Contributor. Noted by DN's readers on October 19th

OPINION. Readers of Dagens Nyheter express their views on the situation in Sweden and the world and DN's content on Monday, October 19th. A print from Dagens Nyheter, 2026-10-20 00:11 Article's original address: https://www.dn.se/insandare/noterat-av-dns-lasare-den-19-oktober-2/ Opinion. Noted by DN readers on October 19th Get more from DN when logged in You know you can create a free account on DN? As a logged-in user, you can access several smart features. - Follow your interests - Newsletter Vladimir Putin proposes a separate meeting between himself, Donald Trump, and Xi Jinping during the next meeting with the Asian cooperation organization APEC in Shenzhen in mid-November. North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un will be at APEC. The meeting will discuss the end of the "conflict" in Ukraine. Doesn't it smell like the Yalta Conference? Then think that the next G20 meeting will be held in Florida in December, where Trump has invited the war crime suspect Putin. Xi will be there. Where is Ukraine in this? Where is Europe? Since there is no agreed-upon agenda, Swedish media report this only in the ongoing news flow as rumors unfold. What if it isn't? What if it is serious? Per Sten, pensioner The Russian bear scares the shit out of all our rulers. Billions have been invested in advanced weaponry. Does stirring up fear with stronger weapons make us safer? Berit Dreyfert, Noblewoman I assert that Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is a fascist, more precisely a 'techfascist'. Some claim that he controls President Donald Trump from a distance. Whether this is true or not, what is clear fact is that Trump changed his line and ordered all sanctions against Russia (read "Putin") to be temporarily lifted in any case (DN 18/10). At the same time, it is reported from the war in Ukraine (DN the same day) that the Musk-owned satellite services Starlink and its military equivalents allow Ukrainian military drones to fly up to 160 km per hour and become largely unusable. The advantages the Ukrainians have gained are a fait accompli. I usually defend myself against conspiracy theories, but the fact is that Elon Musk owns Starlink and its military equivalents and that Starlink's sudden speed restrictions reverse the odds for a Russian loss and a Ukrainian victory. A conspiracy? Yes! Göran Djurfeldt, professor emeritus, Lund University The center for no talks with a party that systematically abuses IT for mass production of anonymously politically blue-tinted material. How can one act differently? The parties (M, KD, and L) who play along with these scum, how can they get a single voice among the people of Sweden? This "people of noble stock" that the so-called Sweden-lovers pretend to represent. Is it noble to run a troll factory? No, it is villainous to us voters. Hakon Malmborg, Bromma Democracies can start to crack if their leaders cannot handle emerging situations for a long time. French politics has locked itself into three blocs that do not want to compromise with each other. Sweden is on the verge of a similar situation. But to view compromises merely as betrayal is linked to authoritarian ways of operating, where V and C seem to have landed, at least temporarily and partially. In that case, one's own position is the only thing that matters, forever. Loyalty is everything. As the SD has declared: Win or die! But the opposite of unyielding loyalty is objectivity, which, instead of the rhetorician's simplified world, sees a highly multifaceted reality, where there are different types of compromises that can be made. Does anyone in the party leadership see this and dare to talk about it? Here lies the spirit of democracy. Håkan Lennerstad, Karlskrona We are in the other 48 parts of the current government period. May this vacuum continue with the prevailing distribution of mandates. Per Broängen It is argued that the Left Party must be in the government, because there are congress decisions on it. V:s party congresses are full of stubborn decisions. In the name of consequences, one must assume that these must also be implemented. The same reasoning applies to MP. Furthermore, there is a great risk that center-right wildlings may change sides. It is only necessary for two traditional Riksdag members from C, who despise V, to change sides. Anders Oskarsson Comment on all complaints after the election: Opinion polls help tactic voters get small parties into the Riksdag. But it is probably not the tactic voters who complain that the government formation is slow. Or? Rickard Nordström Alex Schulman writes today: "We were 6,834,413 adults who voted in the parliamentary election." I am not sure if all of these were adults in their role as voters. Voting according to opinion polls rather than the daily notes of the presented politics is convenient, but not particularly mature. To first tactic-vote in some small parties and then complain that they are troublesome is not particularly mature either. Being "hiadann" (intolerable) belongs to children, however. So regardless of our mental age, we should probably wait calmly for time to take its course. Other countries with many small parties have done this too. Rickard Nordström, Högsjö For whatever reason, I just want to clarify that I have not given Alex Schulman permission to in any way make my statement regarding a possible new election to the Swedish Riksdag. Ulf Molin in Bredäng The danger of rapidly increasing carbon dioxide in the air is most noted as a risk for climate change and the natural disasters it brings with it. It does not seem to be enough for many to want to buy a new car. In September, new car sales increased and more than one in four was a fossil car. What were the buyers thinking? Can the statement from Läkartidningen about how carbon dioxide enters the body and changes the blood be more frightening? The one who starts their new car and tells the children to get in while the emissions puff out around them, perhaps thinking about their blood, might wonder if a fossil car was such a wise choice. It contributes to increased levels of carbon dioxide for many years. But it is clear that research only knows what and how the blood is affected but not yet the full health effects in the long run besides eventually dying, so we can wait a while and see, right? Elisabet Näsman, Uppsala Notes that Henrik Landerholm is sentenced