#interference book 1: shock tactic

[doctorwhoisadhd]

[verloonati]

#25 Interference Book 1 : shock tactics, Lawrence Miles, 1999

God. What a book.

Lawrence Miles' flaws as a writer are very apparent. The racism in the descriptions meant to criticise it but just emptily restituting it are incredibly distateful, as well as the misogyny that get disarmed too late. But apart from that, this book is so many things.

The remote is a fascinating take on the faction's influence, only three books in. The eleven days empire is fascinating stuff, Fitz arc, and the description of Anathema are really striking and I can't wait to find out more about that. Compassion is an amazing character in a sea of weirdness, kode and guest are also really interesting side characters.

The doctor's torture is pretty grim, but it's connexion with the third doctor really comes as a surprise, and having the doctor in the background leaves so much space for Sam still going through the horrors and oddly enough Sarah Jane integrates quite well to the plot.

The Cold is unnerving and makes everything an unreliable narrator, especially with the narrative device of stories within stories. I don't get who i.m foreman is but the blind man shtick and everything on Dust are really good.

10/10 can't wait for the second half of this book

Guess what you idiots, I lied

Big ass DW review post number 2 EDA edition losers

Starting off with number #1 The eight doctors, Terrance Dicks, 1997

Overall it's a pretty unremarkable story. The most notable thing is that the first eighth doctor story revolves around solving his amnesia, by visiting several fan favourites episodes of the show in between sequences. It's a fun enough romp trough the show's history and refresher course, we get to see an unearthly child's rock murder attempt, the war games, the sea devils, E-space vampires, the five doctors' aftermath, the middle of the sixth doctor trial, and just a quick meetup with the seventh doctor for good measure.

Most of these short segments don't really make a coherent story, and while the doctor learns about himself, it still doesn't really add anything to these original stories. There's a side gallifreyan politics secret plot that just don't mesh nicely with the rest. It's all a bit messy, and although it introduces Sam Jones, it doesn't really do anything with her character and doesn't bring her along until the very end.

5/10 fun but is meant to be a refresher course that can only be enjoyed by people who were already fans

[princess-of-the-corner]

Winx Reboot Episodes 13 and 14 (Your worldbuilding is awesome!)

Worldbuilding is so fun!

Episode 13

So this is going a different direction! Bloom still goes back to Gardenia but 1.) She already knows she's adopted and the thing about being found in a fire 2.) Aura vision doesn't work like that. 3.) I want more of Bloom's Earth Friends!

So!

Bloom goes home for break. Her parents are a little... Shocked at the differences. Like, to Bloom most of her Domino traits came gradually but for her parents it's a bit of a jump.

Next morning at breakfast she uses a Glamour to look how she used to, and her parents immediately jump to "frick. We're sorry! We love you anyway it was just a shock to see you don't have to hide what you are from us!". It's pretty sweet and Bloom agrees to not use Glamours when it's just them but out in town she'll probably use it because explaining is... Weird.

Bloom goes to meet her friends from episode 1. I call them Zoe, Jake and Daniell. (Names are subject ti change given certain other fandoms...)

Anyway they're sharing their stories. They also end up with Mitzi tagging along because like.

She showed up and tried to bother Bloom by doing her usual mean girl tactic. But while it's annoying, Bloom has dealt with so much over the past year that Mitzi is barely registering on her radar. Which pisses Mitzi off so she sticks around to keep trying to get a rise out of her.

The rest are surprised to hear that Bloom did end up going away last minute. And Bloom tells them about her adventures. Mostly. She has to censor a lot because of all the Magic stuff.

Mitzi calls her out on the half-truths but Bloom just sidesteps the accusation.

Of course, everything kinda goes to shit because the Trix followed Bloom home and are also trying to get a rise out of her.

They have no issue doing Magic in plain view of everyone, but thry don't start a fight immediatly. Thry just kinda... Show up and taunt Bloom about how she's clearly not from here, and poking at "I wonder how your friends would feel about you if you dropped the Glamour".

Eventually they do start causing more of an actual problem and people are in danger. Which means Bloom has to transform and fight back.

Their job here is done so they leave and Bloom gives up on hiding anything. She gives them a rushed "Yeah turns out Magic exists and I have Magic and I went to school for Magic beings but it's less "Harry Potter" and more "Steven Universe" because it's like Magic Aliens and shit". They're thrown for a loop but Mitzi is the only one to be a dick about it. And the others are like "bitch she just saved you from getting frozen solid" so she begrudgingly thanks her before fucking off.

Now Bloom gets to tell them the full version of her Magic adventures!

-

Episode 14:

This is different because Faeries and Witches are on friendly terms.

So, fed up with not getting any answers from Alfea's Library, she asks Faragonda for permission to search Cloud Tower's library. Specifically the book with her name on it.

I'm going to derail to talk on the book for a moment. There are books that are a written account of someone's life. It is Magically written, and only includes significant events. It can also only be read by the person whose book it is. So you can't get info on anyone just from reading their book.

Faragonda agrees that Bloom's book might have something.

Faragonda arranges it with Griffin, but given what happened last time Bloom went to Cloud Tower, both Headmistresses will be supervising.

This is Griffin's first time /really/ meeting Bloom. Like she saw her with the other Winx when dealing with whatever the Winx/Trix rivalry was, but now seeing her...

It's very obvious that Bloom is from Domino. And as Bloom explains her story, she has the same suspicions about who Bloom might be. And she knows there's no way Faragonda hasn't made the same guess to they're just giving Each other looks this whole time. Neither is going to tell Bloom until they find the book and see if it has answers.

They do find the book, but as Bloom looks to the beginning, all she feels is frustrated. Because the book starts with her being found on Earth in the burning building. It doesn't make sense to her since she had to have existed before that! She was roughky a year old back then what's going on?!

Griffin muses over the fact that sometimes people can have two books. If they do something drastic and change their identity, the person they once were doesn't always exist(though both books can merge if the person accepts both parts of their identity). There might be another book somewhere with Bloom's "birth name" on it, telling of her first year of life. But finding it would be difficult.

Now. At some point the Trix saw Bloom walking around and have been eavesdropping. They decide to create a fake book that is "magically drawn to her". Griffin and Faragonda find this suspicious, but allow her to read it.

Naturally the book gives false info about her being a tool of destruction and whatnot. Griffin and Faragonda try to calm her and tell her it's not real or possible and clearly the book is a trick. But Bloom ends up running off.

While the Trix had been eavesdropping on Bloom and the Headmistresses, Mirta was eavsdropping on them. She wasn't able to interfere with their plan, but she decides to run after Bloom and tell her the truth.

She does so, managing to make Bloom a bit calmer. And also slightly more frustrated because at least when dhe thought she was a tool of destruction she had answers!

A fight happens and Mirta gets turned into a pumpkin. Bloom manages to escape and bring Pumpkin!Mirta back to Alfea. Faragonda and Griffin arrive soon after having been looking for Bloom after she ran off.

They try to turn Mirta back, but find that the spell used is something from the more Forbidden Magics. It will take time to undo it.

But for those three to be using Forbidden Magics, spells that were outlawed for various reasons mostly pertaining ti being cruel and evil, that's a hard no.

Not only are the Trix expelled from Cloud Tower, but there's an attempt to arrest them. They escape and are now on the run.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Democrats running for president in 2020 are faced with a choice when making their pitch to voters: make attacking President Trump a key part of their message or ignore him and focus on introducing themselves and their ideas.

On the one hand, criticizing Trump could help candidates convince primary voters that they’re able to defeat him, but depending on what shots they choose to take, they could risk alienating voters in the general election. So we wanted to see how the candidates tackled this choice by looking at one of the most direct ways they regularly communicate with voters — their emails.

Lindsey Cormack, who runs the DCinbox project, a public database of email newsletters sent by members of Congress, says emails, like tweets, can give us insight into how politicians try to brand themselves. “They don’t have to deal with editors at the paper. They don’t have to deal with booking an agent to be on a TV or radio program. They can really say anything they want.”

So to get a better sense of what the candidates told their followers about Trump, we subscribed to the mailing list of every candidate that FiveThirtyEight considers “major” and looked at all the emails they sent in the month prior to the first Democratic debate. (Though, for a variety of reasons — including email targeting practices, engagement testing techniques and the fact that we haven’t given money to any of these campaigns — we may not have received all the emails sent by all the campaigns.1)

Overall, the candidates have taken very different approaches. Some candidates, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, seem to be ignoring Trump almost entirely, while others, like former Vice President Joe Biden, are heavily peppering their emails with invocations of Trump. Even some lesser-known candidates like Montana Gov. Steve Bullock are going all in on Trump — every email we received from his campaign during this period contained a reference to the president.2

Biden’s emails contained the second-most mentions of Trump. In total, we received 27 messages from his campaign that referenced the president by name. This strong focus on Trump seems aimed at portraying Biden as a strong general election candidate, which makes sense, as his perceived “electability” has been a central argument of his campaign.

In his emails, Biden has attacked Trump’s campaign tactics, his policy stances and his values. Biden has even sent an email that, rather than concentrating on his campaign, asked readers to sign a petition to “tell Donald Trump that welcoming foreign interference in our elections is unacceptable.” Even many of Biden’s fundraising emails are all about Trump, asking readers to “imagine the shock on Trump’s face” when they hit their fundraising goal and collect enough to “compete with Trump’s fortunes.”

While Biden mentions Trump often, his emails completely ignore the rest of the primary field — none of his messages mention another Democratic candidate by name. Another thing Biden never mentions? Impeachment.

Biden also sent the most emails with “Trump” in the subject line.

And that’s a telling omission, because many other candidates have called for Trump’s impeachment and are renewing those calls in their emails. The move could help them in the primary election, as impeachment is popular among Democrats, but could prove risky in a general election because most polls find that more Americans oppose impeachment than support it.

In the month leading up to the first debate, Sen. Kamala Harris, former Cabinet secretary Julian Castro, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Sen. Cory Booker, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and former Gov. John Hickenlooper all sent at least one email entirely devoted to calling for Trump’s impeachment. O’Rourke, for example, sent a long email on May 30 explaining why he thought Trump should be impeached, and then a punchier one about two weeks later with “Donald Trump” as the subject line and “… should be impeached” as the only text in the body of the email, with a link to a petition.

While Warren was the first 2020 Democratic candidate to call for Trump’s impeachment — she publicly embraced that stance after the April release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election — we didn’t receive any emails from her campaign that mentioned the topic in the month before the first debate. Likewise, Sanders has also called for Trump’s impeachment, but didn’t send us any impeachment emails during the period we looked at.

Some candidates largely avoided talking about Trump at all in the month before the debate. For example, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg only mentioned Trump in one email, when he called Trump’s tariffs on Mexican goods “politically-motivated gamesmanship.” Warren also was largely silent on Trump in this period. Of the 56 emails she sent us that month, only four mentioned Trump, and of those four, only one focused on him for the bulk of the message.3 That email explained, “Our campaign isn’t about Donald Trump. That’s because he’s just the symptom, not the cause, of the crises we face as a country.” And Rep. Tim Ryan, who sent us 78 emails — the most of any candidate — didn’t mention Trump even once, although he, too, has called for Trump’s impeachment.

Bullock, on the other hand, mentioned Trump in every single email, often as part of a formulaic reminder to subscribers that he is the only presidential candidate to have won statewide office in a state Trump won.4

Candidates who have a harder time making an “electability” argument than Bullock varied widely in the tenor of their emails that mentioned Trump. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, for example, sent us fewer emails in the month leading up to the debate than most candidates, but he mentioned Trump in five of the seven emails he did send us. (And one the two that didn’t mention the president’s last name still used the hashtag #ConDon, which showed up in six of de Blasio’s emails and is meant to imply that Trump is a con man.) In many ways, De Blasio seemed to be trying to out-Trump Trump, aggressively attacking him and using name-calling tactics that the president is known for. In one email, for instance, he called Trump a “New York con man who’s just been made to smell his own BS” and referred to Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, as Trump’s “lapdog,” whose insults were “even lamer than his boss’s.” But unlike de Blasio, most of the Democratic contenders seemed to have heeded former First Lady Michelle Obama’s advice to “go high” when their opponents “go low” and are trying to strike a different tone than the current president, rather than trying to outdo him.

So what does this tell us about how Democrats are crafting (or not crafting) their campaigns around Trump? Well, a few candidates, like de Blasio, Bullock and Biden, are at one extreme — mentioning Trump at practically every opportunity — and a few, like Ryan and Buttigieg, are firmly planted at the other extreme, remaining largely silent on Trump. But perhaps unsurprisingly, most candidates fall somewhere in between, striking a balance between talking about Trump and focusing on their own message. It’s early yet, though, and some candidates’ communication strategies might change as the primary progresses. Still, with so many Democrats running, the party will have collectively tried out many different avenues of attack before the general election. Ultimately, however, there will only be one Democratic nominee, and whoever that is, he or she will have a wide pool of pre-tested approaches to draw from.

[satyrykal]

Sugar, Spice, and All Things Ice 3

Hey guys,

This is the third of seven entries I wrote for Gratsulu Week 2018! I am super excited. This is a collection of interconnected one-shots in an alternate canon-verse.

Story excerpt below!

