Author: pelshvalen (Page 21 of 44)

Tillit, herr helseminister?

18.08.2020 / pelshvalen

Hvem sin tillit, fru statsminister?

Hver kveld opptrer en liten tropp regjeringsartister på underholdningsprogrammet Dagsrevyen. “Bare hold 1-metern,” spøker de, så går det så greit så.

Jasså? Gjør det virkelig det? Enn om jeg er gammel og/eller ufør og MÅ bruke kollektivtransport? Enn om jeg ikke har bil en gang? Nei, Underholdningsrevyen forsikrer at det slett ikke var fullt på busser, tog og trikker i dag. Så da er det slett ikke nødvendig å påby ansiktsmaske. Det hele er tillits-basert, skjønner du.

Ja, vi vet at et av høyreregjeringens mantraer er “fritt valg”. Så jeg kan velge om jeg smitter folk rundt meg. Men jeg kan ikke velge om jeg blir smittet av folk rundt meg.

Regjeringsartistene har alltid rede svar for hånden, innstudert på forhånd, antakelig etter avtale med talerøret deres, Underholdningsrevyens reportere: Hvis vi påbyr ansiktsmaske, så vil folk tro at ansiktsmaske er tryggere enn 1-metern. Les den setningen en gang til: Hvis det blir påbud om ansiktsmaske vil folk tro at ansiktsmaske er tryggere enn 1-metern. Skjønner du syllogismen?

Men nå går smittetallet opp. Hvorfor det, mon tro? Handelstanden i kommunen Indre Østfold – hvor er det forresten? – skylder på Sverige. Men jeg krysset selv grensen fra Sverige en av de få dagene den var såkalt åpen. Jeg var innom to butikker og fulgte de samme forsiktighetsreglene som jeg gjør i butikker i Norge og er derfor helt sikker på at jeg ikke kan ha fått på meg noen smitte. Men det var lang kø på vei tilbake til Norge, og alle ble vi stoppet og sjekket.

Men samme dagen som jeg satt i kø ved grensen på vei fra Sverige, landet en bekjent av meg på Gardermoen. Han kom fra Latinamerika. Riktignok hadde han mellomlandet på en annen flyplass i Europa hvor han måtte vente på fly til Norge i tre timer. Man må gjerne mellomlande et sted når man kommer fra for eks. Brasil eller USA. “Var det ikke et fryktelig styr?” spurte jeg. “Langt i fra!” Da han kom til Norge var alt nøyaktig slik det hadde vært før Covid. “Hva?” spurte jeg skarpt. Ingen passkontroll, ingen som avkrevde noe som helst, heller ingen som fortalte noe som helst. Det var ikke et pip om karantene, for eksempel, ingen som delte ut informasjon på 6 språk om hvor man skulle henvende seg om man fikk symptomer… “Men, men… jeg trodde…,” sa jeg hjelpeløst, “på Underholdningsrevyen har de jo vist … teststasjoner …” Joda, det finnes boder til testing, forklarte han. Men de var tomme. Han selv hadde et sterkt ønske om å få teste seg, men dessverre, det var ikke noe tilbud.

De var nok sikkert bare satt opp slik at Underholdningsrevyen kunne filme dem.

Devotion

25.07.2020 / pelshvalen

When President Kennedy died, I was just a kid, living in, of all places, the United States of America. Yes, of course I remember when our teacher came in and announced what had happened. Of course; although I remember little else from that period of my life. I also remember how proud I was when Bobby Kennedy later shook my small hand among the millions of other anonymous hands when he was campaigning.

I also remember how pained I was ten-fifteen years later when I was told in various ways and by various people that Kennedy was not the hero I thought he was. He had much to answer for about Vietnam and about sins committed against humanity in the name of anti-Communism.

The purpose of this post is not to throw stones at JFK and his brother Bobby. They were men of their space-time and, not least, products of their social class. There is no way you can become president of the USA unless you embrace extremely unsavoury views, and we like to believe that the president’s also having embraced drugs and certain off-bounds women were reactions to unpalatable decisions he was forced to make.

