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Lost in the Sauce: Trump, Cruz, and Gohmert team up to incite election-related violence

Welcome to Lost in the Sauce, keeping you caught up on political and legal news that often gets buried in distractions and theater… or a global health crisis.
Housekeeping:

Election shenanigans

I put the latest info on Trump's phone call to Raffensperger in this comment.
According to experts, Trump’s conduct has potential criminal exposure:
A federal statute makes it a crime when one “knowingly and willfully … attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by … the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held.”
A Georgia statute similarly provides that a “person commits the offense of criminal solicitation to commit election fraud in the first degree when, with intent that another person engage in conduct constituting a felony under this article, he or she solicits, requests, commands, importunes, or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage in such conduct.”
…The hard part for prosecutors would be proving Trump’s state of mind, because the statutes require proof of knowledge and intent. Prosecutors would have to show that Trump knew that Biden fairly won the election, and Trump was asking for Georgia officials to commit election fraud. And it’s not clear prosecutors could make that case.
At least 12 Republican senators plan to challenge Biden’s Electoral College win on Jan. 6, when Congress is set to officially count the votes. The effort is being led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and includes Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), John Kennedy (R-La.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Mike Braun (R-Ind.), as well as new Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.). Separately, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) is pursuing a similar plan.
"Congress should immediately appoint an Electoral Commission, with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states. Once completed, individual states would evaluate the Commission’s findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed," the senators said in a joint statement. “Accordingly, we intend to vote on Jan. 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not ‘regularly given’ and ‘lawfully certified’ (the statutory requisite), unless and until that emergency 10-day audit is completed."
Their plan is not going to succeed in preventing Biden from taking office, as majorities in both the House and the Senate would need to support a challenge against a state’s electoral votes. For an objection to be made, at least one member of both the House and Senate would need to submit it in writing. Then, the House and Senate separately convene to consider the issue. Debate is limited to two hours for each objection. After debate concludes, the House and Senate vote to uphold the objection and throw out the state’s votes. If the majority of the House AND the majority of the Senate does not uphold the objection, the state’s electoral votes are counted as cast.
  • Vice President Mike Pence’s role is simply to preside over the joint session, opening and presenting the certifications from each state. In his absence, the Senate pro-tempore Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) will lead the session. At the end of the process, the presiding officer announces who has won the majority of votes for president and vice president.
The most immediate danger from Trump and Cruz’s doomed election gambit is rightwing terrorism and general violence: Trump, in particular, is inciting his supporters to swarm D.C. on Jan. 6. “JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!” Trump tweeted last week. Four rightwing rallies are scheduled, including one headlined by George Papadopoulos and Roger Stone.
The Proud Boys and other extremists are planning to attend the rallies and may set up an “armed encampment” on the National Mall, according to the Washington Post. On social media platform Parler, the leader of the Proud Boys said that members will be there “incognito” and may “dress in all black” to impersonate leftwing protestors.
Enrique Tarrio: "The ProudBoys will turn out in record numbers on Jan 6th but this time with a twist...We will not be wearing our traditional Black and Yellow. We will be incognito and we will spread across downtown DC in smaller teams."
Rep. Louie Gohmert has more explicitly tried to incite violence, saying the failure of his legal challenge to the election means “you gotta go the streets and be as violent as Antifa and BLM.” (clip)
  • At the same time, pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood suggested that Pence could “face execution by firing squad” for “treason” if he doesn’t go along with the attempt to subvert the election.

Obstructing the transition

Biden’s transition director has accused the Office of Management and Budget of stonewalling the incoming administration’s team. OMB Director Russ Vought is not allowing key staff to meet with the transition team to help prepare the president-elect’s first annual spending plan, a move that could delay major proposals. Vought pushed back on the charges, saying that his agency needs to focus on finalizing the Trump administration’s regulations before the president leaves office.
“OMB leadership’s refusal to fully cooperate impairs our ability to identify opportunities to maximize the relief going out to Americans during the pandemic, and it leaves us in the dark as it relates to Covid-related expenditures and critical gaps,” [Biden transition Exec. Dir. Yohannes] Abraham said.
Earlier last week, Biden himself said Trump officials are not cooperating with his team, singling out the Defense Department for obstructing information on crucial national security issues. “Right now, we just aren’t getting all the information that we need from the outgoing administration in key national security areas. It’s nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility,” Biden said. The Defense Dept. finally scheduled meetings with the incoming team this week, after not briefing the transition for weeks.
  • The timing of the resumption in meetings is notable because it comes after the one year anniversary of the U.S. assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani on Jan. 3. NATO officials are reportedly worried about the lack of coordination from the Trump administration: "We need the incoming Biden administration to be fully briefed and ready to deal with these very dangerous issues facing NATO's security."

Sabotaging the Biden Administration

U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack is taking steps to keep control of Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia during the Biden administration. As chairman of the boards of Radio Free Europe and Asia, Pack and his fellow members have added binding contractual agreements that will make it impossible to remove him or other pro-Trump allies from the board in the next two years.
In other words, although President-elect Joe Biden has already signaled he intends to replace Pack as CEO of the parent agency soon after taking office in January, Pack would maintain a significant degree of control over the networks.
The State Department is likely to designate Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism “as an 11th hour effort to create hurdles for the incoming Biden administration.” The label, which requires the approval of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, would undo a major accomplishment of the Obama administration. To take Cuba back off the list, the Biden team would need to conduct a formal review, a process that might take several months.
Such a designation would impose restrictions on US foreign assistance, a ban on defense exports and sales, certain controls over exports and various financial restrictions. It would also result in penalization against any persons and countries engaging in certain trade activities with Cuba.
The Trump administration has been rushing to finalize a myriad of rules before Biden’s inauguration. Since Election Day, the Trump administration has issued about three to four times as many new regulations as it did during other periods of Trump’s presidency. Rules that haven’t been finalized or taken effect can be suspended by an incoming president, which Biden has said he intends to do. By contrast, rules that are finalized can take months, or even years, to undo.
“As a general rule, it takes at least as much process to undo or modify a rule as it does to put the rule in place,” said Jonathan H. Adler, a professor and an administrative law expert at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. “The Trump administration is magnifying that challenge for the Biden administration.”
Trump loyalists are urging the president to stymie Biden’s efforts to rejoin the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal. Sens. Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham are working to get the agreements submitted to the Senate for ratification, requiring a two-thirds vote, with the goal of failure. While such an outcome wouldn’t prevent Biden from rejoining the accords, Cruz and Graham hope it would make their resurrection more problematic.
A vote against them would signal GOP opposition to the world and, they hope, undermine any unilateral action by Biden to rejoin the agreements. One senior congressional aide told RCP that sending them to die in the Senate “would be the final nail in the coffin.”
Further reading: “Biden To Be Saddled With Trump’s Payroll Tax Deferral Mess,” Forbes.
Further reading: Biden will inherit a backlog of tens of thousands of visa requests from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and a bureaucratic tangle that refugee advocates say President Trump ignored or made worse.

Trump money and properties

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is employing forensic accounting specialists to examine Trump’s finances and business operations. Vance is looking “for anomalies among a variety of property deals” and trying to determine “whether the president’s company manipulated the value of certain assets to obtain favorable interest rates and tax breaks”.
The analysts hired by Vance probably have already reviewed various bank and mortgage records obtained from Trump’s company as part of the ongoing grand jury investigation, and they could be called on to testify about their findings should the district attorney eventually bring criminal charges
In yet another shady business deal connected to Trump, the United States sold the ambassador’s residence in Israel for more than $67 million. The person who bought the residence is none other than Trump mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. The property only became available due to Trump's controversial decision to relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to contested Jerusalem. Furthermore, State Dept. representatives reportedly lied to Congress about the sale, perhaps to hide that Adelson purposefully overbid.
For now, there is no alternative residence for the ambassador, David Friedman, Trump’s former lawyer, who currently uses a suite at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel or rooms at the former Jerusalem Consulate General when he spends nights in Jerusalem… As a result, the United States appears likely to end up leasing the residence it has owned since 1964 from the GOP-affiliated casino mogul.
“It is very strange that we are now paying Sheldon Adelson,” a congressional aide told The Daily Beast. “It is not above board. We have a number of questions. Did they get two independent appraisals? Was it a sweetheart deal? Was Adelson the highest donor? Was there a reason to sell it now?”
Trump’s businesses have taken in $10.5 million of donor money over the course of his presidency. $8.5 million came from the Trump campaign and related entities that Trump controls directly; $2 million came from other Republican candidates and committees. The biggest beneficiary was Trump’s NYC hotel, taking in $3,039,979 over the four years of his presidency, with $891,003 of that in just the final four months of the campaign.
Trump’s DC hotel is ramping up room prices and requiring a two-night minimum stay for two key events this month, as the president tries to squeeze more profit out of his office. On Jan. 6, when Congress is set to formally count the votes cast by the Electoral College, room rates are listed at over eight times the price of surrounding dates. Trump is encouraging his supporters to attend a protest of Biden’s win on the 6th. A room during the inauguration costs five times the normal rate, at $2,225 per night.
Trump’s Turnberry Resort in Scotland posted a £2.3 million ($3.1 million) loss in 2019, marking the sixth year in a row it has failed to turn a profit under his ownership. Since Trump took over the historic property in 2014, its losses now total nearly £45 million ($61.5 million).
The fact Turnberry remains in the red comes in spite of significant tranches of payments it has received from the US government during Mr Trump’s single term in office… the US Secret Service spent nearly £25,000 to accommodate its agents at the resort during business trips by Mr Trump’s son, Eric, an executive vice-president of the family firm. Since Mr Trump’s election, the property has received close to £300,000 from the Secret Service, US State Department, and US Defence Department
A Florida state lawmaker is calling for Mar-a-Lago to be penalized - and possibly shut down - for flouting coronavirus restrictions during a New Years Eve party. While Trump and the first lady did not attend, son Don Jr., attorney Rudy Giuliani, Rep. Matt Gaetz, and Fox News personality Jeanine Piro were captured on video among the maskless crowd. Guests paid as much as $1,000 for access to the ballroom to be entertained by Vanilla Ice.
State Rep. Omari Hardy: “My constituents are not snowbirds like @DonaldJTrumpJr & @kimguilfoyle. My constituents live here. This is their home, and they're going to have to deal w/ the consequences of a potential super-spreader party at Mar-a-Lago long after Junior & wife leave here on their private jet.”
Are you ready for a Donald J. Trump Airport? According to the Daily Beast, Trump has been asking aides about the process of naming airports after former U.S. presidents.
Further reading: “Jared Kushner’s family real estate business wants to raise at least $100 million in capital through Israel’s bond market… Kushner has helped spearhead a series of moves that have been applauded by the conservative pro-Israel community, including moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv and recognizing Israeli sovereignty in disputed areas such as the Golan Heights. Kushner also has close ties to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Miscellaneous

The Census Bureau missed it’s end-of-year deadline to produce numbers that determine representation in Congress and the Electoral College for the next decade. The agency is working toward Jan. 9 as an internal target date for completing the current stage of processing records. "If we miss Jan. 9, it's hard to envision that we would get apportionment done before inauguration," a Census employee told NPR.
The final timing of the 2020 census results' release could undermine President Trump's efforts to make an unprecedented change to who is counted in key census numbers before leaving office… If the first census results are not ready until after Trump's term ends on Jan. 20, it would be President-elect Joe Biden, not Trump, who would get control of the numbers, which are ultimately handed off to Congress for certification.
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Stokes's Bristol Nightclub incident in detail (From: The Comeback Summer by Geoff Lemon)

IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a place where misadventure could begin, you can’t go past Mbargo. The nightclub’s streetfront is painted a purple so bright you’ll see it in your dreams. Strings of giant sequins shimmer in the breeze. Its phonically inventive name is spelt in silver letters that climb its three-storey terrace facade. Inside are strips of burning neon, a few booths, floorboards so marinated in drink that they have an ingredients list. Bristol is a student city on England’s south coast crowded with music and nightlife and street art. This is Banksy’s home town, and the tourism board suggests in rather strong terms that ‘you would be a fool not to see his amazing work firsthand’. The same organisation describes Mbargo as ‘intimate’, which is fair for a place where you can catch an STI standing up. Students cram into its modest dimensions while people with names like DJ Klaud battle for billing with £1.50 drink deals over seven sloppy nights a week. To get a sense of the story about to come, consider that it’s the kind of place open until two o’clock on a Monday morning, and that at two o’clock on a Monday morning, Ben Stokes still thought it had closed too early.
The Ashes of 2017–18 had disciplinary bookends. It was after that series that Australia’s two leaders went off the rails in South Africa. It was a few weeks before that Ashes tour that England’s biggest star windmilled his way into his own disaster.
In the early hours of 25 September 2017, Stokes and teammate Alex Hales were barred from re-entering Mbargo after a night out on the piss. A Sunday thrashing of an abject West Indies in an ignored series at the fag-end of the season apparently required ample celebration. After arguing with the bouncer and hanging about at the door for a while, they wandered off to find a casino in the hope of more drinking. They’d barely made it around the corner before getting in the middle of a conflict between four locals. As is said on the internet, it escalated quickly.
The 26 September reporting was bloodless. Withholding names, police stated that a man ‘was arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm’ while another went to hospital with facial injuries. England’s director of cricket Andrew Strauss separately confirmed that Stokes was the arrestee, adding that he had been released without charge and that Hales had gamely offered to ‘help police with their enquiries’. Administrators had a good chance of hiding behind that investigation, and the next day Stokes was named in the upcoming Ashes squad as expected. But that night the video emerged.
Bristol student Max Wilson had shot it on his phone, then offered it to The Sun. What he thought was playing hardball was actually lowball: his opening price of £3000 was snapped up by a tabloid that would have paid ten times that. The Sun went on to make a mint by syndicating the rights worldwide. From a window above the fray, the vision showed six men on the street below performing the muddled choreography of a melee. One was right at the centre of it. One was waving a bottle, one dipped in and out, one tried to calm it. Two others floated around the edges. The central figure was unmistakable: red hair burning even in the streetlight as he launched into a series of blows against two of the men, falling to grapple with them on the ground, then following both across the street, swinging punches the whole way. Hales trailed behind, repeatedly and impotently shouting ‘Stokes! Stop! Stokes! Enough!’ The ECB could fudge issues that existed only in thickets of legalese, but not those captured in moving colour. Stokes was stood down from the next West Indies match, then suspended indefinitely. It emerged that he had broken his hand during the fight, something he’d done twice before while punching objects in dressing rooms.
The response in Australia was fierce: Stokes was a thug, a lowlife, a selection that would disgrace England. It was not entirely coincidental that a ban for England’s best player would be handy for the Aussie team, but there was also a cultural split. In England, plenty of people still minimise pub fights as lads letting off steam. In Australia, heavy media coverage as a succession of young men were killed had inverted that tolerance. The discourse now saw any punch as potentially deadly and accordingly reckless. This was more poignant in a cricket context given that David Hookes, the dashing Test batsman and state coach, was killed in 2004 by a pub bouncer’s fist.
The PR situation was bad for Stokes as details emerged of the injuries to the men he’d hit, and that one was a young war veteran and father. Stokes wasn’t officially removed from the Ashes squad through October but stayed behind when his teammates left, hoping for police to dismiss the matter in time for a late dash to Australia. His annual contract was renewed on the due date in case that came to pass. Then 29 October brought a twist in the tale.
‘Ben Stokes praised by gay couple after defending them from homophobic thugs,’ ran the headline. Kai Barry and Billy O’Connell had emerged. Not entirely out of nowhere: while Stokes had made no public comment, this story in his defence had initially been leaked to TV host Piers Morgan after the fight, as soon as the video appeared. Police body-camera footage played in court would later show that Stokes had given the same story to the arresting officer on the night. But no-one knew the identities of the fifth and sixth men in the video, and police appeals had turned up nothing.
It was The Sun again with the breakthrough. Kai and Billy were perfect for a readership not keen on nuance. ‘We couldn’t believe it when we found out they were famous cricketers. I just thought Ben and Alex were quite hot, fit guys,’ said Kai, who was memorably described as a ‘former House of Fraser sales assistant’. The paper had the pair do a full photo shoot: layering the fake tan, showing off chest waxes, mixing Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton into a range of outfits. Their best shot had them standing back to back, heads turned to the camera, in a mirror-image Zoolander moment.
Suddenly The Sun was the England team’s best friend. ‘Their claims could lead to the all-rounder being cleared over the punch-up and freed to play in the First Test in Australia next month,’ it gushed, then gave a tasting platter of quotes: ‘We were so grateful to Ben for stepping in to help. He was a real hero.’ ‘If Ben hadn’t intervened it could have been a lot worse for us.’ ‘We could’ve been in real trouble. Ben was a real gentleman.’ Would it be known forever as Kai and Billy’s Ashes? No. While the Bristol boys provided spin for Stokes’ reputation they didn’t influence the police. With charges still pending there was little choice – not given Strauss had previously sacked Kevin Pietersen for being annoying. Stokes remained suspended through the Ashes and a one-day series in Australia, and lost the vice-captaincy. It was January 2018 before the Crown Prosecution Service laid a charge.
That charge surprisingly came in as affray, a crime that can carry prison time but is classified as ‘a breach of the peace as a result of disorderly conduct’. The men he had punched, Ryan Ali and Ryan Hale, faced the same count, charged as equal participants in a fight rather than Stokes being charged with assaulting them. Alex Hales was not charged, despite being seen in the video to aim several kicks when Ryan Ali was lying on the ground. Given the underwhelming standing of the offence, Stokes was cleared by the ECB to tour New Zealand, and kept playing until his trial in August 2018, which he missed a Test to attend. None of the three defendants would be convicted.
The reasoning behind the charges was never released and was attributed vaguely to ‘CPS lawyers’. The service gave the case to Alison Morgan, a prosecutor of a class known as Treasury Counsel who usually handle serious criminal matters. Morgan had a scheduling clash and never ended up court for the case, but in 2018 and 2019 she would go on to win damages and admissions of libel from The Daily Mail, The Times and The Daily Telegraph variously for incorrectly reporting that she had been responsible for the inadequate and inconsistent charging decisions.
Morgan’s successor on the case was Nicholas Corsellis QC, who on the first day of trial was permitted by the CPS to request two assault charges be added against Stokes. ‘Upon further review,’ claimed a CPS statement, ‘we considered that additional assault charges would also be appropriate.’ This was patent nonsense from the service that eight months earlier had chosen the lesser charge. Any lawyer knows that no judge will allow new charges once a trial has begun, because the defence hasn’t had time to prepare. But such a request could deflect criticism of the prosecution service by technically making the judge the one who disallows the charge.
Working through the story from the trial and the tape is complicated. You had a Ryan and a Ryan, a Hale and a Hales, a Billy and a Barry and a Ben. You had several versions of events as to who knew whom, who was drinking with whom, who had insulted whom and who had merely engaged in ‘banter’, a word that in modern Britain has to do an unconscionable amount of lifting. The reporting had constantly mixed up the Ryans as to who had which injury, who was in hospital, who had played which part in the fight, and whose mum had which stern words to say about it.
Let’s agree that from now Ryan Ali is Ryan One, the firefighter who ended up with a fractured eye socket and a cracked tooth. Ryan Two can be Ryan Hale, the soldier who scored concussion and facial lacerations. Mr Barry and Mr O’Connell are best known per The Sun as Kai and Billy. In scorecard parlance we’ll leave the cricketers as Stokes and Hales.
Amid the confusion, Stokes and his lawyers built his case in a straightforward way. The UK legal definition of affray is ‘if a person threatens or uses unlawful violence or force towards another person, which causes another person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for their safety’. That means it doesn’t account for violence that harms a target, but violence that might frighten a theoretical bystander. The wiggle room for Stokes was with ‘unlawful’, because the charge excuses violence in defending oneself or others.
This interpretation hinged on the beginning of the video, where Ryan One waves a beer bottle about and takes a swing at Kai. The version from Stokes was that he was minding his own business walking down the street when he heard homophobic abuse. He intervened verbally and was threatened verbally by Ryan One – something that Ryan One denied but that couldn’t be proved or disproved. In fear for his safety Stokes had to nullify that threat by bashing Ryan One before it went the other way. He registered Ryan Two in his peripheral vision as another possible threat, and again had only one recourse.
Stokes also had to convince the jury to disregard testimony from Mbargo’s bouncer that he had been looking for a fight. A solid lump of a man, Andrew Cunningham had not enjoyed his patron’s attempts to get back into the club after the bouncer declined an offer of a bribe. ‘He got a bit verbally abusive towards myself. He mentioned my gold teeth and he said I looked like a cunt and I replied, “Thank you very much.” He just looked at me and told me my tattoos were shit and to look at my job.’ Cunningham described these words as coming in ‘a spiteful tone, quite an angry tone’, and said that Stokes still seemed angry as he walked away.
These were details the doorman had nothing to gain by inventing, but each of them Stokes denied. By his own accounting he had drunk a beer at the game and three pints at his hotel, then ‘potentially had some Jägerbombs’ along with half a dozen vodkas at the club. He insisted that after all of this he was not drunk.
If I may take a moment here to call upon the wisdom of experience – a person who cannot definitively say whether they have had any Jägerbombs has definitely had some Jägerbombs. A Jägerbomb is an experience that does not pass one by. Further to that, a person who says they have ‘potentially’ done something has definitely done that thing and doesn’t want to admit it. A person who has had between 15 and 24 standard drinks in one evening is shitfaced. A person who tries to bribe a bouncer £300 – three hundred quid! – to get into Mbargo – Mbargo! – is beyond shitfaced.
If Stokes admitted that he was drunk then the prosecution could say he was out of control. He claimed clear recall of assessing a threat, feeling fear and deciding to protect himself with force. He confidently denied details from the bouncer’s testimony, like using the word ‘cunt’ or mentioning gold teeth. Yet on other details he claimed a ‘significant memory blackout’. He didn’t remember the punch that saw Ryan One taken away by ambulance. He didn’t remember what the Ryans had said to Kai and Billy, only that those words were homophobic. With no head injury, as one of the few people who hadn’t been hit, he had supposedly suffered this memory loss despite being sober.
The version from Kai and Billy was compatible but vague: they had been walking along, they ‘heard … shouts’ of abuse from an unspecified source, then Stokes ‘stepped in’ and thus they avoided possible harm. They claimed to have been bought a drink by Stokes at Mbargo, although CCTV showed them meeting outside. The overall implication from both accounts was that the cricketers had been pals with Kai and Billy, while the Ryans as per The Sun’s headline were a roving band of thugs.
The reality though is that the Ryans were the ones hanging out with Kai and Billy at Mbargo. Police discussed CCTV from inside the club in questioning and at trial. On that footage the four Bristolians bought drinks for one another, danced together, and Kai was noted to have variously touched Ryan Two’s crotch and Ryan One’s buttock. Ryan One told police that all of this was taken lightheartedly and wasn’t a problem. Indeed, when the Ryans called it a night the other two left with them.
This much is clear from footage out the front of Mbargo, which shows Kai and Billy exit the club and start talking with a subdued Hales and a demonstrative Stokes, who are stuck outside. The vision was played in court to determine whether Stokes was antagonistic towards Kai and Billy, as he appears to impersonate them and to throw a lit cigarette their way. More interesting is that after a few minutes the Ryans emerge, and all six actors in the fight video briefly form a prequel in the one frame.
Ryan Two pats Billy on the chest in friendly fashion with his right hand before clapping him on the back with his left. He moves past and does the same to Kai before leaving the shot. Ryan One stops to speak to Kai. They lean in for a moment, talking, then Kai turns and they walk out of frame together. Billy hangs around for a few seconds at the door and then looks after them and races to catch up. Stokes and Hales remain outside the club to remonstrate further with the bouncers. Whatever discord develops around the corner is between four men who left amicably together minutes earlier.
There’s no way to know what caused that friction. If Ryan One did use homophobic slurs, he might have been drunkenly obnoxious for no reason. He might have had an insecure macho response to some extra flirtation. He might have thought unkindness was funny – ‘banter’ once again. Or he might have said something that was misunderstood, as both Ryans insisted in court that they had not used nor had the impulse to use any abusive language.
What clearly didn’t happen was an attack by bigots on random passers-by. This kind of crime is regular enough that an audience understands the horror of it, and this is what was evoked by the public accounts of Stokes, Billy and Kai. All we know is that there was some verbal dispute among the Bristol locals, and that Stokes came along behind them and put himself in the middle of it. Ryan One responded to the interference aggressively and away they went. There are plenty of reasons to look sideways at the idea that Stokes was a saviour. Foremost, neither Kai nor Billy was called upon as witnesses in court. You’d think it would be ideal to have Stokes’ story backed up by those who benefited from his selflessness. But his defence team had developed the impression that the pair had shown a changeable recall of events amid a hard-partying lifestyle, and would be dismantled by the prosecution on the stand.
That raises the question of whether The Sun coached their quotes for the 2017 interview. Despite missing court, Kai and Billy clearly enjoyed the attention. In 2018 after the trial they did a follow-up spread in the same paper about how poor Ben had been mistreated. They got a television spot on Good Morning Britain and glowed about his heroism. In 2019 The Sun wheeled them out once more to say that Stokes should get a knighthood. In 2017 they had ‘never watched cricket’ but by 2019 were supposedly volunteering sentences like, ‘He saved us, now he’s saved the Ashes.’ Whether they were paid for these appearances is not known, but the chance to be famous for a day can be lure enough.
If you find this cynical, consider that on the night in question, the Bristol boys were so deeply moved and thankful for Ben’s intervention that they left him to be arrested and never attempted to find out who he was. Seconds after the video ended, an off-duty policeman reached the scene. You might think that someone grateful to a saviour would speak on his behalf. Instead, said Kai, ‘it all got a bit scary so we walked off. It was too much for me and we went to Quigley’s takeaway for chicken burgers and cheesy chips.’ They didn’t give their hero a thought for over a month while police issued multiple appeals for witnesses.
As for Stokes, he told his arresting officer that ‘his friends’ had been attacked. After three minutes of chat outside a nightclub, these friends were so dear to him that he has never contacted them again: not after the newspaper piece, not after the verdict. He didn’t want to see how they were or thank them for their support. He didn’t mention them by name in his solicitor’s statement after the trial.
The Stokes defence rested on Ryan One’s bottle, which he had carried out of Mbargo to finish a beer, not to use in a Sharks versus Jets amateur production. But once he turned it over to hold it by the neck it became a weapon. Intent and interpretation can change the material nature of things. Part of Stokes’ justification in court was that the bottle implied that the two Ryans might have ‘other weapons’ hidden away. You can understand how a jury could decide that created doubt.
Not being convicted, though, doesn’t give the contents of the video a big green tick. It does not, as his lawyer claimed, vindicate Stokes. Looking in detail, Ryan One is belligerent but his movements telegraph a bluff. Hales is the person he’s gesturing at, but they’re several metres apart when Ryan One cocks his arm ostentatiously, showing off the bottle rather than bracing to swing. He skips forward but Hales skips back and Ryan One doesn’t follow. Kai stretches out an arm to impede Ryan One, who has a drunken stumble, nearly eats pavement, then staggers towards Kai and hits him in the back. That hand is still holding the bottle, but his strike is a side-arm cuff on a soft part of the body. It’s all pretty tame.
This is where Stokes gets involved. Having moved across to protect Hales, he now takes three large steps to run around Kai and booms his first punch at Ryan One. They fall to the ground and the bottle clinks away. Stokes gets to his feet to punch down at the fallen man, while Hales arrives to kick him ineffectively then runs off across the street for some unknown reason. Ice-cream van? Stokes is soon back in the grapple having his shirt pulled up to show off his Durham tan. Ryan Two steps in for the first time to pull Stokes away, prompting a couple more random punches at this new target, then Stokes trips backwards over Ryan One and sprawls in the street. Hales chooses this moment to return and aim some solid kicks at the head of the man on the ground. Nothing so far is a triumph of moral philosophy or the pugilistic arts. But if it all stopped here, perhaps you could say it was somewhere approaching fair. Ryan One has behaved like a turnip and it’s not an entirely unjust world that would give him a whack across the chops. The antagonists have disentangled, Stokes has some distance, it’s time to dust off and go home. Ryan Two steps forward for this purpose with his palm raised in conciliatory style and says, ‘Settle down, stop.’
So Stokes punches him.
It’s roughly his fifth punch overall, and he really winds up into this one. He misses so hard that he stumbles away into the shadows of the shop awnings along the road.
Hales starts shouting for him to stop. Ryan Two backs into the street, still holding his palm up. Stokes closes on him from about five metres away, six large steps, to where Ryan Two is standing on his own. Stokes pushes him a couple of times, as Ryan Two keeps trying to placate him and saying ‘Stop.’ Stokes throws his sixth punch, largely missing as his target ducks.
Ryan Two keeps pulling away and reversing, into the middle of the street now. Stokes follows him, grabbing his sleeve to drag him back. By this point Ryan One has found his feet and walked around behind his friend. Both of them are in the same line of sight for Stokes, and both are backing away. Stokes aims his seventh and his eighth punches, which Ryan Two tries to deflect, as Hales walks up behind Stokes to grab him.
Stokes yanks away from his friend and switches to Ryan One instead, taking seven paces to grab him before throwing his ninth punch of the night. He grabs again; Ryan One blocks that arm and pushes himself back away from Stokes. Ryan Two again intercedes, putting himself between the two with his palms up and his arm extended.
Stokes throws his tenth punch, a right-hander at the face of Ryan Two, then shoves him backwards. Ryan Two backs away once more, four paces. Stokes follows, steadies, lines up, then launches his strongest punch yet, his eleventh, a proper right hook from a solid base, one that cracks across the man’s head and gives him concussion. Ryan Two ends up flat on his back in the middle of the street, his hands still outstretched for a moment in useless protest until they twitch and drop to the blacktop.
Stokes isn’t done. He once more shoves away the restraining Hales and follows Ryan One, who keeps backing away saying, ‘Alright, alright, alright.’ Five more paces from Stokes before another blow at the man’s head. Kai and Billy are now standing over the poleaxed Ryan Two. The video ends, but seconds later Stokes will punch Ryan One hard enough to knock him out too, before off-duty cop Andrew Spure arrives on the scene to bring down the curtain. When the body-camera footage kicks in some minutes later, Stokes is in handcuffs but Ryan One is still laid out in the street. Ryan Two has regained consciousness, folded his shirt under his friend’s head and is asking police for an ambulance.
‘At this point, I felt vulnerable and frightened. I was concerned for myself and others.’ This was how Stokes described that sequence to the court. An elite athlete with years of gym work and training to snap a bat through the line of a ball with astounding power and precision, swinging fists as hard as he can at men with none of those advantages. Punching so hard that he breaks his hand, and repeatedly shoving away a friend so he can punch some more. Frightened and threatened by two targets shouting ‘Get back!’ and ‘Stop!’
The off-duty officer testified that Stokes ‘seemed to be the main aggressor or was progressing forward trying to get to’ Ryan One, who was ‘trying to back away or get away from the situation’. The student who filmed the video can be heard on the tape at one stage exclaiming ‘Fuck!’ and testified that it was because ‘I felt a little bit sorry about the lad that had been punched and it looked like he had his hands up’. That tallied with the prosecutor’s depiction of ‘a sustained episode of significant violence that left onlookers shocked at what was taking place’.
The defendant stuck to his strategy. ‘No, my sole focus was to protect myself.’ All up, in the 33 seconds of footage after he falls over, Stokes takes 35 steps forward to keep hitting two men who keep trying to get away. Not once is he hit back.
After the verdict, Stokes’ solicitor positioned him as the victim. It had been ‘an eleven-month ordeal for Ben … The jury’s decision fairly reflects the truth of what happened that night … He was minding his own business … It was only when others came under threat that Ben became physically engaged. The steps that he took were solely aimed at ensuring the safety of himself and the others present …’ The statement was impossibly self-righteous and self-absorbed.
If there was anyone to feel sorry for it was Ryan Hale, the second of our two Ryans. He’s the one who emerged from the club with a friendly arm around the shoulder for Kai and Billy. He’s the one who interposed himself to end the fight, then kept putting himself back in the firing line, trying to calm an intimidating stranger while dodging blows. For his show of restraint he got laid out regardless, concussed in the street, then was issued a criminal charge equal to that of the man who hit him, and described in national media as a violent bigot in an untested story to support that man’s defence.
Lawyers for Ryan Two made a more convincing post-trial statement, noting that Kai and Billy, ‘neither of whom were relied upon by the prosecution or the defence team for Mr Stokes, have taken the opportunity to speak with various media outlets about the alleged homophobic abuse that they received in the early hours of September 25. Mr Hale has passionately denied this allegation throughout the course of this case,’ it continued.
‘It is upsetting to Mr Hale that although he was acquitted, the accusation that he was the author of such abuse remains. Both Mr Hale and Mr Ali were knocked unconscious by Mr Stokes, and although Mr Stokes has been acquitted of an affray, Mr Hale struggles with the reasons why the Crown Prosecution Service did not treat him as a victim of an unlawful assault.’Good question. Avon and Somerset police were the investigating force, and they were frustrated by the decision. Ryan Two was filmed clearly not hurting anyone, but police were instructed by the CPS to proceed with a charge. Hales (the cricketer) was filmed fighting but ‘a decision was made at a senior level of the CPS’ not to proceed. Police expected Stokes to be charged with assault but the CPS declined. It doesn’t take a wild cynic to think that placing the same lukewarm charge on three men for vastly divergent behaviour might ensure that none would be convicted, even as the trial would maintain the pretence that a defendant of influential standing had not been given a free pass.
A couple of years down the line, the original interview with Kai and Billy has disappeared. All traces have been scrubbed from The Sun website, its social media history, and even from the Wayback Machine internet archive. Given its headline of ‘homophobic thugs’ and text that names Ryan Two but not Ryan One, the libel liability isn’t hard to spot. Later interviews with Kai and Billy take the passive voice – they ‘suffered homophobic slurs outside a Bristol nightclub’.
The article that was once claimed to exonerate brave Ben Stokes now links only to a missing content page, with a picture of a dropped ice-cream cone and the phrase ‘legal removal’ inserted into the web URL. In terms of consequences, Stokes missed one tour. When he resumed his career in January 2018, the Australians hadn’t yet ruined theirs. Their year-long bans looked much more stringent. But the Stokes case dragged on in other ways. With no criminal liability, the Australians confessed promptly enough for the sporting world to give them the full length of the lash. Their situation was ugly but there was closure. Stokes got stuck in legal stasis, unable to be fully backed or condemned. Instead his issue was always present, a browser full of open tabs that the ECB swore they would read any day now.
Through 2018 Stokes was back but he wasn’t back, in the sunglasses and finger-guns sense. In his return one-day series he nearly cost England a match with 39 from 73 balls in Wellington. His first Test hit was a duck as England got rolled in Auckland for 58. At Trent Bridge while Stokes was injured, England posted a world record 481 against Australia. With Stokes three weeks later at the same ground they made 268. He crawled to 50 from 103, the second-slowest any Englishman had reached that milestone in 20 years. That span covered Alastair Cook’s whole career. It was apologetic batting, acting out responsibility via the scorecard. Stokes was creeping back into the team like he’d been kicked out in a blazing row and was hoping to tip-toe to the sofa.
It was December 2018 before the ECB disciplinary committee ruled on him and Hales. In a ‘remarkable coincidence’, wrote Simon Heffer in The Telegraph, ‘the punishment both players faced in terms of bans from playing at international level was covered by the amount of games they had already missed when dropped by England’s selectors, in the furore that followed the incident’. The verdict compounded the omissions around the case by not addressing the violence at its heart. Nor did Stokes, apologising only ‘to my team-mates, coaches and support staff’, and then ‘to England supporters and to the public for bringing the game into disrepute’.
The implicit next step was to rebuild that reputation. It might have been easier had his court defence not meant that he wasn’t game to admit any fault at all. It might have been easier if he or his advisers had been willing to change tack once the trial was done. Imagine a world where Stokes had stood outside court and apologised for overreacting, for the injuries he’d caused, and for the time and energy he had sucked out of other people’s lives. That would have been a show of responsibility beyond a scorecard. When the time came around to assess forgiveness, it might have meant forgiveness was deserved.
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True Story Time

