Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Category: ENGLISH (Page 1 of 29)

There a few posts written in English

United Nations or chaos

21.04.2025 /

Why, my friends ask, why do I keep on making a spectacle of myself, antagonising people left, right and centre? Why can’t I just sit back and enjoy spring, friendships, books, music, films? In short, why can’t I just enjoy life till it ends (i.e. till the war starts)? All my screaming from barricades won’t change anything, they say.

They are probably right about that last bit. I can’t change a thing. Even the late Pope Francis wasn’t able to change much, bless him. (I am not being ironic: I think he was a good and brave man. He is rumoured to not have been very brave during the Videla dictatorship, but he made up for it.) So if even the pope, … how can I presume to imagine that my barricades will make a difference?

Well, for one thing, I am not alone. There are others. Many others in fact. All over the world. Don’t forget: numbers matter. True, you have powerful people like Santa Ursula, Sir Keir Rodney and the not-yet-chancellor Merz, not to mention Macron le Beau – all fabulously unpopular. How do they propose to continue staying in power without introducing autocracy?

True, most people have few sources of information other than the corporate press, in which Norwegians have such bizarre faith. (I still blame Stoltenberg for my compatriots’ tragic ingenuousness.) But if people were aware of all the lies we have been served over the years, not to mention all the news that was deliberately withheld from us, they would not be pleased. So I write and make a spectacle of myself, and others – all over the world – write or run podcasts and youtube channels. More and more and more dissenting blogs and podcasts and youtube channels pop up every day.

If you think that these people are all disgruntled socialists, take a look at Cyrus Janssen’s youtube channel, for instance. He is anything but.

Most people who know that Zelensky is a consummate liar are, it is true, silent. At least here in Norway where criticising Zelensky is simply not done and ridiculing him is tantamount to sacrilege. Here we say that Zelensky was “badly mistreated” in the Oval Office. Zelensky did not misbehave. Trump did. Of course, hearing such statements I regularly walk straight into the trap, defending Trump, which is simply not done here either. Ever.

Now I don’t often defend Trump, but honestly, Zelensky was being rude and as obstreperous ( I can’t resist using the word) as a biker on a cocaine high. And as far as Trump is concerned, I will say this for him: The root causes of the growing problems that await him and US voters are not of his making, though the medicine he is proposing will not work.

My compatriots will not be tearing down the walls of any Bastille, for the simple reason that the walls around us here are made not of stone nor of hardship, but of silence. But elsewhere there is loud rumbling. And since even the EU still consists of nominally Democratic independent states, we can hope that voters will demand change. In the US, likewise. Big change.

The most important change of all, though, concerns the United Nations, where to this day the former colonial powers, UK and France and the biggest bully of all, the USA, hold not only permanent seats but powers of veto. This must NOT GO ON.

As things stand, the most powerful killer apes act with total impunity. The UN charter is all but forgotten, and the world – at least the West – is degenerating into anarchy. Possibly no state should hold veto power.

I leave it to you to design a new Security Council.

Personally, I shall just sit back and enjoy, as my friends recommend. I shall enjoy the thought of a world where the UN Charter and the Declaration of Human Rights are once again universally revered. You may find these documents outdated, but that is what we agreed upon back then, and that is what we shall have to work from.

I shall enjoy the thought of a Security Council that has almost unanimously voted to impose a global boycott on trade with Israel, and a whole raft of economic sanctions on Israeli war criminals. I shall enjoy the thought of a Security Council that sends UN peacekeeping troupes to protect the people of Gaza and the West Bank. Then and only then can talks begin – and they will probably require much patience – as to how Israelis and Palestinians can settle their ancient differences. Will they cohabit as equals (this would require compensations for land stolen from the Palestinians) between the river and the sea? Or will they occupy separate lands after the eviction of all the illegal settlers on the West Bank?

When all this is settled, the boycott will end and sanctions will be lifted.

I shall enjoy the thought of a world where we have, once more, international law, not chaos. There will still be wars. There will be bullies. But there will be a common understanding of International Law, a yardstick, as it were, by which to asses adherence to international rule of law.

There will once more be a global organisation with authority to chastise future bullies.

On wars and countries

18.04.2025 /

Anyone who hasn’t read Nikolai Petro‘s book The Tragedy of Ukraine doesn’t know the first thing about Ukraine, not even the last thing. The above word “anyone” , by the way, includes Russians and Ukrainians and, until today, myself. Mind you, I thought I knew a lot. I certainly knew a lot about the war, but the war does not explain Ukraine.

I will repeat that: The war does not explain Ukraine.

How we see a war tends to define how we see the countries involved in it. Many of us tend to side with the underdog, and will develop all kinds of favourable ideas about that country. For instance, I never thought much of the Houthis in the past (religious fundamentalism is not normally something I tend to vote for) but now I consider them heroes. Having almost been exterminated after years of Saudi bombing and starvation, they understand the Gazans better than most. And the very fact that they are still on their feet, defending Gaza in the face of heavy US bombardment is truly remarkable. Yes, they are indeed heroes. You, however, might disagree with me.

