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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years

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Why none of my books are available on Audible (and why Amazon owes me $3,218.55)

I love audiobooks. When I was a high-school-aged page at a public library in the 1980s, I would pass endless hours shelving and repairing books while listening to “books on tape” from the library’s collection. By the time iTunes came along, I’d amassed a huge collection of cassette and CD audiobooks and I painstakingly ripped them to my collection.

Then came Audible, and I was in heaven — all the audiobooks, none of the hassle of ripping CDs. There was only one problem: the Digital Rights Management (DRM). You see, I’ve spent most of my adult life campaigning against DRM, because I think it’s an existential danger to all computer users — and because it’s a way for tech companies to hijack the relationship between creators and their audiences.

In 2011, I gave a speech at Berlin’s Chaos Communications Congress called “The Coming War on General Purpose Computing.” In it, I explained that Digital Rights Management was technologically incoherent, a bizarre fantasy in which untrusted users of computers could be given encrypted files and all the tools needed to decrypt them, but somehow be prevented from using those decrypted files in ways that conflicted with the preferences of the company that supplied those files.

As I said then, computers are stubbornly, inescapably “general purpose.” The only computer we know how to make — the Turing-complete von Neumann machine — is the computer that can run all the programs we know how to write. When someone claims to have built a computer-powered “appliance” — say, a smart speaker or (God help us all) a smart toaster — that can only run certain programs, what they mean is that they’ve designed a computer that can run every program, but which will refuse to run programs unless the manufacturer approves them.

But this is also technological nonsense. The program that checks to see whether other programs are approved by the manufacturer is also running on an untrusted adversary’s computer (with DRM, you are the manufacturer’s untrusted adversary). Because that overseer program is running on a computer you own, you can replace it, alter it, or subvert it, allowing you to run programs that the manufacturer doesn’t like. That would include (for example) a modified DRM program that unscrambles the manufacturer-supplied video, audio or text file and then, rather than throwing away the unscrambled copy when you’re done with it, saves it so you can open it with a program that doesn’t restrict you from sharing it.

As a technical matter, DRM can’t work. Once one person figures out how to patch a DRM program so that it saves the files it descrambles, they can share that knowledge (or a program they’ve written based on that knowledge) with everyone in the world, instantaneously, at the push of a button. Anyone who has that new program can save unscrambled copies of the files they’ve bought and share those, too.

DRM vendors hand-wave this away, saying things like “this just keeps honest users honest.” As Ed Felten once said, “Keeping honest users honest is like keeping tall users tall.”

In reality, DRM vendors know that technical countermeasures aren’t the bulwark against unauthorized reproduction of their files. They aren’t technology companies at all — they’re legal companies.

In 1998, Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) into law. This is a complex law and a decidedly mixed bag, but of all the impacts that the DMCA’s many clauses have had on the world, none have been so quietly, profoundly terrible as Section 1201, the “anti-circumvention” clause that protects DRM.

Under DMCA 1201, it is a felony to “traffick” in tools that bypass DRM. Doing so can land you in prison for five years and hit you with a fine of up to $500,000 (for a first offense). This clause is so broadly written that merely passing on factual information about bugs in a system with DRM can put you in hot water.

Here’s where we get to the existential risk to all computer users part. As a technology, DRM has to run as code that is beyond your observation and control. If there’s a program running on your computer or phone called “DRM” you can delete it, or go into your process manager and force-quit it. No one wants DRM. No one woke up this morning and said, “Dammit, I wish there was a way I could do less with the entertainment files I buy online.” DRM has to hide itself from you, or the first time it gets in your way, you’ll get rid of it.

The proliferation of DRM means that all the commercial operating systems now have a way to run programs that the owners of computers can’t observe or control. Anything that a technologist does to weaken that sneaky, hidden facility risks DMCA 1201 prosecution — and half a decade in prison.

That means that every device with DRM is designed to run programs you can’t see or kill, and no one is allowed to investigate these devices and warn you if they have defects that would allow malicious software to run in that deliberately obscured part of your computer, stealing your data and covertly operating your device’s sensors and actuators. This isn’t just about hacking your camera and microphone: remember, every computerized “appliance” is capable of running every program, which means that your car’s steering and brakes are at risk from malicious software, as are your medical implants and the smart thermostat in your home.

