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Fugees Founder Pras Michél Speaks Out: 'I Never Wanted to Be a Spy'

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Re: Fugees Founder Pras Michél Speaks Out: 'I Never Wanted to Be a Spy'

#61

Post by UltraSane »

DevX101 wrote: post #52
weinzierl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Secret money is the best, but hard and rare. Celebrity without money the worst and I fully agree with you that I'd prefer to have neither.

Wealthy people are fairly anonymous to most people unless they actually got their wealth via fame (influencers, actors, entertainment talent). Without looking it up, do you have any idea who the CEO of Coca Cola is? Would you be able to spot him/her (I dont' know either) on the street? Now imagine the armies of $XM annual comp high earners in finance and they're even more anonymous.

The Mars family is pretty famous for how NOT famous they are.

Re: Fugees Founder Pras Michél Speaks Out: 'I Never Wanted to Be a Spy'

#62

Post by UltraSane »

toyg wrote: post #32
ta20240528 wrote: post #30

I read that his band mate - a Ms Lauren Hill - was also sent up state for tax evasion. Classy bunch.

Lauryn Hill is a fantastic talent. Like many other fantastic talents before and after her, at some point she lost humility and her mental state degraded.

She is completely nuts. Here is a video of Grammy and Emmy winner Robert Glasper talking in detail about just how nuts she is. It is really entertaining.

https://youtu.be/54WECf1ioeY?t=1669

Re: Fugees Founder Pras Michél Speaks Out: 'I Never Wanted to Be a Spy'

#63

Post by weinzierl »

DevX101 wrote: post #52
weinzierl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Secret money is the best, but hard and rare. Celebrity without money the worst and I fully agree with you that I'd prefer to have neither.

Wealthy people are fairly anonymous to most people unless they actually got their wealth via fame (influencers, actors, entertainment talent). Without looking it up, do you have any idea who the CEO of Coca Cola is? Would you be able to spot him/her (I dont' know either) on the street? Now imagine the armies of $XM annual comp high earners in finance and they're even more anonymous.

I don't doubt that but I'd call that hardly secret. Random people in the street are the least problematic, the ones closest are.

Re: Fugees Founder Pras Michél Speaks Out: 'I Never Wanted to Be a Spy'

#64

Post by churchill »

world2vec wrote: post #53
brookst wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no, it is much too burdensome. Let me take this burden that it does not crush you, brother world2vec.

No, no, no brother brookst - I insist, you don't need to suffer.

Brothers, brookst & world2vec: it would break my heart to watch you both suffer from the pressures worldly wealth and filthy lucre can bring.

Why not let me take it off both of your hands so you can live the ascetic lives you crave? Deal?

Re: Fugees Founder Pras Michél Speaks Out: 'I Never Wanted to Be a Spy'

#65

Post by JKCalhoun »

svantana wrote: post #21
portaouflop wrote: post #3

Celebrity and money are like a reality distortion field. I hope I never acquire either in large quantities - it does not seem like a desirable thing

Presumably the guy is distinctively not rich, or he wouldn't have gotten involved in such risky business to make money. Most of the hit songs he's been involved with are based one or more older songs, so he may not make much from royalties.

> Presumably the guy is distinctively not rich, or he wouldn't have gotten involved in such risky business to make money.

The more I watch the behavior of the wealthy the more I see that either 1) there is never enough to satisfy them or 2) (more likely) getting it is the thing they enjoy — so why would they stop at some arbitrary point?

I think his wealth or lack of is orthogonal. The article in fact mentions his motivations being more along the lines of enjoying living on the edge, living dangerously (see his documentary work).

Re: Fugees Founder Pras Michél Speaks Out: 'I Never Wanted to Be a Spy'

#66

Post by maxglute »

_hl_ wrote: post #47

For anyone else confused by what actually happened, here is a summary compiled from various sources around the conviction and the related 1MDB scandal: --- Jho Low, a Malaysian financier, masterminded one of the largest embezzlement scandals in history through 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a sovereign wealth fund intended to spur economic development. Over $4.5 billion was siphoned from the fund to finance a l…

>extradite Chinese dissident Miles Guo, a target of Beijing

Who let's not forget, would go on to hang with Steve Bannon during the Trump years and use influence to build up scams to defraud 1,000s of gullible anti-PRC Americans (and others) out of a billion with a B dollars - he was the fraudster CCP claimed he was all along (scammed banks in PRC), albiet a connected one with some limited insight into old CCP drama, hence US treated him as valuble anti CCP dissident. Truly top kek leopardsatemyface development that no one would have forseen.

