Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Author: pelshvalen (Page 1 of 44)

On dignity

16.05.2025 /

Today I listened to Glenn Diesen interviewing Gideon Levy, an Israeli journalist and author who runs a weekly column in the Haaretz.

I forget what Diesen’s initial question was, but I shall never forget Mr Levy’s reply: “Uh, I’m so desperate that I don’t know where to start.”

And he looked it. Sallow and drawn, he had not the slightest hint of a smile on his face throughout their conversation. Even Glenn Diesen seemed to be twitching uncomfortably in his chair in the end, because – according to Mr Levy – there is not even a sliver of hope for the future of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

There is only one person in the entire world who can stop the current slaughter, and that is Trump, but Trump has been paid 100 million USD in advance by Miriam-what’s-er-name to not do what he could and should do.

True, there is vociferous opposition to Netanyahu, yes, but not because of the plight of the Gazans; only because of the hostages. If the hostages are released, the Israeli government is welcome to do whatever it likes with Gaza. “They couldn’t care less about the suffering in Gaza.” There is no organised opposition to the ethnic cleansing. There will be no civil war in Israel. There will be no military coup, even if there has been some tension between the government and the military (which is overstretched). There will be no exodus from Israel – for the simple reason that it’s too risky to leave a home and a job for an uncertain future.

Mr Levy pointed out that Israelis love and are proud of their military which is integrated in Israeli society in a way that most of us cannot imagine.

As for the future: The war will simply continue indefinitely, until all Gazans have been killed, all 2.3 million of them. (The part of the previous sentence that follows the word “until”, was not explicitly uttered, but was left hanging as an ellipsis.)

Unless … unless Trump stops it. If he does, the Gazans will nonetheless have to go on living in “a cage”. Palestinians are not people.

A two-state solution is out of the question now that there are 700 000 illegal Israeli settlers on the West Bank. And dismantling apartheid is simply not on the books, never has been. Not on anyone’s books in Israel, because the Palestinians are not people.

There are admittedly “some inconvenient incidents in Europe” for people who fly.

People try to hide their Israeli identity, …but there is no real shame for what we are doing … Most Israelis are totally convinced that the world is anti-Semitic. …It’s all about you, the world. You should be accused, not us.

That is, says Mr Levi, the attitude of almost every Israeli. Because Palestinians are not people.

I have a friend in Gaza with whom I used to work in Gaza for many, many years… And he is diabetic and he needs insulin, And one week ago he told me he was left with the last two drops of insulin. I didn’t call him since then, but we know what happens to people in his condition when they don’t have insulin…

There is, of course, also the tragedy of the crumbling of moral standards in Israel. But above all, he warns:

SAVE THE PEOPLE OF GAZA.

Meanwhile, back at home base, I admit I have been hoping that Israelis would be so disgusted by the horrible deeds their beloved military is committing that they would rise up in arms, and violently overthrow the monsters that are governing them. Now I ask myself, why on earth have I expected more from Israelis than from my own people, from Europeans, from US Americans, who are actively aiding and abetting this mother of all nightmares with arms and “everything we ever asked for”, as Mr Levy put it.

I hold that if you treat a whole population as vermin, you have divested yourself of all human dignity. If we, the others, aid you who treat a whole population as vermin, we are no better than you and as devoid of moral dignity.

Ethnic cleansing – i.e. treating people of a certain nationality or ethnic background as vermin – was the principal crime committed by the Nazis, who considered Poles, Belarusians, Czechs, Ukrainians, Russians, Serbs and Jews to be untermenschen that had to be exterminated. The allies’ resistance to the Nazis was impressive. We did not trade with them, we had no cultural relations with them; we certainly did not send them weapons or money.

Now look at us!

In contrast, I would like to introduce you, if you don’t already know of him, to Pepe Mujica. The people of Uruguay actually went and elected him as president of their country, an office he held from 2010 to 2015.

That a population should choose as their president a person who had been a political prisoner for 11 years (during the US-orchestrated dictatorship of Uruguay) is remarkable in itself. It is all the more remarkable in view of his outlook. I urge you to listen to his monologue, in Spanish it is true, but beautifully (visually) translated to English.

