Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Category: Crimes against humanity (Page 2 of 5)

Gaza

20.12.2023 /

Much has been said and written about the ongoing genocide. Many of us have described our sense of impotent rage and despair.

Caitline Johnstone has done so particularly poignantly, I think, in an article titled I will not look away. Rather than waste your time on more of my rants, I urge you to read her article.

And if you, like her, feel honour-bound to not “look away”, to subject yourself to a tiny glimpse into the horror, I recommend a piece from Al Jazeera’s Listening Post, What we are seeing from Gaza. Al Jazeera has invested more in Palestine, lives even, than any other mainstream media outlet.

Defending Democracy, by Thrandur Thorarinsson

No!

12.12.2023 /

No, Mr Biden and his lot do not believe that “all men [and women] are created equal”. I have no doubt he says he does, but nobody should ever take the word of a man (or woman) in his position. Mr Biden may, however, believe that all men [and women] are created equal, but that some are more equal than others, while others are definitely less so.

Of course we always knew that the USA had a race issue, but the Democratic Party has lately been loudly shouting that “Black Lives Matter”, and we actually thought they meant it, but now Palestinians are being killed in the USA, and supporters of Palestinians are being hassled, expelled, fired and generally persecuted by some – I insist – some fellow US Americans and – again I insist – and Congress, which has declared anti-Zionism antisemitic. (Mr Biden isn’t alone: His Republican counterparts agree fully: “some are more equal than others, while others are definitely less so.”)

No, Mr Biden and his lot, including his Republican counterparts, no longer value one of the most important pillars of the Democracy they keep bragging about: freedom of expression. Mainstream US media – a grovelling troupe of cowardly verbal mercenaries – has effectively been gagged. Again and again, it merely regurgitates State Department talking points.

No, Mr Biden and his lot do not believe in “rule of law”. They are actively supporting the extermination of as many Gazans as possible. Actively. With bombs! With yet another Security Council veto! With warships all over the place. With military aircraft all over the place. In case you had forgotten, exterminating populations is – apart from each and every killing’s being a mortal sin according to most religions – the very most heinous crime in the book of most criminal codes.

Why, you ask? Why get rid of the Gazans? What’s in it for him, you ask? Why indeed. Well you see, Mr Biden is just a puppet of the monstrous machinery that is US hegemony, which now desperately needs to nurture the loyalty of Israel. All the other countries of the Middle East are turning away from the USA, not because of Gaza, by the way, though Gaza certainly does not improve USA’s standing. Israel is the last outcrop of US-support in that part of the world. To put it differently: The USA is slipping, losing its grip. Even Israel is on good terms with Russia (as was demonstrated by Naftali Bennett’s role in the peace agreement reached between Zelensky and Putin in March 2022 – an agreement that NATO, represented by Boris Johnson, put a stop to). So Mr Biden must outbid the Russians. Biden must go all the way for Israel’s “self-defence”.

No, Israel is not engaged in self-defence. Israel really does need to get rid of as many Gazans as possible, not least children – who will grow up hating Israel – and not least women – who hate Israel and will bear more children who will hate Israel. All Gazans are traumatised, many must be nearly insane with grief and pain. Gazans are truly dangerous for Israel.

No, Hamas is not the problem. Israel is the problem! Israel that has sabotaged a two-state solution all the way and is still adamantly opposed to a two-state solution (though you will never hear or see the grovelling troupe of cowardly verbal mercenaries – US mainstream media – list the details of that sabotage), Israel that for decades has beaten, tortured, imprisoned and randomly killed Palestinians all over the West Bank, Israel that has imprisoned all of Gaza. Why, you ask? Why make life on the West Bank and Gaza a nightmare for Palestinians? Why of course: to make Palestinians flee. Israel is determined to take over the West Bank and Gaza, though that grovelling troupe of cowardly verbal mercenaries will never admit it.

No, Gaza is just the epicentre of decades of unfathomable Israeli violence against a people that Bin Laden insisted were more Semitic than the Israelis themselves. (So according to him, the real antisemites are the Israelis.) But the grovelling troupe of you-know-what that makes up the US mainstream media has unfortunately failed to inform the public:
The public in the USA and its satellites has deliberately been prevented from making informed decisions about what to demand from their elected representatives.

