Bassim
VIP Member
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2008
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Bosnian
- Home Country
- Bosnia Herzegovina
- Current Location
- Sweden
Would you please correct my mistakes in the fifth part of my text.
Religion is on the wane in Sweden. Swedes put their fate in the hands of their strong state, which takes care of them from cradle to grave, instead of believing in an invisible power in the sky. In many countries in the world, you have to work or you will be hungry, but Swedish state gives you food and lodging even if you decide not to lift a finger. Such blind fate in the state makes people passive, numb, dull and unimaginative. You do not even need to think. The state will provide you with all needed information, goals, ideas and conclusions. Your duty is to work in silence, pay your tax and never complain. Any government decision is a decree, whose logic and motives cannot be called into doubt under any circumstances. Thus, when the government had decided that multiculturalism and immigration were Swedish new religions, nobody dared to voice the slightest opposition. Swedes by nature are introverted and reserved people, who seldom show their feelings openly. They are usually mistrustful of strangers and do not quickly build relationship with others. But when their government had ordered them to embrace different cultures, nationalities and races, Swedes complied with the edict unreservedly. Even if someone thought differently, he or she would keep their mouth shut for fear of consequences.
In democratic countries, the media usually scrutinize and criticize politicians and governments, but in Sweden, politicians and journalists are often best friends. Newspapers are partially financed by state grants, which assure their existence even if circulation dwindles. And when you have such generous friends you will be a fool to criticise them. Almost all Swedish journalists were behind their government and its policy, and from the beginning, they wrote fiction about immigration and multiculturalism.
When I read Swedish daily papers, I believed I was back in Yugoslavia in the 1970s. At that time, the front pages carried the pictures of shock workers who exceeded their quota many times. They were depicted as heroes, and the Communist state used them as the propaganda tool to motivate its citizens to more sacrifices. Swedish papers fabricated similar propaganda, but this time it was refugees pictured in their grey suburbs with the bright smiles on their faces. They told reporters how overjoyed they were to be in Sweden and how life was beautiful in their suburbs. Day after day, month after month, papers peddled the same fairy tales; only faces on front pages were different. Readers were made to believe that culture, the arts and sports were flourishing in those ugly suburbs, and their inhabitants were people with exceptional talents and skills. But if you bothered to browse the papers, you would find small notices from the very same suburbs from the front pages. No pictures ever accompanied these reports, which were about clashes between different gangs, using all kinds of weapons, even bombs and AK-47s. Cars were torched in their dozens, vandalism and arson attacks on schools and nurseries took place, and the police confiscated large amounts of drugs. No names of the criminals were ever mentioned, but as the refugees and immigrants mostly inhabited those suburbs, you could understand who the perpetrators were. This kind of journalism has been going on for decades, and nobody can predict when it will end, and when journalists will start to behave as honest people and give their readers an objective picture of reality.
I tossed away papers and switched on TV and radio, but the same kind of propaganda made me cringe. I screamed aloud, “This can’t be true! How can you do such things to your own people?” I felt a sharp pain in my stomach and sweated profusely. I thought I was going to have a stroke. I had seen the power of propaganda before and during the war in Bosnia, and how much harm people who called themselves journalists had inflicted on innocent people. But I could never have imagined that journalists in a democratic country would stoop so low and year after year create fiction which had nothing to do with reality.
I was boiling with rage, and I called some of these journalists on the phone. They would listen to me in silence and would not utter one single word for ten or more minutes as I berated them and asked them questions, which they would never answer. “Thank you for your views,” they would say in their monotonous voices and hang up. I felt someone had just given me the finger. They must have been laughing at people like me, who were like dogs barking at the moon. They were well connected, well-paid and untouchable, and they lived far away from immigrants and ghettos, which they loved to trumpet in their articles. I could not remember ever having been so angry. I promised myself I would never help a Swedish journalist if I saw any of them in need of help. They could be drowning, burning, lying with their broken bodies and limbs, or suffering from heart attacks, but I would ignore them and walk by without giving them a glance.
