Man Claiming Half Ownership of Facebook Is Now a Fugitive 163
alphadogg writes Paul D. Ceglia, who was arrested in 2012 for defrauding Facebook on the claim that he owns half the company, is now a fugitive. Ceglia cut off his electronic monitoring bracelet some time around last Friday and left home in violation of the conditions of his bail, court papers said. Ceglia claimed in a 2010 lawsuit that he was entitled to half ownership of Facebook under a 2003 contract with Mark Zuckerberg, who had done programming work for Ceglia's StreetFax.com.
Like many former facebook users.. (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe he just had enough of being monitored all the time?
Re:Like many former facebook users.. (Score:5, Funny)
It was probably that 43,278,965th Candy Crush friend request that did it to him.
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No, like many surprised iPhone users, he discovered that extra smurfberries are NOT free, and someone has to pay the bill.
It's just unlike Apple, Facebook wasn't so willing to refund all that accidentally-spent money.
Re:Like many former facebook users.. (Score:5, Funny)
He'll be caught soon . . . when he logs on to Facebook to brag about being a fugitive, the cops will know where he is . . .
. . . with Facebook providing free info to the cops!
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Only if he's stupid.
I was a "fugitive" (as the morons in government might call it) for over a decade. Laid low, stayed off of the grid and eventually all of the "legal" entanglement disappeared. The reason I did it was because I didn't recognise the charges, sentence nor the authority behind it.
I can honestly say "I fought the law and _I_ won". They didn't even stand a chance.
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He is literally an anonymous coward. Literally.
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Maybe he just had enough of being monitored all the time?
Maybe this will turn him into a terrorist - you know like all the Muslims say that they only become terrorists because they are monitored so it must be true
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No, what would be funny is if he had been charged for espionage, privacy violations, or something along those lines.
Re: Like many former facebook users.. (Score:2, Funny)
Would if he fled years ago and the person wearing the bracelet was his 90 year old grandma who just passed away and her jewlery and the bracelet were removed at the morgue? Meanwhile Paul is staying in a trailer near mark Zuckerberg's house watching him eat his bagel every morning. Then Mark notices him and they talk it out over more bagels. Then they go shopping for the new iPhone watch. Paul pays for both because he was always the gentleman-type.
Poor Mr. Ceglia (Score:4, Interesting)
He should have known: There's far too much money on the table for justice to be allowed. Did he really think he was going to take billions of dollars of value away from the people who quite literally run the world?
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Somebody has allowed "them" to rule the world. They aren't really smart, actually most of them are pretty stupid, they are just very good at lobbying, they've been doing it for 2000 years. Americans let "them" in after WWII. Now have fun living in a country whose financial, media, and internet industries are controlled by "them".
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Justice? Even if his claim is legit, his involvement has been nonexistent and he has done nothing to build the company.
It's quite difficult to describe as "just" anything resulting in a person gaining billions of dollars for such a small effort.
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I'm afraid you don't know how the capitalistic system works. If you own half of the common shares of a company, you have a 50% voting power at the shareholders meeting and the right to get half of the dividends, whether you also work for it or not. Not that I consider it fair, but that's how it works.
I don't know whether Ceglia's claim is legit or not, however it should be noted that no other company has ever had so many ownership claims as facebook in the last few years. It seems that several businessmen h
Paul D. Ceglia (Score:1, Interesting)
I feel sorry for him... (Score:2)
... This is a sad situation.
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gotta agree, sounds like someone building self-delusion around himself then cracking when it all comes falling down.
Relationship status: (Score:1)
"It's complicated"
Re:So did he write facebook or not? (Score:5, Interesting)
I do not know the man in question, but I imagine that it is not impossible that his claim against Zuckerberg was something along this line. I don't say this out of any appreciation for Facebook either, for what it's worth.
