John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CAITLIN JOHNSON IN CHECKPOINT ASIA
‘Now That [Julian] Assange Is Safely Locked Up, Sweden Drops Its “Investigation”’
"Continues to be detained in a high security prison, having completed an extreme sentence for not meeting the bail conditions for a charge that wasn’t and won’t be made"
Sweden, years ago, was in many ways a very admirable country.
It remained unaligned during the Cold War, staying out of NATO.
Sweden welcomed many American war resisters from the bloody, pointless Vietnam War.
It had a solid reputation in international humanitarian efforts.
It was a truly independent and reasoned voice in world affairs, although its small size limited its influence.
During the 1990s, Sweden, for reasons I do not understand, started cooperating much more closely with NATO, forming a kind of partnership. The timing is even odd, given the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
It is under its closer relationship with the United States, that the country has acted in ways that go completely against its earlier, independent-minded history and reputation.
In the 1970s or even 1980s, Sweden would never have done what it has done to Assange with the phony charges that ended by making him a prisoner in Britain, clearly done at America's bidding.
The country's very progressive Prime Minister, Olof Palme, was assassinated in 1986, in a great mystery never solved.
Some have speculated that CIA might have been involved. Who knows, but it may well have affected the future course of events.
It wouldn’t surprise. It is said that at least one of the serious attempts at assassinating de Gaulle, a real thorn in the side of NATO, was CIA supported.
The airplane-crash death in 1961 of eminent Swedish diplomat, Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General of the United Nations and a much-disliked figure by the United States and some of its allies, was never properly investigated owing to various states’ lack of cooperation. It is thought by many to have been an assassination.
