breakfastmtn

joined 2 years ago
 

Drawn to President Trump for his pledge to take down the political elite, some of his young constituents say he has failed them.

“Not to be trusted.” A “betrayal.”

This is how some young people on the right have characterized President Trump and his administration’s response to the Justice Department’s latest release of Jeffrey Epstein files. For them, the Epstein story is something of a full-circle moment in their political lives — a reason they cast their ballots for Mr. Trump in 2024 that has calcified into anger and disillusionment.

. . .

[T]hey say their faith in Mr. Trump has diminished in recent weeks as they have observed the administration’s response to the Epstein scandal. For his part, Mr. Schwemmer thinks the president has demonstrated a “lack of seriousness” and a pattern of “obfuscation” as communications related to Mr. Epstein have revealed a globe-spanning web of ties to powerful figures in politics, finance, professional sports and the arts. Included in the recently disclosed files are the names of six current administration officials, Mr. Trump’s among them.

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[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 5 points 18 hours ago

Scroll down. Archive.today can archive things other services can't. That's why Wikipedia was in a panic about the verifiability crisis removing their 700 000 links would cause. Most can't be replaced.

Okay, I'm just gonna explain where I'm at with this right now and why.

This isn't a huge issue for this community but for our hard news discussion communities, abandoning archive.today would instantly make a large amount of news inaccessible (probably 1/3 or more, but that's just a guess) to the vast majority. It could limit being fully informed to those with means. That would suck. It's a real harm.

We're in agreement that archive.today is problematic. We really need a working alternative. The ddos attack is shitty and immature. It's a betrayal of trust. However, the victim stated in the Ars article you linked to that this hasn't really had any discernible impact on them. So for now it's a theoretical harm (and an abhorrent practice) vs a real harm.

For me, as it stands now, I'll use alternatives where I can and use archive.today where I can't because I care a lot about that harm. I'll be ecstatic when a real alternative emerges. Like Wikipedia fell into different camps, we're probably similar. I respect that you come down on this differently, but that's where I'm at with this.

[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 5 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

You know that's not a real alternative. I wish it was -- it'd make all of this a hell of a lot easier to navigate. But it just isn't.

[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 6 points 21 hours ago (5 children)

I'd take an alternative if you've got one. Otherwise, unless there's a serious change for the worse, I'm probably going to keep posting them. Sorry!

[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 5 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

I wasn't attacking you. You took issue with the language used and I didn't understand why. Still don't -- it seems like a common way to describe a common occurrence to me -- but you don't have to explain it if you don't want to.

[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I dunno, seems like a perfectly fine way to describe what he was doing. What's your issue with it?

He wasn't diversifying trade in his speech at Davos, even if that was ultimately his goal.

 

U.S. officials are threatening major changes to a trade agreement with Mexico and Canada that could upend the way business is done and leave Canada on the outs.

The Trump administration has a list of things it wants Mr. Carney to concede, including longstanding grievances about protected industries in Canada, such as the dairy sector. Another pressing issue for the U.S. administration is the fact that liquor distributors controlled by Ontario and other provincial governments in Canada pulled U.S. liquor off their shelves last year, in retaliation against Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Canada.

Trump administration officials have also been irked by Mr. Carney’s global charm offensive as he seeks to bolster Canada’s trade relationships with other countries, including China. Responding to a modest tariff deal that Mr. Carney struck during a visit to Beijing last month, Mr. Trump threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on Canadian goods, and claimed that China would “take over” Canada and even ban hockey.

. . .

Mr. Trump and his advisers have indicated that the three-country pact could be scrapped altogether. Instead, the United States could end up with bilateral deals with Canada and Mexico, the advisers have suggested. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

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Jeffrey Epstein cultivated friendly relationships with several customs officers in the U.S. Virgin Islands, offering food, advice and even musical gigs.

One of Jeffrey Epstein’s greatest skills was building and exploiting connections with those who had the power to help or hinder him. In the U.S. Virgin Islands, that included the federal Customs and Border Protection officers who inspected the people and goods that were going to and from his private hideaway.

Mr. Epstein dispensed food, helicopter rides, financial advice and even musical gigs to a handful of C.B.P. officers stationed on St. Thomas, the American port of entry that was near Little St. James, an island that Mr. Epstein owned.

At the same time, Mr. Epstein enjoyed concierge services from some of the customs officers in St. Thomas, according to emails and other records recently released by the Justice Department. They whisked him through inspections. And they helped him troubleshoot when he encountered problems at airports on the mainland.

Starting in 2019, those chummy relationships became the subject of a criminal investigation, the records show.

