@maewestside

By Heidi Siegmund Cuda

On September 17, 2016, at 3:02 pm, I pressed send on my first Resistance blog: “Dooshbaggery, and Other Things I Resigned From,” on my Maewestside Tumblr. On that day, the investigative producer who had schooled me informed me Trump would win the election.

It was an eviscerating narrative on the decline of the newsroom, and as soon as I pressed send, I knew there would be no going back into corporate media. Good fucking riddance. At the time it seemed a fair trade - I simply did not want a veteran con man and pageant guy to be president.

In that moment, I was no longer a full-time inhabitant of planet earth. I also began to inhabit Twitterlandia. I was up all night and into the morning investigating Trump and the goons in his orbit 24/7. In a few short months, I wrote dozens of columns, warning people on the fraud, pyramid schemes, unpaid debts, underage girls, all the grifts, all the hustles, the money laundering of a fake rich guy. I typed until my fingers bled, tweets littered the floor, my bedroom turned cold as I did what any mom and investigative reporter who found herself unshackled by a corporation would do: I reported. I wrote about his gaslighting. I wrote about “real fake news” before he uttered the phrase. I wrote about a “real genuine phony.”

Despite knowing he would win, on the night of the election, my back toward the TVs behind the bar at the Peking Palace in Downtown Los Angeles, I could see the red bouncing off the mirrors. My then-partner looking panic stricken as he tried to comfort me and tell me it was just the early returns. Like millions of people globally, I woke up that next morning to a bitter world, the fight ahead. I promised my poet daughter, tears rolling down her cheeks, I would make it right and get him the fuck out of there, not knowing at the time it would take the full term. I made it to the Women’s March in D.C. to document it on film, because I knew corporate media would get it wrong, and they did.

“(Trump) may not be good for America, but he’s damn good for CBS.” Fuck you, Les Moonves.

Sigh.

So the rift in the space and time continuum that resulted in the real fake presidency of a fake rich guy has now revealed the black hole where his heart should be. Trump is under criminal investigation. Not just for his central role in inciting a violent attempted coup but for potential espionage.

‘Ghosts and Spirits’

In Sun Tzu’s Art of War, Chapter XXIII, On the Use of Spies, he writes:

“Foreknowledge cannot be gotten from ghosts and spirits, cannot be had by analogy, cannot be found out by calculation. It must be obtained from people, people who know the conditions of the enemy.”

So let’s look at Trump’s people, his frens. They are foreign agents, or spies, or have weird entanglements in mafia states. They do their dirt in broad daylight, emboldened by pardon fraud, by Trump’s own nefarious foreign entanglements.

One day, and the day may be coming soon, Trump’s cult is going to learn he never cared about America or them. He played them. He used victim ideology to make money off them.

Let’s consider his frens:

Tom Barrack, Trump’s former advisor, charged with acting as an agent of a foreign government; Mike Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor, who admitted lying about his work on behalf of the Turkish government, and who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his links to a Russian ambassador; Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, convicted of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act in relations to his work for a Putin proxy in Ukraine. Roger Stone, Trump advisor and longtime fren, charged with lying to Congress amid the probe into Trump-Russia. They all lied to cover up their crimes, allegedly and by their own admission. Manafort went to prison, Flynn and Stone, were pardoned, and Barrack is going to trial this month. Trump’s disgraced former attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is a target of Georgia’s criminal investigation into election interference. The home of Jeff Clark, Trump’s outside lawyer, was raided by federal agents while he was left on the lawn in his underwear. Trump’s other outside lawyer, John Eastman, also had his electronic devices seized by federal agents.

‘Stop Me If You Think That You Heard This One Before’

And that’s just the short list. To read about the rogues gallery who enabled America’s first illegitimate presidency*, click here. More felon-spies are documented in my “witch hunt” thread.

Now let’s look at the some of the oligarch affiliates of Trumplandia. Konstantin Malofeev was recently indicted, and the Fox News producer who worked for him Jack Hanick was arrested in London for violating U.S. sanctions. Both Viktor Vekselberg and Oleg Deripaska had their properties searched and oligarch yachts are being seized globally. And lest we forget the plethora of recently deceased oligarchs, of defenestrations, bizarre quote unquote suicides, petro execs meeting unpleasant endings. Dead men tell no tales.

And speaking of defenestrations, Trump may want to stick to one-level abodes for awhile. The latest in federal seizures occurred at Trump’s Florida beach hotel, which was visited last month by federal agents who found more than 11,000 government records, with dozens marked Top Secret, Secret, and Confidential.

‘Violence and Chaos’

Both Trump and Flynn are ratcheting up violent rhetoric as if they know their days to unfreedom are hastening. As my podcast partner, Jim Stewartson, tells me, they need violence and chaos for them to have a chance of staying out of jail.

Despite media distortions, President Joe Biden’s brilliant speech on Maga Republicans drew a very distinct line in the sand: domestic terrorism will not be tolerated.

That includes ex-presidents and retired generals.

‘Lying On the Record’

On November 10, 2017, as I battled the Great Information War with furiously typing fingers, I documented the Lying Liars of Scamalot, the Trump associates who had lied to the FBI.

It seemed a bit of madness, that lies had become so normalized.

I wrote: “Next thing you know, video will surface of the Real Fake President pulling wings off flies. His lawyers will call it science.”

These are dangerous men, and they’re running out of time.

#ArrestDonaldTrump

#ArrestMikeFlynn

****

Heidi Siegmund Cuda is an independent investigative reporter and politico. To support her work or buy her independent book documenting her early Resistance writings, please go here: https://ko-fi.com/heidicuda15373. Below photo: Banksy Spy Booth.

by Heidi Siegmund Cuda

My quiet moments are few and far between, but they always include a French film. Tonight, it’s The Damned, a 1947 French noir thriller by the brilliant director René Clément.

A bunch of Nazis and Nazi sympathizers escape to South America on a U-boat during the last days of the war. In the end, the evil people devour each other, as they do.

I knew the latest round of fascism would be a long war. A screenplay I’d written about the French Resistance, based on a true story about an American actress from the ‘40s who saved the lives of 42 airmen, taught me that the days are long in war time.

I’m in year six year of fighting on the side of truth in an information war that most still can’t see. My podcast partner Jim Stewartson calls it the Invisible War, and we are war correspondents and combatants.

My children don’t want to hear about the Invisible War, which I fight for them.

Things From Before

In the film, a doctor kidnapped to treat a Nazi wife finds a harmonica, and he nostalgically recalls: “Things from before.”

I had a beautiful life before the war. It’s different now. Shadowy tension at all times. I write to breathe, a war correspondent unpaid for my service. Voluntarily drafted because truth won’t wait, and disinformation never sleeps.

The war I fight is about defeating fascism, which crept onto our shores through information warfare, delivered by traitors wrapping themselves in the flag and misappropriating God. These traitors still have power, but their days are numbered. They f**ked with women one time too many.

State of Siege

The car bomb that missed killing Nazi-philosopher Alexandr Dugin today indicates an outing of the real enemies. His evil work led to the murder of his daughter, herself a propagandist under US sanctions. Here’s an article I wrote featuring Dugin a couple years ago. Here’s Jim Stewartson’s critical video explainer showing Mike Flynn doing Dugin’s bidding. Things are escalating as we knew they would.

The Damned

“Victory doesn't necessarily belong to those who win the war … Victory is never final … It isn’t achieved except through persistent action during peacetime.”

The subtitles from 75-year-old dialogue jump out at me like machine gun fire. Nazis on a U-boat already plotting their return after Hitler’s defeat.

Fascism never goes away. It just sleeps.

Remaining Neutral

As the death of Hitler and the fall of Berlin begin to spread among the U-boat crew, a Nazi sympathizer explains the power structure change means he “can no longer remain neutral.”

“I’m stuck between victory and defeat,” he shrugs. “It’s a most disagreeable position.”

My soul does a slow burn as I think of every coward who stepped aside to let the fascists goose step on our democracy. For shame. For shame New York Times for minimizing espionage. For shame David Frum for normalizing DeSantis. For shame.

There’s a sea change. The people who have the guts to fight the fascists, who recognize them for the traitors they are, who see the snow on their boots, can take the credit, as well as those in our justice department who are working overtime.

The Allied forces defeated fascism once before.

This is no time to remain neutral. The sun has not set on our democracy… yet.

****

Heidi Siegmund Cuda is an Emmy award-winning investigative reporter. Below, photo from The Damned (1947). You can support her independent investigative journalism here: https://ko-fi.com/heidicuda15373

By Heidi Siegmund Cuda, aka Maewestside

Life is beautiful. I found beauty in the work.

I who have nothing but the power of my pen found beauty in the Great Information War. The people I met along the way, the people who couldn’t be gaslit. The pain seems so inconsequential. The value of truth far greater than the pain.

The things I lost along the way, family, lovers, security, the price of this war is steep. I need truth like oxygen. And even on those nights, when my heart is spun up and spun out, I keep writing. Because someone somewhere is going to read it, and gain or offer another clue to the fuckery of our times.

Yesterday, the RadPod team interviewed Evita March, a brilliant cyberpsychologist. We talked a lot about psychopathy, sadism, and the empathy deficits of internet trolls. This war has given me a third eye, I see through the slime trails of troll venom to the desperate tragedies behind the keys, both foreign and domestic.

That Grotesque had a very bad day. I’m here for it.

As my recent reporting in Byline Times indicates, the mob roll up has commenced. I knew it would take this long. I was promised a summer of raids and arrests. A Republic, if you can keep it.

I am playing Jawbreaker until it bleeds, my room lit up with a thousand floating hearts and neon ghosts whispering to keep investigating, to keep writing.

Truth is oxygen.

****

Heidi Siegmund Cuda is a politico, investigative reporter, and an anti-fascist mother.

By Heidi Siegmund Cuda

The first time someone told me to stay away from banisters I was three years into covering the Great Information War, which at the time I called TrumpRussia.

I was on the phone with a vital scholar who had done the first big money expose linking the GOP to Russia.

I was quiet. I thought about the death of Scott Christianson, an investigative reporter who co-authored the first big Robert Mercer expose for McClatchy.

I had been inquiring about Mercer, peering down rabbit holes and noting all the curious links to Russia. My source agreed with me that the SEC should do a better job of scrutinizing hedge funds.

I hung up the phone and glanced around my place. There was a sketchy banister out the back door that I rarely used, and the likelihood of defenestration from a second story walk-up was negligible.

I knew the first time I pressed “send” on the very first post I wrote about Donald Trump and his history of corruption that I was willing to die for my country. I knew we were in dire straits, and being German-American, silence was not an option for me. I had a duty to warn.

Besides, everything had already been taken from me the prior year—my mental health, my relationship, my home. I worked on a campaign to take out Dana Rohrabacher, and the corrupt money behind him had made their own plans. I had been a very loud member of the independent media for two years, and when I signed up to work with a Muslim American candidate to remove Rohrabacher, coordinated online and offline harms resulted in a kablooey of my life. In an information war, there are no rear areas.

I see now that I did not understand the complexities of the situation.-Hannah Arendt

It got very dark, and I had no framework for what was happening to me.

But I didn’t stop. I just got louder. I kept writing, threading, reporting. I sought help. The online and offline harms had depleted my emotional sobriety, and I found rooms where people nurtured my soul. In one those rooms, a gentleman in recovery who I was sitting next to, who had made his way there in a white van with a group of other men, slipped me a note.

He wrote me a poem of strength and courage and told me to say I’m “tenacity strong.” He misspelled tenacity and my name, but that was not the point. I gripped that note paper and thanked him.

It took some time, but I got well. As I come under continual heavy toxic fire by suicide trolls trying to hurt my friend Jim, I have a program that helps me deal with it. I hope they get well soon.

I now call the best minds of our times my friends. I have been interviewing the most brilliant people in the fight for truth regularly now for years, and they are targeted by hate accounts as well. I’m not special. We endure as a truth tribe, focused on the work and the fight ahead. I’m glad Japan is now jailing trolls. Consequences for those who psychologically torment people—whether for sport of profit—is long overdue.

One of my most beloved sources has been signing off lately by asking me to stay safe. He recently sent me a message to make sure I don’t let my drinks out of sight when I’m out.

Lucky me, I don’t drink.

****

Heidi Siegmund Cuda is an investigative reporter for Byline Times, the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives podcast, an author, and politico. You can support her independent investigative journalism with coffee tips, for which she is every grateful: https://ko-fi.com/heidicuda15373

By Heidi Siegmund Cuda

I’m an optimist. I find despair too great a burden to bear. So I document the action against autocracy—the raids, the busts, the indictments, the sanctions, you name it, I’m on it. As many of you know, the first time I slept in after the 2016 election was when Paul Manafort was indicted.

And as we fight for our democracy in 2022, you’ll find me relentlessly investigating, churning out stories that offer truth and hope: the arrest of Fox News producer Jack Hanick; the indictments against his employer Malofeev; the rash of dead Russian oligarchs; the Fifth Column culture wars; the Deutsche Bank raid; the Deripaska raid; the money behind the hate. All the stories that get buried under the propagandists’ flood of sh*t to obscure their attempts at autocratic capture.

One of the ways I stay focused is by perpetually turning to former IRS criminal investigator Martin Sheil, who has been following the money on the transnational mob for much of his career and assisted in putting away some very bad men.