But the Houthis are not my concern here. I am. Or rather we are. We who watch wars from a safe distance while people are killing each other. Some of us are horrified, some are angry, some pretend to shrug and remind themselves that we are, after all, just the distant offspring of killer-apes.

So while I gladly admit I don’t know the first thing about Yemen and the Houthis, I honestly thought I knew a lot about Ukraine.

My ignorance, or rather the ignorance of just about everybody other than the warring parties, is part of the problem. How many of our involved diplomats and statesmen actually speak or read Russian or Ukrainian, for instance? How much do they actually know? Are they as ignorant as the rest of us, who only have second-hand knowledge handed down to us filtered by political agendas. I suspect they are.

Until you see “Table 3.2: Ukrainian Officials on the Treasonous Nature of Maloross Ukrainians” in the afore-mentioned book, you will not fully understand that the war was inevitable.

Inevitable.

I have not yet read all of Nikolai Petrov’s book, and I fear I shall be in for further shocks and surprises. For now, I merely repeat: If you care at all about Ukraine, get hold of the book! Read it!

Homo

16.04.2025 /

The Australopithecus, our distant forebear (e.g. “Lucy”), lived during a period (the Pliocene) when global temperatures started by rising to 2–3 °C above our current global average before eventually dropping to the point where much of the planet was periodically covered by a thick coat of ice (the Pleistocene) for 2 million years (a scenario possibly resembling what awaits us).

Yet, even during the ice ages, humans were still on the scene, to begin with in the shape of Homo erectus, some of whom left Africa during the Pleistocene, colonised Eurasia and used fire. Resourceful as they obviously were, these vagabonds were probably not our direct forebears, as H. sapiens are believed to have originated on the Horn of Africa between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago.

Fairly recently, we learnt of the migratory wave of H. sapiens via the Middle East to Eurasia and eventually Australia and South America that set off a mere 70.000–50.000 years ago. There had been several previous migratory waves, and there is even “evidence that modern humans had reached China around 80,000 years ago.”

Practically all of these early waves seem to have gone extinct or retreated back, and present-day humans outside Africa descend mainly from a single expansion about 70,000–50,000 years ago.

Since then, we have seen the rise and fall of empires. We have seen massacres, genocides, devastating wars. To be fair, some of us have also been privileged enough to enjoy the arts, sciences, delicious foodstuffs, vacations abroad… Some humans have devoted their lives to others, to the study of chimps, for instance, to the protection of ecosystems, etc.

Moreover, we are now so scientifically advanced that we know that we share nearly 99 % of our DNA with chimpanzees and bonobos.

Now that is not encouraging, because chimps, intelligent as they may be, are a nasty piece of work. To be precise, they are male chauvinist, rapist killers. For some reason, popular culture has refused to focus on these obnoxious traits. And to the extent that people had to admit that there were 21 chimp-on-chimp murders in a single national park in Uganda, they have tended to blame proximity to humans. However, several studies have shown that chimp violence is not a result of contact with humans.

In fact, we found that the site with the least violence had the largest human impact, and the site with the most violence was one of the least impacted.

True, bonobos (who have female leaders, by the way) are not murderous though they too engage in fierce but non-lethal quarrels. We share, I repeat, nearly 99 % of our DNA with them too. Similar to the chimps in appearance, bonobos are not carnivorous. (Moreover, they are on the verge of extinction.)

The reason we share so much DNA with chimps and bonobos is that they and we have a common ancestor. According to Wikipedia:

The split between the human and chimpanzee–bonobo lineages, took place around 8–4 million years ago, in the late Miocene epoch. During this split, chromosome 2 was formed from the joining of two other chromosomes, leaving humans with only 23 pairs of chromosomes, compared to 24 for the other apes.

The famous primatologist Jane Goodall (born 1934), having devoted much of her life to chimps, wrote about chimp violence in her 1990 memoir Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe, quoted by Wikipedia in an article about the Gombe Chimpanzee war:

For several years I struggled to come to terms with this new knowledge. Often when I woke in the night, horrific pictures sprang unbidden to my mind—Satan [one of the apes], cupping his hand below Sniff’s chin to drink the blood that welled from a great wound on his face; old Rodolf, usually so benign, standing upright to hurl a four-pound rock at Godi’s prostrate body; Jomeo tearing a strip of skin from Dé’s thigh; Figan, charging and hitting, again and again, the stricken, quivering body of Goliath, one of his childhood heroes.

Youtube footage of a chimp grieving for a dead relative or performing acts of kindness tends to move us: “So human!” we exclaim. I take a different tack. Hearing the war cries of human alpha males (and “alpha females”!), I exclaim: “So ape-like!”

