Contract criminals with no links to their victims are hired online. Innocent people are being killed

 

 

“This represents more than ‘cancel culture’, more than another cynical effort by the elites to circumscribe what may be said on a particular issue. It represents an overturning of the virtues of the Scientific Revolution itself, and of that central freedom of Enlightenment: the freedom to question authority.”

 

“Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie captures it well. She writes about the ‘cold-blooded grasping’ in certain youthful circles – ‘a hunger to take and take and take, but never give’, ‘a massive sense of entitlement’, ‘an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care’, ‘an astonishing level of self-absorption’, ‘language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional intelligence’, ‘a passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter, but not in the intimate space of friendship’. And, of course, ‘an unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others’.”
― Brendan O'Neill, A Heretic's Manifesto: Essays on the Unsayable

When police announced last week that they had arrested three alleged would-be assassins en route to murder a man as he collected his children from daycare, the questions from reporters came thick and fast.

Did police cut it too fine in arresting the hired guns as they drove to the daycare centre? Was there a risk they could’ve got away in traffic? What if they’d taken a different route, changed their minds midway, shot another motorist as police closed in?

Contract criminals with no links to their victims are hired online. Innocent people are being killed

Reeves faces a historic challenge with record state spending The Times

 

Pro-Israel group gets £7m from UK government to ‘identify’ antisemitism Middle East Eye

 

England sees second worst harvest on record, analysis shows Independent

 

Epstein survivors sue Bank of America and Bank of New York Mellon

After Epstein victims reached major settlements with JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank, two more shoes dropped on allegedly “complicit” financial institutions. Adam Klasfeld – “Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors filed a pair of federal lawsuits against the Bank of America [via Court Watch] and the Bank of New York Mellon [via Court Watch] on Wednesday, accusing them of ranking among the “complicit financial institutions” who valued proximity to a wealthy and connected predator more than complying with anti-trafficking law. 

“Rather than merely providing routine banking services to Epstein, Bank of America went far beyond what a non-complicit bank would have done and instead assisted Epstein in setting up the necessary financial structure to operate his sex-trafficking venture,” the 49-page lawsuit says. In 2023, survivors settled similar lawsuits against J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank for $290 millionand $75 million. Another lawsuit filed today estimates that Bank of New York Mellon processed $378 million in payments to women trafficked by Epstein. 

Both lawsuits cite the ongoing “follow-the-money” investigation by Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) into Epstein for the Finance Committee. During the investigation, Wyden found that billionaire Leon Black paid $170 million to Epstein for purported “tax and estate planning advice” from his Bank of America account, compensation that he found “far exceeded” that of other professional attorneys and advisors involved in Black’s estate planning. Attorneys David Boies and Sigrid McCawleyfiled both class action complaints on behalf of an anonymous Jane Doe, who says she met Epstein in Russia in 2011 and was sexually abused by him until 2019, the year of Epstein’s prosecution and death…”