Jag trodde att Sverige frivilligt lämnade över den här typen av uppgifter till NATO och USA? Förstår ingenting...
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Monday, May 31, 2021
What the fuck is this???
Some really bizarre revelations from Canada. Am I surprised? Not by the oppression of Natives, per se, but about the sheer size of it! These "schools" were apparently some kind of concentration camps. Or death camps...
En helt vanlig dag i Minsk
Jag tror att Wolfgang Hansson har rätt här. Lukasjenko (eller Lukasjenka) är visserligen pro-rysk, men försöker samtidigt manövrera för att kunna behålla Belarus´ självständighet. Han vill inte bli en av Putins provinsguvernörer. Det är därför han ibland låtsas vara "neutral" mellan Ryssland och väst.
Jag har således noterat att Belarus gärna tar emot bistånd från EU och Sverige, arrangerar fredskonferenser om Ukraina, etc. Innan amerikanska presidentvalet 2020 spreds det rentav rykten om att han var *väldigt* intresserad av ett närmare samarbete med EU, USA och Turkiet. Och så vidare.
Så det är nog Putin som ligger bakom nedtvingandet av Ryanairs passagerarplan. Det hela är ett sätt att knyta upp Belarus ännu hårdare till Ryssland, så att landet inte plötsligt kan svänga (något Janukovitj i Ukraina försökte göra innan Ryssland stoppade tilltaget - och även han var i allmänhet pro-rysk).
Race pessimism in reverse?
Tobias Hübinette is a Swedish (or perhaps Swedish-Korean) writer on a wide variety of topics related to race and "Whiteness". He is extremely controversial, due to his involvement with AFA (Antifa) in his sadly misspent youth, and for other reasons. Situated somewhere to the left of Robespierre politically, Hübinette´s anti-racist identity politics sometimes sound so "essentialist" that he almost comes across as a kind of "reverse racist". Being an adoptee from South Korea, Hübinette has conducted a one-man campaign against international adoptions on "anti-racist" grounds, and finally gotten some traction, due to recent revelations about large scale corruption in the adoption industry in the Netherlands and elsewhere. I recently read his book "Adopterad: En bok om Sveriges sista rasdebatt", published earlier this year.
The work isn´t about corruption in the international and/or Swedish adoption businesses (although there seems to be plenty), but rather deals with the debate about adoption conducted in Sweden during the 1960´s, a debate that preceded the sharp increase in international adoptions in this country during the 1970´s. The book is to a large extent "empirical", simply describing the debate and quoting extensively from various contributions, although the author´s perspective shines through at various points in the narrative. Hübinette calls the debate "Sweden´s last racial debate" and calls the two sides "the race pessimists" and "the race optimists". The race pessimists opposed adoptions of children from Third World nations, ostensibly because the kids would be bullied in school, being obviously different from the Swedish (and White) majority population. (It´s actually quite shocking to read how systematic bullying among children and teenagers was simply taken for granted during this period by many adults, a bit like bad weather in fall time.) The race optimists supported Third World adoptions. As already noted, Hübinette - despite being a leftist anti-racist - actually *opposes* adoption of colored children by White families in the Western world. At the same time, he attacks the race optimists for not being anti-racist enough! This is connected to Hübinette´s analysis that around 1968, the period of "White purity" was replaced by "White solidarity", really a kind of White man´s (and woman´s) burden, which the author doesn´t see as really anti-racist, but rather as a kind of peculiar colorblind nationalism, according to which Sweden was the best nation in the world precisely because it was the most non-racialist, tolerant, and equal society which simply didn´t see any "race" (and which supposedly never had any colonies, thereby white-washing it´s colorful past - pun intended).
Maybe I´m awfully naïve, but I was frankly shocked by the statements made by the race optimists. They quite explicitly promoted Swedish couples adopting Third World children as a grand social experiment, the purpose of which was to make Swedes used to the idea of having colored people around, and thereby making it easier for them to accept mass immigration and/or racial mixing on a large scale. The adoptees were to be the antidote to Swedish racism (Hübinette´s "White purity"), and a kind of vanguard of future progress and societal transformation. Indeed, progress was seen as racial mixing on a large scale, perhaps a kind of global "melting pot". Even more disturbing, the left-liberals said that Swedes shouldn´t have children of their own, while adopting poor kids from the Third World, thereby easing their overpopulation problem! Or, in another version, couples who already had biological children should nevertheless adopt Third World children in addition. I honestly didn´t know that the suicidal impulse existed among the liberal Swedish elites already during the 1960´s, I assumed it was a syndrome more typical of the late 2010´s, but there you go.
That being said, Hübinette isn´t too impressed by the liberal do-gooders. Sure, you can never be "woke" enough in some circles, but I think the author does have a certian point here (at least judging from his selection of hopefully representative quotes). For instance, one common argument for adopting small kids was precisely that they would become assimilated Swedes, whereas this was more difficult to accomplish in the case of adult immigrants. Indeed, some proponents of adoption *opposed* normal immigration, viewing adoption of children as an alternative (and an easier path to assimilation). Indeed, the assimilationist argument only works if you tacitly (or sometimes explicitly) assume that Swedes will remain a solid majority for the foreseeable future. Hübinette also points out that while the early pro-adoptionists weren´t color blind - they deliberately *wanted* adoptees of many different hues - the discourse developed in such a direction overtime. But if you "don´t see color", isn´t that because the adoptees have really been completely culturally assimilated, the culture being one of "Whiteness"? Hübinette has also discovered that many adoptive parents quite explicitly preferred pale-skinned children. The Middle East was better than Korea, Korea better than sub-Saharan Africa (which was lowest on the list). Even when adopting Koreans, lighter skin was preferred. There was also a class aspect to the adoptions, most adoptees being placed in privileged families, which was sometimes also used as an argument in favor of international adoption by the race optimists.
Another example of the color blind attitudes was that White middle class families who adopted non-White children were often in denial about racist bullying in school. That racial slurs were used against their adoptees was explained away as "no stranger than being bullied for talking the wrong dialect, being shorter or having red hair" (!). Some families even "trained" their adopted kids to accept racist epithets, by using them in an affectionate manner at home ("my little Negro", and so on). (Yes, the book actually says this.) Hübinette admits, however, that it´s sometimes difficult to know what exactly constitutes a racist slur in a Swedish 1960´s context, since a term such as "neger" (Negro) was the standard neutral term for "Black person", while also having a potentially pejorative connotation. Sometimes, it was used for dark-skinned people in general, as when a Korean child of slightly darker complexion than the Korean average was referred to as "neger".
The picture of international adoptions emerging from "Adopterad" is almost uniformly a negative one. The adoptees were unwittingly part of a grand experiment in social engineering, organized by privileged White liberals for reasons perhaps best known to themselves. Adopting colored children almost became a fashion of sorts. Judging by Hübinette´s blog, the Swedish adoption industry probably made life easier for traffickers from South Korea, Sri Lanka or Chile. Nor does Hübinette believe that the adoptees in general fared very well in Swedish society, although he may perhaps be a bit subjective here - he is an adoptee himself, and *does* seem to have a life long obsession with the topic. (The author´s constant attacks on adoptions and adoptive parents is one of the things that has made him intensely disliked in some circles. That, and his apparent opposition to mixed marriage!) My main problem with this man is that there doesn´t seem to be anything Whites can do to redeem themselves in his eyes. After all, the race optimists won the battle: 50 years later, Sweden has "super-diversity" (Hübinette´s term), and all the good liberals promote mass immigration, which is still ongoing, plus an entire apparatus of multi-culturalist "experts" (of which Hübinette is one himself), not to mention all the dark faces in high places, so what on earth seems to be the problem? Note also that the adoptees are now seen as "Swedish" and even accepted by the Sweden Democrats! But to the author, this succesful assimilation is really a White conspiracy to recruit praetorians to police the borders of Whiteness...
