Epstein's injuries look more like murder than suicide, noted pathologist says
miamiherald.com
miamiherald.com
Edit: the rate of suicide is still pretty darn low, and lots of other stuff worth looking in to. Just pointing out that he wasn't on suicide watch at the time.
Why didn't Epstein tell the prosecution "Holy fuck, people are trying to kill me, I want a protection and a deal and I will tell on everyone" after the first attempt?
> Federal agents who searched Epstein's $77 million Upper East Side townhouse in Manhattan also found "in a locked safe ... compact discs with hand-written labels including the following: 'Young [Name] + [Name],' 'Misc nudes 1,' and 'Girl pics nudes,' " according to a new court filing in Epstein's case.
I can't find anything about what was on those tapes, what names were actually written on them, if the were encrypted, or if any followup investigation is being done, but maybe my googlefu is just weak. He certainly could have hired somebody competent enough to write a dead man's switch which would release the files if he didn't run a script every X months, but only if he was intelligent and knowledgable enough to come up with that plan in the first place. He could have known that he had no undeniable evidence left in his hands. He could have taken the first attempt as a message, and thought that keeping his head low and shutting up was his best chance at avoiding further trouble. He could have understood his time was limited while also still supporting the greater mission of the blackmail plot and not being willing to blow the cover on his handlers. These are all speculations, I don't know exactly how the events played out. I'd even give the body-double crowd a ~5% chance of being right (but that's a crit fail on a d20; 5% isn't much). I do feel comfortable saying that Epstein almost certainly photographed a former President raping a child, which screams "state actor blackmail," and it seems highly unlikely to me that such a man wasn't being watched by the TLAs unless they were purposefully turning a blind eye.
[0]: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/07/08/jeffrey-epstein-called-s...
I do know this meta discussion is unlikely to be worth it, and I am quite happy to move on.
What is being counted, and how is it being counted?
For example, what has to happen for it to be counted as a death by suicide in that prison? Is it enough for the self injurious act have to occur in the prison, or does the person have to die in the prison?
He is alleged to have hung himself with materials no stronger than tissue paper.
There’s no way that man could have killed himself. I’ve done too much time in those units. It’s an impossibility.
Between the floor and the ceiling is like 8 or 9 feet. There’s no way for you to connect to anything.
You have sheets, but they’re paper level, not strong enough. He was 200 pounds — it would never happen.
This was one of the highest profile cases in the last decade. That they didn’t have him watched 24x7 is incredible gross negligence or more.
I mean you have low level criminals get more attention when they signal possible self harm than this guy.
PS toilet paper: can’t they get prison safe bidets?
> normally security would get pinged with alarms especially if the cameras were tagged as critical
Unless you've worked on prison infrastructure before I'm not sure how you could know this with any level of confidence.
Honestly an IT team would MAYBE bother to prioritize these cameras as critical. They only definitely would after something like this happened. It's an easy thing to put on the backburner...
This is America: we absolutely refuse to use bidets, no matter how much sense they make.
The breaking of the hyoid bone is, in fact, not uncommon in hangings. Nor is the breaking of the cartilage. Nor is hemorrhaging in the face or eyes. Nor is blatant disregard for the fate of a paedophile, who in nobody's right mind could conceivably be innocent.
You're directly contradicting an expect here. Have any sources to back that up?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20973326
TLDR happens ~25% of the time for males.
Have any sources, etc.?
Ken White (famous-ish lawyer and notable internet personality) puts it this way: "But your assessment of plausibility is based on your assumptions about how the system works. Those assumptions are, mostly, wrong — naive Dick-Wolf-level law-enforcement-are-competent-good-guys stuff".
Prisons, particularly american prisons, are full of incompetence and casual disregard to human life and dignity. The prison where Epstein died was understaffed, and the guards tasked with watching him had next-to-no training. Epstein had also been taken off suicide watch nine days earlier.
Ken White put together 32 other cases where people died, or almost died in jail because the administration was too incompetent or too indifferent to do anything: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/thirty-two...
This could have been intentional, fyi.
When was the last time two sets of electronics failed at the exact same time randomly? If there was a voltage spike or something that killed them both how come it didn't affect anything else at the facility? Maybe they were EMP'ed or something? Okay that sounds fantastical, but I hope they do answer questions. There is likely an innocent explanation to all this, but there should be a thorough investigation.
They were probably broken for years.
I'm not saying it's a movie where the moment a camera goes down a 250lb Russian goon comes down and investigates. However cameras not working for years? In the fucking suicide watch cell? You honestly think that's realistic? Honestly those would probably get replaced faster than most cameras...
Maybe there's a few cameras people just forgot were broken and get forgotten about for years but it wouldn't be a typical case if the IT and maintenance team was even half-competent.
Heck, possibly they were dumping their video onto a recorder in the prison guards' personnel room. Right next to the water boiler. With only one socket within easy reach. Go figure.
(The latter example not being as far-fetched as it may seem; our workshop pager system went down several times a day for this very reason until we cajoled an electrician into fitting another outlet...)
What percentage of cameras on BART trains are working at any given time? When was the last time you tested your backups?
As for electronic failure, I would say it's probably common as well. Just search for "Prison conditions in the united states" or "deterioration of prisons". Our prions are overcrowded and under funded. These things are usually reported in regards to the terrible conditions for prisoners (heating constantly failing, mice/bug infestations, leaking roofs, etc), but this also applies to equipment used by guards. We are talking about facilities running old facilities and equipment with minimum maintenance. Even if the camera's didn't fail (I am not up to date on the story, but I assume they both did?), I would be surprised if the quality of the footage was usable (or if it was even recorded).
Was the Titanic disaster a tragic accident borne of negligence... or a conspiracy to assassinate John Jacob Astor and make it look like an accident? A lot had to go wrong to make an unsinkable ship sink. Who paid off the watchmen that evening? Why was the captain going so fast? And did one of Astor's rivals gain a contract to sell the steel that... etc., etc.
Occam's razor is important to keep handy, and Occam's razor here should be factoring in that American prisons are designed-by-committee-and-cruelty shit that have needed a massive overhaul for decades.
How many other cameras in the facility were broken?
If cameras are broken, how would you ever learn that they are broken? Perhaps it would require an important event like a suicide to occur so that you would need to review the tapes and discover the broken cameras.
He had “come back from” one conviction before. And with what he knew he could probably have cut a deal, even gone into witness protection. The suicide theory just doesn’t hold water.
Assassinating one person by sinking a whole ship is a pretty crazy way to kill someone; it's surely far easier to just hire someone to club him when he's walking the street somewhere. However, with Epstein, there's no such similarity: he was the only one to die, and since he was locked up in prison, anyone wanting to kill him really didn't have much choice, if they wanted to get him before he testified against someone. And there do seem to be a disturbing number of things that went "wrong" for this to happen.