Pepe Mujica passed away last Tuesday (13 May) 89 years old. He was probably relieved to be released from pain, but news of his passing has moved people all over the world. His iconoclastic lifestyle as president has spawned innumerable amusing legends which you will find on the web. However, I would like to focus on the speech held at his funeral by Mauricio Rosencof, about the many years the two of them were incarcerated in the same prison. Rosencof is also very old, but clear as a bell and well-spoken. His speech is in Spanish, but youtube translates, if you press settings (the cog wheel) then “Subtitles/CC”. Below “Spanish (auto-generated)”, click “Auto-translate”.

I put to you that human dignity still exists. Somewhere.

What they are not telling us

12.05.2025 /

I should be ashamed of myself! And I am, believe me, but not sufficiently so to alter the title of this post while I still can, before I click “publish”.

Yes, it is a ludicrously pretentious title – after all, there is so much more they don’t tell us than what I want to write about. They don’t tell us about their military cabals, for instance; they didn’t even tell us (Norwegians) that they were going to let the USA take military control of our country, with 12 US military bases. They certainly didn’t allow us to vote on the matter. There was no referendum. Nor were we told ahead of parliamentary elections that the issue would be on the Parliament’s agenda. We were thus unable to vote for MPs known to be opposed to the US takeover. We were simply presented with a fait accompli. I am certainly not surprised that Trump speaks of “bying” Greenland; he has effectively already full control over Norway.

Yet, I am not going to change the title of this post, because I think that the issue I have in mind is very serious indeed. I could of course change it to “One of the things they don’t tell us”, but this is not really about a “thing”. It’s about a whole web of interrelated issues that connect with other webs of interrelated issues at various levels, which could, in the long or even short run, culminate in the “end of history”, not as Fukuyama envisaged “the end”, but rather like the “final solution” for us all.

So no, I am not changing the title.

What they are not telling us, then, is about the “tragedy of Ukraine”, as Nicolai Petro calls it, about how a relatively small minority came to dominate the vast majority in a fairly large country. I would like to stress that there seems to be no doubt that a fairly solid majority were earnestly in favour of Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union. But only a very small minority wished to pursue the course that was subsequently taken, one which led to the collapse of Ukrainian economy, civil war, and subsequently what we have been seeing these past couple of years, which is a stand-off between Russia and the “West”, a stand-off in which the Ukrainian population is being sacrificed.

I cannot and therefore will not presume to tell the tale of Ukraine’s tragedy. It has many chapters and many protagonists. Anybody who reads good novels or good history books knows that protagonists can be good or bad or, more often than not, both. Even a person with the best of intentions can do immeasurable harm. The modern history of Ukraine is like a great big forest, in which enemies lurk in the dark. It is very easy to lose one’s way between details.

There is no doubt whatsoever, that Ukraine has lost its way. I shall refrain, today, from expressing myself regarding the role played by Western players.

Instead, I leave the details to the West-Ukrainian researcher,
Marta Havryshko, here interviewed by Glenn Diesen,

Frigjøringsdagen 8. mai

08.05.2025 /

Det er 80 år siden, ja, og ikke husker jeg selve dagen, siden jeg ikke en gang var påtenkt da. Men det må ha vært en utrolig sterk opplevelse, enten man gikk på Karl Johan eller gråt hjemme på gården av lettelse og kanskje også av sorg. Det var jo noen som aldri mer ville vende hjem. Så var det også et mindretall som hadde samarbeidet med tyskerne.

Men jeg har tross alt levd såpass mange år at jeg har vært avstandsvitne til mange kriger, blant dem NATOs 88-dager-lange bombing av Serbia i 1999. Den gang fantes det kritikere av Norges og NATOs politikk. Dessverre, var jeg ikke en av dem.

Akk.

Jeg vet mer nå om hva som skjedde i 1999 og om hvordan vi ble manipulert, hvordan vi igjen blir manipulert, ang. krigen i Ukraina.

USA (Biden og Trump) framstiller USA som vinneren av annen verdenskrig. Da vi landet i Normandie, reddet vi verden, heter det. Til og med Aftenpostens Halvor Hegtun, blir indignert av påstanden og sender sovjetiske soldater som ofret livet en takknemlig tanke i det han i dag “ruslet fordi” bautaen til minne om dem.

