magicalkittycat
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User ID: 3762
magicalkittycat
13hr ago
No nation at war has ever been required to feed the opposing army's solders (obviously if taken POW, not the central case) or allow the opposing army's soldiers to be supplied with food by a third party
Doesn't Israel claim sovereignity over the area? This isn't "they won't feed foreigners", this is "people are starving within their claimed jurisdiction" which I think plenty of countries have been blamed for in the past. A pretty significant chunk of Mao and Stalin deaths were starvation in their own territory after all.
magicalkittycat
2d ago
don't sell guns or sex
Those aren't speech. Those are definitely questions of autonomy, but they aren't speech. Which makes me think we're both having different conversations here.
Operation Choke Point?
Government.
Kiwi Farms?
Now that's a good example and yes Cloudflare is an example of the rare institutional power broker without much alternative. But one of the main killers was from an Australian defamation suit. (And despite that, they're still around anyway).
Try living your life after having been deemed a politically liability whom no bank will touch and come back to me.
That doesn't and hasn't really happened in the US ... except for well, the one big thing we're seeing right now. Over porn/adult content. The payment processors ability to censor the largest stores on the internet and some of the state governments suppressing adult content sites is a pretty easy to see what real power looks like.
It looks like you literally not being able to see or buy the "bad things" to begin with. And even this still needs the backing of government and the deepest institutions of credit and capital to enforce their censorship with decently accessible workarounds still available. This is the worst America has to offer currently, multiple times more censoring than almost any other cultural clash and it's still struggling.
magicalkittycat
4d ago
It's not a circular argument at all, because it's not the only reason why Tiktok is a threat. It's an auxiliary point of "Hey shit this is so dangerous that two presidents in a row would rather break the law than stop it" with the main danger being ya know, the reason we passed the law to begin with.
That's how Anglo-Americans traditionally (read pre-CRA) viewed it. That's not how continental Europeeans ever viewed it.
Ok well in the case of us (me, and the jubilee guy) being American, the American view is pretty relevant here.
And considering how poorly Europe has been on free speech lately, I'm even less enthused about their philosophy.
Consider a church that a large majority of your society attends (let's call it the catholic church, for "universal"). Let's say this catholic church has formal processes that would impose specific penalties on its members if they associate with people deemed unsavory by the institution. This is not a government institution, and yet it possesses large powers of censorship through this simple application of freedom of association.
If you get large enough it basically becomes a psuedo-government at that point and I would entertain the argument. Throughout much of history, this has been the case so yeah I'd agree we should be cautious.
But America is widely diversified. There is not a single corporate/religious/etc other private entity with that power. In many ways this can beneficial for them because there's a shit ton of powerful rich groups willing to support you. Shiloh Hendricks as an example made almost a million dollars just for being a viral cancel culture focus.
It certainly doesn't seem like there is an all encompassing major institution where dissent = failed life if even the closest thing to that has its victims made millionaires. Maybe it tries, but it's been proven over and over again to be lacking in power outside of a limited subset of society.
magicalkittycat
4d ago
Could anyone tell who he was working for from the video, and did he said anything at all relating to their business?
Well
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We only have his side of the story for the claim so we don't even know if we was fired over the video to begin with
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Ok so you're an employer and you see an employee of yours on the internet in front of millions saying things that you view as disgusting and horrible and that you don't want in your business. Are you only allowed to fire them if they mention your company during it?
If you want to say "a company should be able to fire and hire whoever they want, for any reason" there's entire books of labour law that would need to be abolished to stop the government from being "authoritarian".
I never said that, but yes from the perspective of the business owner they do lose some rights from anti discrimination laws. That is just a fact.
Which ones we find as acceptable is a different discussion and if you believe that should extend to anything a person says outside of work (or maybe even things they do inside of work) then that's a coherent viewpoint, but we can acknowledge that this definitely takes away more rights from the business owner.
magicalkittycat
4d ago
Not a great question considering free association rights are essentially a form of free speech rights. At least that's how we've traditionally viewed it in the US
As the Court noted in Roberts, the choice to associate and "maintain certain intimate human relationships" is "a fundamental element of personal liberty." These associations play a "central role" in the constitutional scheme and in "safeguarding individual freedom." Therefore, they receive protection against "undue intrusion" by the government.
