[Forbes] Ghislaine Maxwell, who is accused of facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of young girls, was denied bail for the third time Monday, all but ensuring she’ll remain in jail before trial.
BLUF:
"The Defendant continues to have substantial international ties, familial and personal connections abroad, substantial financial resources, and experience evading detection," the judge said.
#1
"The Defendant continues to have substantial international ties, familial and personal connections abroad, substantial financial resources, and experience evading detection"
More commonly referred to as sponsoring and tradecraft.
Posted by: Heavy G ||
03/23/2021 12:09 Comments ||
Top||
#7
They are trying to prevent the interview with Oprah situation where she then tells all that she wants the world to know.
I think Oprah wants it all kept quiet as much as any of them.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/23/2021 12:42 Comments ||
Top||
#8
They don't dare eliminate her in custody given the Epstein farce and public doubt, but letting her out would be just as dangerous for her becasue there are very very rich and powerful people around the world who would have her offed in a millisecond. Her power and safety are all about where the tapes and pictures are, once that evidence is destroyed, she is a goner. Clearly the unanswered questions of where his wealth and access came from will never be fully exposed to light, but while he liked teenage girls, and clearly trafficked in them for personal use, there was the seamy blackmail aspect and how that linked to intelligence services that is the most embargoed part of this. Epstein's murder while in custody was beyond bold, it was an act of pure desperation to silence him by some very powerful people inside the government and beyond, given proof by the fact that nothing has been done about it.....it just fades away, the hallmark of an inside job to me.
[deBoer] Displacement - Displacement is a psychological defense mechanism in which a person redirects a negative emotion from its original source to a less threatening recipient. A classic example of the defense is displaced aggression. If a person is angry but cannot direct their anger toward the source without consequences, they might "take out" their anger on a person or thing that poses less of a risk.
Media Twitter does not hate Substack because it’s pretending to be a platform when it’s a publisher; they don’t hate it because it’s filled with anti-woke white guys; they don’t hate it because of harassment or any such thing. I don’t think they really hate it at all. Substack is a small and ultimately not-very-relevant outpost in a vastly larger industry; they may not like it but it’s not important enough for them to hate it. What do they hate? They hate where their industry is and they hate where they are within their industry.
But that’s a big problem that they don’t feel like they can solve. If you feel you can’t get mad at the industry that’s impoverishing you, it’s much easier to get mad at the people who you feel are unjustly succeeding in that industry. Trying to cancel Glenn Greenwald (again) because he criticizes the media harshly? Trying to tarnish Substack’s reputation so that cool, paid-up writer types leave it and the bad types like me get kicked off? That they can maybe do. Confronting their industry’s future with open eyes? Too scary, especially for people who were raised to see success as their birthright and have suddenly found that their degrees and their witheringly dry one-liners do not help them when the rent comes due.
[WSJ] 'The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."
That quote, attributed to Lenin, was a colorful metaphor for what Marxists call the internal contradictions of capitalism. Belief in the inherent inevitability of the West's imminent collapse sustained the Soviet Communists right up to the moment in 1989 when their own system proved more self-annihilating than anything capitalism could muster.
But the old maxim has taken on a new and more plausible form today. It was on display last week in the first encounter between President Biden's foreign policy team and the modern claimants to Marxism-Leninism's primacy in the Chinese Communist Party.
It was evident from the moment the two sides sat down that an emboldened Chinese leadership understands that the greatest ideological weapon it now holds in its increasingly existential struggle with America is the gleeful enthusiasm for self-destruction that characterizes so much of elite opinion in the U.S.
When Yang Jiechi, the Communist Party's foreign-affairs chief, lectured Secretary of State Antony Blinken about America's human-rights record, its treatment of minorities and its system's innate inequity, everything he said could have been lifted straight from the pages of the Democratic Party's presidential election platform, culled from Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper stories, or jotted down in a student's notes from lectures delivered daily at America's top universities.
In fact, it probably was.
In response, a visibly discomfited Mr. Blinken mumbled something barely coherent that at least America deals with its problems in the open. He then complained, like a bested debater, that his opponent had gone over his allotted time.
The larger truth is that the people who control America's leading cultural institutions and now its government have been eagerly manufacturing ideological rope for the Chinese hangman, and they've stepped up production over the past year.
The intellectual movement to which they subscribe has been the force behind the planned destruction-figuratively and literally-of the principal pillars of America's authority in the world: the idea that the greatest nation on the planet was founded on universal ideals of human freedom and dignity. Instead, it insists, like those Chinese Communists, that all along this claim to a unique status in the world has been a fraud, mere sloganeering behind which America has been-and remains-a force for repression and exploitation.
How can a nation prevail in a global ideological struggle when its leaders believe its values are intrinsically evil?
Mr. Yang and his colleagues must have had a good laugh on their way back to Beijing. Indeed they are probably chuckling at much of what they see in the values and principles to which America's new masters-sorry, nongendered leadership figures-demand loyalty.
This isn't about the maternity flight suits for fighter pilots or updated requirements for Army hairstyles the commander in chief proudly hailed earlier this month.
