Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Category: ENGLISH (Page 1 of 29)

There a few posts written in English

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.

“


“

Manufacturing consent in Norway – mission accomplished

10.02.2025 /

Yesterday I had the privilege of exchanging a few words with a political scientist whom I greatly admire, and whom I have often mentioned here in the past, Professor Glenn Diesen. He has written a number of books, most recently:

  • Europe as the Western Peninsula of Greater Eurasia: Geoeconomic Regions in a Multipolar World. Rowman & Littlefield. 2021.
  • Great Power Politics in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: The Geoeconomics of Technological Sovereignty. Bloomsbury. 2021.
  • Russian Conservatism: Managing Change Under Permanent Revolution. Rowman & Littlefield. 2021. 
  • Russophobia: Propaganda in International Politics. Springer. 2022. 
  • The Think Tank Racket: Managing the Information War with Russia. Clarity Press. 2023.
  • The Ukraine War and the Eurasian World Order. Clarity Press. 2024. 

In The Think Tank Racket he explored the sinister part played by fake NGOs, think tanks, media outlets and the like (financed, as it now turns out, not least by USAID) with the explicit aim of promoting a “rules-based order” (our rules, stupid). Some of these fake institutions also receive generous funding from the Norwegian government.

Such artificial institutions are working hard, as we speak, to implement regime change operations and, if required, civil wars wherever the financial and strategic interests of the US elite are not sufficiently heeded. In Ukraine they have worked hard – very hard indeed – to suppress dissent against the Zelensky regime, which now appears to have been a dictatorship.

They also work hard to ensure that citizens in “Western” countries are prepared for and able to support certain regime change operations in non-Western countries.

The manufacture of consent has been particularly successful here in Norway, where confidence in the system has not yet been eroded by the dramatic fall in living standards that has plagued other European countries, and where people are ludicrously proud of Jens Stoltenberg. That he is a neoliberal warmonger has somehow not been brought home on them. Almost all Norwegians are now warmongers. Hearing little old ladies speak, you’d think they were raring to go fight the Russians.

With great clarity and, I would add, humility, Glenn Diesen has above all analysed the tortuous demise of the unipolar system and the unfortunate reluctance of the EU and my own country to understand the need for a new “security architecture”, as he calls it.

Unfortunately empires don’t collapse over night nor do they go quietly. They go crashing through the landscape, smashing everything and everybody on their way out.

I had never previously met Glenn Diesen whose work I have followed studiously for nearly three years. What I was very glad I could thank him for yesterday, is his remarkable courage and stamina! The malevolent and absurdly unscientific persecution he has been subjected to in the Norwegian press, day in and day out, reminds me of fascism, quite simply. You see, in this country, if you don’t like US expansionism and the methods used by the US to retain its hegemony, you’re worse than an infidel.

They don’t burn infidels, it is true, yet, but they smear you, ruin your reputation, finish you off one way or another. They? Who are they? Why, the NGOs that defend “justice” and “democracy” of course! They are trying to light a pyre under Glenn Diesen and others who seriously challenge business as usual. That they devote so much venom on him, is merely an indication, you might say, of how very impressive his work is. It is also an indicatori of Norway’s groveling suberviance to USA.

Well, it turns out that Glenn Diesen has had enough. True, there are other Norwegians who know that the USA is anything but committed to “democracy”, “justice”, and “freedom”. But they dare not speak. That’s how bad it is. So Glenn Diesen is leaving the country. The police have warned him he is not safe here. He has applied for citizenship elsewhere. A scientific refugee FROM Norway. This is not the first time science is targeted, and it surely won’t be the last.

But the smell of burning science is definitely foul.

Our turn

06.02.2025 /

I have been silent for a long time. What can you say, when people are being slaughtered on an industrial scale? You can protest, you can scream, you can imagine in your dreams that the words you direct at the criminals are daggers, but in the end, …

In years to come my grandchildren might ask, “And then what happened?”

To be honest, what happened next was that most of us became numb. Yes, numb, alas. How else could we go on?

However, I have now been fortunate enough to see an interview with a 22-year-old Gazan, who was (at the time) alive. Hopefully, he still is. What he said was truly an inspiration.

I have sometimes felt enough generosity to wonder how US and UK sympathisers of the Palestinian cause must feel. Their governments are complicit in a big way. How would I feel if I were a citizen of a genocidal government?

That must hurt terribly, Yet, how much generosity do I truly feel? After all, the US has a long record of running torture camps and murderous puppet regimes on all continents except, as far as I know, Oceania and Europe. US citizens should be inured by now to the knowledge that their government routinely stamps out democracy, justice, and freedom wherever the US elite’s strategic or economic interests are at risk.