A device that is designed for sneaky code execution and is legally off-limits to independent auditing is bad. A world of those devices — devices we put inside our bodies and put our bodies inside of — is fucking terrifying.

DRM is bad news for our technological future, but it’s also terrible news for our commercial future. Because DMCA 1201 bans trafficking in circumvention devices under any circumstances, manufacturers who design their products with a thin skin of DRM around them can make using those products in the ways you prefer into a literal crime — what Jay Freeman calls “felony contempt of business model.”

The most obvious example of this is in the Right to Repair fight. Devices from tractors and cars to insulin pumps, wheelchairs and ventilators have been redesigned to use DRM to detect and block independent repair, even when the technician uses the manufacturer’s own parts. These devices are booby-trapped so that any “tampering” requires a new authorization code from the manufacturer, which is only given to the manufacturer’s own service technicians.

This allows manufacturers to gouge you on repair and parts, or to simply declare your device to be beyond repair and sell you a new one. Global, monopolistic corporations are drowning the planet in e-waste as a side-effect of their desire to block refurbished devices and parts from cutting into their sales of replacements:.

DRM laws like DMCA 1201 are now all over the world, spread by the US Trade Representative, who made DRM laws a condition of trading with the USA, and a feature of the WTO agreement. Whether you’re in South America, Australia, Europe, Canada, Japan, or even China, DRM-breaking tools are illegal. But remember: DRM is a technological fool’s errand. So while there is no above-ground, legal market for DRM-breaking tools, there is still a thriving underground for them.

For example, farmers all over the world replace the software on their John Deere tractors with software of rumored Ukrainian origin that floats around on the internet. This software lets them fix their tractors without having to wait days for a $200 visit from a John Deere technician, but no one knows what’s in the software, or who made it, or whether it has sneaky back-doors or other malicious code.

And yet, manufacturers keep putting DRM in their products. The prospect of making it a felony to displease your corporate shareholders is just too much to resist.

Which brings me back to Audible. Back before Amazon owned Audible, I bought thousands of dollars’ worth of Audible audiobooks, and they worked great — but they failed badly. When I switched operating systems and could no longer get an Audible playback program, I was in danger of losing my audibook investment. In the end, I had to rig up three old computers to play my Audible audiobooks out in real time and recapture them as plain old MP3s. It took weeks. If I’d made the switch a couple years later, it would have been months (the “audiobooks” folder on my current system has 281 days’ worth of audio!).

Amazon bought Audible during a brief interval in which the company was taking on DRM. They had just launched the Amazon MP3 store, as a rival to Apple’s iTunes Store, which sold music without DRM, so users wouldn’t be locked to Apple’s platform. This was a problem the music industry had just woken up to, after years of demanding DRM, they realized that nearly all the digital music they’d ever sold was locked to Apple’s platform, and that meant that Apple got to decide whether and how their catalog was sold.

Amazon’s MP3 store’s slogan was “DRM: Don’t Restrict Me.” They even sent me a free t-shirt to promote the launch, because they knew my feelings on DRM.

When Amazon announced its Audible acquisition, they promised that they would remove DRM from the Audible store, and I rejoiced. Then, after the acquisition…nothing. Not a word about DRM. The Amazon PR people who’d once enthusiastically pitched me on Amazon’s DRM-free virtue stopped answering my email.

When I got new PR pitches from Amazon, I’d reply by asking about DRM and I’d never hear from those PR people again. I got invited to give a talk at Amazon and I said sure, I’d do it for free — but I wanted to talk to someone from Audible about DRM. The invitation was rescinded.

Once on a book-tour, I gave a talk at Goodreads — another Amazon division — about my work and when they asked if I had any questions for them, I raised Audible’s DRM and the senior managers in the audience promised to look into it. I never heard from them again.

Today, Audible dominates the audiobook market. In some verticals, their market-share is over 90 percent! And Audible will not let authors or publishers opt out of DRM. If you want to publish an audiobook with Audible, you must let them add their DRM to it. That means that every time one of your readers buys one of your books, they’re locking themselves further into Audible. If you sell a million bucks’ worth of audiobooks on Audible, that’s a million bucks your readers have to forfeit to follow you to a rival platform.

