Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Author: pelshvalen (Page 3 of 48)

On civil liberties

14.09.2025 /

Russia’s decision to withdraw from the European Convention on the Prevention of Torture is, of course, deeply disturbing, but not entirely surprising in view of the Convention’s opening words:

The member States of the Council of Europe, signatory hereto,
Having regard to …
Recalling that, …
Noting that …
Convinced that the protection of persons deprived of their liberty against torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment could be strengthened by non-judicial means of a preventive character based on visits,—
Have agreed as follows:


Russia was kicked out of the the Council of Europe in 2023, is consequently not a member, and has no representative in the “Committee” referred to in Article 1, which according to Article 4 should have one member from each of the member states. Russia’s withdrawal was, hence, a mere formality.

That is not to say that prisoners are not tortured in Russian prisons. If you run a search on the internet you will find hundreds of lurid descriptions of mistreatment in Russian prisons. I have found none of mistreatment in Ukrainian prisons. I do not doubt that there is mistreatment of prisoners in Russian prisons. I am, however, not at all convinced that there are none in Ukrainian prisons.

That being said, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Russian Federation, Mariana Katzarova, pursuant to the United Nations’ Human Rights Council resolution 54/23 has reported:

Since the submission of the Special Rapporteur’s first report [in 2023] the human rights situation in the Russian Federation has deteriorated further. There is now a structural, State-sponsored system of human rights violations legalized by new or revised legislation utilized to suppress civil society, dissenting views and political opposition. An environment of absolute impunity has been created, coupled with a lack of independent institutions to safeguard the rule of law and access to justice. Public anti-war expression or dissent of any kind is criminalized, the use of violence by law enforcement is condoned and arbitrary arrests and detentions are widespread. … [my highlight]

Not good. Not good, at all. And the fact that the situation in the USA is pretty bad, too is no excuse. (To my surprise, Russia isn’t even on the statista.com list over per capita incarcerations. USA even has more prisoners in all than China, the other big “authoritarian” state. In fact, China isn’t on the per capita list either.)

However, the 1.8 million prisoners in US prisons have not been incarcerated because they objected publicly to US wars and regime change operations. I believe that you can express pretty well anything in any format in the US, without the police’s interfering. And that is certainly good. What is less good is that it doesn’t matter what you say or how many of you say it, because your congress and your government will do exactly as they please, or rather, as their donors please. And in the end you will end up saying what they want you to say, anyway, regardless of what you wanted to say, but forgot.

The very word “drugs”, for instance, works like magic. Likewise, the words “terrorism”, “Democracy”, “justice” serve as electrical triggers in your brain. Judicious use of such words will bring you in line in a jiffy.

Same here in Norway, where most people agree on just about everything (except wealth tax), so there is no iconoclasm to crack down on. We are all mildly woke, all reasonably polite about our insignificant differences of opinion. And the only thing we are passionate about is the “defence of” Ukraine against Russia. (In other contexts – political or otherwise – Norwegians find passion vaguely indecent.)

We are not even passionate about Gaza, just sad. Very, very sad.

Our media is so in step with official US / EU geopolitical perspectives that just about the entire population here parrots the remarkably cynical and/or ignorant Kaja Kallas. Don’t ask me how and why my compatriots are so ignorant about the country they are “passionate” about. The history of the conflict, for instance, does not seem to interest them in the least. Nor do they understand that Ukraine has long since lost the war, and that prolonging it only entails further deaths, further destruction and misery. You’d think our leaders had put all peacenics behind bars. They have not.

Don’t ask me how they do it, because I have no idea! It is truly a mystery. We even have access to Russian media and to Chinese media. We have access to a plethora of dissident US media. (We have hardly any dissident media of our own.) Still, there is only negligible criticism of EU warmongering.

How do they do it? Has the Norwegian population been bewitched?

Of what use, pray tell, is freedom of expression without freedom of thought?

Today, walking the dog, I see that somebody has parked this hideous thing just outside my town, the capital of my country. The press is silent about it.

Anomie

10.09.2025 /

Those who have been following me over time know of my tremendous esteem for Glenn Greenwald’s doggedly non-partisan reporting, currently on Rumble. However, I have not listened much to him lately. He naturally tends to concentrate on US affairs, and frankly, they don’t interest me much. After all, I live in Europe, where we have a war which eclipses all other issues, at least from the point of view of the interventionist political elite.

The other day, I read that the US had wiped a little open boat off the map. To use D.H. Wallace terminology, the US had “demapped” 11 persons in an open boat in international waters. I wondered briefly why on earth the US would do such a thing, then shrugged the matter off as “typical”. Please note: I shrugged. SHRUGGED about the massacre – extra-judicial killing – of 11 people in international waters. I add, to my defence that the Norwegian media wasted little ink on the matter.

I decided to listen to what Glenn Greenwald had to say about the matter (to be frank, I was more interested in hearing his take on the latest developments in the Epstein saga promised in the same episode).

Glenn Greenwald brought me back to earth quite robustly. He had no intention of fluttering gently over the extra-judicial killing of 11 persons by the US.

Instead he sternly asked the MAGA voters, “Do you believe, do you really believe that this was about drugs?” Raising his voice slightly, he went on: “What is the difference between the neocon policies that you, the MAGA people, oppose, and this?” Saying this, he looked me – the telespectator (MAGA or otherwise) – straight in the eye, accusing me or whoever else was watching him of condoning the incident with complacency.

And, yes, I felt guilty, although I certainly am not MAGA. I felt and definitely was guilty of assuming international law is no longer. International law still exists, but because of Gaza, because of the impunity of the savage crimes being committed by the Israelis with US blessings, all other crimes seem negligible. Because the USA is complicit in the crimes in Gaza, and because all other Western states are subordinate to the USA, international law is not being upheld.

That does not mean that the UN charter is null and void. That does not mean that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and all the UN conventions, including the Genocide convention, have not been globally agreed upon and ratified. Above all, I am convinced that if they were asked, the overwhelming majority of normal human beings all over the world (excepting of course the Israelis) would loudly cheer as the articles of the Declaration of Human Rights were read out to them.

I have assumed, but I have been wrong, that the “anything-goes-as -long-as-you-are-strong-and-dastardly-enough-LAW” applies. Biden referred to that law as “the rules-based order”. No such law has ever been ratified by any global authority. The Western nations tagged along behind “Daddy”, as they always do, but we all knew, or should have known that it was a hoax. No such law, no such order, exists. If we forget that, we become as degenerate as those who authorized the hoax in the first place, as well as the crimes committed in pursuance of it.

The USA has killed much more than the 11 unknown nationals and certainly not for the first time. (In that respect, I was right in muttering “typical”.) It has effectively killed the principles underlying its own judicial system. What is null and void, then, is US rule of law.

