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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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:
Value money as the highest good.
Manipulate the law to enhance personal wealth and privilege
Put your own interests above everyone else’s
Bully opponents mercilessly
Wrap yourself in the flag while you do so
Never admit wrong-doing or failure
When accused change the subject and make vigorous counteraccusation
Lie unceasingly with great confidence and bluster
Declare even the worst defeat a victory
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.
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.
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.”
I never thought I would find myself writing these words. But I think the world is far better off with Trump as our president than with Genocide Joe Biden.
There I said it. I do so under the threat of great personal detriment. I mean, I can hardly voice such opinion in polite progressive company. I can’t even say so in my own family.
So, at the risk of complete isolation, let me try to explain myself.
I think the world’s better off with Trump because a head of state should at least be sui compos mentis. Clearly, Joe Biden was not. By most accounts, Jake Sullivan has been running the country for the last four years. Secondly, Trump is better because he’s backing us off from nuclear war with the Russians. Joe wouldn’t even talk with them. Thirdly, whatever we might think of his words about real estate in Gaza, the Donald has introduced a cease fire there. It seems to be holding. Fourthly, President Trump shows promise of dismantling the CIA and FBI. That has no downside as far as I can see. And finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, he’s unifying the country around the issue of truth-telling. I mean it. Let me explain.
Trump’s Not Senile
I can hardly believe the Democrats knew Joe Biden was mentally over the hill from the first day of his administration. And yet after four years, they were willing to run him out there for a second term, when everybody knew he could scarcely tell up from down.
How cynical is that? How disrespectful to voters! How anti-democratic!
Thank God for the first presidential debate that showed the old man mired in an advanced condition of senility.
As such, his defining issues became:
Billions and billions and billions for Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. (Trump stopped that right quick.)
His inability to do anything about a ceasefire in Gaza. (Trump turned that around even before he was sworn in.)
Unstinting cooperation in the genocide of Palestinians. (We have yet to see Trump’s final policy here, though his words and supply of 2000 pound bombs are not promising.)
Maintaining U.S. hegemony at all costs.
Those are the issues that obsessed and defined Genocide Joe – Ukraine, Gaza, genocide itself, and refusal to recognize that we live in a multipolar world. Little else he did really counts.
Trump Talks Russian
In sharp contrast to Biden’s foolishness, Donald Trump has agreed to peace talks with our proxy adversary in Ukraine. That war could have been entirely avoided had Biden even acknowledged reading and had he responded to Mr. Putin’s peace proposal in December of 2021. However, preferring war to diplomacy, he chose not to.
Shortly afterwards, the war could have been stopped in its tracks had Biden not (through Boris Johnson’s nefarious graces) effectively voided the peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine initialed by both belligerents in March of 2022. Instead, the old man again chose war that so far has exacted more than a million casualties.
In other words, Biden’s version of diplomacy was refusal to even talk with Putin.
Donald Trump has reversed all of that. Simple man that he is, Trump evidently realizes what all of us teach our children – make up with those you’ve been fighting with. Talk with your “enemies.” Try to see things from their point of view. No good parent would instruct them otherwise.
Diplomacy is as simple as that. Its exercise under Donald Trump has made the world a safer place.
Ceasefire in Gaza
So far, Trump’s policy in Gaza has made Palestinians safer as well.
The whole sequence of events since Trump’s diplomatic intervention illustrates the point. Since then, the whole world has witnessed:
Thousands upon thousands of Palestinians returning “home.”
The Zionist-caused rubble of their homes, schools, hospitals, libraries, mosques, and churches.
The uncovering of untold numbers of friends, relatives, doctors, nurses, and teachers buried and uncounted under the rubble raising the number of Palestinians indiscriminately killed to well over 100.000 – more than half women, children, and the elderly.
The survival of Hamas fighters still proud, well-armed, and undefeated by Israel’s genocidal attacks.
The testimony of Hamas prisoners about humane treatment on the part of their captors.
