Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Coincidences

15.11.2025 /

I am no angel, believe me. Every year I commute, as it were, across Europe, not once, but twice: Four trips in all, by plane. Moreover, I have four computers, bought within the last six years, and three mobile phones, the most recent of which I bought just last week. So my carbon footprint is no better than that of my compatriots, which is worse than that of citizens in any other European country.

Why am I confessing my sins to you? I am not a Catholic and you are probably not a priest. The answer is simple: I know that I am no better than most. We Norwegians buy too many clothes, too many new cars and we refurbish our houses too often. However we look at it, most of us Norwegians throw away too much and buy far too much. Period.

Perhaps you did not know this, but “Nordic countries have among the highest consumption-based CO2 emissions in the world, worse than the rest of Europe…. Gains in domestic renewable energy are wiped out by consumption-based emissions”.

My country is virtually self-sufficient in terms of clean electricity, yet … Well, to be brief, I suggest you listen to this zoom presentation by Jason Hickel.

In much of Europe, the indigenous population is plummeting because young people cannot afford to buy a flat where they can procreate and rear children. So the European countries need to import desperate immigrants who, incidentally, are willing to work for next to nothing. Even in Norway, that is increasingly the case. Why? Why are the prices of ordinary flats prohibitive for hard-working young couples?

Is it a coincidence that while the price of a place to live is exorbitant, outdoor temperatures are starting to kill us? “A searing heatwave that swept across parts of Europe in late June 2025 has been linked to nearly 2,300 excess deaths, …”

The heat wave referred to by the journalist lasted only “ten days”. But for much of Europe, the heat continued to kill people for four months. The murderous temperatures are no longer a “heat wave”; they are the new “normal”.

I ask again: Is it a coincidence that more and more young people have nowhere to live, that much of this continent is becoming uninhabitable from June to September, while deliberate total destruction (AKA war) is being perpetrated all over the planet. Most ongoing wars could have been avoided! I put to you that the reason they are not avoided is that for a handful of powerful people with seriously warped mindsets, war – per se – is a source of enrichment and/or power and therefore a blessing.

Even Forbes admits that

[r]ecent research has found that global militaries are responsible for nearly 5.5% of total global greenhouse gas emissions—a staggering figure that puts military emissions on par with the global cement industry. If it were a country, it would be the fourth biggest emitter in the world.

But the real cost is much greater, cf. Covering Climate Now

because a loophole the US inserted into the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 exempts all militaries from disclosing their emissions – meaning the world’s total emissions are significantly higher than officially recognized.

Now why would the US insert such a loophole, I wonder? Is it a coincidence?

Distrust

05.11.2025 /

I was taught in primary school – we all were – to adore my country, its flag, its king and its government, which represented us and acted on our behalf.

As we grew older, we could not fail to notice that our government often made what we considered mistakes, though we assumed it always did its best. After all, nobody’s perfect.

In high school, more and more of us started taking sides, right wing or left wing. Of course you also had the smug set, the people who maintained they followed a middle course.

We voted, defended the party we voted for, and denigrated the other parties. We read the paper we subscribed to and/or listened to our favourite news channels. Those were the days of innocence! Governments came and governments went; left side, right side (or, as they are now called, “centre left” and “centre right”). We would grumble when our side lost as though the whole business of elections was a sports event, and between elections we would discuss the performance of prominent politicians when they appeared on television.

Did we really think that the lies that led to the war on Iraq were a one off? Yes, I’m afraid we did. As for the lies that led to our war on Libya – well, they were never really exposed, were they. At least they were not loudly exposed, not in the mainstream press.

The outrageous persecution of Julian Assange was a wake-up call for quite a few of us, not least since even the Guardian joined the witch hunt.

For some time now, I have realised that we need to go back and re-assess a great deal of post-WWII history. What really happened when Yugoslavia was dismantled, for instance, and why? What they told us was definitely not true. What is? David Gibbs has spent years studying the matter.: I find his book very unsettling and interesting.: First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. I also enjoyed the documentary The Weight of Change, which challenges the official record.

Now, many of us “Westerners” – even many of Charlie Kirk’s people – have understood that we have been lied to about Gaza. Actually, we have been lied to for decades about Israel and its treatment of the Palestinian refugees after the Nakba (many of whom settled in Gaza) and about its gradual but methodical ethnic cleansing of the occupied West Bank.

I wonder how Trump voters of median and lower income will feel in the face of the unassailable fact that living conditions will remain as bad or worse under his rule as under Biden. Trump duped his voters.

They all do, of course. It’s a show, after all.

