The news is all awful as usual and I’m not seeing very well because I had eye surgury yesterday, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I focus this post on a huge Boston crime story.
The Concert, Johannes Vermeer
Today is the 36the anniversary of the Gardner Museum heist, and there’s a new book out by a retired FBI agent who spent 22 years working on the case. If you’re not familiar with this story, here are the basics from Wikipedia:
In the early hours of March 18, 1990, 13 works of art were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Security guards admitted two men posing as policemen responding to a disturbance call, and the thieves bound the guards and looted the museum over the next hour. The case is unsolved; no arrests have been made, and no works have been recovered. The stolen works have been valued at hundreds of millions of dollars by the FBI and art dealers. The museum offers a $10 million reward for information leading to the art’s recovery, the largest bounty ever offered by a private institution.
The stolen works were originally procured by art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) and were intended for permanent display at the museum with the rest of her collection. Among them was The Concert, one of only 34 known paintings by Johannes Vermeer and thought to be the most valuable unrecovered painting in the world. Also missing is The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt‘s only seascape. Other paintings and sketches by Rembrandt, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, and Govert Flinck were stolen, along with a relatively valueless eagle finial and Chinese gu. Experts were puzzled by the choice of artwork, as more valuable works were left untouched. As the collection and its layout are intended to be permanent, empty frames remain hanging both in homage to the missing works and as placeholders for their return.
The FBI believes that the robbery was planned by a criminal gang. The case lacks strong physical evidence, and the FBI has largely depended on interrogations, undercover informants and sting operations to collect information. It has focused primarily on the Boston Mafia, which was in the midst of an internal gang war during the period. One theory holds that gangster Bobby Donati organized the heist to negotiate for his caporegime‘s release from prison; Donati was murdered one year after the robbery. Other accounts suggest that the paintings were stolen by a gang in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, although these suspects deny involvement despite the fact that a sting operation resulted in several prison sentences. All have denied any knowledge or have provided leads that proved fruitless, despite the offer of reward money and reduced or canceled prison sentences if they had disclosed information leading to recovery of the artworks.
Is it possible that Rembrandt’s only seascape, “Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” stolen 36 years ago from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, was delivered to mobsters in Philadelphia in a chicken truck?
That’s what an informant told the FBI, according to a recently published book by retired FBI agent Geoffrey Kelly, who spearheaded the investigation into the theft for 22 years until retiring two years ago.
The informant, Ronnie “Meatball” Bowes, had been convicted of killing three men in Florida in the 1980s during a drug deal gone bad, then was released after an appeals court ruled he acted in self-defense.
“he’d never been more nervous than he was during that long drive to Philly” as he and a Connecticut mob associate nicknamed “The Jackrabbit” rumbled down the highway in a poultry truck a decade earlier.
He was convinced that several cardboard boxes placed in the truck by a Connecticut mobster contained some of the stolen Gardner paintings. But he was too afraid to look.
“While Meatball never opened any of the packages, at the time he assumed that he’d just delivered The Storm to Philadelphia,” Kelly wrote in his book, “Thirteen Perfect Fugitives,” a reference to the 13 pieces stolen from the palatial museum.
The FBI announced more than a decade ago that it believed some of the stolen Gardner artwork went through organized crime circles while moving from Boston to Connecticut to Philadelphia, where the trail went cold.
But Kelly’s bookoffers new details about the evidence gathered by the FBI leading up to that announcement, part of afirst-hand account of the twists and turns in the sprawling investigation into the world’s largest art heist,which remains unsolved.
“It’s basically a scavenger hunt for 13 objects, and the whole world is in play,” Kelly, 58, said during a recent interview. He is now a partner at Argus Cultural Property Consultants.
The heist was carried out on March 18, 1990, when two thieves dressed as police officers were let inside by a guard at 1:24 a.m. after claiming to be investigating a disturbance. They tied up the two guards on duty and spent 81 minutes inside, slashing and pulling masterpieces from their frames….
I’m going to give you some more, because this story is behind a paywall.
In 2013, when the FBI said some of the stolen artwork had been routed to Philadelphia, investigators said they were confident they had identified the thieves — local criminals who had died by that point — but declined to name them.
Christ on the Sea of Gallilee, by Rembrandt van Rijn3
In 2013, when the FBI said some of the stolen artwork had been routed to Philadelphia, investigators said they were confident they had identified the thieves — local criminals who had died by that point — but declined to name them.
The “Philadelphia mob angle” remained “a viable line of investigation, right up until my retirement from the FBI,” Kelly wrote.
Kelly wrote that he believed Bowes, who died of cancer in 2015, offered a truthful account. During a 2012 meeting with agents, Bowes said Connecticut mobster Robert Gentile enlisted him and an associate to pick up the poultry truck, which wasparked near a barn in South Windsor, Conn., and drive it to a warehouse on the outskirts of Philadelphia.
Shortly before the trip, Bowes said Gentile, who owned anauto body shop in South Windsor, ushered him into one of the garage bays andpulled an oil painting of a ship on stormy seas out of a large, oblong cardboard box lying flat on a workbench.
Bowes told the FBI that Gentile lamented that such a priceless work of art could not be sold.
“Do you know what this thing’s worth? Nothing,” Bowes recalled Gentile saying. “This thing is worth nothing. Nobody wants it.” [….]
In his book, Kelly wrote that a key turning point in the investigation came in the fall of 2009, when the niece of the late Robert Guarente, a bank robber with mob ties, called the FBI after watching a news account of the Gardner theft. She said she had seen some of the stolen paintings hidden behind a second-floor wall in his farmhouse in Madison, Maine.
