The Fears of a Weak State

Last week, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, voted through a new law permitting the violation of press freedoms of any foreign media network which may pose a “threat to national security”. Warmonger, hatemonger, fascist, and condemned corrupt politician, Benjamin Netanyahu spared no time to declare the Qatari news network Al Jazeera as public enemy number one and “terror channel” for its on-site reporting of Israeli war crimes and unrestricted murder of both civilians and international aid workers in Gaza.

Because a tyrant can never be tolerant of opposition. And since Al Jazeera is just about the only international news media still operating within Gazan borders, even though the Israel Defence Force (IDF) has been targetting journalists and those journalists’ families since long before the war (see, for example, the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh).

Some may be outraged by this new law. Some may get defensive, like zionists are wont to get. And some may be surprised. But the eradication of press freedoms are not news, nor isolated to Israel. Report after report, from organisation after organisation, sing the same tune: The freedom of the press is dwindling, far and wide. From Russia to the US, from Israel to Iran, and even from the “liberal capital” of the world – the European Union – news networks are being diminished. For much the same arguments, no matter where you go. Whether it’s the US presidential office hunting down Assange for exposing US war crimes, Russia targetting dissenting voices, Turkey jailing anyone who disagrees with Erdogan, or the EU trying (and failing) to ban Russia Today and Sputnik news channels, they all argue the same thing: That they’re fighting a war against misinformation.

Naturally, it’s the reigning regime which defines what’s misinformation and not. Which is understandable. Every weak government since the dawn of history has made great efforts to gain a monopoly of the country’s propaganda, from Rome to Nazi Germany, and beyond.

So instead of just decrying Israel as another apartheid rogue state, let us take a look at the very explicable mechanics behind the erosion of press freedoms, the loss of transparency of government, and the diminishing of public access to reliable and fact-checked information:

Let’s begin our journey with an informed public. Such a population is knowledgable of the minutiae of governance, and the implications of foreign policy and relations. Such a public is difficult to control by ruling parties, and hold their government accountable. They are a demanding sort, holding their leaders accountable and responsible, and aren’t easily swayed by ideological red herrings.

But it is difficult to find people who are willing to lead such a public, for people capable of taking responsibility are prone to avoid it. Instead, cowards and opportunists fill the ranks, who absolutely do not want an informed and knowledgable public. How much easier for them would it not be if the public were malleable and easily herded toward whatever new shiny thing that was dangled in front of them.

So as the quality of the leadership inevitably falter, the will to erode the intellectual capacity of its public is conversely increased. And with enough desire to undermine, or at the very least cease the maintenance of, the informed nature of the public, the institutions of upholding that virtue are slowly picked apart. Schools decline, news networks are turned into partisan propaganda machines, and science is being debated by people who never understood the scientific method. And as a result, people are made ignorant.

And though an ignorant public is easier to be herded by its government, it turns out that they’re also easier to be manipulated by other governments.

And once facts and knowledge becomes increasingly subservient to emotion and belief, that control becomes a tug-of-war with other puppeteers. Some of those outside voices may even maintain a modicum of integrity and offer facts and knowledge to the undermined public, but they’re easily rationalized into the same corner as belligerent foreign interests.

And so “national security” replaces “accountability”, and press freedoms are curbed to maintain the slipping control of the failing regime.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

If a government had a public which could tell truth from lies, then misinformation, foreign or otherwise, would be no threat. But which capitalist government could maintain its power with such a public to begin with? And so, the eradication of a free press inevitably follows, not as a sign of foreign threats or a destabilized geopolitical landscape, but as the consequence of domestic corruption of both the public and the elite.

For it is a weak state which fears information.

/Sebastian Lindberg 9/4-2024

Hating Your Heroes

This week turned out to be one of the saddest weeks for global freedom of speech yet this year. Not only because the Ecuadorian Embassy in London opened its doors and sold an asylum-granted refugee (and let me add betraying one of its own citizens) for an IMF loan. Not only because the London Metropolitan police stormed the Ecuadorian Embassy to arrest one of the greatest journalists of our time. Not even only because the Orange Hydra administration spared not a second to demand that Assange be extradited to the US to face conspiracy charges (something that they have always denied wanting to do).

