Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Category: The games we play (Page 1 of 3)

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.

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.

Homage

16.02.2026 /

Have the Epstein revelations blighted more than was strictly necessary?

When disease strikes a certain branch of animal husbandry, farmers in the affected area will have to cull much of, most of, or even all of their oxen, ostriches, chickens or whatever species was affected.

But the species as such is not exterminated.

Now that we have had a peek at a sufficiently large number of redacted files to have reason to suspect that a substantial segment of our western elites is rotten to the core, we could be tempted to revert to nihilism. But all we really have learnt is something we ought to have always known: Power corrupts; power perverts minds that might otherwise have contributed to the common good.

They understood this as far back as in 1215, when the Plantagenet King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta.

What is also known is that power is a magnet, as is wealth. Epstein used, or was used as – as we have reason to believe – a magnet. His wealth was breathtaking. As a result, his connections among the powerful were infinite, and people were drawn to him not because of his intelligence, as they might themselves have imagined, but because he seemed fabulous. Moreover, he was “generous” with money and, not least, with girls. And he stored – hoarded – compromising evidence about his “friends”.

You and I did not walk into his net. Why was that? It may have been because we are ethically superior to those who did. Or it may be that we were not invited.

One of my heroes, Noam Chomsky, did walk into his net. Does that diminish Chomsky’s contributions to mankind? Certainly not. It only reminds me of the phrase “sic transit gloria mundi”. We are not infallible.

Am I excusing the politicians and diplomats whom Epstein may have persuaded to pass on classified information or perform other services to a foreign power, unbeknownst to the populations of their own countries? Definitely not. My view is that such acts are not only expressions of human weakness but acts of treason!

The four Epstein “friends” under investigation in Norway are so far only charged with corruption or aggravated corruption. Details of the charges and the ongoing criminal investigation will naturally (and rightly) be withheld from the general public for the time being.

I believe the word “treason” is particularly germane to the case of the USA, where nobody has been charged (apart from G. Maxwell) much less indicted, for letting himself or herself be trapped in Epstein’s net. It’s as though the entire judiciary, law enforcement and Congress itself is paralysed.

Moreover, the USA is conspicuously acting against its own interests on behalf of Israel. From a distance and without inside knowledge I must be excused for thinking that the entire nation appears to be handcuffed (or, to be more precise: blackmailed).

Epstein’s remit was networking. He had his own network, but he also joined others, such as the Trilateral Commission. He was very much a buddy of the Norwegian CEO of the World Economic Forum, the purpose of which is, according to Wikipedia, to Influence global agendas and decision making, no less. Judging from this exchange (you will be asked to confirm you are not a robot and that you are over 18) between the two, would you say that Epstein had an agenda when he nurtured friendship with the WEFs CEO? Or this message to Peter Thiel? What about this one?

Another matter is the very nature of arenas such as the World Economic Forum, the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission. The latter two apply the Chatham House Rule, i.e. secrecy rules. And of course there is the Munich Security Conference, now ongoing, which does publish speeches, but what about all the tête a têtes on the side of the conference?

To what extent do so-called Democratic processes control these immensely powerful people and their networks. Compare the Mont Pelerin society, a forerunner which planned and plotted the demise of Keynesianism and eventually celebrated the triumph of a system which would favour the 1%, often referred to as economic “neoliberalism” or “globalism”.

The Mont Pelerin Society claims to promote a free market, but what it promotes is anything but. For Adam Smith, a “free market” was:

an economy free of land rent, usurious banking practices and monopolies in private hands. But as finance capitalism has superseded industrial capitalism, it has inverted “free market” rhetoric to mean a market free for rent extractors to obtain land rent, natural resource rent, monopoly rent and financial gains “free” of government taxation or regulation.
( Source: Michael Hudson: J is for Junk Economics, 2017)

Ugh. The US wars against Afghanistan, Iraq and now Iran are also ugly. If US support for the genocide in Palestine is venal, European support for it is downright nightmarish: By what means have “liberal”, allegedly anti-racist EU and UK politicians been bulldozed into supporting something that is vastly antithetical to European so-called “values”? Is Epstein’s ghost whispering to them at night. Or Epstein’s handlers? What lurid secrets remain unseen in Epstein’s redacted or withheld files?

Or are EU’s leading politicians innately depraved?

But even Europe and the U SA have brave and dignified citizens. Far, far more of them, than the despicable lot who have – as I see it – betrayed their countries.

