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kelley » Today, 00:38 wrote:this seems somewhat astonishing: https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/14 ... monialism/
AUGUST 14, 2019

Epstein, Faction, and Neopatrimonialism
by DAN CORJESCU

"Faction: a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."

-- James Madison

Never has the word “conspiracy” been spoken so easily.
Never has the dark evil that is factionalism and Neopatrimonialism been on such stark display.
If you think Jeffrey Epstein, a man with an inordinate if strongly misguided lust for life, killed himself rather than was murdered by his erstwhile “friends and associates”; you still haven’t taken the red pill.

The writers of the Federalist Papers were famously concerned about the possibility of faction in the United States; their fear was founded in part by their understanding of human psychology and ancient history. They were rightly skeptical about the possibility of totally avoiding the rise of an organized collection of individuals who would capture the state and by implication spread their influence and power throughout the fabric of civil society.

Such a relatively large faction is in existence today, although it is, for the most part, hidden in its day to day workings. As the founding fathers well understood, nothing is more natural than a group of persons tacitly agreeing to work together to further their own private interests at the expense of all others who are not included in their surreptitious compact... [snip]

kelley » 12 minutes ago wrote:it seems the crew at Counterpunch may realize one or more of the 'factions' at hand are transnational in nature, and not so red, white, and blue.

In our conversation in 2015, you described his relationship with teenage girlfriends: “So many time I tried to stop him. I try to tell tell him my opinion about that. He don’t listen to me. That’s the reason why I’m not working for him no more. I make him do that — to let me go.” Do you remember saying that?

It’s not the teenage girls. I never see the teenage girls. I tell you I never see teenage girls.

Plenty of times when I work for him I never see anything unproper or teenage girls around him.

That’s what I say.

You told me he would get phone calls the night before and eight o’clock the police are going to come. He would get a heads up from local police.

[Silence.]

You told me that, Igor. Want me to read the quote?

Well, you can read whatever you want right now. Don’t just — you can put yourself in big trouble.

You said: “He always do something wrong. There was some nights in question. There was at home arrest and police, before they come to the house, they call him and tell him they coming in at eight o’clock in the morning. It’s all corruption you know. It’s all bullshit.”

Listen, don’t put yourself in trouble. Seriously.

We talked about this.

I understand we got this.

I’m telling you to give you a chance to remember because we talked about this stuff. I know it’s hard. I don’t know what you mean about “put myself in trouble.”

Let that go. Seriously. Let that go.

Man thinks 'cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please
And if things don't change soon, he will
Oh, man has invented his doom
First step was touching the moon

Now, there's a woman on my block
She just sit there as the night grows still
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?

seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 14, 2019 10:12 pm wrote:

Hold on. When did you find out he died?

Saturday or Sunday or whenever.

What did you think when you found that out?

What did I think?

Yeah.

Are you sure you want to hear what I am going to think?

Yeah.

Somebody helped him to do that.

You think somebody helped him kill himself?

Yeah.

Okay. Why?

Listen, you know, that’s going a little too deep.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08 ... urce=ifttt

I've treated suicidal prisoners — Jeffrey Epstein's death is a medical, security disgrace
No matter what happened in Jeffrey Epstein's cell, medial personnel and prison authorities clearly failed in their duty to monitor and treat him.

As a physician who has worked with prisoners as well as suicidal patients, I was shocked by the strange circumstances surrounding sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein’s death by apparent hanging in his cell. We may never know for sure all the details of what happened, though I expect further review of the autopsy results to determine once and for all whether this death was self-inflicted.

Earlier in my career, I worked on both a psychiatric ward and a prison ward. In both places, the regular surveillance was sufficient (at least every 15 minutes on the psych ward) so that suicide was almost impossible. For someone who, like Epstein, had apparently made a suicide attempt less than three weeks before, it is almost inconceivable to me that he could possibly be without diligent, frequent observation and without surveillance cameras constantly monitoring him.