No, my message here is not to bring down or even undress statues. It is to undress us, who prostrate ourselves, adoring our icons uncritically, refusing to even see any inexcusable acts underwritten by the persons or ideologies the icons represent.

You don’t thank the bearer of tidings when he tells you your husband, son or father has ordered a massacre. You don’t feel relieved of a lifelong burden of lies; you cling all the more to those very lies as though your life depended on them. You do so, to begin with, by not feeling, period. You refuse to feel, and after that, you simply deny, even in the face of clear evidence. That is what we all do. I do it, my neighbour does it and you, who are reading this, probably do it too.

Even now, knowing better, JFK is one of my heroes. Even now, knowing better, yours might be the Democratic Party, which has let at least 60% of the US population down. Or your hero might be Putin or Mao or Castro or Chavez or Che, all very fallible men. Most men are, in fact, fallible. I’m absolutely sure that even my favourite guru for the moment, Thomas Piketty, must be fallible.

Even women are fallible, and I’m not referring to Ocasio Cortez. She hit my country’s headlines today, not for defending equal rights to health care and education, but for delivering a “lesson in decency“. I’m sure Ocasio Cortez’s verbal lunge at the Tea Party member was more than well served and well deserved. Frankly, I would probably have used much more offensive language to address the fascistoid m__ f__r, and I’m certainly not going to undress Ocasio Cortez! I only wish to point out that the only reason she was in my country’s news today was because she disliked being referred to as a “bitch”. In other words, what was being applauded by my country was her feminism, not her defence of human rights for women and men. Frankly, I’m embarrassed. Yet, I go on believing in the justice, the goodness and the wisdom of my country. In short, I put to you that we are all a bit blind.

I cannot recomend enough the allegorical novel by José Saramago Blindness ( Ensaio sobre a cegueira, meaning Essay on Blindness). It was written in 1995, but is more relevant now than ever.

26 July: I need to add a postscript. The European so-called Istambul Convention prohibits violence against women and domestic violence in no uncertain terms. Poland and Turkey are threatening to withdraw their adherence to it. FIE!

Social cohesion

22.07.2020 / pelshvalen

No matter where you turn for information and guidance, these days, at least in my country, journalists and commentators are sure to raise their arms as a sign, not of innocence but of ignorance. “I don’t know,” they say, “I have no idea what will happen,” they say.

Obviously, they would never declare such ignorance unless they had reason to. Indeed, the bases for prognoses have cracked, not to say crumbled, just in the course of the last few months.

Many people, perhaps most, blame President Trump, who has undoubtedly eroded the rules of international law and who should long since have been put behind bars for tax evasion, among other things. But Trump didn’t invent the system, the winner-takes-all scheme of things. And he was of course compounded by Covid.

No government can be blamed for creating this particular natural disaster. However, some governments can be blamed for poor disaster management. and most can be blamed for not foreseeing that we would sooner or later be faced with a pandemic. Most can also already be blamed for not understanding that business as usual cannot and will not carry on in its wake.

In its recent deliberations about rescue measures, the EU undoubtedly had “social cohesion” in mind. Social cohesion is what was witnessed in the UK during WWII, a we’re-all-in-this-together attitude.

What you see in the below photo from Santiago de Chile is not social cohesion. It is a threat.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Chilean_protests

As you will understand if you look at the wonderful photos here, social cohesion in Chile has de facto come to an end. And that was before the pandemic! Because the so-called “Chilean oasis”, the neo-liberal success story, always was a deliberate travesty, a cynical fabrication.

Imagine, then, how anger and a long-simmering sense of injustice will play out after Covid. And what about Brazil? Yesterday saw 718 new deaths in Brazil. Yes, that was in just one day. You know, don’t you, that those 718 no-longer-existing individuals in Brazil did not belong to the jet set.

