ISRAEL, THE VATICAN, AND THE MAFIA - Another Blackmail Ring Revealed in 2025

Graphite is a software solution capable of penetrating all popular communications applications, including WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal, which are widely considered secure and encrypted. The entire Israeli cyber industry could collapse. Well, don't threaten me with a good time. If Paragon adheres to its ethical guidelines, it's unclear how dozens of noncriminal individuals ended up under surveillance. The answer is because it's [ __ ] a mafia operation, with the Vatican and the Israeli military intelligence and other intelligence agencies all getting in on it, and they're just selling these services to the highest bidder. So no [ __ ], a bunch of people that shouldn't be spied on are getting spied on. Duh. This—these are the founders of Paragon: Ahooden, on the right, a former IDF intelligence Unit 8200 commander, and he just happens to co-found this company with Ehud Barak, the ex-prime minister and IDF chief and Jeffrey Epstein's good buddy. He was deeply involved with Epstein, cited with him many times, visited him many times. These two dudes founded Paragon. It was noted that, quote, "since 2012, cyber-related and intelligence projects that were previously carried out in-house in the Israeli military and Israel's main intelligence arms are transferred to companies that, in some cases, were built for this exact purpose." Just to clarify, just to piss everyone off right now: Peter Thiel is like JD Vance's number one backer. Peter Thiel inspired JD Vance to become who he is today. Peter Thiel hired JD Vance early on in his career at Mithril Capital. JD Vance owes everything that he is to Peter Thiel. But it's obviously—it's a private company; they just all happen to be ex-Unit 8200 members. So like, stop being such an anti-Semite, you bigot. I mean, I'm just being anti-Jeffrey Epsteinite, not an anti-Semite. Like, lots of great Jews out there, but none of them are Jeffrey Epstein. So whatever they're doing, I'm not about it, and I don't want it in my school system, and I don't want it in my 911 system, and I don't want it in my hospitals, or [ __ ] anywhere. No thanks.

All of them generally benefit if they have the ability to blackmail a singer that gets out of line and starts talking about what's really going on in the music industry; or a journalist that gets some big idea that he's going to expose some crack cocaine smuggling scandal, or whatever it is; or a politician that's getting real idealistic and thinks he's going to hook and change something. It would be great for all the people in power if they had just mechanisms in place by which they could tell those people to shut the [ __ ] up kindly. And you better believe they do. Conspiracy theories are dangerous. Information is the oxygen of a democracy, with Republicans, with progressives, with libertarians, because this is not about right and left; this is about right and wrong. [Music]

All right, welcome back to another episode of Cancel Ian Carol. Um, today we're talking about another Israeli blackmail scandal that, at first, seemed a little more mellow, but then, as the story developed, we discovered that we had a lot of familiar faces in the mix, and it started to read a lot like a 4chan post, except that it was in mainstream news, breaking across the Italian press and then the world press. And as more details came out, we got names like Israel popping up over and over, names like Ehud Barak popping up over and over. If you're familiar with your Jeffrey Epstein history, and then we started to get names like the Vatican and the mafia. Um, and when it all came out, it was Mark Zuckerberg that became the hero of the story, which is still, to this day, like, I still can't quite wrap my head around Mark Zuckerberg being on the good guys team in the new Israeli blackmail scandal. Um, and maybe that's just a front; maybe, you know, maybe it's just because his money is on the line. We'll see. But regardless, it's a crazy story; it's hilarious; it's important; it's very instructive about the modern state of the blackmail industry, of the state of the industry that Jeffrey Epstein was attempting to build and move into when he unfortunately ceased to be. Um, and so studying this new blackmail scandal that's coming out right now in the Italian press will teach us a lot about the type of blackmail that we can expect to see in our politics today, the type of blackmail that we can expect to be in our businesses and in our corporate structures today. This is all the way down from the very top to the very bottom, and it's a hack-for-hire scam scandal where people are—where private companies are hacking people's private data, just, you know, on behalf of themselves, totally nothing to do with Israel. Um, we'll get there. And then they're selling it to the highest bidder. And so it really uh goes to show just how important privacy is and how complex the blackmail world is and how people of any amount of power become vulnerable to these types of scams and schemes. And it—it starts to rewrite our whole understanding of how power works in the world today. So, um, encryption is not safe. It's true. Your Signal's hacked, your WhatsApp's hacked, your Telegram's hacked. It's all [ __ ]. And maybe Mark is going to save the day, but I wouldn't count on it, because the black box has been opened, and these technologies are here to stay. So without further ado, let's get into a tale of two Ahoods. We have Ehud Barak and Ahooden showing up hot in today's episode.

