Wednesday, October 29, 2025

Tech, crypto, tobacco, other companies fund Trump’s White House ballroom

 

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Tech, crypto, tobacco, other companies fund Trump’s White House ballroom

Follow up to previous post – Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing is nearly complete, see also: Via Bellingcat – New satellite images show the scale of demolition that has occurred on the East Wing of the White House – and as follows:

  • The New York Times “Obituary” A Pile of Rubble: After 123 Years, the East Wing Is Gone. Critics are outraged over President Trump’s demolition of the East Wing to make way for his $300 million ballroom. [includes historic photos]
  • CNN – Mum’s the word from workers on East Wing demolition, including some who say they’ve signed NDAs.
  • “The White House is owned by the American people and is managed by the National Park Service (NPS). This federal agency is responsible for preserving the cultural, historical, and natural legacy of the site.”
  • FactCheck.org: Trump’s White House Ballroom Sparks Questions About Funding and Ethic…“this is use of public office for private gain in violation of federal ethics rules.” He cited the Code of Federal Regulations, which says government employees “may not use or permit the use of their Government position or title, or any authority associated with their public office, in a manner that is intended to coerce or induce another person, including a subordinate, to provide any benefit, financial or otherwise, to the employee.”
  • MindWar: The Psychological War on Democracy – “The East Wing, as it stood for 124 years, was constructed under Theodore Roosevelt as an auxiliary space and guest entrance, and expanded by FDR during World War II, largely to cover construction of an underground secure facility known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC). The East Wing grew to be the First Lady’s domain, holding her office and housing her staff, while serving as the center of visitor access, social functions, and services tied to the White House’s ceremonial and public role….The enormous golden ballroom will be 90,000 square feet, if not bigger by now, at nearly twice the size of the White House itself and reportedly modeled after the Grand Ballroom at Mar-a-lago…”
  • Jim Sciutto, CNN: “US Secret Service has closed access to the Ellipse park where journalists had been capturing live images of the East Wing demolition. CNN had a photojournalist capturing live images of the demolition at the time. Reuters was also ushered out of the park.’
  • “The National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States (“National Trust”) is a private charitable, educational, nonprofit corporation headquartered in Washington, D.C. and chartered by Congress in 1949 to further the historic preservation policy of the United States. 54 U.S.C. § 312102(a). This Congressional charter obligates the National Trust to “facilitate public participation in the preservation of sites, buildings, and objects of national significance or interest.” Our mission is to protect America’s significant historic sites and to advocate for historic preservation as a core public value. President Trump has proposed the construction of a 90,000-square-foot ballroom on the east side of the White House campus, adjacent to the historic Treasury Building. Site preparation is already underway, including the demolition of a portion of the existing East Wing. “While the National Trust acknowledges the utility of a larger meeting space at the White House, we are deeply concerned that the massing and height of the proposed new construction will overwhelm the White House itself—it is 55,000 square feet—and may also permanently disrupt the carefully balanced classical design of the White House with its two smaller, and lower, East and West Wings…”
  • Tech Lords Suck Up to Trump by Paying for White House Destruction. The cost [and size] has tripled since the president first announced his plans for a massive ballroom [to $350 million and growing].
  • The names of the corporate and individual donors are here via The Hill, and include members of the administration.
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Tuesday, October 28, 2025

Marcin - I’d Like to Stay 85 Forever

October 28, 2025: Marcin performing at City Recital Hall in Sydney and the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) performing "Mountain" at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall. The Marcin performance is at 7:00 PM and is a contemporary guitar concert. 
City Recital Hall, Sydney 
  • What: Marcin - "Art of Guitar World Tour" 
  • When: Tuesday, October 28, 2025, at 7:00 PM 
  • Details: A contemporary guitar performance by Marcin Patrzalek, described as "one of the most talented guitarists of his generation" 
  • Duration: Approximately 2.5 hours, including an interval 


Is this hit guitarist faking it? No, but he’s so good you might think so

He upsets the purists, but this guitar prodigy has millions of fans – including Madonna.