Unless the powers-that-be realise now, immediately, that major changes have to be made – and I mean major – that people will demand their fair share of equal opportunities, equal access to health care, education and sustained natural resources, Western civilisation will come to an end.

At any rate, social cohesion ends when you send in the National Guard, when you beat up or even kill protesters, hoodwinking them into believing that the manhandling they are subjected to is merely the wrath of God. Remember Syria? Autocrats of the world: You are not, I repeat, NOT God. Look to Syria: It is now a failed state.

If Western civilisation does come to an end, don’t snigger, Mr Putin. Your turn to be knocked off the pedestal will come.

In the mean time, I urge you to read the UN Secretary General’s appeal to us all, because all of us are part of this game. To quote the Secretary General:

We are sometimes told a rising tide of economic growth lifts all boats.
But in reality, rising inequality sinks all boats.”
Antonio Guterres

Not me

03.06.2020 / pelshvalen

It’s not about Trump, you know, or at least I hope you know. In 2015, US police officers killed at least 104 unarmed black people. Out of all the unarmed people killed by the police that year, 36% were black, although black people made up only 13% of the US population. Trump was not yet president in 2015.

No, it’s not about Trump. It’s about ingrained institutional injustice. Take a look at the trial in 1978 of Debbie Sims Africa and her companions from “Move”, a trial so farcical that even a child would have have done better.

Or the 1985 aerial bombing of a neighbourhood in Philadelphia, when 11 people were killed, five of them children.

It’s about the unofficial yet – alas, ingrained – idea that not all people are people. It’s also about the unofficial, deep-seated, subconscious conviction that other people have to follow the rules, not me. Boris Johnson’s pet aide Dominique Cummings did not have to comply with Covid-19 rules. The British population has been up in arms about his driving a few miles to his family’s country estate while the rest of them were enduring lockdown. You’d think that was a fairly innocuous breach of rules, but no, the British were stung at the injustice.

In 99% of the killings committed by police officers in the US from 2013 to 2019, nobody has been prosecuted.

Killings committed by police officers from 2013 to 2019 (source):

2013: 1782
2014: 1714
2115: 1607
2116: 1595
2117: 1767
2018: 1848
2019: 1795

I repeat: 99% of those killings have not been prosecuted and there have been massive and often violent protests again and again when the powers-that-be decided not to charge the killers. Evidently, rule of law does not apply when police officers kill. And rule of law certainly doesn’t protect non-whites. This has been an issue for decades. No wonder the Chinese and Iranians are laughing.

Forget Trump; in the first place, he never pretended to care about civil rights or justice. He doesn’t even know the meaning of the concepts. Ask instead: What has the Democratic Party done to rectify the racial imbalance?

Now you might not like the Black Panther movement or Move. So? At least they were brave enough to stand up for basic human rights, which they maintained should also apply to non-whites. They had the gumption to raise a fist or two in defence of their communities and they were persecuted. On the other hand there are a lot of criminally irresponsible organisations, companies and world leaders out there who will never be subjected to anything near what ordinary non-white citizens in the US need deal with.

You probably do not approve of the devastation of entire neighbourhoods currently being carried out by irate protesters. But can you honestly blame them? What would you have done if you lived cooped up in an overcrowded, underprivileged Covid-infested neighbourhood constantly being ostracised by police officers? This article in the Los Angeles Times merely gives a faint outline of the lifelong stress to which the majority of non-white U.S. Americans are being subjected.

A more complete picture is provided by the Marshall Project. I quote Wikipedia as at 03.06.2020:

The Marshall Project is a nonprofit, online journalism organization focusing on issues related to criminal justice in the United States, founded by former hedge fund manager Neil Barsky and with former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller as its first editor-in-chief. Its website states that it aims to “create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system.”

The Marshall Project provides interesting articles about police brutality in the US from various news outlets.

