Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Tag: (dis)information war

Then what?

25.06.2025 /

So the US finally attacked Iran, as most of us knew it would, sooner or later; the attack was inevitable. Not only due to pressure from the Israel lobby and the military-industrial complex, but also because the US has every reason to fear that BRICS will undercut US supremacy.

I woke up with a start in the middle of the night 21-22 June, and knew at once that now, just now, it had happened: the US had bombed Iran (even though Trump had stated, just two days earlier, that he would give Iran two weeks to mull their fragile position).

I will not dwell upon the consequences for the USA. I will not speculate about who will be the “winner”.

What is certain, though, is that the winner will not be the US – if for no other reason because the USA hasn’t won a single war since I was born. (Actually, that is not quite true: I urge you to listen to the historian David Gibbs explain how the US “won” the Kosovo War in 1999.)

Israel will not be the winner either. Israelis are roughly 8 million. As we have learnt from Tucker Carlson, Iran has a population of 92 million, lots and lots of mountains and tremendous pride. In fact, Israel has already suffered considerable damage.

We do not know how Israel’s neighbouring states will react, and to what extent authoritarian US-backed regimes will be able to restrain angry pro-Palestinian populations. After all, the Shiite Iranians supported the Sunni Palestinians, which the US-backed Sunni regimes did not. A lot of people must be very angry.

Iran will, of course, suffer more than bears thinking about. Iran has now been subjected to unprovoked attacks by two nuclear powers. Iran is not a nuclear power. I repeat: Iran is not a nuclear power! But pulverising countries is one of the things the US and Israel seem to find particularly enjoyable.

Moreover, World of Warcraft is not the only US forte. Geopolitical analysts tend to forget the tremendous soft power wielded by the US. Decades of Hollywood, jazz, popular music, Microsoft, Google Search, Netflix and HBO, etc., etc. and etc. dampen the sense of outrage that should have brought citizens of the world to the very doorsteps of their presidents’, kings’ and prime ministers’ dwellings. Citizens of the world should be loudly clamouring against the madness of launching the preliminaries of a new world war. We have been drugged into a state of numbness, and are blind and deaf to the mendacity of US narratives. Here, there and almost everywhere, we are under the sticky thumb of the US entertainment industry.

Iran has been coveted by the USA for a very long time. See the brief clip of General Wesley Clark (interviewed on Democracy Now in 2007). Wesley Clark is an extremely charming man, it seems, and he was considering running for president again when this interview took place. You might also listen to his amusing account, from 22 to 25 minutes into the full interview about plans for the invasion of Haiti. An exceptionally charming, I repeat, and dangerous man, with a wonderful sense of humour.

There are those who maintain that Israel is running the USA. There are others who maintain that “defence” of Israel is merely a pretext.

As the economist Michael Hudson puts it:

The motivation for the attack on Iran has nothing to do with any attempt by Iran to protect its national sovereignty by developing an atom bomb. The basic problem is that the United States has taken the initiative in trying to pre-empt Iran and other countries from breaking away from dollar hegemony and U.S. unipolar control.

So if you think that the cessation of hostilities between USA/Israel and Iran is anything but temporary, think again. Israel agreed to the ceasefire only to catch its breath. The war has just barely begun.

Meanwhile, back at base camp, what the EU will do is anybody’s guess. Europe has for some time seemed suicidal. European leaders are determined to engage in military Keynesianism. Nobody quite understands why. True, Chancellor Merz appears to be a perfect idiot. P.M. Starmer also appears to be a perfect idiot. But surely they are surrounded by teams of advisers, highly educated specialists?

I find David Gibbs’ take on the matter very interesting. The EU and Europe, he explains in the conversation referred to above, lost their independence during the Kosovo war of 1989-1990. It is not news to me to learn that most European states, including my own country, are US vassals. And it should not be news to me to learn that in a vassal state, even historians, political (and other) scientists, and journalists must spend much of their professional life genuflecting in the emperor’s anteroom. Confer the recent White House pressure on even the most prestigious US universities. In Debate on the CIA and Academe, David Gibbs offers valuable insight into how and why academia refrains from pointing out cracks in foreign policy narratives, about which there is a wealth of available information for those who have access to the sources.

I decided to check David Gibbs’s sources on the Kosovo War, and have taken a long look at his 2009 book “First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia”, which I recommend. I find his documentation compelling.

I know my compatriots, and maybe your compatriots, too, want to believe that we are on the right side in a battle between good and evil and that NATO is defending us in that battle. I have long suspected that we are being misled and that US foreign policy is not, and has never been about good versus evil.

This is not the time to make babies

03.09.2023 /

The Norwegian bellicose foreign minister Huitfelt has just been exposed in what appears to be a case of serious corruption. Her husband made some strikingly lucrative investments after she became a Cabinet member. I have seen no proof that decisions she has made as a foreign minister has contributed to their joint wealth. Yet, there is no doubting that her decisions as a foreign minister contributed to an abrupt hike in the value of stock in the arms industry, in which he invested. We all assume that, at the very least, his investments were based on information that was not immediately available to the general public, information she certainly possessed.

You should see her puckered cocker spaniel face as she denies he received the information from her, denies having the slightest idea, even, that he had invested a big lump of their money in stock that would prove extremely valuable just a few days later. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe this sort of thing is called insider trading.