As a rightsholder, I can’t authorize my users to strip off Audible’s DRM and switch to a competitor. I can’t even find out which of my readers bought my books from Audible and send them a download code for a free MP3. Even when I invest tens of thousands of dollars of my own money to hire professional narrators to record my audiobooks, if I sell them on Audible, they get the final say in how my readers use the product I paid to create. If I provide my readers with a tool to unwrap Audible’s DRM from my copyrighted books, I become a copyright infringer! I violate Section 1201 of the DMCA and I can go to prison for five years and face a $500,000 fine. For a first offense.

All of this is so glaringly terrible that it prompted me to coin Doctorow’s First Law:

“Any time someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you, but won’t give you the key, that lock is not there for your benefit.”

It’s been more than a decade since Amazon bought Audible and it’s clear that their DRM policy isn’t going anywhere.

Which is why none of my audiobooks are available on Audible.

I don’t want to contribute to the DRM-ification of our devices, turning them into a vast, unauditable attack-surface that is designed to run programs that we can’t see or terminate. I don’t want my work to be a lure into a DRM-poisoned platform. I don’t want to make myself beholden to Amazon, locking my customers to its platform with every sale.

This doesn’t mean I don’t have audiobooks — I do! Early on, I worked with great audiobook publishers like Random House and Blackstone and Macmillan to produce DRM-free audiobooks which were sold everywhere except Audible. But Audible has the vast majority of the market, and it just didn’t make financial sense for these publishers to pay me a decent sum for my audio rights and then pay great narrators and engineers to produce books.

So I started retaining my audio rights in my book deals, and paying to record my own audiobooks. The first one was Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, recorded by @wilwheaton, with introductions by @neil-gaiman and Amanda Palmer, which explains Doctorow’s First Law in detail.

Since then, I’ve produced many more independent audiobooks, including the audio for Homeland (the bestselling sequel to my YA novel Little Brother, also narrated by Wil), Walkaway (a fabulous multi-cast audiobook starring Amber Benson, Wil Wheaton, Amanda Palmer, Miron Willis, Gabrielle de Cuir and others), and Attack Surface (the third Little Brother book, narrated by Amber Benson).

Generally, these books recoup and make a little money besides, but not nearly so much as I’d make if I sold through Audible. My agent tells me that if I’d been willing to set aside my ethics and allow Audible to slap DRM on my books, I’d have made enough money to pay off my mortgage and save enough to pay for my kid’s entire college education.

That’s a price I’m willing to pay. In the years since the Amazon acquisition, Audible has become the 800-pound gorilla of audiobooks. They have done all kinds of underhanded things — like buying up the first couple books in a series and releasing them as Audible-only recordings, then refusing to record the rest of the series, orphaning it. They’re also notorious among narrators for squeezing their hourly rates lower than anyone else. Audible also refuses to sell into libraries, so all the “Audible Original” titles are blocked from our public library systems.

I think audiences get that there’s something really wrong with a system where a single company controls an entire literary format. In 2020, I Kickstarted the independent audiobook of Attack Surface and broke every record for audiobook crowdfunding, raising $276,000.

But Audible continues to dominate. It is the only digital audiobook channel Amazon will allow, so anyone who searches Amazon for a book will only see the Audible audio edition. It’s also the exclusive audio partner for Apple’s iTunes/Apple Books channel, which is the only iOS audiobook store that doesn’t have to pay Apple a 30 percent commission on all its sales, so it’s the only audiobook store that lets you actually buy new audiobooks.

Other audiobook stores require you to buy your books with a web-browser (which avoids Apple’s sky-high commissions) and then switch back to the app to download them — a clunky experience that has ensured that Apple’s own audiobook channel — with its mandatory DRM — is the only one iOS customers really use.

Not surprisingly, a lot of people assume that if an Audible search for an author or book comes up empty, that means there is no audiobook available. They don’t think of searching for the book on Google Books, or Libro.fm, or Downpour. They never think to check to see whether the author maintains their own storefront, as I do, where you can get all their ebooks and audiobooks without DRM.

That’s bad enough, but it gets worse. So much worse.

Audible has a side-hustle called ACX: it’s a “self-serve” platform where writers and narrators can team up to self-produce their own audiobooks, which are locked to Audible’s platform and encumbered with Audible’s DRM.

ACX has some nominal checks to ensure that the audiobooks that land on its platform are duly licensed from the rightsholders, but these are trivial to circumvent. Here’s how I know that: on multiple occasions, I’ve discovered that my own books have been turned into unauthorized audiobooks over ACX.

