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Well, our police-chief who aren't a police, prefer dialogue and socialism over catching criminals, before being the chief of the police he was the leader of the Migration office and the "Insurance" office (not the last resort welfare stuff but the welfare stuff you collect when you're sick or have a kid or to help pay for your apartment and such.) .. they aren't the most trusted and popular of the government ran places and now he's totally managed to screw the police up too.

But he's still on the job. Because Social-democrats.

The previous "looks like the best prime-minister candidate" of the social-democrats Ygeman had complete garbage history too. I don't remember it now but it included not paying for where he lived(?), lots of late payments but other shit too. Don't remember if it was that his educational background was junk or his jobs or whatever, it was basically all junk anyway.

Our current prime-minister is a social-democrat and he's a compulsive liar and his background is the metal union and .. the social-democrats / their youth organisation. The one they had as leader before that was so shitty he had to go, the one before that is both shitty but also have had lots of unpaid parking tickets, bought private stuff on the account she should use for her job but a lot of other shit too. But I'm too lazy to watch a YouTube video of it all and I don't remember it all. But they are all complete garbage. And those are still supposed to be the elite of the social-democrats I guess..

Picture of the police-chief: https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_...
Picture of the prime-minister:
http://www.regeringen.se/conte...

You can kinda see how little goes on in them ..

I haven't even taken the worst pictures!
https://cdn.quizme.se/quiz/b1a...
https://y.cdn-expressen.se/ima...
https://z.cdn-expressen.se/ima...
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7S4y...
https://w.cdn-expressen.se/ima... :D

Ygeman looks functional:
https://y.cdn-expressen.se/ima...
But clearly looks wasn't everything.
We should had learned that after Fredrik Reinfeldt (former prime-minister, Moderates):
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

He didn't looked all that retarded. He aren't either. But he drowned us in Muslims and Africans and sold out public property way too cheap.

Total previous budget 3.5 million SEK, new budget for today 400 million SEK - no anomaly there...

According to the decision UD2008/10263/ASO (http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/openaid/original/Kambodja_samarbetsstrategi.pdf?1300445979) in 2008:

Landallokeringen fÃr Kambodja ska hÃgst uppgÃ¥ till 550 miljoner kronor under strategiperioden. Den Ã¥rliga volymen bÃr vara ca 150 miljoner kronor Ã¥r 2008, ca 175 miljoner kronor Ã¥r 2009 och ca 225 miljoner kronor Ã¥r 2010.

which basically says the maximum allocation to Cambodia should be approximately 150 millions SEK in 2008, 175 millions SEK in 2009 and 225 millions SEK in 2009. This was extended in 2011 until a new decision was made on March 8 in 2012, which can be found here: http://www.regeringen.se/content/1/c6/10/90/38/d0d2fb9e.pdf, which says the aid for 2012-213 should be 400 millions SEK. So, no, there is no anomaly if you bother to do a quick search to get the correct numbers...

http://www.regeringen.se/content/1/c4/15/40/472970fc.pdf

Chapter21 section 2.

I don't think that is the case except for when his presence is not deemed without importance to the hearing. Swedish law says the suspect must appear to the main and appeals hearing, If the court claims his appearance is necessary to an inquiry, and to any preparatory meeting if "it is presumed" his presence will "promote the purpose of the hearing".

I did some further searching and found an English version of the Swedish code of judicial procedure. This document seems to make the case that what is happening with Assange is not only customary and within the powers of the Swedish judicial system, but actually somewhat required of it. It appears the extradition is in order to maintain its fairness to Assange. Also, according to it, all information that could help Assange is supposed to be released so the concept of the accusers no cooperating with the authorities or not wanting the prosecution should have been released by the government.

Chapter 23 also states that once an investigation is started by the police or the prosecutor, the police can only investigate simple crimes and the police have to turn "complicated" investigations over to the prosecutors office. Only the prosecutor can make the decision to drop a case or investigation and only if there is no substantial public or private interest that would be ignored.

