Just when you think you can't be shocked by the Trump regime

 

I assume Eriksson will be facing a lawsuit and/or penalties in Sweden.

Thread

And Trump wants to pull out

Maybe he doesn't think quite as highly of Orban now.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Our own Josh Holly continues to be an embarrassment

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Sweden and Finland joining NATO

NATO leaders have called Russia the “most significant and direct threat” to the alliance’s peace and security, while officially inviting Sweden and Finland to join bloc.

The leaders of the 30-country bloc, in a joint declaration after meeting in Madrid, Spain on Wednesday, endorsed a new strategic framework and launch the largest revamp of its defence and deterrence capabilities since the end of the Cold War, strengthening its forces on its eastern flank and massively ramping up the number of troops it has at high readiness. The declaration also addressed the growing military and economic reach of China.

[...]

The summit opened with one of the bloc’s problems solved, after Turkey agreed on Tuesday to lift its opposition to Sweden and Finland joining NATO.

  alJazeera

Related:

Finland and Sweden apply to join NATO

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has European nations rethinking their situation.

Nato ambassadors are expected to discuss the applications on Wednesday and could give the green light to opening formal talks with the pair on their requests, but Turkey has raised objections that could delay or even derail the process.

[...]

Finland shares an 810-mile (1,300km) border with Russia and has maintained strict policies of neutrality then non-alignment since the end of the second world war, viewing Nato membership as a provocation of Moscow. Sweden has stayed out of military alliances and has not fought a war for more than 200 years.

[...]

All 30 Nato members need to approve the enlargement, which must then be ratified by their parliaments, taking up to a year. The alliance has said it wants to move as fast as possible given the potential Russian threat over Finland and Sweden’s heads.

[...]

Ankara has said its objections are rooted in what it describes as Sweden and Finland’s support for members of Kurdish militant groups, and their decisions in 2019 to impose arms export embargos on Ankara over Turkey’s military operations in Syria.

[...]

Many analysts believe the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who faces elections next year, is seeking concessions for domestic political advantage and unlikely ultimately to veto the applications.

  Guardian

Turkey and Hungary seem likely candidates for expulsion from NATO, but the organization never formally provided for such a move.

Within NATO, concerns over the behaviour of individual allies are [...] resolved primarily through diplomatic means, political pressure, and by taking a long-term view. As Jorge Benitez of the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington put it, NATO leaders tend to “wait out the misbehaving national leaders until a government consistent with alliance values eventually returns to power.”

  Just Security

Which, when a country finds itself ruled by a strongman/dictator, could be never.

The annex to the Washington Paper of September 1948, which contained the first outline of the future agreement, noted the following:

The question of including a provision for disqualification under certain circumstances of any of the signatories from enjoying the benefits of the Treaty requires further consideration.

In the eyes of the Canadian government, the circumstances that might justify the disqualification of a party had to include the “coming into power of a communist-dominated government” in that state (Commentary on the Washington Paper, Dec. 6, 1948). To deal with such an eventuality, Canada proposed a draft provision entitling the North Atlantic Council to suspend or expel a member state from the privileges of membership (Draft North Atlantic Treaty, Dec. 17, 1948).

[...]

The general feeling among the other negotiating parties was that it would be a mistake to include any provision in the treaty that would raise questions about the voting procedure in the Council.

[...]

The idea to incorporate some kind of suspension and expulsion mechanism into the North Atlantic Treaty was therefore dropped.

[...]

[M]aintaining and furthering the principles on which the Alliance is based — democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law — forms part of the object and purpose of the North Atlantic Treaty. This, in turn, suggests that a failure to comply with these principles may amount to a material breach of the treaty within the meaning of Article 60 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Pursuant to Article 60, a material breach consists of:

(a) a repudiation of the treaty not sanctioned by the present Convention; or

(b) the violation of a provision essential to the accomplishment of the object or purpose of the treaty.

To constitute a material breach pursuant to sub-paragraph (a), the violation of the principles underlying the treaty would have to be so extensive in scope, so severe and so persistent as to effectively “disavow” or repudiate the treaty

[...]

Should the conditions for the existence of a material breach be satisfied, NATO’s member states would be entitled, by unanimous agreement, to suspend the operation of the treaty in whole or in part or to terminate it either in their relations with the defaulting state or among them all (Article 60(2) of the Vienna Convention). For these purposes, a unanimous decision of the North Atlantic Council, excluding the defaulting state, would suffice.

