Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Author: pelshvalen (Page 8 of 41)

Transparency

20.11.2023 /

A former president whom I dislike – I forget which of them it was, because I dislike them all – used to refer to presidents that he disliked as “mad dogs”. Now the difference between a human and a canine mad dog is that you can put the latter on a leash or out of its misery, but you definitely cannot do so with presidents, though I wish you could. Actually, I do not generally approve of the death penalty, but when it comes to certain top dogs … I say no more.

Because as mad dogs go, those who drag their country into a needless war are just about as despicable as the lowliest creatures on earth although, of course, those who commit a genocide – one of which we are currently witnessing – really take the cake.

Leaving aside the genocide (about which I have no words, just tears), we have now all been apprised that the Ukraine war could have been avoided. Or rather… have we? Have you read about the Schulenburg report in your daily paper? Have you heard of the Schulenburg report on the news? I bet you haven’t because the Schulenburg report is terribly embarrassing for the US and for that country’s abject satellites in NATO. And no, I did not hear about it or read about it in my own country’s news outlets, of course, but in the alternative media.

One example of “alternative media” is Conter which claims it “provides anti-establishment news and analysis in Scotland”. Among the questions raised by Conter is precisely: why has the general population so little a say about the wars engaged in or supported by their nation, to their – the general population’s – detriment. The British government firmly supports Israel’s ongoing genocide, while the huge demonstration that the home secretary wanted to see banned included placards that cried “NOT IN OUR NAME!” She called it an example of “hate marches … [in] the rising tide of racism, intimidation and terrorist glorification threatening community cohesion”.

I put to you, that the tide that is rising, particularly in the UK – apart from suppression of information and free speech – is poverty. I’m sure you know about that, too.

One of the most tragic aspects of British politics is the unbelievable hijacking of the Labour Party, cf. Al Jazeera’s The Labour Files. Protesters on the streets and the growing ranks of increasingly poor Britons have nobody to speak for them, only a bunch of mad dogs at the top.

So when Boris Johnson effectively put a final stop to the peace deal reached between Russia and Ukraine in March 2022, the British population had no idea. They still don’t. They had no idea that the USA and NATO with Boris Johnson as a temporary figurehead were going to cost so many lives and the destruction of an entire country. Will Boris Johnson ever be held accountable by Ukraine, by the Britons? Will Biden and all the other presidents I don’t like be held accountable for the innumerable wars they have authorised? (not Trump, I admit.)

Will anybody ever be held accountable for the de-industrialisation of Germany as a result of the destruction of the Nordstream pipeline? (You may think the rising tide of poverty was due to Brexit. Alas, see the fate of the rest of EU in the Arte documentary Working but Poor.)

At the top of the EU pyramid is the slender figure of blond Ursula, always humbly dressed and coiffed, a Saint Ursula as it were, a symbol of western rule of law and transparency.

“Transparency” is a byword for what “we” stand for, and as such, it is a stroke of marketing genius. Transparency is something we associate with gleaming crystal, gems and – yes – “us” and what “we” stand for: truth, and honest endeavour. What a wonderful piece of work “we” are, almost reminiscent of Fabergé, we, the beautiful, pure egalitarian Democracies.

However, most of us now know that nothing is less transparent than the machinations of the EU bureaucracy except, of course other bureaucracies, most of which are designed to keep the top-dogs-that-be at the top. Unfortunately, as things stand, that is all we know.

We don’t know how to change this state of affairs.

Impotence

16.11.2023 /

Joe Biden and Israel have turned international law into toilet paper. Hamas knew, of course, that Israel would bomb the Shifa hospital, which is why they were NOT hiding there. Anyway, there is nothing more to be added.

Nothing. No further monstrosity can outdo what has been done. The ink in my pen has run dry. The voice in my throat rendered a mere croak.

I urge you, therefore, to turn to those who still have a voice.

