Greta Thunberg och Lorena Delgado Varas vänder om, ska till Sudan istället. Nej, vänta...så var det ju inte.
Vad hände förresten med pseudo-debatten om att man inte får kalla politiska vildar för vildar, om de politiska vildarna har utländsk bakgrund? Delgado Varas är ju mapuche-indian. En rent bokstavlig "vilde", alltså. Ja, enligt de gamla ras- och etno-hierarkierna. Vill säga.
Fast *den* konversationen kommer väl nästa månad eller så. Antar jag.
In the popular Western imagination, the Buddha is a fat, ugly and perhaps smiling Chinaman. Where on earth does this absurd stereotype come from? Turns out that it *is* Chinese. However, the adoring old fatty isn´t the Buddha but a certain Budai, a saintly Zen Buddhist monk who may or may not be an actual historical figure. The "holy fool" (today sometimes conflated with Santa Claus in Japan) is actually Maitreya according to some traditions. Maitreya being the future Buddha, the Buddhist "Messiah"! Oookay...
I´ve heard of weird Maitreya connection before, but this YouTube video gives a good overview of the entire Budai problematique. Enjoy! And don´t forget to give the old man some candy, LOL.
There is a lot of videos like this on YouTube just now, documenting the ongoing contretemps of the flat earthers who took a trip to Antarctica only to discover that...ooops...the Earth isn´t flat, after all. Or rather: the "predictions" (such as they are) of the flat earth "model" (such as it is) were proven wrong. In the most common flat earth model, the sun is very small and moves above the earth disk in such a way that a 24-hour sun would be impossible in Antarctica. Indeed, the Antarctic landmass itself doesn´t exist, being an ice wall all around the disk.
But the flat earthers who bravely went to the Seventh Continent eventually realized that the "midnight sun" is real, that Antarctica is there, and that even conspiracy theorists can visit it without being zapped by NASA´s clone warriors (or whoever they think is guarding the Ice Wall). GPS tracking in real time proves they are there, not at some staged location closer to Hollywood.
Of course, the flat earth non-society will come up with all kinds of excuses for the failure of their predictions. Indeed, they already have, some prominents in this milieu declaring before the expedition even launched that there is no flat earth model to begin with (!) and hence no predictions to disprove...
Besides, we all know that flat earth itself is a conspiracy to distract attention from *hollow* earth. There!
In a previous blog post, I mentioned that one Will Duffy, a Christian minister in California, was going to organize "the final experiment" to prove that the Earth is (surprise!) a globe. The flat earthers themselves say that if their model is correct, there can´t be a 24-hour sun in Antarctica. So Duffy offered to take the most vociferous flat earthers on an expedition to Antarctica (all expenses paid) so show them the midnight sun. Only a handful took him up on the offer, and it seems they are down there as we speak.
One of the flat earthers even admitted a few days ago that, well, there actually is a 24-hour day close to the South Pole. The expedition also disproves at least two other conspiracy theories: that nobody is allowed to ever visit Antarctica, and that the continent is really an "Ice Wall". GPS tracking clearly shows that the expedition (including the participating flat earthers) *did* go to the icy landmass from Chile. Also, the whole thing was apparently shown live on YouTube.
So will the flat earth community change their minds? LOL. Of course they won´t. They have already accused the flat earthers who signed on of being "shills" and are coming up with various coping mechanisms in real time. For instance, that the "sun" is a hoax. Or that their model doesn´t really imply the impossibility of a 24-hour sunny day in the Antarctica. Or that it´s not important. Or whatever whenever whithersoever.
So don´t worry, the deboonking industry will stay in bizniz even after "the final experiment"...
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| - Hoo-hoo, am I scary enough? |
Sometimes the Satanic panic is real. The panic, that is. The current population of Chile is 17 million. Of these, 100 have joined the Temple of Satan. Another 400 want to join. That´s 500 people. It´s not even clear whether the Temple are real Satanists, or just a bunch of LARP-ers. Let me guess. They read about the Church of Satan on the web?
But since they apparently applied for recognized religion status with the leftist government, Breitbart News goes completely mustang in this little article. Should you or I tell them about Colonia Dignidad or Miguel Serrano? Or, I don´t know, Santa Muerte in Mexico or something...
