By Jonathan Michael Feldman, June 18, 2022

Here are ten simple rules for persons trying to make a documentary about Swedish weapons transfers. We have reverse-engineered an STV documentary about the subject which you can view here and which is referenced in the plate above.

Rule (1) Do not interview anyone from the peace movement;

Rule (2) Do not consult academic experts who study how military technology actually operates in a social context who are critical of such technology, e.g. don’t mention how the same weapons used in theory to prop up “democracy” were also used to prop up militarists;

Rule (3) Give preference to persons wearing uniforms and who work at higher education institutions linked to the military;

Rule (4) Do not show any dead persons, dead bodies, or the results of weapons transfers;

Factor (5) Keep using the word “defense” and illusions to protection;

Rule (6) Do not raise any questions about the social and economic costs of military weapons transfers;

Rule (7) Privilege the opinion of politicians, political party leaders, and EU authorities over non-military-affiliated academics, civil society organizations, social movements, and persons in the health industry who address the outputs of the war industry;

Rule (8) Conceal how Swedish weapons or weapons systems were used to support illegal wars, war crimes or wars causing mass deaths in Libya, Iraq and Yemen;

Rule (9) Make references to earlier Swedish weapons transfers to Finland, but don’t ever problematize Finland’s role in making alliances with Nazi Germany;

Rule (10) Never raise a single doubt about the Ukrainian state, its diplomatic posture or the foreign policy of the United States each of which potentially contributes to the initial or sustained demands for weapons and discuss weapons transfers without problematizing NATO.