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Decoding Trolls: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Decoding Trolls
Decoding Trolls decodes the meanings inside memes. Decoding Trolls sees any emotion-moving activity of body, speech, or mind as trolling. Trolling others' emotions is what we do as sentient beings. The point is to control it, through getting how it works. www.decodingtrolls.net
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- Yesterday27 min
Podcast | Crossing at Ceuta
This week, the bridge troll went to Africa. I want to talk about Ceuta, and I want to use what happened there to show how a migration crisis hacks our minds. Everything I learned on a wooden bridge in eastern Ukraine between 2015 and 2018 played out this week on a breakwater at the edge of Africa, on a scale I’ve not seen in all my years watching such crossings.50,000 at the FenceCeuta is a Spanish city on the African shore of the Strait of Gibraltar. It has been Spanish for centuries — longer than the United States has existed. About 83,000 people live there. On the land side it is bordered by Morocco, an ally of Russia, and the border is a double fence that runs down into the sea at a breakwater called the Tarajal.On Thursday the 30th of July, the border effectively stopped existing. Spain’s government counted roughly 50,000 people entering in about a day. The president of the city said 60,000. Take the lower number: it is seven in ten of the city’s population arriving in 24 hours. At least 57 human beings died doing it — most drowned, some crushed in a stampede at the breakwater. They were mostly young Moroccan men, with Algerians among them, and a great many unaccompanied children. Footage from the Tarajal shows young men wading ashore chanting Viva España. Another chant was simpler: Bye Bye Morocco, Hello Spain.Ten days earlier there was a trickle. Between 1,500 and 2,000 people had come across since early July, after Spain’s Supreme Court ruled that people who arrive by sea cannot be summarily pushed back. The ruling itself is a humane one — a court applying the post-World War II Refugee Convention, under which the right to seek asylum is sacrosanct. What was done with it was not humane. The Prime Minister says a self-serving interpretation of the ruling spread like wildfire through the smuggling networks. The gangs sold desperate people a rumour about an open door and marched them to the water. And 57 of them died in it. Whatever else turns out to be true about this week, that part alone convicts the people who organised the march. But it’s not the whole story. A rumour does not cross a militarised border by itself. Someone has to hold the gate open.The Goats Are the Original MigrantsLongtime listeners know where I learned to read a crossing. Between 2015 and 2018 I was a peacekeeping diplomat on the bridge at Stanytsia Luhanska, then the only legal crossing point between Russia-occupied Luhansk and the rest of Ukraine. In the counter-Disinfolklore manuscript, I called the armed men on the occupied bank what they were: armed Ruschist bridge trolls. My job was negotiating with them.The oldest troll story in our culture is Three Billy Goats Gruff. Three goats cross a bridge to reach new pasture, and under the bridge lives a troll who demands a toll. When I finally read that tale as an adult, standing where I stood, I saw what had been hiding in it all along. The goats are the original migrants — economic migrants. They just want a bit of extra food on the other side of the water. And the troll is the figure our stories have taught us to accept at every crossing since. He does not build the bridge. He does not own the river. He controls the one narrow place where you have to cross. And from that one place he controls the story of who you are when you cross it. Refugee or invader, returnee or criminal — you do not get to say; the one at the crossing says it.In the manuscript I put the whole engine of Disinfolklore in one sentence, and I’ll read it to you as I wrote it: stories that embed an inner- and outer-realm division in our minds, with invaders from the outer realm said to be threatening the sovereignty, security, and the prosperity — fertility — of our inner realm. That is the machine. Stories. That is the whole machine. Every migration panic you have ever been fed is that machine running. And I wrote one more sentence you should keep in your pocket this week: it is a story structure that becomes a cognitive structure. The border on the map gets built in your head, and then someone else decides who stands on which side of it.So when 50,000 people appear at a fence in a single day, the Disinfolklore analyst does not start by asking what the crossers wanted — 50,000 individual wants as old as our species: food, safety, a future. The analyst asks the bridge-troll questions. Who controls the crossing? Who opened it? And who profits from the queue?The Receipts from the GateStart with who opened it, because there the record is rich. Spanish officers who stood at the fence say the Moroccan gendarmes opposite them stayed passive while tens of thousands walked past. The Spanish police unions went further — and I quote them as unions, rather than as the government, because the government says the opposite. JUPOL called it a window of opportunity inside a strategy of hybrid war. J
