"In the absence of direct witness testimony or forensic/technical evidence, a thoroughly credible testimony
on the part of the accuser, in conjunction with what is otherwise presented before the court, can however be sufficient for a conviction." ("Criteria for judgment", referred in a verdict 2010 by the Court of Appeals in Stockholm) [The full text in Swedish in Note 19, down below]
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See also in this series:
PART I
The main aim of this analysis is to clarify research and clinical psychiatric concepts about the diagnosis posttraumatic stress disorder, as improperly or deceivingly have been presented before the court by Swedish radical feminists - professionals or laymen - in rape trials, as well before the Swedish public through the mainstream media.
On the eve of a London court decision regarding the extradition of Julian Assange to Sweden, speculations have been raised as to whether similar "expert documents" on behalf of the prosecution will be also used in the Assange case. The subject is explained against the backdrop of radical and state feminism in Sweden. On my qualifications regarding the subject PTSD see disclaimer in Note [1].
INTRODUCTION:
On the Origins of State-Feminism in Sweden
By Marcello Ferrada de Noli
Sweden is a wonderful country. The people are for the most part amiable and sincere, hard working and honest. Some years ago the country enjoyed a notable international prestige among both developed and third world countries across nearly all-social and cultural strata. This was mainly due to the balanced Swedish position in international politics - which is not to be equated with "neutrality" in foreign affairs: Sweden had an active international role in pursuing peace.
The Swedish trademark was a matter of sovereign morality, independence and integrity, but it was also about the quality of Swedish production, including cultural and scientific output. But then the Cold War came to an end and the disintegration of the socialist bloc echoed heavily in Sweden. International balance was lost. The ruling politicians were tipped by gravity towards the only geopolitical end point that survived.
The Americanization of Swedish political culture developed fast and uncontested. Government became business. Social welfare became private monopoly. Millions of Swedes were suddenly detached from their secure social system, and the traditional left capitulated to the enemy without combat. It was then that their political struggle was replaced by the more comfortable (and profitable) gender confrontation. To hide their lack of ideological conviction, or combat spirit, the opportunistic left sold their lie to the public: Women, together with men, are not suffering because of a greedy system of profit - women are suffering because of men. And since the system is no longer the enemy, the system very much becomes the ally. Radical feminism became state feminism.
This was the beginning of the cultural and intellectual impoverishment of modern Sweden. Cultural programmes were replaced by alienating superficial pseudo-entertainment. Scientific empirical methods at Swedish universities were replaced by "qualitative research", an easy, cheap, and "pseudo" method which consists of drawing "scientific" conclusions from interviews with a dozen people, women for the most part, who share their "impressions" to the interviewing "researcher", a woman for the most part. True scientific research in Sweden dropped off ominously, as did the scholarly requirements placed on new researchers.[4]
Sound, medically verifiable clinical diagnoses were replaced by pseudo-clinical constructs such as "stress-induced" frozen pelvis and "burnout" ("utbrändhet") [5]. The latter served to give long-term "sick leaves" to hundreds of thousands of individuals, for the most part women. Sweden became the European nation with the highest incidence of mentally ill people, this according to international statistics for people on sick leave for "mental" diagnoses, to which psychological problems and the fashionable mental diagnosis "work stress" belonged. The "utbrändhet" diagnosis, later known as "utmattningssyndrom" reached an epidemic-like distribution only in Sweden, all which comfirmed its cultural character [6].
Some years later, and as I predicted in "The emperor's burn-out clothes" [7] it was demonstrated that a) while stress levels in society (and at the workplaces in particular) have not diminished at all in Sweden at the end of the 90's (the stress level in society had rather increased, b) sick leaves "caused" by work-related psychological stress ("burnout") , especially among Swedish women, have notably decreased and finally practically disappeared. Ergo, The purported causal correlation between “increasing work and societal stress” and “burnout (utbrändhet)” was demonstrated to be as fake as the fashion diagnoses [5] invented by researchers associated at that time to the Karolinska Institute.
