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Jeffrey Epstein: Prince Andrew and an obsession with holes

Epstein prince andrew

Jeffrey Epstein is the BBC’s “shamed financier Jeffrey Epstein”. But he wasn’t was he? We’ve no clue if Epstein felt shame for molesting underage girls. And we know that after his 2008 conviction for procuring for prostitution a girl below age 18 he was still pals with Prince Andrew. If shame results from being shunned by society, Epstein was shameless. It was only after the tabloids published a photo of Andrew walking in the park with Epstein that the royal hole hunter apparently cut ties with the convicted paedophile. And let’s note that Buckingham Palace deny Andrew’s involvement in any wrongdoing.

We don’t know what drove Epstein to apparently take his own life in a New York jail cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. If he left a note explaining all, we’ve not seen it. If he confided in anyone, their lips are sealed.

Did Einstein feel his wrongdoing, something akin to what E.F. Schumacher wrote in 1973 on “The power of ‘the Eye of the Heart’, which produces insight, is vastly superior to the power of thought, which produces opinions”? Was Epstein suddenly acutely aware of his crimes, seeing what once was inaccessible to his limited view? Did Epstein experience embarrassment and found the resulting fall into self knowledge unbearable? Credo ut intelligam.

No Epstein. No way of knowing. Instead a look at some the women on his planet because women sell news.

The Times and Telegraph both lead with big photos of Katherine Keating. It’s “believed” she was seen on video leaving Epstein’s home in NYC, waving goodbye to Prince Andrew as she left.

The footage, shot on December 6, 2010, shows a relaxed Prince Andrew peering out from behind the door of Epstein’s New York home, a lavish residence in which the financier allegedly carried out the systematic grooming, abuse and rape of young girls. The Duke of York was bidding a friendly farewell to a brunette woman who bears a striking resemblance to Ms Keating, now 37, the middle daughter of Paul Keating, the Labor leader who served as Australia’s prime minister from 1991 until 1996.

But, well, so what? Keating has done nothing wrong. She hung out with very rich people in New York. What light does it shed on Epstein?

While the full allegations against him had not emerged in December 2010, he had pleaded guilty, in 2008, to soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14. It seemed to make little difference to his standing in international high society.

Why not? A conspiracy? That a very rich man knew very rich, very connected, very materialistic people is nothing shocking. His little black book was a social network. It’s not the only one. Do we trust the people in these elite groups? What are their values? Chances are they’re as hypocritical as the rest of us.

In a world obsessed with imaginary VIP paedophiles, Jeffrey Epstein was the real deal. Don’t focus on the holes – all the things we don’t know. The good news is that the law caught up with him.

Posted: 21st, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Tabloids | Comment


Prince Harry to be replaced by a tree

prince harry meghan
The official photo harry

Prince Harry, an occasional user of airline fuels in his efforts to save the planet from man-made global warming, could be replaced by a tree. No need to offset your clown-shoe sized carbon footprint by buying lots of trees when you already are a tree.

That list of Royal Carbon Offset Plants in full:

Queen Elizabeth: Bizzie Lizzie

Prince Charles: Creeping Thyme

Prince Edward : Milkweed

Prince Andrew: Red Hot Poker

Posted: 20th, August 2019 | In: News, Royal Family | Comment


Brexit: melting London saved by a new Berlin airlift

Can private jets save us from Brexit? “Operation Yellowhammer”, the super-secret, highly confidential document prepared by Her Majesty’s civil service that we’ve all seen in the Sunday Times outlines the horrors of now-deal Brexit. Who leaked documents, we cannot say. But we do know that after a no-deal Brexit the country will experience a “three-month meltdown”. The New York Sun looks to the skies and sees hope glinting in the vanishing sun:

..it turns out that a no-deal Brexit could coincide almost exactly with the 70th anniversary of the last time an ally like the United Kingdom was cut off from vital supplies sourced from other parts of Europe — only to be rescued by American and British grit. We speak of the Berlin Airlift that triumphed on September 30, 1949.

Back to the future!

Posted: 20th, August 2019 | In: News, Politicians | Comment


Jeffrey Epstein: Release the tabloid dogs lest Prince Andrew slip away

Prince Andrew epstein sex

The better news for Prince Andrew is that the New of The World’s death came long before Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide by committee in a New York jail. The convicted paedophile who hung out with Randy Andy in the palace and the park was the topic of the March 2011 NoTW front page “Prince Andy and the Paedo”. The paper loved a tale of sex and scandal, and would have pursued the story of Andrew and the now dead depraved pervert with vigour. The phone-hacking was deplorable. But there’s a big hole where the hugely popular paper used to be.

Back then, the knowing celebrated the NoTW’s demise. Hugh Grant told BBC Question Time: “I’m not for regulating the proper press, the broadsheet press. But we need regulation of the tabloid press.” Today Jeremy Corbyn agrees with that biased view: tabloid bad, broadsheet good. Or to put it in clearer terms: people who read the tabloids are the wrong sort and must be schooled by their knowing betters. We can know only what our betters think we should know.

