Tag: Politics

What Yet Another U.S. Surrender Looks Like — This Time in Ukraine

Since February 2022, Americans have been fed a fairy tale about the war in Ukraine — a story so uniform across NPR, PBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, CNN, MSNBC, and even Democracy Now that it reveals less about Russian aggression and more about the collapse of critical journalism in the United States.

In that fairy tale, Russia “unprovoked” invaded an innocent neighbor. Ukraine, noble and outgunned, somehow fought the Russian behemoth to a heroic standstill while inflicting catastrophic losses on Moscow. The United States, we are told, has been the grown-up in the room — always seeking peace — while a stubborn, irrational Vladimir Putin refuses compromise.

None of that matches what has actually happened.

I don’t come to that conclusion lightly. Since the start of Russia’s “Special Military Operation,” I’ve written more than a dozen articles on Ukraine — most of them here and for OpEdNews. (See below.) Across those pieces, I’ve argued five things:

  1. By long-established U.S. standards and precedents, Russia had ample cause to defend itself against NATO’s relentless march to its borders.
  2. The war has never been simply Russia vs. Ukraine; it has always been a proxy war between Moscow and the United States/NATO.
  3. Despite the vast imbalance in money, weaponry, and propaganda, Russia has prevailed militarily and strategically at nearly every turn.
  4. Moscow has largely refrained from U.S.-style “Shock and Awe” tactics that deliberately terrorize civilian populations.
  5. Whether one admires him or not, Putin has been the most restrained and predictable major leader in this war.

Those are strong claims. So let me explain how I arrived at them — and what they mean now that Washington and NATO are quietly negotiating terms of capitulation they once declared impossible.

Rejecting Scripted Narratives

From day one, I made a conscious decision to eschew mainstream narratives about Ukraine. I’ve watched this movie too many times: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria. In each case, official “experts” and prestige media gave us a clean story of good intentions and necessary wars — until reality, corpses, and classified documents told another story.

Instead of relying on that machinery, I turned to analysts with actual experience and memory:

  • Realist scholars like John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs,
  • Former intelligence and security professionals like Ray McGovern and Scott Ritter,
  • Military strategists like Col. Douglas MacGregor,
  • Independent geopolitical commentators like Alexander Mercouris, Alex Christoforou, Brian Berletic, Garland Nixon, Jimmy Dore, and Robert Barnes.

These aren’t saints. They disagree with one another. But they share three qualities utterly missing from mainstream coverage:

  • They know how wars actually work.
  • They remember U.S. foreign-policy history.
  • They are willing to analyze “designated enemies” rather than demonize them.

In particular, I’ve followed Alexander Mercouris’ daily 90-minute briefings, where he methodically tracks changes along the 1,000-kilometer line of contact. Through that lens I watched:

  • The slow, grinding fall of key Ukrainian strongholds,
  • The complete failure of Ukraine’s much-hyped 2023 “summer offensive,”
  • The steady Russian advance westward in an attrition campaign the mainstream never honestly described.

On paper, NATO’s side had nearly everything: money, high-tech weapons, satellites, intelligence, media power. Russia had geography, industrial capacity, and patience. Patience won.

NATO Expansion: The Forgotten Red Line

To understand why this war happened and why Russia was prepared to fight it, we have to step back.

For decades, Russian leaders of every stripe — including those favored in the West — warned that NATO expansion to Russia’s border was a red line. This wasn’t just Putin’s obsession. It was echoed by George Kennan (the architect of containment), Henry Kissinger, Jack Matlock (Reagan’s ambassador to Moscow), and even CIA Director William Burns.

From the 1990s onward, successive U.S. administrations broke informal and formal assurances, pushed NATO eastward, armed and trained Ukrainian forces, and treated Russia as a defeated colony rather than a major power. The 2014 Maidan coup, the subsequent civil war in the Donbass, and eight years of Ukrainian shelling of Russian-speaking regions only deepened the crisis.

By the time Moscow launched its operation in 2022, Russia believed — rightly or wrongly — that it was fighting not for “land,” but for survival as a sovereign state.

That doesn’t make everything Russia has done morally pure. But it does make the word “unprovoked” dishonest.

De-Nazification: Propaganda or Inconvenient Fact?

One of Moscow’s stated objectives was “de-Nazification.” Western commentators mocked this as propaganda. Yet the facts are not really in dispute.

Units like the Azov Battalion, Aidar Battalion, and Right Sector have been documented — by Western journalists, Israeli media, and human rights organizations — as harboring neo-Nazi symbols, ideologies, and networks. After 2014, these formations were incorporated into Ukraine’s security structures and presented to the West as heroic defenders.

To acknowledge this is not to demonize all Ukrainians or deny their suffering. It is simply to say that Russia’s reference to Nazi influence was not conjured from thin air. It was rooted in something Western media chose to minimize or forget.

What Surrender Looks Like in a Suit

Today, the battlefield reality is grim for Kyiv:

  • Ukraine’s pre-war army has been largely destroyed.
  • Manpower is so depleted that men well into their 50s and 60s are being conscripted.
  • Western arsenals are drained.
  • Russia controls key logistical hubs and enjoys overwhelming artillery superiority.

In such a context, the word “stalemate” is a euphemism. Ukraine is no longer capable of decisive offensive action. NATO has no credible conventional path to “defeating” Russia in Ukraine.

So we hear whispers of “peace plans,” “ceasefires,” and “negotiations” — often framed as Donald Trump inexplicably “giving in” to Putin, as though Putin “has something on him.” That story continues the tired Russiagate myth and saves face for a Washington establishment that promised victory.

The truth is less dramatic and more humiliating: Washington and NATO lost their proxy war. The winner, as always, sets conditions.

And here is the irony: those “outrageous” conditions widely described as Putin’s “maximalist demands” are essentially the same objectives Russia articulated before the war began:

  1. Ukrainian neutrality — no NATO membership.
  2. Demilitarization — no NATO missile systems on Russia’s border.
  3. De-Nazification — removal of Nazi-linked formations from state structures.
  4. Recognition of Crimea and breakaway regions as Russian.
  5. Security guarantees that NATO expansion stops.

In April 2022, at Istanbul, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators initialed a draft agreement along those lines. The war could have ended then. Instead, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson rushed to Kyiv and reportedly urged Zelensky to abandon the deal and “fight on” with Western backing.

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives were sacrificed on the altar of that decision.

Now, after two and a half years of bloodshed, we are back to those same basic terms — except Russia controls more territory, Ukraine is weaker, and NATO is more divided.

This is what surrender looks like in a suit: euphemisms in press conferences, face-saving language in communiqués, and the quiet acceptance of terms from a side the West swore it would defeat.

The fairy tale said Russia was isolated, collapsing, and on the brink of defeat.
Reality shows something else: NATO marched to Russia’s border, lit a proxy war in Ukraine, and lost.

The Pattern: Who’s Been Right All Along?

Ukraine is not a one-off mistake. It is part of a pattern.

Time and again, the voices that proved right were not the Pentagon spokespersons or network generals. They were the dissidents, the whistleblowers, the realists, the people willing to challenge the mythology of American innocence:

  • On Vietnam, they were right.
  • On Iraq’s non-existent WMD, they were right.
  • On Afghanistan as an unwinnable quagmire, they were right.
  • On Libya and Syria, they were right.
  • On Gaza today, they are right again.

And on Ukraine, the “alternative” analysts I’ve followed — Sachs, Mearsheimer, McGovern, Ritter, MacGregor, Mercouris, and others — have been consistently correct where mainstream pundits have repeatedly failed.

That doesn’t make them infallible. It does mean that those who analyze “designated enemies” instead of demonizing them gain access to reality sooner.

Conclusion: A Chance for Humility

The war in Ukraine is ending as sober observers said it would: not with a triumphant Ukrainian flag over Crimea, but with Washington and Brussels quietly negotiating limits they once called unimaginable.

Ukraine did not “stand up” to Russia and win.
NATO did not “stop Putin.”
The West lost its proxy war and is searching for a way to disguise capitulation as diplomacy.

The deeper question now is not whether Russia learns humility, but whether we do. Will we continue to wage unwinnable wars, believe narratives nobody questions, and call that “defending democracy”? Or will we finally listen to the voices who have been right all along — not because they are smarter, but because they refused to confuse propaganda with truth?

