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It's not the Swedish people

It's their autocratic media.

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Swedish public service television will tonight show the one-hour documentary 'The Snowden Asylum Case'. It's produced by the 'Dokument Inifrån' team, which together with their sibling 'Dokument Utifrån' might be the two most unbiased investigative sources in the country.

They're the ones who showed Hannes Råstam's disruptive documentaries on Thomas Quick, as well as the followups by Dan Josefsson. They also came out with an excellent show on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks (but unfortunately a less than stellar followup some months later).

They're also the ones who exposed the skulduggery behind the Pirate Bay affair. And most recently exposed the corruption in Sweden's massive Immigration Industrial Complex, showing that it's the refugees themselves that have been sold a 'pig in a poke', a show which just might have precipitated the move by Margot Wallström some few weeks later.

The Swedish people have for long known there's something wrong with their governments. In a way that crosses party lines. They've seen how the country's excessive immigration policy has torn the country apart. All the while the people running things in Stockholm have done nothing.

It wasn't until the unexpected emergence of the Sweden Democrats that things started to change. Accused of being a fascistic xenophobic party, SD officially asked only that immigration be reduced to norms used in other member states of the EU. But for this they were called every name in the book. And before they gained seats in the parliament, for all the years before that, immigration was simply something no one dared discuss. Say a word and you'd be immediately shamed into silence.

The Sweden Democrats made it possible to discuss immigration politics in the open. But what a high price they paid. They've had to implement 'zero tolerance' policies against any signs of xenophobia just to appease their critics.

Yet they grow and grow, and a recent poll shows they'd get a full 1/5 of the votes if there were an election today.

The SD platform is more complex than a proposal for a reasonable immigration policy, and of course most Swedes would not agree with many of their other proposals, but a vote for SD is not necessarily a vote for SD. It's just as easily a vote against the establishment. An establishment the Swedish people know lost the plot long ago.

So a few weeks ago, Margot Wallström gave an interview with the leading morning paper DN.se. The article started with the usual hand grenades tossed at SD, but way at the end was an inconspicuous admission that maybe just maybe Sweden's impossible immigration policy would no longer hold. This, lest we forget, in the midst of the biggest refugee crisis imaginable in Europe.

As if the stunt had been but a 'weather balloon', a few days later came the sober announcement that Sweden's immigration policy would indeed change, would indeed go back to levels used in other EU member states. What theretofore was condemned as fascistic and racist was suddenly the norm. What the Swedish people had been trying to say for years, namely that the country would collapse, was suddenly recognised, albeit perhaps far too late. And the people in charge certainly had better access to actual facts and figures than the 'Svenssons' on the street. And yet they did nothing. And worst of all: their media backed them up. All the way.

Six months ago, anyone suggesting the Swedish system might collapse was branded a racist. Today, the same suggestion merely merits a knowing nod.

Edward Snowden mostly escaped the fury of the Swedish media, but the people who saved his life have not. The media campaign against Julian Assange has been intense and merciless. Most recently, Freedom of Information documents obtained by an Italian outlet have shown the entire investigation to be a pathetic sham, with the UK and Sweden colluding to deny Assange his most basic rights, as both sides knew the case would never hold up in court.

The documents - released by what must be regarded as a loving angel burrowed somewhere deep inside Sweden's prosecution authority - spread across the globe like wildfire. But they were not mentioned a single time in Sweden's media. Not once.

Several notables in the Swedish media were contacted for comment. These included an attorney, the editor-in-chief of the country's major judicial website, a former member of the country's Pirate Party, and the head of the country's bar association.

The attorney expressed surprise when he saw the documents, and promised to write again; he didn't. None of the others had even the courtesy to reply.

The media blackout on the first big breakthrough in the five year Assange case has been effectively blacked out in the entire country.

What kind of country can pull that off?

The Two Media Empires

Sweden's MSM is run essentially by two big empires: Schibsted and the Bonniers. Together they control the four major news outlets and their subsidiaries.

Aftonbladet. Originally the paper of the Social Democrats. Today owned by the Norwegian Schibsted. Goldman Sachs hold a 5% share of Schibsted.
Expressen. The attack dog of the Bonniers. The Bonniers are an incredibly wealthy clan with tentacles that reach far beyond Sweden's borders. Today they own Popular Mechanics, National Geographic, dozens of other periodicals in the US and other countries, a book publishing empire, are the publishers of DDB's 'funny book', and have an officially illegal television empire in TV4 Group. It's also at their incentive that fundamental legislation on 'fair play' in the media has been taken off the books, to better let them pimp for their friends come election time.
DN.se. The 'lady' of the Bonnier empire. By far the biggest publication in the land, it's fallen so low under a new toxic leadership that even Sweden's own 'Noam Chomsky' would rather read the New York Times instead!
SvD. Or Svenska Dagbladet. The other half of the Schibsted property. An ultra-conservative paper that still manages to often be the most decent of the lot.

The sum and substance of the above is that for journos in the capital city, there are only two employers. Many other outlets in other cities are controlled by one of the above four, and thereby Schibsted or the Bonniers.

When the naive Donald Boström took his report from UN forces in the middle east to DN.se, he was turned down flat. Reason? The Bonniers are jewish, and the report made them look bad.

Who controls the legal aspects of the Bonniers? None other than Peter Danowsky, the attorney who helped plant evidence on Internet provider Bahnhof for the benefit of Hollywood. Danowsky in turn is hitched to the doctor exposed for issuing hundreds of false rape certificates for use in the country's judicial system. Vertigo can easily ensue.

Bambi & Bob

Bambi Vincent and her soulmate Bob Arno travel the globe for over 300 days per year. Bob is a Las Vegas cabaret artist who got into legerdemain more than magic and has made an excellent career out of it. More: he and Bambi have specialised in training law enforcement all over the globe in how to watch out for pickpockets.

National Geographic distributed their documentary a few years ago.

Bob and Bambi work the streets. And they have better street sense than most. If not all. They see things no one else can see. That's why they're in high demand, even with the police in Sweden.

As they regularly returned to Sweden, they saw the situation with the beggars. And they investigated. What they found was that the begging was organised. And the organisers were getting filthy rich by exploiting unfortunate people and naive gullible Swedes.

This has all been overly documented outside Sweden long ago. But inside Sweden, inside the infamous duckpond? Up to now, there have been only two admissible positions on the controversy - either accept them lovingly or shun them. No one's dared discuss the obvious third alternative.

Until now. Suddenly the Swedish police publish a full study of what's going on with the begging phenomenon, and - wouldn't you know? The begging is organised crime!

Nationell lägesbild: Brottslighet med koppling till tiggeri och utsatta EU-medborgare i Sverige (PDF)

But you couldn't have suggested that half a year ago. Then you'd be xenophobic, a racist. You could cite all the international studies you wanted. You'd still be a racist fascist dirt ball scumbag.

And just in case you want to brand that chap xenophobic: he's a foreigner too. And he considers himself left-wing. But he's not part of the Swedish media establishment.

It's not the Swedish people

It's not the Swedish people. It's their autocratic media. The Swedish people aren't dumb. Or racist. Or sycophantic. Their leaders are. And they don't like those leaders.

Tonight's show is supposed to be about the brave Swedes who helped an insignificant whistleblower. It might also be about how the US tried to monitor a Swedish process to nick said whistleblower. Swedes know their country would never be safe for him.

'Sweden is what Tumblr would look like if it was a country.'
- Angry Foreigner