Financial Times via Archive.ph

https://archive.ph/IutaO#selection-1573.0-1588.4

Most of the article is below, cause it was such a good read it was hard to decide what to edit out- that said, their are a few paragraphs missing- get them at the link.

Elon Musk took a giant leap into a science-fiction future this summer as SpaceX completed the biggest initial public offering in history. The rocket company had claimed it would help humanity ascend in stages from building orbital AI data centres to Mars colonies and eventually a “Kardashev II-level civilization” — one so technologically advanced it could encase the sun to capture its entire energy output.

Amid all the excitement, there were familiar notes. Silicon Valley likes to dress its ambitions in the glistening garb of science fiction from the 1950s, when authors such as Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke spun tales of humanity spreading through the stars. 

But what kind of future are we really hurtling towards? Increasingly, it is looking much more like the one anticipated by the drugged-up 1960s oeuvre of Philip K Dick, filled with deranged billionaires, machines that claim consciousness, hallucinated worlds and political breakdown.

Musk and his brethren seem more like escapees from this universe than the Asimovian super-geniuses they imagine themselves to be. It is Dick’s far weirder sensibilities that offer the better guide to Silicon Valley today.

Dick created queasy worlds where everything seems to teeter on collapse. His novels themselves often threatened to unravel — featuring convoluted plots, ideas sometimes leading nowhere and misogynistic portrayals of women, all wrapped up in unenviable prose. Drugs and financial exigencies help explain the rushed writing; he could not have worked on six novels in 1964 without massive abuse of amphetamines. Regular lurches into paranoia help explain why his legacy was uneven. The list of people Dick denounced to the FBI includes Polish writer Stanisław Lem, as well as literary critics Darko Suvin and Fredric Jameson. 

Dick died in 1982, mostly having failed to achieve significant literary appreciation. He was not a good writer for his time. But he is a great writer for ours.

Technology in Dick’s world is invasive and glitchy, sometimes telling us that it refuses to work, or holding us to ransom. At the start of his 1969 novel Ubik, the apartment door smugly demands a payment for opening and closing. The protagonist, after losing the negotiation, decides to unscrew the door from its frame, prompting the latter to threaten a lawsuit. When characters in Dick’s world yell at the TV, the TV sometimes yells right back. The speech modules of our personal devices don’t yell, but they are beginning to combine alert attention with dim-witted obsequiousness, anticipating our needs while profusely apologising for irretrievably wiping our database.

Dick’s fascination with the fragility of reality and what it means to be human stemmed from deep conviction and a mental breakdown. His speech-turned-essay “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later” revealed that the two questions that fascinated him were “What is reality?” and “What constitutes the authentic human being?” Society is starting to grapple with AI psychosis, when people mistake predictive text algorithms for friends, boyfriends and girlfriends. Maybe they don’t want to know better.

Above all, it is Dick’s understanding of political economy that is urgently relevant today, as Trump-produced instability is compounded by AI-generated unreality.

An unholy tangle of elites tends to hover over every Dick novel: corporate titans who have created new technologies, property developers who own a chunk of Mars or a demesne in California, conglomerates managed by charismatic founders. Though some government authorities are checked out (replaced by androids), others run technology-fuelled police states that reduce citizens to bundles of data that can be monitored and eliminated. 

These elites are smart and conniving but prone to a particular kind of self-deception. They imagine that they are entangled in the plots of some mastermind who is even more sinister than they are. Dick’s most brilliant move is to reveal that the malign forces reshaping the world are in fact petty, self-obsessed and jealous beings. 

In Ubik, nearly everyone dies soon after the book’s opening. The bodies of the former employees of Runciter Associates are stored in cryogenic facilities that allow them to imagine a shared world into being. As they try to unravel the mystery of their death, the characters are devoured by a seemingly terrifying force. It turns out to be a rather disturbed adolescent demanding their attention. That may seem painfully familiar to Americans whose cable news and social media feeds are all Donald Trump, all the time.

A similar revelation anchors Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974). The novel portrays Jason Taverner, a celebrity and member of an elite that is genetically enhanced for brains and beauty. He wakes up one day to a world in which no one knows who he is. Taverner was undone not by one of his peers but by a troubled fan who has consumed a drug that warps reality. In our world too, the feedback loops of fame have become increasingly deranged. It isn’t just pop stars but venture capitalists and CEOs whose sense of the real is inexorably chiselled away by the attentions of their adorers and execrators.