***

So what will happen? Here is my favourite scenario:
Even with US help, Israel won’t succeed in killing all Gazans. Even disease and starvation won’t finish off the Gazans. The maimed, nearly insane with grief and pain and hate survivors will have to be air-lifted out of Palestine, while their dwellings are being rebuilt. The international community will demand that the perpetrators of the genocide pay a price: Israelis must rebuild Gaza for the Gazans. The spirit of the Kibbutzes will resurface as Israeli men and women also plant orchards and vines between the new buildings, and make sure that each and every one of the dead they find in the rubble has a grave which they will water with their tears, muttering “I’m so so sorry … so terribly sorry …”

In Israeli schools, each child will be encouraged to adopt a dead Gazan sister or brother. Parents will try to reach out to surviving family members. Maybe photos can be sent, memories of the dead shared. Who knows? Many Israelis earnestly long for peace. I think that lasting peace without understanding, without humility and sympathy is not possible.

Meanwhile, the airlifted, maimed, nearly insane with grief and pain and hate survivors will be cared for in the very best US hospitals and clinics. All the US citizens who had the courage to oppose the genocide will welcome them joyously, bring them flowers, ask for their autographs and tell their children, “they survived hell on earth. They are heroes!”

***

Alas, I am not a Christian and I’m not an optimist. I want justice to be done. I want the evildoers to be punished. Period.

Alas, in real life, justice is seldom done.

The Israeli settlers will, however, have to leave the West Bank. All of them! Those of them who have also committed crimes against Palestinians will have to be tried and sentenced as harshly as they would have been had they been Palestinians committing the same crimes against Jews. Of course.
Reasonable by any standard.

The ongoing US-abetted, US-aided crimes are so heinous that even science fiction baulks at describing them. And all we can do, we who live in “Democratic” countries is promise to spit on the future graves of the perpetrators.

The US, Israel and Hamas all have God on their side. Now as far as Hamas is concerned, God is all they have, so I earnestly hope he does not forsake them.

As for the Israeli God and the blond US God, they will probably collaborate in making a total hash of what remains of this planet.

Frost

28.11.2023 /

Most of the year I’ll be complaining about the weather. It’s never right, as it were. Too mild in winter, too wet or too dry in summer. “Climate change,” I’ll sigh, pointedly nodding towards the window.

So now, I should rejoice and tell anybody who is willing to listen to me, that here where I live, the weather is for once just right, just the way it should be in late November: The temperature drops and drops, precipitation stops, the winds stall, fogs slither in and out, to and from goodness knows where, and all of nature seems to be holding its breath pending the arrival of loads of snow. Said arrival will without doubt be briefly prefaced by a marked rise of the mercury in the thermometer. Let us enjoy these days of climatic normality for all they are worth. We may or may not know such normality ever again.

In Gaza, the temperature is now 15 degrees. At 7 AM tomorrow the temperature will be 11 degrees. I’ve never been to Gaza, so I cannot tell you whether or not the cool 11 degrees are normal for this time of year. But I’m sure of one thing: Climate change will not enter into the equations to be solved by the displaced survivors of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, wherever they catch a couple of hours’ sleep now and then.

Here in Europe we have suffered due to the sanctions war against Russia (which deprived continental Europe of NLG) from lack of energy to heat our dwellings in winter. In Norway, we had always had more than enough hydro-electric power until our energy was commodified and put on the stock market (and sold to poor continental Europe) at which point we could no longer afford to buy our own electricity. We had to adapt to a drop of indoor temperatures from 23º C. I have managed to adapt to 20.5 º by wearing thermal underwear and woollen sweaters. I can cope with 18º by being in constant activity, cleaning house, etc. But at 16º… Let me tell you that at 16 degrees, I wish I were dead.

Of course, some of us can adapt. Some of us are made of tougher stuff. But 11 degrees without a roof over your head! When I am frozen stiff, I take a hot bath. I can still afford to take a hot bath a couple of times a week. But for the barely surviving people of Gaza, I assume there is no such thing as a bath, let alone a hot bath or a big warm towel and clean underwear.

