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Fox 5 DC and Seth Rich Allegations
I deleted these Seth Rich submissions and threw them here with some updates.
The Washington Post reports:
The family of slain Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich refuted Fox News reports that he had leaked work e-mails to WikiLeaks before he was fatally shot last year in the District.
The reports, which gained traction on social media, said an FBI forensics examination showed Rich transferred 44,053 DNC e-mails and 17,761 attachments to a now-deceased WikiLeaks director.
[...] Several federal and local law enforcement authorities also said Tuesday they were not aware that Rich sent any DNC information to WikiLeaks. "There is nothing that we can find that any of this is accurate," said Dustin Sternbeck, the chief spokesman for D.C police, which is leading the investigation into Rich's death.
[...] The allegations were reported by Fox News, including WTTG-TV, the District's Fox News affiliate. The reports cited a private investigator, Rod Wheeler, who Fox said was hired by the family and had previously worked for D.C. police. He also has been an on-air contributor to the Fox-5 news station. Fox also cited an unnamed federal official who said Rich had transferred thousands of emails to a WikiLeaks director. Fox's source asserts those emails were transferred between January 2015 and May 2016.
Also at MarketWatch, Fox News, and Washingtonian. Original Fox 5 DC story which now includes details of Wheeler backtracking on his claims multiple times during the week:
On Wednesday, just before our newscast, Wheeler responded to our requests via a telephone conversation, where he now backtracks his position and Wheeler characterizes his on-the-record and on-camera statements as "miscommunication."
And here is a reddit thread about some new "evidence".
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A federal investigator who reviewed an FBI forensic report -- generated within 96 hours after DNC staffer Seth Rich's murder -- detailing the contents Rich's computer said he made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker, and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time.
"My investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks."
- Rod Wheeler, former DC homicide investigator
"I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks," the federal investigator told Fox News, confirming the MacFadyen connection. He said the emails are in possession of the FBI, while the stalled case is in the hands of the Washington Police Department.
The revelation is consistent with the findings of Rod Wheeler, a former DC homicide detective and Fox News contributor and whose private investigation firm was hired by a third party on behalf of Rich's family to probe the case.
A report on Monday evening claimed to find links between slain DNC staffer Seth Rich and WikiLeaks. But Rich's family told BuzzFeed News, "[W]e see no facts, we have seen no evidence, we have been approached with no emails."
[...] Wheeler told CNN he had no evidence to suggest Rich had contacted Wikileaks before his death.
Wheeler instead said he only learned about the possible existence of such evidence through the reporter he spoke to for the FoxNews.com story.
[...] Wheeler himself admitted he had "never seen the emails directly." Furthermore, his claims of "evidence" were based on the fact that an unnamed federal investigator had told him he saw the emails between Seth and WikiLeaks but that when he went to the police with concerns, he had been "shut down" and the investigation was being impeded by "a high-ranking official at the DNC."
additional coverage:
- Media Matters for America
- Infowars
- Heavy
- Washington Times (earlier story from 1 May)
- Breitbart News
- Breitbart News
- Breitbart News
- Washington Times
- The Guardian
- Mic
- Newsweek
- The Independent
- Right Wing Watch
- 1011 News
- The Week
previous story:
WikiLeaks Announces $20k Bounty For Murderer(s) of DNC Staffer
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Sanctuary Bills Faced a Surprise Foe: Legal Immigrants
Sanctuary Bills in Maryland Faced a Surprise Foe: Legal Immigrants
ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — When lawmakers in Howard County, Md., a stretch of suburbia between Washington and Baltimore, declared their intention to make the county a sanctuary for people living in the country illegally, J. D. Ma thought back to how hard he had worked studying English as a boy in Shanghai.
Stanley Salazar, a native of El Salvador, worried that the violent crime already plaguing Maryland’s suburbs attributed to immigrant gangs would eventually touch his own daughters.
Hongling Zhou, who had been a student in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square uprising, feared an influx of undocumented immigrants, and their children, would cripple the public schools.
At first blush, making Howard County a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants had seemed a natural move: The county has twice as many Democrats as Republicans and a highly educated population, full of scientists and engineers. One in five residents was born abroad.
But the bill met stout opposition from an unlikely source: some of those very same foreign-born residents.
In passionate testimony before county legislators, and in tense debates with liberal neighbors born in the United States, legal immigrants argued that offering sanctuary to people who came to the country illegally devalued their own past struggles to gain citizenship.
Some even felt it threatened their hard-won hold on the American dream.
Their objections stunned Democratic supporters of sanctuary here and helped bring about the bill’s demise in March. A similar proposal for the state collapsed this month in the Maryland Senate, where Democrats also hold a two-to-one advantage. Some of the same immigrants spoke out against it.
