Your now daily reminder, which I hope you don’t mind me leading with each day, because it’s important:
Americans CAN stop this anytime without being arrested or punished in any way for their actions. STOP SPENDING on all but essential items and shift as much of that essential spending to local businesses. No need to stop eating out, just eat in locally run family eateries (NOT corporate chains). It’s about strategic spending decisions. It’s all about common sense, but if you need more detail, click here for my broader thinking.
There is no case to be made for saying ‘there’s nothing we can do’ It really is very simple, and I would urge you to encourage everyone you know to become part of a sustained act of strategic economic disengagement, because I guarantee just by this most simple of actions, you can unlock the gate on the road back to real American values. A sustained 3-4% drop in consumer spending will occur if Americans have the collective and sustained patriotic determination to say ‘enough is enough’.
I woke up today in a panic. It would be safe to say that it’s the first time since I started writing here that I have felt genuinely lost in an ocean of information and raw emotion with no life vest and no sign of land on the horizon. For what feels like an eternity, I have been buried in threads and connections that are slowly exposing the greatest crime against humanity. It’s like having a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of a black brick wall where the pieces have been dumped in hiding places around the world.
I read a great piece by Mary Harrington in UnHerd on February 5th; it is well worth reading. In it, she describes the Epstein files:
It’s a bit like that joke about a rickety house, only standing because the termites in the woodwork are holding hands. If you booted everyone touched by this corruption from public life, would there even be anyone left?
She said in a separate piece:
Epstein’s network simply took the training-wheels off a moral outlook that has come, by degrees, to govern the entire modern West: one that does not simply reject but actively seeks to desecrate the older, Christian value-system, in pursuit of a morality of power, violence, and individual desire.
I had no doubt this would be challenging, but nothing can prepare you for the cancer that has wound itself around the oesophagus of democracy and the rule of law. It seems history has taught us that once power threatens to destroy everything, revolution becomes the only answer. The burning question is, what form does that take? I would refer you to the head of this post and suggest that the only safe option at this time is to disengage economically.
The Civil Rights Movement lost a giant this week with the passing of Jesse Jackson. We would do well to remember what he and the movement proved possible. Violence is not the answer; it’s the refuge of the inarticulate and uncreative, but nobody should doubt the power of direct action as the residents of Minneapolis have proved over and over again.
We are now living in a world where the Epstein Class is sitting in the halls of power, out and proud. We need to stop looking at this as an event of the past that went away with the death murder of Jeffrey Epstein. A successor will have been appointed the day after Epstein was found hanging in his cell, because that’s how organised crime operates. There’s no better example of ‘the show must go on’ for the wealthy elite than the transnational crime syndicate now operating out of the Oval Office with the blessing of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Trump family is, I believe, a state-sponsored crime family utilising the world’s most powerful military to establish their turf.
I like to think I’m reasonably good at articulating my thoughts, but it’s at times like this that I wish I were a better communicator, because I find myself having great difficulty in conveying the sense of dread I feel in this moment. While I investigate the origins of the Epstein class, they are no longer a shadow organisation; they are in government, and Trump is their frontman. Just as he helped normalise the lie, he is normalising operating the country as a criminal enterprise.
Like it or not, that’s what America voted for, and this is the price paid for that lunatic act of madness. When you have German MEP Terry Reintke addressing the people of America, saying:
Keep up the fight. Keep resisting the authoritarian power grab that is ongoing right now. Europe is at your side; we will stand up for your rights, for our rights, for human rights. For Alex Pretti, for Renee Good, for so many others who have been killed. For democracy and for the rule of law for all of us, KEEP RESISTING.”
Americans are not alone; the world understands the peril they face and the steps so many are taking to fight back. Many on this side of the Atlantic understand the pain being suffered by so many, to enrich so few, but nobody understands it like those who are forced to live through it every hour of every day. It is a relentless assault on decency, moral integrity and the values so many American heroes have fought and died for. It’s easy to observe from afar and offer words of encouragement, but to live it is quite another matter.
There has been much written about Russian interference in the 2016 election, even Trump said, and I quote:
“Russia Russia Russia! That’s all you heard at the beginning of this Witch Hunt Hoax. And now Russia has disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.”
Looking back at the Mueller Inquiry, there’s a clear conclusion we can draw from the report. In the words of Robert Mueller:
“The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in a sweeping and systematic fashion”
While Trump claims he was exonerated, Mueller was definitive in his conclusion that, in his words:
“If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that.”
