Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Category: ENGLISH (Page 1 of 35)

There a few posts written in English

Sinister experiments

07.07.2026 /

Yes, I had heard about experiments carried out on people. Mengele, of course. But also, alas, the CIA. I had sort of forgotten all about those CIA experiments; they were, surely, merely a brief aberration. I thought, maybe even “a conspiracy theory”.

I suspect that most people who have heard about them thought likewise. Actually, in Norway, we didn’t even hear about them at all. In general, US crimes against humanity have been cushioned by Norwegian media for as long as I have lived. For years, my only alternative source was Le Monde Diplo.

But I did hear about them, from William Blum. I just didn’t really believe them, not even from him.

But now we have seen to what extent the US constitution can be side-stepped not only as regards foreign policy, but even domestically. Maybe that is why this ghastly old issue has resurfaced. US citizens have lost faith in the US. And the creepy crawlies are coming out of the woodwork.

Few US Americans now implicitly trust the US judicial system, the US federal police, not to mention the United States Congress. The USA is suffering from acute osteoporosis; internal erosion of “trust”, i.e. of the entire structure.

Did Tyler Robinson kill Charlie Kirk? There are many reasons to doubt it. Who, then, killed Charlie Kirk and why? The very idea that the FBI might be framing a man is pretty extreme, no? Or have US Americans long since gotten used to such practices? Did Epstein kill himself? If not, the FBI would have been involved in the cover-up. Who fired the shots at Trump? Disastrous as Trump’s policies are, the idea that the FBI could somehow be involved in his attempted murder is blood-curdling. What about suspected gain-of-function experiments in Wuhan and Ukraine? And why does Netanyahu have a stranglehold on Trump?

In short, the USA seems to be descending into anarchy.

So it may not be a coincidence that now was the time that the House Committee on Oversight decided to set up a “task force” to re-examine MKULTRA. Not that I for a moment imagine that this will lead to any prosecutions or new revelations.

You can watch the video recording of the entire session: Committee on Oversight Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets: MKULTRA (starting at 16 minutes and 15 seconds).

Or, you could just read the 7-page written document submitted to the Task Force by the witness Tom O’Neill. I think it is well worth your time.

***

Who has greater control over a population? A King or a High Priest?
Take Thomas Becket and King Henry II: I put to you that Becket won in the long run.

Psychology is a very powerful instrument if used intelligently.

Pychiatry = psychology plus drugs = potential threat to personal integrity

The witnesses about MKULTRA admitted they could provide no evidence about the continuation of the programme. But they both very much doubted it had been discontinued.

After all, why on earth should we believe what powerful people tell us.

Not just Trump

20.06.2026 /

Until recently, we here in Norway blamed Putin for almost everything but bad weather. That is, of course, because our EU-centric media have framed foreign affairs in such a way that we know next to nothing about the real world outside our borders. You may ask: Why is that? Have the Norwegian media been given orders? Or are they merely incompetent, misinformed or plainly stupid?

To be frank: I don’t know.

Today Reuters quoted the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on the issue of “dialogue”. There was every reason to welcome dialogue, he agreed. However:

“The Europeans have a very serious misconception: They assume that negotiations with Russia must be conducted from a ​position of strength and based on Russia’s weakness. This is the biggest mistake… Such talk will lead ⁠nowhere. …Does this stem from European incompetence, misinformation, or stupidity? We don’t know for sure, but it’s a fact.”

Putin ​has said that he is open to talks with European governments but that they should make the first move because they were ​the ones to cut off ties. The EU has imposed 20 rounds of sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

Most Norwegians do not get even this little titbit in their news feeds. So they have no way of knowing that the reason there are no peace talks between Europe and Russia is that European leaders refuse to discuss the root causes of the war.

Of course Norwegians could read RT, because it is actually not blocked in Norway. But no Norwegian in his or her right mind would be caught dead reading “Putin talking points” (code speak for “Russian “propaganda”). The implication being, of course, that on our side, we don’t do “propaganda”.

I must really urge my fellow countrymen to challenge his/her super-ego and read RT. Today for instance, I found a mildly ironic review of a newly published book about the sabotage of the Nord Stream Pipeline and the former Ukrainian erotic model, ‘Freya’, “the bravest diver in the whole group”. I briefly scanned the page and caught the word “Norwegian”. When I zoomed in to it, this is what I saw:

As images of bubbling gas leaks [after the destruction of Nordsream] hit international media, a separate story went almost entirely unreported: less than 24 hours after the second round of blasts, Poland and Norway celebrated the opening of the Baltic Pipe, a gas pipeline transiting Norwegian gas to Poland via Denmark, passing over Nord Stream just south of Bornholm.

“Thank you, USA,” Poland’s now-foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, tweeted. Sikorski deleted his tweet two days later.

You may remember, but then again, if you are Norwegian you will probably not even have heard about him, Seymour Hersch and his famous article, according to which the US with the assistance of Norway took down Nordstream. His substack articles require a paid subscription, so I have directed you to the Helsinki Times for a discussion of it. Democracy Now’s conversation with Sy Hersch himself is surely also worth listening to (and there is a transcript).

