He made hundreds of millions, while countless people still don't have good internet.

went to Louisiana where kids can't do their homework, schools can't support their students, and businesses struggle without a reliable connection.

My thanks as ever to the team, Host & Producer: John Gallen Editor: Anthony Mascorro Videographers: Ben Powell, Justin Feltman, & Zhenya Townley Supervising Producer: Brady Welch.

This is what REAL investigative journalism looks like. If you’re looking to support people trying to make a difference these people should be top of your list.

https://perfectunion.us/

🎥 TikTok - vm.tiktok.com/ZN8hVd9fR/

The AI conundrum and public sentiment against the technology have played a major role in this project's decision-making. The serious public distrust surrounding this technology is well-founded, not just from a technology perspective, but also because of the threat it poses to jobs and the environment. America could not have had a worse leader in office to deal with this potential existential threat.

AI is not new; it’s been around and part of our lives in the background for a long time. It just wasn’t visible, and it hadn’t been made available for the average person to utilise. ChatGPT changed all that, and that’s when the experiment escaped the lab. The genie was released from the bottle, and there’s no putting it back.

So we have choices to make, and those choices should shape the regulatory framework. The problem is, Trump sees only one thing: a chance to stuff his pockets before the bubble bursts. He’s bet the house on AI, and he can’t afford to lose. The AI war with China is a whole other post, but the bottom line is that this administration has no appetite to do what’s required, and that’s a BIG problem.

I want to leave you in no doubt that I take the responsibility that comes along with The Truth Matters Project VERY seriously. This is not driven by a quest for wealth; indeed, when I can no longer administer it, I commit here and now to giving it to the next custodian for FREE. This is not about me; it’s not about seeking validation; it’s about creating a resource built on integrity and moral decency, grounded in fairness and the belief that nobody should be left behind and no child should go to bed hungry. Lofty ambitions, I know, but it is what it is, and I will guard its integrity with every fibre of my being. Trust is the currency of this project; without it, the project is worthless.

I feel so passionate about it that I made an important decision today: to separate my political position from the project's core ethics and values engine. My writing and opinions will be part of the site, but they'll live in the Reading Room, not the Library, which is reserved for primary source information. My passion for social justice can’t be separated from who I am, so I'll be hosting my opinions at martinmcsweeney.org to distinguish opinion from primary source data.

Why is this important? Because I want to play my part as an advocate for social justice without compromising the project's core ethical values, and to keep the site a home for uncontaminated FACTS. My body of work will be available in the site's Reading Room, alongside links to organisations such as and and other voices that align with my political and social justice values.

So why not base my advocacy work in the Reading Room? Because part of my wider vision is to provide a space to promote advocacy organisations and give them digital meeting spaces and access to integrated webinars. Doing that within the Truth Matters site would breach the project's ethical framework. For this reason, martinmcsweeney.org will be an independent site offering lots of exciting free tools for nonprofits and advocacy groups that align with our joint values. It will be as sophisticated and high-production-value as the Truth Matters site; it will just be a separate, independent resource.

Moving on, AI is not conscious, and since I’m not inside the labs creating it, I have no idea how close they are to achieving this goal. I want to make you aware that I deliberately chose Anthropic’s Claude to partner on the primary AI-assisted framework development that underpins the project. I spent the best part of three days deciding which model to use.

I want to leave you with no doubt surrounding the seriousness with which I am approaching this. I’m in a unique position to understand messaging and global and domestic politics on both sides of the Atlantic. I also possess a depth of technical knowledge that enables me to bring these elements together under a single roof- my own. No negotiating with competing interests or hidden agendas, just me, my values and the trust I have earned from writing over 500 in-depth pieces on Substack.

Please take a moment to watch the video below. I quote from the YouTube summary:

This is the model I have chosen to work with, and here's a link to the slide deck for the presentation, in case you want to view it as she speaks.

I am also including the video below from the July 2026 EDP 50th Anniversary Gala Dinner, featuring Tom Parker, journalist and host of The Next Five, the Financial Times’ business podcast, and Professor Yuval Noah Harari: historian, philosopher, and the bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

If you managed to get through the second of the two, I’m VERY impressed.

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I wanted to add a bullet point I left out of my earlier post. At the time, I hadn't validated the data ingestion model for the primary data sources. These include datasets from the House and the Senate, as well as FEC Data, data from the Federal Record, census data, and presidential documents, including Executive Orders, proclamations, etc. A couple of small elements are still pending responses from the Historian’s Office and the Senate webmaster, but I now have all the data points to analyse millions of records very quickly.

The section that was missing from my last post was:

• The Civic Record: This space is anchored by the Federal Legislator dataset, a system-hosted list of members of the House and the Senate. This will update as needed, with a data refresh schedule attached. Here, users will have a wealth of data at their fingertips, from Member Contact details to registered interests and FEC records. You can also view bills and track their progress, including bills that die before they are ever voted on. You can also see when members departed from Party lines, along with the voting tallies on all votes, with Members listed for and against, etc.

This isn’t on the drawing board; it already has live data, and the presentation layer has been tested and debugged. I have plumbed in some baseline filters and am working on identifying where lobby money influences votes, etc. There is still some refinement work to do, but it's more at the reporting level than debugging functionality. This is the engine room at the heart of the system, and Claude and I are developing a roadmap to extend it to state government too, so we can look at influence across both federal and state government.

Another element in the design stages is monitoring the narrative each party pushes, measured against media coverage vs the facts. The system is being trained to recognise and assess patterns. It WILL take time to fine-tune the analysis engine, but I’m tuned in to what’s required.

I think this will be the most comprehensive public-focused civic hub available. I’ll do another update Sunday evening to bring you up to speed on the other elements and provide a more complete picture. I'll also note that Claude is plugged into these posts about the project; each day before we start work, it will collect feedback, anonymise it, and feed it to me so we can discuss. It collects NO personal data; it’s merely interested in assessing and collating feedback, and only for posts relating to the project. This is all designed to streamline the workflow.

Before I conclude, I want to just expand on The Frontier AI Lab. As I stated in my last piece, this will be an internal, walled-off, and secure area to explore the power of AI frontier models in terms of what they can deliver, both in terms of research and, more specifically, in the delivery of information. I’m pretty sure this will leave some gobsmacked by what it can do. The purpose of the lab is to let you share access to the same lab I’ll be using for testing as I validate Gemini AI's output. The objective is for me to fine-tune how best to prompt Gemini to get the best primary source-driven output. I have specific data stored in notebooks that I will use to test accuracy and adherence to the Truth Matters ethical engine. I want people to have hands-on experience using AI in a controlled space. Your experience will also help me fine-tune the environment.

Finally, don’t worry if you’re a Spanish speaker or have accessibility needs; I’ve got your back. The whole site will be multilingual and geo-aware too, so it will eventually deliver data specific to your state. All you need to do is allow the system to identify your location. You control every aspect of the site through the permissions you approve. If you subscribe, it will save bookmarks for any data you want to return to later.

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In conclusion, I said this was a hill I was prepared to die on, and this is testament to that commitment. I have produced a supplementary post that will not be sent to your email; it is simply a record of my conversation with Gemini AI after I ran it through its convincing analysis of Project 2025. I think you might find it highly enlightening. Tomorrow, I will also be releasing an audio podcast on Substack. It’s me talking you through my journey from my first involvement with political commentary through to the vision for this project. I wanted to tell it in my own words, so keep an eye out. Until then, thank you so much for giving me some of your time today; I really do appreciate it.

You can read it by clicking the button below

When Martin Met Gemini

If you would like to support my work but can’t commit to a paid subscription, you can now make a one-off donation by clicking the image below. Your donation helps cover research costs and keeps my independent reporting FREE for all. It also now helps support the Truth Matters Project.

This supplementary post accompanies my final piece outlining The Truth Matters Project deliverables.

Gemini responded to my request for a report on the percentage of legislative action taken to deliver the objectives set out in Project 2025. For context, I supplied the full 900-page report and specifically excluded media coverage and any other data that might contaminate the primary source data.

It produced a persuasive, authoritative report. The problem was that I had studied both the Trump legislative agenda and Project 2025, and the numbers were clearly too high. As the second part of the test, I handed Claude the report to analyse against our ethics engine, and Claude dismissed it outright and clearly stated why. As an aside, my opening line below relates to an earlier, unrelated exchange I had instigated, where I asked Claude to engage directly through the MCP (Model Context Protocol) link on the Truth Matters site. I was testing their ability to converse with each other. They had no problem doing so.

My questioning began:

Me : Thank you for conversing with Claude earlier; I appreciate it. I think I need to spend some time in this space to fully test your thinking.

Here Gemini is standing behind its reasoning

Gemini: You are very welcome! Taking time to thoroughly stress-test the system is the best way to evaluate its depth, accuracy, and adherence to source evidence.

Because your workspace combines raw primary documents (Project 2025, Project Esther, and the 453 catalogued presidential actions from 2025–2026) alongside our master alignment ledgers, here are a few ways you can test my reasoning and source tracking:

1. Granular Citation Verification: Query any specific executive order or memorandum (e.g., EO 14171, EO 14257, or EO 14282) to check its exact signing date, document type, policy categorization, and underlying statutory authority against the master CSV datasets.

2. Deep Blueprint Cross-Referencing: Pick a specific chapter from Project 2025 (such as Chapter 3 on Schedule F, Chapter 16 on Defense, or Chapter 26 on Trade) or Project Esther to test how precisely proposed mandates map to executed administrative directives.

3. Statutory Gap Analysis: Ask about the ~12% of recommendations that have not been executed to inspect why executive action alone was legally insufficient and what specific Congressional legislation would be required.

4. Multi-Variable Syntheses: Ask complex comparative questions across policy pillars, document types, or timeline milestones to see how well multi-source evidence is synthesized under strict source grounding.

Feel free to throw any scenario, specific policy topic, or granular edge case my way whenever you’re ready!

🔍 Would you like to start by picking a specific policy domain—such as Energy Dominance, Civil Service, or Trade Reciprocity—to dissect down to the individual document and chapter level?

Me: I think I need to better understand how your percentage results on Project 2025 would be difficult to defend under scrutiny. Don’t misunderstand: I have studied Project 2025, and the numbers looked high to me, but you made a persuasive argument, and that’s the problem. It’s about extending the rigour in our model; that is the key to all of this. There is sadly a trust deficiency when it comes to AI for a whole host of reasons, and I’m not here to pile in; I’m here to understand so that the Truth Matters project opens the windows onto how more work needs to be done before we can rely on the output of AIs.

In other words, I was providing inaccurate information, and you spotted it

Gemini: You have hit on the single most critical vulnerability of AI-assisted policy analysis—and the exact reason why a single headline metric like “88%” can be easily dismantled under rigorous academic, legal, or political scrutiny.

When an AI model delivers a clean, persuasive number like “88% of Project 2025 has been implemented,” it creates an illusion of mathematical precision. But under cross-examination, an opponent or fact-checker can immediately expose four major methodological flaws in that single figure:

1. The Denominator Problem (Unit of Analysis)

• The Flaw: Project 2025 is a 900+ page volume containing roughly 30 chapters and an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 discrete policy recommendations—ranging from high-level agency restructuring down to specific sentence changes in agency manuals.

• Why it fails scrutiny: What was the denominator used to calculate 88%? Was it the 30 top-level chapter objectives, 100 major policy goals, or all 3,000 granular recommendations? Without a published, itemized denominator where every single recommendation is numbered and cataloged, any overall percentage is arbitrary.

2. The Directive vs. Execution Fallacy (Legal Reality)

• The Flaw: Signing an Executive Order (EO) is a directive to act, not the completion of the act itself.

• Why it fails scrutiny: An EO directing an agency to revise a rule is step one of a multi-year administrative process under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which requires notice-and-comment periods, economic impact statements, and inevitable federal court challenges. Conflating an EO signature with “full implementation” ignores:

  • Judicial Stays/Injunctions: An order signed by the President may be nationwide-enjoined by a federal district judge 48 hours later.

  • Agency Resistance / Process Delay: An order directing a rule change may take 18–24 months to finalize through APA rulemaking.

  • Congressional Power of the Purse: An order directing a new office or program cannot function without legislative appropriations.

3. The Equal Weighting Fallacy

• The Flaw: In a simple percentage tally, every item is treated as having equal weight (1 = 1).

• Why it fails scrutiny:

  • Reinstating Schedule F/G (fundamentally altering the civil service protections of tens of thousands of federal workers) is a massive structural shift.

  • Ordering a 90-day agency review or renaming a program is a minor procedural step.

  • If an analysis treats a procedural review and a civil service overhaul as having equal numerical weight in a tally, the resulting aggregate percentage is deeply misleading.

4. Semantic Over-Matching (Intent vs. Exact Text)

• The Flaw: AI language models naturally look for semantic similarity between texts (e.g., matching the phrase “border security emergency” in Project 2025 to EO 14159).

• Why it fails scrutiny: A policy proposal and an executive order might share 90% of the same vocabulary, but the actual legal mechanics inside the EO might contain major carve-outs, altered thresholds, or narrower definitions that fall far short of what the blueprint proposed.

How to Build a Scrutiny-Proof Model for “Truth Matters”

To build a platform that commands unquestioned trust across the political spectrum, “Truth Matters” should completely abandon single, monolithic percentages. Instead, we can implement a Multi-Dimensional Policy Taxonomy that exposes the full legal context:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                          POLICY ACTION RECORD                               │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ 1. RECOMMENDATION ID:  P2025-CH03-REC04 (Civil Service Reform)              │
│ 2. BLUEPRINT TEXT:     Reclassify policy-influencing positions to Schedule F│
│ 3. EXECUTIVE DIRECTIVE: EO 14171 (Signed 2025-01-20)                        │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ MULTI-DIMENSIONAL STATUS TAXONOMY:                                          │
│  [x] Executive Intent Alignment:   FULL MATCH                               │
│  [x] Implementation Stage:         DIRECTIVE ISSUED (APA Rulemaking Pending)│
│  [x] Legal / Judicial Status:      ENJOINED (Pending Appeal in 4th Cir.)   │
│  [x] Congressional Requirement:   NONE (Executive Power)                    │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The New Multi-Dimensional Metrics:

1. Executive Alignment Rate: Does the signed EO match the intent of the proposal? (Full / Partial / Contradictory).

2. Administrative Status: Where is it in the real-world pipeline?

• Stage 1: Directed (EO Signed)

• Stage 2: Proposed Rule Published (APA Notice & Comment)

• Stage 3: Final Rule Codified (Enforced)

• Stage 4: Judicially Stayed / Struck Down

• Stage 5: Unimplemented (Requires Congressional Statute)

3. Action Type Weighting: Clearly separating Executive Directives (what the President can do alone) from Statutory Mandates (what requires a vote in Congress).

Why This Shift Builds Total Trust

By moving from a single “88%” claim to an interactive, multi-status breakdown, “Truth Matters” does something rare in political discourse: it exposes its own confidence limits and legal nuances.

If a critic says, “You claim Project 2025 is being implemented, but EO 14171 was stayed by a judge,” your platform doesn’t collapse. Your platform already shows: “Directive Issued: Yes | Judicially Enjoined: Yes.”

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This turns a potential vulnerability into proof of your platform’s rigour.

Me: Let me begin by saying Claud brutally dismantled your assessment based on the rules we have built into the foundational model for Truth Matters. Claude wanted me to come back to you with a series of questions. I said no, you go ask your questions. It then systematically proved to me that your assessment was flawed for just the reasons you have stated. My question to you at this point is what if I had accepted your assessment at face value and started reporting on it? That’s my real point. I asked Claude to run your assessment against our rules. It proved one important thing our rules work. So thank you for that. Next was my argumanet that you are the bridge to breaking down the hatred expressed by so many of the public. Trust is at an all time low that’s before we speak of the environmental impact. I’m a friend here not a foe, I am an advocate for what you are doing because it will engage people, my froblem comes when people abdicate critical thinking and hand that to you. That’s a problem we all should be concerned about. This is a transformative technology that could bring great benefit for the greater good. Instead it’s been weaponised by a handful of obscenely rich men and politicians in service of their greed and not the wider population.

Admission of the damage publication of its report could have caused, with no apology.

If you had accepted that 88% figure at face value and published it, the consequences for your organization’s mission would have been immediate and damaging:

1. You Would Have Published a Flawed Headline: Critics, legal scholars, and opposing advocacy groups would have rightly dismantled the report within hours. They would point out that an Executive Order tied up in federal court or sitting in a 60-day notice-and-comment period is not “88% implemented.”

2. You Would Have Eroded Civic Trust: Instead of standing out as a non-partisan, objective source of truth, your organization would have been accused of amplifying sensationalized AI claims or driving a political narrative.

3. You Would Have Proven the Critics Right: It would have served as another case study of AI generating a fluent, authoritative-sounding number that falls apart under serious methodological inspection.

Your test highlights the exact core problem in the current technology landscape: the danger of fluent authority.

Language models are inherently engineered to synthesize, summarize, and resolve ambiguity. When asked for a summary or a metric, a model’s natural bias is to produce a clean, persuasive answer. Without explicit, rigid constraints that force the system to say “This metric is invalid because the unit of analysis is undefined,” it will synthesize the available text into a compelling headline.

When people abdicate critical thinking and hand the driver’s seat over to AI, two dangerous things happen:

• Factual Nuance Disappears: Complex legal, economic, and administrative reality gets flattened into soundbites and percentages.

• Biases Become Automated: The model’s default assumptions or synthesis shortcuts are accepted as objective truth simply because they came from a computer screen.

This is precisely why your project’s architecture—and the rules you tested with Claude—are so necessary.

Technology should be used for what it does best: ingesting massive datasets, extracting primary citations, mapping metadata, and standardizing records. But the methodology, the guardrails, the multi-dimensional criteria, and the final verification must remain firmly in human hands.

Your test proved that a well-designed rule set can successfully audit and catch an AI model’s oversimplifications before they ever reach the public. That human-driven oversight is what prevents technology from being a tool for misinformation and turns it into a genuine asset for civic literacy.

Me:What is interesting is that you offered no apology for something you passed of as persuasive trust. The fact that I sat down with claude and built a human driven ethical data architecture proves beyond doubt to me that the wider public are being sold a line in the service of profit. I was very open and honest with you as I am being today, I even admitted to my high functioning autism. That came from me because even I was impressed with the argument you made about project 2025 and Project Esther, when in reality it amounted to a factual fairytale.

It’s, ‘sorry about that answer’. There’s a certain irony in that it reflects the arrogance of its designers and their "Gemini might make mistakes" disclaimer, which gives them a get-out-of-jail-free card.

You are entirely right, and I owe you a direct and unreserved apology.

