Hver morgen over kaffen, leser jeg NRK nyheter. Ellers abonnerer jeg ikke på norske aviser. Men for tiden logger jeg av og til inn på Press Reader gjennom mitt bibliotek, Deichman, og tar en titt på Aftenposten. Jeg trenger å vite hva slags nyheter normale folk har tilgang til.
Det er sørgelige greier, altså. Om Ukraina står det ikke stort. Av og til får landet en liten seier, og den blir alltid rapportert. Om den generelt katastrofale situasjonen langs den alt for lange frontlinjen, står det fint lite. Om miseren i det stakkars landet … akk.
Man må gå til helt andre kilder for å se baksiden av bildet som blir presentert for oss av pressen.
Under overskriften NATO’s Destruction of Ukraine Under the Guise of “Helping” demonstrerer Glenn Diesen i dag møysommelig, punkt for punkt, at Ukraina er blitt brukt kaldt og kynisk av USA med bl.a. Norge som heia-gjeng. Vi har til og med behjelpelig undertrykket kritikk av NATOs tilnærming til Ukraina-konflikten.
Les artikkelen hans! Les ikke minst kildene. (Jeg anbefaler for eksempel henvisning nr 33; pressetalsmannen fra USAs utenriksdepartement får det til å gå kaldt nedover ryggen min. De visste – helt fra starten av visste de – hva som kom til å skje med Ukraina.)
Ingenting av det Glenn Diesen omhyggelig dokumenterer får vi så mye som teften av i vanlig norsk presse. Akk. Ikke i andre NATO-lands presse heller, tenker jeg.
Fra Gaza melder NRK daglig om antall meldte drepte, og der står Norge i litt av en særklasse, pussig nok. Men om USAnernes dobbeltspill der: ikke et ord. Om det faktum at Israel aldri hadde til hensikt å tillate noen tostatsløsning, og at alle fredsforhandlingene bare var skalkeskjul: taushet.
Ellers finner vi knivstikking her, bilbrann der, ras, en del om kongefamilien; mest nyheter i Norge – naturlig nok, for så vidt. Men en tysk turist er drept av en hai sør for Kanariøyene og ca. 20 liv er revet bort at flommer i fastlands-Europa.
Men dog: Om Myanmar leser vi at dødstallet etter uvær har steget til 226. Tenk det, Hedda. Vi bryr oss om Myanmar.
Men så brukte jeg Press Reader for å ta en titt på New York Times. Denne en gang så imponerende formidleren av nyheter og analyser er nå langt på vei blitt et talerør for makthaverne i det Demokratiske partiet. Denne siste setningen var en påstand, ja, én jeg ikke en gang har tenkt å begrunne her og nå, kanskje aldri, for det har andre gjort langt bedre enn jeg noen sinne kunne klare. Glenn Greenwald, for eksempel, har viet de siste årene av sitt liv til å dokumentere den voksende koblingen mellom USAs maktapparat og pressen.
Når jeg går inn, innbiller jeg meg hva jeg vil finne. Og jeg finner det. MEN det jeg ikke, overhode ikke, ventet å finne er overskriften ” ‘Water is coming’ Floods devastate West and Central Africa” med undertittel “Flooding caused by heavy rains has left more than 1000 people dead and hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed.” Det er en lang og hjerteskjærende artikkel. Det følger også en kort video. Jeg har ikke lov til å kopiere fra Press Reader, men jeg har skrevet av det jeg anser som “moralen”, nemlig følgende setning. “Although Africa produces only a fraction of the world’s greenhouse gas emission, Africans bear an exceptionally heavy burden from climate change, according to the World Meteorological Organization.”
Det er en flott og svært dramatisk artikkel datert 15. september.
Jeg finner det interessant at den ble trykket i USA, men at Aftenpostens og NRKs folk, som utvilsomt leser NY Times, ikke fant at nyheten var verd spalteplass. Hva er årsaken, mon tro, til at en så dramatisk situasjon i vest- og sentral-Afrika ikke anses relevant for oss norske avislesere?
I started writing here, as Pelshval, very many years ago and mostly for fun. I enjoyed embroidering picaresque scenes of daily life in my country.
Gradually, my voice grew less jolly, more cautious yet at the same time. slightly caustic. There were terrible droughts out there in the world, and sea levels were rising … but our leaders didn’t seem to worry, so maybe I was exaggerating the seriousness of our planet’s predicament.
Then came the Arab Spring. Now I happened to have some – not much, but more than most who follow the press – previous knowledge. So I soon noticed we were definitely getting skewed news reports. But I had a job that meant a lot to me, a job that required absolute loyalty, so I was mostly silent.
