Shit också, världen är räddad

Helvete också, nu blir det ju ingen apokalyps av det slag jag väntat på typ halva livet. OK, vi får
hoppas att Coronaviruset sprider sig istället. Eller att Jorden krockar med en asteroid. Eller att Donald Trump tappar det *totalt* (as in nuking his mama). Eller att *han* krockar med en asteroid, eller asterisk. Eller nåt jävla jäkelskap.

Obs! Självironisk tweet!

Världen är alltså räddad. Innan nästa kris då, förstås.


Här är lösningen som halverar utsläppen

Kan fånga in mer koldioxid än vad flyget släpper ut

California Crazy

Deep Green Resistance (DGR) is an ultra-radical (or perhaps ultra-rhetorically radical) group in California which advocates the destruction of modern civilization through eco-terrorism on a *massive* scale, which will make human population drop by 99% or thereabouts. And since most humans are psychos anyway, who needs ´em?

The radical Greens in California, and other leftists, saw no problem in cooperating with DGR.

Until…until the DGR came out as TERFs.

So it´s alright to call for the wholesale destruction of humanity, but not alright to argue that trans-women are really men? LOL. Welcome to the Californian woke left, circa 2020.

Still, the SJWs *do* have a point here. After all, the DGR can´t launch eco-terrorism on a massive scale. It´s not even clear whether they want to do anything at all, except selling Derrick Jensen´s books. They *could* exclude trans-people from women´s restrooms at eco-radical conferences.

That, and they probably don´t support Kamala Harris either.

Let them eat roasted locusts

The recent invasion of desert locusts in East Africa was hardly caused by climate change, since locusts have threatened Africa since time immemorial. Remember the seven plagues of Egypt? 

And even if it was, so what? The airplanes used to spray the locusts with pesticides are dependent on fossil fuels. And the pesticides are hardly organic.

So the only way to have modern agriculture in Africa is to go full brownlash. Otherwise, most Africans would die of starvation. And Europeans would have no more hot chocolate. Or whatever it is we´re importing from down there. 

And no, I´m not "denying climate change" or anything like that. I´m just the grumpy old guy in the back of the room reminding you all what we are *really* up against.

Jehovah, come back, all is forgiven.

Are your social media "friends" actually demons?

People get banned from Facebook for the strangest of reasons. Our favorite crazy Irishman Thomas Sheridan was apparently purged because he tried to publish a post about demonic influence on the web!

Since everyone already knows that Zucc is a space alien, I´m not sure what the problem is, but there you go... 

(The clip above does work, despite being all black. Well, for the moment at any rate!) 

In the land of the original Aryans

”The Tajiks in the Mirror of History. Volume One: From the Aryans to the Samanids” is a book attributed to Tajikistan´s president Emomali Rahmonov (today known as Emomali Rahmon). Curiously, it has no publication date, but was probably printed around the year 2000. The book is bilingual. One language is English. The other is presumably Tajik, but written in Persian (or Arabic) script. This is curious, since Tajik is usually written using the Cyrillic alphabet. Perhaps the book was intended for a wider Persian audience?

Tajikistan is an ex-Soviet republic which became independent after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Communist Party morphed into secular nationalists and managed to stay in power after fighting a bloody civil war with Sunni Muslim fundamentalists. Tajikistan is clearly in the Russian geopolitical orbit, while also cultivating good relations with China. Indeed, Rahmon looks like a typical boring Communist apparatchik circa 1975 and could very well pass for Brezhnev´s next cousin or something to that effect. His administration is widely seen as an authoritarian de facto one party state (like most other governments in the post-Soviet near abroad).

I found Rahmon´s book on Tajik history interesting, at least as an exercise in political propaganda. Most Tajiks are Sunni Muslims, but Rahmon´s secular administration obviously cannot use Islam for its political ends. Nor can it use Communism, except to a very limited extent. For instance, the national anthem is actually the old anthem of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic. The solution is to make copious use of nationalism. The Tajiks speak Persian, the same language as in Iran, so Rahmon´s strategy is to claim as much as possible of the Persian legacy. Indeed, he seems to be claiming virtually all of it! Apparently, Tajik nationalists have long harked back to the Samanid Empire, a Sunni Muslim and ethnically Persian empire of the Early Middle Ages. The Samanids were centered on Central Asia, while also controlling large parts of Persia. Rahmon argues that Tajik history goes back much further, indeed all the way to the Indo-European migrations and perhaps even earlier.

Rahmon doesn´t deny that the Indo-Europeans came from somewhere else in Eurasia, presumably much further north than Central Asia. When the “Aryans” arrived in Central Asia, they split into three groups: Indo-Aryans, Irano-Aryans and the original Aryans. The latter group stayed behind in Central Asia when the two former moved east and west, respectively. This latter group is the ancestor of the Tajiks, who are thus the original Aryan culture. In historical times, the original Aryans inhabited the areas today known as Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. Rahmon uses the Persian epic Shahnameh to prove his theories, including the sections usually regarded as mythological (the stories of the Pishdodid and Kayanid dynasties). He argues that these stories took place in “Eastern Iran” rather than “Western Iran”. Since the Tajik language, really a dialect of Persian, is classified as a “Western Iranian” language, “Eastern Iran” is here used as a geographical designation referring to the Eastern part of the Persian cultural area. It seems the Tajiks were not only the original Aryans, but also very specifically the original Persians. Just to be on the safe side, Rahmon also claims the legacy of the Scythians, whose language is classified as “Eastern Iranian” and hence distinct from Persian!

