reddit | "Marc Dutroux (born 6 November 1956) is a Belgian serial killer and child molester, convicted of having kidnapped, tortured and sexually abused six girls from 1995 to 1996, ranging in age from 8 to 19, four of whom he murdered. He was also convicted of having killed a suspected former accomplice, Bernard Weinstein, later proved insane. He was arrested in 1996, four years after the disappearance of his victims had begun, and has been in prison ever since, though he briefly escaped in April 1998.
Dutroux's widely publicised trial took place in 2004. A number of shortcomings in the Dutroux investigation caused widespread discontent in Belgium with the country's criminal justice system, and the ensuing scandal was one of the reasons for the reorganisation of Belgium's law enforcement agencies."
There were many many extremely disturbing things about his trial;
"On the witness stand, Jean-Marc Connerotte (fr), the original judge of the case, broke down in tears when he described "the bullet-proof vehicles and armed guards needed to protect him against the shadowy figures determined to stop the full truth coming out. Never before in Belgium has an investigating judge at the service of the king been subjected to such pressure. We were told by police that [murder] contracts had been taken out against the magistrates." Connerotte testified that the investigation was seriously hampered by protection of suspects by people in the government. "Rarely has so much energy been spent opposing an inquiry," he said. He believed that the Mafia had taken control of the case."
Dutroux himself claimed that;
"There is a well-grounded [paedophile] ring," he said. "I maintained regular contact with people in this ring. However, the law does not want to investigate this lead."
Recently in my home country(The United Kingdom) there has been a lot of news surrounding underground paedophile rings.;
Quite a few MPs(conveniently deceased) as well as one MI5 agent have been indicated as involved.
wikileaks forum |WikiLeaks in 2009 published a File called "Dutroux dossier summary, written down in 1235 pages, from the year 2005" http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Belgium:_Dutroux_dossier_summary,_1235_pages,_2005 We started to translate this File into english (it is written down in French), to get the most possible impact into this children trafficing ring and the people behind the case. You will find soon here the first sites that hass been tanslated and we will release every page, one by one, until this document is fully public. Available to everyone in the world and every one visits the Wikileaks Forum.
nakedcapitalism | The New York Department of Financial Services, which made its mark
under Benjamin Lawsky by embarrassing Federal regulators via its
aggressive pursuit of big bank money laundering, and later went after
mortgage servicing misconduct, is back in the headlines. It’s dinged
Deutsche Bank for $150 million for playing fast and loose with
anti-money-laundering requirements on Jeffrey Epstein’s accounts, a bank
in Cyprus accused of money laundering and connections to the Russian
mob, and Danske Estonia, which conducted what was arguably Europe’s
biggest money laundering operation. We’ve embedded the consent order at
the end of the post and focus this post on Jeffrey Epstein, although for
anyone in the banking business, the entire order is a good read.
Even though cynics have pointed out that the US likes to come down
harder on misbehaving foreign banks than home grown ones, Department of
Financial Services has clout over foreign banks because pretty much all
of them choose to organize their operations through a New York branch.
Long-standing readers may recall that Lawsky caused outrage in the
Beltway when he ordered the CEO of serial
anti-money-laundering-regulation abuser Standard Chartered to appear in
his office and explain why his New York banking license should not be
revoked. That was the equivalent of a death threat. No New York banking
license means no dollar clearing, which would end Standard Chartered’s
international operations.
In the past, Federal regulators embarrassed by the Department of
Financial Services’ enforcement actions would either join the DFS effort
or launch a parallel one and in either case, collect additional fines.
So far, there’s no evidence of that happening with this DFS consent
order with Deutsche.
One has to wonder if Deutsche is truly as incompetent and
disorganized as it appears in the DFS account, or whether the bank was
so caught with its pants down that this was the best defense it could
muster. For instance, if you read carefully, you can infer that someone
who had been on the Epstein team was able to produce a copy of an e-mail
from a co-head of Wealth Management Americas saying the head of
anti-money laundering and the General Counsel had said Epstein didn’t
represent a reputation risk despite his sex offender warts and he was
good to go as long as “nothing further is identified”. Deutsche
maintained it had no record of that e-mail and claimed there had been no
initial review by the Americas Reputational Risk Committee.