Cheers,

Satyrykal - 4/17/2018

3 – Protective – Gratsulu Week 2018 Prompt “PDA”

Rated T/M.

The sun beat down relentlessly, hot and arid. A touch of humidity mixed in with the salt air, swirling in the light sea breeze. The water osculated against the white sand, froth eddying onto the shore in aquamarine waves. The ocean was crisp and clear, the blue sky meeting blue water seamlessly.

The three of them had been at the beach since after breakfast, leaving their hotel room to take advantage of the warm weather and the cerulean surf. The palm trees dotting the shore swayed in the gentle wind, in sharp contrast to the biting gusts that had haunted the streets of Magnolia only a few weeks prior. Winter was only just beginning to meld into spring in their hometown, while the coast here was already balmy and temperate.

Lucy lay on a teal towel stretched over the sand below a wide umbrella the boys had erected earlier. She lay on her stomach, the straps of her white bikini untied at the neck to prevent unwanted tan lines. The strings hung loosely on her shoulders while she kicked her long creamy legs in the air, crossing them at the ankles as she immersed herself in the book she'd packed.

She was facing the sea, large black sunglasses resting on the bridge of her nose, her hair pulled up in a messy bun – still damp from her soak in the water earlier. The novel was a recommendation from Levy, a classic written a century earlier in Crocus, detailing the lives of a huntress who she crossed into faerie lands to protect her family. As she came to the end of the chapter, she paused, blinking into the bright rays shining down on her.

Resting her chin on her folded arms, she could see her boyfriends in the water, wrestling each other down beneath the waves, grappling for leverage to see if they could dunk one another under. She smiled at their playfulness, warmth that had nothing to do with the sun toasting her from the inside out.

Last time she'd looked up, they had been racing out to the large volcanic rock past the reef, nothing more than specks on the horizon. Once they stroked back to shore, panting for air, they were already screaming about rematches. Judging by the cocky smirk on Gray's face, she had gathered he was the victor, though Natsu could be heard complaining loudly about how it was cheating for their boyfriend to have frozen him in place.

They'd ambled over to her towel, dripping wet as they demanded she act as judge, jury and executioner. Silently, she'd agreed with the fire mage about the noirette's underhanded tactics, but she refused to be pulled into the argument. It wasn't as if Natsu wasn't equally guilty. When she had been swimming with them earlier, he'd tried boiling Gray like a lobster as a joke, forgetting she was nearby and didn't have the ice mage's ability to cool herself off.

If that wasn't reason enough, her interference almost always led to one of the men pouting childishly in the corner – and both tended towards unwitting destruction when upset, like toddlers throwing a tantrum.

Luckily, she wasn't asked to referee the current wrestling match. She bit her lip, rolling it between her teeth as she snickered at their hi jinks. The dragon slayer had their partner in a headlock as he dunked him below the waves, intermittently pulling him back up by the scruff of his neck. To non-wizards this may have appeared violent, but she knew them – knew the restrained power that hummed just beneath their skin. To them, this might as well have been foreplay.

She raised a slender brow as she saw how close they were tangled and amended the statement in her mind.

It was definitely foreplay, and she estimated there was a high probability they might try to drag her in as well, but knowing they'd respect her decision and go off on their own if she dismissed them in favor of relaxing. She could still feel the slight soreness in her core from their activities the prior night. They'd been running her ragged since they'd arrived at the resort – utterly insatiable balls of energy.

*Special thanks to MorriganFae for her input on this one!*

Click to read the complete chapter on Fan Fiction ^.^

Chapter 1, 2, 3

@gratsuluweek

[bookmania2020]

Is Russia Re-meddling with U.S. Elections? – Jean Robert Revolus

Renowned author, Jean Robert Revolus discusses the most reported and dramatic elections in the history of the United States of America, in his latest book, US Election 2016 NO COLLUSION?978-1-95-163003-4. The 2016 Elections were filled with twists and turns. But it is safe to say that the most shocking part of it was the day it was announced that Donald Trump had become the 45th President of the U.S. While the polls predicted that Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, had 90% of chances to win. Now that Trump has completed serving his time at the office, elections are just months away. There is news that the Russian government is trying to meddle in the upcoming elections, just as they did in 2016. According to The New York Times, here is what has happened so far.

“Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use it against him.

           The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, the president berated Joseph Maguire, the outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump was particularly irritated that Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the leader of the impeachment proceedings, was at the briefing.

           During the briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump’s allies challenged the conclusions, arguing that he had been tough on Russia and that he had strengthened European security.

           Some intelligence officials viewed the briefing as a tactical error, saying the conclusions could have been delivered less pointedly or left out entirely to avoid angering Republicans. The intelligence official who delivered the briefing, Shelby Pierson, is an aide to Mr. Maguire and has a reputation for speaking bluntly.

           Though intelligence officials have previously told lawmakers that Russia’s interference campaign was continuing, last week’s briefing included what appeared to be new information: that Russia intended to interfere with the 2020 Democratic primaries as well as the general election.

           On Wednesday, the president announced that he was replacing Mr. Maguire with Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany, and an aggressively vocal Trump supporter. And though some current and former officials speculated that the briefing might have played a role in that move, two administration officials said the timing was coincidental. Mr. Grenell had been in discussions with the administration about taking on new roles, they said, and Mr. Trump had never felt a kinship with Mr. Maguire.

         Mr. Trump has long accused the intelligence community’s assessment of Russia’s 2016 interference as the work of a “deep state” conspiracy intent on undermining the validity of his election. Intelligence officials feel burned by their experience after the last election when their work became a subject of intense political debate and is now a focus of a Justice Department investigation.”

[lightshadowverisimilitude]

Responsible Adults and Lab Safety Protocols 1/3

For my bingo square “sex pollen.” Challenger @miss-kitty-fantastico

Watch the cut!

All in all, Tony was disappointed. With rumors of a super thinktank trying to combine all the worst aspects of sodium pentothal, E, and alcohol, Tony had expected more. They’d been hard to find, he’d give them that – as in digitally hard to find. Out in the non-digital world, they were operating out of a strip mall on the main thoroughfare in a tiny township in Minnesota unfortunately named Embarrass.

Since the Avengers trooping through Small Town, Anywhere tended to call a lot of attention, they’d driven from Duluth in a rental van. By the time they pulled into the cramped parking lot, Tony was ready to put a stylus through Clint’s eye. If he had to hear one more chorus of “99 bottles of beer on the wall/ Shoot one down, it shatters on the ground,” ad infinitum, he was going to throttle someone. Since they were mere yards away from a bad guy he could theoretically throttle, he didn’t try too hard to suppress the urge. Nat and Steve had both fallen asleep in the middle row almost as soon as they doors had shut, because they had that whole ‘can sleep anywhere’ thing in common. Sam had earbuds stuffed into his ears, though Tony’s had mysteriously disappeared out of his bag. He felt an acute sense of betrayal.

“Karmic pay back,” Rhodey said, climbing out of the driver’s seat. “Do you remember that trip from Boston to New York your sophomore year?” He smiled sweetly and held out a twenty. Clint snatched it out of his fingers and blew Tony a kiss on his way past, surreptitiously rubbing his jaw.

“It’s not karma if you interfere,” Tony said, but he was secretly impressed. Putting up with three complete rounds of the beer song just to get Tony back for an unfortunate road trip two decades after the fact was dedication.

Rhodey shrugged. “What can I say? Sometimes karma happens to you. Sometimes you’re the karma that happens to someone else.”

“I’m going to remember this,” Tony warned him, snugging his baseball cap down further over his eyes. He guessed that as far as ‘We’re tourists, just passing through,’ disguises went, they probably wouldn’t pass muster for long. He checked his phone, and then looked up. According to his scan, nothing in the area had so much as security camera to its name.

The smallest space on the end of the strip didn’t even have proper signage. When they drew closer, he saw that a set of letters had been frosted onto the glass in what was probably 12-pt font. Dionysus Labs. Original.

Steve, annoyingly alert after his ninety-odd minute nap, casually pulled the door open, and then stuck his foot in front of it and gestured everyone else through. Tony kept his phone up, sweeping the area with infrared as he went. He’d done a satellite pass over the area less than an hour before, and there had only been two heat signatures in the building. He wasn’t surprised to see the same two human-shaped blobs on the other side of the back wall. In two weeks of monitoring, he’d never seen more than two human-shaped blobs.

The reception area was a closet-sized space that they crowded to capacity. It was complete with ugly industrial carpet, three folding chairs under a painting of a lake that might have been stolen from a motel, and a reception desk about the size of a podium. It was empty of even a bored receptionist, which made sense, since there didn’t even appear to be a phone. Rhodey leaned around the desk, feeling underneath the shelves for a weapon, and then shook his head.

Nat put her back to the cheap plywood wood and waited for Clint to give her a nod. She flicked the door knob, and pushed the door sharply inward. It banged against the opposite wall, though the sound was almost drowned out by the startled shouts from within. Clint ran in with his sidearm drawn, leading Steve, Sam, and Rhodey after him. Tony stayed in the waiting room and kept an eye on his screens. Nothing was putting off any troubling energy, and the floor seemed quite solid.

Steve stuck his head back out the door. His lips were twisted in a bemused grimace. “It’s clear,” he said, gesturing Tony in with a twitch of his fingers.

“I am disappointed,” Tony said, following him in. “I was going to be disappointed anyway, but I assumed there would be something for me to do.” The only reason he hadn’t trundled in with the rest of them was that he’d thought a high-budget operation like this one had to be hiding a few nasty tech surprises under their very mundane exterior.

(keep reading)

The room beyond was… a lab. It had been outfitted with metal tables that were stacked with the usual medical lab detritus. Half of the space had been converted into a sterile room, and a ventilation hood took up most of the real estate in the opposite corner. The eye wash station and chemical shower had clearly posted instructions and warnings, and there was a red lab safety handbook on the shelf backed with OSHA posters and cheesy I Am Safe! Graphics of a pencil figure in a hardhat giving the thumbs up. There was a picture of a chambered nautilus on one cabinet, the Milky Way galaxy next to it, and a boxy spiral across the room. Sam was in the process of taking down an enlarged poster of Dr. Foster’s most recent appearance in Reviews of Modern Physics. Thor would have never forgiven them for leaving it.

“Wow. Now I’m… Now I’m just depressed,” Tony decided. Two youngish men in lab coats had already been handcuffed and were slumped in lab stools, still wearing their eye protection. “I mean… I approve of your lab safety, with the exception of the paper thin door that anyone with reasonable hand-eye coordination and baseball bat could get through, but. Wow.”

One of the men sighed dejectedly. He was wearing a plaid shirt with a no-kidding pocket protector. Tony couldn’t decide if he was wearing it with his expensive, tailored khakis as nerd-chic or not. “We were finally getting results,” he mourned.

“We were going to be so rich,” the other added. “I was going to go to Tahiti.”

Tony exchanged a baffled look with Rhodey, who only shrugged.

“We have got to get a better class of supervillain,” Sam said.

Pocket Protector perked up. “Supervillain? Think they’ll write a book about us?”

Rolling his eyes, Sam dropped a heavy hand to the back of the guy’s neck to propel him out of the stool. “No.”

Natasha grabbed the other Supervillain Hopeful by the arm and gave him one of those really creepy Russian doll smiles. “You and I need to talk,” she said.

The guy looked pretty happy with that idea. Tony guessed that they’d have an itemized list of the entire chain of operations by the time the van made it back to Duluth.

“We’ll take these two back in the van,” Sam said, giving his captive a squeeze on the back of the neck that made the man bunch his shoulders up like a cartoon turtle. “Quinjet should be here to help you transport all this…” he waved a hand around the orderly lab with a grimace. “Stuff.”

Tony tossed him a salute and opened an app. He hummed as he tapped away at the commands while Clint, Nat, and Sam lead their docile captives out of the door. Satisfied with the results, he pointed the infrared at the floor to look for a secret lair, occasionally stamping on the floor in likely places.

“This is absurd,” he decided finally. “There is really… nothing. It took us two months to find this place.”

“Well,” Steve ventured, “it did keep them under the radar for more than a year. There’s something to be said about low-tech when you’re going up against Iron Man.” He was thumbing through a binder of pages in sheet protectors, so he didn’t see Tony preening. Tony could just barely make out the words ‘Employee Handbook’ between Steve’s fingers. He shook the binder slightly and held up a page. “They had a 401k plan, and health benefits. They get more vacation days than I do!”

Rhodey snorted. “Guess we’re in the wrong line of work.” He was crouched down beside the transparent door of the sterile room. Tapping one knuckle on the Plexiglas, he noted, “This is more like what I expected to find here. This is four inches thick and bullet proof.”

“Ooo,” Tony said, hurrying around the central table to Rhodey’s side. “Boobie trapped?”

Before Rhodey could answer, his phone went off. He settled back on his heels to answer it, and then instantly jerked the phone away from his ear. ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ played loudly in the background and Clint shouted, “I’m never letting you pay me for favors ever again!”

Tony grabbed Rhodey’s wrist to get at the phone. “If he’s paying you for it, it’s not a favor.”