Hacking is wrong but, you know, would you quite like to hear a phone call between Andrew and Epstein? Perhaps the hack would be more to your tastes if it were via Wikileaks and published in the Guardian?

It’s left to the Mail on Sunday to take up the cudgel. It published new photographs of Andrew’s visit to Epstein’s New York mansion in December 2010 – two years after the host pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor. Good on the Mail, then. Or not. Because according to Corbyn: “Just because it’s on the front page of The Sun or the Mail doesn’t automatically make it news.” Wrong. It does. Whether or not you choose to read it is another story. We’ll decide what’s worth knowing. You can stick your “ethical journalism” up your organic punter.

In a world where the press are compliant and controlled, newspapers will be run by the State and full of press releases, advertorials and PR, like this missive from Buckingham Palace, which says:

“The Duke of York has been appalled by the recent reports of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged crimes. His Royal Highness deplores the exploitation of any human being and the suggestion he would condone, participate in or encourage any such behavior is abhorrent.”

Nothing to see here. Move on. Andrew is His Royal Highness – he never has been a human being like you slobs beset by the foibles of lust, pride and desire. Even the Sun is kowtowed, calling Andrew “foolish”. Better a fool than a paedophile’s princely pal. “What was he doing at the home of a convicted paedophile? What on earth was he thinking?” asks the Times. His thoughts are his own affair. His doings are what we want to know about.

Posted: 20th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Royal Family, Tabloids | Comment


How to apologise for Brexit

Operation Black Vote launched the campaign, due to be shown in London and Manchester, to encourage people from ethnic minorities to register and vote in the EU referendum Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3609357/Operation-Black-Vote-unveils-controversial-referendum-poster-comparing-Asian-woman-angry-white-thug-Nigel-Farage-claims-goes-far.html#ixzz4gC3k2In0 Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Why are public figures so bad at apologising? Brexit is a mess. Are we leaving? Why can’t politicians just own up and say: we were utterly shocked by the referendum result and are still reeling from it; We want to stop it because the EU is an umbrella beneath which we can hide; I love chlorinated chicken.

Jay Hendricks has a guide to getting it right:

  1. Own up to the mistake. Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
  2. Focus on your emotions, not how you hurt someone else. Say how bad you feel about screwing up.
  3. Show how your mistake was an exception to the rule. You’re a great, thoughtful person who temporarily lapsed.
  4. Promise improvement and show what you’re going to do to fix any remaining problems.

Image: Operation Black Vote launched this dire campaign to encourage people from ethnic minorities to register and vote in the EU referendum.

Posted: 20th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment


Cancel Culture is killing democracy

cancel culture

If you don’t like it, you don’t need to watch it. This idea of voting with your feet, or eyeballs, works well in a country like the UK, where there’s lots to watch. But from Jeremy Corbyn’s calls to regulate the wrong kind of media to demolishing monuments and airbrushing troublesome actors from films, the unifying cry of the knowing tells us that the public cannot be trusted. Only censorship can save them and deliver the truth. But once the censorship begins, no one is immune from curtailments on free expression as panicky Cancel Culture holds sway:

Cancel culture is spreading for one simple reason: it works. Instead of debating ideas or competing for entertainment dollars, you can just demand anyone who annoys you to be cast out of polite society.

Way back in the mists of time, say five years ago, if you didn’t like a TV show or movie, you wouldn’t watch it. Now you can ensure that no one watches it, just by slinging some outrage on social media.

Our woke mentality is America’s new Puritanism. Instead of a handy list of sins written thousands of years ago, modern sins are ever-changing. A joke that was deemed progressive a decade ago is retroactively condemned as hate speech.

“If you say the wrong thing,” [Sarah] Silverman said, “everyone is, like, throwing the first stone. It’s a perversion. It’s really, ‘Look how righteous I am and now I’m going to press refresh all day long to see how many likes I get in my righteousness.’ ”

When the mob has burned one witch, they tighten the buckles on their hats and pore through old YouTube videos for their next victim.

Compliance is all.

Posted: 19th, August 2019 | In: News | Comment


Childhood is dead

childhood CCTV

On the beach in lovely Dorset, I saw a party of school children. They were all dressed in high-vis jackets. All the adults around them were early middle-aged women dressed in light blue tabards, words on the back displaying their roles: ‘security’, ‘teacher’, ‘parent’ and ‘assistant’. A day out at the beach was an exercise in crowd control and policing. The message was clear: danger was all around. Lest the children be protected and watched at all times, strangers, the sea (calm and watched by lifeguards sat at beach pods), seagulls, men, sand and, well, anything would destroy them.

Maybe the children’s parents were tuning at home, their phones altered by apps into CCTV devices with which to observe junior’s every waking moment. For older children, which these were, mum should only use baby monitors to check if anyone’s coming down the stairs to catch them smoking in the garden. Anything else is spying.

As the children were trained in techniques that should serve them well for future careers as uber-compliant drones in corporate factories or the Labour Party, I read the New York Times:

School days are longer and more regimented. Kindergarten, which used to be focused on play, is now an academic training ground for the first grade. Young children are assigned homework even though numerous studies have found it harmful. STEM, standardized testing and active-shooter drills have largely replaced recess, leisurely lunches, art and music.