For my part, I know where I stand. I stand with those who insist on seeing clearly, even — especially — when it’s our own leaders and our own narratives that must be questioned.

My Previous OpEdNews Articles on Ukraine (Chronological Order)

(2/26/22)
“20 Reasons Why The United States and Europe Bear Ultimate Responsibility for the Ukrainian Crisis”

(3/4/22)
“12 Potentially Good Outcomes of the Ukraine War”

(3/7/22)
“20 Principles for Making Sense of the Ukraine War”

(3/26/22)
“In Ukraine the ‘Gangsters of Capitalism’ Have Gone to the Matrasses Again”

(5/8/22)
“O.K. I’m A Putin Apologist: Here’s Why”

(7/15/22)
“Russia in Ukraine: Champion and Proxy for the World’s Oppressed”

(2/26/23)
“About Ukraine Even Marianne Williamson Has Sold Out to Imperialism and Conventional Thinking”

(4/23/23)
“Are We Meeting the Risen Christ in Russia and China?”

(8/24/23)
“Putin’s a Killer Who’s Guilty Until (Impossibly) Proven Innocent”

(3/26/24)
“Even for ‘Democracy Now,’ Putin’s to Blame for the Rock Concert Massacre”

(12/5/24)
“Neocons Quake as Trump Threatens Peace in Ukraine”

The Mamdani Lesson: Break Completely with the Billionaire Model

Over the past few months, I’ve found myself sitting at a rather surprising table — the Arc of Justice Alliance (AJA) planning committee. We’re charged with two enormous tasks: first, to craft a meaningful progressive response to the Right’s authoritarian blueprint, Project 2025. Second we’re to draft a counter-vision called Project 2029. It’s to be a path toward a People’s Republic grounded not in domination, but in justice, compassion, and democratic renewal.

For months now, we’ve been wrestling with the same dilemma: If the Republican establishment built a sprawling ecosystem of think tanks, media outlets, university programs, and religious platforms—funded by billionaires and designed to engineer public consciousness—shouldn’t we build a progressive version of the same? At one meeting after another, we even floated ideas about recruiting famous people to our cause and even of courting “friendly” billionaires like George Soros to bankroll a left-liberal infrastructure capable of matching the Right blow-for-blow.

But then something happened that, for me at least, broke the spell: Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race.

Let me underline what his victory represents. Here was a young candidate with 1% name recognition only a year ago. He faced opponents backed by unlimited money — super PACs, corporate donors, real-estate tycoons, the whole constellation of elite power determined to smother anything resembling a genuine democracy. And yet, he didn’t just challenge them; he defeated them. How? By mobilizing more than 100,000 volunteers, by conducting leadership trainings in living rooms and union halls, by knocking on one million doors, and by rallying ordinary New Yorkers around the elemental theme of affordability — the right of human beings to live with dignity in the communities they love.

Nothing flashy. Nothing overly intellectualized. No backroom deals.
Just democracy in its most radical, ancient sense: people talking to people.

His victory provided me with a moral awakening of sorts.

Because suddenly the entire strategy we’ve been discussing — building our own version of the Powell Memo machine — began to look not simply inadequate but morally compromised. If the way forward is through people, why would we imitate a model designed to sideline them? Why mimic the very structure that has delivered us a national government increasingly controlled by ignorant, degenerate, mafia types whose only qualifications seem to be cruelty, ignorance, and a willingness to auction off the country to the highest bidder?

If the fruit of the Right’s model is authoritarianism, why would we plant the same tree?

No. The Mamdani movement reveals the deeper truth:
Power does not flow down from billionaires or elites. It flows up from human beings who discover their own agency. As OpEdNews editor Rob Kall would say, “It’s Bottom-up.”

And so, I find myself convinced that Project 2029 cannot — must not — follow anything resembling the Republican strategy. We cannot organize a progressive future by begging for crumbs from oligarchs. Even “friendly” billionaires are not our allies; their worldview is too shaped by wealth to understand the soul of a democratic movement. Instead, what we need is a politics that speaks directly to the pain and hope of ordinary people:

  • Affordability
  • Green New Deal
  • Free college
  • Downsizing the military
  • Nuclear disarmament
  • Closing foreign military bases
  • High-speed rail
  • Universal healthcare

And this, not as technocratic bullet points, but as expressions of a moral vision rooted in the human right to live, learn, breathe, rest, and dream.

But this raises a practical question, the one our committee keeps circling back to: How do we build a movement capable of achieving such sweeping change without billionaire patrons? Here’s the blueprint that for me emerges when we take Mamdani’s victory seriously:

1. The Movement Must Be Member-Funded — Not Billionaire-Funded

If our goal is democratic empowerment, then our funding must come from the demos.
We need a dues-paying membership, millions strong, each giving what they can — $3, $5, $27. This is not naïve idealism. It is what built the civil rights movement, what sustained labor unions at their peak, and what fueled Bernie Sanders’ campaigns. Money raised from below transforms supporters into co-owners of the movement.

2. Build Leadership Schools, Not Think Tanks

The Right built think tanks to create obedient foot soldiers for oligarchy.
We need leadership academies to create authors of democracy.

Neighborhood leadership circles, online organizing schools, campus institutes for justice work, training hubs in churches and mosques — if Mamdani could train 100,000 volunteers in a single city, imagine what a nationwide network could accomplish.

3. Replace Media Propaganda with Relational Organizing

Fox News and right-wing radio work by isolating individuals and filling the void with fear.
Mamdani’s movement worked by connecting individuals — neighbor to neighbor.

Project 2029 should build a national relational organizing platform that links:

  • congregations,
  • tenant unions,
  • mutual aid groups,
  • environmental coalitions,
  • arts collectives,
  • campuses,
  • worker centers.

Democracy spreads best not through algorithms but through relationships.

4. Tell One Simple, Moral Story

Republicans have mastered messaging not because they are clever but because they are consistent. Mamdani was consistent too. His message didn’t wander through policy white papers; it hit the heart: “Everyone deserves to live here.”

Our message must be equally direct:
A nation where every person can live, learn, heal, and thrive without fear or exploitation.
Every program — healthcare, demilitarization, free college — reinforces that story.

5. The Ten-Thousand-Door Strategy, Scaled Nationally

If the Mamdani campaign knocked on a million doors in one city, Project 2029 should commit to knocking on fifty million nationwide. But these should not be transactional campaign knocks; they should be ongoing democratic conversations about housing, work, health, and climate.

Block by block, precinct by precinct, the country’s political imagination changes one kitchen-table talk at a time.

6. Activate the Spiritual and Artistic Imagination

As a theologian, teacher and former priest, I’ve spent my whole life insisting that politics has a spiritual dimension. The Right weaponized faith to defend hierarchy. We must reclaim it to defend justice. And we must bring artists into the center of our movement. The imagination is political terrain.

If we want new possibilities, we need new parables, new hymns, new murals, new metaphors of liberation.

7. Build Institutions That Answer to the Grassroots

To accomplish all this, we’ll need training centers, media platforms, and policy shops — but they must be governed by the movement itself, not by plutocratic trustees. Our institutions must function like worker cooperatives: democratic, transparent, and accountable to the base.

Conclusion: The Republic Is Waiting for Us

Zohran Mamdani’s victory is not an isolated event. It is a sign — a living reminder that ordinary people, organized, can defeat moneyed power. In that sense, his mayoral race is more than a political upset. It is a prophetic warning: if we cling to billionaire strategies, we will lose not only elections but our moral compass. But if we follow the path of radical democracy, we may yet redeem the American experiment.

Project 2029 must not be a mirror of Project 2025; it must be its antidote.

The future will not be built by oligarchs. It will be built by us — the many — knocking on doors, telling the truth, and refusing to surrender the idea that another world is possible. If 100,000 volunteers can change New York City, then millions can surely change America. And that is the real beginning of Project 2029.

A Day in the Life of Americans Observing the UN Declaration of Human Rights

Recently, at our Arc of Justice Alliance (AJA) meeting, the Planning Committee discussed what daily life in the U.S. would look like if the AJA vision were implemented and the United States actually lived up to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)? Here’s an answer provided by ChatGPT.

Morning Light

The sun rises over Dayton, Ohio, and the Thompson family’s house wakes up with it — lights brightening automatically, powered by rooftop solar panels. The air is fresh, the street is quiet, and not a single car rumbles by. Most people bike or hop the community tram these days.

