Zorro
Zorro's JournalAnatomy of a Fake News Scandal
A long and disturbing read highlighting the gullibility and ignorance of many citizens.
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The revelations overcame Edgar Maddison Welch like a hallucinatory fever. On December 1st, 2016, the father of two from Salisbury, North Carolina, a man whose pastimes included playing Pictionary with his family, tried to persuade two friends to join a rescue mission. Alex Jones, the Info-Wars host, was reporting that Hillary Clinton was sexually abusing children in satanic rituals a few hundred miles north, in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. Welch told his friends the "raid" on a "pedo ring" might require them to "sacrifice the lives of a few for the lives of many." A friend texted, "Sounds like we r freeing some oppressed pizza from the hands of an evil pizza joint." Welch was undeterred. Three days later, armed with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, a .38 handgun and a folding knife, he strolled into the restaurant and headed toward the back, where children were playing ping-pong. As waitstaff went table to table, whispering to customers to get out, Welch maneuvered into the restaurant's kitchen. He shot open a lock and found cooking supplies. He whipped open another door and found an employee bringing in fresh pizza dough. Welch did not find any captive children – Comet Ping Pong does not even have a basement – but he did prove, if there were any lingering doubts after the election, that fake news has real consequences.
Welch's arrest was the culmination of an election cycle dominated by fake news – and by attacks on the legitimate press. Several media outlets quickly traced the contours of what became known as Pizzagate: The claim that Hillary Clinton was a pedophile started in a Facebook post, spread to Twitter and then went viral with the help of far-right platforms like Breitbart and Info-Wars. But it was unclear whether Pizzagate was mass hysteria or the work of politicos with real resources and agendas. It took the better part of a year (and two teams of researchers) to sift through the digital trail. We found ordinary people, online activists, bots, foreign agents and domestic political operatives. Many of them were associates of the Trump campaign. Others had ties with Russia. Working together – though often unwittingly – they flourished in a new "post-truth" information ecosystem, a space where false claims are defended as absolute facts. What's different about Pizzagate, says Samuel Woolley, a leading expert in computational propaganda, is it was "retweeted and picked up by some of the most powerful faces of American politics."
The original Pizzagate Facebook post appeared on the evening of October 29th, 2016, a day after then-FBI Director James Comey announced that the bureau would be reopening its investigation into Clinton's use of a private e-mail server while secretary of state. Data from the server had been found on electronics belonging to former Rep. Anthony Weiner (the husband of Clinton's close aide Huma Abedin), who had been caught texting lewd messages to a 15-year-old. On Facebook, a user named Carmen Katz wrote, "My NYPD source said its much more vile and serious than classified material on Weiner's device. The email DETAIL the trips made by Weiner, Bill and Hillary on their pedophile billionaire friend's plane, the Lolita Express. Yup, Hillary has a well documented predilection for underage girls.?.?.?.?We're talking an international child enslavement and sex ring."
Katz's Facebook profile listed her residence as Joplin, Missouri. With a link to a story headlined "Breaking: Hillary Clinton strategy memo leaked: 'Steal yard signs,'?" Katz posted, "You know how we handle yard sign theft or tampering in South Missouri? With a 3 prong garden hoe buried in the middle of the back." We found no record of anyone with the name Carmen Katz in the entire state. But searching through her online activity, we noticed another clue: Every time she posted petitions on Change.org, such as "Put Donald Trump's Face on Mount Rushmore," the last signer was invariably Cynthia Campbell of Joplin. Campbell used the same profile picture as "Carmen Katz" on Facebook – that is, the same snapshot of the same cat.
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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/pizzagate-anatomy-of-a-fake-news-scandal-w511904
As a teen, he savagely beat a classmate. The attack was forgotten, until he went into politics
The Republicans of Broward County, Fla., knew little about Rupert Tarsey when he ran for an open slot on the local party’s executive committee. But the young man had some decent political cred.
Before the 2016 presidential election, he told them, he knocked on thousands of doors and got 50 Republicans in the liberal enclave to register to vote to support Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. He worshiped at the same church as the committee’s vice chair and headed a local chapter of the Catholic fraternal group Knights of Columbus. He came from a wealthy California family and followed four generations into a real estate career.
Within months of joining the local party, the 28-year-old was elected secretary in May, defeating two challengers who’d been around longer.
