Veckans gag från Ben Yarrows twitter account…

Till en början syns enbart detta på listan över den för USA:s intressen kritiska globala infrastrukturen:

Sweden: Recip AB Sweden: Thyrosafe (potassium iodine)

Längst ner i dokumentet följer sedan denna kommentar från Stockholmsambassaden:

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../2009/03/09STOCKHOLM194.html

VZCZCXYZ0008
PP RUEHWEB

DE RUEHSM #0194 0791327
ZNY SSSSS ZZH
P 201327Z MAR 09
FM AMEMBASSY STOCKHOLM
TO SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 4231

S E C R E T STOCKHOLM 000194

SIPDIS S/CT SHARRI R. CLARK

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/20/2019 TAG PTER, PGOV, ASEC, EFIN, ENRG, KCIP, SW

SUBJECT: SWEDEN: CI/KR RESPONSE FOR S/CT

REF: SECSTATE 15113

Classified By: CDA Robert Silverman for reasons: 1/4 (B), (D), (E), and (G)

¶1. (S) In response to reftel, post would like to add Sweden’s communications infrastructure to the CI/KR list. Although Sweden does not posses a direct undersea cable from the U.S., Sweden is a central European communications hub. For example, Swedish company TeliaSonera is an international carrier that owns and manages 43,000 km of fiber optic cable linking Russia and the Baltics to the rest of Europe and the U.S. If these lines of communications were to be destroyed, disrupted, or exploited, it may compromise global communications.

¶2. (S) Post recommends keeping Swedish pharmaceutical manufacturing company Recip AB on the CI/KR list for its production of ThyroSafe (potassium iodide). This resource provides protection in the aftermath of a nuclear emergency. ThyroSafe is the only FDA approved 65 mg potassium iodide tablet used to protect the thyroid gland against radioactive iodine released during a nuclear emergency.

SILVERMAN

Medan Assange är på väg till Westminster Magistrates Court i den arktiska kylan (The G:s live-update blogg är rätt bra), kan det vara värt att citera Simon Jenkins från förra veckan, för det är en sammanfattning av läget jag tycker man inte kan annat än ställa upp på:

Disclosure is messy and tests moral and legal boundaries. It is often irresponsible and usually embarrassing. But it is all that is left when regulation does nothing, politicians are cowed, lawyers fall silent and audit is polluted. Accountability can only default to disclosure.

Det kan också vara värt att läsa John Naughton idag.

Jag har varit lite sval och skeptisk om Wikileaks 7X hittills. Inte längre. Läs detta om “Anna Ardin”. Vad är det som pågår i Sverige? Kan nån berätta?

Assange kommer alltså att dö. Förgiftad, så är det ryssarna. Skjuten, amerikanerna. Ihjälåklagad, Sverige.

Ian Burrell wrote a big profile of M J Eady in yesterday’s Independent, promising to delve into “the mind of Britain’s most controversial judge”. However, the piece doesn’t really bring us anything new. Here is the para on McKennitt v Ash:

The media was also alarmed by an Eady judgment in 2005 which blocked an author, Niema Ash, from revealing secret details about the Canadian folk singer Loreena McKennitt, her close friend. The judge said McKennitt was entitled to a duty of confidence under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act (the right to privacy), which – in Eady’s view – outweighed Ash’s right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the same legislation. The judge’s finding was upheld by the Court of Appeal, which praised his “careful (and correct) judgment”.

Jag hade ett chaffisjobb igår och idag. Jag körde dit igår, och hämtade idag, vännen Lizzy Nolan till och från Röda Korsets välgörenhetsjulbazar i Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall, där Lizzy sålde (eller försökte sälja…) sina rasande fina, ähm, kläder. Kappor för damer, får man väl kalla dem. Damkappor. Tjusiga saker, alltihop. Dock inte i färger som passar mig.

Hur som haver. Ekvationen kensington + chelsea + röda korset + välgörenhetsbazar resulterar bara i en enda siffra: engelsk övre medelklass i hela sin stenrika, åsneskriande, självgoda självklarhet. Fy fan vad jag avskyr dessa billiga, upmarket Untermenschen… Barbourrockar, gummistövlar, 4-wheel drives med genuin lantislera på fälgarna, yah-ha-yah-ha… Det var champis på gång och en av dom betackade sig med, “Sorry, jag dricker bara vintage…”.

Det finns en social vulgaritet i England som inte är av denna världen, och den definieras ofta av orden Kensington och Chelsea. Lizzy och jag körde äntligen tillbaka hem via Camden och Islington, det var vid sextiden, snön virvlade om oss. Väl inne på Canonbury Road sa jag, “Safely back in the the East…”. -“Inte ännu,” sa Lizzy, “Det här är fortfarande N1, inte E8. Shut up and drive.”

Vill man ha sig till livs, en sån här insnöad dag, några ytterligt väl valda, så är det alltid bäst att vända sig till mästersnickarna. En av dem – han är nog min favorit-quotee, om man kan säga så – är förstås H L Mencken: i senaste TLS recenseras Library of Americautgåvan av hans journalistik.

Här sågar t.ex. Mencken “the Kansas litérateur” William Allen White:

If William Allen White lives as long as Tennyson, and does not reform, our grandchildren will see the Victorian era gasping out its last breath in 1951. And eighty-three is no great age in Kansas, where sin is unknown. It may be, in fact, 1960, or even 1970, before the world hears the last of Honest Poverty, Chaste Affection and Manly Tears. For so long as White holds a pen these ancient sweets will be on sale at the department-store book-counters, and they will grow sweeter and sweeter . . . . If you yearn to uplift and like to sob, then the volume [In the Heart of a Fool] will probably affect you, in the incomparable phrase of Clayton Hamilton, like “the music of a million Easter-lilies leaping from the grave and laughing with a silver singing.” But if you are a carnal fellow, as I am, with a stomach ruined by alcohol, it will gag you.

Men han är nästan bäst när han helt enkelt skriver om hur det är att leva i Amerika på 1920-talet:

Here, more than anywhere else that I know of or have heard of, the daily panorama of human existence, of private and communal folly – the unending procession of governmental extortions and chicaneries, of commercial brigandages and throat-slittings, of theological buffooneries, or aesthetic ribaldries, of legal swindles and harlotries, of miscellaneous rogueries, villainies, imbecilities, grotesqueries, and extravagances – is so inordinately gross and preposterous, so perfectly brought up to the highest conceivable amperage, so steadily enriched with an almost fabulous daring and originality, that only the man who was born with a petrified diaphragm can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night, and to awake every morning with all the eager, unflagging expectation of a Sunday-school superintendent touring the Paris peep-shows.

Det är alltså inte att undra på att svärtan ibland helt tog över det han skrev:

Man cannot sit still, contemplating his destiny in this world, without going frantic. So he invents ways to take his mind off the horror. He works. He plays. He accumulates the preposterous nothing called property. He strives for the coy eye-wink called fame. He founds a family and spreads his curse over others. All the while the thing that moves him is simply the yearning to lose himself, to forget himself, to escape the tragic-comedy that is himself. Life, fundamentally, is not worth living.