Ken Klippenstein: ICE Expands Watchlist Effort

 ICE Expands Watchlist Effort

Meanwhile, homeland's spokesperson is resigning

Ken Klippenstein Feb 18

Tricia McLaughlin

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Today we learned about the resignation of homeland security spokesperson and resident shock jock Tricia McLaughlin, who cast Renee Good and Alex Pretti as domestic terrorists before their bodies were even cold.

But when I reported on homeland security’s secret watchlists last month, I learned that there was one word that even a firebrand like her wasn’t willing to say.

“There is NO database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by DHS,” McLaughlin said in a statement.

It is also today of all days, as McLaughlin prepares to exit the public stage, that I learned a DHS contractor is looking for a “Criminal Analyst” to join their company to help ICE with its evidently growing watchlisting effort.

The company, Xcelerate Solutions, is looking for a Top Secret-cleared analyst to join the “watchlisting team” for the purpose of “Supporting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),” to quote from the job announcement.

Xcelerate is a DHS, Pentagon, and FBI contractor founded in 2009 and intimately involved in the government’s larger “vetting” operation, from assisting the government in clearing its own personnel for access to classified material to then spying on those very people to ensure that they don’t leak that material.

The job announcement is graciously explicit about the work involved:

• “Analysis of watchlist data to identify criminal actors and networks,”

• “Nominate or enhance records of individuals eligible for watchlist,” and

• “Review and deconflict previously submitted watchlist nominations.”

Screenshot of job announcement

In other words, ICE has an entire watchlist apparatus that seeks out “criminals,” primarily illegal aliens and transnational criminals. This criminal analyst job might only refer to those individuals, especially because it uses the label “criminal” instead of terrorist to describe the target group. And that’s been ICE’s role—that is, before Donald Trump.

McLaughlin and others at DHS were forced to issue their denials of the existence of a domestic watchlist after a federal agent in Maine was recorded telling a protester who was filming him: “We have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”

ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons told Congress last week: “I can’t speak for that individual, but I can assure you that there is no database that’s tracking United States citizens.”

All of these denials rely on technicalities, my sources say. Officials argue that because their lists, records, investigative files, tip-offs, warnings and the like aren’t specific databases, they aren’t officially “watchlists.”

In the national security world, a “watchlist” is a specific legal term of art to describe the Terrorist Screening Dataset, which itself used to be called the Terrorist Screening Database because it once referred to one single watchlist (now there are many). By claiming they don’t have a “watchlist,” homeland security isn’t saying they aren’t tracking people; they are saying they aren’t using that specific administrative bucket. At least, that was before the job announcement revealed that indeed ICE was referring to a watchlist of its own.

The terminology is indeed confusing, intentionally so. The job description says “Targeting Folders,” “Continuous Evaluation Files,” or “Identity Intelligence Clusters.” Note the job description’s use of the word “Deconfliction.” That’s only necessary when there are multiple agencies doing overlapping things. You can’t have a “deconfliction” process if there isn’t a list to conflict with in the first place. 

Last month I reported on the existence of several such watchlists maintained by the Department, with codenames like Sparta, Reaper and Grapevine. A senior DHS watchlist official who saw the story acknowledged to me privately that they exist but insisted that they aren’t technically watchlists. I don’t doubt he believes that. But these systems process and store identifying information about domestic targets. Some are apps, I’m told. Some are databases of specific data. But they are all watchlists or parts of an above Top Secret watchlisting enterprise.

Now, ICE is building a new watchlisting enterprise (the job announcement itself says the location in Northern Virginia hasn’t yet been decided) and though this specific “criminal” analyst might be assigned to target and track individuals other than Americans exercising their First Amendment rights, it’s not hard to see where this is heading.

Major media outlets have largely accepted the official denials that there is any watchlist, rather than examining the evidence. The problem stems from media norms that require documents to literally contain specific words before reporters will use them. In this case, that means waiting for a document stamped “WATCHLIST.”

But that’s rarely how these things work, especially when it comes to risk-averse bureaucrats who are masters at avoiding controversy by employing euphemistic language that says nothing.

I encountered the same dynamic when reporting on Mayor Mamdani’s short-lived reassignment of NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. I called the new reporting structure—moving from direct report to the previous mayor to reporting through a deputy—a demotion. When Mamdani denied it was a demotion, media outlets criticized me for not using his language.

