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The Night of the Cynics

'Basically, the US is providing these flows for us. You make war, and we get the refugees!'


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In April 2012, Sweden's Minister for Finance Anders Borg held a talk at the premises of US think tank Peterson Institute in Washington DC. Towards the end of this talk, Borg touched upon Sweden's migrant policy. He brought up the high unemployment amongst young immigrants, and he admitted openly that it was a 'serious issue' for the Swedish labour market. He also mentioned that Sweden opened the borders in 2008, and thereafter achieved the highest level of immigration in Europe - far higher than the UK, France, Germany, and Holland combined.

Then came a startling comment. Grinning widely, he blurted:

'Basically, the US is providing these flows for us. You make war, and we get the refugees!'

The audience, made up of wealthy lobbyists, had themselves a good laugh. This was without question: The Night of the Cynics. Sweden's Minister for Finance Anders Borg, together with his audience, laughed at how the US conducted wars of invasion in the Middle East, causing death, suffering, and destruction for millions of people, creating an unmanageable migrant crisis in the EU and in Sweden.

The second US war in Iraq, begun in 2003 under the false pretense that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, cost the lives of 8,000 US soldiers and one half million Iraqis. Approximately 3.9 million Iraqis were forced to flee their homes, with two million finding refuge elsewhere in the country and another 1.9 million fleeing Iraq altogether. All told, this one US war cost roughly USD 100 billion.



After the formal end of conflict, a number of US oil companies came to Iraq to win lucrative contracts. Amongst others, Halliburton, where Vice President Dick Cheney had previously been CEO, won a multi-billion dollar contract under dubious circumstances. Presidential candidate Rand Paul criticised Cheney for starting the war just to get at Iraq's oil. Former head of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan pointed out that the war was solely about gaining access to the Iraqi oil fields. Even Iraqi's former oil minister Issam Chalabi expressed frustration over the sale of Iraq's biggest oil field to multinationals - huge international oil companies are, in other words, on their way to taking back what they lost when Iraqi oil was nationalised in 1972.

The war also led to the establishment of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The number of jihadis has increased from roughly 1,000 before the war to 100,000 today, whereof the greatest increases occurred during the Obama presidency. This group later mutated into Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) which thereafter joined salafist groups in Syria to form Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The US also assisted the Free Syrian Army with weapons and finances, which in turn were sold to, captured by, or confiscated by Islamic State. The US invasion of Iraq destabilised the entire Middle East, leading to civil war or further invasions in Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.

The EU is now facing the greatest migration crisis since the second world war, not in the least because Turkey opened the floodgates in the autumn of 2015. The collapse of the Middle East, the annexation of oil fields, the enormous human suffering, the mass migration to the EU: Anders Borg and his wealthy lobbyist friends at the Peterson Institute in Washington DC think this something to laugh about. Globalisation and US warmongering have seldom been so cynically portrayed.

Anders Borg said further in the same talk: 'we see the migrants as an asset to Sweden'. His mirth with so many migrants making their way to Sweden is equivocal and difficult to interpret, as this migration leads to high unemployment which, in his own words, represents a 'serious issue'. So what did he really mean?

'Crush the Swedish Welfare System with Immigration'

The answer can be found with Bo Lundgren, who admitted in an interview that the 'Moderate Party', under the leadership of Fredrik Reinfeldt, were trying to crush Sweden's welfare state with immigration.

'The reason Ulf Kristersson, his friends in the Youth League, and many others had that view was that they wanted to crush the Swedish welfare system. Fredrik wanted to as well, as seen in his book 'The Sleeping People'. It's a bit horrific to say, but they partly represented a completely open migration to Sweden so we wouldn't be able to keep a lot of the benefits. So people would be forced to support themselves or wouldn't be able to survive.'

Even Reinfeldt's successor Anna Kinberg Batra has signed a parliamentary motion where she opines that Sweden's welfare state stands in the way of free migration.

In his talk in Washington, Anders Borg also lamented how the Swedish labour market is so highly regulated. But his party, the 'Moderates', avoided direct confrontations with the unions, preferring to let the market model prevail as the status quo.



Yet Reinfeldt entered into a migration agreement with Sweden's 'greens' in 2011, and in 2014 he urged the Swedish people to 'open their hearts'. This led to an immigration avalanche, with even higher unemployment as a result. Tino Sanandaji commented on the effects of Reinfeldt's and Borg's policies on Facebook:

'When Fredrik Reinfeldt took over, foreign-borns were 26% of the unemployed. Today that figure is at 52%, and it's expected to rise to 60% next year. Since 2006, the cost of Sweden's refugee programme has increased from 10 billion to 70 billion per year. Swedish public service recently reported that the number of students who do not finish high school has increased from 10% in 2006 to 14% in 2015. This increase is caused 85% of the time by immigration, as reported by the Board of Education.'

The immigration policy of the 'Alliance' (Fredrik Reinfeldt's coalition of Sweden's right-wing parties) is nothing short of a catastrophe for the labour market. Instead of taking on the unions, the Alliance chose a subtler approach in undermining the market and sabotaging the unions: heighten immigration from the third world and accuse opponents of being racists.

