islam and the West is at war and the growing Muslim minorities in Europe are powder kegs. For example, in the suburbs of Paris, where unrest followed each other for many years, large Muslim minorities exist, largely made up of immigrants from former colonies.

Globalization has thus moved from colonialism including Africa to the French capital and many other cities. Even in countries like Sweden, even though we largely lacked colonies.

According to Mustafa Dikec (12) the suburbs of Paris began to be described as problematic and troubled during the 70s. But it was only during the 80s that the problems were discussed in terms of ethnicity and integration. Before that, the discussion mostly centered on class division. During the 90s, Islam becomes an increasingly common theme when the media and politicians discuss the problem. Dikec (13) argues that it is not at all unusual to, for instance, see riots in the Paris suburbs described as "Muslim".

Even Lars Åberg brings up religion in his article, and says that "a longstanding Islamicisation" has reinforced the isolation of the suburban population. (14)

But how relevant is really religion and ethnicity in this case? Is there anyone who would have designated student uprising in Paris in 1968 as being "Catholic"? Would anyone build a discussion around hos so many of those who took part in the disturbances at the EU summit in Gothenburg in 2001, grew up in a Protestant society? Is the violence and misery of a depopulated Swedish industrial town specifically "Swedish"? Is it at all interesting? Are people's faith or origin really an explanation?

Dikec (15) believes that the discussion of ethnicity and religion hides the real problems. Those suburbs that have the greatest unrest actually don't distinguish themselves ethnically or religiously. In such cases as they do at all. However, they do distinguish themselves clearly in terms of discrimination, inequality and repression. In terms of criminality. In terms of educational level, morbidity and median income.

The same, I venture, applies to Swedish conditions. For instance, Rosengård, where stones-throwing at police and fire departments has occurred, Bergsjön, where there have been car fires, and Rinkeby where parts of a school recently burned down, also don't distinguish themselves solely ethnically or religiously. They are also areas with large social problems, high unemployment levels, poor schools and housing, and low educational attainment and low average income.

Does anyone think it is a coincidence that this global phenomenon - seemingly senseless attacks on civil society - always occurs where the differences between people is most obvious?


BEHIND THE VEIL, A COMMODITY

But it would be incorrect to claim that there aren't religious collisions in our at least supposedly cosmopolitan world. Seyla Benhabib (16) describes a famous incident from 1989, when a school principal in Creil, north of Paris forbade three students from wearing veils in the classroom. The headmaster also tried to persuade the students parents to influence their children to stop wearing veils. After the girls refused to obey the principal, the event reaches media, with great excitement as a result. It led to both extensive protests and to being the spark of some of the unrest Dikecc (17) writes about in his book.

Since then, the veil has been a hot topic in French domestic politics. As recently as last fall, a law banning the wearing of the full veil in public places was adopted.

Similar bans or discussed in several other EU countries. During the election campaign, Jan Björklund declared that he wanted to introduce a ban on the wearing of full veils in Swedish schools. Despite the fact that neither the teachers' unions or Björklund himself knew about the existence of any teacher who has ever done just that.

The full veil obviously evokes bad blood. Despite how a small minority of Muslim women wear it. In Sweden, these are about a hundred, many of them ethnic Swedish converts.

So obviously Islam, in this case in the form of the veil, clashes with our Western world. But what is it really that clashes? In the book, "One-Dimensional Woman" Nina Power (18) says that the conflicts surrounding the issue are logical. The full veil runs counter to perhaps the most basic foundation of our culture, namely capitalism.

Capitalism forces us all to sell our labor, whether we like it or not. It forces us all to be goods. This gives rise to a logic that is forcing many people - especially women, especially those with service occupations - to always expose their bodies. In Germany, for instance, it is both permissible and customary to advertise for staff who "look good".

He who conceals his appearance - and therefore his being - violates this logic. In a world where we are all for sale we must not skimp on the packaging. We are walking CVs where our appearance, whether we like it or not, plays an important part. On the precarious labor market, we need to be constant adverts for ourselves that demonstrate how we are willing, flexible, have large networks and look damn good. Power (19) calls this a "feminization" of the labor force. Where features previously considered feminine, such as flexibility and beauty, now are in demand on an ever-growing part of the labor market and for an increasing number of workers, both women and men.

A capitalistically packaged worker thus cannot wear a full veil. A capitalistically packaged piece of labour rather displays, clearly, what he or she has to sell. Much like the more or less naked people in the commercials that flood our urban environments.



THE REAL PROBLEM IS NO PROBLEM

So wearing the veil in public could be a problem. Doing it as a teacher may soon be prohibited. However, it's apparently no problem to place the worst schools in the poorest parts of the city. As long as the teachers there do not teach in burkas, of course.

Concentrating all of the poor, the sick, the unemployed and unskilled in the same place is no problem either. It is no systemic error. Inequalities do not collide with capitalism. On the contrary. It is a sign that it is working properly.

Bauman (20) quotes the British journalist Jeremy Seabrook

Poverty cannot be ‘cured’. For it is not a symptom of the disease of capitalism. Quite the reverse. It is evidence of its robust good health. Its spur to even greater accumulation and effort…

But to avoid having to talk about injustice, we talk about integration. About people's beliefs. About their origins. All to hide the fact that our profits in the global wheel of fortune are paid for by someone else, somewhere else. Sometimes on the cocaine fields of Colombia, in a sweatshop in Indonesia, a flooded town in Pakistan or a poisoned river in India. Other times, just a few stops away on the bus by a third-generation unemployed.


FROM ADVENTURE TO MISFORTUNE

What does it take for us to pay attention to the unequal conditions in the suburbs? Often we are only reached by what Lilie Chouliaraki calls "adventure news" (21) which is to say blurbs about individual events - usually crimes of various kinds - without pity and with faceless agents and victims. If it is sufficiently spectacular, of course. People rarely pay attention to everyday misery. And good news is barely in the media at all, whether from the suburbs or anywhere else.

In the autumn of 2007 I worked as a youth leader in Husby, one of Stockholm's most segregated suburbs in both the socio-economical and ethnical sense. During this period, there was a brutal beating in downtown Stockholm. A young guy was beaten and kicked to death by one or more perpetrators. All involved belonged to the upper middle class. The event was a great novelty. Campaigns were started in media and on Facebook, something that propelled one of the promoters, the current Member of Parliament Anton Abele, into celebrity.

