4GW
"They're somewhat like the lowest forms of plant and animal life. Even at their highest point of vitality there is not much life in them; on the other hand, they don't die.”
Senator Eugene McCarty, on the nature of the republican party, 1968
Malcolm X had a system where he ranked people from one to one hundred, based on how much he could trust them. That has worked for me for decades, although in recent times I have added a zero to it. I find author Michael Wolff interesting, though a curious fellow. However, I trust him when he says that Steve Bannon told Jeffrey Epstein he was the only one he feared could sink the felon's 2016 election.
There is a social psychiatrist, who used to be a military intelligence analyst, who said that the reason the felon will not release the Epstein files is because they contain information on Epstein and his relationship with underage teen girls. What we are witnessing is a Shakespearean tragedy playing out on the global stage.
Back to Bannon, who ranks a zero. A repulsive scum. It is, in my opinion, important to recognize that while he looks like Otis Campbell, he had enough of a military background to rank as one of the most dangerous individuals associated with the felon-in-chief. Much like many billionaires and corporate heads, Bannon views the felon as a jackass he could ride to advance his goal of destroying democracy in our country. Keep in mind that Bannon thinks he is far more qualified to be president, and has actually told associates he may run in 2028.
Bannon and others – including foreign interests – have been engaged in what our community members with military backgrounds will recognize as “fourth generation warfare” or 4GW. Others will recognize it is similar to what the U.S. did in Central and South America and Iran for decades even before military analysts formalized it in 1989. Unlike traditional warfare between nations, it allows non-state interests to destabilize societies and overthrow governments without the use of foreign troops.
Now, this can include classic asymmetric warfare tactics, but it frequently focuses on psychological operations. Let's say, for example, that Russia had wanted to damage the US. They would focus on convincing a group in this country that there is a menace – for the heck of it, maybe brown-skinned human beings – that threatens their status in the country. This group already had uncertainty regarding why their quality of life was decreasing, including when job opportunities were limited. They knew that their children and grandchildren would not enjoy the things, such as owning a home, that they had. Their social status as white folk was being undermined.
There is an increase in anxiety about the not only the current state of affairs, but fear of the future. Years ago, this could be nurtured by use of the media, but the introduction of the internet added steroids to the mix. For example, something like Q-anon could convince hundreds of thousands to believe that the elite Democrats enjoyed a sex ring involving wee-little children ….. perhaps in the non-existent basement of a pizza parlor. I won't even mention what these fiends dined on in barbecue joints. But it was enough to damage social cohesion and increase the level of hatred into the political environment.
At this very moment, I am confident that anyone still reading this is thinking, “No shit, H2O Man. You took six paragraphs to say what we already knew.” Yet I have a bit more to say. The Universe is a powerful thing. We remember the befuddled masses of maga waiting outside a Dallas building, believing JFK, Jr. was going to appear and endorse the felon. Instead, in one of the most horrible of realities, the felon appointed RFK, Jr. to a position that he is as unqualified for as is the felon to be president.
At still other times, the Universe has a sense of justice tinged with irony. The felon and his campaign sought to exploit the fantasy about the democratic sex & barbecue pit, by promising to reveal the Epstein files. It is fair to say that this has back-fired on them. Surely, the most important thing is supporting the victims, and identifying what the Nixon crew might have called “creeps.” Democrats are saying we will play this hand, so lay the cards on the table.
But there is more. The Epstein scandal files include a lot of money- laundering and associated activities In my last essay, for example, I wrote about the christian nationalist televangelists. It goes beyond the disgraced Jim Baker preaching the gospel of Q-anon – which he did. It involves where billionaires invest their money, including in those programs that have destabilized our country over the past nine years. I will address this further in a future tedious essay.
The good news is that we have more powerful resources available to us. Of course, many of those such as Amendment 1 and voting rights are under attack. But by late Tuesday night, we saw that we can kick the stuffing out of maga. And that is a warm-up for what we will do in the 2026 mid-terms, which are now less than a year away.