In Sweden almost 15% of the population are "foreign born". The same number for the US is almost 13%. In the UK almost 12%.

Information about immigration in Sweden (in Swedish only unfortunately): http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/2279/a/181576
US Census information: http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/acs-19.pdf
UK information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-born_population_of_the_United_Kingdom

To help your google-fu:

"The Swedish Judicial System - a brief presentation".
http://www.regeringen.se/content/1/c4/33/41/0feab306.pdf

How is it that the other Anglo-Saxon countries are all WORSE than the US when it comes to digital rights and freedoms? Canada's version of the DMCA is worse, NZ has this, Australia has its wonderful new Great Barrier Firewall planned, and don't even get me started on Britain and encryption. Seriously?

Because they're all running a different kernel than you expect, despite the nice UI

None of those coountries have a tradition or legal framework for freedom of information. The former colonies, including the US, take their leglisative heritage directly from the UK. The UK there is the Thirty Year Rule, which mandates that even the most mundane material from public agencies is by default secret for thirty years. Further, all that is needed to extend the secrecy beyond the original thirty is a request from even the most petty bureaucrat.

Vellum, paper, microfilm all survive more or less for 30 years even with mediocre storage conditions. Maybe the information contained on those storage mediums will no longer be of use, but it will be there. Throw digital storage media into the mix and you have data-deletion-by-default: backup tapes last up to 15 year depending on quality and optimal storage and handling, including not just humidity and temperature control but also periodic respooling. CD-R, DVD+R,DVD-R, etc, use dyes which oxidize over a few short years. CD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RW use layers of polarizing chemicals, but aren't much better. Compact flash? who knows. Those problems are easily solved through period migration. The real problem has been and still is one of the data formats.

Contrast the Thirty Years Rule with the (former) Nordic countries where material from public agencies is by default not just publicly available but also published. That's not just a law, it's part of the constitution in Sweden, Finland and Norway. It's not new either, it originates from 1766 -- a decade before the US was founded -- as a result of ousting an administration that used control of information to lock out opposition, run up debt and ruin the economy, engage in graft, start unpopular wars, and generally avoid accountability. Hmmm. Dejavu...

http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/9023/a/80886

It's already possible for the police to obtain a wiretap on anyone's subscriber line if they have a wiretap order from a competent court of law. They don't need any dedicated "wiretapping lines" for that; they can simply order the telco to establish the wiretap and send them the transmissions.

The current proposal, due to be voted on June 17, is not about creating dedicated lines to be used once in a while for transferring individual messages from senders singled out by a wiretap order.

The proposal is about creating dedicated lines to monitor all traffic passing any one of a number of access points 24/7, scanning the contents and metadata of every message for certain patterns (some sources claim there are to be around 250,000 search patterns in simultaneous use, all of them secret of course).

The FRA has claimed there will be no breach of privacy unless a message matches a pattern. This is a confusion of words at best, and a blatant lie at worst. It's like opening every letter handled by the post office, scanning it for an uncommon term like "hexamethyl fluoride", and then claiming only the privacy of messages containing the term "hexamethyl fluoride" has been breached, not the privacy of every other message.

Excuse me, but when anyone accesses my e-mail christmas greeting sent to a friend abroad to verify that I don't use the term "hexamethyl fluoride", my privacy has been breached regardless of whether I have used that term or not. And it doesn't matter a single bit to me that my message is scanned by a computer rather than a human, when I haven't the faintest idea of what that computer is looking for. Saying I'm unlikely to send a matching message doesn't resolve my complaint. I'm unlikely to be killed during a bank robbery too; that doesn't mean I will approve of making it legal for bank robbers to fire a gun at me.

