Is it bots that bury stuff like this, or legit people who are OK with the behaviour, do you think? Or some other persona, I don't know

This is why I read https://hckrnews.com/ top 20 - things like this stick there. Also feeds me less noise and requires less F5 than the ever-changing HN homepage :)

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Prosecute and show no mercy, the current Iran war probably will still be going on when the new administration comes in. The only hope for Mr. Kushner and some of the other people is a rapid peace treaty before the end of this mixed-up administration even that probably will not help.

Unless this administration is held responsible for their actions, I think it's safe to say that the incoming administration is compromised too. We had a bunch of hullabaloo from the Democrats about Russian influence and zero about Israeli influence (which is much more overt, severe and out in the open), so it sure looks like our entire government is a rooted server at this point.

>The question is, what do you do as the new administration coming in?

I'm not assuming that there will be another administration, everything points to the US continuing down the road it's on.

> You have to think the current administration is completely and totally owned by foreign interests at this point.

The internal dismantling of the US Government, and 'the identity of the US' in general, that this administration has performed must be beyond the wildest dreams of those who were on the other side of the Cold War.

Despite 'losing' the Cold War, Putin appears to have managed to arrange for the US to also lose, somehow, after the war was over.

It's fascinating.

Or in some cases, not necessarily "owned" but purposely acting on behalf of foreign agents. Kushner + Witkoff running point on all Middle East-related talks on behalf of Israel with their only credibility to do so is just being Jewish, apparently.

No doubt about it. As well as the previous administration, the one before that, the one before that, the next one...

You mean something like.. a purge.. of the deep state? I think I heard that idea before

Much of what this article discusses went on during Trump's first term. A new administration came in and largely did nothing. They had the chance to put Trump in jail or prevent him from running for high office again. They didn't. There were excuses. e.g. Americans didn't want to see a former president treated like a criminal. "That's what third-world banana republics do."

Third world banana republics commonly prosecute ex-leaders for two reasons:

1. The new leader is a criminal thug, and needs to eliminate any threat posed by the previous leader or his supporters.

2. The old leader was a criminal thug who did illegal things.

You don't need both of these to be true to put a former leader behind bars. Either one is sufficient.

I'm a Canadian. Even though the U.S. is busy meddling in our provincial elections, referendums, etc. while waging a trade war on us and threatening to make us the 51st state, we're being set up as scapegoats for the midterms. Yes, your ambassador is currently alleging that Canadian cabinet ministers are interfering in the midterms[1]. This is just one of many indicators suggesting that, should the Republicans lose control of both houses in the midterms, they're going to cry foul and likely refuse to obey the law.

Anyone talking about prosecuting Kushner or the rest of the Trump administration has put the cart before the horse. You have to make sure the midterms are not interfered with by the Trump administration, win the mid-terms, and then win the struggle to enforce that election result on an administration that does not obey the law. You have a mountain of obstacles to climb before you can even think about doing what the Biden administration chose not to do. At the very start of that climb may be the question of whether or not the opposition to Trump is actually comitted to that hard, grueling climb, or would they welcome defeat because it's so much easier?

____________

[1]https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/hoekstra-watching-canada-el...

Cash out, destroy evidence, and feign innocence and ignorance.

> You have to think the current administration is completely and totally owned by foreign interests at this point.

... completely and totally owned by private interests, some of which are foreign.

I don’t think they’re “owned” but they are for sale for given tasks … or straight shaking down folks.

Not quite the same thing.

100 years ago Pareto (yes that Pareto) told us what happens in "Circulation of the Elites" when he noticed a very small part of the population owns most of the assets.

They've shifted the culture and normalized their actions. It was already heading in their direction before they came to power.

This will be an unpopular opinion here and will get downvoted. But this is a total hit piece on Kushner. Vanity Fair is super political and you cannot trust anything they write.

The new administration will also be paid by the same foreign interests.

Yeah, it's almost unimaginable scale a difficulty trying to clear house from a fallen compromised idiot regime, that half unintentionally and far worse half intentionally has handed our nation over to foreign powers.