That´s "reverse race pessimism" for you.
The nicest explanation is that the author (perhaps rightly) fears that super-diversity is just a temporary phase, and will be replaced in the near future either by neo-apartheid or a return to "White purity". I get the impression that he even fears that the Social Democrats, just as much as the Conservatives, may opt for a de facto neo-apartheid position, in which a mass of mostly Third World immigrants are lorded over by a privileged White upper and upper middle class segment. (The Sweden Democrats presumably long for a return to White-only pure and simple.) Having no faith in a classical class struggle or workers´ unity scenario, the only "solution" then becomes even more Third World immigration and a demographic shift which finally destroys Whiteness. But if this is the author´s actual perspective, he is in for a rough ride, since it´s not clear how the *immigrant workers* will unite across *their* racial, ethnic, religious and clan divides to defeat the White neo-apartheid bourgeoisie, or how they could cooperate after replacing the native population by some kind of population bomb.
At bottom, Tobias Hübinette simply wants nihilistic destruction.
Sunday, May 30, 2021
Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia
Facebook banned the claim that the COVID virus may have come from a lab in Wuhan when the theory was promoted by Donald Trump. Now, Biden is touting the same claim...and FB suddenly changes course.
FB´s censorship of "disinformation" isn´t based on anything evidence-based, but simply on whatever is fashionable or unfashionable among the liberal elite at the moment. No surprise there. Still, this does open up interesting possibilities. Is there *something else* we could make Biden say? Criticize BLM-Antifa, say? LOL.
On a more serious note, I´m sure FB´s gyrations will have no effect whatever on people´s trust in science and the media....right?
"Facebook shows its true colors"
Addendum. It seems Facebook was actively trying to suppress the old line on Wuhan already in February! George Orwell stuff...
Facebook censors WSWS article exposing Wuhan Lab conspiracy theory
How I stopped worrying and learned to love my nation
"Vit melankoli: En analys av en nation i kris" (White Melancholy: An analysis of a nation in crisis) is a book by Catrin Lundström and Tobias Hübinette. Both authors are scholars based in the nation previously known as Sweden and could perhaps be described as SJWs if you´re negative of their work. Hübinette has aquired a certain amount of herostratic fame in Sweden due to his connections to Antifa (and several other colorful episodes, none mentioned here). In all fairness, it should be mentioned that Hübinette himself claims *he* has been harassed and set up by right-wing extremists and other elements. Who Lundström is, I don´t know. Judging by the book, probably a confused professor of literature with a penchant for weird discussions about fashie aesthetics!
I bought "Vit melankoli" after reading another book, exclusively authored by Hübinette, "Adopterad". The book struck me as strange in many ways, so I procured "Vit melankoli" hoping that it would explicate Hübinette´s political line more clearly. I´m still not convinced that it did. Still, one thing is clear from the Lundström-Hübinette interface: you can never be "woke" enough in the eyes of a SJW. The book attacks not just explicitly racialist White supremacism, but also the anti-racism and multi-culturalism that has been official policy in Sweden since at least the 1960´s. Apparently, it´s still too White, too "hegemonic", too "nationalist". Really? We are hard to please!
Hübinette and Lundström believe that "White hegemony" has gone through three phases since 1905 (when Sweden definitely became a single nation-state due to the dissolution of the Swedish-Norwegian union). They refer to the three periods as "White purity" (1905-1968), "White solidarity" (1968-2001) and "White melancholy" (the present period). Several things about this analysis stand out. First, the creation of the Swedish welfare state by a strong Social Democratic government falls within the "White purity" period. This was the result of a class alliance between the White working class and the White middle class, in which the former convinced the latter to support the welfare state and the general hegemony of Big Labor and Social Democracy. Was the welfare state at bottom a nationalist or even "racist" project? The authors point out that the term "folkhem" (people´s home), used by Social Democratic leader Per-Albin Hansson to describe the emerging welfare state, was originally a conservative term. They also mention the eugenicist streak within Swedish establishment discourse, a discourse never really questioned by the Social Democrats. The eugenics included forced sterilizations of people from an underclass background (sometimes Travelers) deemed unfit for reproduction by the proper authorities.
But what about the "White solidarity" period? This is the period when Sweden turned 180 degrees and became one of the most anti-racist nations in the world, with mass immigration, a high number of foreign-born children being adopted by Swedish families, a large anti-apartheid movement in support of the ANC, substantial Third World aid programs, and multi-culturalism being the official policy at all levels. Sweden was one of the few Western nations without a right-wing extremist party in Parliament. This "White solidarity" period was also associated with Social Democracy, and supported by the left and the far left, to boot. Alas, the authors believe that this period, too, was a form of White hegemony. I admit that I don´t entirely understand why. Perhaps Sweden was still too White, too homogenously ethno-Swedish (here, the authors prefer the present situation). Sometimes, the explanation seems to be entirely psychological in character: by claiming to be "good Whites", the Swedes somehow sidestepped the fact that they, too, were once "bad Whites". Somehow, this gave Swedes absolution from their previous racialist sins. (What Hübinette and Lundström really mean is presumably that all Whites *are* bad by definition.) The authors believe that official Swedish anti-racism was really a form of nationalism - the Swedes were the best people in the world, precisely because they lacked race hatred, promoted tolerance and diversity, and so on. Gender equality played a similar role. Another problem is that Swedish anti-racism was color blind, pretending that "race" didn´t even exist as a relevant social construct. The authors support a more race-conscious "identity politics" approach, in the belief that this will benefit non-White groups more than the present color blindness. What they fail to understand, is of course that this will also benefit the White racialists they are keen on opposing...
The period of "White melancholy" (which symbolically began in 2001 and is still ongoing) is characterized by neo-liberal economic policies, neo-conservative culture, super-diversity, and a new class alliance, this time between the White middle class and the White upper class. The White working class has been left behind, as the White middle class becomes increasingly more privileged, but instead of uniting with the non-White immigrant workers, the male White workers turn sharply right and vote for the Sweden Democrats, an openly nationalist and covertly racialist party with roots in Neo-Nazism. The authors have no real explanation for this peculiar phenomenon, except another appeal to psychology. While White male workers won´t get any economic benefits from voting SD, they will at least by higher up in some symbolical sense than immigrants (and White women). Nor do they offer any solutions. White melancholy, it seems, is a predicament rather than a problem. Perhaps Whiteness itself is a predicament? Hübinette and Lundström are sharply critical of the mainstream left, which dream of a return to the period of "good Whites", color blindness or "working class politics". They don´t say so, but the implication of their analysis is that the White working class - not to mention the ditto middle class - is a reactionary mass of deplorables and unredeemables, and that the only solution is therefore a radical demographic shift in the direction of even more super-diversity (their term). And perhaps more struggle sessions? Like most anti-racist activists, the authors regard the decision of the Swedish Social Democratic government to "close the borders" during the 2015 migrant crisis as a decisive turning point, and as proof positive that Sweden has now abandoned "White solidarity". But this is absurd, since 163,000 asylum seekers arrived in Sweden before the border was "closed" (something the authors point out themselves), it´s not really "closed" at all, and no attempts have been made to force rejected asylum seekers or criminals to leave the country. What their position actually entails is that Sweden shouldn´t have borders *at all*, in other words, cease to exist.