It's about the elevation of victimhood as the prime signifier of honor in modern America. Whether you're an opportunistic young hoodlum looting Gucci or a member of the celebrity plutocracy seeking better publicity, don the mantle of a hapless innocent exploited by an inherently unjust system, and you're golden. It's hard to imagine a successful society in which the claim to being the victim of some oppressor-often a spurious claim-is the quickest route to advancement.
It's about the destruction of the idea of academic excellence that now seems to have much of the educational establishment in its grip. Democrats in control of major cities across the country are busy eliminating the opportunities for some of their most disadvantaged children that come from admission to selective schools on the basis of talent. We are told that's discriminatory. Leveling down is the result.
And of course it's in the fanatical insistence on the qualities that divide rather than unite Americans-race, sexual orientation and multifarious "gender"-as the principal characteristics of identity. How bitterly ironic that Marxist theories of structural oppression that were discredited by the experience of America's ideological adversaries in the last century are now rampant in the most influential strata of American society in this one. Lenin may get the last laugh.
The Chinese have proved much more adept than their Russian predecessors at adapting the precepts of Marxism to economic reality. As Lenin predicted, they've had plenty of help from American capitalists in the process.
But our cultural elites have also been busy exporting the hangman's rope across the Pacific. At least the capitalists have been selling it to them. Much of modern America seems intent on giving it away.
#1
Make a big noise that copyright and patents are tools of white supremacy and oppression. Then sit back and watch all those woke corporate types try to square the circle.
#2
If they cancel enough legacy content, the underlying copyrights become worthless anyway.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/23/2021 7:55 Comments ||
Top||
#3
And just as the UAW makes no money on the resale of a used car, I don't think there's any copyright revenue generated when that used Dr, Suess book or Warner Bros. cartoon collection DVD changes hands at the flea market, so cancel away, boys...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/23/2021 7:58 Comments ||
Top||
#4
In response, a visibly discomfited Mr. Blinken mumbled something barely coherent that at least America deals with its problems in the open. He then complained, like a bested debater, that his opponent had gone over his allotted time.
Yeah 18 minutes over his allotted 2 mins...Blinken should've gotten up and walked out at 3 minutes in
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/23/2021 8:41 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Think they would've tried this shit with Pompeo?
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/23/2021 8:42 Comments ||
Top||
#6
#3 that is already in effect. What I imply is that stuff that is pirated on the industrial scale. You know, just like the Chinese do now.
#7
Lenin thought he was so clever. He was dead of "an incurable disease of the blood vessels" by 1924.
The Bolsheviks thought they were clever too; they turned capitalism against itself and managed to destroy the social immune system that kept psychopaths in check. Most of them wound up as skeletons paving the bottom of the White Sea Canal, where Stalin sent them to be worked to death.
#8
Think they would've tried this shit with Pompeo?
Never. Not with Trump either. Same for the Russians. Putin is openly mocking Biden.
Whatever they or anyone thought of Trump and his tweets, it was always obvious that he is an alpha male who doesn't take any shit and who knows how to negotiate.
It's obvious to the world that Blinken is a ghey soyboy and his boss a pathetic, mentally decrepit invalid. Fun times ahead.
Posted by: Jack Brown6790 ||
03/23/2021 13:13 Comments ||
Top||
#9
UAW. I remember them. It stood for U Aint Working.
Posted by: These Forkbeard7574 ||
03/23/2021 20:03 Comments ||
Top||
[Right Scoop] In a dissent to a libel case, tossed because it failed to stand up to the "actual malice" standard established under the 1964 Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan, Washington, DC, Senior Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman urged the court to reexamine and possibly overturn that case, stating that "conservatives are oppressed by liberal outlets, academia and tech companies that combine to create ’a frighteningly orthodox media culture.'"
And Silberman took no hostages when he noted where he believed that frightening orthodoxy might lead.
[Townhall] It might not occur to you, because you are not a bizarre weirdo, but a lot of people really love the pandemic. Not just the little fascist gnome who changes his #science advice more often than a Wellesley girl changes her preferences during her sophomore year experimental phase, and not just the fascist pols who get off on exploiting their emergency powers to boss people around, but even some regular people. The masks, the paranoia, the constant talk about vaccines – some people love this stuff. Yes, it's Kurt.
This is their Woodstock.
And they never want it to end.
Why would anyone enjoy this idiocy? Limits on your freedom, hectoring pests, nitwits riding around in their Priuses with face diapers wrapped around their talk-holes… it's an abomination. Yet there's this slice of the populace that gets into it. They resist a return to normalcy because their normal lives were not that great to begin with and this is the most exciting thing that will ever happen to them. For example...