If you have been wondering why the title to this post is “Homage” rather than, for instance, “Treason”, allow me to mention one such brave and dignified citizen. Professor Jeffrey Sachs may be said to belong to the elite, in the sense that he has had one-to-one conversations with many of the world’s most powerful men over the past 40 years or so. But he has definitely not been a tool of the 1%, on the contrary. Moreover he is endlessly generous with his time when trying to elucidate for us – including those of us who are not rich or powerful – why the world is on such a dangerous course and what can be done to correct that course.

Since state and corporate press and social media are determined to discombobulate us, and to prevent us from understanding what is going on and why, he has sought to explain concepts such as “exceptionalism” as opposed to “multi-polar” and “regime change operations”.

It you are uncertain about what has been going on in Venezuela, for instance, I urge you to hear what Jeffrey Sachs has to say about the matter. He also touches upon Iran and explains why US policies with regard to these two states are not even good for US interests: U.S. Economic Coercion & the Death of the Dollar.

The hunter

12.04.2025 /

Months before the last election, seeing that the Democratic Party had dug its own grave, Jeffrey Sachs sighed that Trump is “all over the map”. I liked the expression. Trump is more than merely “unpredictable”.

In polite company he is said to be “transactional”, meaning – I believe – that he conducts affairs of the state in the same manner as he would try to seal advantageous business deals. I don’t see him that way at all. I see him as a hunter.

There was a time when hunting was a bona-fide way of making a living. Consider, then, the hunter, his dog, the game he is pursuing, the weather, the supplies he must carry on his back, etc. If he is a peasant, he even has to reckon with the landlord’s game keepers. (In much of Europe, landlords used to lord it over all the continent’s vast forests.) The wind may turn, the scent may suddenly vanish, a blizzard may whip up, the dog may get his throat slit, a river may turn into a torrent… anything can happen.

Trump is definitely not that sort of a hunter. He is more like one who hunts from a helicopter. The helicopter’s instruments may be able to determine the location of a fox under the canopy, but they know very little about the fox’s habits. However, the helicopter can certainly adjust to changes of weather, and if the fox manages to disappear, the helicopter will simply return another day.

Trump has to balance between the forces that have brought him to power. To my knowledge these are mainly 1) the disaffected former “middle class”, “working class” or whatever-class most of his voters belong to 2) the Zionists 3) US oligarchs who, for whatever reason, do not consider themselves “liberal”. Disparate forces, in other words. Trump has to please them all, just as the hunter on the ground has to adjust to the weather, the surroundings, the quarry and the dog.

I am not apologizing for Trump, merely trying to explain why he is so “all over the map”, for instance in the matter of tariffs. Added to the multifarious challenges that face him, we find that neither he nor members of his team appear to know much about China, Russia, Ukraine or the rest of the world.

The “tariffs” were a complete disaster, for very, very many reasons. Backing down on the tariffs appears to have raised universal distrust even further. Even “the 90-day pause has done little to quell market fears.”

A person who holds the top job in a country that considers itself the top dog will tend to feel, more often than not, omnipotent. Even long after the “fall of Rome” delusions of grandeur will surely have haunted Rome’s top-job holders. I suspect that when Sir Keir Starmer sings in the shower, his favourite refrain will be: “Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves”, long after Britain has turned into a basket case.

Overestimating one’s strength is definitely a weakness in the hunter, one the quarry may take advantage of if he knows his persecutor.

Likewise, fooling your adversary might also be a smart move. I can’t imagine Trump singing, in the shower or elsewhere. But he simply loves signing decrees. So while everybody was wringing their hands about his tariffs, he quietly went and signed an “executive order” the aim of which is for the USA to rule the seas of the world in all perpetuity.

Alas, though Team Trump seems willing to admit that “unipolarity” has come to an end, the White House has not yet lost sight of it.

What happiness

25.03.2024 /

I read in Reuters the other day about the annual World Happiness Report, launched in 2012 to support the United Nations’ sustainable development goals.

How, you may ask, can I even think about commenting “world happiness” when Gaza….? Yes, the mere mention of “happiness” seems a bit obscene, these days, when we – the West – are aiding and abetting unmentionable acts of horror.

But I actually believe that it is all, somehow, interconnected. What the West has been doing to the Palestinians for decades will forever be a hideous stain on the record of an era that is coming to an end. In the West, mood is affected both by an emerging awareness of the harm we have done to the rest of the world and to the growing signs that our welfare is being eroded.