Nor, to my knowledge, has the Norwegian press said a word about the controversy between Poland and Ukraine over the recent state burial of a Nazi collaborator and war criminal. Reuters didn’t devote much space to the matter, but enough to trigger curiosity.

Although Norwegians have been prevented from understanding the role played in Ukraine by successive US administrations, some Norwegian ire has shifted from Putin to Trump.

***

Personally, though, I find Trump rather more entertaining than the stony-faced Sir Keir, the rubber-faced Macron or the German fellow who looks and sounds as though he has just escaped from an insane asylum for former war criminals, I do not – repeat – not – approve of Trump’s policies. I believe that inter-state matters should be handled by adults. Alas, neither the members of his administration nor those handling EU foreign policy qualify as such, although I suspect they may have taken a course in “How to get rich, quick!”

I admit that I rather liked Trump’s comment that not everybody who lives in an apartment building is a member of Hezbollah. I liked his outburst that “Everybody hates Israel because of this!” Above all, I recognise that his MAGA voters hoped he would concentrate on improving conditions for ordinary US Americans.

Moreover, there is no denying that the US on Trump’s watch has lost face due to the Iran debacle. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is very good news indeed, though you may disagree with me.

Bear with me, though: You see, I claim – and again you may disagree – that USA has been, for decades a malevolent global force. And Trump, who has dismantled what little remained of a semblance of Democracy in his own country, with his ICE and unconstitutional extravagances, has merely allowed US hubris abroad to break US legs. Again. (Remember Afghanistan?)

Ordinary US citizens are paying the price. I am sorry. However, EU citizens are also paying the price.

BUT TRUMP IS JUST A SYMPTOM, NOT THE CAUSE

(to be continued)

***

So let’s take a look at the Iran debacle:
Yes, Trump, not Biden, not Obama, was the one who attacked Iran, out of the blue during on-going negotiations. He was pressured by a homicidal maniac, it is true. (Mind you, Naftali Bennet will be no better than Netanyahu!)

History books will say that he, Trump, was to blame for the underhanded attack on Iran on 28 February.

BUT former presidents have been waging economic war on Iran ever since Iran got rid of the US puppet — a pompous, fascist “shah” — in 1979. In fact, Iran was the most sanctioned country in the world until it was surpassed by Russia after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Take a good long look at the so-called Timeline of U.S. Sanctions. The US thought it would be able to force the country to its knees, and obviously now thought it had succeeded in so doing. After all, economic sanctions amount to warfare. They don’t merely hurt the targeted country’s “regime” (a popular word these days for all governments pursuing policies that do not serve “US national interests” – which is a euphemism for the “financial interests of a limited number of people”).

I repeat for emphasis: “US national interests” is normally used as a euphemism for the “financial interests of a limited number of people“.

The Lancet wrote in 2025:

All economic sanctions ultimately function as sanctions on health. Through their direct effects on access to medical products, provision of health-care services, and civilian mental health, as well as their indirect effects on determinants of health such as food security and socioeconomic development, sanctions inevitably or even intentionally undermine people’s right to health. Moreover, the adverse effects of sanctions on health are most pronounced among children, women (versus men), and the most marginalised populations.


With a low efficacy rate and a significant and uneven impact on health, it is questionable whether economic sanctions meaningfully reduce the number of deaths relative to military aggression.
[all highlighting by Pelshval]

In other words, since “it is questionable” whether the number of civilian deaths caused by sanctions is “meaningfully” lower than that caused by military warfare, sanctions are relatively cheaper for the US taxpayer, but no less devastating for the affected country.

So the US has been actively and fiercely engaged in warfare against Iran for decades. Why? Forget about “terrorism”. The US has itself actively engaged in terrorism whenever and wherever it has seen fit, just like Israel; still does.

Not even tangentially does the matter of human rights enter into US equations.

The US would like to have, once again, a puppet regime in Iran, simple as that. The oil, of course, the minerals. Now, though, in 2026, there is the additional pressing need to prevent the strengthening of Iran’s ties with China, before it is too late.

Trump has been doing to Iran what any president would have been pressured into doing, not so much by Israel as by the “limited number of people” who basically run USA behind the scenes. As things have turned out, it is too late.

So the problem is not Trump. It’s the system. Trump was the product of a system that since the introduction of increasingly neoliberal policies from the 1970s on (reversal of progressive taxing, deregulation – e.g. the repeal of the Glass Steagal Act – etc.) has dramatically degraded the living conditions of the greater part of the US and UK populations and shrunk the middle class of the two countries.

As Trump has had to admit defeat, Dems in Congress are as furious as Republicans in Congress. Obviously, most of these people – the people in Congress – do not have the interests of the majority of US citizens at heart.

Their purely political problem is that what the US is doing in the Middle East is increasingly unpopular with US voters, in spite of suppression of criticism of genocidal Zionism. So they happily use Israel as both a scapegoat and an excuse for lingering in the Middle East, while plotting how to “end aid to Israel” and replacing aid with something worse.

AS Trita Parsi writes:

Trump owns this failed war, but if the Democrats help torpedo the MOU and war resumes, then they will co-own the next war.

