Iran War Lord Haw Haw Corner

So Donald Trump's launched one of his seemingly unnecessary bombing raids on Iran.  To be fair although hardly a realistic threat to anyone since it posesses no actual ICBMs let alone the nuclear warheads to mount on them Iran's Nuclear programme causes me to sometimes doze off in the middle of the day.  

WMD?  He hasn't got any but let's get him anyway in a "pre-emptive strike" that futher flushes International Law down the U-bend of the 21st century.  

Of course you can't really defend Donald's attack (he didn't ask Congress, let alone the UN) but the shills are out to sell this dogturd of an illegal war anyway... so I preserved some for posterity...

First up some blatant neo-Nazi account trying to purport that Chamberlain was pushed into WWII by Churchill instead of Hitler ... who I spent some time arguing with about the Polish/British pact of 1939 which was like trying to nail the jelly of truth to a ceiling of lies.  But hey, that's what twitter does these days innit... Manufactures big lies on Goebbels levels...

Meanwhile with Keir Starmer sitting on the fence with Chamberlain-like cowardice Andrew Neil is on hand to have a go at John Healey for not picking a side...

James Heisn'tvery Cleverly also offers Trump support for his illegal war by attempting to "both sides" the argument when there clearly isn't any argument for this kind of unprovoked attack in international law.  It's just slam dunk illegal...

Meanwhile Baron Wolfson of Tredegar - a well known Zionist - attempts to argue about what internation law ought in his view to say ...because it clearly doesn't say what he wants it to say.  Actually, International Law does have an exception that allows for pre-emptive action - it is called the Caroline Test which states that :

The use of force must be necessary because the threat is imminent, and thus pursuing peaceful alternatives is not an option (necessity); The response must be proportionate to the threat (proportionality) and the necessity criterion is described as "instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation".

Clearly Trump's adventures in Iran fail this by a country mile.  

Leaving the general attack aside specifically targeting individuals for assassination is also specifically illegal under the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the the 1907 Hague Regulations.

But that's not going to stop former Conservative Defence Secretary Ben Wallace from lying through his teeth that black is white.  Partly of law and order my left bollock!

Unlike Starmer Emmanuel Macron explicitly condemns the war only to be called a windbag by Andrew Combover.  Pot and Kettle?

Meanwhile in the US they're very upset that we didn't just tag along for the usual round of middle eastern war crimes...

Still for sheer pomposity you can't beat ex-Conservative MP, US Green card holder, chick lit author and general all-round idiot Louise Mensch picking an argument with Pope Leo XIV and telling him he can't pontificate on war because it's a secular matter.  Actually he can pontificate he's the pontif .. it's what they do ... literally the job description ... and for any non-Catholic's wondering ...the Catholic Church's views on "Just Wars" are in your catechism, Ms Mensch, ....if you ever read it ... under sections CCC 2307 onwards...

And, of course, you can always rely on Piers "I was always against the Iraq War" Morgan to dissappear right up his best mate Trunp's arse...  The man could boil cats in public and he'd still lick his boots...

Where it all comes from is a mystery...

I was just sitting in a waiting room and Sky News was on and a Labour MP was literally spitting teeth at the screen about Keir Starmer.  Can't remember which one was only half watching but... I paraphrase but he said something like "And next week we're expected to vote for abolishing Jury Trials.  Where does this come from?". Good question.  Where does it come from? These policies appear from nowhere and become legislation.  But they're inimical to Labour values, as popular as slug yoghurt, authoritarian, no one wants them including Labour MPs, they weren't in any manifesto... And yet they're a hill Starmer seems prepared to die on.  Is this his revenge on juries that didn't convict for him when he was head of the CPS? Is it to keep the Zionist lobby happy?  Troubles the mind.  It's like the abolishing Winter Fuel allowance policy but 100 times as bad?  ID cards - in a manifesto? No.  It's like they go out their way to pluck unpopular policies out of thin air...

Where it all comes from is a mystery

It's like the changin' of the seasons,

And the tides of the sea.

But here's the one that's drivin' me beserk,

For whom are they doing all this dirty work?

Kemi's candidate loses their deposit

 

And so the Labour Party has lost the Gorton & Denton by-election to the Greens.  Reform came second and Labour 3rd but perhaps most shocking is the result for the Conservatives who managed only 709 votes.  This wasn't exactly a conservative stronghold in the first place but that's so few that they're only a couple of hundred votes above the Liberal Democrats and Sir Oinkalot.  Why is this? Are the Conservatives - the party that gave us Churchill, Macmillan and Baldwin, really that toxic?  Would people really rather vote for the really nasty party than the nasty party? Is Kemi weighed down by Sunak's baggage? 