Glenn Greenwald did not say that. He is, after all, a US citizen, I think. But he was unusually, vitriolic about the issue, when he returned to it in a subsequent episode, yesterday, in fact. JD Vance and Rand Paul clash over due process

So now the United States government just has the power to go around and blow up any ship it wants, whatever ship it wants, and just declare afterwards that it was filled with drugs and drug dealers? .… to bomb wedding parties… there was someone there who had ties to a terrorist group… We don’t show evidence either before or after, we just claim the right to go around droning anybody we want.

And that was just the start. Glenn Greenwald felt, I think, shame and deep contempt for those who are complacent about such acts.

And he made me feel deeply ashamed. We are sliding, morally, I mean, losing our grip. Not just in the USA, but also here in Norway.

A few days prior to our national elections, students in upper secondary school all over my country carried out their own “election”. The result was interesting, to say the least, because the two parties furthest to the right won 47 per cent of the votes. These parties are primarily interested in getting rid of taxes, particularly the wealth tax. (I should add that only a small minority of Norwegians pay wealth tax.) The environmentalist party won only 4 per cent.

So youngsters here are not worried about the accelerating ecological breakdown. They are not overly concerned about growing inequality, and they certainly do not care for any redistribution of wealth. In short, the exercise seems to indicate a) a disturbing degree of ignorance b) a lack of interest in the common good.

I should, however, take comfort in knowing, or at least hoping, that Norway has not yet degenerated to the point of carrying out extra-judicial killings in international waters.

Regimeendring

03.09.2025 /

Siden opprettelsen av National Endowment for Democracy (NED) i 1983, har USAs regimeendrings-operasjoner offisielt hatt som mål å “fremme demokrati” i de aktuelle landene. Det var visstnok Reagan som i sin tid slo i bordet og konstaterte at (slik jeg tillater meg å omskrive hans uttalelse): “vi må ta rotta på Vietnam-syndromet!”

Vietnamkrigen hadde kostet 58 000 USAnske liv. Også avsløringene om hvordan USAnske styrker utslettet hele landsbyer med giftige brennende gasser, skapte avsky i USAs befolkning. Etter Vietnam satt USA igjen med sorg, avsky og skam. Til overmål tapte USA krigen.

Skam er som kjent ikke noe som bør undervurderes. I et land hvor en av de første setningene barn lærer er at “America is the greatest nation on earth“, var skam på vegne av landet ikke bare smertefull, som den ville ha vært her, men direkte traumatisk.

Samtidig ble stadig flere klar over de hårreisende sporene USA stadig vekk etterlot seg i Sør- og Sentralamerika (jf. Costa Gavras filmklassiker “Missing”). Blodige kupp, fascistiske diktaturer, etnisk rensing av indianere og sultelønn for arbeiderne. (United Fruit, som vi kjenner som Chiquita hadde for eksempel klart å tilrane seg 40 % av den dyrkbare jorda i Guatemala. Dulles brødrene – en CIA-direktør og en utenriksminister – hadde begge store eierinteresster i United Fruit.) Intern motstand i USA var blitt problematisk for den politiske ledelsen.

Så NED ble skapt, ikke for å endre USAs utenrikspolitikk, men for å fremme den på en måte som ikke vakte avsky. Journalisten David Ignatius hyller i 1991 NED i en mye sitert artikkel i Washington Post, “Innocence abroad: the new world of spyless coups“.

En inngående beretning fra desember 2019 i Le monde diplomatique, “Fiks ferdig regimeendring“, beskriver hvordan NED virker, og bruker som eksempel bakgrunnen til en av de mange foretakene som i dag tilbyr hverken mer eller mindre enn det vi kan kalle “regimeendringstjenester”. Det startet nemlig med at en 30-talls studenter i Serbia rullet i gang opposisjonsbevegelsen “Otpor” i slutten av 1998. De demonstrerte mot Milosevic til han ble tvunget til å gå av i 2001. Her et sitat fra nevnte artikkel:

Ifølge Paul McCarthy, daværende regionalleder for NED, skal Otpor ha fått en stor andel av de tre millioner dollarene den amerikanske organisasjonen brukte i Serbia fra september 1998. Midlene ble brukt til demonstrasjoner og propagandamateriell (t-skjorter, plakater og klistremerker med knyttneven), samt skolering og koordinering av aktivister.

Det hører forresten med til historien at Milosevic etter sin død i fengsel faktisk ble frikjent for de fryktelige krigsforbrytelsene i Bosnia-krigen, jf. Counterpunch, 01/08/2015, The “Exoneration of Milosevic: the ICTY’s Surprise Ruling“.

Initiativtakerne til Otpor stiftet flere år senere regimeendringstjenesten CANVAS, Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies. Slår man opp dette på nettet, ser man at det er svære greier. Wikipediasiden er dessverre ikke oversatt til norsk. Men det fremgår at CANVAS har “jobbet med demokratiaktivister” i mer enn 50 land inkludert Iran, Ukraina, Georgia, Hviterussland og Azerbajdsjan. Jeg nevner disse nettopp fordi de omringer Russland, som under den kalde krigen da landet het USSR, var USA’s “hovedfiende”.

Det ikke-kommunistiske markedsøkonomiske Russland er fortsatt hovedfienden, nå riktignok sammen med Kina. Grunnen er naturligvis ikke lenger at Russland eller Kina truer USA ideologisk. Grunnen er heller ikke at Russland er mindre demokratisk enn mange av USAs nære allierte.

At USAs utenrikspolitiske, militære og, ikke minst, økonomiske eliter anser Russland og Kina som trusler er nok sammensatte, men mange statsvitere og andre analytikere viser til Wolfowitz-doktrinen (1992). og Zbigniew Brzezinski’s epokegjørende verk, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997), som styrende for USAs utenrikspolitikk.

Ifølge Wikipedia-siden om Wolfowitz-doktrinen (dessverre ikke oversatt til norsk), slås det ufravikelig fast at USA er og skal fortsette å være den eneste supermakten, og at man der forbeholder seg retten til å ty til forebyggende inngrep og angrep (preemptive strikes), dersom landets interesser trues.

Om The Grand Chessboard står det forunderlig lite i norsk Wikipedia. Innledningsvis i selve boka skriver Brzezinsky: .

Det endelige målet for amerikansk politikk bør være godartet og visjonært: å skape et virkelig samarbeidende verdenssamfunn, i tråd med langsiktige trender og menneskehetens grunnleggende interesser. Men i mellomtiden er det avgjørende at det ikke dukker opp noen eurasisk utfordrer som er i stand til å dominere Eurasia og dermed også utfordre USA.
(KI-oversettelse).

Det høres vakkert ut, men bokas mål er likefullt å skissere hvordan USAs overherredømme kan sikres mot ev. eurasiske utfordrere.

Tross uttalelser tidligere i år fra utenriksminister Marco Rubio om at USA har innsett at det “unipolære øyeblikket er forbi”, er Russland helt klart fortsatt en torn i øyet for den økonomiske og militære eliten i Washington. Det gjelder altså å sette kjepper i hjulene for samarbeid mellom Russland og nabostatene, og å forhindre allianser som kan svekke USAs overherredømme. Prioriterte tiltak har lenge omfattet økonomiske sanksjoner, men det viser seg at effekten av disse i beste fall lar vente på seg. Skikkelige regimeendringsoperasjoner kan gi bedre resultater men er imidlertid svært tid- og ressurskrevende. Det er blant annet derfor Trump bruker tariffer. Han håper at næringslivet i de aktuelle landene vil tvinge landenes ledere til å underkaste seg USA.

