Who was Epstein working for?

Epstein was obviously working for Israeli and US intelligence.  So it's not surprising that the increasingly irrelevant western mainstream media--owned and operated by US intelligence and big money zionists--is now trying to pin it on Russia.  This misinformation reaches an older generation, mostly over 60 now, that refuses to believe anything else for news.

Alon Misrahi gives a great synopsis here.  And here.

If Epstein had any dealings with Russia, and he tried, they related to helping western backed opponents to Putin, one of whom we know Epstein was friends with.  Epstein had to struggle to get a Russian visa.  His friend Mandelson tried but failed to get a Russian visa for him.

Meanwhile, Epstein's friends were all Zionists, mostly with Israeli dual citizenship.  Ehud Barak was one of his best friends.  Alan Dershowitz was another.  Epstein stated he represented the Rothschilds.  He helped to mediate deals for Israel.  Epstein frequently used the word Goyum to refer to anti-Zionists.

Wexner, who made Epstein rich, was an uber Zionist who ran a big Zionist lobbying operation.  Epstein's wife was daughter of Israeli superspy Robert Maxwell.

And during Epstein's career, what did Russia get from it?  Russia has only sunk into pariah status in the west while Israel has become more and more untouchable even by the media even during a historic genocide which continues today.

Epstein's mission was accomplished and handed off to Palantir.

Western media is more and more proving itself to be a laughing stock.  And that is good, because they've been doing this kind of misdirection for a long time and I hope others will see that more and more.  Such as the fake 'Russiagate' scandals, and all manner of the like, going back 100 years or more, many of which "Liberals" and even "Conservatives" in most cases still take as inerrant truths.  If Russia were as powerful inside the US as Israel, there'd be laws against such knee jerk Russophobia, people would get kicked out of jobs in government and education, etc.

The Iranian "Protests"

I was disappointed to discover that my most favorite blogger, Tony Greenstein, has accepted the "protests" in Iran as mostly legitimate and the Iranian government crackdown against it unjustified and terrible.

I have seen accounts of the death and damage caused by these "protests" and concluded they aren't protests at all, riots would be a better term, but perhaps better yet is a terrorist insurgency led, backed, and funded by US and Israel.  I take as my key piece of evidence the Iranian seizure of 50,000 Starlink terminals used by the foreign backed insurgency to communicate with their foreign handlers.  A key way that Iran stopped the terrorism was by blocking Starlink reception, thanks to on the spot help by Russia.

Tony rants against Max Blumenthal (of Grayzone) and David Miller, from whom I've learned these stories, both of whom I esteem highly, now more than Tony himself perhaps (though Tony is indispensable too).  Tony seems to be from an older generation, like David Silverstein (of Tikkun Olam), who still like to criticize the targets of Empire like Russia and Iran as terrible, instead of seeing them correctly as the victims and targets of Empire, and the Really Existing resistance to Empire.  And I wouldn't believe a word said against the Really Existing resistance countries here either, because we're living in an echo chamber of propaganda even from supposedly independent sources.  Nor is it my job to criticize the Really Existing resistance countries--I refrain from doing that knowing full well that it manufactures consent for US war, the most terrible outcome of all, which is why the Western media won't stop doing so, and making more and more exaggerated claims (Tony buys into some earlier ones, which could be close to the truth, but I see them as the predictable response to western backed proxy terrorism).  Finally, even if the Islamic Republic isn't perfect, it's entirely none of my business.  It is to the people in Iran to deal with it and without any foreign interference, which sadly will never happen, and that is the real core of the problem.

Tony even dismisses the Israeli admission that they are deeply involved as braggadocio.  I'd be as inclined to believe it understatement.

ICE

ICE was created by laws enacted in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.  The laws that many people said had been cooked up in advance, and 9/11 provided the emergency* to get them passed.  ICE was a key part of the new Department of Home Security.  

Previously, INS handled both immigration services and immigration enforcement.  Originally INS had been (most appropriately?) part of Department of Labor, before it became part of the Department of Justice.

