Even better version

 

Here´s that Anglican song again...

The problem with theodicy

Does the theodicy problem really disprove Christianity? Or is it just a rhetorical device made effective by the Zeitgeist? 

We all know the argument by heart, I think. It goes something like this: If God is all-good, he wants to eradicate evil (and/or suffering). If he is all-powerful, he can eradicate evil (and/or suffering). But evil (and/or suffering) exists. Therefore God isn´t all-good and/or all-powerful. Therefore, God (at least in this sense) doesn´t exist. Logically, there is little to argue with here. However, the entire argument isn´t really an exercise in syllogistic logic, but a rhetorical attack on the Christian concept of God, or even the Christian God himself. Indeed, this is what gives the argument its psychological power. Let´s be honest, nobody would care if it was just a boring syllogism. 

However, it´s not overtly obvious that the syllogism is even correct to begin with. "All-good" and "all-powerful" can mean different things. Traditionally, most Christians made at least an implicit distinction between "all-good" and "all-benevolent". Yes, God is all-good in the sense that he really does want to defeat evil and end suffering, but he is not all-benevolent as in "a nice and slightly senile uncle in yonder heaven who just wants everyone to kind of get along". This is obvious from the Bible, where God punishes sinners (often just defined as "those outside the covenant") with all kinds of pestilential torrents, while also permitting his chosen to suffer until martyrdom. Indeed, there are verses strongly suggesting that only those who do suffer until the end can be saved or "win the wreath of victory". So all-benevolent he is not. He is a God who sends rain on the heads of both saints and sinners. 

Yet, atheists usually assume (or want their listerners to assume) that all-good *means* all-benevolent, otherwise the theodicy problem wouldn´t work as planned. The reason why Christian apologists often lose the argument with the atheists is that they, too, assume that all-good means all-benevolent, indeed, most people in the West for the past 200 years or so have made exactly this assumption. *This* is what makes the theodicy problem such a powerful weapon in the hands of atheists, not any fantastic syllogistic reasoning. Now, try the same thing in a Muslim country... 

Right.

(Incidentally, I´m not saying it´s necessarily wrong to identify all-good with all-benevolent. The point I´m making is that it´s the Zeitgeist that makes the argument work, just as it was the Zeitgeist of the 1950´s that made C S Lewis´ Trilemma work.) 

Obviously, "all-powerful" can be problematized in the same way, but usually isn´t, since freedom of choice is important in the secular West. Most people would probably be uncomfortable with the idea of a god (or a government power) rigging everything and controlling everything so that "the good" would be the only possible outcome. Yet, they wouldn´t argue that a government power is all-evil (let alone non-existent) if it isn´t all-powerful. Hence the concentration on the all-good part of the equation.

Note also that the theodicy argument is *really* only a way of saying "Boo to God". But that doesn´t prove nor disprove his existence. We could imagine a similar "problem" applied to Shiva, the Hindu god. That would obviously just be a way to say "Boo to Shiva", since the Shaivas would agree that both good and evil comes from Shiva, and that He is therefore not "all-good" in most senses of that term. An atheist might find such a god deeply abhorrent and refuse to worship him, but that doesn´t disprove his existence. It´s just a way to be miso-Shiva-ist. And yet, the theodicy problem gets its rhetorical and psychological strength precisely from the fact that it´s taken to *disprove* the existence of the Christian God, which (by the same reasoning) is the only God we have to deal with, since of course "everyone" knows that Shiva can´t be real (except one billion Hindus). So ultimately, the all-powerful syllogism of theodicy turns out to be a parochial argument bound by time (the last 150 years) and place (the secular West). 

Contemplate this: God really wants you to suffer to purify your sinful flesh. Or God couldn´t care less about you, unless you worship him during frankly weird nocturnal rituals on the charnel ground for seven lifetimes. What if reality *actually looks like this*? You protesting that this is grossly unfair by the standards of the British gentleman, doesn´t make it any less so. 

You can´t judge God. 

OK, I admit the Anglicans have good songs

 

I just felt like linking to this. It´s actually a Christian psalm...

AMERICA IS BACK

 

Joe Biden can still win! Here´s how... 

Meta-talibaner?

Har Motpol tillfälligt tagit över Fria Tiders redaktion, eller vad? En häpnadsväckande artikel, på mer än ett sätt. 

"Låt kontrajihadismen stanna på andra sidan sundet"

The caste society

 

A Neo-Traditionalist (pun intended) analysis of world history. I suppose there is *some* truth to this, but in contrast to this content-creator, I don´t see why the Kshatriyas or Brahmins in power are necessarily better than the Vaishyas. Indeed, the Shudras (I´m definitely one) had more power under "Vaishya" regimes (i.e. Western mixed economy democracies) than under the two other "castes". 

Nor is it clear why Neo-Feudalism should be considered Vaishya. Rather, it seems to be an alliance between Vaishyas and an autonomous state apparatus, representing a "caste" wholly its own. If succesful, Neo-Feudalism would no longer be capitalist sensu stricto, but rather a completely new system, in which part of the ruling caste would be ex-Vaishyas. (There is some inkling of this in the clip, since the narrator says that the globalists are trying to create a pseudo-religion, i.e. a "Brahmin" caste.) 

Communism doesn´t fit the neat scheme either, unless you think it really does represent the rule of the Shudras, which seems questionable. Rather, the Communist regimes can be seen as some kind of neo- or pseudo-Kshatriyas and ditto Brahmins. 

Only in America

 

Only in America can you be pro-death penalty, pro-war, pro-unmanned drone bombs, pro-nuclear weapons, pro-guns, pro-torture, pro-land mines, and still call yourself "a progressive liberal Democrat". 

Only in America can you be pro-paedophilia, pro-Islamism, pro-terrorism, pro-election fraud, pro-crime, pro-cults, pro-Satanism, pro-prostitution, pro-pornography, pro-drugs, pro-Big Pharma, pro-Big Shrink, pro-genital mutilation, pro-censorship, pro-war, pro-Deep State, pro-establishment, and still call yourself "a radical leftist". 

Någon någon något något

En socialdemokratisk pressekreterare har åsikter om Expressens journalistik. Expressen slår tillbaka. Bilden ovan visar killen grälet handlar om. 