The role of school stress in mental distress is backed up by data on the timing of child suicide. “The suicide rate for children is twice what it is for children during months when school is in session than when it’s not in session,” according to Dr. Gray. “That’s true for suicide completion, suicide attempts and suicidal ideation, whereas for adults, it’s higher in the summer.” . . .

And so for many children, when the school day is over, it hardly matters; the hours outside school are more like school than ever. Children spend afternoons, weekends and summers in aftercare and camps while their parents work. The areas where children once congregated for unstructured, unsupervised play are now often off limits. And so those who can afford it drive their children from one structured activity to another. Those who can’t keep them inside. Free play and childhood independence have become relics, insurance risks, at times criminal offenses. . . .

Kids need recess. They need longer lunches. They need free play, family time, meal time. They need less homework, fewer tests, a greater emphasis on social-emotional learning.

In short: leave them alone. True love is giving people space to be alone, bored and make up their own rules. Meanwhile… the drugs and therapy industries are booming.

Posted: 19th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment


$2.3 million worth of illegal marijuana pizza topping seized in California

cannabis pizza

Only the right kind of marijuana is legal in California. The wrong kind remains illegal – like the $2.3 million worth of marijuana seized in San Diego. US customs have impounded the weed, secreted with a shipment of jalapeno peppers.

Whoever ordered the ‘special topping’ on their pizza is going to be disappointed.

Posted: 19th, August 2019 | In: News | Comment


Mike Tyson : marijuana marketing and short-term memory loss

mike tyson weed

Mike Tyson smokes a lot of marijuana. When former boxer told listeners to his Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson podcast that he and co-host, former NFL player Eben Britton, burn about 10 tons of weed every month at his ranch and resort.

At Tyson Ranch, Tyson sells nine strains of weed, tincture and edibles. There are plans for “glamping” campgrounds. Would you stay at ‘Iron Mike’s’ place?

No idea. But the reporting on what looks a lot like a PR exercise makes no mention – not one – of the fact that Tyson served three years of a six-year sentence imposed in 1992 for raping a teenage beauty-pageant contestant. Not CNN, the Sun or the Mirror mention that. None of them mention that Tyson has convictions for assault and cocaine possession. Maybe it’s down to smoking too much and getting short-term memory loss?

As advocates for weed go, we can get better ones that Mike Tyson.

Posted: 15th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, The Consumer | Comment


Sydney terror attack : four lads with a milk crate and never forgetting Ignacio Echeverría

Left to right: Alex Roberts, Lee Cuthbert, Luke and Paul O'Shaughnessy chased down a man who went on a stabbing rampage in Sydney CBD. (Supplied: Facebook)
RELATED STORY: Woman dead, another stabbed in back as passers-by halt Sydney CBD rampage

Apparently Mert Ney, the man at the centre of the Sydney stabbing, might have yelled “Allahu Akbar”. Some observers say the 21-year-old man’s pronunciation suggests he is unfamiliar with the phrase. Other says he was only a recent convert to Islam. Reports say he has “mental health issues”. He is “understood to have fled from a mental health facility before the rampage”. Was it a terror attack? It must have looked like one.

His face masked in a balaclava, the alleged killer was carrying a large knife. A 21-year-old woman is dead. Others are injured. But we have heroes. Lads gave chase, cornering the man, hemming him in with a wicker chair and a milk crate.

sydney chair terrir
This geezer with the chair stepped in – Via Twitter: @ayusha77)

Supt Gavin Wood from NSW police told reporters: “A number of members of the public physically restrained the offender. I want to acknowledge those members of the public who got involved. They were significantly brave people.” Not have-a-go-fools. Brave. Wood gets it.

paris train heroes
Anthony Sadler, Alex Skarlatos and Spencer Stone – the three courageous Americans who stopped a 2015 terror attack on a train in Paris

Commissioner Mick Fuller said the men who tackled the man suspected of stabbing two women are “the highest order of heroes”. Fuller gets it.

glasgow terrorist airport balls

Lee Cuthbert and his friends Paul and Luke O’Shaughnessy, all from Manchester in the UK, and Alex Roberts, from Cronulla, stepped in “We all kind of chased,” says Lee, “but it was Luke who was the real hero. He pursued him the hardest and managed to get a grip of him with another man.”

 Ignacio Echeverria, 39, “reacted immediately” by stepping into protect a woman who was being targeted
Ignacio Echeverria, 39, “reacted immediately” by stepping into protect a woman who was being targeted by terrorists in London on 3 June 2017. He saved her life. He was killed. He was a true hero.

Lead image: Left to right: Alex Roberts, Lee Cuthbert, Luke and Paul O’Shaughnessy.

Posted: 13th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment


Sarah Silverman fired for making jokes in blackface in 2007

sarah_silverman_hosting_the_oscars

Who need context in the age of offence taking? American comic Sarah Silverman told listeners to The Bill Simmons Podcast about how the knowing came for her. She once posed in blackface on The Sarah Silverman Show. She might be a victim of “offence archaeology”: digging into someone past in the hope of finding evidence of wrong thinking. It matters not a jot what happened in the intervening years. The offence is an indelible stain.