So effectively the creation of DHS and ICE was a way of creating a quasi military "security" force devoted to immigration** and get it away from the more broadly focused Department of Justice (DOJ) which might actually be concerned about civil rights, etc.  The FBI is part of the DOJ and has a better reputation for professionalism than ICE.

No less than the American Friends Service Committee calls for the Abolition of ICE on those grounds.

On January 30, 2026 was the congressional move to separate ICE funding (a mind boggling $170 Billion) from the rest of the budget a good strategy for reforming or abolishing ICE, or a strategy for face saving of top Democrats who have in fact long favored big ICE funding increases themselves?  I don't know, I've seen both opinions.

Who are the undocumented immigrants in the US?  They come from any countries which used to be led by Mexico, though recently more Mexicans have been leaving the US than coming to it.  More recently undocumented immigration has been dominated by influx from broken Central American countries, which the US had a large hand in breaking.

When did these immigrants come to the US?  Most undocumented immigrants in the US came here a long time ago.  The undocumented population of the US grew from 3.5 million in 1990 on a steady ramp upwards through the Presidencies of Bill Clinton and GW Bush peaking before the Global Financial Crisis at 12.2 million then slowly falling during the Obama administration (who did record numbers of deporations) to 10.2 million, then gradually rising with an extra boost of Central Americans in 2023 to about 13 million.  I would call this trajectory basically horizontal since 2008, and while buffeted by external events shows no consistent differences between Democrat and Republican Presidents.

The states that most undocumented immigrants go to is also neither Blue nor Red States but both.  California and Illinois and two leading Blue states for undocumented immigrants, as are Red states Texas and Florida.  Hardly any undocumented immigrants go to most states.

(*Count me among those who believe that the 9/11 was not carried out by government agents as 9/11 Truthers assert, but allowed to happen both through the evil designs of necons like Dick Cheney and GW Bush, and the incompetence of appointees like Donald Rumsfeld.  This makes me doubly suspicious of any laws that were inspired by it, like the infamous Patriot Act which is well known to have long been in the works, just like the War in Iraq.)

(**Supposedly devoted to immigration anyway.  They seem to have taken up an unspoken political mission of quashing dissent to the fascist politics of President Trump, operating something like Gestapo or Brown Shirts.)

Is animal predation evil?

This is a kind of utilitarianism I cannot get behind:

https://www.abolitionist.com/reprogramming/index.html

I see this is wrong on many levels, but it's only an extreme version of ideas many people have.

1. Firstly, it's all about the subjective experience (and apparently of herbivorous species only--he hates cats and believe they should be abolished if they can't be reprogrammed).

I have a long overdue essay in the queue which keeps not being finished about how the focus on subjective experience leads us into social destruction, genocide, etc.  (e.g., the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which focuses on the subjective experiences of Zionist Jews, and similarly the philosophy which enabled Nazism is highly subjective...and it focused on eliminating Marxist materialism because that makes nationalists and capitalists feel bad).

2.  Secondly, it's imagining ourselves to be gods, with our best intuitions being ultimate wisdom.  The road to hell is paved with our best intentions.  The road to wisdom begins with realizing we are really very small, and the world that existed before us was grand.  We should never (have) tried to change it very much.

3.  It's a cornucopian view which ignores physical limits like Limits to Growth.

Whatever their immediate prey might feel, animal predators serve an essential function in ecology.  The essential function of keeping things from getting out of balance.  It's a form of negative feedback.

The important thing is not how people or animals feel.  The important thing is continuation vs extinction.

The problem with people is not that they sometimes make animals feel bad.  The problem with people is that their collective activities are driving a global mass extinction.   This is hard to see if you have a small field of vision.  A human society of vegetarians might be slightly better than otherwise (note: Hitler was a vegetarian), but it could still be driving mass extinction through habitat loss, pollution, and climate modification.  Even if those things were slowed down considerably they would still continue.  The solution involves some combination of limiting the human population size and the destructiveness of human technology.

Cats are not driving a global mass extinction, and I doubt they ever have.  Ordinary predation has limits.  It is human technology, including especially agriculture and mining, which lacks those kinds of limits.