Men jeg ruslet ikke forbi. Partiet FOR arrangerte kransnedleggelse ved de falne sovjetiske soldaters bauta i Vestre Gravlund. Det var ingen der fra regjeringen, fra NRK, eller fra det offisielle Norge. Ingen.

I Norges program nevnes ikke Sovjetunionen.

Men det var en smilende og respektfull gjeng på 50-70 personer som etterhvert stilte opp foran bautaen for å hedre de nærmere 27 millioner sovjetiske borgerne som mistet livet i kampen mot Nazismen. Av dem døde 13 700 av sult, utmattelse, kulde og annen mishandling på norsk jord under krigen. Hvor mange av dem som var ukrainere vites ikke. Det må ha vært en del.

Den norske pressen velger for tiden å ikke snakke om forræderen Stepan Bandera og hans samarbeid med tyskerne under krigen. Stepan Bandera er jo utropt som nasjonalhelt i Ukraina.

Jeg lar ballen ligge. Dette skal jo være en fredens dag.

The value of money

04.05.2025 /

I heard in this remarkable conversation that in the USA, the “Israel Lobby” controls about 400 of the 435 members of the House of Representatives. That’s deeply disturbing, to say the least.

Here and now I won’t bother disputing the ludicrous positions of the “Israel Lobby”.

Nor am I now going to vindicate defenders of the so-called First Amendment that is so sacred to the USA (with good reason). In my country, you see, suppressing dissent is much easier than in the USA. In my country, people implicitly “trust” the mainstream press, because the mainstream press is, after all, our press. Our press tells us, day in and day out, what we need to know. It tells us that Russia will invade Europe, that China will invade Taiwan (without reminding us that Taiwan is actually part of China) and that we must be very grateful for US military presence here (Norway). The press adds that we must all be prepared for nuclear war. We must keep a stock of toilet paper, bottled water and batteries. Our press looks after us, you see.

Do you think I am proud of my country’s press? Has my country’s press informed me that one of the 9 US military bases on the Philippines has a Typhon missile system installed? With a range of about 2,000 kilometres, it can hit most major cities on the Chinese mainland. Not a word, as far as I can see.

But at least my country has made it resoundingly clear that we are horrified and repelled by the moral decrepitude of genocidal Zionism, which appears to control the Congress of the country that insists on controlling the world.

In the above-linked conversation, the two men seem to agree that Congress has quite simply been bought, bribed if you will. Now I really have trouble getting my head around such a supposition.

On the other hand, is it not so that anybody who freely and voluntarily defends starving a population to death, mutilating and torturing hundreds of thousands of people and forcing them to live under unbelievably ghastly conditions is in some way or other a defective human being, the sort of creature who should be monitored around the clock with an electronic bracelet?

Surely Congress isn’t made up of lunatics and psychopaths?

So I must take a closer look at the other supposition: A million USD is a lot of money. Even half a million would revolutionise my life. Besides, just as a member of Congress I would presumably be very well paid. I don’t really approve of torturing innocent people, but I would like to improve the plight of homeless people in my district and I could raise their case if I were in Congress, and – well – half a million USD would be nice.

Is that how it goes?

Is that also how the innumerable US wars go? We want to bring freedom to peoples of the world from Communism, theocracy, autocracy, etc. We are appalled by how women are oppressed in Afghanistan and Iran. We believe in LGBT rights, in justice, etc. etc. We raise our banners and continue the crusade, marching on, leaving a trail of death and despair everywhere we go.

All for money, right? Oil, minerals, black earth, etc. Gee!

Money, then, is very expensive.

Now, if so many members of the US Congress have been bribed – bought – where does that leave Democracy? In Democratic countries, members of national assemblies are elected just like members of Congress. Are Norwegian MPs more incorruptible than US Americans?

Dissent

01.05.2025 /

In Octobre 2023, Consortium News sued “NewsGuard Technologies, Inc.” and the United States government (the Pentagon’s Cyber Command) for defamation.

NewsGuard is “acting jointly or in concert with the United States to coerce news organizations to alter viewpoints” as to Ukraine, Russia, and Syria, imposing a form of “censorship and repression of views” that differ or dissent from policies of the United States and its allies.