Re:So did he write facebook or not? (Score:5, Informative)
nope (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently he didn't fully pay Zuck for the StreetFax.com project. Zuck threated to sue, so he sent a scan of the StreetFax.com contract to his lawyer. Later after Cegilia sued Zuck, the courts got a hold of that contract and noticed it wasn't the same as the one saying Cegilia owned "the facebook".
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The company I once worked for got bought up by a bigger company that tried to pull this stunt in their new employee contract. I and most of the other developers simply refused to sign the contract. I suppose they could have fired us, but that would have sank the company fast. So they continued to pay us and we continued to work for them.
Years later they tried to sue some former employees that went to work for a competitor. The company lost badly.
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Of course not. Zuck shat Facebook out of his anus fully formed.
Re:So did he write facebook or not? (Score:4, Interesting)
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You of course coded in the backdoors and blackmail material about 2 years into this 9 year farce, right? Or at least stole a lifetime supply of office materials? I can't see putting up with that for 9 whole years without becoming really, really suspicious.
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... they hadn't given me the shares in the company that they had been promising for the previous 9 years.
NINE YEARS?!?!??! You went without a written contract for your work for nine years? How many years were you going to work like this? Twenty? Thirty?
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To be honest, the people who were first in charge were probably trustworthy but had no authority to grant shares. Then after about 3 years, they started getting weeded out and replaced with people who had no intentions of ever following through but continued to say they would. After three years, they were so far in my debt that I had to let it ride in hopes that it would payoff. I guess it was kind of like gambling. I figure altogether they owe me about $1 million in overtime, COLA, raises and vacation days.
Complete nonsense. If they were too far in debt to pay it off, and you sued them, you'd end up with the whole thing. The reality is unlikely to be thus, though. It is never too late for them to issue real shares to pay off their debt, if you'll accept those shares. Even if they had to split the stock to get it done.
Another reality is that instead of meaning you "had to let it ride," you should have understood that you "had to take legal action immediately."
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Next time, cut your losses and threaten a lawsuit. You'll never be in better shape for negotiation or a lawsuit than shortly after you don't get what you were owed, since the courts are likely to think you should have complained fairly promptly, and the bosses are going to figure they can continue shafting you without complaint. If they can get away with exploiting you, that'll just encourage them.
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Sorry dude, but it's your own damn fault of not getting the agreement in writing. First lesson in adult life is it's all bullshit UNTIL you have a written, signed and witnessed contact.
Re: So did he write facebook or not? (Score:1)
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In fact, I recently got terminated from one such place because they finally started to make money and could no longer dance around the fact that they hadn't given me the shares in the company that they had been promising for the previous 9 years.
Would you like to work for my company? We can't pay too much right now, but you'll get shares in the company, work hard and we'll make your rich beyond your wildest dreams.
Re:So did he write facebook or not? (Score:5, Funny)
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Which is exactly why I would never work for a "startup". They routinely fuck the people who actually do all of the hard work.
I was glad that I was a contractor during the Dot-Com boom.
Always work for cash. Stock and stock options are nice, but they should be considered as having absolutely zero value until you convert them into cash.
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The US's private prison system is stuffed to the gills with drug criminals and violent felons, so someone who does a crime that:
A: Is not drug related.
B: Is not weapons/firearms related.
C: Is not violent.
D: Doesn't fall under some "terrorism" catch-all
will likely see house arrest, or just be out on bail. In fact, people who do white collar crimes are almost celebrities in the US. White collar crimes are almost never enforced unless there is a major collapse of a market... then someone gets scapegoated
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http://christiannews.net/2015/... [christiannews.net]
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He was caught on the prison phone while conspiring to hide assets from seizure before his sentencing ... he kinda proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he needed the supervision, also that he is a bit of a moron.
The structuring laws are a bit insane, but this case is the exception to prove the rule where they were justified.
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White collar crimes are almost never enforced unless there is a major collapse of a market... then someone gets scapegoated.
Often times not even then.
OMG your right! (Score:2)
Wait...