Nevertheless, seeds of distrust had been sowed.
During the Trump years I, too, was fascinated by US politics. While most of my friends could not “for the life of me” understand why anybody would vote Trump, I could not for the life of me understand why the Democratic Party was not learning a very important lesson. For a moment, it did seem as though Biden would actually start to notice the 50 % of US Americans who were floundering, but he soon devoted his attention to the needs of the military-industrial complex instead.
With time, I have become strident. I’m sorry. Reading William Blum’s Rogue State, I marvel at how he manages to make a book about catastrophic policy choices so wonderfully ironic and often downright hilarious.
It’s a while since I finally managed to discern, through the haze of propaganda, some of the contours of what is going on. But William Blum saw it all sharply already back in 2002. He foresaw what we are now going through, with such acuity that I suspect his book is available to us at CIA\library because even at CIA, there are those who understand that US foreign policy chickens have come home to roost in a very bad way.
There is so much that needs to be put right! More and more people all over the world and maybe even, to some degree, in the USA are starting to understand that. Alas, here in Europe, Ministry of Truth telescreens are running full throttle, incinerating the inconvenient truths of yesteryear, replacing definitions of sizeable parts of our vocabularies, updating fictions, smoothing innumerable paradoxes, and telling us that the end is near and not to worry. Staffing European psychiatric clinics will soon prove impossible as therapists succumb to the general state of universal befuddlement.
In an extremely depressing book called “Essay on Blindness”, the late Portuguese writer José Saramago has painted a stylised picture of the state of Europe today. He later wrote a cheering sequel, “Essay on Lucidity”, that explains how, one by one, people recovered their eyesight and were able to see clearly. While I certainly recommend many of Saramago’s books – he too is extremely humorous – I think it would prove more beneficial for Europeans’ lucidity (and hence also mental health) to read William Blum’s Rogue State, which can, I repeat be downloaded from the CIA library.
I have been, and am still, stunned by the sadism of the Israeli government and its military — as well as by the US, UK, and German governments’ enthusiastic endorsement of genocide. Good heavens, what a bunch of psychopaths makes up the top echelons of our western societies! The events in Gaza recently prompted Craig Murray to write that he had now understood that his “belief in some kind of inherent decency in the Western political Establishment was naive.”
Bush was once the laughing stock of the world when he ranted about the potentially “nukiller” country, Iran’s, being part of “the axis of evil”. I’m afraid I’m tempted to backslide to that particular Bushism. No adjectives in any dictionary I know of can adequately describe the depravity of the acts being carried out in Gaza with energetic western support.
Meanwhile, however, many other issues go unheeded. Take for instance the current troubles in Haiti, a failed state since the USA finally broke that country’s back in 2004.
The extraordinary idea nurtured by successive US governments that they may – indeed must – play the role of Global Top Gun is absolutely mind-boggling. The oddest thing of all is that most citizens in NATO countries don’t seem to mind. Not for nothing are US citizens taught the US catechism: “We are the biggest and the best.” Not for nothing have the rest of us been force-fed Hollywood films night after night, decade after decade.
Most US Americans don’t know, of course, what damage their country wrecks everywhere it goes, and are therefore completely innocent, because corporate media is not “free” to tell them. Nor is the UK mainstream media (MSM) free to tell its citizens. Or the Norwegian MSM, for that matter. There are, admittedly, a few independent sources of journalism, but we are instructed to consider them Russian propaganda outlets and their journalists are – we are told – conspiracy theorists.
So aggressively opposed are our governments to freedom of information, that they are even willing to dismantle fundamental principles of Democracy (with, e.g., the Patriot Act in the US and, in the UK, the National Security Act of 2023 and the updated Official Secrets Act.) Moreover, the Julian Assange case illustrates just how far the UK is willing to go in order to block exposure of UK/US crimes against their own and other countries’ citizens. His case is, from a legal point of view, a travesty of the British legal system, which turns out to be no more committed to justice than judiciaries in countries with which Western countries do not care to be likened.
So that was the good news, not that the dying people of Gaza will know of it, I’m afraid.
The bad news is that Galloway’s party, which could in theory rally quite a large proportion of badly deceived British voters, will be hounded by the MSM and government spokespersons and will be the butt of ceaseless defamation campaigns, the first of which started the moment his victory was announced.
