Epstein Arrest Leaves Top Technology Figures Racing to Distance Themselves
bloomberg.com
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The more that comes out about this Epstein case the more I question that truth. I'm sure there are people on the inside looking to call out and reveal things but if our sole source of coverage for these events are media companies owned by the very people guilty of such high crimes then what do we do? Surely the internet would enable these voices to come forward?
The whole thing seems so weird and like a fiction novel. I'd love to see those horrible people charged for their crimes, but in the absolute bare minimum I'd like to see how such criminal empires operate without notice.
Of course QAnon et al turn it into some crazy nonsense involving a relatively meaningless hormone and a reality TV star as conquering hero.
Or Bohemian Grove. They're doing Satanic rituals! All those rich and famous people are doing horribly corrupt and satanic! They're conspiring to control our lives with evil magic!
Well, _no_, they're actually just engaging in some _very tacky_ theatre followed by the usual rich-person networking, and they'd rather not have you know that a bunch of important events in government and business maybe started there. I mean, heck, that's _the Masons_ too. It was facebook/linkedin of the analog era. join up, "culture of secrecy", but mostly you meet people for business contacts and whatnot.
On one hand, most everyone seems to get it that bad behavior and corruption is rife, but on the other hand any specifics ideas will generally be dismissed as conspiracy theories. I sometimes wonder if the widespread strong beliefs that "everything's a conspiracy theory unless it's been reported on" is completely natural, or if it has been partially socially engineered.
This is a good podcast to listen to for an example:
> Common Sense 276 – Past Transgressions
> https://podtail.com/en/podcast/common-sense-with-dan-carlin/...
> Description: Imagine celebrities from the 1960s and 1970s who were involved in sexual conduct with minors in their heyday being called to account for it today. It’s currently happening in Great Britain. Dan has some thoughts.
How many incredibly famous rock stars from the past were sleeping with underage groupies in plain sight of hundreds of people? And what have we heard, beyond a few rumors?
Has no one here witnessed criminal behavior worthy of prison sentences in the workplace? I certainly have, and my career has been nothing special, at all. People underestimate how easy it is to cover things up when money (people's jobs) are on the line. And if that looks to be failing, there's always cold hard cash or other forms of persuasion, and if the stakes are high enough, "suicide" (which will inevitably be classified as a conspiracy theory).
For more examples of broad daylight corruption that never makes the news, I highly recommend listening to the Common Sense podcast, and even sticking one's nose into /r/conspiracy now and then, for those who are able to think unemotionally about such things of course.
But when you scale things up - at massive quantities - you have to account for the illegal/immoral/unethical behaviour scaling up as well. It may be completely inconceivable that criminal behaviour occurs in circles of power - but when you are dealing with people who are involved in the lives of millions, upon millions - literally tens of millions of humans, or even hundreds of millions - criminality at scale starts to become a thing.
And yes, a group of a few thousand no-good types can hide their activities in the realm of humans-at-scale. This has been proven time and again throughout history, and anyone who thinks 'its impossible for people to be that well organized' are fooling themselves.
Humans are incredibly good at organizing themselves to get things done - nefarious or otherwise - and anyone thinking otherwise is just manifesting a form of personal anti-social neurosis. If its unreal to you that conspiracies could form at scale, you need to read more history and pay attention to how so many of our cultures and societies throughout the world have been constructed. Heck, even the American state began as a conspiracy that nobody could believe would result in anything much ..
[0] https://gawker.com/here-is-pedophile-billionaire-jeffrey-eps...
I’m not equaling Marie Antoinette-way of living to the despicable things Epstein did, I’m just saying that in today’s political climate it would have been very interesting to still have access to articles detailing how the Google or FB owners were throwing out their money.
I guess we're looking for someone more credible to be blowing open these coverups?
Sad state of affairs…
As intelligence services are protected, you won't hear about it.
It's probably worse than we know.
It seems they are trying to distance Epstein from Bill Clinton. Bill flew to the island a dozen times, Epstein's girlfriend came to Chelsea's wedding... Ah! but Bill didn't show for a dinner once so he wasn't really connected with Epstein that much? If the reporter just left that part out completely it might have worked, but they are trying a little too hard. I bet there is a deeper connection there.