And if you're not familiar with Ehud Barak, Ehud Barak is one of the stars of the Jeffrey Epstein show. Um, he was the prime minister of Israel from 1999 to 2001, leading the Labor Party when he defeated our boy BB Netanyahu—the, you know, back that time Netanyahu obviously has come back to haunt the world—but he was also the minister of defense of Israel from '99 to 2001 and from 2007 to 2012. But he has a long career in the IDF. He is one of—he shares the title, but he's one of the most decorated soldiers in Israel's history. Um, and that is a history of being involved in things like Operation Cast Lead, which was a horrific bombing campaign in 2008-2009. But his history with the IDF stretches back 20, 30, 40 years now at this point, I believe. Um, and he's been a commander in all sorts of secret military units. Um, and he was the director of uh Israeli military intelligence um in the mid-80s, right when, by coincidence, Jeffrey Epstein was just going away from the banking world and into the arms trafficking world and rubbing shoulders with dudes like Ehud and Robert Maxwell and Adnan Khashoggi—arms traffickers, uh sex traffickers, blackmail enthusiasts. And that is right around the time when Jeffrey Epstein seems to have evolved. So Ehud Barak is a big name; he's a big deal; and he still is walking free. He's a multi-multi-millionaire, living the good life, despite having numerous connections to the Epstein network, clearly documented on photo, video. He co-founded multiple companies with Jeffrey Epstein, and he's the co-founder of the company that is going to star in today's show. Surprise—Israel's at it again. Um, showing up on the team with him, another co-founder of our company today is Ehud Schneersohn, who is now a venture partner and a former commander of Unit 8200. If you're not familiar with Unit 8200, it is like the NSA of Israel; it is their tech spy agency, and they are infamous for their strategy of starting private companies from Unit 8200 veterans—people that were in Unit 8200 and then finished their years of service in the Israeli military and then go off to start their own private tech companies where they're just doing tech bro stuff, totally not on behalf of Israel. And then when they get caught spying on someone or hacking someone or, you know, doing something sketchy, it obviously has nothing to do with Israel or with Unit 8200, despite it being Unit 8200's overt strategy that they are, you know, doing this, um, because they're a private company, and that's some real good plausible deniability. And we'll talk all about it here, because the story started in a really subtle and simple way; it didn't seem so crazy; it seemed just like an Italian hacker or something, right? And it broke in October of last year, first in Italian press that we'll get to in a second, and then it spilled over into the mainstream press in America. Politico reported: "Massive hack-for-hire scandal rocks the Italian political elites. The president and former prime minister were among targets of hackers selling highly sensitive data." So, oh no, the government has been hacked—innocent little government; they could never have anything to do with this scandal, right? Wrong. We'll get to them in a minute. So this was published on October 29th by two reporters at Politico, and they're mostly reporting on what was already broken by the Italian press at this point. Um, and this firm was run by a guy—so it's—it's a—it's a private investigating firm in Italy, in Milan, I believe. Um, from a single room behind Milan's Duomo Cathedral, this 44-year-old IT consultant named Nunzio Samuel Calabro pulled off a stunningly audacious multi-year breach of a national security database, according to allegations revealed by Italian prosecutors. So this is being prosecuted by the law in Italy. Um, and it started to heat up pretty quick, but it's worth noting that Calabro previously boasted of penetrating the Pentagon with the Anonymous activist collective. So he was one of the Anonymous hackers back in his heyday. Um, and then he did so good at hacking the American Pentagon with Anonymous that apparently the Italian government hired him to lead a squadron of young software engineers to create and maintain databases for the interior ministry as part of a remote team, according to wiretaps recorded by investigators. So he was working for the Italian government, but he was double-crossing them and actually hacking their systems and collecting a shitload of classified data about the Italian government and about people. And at first it seemed like this was an Italy thing, and it seemed like it was just a rogue hacker thing.

