Every weekend (almost) I share five articles/essays/reports with you. I select these over the course of the week because they are either insightful, informative, interesting, important, or a combination of the above.

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Someone on social media recently shared a video of two British talking heads discussing America, with one arguing that Americans are ‘conspiratorial by nature’.

I can’t agree with this assessment, as Americans tend to give others the benefit of the doubt more often than other people. But at the same time, there is a notable uptick in conspiratorial thinking in the USA, something that comes naturally when trust in ruling institutions rapidly erodes. The way that the government and the medical establishment fumbled COVID is testament to that, and nowhere is it more evident than in the hysteria around Jeffrey Epstein.

I’ve briefly commented on Epstein before, and my position has not changed since day one: this is not a sex scandal but a national security one. The “sex trafficking” charges (and convictions) were, in my opinion, nothing but a diversion, a smokescreen, from the real heart of the matter, one that enmeshed powerful people from all sides of the aisle. It’s a scandal that many wish would just go away, even if there are some partisans in Congress intent on using it for their own purposes.

Maybe ‘scandal’ is too strong a word? Maybe “affair” is the better latter half of the compound noun? I don’t know. What I DO know is that there is a lot more information that will come out in due time regarding Epstein and his “hobbies” that involved some of the most powerful people in the world. I am not making a moral judgment here, I’ll leave that to others. Mike Tracey has done a great job in digging in deep to reveal that pretty much the entire sex angle to the story is nonsense. The espionage side is bearing more fruit, however.

Recently, a hacker came into the possession of personal emails from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a close personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein. DropSiteNews received these emails and worked to verify the content. What they uncovered is very, very interesting, and is strong proof that Epstein was knee deep in the world of international backroom deals, especially involving the USA, Israel, and Russia:

Drop Site News

Jeffrey Epstein and the Mossad: How The Sex-Trafficker Helped Israel Build a Backchannel to Russia Amid Syrian Civil War

Jeffrey Epstein facilitated efforts to open a backchannel between Israel and the Kremlin during the Syrian civil war, according to leaked em…

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12 days ago · 653 likes · 7 comments · Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim

Jeffrey Epstein facilitated efforts to open a backchannel between Israel and the Kremlin during the Syrian civil war, according to leaked emails from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

The trove of emails, exchanged at the height of the Syrian civil war between 2013 and 2016, reveal Epstein’s successful efforts to secure a private meeting between Barak and Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a Russian-brokered end to the conflict, including winning Russian support for a negotiated removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Epstein was an invaluable resource for Israel’s former prime minister, who also served as head of intelligence and defense minister throughout his career, sharing whispers from within Russian elite circles and intel on Putin’s interlocutors in Europe and the U.S—and even advising him on how to engage with the Mossad. Barak, fresh out of his role as Israeli defense minister, built a deep portfolio of investments and business relationships around the world with Epstein’s help.

On February 21, 2014, Epstein wrote to Barak, “with civil unrest exploding in ukraine syria, somolia [sic], libya, and the desperation of those in power, isn’t this perfect for you.” Barak replied: “You’re right [in] a way. But not simple to transform it into a cash flow. A subject for Saturday.”

These efforts also provided cover for covert diplomacy on behalf of the Israeli government. Together, Barak and Epstein sought to pressure the Obama administration to either intervene directly in the Syrian war, or make concessions to the Kremlin in exchange for Assad’s graceful exit. In their exchanges, Epstein expressed his frustration at the Obama administration’s failures to contain Tehran, as the two men searched for opportunities to promote U.S. strikes on Iran.

Despite securing a sit-down with Putin in the summer of 2013, they did not succeed in convincing Russia to support Assad’s ouster, but their negotiations set the stage for U.S.-Russia cooperation on disarmament of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal a few months later.

This is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how back channels operate in times of conflict.

On the source of the emails:

The leaked emails come from the same archive previously reported by Drop Site—materials released by the hackers known as Handala and disseminated by Distributed Denial of Secrets. The emails include extensive, previously unpublished documents and photographs from Barak’s inner circle including non-public information verified as accurate by Drop Site. Many documents from the Handala hack were independently validated by records released by the U.S. House Oversight Committee this month.