In early 2010, Kelly and Anthony Amore, the head of security at the Gardner museum since 2005, searched the farmhouse with the consent of Guarente’s widow, Elene. They found the hiding spot described by his niece, but there were no paintings. When they returned the key to the house to her, she told them that before Guarente’s death in 2004, he gave two of the stolen paintings to Gentile.
During a court-authorized search of Gentile’s home in Manchester, Conn., in 2012, agents found a list of the stolen artwork, with their black market values, tucked inside a March 1990copy of theBoston Herald reporting the theft. They also found weapons, police hats, handcuffs, drugs, and explosives.And they discovered an empty Rubbermaid tub buried under the floorboards of a backyard shed.
Wow, what a story. I can’t wait to read the book. I wonder if those paintings will ever be found? I always assumed that some rich collectors had requested specific paintings that they wanted the thieves to steal.
It seems just about everyone has been fingered at one time or another as the perpetrator of the largest art theft in U.S. history: the 1990 robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Two men dressed as police officers showed up at the door of the museum just after 1 a.m. on March 18 as the city rested after celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. They tied up the two guards on duty and walked off with 13 items, including masterpieces by Rembrandt and Vermeer.
Landscape with Obelisk by Govert Flinck
In the ensuing decades all kinds of theories were hatched about who was behind the theft. The Corsican mob. The Irish mob. Noted art thieves. Unknown petty criminals. People who worked in the building. The Irish Republican Army.
Geoffrey Kelly, the F.B.I. agent who handled the case for 22 years, heard all of them and investigated many of them. In his new book, “Thirteen Perfect Fugitives,” Kelly dismisses many of the theories and outlines who he really thinks committed the crime but could never be prosecuted.
Here are his thoughts on some of the theories and his view of what really went down.
Was it the Corsican mob?
One of the items taken from the museum was, oddly, a finial from a flagpole that had once flown the flag of the First Regiment of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard. Not a top-shelf masterpiece. But in 2006, French national police investigators told the F.B.I. that they had heard some rumblings that a Corsican crime group (Napoleon was Corsican) was looking to sell some items from the museum.
An F.B.I. agent who specialized in art crime went undercover, posing as an intermediary for a buyer who was supposedly interested in buying stolen art. The investigation, called “Operation Masterpiece,” included a sting operation on a yacht and other intrigue. It turned up some criminal behavior involving art. But Kelly says the Corsicans were bluffing. They had access to some stolen art, but nothing from the Gardner heist.
Maybe the paintings never left?
What if the stolen works were really right under investigators’ noses? Kelly writes about “The Paintings Never Left the Museum Theory.” It became a perennial. Many tipsters called in to suggest that, since the works had not shown up on the market, or anywhere else, it was possible that they had been secreted somewhere inside the building.
“Why didn’t we think of that?,” Kelly asks in the book. “Actually, we did.”
In the mid-1990s, the Gardner updated its HVAC system and as part of the renovations a team of commercial specialists crawled through every nook and cranny of the building as they installed new ductwork. They found dust but no paintings.
Or could it have been Whitey Bulger and the Irish mob? Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested.
I’d first heard about the Gardner Museum robbery when I was a recent college graduate living in New York, probably a week or so after it occurred. I was at the American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side, gazing up at the giant blue whale suspended from the ceiling, when I overheard two elderly ladies discussing the details of a monumental art heist that had just occurred in Boston.
Heist. It’s one of those words that commands attention. Use it in a sentence in a crowded elevator, and someone will invariably listen in. Naturally, I couldn’t help but eavesdrop on their conversation and listened as one woman related to her friend a fabulous tale of fake police officers, outrageous subterfuge, and stolen treasures.
Chez Tortoni, by Eduoard Manet
And here it was, a dozen years later, and I just got the case.
Until the implementation of a computerized database system, which arrived a few years after the Gardner robbery, FBI files were in paper form. When a new case was opened and assigned to an agent, written as O+A, the very first document, known as a serial, would be two-hole-punched at the top and slipped into a cardboard jacket, skewered in place with two steel prongs. When the file became too fat to be safely secured with the bent-over prongs, Volume II commenced, although most cases rarely merited a second volume. Each squad had a set of file cabinets that held the hundreds of pending cases for that particular squad, and the whole lot was managed by file clerks known in Bureau parlance as rotors, named after the rotary file cabinets over which they governed. Newspeak eventually changed their job title to Operational Support Technician, or OST, but we still called them rotors.
No agent wants to inherit a case; typically, they’re either unsolvable or there isn’t an AUSA willing to prosecute. It’s common for agents to shop their cases door-to-door at the US Attorney’s Office, moving down the carpeted hallway like vacuum cleaner salesmen, hoping to fund an AUSA who’ll bite. These forlorn cases float from one agent to the next, until eventually the statute of limitations expires; that is, the deadline for prosecution, which is typically five years for most federal crimes. Once the statute has expired, the case can finally be administratively closed. Days before a new agent arrives on a squad, the supervisor typically polls the senior agents to surrender a case or two for the new guy. And that’s how a brand-new agent manages to inherit a full caseload of crap.
The Gardner was no exception. Prior to my tenure, it was a moribund case that nobody wanted. The only difference with this cold case was that pesky statute of limitations, as there is no expiration date for possessing stolen property. The reasoning is logical—if there was a firm deadline for prosecution, thieves could conceivably hold on to stolen property for five years and a day, then claim it as their own.
