Please Ivan, Rape My Woman-Folk Too. Spasiba!

The Swedish government is taking flak from the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights for allowing the army to take part in joint exercises with the Russian army's 138th Motorized Rifle Brigade, which according to the human rights group is guilty of naughty human rights abuses in Chechnya.

In "Operation Snowflake" Swedish and Russian troops will be working hand in dick together in exercises of a "peacekeeping" nature on Swedish territory according to Swedish military spokesfolks. However Russian defence minister Sergej Ivanov has referred to the exercises as "training for fighting terrorism" – a Russian euphemism for the war in Chechnya.

What an excellent opportunity for the Ruskies to cross-brand their product and achieve a notch of legitimacy for the abuses and war crimes of their infamous 138th Motorized Rifle Brigade in Chechnya.

Swedish foreign minister Laila Freivalds and minister of defence erosion Leni Björklund think that the brigade's participation in Operation Snowflake is a jolly good opportunity for the battle-scarred 138th to learn a thing or two about Swedish style co-determination throughout the ranks of enlisted chaps and how Swedes follow humanitarian guidelines in combat. (Swedes have been in combat?!) I think we all know who will be teaching who what.

The Russian human rights watchdog Memorial has collected plenty of goods on the 138th's track record including summary executions, rape, chopping off of captives' limbs, and other tricks of the counter insurgency trade that the Swedes don't even have words for in their blue eyed vocabulary.

The Swedes are often referred to as the 51st state in the union and this for good reason. If the Meatballs have decimated their own armed forces and deep-liaisoned their anorectic remnants with both the Ruskies and Yanks then you know ponderously deep shit is stirring. The Swedish military establishment is in impotent revolt with little leverage left with which to do anything about their state of wasting cachexia. Strange bedfellows in strange times for even stranger threat scenarios of which we are told next to nothing despite the incessant flap about this so-called War on Terror.