Politico went on to report—or actually, this is act—technically from two days before—"Hacked info from Italy security databases sold to rich clients, prosecutors say." The Milan prosecutors allege the business intelligence agency tapped into three key government databases: one gathering alerts over suspicious financial activities—useful for business people, useful for the billionaires; one used by the National Tax Agency, with citizens' bank transactions—useful for the businessmen, useful for the billionaires, utility bills, income statements, etc.; and the police investigations database—useful for the mafia. You know, I mean, we're in Italy; the mafia is going to be involved, obviously. And you'll realize as we do more and more of these digs, you'll realize that the mafia and the mob and organized crime all around the world is pretty much in cahoots these days, it would seem, and certainly they still group up with their boys, but they're all working together, and they're pretty much all working with intelligence agencies from time to time, um, and usually with nation states like Israel and the US and CIA too. Um, and this story is no exception. So here is one of the Italian publications that was first breaking this story. It is a translation from Google Translate, so pardon their hilarious uh translation, you know, issues at times here. Um, "The hacker gang, dangerous for democracy, can hold institutions in hand." It's like—it's like freshman-level—freshman-level translation, but that's okay. The suspects, quote, "often promise and boast to be able to intervene on investigations and processes," meaning this hacker collective, which is going to grow dramatically as we watch this story unfold, is saying that they can actually tip the scales in court cases, tip the scales in political processes, in elections. And it goes on to detail more: According to the prosecutors, Pazali wanted to find some information from databases suitable to cast Letizia Moratti's image in a bad light, thus favoring the candidacy of Attilio Fontana. So this hacking data, this, you know, leak, whatever you want to call it, was being used to influence political elections. And in this case, that is specifically describing blackmail, because when you're digging up dirt on a political figure, trying to sway the election against them—whether you're going to them and saying, "Pay me money or else I'll release this information," or you're just trying to release that bad information in order to sway the election—that is all the same mechanism as blackmail. And that's where we start to see the pattern emerge, because gone are the days of needing to run an international child sex trafficking scheme in order to obtain said blackmail, because a lot of people have all the blackmail you'd ever need hidden inside their puny little devices, inside their phones, inside their computers. And if you can just get in there and root around in their little filywies, you'll probably find some pretty salacious stuff, because a lot of people that come into power have done so either through financial, shall we say, stuff, or they have power proclivities, like sexual stuff, like drug stuff, whatever their thing is—a lot of people have a thing—and if you can figure that thing out and either air it out to the press or blackmail them for money or for favors, the world is yours. And we all know who loves to do that and who is especially good at doing that, and we'll get to them in a minute. So in this article, they go into quite a bit of detail, but then they talk about the clients of the dossas—excuse me. So among those under investigation is Leonardo Da Da, who allegedly asked for and obtained information about his brothers for inheritance reasons and about his then-girlfriend, model and actress Jessica, and his right-hand man. So, and then also under investigation is Matteo Arpe and his brother Fabio for unauthorized access to the Alessandria branch of Banco BPM. So this is describing a number of different people that are under investigation for paying for these hacks in order to do whatever it was they wanted to do. And in this first reporting, it's all Italians, and it seems like this is just an Italy problem, and it seems like it's just a bunch of rich Italians trying to, you know, get a leg up on their spouse and their brother or trying to, you know, weasel their way through the banking system or trying to figure out [ __ ] about political figures to sway an election, here, there, whatever it is, you know, but you know, blackmail schemes are going to blackmail scheme, and [ __ ] quickly heated up as Politico published this report, saying: "Vatican, Israel implicated in Italy hacking scandal; leaked files reveal." Oh boy, did that escalate quickly. I haven't heard the Vatican come up in a mainstream media article about, like, a blackmail and, like, scandal type event in a while. Um, and so naturally my interest was piqued. We're still back in November of last year, right? Um, this article on the left, October 30th, 2024, and this Vatican Politico article, November 1st, 2024. So a private investigation firm made up of current and former senior members of the security services was alleged to have stolen personal information on politicians, including Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and public figures to be used for extortion, i.e., blackmail. Poor Giorgia; she must not be too happy about that. Italian intelligence firm Equalize, which allegedly hacked information on thousands of people, including politicians, entrepreneurs, athletes, and even musicians, is accused of working for Israeli intelligence and the Vatican. Police wiretaps leaked to Italian media show: Okay, how did Israel and the Vatican get involved in this? At first, Meloni was coming out describing the plot as unacceptable and a threat to democracy, which stuck all my hairs straight up. Um, where have we heard that phrase before? Uh, every time I hear a threat to democracy, I immediately think that you're dirty and you've got something to hide. And turns out Giorgia might—might just have a little teeny-weeny thing to hide, and it's not necessarily the blackmail; she might have been hiring this firm to do things too; her government might have been using this firm to do things too; it's a little unclear at this point. Um, it's unclear from the leaked documents why Israeli intelligence and the Vatican were involved with the controversial Milan firm and what the reasons were for soliciting information on Russian targets, but their presence in the dossier has dramatically expanded the scope of Italy's sprawling investigation. The job was a cyber operation. So they—they uh had some phone taps, and they listened in on some conversations, and they happened to catch a conversation um where a group uh of two Israeli agents at the firm's office came into the firm's office and had a discussion about a 1 million euro job. According to these wiretaps, the job was a cyber operation against Russian targets, including President Vladimir Putin's unidentified right-hand man. Don't know why Israel is so interested in going after Vladimir Putin's right-hand man. What would Israel have to do with the Ukraine and Russia? I mean, it's not like there's some global conspiracy going on here, right? Just—I—I don't know; it's kind of weird. Um, so uh suddenly Israel is involved; the Vatican got involved through a different element of this; I forget exactly what it was, but it was that—that the Vatican got mentioned in the conversation—we'll probably find it here—the Vatican got mentioned in the conversation as wanting to pay for information about a certain like gas deal or something like that. It's not clear if the Vatican is like deeply involved in the scandal or not yet, and I suspect we won't find out. But once you've got Israeli military intelligence and you've got the mafia, which come up frequently here, and you've got, you know, the Vatican jumping in there, it's like, all right, so we're talking about the deep state, organized crime networks; that's who we're talking about here. Since 2019 and until 2024, this firm has been hacking Italy's government files and people's personal files to build massive files packed with secrets and sensitive information, which he sold or planned to sell to his clients. Um, most of the firm's clients are large companies or major law firms which were interested in access either to gain an advantage over competitors, to succeed in court cases, or for extortion, i.e., blackmail. So everyone's getting in on the scam—scam like big companies are getting in on it; private individuals are getting in on it; later it turns out that the Italian government was probably getting in on it. Um, everyone's getting in on it, and they're all hacking each other and spying on each other. Um, so—so stuff is getting pretty weird. And then the Jerusalem Post: "Mossad agents allegedly—allegedly bought info on Russia from Italian firm marred in snooping scandal," same date, October 30th, and a lot of the details are the same, but they do give us more: Their prices range from €250 to hack a personal phone to tens of thousands of euros for a dossier on a specific individual. So if you're rich, you can now get your own custom Jason Bourne dossier on whoever you want if you just know the right hacking firm to hire. Um, hidden in some random closet in Milan, behind some government building, apparently, police found 800,000 dossiers in the company's vault. The list of targets they—they give you here included Italian President Sergio Mattarella, Ignazio La Russa, president of the Italian Senate, prominent political leader Matteo Renzi, singer Alex Britti, a 2020 Olympic 100-meter champion, Marcell Jacobs, and that's just to name a few. Obviously, there were 800,000 dossiers in this company's vault; that's like, I don't know—I mean, that's not all of Milan, but that's a lot of people. That's—and it's not just in Italy too, to be clear; it came out that these are also targets in European nations. So far, there have apparently been no identified targets of this hacking group in America, allegedly, and I do think that that's probably true, because Meta got involved, and Meta is doing their own due diligence, because it turns out that they were hacking people's WhatsApps and their Telegrams and their Signals, and we'll get to that in a second when we talk about what technology exactly they're using. Calabro highlighted that the Israelis were acting not only on their behalf but also on behalf of additional intelligence agencies during the phone call. The Italian hacker mentioned the Vatican. So there were Israeli spies coming into this office and having conversations with these hackers, and they were apparently saying on their calls that they were also acting on behalf of other intelligence agencies—I presume the CIA, my speculation; I presume Italian, you know, intelligence agencies, whatever they're called; I don't know what they're called—my speculation. And apparently the Vatican's own intelligence agency, which if—I mean, I don't know what they're called, but let's just call them the [ __ ] Illuminati, because like, come on, this shit's getting weird. According to the police documents, which include thousands of pages, the Israeli agents also offered to share with the Italian firm information about the illicit traffic of Iranian gas in Italy, and that's part of this whole other gas deal that was going on. Um, and that is where we get to these Israelis and why the [ __ ] is Israel so involved. And this is where we get our tale of two Ahoods; this is where we get to the Jeffrey Epstein network's connections here.

