Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Month: August 2025

Dense, deceived or devious?

27.08.2025 /

In his novel Essay on Blindness (1995), José Saramago described what Wikipedia calls “an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city, and the social breakdown that swiftly follows”. The story is exceptionally dark and frightening, because when everybody else is blind, the book tells you, you will find nobody to guide you safely home. You won’t even find a toilet. Or water. Much like in Gaza.

Another frightening aspect of the book is that mass blindness can occur anywhere, and at any time, for no apparent reason.

Saramago, it is true, was a communist, and he might have felt that those who were not were blind. I was not a communist, however, when I read the novel several decades ago. Yet, I felt intuitively, that his story reflected reality in an uncanny way. I just couldn’t put my finger on just why it rang so true. Now I can. And yes, mass blindness can occur anywhere and at any time and for no apparent reason.

I was taught and brought up to believe that everything known to mankind was dutifully recorded in Encyclopaedia Britannica. Subsequent information, arrived at after the tomes had been printed, would be reported in the New York Times. Only many years after I left home to study, did I fully understand that Britannica was the legacy of a colonial power in collaboration with a neo-colonial superpower. I could still rely on it to find the birth dates of potentates, and the names, dates and places of important battles. But the underlying causes of violent conflicts, for instance, were not satisfactorily explained.

I haven’t used Britannica for years, and I have also noticed that the New York Times exists mainly to cover the tracks of globalists going about their nefarious business. What the NY Times conspicuously fails to do, for instance, is to explain mass stupidity or, if you will, mass blindness, which is what we are seeing now, and to which the famous news outlet contributes in a big way.

Were there ulterior motives for deluding Ukraine, back in 2022, into imagining the country could win a war against Russia? Why is “the coalition of the willing”, or “Coalition of the Twats”, to quote Pepe Escobar, so rabidly eager to fight the Russians? If they actually send troops to Ukraine – God help us all! – will they stand to gain something?

Have there been ulterior motives for loyally supporting, for decades, an apartheid state? Are there ulterior motives for being complicit in genocide?

The realisation that I could not trust Britannica or the NY Times, that I had to be as wary of them as of the Murdoch press was awful; almost comparable to the discovery that a beloved father is a dictator who has his political opponents imprisoned and tortured.

My question “dense, deceived or devious?” was not about Trump. Not that I like Trump and better than Biden, but I actually think he understands that the European triumvirate plus Santa Ursula are killing Europe. Surely, they are not themselves suicidal? What, then, are they after? The 300-335 billion USD of Russian frozen assets?

By the way, of those 300-335 billions, only 5-8 are in the USA, but 70 billion are in France, according to the market analyst Alex Krainer; were in France. Now only 22.8 billion remain. Where did the rest go? It is true that thanks to Candace Owens, Macron would not be anybody’s choice of a son-in-law, but a 40 billion dollar thief? Surely, not. Or…?

I honestly don’t know. Cross my heart.

Conspiracy theories abound, as they always will when people lose faith in governing establishments. In a Democracy, we expect to be able to hold our politicians accountable. In France, England and Germany – at the very least – not to mention in the USA, Democracy has been so eroded that people are prepared to believe practically any wild story about the leaders of their governments. Anything, or as in my case, nothing. Whether or not we hitch our wagons to a conspiracy theory, we distrust the leaders of the pack and their henchmen.

Mind you, here in Norway (we have oil, remember), the standard of living is still reasonably high, although we are seeing a marked deterioration of healthcare. So here in Norway, people still have faith in their favourite politicians. Here, conspiracy theories are peddled only by a small minority.

Here too, though, what is sure is that the establishment – regardless of what party heads it – lies and steals (we, too, have a financial class) and deceives voters. I did not know, for instance, that the OSCE kept a special monitoring mission in Ukraine during the period 2015-2022. More importantly, I did not know what the OSCE observers observed. What they observed was not publicised, you see, because it did not confirm the official narrative, cf. the recently published book, “What I Saw in Ukraine 2015 to 2022, Diary of an International Observer,” by Benoit Paré. You will hear very interesting examples of what the author saw on Grayzone.

So in Norway, we do not yet know that nobody is guiding us home and that sooner or later, we, too, will lack drinking water. We cling to the belief that technology will solve the climate issue, and that life as we know it will prevail; that the plucky Ukrainians will beat horrible Putin, and that Ukraine has been a Democracy since 2014; that justice will be done in Gaza and that the Israelis will suddenly stop being sadists; that Trump will be replaced by a Democratsand that Democrats are decent. We need not “hope” that USA is our kind uncle and protector, because we have never doubted that was the case.

