The durian fruit has been banned in hotels across Asia, has evacuated buildings in Australia and Canada, and yet now seems to be conquering Germany one fire brigade call at a time.
The Southeast Asian fruit’s smell, which resembles that of gas, was noticed by visitors to a shopping center in the city, located in western Germany.
Welcome, Germany, to the “Durian Panic Club” that includes basically every other nation that accepted the nature of shipped fruit to supermarkets in the last 20 years.
Your membership card is in the mail. It smells like gas.
(It’s not gas. It’s durian.)
In what can only be described as Germany’s most efficient journey from hungry ignorance to fruitful enlightenment, the Wiesbaden fire brigade was called out four times on Saturday to investigate the same gas leak that turned out to be a single durian fruit at an Asian supermarket.
Four times.
Four. Times.
Leave it to Germany to encounter a problem, methodically measure it with high precision instruments, find no rational explanation, and then… call the fire brigade, three more times.
“Zere is no gas connection in zis building,” one can imagine them saying, staring at their equipment in confusion. “Ze measurements show nothing. And yet… ze smell persists. We must investigate again, Hanz. And again, Franz…”
Meanwhile, anyone used to pausing to smell the fruit at a market, or reading the news from countries that eat fruit, is thinking:
“Yes. We know. We’ve known since… around 300 BCE. It’s delicious.”
The question isn’t whether Oracle is paying Tony Blair through his Institute (TBI) for lobbying and forcing top-down sales. The infamously untrusted and overtly political Palantir has proven lately that’s just the standard English breakfast fare for Big Tech.
Many feel that their professional judgement has been overlooked, and that this is yet another example of a top-down digital decision that lacks transparency and accountability.
Based on extensive evidence from multiple investigations and insider testimony, the real question should be: why are governments still taking meetings with Oracle’s TBI?
When a billionaire gives a whopping quarter-billion dollars to the former prime minister’s pockets, to gain extraordinary government capture of policies to benefit that billionaire, it’s not philanthropy.
Tony Blair is really just a salesman for the tech companies, and flies around the world looking for naive Governments who want to believe in magical solutions.
This isn’t just a UK story. Former TBI employees describe similar dynamics in developing countries, with the institute acting as what insiders call a “tech sales & lobbying operation for Oracle”
It’s almost like we know why the company was named an “all seeing” Oracle. Was the brand “Orwellian” already registered? What about “Orwellison”? At the Dubai World Government Summit, the Oracle’s main man Ellison was explicit about a very villainous sounding interest, telling his audience:
The first thing a country needs to do is unify all of their data so that it can be consumed and used by the AI model.
Consumed?
People who need care are seen by the big Oracle as consumption, to be used.
The first thing?
Imagine a doctor saying first to the patient get in here so you can be consumed and used by me. Chilling.
The Oracle man is saying out loud that the first thing he thinks a country needs to do is centralize all citizen data for extraction. This “value” model of use is simply inhumane, a repeat of the worst tragedies – populations treated as raw material to be used in centralized power.
Will his government platform soon say “Oracle Macht Frei” on its landing pages?
This Nazi phrase of human extraction was posted to “labor camps” where prisoners were worked to death, to the tune of “Arbeit macht frei, durch Krematorium Nummer drei.”
The deception of Nazism was in treating human extraction as liberation, which seems to be the same false promise behind TBI pushing Oracle’s cynical “AI transformation” as population-level capture by elites without any representation or exit.
TBI infiltration of government to normalize the Oracle plan is precisely the kind of technocratic dehumanization that enables atrocities, by treating populations as data to be captured inside systems designed for inescapable control, unnecessarily privatizing central power over life and death decisions.
It is no exaggeration to explain how this pattern is straight out of history, such that we know waiting until it’s “bad enough” to call it out means TBI walks away with pockets full while claiming to “know nothing” about how they did it. And that means waiting until it’s too late to prevent mass tragedy.