And now for a word from our sponsor, mecanceling.com. If you want to help support what I do, help support the show, uh help support me getting my dog the finest meats and cuts um so she can be scrumdly, have a silky coat, have healthy teeth, go to canceling.com, hit the shop, pick up some threads; we're going to be dropping some fresh ones here soon, um some exclusives here soon, um we'll let you know when that happens. And if you want Optimal Human—this is what I'm drinking all day long, and this is not—I'm not making this up; I love this [ __ ] so much—when the Bigly Boys asked if I wanted to sell it, I said, "No, I want you to send it to me so I can drink it, because I'm not going to sell any [ __ ] that I'm not drinking." Um, but I did already know a that this is a founder and family-owned—well, I mean, the Bigly Boys aren't quite a family, but this is a founder-owned company, and the Bigly Boys that are selling this, they own their company outright, and so when I'm working with them, I know for a fact who I'm working for, and I know that there's no weird money people pulling any weird strings. Um, and it could not be better, because they could not be more based; they're so freaking chill. Um, and so if you want to get some healthy—if you're the kind of person that likes to drink healthy, that likes superfoods, greens, stuff like that—Optimal Human, legit; it's tested to hell; I genuinely feel it make me like clearer and like just—it's like a—it's not like a drug; it's just like a—I mean, if you've watched the show today, I'm firing on all cinder cylinders, bro. You see how we are. And it tastes good; I mean, most greens powders taste like [ __ ], but this tastes good, and I like to have it either plain or with a little lemon juice if I want it kind of like a—like a—and if I want a sweet version, then I put a little bit of energy drink in it. Um, and there's kind of like, you know, you can't really go wrong. So if you're the kind of person that likes to be healthy and wants to support the show, pick up Optimal Human on the website. If you just want to support the show with some threads, hit some threads; we'll be putting some new ones online here soon. Um, the best way to support the show is just by liking, sharing, subscribing, spreading this content far and wide. I purposely make everything that I do downloadable on TikTok and Instagram and X so that you can download my short-form videos and you can spread them to all your friends and you can redpill everybody with them, because ultimately the reason I do this is so that I can learn things and then so that I can share that learning and have a discussion with other people and learn more from them and they can learn from me, and hopefully that can inspire us all to just think a little bit more and to—to learn more, because it's our job to do that. Now we no longer have mainstream media telling us what's real; we no longer trust mainstream historians or mainstream pharmaceuticals or mainstream [ __ ] anyone, because they're all lying for profit. And so I'm going to tell you the truth. Um, I'm selling you this for profit if you want to buy it, and other than that, this whole thing's for free; it's just me and my dog in an Airbnb with some cool artwork that I made when I was a teenager, telling you some [ __ ] about some really horrible, powerful people. Um, and so I appreciate all of my loyal subscribers; I appreciate all of my ex-subscribers; I appreciate everyone that's followed me along the way, everyone that's bought some greens and everyone that's bought some threads; y'all are—

The [ __ ] thanks for helping out. Thanks for subscribing to the show. And now, back to where we get to the Jeffrey Epstein network’s connections here. And obviously, Jeffrey is not involved because Jeffrey is theoretically in the dirt somewhere, hopefully. Um, but the networks are all alive and well. Like, the blackmailers didn’t stop blackmailing, the child traffickers didn’t stop child trafficking. And to be clear, this is not a child trafficking scheme, thankfully, hopefully so far, but it is a blackmail scheme, quite clearly, um, as well as other types of extortion, as well as other types of hacking.

Yet News has really been covering this story very well, and it’s actually an Israeli publication. Um, I’m not super familiar with Wet, but it’s published out of Israel, and Tal Shah has been covering this story extensively. And so, in February of this year, we get “Israeli spyware Paragon scandal grows, Italian journalist, activists targeted.” Okay. We also get in the subtitle here that Prime Minister George Maloney’s government had to deny any involvement in the espionage scandal because they were implicated, and we’ll get to that a little later here. In recent days, three individuals critical of Italy’s government, including its handling of anti-Semitism within the ruling party, were identified as targets. Oh boy, what could ever go wrong? I’m sure this will never happen in the United States. I’m sure this is not already happening in the United States. I’m sure that my phone is completely fine. Um, CIA, if you’re in there, I love you guys. Israel, I’ll come kiss your wall very soon. Don’t worry about it.

Because it turned out that last week, Meta alleged that Paragon, which is an Israeli tech firm, Paragon’s spyware, Graphite, was implanted in the smartphones of about 90 people across 20 countries. Okay, a lot of them were journalists and political dissidents—exactly the kind of people that we’re supposed to be protecting with freedom of the press because they’re supposed to be holding criminals and the powerful to account. But when the criminals and the powerful are working together, they’re going to wind up spying on those journalists and hopefully not doing anything too bad to them. Jamal Khashoggi is a journalist; he got caught up in this little situation in the embassy in Turkey back in 2018. And let’s just say they, they, they chopped him up; they, they, they put him, they made him into lots of little pieces—a journalist from Saudi Arabia who just so happens to be a member of like one of the richest and most powerful families in Saudi Arabia, who are famous because a non-Khashoggi is one of the world’s most famous gun and sex traffickers in the 80s and 70s. Um, and Jamal Khashoggi, let’s just say he seemed to have ties to Saudi intelligence. But when a Saudi intelligence, when a CIA, when an Israeli intelligence officer gets, you know, whacked very publicly, it’s usually better to say they were a journalist, because at the time that was who Jamal Khashoggi was—is he was a journalist. He was being spied on using the Pegasus spyware, which is an Israeli-developed spyware that can implant into your phone with no clicking of any links; there’s no button; there’s no, there’s no text message; there’s no phishing scam; you don’t have any idea; they just send it to you, and it implants in your phone behind the scenes. You’ll never even know. And then it gives you complete control over that person’s phone; you can turn it on and off; you can use the camera; you can use a microphone; you can extract any data you want; um, you can go through their pictures, and you can track their location obviously, and listen to their calls and texts and all that stuff, um, and you’ll never know unless you, you know, get it forensically analyzed. And it turned out that after Jamal Khashoggi went chop-chop, they forensically analyzed his phone and realized that he was being spied on by this Pegasus spyware, and it broke up in this whole scandal all across the globe where people all around the world were being spied on by their governments and by criminal groups and by intelligence agencies using Pegasus spyware, and it turned into this big scandal for the NSO Group, which was the Israeli company that had founded this whole, you know, technology, and it kind of put an end to Pegasus. But technology never really goes back in the bag, and now we have Paragon. And Paragon is a new, um, a new Israeli intelligence company—uh, Israeli tech company, sorry, sorry; they’re, they’re not affiliated with the Israeli government at all; they’re a private company, and they’re just a tech company; that’s all they do; they just make hacking tools, offensive hacking tools that they sell only to good guys, clearly, only to good governments, you know, only to democracies. And then the idea is that those democracies would be using these hacking tools to target terrorists and bad guys, only bad guys, right? But like, if you wind up with some dude in Italy in a closet that just happens to be selling the services of this hacking device, this hacking tool to the highest bidder, so that governments can spy on journalists, so that, you know, bankers can spy on other bankers, so that Lord knows what can happen, so the Vatican can do crazy conspiracy theories—that’s just a private business thing; like, they can’t control it; they’re just a private business selling a technology, and Israel has nothing to do with it because these guys no longer work for Israel. We’ll get to that in a minute. Um, and so the, the involvement of Paragon kind of changed everything.