The youths at the recreation center were obviously scared of the event. But they were also upset. Why is youth violence only news when it happens in the inner city, and when the middle class children are involved? They told me about a similar assault in Husby some year prior. With offenders the same age. Same age victim. But with exclusively suburban guys involved and with a brutality and ruthlessness that far surpassed the deadly assault in the inner city. There was not a line in the national press, just a notice in the local newspaper, when body parts were found along the rail track.

I had no good answer to why the events got such different space in the media, even though they were so similar. Other than a vague sense that not everyone is equally interesting in the media. All victims are not equally great victims. A sense that we do not need to depart for a war or a natural disaster in the Third World to discover this phenomenon. It is enough to take the subway a few stops west.

Chouliararaki would perhaps have been able to provide a better answer. In order for "adventure news" -- about body parts along a railroad track to turn into "emergency news (22)" - that is, complex stories, with personal stories and visible victims - is required, among other things, Western victims. If we translate the West to civil society or the middle class, we may have answers to the questions of the Husby youth.

A sacrifice is required from established society in order to turn emergency news into adventure news. For the adventure to become an accident. It is required that civil society be attacked. It takes a rock thrown at the police, a severed fire hose or victims or perpetrators from the middle class to give Lars Åberg and the other pundits even the chance to opine on this issue.

A RIGHT IS NOT NECESSARILY AN OPPORTUNITY

So how do we come to terms with these injustices? Both Jürgen Habermas23 and Benhabib24 call for a cosmopolitan law. We should move from national laws to the rights of world citizens. They see before them a cosmopolitan legal order where everyone is guaranteed certain things.

It's a big step to ensure all the same rights, that the same principles that apply in the country - such as freedom - also should apply globally. But is it enough? What does such a thing as freedom of expression mean for an analphabetic nomad in eastern Kurdistan?

In Sweden we all have the same rights. At least on paper. We are equal before the law, have the right to vote, freedom of trade, freedom of religion and so on. We also have freedom of speech and freedom of press. The world's oldest, even. Anyone can start a newspaper and express their views and their view of the world.

But what is a right worth if it is not at the same time a possibility? To be pedantic, everyone has the right to travel in time. At least I do not think there are any legal obstacles. But that right is not the least bit interesting until there is an opportunity to do time travel.

I have exactly the same rights as anyone in Rosengård. This does not necessarily mean that we have the same opportunities. Anyone can start a business, but it helps if you have good contacts in the bank and mastery of legalese. We get to practice whatever religion we want, but some religious symbols run the risk of being banned. Anyone can write in a journal, but it often requires a good education, and contacts in the industry.

Ulrich Beck expresses the problem like this:

Human rights repeals seemingly eternal limits, causing them to fall, thus forcing new boundaries, new selectivities that however do not follow the logic of right but power. (25)

Anyone is allowed start a newspaper in Sweden. But not just anyone can do it. Anyone is allowed to disseminate their views - about, for instance, misery, poverty, and segregation in Rosengård - but not everyone has the same opportunity to do so.


SOME LIKE LIKE

In "The Divided West" Jürgen Habermas (26) reasons on the responsibility to participate. Not only as a right but actually as a civic duty. Anyone who is able must be part of public discourse.

But how do you participate in public discourse as, say, a young and frustrated suburbanite? As a citizen in general? How many are admitted into public discussion? Sure, you can vote every four years and write letters to the editor in the local newspaper. But not everyone gets to write opinion pieces in any of our major newspapers. Most people will never ever be in Lars Åberg's privileged position where he can offer hundreds of thousands of readers his view on a cut-up fire hose in Rosengård.

Not just anyone gets to be published in just any way. Not even the cherished social media are particularly open to those unable to code or without the right network. They are not all that social, for that matter.

I have worked a lot with young people and culture. Both in the inner city and in the most disadvantaged suburbs. There is a huge difference. Everyone loves culture, but the inner city children see themselves as both consumers and producers while suburban children exclusively consume. There are of course exceptions, but the pattern is very clear.

How to participate in a discussion if you see yourself and your friends exclusively as consumers? If you can not even imagine yourself as someone who creates content, meaning and form? Then there will be no debate articles in the Daily News. No participation in the Evening Open. Not even a letter to the editor in the local newspaper. Regardless of the conditions prevalent in general. The few representatives of the suburb that figure in the media, in my experience, are thus often the children to academics or cultural workers.

For many of us, it's easier than ever to make ourselves heard. Anyone can start a blog or a twitter account and join the debate. If you have a self-image that says you have something to say. That it is important to take up space. It is also possible to take a position in numerous political issues through so-called "slacktivism". Pressing "like" on Facebook or flaunt the Aftonbladet symbol of the campaign "We like different." A newspaper which, incidentally, seems anything but different, if you look at who is actually working on the editorial staff.

FROM MARKET TO MALL, FROM TALKING TO SHOPPING

Is there even a physical forum left where we talk to each other? Bauman27 describes how the squares and public spaces disappear to be replaced with malls. In between, even the laundromats, which also served as meeting places, have disappeared. The squares were previously forums for events and discussions. They were places where norms and opinions were created, tested, confirmed or dismissed. When they are privatized, other rules suddenly apply.

Let me add that shopping malls are so constructed as to keep people moving, looking around, keep them diverted and entertained no end – but in no case for too long -– by any of the endless attractions; not to encourage them to stop, look at each other, talk to each other, think of, ponder and debate something other than the objects in display – not to pass their time in a fashion devoid of commercial value…(28)

Transforming streets to malls is also a way to meet social problems. Which has been put into practice in Stockholm. A classic is the area of Kungsholmen formerly called the "Lilla Plattan" that turned into "Vestermalmsgallerian." A windy square with everything from social deprivation to social encounters turned into an upscale shopping center with a slogan that reads "Welcome to the colorful West."

But erecting malls is also a way to privatize public property and obstruc public discourse. For instance, in most malls, it is forbidden to hand out political leaflets or collect signatures. It is not permissible for young people to "hang out". It is however permitted to rather aggressively solicit customers by for instance telephone companies. Free movement of goods and services. Partitions and borders for humans.

