This is a major fuckup but let's be real. Our country is a "joke"? I know complaining is a national sport in Sweden, much like in many other countries, and I can rage about plenty of idiotic things going on. But on the whole, things are in general pretty good, relative to most other countries in the world. Move elsewhere and you'll just find a different set of things to be mad about (perhaps more, perhaps less; and there's always a bunch of Swedish expats who complain that things don't work like in Sweden).

I would say that is having intent if anything. I love my country but I think she should be punished a lot harder. Arkebusering på slottsgården. But since that will never happen, 12 years in jail is probably enough.

Just like involuntary manslaughter is not murder, and so on.

Here's the definition by the way, 19 kap. 1 § brottsbalken: https://lagen.nu/1962:700#K19

Ultimately, both words come from low German "hakebusse".

And slottsgården is more like "courtyard of the castle"

Probably palace, since that's the fancier building with less physical defences in the construction.

I like Sweden, but the "on the whole, things in general" is a dangerous theme. Real problems and injustice exist in the margins and long tails, typically these can be fixed at manageable cost but not if they are ignored.

15 years ago, those relativizations wouldn't have been necessary. Sweden was a poster child of a good society and now it isn't. Many things in your country did deteriorate quickly over the last decade or so, no matter how you try to coat it.

"At least we're still better than others" is a pretty sad statement by itself when you realize that you could be doing a lot better.

My country is currently going down the same road and it's saddening to see that we didn't learn from your mistakes.

For sure some things have deteriorated (and others improved). So it goes. What are some of these things you believe have "quickly deteriorated"? (Genuinely curious)

Your police have basically admitted that if worst comes to worst, they won't be able to uphold the law. 53 criminal zones, for a country like Sweden with relatively little police and military, are beyond managable.

We see the same in Germany, but people choose to ignore it. There are more and more areas in cities where you can't make use of your democratic liberties without being subjected to violence, mostly connected to muslim inhabitants that think their religion is above the law. We have more police and resources to cope with it, but it's reaching its limit.

At the same time I think a lot of people from countries where you really have areas you avoid as a citizen (say, the US) often get the wrong impression when they read about so-called "no go" areas. There's no area on this list that I would avoid going to. And I've been to many, many of them, and have friends/family living in many of them (nearly all violence is between criminals).

Again, not saying it's not a problem. It's a big problem. The police were given more resources in the latest gov't budget to deal with exactly this and will surely get more next year and it'll surely be an important topic in the 2018 election. We'll see how it goes.

What are some other things you think have quickly deteriorated? I'm interested in this outsider perspective.

It is a whole lot better than a lot of other places and I'd hope it would stay that way.

I'm not saying current government are free of blame here, but please stop trying to fit this into a "feminist" argument.

The problem here is not outsourcing, because it is completely legal to do so as long as the company outsourced to goes through with proper security checks and clearances. For example the servers has to be located in Sweden and that proper access permissions are set for the employees.

Outsourcing can in some cases be a very good choice to improve efficiency of tax spending.

Nitpicking: Säpo is not the Swedish equivalent of the CIA. e.g., the single largest expense of Säpo is protection of dignitaries, which is a role held by the USSS, not the CIA.

But then, there is perhaps something she is not telling them. Because to implement this AFTER your main intel service says its not a good idea or legal, is kind of ...odd isnt it?

Notice how it starts in 2015. The last election we had was in 2014 and that's when the change in government occurred. Check your facts, don't just parrot stuff you read on blogs :)

You brought up hiring new staff. This government is the largest employer in the nation and has worse gender segregation than the private industry. One could be forgiven to think then that a "feminist" government would have at minimum create a recommendation in the hiring policy to address that. Nope. Government hired positions still top as the most extreme gender segregated professions in the nation and the trend with this government is more gender segregation in government hired positions, not less.

Blog author is not Swedish but lives there. You gotta love how immigrants (who typically don't peep much and commit either the same level of or less crimes than natives [2]) are often accused of not integrating enough, while you can always find white immigrants like our blogger here ready to lecture their host country on how they should run themselves.

I suspect some of the off-topic comments in this thread are because this is about Sweden, a country that has become the target of all sorts of fantasies by much of the Western far right.

