Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

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

When journalists were Journalists

24.01.2026 /

Once upon a time, there were few vocations prouder than that of “investigative Journalist”. Now people tell me that journalists don’t do their job properly because they are ignorant and lazy.

I fear that is not the problem. The problem is that journalists, like most people I know, including myself, need to make a living to pay the rent. They need electricity, internet, insurance… They cannot – they simply cannot afford to be fired. As anybody familiar with 19th century literature knows: prostitution is an act of desperation, not of love.

Carleton Beals (1893 –1979) was a US journalist about whom I know absolutely nothing. Nothing, I repeat, except that Wikipedia maintains he wrote “more than 45 books” and that Time Magazine called him, “the best informed and the most awkward living writer on Latin America”.

Today, there are few “awkward writers” in mainstream (i.e. State or corporate) media. True investigative journalists have had to find new homes in alternative outlets, such as Consortium News, founded by Robert Parry (1949-2018).

In 1988, Robert Parry informed the US public (in issue no. 72 of the influential magazine Foreign Policy) about the Iran-Contras scandal. By doing so, I believe he contributed to the end of the decade-long war in “America’s back yard”. Reagan was dismayed: Robert Parry and his ilk had to be stopped from meddling in matters of “national interest”, i.e. the economic interests of an infinitesimal portion of the US population. How the press was progressively gagged is a long story, but it is best told by a journalist. Who better than Robert Parry himself: The victory of perception management.

When Europeans are shocked by the current US president’s recent actions against Venezuela, ongoing actions against Greenland and Gaza and future actions against Iran, they seem to have forgotten that he is not the first nor the second King Kong. They ask: “Why on earth did Americans vote for such a clown? Why do they believe all those crazy conspiracy theories?”

Well, for one thing, not all crazy conspiracy theories are false. We now know, for instance, that there is more to the Epstein story than meets the eye, though we still don’t know just what. Moreover:

  • The USA is a country where the authorities still refuse to admit what many historians suspect: that the murder of President JFK was an inside job related to his “Commencement Address” to the American University three months earlier. Confer the moving statement of the 79-year-old Oliver Stone to congress on 1 April 2025.
  • The USA is a country that still denies that the furin cleavage site of the virus that caused Covid 19 was very unlikely to have developed naturally and that the virus was most probably leaked from a lab conducting gain of function experiments partly financed by the US government (NIH).
  • The USA’s healthcare record is so abominable that it lead to the tragic oxycontin drama which in turn has culminated in a grim epidemic of drug overdoses.
  • The USA is therefore a country whose population thinks that “you really cannot trust a word they say” – “they” being the Presidents and their mouthpieces, including the once formidable NY Times and Washington Post; including also, by the way, all state and corporate media in vassal countries in Europe.

So, with respect to Latin America, the USA has had not only one but lots of fingers in the pie almost since the very beginning. The year 1812 saw the “Patriot War”, i.e. the unsuccessful attempt to steal Florida. As a result of subsequent attempts, the USA took possession of bit by bit of what was to become the state of Florida. I suspect that US schoolchildren are taught that the inhabitants of Florida had everything to gain by becoming US citizens. That is undoubtedly Marco Rubio’s point of view, but he is not – you will admit – the average US citizen, at least not as far as wealth and health is concerned.

Nor was Ronald Reagan the first president who tried to annihilate independent Nicaragua. In 1909, US warships were sent to the area. The military intervention forced a progressive president to resign. It was a story we have seen played out umpteen times since: The Yankees didn’t like his policies, quoting Wikipedia:

… improved public education, railroads, and established steam ship lines. He also enacted constitutional rights that provided for equal rights, property guarantees, habeas corpus, compulsory vote, compulsory education, the protection of arts and industry, minority representation, and the separation of state powers.

The 1909 intervention was followed by full-scale occupation in 1912. However, the occupation was not entirely successful. A man named Augusto Cesar Sandino made life difficult for the occupants. He was assassinated by General Somoza in 1934. His example was later followed by the Sandinistas who ousted the dictator Somoza in 1979. Of course the Yankees were not pleased and provided massive assistance to the Contras.