But of course, I remind myself, US citizens are not inured, because they have no idea of their country’s sinister record.

Today, everything changed for me, and my sympathy for the hapless US and UK citizens who have no idea of the ghastly mischief their government has been up to, has risen. Today, you see, I got a taste of the medicine they have had to get used to. Yep.

The man who was the driving force in sending Ukrainians to the meat grinder, the man who peddled fantasy, when everybody should have known – and many certainly did know – that Ukraine could never win against such a formidable opponent – yes, that man, that blot on Norway’s history – has now become Norway’s finance minister.

The number of people killed in action vary, of course, depending on your source. Here in Norway, we have been so gung-ho about the Ukrainian war effort, that the Norwegian press tend to quote the US authorities in this, and for that matter most other, matters related to “national security” (i.e. US “national security” which apparently is ours as well).

However, I have more faith in members of the VIPS and other US critics of US efforts to cling to global hegemony, and most of them put the number of Ukrainian dead at around 700 000, at the very least. And the war is quite obviously lost. L-O-S-T. Yet, Ukrainians are still being sent to the meat grinder to die. I just listened to one of the VIPS, Col. Douglas Macgregor, whose outlook about the Ukraine war (from 13 minutes on) was – to put it very mildly – bleak.

Here I need to remind you, in case you have not visited my site before, that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was not – repeat – NOT unprovoked, as Professor Jeffrey Sachs has repeatedly explained so succinctly that he is effectively black-listed by some search engines, which is why I refer you to jeffsachs.org, where you will find some of his articles and talks,

The medicine, then, that I must swallow though it makes me sick, is that Stoltenberg has relinquished his post as co-head of the Bildenberg group, a title he had just assumed in November 2024, to return to Norway as Finance Minister. As an aside, I put to you that the Bildenberg group is about as disreputable as any other virtually secret society of the super rich, the aim of which is to promote the interests of oligarchs. Mind you: Stoltenberg is a “Labour Party” wolf in sheepskin, like Starmer, but unlike Starmer, he is a dangerous one.

Everybody here was thrilled that Stoltenberg, a war criminal as I see it (the Libya debacle in 2011 here in Norwegian, and here about UK participation in English), should be so greatly honoured, so proud of him: our boy: “NATO Secretary General”, “our Jens” heading the elite Bildenberger group. And they are no less thrilled now that he has relinquished this tremendous honour in favour of “us”. Ugh.

Are the Ukrainians pleased? Having lost the better part of their male population, over 20 per cent of their territory and God knows what else…, are they grateful to Jens Stoltenberg, to NATO, to Bilderberg, to Europe for fooling them into taking on Russia ahead of the war US hawks hanker for with China? Are they pleased when they see Stoltenberg’s smiling unabashedly unashamed face in the media?

Are the Norwegian mainstream press proud of having cheered Stoltenberg on, throughout? So it seems. Why didn’t they see, I ask, what so very many independent political scientists, independent investigative journalists, and independent academics saw from the very start: Ukraine could not win? Why? Well, the answer to that question is simple: They turned to US think tanks that to a large extent are funded by the US military industry, which of course thrives on wars. That’s why.

And now the Norwegian “darling” will be finance minister. He will be de facto leader of this country (because the prime minister is politically impotent). I could have screamed, but I don’t want to wake the neighbours.

***

I would like to give you an example of how VIPS members deal with unfolding geopolitical events and how they deal with diasagreement. Trump has just stated that he wants to take over Gaza: Discussion.

Distraction

18.12.2024 /

I try not to think about the people in Gaza and on the West Bank, but I find it difficult. After all, we have been taught in school about the Holocaust, we have seen more films about WWII and its racism and victims of racism than about any other single historical topic. Films are a powerful medium. I used to be fairly thick-skinned, but in recent years, I can no longer endure scenes of torture at the cinema: I can smell it! It’s true. I can smell it! Smell the blood, the faeces, the urine. I can hear the screams, see the jugulars of the sadists, and I long to …

I will not tell you what I long to …

My friends laugh at me when I need to leave the television on the pretext of getting a cup of coffee – or at least, they used to; I don’t think they are laughing now. They said: “For Pete’s sake, it’s just fiction!” But I always knew it wasn’t fiction. Now I think they know, too. But they will forget. As soon as Palestine is obliterated and Gaza has become a fashionable Israeli tourist destination, the corporate media will help us all forget about all the Palestinian blood in the soil of Gaza’s tourist resorts. Is Gaza’s soil red, I wonder? I shouldn’t be surprised.

But again, as I say, I try not to think about Gaza. I turn to Isabel Allende, to distracting, relatively intelligent light entertainment.