TO BE CONTINUED
Religion is on the wane in Sweden. Swedes put their fate in the hands of their strong state, which takes care of them from cradle to grave, instead of believing in an invisible power in the sky. In many countries in the world, you have to work or you will be hungry, but Swedish state gives you food and lodging even if you decide not to lift a finger. Such blind fate in the state makes people passive, numb, dull and unimaginative. You do not even need to think. The state will provide you with all needed information, goals, ideas and conclusions. Your duty is to work in silence, pay your tax and never complain. Any government decision is a decree, whose logic and motives cannot be called into doubt under any circumstances. Thus, when the government had decided that multiculturalism and immigration were Swedish new religions, nobody dared to voice the slightest opposition. Swedes by nature are introverted and reserved people, who seldom show their feelings openly. They are usually mistrustful of strangers and do not quickly build relationship with others. But when their government had ordered them to embrace different cultures, nationalities and races, Swedes complied with the edict unreservedly. Even if someone thought differently, he or she would keep their mouth shut for fear of consequences.
In democratic countries, the media usually scrutinize and criticize politicians and governments, but in Sweden, politicians and journalists are often best friends. Newspapers are partially financed by state grants, which assure their existence even if circulation dwindles. And when you have such generous friends you will be a fool to criticise them. Almost all Swedish journalists were behind their government and its policy, and from the beginning, they wrote fiction about immigration and multiculturalism.
When I read Swedish daily papers, I believed I was back in Yugoslavia in the 1970s. At that time, the front pages carried the pictures of shock workers who exceeded their quota many times. They were depicted as heroes, and the Communist state used them as the propaganda tool to motivate its citizens to more sacrifices. Swedish papers fabricated similar propaganda, but this time it was refugees pictured in their grey suburbs with the bright smiles on their faces. They told reporters how overjoyed they were to be in Sweden and how life was beautiful in their suburbs. Day after day, month after month, papers peddled the same fairy tales; only faces on front pages were different. Readers were made to believe that culture, the arts and sports were flourishing in those ugly suburbs, and their inhabitants were people with exceptional talents and skills. But if you bothered to browse the papers, you would find small notices from the very same suburbs from the front pages. No pictures ever accompanied these reports, which were about clashes between different gangs, using all kinds of weapons, even bombs and AK-47s. Cars were torched in their dozens, vandalism and arson attacks on schools and nurseries took place, and the police confiscated large amounts of drugs. No names of the criminals were ever mentioned, but as the refugees and immigrants mostly inhabited those suburbs, you could understand who the perpetrators were. This kind of journalism has been going on for decades, and nobody can predict when it will end, and when journalists will start to behave as honest people and give their readers an objective picture of reality.
I tossed away papers and switched on TV and radio, but the same kind of propaganda made me cringe. I screamed aloud, “This can’t be true! How can you do such things to your own people?” I felt a sharp pain in my stomach and sweated profusely. I thought I was going to have a stroke. I had seen the power of propaganda before and during the war in Bosnia, and how much harm people who called themselves journalists had inflicted on innocent people. But I could never have imagined that journalists in a democratic country would stoop so low and year after year create fiction which had nothing to do with reality.
I was boiling with rage, and I called some of these journalists on the phone. They would listen to me in silence and would not utter one single word for ten or more minutes as I berated them and asked them questions, which they would never answer. “Thank you for your views,” they would say in their monotonous voices and hang up. I felt someone had just given me the finger. They must have been laughing at people like me, who were like dogs barking at the moon. They were well connected, well-paid and untouchable, and they lived far away from immigrants and ghettos, which they loved to trumpet in their articles. I could not remember ever having been so angry. I promised myself I would never help a Swedish journalist if I saw any of them in need of help. They could be drowning, burning, lying with their broken bodies and limbs, or suffering from heart attacks, but I would ignore them and walk by without giving them a glance.
TO BE CONTINUED