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Five minutes of foreign policy

01.08.2023 / pelshvalen

What’s going on in Niger? I wonder. My next thought is: How strange the press is! Today, I’ve checked AP, Reuters and Al Jazeera – these are the most common sources that feed local papers in the West about situations in places to which a news outlet may not be able to send its own correspondents. Naturally, I have also checked my own country’s national broadcasting company, and the one daily paper I tend to follow.

They all say the same thing: The army has deposed the president of Niger, who is now a prisoner in his palace. The new president is a general. In other words a coup. There is some uncertainty as to whether the French are planning military intervention. There is universal condemnation of the coup. Some countries are evacuating their citizens from Niger. Most countries are suspending aid to Niger and even contemplating sanctions.

Period.

What they don’t explain is: Why has there been a military coup in Niger? Well, yes, of course the military is dissatisfied, but why?

By the way, in case you were wondering, the demonym for Niger is Nigerien, as opposed to Nigerian. Hear the pronunciation here. And you might look up the pronunciation of Niger, while you’re at it. No, I did not know it, not until just now, which just goes to show, not only how ignorant I am, but also how forlornly anonymous Niger is.

So how come many sources fail to explain why western leaders are worried about an imprisoned president whose name they probably don’t even remember? After all, he’s imprisoned in a palace. Julian Assange’s plight in Belmarsh Prison is far, far worse.

Take a look at this LA Times article of 31 July, for instance: Not a word – NOT ONE WORD – about the uranium deposits tersely mentioned in Britannica:

Niger’s known reserves of uranium rank among the most important in the world, and the country is one of the world’s top 10 leading producers of uranium.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Niger/Economy

Or the oil deposits.

There were intensive exploration activities on the Agadem block between 2008 and 2017, when the CNPC drilled 166 exploration wells, enabling the discovery of 106 new oil deposits containing 2P recoverable reserves of 815m barrels. The petroleum is high quality with an API gravity of 30 degrees and a very low sulphur content.
https://african.business/2021/11/energy-resources/niger-an-attractive-nation-with-an-emerging-oil-industry

CNPC, by the way is China. China has found that Niger’s oil reserves are so important that they are building a pipeline to export 90,000 barrels pr day.

The Niger–Benin pipeline, measuring 1950km and connecting the Agadem block in eastern Niger to the Beninese side of Sèmé, will be the longest pipeline in Africa. The construction work began on 5 July 2021.
Ibid

The Nigerians must be filthy rich. Actually, uranium isn’t all that expensive, but still.

So I can just imagine why there has been a coup. I guess you can too. And I can just imagine why France already has at least 1,500 troops and a drone base in Niger, and why the US has at least 1,100 troops and two drone bases in Niger. Why, surely everybody understands that it’s the most natural thing in the world for the US to protect people from themselves here there and everywhere, and for French troops to be just casually hanging around in former colonies. After all, the US and France are democracies, i.e. rule-of-law and can-do-no-harm-countries, as opposed, of course, to China and Russia that are both do-no-good-countries.

All for now.

Addendum on 2 August 2023:
An article by Vijay Prashad and Kambale Musavuli answers my questions.

On antisemitism in the West

21.07.2023 / pelshvalen

So, the British Labour Party has barred Jeremy Corbyn from running as Labour’s candidate in the next election on the grounds of – of all things – antisemitism. Corbyn’s, that is.

The dethroning of Corbyn has allowed Keir Starmer to take his place and he, Starmer, is certainly neither willing nor able to rally opposition to the ghastly neoliberal policies that are hurtling the UK back into a pre-war state, a pre-first-World-War state, mind you, as described by Charles Dickens in his heart-rattling novels.

Labour’s strait-jacketing of Jeremy Corbyn on the grounds of his alleged antisemitism was the greatest blessing the top decile could possibly wish for in the UK. The trick will surely be – has already been – copied by powers-that-be in other countries, which is why I am writing this piece.

Just exactly what has Corbyn done? Well, apparently, he failed to take sufficient action in response to complaints against persons in his party; antisemitism complaints. According to Corbyn himself, action was taken, but procedures were initially unclear and the process was sluggish, particularly to begin with.

He is quoted as follows:

Anyone claiming there is no antisemitism in the Labour party is wrong. Of course there is, as there is throughout society, and sometimes it is voiced by people who think of themselves as on the left. Jewish members of our party and the wider community were right to expect us to deal with it, and I regret that it took longer to deliver that change than it should
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/29/jeremy-corbyn-rejects-findings-of-report-on-antisemitism-in-labour

The above statement is to some extent corroborated by the so-called “Investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party”, which was the document that eventually lead to Corbyn’s fall:

While there have been some recent improvements in how the Labour Party deals with antisemitism complaints, our analysis points to a culture within the Party which, at best, did not do enough to prevent antisemitism and, at worst, could be seen to accept it
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/investigation-into-antisemitism-in-the-labour-party.pdf

Now, I haven’t read the entire 130 page document, just leafed through it, as it were, searching for clues as to just how that alleged antisemitism had been expressed. I found no particulars, no details, not even in the chapter starting on page 24 “Acts of unlawful harassment which the Labour Party is responsible for”.