Swedish employers association Almega now wants to lower entry-level salaries for foreign-borns with a low level of education, claiming that this would create 60,000 new jobs. Almega economist Li Jansson says:

'After last autumn's wave of migrants, there's been a change in the country The labour market has to keep up. The idea isn't to decrease wages for those already employed. We see that researchers are warning that wage levels are too high for those with little education. At the same time, we've never had so much alienation as now.'

The 'Liberals' (formerly the 'People's Party') are of the same opinion and want to pass a new law for lower wages for youth and immigrants. Union head Karl-Petter Thorwaldsson called their proposal 'fatuous and not at all liberal'. Reinfeldt and Borg didn't need to confront the unions. On the other hand, their irresponsible immigration policy did the job for them, and continues to do the job, now that they've left politics behind.

The government of Stefan Löfven (Social Democrats) inherited the Reinfeldt/Borg/Alliance policy of 'open hearts', and, for fear of being labeled 'racist' by politically correct media, Löfven continued down the same path with the Greens. Anders Borg and Fredrik Reinfeldt left behind an immigration policy in total collapse, and it's only a matter of time before the Social Democrats are forced to loosen up labour legislation to get more unskilled immigrant labour into the work force. The 'Moderates' sowed 'dragon seed', and the Social Democrats are now forced to reap the results.

On public service television in 1988, a young Anders Borg said 'if I were prime minister, I wouldn't do a damn thing, everyone would do whatever they wanted'. Reinfeldt wrote in his book in 1992 'Swedes are mentally handicapped and indoctrinated into believing that politicians can create and guarantee welfare'. These two later became the country's prime minister and minister for finance - the government's two most important members of cabinet.

Fredrik Reinfeldt resigned as leader of the 'Moderates' on election night 2014, after his defeat. Anders Borg resigned a short time after. Their legacy is an immigration policy in a state of collapse that the Social Democrats are desperately trying to fix.

And what are the dynamic duo up to these days? Anders Borg is a consultant for the international bank Citi. Fredrik Reinfeldt heads the organisation EITI which deigns to bring together governments, corporations, and civil societies for the purposes of creating transparency, follow-through responsibility, and standards for compensation related to oil, gas, coal, and minerals. In addition, Reinfeldt is now senior adviser at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Reinfeldt's position at Bank of America Merrill Lynch is surrounded by a number of questions. In 2014, his 'Alliance' government sold emission rights to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Jonas Sjöstedt of the Leftists was highly critical of the sale, and said so in parliament.

'I'd like to speak about the credibility of the Centre Party as regards the most important issue for the future: the climate. What I'm referring to is that you sold it, literally. The price was 38.4 million. The buyer was Bank of America Merrill Lynch. What I'm holding here is the sale decision. It's signed by Minister for the Environment Lena Ek. What does a responsible country do when they have emission rights left over? Some countries assume responsibility and destroy those emission rights. But the Centre Party and your Minister for the Environment sell them to a major US bank, so they in turn can sell them to someone else, for example to a Polish coal energy plant, so that they can quite literally burn up trust in Swedish climate policy.'

Keeping in mind that both Anders Borg and Fredrik Reinfeldt have been participants in Bilderberg meetings, Davos meetings, and the meetings of several additional organisations, they've had ample opportunity to bond into the networks of Big Money. They've certainly benefitted from these contacts in their new work in High Finance. Tino Sanandaji even insinuates that Reinfeldt's goal is to make as much money as possible by peddling his political influence and Swedish insider information to Wall Street.

Fredrik Reinfeldt has two things in common with George Soros: both advocate massive immigration to the EU and Sweden, and both have tentacles in the world of finance. Soros has stated openly that the EU should take in millions of migrants and borrow billions to finance this - some of which will come from his own financial institutions. Reinfeldt doesn't say it openly, but he may have the same agenda: increase the levels of immigration to Sweden so the Bank of America can lend more money to Sweden with interest. This would explain some of his bizarre statements about 'Sweden is a country without borders belonging to immigrants' and his attacks on Swedish unrest in the face of the migration crisis. Sweden needs, for the year 2016, to borrow 30 billion, and for 2017 will need to borrow as much again. If the country should need to borrow even more, Reinfeldt can inform the Bank of America so that the bank can begin negotiations for further loans. Borg may have a similar arrangement with Citi. Reinfeldt's and Borg's involvement with Bank of America and Citi should be thoroughly scrutinised by the media.

Anders Borg's 'you make war and we get the refugees' should be looked into by the media. Journalists should find out why he said what he said - so positively - about US warmongering in the Middle East, as well as the massive immigration which has put Sweden and the labour market under such pressure.

One must of course focus on ending the war in Syria and helping Syrians come home to live in peace, with Sweden returning to a functional immigration so that our welfare state can be saved. Anders Borg, judging from his comments in Washington, may have something else in mind.

Finally: it's time to turn the spots on the globalists and warmongers who are behind the conflicts in the Middle East, draining those countries of their natural resources, and indirectly spawning migrant smugglers and asylum fraudsters, as well as those directing the migrant flows to the EU. Ponder the words of Anders Borg once again.

'Basically, the US is providing these flows for us. You make war, and we get the refugees!'

Based on a paper by the Morpheus Project.

See Also
Morpheus: Cynikernas afton
Learning Curve: Something about the Petrodollar
Wikipedia: Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)
YouTube: Fredrik Reinfeldt: 'Swedes are mentally handicapped' (SV)

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