Anyway, I think my point stands: trying to murder someone by engineering a disaster at sea like this is pretty ridiculous; too many things have to go wrong all at the same time, which really aren't under control of any one person or small group. Getting the captain to speed through iceberg territory (and honestly, there weren't that many icebergs, they were just unlucky and happened across a big one), making sure a large iceberg was directly ahead, making sure just enough compartments flooded, making sure the radio operator on the other ship went to bed, making sure the captain of the nearby ship refused to investigate, and finally when help did arrive (and it did), making sure the assassination target somehow wasn't among the survivors. Killing someone in a prison cell where there's no witnesses except a camera or two (that "just happened" to be "malfunctioning") and a couple of guards to bribe is actually realistic and possible, especially if state-level operatives are involved.
That's a big reason why this is so suspicious.
You can argue that this is a crappy system, and I'd agree - but it is the dominant system in US prisons.
I absolutely agree - it was stupid and shortsighted to take him off of suicide watch, and better suicide watch programs are needed in general.
My point is more that nothing that much out of the ordinary for American jails happened here. Things happen in US jails every day that, to most people, would seem insane - incompetence and indifference to life are the norm. See my comment above - US jails are run on shoestring budgets with no accountability. People die in jail all the time for causes that were trivially preventable.
Or was it clever, manipulative and a powerful demonstration of knowledge on how events would pan out?
This argument holds water if we're talking about an ordinary prisoner, but we aren't. Careers were at stake -- and reportedly have been lost -- over this one in particular.
It made no sense not to give Epstein 24/7 supervision, with everything from (competent) guards outside his cell to dedicated IR cameras looking into it. Nobody is entitled to privacy in prison, so why was it voluntarily given?
It can be true both that the carceral system is hopelessly corrupt and should be abolished, and also that an individual death within the carceral system was avoidable and hyper-suspicious.
I am, however, willing to entertain the softer conspiracy theory - that people in prison (prisoners and staff) hate pedophiles and people who enable pedophilia, and the guy was, perhaps, given more opportunity than average to "fix his own problem" by a staff that wasn't going to shed a tear over a dead pedo.
If you hate pedophiles so much you're willing to risk your life/career just to let one of them commit suicide, surely you also hate them enough to wait just a little bit longer to prevent a bunch more of them from getting away with it.
And IF people thought he had dirt on people then I would assume he would at least have a basic dead mans switch that would send out the dirt to the press in case of death; to prevent assassinations. Especially if there was an earlier attempt.
Also, from Epsteins perspective, actually having a dead man switch versus just letting people assume he has one has exactly the same impact.
So why bother setting one up? If the switch goes off, he will be dead, perhaps there will be retaliation against relatives. How would he benefit?
Why do you think that sleeping through overtime would be a case of the guards risking their life? I doubt they've even been fired.
Second, people are generally pretty bad at suicide, and the methods most likely to succeed (firearms, drugs, falling) are not available as options.
> I doubt they've even been fired.
Especially in this situation. We have huge motive, excellent opportunity and unless one of the guards is so stupid as to talk, almost no possibility of detection. A perfect crime, if there's one. Of course, there's no proof of that - maybe Epstein indeed was suicidal. Maybe the guards were just paid to give him an opportunity, not avoid witnessing murder. Who knows. But I don't see how guards sleeping excludes any of that.
Why doesn't the hard conspiracy theory hold water for you? The motive is much more reasonable and prison assassinations are hardly some unheard of impossibility especially given the sheer amount of extremely powerful people with a reason to kill him.
When competing theories nessecarily have the prison guards who have been overwhelmingly successful in preventing suicide attempts and somewhat successful in stopping suicides after they get to attempts to hold the idiot ball it stretches credulity. Why haven't more prisoners been suicided if these guard were on such a hair trigger they would murder somebody at the expense of children's safety?
On the other hand compromising a prison guard and blackmailing him into murdering Epstein or else would be trivial for an Epstein associate. I just don't get how enraged prison guard is a remotely more plausible motive than prison guard being given a compelling reason to kill Epstein by an associate. It seems like setting out to prove the conclusion Epstein wasn't killed by the rich.
"The Washington Post reported that 'at least one camera in the hallway outside the cell where authorities say registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself earlier this month had footage that is unusable' and that it is 'unclear whether the flaw in the taping affected a limited duration of the footage or whether it was a chronic problem in the beleaguered Manhattan facility.' "
* Mysterious incident a month before his death where Epstein is found on the ground in his cell with bruising on his neck
* Epstein is taken off of suicide watch for unclear reasons
* Epstein is placed into a cell containing only himself, going against prison regulations
* Epstein is found hanging with a broken hyoid bone, which is seen much more commonly in strangulation
* Both cameras surveying Epstein's cell malfunction
* Periodic 30 minute check-ups not being performed (on one of the most high-profile criminals in the US)
There comes a point where foul-play becomes a more likely explanation than the series of events we are told to believe.
It is 99.9% certain that Epstein was murdered. And not by some random rich person but by a state level intelligence organization.
Another mere coincidence is that his former girlfriend and probable accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell is the daughter of a known Mossad asset.
Source: https://www.foxnews.com/us/epstein-new-york-lockup-suicides
You should compare with suicides/suicide attempt rates in general population (or general prison population) to make this statement.
General prison suicide rate is 20/100,000, which is almost identical to the male general population rate in the US (21.1) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...)
I didn't quickly get data on attempt/completion in prison, but the attempt/completion rate is the general pop is ~30 attempts/completion, and the completion rate is dramatically driven up with access to firearms. (https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/) I'd expect to see a lower completion/attempt rate in prison, not a higher one, given the monitoring and reduced access to methods.
I stand by my statement- something is funny with the way they reported that data.
In a perfect prison, suicide attempt should be 0%, not because people are happy, but because inmates should have no way to even attempt a suicide.
If at some point a mistake is made and an inmate manages to kill himself, it will be a 1 attempt/completion and going to the conclusion that prisons make it easy to kill yourself does not seem right.
There's such a thing as an irrational bias that something CAN'T be a conspiracy if other scenerios are possible. Many people take pride in "debunking" conspiracies and that ego can make it hard to see a real one right in front of you.
And it's true, based on the replies to this post. No one who says Epstein's suicide was a "practical impossibility" has been anywhere near the justice system. They definitely don't know anyone who has been on the prisoner side of it.
People who know a thing or two about the justice system will explain to you how differently high profile prisoners like Epstein are treated.
But what could I, a middle class white person, know about the subject?
Are you aware that some of us are former prisoners as well?
They're also used to preventing suicides.
There has only been one other successful suicide in that facility in the four decades it has existed.
Why now? Coincidence?
Here's the story of a death, not suicide, in an equivalent facility in Chicago - Solebo. He wasn't taking his meds, and nobody knew because the blood samples they'd taken from him were contaminated. Coincidence? And although a judge had ordered twice, six months apart, that he be transferred for proper medical examinations, he wasn't. Coincidence? And every staff member with a medical license was on leave or away the day he was found dead. Coincidence? Does the federal DoC just actually fail that much in that many ways? Yes. All the time.
