Gil Duran told the Lincoln Project podcast that Peter Thiel was deeply influenced by "The Sovereign Individual," a 1997 book by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg that predicted cryptocurrency and advanced automation would collapse national governments and economies, concentrating power among a small, wealthy class needing "fortress societies" to survive the fallout. Thiel has named it the most influential book he's ever read, writing that he read it "just before starting PayPal," and later wrote the foreword to its 2020 reissue.

Duran argued the ideology and the tech industry's wealth-building strategy are "one and the same," a claim that lines up with how the book's authors flatter readers as a "cognitive elite" destined to thrive as governments crumble.

The book's fingerprints reportedly extend well beyond Thiel. Reporting shows it also shaped Curtis Yarvin's writing and Balaji Srinivasan's "network state" concept, real projects already underway in places like Honduras' Próspera, a Thiel-network-funded charter city that markets itself explicitly as a "Sovereign Individual" jurisdiction. Duran said this reflects a coordinated, decades-long effort by a small circle of billionaires to build exit ramps from democratic government altogether.

#dailynews

#peterthiel

#gilduran

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MOTHER TERESA EXPOSED!

Behind the SAINTLY IMAGE — The DARK LEGACY and Disturbing Controversies History Tried to Bury

Exposing Mother Teresa’s dark legacy: Explore the controversial aspects of her life, including troubling views on suffering, financial mysteries, and child trafficking allegations, challenging the saintly image upheld by the Catholic Church.

THE PARADOX OF SUFFERING: WHAT HAPPENED BEHIND CLOSED DOORS?

Mother Teresa of Calcutta is globally revered as a symbol of compassion, charity and dedication to the poor. But beneath this sanctified image lies a controversial legacy that has raised serious questions for decades.

Mother Teresa believed that suffering brought individuals closer to Jesus. In a widely circulated video, she is heard saying:

“It’s so beautiful to see people die with so much joy.”

Reports suggest that strong painkillers were withheld from patients, even in cases of severe pain. Critics argue that her religious belief in the spiritual value of suffering sometimes took priority over relieving the physical suffering of those under her care.

The disturbing question remains: was suffering being relieved, or glorified?

THE VATICAN’S WEALTH: WHERE DID THE MONEY GO?

Mother Teresa received enormous donations from around the world, yet controversy has surrounded how that money was ultimately used.

Reports have claimed that she accumulated vast sums through the Vatican Bank while conditions inside some of her facilities remained extremely basic. Critics have questioned why more of the donations were not visibly invested in medical care and improving conditions for the poor.

The mystery surrounding those finances remains one of the most controversial parts of her legacy.

CHILD TRAFFICKING ALLEGATIONS: THE DARKEST SHADOW

Even more disturbing are allegations involving the sale of babies for adoption connected to her organization.

The controversy intensified in 2018, when a worker at a Missionaries of Charity shelter and a nun were arrested in India over allegations involving the sale of babies.

Those events do not directly establish Mother Teresa’s personal involvement, but they raised serious questions about oversight and practices inside the organization she founded.

A LEGACY IN QUESTION

Mother Teresa was canonized in 2016, yet controversies surrounding suffering, medical care, finances, and later allegations connected to her organization continue to challenge the flawless image presented to the world.

The media and Catholic Church helped establish Mother Teresa as one of history’s greatest symbols of charity. Critics argue that this powerful image often overshadowed uncomfortable questions surrounding her work.

Her story, therefore, remains far more complicated than the image of a saint helping the poor.

Mother Teresa’s legacy is not only a story of compassion. It is also a story of suffering, unanswered financial questions, disturbing allegations, and a saintly image that deserves closer examination.

The real question is not whether history should erase the good she did.

It is whether history has told the whole story.

JFK JR

#history #legacy #vaticanwealth

The Hollow Return of Mitch McConnell

Monday afternoon, Mitch McConnell rolled back onto Capitol Hill in a wheelchair. He cracked a joke to the waiting press pool, quipping that after twenty years of dodging their questions, he was surprised anyone bothered showing up. The reporters laughed even though they shouldn't have. Ninety-two days had passed since anyone outside his immediate circle had seen him in the building. The man who helped run so much of our country into the ground came back visibly wrecked, physically frail, and politically neutralized.

His legacy was already completely rotten before he fell in June. And it looks even worse now. The Senate simply has no functioning rules for an official who refuses to let go of power after his body stops working.

McConnell missed 60 roll-call votes. The blackout started June 14, when a fall in his Washington home knocked him unconscious. No resignation. No temporary delegation of duty. Under current Senate rules, no mechanism for either exists anyway. McConnell vanished behind closed doors, drew his taxpayer-funded salary, and left the public staring at silence.