The most intriguing part of “The Tajiks in the Mirror of History” is Rahmon´s use of Zoroastrianism. This was the religion of the Persians before their conversion to Islam. Today, the number of Zoroastrians in Tajikistan must be about zero, yet Rahmon comes across as a kind of pseudo-Zoroastrian, constantly paying homage to this great ancient Persian prophet. He even claims to have secretly studied his writings when he was the head of a collective farm during the Soviet period! Naturally, Rahmon supports the theory that Zoroaster was very early and that he came from Bactria (northern Afghanistan) which would place him in “Eastern Iran”. As a secularist, however, Rahmon can´t really support Zoroaster´s religious ideas, and they are indeed hardly mentioned in the book. Instead, he paints Zoroaster as an advanced ethical teacher, and also as a firm supporter of farming and animal husbandry. According to one theory, Zoroaster called upon the previously nomadic tribes of the area to settle down and become farmers, thereby civilizing them. Rahmon also paints Zoroaster as the first Tajik nation-builder, uniting previously disparate tribes into one kingdom.

Rahmon paints the Tajiks as constant victims of foreign aggressors. He singles out two for special mention. One is Alexander the Great, who destroyed the Persian Empire and did much damage to Zoroastrianism. The other is the Arab conquest, which (of course) *also* destroyed a later Persian Empire and Zoroastrianism. However, Rahmon doesn´t paint the Scythian invasions of Central Asia as equally destructive. As already noted, he rather tries to claim the “Saka” as a kind of honorary Tajiks.

The photos in the book, with a few exceptions, have little to do with archeology or history, but rather show President Rahmonov at various summits, often together with other Central Asian presidents, and sometimes with Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Jiang Zemin. The purpose is obviously to picture Rahmon as an international dignitary of some standing. At one photo, he addresses the UN General Assembly. There are also pics of Rahmon as he is inspecting various building projects in Tajikistan. No photos show him together with Zoroastrians, but there is one where he is conferring with Aga Khan, the leader of the Shia Muslim branch known as Nizari Ismailites. Apparently, some ethnic minority groups in Tajikistan follow this form of Islam.

I´m not sure if even the most avid readers of this blog care about Tajikistani government propaganda, but in case you do, I just indulged some of your curiosity…

Lost in Buddhist space

“Aniara: En revy om människan i tid och rum” is a poetic work by Swedish writer Harry Martinson. A shorter version was published in 1953, a longer variety (the canonical one) in 1956. Martinson got the literature prize in 1974 to a large extent because of “Aniara”. The choice was controversial, since Martinson was a member of the Swedish Academy, the very exclusive club which awards the literature prizes! Four years later, Martinson suffered a breakdown and committed suicide, apparently triggered by all the negative reactions. Yet, his work “Aniara” has survived and is still considered a masterpiece by many, being turned into an opera (sic) and a feature film (which I haven´t seen). Since I haven´t read any official analysis of “Aniara”, the following review is somewhat tentative. Nor have I read the English translations – translating the poem into another language must be quite the challenge, since every other word is a neologism coined by Martinson himself. I´m almost tempted to call the language Martinsonese or Aniarish!

Poetry never made me excited, so I only managed to digest about half of “Aniara”, and skimmed the rest. (Imagine skimming poetry.) One important clue to the immensely pessimistic work is that Martinson claimed to be a Buddhist. Another is that it was written during the 1950´s. The existential threats to humanity mentioned in the poem include nuclear war, environmental destruction and totalitarianism. Interestingly, another thing that influenced “Aniara” was a shamanistic trance experienced by Martinson when looking at the Andromeda Galaxy through an amateur telescope! This could explain why the author chose a science fiction back story to his poetical musings. It might perhaps also explain why the poem feels so “spaced out” at times (pun intended).

The “plot” of “Aniara”, the little there is of such, is set in a not-too-distant future in which humanity has mastered space flight and controls the solar system. In an ironic reversal of the cornucopian dreams about space colonies solving human overpopulation, “Aniara” describes a dystopian society which does indeed transfer humans to both Venus and Mars to lessen the pressures on a dying Earth, but it´s not clear whether the colonists are appreciably better off at their new locations. Probably not, since Mars is referred to as an enormous tundra where almost nothing ever grows, while Venus is a vast swampland. Our destiny in the stars turns out to be “more of the same”. Nor is it entirely clear whether the “emigrants”, as they are called, are really voluntary. Originally, Mars seems to have been a dumping ground for criminals (or perhaps thought-criminals?) from an increasingly totalitarian Earth, but later waves of colonists are presumably volunteers or perhaps chosen by lot. Some have experienced nuclear warfare. Indeed, the wars seem to continue throughout the evacuation, since a later “song” reveals that an entire city on Earth, or perhaps Earth itself, has been completely destroyed.

The narrator of “Aniara”, called Mimaroben in Martinsonese, serves onboard one of the spaceships, named Aniara, which for years have traveled between Earth and Mars. This time, something goes wrong. Aniara collides with an asteroid named Hondo (apparently another name for Honshu – supposedly a hidden reference to Hiroshima) and goes off course. It soon finds itself outside the solar system, propelled towards the far-away constellation of Lyra by a mysterious force. (The last thing the crew sees before being forced off course is a gigantic torus.) The crew and the emigrants have to cope with being forever lost in space, with zero chance of ever being rescued or getting out alive. The rest of the poem deals with various strategies the lost emigrants use to cope with their situation. 