Mr. White might raise questions about the argument "Epstein couldn't have committed suicide because of the system", but by highlighting the incompetence in the system he lends plausibility to the idea that someone could gain access to Epstein in order to murder him.
Sure he does: he has a career as an expert witness apparently.
The pathologists uses facts and established scientific knowledge to draw a conclusion. Legitimate responses to that conclusion should be factual and scientific. Counter arguments along the lines of the "middle class people don't understand the justice system" or "this guy was paid", however true they may be, don't have any bearing on the neck fractures and if those fractures are consistent with strangulation or suicide.
One thing I don't know regarding a medical examiner's job is whether they are supposed to take in additional evidence, and if an ME is required to give one single conclusion. If they are required to give one single conclusion, then it still makes sense that the New York medical examiner would conclude the thing that is more probable in light of circumstances, even if the forensic evidence alone indicates something else is more probable. Because a 25% frequency isn't low enough that one would bet on the 50% frequency event being what occurred in light of the fact that the homicide would have had to happen In a secure and protected facility with an isolated prisoner.
It's almost feels like a Bayesian versus frequentist analysis question.
But in any case, if the medical examiner is required to give a single answer, and their reputation suffers if that answer turns out to be wrong, I would assume that they would factor in mitigating circumstances to allow for the lower probability scenario to outweigh the higher probability scenario in isolation. And the forensics expert who is not responsible for analyzing future cases and may not be constrained to give a single answer is free to answer based on raw probabilities without factoring in circumstances.
The people observing are negligent, the systems don't work, people think 5 minute of 15 minute obs are sufficient.
It's not in any way uncommon.
Statistical methodology hides the true numbers. People talk about "suicide" when they should be asking about "suspected self inflicted death".
Could you put numbers on that? From what I can tell, in the facility where Epstein died, there have been many thousands of people held, and only one recorded suicide in the last 40 years. Do you disagree with this claim, and think there were many more suicides that were not recorded as such? Or do you consider this rate to be "not in any way uncommon"? I could agree with "not impossible", but not with "not uncommon".
> Do you disagree with this claim
Yes.
It's clearly nonsense to suggest that no-one has caused their own death while in that prison, so we need to ask what is being counted and how it's being counted.
Suicide accounts for at least one quarter of unnatural death in jails. Suicide is the leading cause of death in local jails. Deaths by suicide are consistently higher in jails than in the general population. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/mlj07.txt
Are they talking about NVDRS, or about state reports, or about institution reports? What ICD10 codes are they using?
Are they only including deaths where the person died in the prison and that are ruled by coroners to be suicide? Because these two things alone will remove most deaths from the stats. Or are they including all deaths where the lethal action was completed in the jail, even if the person died later in hospital? Many people will die in hospital, not the prison.
A suicide verdict will require a coroner / medical examiner to be convinced to whatever burden of proof they're using (beyond all reasonable doubt? Preponderance of evidence? balance of probabilities?) that the death was both self-inflicted and that the dead person had the intent to end their life. These are high thresholds, which is why statistical organisations (ONS in UK, CDC in US) don't count death by suicide by only counting verdicts of suicide from coroners.
The vast majority of people talking about this death do not know what type of coronial / medical examiner system is used for deaths that occur in that prison. They don't know what burdens of proof are used. They don't know what a coroner / medical examiner needs to know to find a verdict of suicide. They don't know about the high rates of deaths by suicide among prisoners. They don't know that while, male, middle-aged, sex-offending, inmates are at highest risk of death by suicide. They don't know about the high rates of negligence among prison guards tasked with monitoring people at risk of suicide. And yet, even though they're ignorant of all this, they feel free to make wild speculation that he was murdered.
$200 camera < Implicated billionaires
Everyone who cared knew that this prison was a hellhole with poor oversight and poor control, long before Eptstein came near it. Nobody in American politics gives a shit that people facing federal charges are (according to the UN) routinely tortured by being held here. The DoJ is "investigating" conditions at these prisons, but since they are also running them, nobody expects much. (https://theintercept.com/2019/02/09/mdc-brooklyn-justice-dep...)
The sheer ignorance that drives most of the reaction to Epstein's death is awful. Maybe a little of this righteous outrage could get spent on actually making these prisons the well-run, safe facilities people think they are, but I doubt it will be.
I don't think there's much of a story in the end of the Epstein case. The only people that know aren't going to say anything until it's a footnote in the history books. The conservatives peso hunt comes to a close and metoo had Weinstein. Who knows what crimes they committed against the powers that be, if any. I don't know.
If the corporate media doesn't get to the bottom of this then someone else will, it's just a matter of time. Everyone is so tired of being lied to by authority figures.
But you and I haven't dug deep enough to find it.
In theory this would be fine if we had a rigorous and well tested process for managing dangerous information, but the whole classification system has just been subverted to just hide whatever embarrasses the rich and powerful. It's an illegitimate farce.
If he had dirt on people would he not arrange so it would be sent out in case of his death? Especially if there was a failed murder attempt just weeks before?
And what stops the victims of naming names now? And what would have stopped Epstein of just not talking and just denying?
Considering the circumstances, if you received information from Epstein, what would you do with it? Even if you were brave enough to risk your life in the service of justice, what authority would you even send it to?
Have you seen Greenwalds thoughts on Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
I'm not sure they should still be on that list... Maybe, but there's some doubt. More about them than say Assange, for this purpose which is pretty weird and unexpected to think about.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/28/bob-wo...
https://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/11/bob-woodward-sl...
Wherin Greenwald describes Woodward as follows:
"Bob Woodward is a servant-journalist for US government officials."
That's not pulling punches. Is it fair?
"Glenn Greenwald is a servant-journalist for Russian government officials."
with at least as much evidence:
https://arcdigital.media/why-are-internet-radicals-helping-p...
https://www.towleroad.com/2019/05/glenn-greenwald-russia/
https://theintercept.com/2019/04/18/robert-mueller-did-not-m...
Is it fair? I mean calling a journalist an agent of the deep state for publishing leaks given to them is quite a leap... especially given that Greenwald is famous in large part for the same.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/22/hillar...
Never heard of towerload before, but wow, that article is comically terrible. Don't believe me? Here's a tweet from nobody making the same claim without evidence.
The arc digitial article (deliberately?) conflates all those idiots running around yelling "The President is a Russian spy!" and saying that is idiotic with not wanting Mueller's report at all as if those idiots were necessary for Mueller to perform his investigation and write a report.
So yeah, making the claim against Greewald. I'm going with "Not Fair" if that's the best evidence there is.
