By now many know that a man blew himself up in Stockholm yesterday, injuring 2 people. The first ever for this nation. This story deserves all condemnation it gets because Sweden took in probably the highest numbers of refugees during the Iraq war. However, 24 hours later comes this.. "Military staffer knew about attacks:" http://www.thelocal.se/30794/20101212/ Sweden has been very busy this week, with Julian and all..... I also had my credit cards automatically canceled by my bank and notified they'd be replaced because they suspected my number had fallen into the wrong hands...no other explanation offered. And I was looking forward to a nice, cold, Christmas
Gee, I wonder who coulda dunnit? Probably some peaceful non-radical coexistentialists, we'll see soon enough.
"The fray" has been with us for centuries everywhere. We should not be quick to assign too many connections, purposes and powers to acts of violence like this, that can easily be perpetrated anywhere, and that we can be certain of seeing more. What these crimes mostly have in common is the motive to induce societies to panic and irrationality. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
One man believed to be a suicide bomber was killed in the second blast, while the first explosion injured two others. Shortly before the explosions, Säpo and the TT news agency received a message from a 29-year-old man from southern Sweden who claimed that the prophet Mohammed was being degraded. Bronze Age 2011
I don't see it as a religious or political attack, allthough that was his claim, more a personal tragedy. Apparently he had three kids, one wife and looking for a second. Must have suffered some deep psychoses. The funny thing is to see how people react, they just went on with their shopping, pretending like it's everyday business, some survival instinct I suppose.
It's a survival instinct of a kind- and a collective instinct I dont' sense such reflexes in the USA. We tend to turn first to authority, and military rage. I lived in Beirut during times of high frequency street terrorism: A blitz of car-bombs, suicide bombs in markets, theaters, etc. It became a point of determination among Beirutis to not be cowed. I ate in restaurants, played in arcades, went to school, like everyone else- with blood, glass, and debris being cleaned up amidst us all across the city, in surreal normality. Everyone knew it, instinctively and collectively, like people know about other obligations in life, that to exhibit shock at what was going on was defeat. So I stepped over the body of our concierge (shot for catcalls at the wrong man's wife) and went on with a normal teenage day. I rode my bike past burned-out shells of buildings and cars, on normal, cheerful teenage errands. Everybody in Beirut- at least the living- went on with their lives in an intense, defiant routine of normality in the face of the random death that clawed at civilization. And do you know what happened? The political situation stayed the same. All the conflicts and flashpoints have remained, even to this very day.. but the terrorists did not win in Beirut. Like Londoners in the Blitz, Beirutis did not give in to fear, and the fits of terrorism have mostly subsided. I think that in Sweden, and many other places, there is a proximity to the experiences of street terrorism that is more than physical. We are still a society in the USA much insulated from understanding of what resistance to terrorism, and solidarity against the psychological tyranny of terrorism really is. As a whole, we haven't witnessed scenes of carnage in foreign streets with the same sense of empathy as in many other places. We're uniquely vulnerable in the USA to what we like to pretend can't happen to us, as if within our shores there is a bubble of exceptional defense or immunity that comes from on high, and not from within a common inner resilience and defiance that refuses to surrender life's normal routines and simple pleasures to terror. In the USA, we don't seem to get it- what much of the rest of the world has learned about getting on with life in the most effective defiance of terrorism known to mankind.
I don't think anyone should be cowed, but at the same time fear is not the only thing we have to fear. It would be better put to say that simple prudence, sensibility and sobriety of thought would serve us better in the long run.
WTF does all this navel-gazing have to do with the topic? I see fuck-all about Sweden, except for a ludicrous suggestion that Sweden be grouped with societies like civil-war-Beirut or Blitz London in terms of "psychological conflict proximity," based on a single anecdote about some Stockholmers going about their business. The reality is that Sweden is a society that's long been accustomed to standing on the sidelines of conflict and thereby avoiding taking any damage. Wars are something that happen somewhere else - and preferably using lots of Swedish arms exports - as far as they're concerned. They may well write this one event off as an aberration, but I expect that there's more social shock than is being appreciated here - right wing anti-immigration politics are on the upswing there, and this will feed into that. Meanwhile, let's save the canned psychoanalysis of America for an occasion where it's actually germaine - and preferably one in which there's somthing substantial that might bear on such. It really does not need to be shoehorned into every single thread on the WE&P fora.
Bizarre story. Apparently he is from Iraq. So why does he care more about Swedish troops in Afghanistan than in Iraq? Why is Luton a "hotbed" of terrorist activity?
Luton is a Muslim ghetto. Sweeden wants Julian Assange from the Brits so they send them a suicide bomber. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Well, given he appears to have blown his own penis off: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I doubt the virgins waiting as a reward for him in Heaven will be much use to him now.
Sweden's royalty Nazi past: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...t-Queen-s-father-revealed-TV-documentary.html
Swedes are not known for their strong sense of empathy directly. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