Trying to get Russia to agree to Assad’s removal:

In the early hours of May 9, 2013, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak emailed his close friend Jeffrey Epstein with an urgent message. “R U awake? if yes, pl call,” Barak wrote Epstein, at 1 a.m. in New York. Shortly after they spoke, Barak emailed again to ask Epstein to keep their conversation private: “jeff pl don’t share the info with any of our friends.”

Epstein replied: “Of course not. I think you should let Putin know you will be in Moscow. See if he wants private time.”

Barak and Epstein built a backchannel to Putin in hopes of winning Russia’s support to remove Syrian president Bashar al-Assad from power, according to leaked emails from Barak’s inbox. Before approaching Putin, Barak and Epstein sought to use one of the major American newspapers to frame Israel’s narrative about the Syrian war, and telegraph a framework for peace talks led by the United States and Russia.

Private Citizen Ehud Barak:

Barak stepped down from his post in March 2013 after the failure of his new political party to contest Knesset elections. His retirement from formal office, he said, meant that he now would have time to “study, write, live and enjoy.” Instead, he immediately began working with Epstein to conduct covert diplomatic work in support of Israeli security interests abroad.

The key to Barak’s backchannel diplomacy with Russia was his relationship with Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian-Israeli oligarch and owner of the multinational conglomerate Renova Group. Barak offered his services as a strategic consultant to Renova, a position that would generate a lucrative salary for himself and further his ambitions in the global mining and energy sectors, while enhancing his access to powerful figures in the Russian elite.

Barak kept Epstein abreast of every update on his courtship with Vekselberg. As Barak progressed toward a formal agreement with Renova, Epstein counseled Barak on contract negotiations, writing on April 27, “I think you should propose all up front. no need for a written agreement. until later.”

Beneath the surface of mundane contract details, Epstein and Barak worked on a covert plan with the support of Israeli intelligence—regime change in Damascus.

The Israeli military strategist, often described as “emotionally handicapped,” relied on Epstein to help him craft his messaging when dealing with other political officials and business elites. Epstein, for instance, asked Barak to wait until they could speak privately before Barak notified intelligence leaders of a deal with Vekselberg: “do not go to number 1 too quickly, I understnad more now so we should speak.” The euphemism “number 1” is a moniker used to refer to the head of the Mossad, dating back to Barak’s days as director of Israeli military intelligence, when the Mossad director’s identity was kept secret.

As the Renova contract was being finalized—a $1 million advance and a $1 million quarterly retainer—Barak planned a trip to Moscow on May 12 to meet with Vekselberg.

Side note: Vekselberg is known for being in the possession of the world’s largest collection of Faberge Eggs.

A sample of the correspondence and mention of some US Intel heavy hitters:

A few hours after Barak informed Epstein of his Moscow plans, Epstein shared some intelligence about one of Putin’s interlocutors, the head of the Council of Europe: “on may 20 [thorbjorn] jagland is going to see putin in sochi, jagland asked that I make myself availble to meet with him sometine in june, to explain how russia can structure deals in order to encourage western investment, I never met him, wanted you to know.” Barak, who was working closely with Epstein to cut deals in the Eurasian energy sector, wrote back: “i know Jagland for long time. probably we have to talk about it.”

Epstein responded with a short list of past and present American national security leaders who, his response implied, could also be useful in Russia talks. He wrote, “Ok, panetta??, Alexander, Clarke?”—likely referring to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, NSA Director Keith Alexander, and Cybersecurity Czar Richard Clarke.

Upon his return from Moscow, Barak contacted George Tenet, former director of the CIA, to pitch a talk he (Barak) could give at Allen & Company’s Sun Valley event in July—a “summer camp” for billionaires and elite politicians to convene and negotiate deals. The topic? “Think of Syria, CW. (+background of Iran’s elections & nuke program, Global Terror, North Korea etc). Probably briefing for selected group.” Barak was not recorded on the guest list.

In the meantime, Epstein and Barak crafted an op-ed for Barak to publish that could shape the narrative for a Russian-led transition in Syria that secured Israel’s interests.

