Beatles Evolution & Revolution

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If you are going to be successful as an act, you need management & a producer.

Brian Epstein was an ambitious music entrepreneur who managed the Beatles from 1961 until his death in August 1967. Epstein signed the Beatles with EMI’s Parlophone label, which became Capitol Records, and today is owned by Universal Music Group. Beatles songs were all produced by George Martin and remain a huge money maker, testifying to Brian Epstein’s ability to recognize talent, which itself is a talent, and then pair it with the necessary recording talent.

For the record, Brian Epstein was gay and like many stars & others of his era he died young (age 32) of a combined alcohol & barbiturate overdose, ruled accidental. Being gay is a difficult lifestyle, because apparently at some point there becomes an overwhelming need to separate from the mainstream. None of that conventional stuff satisfies. Beyond that, much of the conservative mainstream rejects gay, openly declaring its hostility.

Drugs & alcohol can become a refuge. Gay parties are different from straight parties. In my experience, there are much more drugs & sex going on at gay parties. Much of it is reckless & unprotected, as the attitude among many who are gay is to live it up today & die young. Many don’t want to live into old age, as they are in pain over their sexuality, and once it diminishes, their mental agony can become excruciating. Sadly this emotional pain leads to many early deaths.

Relationship building is an area where many people have issues. It’s especially hard for gays who have come out of the closet to trust straight people, because all straights said or did something offensive to their sensibilities at some point. It’s tempting for gays to become snowflakes on this, which doesn’t help anyone. Rehabilitation & education need to work together for there to be progress in sexual healing, but currently that is being cut out in favor of quackery, prejudice & identity politics. The real work that needs to be done is being actively resisted by all this.

After Epstein’s death, the Beatles attempted to manage themselves with Apple Records and it was a disaster. It wasn’t until after they officially broke up in the spring of 1970 that the Fab Four got they legal & financial issues in order so they could all get paid. Northern Songs was the famous Lennon-McCartney publishing company created under Epstein’s guidance. This got John & Paul paid equally on all their compositions.

George founded Harrisongs in 1964 which ensured he would get paid for his music. Ringo founded his own music publishing company, Startling Music Ltd, in 1968 after his deal with Northern Songs expired. Before the Beatles had begum to disintegrate as a band, each member was legally taken care of as far as songwriting, publishing & royalties. Those are the typical issues that break-up successful bands, and the Beatles showed the world how to handle it as it happened. “Creative differences” between band members is often rooted in legal issues that affect the commerciality of the act, along with who gets paid.

I’ve written in earlier posts that the Beatles wouldn’t be allowed to be successful in this 21-century era. The music industry has learned from the Beatles, punk rock, and 1990’s alternative rock/hip-hop. Those were times when popular music got out of their control and the industry doesn’t like that, even though it makes them billions of dollars. The industry wants to bottle everything up and endlessly sell it back to new generations of consumers, while never allowing another revolution in popular music. Historically, losing Frank Sinatra’s audience to rock & roll in 1955 started all this upheaval for the music industry. Charlie Parker & Sun Ra did the same in jazz.

You can’t stop history, which is metaphorically a raging river with unstoppable momentum & overwhelming power. Rock & roll is here to stay, and you can’t kill it. Same for reggae, rap, salsa, electronica, etc. Once a genre conquers the world, it becomes immortalized and can’t die because too many people, particularly kids, love it. It just keeps growing & flowing, increasing its influence as it goes along. All one can do is attempt to direct the flow. A revolutionary artist finds the best channel and directs all his/her energy into that historical task.

If the Beatles came along today and got their big audition on American Idol, Simon Cowell & company would listen for a bit, then insist to Paul that John be fired. Brian Epstein would be pushed out over a drug/sex scandal, etc, and Universal would handle all management through one of their preferred star agencies. This means Paul would be represented by CCA and be recognized as the undisputed band leader who gets all the songwriting & publishing money, while George & Ringo are a step above session musicians in this gig. If either protest they can easily be replaced. Drum machines that sample Pete Best & AI guitarists work much cheaper, making these new & improved Beatles more cost-efficient to the industry. This is the only way these new Beatles could be economically viable.

George Martin’s talents wouldn’t be applicable to these Beatles. Industry braintrust would surely prefer the guy who produced the Black Keys or Foo Fighters. New Beatles music would need that production edge with everything they’re missing, and George Martin is too subtle and respectful towards the artist to work in contemporary rock music which is now a top-down corporate-controlled project.

Under these conditions, John will struggle to get another opportunity as he’s too outside-the-box for this corporate era of music. He’s not sponsor friendly, so how can you market him? This is how all the gatekeepers & industry experts would understand a young John Lennon today. In this industry-created world, Paul McCartney & his New & Improved Beatles could become more popular than One Direction featuring Harry Styles. Of course, there wouldn’t be 1/10th the great songs from this new UK supergroup, but that’s just a cost of doing business.

Conclusion: There are great aspiring artists with the ability to make meaningful music, but it’s all being suppressed by ruling-class corporate which controls marketing, distribution & sales through its network of business partners, to which outsiders have no access. If you’re reading this, then you’ve discovered a real musical artist of the 21st-century. We’re all underground, censored & blacklisted by the establishment which has near-complete control over TV & the internet. It’s all dirty politics & big money that keeps us suppressed. Eventually the river of history will wash away all their detritus. This will happen when youth & working people unite in action, using music as a tool for revolutionary inspiration.

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My life with gay

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Beauty is blessing with a curse. Physical beauty attracts the opposite sex & gay. If you are attractive, you are going to have to deal with gay.

For the record, I’m 100% straight. Don’t believe that nonsense which declares everyone has gay in them. I have no desire for gay sex. That doesn’t make me anti-gay, it’s merely my sexual preference. Some snowflakes get jealous and attempt to persecute me for that. Anti-gay reactionaries are always looking for political cover for themselves, and a scapegoat to point their dirty fingers at. When you’re a real socialist, you get attacked from all sides politically.

I grew up in the 1980’s, when ‘coming out’ starting becoming in vogue. MTV & Madonna were a big influence on that, and it was certainly needed. I had Wisconsin high school friends (boys & girls) who came out after graduation, and I was among the first of the straights to be told by them. The gay boys were attracted to me, and the lesbian girls knew I was cool and would still be their friend. The ex-jocks & elitists were always the most reactionary towards gay, often claiming they were “betrayed” when they found out so-and-so was gay. That’s why most gays move out of the small towns and to the cities.

Those homophobic bigots were the people I soon lost touch with after high school, as they went on to become cops & local attorneys according to their aptitude. I soon lost touch with my new gay friends too, as that world became a culture that organically excluded straights who were unwilling to “experiment.” The only reason I was being invited to gay parties was because they wanted to have sex with me, not to be my friend.

I was kidnapped into a gay house sleepover in college. I thought I was being taken back to my dorm in downtown Milwaukee, but was instead taken to a rented home in Menominee Falls. I was introduced to all these new gay friends of my high school classmates, and was told we are having dinner & sleeping over here. [!!]