Someone shouted at me the other day during a discussion: “I don’t want to distrust everybody!” No, I certainly understand that.

And it’s not that everybody merits distrust. It’s not the players that need to be replaced, but the rules of the game. That’s what Zohran Mamdani seems to have understood. Who knows, maybe he will prove to be the spark that sets fire to the refuse left by years of mismanagement in Europe, as well as in the USA. If he can inspire the rest of us to demand the Democracy we were promised, that would indeed be great.

Alas, I am not optimistic. Many have tried in various parts of the world, and they have been undercut or killed. Even JFK was killed when he showed indications of leaving the track that had been laid out for him.

And if there is to be real democracy – Ben Norton maintains that Western governments are NOT democracies, they are oligarchies – we must understand that financialization of our countries’ economies is not the way to go.

Another thing we must understand is that “sustainable growth” is a contradiction in terms economically and certainly ecologically. At least in the so-called West. My country talks louder than most about “sustainable growth”, and performs worse than most, according to an assessment of the Nordic countries’ very considerable contribution to the accelerating ecological breakdown .

Finally, let it be clear: War destroys immeasurably. Yes, there are occasions when there is no alternative to armed self-defence. But it must be a last – a really LAST – resort. Imposing “democracy” is not a plausible excuse for violence.

Never before?

31.10.2025 /

Advertisers, news outlets and Trump all subscribe to superlatives:

The biggest, the best, the greatest, the worst, the smallest, the most …, the least…, etc. We also often hear expressions such as “never before” and “for the first time”. Grammatically speaking, these are not superlatives. Semantically, however, they are.

I would have liked to ask the linguist Noam Chomsky, whether this fascination for superlatives is universal, hard-coded into the genetic make-up of our species, or whether it is merely a cultural by-product of Western hubris.

There are some polite non-western expressions floating around to describe Western hubris (I repeat for the record that we represent only 12-14 % of humanity), among them: “US exceptionalism”, “US sense of entitlement”. Note that Europe and other US allies don’t count; we are just appendages to the US.

I am less polite. If you behave as a brigand, a brigand is what you are. The US is so riddled with debts that it has to attack countries to steal their mineral wealth!!! Having starved Venezuela with deadly sanctions for years and engaged in extra-judicial killings of its citizens in international waters, the US is now going to pilfer its riches. The US is preparing to engage in outright robbery in broad daylight. And its European minions are not going to interfere.

The dissenting media are not howling. They are merely shaking their heads. Why? Are they afraid? Or are they grieving? The corporate media are not even shaking their heads.

Maybe they are speechless for lack of superlatives. After all, this is not the first, nor the worst nor even the most…. not even since WWII. This is just business as usual.

I must admit that not until fairly recently have I realised how underhanded US and European foreign and domestic policy have been since WWII. Why did it take me so long?

After all, I read Manufacturing Consent years ago. I perused it as an intellectual, dispassionately, and with respectful interest. For me, the tide only turned when I read Nineteen Eighty-Four, shuddering as I did so: So much of the novel was terrifyingly recognizable!

Novels address your gut. They aim to immerse you into the matter, forcing you to “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” in a way that a cool analysis is unable to. The same applies to the film format.

Today, I returned to Manufacturing Consent, this time as it is spelled out in a gripping 1992 documentary by Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick. The documentary explains what Chomsky refers to as “the terrifying aspect of our society and other societies, [which] is the equanimity and the detachment with which sane, reasonable, sensible people can observe such events.”

Just so. As to why “such events” occur, you will need to watch another equally tide-turning documentary: The Corporation.

That’s why.

How a narrative was manufactured

22.10.2025 /

A book review of a book review

The book GRAND DECEPTION: The Browder Hoax, by Alex Krainer, has been “banned” – twice banned, no less – on Amazon and it is also “banned” by Barnes and Nobles. It was admittedly published a long time ago, in 2017, but is no less relevant, and still banned, today.

You may find it here.

Bill Browder was and probably still is what we used to call a “speculator” – as I see it: a good-for-nothing, big-time gambler. The “financial set” is a class of people against which I am deeply prejudiced, to say the least, notwithstanding the fact that it includes Alex Krainer himself.

So why care about the “Browder Hoax”. Hoaxes are speculators’ bread and butter, no? What made me read Krainer’s introductory pages was the fact that the financial shark Browder apparently operated in Russia and took part in the big grab of Russian spoils during the decade after the dissolution of the USSR. Russia was brought to its knees, and I was eager to learn about that. So I read on, always prepared to quit after the next paragraph.