One absurd thing I noticed with "Vit melankoli" is the constant projection. The Sweden Democrats and Christian Democrats are attacked for their anti-feminism, while Muslims and other immigrants from Africa and Asia are only "supposedly" patriarchal. (Lundström is a White woman who doesn´t veil herself.) The White upper and middle classes are accused of being "clans". There are no other clans in Sweden? Immigrant youth gangs, say? Or Turkish and Somali vote-buyers in certain election districts? Meritocracy is increasingly replaced with "konsekrati" (not sure what the English neologism is - consecracy?), which means that your social capital is more important than your actual skill. The authors claim that this is typical of the White privileged neo-conservative layers, but it´s of course even more obvious in SJW circles. Those who lack the right woke values are purged, while grifters and incompetents are promoted (and consecrated) if they can sing all the right tunes, use the latest weird neologisms, and so on. "Diversity" often plays this function.
I also noted that the authors seem to oppose mixed marriage between a high-status White person and a non-White person of lower status, since this is seen as a way for the non-White person to integrate into "Whiteness" by marrying up. They are also annoyed at the fact that certain non-White groups are succesfully "negotiating the borders of Whiteness" by "passing", for instance secular Iranians or non-White adoptees who are culturally Swedish. I always suspected that Hübinette is a reverse racist (he is a Korean adoptee), and I think this is additional evidence for that position. I´m not sure what Lundström is. A race traitor? The authors argue that gender and race are more important than class, but it´s obvious that they mean *race* is more important than either gender or class, since they attack the feminist movement for being "White-dominated". Also, the non-Whites who marry up into Whiteness are presumably women. Perhaps the authors prefer non-White women to remain conservative Muslims?
As a side point, I was amused by the weird paranoia of Lundström, which seems perennial in Swedish left-liberal circles, about certain symbols. Thus, a shaved head and a big beard is a "fascist aesthetic". (By that definition, left-Social Democrat Daniel Suhonen is fash.) When Christian Democratic leader Ebba Busch showed up in a recent televised debate in an attractive "feminine" dress, the SJWs almost panicked. Yes, Lundström has the same obsession with women dressing up as alluringly conservative "house wives". (She never mentions the Muslim veil, but whatever.) I also remember the strange debate among the lib literati about fascist aesthetics when the neo-Nazi NRM were allowed to march on the streets of some Swedish city a couple of years ago. Yes, there is a similar take on certain hairstyles in this book...
I´m really happy that somebody takes the time sorting out these topics while the world is burning!
Needless to say, I have a very different political perspective than Catrin Lundström and Tobias Hübinette. The present situation (which may indeed have begun around 2001) is marked by an alliance between the neo-liberals and the left-liberals, the former being strong in the corporate and financial world, the latter being strong in the bureaucracy and the ideological apparatus. Their alliance explains the strange hybrid character of the present-day system, with a (fairly bizarre) left-liberal culture and a kind of quasi-welfare state (really a control apparatus over the unemployed) superimposed on a increasingly neo-liberal economy (and yet, one that is ultimately subsidized by the state). Both sides support mass immigration, neo-liberals to get cheap labor, left-liberals to get voting cattle and/or state wards. Both sides also promote immigrants and other "minorities" willing to play by the rulebook. And both sides attack the White working class! It´s certainly possible that the neo-liberals will break the alliance with the left-liberals at some point, turning towards the quasi-nationalist right (which is really neo-liberal). Lundström and Hübinette presumably represent the far left faction of the left-liberal apparatus, which fears this perspective more intensely than many others, and therefore call for a more radical SJW-ish, BLM-ish and anti-White policy in order to quash the (White) neo-libs before it´s too late. And "super-diversity" seems to be the way to do it. (Since Whites and non-Whites can´t unite, what makes the authors think various non-White group can unite better? On his blog, Hübinette even complains about being harassed by MENA youth due to his East Asian look!)
Had I been a revolutionary leftist of the classical type, I would have attacked the authors for being "reformist" and "liberal", accused them of denying the possibility and necessity of "working class unity" and "class struggle", and then called for mass immigration myself. However, I´m beginning to think that there is, paradoxically, *something* to their analysis. Yes, the Swedish welfare state was a nationalist (or "White") project, but why on earth is that a *bad* thing? Maybe global "class unity" really is impossible - as suggested by the authors themselves. But if so, the most logical way to win back the Swedish working class to Social Democratic politics is for the Social Democrats to become more nationalist, while also promoting a stronger welfare state (and negotiating the borders of Whiteness by including, say, Iranians or Assyrians into the Swedish folkhem). If Hübinette and Lundström call for BLM-ish reverse racialism, they can hardly fault others for proposing their own brands of nationalism!
In a way, I suppose you could say "Vit melankoli" made me more race-conscious. Or at least nation-conscious. The irony.
Saturday, May 29, 2021
The biggest scheme QAnon ever pulled
It just struck me that QAnon must be the biggest and most succesful troll ever.
In order to attack QAnon, the establishment media must deny that the world is ruled by a cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles. Perhaps the media are right, in some purely technical fashion. However, the world wouldn´t be very different if it *had* been ruled by a cabal of demon-infested sex offenders.
Of course, an even bigger troll would be to trick the media into denying the following proposition: "The world is ruled by a cabal of neo-liberal corporate cleptocrats who oppose nation-states, labor movements and Western civilization itself".
Can we make this happen? :D
Fullständigt knullade
Liberalerna har ju redan en stor kuk som symbol, och nu detta! Vad blir nästa steg? Kom ihåg: världen styrs *inte* av ett hemligt pedofilnätverk som offrar barn till Djävulen, nehejdå. (Ja, detta är såklart ett slag under bältet, men är man för marknadshyror och vill avskaffa LAS får man skylla sig själv.)
Hälsningar,
Britt-Marie, 45
North Korean capitalism?
"Bureau 39: Kim´s Cash Machine" is a 2019/2021 documentary made by the German public broadcaster DW. On YouTube, it´s been retitled "How does North Korea finance a nuclear weapons program?". However, the production says relatively little about this. Rather, it deals in a more general manner with the North Korean regime´s ways of rounding the UN-imposed sanctions on the country. A humorous detail is that the documentary sounds "leftist", denouncing the DPRK as "capitalist", "aristocratic" and "exploitative", ruled by a "rich elite", and so on. Probably all true, but whatever happened to the standard "Commie gooks with breadlines" angle?
