• FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Another one:

    Epstein is a convicted sex offender. They keep calling him, “disgraced Financier”

    • Insekticus@aussie.zone
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      3 months ago

      They dont want the other financiers tarred with the same brush, even though the capitalist scum deserve it.

    • wheezy@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      I watched the first few hours of his interview that leaked. That man had a room temperature IQ. No one was asking him for financial advice.

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Eh.

        He wasn’t the kind of financier that handled accounts, he was the kind that had connections and when you needed a loan knew who could hook you up.

        Of course, his real line of work was trafficking children.

        • wheezy@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          I think it’s not that at all actually. If you listen to him, he doesn’t understand the first thing about finance. What he did with money was get rich people social connections to the anything from pedophilia to STD drugs to slip to your wife. His financial expertise began and end at blackmailing rich people while using their money to get them whatever fucked up thing they wanted.

          • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            his cover was that of, basically, a matchmaker for cash.

            If Person A needed to finance a project, he had a Rolodex full of stupid rich assholes he could then match them with and get the financing for the project.

            And yes. his real “job” was to set people up with children or whatever else they wanted - and then black mail the ever living shit out of them.

        • UnspecificGravity@piefed.social
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          3 months ago

          That is not what he did. He was a financial manager who was paid by billionaires (literally, exclusively billionaires) to hide money in tax shelters.

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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        3 months ago

        He must have been a really charming, charismatic guy though, to draw in all those famous, well-connected people.

        But then there had to be that moment when he asked to have a private talk, and he took you in a separate room, and informed you that your experience with that 13 year old (which he arranged) was recorded, and now you were going to have to do him a favor.

        Well, c’mon, what did you expect? Just handing out adolescent girls for nothing?

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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      3 months ago

      Even that’s too soft for him, makes him sound like the creep who moved in down the block.

      In reality, he was the most connected and influential international child sex trafficker in history. “Convicted sex offender” sounds like one of his customers.

    • criss_cross@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      This is the one that pissed me off the most.

      Dude ran a fucking ultra elaborate sex trafficking scheme and they label him the same way they would someone caught doing a petty crime.

    • wheezy@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      That could be part of it. But the main reason is the same as what we saw during the manufacturing of consent for the Palestinian Genocide.

      Israeli Citizens Slaughtered by Hamas

      54 Palestinians dead after Israeli targeted strike of Hamas leaders

      Palestinians “die” in news headlines. Israelis are slaughtered.

      It got as bad as media giving us headlines of “Israeli hostage kidnapped from tank”. Not even kidding. They labeled an IDF soldier in a tank as a kidnapped hostage. We have a word for that already: prisoner of war.

      Once you notice this type of passive language used to describe the crimes of who the US government supports vs. who it sees as an enemy. Man, you’ll start to go crazy at noticing how much it’s used.

      Journalist and talking heads on TV are told exactly what vocabulary to use when covering a specific topic. It’s more directed at the interest of those in power and those with wealth than it is to fit an algorithm.

      I mean, the people directing the vocabulary are the same group of people that ensure that algorithm favors them. They allow very extreme vocabulary like “rape” or “beheadings” through their filters when they want to lie about something that favors their narrative.

  • zd9@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    The “news” is the same people as the accused. It’s all the ultra wealthy ruling class. They are also destroying the environment with fossil fuels, buying up livable property and jacking up the rates, shorting water stocks and such, etc.

    Their time may be up soon, but I want to see them rot in prison, not the other option, because that’ll be way more chaotic and could lead to worse outcomes.

    • Grail@multiverse.soulism.netBanned from community
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      3 months ago

      There is no prison for billionaires. Look at New York v. Trump. The only way to fix this mess is a revolution, AKA civil war.

      • carrotfox@piefed.social
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        3 months ago

        Revolutions and civil war have a nasty habit of not going the way you want them to go. Even the French Revolution was coopted by Napoleon and turned into a monarchy.

      • zd9@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Nah, that’s an edgy chronically online 14 year old’s opinion. We likely won’t be able to just vote ourselves out of this mess, but you have no idea what you’re talking about with revolution and civil war. Stop playing Call of Duty and actually go outside.

  • pipi1234@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Distorsión of reality by linguistic manipulation.

    This is straight out of 1984 book:

    In the novel, “Newspeak” wasn’t just about being concise; it was designed to shrink the vocabulary so much that “heretical” thoughts became literally impossible because the words for them no longer existed.

    Here is a breakdown of how linguistic manipulation distorts reality, both in the book and in our world:

    1. The Erasure of Nuance

    In 1984, if you wanted to say something was “terrible,” you just said it was ungood.

    By removing “bad,” “terrible,” and “horrific,” the emotional weight of the experience is flattened.

    • The Result: When we lose specific words for our feelings or experiences, our ability to think critically about those experiences atrophies.
  • Suburbanl3g3nd@lemmings.world
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    3 months ago

    More like the people that own these news companies are also in the files and tweaking the narrative as a result. Something something follow the money something

    • Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      People who rape children.

      At this point it’s on the wealthy to prove they aren’t child rapists. Epstein is just one of many and there is zero reason to assume others like him are not still operating.