Having done with the caveats, I turn to Krainer’s book, which starts with a painstaking analysis of Bill Browder’s self-congratulatory autobiography published in 2015, Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice.

It is so extremely well written, we are told, that it is most likely the product of a ghost writer, It reads like a thriller, but as the title promises, it is a “true” story, and its alleged author, Bill Browder, is a hero, no less. Krainer read it in one gulp, only to find afterwards that it didn’t quite ring true, so he read it again, more carefully.

While my interest in Bill Browder is non-existent and although it doesn’t take much to convince me that a financial shark is a liar and a thief, I reluctantly read all the first 42 chapters demonstrating just that, because Krainer masters the delightful subtleties of polite irony.

So the “hoax”, it appears, is multi-faceted and consists not least of the book itself: Browder’s story is simply not “true”.

What further raised my interest was that Krainer, who was born in communist Croatia and therefore has every reason to distrust Russia, nevertheless questions the virulence of Browder’s denigration of Russia and Gothic epithets referring to Putin. There seems to be a deliberate PR pattern running through Browder’s narrative. The term Russophobia is often explained by geopolitical commentators, as a result of conflicts in the distant past, but I’m not buying: I was brought up to hate Germans, but 80 years after the end of WWII, there is no trace of anti-German sentiment in my country. Krainer demonstrates, with a wealth of examples from the book, how certain stereotypes are repeated again and again with suspicious lack of nuance.

Part 3 of Krainer’s book is a heart-rending account of how Russia was taken apart and turned into a failed state. Browder, of course, blames the Russians for this. But Krainer who is – quite usefully, as it turns out – an expert within the field I so deeply distrust, knows exactly what happened. I don’t understand everything he writes, but he is evidently no man’s fool, cf. a sentence in Amazon’s piece about him:

[I]n 2000. Alex had originated the firm’s research and development program in market analysis and application of neural networks and artificial intelligence in trading of financial and commodities markets.

That was “application of neural networks and artificial intelligence” in 2000! Twenty five years ago! That’s right: no man’s fool.

Krainer more than insinuates that the destruction of Russia by a band of robbers (Russian and Western) was actively supported by US policy. Of course anybody suggesting that the US deliberately engages in despicable acts is labelled a conspiracy theorist, but that doesn’t mean that the “theory” in question is untrue.

Why else would Amazon ban the book, by the way?

What do I care about Bill Browder? Not one hoot, I repeat. But his book, as analysed by Alex Krainer is a remarkable example of how to present Russia in hypnotically monotonous terms, crippling critical thought. Having read it, we must hate and loathe the country and the ogre at its helm to our dying day. Again, we get the sense that Browder’s crusade against Russia – and he is still at it – is very much aided and abetted by USA.

I don’t think we will need many Bill Browder books before we are all convinced that Russia is the end of everything, a modern Niflheimr and its leader an ice-cold, ruthless killer.

Unlike Browder, Krainer explains in Part 4 how that very ogre went on to pick Russia up out of the dust and put Humpty Dumpty together again. Indeed, already in 2017, Russia was doing very well. I won’t quote Krainer’s figures here, because I believe his book merits being read.

As for Browder’s heroic “one-man fight for justice”, that was also a hoax, it turns out – again aided and abetted by USA – concerning Sergei Magnitsky and the 2012 Magnitsky Act. Now Krainer was not the only person who didn’t think the narrative passed the smell test. A Russian film director, Sergei Nekrasov, had made several documentaries that were critical of Russia. His film The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes, had been paid for in advance, presumably on the assumption that Nekrasov would only be too happy to confirm Browder’s story. However, Nekrasov conscientiously examined relevant documentation, and realised during the process of making the film, that the story was a scam. The film was ready in 2016. At this point, remember, when a civil war was raging in Ukraine, it was particularly important to stress that Russia and Putin were evil.

The première at the European Parliament was stopped at the last moment, and screenings were cancelled all over Europe, including in Norway, where the film was made. In other words: The film was censored! As Nekrasov explains in his conversation with Glenn Diesen and Alexander Mercouris, the very fact of being censored in the West, was deeply shocking, deeply troubling. What he basically is saying, I think, is that the West is not what he thought it was. “Sometimes I feel that I’m back in the USSR,” says Sergei Nekrasov.

I haven’t seen the film, but you might find it here.

Amnesia

20.10.2025 /

For me the word “Alzheimer’s” has merely been, until now, a figure of speech. For me and my peers, I should add. Already at the age of 25 we would start referring to our impending Alzheimer’s condition to explain lost keys or phones and forgotten birthdays.

