domain:alexberenson.substack.com
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
20m ago
Somebody with her profile, especially if she was ever an actual intel asset, puts their fucking real name as their handle?
Ross Ulbricht was arrested for a similar OPSEC failure, so I don't think it's completely implausible. Per Wikipedia, "[t]he connection was made by linking the username 'altoid', used during Silk Road's early days to announce the website, and a forum post in which Ulbricht, posting under the nickname 'altoid', asked for programming help and gave his email address, which contained his full name." I won't discount parallel construction here, but I think there is a certain point in an effort like this when you realize "this is for real", but you can't easily scrub the account history: a new account would itself look pretty suspicious and probably point right back to the original -- "DM'd all the other mods and asked for a new account to be blessed" is itself suspicious if you don't trust all those mods, and it's visible to users that a brand new account was given mod access. Satoshi seems like an exception here, but I think it's hard to leave no trace in these sorts of situations generally.
Early Reddit also strikes me as a place where a power-user could steer the conversation more broadly in ways that would be useful to more than just intelligence agencies, or could just be a personal power fantasy. Bots weren't believable conversation partners a decade ago. Observably, various political activists have gotten a lot of mileage out of moderating default Reddit subs, so even if maybe the impact of that is fading today, I think "digital conversation influencer" might have been a playable role that would get one into real conversations in the halls of (non-digital) power.
faceh
25m ago
Well this explains a lot about your stated positions.
Makes me realize that I probably turned out as weird as I did because I kind of had a one-foot-in-one-foot out upbringing, where half my family was churchgoing patriotic traditionalists and the other was more... bohemian? And both sides seemed pretty happy with their lives and had things mostly held together.
'How does everyone fit into society' is a question that needs to be answered and if you've already decided personal characteristics are the way to go about it, well...
We've talked about basic life scripts before, and in general I think that demolishing those scripts has made life harder, scarier, more uncertain, less fulfilling for most people. Becoming an adult is difficult enough when there IS a direct example to follow. Now you have to do it while explicitly being told there is no one 'right way' to go about it.
When every single day, month, year of your life feels like you're having to hack through uncharted wilderness, and determine your location via a hand-drawn map and dead-reckoning, then yeah you're going to keep second-guessing a lot of decisions and live in constant fear of bear attacks, vs. staying on a well-beaten, marked, and lit pathway. (I overstate the analogy just to make a point).
And as you note, people who LARP Conservativism don't really push a RETVRN to such life scripts, or have a plan for bring those scripts back. Because telling your viewers "go to church, follow the bible, and accept your given place and role in life without much complaint" is so utterly uncool and, for an influencer, self-defeating. If the audience does that they will start listening to their pastor more than you, right?
In fact, now I think about it: the term "Conservative Influencer" is almost a contradiction.
I don't think this mentality can come back from the government, but only from intermediating institutions that democrats would like to punish for doing their job and pushing this. But this is the key difference; most adults have probably worked it out for themselves but nobody ever says it out loud.
Agreed. But both the right and the left seem to have converged on the idea that the government ought to be the single wellspring from which all morality and practical guidance comes. What to eat, what to wear, how to arrange your affairs.
Again, overstating the case. I have spent a good portion of my adult life groping around for SOME institution, group, maybe even (ugh) ideology that would give me a provably reliable path towards a better life. But very explicitly not wanting to fall into a cult.
The only one that hasn't let me down in some egregious way, and has remained a steadying force in life is, no shit, my martial arts gym.
The gym I teach at provides the following:
- A strong routine. The schedule for classes has been the same for years and years.
- A curriculum of new material to learn (I've mastered basically all of it, but that just lets me reach out and find new stuff)
- A great social group of generally good, reliable people. (If they weren't good and reliable, they wouldn't stick it out. This stuff is HARD).
- A certain amount of moral instruction: "We are teaching you to inflict physical harm on your fellow human, here are the conditions under which you can do so or should do so."
- A system for advancement (there are tests on a regular schedule, and you earn higher belts as you go).
- Which also allows for a benevolent soft hierarchy. Higher belts are more experienced (and theoretically more dangerous) and thus command some respect, but they have a reciprocal duty to help lower belts learn faster. And nobody thinks, for example, a blue belt has the authority to ORDER a yellow belt to do something.
- Also fun.