However under the heading on page 8 “Our findings – Unlawful Acts”, we find a summary

using antisemitic tropes and

suggesting that complaints of antisemitism were fake or smears.

ibid

The “using antisemitic tropes” rings a bell with me, though. Yes, that sounds bad. Remember the Merchant of Venice? Very bad, in fact. But what are antisemitic tropes today? And what is antisemitism today? I find the very concept disturbing. After all, the notion of “race” has long since been discredited or, to quote Encyclopedia Britannica, “has no biological validity”:

Racism, then, is an anachronism. Criticism of religion, on the other hand, is still dangerous ground, true, but not illegal – to my knowledge – in countries of the so-called “collective West”.

Finally, you have ethnic differences – and the term ethnic can mean almost anything you want it to. “Antisemitism” seems to have landed in this last and most shadowy terrain; convenient, you must admit, for Zionist hardliners, who – you must also admit – rule the roost in Israel and have done so for a long time.

Now, Jeremy Corbyn is not the only person to have lost his job due to alleged antisemitism. There have been several other instances, not least in academia and journalism. Criticizing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is not something you do if you have children to provide for or a career that matters to you. (Just to give you an example, every time I have expressed, here, support for the Palestinian cause, this site has been subjected to DDoS attacks.)

So the crux of this thorny matter appears to be how antisemitism is defined. That is easily ascertained: 37 Nations and 865 Orgs Worldwide had (by March 2022) adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which is vague, to say the least, so it includes 11 examples of what would constitute antisemitism, and according to a few of them, criticism of certain Israeli policies will be construed as antisemitism.

Since this post concerns the UK in particular, I should add that the UK government, adopted the IHRA definition in 2016. The two main political parties and most academic institutions, could not, of course, be seen to “condone” antisemitism, so they all eventually did so too. Even in the UK, however, there was some criticism:

Some have expressed concerns that the IHRA definition restricts freedom of speech by prohibiting legitimate criticism of Israeli government action in the Palestinian territories.

Geoffrey Robertson QC set out many of these concerns in an opinion prepared for the Palestinian Return Centre, arguing that several of the IHRA’s examples were drafted in a way that could be detrimental to freedom of speech. He also criticised the Prime Minister for adopting the definition without Parliamentary debate and without the caveats proposed by the Home Affairs Committee.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/uk-governments-adoption-of-the-ihra-definition-of-antisemitism/

Finally, this year, somebody spoke up at last. A letter was sent to UN Secretary-General António Guterres and Under Secretary-General Miguel Ángel Moratinos, expressing concerns that, based on the IHRA definition, just about anyone could be labelled antisemite. The signatories included:

Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel*
Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights
Al-Haq, Law in the Service of Mankind
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Amnesty International*
B’Tselem
Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement
Human Rights Watch
International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
Ligue des droits de l’Homme (LDH)
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR)
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel

The signatories recommend an alternative definition of antisemitism, that of the Jerusalem declaration. See in particular section “C. Israel and Palestine: examples that, on the face of it, are not antisemitic” [my highlight]”

I am not as polite as the signatories of the above-mentioned letter to the Secretary General. I put to you that the UK has compounded its disgraceful record of press freedom infringements (cf. Julian Assange) by letting itself be bulldozed into labelling as antisemitism valid criticism of Israel.

Mind you, real antisemitism does exist. I think it is largely based on ignorance – but I have occasionally been stunned to hear, in seemingly “normal” conversations, some very weird, almost mystical, ideas about Jews. As Philip Roth’s novels remind us time and time again, the persistence of such ideas have complex roots and causes. As long as he lived, he seemed to be continuously grappling with them.

However, to my knowledge – and I may well be wrong, because there is so much we are not told – there have fortunately been no outright massacres of Jews for a long time. However there are still, to this day, almost routinely, massacres of Muslims. Does “antisemitism” cover the politically motivated killing of so-called Arabs?

Do people in the UK or USA get kicked out of academia or political positions for holding strong anti-Islamic views, for peddling anti-Islamic “tropes”?

In 2019, 51 people were massacred and 40 were injured in two mosques in New Zealand. Could that be referred to as antisemitism?

In June this year, an overcrowded boat carrying migrants from Libya went down off the coast of Greece. There were 104 survivors, but more than 500 remain missing. That was not, admittedly, a massacre. But there is pretty solid evidence that the authorities ignored repeated calls for help from the ship for several hours before it actually sank. Does that not effectively amount to — well, yes, — a massacre?