No room is left for ”local opinion leaders”; no room is left for ”local opinion” as such (29)

In Stockholm, the city's sold a dozen suburban center to the notorious British property company Boultbee. Places that were initially public are now glassed over. New rules apply. Only those considered customers are welcome. Benches disappear and the only seats remaining to be found inside are those of the cafes and restaurants. When Bolutbee bought the land of the city, they promised to fix up the most run-down places. Something they completely ignored by even the politicians who were most active in the sale.

In Skärholmen outside Stockholm, there are eight McDonald's and a giant mall. In addition, Sweden's most visited site, the shopping town Kungens kurva. But hardly any public buildings left at all. No venues where residents decide conditions. Just shopping malls with an implacable commercial logic.

The localized suburban population thus barely has space to communicate within itself. Let alone anyone else. There also seems to be no-one who cares. Before it becomes news. Emergency News.


THE CONDEMNED MIND

To cut off a fire hose is thus a radical way to interpret Habermas. Regardless of intent. He who cuts the hose involves himself in the debate. They who cut the hose generate content in the media. Just as much as the writer of a letter to the editor, an editorial or an opinion piece. But with a much bigger impact.

Bauman (30) cites the Greek Communist Cornelius Castoriadis who argue that the problem of our time is that it's stopped questioning himself. To not ask certain questions is more dangerous than to avoid answering questions that are already on the agenda. Asking the wrong questions distracts from what is really important. So why not help our time along the way?

For it to make sense to have a solution there must first be a problem to solve. Since class inequalities obviously are not an interesting enough problem in our cosmopolitan contemporaries, we find something else. One question, the right question must be asked before we can get an answer. Prompts we will also no answer.

Many have tried to understand the - at least at first glance - senseless violence in the poor suburbs. Those on the right have been appalled, and calling for tougher measures and debates on integration. The left has been searching in vain manifesto and political programs. They unsuccessfully tried to interpret the riots, car fires, school fires and attacks on society's official representatives to protest against exclusion, poverty and segregation.

But there is no such thing. No one does anything. The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek (31) asks himself what kind of world we live in - with a society that claims to be based on freedom of choice - where the only alternative to democratic consensus is blind rage.

When Zizek watches those same riots that Dikec sees, he finds something completely opposed to political programs:

The riots where simply a direct effort to gain visibility…They where neither offering a solution nor constituting a movement for providing a solution. Their aim was to create a problem, to signal that they were a problem that could no longer be ignored (32).

You see, the tragic reality is that an evening with a cut off fire hose is more interesting news than years of deprivation, social exclusion and poverty. Unfortunately, the tragic reality is that Rosengård often only becomes a political issue when some right-wing politicians require tougher measures against the consequences of their own policies. Unfortunately, the tragic reality is that there must first be created "problems" in order for there to be a discussion.

So I create a problem.

It may be morally wrong, but it is ethically correct.

I have no ideas about a better society.

No manifesto. No party programs.

I do not advocate a better society.

I do not advocate any kind of society at aöö

I only take possession of this space.

Create my own gated community with a wall of burning cars.

My own square, my own forum, on the ruins of my secondary school.

I exercise my civil right to express myself and my obligation to participate in public discourse.

I produce emergency news and chronicles by Lars Åberg.

I'm restyling factuality.

But I really have no other ambition than to ask a question you must answer:

Why don't you care until now?

And so I cut the fire hose.


1 Fanon, F (2007) Jordens fördömda Stockholm: Leopard s251
2 Åberg, L (2009) Dagens Nyheter 2009/05/04
3 Marx, K & Engels, F (1985) Kommunistiska manifestet Stockhom: Vertigo
4 Fanon, F (2007) Jordens fördömda Stockholm: Leopard
5 Bauman, Z (1998) Globalization New York: Columbia University Press s 88-89
6 Bauman, Z (1998) Globalization New York: Columbia University Press s 21
7 Bauman, Z (1998) Globalization New York: Columbia University Press
8 Bauman, Z (1998) Globalization New York: Columbia University Press s22
9 Hebdige, D (1988) Hiding in the light London: Routledge s12
10 Enzensberger, H M (1993) Expectations of Civil War Frankfurt: Suhrkamp s 32
11 Lewis, B (2004) The Crisis of Islam New York: Random House
12 Dikec, M (2007) Badlands of the Republic Malden: Blackwell Publishing
13 Dikec, M (2007) Badlands of the Republic Malden: Blackwell Publishing
14 Åberg, L (2009) Dagens Nyheter 2009/05/04
15 Dikec, M (2007) Badlands of the Republic Malden: Blackwell Publishing
16 Benhabib, S (2006) Another Cosmopolitanism Oxford: University Press s51-61
17 Dikec, M (2007) Badlands of the Republic Malden: Blackwell Publishing
18 Power, N (2009) One-Dimensional Woman Winchester: 0 Books s 11-15
19 Power, N (2009) One-Dimensional Woman Winchester: 0 Books s 17-23
20 Bauman, Z (1998) Globalization New York: Columbia University Press s79
21 Chouliaraki, L (2006) The spectatorship of suffering London: Sage s97-117
22 Chouliaraki, L (2006) The spectatorship of suffering London: Sage s114-115
23 Habermas, J (2006) The Divided West Cambridge: Politly s115-193
24 Benhabib, S (2006) Another Cosmopolitanism Oxford: University Press
25 Beck, U (2005) Den kosmopolitiska blicken Göteborg: Diadalos s 82
26 Habermas, J (2006) The Divided West Cambridge: Politly
27 Bauman, Z (1998) Globalization New York: Columbia University Press s24-26
28 Bauman, Z (1998) Globalization New York: Columbia University Press s25
29 Bauman, Z (1998) Globalization New York: Columbia University Press s 26
30 Bauman, Z (1998) Globalization New York: Columbia University Press s5
31 Zizek, S (2008) Violence London: Profile Books s64
32 Zizek, S (2008) Violence London: Profile Books s 65-66

[Eleas]

There's also ample provocation for another reason: that if suburbian kids with ethnic looks do venture into central Stockholm, by doing so they become prime targets for REVA, which is essentially a police initiative to discover illegal aliens and deport them. This is done, among other things, in subway stations. The initiative has been roundly criticized for contravening the ECHR. The police, for their part, deny that they're systematically targeting ethnic minorities, and are remarkably evasive about the fact that their demands for identification without stated cause are blatantly unconstitutional. Any ethnically Swedish-looking person who has ever been stopped in such a manner might want to step forward and tell their story. It'd be the first one.