So we have three parties – 1) the United States military industrial complex, aka the Pentagon, 2) Newsguard that defines itself as “A global leader in information reliability” and 3) Consortium News (CN), which is a news site, obviously.

Quoting from the CN “About” page:

When we founded Consortium News in 1995 – as the first investigative news magazine based on the Internet – there was already a crisis building in the U.S. news media. The mainstream media was falling into a pattern of groupthink on issue after issue, often ignoring important factual information ….

We also looked at the underlying problems of modern democracy, particularly the insidious manipulation of citizens by government propaganda and the accomplice role played by mainstream media. Rather than encouraging diversity in analyses especially on topics of war and peace, today’s mainstream media takes a perverse pride in excluding responsible, alternative views.

Since I quote Consortium News, I should also quote Newsguard

… combines human expertise and technology to provide data, analysis and journalism that helps enterprises and consumers identify reliable information. NewsGuard’s detailed Source Reliability Ratings, produced by a team of expert analysts using apolitical journalistic criteria and a transparent process, enable enterprises and consumers to identify reliable sources of information at scale, with coverage of more than 35,000 online sources accounting for 95%+ of engagement. Our continuously updated Misinformation Fingerprints help clients identify and mitigate unreliable information, with data and analysis covering 30,000+ instances of false narratives spreading online with detailed and precise data seeds built for automated tracking. Altogether, NewsGuard has collected more than 6.9 million information reliability data points for its clients and customers since its 2018 launch [emphasis added].

The “misinformation” Newsguard refers to primarily applies to the Ukraine war and the Israeli genocide of Palestinians. Other misinformation doesn’t appear to interest this intrepid champion of the truth.

I should add that Newsguard is smart enough to also include a couple of pro-Ukrainian and pro-Israeli “myths”. But there is no doubt about what master Newsguard is serving: a) Russophobe warmongers b) the “Israel lobby”.

So what was the issue between Newsguard/the Pentagon and CN? CN explains:

NewsGuard uses its software to tag targeted news sites, including all 20,000+ Consortium News articles and videos published since 1995, with warnings to “proceed with caution,” telling NewsGuard subscribers that Consortium News produces “disinformation,” “false content” and is an “anti-U.S.” media organization.

Elsewhere CN writes:

CN supports no side in the Ukraine war but seeks to examine the causes of the conflict within its recent historical context, all of which are being whitewashed from mainstream Western media.
…

Consortium News can be wrong at times, but never as wrong as mainstream media was on WMD in Iraq or Russiagate. CN got both those consequential stories right while they were happening, and contends it is correct in its analysis of the Ukraine crisis. In any case, it is entitled to its analysis [emphasis added].

In March 2025, we finally learnt:”Judge throws out libel suit against media misinformation rating firm NewsGuard“

Why? Because the judge found that:

Indeed, far from alleging that NewsGuard knew its statements to be false, Consortium News effectively concedes the truth of the ‘anti-U.S. perspective’ label, and acknowledges that ‘reasonable people’ could differ as to the truth or falsity of its reporting, undercutting any suggestion that NewsGuard knew its criticisms to be false and published those criticisms despite knowing them to be false.”

Read that paragraph again, I beg you. What it tells you is that:
a) Newsguard might have been unaware that its defamatory accusations were false,
b) that Consortium News has admitted that its views could be perceived as “anti-US”,
c) that a lot of people would be distressed by what Consortium News reported.

The Court evidently holds that defamation is OK if the perpetrators don’t know they are lying. The Court evidently holds that even if the US is pursuing egregious policies, there is good reason to suppress criticism of the US. And lastly, the Court holds that views other than those held by “reasonable people” may be suppressed.

I do not often laugh when I read the news. But I guffawed! If this is what they call Democracy, give me autocracy any day.

I suspect that the reason Consortium News has been targeted by the Pentagon is that its reporting is, alas, well-founded. See for instance the article On Neo-Nazi Influence in Ukraine which includes links to BBC video footage from 2014 and 2015.

While you’re at it, you might also listen to the rather remarkable CBS interview with Sergei Lavrov.

På den ene og den andre siden

26.04.2025 /

Hva skal vi si om Trump? Og hva skal vi si om de andre?

