dvdan 🇺🇦

human, for the time being.

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Robert Mueller died last night.

He was 81 years old. He had a wife who loved him for sixty years. He had two daughters, one of whom he met for the first time in Hawaii, in 1969, on a few hours of military leave, before he got back on the plane and returned to Vietnam. He had grandchildren. He had a faith he practiced quietly, without performance. He had, in the way of men who have seen real things and survived them, a quality that is increasingly rare and increasingly mocked in the country he spent his life serving.

He had integrity.

And tonight the President of the United States said good!

I have been sitting with that word for hours now. Good. One syllable. The thing you say when the coffee is hot or the traffic is moving. The thing a man who has never had to bury anyone, never had to sit in the specific silence of a room where someone is newly absent, reaches for when he wants the world to know he is satisfied. Good. The daughters are crying and the wife is alone in the house and good.

I want to speak directly to the Americans reading this. Not the political Americans. Just the human ones. The ones who have lost a father. The ones who know what it is to be in that first hour, when you keep forgetting and then remembering again, when ordinary objects become unbearable, when the world outside the window seems obscene in its indifference. I want to ask you, simply, to hold that feeling for a moment, and then to understand that the man you elected looked at it and typed a single word.

Good.

This is not a country having a bad day. I need you to understand that. Countries have bad days. Elections go wrong. Leaders disappoint. Institutions bend. But there is a different thing, a rarer and more terrible thing, that happens when the moral center of a place simply gives way. Not dramatically. Not with a single catastrophic event. But quietly, in increments, until one evening a president celebrates the death of an old man whose family is still warm with grief, and enough people find it acceptable that it becomes the weather. Just the weather.

That is what is happening. That is what has happened.

The world knows. From Tokyo to Oslo, from London to Buenos Aires, people are not angry at America tonight. Anger would mean there was still something to fight for, some remaining faith to be betrayed. What I see, in the reactions from everywhere that is not here, is something older and sadder than anger. It is the look people get when they have waited a long time for someone they love to find their way back, and have finally understood that they are not coming.

America is being grieved. Past tense, almost. The idea of it. The thing it represented to people who had nothing else to believe in, who came here with everything they owned in a single bag because they had heard, somehow, across an ocean, that this was the place where decency was written into the walls. That idea is not resting. It is not suspended. It is being buried, in real time, with 7,450 likes before dinner.

And the church said nothing.

Seventy million people have decided that this man, this specific man who has cheated everyone he has ever made a promise to, who has mocked the disabled and the dead and the grieving, who celebrated tonight while a family wept, is an instrument of God. The pastors who made that bargain did not just trade away their credibility. They traded away the thing that made them worth listening to in the first place. The cross they carry now is a costume. The faith they preach is a loyalty oath with scripture attached. When the history of American Christianity is written, this will be the chapter they skip at seminary.

Now I want to talk about the men who stand next to him.

Because this is the part that actually breaks my heart.

JD Vance is not a bad man. I have to say that, because it is true, and because the truth matters even now, especially now. Marco Rubio is not a bad man. Lindsey Graham is not a bad man. They are idiots, but not bad, as in BAD! These are men with mothers who raised them and children who love them and friends who remember who they were before all of this. They are not monsters. Monsters are simple. Monsters do not cost you anything emotionally because there is nothing in them to mourn.

These men are something more painful than monsters.

They are men who knew better, and know better still, and will get up tomorrow and do it again.

Every small compromise they made had a reason. Every moment they looked the other way had a justification that sounded, at the time, almost reasonable. And now they have arrived here, at a place where a president celebrates the death of an old man and they will find a way, on television, to say nothing that means anything, and they will go home to houses where children who carry their name are waiting, and they will say goodnight, and they will say nothing.

Their oldest friends are watching. The ones who knew Rubio when he still believed in something. Who knew Graham when he said, out loud, on the record, that this exact man would destroy the Republican Party and deserve it. Who sat next to Vance and thought here is someone worth knowing. Those friends are not angry tonight. They moved through anger a long time ago. What they feel now is the quiet, irrecoverable sadness of watching someone disappear while still being present. Of watching a person they loved choose, again and again, to become less.

That is what cowardice costs. Not the coward. The people who loved him.