I'd guess this checks a lot of the boxes for people who want to be able to follow instructions and see improvement in their life circumstances and be rewarded for the progress. There was a period of time where I think Corporations tried to sort of provide that to employees to make them more productive, but the underlying loyalty that requires has dissipated.
Church is still there, but good luck picking one that isn't compromised by political activism or that is mostly full of LARPers.
That seems to leave most people with joining up with political activism or getting into politics. Which tends to make everything worse.
Goodguy
44m ago
Revisionist theories are not much worth engaging with unless they offer an explanation of what happened to Eastern Europe's Jews. For example, the 1926 USSR census records about 2.6 million Jews. The 1931 Polish census records about 3.1 million Jews. What happened to these populations? The current European population of Jews is estimated to be about 1 million total. Is there evidence for a post-war migration of such a large number of Jews to America, Israel, and so on? As far as I know, there is not. There was substantial migration, but from what I understand, not enough to explain the collapse of Europe's Jewish population size. Revisionists, to be taken seriously, should not just pick holes in mainstream theories - they should present an alternative theory that accounts for the evidence. If the European Jewish population collapsed through emigration rather than killing, let's see evidence of the emigration in quantities enough to account for the population changes. Disease, famine, and so on are not good explanations, because they do not explain why the Jewish population collapsed so much more than the populations of other affected ethnic groups.
grognard
Intel Pentium III 450 / Nvidia Riva TNT2 Ultra / Corsair 128MB PC133 / ABIT BH6
44m ago
About those nurses, apparently they get tattoos to help manage their “trauma” which is presumably excreted from an organ somewhere within their bodies.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
44m ago
History is full of men who wanted nothing to do with it. And rightfully so.
Wars of succession are rarely fought to get the other guy to take on the, ah, "curse." There never seems to be a shortage of men ready and willing to take the top job.
It's only redeeming quality is that in the hands of your enemies, it is even more terrible than in yours.
These people have "enemies" because they wish to gain power and subjugate their rivals. If they didn't want to do those things, nobody would give a shit about them.
The vision of the reluctant ruler is a very romantic fantasy for the armchair philosopher, or for those with zero power in their personal life, but has very little, if anything, to do with reality.
FtSoA
1hr ago
What's the probability vs Ghislaine they would name themselves "maxwellhill?" Let's say indeterminate.
Ahahahahahahahahahaha.
Bayes doesn't work if you don't accurately evaluate the evidence.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
Thank you for that. But human memory, while capacious, isn't infinite, and I wonder if I'll ever want these neurons back.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
I appreciate the detail. Ah, would life be nearly as colorful if there weren't so many lolcows mooing out of desperation to be milked?
FtSoA
1hr ago
The lowest circle of the Inferno, the ice is full of traitors. What has the US done, time and again? Turned spies against their country of origin. If the US government can find a reason to trust someone who commits the gravest sin below treachery to God, no doubt with as little slack as they're given, they can find a reason to trust a guy who lied at parties and fumbled around early in his career.
This is not how HUMINT agencies evaluate potential assets, no.
Most spies don't "need" to be "turned" against their country; they just need to be found.
Being a "traitor" is also very much an eye-of-the-beholder situation. Nathan Hale, patriot or traitor?
Personally, I'm very grateful to e.g. the "traitors" to communism in the USSR.
None of what you describe of his background is specifically disqualifying for his use as an asset.
Reliability and discretion matter quite a lot, in fact, for the value of an operational asset conducting sensitive missions.
They have reason to run a perpetual blackmail machine, including targeted those who appear to be on their side.
They also have reason to avoid ops that, if exposed, would cause major problems. Risk, reward.
I would ask, given what we know about his life and how often men like him skirt justice, is it probable that rather than torching literally any VIP he could draw from the list of flights, he instead just killed himself? It's not.
Well, he wasn't able to skirt justice, right?
There is also maxwellhill. Ghislaine Maxwell had a prominent hand in the general psy-opping of the giant psy-op that is Reddit. She was, maybe still is, an intelligence asset. What was Epstein, then?
You're just asserting that as proven fact? Somebody with her profile, especially if she was ever an actual intel asset, puts their fucking real name as their handle?
Come on. Be serious now.
FtSoA
1hr ago
Well, Epstein was his friend.
It's totally plausible Trump participated in Epstein parties with those young girls Trump said Epstein liked so much. At this point, it's not very plausible that concrete evidence for such activities exists.