“Fuck you so hard, Stark!” Clint shouted over the chorus. Tony could hear other voices shouting in the background, and then the van’s sliding door opened. It slammed shut a second later, cutting off the caterwauling of Billy Ray Cyrus and the dismayed shouts of the two unfortunate prisoners. “It better turn off,” he huffed into the phone.

Tony shrugged. “Eh.” He loved high-tech cars with their very hackable computers.

Groaning, Clint said, “Do not pull me into whatever weird prank game you have going with Rhodes, Stark, I swear you’ll regret it.”

Tony fluttered his eyelashes at Rhodey. “Hey, blame Rhodey. He’s the one who got you into this.”

Leaning on Tony’s shoulders, Steve grabbed Rhodey’s arm just under Tony’s grip and pulled up. Rhodey scowled, and Steve ignored him. “Just leave those two locked in the car for a few minutes, and then send Nat after them.”

“Torture tactics? From Captain America?” Clint gasped. “I am shocked. Shocked and severely disappointed.”

“Pleasure to be of service,” Steve said warmly, and then released Rhodey’s arm and levered himself back up without even using Tony’s shoulder for balance. That kind of core muscle response was absolutely not fair. Before Tony could say as much, Steve’s Running Man ringtone went off. He stepped away to put it to his ear.

“Sam -… I’m sure it will turn off eventually,” he said, laughing. “I wouldn’t, if I were you. Well, it’s your life.” He covered the mouthpiece with one hand and leaned over to ask, “You are going to turn that off when they start traveling, right?”

Tony made a vague sound, already more invested in the keypad to get into the sterile room than Clint’s comeuppance. He could feel Rhodey’s eyes on the side of his face and guessed that there was a pre-emptive retaliatory prank already in the works in case Tony had something in mind for him. Tony was going to let him stew in it for a while.

Snagging Rhodey’s wrist again, Tony said, “Hey – stick your head back in the van and say ‘one, one, two’ please.”

“Oh, please, is it?” Clint grumbled, but the vague thumping of music grew louder. “Hey, asswipes! One, one, two,” he shouted over the music. The car door slammed, cutting Billy Ray off at ‘- And if you tell my –‘ “I’m not telling you what he said until you promise to turn that off.”

“I promise I’ll turn it off,” Tony said, pointedly not including when.

“He said, ‘three.’ Mean anything to you?”

Tony hummed, but Rhodey was already keying in the sequence before he could say a word. The door popped open with a hiss. Tony groaned. “Why? I am so..! Two months.”

Steve looked in between them, confused. He frowned at the open door. “What just happened here?”

Rhodey waved vaguely toward the posters of spirals dotted around the room between safety posters. “Zero-one-one-two-three-five. Fibonacci sequence. I am embarrassed for these guys.”

“They sure picked some good real estate then,” Steve said with a grin. He bent over to open a lower cabinet, his face briefly appearing somewhere around his knees. He saw Tony watching him and winked, mouth stretching into a devilish smile.

“I see what you’re doing,” Tony told him, just so he didn’t think he was getting away with it.

“I do not,” Rhodey said, “but whatever it is, stop.”

Steve chuckled and bent his knees, folding smoothly into a crouch. He started pulling out boxes of pipettes, shaking each of them like they were Christmas presents. Tony finally yanked his eyes away from the motion of Steve’s shoulders and followed Rhodey into the sterile room. A row of incubators were on against one wall, the shadow of petri dishes visible behind the dark glass. On the opposite wall was another ventilation hood, and the center of the room was taken up by a workspace and a bank of computers. He glanced up to see five industrial ventilation units in the ceiling – for the size of the room, he would have expected only one, or two. He frowned. Between the heavy-duty sterile room and the ventilation, they must have made a lot of progress over the latest version of the compound they’d encountered.

Rhodey was already taking pictures of the setup, so Tony perched on a lab stool and jiggled the mouse until the computer woke up. The username had been saved, so he tried the Fibonacci sequence again, and then a few others. At least they were a bit smarter with their computer security – not smart enough to keep him out of the system, but smarter than they had been with any other aspect of the operation.

“You know,” Rhodey said, snapping a picture of the incubators, “If it was this difficult to find the lab jockeys, figuring out who bank rolled them is going to be a pain in the ass.” He turned a circle, frowning at the sterile room. “Where are the rats?”

Tony plugged into the computer tower and then looked around again, himself. “Huh.” He frowned. He would have expected a whole wall of test subjects. Shivers skittered down his spine. “They’re either testing offsite…”

“Or they’re not testing on animals,” Rhodey finished for him.

The lock screen vanished and Tony dropped his head into his hand with a helpless laugh. Rhodey came over to stand behind him. He rested one hand on Tony’s shoulder and leaned down to look over the last document their intrepid chemists had been working on.

“… They were testing it on themselves?” Rhodey said incredulously. He reached over Tony’s shoulder to click through the open tabs at the bottom. One was an Amazon page displaying search results for ‘soft stuff,’ two were lab results that they both looked over quickly, but neither of them were chemists. Bruce would have to do the heavy lifting on those. The last tab was a video dated the evening before. Rhodey’s hand curled away from the mouse, and then reluctantly pushed play.

Pocket Protector sat in front of the camera in a hotel room, looking stoned out of his mind. His mouth was reddened from either a lot of rough kisses or an allergic reaction, his eyes were glassy and red, and his shirt was half unbuttoned. It had been pulled open and left that way, his lab coat pulled haphazardly over the top of it. Judging by the dark smear of a bruise under his collarbone, Tony was guessing that he hadn’t been experiencing an allergic reaction.

He stared at the camera with a distant, stupid smile on his face. A woman walked across the frame, only visible from the neck down, and not wearing anything except an equally rumpled lab coat. She dragged her nails down the back of his neck and he shivered visibly, almost violently, before slumping back against her and giggling.

“Thanks for the fun time, sugar,” she said. She leaned down to kiss his forehead, but a curtain of auburn hair hid her face from the camera. “Let me know if you want to do it again sometime.”

“’Kay,” Pocket Protector said drowsily. He turned in his chair to watch her pick up her clothes and walk into the bathroom. The door shut, and then the shower turned on. Pocket Protector turned back to the screen and made an exaggeratedly excited face. He bit one knuckle, slightly muffling his giggling. “Oh… my God,” he said, and then scrabbled around the desk until he came up with a vial of white powder. “Screw AIM, we’re taking this commercial. Fucking fuck. So much fucking, Matt, so much fucking.”

“Okay, well, that was helpful,” Rhodey said, pausing the video. He stepped away with his cellphone already out. “Fucking AIM,” he said under his breath as he left the sterile room.

Shaking his head, Tony scrubbed his hand across his face. They may as well have just left behind an envelope with a big label that read, “EVIDENCE OF ALL MY WRONGDOINGS RIGHT HERE.” Considering how well everything else in the lab had been labeled, Tony wouldn’t have been especially surprised. He clicked through the computer while he downloaded the hard drive, finding detailed records on the entire process. One of the Viagra Duo was apparently a neat freak, because Tony found a spreadsheet outlining every conversation they’d ever had with their benefactors.

Tony started to laugh again. “I am completely stunned that you can be so incompetently competent,” he told the screen.

“Having lots of luck?” Steve asked, peering curiously into the room.

“We can call the interrogation off,” Tony said. “Don’t even bother to give them the yellow legal pad and the pen. We’ve already got their confessions here.” He held up his USB drive for illustration. “Though it looks like what they came up with is more along the lines of fun-time recreational drug than hardcore interrogation chemical.”

“I heard Rhodey muttering about AIM on his way out the door?”

Tony pulled up the spreadsheet and leaned back so Steve could read it over his shoulder. Steve barked out a startled laugh and slapped a hand over his face. “I don’t know who’s worse. These two, or whatever idiot at AIM hired them.”

“If only all the villains kept such impeccable records,” Tony agreed, leaning subtly into Steve’s chest. “We’d be out of a job.”

“We could retire,” Steve said with a pleased hum. “We could move somewhere warm, with a beach. I could learn to surf.”  

Twisting around, Tony demanded, “How have you never learned to surf? We lived in California.”

Steve leaned down and nipped at Tony’s neck in mild rebuke. He nosed under Tony’s jaw and set a soft kiss on his pulse point. “Do you know how to surf?” he asked innocently.

Tony sniffed. “Of course not. I’m not a supersoldier.”

“Of course. Only supersoldiers surf.” He tightened his arms around Tony’s chest and rested his chin on the top of his head. “Mellow recreational drug, hm?”

“Seems to just make for good sex,” Tony replied, wiggling suggestively. “Could be fun.”

Steve chuckled. “Too bad we’re more responsible than our friends, here.”

At the sound of the lab door opening, Steve straightened up, and stepped away. Rhodey came back in, shaking his head. He pointed at the computer, not mentioning the on-mission cuddling he’d certainly seen. “I don’t suppose they mentioned any useful names?”

Sliding backwards off the stool, Tony motioned to the still-open spreadsheet. “The AIM representative was at least smart enough to give them a codename. Mr. Wine.”

“With this group, I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t a codename at all.” He shook his head, and then leaned back. “Bruce should be here in a few minutes. Let’s start packing this junk up.”

Next

[words-writ-in-starlight]

tell me more about the Animorphs DnD Au. I really just need an AU where they don't suffer and just have a good time

My buddy, me too right this second.  For those of you who are not aware, that comment is buried somewhere in this recap of Book 7.

All right, so, like, here’s a basic breakdown of how it all goes down.

It starts with Jake’s big brother Tom, who, like, listen, his parents went “keep an eye on your younger brother after school on Fridays” and Tom went “that’s cruel” and his parents went “don’t be an ass” and Tom huffed like a teenage asshole and rolled his eyes and went “FINE.”  So he decides that if he’s going to be mandatory babysitter for like four hours on Friday afternoons he’s going to do something amusing with his time, and he asks Jake if he knows anything about DnD.  Jake goes “nope!” with good-natured interest because this is his big brother, and Tom’s like “GREAT we’re going to do that recruit your friends”.  And Marco’s in on the spot because he’s a fucking nerd who’s probably done reading on DnD even though he’s never been able to actually play a campaign, and Rachel agrees on behalf of herself and Cassie because she’s exasperated with Jake and Cassie and this is an opportunity to force them to spend multiple hours together.  (Cassie is unexpectedly the major sticking point here, but her parents are like “PLEASE HAVE FRIENDS AND A LIFE OUTSIDE THE BARN” so ultimately she ends up going.)

On the first day, as they’re leaving school, Rachel grabs Jake by the arm and points subtly over his shoulder.  “Hey,” she whispers, “isn’t that Tobias?”  It is, in fact, Tobias.  Actively in the process of maybe fighting a bully for his backpack–if Tobias loses his backpack, no way is his uncle buying him a new one, and he’s also going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble, so yeah he’s gonna fight for it.  Jake and Rachel don’t know this at the time, but listen, Berensons are Berensons in any universe.  Jake ambles over, all cheerfully broad shoulders and stocky build just starting to settle into ‘teen’ rather than ‘kid,’ and silently menaces the bullies into stepping down.  And then he kind of subtly kidnaps Tobias to go with them.

(Ax moves into town a month later.  He’s living with his much-older brother who used to be a soldier and now he’s done with that and working as a computer…person.  Full disclosure, I don’t know that much about Comp Sci, but Elfangor Shamtul is a programmer and he’s the rising star.  Ax is living with him because *waves hand* better schools maybe?  IDK.  That’s how Ax shows up, and they kind of adopt him because he’s new and he joins their campaign.)

Tom, because he’s kind of a dick, declares that he won’t tell them anything about the plot, except that they all have to dual-class as modified Druids.  

(I have added a cut because this got kind of long.)

So, right, all five of them show up and Tom is like “Okay, kiddos, let’s build some characters.”

Their character designs go like this.

Jake: a very direct person in terms of combat, likes to balance strength and agility, most of his talents are in tactics and pragmatism rather than any flashy categories of fighting, so he is straight up a Fighter class in addition to the Druid thing.  He rolls acceptably well across the board, puts his highest stats into Strength and Wisdom, lowest stat into Intelligence, Tom has a field day.  At the beginning of the campaign, Jake is Neutral Good, but he slides increasingly toward Chaotic Neutral as the war progresses, despite attempts to remain True Neutral–the ultimate utilitarian alignment.

Rachel: the tank, obviously, OBVIOUSLY, a Barbarian.  She rolls four high and two low stats.  The low stats go into Dexterity and Wisdom, she puts her highest stats into, unusually, Strength and Charisma.  This proves incredibly useful the first time they’re cornered by someone and Rachel and Marco save their asses with phenomenal Bluff rolls.  She’s Chaotic Neutral from start to finish and she loves it.

Cassie: generally less combative and more interested in ensuring maximum survival of events, a healer in her free time, and an estreen, so she is a pure Druid.  She stacks her highest scores into Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma (Charisma is the lowest of her high scores because Priorities, Rachel), and her Constitution, Strength, and Dexterity are all average (like 13).  Bless her little heart, she’s the only reliably lawful character on this whole team, playing a Lawful Good character and frequently debating the moral points of affairs.