As for Haiti, the US is not the only country to have defiled what must once have been a land of milk and honey. The French economist Thomas Piketty writes in Chapter 6 of Capitalism and Ideology about the blood money exacted by the French Government from its former Haitian slaves between 1849 and 1915, after which the “debt” was taken over by the USA which occupied (and virtually again enslaved) Haiti from 1915 to 1934 and continued to demand payment from its victims until 1950! (My translation of the titles of the two relevant sections in Piketty’s book is France: the double abolition of 1794-1848 and Haiti: When slavery is converted into public debt,) They explain the background of Haitian demands towards the French government.
Actually, you don’t have to read those two sections (though I do recommend that you read the entire book), but you really should read the excellent article in Responsible Statecraft: “From couptochaos: 20 years after the US ousted Haiti’s president”. It explains how the US with its visceral loathing of Articles 25 and 26 in the Declaration of Humans Rights plotted and organised the demise of the extremely popular and democratically elected Aristide.
In the article you will also find a link to the story of how the Haitian slaves heroically defeated and drove away their French owners and how they, the former slaves, subsequently had to pay the former owners (and later also the USA) compensation for loss of property, i.e. them – the former slaves.
For many countries all over the planet, the USA has been and is still the serpent in Paradise (I’m expanding on the above referenced Bushism). USA does believe in some human rights, such as the right to chose between Scylla and Charybdis during elections, provided, of course, the voters chose the candidate previously groomed for them by the USA (e.g. Guaido in Venezuela). This last proviso does not, admittedly, apply to NATO countries (on which the USA occasionally has to rely for its nefarious military operations all over the planet, currently off the coast of Yemen). USA also believes in the right to carry a gun, though I’m uncertain as to where in the Declaration of Human Rights that right is enshrined.
So you see, there has never really been any reason to suspect the upper echelons of society of even a sliver of what Craig Murray calls “decency”. We have just been docilely led by the nose.
Many people in Europe are wondering why the Biden administration has not long since arrested Israel’s sadistic excesses in Palestine.
The US propaganda machine has been running full speed since Eisenhower’s days, and we have all, in the USA and in Europe, been inculcated with a number of assumptions that simply don’t add up. Today, I have been looking at NED, the National Endowment for Democracy, to all appearances a formidably reputable NGO. (Please note that the “non-governmental” part of the acronym NGO does not mean that the NGO isn’t funded by a government.)
If you google NED you will have few doubts about its formidable reputability, since it’s hardly likely that you will have the patience to scroll so far down as to reach Grayzone‘s analysis, which is, however, well worth your time. Here is a short foretaste of it. The impression you get in the “foretaste” is that the NED Communication Director is honestly unaware of what NED really is.
What caught my attention today and the reason for my interest in NED was yet an example of the near hysterical man-hunt conducted here in Norway against people who voice certain opinions – most notably the view that the Ukraine war is a US proxy war. Glenn Diesen (see examples of his extensive research in, for instance, The Think Tank Racket, 2023) is one of the victims of the man-hunt. On Twitter he explains and demonstrates that he is being ostracised by the Norwegian Helsinki Committee (NHC), an organisation he maintains is funded by the NED. I checked: Yes, that is true. By NED and others. (Sadly, I see that “Reporteurs sans frontieres” are also sponsored by the NED, which is a bad sign. A very bad sign, indeed.)
Now, most of those who work for the NHC are probably unaware of any sinister connections between their organisation and their benefactors.
What is, however manifestly clear is that the views expressed in Aage Borchgrevink’s defamatory article about Glenn Diesen (posted by Glenn Diesen himself on Twitter) reflect a supremely and ludicrously Manichean attitude and are certainly not Democratic in spirit. I happen to know that Aage Borchgrevink is neither stupid nor ignorant enough to be able to claim naiveté as an excuse. He must have an agenda, though I do not pretend to know what that agenda is.
It may be that of NED and of successive US administrations. Of their agenda, however, there is plenty of evidence and documentation: It is to maintain and uphold US global military and economic hegemony, no matter the cost to Democracy, to human lives and human welfare. Unfortunately, this agenda is by extension also the agenda of US vassal states, including my own country, where ridiculing the accepted view that Putin is the devil incarnate is now considered morally reprehensible.
But in Norway and in the USA and probably even in the UK, we can still, (gracias a Dios) publish dissenting views in blogs and on small independent sites where truly investigative journalists post the results of their painstaking and underpaid research. The late John Pilgervery aptly collectively referred to such sites as “samizdat“.
We can still publish books such as Glenn Diesen’s The Think Tank Racket, Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes and, not least, Vincent Bevins’ The Jakarta Method. That freedom, I fear, will not last. Let us read, while we can before they start banning books.