Ok, forgive the formatting. This was originally a greentext post for all the /b/tards at 4chan. It's also a long read but if you can get past that then it is actually a quite interesting story that happened to me years ago.
be 22 active duty air force assigned to Nellis in Las Vegas not disclosing job, but no stranger to weapons and tactics get pulled in to supervisor's office one day told I've just been "voluntold" to participate in a training exercise with DOD no other information given other than reporting instructions pretty much any question I asked was answered with "I have no fucking idea " report to conference room at base hotel next morning per instruction see about 12 other guys from my unit also voluntold to be there five guys enter room in civilian clothes introduce themselves as the "WHITEBOX" Group Assume it's an acronym for something, but never explained told we will be upgrading our security clearances hours of paperwork, only told we are participating in a force on force exercise released back to our unit crack jokes about how the exercise is a lie and we will be experimented on return to regular job and time passes eventually assume that it was canceled and forget the whole thing
about 2 months later supervisor pulls me aside and tells me that I need to report to a briefing the next day says it’s about "some WHITEBOX exercise" has no idea what it is and doesn't seem to care. once again report to base hotel with the other 12 guys WHITEBOX guys show up and pick us up in a van driven off base to some random office building and escorted into the offices of the Department of Energy, WTF? mystery only deepens, what the fuck is happening? what if this actually is some evil experimental shit more hours of paperwork and security/safety briefings by random suits had to fill out and sign a non-disclosure agreement and that threatened arrest if violated required to turn in cell phones and any other electronic devices in our possession our cell phones get locked in a cabinet while the office phone in the room gets unplugged WHITEBOX guys finally return and fire up a power point briefing first slide just titled WHITBOX Exercise 0X slide also labeled in bold red letters "CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET / NOFORN / ORCON this is really starting to feel serious
WHITEBOX Exercise finally explained told that for the next two weeks we will be role playing as OPFOR (opposing forces) we will try to attack and penetrate a DOD facility and carry out a simulated act of sabotage facility is protected by a contracted privately owned security force security group is required by the DOD to carry out this exercise in order to audit their protection every couple of years if we succeed, security company fails the audit and looses the contract the exercise is the conclusion of a two week inspection of the security contractors and their procedures every exercise a random military unit is chosen as OPFOR "reminded that we are silent professionals and that this isn’t something we should be advertising shaving wavers granted and civilian attire only FUCKYEAH.jpg power point scrolls to a page with a google earth screenshot on it instantly recognize the picture it's Area 51 holyfuckingshit.exe are we are being told to break into Area 51? can't be real random unit bro pipes up out of nowhere "Is that fucking Area 51?" we are all fucking stoked later told not to call it Area 51 as that just makes you a total chode Groom Lake, Paradise Ranch, or Homey Airbase are the acceptable names many insiders simply refer to it as “The Base” also reminded of the possible legal action via UCMJ if we go around telling everyone about it One of the WHITEBOX guys is now our designated "insider threat" exercise is designed to simulate that someone inside has been comprised by a foreign government he will provide any information that we ask for that he has knowledge of or access to other WHITEBOX guys handle will handle exercise logistics they will provide any weapons or equipment that we request to carry out mission "within reason" told this is not a COD loadout screen
ground rules established... will only be provided with weapons that we are certified to carry weapons will be armed with blank rounds or completely empty also no vehicles will be utilized by us within the DOD property landmarkers simulating road chases are not authorized our insertion is simulated so we will already be escorted/processed through various checkpoints and dropped off near the base no impractical equipment requests, so no tanks, helos, surveillance drones, or scud missiles, lol any explosives we intend to simulate will be assessed by WHITEBOX so if we want to blow the perimeter fences we will tell them before hand, they will calculate the weight of the bang we would need, it would be simulated by rocks, and then someone would need to hump the weight number 1 rule established and stressed with a very serious tone we will be escorted by WHITEBOX evaluators at all times within the DOD landmarkers at no point are any of us authorized to be alone in the facility actual security is not laxed because of the exercise, nor is this a free pass to roam security personnel can still use real force in the event that we deviate from the established protocols shown various pictures within the airbase that most will never get to see a specific hangar is designated as our target building. we will need to gain access to that hangar and carry out an act of sabotage for our sabotage we will need to ///REDACTED/// obviously we won't be doing it for real so we will actually need complete a random task inside the hangar task will be designed to be as complex and time consuming as the real thing all while being hunted by the security force insider threat briefing continues, various elements of the base security procedures and day to day operations explained however, get the impression that the chosen source is someone with a generic admin position and is not actually involved with security we are also encouraged to do our own research and scour the interwebz for info about the base told to supply the URLs to WHITEBOX if we find anything of interest. sorry if we got your Alex Jones or Art Bell conspiracy blogs taken offline briefing finally concludes, we are reminded of our non-disclosure policy and taken back to Nellis and dismissed for the day
next day we all meet at Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nevada we will be using this location to build our plan of attack and do rehearsals/dry runs it's actually pretty cool because it's on us to plan our op, just a bunch of random Airmen periodically grill our insider with questions and start asking our other WHITEBOX guys for gear we tried to have our insider take pictures of the interior of our target hangar, but he got caught IRL he would be arrested and interrogated by the feds, and the whole op would be dead instead though the guys that caught him received kudos from the inspectors, and he just tells us nope have to rely on a whiteboard sketch of the inside decide to keep it simple, M4 riffles only however I am certified on the Barret M82 .50 cal. we decide that I will carry that heavy mother fucker as well as an M4 and provide overwatch from the distance kind of bummed out because im not going inside it will be on me to neutralize certain security positions that we have previous identified we remind our WHITEBOX guys that the M82 is an anti-material weapon with the ability to disable vehicles they tell us that I will just need to call my shots to the evaluator that I will be partnered with he will radio to the vehicles that they are destroyed and will need to stop driving guess I should mention that is also part of the disadvantage we have we will all be paired with WHITEBOX evaluators who will sort of act as referees during this simulated battle however they will all be wearing bright orange reflective vest identifying them as exercise officials that really fucks our ability to stay hidden and stealthy, but it is what it is also should mention that this is a daytime raid despite our objections sounds like they are setting us up for failure, but they remind us not to think of it like that this is all being done just so the evaluators can get a good look at the security's incident response procedures it's not an unannounced drill, the military doesn't really like to do that kind of thing especially with large scale exercises such as this everyone on the base know we are coming, there's no element of surprise here except with what kind of attack we prep it would be a real hot clusterfuck if the security contractors failed the audit heads would roll, people would get fired, and numerous officers would be relieved of command I still get to attack Area 51 so don't care as this is the coolest thing I've done in the military
our plan is starting to come together over the days decide to sacrifice one of us in a suicide bomb attack figure out which of us is the most "FNG" or lowest ranking and make him do it he will approach one of the ECPs (entry points to the base) on foot wearing a rucksack loaded with rocks (make-believe explosives) he will be wearing a uniform and will identify himself as Air Force and will franticly yell that he needs help we don't anticipate that he will make it that far or that the security will actually swallow this ruse however his goal is to get as close as he can to the ECP and yell allah ackbar and release his dead man's switch and try to take out what he can his evaluatoescort will drop a GBS (ground burst simulator) when he detonates GBS is a little miniature explosive device that just makes a really loud boom anyone who’s been through any type of military training is familiar with them, they are used to add stress and create excitement we are hoping this will be a distraction and will get as much security as possible to converge on that location the rest of us will assault from the other side of the base and try to breach the perimeter several of us will also be rucking explosive rocks for the breach chose a breach point that will have us crossing only a minimal portion of the flightline (place where aircraft operate) if we successfully simulate breaching the perimeter the exercise will be paused and we will be inprocessed through the ECP and brought into the base exercise will resume and we will continue to assault towards the target hangar I will stay outside in my sniper position and try to smoke what I can inside the hangar the team will cover the doors with simulated claymores and take up cover two guys will carry out the simulated sabotage act while the rest cover the doors WHITEBOX doesn't have any inert claymores to provide so the will be simulated with small weighted ammo cans the weight is really starting to become problematic so we abandon the claymores and decide to just cover the doors with firepower would really help if we had a vehicle, but not happening to be fair, vehicles wouldn't make it that close to the base if they tried to attack IRL armored or not
week one down, plan looking solid considering how much of our attack is simulated two weeks of planning is actually excessive not complaining though cause two weeks of hanging out and smoking and joking compared to normal work at Nellis only downside is the hour drive back and forth each day to Creech AFB casino right outside that base with awesome steak and eggs so not too bad though one of the WHITEBOX guys tells us he's actually employed by the Department of Energy he doesn't actually work at Groom Lake, he works at the Nevada Test Range the massive amount of Nevada landscape that is restricted and owned by the feds is actually impressive contrary to popular myth there is road access to Groom Lake via the adjacent test range, but not too many people actually make that drive. the 737 shuttle from McCarran Airport is how everyone gets there since the drive is long as fuck the main paved road through Rachel Nevada that all the tourist flock to doesn't really have any operational use anymore allegedly we will be driving there through the test range via a convoluted series of paved and dirt roads route is CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET, not kidding
DOE dude gives us a tour of the test range one day load cases of water in back of van drive to Mercury Nevada and stop at checkpoint inprocessed inside, get pictures taken and issued escorted visitor passes also required to wear radiation badges once inside get to see all that shit from The Hills Have Eyes, fake towns that were blown up with atomic bombs not as intact as they are portrayed in films though, they are pretty rekt or deconstructed show us a massive crater called the Sedan Crater in the 50's they experimented with using atomic bombs for mass excavation projects hoping they could just nuke the ground and build shit instead of fucking around with bulldozers pretty stupid and impractical but they didn't know any better back then they buried an atomic bomb a half a mile underground and blew it up Sedan Crater left behind as a result and the fucking thing is huge. they allegedly herded cattle down to the bottom of the crater afterwards to test the post fallout effects pretty fuckin savage, and it was actually stunning to look at two hour drive to Groom Lake though endless desert roads now see why we loaded the water, we’d be pretty fucked if the van broke down or got stuck get first distant look at the base without having to enter their checkpoints holyshit.mp4 very few people get to actually see what we are seeing to be honest though, looks like any other air force base I've ever seen except smaller besides the obvious fact that it is in the middle of bum fuck nowhere and its main runway is long as fuck also realize one of the reasons they didn't want us operating vehicles most roads are dirt and the entire lake bed is surrounded by "moon dust" everywhere moon dust is the ultra-fine sand found in certain parts of the desert with the consistency of flour it's also a total bitch to drive in and the security patrols getting stuck is a somewhat frequent occurrence told that they even have some of the AAFES fast food joints there that you find on any other base imagine working at a Burger King that you need a Top Secret security clearance for, how the fuck does that work??? noticed that despite being authorized to be here, we are still being watched by distant security patrols wonder if they know we are the bad guys that are going to be attacking the joint make some minor adjustments to the plan since the google earth pictures lack some detail conclude tour and take the 3 to 4 hour drive back home, most of us slept in the van
arrive at Creech next day and see that more WHITEBOX guys have been added to the mix, now there's like 20 of them for the past two weeks they have been inspecting the security contractors and its procedures you can tell a lot of them are ex-military based off of language and the people that are dipping and spiting in empty water bottles the mood is light, all of the exercise planning is finished, nothing to do the last two days we managed to borrow an empty hangar at Creech and used it as a mockup of our target hangar to run rehearsals no longer asking our insider questions about security, instead start asking completely ridiculous questions about conspiracies for lulz accuse some of them of being reptilians to see how they react, some of them get legit uncomfortable before you go sounding off, doubt they are hiding anything, some folks just don’t get military humor one does, however, and shows us a velcro patch that he wears on his rucksack it's one of those standard patches you spot on a pilot’s flight suit that has the name, rank, branch, and blood type his blood type seriously says reptilian it's obvious that they embrace and poke fun at the reputation this base has, in fact they thrive off of it
the day finally fucking arrives, time to attack this bitch wake up at 0400 and drive an hour to Creech dressed to kill decide to wear DCU "desert combat uniform" pants and a sand t shirt with my personally owned Blackhawk tactical vest to carry spare M4 mags sometimes the military issues some real shitty gear so our unit is somewhat lax and allows us to personally buy our own better equipment if it has command approved use and doesn't break SOPs also wear my empty gas mask pouch attached to my hip and use it to carry spare M82 .50 cal mags also wear a black turban for lulz that I bought off an ANA (Afghani Northern Alliance) dude downrange used to have a guile suite but it got lost on a deployment so that's a no go unfortunately arm up with an M4 with M68 red dot sight and attach a BFA "blank firing adapter" to the muzzle, and load six mags of .556 blanks also provided with my trusty Barret .50 M82 and five mags there is no BFA for the Barret that I'm familiar with so carry that with empty mags, guess I get to cheat with the weight load up in the vans with WHITEBOX team and drive another hour to Mercury get inprosscessed through security checkpoint and receive visitor badges for the test range drive another 2 hour on random roads passing more checkpoints /// REDACTED /// forced to surrender cell phones, personally owned electronic devices and CAC cards (military ID cards) again receive our escorted visitor passes for Groom Lake and now continue down some of the most forbidden roads in American history start unloading as close to our start point as the terrain allows and hump the rest of the distance on foot with our escorts suicide attack bro hangs back in the van with other escorts and is driven to his start point the terrain is favorable and allows us to set up out of sight hence why we chose the spot I break off and try to set up my nest at my chosen OP "observation point" as discreetly as possible not really stealthy cause I'm being followed by a guy wearing an orange reflective vest that says STAN EVAL and he's just casually walking he tells me to set up the Barret, but just simulate your shots by firing the M4 blanks now in a spot where I can observe base activity and provide cover fire for the breach, but I am also the most easy to spot sniper ever now wait for confirmation that our distraction on the other side has happened, taking a real long fucking time
my escort's radio chimes to life and starts talking "attention all WHITEBOX, we now have proper authentication via CASTLE ROCK for initiation of a detachment level exercise" voice on radio proceeds to spit out a long winded exercise safety briefing realize it's been about 40 minutes and we are just now fucking starting another 10 minutes and finally get word that suicide bro is approaching his target escorts all inform us that the security force is responding to reports of an explosion outside of the ECP later find out that suicide bro was stopped and challenged at gun point about 50 meters outside of ECP by a mounted patrol he then just fuck it and started sprinting towards the ECP until they opened fire with blanks and his escort set off the GBS he actually managed to take out the vehicle that stopped him and create several casualties (we gave him the heaviest explosive rocks loadout) overall our distraction was pretty fucking successful give it a another minute or two and finally start shooting and calling my shots to my escort/evaluator he's talking on his radio and relaying my simulated violence, "inform Merc-17 that they are dead from sniper fire" etc... I have predetermined targets to engage based off of what poses the biggest threat to the breach team I actually do some damage and get confirmation of casualties from my escort it's about a 600 meter run to the base perimeter in the open desert so it's on me to try and clear their path as much as I can the plan is to try to lure some security vehicles to our position then eliminate them with the Barret while they are en route the dead vehicles can then serve as points of cover for the breach team as they assault towards the base breach team was also aiming to see if they could snag any security radios from the dead patrols so we can monitor their comms didn't really work out that way however, in the end we simply didn't have all the info about the anticipated security response without giving away too many sensitive details, we all got ambushed by the security from unexpected locations forced to abandon my nest and the Barret to start moving towards another location to back up the breach team that was under fire trade some shots with security until my escort finally announces "ok dude, you're dead. go ahead and lay down" that's it, game over
play dead for about 20 minutes while security cleans up the area breach team gets rekt, we managed to get within 100 meters of the perimeter couple of security dudes approach me and perform a dead combatant body search on me it's a specific type of search designed to search a dead body while also checking for possible explosive booby traps pretend to be dead and let security dudes run my pockets finally one of the evaluators shouts "PauseEx" (pause exercise) we got fucking annihilated, no chance this attack was going to be successful our evaluators tell us that everyone did a great job, HOWEVER.... we are going to continue the exercise because they didn't get the chance to observe much of the internal security components we are going to resume the exercise assuming that we were actually able to get inside that target hangar this will give the evaluators the opportunity to observe the security's recap and recov procedures (re-capture and recovery) we all get magically resurrected from the dead I realize that I am actually going inside Groom Lake! Fucking Awesome...
spend about 15 minutes policing up the area for brass which means wandering around and picking up spent cartridges board vans and get driven around to ECP. realize that only half of the security force is playing in this exercise the rest are still armed with live weapons and are still performing regular protection duties forced to show our visitor passes, names and badge numbers are compared against a master list that the security has /// REDACTED /// /// REDACTED /// notice a homemade sign hanging on the wall at the security center it’s got a picture of an alien with a red X through it that says "no extraterrestrial entities or relics beyond this point" like I said earlier, everyone enjoys the reputation this base has drive to our target hangar, holy fuck! I am now inside Area 51 use of blanks not authorized indoors, everyone is told to clear out weapons rest of the exercise will use simulated firing, the equivalent of pointing your empty weapon at someone and yelling bang sadly not the first time I trained like this, military does it all the time it’s ridiculous and awkward every time, looks like a bunch of kids playing backyard soldiers with sticks security has already reset its posture, they know we are attacking but doesn't know the building we are hitting we all enter the hangar, get the impression that it doesn't actually get used IRL anymore reeks of mildew and no power inside, dust everywhere in the center there is a pickup truck covered with a tarp and roped off with red rope and stanchions, signs posted identifying it as a controlled area told that this is a simulated military asset and this is what we are sabotaging WHITEBOX evaluator pulls a box out of the bed of the truck remember when I said we will have to do a complex and time consuming task to simulate our act of sabotage? it’s a fucking Star Wars Lego kit! I shit you not! evaluators tell us we will need start building it and reach page 12 in the instructions without errors or mistakes kind of wish we went with our earlier plan and brought claymores cause I spotted some sweet chokepoints outside the building to set them up also wish we had the idea of bringing padlocks and chains so we could lock down the hangar and make life more difficult for the security force set up our spots to cover the doors, we are well versed with building clearing tactics so we know what spots to cover to make it hard
WHITEBOX evaluator authenticates over the radio with someone by passing letters and numbers back and forth, process known as sign/countersign voice on radio announces that the detachment level WHITEBOX exercise has resumed showtime! Two unit bros start opening the Lego kit and sorting parts me and the suicide bro weren't supposed to be in this hangar or even on the base to begin with so we don't have points to cover inside come up with idea and ask one of the escorts if we can go out the back on to the flightline plan to walk to two separate buildings in opposite directions and see if we can create distractions evaluators approve the plan, but tell us we can't approach or enter other buildings, nor approach any parked aircraft decide to leave firearms and my tac vest behind for clever reasons if we are unarmed the security will most likely apprehend us, and search us this is more time consuming than just shooting us and will keep them away from the hangar longer exit the back of the hangar on to the flightline and just start casually walking down the tarmac with my escort eventually hear the sound of police sirens in the distance getting louder, hear they come! get the urge to start sprinting but decide not to since it would most likely result in me being tackled on the pavement, fuck that later realize distant sirens are actually responding to hangar after reports of a silent alarm being received so much for the distraction plan
decide not to return to hangar since there is not much I can do unarmed, and continue walking down flightline all the parked aircraft I see are just normal military aircraft, although some do seem to have “enhancements” or cosmetic features that I haven’t seen before ask my escort where they keep all the flying saucers, he smirks and just replies "underground" wonder if there are actually any subterranean levels to this base, suppose a lot of these buildings could support that ask my escort if there are really underground levels, he facetiously says “who knows” white pickup truck with police lights approaching fast pretend not to notice and keep walking voice starts barking at me over a loudspeaker "stop right there! do not move! get your hands up! security mercs climbing out of vehicle with rifles drawn, don't see magazines in the riffles, they are part of the drill they actually try to challenge both of us, escort has to remind them that he is out of play security goons bark at me, "face away from me NOW! keep your hands up!" they are actually pretty intimidating, I comply proceed to have me lay on the ground face down with my arms and legs stretched out yell at me to put my hands in the small of my back, palms together, fingers up big black guy approaches me and actually puts his knee on my neck George Floyd style "don't fight me, don't resist me, or you are gonna get hurt" he says puts me in zip ties and picks me up, see other guards still have weapons drawn on me overall whole thing similar to a gangbanger getting rolled up by the cops black guy puts me in some weird and uncomfortable arm hold tells me to start walking while he steers my body with the arm hold and walks me off the flightline taken to a grassy area, get put back on the ground and searched and questioned /// REDACTED /// I try to bluff and say that the hangar will blow if anyone goes inside, see if that stalls them he tries to question me about it, but I can tell he’s not biting, I decide to tone it down and stay quiet cause the dude really looks like he’s going to fuck me up actually overhear his partner talking on the radio, he’s telling others to exercise caution and beware of possible explosive booby traps lights out, realize that someone put a bag over my head evaluator calls out "EndEX" (end exercise) all portions of the exercise are terminated, it's all over
black security guy cuts my zip ties, takes off the hood and sets me loose later find out that security retook the hangar with no problems my guys inside struggled with the Legos since it was so dark and hard to see instead of immediately going in, security tossed inert CS gas canisters inside none of us brought gas mask since it was something our insider failed to mention evaluator let us build legos for another 30 seconds then yelled “GAS, GAS, GAS” unit bros in the hangar were told to lay on the ground and pretend to be incapacitated security swarmed the place with gas mask and guns, kicked away weapons they got a similar treatment to what I received on the flightline and got hauled out of there we all regroup at the base's main visitor center for the AAR (after action review) overall security responded quite well, only some points were critiqued, nothing failing smoke cigarettes and crack jokes back and forth with the security dudes, finally get to see the human side of the guy who snagged me on the flightline tell him he’s one scary mofo, he smiles and we shake hands security dudes leave, head to base theater for full debrief WHITEBOX guys thank us for our participation, time to head home wait a sec, let’s see some fucking aliens WHITEBOX guy smirks and says he’ll give us the dollar tour another day drive back to Mercury knowing full well that we are not going to hear back from them, especially about a tour return radiation badges to the Mercury office told that if we never hear back from them that it’s a good sign told that if they do call us then our Tricare (military health coverage) will get put to good use whole experience was cool as fuck one of the evaluators hands out business cards for ///REDACTED/// and tells us to look them up when we separate from the military starting pay for the security force is pretty fucking dope and only certain military backgrounds are considered for it return to Indian Springs and hit up the casino for drinks with the original 5 WHITEBOX guys ask if any of the prior OPFOR units actually pulled it off and broke in told that a group of CCT guys from the 24th STS was the closest anyone’s ever gotten but even they still failed makes sense, I’ve heard that those dudes are legit operators tell war stories and get drunk actually receive a letter of appreciation from the Air Force Test Center Detachment 3 from Edwards Air Force Base, California about a month later it thanks me for my participation in an exercise but makes no mention of Groom Lake my participation in a vaguely worded “DOD exercise” actually gets mentioned as a bullet in my annual performance report mfw I attacked Area 51
tldr - me and my coworkers "broke" into Area 51 with automatic weapons so we could put together an X-wing starfighter out of Legos
Thanks for reading. I should mention that I have intentionally withheld a lot of details and even altered a few. I'm not trying to blow up anyone’s spot and compromise shit. Just wanted to share a true story about some cool shit I got to do in my youth. For example WHITEBOX is a completely fabricated name while the whole operation actually went under another random weird name. It still ranks as some of the most cloak and dagger shit I got to do in the military. I actually don’t really tell too many people because it is no one’s business and no one would believe me anyways. I finally figured that enough time has passed and like I said, I have specially tailored this story to avoid leaking any sensitive shit. Overall the base was actually kind of underwhelming. I didn’t really see any earth shattering secrets there. All of the alien and reptilian conspiracy theories were openly mocked and made fun of there. It’s really just a base that gets an extra layer of discreetness and physical security for more sensitive assets and projects to be kept there. The CIA, JSOC and other intel gangs from Washington even have offices out there because it’s just a quiet tucked away place to do business. I will say that their security is no joke and that they have some truly fascinating techniques to detect and deny intruders. Hope you enjoyed.
submitted by mindst0rm30 to conspiracy [link] [comments]

