I wrote that the Commission withdrew the proposed directive. Seems I misremembered. What happened was that they changed the directive to a 'compromise' version that basically threw out all the amendment, and it ended up getting rejected.
Point still stands anyway, the Council dumped all over parliament on the SW patent thing, and I've no reason to believe they'll do differently now.

Officially, negotiations are ongoing. In reality, the majority of those that would vote on it have pledged to vote no, if true, ACTA will never go though and become law. So the issue is 'all but dropped' in that the negotiations are still open, but no one on either side expects them to go anywhere.

Well, they haven't pledged to vote 'no' just made a vague list of demands and expressed quite a lot of reservations.

Sadly, I don't think it means that much. The EU Parliaments has expressed skepticism of ACTA earlier, without any reaction. It would not be the first time the Commission tried to goad the Parliament into accepting draconian IP laws, if you remember their attempt at legalizing software patents. They withdrew the proposed directive after the Parliament amended it to something most of the anti-SW-patent crowd could live with (In other words: A reasonable deal). Total disrespect for the directly-elected representatives.

And then he suddenly decides to become a rapist

That's a totally bogus argument. Nobody decides to become a rapist, or murderer, etc. Not in the sense of having made some rational, well-thought out decision. If that were the case, there would hardly be any murders or rapes to begin with. But if you want to play that game, you can equally well make the opposite argument: Since he was in the media recently over the leaks, he saw his chance to rape someone and get away with it, because people like you would surely believe he must be innocent. (And no, I don't believe that, because I'm not a moron who thinks rapists are acting rationally)

If he's guilty, then the timing means nothing. In fact, the better timing would be before the documents had been leaked. Afterwards, what is the point of discrediting him?
The leaks do not depend on his crediblity, he's not the source. (which is the big hole in this conspiracy theory) Everyone knows smearing him won't stop Wikileaks, including the CIA. So what would the point even be? They can apparently manipulate foreign prosecutors and citizens, but are also too dumb to realize that it wouldn't achieve their goal?
No it's not a coincidence, in the sense that he was in the media, and was being asked around to give talks and whatnot and meet with possible allies (i.e. the Pirate Party in Sweden) and during that, he met these women. One of whom is (allegedly) a member of the Swedish Social Democratic party. So what's her motive then? We're talking about the party of Olof Palme, here, the party who spent most of the last 50 years being a giant pain in the USA's ass over foreign policy. Hell, when Assange was born in 1971, the US had broken off diplomatic relations with Sweden over their harsh criticism of the Vietnam War.

Out of all the countries he's going around visiting, you think Sweden is the one most likely to collaborate with the CIA? And their 'socialist' party, at that? This is typical conspiracy theory thinking. You have zero evidence that the CIA or whoever did this. All you have is a coincidence. And coincidences do happen. Just because a set of events may or may not benefit someone, doesn't mean the were behind it. Shit happens.

To take an example from Norway, we have 29 letters including æøå. The last looks like a+circle but it's a separate letter, while say à is considered simply a variant of a.

It's a bit arguable whether 'w' is a unique letter in the Scandinavian alphabets though; it's essentially a fancy variant of 'v', seldom used in actual words. (And they occupy the same place in alphabetical ordering)

Random trivia: In Finnish "Å" is called a "Swedish O".

Below Å.

Finland hasn't been a part of Sweden since 1809.

Language evolves.. but it still evolves along the same lines and 'rules' as before.
For instance, we now have "to google" in English, but if you turn that into a French verb, it needs a French verb ending, thus "googler".
In German you'd need an -n but "googlen" doesn't work, but by transposing the letters you can use the -eln verb ending and so you have "googeln".
In Swedish, verbs need an -a ending, requiring the 'e' be dropped, so "googla".

*) What did happen in the government during the tsunami in Thailand? Why do we need to keep these e-mails secret for 50 years?