The real winners became the Pharmaceutical industry [8] and the private “therapy clinics” often owned by the above researches themselves. However, in the scandalous promotion of such “burnout” diagnoses it was involved official Sweden, the social democratic government, feminists spoke persons, feminist journalists at the mainstream media [9], the feminist-controlled Swedish Psychiatric Association [10], and even the National Board of Health (Socialstyrelsen) [11]. All these brought shame to the country and contributed collectively to shake Sweden’s credibility in the international community.
Would the world now believe the Swedish official thesis that the international discredit of Sweden – “the nation with the highest incidence of mentally ill people” - is the work of one Julian Assange?
The radical academic feminists
The forced retreat of the scientific method from its position of dominance in Swedish academia and research, and the productivity vacuum left behind, was rapidly filled by the new "qualitative research" method and the re-emergence of psychoanalytical categories. None of these intellectual approaches would have been possible without the re-emerging, religion-inspired (religion-pretexted) Western confrontation with the Arab world.
The imperialistic seizing of oil resources in the Middle East, pretexted by the Kuwait and Iraq wars of the Bush dynasty, occasioned a political and at times tiny military response from sectors of the Arab societies made known to us - by edict of our governments - as the Islamic threat, a religious and belligerent fundamentalist movement aimed at the destruction of Western cultural institutions and their replacement with Islamic rule. Cultural racism made its entrance into Swedish politics.[12]
The new presence of religion as a factor in this cultural confrontation ("our religion contra their religion") in turn made possible the renaissance of vintage non-scientific ideologies such as Freudianism. But while religious thought is conversation between people and their god, Freudianism is conversation between people and their navels. Freudians and religious activists share the idolatry of the subjective - "idealism" contra "materialism" as they vulgarly put it. Nevertheless, the scientific method is alien to both.
The pretentiously obsessive treatment of female sexuality in Sweden, the pretentiously exhibitionist need to vent intimate details of one's life such as in the 'talk about it' campaign, the pretentious hero treatment of women who accuse men of rape in normal consensual circumstances, and so forth: this indicates either deviancy or despair. It's the isolated individual without the support of a normal family, a normal friend, a normal system. It is the absence of the old feeling of "security" that neocapitalist Sweden did not replace.
During most of the last century, Swedish men and woman were educated in the solidarity of their state institutions, from where they found solutions to their societal problems. The Swedish system, not quite socialist, not quite capitalist, was a balance between West and East. When the Berlin Wall was torn down, so was the social welfare system in Sweden. Individuals became atoms without a social orbit and their reference point became themselves. Egoism had been reborn.
For the radical and state feminists, the choice of the "qualitative" approach ornamented by Freudian categories was not accidental but essential: the qualitative method was their one and only epistemological option. It is only with the use of an imposed "take it or leave it" faith-based, non-empirical method that feminism could make their master thesis of a “patriarchal” cause of all the misfortunes of women in society, starting with those of their own, prevail. No need to bother with empirical, rational replication - feelings (for the most part bitterness) are sufficient. Translated for the medical debate:
"In order to qualify as having a disease, it is not relevant whether symptoms are medically verifiable. What is relevant is the "experience", what patients feel innermost, their own subjective notion of being ill".[13]
Swedish women ceased to be individuals in the context of social equality. They were now "victims" instead. And they should be compensated for centuries, for thousands of years, of ferocious intellectual rape, structural violence and economic abuse by all men. For radical feminism, gender equality is no longer an option. The only option is supremacist rule.