Alas, today as in the past, the shots are called by ape-like killer-humans. With such leaders, do we even want to be here after WWIII and climate meltdown?

My worry is not that the human species may disappear. My greatest fear is that those of us who are not ape-like, not killer-humans will suffer immeasurably on our route to extinction, just as the Gazans are suffering today.

But I do not believe the species will be entirely extinguished.  Homo has survived in the most uncongenial of circumstances and will as a species survive, even WW III and climate meltdown.

The hunter

12.04.2025 /

Months before the last election, seeing that the Democratic Party had dug its own grave, Jeffrey Sachs sighed that Trump is “all over the map”. I liked the expression. Trump is more than merely “unpredictable”.

In polite company he is said to be “transactional”, meaning – I believe – that he conducts affairs of the state in the same manner as he would try to seal advantageous business deals. I don’t see him that way at all. I see him as a hunter.

There was a time when hunting was a bona-fide way of making a living. Consider, then, the hunter, his dog, the game he is pursuing, the weather, the supplies he must carry on his back, etc. If he is a peasant, he even has to reckon with the landlord’s game keepers. (In much of Europe, landlords used to lord it over all the continent’s vast forests.) The wind may turn, the scent may suddenly vanish, a blizzard may whip up, the dog may get his throat slit, a river may turn into a torrent… anything can happen.

Trump is definitely not that sort of a hunter. He is more like one who hunts from a helicopter. The helicopter’s instruments may be able to determine the location of a fox under the canopy, but they know very little about the fox’s habits. However, the helicopter can certainly adjust to changes of weather, and if the fox manages to disappear, the helicopter will simply return another day.

Trump has to balance between the forces that have brought him to power. To my knowledge these are mainly 1) the disaffected former “middle class”, “working class” or whatever-class most of his voters belong to 2) the Zionists 3) US oligarchs who, for whatever reason, do not consider themselves “liberal”. Disparate forces, in other words. Trump has to please them all, just as the hunter on the ground has to adjust to the weather, the surroundings, the quarry and the dog.

I am not apologizing for Trump, merely trying to explain why he is so “all over the map”, for instance in the matter of tariffs. Added to the multifarious challenges that face him, we find that neither he nor members of his team appear to know much about China, Russia, Ukraine or the rest of the world.

The “tariffs” were a complete disaster, for very, very many reasons. Backing down on the tariffs appears to have raised universal distrust even further. Even “the 90-day pause has done little to quell market fears.”

A person who holds the top job in a country that considers itself the top dog will tend to feel, more often than not, omnipotent. Even long after the “fall of Rome” delusions of grandeur will surely have haunted Rome’s top-job holders. I suspect that when Sir Keir Starmer sings in the shower, his favourite refrain will be: “Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves”, long after Britain has turned into a basket case.

Overestimating one’s strength is definitely a weakness in the hunter, one the quarry may take advantage of if he knows his persecutor.

Likewise, fooling your adversary might also be a smart move. I can’t imagine Trump singing, in the shower or elsewhere. But he simply loves signing decrees. So while everybody was wringing their hands about his tariffs, he quietly went and signed an “executive order” the aim of which is for the USA to rule the seas of the world in all perpetuity.

Alas, though Team Trump seems willing to admit that “unipolarity” has come to an end, the White House has not yet lost sight of it.

Why so silent?

05.04.2025 /

“What I don’t understand is that in a country that has so many political parties, not a single one challenges the view that Putin is the Devil incarnate who wants to conquer Europe.”

My interlocutor was clearly exasperated. Indeed, he had every reason to be since he is Russian. What struck me, however, was the point he had just made: Yes, we have, here in Norway, very many political parties. And yes, not one of them challenges the official narrative about the war. Not one! Standing vis a vis him, looking at the moon, it dawned on me that such monolithic support for the official narrative is definitely weird.

“After all, he continued,” you are sending an awful lot of money to Ukraine so that they can kill Russians and get killed. “Shouldn’t you instead be thinking of improving your educational system?” I responded meekly: “I suppose we imagine that our educational system is pretty good.”

But no, he is right. We have schools, yes, and for everybody, but there is nevertheless too much illiteracy here, and I know that lots of kids hate school and that a number of teachers hate their jobs. Sad, when you think of how many kids in other countries never get to go to school at all. Much could be changed, I guess.

The French have, or at least had, Marine le Pen: Her party is opposed to asking French tax payers to contribute to the slaughter of Russians and Ukrainians. She would certainly have won the next French presidential election, but she has been struck down with “lawfare”. Found guilty of using EU money to support her political campaign – as they all do, all the top dogs – she has been banned from political careers for five years. Dirty. Very dirty.

