The new footage is powerful circumstantial evidence that eclipses the circumstantial evidence being used to imprison and prosecute Cole for planting the bombs. The new footage was released with commentary by Steve Baker, the former Blaze reporter who is embroiled in a legal case of his own that was launched by Shauni Kerkhoff, a former Capitol police officer and current CIA employee who was alleged by Baker to have been the pipe bomb planter based on Baker’s gait analysis.

The federal case against Cole is sure to fracture under the weight of this new footage as it presents a plausible alibi that conforms to Cole’s original testimony before he confessed to the crime under intense questioning. A transcript of the full questioning was recently filed by Cole’s own defense counsel because the confession contained therein appears to have been coaxed by FBI interrogators.

More information forthcoming.

LINK: https://x.com/stevebakerusa/status/2111794954187985102?s=46&t=qvAtmcMwTWlIkd2fcudt2w

The former Capitol Police officer-turned-CIA, Shauni Kerkhoff, was brought in for questioning by the FBI two days before The Blaze published its original story identifying the woman as the J6 pipe bomb planter, using gait analysis.

Here’s how it went down:

“Seemingly rehearsed responses” — a crucial point.

There will be much more to come. Both Kerkhoff and her boyfriend (also USCP) have been subpoenaed.

What they don’t know yet is that they’re already witnessing it in live time.

It is the downfall of Donald Trump.

As I wrote last year in Mere Orthodoxy, Frank Herbert habitually smuggled his own real-world, sharp-edged critiques of political power structures into his fiction. Dune readers and moviegoers will find out just how prescient Herbert sounds when they begin reflecting on the state of the White House.

Listen carefully.

Twice saved from assassination and endlessly sued, the myth of Teflon Don (nothing sticks to him) and a whole lot of promises propelled Trump into a second term with the mandate of heaven.

But nothing lasts forever. The conceit of Herbert’s Dune is becoming the reality of Trump’s second term.

From flops to foibles, from Epstein to Ukraine to lack of accountability to administrative decadence to hardening economic conditions to a new Middle East war that no one wanted that is being waged to achieve goals that are either opaque or already out of reach, it seems Trump has a Dune 3 problem.

Charismatic protagonist Paul Atreides leads his armies of Fremen warriors on a popular conquest of the stars. The people cried out for help, and he picked them up. They defeat enemies, yes, many enemies. But innocence and honor fly out the window as Paul’s mandate affords total control.

Billions die.

The empire’s wealthy winners spend their days in contentment, happy to support Emperor Paul and his demon-possessed sister without question.

But the discontent, those who have been thrust aside, ignored, betrayed, irreparably harmed, those who lost everything fighting Paul’s wars, stew with resentment. The blowback is…nuclear. Paul’s time as galactic emperor ends in catastrophe. And nothing he does can steer the course of events any other way.

And Paul could see the future! Donald Trump cannot see past the next Fox News segment.

Herbert’s warning is simple: beware the messianic figure.

That’s why the book is called Dune: Messiah. Not because Paul is the messiah, but because he’s a messiah figure whose rise is famous and downfall infamous.

We all know how Anakin Skywalker’s story unfolded.

Anakin is based on Paul Atreides.

"I wrote the Dune series because I had this idea that charismatic leaders ought to come with a warning label on their forehead: 'May be dangerous to your health.'"

—Frank Herbert

Trump has become the quintessence of Herbert’s prophecy. The more the public learns of its cultural inheritance in the Dune saga and its political prescience, the quicker the knives come out. The parallels will become obvious. Kids will shamelessly point out the king’s naked frame as he crosses the street.

And Denis Villeneuve is pulling no punches. If anything, he has committed to portraying Paul more rigorously negative than what Herbert was able to write into his books.

In the real world, in the real White House, the question from here must be this: Does the pendulum simply swing the other way like it always does? Or, does it crash through a wall and open into unknown territory?

If this seems like far-fetched talk of epochal upheaval, you may be riding high with all the President’s Fremen at the moment, unaware of the incensed—or outright hopeless—masses waiting their turn to climb a ladder they still cannot reach.

They people in charge couldn’t save the old order from its inevitable fate.

They didn’t even see it coming.

Millions of files with redactions have been released that disclose secrets beyond imagination sparking resignations and international investigations.

*CONTENT WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE AND IMAGERY AHEAD*

The monetary threads and soft power influence angles are most interesting, but the grooming and trafficking are the most shocking and disgusting. Many files remain hidden.

We are lost in Carcosa, that fictional place of darkness coined by Ambrose Bierce and adapted by Robert Chambers at the end of the 19th century with his short story collection The King in Yellow.

Carcosa is the necro-reality, adjacent to our own, a place of death and curse and long shadow.

Along the shore the cloud waves break,

The twin suns sink behind the lake,

The shadows lengthen

In Carcosa.

The concept found new life a century later in True Detective to describe the secret terrors perpetrated by society’s powerful elite. You don’t know what they’re up to, and if you’re able to figure it out, no one will believe you.

Carcosa becomes the comprehensive darkness fueled by cultic crimes against children that is never fully exposed to the disinfecting sunlight it needs. The corrupt are paid and the weak are threatened and the outspoken are killed to keep the city gates locked.

Epstein’s network of powerful overlords that govern world affairs is the Carcosa of our time. What makes it so insidious is not the number of confidants but their reach and silence. What truly frightens is the omertà.

What does one need with blackmail when everyone’s in on it? or worse, when everyone enjoys it?

No one talks. No one discloses. Sometimes perpetrators just die of asphyxiation in a cell where such a demise is said to be impossible.

But impossible, contradictory, paradoxical things happen all the time in Carcosa. In True Detective, the satanism is perpetrated by supposed men of the cloth. Everything is upside down.

When Epstein, who was renowned for his support of scientists and their research, started the Florida Science Foundation, who could have guessed he would use it only to secure work release from his sweetheart prison sentence and then shut it all down as soon as he had served his time?

A self-made billionaire must be a genius, but in Carcosa, emails betray a kind of dimwitted imbecile struggling to form basic sentences.

His New York mansion enjoyed a bottomless budget, but in Carcosa it takes the prize for ugliest digs in Manhattan.

Rooms are outfitted with hidden cameras in the ceiling and Kleenex boxes, but in Carcosa you’re told blackmail tapes never existed and had nothing to do with what Epstein was up to.

Epstein gets high level briefings on the undisclosed whereabouts of CIA and State Department officials and their discussions with world leaders, but in Carcosa they say he has no link to intelligence other than the one that Carcosa wants you to think about.

When associates like Robert Maxwell died (or were killed) and industrial pedophilic traffickers like Ronald Eppinger of Florida (whose wealthy clients were never revealed) are imprisoned and die, sending at least one of his known underage sex slaves into Epstein’s arms, Epstein mysteriously takes up both men’s exact operations exactly where they left off. In Carcosa this is all coincidence.

When Epstein sends 14-year-olds instructions to take sexualized pictures of themselves, you can be sure the Carcosans will come out to declare the whole matter moot and “boring.”

The current administration is playing footsie with a nuclear payload and fumbling the detonator. That is, younger generations are out of patience because they are out of time. They are also out of money.

As long as the government chooses to search for boogeymen in all the wrong places—in fact, anywhere other than where they actually make their home—a revolutionary spirit will simmer in this 250-year-old nation.

We have been given a framework for this. We know where this leads and what it takes to clean house. Reality is following our history. It is also following fiction.

As the news anchor at the end of True Detective says, “The state attorney general and the FBI have discredited rumors that the accused was in some way related to the family of Louisiana senator Edwin Tuttle.” The show of course reveals otherwise.

