Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Sources

09.03.2026 /

I am too depressed, really, to write about US wars – economic, covert or military – against the entire world. I just want to hide under the bed and wait until it is all over. My rhetorical verve fails me: I am dumbstruck.

The USA is, as I see it, a dying empire. As such, it is acting not with wisdom but with desperate fury. I must sadly admit that the empire is far from defeated yet.

At any rate, I am not a geopolitical expert, not a prophet, nor even an investigative journalist. I am just somebody who follows what is accessible to me of “independent” news.

So, for a time, I shall content myself with relaying sources of information and analyses from, yes, experts.

I shall add to the following list, started today 9 march, over the next days.

I start with an analysis of the goals of the US-Israeli attack.
The Wrong Question about the War in Iran

Analysis of Iranian strategy and geo-economic consequences (10 March)

The mainstream media vs reality in the Middle East (Patrick Lawrence) (10 M.)

Una jorden de desalojo (Pepe Escobar) (11 M.)

Mohamad Marandi speaks to Judge Napolitano from Teheran (12 M.)

Correction

08.03.2026 /

I must apologise. In my last post, I wrote that we are “live witnesses to the West’s descent into barbarism!”

This was inaccurate. What we are seeing is not gradual descent down a slope: We are seeing the frantic flailing of a two-headed monster, surrounded by its wailing monster babies. In short we are already there: The West has reached the bottom of the slope. Things can get very much worse, for sure, for all of us, but already the US and its vassals are a pitifully primitive gaggle.

They have broken almost every rule in the book. They are now effectively (some more, some less) barbarian states.

Episode: On March 4, the Sri Lankan navy responded to a distress call from the Iranian warship IRIS Dena after it was sunk by a U.S. submarine. The Sri Lankans managed to recover, out of a crew of 130, 87 bodies, and 32 survivors.

Here is what Perplexity tells me:

IRIS Dena, a Moudge‑class Iranian frigate, was torpedoed on 4 March 2026 in international waters south of Sri Lanka, while returning to Iran after participating in the Indian Navy’s Milan 2026 exercise.​

The U.S. government has confirmed that the Los Angeles‑class attack submarine USS Charlotte fired a Mark 48 heavyweight torpedo that struck Dena under the stern, breaking her keel and causing her to sink rapidly.

Sri Lankan authorities reported that the ship sent a distress call around 05:08 local time and that their navy and air force mounted a search‑and‑rescue operation.

Note that the USA sunk the ship at about 05:08, a time when most of the crew would have been in their bunks. This is the work of barbarians.

Note, also, that the USA just left them there in the water. Even the Nazis, I am told, used to pick up survivors of ships they had sunk. I wonder: did the USA also shoot people in the water, as they did in the Caribbean?

Note, finally, that the ship was in international waters far from Iran, returning from a friendly mission in India.

Perplexity again:

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly framed the attack as a deliberate demonstration that Iranian warships were not safe even in distant international waters, calling it proof of U.S. global reach and….

Global reach! President Flintstone’s “global reach” (and that of his predecessors), is effectively the no. 1 obstacle to global peace and prosperity.

We are of course used to Israel’s routine indiscriminate killing of civilians that do not satisfy its “racial” requirements. And the US has managed to impose global impunity for all Israeli crimes against humanity. (The Nazis, as we know, were no better than Israel, but at least some of them were prosecuted.)

Indiscriminate killing of civilians is barbarism! Having unilaterally cancelled “International Law”, the US now feels joyfully free to engage in indiscriminate killing of civilians without so much as an apology. President Flintstone and his hoodlums will go down in history – no doubt about that – but perhaps not the way he wished.

We are told that the global economy is being hit. Indeed, most countries will be badly hit. A Chinese government spokesperson is imploring the warring parties to cease hostilities and resume negotiations. Now China is a supremely civilised country. I fear it is so civilised that its spokespersons are unable to fathom that one side of this war routinely engages in high-profile assassinations during – yes, just so – negotiations! Indeed, it is very difficult to get one’s head around such barbarism.

Negotiations have systematically been used by president Flintstone and his Israeli handler as a smoke screen.

Stop accusing Iran. Iran did not start this or any other war! The US has been attacking the Iranian people with sanctions for decades. The US has in fact been attacking all over the place, militarily and/or with sanctions and/or though covert r operations for as long as I have lived. And the rest of us (in the West) have not said a peep. Not one peep. We have been perfectly aware of the injustice, but we have been silent.