They could register a stolen car at the DMV or sell a stolen painting at auction. Since the statute of limitations for the possession of stolen property never expires, theoretically the Gardner case would remain open indefinitely.
Yet despite all the challenges, I really wanted this case. And I was intrigued by the biggest challenge of all: the title. The Gardner Museum heist was still carried as UNSUBS. It was the ultimate whodunit.
My first task was to get an idea of the scope of the investigation. Typically, the squad rotor (the file cabinet, not the human) contains every volume of a particular pending case. But due to the sheer size of the Gardner investigation, all but its most current volumes had been relegated to the Closed File Room down on the fourth floor. It was an area rarely visited by most agents, but one which I got to know quite well. Rolling stacks of cabinets extended the entire length of the room, containing a comprehensive collection of all of Boston’s historical FBI cases, arranged numerically by classification. It was surprisingly easy to find the Gardner case, classified as an 87A matter (interstate transportation of stolen property), since it took up nearly an entire file cabinet, sandwiched between other vintage theft cases, many of them ensconced in sepia-tinted file jackets that dated back to the days of J. Edgar Hoover.
And there it was, at gut level: the Gardner case.’
I hope you don’t mind the unconventional post. On top of my poor vision, I had computer problems and the fire alarm in my building went off while I was working on this. I hope the rest of my day goes better, and I hope your day will be a good one.
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World leaders to Trump after he begged them for help with the Strait of Hormuz: You started this mess. Now deal with it.We've compiled a list of statements from world leaders in the aftermath of Trump's desperate posts and comments. Follow along with this thread to read them all. 🧵
NEW: The Trump administration is seeking to oust the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in its talks with Cuban political leaders. It plans to allow the Castro family to keep power if they agree to economic changes, creating a client state for the US. Gift link: http://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/w…
World Brief: NATO rules out aiding U.S. efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the White House considers postponing a summit in China, and low voter turnout mars a presidential election in the Republic of Congo.
Trump's full rant on Cuba: "Cuba, in its own way, tourism and everything else, it's a beautiful island, great weather. They're not in a hurricane zone, which is nice for a change, you know? They won't be asking us for money for hurricanes every week. I do believe I'll have the honor of taking Cuba."
“I’m actually surprised MAGA didn’t put on an alternative Oscar Award Show this year.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’d just like to gripe about one thing today. Humor me. Is it just me, or does everything seem messed up in this country? I’m starting to have visions of us in a Dystopian SyFy movie where the AI in computers decides the best way for financial institutions to make money and gets some sort of cosmic jolly out of making sure something shipped with a commercial deliverer as late as fuck. Also, all inventory systems appear to have certain items that are always gone, even when the company, like Amazon or Walmart, has traditionally had a super inventory system. I’m pretty sure the DOGE thing has messed up student loan and Social Security functions. And wow, now we are completely screwed when it comes to anything that needs petroleum products. It’s like Artificial Intelligence and The Trump Regime Dysfunction have joined together to make our lives miserable.
I’d like to highlight this Substack of Dr. Paul Krugman this morning. “No, America is Not Respected. Thanks to Trump, we’re held in contempt even by our closest allies.” Trump is actually making China great again. They are the obvious winner of all this.
There’s a real Baghdad Bob feel to pronouncements from the Trump administration these days. The war is going great! We’ve been totally victorious! Also, other countries — including China! — must immediately send ships to escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, which the U.S. Navy isn’t doing because it’s too dangerous.
But this has been the pattern ever since Trump returned to power. Despite repeated failures to deliver on his campaign promises — remember how he was going to cut energy prices in half? — he and his minions have continually insisted that everything is wonderful, that everything they do is a triumphant success story. And he’s still doing it. On Thursday, he told a rally that
Inflation is plummeting, incomes are rising, the economy is roaring back and America is respected again.
As I and others have documented ad nauseam, none of those economic assertions are true. Today, however, I want to focus on the bolded claim. Trump constantly insists, in speeches and social media posts, that he took over a weak, despised nation and restored its international reputation. This is clearly something that matters a lot to him and his sense of self-worth.
It’s also the total opposite of the truth.
A stunning poll from Politico — just released, but taken last month — confirms what I and other observers strongly suspected: America is now widely despised, despised like nobody has ever been despised before.
I don’t mean that we’re disliked, although that too. But this isn’t a case of oderint dum metuant — let them hate so long as they fear. Instead, the world increasingly holds America in contempt.
And they no longer believe that being a U.S. ally offers protection, that a good relationship with America will deter potential enemies from attacking them.
At this point, a plurality of the population in every one of our erstwhile allies considers China a more reliable partner than the United States.
Check the graphs and more at the link. Jonathan V. Last, writing at The Bulwark, has this analysis today.
If you want to understand the difference in the quality of strategic thinking between Washington and Tehran, consider the messages being sent out over the last three days:
Tehran: We will continue to resist, however we are open to allowing oil transport in the strait that we control provided the product is sold in yuan and not dollars.
I have been saying since the beginning that America is playing checkers while Iran plays chess, but it’s worse than that. American leadership is utterly incoherent: We won, but we need help. We hate our allies; but will our adversaries please come bail us out?
Meanwhile Iranian leadership survived a transition of power in the midst of war, achieved its strategic objective in closing the strait, and is now looking to leverage China’s rising economic ambitions against the United States.