Bureau 39 (also called Office 39) is a secretive North Korean agency, charged with obtaining foreign currency for the Kim regime by essentially any means necessary. DW claims that Western fashion brands make us of North Korean sweatshop and concentration camp labor through Chinese middlemen. Further, over 100,000 North Korean workers are employed all around the world, mostly in Russia and China. Their earnings are confiscated by the North Korean authorities. The film crew managed to interview a North Korean guestworker in Poland! Their compound was guarded by DPRK secret service.
There is also a global network of North Korean bars and restaurants, staffed by North Korean citizens, who work for free, while the revenue stream goes to the regime back home in Pyongyang. The DW team visited one such restaurant in Cambodia, which catered primarily to Western tourists.
North Korean ships sail around the world under false flags. DW claims that this fleet is used to provide Assad´s military in Syria with the necessary ingredients to make chemical weapons. Bureau 39 is also into arms smuggling and large-scale computer hacking.
The border between China and North Korea seems extremely porous. During the famine of the 1990´s, a huge black market emerged in North Korea, a market for smuggled Chinese goods. Kim Jong-un´s regime has decided not to stop this trade, but rather to capitalize on it. The smugglers have evolved into an entirely new class, known as "Masters of Money", and are allowed to thrive in North Korea, even being allowed to live in the closed city of Pyongyang. They even work for Office 39! The regime has also legalized some of the black markets for Chinese goods, In return, the NEPmen must pay protection money to the Communist authorities...
It´s obvious that China is North Korea´s main beneficiary, and couldn´t care less about the UN sanctions. Every day, huge trucks drive through on the bridge across the Yalu River (the border). As already noted, many North Koreans work in China. What is less obvious is the Western complicity, but it must be there. Not just the greed of some French fashion house, but some kind of geopolitical, or perhaps purely economic, calculation that North Korea is better (for capitalism) under an authoritarian regime, despite its nuclear weapons. Trump presumably tried to "turn" Kim Jong-un and make him more friendly to the United States, perhaps on account of the large and largely untapped mineral resources of North Korea?
As for Communism and capitalism, I agree that North Korea isn´t "socialist" or "communist" in the sense expected by Marx, but that still begs the question of whether Marx´ visions were realistic or not as actually stated. North Korea could have been authoritarian and statist anyway, "Marxism" simply being a convenient cover. It´s frankly amazing why some leftists still today support North Korea (or China for that matter), since nothing in the trajectory of these nations indicate that they are moving closer to the classless and moneyless goal associated with classical Marxism.
With that little reflection, I end my review of "Bureau 39: Kim´s Cash Machine".
Den komplicerade nationalismen
Jag vet inte vem Jonatan Unge är, och om han verkligen är så hjärndöd som den här artikeln verkar tyda på. "Öööööh...jag vet inte vad `nationalism´ är för något". Förmodligen försöker han helt enkelt förklara för alla hjärndöda globo-liberaler från Waldorfskolan varför man trots allt kan vara nationalist, och har då valt att sänka sig till deras nivå.
Intressant att artikeln publicerats i Aftonbladet. Den nationalstat Unge försvarar är nämligen Israel, inte Kurdistan, Palestina eller Sameland. Anta nu att samma snubbe skrivit en artikel i vilken han *verkligen* försvarar Sverige (ingen bryr sig om Sveaborg 1808). Tror någon att *den* publicerats i Aftonbladet? Det tror inte jag...
"Därför är nationalismen mer komplicerad för mig"
Friday, May 28, 2021
Cold War triangle
The link above goes to a documentary on YouTube, titled "Mao´s Cold War: China vs the Soviet Union". It´s available at the Timeline channel. It tells the story of the "cold war within the cold war" between the two leading Communist powers, the Soviet Union and the People´s Republic of China. A large portion deals with the 1969 clashes between Soviet and Chinese troops at Zhenbao Island in the Ussuri River. Several Chinese veterans from that particular conflict are interviewed. The entire production has a strong Sino-centric tendency.
According to the documentary, Stalin´s Soviet Union treated Mao´s China as a semi-colony, forcing the Chinese "comrades" to grant economic concessions in disputed border regions and use Soviet loans to buy Soviet weapons (while refusing to sell the most advanced weapon systems to the Chinese side). During the Korean War, Stalin used Mao´s army as a proxy (some would perhaps say cannon fodder). Still, China and the USSR remained allies.
While Mao may have had a few problems with Joe Stalin, he liked Stalin´s successors even less. I don´t think Khrushchev´s "condemnation of the personality cult of Stalin", per se, had anything to do with it, however, as suggested by the documentary. Rather, it was the Khrushchev thaw and the attempts at "peaceful co-existence" with the United States (the latter is mentioned) that worried Mao. For instance, the anti-Soviet Hungarian uprising of 1956 would have been impossible under Stalin. Mao was quite simply worried that Khrushchev´s policy risked weakening the entire Communist bloc. Khrushchev, for his part, wasn´t amused and recalled all Soviet advisors from China, also stopping Soviet aid.
When Khrushchev was unseated and replaced by Brezhnev, the Chinese made an abortive attempt to restore the Sino-Soviet relations. This failed due to strong suspicions that the Soviets wanted to saw discord within China and perhaps stage a coup to overthrow Mao.
The documentary mentions both major disasters during Mao´s tenure: the Great Leap Forward (38 million dead from famine) and the Cultural Revolution. Interestingly, it almost entirely skips over Mao´s developing alliance with the United States, instead claiming that the Cold War bi-polar world became a "triangle". This shows the Sino-centricity of "Mao´s Cold War". In reality, of course, China allied itself with the United States bi-pole, but apparently that´s not politic to say in Beijing these days.
As already mentioned, a large portion of "Mao´s Cold War" deals with the clashes at Zhenbao Island, when the cold war between the Communist giganti turned red hot.
One thing that struck me was that the war veterans still sound very "Maoist". They quote Mao Zedong´s commonplaces as if it was the highest wisdom, and even deny that the famine under the Great Leap Forward was Mao´s responsibility. Instead, they blame the Soviets! "We had to pay back the loans to the Soviets even during the famine, so therefore we couldn´t eat apples, the debt was paid in apples" (presumably, apples are a staple food during famines in China).
The documentary also claims that the Soviets wanted to literally nuke China during the border clashes, but were forced to back down due to Richard Nixon´s threat that America would look *very* negatively on such a move. In plain English, Nixon would retaliate by a nuclear strike on the Soviets. Is this true? Nixon was notoriously trigger-happy, so who knows? Of course, this means that Tricky Dick was positive towards improved relations with Red China already before Kissinger started playing table tennis...
Relatively interesting. Worth watching.
Knocking on the door of Progress
"Knocking on Heaven´s Door" is a 2011 BBC documentary narrated by George Carey. It deals with a very obscure topic (at least outside Russia), and yet I posted about it before. Yes, it´s time for another close encounter with Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov and the Russian Cosmists!
On YouTube, the documentary has been given the click-bait subtitle "The Bizarre Story of the Soviet Space Program". Some of it deals with the "official" space program and Yuri Gagarin, still considered a hero and a martyr in Russia. No surprise: Gagarin (not Buzz Aldrin or John Glenn) was the first man in space. Digging deeper, Carey discovers a strange underworld where science is de facto treated as a religion, religion becomes a science, and nobody really seems to get the difference (or even give a damn). This holism is, of course, typical of much Russian philosophy.