LOL. So Breitbart News are Old Earth creationists, then? Silly remark, I know, but I couldn´t help myself...
Comet visible for the first time in 80,000 years photographed in Chilean desert
“Easter Island Origins” is a very recent documentary about the mysterious Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in the Pacific Ocean. The island is almost isolated from the rest of the world but famous due to its large stone statues (“moai”), remnants of a vanished high culture. But perhaps Easter Island isn´t really that mysterious. Maybe its people and culture have simply been mystified by outsiders? Judging by this documentary, the answer is “yes”…but some of the new research on the island have led to sensational results anyhow.
Controversially, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl claimed that Easter Island had been inhabited by migrants from South America. While this is disproven (the earliest settlers on Rapa Nui were certainly from other parts of Polynesia), DNA research suggests that there actually might be a connection between the island and the South American mainland. The documentary is somewhat unclear on this point, but if I understand it correctly, the idea is that the *Polynesians* sailed to South America, rather than the other way around.
Genetic markers typical of the Zenú
people in Colombia have been found among the peoples of the Tuamotu Islands,
the Marquesas Islands, Mangareva and Easter Island. The idea seems to be that
the Polynesians first colonized the two former, then reached the South American
mainland, only to return home (presumably with Zenú wives and/or mixed race children).
Some of these people with mixed descent participated in the somewhat later
discovery and settlement of Mangareva and Easter Island, explaining why the Zenú
marker is found there too. The sculptures in “medieval” Colombia had a strong
resemblance to those found in the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, Mangareva and Rapa Nui
(although the moai at Easter Island are much larger in size).
The usual Western picture of Easter Island is that of a downright irrational population who cut down all trees and used up all rock (which could be used as fertilizer) in a vain and manic pursuit of building larger and larger statues. War and civilizational collapse promptly followed, and when the Europeans arrived, the native Polynesians had already forgot their great traditions, lived in caves and drank sea water.
“Easter Island Origins” contain interviews with archeologists who deny this traditional picture. They believe that the population of the island was always relatively small (and hence couldn´t dramatically “collapse” in the first place), that there is no evidence of warfare, nor of settlements being abandoned by people taking to the hills. There *is* evidence of wide-spread deforestation, but this was due to rats, which lacked natural enemies and hence proliferated en masse, consuming the seeds of the trees in the process.
The real (human) population collapse took place after the arrival
of the European colonists, when various diseases to which the natives lacked
immunity killed off most of the population. *This* led to the great statues
being abandoned or destroyed during the 19th century. Easter Island
was also attacked by slave-raiders from Peru. The handful of survivors who were
able to return to the island carried smallpox with them and infected the rest
of the population. At its lowest, the native population was only 40 people!
Today, it´s back around 3000, approximately the same number as before Western
colonialism. The island has been controlled by Chile since 1888.
It´s a
tragic story of a people that actually reached the American mainland centuries
before Columbus made a landfall in the Caribbean…
And no, no evidence of Lemuria!
Milei´s supporters hail him as the first Libertarian head of state in history. Weird, I thought that was Andrew Jackson. Or Augusto Pinochet...
Vem är den här vidriga människan? Verkar vara något slags "demokratisk" version av Pinochet?! Om det stundande presidentvalet i Argentina.
"Galningen som vill legalisera organdonationer"
Not sure what to make of this, but will link anyway. The far left site Grayzone claims that the recent Nicaraguan elections weren´t as undemocratic as reported in the main stream media. The incumbent president Daniel Ortega of the left-wing Sandinista Front was re-elected in a virtual landslide. Note the article´s attacks on Chile and Peru!
MUF:s ordförande visar framfötterna genom att attackera SD...från höger.
Tanken att SD i själva verket är "strasseriter i vardande" är ju intressant. Vad MUF-ledaren är för något vet vi redan.
"Easter Island: Where Giants Walked" is a combined pod cast and visual documentary available on YouTube. It was posted there in 2020.
Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in the Pacific Ocean is mostly known for its mysterious stone statues (moai). For centuries, Europeans have speculated about their origins, often refusing to believe that the native Easter Islanders themselves (who are of Polynesian stock) could have raised them. One example is Thor Heyerdahl´s somewhat wild idea (mentioned in passing in the docu) that the moai must have been built by White-skinned people from South America! Another (not mentioned) is the speculation about a connection to Mu or Lemuria (a kind of Pacific Atlantis). "Where Giants Walked" isn´t particularly interested in these alternative ideas, however. Rather, it´s main target is the "official" narrative, popularized by Jared Diamond in his bestselling book "Collapse", according to which the islanders destroyed their own complex society long before the arrival of Europeans by a combination of ecocide, warfare and rampant cannibalism. The narrator, Paul M M Cooper, believes that there is essentially no real evidence for this standard narrative, and that it really represents a projection of our own modern fears of environmental destruction. One obvious example is the claim that the natives cut down all the island´s trees in order to transport the gigantic stone statues from the quarries to the coast (perhaps by using the logs as rollers or to build sledges), and that this project in turn was completely irrational in nature, being essentially a status-driven conflict between different tribal war chiefs. This, of course, is how a certain kind of moralist sees *our own* present predicament...
So what actually happened, then?
First, even Cooper has to admit that the Polynesian settlement on the island (which recent research estimates at around 1200 AD, much later than hitherto believed) wasn´t a particularly "harmonious" affair, ecologically speaking. Polynesian settlers introduced their own favored flora and fauna at the islands they settled. At Easter Island, rats were introduced quite deliberately, since they were eaten by the common people! (I always assumed the rats were accidental stove aways rather than an inplanted food source.) The rats - which bred exponentially - probably destroyed the palm tree forests, by simply eating the palm nuts. Also, slash and burn agriculture was practiced, with similar devastating results. So yes, there really was an "ecocide" of sorts on Easter Island, although the narrator doesn´t want to use that term. However, since humans are resourceful creatures, the loss of forest vegetation didn´t kill their society. The Easter Islanders simply adapted to the new conditions, building a vast network of "rock gardens" across the island, which prevented the loss of top soil and captured rain water. When the first Europeans arrived on the island, they spotted large fruit orchards, and the natives even gave them food to eat, which doesn´t exactly sound like a starving remnant population. As for the moai, they could be transported to their intended locations on the coast by rocking them forward in standing position with the help of ropes, so no trees were needed. (This is why the islanders said that the statues "walked".) As for warfare, no real archeological evidence for such seems to exist: no hill forts, weapons, skeletons with spear marks, and so on (such evidence can be found on other Polynesian islands). This, obviously, suggests that no war took place. The obsidian "spear points" (mata´a) found all over the island probably weren´t used for war, according to recent research, but mostly for agriculture.
Thus, the real "pre-contact" history of Rapa Nui is a story of a devastating human impact on the local environment - quite similar to that on many other islands, or indeed mainlands, around the world already before modern civilization - but also of human ingenuity and resilience in the face of adversity (whether or not it´s caused by humans). What makes Easter Island fairly unique is that it seems to have been relatively peaceful. Cooper suggests that there were two reasons for this peacefulness. One was that the islanders may have been closely related, being descended from a relatively small group of original settlers (note the socio-biologic slant of this explanation). Another is ingenious ways to "blow off steam" and let people (mostly males, by the look of it) compete against each other in other ways than through warfare. The carving, transportation and raising of the moai might have been a peaceful way of gaining status. Another was the curious "birdman cult", an annual ritual during which the young men were supposed to swim to a small island off the coast and steal eggs from the nests of terns.
So why did the Easter Island society eventually collapse, then? The story turns out to be an over-familiar one: yes, it was European (and Euro-South American) colonization, more specifically a combination of introduced diseases and slave-raiding. The most devastating slave raid took place in 1862, when 1,500 natives were forced into slavery in Peru. This triggered a chain of events that destroyed the last remnants of the old Rapa Nui culture. For instance, the entire priestly class was wiped out, and with them the only people who could read the unique Rongorongo script, the only writing system developed by Polynesians. When the island came under Chilean control, most of it was turned into a gigantic sheep farm. The bizarre semi-barren landscape characteristic of Easter Island today is the result of relatively recent sheep grazing, not some ancient ecocide. The surviving natives were forced to live in a town cordoned off from the rest of the island, and work for the capitalist agri-business that had taken over their homeland...
Cooper ends by pointing out that if Easter Island´s fate has some kind of lesson to teach us, or warning to convey, maybe we should be very careful about what that warning might be!
