Komunitas
aussie.zone
I really hope Jellyfin gets a leg up soon, as a Plex Lifetime Pass owner I have become more and more discontent with the platform. When I paid for my personal licence, it included downloads for all my users, now its cutoff to only older users. I had expected that Plexamp would only be restricted to me while it was being developed, but it remains locked away from my users should never individually have a reason to subscribe for just themselves. I bought my licence to support the company for the use of my server and I feel like they’ve only downgraded my service in the last couple years. Getting new users to jump through all of the hoops with their pinned content, only to have them ask me why there are adverts on my movies is frustrating. I feel like very little has improved in the core product in years, my users default settings are still transcoding to the same bitrate, or 10x its bitrate. Every time I have made a valid suggestion on the old subreddit, the Plex devs had plenty of time to reject any and all criticism. I don’t believe Plex is going to get much better and likely we will see further erosion of our licences as the company only focuses on free users and the FAST service. I will keep checking in on jellyfin and alternatives, hopefully they get a boost soon.
Komunitas
lemmy.ml
I’ve always been very private oriented: I started using linux-debian 20 years ago after discarding windows and apple. I rarely buy online but when I did, to be as private as possible I used to create an account using fake data by the e commerce platform I wanted, get my order and then ignore the account until I wanted yo use it again. Most of the times I used a vpn. This worked till the platform banned me. Now I’m thinking about investing in ETFs to build some capital for my retirement and platforms recommended to me like trade republic or scalable capital seem to be exclusively smartphone reliant. I wouldn’t use fake data to create accounts here, nor would it be possible (bank data involved). The trouble with smartphones: I don’t want to be that guy changing smartphones every 2 or even 4 or 8 years. Spending $200 to $800 for a phone for such a short period of time is just a dumb idea, but I don’t know if it would be safe to use my 2018 android 8 smartphone to invest in ETFs. This 2018 model is my first smartphone. It’s a second hand one somebody gave me because he thought I really needed it. I would have never bought a new smartphone on my own. However, unsupported models are not secure for investing and this model stopped being supported years ago. Another trouble I see: to use scalable capital or trade republic I’d have to download their app in my smartphone. Google is a company I don’t trust. Each time I needed to use something from their app database I got it using aurora, but I’m afraid scalable capital will automatically ban me if I download their app from f-droid instead of doing it officially using google. Using google to create an account would mean giving them my real data, because otherwise I risk being labeled a scammer. Correct me if wrong. I’d love to invest using only a browser on a desktop.
Komunitas
lemmy.dbzer0.com
It’s earned its terrible reputation over the last 15 or so years. Dunno how it got so easy to dupe the tracker, but once scammers found out, it was open season. Anything you searched for was not only there, but had hundreds or thousands of seeders…except it didn’t actually. And the content you thought you were downloading wasn’t either. Its “verified uploader” or “trusted uploader” system was only a band-aid on a gushing wound, because it was so flooded with scams that it drowned out any of the actually trustworthy content. By the time I started shifting to private trackers in 2009, I was barely visiting there anymore because I couldn’t trust it. She turns 20 this September, and I have some very fond memories of those early years, but the name is completely mud to me now. They’d be better served just starting fresh as an exclusively private tracker using much better software and an entirely different name; I doubt anyone who knows their reputation is gonna jump on this.
Komunitas
lemmy.sdf.org
I had a working installation for argos translate. Due to a dead fan, I had to move the hard drive to another machine (same model but there are still differences). Running argos-translate on the replacement machine gave “illegal instruction”. I figured a CPU variation must be in play here. So I ran this: $ pipx uninstall argostranslate Which removed ~/.local/pipx/venvs/argostranslate and freed up ~7gb of space. Then to reinstall: $ cd /usr/local/src/argos-translate; # git cloned $ python3 -m venv env-t7500 $ source ./env-t7500/bin/activate $ pipx install --pip-args='--compile --find-links wheel_cache' . wheel_cache has the whl files I separately fetched with: $ python -m pip download -d ./wheel_cache/ argostranslate There were no errors in the installation, but it still gives “illegal instruction” when running argos-translate. WTF? It should have forced compilation with --compile. Is there something that would have been missed with the uninstallation? I possibly have the same problem as this bug, but then I have to wonder why it was able to compile. It should have failed at compilation not runtime – unless we cannot trust the --compile option.
Komunitas
jlai.lu
I had issues in the past with opensubtitles serving malware through fake download buttons on the site. You had like 6 different buttons to download with only one legit. Sent them an email and they removed them… I hardly trust this site and really don’t appreciate they use open in their name and pull up shit like this. I wish we had some sort of P2P sub hosting… So we don’t have to deal with sites like opensubtitles.
Komunitas
lemmy.dbzer0.com
The fucking bane of my existence I swear, all my homies hate filesize limits. Fortunately we have a few options, some better than others, and if it helps one person Imma talk about it now. Magic-wormhole: My favorite, CLI client that shares files from your computer to a server to be downloaded with a password you send through your normal means of communication. No filesize limit, files stay on the server for 1h unless downloaded (deleted after download.) For sensitive information I would PGP it before I upload but I have trust issues. Warp: Magic wormhole, but GUI. Second favorite, only because I love my terminal so much. It’s literally just a GUI wrapper for magic wormhole though so no complaints from me. Works on windows too iirc, and the android wrapper for it is called just “wormhole” alone, no “magic.” Onionshare: Sends files directly from your pc to theirs, works through Tor. I have gotten it to work before, but sometimes it hates me and refuses to connect, usually when I try to DL from mobile. Soulseek: Not exactly private, but it works if you can forward a port. If you need privacy you’ll have to mark the files as private, probably name them something nondescript like “file1,” and set it so only your trusted buddies can download it, then whitelist the buddy you want to share it with for that time (would have to remove trust for buddies by default, only enabling the ones for the current file to be shared, then swap that again next time. Like I said it “works” but it’s far from ideal. Would also PGP them files to be safe.) Torrents: well we all know this one, it’s the classic! I’m probably forgetting some/don’t know some, so anyone else feel free to add!
Komunitas
pawb.social
(Wow, 14 posts in 2 hours on Lemmy… The old wisdom that the best way to start a discussion is to loudly complain about something rings true :P) Cargo is doing too many things at once. It’s a build system but also a package manager but also manages dependencies? Idk what to even call it. It’s still a build system; most (good) build systems also manage downloading and resolving dependencies. Having them all as part of the same tool makes everything slot together nicely. Syntax is very confusing for no reason. It’s not no reason; dealing with ownership is a complicated problem. It’s just that most languages tend to hide it and let the programmer tangle themselves in knots. You keep talking about it being obvious what the code does but… Using :: over . helps clarify, at the call site, that you are using a “static” function rather than having to make the programmer look up the definition of the lhs. Js is way more readable. Pop quiz: Is this a copy or a reference? let a = b; You can just look at it and immediately know what the code is doing even if you’ve never coded before. You can’t really… The JSON map object syntax isn’t actually intuitive to non-programmers. I’d argue that the rust version is more intuitive, since they can probably make a good guess based on the word “insert”. Multiple string types like &str, String, str, instead of just one “str” function These are distinct types with distinct meanings. JS and TS sacrifice some performance to make them seem like the same type, which may or may not be justified in your project. i32 i64 i8 f8 f16 f32 instead of a single unified “number” type like in typescript. JavaScript has three number types, ints, floats and BigInts. The former two are both called “number”. Even in C you can just write “int” and be done with it so it’s not really a “low level” issue. No you can’t. int is different sizes on different platforms. (EDIT: I was thinking about long. If you need more than 32 bits (which you do to store a pointer), that’s where the problem lies) yet you literally can’t write code without [tokio]. I’ve never actually used Tokio. :D Why is it so bloated? Are you compiling at the same optimisation level, stripping debug info and statically linking libcurl in both cases? Another major issue I’ve encountered is libraries in Rust, or lack thereof. This is a big problem, I agree. Though to be fair, I’ve also encountered it with both NPM and PIP. Perhaps worse so there, because the compiler isn’t backwards compatible. They’re invulnerable to memory issues unless you write infinite while loop and suitable for 99% of applications. No they aren’t~ It’s easy to write code that hitches every few seconds (which kills games). And you also overlook the fact that a garbage collector is, quite frankly, a miracle of optimising compilers. I remember back in university being warned to remove the “next” pointer of graph nodes because otherwise memory would leak. Then use C or C++ if you really need performance. Both of them are way better designed than Rust. I develop professionally in C and C++. No they aren’t. At all. C and C++ are so loaded with footguns it’s a surprise people can get anything done in them without triggering UB. Also, any program you write should be extensively tested before release True. But nobody does that. And even if they did… Why not use a language that makes testing easier and faster? you’d catch those memory errors if you aren’t being lazy Not in any sufficiently large codebase. that’s enough for the entire programming space to rank it year after year the greatest language If you find that everyone in the world except you seems to be involved in some elaborate conspiracy, please check your reasoning. And the thing is, that’s fine, the issue I have is people lying and saying Rust is a drop in replacement for js Ehh… I don’t think it is. I think people interested in stepping up their programming game should give it a go, but branding it as a “noob friendly” programming language is going to put people off programming. Typescript is therefore better at making things quick Thing is, these “quick” programs tend to spiral out into huge megaliths of software that span several servers and support millions of users. And then the only person who knows what everything does gets hit by a bus, and so you have to figure out what thousands of lines of Typescript, PHP and Python code does. Python, JS and php are good for firing out quick solutions, but once you get to the point where maintenance starts becoming more important than new features, it falls off hard. There just isn’t enough structure in the language to make it easy to figure out what code is doing. I’m about to just give up and move on Honestly, I bounced off of Rust the first time I tried it as well. I got frustrated about code not working, and just… Stopped using it. I then tried it again a few years later and everything finally “clicked”. Perhaps it’s the same with you? Give it a break for a bit, but don’t write it off yet. Come back to it later to give it another go. Rust isn’t an easy language to wrap your head around if you aren’t familiar with the problems it’s trying to solve, but it’s not trying to be. Think of it as the drill sergeant that makes you stand up straight and become a better programmer.