The fusion of business and hallucination reaches its peak in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), in which a business tycoon returns from the stars, promising to fulfil the wishes of everyone who steps into the fantasy worlds that he has created. Eldritch’s every move threatens to destabilise the existing corporate and political order. Those who use his product, a drug called Chew-Z, find themselves plunged into worlds that revolve around Eldritch, infecting them with his blurred vision, alienation and despair. Though Elon Musk has reportedly been (has been ?) a prolific drug user, he has not yet released his own variety of dope. 

In the 1960s and 1970s, the physicist Freeman Dyson speculated about megastructures that could encircle whole stars to capture their energy, before dismissing the idea as “a little joke”. Now such ideas inspire not just science-fiction novels but SpaceX’s business plans. Wild speculative fiction has become the fuel of wild financial speculation. Morgan Stanley projects that SpaceX’s revenue could reach $3.4tn by 2040, presumably the year that these particular stock analysts expect to retire.

Grand visions of technological transformation are everywhere, and everywhere they hide realities that combine extraordinary moneymaking schemes with bizarre beliefs. On the one hand, Marc Andreessen’s venture capital partnership funds gambling apps and a start-up promising to “cheat on everything”; on the other, the Silicon Valley Trump whisperer promises that our descendants will “live in the stars”, writing his own quasi-religious credo, complete with “patron saints”. Peter Thiel combines a superb record of picking tech winners with an obsession with the eschaton; he has brought his gloomy discourses on the nature of the Antichrist to the doorstep of the Vatican. Sam Altman says that thanks to AI, we “are close to creating a genie that can grant any wish”.

Yet it is perhaps Mark Zuckerberg who is trying hardest to build a universe that Dick invented as a cautionary tale. The chief executive of Meta is working on an AI version of himself that can interact with employees, maybe so he won’t have to. Zuckerberg’s exhortations, however, have so far failed to win over Meta employees asked to allow all of their clicks to be recorded so that they can train their own AI replacements. 

All of these are Dickish characters. We live in a future that he would recognise immediately. Billionaires have dreamt up alternative realities that they try to pull everyone into, constructing homegrown myths of religions from apocrypha. We are building AI that seems so close to human as to even confuse its creators, while it often fails at basic human tasks. The political order is trying to co-opt the rising business elites — or is it the other way around? 

Dick’s political bugaboo of Richard Nixon may be farcically reincarnated as Donald Trump. The historian Gary Wills described Nixon’s personal tragedy of talent and resentment in his 1970 book Nixon Agonistes. Trump’s dark promises to restore order are not nearly as psychologically interesting, but they have been much more consequential in practice. Like Arnie Kott, the corrupt and venal union leader in Martian Time-Slip (1964), Trump has tried to turn back time and failed. The rest of us are trapped with Trump in his pretend universe where he won the election in 2020, while government policy falls into dank memes and decay. Instead of being made great again, America has become poorer, weaker and meaner. Our fate might have more dignity if Trump were less petty than he is.

Back in 1976, Ursula K Le Guin compared Dick to a “homegrown Borges”, whose subject matter was “reality and madness, time and death, sin and salvation”. He would be better recognised had he not been trapped in self-created theological and existential labyrinths after suffering his breakdown in the 1970s.

We live once more in an era that doesn’t make sense, however hard we look for some grand order. Dick’s combination of verve and madness in confronting the problems of the 1960s — Vietnam, suburbia, the cold war, drugs — holds three key lessons for today. 

We need to find our way back to reality: in Dick’s description, that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away

Second, technology can still be an ally for human ends. Dick’s androids are not necessarily antagonistic towards their human progenitors. In Vulcan’s Hammer (1960), the novel’s equivalent of GPT-7 achieves sentient consciousness and decides to work with humanity in order to prevent the emergence of GPT-8. Dick’s aliens (his technological visions in another guise) tend to be friendly towards humanity; if they pose any threat, it is towards humanity’s political oppressors. Technology might be glitchy and churlish in Dick’s world. It also has a purposiveness that sometimes fits surprisingly well with people’s own purposes.