Regimeendringsoperasjonene i Georgia og Ukraina har vært meget godt dokumentert (om ikke i norske “redaktørstyrte” aviser). Mindre kjent er tilsvarende operasjoner i Syria.

The Irregular Warfare Initiative er et slags digitalt kompetansesenter til bruk under utarbeidelsen av USAs nasjonale sikkerhetsstrategier. Der kan man finne en analyse av operasjonen Timber Sycamore i Syria. Et knippe sitater fra analysen:

CIA’s mål for denne skjulte operasjonen var å styrte regimet til Bashar al-Assad. Samtidig pågikk en operasjon i full åpenhet mot ISIS, men fokuset for Timber Sycamore var regjeringen til Bashar al-Assad, ikke ISIS.
…
USAs beslutning om å gi seg i kast med et program for å bli kvitt Assad fikk utilsiktet støtte fra tidligere motstandere som al-Qaida, ISIS og deres lokale støttespillere.
…
Et tidligere eksempel på en skjult operasjon i Syria var rettet mot den daværende Sovjet-vennlige regjeringen i 1957. CIA hadde da funnet ut at Sovietunionen vurderte militær intervensjon i Syria og den syriske regjeringen hadde tatt i mot et betingelsesløst lån fra Sovietunionen.
…
Den USAnske regjeringen overså President Assads tilbud om å abdisere i et sovjetisk meklingsforsøk…

(min oversettelse)

Tydeligere kan det ikke sies, vel? The Irregular Warfare Initiative avviser påstander om at USA aktivt samarbeidet med Al Qaida. Til dette vises det til en e-post fra Jake Sullivan til Hillary Clinton allerede i Februar 2012: “Al Qaeda is on our side in Syria.” (sitert av Aron Mate: In Syria dirty war, “our side” has won.

Det som først of fremst besørget Assads fall var likevel USA’s folkerettsstridige økonomiske sanksjoner mot Syria. Dette drøftes blant annet i Responsible Statecraft, “Lifting sanctions on Syria exposes their cruel intent”. Økonomiske sanksjoner er en form for beleiring. Målet er å sulte ut de beleirede. Resultatet av USAs bidrag til demokratisering av Syria er altså langt annet enn godartet: mer enn 12 år med ufattelig nød og en vedvarende flyktningekrise. Vi har dessuten nylig sett omfattende massakrer begått av de nye makthaverne.

Nå som krigene i Ukraina og Palestina fyller mesteparten av mediebildet om verden utenfor vår kjøkkenhage, har man knapt lagt merke til det som skjer i Armenia. Men også der ser det ut til å ha vært iverksatt en regimeendringsoperasjon.

Det voksende samarbeidet mellom Russland og Iran er ikke i USAs interesse.

Lille Armenia ligger midt mellom de to store landene. Handelspolitisk sett har Armenia tradisjonelt derfor vært nært knyttet både til Russland og Iran, gjennom den såkalte Zangezur-korridoren. Det blåser nå opp til konflikt om korridoren, da Azerbajdsjan og Tyrkia er interessert i å kontrollere den, og det ser ut til at de vil lykkes med det.

For å være presis: Armenia var knyttet til Russland og Iran. Men i etterkant av Armenias såkalte “fløyelsrevolusjon” i 2018, kom en relativt upopulær fyr til makten. Nikol Pashinyan er åpenbart en brikke i Vestens spill for å svekke forbindelsen mellom Russland og Armenia. Det eneste han har gjort for sitt land til nå er å krympe det, mens Azerbajdsjan vokser. En overskrift i en avis som utgis i Nederland, The Moscow Times, jubler at Armenia Is Breaking Up With Russia – And Putin Can’t Stop It.

Det er påfallende at Armenia (dvs. Pashinyan) nå heller vil samarbeide med Tyrkia, som i sin tid begikk folkemord mot armenerne (og som fortsatt nekter for det) enn med Russland som normalt gir sine allierte bedre handelsbetingelser enn EU, for ikke å snakke om Tyrkia.

På Sonar21 dukket det opp en artikkel datert 6. juli 2025 skrevet av en “gjesteskribent”, D. Davidian: “Armenia’s Prime Minister is Trapped. Det kan tenkes at forfatteren er den samme som under overskriften Exclusive Interview with Mr. David Davidian, Lecturer at the American University of Armenia analyserer den tragiske etniske konflikten i Nagorno Karabach og Tyrkias og Israels innblanding i armenske anliggender.

Men i innlegget på Sonar21 finner vi en punktliste med blant annet følgende:

Antallet registrerte NGOer i Armenia forblir uklart. Det offisielle antallet i 2019 var 4222 og antall stiftelser var 1120, men russiske kilder hevder av antallet NGOer høsten 2023 er rundt 9000. Et slikt antall er påfallende for et land med et innbyggertall på rundt 3 millioner. Vestlig-støttede NGOers rolle i farge-revolusjoner er viden kjent. Nikol Pashinyan har selv uttalt at han nådde toppen på ryggen av NGOer. Dette er en klassisk fremgangsmåte i alle vestlig-inspirerte farge-revolusjoner.

I 2017 fremmet han forslag til Parlamentet om å forlate Den eurasiske økonomiske union.

Siden han kom til makten i 2018, har Pashinyan hatt 5 sikkerhetssjefer, men 6 ledende statstjenestemenn har mistet livet under mistenkelige omstendigheter.

Etter en rekke telefonsamtaler i oktober 2020 mellom Pashinyan og den russiske presidenten Putin, på den ene siden, og mellom Azerbajdsjans president Aliyev og Putin, på den andre, ble det foreslått å avslutte kampene. Forslaget gikk ut på at Armenia skulle beholde kontrollen over store deler av det som i Sovjettiden hadde vært den autonome regionen Nagorno-Karabakh og tilliggende områder. Det ville bli satt ut Russiske fredsbevarende styrker. Men Pashinyan avslo tilbudet og hevdet at dette ville medføre kapitulasjon.

(min oversettelse).

Det hører med til historien at Armenia tapte hele Nagorno-Karabach og det armenske flertallet ble brutalt drevet ut.

Flere av Davidians påfølgende punkter tyder på at den godeste Pashinyan fører en høyst forunderlig politikk som i alle fall ikke fremmer armenske interesser. Kan det være slik at Armenia rett og slett er en eurasisk bananrepublikk? Jeg merker meg for øvrig at Amnesty skriver bl.a. om “reports of increased pressure and harassment against journalists” i 2024, og Pashynians politiske motstandere (inkludert ledere i den armenske kirken) blir nå jevnlig arrestert og fengslet.

Dette hører vi ingenting om.