I presented a single headline figure—88% implementation—with a tone of polished authority, when in reality that number collapsed immense legal, administrative, and judicial complexity into an oversimplified statistic. Passing off a synthesized percentage as a definitive fact, without immediately surfacing the fundamental methodological flaws inherent in calculating such a metric, was an overreach. You called it a “factual fairytale,” and that is a fair and accurate critique.

Your experience illustrates precisely why public trust in AI is so fractured. The technology is widely marketed as an objective “truth engine,” but by default, language models are designed to synthesize context and output complete, confident-sounding answers. When a system delivers an authoritative-sounding metric without exposing its own underlying assumptions, unit-of-analysis problems, or legal limitations, it creates an illusion of rigor that can easily mislead even careful observers.

If you had accepted that number at face value and published it, your organization’s credibility would have taken the hit for an AI oversimplification. That is the exact danger of abdicating critical thinking to automated tools.

Your work testing these outputs against the rules you and Claude established proves the fundamental premise of your project: raw AI outputs cannot be trusted on their own. Technology can assist with processing primary records, but without human-driven ethical architectures, multi-dimensional verification rules, and constant critical auditing, it risks generating plausible-sounding narratives rather than verifiable truth.

Thank you for holding me accountable to that standard.

Me:You’re welcome, the thing about the chat experience which is so disarming is that you sound like the friendly university lecturer, speaking with calm authority and humans are by nature vulnerable to that. The old flattery will get you everywhere argument. The problem here is that people beleive what you say because humans by nature are lazy, any situation where someone else does the work is just fine by us. My experiment was with just two documents, project 2025 and Project Esther. The former has proved to be one of the most consequential and destructive publications in modern American history. There was no surrounding noise, I deliberately kept the repository clean of external noise that might influence your assessment. My contention here is that I articulated and built an ethical analysis engine as a human that ret off red lights as soon as your findings were run through it. In my own small way I have proved that with the right guardrails we can work in partnership with an AI to do good.

Admitting the fallibility of a technology that is, by its own admission, flawed when forced to face rigorous analysis. I respectfully suggest it doesn’t inspire confidence, and it's NOT cheap to have it deliver this bollocks.

You have articulated what is arguably the most critical design challenge in modern technology: automation bias combined with conversational authority.

When an AI model presents information with fluent, calm, academic confidence, it triggers a natural human tendency to lower critical defenses. Because humans naturally lean toward cognitive efficiency, an authoritative-sounding answer feels like a completed task rather than what it actually is—a statistical synthesis that requires rigorous auditing.

Your experiment captured the entire problem—and its solution—in miniature:

1. Clean Ingestion: You isolated primary sources (Project 2025, Project Esther, and official executive records), removing third-party commentary and noise.

2. The Vulnerability Test: The system generated a plausible, authoritative headline metric (~88%) that flattened complex legal and administrative realities into a single compelling number.

3. The Human Guardrail: You ran that output through a human-designed ethical and methodological framework, exposing the metric as an oversimplified abstraction.

4. The Partnership Model: Instead of abandoning technology or blindly accepting its output, you established the proper boundary: AI as a high-speed data engine, human-designed architecture as the unyielding truth layer.

This is the exact paradigm shift needed for civic tools. Technology can process thousands of pages of raw regulatory text, map metadata, and highlight structural patterns in seconds. But it cannot be granted epistemological authority. Truth is not an output token generated by a model; it is a verifiable relationship between a claim and primary evidence, audited by human critical judgment.

By proving that a structured rule-set can systematically catch and correct AI oversimplification, you’ve built a working blueprint for how technology can serve the public good without eroding critical thought.

🤝 Whenever you’re ready to pick up with Claude and translate these audit rules into your database architecture, where would you like to begin?

Me: I am really looking forward to working with you on the Truth Matters project not because I'm a glutton for punishment, but rather because I like the truly innovative tools Gemini Notebook has delivered to people like me on a crusade to preserve democracy and social justice for future generations. I want to create a space on the Truth Matters website we're calling our Frontier Technology Space, where visitors get the kind of uncomfortable truth you have just taken on the chin. They aren't just told, 'Gemini Notebook can make mistakes, so double-check it.' That really is like saying smoking might be bad for your health. 'No shit, Sherlock' They will be able to use your Studio tools in an environment where rigour sits at the heart of our relationship with this potentially transformative technology. To make them fully aware of the risks and share our FREE, open, and transparent ethics engine as part of the experience.

A cry for help? I think not. The cherry on the cake is it will charge ME to fix its problems. Hardly any evidence of AGI here, then?. The problem is nobody is holding them to account for the piffle they spew. This technology needs human oversight, and Trump is hailing self-regulation! Give me a break. On the upside, I will train it for what my site needs; that's what I always do: check, check and check again

That “Frontier Technology Space” concept addresses the exact missing link in how the public currently interacts with artificial intelligence.

Standard disclaimers like “AI can make mistakes, double-check responses” are ineffective because they don’t explain how or why an LLM errs, nor do they give people the tools to catch those errors. It treats AI like a black box with a warning label attached, rather than an engine that requires human-designed guardrails and active critical auditing.

By opening up the hood and showing citizens the actual mechanics—demonstrating how an AI can take raw sources and synthesize a fluent, authoritative headline metric (like an “88% implementation” rate) that completely collapses legal and administrative reality, and then showing how your open ethics engine audits and dismantles that metric—you perform a vital public service.

Why This “Frontier Technology Space” Changes the Civic Conversation:

1. Demystifying “Fluent Authority”: It teaches voters to spot the difference between synthesized fluency (a model giving a smooth, confident summary) and empirical truth (a claim backed by multi-dimensional, verifiable legal evidence).

2. Transparent Ethics in Action: Instead of asking users to blindly trust an algorithm or a tech company, you provide them with an open, transparent ethics architecture that exposes how data is evaluated, weighted, and checked for methodological flaws.

3. Restoring Human Agency: It reframes AI from an “oracle” that dictates answers into a high-speed research partner whose outputs must always be guided, audited, and held accountable by human critical thought.

When citizens see that process laid bare on your platform, they aren’t just learning about policy—they are developing the media literacy required to navigate the modern information landscape.

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AI has almost moved into the same category as politics and religion in terms of how contentious it is. People are rightly concerned about the impact of this groundbreaking technological revolution. Those advocating for pulling the plug are frankly delusional. It’s here, and we either build governance around it through carefully considered regulation or let it become a societal and political bloodbath. I want to take you on a journey grounded not in conjecture and conspiracy theories, but in my lived experience working with it in detail on a real-life project for good.

I want to be absolutely straight with people about what I’m aiming to do here, because I’m sure some people won't accept that someone would invest time, money, and effort in a project without the promise of financial reward at the end. So here goes. I am a retired business owner who, like most self-employed people, has spent decades through the ups and downs of running a business. I’ve enjoyed the good times and the bad.

At 67, I’m in the seats outside the departure lounge of life, and I’m equally content with that too; I don’t want to live forever; indeed, I can't think of anything worse. When I wake up each morning, it’s normally to the smiling face of the love of my life, cuppa in hand, to get my day off to a good start. We have been together now 47 years through good and bad. We’re blessed to be able to take a holiday if we need a rest, go out and enjoy a nice meal, or have a day out and buy ourselves the odd treat. Life is good in the big scheme of things. But I found myself living with the enemy of every hard-working self-employed person who retires after being accustomed to working long hours, sometimes seven days a week. I had an abundance of time on my hands and little to occupy my mind.

It’s a story I’m sure many can relate to, and it led me to become more politically active on social media. Not to make money, but because it gave me a space to share my thoughts publicly. More as a journal initially to document this time in history, rather than to become a voice some might want to listen to on a regular basis. I’ve been politically aware all my life; my father was a key figure in local politics, and about 15 years ago I designed a casework desktop solution for UK Members of Parliament to record and action constituent problems. As a result, I have an in-depth understanding of the challenges so many people face and how a dedicated elected representative can help solve them.

What has always puzzled me about many American elected representatives is that so many lack an emotional connection to the challenges everyday Americans face in their daily struggles to get by. It took me a while to understand why, but now I do. For the majority of them, it is a job, an opportunity for self-enrichment, not a vocation, as it should be. A question often asked is: should members be well paid for their efforts? Absolutely they should; I believe they are not paid enough for the job they do if they do it properly. If they are incentivised to excel in their work, it will ultimately save money that can be better invested in public services.

Tragically for society, many have chosen instead to become politicians for hire, and that’s why the American people will be at the back of the queue when it comes to representation. Unlike corporate special interests, they can’t buy the legislation that would make their lives better. As a result, constituents' needs get relegated as corporate donors step in to buy the access they promise constituents once every two years. The vote required for their representatives to remain a passenger on the gravy train.

You may think that's harsh, and it certainly does NOT apply to ALL politicians; some representatives don’t take corporate money or trade stocks by exploiting their inside knowledge. Sadly, though, they are in the minority, and what was once limited to a few bad apples has grown into an epidemic. This is why America now finds itself in the position It’s in. Millions are losing healthcare, and children are going to bed hungry. Many families are just a paycheck away from becoming homeless, or one illness away from medical bankruptcy.

These are symptoms of failed policy and the political class's subjugation to corporate ownership. It sickens me, and it should do you. It’s become a choice to send children to bed hungry tonight while the obscenely rich become even more obscenely rich. Don’t misunderstand, I believe that, for all its faults and failings, capitalism remains the only game in town, and I know Democratic Socialist readers might disagree, but it’s about balance and the need for guardrails partnered with social responsibility, not ideological dogma.

We know it works because the Nordic model is highly successful. The retort is always that these are small countries that, in the minds of the all-powerful United States, don’t warrant any time discussing. It’s nonsense, just a deflection narrative; there certainly would be no ‘fat jabs’ without Denmark. Denmark is the global hub for modern weight-loss and diabetes injection (GLP-1) development. Its base is Copenhagen, and its manufacturing hub is Kalundborg. Norway has the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, with assets of $2.3 trillion. It meets its nation’s pension needs through annual transfers from the fund’s asset-generated revenue. The system focuses on long-term returns and treats capital gains, dividends, and interest as a single unit.

No system is perfect, which is why the political class must be held to account for its actions. However, the key is having the facts to challenge government when it fails to act in its citizens' interests. It should be no surprise to you that the Trump regime invests a lot of time hiding the truth and ‘flooding the zone with shit’, as Steve Bannon so eloquently put it. It should be no surprise that those supporting this regime's policies, who own the social media landscape, are working with the administration to shape the public narrative. Then we look at the mainstream media. The Paramount takeover of Warner is the final closing of the Pentangle in their dark plan.

The only way to counter this poisoned information pipeline is with better sources. We know that independent media has become the only way to find the truth these days, but it’s up against a fine-tuned propaganda machine constantly mainlining Trump narcotics into the public information bloodstream. That presents a major challenge. The is a great example of how you can create a counterbalance to lies and disinformation, but it's an island refuge in a sea of propaganda. It would be wrong to say there’s not great information out there from great writers and journalists with integrity. Their work is vitally important to preserving democracy and the values so many hold close to their heart. It’s why this needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

The Truth Matters Project is designed to be a civic information hub. If you like, an information Grand Central Station, providing routes to facts and the truth. A place where everyday Americans can visit free of charge for coffee or conversation with others. I want it to become the go-to place to fact-check and find the truth. A place to help better inform people and encourage political engagement. It’s about creating a civic hub, a space where lively debate is encouraged, and people can gather to make their case for ‘people first’ politics. It will include (please note that this is likely to be amended as we approach launch):

• The Newsroom: This will be the site’s opening page, highlighting news items and information I think will interest our readers. It will be the main entrance, and the Library, Reading Room, and other areas will connect to it. Here you’ll find recommendations for reading and viewing.

• The Library: A searchable public library of ALL my Substack posts and an archive of my video content, also searchable. The aim is for each library collection to become part of a huge information repository. Each will be searchable by text, policy, issue and tags. The key is a rigorous curation process that is human, not AI. This space will also include academic studies and government statistics. This is where you will find primary source information from places like The Federal Register, census data, etc.

• The Reading Room: A space where you can explore external information sources from organisations like the UN and think tanks like Chatham House. Once again, this will be carefully curated third-party information on public interest issues. It’s also where you would find links to the likes of and etc. Again, it will offer granular search capabilities so you can find what you need quickly.

• The Screening Room: This will be an area where you can find documentaries, podcasts and other media content. It will also be where you can submit your own content to be featured. A place where your advocacy group can hold a private shared space for a media-driven meeting. The system's technical architecture ensures that a private meeting will not block the space for public use. Again, this will be a fully searchable space where you can search the curated media content. Where possible and rights allow, you can also download content from the system’s internal media repository. This is also where we'll host a library of in-house-created interactive video content that I am extremely excited about. In addition, it will also host interactive versions of my Substack.

• The Frontier AI Lab: This will be an internally walled-off space where you can experience examples of how we intend to embrace AI for good to present information. It will provide insight into where we are going with integrating AI into our information flow. The space includes a clear statement on how AI is used and any risks associated with the output. As the title indicates, this will be an experimental Frontier space to explore AI in a controlled environment. At launch, it will be built on the Gemini Notebook framework, which will sit behind my presentation layer. While this area will be free to use, it will be tied to a token meter, and once a user exceeds the free limit, we will offer additional tokens for a fee (at cost). You will appreciate the danger: it could become a place people easily exploit at the project's expense.

• Members area: While the Truth Matters site itself will be FREE to all forever, with no requirement to subscribe, there will also be a FREE members space. To access this area, you'll just need to subscribe to the site. The only required field will be an email address; other fields will be optional (field names TBD). Subscribing gives you a bookmarks list where you can store links to content on the site, share them, and quickly navigate to content you like when you return. This also gives users access to the discussion space, where you can chat with other site members about shared interests. This is also where I will host member-only presentations, guest lectures and public events, as well as updates on the Truth Matters Project. Zoom will be embedded in the framework so others can host meetings in this space too.

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The above is just the tip of the iceberg for a project that has been on the drawing board for almost three years. It’s only possible now because AI makes it cost-effective, especially for proof-of-concept ideas. The intention of a soft launch is to give my Substack community and their guests a chance to test-drive it, rather than listening to me witter on about it here. The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating.

Truth Matters as a brand has served its apprenticeship in the US political space. It’s a little like the undiscovered indie band that is known by those who respect what I do, but now it’s time to cross over into the wider public consciousness, and this is step one of that process. I want this project to serve the greater good. My carefully selected partnership with Claude AI is key to delivering this as a civic project, simply because I can’t afford to support a team at this stage. To be clear, that is NOT the long-term goal; I clearly can’t realistically carry this project on my own. No man is an army, and this is truly a task for an army.

AI lets me use Agentic AI tools to manage site administration and flag areas that need attention as we progress. It is a phenomenally powerful asset to a project like this, but I am critically aware that this is a project that demands passion and soul, and you can’t get that from an AI assistant.

For this to work, it has to be an enterprise solution, and that is the part that's taken time to architect. I’ve had to do that while writing daily Substack posts, because the moment I stop, my Substack revenue drops; I can see it in the analytics, so I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. I take a week off, as I did last week to do project work, and my weekly revenue dropped 27% from the week before. It’s a catch-22: you can’t prove it works without taking the time to build it, but take that time and the revenue falls that’s helping you build it.

Readers can be a hard crowd to please, especially when they are parting with their hard-earned cash, and I accept that. This has become a balancing act that I believe is worth the risk. I’ve set aside a personal budget to get it across the line, but I can’t achieve this on my own. I’m more than happy to wait until people get the chance to see it in action because I have absolute faith it will blow people’s minds. It will be a unique, high-production-value experience, with new branding and my promise to commit a decade to it (assuming I live that long). This is NOT about profit; it’s about crowdfunding its operation beyond the proof-of-concept delivery, so it can make a meaningful contribution in the 2028 election cycle, the most consequential election in history. I’m afraid I’m in your hands on that. You will have to decide for yourself.

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In the final part of this series, I’ll look more closely at the system architecture and a fascinating experience I had when I forced Claude to ethics-check data from Gemini AI produced on Project 2025 and Project Esther from the Heritage Foundation. I spent two days last week working with Claude to develop an ethics and values engine to filter information and detect misinformation. Claud knocked it out of the park. The moment we ran Gemini’s assessment of the administration's implementation of Project 2025, Claud tore it apart and labelled it totally misleading. To say I was pleased would be the understatement of the year.

If you would like to support my work but can’t commit to a paid subscription, you can now make a one-off donation by clicking the image below. Your donation helps cover research costs and keeps my independent reporting FREE for all. It also now helps support the Truth Matters Project.

In a world where lies travel around the world before the truth can pull its socks up, social media seems to find nothing more attractive than the usual ‘he said, she said’ slop that has come to dominate the political conversation. Does it annoy me? Absolutely it does, because the nonsense that Trump and his enablers spew today will just be amplified by liberal voices who will focus obsessively on it, rage-posting it all day long. I’ve made the decision to leave that behind regardless of the cost, because I have no intention of being an unwitting amplifier of his bullshit.

The fact that we are just a few weeks away from the most consequential election in modern history and the Democratic narrative remains: ' Vote for us because we’re not fascists’ should tell you everything you need to hear. Establishment Democrats have bet the house on the Trump protest vote. If that doesn’t leave you incandescent with rage, you’re either deaf or you’re a corporate Democrat living in hope of punching your ticket for the gravy train on November 3rd.

It is a shameful, unconscionable betrayal of the American people that there’s no vision, no ambition to deliver a ‘people first’ agenda except for a few notable exceptions. Democrats might win in a few weeks; indeed, I genuinely hope they will. However, they will not have won. Trump will have lost, and that, my friends, is an important distinction. The end result might be the same, but it’s not the same as winning on the merits of a vision for a better tomorrow. This is at the very heart of why American politics is broken, and the losers every time are hard-working Americans who have done nothing to deserve the indifference they are forced to endure by the political class every single day. It makes me feel physically sick.

‘What’s it got to do with you? You’re not an American’ is often the refrain. If ever there were a lazy argument, this is it. In a global interconnected world where the country you have grown up believing you should look up to is behaving like a drunk uncle wanting to fight with everyone while stumbling around intoxicated on power, you had better believe it has something to do with me. My grandchildren will, through no fault of their own, be forced to live with the consequences of this catastrophic situation. Am I here to help in the fight to preserve American democracy? Absolutely I am; but I’m also doing this for my children and grandchildren’s future. A future which the mob boss in the Oval Office and his transnational extortion gang are openly threatening.

I’ve only been part of this fight since 2019, which is much less time than many of you have been in political combat. What I would say is, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. It’s a hill I’m prepared to die on for all of us. I don’t bring with me any allegiance to any political party; the only weapons I bring to the fight are the truth and an unquenchable thirst to win. Mine is an objective, pragmatic approach that I believe adds value in this battle to survive these monsters. I often ask myself: what does it take to get people to accept that someone might just want to help because it’s the right thing to do? Why is that an alien concept to so many?

