Author: pelshvalen

  • John Mearsheimer

    Mr. Mearsheimer, who is a prominent expert on international relations, cf. Britannica, has been relatively uncommunicative since 2022, after the war he had warned about ever since 2014, started. Maybe he did not want to tell us “I told you so”. Or was his case perhaps one of not being allowed to tell us? Like…

  • Quoting Kissinger

    To be an enemy of the United States is dangerous. To be a friend of the United States is fatal” Henry Kissinger Indeed. In the wake of the Ukraine debacle, many of us are beginning to understand the statement. Here in Europe, all states, including Ukraine, are seeing an unprecedented rise in the cost of…

  • Five minutes of foreign policy

    What’s going on in Niger? I wonder. My next thought is: How strange the press is! Today, I’ve checked AP, Reuters and Al Jazeera – these are the most common sources that feed local papers in the West about situations in places to which a news outlet may not be able to send its own…

  • On antisemitism in the West

    So, the British Labour Party has barred Jeremy Corbyn from running as Labour’s candidate in the next election on the grounds of – of all things – antisemitism. Corbyn’s, that is. The dethroning of Corbyn has allowed Keir Starmer to take his place and he, Starmer, is certainly neither willing nor able to rally opposition…

  • La semana trágica

    No language can compete with Spanish when it comes to heartbreaking titles (surely you will admit that “The tragic week” isn’t up to much). There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of tragic weeks scattered throughout the pages of history, even (or rather, not least) recent history, yet my search engine only returns results from…

  • John Mearsheimer

    John Mearsheimer is a prominent political scientist and scholar within the so-called realist school of thought. For years he warned USA not to even think about inviting Ukraine into NATO. His prophesies were fulfilled, as we have seen, and for that he has been “punished”, as it were, banished from mainstream media. Like so many…

  • Prayer for Africa

    What are the headlines in your country? I bet one of today’s biggest headlines in your country is the same as in my country: about the implosion of a small vessel somewhere off the coast of Canada. It had a handful of passengers, it is true, and to their families, we of course offer our…

  • Obedience

    To be honest, I know next to nothing about conditions for the press in Russia. I expect there is little if any room for dissent. Would-be critical journalists are up against not only powerful people, but also Government, as the Navalnyj example has demonstrated so dramatically. But then again, Russians don’t expect a free press.…

  • The Great Divide

    The other night I had a terrible argument with a couple whom I consider particularly close friends. They were spending the weekend at my place, and we had enjoyed two lovely days, when in the evening, I unwittingly stepped on a sore toe. Now, I had been very careful not to even mention Ukraine; in…

  • What enlightenment is not

    Yep, artificial intelligence and Wikipedia have already met, I fear. Or are the automatons at work human? Diligent cancelists? At any rate, things are starting to happen, awful things reminiscent of noxious chemical reactions. The other day, I looked up Helsinki Times in Wikipedia. The first paragraph read: Helsinki Times is the first English language…