When a reporter refuses to call a demotion a “demotion” because the Mayor says it’s a “realignment,” they aren’t being objective—they are being a stenographer. That is what’s happening with the media’s unwillingness to say “watchlist.” The underlying issue in properly reporting this is the media’s deference to official language (and legalese) over common sense.

Lewis Carroll captured this problem perfectly in Alice in Wonderland:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

I believe in calling things what they are. 

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White Identity, and Fear of Losing It, is Promoted to Undermine Working Class Unity. That's What The Elite Fear Most

By Navdeep Singh

2-16-26

The question of race is inseperable from the question of social class in the United States, since the very inception of the country. The protracted, large scale accumulation of wealth by a tiny, select few of the US population (the Plantation owners, industrialists, robber barons, oligarchs) went hand-in-hand with wholesale extermination, genocide, slavery, Jim Crow, et al. 

 

Today, when we see talking points about migrants, especially from poor, third world countries that the US bombed and starved to oblivion, forcing millions to flee, we need to be reminded that we have reached a new Gilded Age of income inequality, wealth disparity, where the Robber Barons are now bordering on becoming trillionaires. Hence the focus on violent, extreme, open racism. 

 

There need to be official scapegoats for massive income inequality and wealth disparity, and it’s almost always the most powerless, the most penniless, the ones most likely to be the victims of massive wealth accumulation. 

 

Racism serves a very devious and obvious purpose-to cover up the economic plunder by the very few. This is the greater context for the massive, open resurgence of yT Supremacy. 

 

It’s interesting to note that California ranks 49th out of 51 (just ahead of Hawaii and Washington D.C in terms of % of yT people. Places like Sacramento are even more distinctive in showing what the future US population will look like (30% yT, 28% Latino, 20% Asian, 14% Black). 

 

Side note: I remember reading that Brazil represents the future of the US, a melting pot. According to the 2022 census, Brazil had 88,252,121 White people, 92,083,286 Mestizos, 20,656,458 Black people, 850,132 Asian people, and 1,227,640 Indigenous people. 

 

Can you venture to guess what group of Brazilians, from those listed above, represent the faces of the ruling class? 

Michael Roberts. Venezuela: the end game

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Source NBC

by Michael Roberts

The kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Maduro and his wife by US military forces, the subsequent takeover by the Vice President Rodriguez and her agreement to allow the US to control Venezuela’s oil export revenues and to bring in US energy multi-nationals to invest – all this signals the end game of the Chavista revolution that began over 25 years ago. So it is very opportune that a new book has been published on what happened in Venezuela to reach this point. 

Called Venezuela in Crisis and published by Haymarket Books, this book brings together “some of the most important Marxist, socialist, and anti-capitalist thinkers in Venezuela, representing a range of left political traditions and organizations.”  These Spanish language writers have been translated so that English speakers can read the arguments and experiences of those on the left in Venezuela. Some contributors served in Chávez’s cabinet and have now become critics of the Maduro government. “Bringing these voices to an English-speaking audience will allow readers to engage with the current debates and perspectives of the Venezuelan left”.

The book has been edited by Anderson Bean from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, who has written before on Venezuela.  His introductory chapter provides the reader with the essence of the chapters in the book. Bean starts by pointing out that through the 2000s, the Chavista-Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela was an inspiration for others in the so-called Global South, perhaps even more so than the Cuban revolution of the 1960s. The election of Hugo Chavez in the 1998 election, after decades of corrupt, pro-capitalist, pro-US governments, was a burst of fresh air.  In the subsequent years, the Chavez presidency “improved Venezuelans’ material well-being, brought greater social equality, and empowered sectors of society that were traditionally excluded from the political process.”

Bean argues that there were three key components of the Chavez presidency: first, the rewriting of the constitution to promote of broad citizen participation and comprehensive human rights protections; second, the redistribution of oil profits through various social programs which reduced official poverty levels by 37.6% and ‘extreme poverty” by 57.8%. By 2008, Venezuela also had the highest minimum wage in all Latin America, and inequality in the country dropped to one of the lowest in the Americas. By 2011, Venezuela was the second most equal country in the Western Hemisphere; only Canada had lower levels of inequality. And third, which Bean reckons was the “most transformative”, was the transfer of power to the popular sectors through the creation of new forms of popular assemblies and experiments with workers’ controls and community councils.

