Editor’s Note: While our erudite friend, Actaeon, seriously doubts the Bible – which perhaps a billion people on earth believe in implicitly as genuine history – not fable or myth – Actaeon thinks that doubting the official Jeffrey Epstein narrative of suicide is not logical.
Still, there are many who do doubt the suicide narrative. Only a third of people who were asked believed it in a recent poll. In a poll of 1,458 registered voters conducted on August 24-26 – 34% said they believe Epstein was murdered, 33% said they believe he died by suicide, and 32% said they are unsure.]
Republicans More Likely to Believe Epstein Murdered
In that poll – 46 percent of Republicans believe Epstein was murdered – versus 26 percent who say it was suicide.
Among Democrats – 38 percent say it was suicide, compared to 26 percent who think he was killed. It is curious that in both parties only about a quarter of the people thought he committed suicide – there were just more Democrats who were uncertain.
There are no statistics that I could easily find online about the percentage of people who think Epstein might still be alive.
By the way, apropos of Actaeon’s view on the dubiousness of the Bible – according to a Gallup poll, the results of which were published in 2017:
- 24% believe the Bible is the literal word of God, the lowest in Gallup’s 40-year trend
- View of Bible as secular stories and “history” at 26%, up from 21% in 2014
- The largest segment, 47%, still think the Bible is inspired word of God
***
By Actaeon
This is in response to the post, Concluding that Epstein’s Gurney Pics Were Faked Is an Example of a Hasty Conclusion.
In that post, Frank makes the comment, “Neither can we conclude that Epstein is definitely deceased – or that if he is dead – that his death was by his own hand.”
We have conclusive evidence that Epstein is dead: The coroner’s report. Doubting this fact involves constructing an elaborate conspiracy theory – based purely on speculation – involving multiple government agencies from Federal to local, working smoothly together to pull the wool over the eyes of “the people”.
Of course, one is free to doubt away. Doubt that Apollo 11 landed on the moon, doubt that the world is round. All it involves is replacing multiple lines of evidence with personal speculation. All it involves is an overwhelming conviction that “They” are out to get us, that anything official is a lie.
It’s fine to doubt. I’m a proud skeptic myself.
Mistakes do get made, and the official line sometimes turns out to be untrue.
Saddam Hussein’s ephemeral weapons of mass destruction being a perfect example.
But there comes a time when refusing to accept evidence makes one look like a stubborn fool.
I see nothing convincing about any of these Epstein conspiracy theories. There’s not a shred of evidence for any of them. They’re based on the fallacy of personal incredulity (“isn’t it funny that…”) They are incoherent; these multiple “theories” contradict each other. They make no sense.
Let’s examine them.
Supposedly, anonymous persons in positions of power had Epstein killed to shut him up.
Or no, they didn’t have him killed, they smuggled him off to Israel.
No, they switched bodies and planted fake pictures to cover up the crime. And on and on.
So, which is it? It’s not enough to have conspiracy theories, you’ve got to pick one and show how it makes more sense than the official account. Or does it even matter?
Conspiracy theories seem to be mainly about paranoid distrust of “Them”, anti-government rage, and the sweet sense of being wiser than everyone else in having hermeneutic knowledge of the Real Truth.
These are the people who believe in chemtrails and don’t accept Evolution.
These are the people who join cults. Might as well insist that Raniere is innocent. After all, his conviction is just the “official story”, and therefore dubious. Right?
Common sense tells me that it’s far more likely that the Epstein story is a simple one of a rich and unethical man who had a taste for young women, who egotistically thought he could get away with fooling around with jailbait, whose luck ran out. He got caught, prosecuted and, as is not uncommon, killed himself rather than face spending the rest of his life in prison as a convicted child molester.
Far more likely than any of the conspiracy theories.
Theories that run something like this:
Very powerful people wanted to get rid of Epstein to silence him. This secretive cabal runs the government(s) — everything from the CIA down to the NYC coroners office. Even the Israeli Mossad. The local police to the federal court system. Somehow, they coordinate it all. These very clever people snuffed one man… how?
Stage a simple accident?
No. First, they had him arrested, charged with headline-grabbing offenses that extended to a political scandal regarding his prior conviction. After leaving that story to entertain the nation and indeed the entire world (the British royal family being involved), only then do they have him killed in his jail cell.
All very covert, no? I mean, if I were one of this secret all-powerful cabal, that’s how I’d arrange things. Much better than putting a bullet in the man’s head and burying the body in a ten-foot deep hole.
No, these conspiracy theories involving Epstein are absurd. Look at how Epstein died, and compare it to how Jimmy Hoffa disappeared. When powerful, ruthless men want someone gone, they’d do it the way the mafia erased Hoffa. Even clumsy third world brutal “intelligence officers” know how to disappear someone.