By “we” I do not mean the voters, the you-s and I-s. In that sense of the word, “we” are innocent. I mean those who represent us: The warmongering US-EU 1 %, (or “Epstein class”). And don’t tell me that you and I voted for the wrong man or woman, because we – you and I – are merely hostages of the press/media owned by the above-mentioned you-know-who-class.

Yes, Iran is hitting its two persecutors where it hurts, in the groin: the economy. All of us, and mostly Iran, will suffer as a result.

But don’t, I repeat, blame the Iranians!

Let’s turn it around

04.03.2026 /

“Religious freedom”, as I understand the concept, means the right to express one’s religious views without being ostracised. I am all for it.

Parents naturally tend to try to educate their offspring in accordance with their personal beliefs: They want their children to be, f. instance, good Christians, good Muslims, good anti-imperialists, or good Zionists. Unfortunately, some parents are heavy-handed.

An additional problem that concerns certain fundamentalist groups, including the Zionist lot, is that many of them want more than merely a right to express religious views. Zionists have commanded Israelis to go on killing sprees since the very birth of the country. They have basically determined the foreign policy of a country that was supposed to be a haven for Jews, and they have turned it into the scourge of the neighbourhood and one of the two most hated countries in the world.

I also believe in the right of citizens of the US and its lackey states to “dislike” Iran. Iran is decidedly different from what we in the West are familiar with and feel comfortable with. Moreover, there are rumours of torture in Iranian prisons – and I see no reason to condone torture.

Personally, I am far too secular an animal to comprehend the spirituality of any deeply religious society. Nevertheless, I share the views of the anthropologist Emanuel Todd (in f.inst. La défaite de l’Occident) and many others, that secularism is contributing to the disintegration of the “West”.

We are indeed live witnesses to the West’s descent into barbarism.

With all our technological assets, we are in some senses back in the Stone Age. Now that I think of it, the US president bears some resemblance to Fred Flintstone.

Shortly after WWII, almost all countries in the world were in agreement about the UN Charter, the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, the Genocide Convention, etc., etc. But the US never played fair. Under the pretext of combating “Communism” and defending liberty and Democracy they imposed brutal dictatorships in country after country. The countries they were unable to bully into submission they tried to starve to death with “Sanctions”, just as Medieval bullies made their armies lay siege to towns they wanted to possess.

Iran never had any intention of attacking Israel or anybody else, but has been attacked three times in the course of less than a year.

1) In June last year, the so-called 12-day war,

2) Just two months ago,
when – as Scott Bessent boasted – the US administration’s maximum pressure campaign crashed the Iranian economy. Predictably, there were mass protests of people who couldn’t feed their children, while Mossad used its Twitter account in Farsi to encourage Iranians to protest against the Iranian regime, telling them that it will join them during the demonstrations.

Go out together into the streets. The time has come. We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.

To make sure the Israeli agents provocateurs could coordinate their efforts, nefarious NED contributed 200 Starlink terminals. Hear the involuntary admission here. Indeed, thousands of people were killed.

3) Four days ago.
Among the first victims, that first day, were 48 little girls at school. Since then, they are simply killing indiscriminately, the Zionist way.

Iran has been ostracised by the USA since the self-styled shah something-or-other Palavi was put on the throne in the 1920s by, well actually, by the British. There was a brief spate of Democracy after WWII (when the British were too badly bruised to prevent it) but with US help they put a stop to Mosaddegh’s promising efforts in 1953.

They replaced him with the patently greedy and narcissistic former shah’s son, who had a beautiful wife. The European public just loved her. And he, too, cut a handsome figure in his uniform with all its gold medals and whatnots. He may have had some good intentions to begin with, but he soon became a grizzly dictator and was overthrown in a wave of popular fury – and with good reason – in 1979.

So I think we should ask ourselves what reason the Iranians have to trust or share our so-called “values”. To quote Iran’s deeply revered assassinated religious leader, Ali Khamenei, there is every reason not to:

No problem is solved through negotiations with America. The reason? Experience.

In the 2010’s, we sat down and negotiated with America for about two years.

They went, came, sat, stood, negotiated, talked, laughed, shook hands, became friends — they did everything.

A treaty was formed. In this treaty, the Iranian side was very generous. It gave many concessions to the other side. But the Americans did not implement the treaty.

