Mainly Epstein

Tomorrow, for the first time in over half a century – since Brezhnev and Nixon signed the first SALT agreement in 1972 – the brakes are completely off. Zero constraint on the expansion of nuclear superpower capacity to end life on earth.

The sole remaining arms limitation treaty expires February 6. Food for thought, no?

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Caitlin today:

Political maturity is finally admitting to yourself that the angriest, most disconcerting communist you’ve ever met was pretty much right about everything.

If you learn enough, stay humble enough, and pay close enough attention, eventually that’s what happens. You realize that, generally speaking, the really high-octane commies have the most lucid understanding of the world out of any group out there, and the only reason this wasn’t always obvious to you was because you live under a capitalist power structure which aggressively indoctrinates its populace from birth into believing that communism is No No Bad Bad.

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More than six years on from the suiciding of Jeffrey Epstein, and six days after three federal judges ordered the US Department of Justice to publish three million documents (emails, videos and, to the dismay of the abused, nude images and personal information) two questions corporate media on my side of the pond are asking are:

• Will Mandelson be prosecuted for passing insider information to the man? (Less clear is whether his asking, at Epstein’s behest, a top banker to threaten the chancellor of the government he ‘served’ with dire consequences should it fail to water down a bill to raise tax on corporate bonuses is a crime ¹ – or mere moral fart in a sea of stink.)
• Will this sink a serially and diversely execrable Sir Keir Starmer who, despite knowing, as he has finally fessed up to, of the man’s close ties to a convicted pedophile, sent Mandelson to Washington to kiss the tangerine arse serve His Britannic Majesty there in the plum post of Ambassador?

On the second question I can’t work up much enthusiasm. Not in the absence of anyone in the wings opposed to the economically illiterate path – kindest reading – of neoliberal ‘austerity’ to which TweedleLabour, headed for oblivion along with TweedleTory, remains committed.

On the first, a slew of YouTube videos by Novara Media make useful viewing. (Not that these are confined in scope to Mandelson or Starmer. Bill Gates (with cameo by a Melinda scorned), Richard Branson and, it has to be said, Noam Chomsky also come under the lens.)

In the same vein but punchier, Owen Jones  – whom, even while deploring his “simplistic morality tales” on Syria/Iran, I described as recently as January 18 as “doing good work in other arenas” – offers his own take on the Prince of Darkness.

But what does all of this say about ruling class immorality and contempt for the ruled? Needless to say, our ‘quality’ media, virtue-signaling their disdain for the basely lascivious, are earnestly asking this; albeit in defanged terms of “entitled privilege’, “sense of immunity” and male arrogance.

(Speaking of which, in a short but fascinating Novara deep dive on sex, gender and blackmail – why In God’s name would ‘men of the world’ who pride themselves on their smarts have sex with underage girls in a room with a wall camera in one corner? – Ash Sarkar draws distinctions between male and female sexuality that make such dick driven fools of men. Her gay colleague Michael Walker notes the promiscuity of gay men – because they can – and asks if Prince Andrew, Trump et al did what most men would if they could. To be clear, he’s not defending those men, and Ash is non committal in response. I can’t for now locate that video – I watch so many – but will provide a link if and when. Update six hours later – I found it! If you can’t spare the full 35 minutes, the discussion of male/female sexuality – a segue from one of Epstein leaning on Bill Gates (whose lack of a pre-nup with Melinda had left him vulnerable) begins around the fifteen minute mark and, on second viewing, is fuller than I’d recalled.)

I’ll close with this. One aspect our systemically compromised corporate media stay well away from in their otherwise wall to wall coverage – salacity with schadenfreude, what editor could resist?  – is the Israel connection.

Here to put that right is poet, rapper, silver-tongued and super-informed Lowkey.

Have a nice day, but do remember, apropos my opening paragraph, what the morrow may bring.

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1. For the record, he chancellor in question, Alastair Darling, did not roll over and change his monetary plans.