Third, and most importantly, these purposes should be built from the bottom up. We are confused by and entangled in the science-fiction futures that tech elites have dreamt up for us, demanding that we assent to their strange beliefs about humanity’s destiny amid the stars, the coming of the eschaton, the birth of conscious artificial intelligence, perhaps all at once. More traditional elites, with their self-serving nostalgia for a past world that was never as solid as they believed, aren’t any better as guides. 

We need to find our way back to reality: in Dick’s description, that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. Dick’s last novel describes his own madness from the outside through the eyes of Angel Archer, the one sympathetic and deeply rendered woman in all his work. She concludes that the only way out is through holding on to what is solid, and building up from small relationships.

Salvation is found in the ridiculous and the small — in Ubik, God takes the form of a spray can. It is also to be found in the people around us. Le Guin says that Dick is like Dickens in treating the “honesty, constancy, kindness and patience of ordinary people” as the bedrock of the world. The disturbed child in Martian Time-Slip begins to grow out of his madness when an aboriginal Martian brings him into communion by passing him a cigarette.

Much of what we used to believe in has gone away. Much of what obsesses us now might go away if only we stopped believing in it. The hypnotic powers of Trump and Musk are often a phantasm, losing their pull if people decline to be entranced. 

Instead of gazing upwards to find our glorious cosmic destiny, we should be looking closer to home. What are the people around us doing to build things up, brick layered and mortared carefully on brick? How can we make solid connections between the communities we live in and the bigger structures of the world? How can technology be put to work for human ends, rather than becoming an end in itself? Those are the kinds of questions that helped guide Dick out of his madness. They can help guide us out of ours, too.

Henry Farrell is a professor at Johns Hopkins University, external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute and the co-author with Abraham Newman of ‘Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy’. Dan Wang is a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and the author of ‘Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future’

It kicked off the USrael remake of the ME/NA. I’ve not changed my mind all these years later. Because there has been no new information that would have caused me to change my mind. And everything that followed after the attack makes very clear the false flag benefited the US and Israel- Cui Bono? The beneficiaries are the perpetrators- The US and Israel have been the biggest beneficiaries for 25 years

And that’s about all I can say.

It’s weird that so called first world Canadians would fall for the same methods of operation (modus operandi ) that have taken place in country after country in which the US interfered. Iraq, Libya, Syria as just a few examples. Aren’t Canadians supposed to be all progressive, savvy and educated? That’s the claim, but, here we are and my conclusion has been made.

After writing extensively about Syria as it was destabilized in real time, it has become undeniable that what has been and is occurring in Canada was the same type of propaganda/ perception managing campaign that had played out so many times before.

Social media played a huge role in Syria’s destruction. In fact the entire “Arab spring” was promoted through social media, though internet connectivity was low in the region at that time. I can talk about how that happened, but, it’s not necessary at this time.

Of course, assets and natural resources were plundered and each country was left in worse shape then when the US campaigns started. Libya’s gold was stolen as was it’s oil. Same with Iraq and Syria. Canada, has natural resources too. The US certainly has designs on natural resources. Obvious in Trump’s Greenland moves. The location is beneficial for the US to maintain global hegemony as well. Canada has geostrategic value as well

Right now were looking at the economic & diplomatic pressure methodology of destabilizing– This would be most obvious in the outrageous demands made by the Trump administration during the most recent trade negotiations. And the endless tariff war initiated by Trump against Canada and other nations.

As well as election interference, that the US would never tolerate.

Along with the giant heaping, foul, steaming piles of obvious and blatant demonization of the targeted nation, Canada. Trump is relentless in portraying America as the “victim” of Canada. Or Canada as some overwhelming evil that needs to be redeemed/saved. It’s quite pathetic when one considers the reality.

Remember the Canada is a fentanyl providing nation threat to the US? Most notably promoted by Canadian con artist ( IMO) Sam Cooper- Or as I like to call him Scam Cooper- Prominent promoter of disinfo on X. Recall my very large, extensively linked post. Covering this gossipy pieces and reporting the fact he’s been brought to court for defamation.. Twice if my memory is correct. Give that older post a read for yourself!

Of course there is the domestic political interference aspect. Ongoing this time in Alberta.