The case, overall is just so strange. The plea deal he got before, his attempted suicide in his cell after(!) filing an appeal to post bail.
Also, he went from stealing checks in the mail https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6962478/parties/united-... to owning private islands, 7500 acre range in New Mexico, apartment in Paris, a Boeing 727, getting a multi-million dollar mansions for $1 as a "gift". It's just unbelievable stuff.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/nyregion/bill-clinton-jef...
It's weird how many articles say that Epstein was connected to "Clinton and Trump." No: he'd met Trump. He was connected to Clinton.
Wonder how many of those flights were to the infamous island...
I thought it was interesting to see if the reporter is somehow connected to the Clintons. It seems she was at least viewed as being favorable towards them:
(from https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/33810)
> - Reuters (Sarah McBride) is writing what should be a positive story on our campaign's efforts to attract the backing of young tech entrepreneurs.
I guess the lesson for Brin, and others, is to "cultivate" a better relationship with the journalists so they can insert lines like these in their articles "there was this one time when Brin saw Epstein, but Sergey quickly crossed the street and didn't even say hello".
As for the relation to Robert Maxwell, didn't his connection to underage girls at that time come from him being a teacher at an elite school? Wouldn't you expect such students to have famous and/or rich parents?
But here's the big one... can we please stop shoe-horning long form content into "Twitter threads"? That's not a thing. It's a terrible way of presenting long form content and it needs to die.
Yes, but we can also use Bayesian methods. If someone with powerful, murderous enemies dies in an extremely improbable way, it's not statistically sound to just say "accidents happen every day".
Of course you would need proof to actually convict someone, but it could definitely be a legitimate reason to start asking questions.
"Motive, means and opportunity" is typically what investigators need before charging someone with a crime so not quite sure if it follows that it's not supposed to be brought up in court?
If you include legitimate killings by military personnel, there's a LOT of killers walking the streets. It's a very standard part of life that's hard for most people to really grasp.
Once you consider that there are literally thousands upon thousands of legitimate, legal killers in the country, and a smaller set of people with the power to order those killers to do killing, it really doesn't make sense to assume that all the killing is above board.
Thanks for the warning about the twitter thread -- I didn't bother to click the link.
Thanks for sharing the link!
The linked site has all the markers of being untrustworthy: conspiratorial headlines ending in "What's really going on"; A fascination with cryptocurrencies; Incessant calls for donations, the name, etc.
FWIW the Epstein angle – that he is a Mossad agent – isn't "buried" by the mainstream media. I have seen this theory mentioned. It is just not featured prominently because there is no substantive evidence for it. It's just a Deus Ex Machina that could conveniently explain the dereliction of duty of the criminal justice system in the case.
Journalists never were supposed to be "activists", except for some universally accepted concepts such as democracy and transparency. There is a memorable scene in a documentation of the NYT called "Page One", where Brian Stelter is filmed asking Assange if he considers himselself a journalist or an activist.
What has changed are the widely-shared "assumptions". It's become a marker of one's smartitude to rail against "mainstream" journalism.
An informed reader should understand the biases present in anything they read and weigh the arguments accordingly—pretending objectivity discourages this kind of responsibility and is very harmful to good-faith discourse.
Every person who is a journalist has a bias. But the point of the practice/process of journalism is to mitigate those personal influences.
Just because you're investigating and writing does mean you're a journalist. Maybe you're doing glorified op-ed. Maybe you're being a wannabe reporter. But being a journaliat is a higher level.
If you're not aware of the difference between op-ed, reporter, and journalism then...you're not a journalist. One of the biggest communication problems we have today is that too many assume they understand the definition of journalism (and the processess and ethics on which its built), but they do not. Yet they continue to use the word inappropriately. Others blindly follow. And so on.
Long to short, people use "journalism" like they use "literally"; most of the time in the wrong way at the wrong time.
My point is that just alleging the presence of bias to call a piece 'not journalism' is wrong because all journalism is biased in some way. It's a dishonest tactic that boils down to an appeal to authority.
