Newborn calf struggling in deep freeze brought indoors to curl up on couch NBC News. The photos.
Urban expansion in the age of liberalism Works in Progress
Climate/Environment
Historic snowstorm for eastern North Carolina, with localized amounts near 20″ along the coast Balanced Weather
Overshoot: The World Is Hitting Point of No Return on Climate Yale Environment 360
The biomass industry promised these Southern towns prosperity. So why are they still dying? Grist
Pandemics
Hotel experiment suggests air mixing can help curb flu transmission CIDRAP
Japan
Traffic mirrors in Japan Beyond The Frame
China?
XI CALLS FOR CHINA’S RENMINBI TO ATTAIN GLOBAL RESERVE CURRENCY STATUS FT
23 WAYS YOU’RE ALREADY LIVING IN THE CHINESE CENTURY Wired (Resilc)
CK Hutchison faces limited legal options after Panama voids port rights: experts South China Morning Post
Syraqistan
How Netanyahu is sabotaging phase two of the Gaza ceasefire +972 Magazine
Israel wants US to attack Iran, but Trump favours tough diplomacy: report TRT World
Two blasts kill four in southern Iran as IRGC assassination rumour denied Intellinews
Iran to hold joint naval drills with China, Russia amid rising US tensions TRT World
Africa
Kenya’s first chipmaker caught in superpower crossfire The Continent
European Disunion
Analysis-Europe’s $955 billion recovery fund struggles to transform economy Reuters
Just listened to Peter Thiel complain about how hard it is to have mega companies in Europe and how everyone wants to sell and go on vacation. I am glad Europe exists as a counterpoint to the rat race that is the US. I absolutely love how life can be slow here, how money isn’t…
— Elnathan John (@elnathan_john) January 29, 2026
Irish defence minister confirms plans to scrap Irish neutrality The Canary
As Europe rearms, ‘Made in India’ is entering the EU’s defence equation Euractiv
Been spendin’ most their lives livin’ in the free trade paradise China Articles
Italy church restoration probed after Meloni angel lookalike DW
New Not-So-Cold War
Let’s get something straight : Dmitriev is a representative of the oligarchy faction .
Secondly such negotiations should be conducted by FM not some shady oligarch representative.
Thirdly if you see it as a good sign , I see it as the exact opposite.— Dagny Taggart (@DagnyTaggart963) February 1, 2026
Ukraine Suffers Unprecedented Nationwide Blackouts as Grid Teeters on Edge Simplicius
Ukraine faces mounting IMF repayment pressure as February deadline looms Intellinews
More Ukrainian Cowbell From a Delusional British Colonel Larry Johnson
Silicon murder valley Events in Ukraine
Is it time to replace NATO with EATO? Ian Proud
The Great Game
Kazakhstan: Anti-China demonstrators face long prison terms after fiery protest Eurasianet
South of the Border
L’affaire Epstein
Epstein lawyers discussed possibility of cooperation with prosecutors days before his death, files reveal The Guardian
Epstein Files Give More Evidence That Jeffrey Epstein Was A Mossad Agent. The Dissident
🚨🚨🚨🚨The attached email is the most shocking email I’ve seen yet in the Epstein release and I haven’t seen anyone talking about it.
“We’ve had another serious incident since an American shot the trial judge in our child sex trafficking case here.”
I’m sorry, WTF? An… pic.twitter.com/Xrxr8q5W1G
— ColonelTowner-Watkins (@ColonelTowner) February 1, 2026
The model from Mexico who in 2009, fled from one of Epstein’s parties, screaming “They were eating people!”
No longer seems so crazy. But no one has seen 21-year-old Gabriella Rico Jiménez since then. pic.twitter.com/7b0OzHb0xf
— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) February 1, 2026
learning that so many of the victims of Epstein’s reign of sexual terrorism were orphaned and impoverished Eastern European girls is unfortunately demonstrative that it was the Pedophile’s Den unleashed and catalyzed when the USSR was dissolved; the dissolution of the Soviet…
— Tameqqrant (@tizemtmarxism) January 31, 2026
Trump’s Deputy AG Declares Epstein Document Review ‘Over,’ Angering Democrats NOTUS
MAGA Collapse
Democrat Taylor Rehmet wins solidly red Texas Senate seat in stunning special election upset Texas Tribune
Democrats en déshabillé
House Dem divisions over DHS funding spill out in private call Axios
Police State Watch
Two CBP Agents Identified in Alex Pretti Shooting ProPublica
How Hackers Are Fighting Back Against ICE Electronic Frontier Foundation (Resilc)
Private prisons are cashing in on Trump’s ICE crackdown. They’re just getting started Salon
How the Pentagon is Quietly Building Trump’s Concentration Camps Migrant Insider
St. Peter police chief intervened and got federal agents to release resident, sources say MPR. Another crazy video.
Wars Come Home
How western wars turned liberal democracies into police states Middle East Eye
Our Famously Free Press
The Arrest of Journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort was a test case. Egberto Off The Record
Imperial Collapse Watch
International law meant to limit effects of war at breaking point, study finds The Guardian
Goodbye dollar dominance, hello global financial anarchy Noah Smith, Asia Times
Healthcare?
The system is unsustainable M (is) Living with Long Covid
Mr. Market
Gold, silver, bitcoin and oil slide as ‘metals meltdown’ rattles markets – business live The Guardian
Why the catastrophe bond market is so hot right now CNBC
Kevin Warsh – Wall Street’s man Michael Roberts
“Liberation Day”
US Container Growth Vanishes With World Trade Flows ‘Moving On’ Bloomberg
Economy
The wealth divide is spreading to inflation:
New Fed data shows that lower income US households now face HIGHER rates of inflation than higher income earners.
The bottom 40% of US households is seeing annual inflation rates of ~3.1%.
Meanwhile, the middle 40% and top 20% see… pic.twitter.com/KIrl0BuMwd
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) February 1, 2026
The Human Cost of the Warsh-Palantir Economic Framework Frame the Globe News
The Boomcession: Why Americans Hate What Looks Like an Economic Boom BIG by Matt Stoller
Hard Times in the Delta as Farmers Consider Letting Crops Rot New York Times
AI
Farmland in the crosshairs: Balancing energy expansion and agriculture Farm Progress
Short on resources, special educators are using AI – with little knowledge of the effects The Conversation
OpenClaw (a.k.a. Moltbot) is everywhere all at once, and a disaster waiting to happen Gary Marcus
The Bezzle
Bitcoin Break Below $80,000 Signals New Crisis of Confidence Bloomberg
Emails Show Even Epstein Thought Crypto Pumps are Unethical Gizmodo
The fruits of anger Aeon
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
144 comments
Comments are closed.
From “Goodbye dollar dominance, hello global financial anarchy”
Maybe we’ll find out what central banks knew when/if Germany asks for some of its physical gold back…
If Noah were a competent analyst, rather than a useful idiot pushing the Establishment Narrative (TM), he’d know why CBs around the world were buying gold: reserve managers were looking for neutral assets which carried no political or counter-party risk, unlike the dollar. Since 2014, Russia & China were leading the way in de-dollarizing their USD reserves as the US made clear it intended to fully weaponize USD. That message was amplified in 2022 with the West freezing Russian reserves for its entirely justified military actions in Ukraine.
Additionally, in 2023 & 2024, announcements out of the annual BRICS meetings reinforced the de-dollarization theme, along with a stronger push to conduct cross-border trade in local currencies, and the *potential* establishment of an asset-backed BRICS currency (many expected gold to play a role). So, plenty of reasons why gold took off in 2024.
‘Tameqqrant
@tizemtmarxism
learning that so many of the victims of Epstein’s reign of sexual terrorism were orphaned and impoverished Eastern European girls is unfortunately demonstrative that it was the Pedophile’s Den unleashed and catalyzed when the USSR was dissolved; the dissolution of the Soviet Union produced a vacuum of protection and accountability proved advantageous to international networks of sexual enslavement rings embedded in criminal world economies sustained by imperialism.’
Yesterday my daughter made the astute observation that if the testimony of the women victims was actually believed and acted on, that you would only need the Epstein files as supporting evidence.
Goooooooooood Mooooooooorning Fiatnam!
A number of dogfaces in the platoon had requested apanthropinization, as the situation back in the world was really eating at their morale, I mean imagine your leaders in both politics and business were not only pedophiles, but likely cannibals as an added bonus?
