Skepticism and Scumbags

 

There is a flaw in the construction of "just asking questions" speculations--not all questions are created equally, have equal merit, or come from a place of good faith. When right-wing pundits, gadfly social media owners and even elected officials speculated that there was something "more than met the eye" regarding the break-in at the Pelosi residence and vicious hammer attack on the husband of the Speaker of the House, it's not hard to see what the point of that was--to deflect from the violence in current RW rhetoric and to imply that the Pelosis deserved violence. 

Police reports and court filings have now filled in the picture: the break-in appeared on a security camera that hadn't been manned. The assailant had broken in with a hammer. It's been verified, from DePape himself, that he went there with the intent of kidnapping and breaking the kneecaps of Nancy Pelosi if she did not tell the truth, because he believed that the Democratic party, of which she was the leader, was full of lies.

Think about that--what it means to "tell the truth" to a person who believes weird anti-vax, Qanon. and election denier conspiracies. Imagine what having to please a violent, demanding lunatic and say only what pleased him would be like. 

If that sounds a little like a metaphor for the bigger picture of how people are coping with the reality of heightened threats of political violence where a media ecosystem exists (Fox News, Newsmax, freaking Mike Lindell TV, whatever that is) that promote unhinged lies and poor mental hygiene--well, bingo. 

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald weighs in on the Paul Pelosi attack:

"Skepticism itself can never be wrong ... Even if evidence does emerge later on to prove it, the skepticism itself was not just valid, but necessary." pic.twitter.com/4ClCuPMnVb

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) November 2, 2022

When an argument is made to dismiss the actual conspiracy theory (that the altercation was not political at all, but that Mr. Pelosi was assaulted by a much younger gay lover/prostitute) by claiming that people were "just asking questions" like responsible skeptics, I smell a rat.  

It might be reasonable to hold an open space for the possibility that the assault was committed by someone who was non-political, although the threats against the Speaker are well-known and that it was likely to be political would be irresponsible to dismiss. It is unreasonable to play a game of connect the dots with dots that don't even exist. 

(Which also hilariously highlight stereotypical conservative biases--it's San Francisco; what makes more sense than a squalid tussle between an elderly queer sugar-daddy and a hippie hustler? I mean. who the hell else lives in SF?)

But even if the insinuations weren't unnecessary in themselves, the use of an 82-year-old man's fractured skull as a punchline tells be what kind of people we are dealing with--see the title of the post?

It isn't skeptics. 

Aspen Turning Time

 

Well, this is a humdinger:

One month before a purported leak of files from Hunter Biden's laptop, a fake "intelligence" document about him went viral on the right-wing internet, asserting an elaborate conspiracy theory involving former Vice President Joe Biden's son and business in China. 

The document, a 64-page composition that was later disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump, appears to be the work of a fake "intelligence firm" called Typhoon Investigations, according to researchers and public documents. 

The author of the document, a self-identified Swiss security analyst named Martin Aspen, is a fabricated identity, according to analysis by disinformation researchers, who also concluded that Aspen's profile picture was created with an artificial intelligence face generator. The intelligence firm that Aspen lists as his previous employer said that no one by that name had ever worked for the company and that no one by that name lives in Switzerland, according to public records and social media searches.

 I'm going to go with the creation of a cut-out for disseminating the document in question is not actually for anyone's protection from "personal and professional risks" but just a plausible-sounding origin story for ginned-up twaddle. 

In other news, UPS located Tucker Carlson's lost package and while he has an awful lot of questions about the definitely real stuff on the flash drive that was sent in a container that somehow came undone, isn't it really time folks stopped piling on Hunter Biden? 

Because it's not like, worth losing your lucrative gig to keep after a story that is falling apart all around you. Only a total dweeb would do that.

Greenwald Seems Weird About Tanden, Right?

Unless you are super on-line, I think maybe the average person is almost aware of Greenwald because of Ed Snowden, about whom my opinions have been registered. I don't even know who knows who Neera Tanden is in the not-very-online world.

But because I do a little politics blogging now and again, I want to take a look at what he's saying, because WTF?

The President of the largest Dem Party think tank continues the personal & sustained attack on the party's front-runner with critiques that could cripple him against Trump.

Not sure if she's motivated by pro-Trump sentiments, pro-Putin ones, are (sic) both, but it's highly disturbing:

Says the Greenwald tweet (capped because it might go away). The Tanden Tweet he quote-Tweets is this:

Just FYI: Other Dem candidates who are his age have released their medical records going back decades. What’s the problem with Sanders doing the same? I don’t understand the mystery here. https://t.co/V5GxWqGcSY

— Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) February 9, 2020

Trump's campaign has access to the same shit Neera Tanden does, because they are called newspapers. They will bring up the same issues she does because: political campaign. Because certain underlying facts exist, they will get brought up in the general campaign. Ignoring them now would be, therefore, lacking in even the least bit of foresight.

She's not pro-Trump, she's against the Democratic party throwing in 100% with a candidate she has reservations about. The Trump Campaign in 2016 pretended Hillary Clinton was dying because she fainted when she had a touch of pneumonia.  (She got better!) Does anyone seriously think Sanders is not going to get attacked for being older than Trump and having had a serious cardiac incident (even though we still don't know a whole hell of a lot about Trump's little excursion to Walter Reed).

Just because something shouldn't be fair game, doesn't mean it won't be treated as such.

Yes, I Know That Snowden and Greenwald and All Are Not the Story

Getting the standard Greenwald disclaimer out of the way, there was something of a follow-up to the original "David Miranda was detained for nine hours at Heathrow" story that tends to make me feel a bit less ambiguous about it all. Apparently, Miranda was actually carrying thousands of sensitive encrypted documents on his person...with the password to the encryption code on a piece of paper also on his person.

The government’s statement claims possession of the documents by Mr Miranda, Mr Greenwald and the Guardian posed a threat to national security, particularly because Mr Miranda was carrying a password alongside a range of electronic devices on which classified documents were stored. 

Keeping passwords separate from the computer files or accounts to which they relate is a basic security step. 

Oliver Robbins, the deputy national security adviser for intelligence, security and resilience in the Cabinet Office, said in his 13-page submission: “The information that has been accessed consists entirely of misappropriated material in the form of approximately 58,000 highly classified UK intelligence documents. 

“I can confirm that the disclosure of this information would cause harm to UK national security."

It bothers me to have to say this, but is it possible that out of 58,000 documents, Greenwald et als don't know what all they have their hands on, might actually have some information that would compromise human intelligence assets (that is to say, get friendly folks killed) and lack the good sense not to handle them like a Kindle full of trashy novels? Just asking. Because the road to ruin is paved with good intentions slathered in a mortar of stupid. And this episode looks like a trowel-full of the latter, even if you allow that the journalists in question are brimming with the former. And would this not suggest reasons why people do keep government secrets secretively?

(And in other news, I remain fascinated by the tale of Our Man in Moscow, whose mysterious inability to berth himself in any other asylum-granting happy spot--Venezuela, Ecuador, Fernando Poo, Latveria, Qwghlm--having set forth on the curious route of Hong Kong to Sheremetyevo, has not entirely been explained. One does not know what to make of his spending time in the Russian consulate prior to embarking for Moscow. I know he's not the story, either. But if you don't find that interesting, what does interest you?)