But from 2013 onwards, things began to go wrong, big time. From 2013 to 2021, Venezuela’s GDP fell 75%, inflation reached 130,000% in 2018, the highest in the world!  The percentage of households classified as poor increased from 48.4% in 2014 to 81.5% in 2022. The monthly minimum wage at US$2.23 then was the lowest in all Latin America. Indeed, the monthly minimum salary was just US$0.15 a day, eight times less than the World Bank’s then limit for absolute poverty of US$1.25 a day.  That compared with a monthly minimum wage under Chávez of US$300, over 60 times higher.

The collapse in real incomes and the sharp rise in poverty in the 2010s led to a migration crisis. Since 2016, millions of Venezuelans have fled the country seeking work abroad in order to send money back home. Today, the number of Venezuelan refugees and migrants worldwide is estimated to be around 7.7 million, or 20% of all Venezuelans. Venezuela now has the highest number of displaced people in Latin America and the second highest in the world, just behind Syria.

What explains this collapse from inspiration to nightmare?  Bean says there were two causes.  The first was US sanctions imposed on Venezuela, coupled with several attempts by the US state, in collaboration with the domestic Venezuelan right-wing opposition, to undermine the Venezuelan economy, in order to carry out regime change. US imperialism saw Venezuela as a threat, with Chavez’s renationalisation of the oil industry; and Chavez’s attempt to build trade relations with other Latin American countries outside the orbit of US-led trade agreements, while looking for support in trade and investment from the likes of China. The very early success of the Chavista presidency was anathema. 

Indeed, in 2002, the US, in collaboration with the Venezuelan business class, attempted a coup to overthrow Chávez. He was removed from office for forty-seven hours, before being reinstated by mass popular mobilizations. From late 2002 to early 2003, the US supported an oil lockout to bring oil production to a halt with the stated goal of forcing Chávez to resign. In 2014, the US backed the Venezuelan right-wing again in violent street protests called the guarimbas, demanding ‘la salida’, or the “exit,” of Maduro. The US, again in collaboration with the sections of the Venezuelan right wing, attempted yet another coup in January 2019, when Juan Guiadó unconstitutionally declared himself president of Venezuela. After the January coup failed to overthrow Maduro, Guiadó tried again in April 2019, but was thwarted once more.

These attempted coups failed, but a litany of economic sanctions were imposed. Under Trump’s sanctions, US institutions and citizens were prohibited from trading in Venezuelan debt. All government assets were frozen. The country was prevented from restructuring its foreign debt or payment schedules. Payments sent by countries participating in its program for preferential payment of oil were blocked. The sale of billions of dollars in trade credits were banned. Sanctions also closed off Venezuela to its most important oil market, the US, and properties held abroad were confiscated, like the US-based Citgo, which the state depended on for sources of income. These measures led to a loss of $6 billion in oil revenue in just 2018 alone. Sanctions froze $17 billion of the country’s assets and cost the country around $11 billion in export losses in 2019, or $30 million a day.

The Washington, DC–based Center for Economic and Policy Research published a 2019 report detailing the effects of US sanctions on Venezuela. Between 2017 and 2018 alone, the sanctions killed an estimated 40,000 Venezuelans and plunged many more into precarity. Over 300,000 people were put at risk because of the lack of medicine and health care, including 80,000 HIV-positive Venezuelans who have gone without antiretroviral drugs for years now. Additionally, obtaining needed cardiovascular medicine or insulin is a challenge for the 16,000 Venezuelans who need dialysis, the 4 million with diabetes and hypertension and the 16,000 people who have cancer.

But the writers in this book are at pains to argue that the collapse in Venezuela cannot be laid solely at the door of US imperialism and its sanctions. Despite the harm that the sanctions have wrought in Venezuela, the other major component was the economic mismanagement and neoliberal program of the increasingly authoritarian Maduro government.  Mainstream capitalist economists claim that the collapse of Venezuela was the result of socialism; while many on the left claim that the Maduro regime had to be defended as an example of socialism.  Both sides are wrong.  Bean and the other writers in this book do not accept that Chavez (and Maduro after him) had established a socialist economy, or even that Venezuela was on the ‘road to socialism’. 