This is unacceptable. No regime survives such a thing, and deflection only draws more attention to this national crisis. This infection.

You may extend your stay in Carcosa if you like. The rest of us will be checking out.

Three pieces of evidence—license plate, cell signal, and bomb component purchases—led Kash Patel’s embattled FBI to nab…a dude.

This is surprising because the original CCTV footage of the bombs being planted show what seem to be a woman wearing heavy clothing. At one point you can see the perp adjusting bra straps that had fallen over both shoulders.

It’s also surprising because cell data was claimed earlier by the FBI to have been received from the cell provider in a corrupted, unusable state. Now it has purportedly been used to identify this new suspect.

Late Thursday, Steve Baker of The Blaze retracted his story identifying the Capitol Police officer (turned CIA security) as the bomb planter. Curiously, the retraction notice maintains:

“Our report posted on Nov. 8, 2025, about the Jan. 6 pipe bombs was based on sourcing from individuals in a position to know this type of sensitive law enforcement information who have a demonstrated record of reliability and accuracy. Of note, the sources continue to stand by the information they provided Blaze News.”

The new alleged suspect’s identification has raised questions about the FBI’s negligence or dereliction of responsibility under former director Chris Wray, considering no new information was obtained to identify the alleged perp that wasn’t already obtained years ago under Wray’s leadership. That’s the new FBI’s narrative, at least.

Beneath it all, a battle has been brewing between supporters of the FBI’s and DOJ’s leadership (Patel & Bondi) versus the new wave of critics (among them former FBI whistleblowers) who believe the entire institution is unfixable, regardless of who is put at the helm.

That is perhaps the real story here, since news bombshells and arrests and charging docs do not, these days, often emerge purely from the benevolent, justice-loving motivations of pure-hearted citizens. One man’s perp is a bid to keep the bureau’s lights on; the other man’s perp may be the catalyst to burn it all down.

In the last few days of nail-biting embargo, the report rippled through government channels and independent voices — as though the memo had been selectively dispatched matter of fact for security purposes (the alleged perp may be at risk of assassination) and credibility retention — and leaked without fanfare until Baker himself published the official story early Saturday morning.

College goalie turned capitol police officer Shauni Kerkhoff is the alleged bomb planter. The story has many threads and legs. For one, Kerkhoff was one of the first witnesses brought in to testify against one of the first Jan 6 defendants. If the threads go as deep and the legs on this story are as long as they appear, this will throw every Jan 6 case into legal tumult and bring an entire DC intel apparatus under historic scrutiny.

Critical to the story is that Kerkhoff casually said at trial she had applied for her new job prior to Jan 6. What was that job? CIA security detail. This suggests a greater degree of coordination and premeditation, requiring help with securing employment outside of capitol police following the operation and the ID protection that comes with it.

Add in previous work done by Congressman Thomas Massie that implicates secret service and FBI Director Chris Wray’s evasive answers to Congress concerning the agency’s investigation in which CCTV produced by that very agency had been slowed down (the alleged bomber has now been named thanks to gait analysis using separately acquired, untampered footage) and cell phone data was claimed by the same agency to have been corrupted upon receipt (the companies say they have no corrupt data, that everything is perfectly in tact).

Ex-FBI Kyle Seraphin was part of the investigation that staked out the perpetrator’s neighborhood, but his team was unceremoniously pulled off the hunt without explanation. That buck stops at, you guessed it, Chris Wray.

I have published on many of these developments, including the fact that the culprit was clearly a woman, many years ago, and I’m just a dude with a blog. This appears to be the best poorly kept secret among high-level Washington officials, and the alleged bomber’s present role with CIA screams letter of recommendation from someone in on the op.

The time for that story will come. At the very least facts are finally being brought to bear on conjecture, and half-baked domestic intel ops are now in real jeopardy thanks to dogged reporting, mass electronic capture, and analysis tools that will make shifty directors think twice the next time they coordinate such an egregious crime against the American people in broad daylight.

“Who is that?” you said to yourself as a featureless American prelate took the loggia for the first time—donning garments reminiscent of Benedict XVI. This was unexpected. Or was it?

There’s a way you could have known. In fact, you could have known who the pope was going to be three days early.

If not earlier.

When it comes to Hollywood depictions of Roman Catholic polity, I’ve always maintained that the real thing is far more interesting. Conclave 2025 is proof. What you’re about to read scratches only the surface, but it is the heart of the story.

The all but irrelevant New York Times was pumping the name Robert Francis Prevost six days ago. It was lamenting his purportedly conservative stances while graciously throwing in his misfeasance as a church leader in dealing with clergy sex abuse on his watch.

But if you were an avid reader of InfoVaticana, a Spanish publication covering the Roman Catholic Church, you would have gotten an early spoonful of papal potentialities back in April. A war was going on under your nose.

“Poor management as Bishop of Chiclayo hampers Cardinal Prevost's chances of becoming Pope.” — April 30, 2025

Cardinal Prevost? Who’s that? Well, the article describes full-blown campaigning in Rome for Prevost since other, more outwardly leftist cardinals had become toxic, either due to their ties to Vatican Bank scandals or their karaoke singing.

No one took heed.

What conclave bettors still don’t get is how centralized and clique-controlled the college of cardinals has become. One clique reigns supreme, and they are all tightly connected and carry highly public baggage. Prevost himself carries as much baggage as the long lost frontrunners do—Parolin and Tagle—but Prevost benefited by being lesser known.

Trad hopes for African Cardinal Sarah and newcomer Pizzaballa (yes, his name is Pizzaballa) were never in the cards, and long-time pundits should have known that. These men, who represent the substance of conservatism are persona non grata in the clique. Those shamelessly whipping votes needed only the appearance of conservatism. Substance was antithetical to their century-long efforts, but appearance would appease the grumbling faithful.

Thus, Prevost.

InfoVaticana made it a point, early and loudly, to show how Prevost—who became a cardinal less than two years ago—was unfit for the role of supreme Papa.

What separated Prevost from the pack was that he was always able to keep certain allegations and victims one step removed from him. Accusations of covering up abuse, hush money being paid out, close associates shutting down priests attempting to serve as defense counsel for victims—Prevost has consistently sidestepped disaster. Sort of…

FULL REPORT ON PREVOST’S RESPONSIBILITY IN SEX SCANDALS (IN SPANISH) HERE

Then, three days ago, the coming election of Prevost to the papacy was all but confirmed via a chance encounter with some of Prevost’s staunch and highly influential supporters milling about in Rome. The story was written by InfoVaticana’s Jaime Gurpegui, a nom de plume that has been speculatively linked to Jaime Mercant Simó, a priest in Mallorca. The identity of Gurpegui, however, remains a mystery.

The writer describes bumping into social media/LGBT superstar Jesuit priest Fr. James Martin, who promptly turned away and refused to interact when he learned of the reporter’s affiliation. Alongside Martin was Pope Francis’ biographer Austen Ivereigh, who infamously retracted material from his first edition of The Great Reformer, in which he detailed that Francis agreed for a select group of cardinals to campaign on his behalf in the 2013 conclave — an incredibly serious misstep that, if true, could be grounds for excommunication latae sententiae.

In the InfoVaticana story, Gurpegui writes:

[translated from Spanish]

Austin Ivereigh, for his part, did speak to us… although perhaps he would have preferred not to. Visibly annoyed—and increasingly so as the conversation progressed—he stood up, approached us, and vehemently reproached us for the “campaign” we, according to him, were waging against Cardinal Robert Prevost. “The campaign you’re waging against Prevost is very interesting,” he said, his tone a mixture of anger and frustration.

