Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Author: pelshvalen (Page 1 of 41)

Distraction

18.12.2024 /

I try not to think about the people in Gaza and on the West Bank, but I find it difficult. After all, we have been taught in school about the Holocaust, we have seen more films about WWII and its racism and victims of racism than about any other single historical topic. Films are a powerful medium. I used to be fairly thick-skinned, but in recent years, I can no longer endure scenes of torture at the cinema: I can smell it! It’s true. I can smell it! Smell the blood, the faeces, the urine. I can hear the screams, see the jugulars of the sadists, and I long to …

I will not tell you what I long to …

My friends laugh at me when I need to leave the television on the pretext of getting a cup of coffee – or at least, they used to; I don’t think they are laughing now. They said: “For Pete’s sake, it’s just fiction!” But I always knew it wasn’t fiction. Now I think they know, too. But they will forget. As soon as Palestine is obliterated and Gaza has become a fashionable Israeli tourist destination, the corporate media will help us all forget about all the Palestinian blood in the soil of Gaza’s tourist resorts. Is Gaza’s soil red, I wonder? I shouldn’t be surprised.

But again, as I say, I try not to think about Gaza. I turn to Isabel Allende, to distracting, relatively intelligent light entertainment.

Now I don’t know what you think about Isabel Allende. She is no doubt smart, probably a good business woman, and with great acumen for what her mostly female readers want. She tells a good yarn, full of unexpected twists and turns and acrobatic leaps. She’s very good at describing sexual bliss. So I was not expecting what I got in “La isla bajo el mar”.

For one thing, the book is painfully long! She is not trying to sell us something light and easy. She is furious, and she goes on and on about it, and believe me, I am hanging on to what she writes, sentence by painful sentence.

In brief, it’s about slavery. Not only slavery: racism. And she is not going about her story in an easy way. She is really trying to understand racism! And that is, to my mind, the greatest merit of this very long and painful book about the remarkable and heroic slave rebellion in Haiti against the French army, no less. A remarkable story, but she tells it as though she was there, and that must have cost her no small amount of research.

How can a reasonably decent man actually believe that people of dark skin are so different from us that they can and should be treated badly, she seems to be asking, because surely, not all slave owners were morally inferior? And I find that she does an impressive job of portraying a slave owner in Haiti and explaining why he behaves in such an appalling manner and how plantation ownership gradually turns what initially is a “reasonably decent man” into a cowardly scoundrel.

Mind you, her slaves are not angels either! Far from it. Once they escape, they seek vengeance and are as cruel as their former owners. In view of how slaves were murdered, tortured to death in the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, their vindictiveness is fully understandable, but the reader finds it more painful to learn that they also betray each other. The ghastly tendency of some people to seek power over others – even global hegemony – is not limited to those of white skin.

I had picked up the book thinking I would enjoy light entertainment, a distraction from the ghastly realities being so eagerly aided and abetted by genocide Joe and his ilk. Instead, what I was reading seemed to indicate that this planet would be better off without humans.

But it certainly would be better without the kind of humans that can blithely write and even publish without shame Which Path to Iran (June, 2009). Those are the humans advising the White House.

Look at page 12, for instance, the table of contents that lists, among other things, the options:

Disarming Tehran: The Military Option

  • Chapter 3: Going All the Way: Invasion
  • Chapter 4: The Osiraq Option: Airstrikes
  • Chapter 5: Leave it to Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike [my emphasis]

Toppling Tehran: Regime Change

  • Chapter 6: The Velvet Revolution: Supporting a Popular Uprising
  • Chapter 7: Inspiring an Insurgency: Supporting Iranian Minority And Opposition Groups
  • Chapter 8: The Coup: Supporting a Military Move Against the Regime

Next, read page 14 in its entirety, under the heading The Trouble with Tehran. Please note, that this is not about women’s rights, not even about justice and democracy. It’s about US interests. Please also note that this was nearly 15 years before 7 October.

Was 7 October the very badly needed excuse Bibi has been waiting for?

Believe me, every time I hear about US interests, I start itching. All over. Abolition of slavery ran contrary to the interests of plantation owners. US interests run contrary to the interests of the vast majority of all humans.

Syria

15.12.2024 /

I am not going to write about Syria. I have never been to Syria and know very little about the country.