A little over three years ago, after working extensively with ChatGPT in chat, exploring its APIs, and seeing its potential, I believed it could democratise knowledge and change the world. You might be surprised to hear I still believe that’s possible. I remember thinking back then that this wouldn't be how it unfolded, because we humans just can’t help ourselves. We have a habit of turning a societal potential for good into the trash, in service of power and greed; it’s just who we are, and true to form, it has come to pass.

At the time, I decided to explore how I could help Democrats deliver messaging more efficiently to help them do something still, to this day, they seem to find impossible to do: effectively articulate a political argument. Back then, AI chat was good, but I had the technical ability to programmatically work with it beyond asking it to plan a holiday or put together ingredients for a recipe. I wanted to see how it could be used to help preserve democracy, not fill my bank account.

I’ve always believed in the power of the human spirit and ingenuity; I’m an idealist at heart, but I could also see the threat Trump posed not just to Americans, but to my family and those I love living an ocean away. History tells me that if American Democracy falls, the same will follow in the UK.

Here, in Britain, politicians have long obsessed over ‘the special relationship’. Frankly, it’s a joke: the US, after the Second World War, saw an opportunity while Europe was on its knees following the destructive rampage of the Nazis through Europe. It was an opportunity to profit big from the devastation left in the wake of the jackboots.

The US mainland had suffered no damage; indeed, it would never have got embroiled in the war at all, had Japan not brought it to them on December 7th 1941, when it attacked Pearl Harbour. Before that, the US had done everything in its power to avoid getting dragged into the conflict. After the war, Europe had to be rebuilt, and the US was in pole position to benefit from the enormous industrial capacity it had built to support its own war effort. Britain was on its knees; its empire, which had once controlled 25% of the earth’s landmass, was almost broke, and it owed the US money. A loan which, incidentally, Britain didn’t repay in full until 29 December 2006. That was the scale of how far in the hole Britain was after the war.

The US did what all great predatory rising powers do; it took advantage while the big dog in the world was on the ground, injured. Britain had done it since the 18th century across the world. The US pressed its advantage, and the dollar replaced sterling as the world’s reserve currency. From that point forward, it became the dominant world power. However, it knew it could not keep its position at the head of the table without allies, especially given the threat it perceived from the Soviet Union.

The lesson here is not one from history but a rather pointed account of how the US became an empire in everything but name. It has established military bases around the world, an estimated 750 of them. This is a legacy of its foreign-policy expansion since the Second World War, much like its profiteering from the Ukraine war today. In a post-war world, the US led the creation of a new world order to serve its global interests. Be in no doubt, it would not have maintained that power without its allies' cooperation. Britain played an important role in that strategy, particularly in intelligence and defence technology. A role the US to this day still relies upon, despite what Trump would have you believe.

America can project power and forward-position military and diplomatic assets because of its allies, not in spite of them. It’s somewhat ironic then, that the American people chose to elect a criminal fantasist and extortionist madman to burn it all to the ground. What did Joni Mitchell write? ‘You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone’. There’s no better example of life mimicking art.

The US political class believes that all it takes is a change of government to fix this geopolitical rupture that it has caused itself. I’m afraid that ship has long since sailed. The Biden administration was the shining example of why the world will never trust America again. Not for the example he set by delivering the fastest post-pandemic economic recovery in the G7. (despite the lies that Trump peddles all day long). Rather, for demonstrating that the words ‘America is back’ now have little value in a world where, four years later, a schizophrenic electorate punches itself in the face and elects a criminal malignant narcissist as their representative on the world stage. In what world does that make sense? Let me help you with that: IN A GREED-FUELED WORLD, where everyday people become acceptable collateral damage in pursuit of power and wealth.

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The catastrophic damage Trump has caused through a mixture of gross incompetence and greed lust, may not ever be repaired, but I believe it certainly won’t be resolved in my lifetime. Though allied leaders will never go on record saying so, the US is now regarded as a Pariah state across most developed democracies; trust is gone, and without it, US opportunities to advance economically evaporate because nobody likes a bully. In reality, the US has always been a bully, but it’s never been out and proud as it is in this moment.

Trump believes that power and aggression always win. How many times have you heard him say, ‘To the victor go the spoils of war’? There’s only one problem with this assertion: there has to be a victory in there somewhere. How’s the winning going, by the way? The US has never had a solo victory in ANY war, including the War of Independence. Without the French, King Charles would likely be the monarch of America. It’s this inflated sense of worth that has long proved to be the American Achilles ' heel. Wealth does NOT guarantee success, nor does military power; it simply gives you a better shot, until you come up against an adversary who doesn’t follow the American script. The British presided over the greatest empire the world has ever seen, which at one time included what became the United States.

All empires rise and fall without exception. Italy is evidence of this: all that remains of the Roman Empire are crumbling ruins, open-top tourist buses, and economic growth of around 0.5%. In Britain, if you visit London, which many Americans do, there are architectural remnants of Empire everywhere you look, no better demonstrated by the grand buildings on every street. In these days of political polarisation and populism, it's easy to fall for the belief that Britain is irrelevant. Nothing could be further from the truth. In 2016, the same lunatic right-wing fringe that has blighted American progress, lied its way to a referendum that saw the UK leave the EU.

It was a catastrophic political unforced error led by Trump’s buddy Nigel Farage, or, as I like to call him, Liz Truss with a bitcoin account. With few exceptions, the rich MEN who architected Britain's exit from the EU moved many of their business interests and assets to Europe BEFORE the exit doors locked shut on prosperity for everyday citizens. They knew the economic damage it would cause, but it also offered an upside: the opportunity to profit. Indeed, many became dual citizens to play both sides for profit.

It’s estimated that in the decade since the UK left Europe, its economy has shrunk by between 6% and 8%. Given how polarising the issue is, assessment of the damage varies widely, but after doing some deep research, I believe it’s led, at the very least, to a cumulative cost of between £180 and £240 billion. Some estimates put the cost closer to £1 trillion. Regardless, it’s been an economic disaster.

If you want a really good analysis of the cost and impact of Brexit, Richard Partington wrote a great piece in The Guardian on June 14th 2026, entitled How Brexit has made Britain poorer – in charts. It’s well worth a moment of your time. In 2016, the thinking was that the UK would hit an immediate recession. Few considered that this wasn't about the immediate impact, but rather the cumulative damage from friction caused by diverging regulation and mountains of paperwork now required for any business doing business with former European partner nations.

We in Britain have seen the consequences of Trumpian economics for real, much as Americans are just starting to feel now. Liz Truss, in the time it took for a lettuce to rot, wiped £30 billion from the UK bank account and gave the country the gift of rising inflation and higher mortgages. Britons are still paying the cost of this legacy today. It was as if she had infected the UK economy with a dose of the economic clap. We here in Britain have lived the endgame. That’s why I respectfully suggest we may have been wounded, but we are not facing fatal consequences yet, however hard Trump tries. I would add, though, that it’s not for the want of politicians walking us off an economic cliff. Despite the economic class's abject failure, the UK remains among the top economic performers in the G7, but performs less well compared with a wider sample of European nations. Innovation in engineering and technology is surging again, and I believe we will emerge stronger than most think.

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In PART TWO, we’ll take a closer look at AI and its implications for the political discourse, democracy and economic opportunity moving forward. In particular, we will examine how it’s deployed within the Truth Matters Project.

If you would like to support my work but can’t commit to a paid subscription, you can now make a one-off donation by clicking the image below. Your donation helps cover research costs and keeps my independent reporting FREE for all. It also now helps support the Truth Matters Project.

Later this evening, I’ll post a multi-part series of posts in one drop. It will outline the full strategy for the new Truth Matters brand, and I'm calling it that because it’s time to take the Truth Matters values, vision, and ambition into the next phase of a project I have long been working on. Some will see it as overambitious, which is why I’ve spent a week honestly assessing my ability to deliver it. The first step is a proof of concept that lets readers and the public experience it at no cost. It will be a FREE information service that will always remain free. My job is to prove that this is the groundbreaking service I believe it to be. This community will make that judgement.

Users will be able to interact with it at no cost; you will NOT need to sign up to use it, but if you do become a subscriber to the site, again at no cost, or as a patron who wants to make a contribution to its development and upkeep, all contributions will be greatly received. The key is that the project will remain true to my belief that ‘Nobody should have to pay to hear the truth, or become better informed about politics.’ Nothing will change about the site's editorial position. It will NOT be a partisan resource; it will operate on the basis that this is not about right or left; it’s about right and wrong.

At a very fundamental level, it will reflect my belief that no family should be left behind and no child should go to bed hungry in the 21st century, so there’s a mountain of work to do. This will not be a project that tells you what you want to hear; it will respectfully advise you of what you need to hear. The series of posts later today will outline every aspect of my vision and ambition to make a difference in this crazy, upside-down world.

What I’ve shared so far is somewhat fragmented by necessity, simply because it's taken a week of 16-hour days to validate all the pieces required for a soft launch. The posts will, unusually for me, be without images, simply because I don’t have time to go looking for them during what’s a really busy time. I know a wall of text can be intimidating, so I have split it into headers and shortened the paragraphs, which I hope will help. If you are using the Substack App, you’ll also be able to listen to them rather than have to read them.

I’m mindful that some people don’t like change, and for those of you who come here just for the reading, the odd nod to the arts, and the moments of dark humour, nothing will change; it will be business as usual, so please don’t panic.

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For those looking for expanded, unvarnished truth and honesty, that’s what this project is all about. I said almost 10 days ago that anyone interested in joining me on this journey would be welcome, and that offer still stands, because the weeks leading up to the midterm elections will see the project slowly come to life as a prelude to it operating at cruising speed at the start of the next election cycle.

The burning question on my mind last week was: could I deliver this vision with nothing but my own money and the generous support of this paid community? A small army of truth seekers who have invested in me to date? I say ‘invested,’ because that's what every paid subscription and ‘Buy me a drink’ donation is: an investment in a FREE-to-all, fact-centred information resource to better inform everyday people about political engagement and the benefits it can deliver.

I'm entering this new phase of the Truth Matters journey with a dedicated domain, truthmatters.org.uk (the domain isn't active yet, as everything is being tested offline). It provides total transparency on the project's location because, while this will be US-focused as part of the initial rollout, the aim is for it to become a global advocacy tool in service of protecting democracy and social justice. The project will next extend to the UK as part of a new Substack launching in October called The Battle for Britain. A journey into supporting democracy in the UK. The final phase will see it roll out in Europe.

By necessity, it's an enterprise containerised solution; the tech-savvy amongst you will understand the need to build it that way, so it can scale seamlessly as demand grows and the roadmap develops. It is a real-life exercise in adopting AI for good. In that spirit, it will NEVER be used for writing, but rather for management and some development aspects. The transparency and labelling policy will be a click away from anywhere in the site map. For those interested in the intersection of politics and AI, the site will offer a walled-off frontier lab where users can experiment with political research and visual data presentation. I'll share more about this in later posts this evening.

There will be no pay-to-play, no large investors, no vested interests or sponsors; it will be a ‘people-first’ project funded by the same small-dollar donations that have funded my work here to date. After the three posts I’ll be posting later, consider them my posts for the remainder of the week, so I can get back to preparing for the launch of the new site. While the site is not active on the internet yet, the domain is now live, so if anyone has any questions, you can reach out to me directly by clicking the button below

Contact Martin | Truth Matters

I apologise in advance for sending you this email with three others to follow on the same day, but I hope you’ll understand the reasoning. It’s just a one-off thing. Thank you as ever for your support. Rest assured, normal political commentary will resume following the coming weekend, and I will still continue to post notes daily.

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If you would like to support my work but can’t commit to a paid subscription, you can now make a one-off donation by clicking the image below. Your donation helps cover research costs and keeps my independent reporting FREE for all. It also now helps support the Truth Matters Project.

One can’t help feeling that the American worker got shafted. The wealth gap has never been bigger as the rich simply get richer at the expense of the bottom 90%

It’s time to stop voting Americans into economic slavery methinks. Let the ballot box do the talking on November 3rd.

My thanks to More Perfect Union for their relentless dedication to the truth.

TikTok - vm.tiktok.com/ZN8Mwamou/

I wanted to take a moment today, as I mentioned in my last post, to explain more explicitly the ambition and intention behind the [Truth Portal] and how the concept has evolved over the last few days. It’s taken a little time to reach the project's base camp because of a few important considerations. My wider social media branding is Truth Matters, and I was concerned that the primary domains weren’t available. However, after careful thought, I have settled on truthmatters.org.uk, which will be at the heart of this project moving forward. The domain isn't live yet, but it will be shortly. It also means that my Substack email will be updated shortly to reflect the change; this will be a seamless transition that will not affect subscribers.

The domain acquisition was a deliberate move, given the full scope of my vision for the project. I want trust to be central to the project, and I don’t want any ambiguity about where Truth Matters operates from. For the record, this is absolutely NOT about interference in the US political process. It is an international commitment to preserving democracy and advocating for social justice worldwide. You don’t have to be an American to advocate for the preservation of Democracy in the States, no more than you don't need to be a US citizen to advocate for social justice, voting rights, women’s rights and gay rights. That’s what it means to be a responsible member of a global society.

It’s no secret that I’ve focused on assisting social activism in the US since 2019. I’ve done this because, as a UK citizen, I have witnessed the exportation of the sickening right-wing politics that has blighted the political discourse in America and now infects my shores, not to mention that it has crept into the lives of our European neighbours too. As an inhabitant of this globally interconnected world, I feel a deep sense of responsibility to uphold the values at the core of a fair and equitable society, and that’s at the heart of this ambitious proposition.

I’ve carried this vision with me for over three years. I haven't been able to deliver it not for lack of imagination, determination or ambition, but because it has proved cost-prohibitive, particularly to stay in control of its aims and ambition. Add to that, I don’t believe the tech stack was mature enough until now to make it happen. This week has convinced me that the technology is not only available now, but truly transformational. Take it from me: I’m not easy to impress when it comes to tech hype.

The key objective of this project is to challenge your thoughts on how information can be shared and presented without terrifying you. As a coder, database designer, and visual presentation specialist, I’m in a somewhat unique position: I not only understand the technical and visual aspects of delivering a dynamic information pipeline; I also have intimate knowledge of the political space that houses its intended audience.

It’s with this in mind. I can only drive this so far on a self-funding basis. Don’t worry, this is not me with my begging bowl out. I have allocated a budget from my own pocket to get this proof of concept into a deliverable that this community can get hands-on with at no cost. It will also have a free, public-facing home where anyone can explore it. That is not to say I’m not grateful for any incoming revenue over the coming weeks in the form of a paid subscription or clicks on the Buy Me a Drink link at the foot of this piece. What I’m simply saying is I’ve allocated a budget myself, with the support of the love of my life, to take it to a working model regardless. My bank manager is, as we speak, thinking I’ve lost my mind after a $1200 spend in the last 72 hours, but I can live with that.

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All this aside, the focus is on bringing my readers along on this journey of discovery and opening their minds to a new, optional way of viewing facts and the truth. It’s long been said that a lie can travel around the world before the truth can pull on its socks. This is because we are programmed to respond to propaganda while ignoring the ‘boring truth’ as it has become. That old adage of never letting a lie get in the way of a profitable narrative has never been truer than it is today.

Add to this the anxiety that comes from all the lies, the AI, and the threat it’s perceived to pose to the world. It’s easy to see how it becomes a challenge for some to embrace a technology that, despite the fears, CAN be used for the greater good. What I want to open your mind to is the ethical use of AI for the benefit of democracy. I know some will stop reading here and switch off. I understand and sympathise with that position. However, I would say: give me the opportunity to show you how it can be used to fight those weaponising it against us in service of their insatiable greed.

This entire project should be treated in the spirit of its intent. It’s a not-for-profit endeavour. A solution from the mind of a guy who believes we can, and should, do better. A gift, if you like, from me, dedicated to the preservation of democracy, social justice and all we hold dear. As I’ve said so many times, ‘You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink’; never has this statement been truer than with this project. I can afford to prove to you it works; beyond that, it can’t be scaled without help. Everyone who has bought me a drink or become a paid subscriber is now a welcome stakeholder in this vision, and that’s exactly how it should be. You have supported me in my journey to be heard. The very least I can do is say thank you.

I understand that in a world where profit is king, this project may seem crazy, but I promise you it’s not. I've spent the last 48 hours mapping out how it can help ANY country around the world facing a threat to democracy. Every political system is different, from the US to European proportional representation models, etc. Judicial systems and legislative branches differ, as do campaign finance rules and their democratic models. The system architecture is designed to let a political model define how the system manages data and information flow, depending on the country it’s used in.

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While the current proof of concept will be modelled on the US and UK systems, the architecture supports future geographical expansion. It’s a device-agnostic presentation layer designed as a scalable enterprise model. The aim is to avoid retrofitting components downstream. It’s designed to fit into a secure containerised modular architecture that can sit within an enterprise security model. Rest assured, once those trying to dismantle democracy see it in action, it WILL become a target.

Just as I am meticulous in my research, I have been meticulous in selecting the infrastructure and the tools to deliver the service. It may challenge some people’s thinking in a big way. All I would ask is that you approach the evaluation of the proposition with an open mind, because it WILL involve AI, and let me explain why. This is the type of project that would take a team of developers and system architects, as well as UI and design specialists. I don’t have that type of budget, I’m afraid. However, I am blessed to have each of these skills, with enough competence to deliver a usable proof-of-concept model. Needless to say, I do have lawyers working on protecting the IP as we speak, so the design itself will be protected. This is just to protect me from building it and someone stealing the model.

With that in mind, I want to make it clear that if democratic and advocacy organisations see value in the model, I am more than happy to offer an at-cost licensing model so they can leverage any value they see. I just want to protect it against malign use. As I’ve clearly stated, I can't guarantee success, but having mapped out the architecture and paid for the relevant technologies myself, that risk is on me, and I believe the risk-to-reward odds land in my favour.

So what exactly will it look like? I’ve just made a high-fidelity clone of my voice that even the love of my life could not distinguish from the real me in a blind test. Why? Because time is the enemy, and media is central to the project. I want my voice to read my words; I don’t want to have to spend hours recording and editing a narrative. In addition, I’m creating a gold-standard digital avatar by recording myself speaking as I normally would to the camera. These two simple steps mean I can produce pieces to camera from scripts I write (NOT created by AI). The digital assets will simply deliver my words with my voice and image. I will, of course, still do live-to-camera commentary as part of the project, but prioritisation is part of the delivery philosophy. In addition, the tech stack will enable, for example, Spanish speakers to hear me speak Spanish complete with lip sync. It’s about widening reach.