Of course, the simplest way for the police to justify such questions is to claim something else is afoot, such as claiming the suspect behaved aggressively or was under the influence. This is rather like what happened to a journalist who filmed two civilian policemen in the subway, and who subsequently recovered the movie they forced him to delete (in defiance of the common law).

So yeah. They kinda do have cause to be a bit annoyed.

[Mange]

Something like that. With a touch of police brutality of course.

"Police brutality"? You mean the nonsense Megafonen and the likes are spreading? The police have been very restrained, have mostly protected the rescue services and used non-intervention tactics. I've yet to see any evidence of police brutality (if anything, the Swedish police has too little authority to act in these kinds of situations).

Hilarious. All you need to do is to look at the standard righttard sites such as Newsmill to see how the police view the entire incident: as horrible assaults on the police which should stop before someone gets hurt or even -- le gasp -- killed.

Yes, that's exactly what it is: Assault on societal functions such as the rescue services and the police. The police officer in the opinion piece is quite correct that someone could get killed in situations such as this, either a police officer/security guard or a young person being shot by a cornered police. I don't know what the police officer says that's so "righttard". I don't know if you saw it, but there was a video on YouTube filmed by local kids showing a lone police officer being assaulted by six young men in Husby. What could've happened, either to the police officer or the young men, if he hadn't been able to withdraw?

There'll always be bad eggs in the police force and from what I've read Lundh infers, it's a problem among individual police officers rather than a structural problem (the police has worked hard to recruit among minorities).

But wait, the less-than-fascist might say, wasn't the whole debacle at least partially sparked by the fact that the cops killed someone? That, or the fact that police (among others the Stockholm part of the force) are known to view "buset" (perps) in general and immigrants and particular as subhuman? Well, the policeman in the article might grudgingly admit, of course immigrants are people too. After a fashion.

"Less-than-fascist"? What a sanctimonious attitude. The cause of the riots is said to be the shooting of the 69-year old man by Megafonen and its ilk. However, that doesn't excuse burning your neighbors' cars (how many of the rioters who actually live in the affected areas remains to be seen though), burning down kindergartens and schools and pelting the rescue services, municipal workers, there to save lives, with rocks. Heck, according to Aftonbladet, it seems as if most of the young men who were arrested doesn't even come from Husby or the other areas affected by the riots but from Botkyrka, Södertälje or Huddinge (though Botkyrka and Huddinge has seen some disturbance as well even if the police don't believe it was organized in the same fashion as the riots in the Stockholm suburbs) and there were also two Finns and one Dane arrested.

It's thanks to the residents of the areas (such as Husby) who have patrolled their neighborhoods and guarded preschools and schools that yesterday night was relatively calm.

That's possible. Of course, they have more to lose: they have something invested into a Sweden that still has some sort of use for them. The youth is in a different fix. They know there will be no jobs (hell, there are few enough jobs to go around for those of us that aren't systematically pushed into enclaves with druggies and criminals and told to stay there), and they know they're viewed with contempt by the powers that be. Hell, they know their role as scapegoats perfectly well (for those of you disinclined to trust Google Translate, this article by an SVT journalist who was told that the major evening tabloids are paying serious cash for kids to film themselves setting fire to cars).

"Systematically pushed into enclaves"? The causes are complex and not as easy as you make it out to be: As I inferred above, the vacancies among the apartments built during the Million Program is a factor behind the segregation and it's certainly true that the municipalities earlier steered immigrants to such areas which unfortunately has had lasting effects. It's also a matter of choice: Some immigrant groups tend to cluster which is hardly surprising because of pull-effects.

And why not? If you're excluded (which has already been established -- suburbian kids "of that sort" by and large aren't welcome in the inner city) and if the suburb's youth centers are being systematically dismantled (also factually correct), then what do you do with your resentment and all that spare time? You sit and wait for something to happen, something to make sense. For a call to some kind of action. Maybe not the right thing, maybe not the proportionate thing, but something to validate your situation.

I don't agree with your description of poor kids being excluded from the inner city, that's absurd. Yes, there's indeed a reduction of youth centers in some municipalities because the municipalities unfortunately can't afford to keep them running. However, that doesn't seem to be the case in Kista as a cursory look on stockholm.se shows five youth centers in the area (Kista, Husby and Akalla). And you can't escape the fact that everyone has a personal responsibility. And what about all that spare time? Use it to study. You're not going to go anywhere as there aren't enough unqualified jobs in Sweden and not everyone can be an entrepreneur (though certain immigrant groups with an entrepreneurial spirit have integrated very well and created job opportunities and that's something to be proud of).

[Eleas]

Hilarious. All you need to do is to look at the standard righttard sites such as Newsmill to see how the police view the entire incident: as horrible assaults on the police which should stop before someone gets hurt or even -- le gasp -- killed.

Yes, that's exactly what it is: Assault on societal functions such as the rescue services and the police. The police officer in the opinion piece is quite correct that someone could get killed in situations such as this,

...and thereby revealing that he's ignoring the fact that someone has already died as a matter of fucking rote. I see you fail to grasp the point, so I shall emphasize it: attacking police and rescue service is not justified (and you will notice I never said it was), but people already have died. Real people. No matter how much this officer conveniently wants to forget the fact, police were the ones who fired the first shot, which they can do with impunity.

There'll always be bad eggs in the police force and from what I've read Lundh infers, it's a problem among individual police officers rather than a structural problem (the police has worked hard to recruit among minorities).

To the contrary, if you read the article, Lundh describes a structural problem. I'm honestly amazed by the brazen dishonesty that lets you take an article that begins with the phrase "I was blinded by peer pressure and by the brutal police culture I was inducted into" and summarize that as "a few bad eggs".

But wait, the less-than-fascist might say, wasn't the whole debacle at least partially sparked by the fact that the cops killed someone? That, or the fact that police (among others the Stockholm part of the force) are known to view "buset" (perps) in general and immigrants and particular as subhuman? Well, the policeman in the article might grudgingly admit, of course immigrants are people too. After a fashion.