  • Trump sparker tusenvis av statsansatte og stenger ned store deler av statsforvaltningen.
    • Gjør han det
      • for å redusere den vanvittige statsgjelda (i 2024: USD 35 billioner (altså 10^12) – dvs. over 120 % av BNP)?
      • for å redusere det årlige budsjettunderskuddet, som de siste årene har vært på 6-7 %?
    • Hans motstandere på venstresiden hevder
      • han gjør det for å få råd til å redusere toppskatt på de aller rikeste
      • for å velte en større del av de økonomiske byrdene over på vanlige folk.
  • Han innfører og opphever tariffer fra dag til dag. Usikkerheten som følger av disse svimlende svingende tariffene rammer visstnok alt fra aksjepriser, leveranser og produksjon.
    • skyldes vinglingen at han ikke vet hva han gjør?
    • at han bruker tariffer som utpressing for å oppnå fordeler for USA?
  • For Trump kan tariffer fortone seg
    • som en inntektskilde
    • som middel til å redusere handelsunderskuddet ($1.2 billioner, 4 % av GDP)
    • som verktøy til å stimulere egen industri i USA.
  • De jeg har konsultert (sosialister som kapitalister) enes om at:
    • som verktøy for å stimulere USAnsk industri, vil ikke tariffene funke. Det skal mye mer til for å gjenoppvekke Lazarus.
  • Trump fortsetter det Biden begynte, nemlig å forby Israel-kritikk på universitetene.
  • I tillegg deporterer han uten lov og dom, Israel-kritiske utlendinger som har lovlig opphold i USA.
  • Trump har gjentatte ganger vist rystende forakt for rettsvesenet også i andre henseender.
  • Trump har gjentatte ganger gjort det klart at han er imot “forever wars” og at han ikke vil innlemme USA i nye kriger.
  • Han har ikke statsvitenskapelig kompetanse. Slik sett skiller han seg ikke fra tidligere USA-presidenter. Men han skiller seg fra dem ved ikke å legge skjul på det.
  • Han later til å trives blant milliardærer. Han er ikke den første som tenker at hvis man er veldig rik, så er man også “smart. Han er ikke den første som tenker at det et land trenger er smarte folk.
  • Han klarer å tale til mannen på gata.
  • Hans MAGA-politikk er en eufemisme for: “redd USA fra bankerott”.

Er han verre for USA enn forgjengerne?

  • Uavhengig av partitilhørighet har forgjengerne alle gått mer eller mindre i samme spor:
    • deregulering, de-industrialisering, stimulering av finanssektoren, og “forever wars”.
  • Forgjengernes politikk har ikke forbedret folks kår:
    • fattigdom har økt dramatisk de siste årtiene
    • en håndfull rike er blitt veldig mye rikere.
  • USAs satsing på at USD vil fortsette å være verdens reservevaluta representerer et gigantisk pyramidespill.
    • Før eller senere sprekker bobla. Det er sikkert som – jeg hadde nær sagt – “banken”.

Svar: Tja….

Er han verre for resten av verden enn forgjengerne?

  • Forgjengerne har alle som én understreket at internasjonale lover og regler ikke gjelder for USA.
    • Ved å undergrave selve eksistensen av FOLKERETTEN, har forgjengerne brakt verden til randen av anarki.
  • Teamet til Trump har erkjent at USA ikke lenger kan (eller bør prøve å) styre verden (Rubio), selv om vi her later som om vi ikke hørte det.
  • Når reservevalutaen faller vil det medføre en tsunami i verdensøkonomien uavhengig av om det skjer på Trumps vakt.
    • Men tsunamier varer ikke evig.

