“…A handful of American Big Tech corps and their owners are extracting trillions of dollars from the manufacture of AI chips, development of AI data centers, and operation of so-called ‘frontier’ AI models. Regardless of which side pulls ahead in each arms race scenario, the house always wins. Corporate AI giants profit from the race dynamic itself.

As formidable as the near-monopoly positions of today’s Big Tech giants may seem, people and governments have substantial capability to fight back. Various democracies are resisting this concentration of wealth and power with tools of anti-trust regulation, protections for human rights, and public alternatives to corporate AI. All of us worried about the AI arms race and committed to preserving the interests of our communities and our democracies should think in both these terms: how to use the tech to our own advantage, and how to resist the concentration of power AI is being exploited to create…”

~ Full article…

“…Bombs, Missiles, and the Epstein/Trump/Maxwell Files

A president who controls the DOJ can bury files. A president who controls the military can bury the news cycle. A president facing evidence that he raped a child has reason to do both.

In November 2025, Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act with a clear mandate: release the investigative materials related to Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal network. It is now the law of the United States. The Department of Justice is defying it.

Rather than comply, the DOJ has released heavily redacted documents, in an unclassified file, with redactions that lawmakers from both parties say far exceed anything the Act permits. This is not a disagreement over process. It is the executive branch refusing to obey a law passed by Congress. Attorney General Pam Bondi is reportedly sitting on millions of unreleased pages. She has not explained why.

Furthermore, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has refused to produce financial records requested by the Senate Finance Committee. These are records tied to more than $4 billion in suspicious transactions that JPMorgan Chase allegedly failed to report or escalate in connection with Epstein’s accounts. Senator Ron Wyden, the committee’s ranking Democrat, has described Bessent’s stonewalling bluntly: “Scott Bessent is doing his best to make sure [rich pedophiles and Epstein accomplices] won’t face any consequences for their crimes.”

The investigative record goes deeper. Wyden has revealed the existence of a DEA investigation known as “Operation Chain Reaction,” conducted through the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF), a premier federal task force designed to dismantle major transnational criminal operations. The investigation focused on Epstein and fourteen alleged co-conspirators for drug trafficking and cross-border financial crimes. The investigation was opened in December 2010 under the Obama administration. It was abruptly terminated. The documentation is 69 pages long and extensively redacted. No charges were ever brought against anyone. Wyden has formally demanded answers: what triggered the investigation, what evidence it produced, why it was terminated, and why all fourteen names were redacted. He has asked directly whether the first Trump administration killed the investigation to protect pedophiles…”

~ Full article…

Watch:

Frank Zappa: “Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex.”

South Korea’s National Tax Service seized crypto assets during recent enforcement actions against 124 high-value tax evaders, but now, a large chunk of that crypto cash has been lost. The operation originally resulted in the confiscation of crypto holdings worth about 8.1 billion won, or roughly $5.6 million. However, officials later issued a press release to showcase these efforts in recovering delinquent taxes, and the release included photographs of Ledger hardware wallets taken into custody along with handwritten notes that displayed the wallet seed phrases.

~ Full article…

Last week, Sam Altman confirmed OpenAI’s deal to give the Department of Defense access to its AI models. The agreement came after Anthropic refused to accept government terms that could have allowed its model, Claude, to be deployed for mass domestic surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons.

OpenAI said in a blog post on Saturday that its contract with the Defense Department is “better” and includes more safety guardrails than Anthropic’s original contract.

On Monday evening, following concerns around the deal, Altman said on X that OpenAI is working with the Pentagon to “make some additions in our agreement.”

~ Full article…

Programmable digital currency is the final piece of the global control grid that’s finally snapping into place. Catherine Austin Fitts on how to defeat it.

