Monday, March 30, 2026

Welcome to Hormuz!

   Trump keeps talking about "Kharg island" (جزیره خارگ in Arabic script) but unfortunately the forsaken 20 km2 rock deep inside the Persian Gulf, close to Kuwait should be the very last of his concerns. The Island is little more than a deep sea terminal where oil tankers come to load crude oil, being much easier to approach than the mainland terminals nearby. The oil is transported by pipeline to the island which is therefore of no strategic importance whatsoever. 

   What he should really obsess about is the much larger "Qeshm Island" (جزيرة قشم) which is located right in the middle of the Hormuz strait and almost impossible to take over. But to understand the challenge, words are not enough.


    Looking at the map, you will notice that the strait of Hormuz is exceptionally shallow which is the reason why it is said to be "narrow". In reality, it is quite large since it takes about 2 hours to cross from Khasab in Oman to Bandar-Abbas in Iran. A treacherous ride that hundreds of fast boats do daily to transport contraband between the two countries. But this is only part of the story.   

      Here above is what the coast looks like. Beautiful, most certainly but also deadly. This is not Iwo-jima, the Japanese island with its black volcanic sand beaches where the Americans lost 5,000 men. More like the cliffs of Omaha Beach in Normandy where the soldiers struggled on D-Day. But although what was a problem in 1944, which should easily be solved in 2026 with helicopters, what's behind these cliffs is the real obstacle. 

 

   To say that the landscape of Qeshm Island is forbidding is again an understatement. Almost completely devoid of vegetation, or roads, this is definitively not Normandy which was already so difficult to move around. 

   And then there is the absolute killer: In a couple of months, the temperature will be well above 50C (or about 125F). This is so hot that your head becomes dizzy after a few minutes outside. So think about soldiers with their backpacks and armament. This is very close to mission impossible. 

   But there is worse still. Behind these hills, there are real mountains from which the Strait of Hormuz can be controlled 270 degrees and from above.  

   All this means that practically, whatever the Americans do in the South of Iran, controlling the Strait of Hormuz will not happen in weeks or even months.  

   The Iranians have said that this war is existential for them. They will not surrender or give up easily. The Americans may have an overwhelming force but Iran with its extremely rugged terrain is nothing like the flat desert of Iraq. 

   And then there are the deeper obstacles which are the reason why the war should never have happened to start with: Iran, unlike all the Arab countries of the Middle East is not an artificial country created after the fall of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War but a deeply rooted civilization occupying their land, which is the size of Western Europe, for over 3,000 years.

   It is also the heart of the Shia faith which has been opposed to the rest of the Sunni Muslims for over 1,000 years. 

   To open this old festering wound at this stage was absolute madness. The Sunnis in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are saying that now that the US started this war, it must be completed with the defeat of their ancestral enemy. They have a point. But what is more likely to happen, unfortunately for them, is a complete remodeling of the artificial borders of their rootless kingdoms and their wealth slowly, or maybe not so slowly, evaporating and reverting to its sandy (and oily) origin.  

     

Sunday, March 29, 2026

UK's Ofcom To Investigate Complaints Of Climate-Change Denial

   George Orwell would be appalled but probably not surprised that the UK is at the forefront of Orwellian policies, being on the verge of criminalizing "climate denial" speech.

   People who follow this channel will know that I represent Climate denialism of the worst kind since I often write on the subject based on scientific evidences that what we are currently experiencing is a gradual rise of temperatures which has been going on for over 200 years since the Little Ice Age of the 17th Century and absolutely nothing to worry about. Temperatures will rising for another few decades until they reach a new optimum equivalent to the Middle Age optimum, about half to one degree higher than today, or maybe even the Roman optimum which was a little higher still and lasted longer before falling gradually later on. 

   But who cares about cycles and natural fluctuations when the narrative is that the climate is changing "because" of human activities and more specifically the "massive" emissions of CO2? Who cares that the climate was changing long before humans were on the planet and sometimes extremely violently? 

   The real problem of society is that to be controlled, people need to believe that they are guilty of something very bad and need some kind of redemption. Religion invented the Original Sin for which people needed to confess regularly. This was then. Now, most people in developed countries have lost faith and another sin had to be created based on the new "scientific" credo our modern society invented. And lo Global Warming was born, soon to be superseded by the more flexible "Climate Change". The all-weather concept which can be adapted to whatever happens to the real weather which may or may not cooperate with computer models which as we all know by now are far more accurate than reality.    

This is frightening. Indeed it is truly Orwellian...

From the Guardian:

A U-turn by the UK’s broadcasting regulator Ofcom means it will investigate complaints of climate change denial on television and radio for the first time since 2017. The move marks a victory for campaigners who have accused the regulator of allowing some broadcasters “to spout dangerous climate lies” and “flout” rules on accuracy and impartiality.

Complaints about programmes on TalkTV and TalkRadio were assessed by Ofcom, which then decided not to investigate, the same result as more than 1,000 other climate complaints since 2020. However, after a letter from the Good Law Project (GLP) in January, requesting an explanation for the rejections, Ofcom said it had withdrawn its original decision and would “consider afresh” the complaints.

One complaint was about comments from a Talk guest who said in November that climate change “was a deliberate effort to create fake anxiety … out of something that is false”. In the second case, also in November, another guest said the Labour government’s energy policies were “suicidal”, “driven by pseudoscience in many cases” and “a kind of cultish behaviour”.

A reassessment led Ofcom to conclude its approach to “due impartiality” in the broadcasts “required reconsideration”, with the results of the investigations to be published in due course. Ofcom stuck by its decision to not investigate three other climate complaints.

“Rightwing channels have been allowed to spout dangerous climate lies, unchecked, for too long,” said a GLP spokesperson. “We’re glad Ofcom is finally listening and await the conclusion of the investigations. Should it fail to take action against Talk’s misinformation, we will not hesitate to hold them to account.”

An Ofcom spokesperson said: “In re-examining the programmes, we concluded that they raise potentially substantive issues under the broadcasting code which warrant investigation. We have, therefore, opened investigations [on] whether they breached our rules on due impartiality and material misleadingness.” Ofcom said it had also opened another climate-related investigation after a viewer complaint about another TalkTV programme.

