The great English historian, Christopher Hill, writing on the causes of the English revolution pointed out that despite the bravery of the revolutionists they were unable to overcome the monarchy’s blocking of reforms because they had a “stop in the mind” they believed in the dominant ideology of the time that the King was King by “divine right” he was God’s representative on earth. It’s hard to challenge that. But that ideology was shattered when along came Cromwell who suggested they cut off the King’s head and see what happens. The ideology was a sham and a new day was born.
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Beyond the Mediterranean graveyard: The demise of the anti-capitalist Left
For the reformist left, the oxymoron of capitalist democracy could simply be ignored. Now, the reformist left felt it became part of the club; it had the illusion – as most of the so-called leftists have until today – that it could change the system from the inside, while in reality, it was the system that was changing the left.
Although neoliberalism and postmodernism are two sides of the same coin, their existential condition was the capitulation of the anti-capitalist left. Meanwhile, its new task became to provide legitimation for the system both abroad and at home.
Post-World War II has been virtually universally conceived in an anti-historical fashion. Not only the rise of fascism appeared as an anomaly, disconnected from its liberal ties, but also the so-called welfare system (or Keynesianism) was embraced acritically. It ignores its existence as a reaction to the Soviet Union’s welfare state. Moreover, without a socialist path going on, it is, in fact, a system of managing and controlling the (precarity of the) masses so that any emancipatory expectation never comes to fruition while the system is assimilated and protected by those same people being exploited.
And this connects with the second function of the Keynesian system, namely, to destroy any empathy towards the other, to reaffirm the values of capitalist egoism. While third-world countries were being plundered and those who fought against classical colonialism were demonised, capitalist welfare was sustained on the backbone of underdeveloped countries.
The reformist left therefore renders war, plunder, destruction, and exploitation as reasonable enterprises. Simultaneously, the power of the left, which was previously anchored on the people, faded; the people, conversely, lost representation because the reformists not only parroted the narratives of the status quo but distanced themselves from the masses with their irrational claims disconnected from the broad demands of the people in their daily lives.
This, in turn, resulted not only in the lack of representation of the people by the intelligentsia but even more importantly in the total de-politicisation of the masses, whose spiritual lives lost connection with the world around them. “There is no such thing as society,” as Margaret Thatcher proclaimed.
Consequently, people were not only atomised at work by the capitalist class, their power as a class, which had existed until that moment, was declared extinct. Now, there was only economic, political, and social atomisation.
Before Luigi Mangione, There Was Gaetano Bresci
Even before police apprehended Luigi Mangione, Tik Tok users bestowed a nickname on the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson: the adjustor. The label refers to insurance adjustors who evaluate claims to determine liability and negotiate settlements. The play on words points to the intense anger that many Americans feel for a health care system that seems more concerned with generating profits than saving and enhancing lives. Now, finally, someone was taking action to even the scales. The term, and the act that inspired it, are closely tied to our present moment. Yet they also sit within a historical tradition, that of the giustiziere or “avenging executioner” that dates to the nineteenth century. The most iconic example is Gaetano Bresci, a thirty-year-old silk weaver who assassinated the King of Italy, Umberto I, on July 29, 1900.
On that day, as the king was about to depart from the Parco Reale in Monza, a city not far from Milan, where he had presided over a gymnastics contest, Bresci shot him three times. The king died within minutes. Bresci, who was born in Tuscany and later moved to Paterson, New Jersey, had returned to Italy in spring 1900. He assassinated the king as punishment for his having signed a decree imposing martial law to quell the May 1898 protests in Milan against rising food prices — before bestowing Italy’s highest military honors on the general who ordered grapeshot to be used against the unarmed demonstrators, killing hundreds. The government’s lethal response was the latest in a series of repressive measures intended to thwart efforts by industrial and agricultural workers to fight economic exploitation and force their way into a political process that had long excluded them and ignored their interests.
Bank chief says US firm collapses ring ‘alarm bells’
Andrew Bailey told a House of Lords committee that it was important to take the failure of car parts supplier First Brands and subprime car lender Tricolor “very seriously” – and drew parallels with the 2008 financial crisis.
