I just watched the Octopus Murders which deals with the work and alleged suicide of Danny Casolaro. Much like the alleged suicide of Sam Webb who reportedly shot himself twice in the head Casolaro slashed his wrist so deep he sliced open the veins which permit him to grasp things.

The premise is Casolaro was led down the garden path by a deluded con artist and broke after he wasted his life savings and was about to lose his house.

I struggle with this. Not because some of Casolaro source were clearly a sociopathic manipulating basket case. But because even without the benefit of hindsight we are now living in an age where the very concepts Casolaro was trying to raise attention on, the rise of a big brother police state appears in the form of Palantir increasing embedment into the heart of the military, is now taking place.

Ditto Webbs Dark Alliance, which examines the links between many of the same people Casolaro wrote about, was late not only vindicated by the CIA and a US Attorney general but the concept of transnational crime and “nodes” where state actors now meet non state actors involved in the shadows and organized crime is now literally taught as a geopolitical reality in academia.

Yesterday I clashed with former Pentagon analyst Professor Paul Buchanan who wrote a very long piece largely, devoid of any real imperial data, on the rising issue of transnational crime in New Zealand. It made reference to New Zealand’s role in helping sell sketchy Russian gas.

Paul got his feathers ruffled when I said , commenting on a social media post, ‘basically that’s what I wrote in 1999’. I was referring to the subject matter and how like Webb and Casolaro my ideas took a hammering from the status quo.

And it later hit me the issue was nothing to do with our sources or our extrapolation of the fact. We Casolaro Webb myself were simply out of step with the prevalent dogma of the day.

As stated hindsight vindicated Webb.And looking on line at the archived work of Casolaro his meticulous note taking on the main episodes on American Five Eyes states including Nugan Hand the BCCI affair, big scoop or not, was a ground breaking compilation of the contemporary history transnational crime.

The issue Buchanan in reality was having wasn’t that I said, without meaning to be hard, that his ideas were not new or original ( or even very specific and well documented) it was I had called him out for reporting the old as news now it was politically convenient to do so.

In the 1990s 2000 when I wrote my first two books that dealt in depth with dirty Russian money, passing through New Zealand, the very same folks now bitching about Putin and the cleanest of his oil oglicarch’s cash would be the folk kissing their asses.

Buchanan may proclaimed he has discovered dirty Russian gas dollars passing through New Zealand EUREKA!!! But what his findings will never raise or ask is why was a New Zealand Prime Minister appointed the head of a slush fund headed by a Russian oligarchy. Mikhail Khimich Altimo Foundatio

While his ties included US lobbyist involved in the same Food For Oil Program that saw Texan Oscar Wyatt prosecuted for using the FFOP to bribe Russian oil oglicarchs.

Buchanan rest assured won’t talk about how politicians and the media gushed over Mikhail Khimich when the founder of Altimo promised to fund the Americas Cup and the ALl Blacks, the holy Grail of New Zealand sports. Nor will he point out the New Zealand schemes Khimich was involved in. Such as the Waiwrea bottling plant, that was later liquidated leaving a trail of broken creditors, was not even headed by Khimich. Rather it’s company structor ends in the US led by individuals tied the US DOD While the remaining NZ loose ends to Khimich include a Russian defector who according to local newspapers beat drink driving charges due to his valuable work with Western intelligence agents and another teller of fabulous tales who would be made the New Zealand consul to the Ukraine.

Buchanan won’t mention NZ ties to the same Azberjanni Laundromat used to peddle two dollars of Russian gas for every dollar of aid given to the Ukraine war effort by the same EU states buying Russian gas.

Or more precisely he won’t name their very cosy relationship with Israeli arms dealers not only helping oil despots stay in power but helping arm Islamic terrorist groups.

Or their very cosy relation not just with BP and the folks Marc Rich and Mark Thatcher rubbed shoulders with but with M16. Because to do so would be to ruin the narrative now being rolled out on transnational crime that it’s all the fault of rogue actors like Putin ( Saddam Quaddaffi ect). And it would expose the West own hypocrisy and its repeated role in installing the kind of problems that while making enormous short term profits for Western energy multinationals, inevitably create the kind of long term problem that comes back and bite in the bum.

Casolaro and Webb and my crime wasn’t we where about to expose once and for all the whole sordid circus. The crime was documenting the history of a never ending carnival of self service, sold as in the interest of national security when that couldn’t be further from the truth if you tried.

Report on the issue all you care. But don’t be so foolish as to suggest the state security apparatus is itself an enabler of corruption. Because cause to do so really is the self destructive choice for any academic planning a career to feeding off the Octopus’s tit.