Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Month: December 2022

Deafening silence

31.12.2022 /

The USA has just given its citizens a great big Christmas gift – that of another 44 billion USD for the defence of Ukraine (bringing the total so far to approx 100 billion USD). US citizens must be thrilled. Russia will be spanked by Patriot missiles – aye, Russia will be spanked, period, and that must be a great comfort to families who could not afford a Christmas tree this year either.

Europe is also spending a great deal – actually, I don’t know how much my country is spending on the destruction of Ukraine, because no news outlet is taking the trouble to inform us. What I do know is that Europe no longer receives gas from Russia, and that Europeans are therefore freezing. I am freezing, too, as I write. So we are also being spanked.

Yet, the silence is deafening, and I am reminded of a film title “The silence of the lambs”. We are the lambs, and nobody even dares mutter imprecations against NATO. Yet, does anybody really believe that NATO is defending human rights, Democracy and freedom of information?

Speaking of freedom of information, I visit a number of mainstream news outlets every day. RTVE.es NRK.no, El Pais, New York Times, le Monde, RUV.is, Klassekampen, Guardian… They all seem to be synchronised! Would you believe it? They all say the same thing. Let me tell you – and I’ve been a news junkie for years – it’s scary! It’s terrifying!

For years, too, Glenn Greenwald has been going on about dwindling freedom of speech in the USA, and as things turned out, he has had every reason to harp on the topic. What is less known to us in Europe – we have no Glenn Greenald here – is that we are almost certainly subject to the same regime. The synchronisation of mainstream European news outlets suggests that news to us is carefully filtered and censored. In my country, for instance, we have a whole and growing series of services (that the general public rarely hears about) designed to protect our national security. No doubt they do – protect our national security – but what else do they do, I wonder.

I don’t know, I only suspect. What I can see, however, is that mainstream media here have not discussed the so-called “Twitter Files”. They have merely portrayed Elon Musk’s dismissal of employees as the bizarre acts of a deranged man.

I do not often say “look to the USA”, but in the country with the world’s highest prison population, some brave investigative journalists are still holding the fort. Glenn Greenwald recently referred to TikTok as an example of government censorship:

Rather than ban TikTok from the U.S., the U.S. Security State is now doing exactly that which China does to U.S. tech companies: namely, requiring that, as a condition to maintaining access to the American market, TikTok must now censor content that undermines what these agencies view as American national security interests.

…

These moves by the U.S. Security State to commandeer censorship decisions on TikTok, accompanied by the hovering threat to ban TikTok entirely from the U.S., appear to be having the desired effect already. …

What TikTok did in response to US demands was to remove a Glenn Greenwald video clip, an

… indisputably true and rather benign review of how media outlets, including The Guardian, had previously depicted Zelensky as surrounded by corruption and hidden wealth. To be sure, the excerpt was critical of Zelensky, but there is absolutely nothing even factually contestable, let alone untrue, given that the whole point of the clip is to show how the media had spoken of Ukraine and Zelensky prior to the invasion as opposed to the fundamentally different tone that now drives their coverage.

Since not all of you have access to the quoted article, I shall quote a source that you will have access to: the Consortium News “compendium of evidence”, regarding events in Ukraine in 2014.

Consortium News is being “reviewed” by NewsGuard, a U.S. government-linked organization that is trying to enforce a narrative on Ukraine while seeking to discredit dissenting views. The organization …. calls “false” essential facts about Ukraine that have been suppressed in mainstream media: 1) that there was a U.S.-backed coup in 2014 and 2) that neo-Nazism is a significant force in Ukraine. Reporting crucial information left out of corporate media is Consortium News‘ essential mission.

But NewsGuard considers these facts to be “myths” and is demanding Consortium News “correct” these “errors.”

To make a long story very short, there are two lessons to be learnt from the two quoted articles.

1) the USA is determined to suppress information about its role in the war in Ukraine. One of the methods used is explained by CN. Another method is explained by Glenn Greenwald’s article quoted above.