Similarly, even though Epstein’s accounts were designated high risk,
which supposedly called for close supervision, the bank looked past
obvious red flags. For instance, Epstein and his minions regularly wired
$10,000 or more to three co-conspirators named in the press. His
“Butterfly Trust” had these co-conspirators among its beneficiaries, as
well as women with “Eastern European surnames” (this after the press had
alleged that Epstein had been procuring underaged women from Eastern
Europe). The Order makes clear the trust looks a, if not the, payment
channel for Esptein’s sex trafficking via over 120 wires for $2.65
million.
Forbes | NASA is about to begin building its latest spacecraft. Called
“Psyche” it will explore a 140 miles/226 kilometers-wide asteroid called
“16 Psyche.” Today it’s passed a major milestone.
Why is NASA going to ‘16 Psyche?’
Located in the Solar System’s main asteroid belt between Mars and
Jupiter, metal-rich 16 Psyche is thought to be the exposed metallic
iron, nickel and gold core of a protoplanet. Most asteroids are rocky or icy.
The Psyche mission is part of NASA’s Discovery Program of low-cost robotic space missions.
16 Psyche’s core is tantalisingly similar to Earth’s, which means that it could be the heart of a dead planet that lost its rocky outer layers or suffered from violent collisions.
The metals that make-up this one-of-a-kind asteroid could, according to some, be worth $10,000 quadrillion.
Due to launch from Pad 39A at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in August 2022 on top of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket,
fly-past Mars in 2023, and begin orbiting the asteroid in January
2026, Psyche has just passed its “critical design review” stage.
Now the mission moves to actually making the space hardware.
“It’s one of the most intense reviews a mission goes through in its
entire life cycle,” said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, principal investigator for
the Psyche mission. “And we passed with flying colors. The challenges
are not over, and we’re not at the finish line, but we’re running
strong.”
The team now has to build its three science instruments:
a magnetometer to measure the asteroid’s magnetic field.
a multispectral imager to capture images of its surface and data, about what its made of, and its geological features.
spectrometers that analyze the neutrons and gamma rays coming from the surface to reveal what the asteroid is made of.
Assembly and testing of the full robotic spacecraft begins in
February 2021, and everything has to be in the clean room at NASA’s Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) by April 2021.
The main spacecraft chassis is now being built at Maxar Technologies in Palo Alto, California.
BusinessInsider | Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao says Ghislaine Maxwell was rubbing elbows
with Silicon Valley's elites in 2011 — and Pao believes people
suspected Maxwell's ties to child trafficking at the time and didn't
care.
Maxwell was arrested
last week and is awaiting trial for four criminal charges related to
procuring and transporting minors for illegal sex acts. Prosecutors say
Maxwell participated in a sex trafficking operation alongside her
partner Jeffrey Epstein.
Pao, a former partner at venture capital
firm Kleiner Perkins, said Maxwell was at the firm's holiday party in
2011, more than two years after Epstein was first convicted
of soliciting sex from a 14 year old. Maxwell was Epstein's long-time
girlfriend and associate at the time but did not face any criminal
charges prior to her 2020 arrest.
"[Maxwell] was at the Kleiner
holiday party in 2011, but I had no desire to meet her much less have a
photo taken with her," Pao wrote in a tweet,
screenshotted and reposted by reporter Lachlan Markay. "We knew about
her supplying underage girls for sex, but I guess that was fine with the
'cool' people who managed the tightly controlled guest list."
Pao set her Twitter account to private Monday morning after sending
the tweet. When reached for comment by Business Insider, Pao shared two
additional tweets that she subsequently posted clarifying her remarks.
In one tweet, Pao linked to a Daily Mail report published in March 2011 in which Epstein's victims accused Maxwell of participating in the abuse.
"To
be clear, the press had described her as supplying underage girls for
sex, but she had not been charged so I guess it would be more accurate
to say we 'suspected' v 'knew,'" Pao wrote.
According to a 2011 Business Insider report,
the Kleiner Perkins holiday party that year drew esteemed guests
including former Vice President Al Gore, Apple VP of Engineering Mike
Abbott, and former HP chairman Ray Lane.
A Kleiner Perkins spokesperson declined to comment.
dailymail |Ghislaine Maxwell has a secret stash of Jeffrey Epstein's
twisted sex tapes and will use the footage as an insurance policy to
save herself, a former friend exclusively revealed to DailyMail.com.