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[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

The craziest thing, that isn't actually mentioned in the article, is that not a single person out of 23 voted to indict. Not one.

 

Independence movements don’t usually thrive in regions that are rich.

In the past year, leaders of Alberta’s main separatist organization have travelled repeatedly to Washington, D.C., for quiet meetings with senior American government officials in the Treasury and State departments. They’ve reportedly discussed everything from adopting the U.S. dollar to building an independent Alberta military.

These highly unusual interactions — which prompted Canada to warn the Donald Trump administration to respect Canadian sovereignty — are unfolding just as a new Angus Reid poll shows 29 per cent of Albertans would vote, or are inclined to vote, for separation if a referendum were held today.

This is a clear minority, but it’s also an indication of some discontent. The more interesting question is why a province that has long been among Canada’s richest feels so hard done by that some are willing to contemplate breaking up the country.

 

Prosecutors have been repeatedly caught between the president’s insistence that they undertake weak or baseless cases and the necessity of having to go to court.

In mid-January, federal prosecutors contacted the lawyers representing six Democratic lawmakers who President Trump said should be charged with sedition for issuing a video this fall reminding military and intelligence personnel that they did not have to obey illegal orders.

Despite Mr. Trump’s claim that the lawmakers’ behavior was “punishable by death,” the tone of the calls was genial. The prosecutors, from the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, said the inquiry into the video was only in its early stages and did not identify a specific law that had been broken, according to six people familiar with the matter.

They said they wanted to speak with the lawmakers themselves, but gave no sense of urgency, even using a baseball analogy to one of the lawyers, suggesting that the investigation was not in the first inning yet.

Less than two weeks later, everything changed.

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NYU Langone Health cited the “current regulatory environment” in its decision to discontinue its gender medicine program for minors.

A major Manhattan hospital, faced with threats of losing federal funding, has closed its prominent medical program for treating transgender youth.

The move by the hospital, NYU Langone Health, comes after the Trump administration in December proposed rules that would pull federal dollars from any hospital that provides gender transition treatments for adolescents, such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy or surgery.

On Tuesday night, a spokesman for NYU Langone issued a statement citing “the current regulatory environment” as among the reasons the hospital had decided to discontinue its program for gender-related care for youth.

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Legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote was only the beginning as the G.O.P. presses to sharply limit voting in line with President Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud.

The strict voter identification measure that Republicans have pushed through the House is just their opening salvo in a broader legislative effort aimed at keeping control of Congress this fall and helping to amplify the president’s false claims of mass voter fraud in the event that they lose.

The G.O.P.’s relentless focus on the bill and an even more restrictive measure making its way through the House — both of which face a steep uphill path to becoming law — is aimed chiefly at intensifying pressure within their own ranks to muscle through new voting restrictions and seek to reshape the electorate in their favor.

But it also allows Republicans to hammer President Trump’s falsehoods about widespread illegal voting particularly by undocumented immigrants, helping them build a case, however groundless, that any Democratic victories in November will be a result of cheating.

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There were plenty of signs that something wasn’t right with Jeffrey Epstein. Why didn’t anyone say something?

When Jeffrey Epstein said “massage” in the years after he got out of jail in 2009, what did his friends and associates think he meant? Epstein had been convicted in a Florida court of sex crimes with minors in 2008. His method, reported in The New York Times at the time, had been to recruit girls as young as 14 to his home and persuade them to undress and massage him. Then he would force them to have sex and paid them cash.

He was charged with sex crimes again in 2018, this time by the federal government, which accused him of trafficking underage girls in the early 2000s. If he committed crimes in the years between 2009 and his death in a Manhattan jail cell while awaiting federal trial in 2019, he was not charged with them. But the Epstein files show that, during that decade, he was both rebuilding and curating his vast, elite social network, while also looking at plans for a new massage room on his private island of Little St. James and choosing marble for his massage room in New York.

. . .

Tessa West, a professor of social psychology at New York University, describes the collective silence around Epstein and his “girls” as “willful inaction.” Even if the guests at Epstein’s table were not engaging in illegal or harmful behavior, some had to have seen red flags, and “they’re doing nothing about it. They’re not saying anything. They’re not discouraging it,” West said. Given what she knows about gender dynamics in her profession, academia, “I am zero surprised by any of this,” she said. Scientists like West offer clues to why and how Epstein’s world functioned to protect him.

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Mr. Bannon, a MAGA podcaster, developed a seemingly chummy relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of sex trafficking. He said it was in the name of getting Mr. Epstein to open up.