Scammers claiming to have the rights to my books commission narrators to record them on the cheap, with the promise of a royalty split when they are live. Inexperienced narrators, excited at the prospect of recording a major book by a bestselling author, put long, grueling hours into recording them. Then the book goes live, and I discover it, and have it taken down. The scammer disappears with the profits from the sales in the interim, and the narrator is screwed.

As am I.

Because these illegal ACX audiobooks compete with my own, self-produced editions, for which I pay narrators, directors and editors a fair wage for their creative labor. These unauthorized ACX audiobooks show up in searches for my name on Audible and Amazon, where my own (vastly superior, authorized) DRM-free audiobooks are not allowed.

This isn’t an isolated incident. It’s happened over and over again. It just happened again.

Last week, I heard from Shawn Hartel, a narrator who got scammed on ACX by someone calling themself “Barbara M. Rushing,” who told Hartel that they held the audio rights to my 2017 novel Walkaway. They do not have those rights.

I spent about $50,000 recording a stupendous audiobook edition of Walkaway, which you can buy here for $24.95.

This audiobook has met with widespread critical acclaim and the print edition has been translated and celebrated around the world. But Hartel didn’t know that.

On January 11, 2021, he accepted an offer from “Barbara M. Rushing” to record the book and worked long hours to produce a 16-hour narration. On February 1, 2021, the book was accepted by Rushing. On July 7, 2021, ACX listed Walkaway for sale. On November 9, 2021, ACX took the book down, having figured out that it was infringing.

In the meantime, Rushing sold 119 copies and gave away ten more, diverting people from buying my own, DRM-free edition.

129 times $24.95 is $3,218.55, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s what Amazon owes me.

Now, I’m not going to sue them (probably). I don’t have the money or time to fight that kind of battle. For one thing, I have eight books (four novels, a YA graphic novel, a short story collection and two nonfiction books) in various stages of production right now, and I’m going to be producing my own audio editions for them, which is going to suck up a lot of time.

But Amazon does owe me $3,218.55.

I don’t expect they’ll pay it.

Anyone who’s paid attention to Audiblegate knows about Amazon’s dirty ACX dealing. The company has been credibly accused of more than $100 million in wage-theft from ACX authors and narrators, whom it has scammed with a combination of a one-sided refunds policy and out-and-out accounting fraud.

I know a lot about Audiblegate because there’s a whole chapter about it in Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We’ll Win Them Back, the book on creative labor markets that Rebecca Giblin and I wrote for Beacon Press:

Chokepoint Capitalism explains how large media and tech companies have cornered the markets for creative labor, and why giving creators more copyright won’t unrig this rigged game. The tech and entertainment giants are like bullies at the school gate who shake down creators for their lunch money every day.

To reach your audience you have to go through the chokepoints they have erected, and when you do, any additional copyright powers Congress has granted you is taken away as a condition of entry (think of how Audible nonconsensually takes away your right to use DRM law if you want to list your audiobooks).

If you give your bullied kid more lunch money, you won’t buy them lunch — you’ll just make the bullies at the school-gate richer. Giving creators more copyright inevitably results in those copyrights being transferred to Amazon and other monopolists. To get lunch for your kid — or justice for creators — you have to get rid of the chokepoints.

That’s what Chokepoint Capitalism is really about — not just how the markets got rigged, but how to fix them, with a list of shovel-ready, practical actions for local governments, national legislatures, artists’ groups, as well as creators, technologists and audiences.

We’re going to be rolling out a crowdfunding campaign for the Chokepoint Capitalism audiobook in a couple of weeks (the book comes out in mid-September). We’ve scored an incredible narrator, Stefans Rudnicki, who you may have heard on the Ender’s Game books, Hubris by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, or any of 1,000 other audiobooks. Stefan’s won a Stoker, a Bradbury, dozens of Audies and Earphones, two Grammys, and two Hugos. It’s gonna be fucking great.

And it won’t be available on Audible. Who owe me $3,218.55.

But you know what will*be available on Audible?

This. This essay, which I am about to record as an audiobook, to be mastered by my brilliant sound engineer John Taylor Williams, and will thereafter upload to ACX as a self-published, free audiobook.

Perhaps you aren’t reading these words off your screen. Perhaps you are an Audible customer who searched for my books and only found this odd, short audiobook entitled: “Why none of my books are available on Audible: And why Amazon owes me $3,218.55.”

I send you greetings, fellow audiobook listener!