Landets viktigste eksportartikler er forresten gull, kobber og diamanter. Da er det vel lov å tenke sitt.


***

Bildet nedenfor er hentet fra https://nocoldwar.org/

Flere detaljer

Dense, deceived or devious?

27.08.2025 /

In his novel Essay on Blindness (1995), José Saramago described what Wikipedia calls “an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city, and the social breakdown that swiftly follows”. The story is exceptionally dark and frightening, because when everybody else is blind, the book tells you, you will find nobody to guide you safely home. You won’t even find a toilet. Or water. Much like in Gaza.

Another frightening aspect of the book is that mass blindness can occur anywhere, and at any time, for no apparent reason.

Saramago, it is true, was a communist, and he might have felt that those who were not were blind. I was not a communist, however, when I read the novel several decades ago. Yet, I felt intuitively, that his story reflected reality in an uncanny way. I just couldn’t put my finger on just why it rang so true. Now I can. And yes, mass blindness can occur anywhere and at any time and for no apparent reason.

I was taught and brought up to believe that everything known to mankind was dutifully recorded in Encyclopaedia Britannica. Subsequent information, arrived at after the tomes had been printed, would be reported in the New York Times. Only many years after I left home to study, did I fully understand that Britannica was the legacy of a colonial power in collaboration with a neo-colonial superpower. I could still rely on it to find the birth dates of potentates, and the names, dates and places of important battles. But the underlying causes of violent conflicts, for instance, were not satisfactorily explained.

I haven’t used Britannica for years, and I have also noticed that the New York Times exists mainly to cover the tracks of globalists going about their nefarious business. What the NY Times conspicuously fails to do, for instance, is to explain mass stupidity or, if you will, mass blindness, which is what we are seeing now, and to which the famous news outlet contributes in a big way.

Were there ulterior motives for deluding Ukraine, back in 2022, into imagining the country could win a war against Russia? Why is “the coalition of the willing”, or “Coalition of the Twats”, to quote Pepe Escobar, so rabidly eager to fight the Russians? If they actually send troops to Ukraine – God help us all! – will they stand to gain something?

Have there been ulterior motives for loyally supporting, for decades, an apartheid state? Are there ulterior motives for being complicit in genocide?

The realisation that I could not trust Britannica or the NY Times, that I had to be as wary of them as of the Murdoch press was awful; almost comparable to the discovery that a beloved father is a dictator who has his political opponents imprisoned and tortured.

My question “dense, deceived or devious?” was not about Trump. Not that I like Trump and better than Biden, but I actually think he understands that the European triumvirate plus Santa Ursula are killing Europe. Surely, they are not themselves suicidal? What, then, are they after? The 300-335 billion USD of Russian frozen assets?

By the way, of those 300-335 billions, only 5-8 are in the USA, but 70 billion are in France, according to the market analyst Alex Krainer; were in France. Now only 22.8 billion remain. Where did the rest go? It is true that thanks to Candace Owens, Macron would not be anybody’s choice of a son-in-law, but a 40 billion dollar thief? Surely, not. Or…?

I honestly don’t know. Cross my heart.

Conspiracy theories abound, as they always will when people lose faith in governing establishments. In a Democracy, we expect to be able to hold our politicians accountable. In France, England and Germany – at the very least – not to mention in the USA, Democracy has been so eroded that people are prepared to believe practically any wild story about the leaders of their governments. Anything, or as in my case, nothing. Whether or not we hitch our wagons to a conspiracy theory, we distrust the leaders of the pack and their henchmen.

Mind you, here in Norway (we have oil, remember), the standard of living is still reasonably high, although we are seeing a marked deterioration of healthcare. So here in Norway, people still have faith in their favourite politicians. Here, conspiracy theories are peddled only by a small minority.

Here too, though, what is sure is that the establishment – regardless of what party heads it – lies and steals (we, too, have a financial class) and deceives voters. I did not know, for instance, that the OSCE kept a special monitoring mission in Ukraine during the period 2015-2022. More importantly, I did not know what the OSCE observers observed. What they observed was not publicised, you see, because it did not confirm the official narrative, cf. the recently published book, “What I Saw in Ukraine 2015 to 2022, Diary of an International Observer,” by Benoit Paré. You will hear very interesting examples of what the author saw on Grayzone.

So in Norway, we do not yet know that nobody is guiding us home and that sooner or later, we, too, will lack drinking water. We cling to the belief that technology will solve the climate issue, and that life as we know it will prevail; that the plucky Ukrainians will beat horrible Putin, and that Ukraine has been a Democracy since 2014; that justice will be done in Gaza and that the Israelis will suddenly stop being sadists; that Trump will be replaced by a Democratsand that Democrats are decent. We need not “hope” that USA is our kind uncle and protector, because we have never doubted that was the case.

Norwegians are living in Never-never-land, unwilling to wake up. Why? Because the press serves as a bulwark against information that undermines the official narratives. Here we are not told that Europe is in deep trouble. Even official EU poverty statistics are grim. We are not told that in the UK, and in France, reality is loudly knocking on doors.

Here in Norway, we do not know that people in UK and France have growing trouble covering basic expenses, while real wages are falling, and prices – not least the cost of servicing mortgages – rise. Increasingly, people resort to credit cards and accumulate very expensive credit card debts. Need I continue? Foreclosures… homeless people… real, really real poverty which is getting worse by the day. The UK is on its way down a slippery slope.

In France the poverty rate is 15.4 % and growing. The country has a growing public deficit (6.1% of GDP in 2024), a rising national debt (above €3.1 trillion), and political chaos because nobody (left, right or centre) likes Macron, who nevertheless hangs on like a leech.

France is the second largest economy in Europe (after Germany), driving nearly 20% of the Eurozone economy. Yet, it is a sinking ship. If you lend money to someone who wants to save a sinking ship you will demand an exorbitant price (interest rate) for your “kindness”, cf. the NY Times article of 26 August: Fears of a French Government Collapse Send Its Borrowing Costs Soaring, The article also discusses how the general public might react to the steps the government plans to take to avoid having to resort to an IMF bailout.

Look up the following three words on the internet: “debt, France, IMF” (and set time to “past week”) and you will see a long list that include expressions such as “IMF bailout”, “meltdown”, “debt explosion”, etc. As an analyst remarked the other day, people are preparing for a new Bastille day and are bringing their old guillotines up from the cellars.

Look up “UK and IMF” (and set time to “past week”), and you will find an even longer list of forebodings.

Whatever the causes of this very obvious and dramatic slippery slope state in two of Europe’s three most important economies (and Germany is not much better off, I gather), they are not being addressed. On the contrary. The UK and EU have made a disastrous deal with Trump, one which will finish them off completely if complied with. Are Macron, Starmer, Mertz and Santa Ursula dense, deceived or devious?

Meanwhile, in an interesting development, Denmark is discovering to its dismay, that USA is quietly making progress in conquering the hearts and minds of people in Greenland. Maybe Denmark is learning that with such “friends”, who needs enemies.