People in 143 countries and territories have been asked to evaluate their life on a scale from zero to 10. Finland scored 7.7 followed closely by the Scandinavian countries (including Iceland), and Israel, while Afghanistan and Lebanon, at the bottom, scored next to nothing. Palestine, of course, wasn’t asked.

So that’s the main findings – not very heady, but the Reuters journalist David Milliken has done a good job, I think, because he took a good long look at the 52-page report, and because he pointed out a few very interesting findings, I downloaded the report too.

Findings: The United States dropped  to 23rd place from 15th last year, mainly because people younger than 30 would have placed the United States in 62nd place! (See figure 2.2) Biden and Trump, beware!

And that is the very interesting part of the report. In several of the wealthiest countries there appears to be growing dissatisfaction among the young (defined as under 30). The young in Norway put the country in 20th place, those in the UK in 32nd. Rankings for Germany and France were 47 and 48, for Canada 58 (whereas for all ages the Canadian ranking was 15) Spain 55… etc.

Russia’s young at 68th, however, are slightly more positive than the average, 72, whereas Israel’s young put their country in 2nd place! Young Israelis must have been very blind, indeed.

Yes, the times they are a’changin. For the worse in the West, mostly, though Lithuania’s young put their country in first place.

The report reads: “In Western Europe, life evaluations among the young are significantly lower in 2021-2023 than they were in 2006-2010…For the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, happiness has decreased in all age groups, but especially for the young.”

“Interconnected” was the word I used above. The so-called Pax Americana, that never was a Pax at all, is in the process of being exposed. The colossal hoax to which we in the West have been blind, is unravelling. The West’s irresponsible militarisation, the preposterous US debt (and remember, the dollar is the reserve currency, so when the dollar falls, we all fall), the deepening poverty of the bottom 50 % coupled with the spiralling wealth of the top 10 %, the brazen disregard for the accelerating ecological breakdown… all of this crowned now by the shame felt by those of us who are not psychopaths (and we are, fortunately, the vast majority) about our countries’ participation in acts so horrible that I am lost for words… will continue to undermine “happiness” in the West in years to come until the USA stops being such a bloody bully.

Just a question – or rather three

24.02.2024 /

The Munich Security Conference, held annually, is allegedly the world’s leading forum for debating – guess what – international security. In other words, it is not the opera and it is not open to the public. I add for the record that it makes no headway safeguarding international security, but that is another matter. Its participants are not boy scouts – cf. this year’s list of participants. (Russia, of course, was not invited.)

So why was Yulia Navalnaya attending the Munich Security Conference on 16 February, the day the conference opened?

Yulia Navalnaya was attending the Munich Security Conference on 16 February, the very day Alexei Nalvany died. Now wasn’t that remarkably convenient? She was already there and ready to hold an impassioned speech for which she received a standing ovation. I’d call that divine intervention, if ever there was such a thing. But again: What on earth was Julia Navalnaya doing there in the first place? She’s not a security expert, for Pete’s sake

So who, or rather what is she?

Which begs the question: Who, or rather what was Alexei Navalny?

The dog and I

03.11.2023 /

I have a dog. I’ve almost always had a dog. Big dog, small dog – no matter – I’m rather good at training dogs. Dogs, you see, are basically quite like humans. You tell a dog to “sit”, and the dog will sit. You tell the dog not to sniff the neighbour’s shoes – “the neighbour kicks”, you say – and it will not sniff the neighbour’s shoes. You tell the dog to bite the neighbour, and it’ll bite the neighbour.

The News tells us humans that Putin wants to conquer all of Europe, and we docilely repeat to each other that Putin wants to conquer all of Europe. “Egad!” we say, “have you heard? Putin wants to….” The News tells us that Hamas is fighting a holy Jihad against Jews and Christians, and we, of course, docile as we are, treat Hamas accordingly: as monsters.

In much of our Western world, being “good”, “upright”, “just” means considering everybody else morally inferior. Our norms, our values, our holy cows are of course the norms, the values and the holy cows that all of humankind must adhere to and venerate. Their norms, values and holy cows are inferior and must be annihilated, by force if necessary. Rule of law, you know. Just like dogs. (“My rules, you fool!”) Headline: “Big husky kills toy poodle”. From the big dog’s point of view, the toy poodle was superfluous. The world can do without. (The philosophical range of a big dog is no greater than that of a small dog.)

