Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Category: ENGLISH (Page 2 of 35)

There a few posts written in English

Veterans

19.05.2026 /

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fresh perspectives

13.05.2026 /

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He writes:

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

Makes sense.

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

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

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

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

Joyless

06.05.2026 /

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The PM admitted that

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was quick

12.04.2026 /

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“those who set the world on fire“

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

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

Rhino in the White House

08.04.2026 /

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I say no more.

Easter digression

04.04.2026 /

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, I’m afraid it does. For example:

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

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

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

So much for being morally good.

Iranian wisdom

02.04.2026 /

I urge you to read the letter from the Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian to the “people of the United States of America”. Even if you are not a US citizen, you should read it, because we will all – every one of us – suffer one way or another in the months and years to come as a result of this latest US war of aggression, often referred to as a “war of choice”.

The potential consequences of an attack against Iran were known also to intelligence agencies and military experts all over the world, also in the USA. Many have wondered how President Trump could embark on such a foolhardy enterprise; many even question his sanity.

However, from the perspective of the 1%, there were very sane reasons to start this war:

  • There is reason to suspect it is a last-ditch attempt to reassert US global hegemony (and maintain the dollar as the global reserve currency) in order to prevent the collapse of the ponzi scheme that is the exponentially growing US debt.
  • US hegemony is definitely not something US warmongers and multi-billionaires in both parties are ready to relinquish, even if they fail to recognise the dire state of the US dollar. In the showdown they long for with China, Iran would be a serious obstacle. This war should not come as a surprise to anybody who has been following the egregious foreign policy of the USA ever since the heyday of the Dulles brothers, cf. General Wesley Clark quoting an unnamed general in 2007, “we’re going to conquer seven countries in five years, culminating with Iran“.
  • And yes, there is also the iniquitous Zionist perspective referred to in the Iranian president’s letter.

You won’t find the letter in the N.Y. Times, which only has a condescending article about it. The Associated Press News hadn’t even mentioned it this morning, as far as I could see. The “free press” in the USA is not delivering a letter to the intended recipient, the “people of the United States of America”. SHAME.

You will find it in the Indian press, however, and in the that of Singapore, which is the source I am referring you to.

Letter from Masoud Pezeshkian to the “people of the United States of America”.

Carter vs. Dickens

27.03.2026 /

If you tell me that Charles Dickens and Miranda Carter have nothing to teach us, I beg to differ. Charles Dickens, as I’m sure you know, was a mid-nineteenth century author who wrote, among other things, novels describing unfathomable social injustice. Miranda Carter is a 21st century historian who has also written three novels.

I had been fascinated by two of her extensively researched books when I embarked on a third, Infidel Stain, but was at once dismayed to find myself in Charles Dickens territory.

It’s not that I have had my fill of following protagonists through foul-smelling streets peopled with creatures so poor you can hardly bear to look at them. Dickens’s wrathful descriptions were invaluable social commentary. My problem is that since Dickens wished to satisfy his readers, he made sure to steer his destitute protagonists into the arms of wealthy but “noble-minded” grieving widowers (with or without a beautiful daughter) who of course saved the day. For the protagonist. Not for the rest of London’s starving and freezing multitude. His readers might have been satisfied with the denouements, but I was not.

Like Dickens, Carter leads us along the dark alleys of London in 1841, confronts us with insalubrious characters and teaches us some of their lingo. Unlike Dickens, however, she is interested in opposition – the tooth and nail sort of thing. She does not, I repeat not, trust Parliament to defend the “masses”, because no women and no non-propertied men had the right to vote back then, so they were not represented in Parliament. Those who were, had no wish to share, as it were, with those who weren’t. They were determined to keep them – the have-nots – out.

Infidel Stain is a who-done-it novel, not a political thesis. Nevertheless Carter’s cast discuss how to achieve improvement. Should they do so politely, with petitions? Or should they threaten to use force? In a historical epilogue to her book, Carter explains that the “Chartist” movement presented petitions. As it turned out, Parliament cared not one hoot about the 3.3 million men who signed the 1842 petition (in a country of 16 million of which half were women and many were children). After the 1839 massacre at the Newport rising, the have-nots had to wait until 1918 before non-propertied men and propertied women gained voting rights. That’s a long time!

