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:<div>
<br></div><div>"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."<br>
<br>/cable/2007/05/07STOCKHOLM506.html<br></div>
<div><br>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:<br><br><a href="http://www.thelocal.se/30558/20101202/">http://www.thelocal.se/30558/20101202/</a><br>
<br></div><div>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:<br>
<br><a href="http://www.thelocal.se/30626/20101205/">http://www.thelocal.se/30626/20101205/</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>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.<br>
<br>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..<br>
<br>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..<br>
<br><br>- Nicolas<br><br><br>On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 10:11 PM, David Arcos <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:david.arcos@gmail.com" target="_blank">david.arcos@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
What?<br><br><div>Please provide some context!</div><div><div></div><div><div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 10:05 PM, Erik Lönroth <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:erik.lonroth@gmail.com" target="_blank">erik.lonroth@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">To all of you.<br>
<br>
<a href="http://img580.imageshack.us/i/resign.jpg/" target="_blank">http://img580.imageshack.us/i/resign.jpg/</a><br>
<br>
/Erik<br>
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