The German AFD and the Sara Wagenknecht party are both angry about how Germany has been used by the USA to support a proxy war against Russia. In France, too, the so-called “far” right and the “far” left share this perspective.

The so-called “centre” left and right label their political opponents “populist”, i.e capable of appealing to the general population, as though the act of attracting many adherents were intrinsically objectionable. A party that by the standards of Democracy garners many votes is bad, then?

Yes, yes, I know: The plebs are guided by disinformation, misinformation and other whatnots. Where they get all that “disinformation” from puzzles me, though, as I see not a sliver of criticism of Zelensky or NATO or Starmer in any corporate outlets.

The UK has Nigel Farrage’s Reform party, which according to recent polls would hold 20 % of the votes, which isn’t all that much, perhaps, but the other parties hold even less. Now the Brits, led by Starmer (mind I am exerting great self-constraint in not preceding his name with an outstandingly disagreeable epithet) slashed 5 billion pounds off disability pensions in January! Why, I ask, doesn’t Keir (I repeat, great resraint!) Starmer, offer disabled persons quick and painless death? That would be even cheaper.

The UK is a sinking ship, and more cuts to Britain’s poor were announced just the other day. The UK’s public sector debt has risen to 97.8 % of GDP, Like Germany, the UK will be running a gigantic permanent budget deficit. Yet it promises 3 billion pounds / year to Ukraine.

I am told that energy prices in the UK are the highest in the world and that the supply of gas is at a critically low level. I will add that what I feel about the British political elite, is not suitable for publication anywhere.

But what about Norway? Are we any better? Thanks to oil, our disability pensions are not being axed. But here, you will hear not a whisper opposing the continued killing in Ukraine. Just silence.

So Europe is a terrible mess – there is no doubt about it. Even the NY Times admits it.

Economies are stagnating, governments are unpopular and efforts to keep the far right out of coalition governments are barely holding.


But lo! Germany’s Merz (he even looks sinister), the EU’s santa Ursula and the UK’s Sir K. Starmer have a great plan: They are going to invest massively in war. Doing so will create jobs, “stimulate the economy” and contribute to killing fields all over the world. The Norwegian word for the scenario they are devising is “Ragnarok”. At least for the no longer so “liberal” West.

In other words: the history of the political West will have a grizzly denouement. The only comfort we can take is a) in the thought that the daily massacres committed by Netanyahu and like-minded vermin will have been overshadowed by the actions of the three deranged musketeers and b) that the well-behaved Norwegians will probably have refrained to the very end from succumbing to “disinformation”, “misinformation” and “conspiracy theories”.

Shall we be as complacent about our own fates as we have been about the dying Russians and Ukrainians?

Pusillanimous press

24.03.2025 /

Glenn Greenwald is not the only one who has spoken out against the political incarceration in the USA of Mahmoud Khalil. Quite apart from the almost insolent disregard for due process in the case, it is one of innumerable examples of the harm done to the USA by AIPAC, Israel’s carefully crafted state within the United States. I think that the US elite should ask themselves how to rebuild confidence in the executive, legislative and judiciary branches of government, because at this rate the country will descend into anarchy.

Attempts to force AIPAC to register as a Foreign Agent in accordance with FARA rules have been thwarted for decades. The media rarely brings up the matter for fear of being attacked by AIPAC’s rabid Anti-Defamation League. AIPAC is powerful enough to run much of USAs foreign policy to the detriment of the USA. The fact that Genocide Joe and Trump compete at being “Israel’s best friend” says it all: They have no choice. We have seen under Biden and Trump that AIPAC even controls the universities, and AIPAC has long since had total control over Congress, as every other child knows. In the USA, that is.

In Norway, however, we do not know this, as our problem is of a different order. We read about Israeli atrocities against Palestinians every single day. Police do not interfere with pro-Palestine demonstrations. Even if we defend Hamas, as I do, because I consider Hamas a liberation army against Israeli occupation, we are not harassed. Every occupied nation surely has a right to defend itself? That, I am told again and again and again, applies to Ukraine. Does it not follow that it also applies to Palestine?

And yes! Ukraine does have a right to defend itself. Most certainly. The tricky part of this issue is, however, … well actually, there are very many tricky parts. But one of them is: Who or what is Ukraine?

I have insisted in previous posts that Zelensky was elected with a 73 % victory in 2019 on a “peace program”. I have insisted that Zelensky was prevented by western intermediaries (among them Boris Johnson) from signing a peace accord with Russia in April 2022. The Norwegian press has been conspicuously silent about both of these facts, also about the two Minsk agreements which preceded them and were disregarded by “the Ukrainians.” Why the quotation marks? Well, because I must ask: What Ukrainians? I repeat Zelensky won a landslide victory on a peace programme”. So I strongly suspect that the Minsk agreements were rejected not by “the Ukrainians” but by some Ukrainians.

