#Man who tried to help wikileaks

[liberty1776]

In the 1970s Pentagon Official Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers. The New York Times published them. It helped to end the war by showing Americans how they had been deceived by Washington. Washington tried to prosecute Ellsberg and the New York Times, but the presiding judge declared a mistrial citing government misconduct so severe as to “offend the sense of justice.” Four decades later documents were leaked by Manning to Assange at Wikileaks who made them available to the New York Times and The Guardian, both of which published some of the documents, and the leaked information was published … Continue reading →

[thesecuritysleuth]

Sunday Roundup: 28th of May 2017

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Sunday Round up for the week ending the 28th of May 2017:

Articles:

Interview with the Security Sleuth: https://www.teramind.co/blog/interview-security-sleuth

Critical Vulnerability in Samba from 3.5.0 onwards: https://isc.sans.edu/forums/diary/Critical+Vulnerability+in+Samba+from+350+onwards/22452/

Applocker Bypass via Registry Key Manipulation: https://www.contextis.com//resources/blog/applocker-bypass-registry-key-manipulation/

Beats and Bytes - Striking the Right Chord in Digital Forensics: https://digital-forensics.sans.org/blog/2017/05/22/beats-and-bytes-striking-the-right-chord-in-digital-forensics

The Man Who Made the Mistake of Trying to Help Wikileaks: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/jason-katz-wikileaks

Cameradar - An RTSP Surveillance Camera Access Multitool: http://www.kitploit.com/2017/05/cameradar-rtsp-surveillance-camera.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook&m=1

Your Exploit is Mine: Automatic Shellcode Transplant for Remote Exploits: https://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2017/papers/579.pdf

Using Cloud Deployment to Jump-Start Application Security: https://www.sans.org/reading-room/whitepapers/analyst/cloud-deployment-jump-start-application-security-37805

Verify If A Photo Was Really Taken By A Suspected Camera - Camera Ballistics 2.0: https://www.forensicfocus.com/News/article/sid=2895/

Twitter:

"Classifying Illegal Activities On Tor Network Based On Web Textual Contents" #forensics #feedly https://t.co/EqrT3eVPIK

— The Security Sleuth (@Security_Sleuth) May 21, 2017

In 2017 only losers pay for VPN's #itrtg https://t.co/9mlZjwzDDS

— The Security Sleuth (@Security_Sleuth) May 22, 2017

"“Yahoobleed” flaw leaked private e-mail attachments and credentials" #informationsecurity #feedly https://t.co/KkWYTKoN69

— The Security Sleuth (@Security_Sleuth) May 22, 2017

"Spring Parade for Refreshed Android Marcher" #informationsecurity #feedly https://t.co/IQahxgESKo

— The Security Sleuth (@Security_Sleuth) May 22, 2017

"Breaking the iris scanner locking Samsung’s Galaxy S8 is laughably easy" #informationsecurity #feedly https://t.co/WgwWjiFNKL

— The Security Sleuth (@Security_Sleuth) May 23, 2017

"Beware! Subtitle Files Can Hack Your Computer While You're Enjoying Movies" #infosec #feedly https://t.co/AnLifPZF8O

— The Security Sleuth (@Security_Sleuth) May 23, 2017

"Subtitle Hack Leaves 200 Million Vulnerable to Remote Code Execution" #informationsecurity #feedly https://t.co/rw0aZuNABU

— The Security Sleuth (@Security_Sleuth) May 24, 2017

"Keybase Extension Brings End-to-End Encrypted Chat To Twitter, Reddit, GitHub" #informationsecurity #feedly https://t.co/dKHmOSdwFs

— The Security Sleuth (@Security_Sleuth) May 25, 2017

Read last weeks round up here

If you found some other interesting stuff this week feel free to leave a link to it in the comments section.

[coldbrewandfangirling]

Betrayal – A Bucky Barnes Fanfic Chapter 36

AU / BuckyxOC

Summary:

Ava is an aspiring journalist, working on her first big story. Her life gets confusing when she meets James Buchanan Barnes, a charming, good-looking man, that she can hardly stay away from. She finds herself falling for him, hard, all while being haunted from ghosts of her past. But she can't shake the feeling that he is hiding something from her.

chapter 36, in which Ava finally finds out what James has been keeping from her.

TW: no major triggers

On Wattpad || Previous Chapter || Next Chapter || Masterlist || Playlist

word count: 1952

Chapter 36

"April, I need you to tell me everything you know about the NYPD security breach right now!" A slim, middle-aged black-haired woman came storming into the break room and sat down at the small table with Ava and April. April had just told Ava how her wedding planning was going, but the black-haired woman seemed determined to have her question answered right then and there.

Although Ranner had announced Ava needed to get rid of her overtime, she was already putting in new overtime since returning from Portland. Saying goodbye to her mom two weeks ago had been painful, but she had promised her to come back to Portland no later than Thanksgiving. Ava's evil premonition that James would break her heart quite horribly didn't seem to have come true, which meant that Ava doubted her sixth sense, the gut feeling that had usually supported her in every situation in life without any problems and her instinct that she had usually always been able to rely on blindly. Instead, the last two weeks with James had been almost magical. They saw each other almost daily, he was usually waiting outside her flat when she came home from work. When he wasn't taking her out to dinner or a movie, they spent a relaxing evening in her flat. Most nights he even slept over, which made Ava think about putting an extra toothbrush in her bathroom just for him. Actually, Ava had wanted to ask April if it was too soon to buy a toothbrush for him and if she would scare him off, but her break was almost over and the black-haired woman was just opening her sandwich box she had brought with her, as if she had no intention of clearing the place in the next ten minutes.

"Hi, Sandy. I think I'm the wrong person to ask about that. I was just passing on the police press release," April replied with her usual friendly manner.

"Come on, April," Sandy pressed on, "you must know more! I mean, a data leak? Seriously? That can't be all there is to it!"

"If you want to do a story on it, you can surely talk to Ranner about it. Maybe he'd be interested in doing a background story on the New York Police Department data leak?", April tried to end the subject with her perfect smile.

"What data leak?" asked Ava. Her interest was piqued now after all. She couldn't help thinking about Wanda, who, she only now realised, she hadn't thought about since Portland. Her relationship with James couldn't have been better, but her research seemed to suffer.

"There must have been a data leak at the NYPD, causing them to expand their IT department. Supposedly they're going to bring out the big guys now to protect their servers," Sandy blurted out, "To me, that means there's a lot more to it than a simple data leak. Maybe someone hacked into their systems and stole sensitive data? Maybe there will be the next WikiLeaks scandal soon?"

Ava stood up and went back to her desk without saying goodbye to April. Her thoughts were circling around Wanda and her hacking attack on the NYPD's servers. Wanda had wanted to show her something important, but someone had deleted the data before she could. Could the NYPD mean this data leak incident? Today James would have to spend the evening without her, Ava could no longer neglect her research. She needed to talk to Wanda not only about the data leak but also about her brother Pietro who had been active in the arms export scene.

"Hey Ava, how about Jim's tonight? April and some friends of mine are coming too," Peter beamed at Ava, distracting her from the chaos in her head.

"That sounds tempting, but I'm afraid I have to cancel again. My research is waiting," Ava replied, really regretting having to cancel this time. Peter had already asked her a couple of times if she wanted to come for drinks after work, but she had cancelled every single time for the last two weeks to spend time with James or to relax in her flat with a book.

Peter gave her a fleeting smile and disappeared again. Ava almost felt as if Peter wasn't going to ask her to come to Jim's again any time soon, she had cancelled too many times already. And she couldn't even blame Peter.

After work, Ava didn't even go home, but headed straight for Wanda and Vision's shared flat. Not wanting to waste any more time, she resolutely walked up the steps out of the subway and stepped into the suffocating summer air that had accumulated throughout the day on the busy streets of New York. She had sent James a quick text to let him know she wouldn't have time for him today.

"Call me later if you want to talk. I don't care what time it is," he replied only a moment later and Ava couldn't suppress a smile. Never had a man given her so much attention and affection as James. It seemed too good to be true, but she enjoyed every single minute she got to spend with him.

Ava walked down the street and stopped in front of Wanda's building. She rang the bell and was let in almost immediately, as if they had been waiting for her. Hastily she went up the stairs to the fourth floor where Vision greeted her. She could read tenseness in his face and any light-heartedness that James' text had given her drained out of her body when she saw him.

"I'm glad you finally came, Ava," he said sternly, leading the way into the flat. Ava followed him and, somewhat irritated, closed the front door behind her.

In the living room, Vision sat down purposefully at the small dining table; a cup complete with tea bag was in front of him, Wanda's laptop beside him.

"Is everything all right?" asked Ava, unsure if she should sit down. Vision's scowl made Ava nervous; something was wrong.

"Please sit down, there are things to discuss," was all Vision said.

"You're scaring me," Ava replied and continued to stand. Only now did Vision really look at her, his gaze softening, becoming kinder.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. It's just been really busy here the last few weeks and I would have thought you would have come over sooner after our talk. I even doubted whether we could trust you."

Only now Ava sat down and asked, "Vision, what happened? And where the hell is Wanda?"

"I need to be absolutely sure that I can trust you. Because Wanda doesn't, and if she finds out I've given you sensitive information and you turn out not to be trustworthy, she'll kill me." Vision's eyebrows had drawn together and Ava saw in his eyes how worried he was.

"You, you both, can trust me. I am a journalist, I have principles that I will not break for anyone. One of those principles is absolute source protection. No one will know that Wanda is my source. She can trust me."

"Well," Vision said, lowering his eyes again, "Two weeks ago, just before you left for Portland, Wanda came home all shook up. I told her to calm down, sit down first and calmly tell me what was going on. She ran to the window in a panic and looked out at the street. Then she drew the curtains in every single room. I tried to talk some sense into her until she finally sat down at the table, completely out of breath. She told me that she was convinced someone was following her. She saw a dark Audi following her from the university. She always takes the subway and was sure she would get rid of her pursuer that way, but when she got off at her station, the Audi was parked opposite our building. Wanda was incredibly afraid that the police were after her. You have to know that she pulled two all-nighters in a row to recreate the image of your stranger. She hardly slept and looked completely exhausted. I thought she was imagining the thing about her stalker because of the lack of sleep, you know," Vision paused and took a sip of his tea. Ava guessed where the story was going but didn't want to believe it yet.

"The night before you left for Portland," Vision continued, "there was a knock at the door. Immediately I had an uneasy feeling in my stomach and Wanda looked panicked too. She pulled a Flash drive out of her pocket before I could go to the door and held me by the arm. Then she put the Flash drive in my hand and told me to make sure no one got it. Then I opened the door and the police shoved a search warrant into my face. They took Wanda's laptop and all her technical equipment and she had to come with them to the station for questions."

"She had to come to the station? And where is she now?" asked Ava incredulously.

"They still have her in custody. There's data on her laptop, sensitive data that she obtained illegally," Vision explained further, "When she was allowed to make her call, instead of calling a lawyer, she called me and she told me not to trust you, that you were in with the police, working for them."

Ava looked at him incredulously. "I'm not in with anyone. I'm doing this research for me, not for the police and quite honestly not for Wanda," Ava said indignantly.

"I know. I believe you and Wanda will too," Vision said calmly.

"We absolutely have to get her out of prison! It can't be, we have to do something, get her a lawyer, just try and do everything in our power," Ava bubbled away. She hadn't really processed what Vision was telling her yet. While she had spent the last two weeks on cloud nine with James, Wanda had been in prison. And Ava was partly to blame, after all she had pushed Wanda to help her with her research and more importantly with the photo of the stranger.

"I've already got her a lawyer, he's taking care of everything. He's convinced he can get Wanda out of this, but we have to be patient."

"Good, that's good," Ava said more to herself than to Vision. "And what about the flash drive, have you looked at that yet? What's so important on there?"

"I have looked at the flash drive and it is also the reason why Wanda has lost her trust in you. Unjustly, I strongly hope," Vision said and his look became serious.

"What's on the flash drive?" asked Ava again, her heart starting to pound with fear.

"Wanda was able to recover the image of your stranger. And she hacked into the New York Police database before she was arrested to get the relevant files. But check it out for yourself." Vision turned the laptop that was beside him towards Ava so that she could see the photo she had taken and that Wanda had finally been able to enhance. Her breath caught in her throat. If she wasn't already sitting, she probably would have collapsed. Ava felt like a fish stranded on the beach, flopping helplessly around with no chance of surviving.

There were two very familiar eyes looking at her.

James.

[iraqdinar]

Wikileaks Email Shows Man Emailing Intelligence Contractor to Ask About Iraqi Dinar, Vietnamese Dong Revaluations (RVs)

What documents has Wikileaks published relating to the rumored IQD/VND RVs? (Part 1)

By: Peter Egan Jr.

A 2010 email published to Wikileaks’ “Global Intelligence Files” shows what appears to be a random man emailing an employee of a Texas-based intelligence contractor to inquire about what his firm knew or didn’t know regarding the long-rumored revaluation (”RV”), essentially a massive and instantaneous change to the foreign exchange rate of a national currency. Technically, a country can revalue its currency to either increase or decrease the value of the currency, however in this context, with these two particular countries it’s typically discussed in the context of an upward trajectory being the bullish position among speculators. This is the case even as Iraq just this past couple week devalued the Dinar relative to the US dollar.

The dinar trade on third-party sites like eBay, where users buy and sell Iraqi Dinar at generally inflated prices, is alive and as healthy as ever. At one point in July and August sellers were fetching nearly 300% of the actual exchange rate, and are still selling for much more than IQD has traditionally traded for on secondary markets, although the price has subsided a bit, largely due to a giant increase in supply after word made its way around the Dinar forums and YouTube shows about how much IQD was selling for, while demand has dipped with many investors and speculators possessing a common misconception that the 2020 Presidential election was won by the candidate who actually lost (badly). Dinar speculators have a very large faction who believe that the Iraq currency’s relative worth is to be decided in large part whether the incumbent US President remains in office. Even still, comparing the exchange rate Xe lists against the market rate as determined by the amount IQD is actually trading for againt various other currencies leaves a surprisingly wide gap that begs the question of why the market is willing to pay so much more than it (the market) is being told the high-risk, speculative investment is worth.