In the meantime, countries like Turkey and Hungary, with their "soft" dictatorships, remain in the alliance and can veto any future admissions.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Turkey later blocked a vote by Nato ambassadors on opening talks immediately, suggesting the first stage of the accession process may take longer than the two weeks the alliance planned.

[...]

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told MPs from his AK party the alliance must respect Turkey’s reservations. “Nato expansion is only meaningful for us in proportion to the respect that will be shown to our sensitivities,” he said.

[...]

“So you won’t give us back terrorists, but you ask us for Nato membership? Nato is an entity for security, an organisation for security. Therefore, we cannot say ‘Yes’ to this security organisation being deprived of security,” he added.

[...]

Turkey accuses Sweden and Finland of harbouring members of Kurdish militant groups it considers terrorist organisations, and also objects to their decisions in 2019 to ban arms exports to Ankara over Turkey’s military operations in Syria.

[...]

Other Turkish officials, including Erdoğan’s spokesperson, have been less outspoken, saying Turkey has not shut the door to Sweden and Finland joining Nato but wants negotiations and a pledge to clamp down on what it sees as terrorist activities.

[...]

Analysts believe Erdoğan, who faces elections next year, is largely seeking concessions to score domestic political points and is ultimately unlikely to veto the two Nordic applications.

  Guardian

UPDATE 5/19:

I wasn't expecting that.

It's stunts all the way down

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE

Sweden is going to be on our enemy's list

The Swedish Prime Minister was very talented until he wouldn't trash Swedish law at Trump's say-so.

Sweden's ex-Prime Minister:

Ouch.

Hate to burst your bubble, Eva, but Trump doesn't give a fuck what you think.  Only Kanye.  You don't have any publicity power.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 8/23

It's Sunday

The Church of Sweden is urging its clergy to use gender-neutral language when referring to the supreme deity, refraining from using terms such as “Lord” and “he” in favour of the less specific “God.”

The move is one of several taken by the national Evangelical Lutheran church in updating a 31-year-old handbook setting out how services should be conducted in terms of language, liturgy, hymns and other aspects.

  Guardian

Ron Paul Interviews Julian Assange

Will Sweden Remain Bowed to US Demands?

Assange, 45, has been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012, after taking refuge there to avoid extradition to Sweden over allegations of rape, which he denies.

He fears Sweden will in turn hand him over to the US to face prosecution over WikiLeaks' publication of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents in one of the largest information leaks in US history.

Lawyer Per Samuelson says the US has now openly said it wants to arrest Assange. "Given that the US is obviously hunting him now, he has to make use of his political asylum and it is Sweden's duty to make sure that Sweden is no longer a reason for that fact he has to stay in the embassy," Samuelson said.

[...]

[He] has asked a Swedish court to rescind a detention order against the WikiLeaks founder over an alleged rape and allow him to go to Ecuador to be safe from extradition to the US.

[...]

"If they rescind the detention order, there is a possibility he can go to Ecuador and then he can use political asylum in an entire country."

  Au.News.Com

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Sweden to Reinstate Conscription

Sweden has announced that it will reintroduce compulsory military service starting this summer to respond to global security challenges including from Russia.

[...]

The Scandinavian nation, which has not seen armed conflict on its territory in two centuries, ended conscription in 2010 after it was deemed an unsatisfactory way of meeting the needs of a modern army.

Sweden's minority government on Thursday is set to introduce to the parliament a bill to restore conscription this summer for all Swedes born after 1999. It will last for 11 months.

[...]

Some 13,000 young Swedes are expected to be mobilised from July 1, but only 4,000 of them, 18-year-olds of both sexes, will be selected for military service based on motivation and skills.

  al Jazeera

Oh-ho. You know what to do.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

About Effing Time

Sweden has made a formal request to interview Assange in Ecuador’s London Embassy, four years after the initial offer from Ecuadorian authorities. The deal was struck on Wednesday.

[...]

“In the coming weeks a date will be established for the proceedings to be held at the Embassy of Ecuador in the United Kingdom,” according to a communique released by Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry, as quoted by Telesur media outlet.

[...]