The failure of the sanctuary bills in Maryland reveals a potentially troublesome fissure for Democrats as they rush to defy Mr. Trump. Their party has staked out an activist position built around protecting undocumented immigrants. But it is one that has alienated many who might have been expected to support it.
What follows are the stories of four immigrants in Maryland who oppose sanctuary status — people whose voices have rarely been heard in the long debate over how to fix the nation’s immigration system.
Some supporters of sanctuary had dismissed them as white-collar professionals whose personal struggles could not compare with those of undocumented people now facing possible deportation.
But anyone who thought their journeys were easy, these immigrants said, has never walked in their shoes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/us/legal-immigrants-who-oppose-illegal-immigration.html?_r=2
Please, click the link, and read their stories.
Comey, Russia, Fake News And Confirmation Bias
I was reading this article and thought it might be a good submission as a follow up to the post about Comey's firing.
I held back, as I thought it might already be referenced in the comments. As such, I went back and, as I was reading through the comments, came across this gem from VLM:
Could someone explain the Russia conspiracy theory?
It seems to be anointed queen in waiting lost because she sucked and the electorate hates her although the elites love her, therefore someone is to blame, and it can't be her and it can't be the D party leadership, so obviously it was gremlins or space aliens or ... I know, Russians!
Is there anything to it beyond "argh matey here be tinfoil internet pirate hats"
This got me thinking about the various ways in which we (Americans) have allowed ourselves to be divided, and discussion has devolved into demonization and wacky conspiracy theories.
I posted the following as a response (with minor changes) to VLM:
Regardless of whether the outcome would have been the same, the Russians continue to use active measures (as they have for decades) to influence public opinion in countries of interest for them. This includes the US, UK, France, much of the former Soviet bloc and FSM (okay, FSB) knows where else.
The rise of social media and the ridiculous conspiracy theories* of the right in the US have primed the public to accept fake news (that is, lies intended to pollute public discourse) as long as it comports with their existing biases. That, and demonizing political opponents has weakened our political system and allowed folks like the Russians to muddy the waters and make it more difficult for us to work together to address the issues we all face.
It's appropriate that we all stand together to identify and understand how our public discourse and political system are being affected by those who wish to weaken, destabilize and/or harm the US.
*Partial list of right-wing conspiracy theories. Feel free to add any left-wing ones you think appropriate.
Pizzagate
Birtherism
Jade Helm
Common Core will turn your kids gay
Agenda 21
Sharia Law coming to your town
Plans for firearms confiscation
FEMA Concentration Camps
Clinton death squads
I posit that by promoting bald-faced lies as truth and attempting to discredit those with whom we disagree, we open ourselves up to just the sort of stuff that Russia has been trying (and with the expansion of news bubbles, aided by social media, being more successful) to do for decades.
I chose not to submit the Reuters article, as it seemed to be more of a piece with the Comey firing article. What's more, even though many sources were cited, the core source(s) were anonymous. I'm sure that if there's truth to the allegations, we'll hear more about it soon.
All the same, it seems appropriate for the US to examine the role of external actors on its political and information ecosystems.
Just because the folks attempting to sway public opinion with lies are doing so at the expense of your political enemies, they are not your friends, and should not be defended or given a pass on their interference in our system.
Such actors are a threat to our national interests and should be treated as such by all of us.
I guess the question becomes, are you an American first, or a [Republican|Democrat|Libertarian|Alt-Right|Communist|Socialist|Whatever] first?
I'm an American. And my fellow Americans (regardless of political stripe) are valued members of my society. Let's work together to make our country successful for all of us. Doing so will benefit society as a whole, socially, economically and politically.
Men-only UNESCO World Heritage site in Japan?
Men-only island set for UNESCO World Heritage status
A Japanese island where women are not allowed to set foot has been recommended for listing as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Okinoshima in south-western Japan is deemed so sacred that only men are allowed to visit, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reports. Even then, visitors are not allowed to bring back any souvenirs to the mainland, not even a blade of grass, the paper says. It has been recommended for World Heritage status by an advisory panel, with a final decision to be made at a UNESCO meeting in July.
The home to the Munakata Taisha Okitsumiya shrine, which honours a goddess of the sea, Okinoshima was the site of rituals for the safety of ships, and successful exchanges with the people of the Korean Peninsula and China between the fourth and ninth centuries, the Japan Times says.
wut about the kawaii goddess? Do she count?
New World Order Government cultural organization enforces gender norms on a Japanese island with a for real goddess on it, leading to a disastrous series of events. I'm sure somebody could write a 25 episode anime with that premise.
