Readers may puzzle over this cartoon and its relationship to Crypto. It is taken from the British artist William Hogarth’s famous work of 1721: The South Sea Bubble, as I explain in my forthcoming book – The Global Casino: How Wall St Gambles with People and Planet. For more, see the addendum below.
The Global Crypto Bubble
Crypto – the criminal currency promoted by libertarians of a pioneering, frontier spirit – is being looted by the age-old criminality of capitalism – even while its global valuation rockets to $4 trillion; and even as it is clothed in the respectability of US Congressional and Presidential approval, with cover promised by US regulatory institutions.
One of the gangster bosses looting the decentralised system (DeFi) is none other than the President of the United States. As Bloomberg reported on 21 July, 2025
Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., the firm behind Truth Social, has acquired about $2 billion in Bitcoin and related securities as part of its previously announced plan to become a crypto treasury company.
Bear that phrase in mind: “a crypto treasury company” as I walk you through the process whereby libertarian, de-regulated crypto has met its nemesis: rampant, and corrupt financialised capitalism. In short, Wall Street and the White House.
It all began with Stablecoins
…. like Tether and USD Coin, which like so much about crypto, are not coins. Instead they are the digital currency used in a discredited Hayekian and unregulated system known as ’narrow banking’ or full reserve banking. As Gary B Gorton and Jeffery Y. Zhang argue in an excellent paper Taming Wildcat StablecoinsStablecoins have no intrinsic value. Instead, like the unregulated banks of old, they are currency used by platforms to facilitate exchanges and like banks manage transactions between different cryptocurrency buyers and sellers and between crypto buyers and sellers of US dollars. (There are now more than 15 million different cryptocurrencies, according to price-tracking website CoinMarketCap). To facilitate those transactions Stablecoin platforms issue a form of ‘fiat currency’ (the Stablecoin) which is new, private money creation.
Owners of Stablecoins can “pledge them in decentralised finance (DeFi) platforms that (allegedly) provide interest rates that far exceed the yield that retail investors can obtain” via TradFi (Traditional Finance) – like a bank savings account” write Gorton and Zhang.
Are Stablecoins stable?
Their claim to be stable, and therefore reliable for those wishing to exchange their cryptocurrency for another cryptocurrency or for US dollars, is based on the assertion that Stablecoin’s value does not deviate from the assets they hold; assets that back up the currency. Those assets (or collateral) are mainly short-term US Treasuries, or US government debt.
Back in the 1830s in the United States, unregulated ‘narrow’ banks issued bank notes and arranged transactions in much the same way as Stablecoin platforms do today. In exercising the power to create new money, they would claim falsely, that all the banknotes issued were fully backed by gold stacked in their vaults, or in the vaults of partner banks.The implication was that the notes could be exchanged for gold. Only in a downturn when suspicious customers checked, panicked and caused a run on the bank, were those falsehoods revealed.
Like the US banks of the 1830s, the unregulated Stablecoin ‘bank’ is not backed by gold, but by its holdings of valuable assets that can, it is alleged, be exchanged at par. In other words, the owner of a Stablecoin can allegedly, and at any time, swap the digital ‘coin’ for the exact value of a safer, equally valuable US Treasury bill. This makes a Stablecoin distinct from volatile cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin that are not backed by assets, and whose prices are highly volatile.
Finally, in resembling the ‘narrow banks’ of the 1830s, Stablecoins too are susceptible to downturns, suspicion, panics and bank runs.
There are reasons for investors to worry. Short-term US Treasuries (bonds) that back Stablecoins are just that: promises to pay back quickly, with interest. A maturing bond could lead to the evaporation of the currency’s chosen collateral. Similarly, cuts in the issuance of US government debt (borrowing) can lead to shortages of short-term Treasury bills. That in turn would cause concern amongst Stablecoin investors, and could threaten a run on the ‘bank’ as investors test whether their Stablecoin really can be exchanged at par.
To help avoid such lack of confidence, Stablecoins have sought the protection of the US Congressional legislature, and of US institutions. And in providing the imprimatur of regulation, the US Congress has helped to fire up the valuation of global crypto assets to an extraordinary $4 trillion.
Could that be a bubble?
The Stablecoin exchange system had seemed to be working well, with the most trusted platform owners regularly providing monthly accounting reports and audits of their assets. The market capitalisation of the best known, Tether, was $4.6bn in February 2020 and today is valued at a whopping $160bn, according to CoinLore. Backed by large technology companies and Wall Street banks, Stablecoins have “potential for even greater adoptions” argue Gorton and Zhang.
Pushed by the Crypto sector, and ushered in by the American Presidency the Act won the bipartisan support of both US Congressional Republicans and Democrats. The passage of the Act was initially purchased during the Trump presidential campaign. Thanks to generous crypto donations to US politicians, and to the defeat of crypto-sceptics like Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown, passage of the GENIUS Act was assured. One of the co-sponsors of the Act is the New York (for which read Wall Street) Democrat Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand.
In the week of its adoption President Trump held a gala dinner at the White House to celebrate its passing. The top 220 holders of the $Trump memecoin competed (by buying more memecoins) to be invited to the dinner. Trump had reason to celebrate. The adoption of the GENIUS Act by the US Congress fuelled the rise in valuations of cryptocurrencies held by his company, enriching the president and his sons. Together they are joint owners of a Stablecoin through their cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial. (You gotta love the way in which the word ‘liberty’ is put to service here.)
leans suspiciously centralized for a project that claims to be decentralized, and it has a governance token that holders can’t trade and a revenue model that funnels 75% of net profits to a Trump-affiliated entity.
It’s enough to make a crypto-sceptic cry….
DeFi clashes with TradFi
Crypto interests wanted to integrate Stablecoins into the regulated US financial system so that crypto assets and bank accounts could in future be protected by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, just as ordinary bank deposits are. In other words, the crypto sector wanted to be protected from losses or failure (insolvency) by the US rules-based system sponsored by the American taxpayer.
With the passing of the GENIUS Act, Stablecoin interests achieved their goal.
But Financialised Capitalism – i.e. Wall Street – had a very different, and a far more devious motive for integrating digital Crypto ’narrow banks’ within the financial system.
That motive: nothing less than the subordination of DeFi to the financial interests of TradFI.
This is where ‘crypto treasury companies’ come into the picture. By first luring the global crypto community of fiery libertarians into the rules-based system governed by the GENIUS ACT, THE US Federal Reserve and US institutions, Wall Street helped to inflate the price of crypto currencies. . As a consequence, sky-rocketing crypto valuations have risen to what many consider are unsustainable levels.
But it was the third development that has proved momentous: the creation of a new corporate identity: the ‘crypto treasury company’. Like the deployment of the word ‘Liberty’ in Trump’s World Liberty Financial, the use of the word ‘treasury’ here adds a touch of kingly gravitas to this novel corporate construct.
‘Crypto Treasury Companies’ are designed to get rich by doing nothing except warehousing Bitcoin – an asset of no intrinsic value. Second, they finance their purchases of Bitcoin by luring naive investors into ’the treasury’ as shareholders and lenders of cheap money. The more are lured in, the more attractive the share price, and the more money can be raised for the acquisition and warehousing of even more Bitcoins.