The contrasting emaciated and evidently tortured bodies of Zionist prisoners released by the Zionists.
None of this has been good for Israel’s image in the world. Instead, it’s made the world aware of the justice of the Palestinian cause.
To repeat, all of that makes Palestinians safer. It has also shown President Trump’s policy in Israel to be better than Mr. Biden’s, at least so far.
Today, Palestinians are better off under Trump.
Dismantling the CIA
And then there’s Mr. Trump’s appointment of Tulsi Gabbard to oversee the country’s 18 spy organizations. Those agencies spy on us! They engage in regime change operations. According to ex-CIA director, Mike Pompeo, they lie, they cheat, they steal all the time. They take entire courses on how to do so. Pompeo was proud of that. He thought it was a big joke.
Tulsi Gabbard realizes all of that. In Senate testimony, she refused to identify Snowden as a traitor.
Clearly, she has the “intelligence” establishment quaking in their boots.
That makes all of us better off.
ConclusionBringing Us All Together
Recently, I saw a YouTube discussion between leftist comedian Jimmy Dore and progressive journalist Matt Taibbi. Dore raised a question about climate change. He confessed that in view of all the lies that have infected the scientific community (and American public life in general) he was for the first time having doubts about climate change. Was its threat being overblown?
In response, Taibbi admitted that the exposure of so many lies conveyed by politicians, clergymen, journalists, and university researchers had him wondering too. “I’m ashamed to say so,” he said in effect, “but all of that has me wondering about beliefs I’ve taken for granted over the last 30 years of my life.”
The exchange between Dore and Taibbi made me realize that even the falsehoods conveyed by the Liar in Chief currently manning the White House has important benefits.
On all segments of the political spectrum, it has us wondering about truth. We no longer trust those claiming to be truth tellers. We no longer trust the “fact checkers.” They’ve all been shown to be liars.
Regardless of where we stand on politics or climate change, that’s a hugely important point for Americans to realize and agree to. Thank you for bringing us together, Mr. Trump.
I’m always disappointed with Democracy Now’s (DN) coverage of Syria. Its reporting on the fall of the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad was no exception. It described Assad’s deposition as primarily a triumph of freedom and the will of a brutally repressed people.
Absent from DN’s narrative was the straightforward truth that the fall of Assad was the fruit of another regime change operation. It was part of the U.S. plan announced in 2001 to depose seven governments in five years, viz., Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Iran.
Though the American timetable was overly optimistic, with the change of regime in Syria, the U.S. has succeeded in hitting six of its seven targets. Only Iran’s government remains in place.
Let me show you what I mean by summarizing DN’s account, contrasting it with its counter narrative, and sketching the way U.S. regime change operations work.
The Official Syrian Story
For years DN’s usually critical founder, Amy Goodman, has for some reason sided with the United States and Israel by uncritically repeating their official story about the Zionists’ neighbor to the north. It tells us that:
Bashar al Assad is a brutal dictator who succeeded his dictator father to rule Syria with an iron fist for the last half century and more.
He has not only claimed absolute power in Syria,
But has run an extensive secret prison system there (a “human slaughterhouse”) where captives are systematically mistreated, tortured, and held without charge.
His use of chemical weapons against those objecting to his rule is well documented by independent witnesses such as the Syrian Civil Defense Organization, the “White Helmets.”
For all these reasons, the U.S. and Israel have long held that “Assad must go.”
“Moderate rebels” have recently transformed that imperative into facts on the ground. Thankfully, they have successfully overthrown the hated dictator.
Since his removal from office, his brutality and consequent unpopularity have received ample testimony and denunciation by ordinary Syrians who are universally celebrating his fall from power.
Thus the U.S. and Israel (as champions of democracy, just war, and humane incarceration, and as opponents of torture and the killing of innocent civilians) have triumphed once again in yet another mid-east country.
The triumph mirrors what they have accomplished so idealistically and benevolently in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia and other countries benefitting from their wars fought for democracy and peace.