Maria Thompson rolls out of bed around seven. She’s a nurse practitioner at a neighborhood health co-op. Her hours are flexible; her paycheck is guaranteed. No side hustles, no “gig economy,” no hustling just to survive.

She remembers her mom, back in the 2020s, juggling three part-time jobs with no health insurance and no savings. That world — the world of burnout and precarity — is gone. Work now comes with dignity, fair pay, and time to rest.

“No one should have to earn the right to live with dignity.”

Downstairs, her husband Daniel sips coffee and scrolls through the Public Knowledge Network. It’s news without ads or algorithms — funded by the community, not corporations. Since media reform followed Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, journalism stopped being a ratings game and started being a public service.

At the table, their kids, Lila (16) and Jordan (11), eat fruit and cereal from their weekly co-op basket. There are no food deserts anymore — local farms supply every community with fresh produce. Healthy food is a right, not a luxury.

Midday Work, Human Style

Maria bikes to the clinic along quiet, tree-lined streets. Fossil fuels are long gone; the city runs on clean energy owned by its residents. The air smells like rain and lilacs, not gasoline.

At work, Maria greets patients by name. No billing forms, no deductibles, no endless phone calls with insurance companies. Health care isn’t a privilege anymore — it’s a right.

She spends real time with people. One of her patients, an older man with diabetes, used to ration his meds before universal care took hold. Now he’s thriving. He thanks her — but it’s not the thank-you of desperation. It’s gratitude born of mutual respect.

Meanwhile, Daniel’s high school history class is buzzing. The topic today: Why did it take so long for America to treat human rights as real?

A student asks, “If the Declaration was written in 1948, why didn’t people just do it?”
Daniel smiles. “Because first,” he says, “we had to believe we deserved it.”

“The biggest revolution wasn’t political — it was psychological.”

Afternoon: The Culture of Care

At lunch, Daniel joins other teachers in the school garden, munching on sandwiches and talking about the next community project. Teachers work six-hour days now, and every job comes with paid time for family, creativity, or civic engagement.

Across town, Lila is at her art studio internship, painting a mural about climate recovery. Her school believes in learning through doing — part of Article 27’s promise that everyone has the right to participate in cultural life.

At the community center, Jordan and his friends build solar robots in the after-school program. When the seniors arrive for tea, the kids pause their project to help set up tables. It’s normal now — generations sharing space, stories, and laughter. Loneliness has dropped, community ties have grown, and life feels… connected.

Evening: Democracy in Real Life

Dinner at the Thompson home is simple but joyful: vegetable paella, salad, fresh bread. No one eats in a rush. They talk, laugh, argue a little — about the next Community Assembly.

The Assemblies happen every month. People from every neighborhood vote on local issues through secure digital platforms. It’s democracy that actually feels like participation, not just voting every four years.

“Democracy isn’t an event. It’s a daily habit.”

After dinner, they stream a short documentary about how the world came together to rebuild after the climate crisis. The voiceover reminds them: “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was always a blueprint. It just took humanity seventy-five years to start building.”

Maria looks over at her family — fed, healthy, safe — and smiles. The dream didn’t die; it just took time to grow up.

Night: A Quiet Confidence

Later, Maria steps outside. The neighborhood glows softly under solar lamps. From the park, she hears music and laughter. She breathes deeply. The air is clean, the stars visible again.

Upstairs, Lila writes in her journal about becoming an environmental architect. She knows college will be free and open to everyone. Jordan’s reading a bedtime story about the first moon colony signing the Earth Charter.

Maria crawls into bed beside Daniel.
“Can you believe our grandparents lived without all this?” she whispers.
He grins. “They didn’t give up,” he says. “That’s why we have it.”

Outside, the world hums — steady, hopeful, human.

“When every person matters, everything changes.”

A New Normal

This isn’t a perfect world. Storms still come, people still disagree, and life still surprises. But the old fear — of losing your home, your job, your health, your future — is gone.

Now, human rights aren’t slogans. They’re the structure of everyday life.

Housing is guaranteed.
Healthcare is free.
Education is also free and lifts everyone.
Work supports, not consumes.
News informs, not divides.
Democracy belongs to all.

In this America, the extraordinary has become ordinary: breakfast with family, work with meaning, art without debt, democracy without despair.

The Thompsons aren’t special. They’re just people living in a country that finally remembered what the Declaration promised back in 1948:

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”

And this time, we meant it.

The U.S. & Israel: Cancers on the Planet

Let’s face it squarely: the United States and Zionist Israel function today as cancers on the body of our planet. Like malignant growths, they spread violence, exploitation, and environmental destruction far beyond their borders. If the earth is to heal, these cancers must be confronted, contained, and ultimately transformed— perhaps not in some apocalyptic purge, but healed through justice, repentance, and the dismantling of imperial systems that have long held humanity hostage.

That may sound harsh. But look at the evidence. Both nations operate as neo-colonial powers whose survival depends on domination—economic, military, and ideological. They perpetuate a global apartheid that privileges a small minority of largely white elites while oppressing and dispossessing the majority of the world’s people. Their leaders speak the language of democracy and freedom while practicing the politics of theft and genocide.

Israel has become a settler-colonial project rooted in dispossession and sustained by U.S. complicity. It violates international law with impunity, massacres civilians under the guise of “self-defense,” and treats the Palestinian people as less than human. The result is genocide—a twenty-first-century repetition of the very atrocities the world once swore “never again” to allow.

Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson recently observed that Israel’s behavior could easily provoke a war with Iran, a conflict that might finally expose the illegitimacy of Israel’s apartheid state. Though one might pray for peace, it is difficult not to hope for Israel’s utter defeat in its conflict with Iran. The world would be far better off if the Zionist state of Israel did not exist at all.

The same holds true for the United States—Israel’s patron and enabler. The U.S. is guilty of the same imperial arrogance. As economist Jeffrey Sachs reminds us, there is scarcely a conflict anywhere on the globe that cannot be traced back to Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, or Brussels—the old colonial capitals still trying to govern a postcolonial world. Together, they represent barely twelve percent of humanity, yet they presume to dictate the fate of the remaining eighty-eight percent.

Instead of acknowledging their centuries of plunder and offering reparations to the Global South, these powers double down on their arrogance. When formerly colonized nations begin to cooperate for mutual development through alliances such as BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the West responds not with support but with sanctions, propaganda, and threats. The message is clear: independence will not be tolerated; self-determination will be punished. The Global South’s neocolonial status and resulting poverty must continue for the benefit of “the developed world.”

Consider the behavior of U.S. presidents—Republican and Democrat alike—who behave less like diplomats than emperors. Donald Trump exemplified this imperial mentality, issuing demands and threats as if the world were his personal fiefdom. He ordered the execution of alleged drug traffickers in Caribbean waters without trial or evidence. He commanded Vladimir Putin to agree to an unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine, as though Russia were a vassal state. He even demanded that Brazilian President Lula da Silva drop charges against Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right politician accused of attempting a coup.

This is not diplomacy; it is imperial arrogance in its purest form. As Sachs notes, such behavior stems from a toxic blend of stupidity, historical amnesia, and contempt for international law. The U.S., with only 4.2% of the world’s population, continues to imagine it has the divine right to rule the remaining 95.8%. Its military planners openly speak of “full spectrum dominance”—the ambition to control every domain of warfare, from land and sea to air, space, and cyberspace. No other nation on earth — not Russia, not China, not Iran — articulates such a strategy. It is a uniquely American pathology.

Yet history has moved on. The world of 2025 is not the world of 1945. The United States no longer holds uncontested military or economic supremacy. The unipolar moment is over, and multipolar reality has arrived. China has surpassed the U.S. economically and possesses a formidable military that no Western coalition could hope to subdue. Numerous countries now possess nuclear weapons, making large-scale invasions suicidal. Pentagon war games repeatedly reach the same conclusion: in any conventional conflict with China, the United States would lose.

Nor can the U.S. claim superiority in Europe’s proxy war against Russia. The conflict in Ukraine has revealed that the combined military might of NATO—supposedly the greatest alliance in history—cannot defeat Russia on its own borders. Despite unprecedented aid and intelligence sharing, Western powers have been humbled by a nation they long dismissed as backward and fragile. Like David against Goliath, Russia has exposed the limits of Western militarism and the hollowness of its propaganda.