Norwegians are living in Never-never-land, unwilling to wake up. Why? Because the press serves as a bulwark against information that undermines the official narratives. Here we are not told that Europe is in deep trouble. Even official EU poverty statistics are grim. We are not told that in the UK, and in France, reality is loudly knocking on doors.

Here in Norway, we do not know that people in UK and France have growing trouble covering basic expenses, while real wages are falling, and prices – not least the cost of servicing mortgages – rise. Increasingly, people resort to credit cards and accumulate very expensive credit card debts. Need I continue? Foreclosures… homeless people… real, really real poverty which is getting worse by the day. The UK is on its way down a slippery slope.

In France the poverty rate is 15.4 % and growing. The country has a growing public deficit (6.1% of GDP in 2024), a rising national debt (above €3.1 trillion), and political chaos because nobody (left, right or centre) likes Macron, who nevertheless hangs on like a leech.

France is the second largest economy in Europe (after Germany), driving nearly 20% of the Eurozone economy. Yet, it is a sinking ship. If you lend money to someone who wants to save a sinking ship you will demand an exorbitant price (interest rate) for your “kindness”, cf. the NY Times article of 26 August: Fears of a French Government Collapse Send Its Borrowing Costs Soaring, The article also discusses how the general public might react to the steps the government plans to take to avoid having to resort to an IMF bailout.

Look up the following three words on the internet: “debt, France, IMF” (and set time to “past week”) and you will see a long list that include expressions such as “IMF bailout”, “meltdown”, “debt explosion”, etc. As an analyst remarked the other day, people are preparing for a new Bastille day and are bringing their old guillotines up from the cellars.

Look up “UK and IMF” (and set time to “past week”), and you will find an even longer list of forebodings.

Whatever the causes of this very obvious and dramatic slippery slope state in two of Europe’s three most important economies (and Germany is not much better off, I gather), they are not being addressed. On the contrary. The UK and EU have made a disastrous deal with Trump, one which will finish them off completely if complied with. Are Macron, Starmer, Mertz and Santa Ursula dense, deceived or devious?

Meanwhile, in an interesting development, Denmark is discovering to its dismay, that USA is quietly making progress in conquering the hearts and minds of people in Greenland. Maybe Denmark is learning that with such “friends”, who needs enemies.

***

And no, the double tap strike against Nasser Hospital, killing 20 people including 5 journalists, was not “a terrible mistake”. It was deliberate! On second thought, take a longer look at https://www.972mag.com !!!!

Redistribution of wealth

20.08.2025 /

By “wealth” I am referring not only to that of each country, but to what has been and still is being misappropriated by the “West” from the Global South.

It’s been several years since I subscribed to the last Norwegian newspaper that sported a so-called anti-imperialist profile. Now there are none, alas. Back then, though, the paper published every week one long article written by an economist. Various economists, in fact, would take turns providing the weekly article. They appeared to suggest (very cautiously) that we are not obliged to choose between voracious capitalism or Stalinism. There are, in fact, alternatives.

For me that single weekly article was extremely important as I was, at the time, engaged in daily arguments with a colleague – a very highly qualified economist (and dear friend). Having read my Piketty, I maintained that capitalism was destroying us all. He maintained I was ignorant (which I was). I retorted that he was reactionary, which he still is.

So the book Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste (2013) was an eye-opener for me. Its author, Philip Mirowsky, explained that you just couldn’t get a job as an economist at US universities (which tend to rely on donor funding) or in any self-respecting company, unless you had embraced the religion of market fundamentalism. (That explained the cautiousness of the young economists writing the weekly article in my paper.) To quote Wikipedia:

“[In the book], Mirowski concludes that neoliberal thought has become so pervasive that any countervailing evidence serves only to further convince disciples of its ultimate truth. Once neoliberalism became a Theory of Everything, providing a revolutionary account of self, knowledge, information, markets, and government, it could no longer be falsified by anything as trifling as data from the “real” economy.”

Mirowski’s book also included diatribes about a “Mont Pelerin Society”. I asked myself: “is the man delusional?”