Permission granted~
I wonder if the Mrs. was at that Miami meet:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/netanyahu-wife-living-miami-looking-175600739.html
More from “Goodbye dollar dominance, hello global financial anarchy”
My understanding is that China has been accumulating gold for quite a while, so perhaps this is exactly China’s medium term plan.
“Irish defence minister confirms plans to scrap Irish neutrality”
About the dumbest idea I have heard since, well, the Swedes and the Finns rushing onto a sinking ship …
Same feeling here. The Irish really had it with their neutrality and were respected for it. With this being abandoned, what is the bet that Irish armouries will be emptied of military gear so that it can be sent to the Ukraine and demands will be made that Ireland send billions to Zelensky as well.
This promises to be an explosive issue over here: surveys of popular opinion on neutrality, Triple Lock, etc, have consistently shown a broad and deep attachment to the principle of neutrality. This was of course emphasised by the resounding victory of Catherine Connolly in the recent Presidential election.
Just for you information: there are also politicians in Austria — most prominently the current minister of foreign affairs, Beate Meinl-Reisinger (from the small centre-right liberal party NEOS) — who are arguing that neutrality is no longer relevant, and that a closer cooperation with NATO is necessary. The controversy is raging, for the population is favourable to Austrian neutrality.
Meanwhile, Switzerland is slowly drifting away from neutrality — despite furious opposition from the right-wing CDU — acquiring (or better, attempting to acquire since the suppliers get paid but do not supply) equipment from the USA and Israel, aligning its military strategy with NATO considerations, and adopting a quiet pro-Israel stance.
Jacques Baud reminded us of the fact that the Swiss neutrality was basically the work of the Russians (back in 1815). That’ll show them!
I looked into it, and the 1815 “Déclaration des Puissances portant reconnaissance et garantie de la neutralité perpétuelle de la Suisse et de l’inviolabilité de son territoire” (Declaration of the powers recognizing and guaranteeing the perpetual neutrality of Switzerland and the inviolability of its territory) was signed by Austria, France, Great-Britain, Portugal, Prussia, and Russia.
It is interesting that Russia was also a party to the 1839 Treaty of London, which established the neutrality of Belgium, and to the 1867 Treaty of London, which established the neutrality of Luxemburg.
Somehow the current elites have completely forgotten how important a role Russia played in the various diplomatic events of Western Europe, even regarding countries far away from Russia and to which Russia had no claims (that I know of).
There is a core of Anglo American elites that have never forgotten this and have repeatedly used Russia to weaken the rest of Europe.
This post dates Western Imperialism kicked off by Cortez’ disease of the heart, where the Pirate Empire of Atlantacists has been more motivated by power than greed.
While Cortez would happily let you live after you gave him all your gold, the pirates will kill you after they take everything because they assume you’re psychotic like they are and will do to them as they do. I don’t want to romanticize Russia, China or India, but their foundational legitimizing myths are about cooperation in some form rather than Western narcissistic Freedom.
We had a consistent majority against Nato membership in Sweden until 2022. Once the war was on in Ukraine the major parties flipped on a dime and critical voices were shut out of the media until the Nato application had been handed in. Opinion swung in favor of membership, but I would say it followed the political leadership, not led it.
While there is no question that the current Irish government would like to weaken neutrality, the proposal doesn’t really do that. At present, to send more than 12 military personnel on a mission abroad, it needs specific governmental approval, Parliamentary approval, and a UN Mandate. The law proposes removing the requirement for a UN mandate. So all it’s saying is that the government has sovereignty in deciding when to send its military somewhere, which is not exactly an unusual situation.
Ireland probably can’t join Nato or any other military alliance without a constitutional change (legal scholars argue on this point, but even the government has agreed its probably true), which requires a majority vote, which the politicians know full well they would not win unless there was a dramatic change. What is happening is that the government wants more options for possible small scale deployments on EU missions, which in reality means very little. Ireland has always been ‘neutral, but in the western camp’. That hasn’t changed and isn’t likely to change.
What is changing – and I think this is a positive thing – is that the hypocrisy of Ireland pretending to be neutral while borrowing Nato manpower or equipment when it suited has ended – for example, by asking the RAF to help out when needed. This is behind the big increase in defence spending. Claiming to be neutral without the ability to defend its airspace or help citizens abroad is pretty meaningless.
I’m not so sanguine, PK. Restricting overseas adventures to UN Security Council approved ones has prevented Ireland being involved in America’s wars. No longer….
MLB kept players out of the Hall of Fame despite hitting the most home runs, most hits and most every other thing, and we have an opportunity to clean house thanks to the Epstein revelations-if we’d only act on it, to ban them from what passes for polite society.
They seem to like islands, so lets put them all on the most remote island in US Territory, Palmyra Atoll. It’s 3,300 miles of open ocean to the US mainland, or NZ from there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmyra_Atoll
A remote island makes sense, but Palmyra Atoll looks much too nice for them.
How about this, 1,390 km from Hawai’i: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnston_Atoll
USAF claims to have remediated all the contamination (prolly by just washing everything into the ocean). The players seem like good
guinea pigstest cases for verifying the job. Supplies could be dropped from an airplane. Offspring of the players might form a cargo cult.McMurdo seems like the perfect place for these creeps, to me.
close to 9th circle of hell we’ve got.
The arctic might be better because polar bears
People using AI to scan the files is too easy. The AIs are trained to presume the non-existence of what we all would rather not think about. On the the Michael Wolf daily beast show his co-star had an email lutinick to epstein where the subject was introducing lutinick’s four children to the gang. And another couple, names redacted, and their four children.
1. these people are absurdly monstrous;
2. the roster of names has only begun to be assembled–scoring an invite to Epstein’s place was like getting invited to a Diddy party.
Professional baseball stars are proles compared to this crew. The likelihood of cleaning house, as you describe it, seems quite small to me.
i saw those emails but they didn’t say that those were THEIR children. They said that each couple would be bringing 4 children. Those could be their children, as it were, Lutnick’s wikipedia lists four children, but who can know.
I think the best island on Earth for these people would be this one……
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island
This island is under the control of the government of India. They allow no one to land there. The native population is actually native. And they have a fierce reputation for not liking outsiders. And I would love to see how these scumbags would enjoy that free all paid vacation.
You would inflict them on the natives?
Why would they need an island anyways when a very rusty ship without a propeller could just be anchored wherever? There are always perfectly functional ocean going ships being sent to the breakers.
And I am barely jesting here.
We could send them to the Bronteracs.
Re: Palmyra Atoll
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_the_Sea_Will_Tell
Thirty-five years ago the lawyer Vincent Bugliosi wrote this fascinating true-crime book about a double murder there.
Brief synopsis: An older American couple were anchored there when one day another vessel hove into sight. It bore a young woman and her boyfriend and they planned to stay. But, having failed to provision themselves adequately, they were forced to subsist mainly on breadfruit, about the only edible thing on the atoll and a dreary diet indeed. After too much of it, the boyfriend came up with a way to improve their standard of living…
This recent movie Eden (with Sydney Sweeny and Jude Law) somewhere in the Galapagos Island is also based on true events: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23149780/
the released Epstein stuff is so unfathomably dark you wonder what wasn’t released as well as what’s in all those other inboxes, like Maxwell’s.
basically, it corroborates all of the wildest rumours we have dismissed for years as nutjob conspiracy theories. Granted, nothing is confirmed, but the mountain of evidence is growing. we’re talking satanic rituals, raping, murdering and consuming children of all ages by virtually everyone in power, at least in the west. stuff going back at least to the protocols of the elders of zion.
in one email to peter thiel, epstein writes, ‘i assume you know that i represent the rothschilds”.
All the occult rumors about the rothschilds resurface. basically, what was left of real judaism was mostly eliminated by the nazis. some pockets of it still exist, but mostly it’s just worshippers of baal.
it’s a watershed moment for our civilisation. either we forcefully repudiate it, or it comes out in the open and consumes us all.
What happens next? People are foaming at the mouth thinking this will take down Trump, but will it? That seems to be the hot thing in most circles. They want him gone and this is they way to get rid of him. OK, fine, let’s do so.
What about the rest of these sick ******. They need to face the punishment they so deserve – all of them – no exceptions.
I would not be surprised this entire thing goes away and nothing happens to anyone. Maxwell was in court, is serving time for her guilt. What did we learn from that? Not near enough.