Will their followers ever forgive them?  What is it about snakeoil salesman Mr Toad that still attracts people? Will the Tory party veer to the right?  Well, most of it's Jenricks and Bravermen would seem to have already jumped ship... as rats do when the ship is sinking.  Of course there have been other populist surges to small parties in the past... Some will remember the rise of the SDP in the 80s... The SDP alas without David Owen only managed 46 votes this time out.  But still that's more than the Communist League who couldn't even scrape 30.  Of course eventually ...

...the SDP bubble burst.... but we're definitely seeing a fracturing.... As voters drift off to the extremes of politics....  Of course the result is a disaster for Keir Starmer.  But for the Tories it's a muted catastrophe.  I wonder how long Kemi will remain with results like this.  Then again does anyone else want her poison chalice?  The problem for the Conservatives is an existential one.  What are they for? Recently Kemi has been attacking Labour over Tuition fees and promising to reduce student loan repayments.  It all sounds good but really... We all know we're more likely to see a pig with wings than the government reduce student debt burden ... particularly in the current economic climate... And with government debt so high and growth so low.  You'd have to be born yesterday to buy that one...  I mean if you believe that one you probably believe Clinton just hung out with Epstein for the charitable donations.  What both main parties lack is a sense of purpose.  There may not be money for much these days but...

...Kemi's official response is above.  As can be read clearly, her loss isn't even something that registers in her own mind, let alone a moment for self reflection.  Instead there's a lot of nonsense about stirring up grievance and sectarianism, but I can't say I've noticed either the Greens or Reform running a particularly dirty campaign.  Most of them don't seem to have much in the way of policies at all.  Most of them seemed to be relying on encouraging tactical voting.  It's everyone else's fault for fighting dirty.  Not her own for not listening.

Pear Shaped in Dystopia Series 2 Episode 7

 

Ants

 

It's a little known fact that the ant can carry 19 times it's bodyweight in gay Christians.  Red ants are well known for spreading homosexuality.  Ants are gay by default.  That is why they all congregate around a queen.  It's the ant equivalent of RuPaul's drag race.  The first thing you should do on discovering an ants' nest is to pour boiling hot water over it.  This is known as the antidote.  Ants didn't all used to be gay until the 1950s when gay ants were specifically bred at Porton Down.  On discovering that ants are one of the few creatures that would survive a nuclear holocaust the Eden government intended to eliminate them all by making them gay.  However instead of gay ants they created Adam Ant.  For a while the scientists were a bit of a laughing stock in the scientific community but eventually they decided that ridicule was nothing to be scared of.  Unlike homosexuality which is terrifying.  Homosexuals go to hell where they suffer the eternal torture of being bitten by ants.   Must be true Pastor Alex told me - special prayer only $100

Tactical voting is for idiots

 

As the Gordon and Denton by-election hots up I've noticed both Reform and the Greens encouraging people to vote tactically.  Please don't vote tactically.  Stop it.  It's silly.

If you vote just to keep someone out you're not voting for anything. Really you're basing your vote on your fears of how other people will vote. You're voting through fear. Your 1 vote is mathematically unlikely to keep anyone in or out anyway. So you might as well vote for who you want to. I used to live in an ultra marginal. The lowest margin was 70 not 1. Vote tactically and "it's only a two horse race here" etc are slogans used by the main parties to protect the status quo.  Asking you to vote tactically is the most cynical thing a political candidate can do.  It really says "I have no respect for you.". 

You should vote for who has the best candidate and policy.  When politicians tell you to vote tactically they're really being lazy.  Instead of finding policy reasons for you to vote for them which is what they should be doing, they're saying vote for us because we're most likely to beat the bad candidate you hate which is negative campaigning & circular logic.  Instead of trying to win your vote they are trying to emotionally blackmail it out of you.  Don't let them.

So what were the police waiting for?

Probably for the media and the Daily Mail in particular to stop covering up and giving political cover to Andrew.  Year after year after year after year after year after year since 2019 we've been exposed to a regular diet of excuses, whitewash and he's innocent till proven guilty hogwash as one of the obviously biggest public liars, crooks and dodgy dirty old men was paraded in front of us like a prize pig.  