Why have the Norwegian media failed to inform us about any of this? Why have the Norwegian media stopped mentioning fascist groups in Ukraine? There is at least one reply to the question: Jens Stoltenberg, of whom Norwegians are very proud – may he never know another good night’s sleep. But even Jens Stoltenberg was a puppet, I suspect, and the media in Norway as in the USA and Europe are being held hostage by very powerful forces.

I put to you – and I’m not really in doubt about this at all – that a) Russia did not want to invade Ukraine b) Ukraine did not want to join NATO c) that Ukraine is not even vaguely a Democracy and has not been so since the Maidan coup in 2014. In fact I suspect that Ukraine as a state is more repressive, by far, than Russia. But can I provide evidence to document my claims? The corporate press is of no help.

There are books, of course, but where do I find them? Where do I even learn of their existence? Like most other people I depend on the press. Unfortunately, the corporate press is useless – I can find no better word – about the Ukraine war: No nuance, no analysis, no attempt to understand the root causes, just one single explanation: The Russians are bad and the Ukrainians are defending Democracy, no less. The same approach is apparently adhered to in the USA about Gaza: Palestinians are superfluous, Hamas rapes women and beheads babies. Israel is fighting for its existence. End of story.

True, we have the independent media; the Grayzone, for instance. They have provided invaluable documentation from the Middle East. (And no, there does not seem to be any evidence that Hamas raped people on October 7 or beheaded babies,) But if you want to check the credentials of your sources – I certainly do – you might go to Wikipedia. You will see that the Grayzone has been grossly smeared.

People or sources who are openly critical of US and EU foreign policy are also subjected to crude libel. Whereas AIPAC takes care of those who criticise Israel, NED will look after those who oppose warmongering. I no longer devote any of my earnings to what was once our wonderful Wikipedia, as I suspect that AIPAC and NED make sure my contributions and yours are no longer needed.

Few experts dare introduce doubts about the Democracy of Ukraine and the purpose of this war. So Norwegians eagerly cheer the shining knight Zelensky and send billions of dollars’ worth of weapons with which the Ukrainian nation can continue committing suicide. I really don’t have any other explanation for such bizarre conduct other than that Norwegians must be convinced that Good will win over Evil in the end.

However, facts about Ukraine do exist, if we can find them. Glenn Diesen has treated us to a most interesting conversation with the US academic Nikolai Petro [Wikipedia as at 23 March 2025], and I am now reading Nikolai Petro’s book The Tragedy of Ukraine (2023) which serves as a detailed analysis of the Ukrainian conundrum.

I urge you to listen to the illuminating conversation between Glenn Diesen and Nkolai Petro .

Retribution

18.03.2025 /

No, I don’t approve of death penalties. Death is too kind a punishment for people like Netanyahu. After all, Hitler preferred to die rather than face the music. True enough, there are those who claim that he and his Eva escaped to Latin America. I used to dismiss such suggestions as fantasies, but now I’m not so sure. Sufficiently many lies fed to us over the past few years have taught more and more of us that no untruth is too ignominious for the powers that be.

Just to pick a few disparate examples, they lied about Covid (which turns out to be, after all, a leak from a gain-of-function laboratory), the Skripal case, the beheaded babies, the Bucha massacre, the Nord Stream sabotage, Russiagate, and the Hunter-Biden laptop… You really cannot believe a single word they say. And to top it off they call those who doubt their lies “conspiracy theorists”.

Whether or not Hitler did indeed blow himself up, Netanyahu and his ilk do not deserve death. On the contrary, we need to keep them alive, to be able to make an example of them, to point at them and warn racists “You don’t want to be like that, do you?” Basically, they should be kept in cages in zoos, not safely locked away in prisons, but out in the open for all to see and stare at in horror.

Alas, we were wrong to tell our children that there are no monsters except in fairy tales. Netanyahu is about as horrible a monster as any that has sprung out of human imagination. And there have certainly been plenty of them. Why? How come our imagination has fostered so much horror?

Take, for instance, the immense library of Satanic creatures, goblins, witches, devils and whatnots who populate the Christian underworld. They are the collected product of human fear, of terror inspired by real creatures. Throughout history, there have been Netanyhus, people totally devoid of moral fibre; callous, base and dreadful.

I sometimes hear: “There is some good in all human beings.” I’m sure the words are kindly meant, but the statement is purely academic, probably uttered to encourage tolerance. Generally, of course open-mindedness is conducive to an atmosphere of peaceful coexistence. But do we want peaceful coexistence with a Netanyahu and his ilk?

What if he loves his mom? Maybe he enjoys playing tennis or eating strawberries? So? Of course he isn’t always thinking about frying Palestinians!! Does that mean there is “goodness” in him? He is the very epitome of Western depravity. Should he not then be treated as such?

