“Epstein class” is a good label for the elite cohort of rich and powerful assholes that apparently exist above the law in our society. This system appears to pervade both individual nations, like the US, but also the supposed international rules based order. The entire system is hand motions for the slobs.

And there was a time decades ago when I was younger, in a world that no longer exists, when Germany positioned itself as the ‘conscience’ of Europe. The post-war project was built on a questionable foundation of atonement, of ‘never again’, of exporting ‘democracy’ and human rights in an effort to right its historical sins.

It was always a convenient fiction, but it was a fiction with some utility. It gave the European Union a kind of moral compass, however crooked and prone to failure it was.

But that fiction is now dead. And funnily enough, it has been killed by Germany’s own willing hand

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Last weekend, the most bizarre thing happened when Iran began its retaliatory strikes. Israel’s government plane, Wing of Zion made an unscheduled landing at Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport. Online, millions watched the flight tracker and asked the obvious question: is Benjamin Netanyahu on board? And would Germany arrest him?