Turning up to the meetings of the Knights of the Garter in full regalia, photo bombing official events.  Appearing shamelessly at any and every function with his mum as if to rub it in our faces that he's untouchable... Even in September 2025 despite security funding having taken place in 2024, there was still a whole Prince Andrew Page on the Royal Family website (see here) stating that "On 13 January 2022, Buckingham Palace announced that, with Queen Elizabeth II's approval and agreement, The Duke of York’s military affiliations and Royal patronages would be returned to Her late Majesty, and The Duke would not return to public duties. Prior to stepping back from public life, The Duke of York undertook a wide range of public work, with a strong economic and business focus."  Andrew was de-Princed only in November 2025 and has only been de-Duked in 2026... because ... well...

It's only that the Epstein file dumps from the US are so complete and unarguable that it has forced the establishment to act after only 5 years of trying to sweep it all under the carpet and finding the bump is too large.  Checking the flight logs of private jets?  That's something they could have done years ago.  Even now we have the sorry sight of Andrew being repeatedly asked to testify by the US Congress and everyone in the Establishment wringing their hands and pretending that if he doesn't want to go nothing can be done.  

But it can.  They could get the list of questions off Congress and drag Andrew before a Select Committee where not answering truthfully would place him in contempt of Parliament.  Or better still they could launch a full Judge led Public Inquiry into the Epstein scandal, then if Andrew lied on oath it'd be perjury.  And the chances of that?  More likely to see a pig with wings...

Still Chuck is very concerned... At least for the monarchy... If not for the victims...

I've heard some people questioning whether there is something unseemly and French Revolution in the hounding of Prince Andrew.  

What after years of Lizzie and Chuck trying to force feed us Andrew - even keeping his page on the Royal Website?

Well, it's not that I don't have any sympathy but that's not stopping me sitting on a stool in the front with my ball of wool like the best tricoteuse.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor emailed them all

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had a great fall

All the King's media and his spinmen

Couldn't put Andrew together again

I've now watched the whole of DS9

Well, after some time I finally got to the end of Deep Space Nine.  Unfortunately I didn't manage to do this before it all got taken off Netflix who seems to have lost the battle for old Star Trek with Amazon and the new Paramount plus or whatever it is so I had to pay to see the end of the last series.  It's taken me about four years to get through DS9 and frankly some episodes are a bit of a slog.  The ending is kind of unsatisfying as we don't quite know when (and if) Sisko is returning ... The final face off between Gul Dukat and Sisko I think noticeably owes something to "The Final Problem" of Sherlock Holmes... Apparently the original intention was to kill off Sisko but they decided that killing the first black Captain wouldn't be a good look so what we're left with us a literal cliffhanger that is never resolved.  No sign the Emissary popping back for a Picard-like cameo yet...

Among the other things I noticed were Brunt and the various Weyouns being the same actor in the same episode (but only because the credits told me so ... You really can't visually tell).  Sisko's father being Tom Robinson from To Kill A Mockingbird - nice to see him still working in his twilight years... And the station set being cleverly redressed as other space station other episodes to save money...

Most amusing is the episode "Far Beyond the Stars" which takes place largely inside Sisko's head in which we get to see all the main characters without their prosthetics and Sisko becomes the writer of DS9 writing in the 50s who can't get it published because of racial prejudice... apparently a reference to sci-fi writer Samuel R. Delany who had similar problems publishing stories with black central characters.

"In the Pale Moonlight" is possibly the standout episode of the entire run as Sisko, unable to produce the evidence required to convince the Romulans to join the war on the Dominion, engages in a grubby False Flag operation faking the evidence instead with the help of Garak.  This results in at least one seedy murder and he gets away with it and conceals the truth from the rest of his crew but at what cost to his own soul?  It opens up deeper questions about the militaristic nature of Starfleet and how innocent it is...

Other standout episodes include "It's only a paper moon" where Nog tried to escape the PTSD he suffers after losing a leg in the war by going and living in a Hollosuite programme with holographic lounge singer Vic Fontaine who then has to start dealing with the problems of being real or nearly real like needing to sleep.  Perhaps an inspired twist is he then becomes obsessed with balancing the night club books.  When Nog objects that the financial transactions inside aren't real, Vic responds that they're "real to him" and he and Nog bond over financial planning... However, when you really think about it is course, all money isn't real.  It's value only exists in other people's minds.  More so in these days where physical cash is disappearing and all we have is numbers on computers ...