Midafternoon in late June 2019, Stephen K. Bannon sent Jeffrey Epstein an excited series of texts. “Dude!!!!!” he wrote. “Is this real Tell me this is real.”

Mr. Epstein had just texted him a headline from The Miami Herald. It reported that victims of Mr. Epstein’s sexual abuse had lost a court battle to nullify a decade-old agreement that protected him from prosecution for those crimes.

Off and on for months, Mr. Bannon, a leader in the MAGA movement and a former top aide to President Trump, had been advising Mr. Epstein on how to handle resurrected allegations that he was a serial pedophile. Mr. Bannon recommended which lawyers to hire — his own — when to lie low and when he should jump on an opening to push his narrative. He scheduled what the two men called “media training.”

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Jenifer Darbellay’s husband says he wants to share her unique vision with others

When Nadine Kelln and Jenifer Darbellay first learned they were going to get to do an art show together, they were beyond elated.

The B.C. friends, who’d known each other since their children were in preschool together more than a decade ago, spent a whole year planning and getting excited for their exhibit, which would feature both of their paintings.

But before it could ever come to fruition, Darbellay was killed. She was one of 11 victims of a car-ramming attack on the Lapu-Lapu Day street festival last April in Vancouver.

Now, the show — called Gaze and Connect — will go on in Darbellay’s honour.

 

Federal policies under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that are hostile to vaccines have “sent a chill through the entire industry,” one scientist said.

In Massachusetts, Moderna is pulling back on vaccine studies. In Texas, a small company canceled plans to build a factory that would have created new jobs manufacturing a technology used in vaccines. In San Diego, another manufacturing company laid off workers.

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was picked in November 2024 to become the next health secretary, public health experts worried that the longtime vaccine skeptic would wreak havoc on the fragile business of vaccine development.

Those fears are beginning to come true, according to executives and investors involved with companies that develop and sell vaccines and the technology that is best known for the Covid vaccines.

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Since the Feb. 1 closure of London Drugs at Woodward’s in the Downtown Eastside, or DTES, there is a 27,000-square-foot retail hole in the Vancouver neighbourhood. Mayor Ken Sim is suggesting it be filled with a police training centre.

London Drugs’ president and chief operating officer, Clint Mahlman, previously said that vandalism, crime and violence in the neighbourhood led to the decision to close the store.

But a business group and several neighbourhood organizations say what the neighbourhood needs is affordable retail, not more police presence.

“When an anchor retailer like this leaves the community, especially one that’s very important, it affects foot traffic, access to basic goods, it impacts overall street activity, and it has those ripple effects for small businesses and residents,” said Landon Hoyt, executive director of the Hastings Crossing Business Improvement Association.

“If we’re considering a policing training centre here, can we slow down the process to really understand: is that the best use?”

[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The case of the posthumous video games:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/epstein-fortnite/

The official @FortniteStatus X account, responding to another user, posted (archived) on Feb. 6 that a user changed their name to littlestjeff1 after the name surfaced in the Epstein files, saying in part, "Hey Official Fortnite here - this was a ruse by a Fortnite player. A few days ago, an existing Fortnite account owner changed their username from something totally unrelated to littlestjeff1, following the revelation of littlestjeff1 as a name on YouTube."

The post also said none of Epstein's email addresses listed in the public-facing case files exist in the game's account system.

The case of the day-before-email:

https://www.snopes.com/news/2026/02/10/epstein-press-release-aug-10/

From a DOJ spokesperson:

Official statements regarding the death of Jeffrey Epstein were edited and circulated over several email chains within the Southern District of New York beginning August 10, 2019. While initial drafts of the statement list the previous date, this was merely an unfortunate typo that was later updated to reflect the correct date before being publicized. Any suggestion that the Department drafted a statement in advance of Jeffrey Epstein's death is false.

Also:

Searches for the Aug. 10 news release revealed correspondence between FBI staff on Aug. 10 about what appeared to be the finished news release that Biase sent. Searches of the DOJ's database did not reveal records of DOJ, U.S. attorney's office or FBI staff discussing the versions of the news release dated Aug. 9, suggesting it wasn't circulated internally or externally in the DOJ before Epstein's death.

[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 weeks ago

We shouldn't downplay it by calling it a Chinese outlet like it's news. It's Chinese state propaganda.

We should use the good source you cited instead of letting this Trojan horse through the gate.

[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 weeks ago

BOOOOOOORRRRRING

[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 weeks ago

Sorry, I wasn't insisting that you knew about it. Enough time has passed that many haven't heard of it because no one's talking about it anymore. It was well-reported at the time though. An important reason it isn't talked about anymore is that it was resolved a long time ago too.

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