In the Israeli-occupied territories, at least 177 Palestinians have been killed by the murderous IDF just this year, and Israel’s finance minister declares that a Palestinian town of more than 5000 should be “wiped out”. These killings are not, strictly speaking, massacres, but they are extra-judicial, and they seem to be part of a pretty concerted effort to exterminate Palestinians on the “West Bank”.

Nevertheless, the US House of Representatives just passed a resolution according to which “the State of Israel is not a racist or apartheid state, … and the United States will always be a staunch partner and supporter of Israel.” Just so. USA’s men and women of power defend and uphold their God-given right to continue living in Never-never-land.

Afterthought (24 hours later):

Speaking of massacres, did you know about the Paris Massacre? I did not until I recently read Annie Ernaux’s novel Les années. She refers to 17 October 1961, assuming the reader would understand the reference, and muses: How much did we suspect, back then? Were we not just enjoying the unusually balmy weather?

I looked up the reference, and this is what I found:

The Paris massacre of 1961 (also called the 17 October 1961) was the mass killing of Algerians who were living in Paris by the French National Police. It occurred on 17 October 1961, during the Algerian War (1954–62). Under orders from the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, the National Police attacked a demonstration by 30,000 pro-National Liberation Front (FLN) Algerians. After 37 years of denial and censorship of the press, in 1998 the government finally acknowledged 40 deaths, while some historians estimate that between 200 and 300 Algerians died. Death was due to heavy-handed beating by the police, as well as mass drownings, as police officers threw demonstrators into the river Seine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961

Maybe the truth about that massacre would never have come to light if Maurice Papon had not been accused in 1981 and found guilty in 1998 of responsibility for the deportation of 1,690 Bordeaux Jews to Drancy internment camp from 1942–44. All of which just goes to show that suppression of information in the press is no novelty.

And yes, over the past 24 hours, this site has been honoured with a DDoS attack.

La semana trágica

12.07.2023 / pelshvalen

No language can compete with Spanish when it comes to heartbreaking titles (surely you will admit that “The tragic week” isn’t up to much).

There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of tragic weeks scattered throughout the pages of history, even (or rather, not least) recent history, yet my search engine only returns results from Argentina (1919) and Spain (1909) although my search string was “tragic week” (yes, in English).

I am not going to write about Argentina’s La semana trágica, because I am more interested in another aspect of Argentinian history, the extermination of the Mapuche on the Argentinian side of the cordillera. There have been many tragic weeks for the Mapuche, not – I repeat – not 500 years ago, but towards the end of the nineteenth century, a time when most of the “civilised” world was seeing the light of humanitarianism. Alas, not so in the elevated circles of Buenos Aries. To this day a twang of haughtiness can clearly be detected in that repeatedly bankrupt metropolis.

As Pedro Cayuqueo writes in his fascinating Historia secreta mapuche: “The Argentinians, they keep saying even to this very day, are all grandchildren of gringos or Europeans”.

The E ncyclopedia Britannica’s short article about the Mapuche doesn’t even mention the Argentinian extermination campaign, referred to in Wikipedia as the “conquest of the desert“. “Desert” is a misnomer, by the way, as the Pampas and Patagonia were extremely fertile, which was why they were so coveted. Still are.

No, for the moment, I am looking at Spain’s Semana trágica. Like any self-respecting tragedy, it had a prelude, an overture, as it were, one that is 300 years long – far too long. So I shall just take a cut of it, a pars pro toto: Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, who was assassinated (understandibly, if you ask me) by an anarchist in 1897. He had been passionately opposed to universal suffrage, which would, he feared, favour socialism. He served six terms as prime minister of Spain under weak Bourbon sovereigns. I quote Wikipedia:

The policies of repression and political manipulation that Cánovas made a cornerstone of his government helped foster the nationalist movements in both Catalonia and the Basque provinces and set the stage for labour unrest during the first two decades of the 20th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_C%C3%A1novas_del_Castillo as on 10 July 2023

I add, for the record, that the expression “labour unrest” in the above quote is a euphemism, if ever there was one. The violence was volcanic.

During a religious procession in 1896, in Barcelona, a bomb was thrown. Immediately three hundred men and women were arrested. Some were Anarchists, but the majority were trade unionists and Socialists. They were thrown into the notorious prison at the fortress of Montjuïc in Barcelona and tortured. After a number had been killed, or had gone insane, their cases were taken up by the liberal press of Europe, resulting in the release of a few survivors. Reputedly it was Cánovas del Castillo who ordered the torture, including the burning of the victims’ flesh, the crushing of their bones, and the cutting out of their tongues. Similar acts of brutality and barbarism had occurred during his regime in Cuba, and Canovas remained deaf to the appeals and protests of civilized conscience.
ibid

So much for the overture. Now for the actual semana tragica:

In 1909, the Spanish government sent troops of reservists over the sea to fight against Moroccans. The Spanish government, “the Crown”, considered Morocco its property – and had always considered peasants its property to do with as it saw fit. The problem was that a) Moroccans were not appreciative of Spanish ownership and that b) 520 of the peasants had already completed active duty six years earlier. Besides, they had families who depended on them.