Maxwell,
58, was arrested at her hideout in Bradford, New Hampshire last
Thursday. She was charged with six federal crimes, including enticement
of minors, sex trafficking and perjury.
The
British socialite was arguably Epstein's closest friend and she is
alleged to have acted as his madam, accused of securing underage girls
for the multi-millionaire, who reportedly kept evidence of his perverted
sex acts against the minors.
When officials raided Epstein's Manhattan
townhouse after his arrest last July, they found thousands of graphic
photos that included images of underage girls and a safe filled with
compact discs labeled 'nude girls', according to authorities.
Maxwell's
former friend explained: 'Ghislaine has always been as cunning as they
come. She wasn't going to be with Epstein all those years and not have
some insurance.
'The secret stash of
sex tapes I believe Ghislaine has squirreled away could end up being her
get out of jail card if the authorities are willing to trade. She has
copies of everything Epstein had. They could implicate some twisted
movers and shakers.'
They added: 'If Ghislaine goes down, she's going to take the whole damn lot of them with her.'
The former friend continued: 'Not only did
Epstein like to capture himself with underage girls on camera – he
wanted to make sure he had something to hold over the rich and powerful
men who took advantage of his sick largesse.'
'I'll
bet anything that once it comes out that Ghislaine has those tapes
these men will be quaking in their Italian leather boots.
'Ghislaine
made sure that she socked away thumb drives of it all. She knows where
all the bodies are buried and she'll use whatever she had to save her
own a**.'
tatler | The news comes following a public back and forth between the US
Department of Justice and Prince Andrew’s legal team over the royal’s
alleged lack of cooperation in the ongoing investigations into Epstein.
But one of the US prosecutors leading the enquiries, Geoffrey Berman,
has now been sacked from his role as Attorney for the Southern District
of New York by Donald Trump after refusing to stand down.
According to the Times, the US Attorney General,
William Barr, asked President Trump to remove Berman – who had also
overseen the prosecution of a number of Trump’s associates. Berman
initially responded by stating that he had ‘no intention of resigning’
after Trump ally Barr unexpectedly announced that Berman was ‘stepping
down’.
Earlier in June it was reported that the US Department
of Justice had asked the Home Office to help it question Andrew over his
links to Epstein. The Duke of York’s legal team accused the DoJ of
‘breaching their own confidentiality rules’, claiming that the royal had
‘offered his assistance as a witness’ on at least three occasions this
year.
Berman retaliated by stating that Andrew had
‘yet again sought to falsely portray himself to the public as eager and
willing to cooperate.’ He added that in fact, the Duke ‘has not given an
interview to federal authorities, has repeatedly declined our request
to schedule such an interview, and nearly four months ago informed us
unequivocally – through the very same counsel who issued today's release
– that he would not come in for such an interview… If Prince Andrew is,
in fact, serious about cooperating with the ongoing federal
investigation, our doors remain open, and we await word of when we
should expect him.’
It was subsequently reported that
Andrew would not cooperate with the Epstein investigation unless
American investigators offer him ‘an olive branch’. The Duke of York has
consistently denied any wrongdoing in regards to his links with his
former friend.
dailymail | Speaking to The Sun,
Epstein's former employer Steven Hoffenberg said the paedophile's
ex-girlfriend Maxwell 'knows everything' and will 'totally co-operate'
after her arrest.
Hoffenberg, a
convicted fraudster who employed Epstein at Towers Financial in the
1980s, said 'there's a lot of people very worried' about what Maxwell
could reveal. 'She's going to cooperate and be very important. Andrew is
definitely, definitely concerned,' Hoffenberg said.
On
Thursday, a source close to the Duke of York's legal team told
DailyMail.com that he was 'bewildered' by prosecutors' remarks that they
wanted to speak to him.
'The Duke’s
team remains bewildered given that we have twice communicated with the
DOJ in the last month and to-date, we have had no response.'
On
Thursday, Acting US Attorney Audrey Strauss said the investigation into
Epstein's decades of abuse is ongoing and that she'd 'welcome' Prince
Andrew 'coming in to provide a statement', prompting speculation that he
may among people investigators may focus their attention on next.