Consolo is one of these journalists in Italy that was uh, directly targeted by this technology, and he did an interview with, um, with this publication, Wet, and he said some pretty pointed things. He expressed disappointment in how the Italian government has handled the scandal: “If Italy is involved, I expect someone in the government to step forward and say, ‘Yes, we use Paragon’s tools, but only to catch criminals, not journalists. We will investigate whether anyone overstepped their authority,’ or at least to say, ‘It’s serious that a foreign government is spying on our journalists, and we will support you in finding out what happened, because no one should be spying on journalists. Let’s be very clear about this: no one should be spying on journalists.’ Just like in America, we have free speech; these are like very basic things, although in today’s world, it’s easy to pretend like it’s easy to realize that we actually don’t have these things, and so we get jaded. But like, no one should be spying on journalists. Let’s just be really clear.” “When used against criminals, terrorists, and drug traffickers, these tools can be valuable; criminal organizations have hacking capabilities too, so law enforcement needs the ability to counter them.” And like, yeah, it’s kind of fair, like I guess, but “Governments must be held accountable.” It’s like in Spider-Man: with great power comes great responsibility, and if you use these tools, you must do so ethically and in accordance with democratic principles. Italy, Israel, CIA [ __ ] good luck with that.

So a historic battle breaks out: Israeli cyber firm Paragon ready to face Meta in court. Let’s get to know our boys at Paragon, shall we? Um, so Meta sent a warning letter, um, to Paragon, basically being like, “Cut it out; we sell this product called WhatsApp, and we tell everyone it’s secure, and you’re really harshing our vibe by making it not secure. Um, if you could stop it, that would be great, or else we’re going to take you to court.” And I don’t really know if you’re allowed to take someone to court; it’s kind of like if you have like a, a, a play in your game of football, and then someone makes a play that’s better than your play, and your play doesn’t work anymore, and then they’re like, “Foul, yellow card,” whatever, like flag. Obviously, I’m not very much of a sports guy. Um, I don’t really know if that’s like actually allowed; like, can you sue because someone cracked your, they hacked your encryption? I, I think they can, but I mean, Meta seems to think they can, though. Following reports that Meta subsidiary WhatsApp sent a cease-and-desist letter to Paragon demanding it stop spying on its users, and this sent shock waves through the tech space, especially through the Israeli Zionist tech world, which is a big industry because, right after diamonds and blackmail and bombs—I’m, I’m joking; I’m joking; just jokes, jokes—tech is Israel’s biggest export. Israel is a tech machine, and they’ve been honing their tech capabilities in certain conflicts with certain, shall we say, captive populations that are within walls that they can surveil and spy on and use AI to do some [ __ ] to. Israel is the testing grounds for advanced AI surveillance technologies, and it’s not just Israeli tech firms; American tech firms all have offices in Israel where they test out little things here and there. Don’t ask too many questions; it’s not popular on the internet. And so the tech industry is freaked out by this lawsuit, by this legal action that Mark, Mr. Zuck, is threatening because, “If the NSO affair, the Pegasus spyware thing, repeats itself, the entire Israeli cyber industry could collapse.” Well, don’t threaten me with a good time; let’s [ __ ] go; let’s get it, Mark; let’s bring it all down. Um, gosh, that’s such a great sentence; I’m just going to read it again: “If the NSO affair repeats itself, the entire Israeli cyber industry could collapse.”

Over the weekend, Reuters and later the Guardian reported that Meta claimed nearly 100 smartphones had been breached using Paragon’s Graphite spyware. So Graphite is the name of the spyware. Most of the phones belong to journalists or human rights activists. Oh, and in this article—so the articles are not totally clear about Italy’s involvement here—in this article, he says, “notably the Italian government is a Paragon client.” In the previous article, he said that they are unclear as to whether the Italian government is a Paragon client. So I don’t know if we have confirmation about that yet or not. But Paragon and their new owner that they sold to last year, they’re, you know, devising a battle plan. The alleged targets are from 20 countries, mostly or including European nations, but no Americans were reportedly affected—a key factor in US litigation because, for example, the NSO thing involved 1400 devices, and some of them were Americans. Um, I believe Meta reportedly identified a group of targets tracked by Paragon software; however, doubts remain about whether Meta can identify these users or explain why they were monitored. Um, if Paragon adheres to its ethical guidelines, it’s unclear how dozens of non-criminal individuals ended up under surveillance. And the answer is because it’s [ __ ] a mafia operation with the Vatican and the Israeli military intelligence and other intelligence agencies all getting in on it, and they’re just selling these services to the highest bidder. So no [ __ ]—a bunch of people that shouldn’t be spied on are getting spied on, duh.