I cannot overstate how significant it would be if Iran and China reached an agreement to allow oil transport under condition of a switch from the dollar to the yuan,1 so here’s European Business:
The condition, if formalised, would represent the most significant challenge to the petrodollar system in its fifty-two-year history, striking at the financial architecture that underpins American global power rather than at US military assets. . . .
To understand why the yuan condition matters, it is necessary to understand what the petrodollar system actually is. Born from the Nixon shock of 1971 and formalised in 1974, the arrangement under which Saudi Arabia and the broader Gulf agreed to denominate all oil sales in US dollars created a self-reinforcing loop that has governed global finance ever since. Because oil—the world’s most traded commodity—must be purchased in dollars, every nation that imports energy must first acquire dollars. Every central bank holds dollar reserves for precisely this reason. The dollar’s status as the world’s primary reserve currency is not an abstract achievement; it flows directly and mechanically from oil. . . .
[Iran] is proposing that access to the world’s most critical energy chokepoint be conditional on currency denomination.
The practical consequence, if even partially adopted, would be a bifurcated global oil market: yuan-denominated barrels flowing through Hormuz for those willing to pay in China’s currency, dollar-denominated barrels rerouted at significant additional cost and time for those who are not. The war premium that Western energy importers are already absorbing would become structural rather than temporary.
I don’t know how to make people care about this except to say that if Iran and China made this deal it would absolutely be the beginning of the end of the dollar backstopping the global financial order. The long-term cost to America would be incalculable.
As I said, he’s making China great again. As for NATO, I think Orange Caligula has managed to blow it up. This is from Reuters. It’s the news behind all that analysis. “US allies rebuff Trump’s request for support in Strait of Hormuz.”
BERLIN/BRUSSELS/LONDON, March 16 (Reuters) – Several U.S. allies said on Monday they had no immediate plans to send ships to unblock the Strait of Hormuz, rebuffing a request by President Donald Trump for military support to keep the vital waterway open.
Trump called on nations to help police the strait after Iran responded to U.S.-Israeli attacks by using drones, missiles and mines to effectively close the channel for tankers that normally transport a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas.
Politico’s Nette Nosslinger has more details. “Germany to Trump: We won’t help you reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Berlin says Iran is “not NATO’s war.”
Germany’s government rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s demand that NATO allies help secure the Strait of Hormuz, declaring that the alliance had no place in the war.
“This war has nothing to do with NATO. It’s not NATO’s war,” Stefan Kornelius, a spokesperson for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, told reporters in Berlin on Monday. “NATO is a defensive alliance, an alliance for the defense of its territory,” he added.
Trump had warned NATO allies on Sunday they face a “very bad future” if they refuse to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, pressing Europe to support an American effort to reopen the key maritime corridor.
The German government said it would not assist in that effort as long as the war rages on.
“As long as this war continues, there will be no involvement, not even in an option to keep the Strait of Hormuz open by military means,” Kornelius said, adding that he was not aware of an official request by the U.S. government to Germany to take part in such a mission.
“I would also like to remind you that the U.S. and Israel did not consult us before the war, and that Washington explicitly stated at the start of the war that European assistance was neither necessary nor desired,” Kornelius said.
Heather Cox Richardson puts it into perspective at her SubStack “Letters from an American.” We had quite the Ides of March yesterday; however, the Roman version was a bit more successful in ridding themselves of the bad guy.
Today, as the country enters its third week of war against Iran, President Donald J. Trump was on the golf course, illustrating the observation of journalist E.J. Dionne in the New York Times that “from the very beginning of this war, we got a sense that there wasn’t a great deal of serious thought put into it by the president of the United States about how it might end, what our objectives were, what needed to be done to protect Americans who are in the Middle East, what might happen to oil in the Strait of Hormuz.”
Although the administration appears to be trying to convince Americans that the U.S. military’s destruction of the Iranian military means the U.S. has won the war, Iranian leadership needed simply to continue in power to declare victory. Then, blocking the 20% of the world’s oil that flows through the Strait of Hormuz would give them leverage over the war’s outcome.
On March 10, Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt of the New York Times reported that senior defense officials told them the Iranian military is adjusting its tactics to strike at the communications and defense systems protecting U.S. troops. Those tactics include drone strikes. The same day, Marc Caputo, Barak Ravid, and Colin Demarest of Axios reported that Ukrainian officials had tried several months ago to sell the U.S. anti-drone technology for downing Iran-made drones as a sign of thanks for U.S. support and as a way to strengthen ties between the U.S. and Ukraine, but the U.S. did not pursue the offer.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly responded: “This characterization made by these cowardly unnamed sources is not accurate and proves that they are simply outside looking in. [Defense] Secretary [Pete] Hegseth and the armed forces did an incredible job planning for all possible responses by the Iranian regime, and the undisputed success of Operation Epic Fury speaks for itself.”
And yet the fallout from the strikes on Iran by the U.S. and Israel appears to have caught the administration by surprise. Trump told Kristen Welker and Alexandra Marquez of NBC News yesterday that he was “surprised” that Iran attacked other countries after the U.S. and Israeli strikes. He also said strikes on Saturday on Kharg Island, which is about fifteen miles off the Iranian coast and is home to Iran’s primary oil export terminal, “totally demolished” most of the island but that “we may hit it a few more times just for fun.”
President Donald J. Trump posted on social media Saturday morning: “Many Countries, especially those who are affected by Iran’s attempted closure of the Hormuz Strait, will be sending War Ships, in conjunction with the United States of America, to keep the Strait open and safe. We have already destroyed 100% of Iran’s Military capability, but it’s easy for them to send a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close range missile somewhere along, or in, this Waterway, no matter how badly defeated they are.”