Wars become interminable when leaders convince themselves that ending them without victory is politically more costly than continuing them without hope. Once that trap is sprung, every setback becomes an argument for one more deployment, one more escalation, one more year. The objective shifts from achieving a realistic political outcome to avoiding the admission that the original objectives were unattainable.

That last paragraph describes exactly what is going on in Europe now. Alas. But let me not digress from my agenda today, which is, I repeat:

Trump is not the problem. The system is.

***

So, by way of a very brief conclusion – because were I to recite the entire litany of US war crimes over the past 150 years, I would have to write an entire book (such books have been written, though, ref. William Blum) — I quote the article Democratic Party’s Corollary to the Donroe Doctrine:

Beneath the rhetoric of inter-party conflict lies a broad bipartisan consensus in favor of promoting US hemispheric hegemony and crushing governments that resist it – with Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua at the forefront. While Democrats frequently portray Trump as reckless, they generally accept the underlying premises of economic coercion, political intervention, and regime-change pressure. Their objections mainly focus on the execution of policy rather than its legitimacy.

The rest of the article is well worth your attention, as is the website where I found it: https://www.antiwar.com/regions/

As for the system, ladies and gentlemen, you can call it rotten, if you wish, but that is not exactly clarifying. I maintain that there are two characteristics of the system that are particularly egregious:

  • It is, and has been ever since WWII, hegemonic, i.e. it claims the right to call the shots globally with or without the endorsement of the UN.
    • Consequently, it does not play by any other rules than those that it lays down arbitrarily, according to its needs.

  • It is Neoliberal. Now the Wikipedia article about Neoliberalism is very confusing, but most critics of Neoliberalism stress the following policies:
    • market fundamentalism,
    • deregulation of capital markets and the corporate sector,
    • low taxation on capital income
    • privatisation of the public sphere, and above all:
    • accelerating financialisation
    • => All of which leads to “austerity”,
      • i.e. the lowest 90 % of the population suffer the consequences while the top 10 % thrive.

That is the problem.
Trump is merely the symptom of his country’s malaise

…qui tollis peccata mundi

13.06.2026 /

This string of words appears in my record collection, in compositions by:

J.S. Bach, Samuel Barber, Benjamin Britten, Luigi Cherubini, Gabriel Fauré, Vivaldi, Mozart, Palestrina, Arvo Pärt, Ariel Ramirez (in the vernacular), Rossini, Scarlatti, Verdi.

Most of the compositions bearing the name “Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi” sound funereal. You will probably have heard the one in Mozart’s Requiem. It sends shivers down my spine.

Leaving aside the “Agnus Dei” bit (since in our day and age, the concept of a lamb does not resonate), I was fascinated by the hard consonants – the t-s, p-s and k-s – of the Latin words, long before I understood their meaning. Just uttering them – qui toll-is pec-ca-ta mun-di made me sense the weight of an overwhelming burden.

And so it is, the burden, that is, of evil: It is almost too hideous to contemplate. After I learnt the meaning of the words, which in my inexact translation read “you who pay the price for the sins of the world” – indeed, he was crucified – I addressed them, not to “God’s lamb”, but to the soldiers who died in ditches or in tanks in two world wars, to the peasants and unarmed people whose throats have been slit or who have been shot, starved, burnt to death or dismembered by mines, so that we in the political West can safely enjoy our three full meals a day and our daily hot showers.

“You who pay the price of our sins”, I mentally told them – our sins being mostly, I thought, cowardice. Because we didn’t speak up; we didn’t tell the bastards to STOP all the killing. I am moved by old videos of US kids who protested against the Vietnam war and were badly beaten. They DID speak up. Have I ever gone out and been beaten by the police? No, never. I was a coward. Or maybe I was a realist?

Because the US – totally disregarding the protests – continued its killing, not only of the Vietnamese. And in the end, we all got used to it, while the innocent continued paying the price. …qui tollis peccata mundi…

No, I was not a realist, for only recently did I understand that it makes no difference what we say or shout, or whom we vote for: If the 1 % want war, war it is.

As years passed, the shame of my cowardice was overshadowed by growing insight into financial greed. Because now, more and more people even in the political West are no longer able to afford three full meals a day and a daily hot shower.

Since USA was the “greatest” of the financial players, it was also the most active aggressor. Most of my compatriots, who adore US soft power, refused to see that and naively supported NATO, still do, for the most part.

The US and its European vassals, created and nurtured Israel. Israeli governments have been openly encouraging villainy against Palestinians ever since day one. But only on 7 October, when inmates of the world’s largest prison were miraculously able to escape and create havoc, only then, did even peaceful Israelis become sadists. After 7 October, many Israelis asked themselves why IDF seemed to be asleep on 7 October. I ask: were the Gazans deliberately allowed to escape so as to foment rage and eventually sadism among Israelis?

Sadism cannot entirely exterminate a people. There are now Palestinians all over the world. Like the Jews after WWII, the Palestinian diaspora will remember.

Moreover, encouraging sadism was a mistake on the part of the Israeli government. A stupid mistake. Because since 7 October 2023, the entire world has finally understood that Israel is a madhouse run by homicidal maniacs.

