[pp.int.general] A Christmas present!

[Nicolas Sahlqvist]

It does not make sense unless you seen the Swedish news lately, but our
justice minister (Beatrice Ask) has not resigned (she would not write in
English and forget to sign it so obvious fake..) although a lot of people
have been thinking she should lately. The whole thing is due to the
following paragraph of a leaked cable that was written in Stockholm at the
US embassy:

"6. (s) Swedish military and civilian intelligence organizations are strong
and reliable partners on a range of key issues, particularly making a
significant contribution to our understanding of events inside the Russian
military and in Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The good cooperation on
counterterrorism, both domestically and internationally, has helped Swedish
authorities carry out their mandate to protect Swedish citizens and national
interests. Due to domestic political considerations, the extent of this
cooperation in not widely known within the Swedish government and it would
be useful to acknowledge this cooperation privately, as public mention of
the cooperation would open up the government to domestic criticism."

/cable/2007/05/07STOCKHOLM506.html

This clearly puts Swedish neutrality into question, furthermore the cables
even makes a joke out of Swedish neutrality and that is a real soft point in
Sweden:

http://www.thelocal.se/30558/20101202/

The Swedish government got burnt for being a bit too helpful towards the US
government from 2001 - 2006 when they first extradited Swedish terrorist
suspected citizens in 2001 and then let US planes land with suspected
terrorists on board according to the media. They claimed to be unaware of
the sort of passengers on the planes that were registered as civilian
aircraft's. The cable leaked confirms this and talks about a story where whe
Swedish security service (SÄPO) engaged in covert operations by boarding the
planes as service personal to find out what was transported on those planes
and when they realised that it was terrorist suspects:

http://www.thelocal.se/30626/20101205/

The Swedish neutrality has been questioned since WW2 when the German
soldiers were transported by train to occupied Norway etc. and I had to
learn the true meaning of our neutral from my grandfather who was in the
Swedish army during those days and not in school since out history books we
had neglected to mention that fact. We call this kind of politics, turning
your coat as the wind blows and they started to do it again after 9/11 so I
am not too surprised when Beatrice Ask got asked in all the major news. This
was followed by a 45 minute documentary about the subject where the
responsible politicians failed to properly duck the journalists questions.
This lead to the opposition filing a complaint to the constitution committee
(KU) that among other things oversees how the government rules the country
in accordance with the Swedish constitution.

No one have resigned yet, but it is customary that someone have to resign to
protect the prime minister and Ask have gotten away with too many
accusations in the past so it would not surprise me if it is finally her
turn considering other ministers had to go for not paying there TV licence
etc..

I an however not sure Sweden would get a better justice minister, the former
one was Thomas Bodström who worked out the part of the specifications,
lobbied for and got the data retention directive approved in the European
parliament after he was unable to get it through the Swedish government
directly. According to what I've heard the list of candidates to the role is
worse from a PP perspective then the current one so not sure I would
actually look forward to her resigning..


- Nicolas


On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 10:11 PM, David Arcos <david.arcos at gmail.com> wrote:

> What?
>
> Please provide some context!
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 10:05 PM, Erik Lönroth <erik.lonroth at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> To all of you.
>>
>> http://img580.imageshack.us/i/resign.jpg/
>>
>> /Erik
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