Today, waiting in a shop selling paints, I noticed an unobtrusive sign above the counter urging customers to support family members of patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Not the patients themselves, but their wives, children, etc.

I’ve been in that shop before, and not so long ago, but I never noticed the sign. It may not have been there, but then again, I may simply have been blind to it. We are, after all, blind to the infinite number of sensory impressions our brain filters decide to discard. But today my cognitive filters happened to be very attuned to the plight of spouses of people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, because today, yes, this morning even, an old friend – a very strong and physically fit man – was to be admitted to an institution where people suffering from dementia are cared for. I guess that means that he will be locked away for good. Dead to the world, to his friends, yet alive.

I have not yet heard from his long-suffering wife, who has had to look after him 7/24, because “he must not go out on his own, and he is very abusive and insulting and ANGRY.” Did she get him safely to the institution this morning?

I guess her story is peanuts compared to that of millions and millions of Argentinians 53 % of whom are living in poverty, while 28 % actually suffer food insecurity. Trump has promised 20 billion USD to Argentina’s notorious strongman, who will not share the money with his brow-beaten subjects. Here I quote Alex Krainer (see below): “I generally subscribe to the idea that political power attracts precisely the sort of people who should not have it.”

Meanwhile, as Trump generously squanders 20 billion of US taxpayers’ money, how are US citizens faring under shutdown? In 2023, food insecurity allegedly affected 13.5% of the US population. One or two persons out of every ten US Americans in 2023 “don’t have enough to eat and don’t know where their next meal will come from”. In 2024: 34.7 percent of single-parent households headed by women experienced food insecurity in the USA. I can’t imagine that US citizens of mean or lower income are doing any better today.

A country that claims to spread Democracy cannot even afford to feed its own population. QUE VERGUENZA!

I had lunch today with a beautiful and very hard-working psychologist. She complained that she and her equally hard-working husband had to pay taxes to feed people who worked “on the sly”, i.e. cheated on the system. “Yes,” I said, coward, that I was, “I know what you mean.” I didn’t say, as I should have, that those who earn an undeclared shilling or two in addition to the bare-bone benefits they get, are not responsible for the tremendous defence outlays that eat up a significant portion of our tax contributions, which are intended, “I remind you”, for our common good. That includes feeding people who are unable to provide for themselves.

I said none of that because a) I know that my psychologist friend is ready to crack from exhaustion, balancing work (to service a mortgage and student loans) and parenting and b) because it is true that there are people who simply don’t want to work, and I don’t know how to single them out.

So I stuck to my guns, as it were, and complained about the warmongering. “It’s no good blaming Putin, you know, or even the Chinese. Look at all the wars. They were not China’s wars, not Russia’s wars. Even Korea was not Russia’s war. Nor Vietnam. Yes, there were Communists in Korea and in Vietnam. So? None of our business!” My exhausted friend looked at me me as though wondering which of us is loosing our marbles.

***

Just how often has the US intervened militarily or otherwise to control a foreign governments? I decided to test an AI service:

Q: Please list all US military and /or secret service interventions since WWII

The result was a list of approx 30 well-known interventions. The Panama 1989 “Just Cause Operation” was not on the list, nor the Grenada 1983 “Operation urgent Fantasy”.

Q: Why have you not listed Lebanon, 1958?

A: The 1958 Lebanese crisis is indeed one of the better-known U.S. interventions of the Cold-War era, and its absence from the quick-scan list was simply an oversight rather than a judgment about its importance.

“An oversight”? Well, well, well. I shall keep that quote for future reference. AI suffers from “oversights”. As for the expression “quick-scan list”, please note that my initial question was ” list all US military …

I insisted:

Q: I repeat I am not interested in a “quick-scan ” list. I am interested in a list of all – I repeat – ALL US interventions military and/or secret service interventions since WWII.

A: Below is the most comprehensive catalog that scholars, journalists, and de‑classified archives have assembled of every U.S. military and/or intelligence‑service (CIA, NSA, DIA, etc.) intervention abroad from the end of World War II (September 1945) through the present day.

The list filled 10 A4 pages and I haven’t yet checked it, but it did nor include NED and USAID regime change operations. It ended in 2018.

So much, then, for “the present day”, when the US is bombing boats out in international waters, without warning, without cause. Each bombed boat sinks to the bottom of the sea, a wet and literal memory hole. The planned “liberation” of Venezuela is being aided and abetted by my country with its Nobel “Peace” Prize awarded to someone I would not want as a relative, not even as a distant one.

