Nicker on 19/7/2019 at 01:13
I find it more than a little disturbing that being outraged by the repeated racism, abuse of power, fraud and lies of Donald Trump is now a bad thing.
EDIT: Sorry. I forgot, sexual assaults.
Renzatic on 19/7/2019 at 01:48
It's the difference between handing Trump the rope he'll hang himself with, and trying to hand him the rope, only to have someone else grab it out of their hand, and draw attention to the fact it's the rope they intend to let him hang himself with.
Starker on 19/7/2019 at 04:33
Getting outraged at his latest antics also distracts from all the important issues. Right now, for example, it looks like an investigation into Lord Dampnut's campaign finance violations has been quietly buried after Barr took over, but hardly anybody is talking about it. Things like these are far more important than some racist brainfart Lord Dampnut uses to divert attention away from the things he does (or fails to do). He'd rather people talk about that than the drug prices getting higher or his trade war going nowhere or the blatant corruption happening in his administration. Why do you think he announced the ICE raids beforehand? It's not just to appeal to his racist base (thought that is a significant part of it), it's to inflame the public sphere and burn all oxygen out of it.
ffox on 19/7/2019 at 13:10
Quote Posted by Starker
Getting outraged at his latest antics also distracts from all the important issues.
That is exactly my point - you don't consider his racist attitude to be important. I wonder why?
When my wife saw the video of the rally she was reminded of the Nazi propaganda rallies at (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MaWSTPSA2k) Nuremberg. Just replace "Seig Heil" with "Send her back".
Tony_Tarantula on 19/7/2019 at 15:08
Quote Posted by Renzatic
No, that's a salesman's job, which a financier is in part.
My take: You may have some good points here and there, but your tendency to assume the worst, the most convoluted has, once again, caused you to land in the rough.
More often than not, things are about how they look. In this case, we have Epstein, an all around smart guy who, through good fortune and a little ambition, lucked into a position that allowed him to leverage his talents to make millions. He used this money to strike out on his own, and made a point of hobnobbing and scratching the backs of the Washington and business world elite. By playing his cards right, he bolstered his reputation as the type of guy who could make you rich, which helped him build the necessary connections that would eventually allow him to make billions. He would've lived a charmed life if not for the fact he liked to have sex with kids, and is now finally paying the price for it.
Bolded part is exactly my point. This doesn't look right. Worth noting is that the guy who put together the videos I linked has a background in financial crimes investigation and came to the same conclusion that something is extremely off and that Epstein's "official" explanation for his wealth and power isn't even remotely plausible. That's even before getting to bizarre financial transactions like being "gifted" a $77 million New York mansion, an entity with the same name as one of his , numerous intelligence agencies popping up in his association map, etc.
Remember that I'm trained to do that kind of thing. Example of the tools you would use:
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/dXNldEX.pngSource (Just has unclassified info; this is the "cheat sheet" you'd hand out to the grunts on the team): (
https://info.publicintelligence.net/USArmy-COIST-SmartCard.pdf)
If you start listing the guy's associates, then build a link diagram (Which admittedly I haven't done comprehensively yet due to time) and you start seeing a lot of the lines headed towards people who fall into the same group or type of group then the odds are very, very, good that the person you're looking at is at the very least a known associate of that group or works in the same line of business. It doesn't mean you go out and shoot the guy but it does mean you start doing things like sending SIGINT and GEOINT resources to start monitoring his activity and see who it leads you to. The flights logs are useful because they allow you to put a lot of names on the activity matrix.
As far as "target selection" I would be going after his Madame (due to overlapping foreign intelligence connections she has) and Leslie Wexner. I'd also be looking at connections to Prince Salman and Ehud Barak (a huge list, but doable with a maintaned database) looking for where the strongest mutual connections with Epstein are.
For instance, "the money he used to strike out on his own" was a roughly 100k severance check from Bear Sterns. You also don't generally get to hobnob and scratch the backs of the Washington and Business elite just by being a mid-level employee at an Investment Bank. In that role your typical contacts are with director level corporate finance employees (again, I know because I'm in that world).
Part 5 is up and has some additional information that makes me now feel almost certain that my diagnosis is correct. Epstein had sophisticated surveillance systems in place at each of his properties as well as knowing literally the day of when the police were going around interviewing victims.
Add on this the fact that Acosta was told off the investigation because "Epstein belongs to intelligence" and a lot of things start lining up.
Quote:
No, that's a salesman's job, which a financier is in part.
Salesmen and spies work in a very similar manner. The difference is that the salesmen are trying to make you buy something whereas spies are trying to to condition you into compliance with their desired behaviors. Most salesmen don't make calls threatening to have people killed as one of the victims overhead.