I do, however, remember that I learnt and knew – with absolute certainty when it happened – that the USA (starting with NED) played a dirty game in Syria’s civil war. The US was heavily engaged there from the very start. Or before.

Like Libya and Iraq, Syria was once a country with very respectable living standards, relatively high levels of education and health services, but no free press. In 2011 people started clamouring for a free press. Protesters were imprisoned and viciously tortured.

The Syrian government claimed they were cracking down on terrorists. Of course, most of the protesters were not terrorists.

But there were terrorists, and they were being trained and financed by the USA which could not countenance that Assad was under Russian influence.

Did I already mention that Syria was once a country with very respectable living standards, relatively high levels of education and health services?

I might even mention it a third time, since the USA is not a country with very respectable living standards, availability of higher education and decent health services. Much good the free press and the circus of democratic elections have done the majority of US citizens.

Anyway, the US has since imposed “sanctions” on Syria, has stolen Syria’s oil and has occupied its most valuable and productive agricultural land. In short, the USA has done what it regularly does to countries that offer citizens outside Europe respectable living standards, relatively high levels of education and health services:
It has tried to starve the country to death.

This I did not know. Not until now, when I have spent quite a lot of time and effort trying to understand why Assad’s troops simply caved in, why Turkey is playing its strange game, why Russia walked away, and why Israel is applauding a Jihadist occupation of Syria. Very confusing indeed unless you understand the background, which the corporate press painstakingly declines to do.

So rather than tell you all about Syria, I leave you with Chris Hedges, or rather with Alastair Crooke [yes, that is how the name is spelt] to whom he addresses a few questions. I must warn you: The former MI6 officer and diplomat has a weak voice but a most extraordinarily nimble mind.

“North–South Divide”

11.12.2024 /

The title to this post was the humble search string I entered in DuckDuckGo a couple of days ago. It returned less than a dozen results, some of them about the UK.

“North South exploitation” yielded more results, it is true, but if you are a student with an open mind preparing a paper about the issue based on what you find by means of search engines, I’m afraid you will be very misguided. For example no. 3 on the result list I got is an article from thegeographyteacher.com: “The North South Divide made SIMPLE”. Simple it is. Obviously many a student will go for it, and boy-or-boy how misinformed they will be. For one thing there will be no mention of modern exploitation. The exploitation referred to will be from colonial times.

It is true that Aljazeera has somehow managed to get on to the first page of my result list with an opinion piece from 2021. Rich countries drained $152tn from the global South since 1960. (Did you notice? That was trillions.)

Most of what you will read in the corporate media will give you the impression that Africa, poor dear, is struggling as a result of past colonialism, and current corruption, and that we, the enlightened and mostly “liberal”, not to mention “humane”, West are doing our darnedest to drag Africa out of the rut. (The corporate media is – I repeat for the umpteenth time – a slut serving the powers that be.) Google and DuckDuckG, I am sorry to say, are part of the corporate media.

True, DuckDuckGo lists a whole bunch of highly academic research papers discussing minute aspects of North South exploitation, but they tend to be arcane. Nevertheless, their existence demonstrates that the issue is known, at least to researchers.

You will find no clear and comprehensible explanation of the basically simple mechanisms of what is often referred to as neo-colonialism. It is not taught in school; it is not highlighted on the internet; and if you google “neo-colonialism”, you will get definitions galore, and a few so-called examples, but little understanding of how it works.

DuckDuckGo will not flag that what we, the enlightened-mostly-liberal-humane West, have done to Africa is to subject the continent to IMF’s neo-liberal dictates and interest rates – usury – so that the countries’ annual incomes are spent mainly on servicing cumulative debts, to be paid in USD, the reserve currency. To obtain USD the countries have to produce what the West demands of them, to be sold to the West at prices determined by the West. And if a country’s government fails to do as ordered by the West, the US will clap sanctions on it and/or organise a regime change operation, as was the case recently in Pakistan (with the coup against Imran Kahn), later in Bangladesh, and most recently in Syria (after more than a decade of crippling sanctions against the near starving Syrian population). You won’t find this stated, far less explained, merely by googling.