Since then, I noticed that many progressive economists preferred to refer to their field as the “history” (“philosophy” or “anthropology”) of economics, rather than just plain economics, cf. David Graeber (anthropologist), author of the classic “Debt” (as well as of “Bullshit Jobs”) which has left an indelible imprint on his readers. You might , by the way, enjoy a look at the first dozen or so paragraphs of his essay about power ignorance and stupidity.

Is a brighter future possible? A more equitable one?
For the moment, things look pretty bleak, at least in the EU and UK, which appear to have embarked on the suicidal course of militarism. However, in the UK, a new political party has been created “to take on the rich and powerful and to campaign for the redistribution of wealth,” as the BBC unenthusiastically reported.

During our arguments many years ago, my former colleague, the highly qualified economist, compared economics to a force of nature that can tear down your house or, if correctly managed, transform cataracts into electric energy. Now I can dismiss his analogy, with confidence. Because since then, I have learnt a little about economics, not the economics he had been taught, but the kind that the cautious young economists were suggesting back then. There are more of them now, and some of them even hold positions in universities.

I should add: I have met many people who “absolutely loathe economists”, and with good reason. The economists they loathe have been the servants of the 1–10 per cent. The economists I speak of serve the rest of us.

The important point to realise is that economics are man-made. We make the rules. The decisive question, though, is: Who are the “we“?

What follows is a list of those who have taught me what I now know.

  • I wish to introduce the list by mentioning my very brave and mild-mannered compatriot  Glenn Diesen. Every day he interviews globally recognised specialists on his substack account. Some of his interviewees are political scientists and known geopolitical or military analysts. Others, however, are economists, hedge-fund managers or geopolitical economists. In his own country, Norway, Glenn Diesen is smeared and harassed in every single mainstream outlet. The very virulence of the attacks against him suggests that those who wish to defend US global hegemony find him dangerous.

  • I suspect that Jeremy Corbyn and his new party will have collaborated closely with New Economics Foundation, and that they will have done so for quite some time. There is nothing adventurous about NEF people. They are down-to-earth economists wearing ties and polished shoes, but their economics are of a different kind than what we have been exposed to over the past decades. They also have a web page called “Change the rules“.

    A similar organisation exists in the USA. (For all I know, there may be more) Institute of New Economic Thinking.

  • Radhika Desai presents herself as a marxist economist. I would like to recommend her conversation with Glenn Diesen during which she defines “neoliberalism”. I think we need to understand what the term actually means. Those who are unfamiliar with her exposition of “rentier capitalism” (and Marxist jargon in general) may find her intimidating. But rentier capitalism is none the less a fact.

  • Jason Hickel has devoted much of (maybe even most of ) his professional life, so far, to exposing the West’s exploitation of the so-called 3. world. Yet he is probably better known for his book Less is More, which has been embraced by environmentalists. The two issues are, of course, interrelated. I warmly recommend his book The Divide – Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Market (1923). He writes eloquently and is able to provide data, not least thanks to his university position, that is not otherwise easily accessible. He also has a substack account.

  • Michael Hudson is an outlier in several ways. He is nowhere near “young”, and he refers with respect to the classical school of economics (e.g. Adam Smith whom he maintains neoliberals would have called a Marxist had they actually read his book.) Hudson was an honest to goodness Wall Street economist, although Wall Street called him Doctor Doom. For a long time now he has contributed with Radhika Desai to the excellent website Geopolitical Economy. He has also writen more books than i can list, but I warmly recommend Killing the Host – How financial parasites and debt bondage destroy the global economy.

  • Geopolitical Economy is run by Ben Norton, an exceptionally well-spoken man who elucidates economic issues that seem arcane to most of us, Indeed, there is no doubt that the jargon employed by economists discourages us from trying to understand what the financial set is up to. For example , in the episode  How corporate landlords are taking over society,  he asks Michale Hudson to explain how the financialisation of economics has been nursing a set of parasites that are making life difficult for the rest of us.

  • David Gibbs  is not an economist. He is a professor of history at Arizona University. His latest book The Revolt of the Rich – How the Politics of the 1970s Widened America’s Class Divide (2024) is intriguing (why on earth should the rich “revolt”, and against whom? ) and illuminating. Here again I learn about the Mont Pelerin Society, how they bided their time, and how they struck when the time was right. This book tells us a great deal about why the economy and the standard of living has been going from bad to worse since the 1970s , in the US and the UK.

