This is likely a physical defense reaction against the prosecution of serious criminals who are waging a war to cover up their own misdeeds. Perhaps he should seek advice from Bibi.

Of course it is tragic, heartbreaking even. But what bothers me about the term tragic in this context is that it makes it sound as if the deaths of these innocent girls were inevitable, as if they had been killed in a natural disaster for which no one is responsible.

However, that is not the case here at all: these girls were murdered by ruthless criminals.

I didn’t want to start a discussion about the pros and cons of megathreads, I just wanted to ask whether this is common practice in the Fediverse. That doesn’t seem to be the case - and for good reason, given the decentralized nature of the network. For the sake of simplicity, it would be welcome for some topics, but I’m sure we’ll manage just fine without it.

I’m on Piefed(.social). However, the discussion is still mainly taking place on Lemmy. If there is such a megathread on the war in Iran on .world, for example, I can’t find it.

This is not tragic, but a war crime - and this war is itself a crime, simply because it is completely contrary to international law.

Yes, and it’s also great that the regime is setting up a secret police force with ICE that has a budget equivalent to the military spending of a medium-sized country…

Seriously, how can any reasonably rational person accept this? Why doesn’t the population paralyze the country with a general strike until this criminal regime is forced to resign? That would also be an opportunity to finally overcome the associated oligarchy and force through the reforms that have been necessary for ages. This includes a fundamental update of the constitution, which has not been updated for at least 150 years, something the US seems to be proud of for some inexplicable reason, which can only mean that this country is unaware that it is still celebrating a system of apartheid.

The same applies to the rule that constitutional judges are elected for life - for obvious reasons, there is no other democratic country in the world that would adhere to this; likewise, there is no democratic country that has an electoral college system or similar that does not even take into account the population of a particular state.

Well, that may be one of the countless reasons why the US, under reasonably sensible leadership, has not attempted to attack Iran. Now it has come to pass because a pedophile, threatened by his heinous deeds catching up with him, decided to try it anyway in order to distract from the crimes he and his degenerate crew are committing - in open violation of international law as well as US law. He and his accomplices in Israel apparently trust that the US citizens will let him get away with it unpunished. How about it, US citizens - is that the case? Is there really no justice left in your country?

The whole point is to distract attention from the Epstein files. So…

Thank you very much for the explanation :)

Can someone explain this to me? I’m out of the loop when it comes to mainstream social media, and I suspect that’s what this is about…

Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll definitely take a look at that. It’s remarkable how the US has managed to maintain an image of “freedom” for years, even though it uses autocratic surveillance methods not only only on any other country but on its own citizens - and also for years and years. You almost have to be grateful to Trump for revealing all this in such an incredibly stupid way, just to enrich himself.

In 2020, the European Court of Justice declared the Privacy Shield agreement, an agreement on data exchange with the US, incompatible with European law and thus effectively terminated it, not because of the activities of any corporations, but because data stored on US servers is not sufficiently protected from access by the US government (Schrems II ruling). The reason for this is the absurd legislation in the US, such as the Patriot Act, which, although it has been weakened, still allows the state to force any company or private individual to hand over all data processed on servers physically located on US soil, even without any suspicion or a court order.

As a result, all US companies doing business in the EU were forced to operate servers on European soil in order to continue their activities legally. European companies that used US providers that did not comply had to switch to providers that do not operate servers in the US.

Unfortunately, it took only 21 months for US lobbying to undermine the European Court of Justice’s decision: in 2022, a follow-up agreement was adopted, the “EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework,” which is no different from its predecessor at all. The legal situation remains the same in the US, and once again there is no protection of data from the US government.

In short, anyone who uses services that are processed on US servers is not protected from arbitrary access by the US - and this also applies to EU citizens.

The prominent hacker Kevin Mitnick, on the other hand, was sentenced to a long prison term, with the judge perhaps slightly overestimating the danger he posed:

Mitnick served five years in prison—four-and-a-half years’ pre-trial and eight months in solitary confinement, because, according to Mitnick, law enforcement officials convinced a judge that he had the ability to “start a nuclear war by whistling into a pay phone”,[36] implying that law enforcement told the judge that he could somehow dial into the NORAD modem via a payphone from prison and communicate with the modem by whistling to launch nuclear missiles.[37]

Source

I think it’s fair to say that pretty much all the dystopian visions of the future from literature and films have now become reality. Brave new world…

What do they mean by “turned him into a joke”? Haven’t they seen excerpts from the State of the Union Address or any of his speeches? What else could the Kremlin possibly add to that to make it more ridiculous?

