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Did Sweden Pay Cambodia For the Pirate Bay Co-founder?
An anonymous reader writes "At the start of this month, news broke that The Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm had been arrested in Cambodia. A bunch of updates followed, including that Svartholm would be deported to Sweden, and that the two countries of course collaborated on his capture. The latest tidbit, as of today, is the craziest one yet: Sweden essentially paid Cambodia tens of millions of dollars. The Government of Sweden has agreed to give 400 million Swedish Kronor ($59.4 million) to Cambodia for various reasons, including democratic development, human rights, education, environment protection, climate change, sustainable development, and poverty reduction. You name it (just don't say international arrests)."
Nobody Seems To Notice and Nobody Seems To Care - Government & Stealth Malware
In Response To Slashdot Article: Former Pentagon Analyst: China Has Backdoors To 80% of Telecoms 87
How many rootkits does the US[2] use officially or unofficially?
How much of the free but proprietary software in the US spies on you?
Which software would that be?
Visit any of the top freeware sites in the US, count the number of thousands or millions of downloads of free but proprietary software, much of it works, again on a proprietary Operating System, with files stored or in transit.
How many free but proprietary programs have you downloaded and scanned entire hard drives, flash drives, and other media? Do you realize you are giving these types of proprietary programs complete access to all of your computer's files on the basis of faith alone?
If you are an atheist, the comparison is that you believe in code you cannot see to detect and contain malware on the basis of faith! So you do believe in something invisible to you, don't you?
I'm now going to touch on a subject most anti-malware, commercial or free, developers will DELETE on most of their forums or mailing lists:
APT malware infecting and remaining in BIOS, on PCI and AGP devices, in firmware, your router (many routers are forced to place backdoors in their firmware for their government) your NIC, and many other devices.
Where are the commercial or free anti-malware organizations and individual's products which hash and compare in the cloud and scan for malware for these vectors? If you post on mailing lists or forums of most anti-malware organizations about this threat, one of the following actions will apply: your post will be deleted and/or moved to a hard to find or 'deleted/junk posts' forum section, someone or a team of individuals will mock you in various forms 'tin foil hat', 'conspiracy nut', and my favorite, 'where is the proof of these infections?' One only needs to search Google for these threats and they will open your malware world view to a much larger arena of malware on devices not scanned/supported by the scanners from these freeware sites. This point assumed you're using the proprietary Microsoft Windows OS. Now, let's move on to Linux.
The rootkit scanners for Linux are few and poor. If you're lucky, you'll know how to use chkrootkit (but you can use strings and other tools for analysis) and show the strings of binaries on your installation, but the results are dependent on your capability of deciphering the output and performing further analysis with various tools or in an environment such as Remnux Linux. None of these free scanners scan the earlier mentioned areas of your PC, either! Nor do they detect many of the hundreds of trojans and rootkits easily available on popular websites and the dark/deep web.
Compromised defenders of Linux will look down their nose at you (unless they are into reverse engineering malware/bad binaries, Google for this and Linux and begin a valuable education!) and respond with a similar tone, if they don't call you a noob or point to verifying/downloading packages in a signed repo/original/secure source or checking hashes, they will jump to conspiracy type labels, ignore you, lock and/or shuffle the thread, or otherwise lead you astray from learning how to examine bad binaries. The world of Linux is funny in this way, and I've been a part of it for many years. The majority of Linux users, like the Windows users, will go out of their way to lead you and say anything other than pointing you to information readily available on detailed binary file analysis.
Don't let them get you down, the information is plenty and out there, some from some well known publishers of Linux/Unix books. Search, learn, and share the information on detecting and picking through bad binaries. But this still will not touch the void of the APT malware described above which will survive any wipe of r/w media. I'm convinced, on both *nix and Windows, these pieces of APT malware
dumb sweden i bet 90% of their income is taxes made off of minecraft
What makes a man turn neutral Kiff? Is it lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutral?
Well, that kind of money should reduce the poverty of one or two government officials...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Memorable quotes for
Looker (1981)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/quotes
"John Reston: Television can control public opinion more effectively than armies of secret police, because television is entirely voluntary. The American government forces our children to attend school, but nobody forces them to watch T.V. Americans of all ages *submit* to television. Television is the American ideal. Persuasion without coercion. Nobody makes us watch. Who could have predicted that a *free* people would voluntarily spend one fifth of their lives sitting in front of a *box* with pictures? Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment. And the average American now spends more than one and a half years of his life just watching television commercials. Fifty minutes, every day of his life, watching commercials. Now, that's power."
##
"The United States has it's own propaganda, but it's very effective because people don't realize that it's propaganda. And it's subtle, but it's actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but it's funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, it's funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it really serves people's thinking - it can stupify and make not very good things happen."
