DandomRude

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]

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The US regime has already committed so many serious crimes by now that I would be surprised if it did not try to establish a dictatorship. If it did not do so, all members of the government would risk prosecution as soon as they were voted out of office, even in a legal system as corrupt as that of the US.

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.

Yes, that's true. The Fediverse is also susceptible to manipulation. That's why I'm not a fan of broad rules such as "no politics" in the largest communities, as their breadth would make it easy to buy off a few moderators, which shouldn't be a problem at all if you have even a little capital.

Nevertheless, traditional journalism is dead because its business model is simply no longer financially viable today. Investigative journalism is very expensive and, with the loss of advertising revenue (wnet to search engines and mainstream social media apps), it is simply an impossible business model today. In fact, most of the traditional media today is run at a loss by billionaires like Bezos (Washington Post, among others).

I'm not saying that the Fediverse is a promise of salvation. I'm just saying that it's the only option left.

The internet as such was originally designed to be decentralized, but it was taken over by big capital, for which we are now being presented with the bill in all the remaining democracies of the world.

In my opinion, the only response can be to do everything possible to return to decentralization, in order to at least put obstacles in the way of the powerful of this world.

That goes without saying, but the choice of information media that people use influences their decision. As long as these information media are controlled by billionaires, which is absolutely the case for the majority of voters, not only in the US, the outcome of the elections is a foregone conclusion.

One should not assume that even obvious misinformation has no effect if it is spread widely enough. It is, of course, commendable to believe in people, but this hope is clearly dashed by the US.

Do not believe for a moment that something like this cannot happen in your home country.

In itself, the answer is really simple, at least for the remaining democracies, and a solution would be entirely possible: people would have to switch to decentralized media apps, such as those provided by the Fediverse, and stop attributing so much credibility to legacy media. This would significantly reduce the scope for concerted disinformation, which is the main reason for any autocratic form of government being possible, which is of course never in the interests of citizens.

How this can be achieved is the question, and the answer can of course only be education, because the majority of people are obviously unaware of how they are being duped.

Regardless of their nationality, billionaires largely pursue the same interests in order to strengthen their position of power in the political system in which they are most involved.

This is, of course, a conspiracy theory, but the Epstein files, for example, certainly suggest this - as does the fact that billionaires' companies are all multinational and that it is almost impossible to trace where the incredible amounts of capital in the international economic system actually come from (such as the massive concentrations of capital managed by asset managers like Black Rock).

In short: I suspect that the biggest problem facing people worldwide lies in the power of the respective so-called elites, and I think that they coordinate among themselves in order to remain in power or to expand it further.

This is how I explain the resurgence of Nazi ideology, which is actively promoted by billionaires in very different countries.