A spokesperson for Talk said: “We, as we always would, will cooperate with Ofcom in these matters.”

Full story here.

The first point to make is that there are already rules in place to address factually inaccurate news reporting. But this is not what is at issue here.

OFCOM, it appears, now want to police free speech. Both of these new complaints concern the views of guests, not the journalists or presenters.

Guests on these sort of shows make all sorts of outlandish, and sometimes patently false, comments about all sorts of topics. That is their right. We still have something called freedom of speech in this country.

OFCOM does not get involved in these other cases, so why should they intervene when the topic is climate change?

This decision to intervene in free speech by OFCOM opens a whole new barrel of worms.

What will happen in future if somebody challenges the establishment line on, say, hurricanes?

There is a wide variety of scientific opinion on most climate topics. Will OFCOM be the new arbiter of which version is “correct”?

Will they ban anybody who dares offer a different opinion, or, heaven forbid, dare to quote some facts?

Maybe OFCOM will also ban all use of fraudulent weather attribution models, but I somehow doubt it!

This is a chilling suppression of free speech. “Truth” is fine, but who decides what is true and what is not? OFCOM? The Government? BBC? UN?

And it won’t stop with climate change. How long before we are not allowed to call Starmer the worst PM ever? Or dare to criticise his Government?

We will end up with George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, where the Government decides what is right and what is wrong.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command”

Friday, March 27, 2026

Eurasia Energy War?

    Trump has just opened a Pandora box by attacking Iran. We could get a world war, although at this stage, it is still unlikely considering the fact that the West is not ready to wage war. But what we WILL get without a doubt is a major re-balance of power which inevitably means a drastic reduction of the relative importance of Western countries and the corollary of a very significant reduction of the purchasing power both in the US but especially in Europe. 

   How bad will it be? 

   The first hint is that the financial markets have not yet factored in the risk. When they do, any time now, the decline will be significant. Financial authorities will immediately intervene with limitless funds to prevent a meltdown which conversely guaranties that inflation will rise significantly. What is essential to understand is that inflation of products and deflation of income can actually strike paradoxically at the same time, resulting in a significant crash of purchasing power without triggering hyperinflation, which I think is what we will get this time.    

   What is absolutely certain is that we're in for a very rough ride in the coming months. The recession which did not materialized over the last few years will be swept aside by a depression which will completely transform the current paradigm. 

   It is hard to imagine being more wrong than Fukuyama, who 34 years ago, in 1992 wrote his book titled: "The end of History" just as a new chapter was on the verge of being written.   

Eurasia Energy War?

As analysts and traders continue to assess the Gulf energy shock and its implications for the global economy, another alarming development has emerged across the energy sector: Ukrainian kamikaze drone strikes have reportedly disrupted a significant portion of Russia's oil export capacity, according to Reuters.

Reuters calculates that recent Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia's oil and fuel export infrastructure, including attacks on all three of Russia's major western oil export ports, Novorossiysk on the Black Sea and Primorsk and Ust-Luga on the Baltic Sea, have eliminated 40% of Russia's oil export capacity, or around 2 million barrels per day, in just a matter of weeks.

Taken together, the twin disruptions of Gulf and Russian energy flows (in Eurasia) materially tighten the global energy supply outlook in the coming weeks and months.

The convergence of these shocks suggests crude prices are likely to remain elevated as traders price in a sustained geopolitical risk premium and reduced global spare capacity.

Kiev has also targeted pumping stations and refineries as part of its effort to squeeze Moscow's oil revenue, which funds a quarter of Russia's state budget and its war machine.

This month's attacks on Russia's oil and fuel export infrastructure have forced Moscow to divert more flows to eastern export supply channels.

Flows to China via the Skovorodino-Mohe and Atasu-Alashankou pipelines, plus ESPO Blend shipments from Kozmino, remain solid at 1.9 million barrels per day.

Russia is also still exporting around 250,000 barrels per day from Sakhalin and sending roughly 300,000 barrels per day to Belarusian refineries.

When two separate conflicts involving major powers begin to degrade energy infrastructure across Eurasia, we are left with one very big and unsettling question: At what point do both of these conflicts start to look less regional and more like the early stages of a world already at war?

Who wins? Well, Gulf of America, so far. 

Wednesday, March 25, 2026

California and Europe are in a bind! - Chevron Warns California Facing Historic Fuel Crisis As Diesel Hits Record $7

   When the tide recedes is when you see who was swimming naked. And sure enough, "green" Europe and California will be among the first to enjoy the benefits of a future without oil, pollution... and modern conveniences! 

   According to knowledgeable sources in Washington, Trump has succeeded in cutting himself almost completely from reality as his daily briefing on the war with Iran consists in a 2 minutes video of sycophant analysts telling him that all is going so well that they do not understand why the war lasted until "yesterday".  

   In other words, this is even worse than we thought. The lack of strategy is not a bug, but a feature of the Trump administration. "He" and apparently nobody else says what happens next based on his mood that day. 

   It would almost be funny if the consequences for the rest of the world were no so dire. Soon, fertilizers will be sorely missing in Africa for the coming growing season. But that painful prediction probably won't resonate much in Washington. More ominously, gas prices will spike in California, as explained below. But Californians are not trump voters. It is only when the pain reverberates in red-neck counties that the panic signal will start ringing in the capital. Then soon after, another concern will rise as weapon manufacturers try to expand production to replenish stocks of bombs and missiles, and encounter the bottleneck of Chinese rare earths. Good luck convincing the Chinese to increase exports!   

   And just like that, Iran is finding itself in a good negotiating position. Not because they won any battle but because they thought deeper about the economic consequences of such a conflict and positioned themselves wisely.    

Chevron Warns California Facing Historic Fuel Crisis As Diesel Hits Record $7

The world's biggest energy execs are currently at the annual CERAWeek conclave in Houston where, understandably, they are dropping bulletin bombs reeking of fire and brimstone, and warning the already critical oil/gas situation will only get worse if the pre-war status quo isn't restored (which incidentally will be great for their bottom lines... until the world is tipped into a recession).