2) The USA no longer even bothers to conceal the fact that the press is being monitored and heavily censored.

So heavily censored is the press and social media that even the obvious – the fact that the USA is waging a proxy war on Russia – is never mentioned otherwise than as an example of Russian propaganda.

You might agree with a well-informed friend of mine who maintains that in the battle between “good” and “evil” forces, even censorship is legit. I put to you, though, as I put to him, that Manichean Never-never-land stories are extremely dangerous, because they cloud our judgement, undermine our ability to assess our governments and basically paralyse the Democratic process. He responded: “But surely, wouldn’t you rather live in the US than in Russia or China.” I told him that I would prefer to live where I live, but given the choice between the USA and Russia, I would prefer Russia; I would never be rich enough to afford a decent health insurance in the USA.

So on this last day of this last horrible year, from freezing Europe on its way into a serious recession, I wish you luck in navigating through a miasma of NATO, corporate, and government falsehoods during the coming year.

Not liberty

11.12.2022 /

Lets take a look at Haiti.
(Cf. Thomas Piketty, Capitalism and Ideology, Chapter 6).

Slavery was abolished for the first time in modern times, not in England, but in Haiti, and by former slaves.

In 1780, there were 470,000 slaves in Haiti (90 % of the total population). They rebelled in 1791 and, not surprisingly, their French owners fled. Haiti was free. To cut a very long and painful story short, the rebels (i.e. former slaves) had to resist repeated attacks by the French army until they agreed, in 1825, to pay compensation to their former owners for their liberty. The payment demanded by France on behalf of their owners amounted to 2 % of France’s national income, 300 % of Haiti’s national income.

What with interest rates and the French banks’ commissions, Haiti (a population of, I repeat, former slaves) annually paid 5 % of the country’s national income from 1849 to 1915. Nevertheless, the French banks found payment lax, and begged the USA to intervene. The USA kindly agreed to occupy Haiti from 1915 to 1934 to “restore order”, which they did, killing thousands and more or less reintroducing slavery.

Haiti’s debt to the former slave owners was finally settled in 1950. For 125 years, the former slaves and their offspring had been paying for their freedom!

Thus, Haiti never had even the remotest chance of becoming a proper nation. No wonder the country is still struggling!

***

You might argue that this all happened a long time ago and that things have changed for the better. Have they?

A US company is just now suing Guatemala for “failing to protect” its (the US company’s) illegal gold mining activities. The company demands 400 million USD to cover lost investments and “future earnings”. https://inequality.org/research/guatemala-mining-lawsuit/

Now, Guatemala is one of the countries to which the USA has devoted particularly loving care and attention, not least since 1944 when the then dictatorship was replaced with a social democratic government. The new government’s popular reforms were:

disliked by the United States government, which was predisposed by the Cold War to see it as communist, and the United Fruit Company (UFCO), whose hugely profitable business had been affected by the end to brutal labour practices. The attitude of the U.S. government was also influenced by a propaganda campaign carried out by the UFCO. (Source: Wikipedia as at 07/12/2022)

Quoting Chomsky, in What Uncle Sam Really Wants, 1993:

In 1954, the CIA engineered a coup that turned Guatemala into a hell on earth. lt’s been kept that way ever since, with regular US intervention and support, particularly under Kennedy and Johnson.

…

…

Under Reagan, support for near-genocide in Guatemala became positively ecstatic. The most extreme of the Guatemalan Hitlers we’ve backed there, Rios Montt, was lauded by Reagan as a man totally dedicated to democracy. In the early 1980s, Washington’s friends slaughtered tens of thousands of Guatemalans, mostly Indians in the highlands, with countless others tortured and raped. Large regions were decimated.

To substantiate Chomsky’s opinion of Montt I’m including a few figures from the International Justice Monitor:

The short 17 months in which Ríos Montt ruled Guatemala were the most brutal of the conflict. Human rights organizations estimate that 10,000 people were killed in the first three months of his government alone. During the first eight months of his government, … more than 400 indigenous communities were destroyed.

