You know there's no hope when...

...even a non-socialist government is happy to keep the second heaviest tax burden in the world. So ladies and gentlemen, this years general elections are basically a choice between either high taxes and restriction of your personal freedom, or high taxes and restriction of your personal freedom.

Hmm...this'll be a tough one.

Of course being an immigrant I can't really complain, can I? I could always move along when things get too rough.

We can't prosecute an entire generation (although we'd love to)

We'll let the entertainment industry do the dirty job instead.

Man, those word will come back and haunt that vicious bastard for a long, long time.

Some refreshing political reading

If you're like me, sick and tired of ridiculous election banners and flyers that make absolutely no sense, and instead you want to read some serious politics, let me recommend "Det sovande folket" by Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. Apparently not too easy to get hold of in your local book store, but luckily there's always the Great Library in Alexandria The Pirate Bay. You can download the book here.

The Minister of Injustice, part 2

What has to be Sweden's least popular politician at the moment, the notoriously incompetent, spiteful and integrity-hating minister of (in)justice Beatrice Ask (M), has gone ahead and done it again. The video below speaks for itself, as this sorry excuse of a politician goes on record suggesting that the families and neighbors of suspected sex buyers should be informed what they might have been up to:



Mind you this is a suggestion to penalize (no pun intended) potentially innocent persons in the most barbaric, medieval way for a petty crime that has no victim. We're not talking about trafficking, rape or child abuse, those crimes are taken care of by other and much harsher laws. We're simply talking about consenting adults exchanging favors for money that Swedish politicians only recently decided were morally unacceptable, and thus should be criminalized.

Today, after days of increasing criticism, Ask herself comments on her ridiculous suggestion:

- Ja naturligtvis och javisst gör jag en pudel. Det var klumpigt uttryckt eftersom det kan och har missuppfattats.

Say what? She's sorry her suggestion was misinterpreted??? Does she think the Swedish public are that stupid? The message was loud and clear Ask, without room for any kind of misinterpretations: We should put the presumption of innocent until proven guilty to the side and permanently stigmatize anyone suspected of buying sex from a consenting adult.

That's the Swedish (not the Iranian or Chinese, in case you were wondering) Minister of Justice, ladies and gentlemen.

The Minister of Injustice

The Swedish Minister of Injustice, the notorious Beatrice Ask (M), continues her crusade to make Sweden a less safe place to be. Now she wants the police to be able to do random drug tests on kids without the consent of their legal guardian.

She doesn't see any risk of the police taking this opportunity to harass innocent youngsters, because clearly the police have better things to do:

Lagrådet har också varnat för att urinprov under tvång kan användas av polisen som en slags bestraffning. Den kritiken avvisar Ask och menar att polisen har viktigare saker för sig än att ägna sig åt att trakassera unga.

Riiiiiight... Perhaps you should get your head out of your ass and start reading a newspaper every now and then, Ask. And yes, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here, which I probably shouldn't, you disgusting piece of totalitarian garbage.

Moderaterna party election campaign: More surveillance and higher taxes

Apparently Moderaterna, the Moderate party in Sweden, are prepared to throw their single selling point down the drain, with minister of finance Anders Borg being prepared to raise taxes:

"Det finns starka skäl att överväga skattehöjningar", säger finansministern.

And my personal favorite:

Höjda skatter är avgörande för att behålla en stabil ekonomi i framtiden, framhöll Borg. Och att ett normalt skattetryck för Sverige bör ligga på 35-45 procent av BNP.

In other words, being the most heavily taxed country in the world is the recipe for a stable financial growth. That's certainly new coming from Moderaterna.

Areas that will be affected if Moderaterna get their way is, among others, a "green" tax on CO2 emission (like we don't have enough of these already), even higher taxes on tobacco and alcohol, and certainly no further tax relief on the unfair housing tax (better known as the "Stockholm tax"). The common denominator for all these taxes are that they are not in any way related to your actual income or wealth, meaning they strike people with lesser money much harder than those with more money. Very nice, Borg, that's gonna win you the Östermalm and Djursholm votes, at least.

So my question is quite simply, how exactly do Moderaterna expect to win the elections when they're throwing away the only political issue that separates them from the red and green coalition: A healthy and manageable tax level for people as well as businesses? The way things are looking today they might as well join this red and green coalition, making it a rainbow coalition and front it with the following slogan:

The rainbow coalition: More surveillance and higher taxer - for a safer and healthier society.

The importance of a free, growth-driven and entrepreneurial Internet

Two clowns by the name of Gerard Versteegh and Shadi Bitar, representing two companies I can only assume deal with entertainment through the internet, film2home.se and earbooks.se, have a reader's letter published in Svenska Dagbladet today. The letter is so filled with wrong assumptions, logical flaws and plain errors that's it would take me more effort to go through it step by step than I'm willing to put in. I'll take the short version:

The letter is basically a poorly executed attack on the Moderat politician Karl Sigfrid, who has profiled himself as the only Moderat politician interested in questions regarding the Internet and integrity, and of course on the politics of Piratpartiet, the pirate party.

I feel one of the very first sentences of this letter sums it all up pretty nicely:

En moderat internetpolitik bör sträva efter ett fritt, tillväxtdrivande och entreprenöriellt internet.

Translated to English: Moderat internet politics should strive for a free, growth-driven and entrepreneurial Internet.

Umm...well, yes, and that's exactly what Karl Sigfrid is striving for and you two morons are fighting against.

Obviously Mr. Versteegh hasn't succeeded very well in being free nor entrepreneurial, and of course neither Mr. Versteegh nor Mr. Bitar will see any of my money any time soon.

How to introduce a DDR regime

This is how the FRA act (or the Stasi act, as it would have been called in the good old DDR) was passed in Sweden. I highly doubt this exercise in terror and threats will have a positive impact for the Moderate Party, Moderaterna, in the 2010 elections, as Fredrik Reinfeldt seems to believe.