I had long known about and protested against Israeli violent theft of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem and the West Bank. But I never imagined I would see, anywhere, the extent of the Israeli depravity we have been witnessing these past three years.

Yet, nobody in the political West is lifting a finger to stop the carnage. NOBODY, except Palestine Action, and what a disproportionate price they are being made to pay!

What does that make us? As far as I can make out, we are the accomplices of homicidal maniacs, are we not?

Objection! Our governments do NOT represent us. They do NOT reflect our will. We were taught at school that they do, but all that is sham, make-belief. Though we are taken in by “panem et circenses”, bread and circus, mainly the latter, because most of us do not have much dough,, we are deeply disturbed by our governments’ failure to take decisive action against Israel.

What does that make Iran, that solitary country that has been vilified for 50 years? We have been told it is a backward terrorist state. The “backward” state is standing up for the underdog! It is standing up to the biggest bully of them all. Wow!

I suspect that many of my compatriots are pretty impressed with Iran, in spite of negative media coverage. I suspect that many people silently hope that Iran will prevail against Israel and against the US, regardless of the consequences for us.

Iran is a shining light. Maybe there is hope for humanity after all.

In that spirit, I recommend Ariel Ramirez’ adaptation of qui tollis peccata mundi in the composer’s vernacular. The prayer was to the point in USA’s long-suffering “backyard” when the wonderful Misa Criolla was composed (1964), and so it is today, there and in the rest of the world.


Cordero de Dios, que quitas el pecado del mundo;
ten compasión de nosotros.
Cordero de Dios, que quitas el pecado del mundo;
ten piedad de nosotros.
Cordero de Dios, que quitas el pecado del mundo;
danos la paz,
danos la paz.

Couples

06.06.2026 /

If a couple learns that one or the other is suffering from a terminal illness, something happens to the relationship between them. I am sure that must be so, although I have not studied the subject.

I happen to know a couple in that situation, and am fascinated by how they seem determined to concentrate on enjoying each other and enjoying life together more than they ever did before, more, even, than when they were courting. The sharpness of tone of voice outsiders often discerned in their discourse, is gone. There is a softness, an attentiveness between them that makes me wonder: Will not the grief and the loss seem all the greater in the end?

For some people, perhaps, the very announcement that death will come within – say, half a year – is received as a signed and stamped death certificate, as a fait accompli. Knowing that life as they know it will end, they turn from each other, turn off the light, as it were, in advance, waiting for sleep to turn off the pain.

And there must be a multitude of other reactions, more or less chaotic combinations of the two extremes described. There must be, after all, innumerable unresolved past issues – “you called me a stupid bitch!” – there may be former lovers; there may be “my children”, “your children”…

Moreover, living together is not only a matter of emotional attachment: There are also the house, the bills, the debts, the cost of treatment and, finally, the purely physical burden of having to care for one who is bedridden.

I have never lived with a person who was dying. But I can to some extent imagine how it must be, because I am living with a planet that is dying. To be more precise: It is being killed.

We are all effectively impotent in the face of this atrocity. We know who the killers are, or rather what they are, but we are as incapable of stopping them as Spartacus was of freeing the Roman slaves or as Palestine Action is of freeing the Palestinians. In the end, all who try, suffer the same fate as Spartacus and Palestine Action. They get quashed one way or another.

While injustice has always incited some – as Spartacus – to express their anger violently (which Palestine Action did not, by the way), others direct it at themselves, in the form of depression, which is, in essence, self-harm.

Most of us, however, just carry on the day to day business of staying alive and allowing business to proceed as usual.

You will put to me that there is a distinction between disease and “politics”. Indeed. But the two have a common denominator: They both kill and the net result for those who survive is LOSS.

The loss to most of us who live with this planet is unfathomable.

I grew up loving the swallows who returned to us every spring. No more. There are still swallows somewhere, I believe, but not where I live. I am surely not the only one who notices their absence.

I suspect that most of us are worried and (or) sad, some more, some less. Increasingly, though, people are getting angry.

There is so much to be angry about, where to start?

  • The 1% is running the show (the Mont Pelerin Society, the Bilderberg lot, the Davos and Trilateral Commission lot, the G7 …): Their field of expertise is exploitation at which they excel, using instruments, such as:
    • Our political class – basically all parties (new parties are soon bribed or otherwise discombobulated) – which are tasked with following agendas set for them.
    • State and corporate media whose task it should be to inform us, but which are instructed to withhold information and skew what little information they impart in order to keep us in the dark.

The problem about anger is that when you don’t know what is going on, you don’t know where to address it. When so much effort is being devoted to keeping us in the dark, we can do no more than knock our heads against walls. There is certainly no dearth of walls. Even in Gaza, they still have walls.

I have therefore decided to follow the example of the friends I described in my opening paragraph. At least for now. I have decided to love my dying partner, the planet, with all the tenderness I can muster.

Day by day, I love it more and more, knowing that it is just a matter of time before it or I must die. And this week I have been downright happy: Every day, there has been some rain. And every day, there has been some sunshine. The birds – those who are still around – have been singing, leaves are green, and there are even some insects around. I sit out in the evenings just listening, taking in the scents of life.