- 2 weeks ago15 min
Podcast | Federov and Ukraine's Disinfolklore Channel
Four years ago I was scrolling a Ukrainian Telegram channel called Trukha. It is the biggest news channel in Ukraine. Over three million subscribers read it. It carries air-raid alerts, front-line clips, football, discount codes, the lot. And there, in among the news, I kept seeing a phrase: Kosovo i Metohija.Kosovo i Metohija is not a neutral name. It is the Serbian state’s irredentist name for Kosova, the name that says the territory can never be anything but Serbian. I know this because as a diplomat in the OSCE I often encountered the meme “Kosovo i Metohija” in the minutes of meetings. Often these minutes never revealed which country said what. However, whenever I saw the phrase “Kosovo i Metohija” I knew the speaker was speaking on behalf of Russia or Serbia - no other member state of the OSCE ever used that meme. Moscow loves that name. It is the frame Moscow borrows whenever it wants to say that borders are negotiable and that some nations do not really exist. And here it was, dressed as news, in the most-read channel of a country fighting for its own borders. I am not Ukrainian. I read the channel through a translator app. Even so, the meme stood out like a wrong note. That was my first sighting of what I have come to call a Trukha problem. Not just a problem with one channel. A problem with a form.This week the form became news itself.What happened this weekUkraine reshuffled its government, and its defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, left the post. Fedorov then said: that from the moment Trukha was bought by a new owner, the channel began working systematically against him, and he named the parliamentarian Danylo Hetmantsev as connected to the campaign (Detector Media, 16 July 2026: https://detector.media/infospace/article/251248/, and DSnews: https://www.dsnews.ua/ukr/politics/fedorov-zvinuvativ-naybilshiy-telegram-kanal-ukrajini-u-zamovniy-kampaniji-proti-nogo-16072026-463553). The activist Serhii Sternenko had already published an investigation pointing to a Kharkiv crypto entrepreneur as the likely buyer, possibly holding a Russian passport. The channel’s previous owner was mobilised in June and blamed the minister personally.Claims like these are easy to make and easy to dismiss. Everyone in a political fight says the media is against them. So I did what the Disinfolklore method always asks: I measured.What the data showsTrukha’s flagship channel publishes its full history on the open web. I collected 35,135 posts, everything the channel published from 24 March 2024 to 17 July 2026, and counted every mention of Fedorov by name. There are 126 of them across twenty-eight months.For two years the channel liked him. As digital transformation minister he appears as a steady good-news figure: online marriages in the Diia app, cashback for buying Ukrainian, 5G tests. When he became defence minister in January 2026 the channel amplified his own framing, often verbatim: his plan for the war. His Ramstein results. Elon Musk replying that he was “glad to help” against Russian drones on Starlink. On 22 January the channel even reported, straight, that Sternenko had become his adviser on front-line drones. In twenty-six months of coverage there is no sustained hostile frame anywhere.Through May he is almost invisible, and when he appears, the channel praises him. On 18 May it credits him with Ukraine’s first domestically produced guided bomb (”per Fedorov, development took 17 months,” post 137723). On 28 May it reports neutrally on infantry pay talks. Two mentions in five weeks. Both friendly.Then comes the evening of 5 June, at 20:01. The channel posts this, in its own editorial voice (post 138911, https://t.me/truexanewsua/138911):“And tomorrow we will tell you about the corruption in drone procurement organised by pan Fedorov. Yes, that one. Don’t switch.”News channels do not talk like this about their news. Campaigns talk like this. It is a trailer. Someone had decided, before the facts were shown to the audience, that the minister was now a target, and was building appetite for the reveal.From that post forward, the channel mentions Fedorov twenty times in six weeks. Eighteen of the twenty carry a hostile frame against him, or defend the channel against the people investigating it. The only two exceptions simply report President Zelensky’s own words after the dismissal. On 13 June the channel platforms Hetmantsev, the very man Fedorov later named: “We thought Fedorov spent five months preparing a reform, but he spent five months preparing a website.” The full post list, with identifiers and timestamps, sits in my archive and any reader with a browser can verify every one against the channel’s public record.The most important move in the data is subtler than volume, and this is where the Disinfolklore method shows its power.The mechanism: real
