Arguing against specific highly spurious claims is very different to arguing that intelligence is the only feature of the mind that is inherited. In any case, you might add that the more anti-Jewish side of the DR is actually split between “Jewish IQ is a psy-op, see Unz, myth of American meritocracy, IQ stats from Brooklyn high schools in the 1930s don’t map to Israel” etc and “it’s real but it doesn’t matter because they’re also hereditary cheats, sex pests, clannish narcissists”.
2rafa
29d ago
I agree that the last 20 years saw a move of the last of these Catholics to the GOP. Pro choice Democratic politicians were censured by the church itself which is a big step. In liberal European countries like Germany there are Catholic groups who have semi-openly broken with the Vatican on abortion but in the US the clergy tend to be more socially conservative.
But an example of the above would be like ACB who is a liberal except for abortion.
The thing is, I think your argument is completely plausible and I allow for it in (2). Epstein exploited Wexner, but Wexner was and is a committed Zionist and was long close to the WJC and Lauder, who in turn were and are clearly very well connected in Israel, particularly the center and center left. If someone in Wexner, Lauder or Barak’s orbit (including Israeli intelligence) asked for a favor, an introduction, or information Epstein had acquired, there is every chance Epstein would have done it as you say on an ad-hoc basis, probably not for money but for influence and favor trading (useful given his sexual proclivities had put him under investigation from the mid-1990s).
It’s also obviously, clearly true that Epstein had powerful friends who ensured he was given a sweetheart deal in the early 2000s. They may have been ‘intelligence’, they may just have been very well connected Wall Street people who were close to the Bush administration for whom ‘belongs to intelligence’ was a convenient smoke screen for more naked corruption and favor trading (I think this is more likely; telling Acosta Epstein is intelligence is more likely to stop an investigation than telling him a top donor is friends with him). You don’t need Mossad to frustrate an investigation if you’re friends with a former president and very close to leading GOP donors, which Epstein was.
But crucially, this is all very different to the allegation, made explicitly by Tucker, that Israel and Mossad were behind his immense wealth and also behind a sex-trafficking elite kompromat operation. It is more likely that Epstein was a pervert who preyed on teenage girls (often from poorer backgrounds, in NYC, West Palm Beach, and via modelling world connections he had made through Wexner and the 1980s New York fashion scene from Eastern Europe, and before that his former and before that current students) his whole adult life. As he grew in wealth and power, he sometimes offered girls he was seeing to business associates, not as kompromat but as sweeteners for deals and friendship (Meister, Wexner’s ex-insurance man who introduced Epstein to him and regrets it, explicitly says that Epstein showed up to his house once with models and offered them to him).
Eventually, he used his seduction (likely romantic) of Wexner to catapult himself into the top echelon of NYC wealth, met Maxwell, fresh into exile after the scandal around the collapse of her father’s business, and joined the global elite. At this point he began to attract the attention of people for whom knowing what that elite is doing and thinking was and is important, and as he became aware of his victims reporting him more as the 1990s went on (before then, between ~1965 and 1990 or so no cops would have taken it seriously at all, but the early 90s saw the emergence of third-wave consent based feminism, modern workplace harassment guidance and law) he may have played those connections to try to stay clear of jail.
But no, I don’t think Mossad got a failed high school teacher a job at Bear Stearns. I don’t think they gave a billion dollars to a washed up, fired trader who was unhireable by any legitimate Wall Street firm because he violated securities law in the hope that he would Gatsby his way into the world’s elite and set up a sex trafficking blackmail operation.
2rafa
1d ago
Apparently Epstein was able to set up a meeting between some JP Morgan execs and Netenyahu? That sounds like deeper connections than you described:
Not at all, in fact it’s explained if you read my piece. Staley and Dimon were not particularly well connected in Israel. Epstein was close to Lauder and Wexner and could easily have asked either of them to raise the request with Netanyahu, for whom in any case it wouldn’t have been unusual to meet with senior figures at the most important Wall Street bank. That is most of what Epstein did in his later years, namely send emails to people in his Rolodex whom he had met in his decade of relentless socializing pestering them to do minor things that he could trade in for other things.
There's also the possibility that the operation was tied to a non-Mossad Israeli intelligence operation that pertained to internal divisions in Israeli politics.
It’s possible, and there is nowhere I disagree that Epstein may have played politics for Barak during the slow emergence of the modern Israeli security state in the early 2000s. But again, that was after he acquired fame and fortune and long after the sex stuff started, during which time he would have been a nobody to anyone in Israel.