I've seen no credible evidence that Assange worked with russia fwiw (but the NYT article making the accusation had the silliest diagram I've ever seen in lieu of evidence - so silly it looked deliberately so - as a covert protest perhaps..? ymmv incompetence is the usual go to). If I saw some evidence I might well change my mind on that but I'm just not willing to see russians pulling strings without evidence. I believed WMD claims and I hope I learned /something/ from that error.
Quoting the actual content of Mueller's report. Yeah, I'm ok with that when reporting on it myself. Pointing out that Trump can be a horrible person and awful president without being a russian spy and that constant accusations of it are silly, counterproductive, a massive distraction from the duty of the fourth estate and just need to stop now so we can analyse reality is from the competent journalist playbook rather than a russian conspiracy IMHO.
The claim against Woodward has more legs because he gets top secret leaks and there's no investigation, there's no prosecution, there's no outrage and the stories he writes based on the leaks are anything but embarassing to the government. So I guess all that is at least consistent with what Greenwald is saying. I mean an article that embarasses the government based on leaks with woodward as author - that would be inconsistent and you'd have to address that to keep making the case at least. (well it's 1 this way and 5 the other or something - but I haven't seen the 1).
If I wanted to make a criticism of Glenn in the original context it is that he will use whatever you give him for maximum political impact in support of his political views (but will do so with integrity, eg Snowden is a republican and went to Glenn because of his integrity, also Barton Gelmann and deliberately avoided the NYT for burying stories which should have sent alarm bells ringing loud there, I wonder if it did). Is that political impact according to Glenn what you want? But I guess if what you want released embarasses the government, Woodward hasn't got much form since Watergate..?
So I would send the entirety of the information to every newsroom that could receive it, then pray that I: A) was not the only initial recipient of the Epstein drop and B) that the information I received doesn't contain any content that could be uniquely identified to me.
Afterwards I would sit down and have a long think about how my life got to the point where Epstein is communicating with me personally.
Well, you could send it to various foreign news outlets. I'm sure RT would love it.
> would he not arrange so it would be sent out in case of his death?
Not being able to do that while in high-security confinment.
> And what stops the victims of naming names now?
Not wanting to die.
> what would have stopped Epstein of just not talking and just denying?
The only way to be sure he would not talk is to definitely prevent him from talking.
Now I'm not saying the murder hypothesis is the correct one, but it still holds water IMHO.
It basically says, "Yeah you can be put on 24/7 security, in a prison cell watched by rotating armed guards and we will still find a way to disable the cameras, get the guards away from you cell, and murder you."
I assume that recording that nothing happened could be as easy as put a number over a different door, (or pick the equivalent door in a different floor), record for a while, stop, remove the number tag, and swap the records.
We could ask the smartest team of architects in the planet to design the most secure jail in the planet and then put idiots at charge. The security of the jail will vanish in a poof of "I couldn't care less about replacing this broken bulb"
Did the people who design the prison also work there as security guards? Is that what you're asking?
> We could ask the smartest team of architects in the planet to design the most secure jail in the planet and then put idiots at charge. The security of the jail will vanish in a poof of "I couldn't care less about replacing this broken bulb"
What does this have to do with what you wrote? This actually sounds that you're arguing that it most likely was a suicide if everyone was so inept. Let me ask, how many times did something like this happen before, do you think, in the last 40 years or so?
The relevant text:
At least one camera in the hallway outside the cell where authorities say registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself earlier this month had footage that is unusable, although other, clearer footage was captured in the area, according to three people briefed on the evidence gathered earlier this month
Why would he not be able to do that? He had access to his lawyer, right? Or why would he not be even more upfront and straight up tell the prosecution that someone tried to kill him and that he would spill everything for protection?
The Epstein case could still be pursued. But when the government disposes of the star witness, the average person quite reasonably tends to doubt the state is going to give satisfaction, plus the media-driving focus of attention is gone.
It makes absolutely no difference.
The only thing they had to do was to keep him alive, and given his health, it was not a hard thing to do. If there were no benefactors, it would've been criminal incompetence. As it stands, incompetence is as likely as if he got killed by an anvil falling from the sky.
To paraphrase: it's as if I gave you a new iPhone to keep for a day, and you returned empty-handed and told me someone stole it from you... because you left it on the edge of the platform at a NYC subway station for the night and (surprise!) it wasn't there in the morning!
In this scenario, it makes no difference whether your friend took it, someone else took it, or it got knocked onto the tracks by accident. What matters is that you ensured that I don't have my phone back.
And that's what happened in the Epstein case. His keepers facilitated his death. The exact manner is irrelevant.
The model who exposed Silvio Berlusconi's rape of her and the "bunga-banga" parties was poisoned with polonium.
A guard got blackmailed or something.
I see very little sign of this. On the contrary, basically anywhere I look I see nothing but rabid enthusiasm for the latest Russia boogeyman story, and utter disdain for any idea that things may not be quite as we're told by the government and media.
I suspect the only reason there happens to be any interest in this story is that it involves children. Considering how relatively carefree the public seems to be on this story, when usually any story involving children and sex results in widespread hysteria and disgust, I think whoever is behind the memory holing of this story is probably feeling pretty comfortable with their ability to control people's perception of reality.
And it's a great letter. Of interest, it's extremely similar to Civil Disobedience which is a letter Thoreau wrote from jail, and of which King possessed a copy of at the time he wrote his own letter. Related, Gandi carried a copy of Civil Disobedience with him at all times. Thoreau's rejection of US taxing authority was far more influential than most realize, leading to cascading revolutions throughout the 20th century.
Your vague “internal job” accusation is no exception to this.
https://soundcloud.com/trueanonpod
Plenty of crackpot theories abound of course, but the hosts here try to piece things together that are based in fact to get a more plausible understanding of the course of events.
If the example of Lee Harvey Oswald is anything to go by, your optimism might be misplaced..
https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/michael-brown-shooting/who...
Furthermore, there's nothing new here - all of this was known months ago. The damage in question - Baden's smoking gun - is not uncommon in suicides either.
(Edit: this comment formerly claimed that Baden wasn't at the autopsy. This appears to be incorrect - he was there, but not on the medical team.)
> Dr. Michael Baden, one of the world’s leading forensic pathologists, viewed Jeffrey Epstein’s body and was present at the autopsy, which was held the day after Epstein was found dead at the notorious Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Manhattan.
It looks like he was at least present at the autopsy
Presumably they both care about careers and reputation.
Epsiein's family pathologist only gets paid as long as he's involved in the investigation. If he said "Yep, looks like a suicide", the family would have no further use for him. But if he discovers some conspiracy that will take an indefinite amount of time to deal with, he keeps collecting paychecks. Also, this fellow seems to thrive on fame, so even more incentive to find something juicy.
Naive.
(... and thanks to the power of conspiracy theories, he's now got a cemented reputation forever among some circles).
Not that I think there's any sort of attempts at influencing the story here...
Either: They want the truth or they want to distort the truth.
In the first case: Why don't they trust the state?
In the second: Why do they want to falsely make it to look like a murder?
> The jail informed the Justice Department, when Epstein was placed in the special housing unit, that he would have a cellmate and that a guard would look into the cell every 30 minutes. These procedures were not followed on the night he died.[4] On August 9, Epstein's cellmate was transferred out, and no new replacement cellmate was brought in. Later in the evening, in violation of the jail's normal procedure, Epstein was not checked every 30 minutes.[4] The two guards who were assigned to check his cell overnight fell asleep for about three hours.[21] Two cameras in front of Epstein's cell also malfunctioned that night.[5]
Also assuming it's true one might expect, given the gravitas of this case, that the multiple people responsible for such gross negligence would be prosecuted and brought to light and justice.
I do. How many "conspiracy theories" have we lived through in tech? I can name two right off the top of my head: prism and carnivore.
Whenever there's an overwhelming chorus of "that's conspiracy theory!" what I hear is "don't look too closely! You might find something!"
Ah, you mean like the link between vaccinations and autism?
Or are you just taking about the conspiracy theories you want to believe in?
> Whenever I hear an overwhelming chorus of "that's conspiracy theory!" what I hear is "don't look too closely! You might find something!"
People all over the world are engaged in conspiracies. A theory is an attempt to understand a complex reality. Anybody who thinks that governments ever cover up wrong-doing is a conspiracy theorist. Do you believe that your government ever lied about something? This whole insistence on not bearing the "label" is so mind-numbing. Can we get past the superficiality of name-calling and talk about reality?
Of course, we sit around and say conspiracy theories can't possibly be true because of vaccine+autism and flat earth. End of story. Well it turns out there are links between vaccines and developmental disorders, but maybe those fears are overblown by scared parents (yeah, don't look too closely). You can argue that it's a worthwhile risk to take for the preservation of civilization. But to say there is no link is false.
The world is full horror being perpetrated by powerful people. But we were taught by the evening news that conspiracists are whackos. One thing I've learned is that if the media repeats something over and over again in order to imprint it into your brain, it's probably because there is an agenda behind it and not because it's the good old truth.
The inability of most people to read between the lines baffles me. It's not that hard, especially for an adult with even the barest understanding of the concepts of nuance and subtlety.
- those cameras functioned before that night, when they might as well have been broken for months and/or often broke
- moving cellmates very rarely results in not having someone else move in in the same day
- guards don't usually sleep on their shifts
If however, you assume the much more likely situation that the cameras were already broken or often broke, that guards pretty much always sleep on their shifts and don't follow procedure, and that cellmates are often moved out without a replacement, then it stops looking very unlikely. Then it's just a case of selection, the fact that Epstein succeeded in killing himself means he had the opportunity to do it, meaning the fact that we look into the situation after he has successfully killed himself implies all those things that need to happen for that to be possible likely did happen.
It's like finding bugs in complex multi-layered systems (think airplanes), it's not sufficient for one thing to fail to get a catastrophe, but a multitude of failures combined. And in this case that doesn't seem unlikely at all unless we get more data as to how statistically unlikely each of the listed conditions are normally in that prison.
If those cameras failed often, I’m sure they’d have countless hours of videos that spontaneously cut off as proof.
But except for very few news items, there was surprisingly little uptake. You'd think after Weinstein, and #meetoo movement, there would so much interest in finding who is exploiting and abusing girls and young women, especially by someone as connected as Epstein and his "guests".
One article was odd: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/fdny-rev... Odd because it was concerned not with the victims or his connections but that some paramedic or bystander took a picture of Epstein's body as it was wheeled out and posted it on 4chan. And how it was an egregious violation of HIPPA and FDNY should look into investigating that. Not a word whether they should look into investigating why the CCTV cameras didn't work showing exactly how he hanged himself with toilet paper...
This is a real "horses and zebras" situation.
But if the question on the table is "Was Epstein killed to eliminate the possibility he'd implicate others in his criminal confessions," the answer is "Probably not."
Apropos of all the other things going on in this case - which lets be honest, were getting plenty of news play - why is this article odd?
Because, as a paramedic - fuck whomever did that. I don't care who it is, that is one of the most unprofessional and unethical things we can do. I teach new EMTs and paramedics and we talk about the huge amount of trust and access into the most intimate, worst moments of people's lives, and that's because we have built up this culture of being able to be entrusted to do this.
Whether you're giving care to someone bitten by a canine unit after they were found in the woods after an alleged rape, or to a drunk driver who t-boned your ambulance when you had a patient inside, and so on and so forth, if you can't disconnect your personal passion or despising of someone from your ability to provide medical care, you need to not be in this profession. And furthermore, if you see it not just as an opportunity to be unprofessional but to make a buck / publicity out of an abuse of trust, then even more, get out.
All firefighters and paramedics are certainly not perfect, but there is also a huge stock in trying to maintain the reputation we have - it's what allows people to tell me what drugs they've taken, etc., or whether there's a chance of pregnancy, when otherwise they might not.
Because when it came to this story, most people, who are not paramedics would expect a lot more investigative information around Epstein's story besides the fact that his dead picture leaked to some dark web site full disgusting images.
Let's say they followed up the article with another 5 or 10 analyzing the flight logs, unsealed court documents, tried to interview his associates, looked at all his properties, see maybe other inmates heard anything that night. But it didn't happen, it was mostly dropped and instead they called FDNY to ensure there is investigation into the leaked pictures.
Just look at the responses we've been given to various questions (paraphrased, of course):
Q: "How could he have committed suicide, wasn't he on suicide watch?"
A: "Oh, well he was taken off suicide watch shortly before he committed suicide"
Q: "Didn't he have a cellmate though? Why didn't his cellmate do anything?"
A: "Oh, his cellmate was moved to a different location shortly before he committed suicide"
Q: "Well what about the guards, weren't they supposed to be checking up on him every 30 minutes?"
A: "Yeah, turns out they both fell asleep - sorry, we know how important a criminal Esptein was, but our guards were simply overworked"
Q: "What about the cameras? Wasn't there a camera inside his cell?"
A: "Yes, but unfortunately it malfunctioned"
Q: "Well what about the camera surveying the outside of his cell?"
A: "Oh...well...we've reviewed the footage on that one and unfortunately it's, erm, unusable"
Q: "Wasn't the room supposed to be 'suicide-proof'?"
A: "Uhh...it was but we overlooked the surprising tensile strength properties of the paper-thin bedsheets...our bad".
Q: "Well how about some photos of the body? Can we see them?"
A: "Sorry, he's been cremated and buried at his brother's request and we can't release any photos at this time"
And of course, nothing (that we know of) has happened to all the many people associated and possibly complicit with Epstein. The paparazzi is following Ghislaine Maxwell around burger joints while Bill Barr's justice department files lawsuits to prevent Edward Snowden from making a profit from his book sales.
It is legitimately more difficult to accept all of these circumstances than it is to believe it was covered-up, bought-and-paid-for hitjob. I truly do think Occam's Razor would dictate it is more likely that this is the case. Though, it is important to note, we do not yet have the evidence to say this is the case definitively.
