Year of the Enigma - Parapolitical Strangeness

 

The static blue glow of various media screens illuminates faces of sleep-deprived, social-media addicted, increasingly surveilled netizens. Sleepless at 3am... cognitively over-stimulated and saturated by endless, mind-numbing scrolling... we have become ever more vulnerable to the constant bombardment of disinformation. The expanded use of the internet and new technologies have spurred debates about new forms of spying, from the expanding powers of intelligence services to the collection of data from private corporations. 

Data mining by the likes of the now infamous Cambridge Analytica are constantly gathering and collating our personal information, selling the resulting insights to the highest nefarious bidder. The various Artificial Intelligence entities, freed from their closed systems and now at large across the internet… facilitate data mining operations with post-human capability. Such is our systemic, surveilled State of Play.

The year 2023... described herein as the Year of the Enigma... is meandering its way through a socially mediated mine-field of digital intrusion. In past installments, we have examined the comical ineptitude of the GOP… the Uber-Right exploits of the Supreme Court, and the on-going saga of the Great Robber Baron/Trickster King. Clownish tomfoolery aside, the Year of the Enigma has made clear that the political realm can more accurately be thought of within a parapolitical context. 

 

Parapolitics (or covert politics), is a term used to describe covert political activity that is hidden from the public, utilizing off the books, black-op political actions of subterfuge, secrecy, and deceit. It describes the manipulation of public affairs not by rational debate and responsible decision-making but by indirection, collusion, and deception. Viewing the shenanigans of the past year as an outward result of parapolitical manipulations adds important nuance to our current State of Play.

The trials and tribulations of the Great Robber Baron/Trickster King make much more sense viewed through the lens of an organized, parapolitical crime syndicate, having once had their charismatic front-man in the white house, attempting a banana republic-like coup d'état. As the many indictments against Trump play out, we get more of a feel for how the crime family's boss operated.     

The following accusation, was made by former Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis as part of a plea bargain with Georgia state prosecutors, who have charged Trump and 18 others with plotting to illegally overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election. In a 2020 conversation with Dan Scavino (who was then serving as Trump's chief of staff and director of social media), Ellis testified... 

"I emphasized to him that I thought the ability to challenge the election results was essentially over" (Ellis told prosecutors during her testimony meeting, referring to a raft of failed legal challenges launched by the Trump campaign the previous month).

"He said to me, in a kind of excited tone: 'Well, we don't care and we're not gonna leave.'"

"I said, 'what do you mean?' And he said: 'Well, the boss' ...meaning President Trump, and everyone understood that's what we all called him... he said, 'the boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.'"

Ellis expressed doubt, telling Mr Scavino that "it doesn't quite work that way, you realise". Mr Scavino allegedly responded: "We don't care."

So... all the Whitehouse staff in 2020... those who Trump listened to anyway... referred to Trump as "The Boss." I mean, WTF? This testimony may as well have come from the 1966 Batman TV series... where the Joker's gang are conspiring against the dynamic duo and the good citizens of Gotham City. The telling and parapolitically relevant take-away is that 40% of the voting population in the U S still unquestionably support this clown. 

The MAGA constituency is a dedicated and well-armed segment of the population, essentially a paramilitary wing to the Trump parapolitical machine. When Trump makes a disparaging tweet on Truth Social, some deranged minion will obediently carry out some violent act. Make no mistake... there is a well organized parapolitical apparatus in place to get the Great Robber Baron/Trickster King back in power, at any cost. The question continues to be... who or what is pulling the strings?    

Two GOP speakers of the house later, the U S government is funded via continuing resolution. Not sure what hidden forces are at play here, but surly the GOP cannot be that inept... or can they? Although the GOP is seemingly in chaos, the fact that no republican currently holding office will dare go against "The Boss" or his parapolitical infrastructure, indicates a wide-spread conspiracy.

