... I darkened and browned my front teeth. I stuffed a shaved down tampon deep into my right nostril and died the tip dark brown – giving my nose an awkward, lopsided, disgusting appearance. I put on a pair of ragged brown pants with holes patched and darned. I wore an old, ragged long sleeve shirt. I donned an old Guatemalan style sarape and toted a bag containing a variety of Guatemalan woven goods. I adjusted my posture so that I appeared a good six inches shorter than my actual height and slowly walked up and down the beach with a pronounced limp, pushing an old single speed bicycle and peddling my wares to tourists and reporters using a broken English with a heavy Spanish accent. On my second day, while peddling small wooden carvings, I nearly sold a dolphin carving to an Associated Press reporter standing at the edge of my dock ...
This HAS TO BE A JOKE. This is an elaborate prank.
Literally every post in this blog is dosed with high-test crazy. From the beginning:
* Jeff however, I truly believe, thinks that I sent the photos to his wife. If I had done so, then I would deserve whatever wrath he chose to mete out. But seriously, it’s not my style. And if his mistaken suspicion is not the reason for his bulldog approach to sniffing out my life then I can’t even guess at what twisted motives move this man.
* Wired asked him to pose shirtless with a shotgun. This apart from all the other shirtless photos of him, and him with young coeds; did Wired stage those? Did Wired also stage McAfee playing Russian Roulette with a loaded trick revolver in front of Josh Davis?
* I laid down the pistol that I keep for protection and, contrary to Josh Davis’ assertion that I said “Motherfuckers”, said nothing and went back inside. I woke Amy, the 17 year old with whom I was living, and calmly told her to get dressed – that the GSU was invading the property.
* The entire "Samantha" post, which reads just like the "secret diary of John McAfee" from Gizmodo, which in turn consists of profiles of the various young Belizeans McAfee has slept with, followed by a few sentences about the paramilitary groups seeking to kill him. (My favorite part of all these bits of writing, including the "Samantha" piece, are the photos, which make it seem like the most important thing McAfee has to convince us of is that these young women are real --- like that makes him seem saner)
* First there was an attempt to charge me with running an antibiotics laboratory without a license. In Belize a special government permit is required to research antibiotics – a law which is common in Third World countries. To date, no such permits have ever been issued. I suspect the large drug conglomerates have much to do with these widespread laws, or perhaps it’s a viewpoint motivated by my latent paranoia. In any case, I didn’t have such a permit. Neither was I researching or producing antibiotics. Antibiotics are taken systemically. I was working on a topical antibacterial spray. It could in no way be classified as an antibiotic. (Here it helps to note that McAfee's original research scientist partner in the antibiotic effort had to flee Belize in fear of McAfee)
* The "Punishment of the Innocent" post where careful mention is made of which people do not drink or do drugs.
* The entire "Watchfulness" post, which posits a shoe-polish-painted John McAfee watching the Belizean paramilitary GSU police digging up the corpses of his dogs, removing their heads, and leaving the bodies. The dogs had been dead too long for an effective autopsy, considering it would be performed in a Third World country with limited access to laboratory resources. What was this all about? Well, John, isn't it clear? ZOMBIE DOGS.
I think it's plausible that he's not crazy and everything on that blog is true. The whole situation is crazy enough that people probably approach it with preconceptions and interpret everything they read in that light.
There does appear to be rampant corruption in the government there. The press does seem interested in hyping the story, especially by portraying McAfee as a wacko. When I read the Jeff Wise story "Secrets, Schemes, and Lots of Guns: Inside John McAfee’s Heart of Darkness" recently, I was struck at how sensationalized it was, especially the part where he strains hard to make 8 shotguns, 2 pistols, and some ammo into "a small armory's worth of firearms", and "Vexingly for the police, all of this was actually legal." McAfee writing that Jeff Wise has some ax to grind, therefore, rings true to me.
I think the Russian Roulette trick involved palming the bullet, and was to make the point that things are not always as they first appear. Of course for anyone who's made up their mind that he's crazy, it's just simply more fodder to reinforce their beliefs.
The "Watchfulness" post does seem over the top, yet even that could be plausible. It's a shame -- the guy has been tried in the press already, so people assume he's crazy and a murderer.
Not only that but anyone worth their salt in pranking would certainly take the time to construct something that at least made it to the level of national media attention. To be able to, eh, how you say "punk" the media.
P.S. No-one at the house, including the staff, know that I am nearby. If the police are reading this, do not randomly round up everyone for harboring a fugitive. Please.
John McAfee is such a master of disguise that even though the most elite police unit in Belize has more or less set up camp at his house solely to find him, he's able to wander around close enough to the house to watch their every move simply by dressing up as a German tourist in a Speedo while hollering "Leck mich um ausch!" at passers-by.
Apparently he was known for laying the bullshit on pretty thick even before he turned into a full-time paranoid tweaker, so I'm inclined to think this whole thing sits at the intersection of "hoax" and "really is written by John McAfee"
I mean, yes. But at the same time would an elite police unit expect someone on the run to do something quite that ridiculous either?
I think another possible explanation is that it is his blog, but with the element of truth carefully dispensed and the element of hyperbole liberally dispensed.
I'm not sure that's more likely than hoax, but it's a possibility I maybe wouldn't eliminate.
McAfee is going to end up getting shot, and the rest of us are going to be arguing for 20 years over whether he was sane or whether he actually just became more and more unstable and ended up bringing this on himself.
I complain about too much drama on HN, but this McAfee story is way over the top.
I never would've guessed that the software industry would produce such engrossing real-time dramas. Take Kim Dotcom, John McAfee, throw in Elon Musk for good measure (maybe Branson too) and you're well into comic book territory.
Since I am developing in Java full time at my current gig, I have come to the realization that you would need to have the mind of a pedophile to write this awful language.
When you consider that tech titans are making tools that reshape the way entire societies interact and even how people use information and think about things, we've been in comic book territory for years.
Musk's divorce from his first wife, Justine, was a major drama (his divorce from his second wife was quieter). He also teetered on the brink of insolvency (cash flow) at least in part due to the contentious first divorce.
Or is it just the case, that those willing to infuse brake through thinking into society are more frequantly not fitting the conventional definitions of sanity?
I came away from reading that link and the whoismcafee.com blog thinking that the man is an eccentric but certainly not insane. It is well within my imagination to believe that he may be being persecuted by senior government officials in Belize for not making "donations" or providing other favours when asked of them.
I think that North Americans sometimes don't realize that one of the reasons that the rest of the world is susceptible to urban legends and conspiracy theories is because in those countries, similar stories have been known to hold true. Nothing like a moon landing of course, but presidents and prime ministers have in fact been involved in murders, drug charges and fraud. In that context you're more amenable to think, "Yeah, this could have happened."
So you think the Belizean police are digging up the heads --- just the heads --- of McAfee's dogs while he watches them disguised with shoe polish on his face?
No, they dug up the entire bodies, but only kept the heads, which is normal concidering it's a standard way to test for poisons in dead animals (they test the brain matter, not the muscle tissue).
Here it's worth noting that McAfee contests this explanation. There is some other, more sinister reason they've taken the heads of his dogs. I think we all know what it is.
Why wouldn't he either bail over the border to Mexico, bail to the American embassy, or bail to some other embassy?
Even if he gets arrested in an American embassy, that's got to be preferable to the inevitable "slipped and fell on a bullet" that the policia are liable to issue.
He's living in a country where the sane, rational (relatively speaking) rules of urban America definitely do not apply, fighting a battle he absolutely cannot win.
Which part comes across to you like the ravings of a madman? If it is such - and to be sure, I can't claim to know it isn't - then in my opinion he's doing a good job of appearing sane.
Whether or not it is a cautionary tale about minding your sanity, I think it's also a cautionary tale about not believing everything you read in the press. Until fifteen minutes ago I held the belief that McAfee had committed the crime of which he is accused; thinking about now I realize I held that belief based on essentially no actual evidence. I'm not saying I now believe his side of the story instead. I have no real evidence for that either (and I don't have time to follow up all the links he presented right now). My current conclusion is that at this time I don't know enough of the facts to judge either way.
I think part of it has to do with the conclusion many of us jump to when someone refuses to submit themselves to a trial in a court of law. In the US we like to believe our system is just, or at least mostly just, and therefore anyone who is accused of a crime and skips out must be admitting guilt through their actions. People then tend to project this bias to people who skip court in societies with less just courts like Belize.
To be honest, even in this country any unattractive minority that is accused of a crime may want to consider running from the law and skipping the country because for them our courts are less than just and more likely to convict them of that crime and give them a sentence worse than the average.
He was not accused of a crime! The police wanted to question him as a "person of interest" - big difference!
Almost every news story I saw report on this when it broke last week reported it incorrectly in the headlines as him being "wanted" - it's a shame that journalism can get away with being so sloppy sometimes.
> He was not accused of a crime! The police wanted to question him as a "person of interest" - big difference!
It's a procedural difference, but "person of interest" is really just a bureaucratic euphemism for "suspect we don't officially designate as a suspect yet".
> However, running from the law and how he's been acting is not in accordance with someone who's innocent - no?
What law? You mean the corrupt "legal" system there? Wouldn't most innocent people who are afraid of corrupt police act in the same way? (i guess that implies his innocence then!)
Furthermore, if you believe he is actually insane/paranoid then of course he's going to believe they're out to get him and will try to avoid capture, whether or not he's guilty.
We have, in fact, no way to know if this was actually done by John McAfee. The domain was registered on 11/16/2012 and contains anonomized whois info (not that if it gave an address that would be any different).
It's more like "claiming to be the official blog of John McAfee".
Well, if you want to trust random people on the internet, I can vouch for this site as being the real thing. Some online acquaintances visited McAfee in Belize a year or two ago when he was still on about the quorum sensing stuff. I learned of this site through the same channel.
What makes it more suspect is the blog post explaining many of the techniques he's using to disguise himself. Why would you share that information when you know people are looking for you?
I just read the entire thing and this is what stuck out most to me. The last line of the post you're talking about:
P.S. No-one at the house, including the staff, know that
I am nearby. If the police are reading this, do not
randomly round up everyone for harboring a fugitive. Please.
This does not read like a serious comment, maybe he turns to humour in times of desperation but this just seems... either it's fabricated or he's taunting the authorities.
Also he mentions in one post he's short on time and internet access but then in the second latest post it states:
If I am captured, this blog will continue. I have pre-
written enough material to keep this blog alive for at
least a year.
What's the material about? The attempted capture? The murder? His dealings with the government? Surely he hasn't been expecting this for a long and is only now publishing? If that's the case I might be as crazy as to suggest maybe the murder is his attempt at bringing attention to the corruption. If the corruption is proven true and then the murder may be swept aside as part of it, even if he did it to get the attention he thinks the issue needs.
What about that last part doesn't seem serious to you? To me it reads like he is trying to prevent other people from getting wrapped up in the mess. Seems reasonable and decent enough to me.
Assuming you mean my comment about the last line of the disguise post: He outlines how he's "tricked" the authorities by constantly being there dressed up in elaborate disguises and then says "oh btw, pretty please don't think you can find me by rounding up everyone there"? I don't see how that is anything other than taunting the police, if he didn't want people to be rounded up he wouldn't make them a target by saying he's pretending to be one of them!
He could also comment about the last disguise he used after he has moved on to a new one. This would allow him to throw the police off and be honest at the same time.
"Why would you share that information when you know people are looking for you?"
One possible reason (and I'm not claiming this is being done just giving perspective) is to spread disinformation with the intent of creating wild goose chases. Like planting your cell phone on a bus headed in a direction you are not going or giving your credit card to a person at a bus terminal that is traveling to another part of the country.
I am really interested in all of this, John McAfee gave me
my first ultra-light ride at his "Sky Gypsy Ranch" near Rodeo, NM. a few years back. (no I dont know him) he had just opened the "Sky Gypsy Cafe", a good friend of mine lived in Portal,Az. I did get to tell him, how I hated that his anti-virus software, acted like a virus itself on my computer. My limited profile abilities, (seemed like a normal Joe, except very wealthy and Yoga master BTW) that he was some kind of genius. However, reading the papers about all of this, I am very glad I am ME. Thank you God!
Is it just me, or are all ex patriots living in Belize completely insane?
Each one of them left a comment talking about how wonderful it is to live in Belize, with just the minor downside of a secret police force / gang of thugs running around murdering people, throwing people in prison, and demanding exorbitant bribes.
Judging by the comments that they themselves left on his blog, it appears that saying Belize is a wonderful place to live is akin to saying that living in Nazi Germany was paradise on earth, except for having to live with the Nazis.
My impression from speaking to an American friend working in China is that a very significant portion of the ex-pat populations from the USA and Canada are folks who couldn't hack it in their native lands... personality disorders and an unreasonable inability to deal with authority seem to prevail, but as foreigners they get just enough leeway to skate by.
For people who'd feel "constrained" by your average first-world laws, Belize must indeed feel like a paradise: where else could one maintain a completely legal harem (including minors !), or a militarized compound with 20+ segregated women subjected to god-know-what perversion?
To people like this, the current PM (elected in 2008) and his gang are the cost of access to a "social paradise" they wouldn't get in a country under the Rule of Law.
"I woke Amy, the 17 year old with whom I was living, and calmly told her to get dressed – that the GSU was invading the property. Amy is a tough young woman. She said nothing, got up, got dressed and sat calmly on the edge of the bed."
If you read a later posts he talks about doing something with 6 other people. It would seem sex plays a significant role in his life, I guess that and drugs fit together well.
If he were in the states I'd say he's just trying to build up a case for an insanity plea, but I'm pretty sure he knows how well that will go over in Belize.
This HAS TO BE A JOKE. This is an elaborate prank.