The Epstein Story is now an albatross around the Trump Admin's neck from their own supporter base.
It's not an unprompted reaction--there's a lot of strife in MAGA World right now over it. As I said in another comment:
"The MAGAtard Nation has just been spewing BS and is now the dog that caught the car while also driving the car." Including, of course, his present FBI director and deputy director.
FtSoA
1hr ago
Well besides any formal revelation of the documentation, I'd expect at least partial leaks of any juicy bits. Or at least semi-credible rumors.
For instance, there are allegations that there are never-released tapes of Trump saying very politically correct things on The Apprentice.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/alleged-trump-apprentice-tapes/story?id=57192712
For the Epstein stuff, I'm not aware of any specifics like that. Obviously, the typical person highly interested in Epstein is also pretty dang MAGA, and this tension has now been built in since Trump I. But it's not like the Looney Left hasn't tried to believe anything possible about Trump being a rapist. Or a Russian asset.* I loved BlueAnon believing the assassination attempt was faked.
So the simplest explanation is there's "no there, there." Can't leak what doesn't exist. The MAGAtard Nation has just been spewing BS and is now the dog that caught the car while also driving the car.
The whole "intel black op theory" at least theoretically explains why no one is revealing any further details (if they even exist). Of course, if Epstein was supporting highly controversial totally black ops, one would hope the relevant intel agencies would have spirited him away, or conducted some kind of much cleaner cover up much earlier.
*For the record, RussiaGate did in fact find a lot of pretty bad shit that would have been unthinkable. But claims and expectations exceeded evidence; so some can pretend Trump was totally vindicated and it was all a hoax.
FtSoA
1hr ago
I'm not debating whether Hoss was tortured.
I'm pointing out his gave a consistent account for a long time after that. Weird that his torturers allowed him to claim he had been tortured, but were able to force him to never recant his overall narrative.
Did you even skim the source I provided that discussed corroboration? Are you just gonna ignore the sources I provide and questions I pose and whine whine whine about how it's the mainstream that's incapable of engaging with reality?
But as I've already explained, the biggest problem of all is the lack of corroboration of these claims in the body of documentary or physical evidence.
What's funny is that when I provide such corroboration, or ask harder questions for you than you can ask of me, you seem to ignore it.
Were the camps merely for labor? If so, why destroy and bury them?
How would you expect the Nazis to conduct a secret operation and cover up?
This is funny, the tiles did not match witness accounts and the manufacturers logo would have been installed facing the structure, not installed with the logo facing outwards.
That's not what my sources say. Do you have better ones?
Why was the facility buried?
They claim 800,000 people were killed at the location they "investigate" but instead of excavating mass graves they find a clay tile and claim they have proven everything, while demonstrating their eagerness to overfit on the data by falsely interpreting a manufacturer's logo.
Well, as you love to point out, they haven't been allowed to do a full excavation. They found evidence of structures that matched accounts of the gas chambers and found tiles when they dug. What level of excavation would make you happy?
Revisionists claim that there were real sanitary facilities constructed in Treblinka II. This is supported by budget documents which explicitly have a line item for sanitation facilities to be constructed in TII. So a clay tile is also consistent with the Revisionist theory that this camp featured real sanitation facilities that were falsely claimed to be homicidal gas chambers.
Ok, so then why did the Nazis destroy and bury the structures? Do you expect the Nazis to be retarded enough to put: "Fake Sanitary Facility Actually Intended As A Means Of Mass Execution" in the budget documents? What level of evidence is actually reasonable to expect?
One funny anecdote from Colls scientific excavation is that she found a fossilized shark teeth from when Poland was a seabed millions of years ago! But if the cremated remains of 900,000 people were on that site, and each victim had an average of say 28 teeth, there would be over 25 million human teeth buried in this small area where she found fossilized shark teeth.
Not sure what your issue is. The human bones were ground up. The soil was disturbed/tilled, so a fossil could have been in the mix. If the shark tooth was so damning, you'd think that would have been covered up so clever Revisionists like you couldn't use it.
People believe the Holocaust narrative because of the media transmitted in popular culture and what they are told in school.
Did the media write Mein Kampf? Did it write the speeches Hitler made? Did it compile lists of Jews, make them wear stars, tattoo ID numbers on them, and put them into ghettos and camps?
Yes, the Holocuast is used to force guilt onto gentiles and subsequent "compensation" in various forms. But it's based on a lie.