"Under Swedish law, it’s a fundamental procedure. The reason why this hasn’t occurred previously is because of the Swedish prosecutor’s refusal of Ecuador’s invitation. And this is something that should have happened five years ago," [Assange legal team member Melinda] Taylor added, as quoted by Sputnik.

[...]

The Ecuadorian authorities say they have been urging Swedish prosecutors to interview Assange since 2012.

[...]


In February, the UN ruled that Assange has been the victim of arbitrary detention “by the Governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom.”
  RT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Meanwhile in European Anti-Immigrant News

Dozens of masked man went on an anti-immigrant rampage in Stockholm in an apparent retaliation for the stabbing death of a young Swedish woman at a refugee center earlier this week, local media reported.

The crowd of some 40 to 50 people went on a violent spree on Friday night at around 9 p.m. local time in and around the Swedish capital’s main railroad station, according to the Aftonbladet daily. They were beating up anyone who didn’t look like ethnic Swede. The attackers were wearing black balaclavas and armbands.

  RT

Is this terrorism? Oh, I forgot. It can't be. They are white.

Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the European Commission, doesn`t see any link between mass sex assaults on New Year's Eve in Cologne [Germany] and the ongoing refugee crisis, internal minutes has revealed. He also lamented the reintroduction of internal border checks within the Schengen zone.

[...]

Ralf Jager, interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, confirmed the majority of the 52 suspects identified [in the Cologne assaults] were not German citizens. Twenty-five were from Morocco and Algeria, 15 arrived in Germany as asylum-seekers and 11 perpetrators were staying in the country illegally.

[...]

The Commission's members call for “unconditional rejection of false association between certain criminal acts such as the attacks on women in Cologne on New Year`s Eve, and the mass influx of refugees”, as the minutes of the body`s meeting from January 13, suggest.

  RT

Let's hope the commissioners don't live in Germany.

In a shift for the world body, [United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Anthony] Banbury said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will issue a report next month with details of all allegations [of child sexual abuse by UN peace-keeping troops] from 2015, including the names of countries whose troops are accused. The information, including the status of investigations, will be regularly updated online, he said.

[...]

The U.N. human rights office says it has turned up six more cases of alleged sexual abuse against children by European troops in Central African Republic (CAR), including a 7-year-old girl who said she had to perform sexual acts on soldiers in exchange for water and cookies.

  alJazeera

Social Democracy

Check out this article on the socio-political differences between the US and Nordic countries.  It gets very interesting by the time you get half way through.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Mountain Will Go to Mohammed

They've been insisting Assange come to them.

 

Obviously, they could have.

This seems like evidence that the Swedes are less willing to cowtow to the US than they were four years ago, likely due to all the Snowden leaks.  Another, perhaps less likely, possibility is that the US has quit pressuring them on the Assange issue.

In a statement, [the Swedish prosecutor] said the reason for her change of mind was that the statute of limitations on several of the crimes of which he is suspected runs out in August 2015.

  

Guardian

Or maybe that.

Swedish prosecutors are expected to question Julian Assange in his London refuge after the lead prosecutor bowed to pressure from his lawyers, Swedish legal opinion and the courts to attempt to break the deadlock in the case.

[...]

Assange’s lawyers, who are appealing against his arrest warrant in Sweden’s highest court, have complained bitterly about the prosecutor’s refusal to travel to London to speak to him – an essential step under Swedish jurisprudence to establish whether Assange can be formally charged.

[...]

Rejecting Assange’s appeal in November, a lower court directed sharp criticism at the prosecutor for failing to move the case forward.

[...]

[The Swedish prosecutor] has argued that interrogating Assange abroad would be complicated and have little point because he would still have to travel to Sweden for trial, should sufficient grounds emerge. However, she is obliged to drop the case against him unless she believes there are “reasonable grounds” for suspicion of his guilt.

I’m going to guess she’ll find suspicion enough in the end. Of course, I guessed the reason for the change of heart about going to Assange was because of the change in the world’s opinion of the United States, so don’t pay any attention to me.

“Now time is running out and I therefore believe that I have to accept a loss of quality in the investigation and take the risk that the hearing will not take the investigation forward, because no other option is available as long as Assange does not make himself available in Sweden,” she said.

The hearing might not take the investigation forward? Why is that? Maybe the statue of limitations does have less weight than the change in world opinion, and she’s laying the groundwork for an eventual dropping of the case.