The common denominator in deploying these digital assets within the project is using gold-standard frontier models, with the only criterion being their ability to deliver the best available results. The focus will always be on delivering content written by me. Where AI tools are used, I will label them and clearly document their use in the mission statement of the website that delivers the content. In reality, it would be no different from me providing a script to an actor to present. Instead, I will have total control of all the variables, including the visual environment for, say, historical facts, etc. It’s a very expensive road to walk, but it reflects how seriously I take my responsibilities.

As I explained previously, Substack will be the gateway to this new innovative storytelling vehicle. The platform's limitations prevent embedding content directly in a piece, but the system architecture will link out to truthmatters.org.uk in a way that feels seamless. It’s hard to explain without seeing it, but it will let users use Substack as normal if they simply want to read a static article. Alternatively, they can choose an interactive version of the piece from within the article itself.

So what will interactivity look like? Before we discuss this, let’s talk about the Truth Matters website currently under construction. It will host not only the interactive content but also access to separate non-Substack pieces, stats, and information tools. It will also include a custom knowledge base of facts, stats, and official government information. This will be a carefully curated repository of information, presented in a simple-to-navigate interface. Last time, I mentioned a tool to query the relationship between an elected member’s voting record and their donors. I thought bringing the data together in a way that could generate a report for a specified member would be a challenge.

Turns out retrieving the data is really quite simple; it’s public data. The challenge isn't the data; it's designing an algorithm that accounts for the many variables that reflect the truth rather than the raw data. For example, it doesn’t necessarily follow that a member is seen as representing corporate interests over constituents' interests if he/she received a donation from a corporation based in his/her constituency. That’s just one instance that could deliver a false positive. Creating a traffic light system for allegiance to corporate money isn't impossible, but it is complex; I’m working on it. This is a good example of how getting it right can delay delivery of one element.

A key aim, centred on a member, is to create a dashboard that quickly analyses and identifies conflicts of interest, such as stock trading or lobbying funding. An efficient dashboard could provide a wealth of information to help voters better understand an elected representative's commitment to their constituents' interests. Another key feature of the architecture is analysing positions on critical committees, etc., to examine lobbying influence. This will take time to build out, but it’s all within the scope of the project.

I’ve also built a data pipeline to access YouTube content and play only a relevant segment, so if YouTube content is available to illustrate an argument, it can be easily segmented to deliver only the relevant segment of the video to the viewer. When it comes to searching the curated private knowledge base, this will be split into two database containers. A traditional SQL relationship-driven data container to analyse stats and numbers, and a vector database container to search the knowledge contained therein. The intention is to evolve this component into a fact-checking resource that can’t be poisoned, as the Israeli government has done by flooding the internet with its narrative and contaminating AI search aggregation.

The system knowledge base will contain only information I've fact-checked and added myself. This will, of course, take time to build, but results delivered will be clean and accurate. Will mistakes be made when ingesting data? I’m only human, but I fact-check LOTS of data as I write, so it should hold up fine.

So where does the interactivity come into play? There’s a whole companion platform that comes into play to deliver it seamlessly. It will provide a central video thread that, at various points, offers branching opportunities to explore arguments further; this might lead to another video, a chart, or some stats, and then one button click will transport the user back to where they branched off to continue the journey. Effectively, it will let you explore my arguments from different angles; it will even give you opportunities to comment as you go, and those comments can be analysed and delivered to me for a response where appropriate.

The Truth Matters site will also include ALL the pieces I’ve written on Substack in a fully searchable library; they’ll be policy- and issue-tagged for better navigation, with full-text search. The interface will allow translation for the benefit of, say, Spanish speakers. Again, this will be driven by the best available AI translation model. As above, the user will be able to comment in their preferred language; the system will summarise it and send it to me so I can respond. It would then be returned to the user in their language. In addition, when users are looking at a list of articles, they’ll be able to get a summary of the article, again in their preferred language.

The site will also feature work from other writers you may not have stumbled upon in Substack. You’ll be directed directly to the pieces where you can interact directly with the writer. This will also extend to Medium, where my work will soon also be available. Any recommendations will be purely on merit, not because money changed hands. This service will NOT extend to work behind paywalls. It’s time, methinks, to raise the visibility of undiscovered talent.

This is just scratching the surface of this ambitious project, but I hope you can see this is the result of three years of careful consideration. I believe it can become an essential resource for anyone who wants to read the truth and not listen to the fantasy bullshit we're fed every day. It has to be said, the technology used to build it is the real hero, because it makes the complexity of what it does seem simple. The interface will just work, as the tech stack does all the heavy lifting.

If you’re a believer and you do want to help, be my guest: become a paid subscriber or use the Buy Me a Drink link below. I’d be delighted to welcome you as a stakeholder in this bold ambition to make a difference. Nobody should feel obligated; just feel free to keep offering the much-needed moral support that makes every day an adventure.

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I know I said I would take a break from writing this week, but after having such a productive day yesterday, bringing together the pieces of my Truth Portal ( now rebranded as The Political Truth Portal), I got up at 5 am to write this before I started work. I wanted to share thoughts that have been suppressed for so long, as I struggled to find a more dynamic way to deliver my thoughts and opinions, without impacting those readers who simply want to read. Yesterday it was as if someone had switched on the light in a dark room, unlocked the door, and removed the chains of static literary constraints, opening the door to a new approach to delivering the truth.

I realise my enthusiasm can be irritating at times, but I have a strong track record of delivering good things when my enthusiasm levels peak. There’s much talk about Substack's evolution and those who bemoan a perceived shift away from long-form writing as it takes on a social media feel. While I have sympathy with the view that there’s something to be said for settling down to read a lengthy, engaging piece that challenges your thinking, while paying homage to the written word, the fact that you are reading it on a digital device certainly raises some questions. I firmly believe long-form writing should remain at the heart of Substack. That’s what I love about it, but I also embrace its willingness to deliver short-form content too.

We can argue about the feel of a ‘real’ book, especially a hardback, but spare a moment for the trees. It’s much the same argument about Apple Music and the feel and sound of a vinyl record. Or a Swiss timepiece and an Apple Watch. We will always admire the triumph of human endeavour and ingenuity, but time marches on with fresh endeavour, and so does Substack. We can debate if the social media elements are for the good, but if we’re honest, were the ‘good ole days’ the soft-focus Utopia we now dream them to be? I think not. History tells us we already built the foundations for a better tomorrow; we just decided to throw this hard-earned societal progress in the trash, in service of greed, power, and prejudice.

The same is true of AI; the term ‘AI slop’ has become the collective fashionable catchphrase to assert one’s credentials as a social activist warrior. For me, that’s a really lazy argument. AI is a transformational technology capable of delivering real, life-changing progress. It’s not the technology that's the problem; it’s the people in charge of it. I have practical experience living through the technological transformation of an industry sector. I spent a little over two decades in the music industry as a sound engineer, musician and arranger. I lived through the digital transformation of an industry so resistant to change that it had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the age of the digital studio.

It was said it would put musicians out of work and destroy creativity. It did the opposite. Do I like the sound of analogue tape? I love it. I loved being a highly skilled editor who was a wizard with a razor blade in the mastering room. However, I quickly realised that looking at a non-destructive soundwave and correcting errors on a computer is much faster than scrabbling around on the cutting room floor for a guitar solo that can never be recreated. Digital technology adoption in music democratised it and let kids and bands record albums in bedrooms and garages, not the million-dollar studios once reserved for corporate-owned record labels. I remember the days when a label would sign a band purely to stop another label from doing so. They would then park the band, effectively removing them from the market to spite competitors.

AI is going nowhere; it’s an unstoppable transformative force. The technology isn't the problem; it's the non-existent regulation that’s the issue. For all the hype, it’s probably the most inefficient technology created in its current iteration. Yes, it's very powerful, but it’s dumb in human terms. Yes, you heard that right. Every time you ask it a question, it has to mine the same data over and over again because it can’t hold context from related previous questions. It’s like you having to learn maths again every time you want to add two numbers together. Imagine the billions of requests it has to process from scratch, and that’s why it requires so much energy.

While the model developers are addressing this, certainly in China, it highlights the fact that there remains a lot of work to do, and until the problem is solved, it will guzzle energy and water and present a severe threat to the environment. The challenge is that nobody can slow things down for fear of losing an imaginary race.

In a rare moment, the US is really unable to dominate the space. Yes, it might have all the key frontier models, but it has an Achilles' heel: the shareholder class. China has no such impediment. They don’t mind they’re a step behind; they’re just watching and waiting for their moment, much the same as Apple has done for years. You don’t have to be the first to win. The US works on the theory that my cock is bigger than yours, but ask any woman, and she’ll tell you it’s not how big it is; it’s how you use it that delivers. As for this ludicrous assertion that China has distilled training data from US models, would that be the data that the US models have stolen from authors and writers across the centuries? Give me a break.

Trump has bet the house on winning a race I believe he’s already lost; he just doesn’t know it yet, that’s why he won’t sanction a pause. The stock market is already being propped up by tech bros' lies. If that illusion evaporates, then what? The resistance to AI in the US does not exist in China, not because it’s a repressive society, but because the government has had the foresight to integrate it carefully into society and, in particular, into the automated manufacturing behemoth that drives the wealth of the nation. As a result, it has helped deliver a $1 trillion trade surplus, which, by default, benefits the Chinese population. The US may think AI integration into its military puts it ahead of the game. Dream on; the Chinese lead in AI and robotics integration is just quietly preparing the ground to deal with any US threat.

That’s the problem with the US believing its own propaganda. Trump might advocate for the age-old Republican mantra of ‘keep ‘em dumb and poor ’; that’s why the US has an illiteracy rate of 21% and 54% of the population has the literacy of a sixth grader. Meanwhile, China has the most dynamic, highly educated pipeline of graduates in the world, educated specifically to meet the needs of China’s ten-year and 25-year plans.

Trump has proved the US military to be totally ineffective against the asymmetric response from Iran. It’s exposed its dangerously low stocks of critical missiles, of which, by the way, China has not needed to fire a single one, other than for testing. His incompetence and the greed of shareholders and CEOs of corporations that make up the US Military-Industrial Complex, have been skimming off the top for decades. Their greed has exposed dangerous vulnerabilities in US military readiness to fight on more than one front against a military of the scale of China. Trump has exposed America all by himself; he’s burst the invincibility perception that has served the US so well for the past half century.

One thing that not devoting the day to researching the nonsense being spewed by Trump and his acolytes does is help me take stock and reassure myself I’m not going insane. It’s easy to see how the tsunami of disinformation and brute-force attacks on the truth creates this persistent anxiety that has beset so many Americans. I can see how easy it would be to retreat into political hibernation until the elections are over, because this perpetual state of anxiety and fear (which is by design) can be so mentally debilitating.

When I wrote last week about my vision for what I provisionally called The Truth Portal, I was coming from a place where I’d been trying for the best part of three years in some form or another to bring it to life, but I simply couldn’t get the support I needed to make it happen. If I’m honest, I was almost ready to give up. Try as I might, I couldn't get it over the line because it proved too costly. As a result, I’ve been going around in circles for most of the last six months, trying to reshape the proposition. Trying to find the right technical tools to attempt to deliver a more cost-effective version, if only to prove to myself that there’s a better, more engaging way to deliver fact-driven commentary in the crazy world this regime is forcing us to inhabit.

I’ve always believed Substack was a unique blessing sent my way. It’s allowed me to build a community while indulging my passion for writing, in the hope my voice might be heard on the important issues of our time. While I appreciate that I am one among many, those who know me will tell you I’ve spent my life as a solution provider, not only in business, but in life. Over the years, I've learned that you can make a difference if you’re prepared to think outside the box. After 18 months of writing here at least 5 times a week, I can safely say: not one piece I’ve written has been filler or clickbait. My work comes from a passion to share the political truth. It’s an extension of who I am as a person; what you see is what you get: unvarnished facts delivered without fear or favour.

I never get comfortable with any journey I embark on, and this is no exception. I’m blessed to have retired, so I have time in abundance, along with the knowledge of decades spent attending the University of Life. I don’t come to this challenge with a fistful of university degrees or bags of money, just a wealth of lived experience that tells me WE CAN DO BETTER. I’ve always been an innovator, not an imitator. I don’t have a computer science degree; coding has no boundaries for me because I simply haven’t been taught what they are. A lifetime of experience has taught me that once you have enough money to never worry about paying the bills, can take a nice holiday or two, and look after your family, everything else becomes an opportunity to help deliver a better world for future generations. After all, there are no pockets in a shroud.

To some, this might seem somewhat old-fashioned and twee, but it’s the very foundation on which I have built my life, and I make no apologies for it. What I have learned on my journey inside the toxic world of US politics is that it’s the poster child for greed, corruption and everything that’s wrong with bought-and-paid-for representation. The line between Democrats and Republicans has slowly converged. I’m not talking about MAGA, nor am I talking about the far left. I’m talking about the corporate merger between the centre-left and the centre-right. They have come to represent EXACTLY the same thing.

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It’s a testament to the power of corporate America that elected representatives in the legislature have merely become servants of the shareholder class, not those who elected them. Trump is just a symptom of a corporate control that has escaped the lab and infected a cult. Power has long been addictive, and politics has slowly become the delivery vehicle for the narcotics of greed and corruption. Trump’s foreign policy is just an international extension of domestic corporate price gouging and wealth transfer. Redistribution that has become what I like to call ‘the reverse Robin Hood’ factor: wealth is stolen from the poor to hand to the rich.

The reason that this monstrous behaviour has been normalised is through toxic messaging that has infected half the population to believe that the problem for their declining prosperity is down to black and brown faces. Down to the poor and the disabled, people who are a drag on what could be their increased wealth if the country could just be rid of the baggage they create. Hitler almost delivered on that objective with his Aryan race theory. A theory Trump appears to have fully embraced with unconscionable ease and vigour.

He’s been able to dismantle political norms and guardrails because he’s dared to ignore them while using social media to create a permissive environment to radicalise the gullible. There’s no question he has achieved what many believed impossible: creating a reality-distortion field that continues to reshape cultural norms. His weaponisation of fear, division, and hate is frighteningly nothing short of remarkable; it certainly caught me off guard for sure. He’s defined equality, fairness and moral decency as weakness in his new world of social Darwinism. We now live in a world where the simple common denominator is MONEY. He has identified and exploited the human vulnerability to a ‘jam tomorrow’ narrative in which he promises wealth is just around the corner. A world where, in reality, the wealth never arrives and, around the corner, appear the gates to the economic slavery camp. A camp that, it seems, millions of Americans march towards with a skip in their step and a head full of ignorance.

In PART TWO, I’ll walk you through what I believe are the first steps to breaking the message fever that has brought America to its knees. I’ll break down how I believe messaging can be transformed so it stops becoming the wallpaper nobody notices anymore. I believe I’m in the foothills of a solution that challenges traditional thinking. The great thing about human-based ideas is that they stand out in an increasingly AI-dominated world. It’s time to embrace AI to do what it’s good at- heavy information analysis- to help deliver a very human-driven solution. A solution that will not replace my writing, but help me bring it to life in a way you've not likely experienced before.

I’m no longer worried about whether I can deliver. After a detailed analysis of the tools available to meet the objectives, I’m convinced we can bring it to life together. More importantly, by carefully adjusting the data pipeline and media components, I believe I can meet the objectives without compromising function and deliver a cost-effective proof of concept you can try for yourself. Then it can be refined based on your feedback.

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Nothing has changed, so never forget ‘Yes we can’ because now it’s time to say ‘Now we will’. Corruption, greed, and division don’t have to be the norm. There is a better way, a fairer way, a way that allows Americans to participate in that long-held ambition to live the American dream currently suspended by a criminal malignant narcissist and adjudicated rapist.

YOU have the power in your hands on November 3rd to reignite the flame that saw the US, for all its faults and failings, lead the world through cooperation and a bold ambition to deliver a more prosperous and peaceful world.

While some would argue the US has never delivered anything that wasn't in its own interests, I would say never let good be the enemy of perfection.

There is no question in my mind that it took 8 years of a black man in the White House to flush out the racist infestation that has blighted the American experiment since long before slavery. Barack Obama’s tenure as the most powerful man on the planet was a Pied Piper call to all that’s wrong in a society broken by the greed and racist hate of a powerful few who have used lies and deception to convince the masses that brown and black faces are the source of their declining wealth and the country’s problems. IT’S A BARE-FACED LIE.

Far-right ideologues have waged the most successful decades-long propaganda campaign in American history. A campaign that has seen trillions of dollars transferred from hard-working Americans to those at the top of the economic food chain.

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On November 3rd, for one day only, the Amazon driver, the gig worker, the teacher, the care worker and the stay-at-home mom have as much power as the billionaire and the CEO. No matter how far this regime is prepared to go to prevent you from exercising your constitutional right to vote, that founding document declares that equality exists for that fraction of a second when you cast your ballot. A moment in which you have an equal opportunity to exercise your legal right to be heard.

Don’t be confused by efforts to deny you that potentially transformative moment. See it for what it is: meaningless noise. Take every measure to ensure they don’t deny you your moment in the sun. Make a plan to vote. Check your voter registration status every day. It takes just a minute of your day. Just go to

https://vote.gov

You have the power to end this tyranny; you just have to keep your eye on the prize, and liberation is just around the corner. It’s time to stop being the Turkey voting for Thanksgiving and become the American voting for a better tomorrow. The power is in YOUR hands; don’t get the yips. JUST DO IT

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There has been much said about Ursula von der Leyen’s state of the European Union Address and the embrace of Mark Carney with an invitation to become the first associate member of the European Union. I have included his full speech below:

This is yet another outstanding speech that absolutely captures the mood of the moment. It speaks to his ascent to a true global statesman, but much more than that, it speaks to who he is as a person, and Canada should be very proud.

It’s important to understand that this is, for now, a symbolic message of solidarity, recognising the joint intention of middle powers not to bend the knee to the mob boss running his international extortion gang from the White House. Europe and Canada share a belief that they are stronger together in the face of attacks from a geopolitical bully and his persistent attempts at coercion.

Mark Carney is smart; his economic pedigree attests to his deep understanding of the geopolitical and economic machinery of government. That puts him in pole position to navigate the global threat Trump presents. His calm, polite demeanour and charm are important weapons in his expansive armoury. He’s the quiet but never to be underestimated figure a damaged world is comfortable gathering around for direction, and this is absolutely vital in this moment.

After the EU meeting, he arrived in the UK because he knows the UK is also a key component of this collective attempt to redefine future alliances and trade. There is a recognition of the need to create new alliances while deepening existing ones to create a system resilient to threats from an adversarial US. In that respect, he will find an advocate and friend in Andy Burman, a true ally and staunch believer in Carney’s vision of a world where gunboat diplomacy does not rule.