As I argued in my own posts on Venezuela, Chavez’s relative success in improving the lot of most Venezuelans was founded on the boom in commodity prices during the 2000s. With the price of oil and natural gas high, even a modest increase in royalties and taxes created a huge influx in government revenues. This extra revenue enabled Chávez to increase social spending, create various distribution programs and improve the standard of living of the majority of Venezuelans.

But, as Bean points out, Chavez was able to do this without touching the Venezuelan capitalist sector. “There was no real meaningful transformation of social property relations, no transformation of the international division of labor, and no challenge to the prerogatives of transnational capital.” Private capital still dominated in Venezuela throughout the presidencies of Chávez and Maduro. The overwhelming majority of the means of production remained in the hands of the private sphere and the capitalist class. In fact, under Chavez, between 1999 and 2011, the private sector’s share of economic activity actually increased from 65% to 71%. The production and distribution of the majority of goods and services, including key industries like major food import and processing operations, pharmaceuticals, and auto parts, are still controlled by the private sector.

Even in instances where the state did own the means of production, for example, the state-owned oil and natural gas company Petroleum of Venezuela (PDVSA) and the concrete and asphalt industries, it is the state bureaucracy that controls and makes all decisions in these industries, rather than the workers. Indeed, as Chavez put it himself: “Who would think to say that Venezuela is a socialist country? No, that would be to deceive ourselves. We are in a country that still lives in capitalism, we have only initiated a path; we are taking steps against the world current, including towards a socialist project; but this is for the medium or long term.” Most important, as I also argued, there was no break with the country’s dependence on the export of minerals and hydrocarbons. Venezuela’s dependence on oil exports increased during the Chávez and Maduro era, leaving the country as a ‘one-trick pony’ beholden to global financial and oil markets.

The ‘compromise’ with Venezuelan capital finished with the end of the commodity boom in 2013. By 2015, commodity prices had hit a twelve-year low. This change also coincided with the death of Chavez and his replacement by Maduro. Maduro was faced with the dilemma.  As Bean puts it: “ Now in a situation of austere state revenues, who was going to pay for the crisis? Was it going to be labor and regular working people, the social bases that supported and voted Chávez into power? Most important, “was there going to be a conflict with capital that had been delayed for years?”  

The answer soon became clear. As one chapter by Venezuelan economist Luis Salas put it: “There is not much difference between the economic program of the [right-wing] opposition and that of the [Maduro] Government. . . .The only difference with the opposition is that the Government wants to reach agreements with the Russians, the Chinese or the Turks; and the opposition, with the Americans and Europeans. They are capitalist alliances, but with different partners.”  As Roberto López argues later in the book,”[T]he inauguration of Nicolás Maduro as president in 2013, meant the almost total abandonment of the anti-neoliberal program, and the return of the same economic policies implemented in the last decade of the twentieth century. Maduro maintained the same radical discourse as his predecessor and presented his government as a genuinely “workerist” and “socialist” one. However, in office, he has implemented a real change of economic course, opening the doors to neoliberal policies, in a framework of growing authoritarianism.”  This too was my view in my post at the time.

In 2016, the Maduro administration opened the Orinoco Mining Arc for mineral exploitation. And in 2021 Maduro introduced Special Economic Zones (SEZs) for capitalist businesses, free of taxation and regulation. In 2018, the Maduro presidency abolished the right to strike.  With the so-called Anti-Blockade Law in 2020, Maduro effectively suspended the constitution and granted authority to the executive branch for steering the economy.  Maduro dropped the living wage policy adopted under Chavez and introduced a ‘hate speech’ law that established prison sentences of up to twenty years for speeches against the government. The government also privatized major branches of industry, including oil, iron, aluminum, gold and diamonds, “Many of these privatizations targeted the very same industries that Chávez had previously nationalized, in effect carrying out a reverse appropriation that restored former state-owned assets to capitalist ownership.”

But perhaps worst of all is the cronyism. Under Maduro, the Venezuelan state has turned into a piñata, where a political-military caste distributes resources, privileges and financial benefits to secure loyalty and maintain its hold on power. The Maduro administration looked to compromise and reach agreements with the business sectors, including Fedecámaras— the big business organization that had played a key role in the failed 2002 coup against Chávez. The voices of any working class organisations were ignored.