It’s a big club and we ain’t in it.
Why would it take down Trump? I mean, Biden and his “Justice” department sat on all these files for 4 years. 4 fu***ng years! Apparently one of their most deeply held beliefs is protecting Mossad child sex traffickers.
As for the current “Justice” department, we already have our answer on what they plan to do: Deputy attorney general signals no new Epstein charges, defends Gabbard role in Georgia election search
“Nothing to see here, please move along now”
Oh, common, they are protecting not only child molesters but child murderers as well, with over 20,000 children killed in Gaza so far…
In any society with a ruling class, you wind up with unaccountable authorities doing despicable things. Catholic priests have been raping kids for centuries with little consequence for example.
Healthy nations in traditional times don’t have this problem. Aka indian, native or indigenous people in traditional times. They don’t have unaccountable leaders and endless greed and corruption. Study this way of life and join with others to create a new healthy nation where integrity and generosity are normal. You can find examples
of unaccountable political leaders raping kids with impunity going back to Roman times, and many examples from around the world show it’s not just western Europe/USA.
And this isn’t the first instance of satanic child abuse rituals. The first President Bush was named by victims for participating in satanic child abuse events in the 1980s. We are not free people, and our rulers are profoundly evil. Only by forming new healthy nations can we free ourselves and embrace a way of life without this endless profound evil.
It has been insane to watch how Epstein and Israel have been connected with all the worst trends in censorship in what’s left of the “free” western world. Censorship, psy-ops and blackmail everywhere one cares to look in this sordid affair. Apparently even Moot, the creator of 4chan, was in contact with Epstein. 4chan! Seemingly no part of the internet is off limits to the Israeli manipulation machine, keeping in mind we already know about the hasbara ops that they do with Wikipedia (see the “Hasbara instruction day” with one Naftali Bennet ) as well as social media: (Jan 2026) Israel is using bots to fake social media support
The only large influential social media to NOT become completely in thrall to Israeli interests was the Chinese owned TikTok, and we saw the extraordinary lengths the child sex trafficking elite went to take it over so they can keep pushing their genocidal garbage at us. China of course doesn’t have a lobby of powerful and influential Zionist/Jewish oligarchs to worry about placating, and I’m sure any of their elites acting so repulsively in the service of a foreign country would have been rounded up as traitors and shot by now.
And then (of course!) we have darling figures of the new right wing either being in thrall of or in cahoots with Israel/Epstein. One of the more surprising things to come out of all these emails is just how close Bannon was with Epstein. Pretty much best friends privately, all the while Bannon burnished his public image as the spiritual leader of America-first and MAGA: (Dec 2025) Bannon, Epstein friendship inexcusably stays under the radar :
also, Ghislaine was a reddit supermod using the handle Maxwellhill.
I just finished watching the released Bannon interview with Epstein published by Drop Site. Interesting overall, touching a lot about complex systems and financial accounting, but Bannon closes the interview by asking if Epstein is the devil. He dodges the question.
Interestingly, at several points he insists that humans have a soul.
Funny enough, I would have been more surprised to hear Bannon wasn’t involved with Epstein somehow. You definitely can’t trust Bannon either way, but I still think it’s very possible that he’s actually a hardcore Nechayevist. And one of the primary techniques is to find the influential people in a network (just like Epstein), ingratiate yourself with them, then subtly give them terrible advice to heighten the contradictions.
Never heard of the term “Nechayevist”; named after Sergei Nechaev, a Russian revolutionary. “Revolution by any means possible”. Very interesting, thank you.
And yes, I agree with you, Bannon is difficult to pin down that way as well as an intelligent political operator, and I believe it was Ian Welsh who noted that Bannon is particularly canny (and dangerous) because he is someone that understands the rage of the masses and at least in the first Trump admin, one of the only people who actually wanted to do populist things. Trump’s populist brain. Of course he wasn’t smart enough to not get dumped in Trump 1, and his Epstein links (whatever his goals were) very well might sink him this time amongst the base he cultivates.
Nechaev apparently died in a prison cell…
I pointed out to the medicine group here this weekend that we have a real issue in medicine too. His name is Peter Attia MD. He is one of what are now known as “longevity” doctors. A national following, podcast and multiple best seller books. He openly discusses that he has about 30 or so patients in the 0.1%, Epstein was apparently one of them, and he apparently charges these people 100K or so a year in a concierge type situation. It is not really medicine as I do. He is doing all kinds of longevity type maneuvers on these patients. For quite a while, at different times, I have had 2 of his patients in my own practice. I would say eyebrow-raising.
He graduated from Stanford U Med School, and did a surgery residency at Johns Hopkins. He is licensed to practice medicine in Texas, Calif, and NY. And yet he has absolutely no board certification at all. And this is the important part – he has just been hired in the past few months I would assume by Bari Weiss ( she herself a bit touched by the Epstein scandal through her wife – although what I am reading is at best tangential) as a medical consultant and medical on-air personality at CBS.
In the latest Epstein dump, there are actual emails released between him and Epstein. I find this evidence far more credible in this dump than all the hearsay, and documented stories after the fact. No, this is real time email personally between the two of them.
In those emails we learn that Dr. Attia was cavorting around NYC in Epstein activities while his own son was in the ICU sick unto death back home.
We learn that Attia yearned and was begging to be invited to Little St James Island, the place with the temple and where a huge number of the atrocities occurred.
We learn that Dr. Attia feels that pu$$y is gluten-free.
There are many others. As I was reading through them, I just got sick to my stomach. Mind you – ALL of his email communication was after Epstein’s conviction for sex crimes.
There is no universe where this is even remotely OK for a physician. In his books, Attia was always talking about “Majoring in the minors” – his way of stating that people were getting far too involved and stressed about the little things in life. Could it be he was in a Freudian way confessing his own sin to the world?
You can rest assured, if I had ever written emails like this, Epstein or not, and my wife found out, I would be brained with a frying pan in seconds flat.
This guy among so many others this weekend just make me realize that the people I had been laughing at for so long – the pizzagate nutters – actually were far closer to the truth than we dreamed. These scum actually repeated use the word pizza in these emails.
There had better be removed licenses and lost job at CBS for this guy. There had better be perp walks galore going on. THESE WERE KIDS
I also saw some of these correspondences between the two. very gross.
as an aside, in the bannon interview, epstein seemed quite versed in body systems and used a number of medical analogies when talking about complex systems.
Yep, I have sort of come to the conclusion that all that QAnon stuff about a US pedophile ring full of the rich and well connected was absolutely correct.
And that the perpetrators found a way to defang the whole topic through the QAnon narrative, so that saying anything about a “pedophile ring” became a way to mock the “nutters” and “morons” who brought it up. And so now none of the rich and famous will bear any consequences for ruining young lives, apart from Epstein and Maxwell. The impact of that operation lives on.
The hysteria around Covid and QAnon taught me that it is child’s play to make a lot of people believe whatever you want them to believe
Probably why the PTB were eager to get AI up and running as fast as possible. All videos can now easily be discounted as fake. “you say there’s a video of me with 2 teenaged girls? So what, never happened. That video is as real as Jackson, the cockatoo.”
What you say is true. The PizzaGate people are owed an apology.
I made the same comment today to my wife about “pizzagate” — that all that turned out to be wrong about it was apparently the location.
We truly live in the stupidest timeline …
“mostly it’s just worshippers of baal”
Hey, Ba’al wasn’t such a bad guy He was the “rider on the clouds” who brought rain to the Levant. Molech is your god for human sacrifice and child-eating:
Leviticus 18:21 (NRSVU)
Note that a few scholars would identify Ba’al with Molech, but I like Daniel Schmachtenberger’s use of the name.
JE named his bank account Baal
In one of the emails, HRC mentioned making sacrifices to Moloch, though
JFYI: Ba’al just means “Lord” in ancient Canaanite languages. So Ba’al Zebub (beelzebub) is the lord of the flies.
Ba’al just means “lord” in the original language. If i remember right, there are multiple deities from ancient Carthage that use the epithet Ba’al. Ba’al wasn’t an historically evil deity, he just wasn’t a Hebrew one.
I can assure you that decent, morally sound people still practice the Jewish religion. This stuff is insane though and makes me constantly interrogate the the interactions I’ve had with Israel and Israelis. I’m sure lots of Jews are thinking the same thing. Not in my name, none of this horror.
