Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Author: pelshvalen (Page 28 of 44)

Failed attempt to delimit humanity

02.06.2017 /

You know about the rabbits and the foxes, don’t you, about how there were lots and lots of rabbits in Rabbitland, until along came a couple of foxes, one of each sex, as it happens, and they thought the local rabbits were delicious. They ate and they ate, and they mated too, and their offspring ate and ate and mated too until there were hardly any rabbits left, only a few streetwise, canny ones that nobody wanted to eat, because they were skinny from running and/or lying low. So guess what happened to the foxes. Those that didn’t run away eventually died, undernourished as they were for lack of rabbits.

Imagine the yelps of joy that rang out right across Rabbitland, when the last fox vanished. The surviving skinny rabbits came out of their warrens, gobbled down great big tufts of grass, ran great big circles of delight, and gobbled some more.

So there’s hope for humanity too. By the time we have basically consumed, burnt or poisoned most of the planet’s species, its waters, soil and air, Mr Trump and his imperial court will be ready. He will have collected a pair (hopefully one of each sex) of all the animals he knows of, and Ivanka will expeditiously drive them all into the imperial space Arc – that shouldn’t take too much time. When all the animals are in the Arc, when the emaciated imperial guard has played the imperial march for the last time, and when Mr Trump and his court have duly waved their last goodbyes to the haggard press from the threshold of the spacecraft, the doors to the Arc will shut close. A few moments later, the Arc will zip off into space, bound for Mars.

On a rather more malevolent note, I would just love to be a fly on the wall in the imperial living quarters on Mars, as the family members discover one after the other that the omnipotence of money will only get you so far on a cold, inhospitable and above all uninhabited planet.

Meanwhile, back on Tellus, those of us who are still around will come out from under the ground, bringing the school textbooks, microscopes, gardening tools and encyclopedias we have treasured in secret for years. We will try to locate, nurture or bring back to life, dying species – be they plants, snakes, fishes, birds or mammals – and, not least, one another.

Wouldn’t that be nice? I see you are shaking your head. No? It would be nice, you say, but…

Yes, BUT! It is true that the best of us will act as outlined even against all odds, and it is true that many of us, maybe even a majority, would gladly do so if given half a chance. However, alas, there will always be, not only another Mr Trump, but any number of mini-Trumps who insist on having more, being more than everybody else. I put it to you that ours is a very strange and ethically complex species.

Picking a fight

14.05.2017 /

Some of you are simply itching to get into a red-hot quarrel because you need somebody on whom to take out your matrimonial or economic malaise. So who will it be? The Jews? The Arabs? The blacks? No of course not. That would be politically incorrect.

The nice thing about Trump is that you can blame him for all sorts of things. However, you can’t blame him for US poverty, because it’s been around for ever. The US suffers the second greatest relative income poverty in the OECD, surpassed only by apartheid Israel. And the statistics for child poverty are no better, according to Washington Post.

Now you can’t really blame that on Trump, can you? So if you really are itching to break somebody’s bones, you only have two options: You can root for invasion of some Middle Eastern country or you can blame the Russians. At any rate, you need a new Cold War to keep your blood boiling on rainy days.

Mind you, Russians are poor too, very poor. In fact, poverty is considerably greater there than in the US, even if Russians are much better off than when Putin came to power. No wonder they love him! But the poor are very poor, and the middle class is relatively small and shrinking.

The richest 10% of Russians own 87% of all the country’s wealth, according to a Swiss report (compared with 76% in the US and 66% in China). The rest of the country’s 138 million population have to make do with the remaining 13%. I would say that’s a pretty disgusting figure. Indeed, filthy-rich Russian tourists meet raised eyebrows wherever they go: Surely, people can only grow that rich by crooked means; certainly not by honest work.

Nevertheless, there is absolutely no need to blame the Russians for all the hanky panky going on in the world. Please note, for instance, that the code for the ransomware that recently crippled UK hospitals, Spanish Telecom and for that matter much of Russia had initially been developed by NSA.