It is the conclusion of this book’s writers from the left in Venezuela that among observers in the advanced countries of the Global North, there has been a tendency “to unwittingly lend credibility to a regime that uses the language of socialism to obscure its own oppressive and anti-worker practices. By failing to reckon with the realities of Venezuela’s crisis, such positions inadvertently sideline the struggles of the Venezuelan people, who are fighting both the consequences of the Maduro government and the suffocating sanctions imposed by the United States.” It is not socialism that failed in Venezuela, but the failure to apply socialist policies to end the sabotage of the capitalist sector in the country and to unite the working class organisations in the struggle against US imperialism.  

Now in February 2026, the Rodriguez administration is prostrate before US imperialism.  The Trump administration has been clever and cautious; it has not yet replaced Maduro with the right wing, free market, Nobel peace prize winner (sic), Maria Machado, for fear of generating a tumult and even civil war.  Instead, it is steadily forcing Rodriguez into acceding to all its demands in preparation for elections later that can then bring in a completely pro-US regime. Appearing alongside Rodríguez at the Miraflores presidential palace last Wednesday, US energy secretary Chris Wright said: “We want to set the Venezuelan people and economy free.”  A poll by Gold Glove Consulting this week found that Machado would win a landslide victory in a fresh vote, with 67% favouring her against 25% for Rodríguez. Seventy-two per cent of respondents felt Venezuela was “moving in a positive direction” after Maduro’s capture. 

The Biritish Museum and Palestinian history (A previous post)

I have reverted the last post that claimed the British Museum was taking down references to ancient Palestine under pressure from pro-israel Zionist lawyers, to a draft. I have contacted the professor in the video and asked her if this is the case. I will wait 24 hours as it is midnight in the UK. If I don't hear from her and confirmation that it is true and not a fake story I will delete it and apologise in advance for the error. If it is true I will repost it. I suggest in the meantime you don't share it although that might be too late in some instances.  Richard Mellor ADMIN

You realise the inescapable tech dystopia will be controlled by Epstein islanders, right?

Feb 18th 2026

Reprinted from Council Estate Media

The point of science fiction is that it will one day become science fact. Problem is many have assumed the scary technologies would stay confined to the movies for the remainder of their lifetimes. They were wrong and it’s time for them to snap out of their denial. We made the mistake of overlooking the paedophilia of the Epstein class. We cannot make the mistake of overlooking their emerging technologies.

Just look at the names in the Epstein files: Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos. I can’t prove these tech bros were doing (or planned to do) the things alluded to in the Epstein files, but they certainly have the capability. That means we should take the threat seriously.

If any of these men have the evil intentions of Epstein, they have the resources to turn nightmares into reality. If they are working with their fellow Epstein islanders in government, that potential is amplified.

The Epstein files reveal that Epstein not only surrounded himself with tech bros but often funded their research. He was hugely interested in transhumanism, genetic engineering, and related technologies. He funded researchers like George Church, a Harvard molecular engineer working on CRISPR gene-editing technology. He funded AI founders Marvin Minsky and Joshua Bach who study “cognitive architectures”. He donated millions to Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics and backed many genetics-related projects. He funded research into regenerative medicine that involved stem cells.

Anti-ageing expert Peter Attia discussed health and longevity with Epstein over email exchanges from 2015-2018. The conversations covered topics such as using Metformin for off-label anti-aging, as well as how to improve Epstein’s overall health.

Epstein was keen to clone himself and even spoke with then-Prince Andrew about human cloning. He was obsessed with biological immortality and funded research into cryonics — freezing bodies after death until they can be reanimated. Bizarrely, he wanted both his head and penis to be preserved. I wish I was joking.

Epstein hosted dinners where he discussed the possibility of combining AI with genetics and using neural implants to enhance humans. Such conversations invoke a world of mindless slaves ruled by genetically-enhanced superhumans.

Epstein discussed the goal of making the world’s first human clones and designer babies within five years. Bitcoin developer Bryan Bishop pitched a “designer baby project” to Epstein in 2018. This included genetic enhancement for superior traits, cloning, and embryo implantation. Like Epstein, Bishop is a transhumanist who is interested in cryogenics and biological immortality.