Now I don’t know what you think about Isabel Allende. She is no doubt smart, probably a good business woman, and with great acumen for what her mostly female readers want. She tells a good yarn, full of unexpected twists and turns and acrobatic leaps. She’s very good at describing sexual bliss. So I was not expecting what I got in “La isla bajo el mar”.

For one thing, the book is painfully long! She is not trying to sell us something light and easy. She is furious, and she goes on and on about it, and believe me, I am hanging on to what she writes, sentence by painful sentence.

In brief, it’s about slavery. Not only slavery: racism. And she is not going about her story in an easy way. She is really trying to understand racism! And that is, to my mind, the greatest merit of this very long and painful book about the remarkable and heroic slave rebellion in Haiti against the French army, no less. A remarkable story, but she tells it as though she was there, and that must have cost her no small amount of research.

How can a reasonably decent man actually believe that people of dark skin are so different from us that they can and should be treated badly, she seems to be asking, because surely, not all slave owners were morally inferior? And I find that she does an impressive job of portraying a slave owner in Haiti and explaining why he behaves in such an appalling manner and how plantation ownership gradually turns what initially is a “reasonably decent man” into a cowardly scoundrel.

Mind you, her slaves are not angels either! Far from it. Once they escape, they seek vengeance and are as cruel as their former owners. In view of how slaves were murdered, tortured to death in the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, their vindictiveness is fully understandable, but the reader finds it more painful to learn that they also betray each other. The ghastly tendency of some people to seek power over others – even global hegemony – is not limited to those of white skin.

I had picked up the book thinking I would enjoy light entertainment, a distraction from the ghastly realities being so eagerly aided and abetted by genocide Joe and his ilk. Instead, what I was reading seemed to indicate that this planet would be better off without humans.

But it certainly would be better without the kind of humans that can blithely write and even publish without shame Which Path to Iran (June, 2009). Those are the humans advising the White House.

Look at page 12, for instance, the table of contents that lists, among other things, the options:

Disarming Tehran: The Military Option

  • Chapter 3: Going All the Way: Invasion
  • Chapter 4: The Osiraq Option: Airstrikes
  • Chapter 5: Leave it to Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike [my emphasis]

Toppling Tehran: Regime Change

  • Chapter 6: The Velvet Revolution: Supporting a Popular Uprising
  • Chapter 7: Inspiring an Insurgency: Supporting Iranian Minority And Opposition Groups
  • Chapter 8: The Coup: Supporting a Military Move Against the Regime

Next, read page 14 in its entirety, under the heading The Trouble with Tehran. Please note, that this is not about women’s rights, not even about justice and democracy. It’s about US interests. Please also note that this was nearly 15 years before 7 October.

Was 7 October the very badly needed excuse Bibi has been waiting for?

Believe me, every time I hear about US interests, I start itching. All over. Abolition of slavery ran contrary to the interests of plantation owners. US interests run contrary to the interests of the vast majority of all humans.

Syria

15.12.2024 /

I am not going to write about Syria. I have never been to Syria and know very little about the country.

I do, however, remember that I learnt and knew – with absolute certainty when it happened – that the USA (starting with NED) played a dirty game in Syria’s civil war. The US was heavily engaged there from the very start. Or before.

Like Libya and Iraq, Syria was once a country with very respectable living standards, relatively high levels of education and health services, but no free press. In 2011 people started clamouring for a free press. Protesters were imprisoned and viciously tortured.

The Syrian government claimed they were cracking down on terrorists. Of course, most of the protesters were not terrorists.

But there were terrorists, and they were being trained and financed by the USA which could not countenance that Assad was under Russian influence.

Did I already mention that Syria was once a country with very respectable living standards, relatively high levels of education and health services?

I might even mention it a third time, since the USA is not a country with very respectable living standards, availability of higher education and decent health services. Much good the free press and the circus of democratic elections have done the majority of US citizens.

Anyway, the US has since imposed “sanctions” on Syria, has stolen Syria’s oil and has occupied its most valuable and productive agricultural land. In short, the USA has done what it regularly does to countries that offer citizens outside Europe respectable living standards, relatively high levels of education and health services:
It has tried to starve the country to death.

This I did not know. Not until now, when I have spent quite a lot of time and effort trying to understand why Assad’s troops simply caved in, why Turkey is playing its strange game, why Russia walked away, and why Israel is applauding a Jihadist occupation of Syria. Very confusing indeed unless you understand the background, which the corporate press painstakingly declines to do.

So rather than tell you all about Syria, I leave you with Chris Hedges, or rather with Alastair Crooke [yes, that is how the name is spelt] to whom he addresses a few questions. I must warn you: The former MI6 officer and diplomat has a weak voice but a most extraordinarily nimble mind.

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