
Jeffrey Epstein, blackmail, and a lucrative ‘hot list’ - buildbuildbuild
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/business/david-boies-pottinger-jeffrey-epstein-videos.html
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vearwhershuh
If you think about it, blackmail must be one of the primary tools in real
politics. Relatively cheap and a perfect carrot-and-stick: play ball and you
can keep doing what you are doing, go rogue and we ruin your life.

Funny that it never came up in any of my civics classes.

~~~
dano
Malcom Nance will describe the MICE acronym in this commonwealth podcast where
C is coercion
[https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/malc...](https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/malcolm-
nance-plot-betray-america)

~~~
walrus01
[https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-
intellig...](https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-
intelligence/csi-publications/csi-
studies/studies/vol.-57-no.-1-a/vol.-57-no.-1-a-pdfs/Burkett-
MICE%20to%20RASCALS.pdf)

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misiti3780
First David Boies is on the wrong side of the Theranos scandal, now this -- He
is having a bad couple years.

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claudeganon
One thing I found curious about this story is its patent unwillingness to
examine what this “fraudster’s” motivations might have actually been. The
overall bent of its narrative seems to be to discredit the motivation of
Epstein’s victims and their lawyers, without any consideration that this
could’ve been the express purpose of the ruse.

Overall, the New York Times coverage has been quite poor and conciliatory
toward those involved with Epstein, especially Gates and Wexner.

~~~
carc
My understanding is that Gates and Epstein were more or less just
acquaintances, but it seems you think otherwise. What am I missing?

~~~
claudeganon
The true extent of their relationship is unknown and not really being given
much scrutiny in the media. From the one, reasonable piece of reporting on it,
there was an overlap in staff between Epstein’s operation and the Gates
foundation, the two organizations were in regular contact through 2017, and
Gates has a venture fund with the man named as the executor of Epstein’s
estate:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-
epstein-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-
gates.html)

~~~
panpanna
> The true extent of their relationship is unknown and not really being given
> much scrutiny in the media

Or - and here is a crazy idea - there is not much to dig up.

Obviously if you hang too much on r/conspiracy you will see crazy angles to
anything. (For HN readers who do not: I encourage you to have a look, it's ...
interesting).

~~~
claudeganon
Sure, Gates changed his story from having “no business relationship” with
Epstein to actually having met him many times, oh and also the two shared
members of their inner circle, and I guess, yeah, they worked on a proposed
multibillion dollar deal from which Epstein would have handsomely profited,
all after his underage prostitution charge was known to Gates, but really,
there’s nothing else to dig up.

Despite your insinuation, I don’t spend any time on conspiracy subreddits. But
if you truly think the entire extent of what was going on is out in the open,
I admire your credulity.

~~~
me_me_me
> But if you truly think the entire extent of what was going on is out in the
> open, I admire your credulity.

Well put, it is quite transparent that something shady was happening there.
But it seems no one is interested looking into it.

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buildbuildbuild
Now imagine this situation with deep fakes. Unnerving.

~~~
mgerl
First, I always hear this - but my guess is that we'll have self-driving cars
before we have convincing deep-fakes.

Second, all deep-fakes are going to do is add another dimension of plausible
deniability. Just like "fake news" is now used by all sides to discredit any
and all unfavorable reporting (even if true).

\-- "That wasn't me, it's clearly deep-fake fake news!"

