When the Epstein Files are released...

[Innula Zenovka]

Are there going to be any repercussions for that?

ETA: Nevermind.

Gordon Brown asks top civil servant to investigate Mandelson ‘leak to Epstein’ | Peter Mandelson | The Guardian

No more get-out clauses, no way back. It’s surely the end for Peter Mandelson, finally | John Crace | The Guardian

Financial Times: Police to review allegations against Mandelson in Epstein scandal (Evernote Link because paywall).

Certainly, on the face of it, there's an arguable case he's guilty of misconduct in public office. He's led a charmed life so far, bouncing back from scandal after scandal over the years, but this time his luck may have run out. Starmer is clearly furious about this, and rightly so.

 

[Free]

Allison Gill is on top of this last released batch (or what hasn't been released).

 

[Free]

Elon is "explaining" his appearance in the files.

Don’t You Dare ‘Misinterpret’ Elon Musk’s Epstein Emails. Just the Facts Are Bad Enough

Sorry, but what is the correct interpretation supposed to be?

gizmodo.com

“No one pushed harder than me to have the Epstein files released and I’m glad that has finally happened,” Elon Musk wrote on Saturday. He also now claims, “I had very little correspondence with Epstein and declined repeated invitations to go to his island or fly on his ‘Lolita Express’, but was well aware that some email correspondence with him could be misinterpreted and used by detractors to smear my name.”

Sorry but “misinterpreted”? Even if you do your absolute damndest to read this guy’s freshly released Epstein emails in a positive light, what you get is the story of a tech tycoon stating unambiguously that he wanted to attend an absolute rager on a sex criminal’s private island.

“What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?” Elon Musk asked Jeffrey Epstein on on Nov. 25, 2012.

 

[Free]

Who had "J.K. Rowling is in the Epstein Files" on your bingo card? Because yes, she is technically in the files.

JK Rowling Called Out After Inviting Jeffrey Epstein To A Children's Play — Years After His Child Sex Conviction

Freshly unsealed federal records have reignited outrage around JK Rowling after revealing that Jeffrey Epstein was quietly invited as a VIP to an exclusive Broadway dinner linked to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a decade after his child sex conviction.

While Rowling is not directly named in the email chain, the event formed part of her franchise's flagship Broadway expansion, placing renewed scrutiny on the social gatekeepers who protected Epstein long after his crimes were public knowledge.

The correspondence, released as part of a Department of Justice dataset, details an April 2018 exchange between prominent New York publicist Peggy Siegal and the production's organisers.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Marina Hyde in The Guardian: Never forget Epstein’s little helpers – the powerful men who knew about his crimes, and helped him out anyway

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Noam Chomsky in the Epstein files

Chomsky sympathized with Epstein over 'horrible' press treatment

Renowned American intellectual Noam Chomsky privately sympathized with Jeffrey Epstein over what he described as the "horrible way" the press treated the late sex offender, urging him in a 2019 email…

www.france24.com

Responding to an email from Epstein seeking advice on how to handle his "putrid press," Chomsky decried "the horrible way you are being treated in the press and public."

"What the vultures dearly want is a public response, which then provides a public opening for an onslaught of venomous attacks, many from just publicity seekers or cranks of all sorts," added Chomsky, who is now 97.

"That's particularly true now with the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women, which has reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder."

More in The Guardian

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

And now the Polish government entered the Epstein investigations, since Epstein "recruited" some girls in Poland. PM Donald Tusk will create a task force to do so, and also running checks if Russian intelligence worked with Epstein together, because Tusk thinks there are more than enough nuggets of hints out there which do suggest Russian involvement and collaboration in running the ring.

If Russia is involved Tusk considers it a threat to national security, because it would mean that Russia probably got enough smut to blackmail a lot of people in the west.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

More fun with Epstein: this is Joscha Bach, one of the best known German AI researchers. Also frequent speaker on CCC congresses.

It turns out that his career was heavily sponsored by Epstein, from whom he received over $1mn. Bach was constantly in touch with Epstein, also in private. And sometimes he asked Epstein for support.

Bach met Epstein in 2013, and profited heavily from the connection. Bach states that other scientists advised him to accept Epstein's support. As Bach states: "It was commonly accepted in the scientific community that Epstein didn't commit any crimes after his time in jail."

But in retrospect he should have been more cautious.

It also turns out that Epstein had an own office at Harvard. Bach on the other hand never had a contract with Harvard, and was entirely paid by Epstein. Bach says that Epstein just paid him and had no demands or rules attached to it.

Bach also emphasizes to have never participated at anything illegal, or being a witness of it. Regardsless his connection is enough for some backlashes he is facing now, like removal from CCC speaker slot in December last year.