We are not supposed to be aware of what’s going on; that’s the point. We, Western consumers don’t want to feel we are cheating workers who cannot afford to send their children to school in far-off countries. We want to feel we are “good people”. Awareness of injustice tends to kindle tensions or, as they say, disrupt “social cohesion”. We feel bad when our governments, voted on by us, actively support a genocide. Distrust grows. And threatens status quo. An example of smouldering tension is the extraordinary reaction to a recent murder in the USA.

In the USA, more and more people feel that they are being cheated. Their jobs have been outsourced. Indebted farmers have had to sell their land for next to nothing to agroindustry. Trump voters, in particular, are angry. They blame China and migration. Nobody is telling them about Bangladesh. Remember the garment factory in Bangladesh that collapsed killing 1134 people injuring 2500? I don’t know about where you live, but where I live it’s very hard, still, to find garments that are not produced, in part or altogether, in Bangladesh. “Bangladesh is today one of the world’s largest garment exporters,” this article jubilantly reported in 2021. Amnesty tells another story.

What has triggered the inordinate immigration to the US and to Europe? There are causes, multiple causes. I put to you that those causes are almost all related to the issue “North–South Divide”.

No matter how many malaria vaccines a charitable organisation sends to Africa, we are e-x-p-l-o-i-t-i-n-g – repeat EXPLOITING not only Africa, but the entire global south in a monumental way. This fact is illustrated by a paper that is not easy reading but all the more shocking.

In general, I find that most people in the West still imagine, on the basis of what they have read and heard from the corporate media, that Africans have themselves to blame for their poverty, China and migration can be blamed for poverty in the USA, whereas our governments in the West are doing the best they can, be they “centre-right” or “centre-left” to defend themselves against forces of evil.

Are they doing the best they can? Behold how, as we speak, Santa Ursula and the EU political elite are cynically celebrating an agreement that will turn European farmers into paupers and benefit a small European elite.

Google and DuckDuckGo are not innocent parties. DuckDuckGo inc. is an independent company. It has stakes, as have all companies. It protects, first of all, its own interests, and so it should. But should we trust it to satify all our needs to know; yours and mine and those of the people in, for instance, Bangladesh? I put to you that we should not. I use DuckDuckGo every day, many times a day, but I know its limitations. So I put to you that we must also seek information about the state of the world actively, not from the corporate media, not using the corporate media’s search engines.

And one of the first things we need to understand are the causes and mechanisms of the North–South Divide. Why must we understand them? I’m afraid the answer to that question is a logical loop. We must understand them in order to understand how important it is to understand them.

I suggest starting with an introduction to third world debt, provided by two economists who are generous enough to devote some of their valuable time to explaining the matter to us – non-economists – in plain English. I listened to the linked “lecture” – for that was what it was – several months ago, but today, I printed the transcript and have been pouring over it for a couple of hours with a marker pen. I also downloaded the UNCTAD report commented on by one of them. I honestly think we owe it to ourselves and not least to the planet and future generations to seek to understand how imbalance of power is beeing abused destructively. I am sure somebody, though I cannot for the life of me remember who, once declared that “knowledge is power”.

(You might also take a look at some of the the other lectures in the series.)

Sociopathy – past, present and future

05.12.2024 /

Most people I speak to nowadays are worried about the future. Not that I speak to many, but those I do speak to have varying political viewpoints, and are of widely different ages and levels of education. Most of them disagree with very many of my views. But they are all worried; frightened even. One person told me today: “I am almost always angry now, rancorous even. It’s very uncomfortable, a corrosive state of mind.”

I told her: “As time passes, you will feel more sad than angry. We know there are scum-bags out there, particularly among those in power and those wanting to be in power. That’s how it’s always been and how it will always be.”

I happen to be reading the book “Una historia de España” by Perez-Reverte, which angrily summarises Spain’s inglorious past. I have read it before, but feel a need to read it again, because it mirrors what some of us in the West feel today in the face of our own very inglorious present. I have come to that very point in Spain’s past, as described by him, that seems almost to be about us now. Here is my interpretation of Perez-Reverte’s take:

In the second half of the nineteenth century, there were basically two political parties: the self-serving, often decadent liberals, and the conservatives (headed by a Church fanatically opposed to enlightenment) both equally intent on exploiting and suppressing peasants and the nascent class of industrial workers. (Spain had been a supremely backward country and had had virtually no industry until well into the nineteenth century). Both parties were supported by powerful military factions.