When Trump’s bestie, Tom Barrack, was arrested suddenly last summer, I asked Marty to give me the score. Methodically, even poetically, Marty began following the ties, the shells, and the steakhouse dinners, which lead to a notorious back channel beer meet up.

What follows is some intricate transnational gumshoeing, exposing ties designed to be opaque and deceptive. Marty cuts through the Maskirovka to get to the truth. He reveals cozy relationships between characters who had cozy relationships with Epstein and oligarchs. Some of these characters run media companies, which may explain the terrible neglect of truth we’ve endured in recent years.

Look, we’re not Russia yet. We still have the ability to write and think for ourselves, but I feel the clock ticking, which is why I work after hours to bring you these stories. Do let’s read on.

****

Martin Sheil: I know that you queried me a while ago about some Thomas Barrack affiliations. Well, I came across an interesting connect indirectly.

I was examining the Board of Directors of RDIF which is the Russian Sovereign Fund. The website has tweaked and removed some notables which included at one time Leon Black, Stephen Swarzman (Blackstone), and David Bonderman.

LORBER AND LEBOW

I have long had an interest in a couple of dudes who are alleged to be among Donald Trump's closest friends - Howard Lorber and Bennett LeBow.

While researching these guys I came across an article from February 2016 by Emily Smith in Page Six, which talked about an 80th birthday celebration of Carl Icahn hosted by a Manhattan steakhouse called Mastro's. https://pagesix.com/2016/02/02/inside-carl-icahns-80th-birthday-power-dinner/

Icahn is quoted as saying he has a steak dinner every six weeks or so for the last 20 years at Mastro's with his good friends: Howard Lorber, Bennett LeBow, Leon Black, Rich Handler, Andrew Whittaker, and Michael Milken.

I think you would recognize Leon Black's name. He was the head of a large conglomerate called Apollo Management.

HSC: Oh I know Black, I have multiple threads on him and his Epstein scandal.

https://twitter.com/heidi_cuda/status/1389242427525918724?s=21&t=UnqFB5BmCs8PLiu-PReTDw

And his ties to Russia.

https://twitter.com/heidi_cuda/status/1389439337863925760?s=21&t=UnqFB5BmCs8PLiu-PReTDw

HSC: I’m not a fan of media ownership being affiliated with those affiliated with sex trafficking and Russia, which is a known mafia state.

https://twitter.com/heidi_cuda/status/1389440931292618752?s=21&t=UnqFB5BmCs8PLiu-PReTDw

MS: So you know then that Black got himself jammed up with Epstein's trafficking allegations. Apollo Management also allegedly paid off some notable real estate debts owed by Jared Kushner's real estate company after Black met with Kushner IN THE WH.

Anyway, while researching Black I came across David Bonderman's name. He is from Fort Worth and holds varied business interests including oil and foreign investments in Kazakhstan. He owns a bank in the UK with a guy by the name of Rich Gerson whose brother Mark Gerson has invested with Jared Kushner in a real estate startup called Cadre.

Bonderman has interests in several offshore entities in addition to on shore business interests. But it was his offshore Directorship in Continental Airlines that captured my attention. Joining Bonderman in this offshore vehicle is Thomas Barrack. Yeah that Thomas Barrack. Note the linked ICIJ graphic

https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/100623143 which denotes Continental located in Barbados from 2003-2006.

So clearly Bonderman and Barrack know each other and have known each other for some time.

I am also wondering if Leon Black, Howard Lorber and Bennett LeBow ever chatted about the Russian Sovereign Fund at any of their steak dinners.

Did Black and Bonderman ever communicate to RDIF interest on the part of a powerful Manhattan real estate clique - in any investment opportunities in either direction?

How about Tom Barrack and David Bonderman - did Russian investment opportunities ever come up in discussion? Think any mutual acquaintances might have an interest?

Getting back to Cadre. Jared Kushner never divulged his investment interest as required in Cadre on his Financial Disclosure forms submitted to the government. When caught in this omission Jared promised to divest himself of this investment.

HSC: Still waiting...

MS: Cadre caught the attention and investment interest of the young Russian entrepreneur well known to Silicon Valley Yuri Milner - who invested some $850K.

HSC: Yeah, Milner comes up pretty regularly on RadPod. I always point out his time at Bank Menatap—accused of ties to organized crime—is scrubbed from his bio. Some of his colleagues are still in prison for a little oily multi-billion dollar diversionary activity

https://twitter.com/heidi_cuda/status/1327767323185278976?s=21&t=UnqFB5BmCs8PLiu-PReTDw

MS: Milner has long been close to Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov, who was the longtime honcho of Gazprom Invest.

HSC: Lots of Gazprom related news lately. Including all those dead oligarchs.

https://twitter.com/heidi_cuda/status/1518445153182044160?s=21&t=UnqFB5BmCs8PLiu-PReTDw

MS: Usmanov was allegedly mentored by Transnational Organized Crime figure Gafur Rakimov himself alleged to be a large scale Eurasian drug dealer.

HSC: They seem so nice.

YACHT CRIME SCENES

MS: Usmanov is subject to sanctions and had his super yacht seized recently by Germany. Some say his yacht is the world's largest - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/14/worlds-largest-yacht-linked-to-russian-billionaire-usmanov-seized-by-germany.html

HSC: As Andrea Chalupa says, yachts are crime scenes. I hope they have hazmat suits when they probe the jacuzzis.

MS: We’ll see what they turn up. No word on any of Usmanov's multiple offshore shell companies located in the British Virgin Islands among other places: https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/13006829

BREWSKIS WITH RUSKIS

Okay, so far we have connected Leon Black to David Bonderman and both to the RDIF - the Russian Sovereign Fund presided over by Kirill Dmitriev who famously or perhaps we should say infamously met with Erik Prince in the Seychelles Islands shortly after Trump's one and only Inauguration. Perhaps we can call this connect Steak Dinner to the Seychelles Islands!

HS: Erik Prince is a choir boy. Just brewskis with Ruskis. Nothing to see here. BTW, I like the working title Red Meat and Beer for this one.

MS: Works for me. Okay, so Bonderman is connected to Trump's Chairman of the President's Inaugural Committee Thomas Barrack through their old offshore Continental Airlines Directorships and Bonderman is indirectly connected to Jared Kushner as noted above - Cadre.

Now we noted that Leon Black helped Jared Kushner out with some nagging old business real estate debts. How nice.

HSC: Indeed. Real swells.

BADLY NEEDED DEBT FINANCING

MS: Tom Barrack also helped Jared out with some badly needed debt financing. But Barrack also provided his Colony Capital offices to Kushner in order for Jared to meet pre inauguration with ex FSB Agent Sergei Gorkov - head of VEB, a Russian bank.

To wit: It is important to remember that RDIF was a spinoff from Vnesheconobank (VEB), a Russian state-run bank helmed by ex-FSB agent Sergei Gorkov, who memorably met with Jared Kushner at the company offices of Tom Barrack’s Colony Capital, subsequent to Michael Flynn’s interaction with Russian Ambassador Kislyak, but prior to Donald Trump being officially inaugurated, President*. VEB had signed a cooperation agreement with Deutsche Bank several years ago further cementing a close relationship that Deutsche had engendered with Russia.

Note-this paragraph was copied from an article I wrote called Connecting Elliot Broidy Related Dots linked here https://martinsheil.medium.com/connecting-elliott-broidy-related-dots-offshore-and-on-some-russian-some-not-cabf61f28f

HSC: One of my many 2 am obsessive investigative sessions I stumbled upon that piece. Where I learned Arthur Finkelstein mentored Roger Stone. And Roger Ailes worked on Ron Lauder’s mayoral run, only to lose to Rudy Giuliani, America’s sweetheart.

MS: Recently sanctioned by Iran. Oh what a tangled web is weaved. So to get a clearer picture of how cozy all these guys are, where I reference RDIF as a spinoff from VEB and a Cooperation Agreement between VEB and Deutsche Bank, it’s worth noting that Josef Ackerman past CEO of Deutsche Bank was offered the head honcho job of RDIF by Putin before Kirill Dmitriev. Ackerman declined but did accept an offer from Wilbur Ross to head up Bank of Cyprus! Now Ackerman is just an ordinary run of the mill Swiss Banker - of course he is - where else and what else would he be doing.

HSC: That kind of banking can be hazardous in close proximity to windows.

https://twitter.com/heidi_cuda/status/1520286739931156480?s=21&t=UnqFB5BmCs8PLiu-PReTDw

MS: So just to put a bow on all this, let’s go back to Lorber. Howard Lorber was DJT's first telephone call after the famous Trump Tower meeting with Madame Veselnitskaya, Manafort, Kushner, Trump Jr., et al.

Bennett LeBow had some type of business relationship with the notorious Vadim Rabinovich, who the KGB provided the code name Acorn. Lorber and LeBow ran a business venture that at various times employed David Geovanis in either the U.S. or Russia. Geovanis has been employed in Russia since the Congressional Committee investigating Trump wanted to subpoena him for suspicion of squiring around a Russian damsel that Trump had taken a liking to on one of his Moscow trips.

HSC: Masha Kalalina. Allegedly.

WHAT’S OUR VECTOR, VICTOR

MS: Some final notes I thought you would be interested in: When Geovanis was first employed by LeBow & Lorber it was a company named Brooke Group that later changed its name to Vector Group.

One of the main stockholders of the Vector Group at one time was the Hedge Fund Renaissance Technology (RenTech) run by Robert Mercer one of DJT's largest political contributors.

HSC: He’s got a nice gun collection.

https://twitter.com/heidi_cuda/status/1157428193583755264?s=21&t=UnqFB5BmCs8PLiu-PReTDw

MS: In 2017, Geovanis was re-employed by LeBow and charged with setting up the Russian arm of a company in Russia named Somerset Coal International. He has not returned from Russia. Must be a lot of coal washing to do over there in Russky. Too busy to come back to the States and wash his reputation… and others...

I think I am done now.

HSC: Thank you, Marty. I find it endlessly fascinating how many indicated associates and convicted felons in Trump’s orbit have deep financial ties to a mafia state.

****

Heidi Siegmund Cuda is an Emmy award-winning investigative reporter, an Amazon #1 Bestselling author, and the cohost and coproducer of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative podcast about disinformation. Her work appears in Byline Times. You can support her independent investigative work here: https://ko-fi.com/heidicuda15373

Photo from Spanish artist Isaac Cordal’s “Follow the Leader” collection at his website: cementeclipses.com. To listen to Cuda’s 2015 interview with the legendary guerilla street artist, go here: https://youtu.be/te7T9mU8a10

By Heidi Siegmund Cuda

This was supposed to be a celebration. A post about my 5,000th cup of coffee. A gratitude shoutout to those who support independent investigative reporters like me. For six years, I’ve been gumshoeing on Twitter, fighting the Great Disinformation War with truth; investigating TrumpRussia 24/7 because the world is on fire and the sky is falling, literally.

In July, I opened a Ko-Fi account because I needed support. My life’s work is investigating the fuckery of our times, and I needed to know that somewhere in the thousands of followers I’d amassed I could find support. And it came. People from all over the world bought me coffee and bought my books, and cheered me on and wrote me words I shared with my children. I’d send them screenshots and say, “Look, people care about your mom’s reporting.” Kind words and coffee fueled me to keep going. Like I could stop. Being German-American I am incapable of standing down. Fascism never goes away, it just sleeps. It’s awake now, and trying to take over our country.

Thanks to the shitshow known as Twitter, I have found my tribe. I contribute to the best reader-funded newspaper in the world, Byline Times in the UK. I have the best writing partner in the world, the brilliant Sian Norris. The paper’s founders Peter Jukes and Stephen Colegrave named the newspaper for writers. That’s a big deal.

I found my podcast partners, Jim Stewartson, High Fidelity, and Sean Conner. We all met doing the labor of democracy, exposing the cons and the corrupt, investigating disinformation and piping in truth. Jim and HiFi were forced off the platform, and I get lonely sometimes. My guys aren’t there to protect me, and on a day like yesterday, when I was troll brigaded for pointing out Peter Thiel is bad for democracy, I was on my own.

Block and move on, block and move on, block and move on. The trauma is real. The paid ops are real. The insensitive idiots posting Congressional porn are real. Don’t they know these are just distractions from Putin’s Fifth Column’s war on democracy. Didn’t they read Sian and my story today in Byline Times about what the fuck is happening to women?

Twitter is bad for my psyche. But it’s where I met my tribe. I have to grow a fifth layer of skin. I now have to enter the platform as if watching a horror film, hand covering my eyes, peeking through splayed fingers.

Block and move on, block and move on, block and move on. Keep doing the work. If I leave, that’s one less voice of truth, a victory for the bullies.

I have written a screenplay about the French Resistance. I know how long wars last. I have watched Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows a half dozen times. I have watched Battle of Algiers a half dozen times. I know what to expect. I have been writing about where this is headed for years. I have not been wrong. There is no joy in that.

I was at the symphony drinking in Prokofiev and Beethoven on Saturday night. Prokofiev left Russia behind in 1917, he had no taste for Revolution. Upon his return, he was no longer allowed to leave. Blame it on Stalin.

You might not be interested in war, but war is interested in you (Trotsky).

And the women come and go talking of Michelangelo (Eliot).

This was supposed to be a celebration. Instead it’s a dirge. I’m just keeping it real.

I didn’t shed a lot of tears today, but it was more than usual.