'We
would welcome Prince Andrew coming in to talk to us. We would like to
have the benefit of his statement. Our doors remain open. We would
welcome him coming in and giving us an opportunity to hear his
statement,' she said.
It opens the
door to questions of jurisdiction and whether or not US Attorney Strauss
may charge for alleged incidents that happened in London and not
America. Among the claims in the indictment is that Maxwell groomed one
of the victims in London. At her press conference, Strauss said some of
the sexual abuse also happened at Maxwell's house in London.
US
attorney Lisa Bloom, who represents one of Maxwell's accusers, said
'all others accused of enabling Jeffrey Epstein's predations must
immediately be brought to justice as well'.
'Maxwell's
brutal, ruthless behaviour caused my client tremendous pain,' Ms Bloom
said in a statement, adding that she and her client applauded the
socialite's 'long overdue arrest'.
One
Epstein accuser, Michelle Licata, has previously voiced hopes that
prosecutors looking into Epstein were 'going to start digging into his
life... and start pulling out this spider web of people that were
related to it', according to the New York Post.
Former
federal prosecutor Jessica Roth told Bloomberg: 'There is no way for
prosecutors to present a case against her without going into all the
evidence they had against Epstein, because the charges here are
intertwined.
'The original indictment
against Jeffrey Epstein made it clear that he didn’t act alone and that
the government had evidence that other people were also involved.'
Celebrating
Maxwell's arrest, Prince Andrew's accuser, Roberts said last night:
'Thank you to the FBI, Southern District of New York and anyone involved
in the arrest of this insidious creature. Hope the judge throws the
book at her. So so so happy- she’s finally where she belongs.'
bloomberg | Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime friend of Jeffrey Epstein arrested
Thursday for helping him sexually abuse underage girls, could wind up in
the same jail where he committed suicide last year.
Maxwell,
58, was arrested early Thursday morning in New Hampshire and is set for
an afternoon hearing in federal court there. Federal prosecutors in
Manhattan, who are handling the case, are opposing bail and seeking to
have her held in custody before trial.
“We will be seeking detention,” Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey
Strauss in Manhattan said in a press conference announcing charges.
Prosecutors said Maxwell helped Epstein entice girls as young as 14 into
sex from 1994 through 1997, then lied about it under oath in 2016.
Prosecutors warn that Maxwell has a “strong incentive” to flee if
she’s not detained because she faces years in prison. “That risk is only
amplified by the defendant’s extensive international ties, her
citizenship in two foreign countries, her wealth, and her lack of
meaningful ties to the United States,”
they wrote in a detention memo. “In short, Maxwell has three passports,
large sums of money, extensive international connections, and
absolutely no reason to stay” in the U.S.
Back to New York
Unless
the judge in New Hampshire releases her on bail, Maxwell will either be
held overnight in a local jail there or transported immediately back to
New York, said Jack Donson, a consultant who formerly worked for the
federal Bureau of Prisons. In New York, she would likely be transferred
to one of two federal lockups, the Metropolitan Correctional Center in
Lower Manhattan or the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
Newsweek | "I oppose the destruction of evidence that may contain smoking gun
proof that my false accuser made up her story," Dershowitz said. "I want
all the evidence preserved because I have absolutely nothing to hide. I
did nothing wrong. The evidence to be destroyed may also contain proof
of wrongdoing by others. It should be preserved for appeal and for
history. Destroying evidence risks destroying truth."
Upon
returning from a trip to France in 2019, Epstein was arrested.
Indictment documents alleged that Epstein had "sexually exploited and
abused dozens of minor girls at his homes in Manhattan, New York, and
Palm Beach, Florida, among other locations." Epstein also allegedly
"created a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually
exploit." Investigators also reported finding incriminating photographs
of underaged naked girls inside a safe in Epstein's Manhattan home.
Giuffre
claimed that she had been brought into Epstein's circle by Epstein's
lover Ghislaine Maxwell. While involved with Epstein, Giuffre alleged
that she had been involved in sexual relations with Prince Andrew while
she was 17 years old at Epstein's behest.
Prince Andrew denied the allegations, saying in a 2019 statement that he
"deplores the exploitation of any human being and the suggestion he
would condone, participate in or encourage and such behavior is
abhorrent."
