Dear Ana Palacio,



I feel the need to comment on some of the thoughts, assumptions and presuppositions that appears to form the foundation of your arguments and opinions in this case.



Sweden were once one of the richest countries in the world, we once had a fantastic school system, public and free healthcare. We were secure and acted with pride and integrity and stood for our ideals, and we even faced down USA and protected desserters during the Vietnam War.



Home to the Nobel price, we were the paragon of industry and science, and the epitome of freedom, democracy and justice, spiced with beuatiful blond girls and tall handsome vikings, fantastic nature and meatballs. This was the country of Björn Borg, Ingmar Bergman and Anita Ekberg.



This is a public national image that Swedes are increadibly proud of, and a heritage which is now guarded with reverent pride that borders on manic obsession, and nothing is allowed to tarnish this image.



This has been instrumental in creating a society with an ever deepening rift between the public image of our society and the hard facts of reality.



We fool ourselvs for the sake of a phantom image of the past, and try our very best to fool everyone else, a spell which I fear you have fallen victim to in this case.



Let me stress this a little more, under the blanket created by this image, things are deteriorating at a increasing speed, for example even many swedes dont know that



* Swedish schools and pupils performance are in a freefall and in the last PISA studies Sweden scored below OECD average, and in mathematics did even worse then USA on place 29! One of the most dramatic declines in performance for any country in recorded history.



* Swedish public healthcare has been one of our main prides, and it still ranks fairly high in regard to quality, but this has been to the deteriment of accessibility. Sweden now has the longest ques and waiting times of any country in Europe. Even waiting lines to begin treatments for agressive cancers can be measured in months.



* Swedish police only solves around 4% of all break ins compared to 25% in for example Finland, and the number of solved crimes has continued to decrease over the last years even as the police force has been increased with 3000 new officers, an increase of roughly 15%



* Sweden has the highest number of cases per capita taken to the The European Court of Human Rights

for flout­ing Art­icle 6 -- the right to a fair trial.



* In a survey conducted this spring in Southern Sweden, 90% of all small entreprenurial businesses reported having been targeted with fraud attempts, destruction of property and thefts, and 75% contemplated quiting or relocating their businesses due to this.



* Corruption on all levels in the society are increasing dramatically, which has begun to be noted by international organizations and OECD issued an alert on this just a couple of month back.



and the list goes on and on...



We were great once, but under the spell of this image, corruption, greed and incompetece has been festering.



We are truly a "twilight country", maybe on of the first in the modern era, on a downward trajectory and I would urge all observers to reconsider preconcived notions and opinions and to take a closer critical look.



I apology for the length of this post, but I hope that it can maybe give some clues to the behaviours and strange inconcistencies in this case.