Mind you, Morocco was a meat grinder for the Spanish malnourished, poorly armed and untrained soldiers. In 1859, 4000 Spanish soldiers had perished there, and 1893 had seen more military disasters because, of course, Moroccans fiercely defended their land. As would you and I.

A number of pious ladies saw the conscripts off from several harbours in Cataluña, handing out medallions of the Holy Mother and whatnot, but the conscripts were stony-faced as they boarded the ships. Their wives, however, were not. They were furious. How were they supposed to feed their children when their husbands were carted off? At the time, only prostitutes were allowed to work.

In 1909, once the half-starving conscripts had landed in Morocco – I am quoting Wikipedia:

a series of skirmishes over the following weeks cost the Spanish over a thousand casualties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rif_War as on 11 July 2023

Meanwhile, all Hell broke loose in Barcelona. The “tragic week”. To sum it up, there was a riot, the outcome of which was, to quote Wikipedia:

Police and army casualties were 8 dead and 124 wounded, while 104 to 150 civilians were reportedly killed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragic_Week_(Spain) ason 11 July 2023

That’s it! That was the tragic week, the 8 dead law enforcers, and the 104 to150 civilians. Not the “over a thousand casualties” in Morocco.

You would have thought that the Spanish Crown learnt a lesson in 1909, but Spain was adamant. Spanish peasants were bled again and again in Morocco. In 1921 Spain “sufferered anywhere from 8,000 to 10,000 deaths” according to Encyclopedia Britannica. A commission was set up to investigate the debacle. “The report that resulted—the Expediente Picasso—was damning. It highlighted negligible military leadership, poor troop morale and training, problematic frontline logistics shoddy equipment, and the generally pitiable state of Spain’s colonial army.”

Still, the Spanish Crown failed to learn. Quoting Encyclopedia Britannica again:

The Rif War balance sheet was striking. Official Spanish casualty figures published in the late 1920s put losses at approximately 43,500 troops killed, missing, or wounded. Moreover, estimates put Spanish war-related expenses at 3.2 billion pesetas (more than $540 million), an astronomical figure given the size of Spain’s economy at the time.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Rif-War/Expansion-and-escalation

Mind you, the poor bastards dying in Morocco were not the “owners” of Morocco. The owners were all enjoying the good life back in Spain. Neither they nor their sons or grandsons had to serve in the meat grinder. They merely paid a coin or two to a couple of their peasants to replace them.

Homo sapiens has changed, of course – thank goodness! We are good, now, democratic, just, and above all, fair. Oh, and I forgot: honest.

John Mearsheimer

05.07.2023 / pelshvalen

John Mearsheimer is a prominent political scientist and scholar within the so-called realist school of thought. For years he warned USA not to even think about inviting Ukraine into NATO. His prophesies were fulfilled, as we have seen, and for that he has been “punished”, as it were, banished from mainstream media. Like so many other critics of US foreign policy, he has become a Substack fugitive.

Interestingly, he was the author of a rather curious book published in 2011: Why Leaders Lie. According to Wikipedia, the book maintains:

….that leaders do not lie much to other countries, and that democratic leaders are actually more likely to lie to their own people than autocrats…. Mearsheimer argues that leaders are most likely to lie to their own people in democracies that fight wars of choice in distant places. The author says that it is difficult for leaders to lie to other countries because there is not much trust among them, especially when security issues are at stake, and you need trust for lying to be effective. He concludes that it is easier for leaders to lie to their own people because there is usually a good deal of trust between them.

Mearsheimer suggests that most political lies fall into one of five categories: inter-state lies, fear-mongering, strategic cover-ups, nationalist myths, and liberal lies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Leaders_Lie, as on 5 July 2023

In his article in Substack of 23 June this year (Substack invites you to subscribe, but allows you to “continue reading” if you don’t want to), Mearsheimer paints a very gloomy picture of the outcome of the Ukraine war. Unlike Jeffrey Sacks, another prominent statesman now banned from mainstream media, he more or less discounts the possibility of a peace accord. Ever. I must say I deeply hope he is wrong, but his arguments are compelling, and he certainly was right about his pre-war warnings.

The article is interesting also due to the very numerous references he cites.

Prayer for Africa

24.06.2023 / pelshvalen

What are the headlines in your country?

I bet one of today’s biggest headlines in your country is the same as in my country: about the implosion of a small vessel somewhere off the coast of Canada. It had a handful of passengers, it is true, and to their families, we of course offer our condolences. I’m sure that being imploded is a disagreeable way of dying.