We are losing our country. I will fight til I die.

****

Heidi Siegmund Cuda is an Emmy award-winning investigative reporter. She covers American politics for Byline Times, and cohosts and coproduces the podcast RADICALIZED Truth Survives. You can support her writing at: https://ko-fi.com/heidicuda15373

An Interview with Martin Sheil on the curious rash of oligarch deaths

By Heidi Siegmund Cuda

In recent weeks, I have been documenting the oligarchs in Putin’s inner circle who have been indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as the London arrest of Fox News producer Jack Hanick for violating sanctions by building a pro-Putin propaganda network with a sanctioned, now indicted, oligarch.

In addition, for years, I have been chronicling the curious “suicides” of bankers tied to the transnational mob.

When I learned of the recent rash of curious deaths of Russian oligarchs and their family members, I turned to retired IRS criminal investigator Martin Sheil for his take on what these deaths may indicate and how they may relate to Putin’s war of annihilation in Ukraine.

As usual, Marty did not disappoint.

What follows is Marty’s raw speculation based on decades of experience dealing with global mobsters and following the money on financial crimers.

HSC: Sure seems odd, Marty.

MS: Yes, I noted some media reports on what is being termed "mystery deaths of Russian oligarchs." It sort of sounds like a Grade B movie plot but given the context who knows?

HSC: Do you see a pattern developing as it relates to Putin’s war and economic sanctions?

MS: Before I delve into raw speculation, I just wanted to note that when the New York stock market crashed in 1929 there were a host of millionaires jumping out of windows to their death.

DEFENESTRATING MILLIONAIRES

Back then many millionaires made their millions by speculating in the market by buying stock "on margin," which means they borrowed from banks to invest in high risk equities that paid off richly at times. But when the market crashed, many banks called in the notes and demanded repayment in full which the suicidal speculators were unable to do thereby losing everything.

It must have been hard for millionaires to go from riches to rags within days and many full blown egos built around their wealth probably could not bear the pain.

RICHES TO RAGS

Ninety-three years later it must be hard for billionaires who went from rags to riches to return to rags after the Russian Stock Market closed and banks started to call in notes.

Having said that, let me make some additional speculative observations on "the Mystery deaths."

PETROSTATE OF MIND

I mentioned on one of your previous RADICALIZED Truth Survives podcasts that Gazprom is the main artery of the Russian economy, which is very petrostate oriented. I wrote an article in The Hill that was published on December 31, 2021 that suggested implementation of Truly Targeted Sanctions starting with individuals related to Gazprom whom Fortune magazine once termed "the most corrupt major corporation in the world."

I note that Leonid Shulman who was head of Gazprom Invest Transport service was found dead on January 30, 2022

I further note that Alexander Tyulyakov was found dead on 2/25/22. Tyulyakov (aka Tyuliakov) was the Deputy General Director of Gazprom's Unified Settlement Center (the company's Treasury) for Corporate Security. Local police arrived at the scene at the same time as Gazprom Security personnel. Gazprom security kicked out the local police according to various media reports.

Mikhail Watford was a Russian oligarch born in Ukraine who made his fortune in Russian Oil & Gas, was found dead in Surrey, England on February 28, 2022 in what some are calling suspicious circumstances.

Then just this past week, Vladislav Avayev the former VP of Gazprombank was found dead of a gunshot wound in Moscow after allegedly shooting his wife and daughter then himself.

Two days later, Sergey Protosenya a former VP and chief accountant of Novatek - the second largest Gas company in Russia to Gazprom which also maintains close connections with Gazprombank - was found hanged with a blood stained knife and axe nearby. His wife and daughter were found nearby dead from knife and axe wounds, but no bloodstains were found on Protosenya nor was any suicide note found. The family was spending the holidays in a rented luxury villa in Lloret de Mar, a coastal Catalan town. Telecino reports that Protosenya possessed a net worth in the vicinity of $433M.

HSC: Bloody hell, that’s a lot of death. Are we looking at a mob war within the greater war?

MS: What may we surmise from the suspicious circumstances surrounding the demise of so many Russian oligarchs in such a short period of time that transverses the buildup to the Ukraine invasion, the imposition of serious economic sanctions, and the bloody and very costly Russian initiated war?

It would be tempting to say that some oligarchs got cut off by sanctions from their booty and couldn't take the descent back to the middle class and ended themselves.

Or we could speculate that the above were involved in embezzling and other financial shenanigans typical of corrupt Russian business executives and officials and got caught with their hands in the cookie jar just when all foreign currency reserves were called upon to support Mother Russia.

HSC: And as you noted, the brilliant Deputy Prime Minister of Canada Chrystia Freeland made sure Russia’s rainy day fund was not accessible so money desperation is a real thing.

MS: Correct. Now, we could further speculate that Putin wasn't getting his 4% as the writer Anastasia Kirilenko once characterized the tribute paid by Russia's kleptocrats.

We can connect some dots with the above mystery deaths between major Russian gas companies (Gazprom & Novatek) and a major Russian bank (Gazprombank).

I would also note that Forensic News made reference in a printed article of an unusual financial relationship between Gazprombank and Deutsche Bank.

PUTIN’S SILIVOKI

A further factoid of interest for consideration - Mark Gryelvay one time CFO of Novatek was arrested in the U.S. in September 2021 for allegedly hiding $93M in offshore assets.

Has Mr. Gryelvay decided to cooperate with the authorities and shed some light on other Novatek/Gazprom improprieties? Or Gazprombank shady dealings for that matter?

Who might be targeted? How high up do the target sights go?

HSC: That’s the million dollar question.

MS: Does this go high enough for Putin's siloviki to take action?

HSC: It should be noted that we have so many investigative reporters that we owe debts to on this subject. So many that we have lost along the way, like Karen Dawisha and Wayne Barrett.

MS: Dawisha died not too long ago from a mysterious blood disease as so many other writers and journalists writing about Russia have perished under suspicious circumstances.

While it was Kirilenko that coined the term "Putin's 4%" - I believe that much of the investigative work that forms the basis of that term was conducted by Karen Dawisha who wrote the book - Putin's Kleptocracy.

Dawisha noted that Democracy was just a decoration in Putin's Russia that covered up the union of Organized Crime, KGB and Putin's cronyism best illustrated by the Ozero Cooperative made up of folks close to Putin like Yuri Kovalchuk, Nikolay Shamalov, Petrov, Traber and Skigin. This union got its start with the PTK which stands for the Petersburg Fuel Company, which quickly came to dominate the St. Petersburg docks and businesses under the control of Vladimir Putin.

Controlling the docks in St. Petersburg in the nineties was akin to controlling the NYC docks in the fifties by the Genovese Mafia family (I could have been somebody).

HSC: I learned everything from Dawisha, and I’m so sorry we lost her. She more than anyone explained the origins of Putin’s early gangster days in St. Petersburg. And how Russia was not a failing democracy but a succeeding kleptocracy.

PUTIN’S VIG

MS: While we can say that Putin got his 4% "tribute money" from businesses operating in the city when he was Deputy Mayor of Petersburg, U.S. mobsters like Robert Libutti or Fat Larry Iorizzo would have referenced the 4% as "Vig" - a term not unfamiliar to the docks or to Donald Trump or the man who wrote so authoritatively about him Wayne Barrett.

A USER OF USERS

It was Barrett of whom one eulogy was written - Wayne saw through the show and focused on the sham. When studying 'the Donald," Barrett characterized Donald Trump as "a user of users" - a description that Dawisha or Kirilenko would have and perhaps should have used when describing Putin and his kleptocracy or his 4%.

As time goes by and more Russian journalists are imprisoned or poisoned for their efforts in exposing the truths behind Vladimir Putin and his war on Ukraine, their up and coming courageous replacements would do well to remember Wayne Barrett's searing description of Donald Trump when they are writing about Putin. Barrett memorably noted that for Donald Trump "every relationship is a transaction."

Oligarchs for Putin are "earners." Should they not earn they serve no purpose for Putin. Pay the vig or pay the consequences.

****

For more on Martin Sheil, please watch him on various episodes of RADICALIZED Truth Survives and read his interviews throughout my Byline Times archives. Image below by Russian street artist Pavel Pukhov, known as Pasha P183, who died in 2013 at the age of 29 of unknown causes. He dedicated his art to exposing truth.

Your support of independent investigative journalism means a lot. Grateful for any support here: https://ko-fi.com/heidicuda15373

A “Lucid” Conversation with Anti-Putin Cartoonist Dan Brown

By Heidi Siegmund Cuda

Among the amazing things that have occurred by showing up each week for Ruth Ben Ghiat’s “Lucid” hour is the global network of people I have met. We not only get an education on current events as seen through the lens of one hundred years of authoritarianism by America’s foremost expert on Italian Fascism, but people from all over the world offer debriefs on the growing threats in their own communities and countries. We have formed a global community of smart, concerned citizens, who are into action. We share intel, we support each other’s work, and we make key connections as we further our knowledge on how to fight back.

Among the friends I met is Dan Brown, a New Yorker and Canadian, who worked in both the tourism and art industries. Brown shared one week at Lucid that he thought there was a deadline for democracy, and it was coming on like a freight train. I heard those words and immediately reached out, wanting to hear his story and have him share his experience and thoughts with my readers.

This is that interview.

****

THE WRECKING BALL

Dan Brown: I see the track that the United States is on, it was laid down by a game show host. He’s a wrecking ball, by his own self-perception, and everybody who supports him sees him as a wrecking ball.

And the thing that I think the two sides disagree on is what does that wrecking ball accomplish, and whose interest does it serve? And I think that both sides of the divide believe that authoritarianism is looming. They just disagree on which party is going to bring it.

ONE OF THE FIRST VICTIMS OF AUTHORITARIANISM: HUMOR

In the work that I did as a tour guide, I came into contact with hundreds of thousands of people, as I gave tours of Manhattan. It was an education: I learned a lot about how people react when you start to broach certain subjects, and I had to navigate, basically, through their biases. Because if I said something that was anti-Trump after 2015, it was much different than how people would react if I made fun of Trump before 2015.

People who would have laughed at jokes poking fun at him before 2015 wouldn’t after that. I’ve always thought that one of the first victims of authoritarianism is humor.

Once people get into this mode where you can’t criticize whoever it is that they’re supporting, then you can’t even make just a simple joke.

PUTIN KILLED A PUPPET

When Putin was elected, one of his first authoritarian acts was to have one of his cronies at the Kremlin go to a television station and tell them that the TV show Kukly, which was a puppet show, wasn’t allowed to use his puppet anymore. They had done this episode that was beautifully vicious in its takedown of Putin. The puppeteers and the writers of that show, they saw what he was, almost before anyone else.

I should have been able to, as a tour guide, make fun of Trump openly without having to worry about people who support Trump reporting me to management. But that became a concern. So I had to shut my mouth.

NO TIP FOR YOU

I was giving a tour of the Upper East Side, and as we were driving by Trump Tower, I just offhandedly said—and this was before he was elected—that I had tried to listen to one of his speeches and had to shut it off after 15 minutes.

And there was a couple on board who had been enjoying my tour considerably, and then when they went to get off the bus, they said to me “No tip for you,” because they couldn’t believe that I had said that about Trump. So that was when it became clear that free speech is not as ingrained in the American conscience as people like to think it is.

HSC: Well as Ice-T said: “Freedom of speech, just watch what you say.”

DB: Ha! Exactly! I learned that during the run up to Trump. I was originally doing walking tours with student groups. We would go through Lower Manhattan and down to the 9/11 Memorial, and to the Statue of Liberty. And then later, I was doing double-decker bus tours, and they’re different audiences basically, they’re different crowds.

Double-decker bus tours are more like the McDonald’s type of tour guiding, where it’s just mass tourism, and they kind of squeeze as many people onto a bus as possible, and it’s high turnover, so you don’t get to engage with people in a normal way, which is really detrimental to your soul, because it degrades human interaction.

It’s brutal, and I would see it happening to everybody, including myself. And it was hard to keep going, but you know, when that’s your livelihood, and you’re in a certain mode, and you don’t want to change tracks, you just keep perpetuating it. And so, between those two types of tour-guiding, you’d have different levels of interest in what you’d be saying, and also different levels of knowledge bases. So probably the most knowledgeable person I ever gave a tour of New York to was Dr. Cornel West. He was so supportive, and it invigorated me to keep going.

A TERRIFYING IGNORANCE

But I started to see a terrifying ignorance. One day, we were approaching the 9/11 Memorial, and the new tower–the Freedom Tower, as some people call it–came into view, and one of the tourists was walking alongside me as we made the approach, she sort of asked me, just gently: “Is that the building that the planes hit?”

And I just looked at her, like, is that what she meant to say? And it was. And in my mind, I was like: holy moly. She doesn’t know that the Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11? And so I just, you know, with respect, explained that that building in front of us was built years afterwards, and that two huge towers had been completely destroyed, and she was nodding her head and absorbing it all.

And I just had to keep on going. I felt like I had been smacked in the face. I couldn’t believe it. This was the first time that I had encountered a middle class American, who didn’t know what happened on 9/11. But it wasn’t the last.

The ignorance was revelatory for me. People thought Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. They thought a lot of things that were terrifying in hindsight, and it was the beginning for me of seeing that people’s minds were being manipulated against truth.

A DEADLINE FOR DEMOCRACY

HSC: Is that where the idea of a deadline for democracy first came to you?