It is true, there were more birds last year. But those who still survive from year to year are infinitely dear to me.

Veterans

19.05.2026 /

On 8 May, former UNSCOM weapons inspector Scott Ritter wrote: “America did not become a nation of racketeers under Trump. It always was one!”

But there was a time when a man’s word meant something.
When a handshake was as good as a signature on a piece of paper.
When a reputation mattered.
Those days, unfortunately, are long gone.
Arrogance and insolence have long been traits attributable to the United States of America and the American people.

But these normally repulsive character flaws were always wrapped in the cloak of well-meaning innocence, to be forgiven because those possessed of such traits carried themselves with a smile on their face and the perceived intent of wanting to do the right thing.

Just so, except that I suspect the “American people” have no influence over US policy, domestic or foreign.

Ritter is one of the founding members of VIPS, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. I find him somewhat alarming: He seems dauntingly intense and angry,but I’m sure he has reason to be! One possible reason being something another founding VIPS member, Larry Johnson, wrote about just yesterday on Sonar21:

Since 2001, the United States has lost more than 140,000 veterans to suicide — more than the total American combat deaths in every war since Vietnam combined. Between 6,000 and 6,700 veterans have died by suicide every single year since the War on Terror began, and the VA’s most recent annual report documents an average of 17.6 veteran deaths by suicide every day. [VA is the Department of Veteran Affairs.]

Some researchers believe even that devastating figure is understated: America’s Warrior Partnership estimates the true number may be closer to 24 veterans per day when accounting for underreporting, with an additional 20 dying daily from “self-injury mortality” such as overdoses — a combined total roughly 2.4 times higher than the VA’s official count.

Why am I going on about Scott Ritter? Because I am deeply grateful to him for directing me to a remarkable 12-page booklet you can actually download: War is a Racket, authored by Major General Smedley D. Butler. There is also a public domain audiobook.

In 1935, this extraordinary retired major general smelled a new global war on its way. He did not like it one bit.

On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men — men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago.

The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.

I chose this quote to highlight why Scott Ritter may be angry, and why Larry Johnson is grieving over his friend, a veteran who killed himself last week. But it is far from the most striking part of the little tract.

The entire piece is quite simply brilliant and would have deserved not only a Nobel peace prize, if said prize had not been so demeaned as to represent an insult to whoever receives it, but also a Nobel prize in literature. No wonder the American public was reluctant to join WWII.

Now, I am of the opinion that German Nazism in WWII represented such a hideous threat that it had to be stopped, at all cost. But Smedley D. Butler could not have foreseen that in 1935. And that was not the case, I believe, in 1914 when WWI started. For years, certain forces in several countries had been hankering to cut each other’s throats. (Cf. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, ch. 11: The growth of international tensions 1871-1914)

The factors currently leading us into a new global war resemble those leading up to WWI. Certain forces in certain countries, notably the US and in Europe are positively itching for an excuse to create bedlam and see some action. For instance, even at the best of times, there are, in Washington, in both parties, those who manipulate the incumbent president into starting a war. Reading War is a Racket you will be in no doubt as to why that is.

With such a tool as Trump in their hands, they may even decide to go all out in support of Israeli Übermensch calls to exterminate enemy civilisations and promote acquisition of “lebensraum“. After all, by piggy-backing the Israelis, they hope to help themselves to new chunks of Asia and thus to weaken China.

At any rate, the difference between the global war we are sleepwalking into and the previous one is that this time, we, in the political West are not the good guys.

As for Europe, EU leaders are patently acting, not for the good of their countries, but on behalf of what we recently have learnt to recognise as the Epstein Class.

Finally a quote to remind us that some things never change. The prescient major general wrote in 1935:

Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh.

The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast. The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the united States fleet so close to Nippon’s shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.

Fresh perspectives

13.05.2026 /

There is this Chinese whizz-kid, Jiang Xueqin. Actually, he is neither a kid nor Chinese. According to the linked Wikipedia article, he is about 50, and probably Canadian. But he certainly is more than usually brainy.

Glenn Diesen has interviewed him on a couple of occasions and I note that what he says differs in almost every way from what just about everybody else says, both in form, style and content.

For one thing, he is anything but diffident. He seems almost insolently confident about his predictions. Yes, he is in the business of making geopolitical predictions. And he does so – to be sure – on the basis knowledge and, allegedly, game theory. (To my knowledge, game theory has absolutely nothing to do with gaming.)

Online with Glenn Diesen, he is unsmiling and very concentrated. He serves his apocalyptic predictions with chilling cool, although he concedes from time to time that they sound terribly cynical, inferring that the cynicism is not his, but that of the people who run the world.

They, the people who run the world, pretend they are not Netanyahus, but that is exactly what they are. (Take for instance Keir Starmer, a so-called “Labour” PM, who has turned the UK into a Zionist police state).

I shook my head, as he told Glenn Diesen how the US will bamboozle even the Chinese, and will crack the Iranians if not in the strait of Hormuz, at least in the strait of Malacca. It is true that Trump gleefully bragged, just the other day, that “we’re like pirates”. So, yes, the US can and will do exactly what they want to do with any ship, anywhere.