I invite you to buy all my audiobooks at prices lower than Amazon’s, free from DRM and unencumbered by comedy-of-the-absurd “user agreements” that no one in their right mind would ever*agree to. They are for sale at craphound.com/shop.

Among those audiobooks, the $15 edition of Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, where I explain not just Doctorow’s First Law, but also my Second and Third Laws (my agent was Arthur C. Clarke’s agent; when I told him I had come up with “Doctorow’s Law,” he told me that I needed three laws). As noted, this is superbly read by Wil Wheaton, and Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer read their own intros:

Of course, you will only find this book if Amazon ACX accepts it. I’ve combed quite carefully through their terms of service and I don’t see anything that would disqualify this from being listed as an ACX book.

But then again, they say they ban books produced without permission from the copyright holder and we’ve seen how that works out, right? From poking around on ACX, it looks like Amazon’s main way of checking whether a user has the rights to a book is by looking in Amazon’s catalog to see if there’s already an audiobook edition. That means that if a writer refuses to sell on Audible because of their DRM policies, Audible will use that boycott as an excuse to let ripoff artists bilk the writer, the narrator and the listeners — because if there’s no Audible edition, they assume that the audio rights must be up for grabs.

Will Audible let me use its platform to give away a book that criticizes Audible? Or will they exercise their overwhelming market power to both abet a $3,218.55 ripoff and suppress a critique of their role in that ripoff?

Only time will tell.

[Image ID: A screengrab of the ACX page for the audiobook, showing that it is 'pending audio review]

Addendum: I wrote the above on July 4, 2022, just before submitting the audiobook to Amazon and leaving for a holiday. Over the past two weeks, I've checked in with ACX daily, but the audiobook still shows as "Pending Audio Review." ACX advises that this process should take a maximum of ten business days. It's been 15. Perhaps they're very backlogged.

Or maybe they're hoping that if they delay the process long enough, I'll give up. In the meantime, there is now a Kindle edition of this text:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5RWTPR7/

I had to put this up, it's a prerequisite for posting the audio to ACX. I hadn't planned on posting it, but since they made me, I did.

[Image ID: A screengrab of the Kindle listing page for my ebook showing it as the number one new release in antitrust.]

Bizarrely, this is currently the number one new Amazon book on Antitrust Law!

Also bizarrely - given the context - this book was taken down for several days due to a spurious copyright issue over the cover art, a cack-handed collage of some Creative Commons icons I put together with The GIMP. Amazon flagged this as a copyright violation (despite correct Creative Commons attribution) and took the book down, demanding that I change the cover art, ignoring my explanations. I was ultimately able to get the book restored by contacting someone I know at Amazon legal, who intervened.

I don't know if Amazon will ever release my audiobook, but I hope they do. In the meantime, you can listen to the audiobook of this essay for free via my podcast:

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_431/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_431_-_Why_none_of_my_books_are_available_on_Audible.mp3

ETA: Within a few hours of my publishing this thread, ACX released my audiobook. https://audible.com/pd/B0B7KH8KSD

Image: Paris 16 (modified)/CC BY-SA 4.0; Dmitry Baranovskiy (modified) CC BY 4.0

[Image ID: An anti-pickpocketing graphic featuring a stick figure reaching into an adjacent stick-figure's shoulder-bag. The robber's chest is emblazoned with an Amazon 'a' logo. The victim's chest is emblazoned with an icon of a fountain-pen. The robber's face has an Amazon 'smile' logo. The victim's face has an inverted Amazon 'smile' logo (and is thus frowning). Beneath these two figures is a wordmark reading 'Audible: Am Amazon Company.']

#audible #amazon #amazongate #creator economy #ripoffs #drm #digital rights management #audiobooks #books #publishing #writing #monopoly #doctorow's first law #pluralistic

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kygerbearr · 8 months

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can i get some information?

in hokkaido japan there's these rockets that hang from poles to show you where the road is when it snows over (due to the high elevation there)

also in arizona its illegal for a business to deny any person water because of how hot it is there. they also opted out of daylight savings time and all of america could also do that if they wanted, its just that every other state votes to keep it for some reason.