Norway has tagged along as USA’s obedient puppy, ever since WWII. Yet, it wasn’t the USA, but the USSR that saved Norway from the Germans. That is something we have forgotten.. We have graveyards all over the country full of dead Eastern European POWs who were made to work till they dropped for the German occupants during that war. Forgotten.

Since then, USA has had to feed its war industry. Without wars, no industry, it seems. Wars and make-belief are what USA has to offer the rest of the world. And we curtsy; we say ‘thank you’, and we award Peace Prizes, grant exceptions to International Law as required, and blame the Russians.

For decades Norwegians have been breastfed lies about Venezuela’s “evil dictators”. Yes, millions of Venezuelans have fled from their country and Norwegians think they know why. Apparently, the sanctions have also gone down memory holes.

Glenn Greenwald suggests that Venezuela’s non-existent drug cartels are a poor excuse for going to war. Instead Trump could claim Venezuela has weapons of mass destruction. WMD would at least represent a serious threat to US security.

USA needs Venezuela’s oil, or rather, as explained by Alex Krainer, the oil as “bank collateral”.

Democracy has nothing to do with US regime change operations. Ever.

Svar til en marxist

17.10.2025 /

Jeg er helt enig i at det er storkapitalen som rår.

Jeg er helt, helt enig at vår “styrking av demokrati og menneskrettigheter” i utlandet sorterer under “utenlandsk innblanding”. Det skulle tatt seg ut om etiopierne opprettet et enormt fond for å fortelle skandinaver hva som er rett og galt og hvordan vi burde tenke om dette og hint (jf. USAID og NED).

Jeg er enig i at vårt NATO-medlemskap ikke beskytter Norge; at det er et redskap for å styrke USAs hegemoni.

Jeg er selvfølgelig enig i at vi ikke har pressefrihet – ettersom pressen, de sosiale mediene og de store filmselskapene, osv., eies av storkapitalen. Narrativet er til enhver tid ikke vårt eget, men deres.

Det er nok ikke helt likegyldig hvilket parti kommer til makten ved valg, men som vi har sett i Storbritannia, går det gale veien for folk flest uansett. Jeg husker ikke hvilket parti som hadde makten da el-kraften, vår felles el-kraft, vår kronjuvel, ble stjålet fra oss og lagt ut på markedet til høystbydende. Nå forteller AP at vi skal takke for at man “gir” oss Norgespris – veldedighet! Det blir veldig dyrt for Staten, får vi høre.

Joda, pressen tillater litt kritikk, litt opposisjon. Særlig om mindre vesentlige saker.

Men akkurat nå er jeg mest opptatt av sionismen. Det som har skjedd i Gaza, og som vil fortsette å skje i Gaza, er riktignok ikke det eneste folkemordet siden annen verdenskrig, men til forveksling likt det som skjedde da. Jødene var “untermenschen”, slik palestinere er det i dag. (I vår russofobiske tilstand glemmer vi gjerne at også østeuropeere og russere var “untermenschen”, og at også de ble begravd levende, brent inne i kirker, sultet ihjel osv.)

Over tid har deler av USAnsk og europeisk kapital sett seg tjent med å alliere seg med Sionister. For ordens skyld vil jeg presisere at Sionisme har ingenting med religion å gjøre! Sionisme er et rasistisk og ofte aggressivt ekspansjonistisk verdensbilde som bruker jødedommen som påskudd.

Hvorfor alliansen er blitt så sterk, vet jeg ikke. Men at den er sterk, er det ikke tvil om. Det finnes de som har hevdet, blant dem Charlie Kirk, at Trump rett og slett er redd for Netanyahu.

EU har et påfallende tett samarbeid med Israel:

Historisk sett er EU Israels største handelspartner, og begge sider samarbeider gjennom rammeverk som assosieringsavtalen (1995) mellom EU og Israel og en rekke sektorspesifikke avtaler som dekker vitenskap, teknologi, energi og kulturutveksling.
(KIlde: svar på et AI-søk)

Dette er påfallende i lys av FNs utallige fordømmelser av Israel. Forholdet mellom Storbritannia og Israel er spesielt verd å merke seg.

I 2023-24 ble den bilaterale handelen verdsatt til rundt 10 milliarder pund, hvor Israel eksporterte høyteknologisk utstyr, legemidler og forsvarsvarer, mens Storbritannia leverte maskiner, finansielle tjenester og forbrukerprodukter. De to nasjonene samarbeider tett om terrorbekjempelse, cybersikkerhet og forsvarsforskning. Felles øvelser og avtaler om deling av etterretningsinformasjon gjennomføres gjennom Storbritannias forsvarsdepartement og Israels forsvarsdepartement, samt via NATO-relaterte kanaler der Storbritannia deltar.