Catherine Austin Fitts began her career at Dillon Read & Co. in New York and later served as Assistant Secretary of Housing under President George H. W. Bush. Drawing on her experience on Wall Street and in Washington, she warned communities and investors about mortgage fraud and ultimately prevailed in an eleven-year lawsuit with the Department of Justice. She is now the publisher of The Solari Report…

~ Full video…

Catherine Austin Fitts on the Tucker Carlson Show (Audio link)

“…Together they explore the digital control grid — the convergence of programmable money, digital IDs, and local surveillance hardware designed to enable centralized financial and spatial control of populations. Catherine breaks down the difference between monetary and fiscal policy, and how programmable money would allow bankers to bypass legislatures entirely. They discuss the Genius Act, stablecoins, the Clarity Act, and how private digital assets can implement the same social credit controls as a central bank digital currency — just through different channels. Catherine describes Solari’s work with state legislatures on model legislation to prevent programmable money from being misused.

The conversation covers the black budget’s origins from WWII asset seizures through the CIA Act of 1949 and the 1981 executive order enabling classified corporate contracts, FASB 56’s role in making federal financial statements meaningless, the $21 trillion missing from federal accounts, and why auditing the New York Fed’s accounts matters more than “auditing the Fed.” They dig into why Congressman Thomas Massie is being targeted, the role of dual citizenship in secret governance, the Epstein network’s connection to programmable money development, and why Iran and the BRICS nations represent “leakage” in the global control system…”

Tucker and Cathetine Austin Fitts discuss the real reason we bombed Iran, and what the tension in the Middle East is really about.

~ Video…

Trump controls the Board’s finances as chair, creating what looks to be a slush fund of international proportions. A $1 billion contribution secures permanent membership on the Board instead of a three-year appointment, which requires no payment. Trump said he also exacted promises of more than $7 billion from nine countries, although Board of Peace documents show only eight countries formally signed a pledge of their “intention to contribute funds to the Board of Peace.” For his part, Trump promised to siphon U.S. tax dollars — at least $10 billion — into the Board’s coffers. The Board of Peace, in turn, announced “more than $15 billion in funding commitments” for “humanitarian relief and reconstruction activities” in Gaza.

The Board’s charter states that it can acquire and dispose of “immovable and movable property, institute legal proceedings, open bank accounts, receive and disburse private and public funds, and employ staff.” As chair, Trump has “exclusive authority to create, modify, or dissolve subsidiary entities as necessary or appropriate to fulfill the Board of Peace’s mission.” It remains unclear how all of the Boards’ funds will be spent and if there will be any meaningful supervision of the Board’s finances. The executive board — which Trump chooses and controls — provides “oversight mechanisms with respect to budgets, financial accounts, and disbursements,” according to the charter.

The Board says that the World Bank-administered Gaza Reconstruction and Development Fund “will operate under defined fiduciary controls, aligned with global best practices” and that an “AI-enabled digital infrastructure backbone will support procurement transparency and transform Gaza into a modern economy, reducing corruption risk and ensuring responsible stewardship of reconstruction capital for the benefit of Gaza’s residents.”

~ Full article…

Beyond the rather obvious corruption risk that gives foreign potentates the opportunity to buy Trump’s favor, the Board of Peace is also a bid by Trump and his cronies to usurp or circumvent the functions of existing international bodies and institutions like the United Nations. Flawed as they may be in many respects, these institutions do possess widespread legitimacy: virtually every nation on Earth belongs to the UN. We don’t need to romanticize these institutions or pretend that they’re better and more effective than they really are — in far too many cases, they even wind up prolonging conflicts and issues they intend to resolve — to recognize they often have practical value as forums for discussions among nations and, in some cases, mechanisms for action on pressing international problems.

As a pay-to-play scheme with its membership determined by Trump himself, the Board of Peace will lack even a patina of legitimacy — and it may find it impossible to achieve anything aside from its primary function of enriching Trump himself or its original purpose of supervising the Gaza ceasefire plan.

Indeed, the board’s membership remains far too narrow to command anything resembling widespread and lasting legitimacy. Right now, the board consists of a handful of governments already politically aligned with Trump or seeking to curry his favor in one way or another: countries like Argentina and Hungary run by Trump allies Javier Milei and Viktor Orban, as well as Middle Eastern states like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey that combine ties to Trump with their own national interests in Gaza’s stability. All told, around thirty-five countries out of the fifty or so Trump invited to join the Board of Peace have said they’ll sign up, with only Vladimir Putin promising to pony up the $1 billion payment required for a permanent board seat — funds the Kremlin says will be drawn from Moscow’s frozen assets. If Trump were to accept Putin’s offer, he would effectively be comping the Kremlin for its membership.