Not until May 10 2013, was he finally found guilty of genocide and sentenced to 80 years’ imprisonment, but the verdict was vacated by the constitutional court, presumably due to pressure from you know who.

Speaking of Chomsky, I should add for the record, that he admitted that

the United States was not, however, lacking in compassion for the poor. For example, in the mid-1950s, our ambassador to Costa Rica recommended that the United Fruit Company, which basically ran Costa Rica, introduce “a few relatively simple and superficial human interest frills for the workers that may have a large psychological effect.” Secretary of State John Foster Dulles agreed, telling President Eisenhower that to keep Latin Americans in line, “you have to pat them a little bit and make them think that you are fond of them.”

More quotes from What Uncle Sam Really Wants:

We’ve [i.e. the USA] consistently opposed democracy if its results can’t be controlled. The problem with real democracies is that they’re likely to fall prey to the heresy that governments should respond to the needs of their own population, instead of those of US investors.

Throughout this process, the US press followed Washington’s lead, selecting villains in terms of current needs. Actions we’d formerly condoned became crimes. … The press also began passionately denouncing human rights violations that previously didn’t reach the threshold of their attention. .

If you want a global system that’s subordinated to the needs of US investors, you can’t let pieces of it wander off. It’s striking how clearly this is stated in the documentary record – even in the public record at times. Take Chile under Allende. Chile is a fairly big place, with a lot of natural resources, but again, the United States wasn’t going to collapse if Chile became independent. Why were we so concerned about it? According to Kissinger, Chile was a “virus” that would “infect” the region with effects all the way to Italy.

What Uncle Sam Really Wants was published in 1993, and those of you who have lived all your lives in the USA may not even believe its descriptions about US activities in Nicaragua, Panama and el Salvador. But here in Europe the events referred to in the book were known at the time.

You may want to believe that things have improved since 1993. Maybe they have, though I very much doubt it. With Julian Assange behind bars, the cowed Western press has been brought to heel and obediently trots alongside its masters. Their job is no longer to expose but to justify US activities, and to kowtow to US global leadership, whatever that leadership may involve. So we don’t know, do we, what is going on behind the scenes.

I conclude by adding two items from today’s news (i.e. 7 December 2022):

The Biden administration told a US judge last week that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, should be granted immunity in a civil lawsuit over his role in the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. That decision effectively ends one of the last efforts to hold the prince accountable for Khashoggi’s assassination by a Saudi hit team inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. (Source: Guardian)

The United States is opposed to the International Criminal Court’s proceedings against Israel, State Department Spokesman Ned Price said after Al Jazeera filed a legal brief asking the Hague to include the shooting death of its veteran Palestinian-American correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh within its larger investigation against the Jewish state. “When it comes to the ICC, we maintain our longstanding objections to the ICC’s investigation into the Palestinian situation,” Price said told reporters in Washington in response to a direct question about Abu Akleh’s death. (Source: Jerusalem Post)

Rule-of-law, US style, as usual.

Not greed?

04.12.2022 /

Have you heard of the Dominican prelate Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566)? Almost any book about Latin American history will respectfully mention him, usually, however, without quoting him – more’s the pity.

He was an eyewitness in Latin America during the early decades of the colonisation, and he addressed an account of his observations to King Filip II. It was subsequently published in 1552 as Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies) and subsequently banned by the Spanish Inquisition in 1659. (However it had been translated by Spain’s enemies, and appeared in Dutch, English, French and even German. It is on the public Domain. I would NOT recommend the 1689 English translation found on Gutenberg.org: apart from being practically incomprehensible, it is full of ghastly errors.

So allow me to provide my own translation of some titbits nipped from three paragraphs of the introduction:

From 2nd paragraph:

God made all the peoples of this part of the world, many and varied as they are, open and innocent, without malice or guile. …They are the most modest, patient, peaceful and calm people imaginable, engaging in no feuds, making no trouble, picking no fights; they know no rancour, hate or vindictiveness. … They are, moreover, extremely poor, with but few possessions – nor do they desire worldly possessions – hence unpretentious, without ambition or greed. Their meals are such that even the Holy fathers in the desert could surely not have been more frugal.

