Norway’s crown princess has become embroiled in another scandal after newly unsealed files appeared to show her years of extensive contact with the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The latest tranche of Epstein files, released on Friday by the US justice department, appear to include nearly 1,000 mentions of the crown princess, Mette-Marit.
The files include scores of emails traded between the two, suggesting they were in contact from 2011 to 2014, the Norwegian daily VG reported. Mette-Marit married the future king of Norway in 2001.
The revelations come at a sensitive time for the royal family. The trial of Mette-Marit’s son, Marius Borg Høiby for rape is due to begin on Tuesday. He was born from a relationship before she married Crown Prince Haakon
Høiby is facing 38 charges, including the alleged rape of four women as well as alleged assault and drug offences. If convicted he could face up to 16 years in prison. Høiby has denied the most serious charges, including those of sexual abuse.
Here is the argument, IIRC.
And here is a response.
Thanks, that was interesting, and pretty neatly sums up the revenue side of things (and why I think it’s a bs argument for their continued existence)
I’m still curious about the “work” that The Crown (show) kept going on about. As mentioned in the rebuttal video, all of that revenue essentially comes about through just existing (and there’s no reason it couldn’t continue even if the monarchy were officially abolished)
From the outside, (and going by the events in the show) it seems to be just cutting ribbons, and hosting/attending parties. Oh, and a speech once a year. Is that the extent of their work, or do they actually serve some political function that couldn’t be done by a regular old diplomat?
Officially, the British monarch can reject any bills that Parliament sends them, effectively vetoing it, but no king or queen has exercised that power since 1708.
They’ve used threats instead, as well as the power of shaming and the influence they have in many places including the Press (for example, pretty much the whole Board of the BBC has a royal title, be it a Peerage or higher, and this is similar in quite a number of other places, both in the public and the private sector).
Look up the “black spider memos” from the time the current King was still a Prince.
Without clicking I already know what both of those videos will be.
CGP Grey is a liberal hack. He’s very skilled at explaining things in an entertaining and easy-to-understand way, but he’s really bad at making it clear when what he’s “explaining” is his (or someone else’s) opinion and not an actual fact. And when it is his opinion, far too often it’s a bad one, tainted by some of the laziest liberal status quo bs.
This is one such example, and Shaun’s response is justifiably scathing.
I also found it particularly telling when he did his “guns, germs, and steel” explainer (a book that is widely criticised by historians for its vastly oversimplified explanations), and he responded to criticism by laughing it off, and saying there was no problem. But when he later did a video and made a minor mistake by using the name of a submarine-based missile for what was actually a ground-based missile (or something along those lines), he made a huge deal about how important his integrity is and how he could not possibly live with himself if he allowed that misinformation to go uncorrected.
Suffice it to say, I was not particularly surprised when I later learnt the reason Grey pulled out of Nebula was that he (and Veritasium, IIRC?) wanted a business model/corporate structure which would allow him and other early members to profit off of the work of later-added members. An opinion that put him at odds with the other early founders like Wendover and Real Engineering, who preferred the more equitable model.