A little murder story

26.05.2020 / pelshvalen

Usually, when people get killed in this country, the killer is a puny character. In 2019, for instance, 75% of the killers were under the influence of some intoxicant and 56% of the victims were women. In general, killers in this country are absolute losers, sick of mind and pathetic, no matter how frightening they seem from the victim’s perspective. Moreover more than 95% of the cases end up being solved.

But we also have big-time criminals, people whose minds are no doubt warped, but not to the extent that they lose control. They don’t kill, at least not here; they merely “traffic” and use minions to do the dirty work of handling the victims. The minions get caught, of course, but not the big-timers.

On 31 October 2018, the wife of one this country’s richest men vanished from their shared home. The entire country held it’s breath: We are not accustomed to high-profile disappearances around here.

At first, the case appeared to be one of kidnapping. Apparently a note had been left in the home from which the victim disappeared. The letter demanded a hefty ransom to be paid in an obscure crypto currency. Apparently the husband did try to pay, but the currency was quite simply too obscure. The kidnappers were not heard from again until nearly a year later, when they apparently made contact. The drama was of course played out in detail in the media, mainly by the aggrieved husband’s high-profile lawyer.

A few weeks ago, the police held a press conference to inform the public that they had arrested the husband on charges of murder and with the intention of locking him away for four weeks, so that they could carry out an in-depth search of his home, second home and company. They explained that they had long since reached the conclusion that the kidnapping never occurred and that it had merely been a performance staged for their (the police’s) benefit.

Meanwhile, the rest of the audience, the general public – myself included – was gaping at the spectacle. The very idea of that very rich man sitting behind bars was absolutely extraordinary. Naturally, it did not last. After a couple of days, his very high-profile lawyer had got him out of jail and the case seems to have reached a dead end.

To make a long story short, the police are convinced of his guilt. They are certain the woman has been killed by him or at his orders. There is only one small problem: No body. Moreover, there is insufficient evidence to exclude all reasonable doubt.

Point being: If you are rich and powerful enough, you can get away with murder, any number of them, in fact.

Privacy

22.05.2020 / pelshvalen

Maybe you don’t care whether or not your movements on the Internet are being watched because you’re “not doing anything wrong”. If so, I won’t pick a quarrel with you. After all, why should you draw your curtains at night? Haven’t they seen a naked man/woman before?

Or maybe you will agree that the idea of being watched while sitting on the toilet is disagreeable, but if that is what it takes to put a few drug dealers behind bars, it’s an idea you can live with, even though you realise that if there’s one thing drug barons can do better than just about anybody else except other big-time criminals, it’s to protect their privacy. After all, they can buy all the expertise they need.

So, no, I won’t argue with you. You will hear more than you can bear about privacy in months to come. Covid has unleashed an army of young talented developers who are now all clicking away at their keyboards to satisfy governments’ and industry’s vast demand for ways and means to monitor our actions and influence our attitudes. If that’s fine with you, I repeat, I won’t argue… except to remind you of one thing:

There are investigative journalists out there, sticking their necks out to dig up the dirt we need to know about so that we don’t go off and elect the likes of Trump and Bolsonaro again and again and again. There are tens of thousands of human rights activists and their lawyers and honest judges who risk being stuffed into jails without trials or killed for defending their co-citizens. These people’s privacy must be protected at all cost! How can we help? By defending our own privacy so that their defended privacy doesn’t stick out like a row of sore thumbs.

I’m so very far from being an expert in this field that I would urge you to leave this page at once to go and read somebody else’s advice. But I haven’t found any comprehensive self-help guidance to direct you to. The Privacy Rights Clearing House, for instance, provides very sound insight at the general level, but the bottom line there, as I understand it, is that we should all stay away from the Internet in any way, shape, or form.

True, you can find valuable practical snippets on sites like this one from Kaspersky, but bear in mind that here Kaspersky is also trying to sell us its own products.