Frank Parlato 
Janine Morrison 
J.J. O'Hara 
Richard Luthmann 
Marie White 
Paul Serran
Please leave a comment: Your opinion is important to us!
[…] Finally, Actaeon recently wrote a post, No Evidence Jeffrey Epstein Was Murdered or Is Alive. […]
Frank, go on Red Scare!
Um … so probably we shouldn’t believe the New York Post who reported on July 12, 2019 that Jeffrey Epstein’s cell was 3 doors down from El Chapo?
https://nypost.com/2019/07/12/jeffrey-epsteins-cell-is-three-doors-down-from-el-chapo/
Right, just because it was reported doesn’t mean it is true, even though El Chapo had been there first and for a longer period of time with no security issues. (Oh — but you scream — it wasn’t reported if there were security issues! Yes, much the same as other non-newsworthy events when things run as they should)
Dude with all that word salad and convuluted logic, maybe you oughta start a cult.
My initial point was that there is nothing wrong with questioning the situation and digging deeper. This apparently triggered some reaction in you which frankly, I don’t have the time or the training to indulge any further. You can go to your safe space now. I’ll even donate the crayons.
This book probably relates the real story of Jimmy Hoffa’s Last Ride.
“I Heard you Paint Houses” by Charles Brandt.
Painting houses is slang for a gun shot spraying blood all over the walls.
I Heard You Paint Houses
Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa
by Charles Brandt
Synopsis
Expand/Collapse Synopsis
**You’ve seen the teaser trailer, now read the book that is the inspiration for the year’s biggest movie, THE IRISHMAN: A NETFLIX film directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel, and written by Steven Zaillian.
“Sheeran’s confession that he killed Hoffa in the manner described in the book is supported by the forensic evidence, is entirely credible, and solves the Hoffa mystery.” — Michael Baden M.D., former Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York
“Charles Brandt has solved the Hoffa mystery.” —Professor Arthur Sloane, author of Hoffa
“It’s all true.” — New York Police Department organized crime homicide detective Joseph Coffey
Updated with a 57-page Conclusion by the author that features new, independent corroboration of Frank Sheeran’s revelations about the killing of Jimmy Hoffa, the killing of Joey Gallo and the murder of JFK, along with stories that could not be told before.**
Nice piece Acteon, thanks.
What I see as another major and typical flaw of these sorts of theories, is that they paint the conspirators as devious and highly capable, and yet also implicitly assume they are poorly planned and relatively incompetent – and somehow fail to keep their secret schemes from being figured out in bar rooms and chat rooms. For instance, if someone wanted Epstein dead, they waited until a frenzy of publicity had already built and prominent people were getting exposed – yet the FBI was already re-investigating Epstein last year, the sort of thing well-connected actors are supposed to know, and that should have caused a truly devious and ruthless conspiracy to act preemptively. If Epstein had been murdered in a staged botch robbery in Paris, or his plane had been sabotaged and crashed in the depths of the ocean, none of the exposure and publicity would have occurred, and there wouldn’t be the clamor for further investigations.
The theories against against his suicide, also fail to take into account that he was an unusual personality who was highly controlling, lived by burnishing his reputation, and was very cunning and resourceful. He was facing life behind bars where he would be targeted by inmates as a pedophile and quite possibly killed, along with the sort of humiliating trial that he had probably seen Raniere go through, and then endless civil lawsuits even if he plead guilty to criminal charges; and he had already been pegged as a suicide risk. Particularly given that he was brilliant and manipulative enough to be able to come up with a way to kill himself even in jail if he wanted to, he can actually be seen a a very high if not even likely suicide risk.
By the way, I don’t deny there was some possibility that Epstein was murdered, it is just the least scenario. And if he was, I suspect that it would more likely be the sort of banal thing that history shows is more likely at work, like a brutal guard doing what he thought was a favor to society, than some grand high-level conspiracy. I suspect that eventually, once the conspiracy theorists have patted themselves on the back for their presumed brilliance and moved on to something new theory, the federal investigation into what happened will garden-variety neglect and dereliction, particularly as a result of the political system failing to provide adequate resources of manpower and equipment (like working, properly maintained cameras – probably serviced by contractors who got stiffed during the government shutdown) to do the job that we would expect would be done of properly overseeing prisoners.