DB: Well, going back to the fact that I think everybody in the United States senses how precarious things are, and each side thinks that it’s the other side that’s the problem, and when you’re in that mode of thinking, when you’re certainly riled up the way that the Republicans are riling up their base, things are going to get ugly, and it’s most likely going to be precipitated by the presidential election in 2024 or 2028, and to me, those are the possible deadlines.

LAYING NEW TRACK

I don’t think the track America is on is safe. The freight train’s just going to keep on going until it smashes democracy completely, unless we’re able to lay down a different track culturally. And it has to be done extremely quickly, and in a way that I don’t think is within the imagination of the powers that be in the West. I don’t see them making moves that would indicate that they have any new ideas.

My friends get sick of me talking about all this, because they get so depressed about it, and they think well, ‘Dan is just an endless motor-mouth of talking about depressing news,’ but that’s not how I experience it myself. Talking about all this stuff is just my mind processing it. And it’s spinning out ideas that are much more lighthearted and positive than the crap that’s coming in.

And it’s out of those ideas that I’m trying, in my own way, to piece together something that would hopefully be a platform to, give both sides a different option. And maybe I’m completely foolish and crazy in what I’m thinking, but I don’t really care at this point, because what difference does it make if an idea is crazy when we’re heading towards the worst possible scenario? So? You embarrass yourself if you come up with a crazy idea and it doesn’t work? Who cares? Move on to the next crazy idea.

HSC: Right. I fully agree with you. I love what you said about feeling like we’re on the lower decks of the Titanic, and how do you get that message to the upper decks to stop the ship from hitting an iceberg. I mean, the reason I do these blogs, and I do my investigative work is because I’m trying to get the message to all decks, and I think you said something important yesterday about you get the feeling that Democrats don’t have the kind of urgency that we’re all seeing. I feel like we’re on fire, you know … and where is the urgency? Putin’s war of annihilation definitely created more urgency, but we have such a short window.

DB: Yeah, I agree. That relates to another part of my New York experience. I was working for a company that could be described as “art management.” In New York City, “art management” is a euphemism for tax avoidance. They knew the tax code better than anybody in the country. Everything that they did was to minimize Wall Streeters tax liabilities. Legal, but very sly. And both Democrats and Republicans took advantage of this tax avoidance scheme, while preaching civic duty. And I’m thinking, these wealthy people don’t pay taxes, but I do.

GETTING HATEFUL

So we’re stuck on the lower levels of the Titanic, and the people who are down there are not in any position to affect change. And there’s a lot of people down there, and they’re all reacting differently. Some of them are getting really frustrated, and some are turning to things like the Proud Boys.

I once knew someone who was one of the original recruits to that, and he’s very economically disadvantaged and is probably going to have a very difficult life, and he doesn’t know what else to do but to get hateful.

There are other people down on the lower decks who don’t want to even acknowledge it and just want to play video games. They kind of look cynically at people who care and make fun of them. Or just act like they’re weirdos. And then there are other people who are coming up with ideas and don’t know where to go. They’re just down there, stuck, and that’s frustrating.

HSC: That is so frustrating. I know you don’t want to spend too much time on Trump, but did you want to use that Tony Soprano, anti-hero metaphor? Because I thought that was really good.

DB: Thank you. Absolutely. Because I don’t even think that the Trumpeters would object to that. Most of them know this guy is a scoundrel. “He’s our scoundrel.” They find something charming about him. And you can break that down psychologically as long as you want, but it doesn’t really matter, in the end. They’ve just chosen to be with Tony.

THEIR SCOUNDREL

When the Sopranos prequel movie came out recently, I started watching clips from the show on YouTube, just to remind myself of the characters and the story and everything. So YouTube then recommended a clip of James Gandolfini appearing on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update segment in 2007. Weekend Update was then hosted by Tiny Fey and Amy Poeler. So Gandolfini, in character as Tony Soprano, goes on to make a string of racist and sexist remarks, but at the end of the skit, Tina Fey just looks at the audience and says: “That is the scariest man I have ever been attracted to.” And I feel like that also sums up the way many Republicans feel towards Trump: they know he’s scary, and they like that.

HSC: Very astute. He lovebombs them, so they don't mind that he’s a scoundrel. I thought it was really interesting how you put it together that you’ve got the Billionaires Row, the huge glass towers on 57th, knowing that it’s used for Chinese and Russian money laundering, knowing that oligarch Oleg Deripaska is a gangster and his employee Paul Manafort becomes Trump’s campaign manager, and I love what you said about, “What the hell is going on? I hope the CIA is on it, because I don’t have time for that.” I mean that’s how we’ve been living for six years.

DB: I was just thinking there’s a deadline here… we can’t stand forever lamenting the situation. At some point, we have to get crazy, and talk about strategies that are asymmetric… a way of doing things when you don’t have any kind of advantage, or you’re at a very severe disadvantage, and you have to try to achieve your goals without having anything to work with.

HSC: It is so frustrating the money is on the side that’s against truth. Like the people out there trying to push truth, and show who’s corrupt, and who’s in bed with whoever, a lot of us are unpaid activists, and there’s just endless sums of money to push anti-science, anti-vax… all the antis, and to create that right-wing victim machine. And there’s just endless sums of money to promote the Michael Flynns, and if you could wave a magic wand and come up with a solution, what do you think it would be? Or if you could just wave a magic wand and just make anything happen to keep us from becoming an authoritarian country, how would you do it?

DB: There was a comment I think made by Stephanie, in the Lucid group, maybe about six months ago, when it first started, where she said that it’s her fantasy that there would be a new Walter Cronkite, somebody who both sides could listen to and not feel that they’re being spoken down to, or prejudged, and are not being lied to either.

A NEW WALTER CRONKITE

And that may be one solution. And this is where we get into the world of crazy ideas, but the thing is, charisma. It would require charisma, right? Any individual who had the ability to do that would have charisma, but charisma is not necessarily something that’s inborn.

Predominantly, it’s created. I mean, Trump doesn’t have any natural charisma, frankly, but it was created. It was created by Mark Burnett, and also Vince McMahon, on the WWE side. They manufactured characters that Trump could inhabit. And then he starts to look charismatic when he plays a character. And I think there has to be a lot of creativity, not to fool anybody, but to find someone with the appeal of a Walter Cronkite who could join the two Americas.

HSC: It’s a real hard truth to hear that it can only work by someone who’s not going to offend the other side. It’s so true, and you’re so right. But fuck, how do we just tiptoe around a mobster, and not call him what he is – it’s so difficult. I personally am not able to do it, but you are right. To pretend Trump didn’t try to overturn the election or to pretend he’s not a Russian asset to have a convo with this base. Sigh.

ATTACK THE AUTHORITARIANS RELENTLESSLY

DB: I think one way to go about it is to just recognize that he is a little wrecking ball, but he’s somebody else’s wrecking ball, and the authoritarians that are using him, they are fair game. So the way I think to proceed would be to attack those guys relentlessly. But it has to be done quickly… because look at what Tucker Carlson is already doing… he’s already introducing Viktor Orban to his audience.

And I tend to think that more FOX viewers know the name Viktor Orban than any other group of Americans. My friends, before I came back to Canada, I was passing through New York City, and so I got together with a few friends, and it was the week that Orban had hosted Tucker Carlson, and I brought that up and it was just like, a lot of blank stares from everybody. And these are not uneducated people, but they’re just not paying attention to Viktor Orban. They don’t recognize what Viktor Orban is, what he’s done over the last ten years, and how that’s a template for so many other aspirant authoritarians. And that he’s a more respectable kind of figure to present to Americans than Putin.

There are Putinists around, for sure, who admire his “strength,” and his “manly man-ness.” But he’s also clearly a lunatic, going around with his shirt off on the backs of horses, and starting wars. Orban is a “serious man who wants what’s best for his people,” or at least that’s how he’s being portrayed to FOX viewers. And there needs to be a rapid gearing up to attack Orban, to attack Bolsonaro… assuming he survives as leader of Brazil … and Viktor Orban. But all those clowns… Orban, Bolsonaro, Xi and Putin… they all should be attacked relentlessly, in every way, including not just exposing their policies as horrendous, but attacking them, just making fun of them. That’s one thing I take from Professor Ben-Ghiat’s book is that the cult of virility that they’re relying on, and the manly man-ness of it all, that’s a point of attack that needs to be pursued relentlessly.

HSC: That’s really smart. I mean, a person I know just adores Putin. It’s like, he extracted all the wealth from his country, laundered it in Western nations, he stole from all his people … they’re so poor over there. He took all the fuckin money. And now he’s ruthlessly committing genocide in Ukraine. How can anyone say he’s such a great guy.

DB: What is it that he admires about Putin?

HSC: It’s a she. I think it’s that he loves his country so much.

DB: That’s what they say about Trump too, right. Like, a lot of people who I gave tours to on walking tours, who I actually got to talk to and form a rapport with, and when I still used Facebook, I had them on my Facebook account, and they were really nice people, and genuinely good, and they’d be so enthusiastic about coming to New York to see the Broadway shows, and they know every lyric to every show and they’re just so enthusiastic, and then I’d look them up and look at their accounts and they’re just gung ho for Trump, and I’m like… no, no, no… you’re being misled. He’s nothing like you.

HSC: Yeah, he certainly is not. Gosh, it’s frustrating. Well you’ve given some really thoughtful ideas.

DB: Thank you for listening to me vent.

HSC: It helps me too. You know, you’re so right, because Trump’s someone’s boy, but the fact is, he ain’t my boy. I see him for what he is—a fake rich guy and professional propagandist who owes money to some very bad people. But I can see how if you could find a Walter Cronkite type that would make his base feel safe and lovingly help them out of their addiction to him, it could work. The problem is, as we said yesterday, he’s just the current avatar. There will be another one who’s probably a lot slicker than him.

DB: I was thinking the other day in terms of who would be able to take on, carry his torch for him–I guess both literally and figuratively–it’s just like whoever that is, it’s almost like they have to go commit some crimes and then get away with it, just to prove that they are cut from the same cloth as Trump.

HSC: Oh God, that is like a dagger in my heart, but you’re so right.

AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS

DB: And just one more happy thought to conclude on: the two biggest issues of our day are authoritarianism and the climate crises, and I think it’s in that order. Because if you don’t get the power away from the authoritarians, then the climate crisis is not going to be solved. They’re just going to destroy the planet.

HSC: What you just said is the most important thing of all.

DB: And what that means then, with the issue of defeating authoritarianism, we’re going to need charisma, that’s one thing. But also deference to science. All the great scientists are on the side of democracy, yet I don’t know any great scientists that are out there as leaders of the Democratic Party.

HSC: We need a casting call lol. But your point is right. I mean, why wouldn’t there be? Why would there not be scientists who will throw themselves on the gauntlet and participate in democracy. I wish Stephen Hawking was still with us. It’s a lot to think about, and really fricking important. We’re going to save the world one way or the other. We’ll at least try.

DB: Exactly. Thank you, I appreciate it. Good night.

HSC: I appreciate you. The deadline for democracy is ticking. Sweet dreams.

****

Dan Brown is an anti-Putin cartoonist living in Canada.

Below, image is of the Kukly Putin puppet the Russian dictator had killed when he came to power in 2000. The show Kukly was once the most popular show in Russia. After Putin was installed, the network’s founders were jailed, and the show was killed in 2002. The puppet’s creator was recently forced to flee the country. At the time Putin assumed power, one of the show’s writer/directors told the New York Times: “We’ve lived 10 years under conditions of freedom here. And I don’t want to turn back to what was.”

***

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https://ko-fi.com/heidicuda15373

For me, Twitter has been the best of times, and the worst of times. I have met tenacious angels from every corner of this earth—many of whom have supported me in the last six months of my activism. And I have been hurt. I have suffered real world harms by online active measures. Like many things in life, it’s not a pure play.

So I made a point of meeting key people doing good work online in real life. I am happy I met Jim Stewartson. He is not only a talented OSINT investigative researcher, he is a good friend. And now, a colleague, as we cohost our investigative podcast together RADICALIZED Truth Survives, with our friends High Fidelity and Sean Conner. I created the show around these gentlemen, because they do brilliant work.

Lonely are the brave. Together, we are not lonely.

As I watch a dedicated active measures operation to discredit my team’s work, focusing their online terrorism on Jim, I revisited the raw notes from our first recorded interview. I’m glad I did. I can see why they try so hard to silence him: he was fucking right. And they should fear guys like him, who are all out of fucks as they try to save this country from harm.

Below are the unedited notes, so those who are real can see for themselves why Jim presents such a danger to the traitors who lurk among us.-hsc

****

Jim Stewartson Notes, August 3, 2021, from interview on July 31:

WORKING TITLE: Chaos and Trauma

Jim Stewartson explains the apocalyptic ideologues who created a brainwashed death cult. And what we can do to stop them.

HSC: You estimated about 30 million Americans aren’t well in the head right now. And to put it bluntly, they’re being mindfucked, whether willingly or unwillingly. How did we get there?

JS: To be clear, nobody gets willingly brainwashed. The bad actors we will talk about are absolutely doing things on purpose, but the vast majority of people who are in this cult are there because they got brainwashed, because they got trapped, they got traumatized, they got coerced, over and over and over again, through traumatic propaganda material, until they were literally another person.