"Less-than-fascist"? What a sanctimonious attitude.

My bad. Oblivious right-wing authoritarians tend to bring out my more sarcastic side.

The cause of the riots is said to be the shooting of the 69-year old man by Megafonen and its ilk. However, that doesn't excuse burning your neighbors' cars (how many of the rioters who actually live in the affected areas remains to be seen though), burning down kindergartens and schools and pelting the rescue services, municipal workers, there to save lives, with rocks.

Which is, of course, nothing that hasn't been said already. In fact, I don't only refuse to condone those activities, but I spent the majority of my post explaining why they actually do the things you do (and now I repeat myself for those who, much like yourself, didn't read my last post).

Heck, according to Aftonbladet, it seems as if most of the young men who were arrested doesn't even come from Husby or the other areas affected by the riots but from Botkyrka, Södertälje or Huddinge (though Botkyrka and Huddinge has seen some disturbance as well even if the police don't believe it was organized in the same fashion as the riots in the Stockholm suburbs) and there were also two Finns and one Dane arrested.

Which is irrelevant to the main point, i.e. that there's a simmering resentment among the youth for what is actually some damn good reasons.

"Systematically pushed into enclaves"? The causes are complex and not as easy as you make it out to be: As I inferred above, the vacancies among the apartments built during the Million Program is a factor behind the segregation and it's certainly true that the municipalities earlier steered immigrants to such areas which unfortunately has had lasting effects. It's also a matter of choice: Some immigrant groups tend to cluster which is hardly surprising because of pull-effects.

I did not claim that this was the only reason, but the fact that there are other contributing factors doesn't actually dispute my point: if you're welcome in few places, you tend to go where your kin is. It's not difficult to grasp.

And why not? If you're excluded (which has already been established -- suburbian kids "of that sort" by and large aren't welcome in the inner city) and if the suburb's youth centers are being systematically dismantled (also factually correct), then what do you do with your resentment and all that spare time? You sit and wait for something to happen, something to make sense. For a call to some kind of action. Maybe not the right thing, maybe not the proportionate thing, but something to validate your situation.

I don't agree with your description of poor kids being excluded from the inner city, that's absurd. Yes, there's indeed a reduction of youth centers in some municipalities because the municipalities unfortunately can't afford to keep them running. However, that doesn't seem to be the case in Kista as a cursory look on stockholm.se shows five youth centers in the area (Kista, Husby and Akalla).

Proof? Going by that site, I see a lot of centers for small children. Also, this has everything to do with whether or not they're in danger of being dismantled, which I'm not exactly alone in claiming.

Your emotional aversion to my description of the situation (i.e. that kids are being exiled, or as I might more accurately have put it encouraged to go away) is cute, but you might be better off actually meeting my god damn arguments, viz. such things as REVA, the endemic racism, and the "I cut the firehose" article which I'm pretty comfortable in assuming you also didn't read.

And you can't escape the fact that everyone has a personal responsibility. And what about all that spare time? Use it to study. You're not going to go anywhere as there aren't enough unqualified jobs in Sweden and not everyone can be an entrepreneur (though certain immigrant groups with an entrepreneurial spirit have integrated very well and created job opportunities and that's something to be proud of).

Yes, I know, the go-to excuse of the authoritarian. Everyone has a personal responsibility, and I have (as everyone else in this thread full well knows) not said anything different. However, what does this responsibility entail? Of course it entails not setting things on fire. It does not, however, entail being fucked over again and again by indifferent middle-class Swedes who love talking about social responsibility and upward mobility from a position where damn near everything is stacked to their own advantage. And that's the takeaway from this situation: that these violent acts are happening for reasons quite different than a lack of manners, proper breeding, and swarthy otherness. That it's a question about class, not religion. You know, all those things that the Right shy away from actually addressing in the vain hopes that it might go away.

[D.Turtle]

There was a good article written on the matter, and I tried my hand at translating it. It's uneven, choppy even, but it deserves reading so I'm posting it here. Apologies in advance for the length.

Thanks for the article - a very interesting read.

[InsaneTD]

" And what about all that spare time? Use it to study."

I don't know what it's like in Europe, but here, you have to do courses to have a shot at courses. And how are they supposed to pay for such learning opportunities? I'd dearly love to do several courses which would get me into a good job, that I want to do. But there is no money for me to do so unless I'm either a drug addict, homeless, mentally sick, or a combination of all of the above. It's no good learning something if you can't pay for the piece of paper that says you know it.

[Mange]

" And what about all that spare time? Use it to study."

I don't know what it's like in Europe, but here, you have to do courses to have a shot at courses. And how are they supposed to pay for such learning opportunities? I'd dearly love to do several courses which would get me into a good job, that I want to do. But there is no money for me to do so unless I'm either a drug addict, homeless, mentally sick, or a combination of all of the above. It's no good learning something if you can't pay for the piece of paper that says you know it.

I was mostly referring to high school (secondary education) students but there are no tuition fees for higher education (college/universities) in Sweden (except for students from outside the EU/EEA). The only things you must pay for are materials and books etc. but all students at colleges/universities are entitled to student aid (consisting of a grant plus student loans) ten months per year. There are no prerequisites for obtaining student aid for the first year of study, but you must pass 62.5 percent of the education credits (1.5 credits corresponds to one week of full-time studies and 30 credits one semester) in order to receive student aid the following year. From the second year on, you must pass 75 percent of the credits.

Currently the student aid is 9,204 SEK (€1,050 or $1,358) per month of which 2,828 SEK (€329 or $426) consists of grant and 6,196 SEK (€721 or $932) consists of student loans.

[Mange]

Hilarious. All you need to do is to look at the standard righttard sites such as Newsmill to see how the police view the entire incident: as horrible assaults on the police which should stop before someone gets hurt or even -- le gasp -- killed.

Yes, that's exactly what it is: Assault on societal functions such as the rescue services and the police. The police officer in the opinion piece is quite correct that someone could get killed in situations such as this,

...and thereby revealing that he's ignoring the fact that someone has already died as a matter of fucking rote. I see you fail to grasp the point, so I shall emphasize it: attacking police and rescue service is not justified (and you will notice I never said it was), but people already have died. Real people. No matter how much this officer conveniently wants to forget the fact, police were the ones who fired the first shot, which they can do with impunity.