After this deception, I was uneasy about drinking alcohol, or anything else I didn’t serve myself. The meal was well-prepared, but hardly enjoyable. When it was time for bed, I slept alone on the living room couch, while everyone else went into a bedroom to have gay sex. It was my job to deal with all this like a man by waiting until morning to be taken to my desired destination, and not be a jerk about this. That’s a tough spot to be put in.

When gays are amongst themselves, they speak much more openly. After dinner, my just-came-out-of-the-closet male high school friend is examining the CD collection and is excited to see the Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, etc, well represented. The flaming-gay home resident says loudly to me with a wink & a laugh, “He’s going through his fag rock stage.”

Since then, all that 1980’s goth music has been ‘fag rock’ to me, because that’s what the fags call it– I heard it myself. That doesn’t make me anti-gay, it means I understand gay MUCH better than most straight people. Gay people need a few more straight people like myself who are honest about all this sexuality, because everyone else it lying about it for their own purposes.

For the record, my ‘gaydar’ is exquisitely sensitive, as it needs to be. I am usually the first straight man in the room to know there is a gay person in the area. This has been happening to me since I was a child, so what’s speaking here is a lifetime of experience & learning. If you are attractive, gay is going to find you. It’s all about how you deal with it. What you must do is:

1) Determine your sexual preference and don’t allow any unnatural forces to influence it
2) Determine you social attitude towards a group with whom you are not sexually attracted
3) Set healthy boundaries & limitations and maintain them

This is pretty advanced stuff for most people, as much of today’s society is failing Sex Ed 101. If you aren’t physically attractive, then you don’t have this problem of gay kidnappings, or being lured to their parties, gay bars, etc. Many heterosexual reactionaries are jealous of me because they are ugly. They want to pretend they know better, when in fact they know nothing on this. They claim to be protecting the public interest, when in fact they are fascist haters looking to scapegoat artists & leftists so their crimes can stay hidden from public accountability.

Jealously is the most dangerous emotion. It leads to contempt & uncontrollable rage. Nothing good can come from that. When politics get hyper-sexualized, everything gets distorted because most people are out-of-control when it comes to sex. Most people are never comfortable with their sexuality, and that becomes a root of many disorders– mental, physical, social, economic & political.

I have always turned to music in the face of such difficult & substantive issues. If you love the Velvet Underground & Nico produced by Andy Warhol (1967) they way I do, then you can’t be anti-gay. If you respect David Bowie, etc, in your music listening, then you are a friend of the gay community. With these tools at your disposal, you have all you need to connect with gay people on amenable terms– anytime, anyplace.

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Adam Back: CEO of bitcoin

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Satoshi Nakamoto is the mysterious computer programmer who invented bitcoin and drafted its “white paper” which describes how it works, why it exists, its ideology of anonymity, decentralized finance (de-fi), and other Libertarian tax-avoidance philosophy. There is also a lot of techno-babble on “blockchain” in the bitcoin white paper, which now has become much clearer.

The New York Times just published an investigation that identifies Satoshi Nakamoto as British cryptographer Adam Back, the owner of Blockstream, a very overvalued blockchain tech company headquartered in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, with offices & staff worldwide. Blockchain is a generic crypto industry term for the computer technology that stores & transfers crypto. Coincidentally, Adam Back owns the tech term for bitcoin storage as his company name, Blockchain. We now see more precisely how bitcoin works, when we know who started it.

Of course, Adam Back denies the New York Times‘ claim he is Satoshi Nakamoto, yet in his denials he explains why he is Satoshi Nakamoto, so this is all a game of hide-and-seek with the truth for him. The NYT investigation used their best human investigators, combined with AI analysis of writing style among other factors to conclude with 99.5-100% certainty that Satoshi Nakamoto is Adam Back.

As a believer in science, technology & rational though, I accept the NYT on this, and see Adam Back’s response as an attempt to explain & justify his motives as Satoshi Nakamoto while boosting the value of his creation. The global crypto market is currently ~ $2.4T, and it was created by Adam Back, CEO of Blockchain. This is the biggest whale in bitcoin.

Do you see how much crypto murkiness gets removed when the public can know it is a fact that Adam Back is Satoshi Nakamoto? The mysteriousness of Satoshi Nakamoto lent mythical legitimacy to bitcoin from the start. The entire crypto industry began with bitcoin, which was concocted out of the ruins of the sub-prime mortgage crash of 2008. Bitcoin quickly became the newest form of malignancy in capitalist finance & economic theory.

As soon as that first pizza place agreed to take a few bitcoin for a delivery order, crypto has been legitimized & hyped. At first it was a bunch of Libertarian tax cheats who knew computer code, but it soon became a full-blown Kool-Aid drinker cult of online bitcoin fanatics in the 2010’s. Their mantra was/is: Make easy money without having to work or pay taxes, you’ll always be anonymous, it’s a community-owned technology, etc.

The exposure of Adam Back as Satoshi Nakamoto verifies all this bitcoin propaganda as lies. If you get as big as bitcoin has gotten, eventually the world will find a way to identify who you are. This expose’ (& Banksy) was ordered by serious monied interests, what I’ve identified as the “Warren Buffet faction,” the acceptable corporate opposition to bitcoin & crypto. That faction of capitalism sees crypto as an existential threat to the economic order, with bitcoin being the most explosive & destructive. If/when bitcoin crashes and can’t recover, it will bankrupt the entire international financial system, and it is increasingly likely that will happen in the near future. Right now, bitcoin is being propped-up by futures traders who are become increasingly pessimistic about the future.

Bitcoin & all other crypto doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Crypto is exceptionally sensitive to macro political issues. Like when president Trump expands a World War that Bazooka Joe Biden started in Russia/Ukraine & Gaza/Lebanon, by attacking Venezuela and kidnapping its elected president & his wife to have them held in a Manhattan maximum security facility awaiting trial on charges of narco-terrorism. The problem is the Trump administration has no evidence or proof of narco-terrorism, so everything is delayed and kept murky, while another front is opened up by attacking Iran. That’s how catastrophic world wars start and grow out of control– and it must be stopped.

Donald Trump was turned onto bitcoin & crypto by Elon Musk around 2022. This was between his terms as president, a time Trump retreated to his compound in Mar-a Lago to lick his wounds and plan his next assault on democracy & the international working class. Crypto became his latest scam, and it’s his best one yet– IMO. He’s made more money off his worthless crypto tokens & exchange than any of his other business ventures that went bankrupt, but in crypto his costs are virtually nil and people give him real money in exchange. He’s made billions on crypto, but more than that he’s learned a powerful, anonymous & nefarious way to move funds to fascist henchmen who will do his dirty work for him.

Fascism needs these mechanisms to pay its soldiers of death & destruction– the only things fascists are actually good at. So in the big picture in this War for Historical Truth, Adam Back is a leading enabler of fascism through his bitcoin creation & propagation. Crypto-fascism is the mechanism Trump is using to destroy what is left of democratic rights in order to establish a fascist police state dictatorship in America. To get to be Hitler, Trump needs bitcoin.

