sweden

What do we think of when we think of Sweden? Modern design? IKEA? Volvo? Saab? Or Aftonbladet's infamous Donald Bostrom (awarded Dishonest Reporter of 2009)?

It is to be noted that Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier, the Swedish ambassador to Israel, apologised for Bostrom's article on body parts. But the Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt supported Aftonbladet, or at least maintained their right to write (which is effectively the same thing).

Bildt, not content with backing Bostrom's ability to write lies, went further and put forward the Swedish proposal for the European Union's policy on Israel. The resulting EU document calls for a time line of negotiations and that any changes in the 1967 line must be adopted by agreement. It is the first European statement to call for Jerusalem as the capital of two states. It divides the indivisible body of Jerusalem into parts. Was Berlin a successful city as two halves of a city? To divide Jerusalem cuts the heart of Israel, a pound of flesh.

Body parts?....Even the Swedes must know of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, where a foolish merchant agrees to give as a bond for a loan (that he defaults on) a pound of his flesh, and how that ended. It doesn't work.

The Swedes may need to be more familiar with Shakespeare. The Danes are familiar, for obvious reasons, with Hamlet. In Shakespeare's Hamlet,

 
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt
Can't Recognise Palestinian State till it exists

 

"I don't think we are there yet. I would hope that we would be in a position to recognise a Palestinian state but there has to be one first, so I think it is somewhat premature.

That Swedish organ theft blood libel that went viral in the Arab world - legitimate because the obsessive anti-Zionist gumshoe who wrote it was "just asking questions." His question-filled investigation of the Chinese government, which admits that it actually does harvest prisoner organs, is presumably still pending. Because he doesn't seem to have written this one up yet:

China has launched a national organ donation system to try to reduce its dependence on body parts harvested from executed prisoners, who make up the majority of donors, state media reported Wednesday. Organ transplantation in China has long been criticized as profit-driven and unethical, with critics arguing death row inmates may feel pressured to become donors, violating personal, religious or cultural beliefs... But in a rare disclosure about an industry often criticized for being opaque, the China Daily newspaper said Wednesday that more than 65 percent of organ donors come from death row. Though the figure could not be confirmed with the government, Vice Health Minister Huang Jiefu has publicly acknowledged in recent years that most organs used for transplants are taken from executed prisoners, though only with prior consent.

Of course there's no millennia-old racist trope - enshrined in European religious and literary tradition - about how the Chinese steal human organs. So that wouldn't be as much fun to write.

El Perro Del Mar - Change Of Heart