There have been numerous reports on this very subject.

Link–Smith admits referendum facing foreign interference

“Malicious actors can reach into everybody’s life using social media,” he said Wednesday in an interview with the News.

X is full of these types of accounts, hailing from everywhere on the planet..

“What disinformation achieves is it basically poisons us against each other,” he said. “Like what we see in the States, where someone who’s a different political party is no longer like someone who has different policy ideas, but is seen as someone who’s like a traitor to their country, someone who’s not really human in some way. “It poisons us against each other, and then who can be believed?” According to the most recent report, the most common narratives foreign actors are promoting are about cost of living crisis, media corruption and U.S. statehood.

The true believers in Canada won’t accept they are being played, but, they are- I’ve seen these same ploys/tactics play out so many times, over too many years of covering geopolitical happenings

Since then, common narratives have avoided the referendum directly, instead aiming to stoke discord about specific political concerns and to undermine trust in government and media. This week, Premier Danielle Smith said she was concerned by Cipher’s findings, after previously denying any evidence suggested foreign actors were interfering in discourse surrounding the referendum. “What we do say is people just need to, before they believe everything they read on social media, they need to check the source and verify to make sure that they’re not sharing things and inadvertently amplifying a message that is being used to try to interfere in our contest,” said Smith in a statement. “I trust that Albertans are able to do that research.”

**Hattip over to Ms Cat’s Chronicles as she had covered the meeting of Trump administration officials and Alberta Separatists

Trump officials met group pushing Alberta independence from Canada + More

Leaders of the Alberta Prosperity Project, a group of far-right separatists who want the western province to become independent, met US state department officials in Washington three times since April last year, according to people familiar with the talks.

Meetings between US officials and Syrian destabilizers were frequent as well. They even had a mission in the US. 2014. Yes, 12 years ago..

This is a very common tactic in US destabilization campaigns- meeting with opposition figures. Not a surprise the US is meeting Canadian destabilizers/separatists.

**Dutch Youtube creators behind Alberta Separatist videos

Remember the whole absurd, blame Canada for smoke drifting from forest fires in our enormous boreal forest. Really pathetic, pointless stuff. Nonetheless the sycophantic targets gobbled it down. Demonization, ad hominem galore, but, nothing more

Trump claims to be subsidizing Canada because of the trade deficit? This is over the top bullshit. You have to be very naive or clueless to eat this up? Let’s talk about this..

Donald Trump is fond of repeating that the United States “subsidizes” Canada and other countries, alluding to the country’s trade deficits. Let’s be clear:

The United States isn’t handing money out to Canada or to any other nation. A trade deficit isn’t a subsidy. The United States is simply buying foreign products at market price.

The United States is simply buying foreign products at market price.

What is actually true is many other countries prop up the US through the use of the petro dollar- which requires other nations to hold US dollars for trade. Which allows the US to have an insane amout of debt.

This petro dollar dominance is looking to be coming apart and I will write more on this topic soon – I have, however, relinked a recent article immediately below. This may seem a digresion from the main subject, perhaps slightly, but not entirely. In fact, I’m going to suggest that because the US is tottering financially, the bond market is shaky, very shaky and use of the petro dollars is declining- the US has to resort, again, to plunder of other nations resources. Same as it always has. And this makes Canada an easy target. And that’s what is happening right now!

I’m not alone in this thinking. Sadly, there just aren’t that many of us that can see the forest for the trees. Or the destabilization campaign for what it really is? But there are others who see the reality, because they don’t have blinders over their eyes. And perception managed brains addling their understanding

Lastly, these absurd claims that Canada is going to join China. Or that Canada is going to join the EU and China- No legitimate information on Canada joining the EU or China that I can see.

Btw, The US trades substantially more with China than Canada does.

If not..
Smoke and Mirrors Idiom- a false, flashy, or deceptive illusion used to disguise the truth, distract people, or hide a lack of real substance

The Republican majority Senate hearings are clearly and obviously, at least in my opinion a show. Intended to deceive or distract the general public in advance of upcoming elections in the US in a way that favours the governing Republican party.