***

And no, the double tap strike against Nasser Hospital, killing 20 people including 5 journalists, was not “a terrible mistake”. It was deliberate! On second thought, take a longer look at https://www.972mag.com !!!!

Redistribution of wealth

20.08.2025 /

By “wealth” I am referring not only to that of each country, but to what has been and still is being misappropriated by the “West” from the Global South.

It’s been several years since I subscribed to the last Norwegian newspaper that sported a so-called anti-imperialist profile. Now there are none, alas. Back then, though, the paper published every week one long article written by an economist. Various economists, in fact, would take turns providing the weekly article. They appeared to suggest (very cautiously) that we are not obliged to choose between voracious capitalism or Stalinism. There are, in fact, alternatives.

For me that single weekly article was extremely important as I was, at the time, engaged in daily arguments with a colleague – a very highly qualified economist (and dear friend). Having read my Piketty, I maintained that capitalism was destroying us all. He maintained I was ignorant (which I was). I retorted that he was reactionary, which he still is.

So the book Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste (2013) was an eye-opener for me. Its author, Philip Mirowsky, explained that you just couldn’t get a job as an economist at US universities (which tend to rely on donor funding) or in any self-respecting company, unless you had embraced the religion of market fundamentalism. (That explained the cautiousness of the young economists writing the weekly article in my paper.) To quote Wikipedia:

“[In the book], Mirowski concludes that neoliberal thought has become so pervasive that any countervailing evidence serves only to further convince disciples of its ultimate truth. Once neoliberalism became a Theory of Everything, providing a revolutionary account of self, knowledge, information, markets, and government, it could no longer be falsified by anything as trifling as data from the “real” economy.”

Mirowski’s book also included diatribes about a “Mont Pelerin Society”. I asked myself: “is the man delusional?”

Since then, I noticed that many progressive economists preferred to refer to their field as the “history” (“philosophy” or “anthropology”) of economics, rather than just plain economics, cf. David Graeber (anthropologist), author of the classic “Debt” (as well as of “Bullshit Jobs”) which has left an indelible imprint on his readers. You might , by the way, enjoy a look at the first dozen or so paragraphs of his essay about power ignorance and stupidity.

Is a brighter future possible? A more equitable one?
For the moment, things look pretty bleak, at least in the EU and UK, which appear to have embarked on the suicidal course of militarism. However, in the UK, a new political party has been created “to take on the rich and powerful and to campaign for the redistribution of wealth,” as the BBC unenthusiastically reported.

During our arguments many years ago, my former colleague, the highly qualified economist, compared economics to a force of nature that can tear down your house or, if correctly managed, transform cataracts into electric energy. Now I can dismiss his analogy, with confidence. Because since then, I have learnt a little about economics, not the economics he had been taught, but the kind that the cautious young economists were suggesting back then. There are more of them now, and some of them even hold positions in universities.

I should add: I have met many people who “absolutely loathe economists”, and with good reason. The economists they loathe have been the servants of the 1–10 per cent. The economists I speak of serve the rest of us.

The important point to realise is that economics are man-made. We make the rules. The decisive question, though, is: Who are the “we“?

What follows is a list of those who have taught me what I now know.

  • I wish to introduce the list by mentioning my very brave and mild-mannered compatriot  Glenn Diesen. Every day he interviews globally recognised specialists on his substack account. Some of his interviewees are political scientists and known geopolitical or military analysts. Others, however, are economists, hedge-fund managers or geopolitical economists. In his own country, Norway, Glenn Diesen is smeared and harassed in every single mainstream outlet. The very virulence of the attacks against him suggests that those who wish to defend US global hegemony find him dangerous.

  • I suspect that Jeremy Corbyn and his new party will have collaborated closely with New Economics Foundation, and that they will have done so for quite some time. There is nothing adventurous about NEF people. They are down-to-earth economists wearing ties and polished shoes, but their economics are of a different kind than what we have been exposed to over the past decades. They also have a web page called “Change the rules“.

    A similar organisation exists in the USA. (For all I know, there may be more) Institute of New Economic Thinking.

  • Radhika Desai presents herself as a marxist economist. I would like to recommend her conversation with Glenn Diesen during which she defines “neoliberalism”. I think we need to understand what the term actually means. Those who are unfamiliar with her exposition of “rentier capitalism” (and Marxist jargon in general) may find her intimidating. But rentier capitalism is none the less a fact.

  • Jason Hickel has devoted much of (maybe even most of ) his professional life, so far, to exposing the West’s exploitation of the so-called 3. world. Yet he is probably better known for his book Less is More, which has been embraced by environmentalists. The two issues are, of course, interrelated. I warmly recommend his book The Divide – Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Market (1923). He writes eloquently and is able to provide data, not least thanks to his university position, that is not otherwise easily accessible. He also has a substack account.

  • Michael Hudson is an outlier in several ways. He is nowhere near “young”, and he refers with respect to the classical school of economics (e.g. Adam Smith whom he maintains neoliberals would have called a Marxist had they actually read his book.) Hudson was an honest to goodness Wall Street economist, although Wall Street called him Doctor Doom. For a long time now he has contributed with Radhika Desai to the excellent website Geopolitical Economy. He has also writen more books than i can list, but I warmly recommend Killing the Host – How financial parasites and debt bondage destroy the global economy.

  • Geopolitical Economy is run by Ben Norton, an exceptionally well-spoken man who elucidates economic issues that seem arcane to most of us, Indeed, there is no doubt that the jargon employed by economists discourages us from trying to understand what the financial set is up to. For example , in the episode  How corporate landlords are taking over society,  he asks Michale Hudson to explain how the financialisation of economics has been nursing a set of parasites that are making life difficult for the rest of us.

  • David Gibbs  is not an economist. He is a professor of history at Arizona University. His latest book The Revolt of the Rich – How the Politics of the 1970s Widened America’s Class Divide (2024) is intriguing (why on earth should the rich “revolt”, and against whom? ) and illuminating. Here again I learn about the Mont Pelerin Society, how they bided their time, and how they struck when the time was right. This book tells us a great deal about why the economy and the standard of living has been going from bad to worse since the 1970s , in the US and the UK.

  • Rutger Bregman is also a historian. According to Wikipedia (as at 17 Aug. 2025), “he has been described by The Guardian as the “Dutch wunderkind of new ideas” and by TED Talks as “one of Europe’s most prominent young thinkers”. His book Utopia for Realists “promotes a more productive and equitable life based on three core ideas which include a universal and unconditional basic income paid to everybody, a short workweek of fifteen hours, and open borders worldwide with the free exchange of citizens between all nations.” (ibid). See his TED talk “Poverty isn’t a lack of character; it’s a lack of cash.

  • Kate Rawroth, however, is a full-fledged economist. Her book  Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist (2017) has become a classic for those who wish to know how economics can serve ordinary people to the south and the north of the equator.