Epstein pleaded not guilty to the charges. While awaiting trial, Epstein
died by hanging in his prison cell. After it was discovered that prison
guards had failed to perform safety checks on Epstein, some believed
that Epstein had actually been murdered. However, the coroner officially
ruled Epstein's death a suicide.
nbcnewyork | Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite and heiress who became a
confidante of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and was later
implicated in his alleged sexual crimes, has been arrested by the FBI.
She was arrested in Bradford, New Hampshire around 8:30 a.m. Thursday
on charges she conspired with Epstein to sexually abuse minors, and is
expected to appear in a federal court later today.
The six-count indictment in Manhattan federal court alleges that
Maxwell helped Epstein groom girls as young as 14 years old, going back
as far as 1994. She faces up to 35 years in prison.
"This case against Ghislaine Maxwell is the prequel to the earlier
case we brought against Jeffrey Epstein," Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney
Audrey Strauss said at a news conference on the indictment. The FBI
said that it had been tracking her movements for some time, though she
was not indicted until June 29.
greatgameindia | According to a secret transcript that was just declassified, one of the
spies the FBI deployed against George Papadopoulos said that Israelis
and U.S. Jews are “all f—ing spies,” referred to them as “f—ing
c—suckers,” and said they should all be executed. The declassified
transcript published on Tuesday revealed a “confidential human source”
(CHS) from the FBI quoted as saying that Israeli Mossad spies need to be fucking kicked out of USA.
The 206-page transcript captured conversation between Papadopoulos
and an unidentified CHS, seemingly across one continuous episode on
November 26, 2016. George Demetrios Papadopoulos is a former member of
the foreign policy advisory panel to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential
campaign.
On October 5, 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to making false
statements to FBI agents about the timing and the possible significance
of his contacts in 2016 relating to U.S.–Russia relations and the Donald
Trump presidential campaign. He served twelve days in federal prison,
then was placed on a 12-month supervised release.
The FBI claimed to have begun surveillance of the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016. Papadopoulos told the Daily Caller that the CHS is named Jeffrey Wiseman.
Last year, one of the most high-profile Israeli spy network in the US
was brought down by American intelligence. This secret high-society
elite group was recently exposed on the global stage with the arrest of
the sex-trafficking kingpin Jeffrey Epstein.
Although, Epstein is portrayed as just another billionaire pedophile, he
was actually a high-class Israeli spy. He used perverted sexual desires
as a cover to corrupt and infiltrate higher echelons of power in
government and businesses (including in India). This is the source of
political sex-scandals and video-tapes which surface now and then when
someone refuses to obey orders.
salon | "It's not just the 'Terrorist Surveillance Program,'" agrees Gregory
T. Nojeim from the Center for Democracy and Technology, referring to the
Bush administration's misleading name for the NSA's warrantless
wiretapping program. "We need a broad investigation on the way all the
moving parts fit together. It seems like we're always looking at little
chunks and missing the big picture."
A prime area of inquiry for a sweeping new investigation would be the
Bush administration's alleged use of a top-secret database to guide its
domestic surveillance. Dating back to the 1980s and known to government
insiders as "Main Core," the database reportedly collects and stores --
without warrants or court orders -- the names and detailed data of
Americans considered to be threats to national security.
According to several former U.S. government officials with extensive
knowledge of intelligence operations, Main Core in its current
incarnation apparently contains a vast amount of personal data on
Americans, including NSA intercepts of bank and credit card transactions
and the results of surveillance efforts by the FBI, the CIA and other
agencies. One former intelligence official described Main Core as "an
emergency internal security database system" designed for use by the
military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the
Constitution or the imposition of martial law. Its name, he says, is
derived from the fact that it contains "copies of the 'main core' or
essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced
by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community."
Some of the former U.S. officials interviewed, although they have no
direct knowledge of the issue, said they believe that Main Core may have
been used by the NSA to determine who to spy on in the immediate
aftermath of 9/11. Moreover, the NSA's use of the database, they say,
may have triggered the now-famous March 2004 confrontation between the
White House and the Justice Department that nearly led Attorney General
John Ashcroft, FBI director William Mueller and other top Justice
officials to resign en masse.
The Justice Department officials who objected to the legal basis for
the surveillance program -- former Deputy Attorney General James B.
