Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Category: ENGLISH (Page 10 of 28)

There a few posts written in English

Antagonising journalists

26.04.2023 /

By mistreating and possibly poisoning the prisoner Aleksej Navaljnyj, the Russian authorities are merely reinforcing the Western public’s perception that the concept of justice simply does not exist in Russia.

No matter what you or I think about Navaljnyj’s political views, he is not suspected of having killed anybody, or of having turned “customers” into helpless drug addicts or even of having raped a child. Such crimes, had he committed any of them, might have justified the nine-year prison sentence, with which he has been saddled. He has only been convicted of the sort of financial activities regularly committed with impunity by the filthy rich. Moreover, he is said to be kept, not in a “prison”, but in a “labour camp”, whatever that means.

Of course the Russian authorities have every reason to laugh – even guffaw – over Western sensibilities. I shall not even mention the innumerable school (and other mass ) shootings and deplorable health conditions in US America, merely limit myself to pointing out that you need not be in prison to get killed, one way or another. I do, however, want to stress that Western suppression of investigative journalists and whistle blowers is increasingly reminiscent of what has hitherto been considered more typical of Russia and China.

Suppression of fact, current or historical, is basically unsustainable. The suppressed fact will sooner or later catch up with the suppressor or his/her descendants. And there is no vouching for the good behaviour of those who have been duped.

Take military expenditure: According to Sipri, 2.2 percent of global GNP went to military expenditure in 2022. That’s quite a lot of money not being used on health services or education. 39% of that military expenditure was US American, 13% was Chinese and 3.9% Russian. A lot of people are being duped pretty seriously, wouldn’t you say? A lot of people are going to be, sooner or later, very very angry. But the Western powers have counted on the general public’s tagging along nicely, led by a nose ring.

Indeed, so far, the Western powers’ suppression of fact has duly had the effect of discombobulating and paralysing the general public.

It has also had the effect of turning Julian Assange into a martyr, a saint. Now I very much doubt that the long-suffering man ever intended or wanted to be considered a saint, but there you are. His name is emblazoned on banners and heads “Free Assange” petitions all over the world. Even The Guardian (a paper that in my opinion stabbed Assange in the back some years ago) acknowledges the importance of his case. It is, in fact, a test case. If Assange is convicted, Russia will rightly be able to say: You, the West, are no better than us.

But beware, Mr Lavrov: You are quoted as having rejected the notion that journalists do not commit crimes. While I always enjoy your elegant irony, I advise that you desist from antagonising journalists, be they Russian or Western. After all, there are journalists on this side of the ugly curtain who are doing their utmost to present an alternative to the prevailing US/NATO narrative about the Ukraine war. While they are not your allies, they are not your worst foes either. And while you may consider Navaljnyj a pain in the ass, he will not go away even if he dies. On the contrary, he will haunt the Russian authorities for years to come, if for no other reason because journalists on this side of the ugly curtain will find it less risky to revile your country than to revile their own. I am sure you can understand that.

Rødt

21.04.2023 /

Rødt is the name of a Norwegian left-wing political party. It is the only political party that still advocates leaving NATO. The party maintains that NATO is not a defence alliance, but an alliance of nations vindicating US global hegemony. The party avers that NATO not so much solves as creates problems.

It is the only political party that has been, until now, opposed to Norway’s sending weapons to Ukraine – on the grounds that more weapons will not solve the underlying issues that lead to the war.

However, Rødt is at a crossroads. As we should all know by now, the mainstream media is anything but free, and its Manichean approach to the Ukraine war has been so consistent that few can resist what is, in point of fact, a NATO narrative. Who can fail to shudder, for instance, at a barrage such as the one in Guardian on 4 April 2022 regarding the Bucha massacre?

Now there have been some doubts about that massacre. For one thing the timeline seems dubious. Quite another matter is that the press and hence also the general public always immediately assume that if an atrocity has been committed, it must have been committed by the Russians or Jihadists.

