domain:abc.net.au
He got off the hook in 2008 and pled not guilty here. I don't see why he wouldn't at least fight the charges. It's not like he committed suicide out of embarrassment since he was already a convicted and registered sex offender.
IMO Trump's public attempt to sweep Epstein under the rug provides evidence for why Israel would collect Kompromat even on strategic allies. 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 collect blackmail on allies" would be "for the same reason they do all their other spying operations on their allies."
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. Ultimately there's too much handwaving - "he really charmed his way into getting a job at Bear Sterns, and he was joking when he told people he belonged to Intelligence." Of course it was also claimed Epstein was from intelligence in his 2008 legal troubles which is what got him off those chargers. Apparently Epstein was able to set up a meeting between some JP Morgan execs and Netenyahu? That sounds like deeper connections than you described:
Epstein may have facilitated a get-together with JPMorgan bosses and Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, too. In March 2011, one JPMorgan employee wrote to Staley and another high-level executive, “Against all odds, we have been granted a meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu.” Staley forwarded the message to Epstein and wrote, “Thanks,” to which the convicted sex offender replied, “surprisee suprise.”
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
11hr ago
Thank you, for articulating what I was thinking, but likely would have gotten banned for saying because i would've been a lot less articulate or polite in doing so.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
11hr ago
There is no free lunch. If this was as pure EV-positive as you imply, why isn't any country doing this and reaping the rewards as opposed to this current sub-optimal status quo?
This would redistribute surplus from consumers and farm owners to farm laborers. As someone who's generally in favor of economically redistributive policies, I guess I don't have it, although it's a pretty blunt instrument.
Also your argument implies that minimum wage increases are a pure upside policy too btw
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
11hr ago
Is that something you see happening?
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
11hr ago
Watch Death Note. I've never found a human who didn't like Death Note.
Some of it, it’s fine but relies on a lot of the hearsay (quite a bit of it traced back to Epstein’s own bullshitting laundered through people he spoke to and then others who heard it second or third hand) I discuss in my comment. Especially discussions of when Epstein originally met Ghislaine Maxwell, speculation about what he was doing in the 1980s and so on is a weakpoint with little critical analysis. For example, every suggestion that Epstein ever met Robert Maxwell (and this isn’t concrete evidence that he didn’t by the way, it’s just interesting) can be traced back to Epstein personally, who used to tell people in New York that Robert had personally asked him to look after his daughter, which was ludicrous and ridiculed as such by his sons, whom he had actually groomed to takeover his business and look after their sister and who, unlike Ghislaine, actually knew about his various business and personal affairs, including connections in Israel. That’s before we get to Khashoggi and the many, many people (almost everyone) he knew, none of whom heard of Epstein before the mid-late 1990s post-Wexner fortune grab.
Epstein was unemployed, living off savings and scrounged money in a 1 bed apartment in NYC (much cheaper back then than it is today, of course) before he met Wexner. The suggestion that he was a well connected shady international businessman with close and profitable Khashoggi ties doesn’t track.
erwgv3g34
11hr ago
Yudkowsky wrote a whole author's note about how obvious he thought it was and how he didn't know how to make it any clearer:
Since many reviewers are still asking if Quirrell is Voldemort, I tried putting in a final sentence from "Professor Quirrell's" point-of-view and got such reader outrage at the unsubtlety that I gave up and removed it. I am now seriously asking for help and suggestions on what I can do to make it clear to all readers that Professor Quirrell is Voldemort. So far we have the following facts:
- canon!Tom Riddle applied to teach Defense at Hogwarts and put a curse on the position when he didn't get it.
- canon!Quirrell is possessed by Voldemort.
- It has been repeated within the fic that the Dark Lord has lost his last body but is somehow still alive.
- The author has summarized the First Law of Fanfiction as "Frodo gets lightsaber, Sauron gets Death Star".
- The Defense Professor at Hogwarts is
5a) A drooling zombie
5b) Who occasionally undergoes a drastic shift of personality and
5c) Becomes a genius who
5d) Loves the spell Avada Kedavra and
5e) Is extraordinarily knowledgeable about Battle Magic and
5f) Talks about how he always wanted to teach Defense at Hogwarts and
5g) Wanted to be a Dark Lord when he was a young Slytherin and made a list of all the mistakes he would never make and
5h) Talks about "pretending to lose", which he learned through a horribly humiliating experience in a martial arts monastery which was wiped out by Lord Voldemort shortly thereafter, except for one student who was a friend of his and
5i) Doesn't seem to understand why Harry wouldn't want to become a Dark Lord and
5j) Talks about how much he hates this flawed world and
5k) Has manipulated Harry into disliking Dumbledore and
5l) Thinks that when Harry knows him a little better, Harry will deduce that he would want to cast a spell on the Pioneer 11 plaque which will "make it last a lot longer"The reader is supposed to know at this point that PQ is LV. How can I make it clearer without it being disruptive? If you have ideas, please share them.
Have you listened to MartyrMade's series on Epstein? I used to like his stuff a lot, but he's gone off the deep end recently when it comes to Israel and Jews.
