Loukas Christodoulou

Elections are coming in Sweden. A campaign supporting the ruling Social Democrats is appearing on advertising hoardings all over the country, with the kind of coverage usually seen for major hollywood movies. Run by the country's biggest union, the LO, this election campaign's slogan is 'I'm building Sweden'.

Take a closer look and you see that the billboards are owned by Clear Channel, the advertising and promotions giant that dominates the music venues of the US (see CorporateWatch story www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=114 'Clear Channel killed the Radio Star', newsletter 18). Photos of two billboards, in the northern market town of Hudiksvall and also in central Stockholm, seem to indicate that Clear Channel has a similar grip on the advertising hoardings of Sweden. Which means that, although the mighty Socialdemokraterna has run Sweden almost uninterrupted since the 1930s, it still has to exist within a society and economy increasingly dominated by multinational corporations.