Strategy: the richest crypto treasury company of them all
President Trump is a little late to this particular, and very bubbly form of acquisitive, greedy corporate capitalism. Crypto treasury companies are already well established and one is way ahead in the race to inflate the biggest bubble in Wall Street’s history.
That company is Strategy, previously MicroStrategy, and is led by one Michael Saylor.
Strategy bears an uncanny resemblance to a company at the heart of one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in history – the South Sea Company (about which more below).
As the FT reports,
Strategy now holds 553,555 bitcoins or 2.64 per cent of total supply, acquired at an average price of $68,459 apiece and currently worth over $53bn.
The company itself is valued at $90bn – well in excess of the value of Bitcoin assets it warehouses.
MicroStrategy sells shares and convertible bonds to buy bitcoin. The purchases help support bitcoin’s price, which lifts MicroStrategy’s stock price. Then MicroStrategy sells more shares and convertibles off the higher price to buy more bitcoin.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Sky-high share prices are attracting a constant flow of new investors all keen to make quick capital gains from this giant and expanding Ponzi scheme. In a process not unlike the financial wheel of fortune depicted in Hogarth’s merry-go-round of 1721 (see below), the purchase of Strategy shares speeds up the speculative frenzy and in a positive feedback loop, further inflates the market capitalisation of the company.
At some point – who knows when – the spinning wheel will come to a violent halt.
The Subordination of DeFi to TradFi
Back in 2008 Satoshi’s legendary White Paper heralded a financial revolution. As Michael Kendall wrote on 17 July this year, Satoshi wanted to establish
..a digital currency that would compete with the dollar and provide an end run around the global fiat system. Defi, decentralized finance, will become the name of the game, while Tradfi, traditional finance, slowly, then with a boom, disappears as another historical anachronism. Bitcoin was a decentralized digital system that promised stable money and a permanent ledger transaction history that would revolutionize every aspect of financial life. All the world would have access to this new, revolutionary transaction currency free from government control.
That is not how the decentralised finance system has turned out. Kendall explains far more eloquently than I ever could that:
Everything Satoshi’s White Paper envisioned for Bitcoin no longer exists. All that remains is a non-sustainable, manipulated asset where speculative frenzy defines its valuation.
All manias end the same.
Even Beanie Babies.
It’s not different this time.
Ah, but it is.
This time the President of the United States has climbed aboard the spinning wheel driving ‘crypto treasury companies’ – and dragged hundreds of thousands of gullible MAGA investors along with him.
My mission – and that of my new book – sets out to make common sense of supposedly complex issues for readers. If you learn something from my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. It oils the wheels wonderfully.
Hogarth illustrated the aftermath of a financial crisis known as the South Sea Bubble with this famous etching and engraving that satirised the greed that had led to the Bubble and subsequent, catastrophic crash.
In the year before, thousands of investors and brokers across Europe had embarked on a feverish bout of financial speculation in which vast sums of money were invested in fraudulent, nonexistent and highly risky trading ventures. ‘Both the rich and the less affluent were falling under the thrall of the alluring but fickle figure of Fortune’, wrote one commentator. In Hogarth’s print, the grossly mutilated figure of Fortune is shown in the foreground, blindfolded and pinned to a wheel…
her body hacked by a scythe-wielding devil, who throws hunks of her flesh to the crazed speculators below. Honesty and Honour are similarly unclothed and exposed. Self-Interest is scourged by the two-faced figure of Villainy. Meanwhile, the frantic whirl of speculation is allegorised by the merry-go-round that spins in the mid-distance … Another form of gambling is highlighted on a nearby balcony, where a procession of spinsters queue to take part in a raffle for lottery-winning husbands.
Hogarth did not pull his artistic punches.
He should be living now.
Addendum 2 I am relieved to report that the laborious process of fact-checking and reference-fixing the new book – The Global Casino – is now done.
It was almost, but not quite as painful as giving birth. Grateful thanks are due to my Verso copy-editors Mark Martin and Joy Hoppenot. The big chief at Verso, Leo Hollis, is now discussing the first Jacket proof with designers and we’re working on the summarising text. (Not easy). The manuscript has gone to the printers, and I am told proofs will return some time in August. It will then get a final once-over with a pen…and after that dispatched for final printing, and publication in January.
As dedicated and beloved readers I will ensure you get an early bite at the cherry…and alert you to the opening of the pre-order window….
[i] Mark Hallett and Christine Riding, Hogarth.The South Sea Scheme c. 1721, Tate Publishing, 2007, p. 57.
Letourneau is director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Malone is an award-winning journalist who reports on child sexual abuse and victimization. They are co-writing a book about child sexual abuse prevention and the history of U.S. sex crime laws for Basic Books
Most of us would say that you can‘t put a price tag on keeping kids safe from sexual violence. Yet we do. And the amount is either generous or entirely inadequate, depending on which metric we are looking at.
Incarceration is one area in which we invest serious resources. A research paper we published with our colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health tallies, for the first time, the amount that U.S. taxpayers spend incarcerating people for sex crimes against children each year—an impressive $5.4 billion. There are currently around 145,000 adults incarcerated for sex crimes involving kids, and the majority of these inmates will remain incarcerated for about eight years, some much longer. We will invest approximately $49 billion on the current cohort of inmates, with new prisoners arriving all the time. This sounds like progress, and to some extent it is. We need laws and consequences that send the unmistakable message that the sexual abuse of children is immoral, illegal, and intolerable, and that adult perpetrators will be held criminally accountable. But there is a wrinkle in all of this. By the time these men—and it is typically males—engage with the criminal justice system, a child, and in some cases several children, have already been victimized. This raises a couple of questions: Is this the best we can do when it comes to serving victims of sexual abuse? And is there a way to stop people from offending against a child in the first place? The answers are no and yes.
Up until a couple of years ago, we allocated almost no federal dollars to the primary prevention of child sexual abuse. That is, we failed to invest in developing, testing, or disseminating programs designed to prevent the sexual victimization of kids before the criminal justice system even needs to get involved. But Congress recently began adding funding to the federal budget for this very purpose. In the 2022 fiscal year, $2 million was allocated toward child sexual abuse prevention research. This is a great start, but strikingly different to what we spend on punishment—for every dollar that we spend on prevention research we allocate $2,700 toward incarceration. The latter figure doesn’t include costs related to the detection and prosecution of crimes or the post-release costs associated with parole, sex offense registration, and public notification.
We need to address this imbalance. There are over 37 million adult survivors of child sexual abuse living in the U.S. today. 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 13 boys will go on to experience sexual abuse before the age of 18, and while many will live healthy happy lives, survivors are at increased risk for debilitating psychological, physical, and financial harms. These statistics are so overwhelming, the ramifications so pervasive and complex, that we can feel powerless to do anything more than we’ve always done, which is lock up offenders. This myth about the inevitability of child sexual abuse leads us to overlook, and underfund, the development and dissemination of prevention strategies.
One of us directs the country’s leading center for child sexual abuse prevention research, the other has a decade of experience reporting on sexual abuse perpetration and harm. For the past couple of years, we have been working on a book about about how to better prevent child sexual abuse, which includes taking a close look at the history and impact of U.S. sex crime legislation. During this time, we have met many people who have experienced the devastating consequences of victimization. One of whom is a young man named Connor.