I saw 91 movies in 2020. Here is my full ranking.

I don't want to bore you all so please take a look at my thoughts on some pretty cool films! I watched ~91 movies this year and beginning January 1 I decided to keep a list and write a review if I felt inspired or didn't write one if I was too high or lazy. The list is a combination of movies that came out in 2020, movies I had never seen before, and some movies that needed a rewatch.
I am by no means a professional critic but only an incredibly passionate fan that likes to think I have a good eye! Comment if you agree, comment if you disagree, just comment so I have something new to think about some of the films.
As a quick note, this post is essentially a rip-off of a post done by u/BunyipPouch that can be referenced here: https://www.reddit.com/movies/comments/eh71gy/i_saw_192_movies_in_theaters_in_2019_here_is_my/ . I really like the way this person outlined their list so I'm pulling a Quentin Tarantino and stealing their idea! Without further ado:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Arrival - 10/10 Confirmed my favorite movie of all time. Watching for what might be the 7th time made me realize the strength of a feeling that movies can give you. Having a favorite movie doesn’t mean it is the best movie, but the feeling you get when watching your favorite movie has you wanting to chase that feeling in every movie you see. Certain aspects are unexplainable but all I know is there is something about this movie that gets to me every time I watch it. Maybe it’s the decision she makes to live out the life she sees in front of her even though it leads to extreme heartbreak. Maybe it’s the daring concept of alien life in what is almost such a real depiction. Maybe it’s the idea that time really is a shiftable construct that we may have the power of utilizing. Whatever it is, it leads to extreme beauty and an indescribable feeling.
Parasite - 10
Spotlight - 9.4 A near perfect 10/10. This isn’t a typical movie that should be judged by the acting or camera work, but by the ability to progress and tell a sick and twisted story. The layers are peeled back with each scene, revealing a new horrific aspect about the size of the case, the attempt to cover it up, and the sickness of the individuals involved. The scope of the story can cause an emotional reaction at multiple points and makes you see the pain that the victims have gone through without leaning too much on showing this actual pain.
2001: A Space Odyssey - 9.4
1917 - 9.3
Gone With the Wind - 9.3
Waves - 9.2 There are so many interesting aspects of this film that make it unique and almost fantastic. Firstly, it is almost equally an experience of sound as it is of color and visual (hence ending on Alabama shakes’ Sound and Color). The soundtrack uses modern rap and R&B hits in an effective way and not in the way of trying to impress the audience with good music. Secondly, the emotional scenes are so genuine and the directing style is not aggressive so you can feel the emotion with the characters. The moment of Emily seeing her bf hug her dying father, causing her to walk away bursting into tears and trying to find the words to say to her parents over text, is beyond heartbreaking and done so well. The demise of her brother is depressing and felt exaggerated but goes to show that life can take crazy turns. Loved it.
Soul - 9.2 Such a beautiful film that I did not expect to move me the way it did. The film tackles incredibly deep and metaphysical questions with such ease that it makes the directing and everything about the movie feel even more genius. At times it struggles between being a movie for kids and trying to answer life's toughest questions, but overall tells a beautiful story of just living to live.
Sound of Metal - 9.2
The Lighthouse - 9.2 Oh my god. I don’t really know what to say but this movie made me feel things and that feeling is hard to find. I don’t want to rate it.
The Social Network - 9.2
Pain and Glory - 9.1
Dear Zachary - 9 Never cried more in a movie as this is what the heaviest loss looks like. The sheer passion and commitment that Kate and David have toward honoring their son and being good people is astounding and incomprehensible at times. I’ve never hated someone so much in my life before and felt so strongly about the need to live and do good. It is easy to be broken after something like this happens to you but the awe-inspiring love and devotion that these people have for this family is one of a kind. Please watch this if you need to cry.
The Tree of Life - 9
Ferris Beuller’s Day Off - 9
Midsommar - 9 I don’t even really know what I watched but I know it was genius.
Gladiator - 8.8
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - 8.8
Steve Jobs - 8.7 Shot in 3 unique stories, this movie is able to give you the spirit of Steve Jobs without needing to explain historical information like many biopics would. Faasbender is spectacular and creates the essence of Steve Jobs perfectly as someone who is utterly devoted to better the human race no matter the cost it brings to those around him. The editing is impressive with so many quick cuts and blending the shots to feel like a singular story. You walk away impressed with the legacy jobs left behind, the heartbreak of him not being around to further the human race, and the harsh reality that he was not a flawless human.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 8.7 This film is really in a category of its own, not because it’s the greatest movie ever made, but because of how unique each of the elements are. Fincher takes his signature style of directing and combines it with a Tree of Life storytelling narrative and a Steven Spielberg/James Cameron style of creating a classic feel good drama. Overall, it’s core is designed to make you accept life for what it is, even if this is particularly a positive spin on life and its consequences.
The Grand Budapest Hotel - 8.7
Frances Ha - 8.5 It is such a realistic depiction of struggling New Yorkers without the emotional breakdown. You never really see her lose her shit even when she seems to be going crazy. I hated in the moment the separation of Greta and her best friend because of the somewhat abrupt change in Sophie’s character, but they have a nice full circle reunion. The performances are fantastic and the film has a certain air to it as if Baumbach wants you to realize that what you are watching is not real life while trying to make it seem as real as possible. Definitely a unique film that has minor flaws but overall shows a meaningful journey of a New Yorker trying to find their way.
Almost Famous - 8.5
Bridge of Spies - 8.5 Steven Spielberg has centered his masterful directing skills into telling real life stories without the need for too much artistic involvement. Movies like Vox Lux and The Lighthouse capture you with artistic involvement, but Spielberg has learned how to capture you with immaculate storytelling of historical events. If you are ever interested in learning something new, Spielberg will not disappoint.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - 8.5
The Other Guys - 8.5
Drive - 8.5
Munich - 8.4 This is an action film that takes away the historical cliches of action films and adds a layer of raw truthfulness. Spielberg uses his gift to inform people of a momentous story that affected Israel and the Jewish people without adding any propraganda-like elements to make you pity them or be completely one sided. The story is horrifically true, and Spielberg does not hold back on any of the details. The acting is solid and provides an emotional look into the consequences that come with facing terrorists both for a nation and for an individual.
Ad Astra - 8.4
Okja - 8.4 So goddamn high please don't hurt the animals.
Wedding Crashers - 8.4 You sandbagging son of a bitch
Blade Runner - 8.3
Crash - 8.3 Incredibly powerful and socially relevant, this movie was necessary during these times to artfully show the systematic racism engrained in society. The acting performances are stellar, particularly Thandie Newton, and Haggis’ directing is perfect to convey the raw emotion in each scene.
Spirited Away - 8.3
Blade Runner 2049 - 8.3
Kill Bill Vol. 1 - 8.3
Enemy - 8.2 Such an interesting and gripping movie that didn’t seem to make a lot of sense but I imagine a second watching would provide more insight. Gyllenhal is truly something else and should be treasured. Villanueva is so good at creating his own world and creating such a uniquely shot film with moods and coloring.
Good Time - 8.2
Snowpiercer - 8.2
The Town - 8.2
5 to 7 - 8.1 Luckily I was in the mood for a rom com but this had its own unique air to it as of course there were cheesy parts, but they were not delivered in a cheesy way. Once over the fact that someone essentially like me could find themselves in this sort of relationship, I could actually begin to root for them and understand how something like this could work. There are some amazing lines that I should go back and write down for when I want to pursue someone, and the holistic narrative of the film is done very well. There is nothing special from a directing standpoint, but his simple approach at least allows the story to progress without any complications from a camera perspective.
Oceans 11 - 8.1 The heist movie of all heist movies. You show me a young Brad Pitt and George Clooney and I’m not sure there’s a way to fuck that up. There are obviously cliche moments and the impossibility of actually pulling this off is sometimes too ridiculous (they throw glow sticks into a hidden elevator shaft to a vault), but overall wonderful to watch.
Jojo Rabbit - 8.1
Philadelphia - 8 Led by the incredible acting of Hanks followed by the emotionally gripping plotline, Philadelphia is able to tell the story of not just one gay man’s plight with aids and the repercussions socially and physically, but of an entire minority’s struggle with acceptance. The directing is very understated in a way that pays off considering the story development should be at the forefront of the film. Incredibly heart-wrenching and is clearly an important film to giving a voice to gay Americans.
Uncut Gems - 8 The Safdie brothers have a particular way of filming/directing that creates an environment of entertaining stress that is able to grip your attention for the whole film. I love the connection between the opal gem and Howard as the movie begins and ends with that connection through his body. Sandler was absolutely snubbed and perfectly portrays what it’s like to be an addict and constantly on the run.
Molly's Game - 8
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - 8
Jaws - 8
Love Actually - 8
Cruel Intentions - 7.9 A glorified soft-core porn featuring a young Reese Witherspoon? Yea, you could say I liked it.
Knives Out - 7.8 An all star cast and provides enough mystery to keep the plot moving seamlessly. It’s a very interesting film for a murder mystery as they reveal what would typically be the biggest piece of info quite early in the movie, but there are more layers that need to be peeled back. The reveal is very clever and was not too outlandish, but I think they could’ve done more to make it even more shocking. Aside from that it’s a fun film and is worth the watch.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes - 7.8 In what was a surprisingly enjoyable movie, planet of the apes takes an Avatar approach and gets you to root against the humans. The montage of the ape growing up is done concisely but effectively and allows you to connect with him while remaining entertained. There are obviously some cheesy aspects and not a lot of character development outside of the ape, but I left feeling like I could watch a sequel.
Tenet - 7.8 I love Nolan but I struggled at times to keep up even with my eyes glued to the screen.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - 7.8
Booksmart - 7.7 In what can be assumed to be an ode to the Superbad films of the late 2000s, Booksmart successfully keeps you entertained primarily driven by strong performances from Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein. They have a clear chemistry that is never doubted and play the perfect duo of extroverted smart high school kids that are finally ready to rebel. There are scenes that are a bit predictable and slightly lazy in writing in order to move the story along that I’m choosing to nitpick over (dever creating a “diversion”, using the pizza guy as the free get out of jail card), but once the little things are accepted the greater story can be appreciated. The movie has the particular feel of Superbad in which you know you’re going to see some outlandish things on the journey that will lead to laughs, but will ultimately lead in a coming of age lesson in a heartwarming way.
Out of Africa - 7.6 "You’ve ruined it for me, being alone."
10 Things I Hate About You - 7.5
Zodiac - 7.5
Frozen - 7.5
The Interview - 7.5
Casino Royale - 7.5
Skyfall - 7.5
The Talented Mr. Ripley - 7.4
Tron Legacy - 7.4
Palm Springs - 7.3
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm - 7.2 The hype was too much to overcome but Cohen really did a nice job of bringing back the classic and presenting Borat in a 2020 world. It’s genius filmmaking to have someone like Borat show America what America is really like as you can look in the eyes of a racist foreigner.
Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far On Foot - 7
Quantum of Solace - 7
The Perks of Being a Wallflower - 6.9 The cheesiness makes it shocking that it was released as late as 2012 but overall its an interesting story clearly coming from a novel with strong themes.
Loopers - 6.9 I liked having seen Loopers, but it’s not a must see movie. The ending was creative and definitely saved my overall opinion of the movie.
Have a Good Trip - 6.9 Never forget the power of psychedelics and how these icons have had crazy trips. Carrie Fisher is your new favorite.
Coachella Documentary - 6.9
The Gentleman - 6.9
Jurassic Park - 6.9
About Time - 6.9
Spider-Man Far From Home - 6.8 Probably the worst of the new Spider-Man movies but still provides great visuals with interesting hero concepts. There is definitely a lull in the middle and there are some scenes that make you appreciate Marvel, but otherwise just another solid movie from marvel.
Oceans 13 - 6.7 While entertaining and still shows you Pitt and Clooney, there are definitely more annoying aspects and less intriguing storylines.
The Social Dilemma - 6.4 Obviously a very important topic that should have more documentaries like this one, but really overplayed some of the dangers in a dramatic/theatrical sense.
Ford Vs. Ferrari - 6.2 Not gonna lie, while the story itself is enthralling and a unique part of history, the “studio” feel of this movie took away from much of my enjoyment. I feel bad that Bale and Damon had to be in such a studio made film because they both put on great performances. Bale can do anything he wants and crush it. The way they vilify certain aspects is comical and the cliches are tough to get by, but there are some great action shots of the races and powerful scenes where bale is doing the heavy lifting.
Long Shot - 6.1 Definitely some funny and witty jokes, but overall it’s mediocre. I didn’t hate it and actually enjoyed many of the aspects, but no need to say much more.
Air Force One - 6 Patriotic in the most 90s way possible, with Harrison Ford as president, evil Russian bad guys with mustaches, and an essentially all white cast, Air Force One is a hidden American propaganda film. The movie was funnier than anticipated because of the classic Harrison Ford trope of constant survival and the dramatic set ups to make the wins look even more unbelievable. Either way, hard not to love Ford as the president of the USA and almost made me proud to be an American by the end.
Meet Joe Black - 6 With a 100% white cast and overall 90s feel to the movie, it’s hard to rate this movie “fairly” as if it had just come out in 1998. But I like the idea similarly to Tree of Life in terms of looking over your life and making sure you have lived it completely without any regrets. However, acting is mediocre and I didn’t realize how much I hate the typical 90’s businessman in movies.
Andre the Giant - 5.8
Fury - 5.5 This was definitely a disappointing letdown. Expectations were definitely high going in but the horrible special effects and mediocre acting made this tough to be invested by the end.
Armageddon - 5
Back to School - 5
Cougar Hunting - 4.9
submitted by thirstywaterboi69 to movies [link] [comments]