***

OG VI ANDRE – EUROPA

  • I Romania avblåste domstolene andre runde i presidentvalget i desember fordi man var sikker på at en såkalt “høyre-populist”, Calin Georgescu, ville vinne. Så forbød man Diana Sosoaca å stille som presidentkandidat, da hun angivelig hadde uttrykt motstand mot landets medlemskap i EU og NATO. Likevel, ved valget 4. mai (Georgescu har fått forbud mot å stille) ventes det at en langt mer høyre-populistisk kandidat vinner.
  • Man burer Marine le Pen (slik at hun ikke kan stille til valg mot Macron) for misbruk av EU midler i valgkamp. Mine kilder sier at det kan meget godt hende at hun har misbrukt EU-midler, men det har sannelig så godt som alle andre topp-politikere i EU også gjort. Dette kalles “lawfare”.
  • Macron tapte siste valg, men sitter likevel.
  • Man prøver å forby AFD i Tyskland.
  • Etter siste valg i Tyskland, måtte Scholz gå av og nasjonalforsamlingen ble oppløst. Merz blir antakelig ny kansler når den nye nasjonalforsamlingen trer sammen. Men han er det ikke enda. Likevel sammenkalte han i mars det oppløste parlamentet og fikk presset gjennom fjerning – ja, fjerning – av gjeldstaket. (Det nyvalgte parlamentet ville ikke ha tillatt det.) Målet hans skal være å gjøre Tyskland til en militær stormakt. IGJEN.

Jeg er ikke “tilhenger” av f.eks. le Pen og AFD, men jeg må spørre: Vil vi ha demokrati eller vil vi ikke det? Slike forhold var det JD Vance påpekte i sin berømte tale på sikkerhets-konferansen i Munchen. Vil de europeiske lederne bare ha demokrati når deres venner vinner?

Min venninne hater JD Vance. Hun har sikkert mange grunner til det. De aller fleste jeg kjenner hater Trump og har sikkert mange grunner til det. Men jeg vil påpeke at det fremfor alt er JD Vance og Tulsi Gabbard og, faktisk, Pete Hegseth og Trump selv som prøver å forhindre at USA blir tvunget inn i en angrepskrig mot Iran. Marco Rubio, derimot, og Mike Waltz og mesteparten av kongressen (begge partier støttes av våpenindustrien og sionistlobbyen) vil fryktelig gjerne endelig realisere Netanyahus våte drøm. (Glenn Greenwald fra ca. 18 minutter)

Forteller Klassekampen det? Eller Aftenposten?

Pressen – her, der og alle steder – fremmer enkle og ensidige narrativer. Når narrativet er for enkelt, blir det fort gjort å velge for enkle løsninger.

Jeg skal ikke nekte for at også jeg “hater” den ene og den andre. Men dem jeg velger å “hate” er nettopp typer som pressen hauser urettmessig opp. Om Zelensky, vet jeg for eksempel langt mer enn det Klassekampen og Aftenposten velger å fortelle, for å si det slik.

Apropos Klassekamen leser jeg om avisas pressestøtte: 16.10.2024: “Klassekampen får som alltid mest i støtte i år. Avisen får også den største økningen, og får 45 millioner kroner, mot 40 millioner kroner i 2023.” Er det en grunn til at Klassekampen flere år på rad har fått “mest”?

United Nations or chaos

21.04.2025 /

Why, my friends ask, why do I keep on making a spectacle of myself, antagonising people left, right and centre? Why can’t I just sit back and enjoy spring, friendships, books, music, films? In short, why can’t I just enjoy life till it ends (i.e. till the war starts)? All my screaming from barricades won’t change anything, they say.

They are probably right about that last bit. I can’t change a thing. Even the late Pope Francis wasn’t able to change much, bless him. (I am not being ironic: I think he was a good and brave man. He is rumoured to not have been very brave during the Videla dictatorship, but he made up for it.) So if even the pope, … how can I presume to imagine that my barricades will make a difference?

Well, for one thing, I am not alone. There are others. Many others in fact. All over the world. Don’t forget: numbers matter. True, you have powerful people like Santa Ursula, Sir Keir Rodney and the not-yet-chancellor Merz, not to mention Macron le Beau – all fabulously unpopular. How do they propose to continue staying in power without introducing autocracy?

True, most people have few sources of information other than the corporate press, in which Norwegians have such bizarre faith. (I still blame Stoltenberg for my compatriots’ tragic ingenuousness.) But if people were aware of all the lies we have been served over the years, not to mention all the news that was deliberately withheld from us, they would not be pleased. So I write and make a spectacle of myself, and others – all over the world – write or run podcasts and youtube channels. More and more and more dissenting blogs and podcasts and youtube channels pop up every day.

If you think that these people are all disgruntled socialists, take a look at Cyrus Janssen’s youtube channel, for instance. He is anything but.