When Polish guitar prodigy Marcin Patrzalek – known simply as Marcin – appeared on America’s Got Talent in 2019, he had already won two major European TV talent shows. But this time, there was a problem: the absence of a tragic backstory.
“The producers were rubbing their heads,” recalls the 24-year-old, speaking via Zoom from a recording studio in New York. “They were all saying, ‘Where’s the B-roll video for him?’ They had a big problem with it.”
Marcin, however, refused to play the troubled artist.

I’d Like to Stay 85 Forever

Now that I’m deep in my 80s, I’d like to stay here forever, and I’ll certainly try. I enjoy being here. The decade is the October of aging. And October is a lovely month, don’t you think?
To be sure, there are setbacks, such as the other day, when all at once I found myself on the floor. As I rose to leave the living room chair, it slid out from under me, leaving me astonished, my head banging against the piano keyboard nearby. So weak is my twice operated-upon back, so immobile my muscle-less legs, all I could do was sit there looking plaintively at my wife, Ginny, hoping for leverage, and recalling an ad on TV some years ago. A woman about my age now is on the floor, calling out, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” — her cry as noble as Beowulf’s or any tragic hero.
For my part, I felt more foolish than tragic. The fall was a reminder of the liabilities of the 80s. Yet these are more than counterbalanced by the gifts this decade brings. I have a great deal of free time these days, which I’ve chosen to fill in several satisfying if idiosyncratic ways.
I recite lots of poetry, sometimes to Ginny, often to the window. Poetry that has hibernated in my head since my 20s when I used to teach English and American literature at a university. I memorized great swaths of poetry then because it allowed me to talk directly to the students, eye to eye, as if the poetry existed not in a book, but in the air. Right now, if you turned me upside down and shook me (it really isn’t necessary), I could give you several Shakespeare sonnets, a Dylan Thomas villanelle, “The Mind is an Enchanting Thing” by Marianne Moore, the last lines of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” and all of the introductory stanza to Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.” That may sound like bragging about my memory, but I share it because I think it says something about the lasting power of poetry. Also to brag.

These days, I play more of the piano on which I knocked my head. Playing by ear, too lazy to learn to read music as a kid, my range used to be very limited, especially the chords. With time on my hands I’m getting a little better. You would never mistake me for Bill Evans, or Nat King Cole before his singing days, but my touch is pretty good, and I can do a fair job with “My Romance,” “My Funny Valentine,” “What’ll I Do” and nearly everything by the Gershwin brothers, Fats Waller and Cole Porter. At my age it’s a triumph to get better at anything.
Things I can’t do any more: Run. Play basketball or tennis. I also can’t worry myself to death, or I choose not to. Before my October years, there seemed to be nothing, however inconsequential, that I could not stew over until it grew as big and menacing as Godzilla at night. Nothing was too trivial for my troubled mind. No small rejection. Not the slightest slight. I once came up with a rule, “Nobody’s thinking about you — they are thinking about themselves, just like you.” I wrote it but I didn’t believe it. Now I hardly care if anyone is thinking about me, or not. Hardly.
My love of nature has grown much deeper in this decade. I had always felt an affinity with the natural world, but it was general, casual and fleeting. These days you can catch me at the window, gazing in wonder at the East River (estuary technically), and mesmerized by the shapes in the blue-gray water, the welts and eddies, the tides, the invading armies of the waves, the clouds reflected, looking like submerged sheep.
It’s not what you do in this decade that’s so unusual, or what you think, but rather how you think. The air changes in October. I find myself thinking far less selfishly, giving much more of myself to my friends and family.
In the poem “October,” the sublime Louise Glück found that these years presented one’s life with a cold clarity, as “an allegory of waste.” Me? I see only harvest. I seem to have been partly responsible for creating a crop of six extraordinary grandchildren (add your own excessive compliments here). Before my October years, I would write the same breezy daily note to each of them: “Love you.” Now I have the time and freedom to putter around in their lives, asking this or that, making private jokes. The kids seem to take my attention gladly, or are too polite to tell me they don’t. Either way I have a flourishing garden of young people with whom I can banter to my heart’s content. So I do.