But something felt off about Tarsey for Bob Sutton, chairman of the committee. After a few months, Tarsey went after Sutton’s position, members said, by working to persuade the committee to unseat him. That’s when Sutton started getting phone calls warning him that Tarsey was not quite who he seemed.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-rupert-tarsey-20171129-htmlstory.html
So What Did I Miss? Asks Michael Flynn Tilting Large Flower On Lapel Towards Trump
WASHINGTON—Strolling into the Oval Office and standing in close proximity to the president, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn reportedly asked, “So, what did I miss?” Monday while meticulously tilting the large flower on his lapel towards Donald Trump.
“Sorry I missed you these last nine months, but now I’m totally available to lend an ear if you want to vent about anything, or just feel like reminiscing about the 2016 presidential campaign,” said Flynn, leaning over the Resolute Desk and urging Trump to speak clearly as well as apologizing for being “a little slow on the uptake” when requesting that the president repeat several remarks.
“Just for clarity’s sake, when you say ‘Jeff,’ you’re referring to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is that correct? Go ahead and give me as many specific details as possible about the nature of those conversations, and while you’re answering, why don’t you take a sniff from this beautiful daisy?”
At press time, Flynn was abruptly heading towards the door and whistling loudly as the sound of feedback began emanating from beneath his suit jacket.
https://www.theonion.com/so-what-did-i-miss-asks-michael-flynn-tilting-large-1820779582
Trump Claims Voice on Access Hollywood Tape Is Actually Hillary Clinton Imitating Him
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Casting further doubt on the authenticity of his notorious “Access Hollywood” tape, Donald J. Trump said on Monday that the voice on the tape was actually that of Hillary Clinton, imitating him.
“That’s not me on the tape,” he said. “That’s Hillary faking like she is me.”
Trump said that he had a theory to explain how Clinton came up with the infamous “locker-room talk” that appeared on the tape. “It’s so obvious that Bill came up with that,” he said.
Trump added that if the special counsel, Robert Mueller, has any recordings of Trump associates, such as Paul Manafort or Michael Flynn, colluding with Russians, those voices will “probably turn out to belong to Crooked Hillary also.”
“In addition to being evil, Hillary Clinton is a woman of a thousand voices,” he said.
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-claims-voice-on-access-hollywood-tape-is-actually-hillary-clinton-imitating-him
Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow
It's mid-afternoon on a Friday at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, and three of Elon Musk's children are gathered around him – one of his triplets, both of his twins.
Musk is wearing a gray T-shirt and sitting in a swivel chair at his desk, which is not in a private office behind a closed door, but in an accessible corner cubicle festooned with outer-space novelty items, photos of his rockets, and mementos from Tesla and his other companies.
Most tellingly, there's a framed poster of a shooting star with a caption underneath it that reads, "When you wish upon a falling star, your dreams can come true. Unless it's really a meteor hurtling to the Earth which will destroy all life. Then you're pretty much hosed, no matter what you wish for. Unless it's death by meteorite." To most people, this would be mere dark humor, but in this setting, it's also a reminder of Musk's master plan: to create habitats for humanity on other planets and moons. If we don't send our civilization into another Dark Ages before Musk or one of his dream's inheritors pull it off, then Musk will likely be remembered as one of the most seminal figures of this millennium. Kids on all the terraformed planets of the universe will look forward to Musk Day, when they get the day off to commemorate the birth of the Earthling who single-handedly ushered in the era of space colonization.
And that's just one of Musk's ambitions. Others include converting automobiles, households and as much industry as possible from fossil fuels to sustainable energy; implementing a new form of high-speed city-to-city transportation via vacuum tube; relieving traffic congestion with a honeycomb of underground tunnels fitted with electric skates for cars and commuters; creating a mind-computer interface to enhance human health and brainpower; and saving humanity from the future threat of an artificial intelligence that may one day run amok and decide, quite rationally, to eliminate the irrational human species.
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/elon-musk-inventors-plans-for-outer-space-cars-finding-love-w511747
Apostrophes are not being copied into thread/response titles
For several weeks now apostrophes in source articles aren't copied into thread titles, although apostrophes do show up in preview views prior to submission. Even attempting to edit a title post-submission to insert a missing apostrophe doesn't always work. They seem to show up fine in cut/pasted message texts, though.
Please advise.
