MUST READ: In camera and off the record – social media and the Epstein conspiracy

Radio New Zealand is 100 years old this year. There’s no money budgeted for anyone to be aware of it because we live in an age of austerity for non-landlords.  Last year the Radio Awards after almost half a century became the Radio and Podcast Awards.  Sky just bought the gutted remnants of TV3 off Warner Bros Discovery so that there are now only TVNZ, RNZ, Sky and Maori TV as the pillars of a wobbly Freeview. In the present moment mid-2025 podcasts in their aggregate have now equalled conventional broadcast television in terms of viewers and also equalled it in terms of quality of content.

Just leave it there. With no sources given.

No sources, but it sounds true though, doesn’t it? I wouldn’t want to dispute it. You can dispute it in the comments, but the broadcast television viewership and the Youtube viewership would be comparable in most markets by now.  How is conventional television – Freeview in NZ – reaching more than Tik-Tok or Youtube?

If they killed the Late Late Show (James Corden fortunately) and they just killed the Late Show (Stephen Colbert unfortunately) the next to go is the primetime show – the actual show. TV3 and Maori TV killed their news, TVNZ ended their late news – network TV is retrenching to the point of fatally undercutting their good will. The hope of their boards is that their legacy brands can be converted into app subscribers who will replace the diminishing terrestrial audience. As a delivery platform for content Freeview is doomed. I predicted an implosion this year and it is going that way.

The centre of gravity has changed in the last 18 months – away from mainstream media to social media. With that shift goes some of the rules – the courtesies – of mainstream media. The same sort of rules that went out the window when blogging challenged mainstream journalism and political commentary in the mid 2000’s. It’s rougher, there’s curse words, and there’s a whole lot of “truth” but a lot less facts. The Broadcasting Standards what? The Media Council of who – what’s that? Karen says a council contractor threatened her cats so her niece will livestream her sherry o’clock accusations on Facebook and nek minnit it’s viral and more people have seen that than the evening news bulletin. But there’s also deep-dives, geek-outs and nerd-offs in the podcasts that are better viewing than anything on the television channels. Technology and infrastructure in NZ reached the level of broadcast standard over internet in 2014 (I’ve blogged on this before), but the content and the audience has taken a decade to rival it. But we are here.

Joe Rogan’s a white guy and had been hammering away with his podcast forever, but it took black guys to make it cool. Seriously. Rogan got a cage-full of money, but he didn’t make it cool.

Independent-minded American comedian Kat Williams, knocking back far too many cognacs on Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay podcast in January last year, declared 2024 would be the year everything was revealed. He was telling all. The more he drank the more he told. And he told all to the 90.2 million viewers of that podcast episode. The last Superbowl audience was 127 million so the reach of these tales out of school are in a magnitude of that level – higher than any televised political event.

Williams forecast an avalanche of truth about the depravities and collusion in the American entertainment industry. The Emperor has never had any goddamn mother fucking clothes on – which makes it easier for everyone to suck his royal cock. Williams escaped Hollywood – as he explained in his earthy African-American vernacular – with his virgin ass still intact – a miracle. He was not prepared to pay the price of admittance to that debauched club with his virgin asshole. Whoredom for ten pictures and a guaranteed $50 million. Everyone be gapin’ in Ho’wood. But not Mr Williams. Mr Williams was however prepared to start revenge narking on what he had observed of their proclivities and – like a modern-day Hercules in the temple of the money-changers (or whatever) – he is prepared to bring the house down, not being reliant on that rotten whorehouse for a living. Diddy – wha? Diddy – hey? Diddy – nah, nah, nah bro, no way, nah. Diddy oh no did he? Diddy. Oh yes he did. And in front of a hotel video security camera. And that’s to start with – a taste. A small taste. Everything Williams said – no matter how extreme – seems to be the truth after all. The truth came via a podcast on Youtube. Would television have ever aired this Dresden of truth bombs?

Williams had provided a brandy-soaked bookend to the Me Too movement – the good oil (baby oil as it turns out and lots of it) on the male side of the power imbalance where men are the victims of other men. Why are no-talent actors and comedians recycled through the movie industry? His revelation was that the actors aren’t being paid to say their lines, they’re being paid to stay silent, to shut up, to keep the awful secrets. The first rule of Eyes Wide Shut is you keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth.

The abuse Shirley Temple and Judy Garland underwent is a matter of record. Did Temple’s mother set her 12 year old daughter up to be raped by a film distributor in one room while she had to serve the head of the studio in his office – because that’s what it sounds like. And… nothing much has changed.

So, we get to Epstein. What are they hiding? What is the silence in aid of?

The Behaviour Panel podcast of four (3 x US and 1 x UK) body language specialists analysed the White House cabinet meeting where Trump got tetchy on bringing it up and Attorney-General Pam Bondi defended the handling of the Epstein case. They said all the participants – Trump, Bondi and Rubio – didn’t seem to have any stress around the sexual element but exhibited great anxiety whenever intelligence services were mentioned. They can’t say the obvious – they have to lie, pretend they have no idea.