They’re suffering from a dissociative disorder. It’s a psychological disorder that is real as fuck. It’s not pretend, it’s not science fiction. People get into a dissociative disorder that affects their personality. It changes them. When people talk about going to see grandma, it’s ‘Who is this person?’ ‘Who the fuck is my wife?’ ‘Who is my husband?’ ‘Who is my daughter?’ ‘Who is my neighbor?’ The reason that it feels that way is because they are different people, because they were traumatized and disassociated, cultic influence through ideology was basically inserted into their mind, and then they were refrozen, so that all of those ideas, and all of that trauma and damage that happened while they were disassociated becomes imprinted on their mind.

HSC: It’s critical we start viewing these people as victims/we have to stop taking a warlike stance against our neighbors who have been radicalized, and we have to view them as victims.

JS: Here is the problem and why this is so pernicious. I completely agree that they are victims, and we need to find a way to see them. The problem is the way cults are designed: they are designed to make you have no sympathy for them. They’re designed to make people as combative and enemy-like as they can (Jan. 6). It’s their plan.

Whenever I tweet something about them being victims, you get a lot of angry people saying, ‘They’re not victims, what are you talking about?! They’re dumb! They’re just racists! And I completely understand. It feels that way, because they’re saying stupid shit, they’re saying racist shit.

And some of them may have been racist before but not all of them, not at all. It’s really important to understand that those ideas are put into their head by the cult.

HSC: It’s like invasion of the body snatchers.

JS: It’s exactly like invasion of the body snatchers. When I first got started, I went back to Facebook to do some research, and I hadn’t been on there in 18 months, and it was fucking invasion of the body snatchers, man.

Everybody was in some state of being affected by it. They were either in it themselves, or they knew people who were, their loved ones were. Or they were just freaked the fuck out. Everybody was saying all this weird shit. And that really cemented this whole thing for me. I was seeing it in the real world, and then I went back to my own connection to it, and said, ‘Okay, this is real as fuck, and someone has to start yelling about it.’

HSC: There is nobody that I know whose life is not being touched by this, and it’s incredibly important, and it’s so deceptive.

JS: It’s why it upsets me when people push back. I have been attacked so hard for a year, by people who should not be doing that. It’s amazing to see how people on all sides of the political spectrum act against their own interests. What are you guys doing? Why are you attacking me for trying to expose this? ‘Are you BlueAnon? Russia Russia Russia.’ The free speech objections. ‘Oh, you’re just trying to shut everyone down, they just think different then you. No, no, no.

They’re victims of a psychological attack, they need help.

HSC: Crazy making, it’s creating an unwell and sick in the head America.

JS: Steve Bannon said it himself, when all else fails, flood the zone with shit. That works. It doesn’t even matter what it is, because he and the other people we are going to talk about really want to destroy the administrative state.

He means the entire project of civilization. He wants to burn it all down and build it back up with him in his golden tower.

(Jim explains his history, ARG, creating scenarios for good and for sport)

Two decades ago, I helped pioneer this thing called alternate reality games, which were fun. We would set up puzzles, and scavenger hunts, and online websites of strange companies and allow people to discover them, doing real world and internet archeology to find mysteries.

It was a very big thing in the aughts. It got huge amounts of press, and it was the quintessential viral marketing. We never said the name of the product, it was more like, “Ooh, there’s a weird URL in the Halo trailer, what’s that?’ And people would go and find it.

Halo 2, Microsoft came to us and said, ‘Hey, can you do one of these games for Halo 2?’ Sure, what’s it about? ‘Aliens come to earth and blow shit up.’ We said, we can do that. We had a brainstorming session, came up with a War of the Worlds concept, where everyone comes in the middle when Mars is attacking and people think it’s real. We were like, ‘Cool!’ Let’s do that shit!’ Sounded awesome.

There’s that moment: is it real, is it happening, it’s fun.

So we put a URL in the trailer, one frame: I love bees. And people saw it, and within a couple of hours we had a quarter million unique visitors on the website which in 2004 is a lot. And it was this Napa Valley beekeeper’s normal looking website, and all of a sudden this black box would come up on it and all this weird shit would happen.

And people were blown away. It started this nine month adventure where people would literally go out into the real world with GPS and find a location and a time and wait there, and when they do, a pay phone would ring, and it would have a little bit of what we recorded, a six hour radio drama set in the 26th century. We had tens of thousands of these little groups of people going out in the world, answering pay phones. And I built this system, where when somebody would pick up the phone, I would have an AI voice ask a question, and voice recognition on the other side would know if they answered the question correctly, it would unlock a piece of audio for everybody online.

Everybody online was putting the pieces together.

The thing that would happen is, if we weren’t really clear where the puzzle was supposed to be, people would drive themselves crazy trying to find content that didn’t exist. If someone thinks there's a mystery, they want to solve it.

So whenever we would see that, we would shut it down. We didn’t want them to go crazy. We’d put a boundary on it and tell them where to look, where the puzzle was.

We didn’t want people to drive themselves crazy, we did not think that was a good idea.

(Pokémon Go, I love bees for Halo was basically a proto Pokémon Go. You’re going into the world and trying to collect something. He worked at Niantic when PG was being developed)

So let’s fast forward to 2020, 28 years of experience, high school education, punk rock bands, only child, single mom, nerdy, independent, wasn’t into anyone telling me what to do, was literally in punk bands for 20 years.

Bass player, I always wanted to do that, the nexus between the rhythm and the melody.

I was in punk rock bands, got a temp job moving boxes of women’s clothing, 18 months later, I was VP of central planning.

I was good at math and could figure stuff out. I built a computer system to automate a bunch of stuff, and found out I was way more interested in the computers than the clothing. And so eventually, we had a kids’ division 92, 93, I created some graphics, and showed them to our children’s designer, and she sold 20,000 of them to Mervyn’s.

This is awesome! I don’t have to do anything! I don’t have to have a degree! I can just do computer shit. So I started my own graphics design company, and aside from a stint at Google, I have always run my own companies.

I got into VR in 1995, the only grown up job I ever had was Google, but I’ve run my own companies for decades doing virtual reality, augmented reality, alternative reality games, trans media, AI, all that.

(2020, what happened to Jim)

I knew about QAnon vaguely, I knew it was kind of like an alternate reality game, I was poking around at it a little bit. Then a friend of mine wrote a really important piece about how QAnon was exhibiting some of the characteristics of ARGs.

He was O.G. The Hon brothers.

August 2, 2020.

I read those, and was like, ‘Well shit! Let’s check this out.’

I went there, I did what most people won’t. I immersed myself in what I call Qwitter. QAnon Twitter. All the QAnon people were harassing Chrissy Tiegen and going on people’s threads and creating all sorts of havoc.

In July of 2020, Twitter got pissed off about it and did a decent job of stopping people from coming into Normyville, but what they did was insulated all the QAnon people so that nothing but curated feeds from the outside world.

QAnon is a cult, a set of cults, that was created by a psychological operation that started in 2017. It grew out of a desire by a set of sociopaths and apocalyptic ideologues to destroy America from the inside out.

And they leveraged Trump and had free reign for four years to do whatever the hell they wanted. And they did. And they set up a very damaging psychological operation inside America to mindfuck, brainwash and ultimately weaponize a huge percentage of our population.

When we did it, if people started going crazy we would make them stop. QAnon does the exact opposite. There’s a psychological condition called apophenia, which is a condition you get if you are presented with a lot of noise, and there is no signal. Your brain wants there to be a signal. Your brain wants there to be a signal no matter what. It’s a pattern matching machine. And so if you sit in front of a television set with snow on it, you will see stuff. For some people it will take a long time, for some people it will happen instantly. For those where it happens instantly, they are schizophrenic. It’s literally a pre-schizophrenic state.

It allows you to be very easily influenced. So Q would set up these cryptic bullshit, Q drop clues on 8Chan, and people would invent all kinds of reasons for these drops, these bits of text and words, it really didn't mean much and that was intentional.

So Q, who doesn’t exist by the way, sent people off to solve mysteries that didn’t exist. People would get in this state of apophenia really wanting to find an answer. The trouble is, the content they were doing that in was traumatic, sadistic, and harmful propaganda. Child abuse videos, horrific adrenachrome child raping shit, all of that content was there, right next door, for the people who were trying to solve these mysteries to mire themselves in.

That’s the plan, that’s what they did, to tens of millions of people. They said, here’s a mystery, go solve it, and by the way, here’s a bunch of traumatic material to go marinate in, while you look for it. And that is how so many people got brainfucked in America.

HSC: How sick or evil or greedy are the people who are producing this? Clearly, you're describing something that exists because some people knew how to weaponize and traumatize people with psychological operations.

JS: All of them are sociopaths or psychopaths. The reason for that is simple: you have to be in order to on-purpose design a system that is going to control the minds of people and harm them irreversibly, you have to not care about human beings. That’s the definition of sociopath. You don’t care, you can’t care. If you do, you wouldn’t be doing this.

HSC: So Trump was a perfect vector for this to metastasize.

JS: Absolutely, a sociopath narcissist, it was all about him so he was easy to manipulate. His motivation is as obvious as it gets. It’s just about him. But the people around him are different, Bannon, Stone, Flynn, Thiel, and Prince, they have bigger ideas. They’re ideologues. They genuinely feel what they are doing is great. It doesn't matter if they are destroying the lives and minds of tens of millions of citizens.

HSC: What is their objective or are there multiple objectives in weaponizing and traumatizing people like this? Obviously, Jan. 6 was a culmination.

JS: It was just a rehearsal sadly. The sociopaths who are really running the show are kind of strange bedfellows but they’re also not. The ultimate goal, the shared project as it were, is the destruction of the concept of liberal democracy. Small L, liberal democracy.

They think multiculturalism and all the ‘woke, sjw, racist, anti-Semitic all of that shit, is designed to destroy the reasons for liberal democracy. If you don’t care about other people, if you don’t care about other races, if you don’t see there is good in diversity, then your project has to be to convince everyone that you are right and destroy the ideas that oppose you. And that’s why they attack who they attack, and that is why they do what they are doing.

They want to destroy global liberal democracy and replace it with fascism and authoritarianism, because they believe that situation is the best for them, and they may be right. Because if you’re rich, king of the world, you don’t need all these gaddam people, what do you need all these people for?

HSC: You just described a playing field why facts don’t matter, we’re not penetrating with facts. We can’t refute the insanity of this stuff with facts.

JS: If you dispute the facts that the cult has put in the head of whoever it is you’re talking to, you are automatically the enemy. You have just proven what the cult said. So you can’t do that. You cannot argue somebody out of being brainwashed. Ultimately, you have to allow the personality that is still there, that is still buried underneath this fucking fascist zombie that a lot of these people have turned into, you’ve got to give the original personality of that person some oxygen, and some room to remember who they are and to reassert their boundaries from this other trauma that they experienced, which it was it is, it’s trauma.

If there is this cascading thing that happens, once they kind of pop out, they look around and say, ‘Fuck me, what just happened?’

There’s a lot of that.

HSC: Keeping us fighting against each other is a losing proposition and part of the game, they need to be seen as victims.

HSC: Who are the five apocalyptic ideologue.

JS: Flynn is genuinely a theocratic fascist. The shared project they have is destroying liberal democracy.

They have different reasons for it.

Bannon’s apocalyptic ideology is traditionalism, but it’s a special fucked up form of traditionalism based on a couple of old philosophers Evola and Dugin, they share a view and genuinely believe the world goes in cycles, and we are now at the end of the dark ages and the world needs to burn in order for the elites to rise and begin the next cycle. It’s an occult belief system. Modeled somewhat on Catholicism and masonry and a bunch of other occult shit, but he believes it. It’s his actual philosophy. It’s the reason he’s so smug. He knows exactly what he is doing. He doesn’t believe any of the shit he is saying. He’s doing it in order to push through the apocalypse.

Big Lie, Anti-Vax, Epoch Times, Guo, Breitbart, Cambridge Analytica. War Room is on the same server as X22 Report, which is the largest QAnon account. 400,000 subscribers, Praying Medic, grifter, Jesus thing.

Bannon has been part of this thing from the beginning. He brings in a shitload of money. He’s been in the Trump zone, while QAnon was being built.

To be clear, there is no Q. Q is a fake, Q is a larp. Q does not exist. It’s like saying, who is the real Santa Claus? Santa Claus does not exist.

Q is not a person, it’s a project, it is an op. That went on for three years, but if there was a Q it would be Mike Flynn. Mike Flynn started talking about digital soldiers since 2016. Mike Flynn was in Trump Tower with all the people who fit it, who have all the money for all of the psyops, which the Mueller Report talked about. Flynn got fired three weeks after he began working as a national security advisor, six months after that Ezra Cohen-Watnick got fired and both of them specially went to work to create a psyop on America.

He’s beyond treasony. Last week I found video of Mike Flynn in a church, getting an AR-15 as a gift and saying, I should go find somebody in Washington, D.C. That’s not treasony? Sounds like a threat to me.

HSC: Thank you for following this stuff. I am too weak of heart. I can’t look at it. The media didn’t credit you for finding that Flynn clip.

JS: They don’t like me. Because there are bad actors in the media and surrounding zones that literally ran ops on me for a year, and still are.

If I have receipts on anything, it’s all of that.

Flynn is the worst traitor in American history.

This guy has been running a hot war on the United States and has captured a third of our population.