Meanwhile, the rise of digital communication has shattered the West’s monopoly over information. Once, Washington and London could script the global narrative through newspapers, Hollywood, and network television. Today, social media and independent journalism allow the world’s majority to challenge those narratives in real time. The lies that once justified wars and coups are now exposed within hours. The empire’s ideological armor is cracking.

And yet, the rulers of the old order refuse to accept this new reality. They continue to act as though history has not moved on, as though the colonial empires of yesterday still command obedience. They’ve not gotten the memo that humanity has entered a new era—one in which power is shifting toward the Global South, and the earth itself demands a politics rooted in balance rather than domination.

What is at stake is nothing less than planetary survival. The cancers of imperialism and Zionism threaten not only justice but the ecological stability of the planet. Endless war, fossil-fueled militarism, and corporate greed are devouring the biosphere. The U.S. Pentagon is the single largest institutional consumer of oil on earth. Israel’s occupation of Palestine includes the theft of scarce water resources. Together, these systems of domination represent metastasizing tumors that drain the life force of our shared home.

But cancers, as any doctor will tell you, can be treated. The cure begins with truth-telling—with naming the disease for what it is. It continues with radical surgery: dismantling military bases, ending illegal occupations, canceling debts, and redistributing resources to repair centuries of exploitation. And finally, healing requires transformation: the emergence of a new consciousness that recognizes the oneness of humanity and the sacredness of the earth.

These are the issues voters should insist be addressed. These are the issues both Republicans and Democrats avoid.

The era of empire is ending, whether Washington and Tel Aviv acknowledge it or not. The world is awakening to a different vision of civilization—one based on cooperation rather than conquest, on justice rather than greed. If the United States and Israel wish to survive, they must abandon their imperial pretensions and join the human community as equal members, not self-appointed masters.

For the good of the planet—for the sake of life itself—it’s time to stop pretending that the cancers of empire can coexist with the health of the earth. Healing requires courage, repentance, and a willingness to imagine another way of being in the world. The future belongs not to the empires of the past, but to those who choose life, solidarity, and planetary wholeness.

Spare me the Crocodile Tears: Assassination Is the American Way

Please spare me the handwringing over the political assassination of Charlie Kirk. Like you, I’ve heard our politicians say there’s no place for political violence in America. Others have said such atrocities are the province of the right or alternatively of the left

All of that is false. It’s complete B.S. Face it, America itself and its CIA (often in cooperation with organized crime) are assassination experts. It’s not a Republican thing or a Democrat thing. It’s not a question of “left” (as if there were a real “left” in America) or “right.”

No, it’s the American way. It’s what “we” do in the world. And to stop domestic assassinations, that’s what must change.

As Martin Luther King told us long ago, the U.S. (along with Israel, and NATO I would add) is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. (Vijay Prashad calls NATO “the machine that destroys humanity.”) Our government and those allies commit targeted and random assassinations all the time.

Think of the extrajudicial bombing of that Venezuelan fishing boat just last week. Without advancing any evidence whatsoever, those in the boat were blown up because of “suspicions” that they were drug dealers. No proof, no arrests, no trial. No handwringing or tears. Just killed remorselessly “on suspicion.”  All the victims had (now severely traumatized) families.

Then think of Israeli threats to “take out” (decapitation, they call it) the elected leaders of Iran – or of their attempts a week ago to kill Hamas leaders as they participated in peace talks in Qatar. Think of the way Israel recently killed Yemen’s prime minister Ahmed al Rahawi and other Yemeni political leaders. And need we say the names Allende, Lumumba, Kaddafi, Guevara, or of a whole host of other political leaders routinely offed by the United States? Or all those attempts to murder Fidel Castro. Now they’re talking about taking out Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela

But Kirk was different you might say. Though liberals don’t agree with most of his positions, he was a journalist, a debater, an organizer. His assassination was an attack on free speech, on the first amendment. Killing him threatens the very concept of press freedom.

And the way he was killed was especially brutal. On “Breaking Points,” Krystal Ball even urged her viewers not to watch the video. “It will haunt you for the rest of your life,” she warned.

But all of that is B.S. too. “Our” assassins don’t care about free speech, free press, the first amendment or the assassinations’ brutality. For instance, “we” and Israel kill famous journalists virtually every day. And it’s all done in the most horrendous ways imaginable. More journalists (many of them award-winning) have been killed by U.S.-supported Zionists than all those killed in WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined.

AND IT HAPPENS VIRTUALLY EVERY DAY!!

Those routine atrocities occur in Palestine, where many of the victims have their heads blown completely off. And it’s not just the journalists and other public figures. In many cases it’s their families too – wives, children, infants, parents, grandparents, and great grandparents — who are killed along with them.

So, again, please spare me the crocodile tears! You can’t routinely assassinate innocents, political leaders, and journalists across the planet and not expect it to come home.

Yes, with the political murder of Charlie Kirk assassination’s homecoming is undeniable and horrific. The chickens have indeed come here to roost.

And it’s not something that can be cured by stricter gun laws or by left and right singing Kumbaya together.

What must change is U.S. policy. “We” and Israel and NATO must stop being the world’s foremost political assassins!

The Epstein Case May Bring the Entire System Down: AJA Take Note!

When I tell friends about my involvement with OpEdNews’ Arc of Justice Alliance (AJA), their response often borders on disbelief. They’ll say, “Sure, sounds noble—but for something like that to succeed, the entire U.S. and NATO system would have to collapse first.”

Sometimes I’ve found myself agreeing with them. After all, AJA’s vision is sweeping. It aims to build on the left, the kind of powerful infrastructure that MAGA Republicans have laid out for themselves in their Project 2025 manifesto. Its goal is nothing less than reinventing government to serve ordinary people rather than the rich and powerful.

But here’s the problem: the existing system is so entrenched that genuine change often feels impossible. Unless some catastrophic rupture occurs, the machinery of empire and corporate control looks immovable.

Then came Jeffrey Epstein.

The Epstein affair, I have come to realize, contains the explosive potential to unravel the entire Western system.

Why? Because the case points toward something almost unspeakable: the governments of the United States and Israel are implicated not only in covering up sexual violence against children, but in actively organizing and sponsoring it as a tool of blackmail. If that is true—and the circumstantial evidence strongly suggests it is—then we are not just confronting corruption or incompetence. We are confronting a system so depraved that it has turned pedophilia into a weapon of statecraft.

And once ordinary people grasp that truth, no amount of partisan spin will save the system from collapse.

The Weight of Circumstantial Evidence

To understand the gravity of this possibility, it is important to stress the role of circumstantial evidence in criminal justice.

As I’ve recently pointed out, and contrary to popular belief, most convictions—especially in white-collar cases—do not rely on “smoking gun” documents or direct eyewitnesses. They rely on inference: the accumulation of facts that, taken together, point beyond reasonable doubt. Motive, means, opportunity, DNA traces, fingerprints, destruction of evidence, false statements, suspicious associations—all these can convict without a single direct witness to the act.

That is exactly the kind of evidence accumulating around Epstein. Consider the essentials of what has emerged:

  • The systematic rape of underage girls.
  • Apparently orchestrated by intelligence agencies—the CIA and Mossad—through assets like Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and their associates.
  • Carried out for the purpose of collecting compromising material (kompromat) on powerful men.
  • Deployed to ensure that the world’s elites could be controlled and manipulated to serve U.S. and Israeli interests.

This is not conspiracy fantasy. It is where the trail of evidence leads.

Signs of Cover-Up

The circumstantial evidence is damning:

  • Official deception: U.S. authorities initially promised to release Epstein files in full, later claimed no such files existed, and finally released a mere 33,000 pages—less than 1% of what the FBI possesses.
  • The prison “suicide”: Epstein himself, the most important witness, died under conditions so suspicious that even Ghislaine Maxwell believes he was murdered. Surveillance cameras malfunctioned, guards fell asleep, and evidence was tampered with.
  • Censored names: The FBI redacted Donald Trump’s name, along with those of other high-profile figures, from the released documents. Redaction of such relevance is indistinguishable from destruction of evidence.
  • Intelligence ties: Ghislaine’s father, Robert Maxwell, had well-documented Mossad connections. Based on such ties, respected figures—including economist Jeffrey Sachs and congressman Thomas Massie—have concluded that Epstein was indeed a Mossad asset.
  • The sweetheart deal: Despite overwhelming evidence of sex crimes against minors, Epstein secured an astonishingly lenient plea bargain in 2008. The prosecutor, Alexander Acosta, later testified that he was told Epstein “belonged to intelligence” and that the case was “above his pay grade.”
  • Suspicious leniency for Maxwell: After discussions with Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche, Ghislaine Maxwell was quietly moved from a maximum-security facility to a minimum-security prison whose policy specifically excludes sex offenders.
  • Unusual bargaining power: Maxwell now conditions any congressional testimony on immunity, advance questions, and testimony outside prison walls. Few convicted felons enjoy that kind of leverage.

