27 – There’s no truth and you know it

27 – There’s no truth and you know it

The picture is the cover of one of my favorite classics, Don Quijote. I love how it begins, which is really fitting on a Sunday: “Dear idle reader….” So:

Dear idle reader,

Can you enjoy life if you steal money from people? Do you have a right to? Do you have a right to suffer if someone took your money or should you just move on, cause it’s your own fault? Is ten years in prison more appropriate than one year if you steal a million? How many years is the killing of a child worth? What if you really change in jail? What if you are cured?

If a person is cured after one year, shouldn’t she be let out? When does care turn into revenge – do we have the right to revenge? Yes. You can be revengeful if you like, but don’t expect too much from it. Certain people will probably always be dangerous and maybe they should be kept away form the general population – that is not revenge it is precaution – but others seem to get cured. They should be let out before the jail system makes them into expert crooks.

A thief that stops stealing is cured and should be let out. A thief that stops stealing and is kept in jail – that’s a system by orangoutangs, it makes no sense. I think I have seen Päivi get cured. I’d be very surprised if she ever stole money again. I think I’ve said it before that I have spoken to almost everybody involved in this story, so I have some insight. I have looked into the different motives of the people and some are easy to understand or to see through, others might be skilled liars.

For example, I have spoke to a person from the former management of PAF. This person said to me that it’s a shame that I’m using the word “documentary” for this film when I have already decided that the gambling company is the crook. First of all: I haven’t decided that the gambling company is the crook. I think it’s quite clear that they try to avoid responsibility by getting into semantics like: “we did report suspected money laundry to the police”. Yes. But if you make one or two reports and a competing company from the same are reports 15 000 instances of money laundry, something is fishy. As a thinking human being I take it as an insult that people get away with statements like this or when a company claims “we don’t have a VIP system” (meaning they don’t give gifts to players who play a lot in order to make them stay). But if you give gifts, lottery style, then the more you play, the bigger the chance it is that you win = you reward players who play a lot = you have a VIP system. So. I don’t look at them as crooks but the above statements make the look crooked and that needs to be looked into.

Just because this hurts somewhere doesn’t make me wanna stop, quite the opposite. I don’t see them as crooks but I think the stories of other people should be heard and that will probably make the gambling companies look a little crooked. But hey, what do you expect? if you deliberately target people on welfare, marketing to them: “this is it – now is your time to get rich!” Maybe you’re not a crook but you’re fucked up.

I think local media should ask these “difficult” questions and not let management get away with this. And speaking of which, the media, they are no more objective than anybody else. They have an agenda, they have interests, they choose the perspective and if it’s like in Sweden, that they have made themselves dependent on the gambling companies advertising money – that just makes every decision harder for them.

As a documentary film maker I’d be an idiot to claim I present something objectively or even the truth. That would be incredibly pretentious. This has always been my firm belief. I know I choose a perspective, I know I have an agenda and I have to be open about this. I consider all people who have a different opinion of this c o m p l e t e i d i o t s. I used to take the fight, try to explain that there isn’t any objective truth. Not anymore, there are too many idiots out there.

Here’s the thing: I choose in which direction I point my camera and by doing that I am biased. I know it and I am open about it. In this story I have spent most time with the gambling addicts and the victims and much less with the gambling companies and the government or the gabling lobby. Why? Because I am interested in hearing the other side of the story. Something else than: “yada, yada, yada – we followed orders”.

I am not interested in talking to slick business men whose every second statement is “no comments” – I am interested in hearing people’s personal stories, how did this affect them personally. These are stories rarely told and I would really like to hear the management’s side of this too – but they all say no when I ask them and I have gotten tired of calling them. And this becomes my bias.

But there’s more bias: A district prosecutor who thinks he can take on a case where he himself might be involved….and he doesn’t immediately see the bias? A minister of finance who thinks his friendship with a CEO in trouble is all good – and no mention of bias? A prosecutor who takes a plaintiff to his own house for an “after party”? A PAF board member who is also a singer in an amateur quire and a politician applies for thousands of euros of support for her own quire and she gets 8000 for this – and nobody thinks this is biased? Or the best one: a gambling company owned by the government and the government exclaims “there has been no wrong doing!” But sure, I’m the one who is biased and I am the one who hides my “lying view of the world behind the objective truth of the camera lens”.

The thing is, most of us know the truth when we see it and we find it laughable when people like Donald Trump tweets his outrageous claims. I believe most of us think: “doesn’t he know that we know?” But when people start talking and we lose focus, they get away with murder.

And back to where I started, about punishment. If you steal so much money that you make your former best friend lose her house, that’s enough punishment for a whole life. Staying alive after the crime is the redemption. I know people who have done much, much worse things. And they hold on, they hurt, they stay alive – they know the truth, what they have done, now they can only hope for forgiveness. Some of them even hope to be revenged, thinking therein lie the forgiveness. I do not know.

Johan Karrento

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