Shortly thereafter, the social democratic minister and radical feminist Margareta Winberg, initiated into the ideology of the ROKS cult, was able to impose at government level (undisturbed and unopposed, as she later explained [14]) and from there impose by decree to the Swedish population at large, compulsory teaching at Swedish universities according to the "gender perspective". A vast proliferation of academic positions ensued - full professorships, associated professorships, researchers, and doctorate positions started popping out of the public budget. They were given by the state exclusively to "gender perspective" radical feminists, often with no other merit than their cult articles and books (highly quoted among each other so it gives the false impression of widespread acceptance). The texts deal almost exclusively with the politically correct "qualitative research" method, and their theme with politically correct subjects of "patriarchal domination in society" - read sex, rape, more rape, and unilateral violence against women.
One thing is crystal clear: In truth, there never was any "gender perspective" - it was a pure "radical feminist perspective" all along.
So what was missing in the modern radical feminist paradise after their cult sacrifice of Karl Marx and his class struggle ideology? They needed a classical guru, a real classical guru for terminology, vocabulary, and a-posteriori theses explaining their gender struggle. And they found him in Sigmund Freud, another enemy of scientific truth, but somebody who fits well into the sexist theoretical formulations of the radical feminist movement, nowadays melding with the radical LGBT movement.
And we find all the above converging in the accusations against Julian Assange - the religious political activists (as in the social democratic Christian brotherhood, [15] the slimmed organization of the Assange accusers and ideological home of their lawyers at the firm Bodström and Borgström [16]) that at the same time are fundamentalist feminist activists; [17] radical LGBT police officers that at the same time are social democratic politicians, placing their ideological bias right at the core of the police investigation on behalf of the prosecutor and the plaintiffs' lawyer; [18] the intellectual radical feminists, the "qualitative researchers", and the state feminists, expressing the hysteria of their anti-Assange hate crusade in their articles and reports published or aired by their state-owned or their corporate-owned stream media.
To conclude, the truth is that the world started to be amazed at the Swedish intellectual deterioration long before WikiLeaks denounced corruption among Swedish politicians and their servile posturing to a foreign power. This analysis shows that the so-called Swedish "radical" feminist movement is anything but a progressive movement. Its ideological formulations are on the regressive side of a wheel moved historically by thousands of generations towards human justice and equality.
Further, their intellectual alliance with religion and Freudianism together with their despising of the natural family concept, and their fanatic adherence to the "qualitative research" method whose "results" would not admit replication or empirical verification, portray radical feminists as principal collaborators of an anti-scientific, anti-civilization fascist cohort.
So, is Assange the one to held responsible the damage to Sweden's international prestige?
One prevalent official thesis spread by the Swedish mainstream media in the Assange case is that the WikiLeaks founder should be held responsible for the damage to the prestige of Swedish institutions such as the Swedish legal system. This thesis was for instance clearly stated by the state-owned television network SVT in their documentary 'Julian Assange - The World's Love Affair' of 7/4 2011. The documentary opens with the statement “How could the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange get the world to question Sweden's credibility”? [15]
Beyond a doubt, the objective of the above classical psychological warfare publicist trick was to assemble around the government and the prosecution office a "national", united support for the Swedish public trough, playing on patriotic sentiments such as "Sweden is under attack by Assange", "a foreign born anarchist raped two Swedish girls" ("de här tjejerna" as Claes Borgström used to refer to them - in fact they are two fully adult women who've non-violent and repeatedly consensual standard sex with Assange[16]).
The psychologists aiding the Swedish command in their psychological warfare strategy to secure support for the military intervention in Afghanistan, support for the open entrance into NATO, support for the sale of information about Swedish citizens to foreign powers, and so forth: they're shooting Sweden in the foot when they try to score with the Assange card. It is these people, as well as the media, that are making an international shame of Sweden. It was the blunt process of Sweden against Assange and the ferocious treatment of the person Assange in the media that caused the international focus on the Swedish system and institutions. And not vice-versa. For every informed reader knows about the political causes of this process, and they know full well that Assange's WikiLeaks denounced aggravating wrongdoings by both the current and past Swedish governments.