You also find vociferous small dogs baring their teeth, yapping their heads off at big dogs. Why do they do it, I wonder? As a warning, I guess: “I may be small, but believe me, I can bite!” And because they have a big human at their side: “You touch a hair on my head, and my human will report you to the police and have you killed, so there!” Indeed, if I pick up that little nuisance of a toy-sized dog next door that barks hysterically every five minutes – pick it up by the scruff of its neck and shake it till its teeth rattle, I’ll be reported to the police.

And some dogs bite, just as some humans. Big dogs, small dogs. Their philosophical range isn’t much greater than that of your average human: They believe what they’re told to believe. Each dog is convinced that its master is the best of all masters. So do most humans. If the master tells the dog that the neighbour kicks, the dog will believe the neighbour kicks. The statement “my master’s enemies, are my enemies.” applies to dogs and humans alike, though most humans don’t seem to realise that they have masters. “We just listen to the News,” humans say, “we just consider the facts“.

Morally, however, most dogs are far superior to the people at the top of the human food chain. Being at the top of the human food chain essentially means being willing to employ every underhanded trick in the book, crossing every red line – you know, those famous red lines that humans, as opposed to dogs, seem unable to remember – to stay there. Humans at the top of the food chain are geared only to stay at the top of the food chain, whereas the rest of us normally want to go about our business in peace. We don’t want to kick our neighbours, but we try to defend ourselves if our neighbours kick us.

Humans at the top of the food chain unleash considerable resources to distort narratives that expose the venality of their actions. The News has repeatedly told us that Hamas are monsters. Yes, Hamas committed horrendous crimes against humanity on October 8, but if you beat a creature long enough, hard enough, viciously enough, that creature – be it lion, kitten, dog, human or mother nature itself – will rise like a tsunami to kill you.

The News did not alert us to how the Palestinians have been treated worse than dogs for decades and decades and decades. The News did not tell us that Hamas wanted peace for the Palestinian people, peace and dignity.

This was Hamas in 2017:

28. Hamas believes in, and adheres to, managing its Palestinian relations on the basis of pluralism, democracy, national partnership, acceptance of the other and the adoption of dialogue. The aim is to bolster the unity of ranks and joint action for the purpose of accomplishing national goals and fulfilling the aspirations of the Palestinian people.

29. The PLO is a national framework for the Palestinian people inside and outside of Palestine. It should therefore be preserved, developed and rebuilt on democratic foundations so as to secure the participation of all the constituents and forces of the Palestinian people, in a manner that safeguards Palestinian rights.

30. Hamas stresses the necessity of building Palestinian national institutions on sound democratic principles, foremost among them are free and fair elections. Such process should be on the basis of national partnership and in accordance with a clear programme and a clear strategy that adhere to the rights, including the right of resistance, and which fulfil the aspirations of the Palestinian people.

31. Hamas affirms that the role of the Palestinian Authority should be to serve the Palestinian people and safeguard their security, their rights and their national project.

My emphasis,

Say what you will, but this is not the Hamas “the News” told us about. This is not the “facts” we have been repeating with deference ever since we graduated from nursery school. “The News” obeyed its masters and failed the rest of us. The damage done by “the News” that obeyed its masters can never be undone.

FIE ON THE NEWS

Propaganda

15.07.2022 /

The other day, I tried to explain to my sister-in-law that USA/NATO had effectively been provoking the Russians over a long period of time . The person I was talking to was non other than my sister-in-law. She smiled and said, “well, you would say that, wouldn’t you – you like Putin.”

“I what?!!!”

“Well, at least you don’t like USA.”

It is true that I don’t like plutocracies; nor do I like oligarchies. Both control the dominant narrative within their respective hegemonic spheres.

In a recent interview, John Pilger – still alive and going strong, bless him – complained about the rapidly shrinking narrative space for journalists. He contemptuously referred to western coverage of the Ukraine war as an unprecedented “tsunami of jingoism” with which the media was “utterly consumed”.

Just so: “utterly consumed”. Mainstream media, which is what “respectable people” heed, and social media – from which also less “respectable” people take their cues – are all “utterly consumed” with this single monolithic story: Putin is a monster that pounced on the innocent little Democracy Ukraine which we are honour-bound to defend to the last Ukrainian.

How on earth has this story become so entrenched against all odds – in spite of so very many incontrovertible facts that belie it?

The late 1980s saw the publication of “Manufacturing Consent. The Political Economy of the Mass Media”. For young people advocating change and progress, this book has for decades been an eye-opener all over the world, while the establishment reacted once and for all with a lot of slamming of doors.