Komunitas
feddit.de
What you say is true and I can understand it is frustrating. But I really don’t know how to convince people. Convenience is king and you need to have strong political opinions to abstain. I am a nerd, but still I often need double the time to find the “alternative” way of owning things. I recently wanted to get the Harry Potter audio books for listening on my phone. I basically had two “official” options: Buying all E-books as mp3 download for 235€ Amazon Audible for 10€ per Month You can clearly see that in reality, the industry gives you only one option - audible. For 235€ you can have 2 years of e-book subscriptions. Maybe you would say “hey, 235€ may seem expensive but in exchange you will get to own the stuff you pay for!”. The thing is: you can get the whole audiobook collection on mp3-CD for just 70€ on Amazon? In the end I bough an external CD-ROM drive and bought the mp3-CD box used for 40€. It’s not about that stupid Audiobook or whether the price is justified. The point I want to make is that the industry makes is so hard for individuals to own things, that I almost see this as a lost battle. The way I chose, took almost 2 weeks, days of research, a frustrated lemmy post, two online orders and 2 hours time to copy the mp3s. And the thing is, it’s the same for everything else - you want to buy a vacuum cleaner? Oh better look if it comes with special cleaner bags for 30€ per bag. Let’s not talk about printers. Every little item needs so much research, only for the aspects of planned obsolescence and true ownership. We do not even talk about social or environmental aspects… How the fuck should I expect others to spend so much time on energy on consumption things? Honestly, sometimes I am a bit envious of the people that just do not care. But only sometimes. Sorry, that somehow developed into a rant
Komunitas
lemmy.kde.social
“I have no idea what I’m doing here” <- Happens in the beginning. How about you start by trying to know what exactly you are doing? Let me give you a fasttrack… The first command you get in the instructions is curl. It is generally used to download stuff from a networked server. 1.1. To understand the -fsSLo in the command, I strongly advise you to check out the manual of curl using man curl in a terminal. The second command in the instructions is echo "something" | sudo tee some/file 2.1 Here you see 3 commands echo , sudo and tee. 2.1.1 Again, you can use man command-name to check the manual pages for these commands 2.2 There is a | symbol over here. It is called the “pipe symbol”, which is what you can use to search for it. It is usually difficult to search for the symbol itself and I haven’t found a man page for it, but open man bash and look for “Pipelines” and you’ll know what it is about. Use Link, Link and Link to help yourself understand this. The commands in “Install the package” use the apt program. This is a Package Manager. Its job is to read package information that package developers have made and try to not let the system become unusable. e.g. If you have a program called Xorg from 5 years ago, and a program called mesa from 5 years ago and Xorg depends upon mesa to work. Here, if you replace your mesa with a new, recent mesa yourself, there is a good chance Xorg will not work. The Package Manager prevents that from happening. The gist of what the instructions are making you do is, telling the Package Manager that there is another place from where you want it to look for packages. To understand man pages better, check out this link. Don’t think too badly of people dissing you in the comments. They are tired and fed up of help vampires. Hopefully, you can try not to become one. Try and build your own process of understanding the commands you see on the internet before entering them into the terminal. The comments telling you to just follow the instructions, are coming from the perspective that you don’t have the patience and determination to understand them yourself, which, a lot of people don’t. I will leave it upto you to determine which one you decide to be. It is, however, a bad idea to follow instructions on any website, just because it “seems legit”. You can’t really say you “trust” the site until you have the ability to find out for yourself whether you want to trust it. Check this out
Komunitas
lemmy.zip
cross-posted from : https://news.abolish.capital/post/16129 The US is once again trying to gets its chlorinated fowl into UK markets, a strategy linked to their push for chlorinated chicken exports. Reportedly, it’s happening because of the collapse of an equally bad (if not worse) AI tech deal: This confirms it. The US is using the collapsed tech/AI deal to force Britain to accept chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef. Food standards are the leverage point and the red line. You can’t align with US tech power and stay aligned with Europe.… pic.twitter.com/Ru37rLPH80 — Liz Webster (@LizWebsterSBF) December 29, 2025 ‘Farm to fork’ As Farming UKhave reported, British regulators are against chlorinated chicken because it’s at odds with the UK’s ‘farm to fork’ ethos. The UK is supposed to prioritise hygiene and welfare standards, the Americans, meanwhile, make up for laxer standards with an end-of-process chlorine rinse. As we’ve reported before, the UK is far from perfect when it comes to welfare standards. However, accepting chlorinated chicken would be a step back; it means there’s work to be done getting our own house in order. This is all happening now because the US-UK technology deal has faltered. In part, it’s due to the Americans’ position that the UK’s Online Safety Act will have a detrimental impact on their tech sector. We have voiced our own criticisms of the Online Safety Act, with Steve Topple writing in July this year: When both the left and the right are united in their disdain for a piece of legislation, you know there must be something up. So, enter the Online Safety Act: a law so riddled with corruption, incompetence, and authoritarianism that you’d be forgiven for agreeing with Nigel Farage. But exactly what are the problems with this Tory written, Labour-allowed piece of legislation? He added: While the Online Safety Act was sold as a child‑safety milestone, critics argue it’s structurally incapable of delivering that outcome. Campaigners from organisations including Barnardo’s, the Molly Rose Foundation and CARE UK warn that loopholes around algorithmic recommendations, autoplay, live‑streaming, and age verification mean the legislation “will not bring about the changes that children need and deserve”. Rather than curtail harmful exposure, the law risks becoming symbolic rather than effective. Since enforcement began on 25 July, age verification—via ID scans, facial estimation, or mobile verification—has triggered over five million age checks per day, mostly on porn sites. But this in turn has driven a rapid surge in VPN downloads as users seek to bypass access controls, shifting minors toward less‑regulated parts of the internet and raising their exposure to greater harms rather than reducing it. Laws like the Online Safety Act ultimately benefit tech giants, but they also introduce additional layers of oversight. The tech overlords would prefer to get all of the benefits with none of the downsides, which is why they’ve worked so hard to ingratiate themselves with the Trump administration. US President Donald Trump invited the world’s richest billionaire oligarchs to sit at the center of his inauguration. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, & Google CEO Sundar Pichai symbolically sat with Trump’s cabinet picks. A dozen billionaires will be in the Trump admin. pic.twitter.com/9CHzpmFAEU — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 20, 2025 Given that US tech oligarchs have attained ungodly levels of power since 2020, we shouldn’t want the UK to be more enmeshed with them, especially on this chlorinated chicken issue. Recent events have demonstrated the power that they have and why they choose to wield it: Tech oligarchs are now openly conspiring against @RoKhanna because he dared to back a modest wealth tax. https://t.co/pCh170Oa3v — Krystal Ball (@krystalball) December 28, 2025 Farmers rights As Farming UKfurther note: For British farmers, the stakes extend beyond poultry. The US is also pushing for greater access for hormone-treated beef, another area where UK standards are stricter than those in America. Farming unions have warned that accepting such imports would weaken consumer trust in British food and risk eroding the premium attached to UK produce at home and abroad. Sir Keir has previously treated food standards as a red line, rebuffing Mr Trump’s demands to allow chlorinated chicken in exchange for lower tariffs. Since Labour returned to power, right-wing politicians have been making a big show of supporting farmers and opposing chlorinated chicken. This is ironic given that they didn’t seem to give a shit when the Tories were in power. As journalist Jon Burke recently highlighted, other agriculture deals have gone incredibly poorly for us. I see the @Telegraph is now reporting on the Australian trade deal disaster for which it campaigned. Nobody, and I mean *nobody*, has betrayed this country like the libertarian wreckers who lied to the public about ‘Brexit benefits’. pic.twitter.com/fps85uTWaE — Jon Burke is mainly posting on Bluesky (@jonburkeUK) December 27, 2025 The Australian trade deal that @trussliz struck – despite extensive warnings from civil servants – is turning out to be a disaster for British farmers, you say? If only we could have foretold this in some way… https://t.co/aTlh0B3Bwv pic.twitter.com/0JJN5VQYCU — Jon Burke is mainly posting on Bluesky (@jonburkeUK) December 27, 2025 The White House stated that our refusal to accept chlorinated chicken and hormone-pumped beef is an obstacle to them removing the tariffs that Trump introduced earlier this year. As Farming UK noted: Any decision to relax those rules would carry significant political and economic consequences. Farming leaders argue it would not only threaten livelihoods in the poultry and beef sectors but also set a precedent for weakening food standards more broadly, potentially reshaping the future of British agriculture in trade negotiations yet to come. Chicken Starmer clearly wants to give the impression that he’s achieved something. As such, there’s a worry that he’ll accept whatever deal is on the table — possibly even one involving chlorinated chicken — so that he can act like he got a win. This is why it’s important to be clear that no one will accept capitulation to Trump as a victory. Featured image via BBC By Willem Moore From Canary via This RSS Feed.
Komunitas
ibbit.at
Thanks to all our readers for a great year. A quick note before the story: Ryan Grim was on Tim Dillon’s final show of 2025, discussing all our Epstein revelations. You can watch that here. And if you haven’t made your end-of-year tax-deductible gifts yet, you can support our journalism here: Support DSN With an EOY Gift Undated photo of Netanyahu and Barak in front of an Iron Dome battery, taken from Barak’s private emails. On December 17, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a $35 billion deal to sell natural gas to Egypt in what officials describe as the largest energy export agreement in Israel’s history. The natural gas will be produced from Leviathan, a massive field west of Haifa. “On this day,” Netanyahu wrote in a statement that day, the third day of Hanukkah, “we’ve brought another jug of oil to the nation of Israel. But this time, the flame will burn not just for eight days, but for decades to come.” The gas export permit for Egypt came after months of delays and behind-the-scenes disputes between Tel Aviv, Cairo, and Washington. The decision is expected to reinforce the Camp David peace framework between Egypt and Israel—an arrangement strained by the Gaza genocide—while cementing Israel’s emergence as a major natural gas supplier in the eastern Mediterranean and beyond. The deal has been more than a decade in the making—and one unlikely individual played a small, but essential role in laying its groundwork: Jeffrey Epstein. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak consulted extensively with Epstein on financial deals around Leviathan for years, as Barak searched for international backers for Leviathan’s development. Epstein’s role in Israel’s gas politics contradicts the image, advanced in a recent New York Times profile, of Epstein as a confidence man who was viewed with skepticism by financial and political elites. In fact, Epstein advised financial giant JPMorgan Chase Bank on several global energy and logistics deals after the 2008 financial crisis: unsealed documents from a recent U.S. Virgin Islands’ lawsuit show Epstein engaged with British MP Peter Mandelson regarding the acquisition of natural gas assets from the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2010, and he arranged a 2011 meeting between JPMorgan executive Jes Staley and Karim Wade, son of then-president of Senegal Abdoulaye Wade, to discuss a large crude oil trade. (Later, Epstein tried to help with developing Senegal’s offshore gas as well.) Hacked emails from Barak’s inbox reveal that Epstein shared a critical interest with JPMorgan executives in the early 2010s: development of Israel’s offshore gas fields. Private emails from Barak’s Gmail account show that the former Israeli prime minister was courting foreign investors for the Leviathan gas field, while Epstein provided close guidance behind the scenes. The documents were posted by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a non-profit whistleblower and file-sharing website. Drop Site is partnering with Jmail to make the DDOS emails available to the public. During that period, the development of Israel’s natural gas resources was transforming into an urgent political priority. In February 2011, the same week Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak fell from power, the region was gripped by supply shocks from attacks on the Arab Gas Pipeline by militants in Sinai. The Leviathan field, discovered in December 2010, was estimated to hold roughly half a trillion cubic meters of recoverable reserves, enough to supply the energy demands of Israel and its neighbors for decades, and transform the energy politics of the Eastern Mediterranean. At this pivotal moment in the early months of Leviathan’s history, Epstein also helped secure a meeting between Netanyahu and senior JPMorgan leadership, a meeting which was referenced in documents from the U.S. Virgin Islands lawsuit and previously reported by the Daily Beast. The reason for the meeting, and the nature of Epstein’s involvement, was not disclosed in the court documents, which are heavily redacted. But, whether by chance or by design, Netanyahu agreed to the meeting on March 23, 2011—the same day the Knesset Finance Committee voted on a major tax increase on natural gas exports, a key hurdle to beginning commercial development of Leviathan. Israel’s offshore gas ambitions did not progress smoothly. By 2014, amid a brutal war in Gaza, Israeli energy tycoon Yitzhak Tshuva was facing an antitrust case against his company, Delek Group, which owned the Leviathan field together with Texas-based Noble Energy (since acquired by Chevron). Epstein coached Barak on credibly presenting himself as an expert on energy, as Barak searched for friendly partners in Europe, Russia, and the U.S. to help Tshuva’s group become compliant with Israel’s anti-monopoly law and push the Leviathan project forward. Netanyahu ultimately forced a compromise, allowing the Delek–Noble consortium to control Leviathan, the large field for foreign exports, while selling off its stake in Tamar, a smaller field for domestic supply. As the new gas framework was being finalized, Netanyahu’s son, Yair, was captured on tape at a Tel Aviv strip club in late 2015, drunkenly confessing that it was a corrupt bargain. In the recording, Yair told Nir Maimon, son of gas magnate Koby Maimon, who became the controlling interest in Tamar, “My dad made an awesome deal for your dad, bro. He fought, fought in the Knesset for this.” He pressed Maimon to give him some cash to pay a stripper, “Bro, my dad now arranged a $20 billion show for you and you can’t spot me [400 shekels]?” Although Epstein stopped banking with JPMorgan in 