- Feb 7, 202651 min
Archetyping Bad Faith
There’s a key core module in the disinfolklore analytical method which is what I call the Code of Positive Trolls. It has six elements. The second element is ethical discipline. The first element is generosity.When a generous person—or when M’ockers is telling a story, what I might call Infolklore, on Volya 4 Ukraine radio space on X Spaces or Spotify —this is ethically disciplined, in the sense that it’s true. They’re not misleading us. As we all know, those of us who listen to M’ockers, she’s very careful about what she believes and what she lets be said. It’s ethically disciplined.The standard is set by international law, ultimately, from my perspective. Territorial integrity is sacrosanct. Laws against discrimination on the grounds of certain protected characteristics, the Genocide Convention—one of the most agreed-to conventions in human culture—and a whole plethora of legal instruments which are the expressions of ethical standards. I use that standard, the second element of the Code of Positive Trolls, to distinguish between Infolklore and Disinfolklore.On the fly, when you’re in your real life and dealing with people—you’re doing a deal, you’re talking about drones, you’re trying to get components, you’re a teacher in school with students firing stuff at you and you’re just trying to work out what’s going on—is this person in good faith? The first element of the Code of Positive Trolls, which I find particularly useful, is generosity. If I’m picking up genuine real generosity in the other, then I know it’s probably not intentional misdirection. It’s probably infolklore, not disinfolklore. When you pick up a lack of generosity in, say, Donald or others, then you can brand it disinfolklore.Archetyping Bad FaithThat’s the span between trying to decide in your immediate life whether this is true or not. The definitional disinfolklore is anything Donald says, anything MAGA says. Obviously, until you’ve archetyped them as bad, as not in good faith, you might be confused by little instances. Whereas now we know practically everything he says is bad, yet we still fall for the trolls.I was watching someone today who always talks about the Ukraine war and the battlefield. They justifiably go off on one and complain about this thing I’ve just spoken about—I skipped over it because I didn’t need to hear them say it as well—where Donald talks about the week and the ceasefire and all that stuff. Then the next story they’re talking about is Donald and the Indian oil deal. We have to try and maintain our consistency between these two manifestations of Donald. If you’ve archetyped him as bad and in bad faith and a con man, then when I find myself falling for one of his trolls—tomorrow he may say, oh, I’m thinking about sending the Tomahawks to Ukraine—we just have to resist falling for this.We know that everything he says basically is disinfolklore. We don’t know that with other people in our lives, and we’ve all probably experienced situations where you gradually discover someone you relied on and liked and thought was actually in good faith is really spinning lies or tricking you. Then you realise that everything they’ve said is probably what I would call disinfolklore, because it’s not ethically disciplined. It was untrue, it was falsities, it was manipulative—not manipulative in a positive way.Infolklore Versus Disinfolklore: The M’ockers ExampleAs Bill Terrier says on Volya4Ukraine Radio, the stories which M.ockers is telling are manipulative—stories on multiple layers. The way she tells them, however, the way she frames them, transforms them into infolklore. When she’s telling a tale of woe of some Ruschist mil-blogger who has published a story on Telegram to manipulate people in Russia into sending him money, or like Gherkin forever trying to persuade Russia’s government to do a full mobilisation—that is definitive disinfolklore, and these are the kinds of stories she’s telling. We can talk about those stories in a conscious way that transforms them into infolklore. We’re certainly manipulating each other by telling these stories, yet we’re not doing it with mean intent. We’re doing it out of generosity—a bit of light relief in the midst of the pain. We’re also raising money. I noted Wendy’s matching in An Accidental Ukrainian, which I very much appreciate.Re-Archetyping and the Kennedy CenterWe are moving towards an answer to a question posed by Scouts and indeed raised by Ioana about what is the truth. What James alluded to is that the truth, in inverted commas, is at risk of being defined by Donald and Donald’s attempts to re-archetype the Kennedy Center and indeed annihilate Kennedy, this hero of his youth that he wishes to destroy. It’s not enough to have RFK Jr. absolutely annihilate the Kennedys from the inside. I note all of the Kennedys’ letters and warnings
- Jan 26, 202632 min