The US economy is a mess- inflation is high- very unpopular war with Iran. And suddenly the Senate concerns itself with Fauci?? All the years later. Trump is happy to use social media to spread talking points that paints Fauci and the Democratic party in an unfavourable light- As his Poll numbers drop to all time lows

Ignoring the very fact that it was during Trump’s first administration the vaccines were created under Operation Warp Speed and Trump admin authorized the Emergency Use of the experimental jabs

It’s pure political manipulation in advance of upcoming elections. Smoke and Mirrors! Both parties engage in this type of manipulation- And nothing is going to come of this. That ship sailed long ago.

NYT’s

In recent years, Todd Blanche has been the lawyer President Trump has turned to, over and over, in his times of need.

It was Mr. Blanche who defended Mr. Trump in three of the four criminal cases he was facing, losing one to the Manhattan district attorney’s office but effectively winning two against the special counsel Jack Smith.

It was Mr. Blanche who took the No. 2 position at the Justice Department, stepping in as deputy attorney general to run the agency day to day, when Mr. Trump was re-elected.

And now it is Mr. Blanche whom the president has called upon again — this time in another moment of turmoil to serve as the interim attorney general after the abrupt firing of his predecessor, Pam Bondi.

It was Todd Blanche who famously interrogated Ghislaine Maxwell

The US has just made this declaration- State Department Announcement

Marco Rubio

February 27, 2026

Today, I am designating Iran as a State Sponsor of Wrongful Detention. When the Iranian regime seized power 47 years ago, Ayatollah Khomeini consolidated his control of power by endorsing the hostage taking of U.S. embassy staff. For decades, Iran has continued to cruelly detain innocent Americans, as well as citizens of other nations, to use as political leverage against other states. This abhorrent practice must end.

President Trump issued an Executive Order to Protect U.S. Nationals from Wrongful Detention Abroad last fall and Congress subsequently enacted the Countering Wrongful Detention Act of 2025, authorizing the Department to designate Iran as a State Sponsor of Wrongful Detention. If Iran does not stop, we will be forced to consider additional measures, including a potential geographic travel restriction on the use of U.S. passports to, through, or from Iran.

The Iranian regime must stop taking hostages and release all Americans unjustly detained in Iran, steps that could end this designation and associated actions. We encourage it to do so. No American should travel to Iran for any reason. We reiterate our call for Americans who are currently in Iran to leave immediately.

From earlier today

The Trump administration is deranged.

*Pandemic as unique opportunity to test propaganda techniques

*Recall? War of the World’s alien invasion was also a mass psyop

*Looks to me as if the Alberta separatist movement is a psyop- working on multiple levels and infiltrated by outsiders

The reality is we are manipulated every day. From what goods to buy through to selling war.
The push to attack Iran is chock full of psyops/propaganda intended to get us on board with this action.

Valour Canada- “If” Day

At 0700 hours the siren cried into the early morning sky of February 19, 1942, and before long the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, was plunged into a blackout. The supposed enemy was inching closer and despite the 3,500 Canadian soldiers and reservists making up the defensive army, it crumbled to the Nazi invaders. Winnipeg surrendered at 0930 hours.

But there was nothing real about this invasion – it was all an elaborate ploy to bolster interest and donations to the Victory Bond campaign. “If” Day was meant show Canadians what would happen if Nazis were not sufficiently kept at bay.

For the duration of the day, Winnipeg turned into Himmlerstadt (after high-ranking Nazi officer and head of the SS Henrich Himmler), Portage Avenue became Adolfhitlerstrasse, and Canadian dollars were replaced by Reichmarks.

Mock events aimed to instill a sense of fear and show the extent to which rights and freedoms would be curtailed by an oppressive Nazi regime. Priests and politicians were arrested, churches and other places of worship were forcibly closed, books were incinerated on the front steps of Carnegie Library, brusque identification inspections were conducted on street cars, homes were vandalized, all while Nazi-approved music and speeches reverberated on the radio.

“Everywhere the force of the great and valiant Nazi army are bringing the New Order to the Provinz of Greater Germany. The great and valiant Nazi army is also bringing to the Provinz German Kultur and the blessings of German civilization,” celebrated the newly minted Das Winnipeger Lugenblatt (“formerly” The Winnipeg Tribune).