Yes, absolutely, I completely agree: the Panama Papers already made this very clear - and the fact that not one of those who benefited most from this outrageous multi-billion-dollar fraud against citizens was ever prosecuted already showed that both the law enforcement agencies of the countries and the political leadership are so deeply infiltrated that they simply do not fulfill even their most basic duties anymore. In other words: corruption on a scale that one can only conclude that even most of the remaining democracies must be rotten to the core.

And yes, you are also absolutely right with the second point: Nazi ideology has always been closely linked to the interests of business magnates. That is where the term fascism, as originally coined by Mussolini, comes from: autocratic rule by the economic elite.

What I wanted to point out with the example of the US, and specifically the Eppstein affair, is simply another example of how billionaires have now apparently come to the conclusion that, thanks to their corrupt accomplices in the corridors of political power, they are untouchable - and this is precisely how the US president is acting, who should actually have been in prison for decades for countless serious crimes. Unfortunately, he is not, but is now leading the US as the spearhead of international organized crime, which is unfortunately still not called that because, despite its obviousness, it is secured by state pseudo-legitimacy.

Edit: Another example from Europe is the CumEx scandal - here, too, the massive profiteers, all of whom are billionaires, have never been prosecuted for their massive tax fraud amounting to billions; only a few scapegoats have been convicted.

Yes, that is certainly a motive for many of these monsters. However, the effect on the “lower ranks” or even pf all those caught in the act remains the same: because they commit a crime, and a most repulsive one at that, they are vulnerable to blackmail and manipulation if there is proof (pictures, videos,witness statements).

So the motive hardly plays a role as long as it is treated as a “proof of trust” that every co-conspirator must provide as a “ticket to join the club” of these degenerate criminals.

As I said, this is a classic strategy of organized crime. And since the current US system is essentially organized crime, just on a unprecedented level, I don’t see why the same methods shouldn’t be used here.

For the US, the fact that the president’s father had proven ties to the mob and that the president’s mentor, Roy Cohn, was the go-to lawyer for various underworld figures in the 1970s and 1980s only makes this more likely.

Yes, it would be desirable if truth were rewarded and deliberate false information punished. Unfortunately, neither is even remotely realistic:

True, or at least objectively researched, information was the business of journalism, which for the reasons mentioned above now exists only as a farce of itself (but still retains parts of its former reputation as a reliable source of information). I just don’t think there is any way to make journalism work in the age of the Internet (and I’m from Germany where we have publicly funded media).

Criminalizing misinformation would in turn require appropriate legislation. And as is always the case with laws, those in power would use them to make their worldview the only one that is widely disseminated. To see this, one need only look to the US, where the criminal but also wealthy president is already using current legislation to sue anyone who dares to make him look bad.

So, I think the only option that remains, despite all its flaws and problems, is decentralized social media. Of course, it is susceptible to manipulation, but at least it is not directly controlled by those who want to manipulate the discourse in their favor.

It is certainly not a solution in the true sense of the word - in a purely profit-oriented system, there can be no such thing - but in my opinion, it would at least be an improvement on the status quo, in which people like Zuckerberg and Musk can de facto directly control what people perceive as their reality.

I suspect that child abuse in these circles is something like murder or other serious crimes for less influential forms of organized crime like the classical mob (Cosa Nostra and so on): these heinous crimes serve as proof of loyalty and at the same time as a bargaining chip that the mob boss can use against his “soldiers.” That would explain why there are disproportionately more pedophiles in the GOP, for example. That may not be the only reason, but pedophilia is clearly the common denominator among those who support the authoritarian-fascist regime in the US.

In any case, Epstein was also obviously used by Mossad to collect blackmail material against influential people.

It seems to me, especially given the proximity of the US regime to the equally fascist Israel, that this is a fundamental strategy to prevent co-conspirators from going public with their knowledge.