- Crispin Glover: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000417/bio
##
"It's only logical to assume that conspiracies are everywhere, because that's what people do. They conspire. If you can't get the message, get the man." - Mel Gibson (from an interview)
##
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director
##
"The real reason for the official secrecy, in most instances, is not to keep the opposition (the CIA's euphemistic term for the enemy) from knowing what is going on; the enemy usually does know. The basic reason for governmental secrecy is to keep you, the American public, from knowing - for you, too, are considered the opposition, or enemy - so that you cannot interfere. When the public does not know what the government or the CIA is doing, it cannot voice its approval or disapproval of their actions. In fact, they can even lie to your about what they are doing or have done, and you will not know it. As for the second advantage, despite frequent suggestion that the CIA is a rogue elephant, the truth is that the agency functions at the direction of and in response to the office of the president. All of its major clandestine operations are carried out with the direct approval of or on direct orders from the White House. The CIA is a secret tool of the president - every president. And every president since Truman has lied to the American people in order to protect the agency. When lies have failed, it has been the duty of the CIA to take the blame for the president, thus protecting him. This is known in the business as "plausible denial." The CIA, functioning as a secret instrument of the U.S. government and the presidency, has long misused and abused history and continues to do so."
- Victor Marchetti, Propaganda and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures History
##
George Carlin:
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehous
I highly doubt that the Swedish government would have such a great interest in Svartholm that they would pay to get him extradited. Also how much aid was given to Cambodia before Svartholm was arrested? Unless that figure was close to zero I fail to see how Sweden payed for his extradition.
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
Wait, are you telling me that corporations paid the government to do what they couldn't do themselves? That's almost like saying that the government sometimes pays corporations to do what they can't do themselves... and we all know that never happens. Hangon, my cell phone is beeping... huh... I wonder why the GPS icon is blinking....
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
"Government funded, Samuel Hubinette approved."
Well come on, I couldn't think of a Soviet Russia joke!
-
You have to wonder how "flexible" Ecuador would be if Assange ever made it there and USAID shows up with an offer of "development dollars".
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
How much the USA has promised for Assange?
Did Sweden Pay Cambodia For the Pirate Bay Co-founder?
Why are you asking me? You're the one writing the article, so how about answering some questions and providing factual information instead of weaseling around with headline questions?
goes to Cambodia for asylum? Seriously.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
After this, do we have any illusions that Sweden would not extradite Assange to the US to face "treason" chargers? Their government has become incontrovertibly corrupt...
Governments do this all the time. Jimmy Carter's famous Camp David Accords peace treaty between Sadat and Begin wouldn't have happened unless Carter bribed Egypt with $1.3 billion dollars per year in "aid". Not to be left out, Israel received a $3 billion bribe, I mean, foreign aid, for their part in the peace treaty. For accepting these bribes, Begin and Sadat shared a Nobel Peace Prize. Suddenly, everyone is shocked, shocked to find that aid is going on here?
Try this from now on: any time you hear the word "foreign aid", mentally substitute the word "bribe". You'll see it's a quite normal state of affairs among nations.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Secretary of State Clinton, after being asked on her way out of an industry conference hosted by the MPAA, assured reporters that the US's recent $60MM contribution to "strengthen ties" with Sweden was completely unrelated.
Haha! You thought that the rule of law applies and that justice prevails! You're so cute!
This is how modern diplomacy works. Welcome to Earth, we have Cheetos.
Wikileaks released cables that showed the US had threatened to put Sweden on the WTO’s black list if they refused to deal with the Pirate Bay 'problem'.
So either Sweden actually stood to lose more than the 59.4m by doing nothing or the money came directly from the US.
Either way, the US is being a bully once again.
This is why everyone should vote Romney. While he is just as much of an asshole as Obama and many others before him, at least he'll burn the country to the ground for good.
Utmeskiten.
Meh the answer is No in all likelihood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines
Remember Bin Laden's ransom we had? $25m. How much did he cost the US in damages? Trillions (2 wars) and thousands of American, and over 100,000 Iraqis.
Yet, we put a higher ransom on a guy who created a torrent site?
I don't want to live on this planet anymore...
the USA paid the Swedes to pay Thailand...
the Swedish government spend several hundred times more per capita in international aid then US do both as government aid
Yes, I believe that.
and as given by people and non-governmental organisations
That I do NOT believe. There is no way that even per captia, Sweden is donating more money for foreign aid than all of the private charities JUST spending money on foreign aid in the U.S. put together. Even just naming one - Red Cross - would seem to obliviate what you are saying, never mind thousands more.
You need to provide some solid figures here.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://www.sida.se/English/Countries-and-regions/Asia/Cambodia/Our-work-in-Cambodia/
"Sweden’s development aid to Cambodia began in 1979. Humanitarian efforts have gradually given way to long-term cooperation. In the current cooperational strategy (2008-2010) our cooperation is focused on supporting reforms for decentralization and democratization, and human rights through support for the development of civil society and education."