Those with whom this treaty was signed did not implement it. The treaty was meant to lift U.S. sanctions. The U.S. sanctions were not lifted at all.

Iran is now defending itself. Finally. It’s time to listen to “the other side”. I recommend this Iranian voice on Channel 4 News

Frankly, if Iran destroys Israel – I don’t believe it will be able to, but – IF… IF … it should be able to, the entire area, the entire Middle East will be relieved of a terrible cancer.

Colonial powers, the UK, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium and even Denmark and Germany committed unfathomable crimes against humanity. Forget everything you might have heard about their so-called “civilising influence”! No crime was too base for them. However, to my knowledge, they no longer have colonies they can mistreat. France, it is true, has been bullying and exploiting several African countries, including Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali, which recently threw out the French. France is still engaging in dirty tricks to maintain its grip over the three nations which – I hope – are holding their ground. (I have not been following events there.) True, they are all military dictatorships, but when somebody is sitting on top of you, you need to resort to advanced martial arts.

In short, I have no other quarrel with former colonial powers than I have with any nation – and there are plenty – that give priority to the 1 %, or as people are increasingly referring to them, “the Epstein class”. I have greater quarrel, with the countries, including my own, that contribute to the exponentially accelerating ecological breakdown. The exponentially accelerating ecological breakdown is, I believe, a greater threat to mankind than even nuclear warfare.

BUT systematic slaughter, systematic mass starvation (by means of sanctions), and indiscriminate killings are un-for-givable.

Today, to my knowledge,

only Israel and the USA and,
yes, Sudan,
engage in
systematic slaughter,
systematic mass starvation of peoples
and indiscriminate killings.

(If I were one of the Sudanese leaders responsible for such crimes, I would live under the bed for the rest of my life. For shame.
The Epstein class doesn’t know the meaning of shame,

***

They say that Khamenei had been warned, that his people had warned him, to go into hiding. He refused. They say that he allowed the enemy to make him a “martyr” so as to unite the Iranian people in self-defence.

Epitaph

01.03.2026 /

Ali Khamenei is dead, assassinated. I bow my head.

Yes, the Israeli Zionists aided by their US lackeys have once again done what they do best: assassination.

The European lackeys are – as Associated Press writes – cautious in their statements. What would they have said, I wonder, if the Zionists had killed the Pope?

I can well understand Iranian expats’ enthusiasm for the ongoing operation that may kill hundreds of thousands of their former compatriots. Many of them have had every reason to hate the Iranian “regime”.

But a word of warning: A “regime change”, if successful, will not bring Democracy to Iran. I repeat not. The US is not in the habit of bringing anything but desolation to the countries upon which it showers its deadly blessings. The US is only interested in helping itself (or its oligarchs) to the spoils.

As for the Israeli exterminators…. If there is a God somewhere, God help Iran!

(They are probably wishing they had that bomb after all.)

Lebensraum

28.02.2026 /

So it has happened. What we knew would happen. Israel’s lust for lebensraum knows no limits, it seems.

And of course deceit is one of Israel’s trump cards: Attack during peace negotiations, by all means.

Many assumed that Trump didn’t really want this war. I believe they were right, if for no other reason, because a protracted war was not likely to sit well with his voters. And this war is expected to be protracted.

But the US president is hostage to Zionists in Israel and in his own country; because of the bribes (so-called donations) they pay, yes. But also, I think, because of something else.

The Epstein saga is basically being swept under the rug. Throw some pieces of meat (e.g. former Prince Andrew) to the lions (the public), and resume business as usual.

The “Democrate” elite isn’t talking either, not about Trump – which is unlike them
– not about anybody, because whatshisname had something on just about everybody in the nomenclature, and he passed what he had on to his masters.

Conspiracy theory? Certainly. But you will, I am sure, concede that US subservience to Israel is spectacular, to say the least. It is not – repeat – not in the USA’s interest to play Israel’s game. Maybe it was in the past, but it certainly is not now and hasn’t been for many years.

Secondly, the extent of redaction of the files that have been released raises eyebrows. The fact that nobody in the USA, as far as I know, is being charged with any crime related to Epstein-related shady activities raises eyebrow. (We know for a fact that he engaged in massive bribery, corruption, etc. and people in Europe are being charged.) Finally, the extent of material not being released raises eyebrows.

Three sets of raised eyebrows are not “evidence”, true, but they are indicative of – yes – a conspiracy.