  • Rutger Bregman is also a historian. According to Wikipedia (as at 17 Aug. 2025), “he has been described by The Guardian as the “Dutch wunderkind of new ideas” and by TED Talks as “one of Europe’s most prominent young thinkers”. His book Utopia for Realists “promotes a more productive and equitable life based on three core ideas which include a universal and unconditional basic income paid to everybody, a short workweek of fifteen hours, and open borders worldwide with the free exchange of citizens between all nations.” (ibid). See his TED talk “Poverty isn’t a lack of character; it’s a lack of cash.

  • Kate Rawroth, however, is a full-fledged economist. Her book  Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist (2017) has become a classic for those who wish to know how economics can serve ordinary people to the south and the north of the equator.

  • Ha-Joon Chang, an economist from South Korea, is on good terms with everyone, even with Friedrich von Hayek (the father of neoliberalism). What I find endearing about him, though, is that he appears to sincerely believe that we should all try to understand a bit about economics so that we can take part in decision making, in accordance with our Democratic rights (to the extent we actually enjoy Democratic rights). To that effect, he has written a brief introduction to economics for people like you and me: Economics: The User’s Guide (2014).

    Mild and smiling as he seems, he has a hard punch. In Kicking Away the Ladder (2003) , (which I have not read), he dared take on the really big and bad guys, cf. the Wikipedia article about him. At that time, his book was a very brave one, I suspect.

    Above all, though, I recommend Edible Economics – A hungry economist explains the world. For anybody interested in international cuisine, and even for those who are not, this is quite simply an entertaining read. His tremendous erudition and the deadly punches he delivers in his mild-mannered way seem unobtrusive enough, but the man is, I repeat, brave.

    Those who eagerly follow Trump’s battle with the BRICs might find it worth their while to follow the youtube channel of Sean Foo, a very young, but smart self-declared geopolitical economic analyst.

  • To conclude this list, I add the obvious: Thomas Piketty. As I see it, his two monumental books about Capital (2013 and 2019) introduced a paradigm shift. Not only did they question the validity of the neoliberal order, they appeared to prove that “growth” as traditionally defined was completely unsustainable.

    The books were so monumental that they delivered the academic “coup de grace” to neoliberalism . (Alas, though, neoliberalism refuses to die quietly. Like the dragons of folklore, it lies wounded and compromised, but continues to spew poisonous gasses from its nostrils.)

    I recommend Piketty’s blog in Le Monde. He writes there from time to time, in French and in English.

  • Finally, a reminder of what Western neoliberalism amounts to, when all is said and done:

“Fordelingspolitikk”

12.08.2025 /

Med fordelingspolitikk mener jeg ikke bare fordeling internt i ett land, men også fordeling med det globale sør.

Mens jeg enda abonnerte på Klassekampen – det er en stund siden nå – var det hver uke en stor artikkel skrevet av en økonom. Nettopp den artikkelen var viktig for meg, da jeg prøvde å overbevise min nærmeste kollega, utdannet siviløkonom, at kapitalismen var i ferd med å kjøre oss alle i grøfta (jeg hadde lest min Piketty). Kollegaen mente jeg var uvitende (noe jeg selv skjønte jeg var), og jeg mente han var reaksjonær (noe han enda er).

Økonomene som byttet på å skrive ukens økonomi-tekst i KK rustet meg for mine daglige dueller med siviløkonomen. De lot til å ha tro på at en annen ordning var mulig. Det ble dessuten klart for meg at det var i ferd med å vokse fram en generasjon progressive økonomer som riktignok ikke våget å gjøre mye av seg i landskapet.

Boka Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste (2013) var derfor en åpenbaring! Der forklarer Philip Mirowski nemlig at det var aldeles umulig å få jobb som økonom for andre enn markedsfundamentalister. Neoliberalismen var blitt så innarbeidet over alt, at enhver innsigelse mot den styrket disiplene i troen på at de hadde sett lyset. Ingen universiteter i USA (som jo er avhengige av rike sponsorer) og ingen bedrift våget å ansette andre enn neoliberale økonomer.

Jeg slukte boka. Den introduserte meg dessuten til røttene bak neoliberalismen, Mont Pelerin Society. Jeg syntes det han skrev om MPS hørtes ut som en konspirasjonsteori. Jeg trodde rett og slett ikke på ham, men fordi alt det andre han skrev lød så riktig, glemte jeg ikke MPS. Og nå mer enn ti år senere, får jeg bekreftet, og det til gangs, det han skrev den gang.

