Is the right given a fair choice?

When Fredrik Reinfeldt was elected chairman of the Moderate Party in 2003 (in 2006 he became Prime Minister) hundreds of thousands of Swedes were denied a political home. The Moderates turned into the fourth or fifth party in the crowded middle of the political spectrum.

Persons from the political right were denied a fair choice in politics.

Now the Christian Democrats seem ready to try a go at the political right. The proposed chairman of the party, Ebba Busch Thor, says that she will appeal to the political right. It sounds nice, but is it true? The Christian Democrats have a large group whose most important issues are generous welfare benefits and international aid. Not a working economy and low taxes. We wish her good luck, but wait with praise until she has shown results.

The political opposition can win parliamentary votes, but to no use,
by C G Holm

“The Cabinet governs the realm” is the words of the first chapter’s sixth article in the Swedish constitution. This implies that when the Parliament has one view and the Cabinet another it is hard for the Parliament to get things done. With the present minority government it is obvious that the Parliament will say no to a number of Cabinet bills. But the practice used in Parliament will make it very unlikely that Parliament itself will be able to introduce measures of their own, that will have practical consequences in society.

Les extrêmes ses touchent
by Kjell Albin Abrahamson

A memorial should be raised on Åsgatan in the town of Falun, at the site of the old Hotel Astoria. At that hotel in December 1940 a historical meeting took place between the pioneering Swedish communist Nils Flyg and the front man of the Swedish nazis, Birger Furugård. The men hade a nice meeting in a cooperative spirit during the height of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Exactly thirty years later the hotel was visited by 13 year old Osama bin Ladin, the most frightening beacon of modern islamism. Three of the world’s worst ”isms” at the very same hotel. Only two at the same time, but still…

Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the West
by C G Holm

After ten years in prison camps in Siberia and Karelia Mikhail Khodorkovsky was released at the end of 2013. Once he was the richest man in Russia. Khodorkovsky immediately moved to the West and promised that he should not be active in politics. Now, a year after his release, he is finally starting to talk.

Climatophobia and islamic agony, but papers write about climate agony and islamophobia
by Filip Björner

Propagandistic journalists can deceive in many ways. The straightest way is to publish outright lies. But there are other more sophisticated ways. one is to put focus on feelings instead of facts. A suggestive way is to claim that there is agony, which could be related to emotions. And today agony is linked to climate change, not islamism. And the other way around. Islamophobia is the sickness of the day, while no one talks of climatophobia.

Terror in Paris
by Allan C. Brownfeld

Is the West prepared to meet jihadists returning from Syria or Iraq?

The Regulation Council – a political failure
by Fredrik Runebert

The Regulation Council (Regelrådet) was created in order to reduce administrative costs for companies. The Council studies if cost studies are made in the proper way, when government agencies introduce new regulations. The former center-right government put up the goal of reducing administrative costs for companies by 25 per cent in four years, starting 2006. The objctive has not yet been achieved! The 25 per cent objective has been scrapped and the Regulation Councils integrated into the Growth Agency. The reduction of regulation costs have been minimial and the quality of the cost studies that is a must for goverment agencies, seems to be very low.

Je suis Charlie Martell
Charles the Hammer crushed moslem conquerors, by Tommy Hansson

You have heard ”Je suis Charlie Hebdo”, spread over the world after the jihadist attack in Paris. There should be a more traditional version, “Je suis Charlie Martell”, Charles Martell having stopped the moslem conquest of Europe at Poitiers in France in 732.

The Karelian Isthmus 1944
by David Stavenheim

June 9 1944 is an incredible inferno on the Karelian Isthmus. It’s the start of the Soviet main attack against Finland, a country refusing to be subdued by the Soviet Union. One of the biggest concentrations of artillery in military history is concentrating against Finnish defense lines between Leningrad and Helsinki, defense lines transformed into piles of sand and soil. The sound of the artillery, firing continuously for ten hours, can be heard all the way to Helsinki

Eastern Europe rearms
by C G Holm

Russian aggression and military build up make the new NATO members in Eastern Europe buy new weapons and invest in military training in order to be prepared against Russian military operations.