DandomRude

Yes, that is certainly a motive for many of these monsters. However, the effect on the "lower ranks" or even pf all those caught in the act remains the same: because they commit a crime, and a most repulsive one at that, they are vulnerable to blackmail and manipulation if there is proof (pictures, videos,witness statements).

So the motive hardly plays a role as long as it is treated as a "proof of trust" that every co-conspirator must provide as a "ticket to join the club" of these degenerate criminals.

As I said, this is a classic strategy of organized crime. And since the current US system is essentially organized crime, just on a unprecedented level, I don't see why the same methods shouldn't be used here.

For the US, the fact that the president's father had proven ties to the mob and that the president's mentor, Roy Cohn, was the go-to lawyer for various underworld figures in the 1970s and 1980s only makes this more likely.

Yes, it would be desirable if truth were rewarded and deliberate false information punished. Unfortunately, neither is even remotely realistic:

True, or at least objectively researched, information was the business of journalism, which for the reasons mentioned above now exists only as a farce of itself (but still retains parts of its former reputation as a reliable source of information). I just don't think there is any way to make journalism work in the age of the Internet (and I'm from Germany where we have publicly funded media).

Criminalizing misinformation would in turn require appropriate legislation. And as is always the case with laws, those in power would use them to make their worldview the only one that is widely disseminated. To see this, one need only look to the US, where the criminal but also wealthy president is already using current legislation to sue anyone who dares to make him look bad.

So, I think the only option that remains, despite all its flaws and problems, is decentralized social media. Of course, it is susceptible to manipulation, but at least it is not directly controlled by those who want to manipulate the discourse in their favor.

It is certainly not a solution in the true sense of the word - in a purely profit-oriented system, there can be no such thing - but in my opinion, it would at least be an improvement on the status quo, in which people like Zuckerberg and Musk can de facto directly control what people perceive as their reality.

I suspect that child abuse in these circles is something like murder or other serious crimes for less influential forms of organized crime like the classical mob (Cosa Nostra and so on): these heinous crimes serve as proof of loyalty and at the same time as a bargaining chip that the mob boss can use against his "soldiers." That would explain why there are disproportionately more pedophiles in the GOP, for example. That may not be the only reason, but pedophilia is clearly the common denominator among those who support the authoritarian-fascist regime in the US.

In any case, Epstein was also obviously used by Mossad to collect blackmail material against influential people.

It seems to me, especially given the proximity of the US regime to the equally fascist Israel, that this is a fundamental strategy to prevent co-conspirators from going public with their knowledge.

Yes, that's true. The Fediverse is also susceptible to manipulation. That's why I'm not a fan of broad rules such as "no politics" in the largest communities, as their breadth would make it easy to buy off a few moderators, which shouldn't be a problem at all if you have even a little capital.

Nevertheless, traditional journalism is dead because its business model is simply no longer financially viable today. Investigative journalism is very expensive and, with the loss of advertising revenue (wnet to search engines and mainstream social media apps), it is simply an impossible business model today. In fact, most of the traditional media today is run at a loss by billionaires like Bezos (Washington Post, among others).

I'm not saying that the Fediverse is a promise of salvation. I'm just saying that it's the only option left.

The internet as such was originally designed to be decentralized, but it was taken over by big capital, for which we are now being presented with the bill in all the remaining democracies of the world.

In my opinion, the only response can be to do everything possible to return to decentralization, in order to at least put obstacles in the way of the powerful of this world.

That goes without saying, but the choice of information media that people use influences their decision. As long as these information media are controlled by billionaires, which is absolutely the case for the majority of voters, not only in the US, the outcome of the elections is a foregone conclusion.

One should not assume that even obvious misinformation has no effect if it is spread widely enough. It is, of course, commendable to believe in people, but this hope is clearly dashed by the US.

Do not believe for a moment that something like this cannot happen in your home country.

In itself, the answer is really simple, at least for the remaining democracies, and a solution would be entirely possible: people would have to switch to decentralized media apps, such as those provided by the Fediverse, and stop attributing so much credibility to legacy media. This would significantly reduce the scope for concerted disinformation, which is the main reason for any autocratic form of government being possible, which is of course never in the interests of citizens.

How this can be achieved is the question, and the answer can of course only be education, because the majority of people are obviously unaware of how they are being duped.

One can only have the utmost respect for the women's team for not allowing themselves to be politically exploited by a rapist and serious criminal, unlike the men's team.

These women are true role models.

The thing about licenses is that they only work if they can be defended in court. In the US system in particular, it is simply impossible for a private individual to do so (even multi-billion-dollar corporations with their highly paid lawyers seem to be powerless against artificially inflated AI giants such as OpenAI).

Therefore, it must be assumed that even restrictive licenses will simply be disregarded.

Regardless of their nationality, billionaires largely pursue the same interests in order to strengthen their position of power in the political system in which they are most involved.

This is, of course, a conspiracy theory, but the Epstein files, for example, certainly suggest this - as does the fact that billionaires' companies are all multinational and that it is almost impossible to trace where the incredible amounts of capital in the international economic system actually come from (such as the massive concentrations of capital managed by asset managers like Black Rock).

In short: I suspect that the biggest problem facing people worldwide lies in the power of the respective so-called elites, and I think that they coordinate among themselves in order to remain in power or to expand it further.

This is how I explain the resurgence of Nazi ideology, which is actively promoted by billionaires in very different countries.

True. Unfortunately, however, the Nazi party AfD is quite strong in Germany, whose success is largely due to the fact that the same US corporations that enabled openly fascist candidates to win elections in the US also control the (social) media landscape in Germany.

If we want to preserve our democracy, I believe there is no way around finally putting a stop to the influence that mentally ill billionaires have on public opinion.

Otherwise, Germany will probably end up in a similar situation to the US: With a government made up of corrupt puppets whose Nazi ideology essentially serves to conceal the fact that they are pursuing disastrous, neo-capitalist policies that are exclusively in the interests of the top one percent.

I just installed Ubuntu on my mom's laptop. I also considered Mint, but Ubuntu seems to me to be the distribution with the least risk of any major issues.

Either way, the point was to finally get away from Windows, especially since my mom doesn't use any applications for which there isn't a reliable Linux alternative anyway.

Donations to LibreOffice and so on have also been transferred - in the amount of the license costs for Windows 11 and MS Office for now.

Denke, ihm dient die Wiederwahl als Parteivorsitzender und damit die direkte Regierungsbeteiligung eher als Sprungbrett in einen gut bezahlten Aufsichtsratsposten oder eine ähnliche, bestens dotierte "Anschlussverwertung" - da ist Finanzminister und Vizekanzler in einer neoliberalen Koalition um einen Kanzler, der mehr Lobbyist als Volksvertreter ist, doch genau das richtige.

Glaube kaum, dass sich ein ausgemachter Opportunist wie Klingbeil mit einer schnöden Pension zufrieden geben wird. Wenn es ihm auch nur im Entferntesten um seine Partei gehen würde, hätte er nach der vorausgegangenen, katastrophalen Wahlniederlage selbstverständlich seinen Posten räumen müssen.

Hat er aber nicht und so schafft sich die SPD nun eben selbst ab, um die Karriere der verbliebenen "Schein-Genossen" zu befördern.