Podcast and Pensées 128:
It pops up as a perennial troll: you’re in the countryside, something strange happens, and it’s attributed to a troll appearing and interceding. Trolls perform the same function as angels or leprechauns or banshees or Baba Yaga or rusalky. It’s all the same — every Indo-European culture has these substitutes for energy, to explain things.On Minsk: I’ve talked before about how my Disinfolklore Analytical Method allows us to look at any form. One takeaway from a lot of my work at the moment is to try not to treat these as organic or accidental emanations — just as seeing Elon in the White House archetyping himself with his son as the dark hero, Batman and Robin, is trying to affect our moods. Seeing these elements as part of a system might prevent us reacting to them as if they’re individual artefacts and moments in our lives. They’re very much part of what I would see as the coup or insurrection which, according to both the Georgia and federal indictments, began within the first moments that Donald Trump disputed the results of the 2020 election. The racketeering charge in the federal indictment tells us it’s a whole system, not just one moment. That perspective is essentially what I do in my work — selling perspectives on the quotidian, the daily elements, to help us understand ourselves, where we’re fitting in, how we’re affecting the culture.Our culture — which most of us have chosen to engage with on X — that’s our main entry point, our main power: to affect people’s timelines. We know how we’re affected by information we see. That’s why we’re part of this Volya community, because we think there’s power in communicating this understanding. What we can do is see this as part of the system and become Disinfolklore-literate: look for what I call Archetypal Disinfolklore, look for what they’re trying to archetype themselves as, how they’re trying to manipulate us, and then find ways of explaining and sharing this comprehension.I’d quickly reference the Tulsi Gabbard issue because it ties into what we talked about last week. I’m trying to give tools that help us discern the mana in the meme — the energy in the memes we encounter each day as we scroll, interact with our culture, and create our culture. Axios reported that Tulsi Gabbard is prepared to submit her resignation if Donald authorises entering the Israel–Iran war. There was also credible reporting that she was excluded from a meeting to discuss the impending war. From that, I deduced she is — as most of us know — recognised as being part of the Russian influence network, and they were trying to keep her out of that meeting. Her preparedness to resign over the Israel–Iran war complements my analysis of what is going on.What’s particularly interesting is that because of what we know about Russia’s economy — because we listen to Mokrushyna and Prints every day and Absurdistan — we almost uniquely as a community have a detailed idea of Russia’s economic state, its dependence on oil exports, and its dependence on Iran for weaponry since it was first reported in October 2022, when Iran was denying providing Russia with weapons and drones. Up until then, we didn’t know which way Iran would swing.I have this fixed flagpole in my mind: Russia does not want the United States to enter the war in Iran. Therefore, anyone who is suddenly out of character against this war — Tulsi Gabbard being one — we can use this as a good litmus test to know if they’re in Russia’s influence, whether paid or otherwise. It’s very particularly interesting to see which way Donald goes in the end. On one hand, he’s suddenly become like a Messiah to these patrician neocons who always thought of him as a clown, and now he’s offering them what they’ve dreamed about since 1979: bombing Iran back to the Stone Age. On the other hand, the MAGA element — Bannon and company, who’ve been leading the charge against Ukraine, which again is a litmus test for where these people’s loyalties lie.In this context, I look back at Gabbard’s video — the aesthetics, the Soviet-era aesthetics, the argument about World War III which we as a community understand. A highly educated, brilliant American friend contacted me and used this World War III meme. Whatever media she’s consuming is promoting it, and we’re very familiar with it from here.On the archetyping idea: this gave me the concept of re-archetyping World War III. I read a few pieces this week, which some of you will have seen, on what war looks like now — using what all of us have learned from watching how drone warfare has evolved, listening very carefully to Alan and Chuck Pfarrer and others. All of us have learned a lot about warfare, and because most of us didn’t know much beforehand, we’ve perhaps been more open to the new rules. I saw Trent Telenko’s post yesterday setting out the range of Shahed drones, which I don’t think any of us would be confident about defending against. We’ve seen how
- Jan 16, 202658 min
Podcast & Pensées 127: Russia’s Antisemitic Agitprop. Mental Hygiene and Visual Images.