Iran:

Two months after the St. Petersburg conference, on August 21, 2013, opposition-controlled areas in Ghouta, Syria were struck by rockets containing sarin gas, killing and injuring thousands in the suburbs of Damascus. Ten days later, President Obama delivered a speech at the Rose Garden of the White House, announcing he’d seek congressional authorization for U.S. strikes on Syria, enforcing the “red line” he had drawn exactly one year prior.

Epstein emailed Barak as soon as news of Obama’s speech broke, on August 31, to propose publishing his shelved Syria narrative: “Time to write the wait ‘until too late’ op Ed ???” Barak responded, solemnly: “[U.S. strikes] might be launched before the op ed will be accepted by any major paper.” Epstein disagreed, suggesting any action would likely occur after the G20 summit on September 5, and Congress’s return the week after: “it will be at minmumm a week or two not before g20.” An hour later, Barak agreed: “After listening to POTUS speech, You’re probably right.”

In the same email thread, Epstein offered Barak guidance on how to ratchet the pressure on the U.S. to strike Iran: “I would use the opportunity to compare it with iran. The solutions become more compelx with time not less. i think many people would like your views on egypt. syria, etc. russias role.? i think you might point out the gassing of ‘women and children’ is an expressions from the 20th centry. women are no longer equiv to children,. civilians. vs combatants . only.”

Epstein was no bullshit artist:

Epstein was not merely a fixer for Barak, but also a friend and advisor, who collaborated with him at high-levels to promote Israeli security interests. The correspondence between Barak and Epstein, as well as publicly released information about Epstein’s travel and activities during this period, point to a significant degree of collaboration between the two men, involving numerous governments in negotiations intended to serve Israeli security interests. In a note sent by Barak to Epstein after the St. Petersburg forum in 2015, he rattled off a long list of heads of state, senior officials, and business magnates he had met, reporting “great meetings” with all.

Around the same time, Epstein was known to have conducted meetings with several Obama administration officials, including former U.S. ambassador to Russia, and later CIA chief William Burns, as well as Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler. While shedding light on his efforts with Barak to secure Israeli interests in Syria, the emails leave open the question of other interactions that Epstein may have engaged in with U.S. and other government officials.

A fascinating peek behind the curtains, and only the tip of the iceberg…at least I think so.

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The horrible thing about liberal democracy is that you have to face the voters every few years or so. This mean that short-term results are rewarded, and long-term policy is punished if it doesn’t yield immediate positive results. I’ve defended the Trump admin’s quest to use tariffs to reorder and restructure the economy, even if it is being done in a clumsy and cumbersome manner. Economic globalism is no longer working for America and for Americans, and moving towards bilateral deals is the only avenue of approach permitted to the White House in the US system of governance. Lastly, one of the reasons he was voted into office was to detonate globalism in order to reshore jobs and re-industrialize the USA (very early days, admittedly).

It is also quite clear now that the tariff approach was meant to isolate China and cut it down to size. From what we know now, that has not happened. China is in a much stronger position globally than many thought, especially in light of its dominant position in rare earth minerals. This was the key leverage that Beijing held over the USA, and is what secured the agreement last week between Biden and Xi to work on an overall trade deal between these two giants. Think of it as an economic detente between two competing, yet very intertwined, superpowers.

Here’s a decent summary that focuses on the big picture of the tentative deal:

Both leaders will be happy at the outcomes from this meeting. Donald Trump is famously transactional in his approach to foreign policy, and he comes away from the meeting able to trumpet a “win” for the US.

China will be buying American soybeans, Xi has promised to help deal with the fentanyl issue and his threat to restrict China’s exports of the all-important rare earth minerals will not come into force for 12 months, at least.

However, it’s important to note that there was no agreement from China to relax restrictions it imposed in April on exports of some critical minerals. Xi will want to prevent the US from building stockpiles of some key rare earth elements.

As you might have read in the random commentary from this past Wednesday, rare earths are considered a major reason why Trump is not as publicly antagonistic towards Russia as he is towards others. They are a big deal.

Detente and a short term political win (maybe):

Restoring some trade between the two countries will also help ease the strain on US consumers. They are currently having to shoulder higher prices for everyday items, caused by the tariffs. Given that Trump pledged to bring down prices in his presidential campaign, he may be able to frame this as a political victory with American voters.