  • Stiffy@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    The minimization is CRAZY. Like people are saying “Oh, no, he didn’t rape the kid he just had sex with her.” Like the child CONSENTED to it. Sex, by definition, is engaging in sexual pleasure with both persons consent.

    Our country that was fought for by thousands of soldiers, many whom died for this land, so we could have freedom and a break away from the king of Britain. He was a dictator, and now we are in the company of one such other dictator. A rat, who gained entry only by his father’s money and influence. Who used that influence and abused it, who corrupted young minds and brainwashed people to believe that he was doing good.

    That he was making America great again.

    When the only thing he did for us was give us empty promises, and shoved us down the path of an emptier future.

    • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Like people are saying “Oh, no, he didn’t rape the kid he just had sex with her.”

      It’s much more likely simply a legal CYA maneuver on the part of the media outlet vis-à-vis libel allegations, to not use the name of the crime to describe an act that no one’s yet been convicted of.

      Sex, by definition, is engaging in sexual pleasure with both persons consent.

      Well, not to be pedantic, but that’s not accurate. Consent is not an intrinsic attribute of sex.

      • qarbone@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        What are you on about?

        Rape is a crime. A crime of nonconsensual sexual activity with another person. That, by necessity, requires consent for uncriminalized sex. Children can’t give consent and that’s why sex with children is called statutory rape.

        • luciferofastora@feddit.org
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          That’s their point: Rape being an explicit crime makes the whole thing a legal minefield.

          Accusing someone of something opens you up to being sued for defamation. Truth is a defense against defamation. If I slander my neighbour for taking photos of my bedroom windows and they sue me, I can produce the photos where they are visible in the reflection as evidence that what I said is true.

          However, an accusation of committing a specific crime is considered true if and only if the defendant has been judged guilty in a court of law. Until then, they are considered innocent in the eyes of the law. Proving the truth of your accusation would first require the accused being criminally charged, tried and found guilty. By then, you might have lost the suit for defamation or poured a lot of money into legal defense.

          So a major news outlet accusing a sitting, immune and known to be vindictive president of a crime that he can’t be tried for for the next three years and might never be convicted for by the justice system he rigged would be gambling with much to lose, little to win and awful odds.

          Saying he had sex with children is essentially the same content, but a different packaging that doesn’t paint as much of a target on your forehead.

          Is it fucked? For sure. Is it possible they’re just trying to sanewash the crime? Absolutely. At the very least, it’s spineless. This isn’t me defending their choice of wording, just elaborating on the reasoning behind it potentially being a CYA.

      • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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        3 months ago

        It’s much more likely simply a legal CYA maneuver on the part of the media outlet vis-à-vis libel allegations, to not use the name of the crime to describe an act that no one’s yet been convicted of.

        That’s what the magic word “allegedly” is for. I’m not saying this person committed this crime, I’m saying that someone has said that this person did a thing that could reasonably meet the definition of this crime.

        • teslasaur@lemmy.world
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          Well, using a word usually mean that you have a cursory knowledge of its meaning. But they didn’t exactly elaborate on what they meant by saying that sex doesn’t implcitly mean consent.

          The only way i could justify that position, is of they meant sex(*noun), and the description of organisms that create gametes of different size and shapes.

          Sexual relations, coitus, boinking or one of the many different versions of describing the various acts of genital relationships between humans, DOES imply consent. Otherwise it is sexual misconduct or rape.

          But i recon both of you already know this.

          • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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            But they didn’t exactly elaborate on what they meant by saying that sex doesn’t implcitly mean consent.

            I was pretty straightforward about it, I think. Rape is a ‘subcategory’ of sex.

            There’s a difference between the disingenuous act of describing a nonconsensual sex act while deliberately not mentioning the ‘nonconsent’, and claiming that the word “sex” itself carries with it the ‘trait’ of consent.

            If consent was part of the definition of sex, then when two people get blackout drunk (which legally makes them both unable to render informed consent) and fuck each other at a party or something, we’d consider no sex to have happened, which would be an obviously ridiculous conclusion that no one reaches. It’s obvious consent is not an intrinsic attribute of “sex”.

    • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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      The minimization is CRAZY. Like people are saying “Oh, no, he didn’t rape the kid he just had sex with her.” Like the child CONSENTED to it. Sex, by definition, is engaging in sexual pleasure with both persons consent.

      They’re just extending to elite men almost the same level of rhetorical gentleness that is typically directed at women sexually assaulting boys. It’s only “almost” because they aren’t also playing up how attractive these men are like they tend to when a woman sexually assaults a boy.

        • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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          Yeah, but the level of minimization is par the course for women offenders and only treated as completely crazy because it’s men doing it. Any time there’s a media story about a woman sexually assaulting a boy they try to find glam shots of her, refer to it as an “affair” or “romp” and make at least two references to how attractive she is. It’s just such a radical difference in coverage and reaction it needs pointed out.