If we take the email Mike Whims of the now-defunct Rare Buyer LLC sent to Solomon Foshko of Stratfor, which Wikileaks described as a “global intelligence firm” headquartered in Texas, it likely has something to do with a long-rumored revaluation of one or both of Iraq and Vietnam’s currencies.

Whims in a 2010 email to “responses@stratfor.com” that ultimately made its way to Foshko, who appears to have no prior connection to Whims and whose position reads “Global Intelligence,” wrote the following: 

Email subject: “STRATFOR Group Sales - Inquiry”

Email Body:

“Interested in foreign currency revaluations. My current interest lies with Iraq and Vietnam. Do you have any analysis that might help determine when a currency revaluation may occur such as what happened with the Kuwaiti dinar?”

The message made its way to Mr. Foshko, who replied with the following:

Mr. Whims, I have forwarded your question to our analysts. They may contact you. I did a search of current analysis available on our site, but did not find anything related to the Kuwaiti dinar. Regards, Solomon Foshko Global Intelligence STRATFOR T: 512.744.4089 F: 512.473.2260 Solomon.Foshko@stratfor.com

I reached out to both parties via email (this is New Year’s Day so I am reluctant to call until Monday) to request comment and additional information and clarification. Neither has replied as of this story being published. That said, I don’t expect either to reply on New Years Day, and will update this story with any replies should either or both respond to my inquiry.

Stratfor knew (or thought they knew) something regarding an IQD RV by 2011

Another Stratfor email exchange published to Wikileaks references a plan by the Iraqi government to remove three zeros from the currency, a plan which ultimately failed and for which the then-Iraqi government suffered heavy criticism.

Kamran Bokhari writes in an email to Stratfor analysts:

There is a plan to drop the three zeros off the current Iraqi Dinar as part of an effort to raise its value. So if someone has the old currency (the one printed after the fall of the Baathist regime in 2003) and turns it in will he/she get the same amount of dinars or will they get less as per the difference in value?

Bokhari was speaking of the plan by the Iraqi government as described by Albawaba as: “a plan to remove three zeros from the dinar, replacing current banknotes with new ones.“

The article touches upon the inherent difficulties and challenges faced by a nation the size of Iraq in a project of such a massive undertaking as a total currency revaluation.

According to Mazhar Mohammad Saleh, an expert in the Iraqi Central Bank, in a speech with the ALHAYAT of London, “our problem lies in the timing of the currency exchange, as we need to select a suitable time for implementing the project without obstacles.”

The Central Bank planned to remove three zeros from the Iraqi dinar, after suffering from inflation and the decline of the currency during the nineties, due to economic sanctions.

The following quote from the story is also noteworthy:

The most important change after deleting the zeros, is to reduce the number of banknotes in circulation, simplifying the payment system in Iraq.

In the second paragraph quoted, the article claims (accurately, IMHO) that the decline of the Iraqi Dinar is directly tied to economic sanctions stemming from Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Then in the final paragraph quoted, the article states that the most important step once “deleting the zeros” is to reduce the number of banknotes in circulation.

That last part is significant. If the United States Treasury does in fact hold untold trillions or even quadrillions of Iraqi Dinars from the initial postwar “currency swap,” and/or all of the USD auctions and USD cash pallets delivered to the Central Bank of Iraq, a number known to be at least $40 billion USD as of 2008, and that number has only increased in the 13 years since, although the US government has not revealed by how much or even how much IQD it holds period; then untold trillions could be removed from circulation just by the US exchanging their Dinars back for US Dollars and/or digital currency assets following a revaluation. Iraq could repossess those Dinars and have a giant bonfire with them, at least in theory. Then there are all of the American, Canadian, British and Australian currency speculators who hold IQD in their portfolios who would be looking to swap their suddenly valuable IQD for a currency they can use to buy and sell. While that number surely pales in comparison to the US Government’s holdings, it’s still likely nothing to scoff at, particularly in 2020 with Americans having nearly two decades of hearing about how the Iraqi Dinar would experience a rate change that would lead to windfall profits for American currency speculators. The Dinar is trading at 2.5 times its value (as defined by exchange rate) in US-based secondary marketplaces. One such marketplace where American consumers buy Iraqi Dinars is eBay. Compare those prices to the prices listed at Xe when you look up the formal exchange rate.

It’s been three decades since the economic sanctions that crippled the IQD were enacted and there seems to be a growing global consensus that it’s time to revisit the sanctions and review whether or nor they’re still appropriate and still serve a purpose that isn’t entirely punitively enacted against people, many of whom weren’t even alive when the events that provoked the enacting of the sanctions occurred.

To recap, we know that in 2011, Iraq did plan to at a bare minimum redenominate its currency. Some would argue that the 2011 plan constitutes a revaluation. Semantics aside, if the sanctions are what crashed the currency and have hindered it for three decades, if those sanctions are lifted simultaneously with a major rate change accompanied by Iraq repossessing hundreds of trillions of Dinars from citizens and countries across the globe and presumably removing them from circulation, there’s definitely an argument to be made that the concept of the “Iraq Dinar revaluation” is anything but a scam, and may not only be very real, but also very plausible despite the fact that elements within the media will tell anyone who will listen that Iraq’s situation with its currency bears no resemblance to the 1990-1991 Kuwaiti currency situation and that the same outcome is not possible in Iraq.

If it does finally happen in 2021, and there’s a lot of smoke that would seem to suggest that 2021 might be the year of the Dinar, the “Dinar Scam,” as it’s come to be known, will be remembered as all the people, publications and networks who for the better part of a decade have tried their best to convince anyone who will read or listen that investing in the Iraq Dinar is something only stupid people do, and that smart intellectuals like those in the media like to ridicule such simpletons while at their cocktail parties in their ivory towers.

It would be an end to the saga all too fitting considering that the same people calling the Dinar RV a scam are the world’s premiere pathological liars and have a proven track record of being among the most intellectually dishonest people in all of humanity.

[reading-writing-revolution]

September 2, 2020 (Wednesday)

As I wade through the flood of news today, all of it trying to tilt the playing field toward Trump in the upcoming election, it strikes me there is an elephant in the room that we really need to identify: why is Trump so hell-bent on reelection? He has made it clear he doesn’t particularly like the job. He has no real goals for a second term. He feels victimized by the media and his opponents. He prefers Florida to Washington, D.C., and he really likes to golf. He claims to be wealthy enough to do whatever he wants. So why on earth is he apparently determined to bend our democracy to the point of breaking in order to win reelection to a job he doesn’t seem to want to do?

According to today’s news, Trump's acting Director of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, recently buried the release of a bulletin from the Intelligence Community warning that Russians were trying to undermine Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden by saying he is deteriorating mentally. The bulletin was produced for federal, state, and local law enforcement, but DHS Chief of Staff John Gountanis stopped the distribution of the bulletin and referred it to Wolf. It disappeared. Congress will not be able to ask about what happened because on Saturday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced it would no longer brief Congress in person on election security.

A DHS spokesperson said the bulletin had been pulled because it had not met the agency’s standards, but analysts who produced it said they had determined with “high confidence” that the disinformation effort was taking place. Trump, of course, has tried repeatedly to establish the idea that Biden, who stutters, is slipping mentally.

Although the administration tried to bury this intelligence committee report about actual Russian interference in the election, today Attorney General William Barr told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer a fake story. He said that hostile foreign powers could send thousands of mail-in ballots to this year’s election, creating massive voter fraud. When pressed, Barr admitted there was no evidence for such a claim. The U.S. Intelligence Community has no evidence that foreign countries are trying to manipulate mail-in ballots.

Trump is also continuing his attacks on mail-in votes, insisting they will usher in voter fraud despite their widespread previous use that showed no evidence of fraud, and despite the fact that the president himself votes by mail. Today, in North Carolina, he urged people to vote twice in the November election, once by mail and once in person, to test the validity of the election. Voting twice is illegal under federal law. Under North Carolina state law, it is also illegal to induce someone to vote twice.

On Monday, we learned that Barr has recently replaced the head of the Office of Law and Policy, a Justice Department office that oversees the FBI’s intelligence-gathering activities. Barr has removed Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brad Wiegmann, a 23-year career public servant, and replaced him with 36-year-old Kellen Dwyer, a prosecutor who made headlines two years ago when he accidentally revealed that the U.S. government had indicted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The timing of this replacement, just before the election, might reflect Barr's planned release of a report of his own on the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Barr has dispatched his own investigator to counter the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Senate established that the investigation was legitimate, and that Russia did, in fact, intervene in the 2016 election to bolster Trump.

Remember, that while world leaders are condemning Russia for the recent poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Trump has still not commented on it. Neither has he addressed the story that Russia offered bounties to Taliban-linked fighters to kill U.S. and allied soldiers in Afghanistan, nor the growing Russian aggression toward U.S. troops in Syria.

There is yet another possible attempt to skew the election on the horizon. Led by Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), federal health officials have told states to get ready to distribute a coronavirus vaccine by November. Vaccine-makers say this timing is impossible, and that they will not know by then if their vaccines, which are currently in development, are safe and effective. The chief of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Stephen Hahn, insists that the agency won’t approve a vaccine simply to help Trump get reelected, but the FDA’s recent authorization of emergency use of convalescent plasma despite concerns about its effectiveness has worried public health experts. In any case, Redfield’s letter suggests the CDC might authorize a vaccine itself through its emergency powers.

Trump is also pushing hard on the idea that Democrats have created a crisis of violence in the country and he is the one advocating “Law & Order,” as he keeps tweeting.

On CNN today, White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley blamed Democrats for the shooting a week ago in Kenosha, Wisconsin, that took two lives and wounded a third person. Seventeen-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly crossed state lines with an AR-15-style gun that was illegally in his possession and, after scuffling with some people, opened fire. Gidley insisted that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. He blamed Democrats for restraining the police, leading citizens to have to step in. “If you don’t allow police to do their job then the American people have to defend themselves in some way.” While Gidley said he was not defending vigilantes, it sure sounded like he was inciting violence. He noted that “we have a Second Amendment in this country” and warned that Democrats were stripping “cops” of their ability to protect us, leaving American families “in grave danger.”

Of course, protests against police have been driven not by a general disregard for law enforcement, but rather by such horrors as the murder of George Floyd by Milwaukee police officer Derek Chauvin, who casually knelt on Floyd’s neck until he died; the murder of Breonna Taylor of Louisville, Kentucky, shot in her bed by police looking for her ex-boyfriend; and, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, by the shooting of Jacob Blake seven times in the back as he reached for his car door. Leading Democrats, including Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, have called not for getting rid of police departments, but rather for addressing what appears to be deadly racism within some of them. Biden has actually called for increasing funding to help law enforcement officers handle functions outside the normal expectations of a police force.

The suggestion that Democrats are responsible for a young man’s deadly decision to carry a friend’s weapon to a city in another state is a campaign ploy, and today the president made another such ploy when he signed a memo that sets out to restrict federal money from going to what the White House calls “anarchist jurisdictions.” It orders the Office of Management and Budget to examine what federal funding goes to cities where Trump insists—despite their adamant denials—that Democrats want to “defund” police. The memo leaves Trump loyalist Attorney General William Barr in charge of determining which cities fall into this category according to “any… factors the Attorney General deems appropriate.” The memo does spell out certain parameters. A so-called “anarchist jurisdiction” is defined as one that “disempowers or defunds police departments” or one that “unreasonably refuses to accept offers of law enforcement assistance from the Federal Government.” The memo specifically lists Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; and New York City as “anarchist jurisdictions.”

The memo says: “My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones…. It is imperative that the Federal Government review the use of Federal funds by jurisdictions that permit anarchy, violence, and destruction in America’s cities.” “This is a campaign document coming out of the White House,” said Sam Berger, a former OMB official. “Any actual restriction on funding in court will immediately be sued and almost certainly struck down.”

Trump's effort to convince Americans that he is defending law and order does not appear to be working. In Politico, JR Ross, an expert on Wisconsin Politics, noted that Trump’s fearmongering isn’t working because “after such a tense, violent summer, the protesters might look bad, but Trump, and his law-and-order supporters, don’t look much better.”

According to pollster Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, when asked which candidate would “make you feel more safe or less safe,” 35% of those polled said Trump made them feel more safe, while 50% said less safe. Forty-two percent said Biden made them feel more safe while 40% said he made them feel less safe.

[daprojex]

Nigeria Cracks Down on a Critic, and a New Jersey Town Pushes Back

When the Nigerian government went after a prominent detractor in the midst of a broad crackdown on free speech, it didn’t expect to stir resistance 5,000 miles away.

By Ruth Maclean

Dec. 22, 2019, 11:20 a.m. ET

HAWORTH, N.J. — Opeyemi Sowore watched the videos on her phone in bed in her New Jersey home, the children still asleep, the Christmas tree twinkling downstairs.

The videos showed her husband — a former presidential candidate and the publisher of a website known as Africa’s WikiLeaks — being wrestled to the floor in a Nigerian courtroom by a man in a black suit, as lawyers in wigs and gowns crowded around shouting.

The court had ruled that her husband, Omoyele Sowore, should be free on bail while awaiting trial on charges of treason, money laundering and, for criticizing President Muhammadu Buhari on television, cyberstalking. But on Dec. 6, while his wife slept more than 5,000 miles away, Mr. Sowore was taken from the courtroom back into detention, where he has been held for nearly all of the past five months.

Before Mr. Sowore was led away by Nigeria’s equivalent of the Secret Service, he was videotaped saying that these “might be my only words on record before they kill me.” His wife has had no contact with him since.

When Mr. Buhari was elected in 2015 as president of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and largest economy, it was hailed as a triumph for democracy. Since then, however, his government has turned toward harsh authoritarianism, putting the country’s thriving civic organizations and news media to the test.