Oh come on... The police, as well as any authority, must always be questioned but you must know just as well as I do that the Swedish police isn't known to shoot people at random. To say that the police 'fired the first shot' in this case is to misrepresent what happened on March 13 when members of the public called 112 and said that they had been threatened by a man carrying either a knife or a machete as outlined above and the events that followed. It was unfortunate that the police had to resort to the use of force and it was tragic that the man died, but one must accept that there are procedures to follow in a case like this. The case is being investigated by the Swedish National Police Crimes Unit (Riksenheten för polismål) which sorts under the State's attorney (Åklagarmyndigheten).

The police must be allowed to use force, even deadly force, in situations similar to this when they're being attacked with a deadly weapon without people calling them murderers or fascists.

To the contrary, if you read the article, Lundh describes a structural problem. I'm honestly amazed by the brazen dishonesty that lets you take an article that begins with the phrase "I was blinded by peer pressure and by the brutal police culture I was inducted into" and summarize that as "a few bad eggs".

My apologies, I skimmed it as I'm not unfamiliar with Lundh and I seemed to recall that he had mentioned individuals rather than the structure but I was clearly mistaken. However, it's extremely questionable to apply Lundh's experiences in that very specific unit, the Norrmalm SWAT (Norrmalmspiketen) which had a reputation to be 'tough' (even when not considering the so-called "Baseballigan" during the early 80s), on the entire police force. And I'm certain things have changed, both in the training and in the diversity among the cadets, in the 34 years that has passed since he went to the National Police Academy (Polishögskolan).

My bad. Oblivious right-wing authoritarians tend to bring out my more sarcastic side.

I'm a social liberal, but from what I've read so far, I wouldn't be surprised if you'd consider anyone right of V to be a right-wing authoritarian and everyone right of S to be a fascist tard.

Yes, that was indeed a joke...

Which is, of course, nothing that hasn't been said already. In fact, I don't only refuse to condone those activities, but I spent the majority of my post explaining why they actually do the things you do (and now I repeat myself for those who, much like yourself, didn't read my last post).

Good, glad that we agree on that then.

"Systematically pushed into enclaves"? The causes are complex and not as easy as you make it out to be: As I inferred above, the vacancies among the apartments built during the Million Program is a factor behind the segregation and it's certainly true that the municipalities earlier steered immigrants to such areas which unfortunately has had lasting effects. It's also a matter of choice: Some immigrant groups tend to cluster which is hardly surprising because of pull-effects.

I did not claim that this was the only reason, but the fact that there are other contributing factors doesn't actually dispute my point: if you're welcome in few places, you tend to go where your kin is. It's not difficult to grasp.

Did I say it was? And to nuance the picture a little: Not all areas where immigrants have clustered are poor and many immigrant groups (such as for example Assyrians/Syriacs, Chileans and Iranians) have integrated very well while other groups have had more difficulties and the politicians, whether right or left, is largely to blame for that. The situation in the vulnerable areas in Sweden are also not as bad as in some other European countries. In Husby, where the riots started, 54 percent of the people aged between 20-64 had a job in 2011 compared to the national average of 74 percent according to Statistics Sweden. The figure is far too low, but hopefully the 'new start zones' (nystartszoner) and other initiatives can improve that.

And why not? If you're excluded (which has already been established -- suburbian kids "of that sort" by and large aren't welcome in the inner city) and if the suburb's youth centers are being systematically dismantled (also factually correct), then what do you do with your resentment and all that spare time? You sit and wait for something to happen, something to make sense. For a call to some kind of action. Maybe not the right thing, maybe not the proportionate thing, but something to validate your situation.

I don't agree with your description of poor kids being excluded from the inner city, that's absurd. Yes, there's indeed a reduction of youth centers in some municipalities because the municipalities unfortunately can't afford to keep them running. However, that doesn't seem to be the case in Kista as a cursory look on stockholm.se shows five youth centers in the area (Kista, Husby and Akalla).

Proof? Going by that site, I see a lot of centers for small children. Also, this has everything to do with whether or not they're in danger of being dismantled, which I'm not exactly alone in claiming.

I did write a "cursory look", but choose "Karta" here. The City of Stockholm operates a youth center, Reactor, in Kista which is aimed at young people 16-20 years of age and which is open between 7 PM to 12:30 AM Fridays to Saturdays and 7 PM to 11 PM Tuesday through Thursday. There's also a youth center in Husby and one in Akalla for kids up to 15 years of age. There's also a youth center for young people for special needs and another operated by YMCA (KFUM) aimed at younger kids.

Personally I'm more worried about the dismantling of the community police (närpolisen) rather than the youth centers. The dialog and the meeting between the police and the people living in those areas is certainly important.

Your emotional aversion to my description of the situation (i.e. that kids are being exiled, or as I might more accurately have put it encouraged to go away) is cute, but you might be better off actually meeting my god damn arguments, viz. such things as REVA, the endemic racism, and the "I cut the firehose" article which I'm pretty comfortable in assuming you also didn't read.

I certainly don't condone some aspects of REVA (particularly not the spot checks in the subway which is totally unacceptable) and such actions only increases the suspicion of the police.

As I've already written above, discrimination (which is the result of racism) exists and it thus follows that racism exists but "endemic" racism?

I've read and heard about the firehose claim and I see no reason to make any comments on it. It's an extraordinary claim which comes from rumors being spread among the youth living in the area and I can't assess the credibility of it. I think Aftonbladet and Expressen would have more to lose than win, especially as the rumors seem to be quite widespread.

And you can't escape the fact that everyone has a personal responsibility. And what about all that spare time? Use it to study. You're not going to go anywhere as there aren't enough unqualified jobs in Sweden and not everyone can be an entrepreneur (though certain immigrant groups with an entrepreneurial spirit have integrated very well and created job opportunities and that's something to be proud of).

Yes, I know, the go-to excuse of the authoritarian.

No, you'd have a case if I had said that the people living in vulnerable districts such as Husby, Tensta, Rinkeby or Rosengård have themselves to blame for their situation and that we, as a society, don't have any responsibility. I'm certainly not saying that, but at some point everyone has to sit down and think about their lives and what they can do, if anything, to improve it (and throwing rocks isn't very productive). The residents in the vulnerable districts must also be engaged in the various projects aimed at improving the conditions.