Mind you, I watched Titanic, too – the film, that is – and I admit I was impressed by the luxurious tableware and the music and the grandeur of the disaster. Goodness, yes!

But frankly, looking back now, I realise that Titanic was nothing – even visually nothing – compared to the grandeur that meets the eye if you run a Google images search for climate+disaster+Africa. Try it.

I wonder, I honestly do, how it is that while few Europeans, and maybe even US Americans, remain dry-eyed at the edge of any one of the innumerable and endless French fields decked with plain white crosses over nameless humans who fell there in WWI, we turn our backs to what is going on in Africa. There are doubtless many and complex reasons, but I will mention two, for rhetorical purposes:

1) Could it be that we feel guilty, that we suspect that – although we never meant to hurt them, oh no! – that we suspect that our welfare (let’s be honest and admit that anyone who is reading this enjoys conditions of life far superior to the average African living in Africa) somehow, to some degree, for obscure reasons beyond us, has contributed to their plight? Through no fault of our own, of course.

2) Could it be that in spite of all our activism for Black rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights and whatnot rights, we are just a wee bit, you know – just a tiny bit – um, I hardly dare use the word – racist?

Those who fell in WWI are unknown to most of us, but they were white. Those who are dying in the Mediterranean are also unknown to us, but they are not white. I hear there is much talk of anti-Semitism again. I resent such talk, not – I repeat NOT – because I condone what is real anti-Semitism in any way, shape or form, but because the term “anti-Semitism” is being abused with impunity to commit horrendous racist crimes against Palestinians, whose skin is just a touch darker than the former Europeans who moved to Israel after WWII.

So how, I wonder, do Africans feel about all this? Most of them are much darker, even, than Palestinians. Are we all, in the West (and Israel undoubtedly belongs to the West) a bunch of closet racists?

A good photographer can take stunningly beautiful photos of despair, while hinting at even more stunningly precarious human existence shrouded in mist or sand, somehow alive under unbelievably difficult conditions. David Attenborough has shown us that there are tiny animals that survive miraculously in the Sahara. Maybe we shall see him in a final scene, telling us about how the unbelievably brave and resistant sapiens sapiens is miraculously surviving in, yes, a spreading-like-wildfire-desert, in Africa. That would be his crowning masterpiece.

Many don’t survive of course. Another 39 just drowned, trying to cross the Mediterranean. But we don’t want to hear about starving Africans. It’s their own fault, isn’t it? They’re corrupt, aren’t they, and they’re ignorant. We, of course, in the West, are neither corrupt nor ignorant.

Sci-fi authors regularly write about how the entire planet has been destroyed by weapons of mass destruction, greed and climate disasters. I put to the community of sci-fi authors: Let Africans survive. The rest of us are useless.

I’M NOT FINISHED!

I check the news from the Norwegian National Broadcasting company every single day without fail. So I can assure you that we do hear about Africa from time to time. Listening to or reading the news from the Norwegian National Broadcasting Company, you will get the impression that the only problem in Africa is a few warlords. There are, indeed, a few horrible warlords in Africa, in Sudan, for instance, and in Congo. There is one fundamental difference, however, between a warlord from the global south and a warlord from the filthy-rich “West”: Warlords from the Global South would not be able to start WWIII. Our warlords, however, in the filthy-rich West, seem determined to do just that. After all, their kids will not be the ones to serve and die on the battle fields.

Warlords are an irresponsible psychopathic lot, agreed, be they white, black or green. Hegemon warlords, however, are the very, very worst.

Obedience

12.06.2023 / pelshvalen

To be honest, I know next to nothing about conditions for the press in Russia. I expect there is little if any room for dissent. Would-be critical journalists are up against not only powerful people, but also Government, as the Navalnyj example has demonstrated so dramatically. But then again, Russians don’t expect a free press. Critics were brutally persecuted under the czars (e.g. Dostoevskij was sentenced to death) less so under Lenin, it is true, but certainly under Stalin. Then there was a brief “thaw”, before business as usual resumed with Leonid Brezhnev, as dreadfully dreary a chap as you ever saw. Russians don’t expect a free press. They never had it and they doubt they ever will. People in Russia find out, somehow, what they need to know.

That’s the difference between here and there: knowing what you need to know.

In Five Eyes countries and Europe, people honestly believe they enjoy a free press. All over the world, we watch and ridicule the circus of US politics with its plethora of partisan media outlets, dissent, vitriolic criticism of the currently ruling Democratic Party and even the President, on all sorts of issues. Yet, US citizens can’t seem to find out what they need to know. Else, why is 50–90 per cent of the population there just getting poorer? Why is the top decile just getting very much richer, year by year, regardless of whether the president is from one or the other party?