Stay strong. Trust in the future.
= new reply since forum marked as read
The good news is that we have more powerful resources available to us.
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Hopeful and thoughtful as ever. 
Nothing more to say other than thank you again for a thoughtful piece and a thank you for the Bannon description,
"Back to Bannon, who ranks a zero. A repulsive scum. It is, in my opinion, important to recognize that while he looks like Otis Campbell, he had enough of a military background to rank as one of the most dangerous individuals associated with the felon-in-chief."
So very true and at the moment of reading so very amusing.
Editing because I wonder if some of our younger friends would not understand the true, gross, funny reference of Otis Campbell.
Thank you, H2O Man.
Candy & Money.
The Epstein Files and the 5-Count Felon Bank: The Untold Story
Pam Martens - Russ Martens
CounterPunch.org, September 18, 2025
Excerpt...
Epstein, Wexner and Black all had accounts at the same financial institution—JPMorgan Chase. This bank is both a trading juggernaut on Wall Street as well as owning the largest federally-insured commercial bank in the United States—Chase Bank, which operates over 5,000 branches from coast to coast. Chase Bank takes in saving deposits from unsuspecting moms and pops working in the corn fields of Iowa to the fishing villages of Maine.
We use the term “unsuspecting” mom and pop depositors because in 2013 the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a 300-page report documenting how JPMorgan Chase had used deposits from its federally-insured Chase Bank to gamble in derivatives in London and lose “at least” $6.2 billion. Scandals and crimes at JPMorgan Chase are so ubiquitous that they require their own name by the business press. This one was called the “London Whale.”
Credit for resurrecting the trading/banking structure that brought down the U.S. financial system after the Wall Street crash of 1929 goes to the Wall Street cozy Bill Clinton administration. It repealed the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 that had barred commercial banks from merging with trading firms on Wall Street for 66 years. That repeal allowed Wall Street’s trading houses to merge with the largest taxpayer-backstopped, deposit-taking banks and become unruly behemoths. It took just nine years after the repeal of Glass-Steagall for Wall Street to blow up the mega banks in the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression. The Federal Reserve has been quietly propping up these mega banks with tens of trillions of dollars in bailouts ever since.
Snip...
The way that JPMorgan Chase facilitated money laundering for Epstein sounds uncannily similar to how it facilitated money laundering for Ponzi kingpin Bernie Madoff. Both Epstein and Madoff used JPMorgan Chase as their primary bank according to court records. And the bank made multi-million dollar loans to both men.
FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge George Venizelos said this in a formal statement when the two felony counts were lodged against JPMorgan Chase in 2014 over its Madoff conduct:
“J.P. Morgan failed to carry out its legal obligations while Bernard Madoff built his massive house of cards. Today, J.P. Morgan finds itself criminally charged as a consequence. But it took until after the arrest of Madoff, one of the worst crooks this office has ever seen, for J.P. Morgan to alert authorities to what the world already knew. In order to avoid these types of disasters in the future—we all need to be invested in making our markets safer and more equitable. The FBI can’t do it alone. Traders, compliance officers, analysts, bankers, and executives are the gatekeepers of the financial industry. We need their help protecting our markets.”
Snip...
According to a federal court filing in 2023 by the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein trafficked underage girls for rape and sexual abuse at his luxury island compound, JPMorgan Chase processed 9,000 transactions totaling $2.4 billion for Epstein from 2005 through 2019, without ever filing the legally mandated Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs). From 2008 on, Epstein was a registered sex offender, a fact known to the bank according to internal emails obtained in discovery and filed with the court. Epstein was also taking tens of thousands of dollars each month in hard cash from his accounts at JPMorgan Chase. The bank waited until after Epstein’s death in 2019 to file its SARs.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, part of the Justice Department, criminally charged JPMorgan Chase for its Madoff-related crimes in 2014 and made it pay $1.7 billion to the victims of Madoff’s fraud. We’ve heard nothing from that same office about charging the bank for its involvement for at least 15 years in Epstein’s money laundering to facilitate his sex crimes against children.