That’s the official line DN’s Amy Goodman consistently presents and/or implies.
A More Complete Picture
However, what Goodman’s account fails to explore are its following contradictions that would have us forget that:
The foreign powers advocating and celebrating the end of Assad’s cruelty (i.e., Israel and the U.S.) are the current perpetrators of genocide in Palestine. Arguably, that deprives them of ability to convincingly champion human rights in any forum. It demonstrates that they have no concern about civilian deaths, secret prisons, unjust torture, democracy, freedom, or peace.
In fact (according to George Galloway) during its war on terror, the U.S. used Syrian prisons as black sites to which they rendered “terrorists” for torturous interrogation.
Moreover, the “moderate” agents fulfilling the U.S. and Israel’s imperative to remove Asad from power are successors to the very “terrorists” responsible for al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks 23 years ago).
That is, while designating Syria as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” the U.S. has once again allied itself with al-Qaeda as it had in Afghanistan during Russia’s war there (1979-1989).
Additionally, the U.S. has crippled the Syrian economy by illegally occupying its eastern oil fields since 2014 effectively stealing its oil revenue since then.
While Israel has similarly occupied its neighbor’s Golan Heights.
Syria’s economy and population have suffered severe hardships under a U.S. sanctions regime that started in 2011 and whose effects worsened following a massive earthquake in February of 2023. For years they’ve had to function on the provision of a single hour of electricity each day.
Civil Discontent in Syria
As for the testimony of Syrians applauding and celebrating the fall of Asad . . .. It too demonstrates the effectiveness of standard American policy against designated enemies whose political “regimes” the U.S. wishes to change. That policy never deviates from the following procedure:
Vilify the regime leader as the latest incarnation of Hitler.
Under the pretext of punishing him, use sanctions, economic blockades, bombing, propaganda, bribery, election interference, terrorism, and internal subversion whose real purpose is to make the lives of locals so miserable
That they will arise,
Overthrow the regime in question,
And celebrate the victory as the triumph of democracy.
This is the standard policy followed not only against Syria, but against official enemies such as Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The subversion invariably causes the threatened governments to adopt their own counter-policies that the U.S. and its allies then describe as authoritarian, oppressive, and brutal. The policies include imprisonment of compromised political opponents, jailing and mistreatment of terrorists (no harsher btw than the mistreatment of prisoners in Israel and the U.S.), and restrictions on (usually foreign allied) press along with fifth column civil and religious organizations. All these government actions provide further evidence of the illegitimacy of the regimes in question.
They also provide well-meaning news sources like Democracy Now with reasons to uncritically repeat imperialist talking points.
Conclusion
Listening to Democracy Now’s account of a people’s triumph in Syria after more than a half century of dictatorship made me think of Cuba. As a friend of the revolution there and as a frequent visitor to the island, I couldn’t help thinking how in the case of a successful uprising there (God forbid!), a similar sort of account might be concocted.
There’d be the same people dancing for joy in Havana’s streets and the same people saying on camera how relieved they are that the hated regime had been deposed. There’d also be the same ex-pat Cuban professors from prestigious U.S. universities sharing the joy and supplying historical details about the brutalities of Castro’s legacy.
Misinformed viewers would be led to conclude “Thank Goodness Cubans are finally free!”
But if the current Syrian template were followed, those viewers would never be stimulated to question the official story. They’d never be reminded of the disastrous effects of 60 years of sanctions, blockade, and acts of terrorism against the state. They’d never know about attempted assassinations of the country’s president. Neither would they think critically about the effect of anti-Cuban propaganda on their own psyches.
The point I’m trying to make here is that questions should always be raised about official stories concerning designated enemies of discredited imperialist countries like the United States and Israel.
They should be asked as well when perpetrators of genocide decry the human rights record “dictators” carefully selected from a long list of tyrants routinely supported by the complaining parties and when the black sites and “slaughterhouses” of the offending dictators have been used by their accusers themselves.