When we replied, "No, not against Prevost; against the culture of cover-up in the Church, which you're now in favor of?" the discomfort was palpable. Nervous, Ivereigh mentioned a Sodalitium as the supposed source of the information, and when we explained that there are many cases, all documented, he insisted, ironically, that InfoVaticana "always has more," referring to the documents we've been publishing on the case. His reaction left no room for doubt: Prevost was their man, the candidate on whom they had pinned all their hopes.

If you had been paying attention, a war was being waged in Rome, and if you knew how powerful a select few really are in the upper echelons of the church, you could have seen the name Prevost itself rising out of the white smoke.

What does Prevost — now Pope Leo XIV — mean for Catholics? For Trads, it is nothing short of cataclysmic. Many will not admit this out of fidelity, others simply do not know it yet since Francis amnesia has already set in, and many more will be lulled by Prevost’s traditional vestments and reports of his personal participation in the Latin Mass. Don’t be fooled—he is a construct of a small clique. Controversy and Francis-like doctrinal hedging are Prevost’s inheritance, to say nothing of his own serious baggage.

By the way, the election of Prevost is a crude parody of Jude Law’s character in The Young Pope, who is also the first American to become pope, who throws everyone off their game, and who then turns out to be a conservative, even saintly figure. Prevost may be just the opposite.

For everyone else, it’s business as usual. The Catholic Church is decisively moving in the synodal direction, drawing power away from grand councils and canons and ecclesial authorities for purposes unknown but with inclinations veering ever left.

For Protestants, some of this is fine. We all remember when Francis said that on matters of justification (one of the central controversies of the Reformation) Martin Luther did not err. That is an astonishing statement.

Even conservative 93-year-old Cardinal Zen, who’s had it rough under Chinese jurisdiction and traveled to Rome to warn his brothers of the synodal way in the days leading up to the conclave, nevertheless casually mentioned that Pope Francis had gone up to heaven. If you know traditional Catholic theology, that’s actually quite presumptive. But we Protestants agree with Rabbi Saul, the faithful Pharisee who says in the New Testament:

“…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

That is, amen. More amens may come if Prevost, Order of Saint Augustine, doubles down on his Augustinian roots in this regard.

Liberalizing tendencies in the Roman Catholic Church have actually improved the ecumenical situation a great deal. If Prevost continues that trend, I’m here for (some of) it. Let’s just make sure that progress in this direction is not made at the expense of victims of sexual abuse. What lurks in darkness must come to light.

Conclaves are now highly canvassed affairs with serious power thrown around. It is unsettling that scandals—too often concealed or “managed”—lurk in the skirts of the church’s highest power brokers, and that is a problem for all Christians who demand integrity among those who name the name of Jesus, especially those who occupy such public offices.

For better or worse, this is the lens to use when examining Catholic ecclesiology. It may even help you predict the next pope.

For Prevost’s brother back in Chicago, however, little prediction was needed. He knew that his brother was a top three finalist “a day or two” after Pope Francis died. Oops. These are the kinds of beans that don’t go back in the bowl.

https://x.com/ABC/status/1920591355685859681

When asked about the continuity between Francis and Leo XIV, Prevost’s brother said, “I don’t know that there’ll be much difference.”

Rich Baris, the top pollster in the country, known as much for his accuracy as his loquacity, revealed yesterday why Trump stopped short of fully disclosing the JFK files during his first term. As we have known for some time now, the culprit was none other than former CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

I’ve written about Pompeo before in glowing terms, that is, in the fiery glow of inveterate disdain. It is no surprise his name has resurfaced in this prickly matter.

“You cannot tell the country that our government killed a president,” Pompeo said to Trump at the very end of his term, according to Baris. His chief concern: reputational damage to CIA.

Pompeo was Secretary of State at the time, a lateral move in terms of spookistry in that era. As I have stated before on this substack, this is an un-American man to the core. Loyalty to government and agency over the constitution and the people it serves is the warren of tyranny and the bargain of secret societies. Men like this are not fit for service.

Hey Mike, next time you go around bragging to people that your pal Nikki Haley would be named the RNC’s Presidential candidate and you her VP just days prior to a particular assassination attempt in Butler, PA, you best not miss.

There’s no telling what the files (we might say what’s left of the files after decades of midnight shredding parties) contain, and hounds like Jefferson Morley and others are feeling a malaise after so many promises of full disclosure have been made and broken over the years.

An independently released recording, unauthenticated but authentically Texan, recently brought forth gave its listeners a new angle on the theory that LBJ had a direct hand in JFK’s murder. Any documents forthcoming may either lend or withhold credence for this view. We will wait and see what we get. Let’s just hope it’s not a dud.

I thought it important to scribble a note about this since the fallout from Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and Tennessee is proving increasingly tragic by the day and help is slow to arrive.

At time of writing, the highest number of deaths being reported by media is 220. The actual number is 3 to 5 times higher than that.

Eyewitness coordinator on the ground and five-time hurricane responder Eric Tansey answered a call from the hosts of the Antihero Podcast and walked them through the numbers of bodies that had been recovered. 400 bodies were pulled up in a single day. Tallied up, the current number is closer to 600.

Further still, a request for 1,000 body bags had been placed, which HHS, shocked at the number, was unable to fill, and the government has yet to report. Tansey said such a death toll is likely as some areas remain buried under dozens of feet of mud.

Past experience with information being suppressed or deleted obliges me to write this, especially in this raging political moment. Stay safe out there, and pray for those affected by this disaster.

—Isaiah 49:16

Writers for the New York Times were aghast, I say, aghast at what they heard during last week’s congressional testimony. If you’ve been reading the Missing Link, you’re wholly unsurprised to hear that top bureaucratic scientists misled the world about the origins of the coronavirus.

For the first time, we got a look into how the Freedom of Information Act has been used to conceal critical evidence that everyone in top positions knew the true origin of the virus—i.e., the Wuhan Institute of Virology via a grant funneled through ECOHealth Alliance, now affectionately known as RICOHealth Alliance.

David Morens, a Johns Hopkins professor and senior advisor to Anthony Fauci at NIH, told Peter Daszak (of RICOHealth Alliance) in an email:

“I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I am FOIA’d but before the search starts, so I think we are all safe. Plus, I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to Gmail.”

The criminality isn’t surprising, but the boldness is.

Morens later wrote to Daszak:

“We are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns, and if we did, we wouldn’t put them in emails. And if we found them, we would delete them.”

Oops. That kind of talk is its own kind of smoking gun, and he left it right there in the email, where he said he never would!

Morens later worked with Daszak to craft advantageous FOIA responses. Critical to the whole charade was when NIH deleted the definition of Gain of Function research from its website in late 2021, giving those who had been brought, or would be brought, under oath some semantic room to evade accusations and cover their tracks about what they did in China.

Notice, also, that it’s the “FOIA lady” who instructed Morens in how to dodge FOIA requests. The problem isn’t peripheral to one scientist who wandered his way into a government role. The problem is systemic.

For all the good that FOIA promised to do in demanding transparency from the government, savvy operators have learned to exploit technical loopholes to flout disclosure. Overclassification and liberal use of redaction codes have already come under scrutiny, but this revelation, especially since it has emerged in the context of a concealed man-made global pandemic, implicates the entire FOIA process as an impotent and outsmarted system that ends up encouraging government bureaucrats to subvert it and use it to their own advantage.

We need something more robust, thorough, and less secretive.