FBI Translator Married ISIS Terrorist: A Love Story
The FBI translator who went rogue and married an ISIS terrorist
He was Denis Cuspert, a German rapper turned ISIS pitchman, whose growing influence as an online recruiter for violent jihadists had put him on the radar of counter-terrorism authorities on two continents.
In Germany, Cuspert went by the rap name Deso Dogg. In Syria, he was known as Abu Talha al-Almani. He praised Osama bin Laden in a song, threatened former President Barack Obama with a throat-cutting gesture and appeared in propaganda videos, including one in which he was holding a freshly severed human head.
Within weeks of marrying Cuspert, Greene, 38, seemed to realize she had made a terrible mistake. She fled back to the US, where she was immediately arrested and agreed to cooperate with authorities. She pleaded guilty to making false statements involving international terrorism and was sentenced to two years in federal prison. She was released last summer.
FBI employee married ISIS fighter she was asked to investigate
Prosecutors describe her actions as deserving of "severe punishment," but she was sentenced to just two years in prison. According to an analysis by Fordham University, Americans who are prosecuted for ISIS-related cases received on average 13.5 years in prison.
Quick! WRITE THE SCRIPT! Call Lionsgate!
Unblur!
Fusion to Pluto
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/04/fusion-enabled-pluto-orbiter-and-lander.html
The Direct Fusion Drive (DFD) concept provides game-changing propulsion and power capabilities that would revolutionize interplanetary travel. DFD is based on the Princeton Field-Reversed Configuration (PFRC) fusion reactor under development at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. The mission context we are proposing is delivery of a Pluto orbiter with a lander. DFD provides high thrust to allow for reasonable transit times to Pluto while delivering substantial mass to orbit: 1000 kg delivered in 4 years. Since DFD provides power as well as propulsion in one integrated device, it will also provide as much as 1 MW of power to the payloads upon arrival. This enables high-bandwidth communication, powering of the lander from orbit, and radically expanded options for instrument design. The data acquired by New Horizons’ recent Pluto flyby is just a tiny fraction of the scientific data that could be generated from an orbiter and lander. Engine modeling accomplished during Phase I has shown that we can expect 2.5 to 5 N of thrust per megawatt of fusion power, with an Isp of about 10,000 seconds and 200 kW available as electrical power. We have evaluated the components of the Pluto trajectory including an Earth departure spiral, constant thrust planar transfer, and Pluto insertion using these thrust and Isp levels, and confirmed the plausibility of the proposed mission. In fact, the mission can depart from LEO with about the mass we originally estimated for an interplanetary insertion, widening the range of available launch vehicles and reducing the cost.
Planet Nine in 10-15 years instead of 100:
John Brophy at NASA Jet propulsion laboratory combines a near term 100 megawatt laser beamed power system to enable an ion drive with 70 megawatts of power and 58000 ISP.
They propose a new power/propulsion architecture to enable missions such as a 12-yr flight time to 500 AU—the distance at which solar gravity lensing can be used to image exoplanets—with a conventional (i.e., New Horizons sized) spacecraft. This architecture would also enable orbiter missions to Pluto with the same sized spacecraft in just 3.6 years. Significantly, this same architecture could deliver an 80-metric-ton payload to Jupiter orbit in one year, opening the possibility of human missions to Jupiter. These are just a few examples of high-impact missions that simply cannot be performed today due to limitations in current technology.
Fictions of fascism:
Fictions of fascism: what twentieth century dystopia can (and can't) teach us about Trump by John Gray
Dystopian novels of the 1930s and 1940s feel topical once again – but how much do they tell us about Trump and today’s populist upheavals?
A 20th century novelist pictured a Nazi diplomat ruminating over the grand objectives of the regime he served:
"D“Don’t you realise that what we are doing is a real revolution and more internationalist in its effects than the storming of the Bastille or of the Winter Palace in Petrograd? . . . Wipe out those ridiculous winding boundaries . . . wipe out . . . the influence of the churches, of overseas capital, of any philosophy, religion, ethical or aesthetical system
of the past . . . There are no more impossibilities for man now. For the first time we are attacking the biological structure of the race. We have started to breed a new species of Homo sapiens. We are weeding out its streaks of bad heredity. We have practically finished the task of exterminating or sterilising the gypsies in Europe; the liquidation of the Jews will be completed in a year or two . . . We are the first to make use of the hypodermic syringe, the lancet and the sterilising apparatus in our revolution.”
The writer was Arthur Koestler, and the book Arrival and Departure (Vintage Classics), first published in 1943. We are living in a time when many believe we are seeing a resurgence of fascism, yet so far Koestler’s semi-autobiographical novel has been neglected. This is a pity, as he did not invent the type of Nazi whose terrifying visions he put into the mouth of Bernard, the fictional diplomat. Travelling across Europe as a journalist and undercover communist in the 1930s, Koestler must have encountered many who shared this view of the world – one that departs in a number of ways from the view of fascism that most modern liberals have today.
Under the impact of the rise of Donald Trump and with the growing strength of European anti-immigrant parties, fascism is equated nowadays with extreme versions of nationalism. However, as Koestler shows, many Nazis and fascists regarded nation states as relics that would be subsumed into a new, pan-European order – a project that was revived by Oswald Mosley after the Second World War under the rubric “Europe a Nation”.
Fascism is now being seen as an ideology of irrationalism that was hostile to science and reason. But while some fascists preached “thinking with the blood”, others, like Koestler’s diplomat, gloried in the new powers conferred by modern science. As the historian Lewis Bernstein Namier wrote in 1958: “Hitler and the Third Reich were the gruesome and incongruous consummation of an age which, as none other, believed in progress and felt assured it was being achieved.”
In some ways interwar fascism was a parody of the progressive thinking of the time. In Spain and Portugal, the Balkans and Vichy France, many fascists wanted to roll back the modern world – a project that appealed to figures such as T S Eliot and G K Chesterton, who hankered after the cultural homogeneity of medieval Christendom. Yet many others were at one with Koestler’s diplomat in believing that modern technology opened up the prospect of remaking humankind on a “more advanced” model.
Such views were not confined to the far right. The “evolutionary humanist” Julian Huxley, for many years a prominent member of the British Eugenics Society, advocated “preventing the deterioration of quality in racial stock” throughout the 1920s into the early 1930s. “Racial science” was not a Nazi aberration.
Attitudes that many have seen as defining features of fascism can appear at many points on the political spectrum. Anti-Semitism has been a feature of fascist movements everywhere, and hatred of Jews was the core of Nazism. But anti-Semitic attitudes are not the exclusive property of the far right. After its foundation, the state of Israel was attacked by the left under the banner of anti-colonialism. Clearly, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are analytically distinct positions; but when criticism of Israel’s policies occurs in the context of talk about “Zio media conspiracies” – as has been the case recently among certain sections of the left in Britain – the two become functionally equivalent. The emergence of a left-liberal anti-Semitism is a defining fact of our age.
The rest of this "long read":
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/03/fictions-fascism-what-twentieth-century-dystopia-can-and-cant-teach-us-about
Female Islamic Clerics Issue Fatwa, and more BBC Clickbait
Female Islamic clerics in Indonesia issue rare child marriage fatwa
Female Islamic clerics in Indonesia have issued an unprecedented fatwa against child marriage. The fatwa, which is not legally binding but will be influential, was issued after a three-day congress of female clerics in the country. The clerics urged the government to raise the minimum legal age for women to marry to 18 from the current 16. Indonesia is a majority Muslim country and has among the highest number of child brides in the world. According to the UN's children office Unicef, one in four women in Indonesia marries before the age of 18.
Blue Whale: Should you be worried about online pressure groups?
Reports are circulating in the media of vulnerable people being encouraged to take their own lives by following a series of online challenges. In Russia, the deaths of some teenagers have been linked to the 'Blue Whale' challenge - though these reports have not been confirmed.
The idea is that individuals are invited to complete a number of tasks within a 50-day period. The tasks become increasingly harmful and end with the individual being challenged to take their own life. There is concern that the idea is spreading around the world on social media networks. With questions over whether or not the Blue Whale challenge actually exists, and with no confirmed link between the deaths in Russia and Blue Whale, how concerned should you be?
Tennessee family sues after female janitor charged with raping boy
The family of a teenage boy is seeking $4.5m (£3.4m) in damages after a female janitor allegedly raped him at a Tennessee high school. Jessica Galyon, 29, was arrested in February after she allegedly sexually assaulted a 16-year-old boy during school hours. The victim's family filed a lawsuit on Monday against the school district and the contractor who employed her. The boy dropped out of school after the alleged incident. The lawsuit accuses Roane County Schools and Compass One of gross negligence in allowing the alleged rape to occur.
TED 2017: UK 'Iron Man' demonstrates flying suit
Mr Browning said it is easily capable of flying at 200mph (321km/h) and an altitude of a few thousand feet. [...] The suit can currently fly uninterrupted for around 10 minutes. The start-up he founded, Gravity, is working on new technology for the device which Mr Browning said will make the current prototype look "like child's play". Since video of his maiden flight went on YouTube, he has had thousands of views and interest from investors and the UK military.
And finally: 'Overly obese' body sparks Ohio funeral home fire (BBC fat shaming deleted from the sub list)