In 1990, presumably to celebrate the Sandinistas’ defeat over the Contras and to commemorate the hero who inspired them, the film El Sandino directed by the exciting Chilean director Miguel Littin, conveyed to those of us who cared, some of the spectacular difficulties facing Latin American countries trying to shake off the grubby fingers of King Kong. As far as I have been able to ascertain, Carleton Beale was the only US journalist to interview El Sandino. Was the brave fictional US Journalist in the film modelled on him? Did Beale’s work inspire the late Robert Parry?

At any rate it was Robert Parry who informed the public about a 90-page manual written in 1983 for the Contras. Quoting Wikipedia, the Contras were taught to:

[lead] demonstrators into clashes with the authorities, to provoke riots or shootings, which lead to the killing of one or more persons, who will be seen as the martyrs; this situation should be taken advantage of immediately against the Government to create even bigger conflicts.

[and to engage in] selective use of armed force for PSYOP effect. … Carefully selected, planned targets — judges, police officials, tax collectors, etc. — may be removed for PSYOP effect in a UWOA [unconventional warfare operations area]

Do these two paragraphs remind you of more recent events, by any chance?

Like Iran and Venezuela, Nicaragua has been demonised by the Western press and plagued by economic sanctions. According to the Human Development Index it nevertheless ranks above Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador (that are not subject to sanctions).

Far be it from my intention to defend our present King Kong, but I put to you that a boss who honestly states his ghastly aims is preferable to one who cloaks them in “freedom and democracy”.

As a result of the present King Kong’s frankness, what PM Carney has just referred to as “the fiction” (of the rules-based order) has hopefully lost its “free and Democratic” veneer. Likewise, our leaders, of whom PM Carney revealed that “we” have known it was fiction “for decades“, have been exposed. Is there a glimmer of hope here?

***

I add, by way of conclusion, a link to the trailer of a Netflix documentary about another great investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. He most recently made a splash when he claimed that the USA, with the assistance of Norway, carried out the sabotage of the Nord-Stream Pipeline.

Us versus the State

17.01.2026 /

In liberal Democracies – my state, your state, whichever state – the problem with state propaganda about this, that or the other issue is that those of us who know better are so few. The state, on the other hand, is all-powerful and it is supported by even more powerful agents.

Let me turn that last phrase around: The state is to a large extent the agent of large corporations and big finance, not officially, of course. The meetings of the Bilderberg Group are not official either, nor were those of the Mont Pelerin Society that preceded it and fathered neoliberalism (market fundamentalism, globalism, etc.)

A great deal could be said about the agenda of these coteries of the rich and powerful and their matrimony with “the State” – basically all states, in the so-called West.

The other day, I read a piece written by a former local politician in Norway:

[What we are seeing is a] power structure in which global capital interests, financial institutions, supranational bodies and technocratic circles set the framework which national authorities and the media propagate. Asset managers and funds with ownership across virtually all sectors of society, key financial hubs, large banks, consulting firms and international institutions constitute what can collectively be described as the global governance complex.

In this system, elected representatives at all levels are subjected to intense pressure… [and] begin to represent what comes from above, not what comes from below. Thus, their role shifts from being representatives of the people to being administrators of the interests of the global governance complex.

(AI translation)

Just so! I could not possibly have phrased this more succinctly, and, for the umpteenth time: re-read Orwell‘s 1984. Democracy, I put to you, is just a sham. You and I and all our friends and relatives have no say. Voters can merely decide who will perform the functions of governance, not what sort of governance will be performed.

Meanwhile the propaganda machine, which was once limited to the printed word, now beams its messages through the internet, through Cable TV and through the social media – all of which are part of the “global governance complex”.

So If I tell you that what you have been told about Venezuela is largely, if not altogether, false, you won’t believe me. No mainstream outlet – NY Times, the Guardian, etc. will corroborate what I claim. The same applies to Iran. If Max Blumenthal tells you that the violence perpetrated there is largely the work of people paid by the CIA and Mossad, you won’t have even the slightest chance of believing him, because the propaganda designed to give legitimacy to imminent US aggression against Iran has been overwhelming.