  • Ha-Joon Chang, an economist from South Korea, is on good terms with everyone, even with Friedrich von Hayek (the father of neoliberalism). What I find endearing about him, though, is that he appears to sincerely believe that we should all try to understand a bit about economics so that we can take part in decision making, in accordance with our Democratic rights (to the extent we actually enjoy Democratic rights). To that effect, he has written a brief introduction to economics for people like you and me: Economics: The User’s Guide (2014).

    Mild and smiling as he seems, he has a hard punch. In Kicking Away the Ladder (2003) , (which I have not read), he dared take on the really big and bad guys, cf. the Wikipedia article about him. At that time, his book was a very brave one, I suspect.

    Above all, though, I recommend Edible Economics – A hungry economist explains the world. For anybody interested in international cuisine, and even for those who are not, this is quite simply an entertaining read. His tremendous erudition and the deadly punches he delivers in his mild-mannered way seem unobtrusive enough, but the man is, I repeat, brave.

    Those who eagerly follow Trump’s battle with the BRICs might find it worth their while to follow the youtube channel of Sean Foo, a very young, but smart self-declared geopolitical economic analyst.

  • To conclude this list, I add the obvious: Thomas Piketty. As I see it, his two monumental books about Capital (2013 and 2019) introduced a paradigm shift. Not only did they question the validity of the neoliberal order, they appeared to prove that “growth” as traditionally defined was completely unsustainable.

    The books were so monumental that they delivered the academic “coup de grace” to neoliberalism . (Alas, though, neoliberalism refuses to die quietly. Like the dragons of folklore, it lies wounded and compromised, but continues to spew poisonous gasses from its nostrils.)

    I recommend Piketty’s blog in Le Monde. He writes there from time to time, in French and in English.

  • Finally, a reminder of what Western neoliberalism amounts to, when all is said and done:

“Fordelingspolitikk”

12.08.2025 /

Med fordelingspolitikk mener jeg ikke bare fordeling internt i ett land, men også fordeling med det globale sør.

Mens jeg enda abonnerte på Klassekampen – det er en stund siden nå – var det hver uke en stor artikkel skrevet av en økonom. Nettopp den artikkelen var viktig for meg, da jeg prøvde å overbevise min nærmeste kollega, utdannet siviløkonom, at kapitalismen var i ferd med å kjøre oss alle i grøfta (jeg hadde lest min Piketty). Kollegaen mente jeg var uvitende (noe jeg selv skjønte jeg var), og jeg mente han var reaksjonær (noe han enda er).

Økonomene som byttet på å skrive ukens økonomi-tekst i KK rustet meg for mine daglige dueller med siviløkonomen. De lot til å ha tro på at en annen ordning var mulig. Det ble dessuten klart for meg at det var i ferd med å vokse fram en generasjon progressive økonomer som riktignok ikke våget å gjøre mye av seg i landskapet.

Boka Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste (2013) var derfor en åpenbaring! Der forklarer Philip Mirowski nemlig at det var aldeles umulig å få jobb som økonom for andre enn markedsfundamentalister. Neoliberalismen var blitt så innarbeidet over alt, at enhver innsigelse mot den styrket disiplene i troen på at de hadde sett lyset. Ingen universiteter i USA (som jo er avhengige av rike sponsorer) og ingen bedrift våget å ansette andre enn neoliberale økonomer.

Jeg slukte boka. Den introduserte meg dessuten til røttene bak neoliberalismen, Mont Pelerin Society. Jeg syntes det han skrev om MPS hørtes ut som en konspirasjonsteori. Jeg trodde rett og slett ikke på ham, men fordi alt det andre han skrev lød så riktig, glemte jeg ikke MPS. Og nå mer enn ti år senere, får jeg bekreftet, og det til gangs, det han skrev den gang.

Han var åpenbart en ensom fugl. I årene som fulgte fant jeg imidlertid flere bøker av progressive økonomer som titulerte seg som historikere (økonomisk historie) eller sågar som antropologer. Dette var altså økonomer som seilte på bokhimmelen under “falske flagg”.

Er en annen verden mulig? En mer rettferdig verden?

Akkurat nå ser det dårlig ut, i hvert fall for EU som satser alt på militær keynsianisme, d.v.s. opprustning og mer opprustning. Samtidig uttrykker vanlige folk nettopp i EU, om ikke her i Norge, stadig mer høylydt mistillit til den politiske eliten. I Storbritannia har voksende deler av befolkningen opplevd regelrett nød i mange år nå. Jeg nevner Storbritannia fordi det nettopp der nylig ble stiftet et nytt parti “to take on the rich and powerful and to campaign for the redistribution of wealth,” for å sitere BBC (som slett ikke ønsker det nye partiet velkommen).

Min tidligere kollega, siviløkonomen, forklarte den gang at økonomi er som en naturkraft: vi må bare lære å leve med den. I dag våger jeg å påstå at det er tull. Det våger jeg fordi jeg etterhvert fant stadig flere nettsider, videoer og bøker som lærte meg litt om økonomi.

Vi former nemlig økonomien; den former ikke oss. Det som derimot er avgjørende er hvem “vi” som former økonomien, er.

Det som følger er en liste over dem som har lært meg noe om økonomi. Dessverre er alle mine kilder (med unntak av én eneste oversatt bok) på engelsk. Jeg har ikke saumfart norske kilder, men det finnes sikkert noe å hente også her.

  • Øverst vil jeg nevne vår egen Glenn Diesen. Hver dag legger han ut samtaler med statsvitere, fonds-forvaltere, forretningsfolk mm. Samtalepartnerne kommer fra ulike verdensdeler og har ulike synspunkter om ulike temaer, bl.a. om geopolitisk økonomi. Men neoliberalisme later til å stå dem alle fjernt.

  • Jeg tipper at Corbyn og hans nye parti samarbeider tett med New Economics Foundation og at de har gjort det lenge. Jeg tipper at de er forberedt, denne gangen, med konkrete – svært konkrete tiltak. New Economics Foundation har også en nettside som heter “Change the rules“.
  • Radhika Desai omtaler seg som en marxistisk økonom. Jeg vil anbefale hennes analyse, i en samtale med Glenn Diesen, av “neoliberalisme”. Hvis man ikke tidligere er kjent med begrepene “rentier capitalism” (jeg har ikke funnet noe norsk begrep for dette, men Wikipediaartikkelen tilkarringsvirksomhet forklarer fenomenet) så går det fort i svingene.
    En bokanmeldelse på dansk forklarer “rentierkapitalisme“.
  • Jason Hickel’s årelange kamp gjelder vår økonomiske utbytting av 3.verden, selv om han kanskje er best kjent for sine veltalende bidrag til miljø- og klimasaken. Jeg anbefaler særlig boka The Divide – Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Market (1923). Han skriver vakkert og forståelig, samtidig som han nå har muligheter til å bidra med data vi ikke vil få se andre steder. Jason Hickel har en substack-konto, men skriver relativt sjelden der.