2013, additional leaked emails from Epstein’s Yahoo account suggest elite business leaders in the United Arab Emirates continued to view Epstein as having high-level ties to the bank for years afterward. During a 2015 conference in Kazakhstan, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, head of Dubai Ports World, was angling for a meeting with Israeli economist Jacob Frenkel, then-chairman of JPMorgan’s international business, who had also been involved in planning the 2011 Netanyahu meeting. After the antitrust dispute was finally resolved in 2016, JPMorgan financed a multi-billion-dollar plan to develop Leviathan. JPMorgan declined to comment for this story. This report on Epstein’s background in the Leviathan saga is part of an ongoing series investigating his connections to the intelligence communities in both Israel and the U.S. Support Drop Site’s Reporting on Epstein “Surprisee Suprise” After Jeffrey Epstein was arrested for the second time on sex trafficking charges in the summer of 2019, JPMorgan initiated an internal probe, “Project Jeep,” to investigate its risk exposure from Epstein’s criminal activities. The project produced a 22-page summary of the bank’s communications with Epstein, including a bulleted list of excerpts from emails between Epstein and Jes Staley, former head of JPMorgan’s investment bank, dating back to 2008. Staley met Epstein in the mid-1990s, at the offices of The Limited, when Epstein was working as chief financial adviser to fashion mogul Leslie Wexner. When the New York Times Magazine reported that Staley credited Epstein for setting up the meeting with Netanyahu in 2011, the bank’s spokesman told the paper that JPMorgan “neither needed nor sought Epstein’s help for meetings with any government leaders.” The bank’s statement appears to contradict its own analysis in “Project Jeep,” which includes several examples of Epstein introducing senior bank leadership to government leaders in the UK, Africa, and the Persian Gulf. Epstein “appear[ed] to maintain relationships with a number of senior business executives and senior government officials globally,” JPMorgan’s attorneys wrote. On March 23, 2011, Roy Navon (head of JPMorgan’s Israel office) sent an email to Staley and Jacob Frenkel, writing, “Against all odds, we have been granted a meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu.” Staley forwarded the email to Epstein with a note: “Thanks.” Epstein replied: “surprisee suprise.” Redacted excerpt from U.S. Virgin Islands v. JPMorgan Chase, August 15, 2023. Staley received confirmation of the Netanyahu meeting on the same day as a key vote being held in the Knesset Finance Committee on the “Sheshinski” bill—named for an advisory committee headed by an esteemed Israeli economist—that would increase the Israeli government’s tax on offshore oil and gas profits. Netanyahu framed the gas tax as an effort to balance the needs of Israeli citizens, who were facing rising energy costs, with the demands of the field’s investors, who were threatening to pull the plug on the project. At the eleventh hour, lawmakers were attempting to add language restricting the government’s ability to raise taxes again in the future—but the objection was dropped after the Finance Minister promised Netanyahu would commit to “tax stability” at the next cabinet meeting. Major international banks were already positioning around the Leviathan project: Barclays and HSBC—two of JPMorgan’s rivals—were the exclusive financial advisers for the Leviathan investors’ smaller field, Tamar, and had loaned nearly $400 million the previous year. At around the same time Staley received Navon’s email confirming a meeting with Netanyahu, the minutes for the marathon Sheshinski session show lawmakers were debating whether “financing expenses” would be recognized in calculating the new levy—a decision that would have direct implications for how investors and lenders modeled cash flows from the Leviathan project. Epstein’s emails with Jes Staley, March 23, 2011. After the successful Sheshinski vote, Netanyahu phoned Finance Committee chair MK Moshe Gafni to congratulate him, calling the law “among the most important for Israel’s economy.” One week later, on March 30, the Sheshinski law was passed, lifting the state’s take on natural gas profits to more than 50 percent. Subscribe now “Really a Lucky Guy” Leviathan sits on one of today’s central geopolitical fault lines: Europe’s dependence on Russian gas. Israeli gas could diversify Europe’s supplies by bringing new, non-Russian gas into European markets. Russia’s state-backed energy group, Gazprom, made a bid for ownership in Leviathan in 2012, but it was rebuffed by the field’s American owners from Noble Energy. Nevertheless, in February 2013, Delek and Noble’s smaller gas field, Tamar, arranged an exclusive deal with Gazprom to offtake Israeli liquefied natural gas and market it in Asia — a deal some participants hoped to parlay into a future role in Leviathan as well. With U.S.-Russia competition in the background, Epstein emailed Barak on August 1, 2013 to advise him about challenges to American investment in the Leviathan field’s development. Netanyahu’s cabinet had decided to allocate 40 percent of its gas reserves for foreign exports, but a judge threatened to halt the decision, due to a pending lawsuit over whether the cabinet had the authority. Epstein reacted to the news: “Supreme Court President Asher Grunis said on Thursday that he is inclined to issue an injunction banning natural gas export until the court ruled on the matter. im not sure an amercian [sic] energy co, will do well in israel.” Barak replied to Epstein’s warning, “U R probably right but I would like to check it somehow.” Emails between Epstein and Barak, August 1, 2013. Epstein and Barak’s private discussions about the future of Leviathan came as Israeli antitrust regulators, faced with the enormous size of the new Leviathan field, were threatening to break up Delek and Noble’s monopoly on Israel’s large gas fields—an outcome the group was eager to get ahead of by enlisting Barak’s help. On January 16, 2014, according to a confidential memo written by Barak, Yitzhak Tshuva, the owner of Delek Group, visited Barak’s home to ask for help finding a “major player” to acquire rights to Leviathan production for the Israeli domestic energy market, in anticipation of an anti-monopoly order aimed at breaking up Tshuva’s holdings. The regulator’s concern stemmed from past contracts, from before the Leviathan discovery, that had locked in high prices for Israeli consumers. The same day as Tshuva’s visit, Barak sent an urgent email to Epstein, asking to speak on the phone. The next day, Barak contacted his associates at Renova Group, the conglomerate owned by Russian-Israeli billionaire Viktor Vekselberg. Barak had a lucrative consulting agreement with Renova to source energy, mining, and real estate opportunities. As Drop Site previously reported, Barak and Epstein had leveraged the relationship with Renova in another strategic initiative for Israel in 2013, a diplomatic backchannel to Vladimir Putin during the Syrian civil war. In a memo sent to Renova on January 17, 2014, Barak explained that Israel’s anti-monopoly regulator planned to break Tshuva’s control over Israel’s gas by forcing the Leviathan consortium to bring in a new partner for domestic energy supply. “The Problem is that Mr.Tshuva is the major share holder in both Yam Thetis AND Tamar (really a lucky guy),” Barak wrote, referring to two other gas fields controlled by Delek and its partners. Excerpt of confidential memo from Ehud Barak to Renova Group regarding Leviathan gas field (January 2014). The full memo is available here: Leviathan Proposal57.7KB ∙ PDF fileDownloadDownload Barak offered Renova marketing rights to roughly one-eighth of Leviathan’s reserves, but only for domestic sales inside Israel. Renova would also take on the obligation to drill new production wells, build an offshore platform, and lay a dedicated underwater pipeline to shore. The proposal promised long-term contracts to Israel’s largest electric utility, an attractive security for borrowing money. Renova’s representative, Yakov Tesis, wrote back on January 21, “it makes no sense for Renova to accept the offer,” as Renova would be taking on huge risk to see the project succeed, without any real ownership of the gas reserves. Barak tried to sweeten the deal by showing Renova a memorandum of understanding from Woodside Energy Group, an Australian firm, that valued the field at over $10 billion, but Renova declined again. (Woodside walked away soon after.) Meanwhile, Barak pursued American private equity interests, in spite of Epstein’s earlier warning. In February of 2014, Barak shopped the Leviathan deal to U.S. private equity giant Texas Pacific Group (TPG), an occasional collaborator with Leon Black’s firm Apollo Global Management. TPG partner Chris Ortega replied that, while the Leviathan discovery was a “transformative” moment in Israel’s energy politics, any solution would be capital-intensive and politically fraught and take too long to see a return on investment. Facing another setback, Barak continued to lean on Epstein for support. After an event for Israel’s national emergency response service in Palm Beach two weeks later, Barak wrote to Epstein, “Thx for the time and energy you invest in supporting my efforts to bring home more bread. These exchanges ARE highly valuable for me.” At the time, the two men had been pursuing funding for offensive and defensive cybersecurity startups sourced from Israeli intelligence, including Carbyne, an emergency response platform founded by alumni of Israel’s Unit 8200 signals intelligence unit. Now, Barak reported to Epstein that he was ready to broaden the scope of his efforts, writing, “I’ll try to focus beyond CyberSec on Vik. AZ. Mon. and KAZ.” — referring to opportunities with Vekselberg, Azerbaijan, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. Epstein replied, “im alwys there for you.” Barak reports to Epstein after a Magen David Adom event; he asks Epstein to call a man from Kazakhstan. February 25, 2014. In Barak’s confidential memo to Renova, he had outlined a three-fold plan for Israel’s gas exports from Leviathan. First, regional exports to the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, and small amounts to Egypt; second, a gas pipeline to Ceyhan, Turkey for the Turkish market and Europe; and, third, a liquefied natural gas plant in Cyprus to export gas to Asia and the rest of the world. Barak had begun talks with the leadership of SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company, to partner with the Delek–Noble group in developing Leviathan. Barak hoped to negotiate access for Israeli gas interests into the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), the central and western segments of the Southern Gas Corridor that crossed from Azerbaijan to Italy through Turkey. Avelar, a Swiss-based subsidiary of Renova, operated key gas infrastructure and power utilities in Italy, with alleged links to Italian bureaucrats involved in pipeline politics. Barak pitched SOCAR executives on a deal linking the Leviathan field to the “real power structure” in the TANAP/TAP corridor. The next month, in March, Barak’s wife sent Epstein their travel itinerary for Rome and Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Epstein and Barak made plans to speak on the phone before Barak departed. Barak gives Elshad Nassirov (VP of SOCAR) an update on Leviathan. Barak had a $6 million per year consulting agreement with SOCAR for “business development.” February 20, 2014. Epstein, meanwhile, continued to steer Barak’s efforts to establish his reputation as a credible energy dealmaker. As Barak searched for partners for Leviathan, Epstein was not shy about giving harsh criticism to his friend. When energy tycoon Jack Grynberg asked Barak to find a buyer for his oil & gas assets, Barak wanted to loop Renova into the deal. But, first, he shared Grynberg’s financial statements with Epstein and Apollo CEO Leon Black for due diligence. Barak wrote to Epstein deferentially, “Do not hesitate to correct or direct me along the way. I don’t have enough time to learn from my own mistakes. Shabbat Shalom.” A few hours later, Epstein sent a frustrated response: “This is total 100 percent BULLSHIT. I told you on the phone before sending or asking anyone about it you should do your own homework, You cannot be seen to be selling garbage ,frauds. bad things and or trouble. this is a total waste of your time.” Barak scrambled, sending an email to Black’s executive assistant, “I’ve just learnt that the deal I’ve wrote [sic] you about yesterday, namely GADECO/Grynberg Oil Co. Is not on the market any more. I do not have more details but I kindly ask you to delete my emails and do not forward it to Leon or others within Apollo.” Emails between Barak and Epstein, October 24-25, 2014. Email from Barak to an assistant at Apollo, October 25, 2014. “Stolen Gas” Barak and Netanyahu, although political rivals, both wanted to see Leviathan succeed. While Barak tried to shop Leviathan access to overseas investors who could absorb Israel’s regulatory chaos, Netanyahu applied a different lever: turning Leviathan into a national security issue that would override anti-monopoly regulations altogether. When Barak failed to protect Tshuva’s gas monopoly by bringing in a compliant foreign partner, Netanyahu used the prime minister’s office as a blunt instrument to restructure Israel’s energy economy. Shortly after Leviathan’s discovery, in January 2011, Netanyahu warned that offshore gas fields were a “strategic objective that Israel’s enemies will try to undermine” and vowed that “Israel will defend its resources.” By 2014, he had backed a plan for the Israeli government to cover up to half of the security costs for offshore facilities. These were promising signs for money-lenders: in April of 2014, Reuters reported that Tshuva’s company, Delek, was beginning a “road show” to raise up to $2 billion in bonds to fund Leviathan’s development, with underwriting from JPMorgan, Citi, and HSBC. The bond offering closed on May 11. Just two months later, on July 8, 2014, Israel began “Operation Protective Edge,” a brutal assault on Gaza that killed more than 2,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom were civilians. At the start of the war, IDF officials were reportedly concerned Hamas might use long-range rockets to threaten offshore gas rigs. A blog post for The Guardian argued that control over gas, particularly the Gaza Marine field, was a key driver of Israeli policy. The author, British journalist Nafeez Ahmed, was fired the next day. (According to Ahmed, a Guardian editor justified the decision stating, “Palestine is not an environment story.”) In his post, Ahmed noted that Israel’s Minister of Defense at the time, Moshe Ya’alon, had argued in a 2007 policy paper that allowing Gaza to develop its own gas would “bankroll terror” by making Hamas rich from gas royalties. Alternatively, if the Palestinian Authority was given control of the gas and Hamas was excluded from gas profits, Ya’alon claimed, Hamas would retaliate by sabotaging Israel and PA gas infrastructure. Ya’alon wrote, “It is clear that without an overall military operation to uproot Hamas control of Gaza, no drilling work can take place without the consent of the radical Islamic movement.” Gaza’s gas politics impacted Israel’s diplomatic relations with its Arab neighbors; Jordan, like Israel, suffered from energy shortages due to attacks on Egyptian pipelines after Mubarak’s fall. In autumn 2014, Jordanian officials announced plans to import gas from both Gaza Marine and Israel’s Leviathan field. The Leviathan announcement immediately sparked domestic backlash and street demonstrations against the purchase of “stolen gas.” In early January 2015, Jordanian media reported Amman put the Leviathan talks on hold after Israel’s antitrust regulator moved against the Delek–Noble consortium. Jordanian officials announced they would proceed with plans to buy gas from Gaza. Amid the fighting in Gaza and protests in Amman, Leviathan was halted. The Leviathan owners, and their financiers, would not sink billions into development without regulatory certainty from the Israeli government. Delek executives threatened international arbitration, and Noble warned it would not