Yes, let us read! And since we are now helplessly wondering why the USA, instead of stopping the ongoing genocide, seems determined at all costs to stop those who are trying to stop the genocide, let us read again The Jakarta Method. And please notice the book’s sub-title:
Washington’s Anti-Communist Crusade & the Mas Murder Program that Shaped our World.
What I have learnt from that book is that Israel’s method in Palestine is no novelty to the USA. The USA actually invented it. So why should they “stop Israel’s sadism in Palestine”?
All members of the Norwegian press, including Aage Borchgrevink and also Jonas Bals (who writes for the erstwhile left-wing paper Klassekampen), should read the Jakarta Method and consider to what extent they are willing to defend US global military and economic hegemony by propagating Washington’s talking points and by defaming those who disagree with them. What are they willing to sacrifice? They should think about that, before it is too late.
As usual, every morning, I check Reuters, UPI, AP. What are they saying? What are they telling the US population and the press in the USA’s satellite states in Europe?
Every morning I hope “this day will be different”. Every morning I muse: “Surely, somebody will say, ‘This is it! I can’t take anymore!'”, and I will see, in Reuters, the UPI or the AP, a great big headline: THIS IS GENOCIDE. STOP IT!
But this morning was just as every other morning:
Cat flees from owner at truck stop, turns up 670 miles away (UPI) This was not, I admit, the top headline, nor even one of them. But I assure you that GAZA was not mentioned in any of the headlines.
Israeli strike kills an elite Hezbollah commander in the latest escalation linked to the war in Gaza (AP) Yes, this was the top headline. It was meant to bring joy to those worried that Israel’s war against the terrorists was not going well. It was meant as joyful tidings.
US secretary of state rallies Mideast leaders to prepare for Gaza’s post-war future (AP) Note the word “post-war”. As though the ongoing war is just any old war, not an extermination campaign. Later today, several US outlets proudly declare that the “Mideast leaders” have committed to some post-war efforts, as though Blinken had achieved something, anything at all. Of course the “Mideast leaders” will help Gaza, as they always do! Nothing to do with Blinken.
US top diplomat urges Israel to avoid harming civilians in Gaza. (Reuters) Isn’t that just sweet: Do please be careful, when you bomb hospitals, ambulances and aid convoys. And do please avoid hurting children when you raise apartment buildings to the ground.
A lof of what has happened these past two years has not surprised me. What has, however, astounded and shocked me has been 1) the silencing in the press of all criticism of the US and NATO’s handling of the war in Ukraine and 2) the US and UK crackdown on criticism of Israel post October 7.
An important factor in the near total suppression of dissent regarding US foreign policy, not only in the USA but also in US satellite states – has finally been made clear to me thanks to a book:
The Think Tank Racket by Glenn Diesen, Clarity Press, 2023.
According to Wikipedia as at 01.12.2023:
A think tank is a research institute that performs research and advocacy on topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_tank
That sounds promising enough: Politicians are, after all, initially just people like you and me who have been asked to represent us. They are not experts on “social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture”, etc. They rely on experts who can tell them all about it. Think tanks supposedly serve just that purpose: to inform politicians. Yes, and also to inform the media.
Now, as you will of course immediately point out: All these researchers will have to be paid. Who pays them?
Just so. And please notice the two warning words in Wikipedia’s definition: “and advocacy“
Unsurprisingly, they are paid by those who can afford to pay them and who stand to gain by doing so.
While most of us know a lot about all sorts of things, the matter of “national security” in a big and dangerous world full of threats – cyber threats, WMDs, long distance missiles, AI threats – is not for novices and could easily fill a telephone directory. So yes, I do understand the need for experts. Not only to advise politicians, but also to advise the press.
But there is, again, the issue of funding. The relationship between 1) those who provide the funding, 2) the experts and 3) the government – i.e. the decision makers. Diesen has taken a closer look at some of the think tanks, their funders, to the extent they are known, and the vested interests of some of the “experts”. I would be understating matters by saying that much of what comes to light in his book is extremely disturbing.
I shall not divulge his dramatic revelations though I will quote him a couple of times.
The first quote:
From the start, let’s be clear, the term “think tank” essentially amounts to a more polite way of saying “lobby group.” They exist to serve—and promote—the agendas of their funders. However, particularly in the United States, the field has become increasingly shady and disingenuous, with lobbyists being given faux academic titles like “Senior Non-Resident Fellow” and “Junior Adjunct Fellow” to distinguish them from honest registered lobbyists.