Of course. It shouldn’t need to be said but certainly not all Jews. Just the Zionist supremacist. The fight against them is led by the axis of resistance on the one hand, and anti-Zionist jews from inside the west on the other.
I don’t think the tribe is going to be able to NAXALT its way out of this. They will be judged as they judge: collectively.
Too many people are learning too much too fast and no one under 40 cares about The Worst Thing That Ever Happened. The power that photographs of piles of random shoes has on the boomer mind faded with each subsequent generation.
Solzhenitsyn wrote that elite-capture via debt and vice also occurred in Poland and Russia, resulting in the collapse of both. My guess is the Americans born 1935 to 1955 – the generation that lost the country – were a pushover compared to the others.
noam chomsky comes up a lot in the epstein emails. There is no evidence he partook in any of the depravity, but it’s vanishingly unlikely he didn’t know anything about it as epstein was perhaps his closest friend. He’s someone who, for better or worse, has had a huge influence on the opposition in the west; maybe more for the worse because of how helpless we are, only looking towards the next elections, but it’s looking more and more like he was a complicated psy-op.
makes you wonder who else you look up to is deceiving us. He has been one of my favourite people for some 20 years now, but Greenwald he has some red flags. Trust but verify, as a wise demon once said.
Don’t have any heroes and think critically for yourself on every issue.
Also, you can discard anyone forever who says that there’s nothing to see here. They’re just doing PR for demons.
also, skynet is going to make the mods very busy today. Lots of comments bound to get flagged.
When I saw that photo of Chomsky and Epstein together on a small private jet, I immediately wondered if that was the infamous “Lolita Express” and where that jet was going to. Chomsky laid down with a dog so it is hardly surprising that people say that he got fleas out of it.
For what it is worth, there is this document, where Jewish lawyer Matthew Hiltzik confirms to Jeffrey Epstein (jeevacation@gmail.com) that the advice given by Noam Chomsky to Epstein regarding how to deal with personal accusations is sound.
Hiltzik himself had just a few contacts with Epstein and there is no evidence he participated in the depraved activities of Epstein’s coterie.
As for Noam Chomsky, he had more contacts with Epstein, but the evidence falls short of having him knowledgeable of the degenerate orgies taking place at Epstein’s places.
Millions of documents have been released, and I read that many more remain undisclosed, so who knows.
yeah, i said that there’s no evidence of it, but it would mean chomsky was one of the only people he corresponded with who had no idea at all. chomsky is a pretty smart man, i don’t know. perhaps not believable, but possible. Then there’s him writing about dreaming about visiting little st james. i guess the pizzerie there are really good.
Epstein was apparently also friends with Chomsky’s wife Valeria. I really don’t know what to make of that, but Noam wasn’t communicating with Epstein behind his wife’s back.
The thing about all of this is that a large proportion of the people named in the “Epstein files” have been known associates for many years are still out there fogging mirrors, yet there has been little effort made by the media to ask any of these people what they were doing with Epstein. Lots of people in that Big Club know what was going on and nobody is talking.
Thanks for links
from https://epsteinweb.org/noam-chomsky/
“(…)
Summary: What we can honestly say about Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Epstein
Putting the known pieces together, an evidence-based summary of the Noam Chomsky–Jeffrey Epstein connection looks like this:
Media investigations of Jeffrey Epstein’s private calendars and related records show several scheduled meetings and at least one planned flight involving Noam Chomsky in the mid-2010s.
These entries describe dinners and conversations at Epstein’s New York townhouse and routine travel arrangements, not explicit business deals or criminal plans.
Chomsky has acknowledged meeting Epstein and has said that the interactions focused on politics and academic issues; he has denied any connection to Epstein’s crimes.
There is no documented business partnership, legal case, or long-term financial relationship between the two men in the public record.
Chomsky’s name does not appear as a central figure in the flight-log compilations, “black book,” or trafficking-related court documents that define Epstein’s core network.
For readers exploring the Epstein archives, the fairest conclusion is straightforward:
Noam Chomsky appears in the Epstein story as an intellectual and public figure who met with Epstein on several occasions late in Epstein’s life. Those meetings are real and documented, but they have not been shown to extend into business collaboration or participation in Epstein’s criminal activities.
(…)”
As for accusations that he helped destroy the left I do not see any evidence.
Millions of people got active (myself included) due to his work.
He never argues on ideological grounds although he has strong political beliefs.
He always suggests to doubt him and make own inquiries.
He never interprets others´ behaviour beyond the verifiable and bases his suggestion on info which everyone can counter-check.
He is against hierarchies and in favour of transparency of arguments.
He is opposed to unjust use of force.
However he is not argueing force is by principle wrong to achieve means.
He always tries to point out contradictions and explain them.
He admits mistakes
I wrote this in present tense since the man is alive.
And it would help only “empire” to let “Epstein” destroy his legacy which may be a handy side effect intended by those who use the Epstein case for their own nefarious means shielded by the shadow of the serious crimes everyone is talking about. After all every scandal offers new paths which have to be used by power. And nothing sticks as well as unfounded rumours.
If I had a nickle for every time some guy was considered by most and by every single other male, gay or straight, to be a good guy, a good friend , a good boss, a good professor, or a good customer but I and I couple of others did everything we could to avoid that guy for reasons that were brushed off… I would have spent my teens and twenties slowly pulling up nickles.
The worst isn’t that guy. It’s the other guys who just won’t see it.
(Not talking about cannible child rapist, just sex pests and garden variety creepers. They put you on a black list for rejecting them, spend a lot of time kissing ass to build and preserve their rep.)
I think it is very, very hard for most people to accept that someone who is nice to them, particularly someone with even a little power or influence or charisma, could be a predatory jerk toward others. It really, really hurts to admit that. We really want to believe that other people are whole-hearted in their humanity and if someone says otherwise, well then the accuser is of course the creep.
Years and years ago I had a boss – a nun, in fact – who I and all her other reports thought was just the sweetest darling. It wasn’t until after she retired that we learned that she’d been mean and rude to everyone in the department who didn’t work directly for her. In the space of about an hour we heard story after story of how sarcastic and belittling she could be. We couldn’t argue the volume of accusations away but in one case we her former staff afterwards all agreed that “Well, yes, that was wrong of Sr. Michael but honestly who could blame her…”.
I wish I could say the shock of learning that someone I had always thought to be the kindest soul was also frequently an ***hole made me a kinder person, or at least cured me from thinking “so-and-so would never!”, but sadly I still struggle with it.
This is a tough one for me. Chomsky was one of my heroes. Aside from all the sexual horrors, Epstein represented all the political/social/financial issues that Chomsky was supposedly fighting against for decades.
F**k.
This is it for me. Even if we (sigh) accept Chomsky had no idea what was going on, it’s clear their relationship was more than casual chums of the cocktail circuit. I can’t fathom why that would be and Chomsky’s “it’s none of your business” responses (so far) don’t exactly instill confidence.
I knew something was up with Chomsky for a while, when he started with the blue no matter who stuff.
I also found it suspicious that he never said anything about trans/woke ideology, so much of that debate was about the meaning of words like “woman” so you’d think he would weigh in being the most famous linguist and the way it helped to destroy the left.
There was a linguist who went to the Amazon and found that the indigenous people were using language in a manner that would blow Chomsky’s favourite theory out of the water.
So Chomsky sent people down there to contaminate the evidence by handing over tvs and other delights to the people who until then had been uncontaminated by western culture.
That solved Chomsky’s problem of losing his perch as the linguist supremo of the world because the evidence of the original linguist became so diluted that it could never be used then to question Chomsky’s work..
So, all this about Chomsky confirms to me that he was an ahole hypocrite who knew how to suck up to the right people.
And I’m sorry but I can’t find the article about the linguist, the story about this was maybe a decade and a half or two decades ago. Perhaps somebody in the field can explain it better than me
I followed that story at the time. Initially as someone ill disposed to UG I was biased on one side but at the end of it all I regarded the whole thing as a rather complicated story of fandom, academic factionalism, and opportunism. But there was some writing about the saga, including by Tom Wolf, that I don’t regret reading.
Chomskyan linguistics was a big breakthrough and suddenly a new scientific discipline existed with theoretical basis seemingly as strong as CS. This created new academic career opportunities and was attractive since a social study now had the mathematical and scientific cred of algorithms, computation, Turing, von Neumann, etc.
