chapotraphouse

there was some embezzlement thing where Brian defrauded 17M, Steven Hemsley (executive chariman) defrauded 102M, and Witty defrauded a few million. Brian was set to testify soon. Hemsley took home almost all of the money.

I've been enjoying concocting farcical conspiracy scenarios in my mind since Luigi was collared. It's not so hard to imagine that he could've fallen down the gladio well. Easy to set him up as a patsy. But that also seems like an enormously risky move that, if you assume the powers that be don't know who the real shooter is, leaves them open to embarrassment. And if they do know who the real shooter is why bother creating a fake one? Seems like a lot of work, that could still backfire on them, when it all would've been forgotten about in a few weeks anyway. And the official line is believable. Promising kid from a rich family runs afoul of the health insurance industry, realizes his life will never be the same again, and decides to kill a guy for it. Escapes one of the most surveilled cities in the world as a result of police incompetence and some good planning on his part. Gets caught because a cop lives in the mind of every American over the age of 45.

Anyway, I assume that Luigi is the guy, partly out of "nothing ever happens" brain and partly out of fear that a sophisticated gladio network could really exist, has existed other places in ways that are provable, but I want to believe it's all paranoid delusion, that the State couldn't really be that powerful, because that's too frightening to contemplate. There's that line you see skeptics trot out all the time with regard to conspiracy adjacent stuff, that conspiracy theorists are just looking to believe in something bigger than themselves that has control, because the random and chaotic nature of life can be too hard to take. I hope that's true of all the gladio shit.

This insider trading case does give me pause, though. Suddenly, with that much money on the line, shit that I would normally think is impossible doesn't sound that farfetched.