Bitcoin has helped the fascists WAY more than hard working people who are honest & want to live in peace. Bitcoin is a Libertarian ideological scam introduced around 2010, which has attracted the worst elements of modern society for all the wrong reasons. It is much easier for serious opponents of crypto to explain these facts to people now that we definitively know that Adam Back is Satoshi Nakamoto.

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NCAA hoops finals previews

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Pro-Michigan bias predicted for UM-UConn men’s hoops finals. Danny Hurley has his hands full here. UConn is a basketball school, that’s why they’re in the Big East. They are an original Big East basketball school, along with Georgetown, St Johns, Providence, Seton Hall & Villanova.

Times have changed, and Syracuse, Boston College & Pittsburgh are gone, with the likes of Marquette, DePaul, Creighton, Butler & Xavier now part of the expanded Big East. These are all basketball schools as far as NCAA recognition goes.

We all know football rules, as it draws-in the most viewers (television & streaming), sponsorship money and betting action. The NCAA favors Power 4 conferences, particularly the Big 10 which is run by the University of Michigan. As U-M alum QB Tom Brady says when it’s championship time, “Bet Michigan.” This is tacit recognition (from a true expert) that there’s more going on than the players on the field. There’s officiating, replay officiating, announcer & media commentary all feeding into this bias. Is this prejudiced & unfair? To ask the question is to answer it.

As I stated earlier, UConn coach Danny Hurley has his hands full. First, acknowledge that he’s a great coach and that deserves respect, but he can be a hothead who loses it when he’s been pushed too far with the officiating in a close loss. See Marquette v UConn on 2026 Senior Day at the Fiserv Forum. Marquette got favorable whistles in a nationally televised game on Fox, which kept the Golden Eagles in it and they pulled it out. It was their signature win in a dismal season, and Danny Hurley exploded at the refs on a good no-call at the end, aggressively confronting a bad referee immediately after the buzzer. He was fined $25,000 by the Big East for his outburst. As a Marquette alum, I thought that was ruling fair and moved on with no grudges.

UConn doesn’t make a distinction between men’s & women’s basketball, they are both strong NCAA traditions winning multiple national titles and producing countless NBA & WNBA stars & good players. Danny Hurley supports Geno Auriemma and vice versa. Jim Calhoun started the UConn basketball excellence, and Kevin Ollie is also revered as one of the great coaches in the UConn tradition.

Geno Auriemma has coached at UConn for 41 years, won 10 national titles, and coached the USWNT to basketball Olympic gold in 2012 & 2016. Geno Auriemma is perhaps the greatest women’s college hoops coach ever. It’s either him, or Tennessee’s Pat Summitt (1952–2016).

Yet South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley felt the need to disrespect Geno Auriemma by making him wait in front of everybody for 3 minutes before shaking hands pre-game at half court when announced over the PA system in the arena. When the names are announced, the coaches are supposed to shake hands as a sign of respect for your opponent, the game, as well as the fans in the stands who have paid to see a fair sporting event.

Clearly this was a punk power-play slight towards Geno Auriemma, and Dawn Staley still hasn’t explained it. She insisted he initiated the bad blood and she’s speechless, praise god, his will was done tonight, etc. Of course she’s allowed to get away with this clown act in the media, as they cover for her and don’t press her on anything important in the matter.

The Democratic Party controlled corporate media amplifies red herrings, and insist these are the “facts” that matter and nothing else is to be discussed. Sports fans now recognize this garbage instantly and comment on social media, where their most pointed & critical thoughts are removed by moderators and right-wing attack algorithms. AI bots spam “Fire Geno!!”, etc, and if your didn’t know better you would think this is how people actually feel.

But of course we all know how identity politics creates the narrative in situations like this. A while male heterosexual head coach angrily confronted a black, female head coach after a heated game, AND she praises God. Case closed for the #MeToo & #Black Lives Matter campaigns on that.

The video on this has been turned into propaganda by every fake left outlet, so I won’t post the video– I’ll describe it and you can compare for yourself. I’ve seen the original end game video a few times and I concluded I saw an upset legendary coach giving a foul-mouthed winning coach a taste of her own abuse. Then I see the winning coach going ballistic, hysterically screaming at the losing coach, requiring her entire staff to stand around her and separate her from going after him while hiding her face from the cameras. That’s how they have each others back at South Carolina. You can see how they’ve practiced that.

For context, since it matters, the reason Geno Auriemma had words for Dawn Staley was her pre-game slight, and also the officiating, where Dawn Staley was allowed to berate & abuse the officials, to the point where Geno Auriemma got into it with her & the refs in the second quarter. It was a 62-48 final score, where South Carolina went 18-22 from the free throw line, while UConn went 4-6. I didn’t watch the game, and it is primarily this reason I tune-out the NCAA these days. The officiating crew was Brenda Pantoja, Fatou Cissoko-Stephens & Katie Lukanich; and they should have to answer some questions here, don’t you think?

The UConn men’s team defeated Illinois to reach the finals last evening, but the Geno Auriemma-Dawn Staley dust-up was still their ticker lead, with UConn’s win over Illinois not even in their ticker. Only after Michigan beat Arizona in the second semi-final was Danny Hurley’s big win a story on the ESPN website. Over a thousand words on Geno Auriemma’s apology, etc, with prejudiced writers & numbskull analysts all asking “Is it enough?”

Yes, it’s enough. Now it’s Dawn Staley’s turn to answer for all her misconduct. But I don’t see that happening and neither does anyone else with any political & sports sense. The truth is both Geno Auriemma & Dawn Staley are to blame for this, but this system of “justice” says if we create a scapegoat, then he can be assigned all the blame, when actually it is cartoonish & a false reduction.

But that’s how it is with these people. Facts don’t matter and the truth isn’t welcome for a class of gatekeepers. In reality these are the functionaries & henchmen for fascism, who will to do anything to satisfy their masters. Universities represent capitalist ideology– through curricula, research & the NCAA. The top brands are always favored, just as the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox & Dodgers in baseball. Just as the Lakers, Knicks & Celtics receive favorable bias in the NBA.

It used to be called East Coast Bias, but it’s really big market bias. The top brands are always favored because it is perceived by elites that these brands carry their sports and nothing else matters. So if UConn wins over Michigan tomorrow night, that’s considered a huge blow to what the NCAA is trying to do, which is build its brand by making sure its signature brand (University of Michigan) wins the title.

The South Carolina-UCLA women’s hoops final is this afternoon, and I am making sure I’m published before the game starts. I feel I’m taken more seriously when I predict what’s going to happen in advance and am vindicated by events.

Severe U-M bias all down the line in the final is my prediction on the men’s side. UConn will have to hang in there and try to outlast the unfairness they will be facing. It’s probably too much, with Michigan much more likely to win in a blow-out than UConn, as the Wolverines are getting at least 8-12 points from the refs. It’s in Indianapolis, the NCAA HQ, so it’s basically a home game for Michigan.

