{"id":42615,"date":"2016-06-09T17:05:29","date_gmt":"2016-06-09T15:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=42615"},"modified":"2016-06-05T07:44:08","modified_gmt":"2016-06-05T05:44:08","slug":"09-05-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=42615","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to Swedenistan\u2026and have a lousy day"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>Welcome to Swedenistan\u2026and have a lousy day<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Hugh Ash<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

MY new neighbor, Dan, is a semi-retired orthodontist, working two days a week in a private clinic. His wife, Karla, was his nurse until her career was cut short by rheumatoid arthritis.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Though still Swedish passport-holders both describe themselves curiously as \u2018former Swedes\u2019 and their dearest wish is for their 30-year-old school-teacher daughter to leave Stockholm and join their doctor son in Canada.<\/span><\/p>\n

And, if not the Maple Leaf nation, then Israel, the USA, Britain or Australia.\u00a0Now in their 60s, Dan and Karla \u2013 not their real names \u2013 came to Mallorca, partly to eke out their silver years in the balmy climes of a laid-back Club Med state, but, effectively, as they say, \u2018asylum-seekers.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018All my life I\u2019d been grateful to be part of a civilized society,\u2019 explains Dan, whose parents were among almost the entire population of 8,000 Danish Jews, who were secretly ferried from Nazi-occupied Denmark in 1943 to sanctuary in neutral Sweden.<\/span>
\n \u2018And, until about 2005, I felt blessed to live in a true social democracy, where people willingly paid high taxes for a fine welfare system and liberal values.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

So what prompted \u2013 or rather drove \u2013 the amiable Dan and his gentle wife, creator of the world\u2019s most lip-smacking gravidlax, to sell their Malm\u00f6 shoreline home, rip up their roots and migrate to Spain?<\/span>
\n \u2018Sure, the sunshine and lifestyle played some part in our decision,\u2019 he explains. \u2018But the real reason was Sweden\u2019s changing demographics and politics. The radical, Left-wing establishment became totally obsessed with multiculturalism and political correctness, which we didn\u2019t need reminding had been part of Swedish ethos for centuries.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018But this was different. It was verging on authoritarian diktat and the open-door immigration policy was threatening the nation\u2019s cohesion. Only a fool couldn\u2019t see this, but there was a conspiracy of silence, or rather a policy to whitewash the adverse effects of accepting half-a-million immigrants from the Middle East, who plainly weren\u2019t interesting in adopting Sweden\u2019s values and Swedish culture.<\/span>
\n \u2018The politicians, the media, the intellectuals\u2026they all played their parts in pandering to this dangerous ideology and, sadly, it\u2019s changing the fabric of Swedish society irreversibly.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Karla, who\u2019d sat passively, occasionally nodding in agreement at Dan\u2019s analysis, then interrupted, saying, \u2018If you disagree with the establishment, you\u2019re immediately called a racist or fascist, which we\u2019re definitely not. At times I felt that this was what it must have been like to live in the old Soviet Union.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Many Swedes wholeheartedly concur with the sentiment that Sweden\u2019s long, noble record of liberalism has become perverted and are appalled at their extreme-socialist government\u2019s incompetent, doe-eyed handling of the immigration issue.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s like a laboratory experiment gone horribly wrong,\u2019 one told me. \u2018But the scientists won\u2019t admit they\u2019ve made a monstrous mistake. So Sweden isn\u2019t Sweden as we knew it \u2013 it\u2019s become Swedenistan.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"For any in doubt, former Swedish Prime Minister, Frederik Reinfeldt, infamously stated in 2014 that Sweden now belongs to immigrants, not to the Swedes who have lived there for generations.\u00a0And the evidence stacking up in favor of kowtowing to incomers \u2013 a \u2018lemming complex\u2019, as Dan termed it \u2013 is growing increasingly stark and eccentric.<\/span><\/p>\n