Of course Carter writes about Victorian London with the hindsight of nearly 200 years. We all now agree that it was wrong to deny the vast majority of the country’s citizens the vote. We all now agree that child labour and inhumane working conditions were reprehensible. Indeed, living conditions have since improved immeasurably, not least after WWII. But why, I ask, why did they not improve much, much earlier?

Could it be that people born and bred at “country houses” like Blenheim Palace were loathe to part with their property? Winston Churchill is quoted as saying “a communist is like a crocodile: when it opens its mouth you cannot tell whether it is trying to smile or preparing to eat you up.” The Churchills still own Blenheim.

And why have living conditions in the West deteriorated so much since the 1970s? (Cf. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 2014.) Could it be that some people wanted to retrieve what they lost after the two great wars and that others have felt free to use financial and hence political power to amass wealth regardless of consequences for their fellow citizens and the rest of the world?

And have you noticed that the right to vote, so dearly won, is now nearly worthless?

What is the moral to be drawn by all this prattle? you ask.

Well, for one thing, I very much recommend Miranda Carter’s novel Infidel Stain, reviewed here. It’s a good read.

Moreover, as I see it, the novel stimulates us to consider the topic opposition. How is improvement achieved? Should we collect signatures and present petitions and try to gain support from influential persons? Should we, like the children of the Intifada, collect and throw rocks or, like the demonstrators against the Vietnam war, let ourselves be beaten by police officers on horseback?

Whatever the answer to that question, most of us have been bamboozled into believing we cannot beat the system. That assumption applies at least as much in these AI days as it did in London in 1848, when – according to Carter – the Chartist movement more or less disintegrated.

Does that mean that opposition is forever doomed?

***

Until 28 February 2026, Iran was polite. Very polite. Then the USA and Israel attacked. They attacked a country that definitely did not have nuclear weapons and that had never attacked them.

Did you know that they bombed that school in Minab at least twice? Accident? Ha! They had to be sure that all those little girls were well and truly dead, so they returned to bomb it a second and allegedly even a third time. The Israeli tail and its US dog are evidently rabid and should be put down. But who dares approach a rabid dog?

To everyone’s surprise, one country dares. For the first time in my life, the USA and its Israeli handler are being hit. It’s absolutely unbelievable.

Even more unbelievable: Iran is still on its feet!

There are those who clamour for negotiations. In the past, I would have done so too. But the Israelis have made sure that the mere word “negotiation” has become synonymous with “death trap”.

Long before I was born, Russia saved Europe from Hitler (Germany killed 20 million Russians.) The USA and its European allies then went on to dominate the world, crushing any attempt in all other continents to create any sort of welfare society.

Now Iranians are being killed by a Hitler-emulator and his neocon buddies in the US. The parallel is weird, to say the least.

And Iran is still on its feet.

I find myself holding my breath.

Sources

09.03.2026 /

I am too depressed, really, to write about US wars – economic, covert or military – against the entire world. I just want to hide under the bed and wait until it is all over. My rhetorical verve fails me: I am dumbstruck.

The USA is, as I see it, a dying empire. As such, it is acting not with wisdom but with desperate fury. I must sadly admit that the empire is far from defeated yet.

At any rate, I am not a geopolitical expert, not a prophet, nor even an investigative journalist. I am just somebody who follows what is accessible to me of “independent” news.

So, for a time, I shall content myself with relaying sources of information and analyses from, yes, experts.

I shall add to the following list, started today 9 march, over the next days.

I start with an analysis of the goals of the US-Israeli attack.
The Wrong Question about the War in Iran

Analysis of Iranian strategy and geo-economic consequences (10 March)

The mainstream media vs reality in the Middle East (Patrick Lawrence) (10 M.)

Una jorden de desalojo (Pepe Escobar) (11 M.)

Mohamad Marandi speaks to Judge Napolitano from Teheran (12 M.)

Responsible Statecraft: Trump’s war is a gift to Iran’s hardliners (13 M)

Peter Haenseler (analysis): The Empire is Losing Control  (15 M)

Did you know about the UN Security Council Resolution 2803 of 17 November 2025? I didn’t. It’s a little late now, to ask you to listen to Norman Finkelstein’s lecture about the accursed resolution, but I do so anyway: It is here. While I’m at it, I recommend Max Blumenthal’s conversation with John Mearsheimer, here, where they discuss the role of what John Mearsheimer refers to as “context”. This war is so absurd and dangerous, that we really do need to understand its context.

