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CURIOUSMINDS
A weekly serving of great articles we curate, and original content we produce. So, all you have to do is pick, read, watch and listen. |
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Issue #216 - FEBRUARY 2026
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Stories from Around the World that Affect Us All |
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France Raids Elon Musk’s X Paris Offices This is about power. Influence. And what happens when one billionaire decides the rules don’t apply to him anymore while trying to hide decades of criminality, treason, and alleged pedophelia and the ongoing amplification of child pornography, sexual abuse, and his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Early Feb 2026 the French government raided the Paris offices of X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, as part of a criminal investigation into “Child Sexual Abuse” associated with the Epstein Files and much, much more. Not a regulatory slap. Not a warning letter. A raid. Computers. Documents. Servers. Banking/Crypto Exchange info. You don’t raid the offices of Elon Musk on a “whim,” btw. For the record, Elon Musk called the raid on Twitter (X) offices a ‘political attack.’
France’s official response? “Investigating child sexual abuse material isn’t controversial. Turning it into political theater is manipulation. Maybe that logic flies on some island. Doesn’t fly in France.
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 China’s Delicate Dance of Censorship and Expression
The New Republic(Human/Civil Rights)
The assault on major U.S. law firms that opposed Trump, that restricted lawyers’ access to federal buildings, barred them from government employment, canceled contracts, and threatened companies that hired them, pushed firms like Paul Weiss to make deals and pledge nearly $1 billion in pro bono work. Meta, Target, Amazon, McDonald’s, Walmart, and many others have choosen compliance over becoming the next cautionary tale. What begins as bare-knuckled politics ends as outright silencing. It is no longer culture war—it is delegated repression and state persecution. The First Amendment still offers a legal shield, and the United States lacks a centralized Great Firewall. Yet the pattern of control is unmistakable. The tools differ from China’s; the methods rhyme. The USA is not living behind China’s wall, but America’s own dance of censorship has already begun.
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 Jeffrey Epstein post-mortem released in latest files
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Jeffrey Epstein - Last Interview
Jeffrey Epstein & Steve Bannon: The Unredacted 2019 Interview (Official 2026 DOJ Release) Epstein’s rise hinged on elite access, a few critical patrons, and an unusual level of secrecy. The mystery is a big reason his case unsettles many people and fascinates me..My views on the continuing saga and this video are irrelevant. But despite them and Bannons infuriating interuptions, I was glued to the screen for the whole 2 hours.
Jeffrey Epstein died on August 10, 2019. This is, by all accounts, the full, unredacted video of Jeffrey Epstein being interviewed by Steve Bannon in 2019, recently made public as part of the massive January 30, 2026, Department of Justice document dump.
Originally filmed as part of a secret media project titled "The Monsters," this footage was intended to rehabilitate Epstein’s image following his 2008 conviction. Instead, the DOJ’s Epstein Library reveals a chilling look into the mind of the disgraced financier as he is grilled by Bannon on his connections to world leaders, his views on power, and the financial system.
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Quote of The Week
The greatest love is often the most arduous
- James King -
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Top Stories from our favourite publications to stimulate your curious mind, |
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The Era of American Erasure The Trump administration's actions feel eerily close to something out of a George Orwell novel.
When the Trump administration defended the January murder of Minnesota ICU nurse Alex Pretti by falsely calling him a “domestic terrorist” who was brandishing a gun, I, like many, was reminded of this line in George Orwell’s 1984: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
That line stayed with me last week as I learned about the National Park Service’s recent efforts to systematically remove plaques and exhibits that highlight the complexities of human history and inconvenient realities—from slavery to climate change.
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Deepest Source of Meaning
THE MARGINALIAN (Literature/Philosophy)
Sometimes, life asks the question not as a thought experiment but as a gauntlet hurled with the raw brutality of living. Viktor Frankl was taken to Auschwitz along with more than a million human beings robbed of the basic right to answer this question for themselves, instead deemed unworthy of living. Some survived by reading. Some through humor. Some by pure chance. Most did not. Frankl lost his mother, his father, and his brother to the mass murder in the concentration camps. His own life was spared by the tightly braided lifeline of chance, choice, and character. Frankl took up the elemental question at the heart of Camus’s philosophical parable in a set of lectures, edited into a slim, potent book published in Germany in 1946, just as he was completing Man’s Search for Meaning. |
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Life in a Warming World
THE NEW REPUBLIC (Environments)
US Energy Secretary extolled the administration's work forcing aging coal plants to stay open, and hinted at further handouts to come. Now we're starting to get a sense of what those handouts might look like. The Administration will order the Defense Department to purchase electricity from coal-fired power plants, and the industry will get a 33-month extension on cleaning up coal-ash dumps containing mercury, arsenic, and other toxins (all of which are expected to seep into groundwater in the meantime). It will also award funding to five coal plants in West Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina and Kentucky to recommission and upgrade the facilities. |
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Invisible Enemy
Chapter 1 - Suicide or Murder?
The man rushed up the first flight of stone steps, two at a time, shouting at the sightseers to get out of the way. With every leap, his heart threatened to burst through his chest. Fear was behind him, adrenalin driving him on, the remaining power in his legs took him higher, as he tried to escape from the invisible enemy. An enemy that watched every breath he took and every move he made.