"Det här är fakta, inte propaganda"

Best news of the year

Finally, some good news...

"They can send men to the moon, but they can´t find the world´s northernmost island".

But we´re ready to go to Mars, build cities in outer space, and shit? 

Right.

Scientists discover "world´s northernmost island" off Greenland´s coast

"Så används flyktingar som politiskt vapen"

En del intressanta fakta i denna artikel från Aftonbladet. Det där med Nordnorge kände jag inte till tidigare, inte heller att Belarus i princip "köper" migranter från Irak. 

Så används flyktingar som politiskt vapen

Bokslut

"The decent left" har misslyckats.  

"Joe Biden låter som George W Bush"

Carrier Naturalism

"So, yeah, you could be time-traveling all the time, moving through the entire cosmic history of an alien dimension, billions of times every second…since a compacted time dimension’s entire timeline would occupy less than a Planck time in duration, which is 10-to-the-44th-power times shorter than a second (that’s a 10 followed by 44 zeroes). You’d never notice."

It´s always great fun when an atheist-materialist rediscovers ancient wisdom teachings without even noticing. In this case, Brahman and Maya, alien dimensions, and sacred geometry. 

Yes, it´s Richard Carrier again... 

Superstring Theory as Metaphysical Materialism

The drama of salvation

The recieved wisdom is that evolution isn´t teleological, while human history is (yes, that would be the Western Idea of Progress in all its forms, including the version which singled out a late medieval plague-ridden authoritarian regime with state brothels in northern Italy as the apex of human existence, you know, Florence). 

My impression is rather the opposite: *evolution* is teleological, while human history is *not*. Then, I´m a born contrarian, so perhaps I should hold my peace? But yes, I do find it difficult to reconcile these notions with one another. 

The most obvious solution is that humans aren´t the end-point of evolution, indeed, we might not even be a stepping stone towards it. Perhaps we are a failed evolutionary experiment? Or a kind of weird side branch of an evolutionary-teleological tree the real end-point of which is Galactic Consciousness? (I know, an old New Age trope, but at midnight Swedish time on a Friday, I couldn´t come up with a better one!) 

The Great Cosmic Architect might not care *that* much about our *fantastic* ability to build H-bombs, devastate the atmosphere of a small M-class planet, think out weird philosophies such as "New Materialism" or "Husserlian Phenomenology", or claim that a late medieval plague ridden town is closer to the Architect than anything else you care to think of. Or maybe he does think enough about us to give us an exit door. If we could just find it...

Maybe that´s our teleology. Find that damn door! 

Anarchism in Korea: From revolution to reaction?

"Anarchism in Korea: Independence, Transnationalism, and the Question of National Development 1919-1984" is a book published in 2016, authored by Dongyoun Hwang. I can´t say I like it: English clearly isn´t the author´s first language, his "dialectical understanding" of anarchism is just pseudo-erudition, and he is extremely talkative. The book is really an attempted narrative history of Korean anarchism, made extra difficult by the paucity of sources, rather than an "analysis" in the usual sense of that term. And while the author emphasizes the "transnational" character of Korean anarchism, he gives relatively little background on the Chinese and Japanese anarchists the Korean ones were transnationally cooperating with. 

Apparently, the Korean anarchists are usually depicted as "nationalist" in Korean historiography, which explains why the author (as already indicated) rather emphasizes its cosmopolitan aspects. Anarchist and other socialist ideas entered East Asia through Tokyo and Shanghai, two international metropoles. On the anarchist side, the ideas of Kropotkin were particularly popular. Another staple was Esperanto! The Korean anarchists were largely active in Japan and China. A Korean diaspora existed in both nations. In Korea itself, anarchist activity was ruthlessly suppressed by the Japanese colonial police. Somewhat ironically, there was less repression in Japan itself (until that nation became a militarist dictatorship). One group of Korean anarchists was active at the universities in Tokyo, another among Korean immigrant workers in Osaka. The author´s description of the Osaka group in particular is contradictory: was it anti-nationalist, nationalist, syndicalist, individualist, or what? 

In China, most Korean anarchists do strike me as nationalist. At the very least, most of them were closer to the KMT and the left-KMT than to the Communist Party. That is, they cooperated with the Chinese nationalists. During the 1930´s, in response to Japan´s invasion of China, the China-based Korean anarchists adopted a kind of popular front policy, calling for broadest possible anti-Japanese unity between the KMT, CCP, and (later) the Allies in World War II. However, even now, they were closer to the KMT and the so-called Provisional Government of Korea, than to the Communists. 

After World War II, many Korean anarchists returned to Korea - or rather South Korea - and begun a period of more fundamental reorientation. The author points out that while the anarchists singled out Communism as an enemy to be thrown out of the Korean peninsula, they never explicitly opposed capitalism or imperialism in South Korea, instead attacking "feudal remnants". The anarchists formed several short-lived political parties, one of them claiming loyalty to the Socialist International! (That is, the international organization of mostly Social Democratic parties.) Another faction concentrated on rural reform. Dongyoun Hwang may be right that the Korean anarchist movement de facto supported South Korea against North Korea, or at the very least went into a kind of political hibernation, perhaps waiting for the ROK to become democratic. 

The trajectory of the Korean anarchists is interesting, and was traversed by anarchists in other parts of the world, too, not least the Swedish SAC (the independent syndicalist labor union) which abjured revolution after World War II, called for piecemeal reforms of democratic polities through producer cooperatives, and actually supported South Korea during the Korean War! (In 1976, SAC became more leftist again.) Had I been a Communist, I would have considerable fun with "Anarchism in Korea"! 

I´m not sure who could possibly be interested in this narrow topic, but as you know, the Ashtar Command reviews everything... 

Can Facebook (and the WHO) please debunk this?

This is not intended as medical advice. Links don´t imply endorsement. Can Facebook´s chief epidemiologist Mark Zuckerberg please debunk this somehow?

"Bombshell UK data destroys vaccine surge" 

"There is no teleology in evolution" (part 4,421)

Wondering about the philosophical implications of this...

Speedy evolution: Sustained fast rates of evolution explains how tetrapods evolved from fish 

Taliban Amerika

Concerning the recent events in Kabul...