  • Michael Hudson er et unntak på mange måter. Han er alt annet enn ung. Og han var en ekte Wall Street økonom. Til overmål viser han mye til “klassisk økonomisk teori” (Adam Smith, som han påstår dagens neoliberalere ville ha kalt marxist om de faktisk hadde lest ham). Hudson var kritisk til oppdragsgiverne sine fra starten av, likevel brukte de ham fordi han var smart. I mange år nå, har han sammen med en indisk-kanadisk økonom, Radhika Desai. bidratt til det flotte nettstedet Geopolitical Economy. Han har skrevet flere bøker enn jeg kan liste opp. Men jeg vil nevne Killing the Host. Undertittelen er: How financial parasites and debt bondage destroy the global economy.

  • Geopolitical Economy drives av Ben Norton. Ben Norton er en usedvanlig veltalende og pedagogisk formidler! Jeg har muligens lært mer om økonomi av ham enn av noen annen. I episoden How corporate landlords are taking over society ber han Michael Hudson forklare hvordan “finansialiseringen” av økonomien nærer en parasittklasse som forvansker livet for oss.

  • David Gibbs er ikke økonom, men historiker. I 2024 utga han imidlertid boka The Revolt of the Rich – How the Politics of the 1970s Widened America’s Class Divide. Den kan leses som en lærebok om neoliberalismens fremvekst; om klassekamp, rett og slett. Her får vi også se hvordan Mont Pelerin Society systematisk beredte grunnen for spetakkelet vi ser i dag.

  • Også Rutger Bregman er historiker. I boka Utopia for Realists agiterer han for borgerlønn.

  • Kate Raworth, derimot, er økonom til gangs. Hennes bok Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist (2017) er blitt en klassiker for dem som vil vite hvordan økonomi kan gagne vanlige folk i nord og sør.

  • Ha-Joon Chang er fra Sør-Korea. Han er venn med alle, selv med den fryktelige Friedrich von Hayek. Det som er fint med ham er at han mener oppriktig at vi alle må prøve å forstå litt om økonomi hvis vi skal kunne benytte oss av våre demokratiske rettigheter og utøve medbestemmelse. Han har skrevet en ganske pedagogisk bok – en slags innledning til økonomi: Economics: The User’s Guide.
    Men jeg vil først og fremst anbefale boka Edible Economics – A hungry economist explains the world. For dem som er interessert i mat, og selv for dem som ikke der det, er dette festlig lesning. Og den er langt fra tannløs.

  • For dem som spent følger med Trumps kamp mot BRICS, kan det være verdt å følge youtube-kanalen til Sean Foo fra Singapore. Som Wikipedia-siden om ham viser, har han en svært broket bakgrunn, men han er åpenbart en meget smart ung mann. Engelsken hans er utfordrende.

  • Jeg hadde nesten glemt den store Thomas Piketty! Jeg vil påstå at hans to monumentale verk om kapital (2013 og 2019) medførte et paradigmeskifte i diskursen om økonomi. Det er dessuten vel verdt å følge med bloggen hans i Le Monde (både på fransk og på engelsk).
    Men nå ser jeg det faktisk finnes en norsk oversettelse” av en av hans bøker

En kort historie om likhet.

Jeg siterer utgiver: “De økonomiske spørsmålene er altfor viktige til å overlates til en liten klasse av eksperter og ledere, hevder Piketty. At folk flest tilegner seg denne kunnskapen er avgjørende hvis vi skal få endret på maktforholdene i samfunnet. Denne boken er hans bidrag til endringen”

Recognition?

08.08.2025 /

One by one, countries are “recognising” Palestine as a state. I ask myself: What does that effectively mean? Will those countries stop importing Israeli goods? Will they withdraw funds invested in Israel? Will they instantly halt all trade with and financial services to Israel?
Of course not; money talks louder than justice.

Will they send UN troops to throw the illegal settlers out of the illegally occupied West Bank? Will they boycott the US that blocks all Security Council resolutions aimed at defending the Palestinians? Will the ICC condemn the country that is arming and financing Israel and protecting it militarily?
Of course not; the top dog calls the shots.

I put to you that all this “recognition” talk of Palestine is just lip-service, just a cover-up. We – the general public in most “Western” countries – are seeing some of what is going on in Gaza, partly thanks to the testimony of the brave and heartbroken US Lt Colonel Tony Aguilar, but above all because numerous journalists have volunteered their lives in Gaza, knowing that the IDF systematically kill journalists and health workers.

We – the general public in most “Western” countries – are shocked and increasingly angry. We are casting about us for our pitchforks. One by one, then, governments have to pretend to be doing the decent thing before the old pitchforks in ramshackle tool sheds have been located.

Yes, recognising the state of Palestine is a step in the right direction, but it will not stop the genocide; it will not deter Israel’s imperialist ambitions in the Middle East. It will not in any way prevent Israel from exterminating Palestinian “untermenschen”, and also the “untermenschen” of neighbouring countries, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, to begin with.

The Israelis need “lebensraum”, you see.” They are taking their cues from the wrong teachers. (And I don’t think the Christian Zionists should count on going to heaven either.)

And we, “nous autres”, we are under the US heel, as Santa Ursula has just demonstrated so very eloquently. “Master, tell us how we can serve you.”

Nevertheless, recognition of the state of Palestine is important. Vital.

A state has the right to defend itself.

Did you know – I didn’t till George Galloway, not the mainstream media, informed me – that the captain of the Palestinian football team was murdered waiting in line for food? The mainstream is absolutely useless!

Do you hear the distant rumbling?

31.07.2025 /

From their gardens or small vegetable patches men and women, some decidedly old, others somewhat younger, stop their pruning, cutting, weeding – whatever they are doing – straighten their tired backs and peer into the middle distance. Was that thunder? Or was it the sound of bombs? Many of those who come from far away will have good reason to fear bombs. Those of us who have lived here all our lives don’t really want to know what bombs are, but news of Gaza haunts us, no matter how hard we try to shut our eyes when those ghastly images flicker across the screen.

But I decidedly heard rumbling in the distance.

Garden work is hard on backs and knees. Yet, those who engage in it are, more often than not, retirees. Now they are turning their faces towards the sky, gratefully accepting the first few raindrops, while rubbing the small of their aching backs. Some cast a glance towards the tool shed, where the old pitchfork is hanging from its hook. It hasn’t been used for years, but it is still there.

If I were a painter, my next picture would have as its background the EU headquarters. In the foreground are thousands and thousands and thousands of human figures and their pitchforks.

We’ve been had, you know. Even in the global north, we’ve been had, but in the Global South… The Global South has fed us and clothed us and provided us with gold and gems and beautiful handicrafts and received nothing in return. Less than nothing. Much of the Global South is starving.

Gaza is in a sense the metaphorical Christ who was crucified to save us. Gaza has shown us the evil of our ways.

Here in the global north, we are just beginning to suspect how evil our ways are. Not because of the pruning, cutting and weeding in vegetable plots, but because of the neoliberal system in which we have faith. Mind you, I too have been criminally blind, criminally naive, criminally complacent for most of my life. I am not ashamed of it, because – as I now see – indoctrination is no joke. It’s not taught as such at universities, but it is taught!