2rafa
1d ago
I think the primary beneficiary of Epstein’s sex trafficking operation was himself and maybe a small handful of actual friends, who he probably didn’t care to blackmail but may or may not have kept kompromat on. Separate to that was his love of the game and of impressing successful and powerful people, which he enjoyed doing his whole life, regardless of whether or not they shared his sexual proclivities. In the course of the latter he may have traded in secrets, although it was never close to being his main line of work.
2rafa
6d ago
Chasidic views on interracial marriage (and therefore conversion into Judaism, really) are less exclusive than you might expect. All ultra orthodox accept sincere religious conversion as an inherent part of Judaism and there are occasional ethnic minorities.
As with the Amish, though, an extremely high native birth rate means the majority of the population will probably always be of the original stock.
2rafa
8d ago
Interestingly this is at least partly because Australian Aboriginal genes are even more recessive than white genetics.
Looked this up but couldn’t find anything on it. If it is true might be a quirk of their archaic human ancestry.
2rafa
11d ago
Ukraine is vastly larger than Gaza and civilians were easily and quickly (and still are) evacuated well behind the front lines where the intense conflict occurs. In Gaza, neighboring countries refused to accept evacuations, and Hamas - unlike either army in Ukraine - is an insurgent force that doesn’t wear uniforms, doesn’t observe any rules of war, and hides in the civilian population.
If the Ukrainian military had melted into the civilian population in the occupied cities where they emerged, daily, from schools, residential homes, hospitals and so on to attack Russians, the Ukrainian civilian casualty rate would be much higher. As it happened, the sides are fighting a conventional war (one Hamas cannot afford to fight, and doesn’t wish to).
“Remigration” certainly isn’t official AfD policy, its advocated by the far-right Höcke wing of the party, not the Weidel center.
2rafa
26d ago
No, The Economist’s readership has a substantial number of students and juniors, plus interested normal people who like to imagine themselves as the kind of person who reads it, many of whom don’t have a lot of money. It’s largely the magazine for the back office. FT Weekend’s readership is likely wealthier, because it’s mainly older print readers of the paper who have some money (students and juniors on the app aren’t going to care to read it).
Tatler’s readership is bifurcated between that sub-group of rich Arabs and Asians (they have a big audience in Hong Kong, Singapore and the Gulf) who enjoy the Anglo aesthetic, are often involved with polo, ride, have country houses in England, that sort of thing, and the residual English upper and upper-middle classes, some of whom have money and some of whom don’t. That niche means Tatler’s ads are more targeted, although there is still plenty of Patek and Lori Piana. Bien pensant PMCs might read that awful Air Mail or even worse Monocle, which also have all the Rolex and Porsche ads.
2rafa
27d ago
Interesting how much “Imaginal Christianity” resembles an Islamic-Buddhist hybrid with some Christian characteristics.
2rafa
1d ago
He got off the hook in 2008 and pled not guilty here.
He was still convicted in the early 2000s, though, he just got a sweetheart deal. This time there were more witnesses and more credible witnesses, more victims and more medium to high quality testimony from his own former employees. In addition, he was already a convicted criminal, which would affect sentencing and make a second sweetheart deal less likely in any case (regardless of offense or offender). The Florida cases were localized, the New York case had a much greater emphasis on interstate and international movement which meant a much longer sentence in a real prison was inevitable if convicted. As the Ghislaine sentence (and there was much less direct evidence of a lot of her involvement shows), Epstein wasn’t making it out in his lifetime and there is every chance he knew it. It wasn’t embarrassment, it was someone realizing he wasn’t going to get to do any of the things (or people) he wanted ever again.
The Israelis are already among the top 3, if not higher, countries in the world that target the United States most aggressively for spying operations. So the "why would they collected blackmail on allies" would be "for the same reason they do all their other spying operations on their allies."
Spying on the Mormons at the CIA and the hippies at State is very different to blackmailing Alan Dershowitz into becoming a more fervent Zionist. Israeli intelligence in the US is largely about acquiring intelligence Mossad can’t get directly about Israel’s enemies because the US has sources and deals with Qatar, Lebanon, Bahrain, with Iran via Russia and sometimes directly, intercepts intelligence from other countries that might deal with anti-Israel groups like the Houthis and Hezbollah, has some channels with the IRGC. For example, there was a big Israeli effort to get more information about conversations between the Assadist Syrian and Russian governments, and it’s possible that the US might be able to intercept more than Israel, and it has access to shared Five Eyes intelligence that Israel doesn’t. That makes strategic sense and is much cheaper than running a blackmail op on rich Zionist Wall Street tycoons who already attend the friends of the IDF annual fundraiser for free (or indeed, for a significant donation).
