these are strange days for you me and Germany

[mattiasNYC]

And again, if you want to talk about Germany leading up to WWII then we should remember again that the problem was a government and its policies, not just a subset of the total population.

I see the "not just" in his sentence, but seriously? Oops!

I don't understand your point.

 

[mattiasNYC]

Yes, you have a lot of logical and good points.

About the "think" or "know" about these IS-fighters I wrote that the secret police "confirms" that the two men I was referring to have been fighting for IS and are now well and sound living in Sweden on 100% welfare… This we know. And this is one of the problems… while the state and the legal system is "observing" normal people must deal with these persons in their private lives. Not a good signal to the people… and this is also a fundamental reason for the growth of the sweden democrats ( I stick to their name if someone else is following this thread and don't know what SD stands for )

Like I said, I think legislation is the only way forward. Perhaps officially labeling IS as a terrorist organization and making it illegal to join one would allow for prosecution of these people.

On the pragmatic side of things however it does seem that those nations that fight the most against IS and has the longest deepest history of involvement in that region are the ones suffering the most from actual domestic terrorist acts. Sweden has largely been spared that.

About the neo-nazis in Sweden that had their peak during the late 80's were no real threat in that sense that they mostly were a small ill-organized group of angry young men… today they are estimated to be at most a couple of hundreds while the number of muslims who would like to see Sweden as a muslim country outnumbers those neo-naziz by the thousands and yet thousands and still growing. But still the leading politicians tend to focus on those hundreds of neo-nazis that nobody is listening to anyway… which in itself is a good thing to me.

First of all I think it makes sense to keep a close eye on the movements above because they've traditionally posed a bigger threat to democracy and peace in our part of the world. Secondly, you're ignoring the background of Sweden Democrats. Look at the people that started the party and what their background is.

So, let's be honest here: If you want to question the appropriateness of someone like the Greenparty member mentioned earlier because of a remark that's actually quite benign when taken in context then you can't ignore the background of these politicians. If these either newly arrived or second generation Muslims can't change their views then why would we assume that the Sweden Democrat politicians would? Not only that, every now and then we have them recorded saying clearly racist things. These are actual politicians making actual decisions in Swedish politics representing a party with a sixth of the people's support.

 

[johnheath]

I don't favor any of them… equal shit it is.

/John

 

[sahib]

So in a sense (again) I think a lot of this has to do with us in the west being unused to this level of violence in very recent history.

Yes and no. Certainly not in the US but the forum members of my age (55) and older will remember '70s well. Eta (as one member mentioned) in Spain, Red Brigade in Italy, Baader-Meinhoff (also an extension of red brigade ) in Germany, Asala (Armenian terrorist group) based in France, extreme left/right wing groups in Turkey etc. Not to mentione the famous Carlos the Jackal from South America.  Interestingly, the muslim groups in those days were the poor underdogs. We have to wonder how come all these factions were finished-off and now the underdog rules.

I was studying at the technical college in Istanbul at the time. Politics was not my thing (is still the case), I was rather into music which probably saved me from it after all, as I have witnessed pretty horrific things. Watching a guy walking past you with a gun in each hand, after assasinating somebody in his shop sends quite a bit of shiver down your spine. One of my lecturers also lectured at a local university. One day he sat behined his desk in the classroom, opened the drawer to get the chalk and "kaboom".A booby trap. He was literally scraped off the ceiling.

.......
3) I'm not seeing any information on why the secret police didn't want any action taken by the police - was it because the information they were gathering would lead to further arrests for example? - and I'm not seeing any clear word on if it's actually a crime in Sweden to have fought for a foreign state or sub-state's armed forces.
.....

This is often the case as it leads you into deeper information. Why would you stop your lead by arresting two foot soldiers? UK based members will probably remember  that some years back there was a scandal that the British Army implemented electronic trackers into some IRA guns  which in return were used in shooting and killing British soldiers. I am not making a judgment here but just reporting.  I would not like to do that job for all the cheap mic-amps made in China. These guys must have nerves made of steel.

I won't argue with you because I respect your point of view but if we push this further my guess is that we would have to call each other .....
/John

As we say in Turkish " ..this argument ends up in the cop shop..". And aprropirately so  ;D

 

[JohnRoberts]

We conveniently forget (or some here weren't born yet) the radical extremists back in the 60's- 70's who took pleasure in blowing stuff up and even murdering police.  The nominal political movement, or religion they organized around, may have changed these days, but people keep dying.

It is a little different this time as we now have instant electronic communication around the world so bad ideas can find bad people, ready to embrace those bad ideas more easily.

I would agree with the administration position that this is a manageable policing problem for western countries if we didn't have a beacon for evil in the middle east broadcasting this call to kill and maim innocent people, and didn't have lawless regions these people can promote this evil from.

We can never completely stop isolated crazy people from doing crazy things, but we can stop the wholesale promotion of this bad behavior from lawless regions in the world. Of course providing rule of law world-wide is easier said than done, but a worthwhile goal IMO. 

JR