Interesting too is the Jake/Benjamin relationship.  It's fun that Jake doesn't want to follow in his father's footsteps and as a writer and later journalist is somewhat bewildered by the gungo ho attitude of some of the Starfleet cannon fodder.  It's interesting given the large number of casualties in the war that no one ever brings up the subject of Conscription.  Anyway, it's only something I thought of later but Sisko is the first Captain who is allowed to have any family.  Ok, Kirk had a family in the films but they were always kind of estranged.... And Picard was literally peadophobic... His worst nightmare coming in the episode where he gets stuck in the turbo lift with a group of children.... Although widowed Sisko is allowed a slight more rounded private life...

There are a lot of double acts in the series to the point it reminds me of Robert Holmes - Jake & Rom, Miles & Julian, Warf & Jadzia, Odo & Kira.  I feel Quark is a little underutilized.   After the early series he doesn't get quite enough exposure.... He almost has a romance with Ezri at one point but it's never fully explored... Which is a shame really.  The Klingons continue to evolve into a bizarre soap opera.  Kai Winn Adami is a particularly effective villain who sacrifices her people to her personal ambition ...with just the right level of religious hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness.  I find Kira a little hard to relate to.  I don't quite buy her as a hardened ex-terrorist ...although the episode in which she discovers her mother was a collaborator is very effective.  The Ferengi aren't as developed as I feel they could be ... But when it ends ... You do feel as though you'll miss all these characters...

Royal Carpet Sale

Designed by L. Gruner of 12 Fitzroy Street and made at Wilton by Blackmore Brothers for Watson & Bell of Bond Street the carpet in the great drawing room of Buckingham Palace was exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851.

However, concerns have been raised of late that it is reaching the end of its useful life.  The carpet attracts general attention from its immense size (the extreme length being 52 feet, the width 38 feet), and from the brilliant, yet not gaudy colouring however Prince William has recently raised concerns that it is no longer capacious enough to sweep all the Windsor's dirt under. 

Although Prince Albert thought it ideal for the drawing room of Windsor Castle it does not seem large enough to conceal the family's complicity in the Epstein scandal underneath anymore.  "It was great in its day but we need to modernise," said the Prince.  

The fabric is entirely worked by hand and carefully designed so that any investigation of what is below it can be properly stitched up.  It is also toed through the back, so as to secure greater durability than in any other description of carpets as well as to increase its capacity to convincingly conceal conspicuous bumps. 

The work, which required the greatest attention to the working pattern and the selection of the various shades, was executed at Wilton, by Blackmore Brothers, for Watson and Bell of Bond-street, who claim that it is excellent for hiding things underneath and that it can conceal several hundred thousand pages of incriminating documents or photos.  

However, it no longer being large enough for the great number of three million Epstein files that His Majesty now has to catalogue which were previously kept beneath it, it is currently being offered for public auction at a starting price of £12,000,000.  All proceeds to be donated to the Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor home for distressed gentlewomen.
 

And thus I clothe my naked villainy

 

This is the Tomb of hunchbacked child murderer Richard III who assumed power illegally and illegitimately by bumping off his own nephews.  He was rediscovered under a car park and this elaborate bullshit tomb was immediately built for him.  Thousands turned out to the reinterment of one of the worst of our medieval monarchs like it's something to celebrate.  Honestly, I don't know why they don't erect a mausoleum to Myra Hindley and be done with it.  And people wonder how Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor got away with it for so long ... It's this kind of uncritical, servile fawning.  And thus I clothe my naked villainy with odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ; and seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

Starmer Unpopular - It's the Economy Stupid

Growth from the end of Sunak
to the start of Starmer

I've recently heard various theories for why Keir Starmer is the "worst Prime Minister in living memory".  Is it his purging of the Labour left? Is it his taxes? Is it his lack of charm?  Is it his wooden persona?  Is it facilitating genocide?  Is it categorising grannies with cardboard signs as terrorists?  I have a theory that the driving factor is actually, as Bill Clinton would say "the economy stupid".  Britain's economy is supposedly bumping along the bottom with growth at 0.1% if the Bank of England's figures are correct.  Note that GDP figures are not always correct and are often revised retrospectively as their calculation is far from simple.  If the Bank's figures are 0.2-0.5% out we could have been in recession since the Sunak government which achieved at least one quarter of negative growth (two is an official recession).  If the primary driver of how people vote is the day-to-day economy, this would explain why Starmer is even more unpopular than John Major during his double-dip recession of the 1990s.

