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| Credit: Håvard Berland |
This shit isn´t going away, is it? It would be ironic if the next world war would be fought between the US and the EU circa 2040 over oil on Greenland. Rather than between Russia and the EU over Svalbard, as predicted in some futuristic documentary I watched long ago...
Greenland issues "strong warning" as Trump-linked oil firm prepares to drill
SPOILER WARNING
"Beck - Spår i mörker" (also known as "Beck 2 - Spår i mörker") is a 1997 Swedish film (or strictly speaking a Scandinavian-German co-production). Police officer Martin Beck is a fictional character developed by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, but the film isn´t based on their crime novels. "Beck - Spår i mörker" features Peter Haber, Mikael Persbrandt and other famous Swedish actors.
And now, the subjective part...
Almost 30 years later, the film comes across as very strange. It has a noir and cyberpunk feeling, but also concentrates heavily on Beck´s strained private relationships (which are much more mundane). One running gag is that Beck always has to break off his planned vacation?! Beck´s constant sidekick Gunvald Larsson comes across as "the crazy cop", while almost everyone else is incompetent. The plot itself was *extremely* unrealistic back in 1997, almost to the point of science fiction. Sweden was a much safer place 30 years ago. Today? You tell me.
Beck, Gunvald and Beck´s love interest Lena Klingström investigate a string of bizarre murders in the Stockholm metro. The assassins have hacked the security system and can turn off the lights and the power at will. Indeed, they seem to live in the tunnels. Curiously, no motive for the killings is discernable and the only clue is a Internet symbol meaning "death"...
It turns out that the murders are part of a computer game called "Final Doom", in which the players have to kill real people in order to "reach the next level". It´s never explained what this could possibly mean, but it´s heavily implied that the teenagers playing the game are actually a nihilistic cult. "Beck - Spår i mörker" ends with an American reporter revealing that a similar string of killings have been reported from New York. The cult is worldwide and presumably web-based.
I suppose this noir film did tap into real fears about the Internet which existed back in 1997, long before most people even had access to the damn thing. Today, we know what happened. Violent cults (such as the notorious 764) do indeed thrive on the dark web. Also, youth gangs in Sweden recruit children on-line to carry out murders. It´s hard to believe that things will take a sudden turn for the better. In that sense, the high strangeness of "Beck - Spår i mörker" feels almost prophetic.
Thankfully, the metro in Stockholm is still relatively safe!
Aftonbladets Anders Lindberg vill ha en nordisk förbundsstat. LOL! Be careful what you wish for, tror inte att du vill ha en Nordische Bundesstaat dominerad av Danmark. Du vet, deras invandringspolitik...
Planen är kanhända att den ska domineras av Sverige! Eller?
Fast lite roligt är det ju att den gamle sossekoryfén plötsligt låter som en nationalist. Han citerar t.o.m. nationalsången. Det hela blir ännu roligare om man betänker att Lindberg är en rent usel stilist. En stor del av artikeln är skriven på det där infantiliserade kvasi-talspråket som Aftonbladet verkar älska.
Lär dig högsvenska, Anders. Eller danska...
Jag vet inte vem Payam Moula är, men varför gör Anders Lindberg reklam för honom? Är han desperat? Eller är det "click bait"? Fast det verkar också lite desperat...
Erkänn, Anders! Du vill ha min bloggs finaste och mest klassiska utmärkelse! :D
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| Don´t live on Greenland |
What the fuck´s happening on Greenland? In 2025, the centrist Democrats won a plurality of votes and the position of "prime minister" in the local elections. The Democrats are anti-independence and pro-status quo. That is, pro-Danish. The election results looked reasonable, given Trump´s designs on the island. An independent Greenland would be easier for the United States to swallow. Hence, the voters sensible came out against it.
But...in the recent elections to the parliament of Denmark (where Greenland has two seats), the Democrats failed to gain a single seat. Two pro-independence parties, IA and Naleraq, got over half of the Greenland votes and took one seat each. IA is a left-wing party, while Naleraq has been accused of being pro-American!
Does anyone seriously think that Trump won´t notice? Well, I suppose it´s possible that he won´t. I mean, the guy´s half-crazy and, shall we say, rather preoccupied elsewhere. But if the eye of Sauron will gaze upon the world´s largest island again, it might notice that 55% of Greenland´s electorate voted for parties who wish to separate from Denmark. In effect for a suicide pact.