When Bill Clinton earnestly looked into the eyes of the US-American public and stated, enunciating slowly and very clearly, that he had never had sex with … etc., I thought he looked like a playful, slightly abashed dog, never mind what kind of dog. When our blond foreign minister is caught being bad, she definitely looks like a cocker spaniel. I hasten to add that cocker spaniels are anything but as angelic as they look. They can be very, very (and joyfully) naughty. Moreover, they can be very strong.

So what do we do about it? Well, the Norwegian papers are pondering whether she is telling the truth. The truth!!! Since when do politicians tell the truth? I add, for the record, that Foreign Minister Huitfeldt famously expressed, a couple of years ago, her confidence that the British authorities were adhering, and would continue to so, to international Human-rights treaties in their ongoing persecution of Julian Assange, something the British authorities notoriously failed to do, then as now, as Huitfeldt well knew. So much for “the truth.

“Should she be dismissed?”, a few of our dailies ask timorously. “No,” she replies earnestly. “I want to repair my mistake.” A heading reads: “I am deeply sorry that I made a mistake”, with sub-headings to the tune of “- that I did not check the rules.” Rules? In this country, every child older than 5 years knows that insider trading is against the rules, is bad, is evil, is the stuff that Hell is made of. (We were, after all, a deeply religious country until fairly recently.) But she, poor dear, was not aware of “the rules”!

Anybody who reads the international news, knows there is corruption everywhere. Corruption is the stuff the “accelerating ecological breakdown” is made of. But Norway has come a long way by marketing itself as a country that is almost devoid of corruption, that is “peaceful”, that is benign in every sense.

Huitfeldt and her husband were caught, if not not prosecuted. My question now is: What about our prime minister? Regardless of what political views Norwegians have, he is generally regarded as an earnest and relatively devout Christian, a “good man”. But he is also said to be enormously rich. What do we know about the source of his wealth? And what about his friend and political comrade, the warlord Jens Stoltenberg? Has he invested in the “industrial military complex”? For the record, some of that military industrial complex sits right here in Norway

We have just had a period of deluge here in Norway. Tens of thousands of people have lost their homes, many of them permanently. In June, we had a drought that nearly halved the grain harvest. The August deluge ruined much of what was left. France and Spain have seen their harvests crippled by drought year after year. Will Europe be able to even feed itself in coming years? We are in for a long run of droughts and deluges, unprepared as we are to replace Russian gas, and unprepared to meet, not to mention prevent, the climate disasters that have been forecast for decades. The only thing we are prepared for is war. War is always the solution of choice when the powers-that-be have made a mess of thing: War to divert attention from real and, in this case, existential threat.

The Norwegian foreign minister may be suffering some humiliating moments, but she will be fine in the long run, and wealthy, as opposed to those of us who work for median or less wages. I must remind you that median income is “the amount of income that divides a population into two equal groups, half having an income above that amount, and half having an income below that amount” (source: Wikipedia” as at 1/9/2023.) I should add that in Norway, the income of 60% of the population is less than the “average”.

What do you do when you see that you will not be able to pay the rent at the end of the month? I, for one, have not been in that situation for very many years, but I remember. So I know that what you do is to eat cheap and unhealthy food, freeze in winter, have your teeth and those of your children pulled rather than pay regular visits to the dentist, and when your bronchitis makes you too miserable, you splurge on a baby elephant.

We all divert attention away from real – “existential” – threats. The powers-that-be do so by tricking us into hating “the enemy”. As individuals, we trick ourselves into purchasing what we definitely cannot afford.

Let me tell you a secret. When I was as desperately poor as I hope none of my readers will ever be, I almost took a bank loan – in those days, bank loans were thrown at you – to buy a glass piano. Would you believe it? A glass piano! I wasn’t even a half-decent pianist, but an instrument of glass would surely have been the most beautiful object imaginable. Or so I thought, because I had limited recourse to beauty.

Fortunately, I took to my senses. After all, I knew I would someday become an academic of sorts, if not a good pianist, and would be able to lead a “normal” life.

And now, as an academic, I have learnt that foreign affairs are just as business affairs. Please take note, because this is important:

If you are a businessman, your job is to beat your competitors, preferably to take over their customers and suppliers.

  • If you are a nation, your business is to beat competing nations, take over their trade and trading partners.

If you are a businessman you should prevent your employees from unioniising You do so either by firing them or by offering attractive conditions, wages etc.

  • If you are a nation, you should prevent your population from revolting. You do so either by subjecting it to police terror or by providing decent living conditions.

What I’m saying is that neither business nor foreign affairs are based on lofty ideals.

In short, this is definitely not the time to bring babies into the world.

Suggested reading

10.05.2023 /

Article by Jacob Siegel:

A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century
Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation

Though the title may seem sensationalist, the contents of this profound and illuminating analysis are not.

If you prefer to just get a gist of what Jacob Siegel wrote, you can turn to Glenn Greenwald’s interview of him here. The video only starts after a few minutes. Drag the green dot to 9:35.

It is with great sorrow that I add, in case you didn’t know, that Glenn Greenwald’s husband David Miranda died this week at the age of 37. He was also, in his own right, a remarkable man.

David Miranda no longer knows pain, but Glenn Greenwald — an indefatigable champion of a free press and freedom of information — will undoubtedly continue to do so. I am sure there are many of us around the world who feel with him.

© 2025 Pelshval

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