Or were you trying to say you don't think there should be sentencing of confinement for anything except violent offenses? (Because white collar crime doesn't really count does it
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there are three companies running 14 prisons in the UK. Yes, I said companies. Her Majesty's Prison Service runs places like The Maze, still, which houses the most violent prisoners, but for just about all the "low risk", they're in Hotel Sodexo (which is really more of a Gulag, ask Melanie Shaw if you can get a visit - they're not letting ANYONE in to see her at the moment, not even a legal adviser or a family member), Group 3 (one got away - old joke, now better known as G4S, a throwback acronym to one of
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Re: Is he dangerous? (Score:3)
They just get drunk and stop caring about not having a license. Then drive drunk again.
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They just get drunk and stop caring about not having a license. Then drive drunk again.
This has been the motivation for my preferred policy: One drunk driving arrest, one fucking bullet in the brain.
It's the only way to be safe.
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It might work just to amputate their arms, too.
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It might work just to amputate their arms, too.
I guess give them a choice, although I'm not sure I'd want them to collect welfare.
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How about not drinking if you're going to be driving a vehicle, period?
Why should other people be at risk because someone wants to drink?
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There are lots of other things that can impair a driver. Should it be legal to drive on too little sleep? (There goes the ability to run out and buy more newborn diapers.) If your spouse has just filed for divorce or a parent died? If you're having a real bad time at work? If you're clinically depressed? (Try and get out of depression while they're hitting you because you're down.)
Why should it be illegal to consume little enough alcohol to keep you safer than one of them?
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No. I'm told that studies have shown it's as dangerous as drunk driving.
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Gosh, what is the chance if you take away their car they could get another one? Or just borrow one from another drunk at the bar?
Your nonsense about metabolism really sounds like a drunk driver trying to justify it. I'll make it easy for you: if you drank enough to get you over the limit, and drove anyway, you should be shot. Whining about, "gosh, I thought if I just ate and drank some coffee, it would be fine. And then when I realized I was drunk, I had to keep driving, because *waves hands*" just makes yo
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People shouldn't be punished for sleeping it off in their car. I was under the impression that it wasn't a DUI if the keys weren't in the ignition though.
The issue I was getting at in response to the person I responded to was pretty simple: alcohol destroys your judgement. So you may care about the license being lost when sober, but then your inhibitions are gone, and you don't.
Some of the folks responding got a little crazy with it o-o
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I've read of cases around here where somebody did get drunk, tried to sleep it off in their car, and were held to be in control of the vehicle because they were in it and had the keys available. I think it's a stupid law, and encourages actual drunk driving, but as far as I know that's still the law here.
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Oh yes, I keep thinking we still believe in "innocent until proven guilty." Thanks for the correction.
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Please explain how the length of time of license revocation and the means of getting it back is all the difference between zero-tolerance and not-zero-tolerance.
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You're insane.
Non-violent criminals are exactly the ones you want to use tracking bracelets on. The violent criminals you put in prison so that they can't just remove their tracking bracelet and go and do some violence (or not bother removing it and skipping to the violence part).
Of course in this case he isn't convicted, he's only been charged. So he accepted those bail conditions, he could have sat in jail for two years awaiting trial instead if he has something against those conditions.
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Re:Is he dangerous? (Score:4, Informative)
Why the heck did he have a tracking bracelet to begin with? He was convicted of being a fraudster and financial criminal, but was he convicted of violent crimes? Do they really give tracking bracelets to non-violent criminals in the USA?
That's truly fucked up if so.
I'm not even convinced that the guy is guilty of anything other than pissing off a rich, white, entitled douchebag.
Ask Martha Stewart...
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She also told the truth, and the truth was she broke the law.
She was widely panned for having done that, because everything that she admitted to could have been phrased as a different thing by lawyers, without changing the actual true physical actions she was admitting to.
She basically screwed herself by admitting her intent, which is what they needed to prove, when all they had otherwise was facts about what she actually did; which is not enough to convict under that law.