(Review) Super Mario 3D World: Why it's A Pawsome 2D Experience

Hello! As you know Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury is coming out pretty soon. So to commemorate the game's upcoming release, I'm deciding to do a review on the Wii U version of the game. Also, expect some CATastrophic cat puns.
Firstly, the story in this game is alright for what it's worth. Basically, Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Toad find a pipe that looks broken. So Mario and Luigi fix the pipe and a green Sprixie comes out. She basically explains that Bowser kidnaps these fairies called Sprixies in jars. He captures them so he can rule the Sprixie Kingdom. Eventually, Bowser comes through the pipe, captures that Sprixie, and goes back into the pipe. It's the gang's job to save all 7. Once all 7 are rescued, Bowser retreats into his amusement park fortress. Once you fight him in the final boss, he turns into a cat using the Super Bell Powerup. Once he's defeated, the Sprixies are all saved and Mario, Peach, Toad, and Luigi all go back through a pipe to the Mushroom Kingdom. 8.5/10, better than having to save Peach again that's for sure
Secondly, the level design in 3D World is by far the best a traditional Mario game has gotten as of now. All the levels look to have some sort of gimmick involved with them and never fail to have the levels be very enjoyable. Some levels involve a specific item (6-3: Hands-on Hall focuses on the Goomba mask and Propellor Box) or have a certain challenge (like the ones that need to be completed in a shortened amount of time). For example, Super Bell Hill. As the game's introductory level, it shines in giving the player a rundown of the basics of the game. The main selling point of the game, the Super Bell, is showcased beautifully on this level. From the use of the climbing mechanic to get coins and powerups in trees, to how the level just screams "CATS", it makes it the ideal level to start our radi-clawl 3D World adventure. I love how each of the characters has their own trait to themselves. Mario is average in everything, Luigi is slower but has a higher jump, Peach is slower but has a floaty jump, and Toad is very fast.
Another level that I would like to talk about is in Bowser-5, called Deepwater Dungeon. This level is a prime example of how an Underwater themed level should be done in a video game. It starts with you falling into a dungeon and landing in a rectangular block of water. Anytime you get out of it, you land on solid ground. So you have to traverse through a dungeon filled with rectangular blocks of water all the way to the exit. Once you reach the dungeon exit, you meet up with Plessie, basically a dinosaur you ride on the water. You go through a Plessie section, then you get to a part where you have to avoid getting hit by spikes while staying in this rectangular block of water. Then the level ends. It's just the perfect underwater level and ended up feline pretty good about it.
There are also different types of levels such as Plessie levels, where you ride this creature named Plessie across water-like surfaces and get to the end of the level without dying. And there are Captain Toad levels where you play as Captain Toad (not blue Toad) and try and solve one screen puzzles usually involving the Wii U gamepad's microphone and touch screen capabilities to solve. The main objective is to collect all 5 green stars at each level. However, you can't jump as Captain Toad, so all the platforms you have to go all involve the gamepad in some way. The last type of level was Mystery Houses. Mystery Houses were a collection of short-timed challenges you had to do, and if you beat them before the time limit ran out, you'd get a Green Star. If you failed to beat the level before time ran out, you would move on without getting the star. Besides that, there were mini Casinos that let you get Coins via Slot Machines and Toad Houses that gave you powerups. But those aren't really "levels" but there's nowhere else I can really put these so here they are.
Now onto collectibles, Green Stars are the Star Coins of Super Mario 3D World. Collecting them can help you unlock areas and different pathways to unlock more stuff. The other collectible in this game is called Stamps. Stamps were used to make posts on the now-discontinued service called Miiverse. For this game, Miiverse also lets you do time trials with ghosts of other players online (similar to Mario Kart 8). 9.5/10, the best-looking traditional Mario game I've ever played. But since Super Mario Odyssey exists, I can't give it a 10.
Thirdly, the Art/Music design is pawsitively great! Entering a level makes you feel like you're living inside it as you play. Everything around you including the trees, grass, walls, water, etc just looks gorgeous. The music as well sounds great and fits each level's aesthetic perfectly. It may be metal whenever you fight a Boss or be jolly and happy whilst playing Super Bell Hill. The show both of these great qualities of this game, look at World 3-5; Pipeline Lagoon. It starts with this nice beachy tune with goombas chillin' in floaties in the water. Palm trees are scattered about a beach landscape and look like the perfect spot to just calm down and relax. As the level progresses, you go underwater and the music distorts to reflect you being underwater. The kelp and Cheep Cheeps fit perfectly within the level. Especially once you get to the end and see a sunken ship underwater as you travel through a pipe. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieempdIVK0c). 9/10, Beautiful Soundtrack and Art Style
Screenshot from Wii U Longplay of Super Mario 3D World

Screenshot from Wii U Longplay of Super Mario 3D World
Lastly, Postgame/Extra content. Once you beat the game you go back to world one where the Sprixies will build a rocket. Once you go into that rocket, you unlock the Star World, Flower World (after beating Star World), and Crown World (after beating Flower World). These are extra worlds with more challenging levels that progressively get harder as you go through them. Once you beat Star World's second level, you unlock Rosalina, who has a spin jump as her unique trait. The Finale of the game, Champion's Road, is a true test of skill. It requires everything you've learned throughout the game and is difficult to the max. From perfectly timing your jumps to dashing across boost pads avoiding shock waves, you can't mess up one bit. Especially since they're no checkpoints and it has to be beaten in one go. Once you beat that level, you've beaten the game. However, if you're a completionist, you have to beat every single level with all 5 characters, get all green stars, and collect all the stamps. But it's quite a blast going back and replaying all the levels, so I had fun doing so. Also, since this game came out in the Year of Luigi, you got to play an alternate version of the original Mario Bros. Instead of playing as Mario, you'd play as Luigi as you walk around getting rid of Koopas, crabs, and hitting that Pow Block to disrupt the enemies.
Overall, this game on the Wii U was a blast to play and gave me lots of good, catastrophic memories with my friends and family. It was probably my favorite multiplayer game on the Wii U and had so much stuff jampacked into it. I'm really looking forward to Super Mario 3D World+ Bowser's Fury on the Nintendo Switch this Friday and I can't wait to see what's in store for it!
Final Grade: 9.25/10, Great Mario game overall and would recommend it to everyone who owns a Switch and Wii U
submitted by Kirb_Kun to Mario [link] [comments]

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Know Your President!

There's a lot of disinformation out there spread by foreign trolls and domestic militants. Qanon is nonsense but it serves a purpose of blunting the facts. "You say Trump was helped by the Russians? What about Hillary eating babies?"
A poster named Tobert420 put together a comprehensive list that worth reviewing before voting in the coming election. Since the goal of those spreading disinformation is to muddy the waters, I thought I would share his work. Knowledge is power.

An Overview of Donald Trump’s numerous ties to Russia, with sources!

📷
Trump was over a billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out.
► Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money. In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects. Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the NYT and WaPO calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance. The whole Trump/Russian connection started out as laundering money for the Russian mob through Trump's real estate, but evolved into something far bigger.
► In 1984, David Bogatin — a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. (NY Times, Apr 30, 1992)
► Felix Sater is a Russian-born former mobster, and former managing director of NY real estate conglomerate Bayrock Group LLC located on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Michael Cohen--Trump's former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob. This goes back more than 30 years.
► Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Bayrock (mentioned above). Bayrock was run by two investors: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and poured money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management.
► In July 2008, the height of the housing bust, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. Again, this was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value.
► Semion Mogilevich was the brains behind the Russian Mafia. Mogilevich operatives have been using Trump real estate for decades to launder money. That means Russian Mafia operatives have been part of his fortune for years. Many of them owned condos in Trump Towers and other properties. They were running operations out of Trump's crown jewel.
► From Craig Unger's AMA: "Early on, a source told me that all this was tied to Semion Mogilevich, the powerful Russian mobster. I had never even heard of him, but I immediately went to a database that listed the owners of all properties in NY state and looked up all the Trump properties. Every time I found a Russian sounding name, I would Google, and add Mogilevich. When you do investigative reporting, you anticipate drilling a number of dry holes, but almost everyone I googled turned out to be a Russian mobster. Again and again. If you know New York you don't expect Trump Tower to be a high crime neighborhood, but there were far too many Russian mobsters in Trump properties for it to be a coincidence."
► So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at Trump Tower
► According to a Bloomberg investigation (3/16/2017) into Trump World Tower, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.”
► In 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.
► The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. That is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have been operating out of the home of the president of the United States is deeply disturbing.
► Rudy Giuliani famously prosecuted the Italian mob while he was a federal prosecutor, yet the Russian mob was allowed to thrive. Now he's deeply entwined in the business of Trump and Russian oligarchs. Giuiani appointed Semyon Kislin to the NYC Economic Development Council in 1990, and the FBI described Kislin as having ties to the Russian mob. Of course, it made good political sense for Giuliani to get headlines for smashing the Italian mob.
► A lot of Republicans in Washington are implicated. Boatloads of Russian money went to the GOP--often in legal ways. The NRA got as much as $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnell got millions from Leonard Blavatnik. In the 90s, the Russians began sending money to top GOP leaders, like Speaker of the House Tom Delay. Craig Unger's book alleges that most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by RU money.
► At the Cityscape USA’s Bridging US and the Emerging Real Estate Markets Conference held in Manhattan, on September 9, 10, and 11, 2008, Donald Trump Jr. was frank about the tide of Russian money supporting the family business, saying "...And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."
► Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson in 2014 that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
► Russian oligarchs co-signed Trump’s Deutsche bank loans.
Trump now gleefully takes cues from Putin:
► At the end of 2018, Putin and his allies started making a strong push for a resolution that would justify their country’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and reverse an 1989 vote backed by Mikhail Gorbachev that condemned it. The Putinists’ goal was to pass the resolution by Feb. There is no one on this side of the Atlantic who thinks the USSR was justified in invading Afghanistan. And out of nowhere, on January 2nd, Trump came out strongly supporting Russia's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.
► Trump went against American intelligence on North Korean missiles. He told the FBI he didn't believe their intelligence because Putin told him otherwise. “I don't care, I believe Putin"
Trump met in secret with Putin at the G20 summit in November 2018, without note takers. 19 days later, he announced a withdrawal from Syria. As a note, Trump conducted FIVE completely private meetings and conferences with Putin, and has gone to great lengths to prevent literally anyone, even people in his administration, from learning what was discussed.
Trump refused to enforce sanctions legally codified into law - and in some cases reversed standing sanctions on Russian companies.
► He has denounced his own intelligence agencies in a press conference with Putin on election meddling - and publicly endorsed Putin's version of events.
► Trump pulled out of the INF treaty with no explanation, which allows Putin to create long-range hypersonic missiles that threaten Europe with impunity. The US already has all the weaponry that the INF would ban the development of, so this offers us literally nothing, while allowing Russia to develop powerful new weapons to challenge our allies.
Demanded Russia get invited back into G7
► Pushed the CIA to give American intelligence to the Kremlin.
► Withdrew from the Open Skies treaty
Received intelligence in 2019 that Russia was paying bounties for dead American soldiers, and hasn't done anything about it by the time of this writing.
Announced troop withdrawal from Germany (America's missile defense from Russia and forward operating base against Russian aggression)
► And of course, Trump continues to threaten to pull out of NATO, a move so catastrophically stupid, so inconceivably cosmically myopic, I truly can't express the profundity of the idiocy. Suffice to say, pulling out of NATO would be like the only guy in a prison yard with a shotgun just throwing it over the fence for absolutely no reason, suddenly giving the people with crude homemade shivs complete power.
Trump commuted the sentence of Robert Stone, a former advisor convicted several charges, including lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing a congressional committee proceeding, as part of former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
submitted by Slabraton to centrist [link] [comments]