So I will do my best to indicate how we can protect our privacy from various kinds of intrusion. Of course, if you run a business, you should probably invest in professional services not only to protect your data but also to minimise your vulnerability to malware.

Your device’s location gets shared

The good news is that your device’s GPS is not telling anybody where you are.

The bad news is that the apps that have access to your GPS might do just that. And commercial use is made of the information.

So you should disable location access for the apps on your phone, and you should disable location storage in your Google or Apple account. PCMag outlines how to do so.

You should consider whether you absolutely need to use Facebook, and if you really do, you ‘d better hone your privacy settings there. Kaspersky tells you how.

Websites you visit share more information about you

You prevent this if you use a VPN service.

Doing so not only hides your IP address; it encrypts the re-routing of your internet traffic. So whatever information the websites or ISPs have stored will be illegible to them.

There are many free VPN services, and even more websites that compare them. Take a look.

“Free” always comes at a cost:

You don’t want “speed throttling”.
You want a large data allowance.
You want to cover all the devices you use.
For normal privacy protection, you don’t need access to many countries.

So as not to excceed my data allowance, I try to remember to turn off VPN when video streaming (legally).

Another advantage of VPN is that it also protects you against hackers when you are away from home. But if you yourself are engaged in serious criminal activity, the web service can hand over your identity to law-enforcement.

Many repressive regimes consider political opposition “terrorism” and some unnamed countries penalise whistle blowing. If you are from or living in such a country you might opt for a VPN service in a country that is not likely to pander to, for instance, the Saudi or Israeli governments.

You do not need to use a VPN to block cookies and adverts. There are other ways of doing that. Some browsers do so and there are plugins or “extensions”, such as Ghostery.

Your browser

If you use VPN, your browser isn’t a big issue. But if you turn off VPN …

I would not use Chrome or Safari, and Opera has been sold to a Chinese group.

On Android devices I currently recommend Brave. For computers, consult e.g. Wired or Digital Trends. If you use Firefox, you should at least learn how to fine-tune the browser’s security and privacy settings.

Messaging

WhatsApp is owned by Facebook and its main source of income is based on users’ contact lists. I put to you that Facebook’s track record is less than respectable. Signal is widely recommended. and is pretty impressive in terms of privacy.

Contacts, calendarsand email are our weekest point!

If you, like me, let Google or Apple manage your contacts and calendar, not to mention your email, you really have a problem. We have a problem. Or rather, our contacts have a problem. A lot of other apps on our phones will have access to the contacts, not least Facebook. Yes, Google and Apple enccrypt our email, but not end-to-end.

Oh dear, oh dear.

There is no way I am going to take my contacts and calendar back to a paper notebook. The blessing of having all my devices synchronised cannot be exaggerated. But what if I regularly meet with political refugees from, say, Saudi Arabia or with Russian political activists opposed to Putin… Yes, what then? If the Saudi or Russian authorities are seriously tracking them, my writing in my calendar that I’ll be having lunch with them at so and so time/place and their phone numbers in my contact list may endanger them.

How do I know what Google hands over to state prosecutors who may or may not be hounding people from minority groups and other disadvantaged areas?

What I need is an email service (and local client) that provides end-to-end encryption and that also stores and synchronises a contact list and a calendar.

I googled “privacy alternative to gmail and contacts” (without the quotes). You’d be surprised by the number of hits. Three of the top five, including two from VPN service providers (and they should know) all coincided pretty well in their conclusions. (NordVPN, RestorePrivacy and PureVPN).

As far as I can judge, only one of the email clients they recommend also provides a contact list and calendar: Tutanota. Now, I don’t much like the name, but I do like the look of it. The hitch is, of course, that all email sent from this email service gets encrypted. So you won’t want to use it to ask your dentist for an appointment. But you could use it to communicate with Saudi refugees and with good friends, not to mention if one of them is a married colleague with whom you are having an affair. You would, in other words, leave your dentist’s number on your visible contact list and move your shrink to your private list, using only Signal to communicate with him/her.