BUT at that very time, books were being written, spread and read, in spite of rigid censorship, by offspring of the burgeoning bourgeoisie. A number of “brave men and women” organised clandestine literacy classes. There were even a couple of revolutions, one in 1854, that were promptly suffocated with mass executions. For the majority, life was bleak, to say the least, suppression was more systematic than it had ever been. But looking back, the author seems to be saying, we see that seeds had been sown that would come to fruition a century later, at the death of Franco.

I think there is no doubt that US supremacy is coming to an end, just as the supremacy of the medieval Spanish oligarchy eventually came to an end. But will the process take another century? Will the Middle East have to wait for a century before it can know peace? Will USA’s distant vassals in Europe have to send their children to fight against Russia and die in the hundreds of thousands to protect the USD?

And what happens after that? Will the climate a hundred years hence accommodate life on this planet? Will the Chinese truly abide by their much vaunted Confucianism? Are there not scum-bags in China as elsewhere. Are we as defenceless against scum-bags as against climate change?

Crime passionel?

01.12.2024 /

When we read about a serious crime, we tend to look for a financial motive – “follow the money”. Forcing Ukraine to fight “to the last Ukrainian” is, from an ethical point of view an execrable crime. Is it merely a crime of passion – “russophobia” – as some critics have suggested?

While the blindfolded Norwegian population undoubtedly suffers from acute Russophobia, the Norwegian and other European governments may have more rational reasons for sacrificing Ukraine. After all, they know perfectly well that this war was provoked by NATO, prolonged by NATO and exacerbated by NATO.

I put to you that there may be important financial motives. Apart from Ukraine’s natural resources which US and Western European vultures are eager to get their hands on, there is the matter of the US dollar, the “reserve currency” (the stuff that central banks theoretically have stashed away in case all the country’s bank customers simultaneously demand their savings). It used to be gold, now it’s USD, the currency that has underpinned most business transactions all over the world for decades.

The Reserve Currency is being challenged by the BRICS de-dollarization movement in which Russia plays a prominent part.

JP Morgan, Investopedia, and such are downplaying de-dollarization, which does not mean that it isn’t very real. On the contrary, they keenly realise that “the trend toward further de-dollarization seems unstoppable“.

We are already seeing that the price of gold has more than quadrupled since 2002. (Gold cannot be produced and exists only in very limited quantities. It is therefore considered a safe investment.) The price has risen because demand has risen. We have also seen, as you surely know, a spectacular rise in the price of Bitcoins. This tendency reflects a “loss in confidence in America’s management of the global order” and hence a perceived need to “diversify” reserves.

Meanwhile, US debt is now at 34 trillion USD. That is 120 % of the country’s GDP. Of all taxes, tariffs and fees collected by the US, 23 % goes to paying interest on debt. The US runs an increase in deficits every single year, not least to invest in wars, and every year, it finances the new deficit with new loans. How long can it keep the ball rolling?

What happens if people/countries stop investing in loans to the US? Well, the US would have to raise the price it is willing to pay for the loan (interest rate). US citizens are still buying treasury bonds, but the share of US treasury securities held by foreign investors has fallen from 34 % in 2015 to 24% in 2024 although Europe and other allies are still bravely buying them. (China holds $800 billion of US debt, down from $1.3 trillion in 2014.)

This is not good news for the USA. Even Investopedia admits that

the U.S. has long depended on the dollar’s role as a reserve currency to support running large deficits on government spending and international trade. If central banks around the world no longer felt the need to stuff their coffers with dollars, then the U.S. would likely lose this flexibility.

So back to Europe’s suicidal war against Russia: To be frank, I’m not into the mechanisms of Europe’s economic reliance on the dollar, but I believe they are linked to the growing financialisation (what we used to call “speculation”) of our economies. At any rate they say that “When America sneezes, Europe dies of Covid.” Or something to that effect.

Europe is joined at the hip with the USA and is very shaky now, with zero growth and huge debts. Meanwhile, the EUROzone suffers from “serious structural weaknesses”, whatever that means, and even Deutsche Bank has had liquidity problems. In short, the Euro might look defiant, but it is and has long been on life support.

There are many obstacles to de-dollarization. Nevertheless, as you can hear in this long but extremely interesting conversation between three economists, it is already well under-way, and BRICS and non-aligned countries are enthusiastically working out ways and means to overcome them.