Comey and Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel
-- testified before Congress last year about the 2004 showdown with the
White House. Although they refused to discuss the highly classified
details behind their concerns, the New York Times later reported
that they were objecting to a program that "involved computer searches
through massive electronic databases" containing "records of the phone
calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans."
According to William Hamilton, a former NSA intelligence officer who
left the agency in the 1970s, that description sounded a lot like Main
Core, which he first heard about in detail in 1992. Hamilton, who is the
president of Inslaw Inc., a computer services firm with many clients in
government and the private sector, says there are strong indications
that the Bush administration's domestic surveillance operations use Main
Core.
Hamilton's company Inslaw is widely respected in the law enforcement
community for creating a program called the Prosecutors' Management
Information System, or PROMIS. It keeps track of criminal investigations
through a powerful search engine that can quickly access all stored
data components of a case, from the name of the initial investigators to
the telephone numbers of key suspects. PROMIS, also widely used in the
insurance industry, can also sort through other databases fast, with
results showing up almost instantly. "It operates just like Google,"
Hamilton told me in an interview in his Washington office in May.
Since the late 1980s, Inslaw has been involved in a legal dispute
over its claim that Justice Department officials in the Reagan
administration appropriated the PROMIS software. Hamilton claims that
Reagan officials gave PROMIS to the NSA and the CIA, which then adapted
the software -- and its outstanding ability to search other databases --
to manage intelligence operations and track financial transactions.
Over the years, Hamilton has employed prominent lawyers to pursue the
case, including Elliot Richardson, the former attorney general and
secretary of defense who died in 1999, and C. Boyden Gray, the former
White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush. The dispute has never
been settled. But based on the long-running case, Hamilton says he
believes U.S. intelligence uses PROMIS as the primary software for
searching the Main Core database.
strategic-culture | The royal family in the UK is having its very foundations shaken by
both the controversial departure of Prince Harry and Meghan and now
startling new revelations which compromise Prince Andrew even further,
since his “car crash” interview with BBC, over his alleged relationship
with a sex-trafficked child prostitute working for Jeffrey Epstein.
Andrew had always denied any link whatsoever with the then named
Virginia Roberts who was in just 17 when the main allegation – that
Epstein flew her to London in March 2001 for her to have sex with the
British royal – was brought against him. Central to that allegation was a
photo taken by Ghislaine Maxwell in her London home on the same night
in question which Andrew claims is fake.
Roberts claims that she was forced into the act by Epstein and
Maxwell and has gone on the record to talk about the intimate details of
the incident, but her case have been light on witnesses or those who
can corroborate her allegations. Until now.
Her shocking claims are that Maxwell and Epstein were running a high
class sex trafficking organisation which targeted powerful, influential
individuals, which some might speculate was part of a Mossad run ‘honey
trap’ – a blackmail ring which made Epstein hugely powerful and in a
position to ask from the same targets favours, or for highly valuable
information which could support its agenda.
In just a few days in mid February, Prince Andrew already feeble case
which he was clinging on to – that he had no link whatsoever with
Roberts – was shattered though, which in itself raises a number of
questions over who is protecting the British royal. And at what price?
First off came the accusation by a palace security guard in London
who has challenged Andrew’s claim to be in another part of the country
(far from the capital) on the night of the alleged sexual incident.
According to the security officer, Andrew returned to Buckingham Palace
in the early hours and shouted at the top of his voice at the palace
gates for them to be opened.
But far more damning is the testimony of a telecoms man who was
employed by Epstein on his private Caribbean island who a British
tabloid interviewed days later, who identifies both Prince Andrew and
Roberts being intimate with one another and how she appeared to be like a
child “hiding behind an adult” sometime around 2001 or thereafter.
There is nothing quite so powerful in a legal case which Roberts (now
Giuffre) is preparing than eye witnesses who can stand in the witness
box. And the emergence of Steve Scully will be seen as a massive blow to
Andrew’s claims now. The FBI too will find it hard to ignore Scully’s
allegations.
rutherford | Emboldened by the citizenry’s inattention and willingness to tolerate
its abuses, the government has weaponized one national crisis after
another in order to expands its powers.
The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration,
asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes,
eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate
responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of
compliance and control in the police state’s hands.