Protests have been met with deadly force. The country’s chief justice was summarily sacked. Humanitarian organizations that criticize the state were threatened with closure, and newspaper offices were raided. One journalist, Jones Abiri, has been in detention so long that for a time, he was thought to be dead.

One bill now making its way through Nigeria’s Senate proposes the death penalty for some instances of “hate speech.” A second, the Anti-Social Media Bill, modeled on a new Singaporean law, calls for government critics to spend as much as three years in prison.

Nigeria is not alone in clamping down on freedom of expression. ​A punitive new security law ​in traditionally media-friendly Burkina Faso, a proposed hate speech measure in Ethiopia, a harsh crackdown in Tanzania and routine internet and social media shutdowns across Africa point to a wider trend toward censorship.

“The people in power just don’t want to have to tolerate the voices of the people,” said Ayisha Osori, head of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa.

African leaders feel emboldened to strangle the news media because of a perceived global rollback in democracy, she said.

Mr. Sowore founded a website in 2006, Sahara Reporters, that specializes in exposing corruption and government malfeasance. With funding from American foundations and about 50 staff members working in Nigeria and the United States, the site’s publication of leaked, often unfiltered information disrupted Nigeria’s traditional media scene.

By basing his operation in New York, Mr. Sowore for years had a degree of protection from the consequences of publishing often scandalous information about Nigeria’s most powerful people. He shuttled between his family home in New Jersey and Nigeria, where he is a citizen, without much interference.

Then, on Aug. 3, in the middle of the night, he was arrested by Nigeria’s Department of State Services, or D.S.S., in his Lagos hotel room.

At first, Opeyemi Sowore told no one in Haworth, a well-off suburb about 20 miles from midtown Manhattan, about her husband’s arrest. None of them knew much about Nigeria, or what Mr. Sowore, known as Yele, did for a living. As far as they were concerned, he was just a dad and a keen runner.

One day, though, texting with another mother with children at the local school, Ms. Sowore explained why her husband had been away so long.

Word traveled fast in Haworth, a town of 3,500 people.

“One mom told another mom, told another mom, told another mom, and next thing we knew we had assembled what really is functioning as a crisis management team,” said Alanna Zahn Davis, one of the mothers in that chain.

If Mr. Buhari’s government had gotten tough, so would Haworth.

A core group of 10 women raised the alarm at the State Department. Then they reached Amal Clooney, the human rights lawyer, who demanded Mr. Sowore’s release. They worked with Amnesty International, which declared him a prisoner of conscience.

Sometimes they prepared meals for Ms. Sowore, a marketing executive, or looked after the couple’s two children. Inspired by an American tradition of using yellow ribbons to remember hostages, they held “Yele ribbon” ceremonies in Haworth’s tree-lined town center, attended by hundreds of people.

After the courtroom melee, they called members of Congress, engaging New Jersey Senators Robert Menendez and Cory Booker. Six members of Congress sent a letter on Friday to Nigeria’s attorney general condemning the treatment of Mr. Sowore.

His detention “will only serve to tarnish Nigeria’s international reputation and its standing as a leading African democracy,” they wrote.

Before his arrest, Mr. Sowore was often accused of favoring Mr. Buhari, even helping him get elected. Sahara Reporters’ relentless exposés of graft under the previous government meant Mr. Buhari’s vow to sweep the country clean of corruption resonated with voters. One of Mr. Buhari’s earliest interviews as president was with Sahara TV.

However, Mr. Buhari’s administration turned out to have a corrupt bent, too, along with authoritarian tendencies, said Chidi Odinkalu, the former chairman of Nigeria’s Human Rights Commission.

“The Buhari administration has proved to be at least as bad, if not much worse” than the prior administration that Mr. Buhari had promised not to emulate, said Mr. Odinkalu, who is facing prosecution himself after he criticized one of the president’s close allies.

This was not a great surprise to those who remember how Mr. Buhari, now 77, first came to power in 1983 as a major general in the wake of a military coup. Before being overthrown in another coup, he jailed hundreds of people, made tardy civil servants do frog jumps and had three men executed.

By the time he was democratically elected three decades later, in 2015, it was on promises to tackle corruption and insecurity. Nigeria was battling Boko Haram, oil theft and violent clashes across the country. He often appeared frail, said little in public and spent many months of his first term being treated for a mysterious illness in London.

Sahara Reporters wrote about the absences and allegations of his allies’ corruption, and Mr. Sowore openly condemned the government for failing to meet its promises. He ran unsuccessfully for president against Mr. Buhari in February, and was preparing to lead a protest calling for revolution when he was arrested on August 3.

At the time, La Keisha Landrum Pierre, Sahara Reporters’ chief operating officer back in New York, was heavily pregnant. When she gave birth five days later, she was managing the company’s biggest crisis ever. It keeps getting bigger.

She said that the Nigerian government had frozen the site’s financial account.

“There have been armed D.S.S. men standing outside our offices” in Nigeria, said Ms. Landrum Pierre, in between calls and meetings in Manhattan. She had to cut the staff by 70 percent, and said that most of the remaining employees, feeling intimidated, were staying at home.

On Dec. 6, the court scheduled Mr. Sowore’s trial for February, but he did not remain free on bail as previously ordered. Instead, Mr. Sowore’s lawyers and family maintain, D.S.S. agents attacked Mr. Sowore while still in the courtroom and ultimately took him back into custody.

The D.S.S. said in a statement that it had rearrested Mr. Sowore because of public comments it claims he made the prior night promising to pursue his cause. A D.S.S. spokesman also claimed that Mr. Sowore’s supporters had staged the courtroom attack and were trying to frame its agents.

Ms. Sowore said that watching the videos made her afraid for his life.

“The hardest part about it for me was — how do I tell my kids?” she said.

They have tried to help. For the Haworth school fair in early December, their 12-year-old daughter Ayo made and sold slime and stress balls, planning to put her profits toward her father’s bail. Her mother had to explain that he had already posted bail, but still wasn’t allowed out. Ayo gave her $80 to Amnesty International instead.

Ten-year-old Komi’s desires are clear from his Christmas list. He wants:

1. A remote-controlled racing car that can climb walls.

2. An Apple watch.

3. His father safely home.

4. A turtle.

[quakerjoe]

For anyone who doesn’t have the time or inclination to read the “Mueller report”...

I noted some highlights from Volume I that you can read in 5 minutes. I couldn’t help myself. 😆

*”The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.”

*The counter-intelligence investigation was opened because Papadopolous told a foreign diplomat that the Russian government could assist Trump by releasing damaging info on Clinton.

*The Trump campaign “welcomed the potential damage” resulting from Russia’s “information warfare” and “active measures.”

*The IRA (Internet Research Agency), based in Russia and funded by “Putin’s Chef” Yevgeniy Prigozhin, launched an information warfare campaign to undermine the US electoral system.

*Trump, his sons, and many of his minions like Flynn and Kellyanne Conway promoted Russian generated content alleging voter fraud and other Russian propaganda lies.

*An estimated 126 million people saw posts made by the Russians to influence the election.

*The Russians “organized and promoted” dozens of “political rallies inside the US while posing as US grassroots activists,” going so far as to communicate with Trump campaign members to help coordinate the rallies.

*The Russian military hacked the computers and email accounts of hundreds of Clinton campaign employees, advisors, and volunteers, the DNC and the DCCC, releasing documents timed to interfere with the election. They implanted malware on their networks. GRU officers captured their passwords, banking information, sensitive personal information, internal communications, etc.

*GRU military units targeted military, political, governmental, and non-governmental entities in the US.

*Russian military GRU officers targeted and hacked computers belonging to US state and local entities, Secretaries of State, state boards of elections, county governments, and private technology firms that manufacture and administer “election-related hardware and software, such as voter registration software and electronic polling stations. The GRU continued to target these victims through the elections in November 2016.”

*In just one example, the GRU gained access to info on “millions of registered Illinois voters.”

*Russian government officials and prominent businessmen made a concerted effort during the campaign and post-election transition period to make inroads into the Trump camp.

<Kushner just blew that all off as a few FaceBook posts.>

*Trump fired Comey and freaked when the Special Counsel was appointed, saying it was the end of his presidency. He tried repeatedly to get Sessions to “unrecuse” and to curtail the investigation.

*Trump’s cohorts lied to Congress and the SCO, destroyed evidence, and in some cases refused to be interviewed to avoid accountability.

*Amidst many redacted paragraphs, a few words indicate that while Trump and Gates were driving to La Guardia, Trump told Gates that more releases of Clinton emails were forthcoming.

*Trump continued to express frustration that the Clinton emails had not been found. The Trump Campaign planned an entire strategy around their release by WikiLeaks.

*Harm to Ongoing Matter* Looks like Corsi is in very hot “ongoing matter” water, which is redacted. Unless Barr can still save him.

*Podesta e-mails stolen by the GRU are released by WikiLeaks less than an hour after we all watch the video of Trump say disgusting things about women - “I moved on her like a bitch” and if you’re a star you can do anything you want like “grab them by the p*ssy.”

*Trump Jr “colluded” with WikiLeaks by messaging with them and tweeting links they requested he share. However, they did not conclude it was a “coordinated effort” with Russia to disseminate the e-mails.

*Trump repeatedly asked people affiliated with his campaign to find the “deleted Clinton emails.” Flynn took it to heart and sent people looking, like Peter Smith, the man whose suicide note read “NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER.” Smith claimed he was in contact with Russian hackers and was coordinating his efforts with Trump campaign members Flynn, Sam Clovis, Bannon, and Kellyanne Conway. The SCO could only verify he communicated with Flynn and Clovis for certain.

*Again, because it’s so much worse than Watergate because it involves a hostile foreign adversary directing a concerted attack on our country, TRUMP DIRECTED his campaign people to find the emails he assumed to have been hacked by the Russian military so he could use them to harm his political rival.

*There are a gazillion (by my count, only 101 per Business Insider) “links” between the Trump campaign and those with ties to the Russian government, but the Office could not prove with the info available to them that it rose to the level of a chargeable criminal conspiracy. Again - none of the players “remember” or “recall” anything damning, or they refused to be interviewed or destroyed evidence. This is an incredibly high bar of proof for a narrowly defined crime, so carry on being traitors.

*Trump Jr. seeks documents and info to incriminate Clinton via Goldstone, who says the Crown Prosecutor of Russia is offering them, prompting the “Trump Tower Meeting.”

*On page 187 there’s a paragraph that I find pretty gross. They are letting the Trump Tower meeting participants like Jr. (who refused to be interviewed) and Kushner off in part because they may have been ignorant of campaign finance law. Also, they can’t prove how much the damaging info the Russians claimed to have was worth monetarily, so they get another pass. President Trump and Jr. went to great lengths to cover up this meeting, which any reasonable observer knows is because they KNEW it was ethically wrong, and that it might also be illegal.

*Trump’s written answers to Mueller’s questions state he doesn’t remember if he was involved with changing the RNC’s platform stance on armed support for Ukraine.

*Manafort had Gates give Kilimnik (ties to Russian Intelligence) Trump Campaign updates and polling data, which per Manafort’s own attorney’s admission in Manafort’s trial was “very detailed” and “focused.” Many of Manafort’s shady dealings were covered up by using encrypted applications.

*Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs fully intended to use Manafort to get Trump to support their plan to control eastern Ukraine.

*Pages and pages of shady stuff about Russians, Erik Prince, Nader, the UAE, a chess tournament, the Seychelles, Libya, etc.

*Bannon and Prince’s phones had no text messages on them prior to March 2017, and neither one of them knows why. What a mystery. Provider records show they exchanged dozens of messages.

*Kushner asks Kislyak if they can communicate “using secure facilities at the Russian Embassy” so that, per Kislyak’s suggestion, Russian generals can talk to the Trump transition team to brief them on Syria. Kislyak says no to the Russian Embassy idea.

*Kushner meets with Gorkov, the head of the Russian-government-owned and US sanctioned VEB bank. Kushner says the meeting was “diplomatic.” VEB bank’s public statement says they met to discuss “business.” Mueller here reminds us that Kushner was about to owe a ton of money on 666 5th Ave.

*The Trump Transition team attempted to undermine the Obama administration regarding a United Nations resolution calling for Israel to “cease settlement activities in Palestinian territory.” There was media speculation that the US would not oppose it. Multiple Trump team members, including Michael Flynn and President-elect Trump, communicated with foreign governments such as Russia and Egypt to undermine or delay the resolution, and thereby the current US administration. It passed 14-0 with the US abstaining.

*In sum, despite all the many contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians, the Trump campaign was receptive to their offers of help only sometimes and it did not rise to the level of conspiring with the Russian government’s election interference campaign. It would be difficult to prove they “willfully violated the law.” Their actions may not be sufficient to sustain criminal charges under FARA or criminal conspiracy law, but several of them blatantly lied and obstructed justice anyway and were charged accordingly, like Papadopolous and Flynn.

*Insufficient evidence to charge Jeff Sessions with perjury because his cagey answers and faulty memories (colloquially known as “lies”) were plausible in the context of the questions.

*Some other characters not charged with perjury/making false statements because of evidentiary hurdles to prove falsity, others because the witnesses were ultimately truthful, and others because of “considerations of culpability, deterrence, and resource-preservation.”

- Elizabeth Renfrow Madison

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hi Steph! I hope it's okay if I ask you, but I've got this thing on my mind and I don't know who else I should ask. I've just recently found out about Ben's interview about Chelsea Manning (with the Guradian, I think), and I was utterly shocked how blatantly Ben misgenders her there. I'm a trans person myself, which is probably why I'm even more hurt by it. I always thought Ben rather open minded and intelligent. Do you know if someone ever called him out on that or if he apologised?

Hey Nonny!

First of all, I want to give you a HUGE hug *HUG* I totally understand why you are upset about this, and I do not blame you for being sad that Ben seemingly purposely misgendered Chelsea Manning, and he absolutely should be called on it if it was in fact malicious. Like you, I too also thought Ben usually corrects his errs in language so I thought this was a bit weird.