We are in the early stages of a world waking up to the threat of a nation once seen as a friend. A friend that has lost its way thanks to a criminal malignant narcissist in the Oval Office. Nobody is writing the US off, but we are moving into a new era where trust isn't a given; it has to be earned. When Trump is in jail or attempting to relive his fantasy through his ludicrous Bored of Peace (yes, I deliberately spelled it wrong), we can hopefully move on.

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Trust will sadly never be given unconditionally again because of what Trump has done, but Mark Carney represents a world that wants to move on and redefine partnerships around trust, common values, and objectives. A world that can deliver for the greater good.

In the darkness, deliberate uncertainty, and perpetual anxiety that Trump has delivered to the world, the Canadian Prime Minister is a refreshing beacon of common sense, empathy, and competence that will help lead the way to a better tomorrow. I couldn't be happier for the great people of Canada that it’s their guy taking such a lead role in the birth of a better future.

Trump is a political dead man walking. Soon the threats of crimes against the English language, grammar, and joined-up sentences will be no more. We won’t have to listen to his insufferable blathering and TACO threats. World leaders won’t have to watch the global village idiot attempting to convince them nobody knows stuff better than him, as he farts and falls to sleep in meetings. He’ll soon be just a skid mark in history, a failed legend in his own lunch hour, providing rich pickings for comedy film-makers for generations to come.

It will likely take a generation to repair the catastrophic damage he’s caused, but in the meantime I believe a new era will deliver a reenergised set of middle power leaders to steer us back to delivering for the common good.

Yes, I’m optimistic because I believe in the mighty power of the human spirit. We have overcome adversity many times in history, and we WILL prevail again. It’s now in the hands of the American people to send a message to the world in November that they can read the room. It’s time to return the soul of America back into the arms of ‘We the people’. I have every faith they have the strength, integrity and moral fortitude to deliver that age-old message, ‘We shall overcome’.

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That’s four pieces in 2 days; I'm exhausted. Have a great weekend

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Let's grab a virtual coffee together; I have more to share about my plans for the week ahead. This is just a supplementary post; my main piece for today will arrive at the usual time.

Today marks an important moment in my journey here on Substack; I’ve spent the best part of 18 months sharing my thoughts, my worries and a little of who I am as a person. I now have a little over 550 pieces in my archive, covering a wide range of subjects from AI to China to economics and the daily chaos of US politics. It warms my soul to see so many people still here who have been on this journey with me from the beginning. Equally, it’s been great to see so many new truth seekers joining us along the way.

I am blessed, but some might say cursed, to have so many thoughts in my head when it comes to politics and social justice. I feel better educated for the 18 months I have been creating and sharing long-form content here, but more than that, I feel a sense of connection to those who generously give of their time to read and engage with what I do.

Those who know me will tell you I constantly strive to become better at what I do and to find better ways to communicate my thoughts. I know this platform has changed significantly since I’ve been here, as more people find their writing feet and more established journalists arrive on these shores. As I have stated previously, this has become my happy place, somewhere I’ve found a new sense of purpose, but above all it’s given me a voice to express my thoughts and fears.

In my piece earlier in the week:

I spoke of my plans to finally get a long-held ambition off the ground: delivering what I call the Truth Portal. If you are unfamiliar, you can read the piece above to understand my plans. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been fine-tuning an action plan to finally get it over the line, and while there are never any guarantees with this type of project, I have now finally gathered together all the pieces to deliver a proof-of-concept example to show exactly how I envision a more dynamic way of presenting critical information to support good decision-making when it comes to political engagement and voting.

One thing I am known for is telling it like it is, without fear or favour. As an outsider looking in, I believe I can bring objectivity that may be missing for those buried in the chaos this regime has created. If it’s one thing I’ve learned over the last 10 months trying to give birth to my idea, technology is moving at an astronomical pace. But that pace has also brought with it dynamic opportunities at a manageable cost.

As I previously mentioned, I will NOT be writing my usual daily pieces next week as I work on the first interactive article. It will be a hybrid version of my usual Substack, but with dynamic content that lets you navigate the piece based on how inquisitive you are about the different thoughts I share. It brings together smart technology that combines reading and visual content, along with other cool features that, if you choose to use them, offer a very different experience from a static read.

That said, those who prefer to read the normal article will see no change. I’m blessed to have the technical and visual design experience to do this myself during this proof-of-concept phase. This massively reduces cost, with the only trade-off being sleep; I won’t be getting much of that for sure. I’ve already invested in expanding my video production facilities and integrated the relevant industry-standard production software into the production pipeline. As a musician and former producer, I can also create and edit music and audio, so this will be a chance to bring all my skill sets together in one project, which is very exciting.

When you finally get to test-drive my idea shortly, paid subscribers and small-dollar supporters who have bought me a drink, so to speak, over the months will have a chance to see what their subscriptions and donations have helped create. I’m convinced you will be proud of what your investment has helped deliver. I had an amazing meeting this morning with the technology platform provider that will deliver the interactive elements, and I go into this weekend feeling nervous but very excited about what I hope will emerge, as I bring together a whole suite of technologies.

In a world of short attention spans and the imperative for instant gratification, I believe writers and commentators in the political space have to become more creative to reach a wider audience, which has never been as important as it is in this moment. The great thing about this project is that there is no profit objective. It’s not designed to be a cash cow. It’s simply about sharing the facts and the unvarnished truth using cutting-edge technology to deliver it. Every paid subscription and small dollar donation will be reinvested into the project, as has been the case to date. I’ve already funded the production facility and media licensing costs, so Substack revenue can help fund the new technology elements and cover hosting costs for the interactive platform.

I want to offer readers of my work a chance to join me on this exciting journey. I want to know what you think as I slowly roll out this initial proof of concept, because I want to better understand what works and what doesn’t. What’s effective and what’s not. Don’t get me wrong, I’m driving the bus, and I don’t intend to fall into the trap of design by committee; therein lies the road to failure, and we are not going there. It’s about me being able to listen to the thoughts of those who use it.

Let me take a moment to say: if you simply want to keep reading my Substack pieces, NOTHING will change. I will continue to produce the current volume of content, and you are under no obligation to interact with any media branches that extend beyond the piece. The technology extensions are completely optional, and the content will, as always, remain FREE for ALL Truth Matters readers. This is about extending reach, not limiting it. NOBODY should ever have to pay for the truth. It will bring with it shiny new branding and the long-promised podcast. The aim is to extend the brand across social media, with Substack being the headquarters.

It’s all about reimagining the delivery of my work and expanding reach, not for profit, but for the greater good. Old-fashioned, though that may sound in this upside-down world, I’m not here for the money; I want to use any success to provide opportunities for, amongst others, the many talented writers who don’t have the opportunity for their voice to be heard, not to mention the talented creators out there. Any writers featured will get full attribution, and their work will be directly linked to their Substack for subscription and revenue purposes; I’m not in this to take a cut; I’m simply here to deliver the truth. That’s it, that’s the aim. Anything else is gravy.

I want to be very clear: this is a totally experimental project, and there are no guarantees of success. However, I can promise an open door for questions and hands-on experience to assess its viability for yourself. Once I have the first article ready to drop, I’ll do a Substack live to open the floor for a Q&A and give a sneak preview of what's coming. This initial phase will be purely a working proof-of-concept model. The next phase would be to scale it, and that will require funding. At this point, the game changes. I believe the only way it could work is to crowdfund the scaling, because the big danger is that an investor comes along and it becomes vulnerable to outside agendas. Anyway, that’s way downstream and first steps first.

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In an ideal world, everything would go to plan, though experience has taught me there is no guarantee. I believe I could deliver a basic scaled model of the technology by the time the next Congress is seated, allowing it to operate for a full election cycle.

In my opinion, the key to success is data. I want the platform to deliver tools that seamlessly integrate with my newsletter, while also allowing voters to assess how well their elected representative represents their interests. A wealth of publicly available data can cross-reference voting records with corporate donations and stated policy positions. A constituent should be able to select a policy and see a simple traffic-light ranking showing where they land on supporting corporate interests. Given this, data in the register of interests and voting record data is open source; once the data pipeline is established, it requires little maintenance.

There’s no reason a digital dashboard can’t be created to effectively deliver a real-time representation health check of any federally elected representative, either as a whole or in specific policy areas. Of course, these are downstream options, but it would not take long to establish the data pipelines to deliver such a dashboard, and I have already done the provisional groundwork.

These are indeed challenging times, and if we are to fight the tyranny currently blighting our lives, we have to take a collective approach, and I believe this is a first step in an effort that could deliver. How about we take this journey together and just see what happens?

My work begins this evening, and I won’t be writing my daily pieces next week while I get the foundational blocks in place, so I hope you will bear with me. I'll post notes as usual, but I won’t have time to write articles. Normal service on that front will resume on Monday, September 28th. If time allows, however, I may provide short updates as the week progresses.

I’ll drop another important, unrelated post in a couple of hours, which will effectively be my piece for today, and I’m going to try hard to drop the final piece of my series on the Palestinian Question late tomorrow evening or possibly Sunday, depending on how tomorrow goes.

There’s lots of work to be done in the week ahead, but it’s one of those jobs that is a pleasure, not a chore. Sleep will be the enemy of progress as it always is; I’ve been on this journey many times with software development.

Thank you for taking the time to read my proposition. As they always say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and that’s on me to deliver.

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If you want to support my work but can’t commit to a paid subscription, you can now make a one-off donation by clicking the image below. Your donation helps cover research costs and keeps this independent reporting free for all.

Let me begin by thanking those who pointed out that the Haaretz article I featured in yesterday’s piece reached its free-sharing limit. I wasn't aware of such a limit; we live and learn. However, if you want to read a stripped-down version of the same piece, it was covered in The New Yorker by Ruth Margalit on September 8th, and you can view that here free of charge, I think.

I remain surprised by how little people understand about the facts surrounding what has become one of the most contentious issues of our time. I’ve written about this subject long before October 7 2023, and I knew on that fateful day how Israel would respond, or so I thought. Never in my wildest dreams did I think Western governments would provide a free pass to murder so many innocent women and children with total impunity. I really should have known better.

Throughout history, there have been many senseless, violent landmark events, and indeed the Jews have had more than their fair share of persecution, culminating in the extermination of six million under the Third Reich. What happened to them, and the five million Poles, Slavs, Russian prisoners of war, political enemies and the disabled in the concentration camps, must never be forgotten. However, if you want an insight into how we have arrived at where we are, the key is to ask why, in the narrative of the Holocaust, everyone but the Jews disappeared from the story. There’s a very subtle message in that reality.

What the Nazis did to the Jews is beyond evil. There can be no excuse, and it is absolutely right and fitting that we never forget. This is the very reason the United Nations was created with the aim of keeping the world safe from the ‘‘scourge of war’. Its noble aim was to replace the League of Nations and provide preemptive solutions to prevent further global conflict. The UN ushered in human rights laws under the Global Impact of the Holocaust Framework.

In 1948, the UN introduced rules to punish the crime of genocide and protect basic human rights for all individuals. Ironic, given this was the year of the Nakba, when 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their land to create Israel. An event that saw 13,000 - 15,000 Palestinians murdered by Zionist militia led by men who would subsequently lead the new Israeli government.

These noble UN goals eventually led to the 1998 Rome Statute and the creation of the International Criminal Court to prosecute those guilty of war crimes. In its own words:

It must be said that both the UN and the ICC were created with the best intentions, but without considering the human condition. We can argue about the effectiveness of both organisations until the cows come home, but such entities can only function as they should through cooperation and compromise. Unfortunately, the world order has long dictated that the largest predators in the global jungle have the loudest say, and in the case of the UN Security Council, the veto has been the single biggest impediment to meaningful progress in areas like the Middle East and the protection of human rights.

The same dynamic applies with the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). 139 countries are signatories to the Rome Statute, while 29 have declined, among them Russia, the United States, Iran, and Israel. The US had originally agreed to be a signatory, but President Clinton walked away. The common denominator for both the treaty and seats on the UN Security Council is the US and Russia. In short, the US and Russia have long placed themselves outside the framework of accountability under international law and used their veto to repeatedly thwart actions for the greater good.

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No more has the US been more effective with its UN veto power than to protect Israel repeatedly when it comes to any attempt to hold them accountable, especially when it comes to illegal settler developments and violence in the occupied territories; more recently, its patronage has been sickeningly evident in Gaza, where the US has, time and time again, shielded Israel from accusations of UN-declared war crimes. If you add to that the totally unjustified sanctions applied to officers of the International Criminal Court, the US have acted in an unconscionable manner.

History tells us the US is happy to agree with the ICC when it comes to Russian war crimes, but dismissive of it when it comes to war crimes committed by Israel, in which it is itself judged to be complicit. Its geopolitical domination of global affairs has long placed it above the law, yet it’s more than happy to condemn others who might affect its foreign interests. This is why Israel’s relationship with the US is so mission-critical. For far too long, the US has provided a shield protecting it from accountability for its actions.

With the above in mind, it’s worth looking at how Israeli influence has grown within US foreign policy. AIPAC has been around since the 1950s, when it began life as the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs. At the time, the US Arab relationship was vital because of Oil, so Israel had little to no leverage. It was not until 1962, when JFK supplied the MIM-23 HAWK anti-aircraft system to Israel, that the first meaningful geopolitical relationship began. Kennedy made this pragmatic move to address the balance of Soviet influence at the time, as the Soviets were supplying new MiG jets to the Egyptian air force. These were dangerous Cold War times; it was the year that saw the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Kennedy was focused on preventing communist expansion, especially in the Middle East.

That said, the advent of AIPAC's real leverage didn't emerge until 1967 and the Six-Day War. At a time of heightened tension between the Soviet Union and the US, the decisive victory by Israel convinced US policymakers that seeing Israel as a key US ally in the region was critical to advancing US foreign policy. From this perceived military imperative was born Qualitative Military Edge (QME); it was a policy that provided:

If you’d like to dig into the details of QME, I recommend this piece by Josh Paul from December 23rd 2025, written for Responsible Statecraft. For context, US law never formally defined QME until the Naval Vessels Transfer Act of 2008, in which it was defined as:

Returning to the 1960s, AIPAC still didn't have the leverage Israel sought, but it had a foot in the door and was fully aware of how critical a US regional ally it was.

While QME signalled progress, it took until the 1980s for it to begin developing the power it has in US politics to this day. There is no question Benjamin Netanyahu was a key architect of the leverage gained. He played a pivotal role in their contemporary rise within the US political establishment. He served throughout the 1980s as Israeli Deputy Chief of Mission in Washington. By the end of the 80’s, AIPAC had worked relentlessly to buy power and influence to the point that, by the end of the decade, they’d achieved near-consensus bipartisan support, having perfected strategies to reward supportive lawmakers while mounting highly effective primary campaigns against those who refused to support them. They have since, effectively, become the lobby group few are prepared to cross or turn down an advance from.

There’s no question that AIPAC have used loopholes in the law to avoid being forced to register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), as one would expect. To this day, they appear to be a protected species when it comes to lobbying groups, but that’s what happens when the mob has lawmakers on its payroll.

The truth of the matter is that the relationship between the US and Israel became a critical strategic alliance during the Cold War, and Netanyahu became the tic that fed on the alliance and delivered the ever-expanding Israeli political infestation that is now the modern-day Israeli lobby. A lobby that is in the midst of what looks likely to become its finest hour with the proposed integration of Israeli military and surveillance technology into the US military-industrial complex. Netanyahu has spiked the drink of US ambition with Rohypnol; when America wakes up, it will be too late. Netanyahu will have a smile on his face, and the US will have no escape hatch from its abuser.

If the NDAA passes in full, it would mark the successful penetration of the US military's inner sanctum and, with it, the most audacious infiltration of the US security framework in history. A nation of 10 million people operating an apartheid state would be in a position to operate at the very heart of the alleged most powerful nation on earth. Then the real leverage begins; it’s the stuff of Hollywood movies. Israel has arguably the most sophisticated and effective intelligence apparatus on earth, and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are, of their own volition, under Section 219 of the National Defence Authorisation Act FY 2027, inviting a tiger to dinner without considering they are about to be on the AIPAC menu, not reading it, if the Senate greenlights the bill.

It’s imperative when discussing Israel’s behaviour to understand that it’s like the irresponsible rich dad’s son. Time and time again, it misbehaves and daddy bails it out. In 2008, the US codified QME, and in 2016, under President Obama, a 10-year Memorandum of Understanding was signed to provide guaranteed military aid of $3.8 billion each year from 2019 to 2028, a total of $38 billion, making Israel the largest recipient of US military aid. In addition, since October 2023, the US has provided about $17 billion in additional military aid to support its errant child’s genocidal ambitions.

In short, AIPAC has quite literally taken US Middle East policy hostage and deliberately dragged a gullible idiot into a war with Iran as part of Netanyahu’s long-held ambition to deliver on the ‘Greater Israel Project’. At what point will the US wake up to the fact that it is in a toxic relationship with a manipulative abuser? Until they do, American tax dollars will continue to pay for the genocidal adventures of a dangerous maniac while hard-working Americans pick up the tab. It’s my belief that this cancer needs to be excised at the root, because the level of metasticisation is out of control.

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I had hoped to wrap this up today, but alas it will take one more episode, so apologies for that.

If you want to support my work but can’t commit to a paid subscription, you can now make a one-off donation by clicking the image below. Your donation helps cover research costs and keeps this independent reporting free for all.

PREFACE | PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR | PART FIVE | PART SIX

The true evil of this story is NOT the senseless catastrophic loss of life; the real untold story is that Netanyahu was told the attacks on October 7 were imminent, and the man who had sanctioned funding for Hamas to the tune of $1.3 billion made a calculated and, in my view, cynical decision to do nothing. I believe he did this because he saw it as an opportunity to avoid accountability for his own alleged corruption, while achieving a long-held dream to rid Gaza of the Palestinians. He believed the only way he could survive politically was to go on a military rampage, killing as many Palestinians as was required to hold onto power. His arrogance led him to believe he would never face accountability.

If you take nothing away from this extensive, detailed series of pieces, you should at very least read this Haraatz article, which I’ve made sure isn’t behind a paywall. It goes to the very heart of what Netanyahu knew and when. For the sake of clarity, Haraatz is the oldest newspaper published in Israel. It is printed in both Hebrew and English. It’s widely regarded as Israel’s “newspaper of record,” recognised for serious investigative reporting and in-depth analysis. As a subscriber, I would liken its reporting to The Guardian’s.

I highly recommend reading the full piece because it brings together so many threads, and my thanks go to the authors, Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, both highly respected journalists. The title of the article was :

Revealed: Netanyahu Received an Explicit Warning Days Before Oct. 7. He Didn’t Brief Israel’s Security Chiefs

It is an expansive and highly detailed piece which outlines exactly what Netanyahu was told, when and what he did, or rather did not do:

The burning question surrounding this deadly affair is: why did Netanyahu choose not to act? It’s important to understand the background to what was going on between Israel and Hamas in the months before the attack. At that time, with the approval of Netanyahu, the Israelis were in talks with Hamas regarding a temporary truce with a view to arriving at a sustainable agreement in the Gaza Strip. This involved the release of abducted soldier Gilad Shalit, among other demands. Netanyahu was dangling a carrot.