Things might still get colorful.
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| Credit: Francis C Franklin |
There are *still* people who think every Trump U-turn is just "the art of the deal", "4D chess", "a deliberate strategy of deception", et cetera. Yeah, I used to think so, too. Say ten years ago. Maybe it was true...back then. Today, I think it´s obvious that The Man has lost it.
Biden was (of course) senile, but Trump seems to be both senile and crazy. Biden´s gaffes could also be countermanded, while nobody seems able to reign in the Donald. The only "positive" thing is that Trump´s madness might - just might - scare somebody. Delcy Rodriguez, perhaps? It certainly seems to have scared the beejesus out of Denmark! By contrast, Biden´s decline made the US look weak. But it seems the Iranian regime is calling the Don´s bluff.
Things might get really colorful from here on. And I don´t just mean the oil prices...
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| Credit: FunkMonk |
Helt vansinnigt om det nu är sant. Vilket det mycket väl skulle kunna vara...
Ovanstående är två "hälsningar" publicerade på Vita Husets X-konto med anledning av Alla hjärtans dag. På riktigt.
Svenskarnas sympatier för USA har i princip kollapsat sedan Trump blev president.
KD och SD sticker ut som de partier som har flest pro-amerikanska väljare. Men observera att USA-sympatierna även bland dem halverades redan *innan* Grönlandskrisen kulminerade...och de har i princip kollapsat bland moderater och liberaler!
Pikant nog verkar Centerpartiet och Miljöpartiet ha ännu fler USA-kritiska väljare än Vänsterpartiet, som givetvis inte har särskilt många heller.
Hans Wormhat - one of the biggest kooks on the Internet - actually sounds surprisingly sympathetic in this video. At least when he isn´t discussing conspiracy theories! I might be the last person standing who cares either way, but here you go.
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| - Do you play red or blue? |
Ron Unz is a far right alt-media personality (und so weiter), but the article linked below is quite interesting. About half of it is a summary of a recent piece by longtime GOP strategist Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal, arguing that Trump is losing the electorate even on his central campaign promise: putting an end to illegal immigration. The Greenland shenaningans were even less popular.
Unz then points out that America´s most important pod caster, Joe Rogan, seems to be fed up with Trump. More people follow the Joe Rogan Show than read newspaper or watch CNN. Rogan (who usually sounds like a somewhat left-leaning independent) may have played a role in Trump´s re-election, since he interviewed Trump on his show. Could Rogan´s criticism lose Trump the midterms?
Unz wonders aloud whether Trump might be going literally insane. He isn´t the only one. And yes, it´s Trump´s bizarre craving for the Nobel peace prize which triggered those reactions (same on my end). The article also references some less important people on the far right who are fed up with the Donald.
As I said, interesting.
Yeah, a much better priority is to screw up the transatlantic link...right?
Priorities: Mexican president sends letter to South Korean embassy demanding more K-pop concerts
Inevitably, there are people who claim that Trump´s bizarre gyrations over Greenland comes from his book "The Art of the Deal" from 1987. Which may or may not be true - I haven´t read the book, although I occasionally wanted to give it a shot. I mean, people have been claiming for ten years now that everything in Trump´s politics is explained by that little volume. And that its a work of sheer and stable genius, to boot!
So could anyone please tell Number One that world politics don´t work like property deal shakedowns in the 1980´s Big Apple?
Thanks for your attention to this matter!
Trump and some branch of his admin recently posted a very strange meme. It shows Trump together with a penguin holding an American flag. They are seen walking towards a mountain range at which the Greenland flag has been hoisted. Most people who seen the meme react at that particular detail. After all, penguins live in Antarctica. Greenland is in the Arctic.
But...
The more I think about the meme, the more I´m convinced that this is a hex. A self-hex, to be precise. Trump is essentially cursing himself?! The picture of the penguin originally comes from a strange docu by Werner Herzog. Yes, *that* Werner Herzog. The guy with all the pessimistic and apocalyptic films and documentaries. Often with a certain Klaus Kinski as lead actor. The penguin is implied to be nihilistic or insane. Rather than heading for the sea together with his flock, he walks towards the mountains...and a certain death. On the Mountains of Madness?