Take this recently acquired FOIA document begrudgingly coughed up by the NIH last month which shows just one of many emails sent to Fauci’s NIH in 2021 by people begging for help after they received the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. It comes to us in a batch of 300 documents which the NIH firmly decided to withhold.

The only reason we’re seeing any of this come to light? The NIH had to get the pants sued off of them. FOIA didn’t work. Offensive litigation was the only way to produce this email. I wonder why…

The whole thing makes those FOIA cool guys who write for major publications sporting rad tats on their byline headshots — *cough cough* Jason Leopold *cough* — who make their living off of “newsworthy” FOIA responses they receive from the government look like tools of the system rather than hard-boiled muckrakers for the fourth estate. Not one of them stops to think that the government may be misleading them about what they release, whether via strategic redactions or premeditated email scrubs, as we have seen in the COVID context.

Two conclusions: 1) Our government accountability system needs a major upgrade — maybe live monitoring of email exchanges or immediate expulsion for private work-related exchanges, like using personal email servers; or 2) our government is so massive and unwieldy that there is a reasonable argument to be made that no accountability system, no matter how robust, will be able to keep it in check.

Some news: The Missing Link will be slowing down in the next couple months.

After almost two-and-a-half years of near-weekly articles (this is number 114!), it’s…

Read more

—Isaiah 49:16

“The one thread that I know of with the FBI personnel that is common among most if not all of my clients…was they were all doing something related to Russia.”

Those are the words of Mark Zaid, a well-respected D.C. lawyer (red flag), who is representing about two dozen victims of Havana Syndrome.

The Syndrome is controversial — mainly for its mysterious origins and causes. Many, even government officials, have speculated the cause may be some kind of foreign directed energy weapon.

To the skeptics, however, the Syndrome is controversial because it primarily targets government agency employees. These skeptics believe the whole thing is a farce propagated by government storytellers to instill fear or malign foreign states to justify aggressive foreign policy and defense spending.

One way to evaluate the situation is to look at who is leading the charge. That would be lawyer Mark Zaid, whose firm “represents former/current federal employees, intelligence and military officers, whistleblowers and others who have grievances or have been wronged by agencies of the United States Government or foreign governments.”

His website proudly quotes the National Law Journal: “…if Agent Mulder ever needed a lawyer, Zaid would be his man.”

The fundamental problem with Zaid’s approach is that he plays within the government’s rules instead of the people’s rules. His deference to the government, even while supposedly representing whistleblowers who wish to expose government malfeasance, is one of the reasons he advertises his Deep State bona fides:

“He currently possesses TS/SCI eligibility and has had Q level access.”

Those credentials may sound impressive to a layman, but to a whistleblower that is concerned about retaliation or worse, their government gagging the truth, this should be cause for concern.

Keith Kloor says, “Mark's Havana Syndrome clients are current or former govt personnel, spanning multiple federal agencies, such as the CIA and FBI. He believes they were attacked by a foreign adversary inside their homes. He considers this an ‘act of war.’”

Zaid has been spending significant time getting the story out there and has encouraged the U.S. government to get on the right side of history and investigate the whole thing. The obvious culprit, in his mind, is Russia.

But there are other problems. Besides disagreement over whether such technology even exists that would have the ability to induce Havana Syndrome, Zaid’s past cases speak volumes.

He was part of the legal team that brought forth the so-called Ukraine whistleblower that sparked a Trump impeachment inquiry. This was the “he-shall-not-be-named” whistleblower that reporters feigned outrage about when Rand Paul read off his name in the Senate.

Zaid is a founding legal partner of Whistleblower Aid, which got the so-called Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen her five minutes of fame.

These are hardly whistleblowers. These are government-approved whistleblowers (oxymoron, I know), which means they act more like political battering rams. Zaid has also expressed some careless, verging on hostile, sentiments toward real-life whistleblowers in the past.

And then there are the allegations.

John Kiriakou had this to say about Zaid:

This is in reference to the case of Jeffrey Sterling, the CIA whistleblower who shared with journalist James Risen an elaborate scheme (Operation Merlin) approved by the Clinton admin to give false nuclear warhead plans to Iran, either to entrap or spark armed hostilities.

Sterling became Zaid’s client. Then Sterling went to jail.

The story also gave critical insight into how the intelligence community quashes stories — in this case quashing one from the subservient NYT.

So, Zaid backs government-approved whistleblowers, trashes real whistleblowers, and sometimes gets his clients locked up when they’ve got something big to reveal that will embarrass unaccountable, unelected government agencies.

Enough of that. Now, you tell me what exactly is going on here?

Interesting phraseology, Zaid. Here in the real world, we call “guys who had child porn issues” pedophiles.

Or what about this…

Zaid, a grown man, loves taking pictures with his beloved costumed Disney characters. Could be nothing, but it sure is a bizarre nothing.

But there is something that gives Zaid a positive mark in my book. He successfully battled the mandatory anthrax vaccination of soldiers in the late 1990s to early 2000s. Unfortunately, that is a can of worms that would lead to an entire warehouse full of canned worms, and thus caution must be exercised.

Not least of all because the trail leads to another “syndrome” — Gulf War Syndrome.

The Gulf War Syndrome episode, in which it is believed 250,000 American servicemen suffered or are suffering from something that may be related to the mysterious illness, is as bizarre and confusing as our present Havana Syndrome ordeal. Both syndromes occasionally include overlapping symptoms. At the time, Zaid’s CIA whistleblower clients — Patrick and Robin Eddington, a husband/wife duo — accused the agency of covering up American troops’ exposure to Iraqi chemical weapons. Media interest and inquiry ensued, with ongoing official denials.

Zaid’s focus took an interesting turn in 1998 when a group of U.S. sailors retained his counsel when they decided to refuse to take the mandated anthrax vaccine. Why Zaid for that kind of case? Gulf War Syndrome, of course.

Subsequent investigation led to Tulane researchers declaring that Gulf War Syndrome had been caused by the anthrax vaccine. One of those Tulane researchers, Robert Garry, was to testify in Zaid’s case to show how the vaccines contained an illegal adjuvant called squalene that was causing health problems.

Fast forward to COVID-19. It seems both Zaid and his expert witness Robert Garry have drastically changed their approach to new, yet comparable, situations, the former now championing the COVID-19 vaccine and sternly warning servicemen to take it or else, and the latter licking the boots of one Anthony Fauci to discredit lab origin theories of the novel coronavirus.

We are getting into strange territory. We should be asking, regarding Havana Syndrome, whether Zaid’s clients are truly victims of microwave weapons or something more mundane, and whether Zaid’s focus is truly justice or rather to keep the investigation narrowly focused and his clients on a tight leash for alternative purposes.

Lest we forget, Netflix’s Obama-produced smash hit Leave the World Behind propagates half a dozen government conspiracy theories, one of which is…Havana Syndrome.

—Isaiah 49:16

As a bonus post, here’s a short riff on a new FOIA email chain that shows the FBI continued to investigate COVID lab origins while Anthony Fauci was busy winning media points by publicly disputing Trump. The FBI disproved a specific claim made by Fauci that a natural origin was the only explanation, yet they stayed quiet.

The legendary fraudulent science paper known as “Proximal Origin” — a consensus study driven by Fauci himself — never swayed investigators, but Fauci’s power over minds and bureaucratic mechanisms ensured everything stayed under wraps.

“…the FBI's task force was disbanded ‘almost immediately after it obtained NIH grant proposals and progress reports that pointed to direct involvement of NIH (Fauci) and EcoHealth (Daszak) in funding the research that constructed SARS-CoV-2.’”