In the article linked to below, Chris Hedges writes:

We are not hated for our values. We are hated because we have no values. We are hated because rules only apply to others. Not to us. We are hated because we have arrogated to ourselves the right to carry out indiscriminate slaughter.

We are hated because we are heartless and cruel. We are hated because we are hypocrites, talking about protecting civilians, the rule of law and humanitarianism while extinguishing the lives of hundreds of people in Gaza a day, including 160 children.

Chris Hedges: Pinnacle of Horror

Patrick Lawrence writes about Israel’s ongoing information war and what all these information wars are doing to us:

It is a fine thing that fewer and fewer people are taken in by the psyops and propaganda blitzes of the national security state, the corporate media, and ruthless — indeed Hitleresque, I shall say it — regimes such as Israel’s.

But to live in a world in which one believes nothing of what is said is its own kind of misery. It is effectively a surrender of all public discourse and public space altogether to the malign, the indecent, the inhumane, the degraded and degrading. The truth, and along with it logical thinking and plain decency, become “alternative.”

Indeed! Take a look at the footage Patrick Lawrence includes in his article of the colossal demonstration in London last week and his linked article examining Hamas’ attack on October 7.

The Dog and I – part II

10.11.2023 /

About four months ago I stumbled across an add that ran approximately so: “Please take this dog. She needs family. I can’t keep her.” It had evidently been written by a foreigner.

Now, I had no intention of getting a dog. The problem was that the picture of the dog in question looked very much like the dog I used to have and sorely miss. It haunted me.

Two and a half months later, a new add turned up about the same dog. “Please take dog. Urgent.” So I drove a couple of hours down to a godforsaken village. As I approached the area where the owner and I had agreed to meet, I saw the dog from far away: Shivering in her cage in the back of a carpenter’s van, she had hardly any hair and was so emaciated that she was practically transparent.

“She stopped eating about three weeks ago,” said the owner, an immigrant who explained that he had been evicted and … and… “and winter coming.”

Winter was certainly coming and the dog was nearly naked, terrified and starving. So I took the poor creature and hurried home to feed it.

***

Now that she has been wolfing down giant helpings of healthy nourishment three times a day for three week, she looks more like an oversized white rat than a dog, not at all like the pictures taken of her some four months ago. But she has the sweetest temper.

Except that she hates and is terrified of all other humans and dogs. At the sight of them, she trembles and howls and growls and barks furiously and would rather be run over by a car than be within ten feet of them. Believe me, for a dog owner such terror is no paltry matter. The world is full of humans and dogs. And cars.

***

Every day I drive her down to a beautiful park by the fjord where dog owners walk their charges. I spend an hour there in the hope that she will eventually learn to like somebody other than me.

As we arrived today, a young man with a tall, majestic husky was leaving. He had the dog on a short lead. Their path was perpendicular to ours. I stopped at a safe distance while my dog strained backwards at the leash. The young man glanced briefly at us and I apologised: “She’s terrified of all dogs.” He gave us a closer look. “I see that.”

And then he smiled the most radiant smile and, rather than leaving as he intended, approached with his dog – slowly, calmly, speaking soothingly all the while. We were transfixed, my dog and I, by his quiet voice and beautiful smile. His dog was as serene and beautiful as its owner. When they had reached us, the man asked what my dog’s name was. I told him. He crouched and called her softly. To my astonishment she actually went to him, then approached the husky who stood absolutely still, while she sniffed at each of its long legs, then stretched up towards its face. Watching him bend down to meet her upturned face, I found the word “noble” leapt to mind.

Overwhelmed at the sight of my dog’s miraculously trusting not only another human but also a large dog, I recounted the sad tale of the terrified starving and freezing dog in the cage. Again the radiant smile: “My parents,” he exclaimed with a markedly foreign accent “used to say that whoever looks after a suffering dog will find a place in Paradise”.

Having never before been told I might end up in Paradise, I found I was strangely pleased to hear that. And the warm smile … He could have been Jesus, I mused after we had parted – only he didn’t have blond hair. He was darkish: Middle East, perhaps?