Connor (his name has been changed to protect his identity and that of his victim) was 10 when he began sexually abusing a six-year-old relative. He abused this boy at least five times over the next three years. When it was finally detected, Connor, then 13, was adjudicated in juvenile court of first-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor. He spent the next four years in juvenile prison and, at 17, became the youngest person committed to his state’s sex offense civil commitment program. Sex offense civil commitment is the involuntary and indefinite confinement of people convicted of sexual offenses in secure facilities following their prison sentence. It is ostensibly for treatment, though Connor’s program at the time was not housed in a hospital with rolling green grounds, but in a prison block originally built for death row inmates. The program director did not want Connor there, reasoning that he presented a low risk of reoffending and that his young age and slight build would make him vulnerable to the adult offenders at the facility.
The director was right. Within hours of Connor’s arrival an older resident tried to rape him. Sexual victimization became the norm during Connor’s four years in the facility. Adult men—all of whom had been locked up for years or decades—would expose themselves or masturbate in front of him. They’d come up behind him when he was alone in his room and tell him how much they wanted to rape him.
“I didn’t know how to navigate it,” Connor said. “It was completely different from juvenile [prison]. It’s a whole other level… knowing the consequences are going to be worse than just a fist fight.” Connor was not innocent. He caused real harm to his young relative and action was needed to end the abuse, provide services to his victim, and guard against future harm. Yet there were opportunities to intervene before Connor began sexually offending…..
Luke Malone has put the emphasis on prevention since he began to study the plight of young men who were troubled by their thoughts of addiction to pre-pubescent children.
It’s an issue of great national and international importance. Around one percent of adult men meet the diagnostic criteria for pedophilia, which means there are at least 1.2 million pedophiles currently living in the U.S. There are likely more, but reliable statistics aren’t available for female pedophiles. While some do go on to offend, a surprisingly large number are doing everything they can to avoid giving in to their desires.
Maybe such people amongst us feel bonded to, yet disgusted by, Epstein’s behaviour with under age kids? Just as they may feel compassion for predatory male behaviour, for having an addiction to pursue girls and adult women, and/or boys. They feel disgusted by their own thoughts, by being who they are, but rarely find help and may become a harmful predator.
Thousands of vulnerable kids and adults are sex trafficked globally. It is a terrible crime but makes the traffickers wealthy. There is a constant demand, so there is a supply. Moral codes are non existent. The traffickers will find ways to silence their victims, so murder or threat of harm, is part of the playbook.
And yet, when a young person kills her trafficker, she gets a jail sentence!
Woman who said she legally killed sex trafficker gets 11 years in prison
Chrystul Kizer, shown in court with attorney Gregory Holdahl, was sentenced to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty to reckless homicide.
(Sean Krajacic / Associated Press)
Associated Press
Aug. 20, 2024 7:43 AM PT
KENOSHA, Wis. — A Milwaukee woman who said she was legally allowed to a kill a man because he was sexually trafficking her has been sentenced to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty to a reduced count of reckless homicide.
A Kenosha County judge on Monday sentenced Chrystul Kizer to 11 years of initial confinement followed by five years of extended supervision in the 2018 death of Randall Volar, 34. She was given credit for 570 days, about 1½ years, of time served.
…………
Kizer, now 24, said she met Volar on a sex trafficking website. He had been molesting her and selling her as a prostitute over the year leading up to his death, she said. She told detectives that she shot him after he tried to touch her.
The victim would seem to kill in self defence.
The human hive mind is confused about who is the victim and has the right to plead self defence. Laws are made by powerful people but are usually flawed if not scrutinised and clarified to ensure no injustice or further harm is caused by the legal process.
In America there is an attempt to prevent sex abuse through an awareness programme:
Certainly this world would be a better place if we could all protect one another from mental issues developing which could result in uncontrollable actions against vulnerable others.
Any kind of abuse when one is still a child will scar a developing mind.
Tina Brown wrote the following on Substack:
In the course of writing The Palace Papers, my 2022 book on the royal family, I came across a shocking story in a memoir by Eleanor Berry, daughter of the then-Daily Telegraph owner Lord Hartwell. Berry tells how, at the age of ten, Ghislaine invited her to come upstairs and see her bedroom. Berry noticed an odd-shaped hairbrush, a strap, a slipper, and other implements laid out on the child’s dressing room table. Ghislaine proudly said, “This is what Daddy uses to beat me with. But he always allows me to choose which one I want.” This sadistic offering of power to the powerless—her father asking her, in essence, to procure herself for him— makes it more understandable how susceptible she would be to the twisted machinations of Jeffrey Epstein.
The victim becomes the aggressor.
More on Ghislaine and her bully of a father, from a book by Tom Bower, Maxwell, the Final Verdict
At the beginning of 1991, Ghislaine was receiving a monthly income from Maxwell’s Liechtenstein trust through the Bank Leumi in New York. No one has been able to gain access to those Liechtenstein bank accounts or understand the flow of money to Ghislaine. After his death, at least £25 million remained unaccounted for from the debris of the Maxwell empire in New York and a lot more disappeared into unknown bank accounts in tax havens. Some of that money financed Ghislaine Maxwell’s lifestyle. The result was clear. Through her father’s considerable presence in New York, not least through his ownership of the New York Daily News, she had met most of the city’s financiers and power brokers. Liberated by Maxwell’s death, Ghislaine bought a house in Manhattan and burst into New York’s gossip columns as a brash, party-hopping socialite. Among those she met was Jeffrey Epstein, an investment manager for the super-rich. Undoubtedly, her attraction to a magnetic man with unusual sexual habits was influenced by her childhood. Rich, domineering men could seduce her. Until Ghislaine, then aged thirty, arrived in Tenerife to inspect her father’s yacht after his death, she had been relatively invisible except when she disingenuously congratulated a London policeman after being stopped for drunken driving. Known in the Mirror building as arrogant, she was an aspiring status-seeker, enjoying lunch with Mick Jagger and other celebrities who instantly accepted her father’s invitation. Her life had been dominated by her father’s tyranny. Betty Maxwell, Ghislaine’s mother, would recall that her youngest daughter had been woefully neglected since her birth in 1961. ‘I was devastated,’ Betty would recall of the occasion when her four-year-old daughter had exclaimed, ‘Mummy, I exist.’ During her childhood, Ghislaine had witnessed her father’s merciless bullying, especially at the family’s regular Sunday lunches. Maxwell would question his children about world affairs. In the event that they made a mistake, the meal was interrupted while he physically beat the errant child in front of the others. ‘Bob would shout and threaten and rant at the children until they were reduced to pulp,’ Betty Maxwell wrote about her husband after his death. If a comment in a school report was not perfect, Maxwell caned the child. ‘Remember the three C’s,’ he growled, ‘Concentration, Consideration and Conciseness.’ Ghislaine could expect little protection from her mother even in front of her friends at her birthday party. Betty, who had met Robert during the liberation of France in 1944, collaborated with the beatings of her children just as she connived in her husband’s financial crimes. Except that Maxwell could be particularly protective towards his daughter. As a teenager, Ghislaine was once summoned to Maxwell’s office in Holborn while he was speaking to Roy Greenslade, editor of the Mirror. ‘What’s this about you nearly drowning?’ he asked his daughter. He had heard about an incident in the sea from Gianni Agnelli, the Italian tycoon with whom Ghislaine had been staying. ‘Oh, you don’t mean that little accident,’ replied Ghislaine. ‘There was no danger.’ ‘You’re always taking risks, doing stupid dangerous things,’ said Maxwell. ‘Oh Daddy,’ she exclaimed. Maxwell became serious: ‘I told you about jumping out of a helicopter with my skis on. It won’t happen again.’ Even while Ghislaine studied at Balliol, she succumbed to her father’s control over her boyfriends. Her reward in 1987 was to push the button for the bottle of champagne to crack on the bow of the newly built Lady Ghislaine, sealing her anointment as the mogul’s favourite child and his obedient servant. Her loyalty during the last year of her father’s life is described in this book. But does that oppression explain why she developed a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, a paedophile? Or that she seemingly became his pimp? In 2013, I met Ghislaine at a summer party in a large compound overlooking the sea in St Tropez. The host was a London property developer. I had last seen Ghislaine forty years earlier while filming the BBC documentary. Not surprisingly, she knew nothing about that venture – or, curiously, about the two books I had written about her father. While we chatted over a drink she seemed uninterested in him. Similarly, she seemed oblivious to the presence inside the glass-walled bar of a naked girl, writhing to the music. Nor did she express any emotion when a rocket from the party’s firework celebration landed on Club 55 on the beach below, setting fire to a hut. The fifty-two-year-old woman was hardened and alone. By then, her association with Epstein had become notorious and her friendship with Prince Andrew proven by a series of photographs. She did not want to speak about that except to say that her relationship with Epstein had ended years earlier. Subsequently, I was told by a member of her family that she had enjoyed two long-term relationships with other rich men after parting from Epstein in 2001. That was untrue. Their relationship had continued, even if it was not intimate. In 2019, pursued by the media and women alleging that she had trafficked them on Epstein’s behalf, she disappeared in America. To protect her location, even her family can only reach her – by phone or email – through a third party. Ghislaine Maxwell is a hunted woman, undoubtedly a casualty of her father and mother. While one can declare a final verdict on Robert Maxwell’s life, her ultimate fate is yet to be written – an outcome which her father could not have imagined in 1991. Maxwell’s death shocked the world. Few will forget the moment that the news was first broadcast. I heard it in Moscow while speaking to the former head of the KGB’s Department S, a man responsible for sending ‘illegal’ agents into the West. During his last months, Maxwell had been a frequent visitor to the Kremlin. Bizarrely, it later transpired that he was negotiating to sell blood donated by Russians in the West – a market inspired by the new HIV crisis. Even thirty years later, the end of Captain Bob’s life remains astonishing, and provides a lesson which should never be forgotten.
A humanitarian nightmare is occurring within the borders of the United States.
ICE is ramping up — from 20,000 to 30,000 agents — and adding many more detention camps. It’s tearing up families, uprooting communities, taking our neighbors.
Over 70 percent of those now being detained have no criminal records. Many have been hardworking members of their communities for decades.
ICE is now detaining at least 60,000 people. That’s almost 45 percent above the capacity provided for by Congress. Detainees in at least seven states are complaining of overcrowding, food shortages, and hunger.
Many camps are run by private contractors who evidently don’t care about conditions in the camps. Recent job cuts to an independent watchdog within the Department of Homeland Security means even fewer means of complaining about inhumane conditions.
One of my favorite poets, Alison Luterman, sent me this, to pass on to you.
**
Los Vicinos
Teresa, our Mexican neighbor,
climbs our porch steps on arthritic legs,
carrying a plate of fresh tamales,
still warm, wrapped in cloth,
because they’re having a cook-out in their yard
with all the tias and grandbabies,
and we’re included in the golden circle
of familia, through no virtue
of our own, yet here she is again at our door
with a plate of something delicious, or a big plastic bag
filled with nopales from the edible pads
of the giant cactus in their yard
which she has skinned and cubed and boiled
in salted water. They’re slippery as okra
and tart as lemons and she swears they will cure
a long list of ailments, including
but not limited to cancer, high blood pressure,
diabetes…standing on our porch, leaning
against the railing, she enumerates
the benefits while I smile and nod, “Si, si, gracias…”
My friend who lives in a rich neighborhood
says she’s seen ICE patrolling, looking for gardeners
and maids escaping over the back fences of Marin.
They’re tearing apart families like clumps
of seedlings, uprooting whole delicate
ecosystems, but what they don’t
understand is the mycelian nature
of kinship, how love is a weed
that travels across borders in a bird’s belly
and pops up waving its arms, no matter the law.
Our block resounds with spangled mariachi tunes
all summer long, and I’d be lying if I said
I wasn’t jealous some evenings,
lying awake while parties go on all around us,
because this land is their land, and this devotion
is tough and wild and joyous and Teresa can’t read
the red card that says Know Your Rights
in English and Spanish that I give her, nor understand
how I make a living, but she knows
what to do with the leaves of the guava tree
growing along our driveway, whose leaves
are medicinal in dozens of ways–whose leaves,
like the Bible says, are given for the healing of the nations.
The New York Times reported in July that two senior L Brands executives learned in the mid-1990s that Mr. Epstein was trying to pitch himself as a recruiter for Victoria’s Secret models and that Mr. Wexner was alerted to the inappropriate behavior. Around the same time, a model said, Mr. Epstein lured her to his hotel room under the pretense of being a Victoria’s Secret talent scout and then attacked her.
The executives, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing nondisclosure agreements, said they had not been contacted as part of the investigation, which is being conducted by Davis Polk & Wardwell, a prominent law firm with deep connections to L Brands. Mr. Wexner’s wife, Abigail, once worked there as an associate, and his financial adviser is a former partner.
Mr. Wexner bought Victoria’s Secret for $1 million in 1982. He transformed it into a global powerhouse that defined many Americans’ perceptions of female sexiness.
For years, Victoria’s Secret and its catalogs sought to convey a high-minded British sensibility. The “English heritage of the brand” was “totally made-up but effective,” said Ms. Fedus-Fields, who oversaw the growth of the direct business to almost $1 billion in annual revenue.
The brand’s guiding light in those days was a fictional woman named Victoria who had been raised in England by a successful London businessman and a French mother. She was well educated and married to a barrister. Company decisions were often made by asking, “Would Victoria do this?” By the time Ms. Fedus-Fields left in 2000, she said, the English aesthetic was fading and the brand was becoming “much more blatantly sexy.”
The Victoria’s Secret catalog in 1991 and 1992.Credit…Victoria’s Secret
Young girls fantasised about becoming models like these, just as starlets flocked to Hollywood dreaming of becoming a famed beauty on the screen.
Victoria’s Secret Fashion show in New York in 2005. Picture: Victorias Secret.
But the lure was like a moth trap, the innocent fluttered their wings and were caught by predators who eagerly welcomed them in. And they were destroyed.
First Epstein, Now This: Widespread Sexual Harassment of Victoria’s Secret Models Alleged in Exposé
Feb 1st, 2020
For decades, top executives at Victoria’s Secret engendered and participated in creating a culture of rampant misogyny, bullying, sexual harassment, and retaliation, according to a Saturday New York Times exposé.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, Epstein, who was charged with sex-trafficking last year before officially dying by suicide, mysteriously maintained sweeping control over Wexner’s fortune for decades before the two cut business ties approximately 12 years ago.
