A strange report out of Zimbabwe, where a United States-registered cargo plane has been grounded after officials discovered onboard a dead body dripping blood and thousands of dollars in cash.
The discovery, which was first reported a Zimbabwe state-run newspaper, was initiated by crew members who noticed blood dripping out of the plane at Harare International Airport Saturday. The MD-11 trijet, which is reportedly registered to the Florida-based cargo airline Western Global Airlines, has since been impounded.
CBS reports the body may have been a stowaway whose arm was cut off when the plane’s landing gear retracted.
Also on board was more than $60,000 in South African rand and more conspiracy theories than a cargo plane can hold.
Hell yeah I would take the position of Supreme Court Justice. First thing I would do is reinstate the wig party, everybody will be metal as fuck, then I would take Barack and “Michael” Obama and impeach them.
A little over an hour later, and unprompted, Balloon Boy followed up:
My dad said it is “Whig Party” to oppose tyranny.
We’ve reached out to the White House to ask whether an imminent impeachment might be cause to reconsider a Balloon Boy nomination, as well as ask who “Michael” is. We will update if and when we hear back.
In one of Australia’s biggest drug busts ever, 50 gallons of liquid methylamphetamine were discovered inside silicon push-up bra inserts shipped from mainland China. An investigation lead to 140 more gallons (worth $900 million in total) inside some art supplies stashed in five storage units in Sydney, the AP reports.
According to officials, that’s enough to make about 1,100 pounds of high-grade crystal meth and “the result of organized criminals targeting the lucrative Australian ice market from offshore.” How lucrative is it? Al Jazeera:
An Australian Crime Commission report published last year found that while $80 bought one gramme of ice in China, users in Australia had to pay $500 for the same amount.
Australia has had a meth problem for some time. Though the overall methamphetamine use hasn’t really changed since 2001, “speed” (the powdered form) is out and “ice” (an allegedly more “pure” crystal methamphetamine) is in. A government report suggested that Australia’s “ice” use has doubled since 2007, with more than 200,000 users in 2013, and “anecdotal evidence of higher current numbers.”
Last year, then-Prime Minister Tony Abott announced a 300 million Australian dollar ($214 million US) strategy to fight the “ice epidemic.” That endeavor includes the unfortunately-named Taskforce Blaze, a new cooperation between Australian Federal Police and China’s National Narcotics Control Commission, which was ultimately responsible for this week’s bust.
The government clampdown also includes aggressive public campaigning. That, and constant media attention, could be why Australians “hugely overestimate” just how much “ice” Australians are doing.
Almost half of those who responded to a University of NSW survey believed between 30% and 100% of Australians had tried ice in their lifetime. The latest available national drug data shows 7% of Australians have used a form of methamphetamine at some point and that 1% had used ice in the previous 12 months.
Taskforce Blaze’s meth bra bust is a welcome change to the usual “epidemic” coverage coming out of “The South Pole” or some other town where poor people can be paraded in front of cameras.
Three hundred and eighty-seven sunsets into her book writing journey, Kristin Cavallari presents a photo of “an actual copy” of her forthcoming memoir:
So help me God, Kristin, if you are lying. Ahhhhhhhhh.
Donald Trump today released a delightfully rude statement calling Ted Cruz an unhinged liar and threatening to sue Cruz unless Cruz meets a list of his demands.
Here is the statement from Donald Trump—who saw with his own two eyes “thousands and thousands of Muslims cheering on 9/11”—denouncing Cruz as a “totally unstable individual.” (Typos his; emphasis ours.)
Ted Cruz is a totally unstable individual. He is the single biggest liar I’ve ever come across, in politics or otherwise, and I have seen some of the best of them. His statements are totally untrue and completely outrageous. It is hard to believe a person who proclaims to be a Christian could be so dishonest and lie so much.
Cruz said I would be appointing a liberal judge when in fact I will appoint a great conservative and I am the only candidate who has gone so far, at the debate, as to suggest two individuals I feel would best represent the conservative values we need to protect: William “Bill” Pryor Jr. and Diane Sykes.
Cruz says I am pro-choice, when in fact I am staunchly pro-life and have been for a long time. Like Ronald Reagan, on many issues, I have evolved.
Cruz says I am in favor of ObamaCare, when in fact I have spoken about repealing and replacing this disaster of a system at every speech throughout my campaign and since it’s [sic] inception. Meanwhile, Cruz was responsible for getting Bush to put in the judge that failed to vote against ObamaCare twice.
Cruz says I will try to take away your second amendment rights, when I am one of the strongest proponents of the right to bear arms and I say so in every speech that I have made for years. I am a proud member of the NRA and so are my sons.
Cruz has become unhinged and is lying with the hopes that his statements will go unchecked until after the election and he will save his failing campaign.
In Iowa, Cruz told thousands of Ben Carson voters that Dr. Carson had left the race and to instead vote for Ted Cruz. He apologized when the race was over. Likewise, his fraudulent voter violation form sent to Iowa voters. If Ted is going to continue to lie with such desperation, I have no choice but to fight back.
One of the ways I can fight back is to bring a lawsuit against him relative to the fact that he was born in Canada and therefore cannot be President. If he doesn’t take down his false ads and retract his lies, I will do so immediately. Additionally, the RNC should intervene and if they don’t they are in default of their pledge to me.
I am the strongest on the borders and I will build a wall, and it will be a real wall. I am strongest on illegal immigration, strongest on ISIS, strongest on the military and I will take care of our Vets. I will end common core and preserve the second amendment. I will renegotiate our trade deals and bring our jobs back to our country. I am the only person who will Make America Great Again.
They say when you point a finger at someone, you have three fingers pointing back at you. I say no matter who wins the Republican nomination, it’s going to be a crazy person.
Last night, the National Geographic Channel kicked off its six-episode series Generation X, an uncommonly sharp talking-head recap show that explores various cultural events and phenomena that helped shape the generation after the Baby Boomers. The War on Drugs, specifically how it targeted crack in the ‘80s and was made tangible in the “Just Say No” campaign, was among the topics on last night’s premiere. The segment featured commentary from Senator Cory Booker, journalist Alison Stewart, and none other than Sarah Palin, who pointed out the impracticality of the campaign spearheaded by Nancy Reagan:
My, how easy it would be to sit your child down and say, “Just say no.” It’s not that easy. Great intentions, though!
The intentions, which seemed more along the lines of putting black people in cages than actually improving society for all, were far from great as explained by the rest of the brief segment (and in much further, persuasive detail in Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow), but hey, Palin criticizing any facet of Reagan’s presidency seems like a momentous occasion. Some things are even too idiotic for her to endorse.
The show also included a segment about AIDS and how Rock Hudson’s diagnosis and death thrust the issue into the mainstream, after it had existed on the fringes for years, as gay men died helplessly.
Weirdly, Molly Ringwald claims that she was on the set of The Breakfast Club when she “heard about Rock Hudson,” though Hudson’s publicist didn’t confirm his diagnosis until July 25, 1985, which was over five months after The Breakfast Club was released in theaters. So either Molly Ringwald had insider information about Rock Hudson, or not even Molly Ringwald can keep those Molly Ringwald movies straight.
The primary driver of racism in America? Black people like Beyonce, who celebrate thugs who want to divide us. White America does not have a racism problem—just ask these incensed internet commenters.
As you all know, mentally disturbed typical hollywood hoe* Beyonce gave a despicable and racist performance at the Super Bowl halftime show in which she tried to advance the notion that black lives matter more* and ruined a well known celebration of diversity* (the Super Bowl) in order to divide us and keep ripping off the historical band-aid* instead of leaving well enough alone.
When Blaze TV anchor Tomi Lahren was brave enough to point all of this out, she was attacked by internet hatemongers. But Tomi refuses to be silenced, bravely speaking up again to tell the haters that she will not be silenced, and she is not racist in any way*. “She chose to pay homage to a group that advocated violence as a means to an end,” Lahren said, bravely. “She, while flanked and protected by law enforcement both white and black, chose to use her platform to agitate progress and encourage division.”
Speaking up in support of a group that uses violence—in front of law enforcement? Disgusting.
Why do blacks like Beyonce and the ghost of Malcolm X insist on perpetuating racism in this country, even though whites quit being racist long ago? I and Blaze TV anchor Tomi Lahren sure would love to know. And we’re not the only ones. White internet commenters are also sick and tired of blacks playing the race card despite the fact that white racism is a thing of the past.
Ken Kennemur
Let the blacks start a race war we will eliminate all 13 percent of them easy with in a day and America will be a better place
Enough with the race-baiting, Beyonce.
William McDuffy
Who do these blacks that are doing this think they are. We all bleed die give life some work and some do the career WELFARE. Now which ones have the time to be doing all these riots that ovomit calls calm protests burning building killing each other robbing each other selling DRUGS to each other that destroys more lives then just the addicts. Hmmm and now when the TRUTH comes out about 1 of their own and the racist shit she pulled in a day when people don’t want to think about all the senseless RACIST shit ( thanks to ovomit) she goes out in front of those people and starts her stupid little RACISIM PARADE. I bet her little drug dealer husband put her up to it or is she really that stupid to throw away her career for a stunt like that. People like her need to be stripped of all her wealth because it wasn’t just blacks that got her there I can honestly tell you that. After that rasict bldm bdp is broke ship her ass to Africa and all of her brainless followers. Then we will see who likes being free in our Country with their welfare free schooling uncf because they won’t get nothing free in Africa so keep doing what your doing and setting back all the years it took us to get past this Racisim bullshit
Let’s get past this racism bullshit.
Palmer Hirahatake
FYI NATIVES of the jungle: We are sick of your threats. We are sick of you’re bullying! We are sick of the RAMING of your agenda. Never in my life, and I am 67 years young, never had a problem with any race. However since King CamelDung came along I have found my self struggling to maintain a truth that Skin is just a container and transportation for a persons character and integrity. I am struggling to hold on to that truth because of the apparent jungle bunny mentality that says “YOU are entitled” you aren’t!
There has never been a problem with race—until now.
Maria Giamanco
AntiWhites use threats and intimidation because there is zero justification for the antiWhite proposition, that there can be NO WHITE COUnTRIES and no majority White areas within the confines of formerly White countries. Nobody is using Diversity to make Brown areas less Brown. “Antiracists” only ever use Diversity to chase down White Flight and make White areas less White. They ONLY target White kids. That’s #WhiteGenocide.
Does that sound fair to you?
Peter South
We’ve had enough idiotic one-sided “conversations” about race.
You’re ready to move forward with us in a positive direction...great.
You can’t let go of the past...there’s a certain way we need to handle that because THIS will not continue.
No whining after it’s done and remember, you wanted this. Many people are coming to the conclusion that the KKK was right all along.
That what you want? Think about it.
Black people: STOP with the racism, or face GENOCIDE.
Disclosure: From roughly 2000 through 2008, half or more of my household income came from my wife’s direct employment with Bill or Hillary Clinton. Toward the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency, she worked at the White House Domestic Policy Council; after that, she became a legislative aide working on health policy in the newly opened office of Hillary Clinton in the Senate; finally she worked for the Clinton Foundation, establishing its HIV/AIDS program in China.
This has influenced my outlook on Bill and Hillary Clinton, and on politics in general. This influence has been both positive and negative. Mostly, it means that the terms of discussion can often seem alien to me.
One crude and obvious example, relevant to the current election cycle, is that my understanding of Hillary Clinton is that she is basically a decent human being, who has a kind and parental personal character. That belief, based on close secondhand exposure, is at odds with many people’s strongly held opinions about Hillary Clinton’s personal character, based on their readings of her public character.
This is what we do with public figures, and I might draw similar conclusions myself, given the same set of evidence. It’s not at all unreasonable. But in this case, it strikes me as hollow and overconfident.
Bernie Sanders is, to my considerably more distant secondhand understanding, a likable and principled legislator. I have trouble seeing the contest between the former Senate colleagues in Manichean terms.
My ideas of Bill Clinton were solidly formed at a distance. I despised Bill Clinton from the moment I first saw him, on television in 1988, giving a brutally dull, long, and self-promoting speech to the Democratic National Convention that effectively began the slow suffocation of the Michael Dukakis campaign. Four years later, in my first opportunity to vote for president, I cast my ballot against him in the Democratic primary. My best recollection is that I voted for Paul Tsongas.