No, the frosting upon this shit sandwich that really topped the bill, was the vitriol from both sides of the US political fence that was spewn at an editor in chief of one of the most potent journalistic outlets since print was made obsolete.

From out of the American woodwork crawled all kinds. From supremacists Trumpists, to militants from the rabid Hillary army, to Russiagate supporters that seem to want to bring back the McCarthy days of US discourse. All in an effort to smear, demonize, and diminish the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange.

And while there are many things to be said about Assange’s part in uncovering US war crimes and corruption, about his work toward information transparency, and the national taboos or crimes he may have committed to provide us with insight, I won’t. Not now. His fourteen human rights and journalism awards speak to the credit of his work. His criminal status the world over speaks to it likewise. I will, instead, take time to examine the arguments against the man.

Argument #1: That he’s a rapist. That he’s a misogynist. An epitaph that is levied against him to vilify him as a sludge of a person. As a cretinous monster that needs to be stamped out, and no matter his awards or contribution, he should be shunned.

The global manhunt for Assange began as Sweden initiated a rape case against the man. But judging from the scant information on the Swedish prosecutions case against him that we have available to us, the case seems flimsy. At best. The prosecution has changed the classification of the case many times, but it has most often revolved around sexual misconduct and rape. Even though reports show that neither of the two allegedly raped women seems to have held much of a grudge against the man. Reports paint them as having had casual sexual encounters with Assange, and then left amicably. Until they started trying to get in touch with him due to STD suspicions.

But… having careless sex isn’t rape if it’s consensual. Nor are sexual mistakes. Which leaves us wondering… just how did the Swedish prosecution come to declare a man, that had made himself an enemy of the most influential empire in the western world, a rape suspect? Seems suspect in itself. Even more so, considering that the Swedish prosecution has changed the classifications several times. Not to mention that no suspected rapist in Swedish history has incited a manhunt of this magnitude.

Argument #2: That he’s a criminal. Pure and simple. That he has broken American law by aiding, abetting, and possibly involving himself, in the hacking of top secret government digital archives. That he worked together with Chelsea Manning, and thus made of himself an accomplice.

But Assange isn’t a US citizen. Assange wasn’t in the US when he allegedly helped break into American databases. So why should he be tried in the US? A sovereign state has no right to simply steal away foreign citizens unless a crime has been perpetrated upon their land. There’s little precedent of extraditing people for digital crimes, but what would the US say if… for example, a US citizen on a US internet connection, defamed and insulted Chinese Chairman-for-life Xi Jinping? The Chinese police state has made it clear that insulting their grand emperor is a punishable offence. But wouldn’t the very notion of delivering one of their own into Chinese hands seem absurd? It is simply mind-boggling for anyone blessed to live outside of American borders to consider how western sovereign nations barely even bat an eye at such an affront to international law.

Assange is a criminal in the UK, because he split bail there. That’s an easy fix. Assange is a suspect in Sweden, because of an equally suspect rape case. Both of those crimes, alleged and otherwise, were committed on UK and Swedish soil respectively. But Assange never committed a crime on American soil…

Argument #3: He’s not a real journalist. So press freedom concerns don’t apply to the persecution of him. This one goes hand-in-hand with the McCarthyist arguments that he’s a Russian spy. A stooge of neo-Russian influence on American politics. As if the US needed a foreign power to destabilize them. They do so well on their own.

But being a journalist isn’t a protected title. At least not in Sweden, where this absurd manhunt began. A journalist doesn’t have any more authority to dig up information or talk to people than any random citizen does. Maybe matters differ in the US, where politics seem to rule the journalistic landscape to such an extent that the Hydra occupying the White House has weaponized his patron news outlet, Fox News, to wage a propaganda war on his opposition. Going so far as to incite violence on rival members of congress.

The truth is that world wide, you are a journalist if you do journalistic work. And seeing the many journalism awards given to Julian Assange, he is more of a journalist than most accredited ones. And as for being a Russian stooge, let us carry on to the next point…

Argument #4: Assange, and anyone supporting him, is a Russian instigator. Simply for the fact that they act anti-American.