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Liberty, Equality, Nietzsche
Nietzsche opposed both the moderate and the extreme left, but he saw that conservatism had no future, that its fighting was a rear guard action, and conservatism was being eroded evermore. The consequence of this was that Nietzsche pointed to something which we may call the revolutionary right, an atheism of the right. Nietzsche is then the antagonist of Marx, whom he did not know at all as far as I know. Nietzsche produced the climate in which Fascism and Hitlerism could emerge. One must not be squeamish about admitting this dubious paternity. One must emphasize it. Every fool can see and has seen that Nietzsche abhorred the things for which Hitler in particular stood and to which he owed his success. Some liberals have gone so far as to claim Nietzsche for liberalism. Was Nietzsche not the intellectual ancestor of that great liberal, Sigmund Freud? This partial truth [however] must not be permitted to obscure the more massive and the more superficial fact.
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Has Music Gotten Worse?
DAVID V STEWART (Performing Arts)
The short, easy answer is “yes,” but it must be so qualified that the better answer is “it depends on what you mean by music, worse, and gotten.” I’ve been having this conversation online for over a decade at this point, and closer to three decades in real life. Music has been getting “worse” for a very long time, at least to many people. There are a few problems with trying to evaluate this position, that music has had a decline in quality, and they start with the fact that music is a qualia, an experience, and there is no “good unit” to measure music by. It’s comparative, and so what we are comparing really matters. If you are comparing Michael Jackson to Chapelle Roan (who I really only know of because she wears clown makeup and dresses in a way that would make a whore blush – her music is only distantly able to reach my ears as a result), then yes, music has gotten much worse. If you are comparing Motley Crue to Wintersun…not so much.
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UPGRADE to PAID
CURIOUSMINDS content and opinions contain important information curated from reliable sources. We rely on reader support to keep it FREE. We want it to reach as many people as possible. If you value what we do and would like to help us sustain it, please consider a small monthly or annual contribution. Contributing subscribers get full access to all James King Publications including archives of CURIOUSMINDS, and a valuable BONUS: FREE ebook versions of all James King’s published books.Click - View them at Amazon · Donate via the - Choose a subscription plan - page. If you are not a subscriber already - Go to the Welcome page |
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James King Blog offers valuable resources for students of Arts and Humanities. Particularly those interested in Environments, Literature, Performing Arts, Visual Art, Philosophy, Travel, and Human Rights. The articles provide insights into complex interactions between humans and their environments, and the ethical and moral dimensions of environmental issues. The Blog is relevant to students of all ages and those who are just fascinated by the Arts and Humanities. |
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 Amnesty International Goals – Big Changes on a Global ScaleAmnesty International goals are derived from its strategic plan. It emphasises strengthening freedom of expression and association, securing the right to peaceful assembly, promoting gender and racial justice, and tackling climate justice, among other goals. |
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FREE BOOKS223 Mystery, Thriller, & Suspense FreebiesThese Promos Close 25 and 28 FebruaryThriller authors join forces in joint promotion campaigns to introduce themselves to readers. You can download as many books as you like.
I hope you find plenty to entertain you. CLICK THE BANNERS TO VIEW THE PROMOS - AND GRAB AS MANY BOOKS AS YOU WANT |
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INVISIBLE ENEMY - a Short Story
A psychological thriller – Short Story - that will change the way you look at humankind. It’s 2021 and the world is paralysed by Covid-19. The invisible microscopic organism looks on, astonished at Man’s inability to solve his problems. Despite the warnings and having all the resources available to do so, humans run in circles desperate to escape the clutches of an invisible enemy. Commissaire Pascal de Gaulle is focused on other pressing matters, when a man falls to his death in the centre of Paris, carrying a secret. De Gaulle discovers the Drug Squad, a syndicate of drug traffickers, and the virus itself are all part of the puzzle he must solve. Is it suicide or is it murder? And how will he save his orphaned godchild from leukemia? Do not read Invisible Enemy if you don’t like puzzles.
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THE KENRIGHT CHRONICLES - SERIES
The Kenright Chronicles is a psychological thriller series. Jack Kenright, a young investment banker gets involved in an international art swindle. which cripples his business and threatens his life and his family. He ends up a recluse, working for the FBI undercover and exposes massive corruption in the gambling world. |
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WaldenBy Henry David Thoreau
Walden first published in 1854 as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. Walden details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts.Thoreau makes precise scientific observations of nature as well as metaphorical and poetic uses of natural phenomena. He identifies many plants and animals by both their popular and scientific names, records in detail the color and clarity of different bodies of water, precisely dates and describes the freezing and thawing of the pond, and recounts his experiments to measure the depth and shape of the bottom of the supposedly "bottomless" Walden Pond. |
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The StrangerBy Albert Camus
1942 novella written by French author Albert Camus. The first of Camus' novels published in his lifetime...
The story follows Meursault, an indifferent settler in French Algeria, who, weeks after his mother's funeral, kills an unnamed Arab man in Algiers. The story is divided into two parts, presenting Meursault's first-person narrative before and after the killing. "This is not light reading. Despite its length of 123 pages, The Stranger is a literary endurance test: exhausting, exhaustive, excruciating ... and excellent."
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Substack - Creative Xellence -
Join us at Creative Xellence where we are building a home for James King's Poetry, Short Stories and serialised Novels. Subscribe for Free and you will be notified of new content and recieve the Newsletter.
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Medium
At Medium we curate high value informative articles related to A&H from major publishers and authoratative sources. And we publish a smattering of selected articles from James King Blog and articles written by James King for Medium Publications.
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