Middle East! Eureka: I was wearing my warm Palestinian scarf. That was why his face had lit up when he gave us that first closer look. “Well, my friend,” I thought, “I hope you, too, find a place in Paradise, but please enjoy many rewarding years first.”

Meanwhile, back in the real world, I wish I could sign, I wish all of us could sign:

Chris Hedges’ letter to the children of Gaza

The dog and I

03.11.2023 /

I have a dog. I’ve almost always had a dog. Big dog, small dog – no matter – I’m rather good at training dogs. Dogs, you see, are basically quite like humans. You tell a dog to “sit”, and the dog will sit. You tell the dog not to sniff the neighbour’s shoes – “the neighbour kicks”, you say – and it will not sniff the neighbour’s shoes. You tell the dog to bite the neighbour, and it’ll bite the neighbour.

The News tells us humans that Putin wants to conquer all of Europe, and we docilely repeat to each other that Putin wants to conquer all of Europe. “Egad!” we say, “have you heard? Putin wants to….” The News tells us that Hamas is fighting a holy Jihad against Jews and Christians, and we, of course, docile as we are, treat Hamas accordingly: as monsters.

In much of our Western world, being “good”, “upright”, “just” means considering everybody else morally inferior. Our norms, our values, our holy cows are of course the norms, the values and the holy cows that all of humankind must adhere to and venerate. Their norms, values and holy cows are inferior and must be annihilated, by force if necessary. Rule of law, you know. Just like dogs. (“My rules, you fool!”) Headline: “Big husky kills toy poodle”. From the big dog’s point of view, the toy poodle was superfluous. The world can do without. (The philosophical range of a big dog is no greater than that of a small dog.)

You also find vociferous small dogs baring their teeth, yapping their heads off at big dogs. Why do they do it, I wonder? As a warning, I guess: “I may be small, but believe me, I can bite!” And because they have a big human at their side: “You touch a hair on my head, and my human will report you to the police and have you killed, so there!” Indeed, if I pick up that little nuisance of a toy-sized dog next door that barks hysterically every five minutes – pick it up by the scruff of its neck and shake it till its teeth rattle, I’ll be reported to the police.

And some dogs bite, just as some humans. Big dogs, small dogs. Their philosophical range isn’t much greater than that of your average human: They believe what they’re told to believe. Each dog is convinced that its master is the best of all masters. So do most humans. If the master tells the dog that the neighbour kicks, the dog will believe the neighbour kicks. The statement “my master’s enemies, are my enemies.” applies to dogs and humans alike, though most humans don’t seem to realise that they have masters. “We just listen to the News,” humans say, “we just consider the facts“.

Morally, however, most dogs are far superior to the people at the top of the human food chain. Being at the top of the human food chain essentially means being willing to employ every underhanded trick in the book, crossing every red line – you know, those famous red lines that humans, as opposed to dogs, seem unable to remember – to stay there. Humans at the top of the food chain are geared only to stay at the top of the food chain, whereas the rest of us normally want to go about our business in peace. We don’t want to kick our neighbours, but we try to defend ourselves if our neighbours kick us.

Humans at the top of the food chain unleash considerable resources to distort narratives that expose the venality of their actions. The News has repeatedly told us that Hamas are monsters. Yes, Hamas committed horrendous crimes against humanity on October 8, but if you beat a creature long enough, hard enough, viciously enough, that creature – be it lion, kitten, dog, human or mother nature itself – will rise like a tsunami to kill you.

The News did not alert us to how the Palestinians have been treated worse than dogs for decades and decades and decades. The News did not tell us that Hamas wanted peace for the Palestinian people, peace and dignity.

This was Hamas in 2017:

28. Hamas believes in, and adheres to, managing its Palestinian relations on the basis of pluralism, democracy, national partnership, acceptance of the other and the adoption of dialogue. The aim is to bolster the unity of ranks and joint action for the purpose of accomplishing national goals and fulfilling the aspirations of the Palestinian people.