It´s obvious that Aniara is really a symbol of human existence in general, with Martinson criticizing essentially every human endeavor as being ultimately futile in the face of death and destruction: religions both pagan and Christian, sexual hedonism, belief in progress, mysticism, political fanaticism, and what have you. Somewhat unexpectedly, science isn´t attacked. Perhaps the reason is that science is pictured as strictly objective when confronting the human condition. It never offers any false hope or illusions, just brute facts. Mimaroben is secretly in love with Isagel, the cold and otherworldly female pilot of Aniara, who is also a scientist. At one point, Isagel tells Mimaroben that a mathematical analysis has proven that so-called miracles are really just chance events!

The most interesting entity onboard Aniara is called Miman in the poem´s garbled Swedish. Miman is a kind of super-computer with almost miraculous powers. The emigrants worship Miman as a god, and run amuck when the computer eventually self-destroys. The name obviously refers to Mimir in Norse mythology, the all-knowing deity who guarded the font of all wisdom. Miman has the power to record and/or remember all historical events, and also picks up alien transmissions from other solar systems, turning everything into holographic pictures for the enjoyment of the emigrants. The closest religious equivalent would be the so-called Akashic chronicle many occultists believe in. Martinson clearly regards Miman as a gigantic distraction. This would square with his Buddhism: *all* human actions, indeed all actions of sentient beings anywhere in the cosmos, are ultimately meaningless.

The last songs of the poem sound like a peculiar blend of atheism, theism and Buddhism. As punishment for turning the earthly paradise into hell, the emigrants are doomed to die in outer space, under Law (karma?) rather than under Grace. God is said to be left on Earth, hurt and insulted. Eventually, everyone dies and is turned into sinless dust, but Aniara nevertheless continues its flight towards Lyra for another 15,000 years. The very last line is that “the wave of Nirvana” swept through everyone, but we are left to wonder whether this is good or bad...

I readily admit that I don´t vibrate with the pessimistic perspective of “Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space”. As already indicated, the work essentially suggests that nothing we do is meaningful. But perhaps there is one little escape clause even in Samsara according to Harry Martinson. It is the character of Nobia or Nobby, who lives a life combining ethical self-sacrifice, aesthetic enjoyment and love. Nobby has the ability to see beauty even on the near desolate Martian tundra, she is unaffected by the brutality of the human colonists, and tries to help the refugees onboard the spaceships as much as she possibly can. Her detractors claim that she can´t possibly have been that saintly all her life, but the temporary narrator replacing Mimaroben who tells her story (presumably Nobby´s lover), insists otherwise. Perhaps Nobia is a true Buddhist castaway in this samsaric universe. It´s also interesting to note that Martinson constantly implies that humanity is being punished for its sins by God. At one point, the poet exclaims that God is inside the nuclear blast that destroys a certain city on Earth. But this, of course, is illogical unless there *is* a meaning behind everything, after all. There must also be a meaning to Nobia´s saintly life.

It´s interesting that Martinson, when describing that meaning, had to resort to the anthropomorphic picture of the Biblical God, either the wrathful deity of the Old Testament (or the Apocalypse) or the long-suffering Christ of the Gospels.

With that reflection, I end my review of “Aniara”. 

A flawed understanding of Realpolitik

Sadhguru (Jaggi Vasudev) is being such a basic bitch here. The real question is not if the Buddha could time travel, it is whether Christian Rosenkreutz sent Gautama to the planet Mars in the year 1604 after a secret council of the true Rosicrucians to stop humanity from splitting into two entirely different species. 

Gee, I thought that was obvious.

And the fun time continues...

The Wiki page about Sadhguru was obviously written by one of his critics. I mean, just listen to this infinite wisdom: 

"Vasudev's sociopolitical ideology aligns with that of Bharatiya Janata Party and Hindutva. An article over The Wire noted him to play a vital role within the right wing ecosystem—sugarcoating an exclusionary brand of non-secular ethno-nationalistic politics with an universalist mystic mooring, and deliver the same in a tranquil and captivating manner before an urban audience, whilst operating from within the realms of apolitical spiritual spaces. He advocates a total ban on cow slaughter. His understanding of realpolitik and history, as displayed in delivering these stances has been widely criticized."

I can only hope and pray that Adiyogi will give his most trusted servant a better understanding of Realpolitik in the near future. 

Helt otroligt

Det här är alltså ett kort utdrag ur en intervju med Donald Trump gjord för 40 år sedan. Ja, ni läste rätt. Året var 1980. Det mest surrealistiska är att han låter i princip likadan som idag. Han klagar på Iran, säger att USA borde ta deras olja, att USA behöver ett starkare ledarskap, och sedan frågar intervjuaren honom om han kan tänka sig att bli USA:s president! 40 år sedan. What the fuck.

Konsten att hindra Kuba-krisen

Det här är en autentisk rubrik som stått att läsa i flera svenska dagstidningar. Nog för att jag visste att Fidel hade högtflygande ambitioner, men detta... :D

Castro ger upp försök att bli USA:s president

Jag har ännu inte kollat om Che verkligen var irländare, stay tuned!

Vi måste lära, lära, lära av tredje världen

I Sverige hade de fått samhällstjänst sex månader och feministisk fortbildning c/o Miljöpartiet. Wtf, I love Mama India now!

Dödsstraff mot våldtäktsmän i Indien verkställs

Brutaliseringen av det offentliga rummet

Peter Wolodarski brukar ju klaga på brutaliseringen av det offentliga rummet. Or something. Fast jag misstänker att han inte menar nedanstående...den *verkliga* brutaliseringen av det offentliga rummet.

Some new shit in Sweden

Oh no, the Raëlians were right

WE. REALLY. ARE. THE. GOD. SPECIES.