Alas, even the last Norwegian holdout against NATO propaganda is folding. This weekend, a national Rødt conference may possibly decide to approve sending weapons to Ukraine.

In the event, this will have no practical consequences for Ukraine or the war. Norway sends weapons to Ukraine, with or without the approval of a relatively small political party. But it will have consequences for Norway, in that there will no longer be any Norwegian political opposition to the NATO narrative.

That would be very unfortunate.

Defence of self or of hegemony

11.04.2023 /

Have you heard of “perception management”? Simply put, it means persuasion on the basis not of facts but of lies (or suppression of facts).

During the 1980s, Reagan decided to “kick the Vietnam syndrome“, a condition from which the US public was suffering, sick to the heart of the horror and shame of the Vietnam war, so that future presidents would find it very difficult to pursue the nation’s foreign policy goal of maintaining global hegemony.

In Reagan’s case, the challenge was to convince the US public to support US martial activities in Central America. As Robert Parry subsequently wrote (in 2014):

In that sense, propaganda in pursuit of foreign policy goals would trump the democratic ideal of an informed electorate. The point would be not to honestly inform the American people about events around the world but to manage their perceptions by ramping up fear in some cases and defusing outrage in others – depending on the U.S. government’s needs.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/12/30/endless-war-and-victory-perception-management

Various tactics were used, one of them being:

to weed out American reporters who uncovered facts that undercut the desired public images. As part of that effort, the administration attacked New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner for disclosing the Salvadoran regime’s massacre of about 800 men, women and children in the village of El Mozote in northeast El Salvador in December 1981. Accuracy in Media and conservative news organizations, such as The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, joined in pummeling Bonner, who was soon ousted from his job.

Ibid

During its wars, the US Government found new ways of limiting television viewers’ insight:

One solution involved imposing strict control over the movements of journalists. The government could no longer afford to allow – as it had in Vietnam – enterprising reporters to run around the battlefield, going wherever they wanted and speaking with whomever they pleased.

https://theconversation.com/how-the-pentagon-tried-to-cure-america-of-its-vietnam-syndrome-83682

An important group targeted by perception management consisted of the many who were saddened and shocked by revelations of crimes against humanity. We have therefore been seeing, with increasing frequency, the waging of what Joseph Darda calls “humanitarian wars”. In his paper Kicking the Vietnam Syndrome Narrative: Human Rights, the Nayirah Testimony, and the Gulf War, he quotes George Bush, who in 1990 was preparing for yet another war:

With a war on the horizon, Bush took the proclamation [his own presidential proclamation designating December 10 as Human Rights Day] as an opportunity to situate the looming Gulf War in a human rights context. “In a world where human rights are routinely denied in too many lands,” he observed, “nowhere is that situation more tragic and more urgent today than in Kuwait.” Listing the atrocities reportedly committed by Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait, Bush concluded, “As long as such assaults occur, as long as inhumane regimes deny basic human rights, our work is not done.” The Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait was not merely a threat to Kuwaiti sovereignty but also, Bush alleged, a threat to the sanctity of human rights everywhere. Americans could not feel secure in their own liberal rights until these rights were restored to the citizens of this small, oil-rich state in the Persian Gulf. Thus, the United States’ intervention in the Middle East was not really a war but, as Bush continually stressed that fall and winter, a unified “stand in defense of peace and freedom.”

https://josephdarda.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/darda-kicking-the-vietnam-syndrome-narrative-human-rights-the-nayirah-testimony-and-the-gulf-war.pdf

Next, I quote someone who appreciated George Bush’s appeal to humanitarianism. On the face of it, he sounds like a humane fellow. Only the name of the source, (hoover.org) gives us pause:

The Bush administration made its case for military action, and, after considerable debate, the American people, through their representatives in Congress, gave approval. The administration also made its case to the United Nations, highlighting the damage that inaction would inflict on prospects for peace in the long term.

