This is not true at all. Not even close. Sneaky backstabbing murder by a group member against another group member in violation of implicit group norms has probably always been "bad", but "go out and murder some random human" was a rite of passage for many cultures, raids against other groups for no reason at all except for fun and maybe women were typical across perhaps the majority of groups for thousands of years, and history is full to the brim of wars prosecuted for no particular reason at all.

This goes well into the historical period and there are doubtless groups today still with the same attitude. Why did the Athenians murder the entire male population of Melos despite their neutrality? Because the strong do what we can while the weak suffer what they must.

You are confusing your modern-day HN-poster social norms with some constant of human nature.

All other problems with the Iran war aside, there's absolutely nothing unusual about this, this is standard. Countries that go to war with each other are almost always mid-negotiations. Usually negotiations of some level go on throughout a war as well.

Also, are you suggesting we should convict people and impeach them based on anonymous accusations? Do you believe in the Sixth Amendment? Surely you don't believe that we should be able to destroy notable figures based on anonymous denouncements? There is no universe where anything happens without people coming forward!

You're caught in a bind though, because the conspiracy relies on all these victims of other men existing, but mysteriously not coming forward, unlike the dozens of the victims who say only Epstein was involved, so you have to come up with fictitious reasons why they aren't materializing. What do you even want? Presumably, it's for these shadowy pedophiles to be taken down...but they can't be taken down without the victims coming forward, files or no files!

This is particularly ironic that, instead of endlessly litigating a conspiracy theory that's fairly well exhausted, there is open child prostitution going on right now (instead of 30 years ago) in LA on "the Blade", and we are doing approximately nothing about it, and not nearly enough people care. Imagine if all the energy of these conspiracy theorists was focused on stopping something actually happening now.

The sibling commenter addressed the timeline, but you still seem to be missing the point: harddrive or no harddrive, there would have been witnesses - at least the victims- of the grand conspiracy theory involving other men. Instead, you're limited to Maria Farmer (26 when she was victimized by Epstein, rarely seen in public because she makes wild accusations about random people including the journalists interviewing her - she is currently convinced that Whitney Webb murdered a chef) and Virginia Giuffre (underage victim and confirmed fabulist, who also, for the record, said Trump did nothing wrong and endorsed his Presidency). There never was any evidence of the organized conspiracy of elites part of the Epstein story. Read the testimony! Again and again the women say there were no other men.

You're concluding that computer equipment Epstein had every reason to hide from law enforcement to cover up more concrete evidence of his solicitation of minors actually contains evidence of a totally different thing that nobody was claiming at the time - a grand sex trafficking conspiracy involving powerful billionaires and politicians. But there's no reason to think that's the case.

At the end of the day, if any of this happened, these women could come forward. They're entitled to millions in settlement money already (and you don't even have to go to court to get it - its an administrative process, not a judicial one; and it's big money, Annie Farmer alone got at least 1.5 million), and naming additional names would open the door to even more! They already have some of the best civil attorneys in the country! An unrelated case has already shown that you can win a civil suit against the most powerful man in the country, even with no evidence besides your testimony! That they have not, combined with the total lack of evidence, suggests they don't exist.

But because the mindset behind this is conspiratorial, it will always be "there IS evidence - it's just being covered up!". And no amount of releases will ever be enough - because they can't show it to be true, which just proves there's a coverup! It's never-ending.

This isn’t even news, it was a big deal back in the day and is covered extensively in the report about the DoJ’s conduct. Read the reports and consider the context; this is a nothingburger. But because the conspiracy theory has been started, everything that happens will be read as supporting it. Epstein had very good reasons for destroying evidence of his own deeds without any need for anyone else being involved. (The evidence the DoJ collected was very weak and they weren’t sure it would sustain a prosecution, which is partly why they were glad to go with a plea deal.) You’re coming in primed to believe there’s already a conspiracy about something else altogether.

The whole thing falls apart the moment you examine the actual evidence and think about it. It’s really disappointing that smart people on even this forum get wrapped up into this junk.

And again, millions of dollars are available from settlement funds if Epstein was involved, there’s already some of the best lawyers in the country begging to represent you, and there’s people volunteering to pay for your security needs.

You’re also ignoring the many victims that came out before Epstein died.

This is just an excuse to perpetuate the conspiracy theories. It doesn’t hold water. And of course if anything was released from super secret “the files” they’re definitely still covering up, they’d become publicly known.

Surely you see how this line of reasoning is identical to that of any other conspiracy or moral panic.

The people who were victimized by anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell could come forward at any time, just as dozens of Epstein's victims have. They have some of the highest-powered civil lawyers in America, hundreds of millions of dollars in settlement funds available, and vast swaths of the country behind them.

That they haven't should tell you something.

In the case of both Clinton and Trump, there is no evidence that either of them visited Little St. James, and plenty of evidence otherwise - for example, Epstein even says so about Clinton in an email.

> It’s in the documents released by the government that the government has confirmed as authentic.

The documents are "authentic" in that yes, a real schizo did really tell the government he heard it secondhand 30 years ago that this happened and also that he discovered Hilary Clinton was behind the WTC bombing. (For some reason, people like you always leave that part of the bombshell revelations out.) I am for total transparency generally, but this whole saga has been a major disappointment for me in that the level of public discourse is so lazy and low that its clear that in a purely utilitarian way, it would have been better to not release it. Hopefully long-term the sacrifice of many people whose reputations are being destroyed over little or nothing is worth it. Every crank call about celebrities is being treated as gospel.

Correct, the vast majority of his criminal activity appeared to be in his Palm Beach home and in New York, where he recruited high dozens to hundreds of high school girls for his personal sexualized massages. It actually appears only a very small amount of his illicit activity ever took place on the island, which makes it all the more ironic that's what the conspiracy theorists focus on.

I was willing to be more than openmminded about the conspiracists' mass trafficking ring (ie, beyond the two people charged) angle, but the ironic thing is about the Epstein files is they revealed it was almost all smoke. Of course, in the conspirational mindset, all contradicting evidence is actually, secretly, when you apply the correct hermeutics, even more damning, or else evidence of a coverup.

A lot of stuff in the US is absurdly easy, as well. For example, in my area, pretty much all plumbing is PVC or PEX. Anyone on HN can learn very quickly how to work with this stuff and it's very cheap. There are very few repairs, for example, you could ever need to do that would cost more than having a plumber just show up and look at it - even accounting for buying tools.

This is simply not true. As soon as we were able, we ate almost all megafauna to extinction. Once we mastered pastoralism, peoples who engaged in it continued eating high-meat diets. Even for more settled peoples, going up to medieval or colonial times, beef or other meat was often present in a daily stew in some form.

Chimpanzees eat plenty of meat. They particularly enjoy hunting and eating monkeys, for example.