>In order to clarify the check: Epstein asked Noam to develop a linguistic challenge that Epstein wished to establish as a regular prize. Noam worked on it, and Epstein sent a check for US$20,000 as payment. Epstein’s office contacted me to arrange for the check to be sent to our home address.

This part honestly makes no sense. There is no 'Chomsky linguistic challenge'. I guess the claim is that Chomsky was paid as a consultant to develop the supposed challenge which was then to be administered by Epstein (who – guess what – did nothing of the sort). But it sounds an awful lot like an entirely spurious reason for sending someone $20k.

There must be a template going round for these "Epstein scammed us we knew nothing" attempts at deflecting. Doesn't surprise me at all the Noam Chomsky was on team Epstein.

It's very easy to believe that Epstein cultivated a massive quantity of relationships with any sort of rich, famous, influential, or powerful person he could. It's very easy to believe that many of them, for much of his existence, had no idea what was really going on. It's very easy to believe that plenty of "normal" (for relative values of normal here) people had no idea how to act when this all came to light and just shut up and avoided it and hoped none of this ever surfaced.

But we also know a whole fucking lot of them did know exactly what was going on and partook in some manner.

And as an everyday person who can realistically make zero impact on any of these people? Fuck if I've got the time to try and sort out which person falls into which group. The courts can figure that out if they actually start doing anything about all of this. For me? I'm writing 'em all off.

Crazy that BOTH sides of the Chomsky Foucault debate were diddling children!

(ref: https://www.dailysabah.com/arts/guy-sorman-accuses-michel-fo... )

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky%E2%80%93Foucault_debat...)

Also makes the title of his book "manufacturing consent" quite bad in retrospect!

Just like no matter who you voted for in 2016, you were voting for someone who performed fellatio on Bill Clinton!

(ref: https://www.jpost.com/omg/viral-news-from-the-web/article-87... )

/pol/ schizos deserve reparations.

"when Epstein’s 2008 conviction in the State of Florida was known by very few people, while most of the public – including Noam and I – was unaware of it. "

Oh the, "we didn't know", trope. Yawn. No one ever knows anything. I guess the $$$ helped in not knowing.

"his townhouse in Manhattan" and didn't find the pictures and the massage tables strange.

We didn't know anything.

"Noam’s email to Epstein, in which Epstein sought advice about the press, should be read in context. Epstein had claimed to Noam that he [Epstein] was being unfairly persecuted".

and

"2019 did we learn the full extent"

Full extent? So what did you know before? All of this does not make any sense.

Although I'm not a fan of Chomsky, neither of his political-philosophical, nor his linguistic work, he's never come across as dishonest, and I won't believe implications until corroborated by hard evidence.

I read the first 5 paragraphs which were all "Noam", "Noam", "Noam" and then lost interest. The letter should have started by first acknowledging the heinous crimes committed against innocent children.

One of the crazy things about these files is: it’s clear that the root motivation for a huge number of these guys is just to get with very young girls (and sometimes boys).

Nothing sophisticated. Nothing inspired. Just what the most atavistic parts of the brain stem want.

They were billionaires and high ranking academics and politicians. They could have done so many things but that’s where a huge portion of their energy went. It was clearly one of the most important things to them.

Makes me think of the paperclip maximizers idea. We are paperclip maximizers. This is how a paperclip maximizer would behave. They could extend health and life and explore the universe, but paperclips. Must make paperclips.

I also get the impression that the reason a lot of these guys are attracted to authoritarian right wing ideology, neo-monarchism, etc. is the same. It’s because it would let them have little girls without pesky enlightenment notions like rights or woke nonsense about equality getting in the way.

Gotta make paperclips. Burn the world to make paperclips.