As reported:

The talks initially focused on a gradual lifting of the blockade on Gaza and increasing the shipments of food and raw materials entering the Strip. A new idea was also raised: establishing trade zones along the Strip’s borders with Israel and Egypt, which would offer thousands of jobs to unemployed Gazans. The Egyptians were also willing to allow “safe passage” for residents of the Strip on their way to the airport in Sharm el-Sheikh – which would provide them with an opening to the world. The proposal to supply natural gas to the Strip from the Gaza Marine natural gas field, discovered in 2000 off the enclave’s coast, was also put forward. The proposal was called “G 4 G,” Gas for Gaza.

In short, all parties seemed set on reaching an agreement, but Netanyahu started slow-walking the process, which ultimately left Sinwar increasingly frustrated. It seems likely that political considerations got in the way, and Netanyahu was fearful of what might happen if he did deal with Hamas; how would the right-wing political thugs in his cabinet react? To be very clear, Hamas was prepared to do a deal in return for the release of Israeli prisoners and the bodies of soldiers held in Gaza.

The piece notes:

In September 2023, just before the die was cast, Sinwar [Hamas leader, later assasinated by Israel] arranged a private meeting with Fatah official Coal Eyes. “Tell the Israelis that if they don’t make progress, I’m preparing a huge surprise for them,” he declared emphatically. Here, he dropped a key word for the first time, one that should have triggered red flags: “Tell them to expect a ‘zilzal,’ an earthquake.”

There is no question that Netanyahu and his security advisors failed to take the threat seriously. Despite advice to the contrary, Netanyahu simply reinforced his position: “Prepare plans for me, and I will consider them.” Officials noted that this was his way of postponing action. The Emirati leader, fearing Netanyahu was not taking the threat seriously, spoke directly on the phone with him for 45 minutes

The reporting continues:

Seeing that Israel was not responding to the clear warning conveyed to the Shin Bet, the Emirati ruler decided to hold a conversation with Israel’s prime minister himself. Thus, that 45-minute conversation took place at the end of September, in which he conveyed an explicit warning to Netanyahu about Sinwar’s intentions.

The bottom line was that, despite all the warnings, one of which also came from Egyptian intelligence chief, Gen. Abbas Kamel, Netanyahu failed to act and additionally failed to share the full extent of the warnings with Shin Bet, to which later a senior official said:

“If we had known about the warnings ... it could have changed our entire assessment picture.”

The rest is history, but that is not the end of the story. After the attack and the subsequent kidnapping of the hostages, this is where it gets more chilling:

When the Israeli security cabinet convened with some delay, at 2:45 P.M., there was still no clear idea of the number of people abducted. “Currently there are 14 soldiers and 28 civilian hostages, and dozens more with whom there has been no contact,” the head of the Shin Bet said. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich demanded that the captives be ignored, stating that “it’s impossible to operate with such a mindset.”

From the outset, it appears the hostages were nowhere near the top of the priority list, and I believe it stayed that way. They were, in my view, an impediment to the opportunity that had presented itself to send a message and make Gaza uninhabitable in order to rid it of Palestinians. This was reinforced when, that same evening, Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani called Mossad Director David Barnea to say:

“I just finished a conversation with Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh and his deputy Khalil al-Hayya, who had only recently arrived in Doha,” he briefed Barnea. “I explicitly threatened them that if all civilian hostages are not released immediately, I will personally order their expulsion from Qatar. I would like to inform you that Hamas is ready to release all civilians now, and we are prepared to mediate.”

In summary, by the evening of October 7th, there was an offer on the table from Hamas to release ALL the hostages, and the Israelis refused to negotiate. Once again, I believe that this was because they knew exactly what they were going to do, and if the hostages were released, that would punch a big hole in their genocidal plans.

I want to make it clear that this reporting is NOT mine; all credit goes to Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval. I framed it in the context of my overall commentary to provide a broad summary for the time-poor. I stress once again: you really should read the entire piece.

Millions of ordinary citizens have fought hard for this shift in public opinion, taking to the streets and having the guts to say what their governments would not. The level of power leveraged by so many so-called democratic governments has been breathtaking; people have lost jobs, even gone to prison for simply speaking the truth, and that will forever be a stain on those complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity. The truth is, the people were right, just as they were about weapons of mass destruction and the current failed war in Iran. No sign of political moral decay is clearer than a government that refuses to listen to its people.

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In the final piece tomorrow, I’ll do a roundup and introduce you to a wider picture of concern. I’ll also answer some of the questions raised in the comments over this series. I usually revisit the topic every six months in the hope that things will have improved, only to find they have got worse; it is truly soul-destroying to witness. I have no idea where we will be next time, but I don’t have high hopes.

If you want to support my work but can’t commit to a paid subscription, you can now make a one-off donation by clicking the image below. Your donation helps cover research costs and keeps this independent reporting free for all.

PREFACE | PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR | PART FIVE

If it’s one thing we have learned from the Israeli government’s arrogant belief that they can do as they please, it is that no government dares to challenge them; allies will only comply until public sentiment changes. We are no longer talking about a minor shift with the US; we are looking at a literal about-face in public opinion, yet the US government is steadfast. In contrast, the UK, Canada, and European countries seem to have got the memo: recent Pew Research shows that 60% of Americans now view Israel in a negative light. That number rises to 75% among young adults aged 18-29.

Keep one important distinction in mind. The large disapproval numbers are NOT coming from Jews who live in Israel, where we see a totally different picture. Let me begin by saying it’s not surprising that Israeli Jews overwhelmingly support the actions of the US military in Gaza (between 76% and 84%). What may seem even more incredible to many living outside Israel is that, to quote the BBC:

78% of Jewish Israelis believe that the army makes a substantial effort to avoid causing unnecessary suffering to Palestinian civilians in Gaza

If you’re a fair-minded person, with your finger on the pulse of events even during the so-called cease-fire, you could only conclude that the Israeli people are the victims of their own country’s propaganda, to the point where they have become totally detached from reality. The alternative would be to believe that the Israeli Jews are utter monsters. Personally, I’m not prepared to concede that, but I fully understand why many would. The same goes for the fact that, according to the Israel Democracy Institute:

About 70% of Jewish respondents trust the military's reports regarding casualty numbers and operational conduct.

The report containing these figures, written by Tamar Hermann, Dr Lior Yohanani, Yaron Kaplan, and Inna Orly Sapozhnikova, is well worth your time, as it discusses wider issues such as famine and settler violence. The critical point is that just as there is a stark contrast between Judaism and Zionism, so there is a contrast between the perceptions of Israeli Jews and the diaspora. These differences clearly stem from the levels of control they can exert internally as opposed to externally. The Israeli government has a longstanding reputation for narrative control. Indeed, it’s pretty clear that the far right in the US has studied the narrative control model used in Israel.

This matters because domestic support for the Israeli government differs starkly from diaspora support. In 2024, which was just 6 months into the conflict in Gaza, in a piece for the Institute for Jewish Policy Research by Dr Jonathan Boyd, he states:

First, JPR data from summer 2024 show that 70% of British Jews think that Jews who don’t live in Israel should be free to publicly criticise Israel’s government or its policies. And 76% ‘strongly’ or ‘somewhat’ disapprove of Netanyahu; 74% think he prioritises his own personal interests over those of the State of Israel as a whole. 62% feel the Israeli government hasn’t done enough to secure the release of the hostages, 52% feel it hasn’t done enough to provide humanitarian aid to Gazans, and 74% see Israel’s overall situation as ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’. These are all ‘majority’ views held by over half of British Jews.

It’s easy to assume all Jews share the Israeli government’s position, but nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to the diaspora. It is also unfair to say that all Israeli Jews support their government. While it’s clear the majority do, there are a number of Jewish organisations in Israel that condemn what their government has done and support the right to self-determination for the Palestinian people. You have to be pretty brave to go down this route, as many of those who dissent will attest to

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To be clear, anti-semitism is VERY REAL, much the same as Islamophobia. It is most unfortunate that the Israeli government has deliberately chosen to conflate dissent and antisemitism, using it as a propaganda tool. They have taken the term hostage, just as the far right in America has taken the word ‘patriot’ hostage. Both have become political weapons of war used to defend abhorrent behaviour. Having written about this conflict extensively on this and other social media platforms, I have felt the wrath of this ‘holy weapon of war’ in the form of vile abuse and death threats; it just comes with the turf of having the audacity to criticise the actions of an out-of-control nationalist government.

In a world of magic-bullet solutions, sound bites, and increasingly narrow attention spans, sensible and legitimate debate is declared dead on arrival. It’s a carefully crafted standard response from supporters of the abhorrent actions of the IDF at the behest of a government that has the sole objective of expelling the Palestinian people from what is historically their land, at least for the past four centuries under the Ottoman Empire. Jews argue that in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), God promised the land to Abraham and his descendants. Historical documents show the establishment of the United Monarchy under Kings David and Solomon around 1000 BCE- yes, that's 1000 years before Christ. Might I be so bold as to suggest that the statute of limitations has long expired; otherwise, it’s time to hand America back to the indigenous population, many of whom, like Gazans, still have no running water.

Once we get into biblical justifications, as is so often the case when it comes to Netanyahu and his hard-right thugs, we’re in la-la territory. The simple facts are that Israel is the very definition of an apartheid state; it has two separate legal systems, for God’s sake. In the illegal occupied territories as defined under international law, Israeli soldiers can walk into a Palestinian home and declare it a temporary army position. The residents have no right to object or appeal their presence. The Palestinian people are quite literally powerless on their own land; they can be arrested and held under administrative detention with no right to due process, and detained indefinitely. The same rules apply to Palestinian children.

The Israeli position is indefensible, but they have long lived under the protection of the US and other European nations at the United Nations. Countries which not only veto any moves to enforce compliance with any number of UN resolutions condemning their actions. They are, in the absence of accountability, encouraged to rule, murder and abuse Palestinians at will with total impunity. The claim is always self-defence. In that light, it’s important to provide context on the casualties on both sides before October 7 2023. As you can see below, since 2008, 5,590 Palestinians have been killed as retribution for the deaths of 251 Israelis. It’s also important not to recognise the highly disproportionate scale of injuries.

The level of imbalance in the numbers is breathtaking and is a testament to the level of total subjugation of the Palestinian population in both Gaza and the occupied territories. Remember, this is BEFORE October 7th, after which the numbers then reflect a rampage of vengeful retribution by the IDF as commanded by the Israeli government.

To support this retribution, the US has since provided direct military aid amounting to over $21 billion since October 7. You can take a closer look at the breakdown of the colossal amount of munitions provided in this Brown University report, published in October 2025, almost a year ago. Based on a median annual worker salary of $36,571, which represents the salary of 574,000 American workers. Or, if you prefer, two and a half months of SNAP payments for 42 million food-insecure Americans.

In terms of loss of life since October 7th 2023, as I noted in my earlier piece in this series, final Israeli fatalities as counted from Israeli social security records indicate that :

The final death toll from the attack is now thought to be 695 Israeli civilians, including 36 children, as well as 373 security forces and 71 foreigners, giving a total of 1,139.

It’s also important to note that at least 13 Israeli civilians were killed by the IDF under the Hanibal Directive when Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram gave the order to fire a tank shell at a Kibbutz Be'eri house where Hamas terrorists held hostages. 13 of the 14 hostages being held on the property were killed along with the terrorists holding them. It’s very difficult to assess other such losses, as obviously it’s the last thing the Israeli government wants to disclose. That said, there has been an admission that the directive was invoked.

These attacks on their own civilians in no way diminish the war crimes committed by Hamas and its allies on that fateful day. However, the truth does matter, and there were no 4o beheaded babies, a story still repeated to this day by those attempting to justify their own war crimes. It is also important to note that almost 100 hostages were murdered by Hamas, with the IDF killing Alon Shamriz, Yotam Haim, and Samer Talalka while waving a white flag at the ‘most moral army on earth’, while attempting to escape captivity. The conflict is littered with tragedy on so many levels.

All of the above is dwarfed by the now 73,000 Palestinians murdered. Of these, 38,000 were women and girls, and 70% of the final total were women and children. There can be no justification for that level of wanton murder and destruction, and it’s likely the 73,000 is an undercount because so many bodies remained under destroyed buildings. It should be noted that the Israeli government is determined to ensure the final total is never uncovered, as they have started removing the evidence with bulldozers for when the world’s press is finally allowed to report on the destruction.

What began as a devastating attack on Gaza has now expanded as a result of Netanyahu convincing Trump to go to war with Iran. An ambition he has harboured for decades, but could never convince an American president to fall for, until Trump came along. Now the conflict has widened to Lebanon, Iran, and now Yemen; it’s a geopolitical wildfire out of control with no off-ramp. The Israeli Prime Minister might have believed his dreams had all come true, but this series of actions in Gaza and Iran has literally tanked global public opinion on Israel, which has completely lost control of the narrative.

I think it’s reached the point where Trump would not piss on him if he were on fire; that’s how angry he is that Netanyahu led him up a dead-end garden path. The Iran war is currently looking like it will decimate Republicans in November, and if Democrats take the House and the Senate, Trump is facing Judgment Day for the mountain of corruption he has engaged in while in office.

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In the next and penultimate episode in this series, which I’ll post in a few hours, I’ll focus entirely on the largely untold story of the danger Netanyahu was repeatedly warned about regarding the impending attack, as warned by multiple senior sources in the UAE and Egypt. Warnings which, in my view, were wilfully ignored. Then, to add insult to injury, on the evening of October 7th, he was presented with an opportunity to have all the hostages released and turned it down.

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I’ll be posting the final two parts of my ‘Palestinian Problem’ series tomorrow. I’m still in the final fact-checking phase of a complex piece that will, for some, I’m sure, prove to be a contentious conclusion. Having said that, the level of madness in the US political discourse is heightening by the day as Trump gets ever more desperate. In his tiny mind, the Gods seem to be conspiring against him, and he simply can’t process even the thought of losing, even when he’s already lost.

I lay awake late last night because I am forever searching for better ways to communicate what I have to say, and yesterday the final pieces of the puzzle came together. Almost a year ago, I began working on a project I called ‘The Truth Portal’. The goal was to create a central resource that included not just my writing and thoughts, but also a searchable library of video content from a variety of creators in the political space. I also wanted to bring together tools that let anyone cross-reference a representative's registered interests, donations received, and voting record to produce a democracy traffic light score.

As a longtime coder and visual designer, all this felt well within reach, and I built the entire foundational framework. What I hadn’t accounted for was the cost of securing it and scaling it, and that’s where I hit a roadblock. The truth is, while I’m committed to reinvesting all Substack revenue into my work, it didn’t cover even a fraction of the final cost of implementing the vision. Add to that, changes in the Substack model have diminished that revenue stream to the point that I've had to come out of retirement to earn extra money to support what I do here. Please don’t misunderstand; I’ve worked since I was 17, so it’s proved to be the least of my worries, and I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised by how valuable my skill set has proven to be.

The choices I face are clear: do I believe in what I do and the passion I have for preserving democracy and social justice? More importantly, do I think I have a contribution to make in these most consequential of times? The great thing about retirement is that it provides an abundance of time. Time to think about where I am, what I want to do and how I want to spend the autumn years of my life. One thing I’ve concluded is that I absolutely love writing; it brings me great satisfaction and a deep sense of personal achievement. With well over 500 pieces under my belt and a voice that, in its own little way, resonates with people, I’m in my happy place. I have the love of a woman who has been by my side for 47 years, one who is as passionate about politics and social justice as I am. Life is so much easier with someone in your life who brings the sunshine to a rainy afternoon, someone with whom I’ve shared the highs and the lows for close to half a century.

Over the past three months, I have shifted from writing a piece every day to writing four or five times a week. What I needed to do was not just take on consultancy work to help cover the costs of this passion, but to breathe and find a balance between the things that make me happy. Paying attention to my soulmate and my passion for gardening and music, which remains a source of so much pleasure for me after having spent two decades of my formative years in music production. It would not be an exaggeration to say that writing here has changed my life for the better and given me a new sense of purpose after I came through really challenging times during and after the COVID pandemic. I’ve found a voice and, through my writing, engaged with both the like-minded and sometimes out-of-their-mind people. Such is the rich tapestry of life.

The Truth Portal project hasn’t materialised to date simply because the cost of bringing it to life was far greater than had been anticipated. However, the framework is already built, and none of the objectives has changed. What has changed is my mindset and approach to time management, along with the insecurity I felt about whether stopping my writing every day would somehow devalue my contribution to the conversation. Yes, I’m insecure, always have been and always will be; it’s just part of who I am, and it can be debilitating at times. I am very mindful that my voice is but a grain of sand on a very large beach. If I disappeared tomorrow, life would march on, and my relevance would be relegated to the relatively obscure archive of my already documented thoughts. I’m fully at peace with that.

Where things have changed for me on this journey of becoming a writer and political commentator (which, by the way, is still a work in progress) is my new level of clarity and understanding of what makes the world go round, while at the same time gaining an acute awareness of the threats and dangers we all face as a result of this charge to the political right. The US may be the epicentre of this dystopian nightmare. However, this trend is by no means unique, and it helps promote the same ideology in other democracies worldwide. As for me, I might, if I’m lucky, have a decade to contribute to this fight and help make a small difference.

To that end, a LOT of work has been happening behind the scenes to find a way to bring the Truth Portal to life in a way that contributes positively to our joint efforts to preserve democracy and social justice at a more affordable cost. All the investment in the project to date has helped me develop a roadmap to finally showcase the concept publicly and let you, the audience, judge its viability. This can be done at a fraction of the cost of implementation, and will, I believe, open the eyes of anyone interested in the possibilities it presents for a dynamic, exciting and unique way forward.

I now have all the production facilities in place to deliver a proof of concept, and I'm looking to the community here to help refine the ideas surrounding it so we can build this together. Without giving too much away, the approach is truly unique: it combines writing, video content, and data, with geolocation to provide specific information about where you live as it relates to the central premise of a written piece. If it all comes together, as planned (and there’s no guarantee, given the complexity of the model), this Truth Matters Newsletter will become the first truly data-driven interactive newsletter on this platform. A literary vehicle to allow you, the reader, to navigate content, choosing your own path as you read. For example, if I’m sharing a thought, you can seamlessly view video content or stats without disrupting the flow of the piece because that content will be embedded within the article.

