I heard about this one from my brother who has a nice house in the leafy Adelaide suburb of Mitcham (near Unley High School, where Julia Gillard apparently went to). Mitcham is south of the city centre, basically divided by Unley Road. It is mainly white Anglo middle class, like my brother. But, political correctness has crept in even there:

“It will be a silent night by Brownhill Creek this Christmas, after Mitcham Council dumped its highly popular carols night. The council decision ends 25 years of the Carols By The Creek event, which regularly attracted more than 5000 people. The seven councillors who voted to abolish the carols cited its cost (about $45,000) and said the event was not inclusive for non-Christians. Hundreds of readers on Advertiser.com.au and our Facebook page have slammed the decision. At 6pm on Thursday the poll further down this story had 90 per cent of respondents calling on the council to reinstate the event. During a narrow 7:5 vote to discontinue the event, Cr Darren Kruse said he was happy to be known as the “Christmas Grinch”. “Council should not be funding what fundamentally is a religious event with no co-contribution from the churches,” Cr Kruse said during an hour-long debate on the issue. “It’s not inclusive because it talks to one major religion … the Christian religion … although it is dominant, that is not our demographic. “If the churches want to run it, they should run it.” Cr Karen Hockley said the carols night ignored those who “might never go to a traditional Christmas event”. She said continuing to run the event supported the “old regime” and that the council needed to be “cleverer than that” and support diversity through other events. But she recognised the decision could cause controversy and be regarded as a “step too far” for the community, particularly in light of the council’s 3.67 per cent rate rise in 2019/20. “We’ve given them (ratepayers) the biggest rate rise in the state and then removed the most-visible use of their rates,” she said. “(This is) a sleight of hand that is not going to be tolerated by the community.” Council staff will prepare a report detailing the options for other groups to hold a “slimmed-down” carols event.”

     Having worked in IT, at the basic plebe level of programming, I was interested to see an article about my fellow low-level workers,
  http://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/i-was-a-computer-programmer-i-know-computer-programming-the-indians-programmers-the-treason-lobby-wants-to-import-are-no-alan-turings-theyre-just-cheap/

“The House of Representatives recently passed H.R.1044, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. It’s now in the Senate’s Judiciary committee and could be voted on by the full Senate by September. Javanka is said to favor it, so the chances that President Trump will veto it (as he should) are probably low. The adjective “high-skilled” is misleading—intentionally so, of course. The immigrants being favored by this act are lower-middle-class drudge workers, mainly computer programmers, most from India and China. They know languages like JavaScript, which anyone with above-room-temperature IQ can learn in 24 hours, or PHP and C++, which I’ll allow are harder but which a few months in trade school will get you capable at. I know whereof I speak. I spent much of my working life doing the kind of work—commercial computer programming—that these immigrants are being brought in to do. It is, indeed, not rocket science.

     The Epstein controversy has led to the resurrection of the Clinton Body Count conspiracy, that some less than desirable things have happened to a number of people who may have stepped on Billy the Goat, and Hillary’s blue suede shoes. Look, let the iconic Rolling Stone tell it:
  https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/jeffrey-epstein-clinton-conspiracy-theories-twitter-863446/
  https://www.rt.com/usa/465068-clinton-body-count-twitter/
  https://twitter.com/clintonmurders?lang=en

“On Wednesday night, NBC News reported that disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who is currently awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy, was found injured and semi-conscious in his cell with two abrasions on his neck. While initial details were sketchy, sources at Metropolitan Correctional Center, the prison where Epstein was being held, suggested to NBC News that the injury was possibly the result of a failed suicide attempt, though investigators have not yet ruled out that another inmate may have assaulted him. et on social media, one explanation alone dominated the conversation: the Clintons did it. On Thursday morning, #ClintonBodyCount was one of the top trending topics on Twitter, with many speculating that Epstein’s injuries were the result of an attempt on his life that was orchestrated by his former friends. A list circulating on social media of supposed Clinton “victims,” or people who had purportedly had some connection to Bill and/or Hillary Clinton who had died by suicide. A Daily Beast story published that morning reporting that Epstein had visited the White House a number of times in the early 1990s only added fuel to the fire. Another rumor that spread on Twitter focused on former Westchester County police officer Nicholas Tartaglione, another MCC inmate convicted of having killed four men involved in a drug trafficking ring, who reportedly was brought in for questioning regarding Epstein’s injuries.

     According to news we can “trust,” The New York Times:

“Two forces convulsing American politics found each other at President Trump’s rally in North Carolina this week: a sense of anxiety among white voters about their standing in a country that is growing more diverse, and a politician intent on stoking those worries. Surveys show fears among some white people that they are losing status in America, and those holding such views are increasingly aligned with the Republican Party. These voters perceive anti-white discrimination. A growing share say the nation risks losing its identity because of openness to foreigners. And many are concerned about what it will mean when non-Hispanic whites lose majority status, as demographic projections suggest will happen around 2045. A large if not majority share of white voters, and a majority of Republicans, say this change will threaten American customs and values — a prospect that they say makes them anxious, even angry. …”

     Civilisations collapse when the elites become self-destructive in their greed and evil. This is a theme common to much of the reporting at this blog. Is it true? A scholarly book explores the same theme:  Anne Glyn-Jones, Holding Up a Mirror: How Civilizations Decline, (Imprint Academic, Thorverton, 1996). There is also a very good video about this which can serve as Collapseology 101, an introduction to this topic by Paul Joseph Watson, who argues that almost every factor that led to the collapse of past civilisations, can be found in the West, and there are more as well, generating a situation of over-determination:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELoFwPwIQm0

     First, on the Glyn-Jones book, there are informative remarks given in an interview, saving us time in reading the book:

     Big Tech is trying to depict Donald Trump as an evil paedophile in the Epstein saga, completely false, while they cover up the involvement of Demo-rats like old  Billy Goat Clinton:
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-07-23-big-tech-trying-to-cover-ties-between-epstein-and-democrats.html

“As the “pedo island” scandal continues to unfold, tech giants like Google are frantically trying to purge all posts and search results that threaten to expose ties between Jeffrey Epstein and Democrats like Bill Clinton, and instead implicate President Trump as somehow being one of the perpetrators. Paul Sperry from Investor’s Business Dailybroke the news in a recent tweet, explaining that photos of Clinton with Epstein are being actively scrubbed from Google’s image search results, and replaced with images of Trump – the suggestion being that Trump is the one who flew in Epstein’s private jet at least 26 times, when it was actually Clinton who did this. In truth, Trump was actually the one who blew the whistle on Epstein, having back in the day banned the sexual predator from his Mar-a-Lago resort “because Epstein sexually assaulted an underage girl at the club,” official court documents reveal. But instead of standing up for these sexual assault victims, Google is instead trying to cover for the real perpetrators, which include Clinton and a host of other leftist Democrats. According to Bradley Edwards, an attorney for Epstein’s alleged victims, Trump was actually the only person who willingly came forward when being probed about these allegations, Trump’s full and transparent cooperation with attorneys further reinforcing his innocence. “The only thing that I can say about President Trump is that he is the only person who in 2009, when I served a lot of subpoenas on a lot of people, or at least gave notice to some pretty connected people that I wanted to talk to them – he is the only person who picked up the phone,” Edwards is quoted as saying.”

To The Australian        Henry Ergas, in methodically demolishing some of the latest arguments in favour of Aboriginal constitutional recognition ("This voice would have us shouting over the walls", 26/7), warns that enactment of the proposed "voice to Parliament" could "set off a dynamic whose effects are starkly at odds with its supporters' objectives." Well, yes and no, for while some of the advocates for the cause are good-hearted and well-intentioned, others, as can be seen from their words and actions in recent years, are not. They positively want trouble in order to further their cause of cleaving Australia in two. Ergas foresees unpleasant consequences if the government of the day rejects claims by this putative new body: resentment, fury and a damaging row. That negative behaviour will also manifest if the government finally concedes that the idea of constitutional recognition is unjust (which it is) or fated to lose any referendum. Australians generally must brace themselves with courage to face unpleasantness no matter what course the government adopts.
It would be better to face the music now, before it gets louder!
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

To The Age        Rachel Perkins quotes former chief justice Murray Gleeson's claim that the dispossession of our Aboriginal tribes "underwrote the development of the nation" ("Saluting a Liberal who understands", 25/7). That is a contestable assertion. It can as truly or more truly be affirmed that the Aboriginals' loss was caused by their failure to defend their territory and that the subsequent development of Australia resulted from the knowledge, skills and efforts of the newcomers. She wants "constitutional reforms" to "empower" her people and give them their "rightful place" in "their own country". What this means for other Australians (97%) is changes for the worse giving a very small and ill-defined group unfair advantages that might lead eventually to the establishment of a separate Aboriginal nation. Any "sense of estrangement" really felt by Aboriginals needs to be addressed in a wiser fashion than constitutional change.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave

     In my excitement, I upgraded my name, but not to worry, as in my state of mental decay, I am doing that when I get excited. And who would not be excited when they have their diatribes against the vile and filthy universities confirmed by a former antifa member:
  https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/07/18/former-antifa-member-college-breeds-far-left-radicals/

“Former Antifa member Gabriel Nadales argued this week that American colleges breed far-left radicals in an interview with Tucker Carlson. Former Antifa member Gabriel Nadales appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight this week to discuss the rise of far-left violence. Nadales, who joined Antifa when he was 16 years old, is now a conservative activist. Nadales described the evolution of Antifa as a far-left activist group. “I was in Antifa when I was just 16, almost 10 years ago. Back then it was just a group that went down to go protest against what we thought were fascists. However, Antifa is far more violent today than it ever was,” Nadales said. “This is not a laughing matter,” he continued. “People are being attacked because of Antifa. We have to be able to hold Antifa accountable.” Nadales argued that Antifa activists are born on colleges campuses all around the United States. He cited various professors that have endorsed political violence for the purpose of advancing far-left politics. One professor, Mark Bray of Dartmouth. To really understand Antifa, we have to go to the college campuses. Throughout the country, we have a lot of different professors who are advocating for violence,” Nadales said. “We have Mark Bray from Dartmouth [College] where he praises and advocates for political violence. More recently…we had a professor from Colorado State University who said that she was done talking to people on her opposition, that she was ready to punch them in the neck. Unfortunately, we are seeing a resurgence of political violence by the left.” “So you believe Antifa is being incubated on college campuses…by professors?” Carlson asked. “I think so. I think that’s where they are getting a lot of their philosophy from,” Nadales finished.”

     The battle is on, with a leading jurist saying that an indigenous voice to parliament would not undermine the power of parliament:
  https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/gleeson-defends-indigenous-voice-proposal/news-story/d7d0ab0f0968b6395c253cf4ea65bf82?utm_source=The%20Australian&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=BreakingNews

“Former High Court chief justice Murray Gleeson has declared a new indigenous “voice to parliament” could be created through legislation — with only minimal references in the Constitution — without eroding the power of the nation’s politicians. Mr Gleeson, one of Australia’s pre-eminent legal figures, said the proposal for an indigenous voice — set out in the Uluru Statement from the Heart — would succeed if it maintained “parliamentary supremacy”. Rejecting suggestions by opponents that the voice could act as a “third chamber” of parliament, Mr Gleeson said the proposed new advisory body was a “worthwhile objective” to help governments draft policies that affected indigenous people. “It is difficult to see any objection in principle to the creation of a body to advise parliament about proposed laws relating to indigenous affairs,” Mr Gleeson said. Speaking in Sydney last night, Mr Gleeson, who was appointed chief justice by John Howard, said it was possible to give the new body constitutional status as an “appropriate form of indigenous recognition”. He said a successful model should not be constructed as a “one-line bill of rights”, warning that could “diminish the lawmaking power of the parliament”. The Constitution already gave the federal parliament powers to create special laws specifically for indigenous Australians. He said it should not offend anyone that a new representative body be established to advise the parliament on those laws. The proposal for a voice to parliament had the advantage of being “substantive and not merely ornamental”, suggesting it could be “constitutionally entrenched” but “legislatively controlled”. “Only the federal parliament can initiate a referendum. It has shown little appetite for proposals to limit its own power; and rightly so,” Mr Gleeson said. “Parliamentary supremacy is one of the essential safeguards of our liberal democracy. It is unlikely that parliament will propose a change to the Constitution in aid of indigenous recognition if the effect of the change will be to curtail its own legislative power. “That appears to have been well understood by the supporters of the voice. What is proposed is a voice to parliament, not a voice in parliament.”

     The world suffers from commodity fetishism, where everything has been converted to a money value, and where the money power controls everything. Some may feel that some things escape this net, such as air, but the global warming nonsense shows that even air will be reduced to a monetary value, and we will pay for air:
  https://washingtonsblog.com/2019/07/predatory-green-capitalism-is-monetizing-the-air-and-its-going-to-cost-you.html
  http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2019/07/predatory-green-capitalism-is.html

“You asked, "What's left to monetize? It appears the answer is 'very little.'" I respectfully disagree. The Biggest Enchilada of all is left. Air. Specifically carbon dioxide, CO2. We just have to figure how to get the yokels to agree to pay for that which was formerly free. Got it! First we browbeat them into believing its evil and that we have to tax it to save all life on Earth. Then, following in the finest traditions of the degenerate late medieval Catholic Church, we'll commission sellers of "Indulgences" to allow sinning at ever rising prices. a/k/a "Carbon Credit trading". This doesn't require any value added and the profits on "buy zero sell high" are limitless. This is the specific outline and the very same agencies that so love financialization of all kinds, $2 trillion dollar student debt to sustain obscenely paid college administrators and academics, endless academic credentialism and huge Hipster Cities sitting on container ports and mediating the China Trade, are all promoting this financialization of CO2 as hard as possible. This is why a nullity like the Paris Climate Accords continues to be pushed even after its proven every way possible that a) the biggest emitters like China and India won't adhere to them and b) even if they did the prescribed regimes will do nothing anyway. And its why I "don't believe" in it. Or rather, its why I believe its just the next and biggest financial scam.

     When I speak about conservativism, I think of John Howard as the modern example. This is not classical conservativism, which was a position, as in Burke, that saw the limits of all adventurous and radical social programs, and went instead to support tradition. The modern conservatives are not about conserving anything other than money for the elites. That is why they are big on the Great Replacement, which they see as a winner for the masters of the Universe.
  https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/amy-waxs-critics-unfairly-smeared-her-but-shes-wrong/

“Last week at the National Conservatism Conference, University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax stirred up controversy with a comment about immigration that, yanked out of context, seemed clearly racist. In context, it’s not racist. It’s just wrong. And the reason it’s wrong should help us understand a vital truth: American civilization is now quite clearly distinct from European civilization, and that’s a good thing indeed. First, here’s what Wax said about immigration and race (via Vox’s Zack Beauchamp, with the most controversial elements highlighted): Here’s the argument in a nutshell. Immigration policy should take culture into account, and the culture that most closely matches our own comes from Europe and the “First World.” Depending on how you define the “First World” (lots and lots of people live in China and Japan), that region is mostly white. So, proper immigration policy will result in more white immigrants even if the intentisn’t to bring in more whites. She derides contrary arguments, including the idea that immigrant populations from all regions assimilate well into American culture, as the “happy fantasy” of “magic dirt” — the idea that mere presence in America transforms immigrants into productive members of the American civilization.”

     I like crystal balls and all of that hocus pocus. It takes one back to youth, to days at the carnival, with weird people doing fantastic things, like predicting economic collapse, my obsession:
  https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/futurist-who-predicted-911-and-the-gfc-says-there-will-be-a-global-crash-by-the-end-of-next-year/news-story/1cbfb302a172303db20ab62fe6251ac6

“Chillingly, within the next three years, a popular world leader will be assassinated using autonomous drone technology, sparking an international outcry. Those are just some of the predictions of futurist Dr Richard Hames — who correctly foresaw 9/11 and the GFC, two of the biggest world events of the past two decades — but they’re not his “craziest”. “My craziest prediction is that within the decade we’re going to see almost a revolutionary change in how we think about politics, social enterprise and the economy,” Dr Hames said, citing climate change and the widening gap between rich and poor as key catalysts. “Governments will seriously consider how they can put a cap on personal wealth, thus challenging the capitalist framework. We will shift our thinking away from growth at all costs to how humanity thrives without growth and even negative growth. Economists will say that’s impossible, but it isn’t if you look at more things than just the economy.” To promote his tour of the country, Dr Hames has come out with a number of headline-grabbing pronouncements — including that a second financial crisis is just around the corner. “Since the global financial crisis none of the structural dynamics have changed, in fact I think they’re getting worse,” Dr Hames said. “There is going to be a global crash by the end of next year.” On President Trump’s 2020 prospects, he argues that “a lot of his base is actually falling away but in a number of ways the economy is going better in the US than anyone expected”. “The Democrats are in disarray, that’s a big part of it,” he said. “They’re fighting each other. I’m saying with almost 100 per cent certainty that he’s going to get back in.”

     Here are some juicy articles in the theatre of the absurd, showing the levels of madness of the progressives. Muslim representative Ilhan Omar, one of the “Squad’ thinks people should fear white men more:
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/07/25/flashback-ilhan-omar-tells-al-jazeera-our-country-should-be-more-fearful-of-white-men/

“Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) suggested in a recently resurfaced interview that Americans should be “more fearful of white men” than radical Islamic terror. In an August 2018 interview with Al Jazeera host Medhi Hasan, the far-left “Squad” member was asked for her thoughts on the purported rise of Islamophobia in the wake of terror attacks such as the Manhattan bike path massacre that killed eight people. “I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country,” Omar claimed.”

     The progressives, especially the US Democrats are proclaiming that there is a “new authoritarian,” which they see embodied in Donald Trump and populism. The writers here, especially Chris (US expiate) and Charles our American correspondence, and Richard Miller in London, have sought to counter this by articles based on news sources showing the real authoritarians are the Left. This theme, that the Left are the new technocratic authoritarians, has been argued for in scholarly detail in a fantastic, and highly significance book by Australian academic Salvatore Babones in The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts, (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2018):
  https://www.amazon.com/New-Authoritarianism-Populism-Tyranny-Experts/dp/1509533095
  https://salvatorebabones.com/
  https://sydney.edu.au/arts/staff/profiles/salvatore.babones.php

Here is part of the blurb for the book:
“Salvatore Babones argues that democracy has been undermined by a quiet but devastating power grab conducted by a class of liberal experts. They have advanced a global rights-based agenda which has tilted the balance away from the lively and vibrant unpredictability of democratic decision-making toward the creeping technocratic authority of liberal consensus. Populism represents, contends Babones, an imperfect but reinvigorating political flood that has the potential to sweep away decades of institutional detritus and rejuvenate democracy across the West.”

     America’s latest scandal may be its biggest ever, which in a truly insane land, is saying something. The short of the long is that 1 percenter Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of sex offences, but previously got off rather lightly looks like going down big time now. He previously had a sex island in the ironic Virgin Islands, and he had leading world elites go there to allegedly have sex with under-age girls, no doubt filming everything. The conspiracy theories are flourishing about who would gain from this. 
  https://www.theorganicprepper.com/unbiased-epstein-scandal/
  https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article221897990.html
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7220951/Jeffrey-Epstein-charged-sex-trafficking-just-days-records-transported-minors.html

“Jeffrey Epstein is facing two criminal charges in the sex trafficking case filed by federal prosecutors on Saturday, according to an individual who is familiar with the proceedings. Those charges were filed by attorneys for the Southern District of New York after they spoke dozens of victims, who had also been interviewed by both the FBI and NYPD. Almost all of these women claim they were underage when they were asked to give Epstein massages at his Palm Beach or New York City homes, according to a law enforcement official. Those women - some of whom were just 14 at the time of these alleged incidents -  claim that these massages would then lead to Epstein asking that they perform a rape act on him in exchange for money. That same official said that the incidents for which Epstein is now being charged all occurred between 1999 and 2005. This is the same time period during which Epstein first made headlines after flying former president Bill Clinton to Africa on his private jet, which was later nicknamed the Lolita Express. Epstein, 66, will make his first court appearance on Monday in New York, less than 48 hours after he was taken into custody by federal agents at Teterboro Airport. It all happened just before 5pm on Saturday, when Epstein reentered the country for the first time since June 16, when he took off from the same airport bound for Paris. Prior to that trip, Epstein had been crisscrossing the US as he moved between his properties in New York City, Palm Beach, New Mexico and the US Virgin Islands. Epstein's arrest was first reported by The Daily Beast, and comes in the wake of a three-part expose in the Miami Herald detailing his settlements with victims and sweetheart plea deal.”

To The Australian        Mark Leibler continues a notable furphy in the current debate about Aboriginal constitutional recognition ("Clear voice without the repercussions of a third chamber", 20-21/7). He writes misleadingly that "the intellectual drive behind the constitutional amendment for an advisory voice emanates from constitutional conservatives, including Liberal MP Julian Leeser." That drive comes from other sources too, but the fact is that Mr Leeser is not a conservative on this topic at all. The real conservatives are Keith Windschuttle, Frank Salter, John Stone and Andrew Bolt (to name just four). Promoting faux-conservatives as conservatives is a devious trick which should be dropped. Leibler is also less than courteous to opponents of constitutional change when he disparagingly refers to them as "nay-sayers" who, he quite wrongly implies, have been proved wrong with their "dire predictions for native title and the apology to the Stolen Generation." The apology never had a genuine popular mandate and was based on an unreliable document ("Bringing Them Home"); and the ongoing saga of "native title", based on the very questionable High Court decision in Mabo, has become a national scandal, tending towards a dangerous separatism, which needs to be halted.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

To The Age        It may be true that former High Court chief justice Murray Gleeson "delivered a landmark speech making the legal and ethical case for an Aboriginal voice to be enshrined in the Constitution" ("Joyce U-turn on Indigenous voice", 20/7), but how successful was it? His distinction between "a voice to Parliament, not a voice in Parliament" ignores the fact that the voice he recommends would have some of the influential power that the present two chambers possess. Moreover, it could be strengthened by future legislation, as he admitted - perhaps by a Marxist-inspired ALP government. It could also lead to findings by a politicised High Court against the true national interest. Gleeson claimed that the dispossession of the Aborigines "underwrote the development of the nation", but it can be said with more truth that their failure to defend their territory caused their loss and that the development was the result of the knowledge, skills and efforts of the newcomers. In general he failed to answer the cogent case that has been put against constitutional recognition by men of the calibre of John Stone, Keith Windschuttle and Andrew Bolt..
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave

     This international bestseller caused a few ripples when it was learned that, for this English language version, some references to the power wielded by the Rothschild family which appeared in the original 2017 Spanish first edition, have been omitted. A storm in a teacup: the author appears genuinely to have avoided negative bias against any political, ethnic or religious group. He is a colonel in the Spanish army and was formerly chief of counter-intelligence and security for the European Army Corps. He is said to be one of Europe’s top specialists in geopolitics, terrorism and intelligence.

     It is a sobering account, drawing from worldwide evidence taken from the near and far past, as well as present time. It is an antidote to much of the half-baked idealism common in Australia among political commentators and agitators. In his introduction Banos remarks: ‘The powerful have always tried to seize control wherever their tendencies can reach…..It’s important that we are aware of these strategies that allow the powerful to rule the world. We like to think of ourselves as free individuals who make autonomous choices about our lives….. However, we are in fact continually being induced to make certain choices, and the same thing is happening at the geopolitical level – countries are manipulated into making particular decisions and alliances, and their populations have no say in the matter.’

     I have been arguing that because the Epstein paedophilia sex island scandal involves many 1 percenters and political leaders, something will happen to shut it all down. But like speculating and dreaming about what one would do if one won the X Lotto, it is nice to dream about justice happening for once in the history of the human race:
  https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-17/its-going-be-staggering-epstein-associates-prepare-worst-massive-document-dump

“As Vanity Fair's Gabriel Sherman notes, "The questions about Epstein are metastasizing much faster than they can be answered: Who knewwhat about Epstein’s alleged abuse? How, and from whom, did Epstein get his supposed $500 million fortune? Why did Acosta grant Epstein an outrageously lenient non-prosecution agreement? (And what does it mean that Acosta was reportedly told Epstein “belonged to intelligence”?)" Also illuminating is a statement by attorney Brad Edwards, who said during a Wednesday press conference seated next to Epstein accuser Courtney Wild that "There were other business associates of Mr. Epstein’s who engaged in improper sexual misconduct at one or more of his homes. We do know that," adding "In due time the names are going to start coming out." What's more, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will release of approximately 2,000 pages of documents, likely over the next several days, which may reveal sex crimes committed by "numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known prime minister, and other world leaders," according to the court's three-judge panel. The documents were filed during a civil defamation lawsuit brought by Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a former Mar-a-Lago locker-room attendant, against Epstein’s former girlfriend and alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell. “Nobody who was around Epstein a lot is going to have an easy time now. It’s all going to come out,” said Giuffre’s lawyer David Boies. Another person involved with litigation against Epstein told me: “It’s going to be staggering, the amount of names. It’s going to be contagion numbers.” -Vanity Fair