14 Comments
May 10, 2022Liked by epimetheus

When I read "without alternative" in your translation, I scanned the document to see if the dreaded "alternativlos" was also being used in Austria, but it's "unabdingbar".

Expand full comment
author

Well, I briefly considered rephrasing like 'there is no alternative', if only for the dreadful connotation of that particular phrase in English. Well, Austrians being a funny-speaking bunch to most German ears, I thought the word 'unabdingbar' is about the same as 'aternativlos'.

Linguistic hair-splitting asde, the end result will be, in all likelihood, the same.

Expand full comment
May 10, 2022Liked by epimetheus

As I told friends and relatives when they asked why I wasn't worried about Covid:

"When they enforce strict testing and quarantine for travellers - including migrants and "refugees" - the I will believe it."

Because all the while borders were closed or travel restricted, testing made mandatory and all the rest of charades you cite in the report above, millions flowed into Europe unchecked, and where allowed to as per usual pick-choose their country of destination.

And as I said to then visible annoyed and sometimes literally squirming PC friends: "That's a mighty sensitive virus, what doesn't infect or spread if the potential carrier calls himself a 'refugee'".

For the final nail in the coffin, I put forth this for the hard core "impfen-genossen": why aren't mandates such as these (the same stuff you had in Austria and Germany was proposed here but polled too bad - what a virus! It's affected by popular polls re: upcoming elections!) enforced for violent crime, welfare fraud and financial crimes?

Cue more squirming and simpering sounds of "But that's completely different". Yeah, it is. VAT-fraud alone costs about eight times what is paid out in welfare total per year, only VAT-fraud is committed by middle-class bourgeois small business-owners. Criminal tax evasion is to the tune of more than ten billion euros per year - that's a sizeable chunk of the GDP. And violent crime, such as rape, has seen an increase of more than 1 000% since 2005.

But hey, let's focus on this virus, yes?

It's probably the same deal in Germany: frau "Wir Schaffen Das" and her ilk would rather fight a virus by putting the squeeze on legal citizens, than actually tackling real problems. After all, nobody is going to complain when the scapegoat is a virus.

Expand full comment
author

Exactly, in particular since Russia began its operations in Ukraine, for 'refugees' may now pick and choose their new EU abode (I suspect not many will even think about returning). They may also use 'public transport' freely in Austria and Germany, all that's required in lieu of, say, a ticket is refugee status.

Meanwhile, those who like to abide by the age-old notion of 'live and let live' are coerced, lied to, forced, and gaslit at every step of the turn. Whose country do we live in?

So, unless citizens take back their country, there's little hope for 'Western Civ', I suspect.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
author

Oh yes, this is very interesting: care to share the info?

Expand full comment
May 10, 2022Liked by epimetheus

I'll post the catalogue numbers for the three major SOU:s (Statens Offentliga Utredningar concerning this, meaning "Öffentliche Untersuchungen der Regierung" according to translator software), but they are each several MBs of text, and in swedish, and there are no translations. Further, some of them must be ordered in physical form at cost.

SOU 2020:45, "Wirksamer Schutz der Presse- und Meinungsfreiheit"

SOU 2016:58, "Medienverfassung ändern"

SOU 2022:2, "Ein geschärfter Blick auf Verbrechen gegen Journalisten und Praktiker bestimmter sozial nützlicher Funktionen"

As always, it is made to sound as improvements, but in reality it means creating a selected caste of journalists and other influencers etc which are above the usual laws re: free speech and so on.

Expand full comment
May 10, 2022·edited May 10, 2022Liked by epimetheus

It is the latest in a process begun over 15 years ago, with successive and incremental changes in our freedom of speech and media laws, so it is hard to give one single source as the material is sprad throughout thousands of pages of documents.

It has been defeated several times in parliament before, but the socialist democrats have not given up.

The danger lies IN these changEs tying into existing laws for defamation, slander, libel and hate speech as these LAWS do not take any facts into account. Recently a politician was sentenced for violating the hate speech law by stating, with references given, that the average IQ of somalis are much lower than that of swedes and that somalis therefore have a very hard time finding jobs they are competent to do. Another oppositional politician, Ebba Busch-Thos, was fined a hefty sum for slander for simply pointing out that her opponent's counsel was a convicted sexual offender - this verifiably true statement was according to the court slander.

