Just as Banquo’s Ghost returned to haunt Macbeth’s dinner, now Epstein’s ghost continues to hover over Trump’s Oval Office.
******************
[I]t’s difficult to muster any sympathy for the Mar-a-Lago Macbeth, as Epstein’s ghost plagues him like a sleazier Banquo.
*****************
I get why several commentators compare Trump’s haunting by Epstein to Macbeth’s haunting by Banquo: Two powerful men, in hard-fought, seemingly secure possession of political dominance, cannot escape, and eventually are perhaps brought low by, the return of the repressed. Their past deeds rear up, eerily reincarnate manifestations, for the world to see.
Yet the second writer’s use of the word ‘sleazier’ points to problems with the comparison. Because after all Banquo is a moral exemplar, come to torture Macbeth with guilt over his crimes, while Epstein is a moral catastrophe, a ghost vindictively gleeful at Trump’s entrapment by Epstein’s degeneracy.
UD suggests that another ghost story – the Henry James fiction “The Turn of the Screw” – might be a better comparison. For the primary ghost here – Peter Quint – seems not only evil, but evil in a very Epstein way: He seduces children. The plot of the James work revolves around the narrator’s failed effort to protect children from sexually threatening adults; and what better echo of the sorry tale of the world’s failure to protect Epstein’s victims? Or of Trump’s failing effort to protect himself?
I’m in charge of the deposition. I say when we move on and when we don’t. You are here to respond to my questions. If you refuse to answer, the court will bring you back for another deposition.’
******************
UD‘s gonna guess Ghislaine is exactly the same person today.
If pseudo-remorse plus lies equals a shorter sentence, then she’s ready to perform.
… has names, photos, and details of prior threats and assaults against Przemek Jeziorski, the Berkeley professor shot to death on the streets of Athens by his ex-wife and her boyfriend (the bf has confessed; she has not).
The professor had sought a restraining order in San Francisco against his ex-wife in May, saying he feared for his life, before he was killed, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
*******************
A much better source, with photos of the killers being led out of court. They include a sixteen year old.
The NYT has a Greek correspondent following the story in Athens. Przemek Jeziorski’s death – after two weeks – is getting the coverage it deserves.
Keep in mind the complexity here. As Jeziorski’s brother writes, “Przemek’s estate is in the U.S., his children are in Greece, and our family is in Poland.” He plans to adopt the children, but this too might be another expensive fight. The mother’s Greek family might think it should hold on to the kids until their father’s murderer gets out of prison.
‘Ex-Wife of UC Berkeley Professor Shot in Greece Arrested on Suspicion of Plotting his Killing‘
***********************
If you followed the shooting death of Professor Dan Markel, you will find virtually all of the details of Przemek Jeziorski’s shooting death familiar. Annoyed that the father of her children wanted to father them, his ex-wife (speculating here, but on pretty solid ground) had some criminal connections, probably through her current boyfriend, and she hired them to blow his brains out right there in the street.
Not everyone has this particular skill – walk up to a stranger, shoot him to death – but both the Adelsons and Nadia Michelidaki seem to have known people who knew people with these abilities.
‘[A]uthorities arrested Michelidaki and accused her of convincing her current partner to kill Jeziorski.
Police also arrested her companion — who has not been identified — and three other men as accomplices.
The three men, two Albanians and a Bulgarian man, were accused of transporting the shooter to the crime scene and giving him the firearm used in the crime.
Another Greek news outlet, iefmerida, reported Michelidaki denied any involvement in the crime when she was arraigned, while her partner and the accused gunman admitted to authorities to shooting Jeziorski, and doing so at Michelidaki’s request.‘
UD, as readers know, likes to follow certain high-profile murders, and she must admit she’s GOBSMACKED by the stupidity of degenerates who think they can contract kill a person they’re known to hate with a passion… and get away with it! In both cases, the conspiracy included gobs of people (I’m counting at least seven in the Markel case, and this one in Greece looks to have involved at least five), and, you know, the more people in on it, the greater your chance of discovery. But beyond that, doesn’t it occur to these idiots that the sudden grotesque gunning down of a perfectly innocent random human being will confidently lead investigators to the only possible people who wanted him dead?