Winning a bet, Tesla builds the worlds biggest battery for Australia
Source: Marketwatch
South Australia will soon begin testing the world’s biggest lithium ion battery, the region’s government has declared.
And with that, Tesla Motor Inc.’s TSLA, -1.64% Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk just won a fairly sizable bet. Not only that, but the guy whose electric-car company has earned a bit of a reputation for delays actually managed to deliver a product on time.
The premier of South Australia, Jay Weatherill, said in a statement Thursday that the Tesla Powerpack battery will soon start regulatory testing. It will connect to French renewable energy company Neoen’s Hornsdale Wind Farm in South Australia, and hopefully put an end to the state’s serious energy problems. Neoen and Tesla were awarded the contract in July.
“The world’s largest lithium ion battery will be an important part of our energy mix, and it sends the clearest message that South Australia will be a leader renewable energy with battery storage,” said Weatherill.
Read more: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/winning-a-bet-tesla-builds-the-worlds-biggest-battery-for-australia-2017-11-23
'Death spiral': 4,000% inflation in Venezuela
Venezuela's money is nearly worthless, and its cash crisis is only getting worse.
The country is spiraling further into a humanitarian disaster spurred by the government's economic policies, which have caused the currency, the bolivar, to plunge in value and prices to skyrocket. Food and medicine shortages have been reported across Venezuela.
The bolivar has lost 96% of its value this year. As of Tuesday, it took 84,000 bolivars to buy an American dollar. At the beginning of this month, a dollar was worth 41,000 bolivars. And at the start of this year, it only took 3,100 bolivars to buy a dollar, according to DolarToday, a website that tracks the unofficial exchange rate.
Millions of Venezuelans look at DolarToday or another site, Paralelo Venezuela, to find out how much money they need to buy groceries -- if there's food on the shelves at all. The government's official exchange rate has been deemed meaningless.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/22/news/economy/venezuela-currency-crash/index.html
Venezuela needs our attention, but so do dictatorships-in-waiting Nicaragua and Bolivia
While the world is watching Venezuela’s descent into a full blown dictatorship, scant attention has been paid to the slow-motion disappearance of democracy in two other countries: Nicaragua and Bolivia. If they continue on their present course, they may soon be called Latin America’s emerging dictatorships.
The erosion of basic freedoms in these two countries came to mind this week when I interviewed Sergio Ramirez, the Nicaraguan writer and former Sandinista vice president who, on Nov. 16, was awarded the Spanish Royal Academy’s coveted Cervantes literary prize — considered the Nobel literature award of the Spanish-speaking world.
Ramirez, whom I have known since his days in the Sandinista government in the 1980s, became disillusioned with the increasingly totalitarian bent of his leftist comrades and broke ranks with Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega in the early 1990s. In 1996, Ramirez ran for president as leader of a democratic leftist party he founded, and — after losing that election — quit his political career to become a full-time writer and journalist.
After becoming the first Central American writer to win the Cervantes prize, Ramirez got congratulatory calls from across the world. In Nicaragua, many celebrated the news. But there was no congratulatory call from Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, or any acknowledgment from his government, Ramirez told me.
http://amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andres-oppenheimer/article186095083.html
Politics Shadow Arrests of Citgo Executives in Venezuela Graft Inquiry
Source: New York Times
The administration of President Nicolás Maduro called it a necessary move to ferret out “putrid” corruption and end impunity. Outside the government, however, many observers saw it as yet another strong-arm move by Mr. Maduro to consolidate power.
Whatever the motivation, the arrests this week of six senior executives at Citgo, the United States refining subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, have purged the American company’s leadership and stunned the energy sector.
The move, announced on Tuesday by Venezuela’s attorney general, was the latest in an inquiry that has led to the arrests in recent months of about 50 people associated with the vital national oil industry. The purge has come as the state-owned company, Petróleos de Venezuela, or Pdvsa, teeters on the brink of default on billions of dollars in bond debt amid the nation’s worsening economic crisis.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab said the six Citgo executives, including the acting president, faced charges of embezzlement and other crimes in connection with a refinancing deal worth as much as $4 billion that had not been authorized by the appropriate authorities in the Maduro administration. He said the officials had offered the subsidiary as a guarantee, putting it “at risk.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/world/americas/venezuela-citgo-oil-arrests-corruption.html
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