Mono, or glandular fever as it's known outside of America, is very rarely lethal. That is, assuming you're not a client of the Swedish foster care system, which Donia Hassan, born in 1997, had been for the last five years — against the will of both herself and her mother.

Though attempts at reaching Nollvisionen — the goal of not having a single traffic accident on Swedish roads — have been somewhat successful, people still meet tragic deaths in car crashes. Social planners have long been baffled by the problem, and the reason why Vision Zero hasn't been achieved has eluded traffic analysts for some time. Yet now a genetic anomaly has been discovered that may explain why even drivers who have passed Sweden's rigorous driving exams still end up crashing cars.

This Thursday, the ECHR delivered the verdict in a hate speech case that was appealed to it five years ago, back on 4 January 2007. In December of 2004, seven young men were distributing leaflets about homosexuality at high school Staffanskolan in the small Swedish town of Söderhamn. The message on these leaflets was critical of the way homosexuality was presented in Swedish education and called for a debate on the topic. To quote the portion of leaflet later charged to be hate speech: (My translation)

"Homo sex propaganda

Society has in a few decades turned around from a dismissal of homosexuality and other sexual perversions to an embracing of this deviating sexual inclination. Your anti-Swedish teacher knows very well that homosexuality has a morally destructive effect on the national body and will readily try to present it as something normal and good.

Point out to your teacher that there has been a law in Sweden that outlawed homosexuality, but which under the first half of the 20th century was revoked. Tell him that HIV and AIDS appeared early among the homosexuals and that their promiscuous lifestyle has been one of the main reasons that this modern plague has taken hold. Also tell him that it was because of this that the now repealed "sauna club law" was introduced to prevent the spread of this disease. Tell him that the homo sex lobby with its agencies is also attempting to dedramatize pedophilia and ask him if this sexual perversion should be legalized."

... yet most of the public debate is about the ban on sex with animals in the new proposed legislation, a practice that is currently legal in Sweden.

On 28 November, the Swedish committee, since its inception during the summer of 2009 under the leadership of county governor Eva Eriksson, delivered its final report — SOU 2011:75 (SOU = Official Reports of the Swedish Government). This 1100-page document calls for the government to among other things:

• Require all house cats to be registered with the government.
• Mandate the neutering of all outdoor cats.
• Ban the use of riding crops for propelling horses.
• Ban the use of sea lions and elephants in circuses.
• Criminalize abandoning animals (including house cats).
• Extend the maximum prison sentence for cruelty to animals from two to four years.

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Back in the 1990's, Americans finally had enough of child molesters preying on their children, and incidents such as the rape-murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka sparked a popular movement that resulted in laws being passed which required convicted sex offenders to register with the authorities and make their whereabouts known. Today Mikael Skillt and his “Stop the pedophiles” network are looking to implement the same sort of laws in Sweden too, yet find the justice system is putting obstacles in their way. What will follow here is an interview with the spokesperson for this movement — but first a bit of history.

Swedish media reporting on sex offenders
If you approach the average Swedish citizen about the issue of sex offenders, you'd most likely find him or her quite frustrated with the way mass media never reveals the identity of these pedophiles. What you typically see in a newspaper article is a person covering his head in his jacket, with no name provided, not even after they've been found guilty.

About three years ago, this saw a popular movement starting to emerge which demanded these identities to become publicly known. No fewer than three websites dedicated to the matter were started by different people from the end of 2008 to about a year later — one of which was svenskapedofiler.se (Swedish pedophiles), for which activist Mikael Skillt served as the coordinator. A Facebook group called “Show the identities of pedophiles” was also launched during 2009, a group whose membership today has almost reached 150,000, in this country of not even 10 million people.

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Back on 20 April, 42-year-old Dan Park had spent the afternoon putting up highly provocative wanted posters of a black man named Jallow Momodou, depicting him as a slave gone missing. To quote the poster: "Our negro slave has run away!! If you know where he is or if you've seen him please call."

In the process, Park had been pursued by a citizen who had seen what he was doing and who called the police on him. Shortly thereafter, they arrested him red-handed putting up posters. This Thursday he was subsequently indicted for hate speech under the Swedish HMF law (agitation against ethnic group) as well as two other crimes, facing a possible two years in prison.

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The year so far has witnessed numerous scandals involving partying and drug abuse on the part of the Sweden Democrats (SD), a political party with only a year-long history in the Swedish parliament — Riksdagen — after finally having made it past the 4 percent block during the 2010 elections. This Monday it was revealed that 23-year-old William Petzäll, the most notorious of the party's drug fiends, had been involuntarily committed to a care facility last week under the Care of Alcoholics, Drug Abusers and Abusers of Volatile Solvents Act — the LVM law in Swedish.

Though his party had been aware of his drug problems ever since he started work for them a couple of years ago, this had not become a public matter until on 6 February of this year, when Petzäll was detained by the police after having smashed his girlfriend's apartment in Trelleborg during a drunken rage and had to spend the night in jail. Following this, Petzäll took a timeout from politics and spent the next month and a half in drug rehab, returning on 25 March.

Even in liberal Sweden, Joe Arpaio is The Man.

At least that's the impression you get from reading the comments to tabloid Aftonbladet's hit piece this Thursday on Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. Keep in mind this is Sweden's largest periodical. The article is part of a tour of America two reporters at the newspaper are doing called Amerika på dekis, "America Down & Out." To quote the stated intention of the article series at amerika.aftonbladet.se: "Peter Kadhammar and Urban Andersson are traveling across the American continent for two weeks. They will cover the American crisis which may be the end of an historic era, the American century."