Everyone has a personal responsibility, and I have (as everyone else in this thread full well knows) not said anything different. However, what does this responsibility entail? Of course it entails not setting things on fire. It does not, however, entail being fucked over again and again by indifferent middle-class Swedes who love talking about social responsibility and upward mobility from a position where damn near everything is stacked to their own advantage. And that's the takeaway from this situation: that these violent acts are happening for reasons quite different than a lack of manners, proper breeding, and swarthy otherness. That it's a question about class, not religion. You know, all those things that the Right shy away from actually addressing in the vain hopes that it might go away.

Yes, those are certainly not reasons as to why things are as they are. As for the riots, there are many reasons: Exclusion (to a varying degree), kids seeking thrills and excitement, misinformation that's being spread and the phenomena of Angry Young Men which we also saw in Paris and Bern yesterday (though the police responded quite differently than the Swedish police and used water cannons and teargas which we don't want to see used here. The only water cannon Swedish police had was bought after the riots in Berzelii Park in 1951 and was never used).

[Eleas]

Oh come on... The police, as well as any authority, must always be questioned but you must know just as well as I do that the Swedish police isn't known to shoot people at random. To say that the police 'fired the first shot' in this case is to misrepresent what happened on March 13 when members of the public called 112 and said that they had been threatened by a man carrying either a knife or a machete as outlined above and the events that followed.

I know the police don't tend to do that. Doesn't change the fact that they actually bust through the door to shoot the man in the head, then had the temerity to pretend nobody actually died.

It was unfortunate that the police had to resort to the use of force and it was tragic that the man died, but one must accept that there are procedures to follow in a case like this. The case is being investigated by the Swedish National Police Crimes Unit (Riksenheten för polismål) which sorts under the State's attorney (Åklagarmyndigheten).

And so it should be. I'm just frustrated by the fact that intangibles like social position and ethnicity do matter in these cases, even though people like to pretend it doesn't.

The police must be allowed to use force, even deadly force, in situations similar to this when they're being attacked with a deadly weapon without people calling them murderers or fascists.

And if you had a link to any news source stating they actually were attacked (rather than entering a home with deadly intent), I'd welcome it.

My apologies, I skimmed it as I'm not unfamiliar with Lundh and I seemed to recall that he had mentioned individuals rather than the structure but I was clearly mistaken. However, it's extremely questionable to apply Lundh's experiences in that very specific unit, the Norrmalm SWAT (Norrmalmspiketen) which had a reputation to be 'tough' (even when not considering the so-called "Baseballigan" during the early 80s), on the entire police force. And I'm certain things have changed, both in the training and in the diversity among the cadets, in the 34 years that has passed since he went to the National Police Academy (Polishögskolan).

No, I'm sorry, I was being overly vitriolic. While I do think things have changed, there's still likely to be a lingering mentality simply because such things aren't easily rooted out, and because these tendencies follow societal biases. With the rise of SD and its ilk, and the pandering to sometimes blatantly racist legislation by the Alliance, we should expect to see the police follow suit, as they are the people in charge of enforcing these policies.

I'm a social liberal, but from what I've read so far, I wouldn't be surprised if you'd consider anyone right of V to be a right-wing authoritarian and everyone right of S to be a fascist tard.

Perhaps you would be. I don't really see the relevance since I was speaking about the police in the article in particular and Newsmill in general.

Yes, that was indeed a joke...

No problem. I have less of a problem with people on the mid-right; my problem is chiefly with people who would go "fuck the Plebs", tacitly or openly, or simply don't want to see the suffering their pet theories have been causing.

Good, glad that we agree on that then.

Yeah.

I did not claim that this was the only reason, but the fact that there are other contributing factors doesn't actually dispute my point: if you're welcome in few places, you tend to go where your kin is. It's not difficult to grasp.

Did I say it was?

No, you didn't. My apologies.

And to nuance the picture a little: Not all areas where immigrants have clustered are poor and many immigrant groups (such as for example Assyrians/Syriacs, Chileans and Iranians) have integrated very well while other groups have had more difficulties and the politicians, whether right or left, is largely to blame for that. The situation in the vulnerable areas in Sweden are also not as bad as in some other European countries. In Husby, where the riots started, 54 percent of the people aged between 20-64 had a job in 2011 compared to the national average of 74 percent according to Statistics Sweden. The figure is far too low, but hopefully the 'new start zones' (nystartszoner) and other initiatives can improve that.

Yeah, that's true. But I feel it's not so much a problem of immigration than of reactionary forces trying to cast it in those terms. I think it's a problem of class, yes, but mostly I think it's about dwindling prospects. That's something that's going to hit immigrant kids from poor suburbs first, but we also see the same simmering resentment across the fence (SDU, for instance, gain most of their traction from this).

I did write a "cursory look", but choose "Karta" here. The City of Stockholm operates a youth center, Reactor, in Kista which is aimed at young people 16-20 years of age and which is open between 7 PM to 12:30 AM Fridays to Saturdays and 7 PM to 11 PM Tuesday through Thursday. There's also a youth center in Husby and one in Akalla for kids up to 15 years of age. There's also a youth center for young people for special needs and another operated by YMCA (KFUM) aimed at younger kids.

Thank you. I'll have a look.

Personally I'm more worried about the dismantling of the community police (närpolisen) rather than the youth centers. The dialog and the meeting between the police and the people living in those areas is certainly important.

Well, yes and no. It can have a positive effect in that it reduces separation, but it can also feel like a constant reminder. What I think is the most important is that young people don't spend their days (accurately) imagining going from unpaid job to unpaid job for the rest of their working lives while suits on TV solemnly lament their lack of grit. I know I have had days where I would have liked nothing better than to smash a few of those fuckers over the head with a cement roller, so I can't begin to guess what someone without my chances would feel.

I certainly don't condone some aspects of REVA (particularly not the spot checks in the subway which is totally unacceptable) and such actions only increases the suspicion of the police.

Fair enough.

As I've already written above, discrimination (which is the result of racism) exists and it thus follows that racism exists but "endemic" racism?

My bad. Sloppily worded. I suppose what I meant was "pervasive" racism.