I also shook my head when he explained that this war, these wars, I should say, is not about China but between the US and Russia. Then I remembered that until Trump claimed he wanted the Ukraine war to end, we always maintained that the Ukraine war was a proxy war, that Ukraine was a US proxy. (And just today I read that Tulsi Gabbard has confirmed the existence of more than 40 gain-of-function bio-labs in Ukraine paid for by US tax payers.) The US has now merely outsourced its Ukraine war to its European vassals. Indeed, Jiang Xueqin’s explanation of how and why the US outsources its wars is exhilarating.

I decided to take a look at his website, and having done so I urge you to do likewise.

This picture from Iran on his site is not one I have seen before:

He writes:

Trump ordered the destruction of Iran’s largest bridge. This is considered a war crime because you’re not supposed to target civilian infrastructure. Now, you can make the argument that this is dual-use, meaning that the military uses it as well, but everything is dual-use. The military also uses water, they also use electricity, and their kids also go to university. So, there’s a great fear now that we are already at the point of no return.”

Makes sense.

But I am writing all this only to tell you that this insolently self-confident thinker has produced a treasure trove of a web-site, full of information and mind-boggling theories.

I know for a fact that I do not agree with him about Dante’s Divina Comedia, for example, and a number of other issues. But disagreeing with intelligently developed points of view is stimulating. In a piece about economic bubbles (“The Great Reset”), he writes “How do economies rise and fall? I’m not an expert or a professor. I engage in speculation for fun and entertainment. See this as an exploration of some topics that have no scholarly basis.”

Take a look at his long essay (for lack of a better word) “The Hollywood-Pentagon Complex”, or his impressive Glossary, or his “Mid-Term Examination” starting with the sentence “Today is our midterm examination—a chance for you to question and examine me”. Again, he is in the business of making geopolitical predictions based on a combination of facts, reasoning and adventurism. Game theory is not about gaming, but his predictions are, in a sense, a game.

My approach to analyses of current events is to seek, not confirmation, but understanding. I admittedly want to see an end to US hegemony and I tend to be happy reading promises of the imminent demise of USD reserve currency status. This whizz kid and his Predictive History site is not promising anything of the sort. Yet, he is well worth my time and I therefore suggest he might be worth yours as well. After all, do we not need to understand why rogue states such as the US and Israel are still calling the shots and why US piracy is being tolerated?

Joyless

06.05.2026 /

Many years after the end of the Pinochet dictatorship, a popular Chilean journalist who had been tortured in Villa Grimaldi, was asked what effect it had had on her. She pondered her answer, which was odd because she was usually very much on the ball, and finally replied: “Perdí la felicidad.” Literally: I lost my happiness.

Another one of Pinochet’s innumerable victims told me that her reply made a tremendous impression on him. When she said what she said, he realised: That was exactly what had happened to him!

I did not understand, then, what on earth he was going on about. I mean: Is anybody more than momentarily “happy”?

But the other day, reading about the five Palestine Action defendants who dismissed their lawyers in order to address the jury personally, I finally understood. They had committed vandalism (red paint, broken windows, etc.) against an Israeli arms factory and are facing gargantuan penalties as “terrorists”. The defendants’ lawyers had been given a gag order. The defendants themselves, however, could not be prevented from giving the jury a piece of their mind. I read a short piece that quoted some of their statements, including the following:

Ms —- recalled how she went on local marches and national demonstrations while her “mental health plummeted watching what was happening and feeling helpless to stop it.”

An email to her local MP came back with an “automated response,” she said.

Ms —-, who worked at a nursery, spoke about “the conflict of going to work — teaching young children — and going home to watch videos of children losing everything”.

She felt “sick going to bed feeling helpless witnessing massacres” and felt “compelled to act in defence of those children.”

Now this was something that I could understand and relate to!

People are not all born “happy”. Among “healthy” children of parents who can afford to care for them, some are no doubt happier than others. There are sure to be many factors that determine why people are different in that respect. Whatever those factors are, I for my part have been a joyful sort of person.

Life in Europe tends to take the following course: School, secondary school, infatuations, professional training, finding a partner, buying a home, making children, etc. There are dramas, large and small all along the route, from periods of stressful unemployment and inability to pay bills, to loss of loved ones, serious accidents or illness. We find comfort in our church, mosque or synagogue and the equivalent holy texts, if we are believers.

Personally, I have taken greater comfort from the UN Charter and the Declaration of Human Rights, which I thought were more substantial than millennia-old texts. They contain the rules that the entire global community agreed to try to follow and to consider “Law” – International Law.

I fear those who put their trust in the holy texts are better off than me now.

Remember the Canadian Prime Minister’s astounding speech at Davos? Mark Carney spoke about the end of what he called a “pleasant fiction” in a world where, routinely, “the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.”

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

The PM admitted that

The system’s power comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true.

No, I am not digressing. The post-WWII global order was predicated NOT on “Pax Americana”, (which was not peace in any way, shape or form – on the contrary) but on the understanding that cultures, religions and political systems differ, and that when interests clash, disputes must be resolved through the United Nations.