invest more until the antitrust dispute was resolved. Barak pressed forward, looking to Asia for answers. In April of 2015, he exchanged emails about an “energy play” with Joshua Hantman, a former advisor to Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. They discussed a Cyprus-based company called Cynergy Group, which was looking to buy up natural gas assets in the Eastern Mediterranean, including a stake in Leviathan. Hantman reported to Barak confidentially that he had garnered interest from South Korea’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Choi Kyoung-hwan, as well as members of the president’s office. Hantman wrote, “That is the world’s largest strategic buyer of gas - ready to join us.” Barak wrote back, “Stay in touch and let’s see whether a way to collaborate will emerge.” Leviathan was by now becoming an explosive political conflict in Israel. That spring, Israel’s antitrust commissioner resigned, warning that Netanyahu’s government was prioritizing monopolists and foreign buyers at the expense of Israeli consumers, who would face higher gas prices if the Delek–Noble monopoly was not broken. Economy Minister Aryeh Deri also resigned, under pressure from Netanyahu to exempt the gas framework from antitrust scrutiny. Netanyahu, still the prime minister, stepped in to take over Deri’s economy portfolio. Then, in September, the Russian military officially entered the Syrian civil war, launching airstrikes across Syria in support of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. With extraordinary leverage, Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly offered Netanyahu a deal: Give Gazprom a stake in Leviathan, and, in exchange, Russia would protect the gas fields from Hezbollah and Hamas. Now, the debate in Israel had a new dimension: accepting Gazprom would resolve the deadlock, guarantee the gas field’s security, and instantly turn Israel into an indispensable energy exporter—at the cost of alienating Israel’s allies in the U.S. and Europe. Netanyahu found an opportunity, in one blow, to appease Israel’s neighbors, its NATO allies, and the gas oligarchs at home. In December 2015, after months of Knesset clashes, Netanyahu used an obscure section of the country’s antitrust law to authorize the economy minister (now Netanyahu himself) to permit a gas monopoly on national security grounds. Netanyahu invoked relations with Jordan, Turkey, and Europe to justify the move, signaling to banks and allies that Leviathan was politically protected. “Fake News” After Netanyahu’s move to break the Leviathan deadlock, Amman quietly resumed planning to import gas from Leviathan. In September 2016, Jordan signed a $10 billion deal to import gas from the field, spurring a resumption of protests under the slogan “The Enemy’s Gas is Occupation.” Jordanian officials sealed the Leviathan contract under “state secrets” rules and waited out the protests. Soon after, in November of 2016, the Delek–Noble consortium announced it had secured a $1.75 billion loan from JPMorgan and HSBC for the first phase of Leviathan’s development. The framework that made JPMorgan financing possible transformed Israel’s gas sector into a protected duopoly. Under Netanyahu’s gas framework, Tshuva and his partners retained control of Leviathan, which would become Israel’s main gas export supply, but were forced to sell their stake in the smaller Tamar field—leaving Isramco (linked to Kobi Maimon) as the controlling owner of Israel’s main domestic gas supply. Egypt followed a similar pattern to Jordan: quiet diplomacy, private contracts, and plausible deniability. In 2018, a Cairo-based buyer signed long-term “private-sector” purchase agreements for Tamar and Leviathan gas, and the Leviathan partners bought into the dormant Mubarak-era pipeline that once sent Egyptian gas to Israel, so it could be reversed for exports. The first gas from Leviathan finally began flowing in December 2019. A small amount of this early gas flowed to Egypt through the reversed pipeline. Leviathan gas field. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Earlier that year, on June 26, 2019, Barak announced his intention to challenge Netanyahu in an election slated for that September. Two days later, emails from Epstein’s estate show Epstein messaging Steve Bannon about the election and “dealing with Ehud in Israel.” Bannon praised the decision and asked Epstein whether he could announce himself as Barak’s strategic advisor. Epstein did not live to see the vote—he died in a Manhattan prison cell on August 10, 2019. Despite his death, Epstein’s ghost continues to haunt Israeli politics. In November of 2025, Netanyahu posted, without comment, an article from Jacobin magazine containing Drop Site’s reporting on Epstein’s ties to Barak and Israeli intelligence—implicitly leveraging Epstein’s connection to Barak to detract from his longstanding rival. Netanyahu now openly invokes Epstein to wound Barak, using Epstein’s crimes to deflect attention from his own corruption cases and his responsibility for the genocide in Gaza. “The media channels are not news channels, they are fake channels,” he said in March, “They invite Ehud Barak again and again… with great respect and dignity, but, strangely, he is not asked a single question on [Epstein].” Share Leave a comment From Drop Site News via this RSS feed
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Thanks to all our readers for a great year. A quick note before the story: Ryan Grim was on Tim Dillon’s final show of 2025, discussing all our Epstein revelations. You can watch that here. And if you haven’t made your end-of-year tax-deductible gifts yet, you can support our journalism here: Support DSN With an EOY Gift Undated photo of Netanyahu and Barak in front of an Iron Dome battery, taken from Barak’s private emails. On December 17, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a $35 billion deal to sell natural gas to Egypt in what officials describe as the largest energy export agreement in Israel’s history. The natural gas will be produced from Leviathan, a massive field west of Haifa. “On this day,” Netanyahu wrote in a statement that day, the third day of Hanukkah, “we’ve brought another jug of oil to the nation of Israel. But this time, the flame will burn not just for eight days, but for decades to come.” The gas export permit for Egypt came after months of delays and behind-the-scenes disputes between Tel Aviv, Cairo, and Washington. The decision is expected to reinforce the Camp David peace framework between Egypt and Israel—an arrangement strained by the Gaza genocide—while cementing Israel’s emergence as a major natural gas supplier in the eastern Mediterranean and beyond. The deal has been more than a decade in the making—and one unlikely individual played a small, but essential role in laying its groundwork: Jeffrey Epstein. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak consulted extensively with Epstein on financial deals around Leviathan for years, as Barak searched for international backers for Leviathan’s development. Epstein’s role in Israel’s gas politics contradicts the image, advanced in a recent New York Times profile, of Epstein as a confidence man who was viewed with skepticism by financial and political elites. In fact, Epstein advised financial giant JPMorgan Chase Bank on several global energy and logistics deals after the 2008 financial crisis: unsealed documents from a recent U.S. Virgin Islands’ lawsuit show Epstein engaged with British MP Peter Mandelson regarding the acquisition of natural gas assets from the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2010, and he arranged a 2011 meeting between JPMorgan executive Jes Staley and Karim Wade, son of then-president of Senegal Abdoulaye Wade, to discuss a large crude oil trade. (Later, Epstein tried to help with developing Senegal’s offshore gas as well.) Hacked emails from Barak’s inbox reveal that Epstein shared a critical interest with JPMorgan executives in the early 2010s: development of Israel’s offshore gas fields. Private emails from Barak’s Gmail account show that the former Israeli prime minister was courting foreign investors for the Leviathan gas field, while Epstein provided close guidance behind the scenes. The documents were posted by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a non-profit whistleblower and file-sharing website. Drop Site is partnering with Jmail to make the DDOS emails available to the public. During that period, the development of Israel’s natural gas resources was transforming into an urgent political priority. In February 2011, the same week Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak fell from power, the region was gripped by supply shocks from attacks on the Arab Gas Pipeline by militants in Sinai. The Leviathan field, discovered in December 2010, was estimated to hold roughly half a trillion cubic meters of recoverable reserves, enough to supply the energy demands of Israel and its neighbors for decades, and transform the energy politics of the Eastern Mediterranean. At this pivotal moment in the early months of Leviathan’s history, Epstein also helped secure a meeting between Netanyahu and senior JPMorgan leadership, a meeting which was referenced in documents from the U.S. Virgin Islands lawsuit and previously reported by the Daily Beast. The reason for the meeting, and the nature of Epstein’s involvement, was not disclosed in the court documents, which are heavily redacted. But, whether by chance or by design, Netanyahu agreed to the meeting on March 23, 2011—the same day the Knesset Finance Committee voted on a major tax increase on natural gas exports, a key hurdle to beginning commercial development of Leviathan. Israel’s offshore gas ambitions did not progress smoothly. By 2014, amid a brutal war in Gaza, Israeli energy tycoon Yitzhak Tshuva was facing an antitrust case against his company, Delek Group, which owned the Leviathan field together with Texas-based Noble Energy (since acquired by Chevron). Epstein coached Barak on credibly presenting himself as an expert on energy, as Barak searched for friendly partners in Europe, Russia, and the U.S. to help Tshuva’s group become compliant with Israel’s anti-monopoly law and push the Leviathan project forward. Netanyahu ultimately forced a compromise, allowing the Delek–Noble consortium to control Leviathan, the large field for foreign exports, while selling off its stake in Tamar, a smaller field for domestic supply. As the new gas framework was being finalized, Netanyahu’s son, Yair, was captured on tape at a Tel Aviv strip club in late 2015, drunkenly confessing that it was a corrupt bargain. In the recording, Yair told Nir Maimon, son of gas magnate Koby Maimon, who became the controlling interest in Tamar, “My dad made an awesome deal for your dad, bro. He fought, fought in the Knesset for this.” He pressed Maimon to give him some cash to pay a stripper, “Bro, my dad now arranged a $20 billion show for you and you can’t spot me [400 shekels]?” Although Epstein stopped banking with JPMorgan in 2013, additional leaked emails from Epstein’s Yahoo account suggest elite business leaders in the United Arab Emirates continued to view Epstein as having high-level ties to the bank for years afterward. During a 2015 conference in Kazakhstan, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, head of Dubai Ports World, was angling for a meeting with Israeli economist Jacob Frenkel, then-chairman of JPMorgan’s international business, who had also been involved in planning the 2011 Netanyahu meeting. After the antitrust dispute was finally resolved in 2016, JPMorgan financed a multi-billion-dollar plan to develop Leviathan. JPMorgan declined to comment for this story. This report on Epstein’s background in the Leviathan saga is part of an ongoing series investigating his connections to the intelligence communities in both Israel and the U.S. Support Drop Site’s Reporting on Epstein “Surprisee Suprise” After Jeffrey Epstein was arrested for the second time on sex trafficking charges in the summer of 2019, JPMorgan initiated an internal probe, “Project Jeep,” to investigate its risk exposure from Epstein’s criminal activities. The project produced a 22-page summary of the bank’s communications with Epstein, including a bulleted list of excerpts from emails between Epstein and Jes Staley, former head of JPMorgan’s investment bank, dating back to 2008. Staley met Epstein in the mid-1990s, at the offices of The Limited, when Epstein was working as chief financial adviser to fashion mogul Leslie Wexner. When the New York Times Magazine reported that Staley credited Epstein for setting up the meeting with Netanyahu in 2011, the bank’s spokesman told the paper that JPMorgan “neither needed nor sought Epstein’s help for meetings with any government leaders.” The bank’s statement appears to contradict its own analysis in “Project Jeep,” which includes several examples of Epstein introducing senior bank leadership to government leaders in the UK, Africa, and the Persian Gulf. Epstein “appear[ed] to maintain relationships with a number of senior business executives and senior government officials globally,” JPMorgan’s attorneys wrote. On March 23, 2011, Roy Navon (head of JPMorgan’s Israel office) sent an email to Staley and Jacob Frenkel, writing, “Against all odds, we have been granted a meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu.” Staley forwarded the email to Epstein with a note: “Thanks.” Epstein replied: “surprisee suprise.” Redacted excerpt from U.S. Virgin Islands v. JPMorgan Chase, August 15, 2023. Staley received confirmation of the Netanyahu meeting on the same day as a key vote being held in the Knesset Finance Committee on the “Sheshinski” bill—named for an advisory committee headed by an esteemed Israeli economist—that would increase the Israeli government’s tax on offshore oil and gas profits. Netanyahu framed the gas tax as an effort to balance the needs of Israeli citizens, who were facing rising energy costs, with the demands of the field’s investors, who were threatening to pull the plug on the project. At the eleventh hour, lawmakers were attempting to add language restricting the government’s ability to raise taxes again in the future—but the objection was dropped after the Finance Minister promised Netanyahu would commit to “tax stability” at the next cabinet meeting. Major international banks were already positioning around the Leviathan project: Barclays and HSBC—two of JPMorgan’s rivals—were the exclusive financial advisers for the Leviathan investors’ smaller field, Tamar, and had loaned nearly $400 million the previous year. At around the same time Staley received Navon’s email confirming a meeting with Netanyahu, the minutes for the marathon Sheshinski session show lawmakers were debating whether “financing expenses” would be recognized in calculating the new levy—a decision that would have direct implications for how investors and lenders modeled cash flows from the Leviathan project. Epstein’s emails with Jes Staley, March 23, 2011. After the successful Sheshinski vote, Netanyahu phoned Finance Committee chair MK Moshe Gafni to congratulate him, calling the law “among the most important for Israel’s economy.” One week later, on March 30, the Sheshinski law was passed, lifting the state’s take on natural gas profits to more than 50 percent. Subscribe now “Really a Lucky Guy” Leviathan sits on one of today’s central geopolitical fault lines: Europe’s dependence on Russian gas. Israeli gas could diversify Europe’s supplies by bringing new, non-Russian gas into European markets. Russia’s state-backed energy group, Gazprom, made a bid for ownership in Leviathan in 2012, but it was rebuffed by the field’s American owners from Noble Energy. Nevertheless, in February 2013, Delek and Noble’s smaller gas field, Tamar, arranged an exclusive deal with Gazprom to offtake Israeli liquefied natural gas and market it in Asia — a deal some participants hoped to parlay into a future role in Leviathan as well. With U.S.