Re: Fugees Founder Pras Michél Speaks Out: 'I Never Wanted to Be a Spy'

#67

Post by JKCalhoun »

zusammen wrote: post #23
weinzierl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Secret money is the best, but hard and rare. Celebrity without money the worst and I fully agree with you that I'd prefer to have neither.

Secret money is hard at a certain scale. Money is property rights and people have to believe your rights exist for them to actually exist. Elon Musk is not physically strong but simply the beneficiary of forces that have convinced the world’s mindless executors of one arbitrary thing in his favor, but could have just as easily convinced them of any arbitrary thing out of his favor. It’s better to have $5 million than…

> There is a higher level, which you cannot have without the support of society

Is that true?

I get what you are saying. In my mind it is more like: it would be nice to be wealthy, but you don't want to get wealthy enough that you show up on the radar of the world's bad actors.

Re: Fugees Founder Pras Michél Speaks Out: 'I Never Wanted to Be a Spy'

#68

Post by maxglute »

perihelions wrote: post #58
MrMcCall wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also refused to take a plea agreement that would've spared him most of this (IIUC). They don't like it when a person doesn't "play ball". And it certainly doesn't help that he's Black.

It also doesn't help that he was a Chinese spy. Or that he assisted the CPC trying to repatriate a Chinese defector to China to be executed.

>Defector

A chinese fraudster who scammed PRC banks that "defected" by claiming to be a dissident, that PRC said for years was a fraudster, who would go on to defraud Americans out of a BILLION dollars, because US state department thought he was some anti CCP dissident with deep insight into the CCP, instead of you know... a fraudster. Though to be fair, both could to be true. I hope US got a billion dollars worth outdated info from him.

Re: Fugees Founder Pras Michél Speaks Out: 'I Never Wanted to Be a Spy'

#69

Post by mandmandam »

dustingetz wrote: post #51
zusammen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Secret money is hard at a certain scale. Money is property rights and people have to believe your rights exist for them to actually exist. Elon Musk is not physically strong but simply the beneficiary of forces that have convinced the world’s mindless executors of one arbitrary thing in his favor, but could have just as easily convinced them of any arbitrary thing out of his favor. It’s better to have $5 million than…

paragraph 2: please be concrete, this claim is interesting but completely unsubstantiated as currently stated

I don't know what reasonably substantiating such a claim would look like to you, but yeah, there's something to it.

Think of it as game theory; or think of it like simple mob dynamics. Play Wolf or Mafia, and get an idea of how powerful information asymmetry can be.

Look down stream at where our cobalt, our lithium, our chocolate comes from; what we've done to Africa and South America and indigenous people everywhere; look what Epstein did, and who with, and how media covered it; look at the history of colonialism; look at how people who spoke out against Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria/US torture/drone assinations/Israeli occupation and atrocities were and are being treated by the political and media class. Look at how climate protesters are smeared while polluters are green-washed; not sometimes, but as a matter of course. There's not many ways to explain all the above without the original claim as a large factor.

I'd recommend Chomsky, Naomi Klein, John Perkins, Sarah Kendzior and Whitney Webb if you want to learn more.

Re: Fugees Founder Pras Michél Speaks Out: 'I Never Wanted to Be a Spy'

#70

Post by scns »

MrMcCall wrote: post #28
zusammen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hated that voice. At first, I told myself it wasn’t right to hate someone’s voice so much because I assumed it had been something she couldn’t control, and in fact it made her slightly more impressive to me that she had gotten anywhere with such an uncharismatic voice. Then I found out that, no, she made it up. All fake. I have a cousin with two special needs children. When I was first told that people in Silicon V…

I understand. Sadly, the level of despicable ethics goes far deeper than that, my friend. But I never hate, because hate is a poison to one's own soul, and must always be avoided. I do, however, feel a hot righteous anger at those that manipulate others for personal gain, especially when it's combined with callous disregard for their victims' well-being. I wish more people were like you, who have found reasons to gro…

Hassen macht hässllich ie hate makes you ugly.
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