    • Soulg@ani.social
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      3 months ago

      Ignoring the substance of the post to whine about where it was posted, very interesting

      • criss_cross@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I mean the owner of X

        1. Has made significant contributions to those in power that are hiding the contents of the Epstein files.
        2. IS IN SAID FILES

        I don’t think it’s an inappropriate callout.

    • MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip
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      In principle, I agree.

      Reaching out to the people who haven’t moved on from the captured platforms, however, still has the potential to do good. If a large population is only or almost only using Twitter, then the message never reaches them if no one on Twitter is saying it. Of course, the algorithm will do what it can to minimize such voices, but a small amount of message saturation is more than none.

  • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    “Underage female”. I’ll never forget this. He was a serial child rapist, to start with.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 months ago

    To actually answer the question:

    Because most of the old media functionally has the CIA as an editorial board.

    Immensely ironically, we know a lot about that because of Noam Chomsky.

    Who… is also in the Epstein files.

    Quite a lot.

    Yeah, it wasn’t just the right wing of the country that has been existing in a constructed media hyperreality, it has also been the left wing of the country.

    • FiniteBanjo@feddit.onlineBanned from community
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      3 months ago

      I wouldn’t describe Noam as left wing, he’s advocating for Ukraine’s unilateral surrender rn. He’s just Red Fascist.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        Oh dear, I was unaware of that.

        Oi…

        Still though, he was a pillar of the left wing, in the sense of left wing = not conservative, a literal seminal figure of it, for decades.

      • RedditRefugee69@lemmynsfw.com
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        If someone agrees with most left wing positions except one, are they left wing?

        I think you’re doing a No True Scotsman here. Just because Noam fell for the anti-Ukrainian propaganda doesn’t mean he’s not left wing.

        • FiniteBanjo@feddit.onlineBanned from community
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          All of Noam’s left wing stances are just criticisms of states he disagrees with, it appears. He is in fact supporting right wingers from a different side of the planet.

    • plyth@feddit.org
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      Immensely ironically, we know a lot about that because of Noam Chomsky.

      Limited hangout.

      Which questions are not asked because Chomsky already gave many answers?

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        They kind of just explained that… Chomsky is famous for writing about manufacturing consent, which is exactly what the media is doing here.

        • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          Yeah, thank you.

          Chomsky functionally was the primary whistleblower on how the media in the US gets routinely manipulated by intelligence agencies…

          … and its now pretty clear that he got folded in, to being part of that the system that does that.

  • ɔiƚoxɘup@infosec.pub
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    3 months ago

    It’s called “sane-washing” and the media won’t stop doing it. Even NPR, though less so recently.

    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      You would think with their funding cut off they would stop doing the “fair and balanced” act and stop carrying water for Republican liars.

      • ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online
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        3 months ago

        You would. But one thing I noticed is that even when money isn’t involved people will gravitate towards bullying, bullies, and harassment by default.

        All the media we consumed as kids of the underdog kid getting even with bullies? That is wish fulfillment and fantasy. In real life even a genuinely hard working and intelligent kid being harassed by a dumbass with serious academic and behavioral issues will have adults and authority figures take the side of abuser over him.

        In real life it is like that all the fucking time. Trump in his first term when he HAD to have actually competent people talk to him he would sarcastically call them Einstein or childish nicknames for smart people before just dismissing what they have to say. Thinking his own instincts were always superior to what anyone else had to say.

        Seeing the media try to make what Epstein and the others did look somehow legal or acceptable is exactly what I expected them to do. They will still recycle the old, tired ‘Muslim grooming gangs’ narrative to paint all Muslims and/or brown people as rapists when literally all the major leadership were ritualisticly fucking children and beating them up afterwards.

      • ɔiƚoxɘup@infosec.pub
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        3 months ago

        Personally I don’t understand it how in the world one could be fair and also balanced at the same time. If you’re being fair then clearly you’re going to be leaning a lot harder left.

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        3 months ago

        Cutting off their public funding just meant they were now for sale to whoever pays the largest contributions.

        They already have a new billionaire daddy judging by their all the new AI ad shilling and bringing on more and more Nazis to tell us why the gas chambers are necessary.

    • korazail@lemmy.myserv.one
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      3 months ago

      I listened to part of a segment on my local NPR station last night about melania’s new movie. The reporter was gushing about how great and strong melania is; how she loves fashion and children and supports her husband.

      I was revolted and thought to myself about how far NPR had fallen.

      Those traits are admirable* but not noteworthy. Millions of devoted parents and spouses exist, but my mother and my wife don’t have access to a film crew to document them and pick highlights.

      *unless your spouse is a known domestic abuser, pedophile, rapist, fraudster (…) and actively dismantling democracy in America, in which case… maybe don’t support him unless you are also a monster.

  • ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online
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    What’s even more fucked is just how personally responsible Epstein is to the modern right wing movement. While online Nazis and crass as fuck assholes were common, the way how they became such a concerted and active and effective politicial movement was done entirely through Epstein motivated and funded shit.

    You know how so many major gaming channels always make a ton of right wing advocacy? Their money and funding came from the motherfucker and his network.

    I remember when online gaming channels were AVGN type fun stuff. Either with retro or with modern games.