First thing I wanted to talk about, which is something I noticed on my Twitter about five days ago. I first noticed I was getting a lot of pictures of David Bowie and the Rolling Stones. Never really liked the Rolling Stones. Really loved David Bowie from the age of about eight onwards. And that got me thinking, why am I getting this stuff on Twitter?And then I realized, ah, for some reason, I had cut off images. There was a setting in Twitter which I used as part of my incoming troll radar to block images. And so I would never see images on my Twitter feed, just text. And suddenly that disappeared. And then I looked for the setting and the setting had disappeared. And then I Googled it and I discovered two days before I worked this out, because I was wondering why am I, what is different about this experience? And what is different is I’m getting two channels of information and I’m used to only getting one channel of information on Twitter, which is just text.I would click sometimes on images to look at them if I wanted. But basically, it was my only way of controlling what was going into my mind, into my brain. And they got rid of the setting inside the app which is obviously very annoying because clearly there’s an intelligence behind this and what the intelligence behind this is trying to do is involuntarily feed us with visual memes which can have a greater impact on imprinting on our mind and printing archetypes on our mind. And so obviously that’s very annoying that I as the consumer who actually pay because it’s my main medium for initial writing.And the algorithm trolls me and I troll it and it inspires it. I’ve trained the algorithm so that it hits me with my for you feed is, every now and again there’s a bit of a change but it’s basically exactly how I, I’m pretty happy with it the way it is especially if I can cut out the images. And because of that, I pay for it. And it’s extremely annoying to have my experience determined in this way. That’s one thing, because I think of it as a violation of my right as a consumer or to have the experience that I want. And then I think also, what’s behind it? Why is the intelligence behind the algorithm trying to feed me images which I don’t want to see. It should be no skin off their nose. And it’s very annoying.So I worked out a solution for this, which I now have. I have quite a few different types of browsers on my phone, which I use for different applications. I use the DuckDuckGo browser now for YouTube stuff. It’s particularly well optimized for that and it doesn’t keep any of the cookies and I generally don’t have to sign in. And so, for instance, I was watching the great Chuck Pfarrer and Alan Brewer today on YouTube through DuckDuckGo.But now for Twitter, I am fighting my instinct, which is to always go for the app, but I now go for the, it’s on Firefox, and that cuts out the images. Unfortunately, it still has video, but it’s easy for me to scan through there. And I’ve been doing this now for about five days. So I just say that in the context of incoming troll radar, how do I control the information coming into my brain, coming into my mind, because we’re all dealing with so much of it. And the visual, the image element of it is something I can do without because I work in text mostly. I always add images to my writing and I consider myself mainly a writer, but I do use different forms of media. So I just suggest that if other people have found this lack of a setting, that’s my practical solution to it. And so far it’s working quite well.China and Russia: Territorial AmbitionsI noticed a tweet by Jay and Keeve the other day where he, Jay was referring to this. We’re seeing this story appearing more and more about the China coming in to take a bite out of China, taking a bite out of Russia. And I think it was actually mentioned on Times Radio today, which generally I don’t listen to, but I have started. They were interviewing William Taylor, who was the US ambassador to Ukraine in the late 90s and then the charge d’affaires after an acting ambassador after Donald and Lev Parnas and co got rid of Maria Jovanovich who I met in Dnipro once and who was really amazing really engaged with the granular aspect of what was going on in Ukraine. And so I listened to that interview. And even on that, which is quite mainstream, they’re referring to this idea that China is now talking about taking parts of Russia.And I think maybe it was even Genesis Man raised it today on their show about how there’s a game, there’s actually a game now in China developed, which is, you know, which part of Russia do you want? So I can really get behind that. But Jay and Keeve made a point which I agreed with because when I first heard about this latest round of scary stories about China, not scary from our perspective, but scary for the Russians taking parts of Russia in this latest round. It was about two
- Jan 11, 202658 min
Podcast & Pensées 126: Complicité between Disinfolklore and Staged Events