China will benefit from lower US tariffs on many of its exports and Trump will suspend plans to expand trade restrictions to companies on what is known as the “entity list.” This is something China has been pushing for as it affects many of its companies. But of course, as we know, all of this could easily change.

China has a longer-term vision, which its one-party system permits:

China’s analysis stressed that this was all at one with the country’s long-term strategy, developed “from generation to generation.” It spoke in terms of a broad sweep of development: “Our focus has always been on managing China’s own affairs well, improving ourselves and sharing development opportunities with all countries across the world.”

Tech is still a touchy area:

Tech issues will undoubtedly continue to cause tensions between Beijing and Washington. The US currently blocks Chinese access to much of the advanced tech that Beijing needs to fulfil its desire to become the world’s leader in AI.

And, despite Trump’s suggestion that he and Xi discussed China purchasing some chips from US firms, Chinese access to such advanced tech looks like it will remain heavily restricted.

Trump has said that any trade deal with China will not involve the export of Blackwell, the most advanced AI chip produced by US firm Nvidia. US lawmakers have previously raised concerns about allowing China to obtain the chip, suggesting it could bolster China’s AI industry and weaken the US’s tech edge.

Notable is what was absent from the meeting:

Taiwan doesn’t appear to have been on the agenda, from what both sides have said. Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, took the opportunity of hosting delegates from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobby group this week.

He talked about nurturing “closer Taiwan-US-Israel cooperation on security, trade and beyond, promoting peace across the Taiwan Strait.” But it’s far from clear that this is at the front of Trump’s mind.

Before the trip, it was reported that Trump’s advisers had been concerned that the US president might come away from the meeting with Xi having in some way changed the language over China’s relationship with Taiwan.

There has also been talk in recent months that the US position might shift from “not supporting” Taiwanese independence to “opposing it”. However, when he was asked about this after his meeting with Xi, the US president said they hadn’t discussed it.

Human rights, on the agenda at just about every meeting between a US president and a Chinese leader for as long as anyone can remember, appears not to have featured in the two men’s discussion, either.

It wasn’t that long ago that the EU sent a trade mission to China with a strategy based around lecturing Beijing on human rights. Might this signal the end of western moralizing towards the Orient?

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One of the major themes of this Substack is that the term “liberal democracy” is never properly defined by its stewards. It is a constantly-shifting set of desired results that have long ago veered from the original intent. So far has it veered that even the concept of choice is often out-of-bounds. Almost everyone will run afoul of this very day’s definition, meaning that almost everyone is an authoritarian, fascist….or even a Nazi!

The West has for decades been governed by a liberal consensus; liberal politics and liberal (or as the kids call it, “neo-liberal”) economics. Every so often an opponent might pop up to question this consensus, but the full apparatus of the state will come down hard on them. No deviation is permitted. Sure, you have your social-democratic parties in Europe, your Republicans in the USA, etc. but they all are liberal parties in the end. The only notable differences are in the margins.

Sure, Trump may be an exception to this rule….after all, he did win in 2016 running on Pat Buchanan’s 1992 platform during the GOP nomination process. This only proves that even so-called conservatives (such as the GOP leadership mainstream) were long ago co-opted by the floating signifier known as “liberal democracy”.

It wasn’t always this way. In the olden days (30+ years ago), paleo-cons were an actual thing in the USA. They argued in favour of a nationally homogenous polity with limited government and minimal intervention in foreign conflicts. These paleo-cons were purged from the mainstream of the US right by neo-conservatives and their allies, first and foremost William F. Buckley. Trump 2016 was a long overdue rebellion to this purge.

Paul Gottfried has been writing on the subject of the transformation of American conservatism for decades now, and a collection of his essays was published recently by Passage Publishing. Here’s a very-well written review:

The central malady, the thread that runs through these four decades of essays, is the rise of what Gottfried calls, following James Burnham, the managerial state. The old bourgeois nation-state, with its defined borders, limited government, and specific cultural inheritance, has been supplanted. In its place stands a new leviathan, a regime of administrators, social scientists, media gatekeepers, and corporate partners who govern not by consent but by imagined expertise. This new type of regime is a postliberal creation, retaining the vocabulary of democracy but redefining it as a set of outcomes, including equality, diversity, health, and safety, to be engineered by a credentialed elite. Democracy is no longer self-government but indoctrination.