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Yeah, she made the same mistake people often make; they assumed because they're a good person inside, and they weren't trying to steal or kill or anything, that they must not have broken the law, and if they just explained what they did to the police they'll realize she's not a bad person.
And the cop then arrests them, thinking, "gosh, they're not a bad person, they'll probably learn a valuable lesson from all this."
Even if you're ready to plead guilty before they catch you, still.. what you say could affec
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At times our entire legal system seems to revolve around the idea of "let's find any way to weasel out of punishment for our actions. The truth is the enemy, no one should know the truth. What we really want is a way to get away with it."
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uh... Kanye West
Whitney Houston (yeah. Bite me, women can be douchebags, too. Women doubly so, in fact. Ask Bobby, and don't forget to duck, they were as bad as each other.)
LeBron James
Chris "Tell Me I'm Pretty" Bosh (can go sit on a fucking railroad spike)
LaVar "Stole mah jerb!" Arrington
Tiger "Tag the cunt with a Titleist" Woods
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Dammit, I really should have read through the whole thread before posting.
I thought I was making an insightful point, but turns out that for most people "entitled non-white douchebag? Oh, we're probably talking about Kanye West" was the first thing that came to mind.
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it's acknowledgement of white privilege.
In other words, yes, you are racist.
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Because non-white people don't end up entitled douchebags
Let me introduce you to a man named Kanye West.
Re:Is he dangerous? (Score:4, Insightful)
cite please? I know many douchebags who are not white... heck Kanye West is perhaps one of the biggest entitled douchebags around...
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but all douchebags are white
And Idi Amin was a double douchebag for wearing blackface while being a douchebag. And Robert Mugabe still is. Riiight.
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Not all white people are douchebags, but all douchebags are white. Acknowledging this is acknowledging that racism exists and is alive and well. It is not a racist statement - it's simply fact, because it's part of what douchebag means.
You're the first person I've ever heard who uses a definition of douchebag that contains race.
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Of course, since you are innocent until proven guilty, bail is unconstitutional, but that is another topic.
Bail is clearly allowed by the constitution. In particularly read the 8th amendment.
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Re:Is he dangerous? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Bail is supposed to be a fee that you pay"
Not quite. Its supposed to be a guarantee that you'll show up for your court case, and if you don't you either lose a significant chunk of change far in excess of your crime or you have a bail bondsman with a very good reason to hunt you down. The problem is that bail has been corrupted beyond all reason, people who would have no cause (minor crimes, roots in the community, etc) to flee are held under tens of thousands of dollar bail. People with minor DUI crimes will sometimes have bail in excess of $100K. Its become more of a pre-punishment then a guarantee that you'll return to court, if you have the money you're effectively paying hundreds to thousands of dollars (in lost interest, both investment and inflation) if you don't you're paying a bail bondsman ~10% on your bond. And with court cases dragging on more and more each year (its not uncommon for trial to take 2 years) people are paying more and more.
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People with minor DUI crimes ...
Wait what? "Minor DUI crime", what the hell is that? You're.. sort of drunk and sort of driving? Haha, this about made me fall out of my chair laughing. You betcha bro, drink and drive and the bail goes through the roof, and rightly so.
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Most DUI's are victimless "crimes", no one was harmed, no property was damaged and quite often even past the "legal limit" the person was more in control of the vehicle than someone who hadn't got enough sleep or was too busy stuffing their face with a cheeseburger or doing their makeup, both perfectly legal. It has the POTENTIAL to cause harm (injury/property) but so do a lot of things including but not limited to hunting, fishing, bowling, racing, eating large portions, sleeping around, snowmobiling, etc
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bail is entirely constitutional. EXCESSIVE bail is not.
Apart from that, bail predates the United States Constitution by about five hundred years.