Instead, he and his ilk are being allowed to continue on a course that is so evil it poisons our minds, fills us with hatred, dread and suspicion. Because if he and his ilk can do these horrible things in one part of the world, others are sure to follow their example elsewhere.

The key words here are “his ilk“. Yes, I do need to stress the ilk bit – because it is true that Netanyahu is not alone. From what we see of big time traffickers of drugs, organs and weapons we know that monsters are attracted to one another. Moreover, the Israeli monsters would have been impotent without the energetic support of their “ilk” in the USA, the world’s most dangerous country, the country with hundreds and hundreds of military bases all over the world, the forever-war country, the big-bully country. Netanyahu has, indeed, a great big army of co-devils in the US, many of them, I am told, of Evangelical persuasion (I wonder how they figure their god will treat genocide supporters.)

I have a very good friend whose neighbour, an arrogant awful bully, is driving him nuts. I have suggested getting a little doll and sticking pins in it.

Alas, my fantasies of Netanyahu and his ilk in open cages in zoos all over the Western world will not relieve me of my fear of modern-day Western monsters any more than pins stuck in a doll.

Above all it won’t spare the lives of all the Palestinians that we know will be murdered over the next weeks. Our governments, our “leaders” – the Starmers, Macrons, Merzes, von der Leyens and Kallases – know that mass murder is being prepared and they are not doing a thing to stop it. Not a thing.

They – the Starmers, Macrons, Merzes, von der Leyens and Kallases –are of “his ilk”. Send them to the zoos!

Meanwhile

15.03.2025 /

While we are being dumbed down by a devastating propaganda storm, Oslo, the capital of Norway has had practically no winter this year, the first part of which should have been winter in this hemisphere. No frost, no snow, hardly any precipitation and lots of sun. Much of Andalucia, however, has been very cold and has suffered rain – floods even – as if to compensate for recent years of serious drought.

I just thought I’d mention the matter, although I assume you are not here for a weather update.

So here is the situation: While we, the Europeans are getting ready to go to war against Attila the Hun, or Hitler, as we prefer to call him these days, there has been a rather interesting development: The verdict of the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal. I admit this sounds like some sort of PC gaming event, but it is dead serious. Just as the war games against Attila the Hun are dead serious. “People die”, as the US president keeps saying, and that is normally considered serious, but Keir Starmer and Zelensky are evidently not normal.

I recently sent a book about economics to a friend. He reposted: “The economy for me is not only over my head – I’m just not interested.” I think his view of economics is shared by most people, even by those who deeply care about political issues. Unfortunately, as I see it, politics are not – as most people seem to believe – about “values”, but about money, or rather about who gets it and who keeps it.

So it is with wars. Attempts to weaken or even Balcanize Russia are also about money, certainly not about values. Zionists’ attempts to prohibit free speech are not about values either. Lots of things are about money. Even the weather is about money although we don’t usually think about money when we contemplate the rain outside our window.

Mind you, I don’t mind money. I want a warm bed as much as anybody else, as well as my three meals a day. But I really don’t need a Porsche (not that I have one). I would much rather know that the kids in Gaza have comfortable beds and three meals a day. I don’t see what’s so great about Porsches or, for that matter, “sustainable growth”. I mean considering that growth is not – repeat not – sustainable although consummate liars of Zelensky’s or Keir Starmer’s calibre might smoothly tell us to go on castigating the weather, the elephants, the Russians, the Palestinians, and the 50 % of the UK and US populations who might not be able to afford a comfortable bed and three healthy meals a day. Why on earth do we listen to consummate liars decade after decade?

Has the world improved over the past decade in any way? Any way at all? Will the weather improve over the next decade?

Will there be another decade?

And behold, there was change

23.02.2025 /

I – The usual sort of day

I started the day, as I always do, by checking the news, starting with the news from NRK, the Norwegian national broadcasting company. Top story:

“Trump repeated the incorrect claim that Zelensky is a dictator.”

Did you notice “the incorrect claim”? Or are you so used to this sort of thing that you’ve stopped noticing. There was no question, not even an expression of polite doubt: Could it be that Zelensky is a dictator? Why would President Trump call Zelensky a dictator?

Most Norwegians read only the Norwegian press. So Norwegians will not have heard about Zelensky’s banning of various news outlets and TV station, etc,. long before the Russian invasion.

Meanwhile right-wing populist parties are gaining ground in Europe. But trust NRK (I repeat: the Norwegian national news outlet) to put their own twist on the story: “The German Security Services warn about Russian interference in the upcoming elections.”

Not a word about:

  • any reasonable grounds German voters might have to distrust their political establishment;
  • US interference in many other countries’ elections;
  • a recent avalanche of information about how USAID is a front for regime change operations and imposition of neoliberal policies on countries all over the world: here, here and here.

I repeat: Not a word about the above.