I was going to start with reasons to be grateful, because as you know, one of the four aspects of the model in the Disinfolklore Analytical Method for noticing how information — what I call Disinfolklore, or Infolklore — affects us and changes us is through our moods. Moods, attitudes, intentions and motivations: these are the aspects of our consciousness, our identities, our beingness, which are impacted. A good piece of Disinfolklore will affect all four. Attitudes and moods are more long-duration elements — of course moods can be immediate as well, but in terms of feeling happy or sad over a six-month period, Disinfolklore and indeed Infolklore can affect us greatly.When I talk about Infolklore, I mean really what Mokrushyna, for instance, talks about. Mokrushyna and Genesis Man’s partnership, for me on a day like today, buoyed me up, transformed my mood, made me happy. I love the way Mokrushyna tells the stories. The same story which is Disinfolklore when published on Telegram by the Rashists can be Infolklore when told with Mokrushyna’s mocking tone, drawing attention to elements we all recognise because we’ve been on this journey since February 24th, 2022, and some of us for longer.Not all news is necessarily Infolklore or Disinfolklore. Part of my self-appointed job, my little contribution to helping us navigate the current age, is to characterise some of it as Disinfolklore, some as Infolklore, and to communicate how I do this in my head using evolving criteria. When news affects our mood and/or our attitude and/or our intentions and/or our motivations, then it’s definitely in the realm of folklore or Disinfolklore.Reasons to be grateful today, given everything going on. Ukraine is, technically speaking, handing Russia’s arse to them. If we imagine everything happening — Venezuela, Greenland, everything in America — and we think of having this ogre in the back of our minds with Wagner, this storied mythological force able to fly in anywhere and do anything, we think of Russia having its four million tanks, the entire output of the Soviet Union. And then we see that Ukraine is handing Russia’s arse to it. Whatever happens from this moment forth, so much of that mythos and materiel is gone that it’s laughable when Russia is put in the same category as China, the United States, or the European Union militarily.People’s algorithms, their data-resistant archetypes, their data-susceptible archetypes — if they are changing, they’re updating in real time according to these stories, which could be Disinfolklore or Infolklore. Whether it’s Kupiansk, where Putler announced it had been taken, and now it’s clear not only was it not taken but Ukraine retook it and cleared out most of the Rashists. Pokrovsk, obviously under pressure, but from what we can see it seems to be holding, and we see videos of Russia’s annihilation there. These elements of a story have a capacity, when amplified enough, to transform archetypal identities in people’s minds. Ukraine handing Russia’s arse to it every day is a wonderful thing.Russian Arctic incompetence — absolutely wonderful. Mokrushyna was talking about it today. We hear this idea of a deal between the United States, Russia and China to divide up the world, and Russia’s propagandists are promoting it. But really, the guys around Donald — they’re not charity people. They’re hard-nosed. If they sense weakness, they pounce. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. If you can hold your own and pretend you’re rich enough in the country club, in Mar-a-Lago, you can be one of the gang. But if your Arctic seaports are falling apart and you don’t have any ships and your piers are crumbling — even Donald, whatever tie he has with the Rashists, will look at that and think, “Well, I was going to divide the world up, but...” That pressure is going on. Good to see.None of us — particularly those who made the decision to speak out after February 24th, 2022 — are scared of Russia. There may come the knock on the door, but none of it is in any way as bad as what every single Ukrainian faces every night when they fall asleep, if they can fall asleep. We’re not scared of Russia anymore. A whole decade’s worth of popular culture promoted this idea of Russia as a giant, a massive bear that had to be feared and negotiated with in a quiet voice. But because of what we’ve seen since February 24th, 2022, we’re not scared anymore. When we hear Disinfolklore about Greenland, about NATO collapsing, we can be grateful this isn’t happening when we still feared Russia as somehow equal to us. We have Ukraine and its strength and power.We have the 800 billion euros, which went almost without a blink — agreed last weekend in Kyiv with the national security advisors. 800 billion euros up to 2030 is a lot of cash. Ireland back in the day was getting sort of 10–11 billion over the whole course of a budgetary cycle and built all its motorways for that. An amazin
- Dec 26, 202518 min
Podcast & Pensées 125
