Project Simoom - an apology

Time for another post in English. The occasion merits it, I think.

I just said it on twitter, but I'll say it here to:

I am really fucking sorry about the Swedish arms sales to Saudi Arabia. We already knew our country has been arming them, though it's not something they mention in political campaigns.

Go figure... I wonder what keeps them?

One could almost see a pattern here, as if it was a carefully planned strategy to mention tax cuts, and talk about 'responsibility' a lot, while shutting up about ACTA, the Data Retention Directive, extended government-sanctioned surveillance of the people and other things that would trouble the poor voters.

Yeah, that would make them two-faced, lying bastards, wouldn't it?

We DIDN'T know about the secret plans to help building an arms factory in Saudi Arabia though. That little sparkling gem of hope in Mankind just hit us this morning.

An article I just read (Swedish, linked in as 'SVT' at the bottom of this post) tells how the coverup was supposed to protect the government. When entering the deal, the Saudis wanted the state-run institute for defense-research, FOI, to coordinate the project. As that was deemed politically risky, a private company was funded instead - Swedish Security Technology and Innovation (SSTI). Said company just happened to be run by Dick Sträng, a head researcher of FOI, and the Swedish-Saudi project was run by the same people who had been working with it under FOI.


We probably should have expected it.

A (not so) funny thing is that while I was ranting about this on twitter, our Foregin Minister, Mr Carl Bildt tweeted this:

Funny guy, right? A large part of Sweden is outraged by the affair revealed this morning, and he tweets goofy pictures of him and Santa? Some would call that arrogance. To most of us, it's just business as usual for Mr Bildt, who isn't exactly known for his sense of subtlety and finesse:

I know... the guy's a fucking riot. Hilarious.

Mr Bildt seems to be scheduled for an interview tomorrow morning, and we'll see what he says. It will most likely have something to do with 'stability'. As if arming dictators in the Middle East would have the long-term effect of somehow preventing them from using it to kill innocents and opress their own people. We've already seen Saudi snipers at work killing protesters in Bahrain.

Oh, and Mr Bildt's party released a new campaign over Valentine's by the way. The tagline was: "we love people"...

You can't make this shit up.

Either way, as a Swede, I just wanted to tell you again: I'm sorry. I really wish I could promise you the people behind this will be out of politics permantently after 2014. Sadly, I can't. I can promise you there are a lot of us working to that end though.

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Lastly, for the Swedes, or people wanting to take their chances with Google Translate (it sucks at Swedish), here are some bloggers and articles to read:

Camilla Rågfors, Kommunalarbetaren, SVT