UG is a related idea that poses some valid and interesting questions worthy of discussion. But some scholars took UG way too far, asserting that it tells us that there is a structure to the cosmos, kinda like some Platonic theories do. I’ve met people who argued this strong form of UG but I never found it plausible myself.
So there ended up being a fight with strong UG under attack. But UG as a dialectic hypothesis and Chomskyan linguistics, both of which I regard as distinct from strong UG, and Chomsky himself got caught up in the fight.
The fight itself threw up opportunities for various people, e.g. for Wolfe and Colapinto. Such high stakes! Discredit UG and maybe you can discredit Chomsky, … CHOMSKY ffs. Imagine that!
What I don’t know for sure is to what extent Chomsky was involved in pushing strong UG beyond its shelf life. I suspect a lot of that came from grad students in thrall to him, like the people I’ve met in the early 00s and argued with. During the public fight that Colapinto started in the New Yorker and Wolfe joined, Chomsky distanced himself from UG saying that it wasn’t such a big thing.
In the end I felt like I had learned very little about linguistics and more than I wanted about the combatants and I lost interest in trying to take sides myself. If it proves anything about the moral character of Chomsky, I have no idea.
It’s all about not having heros, or not worshiping them, or something. There’s plenty of people I disapprove of who’ve said or written useful stuff.
Matt. 23:1-3
Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples,
Saying The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat:
All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.
True, and always useful to keep in mind.
“Traffic mirrors in Japan”
Saw the same in Switzerland where they were set up on blind corners of roads going down the sides of mountains. Being able to see if there was a car zooming into that bend or not was very much a relief. Being mirrors, they did not need to be powered, be internet connected, be locatable by an app nor did they need to be powered with solar panes. Old school tech rules.
established in Germany and Austria for as long as I can think of mainly in old towns or old parts of cities where there was little space due to mountains or a river when the streets were added into a historically grown quarter…in fact it makes a spot look “old-fashioned” – which is nice…
re: film education
brief report by HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
Film Students Are Having Trouble Sitting Through Movies, Professors Say
Watching a film for class used to be a dream assignment.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/film-students-are-having-trouble-sitting-through-movies-1236490359/
However, this is not a new issue.
I saw a similar article today but the professors noted that the serious students would sit down and watch a film from end to end. At least the other students did not attempt to swipe the film with their fingers so that it would speed up. :)
😳
Uh….you have to “learn” film? My fave Kael used to make fun of film academics (one essay title: “Fantasies of the Art House Audience”) even if she may have occasionally done some early life university teaching (probably not about film). However PMC overproduction seems to have led many down the film professor path.
Far better than having the Phds tell you what is good would be watching as many movies as possible since discovering the original in a sea of mediocrity is the true nature of film criticism. One of Kael’s books is titled 5001 Nights at the Movies. She even preferred “movie” to “film” in her prose.
Of course Kael may have taken herself too seriously and her 1970s film renaissance was a bit of a fizzle in the face of a pop resurgence via Jaws and Star Wars. Movies are expensive to make and have always been to some extent art that comes out of a factory. Like all art and more than some other arts they are there to entertain us–more dessert than “eat your vegetables.”
German critics like the excellent Frieda Grafe alluded to the fact that during the silent era there was a short phase where the distinction between art vs. popular was non-existent.
Godard in his Montréal film school lectures from 1978 made a few interesting observations about the historical phenomenon. Those lecture protocols to my knowledge only available in print unfortunately. Highly recommended.
On the film program then:
In 1978, Jean-Luc Godard was invited by Serge Losique at Concordia University to teach a course about the history of cinema. This was a crucial moment in the Franco-Swiss filmmaker’s career, when, after much experimentation, he was about to return, in his own way and in appearance, to a more traditional form of cinema.
https://www.cinematheque.qc.ca/en/cinema/lecons-de-cinema-de-godard-a-montreal-programme-1/
Godard spoke also about the mafia-origin of film industry and hinting to those practices in the then present.
A highly fascinating subject you are not taught in film school at all, naturally. Which eventually would point at film as money-laundering scheme.
The late Scorsese DOP German Michael Ballhaus only very rarely in public would talk about the Mafia as a presence in Scorsese´s context via actor Joe Pesci e.g. who has genuine ties to Mafia which might have been helpful – my speculative conclusion – for financing.
Of course looking at directors such as Oliver Stone or Paul Verhoeven and their backing by Israeli arms dealers is an established fact.
Latest example for such conduct would be A 24 being co-financed by the little brother of Trump´s son-in-law – not obstructing the production of such titles as “THE APPRENTICE” by A 24.
If you have no long term memory on account of letting your smartphone do it for, how can you remember something that happened earlier in the film, after enduring 22 minutes of it?
This clip has stuck with me for almost 20 years… Part of an interview from the extras on the Inland Empire DVD…
The Reporter article leads to a piece in The Atlantic, and can thus be ignored.
The miraculous appearance of Giorgia Meloni at a historically important church in Roma, pissed-off bishops, and bad restorations.
It seems that the art restorer chose the angel because the angel is holding a map of Italy. What Giorgia and the rightwingers call “La Nazione,” and the rest of us call “Il Paese.”
https://www.artribune.com/arti-visive/2026/01/angelo-giorgia-meloni-san-lorenzo-lucina/
Scroll down to the archival photos that show how the angel was painted originally.
I wasn’t aware that the chapel includes the tomb of Umberto II, Italy’s last king, who made a mess of just about everything. Of course, his pop, Victor Emanuel III, was a real piece of work. A reign of 46 years, most of it a disaster. But there were smart Savoys and stupid Savoys. The last smart Savoy was Carlo Alberto, whose spirit still inhabits Torino — considering how many museums, schools, and foundations he instituted.
Sometimes, the scandals in Italy are so silly that one can only laugh. It’s as if the protagonists are players so inept that they were ejected from a real troupe of actors of Commedia dell’Arte. Ahhhh, Genny Sangiuliano, Pompeii, and his Big Blonde. Où sont les events planners d’antan?
Meanwhile, Giorgia Meloni (not the frescoed one) and friends have tried to turn Torino into Minneapolis. You can read about events in Fatto Quotidiano, Il Post.it, or Pressenza, all of which are highly critical of the behavior of the government. We are also experiencing Scoundrel Time — McCarthyism — here in the Undisclosed Region in the form of censorship of Angelo D’Orsi and Alessandro Barbero.
But the Piedmontese and Torinese are a tough bunch: I am marking myself as “Safe,” as one does on FacetoBook.
re: secret services and history of disinformation
BERLINER ZEITUNG
a commentary
unfortunately the machine-translation makes errors like this:
google translates “That´s true. But it´s not the truth” (huh?) instead of “That´s correct. But it´s not the truth.”
Alas, I don´t have the time to check the entire translation…
Subversion and disinformation: methods more effective than those of the Stasi
Intelligence services continue to operate with a wide variety of manipulation techniques, just as they always have, and are more “successful” than ever. Only the justification is different.
https://archive.is/0ziZk
I can well believe that stuff gets lost in translation-
“If English had German Grammar”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA8XCKPdrlI (1:05 mins)
Some parts I could hear in German in my mind but the rest I was lost.
🤣
In German there is an actual comical term for this “Filser Englisch” or as it is called by Wiki:
“Lübke Englisch”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BCbke_English
“That´s true. But it´s not the truth” —
Russian has two words for the concept of truth, and both of them are translated into English as “truth”, but they differ.
Pravda (правда) = the truth in specific circumstances, subjective truth
Istina (истина) = the truth in all circumstances, actual truth or objective reality
In a USA courtroom, one takes an oath to speak “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”. This is pretty close to “istina”. Whereas if mommy tells little Billy not to eat all the cookies in the cookie jar and little Billy eats 49 cookies but leaves 1 remaining, he can honestly tell his mother that he did not in fact eat all the cookies. This is “pravda”.
I’m not a native speaker, so I gladly yield the floor to any native Russian speakers in the commentariat who understand this distinction better than I do.
‘Dagny Taggart
@DagnyTaggart963
Let’s get something straight : Dmitriev is a representative of the oligarchy faction .
Secondly such negotiations should be conducted by FM not some shady oligarch representative.
Thirdly if you see it as a good sign , I see it as the exact opposite.’