The Norwegian national network adds, for good measure, that “Danish PM Mette Fredriksen repeats ‘Putin won’t stop at Ukraine.’ ” The network does not explain why we need to fear that “the Russians are coming”. Nor do we hear much about USA’s very real economic and/or military assaults on countries all over the world over the past 70 years. Moreover, having warned us about “Russian interference” in the upcoming elections, NRK does not inform us of the crackdown on free speech in Germany just last week with the German state’s cancellation of Francesca Albanese. See her response

These days, Norwegians must be among the most ignorant peoples in all of Europe. All they have been told about USAID is that USAID employees risk losing their jobs and that hungry Africans are losing their rations.

Trump was never my man, nor was Biden. But at least Trump has been repeating that he wants the killing to stop, and I thought: Let’s see if he means it. Nobody else seems to be saying that; certainly none of Europe’s top guns.

***

II – US elections

I did not comment on the recently concluded US elections. As far as I was concerned Trump could not be much worse than Genocide Joe and his neocon minions, probably not much better either.

Great was my surprise, then, when Trump and his team dented the roof with their scores at the Security Conference in Munich, an event I have never previously bothered about, but this year’s conference was a humdinger!

  • Marco Rubio started a few days earlier by declaring in an interview that the US unipolar moment is over. For that he scored 10 out of 10 in my book. It was just an interview, but it went viral, I mean, it went global.
  • Then Pete Hegseth advised us all to look at the “realities on the ground” in the Ukraine war. For that he scored 10 out of 10. (The realities are that Russia has won the war.)
  • Finally, JD Vance advised the EU to observe the basic rules of democracy and civil rights and to refrain from cancelling elections they don’t like. For that he scored 10 out of 10.

We have been told the USA’s performance left at least one delegate in tears. I for my part wept for joy. This, I thought, this takes us a big step back from midnight on the doomsday clock.

What followed immediately after the conference was the truly historic meeting in Riyadh. Apparently Trump made the initial call. That was all it took! One phone call! And those “horrible” Russians responded at once. They, too, want peace, not because they have been weakened but because they never wanted the war in the first place according to the Bill Burns memo from 2008. (I insist: It was not unprovoked and it did not start in 2022. Regardless, what you think of Tucker Carlson – I think he is rather courageous – you really should listen to what Jeffrey Sachs tells him about the run-up to the Ukraine war.)

The Europeans are furious. I truly do not understand why their policies are so delusional, so I turn to Thomas Fazi and his article: “JD Vance’s speech: change of paradigm or new hegemonic phase?” Yes, he is right to warn people like me. I am so relieved by the break from Biden policies that I am liable to oversee new dangers. Trump and his team certainly deserve praise for retreating from the nuclear brink, but they are no angels either. The USA may nominally have abdicated from unipolarity, but old habits are hard to break. Let us not be fooled.

***

III – On political loyalty

I am all for personal loyalty. And I am also all for adhering to principles. But political loyalty… ? To put it briefly, I am more in favour of healthy exchange of opinions supported by factual arguments. Above, I have given kudos to Trump, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, JD Vance, also to Tucker Carlson. I suspect that I would disagree in a big way with any of these guys on most political issues. For instance I am all for taxes, all for workers’ rights, and I believe the very concept “sustainable growth” is oxymoron. But I also believe that we all benefit from exchange of opinions and above all from freedom of information which is in short supply these days.

So if Trump and his team have earned kudos, they should be granted kudos. I hope they keep up the good work of retreating from midnight on the doomsday clock.

On this note, you might want to watch the conversation between:

former CIA officer Larry Johnson and former UK diplomat Ian Proud

USAID

11.02.2025 /

I see in various outlets and articles that USAID has been financing 85-90% of the Ukrainian media. Admittedly none of my sources for this claim are passionate admirers of US foreign policy and NATO: But I put to you that the following sentence, penned by Glenn Greenwald makes very good sense:

But the reason USAID was created in the first place is because it’s so much easier to access and manipulate other countries when there’s a pretense of humanitarianism to it rather than an explicit CIA or State Dept program.

Read it again. Is there any reason on earth why the US would not pretend to have philanthropic intentions in a country whose leadership they want to support in the face of popular opposition, or whose leadership they want to topple?

USAID (pronounced U-S-A-I-D) USA International Development – is not an acronym. It was created by then President Kennedy in 1961 with the specific aim of countering Soviet Influence. According to The Times of India, USAID has continued its foreign interference with unabashed energy since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, for instance in Cuba, Bolivia, Russia, Brazil, Peru.

According to the Iranian Press TV:

USAID, the agency responsible for implementing much of the US foreign aid program, is significantly impacted by Trump’s order. The directive effectively halts the agency’s current $42.8 billion budget allocated for global operations. (my highlight)

…about

According to observers, there is a dark side to US-provided foreign aid, particularly involving USAID.