It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be—civil
unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order,
purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health
emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”—as long as it
allows the government to justify all manner of government tyranny in
the so-called name of national security.
Now we find ourselves on the brink of a possible coronavirus contagion.
I’ll leave the media and the medical community to speculate about the
impact the coronavirus will have on the nation’s health, but how will
the government’s War on the Coronavirus impact our freedoms?
For a hint of what’s in store, you can look to China—our role model for all things dystopian—where the contagion started.....
....We’re not quite there yet. But that moment of reckoning is getting closer by the minute.
In the meantime, we’ve got an epidemic to survive, so go ahead and
wash your hands. Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze. And stock up
on whatever you might need to survive this virus if it spreads to your
community.
We are indeed at our most vulnerable right now, but as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it’s the American Surveillance State—not the coronavirus—that poses the greatest threat to our freedoms.
NYPost | More eyes are reading about Ghislaine Maxwell than seeing her. Now we
hear from her longtime, oldtime friend/acquaintance Christina Oxenberg.
“I remember it: 1997. Never forget it. We were alone. Pacing around
her living room, hands on her hips, the defiance of a champion
gladiator, she said many things. All creepy. Unorthodox. Strange. I
could not believe whatever she was saying was real.
“Stuff like: ‘Jeffrey and I have everyone on video tape!’
“I didn’t have it in me to ask anything additional. Like, if she’d
actually had the actual consent of those people she videotaped. Or even
who they were. I wish I had asked. At the time, I heard a lot of things,
none of which had the ring of truth. In fact, I thought the woman was a
raving lunatic. But I wasn’t comfortable. I was keen to get away, and I
figured the less I asked the sooner I get out.
“I have since told the FBI what I know. They asked if I’m willing to
testify should it be necessary, and I said, ‘Absolutely yes.’
“I care that the women victimized as children are given some form of reparation. Maxwell’s millions are a good place to start.”
SCMP | Lieber’s
arrest dovetails with Washington’s aggressive “China Initiative”, which
began in 2018. Earlier this month, the Trump administration launched a
“whole of society” counter-intelligence strategy to further guard
against Beijing “stealing our technology and intellectual property in an
effort to erode United States economic and military superiority”, the
administration said.
Chinese
intellectual property theft costs the United States up to US$600
billion annually, according to US trade representative figures. FBI
officials characterise academia as a weak link in their efforts to stem
the loss.
“The Chinese government doesn’t play by the same rules of academic fairness and freedom,”
Academics
and legal experts acknowledge the growing threat from China and admit
they need more safeguards to avoid becoming a pawn in Beijing’s hands.
But
turning universities into fortresses and jealously guarding basic
research is counterproductive, threatening to undermine the economic
leadership and innovation Washington seeks, they argue.
Academic
watchdogs say they have long warned researchers that standards were
tightening – foreign talent programmes were, until recently, viewed as
prestigious – as Washington’s distrust of Beijing increased. But their
warnings were often brushed off, they add.
“The
Lieber case has been the biggest help we could possibly get,” said Mary
Sue Coleman, the American Association of Universities’ president.
“Before the view was, if you’re not a Chinese national, not a
naturalised American citizen, it didn’t affect you.”............
FBI
agents are investigating an estimated 1,000 China-related cases from
its 56 field offices, Wray said, while US attorneys in five cities
oversee their prosecutions. Law enforcement authorities have arrested 19
people in such cases since October, compared with 24 the previous year.
Lelling
denied any administration bias in choosing which China-related cases to
investigate and prosecute. Investigating Lieber’s many Chinese students
without specific cause, for example, would be problematic, he said.
“This
isn’t racial profiling,” the US attorney said. “You have a rival nation
state made up almost 100 per cent of Han Chinese. Unfortunately there’s
going to be tremendous overlap. We’re looking for the conduct, then the
person.”
NationalReview | U.S. government agencies including the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health dole out more than $150 billion
in research grants each year. University scientists rely on that money
to fund their labs. Because grants can make or break a career,
professors spend an inordinate amount of time navigating the funding
labyrinth. A 2007 study
found that researchers spend 42 percent of their time writing grant
proposals and ensuring compliance with the conditions of the grants they
receive. Stringent regulations on everything from affirmative action to
animal welfare place a needless burden on scientists, reducing their
productivity. Since any given proposal has a 20 percent chance of being
approved, researchers devote 170 days to proposal-writing for every grant they’re awarded.