Since 1979? Hmmm. It has not been that effective.
Okay you piss off billionaires and the countries behind them then squeal like pigs when they come after you? I think "dah" is a simple answer to the situation for both he and Assange. Sure in an ideal world you can say it wouldn't work this way but why is anyone surprised that that powerful people want them off the street??? If you try to fuck the bear in the ass he's likely to chase you up a tree. Why is this shocking? They are talking tens of millions but they are multibillion dollar a year industries. If you piss off the right people there's no where you can hide. Say this isn't the way it's supposed to work all you want but in the real world this is reality.
....aaaaand that's pretty much it. I (as regular Pirate Bay user) won't give into discussion about how it's unfair (life's unfair), how court was bought (again, prove this), etc. As I have understood, Pirate Bay founders/owners maitained civil disobedience during investigation and trial. They think law is unfair. Yet, they broke current law - according to court, again - and that's where we land. Cambodia don't even care about this small print, Sweden has legimitate order, they want him - they sure will get him.
Leave selective truth, propaganda and conspiracy theories to the Fox News, please. I know geeks are so much better and above this (also Assange). I know world sucks. I know fight with IPR megacorps and ideas are heavy. But no one promised easy walk in the park.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
How about you provide some facts before calling bullshit?
Here are the figures for 2002: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0930884.html
Combining government and private assistance, Sweden provided 62cents per capita, US 18cents.
was a theme of my childhood and up until now. 64 stupid years, as I will be pretty damn soon.
Swedish development aid to Cambodia began in 1979. Since then Sweden has given millions of dollars to Cambodia. The article by The Next Web and Torrent Freak have no evidence at all to back their claim. It's biased reporting, based on no research and strong prejudice. It is ridiculous to claim that Sweden would use millions of dollars to arrest a man, who is, from government perspective, a petty criminal.
why is everyone after the torrent sites these days
Sweden didn't pay for it. If anyone did pay, it was the MPAA/RIAA black ops funding who did it, probably through numerous lobbyists and other corrupt government bodies. Just like back in 2006, when it was revealed that the raid on TPB was in fact ordered by a swedish minister, after having been told to do it by the media mafia.
It's easy to see. Just look at who would have the most to gain, and the answer is obvious.
So... some powerful influential people with personal, emotional, reputational axes to grind with a clever fellow who escaped their "justice" are willing to squander an astronomic amount of money they didn't earn in order to make the clever fellow pay dearly for being more clever than them?
Yep, that's new!
Azerbaijan secretly promised to buy Hungarian bonds for releasing Ramil Safarov. But now that it happened they won't. A lot cheaper solution.
I think the US put pressure on the Swedish government to open investigations on this. This is pretty much proven by leaks. Question is if they bribed the responsible minister directly or not (he has since moved to the US...) but that isn't sure.
I beleive the "media maffia" bribed the police (Keyzer? Keyser?) responsible for investigations by offering him a high paying job in the maffia that he got even before the investigation was finished.
I also think the judge in the first trial was "corrupt", maybe not by direct bribes but certainly by being in the same "gang" as the maffia (member of copyright organisations and so on).
But that Sweden paid for Svartholms arrest and extradition. No, the Swedish goverment isn't that clever in "getting" people.
And if the rumors of Svartholms drug addiction is correct, maybe he can benifit from staying a year in prison detox.
If the allegation of Sweden paying Cambodia, for them to body snatch a single person, - Gottfrid Svartholm, - so that they can then "deported" the guy back to Sweden - We would know what will happen to Mr. Julian Assange when he step on Sweden's soil --->
Mr. Assange will end up be "sold" to USA, just like Mr. Svartholm was sold to Sweden
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The lack of effectiveness must've been the reason they very, very recently allegedly decided to increase their support a hundredfold.
Seems it's already getting results.
http://www.openaid.se/en/countries/kambodja
You have no clue. The Swedish government gives almost 400 million SEK to Cambodia because it is run by the Illuminati and they want anakata for a ritual sacrifice. The sacrifice will take place on december 21st at Angkor Wat and stave off the end off the world as prophesied by the mayans. See, I just constructed a news story with equal truth content based on the same figures. Which one do you prefer ?
Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see by infra-red, How I hate the night.
This, and Assange's case clearly show that there is something wrong with Swedish justice system. These arrests must have been influenced/initiated/forced by politicians.
In a healthy country, justice system is independent, that also should apply to law enforcement system to some extent.
We criticize Russia for Pussy Riot case, but we have similar problem in Western Europe as it seems.
I would say Cambodia has come a hell of a long way since 1979.
Until the start of 1979 these guys were in charge.