Although the dangers of careless military activism are easy to imagine, the cost of passivity is more difficult to discern. In the 1990s, the Vietnam syndrome helped delay and limit U.S. military intervention in the Balkans. Those delays and limits extended murderous Serbian repression and actually accelerated ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Failure to intervene militarily often permits humanitarian crises to continue and leads to more dangerous conflicts.

https://www.hoover.org/research/kicking-vietnam-syndrome

I have previously written about the bombing to kingdom come of Libya, a vicious NATO operation performed allegedly to protect demonstrators. This was definitely a case of successful perception management, since the public hardly raised an eyebrow at the devastation in NATO’s wake.

Of course, one very important reason to go to war is “self defence”. For some years now, the USA has been spreading its network of military bases in the Far East – obviously for “self-defence” (in case the humanitarian plight of the Uighurs fails to capture sufficient public sympathy). I quote Glenn Greenwald, mocking the self-defence rationale:

I was looking at a video earlier today of George Bush and others saying that the reason we had to go fight in Iraq and invade Iraq is that we’d rather fight them over there than fight them over here. And I saw a video earlier today of California Democrat Adam Schiff saying exactly the same thing about the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine. Namely, the reason we must fight Russia over in Ukraine is that, if we don’t, we’ll have to fight them over here. Presumably, the Russian army is on the verge of attacking the American homeland right after it gets done trying to hold a town or two for more than three months in Ukraine, confident that it can conquer the American homeland, despite spending 1/15 in its military of what the United States spends.

https://rumble.com/GGreenwald (Sorry, I failed to take a note of the post)

More recently, “freedom and democracy” has supplanted humanitarian justification of destabilisation activities – bellicose or otherwise. During the Euromaidan Protests, Senator John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Senator Chris Murphy visited Kiev to “show solidarity” to the demonstrators. McCain dined with opposition leaders, including members of the ultra right‐​wing Svoboda Party, and later appeared on stage in Maidan Square during a mass rally. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Svoboda leader Oleg Tyagnibok.

John McCain — repeat: a US Senator — enthusiastically addressed the protesters — Ukrainian protesters in Ukraine, not in the USA:

Ukraine will make Europe better and Europe will make Ukraine better.

We are here to support your just cause, the sovereign right of Ukraine to determine its own destiny freely and independently. And the destiny you seek lies in Europe,

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/15/john-mccain-ukraine-protests-support-just-cause (bold text is my highlighting)

He told CNN:

What we’re trying to do is try to bring about a peaceful transition here, that would stop the violence and give the Ukrainian people what they unfortunately have not had, with different revolutions that have taken place – a real society. This is a grassroots revolution here – it’s been peaceful except when the government tried to crack down on them, and the government hasn’t tried that since.

I’m praising their ability and their desire to demonstrate peacefully for change that I think they deserve.

Ibid (bold text is my highlighting)

Now, there is every reason to question how “peaceful” this so-called “peaceful transition” was. After all, quite a few protesters and some police officers were killed. We have been told that they were killed by officers defending (the Democratically elected) president Yanukovich. Apparently, the story is being compellingly disputed by Ukrainian-Canadian political scientist at the University of Ottawa, Ivan Katchanovski. Read the abstract of his paper and/or download it here.

However, his peer-reviewed paper has been ignored by mainstream media (which has proven its stalwart ignorance of late). It is truly quite fascinating. No less fascinating is the story of its suppression and the suppression of another of his papers, that of the 2014 Odessa massacre.

To conclude, for now, my exploration of applied perception management in Western foreign policy matters, I bring to your attention an investigative journalist’s address on March 24 this year, to the UN security council about the OPCW examination of the dreadful deaths by mysterious means in Douma, Syria, in April 2018.

So! The final OPCW report appears to have been a cover-up. For what? Why? What/who killed the victims in Douma?

There are still nearly 1000 US troops in Syria. What are they doing there? Who is currently controlling Syrian oil? What are the effects on the Syrian population of US sanctions?

Every day, to this day, Syrian civilians are being killed or maimed by land mines. And the nearly 20 Israeli attacks on Syria over the past year have not helped.