Yes, critical reporters should be able to identify such contradictions.
Simply repeating “the official story” helps no one.
Donald Trump’s landslide victory last month and his repeated promise to end war in Ukraine has Washington neocons quaking in their boots. How can they save their beloved Project Ukraine and prevent peace from breaking out on Russia’s border?
That’s the question Foreign Affairs (FA) tackled this week in an article by Elie Tenenbaum and Leo Litra. It’s entitled “Ukraine’s Security Now Depends on Europe.” The piece was marked by significant departure from the familiar “official story” on Ukraine. Yet it retained enough of that story’s elements to virtually render impossible reasoned discussion about ending the Ukrainian debacle.
The Official Story
To begin with, the FA article tells the story that aficionados of Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, and Washington Post have been programmed to accept. Taking its cue from the White House, the story holds that Putin is the aggressor in Ukraine. He cannot be trusted, lies habitually, routinely breaks promises, and remains unconstrained by international law.
Accordingly, everyone knows that his attack on Ukraine was unprovoked, and that Russia had been raining missiles on terrorized Ukrainian armed forces in the Donbas since 2014. It was Putin who backed out of the Minsk Accords as well as voiding the Istanbul peace framework in March of 2022. Putin also obstinately refuses to consider peace negotiations even though his army has suffered casualties by the hundreds of thousands – far more than his Ukrainian opponents. Moreover, Russia’s economy is crumbling while its citizens generally do not support the war effort.
That’s the Official Story. It’s the one largely repeated by Tenenbaum and Litra.
A Competing Narrative
However, the story’s elements are contradicted point by point by highly credible scholars, diplomats, ex-military and CIA officials and independent journalists. A short list of the latter includes John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs, Colonel Douglass MacGregor, Scott Ritter, Ray McGovern, Alexander Mercouris, Brian Berletic, and Chris Hedges.
All these maintain that a U.S.-led NATO provoked the war in Ukraine after completely ignoring Vladimir Putin’s peace proposal advanced in December of 2021. Moreover, Russia’s invasion mirrors what the United States would do – in fact what it has done – in similar circumstances. Recall the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Remember America’s many violent invocations of the Monroe Doctrine to protect its interests in its Latin American “backyard” by direct invasion, proxy wars, and bloody regime changes.
According to the analysts just mentioned, it is the U.S. and NATO that lie habitually and cannot be trusted. In fact, the whole Ukrainian conflict is based on a broken promise by U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker, to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990. It said that NATO would not expand even “one inch” towards Russia.
Then (as admitted by German ex-prime minister Angela Merkel) NATO further tricked Russia into signing the Minsk Accords to provide time for Ukraine to build up its military for confrontation with its neighbor. According to Merkel, NATO had no intention of observing either Minsk I or Minsk II.
Additionally, in December of 2021, when Russia offered NATO those terms to prevent the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. refused to even consider the proposal. Two months later, after only one month of Russia’s “Special Military Operation,” and after Ukraine and Russia had initialed accords to ensure the former’s territorial integrity in exchange for neutrality on Ukraine’s part, NATO persuaded its protégé to fight on rather than finalize the accord.
The result of such deceptions has been complete catastrophe for Ukraine. Russia’s strategy of attrition has claimed more than 600,000 lives and seriously wounded 100,000 more. As a result, Ukraine is running out of men, its economy is in freefall, and Russian troops are moving relentlessly westward by kilometers every day. Meanwhile, Russia’s economy is flourishing despite the war generally supported by its citizens. There is no way Ukraine can bring Project Ukraine to a successful conclusion.
Cracks in the Official Story
Up until recently, NATO’s official story held unmovable sway. However, the FA article considered here exhibits important concessions to the unofficial account. For instance, Tenenbaum and Litra admit that: by all accounts Ukraine is losing the war as Russian troops rapidly move towards Kyiv. In fact, it seems nearly impossible to reverse this desperate situation since Ukraine and its allies have not only run short of weapons but also, of soldiers who are getting killed and wounded at unsustainable rates. Additionally, the Russian air force and air defense mechanisms are unmatched by Ukraine. Kremlin’s troops also far outnumber the Ukrainians while using and replacing their weapons at a scale Ukrainian allies cannot match.