Everyone with anything to do with Epstein, supposed friends, all have the same reaction to his death – they laugh. They laugh and say “oh well he’s dead” and they shrug their shoulders and smirk like they got away with something. They all have that reaction: Prince Andrew, Bill Gates the exact same reaction. A friend, a Lolita Express frequent flier, a constant visitor to his houses and yet when asked about his tragic *suicide* they snort out a laugh!? What sort of relationship is it when their tragic death is greeted with unconcealed merriment?

Yes, it’s a state secret so they cannot disclose anything about him including the fact of there being a state secret. In the UK they have a D-notice, or super-injunction, where news of certain facts cannot be reported, but the US doesn’t seem to be able to deal with it through the courts it has become essentially political and a matter of trust. It does seem odd that a town like Washington that leaks so badly has been watertight on Epstein.

My belief is that Trump’s divergence from his MAGA base on the Epstein file can be put down to Trump having given up his rallies. Trump had been having mass public rallies for ten years – he never stopped campaigning – then he ended them when the campaign concluded in November last year and he hasn’t had a large-scale sounding board since then and has drifted from public opinion at least on the Epstein case because of it. Given the intelligence connection and the parade of potentates through Epstein properties what the hell can they say? We got a peek at the plane logs a few years ago, the blanks are partly filled in, and it’s a who’s who.

The secret is thus largely open on the non-financial side. There are the two ringleaders Epstein and Maxwell, sent to prison for their crimes, then a list of alleged victims and alleged perpetrators covered by hush-money non-disclosure agreements in some cases and maybe covered by time expiry. His fortune is more opaque but everyone agrees it isn’t the currency trading that he claimed.

What I find interesting is the scum Epstein surrounded himself with. I don’t just mean Trump. Listening to the podcasts of his lawyer Alan Dershowitz and the writer (who was going to write a biography of him) Michael Wolff are enough to make one’s skin crawl. Both slithering liars. Dershowitz bullied one victim into dropping her claim against him (Dershowitz) and even then he says “she says she may have been mistaken” – not was mistaken, but only may have been! Dershowitz claims he doesn’t know how Epstein made his money – it’s preposterous. Wolff also looks to be running interference – claiming Epstein and no one at his home had any technical knowledge so there couldn’t have been any surveillance and then as evidence of that saying the video camera at the front was never working so it was always being fixed. Fixed by whom? Fixed constantly by whom? The security people were there all the time fixing the camera so his claim is nonsense. All their claims are nonsense, just bullshit. They all knew and were all involved. The creepiest moment in these podcasts – and these two hype-men churn them out – was Wolff right at the end of one closing his eyes slowly so he’s peering out behind his eyelashes, slowly nodding, and slowly saying to the other person “I think he killed himself”. It creeped me out so much because I’d seen the exact same thing before. It took me a while but I remembered who it was – Ted Bundy the serial killer. A total act from beginning to end – just lies.

Kat Williams was asked what motive have these people to lie? His response was: “why do liars lie?” That’s right, it doesn’t matter why so much as knowing that they do. And everyone is lying.  And everyone is covering up.  And the reason to cover up is that anything involving a conspiracy can be easily broken by taking out the weakest link. To protect the racket involves protecting even the weakest of links and this certainly explains a lot of what has been going on in the Epstein case.

Is New Zealand really that different?

Are we supposed to think that the Deputy Commissioner of NZ Police and his alleged scrolling nasties is a one-off?

“Revealed: Child exploitation and bestiality material allegedly found on former Deputy Police Commissioner Jevon McSkimming’s work devices”

-RNZ News 

What about the SIS not alerting Police to child molester Ronald van der Plaat because “security”?

-RNZ: 

There are too many conspiracies and corruption in NZ to traverse at length, but a couple that stand out where the state seems to have protected as many perpetrators as possible so egregiously is Dr Selwyn Leeks and his torturing of patients – how did he get a free pass to Australia? And the Roastbusters West Auckland rape gang that escaped prosecution due to their connection with police officers. At least two people went to prison for Epstein’s crimes, only two were eventually prosecuted for Roastbusters and they got Home Detention and permanent name suppression! That put a total lie to the police claims at the time that there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute – just lies. New Zealand is riven with the same illness as America only the civil society in New Zealand lacks competence, stamina and integrity to render justice. Just look at the appalling lies from every judge that has ever sat as the Police Conduct Authority and the brutality, killing and outright murder that those judicial animals have condoned through the years. How many additional misdeeds by how many additional people are needed to cover the misdeeds of even just one person?

We all lie to each other, all the time. Does that make it OK for the government to lie to all of us, all the time?

The neighbour’s kid is developmentally impaired and it’s clear to me what infuriates him is lies. He doesn’t understand why we aren’t telling the truth. He does not suffer liars gladly. The only sure way of assuaging the anxiety and rage at the lies is to be honest with him – that’s my experience anyway.  If you don’t understand lying – why and how we are deceiving others – then you are developmentally impaired, whereas the liar is highly sophisticated. I see the popular PBD podcast from Valuetainment (I laugh every time I see it or hear that name) had a recent moment where Vinny – the dumbest of the panelists – is the one that can’t stomach the Trump administration’s lies and is there shaking his head in disbelief calling out the Emperor’s nudity while the smarter guys (they aren’t that much smarter to be fair in this case) are all twisting and contorting to square the circle of dishonesty as only intelligent people can when they think it in their interest.