Or so we thought. Now we see that it was all a charade. The US no longer even pretends to respect the UN. It flouts, and has flouted from day one, every rule in the book of international law.

***

In my country, children were taught that evil would be punished. As an adult, I learn, and re-learn every single day: evil is rewarded.

That the world is governed by such awful principles as those now openly and unabashedly espoused not only by the USA (including its Congress!), but also by its European vassals, is sickening. Yes, watching feel-good films can distract us for a few moments, but more and more people suffer from a general sense of disgust.

Like the former victims of Pinochet – I have lost the capacity to be joyful. I have not been tortured, it is true. I have not even been incarcerated and killed without a trial like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese. I have not lost my wife or husband or sons or daughters to killers simply because they are not “Jews”. I have not been imprisoned or lost my job, scholarship or residence permit for attending demonstrations.

What has happened to me is merely that I have lost faith in mankind. It is true that not all people are nearly as evil as Netanyahu, Ursula von der Leyen, Lindsey Graham, Nancy Pelosi or Javier Milei. In fact, very few are. But people like them are the people who run the world.

After WWII, Norwegians asked themselves: Had we been German, would we have been proud to kill Slavs and Jews? The thought was horrifying. After all, in terms of ethnicity, Norwegians and Germans are very close.

Since then, we have learnt that the genetic difference between what used to be called “races” of homo sapiens is hardly worth mentioning. Some, it is true, tolerate salt, milk and other substances better than others.

That means, I am very much afraid, that we all could become just as homicidal as Israelis and Nazis.

I used to hope that the UN and the shared principles enshrined in its Charter and Human Rights Declaration would protect our moral condition. But alas, the one country that has done most to undermine the two is the USA, staunchly backed by Santa Ursula’s army of European warmongers.

The human species is in the process of self-extermination. Should we even bother to grieve its demise?

That was quick

12.04.2026 /

So the negotiations have ended. In the old days, there was such a thing as “gentlemen’s agreements”. Those days are long, long gone, at least where the US or Israel are concerned, and the Iranians had few expectations. They certainly saw no reason to talk to the puppets Witkoff and Kushner. I suspect they were pressured by China to agree to “negotiate”. After all, China, too, suffers from the closure of the Hormuz Strait, not to mention the possible collapse of the global economy.

But the Hormuz strait is worth too much, for both Iran and the US.

Meanwhile, Israel, was doing its utmost to sabotage negotiations, as usual, targeting densely populated areas, as usual, killing children, as usual, and slaughtering mourners at funerals, as usual. Moreover, there is reason to fear that the Lebanese PM, and the Lebanese president are relinquishing sovereignty of their country to Israel. See also The Cradle. I see no discussions of this issue in the mainstream press.

European leaders are pusillanimous and hypocritical, also as usual. Typically, Sir Keir has now, under US pressure “paused” UK plans to cede the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

You will know that the US has a military base there, Diego Garcia. The population of the entire Chagos Archipelago, mostly descendants of slaves brought to the Chagos Islands in the late 18th century were forcibly evicted from the islands between 1963 and 1971 to make room for the base. Why in Heaven’s name did the US have to have a military base there, of all places?

I ask you: Were you or your children or grandchildren (depending on your age) informed about this injustice at school? By the press, maybe?

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2019 and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (in 2021) both stated that the UK had an obligation to return the islands to Mauritius. (source as at 12/04/26)

Of course, neither the US nor Israel nor, it seems, the UK are particularly concerned about international law, Democracy or justice.

However, there is a sliver of hope on the horizon. Not all European leaders are sycophants and or hypocrites. Spain’s PM has dared say what others only dare think, referring to

“those who set the world on fire“

There are also faint signs that some countries are starting to wonder whether they should change horses. (With friends like the USA, who needs enemies?) Will there be a Taiwan turn-around?

Let’s hope that the Iranian delegates will be able to return home today without being targeted by homicidal maniacs.

Rhino in the White House

08.04.2026 /

I used to wonder: How did people in Sweden and England – free countries, back then – feel when Nazis on the continent went about dragging Jewish men, women and children out of their homes and stuffing them into train waggons like cattle to be transported to slaughterhouses? How did people feel, back then, knowing that German soldiers burnt Russian men, women and children alive in their homes and in churches? I have heard that they even buried them alive in mass graves.

Well now I know. Israelis have for some time been doing in Palestine and now in Lebanon what the Nazis did. And as I write this, the US and Israel are proudly bombing Iran “back to the Stone Age”. I feel sick with shame, disgust, horror and loathing.

What a magnificently ugly couple they are, the rhinoceros in the White House and the homicidal maniac that is his Israeli handler.

You will tell me that the former is not representative of the USA?

Isn’t he? Why, then, was he elected? Why was such an ignorant and deranged individual chosen to lead the country?

You will reply: He lied. He told the voters that he was a man of peace, that he was opposed to “forever wars”.

He did indeed lie. They all do, you know. Politicians lie. That’s what politics are about. Even if a politician has a decent agenda, he or she will have to trick and cheat and lie to bring it to fruition. That does not mean that politicians are “all bad”. I don’t like them, it is true, but many politicians have done much to advance the common good. Much the same applies to diplomats: Politicians and diplomats suffer from the same occupational hazards. They become habitual if not inveterate liars.