In this dire situation, it is time for negotiations on terms NATO (not Russia) must dictate to possibly include: (1) vastly increased and decades-long economic and military aid to Ukraine, (2) a ceasefire that temporarily freezes current positions of both the Russian and Ukrainian front lines, (3) granting Ukraine NATO membership before hostilities cease or postponing the country’s entry into NATO for 10 to 20 years, (4) the deployment of a NATO peacekeeping force to ensure the frozen hostilities, and/or (5) more extensive intervention by multinational NATO land, sea, and air forces to act as a Security Shield or Guarantor Force against future Russian threats.
The problem is however (even for Tanenbaum and Litra) that absent a “significant military defeat or internal political change,” Moscow will never accept such terms, but is likely to insist instead on settling the war on the battlefield.
Nonetheless the authors hold that the Russian president may come to the negotiation table because: his Special Military Operation is unpopular at home. His army has suffered tremendous battlefield losses. His stockpile of Soviet Era weapons is rapidly diminishing. The Russian economy is overheating while public spending, inflation, and interest rates are exploding.
Conclusion
Do you see how the Official Story is weakening and now finds itself on the shakiest of grounds? It has finally made important concessions to its unofficial counterpart. It admits that Ukraine is losing the war, that it is getting weaker, and Russia is getting stronger.
On the other hand, FA’s insistence on the remnants of the Official Story render virtually impossible intelligent discussion of Ukraine’s future. Depending on one’s source of information – mainstream or alternative – it becomes a kind of “he said, she said” debate over details that are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Practically speaking, it matters little now who started the war, who backed out of agreements first, who’s lying, and who’s telling the truth. What matters now are facts on the ground. And all of them favor Russia.
So, given new agreement on the conflict’s inevitable direction, and given the promises of Mr. Trump, it remains unclear why Ukraine would continue sacrificing its soldiers for no good end.
After all, Ukraine lacks leverage in any negotiations that include proposals for Ukrainian inclusion in NATO. Membership now or ten years from now is a non-starter as far as the more powerful Russians are concerned. Russians are in the driver’s seat now and it must be remembered that a major purpose of their SMO was to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.
Also, it is unclear why Tanenbaum and Litra think that a NATO peacekeeping force would be acceptable to Mr. Putin. Why not China and North Korea?
Yesterday’s posting evoked a very thoughtful response from a faithful and highly valued reader of this blog. He apparently read my remarks as endorsing the use of nuclear weapons by Russia in response to attacks against that country — attacks supported and directed by the U.S.
I sincerely apologize for giving that impression.
To clarify, let me say the following:
Nuclear weapons are categorically immoral.
No human being (Not Biden, Trump, Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, Rob Bauer, Vladimir Putin, or Xi Jing Ping) has the right to use (or threaten the use of) nuclear weapons that will cause the end of humanity.
This means that the reigning deterrence agreement between nuclear powers involving “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) is also unquestionably immoral.
Yet unbelievably, many academicians, politicians, moralists, and military leaders praise such deterrence (coupled with disarmament agreements and pacts limiting the number and explosive force of nuclear weapons) as the most effective way of avoiding nuclear war.
As a result (and quite irrationally), MAD represents the status quo that politicians of all the world’s nuclear powers have endorsed. It embodies the tragically accepted “rules of the game.”
Shamefully, NO ONE among world “leaders” speaks (or apparently thinks) beyond the parameters of MAD.
Nor do they evidence a willingness to engage in nuclear disarmament talks or to sign pacts limiting weapons design or deployment. (In fact, the U.S. has unilaterally withdrawn from several previously signed pacts.)
This means that provocations of one nuclear power against another are completely reckless, irresponsible, and insane, since (according to the “rules” of the MAD game) such provocations can easily lead to nuclear response.