I believe, in short, that Europe (and the US) fears that BRICS (rather than Russia) represents a financial (rather than military) threat. European leaders are prolonging and exacerbating this war not to defend Ukraine but in the hope of weakening Russia and slowing down de-dollarization.

Con los ojos vendados en el valle de los muertos

30.11.2024 /

Europe appears to be a basket case. I shall limit myself to quoting the conclusion of an article in the US-based Responsible Statecraft, an article I urge you to read in its entirety.

If you ask most members of European think tanks to define the specifically British, or French, or Danish interests in the Ukraine War, they are not merely incapable of answering, they clearly regard the very question as somehow illegitimate and disloyal to the U.S.-mandated “rules-based order.”

But the America to which these Europeans are loyal is the old U.S. foreign and security establishment — not the America of Trump, which they do not understand and deeply hate and fear (just as they do their own populist oppositions). Indeed, until a very few months ago the great majority of European politicians and experts simply refused to believe that Trump could possibly win the elections.

Many have now lost their heads entirely, and are just running around in circles. Others, like the Poles and Balts, have their heads firmly screwed on, but back to front.

As to the British government and security establishment, since the U.S. elections they have resembled their predecessor King Charles I, who according to legend went on talking for half an hour after his head had been cut off. Perhaps given time they can grow a new head of their very own. But in the meantime, for people in this embarrassing position, a period of silent inaction would seem to be the wise course to adopt.

I must admit I never imagined that heads could be screwed on backwards, but that certainly seems to be the case.

As for Norway – definitely a Democracy – its population has almost unanimously decided to trust in God, i.e. the USA, rather than in reason. With a constitution that explicitly rules out foreign bases on our territory, the government has surreptitiously allowed the USA to establish no less than 12 bases on Norwegian soil. There was no prior discussion in the press, and all the political parties in our National Assembly sleepwalked into enthusiastic acceptance.

So now, if NATO’s European members persist in escalating what has technically ceased to be a merely proxy war, Norway will be on the front line, together with the last Ukrainians, Poland, Finland and Sweden.

How could this happen? A Democratic country!

Unlike people in many if not most other countries, Norwegians still tend to trust the politicians they vote for. They don’t suspect they are being cheated every time they pay a bill. Even during Covid, there were few protests. And, not least, they absolutely adore Jens Soltenberg. (Yes, I blush as as I write this!) They are proud of him. Dictators of the world, look to Norway and learn.

So in 2022, when Russia launched its “special military operation” with (if my memory serves me) no more than 120,000 men, this was instantly labelled by all political parties and in all news outlets in Norway as an “unprovoked”, rabid attack. And the entire Norwegian population swallowed the bait, hook and all.

The rest you know. But what I consider interesting in this respect was that the press was so well prepared from the very first day to announce to its trusting readers/listeners that Putin was an unhinged, evil “Hitler” intent on conquering all of Europe. The press refrained from all examination of fact, all probing analysis, all discussion. Dissenting voices were stridently ridiculed and thus bullied into silence.

So why did all political parties and all news outlets, react in the same despotic manner? Were they paid to do so (i.e. bribed)? Were they coerced? Were they merely stupid? There is no doubt that there has been a lot of stupidity (and ignorance) involved, but stupidity is probably not the main explanation for European nations’ self-destructive and frankly repressive activities. (Not only with regard to Ukraine, but also with regard to Gaza). Why did all of Europe do the exact opposite of what they should have done in almost every respect?

To be continued.

But in the mean time, as i grieve for my country that has become a vassal of the USA, I turn to another mountainous country, Georgia. My recommendation for tonight is a beautiful Georgian song. (Note 1: The soloist died in 1985.) (Note 2: The EU and NATO are trying to turn Georgia into a second Ukraine, not that the singers knew it, back then. They already had known enough troubles.)

There are various approaches to boycott

22.11.2024 /

About two months ago one of my closest friends, a Norwegian medical doctor, sent me an SMS: “Avoid medication produced by the company TEVA. It is Israeli.” I sighed, knowing perfectly well that what little I may or may not buy from or recomend of a genocidal country’s company, makes absolutely no difference. I am retired.

Retired or not, I am distressed by the situation in Palestine and by my – our – impotence here in Europe. Maybe that is why I have recently developed tension pains in my neck and shoulders, to the point that several times a day, I get so dizzy that I almost faint.