Han var åpenbart en ensom fugl. I årene som fulgte fant jeg imidlertid flere bøker av progressive økonomer som titulerte seg som historikere (økonomisk historie) eller sågar som antropologer. Dette var altså økonomer som seilte på bokhimmelen under “falske flagg”.

Er en annen verden mulig? En mer rettferdig verden?

Akkurat nå ser det dårlig ut, i hvert fall for EU som satser alt på militær keynsianisme, d.v.s. opprustning og mer opprustning. Samtidig uttrykker vanlige folk nettopp i EU, om ikke her i Norge, stadig mer høylydt mistillit til den politiske eliten. I Storbritannia har voksende deler av befolkningen opplevd regelrett nød i mange år nå. Jeg nevner Storbritannia fordi det nettopp der nylig ble stiftet et nytt parti “to take on the rich and powerful and to campaign for the redistribution of wealth,” for å sitere BBC (som slett ikke ønsker det nye partiet velkommen).

Min tidligere kollega, siviløkonomen, forklarte den gang at økonomi er som en naturkraft: vi må bare lære å leve med den. I dag våger jeg å påstå at det er tull. Det våger jeg fordi jeg etterhvert fant stadig flere nettsider, videoer og bøker som lærte meg litt om økonomi.

Vi former nemlig økonomien; den former ikke oss. Det som derimot er avgjørende er hvem “vi” som former økonomien, er.

Det som følger er en liste over dem som har lært meg noe om økonomi. Dessverre er alle mine kilder (med unntak av én eneste oversatt bok) på engelsk. Jeg har ikke saumfart norske kilder, men det finnes sikkert noe å hente også her.

  • Øverst vil jeg nevne vår egen Glenn Diesen. Hver dag legger han ut samtaler med statsvitere, fonds-forvaltere, forretningsfolk mm. Samtalepartnerne kommer fra ulike verdensdeler og har ulike synspunkter om ulike temaer, bl.a. om geopolitisk økonomi. Men neoliberalisme later til å stå dem alle fjernt.

  • Jeg tipper at Corbyn og hans nye parti samarbeider tett med New Economics Foundation og at de har gjort det lenge. Jeg tipper at de er forberedt, denne gangen, med konkrete – svært konkrete tiltak. New Economics Foundation har også en nettside som heter “Change the rules“.
  • Radhika Desai omtaler seg som en marxistisk økonom. Jeg vil anbefale hennes analyse, i en samtale med Glenn Diesen, av “neoliberalisme”. Hvis man ikke tidligere er kjent med begrepene “rentier capitalism” (jeg har ikke funnet noe norsk begrep for dette, men Wikipediaartikkelen tilkarringsvirksomhet forklarer fenomenet) så går det fort i svingene.
    En bokanmeldelse på dansk forklarer “rentierkapitalisme“.
  • Jason Hickel’s årelange kamp gjelder vår økonomiske utbytting av 3.verden, selv om han kanskje er best kjent for sine veltalende bidrag til miljø- og klimasaken. Jeg anbefaler særlig boka The Divide – Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Market (1923). Han skriver vakkert og forståelig, samtidig som han nå har muligheter til å bidra med data vi ikke vil få se andre steder. Jason Hickel har en substack-konto, men skriver relativt sjelden der.

  • Michael Hudson er et unntak på mange måter. Han er alt annet enn ung. Og han var en ekte Wall Street økonom. Til overmål viser han mye til “klassisk økonomisk teori” (Adam Smith, som han påstår dagens neoliberalere ville ha kalt marxist om de faktisk hadde lest ham). Hudson var kritisk til oppdragsgiverne sine fra starten av, likevel brukte de ham fordi han var smart. I mange år nå, har han sammen med en indisk-kanadisk økonom, Radhika Desai. bidratt til det flotte nettstedet Geopolitical Economy. Han har skrevet flere bøker enn jeg kan liste opp. Men jeg vil nevne Killing the Host. Undertittelen er: How financial parasites and debt bondage destroy the global economy.

  • Geopolitical Economy drives av Ben Norton. Ben Norton er en usedvanlig veltalende og pedagogisk formidler! Jeg har muligens lært mer om økonomi av ham enn av noen annen. I episoden How corporate landlords are taking over society ber han Michael Hudson forklare hvordan “finansialiseringen” av økonomien nærer en parasittklasse som forvansker livet for oss.