Well, that didn’t happen, did it? China is full-speed ahead in transitioning away from its fossil-fuel-based energy grid. Trump still shakes his fist at windmills. I did enjoy Kyle Cheney’s take at Politico. “Trump is losing one battle after another. Cue the posts. The president’s Sunday night diatribe was most notable for his attacks on the highest court in the land.”
President Donald Trump is increasingly at the mercy of forces he unleashed but can’t control — so he’s taking aim at the umpires.
So it was, in a fit of Sunday night fury that set Washington’s armchair psychoanalysts ablaze, that the president channeled his rage at the few functioning checks on his power: the media, independent regulators and — most pointedly — the federal judiciary.
Trump’s Sunday night outburst took on all of them, but it was most notable for how he cast the Supreme Court — one that has staved off the destruction of his agenda and even his own criminal prosecution — as “a weaponized, and unjust Political Organization.”
“This completely inept and embarrassing Court was not what the Supreme Court of the United States was set up by our wonderful Founders to be,” the president blared on Truth Social. “They are hurting our Country, and will continue to do so.”
It was a remarkable attack. Until the Feb. 20 tariff ruling, the Trump administration had been touting its winning streak at the Supreme Court. The justices have salvaged Trump’s broadest efforts to end legal protections for hundreds of thousands of noncitizens in the United States, allowed him to assert unprecedented control of once-independent agencies and unilaterally slash congressionally authorized spending.
The court, as Trump knows, is arguably responsible for his return to power in the first place: The justices blocked an effort by some blue states to keep Trump off the 2024 ballot by labeling him an insurrectionist responsible for the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. And the court’s decision to adopt a sweeping view of presidential immunity helped stave off special counsel Jack Smith’s most potent criminal case against Trump.
But to Trump, that’s ancient history.
The core of the attack is the frustration that Trump often exhibits when he brushes up against the limits of his power. He spent Sunday lashing out at the news media, cheering on FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s threat to revoke broadcast licenses for stations that report unfavorably on the war in Iran, and lamenting his inability to control the independent Federal Reserve’s interest rate decisions.
Trump describes the high court’s recent rejection of his unfettered ability to levy tariffs against American trading partners as a deeply personal affront — one that contradicted the ethos of his entire decade in public life.
Since the stinging tariffs decision last month, Trump has seemed fixated on the ruling, weighing in against the high court every few days.
“Our Country was unnecessarily RANSACKED by the United States Supreme Court,” he wrote Sunday.
I’m not sure I’d call this a Come-to-Jesus moment for the Supreme Court. Maybe Roberts doesn’t want to go down as the worst Chief in history. Your guess is as good as mine. And once more, we have more Epstein stories. Basically, you have to chase them down to read about them. Here’s something from The Guardian. “‘Attention will swing back’: Epstein outrage unlikely to subside despite Trump’s Iran war. Advocates say 24/7 coverage of US attacks will not last for ever – and spotlight will return to Epstein and his crimes.”
As the US woke to news that Donald Trump had bombed Iran, domestic discord was fast simmering.
There was unrelenting outrage over ICE raids. There was frustration with the rising cost of living. There was fear over rocketing healthcare prices, mounting household debt, not to mention many Americans’ nagging sense of desperation in a country, some warned, where democracy itself was under threat.
During his third presidential run, Trump promised to release investigative files involving someone Trump had once called a “terrific guy”. This pledge served as ideological catnip to the far-right flank of Trump’s base, many of whom believe that a cabal of elite figures participated in Epstein’s trafficking of teenage girls.
Trump’s administration botched the initial release, however, with his justice department disseminating documents in dribs and drabs before announcing in July that there would be no more disclosures – spurring backlash among longtime supporters. In a rare display of bipartisanship, members of Congress took matters into their own hands, conducting their own investigations and passing the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November.
Trump, despite repeatedly calling the Epstein files a “hoax”, signed the bill into law. His justice department had 30 days to disclose publicly all Epstein files, with rare exceptions.
Trump’s DoJ did not meet Congress’s deadline, disseminating one tranche at the 30-day mark and several others days and weeks later – including a 3 million document disclosure on 30 January – prompting still more ire from opponents and some diehard supporters who believe more files remain.
But now US headlines are dominated by the US-Israel attack on Iran – and the economic and diplomatic chaos it has unleashed. Yet advocates and observers say that Epstein-related outrage is still unlikely to die down.
Gretchen Carlson and Julie Roginsky, who pursued sexual harassment claims against former Fox News chief executive Roger Ailes and started the non-profit Lift Our Voices, told the Guardian that the Iran war can draw attention from the Epstein files – but not in perpetuity.
“We all know that the Trump administration is very good at flooding the news market with a lot of different stories every single day, and so it’s very difficult in the news media to keep up with all of them and give them what they all deserve, as far as time [is concerned],” Carlson said.
“The way the news media works, especially on 24/7 cable news, is that you are covering the biggest story of the moment. Right now that appears to be Iran.”
Carlson said she is still seeing Epstein stories – including news that authorities never searched his New Mexico ranch – and said conservative figures’ opposition to the war portends prolonged attention over Epstein.
“Influencers, especially on the right, criticize the Iranian war and the reasons that the United States got involved,” Carlson said. “I believe that will bring us right back to Epstein.”
So, I’ll quit and just say we’re coming apart at the seams in this country. Tech Bros and Bankers and Pedophiles! Oh My!