So! Let’s figure this out. I did a bit of basic Googling and read a few articles and Wikis to brush up on this; I completely somehow missed the whole debacle that The Fifth Estate caused and how poorly Ben was received for his role in it (which I found out because I also didn’t know Manning was also part of that whole thing). Anyway, so I think I found the original article you are referring to:

The peculiar charm of Benedict Cumberbatch by Decca Aitkenhead (The Guardian, 14 Sept. 2013) – Sherlock Holmes made him an unlikely superstar. Now Benedict Cumberbatch is taking on Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate. He talks about email warnings from the WikiLeaks founder, his ‘crush’ on Matt Damon and why Chelsea Manning broke an oath.

Which was then followed up with this “correction” a couple days later since Ben felt that The Guardian misconstrued his words:

Benedict Cumberbatch: Chelsea Manning and civil liberties – interview transcript by Guardian Staff (The Guardian, 16 Sept 2013) – Decca Aitkenhead’s interview with Benedict Cumberbatch – an unedited transcript of the actor’s comments on Chelsea Manning.

In both of these interviews, both Ben and the original journalist, Aitkenhead, refer to Chelsea by her dead name, Bradley; we know they misgendered her because these are transcripts of the audio recording of the interview for the story. Take note of the dates on these articles, because they’ll be important in a moment.

Thinking this odd from Ben at least (I’m not sure politically where The Guardian stands so I’m not going to comment; I’ve read mixed opinions), I decided to figure out a bit more about Chelsea Manning, from Wikipedia, which cites sources that were helpful to my research:

[…] A trans woman, Manning released a statement in 2013 explaining she had a female gender identity since childhood and wanted to be known as Chelsea Manning. She also expressed a desire to begin hormone replacement therapy.[7]

Here is what Source 7 says:

Manning, Chelsea E. (August 22, 2013). “The Next Stage of My Life”. Press release. Archived from the original on August 22, 2013. As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. …I also request that…you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun…. Thank you, Chelsea E. Manning

Now, let’s go back to the original print date of the first article: 14 September, 2013. Chelsea publicly came out as a transwoman on 22 August, 2013, less than a month apart. Now, I tried to do some research online, as well as my own personal experience from having to work in the newspaper industry, as to how long it is for them to write and publish articles. While I couldn’t find any DEFINITIVE answer on how long of a timeframe The Guardian does between interviews and publishing of said interviews, I know with the newspaper I worked for, at least, it was anywhere between days and months from interview to writing to editing to publication. The Fifth Estate came out on October 18, 2013, and Ben was assumedly doing his press junket for the film when this interview came out in September… which is the perfect time for The Guardian to release the article as people began searching for info about the movie. The first trailer starting the press junket was released in July 2013. Some guesstimation, then is that Ben did the interview sometime between 01 July and… let’s say it takes at BARE MINIMUM 5 days to interview, write, and edit the article, so 9 September.

Again, I can’t seem to find when Aitkenhead actually DID the audio interview with Benedict; I am willing to bet on the odds that it was before Manning’s announcement of her gender identity in August, because, like you said, it’s highly unusual for Ben to purposely be malicious about that sort of thing (especially since JUST TWO MONTHS BEFORE he was the officiant at his two gay friends’ wedding).

I did a bit more digging, and found this Buzzfeed (I KNOW) article regarding her sentencing: 

Benedict Cumberbatch Calls Chelsea Manning Sentence “Devastating” by Jordan Zakarin (Buzzfeed News, 6 Sep 2013) – The actor, who plays WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate, spoke to BuzzFeed about the controversial case.

He was asked about Manning’s sentence while on the carpet at TIFF that year, meaning it was an on-the-spot and not-pre-recorded or pre-planned interview and at that time, he was referring to Manning by her pronouns.

There are some other articles post 16 September that also refer to Manning by her dead name and dead pronoun, also all pre-recorded interviews. So from this, I can glean the more likely scenario, given that Ben, BEFORE that interview in The Guardian was published, was referring to Manning by her pronouns just a couple weeks after the public announcement, I am really honestly suspecting that the 15th’s interview was done in late July or early August, probably just days before Manning’s announcement. As I said before, it’s common practice for newspapers to withhold interviews until “prime publishing” dates, and I suspect this is EXACTLY what happened here.

While I know Ben isn’t perfect, I think this is honestly a case of “an interview was held onto for so long between the interview and publishing and a big revelation happened in between it all”. Should The Guardian have corrected the pronouns? Probably, but it’s not my newspaper.

In this case, Lovely, I think we can say that this was not malicious on Ben’s part. I hope my bit of research (and some deductive reasoning) helped you feel a bit better. It’s still no excuse, absolutely not, that Manning was misgendered in the paper… the media seems to always be the last to correct their own errors, despite being hungry to call out everyone else for theirs for views. Sadly that’s the world of print and digital media, my lovely. 

I genuinely don’t think Ben intentionally called her a “he”, given how close this interview was released to her public announcement. I’m not making excuses at all for him, but seeing that in an on-the-spot interview he did a week beforehand he referred to Chelsea properly, I think this was a pre-recorded and pre-written interview that they literally had just scheduled for publication and moved onto the next item on the docket. It’s a common practice in print media.

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

Florida Man Tempts Fate for Last Time; Succumbs to Truth, Justice, and American Way

If you, in the course of your day-to-day life, regularly come across people who have been even tangentially active in Democratic politics, you may have recently noticed a strange outbreak of seemingly random happy dances. Perhaps you have even been startled by an out-of-the-blue victory cheer. And you may have thought to yourself, “the news about Speaker Pelosi crushing Individual-1’s saggy orange balls on the shutdown isn’t that great, is it? It’s just a continuing resolution, we could be right back here in three weeks.”

While that is an astute analysis of the legislative situation, it is not the source of the spontaneous burst of collective giddiness. That, my friends, is due to the indictment and arrest of one Roger Stone.

Look. If a Scandal villain were real except somewhat dumber than your average Shonda Rhimes character, he would be Roger Stone. Do you know how much of an asshole you have to be to get a mob of liberals angry enough to show up at your bail hearing chanting “LOCK HIM UP!”? Baseline question: have you ever tried to get a group of progressives to agree about the time of day? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

AND YET:

If Stone were only hated for the crimes for which he currently stands charged – betraying his country to help install a racist, pussy-grabbing Putin puppet demagogue in the White House, then lying to authorities to cover up his crimes and threatening a dog to cover up his lies – that would be enough. But Roger Stone is symptomatic of, and in no small part responsible for, the Republican Party’s degeneration over the last several decades into mud-slinging ad hominem attacks on opponents. What Roger Ailes did to news, Roger Stone did to political campaigns. He is hated because he has earned, and consciously cultivated, that hatred. 

The accusations against Stone are extremely serious, even if they were widely suspected. Special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s office alleges that Stone coordinated communication between Wikileaks and the Trump campaign in the summer and fall of 2016, and that he lied to Congress about those conversations and threatened other witnesses out of contradicting his lies. To support the allegation, prosecutors cite the emails, text messages, and WhatsApp conversations that Stone pretended not to have had or preserved.

Got him.

I won’t try to guess what Stone will do. He’s over sixty years old and would be looking at years in jail even if this indictment were all that the feds had on him, which it’s almost certainly not. But I do have a pretty good idea what he could do. Stone has been the GOP’s political hit guy for decades. This motherfucker knows where all the bodies are buried. Individual-1 is not going to be the only Republican lying awake tonight.

It’s worth reading through the indictment, if only to reflect on how effectively Stone manipulated the political press throughout 2016. (Decoder ring for most of the “Person 1″ stuff here. The “senior Trump campaign official” is Steve Bannon.) Or, if you want to spend a couple of hours just mainlining schadenfreude, you can watch Get Me Roger Stone and Client 9.

Seriously, fuck this guy.

[helshades]

Sweetie :) the British supreme court ruled in favor of Sweden's expatriation request in May 2012. Julian was then granted "asylum" at the embassy in August 2012. Cut the bullshit already.

Harshie :( Quoting myself:

‘Eventually, he appealed to the recently-created Supreme Court of the United Kingdom: his request was rejected two years later, in May 2012.[…] On 19 June 2012, the Ecuadorian foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, announced that Assange had applied for political asylum, that his government was considering the request, and that Assange was at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Just before Assange was granted asylum, the UK government wrote to Patiño stating that the police were entitled to enter the embassy and arrest Assange under UK law.’

Kudos on your contradiction skills, duckie. You… accidentally rock at enabling people? I guess??

Rejection of the appeal: BBC News, 30 May 2012, ‘Julian Assange loses extradiction appeal at Supreme Court’

Concerning the asylum (sans quotation marks):

Quoting The Telegraph, 24 June 2012, ‘WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to remain in Ecuadorian Embassy’:

‘In a statement outside the Embassy where Assange has spent the last week, Susan Benn from the Julian Assange Defence Fund said he had been advised that asylum law took precedence over extradition law and would not accept the invitation to attend a police station.

She said: “Mr Assange has been advised that he should decline to comply with the police request. He’s in good spirits. He’s very grateful for the support shown to him by the people of Ecuador and so many others from around the world.”

She added he would stay at the Embassy while his application for asylum is processed and said it was only a matter of time before the US launched an extradition bid.

“This should not be considered any sign of disrespect. Under both international and domestic UK law asylum assessments take priority over extradition claims,” she said.

[…] Assange is under diplomatic protection in the embassy and cannot be arrested by police unless he steps outside the building in Knightsbridge.’

Quoting The Guardian a bit earlier:

‘Julian Assange remains inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London after seeking asylum in the country on Tuesday.’ [Tue. 19 June 2012]

‘The Foreign Office has confirmed the embassy is diplomatic territory, and that while Assange remains there he is “beyond the reach of police”. But the Metropolitan Police says he will be subject to immediate arrest if he attempts to leave the building because he has breached his bail conditions.’

Also in The Guardian:

‘Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents the WikiLeaks founder in the US, said Assange and his legal team considered it highly likely that he would face an onward extradition to the US if he were sent to Sweden.

“The concrete reality [is] that he was facing a political prosecution in the US, he was facing the death penalty or certainly life in jail. Faced with that, he had extremely limited choices.”

Barring a last-ditch appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, Assange could have expected to be extradited imminently, after the supreme court rejected the last of his attempts to resist removal to Sweden over accusations of sex assaults made by two women in August 2010.

The Assange team believes the US is likely to seek to prosecute him on espionage charges, which carries a potential death penalty, and that his chances of resisting any such extradition warrant would be more difficult in Sweden, where he would not receive bail during investigations into the alleged sex crimes and where his lawyers believe political and public opposition to a US extradition claim would be weaker.’

The US empanelled a secret grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks and Assange in May 2011, but has not issued any requests for his extradition to the UK or Sweden. However, Ratner said both he and Assange believed it was “more likely than not” that a sealed indictment had been drawn up.

Assange’s legal adviser Jennifer Robinson said in February that she and Assange had discussed the possibility of his seeking political asylum. Ratner said he had had no warning of the plan, however.’

And still in The Guardian, but in an opinion column:

If one asks current or former WikiLeaks associates what their greatest fear is, almost none cites prosecution by their own country. Most trust their own nation’s justice system to recognize that they have committed no crime. The primary fear is being turned over to the US. That is the crucial context for understanding Julian Assange’s 16-month fight to avoid extradition to Sweden, a fight that led him to seek asylum, Tuesday, in the London Embassy of Ecuador.

The evidence that the US seeks to prosecute and extradite Assange is substantial. There is no question that the Obama justice department has convened an active grand jury to investigate whether WikiLeaks violated the draconian Espionage Act of 1917. Key senators from President Obama’s party, including Senate intelligence committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, have publicly called for his prosecution under that statute. A leaked email from the security firm Stratfor – hardly a dispositive source, but still probative – indicated that a sealed indictment has already been obtained against him. Prominent American figures in both parties have demanded Assange’s lifelong imprisonment, called him a terrorist, and even advocated his assassination.

For several reasons, Assange has long feared that the US would be able to coerce Sweden into handing him over far more easily than if he were in Britain. For one, smaller countries such as Sweden are generally more susceptible to American pressure and bullying.

For another, that country has a disturbing history of lawlessly handing over suspects to the US. A 2006 UN ruling found Sweden in violation of the global ban on torture for helping the CIA render two suspected terrorists to Egypt, where they were brutally tortured (both individuals, asylum-seekers in Sweden, were ultimately found to be innocent of any connection to terrorism and received a monetary settlement from the Swedish government).

Perhaps most disturbingly of all, Swedish law permits extreme levels of secrecy in judicial proceedings and oppressive pre-trial conditions, enabling any Swedish-US transactions concerning Assange to be conducted beyond public scrutiny. Ironically, even the US State Department condemned Sweden’s “restrictive conditions for prisoners held in pretrial custody”, including severe restrictions on their communications with the outside world.

Assange’s fear of ending up in the clutches of the US is plainly rational and well-grounded. One need only look at the treatment over the last decade of foreign nationals accused of harming American national security to know that’s true; such individuals are still routinely imprisoned for lengthy periods without any charges or due process. Or consider the treatment of Bradley Manning, accused of leaking to WikiLeaks: a formal UN investigation found that his pre-trial conditions of severe solitary confinement were “cruel, inhuman and degrading”, and he now faces capital charges of aiding al-Qaida. The Obama administration’s unprecedented obsession with persecuting whistleblowers and preventing transparency – what even generally supportive, liberal magazines call “Obama’s war on whistleblowers” – makes those concerns all the more valid.

No responsible person should have formed a judgment one way or the other as to whether Assange is guilty of anything in Sweden. He has not even been charged, let alone tried or convicted, of sexual assault, and he is entitled to a presumption of innocence. The accusations made against him are serious ones, and deserve to be taken seriously and accorded a fair and legal resolution.

