Woman Professor Shrieks With Glee About War Preparation
Oh, the irony of middle-aged women who will not be sacrificed on the altar of Mars: notes on the decay of history, decency, and, yes, on the perverse push to war
In many ways, due to current events, today’s posting is a follow-up to yesterday’s article about militarism running wild in Norway:
Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine.
Professor Criticises Norwegian Preparedness, Says ‘We Must Prepare for War’
Less than half of us still store water the way we are told to at home. Norwegians should be told to prepare for war like the Swedes, says an associate professor.
By Veronika Westhrin, Gry Eirin Skjelbred, and Lars Tore Endresen, NRK, 3 Dec. 2024 [source]
‘I have to check where it is. My wife did it’, says Caleb Kasper in Skien.
He leads the way to the shed where the family has set up their emergency preparedness box.
In this household, they follow the government’s advice and are prepared for a possible crisis.
If electricity or access to food and water is lost, they literally have their own preparedness in place.
It’s good to be prepared, because these are very uncertain times. You can imagine a major war, but what if we get a huge snowfall?
Not Preparing Norwegians for War
The emergency preparedness brochure from the Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection (DSB) recently arrived in the post, but unlike their Swedish neighbours, Norwegians are not told to prepare for war. [I also received such a brochure, and it was at the same time the Swedish ones were sent out; it’s like this across Scandinavia—every country eyes its neighbours and typically does likewise]
‘It’s better to be prepared and perhaps appear a little paranoid than not to be prepared’, says Monika Bartoszewicz, Associate Professor at the Department of Technology and Security at the University of Tromsø, [check out her faculty profile; she is the Arctic Chair in Terrorism Studies (I’m not kidding), with these being her research focuses: ‘terrorism and political violence, international security with particular focus on societal security and resilience, international relations, religion and politics, political and religious radicalisation, migration, geopolitics, clash of civilisations, culture and identity in political processes’], adding:
If we end up in a very difficult situation, we have a population that has been told that they don’t need to worry about anything other than avalanches in winter.
This is rejected by DSB, which is responsible for maintaining an overview of risks and hazards in society.
DSB disagrees with this: ‘What we are preparing the population for is a number of scenarios. If an even more serious situation were to arise closer to our borders, we have prepared the possibility of distributing that information quickly’, says Elisabeth Aarsæther, Director of DSB [what she means is that the gov’t will access your cell phone and send out ‘warnings’, that is, provided the cell phone service isn’t interrupted].
Shall we be prepared for war? (30,386 votes, around 8 a.m. today)
19%—no, this is too drastic; doing so will only scare the population
39%—yes, it’s better to be ready come what may
42%—yes, absolutely, we should do like Sweden and take concrete steps to be prepared for war
Swedes Receive Concrete War Advice
The Swedish preparedness brochure is clear in its message right from the front of the booklet.
[here are two images, showing the cover (which reads ‘In Case of Crisis or War’) and an exemplary page about ‘where to seek shelter during an air raid’; both can be seen by going to NRK’s article linked above; I’m not reproducing them here as they offer no benefits other than visuals]
In ‘In Case of Crisis or War’, the Swedish brochure offers very specific advice on what to do in a war situation.
In the event of an air raid, people are asked to go to a shelter or other safe place.
They also say that shelters protect against pressure waves and shrapnel from bombs.
However, the simplest form of protection outside is to lie down in a pit, enter a tunnel or stand by a wall.
Inside, you should seek protection in a room without windows.
Less Than Half Store Drinking Water
In a recent survey from DSB, 93% of respondents said they were aware of the authorities’ advice.
But only 49% say they store water at home.
One of those currently sitting on the fence is Hans Uleberg.
Standing in the doorway of his home, is answering the question of whether he has his own emergency preparedness in order.
I haven’t put together an emergency pack yet.
But in Sweden they are preparing their citizens for war. If you had been told to do so, do you think you would have done it?
Yes, of course I would have done it. Absolutely I would.
Bottom Lines: Northern Delusions
Si vis pacem, para bellum—the ancient adage, translating roughly into ‘if you want peace, prepare for war", is a truism.
Europe—the functional equivalent of Tolkien’s Shire since 1989/90, is re-learning a lesson that is, seemingly, eternal: unbridled hedonism and blatant disregard for reality has a price. And whatever one wishes, at some point, there will be consequences.