That has purged the military of any women, any diversity, likely anyone now cowtowing the war crimes happy "department of war" (and clearly given all our blown up bases and very very expensive radars etc has not even basic competence at defense). Has purged diplomatic core of none-regime forces. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6166456-state-de...

These facsist anti-state actors are not going to leave the most unimaginable shitfests. They're going to backdoor everything they can. They're going to leave their foreign hostile friends with full access as much as they can.

The project of doing a full from scratch clean reboot of just the systems is going to be unimaginably slow and terrible. Years of reformatting and careful monitoring. These people hate America, hate democracy, they hate any accountability, they hate democracy, they hate reality. Because reality is against low life lying sacks of no good shit like them. That can't do anything but low despicable low effort actions, and cheat. These people are all Jared. They are all vicious bitter foes to society, dealing readily all the time with the most vile monsters, begging for the destruction of our nation. The great reboot, trying to unwind their corruption, is going to be like trying to fight Vinge's Blight. A never quite dead monsters that is everywhere. Because these are the worst people.

Because even as every day passes and it seems like nihilism makes the most sense, it cannot be our future?!!!

I am trying to remind myself of this, first and foremost.

Having grown up under Soviet occupation - where epistemic nihilism was weaponized - I was taught to try to do better since kindergarten, but this learning happened only at home. I recall my mom trying to deprogram me even back then.

For the moment, we have all of history at our finger tips. Can we just skip the generations of depression and suffering this time?

A lot of people still don't believe it despite increasing levels of proof. The proof is fighting against the world's most powerful media empires, which also prevent access to the proof.

Honestly, this story reeks of being a limited hangout:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout

'Network' and "Margin Call' are two movies I go back to once every few years to kick myself into remembering how things actually are.

cinema that can do that is powerful.

For the lazy asses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMVMbmQBug

Network is absolutely incredible in how it stands the test of time and predicts our current news cycle (we're all still human!). It should be required viewing, especially for today's youngsters.

Of course another famous monologue would be Warren Beatty's to Finch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuBe93FMiJc

It's worth pointing out this quote: "One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused"

I'm not sure about the last part of people being happy, but what he's really talking about in hindsight is the index fund. Vanguard started the first SP500 index fund on December 31, 1975. Network came out in 1976.

Also worth noting that GK Chesterton also talked about something similar to an index fund, but it was an idea called distributism and was a direct challenge to socialism

Azerbaijan isn't a random country in corruption contexts. It is a petro-state and run by a single family for their own enrichment. It's pretty expected to come up occasionally in these kind of stories.

the corruption or that other countries are able to surface the corruption faster than we can?

I wouldn't read a connection between the two other than a lot of corruption flows through Azerbaijan.

He’s a United States special envoy (a position whose history goes back to the presidency of George Washington), which are government officials, like for example ambassadors and other diplomats are as well. They don’t require a direct mandate from the people; many government representatives don’t.

That’s not to dispute nepotism, but he isn’t acting as a private citizen. As the article notes, being a government representative actually makes him formally subject to additional accountability rules.

Because the most powerful nation on Earth turned out to be powerless against a carefully planned and executed Dismantling of Democracy attack.

What you are basically saying is that there is no possible way the election can go any way other than how you expect. It doing so must mean it’s rigged.

It's always funny ever election cycle since 2016, Democrats and Republicans both start screaming "rigged" if they lose. Neither seeming to see the hypocrisy in their accusation. Probably not a good thing. It's not rigged, but it makes for great theatre to say it is. Unfortunately enough people have started to believe it to a since that it is eroding trust in democracy, which is arguably just as bad.

Because the latter included clips of the presidents son smoking crack and hanging out with prostitutes? lol

This question and the potential answers are honestly the most interesting thing in this thread, so far.

Media had access to the laptop, and we only have second hand claims about the phone.

Is there an alternate reality where the dem aligned mass media didn't completely bury the ridiculously salacious laptop story (drugs, money for access aaaand onlyfans level nudity!!) to steer the election?

Because i distinctly recall the head of what to that point I though was a credible journalistic organization saying she didnt want to "waste people's time" with that.

Biden's laptop was in the possession of a computer shop in the US, and the owner leaked its contents to the media.