canada having bagged milk is actually only for the eastern side of canada. the western side of it not as much. also the backs of signs in british columbia are painted green

on google maps coverage of curacao, if you look down at the car there's a sticker on some of the roof rack on the car. this is consistent across curacao's google map coverage

buzz lightyear and woody are actually in the files in the original ps2 version of kingdom hearts 2 and a model for the world on the gummi ship menu is in some screenshots of early kh1 gameplay suggesting they intended on including toy story as a playable world from the very start i stole this image from reddit

polar bears are to my knowledge the only ursidae that actively hunt humans and are also the only carnivorous bears. at least i think. dont fact check it just trust me on this one

in gex 3 deep cover gecko for ps1 and n64, in the 3rd level Tut TV there's a sign on the wall that says "ankh if you're corny" but there's also an unused texture that says horny instead of corny this is the only image i have of it sorry that its small

thomas edison in fate grand order is a furry lion man who is every single president of the united states of america (past, present and future) built into one person. also his super move is proving God doesn't exist and he looks like this

this photo of the sun photoshopped into the background of a place is in the philippines and you can tell because of the color of the sattellite dish as well as the ads for cigarettes

thyis is a grizzly bear you can tell because hes brown. also they only really exist in alaska/canada/montana/wyoming-ish

oh yeah also tsela and yiska from the smoke room vn are names that are words in navajo. not exactly directly translateable as Diné Bizaad, the language of the navajo, essentially operates in "pictures". describing things and such. tsela can be translated to the best of my ability as "like stone"

while yiska essentially carries the message of "the night has passed" (used in both the word for Tomorrow and Saturday)

cynthia's last name, tsosie, essentially means "slender". I cannot provide an excerpt from my navajo-english dictionary since it's not in there, but it's also from 1958 and so its probably a little bit incomplete. the fact that she uses the name cynthia, a non-navajo name, reflects her decision to leave the reservation.

the name Begay is also a real life navajo surname that is an anglicization of biye', which means his/her son. i wish i could speak more on the accuracies within TSR's clifford route regarding navajo culture and history but that would be spoilers. all i will say is that the soap thing was a very real thing that was commonplace

speaking of clifford, his last name Tibbits could be a reference to Howard Clinton Tibbitts, a photographer who was well known for his photographs along the sites of the southern pacific railway which encompassed Arizona and into Apache and Puebloan territories. and yes, even Utah. rather telling

anyways that is an amount of information

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reality-detective · 7 months

Text

WIRES>]; ATTACK ON ISRAEL WAS A FALSE FLAG EVENT

_Israel with over 10,000 Spys in the military imbedded inside IRAN. Saudi Arabia and world Militaries.... Israels INTELLIGENCE Agencies, including MOSSAD which is deeply connected to CIA, MI6 .. > ALL knew the Hamas was going to attack Israel several weeks before and months ago including several hours before the attack<

_The United States knew the attack was coming was did Australia, UK. Canada, EU INTELLIGENCE...... Several satellites over Iran, Israel, Palestine and near all captured thousands of troops moving towards Israel all MAJOR INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES knew the attack was coming and news reporters (Israeli spys) in Palestine all knew the attack was coming and tried to warn Israel and the military///// >

>EVERYONE KNEW THE ATTACK WAS COMING,, INCLUDING INDIA INTELLIGENCE WHO TRIED TO CONTACT ISRAEL ( but Israel commanders and President blocked ALL calls before the attack)

_WARNING

>This attack on Israel was an inside Job, with the help of CIA. MOSSAD, MI6 and large parts of the funding 6 billion $$$$$$$ from U.S. to Iran funded the operations.

_The weapons used came from the Ukraine Black market which came from NATO,>the U.S.

The ISRAELI President and Prime minister Netanyahu ALL STOOD DOWN before the attacks began and told the Israeli INTEL and military commanders to stand down<

___

There was no intelligence error. Israeli intensionally let the stacks happen<

_______

FOG OF WAR

Both the deep state and the white hats wanted these EVENTS to take place.

BOTH the [ ds] and white hats are fighting for the future control of ISRAEL

SOURCES REPORT> " INSIDE OF ISRAELI BANKS , INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES AND UNDERGROUND BASES LAY THE WORLD INFORMATION/DATA/SERVERS ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING WORLD OPERATIONS CONNECTED TO PEDOPHILE RINGS.