I don’ know how else to tell you this, but… you don’t have to support the Putinocracy of revived Tsarist Russia to disapprove of the US way of things. It is not Russian double agents that make the US commit war crimes on a weekly basis. It is not Russian doppelgängers in your midst that are sending your nation free-falling into civil war. It is not Russian influence that has soured the international community in your disfavour. The US is doing all of that on its own.

Even domestic favourites like Joe Biden has proven himself to be a standard molded bully in international matters. He’s even bragged about it. Even democratic darling Obama signed death warrants on US citizens without them being judged by a court of their peers. The US has been circling the drain on acceptable domestic and international etiquette for years. Decades even.

The reason that Assange has spent most of his career looking at your dirty secrets is not because of Russian patronage. It’s because you have a lot of them. A lot of very, very, very, very nasty secrets. Because you have been a very, very, very, very naught nation for a very long time now.

Argument #5, the sweet spot: That Assange is a misogynist and a white supremacist. The reason for which I can only suss out is that people blame him for bricking Hillary in the last days of the 2016 campaign. Because he had a hand in the Hydra gaining the White House.

Never in the same breath though, do I hear self-reflection from these rabid Hillarists, that she wasn’t a good candidate. That she was just as dirty as the rest of Capitol Hill. For as soon as you bring any criticism down on their sweet St. Hillary of the Pure of Heart and Just of Cause, any criticism whatsoever, be it true or false, they shall send self-righteous fury and vitriol down upon you. For as the US political climate has taken a steep turn for the gutter following their election of the Orange Hydra into office, you are either with them or against them.

I bet there’s plenty of valid criticism for the man Julian Assange. I bet people who know him have choice words to say. No one is perfect. Not even people that win awards in journalism. And it is no surprise that governments hate the man. He’s pissed on the porch of some of the world’s mightiest and thinnest skinned powers that the world has ever seen. But when I see private citizens, and million times worse yet; journalists, bashing the man for things blatantly untrue or yet unproven, it chills me to the bone.

For what I see when I look upon the fury some people levy against Assange, I only see one thing. I see We the People, wilfully banging the drums for their own subjugation. Doing the bidding of despots that wish nothing more than to impede on their rights and blindfold their citizenry with deceit and lies and nationalism. I see a people that vilify and spit on their own liberator, the very person that offers to unveil their heroes for the villains they truly are. And it breaks my heart…

/Sebastian Lindberg 16/4-2019

When Her Majesty Demands Betrayal

November ended with the War on Terror taking another civil liberty casualty; namely the right for any journalist to protect their sources. On the 30^th, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled unequivocally that the Vice journalist Ben Makuch would release his recorded communications with the presumed-late IS fighter Farah Shirdon.

The Court admitted the so called ”chilling effects” this may have on the press and on journalistic integrity, but the very Canadian ”sorry” before committing a constitutional aberration isn’t worth much. For what they’re doing here, by demanding that a journalist gives up its contacts, is to wilfully dismantle the most sacred journalistic duties that a reporter has. Namely to never give up ones sources.

This is not the first time in recent memory that journalism has been assaulted in the so called ”democratic” western world. Nor is it the first time that the War on Terror, so very well sold part-and-parcel to western citizens, has encroached on previously unassailable civil liberties and constitutional rights.

I am not going to be quite so pretentious as to say that everyone should have seen this coming. All of the democratic world was stunned by what happened back in 2001. We all knew that Terror would become the new Black, and that the very foundations of our world would be rocked. But I did not imagine this. I was younger then. Maybe not as jaded. But I never imagined this. I never imagined the War on Terror being used to subvert and undermine the tenets of civilized society.

Yet, here we are…

Seventeen years later, and the War never ended. It was expanded. Even under the rule of some of the most popular and controversial world leaders that the West has had. With every demonized freedom fighter checked off of that ruinous ”kill list”, numerous others take its place. At this rate, the War will never end until humanity has. When every civil liberty we ever knew has been placed subsidiary to the Disposition Matrix. When no citizen’s right or privilege remains paramount to the need to kill the ”Enemies of the State”.