(S+) Joscha Bach: Wie ein deutscher Forscher mit Epsteins Hilfe Karriere machte

Joscha Bach ist einer der renommiertesten deutschen KI-Forscher, offenbar hat er mehr als eine Million Dollar von Jeffrey Epstein erhalten. SPIEGEL-Recherchen zeigen: Der Kontakt reichte weit ins Private.

www.spiegel.de

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

The tasty geoduck!

 

[Veritable Quandry]

"Geo" pronounced "gooey" in this case, at least by everyone I know on the left coast.

 

[Essence Lumin]

The tasty geoduck!

That's Evergreen state college's mascot you are eating.

Even though Speedy has a degree, they are a life-long learner and continue to educate themselves alongside each incoming class of students, embodying the essence of Evergreen's commitment to education: accessible to all who are willing to dig deep.

Speedy digs attending campus events, sports games, and college traditions, cheering on Greeners and modeling what it means to let it all hang out. About their experience at Evergreen, the clam shared, "gurgle.....blurp..blurp".

 

[Noodles]

Ewe, a stripped naked duck.

Ewe, its not even a duck its a clam thing.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Damn... this should have been in the Food thread, ok no late night posting for me any longer!

 

[Innula Zenovka]

A much bigger story in the UK than in the US, of course, but the scandal surrounding the appointment of Peter Mandelson, who features in the recently-released files, as the UK's ambassador to Trumpistan in 2024 now threatens to engulf our beleaguered Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Financial Times: Mandelson and the money that never sleeps (Evernote because FT paywall).

The scandal also poses larger questions of how politics can protect itself from those who would corrupt it. One government figure says Epstein “had three circles: a money circle, a power circle and a sex circle”. The value for him lay in the intersections. But while the squalid third circle may be rare, the other two are all too recognisable.

This extreme case is overshadowed by Epstein’s monstrous crimes, but the essential point is that money will always find weaknesses to exploit. This is what the Epsteins of this world understand. Like hackers probing a network for vulnerabilities, money seeks out the weak spots in the body politic, the people it can seduce, tap for information, the person who can help with an introduction, the guy who will champion its cause.

Starmer was struggling before all this, but he's now in deep trouble, and rightly so, because it transpires that, before controversially appointing him as Ambassador to the US in 2024 he was aware Mandelson had maintained his friendship with Epstein after the latter's conviction in 2009. Starmer says Mandelson misled him about the depth of the relationship, but yesterday Parliament overruled him and forced the government to release all papers relating to the appointment to parliament's bipartisan intelligence and security committee. This won't happen immediately, but when it does, the committee will focus on what exactly Starmer did know before appointing Mandelson, what questions Mandelson was asked about Epstein, and how he answered them.

This is really serious stuff and will probably cost Starmer his job sooner rather than later.

From The Guardian:
Mandelson files will be published even if embarrassing to No 10, says ISC chair
What are files from Mandelson’s US ambassador appointment likely to reveal?

 

[Free]

Uhm...

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Uhm...

To be fair, the person claiming to be an Epstein victim seems to have some issues and is not the most credible of witnesses.

 

[Free]

To be fair

 

[Innula Zenovka]

OK -- it's pretty obvious the person making the report has some serious issues:

Another person that is alive and in the CIA is Virginia Guifre. I remember the same FBI agent telling me that they had to put her in the CIA because they would kill her. All this did was silence Virginia and the people that wanted her dead should be held accountable but instead the victims are silenced In 2008, my boss said to me "the FBI is on the phone; did you see James Bulger kidnap a child?". I said"' did". That night I was raped by Ron Desantis. I woke up naked on my floor tied up and beaten while James Bulger stood there with a gun. Then Ron Desantis Came in and raped me. He said by the time I remember him raping me, I'll be locked up as a psychopath! Then a woman came in and faked sex with me and that woman is Nancy Mace. James Bulger said he was going to put it on you porn. I couldn't remember this. This was my punishment for telling I am not a psychopath nor am I a predator. I am a victim of many rapists, these FBI agents. I got sold to be raped and never asked for this life.

 

[Free]

Well we solved that case.

 

[Casey Pelous]

OK -- it's pretty obvious the person making the report has some serious issues:

Radio station phone lines seem to attract folks with this particular flavor of what certainly appears to be schizophrenia; the hallmarks are frequent appearances of celebrities of some sort, the conspiracies, and, of course, the often lurid sexual content. Often, they were frequent callers. I had one woman caller whose obsession had to do with the New York Yankees. Not even the then-current Yankees, but the 1950s Yankees. Whitey Ford played a prominent role in her elaborate tales. The fact that he was on the East Coast and she was on the West Coast did little to dissuade her.

When you go into broadcasting, nobody mentions that you'll be doing bizarre mental health interventions while you're trying to do what is already a rather hectic and stressful job. Most of us would try to keep them talking so that maybe we could tweeze out enough personal info to at least get them a welfare check if not talk them into getting some more definitive care. Of course, her objective was not to get help. It was for me to do a big story exposing the 1950's Yankees for the fiends she believed they were.