The "prophet" of the space age turns out to be the 19th century excentric Fyodorov (often misspelled Fedorov in English), who lived like a "fool in Christ", yet preached a secular religion in which high technology would make humans immortal, including a resurrection of those already dead. Space exploration and conquest was part of this futuristic utopia. In the West, a man like Fyodorov would presumably be seen as a kook, but in Russia, people like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky saught him out, and some later scientists were inspired by the prophetic quality of his ideas. One of them was Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Vladimir Vernadsky perhaps another. Still today, there are Cosmists in Russia. Carey meets both the more quasi-religious types (one of them even showing him a kind of pagan idol!) and the more scientific ones, including a group that investigates "remote viewing" and out-of-body experiences. The latter group seems well connected.
What I find fascinating is precisely the seamless, careless manner in which these people jump across the (supposed) science-religion divide. Tsiolkovsky was a rocket scientist, but judging by George M Young´s book "The Russian Cosmists", he was also a kind of crypto-Theosophist, hiding his religious views behind a scientific-sounding language. But then, he may not have seen any contradiction. In the documentary, the parapsychology researchers comes across as a more fortrightly spiritual group, more interested in inner exploration than space conquest, but once again, they might not see any binary opposition between them. The spiritual dimension is, after all, simultaneously also a kind of space "out there". All matter is alive and communicates with itself, and humans are simply small particles trying to get integrated into a vast spiritual-cosmic matrix. I admit that this more "Hindu" perspective is more sympathetic than Fyodorov´s bizarre ideas about a high tech resurrection (the Cosmists also had an authoritarian and eugenicist streak, making me wonder if *all* humans really were chosen to enter Heaven´s door).
Another reflection: we may look upon Fyodorov as a kook and the personality cult of Gagarin as weird and cultish, but are we that different ourselves? The Soviet cult of the cosmonaut is simply the Communist version of the more general Western idea of Progress, which during its heyday also claimed that "our destiny is in the stars". Perhaps that´s why I found Fyodorov so unsettling. His speculations expose that our pop-scientific worldview is really our religion (Christianity) with the serial numbers filed off. And probably even more crazy, to boot.
Thursday, May 27, 2021
Joy and love in the Upanishads
So I just read the Penguin Classic edition of "The Upanishads", originally published in 1965. The title is somewhat misleading, since the slender volume only contain a few of the Hindu texts known as Upanishads. The translator, Juan (or Joan) Mascaró, also translated "The Bhagavad Gita". Curiously, Mascaró was Spanish (specifically Catalan), yet translated from Sanskrit to English! Since my knowledge of Sanskrit is virtually non-existent, I can´t really judge the translation. However, it did struck me that it sounds "Christian" (a lot of "joy" and "love" in this one, and even a "trinity"). Mascaró´s introduction, which I frankly only skimmed, also tries to find as many parallels as possible between the Upanishads, Christianity, the Romantics, and various poets and mystics through the ages. I´m not entirely sure if this is the right approach.
Still, the little book is interesting. Monist Hinduism always struck me as pessimistic and frankly weird - who wants to become "one" with some impersonal "god" who is suspiciously similar to dreamless sleep, or comes across as a hybrid between a fainting fit and brute matter. Merging with the divine like the drop merges with the ocean (i.e. disappear) doesn´t sound very appealing either. In Mascaró´s version, merging with Brahman sounds like consciousness-expansion, rather than nihilistic self-annihilation. As already mentioned, non-duality means joy and love. Even Shiva is described as a god of love in this scenario! The world around us is God´s creation (or Brahman´s emanation), and therefore wonderful and magical, but in order to reach *real* perfection, we have to go beyond it, to the Spirit from which it came and which still today both transcends it and dwells within it, including in ourselves (as the Atman).
There are no explanatory notes, which is a pity, since the Upanishads contain many statements which cry out for some, shall we say, knowledge-expansion. At several points, an esoteric anatomy is described. Where you end up is dependent on where your subtle energies are directed. Pro tip: direct them to the top of the head! At other points, I get the impression that the impersonal Oversoul isn´t the highest reality, there is something else which transcends even it. Also, the world around us seems to be real, not an illusion, according to many passages. However, there are examples of the more "negative" teaching, too, as when dreamless sleep is portrayed as the obvíous longing of all creatures. Some Upanishads see the Vedic sacrifices and rituals as expressions of the Brahman, while others seem to repudiate them. Of course, these texts aren´t the work of a single school, so different approaches are to be expected. The most common one is to see the traditional rites as good, but nevertheless of a lower order than the yogic techniques, since the Vedic sacrifices can´t lead to liberation, but at most to a temporary stay in a heaven-world. And so on...
Will perhaps ponder these scriptures more in the future.
The COVID Conspiracy
I don´t claim to know whether or not the coronavirus is "man-made" or not, but since I previously linked to an article in Breitbart News claiming that it is (when this was verboten knowledge according to the Masters of the Universe), I will now do the exact opposite, and link to an article arguing that it *isn´t* man-made.
Today, the Biden White House has turned 180 degrees and is de facto claiming that it may indeed have been manufactured, after all. The piece below is from the World Socialist Web Site and argues that the "Wuhan lab" theory is part of the US neo-cold war propaganda against China.
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
Sverige var inte tryggast, trots allt
För omkring sex år sedan påstod Peter Wolodarski i en famös krönika i DN att Sverige aldrig har varit tryggare. Och så var det ju inte riktigt. I dagarna kom en studie som visar att Sverige ligger i topp i Europa när det gäller skjutningar och dödligt våld.
Länken nedan går till Tobias Hübinettes blogg.
Eftersom Hübinette är radikal anti-rasist (anarkist?) är det anmärkningsvärt att han nästan erkänner vad det ökade våldet beror på: "Varför svenskarna dödar eller försöker döda varandra i så hög utsträckning medelst både skjutvapen och sprängmedel att vi nu ligger i topp i Europa per capita är fortfarande inte helt klart och orsakerna är sannolikt många och stavas bl a extrem fattigdom bland landets invånare med utomeuropeisk bakgrund i miljonprogramsområdena och en miniarmé av tonåriga och unga vuxna UVAS/NEET:are som har misslyckats fullständigt i skolan och för vilka brottslighet är den ”enda” karriärvägen."
I klartext: migrantkrisen, flumskolan och välfärdsstatens sammanbrott.
Next year in Beijing
I find it richly ironic that Chinese state media wonders aloud whether there is a powerful Jewish lobby in the United States, prompting the Israeli embassy in Beijing to accuse the show host of "anti-Semitism".
Note: Israel actually has an embassy in China. But that´s not the irony.
The Chinese *know* that Jews in the US are powerful...since one of the richest ones is a Chinese "asset"! Yes, that would be Michael Bloomberg.
Still, the Israeli embassy is right. The Jews really don´t control the world. The Controller is somebody closer to...Beijing.
Revelation on the road to Taipei
Will Joe Biden persecute the guy who exposed this for high treason and espionage? The connection to the present-day "cold war" between China and the US is obvious.
The left can´t meme
The Trotskyist World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) is obviously being trolled by the DSA here, but in time-honored "politically autistic" fashion, pretends not to get it, and instead reacts as if a truly world historic event have transpired. A few invectives á la the Spartacist League would have served the purpose equally well, or perhaps a few memes showing Trotsky executing Mensheviks, but naaah...
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
När den gröna enhetsfronten blir röd
Credit: IDF |
Klimatrörelsen "Fridays for Future" har de facto splittrats, sedan en stor del av den har tagit ställning för "palestinierna" (alltså Hamas) mot Israel. Rörelsen har uppenbarligen kapats av de sedvanliga entristerna från rödvänstern. Den tyska avdelningen kallar de andra gruppernas ställningstagande "antisemitiskt", medan Greta Thunberg försöker hålla sig neutral. Nästa vecka kommer FFF kanske ta ställning för trans-personer också. Eller är detta den *riktigt* hårda vänster som föredrar Mao och Baader-Meinhof?
Snabba cash
Det här är säkert SD-propaganda, men jag erkänner att det var en rätt så rolig parodi på vissa saker...
I pledge my ass to UNESCO
Lysenko making a pledge. Joe listening in the background. |
Apparently, UNESCO wants all the good people (TM) to "take a pledge" in support of science. When a pro-pledge article was published in IEEE Spectrum magazine (link below), all 26 comments were uniformly negative, forcing the poor editors to shut down the discussion thread! Since IEEE is a pro-science org for engineers, I assume that the average reader of their magazine isn´t a firm believer in the existence of, say, retro-engineered UFOs at Area 51, feng shui or haunted houses. So how come *everyone* who commented opposed the idea of a "pledge" to science? Why indeed...
Note also that the pledge has the bizarre name "Trust Science" (and Big Brother?) and will be promoted on "The International Day of Light"! Geezus, and I don´t mean the carpenter!
Apparently, somebody already signed the pledge with the joke name "Thali Domide", and there is probably a "Trofim Lysenko" and "Torquemada" waiting in the wings, too. This per JMG´s blogs.
Personally, I pledge myself to believe in the following propositions:
- Fusion power doesn´t work.
- The Earth is a globe.
- There is a replication crisis in science.
- Heliocentrism is a thing.
- There are only two biological sexes.
- Evolution is true. Humans are related to chimps.
- Trump didn´t collude with the Russians.
- BLM is a front for the Dems and Antifa does exist.
- Joe Biden is senile.
- Freud was a crank, Jung a raving lunatic. "Psycho, analyze thyself".
- There really is a Caucasoid race.
- The Caucasoid race comprises Europeans, Jews, Arabs, Pakistanis, Gypsies and Ethiopians.
- Moses didn´t write no Bible.
- Jesus didn´t write no Bible.
- Buddha didn´t write no Pali Canon.
- Muhammad *did* write the Quran (not Allah).
- Scythians were matriarchal.
- Scythians were crazy warriors of Aryan stock.
- "Pidgins" are legitimate languages.
- The noble savage never existed.
- The West abolished slavery.
- Kunta Kinte isn´t a real person.
- High cultures have existed in Africa.
- COVID is a serious threat.
- Lockdowns haven´t stopped COVID.
- Man-made climate change is real.
- The Earth is overpopulated.
Funny how science constantly transcends the political divides in contemporary America. Almost as if it told us something objective about the world or something...
Britt-Marie har ordet
Britt-Marie 45, förlåt, Åsa Linderborg till attack mot CUF:s bisarra kampanjvideo. Hon får in en del poänger, och så har hon en del blinda fläckar förstås...
The science is unsettled
Last year, Fauci said that it was a "conspiracy theory" to suggest that the coronavirus was engineered in a lab in Wuhan, China. Sort of yesterday, he changed his mind, saying that perhaps it did, after all, and that we should at least investigate the matter further.
Just like that.
It´s good to know that science progresses in the light of new evidence. LOL. I´m being sarcastic, of course. The real question is: was Fauci politicizing the COVID issue last year, or is he doing so now? After all, confrontation with China has become the new liberal orthodoxy.
Perhaps he played politics both times?
Makes you wonder what else they might be less than up front about...
Göran Greider: Djupekolog? Om ett levande löfte som ej kan hållas
Att Greider nästan låter "mörkgrön" här är ju intressant. För många år sedan läste jag hans bok "Det levande löftet" och uppfattade den som väldigt tänkvärd. Och ärligt talat föredrar jag den "ideologiske gråsossen" Greider framför de senare permutationerna.
Fast mitt största problem är nog naiviteten.
Låt oss anta att det mörkgröna scenariot är korrekt. I så fall förutsätter det att Jordens befolkning kraftigt minskar, med kanske 88% (från 8 miljarder till 1 miljard). Det innebär inte bara "nedväxt" i de s k i-länderna, utan även att "tredje världen" *aktivt hindras* från att utvecklas. Så långt vill eller vågar Greider inte gå.
Men enda alternativet till 100 år av kaos och nedväxt är...den gröna industrialisering han kritiserar. Eller att vi fortsätter som förut och sedan duckar!
The Inner School of the Elders
"Esoteric Theravada: The Story of the Forgotten Meditation Tradition of Southeast Asia" is a book by Kate Crosby published last year. I haven´t read literally all of it (it *is* very "esoteric"), but will post a review anyway (it´s my blog, after all). Despite being a scholarly work, it´s published by Shambhala, an independent pro-Buddhist publisher based in Boulder, Colorado.
Judging by several other works I´ve read, the almost exclusive emphasis on Vipassana meditation (which modern Mindfulness is based on) is a new phenomenon within Theravada, not older than the 19th century, when various modernization processes conspired to "resurrect" (or perhaps create wholly de novo) this kind of meditation technique. Before the 19th century, few, if any, Buddhists meditated at all, Theravada practice being about "merit-creating" and pseudo-magical rituals. While this scenario isn´t "wrong", Kate Crosby shows that the actual picture is more complex - and even more interesting.
It turns out that alongside the official Theravada, there *was* a tradition of advanced meditation, which Crosby calls "boran kammatthana". This was an esoteric practice of unknown date which played a prominent part in certain monastic circles prior to the 19th and 20th centuries, usually communicated by word of mouth from master to disciple. It even played a role in a major Buddhist revival in Ceylon during the 18th century. There are similarities between boran kammatthana, Tibetan dream yoga, other Tantric practices, alchemy and Ayurvedic medicine. For some reason, Crosby doesn´t discuss possible similarities with esoteric Taoism. The usual suspicion is that the esoteric tradition within Theravada really is Tantrism, and since such influences were anathema to the 19th century modernizers, this simply became another argument to ignore or suppress it. Crosby, by contrast, believes that boran kammatthana is really inspired by Ayurveda, and that it´s so closely aligned to Theravada philosophy that an "alien" Tantric intrusion is unlikely. In other words, the secret tradition is in some sense legit. (Personally, I don´t see the contradiction.)
The most interesting section of the book tries to describe the actual practices associated with this old school form of meditation. The practitioner does experience various paranormal or supernatural phenomena: encounters with the spirits of the deceased, visions of other realms of reality, seeing spheres of light sometimes accompanied by luminous letters in ancient Khmer script, etc. Physical objects may be visible even when the meditator closes his eyes, or may appear in strange and unfamiliar shapes. Abstract themes for meditation may "appear" as quasi-physical objects, such as a sun´s disk or radiant gems. The practitioner is supposed to absorb the luminous orbs through his nostrils and place them inside his body, at the locations of various chakras or energy centers. This will eventually transform the physical body of the meditator into that of a Buddha! The relationship between this (apparently literal) transformation and the ultimate goal of nibbana (nirvana) is not spelled out in the esoteric scriptures, but presumably a person who dies while in this transmogrified state will immidiately attain liberation. (Does this mean that the Buddha-body is mortal? Or does the person choose to die? Not clear!)
Some additional techniques described in the book take numerology and peculiar written code words as their point of departure. There are affinities between boran kammatthana and alchemy (yes, it works with quicksilver and sulphur in Southeast Asia, too), magical tattoos, traditional medicine, and "forest monks" living at the outskirts of Theravadin civilization. At the same time, the esotericism was also surprisingly intellectually sophisticated. A close reading of Theravada Buddhist philosophy suggested that the "atoms" of samsaric existence are simultaneously both material and spiritual. (Compare Whitehead´s process philosophy!) But if so, spiritual mutations should lead to changes in the physical. Therefore, it´s entirely in keeping with Buddhist understanding that a spiritual technique such as meditation can transform a physical body. Presumably, it´s also logical to assume that a certain kind of body can make it easier to attain a "spiritual" state such as nibbana.
When Theravada modernized itself during the 19th and early 20th centuries, the esoteric practices were gradually squeezed out. One way of doing so was to ban traditional medicine in favor of the modern, Western version. The sangha (monastic order) was taken over by modernists and controlled by the modernizing state. This was the course taken in Siam (Thailand). The esoteric tradition there had already been weakened during the 18th century when the Burmese invaded and devasted Siam, including the then capital of Ayutthaya. In Cambodia, the French colonial power supported the modernist faction within the sangha. The Cold War was another crushing blow. In Cambodia and Laos, Communist regimes (most notoriously the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia) decimated the sangha and Buddhism in general. In pro-Western Thailand, millions of people were relocated from the border regions, where the Thai government feared Communist infiltration. Traditional forms of Buddhism had survived longer in these areas than in others. However, it seems boran kammatthana isn´t completely dead. A few monasteries in Thailand still teach the practice, and the controversial Dhammakaya new religious movement has adopted a modified version of it. Somewhat ironically, it seems that the latest phase of modernization, with its emphasis on individual choices in religion, might favor the ancient esotericism...
There seems to be more to explore here. This is the *inner* school of the elders.
Sunday, May 23, 2021
Thursday, May 20, 2021
Cult leader comes clean?
"Dokument inifrån: De utvalda barnen" (The chosen children) is a Swedish documentary in three parts, only available in Swedish at SVT Play. The documentary is made by Jasper Lake, a former student at Solvikskolan, a radical Waldorf school at Järna south of Stockholm. As a grown-up, Lake started a Facebook group for former Solvik students, and much to his astonishment realized that the school had a dark side he was completely unaware of. Former students told stories about bullying and malign neglect, often at the initiative of the teachers. Lake realized that he had been one of the "good" kids, selected and specially treated by the teachers. Those who didn´t fit in were treated very differently...
Waldorf schooling is an "alternative" form of pedagogy developed by Austrian polymath Rudolf Steiner about 100 years ago. Steiner also created a religious or spiritual movement known as Anthroposophy. Waldorf education is based on the occult and frequently bizarre ideas of Steiner, who claimed the ability to "see" into the spirit-world by supernatural clairvoyance. In Sweden, Järna is the center of Anthroposophy. The relation between Solvikskolan and the wider Anthroposophical movement isn´t entirely clear. On the one hand, Solvik were expelled from the Swedish Waldorf Federation for being too extreme (really for following Steiner´s intstructions to the letter). On the other hand, Solvik were considered a role model by the Anthroposophists internationally, and the school´s founder Pär Ahlbom frequently lectured at meetings abroad, suggesting that *he* wasn´t expelled from much of anything (Ahlbom is in fact a devoted Anthroposophist).
The atmosphere at the school seems to have been bizarre and cultish even at the best of times (or "best"). Dance, song, music classes and pageants took up most of the school days, but the creativity of individual teachers or children must have been severly hampered by Steiner´s dogmatic specifications: no piano allowed, the dance was "eurythmy" - a special kind of dance developed by Steiner and his wife Marie von Sivers - and the pageants probably had an Anthroposophical message. The students were talked into thinking that they were part of something huge and important. In reality, they didn´t learn anything useful. When Jasper Lake began to attend a non-Waldorf senior high school, he was expelled after just one semester, since he literally didn´t know anything! Other students told similar stories: no grades, no knowledge, some could hardly read, and so on. When the government´s school inspectors showed up, the kids pretended to have real classes with real school books, which were quickly stashed away when the inspectors left...
Gradually, a darker picture emerges. As already noted, the children frequently bullied each other, often with the teachers not doing anything, or even initiating the bullying. The kids were encouraged to play in a rope swing hanging in a tree outside the school building. The play frequently ended with children getting seriously hurt - several times, students had to be flown to the nearest hospital in a helicopter! One teacher "played" some kind of suffocation game with the children, or even stepped on them (the kids were only 8 years old), presumably to make them "wake up spiritually". Children with special needs were looked down upon (yet, Anthroposophists claim to take care of such people), and so was essentially everyone who didn´t "fit the format" one way or another.
Steiner divided people into four categories depending on their temperament, and it seems that students who were seen as "sanguine" were promoted by the teachers, while the three other personality types were seen as more negative. One teacher let a kid attack and beat up another, with the argument that one of them needed an outlet for his agressions, while the other needed to learn to stand up for herself - apparently some kind of polarity work. Steiner´s weird belief system was never explicitly taught at the school, but it was certainly practiced. This includes its murkier sides, such as the belief in karma and reincarnation. That some kids were hurt or beaten up was seen as "karmic" and hence in some sense "good".
The spider in this web is Pär Ahlbom, who founded the school about 40 years ago. Lake interviewed him at some length. He also talked to his son Gudmund and daughter Elsa. At first, Ahlbom seems to be a nice old man (he is 88 years old) interested in spirituality, art and Kulturkritik. He comes across as a well-meaning utopian who simply doesn´t understand that his ideas and lofty ideals don´t work in the real world. Gradually, however, a more disturbing picture emerges. Pär seems to be in complete denial about what happened at the school during his time as de facto leader, says he "can´t remember" things, that a particularly crazy teacher was "spiritually interesting", etc. At one point, he even seems to be mocking the victims: "Oh, so you were hurt in your soul? How awful". His Anthroposophy is fanatical: Steiner, it seems, can never go wrong, it´s majority society that is sick and needs to change, not the Solvik school.
Elsa reveals that when she fell badly from the swing (at the age of 10) and was knocked unconscious, Pär didn´t really care...until she told him about an out-of-body experience she had during her trauma. This made him feel exilerated, claiming that her severe accident was actually positive! Elsa then says that her father never feels any shame, guilt or empathy, and seems almost impervious to pain. Is Pär actually a psychopath or, at the very least, a person with undiagnosed Asperger´s? That´s the question I asked myself when seeing this part of "De utvalda barnen".