But the WikiLeaks founder, like everyone else, is fully entitled to invoke all of his legal rights, and it’s profoundly reckless and irresponsible to suggest, as some have, that he has done anything wrong by doing so. Seeking asylum on the grounds of claimed human rights violations is a longstanding and well-recognized right in international law. It is unseemly, at best, to insist that he forego his rights in order to herd him as quickly as possible to Sweden.  

Assange is not a fugitive and has not fled. Everyone knows where he is. If Ecuador rejects his asylum request, he will be right back in the hands of British authorities, who will presumably extradite him to Sweden without delay. At every step of the process, he has adhered to, rather than violated, the rule of law. His asylum request of yesterday is no exception.

Julian Assange has sparked intense personal animosity, especially in media circles – a revealing irony, given that he has helped to bring about more transparency and generated more newsworthy scoops than all media outlets combined over the last several years. That animosity often leads media commentators to toss aside their professed beliefs and principles out of an eagerness to see him shamed or punished.

But ego clashes and media personality conflicts are pitifully trivial when weighed against what is at stake in this case: both for Assange personally and for the greater cause of transparency. If he’s guilty of any crimes in Sweden, he should be held to account. But until then, he has every right to invoke the legal protections available to everyone else. Even more so, as a foreign national accused of harming US national security, he has every reason to want to avoid ending up in the travesty known as the American judicial system.

     — Glenn Greenwald, 20 June 2012.

[imjustthemechanic]

Our Own Demons

Part 1/? - A Bolt from the Blue Part 2/? - A Different World Part 3/? - Stark At Home Part 4/? - Pot Roast Night Part 5/? - Space-Pie Continuum Part 6/? - Energy Signature Part 7/? - Miss Potts Part 8/? - Bot from Beyond Part 9/? - Even the Odds Part 10/? - Miss Potts Arrives Part 11/? - Truth Hurts Part 12/? - The Third Reality Part 13/? - Thor and Odinson Part 14/? - The Tesseract Platform Part 15/? - Prime Suspect

What if Tony Stark really were the villain of the Marvel universe?  How would that work?  Tony himself is about to find out, as he battles his inner demons (and some outer ones, too) across a multiverse of infinite possibilities.

That wasn’t the note Tony wanted to end this experience on, but since the other was determined to be huffy, there was apparently no help for it.  Tony took a folded envelope out of his pocket and put it in the other man’s hand before climbing up onto the platform.

“Well, it’s been weird but I have to run,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see some of you again sometime.  And het,” he pointed to his double, “this is your standing invitation.  If you’ve got some tesseract juice and some vay-cay days to kill, come and be my Cousin Arno for a while.  I’ll get you a yacht and Aishwarya Rai’s phone number.”

But apparently the other just thought he was rubbing it in.  “I don’t really do vacations,” he said.

Foster and Hill went over the settings again, while Miss Potts stood watching as if lost in thought.  When everybody finally agreed that they were as ready as they’d ever be, Foster flipped the switch, and Tony felt his hair stand on end as the equipment began to hum.

“Say hello to your world’s Ginny Potts for me!” said Miss Potts.

“Pepper,” Tony replied.  “Everybody calls her Pepper.”

And then the world went white.  For a moment it flickered back in, and Tony saw a wood-paneled room full of people in historical costumes, with wigs and high heels and frock coats.  He might have recognized a few faces as they gaped at him in surprise, but then they were gone again, and he was suddenly thrown off his feet into a pile of boxes.

Tony had expected it would be easier to get his equilibrium back when he knew what was about to happen, but it wasn’t.  he was buried in junk somewhere very dark – he could hear crockery and metal crashing about as he tried to dig himself out of it. The whole place was vibrating and there was a smell of diesel… and after the initial moment of disorientation he realized he was in the back of a large container truck.  The truck was moving, which mean that somebody was driving it, and that in turn meant that some form of help was at hand.

He fought an arm free of the mess and climbed over more boxes to bang on the nearest wall.  “Hey!” he shouted.  “Hey, open up!”

At first there was no response, but Tony continued banging and hollering until after a minute or so, the truck pulled over and stopped.  Through the holes in the side of the container he could see shadows moving past.

“Is somebody in there?” a voice called from outside.

“Yes!” said Tony.  “It’s a long story – let me out and I’ll tell it to you!”

Something outside went clunk, and light came flooding in as the doors at the far end opened.  The tesseract platform had been packed into the truck along with all the boxes of useless kitchen stuff that had surrounded and disguised it, and Tony had materialized right in the middle of it all, leaving holes in the cardboard and crockery to admit him.  For half a second he was amused by the idea of the people in one of those other realities finding themselves with a Tony-shaped pile of junk on their platform, but then he brought himself back to the situation at hand.

Several people were standing in the open doors. They were dressed in black helmets and jackets with the SHIELD eagle logo on the shoulder, and all of them were pointing guns at Tony.

He held up his hands, although he was pretty sure they wouldn’t shoot once they saw his face.  “Just me!” he said, assuming they knew who he was.  “You guys wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had.”

The agents stepped aside to let him climb down from the truck.  They were at the side of the road somewhere in an area that looked halfway between suburbs and countryside – there were trees and telephone poles and fences, but very few actual buildings.  Tony couldn’t have put a name to the place.  The agents were all staring and exchanging glances, not too sure what to do about the fact that Tony Stark was suddenly in their truck.

“So,” Tony said, and turned to the nearest one to ask, but before he could get another word out, somebody hit him in the back of the head with the butt end of a rifle.  Tony had time to observe that he hadn’t done anything to deserve that, and then he fell face-first on the pavement.

He woke up with a splitting headache, to find himself lying on a very uncomfortable mattress in a tiny room with no furniture except the small bed and a metal toilet.  Three of the walls were bare whitewash, and the fourth was not a wall at all but a set of metal bars, through which Tony could see a hallway with a window at one end and a door at the other, and more cells in between.  He was being held at a police station, which he supposed was better than some other places he could have ended up – but still no way to welcome a guy back to his own reality.

“Hey!” he shouted again.  “I’m awake!  Time for my phone call!”  The last time Tony had been arrested, for a DUI in 2010, he’d used his phone call to order pizza for the entire police force and they’d let him go with smiles on their faces.  This time he was going to be much more responsible.  This time, he was calling Pepper.

The door at the end of the hallway opened, and two police officers – a tall, thin black man in clubmaster glasses, and a middle-aged white woman with bobbed brown hair – came to take a look at him as he stumbled, still somewhat dizzy, over to the bars.

“Are you really Tony Stark?” the man asked.

“Yes,” said Tony.  “I’d show you ID but I seem to have left it in my other pair of pants. Where am I?”

“Leesburg, Virginia,” the man replied.  “We brought you in about half an hour ago.”

Maybe they’d stuck him in a holding cell because they just didn’t know what else to do with him, Tony thought… although he hoped he’d at least been seen by paramedics of some sort. “I need to make a phone call,” he repeated.  “I’m kind of dealing with an emergency right now.”

“Been a hell of a week for that,” the woman observed.

“Of course, Mr. Stark,” the man said, without acknowledging his colleague.  “But first we’ve got a few questions to ask you.”

“I don’t have time for that,” Tony protested.  “I have to call Pepper!”

The cops exchanged a glance.  “Mr. Stark,” said the woman.  “You’re not free to go.  You’re under arrest.”

“For what?” Tony demanded.

“Attempted carjacking, for one thing,” said the woman.  “The woman who called 911 said you’d threatened her kids. For another,” she looked Tony right in the eyes, “murder.”

Tony was actually relieved – it was just a misunderstanding.  Of course it was.  He hadn’t killed anyone…

Then his stomach dropped so hard he was surprised he didn’t hear the splat when it hit the floor.

“I want a lawyer,” Tony said.

Two hours later, Tony was in an interrogation room drinking very bad coffee, with not one, but three lawyers standing in a sullen row behind him.  The male cop seated himself on the other side of the little table and folded his hands in front of him. Both the table and the chairs they were sitting in were bolted to the floor so they could not be moved.  As if the police expected Tony to suddenly go berserk and start tearing the place apart.

“My name is Sid, by the way,” the cop said, reaching to shake Tony’s hand.  “My kids are big fans of yours.  I gotta say, this isn’t how I ever pictured meeting you.”

“Yeah, well, life’s a funny old thing,” Tony replied. He noted the man’s use of a first name – this guy was playing ‘good cop’, trying to make like he was Tony’s friend. Making friends with policemen had been a good strategy in the past but this situation did not leave Tony feeling very sociable.

“Do you have any idea why you’re here?” Sid asked.

“Only what you told me,” said Tony.  “I’ve been out of town for a couple of days.  I just got back from a side adventure, and the first thing that happens is some guy in a black helmet knocks me out and I wake up in jail.  Whatever you want to ask me about, I’m sure it’s important and I’m sure you and my lawyers can iron it all out, but I need to call Pepper.”

“You want to call Virginia Potts,” Sid said.

“Isn’t that what I just said?” Tony asked, annoyed.  “Yes, I want to call Virginia Potts.”  Was this his own reality?  Lord, he hoped so – the last thing Tony wanted was to have to find his way out of another alternate universe.  What if he’d somehow gotten lost?  In infinite universes, could he ever find his way back to his own?  What a horrible thought!

“Why do you want to call Ms. Potts?” asked Sid.

“To make sure she’s all right,” said Tony.  “I don’t know if you noticed, but some kind of government hit list just got put up in Wikileaks, and her name was on it – I checked. I’ve been out of the loop, and I want to see if my girlfriend is okay.  Wouldn’t you?”

Sid didn’t answer the question.  Instead, he asked another: “Do you know where Ms. Potts is?”

“At the moment, no,” Tony replied.  The lawyers had advised him to tell the truth – if he hadn’t done anything, he had nothing to hide.  “Last I knew she had some kind of event at the LACMA, and I was trying to contact her there when events intervened.  Why?”  He was starting to get worried.  Sid’s interest in Pepper and the mention of a murder charge were a terrifying combination. “Where is she?”

“We hoped you could tell us,” said Sid.

“I can’t.”  Tony shook his head.

“Are you sure?” Sid asked.  “Because the last time anyone saw her, she was with you.”

That was almost, not quite, a confirmation of Tony’s worst fear, and he had to shut his eyes a moment to fight back the hot tears that pricked at the corners of him.  The only Way Pepper could have last been seen with him were if another alternate had been here… what the hell hat this other done, and would killing him for it count as suicide?

“I haven’t seen her in a week,” he said when he felt he could speak without either shouting or sobbing.  “Not since I left California last Wednesday.  We’ve skyped in the evenings, but the last time I saw her face-to-face was the morning I left.  Is she missing?”

“Witnesses saw her leave the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with you,” said Sid – his voice was gentle, aware he was breaking bad news. “Apparently you seemed very concerned that she go with you at once, and nobody’s seen either of you since, until you turned up at the side of the road earlier today.  Now that you’re here, we hoped you could point us to her location.”

She was gone.  The guy who’d started all this, playing with the tesseract in Reality B – or whichever one had been his – had taken her.  He’d put her in the Mark XLIII and taken her back to his world.  It was the only possibility, or at least the only one Tony was willing to entertain. With her gone and Tony the last person seen with her… this was the kind of thing that aired on Dateline.  They thought he’d killed her.

“All right,” he said with a sigh.  “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to explain this to anybody but her, but I’m going to assume if you know who I am then you have some idea what my life’s been like the past few years.  Here’s what happened.”

Sid was not very impressed by Tony’s story.  Even the lawyers tried several times to interrupt, but Tony shushed them and plowed ahead anyway.  The cop across the table listened with a carefully neutral expression, and when Tony had finished he said he would be right back, then got up and left the room.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” one of the lawyers asked once he was gone.  “Do you have any idea how crazy that sounded?”

“You told me to tell the truth,” Tony reminded her.

“That wasn’t the truth – that was ridiculous!” the woman protested.  “Your alibi is an alternate reality?”

“I’m a superhero!  This stuff happens!” said Tony.  “Didn’t you tell me you were Bruce’s cousin or something?  You should know our lives are bullshit.”

The door opened again, but instead of Sid coming back, this time it was his female co-worker.  She was scowling.  “Mr. Stark,” she said, businesslike, as she sat down.

Tony sighed and nodded – Mr. Stark.  Sid was done with him.  This woman was going to be the bad cop.

[1765liberty]

Please consider sharing widely.

There has been increased pressure from the GOP and FOX lately on Mueller and his team and even rumors that Trump might try and fire Mueller and the GOP might try and shut down the House Intelligence Committee's investigation. There has also been a PR push by FOX and Sean Hannity to both discredit Mueller and try and claim his team is biased. Both FOX and the GOP have claimed that there is not a shred of evidence of collusion and that this is a witch hunt and a PR stunt.

Seth Abramson (who I've mentioned before) has gone and compiled the top PUBLIC evidence (not including what Mueller has available through his investigation) for you to provide any of your friends/family who claim this is all just made up:

#1: In March of 2016, Papadopoulos reveals to Trump—face-to-face—he's a Kremlin intermediary sent to establish a Trump-Putin backchannel (he says Putin is favorably disposed to Trump's candidacy). Trump then and there orders Gordon to coordinate a pro-Kremlin GOP platform change.

#2: In June 2016, Don Jr. knowingly attends a meeting with—and set up by—Kremlin agents. He asks the Kremlin for what he has reason to believe is illegally acquired Clinton material. Afterwards, he (allegedly) tells no one. When caught, he lies about every aspect of the meeting.

#3: In April, July and September of 2016 Sessions meets Russian Ambassador Kislyak in settings in which Russian sanctions are discussed. He holds the latter two meetings *after* it's known Russia is cyber-attacking America. He lies about these contacts under oath before Congress.

#4: Kislyak egregiously violates longstanding diplomatic protocol to attend—as a guest of the Trump campaign—a major Trump foreign policy speech. Having been invited to the speech as a VIP, Kislyak sits in the front row as Trump promises Putin's Russia "a good deal" on sanctions.

