What do former United States presidents Invoice Clinton and Donald Trump have in widespread with Hyatt Resorts govt chairman Thomas Pritzker and superstar lawyer Alan Dershowitz?
Along with being white American males who’ve usurped a disproportionate share of the planet’s wealth, they have been among the many first names not too long ago uncovered in beforehand sealed courtroom paperwork figuring out associates of paedophile financier and intercourse trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in a US jail in 2019.
Assorted different members of the worldwide elite have been additionally named, together with Britain’s Prince Andrew and the late Michael Jackson. Greater than 150 identities in complete are anticipated to be launched. After all, the naming of names in itself doesn’t represent a legal accusation and whereas media retailers have raced with orgasmic fervour to use the tabloidesque potential of the information story, we’re not really speaking about any surprising revelations right here.
In any case, in a world outlined by US-led patriarchal capitalism – wherein ladies endure a selected form of objectification and commodification – it’s no shock that these on the high of the hierarchy would totally endorse the entire brutal association.
Take Donald Trump, for instance, who has confronted all method of rape and sexual harassment allegations whereas additionally intermittently emitting lewd feedback about his personal daughter, amongst them: “If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, maybe I’d be courting her.” Is it so astounding, ultimately, that he would hobnob with the likes of Epstein?
In the meantime, Invoice Clinton’s identify seems no fewer than 73 occasions within the paperwork launched so far, together with in Epstein sufferer Johanna Sjoberg’s testimony, in keeping with which Epstein as soon as knowledgeable her that Clinton ”’likes them younger’, referring to ladies”.
Inform us one thing we didn’t know.
Anyway, ethics have by no means been the sturdy level of any head of state of a worldwide superpower that has lengthy been devoted to, nicely, slaughtering and in any other case making life hell for people worldwide.
For his half, billionaire Thomas Pritzker of the Hyatt Resorts empire comes up within the unsealed courtroom paperwork as one of many males whom Epstein sufferer Virginia Roberts Giuffre was allegedly compelled to service. He’s additionally an “newbie scholar of Chinese language historical past,” as per his bio on the web site of the Washington, DC-based Aspen Institute – simply one other charmingly cultured super-capitalist whose existence relies on crippling inequality and different good issues.
After which, after all, there’s legal lawyer and former Harvard Legislation professor Alan Dershowitz, who seems within the paperwork as somebody Epstein “required” an underage girl to have intercourse with numerous occasions, in keeping with the lady’s allegations. As Al Jazeera reported on January 4, Dershowitz moreover “performed a major position in negotiating an settlement that offered immunity from federal prosecution within the Southern District of Florida not just for Epstein but additionally for ‘any potential co-conspirators of Epstein’, the paperwork say”.
Of all of the contenders on the so-called “Epstein record” so far, the Dershowitz case is maybe essentially the most deserving of consideration at the moment second, on condition that he has probably been tapped by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to defend Israel on the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. Israel will seem earlier than mentioned courtroom to contest the accusation, made by South Africa, that it’s committing genocide within the Gaza Strip, the place the Israeli navy has killed greater than 22,000 Palestinians in lower than three months.
In different phrases, the “genocide” case is a no brainer in idea. However Dershowitz occurs to specialize in that model of “legal regulation” that defends criminals towards reality and logic.
He has already brandished his beyond-fanatically Zionist credentials on quite a few events – like through the summer time 2006 Israeli conflict on Lebanon that killed 1,200 individuals in 34 days, the overwhelming majority of them civilians. One week into the assault, Dershowitz took to the pages of the Wall Road Journal in an attraction titled “Arithmetic of Ache”, the place he proposed a “continuum of civilianality” to mainly argue that, opposite to worldwide opinion, there merely weren’t that many bona fide “civilians” in locations like Lebanon.
On the Dershowitzian “continuum”, not even ladies and youngsters may “all the time be counted as civilians, as some organisations do”. Such notions will little question come in useful within the occasion that Dershowitz does certainly develop into the face of Israel on the ICJ.
In 2012, throughout Israel’s temporary “Pillar of Defence” offensive within the Gaza Strip, Dershowitz took media retailers to process for his or her failure to specify that Israel solely commits “lawful actions” whereas Hamas solely commits conflict crimes. On this specific offensive, Israel killed 87 Palestinian civilians in eight days, amongst them 35 kids and 14 ladies – a minimum of within the view of these of us who proceed to subscribe to the idea of “civilians”.
Quick ahead to the present genocide, and Dershowitz has predictably slammed “radical feminists” for obsessing over the Epstein stuff relatively than “condemning Hamas”.
To make sure, the Epstein record comes not a lot as a shock as a reminder that a number of horrifying behaviour is being carried out by the powers that be in a nasty system the place elite domination stays above the regulation. However because the tabloidesque protection rolls on, do not forget that this isn’t actually information in any respect.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