I went to my local pharmacy and bought ibuprofen. Only after I had gratefully swallowed the first tablet (expecting an improvement to my condition within 24 hrs.) did I scrutinize the packaging: TEVA.

With the remaining 19 tablets and the packaging in my pocket, I returned to the pharmacy. There were some people in the shop being looked after by the nice lady who runs the place. I turned to a young woman at the counter, showed her the packaging of my TEVA ibuprofen and said:

“I realise you cannot refund me since I have already taken one of the tablets. But do you know this company, TEVA?”
The girl shook her head. I continued:
“It is an Israeli company that pays taxes to the Israeli government that is committing genocide in Palestine. You should not buy products from this company!”
She looked shell-shocked, so I added more gently: “Do you have a waste paper basket?”
She nodded, whispered “just leave it here”, and pointed to the counter.
I said: “No, I want a proper waste paper basket!”
She dug out a basket and I poured the 19 tablets into it.

Then I prepared to leave, but she was urgently prodding her boss, so I waited.

The boss interrupted her conversation with whoever it was and turned to her distressed employee, who was so terrified that no words were heard from her moving lips. She nodded towards me.

The boss looked at me sternly (frankly, I give her kudos for that!) I repeated what I had told the poor employee: “This is an Israeli company that is paying taxes to a country that is committing genocide.” With an apologetic smile, she raised her left shoulder, as though suggesting “well, you know, business…”. I saw that she now recognised me as I recognised her. For years I have been a courteous customer, not least during Covid, and for years she has been equally courteous with me.

So I added, by way of explanation: “One thing is medication for Huntington’s disease, another is ibuprofen which is one of the most common of common drugs. You should not be buying it from TEVA! There are many, many other suppliers.” For some reason, she suddenly almost looked sheepish, and she said she would “take note of my words”.

Whatever that means.

What I do believe, though, is that the poor employee and the others listening to our conversation (including the chemist himself) will not forget that an indignant elderly foreigner actually threw a product produced by an Israeli company into the waste paper basket.

***

Look up TEVA pharmaceuticals. It is very big, and has grown even bigger since Norway’s Pension fund invested heavily in it quite recently. See: https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/3vtoupesw

Of course I love my country, but I draw the line at profiteering from genocide.

***

All that was yesterday. Today, I am shaky from the scene I made yesterday. And my neck and shoulders… I need ibuprofen.

I went to another pharmacy in my little town. And with nervous fingers I examined the box of 20 tablets handed to me. No sign of the hated word TEVA. Mumbling almost incoherently that I was relieved it wasn’t TEVA, I heard the chemist say: “TEVA has a lot to answer for” and his beautiful colleague who was handling another customer, threw me a beaming smile, “NOT Teva,” she called to me.

I felt I had come home.

Entertainment – past and present – a combative take

21.11.2024 /

The Romans offered ghoulish entertainment to the populace in gigantic amphitheatres – Colosseum alone (from 80 AD) held, on the average, 65,000 people. Yes, that was on average, I repeat, the number of those who went out of their way to see people and/or animals being torn to pieces. These were not mere “games” as we understand them; combatants did not get up and shake hands at the end of a fight.

Why such a morbid interest in violent deaths? I ask myself.

Later, and over the course of hundreds of years, we see the same fascination during the public hangings, burnings at the stake, decapitations and what-not that were conducted for the greater glory of God and/or his royal servants and later, during the French revolution, to liberate the populace from religious and royal oppression. Suffice it to read Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities, to get an idea of how the thrilled populace rejoiced at every bloodied head that rolled to the ground.

Are we to understand, then, that humans are, when all is said and done, basically vicious; creatures who just barely conceal fangs under a veneer of “civilisation”? That was certainly not the view Dickens’s wished to impart. He took great pains to explain how the greater part of the population of Paris, indeed that of all of France, had been so mistreated and for so long that they essentially had lost their moral compass. Indeed, we know, too, that Roman slaves were mostly treated like insects. I guess that’s what is meant by the word “dehumanising”.

However, I doubt that slaves made up the majority of spectators at the gory events held all over the mighty empire to celebrate victories (or to gloss over defeats) in the spectacularly beautiful structures they themselves – the slaves – had built. (Slaves are believed to have made up no more than 25-40 % of the population of Rome.)