Does any part of your mind wince a little bit when you notice that you can't stop focusing on the alleged gassing inconsistencies, and you fail to engage with what on earth were the Nazis up to with the Jews and where several million of them ended up? Do you cringe at all when you have to consider that the Nazis operated in a secretive manner with a cover up to hide and destroy evidence, such that imperfect evidence is what would be expected?
The "Final Solution" was the deportation of the Jews to Palestine, Madagascar, or territory in what was supposed to be conquered Russian territory.
Wait, the Nazis were supposed to be shipping the Jews out??? WOW WHAT A GIANT MISUNDERSTANDING THIS ALL IS.
Is that what Hitler meant by "annihilation"?
But the biggest question remains: WHERE DID THE MILLIONS OF JEWS END UP THEN??????????
Again, the biggest tell here is that you simply can't deal with the overarching facts that the Nazis hated the Jews, rounded them up, and then millions of them no longer existed. (The fact you haven't even tried to contend with this rather significant issue is pretty interesting. You have all kinds of ideas and sources re: Hoss and gas chambers and human remains, but not for Jewish population statistics apparently.)
You've also not addressed the false claims you've made about the COMINT/intercepts not having any evidence of the Holocaust. Do you see why people have a hard time respecting your views and the claim that actually you're just a no-nonsense realist concerned only with the truth?
So to sum up where I think we're at:
- Europe has a long history of negative beliefs towards and violence against the Jews
- Hitler wrote a popular book in 1925 that was highly critical of the Jews as significant problem
- The Nazis in general were highly concerned with identifying and controlling Jews in both rhetoric and action, before and during WWII
- Hitler "prophesied" a number of times about "the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe" and called them "enemies of the people"
- Hitler gave a speech to his senior leaders in late 1941 that led Goebbels to record in his diary: "Regarding the Jewish question, the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that, if they yet again brought about a world war, they would experience their own annihilation. That was not just a phrase. The world war is here, the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence."
- The Nazis had a "Final Solution" for the Jewish Problem
- The Nazis systematically rounded up a lot of Jews and put them into camps
- There is clear evidence the Nazis tried to destroy/bury several of these camps, particularly towards the end of the war when the tide had turned - The "Final Solution" was the deportation of the Jews to Palestine, Madagascar, or territory in what was supposed to be conquered Russian territory
- ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
- The pre-war and post-war Jewish population of Europe, particularly Poland, has a gap of several million Jews
Where did the millions of Jews go?
Yes, the Holocuast is used to force guilt onto gentiles and subsequent "compensation" in various forms. But it's based on a lie.
Ah, is that why people hate the Jews so much? When they suffer, they deserve it, of course. But when they don't suffer sufficiently they have to lie about it?
Here's a joke I just came up with:
A Holocaust Revisionist dies and goes to Valhalla. He gets to meet Hitler.
The Revisionist says, "I tried my best to combat the lies they tell about you trying to exterminate the Jews."
Hitler responds, "Well thank you; we tried our best, but I'll always regret we didn't fully annihilate those bloodsuckers."
"Oh no, the Zionist propagandists got you too," cried the Revisionist.
I'll have to workshop it a bit.
erwgv3g34
1hr ago
I usually wonder about this kind of thing in a different sense, because men in spheres bemoaning lack of trad values often mention virginity but I'm never clear on if they're offering the same virginity themselves.
You aren't clear because it is not relevant. Nobody cares if the groom is not a virgin, least of all the bride. Look up mate choice copying (or, as PUAs call it, pre-selection).
It's like worrying about how the groom will look in a dress.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1hr ago
As far as I can tell, TACO is somewhat responsible, but also, average US tariff rates are just over 50% on Chinese goods?
It seems fairly plausible that TACO/other delays in tariff implementation are substantially responsible. The "Liberation Day" tariffs weren't just a hike on (already high) tariffs on China - they were (supposed to be) a sweeping set of tariffs applying to basically everyone. China is a big trading partner, but it's still only ("only") a little over 10% of US imports. A moderate-to-high increase in the price of Chinese imports is not going to single-handed crash the US economy (especially since I expect re-exportation and other means of evasion to mitigate it to some degree), and given existing stocks and possible mitigation strategies, major impacts might be quite delayed.