Kushner's phone data was in the possession of Dutch intelligence who didn't want the public to know they had it -- and as far as I know, this was not public knowledge until today.

crowd control on 4chan?

I think it's becoming clear that although the media just happily accepts the left-wing bias accusations, they are by no means left-wing. They shouted every random Biden mistake from the rooftops while this administration mostly gets a free pass.

Accusation in a mirror

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror

> Why has the latter captured the media so much more then the former?

Kushner is a boring nerd and Biden is a Chad with a huge dong.

I fear that the Democrats will once again fixate on reconciliation and "reaching across the aisle" and "moving forward."

Not that they shouldn't, but you can be 100% sure Trump will hand out pardons left and right when his time comes up. He'll do a self pardon, too. Maybe he'll step down last minute, and have Vance hand out pardons, just in case.

The only things his cronies can be prosecuted for after that, would be state crimes.

What is prosecution even going to accomplish given the right wing owns every court in this country?

Spoiler: They won't.

Echoes of "Lock her up! Lock her up!"

BTW, I found this take very interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHE7oBvOk9U

It’s the Russians that hacked his iPhone:

“The GRU hacked into Jared Kushner's iPhone. Dutch military intelligence (MIVD) then recruited a GRU spy who gave them access to the hacked phone”

https://www.vanityfair.com/story/jared-kushner-hacked-phone-...

We had taps on Merkel, this is nothing!

> and they are destroying records in violation of law

Nothing new and there will be no justice. Look up the guy in charge of MKUltra. He destroyed evidence and got a nice retirement.

"Corruption" isn't quite the right scale to use for this. Far deeper, more systemic. This is the disassembly of a state.

Much more equivalent to phenomenon surrounding the collapse of the Soviet Union: liquidation of an entire state's infrastructure via foreign exchange controlled exclusively by the security state . . with plenty of братва duocracy of course.

We've already seen equivalents, even before the 2008 Econopalypse, but activities like those of the Trump-affiliated circle is the terminal end: where USD-denominated assets are exchanged for pure state power. It's just that this is a particularly pure form of it.

There will be no unravelling of this, not until the system of USD seigniorage itself unravels.

why would you need to destroy anything if there's pardons involved. Even if they have the proof you committed wrongdoing, the pardon means you suffer no consequences.

Seems like the best case scenario is prosecution under state laws, which the presidential pardon cannot stop.

My understanding is that they don't need to destroy records related to Kushner because he's not a government employee, his records aren't required to be retained. And that is, no doubt, by design.

The reason that power centralizes is that decentralized powers tend to get outcompeted (in the short run) by centralized powers.

My pessimistic view is that it is unlikely to end up any other way in the society where the only value of a person is their net worth, giving back to the community is a fringe belief for losers ("make money not friends" said someone's t-shirt I saw the other day) and foreign meddling is all but encouraged ("Russia, if you're listening"). Foreign dictators have deep pockets and they will always find receptive politicians. The Iron Curtain saved the West more than it saved the USSR.

I didn't think he's observant in any way?

Why would that be?

Well, the article itself is just an excerpt from a book released by Simon & Schuster and written by this guy:

>Matthew Cole is an investigative journalist and the author of Code Over Country: The Tragedy and Corruption of SEAL Team Six. He has covered national security for more than two decades, much of it focused on America’s clandestine wars and covert programs. He was previously an investigative producer for ABC and NBC News, and a longtime national security reporter for The Intercept. His other work has appeared in The New York Times, GQ, New York magazine, Salon, and ESPN. He has reported from more than twenty countries, across five continents.

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Princes-and-Thieves/M...

bad politics has a habit of showing up in weird places, if anything that makes things more credible for me.

the sexual abuse of the catholic church was first exposed in a local paper for Lafayette Louisianna.

the My Lai massacre was first uncovered by a small alternative group called Dispatch News Service.

the CIA cocaine stuff of the 90s was first discussed in a local San Jose paper.

Larry Nassar was outted as a predator by a local Indianapolis paper , a local DC paper uncovered the Tuskegee Experiments, the Seattle Times uncovered the 737 MAX safety certification skips..

I dunno, I don't think i'd be that surprised to first read about the upcoming impending meteor in the latest issue of Teen Vogue.

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