These disclosures have portrayed corrupt politicians acting behind the backs of the Swedish Parliament and abusing the confidence of their voting constituencies. And some of the politicians in question, such as former social democratic Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström, are also radical feminists (Bodström has allegedly been signalled a central figure in the secret agreement with the CIA for the rendition of refugees to Egypt [17]) and appear now as co-owners of the legal firm behind the accusations, a question NOT touched on in Sweden.
Further, by initiating a clumsy, poorly orchestrated, and at times erratic legal process against the person of Julian Assange - in the middle of such WikiLeaks disclosures - the "strategists" have put under international scrutiny the awkward legal praxis of Sweden in rape trials, their closed door hearings, their political appointment of judges, their prevalent radical feminism, their officially financed ROKS and that organization's "all men are animals" platform,[18] their prevailing state feminism, and so forth. All this existed in Sweden long before the world ever heard of WikiLeaks or its founder Julian Assange.
State-feminism in a nutshell
While doing research for this article, I found the following "guidelines" contained in a verdict from the appellate court of Stockholm regarding a rape trial. The passage summarizes the praxis used by the Swedish courts for, on subjective grounds, taking the side of the women accusers. Or in other words, what is in principle regarded as "sufficient" in the Swedish courts for sentencing a man to jail in such trials: basically the woman's version
"Criteria for judgement: "In the absence of direct witness testimony or forensic/technical evidence, however a thoroughly credible testimony on the part of the accuser, in conjunction with what is otherwise presented before the court, can be sufficient for a conviction." [19]
And in "what otherwise is presented before the court" it includes at the highest degree the eventual "expert testimony", e.g. psychiatric assessments of the accuser, performed also in Sweden by radical-feminist gynaecologists which otherwise have publicly declared they fight in their (public service) jobs for an increase of rape-convictions.
And in "what otherwise is presented before the court" it includes at the highest degree the eventual "expert testimony", e.g. psychiatric assessments of the accuser, performed also in Sweden by radical-feminist gynaecologists which otherwise have publicly declared they fight in their (public service) jobs for an increase of rape-convictions.
If there was any doubt among the international readership as to what extent radical feminist organizations have seized control of the Swedish state apparatus and its most vital institutions, such as the legal system, the official guidelines cited above should remove it.
If the damage to Sweden's international prestige has indeed been devastating, then they have only their own ideological excesses to blame.
If the damage to Sweden's international prestige has indeed been devastating, then they have only their own ideological excesses to blame.
And the kamikaze hara-kiri attacks continue. Now Sweden faces a new threat to its prestige and trademark: the international focus on pseudo-scientific practices, at times really nonsensical intellectual fabrications, used by Swedish professionals in characterizing Swedes' mental health and as "expert statements" in rape trials in the Swedish courts.
I sincerely hope the analysis that follows will deter the authorities from bringing further disgrace to this otherwise noble nation.
I sincerely hope the analysis that follows will deter the authorities from bringing further disgrace to this otherwise noble nation.
M. Ferrada-Noli, at the Bothnian Sea, 29 July 2011
Next:
· PTSD diagnosis wrongly stated at the Swedish courts in cases of rape ·
· Deceiving management of epidemiological statistics about violence against women
Notes and references
1. Disclaimer
I obtained my PhD in psychiatry (Medicine doktor i ämnesområdet psykiatri) at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm with a research thesis on the subject Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Suicidal Behaviour.[1] I am not an expert in the Swedish legal system. Although the specific subject of my later professorship in Sweden was epidemiology (Professor i folkhälsovetenskap inriktning epidemiologi) my main research activities have been in the field of psychiatric epidemiology with focus on traumatic stress. During my postdoctoral research and lectureship at Harvard Medical School,[2] I had the opportunity to publish my PTSD clinical findings in the Journal of Traumatic Stress (USA) and the Nordic Journal of Psychiatry.[3]
From 1990 to 1998, during my research activities at the Section of Psychiatry, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, I examined approximately four hundred cases specifically for diagnostic assessments of posttraumatic stress disorder, mainly at the Karolinska Centre for documentation and treatment of torture victims (CTD). Further, I have held research courses for PhD students at the Karolinska Institutet on PTSD assessments in cross-cultural settings. I also had worked previously, for several years, as psychotherapist at Sollentuna kommun, mostly dealing with ptsd or trauma-related cases among political refugees, including rape-victims cases.