And in the comments tonight, the followers celebrate. People who ten years ago brought casseroles to grieving neighbours. Who stood in the rain at gravesides and meant the words they said. Who told their children that we do not speak ill of the dead because the dead were someone's beloved. Those people are tonight typing gleeful things about a man whose daughters are not yet done crying. And they feel clean doing it. Righteous. Because somewhere along the way the thing they were given in exchange for their decency was the feeling of belonging to something, and that feeling is very hard to give up even when you can no longer remember what you gave for it.

When Trump is gone, they will still be here.

Standing in the silence where the noise used to be. Without the permission the crowd gave them. Without the pastor who told them their cruelty was holy. They will be alone with what they said and what they cheered and what they chose to become, and there will be no one left to tell them it was righteous.

That morning is coming.

Robert Mueller flew across the Pacific on military leave to hold his newborn daughter for a few hours before returning to the war. He came home. He buried his dead with honour. He served presidents of both parties because he understood that the institution was larger than any one man. He told his grandchildren that a lie is the worst thing a person can do, that a reputation once lost cannot be recovered, and he lived that, every day, in the quiet and unglamorous way of people who actually believe what they say.

He was the kind of American the world used to point to when it needed to believe the story was true.

He died last night. His wife is alone in their house in Georgetown. His daughters are learning what the world is without him in it. And somewhere in the particular hush that falls over a family in the first hours of loss, the most powerful man and the biggest loser on earth sent a message to say he was glad.

The world that loved what America was supposed to be is grieving tonight. Not for Robert Mueller only. For the country that produced him and then became this. For the distance between what was promised and what was delivered. For the suspicion, growing quieter and more certain with each passing month, that the America people believed in was always partly a story, and the story is over now, and there is nothing yet to replace it.

That is all it needed to be.

A man died. His family is broken open with grief.

That is all it needed to be.

Instead the President said good.

And the country that once stood for something looked away 🇺🇸

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Yasmina @yasminalombaert]

The Polish Epstein files investigation has reached a fever pitch with the focus shifting from general "threads" to specific organisations and individuals.

In this video, PM Tusk warns that the KGB likely possesses material against "many leaders still active today."

"An increasing number of commentators and experts assume that it is very probable that this was a premeditated operation by the Russian KGB. This so-called 'honey trap,' a sweet bait, a trap set for the elites of the Western world, primarily the United States. I don't need to tell you how serious the implications for the security of the Polish state are regarding this possibility—an increasingly likely possibility—that Russian services co-organised this procedure, which can only mean one thing: that they also possess compromising materials against many leaders who are still active today." Tusk said.

The discovery of a 2011 visa application by Jeffrey Epstein has become the centerpiece of the "KGB Honey Trap" theory.

Epstein listed his travel purpose as a visit to MOO Vympel (Interregional Public Organization of Vympel Veterans).
Vympel (also known as Directorate "V") was an elite, top-secret KGB special forces unit founded in 1981. Unlike the "Alpha" group, which focused on domestic counter-terrorism, Vympel was designed for foreign operations, including sabotage, deep-cover intelligence, and "liquidating" high-value targets.

Prime Minister Tusk’s team is investigating whether these veterans—many of whom transitioned into private security and "influence" roles after the USSR fell—provided the logistical backbone for Epstein’s European operations. The theory suggests Epstein wasn't just a rogue criminal but a "front" for a Russian state-sponsored blackmail machine.

The task force is zeroing in on Daniel Amar Siad, the Swedish citizen of Berber-Algerian origin identified as a "scout" for Epstein and Jean-Luc Brunel.

Emails from 2009 confirm Siad told Epstein he would be "scouting in small villages" across Poland (specifically naming Kraków), the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary.
Local investigators are currently reviewing hotel and travel records from the summer of 2009. They are trying to verify his claim that he had "several girls already waiting" in Poland.
Documents show Siad also sent Epstein photos of a Polish model he allegedly met in Dubai, suggesting a multi-layered international recruitment network.

While the 3 million pages contain thousands of names, the "kompromat" or blackmail section remains the most sensitive part of the investigation.

Several Polish news outlets have been flagged for their coverage (or lack thereof) during the years Epstein was active. The investigation is looking into whether any editorial decisions were influenced by the threat of kompromat.

Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek’s "Analytical-Investigative Group" is holding its first full operational summit this week.

