Thursday, November 10, 2016

My Fellow Losers:

I can't stand sappy do-gooder posts that purport to offer an injection of hope to people feeling like they've been kicked in the gut.

So, uh, yeah - here's one now!

My fellow losers:

I'm not a woman or minority, so I won't scold or talk down to anyone with strong, emotional, giving-up reactions to yesterday's election result, but I saw something just now: "Don't mourn over the election. Find a charity and help it now."

That's good, but I've got a better idea:

Maybe all us losers could choose to not let this get us too down, and instead decide to use this loss, and to dedicate ourselves to doing something concrete that over the next four years will make our communities, our country, and our world better. Just a little something. Regularly volunteer in a local homeless shelter, become part of a community outreach program to Muslims or refugees, volunteer in women's shelters, volunteer in group homes for developmentally disabled people - anything. Lots to choose from. Do something doable. Don't give in to the "Oh, what use is this goody-goody shit?" feeling. It's of a little use - and that's better than no use. Make a small community garden with some friends, invite your politically-different neighbors over for lunch on a regular basis, get disparate groups of people together for events like outdoor concerts or frisbee barbecues ("Frisbee Barbecue" would actually make a great band name), start a shopping-for-old-people-who-need-a-little-help group. Do things that focus on bringing communities a little closer together. Eras of division like this one could use that. Let's spend the next four years winning - in spite of losing.

We could call ourselves "Losers For Winning Anyway Cuz Why the Piss Not?" (Maybe someone can improve on this. Just spitballing here.)

Let's all take this on the chin, shake it off, and say "Meh." We can do the world a good thing for four years.

I was trained six months ago or so to volunteer to teach English to recently arrived refugees in Sydney. Just one day a week, few hours of work. Our lives here got a little bumpy around that time, and I used that as an excuse to not do that somewhat challenging thing. Screw that. I'm back in. That's my start.

Important Note: All you winners are welcome to join in, too. With open arms.
Posted by at 2 comments:
Labels: ,

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald is Currently Losing His Marbles [updated; again Oct. 20, 2016)]

Oy. This is happening right now, and it's quite convoluted.

Quick intro:

Newsweek writer Kurt Eichenwald has a story up saying - well, a bunch of crazy shit. Primarily: that he has discovered a Russian news service story that carried a mistake regarding Eichenwald himself (Eichenwald is correct on this!); that the mistake proves that a Hillary Clinton campaign-related email that was recently published by Wikileaks was somehow falsified (wrong!); and that Donald Trump has apparently been fed falsified info related to that email—directly from Russia! (Whacky!)

Let's start slow:

Eichenwald's story is about a story that appeared this morning in the Russian news service Sputnik about an email from Hillary Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal to Clinton champaign chief John Podesta (the email actually says it's to "undisclosed recipients," but this if from the Wikileaks Podesta email dump), which was acquired by hackers, and recently published by Wikileaks. Sputnik's story - now deleted - appears to have incorrectly interpreted/understood/transcribed that email, and incorrectly put Eichenwald's words in Blumenthal's mouth.

Then came the money quote: '"Clinton was in charge of the State Department, and it failed to protect U.S. personnel at an American consulate in Libya. If the GOP wants to raise that as a talking point against her, it is legitimate," said Blumenthal, putting to rest the Democratic Party talking point that the investigation into Clinton's management of the State Department at the time of the attack was nothing more than a partisan witch hunt.'
Those words sounded really, really familiar. Really familiar. Like, so familiar they struck me as something I wrote. Because they were something I wrote. 
The Russians were quoting two sentences from a 10,000 word piece I wrote for Newsweek, which Blumenthal had emailed to Podesta. There was no mistaking that Blumenthal was citing Newsweek—the magazine’s name and citations for photographs appeared throughout the attached article.

Remember: this is Eichenwald quoting the Sputnik story about the Wikileaks email, not the email itself. But Eichenwald conflates the two, and has used the apparent Sputnik mistake to strongly imply (bonus tweet) that the email released by Wikileaks was itself fabricated. That's wrong: here's the email. It doesn't put Eichenwald's words in Blumenthal's mouth, as the Sputnik story apparently did.

This was, if Eichenwald is to be trused on what the Sputnik story said (I believe him), Sputnik's mistake. It does not reflect on the email at all. (And please note that if the email published by Wikileaks was falsified, or simply made up, Podesta and Blumenthal could and presumably would deny writing or receiving it. They haven't.)