The general improvement is this: In my younger years I was always looking ahead for whatever would befall me. Now I look at what I have. And as those in their 80s appreciate, what one has is considerable. I don’t fear winter, and I don’t regret spring.
The other night Ginny and I watched the film “They Might Be Giants,” with George C. Scott, who thinks he is Sherlock Holmes, and his psychiatrist, played by Joanne Woodward, who actually is a Dr. Watson. I finally realized what it’s about. The film’s title refers to Don Quixote, for whom the windmills at which he tilted might have been giants, though they were not. But the fact that Don Quixote thought they might be giants meant that his capacity for dreams was greater than his fears.
I still have those. Dreams. Dreams for my country and for the world. And love. I have love intact. Ginny, for instance, the remarkable old woman who helped me to my feet when I parted ways with the chair. My view of Ginny is one thing that October has not changed. I see her as a rescuer now, as I saw her when we married 62 years ago. Bright colors, cool winds, perfect weather.
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ICE Agents Can Now Be Arrested in Chicago

Unfettered and Unaccountable: How Trump Is Building a Violent, Shadowy Federal Police Force

ProPublica: “…Although ICE is conducting itself out in the open, even inviting conservative social media influencers to accompany its agents on high-profile raids, the agency operates in darkness. The identities of DHS officers, their salaries and their operations have long been withheld for security reasons and generally exempted from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. 

However, there were offices within DHS created to hold agents and their supervisors accountable for their actions on the job. The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, created by Congress and led largely by lawyers, investigated allegations of rape and unlawful searches from both the public and within DHS ranks, for instance.

 Egregious conduct was referred to the Justice Department. The CRCL office had limited powers; former staffers say their job was to protect DHS by ensuring personnel followed the law and addressed civil rights concerns. Still, it was effective in stalling rushed deportations or ensuring detainees had access to phones and lawyers. And even when its investigations didn’t fix problems, CRCL provided an accounting of allegations and a measure of transparency for Congress and the public. 

The office processed thousands of complaints — 3,000 in fiscal year 2023 alone — ranging from allegations of lack of access to medical treatment to reports of sexual assault at detention centers. Former staffers said around 600 complaints were open when work was suspended. 

The administration has gutted most of the office. What’s left of it was led, at least for a while, by a 29-year-old White House appointee who helped craft Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint that broadly calls for the curtailment of civil rights enforcement…

Meanwhile, ICE is enjoying a windfall in resources. On top of its annual operating budget of $10 billion a year, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill included an added $7.5 billion a year for the next four years for recruiting and retention alone. As part of its hiring blitz, the agency has dropped age, training and education standards and has offered recruits signing bonuses as high as $50,000…”


A tale of two chants: Why Starmer now casts even the British police as antisemitic Jonathan Cook


ICE boosts weapons spending 700% Popular Information. “…there have also been significant purchases of chemical weapons and “guided missile warheads and explosive components.” Seems rather important.


PRO-NATALISM IN ACTION:  Poland Has No Income Tax to Parents to 2 or More Children


STRONGER PEOPLE ARE HEALTHIER AND HARDER TO KILL:  Study links stronger muscles to reduced organ damage from obesity


Over 50% of New Online Articles Are Being Cranked Out by AI

Vice: “About a year ago, AI began outpacing human writers on the internet. For every one article written by a real-life, blood-bag of a meat puppet, slightly more than one was written by a machine. 