#5: Flynn—aided and abetted by Kushner and the full Presidential Transition Team—illegally conducts sanctions and resolution negotiations with Russia during the 2016 transition. When asked about it by the FBI, he lies. When the lies are published, no one on the PTT corrects them.

#6: Carter Page travels to Moscow under the guise of an academic conference—in fact, he meets with top Kremlin officials and top Rosneft executives, speaking with both about Russian sanctions just as the Steele Dossier alleges. When questioned about his activities, he lies on TV.

#7: Trump campaign manager Manafort and Sessions aide Gordon aggressively push to change the GOP platform to benefit Putin under direct orders from Trump. When asked about Trump's involvement, they lie to the media; when asked about their own involvement, they lie to the media.

#8: Shortly after the inauguration, it's revealed that Trump has been holding onto a secret plan to unilaterally drop all sanctions against Russia for months—a plan he's never before revealed, which would *reward* Russia for cyber-attacking America during a presidential election.

#9: When Trump learns the FBI Director plans to indict his ex-National Security Advisor, he fires him—first lying about his reason for doing so, then eventually admitting he did it due to "the Russia thing." Later—in an Oval Office conversation with Russians—he repeats the claim.

#10: In an Oval Office meeting into which no U.S. media are allowed (foreshadowing a meeting with Putin in which no U.S. translators would be allowed), Trump deliberately leaks classified Israeli intelligence to the Russians, who are allies of Israel's (and America's) enemy—Iran.

#11: In late 2016, Kushner and Flynn smuggle Kislyak into Trump Tower to secretly discuss the creation of a clandestine—Kremlin-controlled—Trump-Putin backchannel only a few principals would know about. The men don't disclose the meeting or plan, which would constitute espionage.

#12: In May 2016, Trump NatSec advisor Papadopoulos makes secret trips to Athens to make contact with Kremlin allies. During the second trip, Putin's also there—to discuss sanctions. It's his only trip to an EU nation during the campaign. Papadopoulos meets the same men as Putin.

#13: In 2013, Trump and Putin's developer sign a letter-of-intent to build Trump Tower Moscow—a deal requiring Putin's blessing that only goes forward when Putin dispatches to Trump his permits man and banker. Trump and principals lie about the deal—and events at the Ritz Moscow.

#14: Just before Trump's inauguration, Trump's lawyer Cohen and ex-Russian mobster Sater secretly meet with a pro-Russia Ukrainian politician to help ferry a secret Kremlin-backed "peace deal" to Flynn, Trump's National Security Advisor. All involved then lie about their actions.

#15: After it's publicly revealed Russia is waging cyberwar on America, Trump publicly and in all seriousness invites the Kremlin to continue cyber-attacking America if doing so will result in the theft and release of his opponent's private emails. He never retracts the request.

#16: Trump advisors Bannon, Prince, Flynn, Don Jr., Giuliani and Pirro are involved—to varying degrees—in leaking, sourcing, disseminating, and legitimizing a false "True Pundit" story that seeks to use fraud to blackmail the FBI into indicting Clinton. Russian bots pump it also.

#17: Trump's top advisors—including Manafort, Sessions, Flynn, Clovis, Page, Papadopoulos, Cohen, Sater, Don Jr, Kushner, Prince, Dearborn, Gordon, Gates, Stone and others—lie about or fail to disclose Russia contacts or key conversations on Russian efforts to collude with Trump.

#18: For many months after Trump begins his run, he is secretly working under a letter-of-intent with Russian developers to build Trump Tower Moscow. The deal—brokered by Cohen and Sater—allegedly falls apart only when Putin's top aide won't return an email from Trump's attorney.

#19: In 2008, Don Jr. privately tells investors that "a disproportionate percentage" of the Trump Organization's money comes from Russia—a fact later confirmed by Eric Trump. Trump Sr. then becomes the first presidential candidate in decades to refuse to release his tax returns.

#20: Though he's fully briefed on Russia's cyberwar against America in August 2016, Trump publicly denies it—calling the U.S. intel community Nazis—while accepting Putin's denials he's done anything wrong and proposing the U.S. create a cybersecurity task force with the Kremlin.

#21: Trump NatSec advisor Erik Prince secretly traveled to UAE at the command of the UAE's Royal Family so he could have a clandestine meeting *on Russia sanctions* with a top and Putin ally—the Russian Direct Investment Fund manager. Prince lied to Congress about all aspects of this.

#22: Trump NatSec advisor Flynn secretly worked with Trump pal Thomas Barrack and Iran-Contra criminal Robert "Bud" McFarlane to lobby Trump to drop Russia sanctions—the better to make money off a deal to bring nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia via Russian-built nuclear reactors.

#23: In 2002, Trump tried to rig the Miss Universe pageant—by leaning illegally on judges—to award the title to Miss Russia, whose two boyfriends at the time were a) one of the top real estate developers in Saint Petersburg, a market Trump wanted access to, and b) Vladimir Putin.

#24: In 2003, Trump was saved from bankruptcy by the sudden, miraculous appearance of Russian mobster Felix Sater in his orbit. Sater found Trump new partners and tenants—often, Russians—and they helped make Trump rich again. Trump then perjured himself over whether he knew Sater.

#25: Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort was secretly contacting Putin ally Oleg Deripaska during the 2016 presidential campaign, at one point promising him special access to the Trump campaign—and to Trump's thinking on Russia policy—via clandestine "briefings" on those topics.

#26: After it was revealed Don Jr. met Kremlin agents at Trump's house—Trump Tower—at a time Trump was in the building and meeting with Don, Jared, and Manafort on the same topics they met the Kremlin agents to discuss, Trump witness-tampered by writing his son's false statement.

#27: Trump's campaign hired Bannon/Mercer-run Cambridge Analytica to target voters via "psychographics." There's evidence Cambridge Analytica leaked its data to the Kremlin to aid its massive propaganda campaign. Emails *from Cambridge Analytica to WikiLeaks* have been discovered.

#28: *After* it was known Trump's NatSec team had met to talk Russia policy and receive orders from Trump on sanctions, Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied—from the White House—on how many times the team met. She said once—it was three times, plus innumerable group calls and email chains.

#29: Trump National Security Advisor Flynn dined with Putin in Moscow during the presidential campaign—*while he was advising Trump*. He admits they discussed Russia policy. The chances he didn't brief the man he was advising on what Putin said—and what Flynn said back—are *nil*.

#30: Trump selected as Secretary of State a man who didn't want the job, wasn't qualified, and has revealed himself to be as bad at it as anticipated. But Tillerson had one qualification—he's not just a Putin pal, but had received the *Russian Order of Friendship Medal* from him.

#31: During the presidential campaign—while he was a Trump NatSec advisor—Trump's future National Security Advisor Mike Flynn received tens of thousands of dollars directly from Kremlin propaganda network RT. He then lied about it on TV and failed to disclose it on federal forms.

#32: Months ago, both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly—517 to 5—to impose new sanctions on Russia for its massive election interference campaign (correctly classified as "cyber-war") on the United States. Trump is now protecting Putin by refusing to impose those sanctions.

#33: Three of Trump's top NatSec advisors—Schmitz, Gordon, Page—went to Budapest in 2016. Budapest is the European HQ for Russia's FSB. It was Gordon's sixth trip to the tiny EU nation in recent years; Page admits meeting an unnamed Russian; *no one knows* what Schmitz was doing.

#34: In 2013, the Trumps developed close business and personal ties with the Agalarovs—a Kremlin-linked family of oligarchs who've acted as Putin agents before (including delivering gifts to Trump from Putin). Trump stayed in touch with them throughout the presidential campaign.

#35: Alexander Torshin—a Putin-linked Russian banker and "long-time Trump acquaintance"—met Trump at an NRA conference weeks before Trump announced his run, then tried to set up a secret Putin-Trump meet in May 2016. He then tried to secretly meet Trump at an event this February.

#36: At a time it was *widely known* that the way to reach Trump was to send an email to Hope Hicks—Trump doesn't use email—Russian intelligence did so several times, suggesting they felt Hicks and Trump would be amenable to the contacts. The FBI had to warn Hicks not to respond.

#37: In 2004, Trump bought a Miami mansion no one wanted for $40 million. After making no improvements to either the land or the property and failing to sell it for *four years*, in 2008 Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev—facing no competing offers—gave him $95 million for it.

#38: In 2014, Eric Trump told reporter James Dodson his father got "all the funding he needed" for his golf courses—a big part of his financial portfolio—from Russian banks. Dodson had no reason to lie, but Eric denied it vehemently—underscoring how dangerous that truth would be.

#39: Trump made his Campaign Manager a man who'd been out of politics for years and is known largely not just for working on behalf of Putin allies in Ukraine but having angled for years to do direct propaganda work for the Kremlin itself—outreach which has since been documented.

BONUS: Though he knows by August 2016 that Russia is committing crimes against America, Trump still lets his top NatSec advisor, Sessions, negotiate sanctions with Kislyak—presumably Trump's plan for a unilateral dropping of sanctions. This is Aiding and Abetting Computer Crimes.

BONUS: During the transition, Trump's son-in-law Kushner secretly meets with Putin's banker—after which discussion the two men disagree wildly as to what they discussed, suggesting that whatever the topic was, it was clandestine. Kushner won't reveal the meeting for many months.

BONUS: Advisors to the Trump campaign, including Trump Jr. and Stone, have contacts with WikiLeaks and/or Russian hackers—the timeline of which conversations dovetails perfectly with consequential changes in behavior by one or both of the parties (including Trump's stump speech).

BONUS: When Acting AG Yates warns Trump that Flynn—his National Security Advisor—has been compromised by Russia, Trump fires her and keeps Flynn on board for 18 days. Either he lies to Pence about what he knows on this or both Trump and Pence lie to America about their knowledge.

BONUS: Fears that the Kremlin recorded "kompromat"—blackmail—on Trump at the Ritz Moscow in November 2013 have been stoked by Trump's repeated lies about his trip, his bodyguard's confession it could've happened, and as many as eight witnesses found by the BBC and intel agencies.

BONUS: After Trump's son Don began engaging in a back-and-forth correspondence with Russian front-operation WikiLeaks in September 2016, the Trump campaign responded to WikiLeaks' pro-Trump overtures by inserting praise of WikiLeaks into then-candidate Trump's daily stump speech.

BONUS: The 4 ambassadors Trump invited to the VIP event before his first foreign policy speech (Mayflower Hotel, 4/27/16)—that'd be 4 of a possible 195—all *breached diplomatic protocol to attend* and were all from nations involved in Russia's sanctions-impacted Rosneft oil deal.

BONUS: Trump has repeatedly angled—almost *desperately*—for private meetings with Putin, including orchestrating pretenses for them. Each time they've met, they've exceeded the allotted time for such a meeting by 300% and breached protocol in how the meetings have been conducted.

[traitor-boyfriend]

I just read your post about Stan and Kyle's relationship and I totally agree, but I was wondering if you might elaborate on what you mean when you said Kyle acts as a moral/ethical guide for Stan? I'm not disagreeing but I'd love to hear you talk more about it

sure!

kyle is obviously the most morally fixated of the four boys and i would say after about season four or so is when they really began to take this direction with his character. whenever something transpires within the group, kyle is almost always the first to disagree w whatever plot they (’they’ almost always meaning cartman) start brainstorming to keep themselves from getting into trouble, that they should instead own up to their mistakes and take responsibility and suffer the consequences that come along w it. rarely if ever does anyone actually listen to kyle and he’s cajoled into complicity but that doesn’t stop him from offering his disapproval at every turn in the name of wanting to do the right thing. the best example of this is ‘toilet paper’ where they tp their art teacher’s house for making them stay late; kenny and stan are immediately on board when cartman suggests it but kyle is uncomfortable w the idea entirely, and after it’s done he’s racked w guilt and is seen as the weakest link in all of them b/c of his compulsion to tell the truth. we get to see kyle struggling w guilt pretty often and the apex of it is usually when some outside force is preventing or coercing him from coming clean about whatever it is he’s done. though stan and kyle both shared the whole ‘gay little speech’ element in the very beginning, it’s pretty much been exclusive to kyle for the majority of the series -- kyle is the one to always explain what they learned at the end of the episode, to tie together the moral lesson you’re supposed to take away from it

because he’s a kid, kyle can occasionally be swayed out of his conviction if the consequences are great enough for him to be afraid of (this tends to be his mom). when butters’ gets the ninja star stuck in his eye in ‘good times with weapons’, kyle initially panics and agrees with cartman’s idea to kill butters and bury him in kyle’s backyard b/c he’s so petrified by the idea of his mother finding out what he was doing. but even then his moral center comes back around, even if he doesn’t follow through; he protests the idea of taking butters to a vet instead of a hospital and later tries to get rid of his ninja weapon and instead confess to what happened. in ‘crack baby athletic association’ kyle is outraged and disgusted by what he sees as cartman exploiting the babies born addicted to narcotics and wants to expose him, but he changes his tune after learning how much money cartman is making. so he eventually joins cartman but justifies it to himself as taking care of these babies, giving them opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise get, raising awareness, etc -- even though he’s in the wrong, kyle tries to view his actions through a benevolent lens in that what he’s doing -is- the right thing; that’s why it bothers him so much when stan tells him he sounds just like cartman. stan is seeing both of their actions clearly in the same vein, but in kyle’s mind, he’s incapable of conceiving himself being in anyway like cartman and has to further delude himself into seeing the positives of his actions. he goes as far as showing up in stan’s bedroom in the middle of the night to legitimize his actions, both to himself and to stan, because stan’s opinion of him matters so much that kyle can’t move past it unless he’s able to convince stan that he’s in the right. to his credit, kyle does try to rectify his actions with the ea sports deal and building an orphanage and whatnot. two wrongs don’t make a right, but that won’t stop kyle from trying.

basically i’m just trying to fully highlight the extent of kyle’s dedication to being honest, being kind, being a good person etc. it matters a lot to him and it’s also touched on briefly now and then w regards to his being jewish -- that being a good person is important if not only for the sake of being a good person.

it’s not that stan isn’t concerned w being a good person or doing the right thing, but he has more of a selfish or self-centered impulse than kyle does. stan cares a great deal more than kyle of what people think of him and is more desperate to be accepted or liked by his peers, so he’s often subservient to the whims of passing trends and fads or following the crowd. this is a debatable point but i also think because of this stan is generally more prone to blatant egotism than kyle -- when he leads some kind of superficial crusade (’butterballs’, ‘scause for applause’, ‘bass to mouth’), it’s pretty plainly about himself and his own feelings whereas when kyle gets wrapped up in a similar power-trip it’s usually at least manifested/disguised in some cause greater than himself, even if it’s a self-centered one. 

i’m gonna touch on the examples i provided above briefly:

-butterballs: stan begins the anti-bullying campaign initially out of concern for butters but when he sees how highly his classmates regard him for taking a stand, it very quickly divulges into stan riding the high of peer approval w regards to the music video, making it seen, going on dr. oz etc. kyle is the only one who finds fault with it -- “don’t act for me, stan, really” is a really caustic but honest assessment of the situation on kyle’s end b/c he sees that stan is more concerned w how his efforts are being received and praised rather than helping butters. again highlighted by their interaction in the bathroom when stan insists his video needs to be seen by everyone and kyle tells him to put it on the internet for free instead if he feels that way. stan is dumbstruck b/c he doesn’t know how to defend himself b/c he knows kyle is right, and he cares more about accolades/profit more than he does actually making any kind of grand social change.