You can read more about it below…

HardFacts

New FBI FOIA Emails Provide Evidence of Intelligence Community Covid Origin Cover Up

An explosive new batch of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) emails reveals that the FBI knew early in 2020 that the Covid-19 pandemic likely originated in a Chinese lab. The key statement in the FBI emails, whose authors and recipients are all redacted, is that a lab made virus “***would leave no signature of purposeful human manipulation***” (emphasis …

Read more

3 years ago · 8 likes · Jeff Carlson & Hans Mahncke

Reminder, earlier this year, smoking gun evidence showed the virus came from a lab. Much of America remains oblivious, and to this day no one has been charged with a crime.

—Isaiah 49:16

*NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE*

It’s the most wonderful time of year: Crypto season. There’s nothing like it on the planet. And you’re lucky enough to be reading this stack while most people are flying blind.

Crypto boom cycles are when people go nuts, figuratively and literally, and new tech is unleashed into the digital money landscape, most of which will launch and crash in a matter of months or years while most of the world takes no notice. Some startups, however, will end up changing the game forever. For those paying attention and minding the space, there are gains to be made.

After a few months of buying pressure pushing Bitcoin and other tokens into the stratosphere, prices for the big winner this cycle (Ethereum, in my opinion) have settled back down to skyscraper height. If you’re willing to risk the climb to the top, there’s a good chance a rocket ship awaits, ready to take you to Mars.

The takeaway: We’re in a dip. And if I were looking to put my money somewhere, I would take a crypto bro’s advice and “BUY THE DIP.” It is unlikely there will be a better chance.

One reason is the halvening. The Bitcoin halving is an event that happens about every four years that inaugurates a new boom cycle. And guess what: The halving just happened this past week.

WHAT IS IT: “Bitcoin halving is a significant event in the Bitcoin network where the reward for mining new blocks is halved, thus reducing the rate at which new bitcoins are generated.” [SOURCE] What this means is that after last week’s halving, the number of new Bitcoin entering circulation about every 10 minutes through block rewards given to miners has dropped in half — from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC.

Thus, the growth rate of the Bitcoin supply has slowed. Theoretically, this aids in scarcity and drives price growth. Historically, Bitcoin has indeed seen significant price increases after every halving.

Those thin black vertical lines in the chart above mark a Bitcoin halving event. Notice how soon after the halving (weeks or months thereafter), things trade sideways for a bit and then take off. There’s no guarantee the fourth halving event will have the same effect, but history speaks volumes. Bitcoin go up > entire crypto market go up.

The second signal is the inevitable Ethereum ETF. While things have hit a snag due to a new lawsuit brought by the SEC, they have zero chance of winning. It may delay approval, but it will not stop it.

As always, government agencies are playing hardball with things that they either don’t understand or feel pose a threat to their power and to the corporations that have captured them. It is amazing how much innovation a bureaucracy can crush or derail. Crypto would have taken off long ago if not for the endless lawsuits brought against it by your own government.

The ETH ETF is coming. We saw significant price movement with the Bitcoin ETF—to the tune of about +$20K in value—and the ETH ETF will likely see similar upward movement that is proportional to its own market cap.

The third signal is tech. New L2s like Base (started by Coinbase) and Blast (started by a dude named Pacman) are unleashing cheaper networks to trade crypto. These L2s interact with the Ethereum network, and Ethereum accommodates them through updates that reduce fees for the L2s when they interact with Ethereum’s base layer. Since Ethereum cannot easily reduce its network fees, its new Blob-L2 system is a step toward acknowledging that L2s acting in conjunction with Ethereum are the way of the future.

These L2s and affiliated tech ventures are deploying new games, partnerships, and incentives to bring in everyday investors on chain. Just look at the gains Base and Blast are making on the rest of the L2 market. As things start to pop off and the Bitcoin halving takes root, look out for things to go BOOM.

The fourth signal is sentiment. Where is it?

Ask yourself, how many normal people in your life are raving about buying crypto right now? Nobody. That’s a good sign. We haven’t hit mania phase, yet. The biggest gains come during a lack of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm comes when people missed the train and still believe another train will be waiting to take them to Valhalla.

When everyone hops on that final train, believing with absolute confidence but not knowing for sure that it will take them all the way, that’s when things go bonkers north and bonkers south. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see $90,000 Bitcoin and $6,500 Ethereum. That’s when you look to that timeless advice, courtesy of Vault-Tec:

Never be ashamed to sell at a profit and get out of dodge. There’s no shame in it, and in fact there is only pain in staying too long.

I leave you now with the three vital acronyms of crypto posting:

*NFA — NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE*

*DYOR — DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH*

*WAGMI — WE ARE GONNA MAKE IT*

—Isaiah 49:16

On-the-scene cameraman Ford Fischer—great name by the way—has documented the ousting of a federal agent by a Virginia militia after the man attempted to convince them to build illegal explosives.

Russell Vane IV, nicknamed “Duke,” cozied up to the Virginia Kekoas and gained access to leadership in order to entrap the group. Sadly for Mr. Fed, his tactics failed.

Duke openly claimed to be working with CIA, ham-fistedly provided reports on explosives from the Defense Intelligence Agency, promoted acquiring quantities of hydrogen peroxide (for bombmaking) with other militias online, and pressed Kekoa members to learn more about the trade…

Duke’s story started slipping when he boasted about being in the news regarding Project Maven — a military A.I. program — and accidentally claimed association with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. That would be DoD. (History tells us, however, that the NGA was a joint venture of CIA and the DIA in the beginning, so go figure).

So, was Duke CIA? DoD? Mixed company? Or some kind of gray spacer? We may never know.

And then, the gambit.

Duke claimed to have a contact in the Russian Embassy who was willing to donate $50,000 a month to unite all Virginia-based militias. The Kekoas shortly kicked him out.

The Russian honeypot angle is probably the funniest part of all this because it reveals an institutionally derived and perpetuated misunderstanding of how those in a (typically right wing) U.S. militia operate. It’s humorous because right wing friendliness to Russia is a myth developed and sold to the media by Deep Staters (unnamed sources in media reports) to damage a certain orangey president of yesteryear and those who support him, e.g. militias. It’s also a McCarthyite tactic used to build and sustain support for Ukraine. That myth has taken hold so powerfully that Deep State handlers who send their plants out into the field to entrap militias have clearly begun believing the myth themselves. They were the ones who created it!

Thus you have Duke, a federal agent, attempting to entice a U.S. militia with Russian sugar daddies because Duke and his handler genuinely believe the militia will go for it.

Comical! A subsequent indignant statement released by the Kekoas tells you just how poorly that little Russian gambit went over with the group…

There’s an important lesson in here. Never believe your own propaganda!

The whole charade finally ended when shortly after getting kicked out of the militia, an obituary for Duke appeared online. A legit obituary, with a memorial service and everything. Thanks to Ford Fischer’s investigation, it turns out the memorial service never happened, and a friend of Duke’s spilled the beans that Duke was doing just fine. As for the obituary…

This hilarious story comes to us amidst the bizarre ramming of the Atlanta FBI office last week, in which a Navy veteran (and Clemson fan) mustered his anger at the system and some horsepower to blast into the HQ’s gated checkpoint.

WIRED reported that the man had expressed interest in joining a militia back in 2020. What WIRED failed to report was that in the same thread, the man was being lured to the January 6 event by online personalities. Savvy?

What’s all this mean? It means it’s going to be a busy 2024. The orange man is leading in certain polls, which means entrapment operations will be out in force. These operations may or may not allow certain acts of violence to occur—the very acts of violence they are encouraging their targets to commit. We’re hurtling into dangerous territory. Don’t be surprised if someone does something truly diabolical, and don’t be surprised if a few black suits lurk behind its perpetration.

