Ground zero?

Harvard professor among three charged with lying about Chinese government ties

The same dudes who ran through machine gun fire were afraid to clock out five minutes early on Fridays after they got home.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/510diu55oWL.jpg


Kiss the Hand You Cannot Bite: The Rise and Fall of the Ceausescus by Edward Behr

I read this a few years ago and goddamn if it ain’t some similar ****. Hopefully the “fall” comes sooner than later.

^ HA! That's a good point I never considered.

^ wow that looks like a great book. A good title and I bet an fascinating look at a country that in the UK was a byword for misery.

The bolded, about the US I presume, is pretty worrying as all those much-praised checks and balances are proving to be ineffectual in curbing the steady decline of democracy in the US. I'm reminded of something I once read: the majority of authoritarian dictators do not gain power by revolution - they are voted into office. :(

Anyone who knows anything about it can point to a million ways Trump and Ceaușescu are different but the important and frightening lesson there is how little it actually took to create a total atmosphere of paranoia and fear in Romania.

^ Red flag from a year ago about the guy who is now taking a kid-glove approach to Trump's band of felons and whose policy of implementing political vendettas is now making a travesty of "impartial justice" in the US.

I think lack of imagination is one reason why Trump and Barr can get away with this stuff: senators and voters both couldn't imagine that the US would have an authoritarian banana republic government - but if it walks like a duck, as they say, and that's how the Department of Justice is now operating:

- lying about the Mueller Report conclusions
- using frivolous investigations (McCabe, etc.) as a device of political harrassment
- re-investigating done-deal guilty verdicts (Flynn)
- downsizing sentence guidelines for cronies (Stone)
- scuppering legit investigations (NY's investigation into Trump's hush-money campaign violation)

That's all true banana republic stuff imo, and it looks like an election is the only way to curb it. That's why I suspect that the upcoming election is going to be an unprecedented sh+t fest of misinformation and voter repression from the GOP.

Caroline Flack (host of well known TV show in UK) found dead.

Was going to be on trial on March 4th for allegedly assaulting her boyfriend.

Media and the online nation tore her to bits and it looks like she killed herself.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-51517973

She ****ed a 17 year old when she was 31. Oh the horror.

It's probably more to do with her breaking a lamp over his head, but nice Kobe apologism bro.

I ain’t never even heard of her till now, Bron Bron

But of course you side with your fellow kid ****ers.

Isn't 17 legal in the UK anyway?

Damn @ 14 in Italy and Germany. Apparently the former axis powers are full of creepy uncles.

Good for them.

That’s called letting people with sexually mature bodies decide, you cry baby puritanical sex-haters.

I'd be on board but 14-16 year olds aren't very good at basketball

But they aren't emotionally mature which makes them the perfect victims to manipulate into sex.

Sex isn’t bad so the words victim and manipulate aren’t applicable.

This is the case for lots of people of all ages.

14 year olds should have autonomy over their bodies.

I don't care about 14 year olds screwing eachother but any actual adult who is attracted to 14 year olds is a to-catch-a-predator level sexually stunted creep.

I mean if youre actively seeking sexual partners based on their age that's one thing, but there are plenty of young teens out there that can easily look a lot older than they are.. I don't think it's that black and white.

I guess I don't come across too many 14 year olds that are passable as adults. Any arbitrary line you draw is going to have some people who look older than others. I'm sure there are 12 year olds that look 14. Still creepy if that's not a deal breaker for a grown man.

He'd know.

Church

When life expectancy was a lot lower, it was more common in general for men and women to get together and even have kids in their early to mid teens. Vestiges of that have carried over in the present day, which is why you see such a wide variation across multiple countries in regards to "legal" age.

That being said, there are also advocates out there who think that being attracted to children or young teens in a completely natural orientation in the modern era and should be accepted as such by the rest of society. It's a byproduct of liberal thought.

The OH part. That's arguably the best part.

Let me put it another way. The medical student who spoke at Ted Talk and advocated for pedophilla to be treated as an unchangeable, acceptable orientation instead of mental illness was far closer to your political persuasion than mine.

Uh yeah I'd say it's way more a byproduct of traditional human mating practices and all that that encompasses, which predates liberalism by quite a few million years.

So, Jeffrey Epstein? :laughing:

Ant hitting us with that brain smoothery.

I'd say the modern moral cluster **** of adults ****ing teenagers would say that the issue is in no way black and white or settled. But I would definitely say that a rich predator who uses his vast resources to cover up abusing people who make it clear that they were not hip to his jive falls into the "bad" category.

I was told at university nearly a decade ago that orientation was a vast spectrum where all forms of behavior and expression were acceptable, and to say otherwise made you a bigot. Were my professors lying or simply misguided? I guess I'll never know.

But by your definition he'd be some kind of apex predator if those tendencies really do go back millions of years. So the question is: are those tendencies an orientation or is it something like an illness or condition that could have been treated via counseling? I read his bio: he was an English teacher or something long before he became rich.

I imagine that "rapist", whether it ever ends up being recognized as an orientation or not, will never be snowflaked into legality.

And? Instincts hold on but modern morality changes.

What do you think the minimum age should be where someone can be legally allowed to give consent?

His point might be a ****ty logical phallacy but I'm fairly sure Nambla calls themselves liberal.