So this is as far as I get without using PGP, which many email clients do allow, but which is a little too cumbersome for most of us – and it still leaves us with an unprotected contact list and calender.

The last word has not yet been written, never will be. But for the moment, if you really make an effort, you can still communicate pretty safely online.

In the shadows

07.05.2020 / pelshvalen

If you read Thomas Piketty’s ground-breaking Capitalism and Ideology, you will see that a great deal remains to be done in the world, and I’m very much afraid that it will have to be done by you and me and our children and grandchildren. It will certainly not be done by any president or prime minister here, there or anywhere else. As Greta Thunberg has pointed out, our grandchildren will not thank us for the state of affairs we leave to them unless we do our D–dest to try to set things right.

The problem with Covid, to my mind, is not so much that it is a killer – locust swarms that destroy everything in their paths are also killers (by proxy), and you don’t hear much about them – it’s who it kills and why. Like other contagious diseases it primarily kills people in congested areas, particularly where sanitary conditions are unsatisfactory, people with scant access to health care and education, and people with short-sighted employers and governments. It will probably not kill people like me, who can work from home at a cottage in the wilds. I only come face to face with another human, separated from me by a glass screen, twice a week at checkout.

So the Covid issue is not really about Covid, it’s about all the underlying stuff, the stuff systematically kept in the shadows. The media makes sure that we mull over the prospects of suffering a terrible Covid death, that we sit still and thank the powers-that-be for whatever handout we get to replace the jobs many of us have lost or will loose. Not to rock the boat, that is the idea. No wonder a recent Guardian article sees fit to remind us that we are actually not all in the same boat.

You will see some of the issues lurking in the shadows behind Covid if you scroll down the entries of the Oxford-based “Our World in Data” . Pass quickly over the Covid stuff, and take a look at issues such as “Nutrition” (“22% of children younger than 5 are stunted”) or Maternal mortality.

Now “Our World in Data” is not a “leftist” site. It probably takes pains not to be, as failing to do so would mean less funding for the research underlying its data. Nevertheless, I was amazed to find that there were no figures about maternal mortality in the United States. “Now why would that be?” I wondered.

Unsurprisingly, this chart shows that the proportion of women who die in pregnancy, giving birth or within 42 days after giving birth has fallen drastically from 1991 to 2015. If you press the button “Add country”, you will see that Tunisia, for example, is doing nicely, but there is no data for the US. For Canada, yes, and for North America, yes. So the figures for the US are hiding behind Canadas? Interesting.

I turn to Wikipedia (as at 07.05.2020)

The US has shown to have the highest rate of pregnancy related deaths o/c maternal mortality amongst all the industrialized countries. The CDC first implemented the Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System in 1986 and since then maternal mortality rates have increased from 7.2 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1987 to 17.2 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2015. [Highlighting by Pelshval]

And here is a Vox article on the issue:

If you compare the CDC figure to other countries in the World Health Organization’s latest maternal mortality ranking, the US would rank 55th, just behind Russia.

What does Joe Biden propose to do about that? Blame Covid?

I apologise for harping so much on the United States, but it really does get on my nerves that a country that is NOT the great meritocratic, egalitarian and Democratic society it claims to be insists on calling the shots about just about everything, everywhere, all the time. It is high time we all, including in the US, start doing things differently. This is not “the best of all possible worlds” to quote Voltaire’s Pangloss (or Leibnitz, if you like, but I’ve never read Leibniz). For many people in the US, it is not even the best yet. And it will get worse for all of us, before it gets better.

Piketty proposes a whole array of alternatives. He does not tell us what to do. He just tells us that other ways are possible. Actually, the only course that is not open to us is the one we are on now. Before long, this road will simply close down.

Piketty also tells us why we are so blind to the existence of other options, which goes a long way, in my mind, to explain why many people, including myself, have said, “It’s no use… We can’t repair this mess… Hopeless… You can’t beat the financial system, market forces… ” But the Berlin wall did come down, didn’t it? We thought it never ever would, but it did.