More specifically, though the present conflict in Ukraine ostensibly involves a war between Russia and Ukraine, it is clearly a proxy war between the United States and Russia.
Yet U.S. insistence on provoking the nuclear power, Russia, with missile attacks that are impossible without direct logistical, targeting, and ordnance supplied by the United States and other NATO members exposes a level of insanity that would be unprecedented
If it weren’t for the fact that the United States is the only country in the history of the world that has ever actually used nuclear weapons (twice).
In these circumstances, it is Russia led by Vladimir Putin that has shown restraint.
And it is the Biden administration that is engaged in irresponsible escalation.
It is the world’s acceptance of its MAD “leaders” that makes it all (im)possible.
I never ever thought I’d write these words. But I find myself desperately wishing for the arrival of the Donald Trump presidency. My driving force here is my love for my children and grandchildren. For their sake, Trump’s advent can’t come soon enough. I don’t want them to die in nuclear war.
As I’ve written elsewhere, my hope is not founded in admiration for Mr. Trump. Far from it. I consider the man a moron unfit for the U.S. presidency.
But he seems to be our only hope of avoiding World War III and the end of humanity – an agenda recklessly pursued by the lame duck Biden administration so recently and so decisively rejected by the American electorate.
Have you seen what that old fool is doing? Do you realize the threat his utter stupidity poses to our children and grandchildren?
He’s trying to “Trump-proof” his insane and ill-fated Project Ukraine.
After having repeatedly rejected Russian attempts to resolve the project’s underlying issues (even before Mr. Putin’s invasion), and after more than a million casualties resulting from such obstinacy, Genocide Joe is trying to transform his failed project into World War III.
His “reasoning” seems to be that such transformation would tie Donald Trump’s hands. That is, despite his repeated promises to end the Ukraine War 24 hours after assuming office, the new old fool would find himself obliged to see it through to its suicidal end, thus dooming ourselves, our children and grandchildren.
That’s the problem. The “End” of World War III will be THE END of us all!
For Ukraine!!
It’s all so insane.
To implement the insanity, the senile old man with one foot already in the grave has:
Allowed Ukraine to invade Russia’s Kursk Region
Given Zelensky “permission” to attack targets deep within Russia.
Directly involved the U.S. and its NATO allies in targeting those attacks.
Permitted U.S. military brass to speak of the possibility of direct U.S. “preemptive” strikes against Russian targets.
Allows NATO “allies” to threaten fielding “boots on the ground” in Ukraine which remains the most corrupt government in Europe.
None of this is even remotely necessary.
Imagine U.S. reaction to similar events on our border. Imagine if Russia or China struck an alliance with Mexico or Canada, poured in arms and trained their allies specifically for conflict with the United States. Would the U.S. stand by idly?
Of course it wouldn’t. Of course it didn’t during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
This is not complicated. It’s simply crazy. It represents complete insanity on the part of “leaders” who should be put in jail for even considering such hypocrisy and mass murder. I can’t wait for January 20th.
I’m not yet sure what to think about last Tuesday’s election results. Surprisingly, I find myself ambivalent and guardedly hopeful.
On the one hand, I feel strong foreboding about the Trump victory. I have nothing but painful memories of his last term. It was tough to wake up each day to the crudity, mendacity, stupidity, self-promotion, and sheer ignorance of the man. As a result, like many others, especially at the beginning, I experienced great relief returning to a kind of normalcy under Joe Biden.
But then as that “normalcy” kicked in, I found that horrifying too. Distressingly, there are those billions and billions and billions spent on a war in Ukraine whose reasons were impossible for me to understand. How was Ukraine our concern? I mean, most Americans can’t even find it on the map. Additionally, by all accounts its government is incredibly corrupt. Historically, it has been consistently associated with Nazism. Ukraine seemed far from our business, especially when we have so many problems at home.