As I’ve stated above, the only thing that really matters about the women’s game (to real sports fans) is what Dawn Staley says about Geno Auriemma and her own unsportsmanlike conduct before, during & after the UConn game. Winning isn’t more important than that, because if you have to cheat & abuse others to win it’s no longer a game, it’s a dirty political war.

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Iran & the 2026 FIFA World Cup

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On March 7, 2025, the Trump White House hosted a “crypto summit,” which featured a surprise appearance by FIFA president Gianni Infantino who pitched a FIFA meme coin and announced a partnership with Trump for World Cup 2026 to be held in North America. The crypto summit focused on making the U.S. a “bitcoin superpower,” establishing a strategic national Bitcoin reserve, and appointing David Sacks as crypto policy czar. Many crypto criminals were pardoned in this time period, or had their criminal DOJ investigations dropped.

This is also when the Trump regime took control of FIFA’s 2026 World Cup. This summer’s World Cup is to be entirely a play-thing of the most criminal & corrupt elements on the planet.

US imperialism’s current criminal war with Iran is the political equivalent of Hitler invading Poland in September 1939, and the corporate media & Democratic Party in America are doing their worst to obscure this historical parallel from being drawn out. This is the murky political backdrop to this summer’s FIFA World Cup, set for June 11 to July 19 in Mexico, the US & Canada. The Iranian national team qualified and are in Group G on the US West Coast with Belgium, New Zealand & Egypt, but it now appears they won’t be participating.

FIFA & the Trump regime are intimately tied together in their criminality & human rights abuses, as both have been in on a plan to build a 25,000 seat soccer stadium on the rubble of Gaza. A coalition of international advocacy groups, Palestinian football players, and clubs filed a 120-page complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) on February 16, 2026, accusing FIFA President Gianni Infantino and UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin of “aiding and abetting” war crimes and crimes against humanity.

President Trump would need to publicly declare & guarantee the safety of the Iranian national team and all its support staff & fans during World Cup 2026 for there to be any chance of Iran competing, but instead Trump says he doesn’t care if Iran participates. This was a political opportunity for Donald Trump to send a message to the people of Iran that he is on their side, but this proves he isn’t. This is how imperialist wars for regime change are judged by history.

If/when Iran pulls out, potential replacements include Saudi Arabia, Iraq, or the United Arab Emirates. Iran is currently in a mandatory 40-day mourning period following the death of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the initial US-Israeli strikes. All domestic sports in Iran have been suspended, meaning the Iranian national team has no way to prepare for the World Cup. As long as the US-Israeli aggression continues, there is no possibility the Iranian national team will be part of World Cup 2026.

With the Russian Federation and its nominal allies being banned from the 2024 & 2026 Olympics by Western controlled institutions, international sporting competition has reached a crossroads. Virulent nationalists & outright fascists are deciding everything in their interests based on cynical & rotten politics, to the detriment of the vast majority, and it’s leading humanity into disaster. World Cup 2026 is just the latest casualty in this war.

Conclusion: Let’s be clear, if a pro-US government could be established soon, the Iranian national team would be welcome at World Cup 2026 by Trump & the Democrats. But since re-installing a shah puppet dictator won’t be so easy, the Iranian national team won’t be welcome on US soil. That’s the line in the elite European & American media that have commented thus far. Most are keeping their distance, while FIFA is “monitoring the situation,” etc.

Donald Trump still has no idea how badly he has discredited himself. He’s too preoccupied with waging war & raging against Marxists to think about anything. Football fans around the world are watching, as crypto-fascism destroys perhaps its most sacred institution. The 2026 World Cup can have no legitimacy as a sporting event. This has nothing to do with how much of a favorite Iran was to make the Round of 16, etc. It’s about fair competition at the highest level being marred by crypto-fascism.

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US imperialism strikes Iran– again

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The war for regime change in Iran is also known as the war that can’t be won. That’s why, up to now, no US President dared try it. The Trump regime has now started its second war against Iran in a 9-month span. Trump and his cronies claimed the 12-day war with Iran last June destroyed their military’s nuclear ambitions and that America was now safe due to this armed intervention.

Yet America is again at war, when Iran poses no threat to US security. The insecurity in the region is entirely due to non-stop US-Israel imperialist aggression, which has finally provoked Trump’s decision to strike Iran again. This hawkish US foreign policy has much support among ruling elites on both sides of the aisle, but little-to-no support among the remaining layers of the population– from professional class to working class. To the American ruling class, that vast divide is the political danger in what Trump has done.

All the political pundits on every network are “wait & see,” when asked what will happen next. As a viewer I ask, “What are you so-called experts paid for? This is a crisis and you can’t tell us anything we don’t already know.” Click.

What’s going to happen? First, oil prices are going to rise dramatically, and everyone knows that means the price of everything from gas to groceries is going up. When you add that to Trump’s tariffs, it’s a recipe for economic, social & political disaster. I suppose that is why none of the pundits want to speak to this.

The Democrats are finished, as they threw in their lot with Trump’s crypto-fascism long ago. Democrats support ICE, DHS, the FBI & CIA, all of which are authoritarian secret police agencies that are above the law. These agencies protect the Jeffery Epstein clients because they now take their marching orders from one of his top clients: Donald J Trump.

The Democrats as a caucus support the crypto industry, perhaps the biggest scam in financial history. The Democrats support the military action Trump has taken in Iran, they only object to being left out of the loop. This consolidation of political, economic & military power into one individual has those on the fake left (Bernie Sanders, AOC, etc) a bit concerned. These near-dead liberals may be forced to organize a one-day protest to let off some steam. Their motto will be: Vote Democrat in the mid-terms.

Democrats operate in that area of circular logic which insists that if the Republicans are exposed & largely discredited as Nazis, then supporting the Democrats is the only “realistic” alternative for democracy. Nevermind the Democrats have enabled & collaborated with Trump all along. It’s getting harder to fool the public when the veneer of democracy has been violently torn away by Zionist genocide in Gaza & ICE terrorism & murder in Minneapolis.

None of the official narratives that apologize for war crimes & crimes against humanity are holding up on social media. The kids can see that Trump is lying and that Congress, the Supreme Court, and the corporate media all allow him to get away with it– day after day after day. What the kids now know is that the Democrats are political accomplices in Trump’s criminality and largely suspect that all this corruption stems from capitalism.

Sports aside: Donald Trump was given the FIFA Peace Prize by FIFA president Gianni Infantino (pic above) in December 2025. No comment yet from Trump or FIFA on whether the Iranian national team will be allowed to compete in World Cup 2026 hosted in North America. Iran qualified and is in Group G with Belgium, New Zealand & Egypt. Iran is scheduled to play two matches in Los Angeles and then in Seattle against Egypt on June 26. Sports pundits have remained conspicuously silent on this.