Re: Is he dangerous? (Score:4, Insightful)
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It can and probably does lead to bullying. However, it's possible for a lot of very unpleasant things to happen to you even if you're found innocent. If there's good reason to suspect you (probable cause), the police can raid your home, tear it up while searching for evidence, and haul you off to jail. There are other things that can happen that I consider illegitimate, but they've been held as legal. Basically, it sucks to be accused of a crime when there's genuine evidence that you have likely done i
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For more information: http://www.npr.org/series/1229... [npr.org]
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Because as part of his punishment, he has to obey certain terms and conditions. The monitoring bracelet allows police to ensure he's abiding by some of those terms and conditions.
Only it did not ensure that at all. He cut it off.
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lol, you think jewish = white, cute.
Yes, most people think jewish people are white, just like they think Poles are white, or Germans, or Irish, or any number of white groups that have faced discrimination in the past.
Yeah, I know KKK members may not like Jews, but that doesn't make jews non-white.
Re:Is he dangerous? (Score:4, Funny)
Sir or Madam,
I am writing to you today to inquire as to the methods and procedures by which I might be able to claim minority hiring status using my Jewish heritage. This question of my religious orientation sadly has never arisen during an interview, possibly because many of the companies to which I have applied respect hiring laws.
However, if, as you say, there are provisions that would allow me to gain further traction with a potential employer simply by virtue of a religious status, I should be most interested in pursuing this venture.
Kindly reply at your earliest convenience to this cyber "e-address" with this exceedingly interesting and potentially life-altering knowledge. By doing so, you may even relieve yourself of your self-proclaimed "anti-semite" status and may then redefine yourself as "pro-semite."
Also, I do hope you recover soon and swiftly from your mentioned fatigue. Some days I struggle with languor myself and must motivate myself repeatedly to accomplish my tasks.
Thank you for your time and gracious attention to this matter.
Respectfully yours,
Herzog Zwei
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Obviously by giving the jewish interviewer the secret jewish handshake. You'll need to ask your parents or rabbi about it since they forgot to teach you about it.
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The same way you get things on any small circle. You go to the meetings and talk to people. We call this "networking". Other people call it cronyism but what do they know.
If it is being Jewish, Mormon, or a member of Skull and Crossbones is irrelevant.
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Wait a minute, as a Jew I can get a minority hiring status ?? I really need to start paying attention at the monthly meeting of ZOG. Thanks for the information but I have to run now. It's time to kill christian babies for the their blood to mix in the Passover matzah.
For the clueless out there, THAT was sarcasm.
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Jesus of Nazareth was a black jew.
I'm not convinced Jesus of Nazareth existed at all.
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I'm just going to leave this here:
"The Christ myth theory is the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth never existed... This theory has very little support among scholars."
The Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] that quote is from gives a lot more sources. The only people I have ever heard say they don't believe Jesus was a real person are those who don't want him to have existed - never from anyone who has actually studied the subject. You can debate what he did and said, but trying to say he didn't exist shows you haven't stu
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The evidence given is largely the gospels, which were written by people who wanted to prove something considerably after the event (one of them makes claims to show Jesus as fulfilling Jewish prophecy), two mentions by a dishonest blowhard in a document we know was modified later by Christians, and one quick Tacitus reference that gives no details. I'm not real impressed. It's as good evidence as we have for quite a few things in ancient history, but ancient historians seem to me to trust their sources m
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If I write an wikipedia article about Batman being real, will you use it too as reference?
I'm not sure about that, but if given the choice I'd definitely choose Batman as my personal Lord and Savior over the zombie guy.
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I will join this religion.
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Semites are not Blacks.
That Jews from a region look like non-Jews from the same region is due to intermarriage. At the time Jesus lived, or is purported to live, it is very unlikely that his family tree would have contained enough African genes to make him what we would call a Black.
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True, he would look more like an Arab than a black man. Jesus Ackbar!
you're all horrible people and should be punished. (Score:1)
Surely someone from that group should be convicted?
D. All of them.
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Re:shady italian scumbag [shakes down rich jew] (Score:1)
Stop correcting ethnic details, you are ruining good bar jokes
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That's absolutely ridiculous. The vast majority of American Jews were born in the US. The vast majority of Jews who moved to the US after WWII are dead.