Displaying symbols, like the national flag, are frowned upon; Haribo, the candy-maker, was accused of \u2018racism\u2019, because its Skipper Mix included African masks; and children\u2019s author, Jan L\u00f6\u00f6f, was pressured to self-censor his best-seller, Grandpa Is A Pirate, which featured characters like the wicked buccaneer, Omar, and street peddler, Abdullah.<\/span><\/p>\n

All this coincided with the nation that gave the world flat-pack furniture and smorgasbord welcoming 500,000 incomers, mainly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, the overwhelming majority Muslim, though the government releases no official figures about migrants\u2019 religious affiliations.<\/span>
\n In this land of mystical forests and tranquil islands, whose population of around nine million remained relatively unchanged until contemporary times, such an influx was bound to have consequences, especially given where the huge wave of immigrants originated.\u00a0So, the impact on Sweden\u2019s Jewry has been predictably disturbing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Malm\u00f6, Dan and Karla\u2019s former home and Sweden\u2019s third largest city, has seen a dramatic surge in anti-Semitic violence over the last decade, in tandem with the exponential rise of its Islamic community, now numbering at about 75,000.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2009, its Jewish center was set ablaze and, since then, Jewish cemeteries have been repeatedly desecrated, worshippers abused on their way home from prayer, and Jews in the streets targeted with anti-Semitic insults by men of \u2018dark and foreign\u2019 appearance.<\/span>
\n The case for historic toleration wasn\u2019t helped by the city\u2019s then mayor, far-Leftist, pro-Palestinian Ilmar Reepalu, who was accused by Malm\u00f6\u2019s Jewish leadership of deliberately stoking animosity by claiming what Jews perceived as naked anti-Semitism was \u2018just a sad, but understandable consequence of Israeli policy.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

(But \u2013 naturally \u2013 Reepalu is quick to add, \u2018Of course, I\u2019m not an anti-Semite.\u2019)<\/span>
\n Then, earlier this year, Sweden\u2019s foreign minister, Margot W\u00e4llstrom, caused a diplomatic storm by alleging Israeli forces carried out extrajudicial killings of Palestinians.<\/span>
\n Unsurprisingly, Israel\u2019s deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, slapped her down, calling Wallstr\u00f6m\u2019s comments \u2018a mix of blindness and political stupidity.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, as the pattern of unrest is being replicated throughout Europe, the ancient prejudices of the Middle East have spread their tentacles further and deeper into Sweden, where the dwindling, 20,000-strong Jewish community has been strongly advised against wearing any outward signs of their faith in public.\u00a0Like Dan and Karla did, many Swedish Jews are now contemplating futures away from a country that long boasted toleration as its totem. But no longer.<\/span>
\n As Dr. Richard Prasquier, former president of France’s national Jewish association, noted, \u2018Jews are a litmus test of what\u2019s going on in a country. It\u2019s not only Jews who will leave. And it\u2019s not only the country which will go down the drain; it\u2019s not only Europe, it\u2019s the entire Western world.\u2019<\/span>
\n For Sweden, then, the sands of time are running down.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Hugh Ash<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Hugh Ash was a respected senior editor on several, top UK national newspapers before taking up the gauntlet of becoming the international media’s Man in Mallorca in 2002. Since then he has melded reporting fact with penning fiction, producing two critically-acclaimed thrillers, The Mallorca Assignment (2009) and The Mallorca Correspondent (2013)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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twoje uwagi, linki, wlasne artykuly, lub wiadomosci przeslij do: webmaster@reunion68.com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Welcome to Swedenistan\u2026and have a lousy day Hugh Ash MY new neighbor, Dan, is a semi-retired orthodontist, working two days a week in a private clinic. His wife, Karla, was his nurse until her career was cut short by rheumatoid arthritis. Though still Swedish passport-holders both describe themselves curiously as \u2018former Swedes\u2019 and their dearest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42615"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42615"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42645,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42615\/revisions\/42645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}