From general “context” to the nitty gritty of real life: Drop Site is not only a source of some honest to goodness real news; it also decks its pages with splendid photographs.

With this I end my list of sources about the war on Iran.

Correction

08.03.2026 /

I must apologise. In my last post, I wrote that we are “live witnesses to the West’s descent into barbarism!”

This was inaccurate. What we are seeing is not gradual descent down a slope: We are seeing the frantic flailing of a two-headed monster, surrounded by its wailing monster babies. In short we are already there: The West has reached the bottom of the slope. Things can get very much worse, for sure, for all of us, but already the US and its vassals are a pitifully primitive gaggle.

They have broken almost every rule in the book. They are now effectively (some more, some less) barbarian states.

Episode: On March 4, the Sri Lankan navy responded to a distress call from the Iranian warship IRIS Dena after it was sunk by a U.S. submarine. The Sri Lankans managed to recover, out of a crew of 130, 87 bodies, and 32 survivors.

Here is what Perplexity tells me:

IRIS Dena, a Moudge‑class Iranian frigate, was torpedoed on 4 March 2026 in international waters south of Sri Lanka, while returning to Iran after participating in the Indian Navy’s Milan 2026 exercise.​

The U.S. government has confirmed that the Los Angeles‑class attack submarine USS Charlotte fired a Mark 48 heavyweight torpedo that struck Dena under the stern, breaking her keel and causing her to sink rapidly.

Sri Lankan authorities reported that the ship sent a distress call around 05:08 local time and that their navy and air force mounted a search‑and‑rescue operation.

Note that the USA sunk the ship at about 05:08, a time when most of the crew would have been in their bunks. This is the work of barbarians.

Note, also, that the USA just left them there in the water. Even the Nazis, I am told, used to pick up survivors of ships they had sunk. I wonder: did the USA also shoot people in the water, as they did in the Caribbean?

Note, finally, that the ship was in international waters far from Iran, returning from a friendly mission in India.

Perplexity again:

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly framed the attack as a deliberate demonstration that Iranian warships were not safe even in distant international waters, calling it proof of U.S. global reach and….

Global reach! President Flintstone’s “global reach” (and that of his predecessors), is effectively the no. 1 obstacle to global peace and prosperity.

We are of course used to Israel’s routine indiscriminate killing of civilians that do not satisfy its “racial” requirements. And the US has managed to impose global impunity for all Israeli crimes against humanity. (The Nazis, as we know, were no better than Israel, but at least some of them were prosecuted.)

Indiscriminate killing of civilians is barbarism! Having unilaterally cancelled “International Law”, the US now feels joyfully free to engage in indiscriminate killing of civilians without so much as an apology. President Flintstone and his hoodlums will go down in history – no doubt about that – but perhaps not the way he wished.

We are told that the global economy is being hit. Indeed, most countries will be badly hit. A Chinese government spokesperson is imploring the warring parties to cease hostilities and resume negotiations. Now China is a supremely civilised country. I fear it is so civilised that its spokespersons are unable to fathom that one side of this war routinely engages in high-profile assassinations during – yes, just so – negotiations! Indeed, it is very difficult to get one’s head around such barbarism.

Negotiations have systematically been used by president Flintstone and his Israeli handler as a smoke screen.

Stop accusing Iran. Iran did not start this or any other war! The US has been attacking the Iranian people with sanctions for decades. The US has in fact been attacking all over the place, militarily and/or with sanctions and/or though covert r operations for as long as I have lived. And the rest of us (in the West) have not said a peep. Not one peep. We have been perfectly aware of the injustice, but we have been silent.

By “we” I do not mean the voters, the you-s and I-s. In that sense of the word, “we” are innocent. I mean those who represent us: The warmongering US-EU 1 %, (or “Epstein class”). And don’t tell me that you and I voted for the wrong man or woman, because we – you and I – are merely hostages of the press/media owned by the above-mentioned you-know-who-class.

Yes, Iran is hitting its two persecutors where it hurts, in the groin: the economy. All of us, and mostly Iran, will suffer as a result.

But don’t, I repeat, blame the Iranians!

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