Take US oil giant Chevron, which warned that California is careening toward an energy crisis because of the Iran war (which will likely be resolved soon), and that the company may quit refining oil in the state unless officials roll back taxes and regulations (which is unlikely to ever be resolved as long as Dems are in charge of the Golden State).

California is highly exposed to the disruption rippling across commodity markets because it imports about 20% of its refined fuels from Asia. But as extensively discussed here, oil product shipments from China, South Korea, Singapore and elsewhere are at risk of slowing significantly as Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz, leaving Asian nations struggling to meet their own demand at home let alone export to California.

Chevron’s oil refining head Andy Walz said the potential for fuel shortages in California is his worst fear: We have refineries in Asia that are having to cut crude, and so they’re going to make less products,” Walz said in an interview Tuesday. “What if San Francisco doesn’t have the jet fuel it needs? Or Los Angeles? Or maybe gasoline?”

And as if to confirm his warning, just hours later the price of California Diesel hit a record high just above $7 per gallon, or $7.072 to be precise. 

That topped the previous record of $7.012 in June 2022, in the first months of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Source: AAA

Since California is disconnected from the US fuel-making centers of Texas and Louisiana, it is essentially an energy island. That’s compounded by multiple refinery closures in recent years due to increased costs driven by regulations designed to fight climate change and cap oil industry profits, not to mention the state's toxic and oppressive regulatory regime. 

As a result, California consumers are more exposed than most other Americans to surging energy prices because of the Iran war. They already pay nearly $6 for a gallon of gasoline, compared with a national average of close to $4, due to the state's ruinous legacy "green" regime. It’s a growing political problem for Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is expected to run for president in 2028.

“California has decided that they’re going to rely on imports,” Walz said at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston. “It’s a dangerous game", Walz added tongue-in-cheek.

California officials should declare an “energy emergency,” reform its climate and tax rules and promote in-state oil production, Walz said. Without such action, Chevron could quit refining in California within a decade, he said.

A spokesman for California Governor Newsom’s office said oil companies are “cashing in” on the war in Iran and running a “coordinated campaign” to attack California. In other words nothing will change until prices get to be so high, the state's residents demand change.

“If they’re serious about protecting consumers, they should direct that concern where it belongs: at Donald Trump. There’s no end in sight to Trump’s war taxing American families at the pump,” the spokesman, Anthony Martinez, said in an email, confirming Newsom's plan is... to pretend there is no problem.

Meanwhile, anyone with a brain can see what's coming: the problem in California is one of the state’s own making, Walz said.

The Trump administration has already used emergency wartime powers to authorize Sable Offshore, a Houston-based driller, to restart oil production off the California coast. The president has also temporarily waived a century-old maritime law called the Jones Act to help make it cheaper and easier to ship gasoline, diesel and other commodities between US ports.

Meanwhile, California already has the nation’s toughest fuel standards as well as a carbon cap-and-trade program that critics say forces consumers to pay the highest prices in the nation. Its goal to reduce carbon emissions 85% by 2045 relies heavily on a near-complete phaseout of gasoline-powered cars and a large reduction in heavy industry — including refining. 

Nonetheless, California remains the country’s second-largest consumer of gasoline and the largest market for jet fuel, for which there’s currently no practical low-carbon alternative. The Democratic state's recent revulsion toward Elon Musk, and Tesla, has not helped the looming fuel crisis. 

The California intent to offshore carbon to other nations has offshored their security of supply,” Walz said. “They’ve offshored jobs and they haven’t had any impact on carbon.” 

Chevron, which has tankers sitting idle on each side of the Strait of Hormuz, is taking the unusual step of shipping Gulf Coast oil to California through the Panama Canal as the war disrupts shipments from the region that West Coast refiners typically use, Walz said. 

China has already imposed a fuel export ban as shipments from the Gulf dwindle. If the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked long enough, other Asian countries could follow suit. Chevron’s scenario planning initially looked at the Strait being closed until the end of March.

“Now our scenario plans are worse,” Walz said. “It’s going to be longer and we’re trying to look around the corner.”

California is home to more than 30 military bases. That includes one of the largest in the US, Travis Air Force Base, which Chevron supplies from its Richmond refinery.

“I think the US government should be concerned,” Walz said.

But wait, there's more because the state's green lunatics threaten to make an already dire crisis something truly historic: new emissions rules proposed by the California Air Resources Board, if implemented, threaten to drive costs for the state’s remaining refineries even higher. Chevron estimates the additional expenses could hit $500 million within five years.

“They need to abandon the tax on refineries or they won’t have any refineries in 10 years,” Walz said. “If it stays that way — Chevron will be gone in 10 years for sure. We won’t be able to make it.”

* * *

But it's not just California that faces a historic crisis: Europe is about to get crushed as well. 

According to Shell CEO Wael Sawan, Europe will soon begin to experience the same kind of disruption to fuel supplies that Asia has faced due to the war in Iran in recent weeks. Sawan said the effects of the conflict continue to ripple out across global fuel markets, first in South Asia, then Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia, and increasingly in Europe as April approaches.

“We are trying to work with governments to just alert them to the various levers they will need to pull, including on the demand side, including what they need to do around storage,” he said Tuesday at the same CERAWeek conference. 

Just like California, expect Europe to do nothing besides pointing fingers, until it is too late.

After The Epstein Files, It's Become All But Impossible To Believe He Killed Himself

   Not only is it impossible to believe that Epstein killed himself, but it is impossible to believe that he is dead. 

   The detective work below makes it rather clear that Epstein was exfiltrated and now lives incognito in Israel.  

   No, the Eptein files are not about pedophilia but about the utter and complete corruption of the political and judicial systems!  

by Tom Elliott via substack,

As soon as the feds announced Jeffrey Epstein killed himself while awaiting prosecution on charges of sex trafficking, the popular reaction was disbelief: “Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself” quickly became an internet meme. And now, with the release of the Epstein Files, it’s only become harder — if not all but impossible — to believe the official story that Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself in the Manhattan Correctional Center on August 10, 2019.