-Russia competition in the background, Epstein emailed Barak on August 1, 2013 to advise him about challenges to American investment in the Leviathan field’s development. Netanyahu’s cabinet had decided to allocate 40 percent of its gas reserves for foreign exports, but a judge threatened to halt the decision, due to a pending lawsuit over whether the cabinet had the authority. Epstein reacted to the news: “Supreme Court President Asher Grunis said on Thursday that he is inclined to issue an injunction banning natural gas export until the court ruled on the matter. im not sure an amercian [sic] energy co, will do well in israel.” Barak replied to Epstein’s warning, “U R probably right but I would like to check it somehow.” Emails between Epstein and Barak, August 1, 2013. Epstein and Barak’s private discussions about the future of Leviathan came as Israeli antitrust regulators, faced with the enormous size of the new Leviathan field, were threatening to break up Delek and Noble’s monopoly on Israel’s large gas fields—an outcome the group was eager to get ahead of by enlisting Barak’s help. On January 16, 2014, according to a confidential memo written by Barak, Yitzhak Tshuva, the owner of Delek Group, visited Barak’s home to ask for help finding a “major player” to acquire rights to Leviathan production for the Israeli domestic energy market, in anticipation of an anti-monopoly order aimed at breaking up Tshuva’s holdings. The regulator’s concern stemmed from past contracts, from before the Leviathan discovery, that had locked in high prices for Israeli consumers. The same day as Tshuva’s visit, Barak sent an urgent email to Epstein, asking to speak on the phone. The next day, Barak contacted his associates at Renova Group, the conglomerate owned by Russian-Israeli billionaire Viktor Vekselberg. Barak had a lucrative consulting agreement with Renova to source energy, mining, and real estate opportunities. As Drop Site previously reported, Barak and Epstein had leveraged the relationship with Renova in another strategic initiative for Israel in 2013, a diplomatic backchannel to Vladimir Putin during the Syrian civil war. In a memo sent to Renova on January 17, 2014, Barak explained that Israel’s anti-monopoly regulator planned to break Tshuva’s control over Israel’s gas by forcing the Leviathan consortium to bring in a new partner for domestic energy supply. “The Problem is that Mr.Tshuva is the major share holder in both Yam Thetis AND Tamar (really a lucky guy),” Barak wrote, referring to two other gas fields controlled by Delek and its partners. Excerpt of confidential memo from Ehud Barak to Renova Group regarding Leviathan gas field (January 2014). The full memo is available here: Leviathan Proposal 57.7KB ∙ PDF file Download Download Barak offered Renova marketing rights to roughly one-eighth of Leviathan’s reserves, but only for domestic sales inside Israel. Renova would also take on the obligation to drill new production wells, build an offshore platform, and lay a dedicated underwater pipeline to shore. The proposal promised long-term contracts to Israel’s largest electric utility, an attractive security for borrowing money. Renova’s representative, Yakov Tesis, wrote back on January 21, “it makes no sense for Renova to accept the offer,” as Renova would be taking on huge risk to see the project succeed, without any real ownership of the gas reserves. Barak tried to sweeten the deal by showing Renova a memorandum of understanding from Woodside Energy Group, an Australian firm, that valued the field at over $10 billion, but Renova declined again. (Woodside walked away soon after.) Meanwhile, Barak pursued American private equity interests, in spite of Epstein’s earlier warning. In February of 2014, Barak shopped the Leviathan deal to U.S. private equity giant Texas Pacific Group (TPG), an occasional collaborator with Leon Black’s firm Apollo Global Management. TPG partner Chris Ortega replied that, while the Leviathan discovery was a “transformative” moment in Israel’s energy politics, any solution would be capital-intensive and politically fraught and take too long to see a return on investment. Facing another setback, Barak continued to lean on Epstein for support. After an event for Israel’s national emergency response service in Palm Beach two weeks later, Barak wrote to Epstein, “Thx for the time and energy you invest in supporting my efforts to bring home more bread. These exchanges ARE highly valuable for me.” At the time, the two men had been pursuing funding for offensive and defensive cybersecurity startups sourced from Israeli intelligence, including Carbyne, an emergency response platform founded by alumni of Israel’s Unit 8200 signals intelligence unit. Now, Barak reported to Epstein that he was ready to broaden the scope of his efforts, writing, “I’ll try to focus beyond CyberSec on Vik. AZ. Mon. and KAZ.” — referring to opportunities with Vekselberg, Azerbaijan, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. Epstein replied, “im alwys there for you.” Barak reports to Epstein after a Magen David Adom event; he asks Epstein to call a man from Kazakhstan. February 25, 2014. In Barak’s confidential memo to Renova, he had outlined a three-fold plan for Israel’s gas exports from Leviathan. First, regional exports to the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, and small amounts to Egypt; second, a gas pipeline to Ceyhan, Turkey for the Turkish market and Europe; and, third, a liquefied natural gas plant in Cyprus to export gas to Asia and the rest of the world. Barak had begun talks with the leadership of SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company, to partner with the Delek–Noble group in developing Leviathan. Barak hoped to negotiate access for Israeli gas interests into the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), the central and western segments of the Southern Gas Corridor that crossed from Azerbaijan to Italy through Turkey. Avelar, a Swiss-based subsidiary of Renova, operated key gas infrastructure and power utilities in Italy, with alleged links to Italian bureaucrats involved in pipeline politics. Barak pitched SOCAR executives on a deal linking the Leviathan field to the “real power structure” in the TANAP/TAP corridor. The next month, in March, Barak’s wife sent Epstein their travel itinerary for Rome and Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Epstein and Barak made plans to speak on the phone before Barak departed. Barak gives Elshad Nassirov (VP of SOCAR) an update on Leviathan. Barak had a $6 million per year consulting agreement with SOCAR for “business development.” February 20, 2014. Epstein, meanwhile, continued to steer Barak’s efforts to establish his reputation as a credible energy dealmaker. As Barak searched for partners for Leviathan, Epstein was not shy about giving harsh criticism to his friend. When energy tycoon Jack Grynberg asked Barak to find a buyer for his oil & gas assets, Barak wanted to loop Renova into the deal. But, first, he shared Grynberg’s financial statements with Epstein and Apollo CEO Leon Black for due diligence. Barak wrote to Epstein deferentially, “Do not hesitate to correct or direct me along the way. I don’t have enough time to learn from my own mistakes. Shabbat Shalom.” A few hours later, Epstein sent a frustrated response: “This is total 100 percent BULLSHIT. I told you on the phone before sending or asking anyone about it you should do your own homework, You cannot be seen to be selling garbage ,frauds. bad things and or trouble. this is a total waste of your time.” Barak scrambled, sending an email to Black’s executive assistant, “I’ve just learnt that the deal I’ve wrote [sic] you about yesterday, namely GADECO/Grynberg Oil Co. Is not on the market any more. I do not have more details but I kindly ask you to delete my emails and do not forward it to Leon or others within Apollo.” Emails between Barak and Epstein, October 24-25, 2014. Email from Barak to an assistant at Apollo, October 25, 2014. “Stolen Gas” Barak and Netanyahu, although political rivals, both wanted to see Leviathan succeed. While Barak tried to shop Leviathan access to overseas investors who could absorb Israel’s regulatory chaos, Netanyahu applied a different lever: turning Leviathan into a national security issue that would override anti-monopoly regulations altogether. When Barak failed to protect Tshuva’s gas monopoly by bringing in a compliant foreign partner, Netanyahu used the prime minister’s office as a blunt instrument to restructure Israel’s energy economy. Shortly after Leviathan’s discovery, in January 2011, Netanyahu warned that offshore gas fields were a “strategic objective that Israel’s enemies will try to undermine” and vowed that “Israel will defend its resources.” By 2014, he had backed a plan for the Israeli government to cover up to half of the security costs for offshore facilities. These were promising signs for money-lenders: in April of 2014, Reuters reported that Tshuva’s company, Delek, was beginning a “road show” to raise up to $2 billion in bonds to fund Leviathan’s development, with underwriting from JPMorgan, Citi, and HSBC. The bond offering closed on May 11. Just two months later, on July 8, 2014, Israel began “Operation Protective Edge,” a brutal assault on Gaza that killed more than 2,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom were civilians. At the start of the war, IDF officials were reportedly concerned Hamas might use long-range rockets to threaten offshore gas rigs. A blog post for The Guardian argued that control over gas, particularly the Gaza Marine field, was a key driver of Israeli policy. The author, British journalist Nafeez Ahmed, was fired the next day. (According to Ahmed, a Guardian editor justified the decision stating, “Palestine is not an environment story.”) In his post, Ahmed noted that Israel’s Minister of Defense at the time, Moshe Ya’alon, had argued in a 2007 policy paper that allowing Gaza to develop its own gas would “bankroll terror” by making Hamas rich from gas royalties. Alternatively, if the Palestinian Authority was given control of the gas and Hamas was excluded from gas profits, Ya’alon claimed, Hamas would retaliate by sabotaging Israel and PA gas infrastructure. Ya’alon wrote, “It is clear that without an overall military operation to uproot Hamas control of Gaza, no drilling work can take place without the consent of the radical Islamic movement.” Gaza’s gas politics impacted Israel’s diplomatic relations with its Arab neighbors; Jordan, like Israel, suffered from energy shortages due to attacks on Egyptian pipelines after Mubarak’s fall. In autumn 2014, Jordanian officials announced plans to import gas from both Gaza Marine and Israel’s Leviathan field. The Leviathan announcement immediately sparked domestic backlash and street demonstrations against the purchase of “stolen gas.” In early January 2015, Jordanian media reported Amman put the Leviathan talks on hold after Israel’s antitrust regulator moved against the Delek–Noble consortium. Jordanian officials announced they would proceed with plans to buy gas from Gaza. Amid the fighting in Gaza and protests in Amman, Leviathan was halted. The Leviathan owners, and their financiers, would not sink billions into development without regulatory certainty from the Israeli government. Delek executives threatened international arbitration, and Noble warned it would not invest more until the antitrust dispute was resolved. Barak pressed forward, looking to Asia for answers. In April of 2015, he exchanged emails about an “energy play” with Joshua Hantman, a former advisor to Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. They discussed a Cyprus-based company called Cynergy Group, which was looking to buy up natural gas assets in the Eastern Mediterranean, including a stake in Leviathan. Hantman reported to Barak confidentially that he had garnered interest from South Korea’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Choi Kyoung-hwan, as well as members of the president’s office. Hantman wrote, “That is the world’s largest strategic buyer of gas - ready to join us.” Barak wrote back, “Stay in touch and let’s see whether a way to collaborate will emerge.” Leviathan was by now becoming an explosive political conflict in Israel. That spring, Israel’s antitrust commissioner resigned, warning that Netanyahu’s government was prioritizing monopolists and foreign buyers at the expense of Israeli consumers, who would face higher gas prices if the Delek–Noble monopoly was not broken. Economy Minister Aryeh Deri also resigned, under pressure from Netanyahu to exempt the gas framework from antitrust scrutiny. Netanyahu, still the prime minister, stepped in to take over Deri’s economy portfolio. Then, in September, the Russian military officially entered the Syrian civil war, launching airstrikes across Syria in support of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. With extraordinary leverage, Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly offered Netanyahu a deal: Give Gazprom a stake in Leviathan, and, in exchange, Russia would protect the gas fields from Hezbollah and Hamas. Now, the debate in Israel had a new dimension: accepting Gazprom would resolve the deadlock, guarantee the gas field’s security, and instantly turn Israel into an indispensable energy exporter—at the cost of alienating Israel’s allies in the U.S. and Europe. Netanyahu found an opportunity, in one blow, to appease Israel’s neighbors, its NATO allies, and the gas oligarchs at home. In December 2015, after months of Knesset clashes, Netanyahu used an obscure section of the country’s antitrust law to authorize the economy minister (now Netanyahu himself) to permit a gas monopoly on national security grounds. Netanyahu invoked relations with Jordan, Turkey, and Europe to justify the move, signaling to banks and allies that Leviathan was politically protected. “Fake News” After Netanyahu’s move to break the Leviathan deadlock, Amman quietly resumed planning to import gas from Leviathan. In September 2016, Jordan signed a $10 billion deal to import gas from the field, spurring a resumption of protests under the slogan “The Enemy’s Gas is Occupation.” Jordanian officials sealed the Leviathan contract under “state secrets” rules and waited out the protests. Soon after, in November of 2016, the Delek–Noble consortium announced it had secured a $1.75 billion loan from JPMorgan and HSBC for the first phase of Leviathan’s development. The framework that made JPMorgan financing possible transformed Israel’s gas sector into a protected duopoly. Under Netanyahu’s gas framework, Tshuva and his partners retained control of Leviathan, which would become Israel’s main gas export supply, but were forced to sell their stake in the smaller Tamar field—leaving Isramco (linked to Kobi Maimon) as the controlling owner of Israel’s main domestic gas supply. Egypt followed a similar pattern to Jordan: quiet diplomacy, private contracts, and plausible deniability. In 2018, a Cairo-based buyer signed long-term “private-sector” purchase agreements for Tamar and Leviathan gas, and the Leviathan partners bought into the dormant Mubarak-era pipeline that once sent Egyptian gas to Israel, so it could be reversed for exports. The first gas from Leviathan finally began flowing in December 2019. A small amount of this early gas flowed to Egypt through the reversed pipeline. Leviathan gas field. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Earlier that year, on June 26, 2019, Barak announced his intention to challenge Netanyahu in an election slated for that September. Two days later, emails from Epstein’s estate show Epstein messaging Steve Bannon about the election and “dealing with Ehud in Israel.” Bannon praised the decision and asked Epstein whether he could announce himself as Barak’s strategic advisor. Epstein did not live to see the vote—he died in a Manhattan prison cell on August 10, 2019. Despite his death, Epstein’s ghost continues to haunt Israeli politics. In November of 2025, Netanyahu posted, without comment, an article from Jacobin magazine containing Drop Site’s reporting on Epstein’s ties to Barak and Israeli intelligence—implicitly leveraging Epstein’s connection to Barak to detract from his longstanding rival. Netanyahu now openly invokes Epstein to wound Barak, using Epstein’s crimes to deflect attention from his own corruption cases and his responsibility for the genocide in Gaza. “The media channels are not news channels, they are fake channels,” he said in March, “They invite Ehud Barak again and again… with great respect and dignity, but, strangely, he is not asked a single question on [Epstein].” Share Leave a comment From Drop Site News via This RSS Feed.