In Norway, where we have a national broadcasting company, and where the population still trusts our authorities because this is still a welfare state, few questions have been asked. We are told that Iran is a monster state that violently suppresses its people. Period. And that is what almost all Norwegians believe without reservations. We were also very much in favour of giving Venezuelans their “freedom”.

After Trump has said that Venezuelans don’t trust Machado, and after Machado has given the shameful prize to Trump, whom Norwegians don’t trust, we are admittedly a little confused. The business of liberty and Democracy is not quite as clear-cut as in Biden’s day. The curtain concealing the heinous operations of the dirty dozen – who have always been cavorting behind the scenes, unbeknownst to us – has been worn thin.

Moreover, Trump has muddied the Ukrainian waters and people are starting to suspect that Ukraine is not quite what it has claimed to be either.

Indeed, now that our most important ally is determined to take Greenland, we are more than confused.

Mind you, I am not saying that China and Russia are more democratic than we are. Certainly not. What I am saying is that they don’t pretend to be. What I am saying is that “Western” so-called liberal Democracy is just a show, a glitzy performance. Behind the scenes, oligarchs have a free rein. In Russia and China, the oligarchs are somewhat reined in. In the West and certainly in Ukraine, the oligarchs basically run the show.

Alas, no Armageddon

15.01.2026 /

I had not listened to the grand old man of political science, John Mearsheimer, for a long time when, today, I heard his recent conversation with Glenn Greenwald. What he said about the currently burning matters of Greenland, Venezuela, Iran, Gaza and Ukraine did not surprise me. His position on these topics is above all reasonable and rational – as was his initial position on Ukraine in 2015. After all, he is a “realist”. He does not pretend to know what will happen in 24 hours, but he peers into the distance and assesses the long-term effects of today’s foreign policy. With regard to Ukraine, ten years after his warnings in 2015, he has been proven right.

Due to those warnings in 2015, the Western press dropped their former star political scientist as though he were a carrier of the Bubonic Plague.

Only on one point did Mearsheimer disappoint me today, not – I repeat not – because I assume he is wrong, but because I hope he is wrong. (The distance between hope and assumption is as that between myself and the moon.) Glenn Greenwald quoted President Lula of Brazil, who claims to dream every night of “de-dollarisation”. To my chagrin, Mearsheimer told Glenn Greenwald that he did not foresee “de-dollarisation” for at least five to ten years.

John Mearsheimer is the antithesis of a vulgar man. He is eminently courteous, soft-spoken, the perfect diplomat, you might say, because he makes no secret of being in every sense an “American”, although he so deeply regrets the foreign policies espoused by his country’s administrations over the past decades.

I recommend the said conversation.

For instance, on a topic about which I, who am anything but a diplomat. howl with rage, he tells us, smiling dangerously, what he thinks will happen next:

You have this so-called cease-fire. The fact is, it’s not been a cease fire from the Israeli perspective. The Israelis have basically continued to behave as if there were no cease-fire. By the way, they’ve done the same thing in Lebanon. … and what they’ll do, they’ll engineer some crisis where they blame Hamas for a gross violation of the cease-fire and say that this is reason for Israel to go in and “finish the job”. … The Israeli goal here is to either drive all the Palestinians out of Gaza into Somaliland or Egypt or whatever or if not do that, kill them. Right? Either starve them to death or bomb them to death or some combination of the two.

The Mearsheimer smile! Paraphrasing the Israelis who refer to the Palestinians as though they were cattle, he beamed his terrifyingly benign smile at us.

Alas, even Mearsheimer cannot foresee any Armageddon for that most vile of entities, Israel. Not as long as the USA, his country, still has its fangs planted in the world economy. Yes, there are many of us who dream of de-dollarisation.

Glenn Greenwald did not question him about Europe’s growing authoritarian tendencies. I wonder why. Does Glenn Greenwald not know how bad things are here now?

One morning last year, the above appeared on one of the walls of the British Royal Court of Justice.

The authorities wasted no time having the stencil removed, leaving its shadow. And this is where we are now: Liberal Democracy.

Hva med NRK?