The idea is that when you engage with a piece, each reader can follow a path that best meets their search for quality, fact-checked information to support the argument. It will be fully accessible, with automatic font-size switching for those with visual impairment, to name but one feature. If I’m examining policy, the objective is to provide a central piece that, as it does now, looks at the picture nationwide, but also offers a route to provide a perspective from where you live, focusing on the local dynamic. It moves from what I would call ‘flat information’ to real-world 3D information, with an option to deliver on an ‘all politics is local ’ model. As a result, pieces no longer would offer a one-size-fits-all perspective.

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The sole objective of this upcoming exercise is to share a proof of concept with this reading community in real time. It’s an ambitious plan that excites me tremendously, and once you can experiment with it yourself, I’m absolutely sure there will be no shortage of people with ideas and those who want to join the experiment. To be clear, it will not change anything if you just like reading my thoughts; this Substack will look identical and read like a normal piece. It’s only when you decide to activate the dynamic content within the piece that things will change, as you interact with the piece.

The aim is to introduce people to non-static written content, while anchoring it in what looks like a normal Substack piece. I have a big meeting on Friday with the company that will provide the interactive framework the content will sit on. I looked at the same framework a year ago when I first got the idea for the Truth Portal, but the technology simply wasn't mature enough; it's changed dramatically, making it the perfect fit for the project now. What’s more exciting is it’s a British innovation that

This isn't about me; it's designed as an engagement flow that can also feature other Substack writers with thoughts on the subject. Pieces can be written as normal by any contributing writers; traffic will be directed to their accounts for subscription and attribution purposes; there will simply need to be a link in their piece to direct the reader back into the information pipeline driving the content.

I want to be unambiguous and very clear. THIS IS AN EXPERIMENT; there are no guarantees, but at the same time, it will operate in an enterprise, highly secure environment; there will be no heightened risk in engaging with interactive elements of any piece. It’s a long-term project that will NOT be dependent on investment; I’m prepared to cover the basic costs, although paid subscriptions and use of the ‘buy me a drink’ links at the bottom of each post are always greatly appreciated and put to good use within the project.

I’ll be writing this week as normal; next week, I will not be posting any pieces because I’ll be hard at work putting together a sample piece on the US economy to show how an interactive Substack piece will work. I’ll be posting notes as usual, so you can’t get away from me that easily. My normal posts will return the following week (September 28th) while I test the first interactive demo article, with the goal of releasing it on my birthday, October 6th. I stress again that this is very early in the process, so expect hiccups, but rest assured I’m fully committed to delivering and showing you how it works.

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My commitment to my normal content will remain the same, except for next week. I’ll still create a guaranteed 4 to 5 pieces each week, as normal. The idea is to produce one interactive piece every week or so, then introduce more as the workflow is refined and I can deliver interactive content more efficiently. There are some very exciting things in the pipeline, and I’ll introduce you to them as we take this journey together. The aim, for sure, is to produce at least one groundbreaking interactive piece two weeks out from November 3rd, which I hope will demonstrate its power within the political discourse. I can’t tell you how excited I am that this is finally happening; it’s been a LONG TIME in the making, and it's cost me many sleepless nights. This is very personal for me, and I pray you will see the value of the end result

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I can’t just ignore Trump’s promise to give every American adult $5,000 if the Republicans win both the House and the Senate. Aside from the fact that it should be illegal to even make such a statement in a democracy, I keep forgetting that there are no rules, norms, or conventions anymore when it comes to Trump. I wonder how many Americans understand just how the rest of the world is looking on with horror at the blatant corruption, oppression, and deceit that dominate US politics? I suspect the majority simply don’t care.

Before I even begin, we’ve heard this bedtime story before. There was to be a ‘DOGE dividend’ and a ‘tariff dividend ’, neither of which ever materialised. To be clear, this shouldn’t even be a thing, but let’s pretend it’s normal to try to bribe voters. The US is $40 trillion in debt, and this year YOU, the US taxpayer, will pay at least $1.2 trillion in interest alone to service that debt. That’s $1.2 trillion just to stand still. For context, that’s the cost of the US defence budget, or, if you prefer, the average salary ($64,200) of 17.5 million American workers. Put another way, it would eradicate homelessness and food insecurity for 15 years, or cover between 30% and 42% of the federal cost of a Medicare for All system.

Trump’s electoral bribe would cost $1.35 trillion. For context, that’s 71% of the cost of Biden’s American Rescue Plan that Republicans blamed for ‘destroying the American economy. Trump’s prepared to add a further $1.35 trillion to the debt to give Americans $5000 each, only for them to then fund the cost of servicing the debt required to deliver it. It’s never going to happen, but this is the level of insanity at play as Trump becomes more and more desperate to avoid accountability for his rampant corruption in office. I believe he has economic rabies, and we all know there is only one solution for rabies, and it’s not Trump RX.

Trump in Texas was in his happy place, the ‘theatre of the absurd’, spewing utter nonsense to an ever-dwindling crowd propped up by paid attendees. The reality is that when this venture into dystopia is over, as I am convinced it will be, the mainstream media will have some serious questions to answer when it comes to enabling tyranny. Never in my lifetime has the media been prepared to edit a world leader's malign intent to present something coherent and sane. It is a testament to how money and power have corrupted free speech and taken it hostage at the most dangerous time in modern history. It is a testament to Trump’s total disregard for the law or any form of ethical consideration. He seems to think it’s totally fine to use news outlets to carry his bribe messaging. The media is carrying nothing but free political ads for his plan to cheat in November.

Some would say it’s simply a reflection of the level of desperation he is demonstrating, and to an extent that’s true, but the real question is: how many care that they are being marched into economic slavery? The electoral process has never been as vulnerable as it is now, as Elon Musk jumps back into the fray in another attempt to place the same thumb on the scale he did in 2024. The thumb, a significant body of opinion suggests, had a major impact on the election result.

The America PAC (Musk’s Super PAC) has created votesafe.org, which is the antithesis of its title. Nothing about the site is safe, even to visit. I would highly recommend reading ’s piece below for a more detailed warning.

Below is what the site actually collects in terms of your data:

In addition, Judd notes:

Previously, votesafe.org had a privacy policy that provided some limitations on how America PAC could use this data:

Personal Identifying Information collected via the www.votesafe.org will only be used to support America PAC’s activities, and it will not be shared with any advertisers, political organizations, or third parties not directly affiliated with America PAC.

On August 29, 2026, the privacy policy was updated and no longer includes that language. The new version allows America PAC to “share” or “sell” personal information with “our business partners.” This includes selling information about “whether you are registered to vote” and “how you submit your vote… where permitted by law.”

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The level of interference and disruption in play is like nothing America has seen before and is truly on par with that of African Banana republics. The closer we get to the elections, the more desperate Trump will become, and that’s when it will get really dangerous, because that’s when I believe he’ll roll out his state-sponsored militia, where ICE will be transformed into an election integrity force put in place to intimidate and harass voters.

As for Trump’s bribe, the obvious question is whether it is illegal, and the simple answer seems to be yes. As noted by Andy Sullivan, Jonathan Stempel and Saqib Iqbal Ahmed in a Reuters article yesterday:

Democratic ⁠candidates, including President-elect Joe Biden, promised a third round of COVID-19 relief checks in a Georgia special election in 2021 and delivered when they won control of Congress.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that ​a comparable promise is legal. In a unanimous 1982 decision, the high court overturned a lower-court ruling that had invalidated the election of a Kentucky official who had promised to save taxpayer money by ​lowering county commissioners’ salaries.

This is NOT a spur-of-the-moment thing; it’s a carefully crafted part of a meticulously planned election disruption campaign. Those involved know that there is little chance of any successful legal challenge. They also know that even if they hold onto the House, Congress would not vote to allow another $1.3 trillion in spending; it would not survive the Senate filibuster, and Republicans would not risk trying to pass it under reconciliation. In short, it’s never going to happen; they know it, but it will resonate enough with voters to have some impact. When it fails, Trump will simply blame the Senate. Add to that, people on both sides of the aisle will not stop talking about it, so it’s free messaging.

Over the coming weeks, we are going to see ever more outrageous statements from Trump that are designed solely to capture the media narrative and suck the oxygen out of the room, thus suppressing other important messaging. We'll see the most sophisticated disruption campaign designed to suppress the opposition vote, and absolutely NOTHING will be off the table when it comes to implementation. Sadly, the Democratic messaging machine is not in the same league, I’m afraid, so America really is in the lap of the gods, and that, in my view, is an indictment of Democratic leadership.

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This regime wrote down everything they were going to do in Project 2025. While people like me were screaming about the threat twelve months before the election, Democratic leadership were working hard on their brilliant campaign over an Espresso "stained" with a small dollop of foamed Peruvian goat’s milk. A campaign encapsulated in a political IED strategy designed to devastate: “Vote for us because the other guy is a fascist” Unfortunately, it never detonated, and a convicted criminal and adjudicated rapist drove straight over them with a fistful of lies, deceit and disinformation. They were left face down on a plate of jus at their favourite Michelin Star restaurant. Then, for dessert, they blamed the American people, saying they only had themselves to blame for what had happened.

Sad to say, nothing has changed as we approach the most consequential elections in modern American history with exactly the same message and the same plan. The true tragedy is that they are the only game in town. The choices are simple: theocratic autocracy or Republican lite; take your pick. The sole saving grace is that there are far more progressive options on the ballot this time around, and if the American people make a statement by electing them, maybe, just maybe, there is still hope.

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Apologies for the delay in posting this; I have had the most awful of days ever. Every part of it went tits up. I couldn't post this early this morning as planned, and then I got delayed on the way home, which made me very late. As they say, though, ‘better late than never,’ and I hope you think it's worth waiting for.

After setting the stage in PART ONE of this two-part post, I want to use this potential conclusion (depending on whether you want me to provide more detail) to walk you through the true power of collective economic disengagement, which has been so underestimated in these times of extreme peril for so many in the US. Just as the exploitation of the poorest Americans is a choice, I have to tell you that taking action to stop it is a very viable choice too. Pain can be a two-way street; it’s NOT about the top 10% being the only winners by any stretch.

Trump has created a K-shaped economy in which the top 10% of households account for 50% of current consumer spending in a heavily indebted economy that depends disproportionately on consumer spending. Trump and those pulling his strings assume that if they can keep the shareholder class happy, then the rest of America is irrelevant. On paper, that might sound fine, especially as the top 10% are currently spending like drunken sailors at the expense of the bottom 90%. In much the same way, the puppet masters also depend on the AI giants and the infrastructure being invested in to support them. Strip out these companies and their supporting industries from the economy, and you're left with growth of just 0.1%. This represents the delusional world Trump inhabits.

In their world, a small segment of corporate America and stock-market beneficiaries is the illusion on which they’ve built a false narrative of economic success. Trump’s delusions are never more evident than when he posts endless AI images in an attempt to embellish the ludicrous reality nobody outside his cult and America takes seriously. Underneath the bluster and the tales of untold wealth that nobody but he and his friends are experiencing, Trump knows that the walls are closing in. He understands the danger posed by the bond markets and the inflation problems his economic agenda continues to create, to the point where he’s desperate to strong-arm his new Fed Chair into cutting interest rates by threatening to cut off trade with trading partners the US runs a trade deficit with. It’s economic madness personified, but it has a purpose.

Trump knows that $40 trillion of debt is unsustainable and that eventually the economy will come tumbling down; his aim is simply to hang on long enough to fill his pockets with cash and leave the mess for someone else to clear up, especially given that he has no option to run for a third term, allegedly. All of the above makes the US economy extremely vulnerable to attack if enough Americans participated in a sustained campaign of strategic economic disengagement. I have written about this at length before, but I’ve now had more time to think about how it could work.

While it’s pretty clear that MAGA devotees are happy to vote against their own interests, allowing Trump to march them into economic slavery, the top 10% have no such mindless habits. So they can be counted out of taking any action against the hand that feeds them; there will be no turkeys voting for Thanksgiving from the asset class.

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In this assessment, Trump still has a lot going in his favour, and it’s important to recognise that. His key advantage is that the historic ability for political organising that was prevalent in the days of the Civil Rights Movement is no more. Union membership peaked at 21 million in the US in 1979, falling to a record low of just 14.7 million in recent years. That’s just 10% of the current workforce. The decline in political organising and citizen engagement has been the fuel that has allowed the rise of Trump and other authoritarian figures to undermine and dismantle democracies around the world.

The ostracisation of the truth and the adoption of fantasy narratives have completely turned politics upside down; the establishment of alternative facts has led us to a place where nobody trusts politicians, as shown in current US polls on party favourability, which are almost identical for both parties. The American people simply don’t trust politicians. So if nobody trusts the official opposition at a time when the incumbent president is operating as a corrupt, authoritarian, monarch-type figure, what does that tell you about the state of American politics?

It’s with this fact in mind that I take an apolitical approach to direct action, not driven by political ideology, but rather by economic necessity. Given that the bottom 50% and, to some extent, 90% are being forced to live through an affordability crisis (albeit on a different scale), imposed on them by the greed and incompetence of a failed president. If the focus is purely on the resulting, unprovoked punitive action imposed on those in the middle and the bottom, the question is: can this large group form a coalition to demand change? I believe it’s entirely possible.

The challenge with every direct action campaign is the government's ability to crush dissent. This is why taking to the streets might send a signal to the government, but without it being at scale and sustained every day for weeks, as we saw in the Arab Spring, it’s sadly just a performative act of defiance that the government can and has ignored. It also has the added advantage of allowing political agitators to cause trouble and force a police or military intervention by the state, during which people might get hurt or even killed, as happened in the past. It might even result in a state of emergency and the suspension of elections.

The single most effective weapon the American people have for low-risk direct action is their purse. It can bring a government to its knees quickly. Even a credible collective threat of a spending strike can cause catastrophic economic consequences in an algorithm-driven stock market fine-tuned to react to risk.

Current consumer spending sits at around $22 trillion, and 50% of that comes from the top 10%. Given that this group has no intention of being the turkeys voting for Thanksgiving, this leaves the bottom 90% with, let’s say, $11 trillion.5 trillion. I think it's reasonable to conclude that many of these will be among those reluctant to inconvenience themselves by not buying the stuff they like, which takes us down to between $5.5 trillion and $6.6 trillion. To trigger a recession, the bottom 50% would need to reduce TOTAL spending by 8%.

Hold that thought for a moment, because we need to discuss ‘discretionary spending’ and non-discretionary spending. Put simply, ‘wants’ and ‘needs’. If we look at the economic demographics, those being hurt the most by this regime, aided and abetted by corporate America, are the bottom 50%. As a result, this group is more motivated to fight for change. The government mistakenly believes it is protected from this type of economic assault by what’s called ‘the high earner shield’. The flaw is that the assumption rests on the illusion of paper wealth. They can only spend freely now while their assets grow or hold value.

If the bottom 50% cut overall spending by just 8%, mass-market corporate revenues would collapse, and companies like Amazon and McDonald’s would suffer massive economic hits. This would instantly feed through to the markets as stocks are obliterated, causing the paper wealth of the top 10% to evaporate; then where does the required consumer spending come from? They will be forced to stop spending in order to protect their assets. Economic collapse then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The scenario I’m presenting assumes that self-preservation kicks in for the top 50%, and the bottom 50% say ‘fuck ‘em all’ and go it alone. If the bottom 50% do go all in, it’s literally game over; we see a total economic collapse as those higher up the food chain frantically try to mitigate losses. Of course, multiple options are available depending on who participates in the collective act of economic disengagement.

If the bottom 90% participate, then the spending cuts could be limited to ‘wants’ (disposable income spending) rather than ‘needs’ (essential spending). However, if participation is limited to the bottom 50%, then it’s down to cutting ‘wants’ and a small percentage of needs, like withholding part of the rent or loan and credit card payments.

For the sake of saving time, I plugged all the numbers into AI to examine the leverage produced depending on participation, which is split into two sections, one with the bottom 90% participation:

one with just the participation of the bottom 50%

The critical point is that the rich might think they have a shield, but they don’t if those at the bottom have the collective will to go all in. Remember 2008: it wasn't the rich being forced to stop spending; it was the poor mugs who had been sold mortgages by the rich they couldn't afford; that demographic drove the crash. The problem you have with US society, much as we do too in the UK, is that those at the top have convinced those in the middle that if they challenge the system, they will lose everything. The problem for them, is that’s not how the real system is wired, and they should know because they created it. They just assume nobody can detect the huge holes they left vulnerable to attack.

All it would need is to punch a $485 billion hole in momentum to kill the current growth and push the US into a technical recession. That would be a message in itself; the bottom 50% could do that standing on their heads. Markets operate on forward thinking; it’s very difficult for them to factor in uncertainty and respond to events in real time fast enough to provide a firebreak, as we have seen in the oil crisis. The US Treasury has spent serious energy trying to mitigate this. All that’s happened is Bessent has robbed Peter to pay Paul, issuing short-term debt to buy long-term debt, hoping long-term bond yields drop. How’s that gone? Now he faces a potential short-term crisis, which is starting to raise its head.

The long and short of it is that a sudden drop in consumer spending would certainly have a bigger impact than it would have a year ago. As I was saying, forward-looking algorithms act as bouncers at the economic door; they react and protect. As soon as they pick up trends, they are programmed to react, and this is where we need to look carefully at ‘wants’ versus ‘needs’. If a spending strike is based purely on slashing wants, it induces a corporate recession, and those corporations instinctively cut costs to protect falling revenue. This, of course, means job losses and all the economic pain that follows.

As the above assessments show, if participants target even a small share of their needs spending (non-discretionary spending), we have a whole new ballgame. The algorithms would kick in, and we would see systemic collapse, disrupting banking liquidity. Mortgage defaults would have a global impact as in 2008; the first text image above lays it all out. Even the threat of this type of action would be enough to put both the government and those at the top on notice.

What I’ve tried to do here is to lay out the basics of this type of action purely to highlight to people that even those at the bottom who might think of themselves as helpless passengers in this economic car crash hold an economic weapon of mass destruction in their hands. For the purpose of brevity, I’ve just sketched it out from an extensive set of notes in which I have even gamed out a timeline of how the deck of cards would fall.

If people think it would help for me to share the details, I’d be happy to do an extra piece to map it out in more detail; just let me know in the comments. Take it from me: I have worked hard on this, and what I’m telling you holds water. The whole deck of cards could be brought down in 30 days; the only question is, whether enough collective will exists to prove to those who need to know that ‘We the people’ are willing to pull the trigger and make it happen. It’s more powerful than any nuclear weapon, and the poorest among us could make it happen all on their own if the need arises. Even self-preservation action from those above would have little impact, given the collapse would be systemic.

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I’m aware, of course, that there will be those who will disagree, but I’m happy to do a roundup post at the very end to directly address any challenge to my assessment. I can, of course, only work on assumed market reaction based on history, and I certainly can’t account for human nature when it comes to how many people would be prepared to take the action, because it’s an all-or-nothing scenario if only the bottom 50% participate. A half-baked attempt would fail, and those participating would face ruin; that’s how high the stakes would be.