The timing of this series is highly curious, however, with the renewed interest in traditional American values and philosophy espoused by the Tea Party movement; and with large portions of Swedish society becoming ever more disillusioned in many of the ideological flagships of their own system. For the last 40 or 50 years, Sweden has been known to take a stand for abortion-on-demand; for a generous asylum policy; for society playing a large role in child-rearing; and for humane treatment of offenders instead of punishment.

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During the summer of 2010, Lars Skoglund was suspected of having molested his sibling's children. He was found innocent of this, but when the police searched his house and seized his computer, they uncovered large volumes of child pornography on his hard drives.

Following this, in September he faced child pornography charges — and while he at first was the sole suspect, some 23 women all over Sweden between the ages of 38 and 70 found themselves charged of the same crime as the police discovered chat logs from the encounters the man had had with these women after hooking up with them on the dating site e-kontakt.se.

In 2009, a lesbian woman "married" to another woman decided she wanted to have a child. This usually isn't a problem if you go about the natural way to have one — find a husband, hopefully marry him, and then start a family; but since she wanted to start a family without a man in it, she opted for artificial insemination instead. To get approved for this procedure, everyone has to go through a mandatory medical examination. So on 6 February of that year, she contacted the Liljeholmen care center, a medical facility with excellent customer reviews at Swedish care guide website Vårdguiden, and arranged an appointment at the gynecologist's office there.

The nurse who received her there told her to get an appointment with a specialist clinic instead, however, since they're not familiar with the procedure for non-heterosexual couples at this care center. As reported by the woman in the lawsuit, she was told, "it's so complicated with lesbian couples," referring to the provisions in question. The care center arranged a speedy referral to the special surgery for lesbian and bisexual women at Södersjukhuset, but as would become evident later — the woman is now more interested in quarreling than in actually getting her artificial insemination. The same day, she wrote an e-mail to the chief physician at Liljeholmen care center asking why she didn't get the care she had asked for during her appointment there.

Staff Interrupts, Fiancée Files Complaint and Wins

In Sweden, we've got a public authority called the Parliamentary Ombudsman (JO is the Swedish acronym), an institution tasked with ensuring that laws are adhered to and that we as citizens can file complaints if some part of the government has stepped on us. People in general don't make much use of this right as they go about their daily lives, and if they do, they certainly don't experience the JO as being very accommodating  — yet inmates at Swedish prisons sure make up for it.

The background for this article was a JO decision I read this morning dated 30 September this year, where a woman had filed a complaint since she felt it had been “disrespectful and offensive” that corrections officers had interrupted her and her inmate boyfriend when they had engaged in sexual intercourse in front of their five-month-old daughter during a conjugal visit. Swedish JO response here.

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Through an unexpected string of events, Swedish child welfare has recently become a hot topic internationally, with no fewer than three other countries involved in highly publicized child welfare controversies. But first, let's start off with a domestic matter — vanvårdsutredningen, "The abuse investigation" in English, the inquiry into the excesses children in Swedish foster care had to endure during the mid-20th century, and the financial compensation the victims who suffered this abuse were looking forward to.

Earlier this year, Minister for Children Maria Larsson hinted at former foster care children possibly becoming eligible for financial compensation, following the investigation that's been in progress since 2006. This September it turned into a stormy matter, however, as she was forced to deliver the gloomy news that the incumbent government had decided there would be no compensation. The left-wing parties of the Riksdag were quick to seize this opportunity to turn the matter into party politics, and chairman of the Left Party, Lars Ohly, went as far as describing the current centrist government as "shameful" and "autocratic" in his debate article here.

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The other day I reported on the brutal and lethal attack on a corrections officer that transpired here in Sweden back on Monday. Now the identity of the perpetrator has been publicly revealed, and the identity of the young woman who was going to be 25 this Wednesday has also become known through word of mouth. Something that might be of interest to Americans is that she has been confirmed as having attended an American university.

Karen Gebreab, born in Sweden in 1986, enrolled at Eastern Connecticut State University in the fall of 2005, allegedly studying social work according to an unconfirmed source. After graduating, she went back to Sweden and started work at the Huddinge jail, where she would be brutally bludgeoned to death only one year later. In this picture from the university, she's just recently arrived, with her in the bottom left corner:

Last June, a 25-year-old woman, whose identity has not yet been revealed to media, started work at Huddinge jail as a corrections officer. During her morning shift this Monday, she was jumped and bludgeoned to death with her own nightstick by a 30-year-old man with a history of violent crime, as he was being booked for attempted murder. The bloody assault took place on the roof of Huddinge jail at around 10:30 AM, when she was alone with the repeat offender during an outdoor walk.

For a long time now, Sweden has been ravaged by numerous attacks by inmates on correction officers who face daily threats and assaults as they carry out their duties. However, due to the country's preference for "humane" treatment of offenders, the officers are bogged down by regulations limiting their ability to deal with the convicts in an effective manner, with more attention being paid to the rehabilitation and well-being of the inmates than prison security and employee protection. In spite of the 30-year-old having been previously convicted of other violent crimes, the 25-year-old woman was still alone with him at the time of the assault, armed with nothing more than a nightstick.

Ron Paul hasn't given rise to a huge following only in the USA, but one in Europe as well. Even in  Socialist Sweden he's inspired people dissatisfied with their own government to look beyond the ideology they've been taught in school and by the mainstream media.

Coming off great displays in recent debates, Ron Paul's candidacy is looking stronger and stronger. During the Freedom Forum on 5 September, the 11-time Congressman was met with applause and amusement as he responded to the questions asked with precision and candor. Asked what he would like to cut from the federal budget, he replied, "Well, that's a difficult question, because that's a long list, I'd rather give you the list of the things we should keep." After a brief applause, he continued, "That would be a short list."