Also, I think it’s time to start considering that conspiracy theories are no longer just a seemingly harmless speculative pastime, when we now know that state actors and their proxies are exploiting social media phenomenon, including conspiracy theorizing, in calculated efforts to influence and undermine free and democratic societies; authoritarian regimes are also using similar strategies in places like Kashmir and Syria. In India, baseless rumors that are rooted in conspiracy theories, such as that Muslims are secretly slaughtering sacred cows, or, somewhat familiarly, that child abduction rings are at work, are spread on social media and are actually resulting in innocent people being harmed and killed:
Social media rumours in India: counting the dead
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-e5043092-f7f0-42e9-9848-5274ac896e6d
What’s happening in this country and abroad:
How Russian trolls exploited Parkland mass shooting on social media
“Russian-linked social media accounts exploited the tragedy at a Parkland, Fla., high school to sow discord and deepen divisions in America. Russian bots and trolls pushed conspiracy theories about survivors…”
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2018/feb/22/how-russian-trolls-exploited-parkland-mass-shootin/
Cranks, Trolls, and Useful Idiots
“Russia’s information warriors set their sights on Central Europe.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/12/cranks-trolls-and-useful-idiots-poland-czech-republic-slovakia-russia-ukraine/
How Trolls and Conspiracy Theorists Spun the Syrian War
“Digital defenders helped the Assad government cover up its crimes.”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/06/trolls-conspiracy-theorists-assad-syria/
I also ran across this interesting article:
Even Conspiracy Theories Have Gotten Dumber, a New Book Shows
“The New Conspiracism Is Conspiracy Theory Without Theory”
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/the-new-conspiracism-is-conspiracy-theory-without-theory.html
(I think that is reflective of what we sort of see from the drive-by trolls who in 2 or 3 sentences make hasty general accusations against anyone dismissive of conspiracy theories, and yet don’t even engage on a single point of actual critique, or defense of the conspiracy theory itself. And Frank, I think you should start to ban that sort of fact and logic free and thus off-topic activity from anonymous accounts, some of which may actually be being done as disinformation for pay, and thus is in some ways similar to commercial spam, and a bit of which could even be coming from artificial intelligence bots.)
To prove his point that we should accept the official narrative, this guy has to scramble the story with Jimmy Hoffa, flat earth, chemtrails and the moon landing? I bet we’re on his tinfoil list if we don’t accept the magic bullet killed JFK.
I think it’s reasonable to question all the “fails” in the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s — shall we say — change of residence? The failure of the cameras, the guards not performing the checks, the anomalies surrounding his “suicide watch,” etc. Suitable explanations have not been given for the fact that all of these failures occurred in that very short time. And with a high-profile prisoner like this, such a sloppy approach to his security should definitely merit further investigation.
If you believe the official narrative, Acteon, you would be more effective in explaining away the very real, unusual circumstances in this case and tell us why you are satisfied with the narrative that has been handed to the public. Your attempt to correlate a lot of unnecessary and irrelevant events in a mocking way just makes you look like a fool.
If you’ve been following developments in the story, the “fails” turn out to be the result of a prison system that has been under-staffed and under-funded for years, and where sub-standard conditions and shortcomings in procedures are unfortunately the new normal, with overworked staff reaching cult-like levels of sleep deprivation (or catching up on their sleep during force-assigned extra shifts when they aren’t even given enough time to go home and get proper rest). One or more cameras had been broken for a while – perhaps, for instance, because outside contractors who serviced them had been stiffed during the government shutdown – and apparently those sort of failures are now common and go unfixed.
Here’s an article from Fox News, for instance:
Jail where Jeffrey Epstein died has egregious history of security breaches
https://www.foxnews.com/us/jail-where-jeffrey-epstein-died-has-egregious-history-of-security-breaches
More background about the underlying causes – which the Fox News piece somehow manages not to address:
After Epstein’s death, long-standing complaints about prison staffing draw new attention
https://abc6onyourside.com/news/nation-world/after-epsteins-death-long-standing-complaints-about-prison-staffing-draw-new-attention
A pre-Epstein article about what really ought to concern us – that our prisons are being turned into gulags like the ones in places such as Russia, Syria and Iran, where besides inhumane treatment of people who may not even have been tried yet and could be innocent, deaths start to become so common that it would :
Prisoners Endure A Nightmare ‘Gulag’ In Lower Manhattan, Hidden In Plain Sight
https://gothamist.com/news/prisoners-endure-a-nightmare-gulag-in-lower-manhattan-hidden-in-plain-sight
That said, there’s some possibility that someone exploited the systemic problems to kill Epstein. But he had lots of reasons to kill himself, and the system is no longer functioning the way we expect it would to make such occurrences unlikely; one of the known problems of the last several years is that suicides rates are rising as conditions and controls deteriorate.
Oh, yes, the MDC is completely incompetent and understaffed. That’s why they were able to secure El Chapo, who twice escaped from Mexican prisons and had a whole lotta people here who would have happily facilitated his return to freedom. His residence was a lot longer than Epstein’s and guess what? Through the pre-trial, the trial and the sentencing, no guard was ever asleep on the job, no cameras failed, and his security was never compromised. And he was housed in the exact same area as Epstein. So how, within a very short period of weeks, did this prison system completely dismantle itself? How can you not at least be curious about this?