How could he be placed in a cell, according to the New York Post's unnamed source, with a bunk bed to hang himself on and a strong enough bed sheet to do it with? If one cellmate was transferred, as sources told The New York Times, why wasn’t he immediately replaced with another?

'Serious irregularities' raise eyebrows

It's true that suicide is the leading cause of death in jails and, in 2014, hit a 15-year high in federal and state prisons, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. But although accused sexual offenders are particularly at risk for both suicides and homicides, the Metropolitan Correctional Center where Epstein was imprisoned has had only one reported suicide over the past 40 years, the gangster Louis Turra, 21 years ago.


Despite its reputation for squalor and overcrowding, the corrections center is not known for suicide.

What is most disturbing to me, as a physician, is the way Epstein went from being on suicide watch starting July 23 to going for long periods without being observed just six days later, sources told The Times. Having treated depression for many years, I know suicidal ideation doesn’t turn on and off like a switch. A person does not want to end it all one day — staring down news as bleak as Epstein faced — and then six days later you are suddenly stable and out of danger. Whoever took Epstein off this watch made a very poor judgement at the very least. And the latest reports by sources of The Times that guards fell asleep for possibly hours while on watch and then falsified records is simply inexcusable.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, though it is conceivable to me that the “serious irregularities” Attorney General William Barr is concerned about could possibly turn out to reveal that Epstein’s was not a simple suicide, that there were other actors in this tragedy. Time, along with the final autopsy report, will tell. It is clear that there were many victims in Epstein's life who loathed him for legitimate reasons, and many others who stood to lose more by his survival than by his death.

Doctors try to save everyone

But no matter what happened inside Epstein’s cell, both the medical personnel and the prison authorities who were involved had the obligation to bring him to a safer place, whether that meant more enhanced psychiatric observation inside the prison, or transferring him with enhanced security to an inpatient psychiatric facility. There was plenty of warning that this could happen.

Children deserve more than we give them: I lost a student to sex trafficking and murder. We woefully fail to protect our children.

After all, we don’t judge our patients, no matter how repulsive their actions or the allegations against them are. Doctors and nurses are simply assigned to try to keep them alive. I have taken care of a perpetrator of assault chained to a stretcher in the emergency room right next to his victim suffering from a gunshot wound, and I have had to do my best to save both without hesitation.

The prison officials who took Jeffrey Epstein off his suicide watch prematurely, relegating him to almost certain death, did not do the prison system and how it handles mental health emergencies any favors.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/ ... 007609001/

Where Is Epstein’s ‘Lady of the House’? Ghislaine Maxwell Mystery Deepens
Tom MetcalfAugust 15, 2019, 12:44 AM CDT
business

Epstein Autopsy Deepens Mystery Over His Death, Post Reports

By
Xiaoying Zhao

An autopsy found that Jeffrey Epstein sustained multiple breaks in his neck bones, deepening the mystery surrounding his death last week, the Washington Post reported, citing people familiar with the findings.

Among the bones broken in the late financier’s neck was the hyoid bone, located near the Adam’s apple for men, the newspaper said. While such fractures can occur in those who hang themselves, especially if they are older, they are more common in victims of homicide by strangulation, the Post reported, citing forensic experts and studies on the subject.

The office of New York City’s chief medical examiner, Barbara Sampson, didn’t comment on the injuries found in the autopsy, the Post said. After completing the autopsy, Sampson listed the cause as pending, according to the paper.

The death of Epstein, who was charged with molesting underage girls and sex trafficking, has prompted outrage among lawyers seeking justice for victims and set off a probe by the U.S. Department of Justice. Authorities are reviewing apparent irregularities related to Epstein’s death, including whether two guards responsible for him slept through checks of the prisoner they were supposed to conduct every 30 minutes and then falsified records to cover up the lapse, according to a person familiar with the probe.

The 66-year-old Epstein was found unresponsive in his Manhattan jail cell about 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 10 after an apparent suicide attempt. He was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

His death came less than a day after a court unsealed documents in a civil suit, which allege he and a friend sent a woman to have sex with a former governor, a former U.S. senator and an asset manager when she was a minor. All of them said the allegations were false.