Scientists create entirely new life form

Ännu en Jan Guillou extravaganza

Jag har ju alltid varit en hemlig beundrare av Jan Guillou och hans enorma biceps. Här flexar han lite mot Skatteverket i ännu en Guillou special. Och ja, han brukar få rätt också... (Alla vet att det är Carl Hamilton som är Guillous verkliga alter ego, inte den där reportern.)

Jan Guillou till angrepp mot Skatteverket

Climate change as metaphor

One thing just struck me. While the climate crisis (and the eco-crisis in general) is real, I sometimes get the impression that the establishment claims to believe in it mostly for metaphorical reasons. The climate crisis is an emerging modern mono-myth and is really a metaphor for the establishment´s own systemic crisis. “The world goes under” really means “our system is collapsing”. Which, of course, is true. Fans of John Michael Greer can make the tie-in to the progress/apocalypse dichotomy here.

But there´s more. At least in Sweden (a nation or ex-nation in which the cognitive dissonance of the chattering classes must be especially severe), what struck me the last two years or so is how incredibly *lazy* the propagandists of the System have become. Logically, the chattering classes should repudiate all pessimism and start to call for *massive* investments (private or public, depending on your nominal partisan affiliation) in nuclear power, electrification, copper mines, or even bio- and geo-engineering. And while such articles have of course been published in the Swedish media, they are nowhere near the level you would expect of a confident triumphalist establishment. This stands in stark contrast to the period 2015-18 when the media at the top of their lungs made coordinated propaganda in favor of open borders and, (more briefly) #metoo.

Instead, the establishment is promoting Greta Thunberg as a kind of ersatz “solution” to the climate crisis. Greta has usually avoided explicit partisan statements, but I think it´s obvious that she is a left-wing radical, perhaps a budding eco-socialist of some kind. In other words, not the kind of person the establishment should promote. The mainline newspaper Dagens Nyheter has even published material from virtual doomsday prophets. Add to this more general statements about the old world order being kaput, and a pattern is emerging. In Sweden (that´s Sweden for crying out loud) the pundits no longer believe that Trump can be impeached or that he will lose the election. The negative reactions to the Suleimani killing are not those of a European ruling class confident in its alternative geopolitical strategy for engagement in the Middle East, but rather those of a cowardly and sickly lot deadly terrified of war, and therefore ready to give Charlie whatever he demands (except nuclear weapons, but wait another five years…).

This bizarre combination of exotic activism, “leftism”, apocalyptic pessimism, cowardice in the face of an expansive religious theocracy, and neo-liberal BAU is not what you would expect from an establishment in ascendancy. It´s not even what you would expect from an establishment in decline, fighting (perhaps desperately) to ensure its survival.

I say they are demoralized.

Tired of winning yet?

Nej, Greta är inte "vänsterpopulist"

Juan Peron: en sann vänsterpopulist 

Sluta kalla Greta Thunberg för "vänsterpopulist", det finns bara en sann vänsterpopulist i det här surrealistiska jävla skitlandet och det är jag. Och hör sen!

The highest accomplishment

“Raja Yoga” is a famous book by Swami Vivekananda, first published in 1896. Vivekananda was the founder of the Ramakrishna Mission and one of the first Hindu teachers to visit the United States. He is often regarded as a Hindu reformer, Neo-Hindu or Neo-Vedantin. According to De Michelis´ book “A History of Modern Yoga”, Vivekananda was heavily influenced by Western neo-esotericism, including New Thought and Transcendentalism. If so, I didn´t get it, since I think “Raja Yoga” sounds traditional enough. But then, at least in the West, this is how almost every Hindu or Buddhist teacher sounds like, no doubt due to the success of “Raja Yoga” back in the days. I suppose you could say that it has become “traditional” after a fashion. Presumably, the original audience gasped in awe and wonder at the swami´s teachings…

The book is divided into two sections. The first contains a number of lectures on the topic of Yoga. The second is a series of commentaries on Patanjali´s Yoga aphorisms. The term Raja Yoga refers to Patanjali´s system and is Vivekananda´s own designation of it. One thing that immediately struck me was that Vivekananda doesn´t connect yoga to any health benefits, the power of positive thinking or what have you. No New Age fare in this one! Yoga is forthrightly said to be a mystical technique to attain either godhood or complete liberation from the material world. The next thing that struck me was how freely Vivekananda talks about some pretty extreme practices. He accepts both hatha yoga and kundalini yoga, indeed, Raja Yoga seems to be a form of kundalini yoga. He also seems to accept that yogis can attain supernatural “siddhi” powers and essentially become “gods”. The author even mentions alchemical attempts (via mercury and sulfur) to make the physical body immortal. As usual, siddhi powers and godhood is said to lead away from liberation, and the yogi should therefore renounce them in order to attain genuine enlightenment.

Vivekananda points out that Yoga is based on the ancient Indian philosophy known as Samkhya. This is something of a problem, it seems, for many Hindus. Samkhya could be described as an atheistic and ontologically realist form of dualism. There is no creator-god, but rather an infinite number of spirits or “purushas”, many of whom are stuck in the material world for eons before attaining liberation. The world is real, not a mayic illusion. And since all spirits are distinct from each other, there is presumably no Brahman either. I suspect that many Hindus, while generally appreciative of Patanjali, nevertheless want to complete his system by introducing a creator-god, a kind of Über-Purusha controlling the entire cyclical process of the world. Others want the world to be an illusion and are hence monists. It´s not clear to me exactly what Vivekananda wants, but he treats the Purusha as one. The Purusha is a trans-personal (critics would say impersonal) god permeating the entire cosmos and somehow also standing outside of it. Unity with this divine reality is the goal of Raja Yoga. The author emphasizes the distinction between pre-personal and trans-personal states (today, this is the shtick of Ken Wilber and his fans) and occasionally sounds like a Theosophist, when he argues in favor of a cyclical involution-evolution.