To further clarify, what you think I said is not what I said.
The practice of journalism will not eliminate bias. Nothing can. But it can and should mitigate it. And if you're not trying to mitigate the biases, then that's not journalism. To write shamelessly with bias is not journalism.
Long to short, there is a fair amount of publishing that gets called journalism, but is actually op-ed. There's nothing wrong with that per se, other than as journalism, it's fake news.
The Rachael Maddow Show is not journalism; and in that context/form she is not a journalist.
Many of the Fox News Shows are not journalism.
Etc. Etc. Etc.
The problem is too many people treat them as news and they're op-ed.
Put another way, just because you agree with an opinion doesn't mean it's journalism.
I don’t watch Fox so I can’t speak to any of their shows, but from what I’ve seen of Maddow (admittedly not a lot), she is clearly doing at least some amount of journalism in terms of seeking the truth, verifying sources and facts, etc. Sure she also pushes her opinions and has an agenda, but I would argue that this is orthogonal to her journalistic integrity, which I haven’t really seen any reason to question. She is not trying to present opinions as if they were facts—she just mixes the two in a single show. Of course she is biased in what she chooses to cover, but again the point is that everyone does that to some degree. Claiming you have ‘mitigated’ your unavoidable bias is just an attempt to privilege your own perspective above others.
Like science, journalism is falsifiable. If you can point to specific errors or falsehoods, you should do so. Otherwise you’re just dealing in innuendo.
Tell that to John Updike.
You should look up "literally" in a modern dictionary. For example:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally
2 : in effect : VIRTUALLY —used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible
"will literally turn the world upside down to combat cruelty or injustice" — Norman Cousins
And an extended discussion:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of-lite...
It's not unusual for a word in the English language to have its own "literal" meaning and also be used in other contexts with nearly the opposite meaning. There are literally billions of words like this!
But I'll bet most people could care less.
Another independent example: Ken Dilanian is at NBC now, but google for articles about him running articles by the CIA before filing them.
And now I sound like a conspiracy monger.
I also have a more conspiratorial theory in reguards to the Economist, as in it is part-owned by the Exor group, owned by the Agnelli family. Now, in these 15 years I’ve only read 3 (three) multi-page articles detailing the not so kosher business dealings of big international companies/conglomerates. One of them was against Warren Buffet’s way of doing some tax-related tricks post 2010 or so, the other two were both against Italian conglomerates, one run by Berlusconi and the other one against the Ferrero group (the maker of famous Nutella among other things). I suspect that both of these articles were related in one way or another to the Exor group, as in them being printed somehow benefited the Agnelli family. Berlusconi actually sued The Economist but as far as I know he lost.
The difference between an activist deciding arbitrarily on a position through bias vs. coming to a position legitimately and promoting it is largely in your perception and based on your agreement or disagreement with their position.
Journalists face the firing squads on all sides when someone or something in power is being called out.
There is no, has never been any, and never will be "objective journalism" because it is a contradiction in terms. Journalists are tasked with telling the truth as they understand it. This involves research and the understanding of facts, sure. It also, inescapably and to the real dismay of a certain segment of the universe that, candidly, often seems generally indisposed to having a society, means having an opinion and informing that reporting through it. That opinion is as much "this is worthy of being discussed" as it is "this is wrong and an affront to decency" and both of these are necessary, inescapable, and inextricable components of journalism. It's definitional. It's what the thing is. "Objective journalism" is a contradiction in terms.
Where journalism can fail, and there is certainly a historical record of it, is believing oneself entitled to one's own facts. But that is separate from one's interpretation of those facts--and, generally though not universally, the invention of one's own facts does not end well for a journalist who attempts it (see Stephen Glass for an example).
HN makes it difficult to really have these conversations in-depth because at some point one must nod to the elephant in the room and point out that there is a manufactured epistemic closure at the heart of the "objective journalism!" complaints. Which is to say that 'edoo might be relaying his opinion in good faith but the folks who peddled his opinion to him certainly did not do so in similar good faith--and there is something slithering in the dark that has a real interest in the delegitimization of journalism that even just tries to represent the truth as it is understood by the journalist.