The right to associate is more than just a right to attend a meeting. Instead, it is "the right to express one’s attitudes or philosophies by membership in a group or by affiliation with it or by other lawful means." (Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)). The Supreme Court has stated that association in this context is a "form of expression of opinion."
magicalkittycat
5d ago
Also possible. Or a mixture, people are really good at just convincing themselves of things if they are rewarded for it.
Seems like an easy Occam's razor to me. Either Candace Owens is just bullshitting with the obvious incentive that she is rewarded with views and attention and money, or she of all people stumbled on hard proof that the first lady of France is transgender, hard proof that is strong enough to overcome the questions of "Why would no one else know about this till now?" and "she somehow faked three pregnancies?" but also isn't able to be shared to convince others to overcome their prior.
Also consider that this is part of a movement accusing large amounts of celebrity women to be secretly trans. It seems like the standards of evidence they use might be pretty weak, or maybe Taylor Swift/Jennifer Lopez/Lady Gaga/the Kardashians/etc are really trans after all.
magicalkittycat
5d ago
And allowing "our children" to see things put out by the Chinese is a national security threat exactly how?
Consider that despite a literal ban being passed, two presidents have ignored it in a row. That seems pretty concerning, they must have a lot of influence in the country if we aren't even enforcing our laws.
magicalkittycat
5d ago
I mean didn't he literally just get purged for expressing a political opinion?
He doesn't have to read about authoritarian states, he's already living in one!
If my employee is on TV and says rude things about a major client of mine, should the government ban me from firing them? From my perspective as a business owner in this hypothetical, it seems more the authoritarian government is the one that forces me to keep shitty and unliked employees around even if they're costing my business reputation.
magicalkittycat
6d ago
Strong is relative. They're holding off Russia for years so clearly they're not too far off from one of our greatest enemies.
magicalkittycat
6d ago
If the politicians across both parties are making up national security concerns as a false justification to suppress rival companies or speech, or use them in other negotiations then that also seems like a major issue of a different kind.
That being said it certainly doesn't seem fake, Tiktok is clearly a Chinese owned app with direct access to the eyes of our children.
magicalkittycat
6d ago
Really interesting thing said in a recent Reason article which I think is a good jumping off point for a greater discussion. Lawfare as censorship and a weapon. https://reason.com/2025/07/21/trump-who-wants-to-straighten-out-the-press-sues-the-wall-street-journal-over-fake-epstein-letter/
Trump and his companies "have been involved in a mind-boggling 4,000 lawsuits over the last 30 years and sent countless threatening cease-and-desist letters to journalists and critics," Seager reported. "But the GOP presidential nominee and his companies have never won a single speech-related case filed in a public court."
In addition to the lawsuits against Gapp and O'Brien, Seager noted Trump's 2013 lawsuit against comedian Bill Maher. That complaint was prompted by a joke mocking Trump's promotion of the calumnious claim that Barack Obama was not qualified to be president because he was not born in the United States.
One major issue with the law right now is that even the most bullshit allegations cost money and time to fight against, and even doing something like trying to get the costs covered by the one suing you is itself expensive and time consuming, especially when that is rarely given even in cases where the lawsuit is bull. Settlements are common in part because of that.
Even in cases like this
That seemed like a lot until Trump sought 10 times as much—$5 billion—in a 2006 lawsuit against Tim O'Brien, a financial journalist who had dared suggest that Trump was not worth as much as he claimed. Although Trump lost both of those cases, he later told The Washington Post he got what he wanted from his suit against O'Brien. "I did it to make his life miserable," he said, "which I'm happy about."
But this isn't just about Trump and his openly admitted to constant use of the court system to harass his critics in an attempt to silence them. It's not just him after all, it's a pervasive issue in the legal system that we call SLAPP or "Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation". 4k is a particularly high amount of abuse, but there's lots of smaller amounts of abuse too.
This is about the court system being able to serve as a weapon to begin with. There will always be bad people who try to exploit a system, and we don't (yet I suppose) have a way to fix those bad people, so it's easier to change the system instead. Unfortunately this isn't just an American issue but pretty common worldwide and historically, so it's probably not perfectly fixable. But still, this is an interesting situation where instead of the government violating free speech on its own, the threat of government is used as a tool by private censors.
Also one interesting thing is that it's not just rich people or corporations filing to harass, but sometimes things like small claims court where a company sending a lawyer to show up and handle things would be more expensive than just giving the person suing you some money to drop the case.