Leap of assumption / fallacy: “Through the pre-trial, the trial and the sentencing, no guard was ever asleep on the job, no cameras failed, and his security was never compromised.” No, we don’t actually know that; we only know that no problems were publicly reported, and that as far as we know El Chapo didn’t escape.*
Mistaken fact: El Chapo was NOT held at MDC where Epstein was even though both their cases were being heard in the same courthouse near MDC; he was put across the river in MCC because of the problems and lack of security at MDC:
Brooklyn can’t hold El Chapo.
“That’s the message the Feds sent when they decided to keep slippery Sinaloa drug cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in a Manhattan lockup rather than a Brooklyn jail — even though he’s standing trial in Downtown Brooklyn’s federal court on a blockbuster, 17-count international drug-trafficking indictment.
https://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/40/6/all-broklyn-jail-cant-hold-el-chapo-2017-02-10-bk.html
Thanks for illustrating the illogical, sloppy, fact-free conspiracy theorist mindset for us!
The “pre-Epstein” article about deteriorating conditions at MDC that I cited, was from June 19, 2018 – more than a year before Epstein’s death. I’ve previously cited numerous older articles about growing problems within the federal prison system as well; here are a couple I was readily able to find:
Overcrowded MDC Facility Puts Added Strain of Shorthanded Federal Officers
“Last year MDC was also rocked by the arrest of two Lieutenants, and a Correction Officer, who were all subsequently convicted of dozens of rape and sexual-assault charges.”
https://thechiefleader.com/news/news_of_the_week/overcrowded-mdc-facility-puts-added-strain-of-shorthanded-federal-officers/article_8a0136f6-968a-11e8-ad10-afd22ff03cb2.html
Lawsuit calls Brooklyn jail conditions a ‘humanitarian crisis
“Similar complaints were filed over the weekend by MDC inmates, including Matthew Madonna, the boss of the Lucchese crime family, and Keith Raniere, the accused leader of upstate sex cult Nxivm who is awaiting trial.’”
https://nypost.com/2019/02/04/lawsuit-calls-brooklyn-jail-conditions-a-humanitarian-crisis/
Brooklyn Jail to Be Visited by Federal Judge After Heat and Power Crisis
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/nyregion/lawsuit-brooklyn-jail.html
* Though a plausible conspiracy theory could probably be concocted that El Chapo did escape and that it was covered up – if it hasn’t been already. Starting with before and after photographs of him, which will almost inevitably have apparent discrepancies when subject to close scrutiny, it can then be claimed that he was replaced with a double as part of the cover-up – or his most clever escape yet.
Don’t bother to try talking sense to the senseless. This guy is an expert on everything. That’s why he is constantly posting on the Frank Report to waste his day away in his mommy’s basement
So let us take a guess of who Actaeon may be. Actaeon is white, in his 40’s, college educated. Maybe a law degree. He’s also fat, unattractive to females, and a bit of a social isolate. He’s unattractive to females not because of his girth, but more so because of his arrogance. Actaeon likely is frequently unemployed because he’s intellectually superior to his boss, which leads him to being fired. He is morally superior to everyone, especially Christians, which may suggest that he may have been molested by a priest as a child. He never served in the military, but if he did, he would have been in special operations. He spends alot of time reading Frank Report and writing the usual opinions of his moral superiority, which suggests that he has no other pro-social outlet.
So how close did I get, Actaeon? Maybe if you get a life you may feel better about yourself. Join one of those horrible Christian groups on a missionary trip to the Bahamas and help with disaster relief. You may even lose some weight along the way.
Your logical fallacy is ad hominem
ad hominem
“You attacked your opponent’s character or personal traits in an attempt to undermine their argument.”
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem
“Ad hominem (Latin for “to the person”),[1] short for argumentum ad hominem, typically refers to a fallacious argumentative strategy whereby genuine discussion of the topic at hand is avoided by instead attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.[2] The terms ad mulierem[3] and ad feminam[4] have been used specifically when the person receiving the criticism is female.
Fallacious ad hominem reasoning is categorized among informal fallacies,[5][6][7] more precisely as a genetic fallacy, a subcategory of fallacies of irrelevance.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
Besides being a typical aspect of culty thinking, it’s characteristic of cults themselves and their cultist members. Note how anyone who criticized NXIVM or Raniere, or even anyone close to Raniere who left him, were the bitterly criticized or even attacked.
Jarhead,
Are you insinuating that Acteon is fat like Private Leonard “Gomer Pyle” Lawrence from Full Metal Jacket the movie.
Jarhead you may be like Nostradamus…
“Are you fucking royalty?”…..
……quote is from Full Metal Jacket the movie.
LOL! R. Lee Ermey…RIP.
R. Lee Ermey
Will always be the man!
RIP
He’s an arrogant ass wipe like the sultan.