My personal interpretation, which could of course be wrong, is that the attack was a kind of false flag, probably a Deep State operation using ISIS as useful idiots. The purpose is pretty obvious: either stop the US withdrawal at the last moment and/or discredit Joe Biden in preparation of a constitutional coup in DC. If so, it seems Biden´s handlers have foiled the attempt.

Let´s be honest about this: the US and the Taliban aren´t really "enemies" in the strict sense of that term. That´s just a media construction. It´s as if everyone suddenly forgot that the Trump administration made a deal with the Taliban last year about a US withdrawal, a deal now honored by Biden´s ditto. Since the Afghan national army is obviously incapable of fighting, the deal really gave effective control of Afghanistan to the Taliban movement. 

So the seemingly super-Machiavellian political judo of the United States suddenly working together with the Taliban against ISIS - the same Taliban who were US enemy numero uno just the other day - is really "business as usual". Media hype isn´t the same thing as realities on the ground. 

Since the US and the Taliban aren´t exactly friends or allies either, we can´t be sure about how this will play out in the end, but there is a certain chance that the deal will work out to "everyone´s" benefit in the end. The US army leaves, US anti-terror black ops stays, US corporations get lucrative business contracts, ISIS get fire and brimstone, and the Taliban get most of Afghanistan. Win-win, kind off. 

Olof Palme: God´s chosen?

A front for the maverick Hindu sect Ananda Marga expounds on their utopian panacea. The following two quotes are priceless: 

"With intellectual advancement, human beings will develop their all-round psychic potential and easily evolve their psycho-spiritual potentiality. Human beings will attain the supreme stance through continuous effort, merging their individual unit existence into Cosmic existence."

"First, there should be economic liberty in society so that people may get a nutritious diet. In Scandinavia, for example, the people’s purchasing capacity is high, and they enjoy a good standard of living. Because of this, they do not face the problem of overpopulation."

I always assumed there was *something* very special about Sweden, but I never suspected we were blessed by the Great Ananda, or whatever the Divine is called in this particular system. 

Note, btw, that they never mention climate change in the article...

Population myths and Islamophobia

Vems nationsbygge? Om debaclet i Kabul

Intressant artikel i AB, översatt från engelskan. Det där med "North Virginia" måste vara en felöversättning, dock. Någon sådan delstat finns nämligen inte. (Ja, jag är nörd.) Många av artikelns påståenden är ytterst anmärkningsvärda, exempelvis att "terrorbekämpningen" i Afghanistan länge varit en gigantisk bluff. Artikeln är skriven av en svensk-iranier som flyttat till USA och arbetar för Quincy Institute, en kontroversiell tankesmedja som blivit anklagad för allt möjligt, från anti-semitism och samarbete med den iranska regimen till uppdämda Trump-sympatier. Åtminstone enligt Wiki. Intressant artikel är det likafullt! 

"Den enda nation USA byggde i Afghanistan var den amerikanska"

Jewel in the night

 

I´m beginning to wonder if this dude might have been on to something... 

Rapport från grannbloggen

Sammanfattning av BRÅ:s rapport om invandrares och svenskars brottslighet. Från en av våra, ska vi säga, ofrivilliga grannbloggar...

Tobias Hübinette om BRÅ:s rapport

Esoteriska koder

Jag undrar vad hon *egentligen* menar med det här? Inbillar jag mig bara, eller har många vänstervridna kulturskribenter den senaste tiden börjat låta mer "höger"? Givetvis mellan raderna. 

Åsa Linderborg är ju ganska uppenbar, Cissi Wallin har gjort avbön, och så var det den där märkliga artikeln av någon vars namn jag glömt som hette något i stil med "Det är inte SD som skapat dagens samhälle". 

Och nu det här. För visst låter det som att skribenten antingen menar att afghaner är barbarer som behöver stöd från civiliserade västländer, eller inte går att avbarbarisera alls?

Men nä, Tidlösa inbillar sig förstås bara saker, som vanligt...

"Det går inte att besegra ett land man inte förstår"

Inte en spänn till talibanerna!

En del intressanta uppgifter i den här artikeln i Aftonbladet. Verkar som att Wolfie är sanningssägare den här veckan...

En sak saknas i ekvationen: Afghanistans naturtillgångar. Som världen behöver för att elektrifiera. Ett område på vilket Sverige gärna vill visa framfötterna. Så det kommer nog att bli ännu mer brutna löften i framtiden...

Sverige kanske kan finansiera skyddsombuden vid talibanernas framtida litiumgruvor? 

Svårt att hålla löftet "Inte en spänn till talibanerna"

Well, I guess you just have to negotiate with them, then!

This is an original argument in favor of re-invading Afghanistan. Usually, the pseudo-green establishment faction isn´t this explicit about what it *really* takes to save the world from climate change, but it seems all tricks must be tried to get "the world" back to Kabul...

"The Taliban are sitting on 1 trillion dollars of minerals the world desperately needs"

Fags, kikes and pigs

I have no idea whether or not this is true, but the claims about FBI´s infiltration of the Nazi Satanist group Atomwaffen are interesting, due to two things. First, the Whitmer kidnapping case in Michigan. Second, the claims by the Biden administration that right-wing terrorism is the main (or even the only) terrorist threat in the United States. Of course it is, if the FBI is actively trying to *make* it happen! 

Otherwise, I´m reminded of anti-fascist researcher Mattias Gardell´s comment concerning US Nazis: "They constantly accuse each other of being homosexual, Jewish or FBI agents. Very often, the charges are actually true."

I also link to another unwetted page on the Daily Stormer site. Now, please read the disclaimers in the blog masthead... 

Daily Stormer on FBI infiltration of Nazi Satanism

FBI White terror hoax?

Om SD-sfären och 15-åringen

Wehrmacht-frivilliga från Korea 

Såg just att "Fria Tider" kallar den 15-årige wanna-be terroristen i Eslöv för "utländsk" och "tredje världen-bakgrund", vilket fick mig att reflektera lite över deras Volksgenosse Jackie Arklöv, som ju inte direkt var kritvit á la Niedersachsen. 