Free Julian Assange

29.04.2020 / pelshvalen

This is to remind you of the Amnesty International petition in defence of freedom of expression. I quote AI:

Julian Assange’s publication of disclosed documents as part of his work with Wikileaks should not be punishable as this activity mirrors conduct that investigative journalists undertake regularly in their professional capacity. Prosecuting Julian Assange on these charges could have a chilling effect on the right to freedom of expression, leading journalists to self-censor from fear of prosecution.

People from all countries are urged to sign here.

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste

12.04.2020 / pelshvalen

Once again I turn to the “historian and philosopher of economic thought” (quoting Wikipedia) Philip Mirowski and his eponymous book discussing How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown.

The book seems tailor-made for Covid-19, although it applied to the financial crisis in 2008. Back then, when many of us were worried, or should I say “frantic”, there were powerful people – people we really don’t want to know personally – who abused, and twisted and skewed things, who confounded and befuddled and “discombobulated” (a word Mirowski uses a lot) us for reasons of their own.

You will no doubt have noticed that since the end of this century’s first decade, which culminated in a financial crisis, the top 10% have become even richer and the bottom 50% very much poorer than they were.

In his book, Philip Mirowski demonstrates that there was and is an actively pursued agenda underlying Neoliberalism, and that there have been and are active agents pushing it. It didn’t have to happen. Reagan and Thatcher, taking their cues from Milton Freedman, didn’t have to happen either. There are other approaches to running a country than those propounded by the so-called Chicago School. Mirowski’s more recent article Hell is Truth Seen Too Late is not an easy read, but it gives a general idea of the agenda and its agents.

We have been hoodwinked into treating economic “laws” as holy cows. For example, the wording in the following quote will tend to stymie any climate activist who has doubts about the sustainability of “economic growth” (Source).

Natural economic law refers to the natural rule (mother rule) that three important consumptions drive the cyclic development of economy. It means: consumption – market – demands (increasing consumption needs of desire – recognition – knowledge and inspiration – recognition) – scientific research – production – consumption of higher level. It is a natural economic law of spiral movement.

Mirowski is not the only one to point out that people we don’t want to know personally are happy to exploit a crisis to advance their own ends. Naomi Klein has also written several books about the matter, including The Shock Doctrine. See what she has to say about the potential consequences of Covid-19. Mind you, she is not saying we are powerless. On the contrary, she is saying that we need to be alert. Grieving about the future is useless, particularly now that we actually have a chance of tipping the scales.

Yuval Harari, the author of Sapiens has been very visible in the media lately. I imagine him as a rather reserved sort of character, so his urgent appeals to the general public these past two months strike me as wake-up calls. (Google Harari + Covid). Speaking of Yuval Harari and the sustainability of economic growth, do please read Chapter 16 in Sapiens. In the light of Covid-19, read it again if you’ve forgotten it.

The Irish Times has recently interviewed Thomas Piketti, who echoes the trio. “Times of crisis are times when the existing ideologies are challenged and when national and international trajectories are likely to change.” The Irish Times continue: “Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic he says it would have been impossible to put air travel on hold as a measure to tackle climate change. But with this new reality, which we are at least temporarily confronted with, that perspective is now changing.”

Obviously, from now on, things will be different. To all appearances, there will merely be winners and losers. The telecom industry, obviously, will be winners, online shops and supermarkets that provide home deliveries likewise, and many companies will rapidly be able to redesign themselves. With predicted soaring unemployment, however, very many of us are already defining ourselves as losers.

But not so fast: Yes, businesses will all have to redesign themselves, unless they already have. Whole countries will have to do so too, though. Whole countries, mine and yours. It’s not just a question of the distribution of wealth and income. It’s also a matter of the distribution of power (not least in view of galloping developments within surveillance technology). And finally it’s a matter of the fate of the planet.

