Sthlm attacks

[Aimless]

Truck drives into crowd on sthlm's busiest street. gunmen jump out of cars and shoot at people elsewhere. I'm guessing religious extremists. Obviously coordinated, obviously a consequence of rampant socialism. The govt has recently come under intense criticism for its sloppy handling of the problem of radicalization. The Swedish security services are poorly equipped to deal with this, in part because they have little insight into the most vulnerable communities. If there's a snap election next week things look pretty good for the opposition.

I visited just last week and sauntered down that road with a couple of friends enjoying the lovely spring weather. People were in good spirits. It felt nice. A friend of mine was near the place where the truck struck and another friend's mother was apparently nearby helping after the attack.

[RandBlade]

Last week London and St Petersburg, this week Stockholm. Utterly tragic that this is becoming the new normal across Europe

[Loki]

Assuming this is "ISIS-inspired", it shows that ISIS is capable of learning in terms of which attacks cause more damage and that ISIS needs to carry out flashy terrorist attacks to offset its disastrous military performance in Syria and Iraq. Unfortunately, there's nothing that could be done to completely eliminate these kind of attacks, at least not in the short term.

[EyeKhan]

And they'll go on after ISIS ceases to exist as a force in Syria and Iraq, though any new recruits will have to train elsewhere. On the other hand, how much training do you need to hijack a truck and run people over?

[Lor]

Im glad i saw you had created this thread Minx, my first thought was you.

Ps - i hope all you folks are fairing up well!?

[Aimless]

Im glad i saw you had created this thread Minx, my first thought was you.

Ps - i hope all you folks are fairing up well!?

Shaken though we may be, Stockholmers have come together and the best qualities of Swedish society have been on full display since the attack. I'm surprised by the response. Nazis, obsessed with blood and violence as they are, immediately took to the interwebs in order to spread the most gruesome images, but, while they were busy trying to stoke the fires of hatred, stockholmers were opening their homes to strangers and keeping each other safe.

They've released more photos eg. of Swedish police arresting one of the suspects:



And enforcing martial law

For all its flaws, Swedish society is, on the whole, both inclusive and resilient. I just hope that the Swedish tradition of responsible and bipartisan crisis management has survived the past couple of years of toxic political debate.

[Aimless]

The entire population of Sweden gathered in central sthlm to demonstrate their greatest strength, namely their love for one another:





Everyone attended except Sven--he was skiing.

Elsewhere, police vehicles were viciously attacked, occasionally by perpetrators who were little more than children:



The police can do nothing about this, their hands are tied:



Swedish politicians, feeling the pressure to reform the legislative side of Sweden's anti-terrorism efforts, are looking to Norway and Belgium for inspiration. In the case of Norway I should perhaps clarify that we're not looking to learn from the treatment of Breivik.

As usual, social media has been replete with detailed fake images. But swedes seem to have less patience with that sort of nonsense than usual and the pushback has been firm and effective. It appears moderate Swedes, who are often disinclined to participate in potentially toxic online discussions, have deemed this an appropriate time to get involved in order to fight the rise of the dark side.

I'm proud of my community but a little nervous about what the coming week might bring.

[Hazir]

I don't know exactly what you are trying with your posts about everybody coming together over the bloody murder of 4 innocent people, but it doesn't take away from the fact that Sweden hasn't got a grip on illegal immigrants. There should be a much bigger awareness of the risks people who are rejected as refugees pose to society than there obviously is.

[Aimless]

I don't know exactly what you are trying with your posts about everybody coming together over the bloody murder of 4 innocent people, but it doesn't take away from the fact that Sweden hasn't got a grip on illegal immigrants. There should be a much bigger awareness of the risks people who are rejected as refugees pose to society than there obviously is.

*shrugs* First of all, no-one is unaware of the risks, but there have not been sufficient resources for handling the deportations in an effective manner. In response to the attack, this has of course become a priority, although I expect it will continue to be a losing battle for Swedish immigration authorities.

Secondly, rejected asylum seekers going underground is not a new problem, and, considering the tens of thousands of undocumented asylum seekers and other immigrants that have gone underground over the decades, all evidence suggests that the risks have until recently been smaller than you're trying to make them out to be. No doubt they're greater now, but in terms of actual lives lost, Sweden has had bigger problems.

Thirdly, as far as your first comment is concerned, I don't know what it is you're having difficulties understanding or implicitly accusing me of trying to pull. My impression was simply that Sthlmers did not immediately surrender to those who attempted to turn the attack into political gold for their generally xenophobic, racist and Islamophobic agenda. As I'm sure you've noticed, these attacks don't only provoke carefully considered and highly specific criticisms of eg. asylum seekers who've evaded deportation. Rather, they often seem to inspire an opposition to all non-Western immigration, esp. of Muslims and refugees, with no distinction made between different categories of brown/black people who all end up becoming targets of various forms of abuse. So I'm pretty glad that sthlm managed to resist that for one weekend. If that upsets you then perhaps there's something wrong with you, I dunno.