“I recently was going to do a movie, a sweet part, then, at 11pm the night before, they fired me because they saw a picture of me in blackface from that episode… I think it’s really scary and it’s a very odd thing that its invaded the left primarily and the right will mimic it…

“It’s like, if you’re not on board, if you say the wrong thing, if you had a tweet once, everyone is, like, throwing the first stone. It’s so odd. It’s a perversion. It’s really, ‘Look how righteous I am and now I’m going to press refresh all day long to see how many likes I get in my righteousness.'”

Context be damned:

“It was like, I’m playing a character, and I know this is wrong, so I can say it. I’m clearly liberal. That was such liberal-bubble stuff, where I actually thought it was dealing with racism by using racism. I don’t get joy in that any more. It makes me feel yucky. All I can say is that I’m not that person any more… There’s a still of me on Twitter in blackface and it’s totally out of context and I tweeted it when Twitter was new and the people who followed me watched that show and it was from that show,” she said. “Now it’s forever there and it looks … it’s totally racist out of context and I regret that.”

Everyone, stay in your lane or else.

Posted: 13th, August 2019 | In: Celebrities, News | Comment


Jeffrey Epstein: tortured to death in New York’s gulag

epstein

The New York Post invites readers to “Meet Jeffrey Epstein’s gang of accused slave ‘recruiters’”. Alleged. Nothing proven. Just to be certain of this: whatever the conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein’s untimely death, innocence must always be presumed. That goes for Epstein, too. The depraved convicted paedophile had pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking charges. He died in an apparent suicide before taking the stand. We can say what we like about him now that he’s dead, engage in mental gymnastics that lightly skip over barriers to justice. But we cannot know for certain if he was guilty.

We can look for facts. The obvious one is to kick over the dead body at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center and look for a suicide note.

The latest news from the jail that guards were so overworked they might have not had time to check on their very high-profile suicide risk. Serene Gregg, president of the AFGE Local 3148, tells the Washington Post newspaper: “If it wasn’t Mr Epstein, it would have been somebody else, because of the conditions at that institution. It was only a matter of time for it to happen. It was inevitable. Our staff is severely overworked.”

But it was Mr Epstein. It was not somebody else. We wanted to hear what he had to say. If harsh jail life was part of the landscape preventing justice, surely this is the time to investigate suicide – the leading cause of jail deaths.

People in jail are seven times more likely to take their own lives than those housed in prisons. The U.S. Department of Justice said “two primary causes for jail suicide exist: (1) jail environments are conducive to suicidal behavior and (2) the inmate is facing a crisis situation. From the inmate’s perspective, certain features of the jail environment enhance suicidal behavior: fear of the unknown, distrust of an authoritarian environment, perceived lack of control over the future, isolation from family and significant others, shame of incarceration, and perceived dehumanizing aspects of incarceration.”

The World Health Organization notes: “A period of risk for pre-trial inmates is near the time of a court appearance, especially when a guilty verdict and harsh sentencing may be anticipated. A great deal of all jail suicides occurred within three days of a court appearance.”

The jail was built to accommodate 474 inmates, but held 763 male prisoners at the time of Epstein’s death, according to a statement from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Prisoners have described seeing large rats in their cells, air conditioner units so noisy it is impossible to sleep, and absence of any natural light or sanitary water.

Gothamist:

In a special jail-within-a-jail called 10 South, alleged terrorists, mobsters and drug kingpins are subject to some of the most brutal conditions of solitary confinement in the nation. This extreme isolation, reserved for those charged with the most heinous crimes, was described as “a punitive measure that is unworthy of the United States as a civilized democracy,” according to a former special monitor on torture and punishment for the United Nations who investigated the case of one prisoner held there for three years.

Jeanne Theoharis is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College who has written extensively about conditions at MCC.
“If I described these conditions to you—filthy, freezing, no natural light, isolation so extreme that you’re punished for speaking through the walls, absurd rules like prisoners not getting to see the newspapers unless they’re 30 days old, secrecy so deep that people are force-fed and lawyers can be punished for describing the conditions their clients are experiencing—you’d be forgiven for thinking that this was Iran or Russia,” she said.
“But in fact this gulag exists right here in lower Manhattan.”

What price justice?

Posted: 13th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment


CCTV nation: spying on kids are they gain independence is unspeakably sad

spying camp facial recognition

Screw solitude and giving loved ones space. Parents who like to video tape their child’s every move can now monitor and keep records of their lives when they’re away at summer camp. The routine is pretty simple. You upload a photo of your child’s face to the Bunk1 app, which uses facial recognition software. Whenever the camp commandants take a picture of the kinder at player and upload it to the service, parents get an alert asking “Is this your camper?” It might well be the most god-awful thing ever. But to the Washington Post, it’s mostly brilliant.