The regime change attempt in Syria was motivated and presented to the public as defence of human and civil rights. I put to you, though I cannot provide documentation — because investigative journalism is now becoming illegal in a growing number of “Democratic” countries — that the regime change attempt was largely orchestrated by the USA for reasons that are totally non-humanitarian. The result was death and devastation.

As usual.

Meanwhile, the arms race is on, full speed. And the engines of perception management are running at maximum capacity.

Please do not bring any more children into this world. I put to you that bringing children into the world now is turning into an act of parental egoism, the victims of which will be those same children.

The tightening of the screw

30.03.2023 /

Europe is currently undergoing a tightening of the screw. As most of you will have learnt from either Milton Friedman or Naomi Klein or both, crises (e.g. the 2008 financial crisis, Covid, the war in Ukraine, etc.) will be inexorably exploited by the powers-that-be. Result: the poor will become poorer, the rich richer. This is inevitable unless a concerted effort is made to change the tide, as was the case after the series of cataclysmic events constituted by WWI, the Spanish flue, the Great Depression and WWII.

I would urge you to read Thomas Piketty’s book “Capitalism and Ideology”, which is basically a history book. If you you do read it, you will probably find that it is one of the most important books you have ever worked your way through, because it answers a great many questions you may have asked yourself and many more that you probably never even thought to ask.

True, it’s a very large book, and most people don’t have time to read hundreds of pages. More’s the pity, because the author writes well, clearly and often humorously, not so much about violent wars but about the contradictions that caused them.

For those of you who want to take a shortcut, I have good news. Yes, I believe the man must care very deeply about the plight of our planet and the creatures, including humans, upon it, because a 156-page document called “Extracts” is freely available on his website. It’s the first item on the list:

http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/fr/ideology

The list also includes all the statistical graphs used in his book, and finally a link to the equivalent page in French.

I was initially only interested in the fluctuations of inequality in the 20th and 21st centuries. Only reluctantly did I go back to read, with rapidly growing fascination, what he had written about the previous periods of human history, because it all turns out to be interrelated.

Still, since I live here — in Europe — and now, I find that developments since the 1980s in Europe and the USA are frightening. Here are a few examples where Thomas Piketty’s graphs speak for themselves:

Inequality 1900–2020

Labour productivity : Europe vs United States

Growth and progressive taxation in the U.S. 1870-2020

There is something uncanny about the years 1980 to 1995, isn’t there. For most of us, the leitmotif was that everything started getting a little worse at about that time. To begin with, just a little, and hardly anybody noticed. But we’re noticing now!

Piketty also writes extensively about other countries, such as India, China and Iran. You’d be surprised by what he and his colleagues have uncovered, very surprised, in fact.

Piketty writes that he is an optimist. “We”, that is not only the Western countries but also countries like India Japan and Iran, were able to turn things around after WWII, dramatically reducing inequality and improving the welfare of lower and middle class people. I believe he is trying to convince us that “we” can do it again.

Libya again

29.03.2023 /
NATO Killed Civilians in Libya. It’s Time to Admit It.

Why, you may be asking, am I writing about Libya when everybody else is writing about Iraq?

  • Well, for one thing, for that very reason; because everybody else is writing about Iraq.
  • Secondly, while the US demolition of Iraq happened 20 years ago, that of Libya is more recent and therefore more indicative of the current foreign policy outlook in Western countries.
  • Thirdly: While the war against Iraq met with considerable resistance in some of the Western press, the war against Libya met almost none. The press had been house-trained: no mainstream outlet peed on expensive carpets, so the general public was basically in the dark about the lies that legitimised the bombings.
  • Finally, I have been appraised of information that I have not previously known about.

And that brings me straight to the rather surreal aspect of this ignominious war, which some countries, not least my own, waged against a country that was, from the 1990s on, one where even you or I might have wanted to live.