Trump wants a deal which is why he uses businessmen to conduct talks. But countries don’t make deals – they make negotiated treaties and ones that are enforceable. And for that you need experts to do the negotiating from sections of the government. Putin understands this so sending Dmitriev meets Trump’s expectations while not much is really agreed so that the Russian military can keep doing their thing. For real negotiations, you would have to have the US State Department negotiating with the Russia Foreign Ministry. Anything else is just Kabuki theater. Here, Dmitriev is just doing his job.
Re the Carolinas and the weather–it really hasn’t been that bad here in upstate SC. Perhaps having so many trees come down during Helene means that there are fewer weak ones to fall now. Give us a couple of days of temps well above freezing and it will all melt away.
It sounds like Charlotte, NC–a major city now–is in bad shape however.
re: Ukraine
interview with Nicolai Petro
The Tragedy of Ukraine: From Crisis (κρίσις) to ‘Forgetting Evil’ (μεμνήσι κακείν)
Reconciliation requires a system of justice based on compassion rather than vengeance
https://landmarksmag.substack.com/p/the-tragedy-of-ukraine-from-crisis
There once was an undocumented man from Nantucket
Who had been there so long, where he thought he’d end up kicking the bucket
Masked ICE officers said with a grin
As they duly took him in
Now documented and in custody in the sin bin
I grovel in your general direction, but the first two and the last lines rhyme in a limerick.
A limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
Stephen Wright
Laugh it up…if the ICE Gestapo hung around the Nantucket ferry in Woods Hole they could fill a dozen buses.
Thomas Frank, Harper’s Magazine, last month.
Liberal Despair
https://harpers.org:2096/archive/2026/01/liberal-despair-thomas-frank/
One and a half paras from the article:
…. This ridiculous man, who seems to value nothing besides flattery and personal enrichment, has achieved in mere months feats of which the conservative movement has dreamed for a lifetime. Like an anti-LBJ, Trump reminds the world every day what presidential power can do—the institutions it can wreck—when it is administered resolutely and with a little bit of daring.
All this, of course, fed into the liberal depression seen everywhere in Washington this past year. So, too, did the dawning awareness that so many of the right-thinking institutions of Trump I—the banks, the Silicon Valley oligarchs, the virtue-signaling media companies—were all along fair-weather allies, ready to abandon the cause the instant things got real. But the main source of dejection was the incredible tour de force of executive power in which Trump’s White House was engaged. It hurt not merely because of its immediate negative effects, but also because we had all been assured for years that such feats were impossible. After all, it was not that long ago that Barack Obama, a man of genuine ability buoyed by an overwhelming win, chose to waste his mandate on leniency toward the banks and Big Pharma and lots of idealistic talk about encouraging innovation. At the time, liberalism’s leading intellectuals laughed off public annoyance at Obama’s lackluster performance, declaring that to expect big things from him was to believe—childishly, contemptibly—that the president was a kind of superhero.
It is pretty hilarious that Trump is doing whatever he wants, sometimes rebuffed by the courts, but often enough, not. And Democrats spent every day since Obama’s election telling everyone that it’s impossible for the presidency to really do anything domestically. Obama did exactly what he needed to do for him and his, and can be thanked forever for Trump’s two terms.
Frank started complaining about that early in the Obama admin, explaining how the presidency has awesome power. It was an amazing accomplishment to persuade Democratic voters that it doesn’t. In fact I don’t think it was really possible without those voters dearly wanting to believe it.
All that “Greenlantern Presidency” bs was Ezra Klein’s life’s work. His more recent crap has been exposed as nonsense in a much shorter time frame like his “Epstein was a pedophile with powerful friends but he kept his worlds separate” take which is currently looking so terrible.
Agree abundantly.
Yes, amazing. It is not that Trump is evil. We have all met grifters and liars like this in our lives. What sort of surprises me is how many people support him and think he is doing good things. Trump couldn’t be doing all of these terrible things by himself.
On DailyKos, it was not that Obama was just a little short of being superhero, but that it was
unfairracist to expect the first Black President to be more daring. That was a view pushed relentlessly by Denise Oliver, once a Black Panther according to her autobiographical comments.LOL I’d forgotten about all the cries of racism if anyone dare criticize our nation’s first Black president. The Democrat Party is a dumpster fire of self dealing, corruption, and graft.
re: literature “Frankenstein”
BERLINER ZEITUNG
machine-translation
A plea for radical rethinking: a new look at Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”
This classic is more than just a horror story. It is a fundamental reflection on science, power, responsibility, and social exclusion.
https://archive.is/WDvwR
A discovery made almost every decade when people actually read the book and don’t just depend on the movies. (And I say that as someone who honestly believes that most of the major Frankenstein films including Young Frankenstein are deeper than they are given credit for. The book is just exponentially far more expansive.)
Trump probably doesn’t understand this and certainly doesn’t care.
This is a huge crisis for the US. Baffling how MAGA heads who should know better are crowing about America First and we’re better off without them, refer to the entire rest of the world. Where our stuff comes from.
My impression is that the best of MAGA –Massie and, amazingly, MTG– are saying No More Foreign Wars. That doesn’t mean ignore the rest of the world, it just means don’t attack them. Particularly not on behalf of the Zionist regime.
And, of course, besides refraining from foreign wars, don’t subsidize foreign militaries and their welfare systems (the kind Americans don’t have) to the tune of billions of dollars. Don’t spend more millions/billions on covert operations to undermine foreign governments.
That would do for a start.
> The Human Cost of the Warsh-Palantir Economic Framework Frame the Globe News
>> Every $1,000 of Medicare revenue loss is associated with a 6 percent to 8 percent increase in mortality rates as hospitals facing cuts reduce staffing levels and operating costs
!?! This is probably the source [bold mine]:
> Long-Term Impact of Medicare Payment Reductions on Patient Outcomes
>> As the first row shows, every $1,000 predicted loss in Medicare revenue per discharge was associated with 0.9, 1.33, 1.67, and 2.07 PP increases in 7-day, 30-day, 90-day, and 1-year mortality rates, respectively (p < .01 for all). In the bottom row of Table 3, we converted the coefficients into elasticities. Every $1,000 of instrumented Medicare revenue loss, or −33 percent, was associated with a 6 percent to 8 percent increase in mortality rates.
Matt’s boomcession article is helpful, yet leaves out a major issue – time wastage. Car repairs often take weeks instead of a day for completion (especially when the warranty insurer argues with the shop, or glitchy (unwanted) electronics are involved). GDP adds a car rental, raising GDP. Health insurance denials are up to 19% in network and 36% out-of-network (at least according to article above). More wasted time, while delayed care can mean excess monetary costs too (raising GDP). Online orders go bad? More lost time and surcharges, if you are able to get things straight (but higher GDP). Hacked?.. or your medical doctor, bank, storecreditcard hacked, even your tax returns? It’s your time to straighten things out, and sign up for “free, very short term” monitoring, and share your info online with yet another group of subcontractors (higher GDP).
Crapification costs usually show up as rising GDP, while wasted time and loss of product-resilience/durability are not part of the formula.
About a dozen of the 7,000 homes lost in the toniest of tony neighborhoods in LA in Pacific Palisades have been rebuilt in over a year since the conflagration.
These are the movers and shakers of LA that got wiped out, and if they have so little pull in righting matters, what chance does the little guy have in battling insurance companies?
Re: MAGA collapse
The Dem pickup in Texas means that Mike “Milk Carton” Johnson can afford to lose only one vote in any party-line type of affair. Massie is a known malcontent/gadfly, so write him off. That means that the likes of Anna Paulina-Luna, Lauren Boebert, or anyone else who feels like getting their ya-ya’s out can live-action role play as Joe Manchin. On the other hand, a moderate type could also decide they’ve had enough and torpedo any legislation.
The odds that they will all stay onside seem awfully low, especially in an election year. As soon as the new guy is sworn in (there is always the possibility that Johnson adjourns the House for a month or so, again, after passing something like a CR for the DHS funding) we can all look forward to peak clown car.
Johnson strikes me as more of ‘Mike of Amnesia’ where its always news he hasn’t yet read or heard, when breaking evasive on a query he doesn’t want to answer.
Mike will enjoy his new occupation as Fox News analyst when he retires from the House after being silenced as Speaker.
Then there’s the Dominionism Theory: a dogma chain reaction where one initial event triggers a series of similar, related, or unrelated events.