What do you think NSA was going to do with the thing, huh?

The little prince

13.05.2017 /

Walking my dog along a track in the woods, I came upon an unexpected couple. Or should I say, they unexpectedly found themselves there, having evidently come down a path from a residential area, without realising they would be engulfed by forest and surrounded by great big, dark and dismal fir trees.

So when I came upon them, they were just standing uncertainly where the paths meet, a little boy and someone who might have been his much older brother. My dog, who believes she owns the area, strode over to inspect them.

Inconsiderate of me, of course, to let her do so, seeing as the two were foreigners, and foreigners tend to be afraid of dogs, even of my cheerful little fox terrier. My thoughts were elsewhere, and by the time I noticed that the elder boy had tensed in a protective position almost surrounding his ward, it was really too late to call back the dog: She was already sniffing at the little one. He, on the other hand, stood his ground, neither stretching out his hand to touch her, as little boys usually do, nor squirming.

By the time I had reached the group, the dog had lost interest and trotted on, but the little boy’s gaze followed her. I stopped in my tracks, struck by what I was seeing: a small boy, maybe five years old, with a yellow knitted cap, a green quilted jacket and a small violin case dangling from a strap around his neck, who had braved, straight and tall (small though he might be), an unknown animal that was as tall as he. “Is that a violin?” I demanded, and the elder boy started to mutter a reply, but the little one needed no-one to speak for him and countered with a question of his own:

– Why did that dog approach me?

– Because it likes children, I replied, adding respectfully, – do you not like dogs?

– I do, but, – followed by a moment’s hesitation, – not bad dogs.

I hastened to assure him that my dog was anything but “bad”, and he breathed a sigh of relief, revealing in spite of himself that he had been afraid.

– Is he very strong? he wanted to know. – He’s much stronger than I, is he not?

I found myself so much in awe of this majestic little child that I actually stuttered when trying to explain that in some ways, perhaps, yes, in others probably not. “And in any case, it’s a she, not a he, a girl dog.”

– Ah, a girl dog. In that case, Mahmoud and I shall have no trouble dealing with her. Mahmoud and I are strong.

I looked questioningly at the elder boy, “Mahmoud?” “No, that’s his best friend,” said the other with a proud and tender smile.

I felt I should not let the little prince’s male chauvinism go ungainsaid: “Maybe strength isn’t what you need most. Maybe wisdom …” but the little prince was pursuing his own mournful train of thought:

– In our house we have neither dogs nor kitties.

– Well, I started to comfort him, – to have a dog, you need lots of time, and you who go to school don’t have that.

I think this was the first time he looked at me. At any rate this was the first time I noticed how brown and dreadfully serious his eyes were.

– I don’t go to school. I attend nursery school.

The whole tone of this conversation struck me as somewhat otherworldly and I tried to make eye contact with the elder boy. He could have been 15. Lanky and pale, with a soft, long, wavy lock falling over his forehead, he had dark-rimmed glasses over a smiling, slightly shy face, and was now speaking on the phone in a foreign language. His voice was unexpectedly deep and soft for such a young man.

The little prince also glanced at him, understanding the foreign language, and informed me proudly: – I have a father, though. And with him I can speak Kurdish.

I respectfully took my leave, almost tempted to wonder whether I had been speaking to a reincarnation of Cyrus the Great.

Valgpoteter

03.05.2017 /

I førvalgstider er det ikke måte på hva de ulike partiene lover for å få flest mulig velgere på kroken. Kontantstøtten er et eksempel, et resultat av tidligere valgløfter, og med den har våre myndigheter vært, og er enda, mer enn alminnelig spandable – vel og merke på vår, skattebetalernes, bekostning – og det jeg lurer på, er hvorfor nettopp kontantstøtte?