29. The PLO is a national framework for the Palestinian people inside and outside of Palestine. It should therefore be preserved, developed and rebuilt on democratic foundations so as to secure the participation of all the constituents and forces of the Palestinian people, in a manner that safeguards Palestinian rights.

30. Hamas stresses the necessity of building Palestinian national institutions on sound democratic principles, foremost among them are free and fair elections. Such process should be on the basis of national partnership and in accordance with a clear programme and a clear strategy that adhere to the rights, including the right of resistance, and which fulfil the aspirations of the Palestinian people.

31. Hamas affirms that the role of the Palestinian Authority should be to serve the Palestinian people and safeguard their security, their rights and their national project.

My emphasis,

Say what you will, but this is not the Hamas “the News” told us about. This is not the “facts” we have been repeating with deference ever since we graduated from nursery school. “The News” obeyed its masters and failed the rest of us. The damage done by “the News” that obeyed its masters can never be undone.

FIE ON THE NEWS

Land of no return

24.10.2023 /

I watched the news today. Usually, I just read the news, but there was something I wanted to see, so I watched. Yes, I saw the news item I wanted to see. Afterwards, however, that news item was followed by news from Gaza.

It is bad enough reading about people being killed. But seeing people being killed is an entirely different matter. Meanwhile a toneless voice was saying that people are being operated without anaesthesia, and – the voice droned on as dead or dying kids were being carted this way and that – even without analgesics. I did not hear the rest of what he said, because I had switched off the damned television.

I just sat there, cold with horror. And then, as the blood started coursing through my veins again, I felt hot tears coursing down my cheeks, and only then did I realise what it was that was coalescing inside me: Hatred. Hatred against the people who are doing this, hatred against the people who are continuing to do this, again and again and again in cold – lizzard-cold – blood.

So many dead, so much suffering, such unbelievable evil.

I have calmed down now, but I wonder: If I, who am basically a pacifist, feel hatred against Zionism, how will other people feel who are not pacifists? Does President Biden really think that aiding and abetting this terrible crime against humanity in lizard-cold blood will help Israel in the long run? Surely he doesn’t think it will stop terrorism? I mean, he’s not stupid, is he? Or is he?

Let me tell you Mr Biden: Norwegian folk-tales are populated by many strange and scary creatures, among them trolls. I am sure you have heard of trolls. Well, the trolls, you see, have a curious asset you may or may not have heard of: If you cut off the head of a troll, he will grow a new one, and not only one, three! And for each of the three heads you cut off, he will grow three more. That’s the sort of thing you are dealing with, Mr Biden.

Hatred is not a smart think to nurture, Mr Biden. And you are nurturing hatred, Mr Biden, in a very big way.

A word or two about hoodwinklers

20.10.2023 /

Need I tell you what I think of the ongoing extermination campaign in Gaza? I think not, so I won’t. (For anyone who happens to drop in on this site and who has not read my previous posts, I shall nevertheless point out, for the record, that Palestinians are humans, not vermin.)

Need I remind you that the extermination campaign is being aided and abetted by the USA and its European satellites, including my own country, Norway? I will add though, also for the record, that the Norwegian people are furious – yes, more than shocked – absolutely outraged, and solidly on the side of the Palestinians.

Now in case you think that I think that the Israelis are vermin, which would not be surprising in view of their actions, I hasten to urge you to please visit the very brave Israeli human rights site B’Tselem. I put to you that most Israelis have no idea of what Palestinians, particularly those on the West Bank and Gaza, have had to endure over the past 50 years.

On the basis of what we should have learnt recently, about how information is suppressed and distorted in the press and social media, about how outright lies are fed to us by the powers-that-be – allegedly to counter disinformation – we should not be surprised that the Israeli authorities have been hoodwinking the Israeli population. For details, see Chris Hedges piece here. After all, the US and its satellites have been hoodwinking their populations about quite a number of things, for decades. Remember Vietnam? Israel is taking hoodwinking a step further.