Have I quoted this guy before?:

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
Chomsky, of course. Not that I agree with everything he has written – far from it! In the field of linguistics, for instance…. be that as it may

Take the issue of abortion as an example, a tremendously hot topic in the USA. In effect, if abortions are prohibited, premarital sex will basically be off bounds. Think about it, that is really hot stuff! True, there are contraceptives, but they are not fool-proof or without side-effects. For the Democratic Party, the assault on abortion rights (supported almost exclusively by voters of the Republican Party) must be conceived as a blessing, because many traditionally Republican voters will secretly cast their ballots for the “other side”, the Dems, not least since the two parties no longer differ all that much on key issues.

Both parties are, after all, neo-liberal to the core and basically also militaristic. How much of US tax payers’ money has disappeared, under Biden, into the abyss of an extremely corrupt Ukraine, with support from most of the Republican Party? I am not going to look it up for you. I’m tired of producing facts that are blithely disregarded.

Why do I go on and on, you ask, about the USA? I keep harping, you say, about US iniquities although I live in Europe. True. Guilty as charged. WHY? Because European NATO member states are US vassals, that’s why.

So yes, let’s look at those of us who live in Europe? Do we know what we need to know? “As long as it takes,” Biden said, but what he seems to have meant was: “no matter what it takes”. Do we, in Europe, understand Biden’s and Stoltenberg’s gamble? Have we, in all our European Democracies, been asked what we think about being the playthings of US attempts to crush a rival? We were told only that:

1) “Every country must be allowed to decide what kids to invite to its birthday party” and

2) “He punched first.”

Repeated every day, many times a day, over I-have-lost-count-of-the-number of days, these two puerile arguments have turned Europe into a gigantic kindergarten.

Do we who live in Europe know that we would be well advised to enjoy every last drop of what may prove to be our last months or maybe even weeks? Do we realise we should be making peace with family members we haven’t spoken to for years? Do we understand that we should imagine ourselves terminally ill? In plain words: What would you do, if you knew you might die within the next six months?

In the late 1970-s, I ridiculed USSR animosity to US chewing gum and Levies. Now I understand that the USSR had every reason to fear what we now understand as US “soft power”. Europe flew right into the net of soft power and is now – forgive my French – a Eunuch.

I put to you, though I may be wrong, that holding dissenting views here, in Norway, is now more personally damning than it is in Russia. A friend of mine who has actually survived being a dissenter in a dictatorship, said: This is worse than in a dictatorship, because, there, you had at least fellow-dissenters. Here, in Norway, none are visible. Here, in Norway, if you disagree with the US/NATO destruction of Europe, you shut up.

In this country, Norway, nobody who is not suicidal will dare publish, in any paper – academic, journalistic or otherwise – any criticism of the US/NATO proxy war against Russia.

You will know, by now, that I maintain that the Ukraine issue is not as simple as the New York Times or Klassekampen would have us believe.

So I end my diatribe with a link to a source I happen to trust more than I trust the CIA or even the New York Times:

The article is called: “Where do you get your Ukraine news?”

The Great Divide

04.06.2023 / pelshvalen

The other night I had a terrible argument with a couple whom I consider particularly close friends. They were spending the weekend at my place, and we had enjoyed two lovely days, when in the evening, I unwittingly stepped on a sore toe. Now, I had been very careful not to even mention Ukraine; in this country we are told in no uncertain terms that we are defending democracy against fascism and that the war is being waged between good and evil. Moreover, those who exclusively read the New York Times and Guardian – and my friends consider them the ultimate sources of information about current events – will “know for a fact” that such is the case. So no, not a word about Ukraine.

Assuming that we would probably agree about “cancelling”, I joked about this growing trend. There are all sorts of views that qualify as grounds for cancelling these days, and I happen to believe – and assumed that my academic friends would agree – that rather than cancel views we don’t like, we should discuss them. Well, my friends, didn’t agree. They were in fact furious with me: 1) The very concept “cancelling”, they maintained, was invented by the ignorati such as Trump and his followers. There was no such thing as cancelling. 2) Misinformation, however, deserved to be suppressed (i.e. cancelled). “People need to check their facts,” they insisted, and they repeated the word again and again: facts. facts. facts.

Admittedly, a few facts, such as many but far from all historic dates, are more or less incontrovertible (except, perhaps, among philosophers). Conversely, in a war, most “facts” are contentious and a great number go on to be debated for centuries.

Even within the exact sciences, calculations are often debatable, if for no other reason because the figures on which they are based,which in turn rely on other figures based on figures, etc. are open to debate. Most social scientists do not even pretend that their “facts” are conclusive. Historians, however, tend to cheat a bit. After all, when all is said and done, history is anything but a-political.

I forget who said that history is always written by the victors, be they Roman or British or US American, not by the Galls, the African peoples or the indigenous (North, Central and South) Americans. Historians live in the victors’ society and their world view will inevitably reflect that of their surroundings. True there will be the occasional deviant interpretation of past events, but in the end, the version that is accepted science and generally agreed upon is the one that gives the best possible impression of “our actions”,”our country”, “us”.