Libyan Government revenue greatly exceeded expenditure in the 2000s. This surplus revenue was invested in a sovereign wealth fund, the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), which was conservatively valued at $53 billion in June 2010.11 The United Nations Human Development Report 2010—a United Nations aggregate measure of health, education and income—ranked Libya as the 53rd most advanced country in the world for human development and as the most advanced country in Africa.

House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee Report (HC 119)

My final point, that of information that has only recently been brought to my attention, is no more and no less than the above reference:

The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (i.e. the UK H of C)
report on
Libya: Examination of intervention and collapse and the UK’s future policy options
Third Report of Session 2016–17

This report is a pretty damning document: For one thing, it explains, there was basically no truth in the claim that Gaddafi was planning to kill the protesters in Benghazi – on the contrary:

Despite his rhetoric, the proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence. (etc.) (§ 32)

… émigrés opposed to Muammar Gaddafi exploited unrest in Libya by overstating the threat to civilians and encouraging Western powers to intervene. In the course of his 40-year dictatorship Muammar Gaddafi had acquired many enemies in the Middle East and North Africa, who were similarly prepared to exaggerate the threat to civilians. (etc) (§ 35)

An Amnesty International investigation in June 2011 could not corroborate allegations of mass human rights violations by Gaddafi regime troops. However, it uncovered evidence that rebels in Benghazi made false claims and manufactured evidence. The investigation concluded that much Western media coverage has from the outset presented a very one-sided view of the logic of events, portraying the protest movement as entirely peaceful and repeatedly suggesting that the regime’s security forces were unaccountably massacring unarmed demonstrators who presented no security challenge. (§ 36)

Ibid

Another matter was that Western intervention “shifted the military balance in the Libyan civil war in favour of the rebels”, ” turned a blind eye to the supply of weapons to the rebels” and, in short:

The combination of coalition airpower with the supply of arms, intelligence and personnel to the rebels guaranteed the military defeat of the Gaddafi regime. On 20 March 2011, for example, Muammar Gaddafi’s forces retreated some 40 miles from Benghazi following attacks by French aircraft. If the primary object of the coalition intervention was the urgent need to protect civilians in Benghazi, then this objective was achieved in less than 24 hours.

Ibid

Etc, etc. Read the report if you are at all in doubt about the cynicism of the entire operation, the purpose of which was, from the very start, to orchestrate regime change, not “to protect civilians”. I really cannot fathom how the House of Commons has been allowed to publish it, if not to humiliate the French:

A further insight into French motivations was provided in a freedom of information disclosure by the United States State Department in December 2015. On 2 April 2011,Sidney Blumenthal, adviser and unofficial intelligence analyst to the then United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, reported this conversation with French intelligence officers to the Secretary of State:

According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues:

a. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,

b. Increase French influence in North Africa,

c. Improve his internal political situation in France,

d. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,

e. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa.

The sum of four of the five factors identified by Sidney Blumenthal equated to the French national interest. The fifth factor was President Sarkozy’s political self-interest.

Ibid

What did we, readers of the mainstream press, know about Libya in 2011, when France’s President Sarkozy started insisting on mililtary intervention in Libya? Did we know about Libya’s reserves of oil? Did we know about the vast network of underground pipelines and aqueducts, built under his rule which brought high-quality fresh water from ancient underground aquifers deep in the Sahara, and which, from 1991, supplied much-needed irrigation and drinking water to populous cities and farming areas in Libya’s north? This was the so-called “Great Mande-Made_River“.

Gone now. Alas, all gone.

Did the mainstream media tell us that the United Nations Human Development Report (UNDP) 2010 – a “United Nations aggregate measure of health, education and income”– ranked Libya as the 53rd most advanced country in the world for human development and as the most advanced country in Africa? A country with a free national health service, free education and free electricity?

Did the mainstream media tell us about what emerged from Hillary Clinton’s 1700 emails released by Wikileaks about her role in the US engagement in Libya?

Unlike the Iraq war, the US and NATO crimes against humanity in Libya went practically unnoticed. The NATO countries’ intervention lasted less than a year, and since no ground forces were involved (at least not officially), no lives were lost on “our side”.

