QUESTIONS

What am I missing?

Why do some stories seemingly run on-and-on endlessly, when a simple question or two would resolve them at the outset?

If it’s due to a deliberate desire on the part of media to keep a story with ‘legs’ running without end in order that the reader stays hooked, then it is having the opposite to the desired effect with me. If, on the other hand, it is true that the media is the tool of those with the power to manipulate its content, and who, having a special interest in hiding the truth, obscure it with obfuscation, contradiction and repetition, that, too, is having the opposite to the desired effect with me.

In the last week or so I have become aware that my engagement is dependent on whether or not I see the obvious questions being raised at the outset. If they’re not, then I refuse to be fed any more verbiage on the subject.

As an example, take the statement by Sir Keir Starmer that he would recognise a State of Palestine in September if Israel didn’t agree to a ceasefire in Gaza by that date. My immediate question was:

“Does that mean, if they do agree to a ceasefire in Gaza you won’t agree to recognise a Palestinian State?”

That’s the question I would ask if I was the Israeli Government. No matter how Starmer replies, yes or no, the answer will guarantee that neither Hamas, nor Israel, will ever agree to a ceasefire as a result of his threat. So, could we please stop wasting media space on it? Or is it just a media excuse to rile us up by saying what bastards Israelis are, or what a cringing creep Starmer is, or ... Who are that other misunderstood lot? Oh yes ... what nice Palestinians Hamas are?

Now to some other news. The World Athletics Federation has announced a simple one-time test for women wanting to compete in female events. A cheek swab or blood sample looks for the SRY gene, which is a reliable indicator of biological sex. Cheap, quick, guaranteed. While celebrating this end to tiresome reportage of women’s sport, I noticed that Mme Brigitte Macron has filed an 800-page deposition alleging defamation against podcaster Candace Owen for her suggestion that the French President’s wife started life as a man. My immediate question was:

“Does Mme Macron really need an 800-page deposition when all it takes is a simple SRY test to make her case?”

But, then again, I also asked at the outset of this internet beat up:

“Why doesn’t she get (independently verified!) DNA tests from her children and herself? Or even photos from her family album when she was growing up?”

Wouldn’t that have resolved the matter? Meanwhile, Candace is having a ball, raking in followers to her podcasts faster than she can count them.

Trade marks and royalties have always intrigued me. There was a female tennis player in New Zealand (name withheld) who was the only NZ player on the WTA Tour for many years. She never won, but because the lazy slugs in media newsrooms scan the wires for any sports result with the letters ‘NZ’ after a competitor’s name, her losses were repeated on the hour every hour in news bulletins. What a waste, I used to think. Imagine all the advertisers spending fortunes on trying to obtain name recognition, and her name was getting massive exposure for no gain.

I had a similar thought when we started to be bombarded by the name Jeffrey Epstein.

Jeffrey, I thought, imagine if you’d been able to copyright your name and charge a dollar every time it was used by the media. You’d be a billionaire by now (if you were still alive). That thought led me to another thought, which was that he didn’t appear to need the money, what with owning a private island, aeroplane, luxury Manhattan apartment and numerous houses — let alone the extravagance of his lifestyle.

I won’t dwell on the political and media motivations for the prurient obsession with obtaining access to the Justice Department’s so-called ‘Epstein Files’, but — as someone who knows that you do not withhold information from the IRS under any circumstances if you value your freedom — I’d suggest if you want to know what he was up to and with whom, you should just pose this question:

“Where was Jeffrey Epstein’s money coming from, and what was he detailing in his expenses claims?”

It’s not the Justice Department’s file you want, it’s the Internal Revenue Service’s file. Not everything would be made clear, and it wouldn’t end all speculation, but we need to accept that, since Allen Dulles made the CIA the secret government of the United States, we’ll never know whether he was working for them, for Mossad, or for the American Pederasts Association. But the IRS would know. They might even be able to explain why Bill Clinton, and Bill Gates, visited Epstein’s island so often.

Talking about porn, what about disaster porn? An 8.8 magnitude earthquake went off 18 miles deep off the North East coast of Russia last week and desk-bound media teams around the world broke out in hysterics as if Lucifer had been sprung from Hell and was advancing with his army towards the gates of Heaven. Designers of digital graphics were told to stop working from home and come in to the newsroom immediately, vulcanologists were winkled out of their cubicles in the remote corners of universities, and mathematicians were challenged to convert their obscure wave theories into calculations regarding the speed of travel of tsunamis that would be intelligible enough to allow the peoples of the Pacific to survive the disaster heading towards them across the ocean.

So enveloping was the media coverage in our part of the world that if you’d been planning an expensive PR launch of a new product that week, you’d have cut your wrists. The 890-strong team in the Climate Change Editorial Department of The New York Times struggled for days to make a connection with Global Warming, and Anti-Trumpers in California wanted to know why he was playing golf in Scotland when he should have been standing on the beach at Malibu with the King Canute Emergency Team turning back the waves.

In Invercargill, New Zealand, 12,000 km (7,500 miles) away from the quake, the harbourmaster ordered all ships to leave the port, and the Civil Defence Department spent 48 frantic hours trying to remember in which desk drawer they’d placed the Tsunami Warning button. Once found, everyone in the office took turns at pressing it every few hours just to make sure it was working. In Hawaii, home of the world’s best waves and top surfing competitions, events had to be cancelled as the waves arriving from Russia were only one foot high.

The 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami that hit low-lying Thailand and Sumatra was only 100 miles off shore (160 km). So, as no vulcanologist, meteorologist, journalist or soothsayer has any skill whatsoever in predicting the outcome of earthquakes beneath the ocean, I would suggest we ask ourselves next time:

“How far away is it?”

My final question for the week relates to Trump’s frequently expressed frustration at Jerome Powell of the Federal Reserve and his refusal to drop interest rates. Now, despite it having been explained ad nauseum, people continue to believe that Reserve Banks are arms of government and that Monetary Policy, in the form of interest rate settings, is the most important influence on the macro economy. They aren’t, and it isn’t.

Reserve Banks are privately owned institutions established by cartels of major banks and owners of wealth, like J.P Morgan for instance, set up to protect and enhance the interests of those banks and owners of wealth. And the foremost influence on the macro economy is Credit Creation, not interest rates. Credit Creation is a sleight-of-hand allowed on the balance sheets of banks alone. For an explanation, I recommend you to read (or listen) to Richard A. Werner, the Oxford University economist.

Meanwhile, my question of the week would be:

“What did Jamie Dimon, the Head of J.P. Morgan (and a major contributor to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign) say privately to Donald Trump when he visited him in the White House last week?”

Maybe we sometimes know the answer to questions without having to ask them.

A.I. Fabler

August 5, 2025