On the other hand, if the April 2nd tariffs had gone into effect quickly, we'd likely be looking at a very different state of affairs.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1hr ago
You've distorted his claim that women should be accountable just like everyone else to imply that he says that only women need to be held accountable
No I didn't.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1hr ago
We also dislike people declaring they have reported someone. "I'm telling on you!" is not any more effective or impressive here than it was in kindergarten. What is that supposed to accomplish? Put extra pressure on the mods? We can see your report. Submit your report and move on.
Apologies then, I will not do this in the future.
Hieronymus
1hr ago
Yes, of course; that's why I mentioned it. It's a funny story, and in some ways the pastor made nerdy, clumsy me feel like a paragon of social grace by comparison. It's not an example to imitate.
And yet... I don't know. The whole service was so incredibly earnest in a way most weddings, even Christian weddings, are not. It wasn't a show. It wasn't just a party. It wasn't a chance for the bride and groom to show off. Great is Thy Faithfulness may never have been sung more sincerely.
The liturgy would not have impressed Cranmer. The preaching would not have impressed Edwards or Baucham. But God was glorified anyway.
Jiro
2hr ago
You have taken him out of context. If you look a few posts down, you see that he also says that people already understand that men need to be held accountable. You've distorted his claim that women should be accountable just like everyone else to imply that he says that only women need to be held accountable.
Jiro
2hr ago
No, that's precisely the kind of rights-based mindset that I'm describing as not being duty-based.
If he owes the duty to other people, his mindset isn't the only one--there's also the other people's mindset to consider. And they may think that they are owed, but that they don't owe. It's exploitation by them.
2rafa
2hr ago
If it was Maxwell and the lynchpin of so many online conspiracy theories, why can’t the powers that be (which surely have access to Reddit or - at worst - Ghislaine’s recovery email) just log in as her and post something?
And besides, you again ignore the entire point. In one of the most expensive intelligence operations in modern history, the most banal, easiest, entry level bulk reposting of links (which would have been botted even back then) was supposedly manually done by a middle aged ultra-rich heiress who knew many of the most powerful people in the world and who was moonlighting as a Reddit powermod and farming karma by reposting (in 99.9% of cases) uncontroversial news stories, the kind of thing any third world teen on a gig work site would have done for $3 an hour and which, in the most sensitive cases, would have been done by 22 year old junior intelligence analysts on their first job.
“Sorry, Your Royal Highness, I’m going to have to interrupt our drinks so I can repost an article about an avalanche in Spain on Reddit for 500 karma because the huge intelligence operation I work for values me not for my contacts and charisma but because I can press submit on m.reddit.com several dozen times a day, a skill nobody else you have access to can do”?
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
2hr ago
You continue holding the idea of these people behaving in predefined ways. They don't. You think they wouldn't use an account with their own last name. Yeah, they would. I wouldn't even say it for the tin foil "Triple bluff." No, they just don't actually think about these things. Opsec is often comically bad, it just sort of works out anyway because nobody gives a shit and people are actually really good at keeping their mouths shut. Though for what it's worth, what you are describing is in fact perfect opsec, because you've convinced yourself it couldn't possibly be her.
So. The patterns suggestive to internet sleuths that account was hers is due to "comically bad" opsec, which enable the sleuths to make the connection. Whereas simultaneously, all the other contradictory patterns (rest of accounts post history) suggestive of coincidence is "perfect opsec", and can be dismissed.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
No. I’m familiar with oxygen-acetylene reactions in the context of welding and thought the portmanteau with hydroxychloroquine sounded cool.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2hr ago
We're not going to take sides in a situation like this. People accuse other posters of misrepresenting and strawmanning them all the time. Sometimes people are misrepresenting and strawmanning other posters, but y'all need to work this out yourselves-civilly!-or let it go.
When we do intervene is when threads become pointless back and forth exchanges of "Did not!" "Did too!" Which is what this is becoming.
We also dislike people declaring they have reported someone. "I'm telling on you!" is not any more effective or impressive here than it was in kindergarten. What is that supposed to accomplish? Put extra pressure on the mods? We can see your report. Submit your report and move on.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
I’m guessing nobody in this story was thinking with the brain.
I find it funny how they think "we're imposing another, different burden on men" somehow "cancels out" the burden they want to impose on women and means women (and me) aren't allowed to say anything about it or have a problem with it. Judging by the fact that the pro-life side can't even with abortion referenda in Kansas and Missouri, it's not a very persuasive argument.
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