Razek, who resigned in August as the brand struggled to reinvent itself, was perceived within the company as “Wexner’s proxy,” which reportedly allowed him to operate with impunity despite myriad complaints regarding inappropriate behavior that included: groping models, trying to kiss them, asking them to sit on his lap, and grabbing one’s crotch without consent prior to the brand’s televised 2018 fashion show. Several witnesses also alleged instances in which Razek publicly demeaned and shamed women, and retaliated professionally against those who dared file complaints about his conduct with human resources.
Harvey Weinstein was another predator on the innocent:
Before their comeuppances, the mention of Weinstein conjured images of respected films and actors, while Epstein — albeit less in the public eye — had ties to rich and powerful figures like Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Prince Andrew, as well as institutions like Harvard University (via The Washington Post). The pair amassed wealth and connections as they committed disturbing acts of sexual assault behind the facade that they worked years to create. They were also friends who appeared to use their connections and status to help each other commit their crimes — at least, for a time.
….bid for New York Magazine
As reported by New York Magazine, both Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein were part of a group of investors that was looking to purchase the outlet in 2003. Among the other people in the group were billionaire Nelson Peltz, businessman Donny Deutsch, and U.S. News & World Report owner Mortimer Zuckerman (via The New York Times). Ultimately, the group bid $44 million for the publication to Primedia Inc. but was outbid by investment banker Bruce Wasserstein.
Why get into media? According to The New York Times, the group was motivated by “ego, power, and cachet.” While Weinstein had enough Hollywood influence at the time, Business Insider said Epstein “tried to establish himself as a media mogul.” The outlet noted that after the failed New York Magazine bid, he and Zuckerman invested $25 million into Radar Magazine. The outlet was ultimately sold to American Media Inc. in 2008 when it stopped publishing in print amid struggles to stay afloat.
Their exact motivations are unclear. Nevertheless, the media disintegration of figures like Prince Andrew — who settled a sexual abuse lawsuit with Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s victims who Andrew was accused of raping — shows what such charges can do to the carefully crafted public images of influential people.
Investigative journalism has created an online trail for anyone to follow:
In his book “Relentless Pursuit,” Bradley Edwards, one of the lawyers who helped put Jeffrey Epstein behind bars, described a disturbing story about Weinstein and Epstein’s reported sexual abuse (via The Sun). Edwards pointed to a conversation with Jean-Luc Brunel, an Epstein associate accused of helping him run an underage sex trafficking ring (per the Daily Beast). Brunel reportedly described a scene where Weinstein was receiving a massage from one of Epstein’s “girls.”
“He attempted to aggressively convert the massage into something sexual,” Edwards said. “The girl rejected his advances. As the story goes, Harvey then verbally abused her for rejecting him. Little did Harvey know, this was one of Epstein’s favorite girls at the time and Jeffrey viewed the aggressive mistreatment as disrespectful to him.”
Epstein allegedly kicked Weinstein out of the house, “delivering the message that he was never to come back.” That was apparently the end of their relationship.
Donald Trump was forced to sell the Miss Universe Organization – which also includes sister scholarship programs Miss USA and Miss Teen USA – in 2015 after his incendiary comments about Mexicans drove away broadcasters NBC and Univision. But Trump owned the pageant for nearly two decades, during which time he would have had the opportunity to come into contact with nearly 4,000 beauty queens.
From walking into a teen dressing room to joking about his obligation to sleep with contestants, Trump’s a storied pageant creep
Brown did not heed his warning. She flung herself at the investigation and eventually persuaded Reiter to go on record. Her resulting, award-winning three-part series last November exposed a vast operation in which 80 potential victims were identified, some as young as 13 and 14 at the time of the alleged abuse. She persuaded eight to tell their stories.
Brown also exposed a government cover-up in which Epstein got away with an exceptionally light sentence that saw him serve only 13 months in jail. She discovered that a “non-prosecution agreement” had been negotiated secretly in 2008 by the then top federal prosecutor in Miami, Alexander Acosta, that gave Epstein and his co-conspirators immunity from federal prosecution.
In 2017, Acosta was appointed by Donald Trump as labor secretary, a post that ironically is responsible for combating sex trafficking.
The FBI revealed in an unsigned memo released last week that Federal investigators have confirmed that “Epstein harmed over 1,000 victims,” each one suffering “unique trauma.”
There is so much evidence, such as that in Craig Ungar’s book, American Kompramat, which contradicts Trump’s denial of his involvement with women procured by Jeffrey Epstein:
Anna Malova wasn’t the only woman who spent time with both Trump and Epstein. In 1997, Trump, who had just separated from Marla Maples, was photographed with Ghislaine at Ford Models’ fiftieth-anniversary party, where he ogled models throughout the evening.25 At another event that year, according to the New Yorker, Trump, then fifty, seemed to fall for a friend of Ghislaine’s, twenty-year-old London model Anouska De Georgiou, and flew her and Ghislaine to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend, after which he installed Anouska in an apartment in Trump Tower.26
July 15, 2025
Terry Moran, on Substack
But the scandal of Epstein’s crimes was never about politics. It was about class. Rich men got away with it. There are princes and presidents, corporate chieftains and celebrity lawyers, oil sheikhs and Hollywood icons and scions of famous families—so many rich men flying on the devil’s jet, dining with him, partying with him, visiting his island of terror for so many girls and women. These men, they are so familiar to us in so many areas of our politics, our economy, and our culture: the rich men who seem to glide through life beyond and above our systems of accountability.
Trump denied he was ever on Epstein’s plane:
the flight logs indicated he flew on Epstein’s plane at least seven times. There is no suggestion that Mr Trump was flown to the island.
The logs indicate that on one of the trips between New York and Florida he was accompanied by his then-wife Marla Maples and their daughter, Tiffany, and another listed his son Eric as a passenger.
In 2015, author and journalist, Nick Bryant found publisher Gawker to put ‘the little black book’ in print, which created a major stir.
In 2015, finally, Gawker published the Little Black Book and accompanying articles. I found it ironic that Gawker, considered to be the mean kids in the media, had the fortitude to publish a story about children whose lives have been disfigured with impunity, whereas media outlets ostensibly immersed in integrity had rejected the story.
So much garbage surfacing, but it has to be corrected:
Bill O’Reilly reluctantly had to admit Monday night that his outlandish claims about the Biden administration and former Attorney General Merrick Garland “convicting” Jeffrey Epstein were false, muttering a truculent “yeah, so” when NewsNation anchor Leland Vittert corrected him.
The Mint Press published an article in 2019 about Lex Wexner. Epstein and the MEGA (not MAGA) group, here is an extract:
The Mega Group’s role in the Epstein case has garnered some attention, as Epstein’s main financial patron for decades, billionaire Leslie Wexner, was a co-founder of the group that unites several well-known businessmen with a penchant for pro-Israel and ethno-philanthropy (i.e., philanthropy benefiting a single ethnic or ethno-religious group). However, as this report will show, another uniting factor among Mega Group members is deep ties to organized crime, specifically the organized crime network discussed in Part I of this series, which was largely led by notorious American mobster Meyer Lansky.