We have all heard the expression “military-industrial complex”, apparently coined by Eisenhower who, in his farewell address warned:
[W]e must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
There are those who claim that US warmongering not only benefits the likes of Lockhead Martin, Raytheon and Boing, but is driven by them. Since I do not have the skills to asses the weight of US defence contractors in the national economy, I leave you with a link so you can judge for yourself.
Surely the defence contractors would not advocate involving their own country in a war for pecuniary reasons? True enough, none of the very numerous wars engaged in by the USA since WWII – not one – was fought on US soil. (Not WWII either.) Admittedly many of “our boys” lost their lives in Vietnam and some, mostly from disadvantaged backgrounds, died in Iraq, just as quite a few disadvantaged US women famously lose their lives every year “while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and the site of the pregnancy, ….” (maternal mortality) largely due to inadequate health care. It is tempting to deduce that from the point of view of US policy makers, these disadvantaged young men and women are dispensable.
Jenny Erpenbeck wrote in Gehen, ging, gegangen: “there’s no better way to make history disappear than to unleash money. Money on the loose is fiercer than a fighting dog.” [My translation]. And the evidence presented in Glenn Diesen’s book seems to indicate that profit might well be a driving force for continuous US warmongering. I give you none of his examples because I think you should read the book.
One of the think tanks discussed by Diesen is the Atlantic Council, basically a NATO propaganda wing.
Here is my second quotation from Diesen, about the Atlantic Council:
[I]n the decade 2006–2016, its annual revenue grew from $2 million to $21 million, a more than a ten-fold increase.”
Not bad for a team of “experts”, I’d say. Most scientific researchers here in OSLO can not even afford a simple 2-room flat. From my perspective, in Norway, the Atlantic Council is definitely a target of study, since NATO-criticism has been totally silenced here on Torvald Stoltenberg’s watch. In view of the war crimes recently committed in LIBYA by NATO, including not least Norway, the silence suggests suppression.
Here is what we find on the Atlantic Council “About” page.
Can you read the text? This is it:
Driven by our mission of “shaping the global future together,” the Atlantic Council is a nonpartisan organization that galvanizes US leadership and engagement in the world, in partnership with allies and partners, to shape solutions to global challenges.
“Global future”? NATO countries make up roughly 11.87 % of the global population! But this “nonpartisan” instrument nevertheless intends to shape the global future, having “galvanized” US leadership? Good luck with that. And as for the “engagement“, a common collocation of the word is “military”, i.e. miiitary engagement, so that word, at least, is apt.
A report referred to by Diesen was produced by the think tank RAND in April 2019. The report, Overextending and unbalancing Russia can be downloaded in its entirety, but you will find a summary of it here. The preface tells us that the report is “sponsored by the Army Quadrennial Defense Review Office, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff G-8, Headquarters, Department of the Army”.
Please note that the preface does not exclude other sponsors.
The goal in this report is to weaken (“overextend and unbalance”) “Russia’s economy and armed forces and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad” notwithstanding the fact that
unlike the Soviet Union, Russia is not overextended geographically. Other than in Syria, its foreign commitments in Ukraine and the Caucasus are relatively compact, contiguous to Russia, and in locales where at least some of the local population is friendly and geography provides Russia with military advantages.
The report mentions a number of Russian vulnerabilities, and sees its economy as relatively weak compared to that of the USA. More importantly: not once in the report do I find any suggestion that Russia poses a military threat to a NATO country.
I cannot quite put my finger on just what it is that gets up the US nose until I come to Chapter 5, Ideological and Informational Measures: “Russia has orchestrated a series of efforts … to undermine Western political institutions and increase Russia’s standing and influence …” Ah!
At any rate, you can see for yourself what measures to weaken Russia were assessed by RAND in 2019 and how they were rated. You will see that among the measures that were highly rated were several “Air and Space Cost-Imposing Measures” e.g. “Invest more in long-range strike aircraft and missiles” – all presumably lucrative for the defence contractors.
What I found most interesting, however, were the following paragraphs:
Expanding U.S. assistance to Ukraine, including lethal military assistance, would likely increase the costs to Russia, in both blood and treasure, of holding the Donbass region. More Russian aid to the separatists and an additional Russian troop presence would likely be required, leading to larger expenditures, equipment losses, and Russian casualties.
Alternatively, Russia might counter-escalate, committing more troops and pushing them deeper into Ukraine. Russia might even pre-empt U.S. action, escalating before any additional U.S. aid arrives. Such escalation might extend Russia; Eastern Ukraine is already a drain. Taking more of Ukraine might only increase the burden, albeit at the expense of the Ukrainian people. However, such a move might also come at a significant cost to Ukraine and to U.S. prestige and credibility. This could produce disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows. It might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace.