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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I’m sick and tired of wars. I’m even more sick and tired of Trump and his cabinet full of stupid idiots. I came of age during the Vietnam war. After that disaster finally ended, I really thought our leaders would stay out of unnecessary wars. But it didn’t happen. These men (goddess forbid we elect a woman president!) just have to prove their “manhood” by attacking other countries. I’m just plain sick of it.
It also appears that Trump and his gang of idiots didn’t plan for the obvious results of their war–rising prices and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. In addition, Trump’s “Secretary of War” is advocating for war crimes. That’s where things stand so far.
For Batoul Hamdan and her two children, seven-month-old Fatima and Jihad, three, Monday’s iftar, the evening meal that breaks the daily fast during Ramadan, was special.
For a week, they had eaten to the sounds of bombs in their home in Arab Salim. Hamdan eventually decided to leave for Al-Nimiriya, the sleepy town where she had grown up. Surrounded by her parents and siblings in the family home, she hoped they could finally enjoy the festive mood of Ramadan.
They had just finished their meal when the bomb fell. The Israeli airstrike collapsed the two-storey building instantly, killing all eight members of the Hamdan family: grandparents Ahmad and Najib, their children, including Batoul, and grandchildren Fatima and Jihad – three generations wiped out in a moment.
On Thursday, only snarled rebar and broken concrete remained of the Hamdan family home. The fragments of their lives – a certificate of achievement from the children’s schooldays, cutlery from their cabinet, frayed purses – had been ejected by the force of the blast and now littered the ground.
“There was no warning before the strike. My own two kids started to cry, I picked them up and started to run away from the explosion when it happened,” said Qassem Ayoub, a neighbour and town police officer, as he stared at the wreckage. “Why were they targeted? I don’t know, ask the Israelis.”
Batoul and her loved ones were among the 773 Lebanese people – including more than 100 children – killed by Israel’s campaign in Lebanon since 2 March. They join a growing list of families completely wiped out by Israeli bombings, in a conflict whose death toll is rising faster than in any previous war in Lebanon.
Forty-one people were killed by Israeli airstrikes in Nabi Chit in the Bekaa valley in only five hours last Saturday, and 18 people died in a single night in the town of Sir el-Gharbiyeh on 8 March. The pace of death has stunned Lebanese people and left them struggling to keep up.
Do you think Netanyahu will stop these attacks on Lebanon if Trump calls off his war in Iran. I don’t.
BEIRUT (AP) — Fatima Nazha slept on the street for two days after she and her family fled their home in Beirut’s southern suburbs following an Israeli mass evacuation order.
All of the schools the government turned into shelters were full, and the family couldn’t afford a hotel or an apartment, so she and her husband eventually moved into a tent in the country’s biggest stadium while their kids and grandchildren found shelter near the southern coastal city of Sidon.
In just 10 days, more than 800,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced by war, just over a year since the last conflict uprooted over a million Lebanese from their homes. That’s one in every seven people in the tiny country, according to humanitarian organization the Norwegian Refugee Council. Many don’t have a place to stay, and the cash-strapped government has only been able to accommodate roughly 120,000 people as it scrambles to open shelters and bring in more supplies.
Nazha, who uses a wheelchair, said being forced from her home has been far more difficult this time than when Israel and Hezbollah were last at war more than a year ago. The strikes targeting the Iran-backed militant group have been more intense and unpredictable, and Israel’s evacuation order came abruptly, leaving her unable to gather all her belongings.
“The strikes used to target a specific area, but now they’re hitting all the areas,” she said, taking a drag off her cigarette. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Friday that more than 700 people, including 103 children, have died in the war.
Israel is planning to significantly expand its ground operation in Lebanon, aiming to seize the entire area south of the Litani River and dismantle Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, Israeli and U.S. officials say.
Why it matters: This could be the largest Israeli ground invasion of its northern neighbor since 2006, dragging Lebanon to the epicenter of the escalating war with Iran.
“We are going to do what we did in Gaza,” a senior Israeli official said, referring to the flattening of buildings Israel says Hezbollah uses to store weapons and launch attacks.
The big picture: An operation of this size and scale could lead to a prolonged Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.
Lebanon’s government is deeply alarmed that the renewed war — triggered by Hezbollah’s decision to launch rockets at Israel — will devastate the country.
The Trump administration backs a major Israeli operation to disarm Hezbollah, but is also pressing to limit the damage to the Lebanese state and pushing for direct Israel-Lebanon talks on a postwar agreement.
Driving the news: Until days ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was still trying to contain the Lebanon escalation in order to stay focused on Iran, according to Israeli officials.
That calculus changed Wednesday when Hezbollah launched more than 200 missiles in a massive coordinated attack with Iran, which fired dozens of its own.
“Before this attack we were ready for a ceasefire in Lebanon, but after it there is no way back from a massive operation,” a senior Israeli official said.
State of play: The IDF has had three armored and infantry divisions on the Lebanese border since the start of the Iran war, with some ground forces conducting limited incursions over the past two weeks.
By Kim Haskins
And what is Jared Kushner up to now that he got Trump to help Netanyahu with his bloodthirsty plans?
Jared Kushner, one of the U.S. government’s chief negotiators in the Middle East, is trying to raise more money for his private equity firm from governments in the region.
Mr. Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, has spoken with potential investors in recent weeks about raising $5 billion or more for Affinity Partners, his investment firm, according to five people with knowledge of the talks who were not permitted to speak publicly about the discussions.