—Isaiah 49:16

The only thing more important than who committed an act of terror is who you believe committed the act of terror.

Let’s see what X/Twitter thinks:

130+ people were killed in Moscow over the weekend. ISIS seems to have taken responsibility, though even that is in dispute. The terrorists we know of were from Tajikistan. They were headed to Ukraine when fleeing the scene.

As I reported here last summer, a Eurasia Program Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute shared a prophetic view on what might happen in retaliation for Wagner’s moves into Africa. From my article:

“This particular article from a Fellow of the Deep State’s Foreign Policy Research Institute lays everything out, including where Russia’s borders are most permeable for theoretical jihadi armies to invade should the mood strike them.”

The author, Raphael Parens, who spent half of 2022 with the World Health Organization in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, where he “countered misinformation” about COVID-19 vaccines, had this to say in his article in War on the Rocks:

“Islamic State Khorasan Province and Tajik Islamic State have also seen an increase in Russian-linked financial support recently, including digital donations of rubles.”

Catch that? FSB interrogation of one of the killers revealed this…

Parens suggests these donations come from Russian nationals recruited by ISIS.

The detainee said someone called “The Preacher” contacted him on Telegram and sent him the money to commit the deed.

We’ve already seen attacks on the Crimean bridge and attacks within Russia perpetrated by Ukrainians, including the killing of Darya Dugina. These particular terrorists were headed directly to Ukraine after the attack. You decide what is going on here. The Russians sure have…

And another Russian speculation that the terrorists were recruited through the Ukrainian embassy in Tajikistan:

But here’s more from Parens’ June 2023 article:

“If Wagner continues its security assistance campaign on the continent [Africa], the group could be unwittingly building the conditions for a jihadist outbreak along Russia’s southern borders and terror attacks within Russia itself.”

ISIS-K is said to have been behind the latest terrorist attack in Russia. Parens had something to say about them, too; namely that they’re perfectly comfortable praising the West for supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia:

“The Islamic State, as a result, sees Russia as the “leader of the ‘crusader East’” — similar to its views of the ‘crusader’ West. Islamic State Khorasan Province [ISIS-K] has even praised support by “crusader governments” — Western states — for Ukraine against Russia as a sign of divine justice for campaigns by the latter against the Islamic State.”

Regarding “porous” borders that could facilitate jihadi movement in Russia, Parens says this:

“Should Sunni jihadist organizations choose to strike into Russia, Russian-born or foreign fighters will likely enter from the Caucasus or Central Asia.”

What could all of this lead to? Parens says it could set the stage for a Jihadist uprising within Russia:

“Though Wagner Group operations in the Sahel and North Africa have provided the basis for renewed grievances against the Russian state, an internal event could actually provide the spark for a jihadist uprising within Russia’s borders.”

That’s right, Parens says all you need is the “proper spark”:

“Should the proper spark set the tinder aflame, Russia could face its own wave of militant jihadism sweeping across its borders.”

Victoria Nuland, architect of the Maidan Coup of 2014 that kicked off the Ukraine civil war and subsequent invasion by Russia, announced her retirement a few weeks ago, but not before informing us that Ukraine will be engaging in asymmetric warfare from here on out to make sure they have a better negotiating position in 2024 with Russia.

If Russia escalates after this terror attack and withdraws any willingness to negotiate, our Deep State gains long-term narrative leverage against Russia, and worse, Ukraine will get absolutely hammered from the East to the West. Here may be the ultimate goal, if you take Parens’ word as more of an announcement than a lucky prediction:

“These [terror] attacks could provoke a heavily militarized Russian response, as occurred in Chechnya in the early 2000s. Such responses could themselves accelerate the now-familiar cycle of jihadist violence, state-sponsored counter-terror violence, refugee crises, and political crisis.”

That is to say—domestic turmoil and political upheaval in Russia. AKA: regime change.

Alright. I’ll end it there. And as always, you be the judge. But to jog your memory and better acclimate yourself to what’s really going with ISIS-related organizations and individuals, here’s another piece I put together early last year that might help you put the pieces together.

—Isaiah 49:16

*NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE*

Months back, I let readers know about the start of the current crypto bull cycle. Since then, things have popped off, and as predicted, Bitcoin ETFs were approved. Inflows caught many off-guard, including Coinbase, a designated ETF Bitcoin custodian. Activity ran so hot that their platform gave out and temporarily showed $0 in funds for its users until they could bring everything back online. That’s what we call in crypto much bullish, very wow.

If you’re feeling left out, you’re not alone. I’m happy to say there’s still time. I’ll explain in a moment.

Weeks ago, when Vanguard announced that CEO Tim Buckley would be retiring, many speculated that he had been pushed out because he refused to offer customers a chance to buy spot Bitcoin ETFs on their platform. Those speculations were largely put to rest when he discussed the subject in a recent interview, saying “We’re not going to change our minds” because Bitcoin is “too volatile and not a store of value.” Simply put, it’s the company line, and it won’t change regardless of who’s in charge.

If you’re not a crypto nut like myself and actually have your head screwed on correctly, you will look at these wise words from a wise man who’s grown his company to $9 trillion (trillion with a T) in assets under management, and you, being wise yourself, will take his wisdom to heart by avoiding Bitcoin and crypto in general at all cost.

But it’s a trap. Don’t do it.

Buckley is not mistaken, per se, in his evaluation of Bitcoin. It is volatile. It is speculative by its very nature. It has not fully accomplished what it was designed to do—i.e., take over the monetary system. Why then should you dismiss Buckley’s musings and throw your hat in with the crypto kooks?

For one, Vanguard is the second largest shareholder of MicroStrategy, Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin behemoth. Bitcoin go up > MicroStrategy go up > Vanguard mutual fund go up. Indirect exposure to Bitcoin is still exposure for Vanguard. Are you aware that Bitcoin is Saylor’s whole schtick? While you and Grandma were out buying bonds and opening savings accounts to get that extra .25% interest, Saylor was gobbling up metric tons of digital gold more volatile than nuclear fission and arguably less understood. See this man’s energy?

Vanguard’s exposure to Saylor is one thing. The other thing is that when it comes to wisdom in investing, most of the people on the other side clicking the BUY button in today’s world have none of it. People will buy whatever’s hot. Tech is hot and getting hotter. Perhaps it wasn’t always this way, but it is now. Conventional wisdom about what will go up and what will stay put or diminish will need reevaluating. It’s not even clear that stocks will survive in the long-term as tech companies pursue ICOs—initial coin offerings—that functionally act like stocks and would be subject to SEC regulation, but would bypass any kind of market listing. So long NYSE.

If you thought the demise of the wild-eyed floor traders on Wall Street was the end of an era, widen your gaze.

With crypto, it will be all or nothing. The end game is either complete takeover of the monetary and financial system, or it will die a slow, agonizing death under a pile of VHS players and moldy beepers.

Why is the S&P 500 still going up when people are feeling the economic pinch and jobs reports are continuously being revised down? Could it be the top movers are tech-related? Why yes, yes it could be. This should be a signpost that something has shifted.

Much speculation is driven by the rise of A.I. Will A.I. truly be successful? The answer to that question is beside the point. It’s hot, and you will put your money into it because you can’t help it. We’ve either moved into a new era of investment, or the economy is so bad that in order to get ahead, people will chase the riskiest possible plays because their prospects elsewhere—jobs, housing, expenses, retirement—look bleak.

