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Julian Assange To Write For Swedish Tabloid
An anonymous reader writes "Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has signed on as a columnist for Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet. Why such a move? Maybe there's something more to be found in Swedish law when you are employed by a newspaper." Here's an account in English, including a translation of the interview that forms part of the linked Aftenbladet article.
What I found more interesting was the stuff buried down in Chapter 7 where it's noted that
That would seem to suggest that if Swedish defence is undermined by WikiLeaks then there are grounds for prosecution. As far as I know Sweden doesn't have forces in Iraq but they do have people in Afghanistan.
Aftonbladet used to be a serious newspaper, but these days they're definitely a tabloid in every sense of the world, although not yet as far down the morass as the U.S. ones.
The major tabloids in the Nordic countries are to the "serious newspapers" what the New York Post is to the New York Times: less detailed articles, more "infotainment", a tendency to pounce on any small news item about crime or the private lives of politicians and declare it the collapse of society.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftonbladet
Tabloid has different connotations in Europe. Tabloid is more of a printing size than a rating of journalistic value. It looks like the publication he'll be writing for is on par with the New York Post or one of the many English tabloids like The Sun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabloid
moox. for a new generation.
Alien deathshock reindeers storming Stockholm. All the secret files now on Wikileaks!
works good enough...
The newspaper has some serious journalism, but also entertainment non-news of various B or C-rate celebrities and such. Their specialty in all cases seems to be how to phrase the headlines as misleadingly as possible (and pause videos in the most compromising and misleading frames possible for use as pictures) to attract people to read the articles which are usually much less interesting than the headlines would have one think. They also enjoy making up new double words (like 'nude shock', 'sex attack' or 'death cheese'.) All in all, their reputation is probably not as good as Dagens Nyheter or Svenska Dagbladet, but it could
And it's SWEDEN, not Switzerland.
Native speaker of US English here. I've only heard "tabloid" used to refer to things like the National Enquirer and Weekly World News, i.e. publications that don't even pretend to be thoughtful journalism.
Keep in mind that Christopher Hitchens, who I think is absolutely brilliant, is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, a pop culture magazine.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
We have a republican form of government that in essence boils down to a democracy. Ask people why they voted a certain way and the vast majority of people voted because of a few "key" issues, issues like abortion, global warming, stem cell research, wars, taxes, etc. So yes, we do have a democracy when it comes to wars, think of how many people voted for Bush the second term rather than any other candidate simply because they supported the war or some other single issue.
The vast majority of races for congress, governor, president, etc. have come down to basic democracy on a few issues.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Bit silly to say Afghanistan isn't a threat when it has been unable to stop its citizens from starting wars.
Here's a list of the 9/11 hijackers. Not a single one of them is an Afghan citizen. No Iraqis on the list, either. The vast majority were from Saudi Arabia and the UAE. As of today, nearly 9 years after 9/11, we still do not have an extradition treaty with either nation. Even if we had discovered evidence to charge someone with, we could not extradite them to face charges for their crimes.
Talk about canards. Using fancy sounding words cannot change history.
Say what you will about the merits of the Iraq expedition, it was at least in the consideration stage in the Clinton administration and would have happened with or without 9/11.
According to some people, Iraq presented no threat to the US. Doesn't sound like preparations for invasion to me. Maybe you're confusing that policy with the policy presented by Project for a New American Century. They begged Clinton to invade Iraq, but he ignored them. Probably because, as this guy Dick Cheney once said, the US could quickly find itself in a quagmire if it invaded.
9/11 was not presented as one of the major factors in the decision by anyone worthy of attention.
SHENANIGANS.
Not only did Cheney and Bush repeatedly make the connection, they had to specifically recant their opinion years later. They made the accusation so many times, and through so many propaganda arms, that by the time the war came around, 70% of Americans believed there was a link.
I'm sure in the bizarro fantasy land where the (R) means infallible, you'll just pretend that none of that happened. Which is alright, if you're not interested in reality.
Now, go home and get your shine box.
Oh, then Aftonbladet does not fit into that category.
What do you call something that claims to be thoughtful journalism but obviously isn't?
No, we didn't support the Taliban outside of humanitarian aid and a few million dollar to get them to stop producing drugs. It's not like we ever endorsed them or anything which is what it appears that you are attempting to make out.
Just an excerpt...
"From 1994 to 1997 the United States was well-disposed toward the Taliban. In October 1994 US Ambassador to Pakistan John C. Monjo, accompanied by Pakistan's interior minister, visited Taliban-controlled Kandahar without informing the official Afghan government, led at the time by Burhanuddin Rabbani. In September, 1996 American Undersecretary of State for Southern Asia Robin Rafel called the Taliban conquest of Kabul a "positive step." To be sure, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright condemned the Taliban's policy toward women in November 1997, but no sanctions were threatened. Washington obviously accepted a power that appeared to guarantee stability by taking up the tradition of a state founded on Pashtun tribes. The embassy of the anti-Taliban government in Washington was closed in 1998." ...
"The pressure that the Americans brought to bear on the Taliban after 1998 was obviously intended not to topple the regime, but to have it break with bin Laden. The sanctions against the Taliban that the Americans proposed in the United Nations Security Council in December 2000 had one objective alone: bin Laden's expulsion. They made no mention whatever of the Taliban's policies. The implicit deal on offer was a trade of bin Laden's extradition or simple departure from the country in exchange for acquiescence in the Taliban's policies in Afghanistan and the tacit promise of international recognition to satisfy the Taliban and their Pakistani backers."
http://www.ip-global.org/archiv/volumes/2002/spring2002/early-american-support-for-the-taliban.html
That all sounds like an 'endorsement' to me.
Republic means only rule by a law (a written constitution) as opposed to a king. China is a perfectly good republic. The US is also, in common usage of the term, and unlike China, a representative democracy. Now aren't you happy you're not just a republic, but a democratic republic?
This whole "it's not a democracy" BS was just started by idiots who think republican vs. democrat is some sort of dichtonomy because the US parties are named that - and they feel that the one named "republicans" is the only legitimate one.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Provocative messages will sell more, and Wikileaks is provoking. Especially the US.
And Aftonbladet is a left wing tabloid press paper which means that they also like to annoy right wing people. And the US is from the European perspective (in most cases) a right-wing country.
Porn, provocation and popular politics sells! As soon as Wikileaks falls into obscurity he will have to look for some other source of income since the press won't be interested in his opinion anymore.
But there are several laws in Sweden that can protect him and his sources. If he can claim to be a journalist and publish stuff it's even illegal for the authorities to search for his sources. Doesn't matter what he do publish, it's illegal enough to have been problematic in the past for the career of policemen and politicians.
If a journalist on the other hand do publish something that's incorrect or exceeding the limits of journalistic morale the offended person can be filing a complaint at Pressens Opinionsnämnd, which can decide if the article was exceeding the moral limits and require the newspaper to post a "correction" later. To be into writing an illegal article - that requires something REALLY offensive, which I doubt that what Wikileaks has posted can be considered as.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.