To create the ultimate illusion, volunteers with the Young Men’s Section of the Winnipeg Board of Trade paraded in Nazi uniforms specially rented from Hollywood. Their behavior towards locals was intentionally brash and rough – though unlike their veritable counterparts, the Winnipeg “Nazis” did not exert any physical violence.

The deception was very convincing for many. “A lot of people were very uneasy and quite intimidated about this thing. Maybe it made them think that it could happen here. They didn’t know how far these Nazis would go,” recalled George Hoffman who played a fake Nazi.

Although the true Nazis had no immediate interest in conquering Canada, “If” Day did give Manitobans a small taste of what life under Nazi occupation would be like in a bid to drive support for the second Victory Bond campaign and propel donations into high gear. Through this first-hand experience, Winnipeggers appreciated how crucial it was to fight in Europe so Canada would not be vulnerable to a real invasion. The original goal of $45 million was surpassed for a total of $47 million (or approximately $658 million in 2017 dollars) – if the “Nazi” invasion was not successful because it was all staged, the Victory Bond campaign definitely was successful.

It’s an amazement to realize just how far a government, any government, will got to manipulate the populace to advance it’s own ends/agenda

Manitoba History- “If” Day Feb 19/1942

Epstein and the Treasury Files- Because more is being covered up then just the contents of the DoJ files

The release of the treasury files would shed a whole lot of light on who Epstein’s co- conspirators are.

Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, pushed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to release files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to the Senate Finance Committee.

Epstein, who was a wealthy financier, died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while facing federal sex trafficking charges.

Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to request the release of Treasury files related to Jeffrey Epstein to the Senate Finance Committee.

The Oregon senator, who has been investigating Epstein for years, specifically requested in his letter — which was sent on Tuesday — “all files related to transactions with Epstein and any co-conspirators,” including “suspicious activity reports” (SARs) issued by financial institutions.

The reports flagged concerning payments made to or from Epstein, his convicted co-conspirator Ghislane Maxwell and 58 other people and groups, according to Wyden

As Trump Sits on Key Epstein Files, Wyden lays out the “Follow the Money” investigation! Always the wisest move.

Washington, D.C. – Senate Finance Committee Ranking Democrat Ron Wyden, D-Ore., slammed the Trump administration’s failure to properly investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking network and financing in a new letter sent today to Attorney General Pam Bondi, and he laid out seven leads for federal prosecutors based on the findings of his own years-long inquiry.

“After reviewing the Epstein memorandum you recently published, it is obvious that the DOJ failed to conduct a real investigation into the funding of Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. In fact, I am convinced that the DOJ ignored evidence found in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Epstein file, a binder that contains extensive details on the mountains of cash Epstein received from prominent businessmen that Epstein used to finance his criminal network,” Wyden wrote. “Due to the DOJ’s lack of thoroughness, I would like to offer you a roadmap with a list of ‘follow the money’ leads on Jeffrey Epstein that you must follow up on immediately.”

The seven lines of investigation Wyden laid out in his letter are as follows:

1. Direct DOJ prosecutors and FBI agents to immediately investigate the evidence contained in the Treasury Department records on Epstein. The Treasury Department’s Epstein file contains actionable information on thousands of wire transfers and more than $1 billion dollars flowing in and out of Epstein’s accounts, all of which merit further investigation.
2. Direct DOJ prosecutors and FBI agents to investigate why several ultra-wealthy Wall Street financiers paid Jeffrey Epstein hundreds of millions of dollars. For example, billionaire Leon Black paid Epstein $170 million for purported tax and estate planning advice, far more than other professional attorneys and advisors involved in Black’s estate planning. This is an abnormal amount to pay for tax advice, yet no satisfactory explanation has been provided as to why Black paid Epstein such extraordinary sums without a written contract or agreement.
3. Investigate the role of sanctioned Russian banks in the financing of Epstein’s sex trafficking activities. The Treasury Department’s Epstein file contains information indicating that Epstein used several now sanctioned Russian banks for hundreds of millions of dollars in wire transfers. It appears that these wire transfers were correlated to the movement of women or girls around the world.
4. Direct the DOJ to subpoena internal bank records related to Jeffrey Epstein. Some of the biggest banks in the world, including Bank of America, JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank, processed billions in suspicious transactions that flowed through Epstein’s accounts. The DOJ and FBI must subpoena internal bank records concerning payments to Epstein to better understand whether financial institutions conducted appropriate due diligence of these transactions or whether the banks willingly looked the other way to not upset wealthy clients that were funding Epstein’s operations.
5. Direct the DOJ and FBI to conduct an investigation into banks that failed to properly report large payments to Epstein in a timely manner. Federal anti-money laundering laws require banks to conduct due diligence on large transactions and report suspicious activity to the U.S. Treasury Department in a timely fashion. The Finance Committee investigation found that several major banks likely broke the law by only reporting large payments to Epstein well after Epstein was charged. In one case, a major U.S. bank flagged more than $170 million in payments to Epstein seven years late, only after Epstein had already died in his cell.
6. Conduct depositions with bankers responsible for overseeing large accounts transacting with Jeffrey Epstein, particularly relationship managers and their supervisors. Epstein’s accounts routinely had hundreds of millions of dollars in them. Epstein also received large inflows of cash from some of the wealthiest men in America, typically in large installments in the tens of millions of dollars. Ultra-high net worth persons ($30 million and up) benefit from white glove treatment from private bankers who are compensated on a percentage of the value of the accounts they manage. These bankers are also required to conduct “know your customer” reviews on their clients and conduct enhanced due diligence of large wire transfers. Accordingly, DOJ must immediately conduct transcribed interviews with bankers overseeing Epstein’s accounts as well as the wealthy businessmen who helped finance his operations.
7. Subpoena documents from the USVI Attorney General related to its settlement agreement that gave Leon Black immunity from prosecution in the USVI for Epstein related crimes. As you may be aware, the U.S. Virgin Islands and billionaire Leon Black in 2023 signed a settlement agreement related to Jeffrey Epstein. As part of that settlement, Leon Black paid $62.5 million in order to receive immunity from any criminal prosecution in the USVI related to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operations. Disturbingly, the settlement includes an assertion that “Jeffrey Epstein used the money Black paid him to partially fund his operations in the Virgin Islands.” This revelation suggests that one of the most powerful figures on Wall Street financed Jeffrey Epstein’s human trafficking operations in the USVI with impunity.

“As you know, my staff have been working to expose the financing of Epstein’s sex trafficking for years. I can say with a high degree of confidence that there is a lot the DOJ and the Treasury Department are not telling the public about Jeffrey Epstein. It is clear that more needs to be done and it would be inexcusable for you not to immediately follow up on these common sense, actionable recommendations,” Wyden concluded.

The complete text of Wyden’s letter to Attorney General Bondi is available here.

BBC

Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted associate of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, refused to answer questions from the US House Oversight Committee on Monday.

Maxwell appeared virtually for a closed-door deposition from the Texas prison where she is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.

Republican House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer said that “as expected”, Maxwell pleaded the Fifth Amendment, invoking her right to remain silent.

Politico

In a copy of Maxwell’s lawyer’s opening statement obtained by POLITICO, David Oscar Markus reiterated that grant of clemency would facilitate her testimony — a power only President Donald Trump can bestow. He has not ruled out issuing a pardon.

“Only she can provide the complete account. Some may not like what they hear, but the truth matters,” according to Markus’ prepared remarks. (Her truth is that Trump and Clinton are both innocent)

Democrats accused Maxwell of using the deposition as part of a campaign for clemency from Trump, while House Oversight Chair James Comer told reporters he did not believe Maxwell should be granted clemency.

“Unfortunately, she had an opportunity today to answer questions that every American has — questions that would be very important in this investigation — and she chose to invoke her Fifth Amendment right,” the Kentucky Republican said.

At this point in time, given this woman’s entire history, background and criminality- her testimony is meaningless- She should be removed from her camp prison and go back to actual prison

I don’t think her “testimony” is required.

And lastly Howard Lutnick, unsurprisingly, is way more tied into the Jeffrey Epstein episode than had been claimed- However, he was Mr Epstein’s neighbour for a long time, and they both share an interest in Israel

Howard Lutnick faces bipartisan calls to resign over latest Epstein revelations

Recently disclosed records suggest a closer relationship than the Commerce secretary previously indicated.