Quick trip report

  1. Predeparture tests: I live in a "bad" state so needed a test. Couldn't get PCR locally so we did a laminar flow antigen test. The online ED process worked pretty well. I got a confirmation "go upload your results" email, my girlfriend did not. Both of us got the green-checkmark in plenty of time for our flights.
  2. Travel: we flew Delta JFK-AUA out and AUA-ATL back. Uncrowded airplanes with good safety measures and passenger compliance. Very limited food/beverage service on the planes.
  3. Arrival: customs was fast. The nose-poke PCR test was not fun but didn't take long. We picked up our rental car and went straight to the hotel for quarantine and a room-service lunch. The health agency says results will arrive in 6-24 hours; ours were in after 6 hours 15 minutes.
  4. Food and beverage: three very good meals (Zeerover's, El Gaucho, Passions on the Beach) and one decent one (Dutch Pancake House). Optional contact tracing forms at all except Zeerover's. Restaurants were not crowded at all. Neither was anything else.
  5. Attractions: ABC Tours ultimate jeep safari was awesome. Our guide, "Big G," was super personable and did a great job conducting the tour, and all the stops were great (except the Indian cave, which is a little lame). Well worth the money. We also did a private snorkel trip that was very enjoyable.
  6. Departure: when you leave, first you go through Aruban immigration, then US customs, then you get to the gate. They recommend arriving 3hrs before your flight; you could probably do 2 hrs and be fine. Eat before you get to the airport.
What we didn't do: no nightclubs, bars, casinos, shopping, etc. That wasn't the purpose of this trip for us.
Overall, it was an amazing, and badly needed, trip and I am super glad we went. I felt very safe and welcomed. I look forward to going back.
submitted by idratherbflying to Aruba [link] [comments]

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submitted by freespinsmobile to u/freespinsmobile [link] [comments]

A not-so-brief rundown of letters J-L of Jeffrey Epstein's 'Little Black Book'