Anne Ramberg, head of Sweden’s Bar Association, said she welcomed the move, but also added that “it should have been taken long before”.

Elisabeth Massi Fritz, a lawyer for one of the women in the case, said she had changed her mind on questioning Assange in London. Last year she dismissed as “empty and ill-informed speculation” calls by Swedish politicians and top legal figures to do so.

The proposed interviews in London will be conducted by the deputy prosecutor in the case, Ingrid Isgren, and a police investigator. Assange’s lawyers maintain that he has already given a DNA sample to police when he was first arrested in the UK in 2010.

UPDATE: Ecuador responds

"If they had accepted Ecuador's offer to question him (at the embassy) 1,000 days ago, it would have saved us all a lot of money and trouble," Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino wrote on Twitter.

"On Monday Assange will mark 1,000 days inside our embassy in London. From the first day we have offered to let (prosecutors) question him and they didn't do it," he tweeted.

"The reason for taking Assange's statement now, after 1,000 days, is the statute of limitations. And if the statute of limitations were five years?"

  The Local (Sweden)

And…from John Pilger, a financial supporter:

One of Assange's main financial supporters, Australian-born campaigning journalist John Pilger, described the Swedish prosecutor's offer as "demonstrably cynical".

"In finally agreeing to come to London to interview Julian Assange... she has waited until just before Sweden's statute of limitations nullifies her threadbare case against him," Pilger said.

"She has wasted four and a half years of Assange's life -- against whom she has never had a shred of evidence to charge him with any crime.

We Don't Like Sweden These Days

Invited for a Talk

Israel has summoned Sweden's ambassador in Tel Aviv after the Scandinavian country's newly elected prime minister pledged that his government would recognise a Palestinian state.

Israel's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said Stefan Lofven was rushing to a decision without understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

  

What he means is without understanding just how much shit he’s going to be in with Israel and the US.

Sweden's ambassador to Israel, Carl Magnus Nesser, "will be invited for a talk at the foreign ministry in Jerusalem," but did not say when.

[...]

Lofven met the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in Ramallah in 2012 and told him that Sweden would recognise Palestine should the Social Democrats return to power.

Sweden voted in favour of Palestinian observer status at the UN in 2012, which was granted despite opposition from the US and other countries.

[...]

"We believe international recognition of a Palestinian state is premature," said the US state department's spokeswoman, Jen Psaki.

Reacting to the US remarks, new foreign minister and former EU commissioner Margot Wallstrom said criticism had been expected and that "it is not the US that determines our policies".

Ouch.

Drip, Drip, Drip

Another Snowden leaked document shows that Norway has been spying on Russia for the US.

Under the heading "success stories," the NSA says it is working in partnership with the NIS "to expand and deepen the intelligence exchange, focusing on report sharing and target development on Russian political, natural resources and energy issues," the daily reports.

[...]

The Norwegian government confirmed the authenticity of the document, but stressed the information presented within was a reflection of the "American point of view."

Last week, it was revealed that Norway’s Scandinavian neighbor Sweden was also collaborating with US intelligence to spy on Russian leaders and engage in industrial espionage against business targets such as Russia’s energy companies.

  RT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Tough Guy Disses Putin

This doesn’t even allow him to qualify for Dick in Chief - I'm lowering it to Weenie in Chief.

Relations between the United States and Russia deteriorated further on Wednesday when Barack Obama abandoned a presidential summit with Vladimir Putin that was due to be held next month, amid fury in Washington over Moscow's decision to grant asylum to the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The White House confirmed that it had decided to snub the Russian leader by pulling out of the planned bilateral meeting in Moscow, but is expected to take part in the broader G20 meeting of international leaders in St Petersburg.

  UK Guardian

So tell me again, who’s got the Cold War mentality?

In a separate announcement, the White House said Obama will visit Sweden instead, travelling to Stockholm the day before the St Petersburg summit.

Do they still like him in Sweden? I bet the citizens don’t. I hope they come out in protests.  And old Cranky McCrank would like to start World War III.

"Now is the time to fundamentally rethink our relationship with Putin's Russia," said senator John McCain after Snowden was granted asylum. "We need to deal with the Russia that is, not the Russia we might wish for."

Channeling Herr Rumsfeld.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.