Du har ju även Puttes tjetjenska legosoldater i östra Ukraina, Karl XII:s allians med tatarer, turkar och tattare, muftin av Jerusalem under det totala kriget med stort TK, und so weiterisch. Låter ju nästan lite multi-kulti. 

Men jag kanske har missförstått något, som vanligt? Sedan har vi förresten den här... 

Om SD-sfären och 15-åringen

The Punisher, kort och gott

Ett lustigt TT-telegram.

Varför är västmedia mot denne man? Lägg märke till sista stycket! :D

Jag vet, jag vet, han har alltför goda förbindelser med Kina...

xxxxx

Duterte vill bli vicepresident 2022

Filippinernas frispråkige president Rodrigo Duterte har tackat ja till att bli regeringspartiet PDP-Labans kandidat till vicepresidentposten i valet nästa år, skriver partiet i ett uttalande, enligt nyhetsbyrån Reuters.

Att Duterte accepterar kandidaturen är ett uttryck för att han lyssnat på ”folkets rop”, enligt Karlo Nograles, vice ordförande i PDP-Laban.

Efter Dutertes tillträde 2016 har tusentals verkliga eller påstådda narkotikalangare dödats i olika insatser, som människorättsgrupper ofta har liknat vid rena avrättningar.

Presidenten har också gjort sig ovän med en lång rad världsledare, bland annat USA:s tidigare president Barack Obama, som han kallade en ”horunge” och påven, som han kallade ”dåre”. Kritiska EU-ledare har hotats med stryk, och tidigare i somras sade han sig vilja kasta vaccinovilliga i finkan.

– Du bestämmer: Vaccin, eller så kommer jag att låta fängsla dig, sade han då i ett tv-tal. (TT)

xxxxx

Under the yew tree

 

Dharma Bodhi (Kol Martens) from Trika Mahasiddha Yoga (TMY) explains the place of drugs (as in narcotics) on the spiritual path. I previously linked to a longer discussion on the same topic by Dharma. 

The short form is that TMY doesn´t generally recommend psychedelic drugs to spiritual practitioners. Today, they often lead seekers astray and make them permanently stuck in "the god realm", by which Dharma means the world of the devas, here interpreted in Buddhist fashion as vain demi-gods who don´t realize their own mortality. I assume he means that they are metaphorically stuck in this realm already in this life. Or as Dharma puts it: "You are just high"!

However, drugs can be of some use if somebody has gotten completely stuck on the spiritual path for years. They don´t help the practitioner to become enlightened, but strong experiences of a supernatural dimension can motivate him to continue his sadhana (day to day yogic practice). 

Dharma Bodhi also discusses various related topics, such as how to achieve shaktipata, by which I assume he means enlightenment through divine grace. In this system, it seems that you can´t get the grace through an electric-like transmission from a guru, but only by your own efforts until one day the shaktipata hits you like a thunderbolt. Gurus who claim to be able to transmit shaktipata person to person are just cult leaders, and the ultimate cultist of them all was Franklin Jones who claimed that you could get the grace simply by being present at his satsangs. I think Dharma sees a similarity between this electric stuff and the idea that really potent psychedelics can be a substitute for sadhana. 

On a lesser note, he mentions how to prepare drugs for consumption. I´m not sure of this stuff, so please don´t try it at home, but supposedly you can give poisonous mushrooms to dogs, and then drink their urine! Sitting underneath a yew tree also produces quite some effect, apparently, so you don´t actually have to consume any part of it directly. The idea of a buddha achieving enlightenment under a yew tree does have a certain intrinsic appeal, so please remember that you can´t! Completely in passing, Dharma also claims that he trained with the Aghori...

Ahem, come again?

The most funny proposal in the clip is the claim that all world leaders should get together and take psychotropic drugs, and then this planet would actually become much better! This reminded me of the Taliban trolling Joe Biden with ice cream, but OK, maybe I just have a bad sense of humor.

Nothing in this blog post should be taken as medical advice, or indeed any kind of advice whatsoever. 

Talibanerna och klimatkrisen

Intressant artikel om hur klimatkrisen drabbar Afghanistan, och kanske har medverkat till att ge talibanerna ökat stöd. Dock oklart hur talibanerna ska hantera den!

Min gissning är att de tänker skaffa hårdvaluta genom att låta utländska intressen exploatera landets mineralfyndigheter, givetvis mot en rundlig betalning, som kanske kan användas för att köpa mat. Men det förstås bara en gissning. Sanningen är att ingen vet vad som händer när talibanerna slutar roa sig med att trolla Joe Biden...

Observera också att talibanerna kan utnyttja både svälten och klimatkrisen till att få västländerna (och FN) att erkänna deras regim. 

Klimatkrisens Afghanistan

På fel sida av historien

Socialdemokratin "drog åt mitten" redan på 1990-talet, men jag tror av diverse psykologiska och andra orsaker att det faktiskt kommer att bli Stefan Löfvén som förknippas med det gamla arbetarpartiets omvandling till ett rent maktparti som är beredda att montera ner den gamla välfärdsstaten bara för att kunna sitta kvar vid regeringstaburetterna. Till stor del för att Löfvén öppet gjorde sig beroende av Annie Lööf och Nyamko Sabuni, samtidigt som han (kanske lite mer i det fördolda - hoppades han) försökte köra över Vänsterpartiet. Inte ens Göran Persson gjorde så. Men okej, det är en "ny parlamentarisk situation", whatever. 

Sett ur sossarnas egen synvinkel var Löfvén expert på att splittra oppositionen för att därmed kunna söndra och härska, men många vanliga väljare förknippar nog honom (och hela det nuvarande SAP) med helt andra saker. 

Löfvén var statsminister under en period präglad av migrantkrisen, skjutningarna, coronapandemin med ökad arbetslöshet och konkurser som följd, social segregation, etnisk splittring, debaklet i Sveriges sista koloni (Afghanistan)...kort sagt, en tid under vilken det gamla socialdemokratiska projektet ersattes av den senkapitalistiska globo-hybriden mellan en kvasi-nyliberal ekonomi och en vänsterliberal stats-, kontroll- och propagandaapparat. Löfvén gjorde ingenting för att motverka denna utveckling, tvärtom var han en av dem som kastade mer eld på brasan. 