Below is a rundown of letters J-L of Epstein's contacts. Last year, I wrote about letters A-C. You can check that out here (https://www.reddit.com/conspiracy/comments/cpis3n/a_brief_rundown_of_the_first_ten_pages_of_jeffrey/).
I also wrote about letters D-F on July 5, 2020. You can check that out here (https://www.reddit.com/conspiracy/comments/hlrba8/a_notsobrief_rundown_of_letters_df_in_jeffrey/).
I posted letters G-I on July 13, 2020. You can check that out here (https://www.reddit.com/conspiracy/comments/hqko0y/a_notsobrief_rundown_of_letters_gi_in_jeffrey/). There are some misspelled names. Epstein entered their names like this.
I have bolded some of the more interesting connections and information, but there could be much more that I overlooked. I hope something here strikes an interest in someone and maybe we can get more investigations out of this. Please, if you know anything more about any of these people than what is presented here, post below. I am working off of the unredacted black book found here: https://www.coreysdigs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Jeffrey-Epsteins-Little-Black-Book-unredacted.pdf
J-L
Jackson, Michael (Samuel Gen): Yes, this is a reference to MJ the singer. However, the numbers listed are not MJ’s. They belong to Samuel Gen, a lawyer for a financial advisor (Jerry Seinfeld’s brother-in-law) who worked for MJ for a while. This one was a reach for Epstein.
Jacobson, Julian: Likely a reference to a Managing Director at several London-based investment firms.
Jagger, Mick: World-famous lead singer of the Rolling Stones. Has been seen in photographs with Ghislaine Maxwell. Actress Rae Dawn Chong claims she slept with Jagger when she was 15 years old.
Jagger, Hatti: Former fashion director for Vogue, Harper’s, and Tatler. Also works as a celebrity stylist and at fashion shows.
jake: Not enough info.
Jameel, Mohammed: Saudi Arabian businessman. CEO of Abdul Latif Jameel, a collective of family-owned businesses that specialize in transportation, investing, and real estate. Royal pervert Prince Andrew infamously partied on Jameel’s yacht during the 2011 London riots (source: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/prince-andrew-frolicks-on-yacht-with-mystery-147496).
James, Susie: Founder and owner of 123 Send Ltd, a company that provides payment terminals.
Janklow, Linda: Literary agent and wife of Mort Janklow, the primary owner of Janklow & Nesbit Associates, the largest literary agency in the world. Attended a party hosted by Sony Pictures with Epstein, although they are not pictured together (source: https://www.patrickmcmullan.com/search/?event=5b3ef4fb9f92906676446c21). In 2007, Ghislaine Maxwell threw an exclusive party (80 carefully selected guests) at her NYC townhouse to celebrate the opening of a new shop by designer Allegra Hicks (granddaughter-in-law of Earl Mountbatten, who you can read more about in my G-I Epstein thread under India Hicks’s name). One of the eighty guests was Julie Landlow, daughter of Linda and Mort.
Jarecki, Nancy & Andrew: Andrew is a filmmaker, co-founder of Moviefone, and was a producer on Catfish, the documentary that launched the popular MTV show. Andrew’s family was reportedly friends with Jeffrey Epstein. There is an EXCELLENT thread on the connections between the Jarecki family (especially Andrew and Nick’s father, Henry) and Epstein here (source: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1200044576947556352.html). Quick summary: Henry was born in Nazi Germany; flew on the Lolita Express; is an expert in psychotropic drugs; owns two islands in the British Virgin Islands; founded the first youth center in the British Virgin Islands; lived 2 miles from Epstein in NYC; owns and donates to many sketchy foundations, schools, and organizations; has donated at least $1 million to leftist organizations). Andrew’s wife Nancy created bettybeauty, a company that specializes in hair dye for your nether regions (not kidding).
Jarecki, Nick: The movie director brother of Andrew and son of Henry Jarecki (see link under Andrew & Nancy Jarecki for more info). Reportedly dated Courtney Love (also in Epstein’s ‘Black Book’) in 2015. Photographed with Ghislaine Maxwell at a Gucci party (source: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ghislaine-maxwell-and-nick-jarecki-attend-gucci-hosts-a-news-photo/591605562).
Jason (canada): Not enough info. Could be artist Jason Wasserman based out of Canada. The second number listed traces back to Station 16 Gallery in Montreal.
Javier: Javier Banon is former Co-head of Merchant Banking at Lehman Brothers and current Founding Partner of Trilantic Europe.
Jeffries, Tim: Ownedirector of Hamiltons Gallery in London. Best known for dating models Elle Macpherson, Claudia Schiffer, Kylie Minogue and Sophie Dahl (also in Epstein’s ‘Black Book’). Jefferies has attended fundraisers for ARK Academy and the NSPCC. He truly cares about children.
Johnson, Richard & Nadine: Nadine is a millionaire public relations guru. Nadine is a good friend of Ghislaine Maxwell’s. Some clients of Nadine Johnson include spirit cooking extraordinaire Marina Abramovic and hotelier Andre Balazs, good friend of Ghislaine. Richard is one of the most well-known gossip columnists and was the editor of Page Six for twenty-five years. There is a great thread detailing the Johnsons’ ties to the Clintons, Balazs, and others here (source: https://threader.app/thread/1162148078981394432). Basically, Richard Johnson is friendly with the Clintons and, as Page Six Editor, purposely did not report or downplayed stories on the Clintons and Nadine’s clients. He also took bribes. Considering Nadine is a good friend of Ghislaine, it would not be a stretch to assume that Richard could have buried stories on Maxwell and Epstein. I could spend 10 pages on the shady connections these two have.
Johnson, Lucy: Not enough info.
Jones, Ann & Mick: Mick is the guitarist of Foreigner, an immensely popular rock band in the ‘70s and ‘80s. His wife, Ann, is a jewelry designer, and friend of Ghislaine. Ann Jones was photographed at a party with Ghislaine and Donald Trump in 1997 (source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/85818/epstein-madam-ghislaine-maxwell-milked-billionaire-dad-and-threw-lavish-parties-with-beautiful-women/)
Josephson, Barry & Jackie: Barry is a producer and the former President of Production for Columbia Pictures. Jackie is his ex-wife and also a producer.
Karella, Kalliope: Wife of Prince Pierre d’Arenberg. Kalliope is a good friend of Ghislaine Maxwell.
Kastner, Ron: No info found.
Katz, Anton & Robin Plant: Anton is CEO and co-founder of Talos Trading, which specializes in cryptocurrency. Anton and Robin are friends of and have been photographed with Ghislaine (source: https://www.patrickmcmullan.com/search/?person=5b3ef50c9f929066764df255).
Katzeneilenbogen, Mark: Long-time investment banker who used to be based out of South Africa.
Keeling, Sarah: There is a Sarah Keeling in London who is a former British government official with 20 years of experience in national security and intelligence experience, however, the phone number listed has a 410 area code, which leads back to eastern Maryland. Inconclusive.
Kegan, Rory: A nightclub designer and creator. Co-founder of the exclusive, celebrity-filled London nightclub, Chinawhite. Prince Andrew (source: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9818190/prince-andrew-pictures-cast-doubt-epstein-sex-slave/) and Prince Albert of Monaco are regulars. Chelsea Clinton has been there, as well (source: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/bright-night-for-china-white-6299739.html). Other patrons include: Prince Andrew, Kate Middleton, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, and more.
Keidan, Amanda: Owner of Keidan Jewelry.
Keidan, Jon: An entertainment executive-turned-venture capitalist. As an entertainment exec, Keidan worked with John Legend, Dave Matthews Band, and Nappy Roots. Keidan serves on the Council of Foreign Relations, a powerful group that some believe determines foreign policy. Former and current members include former presidents, current and former politicians, business magnates, and celebrities (https://www.cfr.org/membership/roster).
Keller, Georgie: Interior designer.
Kellette Frayse, Caroline: Fashion editor at Vogue and Tatler (both magazines constantly come up in Epstein’s contacts). Former girlfriend of Imran Khan, whose name has come up frequently. Passed away in 2014. Her husband, Jean-Marc Fraysse, is a French investment banker.
Kelmenson, Leo-Arthur & Gayl: Leo was an advertising and marketing guru who has been credited with saving Chrysler. Friend and advisor to Lee Iacocca, former President of Chrysler. He worked as Special Project Officer for the U.S. Department of State under President John F. Kennedy and AG Robert F. Kennedy. He had tons of connections. His former maid accused him of sexual harassment in 2010 (source: https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/maid-harassment-suit-claims-ad-exec-leo-arthur-kelmenson-madman-pervy-mad-men-wannabe-article-1.156915). Kelmenson died less than two months after the story came out.
Kennedy Cuomo, Andrew & Kerry: Andrew is the current governor of New York. It’s no secret that Cuomo is willing to look the other way on sexual deviancy as long as he receives a payoff. Cuomo halted a probe into the handling of Harvey Weinstein’s case in New York after receiving $25,000 from Weinstein’s law firm (source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbqg4/andrew-cuomo-received-dollar25000-donation-from-harvey-weinsteins-law-firm). Andrew’s brother, CNN Host Chris Cuomo famously told viewers “not to get caught up in the intrigue of who Epstein’s friends are” (source: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/07/11/cnn_cuomo_lets_not_get_caught_up_in_the_intrigue_of_who_was_friends_with_jeffrey_epstein.html). Perhaps, he was covering for his brother. Kerry Kennedy is Cuomo’s ex-wife of fifteen years, the daughter of RFK, and a close friend of Ghislaine Maxwell. Supposedly, Kennedy provided Ghislaine with informal illegal advice (source: https://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/the-nth-word-and-m-theory).
Kennedy Jr. Ted: Son of Ted Kennedy and nephew of JFK and RFK. Ted Jr. dabbled in politics and currently works as a lawyer. His father, Ted, was a notorious sexual abuser (allegedly).
Kennedy, Bobby & Mary: Bobby is the son of RFK and nephew of JFK. Bobby is a known drug abuser and philanderer. Bobby kept a sex journal detailing his conquests while he was married (source: https://nypost.com/2013/09/08/rfk-jr-s-sex-diary-of-adultery/). His ex-wife, Mary, committed “suicide” two years after their divorce. Before committing suicide, Mary told a friend that she “feared for her life” and Bobby told her that she “would be better off dead” (source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3231043/How-serial-cheater-Bobby-Kennedy-Jr-strutted-family-home-exposing-private-parts-demanded-m-nage-trois-wife-Mary-went-public-Cheryl-Hines-telling-Mary-things-easier-killed-herself.html).
Kennedy, Ethel: Widow of RFK Sr. and mother of eleven, including Bobby Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, and Joseph Kennedy II.
Kennedy, Jo: Joseph Kennedy II is the son of RFK Sr. and Ethel. Served in the House of Representatives from 1987-1999. In 1973, Joseph was convicted of negligent driving after paralyzing a young woman. He was fined $100.
Kennedy, Senator Edward: Brother of JFK and RFK, Ted Kennedy served as U.S. Senator of Massachusetts for 47 years. Besides politics, Ted is best known for the Chappaquiddick incident in which a young female speechwriter for RFK drowned to death when he lost control of his vehicle while driving across a bridge. He was charged with leaving the scene of an incident and given a two month suspended sentence. Ted was also notorious for his extramarital affairs. Senator Kennedy once hosted a party at his house attended by Bill Clinton and Lynn Forester de Rothschild. Rothschild wrote a letter to Clinton afterwards in which she mentions that they spoke about Epstein (source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7283825/Jeffrey-Epstein-injured-jail-cell-following-possible-suicide-assault.html). It is unclear what was said or what Rothschild’s connection could possibly be.
Kersner, Sol: South African accountant and hotel and casino magnate who died of cancer in 2020. Kerzner was a close friend of Donald Trump. They even worked together to create The Palm, a man-made island off the coast of Dubai (source: https://www.ft.com/content/46393280-d9f9-11da-b7de-0000779e2340). Kerzner was also close friends with Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York (https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sarah-ferguson-the-duchess-of-york-sol-kerzner-chairman-and-news-photo/83768272), Naomi Campbell (https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/news-photo/naomi-campbell-and-sol-kerzner-pose-backstage-during-the-news-photo/82869744), and Bill Clinton (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8144647/As-Sol-Kerzner-dies-aged-84-RICHARD-KAY-looks-riotously-louche-life.html). Kerzner was very good friends with Nelson Mandela and built his casino resorts with Gerard Inzerillo, who you can read about in my G-I ‘Black Book’ thread.
Khayat, Antoine, Jana, & George: Jana is an heiress and businesswoman. Jana is the niece of Galen Weston, a close friend of Prince Charles. George is her brother and CEO of Associated British Foods. Jana’s husband, Antoine, is a former banker and currently runs their vineyard.
Kidd, Jemma: Kidd is a British makeup artist, fashion model, and aristocrat. Married to Arthur Wellesley, Earl of Mornington, the son of the Duke and Duchess of Wellington, making her a Countess. Kidd is an interesting figure with elite connections. From 2005-2012, Ghislaine Maxwell served as Director of Jemma Kidd Make-Up Limited, a U.K. makeup company, which was founded by Kidd. Not only did Ghislaine serve as Director, but she was also a shareholder, along with the Rothschild family (source: https://nationalpost.com/news/world/in-hiding-for-years-epstein-accomplice-ghislaine-maxwell-spotted-in-l-a-burger-shop). If you click around the PDFs on this website (https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/05340072/filing-history), you can see everything. The 16 JUN 2006 PDF on page 3 shows you a list of Officers and shareholders of the company. Jemma Kidd has also attended charity events for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) (https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-beckham-nspcc-party-jemma-kidd-106882170.html). Her sister, Jodie, is also a huge supportefundraiser of the NSPCC, as well as the Help a London Child and Monsoon Accessorize Trust charities, both of which help out disadvantaged children (source: https://www.looktothestars.org/celebrity/jodie-kidd).