When mass wiretapping is legalized and the physical infrastructure is implemented, there is nothing to stop this from being abused way beyond the original intentions, and the original intentions are unclear enough as it is. A committee of humans will oversee the world's fifth largest computer cluster scanning billions of messages every day for items matching a quarter of a million patterns, to make sure noone's privacy is being invaded without sufficient cause?

It's like watching a golf course from the club house during a thunderstorm to make sure the grass doesn't get wet.

And it's not like this 24/7 mass wiretapping programme is some unverified conspiracy theory. The technique to be used is described in the proposal itself, in the Proposed act on signals monitoring for military intelligence purposes ("Förslag till lag om signalspaning i försvarsunderrättelseverksamhet", pages 9-11), Article 3.

The good thing about this is that more people will become aware of the surveillance, whether it's legal or not, and hopefully begin defending their own privacy with the help of encryption and other means. It's a pity that it has become necessary, though.

• At about 20 points in the national information infrastructure network, all traffic is spliced off and fed into the Försvarets Radioanstalt (FRA) agency. These points are placed as to catch all traffic entering and leaving the Swedish borders, but will catch much - if not most - domestic traffic too, for technical routing reasons. Electronic traffic, in particular, always takes the scenic route.
• This affects all Internet traffic and all telephony traffic, meaning web surfing, e-mail, phone, and fax are affected, to mention but a few.
• The FRA will scan all traffic in real time according to about 250,000 search criteria. The traffic that matches will be automatically saved for manual intelligence analysis. This obviously takes a lot of computing power. We don't know the exact extent of FRA's computing power, but we do know that they have the world's fifth most powerful computer, in competition mostly with nuclear physics labs.
• "Customers" that will be able to place requests for searches include all authorities (all some 500 of them including Department of Transportation, Department of Agriculture, etc., but notably the police, secret service and customs).
• The political administration may order (not request, but order) a political wiretapping to catch communications they are interested in.
• Major businesses will also get access to the wiretapping grid, but will have to go through an authority.
• The bill specifically allows for singling out Swedish people for specific wiretapping, although only under certain qualifiers.
• The mandate for the agency's own intelligence gathering is broadened from "external military threats" to "external threats", which are exemplified as international crime; trafficking in drugs, weapons, or people; migration movements; religious or cultural conflicts; environmental imbalances and threats; raw materials shortages; and currency speculation. More examples are listed.

They do have an embassy in Sweden located in Stockholm.

Embassy of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Chancery: Norra Kungsvägen 39, 181 31 Lidingö

http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/5357/a/41125

>I don't think there is anything exempt from VAT in
>Sweden except books (and that just happened a few
>years ago). I think some kinds of entertainment
>like concerts and the like are "only" 6%. But there
>are taxes on everything else.

Food in Sweden is interesting though, as the VAT varies depending on how you buy it. It is actually only 12% for food bought at shops or as "take away". If you order it on a resturant, it has 25% VAT. I believe that in England there is also VAT on food bought in restaurant (and eaten there, not take away) although not fully sure.

Books actually do have a VAT in Sweden, it is at 6% and it is the same for newspaper, cinema and some other similar things. One place to find detailed information (in Swedish') is from this document regariding differentiation on the VAT or not made by the goverment:

http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/5266/a/46528
(check the summary in part 1)

Your explanation sounds plausible but is wrong. Postage in Sweden isn't paid by taxes. It's private delivery and open competition. The Swedish Post has the lion share of the market but there are several competing private companies that delivers mail and they all must comply with the legislation that gives you the right to reject junk mail.

As far as incrementing the cost of sending legitimate mail ... did you know that most people sends less than 1 letter per month nowadays. A modest increase of postage is a very small price to pay to get rid of all junk mail for them. Besides, less junk mail is good for the environment. Mööses thrives in a healthy junk mail free environment.

...because starting July 1 a similar law takes effect, which, among other things, makes circumventing the copy protection on a music disc, DVD etc. to copy it illegal even for personal use (note that circumventing it to play it on, for example, Linux, still is legal).