Er det på grunn av smårollingene? Ikke tale om! Ikke på noe tidspunkt i livet vil smårollinger ha det bedre i offentlighetens varetekt enn i alderen 1-3 år. Om jeg var Kristelig folkeparti og ønsket å forsvare barn som individer og “familien” som institusjon, ville jeg ha ivret for noe ganske annet.

Hva Kristelig folkeparti mener om saken, er forresten nokså underordnet, siden et så lite parti aldri kunne ha fått innvilget et såpass ekstravagant tilbud til velgerne uten mer eller mindre implisitt støtte fra de store partiene. Noe skjuler seg bak den retoriske ulla, og jeg lurer på hva det er.

Ikke en gang Høyres mantra om valgfrihet – i dette tilfellet kvinners rett til å velge om de vil eller vil ikke ut i arbeidslivet – kan forklare en så dyr post. Selv Høyre er jo tross alt ikke tilhenger av at unge menn skal få et slikt valg. Kan de da forsvare at unge kvinner skal få det? Javel, det er jobbigt å oppdra et barn, men det er også jobbigt å være parasitt. Det er ikke bare bare å ha råd til beholde mobilnett-, spotify- og netflixabonnement; en parasitt må være både kreativ og flittig.

Alle barn av arbeidende foreldre har rett til barnehageplass. Rett nok betaler foreldrene for hver plass – og den er ikke billig – men er den likevel dyr for skattebetalerne? Kan det hende at kontantstøtten er billigere enn det ville vært om alle arbeidet? Jeg er ikke særlig begeistret for den forklaringen fordi de som arbeider betaler ikke bare for barnehageplassen: de betaler også skatt.

Kronargumentet mot kontantstøtten har vært at den har holdt utenlandske mødre hjemme. Men det siste pelshvalen hørte da den svømte langs Norges lange kyst var at kontantstøtten var et tiltak mot fattigdom. Det het: “Mange utenlandske kvinner får jo ikke jobb!” Er  kontantstøtten til syvende og sist bare et forsøk på å kamuflere uvilje mot å lære opp og ansette utenlandske kvinner?

Så må en heller ikke glemme at uten kontantstøtten ville Kristelig folkeparti vært enda mindre enn det er. Jeg vil hevde at det er i de store partienes interesse å holde småpartiene i live, slik at de har noen å drive hestehandel med og kan holde seg i salen fram til målstreken.

Lureri er alltid irriterende. I dette tilfelle er det spesielt irriterende fordi det faktisk finnes faglige grunner til å påkoste lønn til hjemmeværende foreldre for en periode når barna er i alderen 8 til 16 år. En mors eller fars dedikerte støtte i denne perioden kan gjøre underverker. Det er grunn til tro at det vil kunne forhindre en del unge fra å falle av lasset (d.v.s fra å bli arbeidsudyktige). Hvor mye dette ville bety samfunnsøkonomisk har jeg riktignok ingen forutsetning for å mene noe om.

Hvorfor i alle verden er det ingen av partiene som ivrer for kontantstøtte i opptil 3 av de årene! Det mangler da vitterligen ikke på bekymrede velgere som ville takke for et sabbatsår når poden begynner å oppføre seg underlig.

Arbeidende foreldre mangler ofte tid og overskudd til å lytte til og forstå sine poder, som i mange tilfeller har det direkte vondt. For de fleste av oss er det periodisk smertefullt å være menneske, men i et normalt livsløp, er det langt mest smertefullt å være ungdom. Uansett hvor godt sementert familien er, uansett hvor trygge og gode relasjonene er, er ungdomstiden vanskelig. Flertallet av oss kommer oss gjennom den noenlunde helskinnet, men mange utvikler uheldige strategier.

Jeg mener at en ungdom krever langt mer oppmerksomhet fra foreldrene enn han eller hun gjerne får. Ofte er den unge ikke interessert i oppmerksomhet – avviser den regelrett. Når det skjer, har tilbudet om oppmerksomhet kommet sent, kanskje for sent. De aller fleste barn er takknemlige for støtte hvis de får den i tide, og de vil ty til den når de møter tunge dilemmaer eller opplever konflikter.

Dette forutsetter selvfølgelig at støtten gis på en adekvat måte.

Noe som bringer meg til punkt 2, som jeg riktignok aldri bebudet, men som altså er: Det bør tilbys kurs (ev. over internett) til alle foreldre, med tittel “Hva sier barnet ditt?”

 

Palm Sunday

10.04.2017 /

I have three countries. Yes, that’s right, three, and don’t ask me where I was born. In two of them, Easter means that kids are home from school and that shops are mostly closed, so that parents will have to have planned food schedules and child care for an entire week.

In my third country, Easter is a reminder of the battle between Good and Evil, which of course involves no end of diverging not to mention conflicting views.

In my village, a dense and expectant crowd has gathered outside the Southern entrance of the Basilica Mayor de Santa Maria, at 7 PM on Palm Sunday, when one of the great church bells starts booming, the doors open heavily and a rather sinister procession solemnly starts descending the stairs to the accompaniment of a funereal drum beat. Every time without fail, although I am anything but a believer, I am moved to tears by the spectacle.

Indeed, you could almost be forgiven for imagining that evil could be purged from the land, when the emaciated figure of Christ on a great big float weighing nearly two tonnes, is laboriously carried through the town in a procession that will last for many hours.

For a week, the narrow streets will resound on and off with that slow imperious beat of drums, as float after float carrying gorgeously attired Marias, and various versions of her crucified son ceremoniously emerge from one church after the other, to be perilously marched along steep and narrow streets until they re-enter their respective churches as solemnly as they left them.

For lack of hope of better times — ten years, now, after the financial crisis hurled most people here into desolate poverty — and for lack of work, income and proper schooling, the inhabitants of this village must make do with the ray of hope that faith can give them, faith in the final victory of good over evil. Even if they must die waiting, if even their children must die, good will overcome evil in the end, and they will all be reunited in the afterlife.

Oh, how I wish it were so! There are, however, ever more of us, even in this village, who believe that neither good nor evil emanates from forces beyond human control.

To put it differently: If you have a puppy that you treat firmly but kindly, you will probably end up having a well-behaved and kind dog. Likewise, if you have a child that you treat firmly but kindly, your child will probably grow into a well-functioning adult. I can’t imagine there are many who would disagree with me on that score. Discord only arises when we get down to deciding what “kind but firm” treatment means. For dogs, for example, it includes exercise and excludes being tied up for hours outside the house. For children it includes proper nourishment, stimulating education, reliable medical treatment, plenty of parental companionship and an understanding of ethics.

Those are my views, yours may be different. And we haven’t even started to discuss what is “proper nourishment”! Mind you, I insist that we can and must sort out our differences civilly, without prisons or corporal punishment!

But we can probably agree that there is much evil. I maintain it is almost exclusively human. Evil is regularly generated in non-evil humans in many ways. Apart from the obvious (hunger, humiliation, fear, etc.) there are many insidious triggers of evil that we never think about: Not everybody is able to remain impervious to the venom of the Market’s non-stop stream of advertisements through almost all channels. Meanwhile the most entertaining and hence the most popular (and most lucrative!) media outlets are owned and run by the Market, i.e. by forces that adamantly resent any restrictions on entrepreneurial activities, even if the purpose of such restrictions is to protect the planet and its peoples.

I must say I much prefer the Christian legend about the battle between Good and Evil to the poison injected into in all our minds (making us blind to the anarchic self-aggrandizement of the  Market). After all, even a believer of a religious faith can earnestly support efforts to make the world a better place for those who do not currently enjoy proper nourishment, stimulating education, reliable medical treatment, plenty of parental companionship and an understanding of ethics, and he/she can do so civilly, without prisons or corporal punishment!

Palatables and non-palatables

18.03.2017 /

Several European countries are facing national elections, these days. Lately, I have taken to watching the evening news on television, rather than just reading RSS feeds or listening to podcasts, because so many of my lunchtime companions talk about Trump’s and Gert Wilders’ hairdos that I feel a need to be visually informed.

But alas, information comes at a price. Watching the evening news means you can’t skip paragraphs or fast-forward. You have to listen to a lot of – excuse my French – crap, and crap makes me feel slightly ill. Now, I realise I seem to be echoing Mr Trump as far as distrust of the media is concerned, and for that I prostrate myself in abject apology, but there is no denying that the media has no choice but to record what dominant actors say and do, not least what Mr Trump says and twitters, which is quite a mouthful.

Tonight an opposition party in my country trumpeted: “We intend to redistribute wealth!” Why are they saying that? Because they hope to attract low-income voters. Will they succeed? I doubt it. Why? Because people know that what is meant is really “we will raise taxes”, and although they only want to raise taxes on the filthy rich, we all know that when taxes go up, the bottom two thirds of the population pay more, but when taxes go down, the top third of the population pays less. Why this is so? Beats me!

But taxes do have to be be raised. Why? Because the wealth gap between the top 10 percent and the rest of the country is growing exponentially, here as elsewhere in the western world. As you will know if you have read your Piketty, this is not only because the right-wing parties currently in power here have lowered taxes on wealth and capital, though tax reductions in recent years have been considerable and have gone almost unnoticed. (Everybody got a tiny tax reduction, whereas the top of the pyramid got an enormous tax reduction. Since we don’t want to loose our “tiny” tax reduction, we don’t talk about it.)

While making serious adjustments to cater to the companies and billionaires that regularly contribute outrageously large sums of money to its two main parties, the right-wing government has to attract low-income voters to stay in power. It therefore spends an awful lot of money on trifles that will win votes, oblivious to the unpalatable fact that what goes out has to come in.

Meanwhile, the number of poor people in this country has grown considerably in recent years – and the poor are growing poorer – and a growing number of frustrated and angry young poor are lured by whispered rumours of “great leaders” – charismatic right-wing and/or religious misfits with personality disorders.

The poor are the elephant in the room. Here, there and everywhere.

Elections should be regarded as entertainment, no more, no less, the verbal equivalent of a football match. Contenders hand out chocolates on street corners, appear on talk shows, dress to the nines and repeat their carefully chosen mantras until we all turn into sleep walkers.

If you want to win an election, you have to tell people what they want to hear. You certainly don’t tell them that we have to raise taxes. You don’t tell them that unless we do something about it, the wealth gap will continue to widen. You don’t tell them that unless we do something about it, there will be more terrorism. You don’t tell them that unless we do something about it, most of the planet will sooner or later be uninhabitable.

You don’t serve them the unpalatable truths. You serve canapés and a glass of something or other, smile your red-lipped, full-bodied smile and tell them assuaging non-truths. You tell them that we shall lower taxes, thus increasing employment and wealth for all. (Teresa May is one the real pros!) You tell them that terrorists, far from being poor are just simple killers, and will be dealt with accordingly, swiftly and effectively. You tell them that poverty, climate change and other nasty things have nothing to do with us, that the poor must look after themselves and that the climate must look after itself. In short: Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles. That is what you tell them.

Enjoy the elections!

Terrorism and poverty

12.03.2017 /

Never mind the definition of terrorism (let alone the definition of poverty). As the Guardian wrote in 2001:

While most people agree that terrorism exists, few can agree on what it is. A recent book discussing attempts by the UN and other international bodies to define terrorism runs to three volumes and 1,866 pages without reaching any firm conclusion.

Let us for this particular exercise say that terrorism is the deliberate taking of civilian (i.e non-combatant) lives for ideological purposes.

Some scholars have come to the conclusion that there is no link between poverty and terrorism. Indeed, there is absolutely no denying that the world’s have-nots far outnumber the haves, and that most have-nots are anything but terrorists. Nor can it be denied that ISIS, to take an example, is headed by a man with a university doctorate. I quote Wikipedia (12/03/2017):

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, contemporaries of al-Baghdadi describe him in his youth as being shy, unimpressive, a religious scholar, and a man who eschewed violence. For more than a decade, until 2004, he lived in a room attached to a small local mosque in Tobchi, a poor neighbourhood on the western fringes of Baghdad, inhabited by both Shia and Sunni Muslims.

With a doctorate, he would at least not have been destitute. Whether he lived in relative poverty because he had no choice, or out of solidarity with the poor, or for tactical reasons must be a matter of speculation, judging from the above cited Wikipedia article.

At any rate he did live in relative poverty and he was detained at Abu Ghraib for 10 months. I have never been to Abu Ghraib, but I have been given to understand that detention there was no tea party.

Have you, dear reader, ever felt that you or somebody you cared for had been subjected to gross injustice? Now if you, as I, enjoy a reasonably comfortable living standard, your anger will probably have abated somewhat after a few days. You would certainly not seriously contemplate terrorism. Those of us who have jobs to tend, and family and loved ones to inspire with hope and love of life, cannot allow our minds to be poisoned by bitterness and hate.

But if even the simplest chores of survival were a minute by minute uphill battle and if any of your loved ones had been killed or tortured, believe me: You would be a potential terrorist. You would perhaps not be willing to kill, but you might be willing to harbour a killers, feed him and refuse to give him away, etc. That would make you an accomplice in terrorism, which in many countries is as serious an offence as active terrorism.

I fear the methods that have been employed in the studies referred to above are seriously flawed.

Poverty alone may not be enough to drive a man or woman off the cliff, and successful terrorist groups (whether white-supremacist or religious) are contingent on having leaders who are moneyed and/or educated and who are probably, more often than not, psychopaths. But the foot soldiers who make up their armies are as much victims as their victims, cf. BBC outline of terrorist groups in Africa:

They are given the feeling that they are a very important person and that martyrdom is something to aspire to – the anger over their deprivation is lowered to a feeling of comfort, to a point where the only thing they aspire to is a collective action.

Whether that action leads to their survival or death doesn’t really matter any more.

 

 

Denialists on the rampage

28.02.2017 /

First, the definitions: A denialist is somebody who plays hymns full blast when the rain keeps pouring down and flood waters rise around his house, or somebody who goes looking for his favourite fishing rod when told his son has raped somebody’s daughter, or somebody who shoots asylum seeking immigrants huddling together at a reception centre because he, not they, flunked out of school.

A denialist calls those of us who have the gall to use – from time to time – the ugly word “sustainable”: conspiracy theorists. He calls us arrogant – and by golly, he may very well be right. Denialists and everything-will-be-just-fine-ists believe that as long as they are investing and being invested in, no questions need be asked. Just turn up the volume, bring in the cake, send up the balloons, and hallelujah, the day is made, who cares about the morrow.

Meanwhile, thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands – millions! – of people across the globe open their eyes every morning to look out upon a parched field with a few blades of yellow grass, or the corrugated iron or flapping canvas of a cramped refugee camp. And the stench! I have trouble forcing myself to imagine the stench of a refugee camp.

At the moment I am listening to a sonata by Schubert. A thing of beauty. I am never hungry, never cold, never lacking. Or rather, almost never lacking. One thing, only, is missing from my life: Confidence. Confidence in the sincere and concerted will of politicians – mine and yours, the business sector – mine and yours, the media – mine and yours, voters – here and there, to make the entire – I repeat entire – world a better place for all, starting with those who lack everything, including those who manage hanging by their teeth, including even those, who, like myself, lack nothing but confidence in people who have power.

There is little hope in sight. The world’s most powerful man has understood, at least, one thing: Unless conditions improve in the poor part of the world there will be hell to pay. I doubt Mr Trump would care unless he feared for himself and maybe his family. Since it is unlikely that fleeing to Mars will be feasible within his lifetime, he is taking his typically decisive steps: Multiplying the arms budget. He seems to be saying “We will beat the shit out of them!” I’m sure he means it.

Mr Trump has reason to fear, without doubt.

It is true that UNDP figures indicate that the total number of destitute people has decreased globally. Vaccination programmes have made headway against fatal disease, and education is somewhat more available than previously, even in poor countries.

However, growing parts of the world are becoming uninhabitable due to climate change, a tendency that will grow exponentially over the next years. And with globalisation – television, internet, etc. –resentment among the have-nots is growing. Yes, it is true that Mr Trump has reason to fear. So do we all.

Mr Trump’s solution, on the other hand, is no more a solution than it was in Vietnam. There is little you can do to beat people whose lives are so miserable that death is preferable.

Cyber…

14.02.2017 /

Some time last week my two most recent posts were highjacked by a hactivist. In other words, this site was subjected to a cyberattack. Let me add, for the record: The message was clear and it was not Russian.

I am reinserting, herewith, the two posts that were destroyed.

Sharks and hyenas

14.02.2017 /

What do you tell your children when they ask you about the “North Atlantic Treaty Organization” or the “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership”?

Maybe your children are still only toddlers. One day, however, you may have to explain to them not only the meaning of NATO and TTIP, but how you used your democratic rights to support or to not support your country’s adherence to one or the other. One day, the “democratic” world’s parents will have to explain to their children how a “redneck” who refers to international agreements as “dumb” became the world’s most powerful man. I am not sure future generations will be impressed by the replies:

  • (about NATO) “Well you see, first the communists and then the terrorists … “
  • (about TTIP) “We were all sort of one big family, so trading mainly with each other seemed natural.”
  • (about the world’s most powerful man) “We respected democracy.”

Are we, the parents – we who were once children and who now have children who will someday be parents – are we responsible for the acts of NATO, the consequences of TTIP, the stunningly irresponsible acts of the current US president? If we are not, who is?

Yesterday, there were at least 300 thousand demonstrators on the streets of Romania’s towns furiously protesting against corruption. Their votes had not been worth much, but their anger on the streets may just possibly have some effect. After all, in 1258, the English king’s angry subjects managed to restrict his power, forcing him to accept the Provisions of Oxford. True enough, rebellions have most commonly been brutally repressed, but some of them have yielded improvements for posterity.

Can we consider the election of Trump a rebellion of sorts, the result of the disenchantment of impoverished segments of the US population? Not all his voters were traditional “rednecks”, after all. Did not many of them have reason to feel betrayed, forgotten and neglected? Was their vote not a demonstration of resentment? As far as rebellions go, however, I’d say the consequences for posterity of this one seem bleak.

In my country, and probably in most others, people applying for senior executive posts are put through rigorous personality tests. They have to prove their mettle, demonstrating advanced skills and eminent suitability for the job. Not so for the president of the United States, where the voters have no say about NATO and TTIP, but they do get to decide who gets the top job.

I cannot tell you whether I would prefer to be torn to pieces by a shark or by a pack of hyenas. I have no experience of being torn apart and I’m sure I shall do all in my power to keep things that way. But I know for a fact that the US has invaded very many countries, and that the CIA has engaged in innumerable invasive, clandestine and anti-democratic operations all over the world over the past 50 years, operations the country’s own citizens don’t seem to want to know about. In many countries all over the world, there is therefore much seething hatred against the USA.

Hence, for any country, a military and / or trade alliance with the USA is a very serious liability. To put it more succinctly: Iran is far less of a threat to world peace than the USA which, under its current leadership, is even a threat unto itself.

Each country needs to consider its defences, to be sure. Self defence is indeed vital and includes avoiding entering into or sustaining alliances with bellicose expansionist states (even if they are lucrative to powerful segments of the population).

So how about reconsidering our options?

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