Poland has formally requested that the U.S. DOJ unseal files related to "non-U.S. nationals”, which they believe contain the bulk of the evidence regarding Polish victims.

[dvdan 🇺🇦 @dvdan23]

@elonmusk are you talking about Epstein?

[dvdan 🇺🇦 @dvdan23]

@elonmusk 14 flags for 14 words! how clever of you, @elonmusk - leaving us guessing if you're a white suprematist like that!

[dvdan 🇺🇦 @dvdan23]

@elonmusk And he hasn't died once! amazing.

[Senator Mark Kelly @SenMarkKelly]

When I was 22 years old, I commissioned as an Ensign in the United States Navy and swore an oath to the Constitution. I upheld that oath through flight school, multiple deployments on the USS Midway, 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm, test pilot school, four space shuttle flights at NASA, and every day since I retired – which I did after my wife Gabby was shot in the head while serving her constituents.

In combat, I had a missile blow up next to my jet and flew through anti-aircraft fire to drop bombs on enemy targets. At NASA, I launched on a rocket, commanded the space shuttle, and was part of the recovery mission that brought home the bodies of my astronaut classmates who died on Columbia. I did all of this in service to this country that I love and has given me so much.

Secretary Hegseth’s tweet is the first I heard of this. I also saw the President’s posts saying I should be arrested, hanged, and put to death.

If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work. I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.

[Jason Kint @jason_kint]

Wow. Super interesting. After today’s abhorrent comments on Khashoggi assassination, Rep Vindman suggests a shocking phone call happened between President Trump and Mohammed bin Salman then calls to release the transcript.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

BASH: We have seen these attacks from the president at other people. It's not new. And I haven't heard you speak out about it until it was directed at you.

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: I think that's fair criticism. And I would like to say, humbly, I'm sorry for taking part in the toxic politics.

[dvdan 🇺🇦 @dvdan23]

@AGDugin Why? to "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social, and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups,"? @AGDugin 1997

[Dr. Maalouf ‏ @realMaalouf]

Iranian girls remove their hijabs, take over their school, and chant “Death to the dictator and the Islamic regime”.

❤️

[dvdan 🇺🇦 @dvdan23]

@elonmusk Who are you to save someone else's democracy? Please go back to South Africa and leave the rest of us alone.

[dvdan 🇺🇦 @dvdan23]

@watersfall9999 @CFR_org @vsiv who proved this? if you are referring to deep seek, it's more likely they've just figured out how to evade sanctions.

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

Have we talked about the advantages of extremism lately? What did I miss?

[dvdan 🇺🇦 @dvdan23]

@IvankaNews_ Dugin also laid out plans for the destruction of the United States in a book be wrote in 1997 called Foundations of Geopolitics, which have shocking similarities to Trumpism. When an enemy of the United States supports a US political candidate, you should be suspect.

[dvdan 🇺🇦 @dvdan23]

Good take on the AI shakeup underway. Maybe extreme inefficiency isn't the best path forward, after all.

[De Kai @dekai123]

In early Oct 2024 I submitted this warning piece "Restrictions on AI Power will Backfire" to one of the US’ top newspapers, which declined to publish it. No wonder 100% predictable events like DeepSeek R1 create shock and surprise. https://t.co/Pd3Q01KJMk

[Cormac Smith 🇮🇪🇬🇧🇺🇦🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈 @CormacS63]

Reality check

Just in case you ever believed that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was about @NATO expansion, Ukraine being full of Nazis or any other Russian lie!

"If we do not conquer Ukraine now, WE LOSE EVERYTHING”
Nikolai Patrushev, probably Putin’s most influential advisor👇

[dvdan 🇺🇦 @dvdan23]

@realDonaldTrump The guy was a US citizen and one of your supporters, you lying dirtbag.

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

Apparently calling Musk the next Henry Ford or Wernher von Braun was more accurate than they knew! 😂 The AfD is shunned even by other far-right EU parties. I hope Musk can instead focus his undeniable talents on improving the US govt.

[David Frum @davidfrum]

Why not cut out the middlewoman and just name Putin as director of national intelligence?

[dvdan 🇺🇦 @dvdan23]

@elonmusk so it's our fault and not putin's. riiight. what else do you discuss with him on your frequent phone calls?