Eichenwald goes on to make a huge conspiracy of how Donald Trump came to get this story - he mentioned it in a speech just today - implying that he was fed it directly from Russia.

I am Sidney Blumenthal. At least, that is what Vladimir Putin—and, somehow, Donald Trump—seem to believe. And that should raise concerns not only about Moscow’s attempts to manipulate this election, but also how Trump came to push Russian disinformation to American voters.
[...]
This false story was only reported by the Russian controlled agency (a reference appeared in a Turkish publication, but it was nothing but a link to the Sputnik article). So how did Donald Trump end up advancing the same falsehood put out by Putin’s mouthpiece?
At a rally in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump spoke while holding a document in his hand. He told the assembled crowd that it was an email from Blumenthal, whom he called “sleazy Sidney.”
“This just came out a little while ago,’’ Trump said. “I have to tell you this.” And then he read the words from my article.
The logical, not hair-on-fire, not nutty conclusion about how Trump got that info: the same way other people got it - on Twitter, where it was spread around by tons of people. (Here's a tweet - on the actual email - from October 8. More here.)

Note: In case it's not clear, Eichenwald uses the fact that Trump "advanc[ed] the same falsehood" in the story as Sputnik as proof that Trump was fed the info from his best friend, Putin. And it's not even clear that Trump did that. (Elaborated more fully by Marcy Wheeler here.)

Update: Oof:



Update II: Eichenwald is now hilariously claiming to have not said what he did in fact say:



Gleen Greenwald on this here.

Note, October 12 (Aus): Eichenwald has drastically edited and added to the article in question. It now acknowledges that the Wikileaks email was in fact not doctored. (It's still dumb and silly in every other way.)

Update, Oct. 20: Holy shit. (You've got to read it to believe it. It's so crazy and convoluted it's hard to make sense of. The gist: the writer of the Sputnik story, an American in D.C, says he got the bad info via a tweet. And: he contacted Eichenwald about that. The response: pure craziness. Plus: the writer lost his job at Sputnik. His personal story here.)
Posted by at 2 comments:

Monday, October 3, 2016

Report: British Spy Agency GCHQ Gave Recordings of Dutch Citizens' Phone Calls to Australian Software Company

This is a crazy story: it came about because a British woman working for the Australian company heard the voice of an ex-boyfriend in one of the recordings:

The private conversations of thousands of Dutch citizens have ended up in the hands of the Australian technology company Appen which develops software for converting speech into text.
[...]
A report in the Dutch online site Volkskrant said telecommunications experts had opined that the only way this could have happened was by the British spy agency GCHQ tapping the information and then handing it over to Appen. 
According to Volkskrant, the matter came to light through a Dutch woman who had been employed by Appen in the UK. The company has four main offices: in Sydney, Seattle, San Rafael (California) and Davao City (the Philippines).
This woman was tasked with describing thousands of short audio excerpts in which she heard Dutch people chatting on the phone, with many of them being communications by cabbies in The Hague.
In one excerpt, she recognised the voice of an ex-boyfriend, who was speaking via Vodafone. He had not given the telco permission to share his calls with anyone and confirmed this to Volkskrant.
Much more from the original story at the Dutch site Volkskrant - in English - here.

And a very interesting and related Twitter thread (to to tweet to see full thread):
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Friday, September 9, 2016

Wikileaks and the ".goy" Huma Abedin/Hillary Clinton Email

Julian Assange and Wikileaks are getting shit from several quarters today for promoting an email from Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—with a very questionable email address:

Notice that email address for Abedin? It has a copyright symbol instead of an @ symbol - and it ends with ".goy" instead of ".gov."

Obvious fake - right? Proof that Wikileaks is doctoring emails - right? Also proof of anti-Semitism from Assange - right?

Assange defended the email as real, and the typos as the State Department's:


I decided to test it. (As I'm sure others have.)

Here's a PDF of the email—not from Wikileaks, but right from the source: the State Department's FOIA reading room. (Type in "earpiece" in the search box to get to the specific email. There are three results - it's the third one. You can also view it directly at the Wikileaks website.) Abedin's email address reads "AbedinH@state.gov," just as you'd expect.

But highlight Abedin's email address in that PDF, copy it, and paste it - and this happens:

AbedinH©state.goy> 
That's me - just copying and pasting that into this blog post, straight from the actual email record at the State Department's FOIA site. It's obviously just a reading error by the copy-and-paste machine (computer coding stuff that is above my computer coding knowledge).
Posted by at 1 comment:
Labels:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)