Marco: a bit of an asshole, a talented liar and tactician, but more to the point the kind of person who knows weird obscure shit and likes to fuck with the DM, so he is a Beguiler.  He rolls a 20 and puts it into Charisma, and proceeds to minmax the shit out of his character.  Mostly this is fine except for his -1 Constitution modifier.  Tom gets a huge kick out of describing in elaborate detail the damage that Marco takes.  Marco vacillates between True Neutral and Chaotic Neutral depending on the situation.

Tobias: the lookout, prefers a distance view so that he can see everyone at once, kind of a loner, and furthermore lives in the woods, OBVIOUSLY he is a Ranger.  His Con/Dex/Strength stats almost don’t matter because something goes horribly wrong during their first session–one of those ‘DM rolls dice behind books and stares at them in mild horror before guiltily looking up at player’ moments–and he gets stuck in the body of his animal companion, a red-tailed hawk.  His Intelligence is high, his Charisma is low, and Tom gives him an apology buff to make his Wisdom spectacular after the whole hawk thing.  Given that Tobias’ flexibility on a lot of issues is based on having a pretty solid grasp of his own moral code, I’m going to say Neutral Good trending toward Chaotic Good.

Ax: kind of multipurpose but more to the point I really wanted him to have a blade-using class so that he can bastardize it to fit the weird blade-tailed alien Tom offers him the chance to play, so he is a Swordmaster courtesy of Marco’s interference and Tom agreeing to let him pull some nonsense.  His Charisma…oh, it’s Bad, and plus the dice hate him.  He has phenomenal Dexterity and Intelligence, mediocre Strength, passable Constitution and Wisdom, but his Charisma is like 8, making his modifier -1, and almost every time he tries to roll for Bluff he gets like a 3.  It’s kind of hysterical.  Tom, who has A Vision, tells Ax that he has to start out by trying to play the best Lawful Neutral he can manage.  He pulls it off for like a few sessions before he starts to visibly slip to Chaotic Good without pausing for any of the in-between steps.  More realistically, though, Ax’s alignment is Jake’s Alignment, full stop.

So basically the plot of the campaign is the plot of the War, with the additional bonus hazard of actual Space Magic.  Everyone (with the obvious exception of Ax, who arrived late and is therefore a Plot Piece as well as a PC) is human, playing their own selves, and no one gets the magic/animal companion bonuses of the Druid thing–basically they only dual class as Druids for morphing, because Tom’s kind of a dick like that.  

Regarding Villains

Tom loves hamming up Visser Three, especially since it makes his moments of genuine cunning and brilliance so much more shocking.  Sometimes Eva, who played some DnD as a kid herself, guest stars as The Big Boss, and she and Tom get a huge kick out of playing their characters off each other.  Chapman is still a dick, so Tom makes him a recurring villain, and he shamelessly self-inserts Tom Berenson, Jake’s brother, as a bad guy.  Tom has whole files of the various involved plotlines, about how the Yeerks are moving and the involvement of the Andalites in everything and the tragedy that is the Hork Bajir.  

ANYWAY

This would be good happy times where the major plot outside the game is the others realizing that Tobias’ family fucking sucks.  So Ax is like “Well, my brother and I have a guest room” and so Tobias crashes at Ax and Elfangor’s sometimes, and at Rachel’s other times.  And then Elfangor finds out about the situation and basically goes “Um, no” and pseudo-adopts Tobias, and then eventually stuff goes down and Elfangor goes to Rachel’s mom and just goes “What do I have to do to get legal custody” and then Tobias has a family and he and Rachel get to have a shy adorable relationship and it’s Good.

[go-redgirl]

ANTI-TRUMP COLLUSION BY MEDIA

The Associated Press, founded in 1846 as a cooperative association of newspapers, has enjoyed a reputation for independence and fairness over the years. Lately, however, it has come under criticismfor what some see as a left/liberal bias.

Certainly, what we have just learned about its dealings with anti-Trump partisans in the Justice Department does nothing to improve our perception of the news service.

We have released two sets of heavily redacted FBI documents – 28 pages and 38 pages –about an April 11, 2017, “off-the-record” meeting set up by then-Chief of the Justice Department’s Criminal Fraud Section Andrew Weissmann.

The meeting included representatives of the DOJ, the FBI and the Associated Press in which AP reporters provided information on former Trump Campaign Director Paul Manafort, including the numeric code to Manafort’s storage locker.

Two months later, in early June, Weissmann was hired to work on Robert Mueller’s special counsel operation against President Trump. Weissman then reportedly spearheaded the subsequent investigation and prosecution of Manafort.

Included among the new documents are two typed write-ups of the meeting’s proceedings and handwritten notes taken during the meeting by two FBI special agents.

According to a June 11, 2017, FBI write-up:

The purpose of the meeting, as it was explained to SSA [supervisory special agent, redacted] was to obtain documents from the AP reporters that were related to their investigative reports on Paul Manafort.

No such documents were included in the documents released to us.

During the meeting, the AP reporters provided the FBI information about a storage locker of Manafort (the Mueller special counsel operation raided the locker on May 26, 2017):

The AP reporters advised that they had located a storage facility in Virginia that belonged to Manafort…The code to the lock on the locker is 40944859. The reporters were aware of the Unit number and address, but they declined to share that information.

The reporters shared the information that “payments for the locker were made from the DM Partners account that received money from the [Ukraine] Party of Regions.”

The notes suggest the AP pushed for criminal prosecution of Manafort:

AP believes Manafort is in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), in that Manafort send [sic] internal U. S. documents to officials in Ukraine AP has documentation proving this, as well as Manafort noting his understanding doing so would get him into trouble.

AP asked about the U.S. government charging Manafort with violating Title 18, section 1001 for lying to government officials, and have asked if the FBI has interviewed Manafort. FBI and DOJ had no comment on this question.

Also, according to the FBI write-up, “The AP reporters asked about FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] violations and they were generally told that they are enforceable.”

Although, according to the FBI write-up, “no commitments were made [by DOJ] to assist the reporters,” Andrew Weissmann asked the AP to contact foreign authorities to follow up:

[A]fter the meeting was started and it was explained to the reporters that there was nothing that the FBI could provide to them, the reporters opted to ask a series of questions to see if the FBI would provide clarification. 

No commitments were made to assist the reporters in their further investigation into the life and activities of Paul Manafort and the AP reporters understood that the meeting would be off the record.

***

They [AP reporters] reiterated what they had written in their article, which was a response from the Cypriot Anti-Money Laundering Authority (MOKAS) that they [MOKAS] had fully responded to Department of Treasury agents in response to [Treasury’s] request. The AP reporters were interested in how this arrangement worked and if the U.S. had made a formal request. FBI/DOJ did not respond, but Andrew Weissman [sic] suggested that they ask the Cypriots if they had provided everything to which they had access or if they only provided what they were legally required to provide.

***

The AP reporters asked if we [DOJ/FBI] would be willing to tell them if they were off based [sic] or on the wrong traack [sic] and they were advised that they appeared to have a good understanding of Manafort’s business dealings.

The reporters asked about any DOJ request for the assistance of foreign governments in the U.S. Government’s investigation of Manafort:

The AP reporters asked if there had been any official requests to other countries. FBI/DOJ declined to discuss specifics, except to state that the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty requests are negotiated by diplomats, so they should remain at that level.

AP reporters told the FBI about payments in the “black ledger,” a Ukrainian record of allegedly illegal off-the-books payments:

The reporters advised that their next report, which was scheduled to come out in the next day or so after the meeting, would focus on confirming, to the extent that they could payments in the so called “black ledger” that were allegedly made to Manafort.

***

The impression that their sources give is that Manafort was not precise about his finances, specifically as it related to the “black ledger.” The AP reporters calculated that he received $60 to $80 million from his work in Ukraine, during the time period the ledger was kept. According to their review of the ledger, it appears that there is a slightly lesser amount documented based on all of the entries. The AP reporters accessed a copy of the ledger online, describing it as “public” document (Agent’s note – the ledger has been published in its entirety by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, after it was given to them by Sergei Leshenko, Ukrainian RADA member [Ukrainian parliament] and investigative reporter.)

The AP reporters discussed an extensive list of issues, companies, and individuals that they felt should be investigated for possible criminal activity, including a $50,000 payment to a men’s clothing store; a 2007 meeting with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska; Loav Ltd., which was possibly incorporated by Manafort; NeoCom, which the AP reporters implied was incorporated solely to cover up money laundering; and other matters.

The reporters described an “internal U.S. work product that had been sent to Ukraine.” The reporters described it as an “internal White House document.” The FBI report stated that it “was not clear if the document was classified.”

Evidently referring to these documents, Manafort’s lawyers alleged that Weissmann provided guidance and leaked grand jury testimony to the AP reporters investigating Manafort.

This document production comes in our April, 2019 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:19-cv-00879)) filed after the FBI failed to respond to a July 5, 2018, FOIA request for:

All records concerning the April 2017 meeting between Department of Justice and FBI personnel and representatives of The Associated Press. This request includes all notes, reports, memoranda, briefing materials, or other records created in preparation for, during, and/or pursuant to the meeting.

All records of communication between any representative of the Department of Justice and any of the individuals present at the aforementioned meeting.

Under Mueller, Weissmann became known as “the architect of the case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort,” which produced no evidence of collusion between Manafort, the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. It indicted Manafort on unrelated charges.

In an October 2017 article describing Weissmann as Mueller’s “Pit Bull,” The New York Times wrote, “He is a top lieutenant to Robert S. Mueller III on the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links to the Trump campaign. Significantly, Mr. Weissmann is an expert in converting defendants into collaborators — with either tactical brilliance or overzealousness, depending on one’s perspective.” Weissman oversaw the pre-dawn home raid of Manafort in what one former federal prosecutor described as “textbook Weissmann terrorism.” Weissmann reportedly also attended Hillary Clinton’s Election Night party in New York.

In May 2019, we uncovered 73 pages of records from the DOJ containing text messages and calendar entries of Weissmann showing he led the hiring effort for the investigation that targeted President Trump.

In December 2017, we made public two productions of DOJ documents showing strong support by top DOJ officials for former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates’ refusal to enforce President Trump’s Middle East travel ban executive order. In one email, Weissmann applauds Yates, writing: “I am so proud. And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects.”

These latest shocking FBI reports evidence a corrupt collusion between the DOJ and the media, specifically The Associated Press, to target Paul Manafort. These reports are further reason for President Trump to pardon Manafort and others caught up in Mueller’s abusive web.

This new evidence strengthens the widespread belief that the media are in league with the anti-Trumpers in the administration and in the Congress.

New Benghazi Documents Confirm Clinton Email Cover-Up

Foggy Bottom, the nickname given to the State Department’s neighborhood in the District of Columbia, would seem an appropriate term for the fog its bureaucrats create and use to cover the email irregularities of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Here’s the latest. We released new Clinton emails on the Benghazi controversy that had been covered up for years and would have exposed Hillary Clinton’s email account if they had been released when the State Department first uncovered them in 2014.

The long withheld email, clearly responsive to our lawsuit seeking records concerning “talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack,” contains Clinton’s private email address and a conversation about the YouTube video that sparked the Benghazi talking points scandal (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)). Our FOIA lawsuit led directly to the disclosure of the Clinton email system in 2015.

The Clinton email cover-up led to court-ordered discovery into three specific areas: whether Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server was intended to stymie FOIA; whether the State Department’s intent to settle this case in late 2014 and early 2015 amounted to bad faith; and whether the State Department has adequately searched for records responsive to our request. The court also authorized discovery into whether the Benghazi controversy motivated the cover-up of Clinton’s email.  (The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”)

The September 2012 email chain begins with an email to Clinton at her private email address, “hdr22@clintonemail.com,” from Jacob Sullivan, Clinton’s then-senior advisor and deputy chief of staff. The email was copied to Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s then-chief of staff, and then was forwarded to then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Strategic Communications and Clinton advisor Phillipe Reines:

From: Sullivan, Jacob J

Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2012 11 :09 AM

To: ‘hdr22@clintonemail.com’ <hdr22@clintonemail.cont>

Cc: Mills, Cheryl D

Subject: Key points

HRC, Cheryl –

Below is my stab at tp’s for the Senator call. Cheryl, I’ve left the last point blank for you. These are rough but you get the point.

I look forward to sitting down and having a Hillary~to-John conversation about what we know. l know you were frustrated by the briefing we did and I’m sorry our hands were tied in that setting.

It’s important we see each other in person, but over the phone today I just wanted to make a few points.

First, we have been taking this deadly seriously, as we should. I set up the ARB in record time, with serious people on it. l will get to the bottom of all the security questions. We are also in overdrive working to track down the killers, and not just through the FBI. We will get this right.

Second, the White House and Susan were not making things up. They were going with what they were told by the IC [Intelligence community].

The real story may have been obvious to you from the start (and indeed I called it an assault by heavily armed militants in my first statement), but the IC gave us very different information. They were unanimous about it.

Let me read you an email from the day before Susan went on the shows. It provides the talking points for HPSCI [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] and for her public appearance. It’s from a very senior official at CIA, copying his counterparts at DNI [Director of National Intelligence], NCTC [National Counterterrorism Center], and FBI:

Here are the talking points …

–The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US Consulate and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.

-This assessment may change as additional information is collected and analyzed and as currently available information continues to be evaluated.