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The US is once again trying to gets its chlorinated fowl into UK markets, a strategy linked to their push for chlorinated chicken exports. Reportedly, it’s happening because of the collapse of an equally bad (if not worse) AI tech deal: This confirms it. The US is using the collapsed tech/AI deal to force Britain to accept chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef. Food standards are the leverage point and the red line. You can’t align with US tech power and stay aligned with Europe.… pic.twitter.com/Ru37rLPH80 — Liz Webster (@LizWebsterSBF) December 29, 2025 ‘Farm to fork’ As Farming UKhave reported, British regulators are against chlorinated chicken because it’s at odds with the UK’s ‘farm to fork’ ethos. The UK is supposed to prioritise hygiene and welfare standards, the Americans, meanwhile, make up for laxer standards with an end-of-process chlorine rinse. As we’ve reported before, the UK is far from perfect when it comes to welfare standards. However, accepting chlorinated chicken would be a step back; it means there’s work to be done getting our own house in order. This is all happening now because the US-UK technology deal has faltered. In part, it’s due to the Americans’ position that the UK’s Online Safety Act will have a detrimental impact on their tech sector. We have voiced our own criticisms of the Online Safety Act, with Steve Topple writing in July this year: When both the left and the right are united in their disdain for a piece of legislation, you know there must be something up. So, enter the Online Safety Act: a law so riddled with corruption, incompetence, and authoritarianism that you’d be forgiven for agreeing with Nigel Farage. But exactly what are the problems with this Tory written, Labour-allowed piece of legislation? He added: While the Online Safety Act was sold as a child‑safety milestone, critics argue it’s structurally incapable of delivering that outcome. Campaigners from organisations including Barnardo’s, the Molly Rose Foundation and CARE UK warn that loopholes around algorithmic recommendations, autoplay, live‑streaming, and age verification mean the legislation “will not bring about the changes that children need and deserve”. Rather than curtail harmful exposure, the law risks becoming symbolic rather than effective. Since enforcement began on 25 July, age verification—via ID scans, facial estimation, or mobile verification—has triggered over five million age checks per day, mostly on porn sites. But this in turn has driven a rapid surge in VPN downloads as users seek to bypass access controls, shifting minors toward less‑regulated parts of the internet and raising their exposure to greater harms rather than reducing it. Laws like the Online Safety Act ultimately benefit tech giants, but they also introduce additional layers of oversight. The tech overlords would prefer to get all of the benefits with none of the downsides, which is why they’ve worked so hard to ingratiate themselves with the Trump administration. US President Donald Trump invited the world’s richest billionaire oligarchs to sit at the center of his inauguration. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, & Google CEO Sundar Pichai symbolically sat with Trump’s cabinet picks. A dozen billionaires will be in the Trump admin. pic.twitter.com/9CHzpmFAEU — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 20, 2025 Given that US tech oligarchs have attained ungodly levels of power since 2020, we shouldn’t want the UK to be more enmeshed with them, especially on this chlorinated chicken issue. Recent events have demonstrated the power that they have and why they choose to wield it: Tech oligarchs are now openly conspiring against @RoKhanna because he dared to back a modest wealth tax. https://t.co/pCh170Oa3v — Krystal Ball (@krystalball) December 28, 2025 Farmers rights As Farming UKfurther note: For British farmers, the stakes extend beyond poultry. The US is also pushing for greater access for hormone-treated beef, another area where UK standards are stricter than those in America. Farming unions have warned that accepting such imports would weaken consumer trust in British food and risk eroding the premium attached to UK produce at home and abroad. Sir Keir has previously treated food standards as a red line, rebuffing Mr Trump’s demands to allow chlorinated chicken in exchange for lower tariffs. Since Labour returned to power, right-wing politicians have been making a big show of supporting farmers and opposing chlorinated chicken. This is ironic given that they didn’t seem to give a shit when the Tories were in power. As journalist Jon Burke recently highlighted, other agriculture deals have gone incredibly poorly for us. I see the @Telegraph is now reporting on the Australian trade deal disaster for which it campaigned. Nobody, and I mean *nobody*, has betrayed this country like the libertarian wreckers who lied to the public about ‘Brexit benefits’. pic.twitter.com/fps85uTWaE — Jon Burke is mainly posting on Bluesky (@jonburkeUK) December 27, 2025 The Australian trade deal that @trussliz struck – despite extensive warnings from civil servants – is turning out to be a disaster for British farmers, you say? If only we could have foretold this in some way… https://t.co/aTlh0B3Bwv pic.twitter.com/0JJN5VQYCU — Jon Burke is mainly posting on Bluesky (@jonburkeUK) December 27, 2025 The White House stated that our refusal to accept chlorinated chicken and hormone-pumped beef is an obstacle to them removing the tariffs that Trump introduced earlier this year. As Farming UK noted: Any decision to relax those rules would carry significant political and economic consequences. Farming leaders argue it would not only threaten livelihoods in the poultry and beef sectors but also set a precedent for weakening food standards more broadly, potentially reshaping the future of British agriculture in trade negotiations yet to come. Chicken Starmer clearly wants to give the impression that he’s achieved something. As such, there’s a worry that he’ll accept whatever deal is on the table — possibly even one involving chlorinated chicken — so that he can act like he got a win. This is why it’s important to be clear that no one will accept capitulation to Trump as a victory. Featured image via BBC By Willem Moore From Canary via This RSS Feed.
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Hi, all, and happy Friday. It’s also the day that the Epstein files were supposed to be released. It seems clear, however, that they won’t be, at least in their entirety. This is a heartbreaker, not just for the victims who’ve been working so hard to achieve transparency, but for all of us who’ve worked so hard to ensure this release. It’s also a clear violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. But most of all it’s another reminder that this administration doesn’t care about the law, and it doesn’t care about helping survivors. We’ve known these things forever, but each new example of this fact still stings, enrages, and depresses. But we won’t wallow in those feelings for too long. Because the victims—and we—deserve better. Americans are united in wanting transparency on this issue; we will just have to keep working until we get it. Meanwhile Trump has already added his name to the Kennedy Center’s facade. It took all of a day for him to do so after the board voted to allow it—even though this wasn’t the board’s decision to make. He’s quick to get things done, isn’t he? When those things benefit him? Trump and his administration are also creeping closer to invading Venezuela. And issuing more destructive rules to hurt children. And shutting down the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado over a grudge with Governor Polis. They’re a destructive force the likes of which we have never seen in American politics—and that’s saying something. Look. I know it’s hard to watch the worst people in the world act with what appears to be impunity. The best antidote, for me, is to keep taking action, keep looking for people to help (I’ve got a GREAT option for you below), and keep surrounding myself with people who care about democracy, the rule of law, and civility as much as I do. Trump’s administration is every bit as ugly inside as it is outside (see the Vanity Fair photos). We know it, and so do they. But one other thing we know—that they do not—is that kind of ugliness, greed, and cruelty is inherently weak; it cannot sustain itself. It is, quite literally, self-destructive. More importantly, it will be defeated—because we will defeat it. And when we do, Trump’s legacy will be systematically and fully dismantled. We will take all of this pent up grief and rage and work together, with a singleness of purpose never before seen, to remove his name from every building, tear down his ballroom, reverse his Executive Orders, try cabinet members who’ve broken the law, charge ICE agents with crimes, restore climate action, pass stronger protections for LGBTQ+ people, give Dreamers a path to citizenship, pass comprehensive immigration reform, pass Medicare For All, reunite separated families, pass vigorous voting rights legislation, expand the Supreme Court, strengthen our alliances, fix our trade policy, rebuild our CDC, re-fund US AID, strengthen the EPA and FEMA, expand Social Security, tax the hell out of billionaires and corporations, break up monopolies, restore civic trust, re-center morality in our politics…and more. These are not just pipe dreams. They are achievable. Will they be difficult to accomplish? Some yes, some no. But they are all doable if we have the will. So let’s have it. We will rebuild this country out of the ashes Trump leaves behind. In fact, we will use those ashes to fertilize the growth of a new United States—one that he and his rich donors will hate, but that the majority of us will love and thrive in. Right now the fire still burns, and it’s excruciating. But Trump is running out of fuel. The flames are already diminishing. Soon there will be only cinders. Then the rebuild will begin. Not only will we erase any trace of Trump or MAGA from our national landscape, but we will create the diametric opposite of it and ensure that it’s built to last. Don’t quit before the miracle, folks. Now let’s get to work. Call Your Senators (find yours here) 📲 Hi, I’m a constituent calling from [zip]. My name is ______. I’m furious about Trump’s attempt to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. We all know he’s doing it to get Governor Polis to transfer Tina Peters to federal prison so he can pardon her. It’s grotesque. NCAR is one of the world’s leading Earth science research institutions—without it we will be endangered in ways too numerous to list. I’m glad that Senators Bennet and Hickenlooper are blocking the Senate funding package until this money is restored, and I’d like the Senator to support them in every way s/he can. The Senate is a powerful body. Please act like one and rein our crooked president in. Also, if the DOJ doesn’t release the entirety of the Epstein files today please take all legal measures to ensure that they comply with the law. And I mean play hardball. This is a coverup and it can’t be tolerated. Thanks. Call Your House Rep (find yours here) 📲 Hi, I’m a constituent calling from [zip]. My name is _______. I’m furious about Trump’s attempt to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. We all know he’s doing it to get Governor Polis to transfer Tina Peters to federal prison so he can pardon her. It’s grotesque. NCAR is one of the world’s leading Earth science research institutions—without it we will be endangered in ways too numerous to list. Please ask the Congressmember to do everything s/he can to get this funding restored. Thank you. Also, if the DOJ doesn’t release the entirety of the Epstein files today please take all legal measures to ensure that they comply with the law. And I mean play hardball. This is a coverup and it can’t be tolerated. Thanks. Extra Credit ✅ Let’s write to DNC Chair Ken Martin and urge him to reverse his decision to not release the DNC’s 2024 autopsy report. It’s a stunningly bad decision that will hurt us badly in the long term. His email address is [email protected] Sample letter: Chair Martin, I’m writing as a Democratic voter and volunteer to respectfully ask you to reverse your decision to not release the DNC 2024 autopsy report. How are Democrats going to learn from our mistakes if we don’t have any concept of their depth and breadth? Showing fearlessness, transparency, and a willingness to admit where we’ve gone wrong is how we win voters back! Continuing to retreat from accountability is how we ensure that we keep losing them. Thanks. Feel free to copy and use, but better if you write your own. I sent mine! Get Smart! 📚 Y’all I got my hands on a report about Buy Now Pay Later companies and their connection to the Trump admin and it is INSANE. Every bit of it is just gross. I made a video about it but if you don’t want to watch it that’s fine—still read the report! Video is here. Report is below. If you can’t open it here’s a linked version but it’s not as pretty. This is stuff we need to know, and need to share. Buy Now, Pay Later Pitch Doc234KB ∙ PDF fileDownloadDownload Give 💰! My lovely friend Lindsay from Still We Rise lives in Portland and just learned of an immigrant family there who has been living in fear of ICE raids. They haven’t left their home in two months. Not for school. Not for errands. Not to see friends. Their middle and high school–aged kids are homeschooling, not because they want to, but because going outside feels unsafe. I’m making this family our so-called Angel Tree this year. Yes, there are tens of thousands of families like theirs, but theirs is a family we know about and can reach. Because they can’t safely leave their home, we asked them one simple question: What would help? What would bring you a little joy? With some gentle nudging they shared a wish list with us, and my hope is to clear it and deliver a true Christmas miracle for this family. Right now, fear has shrunk their world down to four walls. Together, we can help open it back up, even just a little. We can remind them they matter. That they are seen. That they deserve joy, safety, and dignity. If you’ve been looking for a way to make a real difference this season this is it.Let’s wrap this family in love. Let’s show up for them. Let’s make their Christmas one filled with relief, warmth, and hope. The wish list is here. It’s on Amazon. I boycott them, but even I will violate that boycott at times like this. There’s really no other way to do this where their address can remain anonymous. Hope some of you can help. Get in the Streets! 🪧 National Day Laborer’s Network is asking us to consider “adopting a corner” to help undocumented day laborers. They’re asking that we go to our local Home Depot, where immigrant day laborers are at extreme risk of harassment and arrest. Choose a location convenient to you, where day laborers gather and commit to showing up regularly. Be present. Be consistent. Build relationships and offer protection. Remember: Solo el pueblo salva al pueblo. Only the people save the people. That has always been true—and never more than now. We can and should be standing together in the face of injustice—peacefully, powerfully, with love and care. We don’t need to feed their violence, we need to build community. Interested in getting involved in your local community? Please CLICK HERE to register to get connected with other people in your area. Win Races! 🗳 The DNC has a new newsletter out called This Week in Organizing. It’s great—it features trainings, election recaps, phonebanks…I really hope you’ll all subscribe! It only comes out once a week so not too much spam. Resistbot Letter (new to Resistbot? Go here! And then here.) 💻 [To: all 3 reps] [H/T the amazing ] [Text SIGN PPAUEZ to 50409, or to @Resistbot on Apple Messages, Messenger, Instagram, or Telegram] (Note that for the most effective RESISTBOT it’s best to personalize this text. More about how to do this here. But if you’re short on time just send it as is using the above code.) I am writing to urge Congress to immediately intervene to stop the reported attempt to rename the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as the “Trump-Kennedy Center.”Federal law is unambiguous. The building “shall be designated as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,” and Congress established it as the sole national memorial to President John F. Kennedy within Washington, D.C. and its environs. Nothing in the authorizing statutes grants the Board of Trustees authority to rename or rebrand this national memorial. Only an act of Congress can change a designation set in federal law.Joe Kennedy III, President Kennedy’s grandnephew and a former member of Congress, has publicly stated that the Kennedy Center “can no sooner be renamed than the Lincoln Memorial,” regardless of claims made by the White House or the Board. That assessment aligns with the plain text of the statute and longstanding constitutional principles regarding congressional authority over federal memorials.Serious procedural concerns further undermine the legitimacy of this action. Despite public claims of a “unanimous” vote, at least one ex-officio board member—Representative Joyce Beatty—has stated she was muted during the meeting and prevented from voicing opposition. This raises grave questions about transparency, due process, and whether the Board acted in bad faith to evade legal scrutiny.Allowing politically aligned appointees to unilaterally alter a congressionally established national memorial would set a dangerous precedent. It would invite future administrations to rewrite history, law, and public institutions by fiat rather than through democratic processes.I urge you to act immediately to:• Publicly affirm that only Congress has the authority to rename the Kennedy Center• Initiate oversight hearings into the Board’s actions and claims• Require a legal review by congressional counsel or GAO• Prohibit the use of federal funds for any unauthorized signage, branding, or contracts• Pass clarifying legislation reaffirming the Kennedy Center’s statutory name, if necessaryThis is not about partisanship. It is about the rule of law, separation of powers, and protecting a national memorial created by Congress. OK, you did it again! You’re helping to save democracy! You’re amazing. Talk soon. Jess Chop Wood, Carry Water is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Leave a comment Share From Chop Wood, Carry Water via this RSS feed
