Stockholm, Sweden — Lennart Nilsson turns 90 on the 24th of August and can look back on an unrivalled career as a photojournalist. He is unique as an educator with a camera, he has been called “a renaissance man in the twentieth century” and he has been compared with the universal genius Leonardo da Vinci.

In the 1960s, Lennart Nilsson was employed at Life Magazine and broke new ground on the border between the scientific and the artistic with his story about how a child is born.

In 1965 his cover story for Life became an all-time bestseller and his book A Child is Born was published that same year, a book that has since been translated into more than 20 languages (the latest being Chinese), has been published in five editions – 1965, 1976, 1990, 2003 and 2009 – and has sold millions of copies.

And that sensational cover story, “Drama of Life Before Birth,” which we’ve all been part of but which none of us remember, was just the beginning of Lennart Nilsson’s tireless exploration of the human body and the miracle of life.

Since then he has continued to surprise and amaze us by using his own ideas and new technology – custom built cameras, tiny fibre optics and advanced microscopy.

Lennart Nilsson’s exploration of the unknown began in the Swedish countryside, in an ordinary anthill, and continued with his adventures under water, which resulted in two books – Myror and Life in the Sea which were both published in 1959.

Lennart Nilsson sees his biggest challenge as being able to explain the unexplainable and to make the invisible visible – his latest work having involved viruses, Particles in the air and bacteria in a bee’s honey stomach. And he usually says that it takes three things to succeed: patience, patience and patience.

- Time doesn’t matter, it’s the result that’s important!

Lennart Nilsson is just as curious about the wonders of nature today as he was when he was 15 years old and got his first close-up look at cells through his newly purchased microscope.

Lennart Nilsson was also in a class of his own as a press photographer during the 1940s and 1950s. In 1945 he followed a midwife who had delivered 1,500 children in the Swedish mountains, a story that was to become his first but by no means his last to gain wide publication overseas.

In 1947 he told the tale of the Norwegian hunt of polar bears which was also a story that gained a lot of international attention, and “tears and protests were heard in many languages.” The following year Lennart Nilsson spent nine weeks travelling round the French and Belgian Congo on the lookout for all things dangerous and wild. And in Rome he got to visit the home of Ingrid Bergman and the new love of her life, the Italian director Roberto Rossellini. The year was 1950 and the romance caused many headlines – not all of them flattering, but they sold many newspapers. Lennart Nilsson reported dramatic pictures from the great flood disaster in Holland in 1953 and was there when Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjold was appointed as the secretary-general of the UN the same year.

One of Lennart Nilsson’s classic stories was about the Salvation Army. For months he followed the soldiers of the “army of love,” and among other things he was there at the very moment that an alcoholic man was saved. The pictures were widely published in both Swedish and foreign newspapers – and in the book Halleluja, which was published in 1963.

Lennart Nilsson has photographed portraits of many people, both famous and unknown – royalty, authors, actors, scientists and leading businessmen as well as “ordinary people” in a series of work reports.

He has a natural ability when it comes to winning people’s trust and getting close to them.

When Nikita Khrushchev visited Sweden in 1964 there were seven people seated around Tage Erlander’s dinner table at Harpsund – apart from the guest of honour himself there was also the Swedish Prime Minister, the Soviet and Swedish Ministers of Foreign Affairs, two interpreters and Lennart Nilsson. He was introduced as an old friend of Erlander and was up until the wee hours exchanging small talk and toasts with the Soviet dictator.

While the assembled press corps had to make do with photographing Erlander’s “crown prince” in front of the Houses of Parliament in 1964, Lennart Nilsson accompanied Olof Palme home to his house in Vallingby and took pictures of a loving father and his football-playing sons. And when Ingmar Bergman was shooting a film on Faro, Lennart Nilsson succeeded in capturing the director and his entire team in a group photo. Following Bergman during the making of ‘Shame’ was much like following game – “you have to keep your eyes and ears open at all times, nothing can be arranged, just click, look and listen.”

No photographer has moved us with his stories quite like Lennart Nilsson. When the TV news showed pictures of what we have on our teeth – enlarged to 100,000 times the actual size – the Swedish people choked on their evening coffee, and all the toothbrushes in the stores sold out the next day.