Some solutions:
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Existing Anti-SLAPP laws do seem to have at least some use, as seen by politicians and public figures like Trump or Newsom filing the defamation/libel claims in states that lack them. A federal anti-SLAPP law or at least all states enacting their own would likely be progress then even if not fully sufficient. If someone admits they filed a lawsuit just to harass a person, punish them for abuse of the legal system.
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Scale the costs of suing by how often you sue. A person who sues once or twice in their lifetime is less likely to be abusing it than a person who seems to sue everyone.
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Higher standards for filing a case to begin with, make them present. Current standards for complaints are pretty permissive, so raise them up and make people show they have a stronger case or risk dismissal from the start.
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Make it a criminal offense to abuse the courts. Prank 911 calls can end with jail sentences, so why not lawsuits?
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Another similar option, just ban someone from seeking further redress for a while (forever?) if they're found to be constantly abusing the courts. Tell the boys who cry wolf to go get eaten by one.
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Find a way to lower lawyer costs/ease the burden for defending yourself/speed up court. Maybe AI lawyers/judges will help this a lot in the future. One of the reasons SLAPP suits work is because court is so expensive, and that's because lawyers are expensive and court dockets tend to be packed and take months (if not years) to resolve cases. If court wasn't so miserable to defend yourself in, then people couldn't sue you for that purpose.
How much more suspicious activity and lucky coincidences would there need to be to convince you (if you're a current denier) that Epstein was murdered/"allowed" to kill himself?
Because from what I see there's a lot of weird things already. The cameras for in front of his cell are down, guards apparently failed to check in on him (apparently both of them fell asleep despite this being their job), his roommate he's supposed to have for suicide watch is moved out earlier that day without replacement, and two staff members get accused of falsifying records only for the charges to get dropped silently two years after over new years.
Now the one camera that was working has footage released from it only for it to be likely edited video that doesn't even provide a meaningful perspective even if it wasn't edited (so why is it changed and had parts removed? Was something incidentally caught on one of the cameras they didn't shut down?) and a full minute missing along with the other smaller possible cuts, a cut that was completely unmentioned in the inspector general's report but suddenly shows up now. With an excuse that the "missing minute" is a standard reset and the recordings aren't operating at that time yet it now appears to exist according to government leakers.
That same day Epstein was also allowed to make an unmonitored call on a line intended for attorneys only to a non-attorney, with the regional director saying "We don't know what happened on that phone. It could have potentially lead to the incident, but we don't - we will never know" which is another oddity. He claimed he was calling his mother ... his mother has been dead almost two decades before then.
Then afterwards, Epstein's own lawyers contested the official finding and hired their own pathologist who said the injuries were more indicative of homicide by strangulation than normal self hanging.
Then of course we have things like Epstein's sweetheart deal maker Alex Acosta being a literal high level member of the government stepping down only a month before the suicide. Was he distancing himself? Cause that's a mighty odd coincidence too to leave right around that time.
And we get told all sorts of things about having files ready for release, only for them to apparently not actually exist like all the files sitting on Pam Bondi's desk. We have leaks of multiple high level politicians (including the current president refusing to release the records who also resigned over the federal government when Epstein died and hired Acosta earlier) with close connections to him. We have intelligence operatives and high level officials trying hard both directly and indirectly as anonymous sources to deny accusations he was working for them which many powerful people are trying to tout as evidence. Which fair, I expect them to deny if it's not true. But also I expect them to lie if it is true.
Like oh really spy agencies, half your job is to be skilled liars and we're just supposed to take your word for it. People can't be this lacking in self-awareness right? So why do so many of the powerful people with connections to Epstein apparently lack this understanding and think it's compelling counter evidence by itself?
Like obviously none of these things in their own are proof by themselves. If they were, we wouldn't be having a discussion like this we would just say "look at the 100% proof it happened". But a lot of truthful things don't have 100% proof. I'm pretty sure OJ Simpson is a murderer despite not having seen it myself and him being found not guilty. I'm pretty sure Casey Anthony killed her daughter. There's a really strong likelihood Micheal Jackson molested some children. Carole Baskin (although a bit weaker of a suspicion) might have been involved in the disappearance of her husband. None of these have hard conclusive evidence, yet none of these are odd to believe.
And just like those examples, there's a whole lot of weird oddities and coincidences and suspicious behavior around Epstein, his death, and the information on him and his connections that it seems pretty reasonable to suspect his supposed suicide wasn't entirely legit. Outside of 100% proof, how much more would be needed before it stops being "just a conspiracy theory"?
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