In addition to the administrative burden, American funding programs
push researchers toward low-risk, low-reward studies. Since papers are
evaluated by the number of citations they generate, professors tend to
focus on questions that guarantee a meaningful result, rather than
taking risks on novel research that might fail. Though the latter is
more likely to deliver high gains in the long run, delayed recognition
of breakthrough research means that scientists in new fields may have to
wait years before they see results, which reduces their ability to
attract funding in the interim. A 2016 paper
found that “funding decisions which rely on traditional bibliometric
indicators . . . may be biased against ‘high risk/high gain’ novel
research.” As a result, American scientists tinker at the margins of
existing research but rarely attempt breakthroughs. This partially
explains the general slowdown of scientific progress over the past few decades.
Enter China. In 2008, the Chinese Communist party (CCP) announced the
Thousand Talents Plan (TTP), which was designed to recruit 2,000
high-quality foreign professionals within five to ten years. By 2017,
the program had lured 7,000 foreigners — more than triple its target. As
part of a broad push to achieve global technological supremacy, China
has committed 15 percent of its GDP — equivalent to $2.1 trillion in
2019 — to human-capital development.
The TTP doesn’t require grant applications or regulatory compliance,
either. Faced with a choice between a Byzantine funding apparatus at
home and instant cash from China, more than 3,000 university researchers
have opted for the latter. In return for that money, the CCP requires
its researchers to turn over intellectual property to which they have
access, as well as to sign agreements preventing them from disclosing
the results of work conducted under Chinese patronage. Some scientists
have concluded that those stipulations are worthwhile. And in a perverse
sense, it is true that the Chinese system provides a great deal of
academic freedom: no applications, no progress reports, no environmental
standards. In a few cases, TTP-linked academics have even opened
“shadow labs” in China that conduct research identical to what they are
doing domestically. The effect is a wholesale transfer of American
intellectual capital and property to our largest geostrategic foe.
Weinstein holding out on an Epstein podcast because of a creepy threatening dinner at which he was told not to put out what he thinks and knows?
Weinstein meets Epstein before Florida charges. Goes to Epstein's house where Epstein plainly signals that he's recording guests, Epstein meets Weinstein in a dining room where Epstein desecrates the flag, Weinstein is not judgemental about consenting adults, though he believe Epstein is Humbert Humbert not living up to the requirements of his construct role.
Science people continued talking to Epstein after charges because he funded cowboy science disagreeable to the "woke" crowd. Science people knew that it wasn't Epstein funding them, but that it was "something else" funding them through the Epstein construct. The Govt. stepped away from blue sky science in 1986 under Reagan.
The Govt underfunds science. So when the "rich guy" comes into the room, it matters. The NSF National Academy of Science under Eric Block and the Government and University Research Round Table conspired to destroy the bargaining power of scientists as laborers by implementing a replacement negroe program for science. The Reagan Govt. realized it could import scientists from China, Taiwan, South Korea and India.
H1-B's and the 1990 Immigration Reform Act took China from 0-60 in half a second and launched our current great power nemesis. The Vannevar Bush Endless Frontier Agreement was abandoned in favor of importing cheap, foreign STEM workers. Asymmetric access to the labor market is fundamental right of citizenship argues Weinstein, and this fundamental right was stripped pursuant to capital interests in removing the privileged labor value of American STEM workers and replacing them with cheap, foreign STEM workers at a 100-1 ratio.
Vulture capitalism metastatically destroyed American fundamental science! Sam Harris makes some weak and trifling "free market" mouth noises, but realizes he's up against an informational rock and a hard place in Weinstein. Then the discussion veers back to creepy-assed Epstein and the holes he was filling....,
MIT | On January 10, 2020, the Executive Committee of the MIT
Corporation, the Institute’s
governing board, released the results of Goodwin Procter’s
fact-finding regarding interactions between Jeffrey Epstein and the
Institute.
In September 2019, at the request of President L. Rafael
Reif and the Executive Committee,
MIT's General Counsel retained the firm to design and
conduct the fact-finding process.
A Foundation of Joy
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
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64th day is March 5
My birthday
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4 x 3 = 12
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
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