Pirate Bay Founder Arrest Followed By $59m Swedish Aid Package For Cambodia
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
See page 8, section 3: »The funds available for the period covered by the strategy amount to approximately SEK 400 million«.
Can we end the speculation now, please?
IMO their articles get far too many upvotes around here. I actually flagged this article. Didn't seem to help much though.
We currently don't know, and saying either way at this point doesn't mean much. We need some actual proof.
We currently don't know, and saying either way at this point doesn't mean much. We need some actual proof.
Or, in other words, you can pretty much make up anything and flag it as a possible reason. A common ploy in propaganda which causes the same affect, if you if add a disclaimer that 'we just don't know'
That's why I think Barack Obama is from Kenya and Karl Rove personally blew up the twin towers.
[1] http://www.google.com/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com+swe...
This wasn't spontaneous. It happens every year although the amounts changes as we see here.
If you have proof otherwise I'd like to see it.
Otherwise - it's is way to easy to smear something in an off-hand way like that.
First, you can't go giving away other peoples money and call it 'charity', or measure it against actual charitable activity.
As far as I can tell, the 'best in the world' status relates only to the fact that they 'give' (redistribute) a higher percent of GDP than any other nation. They still sell or give arms to despots (as even your article points out). Much of their aid is in the form of government purchase of Swedish products, then given away, which surely leads to some crony backroom deals with industry leaders, as all protectionist measures do, you know, pork barrel politics.
My assumption, and the reason that it's easy to smear, is that people with power aren't angels, and taking money from locals to deliver off to some foreign land may be for reasons that are less than scrupulous or benevolent, that there is inherent conflict of interest (conditions for corruption) in every government expenditure.
Of course all such matters will be offset by very visible donations to the humanitarian effort of the day, in this case, Syria. Whatever form their aid to the 'refugees' takes there, unless it's going straight into the mouths of the needy, you'd better bet some of it will be redirected into winning the fight.
From the article: "But today, in another one of those unusual political coincidences, Cambodian officials announced the “strengthening of bilateral ties” with Sweden – along with a $59 million aid package sweetener."
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-09/05/c_1318292...
No, seriously. TorrentFreak here wants us to believe that Cambodia got 40G$ for arresting someone who is not precisely Pablo Escobar reincarnate. Do they seriously want us to believe that the Swedish Minister of Justice is that incompetent? I mean, some calls, an Interpol red notice... I could get it done for less than a million, my fees included. So vote me.
Or have you never been to Cambodia and use HN to throw around racist comments about corruption in Asia?
It is easy to make up a conspiricy, and very hard to disprove it. Nevertheless...
Sweden's foreign aid policies are well respected internationally[1].
For TorrentFreak to try and imply that aid to Cambodia - one of the poorest countries in the world - was in any way linked to their coincidental arrest of a person with an international warrant out for his arrest is shameful.
If nothing else, the foreign aid was announced prior to his arrest[2] and is part of a long running aid program[3].
Not only is it entirely made up, but it puts an unnecessary taint of corruption on a program that saves lives. As anyone scanning thread can attest, the last thing a foreign aid program needs is any kind of association with corruption - especially one that is made up.
It is well known that shoddy journalists can use their pulpit to smear anything they want and there is little that the target can do (eg, questions like "Tell me when you stopped beating your wife"). That is what is going on here, and people who are falling for it should be ashamed of themselves.
[1] http://www.thelocal.se/16158/20081205/
[2] http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/574/a/94013
[3] http://www.swedenabroad.com/en-GB/Embassies/Phnom-Penh/Devel...
Here, we have the observation that Sweden gave $60 million foreign aid to Cambodia, but we are given no clear idea of the prior probability that Sweden would give this much and at this time (but we are given the implication that the evidence is significant). We don't need a hard probability estimate (few of us are actually going to rigorously apply Bayes' rule), but we do need enough information to come to a basic idea of the probability on our own. What does Sweden usually give to Cambodia? When is this usually announced? If this is an unusual amount of money, are there other good explanations for this besides corruption?