Over the years, activists have frequently exposed the exploitation of USAID by successive US governments to push their nefarious agendas abroad. In numerous instances, the agency has served as a cover for US “regime change” plots in many countries, from Cuba to Syria to Venezuela. 

Afshin Rattansi, British journalist and author, underscored that USAID functions as “an arm of regime change and subversion,” infiltrating societies in the Global South and inciting unrest against leaders who either refuse to comply with Washington’s economic or do not align with US foreign policy.

“Millions in the global south will celebrate the end of this organization which created fake neoliberal revolutions for hire, to destroy real revolutionary movements and governments,” Rattansi wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday.

Why do I quote an Iranian outlet? Because I believe it is essential to hear all parties to an argument, be they friend or foe. I am not quoting the Brookings Institute, which also holds strong opinions on the matter, because those are the opinions most of us hear many times a day, year in and year out. In any case, the Iranian Press TV which I just discovered today, looks very interesting, indeed. I put to you that we know no more about Iran than what the US/EU wants us to know, which is not much, and not necessarily all correct.

Anyway, here is a quote from a source most people in the US/EU consider “respectable”, France24. I find the quote eerily unsubstantial:

USAID, an independent agency established by an act of Congress, manages a budget of $42.8 billion meant for humanitarian relief and development assistance around the world.”

You might take a look at how other outlets assess USAID, though I would consider opening the following links a waste of time, unless you have a sense of humour:

I must admit, though that the following item from the White House caught my eye:

More than $9 million of USAID’s ‘humanitarian aid’ intended to feed civilians in Syria ended up in the hands of violent terrorists, including an affiliate of Al Qaeda in Iraq.”

Some of the moneys disbursed by USAID have no doubt contributed to disaster relief. (I am all for disaster relief.) Most of it, however, is not.

How do I know? I was taught, way back in time, to do my research conscientiously. What I have since learnt is that I should not blindly trust my government any more than I should trust corporations or other gold diggers. They all have vested interests. The same goes for independent journalists, of course. But over the years, I tend to trust a handful including those of the Greyzone. Time and time again, Greyzone has provided meticulous and painstaking research, not necessarily of the spectacular “scoop” kind, but of the kind that subsequently proves to have been invaluable, as in their take on USAID, a topic they have been following for years.

I just watched a film from 1972, directed by the magician Costa Gavras, State of Siege. Would you believe that the chief villain in the film was a USAID torture instructor, or rather USAID itself. I actually remember the case – yes, it was real enough – but I didn’t know about USAID. We can thank Trump for exposing that USAID is not all that it seems. And we can thank Costa Gavras for explaining in considerable detail what it pretended to be versus what it really was.
Sources:

  • According to the Greyzone (Do please see, not least, GZ’s linked sources)
  • According to Georgian state TV (should we not also hear a victim’s story?)
  • Lastly, Glenn GReenwald’ extremely interesting examination of Wikileaks documentation regarding a similar and very large and powerful organisation that nobody has ever heard of.

From the US tax payers’ perspective, there is the issue of accountability: Just how were the moneys used? To what bank accounts in whose names, were they disbursed. Where are the receipts regarding their actual use? Did such expenditures truly serve US interests, or just the interests of the 1%? It is a marvel that taxpayers have not long since demanded accountability!

We occasionally hear about the black hole in Ukraine, into which billions have disappeared. Most recently Zelensky himself said that Ukraine has only received 76 billion USD out of the 177 bn allegedly delivered by the US. Here I quote the KYIV Independent:

Ukraine has not received even half of the $177 billion the U.S. allocated to support Kyiv throughout the full-scale war, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with U.S. podcaster Lex Fridman released on Jan. 5. Zelensky implied that this development may have been linked to corruption or lobbying on the side of U.S. companies. Ukraine’s head of state said this in response to Fridman’s question about corruption concerns in Ukraine.

On second thought, I will quote Brookings, because their defence of USAID is so outrageously misleading as to be directly ludicrous. (My emphases in bold: what is ludicrously false)

Abolishing the congressionally funded USAID would hurt U.S. interests in multiple ways that go beyond the core principle of U.S. policy to save lives.

USAID’s efforts to prevent conflict around the world, encourage democratic and pluralistic processes and protect human rights, reduce suffering from death and disease, encourage sustainable economic growth, and prevent environmental destruction reflect the essence of the United States. They help build an international environment that services U.S. interests and values

By way of conclusion, here is the very first sentence in Wkipedia‘s article on “Indoctrination”:

Indoctrination is the process of inculcating (teaching by repeated instruction) a person or people into an ideology, often avoiding critical analysis. (My highlight)

I put to you that we are all – here, there and everywhere – subject to massive indoctrination. Yes, here, too. And we all know that, but somehow we fail to take the fact into account when our sources tell us again and again and again about countries “we” don’t like. Some of what we are told is undoubtedly true, but much is false, deliberately so, at that.

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