The most hair-raisingly absurd aspects of this piece, to me, are: half the population say they can’t store drinking water. This is utterly absurd, as I suppose every household has a shelf that might hold a few gallons of water.
The lesson here is as glaringly obvious as it is stupid: you can prepare as much as you want to, but if you do, consider redoubling your efforts for hungry and thirsty neighbours will come by. As only half the population stores any supplies, this isn’t something that might happen, but something that will.
If you consider this ‘unfair’, think about it this way: they will likely come asking politely and be very grateful for some help.
You can probably imagine what happens if you don’t help them: they’ll gang up with others and take everything from you.
Moving on, that feller they’re interviewing, well, what can I say? More than 90% of Norwegians followed, blindly, their government’s advice and got themselves injected with the modRNA poison/death juice. Because they were told to do so.
If you consider their likely actions in case of a crisis or war to be different, then your opinion about mankind is higher than mine.
Especially if you consider that here were no general vaxx mandates (sectoral ones there were) but an ‘anbefalling’—recommendation—only. Put simply: most Norwegians got themselves injected with the modRNA poison/death juice without any threat or the like.
Now, if you consider their likely actions in case of a crisis or war would be based on recent comparable experiences, then your opinion about mankind’s ability to learn is way higher than mine.
Finally, let’s give a shout-out to Prof. Bartoszewicz, who appears to be about my age (she received her Ph.D. two years after me).
She’s a warmonger, which may or may not derive, in one way or the other, from her Polish ancestry and the freakish Russophobia that comes, it would seem, with it.
Now, I don’t mean to suggest that all Poles are rabid Russophobes (many are, esp. among their political, journalistic, and military elites), for I also know a bunch of Poles who are utterly disgusted by all of this.
Excursus: Memory-Holing History
Still, if you consider Poland’s tragic history across the past, say, 200+ years (4 partitions, genocidal attacks by both Germany and the Soviet Union, plus the occupation régimes), then a certain amount of wariness vs. the bigger neighbours becomes understandable to a certain degree.
Alas, if Polish élites would also consider the roles of their ‘outside friends™’ across esp. the 20th century, I suppose this picture would look different: we know that, thanks to entirely mainstream historians like A.J.P. Taylor (check out his The Origins of the Second World War, 1961, for instance), that US and British ‘guarantees™’, offered in early 1939, massively increased their intransigence vs. Hitler.
Conventionally, the USSR is hailed as the ‘liberator™’ of Europe from the curse of Fascism, which is partially ‘true™’. That this ‘liberation™’ also entailed Communist régimes across half of (Eastern) Europe that endured for decades is similarly true, hence the proximate origins of contemporary Russophobia among all Eastern European peoples. It’s perfectly understandable.
What their history books don’t really talk about, though, are the pogrom-like abuses Polish authorities incited vs. the German-speakers in Poland in the run-up to Hitler’s attack on 1 Sept. 1939.
They also, rather conveniently so, omit the so-called ‘White Book’ that the Germans published in 1940, which was based on documents that fell into German hands as they took Warsaw in September 1939. Their contents were confirmed to be authentic in the mid-1950s, proving that Hitler and the directed German press wasn’t making up these horror stories.
Alas, that’s also but a half-truth, at best.
Earlier this year, a quite famous podcaster was talking to Tucker Carlson, eventually characterising Winston Churchill as a prime culprit in WW2. Conveniently, the shenanigans of the Roosevelt administration since 1937/38—decried in leading newspapers and magazines by, e.g., John T. Flynn (he was ‘cancelled’ and memory-holed after WW2) and many others—were omitted. Perhaps said podcaster hadn’t discovered this aspect of US history yet, but maybe he did so on purpose.
Be that as it may, we don’t need to go down this ‘conspiratorial™’ road; here’s a bit from the aptly-titled Wikipedia entry ‘Battle of the Atlantic’:
By 1941, the United States was taking an increasing part in the war, despite its nominal neutrality [it means FDR broke the law, and since it affected foreign policy, this may constitute high treason]. In April 1941 President Roosevelt extended the Pan-American Security Zone east almost as far as Iceland. British forces occupied Iceland when Denmark fell to the Germans in 1940 [the British occupied their ‘allies™’]; the US was persuaded to provide forces to relieve British troops on the island [oh, look, sending US combat troops to foreign soil without a declaration of war led to the US occupation of Iceland, also an ‘ally™’]. American warships began escorting Allied convoys in the western Atlantic as far as Iceland, and had several hostile encounters with U-boats [it means US forces opened fire on Germany while, technically, no state of war between Berlin and DC existed; also, remember, what both Hitler and Putin did was something entirely different that no other global power would ever do].