I've read and heard about the firehose claim and I see no reason to make any comments on it. It's an extraordinary claim which comes from rumors being spread among the youth living in the area and I can't assess the credibility of it. I think Aftonbladet and Expressen would have more to lose than win, especially as the rumors seem to be quite widespread.

Um, that's not the firehose article. The firehose article is what I posted as a whole in my original post. You seem to refer to the allegations of incitement to riot, which I will agree is an extraordinary claim. It's noteworthy that neither paper has dismissed the claims at all, because that would be easy to do and they tend to dismiss such notions or counterattack. That they haven't done so already may mean they're biding their time, but it may also mean there's substance to it and they're wary of enmeshing themselves deeper.

No, you'd have a case if I had said that the people living in vulnerable districts such as Husby, Tensta, Rinkeby or Rosengård have themselves to blame for their situation and that we, as a society, don't have any responsibility. I'm certainly not saying that, but at some point everyone has to sit down and think about their lives and what they can do, if anything, to improve it (and throwing rocks isn't very productive). The residents in the vulnerable districts must also be engaged in the various projects aimed at improving the conditions.

Alright, I was out of line. I apologize.

And that's the takeaway from this situation: that these violent acts are happening for reasons quite different than a lack of manners, proper breeding, and swarthy otherness. That it's a question about class, not religion. You know, all those things that the Right shy away from actually addressing in the vain hopes that it might go away.

Yes, those are certainly not reasons as to why things are as they are. As for the riots, there are many reasons: Exclusion (to a varying degree), kids seeking thrills and excitement, misinformation that's being spread and the phenomena of Angry Young Men which we also saw in Paris and Bern yesterday (though the police responded quite differently than the Swedish police and used water cannons and teargas which we don't want to see used here. The only water cannon Swedish police had was bought after the riots in Berzelii Park in 1951 and was never used).

True enough, but there's also been reports about dogs being set on women and children, and I've seen pictures of lesions on kids beaten with police truncheons. It's not a pretty sight.

[Mange]

I hope you'll forgive me for pushing these two together (and for not commenting point by point on things I largely agree with):

Oh come on... The police, as well as any authority, must always be questioned but you must know just as well as I do that the Swedish police isn't known to shoot people at random. To say that the police 'fired the first shot' in this case is to misrepresent what happened on March 13 when members of the public called 112 and said that they had been threatened by a man carrying either a knife or a machete as outlined above and the events that followed.

I know the police don't tend to do that. Doesn't change the fact that they actually bust through the door to shoot the man in the head, then had the temerity to pretend nobody actually died.

And if you had a link to any news source stating they actually were attacked (rather than entering a home with deadly intent), I'd welcome it.

The police had, according to what's been said in the media, tried to negotiate for two hours with the man before they entered the apartment as they, again according to what the police have said to the media, were afraid that the woman in the apartment might be in jeopardy. In the article at Sveriges Radio, police spokesman Lars Byström said that:

– Polispersonalen känner sig hotad, man använder det vi kallar distraktionsgranat, tyvärr får det heller ingen effekt utan polispersonalen känner sig hotad och avger verkanseld, och tyvärr avlider personen i fråga på grund av att polisen avlossat sina tjänstevapen, säger Lars Byström.

Varför kände sig polisen hotad?

– Jag tror att det är ganska lätt om man sätter sig in i en situation där man blir attackerad av en person [med] kniv eller machete, att man då känner sig hotad.

My translation:

- The police officers felt threatened and used what we call a distraction grenade. Unfortunately, that didn't have any effect either and the police felt threatened and opened fire for effect and unfortunately the person in question died as a result of the police discharging their service weapons, says Lars Byström.

Why did the police feel threatened?

- I think it's quite easy to feel threatened in a situation when you're being attacked by a person with a knife or machete.

Source: Sveriges Radio - Man skjuten till döds av polis. March 14, 2013.

Again, that's the version given by the police and we'll have to wait for the results of the investigation. Much has also been said by for example Megafonen about Lars Byström's initial statement that the man died at hospital after having been taken there by ambulance severely injured (which is the version given in the article). However, the police spokesperson isn't omniscient and there could be simple miscommunication rather than a conspiracy by the police. I was also unaware that details, such as the man having been shot in the head, had been released.

However, as I'm writing this, I hear that the police officer who fired the shots which killed the man is a suspect of causing wrongful dead (vållande till annans död) and that he had already been given a public defender on May 23.

Yeah, that's true. But I feel it's not so much a problem of immigration than of reactionary forces trying to cast it in those terms. I think it's a problem of class, yes, but mostly I think it's about dwindling prospects. That's something that's going to hit immigrant kids from poor suburbs first, but we also see the same simmering resentment across the fence (SDU, for instance, gain most of their traction from this).

I think "class" is too deterministic, but I certainly think you're quite correct about dwindling prospects and immigrant kids.

I've read and heard about the firehose claim and I see no reason to make any comments on it. It's an extraordinary claim which comes from rumors being spread among the youth living in the area and I can't assess the credibility of it. I think Aftonbladet and Expressen would have more to lose than win, especially as the rumors seem to be quite widespread.

Um, that's not the firehose article. The firehose article is what I posted as a whole in my original post. You seem to refer to the allegations of incitement to riot, which I will agree is an extraordinary claim. It's noteworthy that neither paper has dismissed the claims at all, because that would be easy to do and they tend to dismiss such notions or counterattack. That they haven't done so already may mean they're biding their time, but it may also mean there's substance to it and they're wary of enmeshing themselves deeper.

I'm so sorry. I had planned to read it but as I was quite tired I forgot about it. Interesting read!

Alright, I was out of line. I apologize.

No worries!

True enough, but there's also been reports about dogs being set on women and children, and I've seen pictures of lesions on kids beaten with police truncheons. It's not a pretty sight.

Yes, I'm aware that there are rumors and reports about dogs and truncheons and that must be taken seriously. Assault by the police can never be tolerated and complaints must be thoroughly investigated.

However, my understanding is that the handlers just don't dogs loose in these situations. And as far as pictures are concerned, the only ones I've seen is a picture of a pair of hands with cuts in the palms and another picture which shows some bruising which are said to be the result of having been beaten by truncheons along with a story that quite frankly doesn't sound very credible. I do hope that the person reports it so it can be investigated.