The death of John McAfee: Suicide or conspiracy?
Current Affairs
John McAfee, the founder of one of the world’s most widely used antivirus software, died recently in a Spanish prison. on June 23.
McAfee was found hanging in his prison cell soon after the ruling of his extradition to the U.S. where he was accused of tax evasion.
We reflect on his bizarre and rather unusual life post his resignation from McAfee Associates in 1994, selling off his remaining stakes in the company only 8 years after he founded the cyber-security giant in 1987.
Conspiracy theories around his death: “If I suicide myself, I didn’t”
Although all evidence suggests suicide, conspiracy theorists have suggested that the cybersecurity mogul has died by other means, indirectly pointing toward murder. A tweet from McAfee’s verified account in 2019 emboldens these claims where he says “If I suicide myself, I didn’t.”
Spookily, his Instagram account posted an image of a capital “Q” moments after the news of his death broke out, which appears to be a reference to QAnon.
QAnon, a cult of far-right conspiracy theorists, had suggested a similar claim when Jeffery Epstein, a disgraced financier and sex offender, had died. “Epstein didn’t kill himself” eventually became a major online meme.
Why was he in prison?
After being found guilty in the U.S. for not paying taxes for 4 years between 2014 and 2018 despite earning millions of dollars in income, McAfee was caught and imprisoned in Spain and was awaiting extradition. Days after the ruling for his extradition to the U.S. was passed by Spain court, McAfee was found dead in his prison cell.
As per the regional justice department’s statement, everything indicates that it was a suicide. While investigating the possibility of murder it was indicated that he had a cellmate but he wasn’t present during this incident.
Suspect of a murder investigation
Apart from being a founder and a CEO, McAfee was a two-time presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party. Additionally, he was also at one point the suspect of a murder investigation in Belize. He recently sold the rights to his life story for a documentary “Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee” and seemed to have earned a fortune from it.
A critic of his own baby
McAfee wrote the first commercial anti-virus software only to sell his masterpiece. However, years later, he became the biggest critic of his own baby, accusing McAfee software of being a Bloatware, a term commonly used for softwares that are bloated with inefficiencies. He even created a parody youtube video on “How to uninstall McAfee antivirus” while snorting white powder which got ~10 million views.
He openly denied the acceptance of the use of his name against the product. The company did try to rebrand under the ownership of Intel corporations but with no fruit.
Professional life
John was a man who seems to have dipped his toe in everything. After McAfee Associates, he went from founding companies like Tribal Voice, QuorumEx, and Future Tense Central to becoming the CEO of MGT Capital Investments which moved into mining of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. All of his ventures resulted in the accumulation of wealth close to $100 million which plummeted in the financial crisis of 2008.
A man of many realities, none of which we were aware of, dies at the age of 75 and leaves us with a life full of mystery to look back on.
Did the Delhi government exaggerate oxygen requirements?
Current Affairs
On May 8, the Supreme Court of India had formed a committee to improve the Oxygen distribution in India. This committee had a special sub-group to audit the oxygen requirement in Delhi specifically. The members of this team included AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria, Max Healthcare's Sandeep Budhiraja and various IAS officers.
On Thursday, they published a report that said that the Delhi government had asked for ~4 times more oxygen than the city needed.
The calculation is done based on oxygen required per bed. Basically, the team calculated the bed capacity of Delhi and used it as a benchmark to calculate the oxygen that would have been sufficient for those beds. According to this calculation, Delhi should have needed ~289 metric tonnes of oxygen daily. However, CM Kejriwal had demanded 1140 metric tonnes of oxygen from the Centre.
How accurate is this?
Well, there are some obvious errors. During that challenging phase, people also set up beds informally at homes and offices because of the lack of beds in the hospital. Those beds are not counted as a part of this calculation.
Moreover, it seemed that the strain in Delhi was more potent than elsewhere. Hence, the oxygen needed per bed might have been higher.
However, that might not be able to justify the requirement to be four times higher. Purely looking at the results, it is safe to conclude that the Delhi government’s handling of Covid Wave 1 and Wave 2 has been questionable. While the CM has cried foul on the lack of the Centre’s help, their inability to arrange cryogenic trucks for carrying oxygen was exposed and called out in the open.
Delhi government’s response
Manish Sisodia did a press conference on this issue and said that such a report “does not exist”. He claimed that the BJP ministers created this report and none of the committee members had signed it off. Sisodia claims that this is just another trick from the BJP ministers to malign the Delhi government.
Author’s opinion
Covid wave 1 was extremely difficult for Delhi too. However, we saw very few proactive measures from the state government to prepare for the second wave. If these reports of exaggerating oxygen requirements are accurate, Delhi’s CM is about to get in a big legal mess - and rightly so. If Delhi requested more oxygen than they needed, it would have affected other states’ oxygen supply.
If Manish Sisodia is right and this is just a ploy to malign the government - this move shows that AAP is a real scare for the BJP in the upcoming elections.
A real-life Rapunzel story: What is happening with #FreeBritney?
Current Affairs
“I’m not here to be anyone’s slave”
She rose to become the “Princess of Pop”. Today, however, she finds herself in a Rapunzel-like reality.
For nearly 12 years now, Britney has held limited control over her life. Post an episode of mental breakdown in 2008, she has been put under “conservatorship” by her father, Jamie Spears, giving him control over all her work decisions & finances.
On 23rd June, she appeared before the court to end her conservatorship and said: “I’m not here to be anyone’s slave”.
What is conservatorship?
Under US law, conservatorship is the appointment of a guardian or a protector by a judge to manage the financial affairs and/or daily life of another person due to old age or physical or mental limitations.
Case in point: Britney Spears
Britney, the conservatee, in this case, was put under conservatorship after being deemed mentally “unfit” to manage her daily life. This gave her father, the conservator, a legal right to manage her finances, health, work, and even personal life.
Originally, Britney’s conservatorship was only a “temporary” emergency measure. However, 12 years down the line, little has changed.
But what actually happened in 2008?
In January 2008, Britney was spending time with her kids, Jayden and Sean, as part of the joint-custody agreement she has with her ex-husband Kevin Federline. When an officer from Kevin’s side came to Britney’s house to take the kids back, Britney locked herself in a room with her one-year-old son and refused to hand him over.
Later, she was found to be under the influence of an unknown substance and was put under a 72 hour “mental evaluation” called the 5150 hold. This combined with other ‘erratic’ behaviour like shaving her head, attacking a paparazzi’s car, public breakdowns, led to her father filing for a conservatorship.
A day in the life of a conservatee
In the last 12 years, little details of Britney’s conservatorship have been made public. During this time, Britney has gone on world tours, released multiple albums & appeared on various television shows. None of these contracts are her decision, though. Her personal life has also been upended.
The conservatorship has been repeatedly approved for extension and the current arrangement extends at least through 2021.
#FreeBritney Movement
Convinced that Britney is struggling to attain freedom from conservatorship, her loyal fans launched FreeBritney.net to express their concerns and attain justice for Britney.
The movement picked up steam in 2019, when an anonymous lawyer said to have worked in managing Britney’s estate, revealed some alarming details of Britney’s conservatorship in an episode on the “Britney’s Gram” podcast. Fans & celebrities united to fight for her freedom through rallies, social media posts, podcasts etc.
The “devil’s” advocate?
"I understand that every story wants to have a villain, but people have it so wrong here," said Jamie Spears’ lawyer about the father’s side of the things. (Source: Harper’s Bazaar)
He claimed that this was a story of an extremely loyal, loving father who was only seeking to save Britney from a life-threatening mental spiral. He also suggested that under the years of conservatorship, he had multiplied Britney’s estate from 2.8 million dollars to 60 million dollars today.
"I am not happy, I can’t sleep. I’m so angry, it’s insane. And I’m depressed,"
"It’s not OK to force me to do anything I don’t want to," she added as per FOX and CNN.
On June 23, in a 24-minute monologue on her life in conservatorship, Britney, for the first time ever, spoke out about her wish to end the arrangement in court.
Britney’s stand
"My dad and anyone involved in this conservatorship, including my management … they should be in jail," she said as per Fox and CNN. She also accepted that she was lying about her emotional well-being for some years under the fear of extending conservatorship.
Britney has now asked for her basic right to make her own life decisions, spend time with her kids, and have another child with her boyfriend, Sam Asghari.
Which side would you stand for? Basic rights or alleged threat to mental, physical well-being?
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