Stone has been a charming ratfucker, and he’s been working for the Russians and other foreign powers for 50 years. Literally since Watergate.

He has the most incredible string of bad shit he has done almost outside of anything you can think of who hasn’t committed murder.

He’s arguably worse because he’s hurt many people with the shit he has done.

Jason Sullivan Ron Watkins, Sullivan was Stone’s Twitter guy, Stone is connected to Alex Jones, one of the worst propagandists. He helped organize 1/6 and has been in Trump’s ear since the ‘80s. He doesn’t have an ideology, he’s just a smart Trump. He’s just a scheming little fucker. He’s a sociopath. At this point, he’s just an old ratfucker.

Peter Thiel does not have an ideology other than Peter Thiel. He’s a psychopath, a legit brilliant psychopath. Capitalism propels sociopaths, if you have no regard for human life or health it’s a superpower. You have an entirely different set of options than most people.

So while everybody else is trying to save the world, Thiel set us his entire life to short the world, in investment parlance. To make a bet on the world devolving into chaos and pain and death.

Palantir, Clearview, Facebook for that matter, they all benefit from chaos and vitriol and destruction.

He wants the world to burn because it’s good for business. The reason he’s into sea steading, he thinks he’s going to be on an island in the ocean, cuz everything else will be burning. That’s his elitist paradise and he’ll lead everything else to the battle.

Dude is a fucking psycho.

On Trump’s transition team, his CTO was Thiel’s chief of staff.

Thiel also funded Maga3X which was the group that started QAnon.

So if you want a direct line, there is it.

Also Stone.

Erik Prince is a fucking Nazi.

(Tells the story of Thiel’s priest Opus Dei mentor father Arne Panula at Stanford, who became head of the Catholic Information Center, Opus Dei and Knights of Malta, K street lobbying firm Leonard Leo, that whole thing was put in place you the guy who had a weird relationship with Thiel in college)

They all have their roles, Flynn is the psyops guy and the general, Stone is the sneaky ass ratfucker who will just do anything, he doesn’t give a shit, Bannon is the guy who brings the billionaires along and runs the enormous targeting and propaganda operations, Erik Prince trains everybody and executes specific targeting operations, he had training centers in WY NC and VA, he trains physical troopers, but he trains psychological terrorists who started and operated QAnon.

(RNC 2016 is when they were all together)

PsyGroup did data collection and surveillance at the RNC,ever wonder why Republicans acts like they’ve got kompromat.

Live Action Role Playing, Q is a Larp…

Patriot 27 Storm is Upon Us… LARP, not an identifiable human being.

Louise Mensch is a LARP human…

She was the 18th person that Rupert Murdoch followed, she’s an op…

They set up factions to war against each other

She fought against right wing friends and the goal is to get everyone radicalized…

It’s the same five white men who are running all of it

What do we do about this? Arrest them! For trying to overthrow the country. It seems like a crime, arrest them. Or commit fraud on the entire country. There are so many crimes. RICO. It’s a legitimate conspiracy to mindfuck the country and mindfuck the world to destroy liberal democracy.

(Gamergate to alt right)

It all goes back to misogyny. Gamergate was started by Fred Brennan on WizardChan, then it went to 4Chan, and what it was was a fake critique of female, woke, SJW gamer, and the people who support them.

(It was to denigrate woman who were trying to do good in the world)

Yes, Zoe Quinn, who was the target, and still is the target, created a game about feminism and misogyny and they saw an in. They targeted her and picked on her, since 2013.

They grew the issues and just churned on it, until all these gamers, and 4Chan denizens were all pissed off about it. And Fred Brennan, when it got too intense and too violent, he literally started 8Chan to take all the Gamergate people to that platform.

Ron and Jim Watkins offered to buy 8Chan.

They’re the worst websites in the world, uncensored anti-Semitic misogynist where trolls go to be radicalized.

From this Gamergate metastasized into the alt right.

Fred Brennan wrote an article in Storm Front in favor of eugenics, Storm Front being a straight up Nazi website and Milo from Breibart loved it. He loved all the Gamergate shit. He saw these radicalized people, which was basically his job. So he started covering Gamergate for Breitbart and Steve Bannon saw it, and likely thought it was the best shit he’d ever seen and there are many quotes from him saying if it wasn’t for Gamergate we wouldn’t have had Trump.

It’s a very clear simple progression. You have this angry set of white repressed, threatened, incels (involuntary celibates) that generate all of this hate, and basically get siphoned off through Breitbart and Richard Spencer through all these diffferent vectors into straight up white nationalism.

So that’s why we have all these fucking Nazis.

(I tell him broadcast news nazi vs punkvoter story. How when there would be a ratings sag, I’d be asked to scrounge up Nazis, instead I delivered ratings with the Rock Against Bush/PunkVoter tour)

JS: This is not that. There is a new thing that happened in late 2020 and 2021. There’s a Nazi explosion. I can show you on Telegram there are millions. Telegram was operated out of Russia and now its Pavel Durov in the UAE with Erik Prince.

(He shows me the racist and Nazi postings, strewn throughout his trauma video, violence, all trauma violence. All the time. Anti Semitic Nazi …this is one of hundreds of these channels. This is one of the bigger ones. All of these are nazis.)

HSC: How are you able to do this work without infecting your own soul?

LAST LINE:

JS: It does, of course it does. It hurts, it sucks. When I started this, I knew it was gonna hurt, I knew it was gonna suck. But I got the callouses to deal with it. That’s fundamentally what it comes down to.

It’s hard man, especially when you’re seeing this shit and trying to do good in the world, and you get attacked by people who you expected to be your friends.

This shit is hard, I’ve been in the fetal position a lot of times.

There’s also something really obsessive about it. I know that if I spend another 15 minutes looking through these channels, I’ll find something that people should know about, like the Mike Flynn video.

(That’s my lede)

I think it’s important that someone is documenting it, as more things happen and we have to look back to see how we got here.

To radicalize people into a cult, you used to have to bring them to a compound, or kidnap them like Patty Hearst, they kidnapped her and worked on her for months, until she finally was indoctrinated. It’s almost impossible for people to resist real serious coercive trauma programming. It goes to the origin of the word brainwashing by the Chinese Communist Party in the ‘50s. You used to need a compound like Waco, very close constant access.

The internet changed all that. 2020 was this perfect storm, the pandemic hit and now suddenly literally everyone in the country is home all day long.

That was the rocket fuel for this thing, and it came at just the right time, and the cult was already there, it was already radicalized but when the pandemic hit, that’s when I saw shit really start to take off.

We have to get serious about cutting off these bad actors and propaganda outlets. Forget about Fox for a minute, which has been doing this shit for 30 years, we have OAN and Newsmax beaming into our living rooms, on our cable. These are straight GRU propaganda. What the fuck is that doing on our TVs? Why is that on our TVs?

Why should I be able to turn on Newsmax in my living room or my kid or my wife or grandmother?

We have to get fucking serious and understand what these things are. They are literally there to support this psyop. That’s what they do. OAN is a psyop validator, the entire purpose of it, same as Newsmax, they just put this bullshit out into the world to strengthen these operations.

There have to be fucking consequences. I did a map on the top 20 people on QAnon and nothing has happened. Nothing has ever fucking happened.

Until we start arresting some of these fuckers, it’s just going to get worse.

Putin is deeply behind this. Everything in QAnon is Russian propaganda. All of it. The top three heroes in QAnon, Trump, Julian Assange, and Vladimir Putin.

QAnon is supposed to be so patriotic, but the enemy is Putin.

What I mean by fuck the norm is the lack of seriousness that the Democrats and others are taking the destruction of our government.

A lot of our government is still run on norms, and Trump destroyed all of that. Because he didn’t give a shit. And now we’re back in there and we’re trying to do bipartisanship and trying to go through all these processes that used to work, they don’t fucking work anymore. Get rid of the filibuster, pack the court, do what it takes to save this gaddam country because if you don’t we’re done here. So that’s what I mean by fuck the norms. Stop worrying about powdered wigs and collegiality and start getting serious.

(Pedo Q is code for dehumanizing)

JS: It’s always projection. Trump obviously has a pedo problem in his orbit.

(Thiel’s adrenochrome company)

In the real world if you're in a store and 50 Nazis come in and start harassing you you can call the cops. When you’re on Twitter and your just doing your thing and suddenly 50 nazis come and attack you, you don’t have shit.

And here’s the thing, it’s just as psychologically damaging as it is in the store. It’s not any different.

You have all these rules in the real world and the digital world used to be a reflection, take a picture of it online. It’s not like that anymore, it hasn't been like that for a long as time. If your character is assassinated online, you’re screwed. And we need to start paying attention to it as if it’s the real world because it is. It’s as real as the real world. It’s no longer a reflection of the real world in some ways its the other way around,

January 6 is a reflection of the online world. Not the other way around.

I don’t think most people understand what happened.

All the dying people in the hospital are because of this cult.

HSC: If we don’t start arresting the Big Five, what's next?

JS: Civil War

Follow me on Twitter, if you have information let me know. I made the decision to not make money from it. I tried to set up a group on Twitter to do some work and we got attacked.

Right now, it’s just about getting information.

I have three boys, three kids, and I don’t want them to live in a fascist hellscape. It’s basically that simple.

For some reason, I’m good at this. I’m terrible at a lot of things, but I’m good at this.

I don’t see how ignoring it is a responsible pathway.

(End raw notes)

Turns out, it was right-wing coup.-hsc

(Below, our first meeting, July 24, 2021. We recorded the interview above a week later.)

By Heidi Siegmund Cuda

My fondness for investigative reporter Carole Cadwalladr and Dr. Emma Briant, a researcher and professor, led me to spend an hour with them on the third installment of the “PSA Media and Politics Group Seminar: Power, Politics, and Media.”

Dr. Briant kicked off the lecture with her research, “Neuro Targeting in the Influence Operations--from Psyop to Politics,” and the special case of Cambridge Analytica. With her background in information warfare, counterterrorism communications, and research into how militaries utilize propaganda, Briant honed in on one area where Cambridge Analytica was very effective: neurotics. If CA--essentially a shell company for defense contractor SCL--identified neurotics, they could market and sell fear.

“SCL were among the first people looking at neurotargeting,” she said. “Essentially, researching the brain to predict and potentially manipulate audience behavior and decision making.”

Bone-chilling, stuff. Easy to see how authoritarian leaders could use such research and data to control entire populations, which of course causes profound ethical concerns.

“We need to be paying close attention to neuroticism,” she said. “It seemed to create much greater engagement by audiences when targeting neurotics with fear-based messaging. If we are neurotic, we are more likely to experience anxiety.”

She spoke about the church data-mining company, Gloo, which repurposes their data for political purposes. Although Gloo denies this, Briant had emails revealing otherwise. In addition, she reminded us that CA shared their data with Russia. She also revealed how peddling conspiracy theories to those with mental health conditions is, quite frankly, amoral and unethical.

MALINFORMATION

It was while listening to Dr. Natalie Martin that I had to pull over and suck in some air.

As Dr. Martin explain the distinctions between misinformation and disinformation, she included a new term I had not yet heard: malinformation. Malinformation is truth that is used to discredit someone professionally or personally. The most obvious example is “kompromat,” where truth about a target can become a blackmailable commodity. Such truth is also used to target someone into silence, to disengage them from their peers and to ostracize them. Journalists are frequently the target, those speaking truth to power are often the subject of malinformation.

I could feel tears draining from my eyes before she finished her opening statements. As soon as I learned the term, I reflected on how malinformation was used against me personally and professionally in 2018, both online and offline.

I had been the target of concerted online and offline attacks to discredit me in my personal life, as well as my professional life. My big sin was to take a job on a campaign to unseat Russia’s favorite Congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, from Congress.

From the moment I made the announcement that I would be the Director of Communications for a very talented Muslim-American candidate, and from the first celebrity retweet, the malinformaton campaign commenced.

My life was shattered inside and out within days, and it would take years before I could see how coordinated the effort was. In an Influence War, there are no rear areas.

In my case, I grew three layers of skin, and fought louder. I formed allies throughout the world, and we are stronger in numbers. With little to no resources, we go up against corrupt billionaires daily, and our work is making a difference.

CAROLE’S STORY

One of the most public disinformation and malinformation attacks on a female journalist was the brutal campaign against Carole Cadwalladr, who exposed the malign forces behind the Brexit campaign.

“I feel like I’ve been the target of propaganda,” she said. “I feel it has had a lasting impact, and in very real life ways. It’s manufactured online, but it has ongoing effects in terms of my life and career. It made me into a contested political figure, and that’s a hard space to do journalism in. I am now seen as a legitimate target, a cultural hate figure. And that brings baggage that I carry now into everything I do.”

She is also a global hero for truth, and no amount of pokey and twee shit heels can take that away from her.

A BIT SHIT

“All that stuff is poorly understood,” said Cadwalladr. “But on the plus side, I’ve come to understand it. So on the plus side, it aided my understanding; on the minus side, it’s a bit shit.”

A viewer phoned into the seminar who had been recruited into SCL 15 years ago, and said he smelled a rat and stayed far away. “It’s called smearing,” he said. “And it’s been part of democracy for decades.”

That may be, but in an Influence War, the targets are no longer just political figures. Hiring bad actors to silence journalists, particularly female journalists, is cheap and easy.

Thankfully, we are not.

I wake up every day ready to fight this war. I don’t like it. We know who the creeps are: they are the ones lying, rotting from the inside, their telltale hearts beating so loud we can hear them across continents.