“he really charmed his way into getting a job at Bear Sterns”
As I explained, in the Wall Street of the 1970s it really wouldnt have been unusual for a really smart Brooklyn kid to drop out of a math degree at NYU and still end up in finance on the trading floor. At that time, many new traders were working class and didn’t necessarily have college degrees. Everyone who met Epstein said he was insanely charismatic.
2rafa
5d ago
It’s possible this was the final straw, but it doesn’t seem like a radically new kind of scandal for them.
2rafa
8d ago
And that’s most of what’s necessary. Some kind of soft-kefala where the migrants don’t stay, don’t have or bring over children, and go home at the end of the season.
2rafa
9d ago
Mandatory e-verify doesn’t work because most settled illegals appear to have stolen social security numbers, as discussed above. It’s a fake solution.
2rafa
26d ago
Problem was that they started actually believing all of the universal spread of liberal democracy stuff because the Cold War involved an ideological component that 19th century European colonialism didn’t (“spreading Christian civilization” was a post-hoc thing). That meant that which side was supported was often determined more ideologically than it had been under the British or French, who were regularly willing to screw over fellow Christians, liberal reformers, or other more ideologically aligned factions if their opponents had better will to power.
2rafa
6d ago
I disagree, there were various leftist justice reform DAs that won big in NYC, Philly etc. De Blasio was on the progressive wing of the party; he wasn't Chesa tier but effectively welcomed that movement into office.
2rafa
15d ago
Nope, Trump did what neocons failed to accomplish during any previous GOP administration over the last 40 years, namely direct, massive US air strikes on the Iranian nuclear program, and he did it over the wishes of isolationists like Carlson and to the approval of the great majority of his base. Framing this as a win for principled anti-intervention rightists is ridiculous.
And Trump didn't keep his intervention limited because everybody was so supportive of it.
Ground invasion of Iran is impossible and externally-forced regime change is impossible without ground invasion. Trump picked the most maximalist neocon option realistically possible, just like when he had Soleimani assassinated over the suggestions of the DoD and most of his own senior advisors.
2rafa
21d ago
Regime change isn’t possible without a ground invasion which isn’t possible. Posturing doesn’t change that.
2rafa
22d ago
The Israelis are still a big part of the western internet it would be impossible to hide if many thousands of Israeli civilians had died in Iranian strikes.
2rafa
22d ago
As a whole not really, it can still get hot, SF itself still gets a lot of fog even if it’s less than it was.
But slightly inland in Silicon Valley proper yeah, the ultra expensive places like Atherton, Woodside around Redwood probably have a close to ideal climate-weather combination.
It’s not perfect, though. That honor goes to San Diego.
2rafa
6d ago
With enough lobbying they can pass laws that say things like “for each half hour spent in court, x lawyers based in local city who passed the state bar must have y billable hours attached to them”.
Lest that sound farfetched, Hollywood writers just got this kind of deal and the studios are far more equipped to play hardball than state congressmen.
2rafa
19d ago
Ok, well let's just take a look at the undefeated Uno Reverso.
Indeed. Suppose Ignatiev were to reply to your comment (and general worldview) with:
“My dear SS, I agree completely. I think all practicing Jews should renounce their religious practice (including, as I have already argued, kosher dining and food preparation), and all ethnic Jews should abandon their cultural particularity. Jews should convert to mainstream Protestant Christianity, the predominant gentile religion in the United States, or practice no faith. They should marry gentiles (of course most already do, but let’s say all of them). All Jewish religious institutions (synagogues, museums of tolerance, etc) should be closed, all religious clothing banned. Those who refuse these terms ought to go to Israel, but those who accept them can remain in America with no further restrictions placed on their participation in society, culture, politics or the economy. Furthermore, any racial agitation by white nationalists towards those former Jews who fully, sincerely renounce and abandon their Jewishness will be strictly prohibited.”
Would you accept his offer?
Because that is the difference between Ignatiev’s position and those of the dissident rightists who borrow his words in this case. He (like all communists) allowed for conversion; even the last emperor of china was converted, after all. You do not.
Chinese online / younger nationalists are mostly over the hatred for much of the eight nation alliance. They have it, but it isn’t central to their mythos as their hatred for the Japanese and general dislike for the Koreans.
I don’t think they really have an ethnic hatred for Europeans, which is something you see more of in niche diaspora CCP-fan migrant communities in the West where complaints about, say, white men dating Chinese women are more central. The CCP teaches every Chinese child that Marx and Engels were some of the greatest people in history, has statues of them, murals of them and so on.
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