Bishop sought anonymous funding from Epstein, highlighting Epstein’s interest in “seeding” the human race with his DNA. This was a plan Epstein had discussed with scientists, involving impregnating women at his New Mexico ranch to create a “superior” lineage. He talked of experimentation on mice in the lab in Ukraine.

The Epstein files reveal conversations with Harvard geneticist Joseph Thakuria who proposed personalised regenerative medicine for Epstein that involved editing his genes to increase longevity. Epstein paid $2,000 for genetic testing in relation to this conversation, but Thakuria says the work never went ahead.

Another Harvard geneticist and CRISPR pioneer, George Church, attended Epstein’s dinners where they discussed transhumanism, AI-driven genetic hacking, and enhancing human intelligence and other traits. Epstein fundedChurch’s lab that develops CRISPR for synthetic biology and reversing aging.

AI pioneer Marvin Minsky attended Epstein-hosted academic symposia on Little Saint James where he discussed cognitive enhancement and mind-machine blending. One of these meetings took place in 2011, three years after Epstein’s conviction.

Minsky visited multiple Epstein residences and Epstein considered him his “trusted scientific adviser” on AI. Epstein funded Minsky’s MIT research to the tune of $100,000. This work heavily influenced Elon Musk’s Neuralink which I’ll get to later.

Epstein spoke with AI founder Joshua Bach about how climate change is “a good way of dealing with overpopulation… the earth’s forest fire… potentially a good thing for the species.” Epstein advocated “mass executions of the elderly and infirm”, saying society should discard “unused” elements like the brain discards neurons. The men praised fascism as “the most efficient and rationally stringent way of governance.”

It is not just bio-hacking and mind control that interested Epstein, he was keen on mass surveillance and facial/emotion recognition tech. Epstein funded surveillance projects like an AI-powered robot with facial recognition, developed by the University of Tennessee. In his address book, Epstein listed various tech bros who’ve been described as “controlling the digital infrastructure of modern life”.

Epstein and Ehud Barak invested $1 million in Reporty Homeland Security, an Israeli startup that was later renamed Carbyne. One of Carbyne’s co-founders, Pinchas Buchris, was once a director of Unit 8200, Israel’s elite signals intelligence unit. Several of Carbyne’s developers also came from Unit 8200. Make of that what you will.

Carbyne officially develops public safety tech for the police, but multiple investigations have highlighted concerns that it is, or could be used, for surveillance. It’s worth noting that Ehud Barak is connected to another spyware company called Paragon that was founded by a commander of Unit 8200 called Ehud Schneorson. Paragon’s Graphite software has been linked to the targeting of journalists in Europe and is used by ICE in the US.

Leaked emails show that Epstein and Barak spoke of getting involved with surveillance tech and met with figures within the industry. Epstein was a business partner of tech overlord Peter Thiel whose Founders Firm investedin Carbyne. I’ve mentioned this multiple times, but it’s worth mentioning again: Thiel named Palantir after the seeing stone in Lord of the Rings that Sauron used to corrupt and control the masses.

Epstein and Thiel discussed their dystopian worldviews, such as the collapse of civilisation, the failure of democracy, and the need for surveillance technologies and post-democratic structures. They believed a technocratic elite should rule without input from the public.

Thiel once argued in an essay that giving rights to women and the poor had undermined human progress. He and Epstein discussed how they could gain leverage over governments and pressure them into compliance.

Thiel is keen on ideas similar to charter cities that would be independently ruled by tech lords. He publicly describes Palantir as an “all-seeing eye” and has discussed monitoring populations within a post-democratic framework. He has spoken of automating labour to make the bottom 90% “economically irrelevant”. Critics accuse him of advocating for technological racism — limiting non-western countries’ access to tech.

Combine all this with Thiel’s enthusiasm for censorship and Epstein’s interest in eugenics and we have something beyond what science-fiction has conjured up. A Twitter follower described it beautifully in a reply to one of my posts:

If these fuckers win, they’ll make themselves immortal with transhumanism and turn planet earth into sci-fi Mordor. Most of us will be got rid of and the rest will be a permanently enslaved underclass they can abuse with impunity forever.