One day, the law will catch up, and the separation between online harassment and real world harassment will no longer exist.

The perpetrators of this real world evil will be punished. The truth tellers will be vindicated. One day. That day should be now.

****

Author Heidi Siegmund Cuda is an Emmy award-winning investigative reporter, producer, and filmmaker.

On July 27, 2021, democracy exhaled.

Six months after domestic terrorists tried to overthrow the government in the name of Trump and God, police officers who were present on that malevolent day spoke their truth. With achingly powerful testimony, each described their attempts to hold the line, and the subsequent trauma they endured.

“This is how I’m going to die,” said Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, as he told of being beaten by the violent mob in what he described as a “Medieval battle.”

Gonell, a 15-year veteran of the Capitol Police, said: “Rioters called me traitor, a disgrace and that I, an Army veteran and a police officer, should be executed.” Gonell, who was born in the Dominican Republic and served eight years in the U.S. Army, described being punched, kicked, shoved, and sprayed with chemicals as he attempted to defend a Capitol entrance.

“There’s a continued shocking attempt to ignore or try to destroy the truth of what truly happened that day and to whitewash the facts into something other than what they unmistakingly reveal - an attack on our democracy by violent domestic extremists and a stain on our history and our moral standing here at home and abroad,” he said.

In one of the most telling passages of his statement, he said: “I did not recognize my fellow citizens who stormed the Capitol on January 6th or the United States that they claimed to represent.”

The video that was played throughout the hearing of the violence captured on that day from police body cams revealed brutal images and audio of people who had devolved into grotesque caricatures of human beings. They sounded like monsters.

KILLING IN THE NAME OF

“I heard chants of ‘Kill him with his own gun,’” said Michael Fanone of D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, as he described being beaten unconscious. “I was electrocuted again and again and again with a taser. I’m sure I was screaming, but I don’t think I could even hear my own voice. … I thought about using my firearm on my attackers, but I knew that if I did, I would be quickly overwhelmed, and that in their minds would provide them with the justification for killing me. So I instead decided to appeal to any humanity they might have. I said as loud as I could manage, ‘I’ve got kids!’”

That plea prompted someone in the crowd to drag him away, but not before he suffered a heart attack and a brain injury.

“I feel like I went to hell and back… but too many are now telling me that hell doesn’t exist or that hell actually wasn’t that bad. The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful,” he said, as he pounded his fist on the table.

Daniel Hodges of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, who spent six years in the 116th infantry third battalion as an indirect fire infantryman, was soft spoken and direct, and he laid the blame squarely at the feet of Donald Trump.

He called the mob “terrorists” 15 times, also referring to them as “Donald Trump’s people,” and he noted key details: “The sea of people was punctuated throughout by flags, mostly variations of American flags and Trump flags. There were Gadsden flags. It was clear the terrorists perceived themselves to be Christians.

“I saw the Christian flag directly to my front. Another read, ‘Jesus is my savior. Trump is my president.’ Another, ‘Jesus is king.’ One flag read, ‘Don’t give up the ship.’ Another had crossed rifles beneath a skull, emblazoned with the pattern of the American flag. To my perpetual confusion, I saw the thin blue line flag, the symbol of support for law enforcement, more than once being carried by the terrorists as they ignored our commands and continued to assault us.

“A man in a QAnon hoodie exclaims, “This is the time to choose which side of history to be on.” A man whose shirt read, ‘God, guns, and Trump,’ stood behind him silently holding a Trump flag.”

He described the moment when they were unable to hold the line, and “terrorists pushed through the line and engaged in hand-to-hand combat.”

As someone tried to gouge his eye out, he was sprayed with a fire extinguisher.

“It was my turn in the meat grinder,” he said, as he detailed how a man who was foaming at the mouth kept bashing his head in. He said he did the only thing he could think to do: he screamed for help.

The last to speak was Harry Dunn, a Capitol Police officer, who asked for a moment of silence to pay respect to Brian Sicknick, an officer killed by the mob.

After telling the crowd he voted for Biden, he described a woman in a pink MAGA shirt, who “yelled, ‘You hear that guys? This n***er voted for Joe Biden.’ Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 people, joined in screaming, ‘Boo, fucking n***er.’ No one had ever, ever called me a n***er while wearing the uniform of a Capitol Police officer.”

He described the “words as weapons.”

Gonell noted the unpatriotism of attacking police officers “with the same flag they claim to represent” and said: “It was an attempted coup, and we were fighting for our lives.”

Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) called the insurrectionists “fascist traitors” and Harry Dunn called it “war.” Six months after the attempted coup, the death count continues. Four officers who guarded the Capitol on January 6 have committed suicide.

A thoughtful moment came when Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Virginia) quoted Hemingway, on how these things happen: “Gradually, then suddenly.”

She said she doesn’t want to look back in 20 years with the regret of inaction.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) noted the gravity of it all, by citing founding father Benjamin Franklin: “A Republic, if we can keep it.”

With the darkness of the Trump era still casting shade on the soul of America, the January 6 commission is taking the next right indicated step.

“There can be no moving on without accountability,” said Hodges. “There can be no healing until we make sure that this can’t happen again.”

****

Author Heidi Siegmund Cuda is an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter.

by Heidi Siegmund Cuda

We did it, you and me.

We thwarted an authoritarian in the middle of consolidating power, and that is a rare feat. We did it by exercising our rights as American citizens: we voted. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor the installation of hack at the USPS, nor a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic could stop us. Enough of us had the sense to rebuke disinformation and vote for the good guy and gal.

On Inauguration Eve, we celebrate. Hug a baby, cuddle a puppy, give your significant other a squeeze for their patience as you spent five years, phone in hand, fighting for truth to see sunlight. Tell your kids how much you love them. Or simply look in the mirror and give yourself a hearty, “Well done, you!”

We did it. We not only evicted Trump from the White House, we evicted Putin. Yes, we must remain vigilant, because we are in for the fight of our lifetime, but we deserve a moment to breathe and reflect.

We were not the silent ones. Or the neutral ones. Or the diffident ones. Nah, we were the loud ones, the people who defended democracy relentlessly, who called out the normalizing and complicit media, who never bought into the Trumpian alternative facts bullsh*t. Who never called him president. Who knew him for the fraud he was, and never wavered from truth despite societal pressures to do so. We are the finest of patriots, and I am very happy to know you.

We are on a precipice of a rebirth in this nation, survivors of a new cold war, where disinformation is free and truth lurks behind paywalls. We almost lost our nation to a rogue state whose leader poisons truth-tellers like it’s the gaddam Middle Ages. And now that we know how fragile our democracy is, join me in suiting up and showing up on Thursday, when we begin the fight anew. We must never allow the installation of a larcenous puppet into our highest office ever again and believe me, dark forces will try.

As I type these words, I know evil forces are plotting, scheming, desperate in their fear, prisoners of their own corruption. We must keep our eyes wide open and anticipate their moves. Everything is telegraphed by history, and dictators are very predictable.

I ask you to please stay loud.

As Ruth Bader Ginsburg taught us, “Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

Allow the good spirits to guide us, as we journey safely onward.

Author Heidi Siegmund Cuda is an Emmy award-winning investigative reporter, who is currently writing for Byline Times.

Throw a rock, hit a shell. 

When spelunking down rabbit holes to investigate corruption, the anonymous, shadowy world of shell companies often leads to cryptic deadends. According to retired IRS investigator, Martin Sheil, the darkness is by design.

“The fact of the matter is that over the years the U. S. has become 'the' ultimate money laundering destination of choice for the kleptocrats, oligarchs, drug dealers, organized crime figures and corrupt politicians worldwide,” says Sheil. “Not Switzerland. Not Estonia or Latvia nor Cyprus although the Russians might cavil with that assertion.

“Anonymous investment in real estate via shell companies within big cities safely ensconced in fortress America became the popular choice worldwide of those noted above who possessed sources of nefariously obtained income.”

That choice is now challenged. A bipartisan push in Congress to pass anti-money laundering legislation resulted in last week’s insertion of multiple bills requiring companies to disclose their beneficial owners into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a must-pass defense bill.

“It is beyond about time,” says Sheil. “To quote Robert Frost, it’s ‘a momentary stay against confusion.’"

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) has been trying to pass anti-money laundering legislation for 12 years, and her Corporate Transparency Act was among the bills inserted into the NDAA.

“The bill will crack down on anonymous shell companies, which have long been the vehicle of choice for money launderers, terrorists, or criminals,” she said in a statement. “The bill will finally allow law enforcement to follow the money in their investigations, and will prevent terrorists, kleptocrats, and other bad actors from using the U.S. financial system to hide their dirty money.”

Senator Mark Warner’s ILLICIT CASH Act was also inserted into the NDAA, and like Maloney’s bill, he’s seeking to make it easier to track criminal activity, improve corporate transparency, and strengthen national security.

“As the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I know that the current holes in our financial system pose a serious threat to national security,” Warner said in a statement. “The ILLICIT CASH Act will seek to patch those holes… handing federal agencies the 21st-century tools they need to combat these 21st century threats.”

The poetic justice of anti-money laundering legislation being inserted into an annual defense bill is not lost on Sheil, who spent 30 years at the IRS, retiring as Supervisory Special Agent in the Criminal Investigation Division.

“I recall Jonathan Viner, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Law Enforcement in the Clinton administration, quoted as saying in regard to the rise of luxury real estate to launder money, ‘It didn't matter that you paid too much because real estate values would rise, and it was a way of turning dirty money into clean money,’” says Sheil. “Viner was further quoted as saying, ‘It was done very systematically and it explained why there were so many high rises where the unit was sold, but no one is living in them.’”

Sheil says cash purchases of a luxury property via shell companies with no requirement to reveal the beneficial owner was a key method to launder foreign, ill-gotten gains.

“Banks who have a requirement in their anti-money laundering responsibility to ‘know their customer,’ will be greatly assisted by the requirements of the legislation,” says Sheil. “Folks who make their living selling luxury condos may have to adjust.”

In a recent editorial published in The Hill, Congresswoman Maloney wrote: “Beyond the impacts for law enforcement, this bill will directly affect us here at home by lowering housing costs in New York City.”

She explains how criminals using shell companies routinely park illicit money in luxury real estate, which limits housing availability and drives up costs. Among the condos sold in all cash transactions to anonymous shell companies were more than 1,300 Trump condominiums, according to a Buzzfeed News investigation.

“We’re the only advanced country in the world that doesn’t already require disclosure of this information, and frankly, it’s an embarrassment. We must fix this in the final NDAA,” wrote Maloney in The Hill.

Sheil says money laundering, like life, will continue to evolve.

“How long will it take to successfully regulate Bitcoin once the big corporations and tech companies with all their political contribution potential get involved to muddy the regulatory waters?” queries Sheil. “The major attraction of Bitcoin is the Anonymity associated with it. Sound familiar?”

He says the bad guys will adapt, and so too must Uncle Sam. He cautions that unless money laundered is tackled head on, the U.S. tax system will further erode and society will further stratify.

“I hope that does not happen and we have learned our lesson,” says Sheil. “But hope is the key word there. To quote Joe Biden quoting Seamus Heany, ‘History says, Don't hope on the side of the grave… But then, once in a lifetime, The longed for tidal wave, Of justice can rise up, Believe in miracles, And cures and healing well.”

It is, after all, the season of miracles. Let’s see if Congress can make one.

The imaginary hours. Wide awake at 2 a.m., researching, posting, digging, poking. Tweets strewn about the bedroom floor. News delayed is news denied. I am a veteran investigative reporter, who resigned from corporate controlled media just in time to be a useful warrior for truth, unshackled and loud. It’s 2017, and I am abandoned in my own home, my pursuit of truth during the Deception Wars was inconvenient. I am alone, and I’m fighting for truth to see sunlight during a time of grave deception. It’s my raison d’etre. No sleep.

I got into the war for my children. I am first generation German-American. I can’t be silent during a time of massive injustice. I am an environmentalist, who can’t be silent when our planet is at stake. I am a trained reporter, who can’t be silent when I knew the real fake president* was a veteran con man, who used people as for-profit marks. I had investigated all his ponzi schemes and knew him for who he was. For this, I am now banished in my own home, living in my daughter’s room, while my children are away at college. 

I began printing the truth prior to the election of 2016, punching through every angle to cut through the noise of deception, to cut through the billionaire-funded lies. I had to be brave, the loneliness was crushing.

Nevertheless, she persisted. I cut through the bigotry and the for-profit hate, countered the misogyny and brute normalization. I made it to the Women’s March in Washington, D.C. And then something beautiful started to happen. A network of strangers began forming alliances, all in the relentless pursuit of truth. It was some kind of magic. Suddenly, I was no longer alone. I would push an investigation as far as I could, and a new European ally would post a clue so I could keep going. We crowdsourced our work and supported each other during profoundly dark days. The unthinkable was occurring: global democracies were under siege. A greed-union between a Russian war criminal and his henchmen, and money laundering Americans posing as businessmen. The war criminal trying to bootstrap his way back to power on the cheap.

Someday I’ll write a book and dedicate it to each and every one of you who lifted me up and encouraged me to keep going. Those of us who used our real names to fight this war suffered the slings and arrows of unloved trolls, who were just following orders from St. Petersburg and its London annex. Through our activism, some of us even found love. Disdain replaced by compassionate support. Homes now filled with warmth.