Tydligen ville han hoppa av i förtid för att slippa bli förknippad med folkhemsprojektets slutgiltiga undergång år 2022 (då högern kanske kommer att begrava det för gott). Kan inte direkt säga att jag är imponerad... 

Och nej, han kommer inte att kunna stoppa klimatapokalypsen heller. 

"Halal-arious" (hilarious) trolling?

This is simply incredible. Or is it Russian disinfo? Clearly, *somebody* is trolling America!

Taliban trolls Joe Biden...again!

På rätt sida av historien?

Kanske *lite* förvånad över det positiva genmälet här...

Stefan Löfvén: världens mest anti-rasistiske regeringschef?

Wtf, I love Danny DeVito now

Funny to see this kind of article published on the Trump-loving Breitbart News site. Of course, they are playing the Machiavellian game of "my enemies enemy" here. (According to Wiki, DeVito is indeed a supporter of Bernie Sanders!)

A quote: "Despite their left-wing politics, Silicon Valley companies are fighting a growing organized labor movement within the tech industry, with employees at Amazon and Google attempting to form unions. Amazon has fought aggressively to stamp out union organization efforts within its warehouses and fulfillment centers while earlier this year, employees at Google formed the Alphabet Workers Union, the first successful effort to establish a companywide union at Google."

Time to make Silicon Valley a UNION TOWN.

Was Danny DeVito unverified for supporting a labor strike against Big Tech?

Alexander Bard: Hemlig medarbetare på Fria Tider?

Fria Tider publicerar en artikel som försvarar pornografi. Det var ju...intressant. Kanske krockar med andra agendor hos denna publikation?  

Bankerna tvingar Only Fans att sluta med porr

The fall of Lisbeth Salander

"The Girl in the Spider´s Web" is an international film released in 2018, and is very freely based on David Lagercrantz´ novel of the same name. (In the Swedish original, the novel is titled "Det som inte dödar oss".) That novel, in turn, is a sequel to Stieg Larsson´s "Millennium" trilogy. The original novels have also been adapted for the movie screens in both Sweden and the United States. 

Larsson was a left-wing radical, a member of the "Socialist Party" (a small Trotskyist group in Sweden) and a founding editor of the anti-fascist magazine "Expo". I never read the original novels, but the Swedish film adaptations - as far as I understand - do contain strong elements of Larsson´s conspiracist worldview, with secret elite societies of sexual perverts and various crime syndicates playing important roles in the plot. Curiously, the Secret Service are often at the good side, while the main character, Lisbeth Salander, is a feminist vigilante with a propensity for hardcore violence and a worldview that doesn´t seem particularly "leftist". Salander strikes me more as a libertarian "troubled superhero", and is frankly unrealistic, almost to the point of unintentional comedy. I sometimes wonder if this is how Expo secretely viewed themselves: as heroic superheroes fighting powerful evil conspiracies? A kind of QAnon of the left? 

Larsson´s novels were published posthumously, and their success prompted the publishers to go ahead with post-post-Larsson sequels. As I said, I never read the novels, but the film version of "The Girl in the Spider´s Web" is very different from the "canonical" Millennium stories. The secret billionaire paedophiles have been replaced (with one notable exception - see below) by more mundane conspiracy scenarios involving Russian mafiosi, American agents and a computer program that can control all nuclear missiles in the world (no less). The Swedish secret police have been compromised, as well. The plot is full of holes and so unrealistic that the whole thing often devolves into James Bond parody. Lisbeth Salander is like a cat with nine lives (or is it a jumping shark), surviving everything from huge gas explosions in her own domicile to large quantities of injected poison. "Basement dwellers" and "weaponized autists" might like the film, since the good guys frequently win by an amazing ability to hack each and every computer system you can think of. They have some kind of x-ray vision, too, which enables them to shoot everyone in a closed compound in the film´s dramatic finale...

But the most stunning aspect of the film is surely that it dethrones Lisbeth Salander from her position as larger-than-life superhero. A central plot element is that Salander abandoned her sister Camilla when they were both children, forcing the sister to endure a life of abuse at the hands of their father, a rich Russian paedophile named Alexander Zalachenko (although he looks "Western" in the film). Camilla wonders why Lisbeth didn´t save her own sister, while being busy rescuing victims of sexual abuse in the rest of the world for sixteen long years. Lisbeth has no good answer. After the father´s death, Camilla took over his crime network and continued his work, while woving revenge on Salander! 

This would have worked in a typical superhero story (making the troubled hero an *even more* troubled hero), but in the context of "Millennium", it looks more like the fall of humankind from Eden.

Unrealistic, mundane, bad English accents, attacks the original franchise...I´m not sure if there is anything positive with "The Girl in the Spider´s Web"? Maybe that it´s (relatively speaking) less brutal and less pornographic than the canon.

Probably not recommended.  

Taliban astrology

An astrological analysis of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, predicting a "normal" Central Asian near future for the country. Read: all kinds of problems, but it will still be possible for the Taliban to remain in power, due to a more pragmatic foreign policy (and abundant mineral wealth). 

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan: An Exploration in Mundane Astrology

ComCrit and other cultist shit

In another lifetime, I actually met the International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT) and the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL), the two Trotskyist groups mentioned in the links below. The IBT seemed nice as persons and their message was indeed known as "Spartacism with a human face". The RWL were more weird, but not *that* much weirder than any other hyper-activist leftist group I was familiar with (read: the CWI section in Sweden). Or so I assumed...

The links below show what was *really* going on behind closed doors in the IBT´s New Zealand (sic) section, and the RWL in the United States. I´ve heard the accusations against the IBT before, but the RWL stuff was news. I assumed the RWL was just a bunch of petty bourgeois kids from the local art college who couldn´t tell semi-Stalinophilia from pro-paedophilia, but clearly I didn´t know half of it!

It´s interesting to note that both groups are splits from the super-cultic Spartacist League, although it´s not entirely clear whether there is a direct connection. After all, these kinds of practices, bizarre and deeply *unserious* at the same time, exist in all kinds of outfits...