So let’s meet the founders. Founded in 2019, these are the founders of Paragon: Ahood Schneersohn on the right, former IDF intelligence unit 8200 commander. So he was the top of unit 8200; that’s the NSA director right there, and he just happens to co-found this company with Ehud Barak, the ex-prime minister and IDF chief and Jeffrey Epstein’s good buddy. He was deeply involved in Epstein; cited with him many times, visited him many times; clearly was one of the people that helped Jeffrey Epstein rise from his lowly position in the 80s up to whatever the hell he was in the 2000s. These two dudes founded Paragon, and then that company just so happens to wind up making a technology that gets sold out to this Italian firm, and then that Italian firm just so happens to be using it to hack all kinds of civilians and private citizens and government databases and all sorts of [ __ ] like. At this point, I don’t think we even know how many people have hacked it or how many different things they’ve hacked. And not just that, but they’re also getting visits from Israeli intelligence officers covertly throughout that time. So it’s not just that the Israelis developed the technology then sent it off to them to use, obviously with no backdoor built in; obviously, Paragon could never be scraping all the data that their program is used to hack into, right? Like, promise software, ringing any bells? But not only that, they’re actually sending Israeli intelligence officers to this dude to confer with him and to give them jobs and to transmit data and information, apparently, allegedly. And then we also have CEO Iden Nurk, Iiggore Bogdanov, Leor Abraham, and Lyron Alco. I’ll let you guess where they’re all from. Paragon was acquired last year by US private equity firm AE for $500 million, potentially rising to $900 million if the business goals are met—if they don’t, you know, get mired in this scandal. Here’s a little article about how Ehud Barak is the most decorated soldier in Israeli history, and you can research all about it and just know that basically everything that he’s decorated for, a lot of civilians died in pretty much all of them. And yes, I know that like Israel was trying to, you know, form itself, and they were at war for a lot of those, and you know, it’s complicated; it’s not trying to condemn every military operation that’s ever occurred, but Ehud is a piece of [ __ ]. So that’s pretty much how that works. Um, you can read all about how unit 8200 is not necessarily the most above board; they’re like hacking each other; they’re like hacking Israel; they’re just hacking all over the place. But this is a very important note; this is about Graphite, the program that was being used to hack everybody: “Graphite is a software solution capable of penetrating all popular communications applications, including WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal, which are widely considered secure and encrypted.” Yeah, so your shit’s not safe. This is just one of—I’m sure it’s the only one—the only technology that’s out there that can hack into your encrypted apps. Um, I’m sure that none of those apps were built with back doors from the beginning.

We’re going to skip the NSO Group history; let’s just say that Jamal Khashoggi didn’t wind up doing too hot after it was all said and done, and it has a lot of really interesting linkages to the Las Vegas shooting in 2017, and we don’t have nearly enough tinfoil out on this desk to do that one right now; we’ll do that another time. Um, so dive down that rabbit hole at your own risk. But it’s important to clarify, as reported by Intelligence Online, um, and this is corroborated pretty much everywhere: this is the point of this company, Paragon: “a specialist in the zero-click attack, which does not require the target’s interaction and is aimed at messaging services.” Paragon is increasingly seen as the new big name in the sector; its main rival, NSO Group, got screwed over because they screwed everyone over because they were doing bad [ __ ]. Um, it’s a shame that Paragon is also doing bad [ __ ], and it’s worth noting—we’re going to take a quick detour here—because Paragon is actually, ironically, a paragon of the Israeli, uh, technological, um, intelligence model, and this is largely reporting from Whitney Webb, um, about other Israeli tech firms that are built in the exact same mold, because this is actually an Israeli stated military tactic. Whitney Webb astutely reported on an article that was published in Calculist back in 2018, titled “Israel blurs the line between defense apparatus and local cyber security hub,” in which it was noted that, “Since 2012, cyber-related and intelligence projects that were previously carried out in-house in the Israeli military and Israel’s main intelligence arms are transferred to companies that, in some cases, were built for this exact purpose.” This is not unique to Israel; the CIA also does this because the whole point of having an intelligence agency is plausible deniability. And so, when you’re trying to get away with [ __ ] that you’re not supposed to do, you purposefully outsource it to a private company or to a private individual or to just an eccentric financier that has no one backing him, apparently, despite being surrounded by government assets like Ehud Barak, Robert Maxwell—you know what I’m saying?—because then if you get caught, Jeffrey Epstein gets caught, Pegasus gets caught, Paragon gets caught, it’s just a private company, and it has nothing to do with Israeli intelligence. You know, when the Iran-Contra scandal blew up, it was supposed to just be some private stuff over there; it wasn’t supposed to be traced all the way back to the CIA. And at least the CIA managed to cover up the fact that they had been transporting the crack cocaine straight into downtown LA via Freeway Ricky Ross; they managed to investigate themselves and clear themselves of any wrongdoing there because the point of covert operations is that the blowback is insane if it comes back on the nation-state that’s behind them all. And so, for a while now, all of the effective intelligence operations, especially Israel and the United States, have been exporting all of their covert operations, uh, groups, especially their tech ones, out into the private sector. And so they seem to be just tech companies, like Carbyne 911, which was actually founded with money directly from Jeffrey Epstein before he was caught, along with Ehud Barak, and if I’m not mistaken, Peter Thiel, yeah, was also involved in the founding of Carbyne 911.