Continues...
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/09/18/the-epstein-files-and-the-5-count-felon-bank-the-untold-story/
Thanks, Sir H2O Man! There is so much criminality and treason that, without discussion, we'd never be able to remember all the stuff we know we will need to bring out during the trials. And there will be trials, as the Constitution will outlast the reign of these traitors.
Since Reagan launched Trickle-Down, the plutocrats and oligarchs have been having a big pool party and We the People have picked up the tab.
“One of the things that is interesting about reading conspiracy theory is that much of what folks think is conspiracy is really many people acting in concert to make or protect their money.” ― Catherine Austin Fitts
Former Deutsche Bank Exec Connected to Trump Loans Dies by Suicide in Malibu
Thomas Bowers, who worked above Trump’s personal banker, was 55
By Ian Spiegelman
LA Magazine-November 27, 2019
A former Deutsche Bank executive who reportedly signed off on some of the institution’s unorthodox loans to Donald Trump killed himself in his Malibu home on November 19. Thomas Bowers, the onetime head of Deutsche Bank’s American wealth-management division, where he oversaw Trump’s private banker, committed suicide by hanging, according to Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s office. Bowers was 55.
Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank—which lent him around $2 billion after most other institutions had forsaken him for his history of defaults and bankruptcies—has come under investigation by two Congressional committees and the New York Attorney General, who are hoping the bank can shed light on Trump’s elusive finances, according to the New York Times. At one point, Bowers had a close connection to those finances.
Rosemary T. Vrablic, a managing director at Deutsche Bank who became Trump’s private banker in 2010 after being introduced by her client, Jared Kushner, reported directly to Bowers. Vrablic reportedly helped Trump secure loans from her bank, which Bowers approved—including more than $100 million to buy his Doral resort in Miami—even after Trump and Deutsche had to settle messy litigation over a Chicago loan that went bad.
Snip...
Bowers isn’t the first Trump-connected Deutsche exec to commit suicide. In 2014, Deutsche derivatives analyst William S. Broeksmit, who reportedly had links to Trump and Russia, hung himself from a dog leash at his home in London.
Source:
https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/deutsche-bank-death/
https://www.fedortax.com/blog/deutsche-bank-nabbed-for-money-laundering-in-russian-laundromat-investigation
https://ips-dc.org/trumps-dirty-money/
Thought the rich would have some class, ya know? But no, they are largely so low all they can thing about is keeping the money stream flowin'.
Book reveals Trump effort to persuade Justice Kennedy to step aside for Kavanaugh
New book Dark Towers tells of how family coordinated charm offensive to convince ageing supreme court justice to retire
by Julian Borger
The Guardian, Feb. 4, 2020
Excerpt...
Justin Kennedy was part of the US branch of Deutsche Bank from 1998 to 2009. Drawn to Trump’s risk-taking and glamour, he became a Trump confidant, sitting with the real estate impresario at the US Open tennis or in Manhattan nightclubs, and chaperoning huge loans to finance Trump’s real estate spending sprees.
Kennedy, who ran the bank’s commercial real-estate team, continued to lend to Trump even though Deutsche clients had suffered severe losses when Trump’s casino business collapsed and he declared bankruptcy.
After Kennedy set up his own finance and property firm in Florida, Enrich writes, he continued to help other members of the Trump family – Ivanka, Kushner and Donald Trump Jr – arrange financing for projects in New York. The New York Observer, which was owned by Kushner, put Kennedy on a list of the 100 most powerful people in New York real estate.
Once Trump was in office, he went out of his way to congratulate Justice Kennedy on his son, calling him a “special guy” and saying how much his own children loved him.
“Trump’s flattery,” Enrich writes, “was part of a coordinated White House charm offensive designed to persuade the ageing justice – for years, the court’s pivotal swing vote – that it was safe to retire, even with an unpredictable man in the Oval Office.”