Update: ESPN just published an article titled, “Iran’s soccer federation says World Cup participation in doubt”. Fans from Iran were already barred from entering the US by Trump’s travel ban. The president of Iran’s soccer federation said he does not know if their national team can play World Cup matches in the United States following the surprise US-Israeli attack on his country. “What is certain is that after this attack, we cannot be expected to look forward to the World Cup with hope.” For the record, Donald Trump has already negatively disrupted group play & attendance at the 2026 World Cup, which of course pleases him. And sports fans thought football was decided on the pitch.

President Trump is what the ruling class needs & demands– a dictator. Dictators are toppled by the international working class when their regimes of authoritarian terror & cultural vandalism become so bankrupt & malignant that no one will fight for them anymore. Defections from fascism are happening on different levels. The American working class has already rejected Trump’s attempts to establish a fascist regime in permanence. Popular resistance to ICE terror testifies to that. Republican prospects in the upcoming mid-term elections also speak loudly to fascism’s existential political crisis.

This war on Iran is Trump’s attempt to shift the narrative and start a world war which would allow him to exercise martial law and declare himself President for life. History “experts” on major news networks fail to make these obvious connections, which makes one wonder how much they really studied. How much do they understand about fascism? They barely use the term, much less attempt to draw obvious historical parallels between Adolph Hitler & Donald Trump.

Below is the bulk of George Stephanopoulos’ interview with Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi this morning on ABC’s ‘This Week.’ It has been slighted edited for clarity. This interview can teach the international working class much about how nationalist class interests affect the news and turn it into propaganda by distorting facts & eliminating historical truth from the discussion. For once, someone was allowed to reply to this.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Who’s in charge of Iran right now?

ABBAS ARAGHCHI, IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: There is a transitional council of the president, the head of judiciary and one jurist of the Guardian Council. These three would decide — are in charge right now.

STEPHANOPOULOS: President Trump issued a warning overnight, warning the Iranians not to retaliate. And he said, “they better not do that. If they do, we will hit them with a force that has never been seen before.” How do you respond?

ARAGHCHI: Well, I don’t think any leader of a country has the right to say so. You know, we are defending ourselves and we have every right, every legitimate right to defend ourselves. What the United States is doing is an act of aggression. What we are doing is the act of self-defense. There are huge differences between these two. So, one should tell, you know, the president of the United States, do not attack, do not — you know, make any aggression against another country. But nobody can tell us that you don’t have any right to defend yourselves. We are defending ourselves whatever it takes, and we see no limit for ourselves to defend our people, to protect our people. Just look, yesterday, they hit — they struck against a school. So far, 148 girls, students have been killed and this is a big massacre. This is a war crime, and you say we don’t have any right to defend ourselves?

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say you want to protect your people, but your own regime, according to the estimates we’ve seen over the last several months, is responsible for the killing of up to 30,000 of Iranian — Iranian citizens.

ARAGHCHI: We have already answered this accusation. You know, let me to explain. We were faced with a terrorist operation. It was first protesters, demonstrations — demonstrations which were legal. According to our constitutions, our people have the right to protest and to go for gatherings and demonstrations. They did it from 28 December to 7 January. We had legal protests. Everything was fine, and nobody was killed.

And then on 8 January to 10, we [were] faced with a terrorist operation. Armed elements were added to the — to this — you know, question, and they started to shoot at our police forces, our security forces and then they started to shoot at ordinary people, even to protesters. Why? Because they wanted to increase the number of deaths.

Since the president of the United States has — had already said that if there are killings, he will come to — he would come to rescue. So, they wanted to actually drag him to this question. So, they started to kill people. So that was a terrorist operation for three days and the number of killings were exactly 3,117. And the names of those victims, all of those victims have been already published by us, together with their identification number. If anybody claims that the number is more, as you said, 30,000 — 50,000, whatever, please show one evidence. Please add one more name to the list we have already published.

If somebody shoots at a police department officer in the United States, how do you react? Do you just, you know, give him permission to do whatever he wants because he is a protester? No.

And so many people were killed, you know, blindly by these terrorist elements. Because they were ordered by Israel, at that time, they were instructed to kill people and give a big number of killings to the president of the United States. We have their voices, their instructions, which coming from Mossad, from outside, to these terrorist elements, who are ordering them to kill police officers, if not police, kill the boy and girl in front of you, because they wanted killings.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is a negotiated settlement with the United States still possible?

ARAGHCHI: Well, you answer this question. We negotiated with the United States twice in the past 12 months. And in both cases, they attacked us in the middle of negotiation. And that has become a very bitter experience for us. In last June, we were negotiating. We had five rounds of negotiations, and we had already fixed the sixth round for 15 June when the Israelis attacked us, and then the U.S. joined the attack.

And this time, we had three rounds. Last Thursday, we had a very good discussion, very good talks in Geneva. Both Iranian and the U.S. delegation were happy at the end of seven hours of negotiations. And I can go into the details of what we agreed and how a deal was at our reach. And when we concluded, the Omani foreign minister, who was the impartial intermediator between us, he concluded by saying in his post that we made significant progress this time. We were able to come to a good understanding on some of our differences.

Some other differences were left for the next meeting, and we decided to go for Vienna, to send our technical teams to Vienna on Monday, which means tomorrow [3-2-26], to go to the IAEA, and with the help of the International Atomic Energy Organization, try to find technical solutions for the political problems. And we both believed, I mean, both delegations believed that this is possible. So, a deal was at our reach, and we left Geneva happily with the understanding that we can reach a deal next time we meet.

And it was very unfortunate that those who are against peace, against diplomacy, against negotiation, when they understood that diplomacy is going on well, they decided to spoil it, and they created a buildup in the media, you know, against the Islamic Republic of Iran, against the desires of us, against Iran. And they made lots of accusations against us. They made — they created false information and disinformation, and they finally get, today, to what they wanted. They dragged President Trump, they convinced President Trump to attack us unprovoked and unwarranted.

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The NIL Frankenstein

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The NCAA Power 4 conference commissioners & athletic directors will attend a White House roundtable discussion hosted by Donald Trump on March 6. Invited guests include: Tiger Woods, Nick Saban, Mack Brown, Urban Meyer, Tim Tebow, Condoleezza Rice, New England Patriots president Jonathan Kraft, NBA commissioner Adam Silver, Fox Sports president Eric Shanks, and ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro.

The issue is NIL (Name Image Likeness) spending for top athletes, which has quickly turned into a Frankenstein for the NCAA, which was caught flatfooted from the start and has never come up with a fair & rational system to regulate NIL spending & the transfer portal, so they are now seeking Congressional & Presidential intervention. It seems like there is an athlete suing the NCAA every week now over eligibility, etc, and it’s become a right-to-work issue beyond its institutional control.