So just to clarify, just to clarify, just to piss everyone off right now: shout-out Whitney Webb for this awesome reporting. She has so much like this. Peter Thiel is like JD Vance’s number one backer; Peter Thiel inspired JD Vance to become who he is today; Peter Thiel hired JD Vance early on in his career at Mithril Capital; JD Vance owes everything that he is to Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel is also the kind of entrepreneur that goes into business with Ehud Barak and Jeffrey Epstein to found companies like Carbyne 911, which is an Israeli tech company, just like all the others, formed out of Unit 8200, that is designed to combine all of the 911 reporting and, and like, uh, alert systems all across America into one connected smart database. So when you call 911 in Chicago, it would go into—if you know, if they get their way—it would go into a Carbyne 911 database, and AI would be parsing it, and AI would be connecting it and tabulating it and recording it. And then if you had a school shooting in Montana, it would be going into a Carbyne 911 database; if you had to call an ambulance, it would be going into a Carbyne 911 database. Their, their vision is that all of the EMS response systems in America are all unified under one database run by Carbyne 911 and funded by Jeffrey Epstein, Ehud Barak, Peter Thiel, and all their buddies. And I can only imagine what would happen when, shall we say, a journalist that had done a bad, bad—tried to call 911 because someone was breaking into his house—in order to, how do you say that YouTube-friendly—in order to have nothing to do with that journalist ceasing to exist. You know, for example, it would be really easy, to be clear, to cover up crimes that you want to cover up, to alter the criminal system, to surveil the criminal system, to frame people. And I’m just being conspiratorial here, but these are things that it would allow you to do. And I mean, Jeffrey Epstein is literally one of the founding funders of this company, so what do you think they’re really trying to do, right? What do you think the pitch was to Peter Thiel, JD Vance’s buddy? And I’m going on this tangent so hard because Carbyne 911 is this exact same model of company; it’s an Israeli cutout that they purposefully found, founded in the private sector so that it theoretically has nothing to do with Israel, but it’s just going to become an integral part of the entire American emergency response system. There are many others; there are companies that are the same model coming out of 8200 and being put into American systems that are specifically designed to be built into our public school systems in order to do lockdowns if there’s a mass shooting. But that means that you’re giving an Israeli tech company complete surveillance capabilities over American schools if they get their way and the ability to lock those schools down remotely—an Israeli company, but it’s obviously, it’s a private company; they just all happen to be ex-Unit 8200 members. So like, stop being such an anti-Semite, you bigot. I mean, I’m just being anti-Jeffrey Epsteinite, not an anti-Semite; like, lots of great Jews out there, but none of them are Jeffrey Epstein, and I certainly wouldn’t count Ehud Barak on that list either. So whatever they’re doing, I’m not about it, and I don’t want it in my school system, and I don’t want it in my 911 system, and I don’t want it in my hospitals or anywhere. No thanks. I’m getting so carried away over here. This article goes on and on, so like, all of these notes right here, all of these notes—this is all one article from Whitney Webb because she is a gangster. And if you’re not familiar with unlimited.com, you’re welcome; go get Unlimited Hangout; just, it’s free; it’s just a website; she publishes everything there; all of her co-reporters publish there. Unlimitedhang.com is a trip, and you will learn a lot. And there was one other company that was mentioned here: Black Cube. Oh, Black Cube. You remember the Harvey Weinstein scandal which Candace is reporting on right now, um, and to be fair, Candace’s reporting is starting to convince me that Harvey Weinstein kind of got framed for the job a little bit. I mean, he was a bad piece of [ __ ], but it was also, it seemed to be some power playing going on there. It’s, you know, we’re not done with the reporting yet, and I’m very curious to see what she uncovers. But when Harvey Weinstein started to get, shall we say, taken down, he went to his Israeli buddies because dual loyalty is not—I mean, obviously, like the loyalty question would never be real. But when Harvey Weinstein was in a pinch, who did he go to? He went to his buddies, um, Ehud Barak—shocker; Harvey Weinstein goes to Ehud Barak, who puts him in touch with Israeli private intelligence outfit called Black Cube. It’s just, it’s just a name; I mean, it’s just, it’s just a name. If you don’t know about the symbol, the religious thing that goes on with the, with the cube, and the—just look it up; it’s just—and it’s fine; I mean, like you can have your religious practice; it’s just a particularly like intense one. And when you have a spy firm called Black Cube being referred from Ehud Barak to Harvey Weinstein so that he can spy on his accusers and gather private details about them, um, in order to intimidate them and whatever else—it just, it is what it is; I mean, it just is what it is. Like, Israelis just found a lot of tech companies, and they’re especially good at spying on people for reasons, um, that I’m sure are just totally splendid.

So Israel is actively engaging in the strategy of founding tech companies using ex-military intelligence officers to just go do hacking stuff and to go do the infrastructure for entire parts of America’s technology and security network, to just go out there and, I don’t know, make friends with Peter Thiel and Jiggy Vance and all the other bros. And then when you start to look around the tech space and you start to just look at the allegiances out there, it starts to be a pretty sketchy place if you aren’t going along with whatever narratives you’re supposed to. Just going to put it at that, um, cuz I’m on the internet right now. So yeah, reporting is ongoing; it’s not entirely clear how far the scandal goes, how deep it went into the Italian government, and how complicit members of the Italian government were in this hacking scandal. It’s not entirely clear how involved Israeli intelligence was, but it’s clear they were involved. I am doing a fair bit of speculation when I talk about Ehud Barak’s ongoing involvement, um, and to be fair, he, he doesn’t need to be involved in an ongoing way; that, that’s not the point; you just, you, you found these things; you send them out to do a purpose. And so far, we’ve just had one scandal around one company where there was one kind of hacking firm utilizing Paragon’s software to hack everybody illegally; that does not mean that there’s not other ones, right? I mean, why is Israel’s technology specifically in Milan, Italy? Why’d they choose Milan, Italy, to have their Israeli intelligence officers going to talk to this hacker guy? Why are they trying to hack Italy’s government specifically and Italian privacy? Is there something special about Italy other than the mafia? I mean, that is a pretty big, you know, just a coincidence that the mafia is in Italy and the Vatican is in Italy. I mean, I don’t want to get too conspiratorial here, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s not other hacker firms just like this one in other parts of the world hacking other kinds of people, surveilling other kinds of journalists. A maybe we just…

Haven't found them yet. Because you wouldn't know if your phone was compromised by Paragon, by Graphite, or by whatever the next technology is. Right? How would you know? Because you didn't need to click on anything. You didn't need to open any links. You didn't need to receive any sketchy emails or text messages. They just put it on your phone remotely, and then they know everything they need to know about you.

