Rixstep
	`About \| ACP \| Buy \| Industry Watch \| Learning Curve \| News \| Products \| Search \| Substack`

Home » Industry Watch

Sweden Fellating US

'Astonishing subservience' says former right wing Assange-hater.

Get It

Try It

DUCKPOND (Rixstep) — Swedish 'journalist' Emanuel Karlsten's had a long journey. From the ultra right wing 'Dagen' to the universally derided Expressen (where he helped spread the word about the rag's 'scoop' on Assange 21 August 2010 and further embarrassed himself by issuing a challenge on Twitter for anyone to prove Assange's innocence) and now to Expressen's 'big sister' publication in the Bonnier empire, where he's suddenly attacking his fellow duckpond 'journos' - that's quite the transformation.

Emanuel Karlsten was one of three Expressen reporters who worked through the night of 20/21 August 2010 trying to give legs to their Assange 'scoop'. When challenged directly why so many tweets claimed to be certain of Assange's guilt, Karlsten regrettably replied: 'so what - you can't prove he's innocent either!'

Karlsten was also one of the first to discover the agenda behind the infamous 'talk about it' campaign - only to thereafter help it along out of his blind hatred for Assange.

Small wonder then that Karlsten not only 'graduates' to a premiere rag in the Bonnier empire, but also comes out in harsh condemnation of his duckpond colleagues. And condemnation it was.

Sweden Fellating US

What a strange summer it's been. Big surveillance scandals have blown up around us, yet our politicians, our journalists, our country Sweden, and the world at large have hardly reacted! Wrapped in comfortable apathy, we've focused on everything but the message itself.

Take Manning as an example. His trial is over now. He was charged with leaking hundreds of thousands of documents which revealed the true nature of the wars of the United States.

And it's because of those documents that we now know the US tried to hide the real casualty figures from their invasion of Iraq. Thanks to those documents, we know that the US bugged the offices of the general secretary of the United Nations in the ramp-up to that same war. And it was thanks to those documents we could see how US soldiers gleefully slaughtered Iraqi civilians in cold blood.

So what was the gratitude shown? 35 years behind bars. The rest of the world let the discussion devolve into the amusing fact that after the sentencing, Manning said he wanted to initiate a sex change and change his name to 'Chelsea'.

No one cares about the message, so great is the apathy shown a freedom fighter who's sentenced to half a lifetime in prison for telling the world about the war crimes of the US.

And then we haven't even begun to talk about Edward Snowden. The then 29yo data analyst decided at the start of this past summer to sacrifice his entire life to let the world know everyone was under US surveillance. He used a series of documents to demonstrate how the US intercepted a huge chunk of Internet communications.

So what did the talking heads talk about this time? The message of surveillance? They focused on the messenger, on his escape from the US, on the high stakes game when several countries offered him asylum and thereby gave Obama a slap.

I'm not saying no one wrote about the surveillance. I'm saying the message doesn't stay in the news. As if the message is too big, too abstract, and we therefore focus instead on smaller things we can wrap our minds around.

It's all so very weird. How can we not give a fuck we're under constant surveillance?

I don't know why things are like this. But perhaps all the insinuations that this is an unavoidable development have got us to simply give up. To interpret 'Big Brother Society' as a prophecy and proclaim that the only way out is through total submission. As if there's no point in fighting a superpower.

Our top politicians seem to feel that way. When Obama's visit was announced, cabinet ministers danced in ecstasy in front of television cameras. Minister for education Jan Björklund got so worked up that he blabbered on state television that Obama is 'the leader of the free world'.

I need to take a moment. How can we so unashamedly fellate a country that only this past summer was found to be bugging the offices of the European Union?

Think if our politicians could instead seize the opportunity of Obama's visit to show that he's gone too far.

This can be the start of your election campaigns! A way to show voters that politics can indeed be meaningful, a way to show that drawing a line when something's wrong is not only a right but a duty!

Certainly I have no illusions about that happening. But it would be nice if we could somehow be woken out of our slumber.