The document dump. It reminds me of another aspect of my past, where I worked for this New York law firm called Fishbein Badillo Wagner Harding, which was closely associated with Giuliani and Herman Badillo, who was one of the first Hispanic council members in New York City. We also worked for Donald Trump. The case I was involved in — before I went to Cambridge to study law, so I was a paralegal — was a Bear Stearns matter, where Epstein worked as well. This was obviously long before Bear Stearns exploded, but when Bear Stearns exploded, I was not surprised.It occurred to me today as I was listening about the document dump: the chaos of these files is a catastrophe for Donald and everyone. There are tens of millions of documents. We have enough documents now to know there are tens of millions more to come. But from the perspective of a lawyer, you have — I’ll say infinity as a metaphor — infinity of different ways to charge particular criminals. Well, you don’t — there’s a set of different ways for any particular set of facts. You develop a theory, take a view on the most solid charges, and if the person is guilty of huge numbers of crimes, you try to take the most solid one.Any of us who followed the Stormy Daniels case from the first time Michael Cohen was charged and jailed — it was done on illegal funding of the election, because the payment to Stormy Daniels should have been registered. That was the most solid case they could make. Donald was unindicted co-conspirator number one. But then it was dismissed, and when it came back, it turned into a business records fraud case.By analogy, you can see the clearest case against Putler. He’s entitled to sovereign immunity because these are acts done as head of state. But because international law — this principle which sadly the current US regime and Putler and all the paleo-masculinist conservatives want to get rid of — holds that international law has primacy over domestic or municipal law, certain crimes cut through that immunity. The stealing of children under the Geneva Conventions is a really clear-cut crime. And the idiot has admitted to it. He is just as idiotic as Donald in the sense that if you were their lawyer, you’d constantly have your head in your hands, because they keep admitting to crimes from which they’re not immune. He has admitted on television to stealing these children, as has Lvova-Belova. The Council of Europe has established the tribunal to try Russia for the crime of aggression, and Putler and all the leadership will be responsible for that. They’ve committed so many crimes — the genocide case is going through, tortuous and complicated, and will go on for years. And the Compensation Commission was signed last week in The Hague.This is where Ukrainians will be able to claim compensation. And again, this goes back to Putler understanding what awaits him and Russia, and why they will never relent. There’s no chance, as far as I can see, unless the European Union gets catapulted into a Disinfolklore universe — which I don’t see happening at the moment, thankfully. When I made my Munich speech, I wasn’t sure. It was the same day President Zelensky was speaking in Munich, and J.D. Vance spoke the next day or perhaps that day as well. It wasn’t clear to me how things would go after the White House visit. The typical pattern would have been everyone trying to assuage the Americans and selling out Ukraine — that’s what had happened since 2014. But that didn’t happen.You see this huge pincer movement, like a lobster claw, against Russia — notwithstanding Ukraine’s execution of justice by blowing up long-term assets. Yes, it would be great to see him charged for absolutely everything, but this crime is serious enough that the key would be thrown away, and it’s the easiest to prove — he’s admitted it. They could convince even extremely conservative judges.Why hasn’t it happened? Unfortunately — I won’t go into too much detail for personal reasons — but I think five judges at the ICC are now sanctioned by the United States, including the chief prosecutor. I’m hoping that now Europe has to say to America: sorry, we’ve helped you for decades, but now it’s over. The chief prosecutor is accused of something which I suspect he didn’t do. We see this coalition between the United States, Israel and Russia trying to destroy the International Criminal Court — the apex of the system established after World War II. It was almost unimaginable that the ICC would be established before the Rome Statute was founded, around the turn of the century. Now Israel, the United States and Russia together are trying to destroy it through all sorts of disgusting means. I suspect the court is under great pressure, but the warrants for Putler’s arrest, and indeed Netanyahu’s, are still alive. The case against Russia is much stronger. I’d say it’s the best, the easiest chance of a conviction — getting a warrant against a sittin
- Dec 20, 202526 min
Podcast | Pensées 124