The problem is that the data in the article leaves us to use a relatively uninformed prior. $60 million is not that much money for a nation with Sweden's economy. It seems fairly likely that some kind of diplomatic news mention would happen regarding Sweden and Cambodia within any given two week period (close enough to appear associated with any given event), and since Sweden and Cambodia are on friendly terms, that mention is likely to be positive. Supposing that this is an unusually large amount of aid, there are plenty of possible reasons that Cambodia, often plagued with both droughts and floods, might have been hit particularly hard in the last year and needed more, so even if this is an unusual amount of aid. This all puts the prior for the observation pretty high, which cuts its evidential weight down very very low. As you illustrated, that prior gets higher as we add information, further weakening the evidence.
It's an interesting idea though. Some subjects are interesting enough that it actually might work.
But my question is: So what?
Sweden have in the past (since 1979) sent aid to Cambodia.
In 2011 we sent 168 million SEK and in 2012 and 2013 we will send 200 million (a total of 400 million for 2 years) and this was decided a long time ago.
Do you really think Sweden will pay 400 million to get one person back and have him serve ONE year in prison?
http://www.swedenabroad.com/sv-SE/Ambassader/Phnom-Penh/Utve...
It's not my argument, but the interesting argument is not that Sweden paid 400M SEK to get a prisoner - that cause and effect are working this way. But it's interesting that he is arrested after quite some time in Cambodia and Sweden is paying 400M SEK aid.
What exactly is misleading about TF's posting?
This article's a great example since this money is only a small increase on the annual aid Sweden has been giving Cambodia for years, as pointed out in comments.
Or in TorrentFreak speak, "Sweden bribing Cambodia for Pirate Bay arrest since 1979!".
It does according to the dictionary definitions I'm reading. Going by your definition, any viewpoint can be "propaganda" as long as it's repeated often enough for an agenda. Civil rights comes to mind, where the agenda is equality, but you don't hear anyone but far-right wingnuts calling the repeated insistence that discrimination is wrong propaganda.
It's a loaded term, best avoided.
The agenda's called "making money off people who want to believe they're the hero in this story for pirating X"
And there's the denigration. That didn't take long.
This article's a great example since this money is only a small increase on the annual aid Sweden has been giving Cambodia for years
50% is a small increase?!
http://www.swedenabroad.com/en-GB/Embassies/Phnom-Penh/Devel...
The good news, I guess, is that Swedish prison will likely be a less heinous experience.
I know that was probably an emotional response and the phrase "correlation does not imply causation" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_caus... ) gets thrown around here alot more than it should but that's a very strong statement to make.
Is it possible that it's true, yes. Is there evidence that makes it appear likely, not that I've seen. Maybe there will be more evidence coming up to help prove the swedes bribed the Cambodians to arrest him, but so far it looks like its way to soon to say this is definitely what happened.
As for the motives... IF the arrest of Anakata was a paid job, what other reasons than keeping good relations with the U.S. do we (or rather, the Swedish state) need?
Really?
"The Pirate Bay (commonly abbreviated TPB) is a Swedish file-sharing website founded in 2003..." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay
There are media companies in other parts of the world too you know. The world is a big place, it even exists outside the US.
Torrent Freak has not even gone close to saying Sweden has bought him.
When countries give foreign aid, it is often, at least in part, for power plays.
Japan regularly does this in the pacific islands and uses their support to continue whaling. To argue the amount of money they give (quite large) is so they can continue whaling is also ridiculous. In fact most Japanese don’t even eat whale or care about the issue. It’s mostly political.
Sweden is owed a few favours and it seems they have called one in. The story here is why they have chosen this as one of them.
I suppose they would have preferred to obtain Assange, but he wasn't in Cambodia? ;-)
1) how much of an increase this is compared to the regular yearly foreign aid of Sweden to Cambodia (I understand it's 150%, so "just" 20M extra, and that the yearly foreign aid to Cambodia has very little variance.
2) when this increase was decided upon.
3) since when Svartholm was wanted, and known/expected to flee to Cambodia.
Those answers still don't quite rule out the two events are connected, but it would definitely make TorrentFreak's article quite a lot more balanced. Besides, it's easy enough to expose the big entertainment lobbies and their copyright watchdogs without making things up.
It also shows that HN is better at doing proper journalistic research ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Train_Robbery_%281963%29#...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Battisti_%28born_1954%29