King, Abby: No info found.
Kirwin Taylor, Charlie & Helen: Charles is an investment banker. He was former CEO of Credit Suisse in Switzerland, an investment firm which shows up a few times through Epstein’s contacts. His wife, Helen, is a journalist.
Kirwin Taylor, Peter: British financier. Was a member of the Pilgrims Society (https://isgp-studies.com/pilgrims-society-membership-list), a group that has included the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and other elites amongst its ranks.
Kissinger, Dr. Henry A: Former U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under Nixon. Kissinger has long been accused of committing war crimes (ex: carpet bombing Cambodia, installing fascist governments in Chile and Argentina, genocide, extending our stay in Vietnam, etc) yet somehow managed to win a Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. Kissinger once said, “Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.” Kissinger served with Epstein on the Trilateral Commission. Kissinger has also been a member of the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Aspen Institute, and Bohemian Grove. Long thought to be an advocate for a globalist New World Order, Kissinger is a scumbag of the highest order. His connections with Gates, the Clintons, Bush Sr. and Jr., the Rockefellers, and the Rothschilds are well-documented. If anyone here has ever done any research regarding the NWO, you have undoubtedly seen Kissinger’s name several times.
Klee, Rupert & Charlotte de: Rupert is a Director with Oakridge Group, a property development and investment company. His wife, Charlotte, is the producer of the religious plays at Wintershall.
Klesch, Johnathan: Former Director of Klesch Trading, which specializes in industrial commodities. It has offices in Russia, Malta, Surrey, and in London, down the block from Buckingham Palace.
Koch, David: Co-founder of Koch Industries, a diversified manufacturing conglomerate. Koch Industries has stolen oil from Indian reservations, committed hundreds of polluting, labor, and workplace safety violations. When he ran on the Libertarian ticket as the vice presidential nominee in 1980, Koch aimed to abolish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare benefits, and minimum wage. Koch and Epstein were friends. Epstein even attended a party at Koch’s Southampton home (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7270735/Jeffrey-Epstein-Trumps-closest-advisers-Wilbur-Ross-Rudy-Giuliani-Steve-Mnunchin.html). Koch has also been photographed with Ghislaine Maxwell (https://www.reddit.com/KochWatch/comments/dcjth3/david_koch_ghislaine_maxwell_getty_images/). Thankfully, Koch died last year.
Kohl, Astrid: A businesswoman involved in pharmaceuticals. Married to Prince Alexander of Liechtenstein. Daughter-in-law of Prince Philipp of Liechtenstein. Niece of former German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl.
Kotic, Boby: CEO of Activision Blizzard, a video game holding company. Used to run several electronic companies. From 2003-2008, he was a director at Yahoo! In 2012, he became a non-executive director of Coca-Cola.
Kotze, Alex Von: British businessman involved in the tech industry.
Kravetz, Anna: Not much info found. Has a degree in finance from Wharton School and used to live on Park Avenue in NYC.
Krooth, Caryn: A successful real estate agent based out of Los Angeles
Kudrow, Alistar: No info found.
Lal, Dalamal: Director of Akron Corp. & Akron (Nig.) Ltd., a food and beverage import company based out of Nigeria.
Lalaunis, Demetra: Daughter of Ilias Lalaounis, a pioneer in Greek jewelry and a world renowned goldsmith.
Lambert, Christopher: Well-known actor.
Lambert, David: Former partner, managing director, and VP at Goldman Sachs.
Lambert, Edward: Lampert is a billionaire hedge fund manager and former CEO of Sears. Lampert graduated from Yale University in 1984 where he was a member of Skull and Bones. Rumored pedophile David Geffen gave Lampert $200 million to invest in 1992, when Lampert was just 29 years old. Lampert made Geffen $1 billion.
Lambos Duff & John: Karen “Duff” Duffy is an actress, model, and TV personality. She has had memorable roles as the love interest in “Blank Check” and as JP Shay in “Dumb and Dumber.” Duffy has battled with sarcoidosis, a deadly central nervous system disease, since the mid-’90s. She credits Harvey Weinstein with saving her life (https://nypost.com/2000/10/03/coping-with-class-this-model-patient-suffers-in-style/). John is a former banker with Morgan Stanley and current President of GCA-US, an investment banking company.
Lang, Caroline: An art expert and Chairman at Sotheby’s Switzerland.
Lange, Dieter: Former Partner at WilliamHare, an international law firm with offices in London, Berlin, the U.S., Beijing, and Brussels. Passed away in 2010.
Larsen Janet: The only one I can find is a Business Psychologist based out of London.
Laurie, Jonathan: Founder and CEO of Cheyne Capital Management, an alternate investment fund firm.
Lavlada, Laura D.B. de: Laura Diez Barroso is a Mexican businesswoman. She sold her stock in Televisa for $726 million in 1993. Since then, she has been the head of several other companies.
Lawford Christopher & Jean: Christopher was an actor and relative of the Kennedys. His uncles were JFK, RFK, and Ted Kennedy. Many of his relatives appear in Epstein’s ‘Black Book’. His first wife, Jeannie, was an ad-sales associate for New York Magazine.
Lawton Paul: Two British businessmen with the same name come up. Both have extensive resumes. Could be either one.
Lazar, Christopher & Marie: Christophe seems to be a realtor in Paris, but I am not completely sure.
Le Bon, Simon & Jasmine: Simon is the lead singer of Duran Duran. His wife, Yasmin, is/was a fashion model. Yasmin is represented by Models1 in London. Models1 also represents Epstein and Ghislaine’s friend, Naomi Campbell. Le Bon has been accused of sexual assault in the past (https://www.freep.com/story/news/2018/07/12/simon-le-bons-accuser-sex-assault-claim-speaks-out-awful/777106002/).
Le Fur, Jean-Yves: French businessman and magazine creator. He was once Princess Stephanie of Monaco’s ex-fiance. More notably, Le Fur was the one who discovered supermodel Karen Mulder (his girlfriend at the time) on the floor after she attempted suciide. Mulder blew the lid off the rampant rape and sexual abuse that she and her modeling colleagues had suffered at the hands of businessmen, royalty, celebrities, and government officials. She was even the protege of Epstein collaborator (allegedly), Jean Luc Brunel (https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article238351108.html).
Le Marg Willie: No info found.
Lea, Piers: CEO of Learning Technologies Group, a workplace digital learning company.
Leeds, Jeffrey: Co-founder and Managing Partner of Leeds Equity. One of Leeds Equity’s partner companies is Endeavor Schools, which runs private preschools, primary schools, and secondary schools in Florida and 11 other states (https://www.leedsequity.com/news/articles/leeds-equity-partners-completes-investment-in-endeavor-schools). They are also partners with Fusion Educational Group (now Fusion Academy), which runs a chain of private secondary schools (https://www.leedsequity.com/news/articles/leeds-equity-partners-completes-investment-in-fusion-education-group). Former teacher Kris White, now the head of Fusion Academy in Palo Alto, allegedly told a student that he was in love with her and wrote her a note saying he was “obsessed” with her. (https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/07/12/teachers-named-in-presentation-high-sex-investigation-kept-working-as-bay-area-educators-for-years/). This story was just published on July 12, 2020. Hypothetically, if one wanted to procure underage children, it would certainly help if the head of the school was on board and possibly a pedophile himself. According to this former teacher at Fusion Academy, “many students struggle with learning differences, behavioral issues, and/or addictions” (https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Fusion-Academy-RVW21260629.htm). In other words, the downtrodden and vulnerable. Fusion Academy refers to itself as a non-traditional school that focuses on individual students. Seems like a great opportunity. Leeds was also good friends with Epstein (https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/n_7912/) and has close ties to Colin Powell and Rudy Giuliani (https://nypost.com/2016/09/14/colin-powell-wont-vote-for-her-because-of-bill-clinton/).
Lefcourt, Jerry: Famous lawyer who defended Epstein in 2007. That same year, Epstein donated $250,000 to the Washington-based Foundation for Criminal Justice, where Lefcourt was a board member.
Lester, Dominick: Founder and owner of MortgageFlex Systems, a mortgage lending company.
Levine, Phillip: Ex-Miami Beach mayor and close friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton. He claims that he doesn’t know how Epstein got his contact information… all 13 phone numbers, including those of his driver and housekeepers (https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/ex-miami-beach-mayor-philip-levine-listed-13-times-in-jeffrey-epsteins-black-book-11242116)!
Liman, Doug: Popular Hollywood director and producer. He directed Swingers, The Bourne Identity, and a couple of Tom Cruise movies.
Lindeman-Barnet, Sloan & Roger: Sloan has been a New York Times bestseller and an on-air and print reporter for NBC, ABC, and Reuters. Sloan and Roger also sit on the board of the Spence School in New York City, a private K-12 all-girls school (https://www.spenceschool.org/2017---news-detail?pk=999120). Her husband, Roger, is the founder of beauty.com and Chairman and CEO of Shaklee, a highly successful nutrition company. Donald Trump, Melania Trump, and Ghislaine Maxwell all attended the publication party for Sloan’s book in 2008 (https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ghislaine-maxwell-anton-katz-and-robin-katz-attend-sloan-news-photo/619921016 ; https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/donald-trump-melania-trump-sloan-barnett-and-roger-barnett-news-photo/619921180).Other guests included Steve Mnuchin, Epstein and Maxwell chum Carol Mack, and a bunch of others also featured in Epstein’s ‘Black Book’ (Colin Cowie, Anton and Robin Katz, and Vittorio Assaf).
Lindemann, Adam & Elizabeth: Adam is a billionaire investor and art gallery owner. Brother of Sloan (mentioned just above). Elizabeth is his ex-wife. She is often photographed with many other people mentioned in Epstein’s ‘Black Book.’
Lindemann, George(Sr.) & Freida: Now-deceased billionaire father of Sloan and Adam. George was the CEO and Chairman of Southern Union, a pipeline company and served as Vice President of the Metropolitan Opera Association of NYC. His wife, Frayda, is the President and CEO of the Metropolitan Opera.
Lindsay, Alex & Jaclyn: Alex is a war documentary maker who rents out his loft at the address Epstein has listed (https://www.independent.co.uk/property/house-and-home/property/spheres-of-influence-72014.html).
Lindsey, Ludovic: Racecar driver.
Lindsley, Blake: Actress who was in two movies directed by Doug Liman (also in Epstein’s book) - “Swingers” and “Getting In.”
Linley, David: Princess Margaret’s son, Queen Elizabeth II’s nephew, and first cousin of Prince Charles and Prince Andrew. Linley is a furniture maker and the 2nd Earl of Snowdon. He used to be the Chairman of Christie’s auction house in the UK.
Liogos, Babis: No info found, but one of the numbers traces back to Thylan Associates, a real estate and investment firm.
Lister, Paul: Likely the director of legal services and company secretary for Associated British Foods, or it could be a conservationist. Not sure which.
Livanos, Arriette: I believe this Arietta Livanos, wife of Greek shipping magnate, Stavros Livanos. Arietta passed away in 1986.
Lo Cascio, Robert: Founder and CEO of LivePerson, a tech company that develops conversational commerce. LoCascio was photographed with Ghislaine at an after party in 2012 (https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ghislaine-maxwell-and-robert-locascio-attend-osklen-spring-news-photo/1169681572).
Loeb, Alex: Alexandra is the daughter of John Loeb, former U.S. Ambassador to Denmark under Reagan and former Delegate to the United Nations. John Loeb was also a special advisor to Nelson Rockefeller. Alexandra is also a descendant of the Lehman family (Lehman Brothers). Alexandra graduated from Spence Day School for Girls (mentioned earlier under Sloan and Roger Lindemann-Barnett).
Lonsdale, Richard: British investment banker.
Lorenzoti, Eva Vivre: Founder of luxury online retailer, Vivre.com and is a TV spokesperson/personality. Good friend of Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell and a couple of Rockefellers were guests at her house for a dinner party in 2010 (https://hauteliving.com/2010/11/doris-world-eva-lorenzottis-dinner-party/105102/).
Lorimer, John & Lottie: John works as a private investor and as a realtor. His wife, Lottie, is an interior designer.
Louthan Guy J: Prolific British film producer and former boyfriend of actress Liz Hurley (also in Epstein’s book).
Love, Courtney: Famous drug addict, musician, and actress who likely killed her husband, Kurt Cobain. Courtney famously claimed that Prince Andrew showed up to her house late one night in 2000 looking for sex. She has since retracted this claim. The entries under Love’s name all say ‘Dana’ next to them. This is Courtney’s ex-boyfriend, Dana Giacchetto. Giacchetto was considered to be the “stockbroker to the stars” and was friends with JFK Jr, Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp, and many others. He ripped his clients off of millions. Even more telling, Giacchetto was involved in a sex abuse case against X-Men director Bryan Singer (https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/news/leonardo-dicaprios-convicted-ex-money-manager-denies-bryan-050000120.html). He died in 2016 after he partied too hard and overdosed (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dana-giacchetto-dead-stockbroker-stars-902383).
Lowell, Ivana: Guinness heiress who wrote about Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuse while she worked at Miramax in her book back in 2010 (https://www.irishcentral.com/culture/entertainment/guinness-heiress-spoke-out-about-predator-harvey-weinstein-7-years-ago). She also dated Harvey’s younger brother, Bob.
Loyd Mark: No info found.
Lucas, Colin: The godfather of Boris Johnson, England’s current Prime Minister. Lucas is a British historian and university administrator. Served as Vice Chancellor of Oxford University from 1997-2004.
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