A little after 4 p.m. local time, Anna Lindh, foreign minister, was stabbed in the stomach, when she was shopping in Stockholm’s premium department store, NK.
Link to AFP, the story is currently on the first page, but only links to a java pop-up and not a proper link.
So why?
This upcoming Sunday, we have a referendum on the Euro. Are we gonna throw out the Swedish crown or keep it? The Anti-Euro side has long been in the lead, whereas the socialdemocratic party and government largely are in favor.
Anna Lindh has been one of the most outspoken in favor of the change, saying that the welfare state needs strong private enterprise, or the public sector will not be able to afford all that welfare we get. It’s been a welcome change and the socialdemocrats have finally learned that you can’t get something for nothing. The transformation has largely been the same as with the Labour party in England.
The pro-euro people are in alliances that we normally don’t see: Socialdemocrats are rallying with Christian Democrats and the Conservative party. And some time ago, Lindh was at a meeting where she and the head of cell phone manufacturer Ericsson spoke oput in a joint statement about the benefits of the euro.
Lindh has taken a lot of heat for this. Ericsson has been laying off a lot of people to get the company straight and she being from the left side of the political spectra was deemed a traitor by many on the ultra left.
She was just running a quick, private errand, and didn’t have the security detail with her. The police have currently no leads to who the perp is.
Yeah, I read about it just now, un-fucking-believable. Good news is, it seems like there’s a pretty good chance of her surviving, and I sincerely hope she does. She is one of the few politicians I like and have respect for.
Not so long ago is was Pim Fortuyn of Holland - another victim of a left wing extremist fuckhead. 2 – 0 for the leftist bastards. Perhaps someone can come up with a right wing extremist political murder, just to even the score a bit?
(FTR. It’s not certain Lindh’s murder was political inspired. Might just have been an all round crazy idiot)
What saddens me the most is that it’ll probably spell the end of the open Scandinavian democracy. Where the politicians could move around and talk to the voters without elaborate preparations and a screen of bodyguards and what not.
I think you are jumping to conclusions Gaspode. We don’t know who did this yet. My guess is a deranged person who did it on the whim. It’s still horrifying, Anna Lindh is a great politician and would make a great prime minister. I don’t agree with Winstonsmith that it will end the open democracy, it didn’t after the murder of Palme.
Well, a bomb was placed outside the home of the Japanese Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister by members of two right-wing, ultranationalist group calling themselves the “Traitor Punishing Group” (Kokuzoku Seibatsutai) and the “Nation-building Volunteer Army” (Kenkoku Giyugun), in reaction to his work in arranging a summit between Japan and North Korea. A letter found nearby read “[Deputy Minister Hitoshi] Tanaka has put his heart into collaborating with a hostile nation. His actions cannot be condoned.”
2-1?
Anyway, here’s wishing Lindh a full and speedy recovery
Just for an update, yesterday’s attempted bombing received praise from Tokyo Gov. Ishihara later that day. Perhaps it no longer counts as an extremist murder attempt, but a mainstream one?
Is it only leftists that are against the euro in Sweden? That certainly is not the case in Britain or Ireland.
And as long as we’re making completely unsupported allegations about the motives of the stabber, I’m gonna go with a “Bob Roberts” scenario. I mean, I’m sure he could have killed her if he’d really wanted to, right?
There is no knowledge of anything about the motives.
And she was labelled “to be under the same blanket with Ericsson” by a non-leftist tabloid. The whole discussion about this is a pseudo-discussion, very typical for these papers.
*the word will be found in the next editions of Oxford and also Webster.
ruadh wrote:
It is not only leftists, but the main money for the “Vote Yes”-campain is coming from big business. Therefore it has begun to be labeled as a left-right discussion.
A bread in Finland costs 1,8 - 2 EUROs. (about 2 - 2,2 US dollars). We have the EUROs here in Finland. (It is much more than earlier).
Finnish firms are moving out from Finland, but this is another story.
So obviously it is not “just a question of the left”.
I was five when Olof Palme was gunned down on an open street in Stockholm, but even I feel a cold chill when I walk by the plaque in the streets of Stockholm that reads (paraphrasing) “Olof Palme, prime minister of Sweden was shot dead on this spot, the 28th of february 1986”.
Yesterday another attack on this, in most ways, great democratic society occured when some madman stabbed one of the politicians I respect the most, foreign minister Anna Lindh. In my mind this is not only an attack on a wife and mother, but an attack on the open society we have created. If the politicians are forced to hide behind walls of security, what will this do to the openess of our society, to the core of our democracy, where the people who govern our society is easily accessible to the public. What will happen?
As I sit here, this all fades though, and all I wish for is for Anna Lindh to wake up so her family, and our society can stop worrying. The rest can be dealt with after that.
Well, Henry B, as I said earlier, I put this in the pit precisely to be able to throw unfounded allegations around.
To be a bit more ballanced, I see only two possibilities:
Madman in random attack.
Politically inspired.
If it’s #2, then it surely is from the left. There are nutty right-wing anti-democratic dipshits, but I somehow doubt they would make an issue of Lindh having strange political bedfellows to the right of the politcal landscape.
To other posters, yes, there are anti-euro people on the whole political scale.
And as an update - according to wedish news sources this morning, Lindh is still in critical condition. I hope she pulls through. Though I don’t share her political view, she’s been a voice of reason and have shown great courage. I admire her in many ways.
Almost crying. Anna Lindh was a great politician, admired and respected by people with all different political views. She would have made a great first female prime minister. It’s deeply saddening that this has happened again in Sweden. My thoughts go out to her famliy, especially her two children.
Re-reading, I’m not sure it comes across so clearly that my “Bob Roberts” analogy was meant purely as a sarcastic response to the OP’s unsupported allegation. I don’t really mean to suggest that’s what happened, and I apologise if anyone was offended by it.
Lindh was criticized by Israel because she was critical of the UN report on the Jenin massacre. “The report shows that serious crimes against humanitarian law have occurred,” said Lindh.
"The Israeli foreign ministry issued a scathing condemnation of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh Sunday, August 4, for her criticism of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s report on the Israeli army incursion into West Bank refugee camp of Jenin._
In an official Swedish Foreign Ministry press release, Lindh said that, “Israel’s refusal to cooperate with the U.N. has meant that a full and comprehensive report has not been possible to produce.”
Fuck. Just when you think a day can’t get any more crappy, it does.
Condolences to the people of Sweden and most especially to the family and friends of Anna Lindh. I really know next to nothing of her or her work, but it’s just shitty beyond words that anyone’s life should end this way.