I bet Orwell is spinning in his grave.

The Press makes mistakes. Fake News is all the rage, and certain media outlets perpetrate the sins of untruthfulness in the face of the public. But the Press, with all its faults and all its pride, is necessary. Not just necessary, but vital, to the sanity and virtue of the world.

How do I know this? How can I prove the inherent value in journalism to the doubters? Well, without going into the academics of it, without boring you with an explanation as to the importance of forces in our society that are dedicated to uprooting the rot that Power seeds, let me simply point out this:

If not for the Press’ benefit to mankind, to the voter, the citizen, and the tax payer, why do you think that the first step that any despot takes is to discredit and dismantle the media?

Why else would every burgeoning autocrat be so hellbent on making the media, the press, journalism at large, and the tools of shining a public light on hidden truth, the ”Enemy of the State”. Because subverting those institutions, founded to shepherd the citizen through the weaves of bullshit that Power keeps spinning, is the beginning of the end of free thought.

/Sebastian Lindberg 3/12-2018

Big Trouble in Little Sweden

A hizzy-fit is brewing between Sweden and China. And now we have people eager to sell their souls to appease the angered dragon.

A few weeks ago, three Chinese tourists were forcefully evicted from a Stockholm hotel. The tourists had arrived a day early, and refused to take a ”you’re room was booked for tomorrow” for an answer. A video from the event shows one of the tourists falsify distress as if it was insurance-fraud caught on a dashboard-cam, shouting ”this is killing!” as he’s being carried away by Swedish police.

No killing occurred. Not even a smidgen of it. One might understand that a person raised in the Chinese autocracy might reasonably fear that being carried off by police might end in a bullet to the head. But ,#newsflash, that’s just not how Swedish authorities operate.

But the Chinese government considered this culture-clash to be police brutality against Chinese citizens. So, they demanded an apology and recompense from the Swedish government. A government, which could only shake its head and blankly state that the forceful eviction was a police matter. Neither the Swedish parliament, nor the Foreign Ministry for that matter, directly inserts its will into ongoing police investigations. Which, again, is understandable that the Chinese autocracy has trouble comprehending.

And then someone decided to throw gasoline on the embers.

A Swedish satire program sent a droll little informative video into the Chinese side of the internet, kindly cautioning Chinese tourists to behave when on foreign soil. Or get their asses kicked.

China is now threatening to close down travel to Sweden. To boycott Swedish products and companies. They even activated their youth propaganda-agents, Pissy, to tell Sweden off. All because Swedish media labours under the (supposedly faulty) impression that the Freedom of the Press also protects satire and comedy levied against the Great Chinese State.

Worse yet, Swedish companies and businessmen lambaste the media production, calling for discontinuation of one of Sweden’s most informative news shows.

Which is exactly how you sell your soul and freedoms.

What we have here is a global superpower, trying to impose their red dominion on a relatively free people. They do it by way of the wallet. The Chinese government seems to consider the Swedish nation as a puppet state. A vassal. In their eyes, they own us. To the point where it’s their right to dictate the behaviour of Swedish citizens, business’, and media. And they are not a friendly giant. Not a blank-cheque investor. They are a scary, scary empire, and a menace to any effort of free thought attempted within their domain.

Which is fine! An oppressive regime is gonna oppress. We all know that the scorpion is going to sting the frog in the back, no matter how many times we tell the story. But, and here’s the kicker, we have Swedish business’ and corporations that are going along with it. So frightened that they will lose the Chinese money in their pockets that they are willing to give up their democratic privileges to retain it. And many people here, vast swathes of the Swedish economy, has allowed itself to become so dependent on Chinese money to function, that they are willing to give anything up to keep themselves afloat. To appease their eastern overlords. And it’s those people that are the real problem here.

For if you depend on evil, you are a part of evil.

To me, there will never be enough Chinese-, or American-, or Russian money to warrant me selling my privilege to express myself freely. And if you try to take that privilege away from someone, then you are an opponent and enemy to a free society. No way ’round it.

/Sebastian Lindberg 2/10-2018