Mr MacLeod 

So how reliable are the BofE's figures?  Well, we know for a fact their inflation figures have been rubbish of late.  Recent internal and external reviews (see here and here) have shown that the government underestimated inflation during the post pandemic/ Ukraine invasion inflation shocks.  If it's underestimating inflation, it's probably calculating growth incorrect too.  Indeed they have been... So I wouldn't be surprised if someone pops up in a few years and tells us that actually the economy has been in recession after all (see here).  There certainly seems to me to be some disconnect between the Bank of England's statistics and my lived experience... At best we seem to be experiencing what Iain Macleod would describe as Stagflation - stagnant economic growth, high inflation and increasing unemployment... So ...

Growth since the Pandemic 

We all laughed at Liz Truss but her dash for "Growth Growth Growth" through deeply misguided and appallingly executed did at least correctly identify Britain's great problem ... Stubborn stagnation.  Since Brexit the economy has been seemingly stuck in a doom loop of near zero growth.  Hence various bungled attempts to give it CPR which fail to bring the patient back to life but give them a nasty shock before they return to a coma...  It is thought that Britain's hard Brexit far from providing £350m/week for the NHS actually shaved about 2% off GDP.  That's the difference between getting by and bumping along the bottom.  Last time we were here Ted Heath's solution was the Barber boom and...

Looking back at historical GDP figures (see right) we can see that in the 1950s and 60s Britain was often making 5% growth ...by the 90s this had lowered to 3 or 4% and by the 2010s 2 or 3%.  The figures are then slightly distorted by the Pandemic when there was extreme negative growth followed by a brief boom adjustment... But since then we've been averaging (see above graph) 0 to 1%. ...often less.  This isn't all down to Brexit, there is a global trend of Western economic decline but Brexit seems to have been like tying a lead balloon to the drowning man...

The question is what drives this trend.  Well, there are various theories... One is the aging population and declining birth rate.  Whilst the official inflation figures that we now know were wrong but not by how much have not been too bad recently (if you disregard the post COVID economic shock when they went to 10%) ... The CPI index does not really reflect things like housing costs very well.  It does attempt to reflect them to some degree but it bases it's calculations on the housing costs of owner occupiers.  So if your rent has inflated ...sorry that doesn't go into the calculation...

The reason for this ostrich-like approach is that buying a house is not seen as day to day expenditure - it's a one off purchase.  This is a bit silly because the increasing amount people are saving to buy a home has a strong negative effect on economic growth.  Added to this House Price Inflation is very high meaning if it was properly integrated into CPI then we'd get a very different graph...

As we can see House Price Inflation and Private Rents are significantly higher than the headline CPU inflation rate with HPI frequently breaching the 10% barrier and Private Rents not far behind.  Before the sub-prime mortgage financial crash figures were even worse.  In the early 00s HPI frequently breached the 10% barrier.

So what?

Well, all of this has an effect on the amount of money being spent in the day-to-day economy.  That is to say that inflation depresses growth.  There are other increasing signs of poor health in the economy.  For capitalism to work there must be regulation to prevent the growth of monopolies which depression competition.  Astute social observers will have noticed an increase in the number of flamboyant billionaires about.  This is not actually a good thing for the health of the overall economy because billionaires tend to hoard wealth rather than spend it which does not create growth ...

Trump Supporters be like...

Well okay he's a gangster, convicted felon, civilly adjudicated sex offender, war criminal, openly racist, so narcissistic he slags off his predecessors on the White House Walls, bulldozes bits of the White House and renamed the Kennedy Centre after himself but...

Wicked witch of the X

In case anyone's wondering what happens if you assiduously block all the fake Elon bots and accounts on X and his real official account too the answer is ...his scary wicked witch of the west mother starts cyberstalking you instead

Anti Slavery Collective

In 2012 our co-founders HRH Princess Eugenie and Julia de Boinville travelled to Kolkata in India, where they met the late Aloka Mitra, a social activist who led programmes supporting vulnerable women and children in India for over 35 years. Aloka (who sadly passed away in 2025) founded the Women’s Interlink Foundation, which rescues survivors of modern slavery such as sex trafficking.  

The organisation gives them a home either in New York, London or on the Carribbean Island of St James and teaches them simple vocational skills to support the process of rebuilding their lives such as giving massages or going round to Jeffrey Epstine's with your mum for a free nosebag when you are 19 and your sister is 21 but not seeing any modern slavery in evidence anywhere, or simply some work experience in Pizza Express Woking.