Nearly all major corporate news is corporate propaganda.
As far as I can see, this site is not trustworthy and does not produce any news or employ any journalists.
Is there any doubt at this point? It was Mossad. It couldn't have been an American agency, the fallout would be too great.
Edit: This has been suspected as early as 1992. This is not pizzagate/qanon bullshit. https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/ch7bnm/the_myst...
- MI6 had to have known of Price Andrew's association with Epstein. There's no way the Royal Family isn't on their grid.
- CIA & SS had to have known of Clinton's association with Epstein. Again, no way former Presidents are not under a tight CI net. No way.
- It was reported an expired Saudi passport was found in Epstein's safe; and it was also reported/speculated that Ehud Barak was caught in Epstein's web.
- After the 1987 Pollard affair Israel and the US came to an understanding Israel would not operate in the US. At risk was/is more than $3b in aid to Israel, access to US intel and a seat under the US security umbrella.
- Epstein appeared to be trafficking Russian women. No way this wasn't noticed by FSB.
"Best" case Epstein was operating independently for a time, blackmailing private businesspeople. "Worst" case he was operating on behalf of a foreign power (Saudi? Russia?). However, ultimately the US IC had to involve itself (see above) and it could be he was being run by several competing interests at once.
Highly unlikely anyone will ever know what really happened. Trial is about a year away. One wonders if he will still be alive.
I agree, no one really knows what is behind all this, but saying "zero chance Mossad" seems disingenuous.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell#Mossad_allegati...
That's not exactly true. It was reported the passport listed a residence in SA, but the country that issued the passport was undisclosed.
It was an Austrian passport [1]. (Presumably fake.)
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-jeffrey-epstein/fi...
I think it's almost certain that Epstein was not connected to US intelligence. Much of what you say above (Clinton/MI6) argues for that.
The U.S. Intelligence Community is lenient about the private habits of high-value agents or informants, but they won’t countenance running sex trafficking rings for minors on American soil, for years. While it’s plausible that Epstein was sharing some information with the FBI—many criminals do so to buy themselves some insurance—it’s implausible that he was mainly working for the Americans.
This is true.
Also, this is a good sum-up
Who are the suspects then? It seems awfully coincidental that Epstein’s best pal and business partner for decades has been Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite and daughter of the late Robert Maxwell, the media mogul who died under mysterious circumstances in 1991. Something of a Bond villain turned real life, Maxwell loved the limelight, despite being a swindler and a spy. British counterintelligence assessed that Maxwell was working for the KGB, while pervasive allegations that he was working for Mossad too are equally plausible.
Since the _lines between Russian intelligence, Israeli intelligence and organized crime can get remarkably blurry in practice_, as I’ve explained previously, assessing whom Epstein’s been working for may prove difficult to answer with any precision. But we have a suspect list to start asking questions.
What’s not in doubt is that a sex trafficking ring centered on minors, which involved numerous global VIPs in compromising situations, would be of high interest to quite a few intelligence services. The Epstein saga seems certain to get even more unpleasant and interesting.
I think this is right: >"Best" case Epstein was operating independently for a time, blackmailing private businesspeople. "Worst" case he was operating on behalf of a foreign power (Saudi? Russia?). However, ultimately the US IC had to involve itself (see above) and it could be he was being run by several competing interests at once.
Key question, though, is why US intel and MI6 didn't get Clinton and Prince Andrew right the hell out of there.
> Is there any doubt at this point? It was Mossad.
- "The sordid Epstein saga is a sex scandal, a human trafficking scandal, a financial scandal -- and now an espionage scandal too. But whose?" John Schindler https://twitter.com/20committee/status/1149069968237039617 Schindler draws oblique links to Mossad.
- Alex Acosta, quoted as, "I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” he told his interviewers" - Vicky Ward, reporter whose profile of Epstein in 2002 in Vanity Fair had its editors kill mention of sexual accusations.
- Epstein had a fake foreign passport with his face but not his name. https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epstein-saudi-austri...