Now let us sit back and watch the mayhem in the Middle East.

Thoughts about thought

26.02.2026 /

I sent a text message the other day, to a highly educated and intelligent old friend. I have not seen him for a couple of years, but we have exchanged amicable messages from time to time. This was the message I sent this time:

Glenn Diesen’s speech at the UN Security council. It was about geopolitics in general and the Ukraine war in particular.

That was all I wrote. My short text was followed by a link to the said speech at the UN Security Council. I recommend the speech!!

This was the response I received:

This is just about as bad as it gets from a well-known peddler of Russian war propaganda and lies (not that I follow what peddlers of Russian propaganda say). It is a strong defence of the right of superpowers to invade and annex countries (e.g., the US and Greenland or Panama). Ironically, it is also a defence of the right of the superpower Europe, in order to defend its legitimate security interests, to supply Ukraine with weapons and keep the war going indefinitely. But Professor Diesen probably doesn’t understand that.

I will not deny that I knew, when I sent the link, that my friend, as almost all other Norwegians, believes that Putin is the devil incarnate. Norwegians have been told so by our media. (Unlike the USA, we have practically no news outlets other than state and corporate media.) So when I sent him the link, I had only a very faint hope of effecting a slight dent in his attitude.

At any rate I do not intend to reply to his message as it does not serve as an invitation to a mutually rewarding discussion.

A discussion worthy of participation would include, on my part, questions such as:

  • Did we (the West) engage in this war in order to protect Ukraine?
  • Is our bellicose attitude 1) benefiting Ukraine 2) benefiting us (Europe)?

I recognise that my friend should have every right to challenge me with his own questions, such as:

  • Was the invasion of Ukraine in contravention of International Law?

I would have to reply: “Yes”, but I would ask a similar question in return:

  • Did the Ukrainian government prior to the invasion (and with NATO assistance) act in contravention of international law?

At any rate I urge you to hear Glenn Diesen’s response to the criticism he undoubtedly has received following his speech to the Security Council.

***

What makes debate about the Ukraine war particularly tricky is the way the media filters information. In Norway, for instance, the filters play a part in framing the invasion as “unprovoked”.

In Norway we still trust the politicians we vote for, (strongly dislike the politicians we don’t vote for) and basically, according to Norway Statistics, trust the system (score 6.4 out of 10) and our press (score 6.2 out of 10). So people read the mainstream news and see no reason to question the framing of international issues in accordance with the views of Santa Ursula and Kaja Kallas.

Such levels of trust are remarkable compared to the state of affairs in the USA where, according to Pew Research Center figures, “just 17% of Americans now say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right just about always (2%) or “ most of the time (15%).” Confidence in US mainsream media fares hardly any better: “seven in 10 U.S. adults now say they have “not very much” confidence (36%) or “none at all” (34%).

Edward Bernays (1891-1995) had the brilliant idea of renaming “propaganda” “PR”, (public relations). We all know that propaganda is what the bad guys, notably the Russians, do. We don’t do propaganda. We just do “information” or PR. The result, in either case, is indoctrination. Interestingly, it would seem that we in Norway are more indoctrinated than US citizens. I’m afraid I do not know the score for Russia.,

The first sentence in the English Wikipedia article about indoctrination is currently: “Indoctrination is the process of inculcating (teaching by repeated instruction) a person or people into an ideology, often avoiding critical analysis.” That is exactly what has happened here in Norway.

Norwegians have been told again and again and again, by our government, and also by opposition politicians, by the newscasters on TV and radio stations, and by newspaper articles, that Russia’s “full-scale invasion was unprovoked“. No wonder Norwegians are angry. To me they huffily recite their catechism: “It was a full! scale! unprovoked! invasion”.

Russophobia is a new phenomenon here! To my knowledge, there have never been skirmishes on our shared border with Russia! Particularly in communities in northern Norway where Russian prisoners of war were used as slave labour by the Germans and where they died as flies of cold, illness and hunger, people used to feel, until recently, immense sadness about all who suffered here, and gratitude to the Russian forces that drove the Germans out of Finnmark and then simply left. What the post-modern Norwegian press has done is really unpardonable: It has made a whole population suffer from Russophobia and has turned academic giants such as my friend into Cyclops. It has been able to do so because Norwegians trust the system and trust the media.

So this is the flip side of the coin in a socially coherent welfare state: I suspect there is a degree of positive correlation between levels of “trust”, public satisfaction and welfare on the one hand and the level of indoctrination on the other.