The breakup of the Soviet Union represented the demise of Communism in Europe. Yet, the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO) which had been established to “defend” Europe against Communism, was not disbanded (why?) and the Great Divide persisted. Why? Why did we not throttle the growth of the monster that was quietly being groomed in our midst? Was there a real threat or was there something else going on? In 2021, Russian military expenditure was fairly modest, whereas the US controlled about 750 bases in at least 80 countries and spent more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. How could anybody imagine that Russia would wish or be able to threaten Europe with such puny means? Even in 2022, the country’s military expenses amounted to a mere 4% of global military expenditure, compared to the USA’s 39%.

Now a SIPRI headline from April 2023 reads: “World military expenditure reaches new record high as European spending surges”. Whom does this absurd military build-up benefit? Certainly not the population of Ukraine! Certainly not the populations of Europe!

The information war waged between the so-called blocks is no less terrifying: the battle for hearts and minds. Remember Vietnam? The Pentagon Papers and the persecution of Daniel Ellsberg? And that was just the beginning.

Before the breakup, during the first Cold War between what the West called Communist states and what so-called Communists called Capitalist states, the stories told on each side were grossly inaccurate. I happen to be familiar with both of them.

Take, for instance, DDR, East Germany, a country which is, with reason, indelibly linked in our minds with “repression”, “fear”, “Stasi”. With reason, yes, but we never heard the whole story. We will probably never know how misinformed we were, because East Germany is gone, subsumed into a greater Germany, and those who lived there have nothing but flighty memories to go by when evoking the past. The German writer Jenny Erpenbeck is one who recalls beautiful fragments of what is gone. True, even in the worst of places you find happy people, just as even in Beverly Hills there are lots of suicides. So I agree, fragments of memory are not reliable.

Analysing quality of life is no joke anywhere, let alone in an entire country, now non-existant, yet still reviled, both by the West and by the East. The only defenders of what was once East Germany are people who actually lived there.

If NATO “wins” Ukraine, as that horrible man at the top insists it will, will the Ukrainians weep for joy? Weep, they will, you may be sure.

The Great Divide runs not only between East and West, but straight down the middle of our societies, splitting families and friendships, spreading distrust, even hate — as welfare states are mangled by military budgets. And fear, yes, because the absurd contradictions imbedded in the concept of waging war as a deterrent to war confuse and frighten us. We suspect we’re being had. We all know that unless these spiralling excesses stop, there will be war for us all. We blame the Russians, but that does not make us feel better.

Formerly respected news outlets, which used to argue about political issues, now all clamour for more weaponry. All who try to paint a fuller picture of the situation are vilified, though I have not yet seen them referred to as “traitors” – just a question of time, you may be sure. Here is a short video explaining what happens to “the fuller picture“.

In short, I very much doubt that the press is much freer in the West than in Russia. In fact I suspect that here, the battle for hearts and minds (in short, indoctrination) has been more successful. Nevertheless it is growing ever more aggressive (in short, authoritarian), not least in the UK, which after Brexit appears to be accountable only to the US administration, not to the EU and certainly not to the British people.

I recommend a conversation between Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Edward Snowden — remember him and the “No Such Agency” story that broke exactly ten years ago on 6 June. The conversation, on Glenn Greenwald’s site, starts at about 21 minutes into the video.

What enlightenment is not

17.05.2023 / pelshvalen

Yep, artificial intelligence and Wikipedia have already met, I fear. Or are the automatons at work human? Diligent cancelists? At any rate, things are starting to happen, awful things reminiscent of noxious chemical reactions.

The other day, I looked up Helsinki Times in Wikipedia. The first paragraph read:

Helsinki Times is the first English language daily online newspaper in Finland providing news about Finland and the world for English-speaking readers resident in the country. A weekly printed edition was issued between 2007 and 2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki_Times (as at 17 May 2023)

That sounded ok, The article went on to tell me that “notable guest columnists include ….” I looked up those I did not know, including Cynthia McKinney.

Wikipedia’s introductory sentence about Cynthia McKinney was:

Cynthia Ann McKinney (born March 17, 1955) is an American politician, academic, and conspiracy theorist [my emphasis].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_McKinney (as at 17 May 2023)

Now I have no idea of what views are held by Cynthia McKinney, who is a member of the Democratic Party. Since she has served six terms in the House of Representatives, she must have served her voters well. She is sure to hold various views which you or I may or may not not share, but HONESTLY: Committing character assassination of Cynthia McKinney in the very first sentence of the Wikipedia article about her seems a bit over the top, no? I don’t know what “conspiracy theorist” views she holds, mind you: Wikipedia having rubbished her, I naturally read no further.

Is Wikipedia now a guardian of a modern “Index Librorum Prohibitorum” ( a list of written works condemned as heretical or injurious to the Christian faith by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in 1563)?