[1] http://www.snopes.com/refugee-invaders-meme/

[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-015-0543-2

I quote from [0] which links to primary sources, including the swedish immigration authorities (which I cannot confirm because I can't read swedish):

""" According to Swedish government statistics, as of the end of November, 71 percent of all applicants for asylum to Sweden in 2015 were male. More than 21 percent of all migrants to Sweden were classified as unaccompanied minors, representing more than half of all minor migrants to the country. For accompanied minors, the sex ratio was about 1.16 boys for every one girl. But for unaccompanied minors, the ratio was 11.3 boys for every one girl. In other words, the Swedish case confirms IOM’s statistic that more than 90 percent of unaccompanied minors are male. Indeed, on average, approximately 90 unaccompanied boys entered Sweden every single day in 2015, compared with eight unaccompanied girls. """

[0] http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/europe-refuge...

The article provides statistics as recent as 2016. It does more than refute a single picture.

>> Syrian refugees - which are probably the more (perhaps only) deserving of "refugee" status

Just off the top of my head: Eritrea, Lybia, Western Iraq, Burma. And that's not counting locally displaced refugees who don't reach Western shores (Burundi, Nigeria, Yemen).

Regarding your source:

Specifically regarding Sweden, this does not really counter what I said. Your source notes that the demographic that leans (very) heavily male is unaccompanied minors (in fact it seems they account for almost all of the male imbalance in Sweden?). These are not single adult males (I used that term because the linked blog heavily relies on the "dangerous young adult" trope mentioned by Snopes -- by 'single' I mean 'not married'). Your source however does show that there are more adult males registered in Greece and Italy. Quick aside: registered refugees do not get to choose their assigned countries of residence if/when their status as refugee is recognized.

I'd say there is quite a world of difference between groups of "young adult males" and unaccompanied minors (who are in that situation presumably because they have lost their families).

>> and in fact - especially in Sweden - they are

But do you have better sources than this one which says these are boys, not men? The point of my post was that the linked blog made loaded claims without substantiating them, so I only went as far a providing a counter-point. Maybe the current Swedish government does in fact have a policy locally favoring male refugees directly or indirectly (which in absolute is possible since, as noted above, refugees don't get to choose where they end up), but he provided no evidence.

This was made widely public when a 23-year old who got asylum as a 17-year old killed a social worker at the asylum about a year ago, and investigation showed that at least 10% of "minor" asylum seekers at that place were above 20. Google may give you more details.

I did Google, and Google tells me Sweden wants to introduce age tests to address this issue (I hope they don't outsource it to IBM).

I disagree with your other post regarding the fact that a refugee being 16 or a young adult doesn't change much: what we are discussing here, beside the racist Predatory Brown Men are coming! thing, is the legitimate concern over the necessary cultural integration of refugees in their host country Vs becoming a problem for society. We know that a husband or dad (or a family unit in general) is much less likely to cause any trouble. That would less be the case with a young single adult, who is fully autonomous and has no dependents. A kid, even at 17, is much less autonomous, will have an educator or foster family, will go to school, etc, they are going to be 'enrolled' much more actively into society.

That's nice in theory, but it doesn't actually bear out in practice. As one example, according to [0], even second or third generations fail to integrate (with disastrous results), and AFAIK that's the rule rather than the exception (though there are quite a few exceptions, more in the UK, less in mainland Europe). It's not enough if even 50% integrate successfully when the number of immigrants is so high.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/brussels-molen...

https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&ar...

Do you really think people won't lie to get an advantage

Naivete is strong it seems

So, yes, those who expected the majority to lie about their age have been proven correct.

https://www.rmv.se/aktuellt/de-forsta-medicinska-aldersbedom...

https://nyheteridag.se/nya-siffror-over-80-procent-av-testad...

Just over 83% is considered to be over 18, ~1% is likely to be over 18, 16% is possibly younger than 18.

Either way, even if they are just 16, it does not change the fact that two years later, the vast majority of adult refugees are male.

Because your first link talks only about Syrian refugees and only a fraction (<30%) of those coming to Europe were from Sweden. It also talks about refugees in neighbouring countries, which changes the picture a lot.

  > as of 16 March 2016 they had recorded nearly 5 million registered
  > Syrian refugees: 2.1 million of them in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and
  > Lebanon, another 1.9 million in Turkey, and more than 28,000 in
  > North Africa. 

The second link talks about old stats before the "great influx".

Regarding the refugees entering Europe: initially something like 90% of refugees were in Turkey/Lebanon/Jordan, but the camps there started to crumble under the demographic pressure and lack of funds, and people started a westward migration. Most people arriving in Greece are in fact coming out of Turkish refugee camps, as far as I know. So Europe saw its number of refugees double from 10 to 20% in pretty much one year, and it's not really known if the deal with Turkey will stabilize this number.