-scause for applause: my favorite example, i think. again, stan’s refusal to take off the bracelet starts as something personal to him and very, very quickly transforms into a selfish movement about himself, ‘stanground’, b/c he loves the positive affirmation he receives as a result. craig then accuses him of having lied, and stan berates him in front of everyone in a really acerbic manner and only fuels the fire that eventually brings him down. when everyone hates stan after finding out he actually did cut off his bracelet, kyle tries to nudge stan in the right direction by urging him to tell the truth, but stan only doubles down and tries to get everyone on his side again w a convoluted scheme to make it seem as if the whole thing was intentional. when this blows up in his face, again, kyle -- without judgement -- confronts him about having asked heidi to borrow superglue the week before. stan scoffs and i think he says something like “you’re still on that, dude?” and of course kyle is! why wouldn’t he be! he doesn’t want to see his friend dig himself any further a hole than he already has. 

-bass to mouth: everyone participates in the wikileaks gossip site at school but kyle; he’s the only one who has an outright problem with such an invasion of privacy, and stan tries to get him to lighten up. kyle remarks that it wouldn’t be funny if something about stan were written on there; stan responds flippantly that there isn’t, only for something about him to show up shortly after. cue stan leading the charge to find out who the site-runner is only for kyle to remind him during the meeting that, okay, now that it happened to you, it isn’t funny, right? 

not necessarily in the same vein of selfishness, ‘two days before the day after tomorrow’ is another great example of kyle wanting stan to do the right thing. after they destroy the dam, cartman and stan agree not to tell anyone, but when stan is confronted by the destruction his actions have caused with the people of beaverton being trapped in their flooded homes, he feels immensely remorseful. cartman sternly demands that he not tell kyle b/c kyle will obviously try to get him to confess to what they did. stan ends up telling kyle anyway to the exact result, advising him to let everyone know he’s responsible so the people stranded can receive actual help. cartman becomes irate when he realizes kyle knows, but instead of following his advice, stan tries to do the right thing in a roundabout way: rescue the people himself so he can “do the right thing, but still lie about it.” this doesn’t work and only serves to put the boys themselves in grave danger, and kyle pleads for stan to own up to what he did if for their sake only. he calls randy and comes so close to following through only to decide against it, to which kyle is visibly angry and upset with him. by the time stan does come around to telling the truth it’s too late -- everyone thinks he’s speaking metaphorically about breaking the dam instead of literally which leaves him frustrated.

there’s more examples of this, but kyle very frequently is the first one who tries to intervene when stan gets himself in more trouble than he can handle by trying to guide him toward what’s honest and what’s right. stan is often described as the everyman or the straight man of the group, and for the most part i agree with this -- stan himself is a very average kid. but i think it helps to also look at his family dynamic; he has no siblings he can really rely on as shelly is far too volatile, and though she’s shown some moments of genuine concern and care for stan (that i love and wish there was more of!) she generally holds stan with disdain and irritation. sharon is shown to love and care deeply for stan’s well-being but is also largely unaware of the extent of his problems as her hands are usually tied up elsewhere (and doesn’t receive enough one-on-one interaction with stan for me to really comment on how well she handles those problems). randy is a fucking mess and speaking as someone w a parent who was a functioning alcoholic as randy is, i can attest to how fragile and chaotic a relationship like that can be. randy is certainly no role model of decency. i mean, christ, there’s an entire episode based around the concept of randy teaching stan how to lie effectively wherein which he demonstrates ‘tells’ for stan only to exhibit them when he tells stan he loves him. obviously this is played as a joke, but stan notices this and is rightly upset. randy, as a parent and a person, is incredibly selfish, has no sense of boundaries, acts in his own self-interest, and treats stan like a friend instead of son -- not a very good friend at that. not that randy has absolutely no redeeming qualities, but they’re few and far between, and the rare occasion we see him genuinely try to help or bond with stan usually ends up in another wacky misadventure. my point being, stan doesn’t have a very strong support system within his home and thus has to rely entirely on his own will to guide himself.

kyle is one of very few who is really ever shown to expect better of stan, to want him to be better than he is, to want him to be better for the simple fact that he should want it for himself as well -- not so he can get anything out of it.

that was what i mean by kyle being a moral guide for stan and helping keep him grounded. sorry this became so long, but i hope this answered your question!

[sgreffenius]

Remember this quip as we move further and further into President Biden’s administration: “Orwell meant 1984 as a warning, not a handbook.” This article reminds us of Big Brother’s penchant for offices and agencies with vague sounding names, and a lot of power, especially over information. One such agency - planned, not yet formed - is the Public Integrity Protection Agency, or PIPA. Its mission: regulate advocacy.

You read that right. Rohit Chopra, Elizabeth Warren protege nominated to head the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, argues we need a new agency to regulate political speech. For example, if an interest group donates money to a think tank or other public affairs group, PIPA would prohibit donors from using  materials they helped to fund in any of their public advocacy. Let free political expression try to work its way around that rule.

You say, “That sounds like a simple rule. Do we want advocacy groups to fund partisan research and analysis?” Well of course we do. That’s how advocacy works. When government wants to advocate a certain position or outcome, it creates a blue ribbon board, or an expensive investigatory body like the Mueller commission. Government would love to be the only advocacy operation town.

Actually, PIPA would be a regulator’s dream. Donors would have to track and report every one of their donations. Recipients would have to do the same. Then donors would have to show PIPA that for every bit of information they publish, their money did not help to fund it. Just as the SEC can force companies to prove they did not violate any rules that govern the stock market, PIPA could force advocacy groups to prove they did not violate any rules that govern policy analysis, or rules that regulate political speech of any kind.

We have seen the degree of pressure that government and advocacy groups have exerted on Facebook to regulate speech of all types, whether it be posts, advertisements, pages, timelines, personal communications, interest groups, private groups, and so on. Over the years, people who exert that pressure have become impatient. They ask, in one form or another, “Why cannot Facebook get it together to solve this speech problem? Why do they allow this pernicious, distorted, false information to appear on their site?”

PIPA would bring this pressure under the purview of a powerful new agency. The agency would have power to prosecute violations in collaboration with the Justice Department. Pressure to comply with standards and regulations to control information would not be informal, and advocates for regulation of speech could purge the site of information and people they do not like. Why become exasperated when you can act? Speech regulators could threaten Facebook executives with imprisonment if they do not satisfy the agency, and send them to jail if a court finds they violated the rules.

Ask Martha Stewart what twelve months in prison is like, when the SEC decides it does not like you, and brings the FBI in to question you. Ask Michael Flynn what happens when the FBI decides that normal transition activities, such as a phone conversation with the Russian ambassador, now count as a crime. When the Justice Department wants to prosecute you, it will. Heretofore, it has not openly prosecuted people for prohibited political speech. PIPA would give it formal power to do so.

PIPA would even “inspect and investigate” anyone who tries to “influence federal officials.” This is astonishing language in a republic whose foundational principle appears in the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law that abridges the right of free speech. The same amendment guarantees every citizen the right to petition government officials for a redress of grievances. An agency that regulates public integrity can decide which grievances are legitimate, and which ones count as subversive, criminal activity. You do not know which category your grievance is in until the FBI knocks at your door, to collect your computer and all your other records.

Groups on the so-called far right, of course, already know what federal agencies think about them. They were under close scrutiny well before the June 6 riot at the Capitol. Government attempts to regulate speech among groups that have grievances drives them underground, where threats of violence become even more dangerous. Federal officials ignored the possibility of an insurrection when groups planned it in the open. When you regulate political speech, you create a large black market for speech. If government agencies want to monitor us, you wonder why they create such strong incentives for encryption.

The same officials who want to regulate political speech wring their hands endlessly about activities on the “far right,” because they threaten “our democracy.” Whose democracy is it, after all, when government officials haul you into court because you do not comply with a complicated rule book that specifies what you can and cannot do in the realm of political expression?

Power in that instance does not belong to everyday people who want to express their grievances, or protest against policies they dislike. It belongs to officials who define whether your speech is permissible or not. Alex Jones learned quickly enough that his Infowars rants were not permissible. Every social media platform threw him out at the same time. That happened with no formal regulatory power lodged in an agency that is supposed to protect “public integrity.”

In the past, government used the Internal Revenue Service to seek out its opponents and shut them down. Richard Nixon regularly used the IRS’s investigatory powers to silence opponents, and other groups he did not like. Remember when President Obama’s IRS, in 2013, selected which advocacy groups would receive preferment for non-profit status, and which would have their applications stonewalled? If the IRS liked your progressive credentials, it waved you through. If the IRS found your political leanings suspect, good luck.

When people learned of these preferments, they objected - everyone except the president, of course, who did not even bother to defend the practice, or to criticize it. In his usual detached way, he said something like, “We’ll have to look into that.” That attitude did not help all the advocacy groups denied non-profit status during Obama’s first term, merely because they did not scrub their applications of suspect words, such as conservative or libertarian.

I have to add a last word about use of the word protection in Elizabeth Warren’s new regulatory agencies. We saw it early in her first project, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB. Its purpose is to protect all of us from Wall Street predators, who offer fraudulent financial products. Now with a Public Integrity Protection Agency, she and Chopra want to protect us from predators who generate disfavored political information. If we cannot recognize dangerous information, we need a powerful federal agency to do it for us.

I wonder why Warren and Chopra do not see the term protection as a little dodgy. Federal law enforcement agencies use the phrase protection racket to describe organized crime operations that collect money from small businesses, in order to “protect” them from bad things that might happen to them if they do not pay. The money you pay out to the man who visits you is a cost of doing business.

The same wonderful possibilities exist with PIPA. Do what we want, federal officials say, and we make sure bad things do not happen to your advocacy group. The agency develops methods of operation where favored, compliant groups receive leeway to conduct their operations, so long as they stay within PIPA’s boundaries. Disfavored groups, such as Infowars, Wikileaks, advocates for gun rights - or any group that protests government power - go under the blade.

That is how protection works: when you extort compliance, you need not prosecute. Threats of investigation, prosecution, conviction, and sentencing are implied. Why do you suppose Mark Zuckerberg pleads for federal regulation when he goes before a congressional committee to testify? He anticipates that with his company’s large legal department, he can stay within the regulatory agency’s formal boundaries for permitted speech, and ensure favored status for himself and Facebook. He would not have to testify before congressional committees so often.

I used to think that efforts to restrict free speech in politics were fated to fail in the United States, ending in the same trash bin as socialism, communism, and free love in the Senate washroom. To propose ideas like regulation of speech was part of our free expression. You could criticize these proposals, but you could not object to their existence, or to their publication. You could only explain why they were bad ideas. When government officials propose bad ideas, however, you have to speak up, strongly and immediately.