Taken together, these facts paint a chilling picture of deliberate obstruction and protection.

Questions of Character

Equally troubling is the character of those who have denied Epstein’s intelligence connections.

Donald Trump insists he barely knew Epstein, despite ample photographic and testimonial evidence to the contrary. Trump’s record of habitual lying is a matter of public record.

Ghislaine Maxwell has twice been indicted for perjury. Her status as a jailhouse informer who stands to personally benefit from exonerating the rich and powerful connected with the case hardly qualifies her as a trustworthy source.

And as for the CIA—its former director Mike Pompeo openly admitted that agency operatives are trained to “lie, cheat, and steal.” To accept denials from such sources at face value is to accept testimony from admitted professional liars.

 Neither President Trump, Ghislaine Maxwell, nor any CIA operative is a credible witness. All of them are compromised actors whose interest lies in suppressing the truth.

A Crisis That Could Change Everything

As the Epstein revelations continue to unfold, the implications are staggering.

This is not about partisan politics. It is not about Republicans versus Democrats, or about conservatives versus liberals. It is about a system in which the ruling class of the United States and its closest ally, Israel, have apparently used the rape of children as a tool of blackmail to maintain global dominance.

No matter where ordinary people stand politically—whether left, right, or center—this is a line too far. Few Americans or Europeans will tolerate their governments being complicit in the systematic violation of schoolgirls.

That is why the Epstein case has revolutionary potential. It exposes rot so deep, depravity so shocking, that once the public fully grasps it, the legitimacy of the system itself could collapse.

The Arc of Justice and the Opportunity Ahead

Here lies the paradox: while many dismiss projects like the Arc of Justice Alliance as quixotic, the Epstein case may provide exactly the systemic rupture that movements for justice have been waiting for.

If the truth about Epstein, the CIA, and Mossad becomes undeniable, a massive crisis of legitimacy will follow. That crisis could open the door to fundamental change—change that AJA and allied movements are preparing to advance.

Far from tilting at windmills, we may soon find ourselves at the forefront of a historic turning point.

The Epstein scandal is not just another corruption story. It may well be the crack in the dam, the event that triggers the collapse of a system too evil to sustain itself.

And if that collapse comes, the task will be to ensure that what rises from the rubble is a system finally dedicated to justice—for the many, not the few

Circumstantial Evidence and the Epstein Affair: What Trump, Maxwell, and Western Intelligence Reveal

Like many Americans who have not yet surrendered their capacity for outrage, I’ve been haunted by the Jeffrey Epstein Affair. It refuses to go away—not because corporate media wish to pursue it (they manifestly do not), but because it cuts to the rotten core of empire itself.

For years now, we’ve been promised the release of the “Epstein files”—thousands of pages of testimony and hours of videotape implicating political leaders, judges, corporate moguls, Hollywood celebrities, and clergy. We’re told they exist. We’re also told—by the very elites most likely ensnared—that there’s “nothing to see here.” The truth, however, seems closer to what insiders have whispered: that those files contain enough evidence to topple governments across the Western world.

What has especially caught my attention is the strange “reluctance” to release those files publicly, and the curious way the story itself has been managed. Instead of honest transparency, we have smoke screens: Epstein dies in custody under suspicious circumstances; Ghislaine Maxwell is shuffled quietly from high-security to minimum-security prison; Donald Trump alternately promises to release Epstein’s files, then dismisses the whole thing as a “hoax.”

Why?

Because the evidence points not only to sexual predation, but to the use of sex, blackmail, and child trafficking as tools of statecraft—involving not just corrupt billionaires, but also the intelligence agencies of the United States, Israel, and the United Kingdom.

Epstein, Maxwell, and Intelligence

Let’s be clear: Jeffrey Epstein was no mere “hedge fund manager.” His wealth was largely unexplained, his client lists opaque. Multiple sources—including Alexander Acosta, the U.S. Attorney who gave Epstein his infamous “sweetheart deal” in Florida—have testified that Epstein “belonged to intelligence.” Acosta was told explicitly: back off, Epstein was “above your pay grade.”

But which intelligence service? All signs point to several.

  • Mossad (Israel): Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, Robert Maxwell, was long known to be a Mossad asset. His daughter continued that role, serving as Epstein’s partner in recruiting, grooming, and trafficking underaged girls. Several credible reports suggest Epstein and Maxwell’s operation doubled as a Mossad “honey trap”—a means of collecting dirt for purposes of blackmail on powerful Western leaders.
  • CIA (United States): Epstein’s New York townhouse was reportedly wired floor to ceiling with hidden cameras. Who collected and stored that footage? Who protected him after each arrest threat? The CIA had both motive and opportunity: control through blackmail has always been central to its toolkit. (BTW, in her recent interview with Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanch, Ms. Maxwell denied that there were any recording devices in Epstein’s New York mansion — a claim that is easily refuted.)
  • MI6 (Britain): Epstein’s circle overlapped heavily with British aristocracy, including Prince Andrew. The United Kingdom’s intelligence services, like their American and Israeli counterparts, benefited from access to compromising materials and plausible deniability through “private” networks.

In other words, Epstein’s operation was not an aberration. It was systemic—a private-public partnership between elites and intelligence agencies designed to entrap and control.

Trump’s Place in the Web

So where does Donald Trump fit in? The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming:

  1. Friendship with Epstein: Trump himself admitted they were close. Photographs and flight logs confirm this. They partied together in the 1980s and 90s—often in the presence of girls who were clearly underage.
  2. Connections to Organized Crime and Intelligence: Trump’s “mentor,” Roy Cohn, was not just a Mafia lawyer but also a fixer with CIA ties. Trump inherited from Cohn both his ruthlessness and his network.
  3. The Access Hollywood and Carroll Cases: Trump’s own recorded boasts of sexual assault, along with civil judgments against him for sexual abuse, demonstrate a pattern of predation that makes his involvement with Epstein’s underage network plausible, even likely.
  4. Obstruction of Evidence: Trump promised as president to release the Epstein files but instead allowed the FBI to redact his own name from them. His sudden dismissal of the entire affair as a “hoax” is not the language of innocence but of guilt management.
  5. Ghislaine Maxwell’s Treatment: Under Trump, Maxwell was moved to a lower-security facility and treated more like an informant than a convicted trafficker. Why? Perhaps because she knows too much, and her silence needed to be purchased with privileges.

Circumstantial Evidence and the Law

Of course, defenders say all of this is “only circumstantial.” But American courts have long recognized that circumstantial evidence can be just as probative as direct evidence. After all, few crimes of power leave smoking guns. What we have instead are:

  • Patterns of association.
  • Unexplained wealth and protection.
  • Testimonies suppressed.
  • Defendants obstructing evidence.
  • Intelligence agencies circling like vultures.

These, taken together, paint a picture no less damning than a video recording.

The Larger Stakes

What makes this affair explosive is not merely whether Donald Trump is guilty of pedophilia. It is that the entire Western system—Washington, London, Tel Aviv—may be implicated in using sexual blackmail as a governing tool.

Ordinary people may not follow Russiagate, gerrymandering, or campaign finance reform. But they understand rape. They understand pedophilia. They understand that leaders who use children in blackmail operations have crossed a line that should end not only their careers but also the legitimacy of the system they serve.

If the Epstein files are ever released unredacted, the consequences could be revolutionary.

That is precisely why they remain hidden.

And precisely why we must demand their unveiling.

Notes and Sources

  • Alexander Acosta’s statement about Epstein “belonging to intelligence” – The Daily Beast, July 2019.
  • Gordon Thomas, Robert Maxwell: Israel’s Superspy (2003).
  • Whitney Webb, One Nation Under Blackmail, Vols. 1–2 (2022).
  • Vicky Ward, “Jeffrey Epstein’s Sick Story Played Out for Years in Plain Sight,” Vanity Fair, July 2019.
  • BBC, “Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein: What You Need to Know,” November 2021.
  • Flight logs and photos released in U.S. District Court (Southern District of New York) filings, 2019.
  • Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and the Downfall (1992).
  • Access Hollywood tape, October 2016.