I admit that he has a point there...
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| Påskön får celebert besök... |
Hur gamla nynazister drog det svenska världssamvetet vid näsan.
Tobias Hübinette strikes again, fast egentligen är det DN han sammanfattar. Vilket som, när adoptionsutredningen är klar 2023 lär det inte vara mycket kvar av det mångomtalade "samvetet". Åtminstone inte i dess sjuttiotalistiska inkarnation. En utredning om de "ensamkommande" lär väl vänta på sig till circa 2050 eller så...
Rätt ironiskt att en vänsterliberal paradgren blir brunsmetad, but there you go!
1000 BC to 600 AD in the Atacama, northern Chile. Communities of farmers and fishermen engage in bloody tribal warfare. Yes, folks, welcome to another Native killing spree! But I´m sure these people were highly spiritual somehow, and could teach us something new agey about finding ourselves with meditation, homeopathy and hash? Or no?
Farming brought burst of extreme violence to the Atacama Desert
Alla verkar inte gilla Nooshi. Noll förståelse för den ariska vinklingen, exempelvis. Och den här killen går visst inte att beveka med "attributen" heller. Föredrar Pinochets fräsiga uniformer?
"Persiska kommunister har Sverige i sitt grepp"
"Framgångsrik marknadsföring av iranska kommunisten Mehrnoosh Dadgostar"
"Lithium: New Gold Rush in the Andes" is a short documentary about the perils of "Green" technology, in this case the "electrification" of the car industry in the developed nations of the world.
In order to replace all gasoline-driven vehicles with electric ones, enormous amounts of lithium are needed for the batteries. Over half of the world´s lithium reserves are believed to be situated in South America, principally Chile, Bolivia and Argentina. Thus, in order to "save the world from climate change", super-exploitation of these mineral resources is necessary.
Lithium extraction is impossible without enormous amounts of water, which puts pressure on the wells and groundwater in the arid regions where the mines are situated. The documentary features interviews with Natives in Chile who oppose the mining operation, preferring instead to live their lives like they always have (raising llamas and growing their food locally). Somewhat ironically, the Natives on the Bolivian side of the border *support* lithium mining, while the decision to let a German corporation invest in the region proved controversial in the rest of Bolivia, where many left-wing activists fear foreign domination and increased environmental destruction. Bolivia´s left-nationalist president Evo Morales eventually cancelled the deal, although its possible that the current president Luis Arce (a Morales supporter) might renegotiate it.
Thus, "Green energy" in Europe and North America actually leads to environmental destruction, political instability and a "scramble for South America". I´m not opposed to economic development, per se. Quite the contrary. However, what makes this documentary on the "white gold" interesting, is that it shows how little has really changed. Previously, it was guano. Then, oil and gas. Now? Lithium, copper and REMs. Throw in some bananas there, too.
Nor is it clear how this will save the world from climate change, since large scale operations of this kind *are impossible without a modern economy based on fossil fuels*. The Green and climate change movements are simply the shock troops of one wing of late capitalism, the wing trying to make profits on minerals related to electrification...
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| The Chilean military junta, with Mendoza first from the left, Pinochet second from the right |
"De stulna barnen" (The Stolen Children) is a shocking Swedish documentary in 4 parts available at SVT Play, but only in the Swedish language (some of the people interviewed speak Spanish). SVT is the public broadcasting corporation. By carrying this material free of charge on their site, SVT has in effect given it official imprimatur.
It will be interesting, if that´s the word for it, how this production will affect the so-called "image of Sweden" (Sverigebilden), that hallowed Swedish-liberal self-portrait of this little Scandinavian nation as a humanitarian and anti-racist superpower. The liberals panicked during the migrant crisis when Trump, Tim Pool and the US Alt Right (and shadowy Russian influence agents behind every bush) supposedly "attacked the Image of Sweden" by talking about crime statistics, no-go zones and what not. And while "De stulna barnen" isn´t a critical look at Afghan immigration, crime, COVID lockdowns or other hot button topics du jour (SVT would never carry *such* material), I think it challenges the holy Image of Sweden on a far deeper level.
Yes, it´s about international adoptions.