Ask the administration. But they're not secret for 50 years, they're temporarily sealed for 3 (now 2) years pending investigation on whether the law should be changed re: backup copies. I don't think it's going to happen in the end.

*) What did happen to Raoul Wallenberg?

By Soviet accounts, he was executed in Lubyanka prison in 1947.

*) Why is a big part of the Palme murder still classified?

Because it remains an active police investigation.

If I recall correctly, in Sweden the servers of political parties, served from their political offices, are immune to prosecution for a variety of offenses. It's intended to protect the freedom of independent parties. It just adds another layer of shielding on top of Sweden's other protections.

Not quite. Members of parliament there, as in many countries, have immunity from prosecution. But the Pirate Party is not, as of yet, represented in the Swedish parliament. There's a 4% of the popular-vote threshold for entry.

That said, Sweden has much more powerful transparency laws than most nations. Prior restraint on publication is banned, with the exception of cinema* and matters of national security. This can be challenged in court of course, like every democratic country they have due process. Every government document is public (per the constitution) unless explicitly classified, and has to be handed over, without question or delay. (E.g. anyone can waltz in to Rosenbad, the executive offices, and ask for a copy of the Prime Minister's e-mail from the last week). Classification requires explicit action (which again can be challenged in court) and is limited to national security, personal privacy, documents which are still under preparation, and a few other fairly obvious exceptions.

Source protection is exceptionally strong; If a classified document is leaked, it is illegal (unconstitutional, even) for the government to investigate, much less prosecute, the source of the leak. The only exceptions are essentially if the leak constitutes espionage or treason, or if it was an intentional violation of confidentiality (the latter is difficult to prove in court). In short, their government is severely limited in its powers to stop even its own leaks, much less leaks of information pertaining to foreign governments.

(* Cinema releases have to pass a ratings board that has the authority to cut footage or even ban releases. It's fairly inactive, today they only cut a few minutes of footage in total every year, almost exclusively for violence, not profanity or nudity. I believe the last movie that was banned from cinematic viewing altogether was the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 36 years ago)

You'll never know if you have a real competent spy around.

I know! It's just the same with the half-dozen ninja assassins lurking in my apartment!

But they're there. I can feel it.

Fortelling assassinations! (This originally being a refutal of Drosnin's "Bible Code" nonsense)

Seriously, in any given cirumstance I'd be extremely skeptical of this stuff. But in this case we don't really know whether all of "Plato's" writings were actually written by Plato, and certainly not if they're verbatim. Given that ancient Greek had five grammatical cases, it didn't have very strict word order (much like Latin). So it's even less of a coincidence if someone manages to string the words together into comprehensible sentences.

I doubt this will be the revolution Dr Kennedy thinks it will be. It'd be interesting to hear what others have to say. But of course, this is a press release, not a real article.

or the servers that are being cooled?

Why not? In the opposite situation to AC, I know the PDC supercomputing center in Stockholm, Sweden feeds the surplus heat from their machines into the local district heating system.
Perhaps even more originally, those crafty Swedes have also hooked up their crematoriums!

I dunno why, but I suddenly pictured a bunch of embarrassed Swedes whistling as they quietly move the town over a few hundred meters.

Well, it's not the first town we've moved! Malmberget and Grängesberg are a few others. And Falun (one of the world's largest copper mines from the 7th century until it closed in 1992) collapsed in 1687 resulting in a hole 1.5 km in diameter right next to the town. (Miraculously, nobody was injured because it occured during one of their few holidays).

Here's a pic I took in Grängesberg (the largest ore body in Sweden second only to Kiruna), whose old town center had to be evacuated in the 1970's. The farther wall of the building has fallen into the open pit (and in the background, one can glimpse the mine office and one of the main shaft elevators). The pit behind it is well over 100 meters deep. That mine was shut down in 1991, and even though it filled at rates of tens of thousands of cubic meters of water per month, it took 18 years to fill up after the pumps were switched off.

/Unabashed mine geek.