Although, the consequences of the war were disastrous for Libya, for Africa as a whole, and, indirectly, for Europe, (but not – I repeat NOT – for the USA) mainstream media has not taken pains to inform the public about the real facts.

Like the Iraq war, the war on Libya in 2011 was based on lies, the most important of which was that Gaddafi was preparing genocide against the people of Benghazi. The annihilation of Libya was officially undertaken for “the protection of civilians”.

Protection of civilians, my foot.

Anger

22.03.2023 /

I am just a common inhabitant in a country of just five million – just one country of 195. I live in the West – i.e. the part of the world that makes up just 15 per cent, or so, of the world’s population.

Countries in the West take orders from an infinitesimal minority of people in the USA, where the rest of the 331 million have no say whatsoever in the greater scheme of things. Just like me.

I find to my surprise that I have something else in common with them: Anger.

Many people in the USA are angry and have been so for a long time. During the Trump presidency and its immediate aftermath, we even had the impression, here in Europe, that the self-defined “greatest country in the world” was on the brink of civil war.

Mainstream media no longer highlights the risk of civil war in the USA – but I’m pretty sure that the anger is still there, lurking under the relatively smooth mainstream surface. US American anger is presumably as variegated as is anger in the rest of the world. There are for instance a number of widely held views in the US that I do not share. (Now that I think of it, the European press tends to highlight the most outlandish of US popular trends. I will not mention examples now, because my goal here is to explore common ground.)

In terms of common ground, I suspect Europeans and US citizens share a growing sense of distrust of “the system”, “politicians”, “the elite”, “the press”, “the financial services” – whatever, and please do not even think of adding “the Jews”!

Now, since I dropped that word, let me make it eminently crystal clear: Being Jewish does not – NOT – mean being politically or financially this, that or the other, nor does it mean being morally or otherwise responsible for the ongoing attempted genocide of the Palestinian people. Being Jewish means no more and no less than being, for instance, Catholic or Protestant or Moslem or Agnostic (I write this notwithstanding my great admiration for the novelist Philip Roth who would have disagreed with me, maybe) or even US American.

Now, where was I? Yes. Anger. Distrust. We have been, most of us, taught since early childhood to blindly trust and honour our countries, our governments, our authorities. In Communist Eastern Europe, people have learnt to be less credulous, although they love and honour their countries no less than we love ours. But I put to you that citizens of Eastern European countries are more inured to lies on the part of “the system”, “politicians”, “the elite”, “the press”, “the banks” – whatever – than the rest of us. They are more realist.

We in the West trusted our authorities blindly, and many of us are now angry. Maybe we believed in what was impossible. Maybe “honesty” exists only in children’s books. At any rate, I, for one, have noticed with growing frequency over the past years (maybe I had previously been naive) that Government spokespersons, representatives of political parties, corporations and financial services have been scrupulously trained to lie blithely when lies are “required”, in other words in the service of their employers’ self-interest. Communications advisors are extremely well-paid, by the way, presumably to compensate for psychological damage from fears of an eternity spent in whatever hell their particular religion has in store for them.

For the record, I wish to add that honesty between people who love each other is not, definitely not, limited to children’s books. Such honesty exists, thank goodness, and is still held in high regard.

But this post is about anger, anger as opposed to peace. Because I fear that most of us do not want peace. For one thing, we do not accept the implications of peace as they are presented to us. In the case of Afghanistan, for instance, the implications of peace were that women would be horribly suppressed. And yes, women are now horribly suppressed. In the case of Ukraine, peace might mean that parts of Ukraine (the Russian-speaking parts) must be seceded to Russia, and that Ukraine will never be a member of NATO. In the case of Israel, the implication of peace would be that Israel relinquishes the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967 in defiance of “international law”. Whatever your views on these implications, there are certainly enough people who are so adamantly opposed to them, that they will prefer war to peace.

