Rixstep
 About | ACP | Buy | Industry Watch | Learning Curve | News | Products | Search | Substack
Home » Industry Watch

Truth of Sweden is Stranger than Fiction II

Wherein a lowly architect and writer from 'Downunder' gives a fluffed up duck its due.


Get It

Try It

CANBERRA/LONDON/SYDNEY/STOCKHOLM — There's something inept about Swedes, bless their politically correct souls. Thank goodness there are still a few people in the world, even if they're only architects, who can call a Swede a Swede.

This all started with an upload to Image Shack of 102 pages of Swedish FOI documents (which Expressen and legal idiot Mårten Schultz immediately concluded were authentic WikiLeaks releases - strike two for the ducks) which includes a flurry of departmental correspondence in Sweden's foreign ministry over Elizabeth Farrelly's articulate piece in the Sydney Morning Herald in April 2012.

The foreign ministry were counting on their ambassador in Canberra to take care of the jezebel, and ambassador Sven-Olof Petersson's draft of a letter to SMH editor Antony Lawes made the rounds. And everyone loved it.

Ambassador Petersson also sent a personal hate letter to Farrelly, but excused himself before his colleagues with 'I just couldn't help myself'.

Petersson should have had Elizabeth Farrelly at his side. Farrelly writes:

'Sven-Olof Petersson is Sweden's man in Yarralumla. By now he may be wishing he'd followed the advice I give my 13 year-old. It's this. If you have something savage to say, sleep on it. Then, if it really must be said, pick up the phone. Say it in person. Shout it from the rooftops, if need be. But under no circumstances commit it to cyber-space. Cyber-speech, seemingly ethereal, is etched in stone.'

Farrelly wasn't impressed with the Swedish diplomat in Yarralumla.



'The mis-spelling, the splatter of exclamation marks and the eggy emotion sound more like some suburban troll than a high-order professional or diplomat.'

'This is how bullying works. After a while we start to anticipate, self-censor, evade the rage.'

'Welcome to Sweden's So-Called Duckpond'

Farrelly continues with a guided tour of Sweden's rogues gallery.

'The Swedish case pivots on the 'ultra-feminism' that many see as having colonised Swedish politics. This has not only shaped the unfair rape laws to which Assange, once extradited, would be subject, but also unites many key players.'

'All these are active members of the ultra-feminist Social Democrat party: the prosecutor Marianne Ny; the plaintiffs' lawyer Claes Borgström; his practice partner Thomas Bodström (the Swedish justice minister, 2000-06); the principle principal plaintiff Anna Ardin - who invited Assange to Sweden originally and wrote the notorious 'Seven Steps to Legal Revenge'; and the police officer Irmeli Krans to whom Ardin took the secondary plaintiff, Sofia Welin. Welcome to Sweden's so-called 'duckpond'.

'When a mere opinion maddens a potentate into uncontrolled aggression, you have to wonder: why so defensive? What are they hiding?'

Farrelly possesses an uncanny ability to correctly appraise what's going on in Sweden - seemingly without ever setting a foot there. Sweden is indeed overrun with cronyism, informal but very effective cartels, and today Sweden can rightfully be said to be 'rotten to the core'.

The shame of it for Julian Assange is he got stuck in it just like a jetliner headed for the Bermuda Triangle. The flip side of it is that he inadvertently shone global light on systemic corruption that millions of good Swedes would like to see gone by tomorrow.

I'm so sick of it all. Will it never end? At any rate I want to say the other girl's just as much to blame.
 - Anna Ardin

Apparently Swedish laws are unique. If you have a penis you're half a rapist before you even get through customs.
 - Scott Adams

If I am able to reveal what I know, everyone will realise this is all a charade. If I could tell the British courts, I suspect it would make extradition a moot point.
 - Björn Hurtig

I can tell you that the Swedish prosecution still hasn't provided copies of those SMS texts that have been referred to. Those texts are some of the most powerful exculpatory evidence. In Australia prosecutors have a very grave duty to disclose such evidence to courts when seeking the grave exercise of a court's power against an individual. Yet in Sweden in this case, in the first hearings to obtain an arrest warrant, those texts were not submitted to the Swedish court, which is highly improper.
 - James Catlin

The prosecutor could achieve this broadening of the law during Assange's trial so he can be convicted of a crime that didn't exist at the time he allegedly committed it. She would need to. There is no precedent for this. The Swedes are making it up as they go along.
 - James Catlin

Julian Assange will surely learn that considering what WikiLeaks has published, he's got a few enemies in the Pentagon, the CIA, and the White House. Sweden began an investigation into rape which was later dismissed. Assange was even denied residence in Sweden. One can only speculate to what extent the security agencies of the US were involved. And considering the obvious interest of the US to silence WikiLeaks, is it likely Assange will have an accident of the 'Boston brakes' kind in the coming years? Or will he be snared with compromising information of the 'honey trap' kind?
 - 'Drozd' at Flashback 23 October 2010

The truth will out, the truth wins out. Let no journalist ever again speculate into what the protocols say. Six months of digging and the people at Flashback have the actual documents. The sleaze printed by rags such as the Daily Mail, Sweden's Aftonbladet and Expressen, and perhaps above all the toxic Nick Davies of the Guardian, can stand no more. Yet more: these documents are an indictment of the 'news organisations' who've printed deliberate inaccuracies all along or even worse: refused to print anything at all. Nick Davies' account of the protocols was maliciously skewed; both Aftonbladet and Expressen had copies early on and printed nothing. Bloggers had copies but arrogantly kept the information to their Smeagol selves.
 - The Assange Police Protocol: Translator's Note

See Also
Industry Watch: Truth of Sweden is Stranger than Fiction
Sydney Morning Herald: Ambassador's rage doesn't dispel facts
Sydney Morning Herald: Truth of Assange is stranger than fiction

About | ACP | Buy | Industry Watch | Learning Curve | News | Products | Search | Substack
Copyright © Rixstep. All rights reserved.