His pictures are to be found on money and stamps, in textbooks and encyclopedias, and some of them are currently on their way out into space, aboard NASA’s space probes Voyager I and II, as part of a greeting from planet Earth.

The photographer whose motto is that nothing is impossible has been richly rewarded during the years for his photographic, journalistic and scientific ambitions.

Lennart Nilsson is an honorary doctor of both medicine and philosophy, he has been given the title of professor and has received gold medals from the government, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He was the first recipient of the Hasselblad Award in 1980, has received the title Master of Photography and has won the World Press Photo and three Emmy Awards, the TV world’s Oscar, for his films. And just in time for his own 75th birthday the “Lennart Nilsson Award” was instituted in 1997, an international award for a photographer who works in the spirit of Lennart Nilsson.

Image Courtesy of  Erik Collin (Centennium) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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Julian Assange’s worst nightmare has finally come true. According to the London Police Station, Julian Assange has received a letter to report to London’s Belgravia police station this coming Friday at 11:30 p.m. Sam Jones, a reporter for ‘The Guardian,’ reported, “Assange has been seeking political asylum (where an individual seeks refuge in another country after not feeling safe in their own country, and if the country in which they are seeking refuge, approves of them being there) inside Ecuador’s embassy in London since last week” as he tries to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning about alleged sex offenses.”

For extradition cases, being court ordered via letter to attend a court hearing is considered the first step of the extraditing process. Assange is facing court orders to be extradited back to Sweden after he was found of accusations of raping a woman and molesting another while attending a lecture in Stockholm back in August of 2010.

Assange, the Wikileaks website founder, “published a mass of leaked diplomatic cables that embarrassed governments and international businesses, denies all allegations, saying the sex was consensual and the allegations against him are politically motivated,” according to The Guardian.

As of recently, a letter has been signed by leading political figures in the United States including that of Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, Noam Chomsky and Danny Glover. In addition to the letter that was sent to the embassy in Ecuador, a petition of over 4,000 American signatures arrived there as well, in hopes of Ecuadorian President, Rafael Correa approving Assange’s political asylum to stay in Ecuador.

According to Reporter Sam Jones, “The letter, which has been posted online, states that its signatories believe Assange has good reason to fear extradition from the UK to Sweden, “as there is a strong likelihood that once in Sweden, he would be imprisoned, and then likely extradited to the United States.”

If Assange is extradited to the United States, and is found guilty of his allegations, he will face the death penalty, according to the Espionage Act.

One of the individuals who signed the petition also wrote a letter to President Correa stating, “Because this is a clear case of an attack on press freedom and on the public’s right to know important truths about US foreign policy, and because the threat to his health and wellbeing is serious, we urge you to grant Mr Assange political asylum.”

Thus far, Assange has not received any charges from the country of Sweden.

Image Courtesy of  acidpolly

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New York, U.S.A. – The first worldwide counter-jihad initiative will begin August 4 with the First Annual Global Counter Jihad rally in Stockholm, Sweden. Representatives from Stop Islamization of Nations (SION), Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE), the English Defense League (EDL), and allied groups will speak.

The Global Counter Jihad rally will feature the president of SION and executive director of SIOA, Pamela Geller, as well as SION Vice President and SIOA associate director Robert Spencer. Also speaking will be the EDL’s Tommy Robinson, SIOE’s Anders Gravers, and other worldwide leaders from official Stop Islamization and Defence League groups.

“The conference,” said Geller in a statement, “heralds the launch of a worldwide counter jihad alliance. Freedom fighters from Europe and America, as well as India, Israel, and other areas threatened by jihad, will at last be working together and forming a common defense of freedom and human rights.”

Stockholm was chosen for the Global Counter Jihad rally because of the actions of an Iraqi-born Swedish citizen, Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, who traveled to central Stockholm on December 11, 2010 in order to commit mass murder in revenge for Sweden’s “silence” over cartoons of Islam’s founder and the presence of Swedish troops in Afghanistan. Al-Abdaly succeeded only in killing himself, but his jihad plot is particularly noteworthy because he turned to jihad violence and hatred in England, at the Luton Islamic Centre.