I’m referring to huge income gaps between rich and poor, to decaying cities, roads and bridges, low minimum wage, lack of universal health care, college loan indebtedness, rampant homelessness, and incoherent immigration policy. Why did the Biden administration find it so easy to find billions for Ukraine, but not for us and our problems?
Then came the genocide in Gaza! At the very least, it revealed the hypocrisy of Democrats ostensibly concerned with women’s rights, and racism, but supplying weapons to kill mothers and their children in Gaza. Clearly the administration felt differently about Palestinian women and children than about their American or Ukrainian counterparts. Isn’t that sexism? Isn’t that racism? Isn’t it politically suicidal?
Mrs. Harris promised more of the same. During her ineffective campaign she repeatedly refused to distance herself from anything Genocide Joe continues to implement in the Middle East. Doesn’t that make her a genocider too? Of course it does!
But won’t Trump just give us more of the same as well? Probably. But maybe not.
So, to clarify my own ambivalence about Tuesday’s election results, I decided to make a list of Trump’s pros and cons. Here’s how it came out:
Trump’s Negatives
There are so many! But here’s the short list:
In general, he’s crude, superficial, and uninformed.
He’s a pathological liar, e.g., about immigrant crime rates and their eating pets.
His only true accomplishment during his first term was to give gratuitous tax breaks to the world’s richest people.
He totally mishandled the COVID 19 outbreak. As a result, more Americans died than citizens of any other developed country.
His punitive policies against Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba have increased the immigration situation he decries.
More specifically, he repeatedly tried to overthrow the Venezuelan government ridiculously installing U.S. puppet Juan Guaido to replace Nicolas Maduro.
He’s a climate change denier
He’s a champion of the fossil fuel industry’s super polluters.
He exhibits no understanding of the dangers of nuclear war. (Remember his wondering “If we have nuclear weapons, why can’t we use them.”)
Like Biden and Harris, he’s anti-Palestinian and an enthusiastic supporter of Israel’s genocide.
He blames U.S. unemployment and low wages on immigrants and the Chinese rather than on the decisions of his capitalist friends to offshore American jobs.
He thinks that tariffs hurt the Chinese, when they are covert taxes on American consumers, while increasing inflation and funneling the surcharged money to Washington.
He’s disrespectful of women and has been convicted of rape by a jury of his peers
He was a friend of Jeffrey Epstein.
He encouraged the January 6, 2021, assault on our nation’s capital.
He’s likely to incorporate into his administration neanderthals like Mike Pompeo and Marco Rubio.
Trump’s Positives
Believe it or not, there are a few. Here’s the longest list I can think of:
Trump’s disliked and vilified by the Washington establishment and the mainstream media. (Indicating that he can’t be all that bad).
His landslide election has exposed widespread discontent with the economic and political status quo.
He’s a loose cannon. He and his MAGA followers form the closest thing to the third party that America requires.
His “party” has succeeded in uniting large swaths of previously hopelessly polarized population segments who somehow realize that they have more in common with each other than what drives them apart – including women, African Americans, and Hispanics.
He promises to incorporate into his administration anti-big-pharma, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., war critic, Tulsi Gabbard, and Putin interviewer Tucker Carlson.
He’s willing to negotiate an end to the Ukrainian war.
He’s highly skeptical of NATO.
His vice-president is J.D. Vance has been described by Robert Barnes as “the most war skeptical and pro-labor Republican office holder in the last 50 years.”
Beyond that and unlike the Biden administration, he’s proven willing to dialog and “deal” with America’s designated enemies including North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
He promises to open sealed government documents (and their can of worms) on the JFK assassination.
And (most importantly) his election may drive neo-con Democrats to repudiate their efforts to out-Republican Republicans and to reappropriate their identity as Roosevelt New Dealers.
Conclusion
Well, there you have it – the pros and cons of Trump’s triumph as I see it. What do you think? Am I being naïve and too optimistic? Am I whistling past the graveyard? Can you add to my lists? Do you care to refute my reasoning?
About Things That Matter 