Don’t get all twisted up about “slightly more than one” article; it’s fractions, my friends. The news was broken when Graphite published a study showing that AI-written articles surpassed human-written articles by a small margin in November 2024. “We find that in November 2024, the quantity of AI-generated articles being published on the web surpassed the quantity of human-written articles,” “We observe significant growth in AI-generated articles coinciding with the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. After only 12 months, AI-generated articles accounted for nearly half (39%) of articles published. 

The raw data for this evaluation is available  The authors randomly selected 65,000 English-language articles using Common Crawl. The criteria for the articles reviewed were that they were at least 100 words long and were published between January 2020 and May 2025. To determine whether they were AI-written, the authors used Surfer’s AI detector. 

According to the study’s authors, most of these AI-written articles, though, don’t appear in either Google or ChatGPT. “We do not evaluate whether AI-generated articles are viewed in proportion by real users, but we suspect that they are not.” The authors didn’t speculate on Although the rise of AI-written articles (I’m not calling it content, darnit) was swift, it also plateaued relatively quickly.

 “While AI-generated articles grew dramatically after ChatGPT launched, we do not see that trend continuing,” the study’s authors wrote. “Instead, the proportion of AI-generated articles has remained relatively stable over the last 12 months. We hypothesize that this is because practitioners found that AI-generated articles do not perform well in search…”

See also NewsGuard – OpenAI’s Sora Spreads False Claims in the News 80% of the Time and a Russian Disinformation Laundering Loop that Relied on Microsoft’s MSN and a Member of Congress. 

This week’s episode covers the ease with which OpenAI’s Sora can generate realistic deepfake videos designed to spread false claims in the news at scale. We also unpack how a fabricated corruption claim about Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled from a fringe Turkish outlet through Russian media to the mainstream platform MSN operated by Microsoft and a member of Congress, before returning to Moscow as supposed “proof.”


ICE Agents Can Now Be Arrested in ChicagoMigrant Insider

 

Exclusive: FEMA Workers Improperly Collected Data About Politics of Disaster Victims Matt Taibbi, Racket News

 

Why We Must Protect Both Turning Point and Mark Bray Jonathan Turley


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‘I wanna kill him so bad’: Bikie turned Four Corners journalist in ‘fabricated message’ feud

'Cowardice wins': outrage as Chris Masters' lecture cancelled at historic Tuggeranong Homestead 

 Sally Pryor October 25 2025 
A planned lecture by renowned war correspondent Chris Masters has been cancelled, amid reports the venue owners were worried his speech would be too controversial.

 

 ‘I wanna kill him so bad’: Bikie turned Four Corners journalist in ‘fabricated message’ feud 


By Kate McClymont and Calum Jaspan October 25, 2025  

An ongoing feud between a former bikie member turned Four Corners reporter and his ex-podcast host, a former felon, has escalated amid claims of fabricated text messages in which the ABC journalist allegedly describes a well-known YouTube figure as a “f---in’ rat” whom he wanted to kill.

 Mahmood Fazal, a former member of the Mongols bikie gang who has worked as an investigative reporter with the ABC since 2021, has accused former associate Ryan Naumenko of fabricating an explosive text message in which Fazal speaks out against YouTube figure Jordan Shanks, known online as FriendlyJordies.


In the encrypted text exchanges between the pair, screenshots of which have been seen by this masthead, Fazal sent a text to Naumenko on the evening of October 2 saying: “F--- Jordies and his people they’re dogs I wanna kill him so bad.”
The previous day, Shanks had released a video, They Tried to Kill Me, in which he complained that the only person who had been jailed over the November 2022 firebombing of his home had been the hired “muscle” for the Alameddine organised crime gang.
“I don’t know why hes [sic] crying…comes with the territory…u want to shit on gangsters and make fun of them in ur [sic] video,” said Fazal in one message. In another, he said, “nah he [Shanks] has to get what he gets…”
Asked about the exchanges, the Four Corners reporter said the text message expressing his desire to “kill” Shanks had been falsified, while others had been taken out of context.
“You have put a fabricated message to me and select [sic] messages out of context. I deny any wrongdoing,” he said.
Naumenko, who describes himself as “part journalist, part outlaw” complete with a “30-page criminal history”, denied the fabrication claim, telling this masthead: “The old narrative ‘Ryan lies’ – doesn’t work and won’t work this time.”