A self-described “collector” of rich and powerful people, Epstein had links to a Who’s Who of prominent political and business figures. That circle, including former U.S. President Bill Clinton and billionaire Leslie Wexner, all distanced themselves from the financier after his arrest in July. Among those who once socialized with him was future President Donald Trump.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ry-deepens

Epstein traveled to Cuba at Castro’s invitation, former Colombian president says
BY NORA GÁMEZ TORRES AND BEN WIEDER
AUGUST 14, 2019 05:34 PM, UPDATED 3 HOURS 22 MINUTES AGO

Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein has been a free man, despite sexually abusing dozens of underage girls according to police and prosecutors. His victims have never had a voice, until now. BY EMILY MICHOT | JULIE K. BROWN
Millionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of sexually abusing minors and died last week by apparent suicide in a federal lockup in Manhattan, traveled to Cuba at Fidel Castro’s invitation, according to Colombia’s former president, Andrés Pastrana, who said Wednesday he accompanied him on the trip.

“Amid journalistic revelations about horrifying and reprehensible sex scandals of financier Jeffrey Epstein, a trip of mine on his plane to Nassau, Bahamas has appeared, to transfer to the final destination of Havana, Cuba, invited by President Fidel Castro,” Pastrana said in a statement posted on Twitter on Wednesday.

“Mr. Jeffrey Epstein left Cuba a day or two later; I stayed on the island,” he added.

The trip to Cuba would have taken place in March 2003 when Pastrana was no longer president of Colombia.

Pastrana said he met Epstein in Ireland at an Academy of Achievements’ summit attended by personalities such as Bill Clinton and Bono. The event took place June 6-9, 2002.

Epstein’s private planes’ flight records, released by one of his former pilots, David Rodgers, show that one of Epstein’s jets arrived in Dublin on June 7, 2002, and left the next day, with the millionaire on board.

The Colombian politician denied having been at Epstein’s “now infamous” private island in the Caribbean, off the coast of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, where the millionaire took famous guests allegedly to have sex with minors.

Flight records show that Pastrana was aboard one of Epstein’s private planes that left on March 20, 2003, from New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport headed to Palm Beach International Airport. Pastrana also appears in the manifest of another flight the next day from Palm Beach to Nassau International Airport in the Bahamas.

Records show Epstein, his girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, and model executive Jean-Luc Brunel, on both flights. According to the documents, they all returned to Palm Beach, without Pastrana, from the Bahamas on March 23.

The girls who were abused by Jeffrey Epstein and the cops who championed their cause remain angry over what they regard as a gross injustice, while Epstein's employees and those who engineered his non-prosecution agreement have prospered. By Marta Oliver Craviotto | Emily Michot | Julie K. Brown
The trip to Cuba, however, does not appear either in Rodgers’ records or in the records kept by the Federal Aviation Administration and obtained by the Miami Herald.

If Epstein traveled to the island, he might have wanted to avoid public scrutiny, since Americans are banned from traveling to Cuba for tourism.

“It was probably unlawful travel,” said attorney Robert Muse, an expert on the U.S. embargo against Cuba. “At that time, there were very few categories of authorized trips, and it is not clear that he would have qualified under one of them.”

Under the George W. Bush administration, there were only a few categories of American travelers allowed to travel to the island, including Cuban Americans on family visits and academics to do research, the lawyer said.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation ... 09227.html

7:34 AM PT -- Jeffrey Epstein's blood vessels in his eyes popped when his air supply was cut off by the bed sheet that was wrapped around his neck ... this according to law enforcement sources briefed on the case. We're told he suffered petechial hemorrhaging, caused when someone hangs himself or is strangled or smothered, but authorities are confident this was a hanging.


We're told the bed sheets were tied to the top of a bunk bed and Epstein either hurled himself off the top bunk or had his feet to the ground and leaned forward to cut off his air supply. Authorities believe the former is true, because throwing himself off the top bunk and falling violently to the ground could explain why his hyoid bone was fractured.