A regime of this nature requires a new language, or rather a corruption of the old one. Words must be unmoored from their historical meanings to serve the present. Gottfried’s most sustained analysis of this process centers on the word “fascism.” In the hands of the managerial class and its media adjuncts, “fascism” has been transformed from a specific, interwar European phenomenon of militant nationalism into a floating signifier of ultimate evil. The word has become code for the threat of genocide that forever emanates from unapproved attitudes.

This is very interesting:

The utility of such a maneuver is plain. The therapeutic state requires a perpetual patient, a society riddled with pathologies that only its expert class can cure. The ever-present, ever-expanding specter of “fascism” serves as the ultimate justification for endless intervention. Fascism has become 1984’s Goldstein for our time: an imaginary, shape-shifting threat whose supposed recurrence mobilizes the faithful and keeps whatever remains of an opposition fearful and subdued. Anyone who resists the progressive agenda, be it on immigration, gender ideology, or the centralization of power, can be branded with the scarlet F. The label’s historical incoherence is not a bug but a feature. It is a tool of power, not of analysis. That opponents of EU centralization are called Nazis, even though the actual Nazis were bent on continental conquest, is an irony lost on the accusers. The words are not meant to describe but to batter.

It’s not limited to the left, either:

This linguistic decay is not entirely a leftist phenomenon. A core contention of the paleoconservative critique, one that Gottfried makes with acid precision, is that the mainstream American right was a willing, if not always conscious, accomplice. He charts the rise of the neoconservatives in the 1970s and 1980s not as a revitalization of conservatism but as a hostile takeover. These figures, many of them ex-Trotskyists and disenchanted liberal Democrats, did not emerge from any recognizable American conservative tradition. They were merely less extreme liberals, comfortable with the New Deal welfare state and animated by a Wilsonian zeal for exporting democracy abroad.

What they created was not an opposition but a pseudo-opposition, a controlled sparring partner for the left that shared all of its foundational premises. The neoconservative-led right, Gottfried argues, became a movement of gatekeepers, policing its own ranks for any deviation from the new consensus, eagerly purging those who questioned their new orthodoxies on immigration, foreign policy, or the civil rights revolution. Neoconservatives offered a choice between a left that demanded radical change today and a conservative movement that promised to manage that same change more prudently tomorrow. They conserved almost nothing. Instead, they became a moderate wing of the managerial state that a genuine right would be expected to oppose. One begins to understand populist rage against a “uniparty” not as paranoia but as a raw, untutored recognition of the scene Gottfried has been describing for forty years.

Abdication of the old elites in a fit of self-flagellation:

Gottfried argues that the politics of guilt finds its most fertile soil in the post-Protestant mind, where the habit of intense, inward-looking moral inventory persists long after its theological framework has collapsed. The Protestant conscience, once tormented by the state of its soul before God, is now tormented by its standing before the commissars of sensitivity. It is a faith turned inward on itself, a culture of repentance without the possibility of grace.

…..

This sense is the engine that powers the therapeutic regime and explains the otherwise inexplicable spectacle of a civilization actively dismantling its own heritage. The historic WASP elite, in Gottfried’s telling, did not inadvertently lose power but rejected it in a fit of moral anxiety, becoming the loudest critic of its own ancestors. Gottfried recounts meeting Yale patricians in the 1960s engaged in “pompous self-debasement,” a ruling class that “destroyed itself.” This moral disarmament provides the justification for policies, from open borders to affirmative action, that are motivated not as prudential choices but as acts of penance.

Gottfried is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand recent US political history of the right wing.

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I am running short of time today (apologies), so I will just provide a link and one excerpt to this fascinating essay on why Pittsburgh has managed to escape post-industrial collapse, unlike nearby city of Cleveland:

In December 1979, a perfect storm of global competition, outmoded factories, and recession slammed into America’s industrial heartland. US Steel, for a century the jewel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s crown, shuttered 15 plants. Seemingly overnight, the 27,000 steel mill jobs across the city’s Monongahela Valley vanished with them. By 1980, one-in-five Pittsburghers was jobless, and they weren’t alone. In 1950, the industrial Midwest, a seven-state region stretching from Appalachia to Wisconsin, was home to 43% of all American jobs. Starting in the Seventies, steel shed 350,000 jobs, carmakers 500,000; 1.2 million blue-collar jobs disappeared, and Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh lost nearly half of their populations.