Fazal has since made a statement to police and has applied for a personal safety intervention order against Naumenko.
In late September, a week before his explosive text messages, Fazal, 34, had launched a podcast with Naumenko, 42, called Word on the Street, which Naumenko said would “dive into the gritty underbelly of crime”.
But a bitter break-up between the pair saw Naumenko launch a savage attack on Fazal in a YouTube video aired last week.
On Thursday, Naumenko turned on the media, including this masthead, for reporting on the Fazal saga. “The vast majority of mainstream media, in my humble opinion, are absolute c---s,” Naumenko said on a YouTube video.
He repeated his previous allegations against his former co-host, including that Fazal demanded payment in cash, and that he had not told his employer, the ABC, that he was being paid. Naumenko later identified that the money funding the podcast was coming from online gambling firm Vegastars.
However, Naumenko said he would not be co-operating with the ABC’s investigation into what he described as Fazal’s “side-hustle”.
“Yes, Fazal acted very greedy,” said Naumenko, though he said their spat should have stayed online. “The media circus around Fazal shows Australian journalism’s true colours. Everyone’s got a f---ing angle, and integrity is nowhere to be found,” he said in Thursday’s video.
In the text exchanges earlier this month, Fazal said he wanted to run a favourable podcast about the notorious Alameddine crime gang.
Apart from 20 tit-for-tat murders, the Alameddine gang and rival Hamzy clan have engaged in kidnapping, arson and torture as they battle for control of Sydney’s lucrative drug trade.
Fazal, who is no stranger to drugs and violence, having been a sergeant-at-arms of outlaw bikie gang the Mongols, also said in the text exchange, “nah he [Shanks] has to get what he gets he’s a dog ratted me to jacks [police].”
Last year, this masthead revealed that Fazal had been reported to NSW Police for passing on threats from the Alameddine crime gang to Shanks, 36, and his producer, Kristo Langker, 25. Police did not take any action against 