“Raja Yoga” is not a textbook of instructions, although Vivekananda does mention a few typical practices, such as the importance of a correct body posture or various exercises involving inhalation and exhalation. He also discusses mantras. Following Samkhya, the author argues that sense perception or empirical experience is the ultimate ground of all knowledge. Of course, he regards mystical experiences as empirical. The only true religion is the one that isn´t based on blind faith, but invites people to come and see for themselves. In this particular book, Vivekananda seems to regard all “official” religions as false, while in other works, he rather emphasizes that most people can´t attain liberation unless they worship a personal god or even a human saint, although the ultimate goal can only be the trans-personal Divine. An ironic confirmation of this is that Vivekananda´s admirers on YouTube claim that he was actually Shiva! It seems some people can´t be liberated from samsara without worshipping a personal destroyer-god in the shape of one Narendranath Datta from Calcutta…  

The edition of “Raja Yoga” I have on my desk has a sub-title not present in the original: “A Scientific Method for Mental Modification”. This kind of “scientism” is rather typical of the New Age. As already indicated, however, there is very little New Age feel in this work. If anything, it has a “Buddhist” vibe, perhaps because a Western reader like yours truly rightly or wrongly associate “atheistic dualism” with Buddhism. I think “Raja Yoga” can be read with some benefit by those seriously interested in real yoga, and it could also be important for students of comparative religion, the history of religion, and the contemporary spiritual landscape.

Västmarxismen spårar ut totalt

Kalle Marx lär ju ha kritiserat sina självutnämnda lärjungar med orden "Om detta är marxism, så är i vart fall jag inte marxist". Kom att tänka på detta när Alexander Bard (av alla personer!) deklarerade sig som marxist under bråket med DN:s chefredaktör Peter Wolodarski (som försöker få TV4 att sparka honom). Säga vad man vill om barden, men "marxist" är han nog inte. Och ärligt talat är han nog inte zoroastrier heller. Men OK, han har skrivit några bra popplåtar... 

"Jag är marxist" säger Alexander Bard

Sverige har aldrig varit tryggare

"Sverige har aldrig varit tryggare" skrev Peter Wolodarski i DN år 2015. Sedan hände något. Och här står vi idag. Samtidigt som Wolle bråkar med transvestiternas okrönta drottning Alexander Bard och lyriskt skriver om elsparkcyklar i Stockholm...

Våldtäkter och barnrån ökar

Förstår inte problemet riktigt...

Så flera miljoner djur har dött för att några mordbrännare löpt amok i Australien, Australasien eller vad fan den där landmassan kallas nuförtiden. Ja, är det någon som bryr sig? Är ni medvetna om vilka slags djur som finns i Australien??? Just det, typ fucking 100 arter av världens giftigaste ormar, havskrokodiler, skitfarliga växter som kan döda en vuxen man på studs, och så pungvargar, pungrävar, pungdjävlar och andra aggressiva urtidsdjur som får en pit bull att verka sympatisk, det lär finnas mördarkoalor också, JAG SÄGER ATT DET ÄR BRA ATT SKITEN BRINNER, vad är problemet om en miljard taipaner och tigerormar går upp i rök, kanske kan jag nu flytta till Australo-Oceanien, huspriserna lär ha sjunkit kraftigt sista tiden.

Män som aldrig knullar

Kan ju vara intressant, med tanke på den senaste tidens debatt om s k incels.

En myt att de ratade männen blir allt fler

Länge leve republiken!

Krönikören har ju en poäng, men samtidigt undrar man ändå varför någon över huvud taget bryr sig om "krisen" i det brittiska kungahuset? End it already, up the Republic! Var är Oliver Cromwell när man till slut faktiskt behöver honom?

Äntligen fick han hata Meghan

A reminder

"What makes you think we don´t have religion, earthling?
We worship the Six-Legged Shoggoth!"

A little reminder that the only things (yes, only) which distinguishes humans from ants is philosophy, religion and art. Everything else we have, they have too. And they have it on instinct! 

There is just one problem. We have no idea which philosophy or religion is the true one. Is it Mormonism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Israel Only Full Preterism or what? Not to mention post-post-structuralism, Right Hegelianism or the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea. 

Come to think of it, we have no idea which art style is the most beautiful one, either. 

But we´re the crown of creation, right?

Right.

Trump, Soleimani and energy security

An interesting article on Iran´s and Iraq´s energy politics, which gives some new background information to the recent conflict between the Trump administration and both these nations. Written by Robert Bryce, who I half-jokingly and half-seriously have dubbed "my favorite cornucopian". 

There is one error in the article, though. The reason why the rivalry between Iran and Iraq is mostly gone, isn´t energy politics but a shared religion. Most Iraqis are Twelver Shia Muslims, and after the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein (who was Sunni Muslim), the Iraqi Shiites have been working to establish closer relations with their co-religionists in Iran. Right under the nose of both Bush and Obama! Trump sees the problem, but is probably unable to actually do anything about it... 