“Where’s My Roy Cohn?”: A U.S. Coup D’état by Nihilists, Mobsters, Pedophiles and Blackmailers

This is a reposting of a second article I wrote about the Epstein affair. I published this one in 2020. I repost it here because of its extreme relevance to the reemergence of the whole scandal in the national consciousness. The review of “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” points out the centrality of pedophilia and related blackmail in our nation’s (and the world’s) governance. It touches our political system at the highest levels.

“Where’s My Roy Cohn?”: A U.S. Coup D’état by Nihilists, Mobsters, Pedophiles and Blackmailers

Recently, I spent two weeks in Tijuana working with Al Otro Lado (AOL). I’ve written about that experience here, here, and here.

AOL is a legal defense service for refugees seeking asylum mostly from gang-rule in Mexico and Central America. The emigrants want escape from countries whose police forces and allied power holders are controlled by ruthless drug rings whose only goal is accumulation of money and social dominance.

As I did my work helping clients fill out endless forms concocted by those who would illegally exclude them, everything seemed so hopeless. I wondered how those gangs achieved such power? Isn’t it a shame, I thought, that entire countries are now controlled by criminal mobs with names like “MS 13,” “Nueva Generacion,” and “18?” How sad for these people!

Then, during my flight home to Connecticut, I happened to watch the documentary “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” (WMRC).  It introduced viewers to the dark and criminal mentor of Donald Trump. (See film trailer above.)

On its face, the film illustrated the absolute corruption of the U.S. government as the unwavering servant of the elite as the only people who count. But in the light of my experience in Tijuana, it made me realize that our country too is literally controlled by shadowy gangs to an extent even worse than what’s happening south of our border. I mean, the United States of America now has the most prominent protege of Roy Cohn, an unabashed mafioso, actually sitting in the Oval Office! Both Cohn and, of course, his disciple turn out to be absolute nihilists without principle or any regard for truth.  

The film made clear how both men tapped into a similar nihilist strain within huge numbers of Americans who identify with the Republican Party and ironically with the Catholic faith and Christian fundamentalism.  Nonetheless, WMRC wasn’t explicit enough in probing either Cohn’s corruption, that of Donald Trump or of our reigning system’s complex of government, education, church and mainstream media.

It failed to show how the phenomena of Roy Cohn and Donald Trump represent mere surface indications of a profoundly anti-democratic coup d’état that has gradually unfolded in our country over the last 40 years. The actuality of this takeover was revealed most clearly in the recent impeachment proceedings. They provided a kind of last straw undeniably exhibiting how nihilist “Christians” have seized power in perhaps irreversible ways.    

The Film  

To see what I mean, begin by watching “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” for yourself. It not only details Cohn’s life as an infamous New York mafia consigliere. It also shows how he started his career in crime as the 23-year-old advisor of the equally villainous Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. (McCarthy, of course was the force behind the nation-wide communist scare of the early 1950s.)

However, most importantly WMRC describes the film’s subject as the mentor of Donald Trump. By both their admissions, each recognized in the other a kindred spirit. Each used mafia and friends in high places (from Ronald Reagan to New York’s Cardinal Spellman) to enrich himself in terms of power and money. In the end, the alliance brought Trump to “the highest office in the land.”

To that point, here’s the way the film’s (highly accurate) preview-teaser reads: “Roy Cohn, a ruthless and unscrupulous lawyer and political power broker, found his 28-year career ranged from acting as chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Communist-hunting subcommittee to molding the career of a young Queens real estate developer named Donald Trump.”

In the course of the film, witnesses testify that Cohn taught Trump his basic approach to life. To wit: here are Cohn’s (and by extension, Donald Trump’s) implicit Ten Commandments. They also summarize the guiding principles of perhaps the majority of the most prominent politicians in the U.S. and across the world:

  1. Value money as the highest good.
  2. Manipulate the law to enhance personal wealth and privilege
  3. Put your own interests above everyone else’s
  4. Bully opponents mercilessly
  5. Wrap yourself in the flag while you do so
  6. Never admit wrong-doing or failure
  7. When accused change the subject and make vigorous counteraccusation
  8. Lie unceasingly with great confidence and bluster
  9. Declare even the worst defeat a victory
  10. Win at all costs

All of that was actually Cohn’s personal ethos. It worked for him throughout his life. It is reaping at least short-term benefits for Donald Trump as well. In fact, with Cohn as his mentor and as the man’s protege, Donald Trump would seem to merit all the adjectives on the film’s cover envelope: ruthless, unscrupulous, powerful, flamboyant, notorious, despicable . . .

Deeper Corruption

Unmentioned however in the film is Cohn’s connection with the very way our country (and the world) is run. It’s largely a blackmail game connected not merely with money and power, but with sex, pedophilia, blackmail and complete disregard for truth or moral principle. In fact, Whitney Webb’s four-part study of pedophile-racketeer, Jeffrey Epstein is called just that: “Government by Blackmail.”

And right at its heart, we find Trump mentor, Roy Cohn, listed prominently among figures like the Mafia kingpin Myer Lansky, and Lew Rosenstiel (of Schenley distilleries). For decades following World War II, they were real powers behind mayors, governors, congressmen, senators, presidents, and (yes) behind the world’s remaining kings and potentates, along with assorted church officials.

In fact, according to Webb, all during the ’70s and ’80s, Rosenstiel, Lansky’s close friend, regularly threw what his fourth wife (of five) called “blackmail parties.” The photos and recordings gathered there long kept Lansky out of trouble from the federal government. They also delivered entire cities to Mafia control in the post WWII era. In the end, Lansky blackmailed numerous top politicians, army officers, diplomats and police officials. He had photos of FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover in drag and performing homosexual acts.

Again, according to Webb’s research, Rosenstiel’s protegee and successor as blackmailer-in-chief was Roy Cohn himself who was closely associated with the Mafia bosses referenced prominently in “Where’s My Roy Cohn,” as well as with J. Edgar Hoover and the Reagan White House. (Nancy Reagan even phoned Cohn to thank him for enabling the election of her husband.)

Simultaneously, Cohn took on the central role in the blackmail pedophile hustle Lansky and Rosenstiel had started. As usual, its main targets were politicians often interacting with child “prostitutes.”

That was the real source of Cohn’s power. So were his dear friends in high places including (besides Clinton, the Reagans and Trump) Barbara Walters, Rupert Murdoch, Alan Dershowitz, Andy Warhol, Calvin Klein, Chuck Schumer, William Safire, William Buckley, William Casey, and top figures in the Catholic Church.

It’s those latter figures that connect Cohn’s pedophile ring as inherited by Jeffery Epstein even with the Church’s child abuse scandal. It directly involved the aforementioned “American pope,” Francis Cardinal “Mary” Spellman of New York, and Cardinal Theodore “Uncle Teddy” McCarrick of Washington D.C. Father Bruce Ritter’s Covenant House (a multi-million-dollar charity for homeless and run-away boys and girls) was also deeply implicated. In fact, when Ritter’s involvement in sex acts with his underage wards came to light, it was secular powers more than ecclesiastical forces that rallied to his defense.

Right-Wing Coup and Presidential Impeachment

All of that leads me back to where I started – to the right-wing coup d’état whose final straw debunked any pretense of democracy that may have been persuasive to some before impeachment proceedings put them completely to rest. “Where’s My Roy Cohn” showed the profound extent of the take-over in question – never far distanced from predominantly male sexual perversion.

Yes, we all know about such depravity within the Catholic Church – all the way up the chain of command. But the Cohn film along with the ancillary Epstein revelations it ignores reveal the centrality of that debauchery to standard operating procedure among government officials in the United States and across the world. It’s evidently what they do.

Am I exaggerating? Go back to the above list of Cohn’s and Epstein’s “friends.” See for yourself: they include presidents, princes, prelates, professors, pundits, pushers, and publishers.  All of them have always had a lot to fear from the tapes and videos made by Cohn. But the same holds true for the ones confiscated from Epstein’s special safe, and from the still unpublished manifestoes of passengers on Epstein’s “Lolita Express” to the man’s “Orgy Island.” Additionally, there’s remains a lot to learn from the testimony of Epstein’s procurer, Ghislaine Maxwell. Inexplicably the latter remains at large and allegedly unlocatable by international agencies possessing the world’s most sophisticated technology.