2. During my research time at Harvard medical School I had also the opportunity to discuss features of the ptsd diagnosis with my supervisor, psychiatry professor Arthur Kleinman (also professor in cultural anthropology at Harvard – Cambridge). He was critical to the universal character of the ptsd diagnose and the psychiatric diagnoses in general, favouring instead a cultural relativistic approach.
3. See Google scholarhttp://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=ferrada+noli
4. As an illustration: instead of the seven scientific articles required in old times by the Karolinska Institutet to obtain a doctorate degree, now it is enough with only one published article, one accepted, and two still in draft!
5. "Frozen pelvis" is instead a physical condition caused by infection or carcinoma. The Swedish version of "burnout" is called "utbrändhet or "utmattningssyndrom" (see Ref 6 below). The first public exposure of the pseudo-diagnose "utbrändhet" is found in my DN-debatt article "Utbrändhet, mest en modetrend", Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm, 2000-10-20
6. M. Ferrada-Noli "Utmattningssyndrom är en kulturellt betingad diagnos unik för Sverige". Dagens Medicin 2007-10-03.
7. M. Ferrada-Noli, "Kejsarens utbrända kläder". Sociologisk forskning. 2004-1 [1]
Id.
M. Ferrada-Noli,, What is behind Swedish cultural-racism?
Svenska Dagbladet
14. Margareta Winberg declared herself in the documentary "The gender war"(see below), with these words, that "Roks' analyses and the Swedish government analyses are in complete agreement" and that her propositions at the Persson's government were plainly accepted even if she would consider that members of such government did not know or did not understand what she did, what she meant with those propositions, what they were really about!
15. M. Ferrada-Noli:
17. A.Kreig Partner At Firm Counseling Assange’s Accusers Helped In CIA Torture Rendition. Article by Andrew Kreig
18. M. Ferrada-Noli, Rigged documentary on Julian Assange in the Swedish National Television. Part 3: "Men are animals"
19. Svea Hovrätt, Avd 07. Dom 2010-10-19, page13 (under "Utgångspunkter för bedömningen", first para, last text):
"Utgångspunkter för bedömningen
Hovrätten instämmer i de av tingsrätten angivna utgångspunkterna för bedömningen.
Utgångspunkten är således att det i sexualmål, liksom i andra brottmål, för en fällande
dom krävs att det blivit ställt utom rimligt tvivel att den tilltalade gjort sig skyldig till
det åklagaren påstår. Det inte tillräckligt att målsägandens berättelse är mer trovärdig
än den tilltalades. När det saknas direkta vittnesiakttagelser och teknisk bevisning kan
dock en alltigenom trovärdig utsaga från målsäganden i förening med vad som i övrigt
framkommit i målet vara tillräcklig för en fällande dom. "
Hovrätten instämmer i de av tingsrätten angivna utgångspunkterna för bedömningen.
Utgångspunkten är således att det i sexualmål, liksom i andra brottmål, för en fällande
dom krävs att det blivit ställt utom rimligt tvivel att den tilltalade gjort sig skyldig till
det åklagaren påstår. Det inte tillräckligt att målsägandens berättelse är mer trovärdig
än den tilltalades. När det saknas direkta vittnesiakttagelser och teknisk bevisning kan
dock en alltigenom trovärdig utsaga från målsäganden i förening med vad som i övrigt
framkommit i målet vara tillräcklig för en fällande dom. "
Previously in Professors blogg on the Swedish case against Assange