I dare not even think of what it must be like to have to pee for a woman in Gaza, not to mention to menstruate! Good God what humiliations they must endure! And bowel movements for men and women; where do they go? There must be an unbelievable stench everywhere.

And the dead! Oh Lord, the dead! Not only the thousands and thousands who are known; also those who are simply “missing”, decomposing under the ruins of the bombed buildings.

I have never been to Gaza, never been to the West Bank, far less to Israel. Having written what I have written I will probably never be allowed anywhere near occupied Palestine. (Not that I shall ever humiliate myself or the Palestinians by asking for Israeli permission!)

But I must ask Israelis: You maintain that we, those of us who criticise you, do not understand your “plight”. But have you even tried to imagine what life has been like for the population you maintain is trying to eradicate you?

Impotence

16.11.2023 /

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

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

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

In the article linked to below, Chris Hedges writes:

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

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

Chris Hedges: Pinnacle of Horror

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

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

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

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

Land of no return

24.10.2023 /

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A word or two about hoodwinklers

20.10.2023 /

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

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

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

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

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

Alas, we have overslept.

Yes, but…

14.10.2023 /

To quote the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(my emphasis)

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

Again I quote Vox:

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

Where were you on 9/11 1973?

17.09.2023 /

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

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

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

If you survive … you wish you were dead.

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

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

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

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

***

One woman’s story:

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

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

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

Another woman’s story:

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

Back to Palestine

14.05.2023 /

While the war in Ukraine has engulfed most of our attention, the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, the occupied territories, and Jerusalem has grown dramatically worse. Almost every day, one or multiple Palestinians are killed.

The paragraph I just wrote is no different from what you might read in any mainstream paper. What is missing from that paragraph, however, particularly in the last sentence, is the grammatical agent: Killed by whom? Why?

Well, the mainstream media will probably not be accused of anti-Semitism even if they admit that the killers are Israeli, although they would never dare use the word “killers” about Israeli soldiers or settlers. And they will always add that the Israelis naturally have a right to defend themselves. Remind me now: How many Israelis have been killed by Palestinians?

The Ukrainians have a right to defend themselves, we are told; the Israelis have a right to defend themselves, we are told; do not the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves? It’s just that they can’t. No way. The Israeli stranglehold on the Palestinian people is deadening.

Yet, the EU does not seem to get the point. Ursula von der Leyen recently held a speech commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Israeli state. In her speech she made no mention of the roughly 750,000 people who were driven off their land and/or killed to make way for the Israeli state.

Her speech included two very provocative sentences:

” …Today we celebrate 75 years of vibrant Democracy in the heart of the Middle East.” Vibrant Democracy? VIBRANT DEMOCRACY!!!! Von der Leyen lives on the moon? Or is Von der Leyen an abject liar?

and

” …You have literally made a desert bloom.” Really? I believe the Palestinians who used to live in the part of Palestine that is now Israel engaged in agriculture (e.g. oranges and olives) before they were chased away like vermin..

The conditions under which the Palestinians who still refuse to move from what little remains of their land are unbelievably harsh. They are treated not like dogs – anybody treating a dog that way would be prosecuted under laws prohibiting cruelty to animals – but like white folks treated the indigenous peoples whose lands they had stolen 400 years ago, i.e. much, much worse. It’s a wonder they are still alive.

If you are in any way in doubt about my assertion, please take the time to look at the following two videos.

About Hebron in the occupied West Bank

About Jerusalem

As for Gaza, more than 40 Israeli war planes carried out attacks for two hours, starting at 2 at night on 8 May, killing 13 people including women and four children and wounding at least 20 others.

A brief look at gold mines

16.02.2023 /

Gold mines are worth gold, and wars are fought for them, as we know.
See, below, a famous photo of a gold mine.

See more of Sebastião Salgado’s photos of the mine Serra Pelada.

The above photo and the others on the same site are not from 1895 or even 1905 or 1925 or 1955. They are from 1986.

Brazil’s military dictatorship from 1964, orchestrated by USA, served as a model for a whole string of subsequent dictatorships throughout South America – all orchestrated by the USA and designed to protect the countries in question from the threat of Social Democracy.

In short, the United States of America has a long history of defending liberty and Democracy all over the world.



« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2025 Pelshval

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