to 80 days of fines at 650 kronor each. Think that such a high-ranking person does not have more than 19,500 kronor a month in salary, gross! Poor fellow! Mats Högblom, paper subscriber in Hisings Backa The Swedish business world is as usual buzzing about hostile foreign competition and the internationally comparable high labor costs in Sweden. They have a wet dream that workers should be both secure, well-educated, grateful, and work for free. Such a good working life and business climate as we have in Sweden, one does not find in all countries. Roland Ingemarsson, Hellvi 499 researchers warn. At the same time, our own municipalities stumble over their shoelaces in their haste to invite the same greedy villainous companies to establish giant energy-consuming data centers both right and left at home so as not to mention our police and military fondness for the supreme priests Palantir and NSO Group. We are then shamefully slow to learn. Allan Mutén It is hardly surprising that Hans Bergström expresses himself so strongly against a participatory democracy (DN Debate 17/10). As owner of the International School of English, he has accumulated enormous sums at the taxpayers' expense, partly thanks to the systematic weakening of participatory democracy that has followed decades of neoliberal politics (for more on this, Johannes Klenell's book "The Banana Republic Sweden"). But democracy came through the participation of those whom Bergström so detests the common people. The engagement of citizens in the labor, temperance, and free church movements was what laid the foundation for Swedish democracy, not the use of neoliberal thought currents. The fact that democracy in Sweden has developed into a service industry that is more favorable to Bergström was never given. What Bergström describes as a changed view of democracy is actually just to take the words of the constitution seriously, that all public power originates from the people. The changed view of democracy is rather what Bergström himself expresses, that all public power actually originates from those in power. We should look for a clearer, more dazzling, and yet more direct democratic practice, so I still raise my hat for that sincerity from Bergström. David Sillén, Stockholm The residents on the West Bank are state-sponsored terrorists. As long as this continues, Sweden should have no trade relations with Israel. Sara Pargell, Gothenburg For decades, the violence from the Israeli so-called settlers, that is, illegal occupiers, against the inhabitants of the West Bank has been allowed to continue without the outside world reacting with anything other than vague condemnations. In the latest incident, an American journalist was injured, which is highlighted by the media as particularly serious. At the same time, the people who have lived there for generations and their living conditions, houses, livestock, olive trees, orange groves are burned and raped daily and systematically. All under the protection and justifications of the Israeli army. As if the Palestinians "provoked the settlers" when they went out to harvest their olives. Israel's current government has had decades to tame its violent religious fanatics. But on the contrary – even the police minister backs them! No other civilized country should be allowed to exercise state-sponsored violence on the territories of other countries. For the same reason that the outside world has classified Iran-supported Hamas as terrorists, it is high time to classify the Israeli "settlers" as terrorists. The next government should work, in cooperation with other European progressive countries, to make this happen as soon as possible. Lars Wengrud, Bromma Regarding Sunday's DN article about the new China: One should always distrust a nation if its soldiers in a parade march are as long as. Christer Gerlach, Ekerö What an excellent suggestion from Gun-Mari Skrader to move the Nobel Center to Vinterviken! There is still a lot left after Nobel on the site, so it is most natural that the museum is also there. We avoid more large buildings at Slussen and can enjoy a nice trip to the museum in Vinterviken instead. I hope more residents think it is a good suggestion! Lena Walter Has a suggestion regarding table tennis: Install two panels under the table surface on the sides of the table where the players can store their towels, so we don't have to run to the referee to dry themselves. Kurt Lindblom Opinions on DN Even on October 17th, one was met by "Gaza/West Bank" in the image and the largest possible text size on the front page of DN and four additional full pages (Culture included). Other, for us closer and larger conflicts like the destruction of Ukraine to mention one, are very sparsely covered by DN regarding the Palestinian issue (if you count the number of columns). One wonders if DN has gone from a newspaper to an opinion shaper for Palestinian activists. Until DN dedicated the entire front page and two full pages on Gaza on October 7th of this year – which completely obscured "one column" for remembrance of the victims of Hamas's indiscriminate killing of children and the elderly, rape and mutilation of young women that they filmed and posted on social media – I didn't think much about this. DN's "news coverage" about schools in Gaza on October 7th can only be seen as mockery and minimization of the suffering of the Jewish people and the approximately 2 million Christians, Druze, and Arabs of Israel. Everyone became as large victims as the Palestinians when Hamas, fully aware of the consequences, added its voice to the peace process. Saudi Arabia was still only days away from ending a peace treaty with Israel. Unfortunately, in DN, even after a ceasefire, a clear pattern in the news coverage is visible. Where has DN's proud motto "for an enlightened world" gone? Andreas Körösi, with 35 years of travel in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine, the last nine years as a mediator and arbitrator in the tourism industry with responsibility for the entire Middle East Do you also want to submit short texts (under 1000 characters including spaces) and pictures or photo submissions to the "Noted by DN readers" vignette? Email insandare@dn.se! A smaller selection is published on the opinion page in the newspaper Tuesday–Friday and a larger selection on dn.se/insandare weekend–Friday. You can read more about how to write opinion pieces in DN here.