Edit: I want to re-emphasize your point about how "things are as they look".
The way things look is NOT that "he just got rich through working in finance". It looks entirely like a front. Accounting Today ran a piece where they give an explanation as to why.
Quote:
How difficult will it be to dissect Epstein finances if he doesn't cooperate? Pretty hard. His primary charitable foundation, the J Epstein VI Foundation — which made grants to scientists, including the $6.5 million he donated in 2003 to support Harvard mathematician Martin Nowak — does not appear to have ever filed a financial disclosure form with the Internal Revenue Service, as most foundations are required to do.
His company, the blandly named Financial Trust Co., is equally invisible. It has no website, no record of any transactions, and no filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The lack of an SEC registration strongly suggests that Epstein never managed money for billionaires (or anyone else) as he long claimed. But after making phone calls for the last few days, I'm pretty sure he did do something useful for the superwealthy. He was a tax and estates adviser — the kind who has a knack for finding loopholes to help clients minimize their taxes. And he was said to charge a small fortune for his services.
Still, how many tax advisers do you know who have a net worth of more than $500 million, no matter how wealthy their clientele? Thus, the mystery of how Epstein became rich enough to own six properties, plus a private jet, plus all the rest of it remains just that: a mystery.
(
https://www.accountingtoday.com/articles/more-questions-about-how-jeffrey-epstein-got-island-owning-rich)
Speaking from experience, investment managers are required to make a lot of disclosures to the SEC (a listing isn't relevant but easily searchable). Even as a tax advisor they're correct that $500 million net worth is unusual. Those guys are lucky to top out at a few million per year and you typically don't get the guys making hundreds of millions until you're a very senior asset manager (NOT advisor) at a megafund.
Starker on 19/7/2019 at 22:50
Quote Posted by ffox
That is exactly my point - you don't consider his racist attitude to be important. I wonder why?
When my wife saw the video of the rally she was reminded of the Nazi propaganda rallies at (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MaWSTPSA2k) Nuremberg. Just replace "Seig Heil" with "Send her back".
It's not just the racism that I don't consider important, I regard basically anything that comes out of his mouth as garbage. Why should I let him dictate the conversation? And it is what he wants. When he was asked in one recent interview whether he relished all this, Lord Dampnut, apparently not knowing what the word relish means, said that no, he actually enjoys it.
Besides, it's not like it's exactly news, is it? Remember, this is someone who considers most Mexican immigrants to be rapists, drug dealers, and criminals and thinks a Mexican judge is not able to do his job.
For example, I think that the chant in the clip below deserves far more attention and is far more important than giving free advertising for Lord Dampnut, so that he can whine and play victim:
[video=youtube;_MnFdGKVcdI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MnFdGKVcdI[/video]
Renzatic on 20/7/2019 at 02:59
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
Add on this the fact that Acosta was told off the investigation because "Epstein belongs to intelligence" and a lot of things start lining up.
It comes out more as a teetotal clusterfuck. If the government were protecting Epstein, why would it step all over the FBI investigation while it was in the process of expanding its reach to Epstein's friends and acquaintances, why would it later consider the plea deal he signed to be illegal due to a rather niggling issue of disclosure were it actually covering for him? It seems like the federal government is tripping over its own feet here.
More importantly, what has Epstein done, or is currently doing for them, that makes him such a valuable asset that they'd willingly expose themselves by assisting a nationally loathed scumbag escape justice in a blatantly public abortion of justice?
...an asset that is now, apparently, expendable.
Given that the only source for this quote is Acosta himself, who could be telling the truth, but is also just as likely wanting a to provide a nice ass cover excuse as to why he prosecuted a case that allowed yet another rich businessman to get a slap on the wrist for a crime anyone else would've spent the rest of their lives in jail for.
ffox on 21/7/2019 at 17:39
I wonder if he thought of this:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]2550[/ATTACH]
Starker on 22/7/2019 at 00:29
Apparently, the US was founded on the idea that everyone facing persecution and oppression should stay and fix their countries. Well, except if they don't like it. Then they should leave. But not if they're, like, from one of those Mexican countries or something.
It's like with criticising your country -- it depends who is doing it. If you're a non-white congresswoman who says that abusing children under the US flag is un-American, then you hate the US and should go back wherever you came from. If you're a rich white guy who says the US is a weak and stupid country, then you're a patriot and a real American who belongs there, more so than the First Nations people.
[video=youtube;p9q5gmmzvMQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9q5gmmzvMQ[/video]