Most people who know that Zelensky is a consummate liar are, it is true, silent. At least here in Norway where criticising Zelensky is simply not done and ridiculing him is tantamount to sacrilege. Here we say that Zelensky was “badly mistreated” in the Oval Office. Zelensky did not misbehave. Trump did. Of course, hearing such statements I regularly walk straight into the trap, defending Trump, which is simply not done here either. Ever.

Now I don’t often defend Trump, but honestly, Zelensky was being rude and as obstreperous ( I can’t resist using the word) as a biker on a cocaine high. And as far as Trump is concerned, I will say this for him: The root causes of the growing problems that await him and US voters are not of his making, though the medicine he is proposing will not work.

My compatriots will not be tearing down the walls of any Bastille, for the simple reason that the walls around us here are made not of stone nor of hardship, but of silence. But elsewhere there is loud rumbling. And since even the EU still consists of nominally Democratic independent states, we can hope that voters will demand change. In the US, likewise. Big change.

The most important change of all, though, concerns the United Nations, where to this day the former colonial powers, UK and France and the biggest bully of all, the USA, hold not only permanent seats but powers of veto. This must NOT GO ON.

As things stand, the most powerful killer apes act with total impunity. The UN charter is all but forgotten, and the world – at least the West – is degenerating into anarchy. Possibly no state should hold veto power.

I leave it to you to design a new Security Council.

Personally, I shall just sit back and enjoy, as my friends recommend. I shall enjoy the thought of a world where the UN Charter and the Declaration of Human Rights are once again universally revered. You may find these documents outdated, but that is what we agreed upon back then, and that is what we shall have to work from.

I shall enjoy the thought of a Security Council that has almost unanimously voted to impose a global boycott on trade with Israel, and a whole raft of economic sanctions on Israeli war criminals. I shall enjoy the thought of a Security Council that sends UN peacekeeping troupes to protect the people of Gaza and the West Bank. Then and only then can talks begin – and they will probably require much patience – as to how Israelis and Palestinians can settle their ancient differences. Will they cohabit as equals (this would require compensations for land stolen from the Palestinians) between the river and the sea? Or will they occupy separate lands after the eviction of all the illegal settlers on the West Bank?

When all this is settled, the boycott will end and sanctions will be lifted.

I shall enjoy the thought of a world where we have, once more, international law, not chaos. There will still be wars. There will be bullies. But there will be a common understanding of International Law, a yardstick, as it were, by which to asses adherence to international rule of law.

There will once more be a global organisation with authority to chastise future bullies.

On wars and countries

18.04.2025 /

Anyone who hasn’t read Nikolai Petro‘s book The Tragedy of Ukraine doesn’t know the first thing about Ukraine, not even the last thing. The above word “anyone” , by the way, includes Russians and Ukrainians and, until today, myself. Mind you, I thought I knew a lot. I certainly knew a lot about the war, but the war does not explain Ukraine.

I will repeat that: The war does not explain Ukraine.

How we see a war tends to define how we see the countries involved in it. Many of us tend to side with the underdog, and will develop all kinds of favourable ideas about that country. For instance, I never thought much of the Houthis in the past (religious fundamentalism is not normally something I tend to vote for) but now I consider them heroes. Having almost been exterminated after years of Saudi bombing and starvation, they understand the Gazans better than most. And the very fact that they are still on their feet, defending Gaza in the face of heavy US bombardment is truly remarkable. Yes, they are indeed heroes. You, however, might disagree with me.

But the Houthis are not my concern here. I am. Or rather we are. We who watch wars from a safe distance while people are killing each other. Some of us are horrified, some are angry, some pretend to shrug and remind themselves that we are, after all, just the distant offspring of killer-apes.

So while I gladly admit I don’t know the first thing about Yemen and the Houthis, I honestly thought I knew a lot about Ukraine.

My ignorance, or rather the ignorance of just about everybody other than the warring parties, is part of the problem. How many of our involved diplomats and statesmen actually speak or read Russian or Ukrainian, for instance? How much do they actually know? Are they as ignorant as the rest of us, who only have second-hand knowledge handed down to us filtered by political agendas. I suspect they are.

Until you see “Table 3.2: Ukrainian Officials on the Treasonous Nature of Maloross Ukrainians” in the afore-mentioned book, you will not fully understand that the war was inevitable.

Inevitable.