The next five years were spent learning more about labour exploitation and modern slavery in the UK by continually helping deny that the photograph of your father next to a sex slave was just that, even though it obviously was and everyone and their dog new it, meeting with policy makers like Peter Mandelson, law enforcement agencies, academics, NGOs, social workers, and survivors who later die in mysterious circumstances to find out what support would help gaslight the public into believing that that picture ain't real. 

The Anti Slavery Collective was created in 2017 as a project to raise awareness of labour exploitation here in the UK and build more effective models of collaboration. In 2022 this small project was incorporated as a standalone charity and The Anti Slavery Collective hired our first member of staff who cost considerably less than the £12 million Eugenie's grandmother paid to Virginia to not claim she was sex trafficked for a bit.

The Anti Slavery Collective hosted our inaugural Force for Freedom gala in 2023. The generosity of so many supporters during the gala enabled the charity to refine our mission and programmes, build a new team, and scale up our operations. We are dedicated to building on this momentum, strengthening our impact, and ensuring that modern slavery remains on the agenda for change-makers around the world particularly on the Carribbean Island of St James.  Remember modern slavery is everywhere all around us and it can often be very very hard to spot if you don't know what to look for.  You're never 1.5 miles from a human trafficked sex slave, even in Windsor Castle.

So is Mandelson's appointment as Ambassador the fault of poor MI5 vetting?

So claims Sir Keir Starmer but one didn’t have to call in Mycroft Holmes to find the facts about Epstein and Mandelson even then. Back in 2023 the Financial Times reported uncovering an internal JP Morgan dossier from 2019, which found ‘Epstein appears to maintain a particularly close relationship with Prince Andrew the Duke of York and Lord Peter Mandelson, a senior member of the British Government’ and suggested Lord Mandelson stayed at Epstein’s house in Manhattan (the one full of pornographic art) in June 2009, whilst Epstein was in prison for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Still, we’ve all house-sat for sex traffickers by mistake. And the photos of Epstein and Mandelson shopping next to an enormous ugly glass vase and Mandelson attending Epstein’s birthday party in the early 00s have been doing the rounds of the tabloids and the internet for years. Still, who hasn’t been to a party on a peadophile island by mistake? That Mandelson should never have been appointed is not a three pipe problem. The question is what magical powers did the Prince of Darkness have to allow him to defy political gravity…? All the recent revelations have done is turn the already small mountain of evidence against him into a volcanic archipelago but there was undeniably a mountain already… Perhaps this why was he made Ambassador to the United States? My theory is the Cabinet would not wear the Lord as an unelected cabinet member anymore after Brown and no CLP would take him on as a candidate and no constituency would elect him again so Starmer was forced to invent some kind of job to keep McSweeney happy but Mandelson at arms length by inserting an Ocean between Peter and the PLP… and one he hoped would put enough distance between himself and the Lord of Darkness that if the skeletons fell fully out of the closet again then… There was however, a tiny flaw in the plan… since Epstein topped himself, his every email now belongs to some trust he set up and the FBI and it lays bare years of skulduggery in breathtaking detail.  Bit of lobbying here, bit of insider trading there, pumping his associates for information, supplying sex slaves to the rich and infamous.  It's wilder than a Bond novel.

As to Epstein's death that resembles a locked room mystery like something out of the Sherlock Holmes story The Speckled Band.  Was it suicide?  Epstein originally shared a cell with multiple murder and drug conspiracy suspect Nicholas Tartaglione who attacked him.  Following this he was moved to a single cell and put on suicide watch but then taken off it and moved back to a normal cell where he had another cellmate who was moved out the evening before his death.  He was not checked on every 30 minutes, cameras failed and he was discovered to have hung himself at 6:30am.  Discovered in his cell were notes investigated by 60 minutes about burnt food and "Giant Bugs crawling all over my hands". See here.  Was he drugged?  In the Adventure of the Speckled Band a snake is introduced into the seemingly impenetrable locked room via an air vent.  New York City's Chief Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson and Epstein's lawyers' pathologist Michael Baden disagreed violently about the cause of death and autopsy report.  How did a 6ft man hang himself from a top bunk?  Were his injuries consistent with hanging? The FBI interviewed dozens of FBI witnesses who were not in the room at the time of his death and 100,000 documents about what happened when no one was looking and said it was definitely suicide.  29% of the public believe them.