–The investigation is on-going, and the US Government is working with Libyan authorities to bring to justice those responsible for the deaths US citizens.

That is exactly what Susan said, following the guidance from the IC. She obviously got bad advice. But she was not shading the truth.

Third, you have to remember that the video WAS important. We had four embassies breached because of protests inspired by it. Cairo, Tunis, Khartoum, and Sanaa. We had serious security challenges in Pakistan and Chennai and some other places.

All this was happening at the same time. So many of the contemporaneous comments about the video weren’t referring in any way to Benghazi. Now of course even in those countries it was about much much more than the video, but the video was certainly a piece of it one we felt we had to speak to so that our allies in those countries would back us up.

(In fact, as we famously uncovered in 2014, the “talking points” that provided the basis for Susan Rice’s false statements were created by the Obama White House.)

We requested records related to the Benghazi talking points in May 2014. In July 2014, we filed suit. The Clinton email finally released this month was first identified by the State Department in September, 2014 but was withheld from us despite it specifically referencing talking points. After it was specifically described in an Office of the Inspector General report, the court ordered its production.

 It was only after we informed the State Department that we were prepared to file a motion with the court to compel production of the records that the Department relented and produced the 2012 email in question.

(In an August 22, 2019, hearing, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered production of the record in granting us significant new discovery in the case. Judge Lamberth said, “There is no FOIA exemption for political expedience, nor is there one for bureaucratic incompetence.” The judge also stated that the government has mishandled this case and the discovery of information including former Secretary Clinton’s emails so poorly that Judicial Watch may have the ability to prove they acted in “bad faith.”)

This email is a twofer – it shows Hillary Clinton misled the U.S. Senate on Benghazi and that the State Department wanted to hide the Benghazi connection to the Clinton email scheme. Rather than defending her email misconduct, the Justice Department has more than enough evidence to reopen its investigations into Hillary Clinton.

The court is considering whether to allow us to question Hillary Clinton and her top aide in person and under oath about the email and Benghazi controversies.

Last month, the State Department, under court order, finally provided us a previously hidden email, which shows top State Department officials used and were aware of Hillary Clinton’s email account.

Our discovery over the last several months found many more details about the scope of the Clinton email scandal and cover-up:

John Hackett, former Director of Information Programs and Services (IPS) testified under oath that he had raised concerns that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s staff may have “culled out 30,000” of the secretary’s “personal” emails without following strict National Archives standards. He also revealed that he believed there was interference with the formal FOIA review process related to the classification of Clinton’s Benghazi-related emails.

Heather Samuelson, Clinton’s White House liaison at the State Department, and later Clinton’s personal lawyer, admitted under oath that she was granted immunity by the Department of Justice in June 2016.

Justin Cooper, former aide to President Bill Clinton and Clinton Foundation employee who registered the domain name of the unsecure clintonemail.com server that Clinton used while serving as Secretary of State, testified he worked with Huma Abedin, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, to create the non-government email system.

In the interrogatory responses of E.W. (Bill) Priestap, assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, he stated that the agency found Clinton email records in the Obama White House, specifically, the Executive Office of the President.

Jacob “Jake” Sullivan, Clinton’s senior advisor and deputy chief of staff when she was secretary of state, testifiedthat both he and Clinton used her unsecure non-government email system to conduct official State Department business.

Eric Boswell, former assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, testified that Clinton was warned twice against using unsecure BlackBerry’s and personal emails to transmit classified material.

The Deep State has a secure home at the State Department.

Deep State Targets Trump Family, Lawyer, Journalists with Illicit Spy Op?

George Orwell call your office. Then call George Soros’ office.

Obama lieutenants – planted throughout the government – used powerful tools to spy on just about everyone not in their control. Remember UN Ambassador Samantha Power allegedly unmaskinghundreds of Americans caught up in NSA tracking?

Now, as our Corruption Chronicles blog continues to report, we have details on illicit targeting of President Trump’s son, lawyer, and key journalists – all seemingly in an effort to protect Biden and, yes, George Soros:

The State Department utilized a powerful Facebook-owned social media tracking tool linked to leftist billionaire George Soros to unlawfully monitor prominent U.S. conservative figures, journalists and persons with ties to President Donald Trump, according to an agency source. The State Department veteran identified Crowdtangle as the tool used to closely watch more than a dozen U.S. citizens, including the president’s son, personal attorney and popular television personalities such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, among others.

Last week Judicial Watch launched an investigation into the unlawful monitoring, which State Department sources say was conducted by the agency in Ukraine at the request of ousted U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, an Obama appointee. 

Judicial Watch has obtained information indicating Yovanovitch may have violated laws and government regulations by ordering subordinates to target certain U.S. persons using State Department resources. Yovanovitch reportedly ordered monitoring keyed to the following search terms: Biden, Giuliani, Soros and Yovanovitch. 

Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the State Department last week and continues gathering facts from government sources. This week Judicial Watch filed another FOIA request for information related to the State Department’s use of Crowdtangle.

A private, invitation-only engine, Crowdtangle describes itself as a leading content discovery and social monitoring platform that can help identify influencers and track rivals. It was launched in 2011 to organize activism via social media and Facebook purchased it in 2016. Crowdtangle monitors more than 5 million social media accounts and uses dashboards to track keywords, data and specific topics across platforms. For years Facebook has made Crowdtangle available to the mainstream media and in January founder and CEO Brandon Silverman announced he will give access to select academics and researchers in order to help counter misinformation and abuse of social media platforms. “To date, Crowdtangle has been available primarily to help newsrooms and media publishers understand what is happening on the platform,” Silverman writes. “We’re eager to make it available to this important new set of partners and help continue to provide more transparency into how information is being spread on social media.”

A leftwing, Soros-funded organization called Social Science Research Center (SSRC) is charged with determining who is granted access to Crowdtangle. Earlier this year Facebook announcedthat SSRC will pick researchers who will gain access to its cherished “privacy-protected” data. T

The statement assures that “Facebook did not play any role in the selection of the individuals or their projects and will have no role in directing the findings or conclusions of the research.” 

That is left up to the SSRC, which claims that selected researchers will use privacy-protected Facebook data to “study the platform’s impact on democracy worldwide” 

The nonprofit describes itself as an international organization guided by the belief that “justice, prosperity, and democracy all require better understanding of complex social, cultural, economic, and political processes.” 

In 2016 Soros’s Open Society Foundations gave the SSRC nearly $500,000 for a Latin America human rights and public health initiative and a global “equality and antidiscrimination” program.

The 2018 Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy report confirms that the State Department uses Crowdtangle and considers it an important tool for social media managers to conduct official agency business worldwide. 

The State Department’s head of Public Diplomacy training also encourages the use of Crowdtangle to educate personnel about polling data consumption and “the difference between impression and reach.” 

The State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) actually includes a link to Crowdtangle and reveals the agency uses it to track social media posts. 

Nevertheless, ordering subordinates to target certain U.S. persons, as sources say Yovanovitch did, using State Department resources would constitute a violation of laws and government regulations. 

“This is not an obscure rule, everyone in public diplomacy or public affairs knows they can’t make lists and monitor U.S. citizens unless there is a major national security reason,” a senior State Department official told Judicial Watch last week when the story broke.

[45news]

I am not a crook.Some 46 years ago, President Richard Nixon made that infamous declaration during a press conference in Orlando, Florida. While the quote is not exactly another "ask not what your country can do for you," his five words, perhaps more than anything else, came to define an era of American history. Today they are printed in countless history books as a study in irony, corruption, and holding our leaders accountable.Now, nearly half a century on, the murmurs of impeachment have started once again. And although no one can know the future, we very well may be listening to the words -- or reading the tweets -- that will write the chapters of our future history books. Here are seven quotes from the past week alone that students could be reciting in classrooms half a century from now.1\. "In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. government officials that the president of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election." -- The whistleblower complaint, declassified Sept. 26Over the past week, reports of an anonymous intelligence officer's concerns about President Trump's July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the White House's attempted cover-up of the call, went from speculative to declassified. The now-public letter begins strikingly by accusing the president of the United States of pushing a foreign leader to investigate his potential 2020 political opponent.While the identity of the whistleblower remains closely guarded, that likely won't last forever; in the words of The Washington Post, "no one expects his anonymity to last as long as Deep Throat's did." However, his name -- and place in history -- could likewise be a future AP History test question, depending on what happens next.2\. "You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now." -- President Trump, Sept. 26You are never really off the record -- just ask the Watergate conspirators. Speaking at a private event on Thursday, President Trump was caught on tape yearning for the good old days when spies were executed. Even as a "joke," the quote is shocking, something more along the lines of what a dictator might say rather than the leader of the free world.House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has argued, though, that Trump's quote was intended to get out: "That kind of incitement to violence is only going to chill other witnesses when they come forward," he said. The whistleblower already reportedly fears for his safety, and the possibility of retaliation from Trump loyalists.Then there is the fact that, as The Week's Joel Mathis points out, Trump is "the president of the United States ... We must take his words and ideas seriously."3\. "I will be the hero! These morons -- when this is over, I will be the hero." -- Rudy Giuliani, Sept. 26Perhaps more than anything else, irony gives a political quote its staying power. And while this one might not be as short and sweet as Nixon's famous line, there is a certain poetry to Rudy Giuliani's insistence of his innocence to The Atlantic.The former mayor of New York turned Trump's personal lawyer, Giuliani has been lashing-out at critics for a week. His statements, though, could potentially lead investigators to information that could make both him and his boss vulnerable. Giuliani, after all, is tangled in the Ukraine web, having allegedly attempted to "seize an unsanctioned diplomatic role [in the country] for himself," as The Washington Post reports. Likewise, in the transcript of Trump's call with Zelensky, the American president pushes his Ukrainian counterpart to coordinate with Giuliani on dredging up Joe Biden-related dirt ... multiple times.Giuliani's insistence, then, that he will "be the hero" in this narrative seems doubtful if there is any veracity to the White House's own transcript of Trump's call. An alternative Giuliani quote from The Atlantic interview that might also find its place in textbooks could be: "If this guy is a whistleblower, then I'm a whistleblower too. You should be happy for your country that I uncovered this."4\. "If that perfect phone call with the President of Ukraine isn't considered appropriate, then no future President can EVER again speak to another foreign leader!" -- President Trump, Sept. 27 Republicans are clearly struggling to spin the whistleblower complaint into a nothingburger, seeing as most aren't exactly prepared to call it "perfect."Even with Trump's claims that the call was completely "appropriate," the White House seemed to treat the conversation differently. The New York Times reported late last week that "current and former officials said the White House used a highly classified computer system accessible to only a select few officials to store transcripts of [certain] calls," including the July call with Zelensky. Why? Well, the whistleblower has alleged that the administration tried to bury Trump's conversation with the Ukrainian president -- something that wouldn't likely have been the case if the call were considered "perfect" and "appropriate" by the administration, too.5\. "If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal." -- Robert Jeffress, quoted by President Trump, Sept. 29Sometimes it's not what you say, but what you quote. On Sunday, Trump tweeted a claim by Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, who speculated that if Trump is impeached, "it will cause a Civil War."Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) slammed Trump for sharing the claim, tweeting, "I have visited nations ravaged by civil war ... I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant." But it also might be more than just an eye-popping pronouncement: "This tweet is itself an independent basis for impeachment -- a sitting president threatening civil war if Congress exercises its constitutionally authorized power," tweeted Harvard Law professor John Coates.6\. "Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser." -- President Trump, Sept. 29On Sunday, Trump claimed in a Twitter thread that he should be allowed to meet "the so-called 'Whistleblower.'" According to Brooklyn public defender Scott Hechinger, that's "grounds for impeachment, evidence of consciousness of guilt, active obstruction of justice, and just plain old unhinged and terrifying."It's also incorrect; as Hechinger adds, "the 6th Amendment Confrontation Clause does not entitle someone to 'meet' their accuser. If this was a criminal proceeding, an order of protection would already have issued. The Constitution allows -- in a criminal trial -- the right to confront on the witness stand."Trump's insistence that he meet the whistleblower also plays into a general theme of trying to expose the identity of the intelligence official, which many critics say is an intimidation tactic. It could also be literally life-threatening; the whistleblower's attorney has said "our client will be put in harm's way" were his identity to become known in the way Trump is publicly pushing for.7\. "Arrest for Treason?" -- President Trump, Sept. 30If you stop and think about it, "Trump Raises Idea of Arresting House Chairman for Treason" is an astonishing headline.While Trump's musings about arresting Schiff became an instant Twitter meme, the reality of the quote is more worrying. Trump claims that Schiff gave a summary of the transcript that "bore NO relationship to what I said on the call [with Zelensky]," although the Times writes that the summary indeed "appears to be drawn from several portions of the call, including statements from Mr. Trump to Mr. Zelensky."Joked Aaron Rupar of Vox: "What stage of authoritarianism is 'leader publicly calls for imprisonment of his political opponents'?"I'll leave that answer up to the historians.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.