Now, I particularly dislike the way women are treated in Afghanistan. However, I very much doubt that economic sanctions, not to mention prolonged outright occupation would ever have had the desired effect on the proud Afghan men. Battering the men would never have made them see what we consider to be the errors of their ways.

My experience – but I know that many would disagree with me – is that if you beat a recalcitrant child, you may cow him, you may find him submissive, but he will hate you, deep down, hate everything you stand for, and he will not weep at your funeral, though he might weep for himself. Had we left the arrogant Afghan cats alone, they would sooner or later have come out of hiding and asked for milk, just like all cats. Then we could have bargained for women’s rights.

But we – the West (i.e. governments of the West) – are not cats, not dogs, nor even sharks. We are just plain stupid. We destroy everything we touch with our arrogance, our conceit and not least with our financial tricks and shenanigans.

As for the Palestinians: Has anyone ever been willing to go to war for them? Alas, they are on their own. Not only must they try to defend what little is left of what is actually their country (according to the UN), those of them who never fled from Israel after 1949 are treated as third class citizens. They have no petroleum, no rare-earth elements, they are hardly worth guano, i.e. shit, from an investor’s perspective. So nobody will send them guns and tanks and fighter planes with which they can defend themselves.

Not that I would want us to do so. I merely roundly condemn any country that supports and finances the oppressor, and I recommend – yes, only recommend – that other countries boycott (not sanction) Israel, as long as it flagrantly practices apartheid in contravention of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and occupies territory to which it has no right.

Uganda is another country to which we are not sending guns and tanks and fighter planes. Yet, Uganda is harshly suppressing homosexuals. That is very regrettable. But so did we in the West until just half a century ago. Uganda must find its way. I am glad that, so far, we have not declared war on Uganda (but you never know).

Live and let live! Not war. Not sanctions. Not bullying.

We are so sure, here in the West, that our way is the best way. That our way is the only acceptable way, that we have seen the light.

I can assure you, in case you missed the point, that if there is one thing we haven’t seen here, it’s the light.

Look back in horror –Libya 2011

17.03.2023 /

In 2011, NATO bombed Libya to Kingdom Come.

Blasting a well-functioning country off the map was not – I repeat, NOT – in compliance with UN Security Council resolution 1973 (Incidentally, no less than five countries, including Germany, abstained from voting on that occasion).

The said resolution authorised action to “protect” civilians.

…. take all necessary measures, notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 (2011), to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory

http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/1973

The said resolution did not authorise reducing the country to rubble. It didn’t even authorise forcing regime change, which (as we now know) was what the freedom and Democracy-loving countries unofficially set out to do.

Now it is true that Gaddafi was a dictator, and it is also true that he did not take kindly to the Arab Spring demonstrations. Yes, the Arab Spring debacle evolved into a civil war in Libya as in Syria, and during civil wars, crimes against humanity tend to be committed. But unlike many other countries and like Syria and Iraq, Libya had, until we intervened to defend our blessed Democratic values (or interests), been a well-functioning state.

Public education in the country became free and primary education compulsory for both sexes. Medical care became available to the public at no cost, but providing housing for all was a task the RCC government was unable to complete. Under Gaddafi, per capita income in the country rose to more than US$11,000, the 5th highest in Africa. The increase in prosperity was accompanied by a controversial foreign policy, and increased domestic political repression.

Wikipedia as at 17 March 2023

All of this was destroyed as we know. Libya has ever since been a failed state. The freedom-loving Democratic countries in the West, the countries that so love protecting other (particularly oil-producing) countries’ freedoms, apparently prefer failed states to “controversial foreign policies”.

Norway was apparently rather gung-ho in Libya, dropping bombs in areas where nobody else wanted to do so, including urban areas. We continued to do so, not only long after the Libyan military had been defeated, long long after the protesters in Benghazi whom we initially set out to “protect” no longer needed protection. Since Gaddafi was systematically described in the press as the Devil incarnate (just like Putin), the Norwegian press (with the honourable exception of Klassekampen and Ny tid) and its readers loudly applauded all of this bombing, hardly noticing that civilian lives also were lost to NATO bombs. (We will never know how many of them there were, but Amnesty International has painstakingly collected impressive documentation.) There are those who maintain that Norway dropped more bombs on Libya than any other NATO country.

