Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Dunno if this belongs here, exactly, but - fucking hell.

'Missed a plane? Lost an election? Blame it on us!' RT airport ads rock Twitter

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Want to gloat any harder there, Vlad?

Edit: 'recommended' Judgement day: Will Nibiru annihilate all life on Earth today as prophesied? (POLL)
 

vimothy

yurp
It's not outrageous to suggest that conspiracy theories can be problematic, nor that they have an important relationship with antisemitism (in may ways the paradigmatic conspiracy theory), nor is it outrageous to attempt to theorise conspiracy theories themselves, as Marlon -- who happens to be an old friend of mine -- does in the piece on Channel 4. On the other hand, what conspiracy theorists do understand (intuitively, maybe) is the consensus nature of society, and the fragility and sometimes irrationality of that consensus.
 
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vimothy

yurp
Interesting that conspiracy theorists are increasingly blamed for the fragile nature of the social consensus. "Conspiracy theories" will perhaps become the biggest conspiracy theory of all.
 

luka

Well-known member
Interesting that conspiracy theorists are increasingly blamed for the fragile nature of the social consensus. "Conspiracy theories" will perhaps become the biggest conspiracy theory of all.

good comment
 

sufi

lala
This article http://www.private-eye.co.uk/hp-sauce proper gives me the heeby jeebies and will for you too unless you have a stronger stomach than i (even if you read it in the Hislop voice)

Legatum goes global
Hard Brexit, Issue 1454
FOR a think tank few have heard of, the Legatum Institute has a lot of influence. Funded with £4m a year from secretive billionaire Christopher Chandler, its surveys are namechecked by newspaper columnists, while it promotes the hard Brexit cause from its Mayfair offices.

As the Eye went to press, Legatum was planning to show its pulling power at the Conservative party conference, where Boris Johnson would be star speaker at a Legatum rally on how to create a “Global Britain”. If Johnson resigns from government to lead a right-wing assault on Theresa May, he will make good use of Legatum’s argument that no compromise that leaves Britain “locked in” to EU regulations or standards is acceptable.

The think-tank was not always a home for EU rejectionists. Until September 2016 it supported liberal ideas and employed acclaimed US historian Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev, an authority on oppression in Putin’s Russia. Then Baroness (Philippa) Stroud took over. Best known as an ally of Iain Duncan Smith, she had little time for colleagues who worried Brexit might go wrong. “Almost the entire staff has left or been fired,” one ex-Legatum employee tells the Eye. “Some agreed to be fired or even jockeyed to be fired in order to be paid off.”

Right-wing ministers
In their place have come the hardmen and women of the Tory right. Toby Baxendale, who helped run Andrea Leadsom’s Tory leadership campaign, is a trustee. Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave, is a senior fellow, along with Tim Montgomerie, founder of Conservative Home, who recently accused the BBC of “looking unpatriotic” when it reported that the French were poaching jobs from post-Brexit Britain.

Right-wing ministers have welcomed Legatum’s “expertise”. It’s not just Johnson who entertains its gurus. Shanker Singham, Legatum’s director of economic policy, has advised David Davis and Liam Fox. Although the media describe Singham as a “former US trade negotiator”, a former US trade official told the Times: “He didn’t negotiate anything.” To imply that he was an authority on trade deals was “a bit of a stretch”.

Although Montgomerie plays the patriotic card, no organisation could be further from Britain than the Legatum Institute. It is funded by a foundation registered in Bermuda and controlled by a company in the Cayman Islands. Behind it stands Christopher Chandler, a remarkably shy billionaire from New Zealand. With his brother Richard, he turned a family inheritance of $10m into $5bn. They have given just one press interview in the 21st century – to Institutional Investor in 2006. Even then, Richard did most of the talking.

The Chandlers’ Sovereign Global Investment made money by finding undervalued assets the rest of market ignored, Richard explained – “transition economies or distressed sectors where information is not easily available and standard metrics don’t apply”. Sovereign was one of the first funds to pile into Brazil when the country opened to outside investors in 1991. It moved into Russia after the collapse of communism, and bought up assets in Japan and Korea during the banking crisis of the early 2000s.

The idea that investors could swoop on cheap assets after Brexit wrecks the British economy is, of course, so preposterous no sane person could entertain it. For, as no less a statesman than Boris Johnson told the Telegraph: “I am here to tell you that this country will succeed in its new national enterprise, and succeed mightily.” Who can doubt it?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Weinstein scandal is also an interesting case study of collusion.

I just read the fairly extensive New Yorker piece on him: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news...harvey-weinsteins-accusers-tell-their-stories

Just unbelievable - except, of course, it's totally believable. Seems like he's been a serial groper/bully/rapist of Cosbyish proportions for decades.

Cyril Smith and Edward Heath back in the news this week, too. The upper echelons of power and wealth are actually just packed to the rafters with rapists and nonces, aren't they? This is what makes conspiridiocy like 'Pizzagate' and the 'Satanic ritual abuse' panics of the 80s and 90s all the more galling, as they muddy the waters and make it that much harder for genuine sex-abuse conspiracies to be taken seriously and perhaps eventually confronted.

I still hold some hope that something may come of the multiple accusations of rape and sexual assault made against Trump.
 
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Leo

Well-known member
not to derail but...it is certainly enormously difficult for a woman to come forward and accuse a powerful figure like weinstein, and as is often the case (thankfully) more of them seem to come out to corroborate stories once the brave first few come forward.

but what about all the men in hollywood? actors, the agents and managers who sent actresses to private meetings with weinstein, knowing full well what could very likely happen, all the studio heads, etc. days after the news breaks, all these actors come out and say (usually still off the record) how it was a well-known secret in the industry, everyone had heard stories, etc.

fuck those appeasers. they can spin it however they like but the bottom line is they looked the other way to sexual assault and shut up for their own self interest. even if they didn't have the balls to speak out on the record, they could have leaked stories to media or staged some sort of intervention with harvey long ago. fuck all the men of hollywood who knew about it and did nothing to stand in his way.

sorry to vent.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Yes, absolutely - and all the people who, actively or passively, protected and enabled Bill Cosby, and Gary Glitter, and Jimmy Savile, and...

And not wishing to go all not-all-men on your comment, but apparently one of his favourite tactics was to set up a meeting involving a female assistant or secretary or whatever, to give an illusion of safety, who then disappeared after the intended victim showed up - but to your general point, yes, there must be tens if not hundreds of people in Hollywood who are to a greater or lesser degree complicit in Weinstein's crimes (perhaps including some actors or directors who might've had a bit more clout than a PA).
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Exhaustingly, this has already gone into the phase where people are vetting accusers of their 'consistency' or scrutinizing victims for their reactions to this sort of situation, which becomes a weird crisis of who does and doesn't hit the checks of properly addressing this situation and thusly they can either somehow be blamed for their own moments of crisis or discredited by those who are looking to be skeptical. As always expectancy of the "Why So Long..." threads of argument place a sense of obligation on the powerless and not those who are the abusers of power. Even outside of sexual assault conspiracies in the realm of Hollywood, the reoccurring thread is that the skeptic always tries to sus out some sort of contradiction as a method of 'insincerity' to validate their disconnect.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
youve missed the point but i suppose thats your role here

If I've misunderstood you it's because you wrote "will be of particular interest to" when what you should have put was "will thoroughly enrage/exasperate".

But it's academic anyway as Dan is too busy being a dad these days to spend much time on here, I haven't seen him post for ages.
 
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