And since you wonder, I don´t know who Samuel Trachtenberg is (was?), nor have I ever met Bill Logan...

"Appendix 1" (on the PRG) 

"Appendix 3" (on the RWL)

There will be war...and fossil fascism

"White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism" is a recent book by Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective, the latter being Malm´s co-writers. The bulk of the book was written shortly before the COVID pandemic, but has a postscript dealing with certain aspects of it. The title of the work is a rather obvious reference to Frantz Fanon´s "Black Skins, White Masks". Let me first say that if you are an early 21st century leftist of a somewhat more intellectual bent (but not *too* intellectual), this might be just what you have been looking for. Malm, a Swedish climate activist, weaves together the climate crisis with racism, fascism and capitalism in this near-encyclopedic survey of the White and Western far right and its hot takes (pun intended) on climate change. The authorial collective is named after the German Communist leader Clara Zetkin, who wrote one of the first Marxist analyses of fascism in 1923. 

My own take on the book is that although Malm does say interesting things, I nevertheless felt strongly frustrated when reading it, perhaps because I´m a "recovering leftist". The left I used to sympathize with was very different from the early 21st century SJW-ish/identity politics/postmodern kind of left to which Malm (at least broadly) belongs. Ironically, I might have been closer to the real life KPD than the Zetkin Collective! Today, my mental universe is so different from the main author´s that I initially found a meaningful polemic difficult to even conceive, but it seems I just may have found the right wave length, after all! 

Malm´s analysis of fascism differs in some ways from the "classical" Marxist one. He believes that the standard analyses de facto treats fascism as an alien force within capitalism. Fascism is either seen as a bourgeois response to the organized attempts by the working class to abolish capitalism, or as an atavistic pre-capitalist reaction. That is: if capitalism is left undisturbed, threatened neither by a militant workers´ movement nor by a feudal throwback, it will *not* turn fascist, but presumably develop "normally" in a "liberal" way. However, Malm argues, the present situation disproves this, since fascism is on the rise *in the absence of* a radicalized working class or pre-modern Vendées. Capitalism, it seems, breeds fascism by its normal dynamic. (I think Slavoj Zizek might have a similar take.) 

Malm, of course, connects this to the unfolding climate crisis. In short, capitalism and modern imperialism are dependent on fossil fuel, making fossil capital the most important faction within the bourgeoisie. This dependency inevitably drives climate change, leading to social conflicts, wars, refugee crises, chaos and potential collapse. *This* is what makes fascism an inevitable product of the system´s own internal laws of motion, not just a momentary political tactic the powers-that-be occasionally resort to. Fascism is the last line of defense of fossil capital when the latter becomes a threat to human survival, yet refuses to yield. This explain why most fascists are climate change denialists, indeed denialism has become a central part of their message (topped only by opposition to immigration and Islam) and the more the crisis unfolds, the more pushed to the fore it is. The same is true of proto-fascism and indeed of the capitalist class itself. True, some fascists claim to be "Green", but Malm believes that this is just a kind of "green-washing". The voting record of the "True Finns" in Finland (who claim to be ecologically woke) shows that they really suppport fossil fuels when push comes to shove, in their case peat (of which Finland has an abundance). Likewise, the National Alliance in France consistently vote against all climate regulations, despite also claiming to be green (I note that France gets most of its electricity from nuclear power). Malm doesn´t rule out a truly green fascism at some point in the future, but current trends rather point towards a "fossil fascism". The program of such a regime would be to protect capitalism by defending the White nations against "the Other", meaning mostly poor non-White peoples, both those in the Third World and those already living in the West. To accomplish this, fascists will try to unite all Whites regardless of class. He believes that a substantial portion of the White working class has or will be won to the fossil fascist perspective. So will various "declassed petty bourgeois layers". 

Of course, this makes no sense if you believe in a strictly materialist interpretation of history, and I think Malm realizes this. Please note that Malm *denies* that the colored peoples are responsible for the climate crisis, but if so, it makes no sense for the bourgeoisie to exclude them, if the point of fossil fascism is to somehow save capitalism. Then it´s better to promote mass immigration to the West, drive down wages, and use the cheap labor to make fossil fuels great again! Malm is brave enough to grab the bull by the horns, stating that perhaps fascism is at bottom an irrational phenomenon. It´s connected to White status issues and ditto anxiety. As somebody once said: "If a White man can´t be higher up than a nigger, what can he be?" Indeed, the Whites who vote fascist and deny the climate crisis might be psychologically damaged by strong narcissism and a Freudian death-wish. 

Since the White working class is essentially written off in this scenario, Malm must call for new alliances, principally with non-Whites (including non-White workers) both in the metropols and the global south. His analysis is strongly "racialized" on this point. To Malm, fossil capitalism is an inherently White project to dominate non-Whites. It´s almost as if he believes in a kind of "bribe theory" from the outset, in which the working class struggles of the early 20th century were just a paranthesis. However, the wretched of the earth aren´t the only possible allies in the Malmian scenario.

Another is the imperialist state itself...

In the postscript, Malm argues that the capitalist state´s anti-pandemic measures during the COVID outbreak (including lockdowns and mask mandates) are a "post-political moment" and the first example of how the states somehow respond to the needs of the people. This positively bizarre analysis of the COVID crisis is expanded in another recent book by Malm (without the Collective this time), "Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency", in which the author calls on the climate change movement to capture the existing states (rather than overthrowing them in outright revolutions) and use their power to smash fossil capital. Is it really possible that Malm could have missed the enormous transfer of wealth to the super-rich that has taken place during the pandemic *with the help of precisely this state*, rather starkly revealing that nothing "post-political" is going on after all? In "White Skin, Black Fuel", when Malm discusses the lock downs, he writes off those "declassed" by them as "petty bourgeois layers" ready for fascism - does this refer to, say, Somali shop-owners in Minneapolis bankrupted by the lockdowns and then attacked by Malm´s Antifa buddies? Or is the chronic emergency so woke that it only hits Trump-voting evangelicals in the Idaho panhandle who own anti-gay pastry shops? 

There is another potential ally to the climate change movement: Green capital. Malm doesn´t discuss this at length, but he does believe that some sections of the capitalist class might survive the destruction of fossil capital by simply capturing the alternatives, such as wind or solar. Might not *they* become part of a popular front with the Greta Thunbergs of the world? If not, why not? Perhaps its safer to simply take over the bridge...

As already mentioned, "White Skin, Black Fuel" frequently operates in a mental space somewhere to the left of La-La Land. For starters, there is nothing about China, the second biggest emitter of CO2 in the world. China is, of course, "colored". If the color is red or jade is perhaps another matter, but it´s certainly a highly centralized economy. India isn´t mentioned either, something actually admitted in one sentence by the author-collective. But India is *governed by a party Malm and the Collective should consider fascistic*. Unfortunately for their racialized analysis, the Indian Aryans are also non-White, but perhaps the strongly pro-Muslim Malm will one day write about the BJP due to its anti-Muslim policies? One also wonders whether narcissim and death-wishes are really purely White character traits, or whether they might also exist among more colored kins, among jihadist warriors, perhaps, the Chinese neo-rich or Hindu communalists...

As for overpopulation, Malm is right that the poor in Mozambique (his favorite example, since that nation was hit by a devastating cyclone on the same day as the first international climate strike in 2019) don´t contribute much to global warming while being disproportionately hit by it, but China *does* contribute, and India will in the future if the BJP somehow catches up with the CCP, meaning that an additional two billion "colored" people will enter the orbit of fossil capital. If Malm´s analysis of fossil fascism is correct, then the PRC and India will be just as big purveyors of its proto-version as Donald Trump or Hans Rosling, indeed, they might even become the first actual fossil fuel fascists (or at least the first really dangerous ones) since they are already in power in large nations (the CCP even being the sole legal party in China)! And what would stop runner-ups from becoming fossil fascists, too? Malm does discuss Brazil, but obviously only because Bolsonaro is a White right-winger. Why no discussion about neighboring Venezuela, the entire economy of which is based on oil? Indeed, why can´t there also be a "fossil Communism" (pun unintended) or "fossil left-nationalism" in the Third World *or even a fossil democracy in the Western nations*? 

At bottom, the problem is that modern civilization simply can´t do without fossil fuel. White people want to keep it, colored people want to claim it, nobody (except maybe some seriously declassed petit bourgeois) want to abolish it, indeed, nobody but such people has any *objective material self-interest* in doing so. The idea that wind, solar and other exotic energy sources will make everyone in the world (all the projected 11 billion) just as prosperous as (locked down) middle class Europeans (OK, they have to take the train to Grönköping instead of flying to Phuket) is just another Green-leftist conceit. The future probably does belong to fossil fascism, and in a distant future even eco-fascism, but we might also see people vote in fossil fuel governments in democratic nations, ironically enough precisely because they are democratic and hence must respond to the felt needs of the electorate, rather than post-politically sheltering them in place. But yes, the democratic polity might decide on reforms Malm would find horrendous, perhaps even proto-fascist, such as less immigration, pipelines to Russia (or why not *Byelo*russia) and so on. 

In contrast to the Zetkin Collective, I don´t claim to have any solutions to our present predicament. I do have a prediction, however. Barring a sensational technological breakthrough, or a massive and coordinated international mobilization in favor of a de-carbonized economy with thorium reactors (which would be extremely expensive and detrimental to the environment in other ways than climate change, but of course still worth trying if at all possible), what the world will see is a "bellum omnium contra omnes", or less eruditely put "use up the last fossil fuels and then duck", perhaps dominated by the Russian Federation and China, and then a general collapse of modern civilization, followed by centuries of tribal warfare and dragon-ships...

Most based take ever

 

As usual, it´s difficult to know whether or not Thomas Sheridan is trolling or being seriously paranoid, I mean, last year he claimed that the COVID virus might come from Chinese time-travellers from the future, or perhaps from a Muslim jinn that wants to punish China for their oppression of the Uighurs?! Sheridan believes in "chaos magic", so perhaps the trolling is a kind of incantation? For purposes only known to him (and the "tribe" he talks about). 

Here, he makes other startling statements (and no, I don´t agree with him) about alien demons controlling the Afghan situation, almost a bit like David Icke. I link to this strictly for reference purposes. 

And since you wonder, I´m also worried about the world situation in 2021, but perhaps for more "human" or "down to earth" reasons... 

Tulsi Gabbard on Afghanistan

 

Tulsi Gabbard is getting old (let´s be honest, she used to be the hottest Hare Krishna chick in town, and yes the town in question was Washington DC!), but she does make some good points in this message on Afghanistan, which, however, also leaves many questions unanswered... 

"En flyktingvåg som kanske aldrig kommer"

Wolfgang Hansson i Aftonbladet om eventuell ny flyktingvåg från Afghanistan. "Esoteric speech"?

En flyktingvåg som kanske aldrig kommer

Hue and cry over Afghanistan

I´m old enough to remember when the media told us *not to do anything at all* in response to the wave of Islamist terrorist attacks in Europe during the 2010´s. "Brits always had a stiff upper lip", "you can´t ban knives", "part and parcel" and so on. This defeatism was also propagated on Swedish TV. To do something would be "racist" and - heaven forfend - "Islamophobic". Remember Charlie? You know, Charlie Hebdo. Not me neither.

Flash forward to 2021. Taliban, Saigon, Taliban, Saigon, sharia, sharia, sharia, terrorists, terrorists...

OK, wait a sec.

So we can´t do *anything at all* (not even ban knives?) if the terrorists supposedly shielded by the Taliban strike in our big cities, but we are supposed to do everything (including smart bombs, drone attacks and, I suppose, gender study courses) to oppose the Islamists in northern Syria or Afghanistan?! (Did I say "sharia" or "Islamic Emirate"? No? OK, I say it now, then!)

I smell a rat here somewhere...

The Islamophobia discourse has only been broken twice. First, when Trump dumped the Kurds in 2019. To get Trump, obviously. It can´t have been to get ISIS. You can´t ban knives, remember? The second time is now, when Kabul fell to the Taliban. To get Trump, obviously. But yes, I can think of some other reasons, too (none mentioned here)... 