So let's close with the modern state of blackmail, shall we? Because blackmail is more and more becoming a theme, and there's a reason for that. It's because I didn't really realize this—I mean, partially until I started researching, but also until I had some modicum of like, power to change the world or to influence people and things. Because when you're just kind of like a dude, like when I was working in a restaurant, you know, making kind of minimum wage and just like smoking weed and hanging with my friends, like being a 20-year-old, no one gives a [ __ ] about me. And I'm not like going to change anything, and I don't have any power, and I'm not like gonna be blackmailed. It doesn't matter at all. Like, who [ __ ] cares?

But like, relatively normal—like normal people—don't have to worry about this. But powerful people, it's a whole different world. Once you're a politician, or a tech financier, a banker, a rich person, a media influencer, it's a whole different world. And when you're living your 20-year-old life, you have no idea who you're going to wind up being when you're 30, 40, 50. And so most people are just being belligerent, debauchery, American type of people all the way until one day they get this new job, or they have this crazy opportunity, or they decide to run for office, or whatever it is. And a lot of people have skeletons in the closet. And if you come into this new world with skeletons in the closet, you can count on them getting exposed. Like, sorry, if you get powerful enough, there will be enough incentive for people like Paragon to hack into everything they can possibly find about you: your internet history, your internet data, and that includes like bank records, that includes transactions, that includes pictures and videos you've sent, received, watched—everything. It's all public, basically, for the right price.

And when that's the nature of the private lives of so many of our public people, a lot of them can be influenced, blackmailed, coerced—you name it. And all that is if we're acting in a vacuum, but we're not in a vacuum. We're in today's world, which was built on yesterday's world, but yesterday's world was built by an FBI whose director was blackmailed by the mob and the mafia for 50 years—J. Edgar Hoover—a CIA that was running blackmail and drug trafficking and weapons trafficking rings illegally behind the president's back for its entire history; an Israel that was founded on warfare, espionage, terrorism, and then allegedly blackmail. And that's just America and Israel. There's also Saudi Arabia, there's also Iran, there's also China and Russia, and everyone is engaging in the same tactics. Because blackmail is not—it—it—it's not—it's not a new idea. It is the most obvious and basic way to manipulate powerful people, and it's as old as time. And technology has made it accessible in a way that it never was before. And so now that everything is online, everything is digitized, everything is available for blackmailers. And so we entered this age with the blackmailers already in power: in the mob and the mafia and the intelligence agencies and the White House and all these other government organizations.

And so all of those people, right up to the bankers at the top of whatever conspiracy theory you want to spin, all of them generally benefit if they have the ability to blackmail a singer that gets out of line and starts talking about what's really going on in the music industry; or a journalist that gets some big idea that he's going to expose some crack cocaine smuggling scandal, or whatever it—or a politician that's getting real idealistic and thinks he's going to [ __ ] change something. It would be great for all the people in power if they had just mechanisms in place by which they could tell those people to shut the [ __ ] up kindly. And you better believe they do. And they realized, I presume, because it's not hard to think it through at some point over the last 60 years, that, hey, it would be better if we were promoting more corrupt individuals into positions of power, because then we control them, right? Because if you run the blackmail networks, if you run the hacking networks for electronic blackmail, you run the human trafficking networks for human trafficking blackmail, you run the drug smuggling networks for drug blackmail—all these different networks of crime and indecency and sloth and sin that all get utilized by corrupt individuals—if you're behind a lot of those, kind of working them and keeping tabs, then the moment that a corrupted person—you know, someone with a sex addiction, for example—comes into the government, into a position of power, oh look, you just got a new employee, right? The moment that a pedophile makes it into the government, you just got a new employee.

And so the deep state networks that run the organized crime networks—and they're obviously many different groups, and they're not all one blob, they all have their own agendas—but these groups, they are incentivized to promote pedophiles. They are incentivized to promote people that have skeletons in their closets. And that's why we get so many politicians with so many skeletons in their closets. Because the politicians are chosen by who gets the most funding from the groups that fund them. And so *One Nation Under Blackmail* is so much more than a title of a book that you should read. *One Nation Under Blackmail* is actually selling it short, because we are a world built on blackmail. And the moment that the world went digital, it sealed the deal. And now we're in this age where anyone can be hacked, and everything can be exposed, and all your secrets belong to the blackmailers the moment you get enough power to be worth their time.

And so there's only one solution, and it sounds corny, but that solution is to not be a piece of [ __ ]. And realistically, that is synonymous with God, whatever your god is, with some form of godliness, of doing the right thing even when no one's watching, because it's the right thing; of not engaging in behaviors that would be blackmailable, not because you're worried about that specifically, but just because you don't want to be a piece of [ __ ]. And if you ever personally—if you ever have any intention of becoming anyone important—if you're a kid right now, if you're in your teens, if you're in your 20s, here's my recommendation to you: be a good person, and don't do any dumb [ __ ]. And when no one's watching, when you're alone at night on your computer and you want to whack off, or you want to message that girl, or you want to buy some drugs, or whatever it is, just think it through. Think it through. What kind of person do you want to be? And if you ever want to be a person of any power, money, or influence, if you have any hopes of meaning something big in this world, you got to get there clean. Otherwise, you're going to wind up working for some of the dirtiest scumbags the world has ever known. Conspiracy theories are dangerous. Information is the oxygen of a democracy. With Republicans, with progressives, with libertarians, because this is not about right and left, this is about right and wrong. [Music] It's so sick where we can't talk, our security is at stake, responsibility.