According to friends who have visited Svartholm, he is being held on terrorism charges not related to TPB, but still on the request of Sweden:
https://twitter.com/brokep/status/243609656126230528
https://twitter.com/brokep/status/243611708386574336
Peter Sunde, a TPB founder, seems to think that it is related to the fact that Svartholm's company used to host WikiLeaks.
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
But your ignorance and repeating of this falsity isn't personal, is it. Oh, no. He just helped show up the USA and how far it has fallen.
And that makes you mad.
Does anybody still doubt if this government gets hold of Julian Assange, they'll have his soon-to-be-dead ass on its way to the United States faster than you can say "American Lapdog"?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
A heated debate over an article from The Onion? /. was supposed to be "news for nerds" not "half baked conspiracy theories for complete fuckwits."
I thought
A clue for those of you who think you understand the legal system of Sweden from watching a few episodes of Law & Order or its foreign policy because you have managed to gather that Sweden is in Europe: Get a new tin foil hat and head to davidicke.com instead of posting crap here.
Because it's just unthinkable that someone sentenced for a crime could be extradited for it? And Assange's case is even more ridiculous. So was it political pressure that made the district attorney _drop_ the case, only for that decision to be successfully appealed by the women's representative? And given that the women and their legal representative are members of the opposition, are they working across the isle on this, too? You're living in a crazy fantasy.
But only if they're doing what you want, right? Because Assange doesn't think so. He thinks the Swedish government should provide guarantees he won't be extradited to the USA, despite the fact that this is a decision the courts would make. He's asking for the Swedish executive to tell the judicial what to do.
Count them. Which invasions and subjugations of entire peoples have led to stable governments? Are you talking about Iraq? Egypt? Somalia? Sudan? Nigeria? Afghanistan? How are those former colonies faring these days?
Name one British program to develop African manufacturing capacity. There are zero, or virtually zero, because the purpose of colonialism is to subjugate a population in order to steal their natural resources so the parasite nation -- in this case, the UK -- can take those raw materials and create wealth by processing them. Even in cases where manufacturing had to be located in the country occupied by the British, those factories were never owned or under the control of the native population. That's why they spent hundreds of years trying to kick the British out.
The British empire enslaved hundreds of millions of people and then worked them to death in colonies across the world. They killed millions through their quaint "expeditions" on their hunt for the next civilization to exploit. Did you forget about slavery and war? I know those parts of British history only lasted for a few hundred years; maybe it just slipped under your radar.
Ron Kirk, the US Govt's top trade representative just happens to be in Cambodia at the time he was arrested. Cambodia then announces he'll be extradited despite there being no extradition treaty between the two countries (which is why he chose to live there). Then 2 days later Sweden give Cambodia an unprecedented $59 million. It smells fishy to me.
The British didn't enslave many people actually. Most slaves in the triangular slave trade - the only slave trade that Britain got involved in - were bought from slave traders - African mainly, some Portuguese. Britain was the first modern country to abolish slavery, and fought wars to stop slavery around the world.
I don't know about "African manufacturing capacity" but the British built the modern railways still in use in India and Africa. The line from Alexandria to Khartoum was built by Lord Kitchener (he of the "WANTS YOU" posters), Cecil Rhodes wanted to build a line from the Cape to Cairo.
Nigeria has a lot of problems - it had a lot of problems before the British - but it also has a functional civil service, courts and fairly democratic elections.
I love how people like to round upon the British for their colonial past and judge past acts against current morality. The British did no more than most other European nations, and in many cases were the colonies previously governed by the British now are significantly better off than the countries that were governed by other nations. How did the French-Indochina fall apart so massively? Look at the fate of the Belgian Congo and German (then Belgian) Rwanda.
The most telling insight is that the Commonwealth of Nations still consists of all these countries that the British governed, well after independence. In fact, I think the only country that does not recognise their special relationship with Britain with membership is ironically the one that constantly mentions their "special relationship".
Yes. So what? This happens all the time in diplomatic circles. Hell it happens in every county in the US, that's why we have bounty hunters for bail jumpers. Sweden considers the man a criminal and agreed to pay Cambodia money for various projects in return for bringing in this criminal. The issue isn't who paid who, the issue is that Sweden considers him a criminal, that's what we should be talking about, not some bounty getting paid.
Only 12 million were enslaved and brought to the Americas... I don't know why I thought there were orders of magnitude more, but I was entirely incorrect on that point.
Also, I did not mean to suggest Britain was any worse than other colonial powers. They all operated more or less in the same way: exploit and destroy local cultures and governments in order to profit from their natural resources. I have little respect for any colonial empire, and I still strongly disagree with the sentiment that the lives and cultures destroyed in the process in order to establish a Western way of life through simple-minded violence was at all justifiable.
Here are the figures for 2002: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0930884.html
That's great, but where does it say that includes private assistance?
I never claimed that the U.S. beat Sweden on government assistance only.
And as noted it's far from your many orders of magnitude you were claiming.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley