🇺🇸 🇮🇱 🕵‍♂️ Was Epstein a Mossad agent? New files deepen mystery over Israel links

Messages released by US Department of Justice have renewed speculation that the paedophile financier was a spy

The files include claims from a confidential informant to the FBI that, far from disliking Israel, Epstein was in fact employed by its spy agency, Mossad. An FBI report from the Los Angeles field office written in October 2020 said the bureau’s source had become “convinced that Epstein was a co-opted Mossad agent”.

It said the Wall Street financier had been “trained as a spy” for Mossad, alleging that Epstein had ties to US and allied intelligence operations through his longtime personal lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor whose orbit included “many students from wealthy families”. It said Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and his brother, Josh, a financier, were “both his students”.

Nushbacher, a senior UK national security official and lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, explained the possibility of Epstein’s involvement and the structure of recruitment by the spy agency in Israel.

“And then there are people who are assets. They are just useful. Is it possible that Epstein was an asset to the Mossad? Yes. Do I think he was an agent of any intelligence agency, I think it was unlikely. Was he an officer? No.”

In 2003, Epstein applied for a second passport for his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, in order to “avoid conflicting visa stamps” when travelling. “Ms. Maxwell’s responsibilities … require her to travel extensively throughout the world. She is currently scheduled to travel on March 16. 2003 to Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia,” he wrote.

Maxwell’s father, the disgraced media tycoon Robert Maxwell, was widely suspected of having connections to the Israeli intelligence agency and is known to have pumped millions into the Israeli economy, promising to invest “at least a quarter of a billion dollars” to the then-prime minister Yitzhak Shamir.

https://www.thetimes.com/world/middle-east/article/was-jeffrey-epstein-mossad-agent-spy-israel-w6p35b9v6

📎 The Times

🇸🇦 🇦🇪 An overview of the Saudi Arabia-United Arab Emirates rivalry in the Middle East and Africa

📎 Clement_molin

Digital identity panopticon update:

Discord will implement face scans and ID checks before users are granted "full access."

"Non-verified" users will be prohibited from seeing "any content Discord detects as graphic or sensitive."

Discord was hacked last year and the hackers were able to access government IDs used for age verification checks.

🛢 🇻🇪 ⚡️ Venezuela's largest refinery out of service after power blackout, sources say

Feb 9 (Reuters) - Venezuela's largest refinery, the 645,000-barrel-per-day Amuay, was taken out of service on Monday following a power blackout, four sources close to the facility's operations said

Electricity outages hitting state oil company PDVSA's facilities are frequent, which leads to refinery operations well below their installed capacity. Amuay was processing some 137,000 bpd before the incident, one of the sources said.

📎 Reuters

🇪🇸 Increasingly authoritarian Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez accused Elon Musk and Telegram founder Pavel Durov of spreading lies about Spain, insisting that technology companies will not influence the government’s plans to restrict social media access for minors.

Spain plans to ban social media use for those under 16 and to hold platform executives accountable for hate speech. Durov and Musk publicly criticized the proposal.

Spain joins countries such as the UK, Greece, and France in tightening social media regulation, following Australia’s ban for children under 16.

“Democracy clearly will not be influenced by algorithmic tech oligarchs. Yesterday they addressed millions of people through their platforms to spread lies,” Sánchez said in Madrid.

Durov warned on Telegram that the law would force platforms to collect user data and allow governments to control content. Musk called Sánchez a “tyrant and a traitor to the Spanish people” on X.

The Spanish government said Durov’s message to Telegram users proves the need for stricter regulation to protect citizens from misinformation.

Sánchez has criticized tech platforms since last year, when he proposed ending online anonymity and linking user data to an EU digital identity.