Read and weep:

When David Hiller’s two daughters checked into Camp Echo, a bucolic sleep-away camp in Upstate New York, they relinquished their cellphones for seven idyllic weeks away from their digital lives.

But not Hiller: His phone rings 10 times a day with notifications from the summer camp’s facial-recognition service, which alerts him whenever one of his girls is photographed enjoying their newfound independence, going water-skiing or making a new friend.

His daughters don’t really know about the facial-recognition part, he said. But for him and his wife, it’s quickly become a cherished summer pastime, alerting them instantly when the camp uploads its for-parents haul of more than 1,000 photos a day — many of which they end up looking through, just in case.

Points to consider:

  1. Why not just let the nippers have their phones? Why is not having your phones “idyllic”? Mum and dad seem to be on theirs all the bloody time. And they love it.
  2. Why is letting strangers take photos of children all day a good thing?
  3. What “newfound independence”? Everything they do is being recorded, observed and judged. A child in the frame is about as independent as a lab mouse in a cage.
  4. Why don’t the children know what’s going on in their own lives?
  5. Other parents of kids who look like yours get to watch them too?
  6. A huge database stores the images and names of all the kinder. What could possibly go wrong?
  7. It all looks like a desperate attempt by parents to make a connection with their children. Give them space. Protect their fullest freedom and development by protecting their right to be alone.

Zu kampers vant more?

“It’s all about building this one-way window into the camper’s experience: The parent gets to see in, but the camper’s not distracted from what’s going on,” said Bunk1 president Rob Burns, a former camp counselor himself. “These are parents who are involved in everything their kid does, and that doesn’t go away when the kid is at camp.”

We have only glimpsed the hell to come…

Posted: 12th, August 2019 | In: News, Technology | Comment


Jeffrey Epstein: Ghislaine Maxwell, sex and money

jeffrey epstein
Jeffrey Epstein – Cosmopolitan’s most eligible batchelor – 1980

This and that, they must be the same
What is legal is just what’s real
What I’m given to understand
Is exactly what I steal
I wormed my way into the heart of the crowd
I wormed my way into the heart of the crowd
I was shocked to find what was allowed

Shot By Both Sides, Magazine

Jeffrey Epstein’s death titillates us. We want to peeks behind the curtain and see what the super-rich get up to. We know Epstein was a depraved pervert. Prisons are full of them. But his money and friends in high places pull us in. We want to know what the rich don’t want us to know. We want media to publish what the rich and powerful don’t want them to. We fill the twilight space between truth and fiction with tales of murder, sex and corruption.

The Times shows us Ghislaine Maxwell. The tone is sympathetic ,as it should be. She’s innocent. The paper tells us that “as a young woman she was pushed into the spotlight by the death of her father, the media tycoon Robert Maxwell, and a roiling financial scandal.” Maxwell died on November 5, 1991. His body was found floating in the Atlantic Ocean after he went missing off his private yacht, Lady Ghislaine. The official inquest into Maxwell’s death decided that he died from a heart attack combined with accidental drowning.

Suicide? As Tom Bower notes in Maxwell: The Final Verdict: “Anyone who had fought on the front line from the Normandy beaches to Germany, facing constant danger and death for months on end from the enemy’s snipers and shells, was unlikely to suffer fear.”

A notion supported by this anecdote from the man who won the Military Cross. He was a captain fighting for the British in the heat of Nazi Germany. His family had been captured by the Germans in his native Czechoslovakia. Maxwell recalled an episode to his wife Betty:

“… so I sent one of the Germans to fetch the mayor of the town. In half an hour’s time, he turned up and I told him that he had to go to tell the Germans to surrender and hang the white flag otherwise the town will be destroyed. One hour later, he came back saying that the soldiers will surrender and the white flag was put up so we marched off, but as soon as we marched off a German tank opened fire on us. Luckily he missed so I shot the mayor and withdrew.”

The Guardian reported:

As London business analysts were predicting the break-up of his business empire under the pressure of £3bn debts, his widow Elizabeth and their son Philip flew to Gran Canaria and identified his body at the Gando air base.

Now, says the Times, Ghislaine Maxwell “has been thrust into the centre of a darker controversy by the apparent suicide of another man to whom her fortunes were tied”.

Epstein

Ms Maxwell, 57, has been described as the sometime girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, who was found dead in his cell in Manhattan where he was being held pending a trial for sex trafficking. They met after she moved to New York following her father’s death, in the 1990s. She ushered a succession of the rich and famous into his orbit, including Prince Andrew, managed his households and recruited masseuses.

But in court papers released on Friday, she was said to have acted as a “madam” who trafficked minors.

One accuser alleged in a court deposition that Maxwell “recruited her under the guise of a legitimate assistant position, but asked her to perform sexual massages for Epstein, and punished her when she didn’t cause Epstein to orgasm”.

Claims and denials. Stick to the facts. Look for evidence. Prove guilt. One of Epstein’s lawyers, Marc Fernich, has issued a statement:

“I speak as an outraged citizen and defense lawyer, not as a representative of Jeffrey Epstein’s defense team. There seems plenty of blame to go around for this unthinkable tragedy. Overzealous prosecutors bent on locking up a presumptively innocent man posing no real danger or flight risk.