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From Into Action. Download here. Hi, all, and happy Sunday. Also happy first day of Hanukkah to those who celebrate. Of course, none of it is happy at all, is it? In the last 24 hours we’ve had horrific shootings both here and abroad—the latter fueled by antisemitism and the former by some other, as yet unknown, form of hate. It’s ghastly, and gutting; grief seems the only appropriate response. So yes, I grieve. I know you do, too. Hate is awful, yet feels ascendant. That’s not fair. Or right. Or acceptable. But I also know this: the way we eradicate—or at least overcome—hate is by winning our current fight. The way we do that is by continuing to do what we’re doing—ideally with a bigger army. And the way we do THAT is by keeping our morale up and showing that what we’re doing is working. How do we do that? In part by acknowledging where we’re winning. So we’re going to do that, even on a day infused with grief. Sending hugs, all. Sending strength. And sending determination that these people will not win. Below is proof that we can prevail. Please share it with others and ask them to join us. Together we can create a better world. Celebrate This! 🎉 Eileen Higgins won the Miami Mayor race by a wide margin, becoming the first woman ever to hold the seat, and the first Democrat in almost 30 years! A federal judge blocked U.S. immigration authorities on Friday from re-detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia after he was finally freed. He’s now home with his family. New York will become the first state to force advertisers to disclose the use of artificial intelligence to replace human actors under a law signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul. The Indiana Senate has REJECTED a proposed 9-0 GOP gerrymander in their state. Twenty-one Republicans voted with all Democrats against the bill, despite Trump’s mob boss-style threats. This was a MAJOR defeat for Trump. To quote one analyst, it was “one of the most significant GOP rebukes of [him] to date.” A grand jury declined to re-indict Letitia James, AGAIN! Mexico announced it was boosting the minimum wage by 13% and plans to limit the work week to 40 hours in 2030. The Institute of Museum and Library Services is reinstating all grants that were previously terminated by the Trump administration. DHS announced it’s planning to change its tactics in immigration enforcement operations, moving away from sweeping raids to a more targeted approach. This is likely because of Trump’s plummeting poll numbers. If true, it’s excellent news. Protesters disrupted a New Orleans City Council meeting to speak out against the federal government’s immigration crackdown in the state’s most populous city. Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens formally filed articles of impeachment against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kirsti Noem had a very, very bad day at the House Homeland Security Committee hearing. Democrats there shone, in particular Reps. Magaziner and Ramirez. Overall, this year, Democrats have flipped 21% of all GOP-held legislative seats that were on the ballot, while the GOP flipped none. An environmental group is suing to get Trump’s image removed from next year’s national park passes. Leaders of a Catholic church near Boston kept a Nativity display with an anti-ICE message in place, defying an order from the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston to remove it. A Maryland judge ruled that a lawsuit alleging Education Secretary Linda McMahon and her husband, WWE co-founder Vincent McMahon, knew about and chose not to stop sexual abuse against eight underage “ring boys” will proceed. L.A. County sued four oil companies operating, or who have operated, in the Inglewood Oil Field near Baldwin Hills and Ladera Heights, alleging they’ve failed to properly clean up hundreds of depleted and idle wells. A new conservation agreement will preserve land with breathtaking desert vistas that inspired the work of 20th century painter Georgia O’Keeffe and ensure visitors access to an adjacent educational retreat 13 Congressional Republicans joined Democrats in a vote to nullify Trump’s executive order stripping collective bargaining rights from roughly one million federal workers. US suicide rates fell in 2024. Trump’s approval on the economy and immigration have fallen substantially this year, a new AP-NORC poll finds. Opponents of Missouri’s new congressional map turned in more than 300,000 signatures to the secretary of state’s office — well over the roughly 110,000 needed to suspend the new U.S. House districts from taking effect until a referendum election can be held next year. HUGE! A US judge ruled that Trump must end the National Guard deployment in Los Angeles. Immigrants living in Illinois, among the states hit hardest by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, are now shielded from federal enforcement near courthouses, hospitals, university campuses and daycares under a law Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker signed Tuesday. After a lawsuit by 20 Democratic state AGs, a federal judge has said the Trump administration acted unlawfully in ending BRIC, a FEMA program aimed at helping communities become more resilient to natural disasters. This means funding should get restored. The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued the Trump administration over the White House ballroom project, arguing the White House failed to seek necessary reviews before demolishing the historic East Wing in October. Democrat Eric Gisler claimed an upset victory Tuesday in a special election in a historically Republican Georgia state House district. Former Special Counsel Jack Smith is starting a law firm with three other attorneys who investigated President Donald Trump and his supporters. Former Senator Doug Jones (D - AL) has announced his bid for governor of Alabama. Democrat Tim Keller has won reelection as mayor of Albuquerque. He defeated a former Republican sheriff, who took issue with Keller’s executive order that limited collaboration with ICE. A liberal faction seized the majority at city council, too. New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law to prohibit public and school libraries from banning books in the state and to enshrine protections against civil and criminal charges for librarians who comply with the law. Workers and unions in 10 countries took action this week in support of US Starbucks baristas, including actions in the UK, Turkey, and Istanbul. Remember, Starbucks workers are on strike. Please don’t cross the picket line! The developer of ICEBlock, an app that shares local ICE alerts sued top Trump administration officials, accusing them of pressuring Apple to stifle his free speech and his right to create, distribute and promote the app. A federal judge has refused to release Tina Peters, the former Colorado elections clerk convicted of trying to overturn the 2020 election, despite Trump calling for her to be freed while she appeals her case. A federal judge said the Justice Department can publicly release investigative materials from a sex trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime confidant of Jeffrey Epstein. For the first time in state history for either party, Texas Democrats have fielded candidates in every legislative, statewide, and federal race. This is a HUGE deal. Concerned that residents’ locations and schedules could be obtained by ICE agents, Connecticut state lawmakers passed a bill this month to prevent public agencies from sharing such personal information. State Senator Chambers Armstrong will make history as the first woman elected to Kentucky Senate Democratic leadership. A federal judge struck down Trump’s order blocking wind energy development. The Honduran attorney general issued an international arrest warrant for the country’s former president, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was pardoned by Trump and released from a federal prison in the U.S. where he was serving 45 years for drug trafficking and weapons charges. Some U.S. farmers say large solar and wind farms have delivered unexpected financial relief — and a chance to rest and restore their land — as they lease farmland for renewable energy generation: Food giant Kellanova is rolling out regenerative agriculture practices across its supply chain in an effort to meaningfully cut Scope 3 emissions — a sign that big food companies are finally putting real money behind climate-smart farming. Along the Mississippi Flyway, a new collaboration between rice growers and conservation groups is turning farmlands into seasonal habitat, helping migratory birds rebound while boosting farmers’ yields. New York’s transit system is showing a post-pandemic recovery, with ridership climbing and long-delayed capital projects finally moving ahead. Massachusetts just unveiled a 50-year coastal resilience plan to protect communities from rising seas and stronger storms, combining wetlands restoration, elevated infrastructure, and new retreat incentives. At a rally organized by Western Queens Indivisible that was covered by The New York Times, hundreds of New Yorkers gathered to protest the Trump regime’s arrest and forced separation of a six-year-old immigrant, Yuanxin Zheng, from his father. The Vatican returned sacred artifacts held for a century to their Indigenous owners. ABC has signed Jimmy Kimmel to a new one-year deal that will keep his show on the network through May 2027. Alina Habba announced she is resigning as acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey after a federal appeals court concluded her appointment was unlawful. Another Chicago-area church altered their Nativity scene to make an anti-ICE statement. In it, Mary, Joseph and Jesus are gone and replaced with a sign that reads: “Due to ICE activity in our community, the Holy Family is in hiding.” Heartbreaking but good defiance! Florida’s U.S. senators and all 28 of its U.S. House members signed a letter urging the Trump administration not to allow oil drilling off the state’s coast, saying it would disrupt tourism and military operations. New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) announced that he’ll be recruiting challengers against his state’s Democratic politicians who shield “machine politics.” A Sacramento County man pardoned by Trump for his role in storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, was sentenced this week to nearly 7 years in federal prison on a charge of receiving child pornography. Ew, but glad he’s behind bars again. California state officials announced that they’ll be increasing their oversight of field workers and overseeing a data-sharing effort in order to protect underage farmworkers. The National Rifle Association is burning through its investment portfolio to pay its bills as legal perils increase and revenue from membership dues decline. A federal judge ruled that the DOJ unlawfully accessed evidence central to its case against James Comey, delivering what could be a death blow to Trump’s efforts to re-indict one of his most prominent perceived rivals The Republican plans to pick off five Democratic-held congressional seats in Texas once is looking more and more like it might backfire. Beautiful. Chop Wood, Carry Water is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Leave a comment Share From Chop Wood, Carry Water via this RSS feed
Komunitas
news.abolish.capital
The ELN Christmas ceasefire 2025 offers respite for Colombians amid denunciations of U.S. naval aggression and regional militarization in the Caribbean. Related: 10-Year Colombia Defense Budget 2025 Plan: $12.7 Billion to Counter Armed Violence and Restore State Presence comunicado-2112-25Download In a significant gesture of seasonal goodwill, Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN) has declared a unilateral Christmas ceasefire across the country, effective from 12:00 a.m. on December 24, 2025, through 12:00 a.m. on January 3, 2026. The insurgent group announced the pause in hostilities via an official communiqué, extending a message of peace to the Colombian people and reaffirming its longstanding tradition of halting military operations during the holiday season. “This ceasefire is a gift of tranquility to the Colombian people during this sacred time of family, reflection, and hope,” the ELN stated, emphasizing that the measure aims to allow communities—especially in rural and conflict-affected regions—to celebrate without fear of violence. The announcement comes amid heightened tensions in Colombia’s northern departments, where the ELN recently carried out a series of attacks on military bases and police stations in Cesar and Norte de Santander. These actions, the group explained, were a direct response to what it describes as an escalating U.S.-led military offensive in the Caribbean, which it claims threatens the sovereignty of nations across Latin America. ELN Christmas Ceasefire 2025: A Pause for Peace Amid Imperial Aggression While offering peace for the holidays, the ELN used its communiqué to denounce the presence of U.S. naval forces in the Caribbean Sea, which it accuses of conducting “acts of piracy” against civilian vessels. According to the group, U.S. warships have sunk more than 30 boats and caused loss of life in international waters near Colombia under the guise of counter-narcotics operations—a claim echoing recent statements by the Venezuelan and Cuban governments. “The recent surge in armed actions, including our 72-hour armed stoppage, is a necessary response to the warlike aggression promoted by Washington,” the ELN declared. “We will not stand idly by while foreign powers seek to control our seas, plunder our resources, and dictate the fate of our peoples.” The group explicitly rejected the deployment of U.S. troops in the region, framing it as part of a broader imperial strategy to dominate the Global South. In 2025, this strategy has intensified, with the U.S. Southern Command expanding naval patrols, establishing temporary bases on Caribbean islands, and coordinating joint exercises with regional allies—moves that critics argue violate the spirit of the CELAC “Zone of Peace” declaration. Read the Organization of American States’ latest report on peace efforts in Colombia Despite ongoing peace negotiations between the ELN and the government of President Gustavo Petro—widely regarded as the most promising dialogues in decades—the conflict remains volatile. Just days before the ceasefire announcement, a clash in a rural area of Colombia left four soldiers dead, underscoring the fragility of the current truce framework. Yet the ELN’s decision to honor the Christmas pause reflects its commitment to humanitarian principles, even amid distrust. Historically, the group has respected holiday ceasefires, using them not only as acts of goodwill but also as opportunities to engage in internal reflection and community dialogue. This year’s gesture carries added weight, coming at a time when U.S. policy appears increasingly interventionist. Explore UN Office on Colombia’s support for humanitarian ceasefires and peace implementation For many Colombians, especially in Indigenous and Afro-Colombian territories where state presence is minimal and armed groups exert influence, such pauses are lifelines—windows of safety to travel, trade, and reunite with loved ones. Civil society organizations have welcomed the ELN’s announcement and called on all armed actors, including state forces, to reciprocate the restraint. Geopolitical Context: Latin America’s Sovereignty Under Maritime Siege The ELN Christmas ceasefire 2025 must be understood within a wider regional crisis: the militarization of the Caribbean and Pacific coasts by external powers, primarily the United States. Under the banner of “counternarcotics” and “security cooperation,” Washington has intensified naval operations near Colombia, Venezuela, and Central America—often without the explicit consent of host governments. This posture, critics argue, revives the Monroe Doctrine in modern guise, asserting U.S. dominance over what it deems its “sphere of influence.” The consequences are severe: civilian vessels are boarded, fishermen are detained, and maritime trade routes are surveilled—creating a climate of fear that particularly affects small-scale fishers and coastal communities. Moreover, the timing is critical. As Colombia advances its “Total Peace” policy under President Petro—a strategy seeking simultaneous negotiations with all remaining armed groups—external interference risks derailing domestic progress. The ELN’s linkage of its armed actions to U.S. naval conduct suggests that regional peace cannot be achieved without confronting imperial overreach. Globally, this dynamic reflects a growing rift between the Global North and South. While Western institutions frame military deployments as “stability operations,” many Global South nations view them as neo-colonial intrusions that undermine self-determination. In Latin America, where memories of CIA-backed coups and banana wars remain vivid, such deployments trigger deep historical trauma. Review the CELAC Havana Declaration on Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace For Colombia—a nation scarred by six decades of internal conflict—the path to peace is both internal and geopolitical. The ELN’s ceasefire offers a moment of respite, but lasting tranquility requires more than goodwill; it demands respect for sovereignty, demilitarization of seas, and an end to foreign intervention. As church bells ring across the Andes and families gather in villages from Chocó to La Guajira, the ELN’s message is clear: peace is possible, but only if empire steps back. From teleSUR English via This RSS Feed.
