@FOOL_NELSON@shipwreckedcrew re Downer's evidence. The FBI EC opening Crossfire refers to Downer saying that Papadopoulos mentioned a "Russian offer to assist". In his public interviews, Downer has never mentioned or referred to this supposed "Russian offer". He evaded comment when asked directly on twitter
@FOOL_NELSON@shipwreckedcrew 2/ I think that there's a real and serious possibility that the language "Russian offer to assist" was an embellishment added somewhere in transmission from Erika to Downer to Dibble to Legat Boetig to FBI headquarters. Pass The Telephone.
Strzok and Pientka interviewed Downer and Thompson on Aug 2, but their 302/memorandum on interview remains concealed. Strzok spoke publicly on this interview last fall, but unfortunately his most explosive statement about interview
@FOOL_NELSON@shipwreckedcrew 4/ was at best "false memory"; at worst, intentional lie. When caught out on twitter, Strzok conceded falsehood but claimed that is was just a "little error" - an indulgence not extended by Strzok himself.
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@realexmaple@FOOL_NELSON@shipwreckedcrew@wakeywakey16@Guccifer2Henry So it's probably not a 4-stage Pass The Telephone problem. However, Papadopoulos' ravings and whispering are easy enough to misunderstand under the best of circumstances, let alone when he was getting drunk with Erika. ( Base case is May 6 with Erika, not May 10 with Downer)
@realexmaple@FOOL_NELSON@shipwreckedcrew@wakeywakey16@Guccifer2Henry Consider the problems that arise with FBI 302s under relatively controlled circumstances. Erika wasn't taking notes; there was no transcript or recording. What are the chances that Erika mischaracterized Papadopoulos' nonsense in earliest report? Pretty high.
@Wilkmaster@15poundstogo actually, I don't think that it was Jake Sullivan who was hacked anyway. It was someone who was copied on the email between Jake and Huma.
@Wilkmaster@15poundstogo What caught my eye about this was that it doesn't seem to have been released during the campaign. One would have thought that showing an email hack involving Huma Abedin in Sep 2016 would have been a notable scalp for DCLeaks and worth announcing.
@Wilkmaster@15poundstogo my puzzle arises precisely because this wasn't published. It seems to have been in a password-protected section of DCLeaks, (partial) contents of which were vacuumed up by Wayback.
Alarming that Biden administration has apparently authorized a proxy war in Ukraine where Biden as VP previously led US regime change coup in February 2014. After 4 years of somewhat hostile peace, Ukraine, now a US/NATO proxy, declared war on "its own people" (Donbass).
Ukraine has two main languages- Ukrainian in west, Russian in east (Donbass). After US-backed regime change coup in 2014, first act of US-installed govt was to limit, even forbid, use of Russian language by govt and public institutions. If something similar happened in Canada,
2/ Quebec would separate in 2 weeks. (As Crimea did.) There have been two Quebec separation referenda in my adult life, each of which was very narrowly defeated. So the principle that separation is legal under international law seems well established to me.
we've all heard a lot about super-transmissibility of UK variant. Estimates were based on Volz, Neil Ferguson et al 2021. Here is right panel of their Figure 3 showing "additive advantage" of variant of >60% (horizontal line). medrxiv.org/content/10.110….
2/ Volz, Ferguson et al used data from epidemic weeks 46-49. Generating code for this figure and out of sample data (weeks 50-56) is available for at github.com/mrc-ide/sarsco…. Out of sample, super transmissibility vanishes as variant became dominant. @BogochIsaac@NathanStall
3/ the UK wave associated with the variant was real enough, but out of sample data counter-indicates the super-transmissibility hypothesis.
the burden of COVID lockdown has been borne entirely by local small businesses and their employees - a gross inequity ignored by public health ethicists, who haven't lost a single fat paycheck. The devastation is visible on store fronts in arterial road (Danforth) near me,
2/ here are pictures of 10 shuttered premises in short two blocks, each representing the end of someone's dream and livelihood, with each owner ending up with losses and debts.
this is such garbage reporting by US media: what US calls "Iranian-backed militia" are units of Iraqi military. Iraq is majority Shia so there are Shia units in Iraq military. Hard to see how bombing Iraqi military units is going to improve US-Iraq relations.
Iraq asked US to withdraw forces from Iraq as they are not currently fighting ISIS. US military in Iraq has become hostile occupying force that has no strategic purpose, is a target for local resistance, creating pointless risk of larger conflict to "honor" their sacrifice.
an astounding replay of events of Dec 29, 2019. Biden admin says that there was a rocket attack near Irbil in Kurdish area in northeastern Iraq. The Dec 2019 rocket attack was in nearby Kirkuk, also in Kurdish area, where ISIS cells were also active, making attribution obscure