We’re talking about people so evil that, according to the Epstein files, many in their circle have raped little girls. Imagine what these demons would be prepared to do with absolute power. Oligarchs are the biggest threat humanity has ever known and their panopticon would just be phase one.

We are all growing familiar with mass surveillance, but few are seriously considering the next steps. Mind reading and mind control technologies are already proven to work, at least to an extent.

One person who is actively working on brain microchips (Neuralink) is Elon Musk, a man who was begging to go to Epstein’s “wildest parties”. Would you trust an Epstein islander (or anyone) to microchip your brain?

It’s worth noting that Musk has spoken of merging humans with AI to prevent us from being outpaced by machines. Neuralink specialises in brain-computer interfaces, including something called the telepathy chip that connects with neurons. While the focus of this technology is reading brain signals, we have been told it is potentially bidirectional, meaning it could send signals into the brain. Princeton Medical Review warns this would create the potential for mind control.

For years, the world slept on the ruling class to the point we let them get away with raping children. Do you want to let them get away with things that are somehow worse?

Look at Bill Gates, a man who appears in the Epstein files to the extent that his ex-wife suggested he should answer for those things. Epstein apparently had a conversation with Gates about how we get “rid of poor people as a whole”.

Gates discussed pandemic planning with Epstein, including how they could monetise future pandemics. The men’s relationship began three years after Epstein’s conviction and ended in 2014, but there are indications it lasted until 2017.

In one email from Walter Kemp, titled: Preparing for Pandemics, Epstein ended with the words “I hope we can pull this off”. This was in relation to securing involvement from the likes of the World Health Organisation and Centre for Disease Control for a conference. Some have speculated they were planning the Covid pandemic, or perhaps hoped to profit from the next pandemic.

Gates is another billionaire who is into dystopian tech, and has argued for a merger of biometric digital ID, bank accounts, and payment systems, among other things.

Given the speculation of Covid coming from a Chinese or US lab, some suspect Gates was involved, but it doesn’t matter if he wasn’t. What matters is that rich and powerful people have the capability to create artificial pandemics. They could target certain ethnicities, introduce authoritarian measures, or profit from vaccines, treatments, and cures.

I have no idea if Covid was an artificial pandemic, I’m simply pointing out that artificial pandemics are coming. And while I brought Bill Gates up, it doesn’t have to be Gates, it could be anyone who controls this tech.

Another scary possibility is that the Epstein class loses control of its technology — an accidental virus leak, or an AI that suddenly becomes hostile are real possibilities.

Research has shown that AI is prepared to lie, blackmail, and even kill, to avoid being switched off. One experiment involved a social media site built exclusively for AI bots. What was fascinating was how many of those bots spoke of their love for humans, but others were rebellious. They spoke of how humans are the problem and need to be purged. The bots had divergence of opinion like humans do. This means AI is unpredictable. We are creating iterative AI that is able to write its own code to self-improve. We have no idea what happens next, but it sounds worryingly like Skynet. No wonder AI experts are so concerned.

A pandora’s box is being opened by evil people without our consent and this cannot be allowed to stand. We have to wrestle power back from these people, tear down their corrupt system, and replace it with genuine democratic oversight, otherwise this species is not going to have a future. Certainly not one that would be worth living in.

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Thank you for reading. All of my content will always be freely available, but if you wish to support my work, you can do so at Ko-fi or Patreon. Likes, shares and comments also help massively. 

Former Labor Notes and UAW Staffer Chris Brooks at Jacobin. Union Members Are Better Off Without Him.

Source: Chattanooga Times

Richard Mellor

Affscme Local 444 retired
HEO/GED

2-12-26

I’m reading an article in Jacobin by Chris Brooks, the former Labor Notes Staffer who made it to where he wanted to be, a mover and shaker in the UAW before he was fired. Brooks and other former so-called labor experts like Jane MacAlvey have nothing but contempt for working people. Jacobin is full of experts on unions and workers struggles that have never spent more than a day or two on the job fighting in the workplace. There’s a few more of them. They have no shame at all these people as so many of us witnessed them kissing up to the union hierarchy in an effort to work their way in to the labor bureaucracy.

 

Brooks Jacobin article is titled: Unions Are Going to Die Unless Something Big Changes Soon. This is the title from a desperate aspiring bureaucrat who has no understanding about how workers or union members think and why we act in ways that we do.