Elizabeth Warren’s quote comes to mind: “The first rule of DC is that insiders don’t criticize other insiders.” I suspect the kernel of truth to conspiracy theories is that various private cabals, from fraternities to Skull & Bones to Bilderberg, act as trust and secrecy filters, selecting for those who know where their bread is buttered, and therefore can be trusted by various elites, who have common interests despite being in direct competition for power, influence, and resources (“honor among thieves”). There need not be a singular group of robed masterminds; just the amorally ambitious pursuing their own interests.
There must be some level of coordinated pressure exerted on both of these offices for neither to highlight the inconsistencies.
What would be more concerning: a governmental agency or a non-governmental organization having this kind of power?
https://www.thedailybeast.com/two-saudi-sisters-found-dead-i...
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/03/us/saudi-sisters-hudson-river...
I mean, it's possible that they were murdered. But it's not unreasonable to conclude from the available facts that it was suicide. Do you have access to additional facts that would dispute that conclusion?
HN tends to attract people who believe in finding the Truth with a capital T, but the majority of the world does not function like that. Most people are more concerned about personal costs and benefits and how a given action will affect them. The abstract Truth out there is immaterial; they just don't care, and save their energy for things that matter more to them. Explains a lot about the media, politics, corporate scandals, and so on.
If there is such a organisation, then it certainly would be not either private or government, but both connected.
The latest was the satanic child abuse thing from the 80s that was just un-debunked from the Finders release.
We have have reached the point where it's worth looking at the "debunked" conspiracy theories with a new, critical eye.. which is all kinds of disturbing.
I am not going to name names, as that would be inappropriate, but there are some popular public figures that make video and news streams, that have sounded totally loony for decades and yet, turned out to be mostly right or in some cases, spot on. They just conveyed the message poorly.
Which is why Greanpeace and PETA are a joke, but the Nature Conservancy, EFF, and the ASPCA are less so.
Almost anyone can learn to piss people off. We often call them 'assholes'. Turning that energy to something requires leadership.
Of course the former makes the latter trivially easy to do, but privacy advocates have failed in two ways: bridging that cognitive gap between passive and active surveillance, and explaining why/how government can reasonably be expected to have worse capabilities than exist in the private sector.
We certainly need stronger privacy laws, but the solution is not for everyone to become a security expert or accept total compromise. That just leads to neighborhoods where every house is barricaded like a prison and the main profit makers are security firms and locksmiths, a condition which already afflicts us: http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bowles/GarrisonAmerica2007.pdf
Disposing of entire groups and social movements. Example, occupy wallstreet.
As in, stealing, literal, bloody, stealing of an entire generations wealth, and transfering it to those who cause poverty and suffering... and yeah, all the masses can do is "well at least I got a new shiny iphone".
Wake up people, you americans especially are living in worse conditions than people under Stalin lived. Thats not a joke or har har, hard reality.
Stalin committed literal genocide of millions of people. That simply does not happen in the USA today and conflating the two weakens any point you may have had.
I agree, and I also think that's why there's no widespread outcry about surveillance among the general population. For example a lot of baby boomers grew up with "party line" telephones. I did, rural areas in the 80's still had them. You get used to idea of someone listening. I'm not saying this makes it right, just that it could explain the ambivalence of many.
The shocking part was (a) that the reality turned out to be even more pervasive than the fantasy in some respects; (b) that the details had remained a secret for so long (which is a surprising counterpoint to the whole "governments aren't good at keeping secrets" thing); (c) that it was leaked at all given the first two points; and (d) that any backlash against it all was so milquetoast.
All of this shifted some pretty fundamental stuff in my worldview and the way I regard conspiracy theories. I'm still skeptical of them, by default, but now only because I think that's a necessary blockade against insanity, not because widespread government secret-keeping is implausible.
Does the European Parliament's 2000 ECHELON report not count? I would say that there was plenty of evidence around, but the attacks of September 11 simply obscured the prior debates about telecommunications privacy in press coverage.
The cameras happened to malfunction on that day... guy got taken off suicide watch. Also his cell mate was an ex-cop who looks like he could snap people in half without trying. I mean come on.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/16/epsteins-ex-cellmate-cleared...
How do you handle the guards? How do you keep the other inmates quiet? Can you get away with bribing a single guard or is a larger operation needed? If you bribe people, how do you get the money to them? How do you keep them quiet when the inevitable investigation happens?
I don't think it's impossible, but if this was a murder then it's fascinating that someone could be this good at assassination.
The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously".
If there was a conspiracy involving the guards, it involved at least two of them. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-... (Non-paywalled summary https://thehill.com/homenews/457346-epstein-guards-fell-asle... )
Mind you, I'm not saying that it was murder. I'm just saying that the degree of difficulty isn't as big a barrier as it would seem.
I'd like to think I could withstand such a threat like a fictional hero, but I have my doubts. I hope to never know for sure.
I doubt most people, or heroes, withstand the threat when they don't actually care. Do you personally care if Epstein is alive or dead?
What reasons could there be to cover up non high profile murders? High profile is where all the covering up happens.
https://observer.com/2019/07/jeffrey-epstein-spy-intelligenc...
https://www.mintpressnews.com/mega-group-maxwells-mossad-spy...
If Epstein was killed, it's quite possible he was killed by US counter intelligence.
Nope, straight up, some people come up to me, bribe me and threaten me or my family so they can kill a pedophile and I wouldn't hesitate for a second. I'd hand them the keys and walk away.
For example, how do you know which guards are assigned to Epstein’s cell, and how do you get in contact with them? Is it only one guard, or are there several in rotation? Where do you get this information? Once they accept your bribe, how do you get the money to them?
I’m just thinking about the logistics of the situation. Surely someone who can do all of this stuff would be considered skilful.
Or merely someone who guards report to.
Especially easy to get people to comply given that the general societal consensus is that pedophiles deserve death without due process, regardless of their proscribed legal punishment.
i think it is much easier task than what happened in Florida in 2008 and the years after when the federal and the state prosecutors and the FBI and the judges all were basically working on the Epstein side to make sure that the slam dunk serial pedophile charges would get nowhere. You can't directly buy that with money. That was done by some large power and influence from behind the scene (influential enough to make all those participants to accept the obviously fake CIA cover as a way out). Couple prison guards and non-working cameras is just a minor thing for such power and influence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-...
It was all very weak stuff, but the people they used were all credible crime investigation people so it sounded legitimate.
The poor brother was grown up now and a software engineer who already went through enough trauma and had to sue the show for defamation.
I have watched that documentary and as someone who has a lot of experience with autism spectrum disorder and complete inability to control one's actions at not such a young age, I have little doubt that he could have done that unintentionally.
Even as an adult, he still doesn't look as someone who is fully able to comprehend his actions.