…

From 3rd:

Upon these gentle lambs of said God-given qualities, the Spanish fell like ravenous wolves, tigers and lions of extreme cruelty, as though they had not eaten for days. And all they have done in these parts since, for forty years – and they are still at it – is to tear them to pieces, killing them, terrorising, torturing and destroying them in all manner of strange and varied and unheard of ways that have never before been even read about.

From 7th and last:

The reason why the Christians have killed or destroyed innumerable souls, is that they wished to satisfy their lust for gold, to inflate themselves with wealth in the course of just a few days, and to attain lofty positions regardless of their person. Let it be known that the insatiable greed and ambition that has driven them has been as great as could possibly be imagined in this world, since these lands are so lovely and so rich, and these peoples so modest and patient, so easily subjugated; yet have been shown no more respect, no more due (and I speak truthfully, because I know all that I have seen for all this time) than – not animals, for by God, had they been animals they would not have been so treated – but as dung on the ground.

Hot stuff, right?

So what is my point here?

  1. That Spaniards are the Devil incarnate?
  2. That Dominican prelates are “good”?
  3. That indigenous people from Latin America are genetically better than Europeans?

1) My aim here is certainly not to crucify Spain. On the contrary: I have been given to understand that British, French, Dutch and German colonial powers have left a trail of stories as horrifying as those hinted at above, and very much more recently!

2) As for the Dominican order, I believe it has almost as many sins on its collective conscience as do the colonial powers.

3) The book Potosí that I commented on a few posts back, describes among other things how Quechua and Aymara miners, who have been abused and brutalised for centuries, men who rarely survive to the age of 45, beat and rape their own womenfolk etc. These miners are the offspring of the beautiful mild-mannered people so deeply admired by Bartolomé de las Casas.

As for brutalisation, allow me a few words about the identity of the actual men whose actions the prelate condemns: They were not people like you and me. Many of them were prisoners whose sentences had been commuted to that of “galeotes” (galley slaves). From 1530 on, criminals could be, and were more often than not, directly sentenced to the galleys rather than to prisons, as the traffic on distant Latin America required many hands, and as so many of the crew died on the way. The first ships that set out for Latin America were at any rate manned by the most desperate, brutalised men in the land. Contrary to what some people still appear to believe, life as a galley slave will not make a decent man of you.

Bartolomé de las Casas also wrote a no less remarkable book: The Apologetic Summary History of the People of These Indies, (partially included in vol.V (1876) of his Historia de las Indias on Gutenbeerg.org). It is “apologetic” in the sense that it is a defence of the peoples and cultures that the author visited on his travels. It serves, moreover, as a very early example of what we, today, would call ethnographic studies.

I have declared and demonstrated openly and concluded, … that all people of these our Indies are human, so far as is possible by the natural and human way – and without the light of faith – had their republics, places, towns, and cities most abundant and well provided for, and did not lack anything to live politically and socially, and attain and enjoy civil happiness…. And they equalled many nations of this world that are renowned and considered civilized, and they surpassed many others, and to none were they inferior. Among those they equalled were the Greeks and the Romans, and they surpassed them by many good and better customs. They surpassed also the English and the French and some of the people of our own Spain; and they were incomparably superior to countless others, in having good customs and lacking many evil ones. (Source).

A remarkable man, that. One who despite being a Catholic priest could admire people “without the light of faith”, could study their customs for decades, and have the courage to defend them in writing – five hundred years ago. Yet, what fascinates me more, even, than the man who dared admire “heathens” (who were, moreover, mostly naked, although they covered their “private parts”) is something else:

Those heathens were not greedy.
I repeat: They were NOT greedy.

My question to myself, to you, is therefore:

Are humans inherently greedy or is greed a social construct? As Ghandi allegedly said: “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”

So, if greed is a social construct, what are the implications for us, today and for the future?

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