[Oboogie]

I'm interested in the number of times Putin's name appears in the Epstein files, there's a growing theory that the Epstein sex trafficking operation may have been an FSB kompromat honey-pot.

[Abernathy]

Very well put, K.

[Boiler]

Marina Hyde on this matter.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... omen-girls

There's a name in there that'll have the Trots foaming at the mouth - Noam Chomsky.

[Killer Whale]

I still get the nauseous feeling that the only people to get any kind of comeuppance from this (aside from Epstein himself, of course) will be a woman and a gay man. All of the rich, powerful, abusive straight men are going to get away with it. Again. Aren't they?

[Abernathy]

Well, probably, yes. But Mandelson doesn’t get a free pass for being gay.

[Killer Whale]

Clearly, I'm not saying that both (especially) Maxwell and Mandelson didn't have it coming.

[kreuzberger]

I'll let you in on a situation which occurred within my social sphere and which, I hope, suggests that different reactions to those of the Epstein Gang are both possible and really quite normal.

Our beach crowd in Scotland in the mid to late 90s in the West of Scotland was a mixed crowd. We were from various backgrounds, all united in our love of wave sailing, but increasingly turning up alone, given that sitting on beaches up there in a force 6 to 8 was not much fun for our partners.

Anyway, I chummed up with a guy who was a decent cove. On weekends away, a few pills and / or lines, but still dedicated to sailing, even if ambition was always going to triumph over ability. We even went on a sailing holiday together around the time that my marriage was drawing to a close - what happens in Vasiliki stays in Vasiliki.

Then, quite out of the blue, a young girl of fifteen turned up on his doorstep. She had had a troubled upbringing and was announcing that he was her father and had run away from her nut-job mother with whom he had had a one-night stand. Most of this was true, apart from the bit which was disproven by the DNA tests. And then they started shagging and soon brought a child in to this hideous world of his.

It takes a lot to mortify me but this did it with ease.

I have never seen or heard of him since, as have none of the old beach crowd.