09.01.2026 /

Norge er et tillitsbasert samfunn, får vi høre. Det fremgår vidt og bredt på nettet. Tillit er bra, selvfølgelig, men det kan bli for mye også av det gode. Under overskriften Norge har et konsensusproblem presenteres følgende postulat:

Når høy grad av konsensus kombineres med lav toleranse for avvikende meninger, oppstår et miljø der frykt og indoktrinering kan få fotfeste – to trekk som historisk har vært kjennetegn på autoritære regimer.

I episode av 30. desember 2025 har Mediaovervåkerne invitert “lektor og medieviter Lars Audun Bråten”. Han har nylig skrevet en kronikk om NRK med tittelen Redaktørstyrt narrativkontroll med undertittelen: “NRK lurer og påvirker sitt publikum under dekke av å aktivt arbeide for å ikke lure og påvirke”.

Her følger noen utdrag:

Vi er mange som har stusset over NRKs ensidige dekning av Russlands krig mot Ukraina siden invasjonen i februar 2022.

I et foredrag for Kringkastingsrådet 25. september 2025, under segmentet «Slik blir vi forsøkt påvirket og lurt», redegjør Anders Hofset fra NRK Beta for statskanalens arbeid mot påvirkningskampanjer og desinformasjon. … Som et ansvarlig, redaktørstyrt medium, er det både selvsagt og prisverdig at NRK har en plan for å motvirke slike påvirkningsforsøk fra aktører som anses som trusler mot Norge. Men hva med påvirkning fra våre allierte og aktører vi har et mer vennligsinnet forhold til? Kan ikke den typen påvirkningskampanjer være like problematiske, når målet med journalistikk tross alt er sannhetssøken og troverdighet?

Problemet for NRK oppstår nemlig når nevnte Hofset informerer kringkastingsrådet om at flere medarbeidere i NRKs utenriksavdeling, blant andre redaktør Sigurd Falkenberg Michelsen, kort tid før møtet i rådet var på studietur til Kyiv og besøkte avisa Kyiv Independent. Her forklarer Hofset ublygt at det er den ukrainske avisas redaktør Toma Istominas «sjekkliste» som ligger til grunn for NRKs dekning av krigen, og at denne sjekklista er spredd til alle kanalens redaksjoner. Lista sirkuleres sågar under tittelen «Tomas sjekkliste». I sjekklista står det blant annet at NRK må spørre seg hva ukrainske myndigheter sier om den aktuelle nyheten før de publiserer noe om den, og om nyheten er viktig nok til at NRK trenger å dekke saken.

—

,,,. at NRK stort sett holder seg med et fast, men relativt lite knippe ekspertkommentatorer fra det utenriks- og sikkerhetspolitiske miljøet i Norge. Publikum som har fulgt kanalens sendinger, kan ikke unngå å ha lagt merke til at Tor Bukkvoll fra Forsvarets Forskningsinstitutt, Palle Ydstebø fra Krigsskolen, Karsten Friis fra NUPI og Tom Røseth fra Forsvarets Høgskole har vært hyppige gjester. I tillegg kan nevnes Iver B. Neumann fra Fridtjof Nansens Institutt og Anders Romarheim fra Forsvarets Høgskole. Felles for alle disse aktørene, er at de systematisk og over lang tid har undervurdert russisk økonomi og militær styrke, mens de paradoksalt nok advarer mot russiske angrep på NATO-land dersom Donald Trumps fredsplan blir implementert. Er det dette NRK anser som «bredde og relevans» i valg av kilder?

Det Lars Audun Bråten skriver og som ble drøftet av Mediaovervåkerne var så interessant at Pelshvalen følte behov for å se nærmere på det omtalte møtet.

Det stemmer at et videoopptak av Kringkastingsrådets møte 25. september 2025 ligger offentlig tilgjengelig, antakelig i henhold til Offentlighetsloven. Møtet er 4 timer og 29 minutter langt.

Saken som interesserer Medieovervåkerne er siste og lengste post: “PÅVIRKNING, DESINFORMASJON OG TRUSLER”

Det dreier seg om to “innledninger” under overskriften “Slik blir vi påvirket og lurt”.