As part of the fund-raising effort, Affinity’s representatives have already met with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which invests the proceeds of the kingdom’s vast oil reserves, two of the people briefed on the discussions said. PIF is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has formed close ties with Mr. Kushner and the Trump administration.
PIF, which is already the largest and earliest investor in Affinity, invested $2 billion soon after the first Trump administration ended.
As part of that deal, the Saudis must be given the first chance to invest during any subsequent attempts by Affinity to raise funds, the two people said. Other Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds that invested earlier in Affinity, including those in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, are also expected to be asked for more, the people said.
Mr. Kushner’s fund-raising is expected to stretch on for the better part of this year.
The efforts show the blurring of the lines between public service and private profit-seeking during Mr. Trump’s second term. Only a few weeks ago, in his role as Mr. Trump’s “peace envoy,” Mr. Kushner met in Geneva with Iran’s foreign minister. The U.S. and Israeli bombing campaign in Iran began shortly after those meetings concluded without a deal on Iran’s nuclear program.
Meanwhile, Kushner is not actually an employee of the Federal government. The corruption is breathtaking.
And what’s happening in in Iran these days? Well, it appears that the Trump gang didn’t plan for what to do if Iran cut off shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz–something they were warned about.
Of all the risks the global energy system has long faced, none was bigger or better known than the potential closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
The narrow passageway out of the Persian Gulf is both vital — serving as the only gateway to the rest of the world for huge amounts of oil and natural gas — and extremely vulnerable to attacks.
But despite being widely recognized as a potential choke point, the strait remains the only way to export most of the energy produced in the region. That has come into sharp relief in the second week of the war in the Middle East, as the near-closure of the waterway sent oil prices soaring above $100 a barrel for the first time in almost four years.
The reason there is no true alternative comes down to a combination of geography, political tensions and economic competition among the region’s oil powers. There have been efforts to circumvent the strait, notably by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But the pipelines through those countries can carry only a small fraction of the energy produced in the Persian Gulf.
By Mathias Hauser
For many other energy-producing countries in the region, the only way to avoid the strait would be to lay a pipeline across a neighboring country — an expensive and politically fraught endeavor. Take Qatar, one of the world’s biggest natural gas exporters. Its only land border is with Saudi Arabia — a country that cut off diplomatic ties and closed that border during a regional spat resolved five years ago. Plus, any pipeline would itself be vulnerable to Iranian attacks.
“There’s nothing which is totally secure here,” said John Browne, a former chief executive of the London-based oil giant BP, once known as the Anglo-Iranian oil company. “In the end, someone with bad intention can do all sorts of things to oil and gas infrastructure.”
Some oil analysts also assumed that, if the time came, the United States, which has a keen interest in keeping energy markets stable, would use its military might to keep the strait passable.
Oh really? I guess these “analysts” didn’t consider the fact that Donald Trump is a psychopath who couldn’t care less about anyone but himself and his childish needs. Use the gift link if you want to read more.
Now that the shit has hit the fan, and prices on gas and just about everything else are rising rapidly, Trump has decided to send in some more troops.
About 2,500 Marines aboard as many as three warships are heading to the Middle East from the Indo-Pacific region, as Iran increases its attacks on the Strait of Hormuz, two U.S. officials said.
The shift, earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal, comes as Iran’s response to nearly two weeks of aerial bombardment and long-range artillery strikes has proved more resilient than Trump administration officials anticipated.
The Marines will join more than 50,000 American troops in the region. The new deployment comes as Iran’s attacks on and near the strait have choked maritime traffic through the essential waterway, rocking the global economy. It was unclear how the new deployment would be used….
Last week, President Trump said he might order Navy warships to escort merchant ships through the crucial oil supply route, which U.S. forces did for a period of time in the late 1980s during similar tensions with Iran.
U.S. forces have carried out “large-scale” strikes on Kharg Island, a critical hub of Iran’s Gulf oil operations, with the country responding by threatening to strike U.S. allies’ oil facilities if any of its infrastructure is damaged.
U.S. Central Command said Saturday that naval mine storage facilities and missile storage bunkers were among targets destroyed in the “precision strike” on the island, hitting “90 Iranian military targets” while “preserving the oil infrastructure.”
Kharg Island, a tiny but strategic island 15 miles off the coast of Iran in the Persian Gulf, is home to an oil terminal that ships 90% of the country’s oil exports. There are also military capabilities there, including air defenses and mines buried underground.
Announcing the strike in a post on Truth Social late Friday, President Donald Trump said that U.S. forces had “totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island.”
Trump just loves that word “obliterated.”
The island’s oil terminal has so far been unscathed in the war, according to oil market research firm Energy Intelligence, and the president said the island’s oil infrastructure was spared in Friday’s attack, but could be struck down the road.
“Should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision,” Trump said, as Iran has actively interfered with shipping in the strait for several days.
A missile struck a helipad inside the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, two security officials said.
The projectile landed within the embassy’s boundaries after the Green Zone, the heavily fortified district in central Baghdad that houses Iraqi government institutions and foreign embassies, added the security officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to speak with the press.
Video obtained by The Associated Press showed smoke billowing from inside the compound.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran openly threatened a neighboring country’s non-U.S. assets for the first time Saturday, warning people to immediately evacuate the busiest port in the Middle East and two others in the United Arab Emirates as the U.S.-Israel war with Iran entered its third week.
By Rudi Hurzlmeier
A missile struck a helipad inside the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad, and debris from an intercepted Iranian drone hit an oil facility in the UAE, further increasing global anxiety about oil supplies.