EDL leader Tommy Robinson explained in a statement: “We are ashamed that the people of Stockholm had to suffer the horror of a terrorist attack in their city because we as a country have been unable to even truly acknowledge the extent of the threat posed by Islamic extremism, let alone combat it. We have a responsibility to ensure that our country can never again be the birthplace for terrorism. We owe that much to the people of Stockholm, to our friends in Europe and across the world, and to our children. This is why the English Defense League will be attending the First Annual Global Counter Jihad rally in Stockholm on August 4, along with Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, and Anders Gravers.”

Robinson added: “We must also look at the other forms of extremism commonly associated with Islam, including but not limited to the oppression of Muslim women, the predominance of Muslim men in child grooming cases, and the seditious ideology of Sharia Law. Of course, we must always be careful to distinguish fair-minded criticism from simple prejudice. But that does not mean that we should equate disdain for Islam as an ideology (both political and theological) with hatred of individual Muslims. It is certainly true that there many decent Muslims – no one is questioning that. But that does not mean that the problems that give root to Islamic extremists can be understood in isolation from mainstream Islamic thought or practice.”

Security will be high, so as to prevent what has happened at previous free speech demonstrations inEurope: at one, the display of an innocuous cartoon of Muhammad resulted in devout Muslims rioting, attacking and stabbing police. “It is time to stand against this encroaching tyranny and defend free speech and free people,” stated Geller.

The First Annual Global Counter Jihad rally claims that they stand for several things. The freedom of speech – as opposed to Islamic prohibitions of “blasphemy” and “slander,” which are used effectively to quash honest discussion of jihad and Islamic supremacy. The freedom of conscience – as opposed to the Islamic death penalty for apostasy. They also claim to stand for the equality of rights of all people before the law – as opposed to Sharia’s institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims.

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The coveted Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Tomas Transtromer for his work in poetry. Transtromer received the news of his winnings on October 6. Transtromer will receive $1.5 million for winning the Nobel Prize. He is a native of Stockholm, Sweden, where the announcement was made.

At 80 years old, Transtromer has spent a great deal of his life working on his craft of poetry. Over the decades, he has had over 15 different collections of poetry published internationally. His work has been translated into 60 languages, which makes his poetry easily accessible to readers world wide.

Many of his original work has been translated into English. Some of his published collections include “Twenty Poems,” “The Half-Finished Heart,” and “The Deleted World.” Transtromer comes from humble beginnings in his native Sweden. He was born in 1931 in Stockholm, where he went to school and studied many subjects including psychology and literature.

Before setting his focus on writing poetry, Transtromer worked as a psychologist for troubled youth. It wasn’t until 1990 when Transtromer became very serious about his works of poetry. After being affected by a stroke, he was unable to speak as much as he once could. It was then when he relied on his writing to express his ideas.

Much of this Swedish poet’s writing delves into various themes that can be seen throughout his work. Transtromer is famous for his focus on emotions. With a strong background in psychology, he uses his knowledge of the way people think and feel to create literary masterpieces.

He plays with the ideas of identity and tries to express feelings of mankind through his poems. Being from Scandinavia,Transtromer is able to identify the emotions that come along with Sweden’s dark, drawn out winters. He is famous for poetically expressing Scandinavian winters and writing about nature as well.

“He is to Sweden what Robert Frost was to America. The national character, if you can say one exists, and the landscape of Sweden are very much reflected in his work. It’s easy because of that to overlook the abiding strangeness and mysteriousness of his poems,” stated the editor of Granta, John Freeman.

Swedes celebrated the announcement of Transtromer’s Nobel Prize win. When the news was made public, journalists from around the world gathered in Transtromer’s Stockholm buildings in hopes of interviewing him. He is the first Swede since 1974 to win the Nobel Prize. The 1974 prize was shared between Harry Martinson and Eyvind Johnson. There have been 107 Nobel Prize winners before him.

Aside from the internationally well respected Nobel Prize, Transtromer has won a number of awards as well. He has been the recipient of awards such as Bellmanpriest in 1966 and the Nordic Prize of the Swedish Academy in 1991, both given in Sweden. He won the Horst Bienek Prize for Poetry in 1992 in Germany, and the Griffin Trust Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007 in Canada.

He is often regarded as one of the most important and influential poet of Scandinavian roots.

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