John Schindler is a good source for intelligence-related matters. He formerly worked for the Navy and the NSA but he has been unafraid to comment on or criticize the US government. He's actually a hard-core conservative, though he criticizes both parties; still he's worth reading for his insight. He often writes for the NY Observer but has been editorially independent from its ownership. And Vicky Ward has been following Epstein for years.
At this point, it is certain that Epstein is not related to the US intelligence agencies. It seems highly likely that he was doing intelligence work linked to Mossad in some way. We may find out, at some point.
It doesn't help that for the same reason, I wouldn't particularly trust any press figure either. We have pretty good reason to believe the CIA has been involved with the press, and it's crazy to think other agencies would never have had the idea to get involved with the press. Is someone connecting person X to organization Y even telling the truth as they see it, let alone the question of whether they even have access to the truth. The odds of a given press figure A: having access to the truth B: deciding to tell you the truth and C: staying unmolested by these organizations even as they tell the truth about them over time strike me as effectively zero.
> One outrageous story links him to the CIA and Mossad. Another that Epstein was a concert pianist. Yet another that he was a maths teacher at an exclusive girls school.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Epstein/comments/ch6g3r/the_mystery...
Two of those three are known publicly to be true.
what about the dreaded possibility that our intelligence agencies are somehow fighting domestic wars for/against specific political interests? In that case, whatever agency "owned him" would want him to ensnare as many powerful people as possible.
Where is this coming from?
Also, why would blackmailing need someone to bankroll it? Blackmail makes money. It bankrolls itself.
If one needs to shove Mossad into the storyline, yes. But it's unnecessary. Epstein getting wealthy by blackmailing Maxwell and using that wealth (and power over his blackmailing victims) to get wealthier, bully witnesses and lobby powerful people is plausible by itself.
If he just wanted to get his own rocks off, why bring in these guys? Prince Andrew, Clinton? It'd be safer to ensnare middling business leaders no one has ever heard of if he just wanted money. But such people are no use to state intelligence.
We have no evidence any of Prince Andrew or Clinton did anything nefarious in the midst of Epstein. Epstein was just doing what rich Americans do--cohorting with his fellow powerful.
Sergey Brin
Richard Branson
Jason Calacanis
Bill Gates
Reid Hoffman
Elon Musk
Nathan Myhrvold
Mark Zuckerberg
That’s an impressive list.
Let's be very clear here: anyone trying to distance themselves from him now isn't doing it out of principle, as numerous allegations against him have been rumored for many years. They're doing it for self-preservation.
I'm sure the billionaire's club is small. I mean, I imagine if someone in my local improv community (which I used to participate in) came out as a sex offender I could probably say, "Yeah, I met the guy, went to a few parties at his house. There were some rumors about him but I didn't pay much attention at the time."
Not saying everything is squeakly clean, but many of these stories are at least plausible.
Or did you expect these people upon reading the recent story to issue some kind of statement saying that they had interactions with someone (I might add accused at this point) and therefore wanted to get out front with the disclosure of association?
It may very well be that some people were complicit with Epstein, but none of us are in any way qualified to speculate on that end
Which is exactly the problem. This entire culture of "well if you're rich and powerful enough you get to play by a different set of rules, whatreyougonnado" needs to be torn out by its roots. If they associated with Epstein with knowledge of his prior convictions then none of these people is entitled to any sympathy or benefit of the doubt whatsoever -- rather, they should be expected to explain themselves and drummed out of polite society if their answers are found lacking.
I have wondered how people with odd (or horrible in this case) fetishes that are looked down upon manage to meet. I imagine the number of people involved in the abuse must be pretty small.
Edit: warning, the story above had me crying on public transit. It is worth knowing about but terribly terribly sad.
Suddenly the crazy connections among business magnates, past and present world leaders, and pedophile rings is not so crazy.
The press focused on a leaked report that it all happened in a small pizza place. While it effectively (for the leakers) killed progress of the investigation (the one which consequences are being talked now in this thread, so it was very much real) it also gave a catchy name for a while, that cause real investigative reports to jump in.
fake news is a very interesting problem to follow.
You just made sure that a rich bad guy has even more money so he can build a roller coaster on pedophile island.