Back in the 1930s, a Canadian named Samuel Bronfman, exploited legal loopholes to sell liquor during the Canadian, then the American Prohibition Era:
Most of Bronfman’s mob associates during Prohibition were members of what became known as the National Crime Syndicate, which a 1950s Senate investigative body known as the Kefauver Committee described as a confederation dominated by Italian-American and Jewish-American mobs. During that investigation, some of the biggest names in the American Mafia named Bronfman as a central figure in their bootlegging operations. The widow of notorious American mob boss Meyer Lansky even recounted how Bronfman had thrown lavish dinner parties for her husband.
Years later, Samuel Bronfman’s children and grandchildren, their family’s ties to the criminal underworld intact, would go on to associate closely with Leslie Wexner, allegedly the source of much of Epstein’s mysterious wealth, and other mob-linked “philanthropists,” and some would even manage their own sexual blackmail operations, including the recently busted blackmail-based “sex cult” NXIVM. The later generations of the Bronfman family, particularly Samuel Bronfman’s sons Edgar and Charles, will be discussed in greater detail in Part II of this report.
Maurene Comey, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, was fired recently. She was known for her work on high-profile cases, including those involving Jeffrey Epstein and Sean “Diddy” Combs. Political Wire Axios
NEW YORK, NY – JUNE 07: Les Wexner speaks onstage at the 2016 Fragrance Foundation Awards presented by Hearst Magazines – Show on June 7, 2016 in New York City.
The CEO of L Brands, which owns Victoria’s Secret, compared Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to two of Rome’s most notorious emperors, faulting their divisive campaign for distracting shoppers.
“We have Nero and Caligula arguing about the future of Rome, and like fools we’re listening to it,” Ohio billionaire Les Wexner said Tuesday during the company’s investor day.
Wexner, in remarks reported by Bloomberg, said the presidential election had distracted consumers.
“We’ve got this peculiar election,” said Wexner, who has donated to Republican candidates in the past. “On the one hand, you can choose somebody who’s absolutely nuts or somebody who’s probably very selfish and dishonest.”
He didn’t clarify which candidate had earned a comparison to which emperor. Caligula was murdered by his advisers after a short, tumultuous reign as emperor. Nero, his nephew, was a tyrant known for debauchery who fled the city during a revolt against him.
Jeffrey Epstein held Power of Attorney for Lex Wexner. How he managed to end up doing that after his brief and unsuccessful career in teaching, can be learned if you check out facts at Snopes and other sites:
Epstein was fired at the end of the 1975-76 school year. Peter Branch, interim headmaster after Barr’s departure, told The Miami Herald that Epstein “had not adequately grown as a new teacher to the standard of the school.”
But more on Les Wexner:
July/August 2021 Issue
The Mogul and the Monster: Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Decades-Long Relationship With His Biggest Client
Of the many mysteries that still surround the life and crimes of the notorious financier, the source of his wealth, and thus his power, might be the greatest. His long-standing business ties with his most prominent client, billionaire retail magnate Leslie Wexner, hold the key.
Les Wexner knew Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton very well, so he was in a strong position to make comments about them. But what about the qualities in this Ohio based billionaire, Les Wexner? Answers are easily found on the Internet, if you can be bothered to look. He obviously has been of interest to investigative journalists during his long life. So I just picked out a few quotes and links.
So starting with how revered Mr Wexner was:
Jew of the Week: Les Wexner
Les Wexner
Leslie H. Wexner (b. 1937) was born in Ohio to Russian-Jewish immigrants. He dropped out of law school to help his parents, who opened a small clothing shop after struggling for many years in low-level jobs in the garment industry. At 26, he loaned $5000 and opened his own sportswear store for young women, called ‘The Limited’. The store was a hit, pulling in $160,000 in sales in its first year. Just 6 years later, the company went public. Wexner has been its CEO since then, making him the all time longest-serving CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Over that time, he has taken his company to new heights, starting a number of new businesses, and acquiring others, including Victoria’s Secret, La Senza, Pink, Bath & Body Works, and Abercrombie & Fitch. He now oversees 3000 locations around the world, and his net worth is estimated at around $6 billion. A sizable portion of this wealth goes to charitable causes. Wexner has donated millions to the United Way, Hillel, Birthright, and Ohio State University. He has given over $160 million to the Columbus Foundation, and pledged $100 million for medical and cancer research. His own Wexner Foundation provides funding for Jewish leadership programs, master’s degrees in rabbinics and Jewish studies, Jewish day schools in the US and universities in Israel, as well as sponsoring Israelis studying at Harvard. For his extensive philanthropic work and business acumen, Wexner has won numerous awards and honourary degrees.
From the above 2021 article by Gabriel Sherman we can read how Wexner first employed Harold Levin as his money manager in 1982. Levin was a happy man to gain such employment, but was eventually replaced by Jeffrey Epstein.
Wexner entrusted Levin with increasingly ambitious projects. Starting in the mid-1980s, Levin purchased thousands of acres of farmland in New Albany (population 414) on the outskirts of Columbus, where Wexner planned to build his very own town modeled on an 18th-century Georgian village. “Les sent me to Richmond, Virginia, to look at architecture he wanted to copy,” Levin said.
On one of Levin’s trips to New York in 1989, Wexner asked him to meet a brilliant young financier who wanted to pitch an investment opportunity.
Levin had never heard of the man, Jeffrey Epstein, which was odd. After working for Wexner for seven years, Levin knew virtually every player on Wall Street (a few months earlier, Levin says, he met with arbitrageur Ivan Boesky). Levin’s skepticism was confirmed as soon as he arrived at Epstein’s Madison Avenue office. There were no visible signs of a trading operation; just Epstein sitting behind a desk that didn’t even have a computer. “Epstein was trying to explain a currency trade he wanted to do. I have an MBA from Ohio State, and I didn’t understand a word the man said,” Levin recalled. Levin went back to Columbus and reported that Epstein was a fraud. “I told Les, ‘Stay away from him,’ ” Levin remembered. Wexner agreed not to do the trade.
But despite warnings, such was the Epstein charm that Wexner dismissed Levin and made Epstein not only his financial adviser, but eventually gave him Power of Attorney.
Sherman goes on:
Wexner paid Epstein’s predecessor about $600,000 a year in today’s dollars. Epstein, a former high school math teacher from Coney Island, Brooklyn, was worth a reported $559 million. His estate included a 51,000-square-foot Manhattan town house (bought from Wexner); a private jet (formerly owned by The Limited) and a helicopter; a Caribbean island; a Paris apartment; a Palm Beach mansion; and a 10,000-acre New Mexico ranch. (Epstein’s brother’s real estate company also had majority ownership of a Manhattan condo building on East 66th Street where Epstein allegedly housed girls. The building was formerly owned by Wexner.) Prosecutors say that Epstein built his vast sex-trafficking ring throughout the ’90s and early aughts. In other words, Epstein became Epstein during his long association with Wexner.
And after Epstein’s arrest, Wexner stated:
Wexner said during a speech in September 2019. In a letter to his charitable foundation around this time, Wexner claimed Epstein had “misappropriated vast sums of money from me and my family.” Epstein had reportedly transferred back nearly $47 million to a Wexner-controlled charity fund in 2008.