Continues...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/04/trump-family-anthony-kennedy-brett-kavanaugh-dark-towers
The money was nice and plentiful. Mixing politics, money-making A and treason, Trump’s people — Giuliani, Volker, Sondland, plus Pompeo and Perry — worked to tilt US policy in Ukraine toward the corrupt bastards who looted the Treasury, privatized the resources, and ran the fledgling democracy into the ground. All that benefitted the Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs backed by Putin and served by Manafort. Regarding the money laundry: Craig Unger’s work lifted up the lid...
Trump’s Russian Laundromat
How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.
By CRAIG UNGER
The New Republic, July , 2017
Excerpt...
Trump made his first trip to Russia in 1987, only a few years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Invited by Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin, Trump was flown to Moscow and Leningrad—all expenses paid—to talk business with high-ups in the Soviet command. In The Art of the Deal, Trump recounted the lunch meeting with Dubinin that led to the trip. “One thing led to another,” he wrote, “and now I’m talking about building a large luxury hotel, across the street from the Kremlin, in partnership with the Soviet government.”
Over the years, Trump and his sons would try and fail five times to build a new Trump Tower in Moscow. But for Trump, what mattered most were the lucrative connections he had begun to make with the Kremlin—and with the wealthy Russians who would buy so many of his properties in the years to come. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets,” Donald Trump Jr. boasted at a real estate conference in 2008. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
The money, illicit and otherwise, began to rain in earnest after the Soviet Union fell in 1991. President Boris Yeltsin’s shift to a market economy was so abrupt that cash-rich gangsters and corrupt government officials were able to privatize and loot state-held assets in oil, coal, minerals, and banking. Yeltsin himself, in fact, would later describe Russia as “the biggest mafia state in the world.” After Vladimir Putin succeeded Yeltsin as president, Russian intelligence effectively joined forces with the country’s mobsters and oligarchs, allowing them to operate freely as long as they strengthen Putin’s power and serve his personal financial interests. According to James Henry, a former chief economist at McKinsey & Company who consulted on the Panama Papers, some $1.3 trillion in illicit capital has poured out of Russia since the 1990s.
At the top of the sprawling criminal enterprise was Semion Mogilevich. Beginning in the early 1980s, according to the FBI, the short, squat Ukrainian was the key money-laundering contact for the Solntsevskaya Bratva, or Brotherhood, one of the richest criminal syndicates in the world. Before long, he was running a multibillion-dollar worldwide racket of his own. Mogilevich wasn’t feared because he was the most violent gangster, but because he was reputedly the smartest. The FBI has credited the “brainy don,” who holds a degree in economics from Lviv University, with a staggering range of crimes. He ran drug trafficking and prostitution rings on an international scale; in one characteristic deal, he bought a bankrupt airline to ship heroin from Southeast Asia into Europe. He used a jewelry business in Moscow and Budapest as a front for art that Russian gangsters stole from museums, churches, and synagogues all over Europe. He has also been accused of selling some $20 million in stolen weapons, including ground-to-air missiles and armored troop carriers, to Iran. “He uses this wealth and power to not only further his criminal enterprises,” the FBI says, “but to influence governments and their economies.”
In Russia, Mogilevich’s influence reportedly reaches all the way to the top. In 2005, Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian intelligence agent who defected to London, recorded an interview with investigators detailing his inside knowledge of the Kremlin’s ties to organized crime. “Mogilevich,” he said in broken English, “have good relationship with Putin since 1994 or 1993.” A year later Litvinenko was dead, apparently poisoned by agents of the Kremlin.
Continues...
https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/trumps-russian-laundromat-trump-tower-luxury-high-rises-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate
Impeachment is too good for the Trump SCROTI and the MAGANAZIGOP Unitarycongressexecutive. They and their plutocrats and oligarch supporters are traitors.