The “Suicide”

The DoJ’s Inspector General released a report that officially concluded there was no reason to doubt the suicide story, but actually contains many disturbing details if you read the included evidence. As summarized by JustFacts:

  • Federal prison officials placed Epstein in a cell with a murderous, hulking ex-cop — a death trap for any child molester.

  • Less than two weeks later, prison guards found Epstein in the middle of the night in a semiconscious state with a rope and “friction marks” around his neck.

  • Despite a court order requiring the prison to preserve video surveillance footage near Epstein’s cell during the strangulation, federal prison officials failed to do so and also lost the backup due to “technical errors.”

  • Federal prison officials took Epstein off “suicide watch” just one day after the strangulation without determining whether Epstein was attacked by his cellmate or tried to commit suicide.

  • One day before Epstein’s death, federal prison officials removed his new cellmate and didn’t replace him. They did this even though a prison psychologist sent an email to over 70 prison staffers stating that Epstein “needs” a cellmate — a common suicide prevention measure.

  • One day before Epstein’s death, a federal court unsealed more than 2,000 pages of lawsuit records that named and implicated wealthy and powerful people in Epstein’s sex crimes, as well as federal officials in covering up the crimes.

  • One day before Epstein’s death, federal prison officials permitted Epstein to make a completely unmonitored phone call in direct violation of prison policy and under patently false pretenses.

  • Federal officers placed a hoard of linens in Epstein’s cell, which is commonly prohibited because they can be used to create nooses.

  • Federal officers left Epstein alone in his cell for nearly eight hours on the night he died — despite the fact that they were required to check on all inmates in his unit “at least twice per hour” and were only 15 feet from Epstein’s cell.

  • Federal officers falsified records to show that they had checked on Epstein, a violation of federal law punishable by up to five years in prison.

  • Federal prosecutors “dismissed all charges pending against” the two officers who falsified the records and “declined” to prosecute others who “falsely certified inmate countslips and round sheets on the day before and the day of Epstein’s death.”

  • Federal prison officials failed to record footage from 9 of the 11 surveillance cameras around Epstein’s cell on the night of his death, including one that showed Epstein’s cell tier and cell door.

  • The FBI agents who searched Epstein’s New York mansion found and then abandoned a sexually explicit trove of photos and CDs labeled with the names of “young” females alongside people other than Epstein. This allowed one of Epstein’s most notorious accomplices to take the evidence and potentially scrub it before giving it to the feds.

  • To this day, the federal government hasn’t revealed the names of the people that were written beside the “young” females on Epstein’s CDs.

Hours before Epstein’s reported suicide, he made an unmonitored call to his girlfriend, Karyna Shuliak. She told friends Epstein gave no indication he was thinking of harming himself. The New York Times asked the Bureau of Prisons for his full call logs; “those logs show only one social call during his stay, more than a week earlier, to Shuliak.” In other words, the logs omitted this critical call. To date there is no knowledge of its contents, beyond Shuliak saying Epstein appeared to be in good spirits.

The Cameras

Due to a known issue with the prison’s DVR system — an issue jail officials were already aware of — only one security camera in the SHU unit was functioning. The feds said there exists no camera list correctly naming camera locations in the jail. The corrupted DVR drives were shipped to Quantico, where the FBI reportedly planned to attempt data recovery. However, according to an FBI letter, “they discontinue[d] those efforts once we told them dates prior to July 29th weren’t of interest.” This is itself strange, as pre-July 29th would have covered Epstein’s original reported strangulation.

According to the Inspector General’s report, both guards tasked with monitoring Epstein that night fell asleep during key hours, missing six of the six mandatory visual checks on Epstein. At other points during the night, as newly surfaced surveillance footage shows, the guards were actively walking around mere “steps away” from Epstein’s cell as he was reportedly preparing sheets to hang himself.

Many online researchers have noted that by using a technique to search Epstein files displaying the text “no images produced,” you’ll find files with a .pdf extension that, when renamed to .mp4, reveal video files. One interesting video is surveillance footage from the Manhattan Correctional Center from the night prior to Epstein’s “suicide.” It shows a large screen blocking the camera from the stairwell.

The Body Swap Theory

Why might blocking the stairwell camera be necessary? One possibility is to facilitate what a worker at the jail posted about on 4Chan: that the night before the “suicide,” the feds swapped Epstein out.

“Last night after 0415 count they took him medical in a wheelchair front cufed but not 1 triage nurse says they spoke to him. Next thing we know a trip van shows up? We do not release weekends unless a judge orders it. Next thing we know, he’s put in a single man cell and hangs himself? Here’s the thing, the trip van did NOT sign in and we did not record the plate number and a guy in a green military outfit was in the back of the van according to the tower guy who let him thru the gate. You guys I am shaking right now but I think they switched him out.”

Within 24 hours, the feds subpoenaed Apple, AT&T, CitiBank, and 4Chan to investigate this poster’s identity and determined it was indeed a staffer at the jail. Consider the priorities this reveals: subpoenas issued within hours of an anonymous post, while the investigation into the most high-profile prisoner death in modern history was left to two guards who falsified records.

Multiple sources in the Epstein files note that at 10:39 PM on August 9, investigators reviewing jail surveillance footage flagged an orange-colored figure moving up a staircase toward the locked tier housing Epstein’s cell. The Inspector General said it could be someone carrying bedding; CBS reported independent analysts said it looked more like an inmate. Officials have repeatedly stated no one entered Epstein’s housing tier that night.

The Guards

The NY Post reported that one of the jail guards, Tova Noel, was googling “Latest Epstein jail” in the hours before his reputed death. Noel also “made a mysterious $5,000 cash deposit 10 days before the predator’s jail-cell suicide, new Department of Justice documents reveal.” Noel drove a $62,000 Range Rover — an extravagant luxury for a jail guard.

Noel was one of the two jail workers accused of faking records to say they checked on Epstein throughout the night of his “suicide.” She was fired, but the feds later dropped criminal charges.