But Wexner’s belated attempts to explain himself only raised more questions. Why, for instance, did Wexner not report Epstein’s alleged $47 million theft to the FBI? Or how could Wexner claim to be blindsided by Epstein’s duplicitousness? “I told Les, ‘I wouldn’t trust Epstein to cross the street—why are you trusting him with your money?’ ” recalled Jerry Merritt, a former Ohio state highway patrolman who served as The Limited’s security chief for more than 25 years.
In reporting this article, I spoke to more than 30 people who had firsthand encounters with Epstein or Wexner. (Wexner, who announced he was stepping down from the board of his company in March, declined numerous interview requests.) The story that emerged is a deeply strange one. Sources say Epstein occupied different roles in Wexner’s life depending on the audience. “Jeffrey compartmentalized. He told you what you wanted to hear,” Epstein’s former lawyer Alan Dershowitz told me. Epstein sometimes portrayed himself as a surrogate son to a lonely billionaire. He told some people he was Wexner’s fixer. Dershowitz said that when he became Epstein’s criminal lawyer in 2007, Epstein boasted that Wexner would not testify against him. Whatever the nature of their relationship, Epstein’s long-standing connection to one of America’s richest men inarguably aided his public profile, adding to his air of legitimacy and thus his power.
Further on Sherman relates he talked to Robert Meister, who had introduced Epstein to Wexner:
Wexner met Epstein sometime around 1986. They were introduced by Wexner’s close friend the insurance mogul Robert Meister, whose firm handled insurance for The Limited. I spoke with Meister in April, and he opened up for the first time about the origins of Wexner and Epstein’s relationship. It was history that Meister, 79, found difficult to revisit. “I walked away from Epstein a long time ago, and I’ve been trying to erase him from my mind ever since,” he said. Epstein struck up a conversation with Meister on a commercial flight to Palm Beach. Meister remembered being impressed with the young banker. In reality, Epstein lived in a one-bedroom apartment and ran a fledgling investment firm. (Epstein had been forced to leave Bear Stearns in 1981. He told Securities and Exchange Commission investigators he had been penalized after letting a friend borrow money to buy stock, that there were irregularities with his expense account, and that there were rumors at the firm about his relationship with a secretary.) “He was a great bullshit artist,” Meister said.
The PFAS class incorporates a vast but unknown number of different chemicals – estimates vary from around 5,000 to 6.5 million. TFA is just one of many PFAS.
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TFA enters the environment from different sources. It’s used to make blowing agents (used to make things like expanded foams and plastics such as packaging materials), pesticides and pharmaceuticals. So it is intentionally used for some useful applications.
But it can also be produced unintentionally as a by-product from various processes that involve “pre-cursor” PFAS chemicals. The biggest environmental source of TFA is as a by-product from manufacturing “F-gases” or flourinated greenhouse gases – these are used as refrigerants instead of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and HCFCs (hydrochlorofluorocarbons) which are known to cause ozone depletion.
While F-gases may not deplete ozone, they are greenhouse gases with extremely high global warming potential with some several thousand times more potent then CO₂. An F-gas called fluoroform has a global warming potential of 14,800. This means that when fluoroform is released into the atmosphere, it will trap 14,800 times more heat for an equivalent amount of CO₂.
TFA is highly persistent so it resists most forms of physical, chemical and biological degradation. TFA is also highly mobile so it can enter waterways and move around them easily, while remaining in the environment for hundreds of years. This is why it’s now accumulating and cropping up in our environment more often, contaminating our rivers, food and even our wine.
Scientists have analysed levels of a particular forever chemical in 32 UK rivers. Inessa Boo/Shutterstock
TFA has been found in rivers across the globe including the US, China, Germany and Switzerland. These findings have triggered joint research between environmental charity Fidra and scientists at the University of York to sample water from and analyse the TFA levels in 32 UK rivers, streams and lakes. They found TFA present in 31 of the 32 sites investigated, including an exceptionally high level in the River Kelvin, Glasgow (the second highest recorded globally to date). This is approaching levels where TFA has been previously observed to start having adverse effects on aquatic organisms.
The trouble with TFA
Apart from its major source being as a breakdown product from the production of greenhouse gases (and knock on climate change effects), the presence of TFA in our environment represents a genuine threat to human and environmental health.
Currently there is no guidance for safe levels of TFA in drinking water, and it is not something that is measured. However, if it is present in our rivers and lakes, then there is a potential pathway for it to enter our drinking water. This needs to be addressed so that our levels of exposure, and the level of threat that TFA poses, can be assessed by scientists, industries and regulators.
While evidence is limited on human toxicity of TFA, studies dating back more than 25 years have highlighted its potential effects on aquatic organisms, including effects on development of zebrafish, as well as various algaes, which act as important food sources in aquatic ecosystems. Studies on mammals have that continuous TFA exposure could lead to shown increased liver sizes (suggesting the possibility of a significant underlying, unknown medical condition) and potential disruption to reproductive hormones, causing fertility and foetal development issues.
The EU’s chemical regulator, the European Chemicals Agency is responsible for ensuring chemical safety in Europe. They suggest TFA poses a low threat if exposure is short term. However, longer-term exposure effects remain unknown. With other PFAS, recommended weekly maximum intakes have been substantially reduced as knowledge has advanced.
While TFA pollution continues unabated, levels in the environment beyond those 32 rivers – and in our food and drink – remain difficult to quantify. It is also hard to confidently suggest methods to reduce personal TFA exposure. However, work by myself and colleagues has shown that exposure to many PFAS can be reduced by filtering tap water with activated carbon or charcoal filters. Other researchers have suggested that this could be an effective way to remove TFA from drinking water, as long as filters are changed regularly.
The upgrades to the drones were part of a larger technological push in the IDF, which in the late 1980s invested significant resources to acquire and develop precision ordnance—“smart bombs” that could hit their targets more accurately, making them more effective and less likely to inflict collateral damage. This process was accelerated when technology buff Ehud Barak, who wanted to build “a small, smart army,” became chief of staff in 1991, in effect shaping the Israeli war machine for the coming decades. Under his direction, the IAF’s Apache attack helicopters were equipped with laser-guided Hellfire missiles. At the same time, a meeting between the heads of the IAF operations department and Arieh Weisbrot, commander of the first IAF drone unit, Squadron 200, came up with the revolutionary idea of combining all of these technological advances into a single five-step process, to create a new and particularly deadly method of targeted killing. First, a drone would track a moving target, either a person or a vehicle. Second, the drone would transmit an image of the target directly to the operational command, providing a real-time connection with the decision-makers, right up until the order to fire. Third, the drone would designate the target with a laser beam that could be picked up by an Apache helicopter’s laser detector—a stage known as “passing the baton,” from the intelligence-gathering cycle to the operational cycle. Fourth, the Apache’s own laser would mark the target, which a Hellfire missile could then lock on to. Fifth, the Apache pilot would fire the missile and destroy the target. Combining and synchronizing both systems—intelligence and operations—was a major breakthrough. Drones already had proven themselves invaluable in gathering information. But now they’d evolved from a support role into a direct combat tool. Squadron 200 began training with the Apache pilots of Squadron 113, the “Wasp” squadron, in late 1991. There were skeptics in the IAF, especially among pilots who’d been trained in, and had long practiced, specific combat tactics. The idea that flying robots could be effective in war seemed, to some, preposterous. But in December 1991, they tried a number of “dry runs,” using vehicles on Israel’s roads as targets. Three or four drones were launched, and a vehicle selected at random for them to track with their cameras, transmitting everything to the control caravan. Then the vehicle was “lit up” with a laser beam, and after a few miles the chase was joined by two Apaches, and the whole team would practice “passing the baton” as the Apaches’ sensors would lock on to the drone’s laser beam. At the moment the Apache indicated that the target was locked, the exercise ended. But simulating missile fire onto cars on a friendly road was one thing. Killing a live target in hostile territory was something else altogether.