Shanks’ house was firebombed only weeks after the August 2022 release of a contentious FriendlyJordies video highlighting the activities of senior members of the Alameddine network, including Fazal’s friend, rapper Ay Huncho, whose real name is Ali Younes.
Although an Alameddine foot soldier was arrested over the firebombing in December 2023, early last year Fazal was passing on threats that worse might happen if Shanks and Langker didn’t remove the FriendlyJordies video to which the Alameddines had taken exception.
In his statement to police on January 19, 2024, Langker alleged that Fazal had said to him: “These people kill people. If you don’t take the video down something bad is going to happen.”
Fazal is also alleged to have said, “Jordan has already been firebombed, what more could it take to take the video down.”
Langker told police that Fazal said he, too, was being threatened and that he had been receiving “furious” calls from Sydney builder Andy Nahas, who featured in the video and wanted it taken down.
Following the threats, the video was taken down.
Both Nahas, 37, and Younes, 28, were recently named in a police exhibit, tendered in a murder trial, as senior members of the Alameddine organised crime group. It is not suggested that either of them, or Fazal, was involved in the firebombing.
Last year, in response to questions from this masthead about Fazal’s role delivering death threats to other journalists, an ABC spokesperson said, “Mahmood Fazal does extremely challenging, impactful and important public-interest journalism for the ABC and the ABC stands by his reporting.”
Langker later emailed the ABC asking: “Does the ABC believe it is acceptable for one of their employees to pass on death threats to other journalists and then refuse to co-operate with police?”
“We have no evidence of any illegality or misconduct by an ABC employee,” an ABC spokesperson replied.
NSW Police said the investigation into the threats reported by Langker went nowhere in part due to the reluctance of Fazal to provide a statement.
While Shanks did not name Fazal in his recent video about the three-year jail sentence given to the arsonist, Tufi Junior Tauese-Auelia, 39, the YouTuber had a not-so-subtle dig at Fazal, saying, “Why do the Alameddines, an organised crime gang, give so much access to certain ABC journalists? Why is the ABC so ardent in defending these certain journalists?”
After seeing the video, Fazal texted Naumenko about Shanks’ quote referring to “certain journalists” having access to the Alameddines. After calling him a “f---in rat,” Fazal said he didn’t know why Shanks was “crying”, saying it “comes with the territory”.
Naumenko said in his YouTube video last week that Fazal had wanted to do a podcast episode “to earn some respect from the Alameddine crime family”. But he said that the “ABC wouldn’t let him, due to the stories tying him too closely with the Alameddine crime family”.
Naumenko told this masthead that the Alameddines were “pissed” at Fazal’s efforts early last year to get the FriendlyJordies video taken down. “It blew up in their face,” Naumenko said.
In the text messages the pair supposedly exchanged earlier this month, Fazal said to his then-podcast co-host, “Bro Alameddines still wanna hit me.” Fazal went on to say in the text that he planned to “make up to em” by doing a favourable podcast on the Alameddines.
“Better him than me but f--- him we should do a pod on that and get my story out,” he said of Shanks.
d for : 
“Nah, leave it,” Naumenko replied. “It’s not worth it. Seriously, jordies is a nerd, bro, he’s not part of OC [organised crime] why hit a house over a story it’s f---ing gay … Just leave it. I’m not willing to speak about it cause let’s be real you sent the f---ing threats, they f---ed you.”
Fazal replied that Shanks was a “dog” who “has to get what he gets”.
In response to questions about the exchanges, Fazal said in an email: “Ryan Naumenko has a criminal history, a history of harassment, and a documented record of dishonesty. As a journalist you should know that background is material when assessing his reliability and motives as your source.
“His previous allegations about the podcast are demonstrably false and it is surprising that the Heraldchose to publish them. Similarly, you have put a fabricated message to me and select messages out of context. I deny any wrongdoing.”
The former bikie turned ABC reporter won a Walkley Award in 2020 for the podcast series No Gangsters in Paradise, which detailed the bloody feud between Sydney’s warring Darwiche-Razzak families more than a decade earlier. Fazal was then hired by the ABC as an investigative reporter before joining its flagship current affairs program, Four Corners, in August 2023.
Naumenko, who delivered the recent public tirade about Fazal, has a colourful background. He has served jail time for drug trafficking and obtaining property by deception and has previously said he was once associated with “the mafia, scammers, conmen and drug dealers”.
The relationship between the two former underworld figures blew up last week after Naumenko alleged that Fazal had not told the ABC about his paid gig following an incident in Melbourne between the pair before the recording of their second episode. Naumenko said he had “fired” Fazal but would still publish the second and final episode.
Naumenko also said he paid Fazal $13,000 in total for his involvement in the podcast. On Monday, the ABC’s program Media Watch published screenshots of text conversations between Fazal and Naumenko, in which the ABC journalist requested that he transfer money directly to his account.
Fazal’s lawyer Rebekah Giles told Media Watch the ABC journalist had connected Naumenko with a production crew, and that any funds transferred to him were to pay those contractors. However, Naumenko provided further screenshots to Media Watch showing he had made direct bank transfers to members of the crew who produced the podcast.
Fazal had previously told the ABC he was not being compensated for his appearances.
The ABC last week announced it was investigating Fazal’s role in the venture following Naumenko’s on-air tirade about Fazal demanding cash payments for his involvement in the project.
“After the interview aired, which included gambling ads, his manager withdrew endorsement of the work. ABC management is looking further into this matter,” an ABC spokesperson said at the time.
When asked about the fresh allegations this week, the ABC provided the same statement, though added that management is now “thoroughly investigating” the matter.


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