So the meme could be (subconsciously) read in the following manner: Trump is acting like the crazy penguin (or like Kinski?), leading all of America to its doom, chasing the mirage of a Greenland military conquest.
It´s actually quite eerie. And no, I don´t really believe in magick. Which makes it eerier still.
The Why Files take on the ever-evolving legends about the Count of Saint Germain, a mysterious French character who officially died in 1784. I admit that some of the content in this video was new even to me! Apparently, there is a "tradition" in Lousiana that Saint Germain was a vampire and lived in the state for a number of years. Another tall tale claims that he was taken prisoner by German soldiers during the First World War and predicted Hitler´s rise and fall. As late as the 1970´s, some stage magician in France claimed to *be* Saint Germain.
All the standard legends about the Count are of course also incuded in the video, such as the claim that he persuaded the Founding Fathers to sign the Declaration of Independence, or that Voltaire un-ironically called him "the man who never dies". The Why Files also briefly mention Guy Ballard and the Mighty I AM Activity, the American New Religious Movement which treats Saint Germain almost as a god.
There is no doubt that the Count of Saint Germain was a real person, although nothing for certain is known about his origins. The "count" was probably an Italian adventurer and con man who claimed to be an alchemist. At some point, he had overstayed his welcome at the French royal court and had to make a run for it to Schleswig-Holstein, where he is also buried. As a good Scandinavian, I couldn´t help noticing that the Why Files refer to the Count´s final residence as "Germany". Not wrong, but at the time Schleswig-Holstein was in union with Denmark!
For whatever reason, this colorful character was turned into a semi-divine being by 19th century Theosophists ("Master Rakoczi") and 20th century Theosophy-inspired groups ("Ascended Master Saint Germain"). But that´s another show, as they say.
Enligt denna artikel var Danmark faktiskt beredda på krig med Donald Trumps USA (även om de betraktade detta scenario som ett av de mindre troliga). De skickade dessutom en förfrågan till Sverige om militärt stöd. Men offentligt sade de ju att Trump missförstått syftet med truppförflyttningarna till Grönland. Uppenbarligen gjorde han inte det...
Frågan är vem som framstår som svagast i den här situationen. Danmark, som jag antar inte har en chans mot USA om de verkligen invaderar "isbiten"? Eller Trump, som svarade på de danska trupperna med hot om strafftullar på smörrebröd eller vad det nu är DK exporterar över Pölen?!
Eller också är det någon någonstans som ljuger. Men även om vi antar att så är fallet är det givetvis intressant att någon nu spinner propaganda om att Danmark (och Sverige) under några dagar inte uteslöt krig med Förenta Staterna. Och ärligt talat tror jag att uppgifterna stämmer.
NATO framstår alltmer som ett ännu större skämt än när Biden lät Erdogan och Orbán trakassera Sverige under ratificeringsprocessen...
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| - You sure this is India? Looks more like some disputed territory in the Arctic! |
Donald Trump supposedly changed his mind about Greenland at the last moment blah-blah. Except that he really didn´t. This doesn´t change anything. The new deal doesn´t seem to contain *anything* Trump couldn´t have gotten by simply negotiating with Denmark in normal fashion through the usual NATO structures. Or bilaterally, for that matter.
Instead, he threatened Denmark with a military attack and other NATO allies with steep tariffs. The "isolationist" (really imperial-nationalist) dynamic is still at play. It´s also obvious that the guy can´t be trusted to negotiate in good faith.
Therefore, the European-ist dynamic must continue. Unless the Trump administration simply collapses in such a spectacular fashion that the transatlantic link can be reset on a very firm basis. I´m not holding my breath, though.
Let´s see if I get this right. By Marxist-leftist standards, the United States is imperialist. But so is the EU. Heck, so is little Denmark. So presumably the left won´t defend Denmark (and hence Greenland) against an attack by Donald Trump´s administration?
Is that correctly understood?
Maybe they would defend Greenland if there had been an Inuit workers´ militia in place at Nuuk. But alas, there isn´t. So if they are true to their hallowed principles of revolutionary defeatism, they have to stay neutral.
And yes, I´m probably the only one sperging about this in the darkness of cyberspace...
Funny picture, btw.