Innledning 1) av Bente Kalsnes, professor ved høyskolen i Kristiania med et nydelig smil begynner ca. 2:59:00. Etter noen ord om hvem og hva hun er følger en utredning om ikke minst “Russisk informasjonskonfrontasjon”.

Innledning 2) av NRKs egen Anders Hovseth (begynner ca. 3:40:00) og er den som opptar Medieovervåkerne og Pelshvalen.

***

(Alle uthevinger i det som følger er Pelshvalens)j

“Dypest sett styrer offentligheten vår forståelse, valgene vi gjør og samfunnsutviklingen vi får”, lærer vi. Utfordringen for offentligheten er de ikke-redaktørstyrte mediene, siden “[e]nkel og fri tilgang til publisering og stor distribusjon uten redaksjonell kontroll kan åpne for påvirkning”, uønsket påvirkning, altså.

Et interessant begrep Hovseth bruker i denne sammenhengen er “representativitet” som i utsagnet “Manglene representativitet – åpner for å spre et forvrengt bilde”. Pelshvalen tolker utsagnet slik: Vi vil helst at alle tenker likt.

De redaktørstyrte mediene kan beskytte oss mot “påvirkning” (uønsket påvirkning, altså.) og fremme “representativitet”. De har “har en todelt rolle i møtet med påvirkning og desinformasjon”, nemlig 1) “å spre informasjon om påvirkningen og hva som er sant” og 2) “å spre påvirkningen” [sic]. Jeg antar at rolle nr 2 gjelder ønsket påvirkning.

Hovseth viser videre til 3 punkter fra pressens “vær varsom plakat” blant dem følgende to:

1.1 Ytringsfrihet, informasjonsfrihet og trykkefrihet er grunnelementer i et demokrati. En fri, uavhengig og sannhetssøkende presse er blant de viktigste institusjoner i demokratiske samfunn.

3.2 Vær kritisk i valg av kilder, og kontroller at opplysninger som gis er korrekte. Det er god presseskikk å tilstrebe bredde og relevans i valg av kilder. Vær spesielt aktsom ved behandling av informasjon fra anonyme kilder, informasjon fra kilder som tilbyr eksklusivitet, og informasjon som er gitt fra kilder mot betaling.

I lys av trusler om uønsket påvirkning kan Hovseth berolige oss med å forsikre at:

Internt så har vi skjerpet den redaksjonelle kontrollen. Vi har en spesialfunksjon på desken med særlig ansvar for verifisering av bilde- og videoinnhold og vi gjør kritiske vurderinger av om nyheten er viktig nok.

Medlemmer av utenriksredaksjonen var for eksempel på studietur til Kiev nå nylig hvor ett av besøkene var til Kiev Independent, og der diskuterte de hvordan de forholdt seg til nyhetsjobbing om krigen med Toma Istominas. I etterkant laget de denne sjekklisten, som er spredd til alle våre redaksjoner.

Vi har også interne råd for å sikre at vi ikke blir misbrukt til påvirkning.

Ett av de “interne rådene” er: “Vi har ikke publiseringsplikt“.

Hovseth forsikret at “vi” legger vekt på

å bevisstgjøre publikum om desinformasjon og trusler. Og da dekker vi påvirkningsmetoder og utenlandske påvirkningsaktører og særlig i forkant av valg.

Han gjorde videre rede for arbeidet med kompetanseheving internt om dette feltet (fagdager osv.).

***

Pelshvalen takker Mediaovervåkerne og Lars Audun Bråten og slutter seg til deres vurderinger av NRKs dekning i spørsmål vedrørende norsk utenrikspolitikk generelt og Ukrainakrigen spesielt.

Pelshvalen kan ikke se at NRKs dekning av utenrikspolitiske saker er fri eller uavhengig eller sannhetssøkende. Pelshvalen kan ikke se at NRK tilstreber bredde i valg av kilder. Pelshvalen kan ikke se at NRK gir norske borgere grunnlag for å danne seg en kunnskapsbasert forståelse av den geopolitiske virkeligheten.