The final point I’ll make is that crypto really does go beyond the speculative. It’s a hard asset with hard use cases and slowly hardening methods of mass adoption. Don’t let the FUDders (FUD: fear, uncertainty, doubt) fool you. And while some investors have proclaimed Bitcoin to be a fake asset because it produces no cash flow or quarterly report that shows the “business” is doing well or doing poorly, the truth is the Bitcoin network generates average fees to the tune of $2.6 million dollars a day. It’s true that those fees aren’t going to you as an investor in the form of dividends (unless you’re a miner), but it is a good measure of how well Bitcoin is working and how many people are willing to use it.

That brings us to the present moment and how you can ride this crypto wave, if you’re strong enough and unhinged enough!

If you think $2.6 million in Bitcoin network fees is good, the Ethereum network is currently generating an average of $24.5 million in fees a day. The usage is massive.

You’re reading this at just the right time. We’ve hit a modest dip. If I were looking to purchase more crypto, I would be buying now. And specifically I would be buying Ethereum since it has the most room to run and a likely ETF of its own on the way very soon.

The other components that make Ethereum an attractive buying opportunity are the launches of new L2s that work off the Ethereum mainnet to reduce fees. A recent upgrade to the Ethereum network called “Dencun” is reducing fees for those who operate on L2s. Feel free to do your own research on these things; just know that it means *massive* investment is going into the Ethereum blockchain. Moreover, as we’ve seen since 2022, the supply of Ethereum has turned negative due to the way new upgrades to the blockchain deal with “gas fees” on the system.

This means that everyone who is buying Ethereum is scrambling to get a slowly diminishing supply. Opportunities for price movement upward look good for the foreseeable months.

That’s the good news. The dose of reality that you will need going forward, should you decide that investing in crypto is a good idea for you, is that crypto cycles include both rapid run-ups and rapid collapses. It is called a cycle for a reason. It’s never shameful to find yourself ahead in crypto and decide to sell.

We haven’t hit crypto mania yet in this cycle, but when we do, that is a sell signal, psychologically speaking. If you make a profit and decide to sell, you will experience pain when you see that price continue to go up. Don’t let it get you down. It’s far worse to ride the cycle up and ride it back down and find yourself at a massive loss.

Never be afraid to sell at a modest profit!

That’s why you have to be brave, strong, and ever so slightly crazy to be a crypto bro looking to make money on the market itself. But if you have long-term vision and conviction, it is my opinion that crypto is the play of the century that will become the standard financial system at some point in time. When? I don’t know. But if you’re going to bet on it, now’s the time.

Happy bull!

—Isaiah 49:16

Deep underground, beneath a bombed out Ukrainian command center is a fully operational bunker housing a CIA-backed Ukrainian espionage operation intercepting Russian cables and hacking satellites…says The New York Times.

In perhaps the most predictable story of the war, the Agency, unable to keep its most precious secrets secret for fear you might never know how much work they put into fomenting the mutual slaughter of hundreds of thousands of young men in a territorial war that could have been resolved two years ago, they chose their second-favorite paper (WaPo #1), to present to you like a dog with its chew toy their most insane waste of money yet — a decade’s worth of single-handedly running Ukraine’s intelligence apparatus as its proxy in the region in the eternal war against Russia.

When it comes to CIA, it’s like the Cold War never ended.

Isn’t it funny that CIA can find support in Washington to wage generation-defining warfare on behalf of Ukraine but can’t muster an iota of interest in making the beleaguered nation a full-fledged NATO member? Kind of says it all, doesn’t it? The U.S.-Ukraine partnership is the geopolitical epitome of an abusive relationship.

The report spins a juicy account of the close relationship forged between CIA, MI6, and the new spy chief of Ukraine in 2014, the day after the old spy chief and President Yanukovych fled Ukraine. That relationship began with phone calls to both agencies by the new spy chief on February 24th, 2014, almost ten years ago to the day. Proud Deep Staters never forget to honor clandestine anniversaries in their annals of choice.

Future generations, having greater clarity with reports like this that lend further credence to claims that myself and others have put forward that this is a Deep State-started, -funded, and -operated war, will look back on this disgraceful conflict and wonder how The New York Times could publish such a glowing story of CIA’s exploits with a straight face.

Apart from Operation AERODYNAMIC implemented early in the post-WWII era to turn Ukraine into an American proxy state against Communist Russia, we are inching closer to implicating—with hard evidence—CIA (and MI6) in the color revolution known as the Maidan coup of 2014.

This would be in keeping with its sordid history of partnering with Nazis in the region. To do what exactly? For the express purpose of overthrowing governments. This isn’t rocket science.

“They were Nazis, pure and simple,” one CIA operations chief said. “Worse than that, because a lot of them did the Nazis’ dirty work for them.” [LINK]

Like the State Department, things may have landed jelly side up for CIA in 2014, as well. This should come as no surprise. Their goals are often interchangeable.

But here’s the quote of the article: “And they [intel networks] are increasingly at risk: If Republicans in Congress end military funding to Kyiv, the CIA may have to scale back”

Gasp! Not a restrained intelligence agency!

Don’t give the tabloid Times a click. Read more about the story here, and I think you’ll find that with a critical eye—a storyteller’s eye—you’ll see that some of the claims in the report are more fanciful than fact: “a pile of smoldering documents in the courtyard”…*eyeroll*. Whatever you believe about the facts, however, the truth is that this is a CIA war, not an American war.

The math is simple. No more CIA, no more funding, no more Ukraine war. Back to normal overnight.

—Isaiah 25:6

In the 2010s, James K. A. Smith wrote a lovely three-volume work on the nature of Christian political engagement beginning with Desiring the Kingdom (vol. 1), then Imagining the Kingdom (vol. 2), and finally Awaiting the King (vol. 3).

Widely hailed as a powerful window into the nature of institutional formation — shall we be shaped by politics or, as agents of the Messianic King, shape our politics by a desire for the common shalom? — there is perhaps a fourth entry that poor Mr. Smith failed to pen that could have been called, Tasting the Kingdom.

Too late for that. We have gotten the fourth volume in cinema form. Let me introduce you to The Taste of Things from Vietnamese-born French director Trần Anh Hùng. Advertised as a culinary film garnished by rich, edible visuals and seasoned performances, the movie is precisely that and much more.

Veteran actress Juliette Binoche plays Eugénie the cook, and Benoît Magimel plays Dodin Bouffant the gourmet, who together bring haute culinary creations to Dodin’s rustic manor in the year 1885. The film seldom ventures from the location and spends most of its time basking in the simple charms of the basement kitchen nearly the entire runtime.

The film opens with a methodical cooking sequence in which Eugénie and her young helper prepare an exquisite menu derived from ingredients freshly harvested and butchered on the manor’s garden grounds. Everything is traditional and handmade. Thick iron rings are lifted; coals are shoveled into the stove top to heat. They cook exclusively by the light of day flooding through stone windows. You see the flavors; you hear the aromas. The mundane is made marvelous.

The U.S. release, The Taste of Things, is a title change from the French: La Passion de Dodin Bouffant. The change is not entirely a shame since it will drive greater English-speaking viewership, nevertheless it hides the passion that so elevates the film—the plural passions, that is, that Dodin displays both for the art of cooking and for his potential lover and present colleague, Eugénie. The first is evident from the start; the latter takes time to unfold, and it is worth the preparation and plating.

The character Dodin Bouffant comes to us from the culinary stories of Marcel Rouff and his 1924 book La Vie et la passion de Dodin-Bouffant, gourmet.