Yes, you have a liar in the Oval Office. So? He certainly is not the first. Remember Obama? He actually did receive the Peace Prize, but he is said to have dropped more than 26 thousand bombs on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen — in 2016 alone! And without asking for congressional permission. He replaced soldiers with drones so that the US could continue bullying the world without risking domestic discontent. There was nothing, it seems, to stop him.

You may feel that since the rhino has a personality disorder and is appallingly ignorant, unlike Obama, he should never have been allowed to run for any public office. Indeed, the Dems did their best to obstruct his candidacy.

My point, however, is that having got into the Oval Office, the man’s words and actions should have been kept under control. In a so-called Democracy there are checks and balances – you know: the separation of powers, plus the “fourth estate” (the free press) and all that.

In USA, separation of powers, accountability, checks and balances and a free press have long since been dismantled, to the extent they ever existed, in the first place. It is not the rhino that wrecked US Democracy. He has had a free rein because US Democracy has been unofficially dead for decades. Dead without a funeral.

There was nobody to stop his Iran campaign, because the US oligarchy basically supported him. They thought the campaign would be over in a jiffy, after which they could all just help themselves – looting the broken land. That was what they have been doing in their back yard – Latin America – for decades, what they did in Russia under Yeltsin and what they intend to do in Ukraine, to name just a few examples.

He is doing blatantly what other US presidents have been doing for decades under the pretext of promoting Democracy and “free trade” (a euphemism for something that is anything but “free”).

The US “Democracy promotion” cover was finally blown under Biden, thanks to his and his party’s passionate support for the Israeli genocide. Genocide support can hardly be considered “promotion of Democracy”, can it. So in spite of the efforts of corporate media (owned by the oligarchy) there has been considerable scepticism among the US general public about the Iran campaign. (e.g., Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson).

The fact that none of the long list of US war presidents have been prevented from committing crimes against humanity is proof of the fact that USA is a rogue state. Can we now hope that at last people in all continents will start recognising the United States of America for what it is?

And as for the rhino’s homicidal handler we really don’t want to talk about him, but may he eternally …

I say no more.

Easter digression

04.04.2026 /

What is morally good? I know, I know – don’t worry – that time and time again, as far back in time as we have written evidence, far wiser persons than myself have tried to answer this question. Moreover, written evidence tells us that concepts of morality are mutable. Very much so.

For instance, a conundrum that still vexes philosophers is referred to today as the “trolley problem”: Can we justify sacrificing one person in order to save many? I believe the Utilitarians, for instance, assessed the moral worth of actions in terms of the sum total of their consequences. Emanuel Kant did not. But I am not going to chew that bone.

I periodically live in a village where most people are relatively poor, and none are filthy-rich. But nobody starves here. Here, nobody has to sleep on the street, and the terminally ill are cared for.

Here, far from tourist traps, they celebrate Semana Santa every year just as earnestly as they have done for centuries. I have been here for many years, and there is no change with regard to Semana Santa. We almost all turn up and wait patiently at our respective corners and all along the route of the famous processions. We fall silent as they pass. Some spectators are dressed in finery to show respect, others show respect by waiting for hours in their everyday sweaters, because at this time of year, the weather is still cool.

From my bed, I heard a procession pass my house in the night. I knew it was that of el Nazareno, the most beloved of them all. I used to get up, but now the night was cold, so I didn’t. They had started their long walk at 3 AM with a very arduous uphill climb.

This morning I felt guilty and went out early to look for them. They had been walking all night to the farthest corners of our village. They must have been exhausted!

I found them relaxing around and on the steps up to a rather grand church, which had opened its doors to them. There they chatted happily and munched sandwiches as sunbeams started to trickle down to us all. So there, on the raised church square, they were happily mingling with the beautiful effigies they had been carrying and with us spectators.

I left them to go down to look for a good place from which I would be able to film them once they set off again, and found a doorstep blessed by the sun on which I could wait.

Do you see what is happening to my language? I am not a Catholic, not even a believer, yet I write “blessed by the sun”. That is what happens to us, you see, in a village where people believe in being “good”, and where Semana Santa and the solemn (and very beautiful) processions remind us not to forget how much we depend upon one another.

I have nothing to contribute to the solution of the trolley problem. I was once taught the Catechism and the Lord’s prayer. All that I retain of the two is that I must not want what is not mine, must not tell lies and must not deliberately hurt anybody. Simple as that. Does it really have to be more complicated?

Yes, I’m afraid it does. For example:

Regarding not wanting what is not mine: If I want to live with the person I love and have a child, I will want a flat. And I will never be able to afford a flat, no matter how hard I work. So I will not be able to live with the person I love and will not be able to have a child.

Regarding not telling lies: If the tax man demands that I declare all my work so that he can tax me, that would be fine if I were able to pay both my bills and the tax. So I must lie and do some undeclared work.

Regarding not hurting anybody: Yes, there are some people in this world I wish would die a horrible death. Fortunately, I will never have the chance to hurt them. But if thoughts could kill, some people would be dead.

So much for being morally good.

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