It should be ever more evident that the powers-that-be care not one jot about the “rule of law and Democracy”, not to mention Justice. They care about power. It is up to us, the ruled to make sure that they adhere to what we, whom they allegedly serve, actually want.

Alas, we have overslept.

Yes, but…

14.10.2023 /

To quote the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem:

Abandoning the basic moral principle that all human beings were created equal (“b’tselem elohim”) is a loss of humanity.

The Israeli state (with US and EU support), the Zionist movement and Israeli settlers on the occupied West bank have been treating Palestinians as inferior creatures for decades. Even the US-based outlet Vox understands that the Hamas attack:

… comes after nearly two decades of the US and world leaders overlooking the more than 2 million people living in Gaza who endure a humanitarian nightmare, with its airspace and borders and sea under Israeli control…. Gaza is in essence a refugee camp (about 70 percent of those living in Gaza come from families displaced from the 1948 war) and an open-air prison, according to human rights groups. The United Nations describes the occupied territory as a “chronic humanitarian crisis.” Israel has blockaded Gaza since Hamas assumed control of the territory in 2007, and neighboring Egypt to the south has also imposed severe restrictions on movement.

We have seen that no peaceful efforts to persuade Israel to change its tack have had any effect whatsoever. Negotiations have had no effect whatsoever. Subservience on the part of Palestinians have had no effect whatsoever – they just continue getting killed, their homes continue being confiscated, their holy shrines continue being insulted.

Yes, Hamas has committed vicious war crimes. No doubt about it.

But I ask you: What else could they do? How do you propose keeping your hands clean when defending a country from inside a prison?

I don’t much like the preamble of the Document of General Principles & Policies, issued by Hamas; talk about the Islamic Ummah leaves me pretty cold, I must admit. But starting with paragraph 14, I find my interest roused. Here from pragraph 16:

Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.

Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds. Hamas is of the view that the Jewish problem, anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage.

The Zionist movement, which was able with the help of Western powers to occupy Palestine, is the most dangerous form of settlement occupation which has already disappeared from much of the world and must disappear from Palestine.

And further on (paragraph 20) regarding a two state solution:

However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.

(my emphasis)

Human rights organisations are being banned from Israel-occupied territory. Even B’Tselem is being restricted, not least due to articles such as this one, declaring that Israel is an apartheid state.

Again I quote Vox:

The dread Israelis are feeling right now, myself included, is a sliver of what Palestinians have been feeling on a daily basis under the decades-long military regime in the West Bank, and under the siege and repeated assaults on Gaza,” writes the Israeli journalist Haggai Mattar in 972 Magazine. “The only solution, as it has always been, is to bring an end of apartheid, occupation, and siege, and promote a future based on justice and equality for all of us. It is not in spite of the horror that we have to change course — it is exactly because of it.

Listen

12.10.2023 /

There are limits as to how long you can batter a dog, a horse, a man or a woman before he/she or it will rise and attack you with all the ferocity he/she or it had to suppress for months or years.

There are limits as to how long you can abuse a people, a nation, a continent, or a planet, before it will rise and attack you with all the ferocity it had to suppress for years or even decades.

On this cheerful note, allow me to urge you to watch and listen to Professor Jason Hickel. His voice is not often heard in the press – no doubt, he is up against powerful opposition from the owners of corporate media (including Google, Facebook, etc.) – but the voice is making its way, ever so slowly, to more and more people.

To quote him:

“This is not a time for timid responses, tweaking around the edges of a failing, degenerating system.”

Listen! Please, please listen!