Komunitas
feddit.it
About the root problem, as of now new installs are trying to let the user to run everything as a limited user. And the program is ran as root inside the container so in order to escape from it the attacker would need a double zero day exploit (one for doing rce in the container, one to escape the container) The alternative to “don’t really know what’s in the image” usually is: “just download this Easy minified and incomprehensible trustmeimtotallynotavirus.sh script and run it as root”. Requires much more trust than a container that you can delete with no traces in literally seconds If the program that you want to run requires python modules or node modules then it will make much more mess on the system than a container. Downgrading to a previous version (or a beta preview) of the app you’re running due to bugs it’s trivial, you just change a tag and launch it again. Doing this on bare metal requires to be a terminal guru Finally, migrating to a new fresh server is just docker compose down, then rsync to new server, and then docker compose up -d. And not praying to ten different gods because after three years you forgot how did you install the app in bare metal like that. Docker is perfect for common people like us self hosting at home, the professionals at work use kubernetes
Komunitas
lemmy.max-p.me
Why are there so many distros out there? What’s the difference between debian + kde and manjaro + kde? They look the same, they work the same. I don’t get it. They visually look similar because both are running KDE with pretty much all the defaults, as it happens both Debian and KDE don’t diverge too much from the recommended defaults as long as they work well. But under the hood, Debian and Manjaro work completely differently: one uses apt, the other uses pacman. The way those packages are maintained, compiled and distributed is vastly different, with different kinds of QA testing. Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian, so it doesn’t look that much different but Canonical does tend to provide newer packages than Debian does. But Ubuntu also has a lot of flaws so spinoffs like Mint and Pop_OS! take on Ubuntu as a base and “fix” it to their liking and hopefully the user’s too, which, given how popular Mint is I’d say they’re pretty successful in that goal. Also why do things have to be complicated? It doesn’t, but the amount of options and choices in how to do basically anything on Linux can certainly look very overwhelming. You can click on it in your file manager, you can add it to /etc/fstab, you can use a systemd mount unit. They’re different ways of automating and configuring what ends up being mostly the same: mounting a filesystem and setting permissions on it, and they come with different defaults. You’re running into the particular area of trying to mount an NTFS Windows partition on Linux, which is nothing like what Linux expects to it fakes a few things to make it work, and that makes everything owned by the same user by default. If you do it from your file manager, it’ll get a temporary mountpoint in like /run/user/1000/media/YOUR DRIVE but is mostly intended for when you plug in a USB or something. You probably found /etc/fstab but then that made all the files owned by root, and you can temporarily change that with chmod and chown but once you reboot and it gets mounted again, it’ll revert back because it doesn’t actually store those fake permissions as to not break Windows. It’s just problems, after problems, after problems and i didn’t even start gaming. Yeah, some people end up particularly unlucky in that department. Eventually, over time, it feels as easy or easier than on Windows. It’s just, you have years of experience on how to make Windows do the thing, and Linux is completely new to you. I had a very similar experience a couple years ago when I was forced to learned macOS because the job would only issue MacBooks. Everything felt way overcomplicated and eventually you start thinking the Apple way and it goes more smoothly, you understand better how it works. I mean, how alien is it to just open disk images and copy .app files to /Applications and that’s how you “install” things?? And you get used to it and now I wield the macOS terminal like I do on Linux. What do i need to do to install a AUR package? A wall of text on the wiki, 20 minutes videos, yay. Ok let’s call it a day. So, this is why people don’t like recommending Manjaro. It’s ArchLinux with a coat of paint, but still relies on Arch’s infrastructure for the AUR. ArchLinux is well into advanced Linux: it’s a box of legos you have to assemble in the shape of a Linux distro yourself. So yes they do expect you to do a fair bit of reading, but Manjaro doesn’t, and it’s a real problem that has caused a fair bit of drama at its time. The AUR is great, but to make another analogy, the AUR is more like a recipe book: you don’t download premade meals, you have to bake them yourself (compiling source code into binary) to have your meal (the generated package file). Sending beginners that route is a recipe for a bad experience. Ironically, yay is the name of one of the tools that helps install AUR packages. Do i need to live another life to make linux work? No, but it does take some initial commitment to get to the nicer part of the learning curve. The first install is always pretty rough, you will destroy it, that’s fine, you have to learn first. Ok let’s call it a day. Honestly by the post you should have done that earlier. As with anything, when you’re frustrated with it you stop learning, you start making it much harder than it needs to be. It’s fine to take a step back and reboot into Windows and try again the next day. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, plenty of people have started by using Linux for just one task that’s easier to do on Linux, and eventually you start thinking of migrating more workloads to Linux over time. You’re restarting your computer learning journey from pretty close to the start, give yourself a break, computers aren’t worth getting pissed off at.
Komunitas
lemmygrad.ml
How many keywords can you stuff in a title right? I’m posting this in the prolewiki community because we’ll be discussing ProleWiki’s own in-development RAG for LLMs, but first you probably saw the WSWS, i.e. the trots, published ‘Socialism AI’. In their press release, they basically self-congratulate themselves about how cool this is for the workers movement and socialism and great victory this and great victory that blahblahblah. You know how trots are. Their system is usable through ai.wsws.org or something iirc, it’s a web-interface so yes it’s cool that it comes as a package you can just run from any device and don’t have to fiddle with it, there’s also a lot of problems with it especially when coming from self-proclaimed communists. Though with how much of a joke trots are to everyone, I feel like I’m not really throwing oil into the fire with this post lol. We looked into how their system works because they give absolutely 0 indication on the technical implementation, and found several notices of copyright in the Terms of Service. They say that the output from their AI belongs to them, for example. Courts in the US have found that LLM output is public domain but sure I guess, not really my area of expertise. We’ll get into it. Understanding what WSWS did WSWS did not train a model from the ground-up WSWS did not fine-tune an existing open-source model WSWS is not running and hosting their own model. What WSWS does (and you can find this out from just using browser tools, i.e. F12 on their homepage) is use the chatGPT and Deepseek APIs. Their pipeline is like this (as far as we can ascertain from simple browser tools): You send your prompt -> they add their own instructions to it -> LLM fetches WSWS blog articles to answer your prompt -> LLM reads blog articles -> LLM answers your prompt with the WSWS blog articles as sources. This is what we call RAG, or Retrieval-Augmented Generation. The technique is legit, I’m not disputing that, it’s just the way they did it is both inefficient and concerning. The Problems I have with that way of doing things We’ll get into the technical problems when I detail what the ProleWiki MCP will look like. it’s also very closed-source and obfuscated. Mind you I did not create an account (too much hassle if I want to retain my privacy on it), but you have to understand your prompt + llm output transits through OpenAI and Deepseek. There is no privacy when using this service, it goes straight to the feds with OAI. Secondly they sell paid tiers, starting at 5$ per month for 150 messages which is… absolutely nothing. Thirdly everything is closed off. They did not release any documentation on how this works or how you could run this yourself. Selling paid tiers is not a problem in itself at least for me personally. You have to break even and they do pay API access to openAI and Deepseek (though Deepseek is very cheap). The problem I have is they at least should offer an open-source implementation for people who know how to use it, at the very least make the RAG files available. This is not the case. I’m also a proponent of paying it forward. Yes this costs them money, but they could find a way to break even in ways that don’t consist of just selling another SaaS (software-as-a-service). Let people pay it forward for others or something. Accept that you will lose some money on running this and cover with dues or people in the party who have money and don’t mind maintaining this service. Accept donations. Lots of ways you can do this that are not so commercial, i.e. “if you can’t pay you must vacate the premises”. The technical implementation: ProleWiki MCP vs. Socialism AI A few months ago we started working with a dev who was making the Marxists Internet Archive available for RAG use. This project evolved and they are now making a ProleWiki MCP with the pages we sent them. It’ll still be RAG, but more efficient. So first, let’s look at how the Socialism AI RAG works. If you remember the pipeline: You send your prompt -> they add their own instructions to it -> LLM fetches WSWS blog articles to answer your prompt (<-- we are here) -> LLM reads blog articles -> LLM answers your prompt with the WSWS blog articles as sources. The problem we’ve found is what kind of data exactly the LLM gets access to. Imagine it like a bin the LLM can sift through to make an answer with. If you provide it with the link to the page, it parses that as html code, with all its tags, headers, script calls etc. Imagine me giving you a page full of html code and asking you “can you answer when Lenin was born from this info?” You can, but it’s gonna take a while and a lot of it is simply unnecessary. And you only have this one page to make an answer. If Lenin’s DOB is not neatly written on it, you have to do extra thinking to put it together (this is the context window - the LLM simply won’t look through 250k WSWS articles, it has to pick and choose which articles are more likely to help answer the question). Therefore we can optimize this bin. Instead of giving you full pages you can pick from, we can give you individual lines. In our RAG for ProleWiki, what our dev did was some math that extracts every line from our pages on the principle of 1 line = 1 idea. Then it puts these ideas together in a matrix and sorts them by semantic closeness. What this means is if you’re the LLM, you don’t get a full page on the October Revolution or Lenin to answer a question with. You can see our page on Lenin is quite lengthy and if you asked a question that is not on this page when the LLM pulled it to look at it before answering (for example you can see the self-exile section is empty), it might not answer your question as best it could. With the semantic matrix, instead of picking from pages, it picks from lines to make a coherent answer. Instead of looking at just Lenin’s page and filling its entire context window with it, it looks at semantic information relating to Lenin’s self-exile on ProleWiki - or other sources you add to the corpus, the ‘bin’ - and then makes an answer on this. tl;dr: This means if we have information about Lenin’s self-exile on say the USSR page (because why not!), it will pull exactly that thread from that page. And this is much more powerful than what the WSWS did and why they offer such measly usage rates. They are filling up context window and sending noise tokens because they’re giving an entire … html page instead of just the relevant content. Again - as far as we can tell from looking in from the outside.
But where does the MCP come in? MCPs are kinda new, and were made for AI to work with. I wouldn’t be the best person to explain them but basically it lets an LLM look at some data (website, files, etc) and work with that data in some way. Mostly used in agentic work, tools are exposed to the llm such as view file or edit file, so it can perform these operations itself instead of having you do it and then confirm. So if you have an agent (such as crush, our favorite here on lemmygrad), an LLM can and will view and edit the files you tell it to. These are an example of 2 tools. With an MCP, you give the LLM access to data it can read and can also give it its own tools. You could make a tool “ProleWiki-fetch”. When the LLM decides to use this tool, it communicates with the ProleWiki MCP you have installed locally and lets it say “okay, let’s use the prolewiki-fetch tool to look at data from prolewiki to answer this question”. Then the MCP does its magic and sends back to the LLM the information. And not only that, but as we said you can also run this locally. We are still figuring out how we’ll package all of this but most likely we’ll make the source files available so that anyone can build any RAG or make their own cloud web interface if they want. Likewise for the MCP, it will be downloadable with our source files so that you can just add it to your agent interface and start using it to query the LLM and answer with prolewiki content. Communism is not in a position of strength currently. So, I don’t see any reason we should be trying to hide and obfuscate any of our content. On the contrary, proletarian education demands it be accessible without discrimination. Unlike trots, we trust the people to make the right decisions collectively - if someone wants to use ProleWiki content to train a model and paywall that, let them. There will be 10 more that won’t be. In fact speaking of models, our dev is also working on something there… but I was asked not to say too much about it as it’s very experimental 🤐
Komunitas
lemmy.zip
Your options are building from source, downloading dev apks, or using an app store. If you can’t trust anyone, then you need to build from source Fdroid is the best of the app stores, they are always trying to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to privacy, security, and trust Reproducible builds are the standard for FOSS trust, see this article for an overview. They close the gap between app stores and dev apks Fdroid are constantly working to increase the prevalence of reproducible builds, and to enable you to verify more so you have to rely less on trust