Who gets to define something as a conspiracy theory? It certainly isn’t anybody I know.

I am told that if you don’t believe the official story about the murder of JFK, you hold a conspiracy theory. I look up Lee Harvey Oswald in Wikipedia. The article is extremely long. It contains no doubts about the matter, no unanswered questions: The man was emotionally screwed, a defector to the USSR and he did it. He killed Kennedy. Alone. Period. In Wikipedia he is damned without a trial.

I read somewhere just the other day that 70% of the US population have doubts about that story; 70% of the US population are “conspiracy theorists”?

What is a conspiracy theory? Firstly, the expression is pejorative. If you hold conspiracy theories, you should get your head examined, and people you know will cross to the other side of the street when they see you. Conspiracy theories tend to 1) question the intentions of powerful institutions — say banks, the CIA, the President, the national health authorities, etc. 2) Their dissemination is deemed a “threat to Democracy”, to “national security”, etc.

It’s usually the mainstream press that gets to attach the bell to the cat, and the social media will immediately follow suit. The mainstream press does not need to pretend to be unbiased, on the contrary. It’s supposed to promulgate political positions. It might encourage debate on some issues – for instance, about the environmental benefits of electric cars – but conspiracy theories are above question, or should I say below question. They are so base, they must not be put on the table. They are simply trampled on.

Encyclopaedias, however, are supposed to hold certain academic, yea, scientific standards. They may present differing views about controversial issues, including the arguments supporting those views, but it is not for the encyclopaedist to make the final judgment unless the arguments on one side are particularly flimsy.

The arguments raising doubts about the official story of the JFK killing are not flimsy. In the last and very brief paragraph about Lee Harvey Oswald, sub-titled “Other investigations and dissenting theories” those arguments are, however, not presented. A couple of films are listed, presumably to lengthen the paragraph. Remember Oliver Stone’s film JFK? A rather compelling story, no? Too compelling, it would seem, because it is not among the films listed.

The JFK case was a long time ago, and principal players in that drama are long gone. But some lasting damage has been done: You and I know that we cannot believe everything we are told by presidents, government agencies and corporate spokespersons even though they earnestly look you straight in the eye from the TV screen. Had the US authorities not put so much effort into suppressing the “dissenting theories”, the damage would have been far greater.

And now we can no longer trust the intentions of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is, or rather was, our encyclopedia. We made it. Hundreds and thousands of us contributed painstakingly to its remarkable growth. True, we always knew that in the heat of a scuffle, some articles would be skewed. Who can blame a writer from an occupied state who is less than objective about the occupying country! However, since we all had access, we could edit, correct, and view the article’s history. We still can, of course, but with artificial intelligence, it’s a losing battle, I fear.

Today, I came across, once again, an important and well-sourced article in the Grayzone. Articles in the Grayzone tend to be a bit tedious, as they seek to adhere strictly to the source. They are not colourful, ironic or full of beautiful metaphors. They are simply dull, yet, sometimes extremely interesting. I was sure the Grayzone article satisfied journalistic and even scientific standards, so I gave Wikipedia a new chance. This is what I got by way of an introductory paragraph:

The Grayzone is an American far-left news website and blog founded and edited by American journalist Max Blumenthal. The website, initially founded as The Grayzone Project, was affiliated with AlterNet before becoming independent in early 2018. A fringe website, it is known for misleading reporting and sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes The Grayzone has denied human rights abuses against Uyghurs, promulgated conspiracy theories about Venezuela, Xinjiang, Syria and other regions, and promoted pro-Russian propaganda during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Grayzone has been described by Commentary as a propaganda shop devoted to pushing pro-Assad, pro-Maduro, pro-Putin, and pro-Hamas narratives. [My highlights.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grayzone (as at 17 May 2023)

Wow! Kill, kill, kill. Is it really no longer possible to simply disagree with content? Does it have to be savaged?

Wkipedia appears to be rapidly descending into an artificial intelligence Hades from which there will probably be no return, unless the damage done is the work of diligent cancelist humans.

On the other hand, GPT chatbot is basically the child of Silicon Valley, which is basically affiliated with the Democratic Party establishment. So whether the automatons at work are digital or human, the ongoing editing of Wikipedia appears to bear the imprint of cancelist Dems.

Back to Palestine

14.05.2023 / pelshvalen

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

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

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

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

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

Her speech included two very provocative sentences:

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

and

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

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

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

About Hebron in the occupied West Bank

About Jerusalem

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

Pelshval

Page 10 of 42

Five minutes of foreign policy

On antisemitism in the West

La semana trágica

John Mearsheimer

Prayer for Africa

Obedience

The Great Divide

What enlightenment is not

Back to Palestine

Suggested reading

PELSHVAL

SONGS OF THE FURRY WHALE

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