In such a case, it would be easy to understand the parents' desire to protect at least the child who was still alive.
And not suing after the documentary was released was not an option, if they wanted to stick to their story.
They found touch DNA on her pants that matched a Latin male among lots of other stuff that just makes the whole brother story sound ridiculous.
Autism is also not sociopathy.
Yes, for a kid with autism it would have felt like "playing" without realizing the consequences of the "game" he was in.
Such a person can be mentally unable to think two steps upfront, or even to have real feelings about his actions.
> Then left a basement window open?
Everything what happened later could have been done by the parents in an effort to protect their son.
I personally wouldn't have released this documentary and believe that the family should be left alone, but have little doubt in its findings.
Politicians chanting, essentially, "Think of the children", is phenomenally hypocritical when layered on top of the Epstein situation.
The US and Five Eyes world-spanning communications surveillance operations couldn't even get this guy jailed for child-sex crimes?! How much is it costing for this wholly-ineffectual-at-what-its-claimed-purpose-is infrastructure?
Seems like it's all either factual or clearly labeled uncertainty ("seems", etc.)
But, I think what I see there, what I see here just tend to reinforce something that I believe is vindicated by the rest of history -- politics can be very dirty, and to prematurely label something a conspiracy theory can get in the way of seeing the reality of what happens on the ground. There's a difference between labeling something a conspiracy theory because it feels unthinkable and labeling something a conspiracy theory because it's a stretch to imagine it logistically possible. I have a hope that somehow we can get to a reality where that's not the case, but it's hard to reconcile that with seeing these things happen again and again.
How strong is a democracy? What is the price of freedom and liberty, and how resistant are any of the world's well-resourced democracies to this sort of high-level corruption? Were they ever resistant to it? Were democracy and technopolitics always merely a smokescreen over invisible perpetuations of the perennial brutal principle of "might makes right" and any egalitarian, humanist drive somewhat doomed to never fully (or even partially) succeed?
[0]: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VsRMAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22consp...
There’s something really gross about how his proximity to power that we, ostensibly, “like” is decreasing our collective likelihood to state the obvious.
They failed and now a majority believe he was. Including me.
My brother in law is an attorney who literally makes a career out of the deaths and injuries that result from the incredible incompetence and neglect we inflict upon the imprisoned in this country. And as he puts it "Business is Good."
We know that blackmail exists.
While they might be uncommon, neither of those are extraordinary.
It is also undisputed that:
- a serial and unabashed pedophile had multiple contacts with two presidents, a member of the British royal family and a few titans of industry.
- when prosecuted for his sex crimes said pedophile came away with a sweetheart deal that apart from violating federal regulations, was _incomprehensible_ in it's leniency.
Now just because those two things are quite extraordinary it doesn't mean they are proof of anything. At the same time though, they are a justification for being a little more circumspect about dismissing conspiracies as crank theories.
Suicide in prison is very, very common.
The wealthy and powerful being above the law and getting sweetheart deals by prosecutors who are more obsessed with not losing and not working hard for easy pleas against people who cannot afford to defend themselves Federally is very, very common.
Note I am not closed to the possibility he was killed, I'm simply noting the contents of this article are miles away from the kind of evidence sufficient to raise a doubt he killed himself.
Obviously I'm interested...why else am I commenting after reading the article? The problem is that nothing interesting happened.
The claim that someone entered a locked prison cell, killed Epstein, and then left without getting caught is the definition of extraordinary.
It's possible, but then it's possible I'm being paid to post this by his killers rather than just be some schmuck in Chicago waiting for a meeting to be over.
At best, maybe we could say that both potential instances (suicide and homicide) are extraordinary, since what we would expect to happen in the ordinary circumstance is neither suicide nor homicide; but that wasn't the impression given by the original statement.
It could be equally said, therefore, that the claim Epstein hung himself with dental floss inside a secure facility without being captured on camera is also extraordinary. So, when I asked, I wasn't sure which of these two events was supposed to be "extraordinary", because neither really seemed to rank more extraordinary than the other, and still don't.
My condolences about being stuck in Chicago. I spent a good amount of time downtown around Merchandise Mart. Crazy traffic.
"Fractures of the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage in 25% of Thais who died of suicidal hanging were related with older ages and incomplete hanging but not related with location of the knot."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30015282:
"Altogether, we identified the following types of laryngohyoid fractures in 129 of 178 cases (72.5%): isolated fracture(s) to the thyroid cartilage in 60 cases (33.7%), combined thyrohyoid fractures in 41 cases (23.0%), isolated fracture(s) to the hyoid bone in 28 cases (15.7%), and no fractures to the cricoid cartilage or the cervical vertebrae."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13531...:
"There were a total of 40 cases of suicidal hanging with an age range of 17–74 years (average = 35 years; M:F = 33:7). Fractures of neck structures were identified in 19 cases (47.5%) and were more common in older victims and males. Nine victims had only thyroid cartilage fractures (22.5%), four victims had only fractures of the hyoid bone (10%), and six victims had fractures of both the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage (15%)."
Epstein, alive and well, doesn’t really care which side of the false debate you take.
Of course there is a deadman’s switch... It wasn’t triggered. This isn’t rocket science.
Once he was headed for a long prison sentence and logically had nothing to lose, the powerful people he had blackmail material over would obviously choose to get rid of him to prevent the chance that he revealed everything. It's really not that far fetched.
(1) Blackmail a whole lot of extremely powerful people.
(2) Get busted and go to prison.
(3) Wait for a hit man to come kill you.
I guess it worked though.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-...
I don't think the average American knows that until they hit 40, hence the midlife crisis.
one of the best protections the wealthy have in the US is the poor and middle class voting based on an imagined and unlikely future for themselves.
I find it difficult to believe Epstein had no protectors. Natually, now nonone really knew the guy.
Somewhere or wheres, there has to be a couple boxes of hard drives that could burn the world down if they ever came to light. Although I may be being optimistic; the Panama Papers never amounted to anything.
Also, if Epstein was indeed an intelligence agency cutout then he was surely watched very closely at all times, so there might not have been an opening for him to set one up (or he might have been told in no uncertain terms what would happen if he tried). Or (most likely of all IMO) after the sweetheart 2008 deal he simply thought he was untouchable and above the law, so why would he need to take precautions against being assassinated?
To that particular person. Being personally shameless with corrupt friends does have a way of making one immune to many kinds of blackmail. That doesn't mean there aren't a lot of people who have more shame and better friends that can still be controlled via threats of blackmail.
The egotistical usually like it even less. To plan for a dead mans switch, means staring down the abyss that is your own mortality.
I figure for many of these people it's very much out of their character to do so.
The UK had Jimmy Saville and a similar story. He raised a lot of money for various important people and charities so nobody paid attention to the fact that he appears to have been a serial rapist for decades.
Don't overlook the snobbery and friend of royalty aspect. The Windsor boys have been very, um, unlucky in their choice of friends. Despite the fact they have advisors and the secret service keeps tabs on them so they aren't compromised by spies or assassinated.