You see, it’s ‘evil™’ if whoever is designated the enemy does whatever; by implication, it’s ‘good™’ if it friends do the same.
As a thought experiment, consider that from 1938 through summer 1940, German forces invaded 9-10 countries (Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France, as well as fought vs. the UK)—and compare it to Stalin’s activities: the Soviet record isn’t that far behind covering 6 countries (Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, parts of Romania). I’m not saying this is the same, but I am pointing towards very different scholarly and societal considerations of these events.
One more paragraph from the above-cited Wikipedia piece:
In June 1941, the US realised the tropical Atlantic had become dangerous for unescorted American as well as British ships. On May 21, SS Robin Moor, an American vessel carrying no military supplies, was sunk by U-69 750 nautical miles (1,390 km) west of Freetown, Sierra Leone. When news of the sinking reached the US, few shipping companies felt truly safe anywhere [that sentence reads like it’s missing a word]. As Time magazine noted in June 1941, ‘if such sinkings continue, U.S. ships bound for other places remote from fighting fronts, will be in danger. Henceforth the U.S. would either have to recall its ships from the ocean or enforce its right to the free use of the seas.’
This stance, conveyed rather openly in Time, have never changed since. Look up the Red Sea issues or whatever happens in the Taiwan Straits or the South China Sea.
I have dealt with this at-length in an earlier essay:
So, what shall we make of this all? I’m disgusted by the hypocrisy, but I also understand how international relations work. It’s also nothing ‘new’ or the like.
Thucydides wrote about it 2,500 years ago (these are the words in Richard Crawley’s 1910 translation of The Peloponnesian War):
The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.
In the final analysis, I suppose we all know where the increasingly shrill will, seemingly inexorably, lead to: war.
This is what makes the shrill cries by Prof. Bartoszewicz so deplorable: as a middle-aged woman, she will not be called up to fight. Her students will do the dying, which is why I consider these utterances so disgusting.
I’ll also throw in one more facet that I’ll leave here for your consideration, which has to do with the history of popular democracy, in particular affording women the right to vote in exchange for nothing.
(Note that I’m not against women voting, so before you, dear readers, label me a misogynist, bear with me for a few more lines.)
Universal male suffrage was, historically, tied to two core facts: being a taxpayer and military service. Citizenship rights in ancient Greece and Rome were connected to both aspects, and they have been tied to together ever since—until the suffragettes came along.
One of the core changes to democratic theory (if you will) came in the late 19th century when universal male suffrage was granted, but note that it was tied also to universal male conscription, which underwrote the creation of the mass armies of the modern and contemporary era.
Now, I happen to know—and if you, dear readers, wish to know more about this, please let me know and I’ll write this up before too long—that the Swiss case offers an invaluable lesson here.
You see, in autumn 1918, a general strike rocked Switzerland, which did not actively participate in WW1. At that time, debates were held about extending class-based, male-only voting rights to the lower rungs of society—and to women.
Discussions in Switzerland included questions, such as: ‘why should we grant women the right to vote if they don’t get drafted into the army?’
You can imagine how wonderful family dinners must have been, esp. as simply asking about this—still (!) valid—issue quickly revealed that upper-class women didn’t share much, if anything, with their working-class peers.
Swiss politicians even discussed tying a woman’s right to vote to motherhood—which I consider a not entirely stupid idea in the first place, esp. as military service and motherhood were considered in the same category.
In the absence of contraceptives, everybody knew that there’d always be kids around, hence the proposal was eventually abandoned and women were granted full voting rights without any demands.
I suppose that, at this time, we can safely consider how wrong some of the underlying considerations of Swiss politicians were. Sure, hindsight is 20/20 vision, but I suppose the larger point is this:
People who have zero skin in that game—like that middle-aged professor—should be called out for what they are: warmongerers standing at the sidelines.
Talk about Monday morning quarterback efforts taked to the extreme.
I’m certainly curious about more on the Swiss example. If you find time and others are interested too I’d be delighted.
I admit “voting” is another one of those rocks I haven’t yet turned over and challenged my perceptions.