Iran´s power over Iraq includes electricity

Albert Shanker did nothing wrong

“Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles over Schools, Unions, Race and Democracy” is a book by Robert D Kahlenberg, a senior fellow of the liberal Century Foundation. Albert Shanker (1928-1997) was the controversial president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Kahlenberg is mostly supportive of Shanker´s agenda, which he dubs “tough liberalism”. Critics may call it Cold War liberalism or State Department socialism. While Shanker wasn´t formally a member of the Social Democrats USA, his political line was virtually identical with theirs, and he saw prominent SDUSA leaders Max Shachtman and Bayard Rustin as his political mentors. Shanker worked closely with the SDUSA and I frankly suspect that he *was* a leading member of the group de facto, while nominally being a regular Democrat, perhaps for tactical reasons. Shanker was also a leading official of the AFL-CIO, working closely with AFL-CIO presidents George Meany and Lane Kirkland. One thing I didn´t know before reading Kahlenberg´s book is that the AFT was one of the most important AFL-CIO affiliates, due to the gradual decline of the more traditional working class unions. Teachers, by contrast, are heavily unionized, either in the AFT or the NEA (not a member of the AFL-CIO).

Shanker became notorious during the “New York City teachers´ strike”, actually a series of strikes in 1968 directed against “community control” of public schools, a policy supported by both the New Left, Black activists and…the capitalist Ford Foundation. The Black-controlled school district of Ocean Hill-Brownsville had fired White and Jewish teachers, probably on racial grounds. The Shanker-led United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the AFT´s New York City local, responded by taking out over 50,000 members in a series of city-wide strikes which effectively shut down most public schools in the Big Apple. As a result, racial tensions between Jews and Blacks reached a fever pitch. Kahlenberg acknowledges that most New York City teachers were Jewish, that Shanker was Jewish himself, and that most Blacks supported the Ocean Hill-Brownsville school district. The few Blacks who stood by Shanker included SDUSA leader Bayard Rustin and legendary civil rights leader A Philip Randolph. 

Shanker also alienated many on the left. Despite his union militancy (at the time, teacher strikes were illegal in New York), he stood far “to the right” of the emerging New Left or campus left, which had also began to organize within the Democratic Party. Shanker opposed racial quotas in hiring and firing, wanted the Democrats to repudiate the campus left in favor of the traditional labor movement (which was seen as mostly White and male by many leftists) and supported the US war in Vietnam, and the Cold War in general. Shanker and the SDUSA were heavily involved in the centrist wing of the Democratic Party around anti-Communist liberal Henry “Scoop” Jackson and the Coalition for a Democratic Majority.

During the 1980´s and 1990´s, many felt that Shanker had begun to abandon his early union militancy, too. The reason was Shanker´s support for so-called education reform, actually a common sense policy aimed at making US public schools more similar to European ditto (which were usually much better). I knew that American public school education sucked, but I clearly didn´t know half of it, since proposals for a "long" six hour school day, national standards or any kind of curriculum whatsoever were considered controversial by many. (In Sweden, a normal school day is around 8 hours, and even private schools must follow government-imposed national standards. Shanker would have loved Sweden! OK, maybe not our foreign policy.) Even more shocking is the rooster of people opposed to national standards. It includes essentially everyone, from right-wing proponents of “local control” and New Left agitators for “identity politics” to parents angry at schools giving their kids bad grades and…the teachers themselves. Shanker probably angered even some of AFT´s own members when he said that it must become easier to fire incompetent teachers, including “veteran” teachers, and that teachers should be periodically evaluated by peer review panels and tests. A Shankerite proposal condemned by the competing NEA was that disruptive students should be removed from the classroom! Wow, imagine that. (I´m sure Shanker didn´t want to use napalm on them, despite his Shachtmanite proclivities.) 

Kahlenberg believes that Shanker was really trying to save the public schools (and the unions) by pushing for education reform. One of Shanker´s big fears throughout his political career was the conservative proposal for school vouchers, which could potentially destroy the public school system entirely. By meeting the Republicans and the business community halfway, securing quality in the public school system, Shanker hoped to defuse any moves towards vouchers. Less surprising was Shanker´s insistence that the national standards should be “Eurocentric” (as his opponents would probably have put it), which was in line with his constant repudiation of “identity politics” and “community control” in favor of a colorblind form of liberalism, the purpose of which was to weld a united nation and democratic polity out of disparate ethnic and racial communities. For instance, Shanker had always been an opponent of bilingual education. This was obviously anathema to the multi-culturalist left.

Considering Shanker´s “tough liberal” or even “conservative” stances on education issues, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that he was also interested in alternative pedagogy. Shanker had apparently been an “untraditional” learner himself, and so were his two sons. When Shanker expressed support for so-called charter schools, his reason for doing so was to free the teachers to experiment with alternative and innovative ways of teaching – something obviously at variance with his adamant insistence on national standards and more federal control. Shanker even claimed that the “factory model” of education only works for about 20% of all students, the remaining 80% being untraditional learners. This sounds counterintuitive on the face of it – surely, it´s the other way around? It´s frankly strange to hear Cold Warrior badass Albert Shanker suddenly sounding like a flim flam rad-libber or Waldorf teacher!

“Tough Liberal” was an interesting read (or is – I still haven´t read all chapters, untraditionally beginning somewhere in the middle), for several reasons. I have been looking for some time for a good book on the SDUSA, not finding any. This was a suitable substitute, since Shanker backstage probably was one of the SDUSA´s leaders. The near-permanent education crisis in the United States never ceases to amaze me. Finally, “Tough Liberal” very clearly shows that the present conflicts in American society aren´t particularly new. The transition from labor-supported “tough liberalism” to the multi-culturalist campus liberal maze, where privileged middle class groups control disadvantaged minorities through the state apparatus while excluding the White workers, began already during the late 1960´s. 