Could it be that treating people as insects is as dehumanising as being treated as an insect? After Spartakus’s revolt in 73 BC, 6000 slaves were reportedly crucified. Six thousand! One single crucifiction has been haunting us for over 2000 years. How many people must you crucify before your stomach stops churning? And what sort of creature are you then?

If you are a Roman official, say a quaestor, or a senator, you have people above you and below you, not to mention beside you and of course, there is always the top dog. People are being assassinated left, right and centre, by slaves, by wives and above all by competitors. Even the top dog gets assassinated from time to time, so your primary concern is not with morality.

To this day, structures built by Roman slaves are among the most beautiful of all structures built by humans in Europe. We have learnt, I am told by historians, a great deal from the Romans. Hence we have tended to adulate them, something I strongly regret because they celebrated, above all, conquest and expansion at all cost (including genocide). I put to you that what followed the Romans when their fundamentally unsound society imploded, was several hundred years of “dark ages”, not because Rome was gone, but because Rome had left a tabula rasa: Everything before them had been eradicated; culture, traditions, religions, languages… and peoples. (Historians will disagree with me. Let them! Look at the mess we’re in and tell me if learning from the Romans has benefited us in the long run.)

Like the Romans, the Nazis celebrated conquest and expansion at all cost. I am not the first person to ask: How much did most Germans know of what was being done to Jews and other non-Arians by their compatriots? I suspect that most people living in towns or cities will at least have heard rumours, many will have seen the sacking of shops, arrests, beatings and worse. But they will have refused to “know”. Intoxicated with patriotism and full of hope that their government would at last offer them better a better life, they will have wanted to believe that what they heard or saw were exceptions. (True, the propaganda apparatus was running at full throttle: Those wonderful new radios…)

But the perpetrators, the soldiers, SS people, etc: What were they made of? They left normal homes, beloved girlfriends, parents and younger siblings and set about burying people alive, setting fire to churches where whole villages had run for sanctuary. The viciousness of NAZI hatred of Slavs, Jews and others perceived to be of a “foreign race” was unfathomable. How was it possible?

I have no answer.

How is it still possible? IDF is following in the footsteps of the Nazis, even trying to outdo them. How much of the IDF atrocities is the Israeli public aware of? How much is the US public aware of? As for the rest of us: Are we doing anything – anything at all – to stop the US from supplying weapons to Israel. Are we boycotting the US? Are we even boycotting Israel? (True, the propaganda apparatus is once again running at full throttle, those wonderful social media…)

Are our countries in the West any better than Nazi Germany and Israel?

Looking back – far back

16.11.2024 /

In 1911, the composer Gustav Mahler died from a combination of poor heart valves and a streptococcus infection. He was only 50 years old. Never mind whether or not you like or have even heard of Gustav Mahler – for those of us who like music from previous centuries, he is one of the greats, though far from all lovers of classical music are Mahler enthusiasts.

The reason I was reminded of Gustav Mahler (I warn you: This is going to be a magna grada digression), in fact the reason why I am currently listening to his Symphony no. 3, is that I have just finished reading a gigantic novel by Thomas Mann, The Buddenbrooks, published in 1901.

Thomas Mann was heartbroken when Gustav Mahler died, and wrote the novella Death in Venice, upon which the eponymous 1971 film was based. Although Mann’s protagonist was a writer like himself, Visconti who directed the film made the dying Mahler the hero. I believe the film contributed greatly to Mahler’s increased popularity among even young people in the last quarter of the previous century.

Thomas Mann, on the other hand, (1875–1955), lived to stand up to Hitler in a big way and survived to a relatively ripe old age.

The Buddenbrooks for which he won a Nobel prize analyses as only an epic novel can, how a wealthy, respected and God-faring clan can disintegrate. An interesting aspect of the story is that the Buddenbrooks are both truly “good” people and astute businessmen. He is not – I repeat – not ascribing their demise to vice.

“Demise” is the key word here. What causes demise? Thomas Mann needed hundreds of pages to explain the matter, so how could I do so in few words? However, I don’t doubt that most analysts of past empires will agree that the causes of demise include internal cracks and external pressures.