In the Autumn of 2019, I was trying to understand of what Don’s power/Mana consisted. I wanted to understand in order to counter how Don Disinfolklore used Twitter to roil humanity’s minds into believing trolls like the Hunter Biden troll or Pizzagate Conspiracy.At the time I was a diplomat in eastern Ukraine- I could see how Donald’s trolling even then had real world effects on the battlefield.So of all the gateway concepts to Master/Magister, I chose “trolls and trolling.”Then, when I formed the hypothesis in the note below about Trolls, Trolling and energy exchange, I became @DecodingTrolls to test the hypothesis and to troll others into perceiving how we become part of the problem when, unthinkingly / unknowingly, we perpetuate others’ trolls, like, for example the idea that Europe and Ukraine are “weak,” in whichever guise such trolls are conveyed.As emptywheel notes below, trolling and Don’s motivated trolls are CENTRAL to his mana/power. And the key/core/dominant determining troll that yields/yielded Don’s power was about pedophilia (cf. PizzaGate troll that recruited many MAGA adherents to their Magus Donald due to the disgust it engendered, unjustifiably, about his main rival Hillary in the minds of those who fell for the PizzaGate troll).This is why the public cover up through ‘redaction’ of the Epstein files goes to the core of Don’s Mana/power.“The very trolls that Donald Trump has relied on since 2016, people like Jack Bysiobieck, people like Benny Johnson, people like Charlie Kirk while he was still alive….There’s this whole group of trolls and they have been instrumental to Donald Trump’s ability to grab attention and refocus it somewhere else…In other words, these people, so long as social media, so long as Twitter is viable, they have been able to swamp the public’s fear with Trump’s b******t and in the process drown out other things.‘A new report by Reuters uncovered that in the first half of this year alone, President Trump’s family has raked in more than $800 million from sales of crypto assets. This on top of potentially billions more in unrealized on paper gains.’Now, much of this cash has been coming in from foreign sources, which doesn’t come as a surprise when we factor in.So they are an instrumental tool to Donald Trump, to his ability to be able to be always the center of tension, but ensure that it’s the kind of, you know, ensure that he can direct the attention where he wants it to be.‘Mr. President, why wait for Congress to release the Epstein files? Why not just do it now?’Donald: ‘I think you are a terrible reporter. You’re a terrible person and a terrible reporter.’Those trolls, that troll in the effort, is fundamentally tied to conspiracy theories about pedophilia.Fake worrying about pretend pedophiles is an easy way[…]…He relies on these trolls. These trolls rely on conspiracy theories about pedophilia. He installs these trolls as the FBI director and deputy director, and he’s stuffed.And then when he tries to make it go away in July, he can’t, those trolls at first, even the Psobe act…What happened is that he threatened those same trolls, the same trolls his power utterly lies on, and they stopped chasing Epstein. But by that point, it has this weight and salience throughout the MAGAbase…[Don’s chief of staff Wiles is] the same woman who’s telling us there’s no ‘there there’s inside the Epstein files, is also telling us it’s not central to Donald Trump’s power, which not only was it up to the moment in July when he tries to shut it all down, but if you look at what has happened since July, if you look at the way effectively Democrats plus Tom Massey plus Marjorie Taylor Greene have been able to take the speaker’s gavel away from Mike Johnson over and over and over again, it is fundamental to his power right now. “ [From Ball of Thread: Young Playboys Gone Wiles, 19 Dec 2025This material may be protected by copyright.]⚡️Trolls are energy (Mana) that only moves when we share them.Then, we become the troll.The informational unit (Troll) consumes us as it instrumentalises us to keep it in motion.Like a virus hacking our mind, the troll uses us to keep their troll moving.Ruschia’s Nordic troll monarch Putler is very successful at provoking us into doing his mental work.We are the petrol fuelling the troll, even when we disagree with its content.That’s the point of trolls like Nigel Porridge, in fact. Their oligarch backers pay to promote their trolls. Then, by reacting and perpetuating the trolls, we fuel and energise that which we think we’re opposing.We become the Useful I***** of Useful I******.One solution I’ve found if I must talk about Nigel Porridge or the Chef Wanger Nazi, the Chef of
About Decoding Trolls
Decoding Trolls decodes the meanings inside memes. Decoding Trolls sees any emotion-moving activity of body, speech, or mind as trolling. Trolling others' emotions is what we do as sentient beings. The point is to control it, through getting how it works. www.decodingtrolls.net
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