From book, ‘Rise and Kill First,’ Ronen Bergman
From Mint Press:
During the 1980s, as MintPresspreviously reported, Epstein claimed to have been an intelligence operative and so-called “bounty hunter” in the world of shadow finance. During this time, he was known to have developed close relationships with several British arms dealers, particularly Sir Douglas Leese. Thus, Epstein appeared to frequently be traveling between the Middle East and London, which is also supported by Epstein’s now-infamous Austrian passport which he was believed to have carried during this period of time.
Ben-Menashe told MintPress that he had not only met Epstein after Epstein had been recently recruited by Israeli military intelligence, but had seen him on several occasions thereafter as Epstein “used to be in [Robert Maxwell’s] office [in London] quite often” and would arrive there between trips to and from Israel.
Camp David, Clinton and Barak:
The 2000 Camp David Summit was a summit meeting at Camp David between United States president Bill Clinton, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat. The summit took place between 11 and 25 July 2000 and was an effort to end the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Wikipedia
Ehud Barak, and his start up company, Carbyne:
Even more funds for Carbyne from Peter Thiel:
Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm Founders Fund has joined a $15 million Series B funding round in an emergency response startup Carbyne, backed by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. The company announced the round led Elsted Capital Partners Tuesday.
Listed as Reporty Homeland Security Ltd., Carbyne develops a technology designed to enhance first response services, reducing the time it takes first responders to assess, prioritize, and act in crisis situations. Carbyne’s digitized 911 system helps first responders better process incoming emergency calls using information sources including live video streaming, voice over IP, and location detection. The company reports a 65% reduction in time to dispatch.
.Ehud Barak with the founders of Reporty, which was rebranded as Carbyne. Photo: Amit Sha’alCarbyne was founded in 2014 and is based in Tel Aviv, with an additional office in New York. The company reports clients in the U.S., Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. In 2016, Carbyne raised $5.15 million in an angel funding round led by Barak, who serves as Carbyne’s chairman of the board.
Ehud Barak’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein detailed in new book
According to a new book by journalist Michael Wolff, former Israeli prime minister Barak said he and Epstein have “nothing to worry about. The secrets are safe.”
Ehud Barak and Jeffrey Epstein(photo credit: CORINNA KERN/REUTERS)ByJERUSALEM POST STAFFOCTOBER 17, 2021 20:53
Former prime minister Ehud Barak was a “frequent guest, almost a fixture” at convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion in New York before Epstein’s death in 2019, according to a new book by journalist Michael Wolff.
Too Famous: The Rich, The Powerful, The Wishful, The Damned, The Notorious – Twenty Years of Columns, Essays and Reporting, to be released on Tuesday, features Barak’s relationship with Epstein in great detail.
And now the sale of Paragon software from the Carbyne stable:
The deal will significantly benefit Paragon’s founders, including former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, company chairman Ehud Schneorson (a former commander of IDF Intelligence Unit 8200), CEO Idan Nurick, Igor Bogdalov and Liad Avraham. The founders are expected to collectively receive about 30% of the initial payment, or approximately $150 million. Barak, holding a small equity share, is estimated to receive around $15 million. Employees will also benefit, collectively receiving about $100 million through the company’s generous stock option policy. The remaining funds will go to the company’s investors.
A strategic partnership with global implications
Paragon, one of Israel’s two leading offensive cyber companies alongside NSO, specializes in technologies classified as weapons, requiring export approval from the Ministry of Defense. Unlike NSO, which faced international backlash for selling spyware to authoritarian regimes and which was blacklisted by the U.S. government, Paragon was founded under a mandate to operate exclusively in democratic nations. This ethical approach paved the way for the current deal.
According to a source familiar with the transaction, the acquisition aims to establish Paragon as a global leader in cyber technologies.
Famous as “the girl who kissed Putin,” Masha Drokova also worked for Jeffrey Epstein before she penetrated the Silicon Valley tech sector. Big question: Is Masha another Red Sparrow?
Epstein, replicating the pretensions and vacuity of the characters who were parodied in the “Dinner with Trimalchio” chapter of Satyricon, organized elaborate dinner gatherings for his billionaire friends, including Elon Musk, Salar Kamangar and Jeff Bezos. He dreamed up bizarre schemes of social engineering, including a plan to seed the human species with his own DNA by creating a baby compound at his sprawling ranch in New Mexico.
“Epstein was also obsessed with cryonics, the transhumanist philosophy whose followers believe that people can be replicated or brought back to life after they are frozen,” Brown writes. “Epstein apparently told some of the members of his scientific circle that he wanted to inseminate women with his sperm for them to give birth to his babies, and that he wanted his head and his penis frozen.”
Musk can be found all over YouTube and other sites spouting his interest in cryonics, for example on Reddit:
“In an AMA, Elon Musk on cryonics: “Assuming that the brain is frozen quickly after death, then I think you probably could extract quite a lot of information from it in the future. And you might be able to create something approximating that person. I mean there’s gonna be a few issues obviously.”
And Kara Swisher, in her book, cites a particular conversation she had with Musk:
So, what did Musk think of Trump’s invitation? The meeting had no stated agenda, which made it clear to me that it had nothing to do with policy and everything to do with a photo op. “You shouldn’t go,” I warned him. “Trump’s going to screw you.” Musk disagreed. He told me he would attend, adding that he had already joined a business council for the newly elected president, too. When I brought up Trump’s constant divisive fearmongering and campaign promises to unravel progress on issues ranging from immigration to gay rights, Musk dismissed the threats. I can convince him, he assured me. I can influence him, he told me. Apparently, Musk thought that his very presence would turn the fetid water into fine wine, since he had long considered himself more than just a man, but an icon and, on some days, a god. Good luck with that, I thought to myself as we hung up.
Note from Brittanica on Cryonics:
The concept of cryonic preservation was popularized in The Prospect of Immortality, a book by Robert Ettinger that was initially released in 1962 and formally published in 1964. Ettinger subsequently became known as the father of cryonics. His body was cryonically preserved upon his death in 2011 and was stored at the Cryonics Institute in Clinton Township, Michigan. The first human to be cryonically preserved was James Bedford. On January 12, 1967, Bedford died from liver cancer that had metastasized to his lungs. Bedford died before all the arrangements for his cryonic preservation could be completed. As a result, his body was injected with cryoprotective agents without first draining his blood, and his body was then packed in dry ice. Bedford’s body was later immersed in liquid nitrogen and transferred from one facility to another, finally ending up at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona.
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