From that day till this one, I have yet to vote for the eventual nominee in any contested Democratic presidential primary. Unable to vote against Bill Clinton, I voted against Al Gore. I’m not sure who I voted for in 2004. I’d meant to vote for Howard Dean, but looking back, I see he was already out. It might have been John Edwards; I had a theory about how trial lawyers could represent a politically promising confluence of the American urge to get rich quick and the yearning for justice. It wasn’t John Kerry.
In 2008, I didn’t vote in the primary, because I was living abroad and getting the ballot was a hassle, but mostly because I basically liked both candidates and didn’t feel like choosing. I guessed that Hillary Clinton would get off to a more effective start before getting eventually mired in adversity and scandal, while Barack Obama would struggle for a while before he got rid of the idealist-careerists around him and hit his stride. That wasn’t exactly how things worked out, but I didn’t regret it.
Getting closer to Bill Clinton did not fundamentally alter my view that Bill Clinton is a monster. Monsters are what our political system is built to produce, and he is one. The most persuasive particulars in the case against Hillary Clinton are largely carried over from the case against Bill Clinton—except her vote for the invasion of Iraq, and it’s impossible to doubt which way Bill Clinton would have voted on that one, had he been in a position to vote. Watching the Iraq invasion become a fait accompli was exactly like watching welfare reform go through, or seeing Lani Guinier hung out to dry: cowardice doing business as principle, and possibly even believing itself to be principle.
The mere demographic fact of Bill Clinton was offensive. He embodied the doctrine that an urban, coastal, ethnically and racially diverse political coalition could only survive if it were represented by blockheaded Southern men, its least talented subgroup. His politics followed from that, a smarmy self-styled centrism designed to systematically drain hope from the political left, to forestall the very idea of substantive change or even a choice among competing options. Cancel out the distinguishing vectors of politics and you have the Third Way.
None of this really involves any special knowledge. If you read the news you are aware that Bill Clinton is a starfucker, top and bottom. Bill Clinton has a weakness of personality that leads him to say yes to everyone, and he says yes to bad people, and he appears to have said yes to bad people at a high enough rate to suggest that he is biased toward associating with bad people or encouraging them to ask him for favors.
Yet he was the president, and good people worked for him, because they wanted to do good things. The world around the Clintons has plenty of good people involved in it. In Michelle Goldberg’s Slate essay about why she is supporting Hillary Clinton, despite a long and agonizing list of reasons not to, she wrote, fairly far down the piece, “Her overall voting record in the Senate was to the left of both Obama and Joe Biden.”
This aspect of the Clinton experience almost certainly carries more weight with me than it does with most political observers. When Hillary Clinton talks about incremental programs like the Children’s Health Insurance Program, while Bernie Sanders calls for universal single payer coverage, I’m conscious of what a tremendous grind went into building and expanding CHIP. When scandal stories came out about the Clinton Foundation spending lots of money on salaries and travel, I understood that salaries and travel would have included things like hiring doctors and flying them to deep rural China to treat AIDS patients.
I’m not always sure which way exposure to the totality of the Clintons biases me. Knowing that Mark Penn and Doug Band were people doing daily work can’t help but have its effect. In the event that Ted Cruz places his hand on the Bible next January and pledges to destroy everything decent that America has accomplished in the past 100 years, even as I contemplate with horror the vicious and broken world my children will inherit, some small part of me will be warmed by the knowledge that certain people who had high hopes for their role in a new Clinton presidency are eating shit.
In either event, my wife has contributed money to the Hillary Clinton campaign, and she took our children to the Clinton campaign kickoff event on Roosevelt Island. She has no designs, however, on any job in a new administration. We prefer living in New York to living in Washington D.C., and we prefer the hours and conditions of our current jobs to the hours and conditions of political work. (Her current employer is Rutgers, which makes her a New Jersey state employee. Here I note that Chris Christie’s mismanagement of the state budget has made her benefits much worse, and at one point nearly cost her several thousand dollars in research funding. Christie’s decision to pilfer federal tunnel-construction dollars also guarantees her commute will be difficult. I am personally biased against Chris Christie because he is a lousy executive and he has made our lives worse.)