(min utheving) (ibid)

Sionismens enorme makt i USA, i EU og i UK er altså påfallende, men endrer ikke det faktum at det til syvende og sist er storkapitalen som rår.

Det er helt urealistisk, nå, å gå til frontalangrep mot storkapitalen. Det gjør ingen av partiene på den såkalte venstresiden på Stortinget. Partier som FOR (Fred og Rettferdighet) og Storbritannias Worker’s Party og Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party er så små at de overhode ikke synes i landskapet.

Det er derimot langt mer aktuelt å gå til frontalangrep mot sionismen i USA, i EU og i Storbritannia. Det vi har vært vitne til de siste par årene – i realiteten helt siden opprettelsen av staten Israel – og det vi vil fortsette å være vitne til de neste årene er så sjokkerende at folk som ikke er aldeles avstumpede reagerer.

Det mange også kjenner på – nettopp i USA, UK, Frankrike og Tyskland er mistillit og sinne mot “eliten”, “the political establishment”, dvs såkalt “sentrumspolitikk”. De sosialdemokratiske partiene har alle gått i Tonny Blairs spor som ulver i fåreklær. Derfor omfatter sinnet også “venstre-politikk”, som har erstattet krav om rett til verdige levekår og utdanning med liberal identitetspolitikk – som vel og merke ikke koster en krone på statsbudsjettene.

Vi ser derfor at velgere vender seg til partier som pressen stempler som “populistiske” eller “ytre-høyre”. Noe disse partiene har til felles er at de ikke vil bruke skattepenger på krig og at de vil begrense innvandring.

Dette med innvandring er alvorlig fordi det jo nettopp er storkapitalens neo-koloniale kriger og utbytting som har forårsaket innvandringsflommen. Siden fødselstall i Vesteuropa går ned, og siden GDP-vekst er avhengig av befolkningsvekst, vil storkapitalen dessuten gjerne opprettholde immigrasjonsstrømmens billige arbeidskraft. Det vil vanskelig la seg gjøre å forhindre sosial uro ved intens tilstrømming av desperat fattige og traumatiserte mennesker.

I kampen om skrumpende velferdsgoder, utvikles lett aggresjon mot fremmede. Det er antakelig et faktum at noen velgere av populistiske partier faktisk er rasistiske, men flertallet av dem er nok ikke det, selv om de kanskje misliker de fremmedes skikker. La oss kalle det de lider av for fremmedfrykt. Etterhvert som de blir kjent med hyggelige mennesker fra kulturer de er skeptiske til, slipper fremmedfrykten taket.

I mellomtiden er de dypt opprørte over det som har skjedd i Gaza og det som vil fortsette å skje i Gaza og Vestbredden. Det har vært kolosssale demonstrasjoner i sommer og høst, sant nok ikke bare mot folkemordet. Det er i det hele tatt mye sinne ute og går. Og mange har fått med seg statenes vanvittige bruk av midler til krig og opprustning.

Tiden er inne, foreslår jeg, til å gå hardere til verks mot Sionismen og vestens krigshissing.

Reckless driving

03.10.2025 /

There are a lot of people who love the thrill of driving fast, who are intoxicated by the taste of danger. Most of them nevertheless refrain from reckless driving. If you are somebody who tends to not hold your horses when driving a motorised vehicle, you are probably an immature driver in that you don’t fully comprehend the danger to which you are subjecting others. If you do comprehend that danger, but simply don’t care or believe that your time is much more valuable than anybody else’s, you should consider the possibility that you’re a psychopath.

There are of course other reasons why people drive as though there were no tomorrow. Maybe you are so upset or angry that those who love you, if you are lucky enough be loved, tell you: don’t take the car now. Maybe you are not loved; your wife just told you she’s leaving you. Maybe your boss blamed you for something you haven’t done. Maybe a tree crashed over your house, or maybe you actually are fleeing from, say, a volcano or a tornado.

I don’t know which of these predicaments caused Trump to make that reckless deal with Netanyahu about Gaza. Let’s put it this way for a start: I am absolutely convinced he wanted to put an end to “all the killing”. He wanted to save those who are still alive from the ongoing industrial slaughter. Yes, or rather no, I don’t generally approve of Trump, but he does seem to have a humane streak in him.

