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.