One can only imagine how Ellison and Epstein would discuss moving humans to a digital island for high exit barriers. It sounds like something out 1600s colonialism to be honest, if you think about the huge buildings built around London as displays of extractive power. The devastation wrought on nutmeg islands hundreds of years ago would be lost on most readers, unfortunately, but everyone has heard of Epstein.
In that sense it really doesn’t matter whether Ellison was on the “Epstein list” or not because we are talking about a modern metaphor to predict harms from certain billionaire behavior (private islands, capturing people with high exit barriers, treating humans as consumable resources). That’s a structural analysis for preventing measurable harms to the public.
So let’s fast forward, to how Britain’s NHS health records dating back to 1948 have an estimated commercial value of up to £10 billion. Oracle indeed has used capture of citizen data to reach £1.1 billion in UK public sector revenue since early 2022, with major government colonization worth hundreds of millions.
The concerning part, in other words, isn’t just a one time exposure, it’s the ongoing access – a form of colonnus. One investigation revealed that TBI staff were embedded directly in UK government departments while still on TBI payroll. Documents show that Technology Secretary Peter Kyle even instructed officials to work with TBI on the national data library project, writing plainly:
Attaching the initial scoping work from TBI here.
A bit on the nose. Which is why it apparently wasn’t hard for reporters to find 29 current and former TBI staff with damning accounts:
“When it comes to tech policy, Oracle and TBI are inseparable,” said one former senior adviser.
I was being pulled into what felt a lot like tech sales and tech PR… We had an angle, and the angle was more tech, big tech, all the time.
Oracle staff reportedly began sliding into TBI employees’ calendars to schedule meetings and “scope out opportunities”.
I’m definitely getting Epstein vibes throughout the reporting—not because Ellison is connected to Epstein, but because the pattern is identical: private islands (literal and digital), captured populations with high exit barriers, humans treated as extractable resources.
TBI looks to be engaged in a centuries old extractive structure of dehumanization.
Going through the Oracle and TBI papers means learning about innocent and often powerless people unwittingly coerced and then digitally captured by a billionaire who promotes tech islands where citizens are stripped of rights so they can’t easily get away from his consumption, to be used by him.
Tesla tried to use a loophole in regulation of public insurance by propping up its own private closed-loop system. The loophole may be closing, however, as its angry customers blow up like a SpaceX launch, proving Tesla once again is doing public harm that should have been predicted.
…accusations are based on the companies’ ongoing systemic failures and willful unfair claims settlement practices including, but not limited to, the following alleged violations:
Egregious delays in responding to policyholder claims in all steps of the claims handling process, causing financial harm, out-of-pocket expenses, potential third-party liability exposure, and distress to policyholders
Unreasonable denials and delays in fully paying valid claims to consumers
Failure to conduct thorough, fair, and objective investigations of claims, thus denying consumers the insurance benefits they expect
Failure to advise policyholders of their rights to have their claims denials reviewed by the Department – a major consumer protection in California to make sure insurers are held accountable by their regulator
Undermining consumer protections again while actively screwing consumers again? After decades of watching Tesla somehow avoid criminal charges, will they ever face a proper accounting?
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth still won’t explain the intelligence behind ongoing illegal US strikes on civilian boats in international waters.
There’s a simple reason, which should be most apparent to students of international history: it turns out that these aren’t drug interdiction operations. Venezuelan ships are being attacked to disrupt Iran’s financial lifeline—and Israel’s fingerprints are all over extra-judicial strike orders.
Hegseth Won’t Share Certain Secrets
The Onion understands Pete’s tragicomedy status as the least capable or qualified military leader in history
Venezuela has become a critical node in an Iran-Hezbollah money laundering operation. Cocaine moves through Venezuela, Hezbollah-connected facilitators handle the financial infrastructure, cash gets laundered through the Middle East, and proceeds fund Hezbollah operations against Israel.
Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami has been accused of helping Hezbollah members enter Venezuela and managing drug proceeds that flow back to Iran. Multiple investigations document how this network generates billions while helping Iran circumvent sanctions.
It’s running 1,500 miles from Miami, and it’s keeping Hezbollah operational after Israeli strikes degraded their capabilities.
Russia is Very Worried
Russia just responded to American attacks on these ships with warnings of “far-reaching consequences“. Putin isn’t defending drug traffickers, and he certainly isn’t standing up for civilian rights against targeted military strikes. Russia has $4 billion in Venezuelan arms sales, military advisers on the ground, and oil infrastructure as collateral for regime loans.
Venezuela is Moscow’s foothold in the Western Hemisphere. And Moscow is almost out of runway in their invasion of Ukraine. Some intelligence analysts predict Russia is approaching state failure next year, bringing foreign lifelines and networks into focus. That is essential context for Trump’s latest war mongering:
“They’re not coming in by sea any more, so now we’ll have to start looking about the land because they’ll be forced to go by land,” he added in an apparent threat to strike Venezuela.
Consider that Venezuela is Russia’s ally Iran’s cash cow, which is directly feeding the Ukraine war. These strikes on boats don’t just disrupt drugs—they attack the financial pipeline keeping Hezbollah funded and Iran relevant despite sanctions.
Israeli Intel Directs American Missiles
The strikes’ intensity and illegality—bypassing law enforcement channels, refusing oversight, offensive operations in international waters—suggest Israeli intelligence being weaponized through US military force.
Israel has tracked Hezbollah’s Latin American networks since the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires. The Trump administration’s designation of cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations” creates a framework allowing secret intelligence about Hezbollah financing to abruptly become targeting data for loud and proud American military strikes.
Hegseth can’t explain the intelligence because it would invite scrutiny of Israeli operational involvement in directing American force on foreign states. Secretary Rubio admitted the boats “could have been interdicted” through normal law enforcement. But interdiction means trials, evidence, due process, scrutiny.
This is 1960s assassination modeling dressed in 1970s drug war rhetoric, designed to destroy 1980s Iranian power and financial capabilities without current congressional authorization or public debate—in pusuit of immediate Israeli security interests.
The Looming Domestic Shadow
The framework being tested in Venezuelan waters transfers directly home. If the executive can designate “narco-terrorists” for extrajudicial killing based on secret intelligence about Iranian networks, the same framework applies to any group labeled “terrorists” domestically.
Trump has already designated Tren de Aragua as terrorists, invoked the Alien Enemies Act against migrants, deployed troops to cities, and effectively legalized racial profiling. The scaffolding is being built. The legal theories are being tested where oversight is minimal.
Phoenix Program started in Vietnam and came home to COINTELPRO. The infrastructure of targeted killings based on secret criteria always expands beyond its stated parameters.
Senator Frank Church displays the CIA poison dart gun at committee hearing with vice chairman John Tower on September 17, 1975 (Source: U.S. Capital via Levin Center, photo by Henry Griffin)
That’s what the Church Committee documented 50 years ago when establishing why democratic oversight requires transparency.
“We have every authorization needed. These are designated as foreign terrorist organizations,” Hegseth said…. Hegseth and President Donald Trump have not provided evidence for claims that the targeted boats were carrying drugs.
GOP “War on Drugs” Still Signals Race
These boats maybe were carrying cocaine.
The people killed maybe were traffickers.
But they’re being killed primarily because they’re part of a financial network helping Iran fund resistance to Israeli power. That means the US military has become the enforcement arm of an Israeli agenda.
Russia understands this.
Iran understands this.
The only people kept in the dark are Americans, told a yarn about drugs while their military establishes how the unitary executive can again kill anyone, anywhere, based on secret reasons only a Dick or Donald can know.
Richard Nixon 1971 presidential campaign button
That precedent won’t stay in international waters. It never does. We know this from the Nixon years. History rhymes even when it doesn’t repeat exactly.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