It will be interesting to see for how long the globo-liberals and leftists will shed their crocodile tears for victims of Islamic terror in Afghanistan. Until the next terrorist attack in London, Paris or Stockholm, presumably. Then we will be told, once again, to have stiff upper lips, don´t ban knives, think of the gay bath houses in Umayyad Spain 1,200 years ago, and remember not to be so damn ISLAMOPHOBIC. 

Not Charlie 

Gud och staten

Varför är en viss typ av vänsterintellektuella så jäkla fixerade vid Ernst Jünger? Och vem *är* Ernst Jünger??? Det går ju inte en vecka utan att man hör någon väldigt "bildad" person på vänsterkanten veklaga sig över denne hemske författare, som skrev om våldets och krigets tjusning på ett tydligen väldigt mesmeriserande sätt. 

Ja, ibland undrar jag om fler intellektuella på vänsterkanten läser denne Jünger, än nynazister. Jag menar, jag har aldrig träffat (med slangbella) någon nynasse som läst "Storm of Steel" eller vad den nu heter i original ("Volkstürm Ostpreussen"?). 

Okej, har en teori.

Detta är i själva verket extremvänsterns pornografi. Det är vad fjolliga soy boys läser i hemlighet när de vill få en...ska vi säga...volkstürm i brallerna. 

En annan typ av läsare kan ju vara den gamle docenten i Uppsala som var anarkist i sin ungdom, och vill återuppleva den där känslan man fick när man kastade molotovs på snuten. 

The urge to destroy, comrades, is also a creative urge...

Stop this...now!

 

If God is real, personal and loves beetles, He should stop this crazed heathens AT ONCE with a thunderbolt or other celestial weapon of his choice!!!

Potemkin Nation

The title of this blog post doesn´t refer to Russia, unfortunately!

It seems we just *have* to continue talking about Afghanistan. Below is John Michael Greer´s take. He connects the debacle in Kabul to the current crisis in the United States, and comes to some pretty startling conclusions...

I don´t think he´s wrong, though (although I don´t really like when JMG is right, tbh). 

Just one little quibble. JMG points out that the Saigon regime managed to stay in power for three years after the US troops left, while the Kabul government fell within three weeks. It seems to be even worse than this, since the American troops - if I understand this correctly - were in Kabul still a few days ago. Maybe some are still actually there, trying to locate United States citizens? So it´s more like three days, three hours or even right under the nose of the US troops! 

Btw, it seems Sweden, at any rate, *is* willing to continue sending aid money to various projects in Afghanistan, although I don´t see how this is possible if the Taliban are in control. Perhaps the Swedish government (which acts as if Kabul was a municipality in Stockholm) is simply grand-standing...

Let´s be brutally honest. If America falls, Europe will have to face Russia (and China) alone. France, Germany and Italy will probably make a deal with the Russians (and the Chinese). The UK is a joke. This might create yuge problems for places like Poland, Estonia and...Sweden. 

Can´t say I like it. But unless Japan gets the bomb and sends its Pacific fleet to the Baltic, that´s what the future has in store. 

Potemkin Nation

They can still troll Joe Biden

Donald Trump got banned by Twitter. My alter ego seems to have been de facto blocked by this god-forsaken site, as well. Meanwhile, the Taliban are allowed to tweet! OK, good, this way they can continue trolling Joe Biden (who also has a Twitter account, btw)...

Taliban allowed to remain on Twitter

Molkom har fallit

They lacked the Aghori mindset. 

Tantrafestivalen ber om ursäkt

Saigon? Vilket jäkla Saigon?

Lite fascinerande att de "vakna" globo-liberalerna och deras ännu "vaknare" vänsterliberala påhäng ständigt jämför USA:s debacle i Kabul med USA:s dito i Saigon.

Hmmm...

Jag trodde det var politisk ortodoxi i dessa kretsar att Vietnamkriget var ett gigantiskt misstag, ja rentav reaktionärt på något sätt. Har jag missat någon ny "omprövning" någonstans?

För om man jämför Kabuls fall med Saigons, så jämställer man ju FNL med talibanerna, och Nordvietnam med Pakistan. Vidare jämställer man regimen i Saigon med "den demokratiska regeringen" i Kabul, den som vi förväntas stödja cuz reasons. 

Om skribenterna verkligen tycker att man ska stödja Nguyen Van Thieu, får de gärna säga det. Annars kanske det är läge att byta metafor. Ja, jag vet inte. Finns det någon annan som ens fungerar? Syndafallet, kanske?

Glöm flygbasen i Bagram, det här är värre

De här jäkla fjollorna har just besegrat "den mäktigaste krigsmaskinen världen någonsin skådat" (USA) och även knullat den humanitära stormakten Sverige. Saigon? Det här är *värre* än Saigon. "Imperiets" första så att säga postmoderna tillbakadragande? 

Talibanfilmerna från Kabul väcker skratt

Dostum is safe

Is this the end of the Afghan "warlords"? Have they finally lost their social base? Dostum and some bloke named Noor escape to Uzbekistan as their regional power base apparently collapses.  

Afghan militia leaders escape "conspiracy"

Esoteric Bidenism: The buck stops here

 

A surprisingly good speech by Joe Biden on Afghanistan, all things considered. I mean that un-ironically. Note the attacks on "nation-building"! Biden actually says: "The goal was never to create a unified centralized democracy in Afghanistan". He also singles out al-Nusra in Syria as enemies of the US. And yes, he did call Afghanistan "the graveyard of empires".

Let´s be honest: Biden sounds like Trump! 

But *now* the globo-liberal media attack him, comparing the US withdrawal to Saigon?! Ahem, aren´t libs and boomers supposed to *oppose* the Vietnam War? Do they actually compare the "centralized democracy" in Afghanistan with the military regime in South Vietnam? HA HA HA. 

You go, Joe! 

Okej, nu slutar vi snacka om Afghanistan

Slutsnackat för den här gången. 

Not even Amin was *this* daring

The American blame game has begun. Here´s just one example. Yes, I picked the weirdest one so far. Literal globo homo? 

"Biden prioritized LGBT agenda while terrorists took over"

Lite intressant statistik

Vi anlägger givetvis inga som helst politiska eller andra aspekter på nedanstående.   

Snart är hälften av USA:s befolkning icke-vit