How can you argue with Russophobia? How can you argue against any phobia? If a person suffers from agoraphobia, there is no way of convincing him with simple words that he need not fear leaving the house. Arguing against Russophobia seems equally hopeless. There is no such concept – here in Norway, at least – as “European war propaganda”.

These days, the first thing I do when I open my eyes is to check my phone: Has the USA attacked Iran, yet? And every morning, so far, I have heaved a sigh of relief. Does that mean that I have been taken in by Iranian propaganda? Of course not. But I must admit that if the USA does attack, I hope Iran will give the aggressor (and Israel, on whose behalf the USA would be attacking) a beating. I look forward to hearing Santa Ursula’s and Kaja Kallas’ views.

Homage

16.02.2026 /

Have the Epstein revelations blighted more than was strictly necessary?

When disease strikes a certain branch of animal husbandry, farmers in the affected area will have to cull much of, most of, or even all of their oxen, ostriches, chickens or whatever species was affected.

But the species as such is not exterminated.

Now that we have had a peek at a sufficiently large number of redacted files to have reason to suspect that a substantial segment of our western elites is rotten to the core, we could be tempted to revert to nihilism. But all we really have learnt is something we ought to have always known: Power corrupts; power perverts minds that might otherwise have contributed to the common good.

They understood this as far back as in 1215, when the Plantagenet King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta.

What is also known is that power is a magnet, as is wealth. Epstein used, or was used as – as we have reason to believe – a magnet. His wealth was breathtaking. As a result, his connections among the powerful were infinite, and people were drawn to him not because of his intelligence, as they might themselves have imagined, but because he seemed fabulous. Moreover, he was “generous” with money and, not least, with girls. And he stored – hoarded – compromising evidence about his “friends”.

You and I did not walk into his net. Why was that? It may have been because we are ethically superior to those who did. Or it may be that we were not invited.

One of my heroes, Noam Chomsky, did walk into his net. Does that diminish Chomsky’s contributions to mankind? Certainly not. It only reminds me of the phrase “sic transit gloria mundi”. We are not infallible.

Am I excusing the politicians and diplomats whom Epstein may have persuaded to pass on classified information or perform other services to a foreign power, unbeknownst to the populations of their own countries? Definitely not. My view is that such acts are not only expressions of human weakness but acts of treason!

The four Epstein “friends” under investigation in Norway are so far only charged with corruption or aggravated corruption. Details of the charges and the ongoing criminal investigation will naturally (and rightly) be withheld from the general public for the time being.

I believe the word “treason” is particularly germane to the case of the USA, where nobody has been charged (apart from G. Maxwell) much less indicted, for letting himself or herself be trapped in Epstein’s net. It’s as though the entire judiciary, law enforcement and Congress itself is paralysed.

Moreover, the USA is conspicuously acting against its own interests on behalf of Israel. From a distance and without inside knowledge I must be excused for thinking that the entire nation appears to be handcuffed (or, to be more precise: blackmailed).

Epstein’s remit was networking. He had his own network, but he also joined others, such as the Trilateral Commission. He was very much a buddy of the Norwegian CEO of the World Economic Forum, the purpose of which is, according to Wikipedia, to Influence global agendas and decision making, no less. Judging from this exchange (you will be asked to confirm you are not a robot and that you are over 18) between the two, would you say that Epstein had an agenda when he nurtured friendship with the WEFs CEO? Or this message to Peter Thiel? What about this one?

Another matter is the very nature of arenas such as the World Economic Forum, the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission. The latter two apply the Chatham House Rule, i.e. secrecy rules. And of course there is the Munich Security Conference, now ongoing, which does publish speeches, but what about all the tête a têtes on the side of the conference?

To what extent do so-called Democratic processes control these immensely powerful people and their networks. Compare the Mont Pelerin society, a forerunner which planned and plotted the demise of Keynesianism and eventually celebrated the triumph of a system which would favour the 1%, often referred to as economic “neoliberalism” or “globalism”.