Norway dropped 588 bombs on Libya. There are those who have suggested that there is a link between Norway’s enthusiastic performance there and the ascent of the former Norwegian Prime Minister to the post of Secretary General of NATO. Of course I would never suggest anything of the kind.

Neither NATO nor NATO countries have apologised for the havoc they left in the territory that once was Libya. Nor have they paid compensation to those (civilians) whose loved ones, homes and livelihoods they exterminated. Norway, the neocon Norwegian press and the increasingly neocon readers of the Norwegian press are no exception. After all, Gaddafi was a dictator, wasn’t he.

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.



Pipe me a Tune

11.02.2023 /

For a year now I’ve been wondering why the Norwegian authorities are so rabid about the Ukraine war. I mean, their faces don’t turn scarlet when they talk about the de facto genocide of the Palestinian people, the torture going on in Egyptian prisons or the suppression of women in Saudi Arabia. But Russia, now, that is another matter.

An air of fear seems to be wafting through the corridors of power, at least judging from Norwegian press updates about Ukraine. Why?

Are we preparing for war? Are we at war without our, the general public’s, knowing it? Why do the authorities seem so convinced that Russia will attack, and that we will be engulfed and eaten alive unless we become the 51st US state?

I really cannot understand all this hysteria – or could not – until now, since Norway and Russia have traditionally been on very amicable terms. Unfortunately, though, a Norwegian former prime minister has recently been running the NATO show that eventually, in my opinion, led to the fateful Russian invasion of Ukraine. He is pressing for more bombs, more tanks and possibly also long-range missiles and fighter jets to Ukraine. He is contributing in a massive way to the Ukraine disaster and to the destruction of Europe, and nobody in Norway is protesting. Nobody is asking difficult questions, not on the left nor on the right. At least no such protests and no such questions are heard in public. All dissent is suppressed in mainstream media.

But now I, too, am getting uneasy. Sending food, medicines, blankets, hospital equipment, etc. to a war-torn country constitutes “humanitarian assistance”, something that in everyday speech could be termed “the only decent thing to do”. But now we are gifting weapons to Ukraine, yes, and tanks, and that is something altogether different. I, too, now need to remind myself, every time we have a power outage, that we have been having some pretty strange and difficult weather recently and that Russia is not responsible for the weather.

Only today, though, have I realised that Russia might have good reason to retaliate in a very serious way against Norway. Very good reason indeed.

Of course the Norwegian and US authorities have respectively rejected Seymour Hersh’s allegation as “utterly false and complete fiction” and “nonsense”, and the Norwegian media have hardly mentioned it all. One Norwegian paper ran a short article explaining that building a story on information from a single anonymous source was poor journalism. (I put to you that in view of the penalties for whistle-blowing in the US, you would have to be terminally ill to risk informing a journalist of anything at all.) Apart from that, we should all have learnt that whatever President This or Prime Minister That says about what is, or is not, true can safely be disregarded at all times.

In view of President’s Biden’s September statement about Nord Stream 2, US involvement in the sabotage should not come as a surprise to anyone. Norway’s involvement, however, is a bit of a shock, since that effectively means that Norway is a legitimate target for Russian retaliation.

I would say, then, that whoever authorised Norway’s participation (unbeknownst to the general public, not to mention the national assembly) should be indicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Note that Seymour Hersh, who has won a number of prestigious prizes for his journalism, including the Pulitzer Prize, has for some time found it necessary to publish his work on Substack, just as, for example Glenn Greenwald. Seymour Hersh appears to be neither right-wing or left-wing. He describes himself merely as an “investigative” journalist. His departure from NY Times and Washington Post is indicative of something, do you not agree?

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