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[worldtopnewsoftheday]

I am not a crook.Some 46 years ago, President Richard Nixon made that infamous declaration during a press conference in Orlando, Florida. While the quote is not exactly another "ask not what your country can do for you," his five words, perhaps more than anything else, came to define an era of American history. Today they are printed in countless history books as a study in irony, corruption, and holding our leaders accountable.Now, nearly half a century on, the murmurs of impeachment have started once again. And although no one can know the future, we very well may be listening to the words -- or reading the tweets -- that will write the chapters of our future history books. Here are seven quotes from the past week alone that students could be reciting in classrooms half a century from now.1\. "In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. government officials that the president of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election." -- The whistleblower complaint, declassified Sept. 26Over the past week, reports of an anonymous intelligence officer's concerns about President Trump's July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the White House's attempted cover-up of the call, went from speculative to declassified. The now-public letter begins strikingly by accusing the president of the United States of pushing a foreign leader to investigate his potential 2020 political opponent.While the identity of the whistleblower remains closely guarded, that likely won't last forever; in the words of The Washington Post, "no one expects his anonymity to last as long as Deep Throat's did." However, his name -- and place in history -- could likewise be a future AP History test question, depending on what happens next.2\. "You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now." -- President Trump, Sept. 26You are never really off the record -- just ask the Watergate conspirators. Speaking at a private event on Thursday, President Trump was caught on tape yearning for the good old days when spies were executed. Even as a "joke," the quote is shocking, something more along the lines of what a dictator might say rather than the leader of the free world.House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has argued, though, that Trump's quote was intended to get out: "That kind of incitement to violence is only going to chill other witnesses when they come forward," he said. The whistleblower already reportedly fears for his safety, and the possibility of retaliation from Trump loyalists.Then there is the fact that, as The Week's Joel Mathis points out, Trump is "the president of the United States ... We must take his words and ideas seriously."3\. "I will be the hero! These morons -- when this is over, I will be the hero." -- Rudy Giuliani, Sept. 26Perhaps more than anything else, irony gives a political quote its staying power. And while this one might not be as short and sweet as Nixon's famous line, there is a certain poetry to Rudy Giuliani's insistence of his innocence to The Atlantic.The former mayor of New York turned Trump's personal lawyer, Giuliani has been lashing-out at critics for a week. His statements, though, could potentially lead investigators to information that could make both him and his boss vulnerable. Giuliani, after all, is tangled in the Ukraine web, having allegedly attempted to "seize an unsanctioned diplomatic role [in the country] for himself," as The Washington Post reports. Likewise, in the transcript of Trump's call with Zelensky, the American president pushes his Ukrainian counterpart to coordinate with Giuliani on dredging up Joe Biden-related dirt ... multiple times.Giuliani's insistence, then, that he will "be the hero" in this narrative seems doubtful if there is any veracity to the White House's own transcript of Trump's call. An alternative Giuliani quote from The Atlantic interview that might also find its place in textbooks could be: "If this guy is a whistleblower, then I'm a whistleblower too. You should be happy for your country that I uncovered this."4\. "If that perfect phone call with the President of Ukraine isn't considered appropriate, then no future President can EVER again speak to another foreign leader!" -- President Trump, Sept. 27 Republicans are clearly struggling to spin the whistleblower complaint into a nothingburger, seeing as most aren't exactly prepared to call it "perfect."Even with Trump's claims that the call was completely "appropriate," the White House seemed to treat the conversation differently. The New York Times reported late last week that "current and former officials said the White House used a highly classified computer system accessible to only a select few officials to store transcripts of [certain] calls," including the July call with Zelensky. Why? Well, the whistleblower has alleged that the administration tried to bury Trump's conversation with the Ukrainian president -- something that wouldn't likely have been the case if the call were considered "perfect" and "appropriate" by the administration, too.5\. "If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal." -- Robert Jeffress, quoted by President Trump, Sept. 29Sometimes it's not what you say, but what you quote. On Sunday, Trump tweeted a claim by Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, who speculated that if Trump is impeached, "it will cause a Civil War."Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) slammed Trump for sharing the claim, tweeting, "I have visited nations ravaged by civil war ... I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant." But it also might be more than just an eye-popping pronouncement: "This tweet is itself an independent basis for impeachment -- a sitting president threatening civil war if Congress exercises its constitutionally authorized power," tweeted Harvard Law professor John Coates.6\. "Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser." -- President Trump, Sept. 29On Sunday, Trump claimed in a Twitter thread that he should be allowed to meet "the so-called 'Whistleblower.'" According to Brooklyn public defender Scott Hechinger, that's "grounds for impeachment, evidence of consciousness of guilt, active obstruction of justice, and just plain old unhinged and terrifying."It's also incorrect; as Hechinger adds, "the 6th Amendment Confrontation Clause does not entitle someone to 'meet' their accuser. If this was a criminal proceeding, an order of protection would already have issued. The Constitution allows -- in a criminal trial -- the right to confront on the witness stand."Trump's insistence that he meet the whistleblower also plays into a general theme of trying to expose the identity of the intelligence official, which many critics say is an intimidation tactic. It could also be literally life-threatening; the whistleblower's attorney has said "our client will be put in harm's way" were his identity to become known in the way Trump is publicly pushing for.7\. "Arrest for Treason?" -- President Trump, Sept. 30If you stop and think about it, "Trump Raises Idea of Arresting House Chairman for Treason" is an astonishing headline.While Trump's musings about arresting Schiff became an instant Twitter meme, the reality of the quote is more worrying. Trump claims that Schiff gave a summary of the transcript that "bore NO relationship to what I said on the call [with Zelensky]," although the Times writes that the summary indeed "appears to be drawn from several portions of the call, including statements from Mr. Trump to Mr. Zelensky."Joked Aaron Rupar of Vox: "What stage of authoritarianism is 'leader publicly calls for imprisonment of his political opponents'?"I'll leave that answer up to the historians.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.

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[tendance-news]

I am not a crook.Some 46 years ago, President Richard Nixon made that infamous declaration during a press conference in Orlando, Florida. While the quote is not exactly another "ask not what your country can do for you," his five words, perhaps more than anything else, came to define an era of American history. Today they are printed in countless history books as a study in irony, corruption, and holding our leaders accountable.Now, nearly half a century on, the murmurs of impeachment have started once again. And although no one can know the future, we very well may be listening to the words -- or reading the tweets -- that will write the chapters of our future history books. Here are seven quotes from the past week alone that students could be reciting in classrooms half a century from now.1\. "In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. government officials that the president of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election." -- The whistleblower complaint, declassified Sept. 26Over the past week, reports of an anonymous intelligence officer's concerns about President Trump's July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the White House's attempted cover-up of the call, went from speculative to declassified. The now-public letter begins strikingly by accusing the president of the United States of pushing a foreign leader to investigate his potential 2020 political opponent.While the identity of the whistleblower remains closely guarded, that likely won't last forever; in the words of The Washington Post, "no one expects his anonymity to last as long as Deep Throat's did." However, his name -- and place in history -- could likewise be a future AP History test question, depending on what happens next.2\. "You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now." -- President Trump, Sept. 26You are never really off the record -- just ask the Watergate conspirators. Speaking at a private event on Thursday, President Trump was caught on tape yearning for the good old days when spies were executed. Even as a "joke," the quote is shocking, something more along the lines of what a dictator might say rather than the leader of the free world.House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has argued, though, that Trump's quote was intended to get out: "That kind of incitement to violence is only going to chill other witnesses when they come forward," he said. The whistleblower already reportedly fears for his safety, and the possibility of retaliation from Trump loyalists.Then there is the fact that, as The Week's Joel Mathis points out, Trump is "the president of the United States ... We must take his words and ideas seriously."3\. "I will be the hero! These morons -- when this is over, I will be the hero." -- Rudy Giuliani, Sept. 26Perhaps more than anything else, irony gives a political quote its staying power. And while this one might not be as short and sweet as Nixon's famous line, there is a certain poetry to Rudy Giuliani's insistence of his innocence to The Atlantic.The former mayor of New York turned Trump's personal lawyer, Giuliani has been lashing-out at critics for a week. His statements, though, could potentially lead investigators to information that could make both him and his boss vulnerable. Giuliani, after all, is tangled in the Ukraine web, having allegedly attempted to "seize an unsanctioned diplomatic role [in the country] for himself," as The Washington Post reports. Likewise, in the transcript of Trump's call with Zelensky, the American president pushes his Ukrainian counterpart to coordinate with Giuliani on dredging up Joe Biden-related dirt ... multiple times.Giuliani's insistence, then, that he will "be the hero" in this narrative seems doubtful if there is any veracity to the White House's own transcript of Trump's call. An alternative Giuliani quote from The Atlantic interview that might also find its place in textbooks could be: "If this guy is a whistleblower, then I'm a whistleblower too. You should be happy for your country that I uncovered this."4\. "If that perfect phone call with the President of Ukraine isn't considered appropriate, then no future President can EVER again speak to another foreign leader!" -- President Trump, Sept. 27 Republicans are clearly struggling to spin the whistleblower complaint into a nothingburger, seeing as most aren't exactly prepared to call it "perfect."Even with Trump's claims that the call was completely "appropriate," the White House seemed to treat the conversation differently. The New York Times reported late last week that "current and former officials said the White House used a highly classified computer system accessible to only a select few officials to store transcripts of [certain] calls," including the July call with Zelensky. Why? Well, the whistleblower has alleged that the administration tried to bury Trump's conversation with the Ukrainian president -- something that wouldn't likely have been the case if the call were considered "perfect" and "appropriate" by the administration, too.5\. "If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal." -- Robert Jeffress, quoted by President Trump, Sept. 29Sometimes it's not what you say, but what you quote. On Sunday, Trump tweeted a claim by Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, who speculated that if Trump is impeached, "it will cause a Civil War."Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) slammed Trump for sharing the claim, tweeting, "I have visited nations ravaged by civil war ... I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant." But it also might be more than just an eye-popping pronouncement: "This tweet is itself an independent basis for impeachment -- a sitting president threatening civil war if Congress exercises its constitutionally authorized power," tweeted Harvard Law professor John Coates.6\. "Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser." -- President Trump, Sept. 29On Sunday, Trump claimed in a Twitter thread that he should be allowed to meet "the so-called 'Whistleblower.'" According to Brooklyn public defender Scott Hechinger, that's "grounds for impeachment, evidence of consciousness of guilt, active obstruction of justice, and just plain old unhinged and terrifying."It's also incorrect; as Hechinger adds, "the 6th Amendment Confrontation Clause does not entitle someone to 'meet' their accuser. If this was a criminal proceeding, an order of protection would already have issued. The Constitution allows -- in a criminal trial -- the right to confront on the witness stand."Trump's insistence that he meet the whistleblower also plays into a general theme of trying to expose the identity of the intelligence official, which many critics say is an intimidation tactic. It could also be literally life-threatening; the whistleblower's attorney has said "our client will be put in harm's way" were his identity to become known in the way Trump is publicly pushing for.7\. "Arrest for Treason?" -- President Trump, Sept. 30If you stop and think about it, "Trump Raises Idea of Arresting House Chairman for Treason" is an astonishing headline.While Trump's musings about arresting Schiff became an instant Twitter meme, the reality of the quote is more worrying. Trump claims that Schiff gave a summary of the transcript that "bore NO relationship to what I said on the call [with Zelensky]," although the Times writes that the summary indeed "appears to be drawn from several portions of the call, including statements from Mr. Trump to Mr. Zelensky."Joked Aaron Rupar of Vox: "What stage of authoritarianism is 'leader publicly calls for imprisonment of his political opponents'?"I'll leave that answer up to the historians.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.