“Pandering politicians who wrote the restrictive bail laws that empower them to do it. Compliant judges who let them get away with it while paying lip service to the presumption of innocence.

“Jailers who appear to have recklessly put Mr. Epstein in harm’s way, heedlessly placing his life at risk and failing to protect him.

“An hysterical press corps clamoring to recharge Mr. Epstein with dated crimes for which he’d long since paid his debt to society under an arm’s length plea deal — just because he had the misfortune to be a wealthy man in the #metoo era whose former prosecutor happened to take a job with President Trump.

“Greedy plaintiff’s lawyers who instigated and exploited the media frenzy to line their own pockets.

“Breathless reporters excavating every corner of Mr. Epstein’s life to pile on, tear him down and kick him at his lowest — while still presumed innocent, before he’d had his day in court.

“All these actors appear to bear some responsibility for this calamity. All seem to have a share of Mr. Epstein’s blood on their hands. All should be ashamed of their behavior.

“I call for a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding Mr. Epstein’s death. The public needs to know exactly what happened and why — and how his custodians could have let it occur.”

Bring it on. But this might just be – and hold the disappointment – the sad story of a rich man who liked abusing underage women.

Posted: 12th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment


We all know who killed Jeffrey Epstein

Convicted child molester Jeffrey Epstein knew a lot of very rich, very needy and very vain people. He’s dead. How he died is matter of conjecture: he was found dead in his jail cell in New York’s Metropolitan Correction Center. Was he on suicide watch? Yes. And no. If no, why not? Did the cameras watching his cell malfunction on the night of his death? Some say they did. Someone says there were “astounding blunders perhaps by multiple personnel at the Bureau of Prisons”.

Jeffrey Epstein Russians

Do people close to him think he was murdered? Maybe. Did Bill and Hillary Clinton order a hit on Epstein, their one-time pal? Not a word of evidence to support the theory of orgies and death on theLolita Express’. But those feel the news believe the rumours could be true. Conspiracy theories abound. The checklists is on: “Clinton-backed assassination? Trump-backed assassination? Coordinated hit by a cabal of international jetset pedos? The Saudis? Mossad?” The British – same people who killed Lady Diana? Trump?

“The immediate rush to spread conspiracy theories about someone on the ‘other side’ of [sic] partisan divide illustrates why our society is so vulnerable to foreign disinformation,” tweeted Republican Senator Marco Rubio.

“The Department of Justice failed, and today Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirators think they might have just gotten one last sweetheart deal,” says Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.). “Every single person in the Justice Department — from your Main Justice headquarters staff all the way to the night-shift jailer — knew that this man was a suicide risk, and that his dark secrets couldn’t be allowed to die with him.”

And what about Epstein? Some say he tried to impregnate 20 women at a time. Well he was once Cosmo mag’s Bachelor of the Month.

Jeffrey Epstein Cosmopolitan mag's Bachelor of the Month
1980

Did the great and good all care that Epstein was a predatory sex offender? Why did he cop a sweetheart deal?

Who dunnit? Only you can decide…

Posted: 11th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment


Jeffrey Epstein : Clinton, Prince Andrew and the smoking gun

prince andrew epstein
We never did see any video – The NE is often wrong; but it can be right

“Any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue.”So says Buckingham Palace in response to the accusation that
Prince Andrew groped a woman against her wishes at convicted paedophile – now dead! – Jeffrey Epstein’s US home.

We know what Prince Andrew did not do because a day before Epstein was found dead in a New York jail cell, court papers about his case were released. Epstein was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

epstein prince andrew

The papers feature an allegation by Johanna Sjoberg. She claimed Andrew touched her breast at Epstein’s Manhattan apartment in 2001. She alleges: “I just remember someone suggesting a photo, and they told us to go get on the couch. And so Andrew and Virginia sat on the couch, and they put the puppet, the puppet on her lap. And so then I sat on Andrew’s lap, and I believe on my own volition, and they took the puppet’s hands and put it on Virginia’s breast, and so Andrew put his on mine.”

‘Virginia’ is Virginia Giuffre, known as Virginia Roberts when she allegedly had sex with toe-licking Andrew at Epstein’s ‘Lolita island’. He denied that, too.

The British press is looking hard at ‘Randy Andy’:

prince andrew jeffrey epstein
prince andrew jeffrey epstein
prince andrew jeffrey epstein

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio says Epstein’s death is “way too convenient”. “What a lot of us want to know is, what did he know?” asks Mr de Blasio. “How many other millionaires and billionaires were part of the illegal activities that he was engaged in? Well, that information didn’t die with Jeffrey Epstein. That needs to be investigated, too… How on earth is he not under special protection? What’s really going on here? I think that’s a question that we must get a full answer to.”

Why did he need them to be close? And what did he have on them? Epstein was accused of hiring girls aged 17 and under for sex at his Manhattan and Florida piles between 2002 and 2005.