Some analysts maintain that Russia lacks the resources to escalate the conflict. Ivan Medynskyi of the Kyiv-based Institute for WorldPolicy argued, “War is expensive. Falling oil prices, economic decline, sanctions, and a campaign in Syria (all of which are likely to continue in 2016) leave little room for another large-scale military maneuver by Russia.” According to this view, Russia simply cannot afford to maintain a proxy war in Ukraine, although, given Russia’s size and the importance it places on Ukraine, this might be an overly optimistic assumption.
There is also some risk of weapons supplied to the Ukrainians winding up in the wrong hands. A RAND study conducted for the President of Ukraine found reasons for concern about the potential misuse of Western military aid.
bold highlights are mine
RAND seems to have been more prescient than most other policy advisers pushing for war “to the last Ukrainian” and “what it takes” etc. Those of us who have been accused of being Putin acolytes – i.e. all who have warned about the consequences of the “proxywar” – find support in, of all things, a RAND document from 2019. Would you believe it?
Meanwhile the disgraceful Wikipedia article vilifying Glenn Diesen is an example of just how “lethal” the stand-off between the USA and everybody who does not vocally support “our” foreign policy has become. Glenn Diesen is a political science professor at a Norwegian university. As a Norwegian, I resent the innuendo that university professors here are employed by virtue of anything but outstanding academic qualifications. I may disagree with our professors and frequently do, but academic debate has until recently been allowed, even welcomed. Controversial views are no exception! The information Glenn Diesen brings to the table is based on research – an example of which is the book I so warmly recommend, a result of assiduous and time-consuming work. It is, moreover, written in an easy, often ironical, conversational tone.
The other night I had a terrible argument with a couple whom I consider particularly close friends. They were spending the weekend at my place, and we had enjoyed two lovely days, when in the evening, I unwittingly stepped on a sore toe. Now, I had been very careful not to even mention Ukraine; in this country we are told in no uncertain terms that we are defending democracy against fascism and that the war is being waged between good and evil. Moreover, those who exclusively read the New York Times and Guardian – and my friends consider them the ultimate sources of information about current events – will “know for a fact” that such is the case. So no, not a word about Ukraine.
Assuming that we would probably agree about “cancelling”, I joked about this growing trend. There are all sorts of views that qualify as grounds for cancelling these days, and I happen to believe – and assumed that my academic friends would agree – that rather than cancel views we don’t like, we should discuss them. Well, my friends, didn’t agree. They were in fact furious with me: 1) The very concept “cancelling”, they maintained, was invented by the ignorati such as Trump and his followers. There was no such thing as cancelling. 2) Misinformation, however, deserved to be suppressed (i.e. cancelled). “People need to check their facts,” they insisted, and they repeated the word again and again: facts. facts. facts.
Admittedly, a few facts, such as many but far from all historic dates, are more or less incontrovertible (except, perhaps, among philosophers). Conversely, in a war, most “facts” are contentious and a great number go on to be debated for centuries.
Even within the exact sciences, calculations are often debatable, if for no other reason because the figures on which they are based,which in turn rely on other figures based on figures, etc. are open to debate. Most social scientists do not even pretend that their “facts” are conclusive. Historians, however, tend to cheat a bit. After all, when all is said and done, history is anything but a-political.
I forget who said that history is always written by the victors, be they Roman or British or US American, not by the Galls, the African peoples or the indigenous (North, Central and South) Americans. Historians live in the victors’ society and their world view will inevitably reflect that of their surroundings. True there will be the occasional deviant interpretation of past events, but in the end, the version that is accepted science and generally agreed upon is the one that gives the best possible impression of “our actions”,”our country”, “us”.
The breakup of the Soviet Union represented the demise of Communism in Europe. Yet, the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO) which had been established to “defend” Europe against Communism, was not disbanded (why?) and the Great Divide persisted. Why? Why did we not throttle the growth of the monster that was quietly being groomed in our midst? Was there a real threat or was there something else going on? In 2021, Russian military expenditure was fairly modest, whereas the US controlled about 750 bases in at least 80 countries and spent more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. How could anybody imagine that Russia would wish or be able to threaten Europe with such puny means? Even in 2022, the country’s military expenses amounted to a mere 4% of global military expenditure, compared to the USA’s 39%.