At the very last moment, the documentary takes a *very* unexpected turn. Pär´s wife dies after a protracted battle with cancer. For the first time in his life, the old man feels real grief. Somehow, this makes him realize that he really has been a bad person most of his life. He admits having been a "dictator" and "almost a cult leader", and tries to reconcile himself with his son during a dramatic eye-to-eye meeting at Solvik. I have no idea whether Pär is sincere (although I would love to think so), but his last minute apology just might be what is needed to save the reputation of Waldorf schools in Sweden.
Swedish media haven´t yet commented the last episode (which haven´t been shown on regular TV yet, although it´s already available at SVT Play), but reactions to Waldorf schooling and Anthroposophy after the first two episodes were, as expected, uniformly negative. What did surprise me, frankly, was that the newspapers had no problems finding people who had attended Waldorf schools, or knew somebody who did...among their own contributors or sub-editors. Did every other crazy liberal in Sweden attend a Waldorf school? Did this affect their worldview somehow? Made them equally naive and fanatical? This is not the first time I´m baffled by the success among liberals or "the woke" of Waldorf pedagogy, despite the fact that Anthroposophy is a very "problematic" movement. I mean, Steiner supported Germany in World War I, believed in racial differences and hierarchies, and had an obsession with Goethe, who was politically conservative! He probably said something negative about Jews, too, although I haven´t bothered checking.
"Dokument inifrån: De utvalda barnen" is a tour de force and probably even worth some kind of award, but I feel that there might be more to unearth here...
Ännu en av mina förutsägelser slår in
Fast det här var den enklaste. Brace for impact, boys and girls...
Veckans Margot
Margot Wallström tar ställning. Kommer trans-tramset att bli nästa valfråga? Lägg märke till hur Vårdguiden fräckt ljuger i slutet av artikeln!
Wednesday, May 19, 2021
Veckans Strasser
Vårt mest populära inslag är tillbaka. Artikeln nedan är från Tobias Hübinettes blogg.
He could have a point
Interesting comments on the recent Bill Gates situation. I think Styx might be on to something here...
Confirms my suspicions
Not sure if this has been conclusively "proven" yet, but it does tend to confirm my own suspicions. Is society letting down autistic youth?
Fantasy Worlds
Donna M Hughes is a professor at the university of Rhode Island. She was recently condemned by the university for criticizing the "trans-gender" movement (the second link below). The first link is to her original article. She points out the curiously anti-feminist/anti-woman nature of trans-gender ideology. Males are not asked to repudiate their privileges. Rather, women are asked to give up hard-won rights to men claiming to be women! She also points out the profit motive of Big Pharma (this is very important, imo).
Of course, as a good liberal, Hughes just have to compare trans-sex beliefs to QAnon, "right-wing domestic terrorism" and lock down criticism (nothing about BLM-Antifa riots), but it is what it is, I suppose.
From where I stand, SJW-ism and trans-genderism are looking more and more like a cult. A certain trans-woman at a certain blog I follow who left the movement (but still identifies as trans) called it "a social cult". That is, a social milieu or subculture that increasingly functions in a cultic manner.
I´m beginning to suspect that it goes way beyond this. For instance, cults often try to control the physical environment of cult members. And the SJWs are for "safe spaces". They already try to control the language of cult members. And just like capricious cult leaders, they constantly change the goal posts, making cult members live in constant fear of not knowing what to do to please the cult - another classical tactic. Of course, public denunciations and purges (the university´s reaction) are par for the course, but we knew that already.
It´s time to deprogram America...
Avprogrammera "antisarna"?
Jag tänker recensera/kommentera dokumentärserien "De utvalda barnen" efter att ha tittat på alla tre avsnitten (det sista är ännu inte tillgängligt på SVT Play), men redan nu är serien *väldigt* uppmärksammad. Nedan en artikel från Aftonbladet som kortfattat tar upp problematiken kring Steiner och Waldorf.
Är DN en sekt?
Att Peter Wolodarski införde något slags "demokratisk centralism" på DN under migrantkrisen har jag förstått länge. Jag fick också intrycket att han upphävde den efter valet 2018. Då blev DN (relativt sett) mindre likriktat. Exempelvis var det fullt tillåtet att publicera anti-feministiska artiklar! Under coronapandemin verkar Wolodarski ha återinfört den demokratiska centralismen.
Fast inte vet jag. Jag läser inte ens rubrikerna i DN längre. Har dock noterat att W vill att Sverige stänger ner helt och hållet. Lustigt att en chefredaktör driver en dagstidning som ett slags homogen politisk fraktion...
Från Aftonbladet.
Why atheism is inherently anti-trans
Why do so many secular liberals support trans-genderism? It just struck me that a materialist can´t support trans-people. On the materialist perspective, the mind is a product of the brain. Further, there are biological differences between male and female bodies. For instance, a male body is literaly soaked in male hormones. This affects the brain. And the brain gives rise to the mind. Therefore, a mind in a male body *cannot be* "female". A male person *cannot have* "female" experiences. Indeed, on a materialist perspective, the whole notion of "female mind in a male body" is incoherent and incomprehensible. What could such a concept even *mean*?
What do we call a human who claims to be a bat, since he "experiences himself as a bat"? Batshit crazy, I suppose. A human can´t have bat experiences, unless he has telepathic contact with a bat mind. Which is impossible. At least if materialism is true. And even if a human *would* have such experiences, *he is still a human*, not a bat, since a materialist must define "human" in a biological way. At most, he is a human whose mind has been possessed by the mind of a bat. But what is true of humans who claim to be bats, must also be true of men who claim to be women. Without mental telepathy, these men simply can´t know how it feels to be a woman. Therefore, they can´t use their feelings or subjective identity to prove that they are really women.
Materialists believe that there is no such thing as race. That is, there is biologically or materially no such thing as race. "Race" is a social construct. But if so, trans-racialism is also a social construct. Now, materialists accept "Black" and "White" as valid categories, while admitting that they are socially constructed. But if so, they must logically also accept the category "trans-racial", which is just another socially constructed concept. (Or could become one, if enough people chose it to be so.)
Thus, materialists must oppose the claims of trans-people, but accept those of trans-racials. Yet, virtually all materialists take the exact *opposite* position. Why is this?
Now, there is one way in which trans-genderism could be coherently defended. Let´s assume humans have immortal souls. Let´s further assume that the souls are gendered. Let´s finally assume that a female-gendered soul incarnates (or re-incarnates) in a biologically male body. This would presumably cause the person so constituted to subjectively feel lika a woman, while biologically being male.
Good luck proving that proposition.
Of course, such a belief system is protected under the First Amendment. So trans-women would still be safe from persecution from the federal government, if they declare themselves to be a religious minority. But of course, they wouldn´t have, say, the right to affirmative action, which I assume isn´t available in the United States on strictly *religious* grounds. Nor would they have the right to federal money for gender surgery, since Jews and Muslims don´t recieve such money to get circumcised. They would also have to pay for their own hormones, since Catholics don´t get federal grants to pay for the communion wine. On the other hand, a Church of Christ Trans-Gendered would be exempted from paying taxes, including (I suppose) on donations from private citizens. They would also be able to serve in the US military, which I assume can´t bar any recruit due to religious affiliation...
Is this text serious? Or I am just trolling you? I suppose that´s up to you to decide.