(Part 1 of his lecture starts after about 10 minutes of introductory music, speeches etc. Part 2 is mostly critique of his lecture by 3 people. He is allowed to answer at the end.

https://www.sum.uio.no/english/research/networks/arne-naess-programme/videos/

The Left or…

27.09.2023 /

I have mentioned several times, on these pages, a remarkable book written by what must be a remarkable man:

“LESS IS MORE'” by Jason Hickel.

No book that I ever read had a more profound effect on me. Reading it, I realised I had been wrong on a number of issues. By the way, discovering that you have been mistaken can actually be extremely liberating – unless you are being publicly humiliated; it gives you a new start, so to speak, and Jason Hickel has no intention of humiliating his reader. He puts the facts to us very gently.

Mind you, I have read, or at least leafed through, quite a large number of books and essays on climate change, ecology, the third world, social injustice, neocolonialism, etc., etc., etc. Believe me, this one was different.

The odd thing was that nobody I knew in Norway had ever heard of Jason Hickel or his book. I stumbled across it entirely by coincidence. I lent it left, right and centre and oddly, most of the people who have actually read it have been taken in by it. Not that they agreed blindly with all the conclusions, but they found the reasoning extremely thought-provoking and important.

Yes, I live in Norway, a country I thought was unhappy about the plight of the planet and the creatures living on it. I thought that informed intellectuals, at least, would know enough to grieve about the disproportionate price paid for the changing climate by people in Europe’s neighbouring continent, Africa. I wrote to three left-leaning political parties (including MDG – the Greens) saying that the issues raised in the book are so important that they merit a serious national discussion. I received barely disguised snorts in return. The paper Klassekampen (Class Struggle) has one – 1 – somewhat supercilious review of the book, end of story.

That paper, Klassekampen, which claims to be venstresidens avis (“the political Left’s paper”) is certainly as good or better than any other Norwegian paper. It’s a good read, no doubt, even entertaining. But it is not interested in discussing the global economic system that has been crippling African countries ever since their independence. I have not seen a word about the debt crisis that the currently rising price of the US dollar is aggravating for 3rd world countries. No in-depth analyses do I find, historical or otherwise, of the relationship between the global south and countries such as, yes, Norway. Why does Norway’s UN vote never go to the Palestinians, for example? And of course, there was merely a brief article more or less dismissing Seymour Hersh’s detailed claim that the US and Norway were responsible for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline. On whose side are you, Klassekampen? Is the new Labour Party paying your bills, by any chance?

I have a couple of ageing British friends who have not come to terms with the end of “Empire”. They call me a “Lefty”, meaning a “f__ing Marxist”. I may indeed have been a “Lefty” in the past, but I no longer know what the term means.

So no, I am no longer a “Lefty”.

“Universal human rights” is what I might be willing to die for, I think (as opposed to my British friends) if the opportunity to do so were offered to me. I would also, in theory at least, be willing to die for the principles of the Bandung Conference in 1955. But such matters are of no interest to the “Left” these days, it seems.

All of a sudden, I discover – again, purely by coincidence – that Jason Hickel is in Norway this year, as an 2023 honorary professor at Oslo University. Unfortunately I was unable to attend his lecture on 13 September, as I was staying in a village in southern Europe, where most people cannot afford to protect themselves against the mortal heat of summer nor the ghastly cold of winter.

I think the “Left” has lost its way, not only in the USA, but also in much of Europe. I think Norway has lost its way in what I consider a western geopolitical debacle.

I am sorry. I am deeply sorry.

Where were you on 9/11 1973?

17.09.2023 /

In the course of my career, I have met a number of people who have lived through unspeakable horrors. I have always realised that I had little to offer other than a willingness to listen, but of course, most people who have actually been in Hell are unwilling or unable to “talk about it”. They can at best use the words that have subsequently been fed to them by psychotherapists, but they will not be able to find words of their own to convey what they saw and felt; not even – least of all – to their spouses and children. That’s how serious traumatic experiences work: They isolate the victim, often for life.