Iran threatened to attack cities in the UAE, home to Dubai and one of the world’s busiest airports, saying the U.S. used “ports, docks and hideouts” there to launch strikes on Iran’s Kharg Island, without providing evidence. It urged people to evacuate areas where it said U.S. forces were sheltering, naming Dubai’s Jebel Ali port — the Mideast’s busiest — as well as Abu Dhabi’s Khalifa port and Fujairah port.
Iran has fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Arab Gulf neighbors during the war, but it said it was targeting U.S. assets, even as hits or attempts were reported on civilian ones such as airports and oil fields.
Back here at home, Pete Hegseth is in favor of committing war crimes. He’s already committed war crimes with his fishing boat strikes. His troops also committed a war crime when they sank Iranian ships and failed to attempt to rescue survivors. Then yesterday he said advocated for another war crime.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth offhandedly made a remark about the Trump administration’s attack on Iran during his speech on Friday that experts warned, if he’s serious, could be a war crime — even just for him to say out loud.
“No quarter, no mercy for our enemies,” said Hegseth. “Yet some in the press just can’t stop. More fake news from CNN reports that the Trump administration underestimated the Iran war’s impact on the Strait of Hormuz. The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”
The phrase “no quarter” is often used colloquially in a political setting, but in a military context, it means any enemy combatants will be killed with no allowance for surrender — something that, as experts on X and Bluesky were swift to point out, is a violation of both international law and the U.S. military code.
“Went largely unnoticed but Hegseth on Iran said the U.S. would provide ‘no quarter, no mercy for our enemies’ during his press conference today,” wrote Wall Street Journal national security reporter Alex Ward. “‘No quarter’ is a violation of international humanitarian law.” He provided a link to the relevant provisions of the Geneva Convention.
“Today, Hegseth said: ‘No quarter, no mercy for our enemies.’ But the Defense Department’s own Law of War Manual (pp. 209-210) says: ‘It is forbidden to declare that no quarter will be given,'” wrote Claremont McKenna College professor Jack Pitney.
“Former USG war crimes lawyer here,” wrote International Crisis Group senior adviser Brian Finucane. “Apropos of SecDef’s remarks this morning: Denial of quarter — even the declaration of no quarter — is a war crime. And recognized as such by the US Government. From DoD’s Manual for Military Commissions.” He screenshotted the section of the manual, which stated denial of quarter is punishable by up to life in prison.
“Declaring that no quarter will be given is straightforwardly prohibited under international humanitarian law,” wrote Stanford law professor Tom Dannenbaum. “When done to threaten an adversary, the declaration itself amounts to a war crime.”
“Yet another thing to put in our back pocket,” wrote Ryan Cooper of The American Prospect. “‘Ship em to the Hague’ is a completely valid option for a long and growing list of people who need to be dealt with.”
Donald Trump is lost in his fog of war. He compounds confusion with improvised fabrications as his naive expectation of a lightning victory has been sunk in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran, he felt certain, would easily follow the “perfect scenario” of Venezuela, accede to naming a leader who would instantly do his bidding, and there would be no disruption of the oil markets – “a strong game plan”, stated Karoline Leavitt, his White House press secretary, who defends each of his changeable excuses with equal ferocity.
By Kim Haskins
There may be few if any facts underlying the delusions upon which Trump constructs his vapid explanations and evanescent strategies. The belief that coherent sense can be made out of Trump’s shuffling words is a weakness of the rational mind that refuses to accept the impulses of the inveterate demagogue for what they are. Searching for reason in the jungle of Trump’s tales may compel hopelessly sensible people to superimpose logic where there is none in order to satisfy the need for some semblance of soundness.
Trump’s erratic efforts to reframe his rationale further expose his incompetence and unintelligibility, utterly predictable but now lethal on a global scale. His stream of sputtering remarks has, however, clearly established the ground that should be explored by congressional inquiries into the war’s origins, planning and conduct.
Trump is also at war with the English language. His war is not a war, he insists, but a “short-term excursion”, a semantic dodge to skirt congressional and international accountability. Then, when asked whether it’s an excursion or a war, he replied: “Well, it’s both. It’s an excursion that will keep us out of a war.” His rhetorical legerdemain is the equivalent of René Magritte’s painting of a pipe with the caption, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” – “This is not a pipe.” The title Magritte gave to his painting was The Treachery of Images. Orwell or Magritte? Propaganda or surrealism?
Trump has declared he will force “regime change” or negotiate with some unnamed personage in the regime who happens to have been recently killed. “Most of the people we had in mind are dead,” he said. Trump demands “unconditional surrender” or he declares the war “very complete” after an hour-long conversation with Vladimir Putin, after Putin pledged “unwavering support” to the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khomeini, the 56-year-old son of the assassinated 86-year-old supreme leader, about whose ascension Trump said he was “not happy” and called him a “lightweight”.
I hope you’ll go read the rest. Blumenthal is good.
That’s all I have for today. I hope you’re enjoying your weekend, despite the ugly war news.
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
Check the graphs and more at the link. Jonathan V. Last, writing at
As I said, he’s making China great again. As for NATO, I think Orange Caligula has managed to blow it up. This is from Reuters. It’s the news behind all that analysis. “US allies rebuff Trump’s request for support in Strait of Hormuz.”
Heather Cox Richardson puts it into perspective at her 
Well, that didn’t happen, did it? China is full-speed ahead in transitioning away from its fossil-fuel-based energy grid. Trump still shakes his fist at windmills. I did enjoy 
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