Lessons from the North

Inside the cave-like used bookstore in Helsingborg for our talk two nights ago

While visiting Stockholm, Helsinki, Gothenburg, Helsingborg, and Malmo we’ve learned much about the drastic changes now underway in Scandinavia.  The US and NATO cultural and military colonization of this part of the world has been a constant theme in our discussions with local activists.

One woman in Malmo told us, “Our Swedish culture is being erased.”  She reported that about 80% of Swedish TV is American programming. I can attest to that fact as the one time I turned on a TV and surfed the available channels it was more than surprising to see program after program from the US.  Her husband remarked that people no longer go to meetings – they go to work and come home and turn on the TV.

We heard that virtually the entire nation had been programmed to root for Hillary Clinton during the last election.  When Trump surprisingly pulled off his electoral college victory mothers had to take their children aside and reassure them as the kids shook in fear of the new American president.

A man in Malmo remarked, “Swedish leaders look to America but now with Trump in office they don’t know what to do.”  (It might be a good time for a course in corporate deprogramming….)

We learned that in recent years’ conservative Swedish governments have privatized much of the national stock of publicly owned apartments forcing people to take out expensive loans to purchase their flats.  The length of the loans will outlive most of the new ‘owners’ and as a result many people who had routinely voted for the Communist party are now voting for the conservatives. The new land owners fear property tax increases as the valuation of their housing has shot upward toward the moon.  They must now protect their ‘investment’.

The once strong sense of community and civic participation has dried up in the growing capitalist desert that now dominates Sweden.  As we walked down a well-lit street in Helsingborg a youngish man described how the local pubs, that used to be filled with political activists and vigorous debate, have closed and been transformed into ‘plastic’ watering holes for the trendy who have little interest in current affairs.  When people no longer are in touch with their own history their moorings are cut loose and they drift dangerously in the rough seas of present times.

This is the story of corporate globalization and you can hear similar tales whether in Romania, India, South Korea, the US, or most other places.  The public has been conditioned toward consumerism, info-tainment, depoliticization and a historical/political amnesia that ensures total bankster control.

Insert into this vacuum the current anti-Russia demonization by the corrupt forces that see Moscow and Beijing as primary obstacles to complete western (US-NATO) domination of the planet’s resources and economic system.  Thus, legions of people throughout the world are daily smothered with stories of a resurgent Russian bear bent of invading Europe to recreate the Soviet Union.  

People with little interest in, or knowledge of, actual global affairs are shepherded like willing lambs into allowing their tax monies to be shifted into NATO coffers to buy more weapons to encircle a largely defensive Russia and China.  Moscow has a vast northern border and as the Arctic Sea melts western fossil fuel pirates drool over the thought of a potential gold mine from drilling in the region. 

Thus, not only are the people of the Nordic nations being dumbed down they are being prepared for war with Russia to ensure the successful balkanization of the nation that Napoleon and Hitler failed to deliver to the western bankers.  This time nuclear weapons are in the military mix but the desperate US imperial puppeteers seem willing to roll the dice anyway as they fear their own demise before the takedown of Moscow and Beijing can be delivered to Wall Street and London’s financial district. 

Bruce