~ Full article…

Transition of officials from the UK Ministry of Defence to spyware firm Palantir raises alarms over national security dependency and eroding accountability.

Investigation reveals that Palantir, a US surveillance and AI firm with close ties to the Trump administration, hired its fourth former UK Ministry of Defence official in 2025, just months before winning a no-bid £240 million contract. The pattern of recruiting senior civil servants and ministers, coupled with high-level government access, illustrates a deep integration that critics warn undermines sovereign control, democratic oversight, and public trust in critical systems from the NHS to national security.

Palantir hired four ex-Ministry of Defence officials last year, with its latest recruit joining months before the US spyware giant won its biggest ever contract with the department, openDemocracy can reveal.

On 31 August 2025, Barnaby Kistruck left his role as the Ministry of Defence’s director of industrial strategy, prosperity and exports – marking the end of a career in the civil service spanning almost two decades, in which he’d worked primarily on national security and defence.

Nine days later, he took up his new position as senior counsellor at Palantir, a US tech firm with close ties to the Trump administration that specialises in providing AI-powered military and surveillance systems and data analytics.

openDemocracy understands Kistruck played a key role in writing the UK’s Strategic Defence Review and accompanying Defence Industrial Strategy, which were published last summer and recommended AI play an increased role in defence policy.

In December 2025, three months after Kistruck’s appointment, Palantir won a three-year Ministry of Defence contract worth £240m to ‘modernise defence’ by providing “data analytics capabilities supporting critical strategic, tactical and live operational decision making across classifications” in the armed forces.

The contract, which is more than three times larger than any Palantir has previously won with the MoD, was awarded without tender.

~ Full article…

In a viral interview last week, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee declared that “it would be fine” if Israel “took” all the land from the Nile river in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq.
[…]
This is the devastating backdrop against which Donald Trump convened the first meeting of his so-called “Board of Peace” in Washington.

Behind the language of reconstruction lies a familiar formula: security control without sovereignty; billions pledged without rights restored; governance structures designed in foreign capitals; economic management tied to compliance. Gaza’s devastated coastline is recast as an investment corridor. Reconstruction is framed as an opportunity for “modernisation”: digital identification systems, tightly monitored financial flows, the promise of a cashless economy administered under external oversight. A liaison office is established to coordinate with a Palestinian Authority stripped of territorial control. Self-determination is deferred yet again.

In this model, occupation is rebranded as redevelopment. Annexation advances on the ground while a new supervisory regime is assembled above it.

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, declined the invitation and called the initiative what it is: a “colonialist operation — others deciding for the Palestinians.”

The description is precise.

What is consolidating is a colonial architecture: territorial absorption normalised; siege maintained through financial and logistical systems; reconstruction conditioned; international law invoked when convenient and ignored when it obstructs expansion. The language may oscillate between messianic fervour and technocratic management; the result converges.

Yet this is not the only architecture taking shape.

Next week, states will convene in The Hague, in an meeting co-chaired by South Africa and Colombia, to advance a different logic: that international law imposes obligations on third states; that arms transfers can be halted; that ports can refuse docking; that vessels can be de-flagged; that public contracts can be reviewed; that universal jurisdiction can be activated. The Hague Group was formed to break paralysis — to translate condemnation into coordinated state action.

Concrete action, not rhetoric, is precisely the world’s demand. That is why days later in Amsterdam, social movements, trade unions, parliamentarians, jurists, dockworkers, journalists, and political leaders from across the world will march to Amsterdam for the People’s Congress for The Hague Group. There, they will map the global supply chains that sustain Israel’s war machine; coordinate organising at ports and transport hubs; plan campaigns to cut contracts and financial ties; pursue accountability through courts; target shipping giants and energy flows; and align strategy across borders.

~ Full article…