The NCAA’s “Power 4” is about football money, most of which comes from television & streaming. The Big 10, SEC, ACC & Big 12 are the Power 4– in that order. SEC commissioners & AD’s are upset because they collectively feel their athletic programs are vastly superior to those of the Big 10, but the NCAA is staffed at every level with Big 10 alumni, so they get favorable rankings, seedings, officiating, national television exposure, etc, which creates friction between the top dogs.

The ACC has suffered greatly in football during this NIL era of the transfer portal and conference expansion/reshuffling, so their school officials aren’t happy. The Big 12 had to rebuild itself after losing Texas & Oklahoma to the SEC a few years back. The Big 12 is doing better with Texas Tech committing $28M to its football program in 2025, which yielded them a coveted CFP playoff spot. But most schools can’t spend like that, and those that can’t are upset about competitive imbalance.

Everything is about football, as it generates the most viewers & largest wagering handles. Therefore, a basketball conference like the Big East has become irrelevant to the NCAA. UConn is still a top national men’s basketball team, but it won’t be able to recover its glory of just a few years ago when it won back-to-back national championships because it doesn’t have football revenue coming in to pay for top NIL basketball athletes like Power 4 conferences can.

On the NCAA agenda now is expanding its football playoffs from 12 teams. Sixteen teams makes the most sense, and always has, but it appears the NCAA is looking at possibly jumping to 20-24 teams for their playoffs. Top Big 10 officials (University of Michigan) insist on byes for Power 4 conference champions, etc. This makes it easier for their teams to win the football championship (as Indiana University did in 2025), versus having a 16-team playoff with no first-round byes.

Understand that the NCAA doesn’t want a fair & level playing field, it wants the Big 10 to win every year and put as many of its teams into the big tournaments (football & basketball) as possible. Generally speaking these days, the SEC qualifies & wins a lot because it spends the most money on NIL athletes, coaches & infrastructure. Everyone is lobbying for rules that give them the biggest advantage, so in the end their is little agreement. Money wins is the bottom line, and there is no way to change that fundamental under capitalism.

The Winter Olympics just concluded and the US had its best medal count ever. The last two Olympic games, Paris 2024 and Milan 2026, excluded Russian athletes, which affected medal totals. NIL spending, particularly for summer games sports such as track & field, swimming & gymnastics means these sports are now NCAA dominated, which is pushing up US Olympic medal wins.

Foreign athletes now get visas to come to a US university and train in their particular sport so they can get paid. Ed O’Bannon v NCAA in 2016 changed everything. College & high school sports are now openly professionalized as the concept of a “student-athlete” has been largely obliterated in bigtime NCAA sports. Today, the top girls high school softball & volleyball players across the country have a NIL profile. That’s how far it has proliferated.

AAU hoops & traveling soccer teams are corporate sponsored and the spending is only going up. The next tennis & golf prodigies are nurtured at ING academies and the like. Everybody wants to win, and seemingly every parent wants their son/daughter to get an athletic scholarship to a Power 4 school where they can play on TV & get paid.

Major universities have become sports factories more than institutions of learning. Back in the 1980’s, SMU and the University of Miami were outlaws in this regard in the eyes of the NCAA. Today they would be heralded as models of excellence in this age where winning in football is all that matters.

So how is Donald Trump going to fix this? To ask the question is to answer it– he won’t. Donald Trump & many of his invited roundtable guests are at the heart of this corruption that is destroying athletics. They don’t care about the athletes or the integrity of the game, they only want to profit & accumulate power from sports.

Conclusion: The issue for the NCAA is that college athletes are now paid free agents and this is getting very costly for universities that want to compete in sports. Power conferences dominate the NCAA because they have the deepest pockets and thus monopolize the top talent. What used to be hidden booster activity to avoid NCAA sanctions is now organized into university NIL collectives. Alabama will still win at football because their alumni are willing to spend whatever it costs to win. Whatever rules spending limits the NCAA sets, they will be covertly by-passed by universities that want to win– everyone knows that.

This mechanism change of paying athletes through NIL rules allows all schools to do what only the most competitive did in the past– pay their players. But the amounts are what matter, and just because Marquette can now pay its basketball players doesn’t matter so much when the University of Wisconsin can pay theirs so much more. The result is the Wisconsin Badgers are a NCAA Tournament team in 2026, while Marquette stinks. Marquette doesn’t have football so that program won’t have the revenue to rebuild through high-school recruiting or the transfer portal. Marquette was a consistent men’s Tournament qualifying team as of a few years ago, but that era is over.

These NIL issues have filtered up to the WNBA and have affected CBA negotiations which are currently at an impasse and are threatening the start of the upcoming season scheduled to tip-off on May 8. Top women’s collegiate players are now well-compensated through NIL deals, and this has raised expectations for the current WNBA players. WNBA owners still want to treat the WNBA players as “lucky to have a job,” so CBA negotiations have been non-productive thus far.

Every adult has the right to work and be paid. The question is: who gets the most money from their labor? This NIL era has transformed athletics and how young people look at sports. It’s now more of a business than ever, and at a younger age. This is double-edged in that it can take away the youthful love of the game, but also raises the level of consciousness of the young athlete in regards to what sports are.

The earlier one learns what sports are, the better that young athlete can decide whether it is worth it to compete seriously. It’s just as important to know what you are up against, as it is to know what you are competing for. It quickly becomes about a lot more than the game itself.

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Milan Winter Olympics observations & thoughts

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The perils of promoting oneself as a “Quad God” before taking the ice in front of the world became an Olympic reality for US figure skater Ilia Malinin, who entered the free skate 1st, but placed 8th after two falls during his long program.

It’s painful to watch.

This was Olympic pressure cracking a very talented young man. NBC’s evening coverage from Milan, which is tape-delayed, featured two retired US figure-skaters who mentioned Olympic pressure as nothing an athlete can simulate or be completely prepared for. Tara Lipinski won gold in 1998, and she admitted her knees were shaking going into her long program– which won.

So we can see that every athlete feels the pressure, even those who prevail as champions. It’s all about managing oneself and focusing on the tasks of the competition. When you put yourself under more pressure because you have promoted yourself as a Quad God, then you are setting yourself up for failure. That’s all one can say to the athlete on this.

I’m of a firm belief that figure skating & ice dancing are art-forms that should be appreciated as performance, instead of graded as competition. I feel the same way about diving & gymnastics at the summer Olympics. I understand this opinion is in the minority, but there are points to be understood, even if it doesn’t change your mind.

Let’s start with the ridiculous notion of music being an Olympic event and “best rock concert” wins the gold. The Beatles rock the house, followed by the Rolling Stones, Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band, the Velvet Underground, the Doors, Creedence Clearwater Revival, James Brown, and finally Jimi Hendrix. Judges (trusted old people) will rate their performances, based on criteria defined by them, and determine a winner & podium.

That may sound silly, and it is, but Rolling Stone magazine has been doing this since it started in 1967. More than anything, criticism of music & film and the judging of athletic performances are vehicles to promote personal favorites & devalue disliked acts. They act as political & social filters.