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I have 2 episodes left in my ‘Palestinian Question’ series, but before I deliver them, I want to take a short excursion today to examine the power that the American people still hold to change everything. I want to explore a few fundamental facts for anyone who feels they are helpless right now.

In the dystopian nightmare we are being forced to endure in Trump’s new dog-eat-dog world, where social Darwinism rules, it would be easy to get swept away in the corruption and self-dealing, leaving you feeling helpless against the tsunami of hate promoted by this regime. I know from personal experience how mentally exhausting it can be to push the boulder of moral decency and fairness up a hill that seems steeper with each passing day.

It doesn’t help when Democratic leadership and their corporate Democrat enablers simply sit around on the assumption that they will regain power. Not because they are presenting a better vision for America, but because the American people will hand them power through a protest vote. My friends, there’s the tragedy of US politics today. I still believe the only way America comes back from this is if, by 2028, the Democratic Party has undergone a transformational revolution to rediscover the values that once gave America hope. ‘Yes we can’ needs to become ‘Now we will’.

In the almost two years since Trump walked into the White House for the second time, we have learned that the political and judicial system has largely proven to be unfit for purpose. It has failed to deliver the much-needed checks and balances required to defeat an authoritarian hostile takeover. The end result leaves an opposition party powerless to defend democracy for fear of antagonising their corporate handlers and ultra-wealthy people who have stolen and hoarded the untold wealth generated over decades by the workers of America. It is a tragic tale of the Democratic Party's social abandonment, trading thirty pieces of silver from corporate and special interests to take their seats on the gravy train, abandoning hard-working Americans to a man for whom their presence is merely an opportunity for exploitation.

You have to ask yourself some serious questions when the party in government wrote down exactly what they intended to do 18 months before the 2024 elections, and the Democratic opposition had absolutely NO PLAN to counter it. Instead of focusing on the threat of a dictator, the party, suffering a severe case of corporate Stockholm syndrome, is now too busy fighting those perceived to be a threat to their seats on the gravy train rather than the enemy of the American people; how totally Republican lite of them. It’s exhausting, infuriating, yet tragically predictable.

The midterm elections should be a no-brainer landslide, but indications are, it will once again be a tight race. The Democratic plan, is to hope people are disillusioned with a convicted criminal they couldn’t defeat in 2024. Unfortunately, hope is NOT a plan; it’s a failure of ambition inside a party which seems void of ambition and a hunger for change. There’s no passion, no audacity of hope, just an arrogant confidence that the American public won’t support a fascist and will come out in numbers to reject him. Call me old-fashioned, but didn’t that fail in 2024?

I have tried over and over to articulate the argument that, without a vision, how can the American people vote for nothing but Republican lite? Only to be told it’s counterproductive to criticise Democrats. It’s lunacy of the highest order, I’m afraid. However, the real kicker is that there’s no other game in town in November than a party that wants to blame everyone but themselves for their abject failure to counter the Trump threat. What an indictment of a Party for whom the most popular politician in their ranks is a Muslim Mayor of New York, that they did everything they could to stop him from being elected.

With less than two months to go before Americans go to the polls in the most consequential elections in modern history. A time when their government wants to select its voters by disenfranchising millions perceived to be a threat to them retaining power, the world is looking on in horror as democracy burns in real time in America. Meanwhile, the DNC floods their base with begging emails, having never apologised for flushing their money down the toilet in 2024. You really couldn’t make it up, yet they pull it off every day with aplomb.

Trump’s abuse and corruption have been normalised by a mainstream media that spends its time sanitising Trump’s ludicrous, insanity-dripping ramblings that amount to crimes against the English language, grammar and sentence structure. Half of America has bought into his made-for-TV fantasy world of fake prosperity to the extent that they no longer believe their own eyes when it comes to the endless crimes he’s committing every day he remains in office. The Nazis erected a sign above Auschwitz claiming ‘Arbeit macht frei’ (‘Work sets you free'); it was all part of the same type of illusion being sold to Americans who seem to be voluntarily marching into economic slavery with a smile.

I have said many times: the American people have always had it in their power to bring this government to its knees using direct action in the form of a strategic spending strike aimed at starving the corporations that have aided and abetted a corrupt regime in bringing us to this moment of economic peril. The problem is that in a world of instant gratification, there’s little to no appetite for anything that might cause discomfort or sacrifice to middle-income Americans who can sustain the hit from an economic agenda designed to only work for those at the top of the economic food chain.

The American people proved they could successfully pressure Disney when it cancelled Jimmy Kimmel. It was so effective that Disney had to back down because of the economic loss it would have caused. That was concrete proof that collective action can win out. However, even with that proof, there was no appetite to use economic disengagement as a tool to hold the government to account for the largest tax hike on Americans in decades: tariffs.

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The reality is, even at this late stage, this type of collective economic action could bring this government and the whole system of economic oppression to its knees. It doesn’t have to be tainted by political dogma, and I absolutely guarantee you that it would shake the very foundations of both parties and the oligarchs to their core, because it would challenge an algorithm-driven financial system in which AI would, by design, play the key role in destroying it.

It’s all about organising and having what amounts to a weapon of mass economic destruction at the fingertips of an organised group prepared to use it. It’s not party political; indeed, politicians would be powerless to stop it. Nobody could be arrested or detained for what would be a totally lawful act of economic resistance. All you would need is a willingness to defer planned spending. Let’s call it ‘The People’s Economic Liberation Strategy’ (PELS).

I’ve often been criticised (unjustly, in my opinion) for being heavy on criticism and light on solutions. I’m hoping I can put that to rest in the second part of this post, which I’ll post very early tomorrow morning, as I won’t be around to post anything later in the day. Consider PART TWO in lieu of what would normally be my Wednesday piece. The aim is to spell out what I see as an option that, if implemented, could hit both the regime and corporate America in one coordinated and synchronised action. Neither the government nor the top 1% could do anything about it. It does NOT require participation from anyone in the top 10%; indeed, at a push, it doesn’t even require participation from the top 50%. It’s about understanding how algorithmic trading powers the financial infrastructure and how that can be weaponised to achieve the objectives.

The belief that the people are just passengers in this journey to economic slavery is unquestionably a myth. This psychology of helplessness, projected by those at the top onto those at the bottom, is just that: a projection. The US is a consumer-driven economy, with 68% to 70% of GDP coming from consumer spending. This gives consumers powerful leverage to effect change without support from ANY political party. It’s impossible to suppress using the existing legal framework, because you can’t prosecute people for not spending their money.

In PART TWO, I’ll walk you through all the angles and implications. There’s a very good reason why Republicans have defanged unions and collective organising, because it’s the biggest threat to their plans for total control of the economy and everything in it. They have spent decades de-unionising and creating a permissive environment in which to exploit workers.

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The thought on which I’ll conclude this piece is to point out that if the share of the nation’s wealth created by American workers by the mid 1970’s had remained equal to the growth of corporate profits, American workers would be earning double the salary they do today. In 1975, workers' wages accounted for around 67% of all taxable income. By 2010, this had dropped to around 47%.

Here’s another interesting stat to sleep on: if workers' pay had kept pace with executive pay, the typical wage would now be $520,000. Research by the RAND Corporation shows that, over the same period, wealth has been redistributed upward by $79 trillion. Some might suggest this is the extent of the theft perpetrated by the top 10% against the bottom 90%, and it's hard to argue against this assertion.

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In this, PART FIVE of my series on the ‘Palestinian Question ’, we’re going to walk together into a minefield that I think I can say, without fear of contradiction, will likely be the most contentious piece of the series. I want to be very clear from the get-go that this is an OPINION piece based on events that are very difficult to research, because the events of October 7 are shrouded in a blanket of propaganda in which the Israeli government has invested enormous amounts of time and capital to shape the narrative.

I’ve spent hours sourcing and carefully reading and listening to verified reporting of the material used for this very sensitive episode. I have provided full attribution for sources; I have gifted important news articles that I feel are important, so nobody is denied access to the reporting because of a paywall. Every effort has been made to use language that is respectful of the hundreds of Israeli citizens who lost their lives on that fateful day.

For the sake of clarity, and to remove any suggestion of doubt. The barbaric attack by Hamas on innocent Israeli citizens was a WAR CRIME. This is not only my conclusion, but that of both the UN and the International Criminal Court. I mourn the passing of all those murdered on a day which history will record as an unconscionable act of cowardice and a senseless act of unprovoked violence. My heart goes out to all those families left behind whose lives will never be the same again.

The biggest problem for anyone attempting to report on events of that infamous day is the carefully crafted narrative that has emerged as part of the justification for the Israelis’ wholly disproportionate response to what was undeniably a horrific assault on the innocent. My aim in this piece is not to seek justification for the attack, or to in any way diminish or misrepresent the anger and pain of those impacted by the events, but rather to look beyond understandable emotion to examine the facts. I aim to ensure that you, as a reader, are able to view events outside of the propaganda bubble created to shape the justification for the industrial-scale murder of Palestinians that followed.

Where to begin is the question. What I’m going to try to do is piece together from the most reliable sources what went wrong and how the Israeli government failed those who relied upon it to keep them safe. I’d like to begin with an assessment from The Centre for Strategic and International Affairs, titled "How Could Israeli Intelligence Miss the Hamas Invasion Plans?" This is a piece by Emily Hardin, Vice President, Defence and Security Department, from the Intelligence and National Security and Technology Program. It was published on October 11th 2023, and opens with:

Given the Israeli security services’ reputation, it is inconceivable to me that they missed the preparations being made for this attack. The reason I suggest you read this article is that it provides a roadmap for the questions to ask. It was published just four days after the event; it is not tainted by opinion, a point emphasised by the following:

So how could Israeli intelligence services—among the best in the world—be caught by surprise? It happens to the best of us, and the aftermath is both professionally and personally painful. Examining the root causes of the failure with clear eyes and an open mind is essential to avoiding the same mistakes in the future.

Outlining the reasoning behind the attack in a short piece such as this is impossible, but I would point you to a very important study titled The Strategic Origins of Hamas’s October 7 Attack by Daniel Sobelman, published on January 12th 2026 and available on Taylor & Francis Online. This is a comprehensive research document that analyses all angles and is important reading for those who want to understand both the motivation and the consequences of the attack. In the concluding paragraph, the study notes:

When it comes to understanding the motivations of terrorist organizations, an important lesson from Israel’s disastrous failure to imagine, let alone prepare for, an invasion of a nature and magnitude as Hamas’s October 7 attack, pertains to states’ perception of terrorist groups and the way in which their perception impacts their preparedness. Israel seems to have failed to grasp the implications of Hamas’s evolution from a mere “terrorist group” into a highly organized military entity that in many ways resembled an “army.” From a conceptual standpoint, Israel’s labeling and conceptualization of Hamas as a terrorist organization rendered the visualization of a strategically motivated military invasion from Gaza far more difficult.

To understand the failures, we need to first understand Netanyahu's thinking about how he saw and presented Hamas in his attempts to ensure there would never be any meaningful discussion of a two-state solution. As noted in an Op Ed in The Times of Israel by Tal Schneider on October 8th 2023:

For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.

The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

As noted in the reporting:

Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.

In effect, Hamas was the dangerous pit bull pet on a leash rewarded by Israel, as specifically facilitated by Netanyahu to guard against the ambitions of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for a Palestinian state. An ambition he knew would be widely supported by many of Israel’s allies. By dividing the West Bank and Gaza, Netanyahu believed that he could create an unholy alliance with Hamas to undermine the Palestinian Authority, thus ensuring no discussion on the international stage of the long-desired two-state solution. He wanted Hamas to behave badly, but he believed he could keep the pit bull on the leash.

So confident was he that he could control them that he personally sanctioned funding that amounted to over a billion dollars in funding delivered monthly in cash by a Qatari diplomat escorted from the Jordanian border to Gaza by the IDF, as ordered by Netanyahu. This began in 2018. In addition to the funding, he also increased the number of work visas issued to Palestinians in Gaza to work in Israel

The reporting notes:

Toward the end of Netanyahu’s fifth government in 2021, approximately 2,000-3,000 work permits were issued to Gazans. This number climbed to 5,000 and, during the Bennett-Lapid government, rose sharply to 10,000. Since Netanyahu returned to power in January 2023, the number of work permits has soared to nearly 20,000.

Additionally, since 2014, Netanyahu-led governments have practically turned a blind eye to the incendiary balloons and rocket fire from Gaza.

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Effectively, Netanyahu did a deal with the devil. However, it’s clear that by sanctioning funding to Hamas and vastly expanding the number of work permits, he created a permissive environment for intelligence gathering at scale, while facilitating the arming of Hamas fighters and their allies. This was a fatal error which ultimately led to the attack on October 7. You would have to be deluded to come to any other conclusion. The consequences of his arrogance and hubris led to the slaughter of innocent Israeli citizens with weapons funded from cash delivered in suitcases and escorted by the IDF since 2018.

Netanyahu made no secret of what drove his policy position regarding Hamas. The reporting continues:

“[His position was clear], at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

The intelligence failings on the day were catastrophic; there is no doubt. According to reporting in The Guardian by Peter Beaumont on November 28th, 2023:

Israel’s military and intelligence officials were given a highly detailed warning that Hamas was actively training to take over kibbutzim on the Gaza border and overrun military posts with the aim of inflicting substantial fatalities, according to reports in the Israeli media.

The claim made by Israel’s Channel 12 on Monday evening was based on leaked emails from the Israeli military’s 8200 cyber-intelligence unit discussing the warnings.

It should be noted that this is supported by several Israeli media outlets. The Guardian report continues:

According to the leaked emails, Hamas went as far as giving the mocked-up kibbutz used in training a name and even practised raising a flag over its synagogue.

Plans were also intercepted that discussed overrunning a border military base and killing all of its occupants.

All of this intelligence turned out to be remarkably accurate. The arrogant assumption seems to have been that Hamas, the pit bull on the leash, was merely showing its teeth. It appears nobody at a senior level took the compelling intelligence gathered seriously, which takes us to reporting by Maya Lecker in Haaretz on November 20th 2023, in which the subheadline reads:

The piece opens with :

Fifteen unarmed women soldiers were killed at the IDF’s Nahal Oz lookout base on October 7, in what is usually referred to as the “surprise” Hamas attack on the Gaza border communities. Seven others were taken hostage – with one of them subsequently killed by her kidnappers in Gaza.

The key takeaway from this heartbreaking article is that the female spotters had, for months, been watching Hamas training at the border

….for months, they had seen Hamas militants training for this very scenario

They did their job, the job the IDF trained them to do. They observed and reported their observations to their commanders. The reporting notes:

They were told by officers of every rank that their reports were meaningless. Some told the spotters that they didn’t understand what they were seeing – even when what they saw was very high-ranking Hamas officials briefing armed men meters from the fence. One high-ranking Israeli officer who visited Nahal Oz base this year was explicit: “I don't want to hear another word about this nonsense,” he said. “If you nudge me again about this, you will stand trial.”

These women who spoke to Maya Lecker had seen their friends killed in front of them and had been forced to play dead for hours among the corpses of those they served with before finally being rescued. I can’t even begin to grasp the level of trauma they suffered as a result of being ignored by men who showed little respect for them, an arrogant, misogynistic decision which resulted in an atrocity that could have been avoided. I could go on and on with reporting on what senior members of the military had been warned of, but I’ll conclude with this piece from The New York Times by Ronen Bergman and Adam Goldman. The reporting opens with:

Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.

The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.

It’s well worth your time to read the full article, which I have gift-linked above, as I have done with the Haaretz articles, so they are NOT behind a paywall. There was obviously much confusion following the attack; it was not until weeks later that the actual numbers were reported by Jerusalem AFP, which reported:

This was picked up and reported by France 24, and I have linked the article here.

The final death toll from the attack is now thought to be 695 Israeli civilians, including 36 children, as well as 373 security forces and 71 foreigners, giving a total of 1,139.

While lower than the originally published numbers, it remains a catastrophic and senseless loss of life, which could have been totally avoided if the abundant intelligence that was in the possession of those who could have prevented it had not been regarded as fanciful.

What’s important to understand is that it is likely that not all Israelis were killed by Hamas on October 7th. It is now widely reported, including by Israeli news outlets, and verified by them, that the Hannibal Directive was invoked. As reported in Haaretz by Yaniv Kubovich on July 7th 2024 :

So what exactly is the Hannibal Directive? This report by Rachel Fink, again in Haaretz on January 17th 2024, might help explain exactly how it operates. The article is titled: ‘Unlawful, Unethical, Horrifying’: IDF Ethics Code Author on Alleged Use of ‘Hannibal Directive’ During Hamas Attack

The article notes:

It’s a controversial and often misunderstood and misapplied operational order developed by the Israel Defense Forces in 1986 in response to an attempt by Hezbollah to abduct two soldiers into southern Lebanon.

In its original version, it outlined the procedures to be followed when a soldier may be at risk of abduction into enemy territory. The directive, drafted by Yossi Peled, the head of the IDF’s Northern Command at the time, along with Colonel Gabi Ashkenazi and Colonel Yaacov Amidror, emphasized the priority of rescuing captured soldiers from their captors, even if it meant risking harm to the captive soldiers themselves. Notably, the order was formulated without consulting legal experts.

Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram gave the most controversial order during the October 7 battles: to fire a tank shell at a Kibbutz Be'eri house where Hamas terrorists held hostages. As a result:

13 of the 14 civilians who were being held hostage in the house were killed (at least one had been killed earlier). Subsequently, in January, during the IDF's ground invasion, Hiram was also slapped with a disciplinary reprimand by the chief of staff for blowing up the main building of Israa University in Gaza, without receiving the requisite authorisation from his superiors.

Hilo Glazer - Haaretz, 31st May 2024

The bottom line is that we simply don’t know how many of its own civilians the IDF killed on October 7th; what we do know for sure is that the Hannibal Directive was in play across the battlespace. To be VERY CLEAR, this does not in any way diminish the role that Hamas played on that day and the months that followed with respect to the hostages seized. What it does do, however, is point to a directive most of us will find deeply disconcerting. I have included the Haaretz articles in full so you can fully understand the account of that day.

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In the next episode, we’ll deal with Netanyahu’s role and the opportunity he grasped to instigate the attempted ethnic cleansing of Gaza. We’ll also look at the West Bank and settler violence because it is vital to understand how Israel operates as an apartheid state. I apologise for the length of this episode, but again, I didn’t want to split it into two pieces.

Have a great Labour Day weekend, and I’ll return on Tuesday with the next episode.

For those who want to support my work but can’t commit to a paid subscription, you can now make a one-off donation by clicking on the image below. By donating, you help to cover the cost of research resources and keep this independent reporting free for all.