The Mont Pelerin Society claims to promote a free market, but what it promotes is anything but. For Adam Smith, a “free market” was:

an economy free of land rent, usurious banking practices and monopolies in private hands. But as finance capitalism has superseded industrial capitalism, it has inverted “free market” rhetoric to mean a market free for rent extractors to obtain land rent, natural resource rent, monopoly rent and financial gains “free” of government taxation or regulation.
( Source: Michael Hudson: J is for Junk Economics, 2017)

Ugh. The US wars against Afghanistan, Iraq and now Iran are also ugly. If US support for the genocide in Palestine is venal, European support for it is downright nightmarish: By what means have “liberal”, allegedly anti-racist EU and UK politicians been bulldozed into supporting something that is vastly antithetical to European so-called “values”? Is Epstein’s ghost whispering to them at night. Or Epstein’s handlers? What lurid secrets remain unseen in Epstein’s redacted or withheld files?

Or are EU’s leading politicians innately depraved?

But even Europe and the U SA have brave and dignified citizens. Far, far more of them, than the despicable lot who have – as I see it – betrayed their countries.

If you have been wondering why the title to this post is “Homage” rather than, for instance, “Treason”, allow me to mention one such brave and dignified citizen. Professor Jeffrey Sachs may be said to belong to the elite, in the sense that he has had one-to-one conversations with many of the world’s most powerful men over the past 40 years or so. But he has definitely not been a tool of the 1%, on the contrary. Moreover he is endlessly generous with his time when trying to elucidate for us – including those of us who are not rich or powerful – why the world is on such a dangerous course and what can be done to correct that course.

Since state and corporate press and social media are determined to discombobulate us, and to prevent us from understanding what is going on and why, he has sought to explain concepts such as “exceptionalism” as opposed to “multi-polar” and “regime change operations”.

It you are uncertain about what has been going on in Venezuela, for instance, I urge you to hear what Jeffrey Sachs has to say about the matter. He also touches upon Iran and explains why US policies with regard to these two states are not even good for US interests: U.S. Economic Coercion & the Death of the Dollar.

Selective repugnance

14.02.2026 /

Several questions and one hypothesis

Tell me, how should a teacher reply when his 17-year-old students in upper secondary school address the following question to him:

We see in the papers that the so-called Epstein files include correspondence with people who have had sex with young girls, girls who are even younger than us. We suspect that the girls mostly found the much older men repulsive. Moreover, according to our text books, sex with girls under a certain age is illegal, also in the USA. Surely, the US Department of Justice has had access to the files since 2019, when Epstein died.

Why has nobody been charged?

What on earth can the teacher tell them? That Trump is not exactly playing by the rules? Sure, such a reply will not warrant a parental complaint to the school authorities, since the overwhelming majority of Norwegians have hated Trump from day 1. But the students will point out that Trump has only been president for a year.

Should the teacher admit that the US Department of Justice, under Trump and certainly under Biden, must be protecting powerful persons who have committed criminal acts – a conclusion the students probably arrived at on their own? Goodness knows what the school authorities would recommend. If he “takes the fifth”, as they say in the USA, his students will hardly be able to disguise their contempt of his intellectual cowardice.

Regardless of how he responds: his students and 17-year-olds all over Europe are drawing the obvious conclusion that the rule of law has long since ceased to exist in the USA and by extension, probably also in Europe.

You may rightly point out, that most 17-year-olds don’t care one way or another. They are too busy following their social media feeds. They have turned into puppets of the tech-industry. Only the bright and/or ambitious few will remember, and as they grow old enough to make their imprint on the future world, they will have learnt the moral code our generation bequeathed to them: “anything goes”.

***

Walking her old dog along the seafront, the little old lady meets other old ladies walking their old dogs. They stop and exchange remarks about their respective dogs’ foibles and the icy cold weather, and one of them sighs, remembering that there are those who are truly suffering from the cold: “Why are they forcing those poor Ukrainian boys to keep fighting and dying, when the war is lost?”

***

There are also many people here, there and almost everywhere that shudder at the thought of Palestinians in Gaza, those who are still alive: They must be freezing!

Palestine is almost gone now, not least thanks to Epstein’s network of “dear friends”, among them Mona Juul and Terje Rød Larsen.

All over Europe, however, there have been massive demonstrations against Israel. According to Human Rights Watch over 2,700 peaceful protesters in the UK have been arrested under counter-terrorism legislation, no less, most for peacefully holding signs reading “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.” (See also the Human Rights Watch article Silencing the Streets.) A number of Palestine Action members have been kept in pre-trial detention for more than 500 days. Six of them have now been acquitted but the prosecution has appealed the acquittal. Sitting in their cells, day in and day out, they must have wondered: “Why on earth did Norway’s Nobel Committee give the Nobel Peace Prize to a genocide supporter?