Your source is better than mine and does show an imbalance in the adult demographics applying for refugee status in Europe, but it is still lacking enough details to support a "single adult males storming the gate" hypothesis: according to the Snopes article most "entering-the-EU-as-single" male refugees are married or part of a family but cross over to Europe alone to apply for the status and then bring their family in later, officially and through non shady/dangerous routes. It makes sense that they would temporarily leave their family in the relative safety of established camps, and the fact that there is no male-leaning imbalance in the overall refugee population supports this. I can't find the source for this but in general "unmarried/alone young adult males" represent a small amount of the overall refugee population [1].

I will also point out again that refugees are in fact "applicants", and once accepted do not choose in what country they end up. If Sweden ends up with a disproportionate number of young men, it will be because of a policy decision, not because they walked in a settled there. Case in point: Canada is taking in plenty of refugees, but not unmarried adult men: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/24/canada-exclusi...

[1] There is this piece by Samantha Bee: https://youtu.be/na7pFnoLxjw?t=3m6s saying it's about 2%, but it's about the US and they provide no source, and I suspect a refugee expert being interviewed on a liberal show will not be accepted by some.

Oh, yeah. The leak is _still_ ongoing: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u...

More info here, with Google translated for your convenience: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2017/07/swedish-t...

In the end it doesn't matter how feminist a government is if it cannot properly rule a country, and their actions speak louder than empty words.

What I personally find so galling about the whole debacle isn't that Maria Ågren wasn't punished enough, but the signals the state sends to the people. She got away with a slap on the wrist, and she will continue to earn $14 000/month in the forseeable future[2].

If someone becomes a director general of a state agency their resonsibilities and culpability should increase with the salary. Criminal incompetence is still criminal, and should be prosecuted.

Instead, our government tried to bury the leak.

[1]: http://www.government.se/government-policy/a-feminist-govern... [2]: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/maria-agren-plockar-ut-lo...

If she had been convicted for intentionally leaking information to foreign powers for money, she would have been convicted for treason.

But the prosecution could not find/show intent, so she was only convicted for incompetence.

Yes, please be outraged.

But please also realize its the norm. We (society) do not have the laws, rules, procedures, or technology to prevent or mitigate it.

Edit: Just quickly read up on this incident. They did try to bury it. But I read one account that stated one the Pirate Bay guys daylighted the breach. Delicious irony. So this scandal is now at stage 4: Assign the blame. Next is stage 5: Rinse, lather, repeat.

Swede here. I don't even know how many times I've thought and said these exact words. Spot on.

The defense minister has openly said that the "försvarsmakten"'s cars aren't listed in the STA's registers.

I can't find a link to prove this but i think it was said in one of the press conference's

> Here's a summary of what foreign powers got access to:

It's not been established that foreign powers got access to the data. It's considered a leak because confidential information is considered leaked as soon as it's not handled correctly.

> Even worse: when they realized they'd leaked photos, home addresses and SSNs of protected identities, they sent a clear text email asking the contractor to clear them from the database manually.

There were two leaks. One was the information not being handled correctly, the other was the disclosure of people with protected identities in the "car registry" to companies that would use the data to send advertisements to the owners. This wouldn't have included photos or SSNs.

> SÄPO knew about this in 2015, and recommended against it, but the Transport Agency still went through with the deal. How they could even be allowed to do that is beyond me.

They weren't really allowed, which is why the head of the agency was prosecuted.

> Either she knew exactly what she was doing, meaning the Russians paid a meagre $8500 for full access to a database containing top secret information, or (more likely) she was just that stupid, meaning possibly hostile powers got this information for free.

The investigation concluded that she was aware that she was breaking the law but not that the leak was intentional as such, therefor it was "willful negligence".

> Here, Swedes believe that Trump is such a catastrophe, and wonder why Americans could vote for him. We should instead look at our own pathetic "feminist" government, and ask ourselves how and why we got here.

That's silly.

- IT operations used to be run by another government agency called The Transport Administration (vs. The Transport Agency). - The decision to outsource was done under the former government by the the former head of the agency in 2012. - The previous contract on IT operations was already cancelled, the staff was being let go, the facilities cleared and would no longer be available come January 2015. - The former head of the agency retired in February/March 2015, the deal with the IBM was concluded by the new head of the agency in April 2015. - The event is one in a long line of outsourcing and public-private partnership failures. Including the Public Employment Agency, Social Insurance Agency, Karolinska University Hospital etc.

The only reason this outsourcing failure is big news is because the government is weak, "the alliance" in opposition is even weaker and there's an election next year. Anakata of The Pirate Bay fame hacked Logica (another consulting company) in 2012 accessing confidential data from multiple government agencies.