I find myself wondering what the psychological effects will be for survivors and witnesses of what has just happened in Libya. I can’t help thinking that at least they know that their distress is shared. The community of survivors will be on its knees in grief, together. Bereaved, but not alone, I think. But then again – what about anger? There will surely be anger. Will that be shared too?

When you’re being tortured or threatened with torture, you eventually tell them… lies to begin with, lies they are prepared for and crack in the course of a few hours … lies for which they “punish” you, making you out to be an exceptionally deviant, i.e. bad, person. That’s how it works. Believe me, you tell them what they want to hear, if you know, that is. And if you don’t, you make up things, lots of things, anything. Again, that’s how it works and has always worked: During the Catholic Inquisition, during the Protestant witch purges, and throughout the so-called Pax Americana.

If you survive … you wish you were dead.

Either way, in Chile, they ended up literally throwing disfigured corpses into the sea. The spouses, parents and children had to learn to live with not knowing what happened. Many still have no idea where/when/how a loved one was put to death. They have had to learn to get on with their lives.

After the dictatorship, polite society agreed to start afresh. No talk about the past. Same as in Spain. Those who complained were defined as cranks. We all want to belong to polite society, don’t we.

Please note that what I am writing does not – repeat NOT – apply only, or even mainly, to Chile. Chile is my topic now because the country has has just commemorated the murder in 1973 – 50 years ago – of the country’s democratically elected then president. (And the Congress’s far-right majority has just admitted it still justifies the 1973 coup.)

What also happened on 9/11 this year, was that some people started talking: Some people started asking themselves: Where was I on 9/11?

***

One woman’s story:

We had just moved to a flat the day before, on September 10. We had not foreseen there would be a coup the following morning, so I counted on being able to get hold of some foodstuffs the next day. My son was two years old and needed milk. Milk was rationed due to political tensions. My husband had to leave the house at 6 am. By 8 am, when I would normally go to work and leave my son at the workplace nursery, where he would be given milk, I saw there was something afoot, but I set off, because the shops were closed and my son needed milk.

Some people were on their way to work like me, but there were no buses. I had to walk quite a long way. A military vehicle came charging past me, full of soldiers, and they shot at people! I saw people fall to the ground, but the vehicle sped on. I didn’t know if the people who fell to the ground had been shot or had just hurled themselves down. I was of course terrified and I hurried on with my son in my arms. I passed people lying on the street. I hurried on. I saw a lorry from which blood seemed to drip. I saw another lorry stop and pick up what appeared to be a corpse in the street.

I told you all this back then, but you didn’t believe me.

Another woman’s story:

My mother was a very inquisitive person and when she heard shooting in the street, she ran to the window to see what was going on. My husband, who was with us just then, roughly grabbed hold of her dress and dragged her harshly back: “Stay away from the window, you fool, they’ll shoot you!

Just then, a bullet did hit the wall just beside the window.

For decades, we refrained from repairing the hole in the wall; it was a souvenir.

***

A rigorously non-political outlet had the the courage to publish, on 11 September this year, an article that commemorates those who were indiscriminately shot dead in Santiago during the first hours of the coup. The victims were:

…. just ordinary people on their way to work or school, people who never returned home because they met death in the form of bullets from the security forces who shot indiscriminately right and left in order to instil terror. These people were men and women on their way to work, students, pensioners, housewives and young children, in all of Santiago’s districts.

A list follows of the couple dozens of known victims in Santiago alone, during the first hours. Not until 4 PM, was a two-day curfew announced in Santiago.

***

I don’t know about you, but just the idea of a “two-day curfew”… Yes, we had Covid, but at least you could buy milk! And you could go see a doctor if you had to. During fascist coups, you just get shot.

Most people stayed at home, locking their doors, most of them thinking “we are law-abiding citizens, so no harm will come to us, if we just do as we are told.”

I shall not continue this sad tale. You have surely seen what fascists are capable of on film.

I insist: Chile is just a very small, but telling example. Please read (or listen to) The Jakarta Method for the real stuff.

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