***

And why have four EU member states demanded, just this week, the resignation of UN rapporteur for the Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese? Yes, she is reviled by Israel – all the better. But has she sodomised little boys or for that matter any other boys? Has she even taken bribes? No, her offence is “hate speech”, naming the State of Israel for what it is: a perpetrator of the most horrendous crimes since WWII. You are not allowed to do that if you are a public figure in the self-proclaimed bastion of free speech (i.e. the Democratic West).

***

A slight digression here about freedom of thought (remember 1984?). Most of us humans want to be accepted. In order to be accepted, we strive to be acceptable. From what is euphemistically referred to as “social media”, we learn what thoughts are acceptable. Thanks to EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), we have, here in Europe, a system that to a large extent shields us from social media content that is “undesirable”. My use of quotes here is meant to indicate that the perspective is that of the unelected EU leadership (mainly the EU Commission).

As a result, your thoughts and mine – some of which might show signs of rebelliousness – systematically get pruned and dry-cleaned, by the social media, and by our teachers, cousins, neighbours, colleagues, etc. who all follow the social media. For detail, I recommend an article by the ever delightfully facetious Tarik Cyril Amar.

***

Back to the Epstein files: Alastaire Crooke writes in an article:The Epstein Earthquake:

The elites understood that once the masses became aware of the rulers’ utter amorality, the West would lose the framework of moral narratives that so precisely underpin an ordered life. …What would then hold a nation together?

Well, probably just totalitarianism.

I have great respect for Alastaire Crooke. However, in this matter, I would like to interject a few thoughts: For one thing, the Democratic West was well on the way to totalitarianism before the Epstein avalanche started. The DSA, for instance, was enacted, I believe, in 2022.

Secondly, there is the matter of proportionality: Yes, divulging state secrets or influencing policies in return for favours is bad, very bad, not least if the favours involve sexual predation, but what about killing thousands and thousands of people, torturing thousands and thousands… do I really have to remind you? … for years and years and decades…

Dear Mr Alastaire Crooke, you are wise and impressive and have seen so very much, too much perhaps, of the evils of geopolitics, particularly in the Middle-East, and I have earnestly listened to your elegant analyses delivered with your habitual air of resigned sadness. Why, I ask you, do you now express such outrage about the Epstein files? Or have I misinterpreted you? Are you actually jubilantly shouting what you have known, silently, all along, that the system, our Western Democracy, has long been rotten to the core?

If so, “I salute you”, and here comes my hypothesis:

The EU and the USA were prepared to defend, in the social media: venal regime change operations, most recently those against Venezuela and Iran, murderous economic sanctions, and even Israel’s crimes against humanity … BUT they were not prepared to defend predatory sexual crime.

Let us use this flaw in the EU and US armour and shoot.

Venezuela

07.02.2026 /

I actually spent a month in Venezuela many, many years ago, during the Chavez period. I fell in love with the country.

My friends make fun of me, maintaining that Chavez bewitched me with his songs. (He was a wonderful singer.)

What is certain is that when I stayed there, I was only a tourist. I did not have the academic or technical tools to assess social progress in the country since Chavez’ election. (Yes, he was fairly and squarely elected.) So I won’t write about “my Venezuela”. Instead I recommend a 2007 documentary film by John Pilger: The War on Democracy

When Maduro followed Chavez – and I haven’t heard Maduro sing – I was in doubt. What now? The mainstream press was describing Venezuela as a grizzly dictatorship where political opponents are routinely tortured. Venezuela has defenders, but they are not given press. The horror stories about Venezuela were such that a woman who praises Netanyahu and actually begged the USA to invade her own country was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. That’s how bad the mainstream press is!

My point is this: Thanks to the mainstream press, we know little about Venezuela. Correction: We know nothing.

Now Maduro and his wife have been kidnapped. They are being kept in a prison somewhere in NY state, under charges that are universally understood to be absurd. I heard today that they are incommunicado. Strictly speaking, we cannot even be sure they are alive. The dismal state of US justice and of US embarrassment is now such that I would not even be surprised if they get sent to Guantanamo.

Long before I started writing this piece, I knew I was so angry that I should “keep my mouth shut”.