No surprise really, but this book shows how far the process had went already by that time, the Democratic Party becoming the voice of these sectors, while the European Social Democratic parties seemed to have undergone this transition only within the last 25 years or so. The phenomenon of angry White workers voting for right-wing populist candidates isn´t new either – George Wallace and Ronald Reagan being examples from the 1970´s. Shanker feared that the White workers (then an important voting bloc) would turn to the Republicans if the Democrats would embrace “the New Politics” – which of course they did. Today, the same phenomenon is represented by one Donald J Trump. As for the SJWs, they are simply the new New Politics, and seem strikingly similar to the old version, perhaps with a few new “identities” tacked on (although I´m sure even those existed in California back in the days).

In the end, however, there was a blank spot in Shanker´s worldview, and probably in the author´s, as well. As far as I can tell, Shanker didn´t oppose mass immigration to the United States, instead counting on public education to turn all comers into good American (and slightly Eurocentric) citizens. With that little reflection on my own, I end this review of “Tough Liberal”.

Bigfoot and the orbs

Might as well share this. It´s a Bigfoot encounter with supernatural or paranormal traits, more specifically luminous orbs. Here we go again, in other words!

Meme magic eller fake news?

Jag har ju tidigare kallat Greta Thunberg "the new Conan of the Green Barbarian Dispensation" och utnämnt henne till arisk raskrigare...och så kommer detta upp i min sökmotor!

Vikingarna hade klimatångest

Men vad fan...är det detta som kallas "meme magic" eller vad? 

Fast om man läser artiklarna om Rökstenen i Östergötland noggrant, så står det ju att "vikingarna" (alltså järnålderns fornskandinaver) inte alls var rädda för global uppvärmning. De fruktade snarare en ny istid. Och jag antar att de inte trodde att utsläppen från järnålderns vapensmedjor låg bakom, heller.

Borderline fake news, alltså. 

God did it, show me a transitional fossil between a grasshopper and a warbler, you can´t bloody liberal

This is a hilarious news item. After a dramatic expedition to the three mountainous islands of Taliabu, Peleng and Batudaka east of Sulawesi in Indonesia, scientists have discovered 10 new species or subspecies of small songbirds. Well, amen to that. If the Togian jungle flycather or the grasshopper warbler fancy being discovered by the orang-utan´s crazy evolutionary cousins, is perhaps another matter entirely. Time to evo-devolve into velociraptors and take a firm stand at the mountain side? 

New bird species discovered in Indonesia

The triumph of...wait for it...Greta Thunberg??!!

Greta Thunberg is the only person who managed to troll Donald Trump (when she changed her Twitter profile after Trump had mocked her speech at the UN). Now, it seems Greta has memed the God-Emperor into admitting that, er, climate change is real?!

Hmmmm, I assumed the Greta campaign was a petty bourgeois diversion of some kind?

:D

Trump admits climate change is real

Collusion

The guy Trump can´t attack no more.
Well, he aint Russian, is he?

For five years, we have been told that President Trump should be removed from office cuz collusion with Muh Russians or something. Now, the Dems have just voted to limit Trump´s war powers on Iran. 

Iran is a Russian ally.

Tell me again about "collusion"... 

US House of Representatives votes to limit Trump war powers on Iran

For the record, I don´t think World War III against Iran would be a terribly good idea, but then, you don´t see me calling for another march on Stalingrad, either. Or, say, a no-fly zone over Syria. You know, Hillary Clinton cough cough Hillary Clinton... 

Järfälla har aldrig varit tryggare

Moskén i Järfälla

Är detta sant? Och om det är sant, varför har vi inte fått reda på detta tidigare i etablerade media? 

Hazara och den iranska regimen

The mystery of Karl XII

“Karl XII: En biografi” is a biography in Swedish written by Bengt Liljegren. The book was published in 2000. Karl XII (or Charles XII) was king of Sweden from 1697 to 1718. During most of that period, Karl was away from Sweden waging wars in the Baltic provinces, Poland, Germany or Russia. He was also semi-interned in the Ottoman Empire for several years. The “Great Northern War” ended for Karl XII on the 30^th November 1718, when he was shot dead in Norway during a siege. The Swedish defeat in the 18-year long war effectively ended Sweden´s great power period, Russia taking Estonia, Latvia, Ingria and West Karelia. Czar Peter the Great built St Petersburg, soon to become the Russian imperial capital, on territory conquered from the Swedes (or reconquered since Russia controlled the area before Sweden´s rise to regional great power status). Sweden also lost some of its German possessions, but was allowed to keep Finland, which had been occupied by Russia during the course of the war. Karl XII´s death also ended the first period of absolutist rule in Sweden, absolutism being replaced by a constitutional monarchy dominated by the Diet or Parliament (“the Age of Freedom”).

In Sweden, Karl XII is still extremely controversial, the “great warrior king” being a symbol for right-wing extremism. When I was younger, left-wing radicals and neo-Nazi skinheads near-rioted on the 30^th November every year at Kungsträdgården in Stockholm, where a 19^th century statue of Karl XII is located, menacingly pointing eastwards (at Russia). Leftists and liberals have often pointed out how absurd and anachronistic Karl XII is as a Swedish nationalist symbol. The king ruled a multi-ethnic state, many of his officers and officials were foreigners, and he attempted to create an alliance of Swedes, Cossacks, Tatars and Turks against Russia. Tatars and Turks are, of course, Muslim. Liljegren doesn´t mention the old legend that Karl XII brought the Travelers (a kind of Gypsies) to Sweden. At the same time, the slightly trollish liberal take on Karl XII is another form of propaganda, since it´s just as anachronistic to portray the old dictator as “pro-immigration” or “anti-racist” in the modern sense. Paeans to Karl XII have usually been a right-wing preserve, leftists – somewhat strangely – preferring his father, Karl XI (who created the system the son was defending). In his book, Liljegren describes how the views of Karl XII have changed back and forth over the years, among both historians and the public.