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[courtneytincher]

The Question India and Pakistan Don't Want to Ask the Residents of Disputed Kashmir

If the CIA is watching India and Pakistan now, it will have to do better than it did in 1998.In 1998, the CIA subjected India to strict surveillance to ensure it was complying with its commitment not to test nuclear weapons. The agency used satellites, communications intercepts and agents to watch the nuclear facility at Pokhran in Rajasthan state. India could not detonate warheads, which would inevitably lead Pakistan to follow suit, without the United States knowing in advance. Or so the United States thought.Washington went into shock on May 11, 1998, when Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced that his country had just detonated not one, but five nuclear warheads at Pokhran. "India is now a nuclear power state," Vajpayee declared. R. Jeffrey Smith reported two days later in The Washington Post that CIA analysts responsible for monitoring India’s nuclear program "had not expected the tests and were not on alert, several officials said. They were, according to one senior official, asleep at their homes and did not see the (satellite) pictures until they arrived at work in the morning." U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby called the negligence "the biggest failure of our intelligence-gathering agencies in the past 10 years or more." Pakistan responded by testing five of its nuclear bombs on May 28. Pandora’s box was wide open, threatening mass destruction to the Asian subcontinent if the Pakistani and Indian armies squared off along the Line of Control that separated their forces in the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir. That happened a year later when Pakistani paramilitaries masquerading as indigenous Kashmiri rebel jihadists penetrated the Line of Control in Kashmir’s Kargil region. The Indian army confronted them, and U.S. intelligence detected Pakistan moving tactical nuclear weapons onto the battlefield. American diplomat Bruce Reidel wrote in his informative book, Avoiding Armageddon: America, India, and Pakistan to the Brink and Back, "The last war that India and Pakistan fought, over Kargil, threated to expand to a nuclear conflict." It didn’t go nuclear, following U.S. President Bill Clinton’s demand that Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif withdraw his forces. It was a close call.A Matter of International ConcernIf the CIA is watching India and Pakistan now, it will have to do better than it did in 1998. In 2019, with passions high over India’s abrogation of Kashmir’s legal, if fictitious, autonomy, the outcome would not be waking up to discover one side or the other had tested weapons. It would be the sight of nuclear war taking millions of lives. Although the stakes in Kashmir could not be higher, the United States and much of the international community call the dispute India’s "internal affair" or a "bilateral" issue between India and Pakistan. It isn’t. A potential nuclear conflagration cannot be anything other than a matter of international peace and security. The Indian and Pakistani armed forces possess both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, which local commanders could use on the battlefield in populated areas. This would be the first use in war of atomic weapons since the U.S. destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.The possibility of the conflict going nuclear may have increased on Aug. 16 when Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh seemed to abandon India’s "no first use" doctrine when he tweeted that "India has strictly adhered to this doctrine. What happens in the future depends on the circumstances." The circumstances are not hopeful. Correspondents for The New York Times in Kashmir reported meeting a herdsman beside his flock in the Kashmiri capital, Srinigar:As a car carrying a reporter slowed down to approach him, he sprang up and jogged to the window."We are ready to pick up guns," he said, unprompted.If the decadeslong armed rebellion in Kashmir grows more intense in response to India’s revocation of the region’s autonomy and its imposition of a total security lockdown, India will blame Pakistan, which in years past supported Kashmiri insurgents. Imran Khan, who became Pakistan’s prime minister in August 2018, was not involved in his predecessors’ interference in Indian-controlled Kashmir.Seeking a Moderating VoiceFollowing Modi's clampdown in Kashmir, Khan has sought mediation support from U.S. President Donald Trump (who had offered to mediate when he met Khan at the White House in July), the United Nations, fellow Muslim leaders and countries that might influence Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His pleas, he recently told me over the telephone, fell on deaf ears. His problem is how to avoid war while defending the people of Kashmir, who are overwhelmingly Muslim in India’s only Muslim-majority state. Muslims throughout India, who have been subjected to new tests to prove their right to citizenship, are living in fear of Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.India and Pakistan came to blows last February, following an insurgent attack on Indian troops in Kashmir. The Pakistanis downed an Indian fighter jet and captured its pilot, Abhinandan Varthaman. When Khan returned the Indian pilot on March 1, Modi did not acknowledge his conciliatory gesture. Nor has his government been willing to discuss Kashmir, whose people were promised a plebiscite on their future by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1947. The vote never took place, but several wars have. The question is, what do the people of Kashmir — those in the Indian-held two-thirds of the region, the Pakistani-held western third and the Hindu Kashmiris who were expelled from their homes in 1947 and are still officially displaced — want? No one is asking them, but that may be the only way to save them, and the world, from nuclear war.The Question That Never Gets Asked About Kashmir is republished with the permission of Stratfor Worldview, a geopolitical intelligence and advisory firm.Image: Reuters.

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If the CIA is watching India and Pakistan now, it will have to do better than it did in 1998.In 1998, the CIA subjected India to strict surveillance to ensure it was complying with its commitment not to test nuclear weapons. The agency used satellites, communications intercepts and agents to watch the nuclear facility at Pokhran in Rajasthan state. India could not detonate warheads, which would inevitably lead Pakistan to follow suit, without the United States knowing in advance. Or so the United States thought.Washington went into shock on May 11, 1998, when Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced that his country had just detonated not one, but five nuclear warheads at Pokhran. "India is now a nuclear power state," Vajpayee declared. R. Jeffrey Smith reported two days later in The Washington Post that CIA analysts responsible for monitoring India’s nuclear program "had not expected the tests and were not on alert, several officials said. They were, according to one senior official, asleep at their homes and did not see the (satellite) pictures until they arrived at work in the morning." U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby called the negligence "the biggest failure of our intelligence-gathering agencies in the past 10 years or more." Pakistan responded by testing five of its nuclear bombs on May 28. Pandora’s box was wide open, threatening mass destruction to the Asian subcontinent if the Pakistani and Indian armies squared off along the Line of Control that separated their forces in the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir. That happened a year later when Pakistani paramilitaries masquerading as indigenous Kashmiri rebel jihadists penetrated the Line of Control in Kashmir’s Kargil region. The Indian army confronted them, and U.S. intelligence detected Pakistan moving tactical nuclear weapons onto the battlefield. American diplomat Bruce Reidel wrote in his informative book, Avoiding Armageddon: America, India, and Pakistan to the Brink and Back, "The last war that India and Pakistan fought, over Kargil, threated to expand to a nuclear conflict." It didn’t go nuclear, following U.S. President Bill Clinton’s demand that Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif withdraw his forces. It was a close call.A Matter of International ConcernIf the CIA is watching India and Pakistan now, it will have to do better than it did in 1998. In 2019, with passions high over India’s abrogation of Kashmir’s legal, if fictitious, autonomy, the outcome would not be waking up to discover one side or the other had tested weapons. It would be the sight of nuclear war taking millions of lives. Although the stakes in Kashmir could not be higher, the United States and much of the international community call the dispute India’s "internal affair" or a "bilateral" issue between India and Pakistan. It isn’t. A potential nuclear conflagration cannot be anything other than a matter of international peace and security. The Indian and Pakistani armed forces possess both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, which local commanders could use on the battlefield in populated areas. This would be the first use in war of atomic weapons since the U.S. destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.The possibility of the conflict going nuclear may have increased on Aug. 16 when Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh seemed to abandon India’s "no first use" doctrine when he tweeted that "India has strictly adhered to this doctrine. What happens in the future depends on the circumstances." The circumstances are not hopeful. Correspondents for The New York Times in Kashmir reported meeting a herdsman beside his flock in the Kashmiri capital, Srinigar:As a car carrying a reporter slowed down to approach him, he sprang up and jogged to the window."We are ready to pick up guns," he said, unprompted.If the decadeslong armed rebellion in Kashmir grows more intense in response to India’s revocation of the region’s autonomy and its imposition of a total security lockdown, India will blame Pakistan, which in years past supported Kashmiri insurgents. Imran Khan, who became Pakistan’s prime minister in August 2018, was not involved in his predecessors’ interference in Indian-controlled Kashmir.Seeking a Moderating VoiceFollowing Modi's clampdown in Kashmir, Khan has sought mediation support from U.S. President Donald Trump (who had offered to mediate when he met Khan at the White House in July), the United Nations, fellow Muslim leaders and countries that might influence Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His pleas, he recently told me over the telephone, fell on deaf ears. His problem is how to avoid war while defending the people of Kashmir, who are overwhelmingly Muslim in India’s only Muslim-majority state. Muslims throughout India, who have been subjected to new tests to prove their right to citizenship, are living in fear of Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.India and Pakistan came to blows last February, following an insurgent attack on Indian troops in Kashmir. The Pakistanis downed an Indian fighter jet and captured its pilot, Abhinandan Varthaman. When Khan returned the Indian pilot on March 1, Modi did not acknowledge his conciliatory gesture. Nor has his government been willing to discuss Kashmir, whose people were promised a plebiscite on their future by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1947. The vote never took place, but several wars have. The question is, what do the people of Kashmir — those in the Indian-held two-thirds of the region, the Pakistani-held western third and the Hindu Kashmiris who were expelled from their homes in 1947 and are still officially displaced — want? No one is asking them, but that may be the only way to save them, and the world, from nuclear war.The Question That Never Gets Asked About Kashmir is republished with the permission of Stratfor Worldview, a geopolitical intelligence and advisory firm.Image: Reuters.

August 25, 2019 at 02:45AM via IFTTT

[bisoroblog]

How Data Privacy Lessons in Alternative Reality Games Can Help Kids In Real Life

Ubiquitous social media platforms—including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram—have created a venue for people to share and connect with others. We use these services by clicking “I Agree” on Terms of Service screens, trading off some of our private and personal data for seemingly free services. While these services say data collection helps create a better user experience, that data is also potentially exploitable.  

The news about how third parties obtain and use Facebook users’ data to wage political campaigns and the mounting evidence of election interference have shined a spotlight on just how secure our data is when we share online. Educating youth about data security can fall under the larger umbrella of digital citizenship, such as social media uses and misuses and learning how not to embarrass or endanger oneself while using the internet. But few resources compare to actually experiencing a data and privacy breach.

To ensure that students learn about online privacy and data security, high school English language arts teachers John Fallon in Connecticut and Paul Darvasi (who also reports for MindShift) in Toronto co-created Blind Protocol, an alternate reality game. ARGs blend fiction with the real world by creating narratives and puzzles that take participants deeper into the story by way of their actions. Fallon and Darvasi’s ARG goal was not to inform students on how to actually hack or spy; rather, they use game tactics to teach about the vulnerability of their data.

“Every decision and click you make is being recorded and scraped by somebody who doesn’t have your privacy and interests at heart,” Fallon says to his students. “Think carefully about whether you want your cookie crumbs to be spread.”

John Fallon’s students create work that will earn them faux bitcoins that can be used for purchasing and launching protocols against the other team so they can uncover their identities. (Courtesy of John Fallon)

HOW ALTERNATE REALITY BEGINS

The ARG unit starts with the viewing of several privacy-focused films, including the Edward Snowden documentary “Citizenfour,” PBS Frontline’s “The United States of Secrets,” which is about the National Security Administration, and the film “Terms and Conditions May Apply.”

When the teachers are ready to begin the ARG — Fallon in Connecticut with his Fairfield Country Day School students and Darvasi in Toronto with his Royal St. George’s College pupils —  students start out by viewing a TED Talk about online privacy and data surveillance. (The two classes are experiencing the ARG separately and the students are unaware of each other’s existence, until they eventually interact halfway through the four-week unit.)

“All of a sudden, I get a phone call,” Darvasi said. Fallon gets the same fake phone call, too, as each follows the same setup. Each teacher then steps outside his classroom, leaving the students alone. Then the video restarts, seemingly gets hacked and a voice urges students to check their email. Students then find an email from a mysterious entity named HORUS that has an email with the school domain address. The message from HORUS contains a video message with instructions for the ARG.  

Students are then given a series of clues that unlock more clues as the game progresses. For example, clues in the email lead students to four canopic jars containing USB drives. Details on the jars unlock access to the contents of the password-protected USB drives. The clues within the drives lead students to a game manual buried somewhere on campus that allows them to  unlock more clues.

In the second week, students come up with user profiles on a PDF that include four details — a self-selected image, nickname, symbol and motto — and turn them into their teacher, who acts as a conduit for HORUS. Several days later, much to their shock, according to the teachers, the students find a stash of profiles delivered by HORUS that include photos, nicknames, symbols and mottos — but the profiles are not their own. They are surprised to discover that, somewhere else in the world, HORUS has clearly led another group of students through the same steps. The questions is: Who are they and where are they?

The students’ game goal is to uncover the location and identities of their newly discovered counterparts. The process of uncovering this data is the win condition of the game, and the central mechanic that drives student engagement and learning.

“John and I play dumb,” said Darvasi, who said it’s up to the students to solve the game while the teachers act as intermediaries. “We tell the students we know a little more than you do. Obviously, they know we’re pulling the wool over their eyes and we’re in on it, but they still happily play along.”

A clue for a side mission was planted at the school library inside a digital privacy book, “I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy” by Lori Andrews. (Courtesy of Paul Darvasi)

In the process of uncovering data about the other students with four details and additional tools, students learn about how much data people, especially teens, reveal about themselves online and how little information it takes to identify someone.

LAUNCHING PROTOCOLS

Through an additional series of clues, students are led to another important tool to unlock the game: a catalog of 20 protocols. Inspired by the NSA ANT catalog that detailed the types of protocols that can be launched against a target for cyber surveillance (with names such as GOPHERSET and COTTONMOUTH-1), Darvasi and Fallon created their own catalog from which students can purchase protocols with faux cryptocurrency they’re given at the start of the game. No student has enough to buy a protocol on their own, so students have to pool their money and make selections strategically as a group.  

For example, Darvasi’s students in Toronto can pool together 55 faux bitcoins to purchase and launch the BOTTING protocol against an opponent. The student targeted at Fallon’s school in Connecticut would then have 48 hours to record audio of 10 words of Darvasi’s students choosing and send it back to them through an intermediary (Darvasi or Fallon). For a higher price of 65 faux bitcoins, students can launch MORPHLING, which would give the opponent 48 hours to record a one-minute video explaining three ways to stay safe while using Facebook, while making their school mascot (or a close approximation of) appear in the video in some way during the entire minute.

Ultimately, the students on the receiving end of the protocol are trying to comply with the request while revealing as little information as possible. The goal is to avoid having their true identities revealed.

In an example of how snippets of data can reveal a bigger picture, students launched a desktop protocol, in which the opponent is required to take a screenshot of their own computer desktop. The student whose screenshot was submitted left his first name on one file and last name on another document that was visible. Opponents searched for that student’s name and identified their Facebook profile — where he was wearing his school colors — and won.

One of several clues planted near Darvasi’s school that helped students advance in the game. (Courtesy of Paul Darvasi)

MAKING LEARNING REAL

Running the game with two different groups imbues students with the sensation of online vulnerability without actually putting anyone’s real-life data at risk. The two teachers run the game together, but are exploring playing with more classes around the world.