I shall now shut it and leave the floor to somebody who is blissfully objective and sensible and wise, and who has actually spent a couple of weeks in Caracas. In fact, he is still there. Hear what he says:

Craig Murrey. (If the video doesn’t open, try the link: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9z6rra)

The princess and the frog

05.02.2026 /

We’re just human, after all, and being human tends to mean that we side with the princess rather than with the frog. So when the princess makes a false move, all the world is up in arms, but when the frog makes a false move, we hardly notice.

A certain princess in her glass cage was probably bored; indeed she explicitly said so to her “friend” Epstein, who had, after all, served his sentence and who must have been an extraordinarily interesting man, judging from the number of highly competent people who seemed to dote on him. Moreover, Norwegian royalty is merely ceremonial, so the princess is unlikely to have had access to state secrets to pass on, unlike some of her compatriots, among them a former prime minister, a former foreign minister and the famous “diplomatic couple”, fêted in the 2021 film Oslo.

The late Mr Arafat also made a false move back in 1993 and 1995. He signed the Oslo Accords, or rather he was cajoled and/or tricked into signing the Oslo Accords. Nobody wept. On the contrary, back then, most of us rejoiced. Only after many years have some of us – far from all – understood that those accords were a masterfully infernal, backhanded deception.

In the article The Oslo trap; How PLO signed its own death warrant Professor Raef Zreik explains the trap from a legal perspective, while Jasim Al-Azzawi adds colour to detail in You can’t see the forest for the trees: How the Oslo Accords became Israel’s greatest strategic victory.

Arafat failed to understand that the negotiating table itself was rigged, and he was on the menu. Most significantly, Arafat misjudged America’s role. He counted on the United States as an “honest broker”.

In essence they are both blaming the frog (Arafat was not a beautiful man, let’s face it). Until recently nobody blamed Terje Rød Larsen and Mona Juuel who are credited with having engineered the trap.

Raef Zreik, still a young and powerless Lawyer back in 1993 may have seen through the sham at the time, but all the world (and when we in the West say “all the world”, we usually mean the 12.5 % of the global population that inhabits our part of it) rejoiced. Today, almost all of us know that the US is far from an “honest broker”.

Back then, we believed that when a generation of brave American kids who had been brutally beaten demonstrating for civil rights and against the Vietnam war took charge, the US would mend its ways. The US had seen the film Missing, had listened to Arloe Guthrie, Angela Davis etc. And Clinton even played the saxophone! We rhapsodised about a new era.

Later, here in Norway, we were sure that after the disastrous Iraq war the US would finally have learnt. And again, after the financial crisis in 2008, some of us still hoped… Actually, to be fair to myself I had long since lost my illusions about the USA, not to mention Israel. But back in 1993 and 1995, I was still easily duped.

You see, there was this massacre in 1982. That was the first time, from my perspective at least, that the press was able to convey some of the horror we have regrettably grown quite used to: The Sabra and Shatila massacres. Quoting Wikipedia:

The Sabra and Shatila massacre was the 16–18 September 1982 killing of between 1,300 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias.

No matter how they turn this around in the blame game, it was and is clear to me that this was an expression of Israeli racist loathing. It became clear to me, that every Palestinian anywhere near Israel risked being exterminated. So ten years later, the Oslo Accords seemed preferable to extermination. Therefore, Prof. Zreik and Mr Al-Azzawi: don’t blame the Frog!

Blame the lionised diplomatic couple Terje Rød Larsen and Mona Juuel. Blame their employer, the Norwegian Foreign Service, who must now endure the shame of having been one of Jeffrey Epstein’s gullible targets. Please note, also, that with 12 US military bases on Norwegian soil, my country is a US vassal. If Trump “takes” Greenland and/or Iceland and/or the Svalbard archipelago, there will be nothing, nothing, we can do about it.

***
Post scriptum: I suspect that Epstein’s collusion with powerful citizens in my country (and, in the event, yours) will not be properly examined by our judiciary: It is too embarrassing. I therefore urge you to search through the enormous cache of Epstein files. It is a treasure trove, consisting mostly of worthless pennies with the occasional ingot. Sifting through files under “rod larson” I found, for instance, Epstein’s will of 29 June 2017 – since revoked: Epstein designated three executors, one of whom is Terje Rød Larsen. Nowhere in the press have I seen this piece of information. This is, as I see it, an ingot which we can use to force our authorities to come clean on their collusion with the racist state of Israel.

Here is our gold mine:

https://www.justice.gov/epstein

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