For the last 25 years the corporatized “music Olympics” has transformed from Rolling Stone magazine into American Idol reality TV, and it’s why music sucks so hard today. When industry gatekeepers control every aspect from development & finding talent, to access to resources & media promotion, it becomes nothing more than a popularity contest & pet projects among executives, instead of the kids deciding what they like & get to hear.

Back in the 1960’s, kids loved the Beatles & Stones, and demanded more from the record labels, and what followed was its classic rock era. Today corporate heads manipulate everything you see in the media. The last thing they want is another Bob Dylan revolutionizing things. Today. one must pass through the corporate filter of reality TV before one can be anointed a star.

The Beatles & Rolling Stones wouldn’t be allowed to exist and become famous these days. Their type is too wild & dangerous, too exciting & influential with the kids, and that can’t be allowed to happen. That’s been the corporate philosophy on music & entertainment post-Nirvana.

It’s the same process in sports, which is big money these days because it’s live entertainment brought to the viewer through traditional television & now internet streaming. Sports harvest eyeballs in all demographics, which advertisers love & networks cash in on.

Thus, I don’t get caught up in this Olympics ice dancing judging controversy.

Unfair judging has been part of the Olympics for decades, as these are political slights intended to project power towards an antagonist nation. The actual effect is to degrade an athlete’s performance while raising suspicions of dirty politics undermining the spirit of “fairness & international goodwill” at the Olympics.

Curling is a little known sport, and this is historically my first commentary on it. Team Sweden accused team Canada of cheating during their competition. Video shows illegal touching by Canada, but the sport is not subject to replay review officiating– yet. Cheating at a “gentleman’s” sport which most people don’t even understand or care about reveals that we have a competition problem at the Olympics.

The problem is everyone lies, and the more money that goes into winning, means more cheating & lying to become the “best”. This can raise the pressure to a breaking point for many athletes. “Cracking” happens in many different ways– bad performances, rules cheating, hidden PED use, etc. The drive to be the best involves making difficult decisions and managing serious expectations. Failure can derail a career in minutes. Sponsors want a winning face that pops. Silver medals don’t get it done, as an Olympic athlete needs gold to have a successful post-athletic career in broadcasting or whatever.

Of course, I understand the need to recognize the best in sports, and in competitions where the event is decided by time or some other objective measure, or on the field played by a predetermined set of rules that is officiated on the field, then it is a sport where Olympic medals can be fairly awarded.

X-game events are largely subjectively graded, and should be appreciated as athletic-artistic performances, instead of judged for medals in competition. Let the fans & viewers argue about who is top-tier & best, etc. These performances would be better if they were considered as such. Music, art & entertainment are competitive, so there would be no lack of motivation to be recognized as the best. What would be removed would be tainted judging & corporate dominance in messaging, and sports fans would appreciate that.

Conclusion: I’m not an athlete, I’m a musical artist. The two are similar in that managing your performance is more mental than physical. World class athletes train a lifetime for Olympic competition. Unless there is an injury, it’s typically not physical issues that concern when the time comes to compete. It’s the same in music, as the performer knows how to play, but it’s nerves that can wreck it. Learning to control oneself and be calm in front of an audience is an advanced skill for any performer– artistic and/or athletic. It’s not something anyone is born with, it’s something that can only be learned through hard experience.

It involves breathing, taking in the moment, and realizing where you fit in as far as the bigger picture is concerned. It actually helps to have a bit of contempt for all this crap & people’s expectations, etc. If you feel the only expectations you need to meet are your own, then you are at peace and ready to perform. If you can’t do this, then it is easy to be overwhelmed by the situation, which creates self-doubt & performance slippage.

Lindsey Vonn crashed out of her skiing event (pic above), after trying to compete with a torn ACL. That was her choice as a professional athlete in an individual sport. Team sports are different, where competing injured can set an organization back in the long-term. In those cases, team physicians & management must make the final call, for the safety of that player, other players, as well as the interests of the organization & league. But in individual sports such as skiing, it’s the athlete’s choice.

These athletes consistently push their bodies beyond the breaking point to be the best and amaze the world. All this competition (music, art, sports) falls into the category of entertainment.

You do push yourself to (& beyond) the breaking point when you attempt to be the best in these fields. People admire & are inspired by great music, art & sport, but often don’t really understand the sacrifices, or the heartbreak of coming up short, getting injured, having to retire. No one can sustain the greatness to be the best in any of these entertainment fields for more than a few years. It’s too competitive and always progresses into the future, favoring the next generation.

Old judges & seasoned critics contribute nothing useful or progressive to entertainment. They act as a brake on development & innovation, invariably favoring conservative corporate & political interests. Too much of these Olympics, along with all other sports, is about satisfying the demands of people who put themselves above the athletes in competition.

And finally: Russia & Belarus are once again banned from competing as nations in the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina. Both nations were banned from the 2024 Paris summer games due to the ongoing war with Ukraine. This ban was a political decision made by western imperialism backed by its International Olympic Committee. Only a limited number of individual, pre-vetted athletes from Russia & Belarus can compete as neutral, non-represented participants– and most choose not to. This drastically affects: figure skating, cross country skiing, ice hockey, biathlon & speed skating.

The US is able to run up its medal count at the winter games due to: 1) new (X-game) events which largely favor US athletes; 2) banning Russia from the competition; and 3) massive sports spending in America linked to the NCAA, etc. World politics & corporate sponsorship are the unspoken elephants in the room as far as any international competition goes these days.

It’s not the Russian athletes’ fault that Russia & Ukraine are at war, yet they lose their opportunity for which they have trained a lifetime due to the rulings of corrupt politicians & their puppet institutions. This NATO-provoked proxy war in Ukraine is the work of US, UK & German intelligence, supporting fascists in Kiev in an effort to carve up Russia. None of that has any rightful place in influencing Olympic competition. Imperialist institutions are responsible for unfairly banning Russian athletes, stripping them of their opportunities for Olympic glory. Those are the real politics that underlie all the official lip service on internationalism & the Olympic motto of “Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together.”

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Who controls bitcoin?

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This is the third part of a trilogy discussing a qualitative shift in bitcoin-crypto dynamics. Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here.

Bitcoin has settled into the $68-72K range since I last published. Any short or long derivative bets outside that range are being aggressively liquidated. This is how Wall Street controls bitcoin without buying or selling any tokens. Since the analysis of the bitcoin market being manipulated by futures trading (linked & discussed in Part 2), bitcoin’s price has settled where reluctant proponents & mild opponents can agree– for now. But this is a war for existence on all sides. Crypto Kool-Aid drinkers still in the game are battling against bitcoin going to zero, which strong opponents (historical materialists) have always insisted upon.

But ‘mild opponents’, also known as centrists & liberals, see it differently– and fundamentally so. Crypto has no legitimate use value, but it has tremendous criminal value. The actual justification for bitcoin (& all other crypto) is its value on the black market. That is where assets of the CIA, MI5, Mossad, etc, operate. For example, Pussy Riot are a known CIA asset, and they coincidentally have been huge crypto proponents, even issuing their own NFT. Al Qaeda terrorists love crypto, and being paid in bitcoin is gold to them because it is anonymous & largely untraceable. Hence bitcoin’s maintenance of price value, despite there being no new buyers in the financial market.

