[Peer]

Am I the only one tired over how TorrentFreak will say anything, related or not, to try to confirm their bias? This aid was decided on for over 5 months ago, in march 2012 (http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/574/a/94013), and it is obviously not the result of Sweden trying to get at Svartholm. But if you want to be believe it then please do...

[guelo]

I didn't know Sweeden gave money to Cambodia and I am glad that TorrentFreak informed me of this. Foreign aid from rich to poor countries is used in general to keep diplomatic cooperation flowing smoothly in matters of interest to the giver country.

[Zirro]

Sweden is one of few countries that reach the United Nations goal stating that countries should give one percent of their GNP as foreign aid. According to the reports I could find it is currently the largest giver of foreign aid in the world, with regards to it's economy and population.

This wasn't spontaneous. It happens every year although the amounts changes as we see here.

[naturalethic]

Poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.

[nl]

Sweden's foreign aid program is one of the best in the world[1], and doesn't fund rich people as you are implying 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.

[1] http://www.thelocal.se/16158/20081205/

[naturalethic]

I read your article and surfed around for better information, but couldn't find much. So here's a bunch of conjecture, feel free to skip it. Link me better stuff if you find any.

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.

[nixy]

It's "Sweden," not "Sweeden." I see a lot of people making that mistake on HN[1].

[1] http://www.google.com/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com+swe...

[jesseendahl]

Looks like HN strips out the quotes needed to make this query work. Here: http://goo.gl/zMUQY

[wccrawford]

I'm not saying they did, but it's possible that they threatened to withhold this aid if they didn't get him.

We currently don't know, and saying either way at this point doesn't mean much. We need some actual proof.

[itcmcgrath]

I'm not saying they did, but it is possible thay they threatened to bomb them with buckets of blue paint if they didn't get him.

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'

[itcmcgrath]

s/affect/effect/ Proof-reading fail.

[adgar]

You're right. We're just asking questions. There's nothing wrong about asking questions when there's no proof one way or the other.

That's why I think Barack Obama is from Kenya and Karl Rove personally blew up the twin towers.

[reinhardt]

Nobody is claiming that Svartholm alone was worth $60M to Sweden. Still, is it equally "obvious" to you that not even a tiny fraction of the lump amount was allocated to "strengthen the relationships between the immigration departments" of the two countries? If you want to believe it then please do...

[Peer]

I thought that was exactly what the article tried to imply.

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."

[reinhardt]

The implication is that the package helped (in part or in whole, that's not implied) sweeten the deal. How does the fact that it was decided half a year go make it obvious that the implication is wrong? Wasn't Svartholm wanted back then?

[DigitalSea]

Svartholm has been in Cambodia for more than 5 months, hasn't he? Not to mention it's a known fact he's been there many times before. So wouldn't it make sense that the Swedish government made this look like it wasn't related by pre-planning in advance the all of a sudden generous and higher than usual aide payment in exchange for Svartholm being deported?

[cpach]

Thanks for the reference!

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?

[cpach]

Oh, and by the way: If Torrentfreak would like to be considered a venue of serious journalism, they ought to learn how to find sources like the one Peer linked to. It's not even written in Swedish, for the love of ${DEITY}, so I do think it can be considered low-hanging fruit.

[mongol]

Yes, but before that maybe we should throw the ball back in Torrentfreak's court. They tried to mislead us?

[cpach]

Well, their bias is quite obvious, isn't it?

IMO their articles get far too many upvotes around here. I actually flagged this article. Didn't seem to help much though.

[sandstrom]

Here is a historical breakdown of previous Swedish aid to Cambodia (data from 1975 and onwards):

http://www.openaid.se/en/countries/kambodja?year=2011

[kmfrk]

Oh yeah. It's basically only good for learning about when a tracker gets shut down.