The Swiss-born Rouff and his colleague Curnonsky (Maurice Edmond Sailland), who is known as the Prince of Gastronomy in France, together wrote the 28-volume Gastronomic France: Guide to the culinary marvels and the good inns of France. Curnonsky’s writings for Michelin in Le Journal—and the contemporaneously published motorist guide, which the Michelin brothers started printing in 1900 to encourage French consumers to buy cars (and thus, the brothers’ tires)—led to the development of the Michelin Star rating system.

Eugénie and Dodin enthrall as both co-workers and potential lovers, with Dodin asking “once again,” playfully but earnestly, if she will marry him. Her answer, and ensuing events, form the basis of one of the most evocative cooking scenes you will see in film. Ordinary in its details, extraordinary in its cooking splendor, and sublime in its contextual presentation, it follows Dodin preparing and serving a multi-course meal of unimaginable quality to the woman he can only desire, not have, and who is clearly suffering some sort of physical malady evidenced by her periodic fainting spells.

In real life, Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel are “ex-partners” and have a child together. Whatever fire they once held between the two of them is visible on the screen. Perhaps in their performances they drew from the wells of longing leftover from that broken time in their lives. It is like a temporary restoration on screen of what sin and circumstance had destroyed in real life. It is, intentionally or unintentionally, a vision of hope.

Eugénie, more savant than cook, works wonders in the kitchen and is so dedicated to the craft that she rebuffs Dodin’s friends who beg her to join them in sharing her inspired dishes upstairs in the dining hall where women of her extraordinary talent rightly belong.

Dodin’s friends are almost comically rich and far surpass aristocratic expectations of attire and elocution. They quote philosophers and poets long dead as if they are there in the room with them. It’s all very French and uppity. And yet.

Whatever snobbishness the audience might at first detect by their clothing and conversation is promptly dispelled by the entourage’s sincerity, faithful friendship, and unwavering loyalty to Dodin and Eugénie. They are wildly obsessed with food, not as a gluttonous diversion but as a commitment to savoring the stories and feelings that the food evokes within them—stories and feelings they have for Dodin and one another. In that way they are buoyant, delighting, genuine personalities whose respect for fleeting fancies has attuned them to the weight of human bonds and their irreplaceable role in human connection and meaning.

There is a human worldliness (1 John 2:15-17), and then there is a Godly form that glorifies the one who created the world (1 Corinthians 10:31). There is no need to discern which characterizes that of Dodin’s friends—this is a work of secular fiction, after all—but what is clear in their posture of friendship and joyful, unrestrained generosity of spirit is a taste of the Kingdom of Heaven.

When John the Baptizer’s followers approach Jesus during a meal he’s sharing with his disciples and with the “tax collectors and sinners” of Capernaum (Matthew 9), they question why he and his followers aren’t fasting like they are (probably twice a week in accord with Pharisaical custom). Although we are given no further details, we might well imagine that when Jesus responds that fasting is inappropriate while the bridegroom is present among them, that this was met with jubilation at the table that night. This is the disposition of Dodin’s friends at Dodin’s table. The joy of table fellowship is the key.

It is this picture that Jesus paints of his Kingdom, which is here and now, yet not fully complete as there still exists those in the world who want no part of it. For those who accept the invitation to dine with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the messianic banquet (Matthew 8), there is some joy and love we can learn from Dodin’s rich friends whose delight in food is surpassed only by their delight in one another. That brotherly love compels them to humility, to share perfectly prepared fowl in the game keeper’s dilapidated hut in their bespoke suits, to go running across dirt terraces when called upon to aid their friends, and to stand by their brother in dire circumstances hoping to reinvigorate the joy they themselves cannot contain or refrain from sharing. They possess what the French might call a joie de vivre and what we Christians might call Kingdom Joy.

Anything more than that may spoil the film, so do watch, and savor the flavor.

• Violence: none

• Language: limited, if at all

• Nudity: it’s French (but surprisingly modest)

—Isaiah 49:16

Putin is fine with Russia playing a modest, collaborative role on the world stage

Despite fervent nationalism in Russia, Putin clearly plays a moderating role. He appeases the extreme voices at home while fostering friendships abroad with world powers, as far as he is able. There are obvious red lines for him — NATO and Ukrainian Nazis — that he says motivated him to act. The scrapping of the Minsk Accords is also key.

But it appears he’d rather put an end to all of that, return to normal relations, and put the Ukrainian problem far behind him. There is a niche he sees that Russia can fill that ensures Russian sovereignty and pride while exercising a realistic degree of economic and political power abroad that will never exceed that of the U.S. or China.

Putin is a globalist, but is motivated differently

It’s telling that Putin still calls the powers in the West his “partners,” even as they fund weapons and mercenaries that are killing his own soldiers in Ukraine. He has a strong intuition to cultivate global relations, but he is motivated differently than your average left or right globalist. While they are motivated by power, control, and money, Putin is motivated by his singular dedication to Russia’s interests, and thus he engages in similar globalizing relations.

Despite his boasting about Russia’s ability to thrive while dodging every sanction under the sun, he has no illusions that Russia is a younger brother in the world, and it benefits Russia to lean into that role. It’s not something he would say directly to hard Russian nationalists, I’m guessing, but he signals it through his words.

Some say he was grandstanding, but he was just making the most of the opportunity

This interview wasn’t an interview; it was an opportunity for Putin to express his message to the West in a way he hasn’t previously been afforded. Some say he was grandstanding or filibustering by giving such a lengthy history lesson, that he was putting on a typical Russian display of power and lording over the conversation. It’s not an unreasonable conclusion.

However, from the outset of the interview, his question to Tucker was whether or not they’d be having a serious conversation. It is also telling that Putin’s team had done their research on Tucker. The CIA comment about Tucker’s past is clear. Putin recognized that Tucker provides a less filtered platform than other Western media, and so he sincerely gave his history lesson for persuasive purposes rather than conversational power. You may decide if it was effective or not.

Putin is frustrated that the post-Soviet vision is dead

In his view, Western powers killed the dream of friendly relations with Russia in the post-Soviet era. It’s hard to argue otherwise, especially as Putin himself long ago asked about joining NATO. The American neocon mindset of great power politics prevented this. To them, Russia is a gas station on the way to a larger, apocalyptic conflict with China. Where Putin sees opportunities for diplomacy and partnership, the West sees an opportunity for hostility and subjugation.

Again, that’s not the collective mindset of the people in the West, but that of their leaders — who have reached a level of incompetency and self-importance we have not seen since the elitism of the early 20th century that led to WWI, and then WWII. What you have are bunch of Ivy League lunatics running the country, and their philosophy is killing both American prosperity and global peace.

Putin is prepared to end the conflict with Ukraine at any time, and relations are still salvageable

The biggest takeaway is that Putin was adamant the war would end in a matter of days if a peace agreement (that had long ago been drawn up before it was torpedoed by Boris Johnson) could be reached or funding stopped going to Ukraine’s war effort. The latter is more reasonable than you think. Videos have been released of Ukrainian authorities stuffing people into vans and hauling them off to the front lines. The nation has been bleeding blood and treasure for months. Western benefactors are beginning to appear like slave drivers, whipping Ukrainian leadership into forcing more and more men to walk through the fire. We are drawing out the conflict and forcing old people into a decimated military. Recruits are lasting seconds on the line.

The war could have and should have ended long ago, but our Deep State still will not allow it. Putin suggested they could come up with some kind of excuse that would save face, and he’s right — they will probably do this once we find a way to stop funding the war.

Love him or hate him, Putin is far more practical about the situation because he needs to be. He has skin in the game. By and large, we do not.