I have a hard time believing there's any actually damning evidence against Trump or really anyone, or else someone would have leaked something by now. It's been a big issue for years, multiple administrations.
The common retort is that there’s stuff on Bill Clinton as well as Trump so they can’t. But this is a bad argument because
-
They could just have published the Trump stuff and conveniently redacted the Bill Clinton stuff if they had wanted to.
-
I really don’t think Bill’s grip on the party is so strong that they wouldn’t throw him under the bus to attack Trump if necessary.
kky
12hr ago
Quite true, and I suppose it varies along lines of culture and class. Doesn’t make it any easier to determine lawful slavery, I suppose.
kky
12hr ago
Strong disagree. I think 5% or less would support that, within polling margin of error. I’m a little shocked you think otherwise. Do you personally know people who would sign such a contract? What are they like? If you don’t know any, aren’t you just saying that you’d like to enslave people?
I know well that American chattel slavery was unusually bad. But Greek slavery was also quite bad, you know. It’s what they did to people they defeated in war! Or, read in the reverse, people were willing to fight potentially to the death for the privilege of not being a slave! I know we’re all very sophisticated around here and have very novel and interesting perspectives, but this is lazy whitewashing.
I fully understand that society always has and likely always will have classes, and that the labor of the lower classes is compelled in a way which the upper classes are not subject to. I’m even amenable to the idea that it’s a reasonable system in the abstract for some to own and organize while others provide more of their labor. But slavery is an extreme form, not the normal, and it’s fair to say that those in the bottom tranches of labor should get their choice of master or strong customary and legal protections or both, and that depriving them of these is wrong.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
12hr ago
I thought Elfen Lied was great… when I was in high school. Now, it’d probably go in the “guilty pleasure” box at best.
I can’t imagine recommending it to someone who’s just getting into anime, unless I already knew they were into that sort of thing.
phailyoor
12hr ago
Dunking on maga is great but you should be expected to explain and defend your position. Not drop a cryptic reply like "I'm anti third-worldism." several times and never explain what that means.
As far as I know the "official" definition, as an obsolete cold-war political movement, has nothing to do with the current right at all.
Your posy by itself does a better job dunking on maga than any of Alex's sneering walls of text.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
12hr ago
It’s crucial to understand why this isn’t the case. The mechanic competes in wages with the fruit picker (in an economy with an absence of illegal labor), not directly but transitively, because the mechanic competes with somebody who competes with somebody who […] competes with the fruit-picker. Increasing opportunity for the lower class increases it for the lower-middle, which increases it for the middle. Everyone’s QoL and wages increase. Food prices increase, but wages increase higher than they for the lower and middle. It won’t increase wages for the upper white collar professionals, because there’s a strict barrier where they simply would never consider entering a trade or working as a chef even if wages in these places rose considerable, which is because of the class association. (And remember remittance payments: 66 billion yearly just for Mexico!)
I understand that argument, and I think that there is a lot of sense to it. I would have said something very similar yesterday, probably. But I'm just bewildered at Trump repeatedly getting emotionally heated about this issue, out of left field, with nothing really compelling him to do it. It seems like a deep emotional reaction. It's starting to seem to me that something really bugs Trump about the Epstein matter on a personal level, beyond just journalists annoying him about it. I don't necessarily think that where there's smoke, there's always fire. But I am seeing a weird amount of smoke coming out of Trump about this lately. He's acting defensive about it beyond his usual level of getting annoyed when attacked. He's bringing it up un-prompted. Those are very common behaviors that people engage in when they are trying to hide that they did something.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
12hr ago
7.77 million tons of rice production annually isn’t trivial and neither is 77,000 tons of green tea
FtSoA
12hr ago
Yeah, in theory.
But, in practice, how often is there actual accountability? And a good way to fire them?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
12hr ago
If it were viable to employ illegal workers as baristas, you would be shocked at how horrible the QoL for baristas is too. Have you seen how bad the QoL is for soldiers? It’s because they don’t have a choice!
Wow, horrible, picking berries. They are performing literally the same physical movements that a grocery stocker performs, except the objects are lighter, they aren’t breathing in microplastics all day, the ground beneath them isn’t concrete, they don’t hear horrible pop music 24/7… how could anyone do this?
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
12hr ago
He killed the guy simply by hacking his leg? That's unexpected.
Just a few days ago I read a court opinion where somebody died from being slashed in the face. He didn't bleed out; rather, an air bubble got into his blood vessels and he died of a heart attack. (I unfortunately don't have the link on hand.)
FtSoA
12hr ago
Could just be a narcissism flare up.
I have a hard time believing there's any actually damning evidence against Trump or really anyone, or else someone would have leaked something by now. It's been a big issue for years, multiple administrations.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
12hr ago
Well only the fruit pickers wage would go up. The mechanics wage would not, and the price of their food would.
If everyone's wage goes up equally you're just describing inflation.
They would love when the price of consumer goods go up if their wages go up as well.
Sure, medical professionals now as well. I assume. I haven't seen many doctors with their clothes off but I've seen a few nurses.
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