But at what cost? To put it plainly, at the cost of Palestine. With this deal, there will be no Palestine, ever. Israel has made it clear, time and time again, most recently at the UN general assembly just a few days ago: Israel will never, ever, ever even consider accepting a Palestinian state. “Negotiations in five years” will be a waste of time and money, as have all previous negotiations headed by naive and/or deceitful mediators, including not least from my own country. Israel has even taken to killing negotiators.

Without Hamas, no Palestine. Israel knows this, which is why they want to eradicate Hamas. The Palestinian Authority on the West Bank, often referred to as PA, contents itself with doing Israel’s bidding. That’s what it gets paid for. Without Hamas, some Palestinians will be allowed to live in Gaza and the West Bank, as serfs for the Israelis and on subsistence wages.

Tony Blair, a malevolent figure (and war criminal) who turned the Labour Party into a neoliberal tool of the 1 %, but better known by most as a consummate liar, is vying for a job as the viceroy of Gaza. He will make sure that the handful of surviving Gazans cause no trouble while Jared Kushner and his ilk build their luxury hotels. That’s the deal.

So my tentative diagnosis of Trump’s decision so far: Yes, he does care about loss of lives. But he has no respect for international law, no more than does Israel, he has no understanding of Palestine’s decades long case and, worst of all, he does not really care if one people lives in servitude to another.

Better alive than dead? I’m not sure. The problem is that the Palestinians will not forget who they are. Those who are still alive have endured months and months and months of unimaginable conditions – conditions reminiscent, but worse, than those endured in Nazis concentration camps (cold, hunger, fear, no toilets, no sanitary napkins, no water, no electricity … ) They are formidable heroes! And they will not forget. Memory hurts.

Besides, Netanyahu is as treacherous as the Devil himself: He considers all Gazans members of Hamas, and will try to kill the rest of them even while the deal is being sealed.

Did Trump have any alternatives? Of course he did. He could have cut off all support for Israel. Simple as that. No more arms, no more money, no more trade, no more vetoes against the vast majority of the global community in the UN.

Yes, the US Zionist billionaires would have stopped financing him. He may have lost his entire fortune. But had he done the decent thing, he would have been universally celebrated. He would have been granted almost as much as he had lost but by non-Zionists. Had he done the decent thing. Even little Norway, I am sure, would have been able to provide him with a life in the lap of luxury, had he done the decent thing.

He did not. His recklessness has also had the following consequences:

1) It has killed what was so precariously won, in spite of all the deaths, after WWII: International Law.

What remains is the playground of filthy-rich bullies and psychopaths. With or without a 2000-year-old myth or legend, anybody with sufficient funds can go on a killing spree in neighbouring or even distant states and get away with it.

2) It effectively sounds the death knell of the Jewish state.

As Norman Finkelstein tells Aljazeera on 4 October: At least we have “the historical record” of what has happened. Indeed. We have the record of a new Holocaust committed by the “Jewish State” and endorsed by the USA.

Had Trump done the decent thing, the “Jewish State” might have continued to exist indefinitely. Instead, his recklessness has driven a nation into servitude, while the despicably racist Jewish state is a pariah. The state of Israel has proven to be so murderous that even right-wing evangelicals in the US are stunned.

The US and its adoring “Western” vassals, represent only 12 % of the world’s population. The remaining 88 % will not bow indefinitelyto the primitive Stone-Age will of the bully. Eventually, some semblance of International Law will be resuscitated, and the pariah Jewish State will not be invited to the party.

So what Trump actually achieved was probably more than he reckoned with.

Was there a Stand Down order?

29.09.2025 /

As we see more and more horrors – attacks on Venezuela, collusion in the killing of participants attending peace negotiations in Qatar, and the continued acceptance of the deliberate slaughter of all human beings living in Gaza – we realise that Charlie Kirk’s “hunch” might have been right.

No abomination, it seems, is too base for certain people. No abomination!

Fortunately, a small ray of decency is making its tortuous way along the Mediterranean. Like a flock of white wagtails seeking winter quarters in the Middle East, some 40 to 50 civilian boats with fluttering Palestinian flags are on their way to Gaza with food, water and medicines. With thousands of participants from more than 44 countries, the Sumud is the largest civilian-led convoy of its kind in history, according to Wikipedia.

Source: https://globalsumudflotilla.org/tracker/

Reuters writes: “Italy and Spain have deployed navy ships close to the flotilla for rescue and humanitarian tasks.” Bravo, Italy. Bravo, Spain. Because there have already been a number of drone attacks on the flotilla.