Above all, he describes the actual reign of Karl XII. While Liljegren is admirably objective in his style of writing, it´s difficult not to be critical of the monarch after reading the 442-page tome. Since Sweden was attacked by a triple alliance of Russia, Denmark-Norway and Poland-Lithuania-Saxony, one can hardly fault Karl XII for taking up arms in defense of his realm. However, his concrete way of doing so ultimately proved disastrous for both Sweden and himself. Instead of concentrating on defending the Baltic provinces against Russia, Karl spent years fighting a quixotic war in Poland and then attempted to march on Moscow without due preparations. The Russians decisively defeated the Swedish army at the infamous battle of Poltava, forcing the king to flee south to Bessarabia, then controlled by the Muslim Ottoman Empire. After finally returning to Sweden, rather than counter-attacking the Russians (who had occupied half of the then Swedish kingdom), Karl embarked on two equally weird and badly thought-out campaigns in Norway. The entire reign of Karl XII was marked by famine, pestilence and war. 200,000 Swedish soldiers were killed. At the time, the Swedish kingdom had a population of only two and a half million!

I get the impression from Liljegren´s book that while Karl XII was a brilliant tactician on the battlefield (at least in the beginning of the war), his long-term strategy left much to be asked for. Diplomatic finesse he had none. The young king had a reckless streak, constantly being on the attack (literally), even when diplomacy and tactical retreats would have suited the situation better. With more strategic thinking and planning, Karl might have been able to hold on to the Baltic provinces – or at least to Estonia and Latvia. Some of his wilder plans were never put into operation: Karl XII apparently toyed with the idea of invading Britain in alliance with the Jacobites, and also wanted to establish a Swedish colony on Madagascar in alliance with local pirates! Mostly as a thought experiment, he also developed a new numeral system with 64 as its base, a system defended by Emmanuel Swedenborg (the future Seer of the North) in a pamphlet written mostly to show loyalty to the king-dictator. 

What struck me most when reading “Karl XII: En biografi” was the intractable personality of the king. On the one hand, he was authoritarian, unapproachable, inflexible to the point of obsession, and had a sadistic humor. Foreign diplomats described him as unkempt and extremely rude. On the other hand, he clearly had *something* which made officers and common soldiers follow him and trust him, even to the point of death. Some kind of mysterious charisma? Karl XII always dressed in uniform, didn´t wear a wig and kept his hair short – all three things unheard of among contemporary monarchs and aristocrats. This gave him a “plebeian” look. He cultivated an image of being an ascetic warrior, married to his army. Like many other Swedish kings, he also distrusted the higher nobility as a class, much preferring the lower nobility and the commoners. The king was also something of a religious zealot, which gave him a fatalistic outlook on life - everything was preordained by God, so why worry about failure. Above all, he seemed impervious to suffering.

My impression of Karl XII´s personality type is very negative. Was he a sociopath? Or did he have some kind of autism spectrum disorder? What makes the whole thing doubly disturbing is that his inflexible orders were usually followed meticulously, even by people who knew better. Karl XII´s father Karl XI had turned Sweden into a well-drilled militarist absolutist state – and the son was reaping the benefits.  

That is, until the 30^th November 1718 (or December 11 according to the Gregorian calendar now in use). For centuries, rumors have claimed that Karl XII wasn´t killed by a Norwegian bullet, but by one of his own people. A French immigrant serving as an officer in the Swedish army, André Sicre, was widely suspected of being Karl XII´s assassin by his contemporaries. Liljegren believes that the king was murdered and that Sicre may indeed have done it. Cui bono? The author regards it as extremely suspicious that Frederick of Hesse – who subsequently became king of Sweden – acted so fast after the death of Karl XII, purging the most prominent Karoline loyalists while buying off the officer corps with lavish gifts. And why had the same Frederick only six months earlier issued instructions about what should be done in the event of the king´s death, instructions never before heard of? And guess who promoted André Sicre? Yes, the very same Frederick… 

If Frederick was the main conspirator, the conspiracy failed after his “Hessian” faction had purged the pro-Karl “Holstein” faction. In the aftermath of the purge, the Hessians quickly lost the initiative to a third group, the “men of freedom”, who abolished royal absolutism. Frederick (who was married to Karl XII´s sister Ulrika Eleonora) eventually did become king, but without much effective power. It should be noted that other historians, including Peter Englund, strongly support the idea that Karl XII was killed by enemy fire.

Perhaps the debate will continue for another 300 years…

Still, if Swedish is your first language, “Karl XII: En biografi” does give a good overview of the life and times of the most divisive king in Sweden´s history. And perhaps his death, too.

Wtf, I love Anglo-Catholicism now

"Anglo-Catholic Hermeticism", "Anthroposophy Cult" and "Bob Pearlman of SWP on Spartacist League" are some of the search terms which has lead people to my humble blog this week. 

Just some of the services we provide around here... 

;-) 

Now, read this:

On the Wings of the Dawn: The lure of the occult

Nothing to be worried about, I´m sure

I´m sure there is nothing to be worried about here. Right? From Canadian TV. 

Välkommen till Sverige ett år efter Januariöverenskommelsen

Det är tydligen så här SAP vill stoppa SD... 

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