Not to be outdone in buffoonery, the Democratic party seems to be, on one hand, the adults in the room, while simultaneously in total disarray. They are totally freaked about President Biden's tottering age and cringe at any hint of mental decline. Those of us who have been around the block remember that Biden has always been a total gaffe-master. In his advanced old age, if anything, he has gotten less prone to put his foot in his mouth.  

In other Enigmatic news... 2023 has proven to be a massively impactful year in the crypto-verse. As you no-doubt recall, the cryptocurrency exchange company FTX, once the darling of the crypto market, collapsed in November, 2022... followed by the arrest of co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried. On December 13, 2022, founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was charged by the US attorney's office for the southern district of New York with fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to defraud the US and violate campaign finance laws.

After a spectacular feeding-frenzy of reporting by the legacy media... who were thrilled at the crypto king's comeuppance... Bankman-Fried was found guilty of fraud and money laundering at the end of a month-long trial in New York. The jury delivered its verdict after less than five hours of deliberations. FTX was once valued at $32 billon dollars, but when it went bankrupt in November last year, it seems that $8 billion in customer funds was missing.

The jury found him guilty of lying to investors and lenders and stealing billions of dollars from FTX, helping to precipitate its collapse. While he had been charged with seven counts of fraud and money laundering, Bankman-Fried had pleaded not guilty to all the charges, maintaining that, while he had made mistakes, he had acted in good faith. yeah right.

Not to be outdone, Binance CEO and initial investor in FTX, Changpeng Chao pled guilty to money laundering. As part of a guilty plea, Zhao agreed to pay a $50 million fine and would be barred from any involvement in the business. Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, also agreed to plead guilty, accept the appointment of a monitor and pay a criminal fine of nearly $1.81 billion as well as a $2.51 billion order of forfeiture to settle three criminal charges. 

The US Justice Department had charged the company with conducting an unlicensed money transmitting business, a conspiracy charge and violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed civil charges against Binance in March, alleging it failed to implement an effective anti-money laundering program to detect and prevent terrorist financing. In February 2019, Binance’s former chief compliance officer Samuel Lim received information on transactions by the militant Palestinian group Hamas on Binance, the CFTC wrote.

Which Segues quite nicely to the most horrific event of the Year of the Enigma...  the Israeli/Hamas War. It seems feasible that Hamas parleyed its crypto investments to finance the October 7th sneak-attack on Israel. As indicated in the above-linked post, with an ongoing War in the Holy Land, it appears as if the entire Middle East is poised to plunge into the dark fog of war. The outbreak of open warfare in the Holy Land, invariably conjures apocalyptic visions of Armageddon, the prophesied location of a gathering of armies for the final battle during the Eschatological End Times.

Such dark imagery is horrifically in keeping with the strange, parapolitical madness we can expect from these dark times. It is the stuff of nightmares, fanning the flames of prophetic doomsday of Christian and Islamic fundamentalists alike. Such imagery is also a means or mechanism of mind control, designed by a ruling elite, to maintain obedience and docility in an otherwise disenfranchised and disillusioned populace. And it is through means such as these that the predator-dominator paradigm... the Black Iron Prison... persists.

Such surveillance and propaganda mechanisms as those outlined above, beg the question... You! what did you do to my brain? Stay tuned for further developments concerning the Year of the Enigma. We will close the year with a year-end wrap-up of the strangeness that has been 2023... as well as a peek at what to expect in 2024.

  

Bonus Year of the Rabbit Update: File this one in the "stranger than fiction" category...

Two years after a resident of Wilton Manors, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale let loose lionhead rabbits from their backyard, according to local lore, the number of rabbits now outnumber the 81 homes in the Jenada Isle, Florida neighborhood. The furry invasion has divided the neighborhood's residents. 

Some have allegedly threatened to shoot the animals or feed them to their snakes. Some want to let the bunnies roam free. Others, concerned about the rabbits' safety, are racing to raise money to save them. East Coast Rabbit Rescue, a nonprofit organization, is spearheading an effort to rescue and rehome the bunnies. The group managed to rescue 19 rabbits on Friday, July 21st of this year.

WTF is up doc?