Kort sagt kan Pelshvalen ikke se annet enn at det offentlige Norge driver med informasjonssensur.

Brev fra Oslo

05.01.2026 /

Kjære venner,

Etter mine tre måneder i San Miguel de la Peña på slutten av 2025 hadde jeg ikke produsert et eneste “Brev fra San Miguel” slik jeg pleier å sende til den lange listen av dem som “abonnerer” på mine reisebrev. Jeg følte rett og slett ikke for det å skrive om hvor pussige mine nye landsmenn – de kaller seg miguelinos – er. Tvert i mot syntes jeg at mine gamle landsmenn, som kaller seg nordmenn, er langt rarere.

Så nå er jeg tilbake i Oslo og kan skrive “Brev fra Oslo”.

Det er et nytt år, 2026. (Jeg må skrive tallet slik at jeg får det inn i håndens minne.) Mer enn det: det er 3. januar 2026, dagen da Venezuela ble halshugget – “decapitated” er ordet som brukes om den slags CIA-angrep.

Egentlig hadde jeg tenkt å skrive om hvor godt jeg og flertallet her til lands (altså Norge) tross alt har det, i alle fall etter at vi fikk “norgespris” på strøm. I fjor frøs jeg like mye her som i San Miguel fordi jeg ikke hadde råd til forsvarlig oppvarming. Men nå holder leiligheten min her 19 grader, og det er helt ok hvis man kler seg ordentlig. Jeg drikker tran (mot manglende sol), tar hver dag en tablett multivitamin og har ikke vært syk på over ett år. Jeg har råd til en tannlegesjekk hvert år og har ikke hatt hull på det jeg kan huske. Er det noen sak? Om jeg er representativ, er nordmenn ekstremt sunne og friske, eller hur?

Jeg har medianlønn, tror jeg, ikke mer, men heller ikke mye mindre. Selv om jeg ikke lenger har studiegjeld og ikke tok lån da jeg kjøpte leilighet på østkanten, bevilger jeg meg ikke opphold på norske hoteller eller tur med Hurtigruta, men jeg reiser 2 x / år utenom høysesong til San Miguel de la Peña. Pensjonen min dekker det, men ikke stort mer. Jeg har det derfor, økonomisk sett, som plommen i egget – altså helt strålende!

I Oslo har jeg skilderier på veggene, musikk fra gode høyttalere, deilige bøker i bøtter og spann og utsikt over solnedgangen når det er klarvær. Til overmål har jeg en voksen datter som rett som det er vier meg noen dager. Hva mer kan en ønske seg?

Men til min undring ser jeg at nordmenn – det er jo ikke så mange av oss – hadde en total rentebærende forbruksgjeld i desember på 140 milliarder: Jeg gjentar 140 milliarder! Det er mye penger. I løpet av måneden økte beløpet ytterligere. Renter på kredittkortgjeld er brutale, for å si det enkelt.

Noen i kongeriket Norge – hvor mange er det, mon tro ? – er altså gjeldsslaver til et kredittkortselskap. Jeg regner med at noen kjøper over evne, men at det også er mange som må betale for nødvendigheter de ikke har råd til, som tannlegeregninger.

I San Miguel er en betydelig andel av befolkningen tannløs. Har de spist for mye sukker eller drukket for lite melk? Har de forsømt å pusse tenner? Kanskje de ikke hadde råd til tannpasta? Ikke vet jeg. Jeg spør ikke. Om jeg hadde spurt hadde jeg uansett ikke forstått svaret fordi de som mangler fortenner snakker uforståelig, rent bortsett fra at de til forveksling likner alle andre tannløse. Se bare på komponisten Franz Liszt. Som ung var han så vakker at det ble utløst “Listomania” overalt hvor han viste seg. På sine gamle dager, da han ikke hadde fortenner, kunne man ikke skille ham fra andre tannløse gamlinger.

President Maduro har alle sine tenner, så vidt man kan bedømme. En vakker rad hvite tenner hadde også hans forgjenger Chavez. Sistnevnte er død, men gudane må vite hva Maduro utsettes for nå av hans CIA-kidnappere. Kanskje tar de tennene hans?