If you are the only one in town who is going to lose your job and your health insurance, you will feel very very bad indeed. Let me put it another way: the more of you there are, the more likely it is that your government will have to introduce some very major changes for your benefit.

If you are a telecom employee, you don’t want to wake up in 5 years feeling the way Edward Snowden felt when he realised that with his expertise he had contributed to a Big Brother is Watching You scenario.

So what will it be? Who will have the final say about the world we leave to our children? Trump, Putin, Xi and their likes, religious fundamentalists (Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish) or the rest of us?

Selvmål

28.03.2020 / pelshvalen

Pelshvalen er tilbake på våre breddegrader. Jeg hører den synger. Luften er jo blitt litt renere nå som følge av Corona-tiltak; kanskje også havet? Eller forresten, er det virkelig sang jeg hører?

En venn i det hardt Corona-rammede Spania og jeg kommuniserer en del for tiden, her vi sitter i hver vår “sosiale avstand”, han i praksis i husarrest og jeg med hytte- og besøksforbud.

Dagens tema har vært chagas. (Det var spanjolen som begynte, fordi han har en boliviansk venn som pga. chagas nylig er blitt livsvarig arbeidsufør i en alder av 38.) Chagas tar hovedsakelig de fattige – mange fattige – i Latinamerika, og farmasøytiske selskap bryr seg derfor ikke om denne sykdommen.

Det er i det hele tatt mange svært alvorlige sykdommer i fattige land som den farmasøytiske industrien og økonomiske eliter ikke bryr seg nevneverdig om.

Nå kommer det riktignok endelig en malaria-vaksine, men hvem av de fattige får råd til å ta den? Her i vesten har vi i årtier hatt vaksine mot røde hunder, som er en helt uskyldig sak for alle unntatt fostre. Vaksinering mot Zika-virus (forbundet med mikrokefali hos fostre i mødre smittet under svangerskapet) er derimot enda ikke klar. Det er nettopp utviklet en vaksine mot Dengue-virus som bare må gis til folk som allerede har motstoffer mot Dengue, og som i for eks. i Thailand koster USD 87 x 3 (+ testing av serum antistofftiter)

Osv. osv.

En Covid-19-vaksine er derimot allerede klar til testing etter bare et par måneder, og vil bli klar til bruk om et år.

I NRK har de imellomtiden nesten sluttet å snakke om hva som skal skje med de innelåste flyktningene i Hellas (31.400), i Syria og naboland og i andre nødstedte områder. Jan Egelands askegrå, fortvilte ansikt dukker øyeblikkvis opp på skjermen, men fader straks ut i det leppene hans former et svimlende høyt tall. Publikum – vi – orker ikke tenke på, orker ikke se på, orker ikke vite, orker ikke høre det. Orker ikke, ORKER IKKE.

Jeg tror at vi i vesten trues av en annen, men like stor, krise som Covid-19, men jeg vet ikke hvordan den vil arte seg. Derfor formulerer jeg beskrivelsen av den som spørsmål:

Hvor lenge og til hvilken pris vil hver og en av oss klare å opprettholde sameksistensen mellom, på den ene siden, våre stort sett “humanitære prinsipper” og, på den andre, undertrykt kunnskap om at millioner etterlates uten våpen mot ulike mikrobiologiske (f.eks. viruser) og makrobiologiske og -geologiske (f.eks. ørkenspredning) fiender?

Hvor lenge kan vår tro på oss selv som rettferdig og demokratisk samfunn overleve det at vi forlater de andre, der de sitter fast i sine flyktningeleire, favelaer eller omgitt av utbrente marker. Med tårer i øynene snur vi oss og vinker, men de ser ikke våre tårer fordi de er allerede i ferd med å falle om.

Denne sameksistensen er så disharmonisk at den skriker. Noe vil måtte gi seg. Før eller senere.

Er det kanskje uling jeg hører?