Lots of News, Often Unverifiable

American Thinker 

I’ve been working hard this week trying to keep abreast of national and international events, and I’ve come to the conclusion that much of what is most important to know remains, as yet, murky and unverifiable.

International Developments

Some things are clear. The decades-long oppression of the people of Cuba is coming to an end within days. The country is woefully short of energy sources -- in significant part because Maduro is out and Venezuela is no longer providing it. The country is now barely existing in blackout conditions. President Trump has announced that major tariffs will be imposed on any country that resupplies fuel. I give the existing regime no more than a few days until it’s done.

In Venezuela, despite some signs of pushback by the new interim leader, the transition appears to be proceeding as rapidly as we might wish. This week, it was announced that the national prison is closing, with all prisoners released. Moreover, a general amnesty has been announced.

In the Mideast, in apparent preparation for an attack on Iran’s rulers, Israel has been eliminating Hezb’allah redoubts, striking at Iranian proxies so they cannot come to their sponsors’ aid. Hamas still has not disarmed, and Israel has successfully eliminated more Hamas leaders.

In Iran this week, there were significant explosions in 11 cities, with reports (denied by the government) that key officials were killed in these bombings. The Iranian government claims that these were simply caused by accidents in gas pipes, but this does not seem confirmed by pictures of the damage.

Rumors earlier in the week that a plane, which normally carries Iranian officials, left Tehran for Moscow. Flight identification and tracking appeared to confirm that such a flight took place, but the speculation that it carried many key figures to exile cannot be confirmed. Citing the Caspian Post, Wretchardthecat may have solved this mystery:

So now we know who was one of the passengers aboard the Iranian VIP plane to Russia: Iran's security chief Ali Larijani. He is a very senior figure, formerly commanded the revolutionary guards. He is intimately connected with the nuclear program. He may not have been the only high level passenger on the VIP flight to Moscow, just the cover sheet for other unnamed members of the delegation.

A senior Iranian security official has held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow amid the ongoing Tehran-Washington tensions, according to Russian and Iranian officials.

Ali Larijani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) of Iran, met President Putin at the Kremlin on Friday, The Caspian Post reports, citing Interfax.

The meeting was later confirmed by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Kazem Jalali, Iran Ambassadr [sic] to Russia, also confirmed the talks, stating that Ali Larijani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, met with President Putin at the Kremlin on Friday evening.

U.S. ships and aircraft are positioned to attack. When and at what targets are pure speculation, though certainly every effort must be made to limit civilian casualties. In a sense, we are facing a replay of Israel’s dilemma after October 7. In this case, the hostages are the people of Iran.

At the UN, with U.S. contributions halted, UN Secretary-General António Guterres announced that the organization is in financial difficulty and will run out of funds in July. It’s not the only international organization being rocked by dissent.

The European Union is starting to see more pushback, significantly because of the consequences of its open-borders policies, which Hungary, for one, has refused to follow. Denmark and Sweden have announced remigration/deportation plans.

The UK has not, but Starmer’s hold on power is increasingly very tenuous. He was humiliated on a trip this week to China, where he received a tepid reception and gave away a great deal for nothing of value. His attempted giveaway of the Chagos does not look as if it will survive a U.S. veto or parliamentary inquiry.

France’s Macron’s policies have triggered protests by firefighters and police. It looks like Europe is finally going to label Iran’s IRGC a terrorist organization, after that outfit slaughtered tens of thousands of Iranian civilians.

The U.S.

In the U.S., attention to deportation protests, the search and seizure of the Fulton County, Georgia, election records, and the release of the thousands of documents in what are called the Epstein files are probably the key items of the week.

Minneapolis police (and now Los Angeles police) are cooperating with federal HHS officials as deportations continue.

Interestingly, the government signals it is going after the funders of the ICE riots. The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia announced the planned move:

“If money is quietly moving crowds in the streets, Jeanine Pirro says it’s time to treat it like organized crime.”-- Jeanine Pirro moves to block George Soros from allegedly secretly bankrolling protests across America -- by introducing a new bill that could classify such funding as organized crime under the RICO Act. If enacted, Soros-linked accounts could reportedly be frozen overnight, triggering a massive political shockwave nationwide and igniting fierce debate over protest financing, free speech, and national security. Soros should be behind bars!!

It is a key tactic of the administration to go after those who fund evil. They’ve done it internationally, by blocking the narco trade, the oil shipments from Iran and Venezuela, cutting off funds for the UN and the USAID slush fund. Domestic NGOs are also under scrutiny:

Kristi Noem goes nuclear as DHS chief, exposing how DEMS CREATED A SHADOW GOVERNMENT to sabotage the nation!

She says Democrats built a massive NGO web at home and overseas designed to weaken and overthrow America’s constitutional system.

It’s probably no coincidence that with the cutoff of funds to USAID and the increased scrutiny on NGOs, the DNC is in the red, and it will be even more starved for funds as the smurfing operation Act Blue is increasingly scrutinized.

We know the FBI searched and seized the Fulton County election materials, and we already knew before that the 315 thousand ballots in Georgia were illegally counted. There’s an FBI forensic lab on site reviewing the seized materials, and I think they will probably find a great deal to support the necessity of the SAVE Act pending in Congress, which is designed to limit the shenanigans that clearly occurred in Georgia and elsewhere in 2020.

There is, moreover, besides the usual election criminality and likelihood of electronic legerdemain in ballot counting and recording, some clear signs of foreign interference. What, if any, criminal prosecutions may occur if my speculation about what will be found is true remains unclear, but foreign involvement, if proven, adds another dimension to the inquiry. Unfortunately, for those who might wish and speculate otherwise, even if the administration exposes massive election corruption, that will not undo the Biden presidency, his appointments, and such. 

Finally, the release of the Epstein files, which the Democrats insisted on (doubtless believing the judicial hold on their release was permanent and the charge was sufficient to tar the president with suspicion), took place after hours of review in order to, among other things, protect the victims. The demand took up countless hours of DoJ lawyers, already shorthanded, for nothing.

Just as the president warned, names of perfectly innocent contacts with Epstein appeared, including Mayor Mamdani’s mother, for one. The files make clear that Trump had never engaged in any of the inappropriate conduct attributed to Epstein, which must be a further disappointment to those who hawked this nonsense.

Here’s the most detailed analysis I’ve found of what is in those documents.

To sum up, we’ve found out

• Jeffrey Epstein was an expert at tax advisory and offshore jurisdictions moving around money for rich people, that’s how he made his money. Unsavory but also legal and not Mossad blackmail. 
• He was a consummate networker spending lots of time hobnobbing with the rich for mundane reasons (getting new clients, narcissism) 
• He had sex parties with young women, some of them minors, but none of them were "children" in the conventional sense of the term
• Some of these women were paid, not "trafficked"
• To be clear underage prostitution is a crime and people who solicit/procure underage prostitutes should go to prison! 
• However, most of the Epstein "victims" are grifters. They were happy to be paid money to engage in high-dollar prostitution and now they’re engaging in a different kind of prostitution. 
• He filmed the sex parties to jerk off to the tapes, not to blackmail people or send them to the CIA or whatever
• He killed himself because he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in a prison cell
• He was a standard issue MSNBC boomer lib.

Total waste of everybody’s time.

As is clear, most of the important matters of the day cannot be fully understood yet. We have hints, speculations, and analyses, but still nothing very concrete. Events, however, seem to be moving as fast as they are multiplying, and by next week, we should see a lot of clarification.