  • David Gibbs er ikke økonom, men historiker. I 2024 utga han imidlertid boka The Revolt of the Rich – How the Politics of the 1970s Widened America’s Class Divide. Den kan leses som en lærebok om neoliberalismens fremvekst; om klassekamp, rett og slett. Her får vi også se hvordan Mont Pelerin Society systematisk beredte grunnen for spetakkelet vi ser i dag.

  • Også Rutger Bregman er historiker. I boka Utopia for Realists agiterer han for borgerlønn.

  • Kate Raworth, derimot, er økonom til gangs. Hennes bok Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist (2017) er blitt en klassiker for dem som vil vite hvordan økonomi kan gagne vanlige folk i nord og sør.

  • Ha-Joon Chang er fra Sør-Korea. Han er venn med alle, selv med den fryktelige Friedrich von Hayek. Det som er fint med ham er at han mener oppriktig at vi alle må prøve å forstå litt om økonomi hvis vi skal kunne benytte oss av våre demokratiske rettigheter og utøve medbestemmelse. Han har skrevet en ganske pedagogisk bok – en slags innledning til økonomi: Economics: The User’s Guide.
    Men jeg vil først og fremst anbefale boka Edible Economics – A hungry economist explains the world. For dem som er interessert i mat, og selv for dem som ikke der det, er dette festlig lesning. Og den er langt fra tannløs.

  • For dem som spent følger med Trumps kamp mot BRICS, kan det være verdt å følge youtube-kanalen til Sean Foo fra Singapore. Som Wikipedia-siden om ham viser, har han en svært broket bakgrunn, men han er åpenbart en meget smart ung mann. Engelsken hans er utfordrende.

  • Jeg hadde nesten glemt den store Thomas Piketty! Jeg vil påstå at hans to monumentale verk om kapital (2013 og 2019) medførte et paradigmeskifte i diskursen om økonomi. Det er dessuten vel verdt å følge med bloggen hans i Le Monde (både på fransk og på engelsk).
    Men nå ser jeg det faktisk finnes en norsk oversettelse” av en av hans bøker

En kort historie om likhet.

Jeg siterer utgiver: “De økonomiske spørsmålene er altfor viktige til å overlates til en liten klasse av eksperter og ledere, hevder Piketty. At folk flest tilegner seg denne kunnskapen er avgjørende hvis vi skal få endret på maktforholdene i samfunnet. Denne boken er hans bidrag til endringen”

Recognition?

08.08.2025 /

One by one, countries are “recognising” Palestine as a state. I ask myself: What does that effectively mean? Will those countries stop importing Israeli goods? Will they withdraw funds invested in Israel? Will they instantly halt all trade with and financial services to Israel?
Of course not; money talks louder than justice.

Will they send UN troops to throw the illegal settlers out of the illegally occupied West Bank? Will they boycott the US that blocks all Security Council resolutions aimed at defending the Palestinians? Will the ICC condemn the country that is arming and financing Israel and protecting it militarily?
Of course not; the top dog calls the shots.

I put to you that all this “recognition” talk of Palestine is just lip-service, just a cover-up. We – the general public in most “Western” countries – are seeing some of what is going on in Gaza, partly thanks to the testimony of the brave and heartbroken US Lt Colonel Tony Aguilar, but above all because numerous journalists have volunteered their lives in Gaza, knowing that the IDF systematically kill journalists and health workers.

We – the general public in most “Western” countries – are shocked and increasingly angry. We are casting about us for our pitchforks. One by one, then, governments have to pretend to be doing the decent thing before the old pitchforks in ramshackle tool sheds have been located.

Yes, recognising the state of Palestine is a step in the right direction, but it will not stop the genocide; it will not deter Israel’s imperialist ambitions in the Middle East. It will not in any way prevent Israel from exterminating Palestinian “untermenschen”, and also the “untermenschen” of neighbouring countries, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, to begin with.

The Israelis need “lebensraum”, you see.” They are taking their cues from the wrong teachers. (And I don’t think the Christian Zionists should count on going to heaven either.)

And we, “nous autres”, we are under the US heel, as Santa Ursula has just demonstrated so very eloquently. “Master, tell us how we can serve you.”

Nevertheless, recognition of the state of Palestine is important. Vital.

A state has the right to defend itself.

Did you know – I didn’t till George Galloway, not the mainstream media, informed me – that the captain of the Palestinian football team was murdered waiting in line for food? The mainstream is absolutely useless!

© 2026 Pelshval

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