And some Schiff sort of hit the fan under the pandemic. It was weird and sort of scary and, most importantly, it was different. The disease itself could actually kill you, though with a 99 percent survival rate for most healthy folks, the odds were generally in your favor (when I got it, it was like a slight cold). But there were the public manifestations of chaos. Going to a Trader Joe's during the first days of the unprecedented lockdown, seeing the wine moms load up on hummus, ciabatta, and $5.99 screw-top Chardonnay as if they were Hillary Clinton anticipating the breakdown of the entire social fabric, was memorable. For once, things were not certain in America. And something within human beings responds to that uncertainty. We were designed to fight for survival, and even if that meant battling to be the one getting the last bag of frozen orange chicken, it was something.
[Spectator] Well, that didn’t take long. The first major bill passed by the new Democratic congressional majority and signed into law by our new president on March 11 had already provoked a constitutional challenge by March 17. The attorney general of Ohio filed suit against the Biden administration last Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, alleging that the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) unconstitutionally and coercively limits the right of states to manage their internal fiscal policies: "This suit challenges an unconstitutional provision in the American Rescue Plan Act — a provision that allows the federal government to commandeer state taxing authority."
If the use of "commandeer" in this context seems vaguely familiar, it’s probably a vestigial memory of the B.O. regime’s failed attempt ...Curses! Foiled again!... to exert equally questionable control over state budgets using the mandatory Medicaid provision of Obamacare
Continued on Page 49
Kurt Schlichter, of course
[Townhall] - It might not occur to you, because you are not a bizarre wierdo, but a lot of people really love the pandemic. Not just the little fascist gnome who changes his #science advice more often than a Wellesley girl changes her preferences during her sophomore year experimental phase, and not just the fascist pols who get off on exploiting their emergency powers to boss people around, but even some regular people. The masks, the paranoia, the constant talk about vaccines — some people love this stuff.
This is their Woodstock.
And they never want it to end.
Why would anyone enjoy this idiocy? Limits on your freedom, hectoring pests, nitwits riding around in their Priuses with face diapers wrapped around their talk-holes... it’s an abomination. Yet there’s this slice of the populace that gets into it. They resist a return to normalcy because their normal lives were not that great to begin with and this is the most exciting thing that will ever happen to them.
People crave a challenge, and for a while one of the most challenging things about America was its utter lack of challenge. It’s generally safe here. You probably won’t get hurt, except by accidents or if you live in a big Democratic city, and only then if you find yourself in the wrong neighborhood. You won’t starve — even if you are a bum, someone is handing you a ham sandwich. You really have to go looking for danger, and people do. They get into extreme sports, or flirt with crime, join the military, or date a Cuban chick.
The hardworking people who built America and made it safe, secure, and prosperous, also made it, in some ways, empty. We inherited a paradise. We paid nothing, did nothing, and most importantly, we risked nothing. But human beings are designed to do all those things. And we never really got a chance to.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/23/2021 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11129 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The US population in general is addicted to excitement & emotional agitation, that is the root cause of this.
#6
It was plain to see during 2 Weeks to Flatten the Curve, Part 3 that there were CosPlayers and Karens who had formed their Id and Ego around the situation. The Petty Tyrants had come into their groove without a zest for things like, The New Rules for How You Will Now Play Softball.
These anti-social and mentally unbalanced people had found their niche.
It was official when the Daily Mail was attempting to re-define Karen into someone had done their requested mask time and actively defended themselves against the free agents.
Also, it was then that Getting Paid to Not Work Because Covid started to get mentioned, as the ball fields at the centralized location (huh uh you will not travel to other towns, just this one) were not maintained like they had been. Get paid to mow the entire grounds, or get paid to wrap some construction fencing around everything but the ball field and just care for that area.
Why isn't the pitching rubber where it is supposed to be and the infield dragged? Nobody wanted to go to work that morning.
[Aljazeera] The United States economy is "much improved," says Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, crediting Congress and the central bank both for providing "unprecedented" support, but at the same time warning that the recovery is still "far from complete".
"The recovery has progressed more quickly than generally expected and looks to be strengthening," Powell said in remarks prepared for delivery to a congressional hearing on Tuesday morning. Household spending has risen, he said and the housing sector has more than fully recovered.
#1
When the price of gas jumped 30 cents in less than a week, that is the underlying cost to everything moved in the economy, that is a signal that you can kiss any recovery goodbye.
[IsraelTimes] The only coalition he could possibly build would be the most hawkish in our history, committed to limiting the authority of Israel’s courts, bolstering the power of its politicians.
If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerges triumphant from Tuesday’s elections, a thoroughly realistic prospect, the superficial commentary will hail his extraordinary political survival skills.
The man who in three previous elections fought off a centrist alliance led by former IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz and hung on to power by his fingernails, it will be breathlessly noted, this time managed to defeat an array of anti-Bibi forces including two potent rivals from his own right-wing side of the political spectrum.
Continued on Page 49
the amount of funds involved, however, is pretty small by US standards, e.g. receiving cigars and champagne over 20 years from a friend without reporting it, inappropriate discussions of tax breaks with potential beneficiaries and similar stuff
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
03/23/2021 17:31 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Forbes] Ghislaine Maxwell, who is accused of facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of young girls, was denied bail for the third time Monday, all but ensuring she’ll remain in jail before trial.