Jordain Carney02/09/2026, 11:15am ET

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is facing bipartisan calls to resign after he appeared in a recent batch of files linked to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) accused Lutnick in a statement Monday of having “lied” about the extent of his connection to Epstein. Lutnick has sought to downplay their relationship, saying in a podcast appearance last year he vowed in 2005 to never again be in the same room as Epstein.

But files recently released by the Justice Department suggest he continued his interactions with Epstein, including planning a visit several years later to Epstein’s Caribbean island.

“Lutnick’s lies about his business dealings with a convicted child sex offender, raise serious concerns about his judgement and ethics,” Schiff said. “Lutnick has no business being our Commerce Secretary, and he should resign immediately.”

The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson previously said that Lutnick had “limited interactions with Mr. Epstein in the presence of his wife and has never been accused of wrongdoing.”

House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), who is leading an investigation into Epstein and has already subpoenaed multiple associates, did not rule out issuing one for Lutnick. But he said the panel’s outstanding subpoenas take priority for now.

“It’s now clear that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been lying about his relationship with Epstein,” the Californian posted on X. “Lutnick must resign or be fired. And he must answer our questions.”

The Independent

Donald Trump claims to have hashed out the “framework” of a future deal on Greenland following weeks of threats to annex the Danish territory.

The US president emerged from talks with Nato secretary general Mark Rutte on Wednesday confident that a deal was in sight and that all parties were happy with it.

In sight? In immediate sight? A distant sight?

Denmark said it was open to dialogue so long as its borders are respected – but have notably not endorsed any aspects of the agreement briefed to the media or discussed publicly by Mr Rutte.

The shape of the arrangement was “a little bit complex”, Mr Trump said, and would have to be explained “down the line”. However, he waived his previous threat of tariffs against European allies in an apparent attempt to defuse tensions.

Mr Rutte said that Denmark would retain its sovereignty and stressed that Nato allies would have to step up on Arctic security “within months” under the framework deal currently being discussed.

Officials close to the negotiations briefed media outlets that a deal could see greater US freedom to build on the island, modelled on Britain’s overseas arrangements. But concrete details of what could form part of the deal remain scarce and there is no guarantee that Mr Trump’s demands will be accepted by Europe.

What is the deal missing?

The framework remains informal and lacks specifics. If the main challenges are, as Nato says, combatting Russian and Chinese investment and interference, the US already has the right to build bases and Denmark has countered Chinese investment in the past.

The development of the island’s mining sector is also wrapped up in red tape and opposition from indigenous people, and it is unclear how Greenland would be compensated if the US tries to extract rare minerals. The extraction of oil and gas is banned for environmental reasons

Sky News

Donald Trump’s team will act like he has achieved something with an apparent “framework of a deal” on Greenland. But be in no doubt, that’s nonsense – and the US president has inflicted serious damage to the trans-Atlantic alliance.

Donald Trump may claim there is, but that’s only because he needed a way to back down from his threats when he realised that he wasn’t going to be able to own Greenland.

“Is this just Trump’s off-ramp? No actual framework of a deal yet?” I asked one diplomat at the heart of it all.

The response: “Exactly.”

Through the “Trump whisperer”, NATO secretary general Mark Rutte, the Danish and Greenlander positions have essentially been reiterated to the American president.

During a face-to-face meeting in Davos, pre-existing commitments in the 1951 US-Denmark treaty were reemphasised and European nations re-committed to increase their own defence of Greenland.

When they did precisely this last week, by literally sending senior military officials to Greenland, Trump interpreted it as a provocation against him and issued the tariff threat.

“I’m so bored of this now…” one European ambassador told me over the weekend, such is the level of weariness over the American president’s antics.

A trio of U-turns

The day in Davos was dizzying even by Trump’s standards.

He first U-turned on the implicit threat of military action, then he U-turned on the tariff threat, and then he U-turned on the insistence that he take sovereignty of Greenland. All in the space of a day.

The penny had dropped in his head, it seems. He realised his Greenland ownership plans were more than just unpopular at home (among his own side too). They were seen as self-defeating, undeliverable and frankly mad.

U-turns and TACO’s

Importantly, though, Trump has pulled back on his proposed European 10% levies set to come into effect on 1 February and noted that the US will not take Greenland by force; both clarifications were meaningful and helped calm markets

After finding the above information- a Glenn Diesen interview came my way