Regardless of how we describe his nondescript-ness, Johnson is effectively a lame duck as soon as the new guy gets sworn in. He can’t control his own caucus, so passing any legislation will be impossible without Dem votes. Which will only enrage the Boeberts and the Anna Paulina-Lunas. Retired House Rep Marge the magnificent just said the quiet part out loud – MAGA was a big lie.
Meanwhile, the Obamacare subsidies expired in December, and now its too late to do anything except reap the consequences:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/obamacare-enrollment-fell-by-more-than-1m-enrollees-for-2026/ar-AA1Vm73B?ocid=BingNewsVerp
Two things:
1) The ACA was a GOP/Mitt Romney health care plan.
From 2016:
https://www.ms.now/msnbc/mitt-romney-takes-credit-inspiring-obamacare-msna709486
2) The ACA premiums are going through the roof this year.
From CNN:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/28/politics/obamacare-premiums-increase-2026-coverage
I’m more interested in the sort of Dems getting elected. Do we need more like Chuck “I can’t do whatever thing Dem voters want. Now watch me grill a raw cheeseburger…. man of the people that I am.” ? I don’t think so. / ;)
I have watched for years how the Dem estab kneecaps locally winning Dem candidates who are just a leetle too progressive when they run for a D.C. office. The Dem estab seems determined to lose to an estab GOP candidate rather than let some New Deal type heretic (to the neoliberal economic order) win and go to Congress. It’s called the uniparty for a reason. / my 2 cents.
I think it’s a foregone conclusion that the Dems retake the House and send Johnson off to Fox News, as Wukchumni suggested will happen.
Focusing on how the Dems intend to take advantage of the GOP implosion is probably a wise move. Both parties tend to purge anyone who is too serious about changing the established uni-party schtick.
BTW, is it just me, or have the Donkeys suddenly gone silent on the Obamacare subsidies expiring, leaving over a million without health insurance?
[Crickets]
That is assuming Fox wants Johnson. As to the spiritless flaccid gormless uniparty, what was it John Nance Garner is said to have said of the Vice Presidency something about “not worth a bucket of warm p— or some other bodily fluid.
Congress is supposed to be a”co-equal branch of government — as above, spiritless flaccid gormless not to mention terrified of Donnie and weak in the knees at the prospect of being ejected from the gravy train.
The Dem pickup in Texas was a state senate race so it won’t impact the US House of Reps…yet. It does point to the Texas redistricting effort blowing up in the GOP’s face in 2026 tho.
There were 2 special elections. One in Houston between 2 Dems for Sheila Jackson-Lee’s old House seat and the State Senate seat in Tarrant county. Interestingly a Texas Senate seat is more populous than a US House Seat (940K vs 770K). The Senate Seat is also much more of a stunning and worrisome result for the GOP. The Dem candidate was outspent by 5-1 ($2.7 million vs $540K), The TX Gov, Lt Gov and AG all stumped for the GOP candidate and Trump sent out 3 messages on and prior to Election Day in support of the GOP candidate. This was a run off election from the November election where the Dem got 47.5% vs 2 GOP candidates who got 36% and 16.5% respectively. It was low turnout 95K about 1/3 of the turnout for 2022 election for this seat which was 277K, but the Dem won by a whopping 14% (57% to 43%) a Dem hadn’t been closer than a 10% loss (2018) for this seat since at least 1992.
One tariff makes you larger
And one tariff makes you small
And the ones that TACO gives you
Don’t do anything at all
Go ask if its malice
When his tales grow tall
And if you go chasing rabidly
And you know you’re going to fall
Tell ’em a Teetotalitarian leader
Has given you the call
Call it malice
When he acts so small
When men on the Zionist chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you’ve just wrote some kind of attack on X
And your mind is moving low
Go ask if its malice
I think he’ll know
When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the yellow metal is talking backwardation
And treasuries sold off, in Dollar dread
Remember what Epstein said
Heed your head
Heed your head
White Rabbit, by Jefferson Airplane
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0&list=RDWANNqr-vcx0
Hopes that Warsh will be confirmed as Fed Chief in time to compete @ Milano Cortina in the figure obfuscating event are dwindling, as Congress is diddling about.
Tis a pity as Kevin was planning a triple-dough-loop, with a treasuries crossover move, and a little known law loop lutz, to finish the performance.
One group of reactions I saw to the latest Epstein dump was all “Russia!Russia!Russia!” was true all because the article stated that there were numerous mentions of Putin. Only one email reference was used. It was an email from Epstein to Ehud Barak about demanding a private meeting rather than the public one Putin suggested. I don’t know what else is in there, but that doesn’t say it was a Russian honey trap to me, not when Epstein is clearly reporting to and working with a former Israeli PM.
I will wait to see more, but I don’t think this is going to end up helping the neoliberal Democrats so much either. Especially as the history regarding this sort of thing is knee deep in instances where the supposed enemies banded together to rebury whatever had seen some daylight.
Notice how the word ‘Epstein’ got 86’d from Tik Tok a few days prior from the last release of files?
Fancy that> Why ever would it be so?
That certainly seems to be the plan of attack on these now. Whenever SHTF, wheel out the tired old RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA. Laughable. The Daily Mail was pushing the RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA story on Saturday: Epstein’s sex empire was ‘KGB honeytrap’: Paedophile financier had multiple talks with Putin after conviction – with Russian girls flown in to harvest ‘kompromat’ on world-famous figures
The reader comments are hilarious, because even the crawling-with-Israeli-bots- daily mail comment section isn’t eating this dogfood.
The Sydney Morning Herald is also pushing the RUSSIA RUSSIA Please Pretty Please Don’t Mention Israel theory of the universe: Epstein links to Putin stoke fears he was a Russian agent
So I assume that will be the plan of attack on this one to try and bury it. Problem for them is Epstein is clearly the most obvious Israeli op possible, and the Russian’s, if anything, are coming off looking pretty good in these. The so-called “Russian opposition” was apparently looking for help from Epstein and associates in how to push anti-Putin elements such as Ilya Ponomarev.
Putin wanted to have nothing to do with Epstein as he knew who he was which made Epstein wonder about regime changing Putin about a decade ago. Hilariously, the guy who Epstein considered replacing Putin is now in the Ukraine and supporting them against Russia.
Nice underage girls not one with a defect
Cellophane shrink-wrapped, so correct
Old dogs under illegal legs
She looks so good that he gets down and bags
She is watching the defectives
“Ooh, he’s so cute!”
She is watching the defectives
When they shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot
They heat him up until the teardrops start
But he can’t be wounded ’cause he’s got no heart
Long shot of that Auld Lang sigh
Visible shivers running down my spine
Cut the baby taking off her clothes
Close-up of the sign that says,”We never close”
You snatch a tune, you match a cigarette
She bawls her eyes out with a face like a magnet
I don’t know how much more of this I can take
She’s filing her affidavit while the media is ignoring her take
She is watching the defectives
“Ooh, he’s so cute!”
She is watching the defectives
When they shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot
They heat him up until the teardrops start
But he can’t be wounded ’cause he’s got no heart
You think you’re alone until you realize you’re in it
Now fear is here to stay. Love is here for a visit
They call it instant justice when it’s below the legal limit
Someone’s scratching at the window. I wonder who is it?
The defectives come to check if you belong to the parents
Who are ready to hear the worst about their daughter’s disappearance
Though it nearly took a miracle to get you to stay
It only took their little fingers to blow you away
Just like watching the defectives
“Don’t get cute!”
It’s just like watching the defectives
She gets so angry when the teardrops start
But he can’t be wounded ’cause he’s got no heart
Watching the defectives
It’s just like watching the defectives
Watching the defectives…
Watching the Detectives, by Elvis Costello
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1Qnt5bx1OI&list=RDk1Qnt5bx1OI
You truly found the beat on that one!! I was singin’ along
Re the “crazy video”…
I know there are some MN residents on here–is this happening in other small towns or has ICE singled out St. Peter?
I’m sort of hoping it’s widespread, odd as that may sound. I recognize the road in the video–we’re about a half mile up the hill from the Minnesota Security Hospital. Which is, technically, a “correctional facility.” The thought of ICE goons storming a psychiatric hospital to “interview” the inmates is horrifying…please tell me there’s no chance we’re going there.