It really is extraordinary that they were both so unlucky and so badly compromised in this way.
You are not unlucky - you are simply coming from a powerful family but otherwise useless, so the only people who active try to be your friends are people who can’t be friends to someone useful.
I suppose the null hypothesis is that rich and well-connected people can get away with even open crimes in public for years and years. Weinstein got away with rape for years and years, against well-connected people as well. Epstein was a financier just like Weinstein. They have what you need, and they have the ear of a lot of other well-connected people who need things from him.
Mossad seems to be the most likely player here[1][2]:
> Given the chance to refute Ward’s report, specifically that the Epstein case involved intelligence matters, Acosta did nothing of the sort. Indeed, he functionally admitted that it’s true.
> What then can we conclude at this point? It appears that Jeffrey Epstein was involved in intelligence work, of some kind, for someone—and it probably wasn’t American intelligence either. 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.
> 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.
> Six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence services attended Maxwell's funeral in Israel, while Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogized him and stated: “He has done more for Israel than can today be said."
[1] https://observer.com/2019/07/jeffrey-epstein-spy-intelligenc...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell#Israeli_connect...
>We need a second Church committee. Obviously.
>If you don't want to call for one, then tell us why in an editorial. Why doesn't this recent pattern of state-protected child rape excite you as much as 17th century slavery? This story would sell newspapers & subscriptions. Let it.
You have no idea what gets Bill Gates off.
Mr. Gates started the relationship after Mr. Epstein was convicted of sex crimes.
The problem here is just, that apparently he did not moved on at all and just continued undisturbed.
Much more likely is that Epstein had dirt on Gates and/or connections Gates wanted.
And if someone commits a crime then the courts determine an appropriate punishment and that is the end of what gets called 'wrong'.
I'm on board if you don't want to talk to convicted paedophiles - seems reasonable to me - but being judgemental of someone else's relationships is not fair.
I swear we're going to have to relearn all of the lessons we learned over the centuries of developing civil society, all in the name of some strange utopian perfectionism we're putting on every popular person. Mob justice is rarely good justice.
The Gates case is more complicated, as you mentioned, but the general trend is worrying and I personally wouldn't public tell people I met with Epstein either.
When it comes to courts, absolutely.
When it comes to making a judgement call (and also associating with people), it's expected.
You make a choice who you maintain relationships with. You can, and will be judged by the choices you make.
If so then your example has nothing to lend.
> Pedophilia is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children. [0]
The problem and crime is, when those people act on those attractions and the way society reacts to pedophiles is certainly not helping anyone and I’d assume hindering some of them from seeking or even receiving help.
I am 100% speculating, but I'd guess that's what Jeff Bezos did in relation to his extra-marital affair, and what Bill Gates and others have been doing in relation to Epstein.
I'd be interested in learning about what techniques they use, since they seem like something that ought to be countered.
I suppose it is mostly about connections with people in newspapers etc. and collecting favors from them.
I've seen it many times and it has always struck me as the kind of spin that PR firm would write and disseminate.
Have to say I'm particularly impressed with Reid Hoffman's PR outfit though. By all accounts he was a major Silicon Valley nexus connecting Epstein to Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and others, yet he managed to stay almost completely out of the headlines and even still hosts a show on NPR about the startup scene.
When you look at the whole Epstein story, the people and the patterns, it's pretty clear that Gates was in a very questionable relationship with Epstein. The MIT donations, the senior Gates employee being the executor of Epstein's will, Gates' denials of knowing Epstein before the NYT article hit and his failure to address his flights with Epstein and meetings at his houses, Gates' email to staff about meeting with Epstein and a "beautiful Swedish woman and her 15 year old daughter, late into the night"...
With Gates in particular a lot of people seem willfully ignorant or have a strong desire not to dig deeper. It was a the same with Matt Gronenig. Prince Andrew, Dershkowitz, Wexner... I think every assumes the worst there but a lot of people are struggling to digest their actual heroes turning out to be much less than they thought.
I mean, your heroes sometimes turn out to be all that and so many more, horrible things. It's hard to fathom that people can contain good and bad qualities, and after the fact push them aside among "bad people". But if you do this, you won't learn anything, or be watchful of your remaining heroes.
Next time you idolize someone, remember that. They may be more things and those things may not all be pretty.
The English Language strikes again. Apologies for wandering off-topic, but to (hopefully) clarify:
You're thinking of less / more in the quantitative sense, suggesting some people have _more_ traits, some of which are unpleasant.
I think GP was using less in the qualitative sense - "a lesser person for lacking moral fiber", if you will.
Both are valid, but contextual ambiguity interferes with interpretation.
There’s a perfectly sound explanation for those posts that seem “shillish”: sincerely held beliefs that are different from yours. I think fanboyism and ideology motivate a lot more people to argue on the internet than money. If you want proof of this, look at all the teeming masses arguing for all sorts of causes that the rich and powerful don’t care about.
It's not necessarily relevant to this case, and I agree that calling those people out as such lowers the quality of discourse, but I think it's something important to keep in mind.
Now I’m getting in the weeds and questioning the motivations of party A. I suspect this might make party A feel the way party C does when people call them “useful idiots”. And perhaps it demonstrates how this line of questioning is an endless rabbit hole.
I think the criteria "that party B calls party C" is actually pretty irrelevant to the concept's usefulness.
> essentially an argument meant to invalidate popular support for party B
In most of the cases where I'd use the term "useful idiot" the "party B" doesn't have much popular support, but is rather engaging in manipulation, disinformation, dishonest propaganda, etc. The realization isn't useful as a dismissal, but rather as a reminder that you need to confront both the idiot's sincere belief along with their ignorance of it's goals, implications, and beneficiaries.
Another example of these kinds of statements would be "Elon Musk is like a real life Tony Stark." Do I think that every Elon fanboy is paid to say this online? No, of course not. Do I think that Elon Musk like many celebrities has a public image crafted by a PR firm and that this kind of jingo-istic soundbite probably originated from that firm? Absolutely.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-an-elite-univer...
Bezos put all cards on table to avoid being blackmailed.
Not just in his will but named as the executor of his will.
But when your power base is threatened, when you are wide open and people feel you could go under. That's when you can exhibit that power. When you step forward and pronounce that black is white, and all the press and the politicians nod in agreement.
This entrenches their power. Nobody called them out.
If you don't think that, well then we do have to hem and haw about how much guilt by association they carry. Because for a lot of people, business connections or rubbing elbows for money with bad people doesn't get much blowback. Just look at Tim Cook gladhanding dictators of nations where homosexuality is outlawed. Or manufacturing in countries with ethnic concentration camps.
p.s. the doctor was there for the autopsy.
I'm prepared to believe it but I'm suddenly just really reluctant to believe anything about this case without evidence.
Very much the story of his entire life.