And look what the killers have achieved. They have produced orphans whose mothers killed their fathers. Mothers who will go to prison for life for their crime. Nicely done.
The absolutely disgusting murder of Berkeley professor Przemyslaw Jeziorski, possibly engineered by his Greek ex-wife, echoes the equally disgusting murder of law professor Dan Markel, engineered by his ex-wife’s family.
It took eight years, but three people so far are serving life sentences for Markel’s killing, and a fourth will be in prison for around twenty years. The vindictive ex-wife’s vindictive mother – reported to be the ringleader of the conspiracy – is in prison awaiting her trial, and it’s not yet clear whether the ex-wife will also be tried, but she may well be. All this because the ex-wife didn’t want to share custody of their children.
Perhaps the motive was similar in the case of poor Jeziorski.
************************
UD worries that Greece’s pathetic justice system will find a way to fuck this up and let the guilty parties walk. It took far too long to deal with the Markel murder, yes, but we did get to it and we have been putting the killers away.
*******************
You can donate to help his family with legal and other expenses here.
It’s true that we’ve had a field day with lacrosse and sadism on this blog. Far as I can figure, the deep alcoholism endemic to the sport, its privileged-folk provenance, and the near-universal tendency toward hazing in high school and college athletics, produces extreme specimens like George Huguely, and less extreme but still very dangerous people like the guys on the Syracuse high school team.
Huguely, currently rotting in jail, was a U Va lacrosse player who got drunk and beat his girlfriend to death:
In truth, there are many places in [lacrosse’s] culture where nights like the one Huguely had at Washington and Lee University in November 2008 – when he was Tasered after resisting arrest and shouting slurs at a black, female officer who had found him stumbling into oncoming traffic – garner acceptance and credibility. As with other sports teams and fraternities, stories like these are traded like war stories among lacrosse players; they’re the battle ribbons of a culture that enjoys hard-drinking and recklessness. They’re a kind of proof of one’s weekend warrior bona fides.
One thing to remember, as we talk a bit more about the latest degeneracy, is that the lads have guns now. When you add guns to alcoholism, entitlement, and sadism, you get what people refer to as extreme hazing, which is simply extreme sadism. Among the very young. Sixteen. Fifteen.
Aggression and alcohol abuse, of course, are hardly the province of lacrosse alone when it comes to men’s [high school and] college athletics. But, when it comes alongside lacrosse, there’s an implied element of absolute indifference and arrogance as well.
We’re into group psychopathy at this point, an unbounded Lord of the Flies viciousness. As a team you derive splendid new forms of human abuse and let their effects amuse you as you film your victims in order to share their agony with other sadists. (Sadism, you know, is very common.) Or just to watch your weeping pleading shrieking victims over and over in your bedroom. Lots of hazing – fraternity as well as sports – now involves threats with guns; but we can certainly anticipate actual killing with guns in the hazing setting quite soon.
Complaints about shooting and violence are nothing new in downtown Myrtle Beach. In 2017, a shooting on Ocean Boulevard on Father’s Day injured six people and brought much attention to Myrtle Beach because a tourist happened to livestream the incident on Facebook.
In 2018, an off-duty employee of RidTydz on North Ocean Boulevard was shot inside the establishment and died. A lawsuit filed by the man’s family said that the popular tourist spot “was becoming known as a problem area for increasing incidents of violence, shootings and murders to the extent that Myrtle Beach had been infamously nicknamed ‘Murder Beach.’”
In 2020, then-Myrtle Beach City Councilman John Krajc told ABC 15 News that the violence had to end. “If we stop making ourselves the ‘discount beach,’ over time that culture can change,” he said. “We have to remember this is Myrtle Beach, not ‘Murder Beach,’ not ‘Dirty Myrtle.’” …
[The mayor complained about] “hotels who choose not to clean themselves up, and offer rooms at $40-$45 a night” and businesses along Ocean Boulevard that cater to the wrong crowd by selling “graphic” T-shirts, drug paraphernalia and “things that are not welcoming to families.”