Tenk, slikt driver CIA med den dag i dag. USA vil ha Venezuelas olje, slik de i sin tid ville ha Midtøstens olje. For USA skylder nå over 38 billioner (“38 trillion”) USD. USA må betale stadig mer i renter for å lokke investorer til å kjøpe landets statsobligasjoner, som mange land nå ønsker å kvitte seg med fordi USD i økende grad anses som utrygge.

Men det var ikke det jeg ville skrive om, og jeg måtte ta pause i brevskrivingen for å roe meg. Det er nå 6. januar 2026, men jeg har ikke klart å roe meg. Tvert imot, for NRK-nyheter er nok en gang som barnetimen for de minste. Vi har vært USAs snille læregutter i alle år og har fremstilt ikke minst sosialistiske Venezuela slik vår “Daddy” befalte, enten han het Clinton/Obama eller Bush/Trump.

For meg er Venezuela et nesten like smertefullt tema som Palestina og for den del Ukraina. Alle disse tre landene har jeg tilfeldigvis et spesielt forhold til. Og om alle disse landene har grådige USA spredd løgner år etter år, løgner som lydig er blitt kolportert av NRK og norske aviser. (Først med Bart Eide har Norge endret kurs i forhold til Palestina.)

Det finnes faktisk en norsk nettavis som ikke kolporterer USAs løgner om Venezuela. Det er Steigan.no. Steigan.no er anatema for både den ene og den andre her til lands. Det er nemlig en avis som utfordrer løgnhistoriene såvel fra USA som fra EU. Tatt i betraktning dens minimale ressurser, er Steigan.no en forbannet god avis. Faktisk! Ja, selv her i barnetime-Norge finnes det altså en avis det er verdt å lese. Så les den!

Om Venezuela har avisa nå en viktig artikkel av Craig Murry, (originalen på engelsk),

La det være klart: Det finnes andre land som er og har vært minst like feilrepresentert i USA/EU-vennlig presse. Det gjelder ikke minst land i Afrika. Men jeg har ikke innsikt i dem. Nesten det eneste jeg vet om dem er at Storbritannia og i enda større grad Frankrike fortsatt ikke helt har gitt opp kampen om kontinentets ressurser.

Men det var heller ikke det jeg ville skrive om. Jeg ville bare skrive et hyggelig brev til mine norske venner, et “Brev fra Oslo”, denne gangen. Dessverre, viser deg seg, er ikke dette brevet det aller minste hyggelig, og dessuten ikke om Oslo.

Den verden jeg ser og den verden mine norske venner ser, er ulike som natt og dag.

Hva kommer de til å si, mon tro, når USA bruker sine 12 baser på norsk jord for å ta Grønnland?

Parallel realities

03.01.2026 /

Christmas has always been a time of make-belief. Never more so than now. Here in Oslo we have tried our best to pretend that all is normal, although there is no snow on the ground, although Trump has been threatening to occupy our neighbour Greenland and Venezuela, and although the genocide of Palestinians is continuing unabated.

I spent Christmas day with adult family – no tree, no red, green or gold baubles – what a relief! There was a fire burning in the hearth, though, which is consistent with our fantasies. And we had a delicious meal of baked trout.

For psychiatrists, police officers, mental health workers and MDs on duty over the Christmas holiday, there is nothing festive about those days and never has been. For a large number of people, the discrepancy between fact and fiction is vast. Consider the classical scene: In a block of flats, somebody starts screaming on the third floor, really screaming – man or woman – enraged, delirious. The entire neighbourhood tries to overhear the violently hurled threats, turning up the volume of the TV’s rendering of “Adeste fideles“.

There is nothing new about this.

What is new is that the screaming is heard not only from the third floor but from “our friends” in the EU, Santa Ursula and her lot. Meanwhile, our most prized “ally” with its 12 military bases on our soil was engaging in piracy in the Caribbean, so there is no reason to doubt it might make good on its promise to “take” Greenland too.

