Wow! Swedish Min of Justice Hides Secret Anti-Terror Ops with US from Swedish Paliament

Wow. According to this article, a secret cable exposes that the MOJ and MFA in Sweden had hidden these meetings and information sharing from the Swedish Parliament.


www.telegraph.co.uk...

By Andrew Hough, and Christopher Hope 7:00AM GMT 15 Dec 2010
The secret cables, seen by The Daily Telegraph, disclose how Swedish officials wanted discussions about anti-terrorism operations kept from public scrutiny.

They describe how officials from the Swedish Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Foreign Affairs had a “strong degree of satisfaction with current informal information sharing arrangements” with the American government. Making the arrangement formal would result in the need for it to be disclosed to Parliament, they said.

This seems huge....and has to raise serious questions about the charges being pursued against Assange. Imagine, Assange he must have already known this - hence, perhaps the statement from his Lawyer yesterday that Assange believed that Sweden would extradite him to the US.

This one looks like a bit of a bombshell to me. It looks as though the US/Swedish MOJ cover is well and truly blown. No wonder they were so intent on getting Assange out of UK and back to Sweden!

Another couple of snippets from the article.

Under the heading “teams visits to discuss terrorist screening information exchange with Sweden”, they show Dr Anna-Karin Svensson, Director of the Division for Police Issues, saying the Swedish government would strike controversy if its intelligence methods were disclosed.
The cable claimed that the "current Swedish political climate makes any formal terrorist screening information agreement highly difficult". Swedish citizens are said to place high value on the country’s neutrality.
"The MOJ team expressed their appreciation for the flexibility of the U.S. side in regards to memorialising any agreement," said the cable

Kristinn Hrafnsson, a Wikileaks spokesman, said that the website was “concerned about political influence on the prosecution of Julian Assange”.
“The new revelations contained in the Swedish cables … shed some light on the ferocity of the Swedish prosecutorial process in this case,” he said.
“The prosecutor has said there is ‘no condition’ for bail that will satisfy them.”

Wow.
It just goes to show how important it is to get the truth out. Heads should roll over this.

Mods. These are very small excerpts from quite a long article.
second

Once again, the whole Wikileaks saga, in essence, boils down to a "you can't handle the truth" argument.
While I tend toward the side that the whole truth must be known in order to have a true democracy, some seem to imply that we should give the privilege and accompanying responsibility of truth to a select few who shall then decide what truths we are allowed to know... an elitist concept that I find totally barbaric.

Originally posted by Billmeister
Once again, the whole Wikileaks saga, in essence, boils down to a "you can't handle the truth" argument.
While I tend toward the side that the whole truth must be known in order to have a true democracy, some seem to imply that we should give the privilege and accompanying responsibility of truth to a select few who shall then decide what truths we are allowed to know... an elitist concept that I find totally barbaric.

I agree completely....but of course the real reason is to hide their own underhand and at times criminal antics, and the cover-ups which protect their own gang members. It's inconceivable to me that only a select few should have access to the truth, and even more inconceivable that so many people support that. Feudal, barbaric, I agree!

reply to post by wcitizen


Exactly! And that is why I say "Game On!" Our so-called representatives speak of a "free" society, and a "free" market, while many of us can clearly see that the game is rigged.
Only when all their back-room dealings and two-faced diplomacy come to light can "we the people" truly see who is running the show and for whose benefit. Then, and only then, can we take a truly democratic position.

p.s.
As I stated in my intro, I am a long time lurker, and have always appreciated your posts... keep 'em coming!

p.p.s
The term archaic, and not barbaric is probably more appropriate in my original post.

Originally posted by Billmeister
reply to post by wcitizen

 

Exactly! And that is why I say "Game On!" Our so-called representatives speak of a "free" society, and a "free" market, while many of us can clearly see that the game is rigged.
Only when all their back-room dealings and two-faced diplomacy come to light can "we the people" truly see who is running the show and for whose benefit. Then, and only then, can we take a truly democratic position.

p.s.
As I stated in my intro, I am a long time lurker, and have always appreciated your posts... keep 'em coming!

p.p.s
The term archaic, and not barbaric is probably more appropriate in my original post.

Y.e.s. Game on!
It is truly archaic, I agree. These old methods have been used to dupe the people for hundreds of years - and they've had their day. Enough already!

..and thanks!

The problem that the MOJ saw was that the citizens would find out that Sweden isn't really neutral as they officially state they are. This isn't only in law enforcement, extends to military also. Sweden is not a NATO member. No formal military alliance with US, but I saw a video recently showing the top commander of Sweden military on a US aircraft carrier, participating in US exercises near Korea.

Officially neutral but actually US lackey, as far as back room deals go, would be my take on this. But the secrecy is for the enhancement of a well-informed democracy -

Here's an interesting article:

Pentagon's New Global Military Partner: Sweden
European nations that have maintained neutrality since the end of World War Two and in some cases decades and centuries longer have provided NATO with troops for its International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Austria, Ireland and Switzerland have sent nominal contingents under Partnership for Peace (PfP) obligations. PfP member Finland has approximately 150 troops attached to NATO's Afghan command and Sweden has 500. The Swedish consignment was until lately the second-largest of all non-NATO member states, only surpassed by Australia until over 750 more U.S. Marine Corps-trained Georgian troops arrived in the South Asian nation in April. (Last month Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili said that the 1,000 total troops he deployed were matriculated in the "school of Afghan warfare" for use in future conflicts like those of the five-day Georgian-Russian war of two years ago.)

The main function of the Partnership for Peace program - whose name is counterintuitive, Orwellian and blasphemous given the fact it has graduated 12 Eastern European nations into full membership in the world's only military bloc and prepared them for deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq - is to integrate nations in Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia for NATO operations abroad. The major beneficiary of that process is the Pentagon.