Three decades down the road, the advertising industry has developed the manufacture of consent – i.e. an understanding of how to control what we think, what we believe, what we fear, what we want – to a level so sophisticated as to make us faint-hearted. Yet, I want to honour the authors Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman (not the least faint-hearted) for demonstrating that propaganda is, here, there and everywhere, a tool used to serve geopolitical, ideological and corporate needs; not least in the so-called free world.

I would urge you to study an enlightening analysis in the Huffington Post called “Don’t Believe Everything You Think: Marketing, Manipulation & The American Mind” by Samuel C. Spitale.

It starts with a safe outline of the obvious, but as he gets into the finer print, I think you will find it interesting regardless of your geopolitical views. The fact that the article dates back to 2017 and seems totally oblivious to the existence of countries outside USA makes it no less relevant as a study of 2022 jingoism and manufacture of consent.

For non-US examples, I add a semi-humorous list compiled by Caitlin Johnstone of some of the “false narratives ” with which “the political/media class pummels our consciousness day in and day out”.

  • We live in a free and democratic society
  • Your government is your friend
  • Capitalism is totally working just fine
  • Putin is trying to take over the world
  • Maduro must go
  • Assad must go
  • The governments of Iran, North Korea, and every other nation which doesn’t bow to imperialist interests must go
  • Assange is a rapist Nazi Russian agent who mistreated his cat so it’s good he’s locked up
  • The TV would never lie to you

I must say I’d never heard the one about TV, but the others are all too familiar.

Meanwhile, in Chile, people have opened the gates for an entirely different kind of narrative. Whether or not the new draft Constitution will be approved by the national plebiscite scheduled for 4 September remains to be seen. You may be sure, there are very powerful forces dead set against it, as the richest percentile stands to lose a great deal. For instance, Article 25 stipulates:

Es deber del Estado asegurar la igualdad de trato y oportunidades. En Chile no hay persona ni grupo privilegiado.

I’ve read a lot of legalese in my time, but I’ve never seen anything quite like that: beautiful and simple. Every man, woman and child – presuming they can read – will understand those two sentences. It will take years to implement them, but people will know their rights.

The Nordic Paradox – part 2

20.10.2021 /

No doubt about it: There is more domestic violence (“Intimate Partner Violence” or IPV) in the Nordic countries and the UK than in, for instance, Spain, Italy and Ireland. In spite of greater gender parity!

Allow me to draw your attention to an Icelandic TV series, “The Flatey Enigma”. This is to all appearances a fairly ordinary crime story, true enough from the 70s., with a vibrant female heroin and a dull and ugly scoundrel who happens to be the investigating police officer.

However, there is nothing ordinary about the series. Just as the heroin has to revert (in 1971) to blackmail to have a particularly interesting article published in an academic journal – because she is only a woman, after all – the director of this series has had to use a “crime device” to demonstrate that Icelandic women were battered in the 1970s.

I watched the four-part series with growing dismay. I had known that conditions were hard for everyone in Iceland back then, and that women rarely had reason to laugh or even smile, but I did not know they were battered. I decided to look into the issue.

In the seventies, some very few women were fortunate or brave enough to go abroad to work and/or study. They had no trouble finding work throughout Scandinavia, because they had a reputation of being extremely hard-working. While abroad, they learned that women need not defer to men, and they learned to talk back. In 1975, back in Iceland, they were able to organise the most remarkable demonstration of female power I have ever heard of: They persuaded the country’s entire female population to go on strike for one day. How they managed, I cannot imagine! But they did.

It was a stunning affair. The country was absolutely paralysed for a whole day. No food on the tables, schools and childcare centres closed. Male doctors had to nurse hospitalised patients, daddies had to change toddlers’ nappies, planes were grounded…

After that, things changed. Everything changed, and very quickly. Vigdis Finbogadottir became president, and Iceland evolved from a miserable backwater where many people still lived in turf huts into a truly modern country. (I hasten to add that the greedy bastards who drove Iceland to the brink of extinction in 2008 were not women. Mind you, women can be greedy bastards too.)

No, Icelandic women need not bow to any man in public. BUT, in private, alas, things are still not well. An article in Foreign Policy notes:

One theory to explain the Nordic paradox is that increased gender equality fuels male resentment, creating frustrations that are channeled into physical violence—a mode of action where men can easily still dominate. Violent outbursts of this sort, fueled by feelings of injured masculine status, are so deeply psychologically motivated that they can be difficult for governments to counteract.

In the same article a link takes us to the abstract of a study carried out by the National Hospital.

