An Orwellian case of illegal surveillance on Mexico’s journalist Carmen Aristegui and her son Emilio is today reported by The Intercept. Business Insider wrote last year that the company NSO Group, which sells the hacking tool, was founded entrepreneurs with ties to the Israeli government and the tool was apparently discovered in a hacking attempt on a human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates. Earlier it has also been used e.g. by the government of Panama to spy on journalists (among others), according to La Prensa.

Some Swedes are starting to understand that they are living in a world of propaganda dominated by the West. While the official story is that primarily Russia is behind fake news and disinformation (link to news in English about a heavily criticized report), others ask how long the hypocrisy will continue? For example, earlier this year Göte Marjavaara wrote about how he thinks Swedish Television (SVT) behaves when talking about NATO and West as friendly while Russia is a constant threat. He writes:

When will those in power ensure that SVT goes from spreading propaganda to working legally as a public-service company?

As far as we know, SVT has not responded to this in any way. Read more (in Swedish) on the following links: Göte Marjavaara’s summary of distorted news, Sven Ruin about democracy and Fokus about Sweden’s secret propaganda soldiers. The latter highlights how Swedish military is actually conducting offensive psychological operations in other countries.

Smear campaigns have also appeared against some of the Swedes who try to tell the truth, for example by Dagens Nyheter.

As the Doomsday Clock is two and a half minutes to midnight, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons passed at the United Nations by a vote of 122 to 1 on the 7 July. Read more about:

• Atom bomb survivors in Japan welcome UN resolution
• Nuclear-armed states have not fulfilled previous political and legal commitments and will not recognize the new document as customary international law
• Even Australia did not take part

Working with Privacy International, Reprieve has discovered the existence of a secret policy, or “direction”, from Downing Street. It concerns covert activities being conducted right now by Britain’s intelligence agencies, but that’s all we know – for now.

It is called “The Third Direction”.

The first two directions concern torture and cyber surveillance – issues which clearly have huge implications for human rights. The Third Direction is entirely shrouded in secrecy.

See the important petition from Reprieve

According to The Intercept, the History Channel is finally telling the stunning secret story of the war on drugs, including government alliances with some of the world’s largest drug cartels.

Are such criminal alliances just a history of the past? Afghanistan now supplies about 90 percent of the world’s heroin, as The Intercept’s Jon Schwarz writes. See also what Julien Mercille has written about drug trade in Afghanistan.

The premiere of “America’s War on Drugs” is at 9 PM TONIGHT (EDST – Eastern Daylight Savings Time). See show site.

Read the article in The Intercept, which reminds about Paul Craig Roberts’ words about the police

In a recent article the CEO of internet service provider Bahnhof, Jon Karlung, criticizes a proposal by the Swedish Minister for Home Affairs, Anders Ygeman:

If the NSA cannot keep tight – why should Swedish security services succeed better? The risk of the proposal for secret data reading is therefore that external criminals once again get a list of security holes …

Read the article on SVT Opinion (in Swedish). Earlier, the Swedish “Defence” Minister, Peter Hultqvist, has also proposed that Sweden should be able to carry out offensive cyber attacks (link to Swedish content). The danger is obvious that such measures do more harm than good.

Sweden used to be a country known for neutrality and strive for peace. However, abandoning those principles step by step seems to have coincided with an increase in Swedish arms exports. Calculated per person, Sweden is nowadays one of the countries that sell the most weapons in the world, according to the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society (all links in this post are to Swedish content). Despite guidelines that should prevent this, Sweden sells military equipment to both countries at war and dictatorships. The Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri recently defended the Swedish arms exports and wrote about “responsibility for the Swedish peace and freedom in the future”. Well, despite Sweden’s soaring arms exports, our prospects for peace somehow seem worse than before. “Sweden can be at war within a few years”, was last year stated by the army chief. And the wars we support in other countries (sometimes not only by selling arms) can be a reason for terrorist attacks here. The following video is a few years old, but is still a powerful statement against the hypocrisy.

On this site, we have earlier highlighted some of the questionable activities of the Swedish Security Service (Säpo). Recently, Säpo has been in the news again (the following links are to content in Swedish):

• Threatening a pregnant witness so she had miscarriage during the interrogation. According to an interview in Swedish Radio, professor Pär-Anders Granhag says It should be investigated if the interrogator violated the law.
• Did Säpo have knowledge in advance that a terror attack was to be carried out in central Stockholm and why don’t they answer questions about it?

See UNESCO news and Free Dawit