Julian Assange & Claes Borgström

Peering down a rabbit hole.

Get It Try It

It's Sunday. In Sweden too. And Sweden will end their national elections tonight at 20:00.

No one's certain of the whereabouts of Julian Assange although an article from AFP suggests he may leave the country.

Julian's been up on charges of rape and sexual this and sexual that - all it would seem because of condoms. Or so the story's been told. And in a strange move, superfeminist Claes Borgström was called in to represent the plaintiffs - and this even before the preliminary investigation was complete?

Who is this Claes Borgström anyway? And who is paying his bills? These are questions often heard in the blogosphere.

It's fairly certain Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilén are not paying Claes Borgström's bills. He's much too expensive for them.

But who is he?

Claes Borgström shares a law firm with former minister of justice Thomas Bodström - the one who finagled with the White House to bust The Pirate Bay, the one who just the other day wrote an op-ed for the social democrat Aftonbladet where he called for even more expansive definitions of rape.

The social democrats recently defended the European Data Retention Directive on the grounds that it helps them 'catch more rapists'. And Claes Borgström was the social democrats' minister for equality in the previous cabinet.

That's a bit about the career of Claes Borgström. Now - what about his mind?



Borgström's appearance gives a bit away. He's a confrontational type. Not the 007 type of charmer of a Björn Hurtig or the wise sage of a Leif Silbersky. This one has an aggressive agenda.

But his words? Ah - as advisor numero uno to current social democrat party boss Mona Sahlin (she won her position because the social democrats didn't allow men to candidate for it - really) on matters of equality, he certainly has a lot of words.

Some of his words caught the attention of Maria Ludvigsson at Newsmill when he spoke at last year's politics bash in Almedalen. Ludvigsson (who's seen things like this before in Norway) gets the word - hold onto your seats.

Former equality ombudsman Claes Borgström has been working for a while as Mona Sahlin's equality politics theoretician. To succeed as a former something with the classic challenge of renovating the old, he's been given special resources and the renovation is in full swing. At any rate, he told everyone the secret cause of the current world financial meltdown.

It's all about women.

In the case of the banks and financial institutions that lend out more than they have with no collateral, it's about all the women who weren't involved. At a seminar on 'equality politics' organised by the social democrats, Claes Borgström started things off by deftly drawing the startling conclusion that the financial crisis was caused by a lack of women sitting on corporate boards. Oh yeah, he said, with women running the show for the banks and financial institutions, there'd never have been a crisis.

It was even more startling that no one in the SRO room stirred or uttered a word of protest. Borgström seemed to think the lack of reaction was a bit strange, so he followed up the first bomb with a second.

'But it's so very obvious, isn't it?'

Borgström's craze for women in the financial sector and their extraordinary sex-specific ability to steer clear of danger and crises reminds me of conversations I had when studying in Lund. There was always some young man at every event who wanted to garner attention (and maybe approval) by using the Borgström claim that 'The World Would Be A More Peaceful And Better Place If Only More (Or Preferably Only) Women Ruled'™.

The obvious retort? 'I agree! The world *would* be better a better place with more Maggie Thatchers!'

The new social democrat equality platform (that of Claes Borgström of course) can thus be summarised as follows: because the female sex possesses such extraordinary capabilities, more women should be sitting on corporate boards. And by insisting on quotas to Swedish corporate boards, we shall save the world from both crisis and misery.

So there you have it: the current world recession is caused not by the collapse of Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac, and too many banking institutions blindly trusting them but by men oppressing women.

This is what you're up against if you stay, Jules. A society where black has been ruled to be white and vice versa, an Alice i Underlandet nightmare where nothing is common sense or follows logic, where everyone talks jabberwocky and chants mantras that nobody understands.

See Also
Newsmill: Varning för Borgströms övertro på kvinnorna