In his novels The Buddenbrooks and Death in Venice, Mann is also obsessed with Death. Listening to Mahler’s music (now the Symphony no. 5) I imagine Mahler was too. After all, people died back then, in a big way, even from common colds! In The Buddenbrooks, the main protagonist dies in unbelievable pain from an infected tooth.

As I hear it, Mahler’s music is all about death, senseless, outrageous death, such as the deaths of the 225 people who were torn out of completely ordinary lives on 9 November 2024 (14 still missing) due to, YES, vice. No, not their own vice, that of the powers that be: Greed.

Greed that for decades has dismissed warnings about climate change.

See the pictures of the flood and its consequences from Elpais.com ( Double-click picture no. 2 to navigate with left/right arrows.)

Information warfare

14.11.2024 /

Too many of my friends are telling me “I can’t bear to listen to the news. It’s all so horrible!” Indeed it is. But the only force that can stop any of this horror is popular opposition. Which is why, I regret, we must try to share information.

I’m not going to tell you what’s going on in Ukraine. I’m not going to explain to you why Russia’s “invasion” wasn’t an invasion, far less an “unprovoked” one. Nor will I explain to you that most US “sanctions” are (a) illegal, (b) more often than not, crimes against humanity and (c) counter-productive. I certainly will not explain to you how the perfidious corporate media has prevented us from hearing the truth about the Middle East. Finally, neither I nor my faithful computer will live long enough to be able to compile a list of all US crimes against humanity.

There are others who can do all that and much more with far greater expertise and insight than I.

I merely propose a list of some – I must emphasise the word – outlets that dedicate their efforts to debunking the prevalent lies about US foreign policy which European statesmen are lapping up as Biblical truths.

There are many outlets I am not listing; more and more of them, fortunately, and they tend to refer to one another, thereby promoting each other in a joint effort to challenge the official narrative.

The ones I include in my list are the ones I personally use the most. Some I enjoy simply because I like their style. Others impress me with the breadth and width of the information they impart. Others again are specialists in some or other field.

***

Consortium News: This a hub, as it were, a haven for many outstanding journalists who after years of service with prestigious news outlets, have opted to preserve their journalistic integrity in these difficult times of Newspeak and Doublethink (cf. the novel 1984). They are joined from time to time by professionals from various fields. For a long time I knew of no other outlet that squarely contested what I knew to be lies and fabrications about US “defence of Democracy and freedom”. CN has a relatively long and noble history as a lone wolf among hyenas. It is the first outlet I turn to every morning over my coffee.

Craig Murray is having a spot of trouble right now in Beirut, but he writtes wonderfully poignant but often also humorous commentaries.

Chris Hedges knows more about the Middle East than most.

Declassified: Is the UK turning into a police state?

The Duran: mainly about Ukraine

Glenn Greenwald: 1st amendment issues, defence of freedom of information, press iniquities

Glenn Diesen, professor of geopolitical economy, analyses the causes of the current debacle in the West.

Greyzone: investigative journalism mostly about the Middle East now, but also for instance about Honduras, Bangladesh, …

Geopolitical Economy explains for instance the nefarious effect of sanctions, but also about information warfare

Larry Johnson: (one of the VIPS – Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity) offers insight into military aspects of US militarism. He also hosts and joins interesting conversations with people from other fields of expertise, e.g. Pepe Escobar.

Nima Alkhorshid / “Dialogue Works” hosts some impressive guests on his videos. I don’t follow him because I try to avoid Youtube to the extent possible

Colonel Wilkerson doesn’t have his own outlet, but he appears on some of the above. His knowledge is impressive, updated and precise, for instance on military aspects of the potential war on Iran

Finally, the list of US crimes against humanity is longer than you want to know, whoever you are. Most Norwegians love the USA. Most Europeans likewise, not to mention US Americans. All over the world US “Soft power” is not just an expression, it’s dynamite. We’ve been adoring whatever idols dominated the sound waves and screens for generations.

What we’ve been (and still are) reluctant to bear in mind was that while Elvis and Debbie Reynolds were doing their stuff, the USA was killing, killing and killing. And they have been doing so ever since. Killing. The USA is a killing machine.

I don’t write books. If I did, you wouldn’t want to read them. But you might be willing to see a documentary, and I would start with Oliver Stone’s “Untold history”? You will find “chapter 1″ here.

And I would go on to the late John Pilger‘s documentaries.

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