The investigative crew behind "De stulna barnen" has taken a closer look at the adoption industry in Chile, or rather the *Swedish* adoption industry branching out to that particular South American nation. The reporters believe there is plenty of good evidence that many Chilean children were stolen from their parents by unscrupulous adoption agents, and then sent to Sweden. Both the police, the parliament and the media in Chile think the same thing. But for a very long time, decades even, Sweden was in denial about what was going on.
The parents were told that their children had died, either at the maternity ward, or during visits to hospitals. Some were kidnapped from political prisoners. Many of the families who got their kids stolen in this way are Mapuches. The Mapuche are a Native minority group in southern Chile. The "spider in the web" was Anna Maria Elmgren, known as Aja, who worked with the Swedish embassy in Santiago and also with Adoptionscentrum (AC) in Sweden, an organization responsible for international adoptions. Aja (who lives in Chile) has denied the allegations in letters to Chilean newspapers, but she refused to get interviewed when contacted by SVT.
What makes the above especially galling is the following. In 1973, the military took power in Chile in a bloody coup, a coup led by the notorious Augusto Pinochet. Sweden was one of the nations most sharply condemning the coup. Indeed, many Chileans fleeing the junta got asylum in Sweden. Yet, it was *at this very time* that AC started working with Aja *who was married to a police officer with connections to General Mendoza, a member of Pinochet´s governing junta*. (Mendoza was the head of the militarized Chilean police force, the Carabineros.) If the allegations against Aja are true, Sweden has been implicated in Pinochet´s human rights violations.
Or perhaps not. Another bizarre fact is that the Chilean police themselves suspected Aja of foul play and tried to start an investigation against her! Let that sink in: even the police forces of the highly repressive military regime wondered what the heck the well-connected Swedish lady was up to. What saved her was her husband´s connections to Mendoza, and the generally corrupt character of the Chilean judiciary and bureaucracy. The documentary strongly implies that Aja bribed select people in Chile with money procured from AC´s members in Sweden...
The role of AC is a curious one. On the one hand, AC is an independent organization. On the other hand, however, they seem to function as a kind of quasi-governmental agency, a quango if you like, since international adoptions are considered an important part of Swedish activities abroad (and "evidence" for our hallowed status as a champion of human rights). The present leader of the Conservative Party, Ulf Kristersson, was head of AC 20 years ago, when the allegations of child abductions from Chile first surfaced. His response was to do nothing and criticize those who wanted to do something. A government report demanded more transparency in international adoptions, something Kristersson opposed with the (intriguing to be sure) argument that it would stop almost all Third World adoptions to Sweden! Kristersson flatly refused to be interviewed by the reporters behind "De stulna barnen". His press secretary, in true Soviet fashion, demanded to see the questions in advance and then unilaterally decided that Kristersson wouldn´t do any interviews. She even refused to say whether Kristersson himself ever read the questions at all!
AC *did* agree on an interview, and here the documentary turns really, really weird. The two AC spokespeople look like cult leaders or alien body snatchers in skin suits when they try to explain the NGO´s position. Later, AC flatly refuses any more interviews "for the good of our members" (whatever that even means). In the interview they did give, the AC alien quangocrats essentially accuse all Chilean mothers of blatant lying! Former AC operatives interviewed say that they never doubted Aja and still feel completely confident that nothing untoward happened.
While all the above is, to put it mildly, bad, the real rabbit hole goes deeper, as pointed out in my blog post "Race pessimism in reverse", a review of leftist gadfly Tobias Hübinette´s book "Adopterad". Hübinette, a critic of international (Third World) adoptions, documents how such adoptions were *explictly* part of Sweden´s "anti-racist" and "multi-culturalist" (and yet strangely "color blind") politics, and also an important part of the enlightened liberal self-identity. If this liberal social engineering turns out to have fueled what essentially amounts to child trafficking, the Image of Sweden will get a body blow from which it may never recover, even among its friends and allies. Adoption seems to be a *religion* for many of these people. It seems another god has failed! In all fairness, the Swedish Parliament (at the initiative of the Left Party) decided just the other day to launch an official investigation into both Chilean and other Third World adoptions, with the government parties (Social Democrats and Greens) bizarrely voting against the proposal, so perhaps *something* of the Image could still be salvaged. However, it´s equally likely that even more compromising facts will be revealed.
Welcome to 2021.