His absence brought an unintended consequence: it ground part of the standard conservative machine to a dead stop. On August 6, the Senate Agriculture Committee took up the 2026 Farm Bill. It failed on a 10 to 11 vote. McConnell tried casting a proxy vote from his sickbed. So did Alabama's Tommy Tuberville. Committee rules require warm bodies in seats, so neither proxy counted. Without McConnell there to rubber-stamp the party line and push the package through, the measure stalled cold.

Committee chair John Boozman told farmers they would have to wait until September.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear eventually ran out of patience. Beshear fired off formal demand letters through late July. In one, he stated plainly that he was writing under the assumption that McConnell was still capable of reading, speaking, and was not cognitively incapacitated. Read that again. A sitting governor had to put in writing that he could not verify whether his state's senior senator was conscious enough to think. Beshear asked him to prove his capacity or quit.

McConnell's camp responded with two staged photos and boilerplate press releases. Nothing else. Forty-three days went by without a public sighting. Rand Paul brushed off the uproar as political theater. Senate leadership looked the other way.

When McConnell finally wheeled in this week, his own public statement gave up the game. He admitted his recovery has been brutal, complicated by childhood polio. He admitted he is still not back to 100 percent. Then came the real confession: he promised John Thune he would do his best to show up when leadership desperately needed a vote.

He converted a constitutional office into an on-call tool for partisan tallies. Whenever he manages to summon the strength to show up, it is purely to supply a reliable, destructive party-line vote on life-tenured judges and deregulation, chipping away at the country one procedural threshold at a time.

We are watching the end stage of Washington's gerontocracy. Dianne Feinstein dragged herself through the Capitol halls the exact same way until her death, propped up while her staff insisted everything was fine. McConnell sat ten feet away and watched it happen. He chose the exact same route. Senate rules impose no capacity tests, no health disclosure mandates, and zero accountability short of expulsion.

McConnell is out the door in January. He handed leadership to Thune; Donald Trump's coalition stepped over him months ago, and his influence in the chamber is gone. The self-styled "Grim Reaper" showed up Monday as a damaged backbencher, wheeled into the well just to cast a low-level judicial vote and run out a clock that expired long before his arrival.

If my work matters to you, help me keep it going. Head over to Substack to subscribe to the newsletter, check my bio for direct support via Buymeacoffee, CashApp and more, or hit the Facebook subscription below in the first comment. We can make the world a better, more accountable place, but it takes all of us pulling in the same direction. We are in this together.

Brent Molnar: A voice of reason 

SO, WORLD. AS NIGHT FALLS IN NEW YORK CITY, THE BREAKING NEWS IN AMERICA IS THAT 84-YEAR-OLD KENTUCKY SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL HAS REAPPEARED - AND HE ACTUALLY AIN'T DEAD...

The news that SHOULD be breaking?

His ancient, corrupt, and decrepit ass SHOULD be announcing his retirement.

Why?

Because we don't need people that most of the country has thought were dead for MONTHS having anything to do with the direction of this country.

Or ANY country, for that matter.

See, McConnell, the longest-serving senator in US history, has been in place for a staggering 41 years - which is more than enough time for anyone to become corrupted by that sustained power and influence.

And over time, the older he became, the further right McConnell helped push the American government.

His power grew to the point that as Barack Obama's second term was ending and an opening occurred on the Supreme Court, McConnell abused his power, along with Paul Ryan and John Boehner, to prevent the SITTING US PRESIDENT from appointing a new supreme - effectively holding that spot open until Donald Trump could be sworn in to choose a conservative.

As hardcore corrupt politicians go, it's difficult to get worse than McConnell, who helped Trump appoint three justices - Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett - resulting in a 6-3 conservative majority that consistently rules in Trump's favor.

McConnell, who will not seek reelection when his term ends this year, has been out of the public eye for more than three months, ever since being hospitalized on June 14.

He has missed numerous Senate votes without explanation and is Exhibit A as to why the United States needs term limitations across all levels of government as soon as possible to prevent another McConnell from happening ever again.

Many conservatives will see McConnell's reemergence as a victory.

As proof of life.

The reality, however, is much more stark.

You see, McConnell showing up with the midterms looming after 92 days out of sight, is more than proof of life.

It's proof that members of the Republican Party will spend their final, dying days on this earth clinging to power.

So, to paraphrase the great Bob Dylan:

Mitch McConnell ain't dead yet...

But he's getting there.

 

BREAKING: Maggie Haberman just dropped a blockbuster front-page investigation cataloging exactly how Trump has been using the full power of the federal government to silence the press, and it's a story he desperately did not want written.

The piece, co-authored with Jim Rutenberg, lays it all out in stark terms.

The Justice Department has sent FBI agents to reporters' homes to serve subpoenas, in at least one case flashing a warrant to seize devices. The Pentagon fired the editor and publisher of Stars and Stripes, the military's traditionally independent newspaper, and locked out journalists who refused to sign pledges limiting what they could report. Regulatory agencies have leaned on media companies over their content. Public television and radio funding has been stripped away.