Per the NY Post, “Noel googled ‘latest on Epstein in jail’ at 5:42 a.m. and then again at 5:52 a.m. — less than 40 minutes before her colleague, correctional officer Michael Thomas, found the disgraced financier dead in his jail cell.” Noel later denied to the feds that she had googled Epstein — a claim her internet history would disprove. Despite the DoJ knowing she was actively checking for updates on Epstein throughout that night, the IG report downplays this, merely stating she read an article about Epstein:

“OIG analysis of the activity on the SHU computers revealed that Noel used the computer periodically throughout the night, including to search the Internet for furniture sales and benefit websites and to read a news article about Epstein. Thomas used the computer briefly around 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. to search for motorcycle sales and sports news.”

Noel reported that faking records at the Manhattan Correctional Center was just the way things operated there.

The files only contain Noel’s bank records beginning in December 2018. They show seven cash deposits totaling $11,880. Noel started working at the Special Housing Unit — where Epstein had been held — beginning on July 7, 2019, just weeks before his death.

Noel, who drove a $62,000 2019 Land Rover Range Rover, wasn’t asked about the cash during her DOJ interview, records showed.

The Miami Herald reports that an inmate during Epstein’s incarceration overheard a commotion the morning Epstein was reportedly found dead:

The federal government’s online Epstein library contains a five-page handwritten report of an FBI interview with an inmate who awoke the morning of Aug. 10, 2019 to the loud commotion in the Special Housing Unit, or SHU, where he and Epstein were jailed.

“Breathe! Breathe!” he recalled officers shouting about 6:30 a.m. Then he said he heard an officer say “Dudes, you killed that dude.” A female guard replied “If he is dead, we’re going to cover it up and he’s going to have an alibi — my officers,” the FBI notes said. The inmate claimed the whole wing overheard the exchange.

Later, after learning Epstein had died, he said inmates said “Miss Noel killed Jeffrey.”

He identified the female guard as Tova Noel, one of two correctional officers who were later charged with falsifying reports so that it appeared from their records that they had made their rounds that night — when they had not. The charges against her and the other officer, Michael Thomas, were later dropped, but both were fired.

And another curiosity. In an interview with an unnamed jail worker, the redacted interviewee says they used a fake body to confuse the press:

“[REDACTED] remained with COs [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] until personnel from the Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) arrived to transport EPSTEIN to their facility. Due to the large news media presence outside the MCC, a male OCHE official called and said he would be arriving at the loading dock with a black vehicle. In order to thwart the media, [REDACTED], [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] used boxes and sheets to create what appeared to be a human body, which was put into the white OCME vehicle which the press followed, allowing the black vehicle to depart unnoticed with EPSTEIN's body.”

The Body Doesn’t Match: The Prostate

It seems clear enough someone died of hanging or strangulation that morning. The question is whether it was Epstein’s body, or someone else’s.

Perhaps the most damning evidence that it was not Epstein’s body comes from his prostate — or rather, his lack of one.

In an exchange with Dr. Richard Axel, Epstein said that despite taking testosterone, he also takes Viagra due to not having a prostate. This is Epstein, in his own words, telling a doctor that his prostate had been removed.

His medical records corroborate this. A LabCorp patient report for Epstein references his “radical prostatectomy” — boilerplate language triggered by a prostatectomy flag in his patient history. This language appears in reports from both 2010 and 2018.

In two of the Epstein files, we have Epstein texting himself about needing a prostate cancer specialist. In April 2019 — just months before his death — NY-Presbyterian Hospital told Epstein the doctor he sought was no longer practicing and included several alternative recommendations. Of a proposed doctor they wrote: “He has been listed as an expert in nerve-sparing radical prostatectomy techniques as well as male infertility by Castle Connolly’s ‘Best Doctors’ Guide since 1999 as well as other national ‘Best Doctor’ lists.” (“Nerve-sparing” translates to Epstein being able to continue his favorite pastime.)

And yet: despite all of these records indicating Epstein’s prostate had been removed, the NYC coroner report describes the deceased as having a prostate that is “slightly and diffusely enlarged, with marked enlargement of the verumontanum.” The verumontanum is an anatomical structure that exists within the prostate. You cannot have one without the other.

To date, there is no publicly known way to regrow a prostate.

The Body Doesn’t Match: The Lipoma

Jeffrey Epstein suffered from a roughly 6 cm lipoma (fatty tumor) in his left supraclavicular fossa — the area above his left collarbone — documented in 2016, 2017, and again in 2018. The 2016 report also references a similar exam from 2014. In 2016 there were communications about surgical removal. In 2017, Epstein’s assistant confirms he hasn’t had it removed. In 2018, it’s being MRI’d all over again.

2016:

2017:

2018:

Both MRIs document a mass large enough to displace the brachial plexus — a critical nerve bundle serving the arm. The autopsy makes no mention of it whatsoever, despite a detailed neck dissection necessitated by the hanging injuries. The 2016 MRI also documented multilevel cervical spondylosis (C3-C7) with cord compression at C5-C6. The autopsy doesn’t mention this either. Its musculoskeletal section notes only a healed rib fracture and general musculature — no soft tissue masses anywhere.

Despite Epstein’s voluminous communications with his doctors in the years and months before his reported death, there is no record anywhere of Epstein having the lipoma removed. As late as September 2018, he was texting his doctor about it. And even if he had somehow undergone an undocumented surgery and recovery in the months before his arrest, that level of operation should have left scarring or other evidence the autopsy would have noted.

The lipoma’s location also creates a cardiovascular problem for the official narrative. “Evaluation of the left supraclavicular fossa once again demonstrates a lesion identified, inferior to the subclavian vein, and displacing the roots of the brachial plexus inferiorly,” the radiologist, Dr. Douglas DeCorato, observed in the 2018 MRI. In 2016, in an exchange with one of his doctors, the surgeon says he’s bringing his brother, a vascular surgeon, because “the tumor is directly adjacent to the subclavian vessels.”

Here is what the official autopsy says of the deceased’s cardiovascular system (a section redacted in some versions of the document):

During autopsy, the cardiovascular system examination involves tracing major vessels including the subclavian. A 6 cm mass resting on those vessels should have been encountered during that dissection — yet the autopsy reports the pulmonary vessels and venae cavae as simply “free of thrombus and embolus” with no mention of any adjacent mass.

The 2018 MRI explicitly states there is “no evidence of adenopathy.” The autopsy, roughly 14 months later, documents multiple enlarged cervical lymph nodes up to 1.5 cm. That could be a new development, but combined with the missing lipoma and the impossible prostate, it deepens the question of whether these records describe the same person.

The Body Doesn’t Match: Physical Appearance

The Epstein in the post-mortem photos has ears and a nose that look markedly different from Epstein’s known features. Morticians have also noted that images of the deceased with his mouth closed do not align with how faces typically present after death by hanging — muscles relax and gravity takes over, meaning mouths and eyes usually fall open.

The Medical Examiner

The original death certificate, from the day after his reported suicide, lists his immediate cause of death as “Pending Further Study.” New York City’s medical examiner, Dr. Kristin Roman, told federal investigators that due to the high-profile nature of the case, she wanted to be “thorough” and speak with the guard who found him. However, she was not permitted to do so. She changed the ruling to suicide after reviewing “additional evidence” — which sources say was his alleged prior suicide attempt.

Jeffrey Epstein’s brother hired famed pathologist Michael Baden to observe the autopsy. “Baden served for decades as a member of the New York State Correction Medical Review Board, an entity responsible for reviewing deaths of inmates in custody,” the Miami Herald reports. “Baden has conducted more than 20,000 autopsies including reviewing those of former President John F. Kennedy, and civil rights leaders the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers.”

Baden found three separate fractures: two on the left and right sides of the thyroid cartilage (the Adam’s apple), plus one on the left hyoid bone. He described the injuries as requiring a “huge amount of pressure” and specifically noted they were “more consistent with ligature homicidal strangulation” than suicide. “I have never seen three fractures like this in a suicidal hanging,” Baden later told 60 Minutes. “Going over a thousand jail hangings, suicides in the New York City state prisons over the past 40-50 years, no one had three fractures.” Others have noted that hyoid fractures can occur in hangings, particularly among older individuals — but three fractures remains highly unusual.

Attorneys for Jeffrey Epstein told the Southern District of New York: “We also had been in receipt of a tremendous amount of medical and scientific evidence volunteered to us opining that the injuries suffered, as reported, were far more consistent with assault than with suicide, and we are happy to supply the court with all the information we have.” These attorneys also noted how the prison guards had moved the body, complicating investigation efforts: “Instead of having the cell in the condition it was found, if he had been dead for 45 minutes or two hours or four hours, there were efforts to move him and, therefore, make it more difficult to reconstruct whether or not he died of suicide or some other cause.”

The Pre-Dated Death Announcement

The feds’ statement on Epstein’s death appears to have been drafted a day before he died. As many as 23 documents in the disclosure are labeled as statements from the Southern District of New York’s US Attorney’s Office. In one version, the date reads August 9, 2019 — a day before Epstein was reportedly found dead. It states: “Earlier this morning, the Manhattan Correctional Centre confirmed that Jeffrey Epstein, who faced charges brought by this Office of engaging in the sex trafficking of minors, had been found unresponsive in his cell and pronounced dead shortly thereafter.”

The DOJ has called it “merely an unfortunate typo that was later updated to reflect the correct date before being publicized.” Theoretically possible, sure. But it’s another incident in an impossibly long string of coincidences where you must extend the feds the benefit of the doubt.

Destruction of Evidence

Then there are the jail’s surveillance hard drives. The Epstein Files contain an FBI memorandum admitting that an FBI agent removed the hard drive from the jail’s camera system, wiping all of the data from the night Epstein died. The agent did this, they acknowledge, even as he knew doing so would result in the content’s corruption. This comes on top of two other surveillance systems that independently failed that night.

And it gets worse. Just yesterday, the Daily Beast reported that six days after Epstein’s death, the Department of Justice shredded a massive volume of documents from the jail:

A Bureau of Prisons “After-Actions team” went through the jail and shredded the files, according to a report drafted by an FBI official whose name has been redacted. The document is part of the tranche of files released by the Department of Justice earlier this year.

“[Redacted] has never seen this amount of bags of shredded documents coming out to be put in the dumpster at the rear gate of the MCC,” the report said.

“Last week Epstein hung [sic] himself, and there is an ongoing investigation. There was a BOP After-Actions team that come, and they are supposed to review what happened,” the report continued.

… “Caller found it suspicious that an after-action team charged with investigating would be shredding huge amounts of paperwork with all of the officials from the AIG, FBI and BO[P] in the building in the middle of an investigation. Those giving instructions to [redacted] said, ‘Make sure you get that box too,’” the document said, referring to the assistant inspector general.

That this was no normal cleanup operation is underscored by the fact that at least one inmate was recruited to help dispose of the shredded material: “[Redacted] was bringing back bags of shredded papers, around 4 or 5 bags, and caller brought them into the gate to throw into the dumpster. [Redacted] told caller that the after-action team is shredding huge amounts of paperwork.”

Even more damning: a federal prosecutor later wrote that “all institutional count slips prior to August 10, 2019, which we requested on August 12, 2019, are apparently ‘missing.’”

The Miami Herald notes there were two separate corruption probes associated with Epstein’s death — “one, an obstruction-of-justice case involving the shredding of documents and possible charges of dereliction of duty and other misconduct by correctional officers; and second, a blackmail-for-sex scheme involving a correctional officer that the DOJ labeled a ‘Color of Law’ probe” — and both were transferred from being an FBI criminal case to being a matter for the DoJ’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), which lacks prosecuting power.

From the outset, on the day Epstein’s body was found, then-Attorney General William Barr immediately announced that Epstein died of an “apparent suicide.” And then, six days later, on Aug. 16, Sampson confirmed the suicide ruling.

With the cause and manner of death already determined, and no foul play suspected, the only aspects of the case left unresolved – at least in the eyes of the Justice Department – was whether the actions of any of the officers contributed to Epstein’s suicide.

This seemed to color the investigation almost from the beginning, since Epstein’s death was never treated as suspicious. As a result, his cell was never considered a possible crime scene that would, under normal circumstances, be examined by experienced criminal and forensic experts who would take fingerprints, blood samples and other evidence. One thing that got lost as a result of the cell not being examined was that the piece of fabric that Epstein allegedly used to hang himself was never identified.

Before moving on, it’s worth recalling that Epstein significantly revised and signed his will two days before his reported death. Normally, dramatic changes to your estate hours before a death arouse suspicion, but it’s also not inconsistent with suicide.

The Tattoo Question

Many have called into question an apparent discrepancy between Epstein having at least one tattoo and the autopsy body having none. The files contain an undated image of Epstein with a barbed wire tattoo on his left arm:

However, this situation isn’t straightforward. In 2009, Epstein references his tattoo in an email. In 2010, his assistant emailed him about tattoo removal options. There are also several redacted emails about a tattoo. Some have pointed to a 2017 DoJ deposition referencing a “barbed wire” tattoo on the left arm, but this deposition is actually from one of the victims, not a contemporaneous observation of Epstein.

Due to Epstein’s 2010 interest in tattoo removal and the lack of dated photos confirming the tattoo’s presence at the time of his arrest, there’s not enough to establish this discrepancy definitively. It’s also possible someone has inserted a fake image of Epstein with a barbed wire tattoo specifically to plant a debunkable conspiracy theory — a known disinformation technique.

Post-Mortem Activity

Meanwhile, accounts connected with Epstein have remained active after his reported death.

The Irish media outlet The Ditch “gained access to the convicted paedophile’s FedEx account after the US Department of Justice published an unredacted password. The department later removed it from the Epstein files.”

The account was used as recently as summer 2024 — despite Epstein’s death in 2019.

The Ditch still has access to the FedEx account and address book, which contains almost 100 names and addresses, including an ex-Israeli Air Force Lieutenant Colonel who now advises Alan Dershowitz.

A package collected from Gulfstream’s product support centre in Savannah, Georgia, was shipped to Plan D LLC in Kennesaw, Georgia, on 20 May, 2024.

Plan D is the now-dissolved firm that Epstein incorporated to own and operate his private jet, which Donald Trump used during the 2024 US presidential election campaign.

Another package was shipped from the same Gulfstream address in Georgia to Empire Aviation in West Palm Beach, Florida, on 12 March, 2024, according to invoices.

FedEx deleted both invoices from the child sex offender’s account in the past few days.

Then there’s Fortnite.

One of the early public discoveries from the Epstein files drop is that Epstein had a Fortnite account under the username littlestjeff1.

This username matches an email listed in the Epstein files, littlestjeff@yahoo.com (Littlest = Little St. James). It also appears as the username of his YouTube account.

After people looked up the account’s status, it appeared to be actively used from Tel Aviv. Fortnite removed the account from online tracking, then issued a statement saying it was a “ruse” — actually another player “who changed their username” to match Epstein’s.

However, Fortnite’s player community noted a problem with this explanation: when people change their username on the platform, you can see the previous usernames. This account showed no prior name. (That community note was later removed from X.)

Other details that Epic Games’ statement didn’t address: the account showed a gap in activity that coincided with Epstein’s stay in the Manhattan Correctional Center, and records of its use were scrubbed from the Wayback Machine.

Could anyone in Epstein’s orbit exert influence over Epic Games? One pathway: Epstein’s estimated $5 million equity stake in Tencent, the Chinese technology conglomerate that purchased a 48.4 percent outstanding stake — equating to 40 percent of total capital — in Epic Games in 2012. Tencent’s acquisition triggered a number of high-profile departures from Epic, reputedly over the company’s shifting philosophy. A financial whistleblower also alerted the feds to suspicious Epstein activities related to Tencent’s ownership.

Epstein’s “secret” bank in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Southern Country International, also saw significant post-mortem activity. The New York Times reported that Southern Country had $693,157 in assets when Epstein died. Then, in mid-December 2019, the estate transferred $15.5 million to the bank. Two weeks later, its assets were back down to $499,759. The estate offered no explanation. A magistrate judge reviewing the transactions said, “There’s no explanation for it.”

The Epstein files dump also includes emails between DoJ and HHS officials from July 6, 2021 — two years after Epstein’s death — discussing “Epstein’s” availability for a call in Colorado. Snopes investigated and found evidence indicating these emails refer to Richard Epstein, a cooperating witness in a Medicare fraud investigation. Despite my general skepticism of Snopes, I believe they’re correct here: the evidence strongly suggests this email chain referred to a different Epstein.

There are also the supposed sightings. Someone thought he might have seen Ghislaine (and someone who looks like Alan Dershowitz) in Quebec. Someone else brought a drone to Little St. James and caught a glimpse of someone who resembles Epstein (and his most recent girlfriend) in the weeks after his reported suicide. Another sighting had him in a random port in Greece.

Why the Feds Might Help Him Disappear

Why would the federal government help Epstein flee? There are actually many reasons.

He provided them a skill they find valuable: money laundering. CBS News recently revealed a previously undisclosed DEA investigation — a five-year-plus probe targeting Epstein and 14 other individuals for approximately $50 million in suspicious wire transfers linked to illicit narcotics and prostitution activity in the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York City.

He was an international power broker, coordinating operations among banking families, intelligence agencies, universities, and governments. He’d been a key cog in the apparatus that seems to run our power structure for at least 40 years. And he provided the U.S. intelligence:

  • Epstein “told colleagues and friends that he was an intelligence asset

  • The FBI closed a forfeiture proceeding against Epstein, noting “Epstein… has provided information to the FBI as agreed upon”

  • There’s speculation that Epstein was a “confidential informant

  • The U.S. State Department rented Epstein a luxurious townhouse in New York City that had been seized from the Iranian government in 1992. They didn’t even complain when he failed to pay his bills.

  • Researcher Mike Benz has detailed reporting all but conclusively showing Epstein helped launder money for the CIA during, at least, Iran-Contra.

And yes, most likely he was leveraging sexual blackmail — as everyone now largely agrees. Were they really going to let Epstein go to trial where he starts spilling secrets? A guy like Epstein would have sooner torched the whole cathedral than quietly accept a life sentence. That was never going to happen.

My working theory is that the feds initially hoped Epstein would be killed in jail — the most convenient outcome for Trump, Barr, and others. Which may explain why they kept housing him with violent inmates. When that failed, they went to Plan B.

Suppression Over Investigation

Of course I cannot prove any of this definitively — although the prostate issue seems as close to proof as it gets. But one thing I can say: even if the feds didn’t help Epstein abscond, why are they acting like they did? If you start with this theory — that they orchestrated a conclusion to the Epstein chapter they hoped would tie up countless loose ends — everything else starts making sense. Including Trump and Bondi’s absolute resistance to dig deeper into the files.

One of the most notable aspects of the feds’ post-Epstein behavior is how focused they are on suppressing incriminating information rather than investigating it.

Case in point: Zorro Ranch. Many Americans have wondered why the feds never raided Epstein’s 7,500-acre New Mexico compound despite multiple victims testifying of abuse there. But it’s worse than neglect — the feds actively prevented others from investigating, reports the Albuquerque Journal.

The request by federal prosecutors essentially “gutted” New Mexico’s investigation into sex trafficking at Epstein’s 7,500-acre Zorro Ranch located 30 miles south of Santa Fe, Balderas said.

“We provided information to them to strengthen their prosecution,” he said. Prosecutors made assurances they would provide findings to New Mexico investigators. “They were making the representation that they were going to prosecute with a multijurisdictional, multistate focus.”

Balderas’ office also sent a letter in 2020 urging federal prosecutors to seize control of Zorro Ranch to preserve evidence, records show. Balderas said he also offered to assist serving search warrants at the ranch but never received a response and has no reason to believe prosecutors acted on the requests …

None of the investigative records provided by New Mexico appear to be among the more than 3 million pages of documents released last month by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The FBI/DoJ’s redactions — technically illegal under the Massie/Khanna disclosure bill — are also telling. The day before Epstein was reported dead, the federal jail transferred out Epstein’s cellmate despite a prison psychologist expressly forbidding this. The records reporting the transfer are blacked out:


This is one of thousands of similar examples. The Massie/Khanna bill specifies redactions are only “permitted to withhold certain information such as the personal information of victims and materials that would jeopardize an active federal investigation.” The law also requires the DoJ to list all redactions and categories of redactions. The DoJ refuses to comply with either requirement.

Should we wonder if the FBI has a conflict of interest considering its post-9/11 data-mining was in large part assisted by Chiliad, a Big Data company run by Ghislaine Maxwell’s sister, Christine? One whistleblower told the FBI “a backdoor to the software is suspected … I suspect Robert, Ghislaine, and Jeffrey were all Mossad agents trying to blackmail leaders in the political and financial world.”

The Impossible Coincidences

I can’t help but acknowledge that putting all of this in writing will be controversial. But this is the actual presumption of a very large swath of the American public — and for good reason. We already know the feds lied about Epstein’s “sweetheart deal.” They lied about his intelligence connections. They lied about the lack of incriminating evidence in the Epstein Files. They refuse to comply with the law requiring the release of unredacted records. And all of that is before the chain of impossibly improbable events surrounding his supposed suicide.

To continue believing the official narrative, you must believe:

It’s just bad luck the body autopsied had an enlarged prostate, despite Epstein telling his own doctor he’d had his removed.

It’s just bad luck a 6 cm tumor documented in Epstein’s neck through 2018 vanished from the 2019 autopsy — with no surgical record explaining its absence.

It’s just bad luck the jail’s known-to-be-broken DVR system wasn’t repaired before the most notorious inmate in the country was found dead.

It’s just bad luck 11 of 12 cameras were either offline or not recording that night.

It’s just bad luck an FBI agent corrupted the data on one of the surveillance drives still in existence.

It’s just bad luck the FBI was unable to recover that footage.

It’s just bad luck the Bureau of Prisons shredded “huge amounts of paperwork” from the jail six days after Epstein’s death, during an active investigation, and that the institutional count slips from the night he died went “missing.”

It’s just a coincidence someone working at the jail posted that he believed they swapped the body out — and the feds subpoenaed his records within hours.

It’s just bad luck that not one but both guards assigned to Epstein’s unit that night fell asleep, failed to make their rounds, and lied about it.

It’s just a coincidence one of those guards was receiving unexplained cash deposits and driving a $62,000 Range Rover, and spent part of the night googling for updates on Epstein in jail.

It’s just bad luck the DoJ dropped charges against both guards.

It’s just bad luck the medical examiner initially needed more time, was denied access to the guard who found the body, and then changed her ruling.

It’s just bad luck a competing pathologist found three neck fractures — more consistent with strangulation than hanging — something he’d never seen in thousands of jail suicides.

It’s just bad luck the feds’ announcement of Epstein’s death was dated the day before he died.

It’s just bad luck Epstein’s FedEx account was shipping packages five years after his death, and his Fortnite account showed activity from Tel Aviv.

It’s just bad luck the feds shut down New Mexico’s investigation into Zorro Ranch and then failed to include any of New Mexico’s records in the 3 million pages they released.

It’s just bad luck so many of the feds’ documents regarding Epstein’s reported final days are still being illegally redacted.

All of this only scratches the surface. Further examples of the feds’ withholding of evidence, as well as conflicts of interest between Epstein-affiliated enterprises and federal officials, are too numerous to document here. One rabbit hole: the Epstein-backed surveillance company Reporty (later renamed Carbyne, also known as Smart911), whose financial backers — including former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak — overlap with the president’s, and whose technology appears to be used at the Pentagon. (There is more on this in the bookEpstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales.” And I can’t help but quickly add: The authors of that book interviewed Epstein’s attorney, victims’ attorneys, among others, and the only person willing to go on record stating he believed Epstein killed himself was Alan Dershowitz. )

Speaking for myself, I can only weather so many insults to my intelligence before accepting I’m being had. We’ll likely never know exactly what happened on August 10, 2019. But one thing I can say with confidence: the feds have absolutely earned their distrust.

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