I have not yet read all of Nikolai Petrov’s book, and I fear I shall be in for further shocks and surprises. For now, I merely repeat: If you care at all about Ukraine, get hold of the book! Read it!

Homo

16.04.2025 /

The Australopithecus, our distant forebear (e.g. “Lucy”), lived during a period (the Pliocene) when global temperatures started by rising to 2–3 °C above our current global average before eventually dropping to the point where much of the planet was periodically covered by a thick coat of ice (the Pleistocene) for 2 million years (a scenario possibly resembling what awaits us).

Yet, even during the ice ages, humans were still on the scene, to begin with in the shape of Homo erectus, some of whom left Africa during the Pleistocene, colonised Eurasia and used fire. Resourceful as they obviously were, these vagabonds were probably not our direct forebears, as H. sapiens are believed to have originated on the Horn of Africa between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago.

Fairly recently, we learnt of the migratory wave of H. sapiens via the Middle East to Eurasia and eventually Australia and South America that set off a mere 70.000–50.000 years ago. There had been several previous migratory waves, and there is even “evidence that modern humans had reached China around 80,000 years ago.”

Practically all of these early waves seem to have gone extinct or retreated back, and present-day humans outside Africa descend mainly from a single expansion about 70,000–50,000 years ago.

Since then, we have seen the rise and fall of empires. We have seen massacres, genocides, devastating wars. To be fair, some of us have also been privileged enough to enjoy the arts, sciences, delicious foodstuffs, vacations abroad… Some humans have devoted their lives to others, to the study of chimps, for instance, to the protection of ecosystems, etc.

Moreover, we are now so scientifically advanced that we know that we share nearly 99 % of our DNA with chimpanzees and bonobos.

Now that is not encouraging, because chimps, intelligent as they may be, are a nasty piece of work. To be precise, they are male chauvinist, rapist killers. For some reason, popular culture has refused to focus on these obnoxious traits. And to the extent that people had to admit that there were 21 chimp-on-chimp murders in a single national park in Uganda, they have tended to blame proximity to humans. However, several studies have shown that chimp violence is not a result of contact with humans.

In fact, we found that the site with the least violence had the largest human impact, and the site with the most violence was one of the least impacted.

True, bonobos (who have female leaders, by the way) are not murderous though they too engage in fierce but non-lethal quarrels. We share, I repeat, nearly 99 % of our DNA with them too. Similar to the chimps in appearance, bonobos are not carnivorous. (Moreover, they are on the verge of extinction.)

The reason we share so much DNA with chimps and bonobos is that they and we have a common ancestor. According to Wikipedia:

The split between the human and chimpanzee–bonobo lineages, took place around 8–4 million years ago, in the late Miocene epoch. During this split, chromosome 2 was formed from the joining of two other chromosomes, leaving humans with only 23 pairs of chromosomes, compared to 24 for the other apes.

The famous primatologist Jane Goodall (born 1934), having devoted much of her life to chimps, wrote about chimp violence in her 1990 memoir Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe, quoted by Wikipedia in an article about the Gombe Chimpanzee war:

For several years I struggled to come to terms with this new knowledge. Often when I woke in the night, horrific pictures sprang unbidden to my mind—Satan [one of the apes], cupping his hand below Sniff’s chin to drink the blood that welled from a great wound on his face; old Rodolf, usually so benign, standing upright to hurl a four-pound rock at Godi’s prostrate body; Jomeo tearing a strip of skin from Dé’s thigh; Figan, charging and hitting, again and again, the stricken, quivering body of Goliath, one of his childhood heroes.

Youtube footage of a chimp grieving for a dead relative or performing acts of kindness tends to move us: “So human!” we exclaim. I take a different tack. Hearing the war cries of human alpha males (and “alpha females”!), I exclaim: “So ape-like!”

Alas, today as in the past, the shots are called by ape-like killer-humans. With such leaders, do we even want to be here after WWIII and climate meltdown?

My worry is not that the human species may disappear. My greatest fear is that those of us who are not ape-like, not killer-humans will suffer immeasurably on our route to extinction, just as the Gazans are suffering today.

But I do not believe the species will be entirely extinguished.  Homo has survived in the most uncongenial of circumstances and will as a species survive, even WW III and climate meltdown.

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