He said it was unclear whether these were one-off issues, or a case of “the canary in the coal mine”.
[…]
Last week, Jamie Dimon, the boss of US banking giant JPMorgan Chase, warned the failure of the two US firms could be a sign of more to come.
“My antenna goes up when things like that happen,” he told analysts. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but when you see one cockroach, there are probably more.”
~ Full article…
Jeffrey Epstein Wanted More War
The disclosures add to our understanding of Epstein’s still-murky role as a global power player, and what he actually used the influence he had amassed for. Simply put, if Epstein was using his connections to powerful people with some kind of aim in mind, it was decidedly not to make the world a better place.
“History Repeats Itself”
In the files, Epstein appeared to favor more aggressive solutions to geopolitical problems — particularly when it came to traditional adversaries of Israel, a country whose politics and national security the sex trafficker took a keen interest in, these and other disclosures show.
[…]
“China China China”
But the country that featured most heavily in Epstein’s private discussions contained in the files wasn’t Israel; it was China.
The subject of the United States’ chief geopolitical rival clearly loomed large for Epstein.
Mediterranean with Floating Nuclear Power Plants: Greece is Discussing It
The concept of moving nuclear energy to the open sea using floating platforms that operate as small nuclear power stations continues to gain momentum in the Mediterranean. In Greece, the Floating Nuclear Power Plant (FNPP) project has taken a major step forward. A high-level meeting held in Athens brought together leading companies and institutional stakeholders to explore the idea. The primary objective at this stage is to determine whether these offshore facilities can effectively address the energy-security needs of Greece’s islands and coastal communities.
[…]
The American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) is no stranger to the concept. As early as 2024, ABS published the most detailed technical guidelines ever produced for FNPPs. The report acknowledged that many advanced reactor designs suitable for floating platforms are still in early development, but it strongly endorsed the modular construction approach, which offers better cost control, operational flexibility, and the ability to scale power output to match the requirements of ports and coastal infrastructure.
https://greekcitytimes.com/2025/11/23/floating-nuclear-power-plants-greece/
Israel’s financial war on Palestine
Elsewhere in occupied Palestine, Israel’s financial machinations have been more insidious, but almost as equally destructive. As part of its occupation — and in complete violation of the Oslo Accords — Israel has arbitrarily expropriated Palestinian tax revenues. Foreign Minister Varsen Aghabekian Shahin, who I was able to speak with during her visit to the Philippines this week, said that amount had ballooned to about $3.7 billion. Under an agreement between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government, the latter was supposed to return the diverted tax revenues each month. However, the foreign minister said, about two years ago, Israel began deducting some of the amount, for reasons known only to itself, and in the past six months — in a move that, to an outside observer, seems only calculated to starve out the Palestinians — it has not returned any of the money.
That prevents the Palestinian Authority from operating properly, funding its public works and services programs, and paying government workers. Shahin said government workers were currently owed 13 months of back pay as a result of Israel’s actions, and that only some employees could be paid partial salaries. To make matters worse, Israel has threatened not to renew the annual waiver of terrorist financing laws that allow Israeli banks to process transactions with Palestinian banks when that waiver expires this month, the OHCHR said. That would virtually cut off the Palestinian banking system from the global financial system.
At the beginning of the war against Hamas in October 2023, which has since turned into a wider campaign to completely depopulate Gaza, Israel began suspending the work permits of 100,000 Palestinian workers who had jobs in Israel, or in Israeli-controlled parts of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Those wages previously represented a quarter of Palestine’s gross national income, which is now gone.
Finally, Israel has also found a way to choke Palestine using Israel’s own money. Billions of Israeli shekels have accumulated in Palestinian banks; most of that money represents payments made in the past to Palestine’s now-unemployed cross-border workers, who exchanged those wages for US dollars or Jordanian dinars (Palestine as yet does not have its own national currency, thanks in large part to Israel’s assault on its financial system). The banks, however, are unable to exchange the shekels with Israeli banks, due to laws capping the volume of exchanged currency; and of course, there is no other country with whom Palestine can exchange Israeli currency. While the shekels were exchangeable, they represented a big percentage of Palestinian banks’ liquidity. Now that they are not, they may as well be scrap paper for all the good they do the Palestinians.
https://www.manilatimes.net/2025/11/23/opinion/columns/israels-financial-war-on-palestine/2229781
Saturday Hashtag: #GenomicGameboy — Your DNA Isn’t for Fun
Industry has hypercommodified every aspect of human existence, and personal data is no exception. But DNA data is in a league of its own: permanent, deeply personal, and ultimately monetized as an institutional asset.