Michael Saylor keeps borrowing to buy more bitcoin as other whales sell. That’s the total current bitcoin market, outside of what is being mined, which is currently ~450 bitcoins/day. Technical note: bitcoin is “halved” every four years so that mining rate decreases the closer it gets to 21 million– bitcoin’s finite limit set by its unknown creator Satoshi Nakamoto. As of early 2026, 19.9M – 20M bitcoins have been mined and are in existence. It’s helpful to know these technical facts when dealing with Kool-Aid drinkers & understanding the bigger picture.

The CIA demands bitcoin be legal & valuable, and that was conceded by the US Supreme Court during the Joe Biden administration in SEC v Grayscale, which was discussed at length on this blog. To review, Grayscale sought to establish an ETF for bitcoin, and the SEC denied the application, arguing (correctly) it lacked sufficient fraud & manipulation protections. But in August 2023, the right-wing Supreme Court ruled in favor of Grayscale, paving the way for crypto to become a stock exchange, thus giving bitcoin (& crypto) the business legitimacy it desperately needed after the stablecoin & FTX collapses a year earlier.

Bitcoin needs to exist at a wildly inflated value because the criminals who run the world depend on it. These are the Jeffery Epstein clients who are being protected by Trump and the FBI which he now controls. This is now a crypto fascist world we are living in, where everything important is decided behind closed doors with no public disclosure, discussion, or criticism allowed. Trump with the tutelage of Elon Musk (from 2022-25) became crypto fascist, because that’s what he needed to do to stay ahead.

Trump tokens on his crypto exchange World Liberty Financial have apparently lost over 96% of their value, which was claimed be $85/token at IPO in January 2025. Currently the Trump token is ~$3.30. Here are two recent screenshots:

Unsurprisingly, there is a total supply of 100 billion [!!] Trump tokens, already minted & available for purchase, which illustrates fascist greed & ignorance causing faster crypto de-valuation. That’s the inherent rot eating crypto fascism from the inside. Of course there are outside forces too, such as traditional finance on one side & mass worker organization with strike action on the other. Crypto is caught in a Mexican stand-off, and will be the first killed, crushed between the millstones of economic laws & historical truth.

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Bitcoin bits & the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping

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Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent (portrait pic below) was asked the other day by a congressman if crypto was going to be bailed out, and it ended in a shouting match. The biggest bitcoin booster, Michael Saylor, is now deep underwater, as the crypto industry has been loaned hundreds of billions of dollars which they clearly won’t be able to repay. The issue has always been– will crypto be eligible for a taxpayer bailout when doomsday comes?

Here it is spilling out in the public arena after being discussed intensely behind closed doors. Since I last published, bitcoin has crashed & “recovered”– again. Banks have kept loaning to crypto up to this point, but it’s getting tougher to justify. This is the crisis which now imperils the entire capitalist set-up.

Bitcoin has “stabilized” again, let me explain how & why. First, peruse the reader comments to financial articles that discuss Scott Bessent and a possible taxpayer crypto bailout. They’re all negative– no bailout. These are people with money commenting, and none of them have an appetite for crypto. But bitcoin “bounced” again, so obviously the banks have quietly loaned Michael Saylor, etc, more money in another foolish attempt to re-inflate the bubble.

The music is still playing, but for how long? Trump tariffs & crypto are killing the US dollar with inflation. Tariffs make goods more expensive, while crypto (fake money) dilutes the dollar’s value when it is extensively invested-in by the US financial system. Warren Buffet said crypto is “rat poison,” and this is how it works.

Here’s an interesting post from an industry expert who has researched the latest bitcoin crash. In short, analysts now say derivatives are setting the bitcoin price. As liquidations pile up, questions are growing over how much Wall Street is manipulating bitcoin’s price. Recall that bitcoin was originally hyped by Libertarian money-nerds as “deregulated finance,” outside of government & Wall Street control. Today, all the premises underlying bitcoin (including finite supply) have been dispelled by capitalist machinations. For the original Kool-Aid drinkers, the crypto pitcher has run dry, and all that remains for them is a nasty hangover.

Of the $2.6B liquidated in the latest bitcoin crash, $2.1B came from liquidated long bets. “Long” means you bet the market would go up. Derivative short-sellers have been cleaning-up since 10-10-25, which was four months ago when Trump announced 100% tariffs on Chinese exports. Bitcoin started crashing from its $126,000 all-time high. Trump was forced to walk back that threat, but bitcoin kept falling and currently is at ~ $69K, after falling to $60K just two days ago. That cleaned-out all the long-bet suckers (again) down to $60K, and now it has been pumped up a bit and rests at just under $70K. It’s amazing how these crypto price levels magically hold & fluctuate.

Hypothetical question: What are the futures for an “asset” that has no legitimate use value?

Bitcoin is useless in the legitimate market because it is valued in dollars or some other fiat. You may as well just pay for what you need with a dollar, instead of crypto. Most legitimate institutions don’t take crypto because they have no good reason to. ANY illegitimate & criminal organization with any ambition deals in crypto– from the CIA/MI5 & Al Qaeda/ISIS to online scammers & wrench hack kidnappers.

The high profile kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie, reveals the actual use value of bitcoin. Apparently, the kidnappers are demanding payment in bitcoin, because it is online anonymous & virtually untraceable. The image below of the ransom demand sent to a local news station is blurry, just like everything else bitcoin is involved in.

Large bitcoin holders are targets for abduction, as they are often tortured into revealing the key codes to their virtual wallets. This is known as a “wrench hack,” because all that is needed is a wrench to beat the victim into submission. Bitcoin/crypto is intimately linked with these forms of criminal activity, and this is being under-reported in the mass media concerning Nancy Guthrie’s abduction.

We now learn from released documents that Jeffery Epstein was all over crypto from the start. Crypto links this entire corrupt nexus. The US government is now crypto fascist by definition. It’s how it operates behind-the-scenes, as crypto fascist is what the Trump administration intends to become in permanence.

What we can see from all this is that bitcoin has enabled a layer of crypto-criminals. Their activity ranges from online theft & kidnapping to Trump’s exploits in World Liberty Financial– his proprietary crypto exchange (founded in 2024) where he mints worthless Trump tokens and trades them for most established crypto such as bitcoin, along with any cash people will pay for his junk.

The consequences are to be paid by all of us who must endure higher prices with a dollar that is being devalued by crypto. Bitcoin does this by sucking-up money that could be better invested elsewhere, while undermining the value of fiat currency. Wall Street loans the money to crypto companies, then wins all its manipulated derivatives bets. That’s called getting paid on both ends, with the US taxpayers eventually being made to pay the bond holders & banks for all their losses on bad crypto loans.

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