But what about Norway? There are 9 Norwegians in the flotilla. And what about Germany, France, UK? Was recognition of Palestinian statehood no more than nauseating hypocrisy? Are the leaders of the European states no better than the leaders of the USA, i.e. so vile that they merit being locked away on a diet of bread and water for good? 19 sanctions packages against Russia and a military build-up unheard of since WWII, but nothing – absolutely nothing to stop the killing machine in the Middle East.

Disgusting, quite simply. Sickening.

The General Assembly matters

27.09.2025 /

Not a word will you see in this post about Trump’s speech to the “UNGA”!
Not one word!
Nor even about Netanyahu’s!

But boy, have I ever enjoyed this:

While I was at it, I stumbled across another speech that figured prominently amongst the youtube videos from the UNGA, that of Prime Minister Mia Mottley of tiny Barbados, with a population of 280.000. That’s right: two hundred and eighty thousand Barbadians. That’s even less than the population of Iceland on the diametrically opposite side of the world. But the Barbadians have a much nicer international calling code: +1. That of Iceland is +354

After the Spaniards and Portuguese had left Barbados, the islands were appropriated by the British in 1627 and (quoting Wikipedia):

… the colony operated on a plantation economy, relying initially on the labour of Irish indentured servants and subsequently African slaves who worked on the island’s plantations.

Yep, the British have a great deal to answer for.

Why am I going on about Barbados? Well I happen to be particularly interested in another island country, Iceland (391.000 people according to the 2025 census) which has done extraordinarily well since it gained its independence in 1944. It operates on the “all hands on deck” principle. It needs hospitals, orchestras, universities, plumbers, electricians, art academies, economists and not least export industries, just like any other country. It can’t afford to let people hang around counting their fingers.

I expect Mia Mottley has not been blessed merely with privilege. She is her country’s prime minister, finance minister and Minister of National Security and the Public Service. Presumably, she is trying to bring down her country’s debt which was the second highest in the world in terms of ratio to GDP, when she took office. The debt has decreased considerably; yet she is serving her second term and is still remarkably popular.

Since Mia Mottley, whom I had never heard of, seems to have attracted a lot of attention in the media, I started listening to her speech, just to – sort of – figure out what sort of scandal she had made.

Nope, no scandal, just an extremely intelligent speech! She balanced it so carefully that most people, I think, would be able to applaud her words. She managed to avoid the Scylla- Carybdis dilemma – whether to offend one side or the other – yet at the same time, she was able to make a few important points. Very important points, amongst them: the need for a “rules- based system”.

Mind you, the very words “rules-based system” raised my hackles when she first uttered them, because they were almost identical to Biden’s “rules-based order”, which basically means US rules in defiance of international law.

However, Mia Mottley made very clear that she had something entirely different in mind: the UN charter. Do we still agree about the UN Charter, she asks. And I would add: If not, what do we agree about? Her alternative seems to be: Let those who do not agree leave the room. I don’t know what alternative is the best. At any rate, she calls for a reset of global politics. Indeed, a reset is badly needed.

I take my hat off to Mia Mottley of Barbados, a very intelligent lady whose name we should not forget.

I’ll be brief

21.09.2025 /

The inimitable Alex Krainer writes “What matters is what people believe – not what they know”. And a growing number of people in the USA believe that two official storylines are definitely not passing the smell test. One storyline attempts to account for a dead villain, the other concerns (or covers up) the murder of a leader who knew he was risking a great deal by publicly starting to doubt the Zionist narrative and by flouting Netanyahu.

We may possibly never get to know what crimes Epstein committed, for whom and with whom. We won’t be told who protected him or how and why his life ended in 2019. Personally, I would never have given the matter a second thought if it hadn’t been for a sudden and very unexpected rush of vehement denials on the part of the current US government: Not only is there nothing to investigate, they say; the man is simply not worth our attention. Obviously, then, this is hot stuff!

Nor would I have given Charlie Kirk a second thought – after all, I’m not a Conservative Christian US patriot, and murders are run of the mill in the USA – if it hadn’t been for the link, indirect as it may seem, between the two men: Israel.

I say no more, except that when your government insists on feeding you, in rapid succession, brazen lies about things that matters to you (as substantiated, in the case of Charlie Kirk, by The Greyzone), you start remembering past storylines that you doubted. You remember all sorts of other things, too, the 2008 bailouts, for instance. You ask yourself questions such as “They call this a Democracy?” “Where do all our taxes go?” “Why is Nancy Pelosi so rich?” And “why on earth are we cancelling the first Amendment?”

Above all, I would wonder, if I were a US citizen: Why are we so hooked on Israel?

Speaking of which, see

+972

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