The nonconsensual collection of genetic data was covered in a previous hashtag, but the voluntary “direct-to-consumer” DNA market, which introduces equally grave, hidden dangers, is exploding and projected to skyrocket to $2.5 billion by 2032.
The industry, led by 23andMe, AncestryDNA, and numerous smaller startups, promises fun ancestry reports and health insights. What it never advertises is that you are trading your private genome for entertainment, corporate profit, and significant risks you cannot control.
https://whowhatwhy.org/editors-picks/saturday-hashtag-genomicgameboy/
Founder of Company that Produced Software Later Stolen by CIA Believes Software Was Used to Develop Digital Surveillance in Afghanistan
PROMIS stands for Prosecutors Management Information System. It was originally created by the Hamiltons’ company, called the Institute for Law and Social Research (INSLAW), to help law enforcement agencies track court cases and criminal offenders and was adopted by state and local prosecutors’ offices, including in cities like New York and Los Angeles.
In the mid-1970s, INSLAW was awarded a $10 million contract to install the PROMIS software in 94 Department of Justice offices before it was forced into bankruptcy and taken over by officials in the Justice Department working under Edwin Meese, Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General.
Hamilton believes that INSLAW was used by banks to enable NSA and the CIA to track wire transfers of money and letters of credit, and by the CIA to track dissidents and alleged troublemakers in an emergency preparedness program commissioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Then-CIA Director William Casey was the driving force for most of the unauthorized, copyright-infringing uses of INSLAW’s PROMIS, which was carried out by the CIA’s Division-D.
The PROMIS software was so valuable because it enabled collection of a vast amount of personal data on Americans, including NSA intercepts of bank and credit card transactions and the results of surveillance efforts by the FBI, CIA and other agencies.
Lockheed Martin engineers also got a hold of PROMIS and developed sophisticated software for the cockpits of some of its planes, like the F-117 stealth fighter which is invisible to radar.
Throughout the mid to late 1980s, the PROMIS software was sold to intelligence services worldwide by Dr. Earl W. Brian, a veteran of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam and former director of California’s Department of Health Care Services, with close connections to Meese.
Dr. Brian’s holding company, Biotech Capital Corporation, had 40 computer system contracts with U.S. intelligence agencies, and tried to pressure Hamilton into selling INSLAW.
According to various sources, Brian was involved in the “October Surprise” where the Reagan campaign paid the Iranians to delay the release of American hostages during the 1980 election to make incumbent Jimmy Carter look bad and help Reagan win the White House.
CIA whistleblower Michael Riconosciuto claimed that PROMIS software was Brian’s payment for participation in the “October Surprise” and other covert operations.
Riconosciuto told Unsolved Mysteries that Dr. Brian and other men involved in the PROMIS theft participated in the Iran-Contra affair and covert operations in Central America and the Middle East that involved illegal drugs and arms smuggling.
The Star Within the Circle — How an Oligarchy that is Thousands of Years Old Maintains Control Through Secret Round Table Groups
This is the Star-in-Circle Model — the true power structure that operates behind and above the visible Org Chart of global institutions.
The Circle represents external control mechanisms — secrecy, coercion, blackmail, and loyalty enforcement.
The Star represents internal networking and deal flow — hidden agreements, conflict resolution, and policy formation among members.However, the true complexity of this model emerges when we consider that many members of these Round Table groups also hold seats in multiple organizations. This creates an interwoven network of power, where different groups form reciprocal alliances.
In other words, the hidden Org Chart of the world isn’t structured like a corporate pyramid but like a constellation of interlocking stars — a dynamic power matrix that resembles the Sefirot, where each node of power connects to multiple others, forming a self-reinforcing elite governance system.
https://thedukereport.substack.com/p/the-star-within-the-circle