Aims: The purpose of this study was to analyse the prevalence of hospital visits and nature of injuries caused by intimate partner violence (IPV) against women and associated costs. All visits to Landspitali National University Hospital by women 18 years or older subjected to IPV, inflicted by a current or former male partner during 2005–2014, were observed and analysed
…. punching (29.7%), shoving (17.8%), kicking (10.5%) and attempted strangulation (9.8%) were the most common types of aetiology. Repeated new visits were 37.8%.

I repeat: There are few Muslim immigrants in Iceland, so it’s no use blaming them.

If asked to pick one of the suggested causes of the Nordic Paradox, I would vote for “backlash”. If you impose norms on a recalcitrant group, it seems intuitively obvious to me that there will be resistance. Some will protest loudly. Others will just take private action.

Female emancipation dethrones the male. Many men have absolutely no wish to sit on a throne and be “boss”, and for them female emancipation is liberating. For many others, however, it is perceived as socially castrating and as a violation of what they consider their birth rights.

There are lessons to be learnt here for countries where female emancipation is still a matter of the future (e.g. Afghanistan). Action will have to be taken to help the male population come to terms with a new and disconcerting (for them) reality.

The Nordic Paradox – part 1

19.10.2021 /

Have you heard of the Nordic Paradox?

I quote a paper on the subject:

Intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) is a global public health issue often assumed to be associated with gender inequality. The so-called Nordic Paradox, the apparently contradictory co-existence of high levels of IPVAW and of gender equality in Nordic countries, has not been adequately explained.

Let me tell you, all this is new-speak in my ears, starting with ” IPVAW”, which is international jargon for what we normally refer to as “domestic violence”.,

The reason I found the said paper was that I was confronted a few weeks ago by friends in Spain who resented my – ehem – “insinuation” that Spaniards go around battering and killing women. Yes it is true that a year or two or three ago, 55 women were killed in Spain. But, my friends continued, how many people live in Spain? So how many femicide victims are there per 100k in Spain?

I was put to shame.

My friends sent me figures and charts and goodness-knows-what, to demonstrate the opposite of what I had posited. Below, you will find a map of the EU countries. Source: Violence against women: an EU-wide summary. The 2012 findings were apparently more or less corroborated in a rather more wide-ranging March 2021 report. You will recognise the “FRA” logo of both reports.

What the map tells us is that the countries with least domestic violence are, interestingly, countries we generally consider Catholic. Countries with the highest reported levels of domestic violence are Denmark, Finland and Latvia. I repeat: these figures are from 2012.

So, are Protestants more violent than Catholics?

Are Catholics more reluctant to report domestic violence than Protestants? What about Muslims?

This line of enquiry is not politically correct, so I will leave it for now.

Norway and Iceland are not on the map as they are only EEA countries.

Statistics Norway provides very little information about domestic violence in Norway. All I found were three terse sentences:

Lifetime Physical and/or Sexual Intimate Partner Violence: 27 %
Physical and/or Sexual Intimate Partner Violence in the last 12 moths: 6 %
Litime Non-Partner Sexual Violence: Official National Statistics Not Available.

As for Iceland you will see that Denmark, Finland and Iceland are high up on a WHO shame list (notice Turkey!!!):

To summarise: In the European Nordic countries, not least in Iceland, there is greater gender parity than practically anywhere else in Europe. Forget the details for now, but let’s just say that women in these countries enjoy as much liberty, pay and prestige as men. E.g.: The Danish, Finnish and Icelandic prime ministers are all women. However, there is more domestic violence in these same countries (and in the UK) than almost anywhere else in Europe.

Again I direct your attention to the interesting paper about a Swedish study that I mentioned by way of introduction. It refers to various suggested explanations for the paradox, such as male backlash at female success, and high alcohol consumption. It discusses whether women in Sweden are more prone to report maltreatment than women elsewhere. It points out that there are reasons to argue that the opposite may be the case. The paper also dismisses the theory that immigrants are at the heart of Sweden’s poor showing, as “othering.

Enter Iceland. Again, Iceland is not on the EU map and is more interesting than Norway in this context, as I hope to demonstrate. Iceland is a particularly interesting country for researchers of — not least — medical, social and natural sciences as it is an island. (Hardly any Moslem immigrants have even considered taking refuge on that cold Atlantic rock. ) Due to its tiny population of about 360 thousand, Island is also frequently a statistical aberration.

So, no, Muslims do not explain IPV in Iceland.

To be continued.

« Older posts

© 2026 Pelshval

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