In other words, what we know about connections between Cohn, Epstein, the Mafia, CIA, DOJ, White House, and church officials represent the mere tip of an iceberg whose continued submersion seems assiduously assured by the agencies involved, by Britain’s royals, and other powerful entities — all aided and abetted by an entirely cooperative MSM.

[And no: it’s not baseless “conspiracy reasoning” to implicate the deep state officials just mentioned – not in the face of Jeffrey Epstein’s mysterious “suicide” whose suspicious circumstances (within a specifically federal prison) include transgression of standard protocols for prisoners on suicide watch, missing surveillance tapes, sleeping guards, unexplained screams reported by fellow inmates as coming from Epstein’s cell, and lack of follow-up by the MSM.] 

In other words, it’s not just that our country has been taken over by right-wing mobsters. No, it’s much more than that: our very world is run by gangsters, pedophiles, blackmailers, and their enablers – with Donald Trump its most recent and blatant evidentiary manifestation of anti-democratic policies.

Ignoring the rest of the world for a moment, consider what we’ve learned from the impeachment process about the extent of America’s de facto coup under Donald Trump whose criminal actions have gutted the Constitution of the United States at its core. Thus:

  • There no longer remains a separation of powers.
  • An indicted executive can control his own trial.
  • Subpoenas mean nothing to the reigning executive. By his decree alone, he can override summonses, forbidding those receiving them from appearing in court.
  • Impeachment “jurors” can embrace unmitigated bias with impunity announcing their judgment well before the trial’s commencement.
  • The presiding judge – even as he acknowledges the appearance of his court’s politicization – can with straight face permit a “trial” without evidence or witnesses.
  • Thus, prosecutors (i.e. the very House of Representatives) are left entirely impotent.

The hell of it is that these are all merely the latest developments in a criminal, unconstitutional, and anti-democratic process that has been in motion for nearly half a century. It has attacked the very pillars of democracy including the Supreme Court, Public Education, the mainstream media (MSM), and the Catholic Church – not to mention the Christian fundamentalists who constitute the heart of the Republican Party. It’s no wonder that Noam Chomsky has identified the latter as the most dangerous organization in the history of the world.

To be more specific, its “Christian” base hold firmly to tenets like the following that can only be described as “Cohnistic,” Trumpian, nihilistic, or (in religious terms) heretical:

  • There are no basic ethical principles (except that abortion is immoral).
  • Human life has no value except in its fetal stages.
  • The concept of truth is completely meaningless. This is because the public’s attention span and memory are so limited that repeated deceits make no lasting impression and will soon be forgotten.
  • The U.S. Constitution (except for the Second Amendment) is entirely insignificant.
  • There are two sets of laws, one for the elite and another for the rest of us.
  • As legal persons, corporations have more rights than living human beings.
  • International law applies only to U.S. enemies, never to the United States or its allies.
  • While the United States has the right to assassinate, bomb, drone, invade and occupy wherever it wishes, defense or retaliation against such aggression is criminal and liable to maximum punishment.

Conclusion

Do you see what I mean in describing our situation here in “America” as worse than our neighbors to the south?  

It’s a truism to observe that whatever imperial governments – from Rome to Great Britain to our own – do abroad eventually returns to haunt them at home. My experience in Tijuana coupled with watching “Where’s My Roy Cohn” underlined the veracity of that terrible axiom. It all made me realize that our government has been taken over by cynical nihilists – and more than that by mobsters, pedophiles, blackmailers and heretical religious fanatics.  

So, my take-away from border work in Tijuana is not only dismay, sadness, and despair for refugees at or border. It’s the same sentiments for ourselves.

With elections on the horizon, it’s also the question, what are we going to do about it? We have to determine which available candidate is freest from the sick contagion I’ve just described.

Repost of My 2019 Article on Jeffrey Epstein

Of course everybody’s talking about Jeffrey Epstein. The topic is often presented simply as a tale of his perversion possibly with connections to Donald Trump. But it’s much more than that. As Whitney Webb has pointed out in two 500 page books on Epstein, it’s about “Government by Blackmail.” It’s about Israel’s Mossad and why Zionists can exercise nearly absolute control over the U.S. government, no matter who’s president. With Webb’s help, I saw all that six years ago, when I published the following essay on OpEdNews and when I followed it up by another piece on the use of the phrase “conspiracy theory” to dismiss any deeper probes into Epstein’s identity. So, here’s what I wrote in 2019.

___________

Epstein Was Suicided; That’s How Our CIA Does Business

I could hardly believe my eyes this morning, when I read in Alternet that Jeffery Epstein was found dead in his jail cell of apparent suicide. And I find it hard to believe that he killed himself, especially since he’s been on “suicide watch” since the discovery of apparently self-inflicted marks on his neck ten days ago. Instead, I suspect he was killed by the CIA. My suspicion is based on my close reading for the past few days of muckraker, Whitney Webb‘s three-part expose’, “The Jeffery Epstein Scandal: Too Big to Fail.”

Webb’s series makes the point that the Epstein pedophilia scandal threatened to blow apart the entire U.S. government house of cards. It opened up a potentially devastating window not only on the sordid lives of Epstein and his close friends, Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, but on the profound corruption of the entire U.S. government and of international politics as a whole. Though connected with the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church, the scale of the Epstein branch of institutionalized child abuse absolutely dwarfs the shameful hypocrisy of justly vilified ecclesiastical criminals.

Epstein’s federal trial was scheduled to begin next summer. This means that the details of his crimes (and, more importantly, those of his high-placed patrons’) would steal headlines at the height of the general election of 2020. The evidence to be presented there is said to comprise more than one million pages.

In the light of what I’ll detail below, one can only imagine the surprises contained therein and whom those pages implicate. And given Epstein’s close association with Donald Trump and the Clintons (not to mention the other billionaire residents of Palm Beach Island in Florida), the trial and evidence presented at that crucial moment would likely have had an impact of the presidential election. Wayne Madsen for one, speculates that it may have already influenced the resignations of several Republicans from the House of Representatives.

Epstein, of course, is the alleged hedge fund tycoon whose central role in a pedophilia network came to light when he was arrested last July on Federal charges of sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York. Previously, he had been convicted of molesting an underage girl, but had mysteriously served what’s been described as the most lenient sentence in history for crimes like his — 13 months in a county jail during which he was free to leave during the day.

Alexander Acosta, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Labor was responsible for securing the ludicrous sentence, when Acosta served as Attorney General for the Southern District of Florida. On Epstein’s arrest last July, the FBI found hundreds of photos, videos, and recordings of child molestations some of them allegedly involving prominent public figures.

According to Webb’s expose’, the Epstein story is merely the tip of a dark iceberg much bigger than most of us realize. The darkness below the surface stretches back more than 75 years. It involves not only Epstein, but the CIA, its Israeli counterpart the Mossad, the Mafia as a CIA asset, the mysterious MEGA Group of influential billionaires, many government officials, and other high rollers with familiar names.

Webb’s series unveils what she terms “Government by Blackmail” an all-encompassing political strategy that began at least as far back as the conclusion of the Second Inter-Capitalist War. As the phrase suggests, Government by Blackmail consists in luring heads of state and other powerful world figures into compromising situations (often with underage “prostitutes” of both sexes), filming them in the process, and then using such evidence as leverage to extort huge sums of money, to extract favors and actually shape the world’s political economy. It extended to the Mafia, for instance, a virtual license to kill without legal repercussion.

As an alleged intelligence asset himself (of either the CIA, Mossad, or both) Epstein’s job was to gather the required evidence. To that end, he placed in compromising and seductive situations government officials from across the world. His mansions, private islands, and fleet of jet planes provided the venues. They were the sites of fabulous parties featuring alcohol, drugs, and underage “call boys” and “call girls.” All the locales were equipped with sophisticated recording devices, both audio and video, and two-way mirrors for recording acts of criminal pedophilia and other crimes or embarrassments on the parts of Epstein’s “friends” and acquaintances. Invitees included heads of state from across the planet Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, of course, among them.