*******************************
Murder Beach isn’t working class; it’s sub-proletarian. It’s dirt cheap, ugly, porny, druggy, boozy, gunny. Its clubs are loud, extremely gross, and feature really cheap alcohol. Outside the clubs, squatted trucks and hordes of motorbikes screech by. “The last time I was in Myrtle my Uber driver had a gun between his knees because he was worried about getting robbed again.”
And Myrtle Beach is wall to wall gun ranges, so don’t forget your own guns!
All wrapped up in South Carolina itself, Murdaughville!
*********************
I mean, yeah, this might appeal to a few… non-standard… families, but I’m thinking all of that plus a pretty constant atmosphere of menace on the main thoroughfares – deepened by a huge police presence – doesn’t exactly broadcast safe family fun. I mean hey why do they need battalions of officers? Aren’t we supposed to be having a relaxed carefree sort of experience?
Any family with the means to vacation someplace better than Myrtle Beach should certainly be expected to do that. Your chance of getting shot might not be great, but you can count on feeling menaced and cheapened by the setting.
And of course everyone says that thing about changing the culture, but there’s real big piles of real big money behind the purulence, and the business owners making all that money aren’t about to fuck with their model.
Don’t call 911 or anything as he’s dying, because you’re not supposed to be at the secret illegal destination, and your fraternity isn’t supposed to be beating people to death. Keep it quiet, lie about everything, and let the guy die.
In Iran, you get whipped 74 times for singing songs about women who choose not to cover every inch of their whorish flesh; in some US states, condemned murderers can opt to be shot to death by the state.
Shame seems to be the big thing at the moment (“And I have — I first started thinking, is it — am I feeling grief? Am I feeling shock, like I’m in a hallucination? But I just think shame, moral shame. It’s a moral injury to see the country you love behave in this way.”) as the US regresses to Second World status, with our would-be dictator and primitive public realm.
Our emerging civic models are disease-vector cults (fringe Mennonites, the Ultraorthodox) and it’s INSANE that we keep giving zealots vaccination exemptions and education exemptions and civic existence exemptions but this is where we are. Eventually our sense of shame will disappear, and it’ll be all Ostrogoth and Visigoth and Mad Max Fury Road.
At least we’ll have plenty of guns for the incipient permanent warfare.
Yeah, well a kid already died of measles because unfortunately for the kid he/she lived in a state that thinks freedom means ignoring everything primitive cults within the state do (go, Texas!) — wouldn’t want to interfere with the fringe-Mennonite cluster out there that doesn’t educate or vaccinate its children. Too cute! Leave ’em be! It’s Trump DEI.
And just wait til a lot of other anti-vaxxers in Texas and New Mexico get a load of the effects of HUGELY contagious measles on their children.
A heady mix of martinis, machine guns, and masses of paying underage partiers (no guest list – you simply respond to flyers advertising it all over town) just exploded — whodathunkit? — into mortal combat! A sixteen year old is dead, and a bunch of other kids are injured, and somebody filmed the fun, with tons of people racing and screaming down the driveway into the night.
Here’s the house, in case you also want to pack a bunch of armed strangers into a random unguarded location and get them drunk.
As with the late-night lounge massacres UD tracks on this blog, the megamansion massacres have become routine; but just as no one wants to shut down the lounges, so no one seems interested in messing with the bullet-spewing big houses.
Maybe the extremely wealthy neighbors of mansions like this one? Does it bother them a tad?
UD also wonders about the people who build insanely massive houses like this one. Did they intend for some rich person to buy it, and when that didn’t happen they decided to rent it out to swarms of teenage shooters? Me don’t get it.
The gang used to be a recognized JMU fraternity, but its lethality/perversity was too much even for a southern frat school, so JMU took away its recognition. Right away, under a different name, and now free from school rules, the frat reconstituted itself and kept up the killing.
It killed two members, and one would-be member, in a car crash, and the parents of the dead boys are suing the gang and each of its members.
JMU should have taken action against the reconstituted gang as soon as it learned of it. As twisted as it is for a university to have to police and surveil itself in this way, if you’re going to let frats go wild on your campus, as JMU notoriously has, you have an obligation to understand that eventually one or more of these groups is going to go very seriously rogue, and that before multiple students of yours are drugged unconscious, dumped in a car, and driven into a tree, you need to rid your campus of the killers.