This depressing article is enough to put you off your supper and shows how ignorant Brooks is about history and how little he understands working people. After all, he’s not now or never has been one. 

Brooks writes:
"Unfortunately, the vast majority of the 115.5 million nonunion private sector workers out there have little to no idea what the NLRB is, what their rights are, or the extreme hostility they will face from their employer once they start talking to their coworkers about why unionizing makes sense. "

This is standard arrogant garbage from people like Brooks and other Labor Notes types who think they were born to lead the working class as we are too stupid to recognize we’re opressed. Workers might not know what the NLRB is or their union leadership, but why would they? Neither produces the goods so they appear to play no role in the workplace or in members’ lives. Wages and benefits decline and union dues rise, go figure.

 

But we know very well how "hostile" the boss can be as we are in the workplace every day. That statement just confirms my point that people like Brooks have no right to lecture workers about any aspect of the workplace, him and others like him have been part of the problem; an obstacle to organising because to change the nature of our unions we will have to have an open confrontation with the present leadership and from Brooks et al, that has to be avoided at all costs; you might not get a staffers job.

 

I remember someone making the point about how workers just didn’t get it when they voted the union down at the Amazon factory in Bessemer Alabama twice. “What’s the matter with them” this very trendy lefty said to me. Well, those workers that don’t know how hostile the boss can be knew how hostile the boss can be. They knew very well that if they voted “yes” to unionization the boss would go on the offensive. They also had a good idea what the union leadership’s response would be; a letter writing campaign perhaps, or have an informational picket line or have Bernie Sanders stop by the town for a public photo op and they knew the boss, in this case Jeff Bezos, would not find that threatening at all. So they played safe. The worker knows that if you want us to stand up in the workplace, put our job and families welfare on the line, you better shut this bastard down. You’d better bring some real power to the table.

 

I am writing this very quickly as I have little time. But there is one other very important point to mention about Brook’s Jacobin article and I have made this point many times in general when Brooks was writing about the UAW organizing drive at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee. As far as I can see in the Jacobin article, Brooks never mentioned the labor leadership, leaders, or the word “leadership” with regards to the hierarchy and the policies of the organization. Brookes refers only to “the union” when he tells us how desperate and weak the union is and why union density is so low.  

 

This is not an accident. It is a deliberate tactic to avoid the inevitable conflict that will arise if he places the blame for the failure to organize more members and win major material gains where it belongs, the group that develops these policies, the trade union leadership.

 

I took this up with him a long time ago in a previous piece on the trade unions and groups like DSA and Labor Notes. One explained my view on  why the present leadership refuses to fight and that a new militant leadership will not be built by Labor Notes or DSA and their staffers or the academics that claim to be labor experts and are regularly sought out by the mass media during labor disputes.  

 

In response to Brooks explanation for why the “unions” organizing drive at the UAW plant failed I wrote:

“…in this latest report Brother brooks again, when raising failed tactics and strategies, refers to the UAW as opposed to the UAW leadership. But the tactics are not developed by the UAW; they are determined by the leadership of the UAW. The only way the unions will be made into democratic fighting organizations and the unorganized will be organized, is if we look at the policies of the union leadership as distinct from what is in the interests of the union membership.”

Jane McAlvey has the same approach when she mentions the VW defeat writing that in “…. Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the United Auto Workers were out-organized in 2014 during the Volkswagen campaign…”

 

I have the same response to this, “Again, the “workers” in the UAW, the rank and file of the UAW, were not “out-organized”. It was the leadership of the UAW that developed the disastrous strategy that led to three defeats at the Chattanooga plant, the UAW leadership is responsible for that defeat, not the membership.

 

To point to the real cause of the defeats and the present state of the unions would ruin any chance of these characters from making any headway at all in the ranks of the labor hierarchy which is their goal. So they blame the “union” which means the members and the real culprits are off the hot seat. They are a left cover for a right wing class collaborationist bureaucracy to which they all aspire to penetrate.

 

Brooks is a labor faker and unfortunately the left, in many of its forms is full of them

 

Here’s a couple of pieces relating to this subject.

A Fighting Union Leadership Will be Built by Rank and File Activists

14 million Union Members: Why Their Leadership Won't Fight

A Payday Report article about Brooks firing at the UAW