Now a SIPRI headline from April 2023 reads: “World military expenditure reaches new record high as European spending surges”. Whom does this absurd military build-up benefit? Certainly not the population of Ukraine! Certainly not the populations of Europe!
The information war waged between the so-called blocks is no less terrifying: the battle for hearts and minds. Remember Vietnam? The Pentagon Papers and the persecution of Daniel Ellsberg? And that was just the beginning.
Before the breakup, during the first Cold War between what the West called Communist states and what so-called Communists called Capitalist states, the stories told on each side were grossly inaccurate. I happen to be familiar with both of them.
Take, for instance, DDR, East Germany, a country which is, with reason, indelibly linked in our minds with “repression”, “fear”, “Stasi”. With reason, yes, but we never heard the whole story. We will probably never know how misinformed we were, because East Germany is gone, subsumed into a greater Germany, and those who lived there have nothing but flighty memories to go by when evoking the past. The German writer Jenny Erpenbeck is one who recalls beautiful fragments of what is gone. True, even in the worst of places you find happy people, just as even in Beverly Hills there are lots of suicides. So I agree, fragments of memory are not reliable.
Analysing quality of life is no joke anywhere, let alone in an entire country, now non-existant, yet still reviled, both by the West and by the East. The only defenders of what was once East Germany are people who actually lived there.
If NATO “wins” Ukraine, as that horrible man at the top insists it will, will the Ukrainians weep for joy? Weep, they will, you may be sure.
The Great Divide runs not only between East and West, but straight down the middle of our societies, splitting families and friendships, spreading distrust, even hate — as welfare states are mangled by military budgets. And fear, yes, because the absurd contradictions imbedded in the concept of waging war as a deterrent to war confuse and frighten us. We suspect we’re being had. We all know that unless these spiralling excesses stop, there will be war for us all. We blame the Russians, but that does not make us feel better.
Formerly respected news outlets, which used to argue about political issues, now all clamour for more weaponry. All who try to paint a fuller picture of the situation are vilified, though I have not yet seen them referred to as “traitors” – just a question of time, you may be sure. Here is a short video explaining what happens to “the fuller picture“.
In short, I very much doubt that the press is much freer in the West than in Russia. In fact I suspect that here, the battle for hearts and minds (in short, indoctrination) has been more successful. Nevertheless it is growing ever more aggressive (in short, authoritarian), not least in the UK, which after Brexit appears to be accountable only to the US administration, not to the EU and certainly not to the British people.
Yep, artificial intelligence and Wikipedia have already met, I fear. Or are the automatons at work human? Diligent cancelists? At any rate, things are starting to happen, awful things reminiscent of noxious chemical reactions.
The other day, I looked up Helsinki Times in Wikipedia. The first paragraph read:
Helsinki Times is the first English language daily online newspaper in Finland providing news about Finland and the world for English-speaking readers resident in the country. A weekly printed edition was issued between 2007 and 2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki_Times (as at 17 May 2023)
That sounded ok, The article went on to tell me that “notable guest columnists include ….” I looked up those I did not know, including Cynthia McKinney.
Wikipedia’s introductory sentence about Cynthia McKinney was:
Cynthia Ann McKinney (born March 17, 1955) is an American politician, academic, and conspiracy theorist [my emphasis].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_McKinney (as at 17 May 2023)
Now I have no idea of what views are held by Cynthia McKinney, who is a member of the Democratic Party. Since she has served six terms in the House of Representatives, she must have served her voters well. She is sure to hold various views which you or I may or may not not share, but HONESTLY: Committing character assassination of Cynthia McKinney in the very first sentence of the Wikipedia article about her seems a bit over the top, no? I don’t know what “conspiracy theorist” views she holds, mind you: Wikipedia having rubbished her, I naturally read no further.
Is Wikipedia now a guardian of a modern “Index Librorum Prohibitorum” ( a list of written works condemned as heretical or injurious to the Christian faith by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in 1563)?
Who gets to define something as a conspiracy theory? It certainly isn’t anybody I know.
I am told that if you don’t believe the official story about the murder of JFK, you hold a conspiracy theory. I look up Lee Harvey Oswald in Wikipedia. The article is extremely long. It contains no doubts about the matter, no unanswered questions: The man was emotionally screwed, a defector to the USSR and he did it. He killed Kennedy. Alone. Period. In Wikipedia he is damned without a trial.
I read somewhere just the other day that 70% of the US population have doubts about that story; 70% of the US population are “conspiracy theorists”?