It is happening all across the state. Here’s a small sampling:
‘It’s getting a little crazy’: Willmar hard-hit by ICE activity
ICE terrorized a mall in St. Cloud, too
Witnesses accuse ICE of pepper spraying a minor as videos emerge of raids in Owatonna
I remember reading a piece about James Cameron making the first Alien movie in England. Cameron, perhaps the archetype of high-powered, short-tempered US business executive, was apparently being driven insane by the work habits of the British production crew, who saw what they were doing just as a job instead of as some kind of mission from God. He related how as soon as he got the sound stage set up for a shot and filled with smoke or whatever, the sound stage doors would burst open and old ladies would come in with carts of tea and snacks for the workers. Of course, the stupid workers would stop working at that point so they could enjoy the tea and snacks.
Not only was this culturally tone deaf to complain about, but I think the American Cameron honestly didn’t see any value in taking time off from work just to experience a passing enjoyment.
This story seemed very sad on many fronts.
he’s canadian, afaik. But i guess same thing
Fortunately the US studios and streamers now control the English film industry and the tea ladies have been abolished (soon to be followed by all the other English creatives thanks to AI)
I have little regard for C.
However C himself said “I was a big asshole in the 1980s.”
Which however is meaningless considering that to this day C is treated as God by the industry and media reps.
Even though his narrative sense never exceeds turning everything into a war movie.
(admittedly Spielberg turns all material into high intensity family soap operas and Scorsese into some inverted buddy movie.)
rant over
As a companion piece to the Urban Expansionism article I can highly recommend (free at her site) “Removed: Black Erasure in Boston” by Sabrina Salvati, (sabby-sabs.com), also available on her youtube channel. This documentary examines the strategic red-lining and erasure of whole well-established black neighborhoods in the name of billionaire vanity projects, happening now, same as it ever was, so very vicious and and with no reverse gear.
The Duran’s latest on the Epstein saga and connections blowing up the British Establishment (yet again). Quite an interesting discussion on all the sordid links: UK establishment panic over Epstein files
All about the resignation of “Lord” Peter Mandelson, and until a few months ago Britain’s ambassador to the US. Mandelson has also been connected to pretty much everyone connected to Keir Starmer’s Zionist takeover of the Labour party.
The same Mandelson who helped orchestrate the removal of Jeremy Corbyn from Labour due to “anti-semitism”. All while working with/for the Israeli’s? Ha! Same piece of work once upon a time said he “felt dirty staying in the Labour party” because of Corbyn, but was absolutely fine staying around pedophiles.
Also at the Financial Times: JPMorgan should ‘threaten’ UK over banker tax, Mandelson told Epstein
Imagine someone so high up in the British establishment telling some foreigners to threaten the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Talk about treasonous.
Picked up by the BBC now as well: Faisal Islam: Mandelson, Darling and the conversation I can’t forget
The Yale Climate Connections article is as thorough as it is thoroughly depressing. So long, 1.5 degrees Celsius. It’s been good to know ya’. What was once a slow rise will soon be fast as the balancing loops are hitting tipping points.
I’ve recommended Nate Hagens’s Friday Franklies before, and he’s released one today because he did two last Friday. The focus is on Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s recent essay titled “The Adolescence of Technology,” Sagan’s warning about the adolescence of humanity and the TechBros dangerous failure to take a wide-boundary approach. Within, he suggests that AI is mostly a desperate bet of business and government elites that AI will turbocharge productivity increases to prevent neoliberalism doing itself in.
So our species is now teenage boys with a driver’s license and 400 horsepower.
As if strikes and drought weren’t enough, many foreign skiers are staying away from the United States. “Geopolitics have driven international visitation to U.S. mountain resorts down 33 percent this winter, led largely by declines from Canada,” said Tom Foley, director of business intelligence at Inntopia.
Relief does not appear to be in sight. Mr. Meyer, the Utah climatologist, said there were no storms on the horizon that would let the West catch up on snowfall.
The lean winter may soon translate into a dry summer and volatile wildfire season, since much of the West’s water supply is derived from the winter snowpack.
Barry Davis, the mayor of Vail, Colo., insisted that it’s still worth skiing even if less than two thirds of Vail’s trails are currently open. “The skiing here is not what we’re accustomed to but it’s still pretty damn fun,” he said, noting that he had just returned from taking some runs to “clear my head.”
Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah, went on social media last week “to invite all Utahns to seek help from a higher power” in order to save this year’s Western ski season.
In other words: Pray for snow. (NYT)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One thing that I heard little of in 5 days on the slopes in Utah, was foreign accents, they’re staying away in droves.
It seems that the Venezuelan system is more democratic in practice, than the so-called democracy we we practice in the west
https://open.substack.com/pub/julianmacfarlane/p/who-cries-for-venezuela?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=319lal
Back when liberals were freaking out about how many people had bought into the crazy QAnon story I used to like to tease them by explaining, “but it’s all true, at least allegorically.” The world is indeed run by a secret elite conspiracy of pedophiles extracting the life force out of our children. The Epstein story was well enough developed back then to refer to but today’s addition of cannibalism makes the QAnon prophesy pretty much complete.
Been spendin’ most their lives livin’ in the free trade paradise China Articles
I absolutely agree with the feeling of this article. We need to change leadership in Europe ASAP.
TACO quest continues
Trump slashes tariffs on India after Modi agrees to stop buying Russian oil (CNN; subscription)
(bold mine)
Psychosis Diagnoses Have Risen Among Young Canadians, Data Shows NYT
Data talks, BS walks. High test weed is NOT a good thing. Getting stupid or lazy is one thing, but schizophrenia is a lifelong disability. We know pharma psychotropics change the brain; surely cannabis also does. Speaking as a parent of a schizophrenic.
Antidote du jour
Two big fur-bags and a big couch without a claw mark. I’m impressed!
re: Ukraine Bandera Lobby
Eagle, Trident, Swastika
Project 2026 on the Bandera Lobby Blog: the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Holocaust, and the U.S. origins of the ‘Bandera Lobby’
by Moss Robeson
Feb 02, 2026
https://banderalobby.substack.com/p/eagle-trident-swastika
The German book on Ukrainian fascism Robeson mentions and links to where his text was initially published in German is highly recommended for German-speakers.
https://www.jungewelt-shop.de/Witt-Stahl-Hg-Der-Bandera-Komplex
“The biomass industry promised these Southern towns prosperity. So why are they still dying?”
Drax is a notorious scam: an old coal plant converted to run on biomass and to collect immense subsidies for it. There have been scandals about both its carbon accounting (low replanting and regeneration) and its ecological footprint (chipping old growth forests!). It should be closed with prejudice.
Two insightful comments on the Epstein world, both some years old but resurfacing in the light of disclosures.
Mike Skinner (unique, Chekovian UK rapper The Streets) giving a random interview on Peter Mandelson just before going on stage (this is a famous clip if you are terminally online and hate New Labour).
https://nitter.poast.org/malonebarry/status/2018363081315827768#m
Apparently Jeffrey Epstein’s redemption notice may have brought down Bear Stearns?
https://nitter.poast.org/ArmchairW/status/2018030527987499254#m
No, no, no, no, no, no, Noem
No Noem
Not at this airport here you understand
No, no, no, no, no, no, Noem
No Noem
Go be ICE Barbie elsewhere
Noem, Noem, Noem la la la la de dah
No, no, no Noem, no, no
Not in the terminal, not in the terminal
Not in the terminal, not in the terminal
No, no, no, no, no, no, Noem
No Noem
Music to Watch Girls By, by the Bob Crewe Generation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwhflMf0Gyc&list=RDNwhflMf0Gyc
100+ Twin Cities drummers staged a distributed drum protest throughout downtown Minneapolis today:
Twin Cities Drum Collective protests ICE in Minneapolis
Twin Cities drummers staged a two hour distributed drum protest and fundraiser throughout downtown Minneapolis this afternoon:
Drummers line Minneapolis streets to protest ICE in Minnesota
Twin Cities Drum Collective protests ICE in Minneapolis
Russian Soldiers Seen Surrendering to Gun-Wielding Robot (Futurism)
See also:
Humanoid Robots For War And Work: Startup Plans To Build 50,000 By End Of 2027 (Forbes)
“Start-up” & “war robot” = a bad combination. I shudder to think of the consequences of “release MVP then iterate” for murder it’s.
Idiocracy Skynet?
I did a quick scan of recent posts and didn’t find a link to this article from a few days ago so please accept my apologies if I messed up and this is old news:
ICE isn’t just tracking your phone. The surveillance technology goes further than that.