]> [ EPSTEIN] was created by the MOSSAD

with the CIA MI6 and EPSTEIN got his funding from MOSSAD who was Ghislaine Maxwells father> Israeli super spy Robert Maxwell_ ( who worked for, cia and mi6 also)/////

____

The past 2 years in Israel the military has become divided much like the U.S. military who are losing hope in the government leaders and sectors. Several Revolts have tried to start but were ended quickly.

🔥 Major PANIC has been hitting the Israeli INTEL, Prime minister and military commanders community as their corruption and crimes keep getting EXPOSED and major PANIC is happening as U S. IS COMING CLOSER TO DROPPING THE EPSTEIN FILES. EPSTEIN LIST AND THE MAJOR COUNTRIES WHO DEALT WITH EPSTEIN> ESPECIALLY ISRAEL WHO CREATED EPSTEIN w/cia/mi6

____

Before EPSTEIN was arrested, he was apprehended several times by the military intelligence ALLIANCE and he was working with white hats and gave ALL INFORMATION ON CIA. MI6 . MOSSAD. JP MORGAN. WORLD BANKS. GATES. ETC ETC ECT EX ECT E TO X..>> ISRAEL<<BIG TECH

GOOGLE. FACEBOOK YOUTUBE MICROSOFT and their connection to world deep state cabal military intelligence and world control by the Elites and Globalist,<

This massive coming THE STORM is scaring the CIA. MOSSAD KAZARIAN MAFIA. MI6 ETC ECT . ect etc AND THEY ARE TRYING TO DESTROY ALL THE MILITARY INTELLIGENCE EVIDENCE INSIDE ISRAEL AND UNDERGROUND BUNKERS TO CONCEAL ALL THE EVIDENCE OF THE WORLD HUMAN TRAFFICKING TRADE

_ THE WORLD BIG TECH FACEBOOK GOOGLE YOUTUBE CONTROL

_THE WORLD MONEY LAUNDERING SYSTEM THAT IS CONNECTED FROM ISRAEL TO UKRAINE TO THE U S. TO NATO UN. U.S. INDUSTRIAL MILITARY COMPLEX SYSTEM

MAJOR PANIC IS HAPPENING IN ISRAEL AS THE MILITARY WAS PLANNING A 2024 COUP IN ISRAEL TO OVER THROW THE DEEP STATE MILITARY AND REGIMEN THAT CONNECTED TO CIA.MI6 > CLINTON'S ROCKEFELLERS.>>

( Not far from where Jesus once walked.... The KAZARIAN Mafia. The cabal, dark Families began the practice of ADRENOCHROME and there satanic rituals to the god of moloch god of child sacrifice ..

Satanism..... This is why satanism is pushed through the world and world shopping centers and music and movies...)

- David Wilcock

Something definitely doesn't seem right and destroying evidence has been going on for a long time, think Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11's building 7 and even Waco Texas was about destroying evidence. Is this possible? Think about it and you decide. 🤔

#pay attention #educate yourselves #educate yourself #knowledge is power #reeducate yourself #reeducate yourselves #think for yourselves #think about it #think for yourself #do your homework #do some research #do your own research #ask yourself questions #question everything #you decide

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strictlyfavorites · 19 days

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One state prosecutor and one civilian plaintiff have already won huge fines and damages from Donald Trump that may, with legal costs, exceed $500 million.

Trump awaits further civil and criminal liability in three other federal, state, and local indictments.

There are eerie commonalities in all these five court cases involving plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James, federal special counsel Jack Smith, and Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis.

One, they are either unapologetically left-wing or associated with liberal causes. They filed their legal writs in big-city, left-wing America—Atlanta, New York, Washington—where liberal judges and jury pools predominate in a manner not characteristic of the country at large.

Two, they are overtly political. Bragg, James, and Willis have either campaigned for office or raised campaign funds by promising to get or even destroy Donald Trump.

Carroll’s suit was funded by left-wing billionaire Reid Hoffman.

Smith sued to rush his court schedule in hopes of putting Trump on trial before the November election.

Three, there would not be any of these cases had Donald Trump not run for the presidency or not been a conservative.

Carroll’s suit bypassed statute of limitation restrictions by prompting the intervention of a left-wing New York legislator. He passed a special bill, allowing a one-year window to waive the statute of limitations for sexual assault claims from decades past.

Until Trump, no New York prosecutor like James had ever filed a civil suit against a business for allegedly overvaluing real estate assets to obtain loans that bank auditors approved and were paid back in full, on time, and with sizable interest profits to the lending institutions.