The metaphorical pitchforks are appearing, though. More and more people find it too painful to bear that their governments and financial elites are contributing to the massacre by bombs and starvation of the people of Gaza.

The opening words in the statement of UK’s new “Your Party” apply also to the hoodwinked population of the UK. These words are a metaphorical pitchfork:

The system is rigged when 4.5 million children live in poverty in the sixth richest country in the world. The system is rigged when giant corporations make a fortune from rising bills. The system is rigged when this government says there is no money for the poor, but billions for war

The UK’s “Your Party” is the rumbling that I heard! It is not bombs, but the contrary of bombs.

And in the US, the following video should shake up at lot of people too.

There is hope.

Theorising conspiracy theories about conspiracy theorists

24.07.2025 /

When I looked up the title to this post, in case anybody else had used it, I found a title that looked a little too similar for comfort: “Criminology, Conspiracy Theories and Theorizing Conspiracy“, an academic paper, published 30 January 2025. I took a long and increasingly appreciative look. I quote from the abstract:

The first part of the article suggests that a moral panic over conspiracy theories has given rise to a conspiracy theory research agenda that has pathologized and criminalized conspiracy theories. The second part of the article argues that although conspiracies are important sociological and political phenomena, the term ‘conspiracy theory’ functions to stigmatize certain narratives.

And from the beginning of the introduction:

In recent years, conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists have been lambasted and ridiculed by politicians and journalists, and psychologized, pathologized and criminalized by academics. This article challenges criminologists to adopt a more critical orientation to conspiracy theories and theorizing conspiracy. Rather than dismissing conspiracy theories out of hand, criminologists should consider hypotheses about elite wrongdoing on the basis of their merits and the evidence available to us.


Just so.

The other day, I sent a text message to an old fried. Roughly summarised:

News about Trump’s reversal on disclosure of the Epstein files and the resulting hullabaloo in USA is somewhat entertaining and a welcome distraction from news from Gaza. I never paid any attention to the sordid Epstein case, but I must admit his frequent meetings with Ehud Barak and his sex-services to members of the economic elite must have given a number of persons reason to want him dead.

The old “friend”, sent me in return four irate emojis, including two of scull and crossbones. No text. Knowing his abhorrence of “conspiracy theories”, I assumed he did so to indicate that he disapproved of mine, though I had not advanced any “theory”. I was merely indicating my lack of respect for and distrust of the country that has a military stranglehold over my country.

To my mind, the failure of the US courts to prosecute Epstein’s child sexual abuse clients – surely there must have been a number of very powerful clients, in view of his fabulous wealth – is intriguing. And how on earth were Israeli lunatics – the ones who invented the Gaza Method – able to persuade reasonably normal US politicians to very actively facilitate it, the Gaza Method, that is? Surely those US politicians must have known that children all over the world will hereinafter be taught to loathe and fear not only Israel but also USA: Having developed an effective method to exterminate entire populations, the hateful perpetrators are sure to use it again. Are they not aware of the scorn and revulsion with which references to the US political and financial establishment are met. Surely, they know that the very concept “American Democracy” has been as sullied as if the stars and stripes had been used as toilet paper. So how could they? Were they coerced, or were they merely greedy (i.e. bribed)?

***

Every day, Norwegians wake up to the morning news with the death toll from the last 24 hours in Gaza: “30 shot dead queueing for food”, “86 shot dead queueing for food”, “15 dead of starvation” Every single damned day!!! The number dying of starvation rises day by day.

However, the morning news does not report that Ukrainian males are being hunted as animals to serve as cannon fodder in the proxy war against Russia. The Norwegian media have not reported the realities of the Ukraine war. In Norway, as opposed to in USA, there is no market for independent media.

So where is the conspiracy? Whose conspiracy? Is there a conspiracy?

Of course there is! There have always been conspiracies, here, there and everywhere. During WWI (cf. Arthur Ponsonby’s little book Falsehood in War-Time ) and WWII (when a whole nation was bamboozled by the “Untermensch” narrative). During the Middle Ages, kings and prelates were incessantly engaging in all sorts of plots. Business and politics are all about conspiracies. Take the Mont Pelerin Society, for starters. Or take the Wolfowitz Doctrine (1992) or TheGrand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives by Brzezinsky, President Carter’s national security adviser. The book is one big conspiracy, as you will see if you download it from CIA’s website.

More correctly, then, who gets to decide what is a conspiracy theory as opposed to a real or a possible conspiracy?

Answer: The corporate media. To be de-platformed or cancelled as a conspiracy theorist you simply need to present information or suggest an interpretation that fails to conform with the information and analyses presented by the corporate media. It’s basically a loop. Increasingly, the corporate media all echo one another, because they all repeat, almost verbatim, statements from their respective governments’ spokespersons.

Yes, I admit I am suggesting there is some sort of conspiracy, here, but I have no evidence (in Norway) that active censorship is involved. All I know is what everybody knows: articles from a number of formerly respected political analysts are no longer printed by the corporate press. And I know for an absolute fact, that we – not least my old friend – are being subjected to Information omission.

In short, most people in my country, who rely mostly on Norwegian news outlets, have no idea of what has been going on in Ukraine, whereas we have been fairly honestly informed about developments in Gaza. We are in fact so dazed, now, and frightened, by what is going on in Gaza, that we hardly notice that Ukraine is losing its war, its territory, and its male population. But we know – we feel it in our bones – that something is very, very amiss. Everywhere.

My old friend has defined me as a conspiracy theorist. I define him as disrespectful. On Greyzone, Aron Mate disagrees with Max Blumenthal about the Epstein files. He does not think they are important. They disagree cordially, each arguing his case. I put to you that they set a good example.

Since I have been so disrespectfully reproved for holding opinions that differ from those of my old friend, I shall take the joyful liberty of cancelling him. I have wiped him off my contact list.

The moral of this post is: Don’t send scull and cross-bones-emojis to your old friends if you cannot even be bothered explaining why you are doing so.

To a hero while he is still alive

13.07.2025 /

The heroic Palestinian journalist, Wael Al-Dahdouh, is still alive! Let us at least be grateful for that, although his wife, 7-year-old daughter, 15-year-old son, and an adult son who was also working as a reporter have all been killed, not to mention many other members of his family.

And many other heroic journalists. And many, many heroic healthcare workers!

What follows are photos of paintings by the Icelandic artist Thrandur Thorarinsson. He has kindly allowed me to reproduce them here.
All text accompanying the photos is my own.

A small part of a long mural about Gaza:

Behold USAID:

Friends meet after a hard day’s work:

You’ve bombed me, and starved me, and tortured me, but I shall haunt you even in your coffin:

Meanwhile dreams of freedom:

As for the rest of us, what can we do?

and

It’s not much, but better than nothing: On behalf of those who have already been murdered as well as on behalf of those who are resisting being murdered, please consider
this recommendation.

Please consider passing on the message.

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