He escaped similar charges in a plea deal in 2008. He and his accomplices received immunity from federal sex-trafficking charges that could have sent him to prison for over 40 years. Back then he pleaded guilty to the lesser charges of soliciting prostitution, including with a minor. For that Epstein was sentenced to 13 months in the private wing of a county jail. Was it tough? No. The paedophile was allowed to leave for work – up to 12 hours a day, six days a week. No-one else – not one other person who allegedly arranged the girls and enabled Epstein’s crimes – was prosecuted.

“How come people who don’t have money get sent to jail — and can’t even make bail – and they have to do their time and sit there and think about what they did wrong? He had no repercussions and doesn’t even believe he did anything wrong,’’ asks Micelle Licata, who was 16 when she says Epstein abused her. “His lawyers were just in my life inside and out. They asked if I had a baby, if I had an abortion, ‘did you sleep with 30 different guys’ and ‘do you think that played a part?’ I said, ‘you’re going to come at me like that when you represent a guy who is doing this to hundreds of girls? How do you sleep at night?’”

Epstein “had a revolving door of middle and high school girls coming to his gated compound throughout the day and night.”

Why did he get away with it? And why now is he dead? We know that he kept photos of young girls. Did he keep records of comings and going to his mansions. Did he keep tapes?

Posted: 11th, August 2019 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News, Royal Family | Comment


Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton exhale : Jeffrey Epstein is dead

jeffrey epstein passport

Convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead in his New York prison cell. He was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Suicide? So they say. But he was on suicide watch, reportedly, after an alleged attempted suicide attempt last month. So how did he give everyone the slip?

Super-rich Epstein cultivated powerful friends, including Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew. And now he’s dead.

Conspiracy theorists – away you go.

Posted: 10th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians, Royal Family | Comment


Dmitriy Andreychenko is the vainest man in America

Dmitriy Andreychenko is a vain idiot. Days after mass murder in the streets of Dayton and a Walmart in El Paso, Andreychenko walked into a branch of Walmart in Missouri wearing full body armour and carrying a loaded handgun and rifle. For added oomph, he was filming himself. “I wanted to know if that Walmart honoured the second amendment,” the 20-year-old told police after he was arrested. His caper came to an end when he was spotted by an off-duty firefighter and challenged at the point of a gun (also loaded). Walmat security were reportedly uninvolved.

Andreychenko is accused of making a terrorist threat. If found guilty, the charge could result in a four-year prison sentence and a fine of $10,000 (£8,300).

“This is Missouri, I understand if we were somewhere else like New York or California, people would freak out,” he told police.

Andreychenko wasn’t checking any rights. He was making a demand to have everyone adhere to his pathetic interpretation of the law.

Springfield, Missouri, Police Department spokesman Lt. Mike Lucas tells us: “He walked in here, heavily armed with body armor on, in military fatigues, and caused a great amount of panic inside the store… Obviously, what’s happened in Texas and Dayton and all that kind of stuff in the last seven days – that’s on everybody’s mind.” Andreychenko is “lucky he’s still alive”.

And why Walmart?

Carroll County Sheriff Jim Dewees wasn’t worried about being PC when asked about Wal-Mart store security after a gun man robbed one in the suburban area of his mostly rural jurisdiction:

“Find me a Walmart that isn’t a burden on law enforcement resources and I will kiss your a–,” he said, according to The Carroll County Times. “Their corporate policies are pitiful when it comes to securing their stores and protecting their employees and the customers that are there.”

Dmitriy Andreychenko is the idiots’ idiot.

Posted: 10th, August 2019 | In: News | Comment


Arsenal pair forced out by security fears

Can we speculate about the “further security incidents” keeping Mesut Ozil and Sead Kolasinac out of Arsenal’s squad for tomorrow’s Premier League game at Newcastle United? There have been “credible threats” to their safety.

Two weeks ago the players were attacked by a knife-wielding gang in Golders Green, north London. Talk was of an attempted carjacking. Ozil has a swanky motor (black Mercedes G-Class 4×4), but would the villains bother retuning for another go at it?

Arsenal are “providing the players and their families with ongoing support. The welfare of our players and their families is always a top priority. We have taken this decision following discussion with the players and their representatives. We look forward to welcoming the players back to the squad as soon as possible.”

And so the speculation. Is it to do with “Ozil’s recent high profile endorsement of Turkey’s Erdogan and his rejection of his adopted country, Germany?” asks one fan. Or is it because the police can’t nick scooter gangs?

Posted: 10th, August 2019 | In: Arsenal, News, Sports | Comment


Fairground workers say Norwich Cathedral ride is rigged

‘Down and down and down you go, where it stops, hell knows’

The country’s fairground workers might wonder how fair it is that Norwich Cathedral has installed a full-size helter skelter ride in the nave. The cathedral says the ride is “a creative way to share the story of the Bible”, particularly Proverbs 32 – 7-9: ‘£2 per person per ride. One rider per mat. No refunds.’

Says one fairground worker: ‘At least you know our games are rigged. With this mob you only find out if they’re above board when you’re dead. i wish we’d have thought of it first.’