The reason Mueller was forced to make this statement was that Bill Barr, who was Trump’s Attorney General, deliberately held a preemptive press conference two hours before the release of the Mueller Report to Congress and the public. It was textbook Trump propaganda in which the chief law officer of the United States made a premeditated attempt to discredit the findings of the Report. He also sent a four-page summary to congress part of which read:
“In making this determination, we noted that the special counsel recognised that ‘the evidence does not establish that the president was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference,’ and that, while not determinative, the absence of such evidence bears upon the president’s intent with respect to obstruction.”
For anyone with half a brain, the report was very clear and reflected the fact that it would be against DOJ policy to charge a sitting president with a crime.
You can make your own mind up whether, at the time of the election, Epstein’s proven and well-established ties to the Russian government had any bearing on the level of Russian interference that led to a victory that was a surprise even to Trump at the time. However, what I would say is this: in 2016, Steve Bannon was a key player in both the Trump campaign and the Cambridge Analytica scandal that he attempted to distance himself from.
The Trump victory followed the equally surprising outcome of the UK's Brexit vote, which marked a devastating moment for Britain as it voted to leave the European Union, a move that has cost the UK economy £100 billion pounds every year since. Both campaigns benefited from the illegal Cambridge Analytica data-mining project on Facebook, which, at the time, was a critical vehicle for distributing far-right propaganda, helping deliver Trump's victory. I have included below a short film, which some will have already seen, that I made about how it worked and its connections to Peter Thiel and Palantir.
If I achieve nothing else with this episode of this series, it’s that I hope you can see how these threads that may once have seemed unconnected begin to converge. One of the strengths that the right believes they have in this moment is that the left is caught up in a frenzy of conspiracy theories, where every email and image leads to Trump. This is the very reason I have steered clear of becoming part of that feeding frenzy, instead choosing to focus on the broader picture.
As someone who has dealt with the legal process of supporting a young daughter following a sex crime perpetrated on her as a child, I know the overwhelming evidentiary burden and the high bar set to obtain such a conviction. I concluded long ago, after examining the released files, that however much we want in our minds to conclude that Trump is a pedophile, it’s one thing to think or wish it to be true, but quite another to secure a conviction in a court of law.
Trump is a man who has taken ownership of the Department of Justice and is using it to ensure there will be no charges levelled against him. He believes that accusations simply turn him into a victim, which in turn fires up his base. I think right now that is a misguided calculation. From a political standpoint, the persistent flow of perceived damning information undoubtedly hurts Trump as polls show and that helps Democrats. However, I hate to say it, but I’m forced to conclude that this is all that matters to Democratic leadership. I personally struggle to believe that the victims will ever see justice for the abhorrent crimes committed against them, and that breaks my heart.
The arrest of the former Prince Andrew today in the UK today marks yet another twist in a saga that is going nowhere, but this arrest is related to misconduct in public office. In a statement today, Transparency International UK they write:
"Transparency International UK notes today's arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on suspicion of misconduct in public office, in connection with his former role as the United Kingdom trade envoy.
"We will not comment on the specifics of an active investigation so as not to undermine due process. In general terms, we note that misconduct in public office is among the most serious offences in English law, carrying maximum sentence of life imprisonment, and is reserved for those who are found to have wilfully abused a position of public trust. Any proven abuse of a senior public role for private ends, financial or otherwise, is corruption that erodes public trust in our institutions.”
While there are some six additional investigations ongoing in relation to potential sex trafficking, I would hazard a guess that misconduct in public office would provide a politically more acceptable conclusion than that of sex crime charges. It’s hard to tell how much the establishment wants to use him to set an example, especially given Peter Mandelson may face similar charges.
I’ll conclude today by saying that the Epstein Class has taken decades to arrive at where they are today at the heart of government, and if you think they are going to let the matter of an election get in their way, you are deluding yourself. The power to stop this still remains in the hands of everyday Americans; simply refer back to the opening two paragraphs I include in every piece I write these days. It’s the only option on the table. A simple straight forward silent but deadly revolution.
I’ll leave you with the thought that Trump is not lurking in the Middle East for fun. I have a sneaking suspicion that he’s prepared to send American men and women to die in a war in Iran if it means he can possibly postpone the midterms. This was the man who said there would be no forever wars. Be assured if he thinks Iran would simply be another Venezuelan escapade he is is very wrong.
I seriously question whether trump actually was elected by the people of this country. There were so many shenanigans going on at the time from the Russians to Palantier and Musk messing with the voting machines to ballots being thrown out.
Thank you for your perspective and the compassion that has come at great cost to you personally. Your work is very much appreciated.