IT'S amazing and instructive where the red lines are drawn. Red lines should and need to be drawn on sustained engagement with an international extortioner and procurer of children for rape. It is long overdue, even if the line is a little more light pink than red if we are colour-coding actual accountability for such crimes. But I am simultaneously interested in the crimes, and the criminals, and the people with contact with criminals, that go without sanction.
Will those carrying out genocide, and those who cover up for them, and those with habitual contact with these child killers suffer a similar fate? I feel uncomfortable with a world that has seen Palestinian children systematically shredded, starved to death and left orphaned with no access to care, education or health provision with utter state impunity, where the abusers are known, feted and cosseted and face absolute impunity for these crimes. I say uncomfortable, what I mean is I feel white hot outrage at a world that will deliver a modicum of societal disgrace to those named in the Epstein files while simultaneously excusing Israeli murderers.
The fact that some names overlap forms of heinous crimes is not accidental. It is widely reported that a former senior Israeli politician is the man that Virigina Giuffre referred to as having beaten and strangled her, leaving her begging Epstein not to send her back to him. A plea which was treated with disregard by that monster.
The overnight moves to delete the name of George Mitchell from Queen's University caught most by surprise. And moves to strip Peter Mandelson of his peerage are belated, but a sign of the toxicity of this ever-growing scandal. But there are Sirs and Lords swanning around Westminster and Whitehall whose names are directly associated with murder and collusion in Ireland. The only challenge these characters face is how to add more medals to their chests, or more letters after their names on letterheads. Indeed, the same characters, who live in the domains of national security, whisper in the ears of legislators, ensuring that the Legacy Act continues the policy and practice of state impunity.
The relatives of over a million Iraqis might wonder about Tony Blair’s utter impunity for war crimes while his New Labour colleague rightly faces ignominy.
Victims of Kincora might feel pretty sore this week as they live with the knowledge that their testimonies of abuse, torture and rape have gone unaccounted for with names of some of the most powerful in British society associated with those crimes.
But while I ponder the double standards and neck-saving hypocrisy. I feel a sick certainty that there will be little actual legal accountability for the crimes against humanity by those contained in the pages of depravity known as Epstein Files. Not least because the most powerful man on the planet, residing in the White House, is mentioned most, has most to answer for and yet eludes judicial accountability.
Not since the times of Sodom and Gomorrah has humanity been asked for its own reckoning, for all crimes, for all victims.