The “Steel City” of the Thirties forged the Empire State Building and Golden Gate Bridge. But by the Eighties, Pittsburgh’s once-tidy working-class neighbourhoods were shooting-dens of bullets and heroin. Prostitutes walked the streets. Patrons queued outside bars at 10 in the morning. “I was watching my city die,” Peduto says again. “I mean, right before my eyes.” But family is family, and Peduto, a big man with a booming voice, saved his kin and kiln. The longtime councilman and city mayor from 2014 to 2022, he engineered America’s gold standard in urban revitalisation, with Pittsburgh now widely regarded as the country’s “most liveable city”.

Pittsburgh now teems with the creative types who drive startups and young firms. Nearly half of local Zoomers hold college degrees. Their ingenuity pushed city GDP from $79 billion in 2012 to $109 billion by 2021, a 37% jump. On a warm autumn evening, I walk the streets of downtown and can almost taste the wealth. Forty-somethings crowd the August Wilson theatre. Twenty-somethings sip cocktails in the dusk. The Steel City is now the Smart City, a centre of new tech boasting three billion-dollar AI firms. Pittsburgh’s legacy companies have come back too: the gleaming offices of Heinz, PPG and even US Steel dominate what locals call the “Golden Triangle” of the downtown, squeezed into the spit of land where the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers all meet. The rivers mean bridges, 446 of them, many of which are painted black and gold: in Pittsburgh, even the infrastructure roots for hometown teams.

Through all this, Pittsburgh hasn’t become some bougie theme park. Instead, it is the most affordable city across the US, Australia, Canada, and the UK. That, of course, still leaves one more question: how did Peduto’s dead city come roaring back to life? For Ken Heineman, the answer starts with history. As far back as the 19th century, explains the author of a book on the city, Pittsburgh’s early industrialists lent a “special flavour” to the local elite. Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon, Scots-Irish Presbyterians both, practised a civic stewardship that defined the Pittsburgh’s establishment, a code that meshed with the social responsibility of the Catholic working class. Pursuit of the common good became the steel running down the city’s spine, creating social cohesion — and, if you like, a Pittsburgh family.

Click here to read the rest.

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We end this weekend’s SCR with a report on how DNA research discovered an ancient population located in Central Argentina that persisted for almost 10,000 years!

The researchers worked with archaeologists, bioanthropologists, and museum curators in Argentina to identify human remains in their collections that might yield analyzable DNA. After sequencing genetic material from 238 people who lived in the region over the past 10,000 years, researchers were surprised to find a previously unknown lineage. “This is a big part of the history of the continent that we didn’t know about,” says study co-author Javier Maravall-López, a Harvard University geneticist.

The ancient genomes, combined with archaeological evidence from the region, suggest that despite experiencing cultural upheaval, bouts of technological innovation, and severe environmental stress, the newly revealed lineage mixed with people from elsewhere in South America only at the region’s edges. It’s unclear why this group mostly kept to itself: There are no major natural features that would have prevented migrations into or out of the area from the Amazon to the north or Patagonia to the south. “It’s not like there are huge biogeographic barriers,” Barberena says. “The [area] is basically a huge plain.”

Despite its relative genetic isolation, the lineage was remarkably resilient. The geneticists found that many modern Argentinians share some ancestry with members of this population who died over the past 8500 years. A profoundly dry spell in the area between 6000 and 4000 years ago had no measurable impact on the population, either.

The pattern here differs from what researchers have found in Europe, Asia, and Africa, where shifts in lifestyle and language often happen alongside genetic change. In Europe, for example, ancient DNA studies have shown that farming arrived and spread across the continent together with an entirely new group of people.

The ancient Argentine population, however, didn’t intermingle much with other South American groups, even as archaeological evidence suggests its people started growing crops on a small scale about 1500 years ago. That continuity suggests people there stayed put while adopting new ways of life.

I love these stories. Click here to read the rest.

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