What is a conspiracy theory? Firstly, the expression is pejorative. If you hold conspiracy theories, you should get your head examined, and people you know will cross to the other side of the street when they see you. Conspiracy theories tend to 1) question the intentions of powerful institutions — say banks, the CIA, the President, the national health authorities, etc. 2) Their dissemination is deemed a “threat to Democracy”, to “national security”, etc.
It’s usually the mainstream press that gets to attach the bell to the cat, and the social media will immediately follow suit. The mainstream press does not need to pretend to be unbiased, on the contrary. It’s supposed to promulgate political positions. It might encourage debate on some issues – for instance, about the environmental benefits of electric cars – but conspiracy theories are above question, or should I say below question. They are so base, they must not be put on the table. They are simply trampled on.
Encyclopaedias, however, are supposed to hold certain academic, yea, scientific standards. They may present differing views about controversial issues, including the arguments supporting those views, but it is not for the encyclopaedist to make the final judgment unless the arguments on one side are particularly flimsy.
The arguments raising doubts about the official story of the JFK killing are not flimsy. In the last and very brief paragraph about Lee Harvey Oswald, sub-titled “Other investigations and dissenting theories” those arguments are, however, not presented. A couple of films are listed, presumably to lengthen the paragraph. Remember Oliver Stone’s film JFK? A rather compelling story, no? Too compelling, it would seem, because it is not among the films listed.
The JFK case was a long time ago, and principal players in that drama are long gone. But some lasting damage has been done: You and I know that we cannot believe everything we are told by presidents, government agencies and corporate spokespersons even though they earnestly look you straight in the eye from the TV screen. Had the US authorities not put so much effort into suppressing the “dissenting theories”, the damage would have been far greater.
And now we can no longer trust the intentions of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is, or rather was, our encyclopedia. We made it. Hundreds and thousands of us contributed painstakingly to its remarkable growth. True, we always knew that in the heat of a scuffle, some articles would be skewed. Who can blame a writer from an occupied state who is less than objective about the occupying country! However, since we all had access, we could edit, correct, and view the article’s history. We still can, of course, but with artificial intelligence, it’s a losing battle, I fear.
Today, I came across, once again, an important and well-sourced article in the Grayzone. Articles in the Grayzone tend to be a bit tedious, as they seek to adhere strictly to the source. They are not colourful, ironic or full of beautiful metaphors. They are simply dull, yet, sometimes extremely interesting. I was sure the Grayzone article satisfied journalistic and even scientific standards, so I gave Wikipedia a new chance. This is what I got by way of an introductory paragraph:
The Grayzone is an American far-left news website and blog founded and edited by American journalist Max Blumenthal. The website, initially founded as The Grayzone Project, was affiliated with AlterNet before becoming independent in early 2018. A fringe website, it is known for misleading reporting and sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes The Grayzone has denied human rights abuses against Uyghurs, promulgated conspiracy theories about Venezuela, Xinjiang, Syria and other regions, and promoted pro-Russian propaganda during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Grayzone has been described by Commentary as a propaganda shop devoted to pushing pro-Assad, pro-Maduro, pro-Putin, and pro-Hamas narratives. [My highlights.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grayzone (as at 17 May 2023)
Wow! Kill, kill, kill. Is it really no longer possible to simply disagree with content? Does it have to be savaged?
Wkipedia appears to be rapidly descending into an artificial intelligence Hades from which there will probably be no return, unless the damage done is the work of diligent cancelist humans.
On the other hand, GPT chatbot is basically the child of Silicon Valley, which is basically affiliated with the Democratic Party establishment. So whether the automatons at work are digital or human, the ongoing editing of Wikipedia appears to bear the imprint of cancelist Dems.
Though the title may seem sensationalist, the contents of this profound and illuminating analysis are not.
If you prefer to just get a gist of what Jacob Siegel wrote, you can turn to Glenn Greenwald’s interview of him here. The video only starts after a few minutes. Drag the green dot to 9:35.
It is with great sorrow that I add, in case you didn’t know, that Glenn Greenwald’s husband David Miranda died this week at the age of 37. He was also, in his own right, a remarkable man.
David Miranda no longer knows pain, but Glenn Greenwald — an indefatigable champion of a free press and freedom of information — will undoubtedly continue to do so. I am sure there are many of us around the world who feel with him.
I shall be publishing the second part of Thorarinn Hjartarson’s analysis of the “Holdomor” narrative in a couple of days.
In the mean time you might take a look at an article that appeared yesterday in Helsinki Times. I was kindly informed about it by a friend in Poland. I gather press freedom is not much greater in Poland than it is in Norway these days.