The motivation for this is that otherwise "everyone would copy discs and claim it's for personal use". Well, maybe if they copy them and share the copies online (which I'd wager the law is out to stop) it's not just for personal use anymore.

Needless to say, I, as a Swede, am not happy that I will be a criminal for listening to my music on my computer with iTunes (which by the way rips the copy protected discs I own with no problem - now what, will iTunes be illegal under the new law?) instead of having to switch discs all the time.

Apparently, the law will bring Sweden up to EU standards on the matter. I thought Norway, which isn't a member of the EU, wouldn't do something like this, seeing as how they're not pressured to it by a bunch of guys in Brussels.

More info about the law, in Swedish, at: http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/1929

You're right. I was just using the time-honored knee-jerk translation of 10 SEK per USD. The rate seems to thrive in the neighborhood of that number anyway; I was using 10 for my mental lookups when the rate was closer to 13 SEK per USD, too.

I should probably consider changing that habit if it goes below SEK 7.50. Coming to think of it, isn't that rather close now?

Oh, and if you're interested in the governmental full paper with law text and stuff, it's here (in Swedish). For some obscure departmental reason, it's from the Dept of Agriculture...

Press release

Part 1 of the proposal

Part 2 and appendixes

Press release

Part 1 of the proposal

Part 2 and appendixes

Press release

Part 1 of the proposal

Part 2 and appendixes

Here's the coverage (in Swedish) from all the four major newspapers:
Expressen
DN.
SvD
Aftonbladet

Some great quotes from Mr BodstrÃm (Minister for Justice) include:
"We have not done this to satisfy the big record companies"
"The police will not come running into people's homes looking for these things"
He is clearly completely clueless. I bet he has no idea that it's even possible to trace people with their IP address.

This law is unenforceable and will not be enforced. The police can't even keep child porn off the p2p networks here, so really, this is ridiculous.
The real enforcers will be Antipiratbyrån, the anti piracy bureau, a group of lawyers representing a number of companies. You can see a list of the member companies here. Most should be familiar to non-swedes too.
This is the only organisation activiely looking for copyright infringement online. (and their efforts so far has been very sporadic, even they have the sense to mostly go after CD bootleg sellers). In practice this all means that if you are careful not to share anything from the member companies of Antipiratbyrån on your favourite p2p network, you will not get caught.

Bork Bork bork "Bork Bork Bork bork Bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork , bork bork bork Bork, bork bork 1st bork Bork, 2bork4. Bork bork bork bork bork BORK bork, bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork Bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork. Bork, bork bork bork bork bork bork bork, bork bork bork (bork bork bork bork), bork bork, bork bork Bork bork bork, bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork, bork bork bork bork." Bork bork bork bork bork bork Bork-bork bork bork bork Bork BORK bork, bork bork bork bork bork $4 bork bork bork bork bork bork bork CD-BORKs.

(And don't talk about Sweden like it was paradise either - they have a yearly national dept equal to 133% of their GNP. That's a burn rate that would make some dot coms flinch!)

I think you may be confusing deficit and debt and the GNP with the government revenue.

Swedish government statistics show that government expenditures are about 56 per cent of the GDP (roughly comparable to the GNP).

Sweden indeed uses deficit financing as the United States did until recently. However, national economic accounting principles are quite different from corporate accounting principles. Among many other reasons, governments can cover debt costs by printing money or raising taxes, an option obviously not open to private enterprise.

In addition, many companies stay in business with high losses as long as their income can cover the interest payments on their debt. Successful startups typically lose money for years before making a profit.

The economics of bankrupt dotcoms is much different. They had expenditures several times their revenue and thus ran through their venture capital. They usually had very low debt since their working capital was provided by investment, not loans. Banks will rarely lend money to startups.

The Swedish growth rate of 3.8% is reasonably healthy compared to the U.S. growth rate of 4.1%

The Swedes are doing okay. The dotcoms should be so lucky.