Alvin Bragg bootstrapped a Trump private non-disclosure agreement into a federal campaign violation in a desperate effort to find something on Trump.

Smith is also charging Trump with insurrectionary activity. But Trump had never been so charged with insurrection, much less convicted of it.

Willis strained to find a way to criminalize Trump’s complaints about his loss of Georgia in the 2020 national election. She finally came up with a racketeering charge, usually more applicable to mafiosi and drug cartels.

Four, in all these cases, the charges could have been equally applicable to fellow left-wing public figures and officials.

Joe Biden, like Trump, was accused of sexual assault decades earlier by former staffer Tara Reade. Yet Reade was torn apart by the media and the left for inconsistencies in her memory. By contrast, the wildly inconsistent and amnesiac E. Jean Carroll won $83 million from Trump.

Jack Smith created the precedent of charging former president Trump for unlawfully removing classified files to his private residence.

But the government simultaneously did not charge Joe Biden for similar offenses. Yet Biden had removed files not for two years but for more than 30. He stored them not in one location but several.

His rickety garage was a mess, not a secure family compound like Trump’s estate. Moreover, Biden did so while a senator and vice president, without any presidential authority to declassify almost any presidential document he wished.

Biden never came forward to report the crime for over thirty years—until Trump was charged. Indeed, he was caught on tape six years ago, admitting to his ghostwriter that he possessed classified files but never reported it.

Bragg might have noticed that both Hillary Clinton (fined $113,000) and Barack Obama (fined $350,000) broke campaign financing laws. Neither was subject to federal criminal charges by local prosecutors.

An array of left-wing celebrities, politicians, 2004 House Members, former Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), and failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams have all recently challenged elections. They sought either to delay or redo ballot counting or, on the federal level, to sidetrack electors to ignore popular votes in their respective states.

These lawfare cases are part of other efforts that were highly partisan and without merit. Recall the Trump “Russian collusion” hoax and the “Russian disinformation” laptop farce.

In another first, some blue states are suing to take Trump’s name off the ballot for “insurrection,” a crime for which he has never been charged.

Total up the deaths, damage, and length of the summer 2020 Antifa/BLM riots. Then compare the tally to the one-day January 6 riot.

The former proved far more lethal, long-lasting, and destructive. Yet very few of the 14,000 arrested rioters in 2020 were ever prosecuted, much less convicted.

By contrast, the Biden administration sought to jail hundreds for crimes allegedly committed on January 6, such as “illegal parading.”

We are entering a dangerous era in America.

Ideology and party affiliations increasingly determine guilt and punishment. Opponents are first targeted, and then laws are twisted and redefined to convict them.

The left is waging lawfare with the implicit message to political opponents: either keep quiet or suffer the consequences.

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mindibindi · 8 months

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⭐(Re)Visit a Classic XF Fic [7/7]⭐

So, as part of The X files 30th anniversary celebrations, I took it upon myself to highlight some of the AMAZING authors I first read in this fandom. They were a HUGE part of my experience of watching the show during it's original run. For shippers, the original run was a marathon in faith, frustration and endurance. We were judged, dismissed, ridiculed and gaslit throughout. But in fandom, we found solidarity, and in fanfic, we found solace. (AND we won in the end, so THERE).

As a retired author, I also have a vested interest in pleading the case of older writers. Fanfic archives are libraries, not social media sites. Don't just read whatever comes up most recently in your feed. Search. Discover. Explore. Experiment. Yes, there are some differences in older fanfic culture that are evident in these seven recs. Characters may be understood differently in their original context, narrative style may also differ (more 1st/2nd person address that even addresses the reader directly), there may also be less clear trigger warnings and fewer opportunities for feedback/community. I know we all love AO3 and are grateful for its good works. But don't forget that there are other avenues through which to explore fanfiction.

For this final rec, I want to return to the first author I rec-ed. I urge you to check out her other works. The characters are sometimes a little overwrought or OOC but even when they are, her stuff is tremendously messy, sexy and fun. Here Mulder and Scully are perfectly in character in a rather rauchy scenario. (If you're a babyphile and you don't know the politics at play then ask an auntyphile to fill you in). I will post links below for all the classic authors I have rec-ed, along with a few archives you may want to check out.

Rec #7:

MSR, obligatory stakeout fic

Prompted by current events, Mulder and Scully discuss oral sex

Some knowledge of the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal required