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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 4, 2025

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For Epstein to have been murdered, the assailant would have had to know how to do the job in such a way that it would cause certain things to happen but wouldn't cause other things to happen

If the medical report is real and evidence-based. You can just write a fake medical report. You can just release fake documents, or misleading documents, or documents that lack the key facts. Official sources release fake documents all the time, there's no need to believe government data on potentially embarrassing topics like unemployment, military intelligence, espionage or whether politicians actually did commit a scandal. They can produce masses of evidence for why a policy has been a success, that doesn't make it a success.

I want to see camera footage of Epstein killing himself. If no such footage is provided, then it didn't happen. Footage of corridors is not a substitute. There's no excuse for 'oh we lost the camera footage, my bad'.

Having a camera or a guard or a cellmate or anything watching a high-profile prisoner (a prisoner so high-profile we are still talking about it today) is not an optional extra. The US is a rich enough country to have at least one prison cell with a camera that works.

I want to see camera footage of Epstein killing himself. If no such footage is provided, then it didn't happen. Footage of corridors is not a substitute. There's no excuse for 'oh we lost the camera footage, my bad'.

What makes you so sure that Epstein is even dead? The whole hanging thing could have been the perfect ruse to get him out of the jail and never seen again, while all you rubes focus on conspiracy theories relating to his demise. That would make more sense than what everyone seems to be proposing.

The prison system broadly does not give a shit about the lives of inmates, guards are mostly on the take, and having done prison maintenance before the standards are extremely low.

I think allowing Epstein to kill himself would have cost less than $30k- and thats taking into account New York being more expensive than Texas.

Having a camera or a guard or a cellmate or anything watching a high-profile prisoner (a prisoner so high-profile we are still talking about it today) is not an optional extra. The US is a rich enough country to have at least one prison cell with a camera that works.

There are two problems with that proposal.

One is privacy. Traditionally, prison was not a panopticon, and turning it into one would alter the character of a prison sentence. Of course, this privacy cuts both ways -- most guards would likely prefer not to watch prisoners jerk off in front of the camera.

Another is that while a prisoner is unlikely to disable a camera in the corridor, they could easily disable a camera in their cell. There is not a ton of stuff which you can legally do to coerce a prisoner who is already in solitary to stop them from smearing shit on the camera lens. (Sure, you could place a glass ceiling and have a movable camera above it, but that sounds really expensive.)

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Besides that, not allowing prisoners to kill themselves (easily) is SOP. Epstein should not have had the tools to hang himself. I am not very surprised that he had them, from the post it seems clear that his legal team was very resourceful, and prison guards are less vetted than CIA employees. If you have unlimited money, finding a prison guard who has a family member on which you have exclusive dirt or who is in the kind of trouble which could be solved with a quick 100k$ in cash is likely not all that hard.

However, a chewing gum to stick on the lens of the cell camera is not a very difficult item to smuggle in. If his guards were not in on his suicide, "camera in cell 5736 went dark" seems much a lot less likely to prompt an urgent response than "that guy in cell 5736 is hanging in an noose".

The only reason why Epstein would have left the camera running while killing himself would have been to make it public knowledge that his death was suicide. I do not think that he wanted that. He did not write any suicide letters (afaik), and his brother casting doubt on the circumstances of his death was likely acting in his best interests.

So in short, if there had been a camera in his cell, then both the suicide theory and the murder theory would predict that there was no usable footage of his death.

they could easily disable a camera in their cell

What if you conceal it in a mirror or somewhere non-obvious? Neither Epstein nor the average prisoner is a secret agent with bugfinding tools.

Another option is to put the camera in the hall outside positioned so it can see inside the cell.

What if you conceal it in a mirror or somewhere non-obvious? Neither Epstein nor the average prisoner is a secret agent with bugfinding tools.

As you practically said yourself, this is spy-novel stuff. You are almost certainly greatly overestimating the budget and technological sophistication involved.

Besides, much of the purpose of such things is to serve as a deterrent. Hiding them works against that. (As well as being able to maintain or replace them easily, not that this was a high priority in this case on anyone's version of events.)

You are almost certainly greatly overestimating the budget and technological sophistication involved.

How hard is it to buy a hidden camera? If Korean perverts can hide them in toilets or suspicious husbands can use them to watch their wives, a large institution like a prison should be able to come up with some. Cameras/mikes would be useful since prisoners often talk to eachother about their crimes and some useful evidence could be gleaned. The Allies did it to German POWs with 1940s tech.

Also, there is still the outside-the-cell looking in approach.

Furthermore, high profile prisoners should be especially watched, isn't this a natural inference?

Yeah exactly, "your conspiracy theory conflicts with these official reports" as if the official reports are some objective source of truth is such a weak argument. Giving a bone to the truth while slipping in falsehoods and lies is a staple of getting away with a cover-up to begin with, we would expect the official documents to conflict.

This is something especially true when it comes to sensitive matters. Half the point of an intelligence agency is spreading lies and misinformation! I don't believe there's much evidence linking him to being an intelligence agent, but it's not so easily dismissed either.

And when we have plenty of bold faced lies happening even now around Epstein, my trust is greatly diminished.