We’ve never known how this story would end. How the biggest traitor in world history would go down. We can look to history for clues: Manafort’s clients either flee to Moscow or meet unfortunate endings. Revolutions are messy things. Just ask the ghost of Tsar Nicholas. A con man does not go gently into that dark night. Most autocrats are dictating to hide their financial corruption, so it would behoove the real fake president* to exit stage right without fanfare, retiring to the old oligarchs’ home. Some would prefer he face life in prison, because treason is still a thing.

I do know that we are about to see what is left of America, what kind of stuff she is made of. I am hopeful, I am emo, I am awake. 

by Heidi Siegmund Cuda and Keith Matthews

It was two days after the president of Russia had declared himself the Supreme Ruler Master of Ceremonies Thrasher of the Damned Remarkably Free of Flaws and Don’t Contradict Me King of Kings in Perpetuity Forever and Ever, and his hair was a mess.

As it turned out, his erstwhile barber, now dead, was more difficult to replace than anticipated. He was now on his fifth barber in five weeks, and since he’d declared marriage to be between anything with a fifth appendage and a woman, all the barbers in Moscow had revolted.

That evening, he was flying in a new temporary barber from the city formerly known as Stalingrad, who had come highly recommended by his “Chef” due to a fluency in doublespeak. The fact that he was a gifted neurosurgeon with a pocketknife had gone unremarked.

The Supreme Etc caught a glimpse of himself in the dichroic headlamp of his Aurus limo and was devastated. He hadn’t looked that bad since ‘91, when he was still doing his own grooming. He popped a ‘lude and took a nap.

Meanwhile, back at The Hague, the American president was recovering from emergency surgery. Turns out, removing a “Chip of Unknown Origin” (CUO) had more side effects than anticipated.

“It was a lot like removing Britain from the Union,” said The Hague’s chief neurosurgeon, wiping off his scalpel. “It left a dent. It also appears his right temporal lobe has been missing for some time. You know borscht technology, it’s never subtle.”

Repelled by his lack of symmetry, the American president’s base had at long last abandoned him. Once held together by cynicism and malice, his fake empire was crumbling.

He finally had the gift of desperation.

Unfortunately, the waterworks he shed on TV night after night from prison was a big turn off. Viewership was down.

The vice president, a House Plant with a Cross, attempted to stage a televised intervention. His dream of assuming the presidency hung on appearances.

The president’s current wife, the Beard, had to first get clearance from the Kremlin. Every other family member was able to get by with just a note from their handler.

The House Plant opened the proceedings, but assuming his usual devotional gaze when casting his eyes upon the president proved difficult. The consensus in the room was a mutual desire to look away from the disfigured head.

What should’ve been a supportive be-in, quickly became a vicious shitshow. The family found his wigless, tanless, caved in head, weak. They were repulsed by his uncontrollable weeping, a side effect of crank withdrawal.

Within seconds of receiving the power of attorney to assume control of rebooting The Brand, the family snapped their briefcases closed and stalked out. Only the Beard remained, long enough to pass a message from the Kremlin: “We’re increasing the Vig,” she said.

Meanwhile, back at the Kremlin, the Russian leader was eyeing the barber’s blade closely. Each time his new stylist snipped, his anxiety spiked. His hair looked okay—this guy clearly made the cut. But could he be trusted?

The entire Truth Resolution Operation of the Brain Modification Management Team (BMMT) took up a third of the country’s budget and everything hung on its success.

So far, the Kremlin was still in control of the other Oligerks at The Hague—removing the “Chips of Unknown Origin” (CUO) could prove lethal and The Hague jurists weren’t willing to risk the liability.

The BMMT programmed the two GOP Senators and one Congressman (who’d been arrested with the president for trying to drop dirty bombs on California and pin the blame on Hillary Clinton) to parrot Kremlin talking points. The aim was to further obfuscate The Hague’s trial to determine what was self-will and what was Kremlin will. It was clear, however, that the Kremlin was starting to lose control of the plot.

As his new barber pulled out a straight razor to trim his sideburns, the Russian leader overreacted and was about to call for his execution when he got distracted by a rat in the corner of the room.

“What are you looking at me for?” said the rat.

Questioning his sanity, the Russian leader downed a Thorazine cocktail and singing softly to himself, “I Get No Kick from Champagne”, he drifted off into fairyland.

--

“The Oligerks” is a work of fiction based loosely on fake events. Read Part One here: https://maewestside.tumblr.com/post/187749605256/the-oligerks

by Heidi Siegmund Cuda aka Maewestside

Every time you hear a 2Pac song, he’s reborn again. Each time another street-fighting hopeful enters the ring, Muhammad Ali lifts the rope.

We are the City of Angels, and angels are everywhere, sending indirect signs, helping us to keep our head up even in moments of great despair.

That love you feel for Kobe Bryant, that’s something special, something to carry in your heart. As long as he’s in your heart, he lives on forever.

Legends never die, they just multiply—schoolyard poets, writing licks on scraps of paper at recess; middle school athletes blessed with talent working as if they had none, because that’s what Kobe did.

The lessons they left behind, schooling us, a piece lives on in every heart that beats.

TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA

The impromptu weeklong memorial for Kobe and his daughter Gianna brought out the angels en masse. A courteousness and a grace permeated the crowd of mourners, decked out in that incongruous pairing of gold and plum, forgiven by aesthetes because the colors have come to embody greatness.

Anyone who saw Kobe play knows he’s legend. I got to see a 65-point game on March 16, 2007, where the Lakers were down by seven points in the last minute and a half, and with grace and ease, Kobe just kept nailing those three-pointers, leading the Lakers to victory over Portland. I remember thinking that he was the most graceful court dancer I’d ever seen, only learning this week just how hard he worked for those moves.

SHED SO MANY TEARS

Kobe once said, “I was blessed with talent though I worked as if I had none.”

That right there. Legends work hard. We only see the results. Fred Astaire glided across the dance floor as if on clouds of air, but the perfection was the result of endless practice.

Muhammad Ali danced like a butterfly and stung like a bee because he trained six days a week, shadow boxing, pounding the bag, sparring—not because he liked it but because he knew if he didn’t quit, he’d live the rest of his life as a champion. Word.

In the last year of his life, 2Pac would tell his driver to pull over so he could jump out and grab a spiral bound notebook, lyrics flooding out of him that he had to capture, instinctively knowing his time on earth might be short. His poetry, forever etched into our consciousness.

MAN OF THE PEOPLE

On night number five in downtown, the Kobe vigil was in full swing. Family units, travelers from Nicaragua and Tallahassee, women in stilettos, cuz, you never know. Vendors selling Kobe scarves, churros, handmade key chains, bacon wrapped hot dogs, his image etched on wood carvings, tshirts with the wings that were tattooed on his bicep now adorning his back.

I stopped for a pair of street tacos, asking the women preparing them what Kobe meant to her. She told me, “He spent time with us, the people, you know. He wasn’t above anyone.”

She said he stopped by her restaurant and refused to jump the line, telling her to treat him just like another customer. She wiped away a tear with her gloved hand, as I put four bucks in her fanny pack. There’s little doubt in my mind Kobe would have appreciated the entrepreneurism his tragedy inspired in the locals.

I walked through the streets admiring the freshly inked arms, reflecting how we mourn in L.A., with tattoos and paint, body canvas and abandoned buildings. Even if you didn’t hear the news that Sunday morning, all you had to do was drive through the streets, the handiwork of taggers already paying tribute. “RIP Kobe,” in Olde English, covering aged bricks.

HOW TO BE A MAN

“Dear Kobe, thank you for teaching me how to be a man, on and off the court,” wrote a fan on the canvas outside Staples Center. On a scrap of binder paper next to a flickering candle with “Long Live Kobe” written in sharpie, a mourner wrote a four stanza poem, the third stanza reading: “Oh what it means, to be a dad, Oh what it means, to rise from bad.”

At their best, legends make us better people. They make us work harder, strive for more and teach us to overcome adversity.

L.A. is an imperfect place, beautiful and flawed. The legends that spring from here are brilliant, beautiful and flawed. But it’s the brilliance and beauty that stay with us.

CALIFORNIA LOVE

The world is mourning the loss of a legend, but L.A. is mourning the loss of family. The kindness of strangers that permeates the downtown vigil is a moment for L.A. and one I cherish.

Kobe murals are popping up throughout the city, a sea of post-its creating a rainbow of love. So much raw beauty in this City of Angels.

As long as there’s a can of paint, the whirring of needles and archival footage, Kobe Bryant, like Pac and Ali, will flame eternal.

***

by Heidi Siegmund Cuda and Keith Matthews

Dateline: The Hague.

It was on day number three of the Trial of the Century when fresh hell broke loose.

Four defendants—an American President, two GOP Senators and one Congressman—were on trial for treason, war profiteering and crimes against humanity, after hatching a clandestine plot to drop dirty bombs on their own people and pin the blame on Hillary Clinton.

The scheme was foiled by the President’s youngest son, who was hiding behind a plant in the War Room and recorded the entire conversation on his cell phone, having evaded his Secret Service detail by feigning boy problems.

He livestreamed the cabal convo to Insta, and it was picked up by a blogger in Cincinnati who’d been trolling his feed for years. Pentagon officials immediately called for the video’s deletion. But it was too late—it had already rickrolled the Western hemisphere.

The President declared the video “Fake News” and had his son detained by Homeland Security. At an impromptu presser in the Rose Garden, he assured the nation his son would be put on a terrorist watchlist.

Meanwhile, back at the Kremlin, the President of Russia was in a pique. Just last week, the American President had uttered unauthorized words and he was convinced one of his top hackers was either drunk or a double agent.

The BMMT, Brain Modification Management Team, run by his longtime hairdresser, had been giving him ulcers. He no longer trusted his chief advisors—his chef, masseuse, plastic surgeon and bartender—who he’d put in charge of the entire Truth Resolution Operation.

As he popped another barbiturate to try to calm his nerves, Western leaders were gathering at the Bavarian summer home of the German Chancellor to see who pulled the short straw to take the lead on having “The Oligerks” (pronounced with a soft “G”)—the nickname given to the American traitors by a popular Twitter activist—arrested and brought to The Hague for trial.

It was easy enough to arrest the President. He was told he had a “golfing date” with the former President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, to discuss real estate. No one had told him Mugabe had died the previous Friday. He was arrested on the apron of the ninth hole, after the agent posing as Mugabe kicked him in the back of the knee.

The plane sent by Interpol was already idling.

Arresting the other “Oligerks” proved just as easy. All three politicians were pinched simultaneously at a scheduled photo op at the border, where they arrived in Chinos and blazers to look smugly upon caged men. But agents took them to the other border, where they were swiftly detained by Canadian Mounties.

They landed in The Hague at the same time as the President and a choreographed perp walk ensued.

The arrests were reported around the world, as font sizes grew from 24-point headlines to 36, 48, sometimes even taking up half the broadsheet.

Global leaders knew justice had to be swift but there was a slight problem. Not a single reputable attorney would take on any of the Oligerks as clients. They’d burned through every lawyer just staying in office and now that they were fending off crimes against humanity, no one wanted the stink. Besides, they were all known chiselers.

After a brief meeting, it was determined the President himself would represent all of the defendants, with his former lawyer advising him from prison.

And that brings us to day number three of the Trial of the Century and the fresh hell that ensued.

The President was giving opening arguments and there were audible gasps and murmurs because international law excluded the use of toupees and tanning beds and there was some initial confusion about who he was. He’d also lost a little weight.

He began his defense: “This is a witch hunt! We were only going to drop bombs in California because they aren’t patriots! Have you looked at their tax structure?! It’s a mess! Who cares about clean air?! Pfft. What a bunch of losers!”

As he turned to the panel of judges, waiting for the laugh track and applause, the silence seemed to confuse him. Nevertheless, he plodded on.

“The legitimacy of this court is nada!”

“You can’t hold me!”

“I’ll nuke you all!”

Unfortunately, none of his one-liners were finding an audience. He was in the dismal position of not having an army of focus groups helping him advance the plot.

He appeared defeated and began to stammer.

“And you…you can’t hold my co-conspirators either.”

“We’re not…innocent…I mean, guilty, yeah, not gui…gui..guilty.”

“We’re legitimate head honchos buh-buh-back in the States.”

He paused, then let out a screech.

“Ow!!”

He slapped his right ear hard as though an insect had landed. A smell of burning flesh suffused the large room. Smoke began to waft above his head and a blotch appeared behind his right ear.

One of the judges gestured to the bailiff who offered the President help to his chair. It was determined he required medical assistance.

This, of course, led to a whole chain of undesirable disclosures.

Upon closer scrutiny, The Hague’s doctors found all of the Oligerks had—to put it colloquially—a chip in their head. Each had been installed unbeknownst to the patients, on various otherwise pleasant trips to Moscow.

The disclosure caused an international incident but mostly people were relieved that there was finally an explanation.

The Kremlin issued firm, confident-sounding denials followed by a torrent of obfuscatory disinformation.

After ordering the arrest of all five members of his Brain Modification Management Team, the Russian President popped another Soma and sighed, realizing he’d have to find a new barber.

******

“The Oligerks” is a work of fiction based loosely on fake events. Read Part Two here: https://maewestside.tumblr.com/post/612706264512954368/the-oligerks-part-two-the-g-is-soft