Taken together with the proposed changes to the laws for press and journalism will have the effect that they can be used as I described initially, without any single law explicitly stating it: I should have been more clear.

Something that has been the target for many years are swedes being able to get news from other nations uncensored, f.e. norwegian and danish media describing the "swedish condition". By giving an agency the legal stading to declare information as being "disinformation" without any actual proof or process, this can be corrected, and also help to quiet swedes writing or reporting or sending films to journalists in other nations.

One example is that a web broadcast means the broadcaster is protected the same way as print media re: speech laws, and thus all the material in the broadcasts database is too. This has meant that regime critical media has been able to operate. The law aims to remove this protection for web-based media but keep it for print media - if the publisher is part of the state's subsidy program for the press and has been awarded a state-granted publisher's license - for the very simple reason it is beyond the scope of a private citizen to start a paper, but anyone with a smartphone can report news online.

I'll have to get back to this later.

Expand full comment
May 10, 2022·edited May 10, 2022Liked by epimetheus

Addendum: it has nothing to do with Covid but everything to do with Sweden rapidly approaching failed state status due to migration and mismanagement since about 1991.

Facts such as the about 30 murders so far this year alone, the rape epidemic, the more than 100 000 illegals in Sweden, the collapsing school system, and so on are the fault of all political parties (save the Sweden Democrats) and the major banks and businesses and must be hidden.

That is the point of the changes to our speech and press laws: to maintain the Potemkin facade of the "Swedish model".

Thus it is a bit hard to sum up the hundreds of issues this concerns. On ething to remember is that in swedish courts, civil and criminal, the judge's ruling isn't what counts, but the vote of the politicians making up the court, and the sad fact that we do not have anything resembling a constitutional court, and (inhales) that even if the Constitutional Committee was to issue a stern judgement against a politican or minister, or other party under their jurisdiction, said judgement carries no other consequence than mere words. In fact, a politician or head of a department or similar need not even heed a summons.

A lot of time and energy is now being spent by our media to keep the people's focus away from societal problems or if that does not work, blame Russia, "the racists" or some other scapegoat from the leftist pomo-woke toolbox of tricks.

Wasn't Russia who incarcerated swedish artist Dan Park a few years back or burnt his paintings. Was no racists trying to get a book by jewish author Aron Flam burned for IP-infringement (and that the book detailed the collaboration of the socialist democrats and nazi-Germany had nothing to do with it, right?). Ain't no russians committing over 9 000 reported rapes every year -it's people from "non-skiing nations" as the as of yet legal euphemism is.

That's the kind of information these changes, each on its own quite innocuous-looking, are intended to quiet.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
May 10, 2022Liked by epimetheus

I think Sweden's neighbours are falling into a fallacy: "as long as it's not as bad as Sweden, it's not bad" if you see what I mean?

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
May 10, 2022Liked by epimetheus

They are preparing for the next winter wave, but I read nothing about more nurses, ICU beds or the like. Is there any thoughts on that, or are they going to swing it with more totalitarian measures of marginal effect?

Expand full comment
author

Of course they won't address this problem. It's well-known, there's nothing that has been done for 20+ years, so why start now?

Sarcasm aside, that would be costly, both politically and economically, hence it won't be done.

Expand full comment
deletedMay 10, 2022·edited May 10, 2022
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
author

I suppose that the biggest problems for 'them' now is that injections aren't popular anymore: the EU estimated, according to Austrian state broadcaster ORF, approx. 80% of all EU citizens (sic) have been exposed to Sars-Cov-2 now, so--it's extra-hard to scare people into taking more of these injections.

The Austrian authorities confirm that they received some 37m doses, but only half of them (approx. 18m) have been used. This calls for an enquiry into the misallocation of public funds, but then again, I don't think that these things exist anymore.

Be that as it may, and to return to your considerations of the crime show analogy: I thought that 'Covid' was the accellaration of these plans, so, if your estimation holds true, this would be the next adjustment 'on the go'.

Bottom line, to me, today--the more actors there are, the more mistakes may be made. The more changes must be made, the higher the likelihood of 'something' going wrong.

Expand full comment