In other news: the central aisle of Rochester Cathedral has also been converted into a crazy golf course.

Posted: 9th, August 2019 | In: News, Strange But True | Comment


Multi-millionaire Jeremy Corbyn attacks Boris Johnson’s ‘Millionaire Friends’

Jeremy Corbyn never made it to the big Google climate shindig. As a man with an estimated net worth of £3million, chances are he wasn’t rich enough to afford a private jet and thus matter. As the right sort of stinking rich attempt to buy their way into Heaven by offsetting carbon and preaching from an exclusive, sun-kissed holiday spot, Corbyn was busy bashing the wrong sort of stinking rich. The first version of a recent video lambasted Boris Johnson’s millionaire friends. But Jez came across as a bit self-hating. So he changed it to Boris’s ‘billionaire’ friends.

And he got that wrong, too.

A 2016 investigation by Greenpeace revealed that some of the biggest recipients of EU grants that year included Queen Elizabeth (£557,707) and the UK’s youngest billionaire, the Duke of Westminster (£437,434). Other aristocrats earning hundreds of thousands of pounds from the EU – just because they own farmland – included the Earl of Moray and the Earl of Plymouth. Billionaire Brexiteer Sir James Dyson was also among the top 100 recipients of EU farm money.

Where there’s muck, there’s gold.

PS: Corbyn’s billionaire mates are the good sort.

Hugo Chavez money


According to a Forbes article in 2015, Chavez was worth an “estimated $2 billion at the time of his death [in 2013]. It is not known how many trees he planted.

Posted: 9th, August 2019 | In: Money, News, Politicians | Comment


Still I Rise : Maya Angelou resurrected to sell helicopters to billionaires

Maya Angelu
‘A private chopper is a human right’

How do you celebrate the life and thoughts of Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014), the American poet and civil rights activist? Well, if you’re running the twitter account for Billionaire Magazine – “the Official Account for Billionaire Magazine. World’s Finest Marketplace. Buy & Sell Jet•Yacht•Supercar•Estates Non-Political” – you see her words as a tool with which to flog ridiculously expensive stuff.

“You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I’ll rise!” says Maya Angelou in Still I Rise – her words now stripped of context and placed in the mouth of a private helicopter.

Still I Rise
Maya Angelou – 1928-2014

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise

Posted: 8th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, The Consumer | Comment


Pass the Duchy: Luxembourg wants to legalise marijuana and let 12-year-olds smoke it

Things to do in Luxembourg No. 2: get stoned. The Grand Duchy wants to be the first nation in the European Union to legalise weed. The country’s Health Minister, Etienne Schneider, wants to regulate the cannabis market. “This drug policy we had over the last 50 years did not work,” says Schneider. “Forbidding everything made it just more interesting to young people.” But now it’s interesting to old people who want to cash in on the high.

Schneider and Justice Minister Félix Braz plan a “highly regulated structure”, including “prohibition on purchases by non-residents, as a way to avoid drug tourism”. In neighbouring Belgium it’s ok to possess up to 3g or cultivate of one plant. In neighbouring Germany prosecution is optional for possession of “small amounts”. Why would you bother heading to Luxembourg for a holiday, let alone a spliff? It’s full of accountants surfing tax loopholes.

Anyhow, the drug would be available legally to over 18s but minors aged between 12 and 17, says the Guardian, would not be criminalised for possessing five grams or less. School trips to Luxembourg might catch on…

Posted: 7th, August 2019 | In: News | Comment


UK Government profits from Canadian cannabis smokers

cannabis uk

At what point does the Government accept defeat in the war on cannabis? Glasgow food safety business R-Biopharm Rhône (RBR), a subsidiary of German parent company R-Biopharm, will supply test kits to a Canadian cannabis producer. The weed grower wants to rid their products of carcinogenic toxins. RBR makes kits that test for toxins in milk, spices, cereals and animal feeds. So why not put its skills to profit from the booming marijuana industry? Cannabis is legal in Canada. In the UK the law allows some medical use of the drug.

So here’s a renowned business based in the UK making money from weed. R-Biopharm Rhône product manager Claire Milligan tells the Herald: “Just like any other ingestible item, strict consumer protection legislation requires that cannabis products, including oils, cookies and cannabis plants themselves, should be tested for the presence of dangerous toxins. While the legality of cannabis products in the UK is currently the subject of wide-ranging debate, in those jurisdictions, such as Canada, certain states in the US, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands where consumption of cannabis products is permitted, testing for toxins remains of great importance. In the wake of the sale to our Canadian customer we anticipate further demand for our test kits in other regions where consumption of cannabis is legal as well as perhaps, at some stage, here in the UK.”

How do we feel about the UK doing business with companies whose produce is banned here? Any reputable British firm, which RBR certainly is, will pay taxes into the Treasury’s coffers. Some of that money will surely come from the Canada deal. Isn’t it a tad hypocritical of the UK Government to profit from the consumption of cannabis for non-medical use – the same drug it bans and arrests people for selling? How ethical is that?

Posted: 6th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, The Consumer | Comment