Ultimately, the teachers’ learning goal is to drive home a deeper understanding of what it takes to maintain good online security and privacy practices. More than how, students learn why they should be careful about what they post on social media. “Students learn why they must change passwords, and why they should be careful about their digital footprints,” Fallon said.  

Fallon and Darvasi carefully mediate the entire experience, pulling the game’s strings and levers in the background, as students play in class. “The game is metaphorical, not real—but the impact is,” said Fallon, who now teaches at a different school. Students know they are in a game and that their actual identities are safe. “If a group of strangers from another country only needed a street sign and your school colors to figure out where you are, think about how vulnerable you are online.”

How Data Privacy Lessons in Alternative Reality Games Can Help Kids In Real Life published first on https://dlbusinessnow.tumblr.com/

[perfectzablog]

How Data Privacy Lessons in Alternative Reality Games Can Help Kids In Real Life

Ubiquitous social media platforms—including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram—have created a venue for people to share and connect with others. We use these services by clicking “I Agree” on Terms of Service screens, trading off some of our private and personal data for seemingly free services. While these services say data collection helps create a better user experience, that data is also potentially exploitable.  

The news about how third parties obtain and use Facebook users’ data to wage political campaigns and the mounting evidence of election interference have shined a spotlight on just how secure our data is when we share online. Educating youth about data security can fall under the larger umbrella of digital citizenship, such as social media uses and misuses and learning how not to embarrass or endanger oneself while using the internet. But few resources compare to actually experiencing a data and privacy breach.

To ensure that students learn about online privacy and data security, high school English language arts teachers John Fallon in Connecticut and Paul Darvasi (who also reports for MindShift) in Toronto co-created Blind Protocol, an alternate reality game. ARGs blend fiction with the real world by creating narratives and puzzles that take participants deeper into the story by way of their actions. Fallon and Darvasi’s ARG goal was not to inform students on how to actually hack or spy; rather, they use game tactics to teach about the vulnerability of their data.

“Every decision and click you make is being recorded and scraped by somebody who doesn’t have your privacy and interests at heart,” Fallon says to his students. “Think carefully about whether you want your cookie crumbs to be spread.”

John Fallon’s students create work that will earn them faux bitcoins that can be used for purchasing and launching protocols against the other team so they can uncover their identities. (Courtesy of John Fallon)

HOW ALTERNATE REALITY BEGINS

The ARG unit starts with the viewing of several privacy-focused films, including the Edward Snowden documentary “Citizenfour,” PBS Frontline’s “The United States of Secrets,” which is about the National Security Administration, and the film “Terms and Conditions May Apply.”

When the teachers are ready to begin the ARG — Fallon in Connecticut with his Fairfield Country Day School students and Darvasi in Toronto with his Royal St. George’s College pupils —  students start out by viewing a TED Talk about online privacy and data surveillance. (The two classes are experiencing the ARG separately and the students are unaware of each other’s existence, until they eventually interact halfway through the four-week unit.)

“All of a sudden, I get a phone call,” Darvasi said. Fallon gets the same fake phone call, too, as each follows the same setup. Each teacher then steps outside his classroom, leaving the students alone. Then the video restarts, seemingly gets hacked and a voice urges students to check their email. Students then find an email from a mysterious entity named HORUS that has an email with the school domain address. The message from HORUS contains a video message with instructions for the ARG.  

Students are then given a series of clues that unlock more clues as the game progresses. For example, clues in the email lead students to four canopic jars containing USB drives. Details on the jars unlock access to the contents of the password-protected USB drives. The clues within the drives lead students to a game manual buried somewhere on campus that allows them to  unlock more clues.

In the second week, students come up with user profiles on a PDF that include four details — a self-selected image, nickname, symbol and motto — and turn them into their teacher, who acts as a conduit for HORUS. Several days later, much to their shock, according to the teachers, the students find a stash of profiles delivered by HORUS that include photos, nicknames, symbols and mottos — but the profiles are not their own. They are surprised to discover that, somewhere else in the world, HORUS has clearly led another group of students through the same steps. The questions is: Who are they and where are they?

The students’ game goal is to uncover the location and identities of their newly discovered counterparts. The process of uncovering this data is the win condition of the game, and the central mechanic that drives student engagement and learning.

“John and I play dumb,” said Darvasi, who said it’s up to the students to solve the game while the teachers act as intermediaries. “We tell the students we know a little more than you do. Obviously, they know we’re pulling the wool over their eyes and we’re in on it, but they still happily play along.”

A clue for a side mission was planted at the school library inside a digital privacy book, “I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy” by Lori Andrews. (Courtesy of Paul Darvasi)

In the process of uncovering data about the other students with four details and additional tools, students learn about how much data people, especially teens, reveal about themselves online and how little information it takes to identify someone.

LAUNCHING PROTOCOLS

Through an additional series of clues, students are led to another important tool to unlock the game: a catalog of 20 protocols. Inspired by the NSA ANT catalog that detailed the types of protocols that can be launched against a target for cyber surveillance (with names such as GOPHERSET and COTTONMOUTH-1), Darvasi and Fallon created their own catalog from which students can purchase protocols with faux cryptocurrency they’re given at the start of the game. No student has enough to buy a protocol on their own, so students have to pool their money and make selections strategically as a group.  

For example, Darvasi’s students in Toronto can pool together 55 faux bitcoins to purchase and launch the BOTTING protocol against an opponent. The student targeted at Fallon’s school in Connecticut would then have 48 hours to record audio of 10 words of Darvasi’s students choosing and send it back to them through an intermediary (Darvasi or Fallon). For a higher price of 65 faux bitcoins, students can launch MORPHLING, which would give the opponent 48 hours to record a one-minute video explaining three ways to stay safe while using Facebook, while making their school mascot (or a close approximation of) appear in the video in some way during the entire minute.

Ultimately, the students on the receiving end of the protocol are trying to comply with the request while revealing as little information as possible. The goal is to avoid having their true identities revealed.

In an example of how snippets of data can reveal a bigger picture, students launched a desktop protocol, in which the opponent is required to take a screenshot of their own computer desktop. The student whose screenshot was submitted left his first name on one file and last name on another document that was visible. Opponents searched for that student’s name and identified their Facebook profile — where he was wearing his school colors — and won.

One of several clues planted near Darvasi’s school that helped students advance in the game. (Courtesy of Paul Darvasi)

MAKING LEARNING REAL

Running the game with two different groups imbues students with the sensation of online vulnerability without actually putting anyone’s real-life data at risk. The two teachers run the game together, but are exploring playing with more classes around the world.

Ultimately, the teachers’ learning goal is to drive home a deeper understanding of what it takes to maintain good online security and privacy practices. More than how, students learn why they should be careful about what they post on social media. “Students learn why they must change passwords, and why they should be careful about their digital footprints,” Fallon said.  

Fallon and Darvasi carefully mediate the entire experience, pulling the game’s strings and levers in the background, as students play in class. “The game is metaphorical, not real—but the impact is,” said Fallon, who now teaches at a different school. Students know they are in a game and that their actual identities are safe. “If a group of strangers from another country only needed a street sign and your school colors to figure out where you are, think about how vulnerable you are online.”

How Data Privacy Lessons in Alternative Reality Games Can Help Kids In Real Life published first on https://greatpricecourse.tumblr.com/

[mylifeatwar]

Book 2, Chapter 1, Page 28

Archived Text Follows:

Hello Everyone,

Here we get to see some action from the folks over at IFS. As we see more of each of our three Free Market Security Companies I think they’ll become easier to distinguish, both visually and tactically.

‘Immediate Force Solutions: Because executive problems require executive solutions.’

Thanks for reading!

– Luther out

Comment Text Follows:

PlaintextMan - Somebody set up them the bomb!

Grudgesettler - IFS is striking back. Had to double check to make sure, but they were the ones that went off the radar, while Sumner got whooped. Left wondering if they tried a conventional defense first, and swapped tactics after a) it became apparent what they were doing wasn’t going to work, and b) they knew Mega Fun Foods was going to keep paying them. Looking forward to seeing more of our beloved mercs once again. I miss the shark folk.

CaptEndo - These people have never heard of mechanized warfare or full spectrum integration have they? Joint arms tactics? The Dhuvalians seem to be stuck in the equivalent of Napoleonic tactics and philosophy, from their uniforms to the close order foot marching of columns of infantry ( not even motorized transport!) to the noble dominated Cavalry equivalent of the LIMB forces. A US heavy expeditionary force from our world would likely clean their clock in spite of their technology.

nweismuller - It’s true, they appear to have very poor combined-arms doctrine. And I’ve observed before that their primary infantry weapon seems to be very poorly-designed for being able to *aim* when firing at the enemy. Now, this overspecialisation as anti-LIMB prybars, essentially, might be understandable if they think of infantry opposition in terms of big Napoleonic formations, where poor firing accuracy is less of a drawback… this actually suddenly explains that bit of kit they use.

CaptEndo - Made the same observation, though a heads up or holosight could make a polearm shaped firearm viable. Not especially effective or efficient, but useable. Of course, too much realism would automatically interfere in any mecha based story. Ground pressure alone would make them practically unusable.

CaptEndo -  Also their use of wheeled armored vehicles with almost a tricycle configuration. Vey limited off road mobility makes them effectively very slow targets with little tactical utility. Useful for occupations and peacetime or low intensity warfare, perhaps. Just like Strikers and MRAPs. They have their usefulness, so long as you aren’t in a hot war.

nweismuller - A HUD might make it more effective, but we’ve seen that Dhuvalian infantry have nothing over their eyes. I think we’re just going to have to accept that the firing accuracy of Dhuvalian infantry is going to be comically poor.

Matti - “Unconventional tactics”? To me that looks like infantry ambush straight from the BOOK! Hey Dhuvalians, use some recon platoons with minesweepers, hey!

folti - They can be unconventional for the Dhuvalians. If their previous conflict(s) were with similarly equipped foes, following a similar, more restricted doctrine*, they are mentally unprepared for tactics that are standard issue today. Remember, depending on the doctrine of the day and the available technology, tactical ambushes were either undoable (Napoleonic line infantry are nothing but an uncontrollable armed rabble outside of formation, in formation it’s too slow and unflexible to do it), limited to very specific units (light cav, like hussars, but they might be of limited use) or simply standard issue warfare (like steppe nomads and other highly mobile forces, like plains Indians in America). * looks like, it’s centered around man-to-man combat by LIMBS of the nobility, where all the other kind of troops are only there for secure the battlefield and capture/rescue pilots of downed limbs. That’d explain why infantry have an oversized can opener for individual weapon. Heck I wouldn’t be surprised, that ransoming the downed pilots, like it was the standard practice in the medieval period for knights and nobility is their biggest goal in combat, not working together to win the battle as a well oiled warmachine, like the mercenary armies and later professional armies that replaced them historically. Also why they want to send an on Duke back to the battlefield in his personal LIMB… There is lots of historical parallell hiding here, if you look at it …

SteelRaven - Dhuvalian’s military seem to have become complacent, thinking they could simple chase the mercenaries off ‘their’ land and not prepared for a real fight after one major ‘shock and awe’ like offensive. While the Dhuvalian Limb pilots may have all the confidence in the world, I’m sure the infantry and light armor personnel must be scared as hell right now.

folti - Probably. Skills and combat readiness atrophying over time due to lack of training and funding is not a new phenomenon. Outside of their LIMB pilots who are part of the feudal nobility.

Iarei - Whenever you hear someone object – Those cowards fight with “X” ! Remember; it’s about as frequently true that those cowards WIN with “X”.

PlaintextMan -  A valuable lesson I learned from a number of strategy games: If you’re not fighting dirty enough, you’re not winning!

Hornet -  There is no “X” until one side gets it’s hands tied in bureaucratic cow pies...

CaptEndo -  Until the side with the greater committable resources adapts to the “X” strategy or tactic. If they cannot divert enough resources to the conflict, then adapting to the news tactical reality may not be enough. But if they can, then the underdogs still lose. Reference the US Army and the Indian Wars, all the way back to the early colonies and he development of the Ranger concept. Both adaptation and superior resources defeats unconventional warfare pretty reliably.

Plaintext - I notice the chain of starts hung across the Crown Prince’s chest. One of them is dark; I wonder whether those represent the principalities of Dhuvalia, with that one being a former/destroyed principality.

Darkkismeth - For those, who think that IFS strikes back: Nope. SS got their ass kicked, not the IFS. The SS troops are the old security guys with old LIMBS and grey uniforms, best to look at like the corp. security or even police force to keep the law up.

Grudgesettler - Your paragraph doesn’t make much sense. IFS is the one attacking in the comic; the author’s commentary makes that perfectly clear. And the only mention of Sumner was mine, and I clearly said “they got whooped.” Now, what I reckon you were going for with this was that IFS wasn’t the one struck, ergo they can’t be the one striking back. That, I’ll grant you, is an assumption on my part. Made an educated guess that IFS would have started with a conventional defense as opposed to immediately engaging in guerrilla warfare. It seems doubtful that Mega-Fun Foods would be willing to initially to put up with the necessary property damage such a defense would entail.