[hg47]

47 Reasons Why I Fear Islam - (Reason 35)

-35-Earthly Islamic success seems more about loot, taking possessions from Infidels rather than self-actualization. ++++------- http://www.amazon.com/Politically-Incorrect-Guide-Islam-Crusades/dp/0895260131/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380255775&sr=1-1&keywords=POLITICALLY+INCORRECT+GUIDE%E2%84%A2+TO+ISLAM In POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE™ TO ISLAM (THE) Robert Spencer shows through historical research that the temporary growth of culture and science in the Middle Ages under Islamic rule had nothing to do with Islam, but came instead from Infidels who served Muslim masters.  Even the architectural design for mosques is unoriginal; the foundational structure and shape for mosques was stolen from Byzantine churches, and only slightly modified to eliminate references to Christianity.  So when Muslims show pride in their fine mosques, they are being arrogant about a design they ripped-off from a culture they smashed: “We steal from the best!  It’s ours now!  Soon everything you have will be ours!” ++++------- tweet ~ Koran TweetNotes: Muslims are forbidden to become friends with Non-Muslims. (It’s OK to *pretend* to be a friend.) ++++------- http://www.amazon.com/Cruel-Usual-Punishment-Terrifying-Implications/dp/1595551611/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380310980&sr=1-1&keywords=CRUEL+AND+USUAL+PUNISHMENT+by+Nonie+Darwish In CRUEL AND USUAL PUNISHMENT Nonie Darwish gets into the blind greed of Muslims.  Muslims dare not blame Islam for the economic failure of their countries of origin, because Islam is perfect; it must be the evil Jews who wrecked the Arab lands, or the Great Satan America.  Muslims look at the economic success of Britain or France or the United States, and think they must impose an ideal Islamic Government on these prosperous nations!  They will do Islam right on these countries.  In Nonie’s words: “They want to take over a ready-made civilization and claim it for themselves and Islam.” ++++------- A quote from Mawlana Abul Ala Mawdudi (the entire Islamic world considers him a leader who will be remembered throughout history): “Islam is not a normal religion like the other religions in the world, and Muslim nations are not like normal nations.  Muslim nations are very special because they have a command from Allah to rule the entire world and to be over every nation in the world.” @hg47 says – I agree with Mawdudi when he says that Islam is not a normal religion like other religions.  For that reason, Islam is more to be feared.  Other religions are after the soul of the woman or the man in disagreement with the particular religion.  (This is a slight over-simplification; doing “good deeds” and achieving “peace of mind” also factor into other religions.)  Islam is after the property and the lives of any man who refuses to bow down before the Islamic God.  (This is a slight over-simplification; women are also useful as property, things which must be owned by a male Muslim; things to be enjoyed sexually, things to produce future Muslim warriors.) I agree with Mawdudi when he says that Muslim nations are not like normal nations.  Muslim nations are abnormal.  Muslim nations protect rapists from prosecution.  Muslim nations are ruled by Islam, a set of obsolete laws fixed unchangeably 1,100 years ago, which Muslims insist must rule all men everywhere, which call for the elimination of the Jewish people from the earth.  Wait, didn’t we just go through that mess with Adolph Hitler half a century ago? Mawdudi didn’t quite say it, but I will.  Muslims are not like normal people.  Muslims insist that the holocaust never happened.  If Muslims lose that argument they say that the Jews got exactly what they deserved: death.  This is what Muslims teach their children.  Muslims, all Muslims, believe that the perfect written down laws of their God must rule all men everywhere, everywhen.  Muslims, all Muslims, take as their standard of reference for the Perfect Man someone who married a girl when she was six years old and had sex with her when she was nine years old, setting the ideal sexual standards for all men for all time. ++++------- http://www.amazon.com/Cruel-Usual-Punishment-Terrifying-Implications/dp/1595551611/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380310980&sr=1-1&keywords=CRUEL+AND+USUAL+PUNISHMENT+by+Nonie+Darwish In CRUEL AND USUAL PUNISHMENT Nonie Darwish gets into how whatever wealth and power of Muslim states acquired were the result of jihad battles with Infidels. In the words of the Islamic Prophet: “I have been awarded victory by terror, so the treasures of the earth are mine.” ++++------- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/opinion/12brooks.html A captivating article by DAVID BROOKS about the accomplishments of the Jewish people, especially the tech boom within Israel, compared to the Muslim people and their pathetic nations.  One conclusion was quite scary.  The Muslims may win not by nuking Israel, but by fomenting sufficient instability so the key Jewish leaders of the technological boom relocate to California. ++++------- tweet ~ Koran TweetNotes: The Koran counsels deceit in dealing with Non-Muslims. ++++------- http://www2.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=b73e7965-830c-4c76-9601-f071e8fa3a55 Perceptive article by Robert Fulford on the emir-like behavior of powerful Muslims, where personal status is everything, but actually accomplishing something is a petty trifle.  This article also illustrates why Western notions of representative democracy will never work in Islamic lands, by describing a meeting of social scientists in the Middle East who accomplished nothing through their association but each member got a chance to make a fine speech. Lebanese proverb: “Plenty of ejaculations but no pregnancies.” ++++------- http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2013/03/egypt-ethiopia-water-war.html Egypt versus Ethiopia: the first of many Water Wars?  Muslims in Egypt are so busy praying in military formation, bitching about the government leaders, burning the occasional Christian church, and blaming Infidels and Jews for all their problems that they may soon have no drinking water. ++++------- http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/opinion/friedman-backlash-to-the-backlash.html?ref=thomaslfriedman Thomas L. Friedman’s fascinating Op-Ed piece on occasional slight stirrings of moderation within the Muslim world.  Friedman is a great thinker with his head screwed on straight.  When he writes, I read. ++++------- tweet ~ Koran TweetNotes: 61% of the Koran is about Non-Muslims, the worst of creation. Allah hates Non-Muslims and plots against them. ++++------- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443866404577566770697427382.html?mod=googlenews_wsj RICHARD LANDES on Mitt Romney’s comments comparing Israel with Palestine. Some points Richard Landes brings up: 1) The Muslim leaders are contemptuous of hard work. 2) Muslim economic life and Muslim political life is governed by the Islamic principle of RULE OR BE RULED.  Cooperation?  Nope.  Compromise?  Nope.  “I win!  You lose!  Why?  My AK-47 is pointed at your head!  And now that it is pointed at your head, give me your wallet!” 3) Intellectual openness is un-Islamic!  We can’t have that! 4) Innovation is sinful and against perfect unchangeable Islam!  “Now memorize that Koran.  No, you missed a word, recite from the beginning, and shout with joy the part about killing Jews.” 5) Law & Order?  Nope.  Protection rackets! ++++------- Quote from Richard Butrick: We should never forget that “Islam” means submission -- the opposite of self-determination and Enlightenment values. ++++------- A quote from Amil Imani: Islam is a charter of submission. It is a sworn enemy of freedom and views the Cyrus Charter as heresy. ++++------- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/07/wikileaks-cables-saudi-princes-parties Heather Brooke on the astounding underground party night life within Saudi Arabia hosted in the private homes of wealthy royalty, revealed by Wikileaks. Some Muslims really know how to party like it’s 2014-jihad! ++++------- A quote from Mawlana Abul Ala Mawdudi (the entire Islamic world considers him a leader who will be remembered throughout history): “Islam is a revolutionary faith that comes to destroy any government made by man.  Islam doesn’t look for a nation to be in better condition than another nation.  Islam doesn’t care about the land or who owns the land.  The goal of Islam is to rule the entire world and submit all of mankind to the faith of Islam.  Any nation or power in this world that tries to get in the way of that goal, Islam will fight and destroy.” @hg47 says – Please note that Islam is here to destroy the American way.  Please note that there is no compromise with these people drunk on their savage religious laws from the Seventh Century; they don’t care about you or me or which of us owns what, because they are out to acquire all of it for themselves.  Muslims will fight and destroy you and me if we resist them in their quest to die fighting Infidels for the glory of Islam. ++++------- http://www.hudson-ny.org/1610/sharia-advancing-in-west Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury on how the wild growth of Sharia banking helps Sharia law to gain traction within Western nations. @hg47 says – Confess that “Sharia Banking” may be a soft-target for “Infidels Irritated by Islam” to attack.  As I understand it, the whole notion of “Sharia Banking” is a BIG LIE, pretending to be one thing, All Islam All The Time, while actually just covering up the exterior with Islamic trinkets and describing the transactions in obscure Arabic that hides the essential function of the “supposed” Sharia Bank.  In other words, ALL the evil and forbidden Western financial transactions proceed as normal, absolutely nothing is changed, except the obfuscation for the Mullahs and the Ayatollahs back home in Muslim lands.  Charging interest?  Check!  We’ll just call it: “Boo-boo-de-goo-go!”  Derivatives?  No prob!  That’s when the foot washes the hand while the toes hold the money! The only real difference between Sharia compliant banks and Western banks is the tellers with scarfs in the lobby and the money laundering for Muslim terrorist organizations. I know that Islam is never concerned with the spirit of the law, only the letter of the law.  But I’m wondering if the Mullahs back home “get” that by describing the Western financial transactions differently, that they are re-writing the letter of Islamic law.  This is a precedent. My question is this: how many other forbidden behaviors in violation of obsolete laws from the Seventh Century may now be described differently to obey the letter-of-Islamic-law? ++++------- http://www.meforum.org/ - awesome info on current Middle East events and Islam +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +Go-To-36+ +Go-To-Beginning-Of-47-REASONS-WHY-I-FEAR-ISLAM+

[sciencespies]

Researchers developed AI that tells apart true conspiracies from conspiracy theories

https://sciencespies.com/humans/researchers-developed-ai-that-tells-apart-true-conspiracies-from-conspiracy-theories/

Researchers developed AI that tells apart true conspiracies from conspiracy theories

The audio on the otherwise shaky body camera footage is unusually clear. As police officers search a handcuffed man who moments before had fired a shot inside a pizza parlor, an officer asks him why he was there.

The man says to investigate a pedophile ring. Incredulous, the officer asks again. Another officer chimes in, “Pizzagate. He’s talking about Pizzagate.”

In that brief, chilling interaction in 2016, it becomes clear that conspiracy theories, long relegated to the fringes of society, had moved into the real world in a very dangerous way.

Conspiracy theories, which have the potential to cause significant harm, have found a welcome home on social media, where forums free from moderation allow like-minded individuals to converse. There they can develop their theories and propose actions to counteract the threats they “uncover.”

But how can you tell if an emerging narrative on social media is an unfounded conspiracy theory? It turns out that it’s possible to distinguish between conspiracy theories and true conspiracies by using machine learning tools to graph the elements and connections of a narrative. These tools could form the basis of an early warning system to alert authorities to online narratives that pose a threat in the real world.

The culture analytics group at the University of California, which I and Vwani Roychowdhury lead, has developed an automated approach to determining when conversations on social media reflect the telltale signs of conspiracy theorizing.

We have applied these methods successfully to the study of Pizzagate, the COVID-19 pandemic and anti-vaccination movements. We’re currently using these methods to study QAnon.

Collaboratively constructed, fast to form

Actual conspiracies are deliberately hidden, real-life actions of people working together for their own malign purposes. In contrast, conspiracy theories are collaboratively constructed and develop in the open.

Conspiracy theories are deliberately complex and reflect an all-encompassing worldview. Instead of trying to explain one thing, a conspiracy theory tries to explain everything, discovering connections across domains of human interaction that are otherwise hidden – mostly because they do not exist.

While the popular image of the conspiracy theorist is of a lone wolf piecing together puzzling connections with photographs and red string, that image no longer applies in the age of social media. Conspiracy theorizing has moved online and is now the end-product of a collective storytelling. The participants work out the parameters of a narrative framework: the people, places and things of a story and their relationships.

The online nature of conspiracy theorizing provides an opportunity for researchers to trace the development of these theories from their origins as a series of often disjointed rumors and story pieces to a comprehensive narrative. For our work, Pizzagate presented the perfect subject.

Pizzagate began to develop in late October 2016 during the runup to the presidential election. Within a month, it was fully formed, with a complete cast of characters drawn from a series of otherwise unlinked domains: Democratic politics, the private lives of the Podesta brothers, casual family dining and satanic pedophilic trafficking.

The connecting narrative thread among these otherwise disparate domains was the fanciful interpretation of the leaked emails of the Democratic National Committee dumped by WikiLeaks in the final week of October 2016.

AI narrative analysis

We developed a model – a set of machine learning tools – that can identify narratives based on sets of people, places and things and their relationships. Machine learning algorithms process large amounts of data to determine the categories of things in the data and then identify which categories particular things belong to.

We analyzed 17,498 posts from April 2016 through February 2018 on the Reddit and 4chan forums where Pizzagate was discussed. The model treats each post as a fragment of a hidden story and sets about to uncover the narrative. The software identifies the people, places and things in the posts and determines which are major elements, which are minor elements and how they’re all connected.

The model determines the main layers of the narrative – in the case of Pizzagate, Democratic politics, the Podesta brothers, casual dining, satanism and WikiLeaks – and how the layers come together to form the narrative as a whole.

To ensure that our methods produced accurate output, we compared the narrative framework graph produced by our model with illustrations published in The New York Times. Our graph aligned with those illustrations, and also offered finer levels of detail about the people, places and things and their relationships.

Sturdy truth, fragile fiction

To see if we could distinguish between a conspiracy theory and an actual conspiracy, we examined Bridgegate, a political payback operation launched by staff members of Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s administration against the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey.

As we compared the results of our machine learning system using the two separate collections, two distinguishing features of a conspiracy theory’s narrative framework stood out.

First, while the narrative graph for Bridgegate took from 2013 to 2020 to develop, Pizzagate’s graph was fully formed and stable within a month. Second, Bridgegate’s graph survived having elements removed, implying that New Jersey politics would continue as a single, connected network even if key figures and relationships from the scandal were deleted.

The Pizzagate graph, in contrast, was easily fractured into smaller subgraphs. When we removed the people, places, things and relationships that came directly from the interpretations of the WikiLeaks emails, the graph fell apart into what in reality were the unconnected domains of politics, casual dining, the private lives of the Podestas and the odd world of satanism.

In the illustration below, the green planes are the major layers of the narrative, the dots are the major elements of the narrative, the blue lines are connections among elements within a layer and the red lines are connections among elements across the layers.

The purple plane shows all the layers combined, showing how the dots are all connected. Removing the WikiLeaks plane yields a purple plane with dots connected only in small groups.

(Tangherlini et al., CC BY 4.0)

Above: The layers of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory combine to form a narrative, top right. Remove one layer, the fanciful interpretations of emails released by WikiLeaks, and the whole story falls apart, bottom right.

Early warning system?

There are clear ethical challenges that our work raises. Our methods, for instance, could be used to generate additional posts to a conspiracy theory discussion that fit the narrative framework at the root of the discussion. Similarly, given any set of domains, someone could use the tool to develop an entirely new conspiracy theory.

However, this weaponization of storytelling is already occurring without automatic methods, as our study of social media forums makes clear. There is a role for the research community to help others understand how that weaponization occurs and to develop tools for people and organizations who protect public safety and democratic institutions.

Developing an early warning system that tracks the emergence and alignment of conspiracy theory narratives could alert researchers – and authorities – to real-world actions people might take based on these narratives.

Perhaps with such a system in place, the arresting officer in the Pizzagate case would not have been baffled by the gunman’s response when asked why he’d shown up at a pizza parlor armed with an AR-15 rifle.

Timothy R. Tangherlini, Professor of Danish Literature and Culture, University of California, Berkeley.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

#Humans