Even Norwegians, whose intake of real news is blocked in all mainstream media, get the uncanny impression that there is evil in the air, lacing the scents we have treasured for centuries: cinnamon on baked apples, cardamom in raisin bread, cloves on legs of ham, sage in turkey stuffing, or maybe rosemary for those who prefer lamb, not to mention the scent of a wood fire and of spruce. Christmas has always been a glorious festival of scents.

This year, we celebrated Christmas with an orgy of desperate consumption, as though fearing it would be our very last, and who knows: maybe it will be. If Mertz, Starmer and Santa Ursula have their way – certainly if they succeed in killing Putin – we will be embroiled in all-out-war with Russia within minutes. And that is what they want, because then the US will have to defend us, or so they hope. And then, they hope, Russia will be crucified.

Of course Mertz, Santa Ursula and Kaja Kallas won’t be sent to the front to fight. They will send us – European citizens, as they have sent Ukrainian citizens – to the meat grinder. WWI all over again. Have we not learnt?

(AI generated image)

Alas, “we”, European voters, are denied information and are hence unable to make “informed decisions”.

I have not seen “proof” that Norwegian media have explicitly been subjected to press censure . However, the very fact that there has been absolutely no discussion in the press about our military and economic support to the corrupt regime in Kiev is highly suspicious, to say the very least.

Dissent in Norway is suppressed not with criminalisation, not yet – true – but by other means, which I do not have the instruments to analyse, except that I note that social media are also used to discredit dissenting views. Those who attempt to question the official narrative in the press are instantly and viciously smeared. No arguments are offered, just defamation. Weird and definitely Orwellian.

Were those poor dead Ukrainians really fighting for Democracy? For liberty?

Some people say it’s all about ingrained ancient “Russophobia”. I do not entirely agree: I maintain it’s not least about money. The rich and powerful thought they could easily put Ukraine and the frozen Russian billions in their pockets by riding on the backs of the ultra-nationalist Western Ukrainians. They were mistaken and now they are desperately indebted.

The US is trying to extricate itself, while the EU leaders and Starmer are digging in, deeper and deeper. Desperate.

So desperate are they, that they are starting to clap sanctions on European journalists and writers. Without even being charged, let alone tried, even the eminent military analyst Jacques Baud has seen his bank accounts and sources of income frozen and is banned from travelling because he has dared publicly doubt the official narrative.

Russophobia is merely a tool used in the media by the powers-that-be to legitimise their awful campaigns, now as in the past.

Most wars are about money – greed, if you will – just as much so as the financial crisis in 2008. So is the Ukraine war. So is the rape of Venezuela. Greed and lust for power. Money is the conduit for power.

Moneys are running out and power is slipping, in Europe as in the USA. Basically, the US dollar is increasingly understood for what it is, a Ponzi scheme. This charming piece explains why. (If you prefer to skip the introductory charm, search in the text for the sentence: Watch how it plays out in real life.

Incidentally, the writer even explains the fallacy of “the growth mindset”. The more people understand this, the sooner the Ponzi scheme will collapse.

So the USA and the EU need new moneys. They need them bad, so bad that they are willing to break any rule and to expose themselves for what they are: unscrupulous totalitarian predators.

Today, we wake up to learn that the chief predator is on the kill in Venezuela. He wants Venezuela’s oil (money) so he can keep the Ponzi scheme going. My country’s press basically holds its breath and says nothing. The global south, however, notes once again: Yep, that’s Western “Democracy”.

Happy New Year, guys and girls.
This promises to be quite a ride on a dangerous carousel.

Painted by Thrandur Thorarinsson

Quoth CNN

22.12.2025 /

CNN lied! Just about all the corporate press outlets lied about Iraq, about Libya, about Syria… They are still lying through their teeth about the ongoing genocide in Palestine (all of Palestine, not just Gaza!).

They are lying for dear life to defend EU financial investments (Ponzi scheme?) in Ukraine… etc.

“Lies, lies, lies is all they’ve got!” I am quoting Max Blumenthal.

In Oliver Stone’s take on Big Finance’s ugly war on countries like Venezuela, he makes it eminently clear that the “press”, the corporate media on which we all depend, has VERY MUCH to answer for.

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