Trump has sued major news organizations personally. The White House seized control of the press pool that follows the president, hand-picking which outlets are allowed access.

And Times reporters investigating security problems with Trump's Qatari-gifted Air Force One were hit with subpoenas of their own, later withdrawn only after it looked like the Justice Department was about to lose in court.

Here's what makes this reporting land even harder.

Trump has spent recent weeks personally attacking Haberman, calling her "unattractive," a "scammer," and a "stalker" after she reported he was skipping the 9/11 ceremony at the World Trade Center because he wouldn't be allowed to give a speech there.

She didn't flinch. She didn't mention the attacks in her story. She just did her job and published the facts.

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On Thursday, with hatred twisting his snarling face, Trump lunged at a woman reporter. For a moment, it looked like he was going to physically assault her. “Not you. Not you,” Trump said. Then came the lunge and the monstrous face, “Hey, not you!”

The lunging incident grew from a single moment. It happened when a woman reporter tried to ask Trump a question.

The previous day Trump had promised every American citizen a $5,000 stimulus check after the midterm elections. The next day on the tarmac of DFW Airport in Dallas, the woman reporter asked Trump why the American people need a £5,000 incentive to turn out to vote if Trump’s economic policies were so successful.

Trump denied that it was an incentive to vote, even though that’s exactly how he’d framed it the previous day. Then Trump told the woman it was a "reward" for people having to put up with “a horrible situation caused by Biden.”

The lunge happened after the woman attempted a follow-up question.

“Hey, not you!”

The reporter was ABC’s Rachel Scott. Ms Scott is an intelligent, highly competent reporter.

She’s also Black.

This isn’t the first time Ms Scott has attracted the unjust ire of Trump. During the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Conference in late July of 2024, Scott asked Trump why Black voters should trust him given his past rhetoric. Trump called the question “horrible,” “hostile,” and “disgraceful.” He later labeled her “the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place.”

Trump has a long, ugly history of abusing women reporters, especially when they’re women of colour.

For example, Yamiche Alcindor, Abby Phillip, Akayla Gardner and Weijia Jiang are highly intelligent and competent women reporters of color. They have all felt the vicious lash of Trump’s racist tongue, a tongue he uses only on women, especially women of colour.

But women of color don’t have to be reporters to attract Trump’s invective. Kamala Harris, Maxine Waters, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Michelle Obama, “The Squad” of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, are particularly favourite targets for derision by racist Trump.

Trump isn’t merely racist, either; he’s above all a misogynist. Women of any race routinely receive excoriation for their looks, their weight, their intelligence, and their right to speak their minds. Trump abuses women in ways that he rarely uses against men, particularly white men.

Trump clearly hates and fears and feels inadequate around smart women. Where does this come from?

In 2015, psychologists Tali Mendelberg and Christopher Karpowitz at Princeton University, studied how men respond to intelligent women in group settings. The study revealed that men with fragile masculinity showed measurable anxiety and hostility toward women who outperformed them.

Trump has the most fragile masculinity of anyone I can think of. He also obviously has an advanced case of SPA.

SPA, or Small Penis Anxiety, is a persistent worry or distress about penis size. When Trump brings up his obsession with the size of his hands, a psychological misdirection known as "displacement" or "deflection," he’s really talking about his tiny penis.

The revelation from Stormy Daniels that Trump’s penis is minuscule is dismissed by Trump, who says that he never had any relationship with her. But that’s an obvious lie.

Trump’s history of adjudicated rape, alleged child rape, sexual assault, unwanted touching, inappropriate comments, and physical and verbal abuse toward dozens of women would put a less powerful man in prison, if not on the national sex offender registry. Trump has always gotten away with these crimes against women, in part because the Republican Party has evolved into a safe place for rapists and woman haters.

Violence and hatred of women are deep in the MAGA DNA.

It’s the real reason Roe v. Wade was repealed. Not out of concern that a bit of microscopic protoplasm might be a fully-formed human soul, but because some men are outraged that a woman can get pregnant by any means but theirs.

It’s why women whose lives are in peril, who were raped by their fathers, who will die if they give birth are denied life-saving or sanity-saving abortions in some American States.

Neither is it any accident that the so-called online "Manosphere" is Trump-aligned either. Violence against women is becoming a cultural norm among insecure little men who take their frustrations out on all women because their egos can’t handle a little rejection.

Men like Trump are terrified of what they can’t control, and Trump is clearly terrified of smart women. Trump’s lunge at a brilliant and skilled Black reporter has given another increment of permission to the worst and ugliest and most violent impulses of weak men.

In a split second, Trump showed us exactly what he is and what he’s capable of.

————

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