But, Webb reveals, Epstein is only the latest iteration of Government by Blackmail. He’s the clone of figures like the Mafia kingpin Myer Lansky, and Lew Rosenstiel (of Schenley distilleries). During the ’70s and ’80s Rosenstiel, Lansky’s close friend, regularly threw what his fourth wife (of five) called “blackmail parties.” According to Webb, the photos and recordings gathered there long kept Lansky out of trouble from the federal government. They also delivered entire cities to Mafia control in the post WWII era. In fact, Lansky entrapped for blackmail purposes, numerous top politicians, army officers, diplomats and police officials. He had photos of FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover in drag and performing homosexual acts.

Rosenstiel’s protegee and successor as blackmailer-in-chief was Roy Cohn, who at the age of 23 was a close adviser of Senator Joseph McCarthy. More importantly, he was also associated with Mafia bosses, J. Edgar Hoover, the Reagan White House and has been described as a mentor of Donald Trump. His mentor!

Simultaneously, Cohn took on the central role in the blackmail pedophile racket Lansky and Rosenstiel had started. As usual, its main targets were politicians often interacting with child prostitutes. That was the source of Cohn’s power. So were his dear friends in high places including (besides Clinton and Trump) Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy, Barbara Walters, Rupert Murdoch, Alan Dershowitz, Andy Warhol, Calvin Klein, Chuck Schumer, William Safire, William Buckley, William Casey, and top figures in the Catholic Church.

It’s those latter figures that connect Cohn’s pedophile ring as inherited by Jeffery Epstein with the Church’s scandal. It directly involved “the American pope,” Francis Cardinal “Mary” Spellman, and Cardinal Theodore “Uncle Teddy” McCarrick. Father Bruce Ritter’s Covenant House (a multi-million-dollar charity for homeless and run-away boys and girls) was also deeply implicated. In fact, when Ritter’s involvement in sex acts with his underage protegees came to light, it was secular powers more than ecclesiastical forces that rallied to his defense.

Another pre-Epstein blackmail king was Craig Spence, a former ABC News correspondent who became a prominent DC lobbyist and CIA agent. All during the 1980s he provided child prostitutes and cocaine for Washington’s power elite. For purposes of blackmail, Spence used the now-familiar devices of video cameras, tape recordings, and two-way mirrors. His little black book and “favor bank” records have been described as involving a Who’s Who of Washington’s government and journalistic elite, this time including Richard Nixon, William Casey, John Mitchell, Eric Sevareid, John Glenn, and key officials of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, as well as media celebrities and military officers. According to the Washington Times, during the Bush administration, Spence had permission to enter the White House late at night to supply “call boys” to top level officials there.

Significantly, in the light of Epstein’s demise, just shortly before his death (also quickly ruled a suicide) Spence expressed fears that the CIA might kill him — apparently for knowing too much about connections between Nicaragua’s Contras and CIA cocaine smuggling to support them. But according to Spence himself, his knowledge went much deeper. Shortly before his similarly alleged suicide, he told Washington Times reporters: “All this stuff you’ve uncovered (involving call boys, bribery and the White House tours), to be honest with you, is insignificant compared to other things I’ve done. But I’m not going to tell you those things, and somehow the world will carry on.”

The Contra connection shows how in all of this, the Great Enemy of the hidden powers described here (involving the White House, CIA, FBI, Mafia, Mossad, powerful lobbyists, “fixers,” and billionaire political donors) was socialism and communism. The latter’s world project was 180 degrees opposed to governance by the moneyed elite as represented by the blackmail project of Epstein and his predecessors.

And so, it was important for blackmailers to support the prosecution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, back McCarthyism and J. Edgar Hoover, to undermine the Soviet Union, attack Cuba and Fidel Castro, protect organized crime bosses, and to make sure that projects like the Sandinista Revolution of 1979-90 failed. To those ends, it was even more important to inveigle left-wing politicians and officials from socialist countries into the international blackmail dynamic described here.

As for Epstein himself, following Cohn’s death (from AIDS) in 1986, he quickly took up his mentor’s mantle. As described earlier, Epstein became an FBI informant in 2008 yet more evidence of the agency’s long-standing involvement with and protection of pedophile rings for purposes of blackmail.

In summary, the Epstein scandal has finally made public a decades-long pedophilic blackmail operation at the highest level. Ultimately run by the FBI and CIA, (i.e. with the knowledge, approval and participation of law enforcement), it has involved prominent politicians, businessmen, police and military officials, celebrities, and ecclesiastical officials. The scandal has touched the current U.S. president and may still bring him down.

In the meantime, it has left behind a trail of broken lives in the persons of the children exploited for the pleasure of old white men whose debauched proclivities have been parlayed into economic and political power. On Epstein’s watch, the operation has spread to Central America and beyond, becoming truly international in the process.During the 2016 presidential campaign, Pizzagate fascinated right-wing conspiracy theorists. It alleged that the Clintons were somehow involved in a child prostitution operation run out of the Comet Ping Pong restaurant and pizzeria in Washington, D.C.

If a debunked Pizzagate theory caused such stir, and if pedophilia expose’s within the Catholic Church have brought it to its knees, one can only imagine the revolutionary potential of the documented disclosures that would inevitably come to light in a Jeffrey Epstein trial. It would reveal pedophilic involvement by public figures far surpassing the scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. It could bring down not only the Trump administration, but the whole international House of Cards.

One can only hope . . .

Good Friday: Heretical Trumpists Celebrate an Imperial Jesus

Today is Good Friday. This morning’s New York Times (NYT) correctly identified the day as “part of the holiest week in the Christian calendar.”

It also recalled President Trump’s campaign promise to “bring back Christianity.”  According to him and his first lady that means following “the living Son of God who conquered death, freed us from sin, and unlocked the gates of Heaven for all of humanity.”  The pair wants this to be “one of the great Easters ever.”

The article went on to recall how Mr. Trump’s aspirations were following and expanding the lead of George W. Bush who established the first White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives in the early 2000s.

Mr. Trump’s “personal pastor,” Paula White-Cain who heads the Office affirms its ability “to weigh in on any issue it deems appropriate.” Chief among them, she said, were the desire to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” including deviation from the position that there are two sexes, male and female.  Such concerns have afforded the Faith Office “unprecedented access” for faith leaders to “officials in intelligence, domestic policy and national security.”

Accordingly, Mr. Trump has often met with pastors from states like Colorado and Pennsylvania. On returning home, those reverends have shared photos taken with the president sometimes with heads bowed in prayer, imposing hands of blessing on the president’s head, or with Mr. Trump joining them in singing hymns.

All of this led the NYT article and accompanying video to identify the White House as “one of the safest places in the world to be a Christian.”  In fact, one of the Christian pastors interviewed for the piece said that “he doesn’t see any rails on the limits of the faith office.”

Good Friday Perspective

As a Jesus scholar and theologian, I found all this quite ironic, false, and heretical. In my view it is reminiscent of Germany of the 1930s, when Christian pastors and Catholic bishops routinely endorsed the leader of the Third Reich, who also affirmed allegiance to the Jesus reflected in Mr. and Ms. Trump’s profession of faith.

The reality was, however, that Hitler’s Germany and the policies supported by Trump’s MAGA crowd reveal an actual hatred for Jesus mourned and celebrated this Good Friday. After all he was the son of an impoverished unwed teenage mother who was houseless at birth. He was an immigrant in Egypt. He was an unemployed construction worker. He was a harsh critic of the Jewish political and religious establishment, of the Roman Empire, and of the rich in general. He said that the future belonged to the poor, the non-violent, and those persecuted for justice sake. He ended his life as a victim of imperial torture and capital punishment.

Conclusion

So, if there are no rails, no limits, on Mr. Trump’s faith office how about lowering them for pastors like Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde?  (Remember how she infuriated Donald Trump and JD Vance at Trump’s inaugural prayer service at the National Cathedral in Washington. She did so merely by pleading with Mr. Trump to “have mercy” on LGBTQ people and immigrants targeted by his policies.)   

If there are no rails, how about lowering them for rabbis, ministers, priests, and faithful demanding that Mr. Trump stop the Hitlerian genocide he’s committing in Zionist Israel?

If there are no rails, how about implementing policies that recognize and honor Jesus in the children of poor unwed teenage mothers, in the houseless, in immigrants, in the working class, in opponents of the rich and powerful, in those protesting the hypocrisy of Jewish Zionists, in U.S.-supported torture facilities, and on death row.

Only changes like those can convince followers of the historical Jesus that the White House is “one of the safest places in the world to be a Christian.” Only changes like those can make this “one of the great Easters ever.”