Those are my connections. Here was my experience of meeting Bill Clinton: I had gone with my wife to a White House holiday party—the eggnog was the best eggnog I have ever had in my life—and the President and First Lady were shaking hands with the guests, so I shook his hand. His hand was smooth but the overwhelming impression I had was that looking Bill Clinton in the face was exactly like looking at a big photograph of Bill Clinton. There had been a portrait of him in a magazine, I believe by Martin Schoeller in the New Yorker, with the president’s face filling an entire page, and all I could think was that it was just like that.
Then I went on to greet the First Lady and a small but memorable thing occurred, quite by accident. Hillary Rodham Clinton had been shaking hand after hand, like her husband, and as I moved along the line I had been aware of her politely repeating the same friendly platitude to each, Thank you for coming, or Happy holidays, something forgettable. The moment I reached her happened to be the moment that she had hit her limit with that particular utterance, through boredom or semantic fatigue. Like a swimmer making a turn at the wall, she paused and briefly broke the surface. Her eyes ceased the performance of eye contact and focused, and she said something different—It’s nice to meet you, maybe. It sounded, that once, like an ordinary person speaking. I moved on, and she repeated it to the next person, back in rhythm.
Louise Mensch, an English author of popular fiction and unpopular political columns, as well as, for a few years, a Conservative member of Parliament, will start a new website, called “Heat Street,” for News Corp, Buzzfeed reports.
News Corp. spokesman Jim Kennedy said that Heat Street will, “in a spirit of free speech and no ‘safe spaces,’ cover a variety of topics from a diversity of viewpoints.”
“No ‘safe spaces’” is a bold frontal attack on our current culture of political correctness, in which so-called liberals, I’m told, frequently flirt with censorship, demand trigger warnings in order to avoid exposure to contrary points of view, and regularly conflate unpopular speech with actual violence. Against all that, here comes “Heat Street,” sure to be a defender of unfettered and unfiltered democratic speech.
Here is a relevant column from Louse Mensch, erstwhile politician, on the subject of speech and “safe spaces”:
Toxic trolls should have no hiding space By Louise Mensch [...] Too often people have believed that the internet is a magical, protected space where nothing they do can be policed. They type threats on their keyboard that they would never utter in person. A rash of such cases has arisen in the past couple of years, and prosecutors are cracking down. In 2011 a 25 year-old, Sean Duffy, was jailed for posting obscene messages about teenagers who had committed suicide. On a memorial website to Natasha MacBryde, who had thrown herself under a train after being bullied, he posted a picture of Thomas the Tank Engine with Natasha’s face superimposed upon it, and called it “Tasha the Tank Engine”. [...] The Government yesterday introduced new laws to encourage websites and internet service providers to surrender the identity of those posting abuse or libel. This is a good thing.
Amazon’s Prime Pantry program is great for stocking up on household goods and non-perishable foods without actually having to visit a store, and with these stackable deals, the prices will blow away any brick and mortar store in your town.
Next, promo code 10PANTRY will take $10 off any $75 Prime Pantry order, regardless of what’s in it. As long as you hit that minimum, that means you can save a whopping $16 on your order, or even $22 if you had an existing no-rush shipping credit. Not bad at all!
You know what they say; once you go vacuum insulated stainless steel, you never go back. This spacious 32 ounce Thermos can keep beverages hot or cold for up to 24 hours, and its lid even doubles as a cup to help avoid spillage. This model’s price fluctuates a lot, but today’s $26 deal is the best Amazon’s ever listed. [32 Ounce Thermos Vacuum Insulated Stainless Steel Bottle, $26]
You can never have too much flash storage, and today only, Amazon’s offering all-time low prices on a number of SD cards, microSD cards, and flash drives from PNY.
If you missed out on Black Friday’s Brother monchrome laser printer deals, you can pick up a barebones (but still excellent) 2300D for $40 today from Newegg.
This model doesn’t have a scanner or built-in networking, but it can still spit out 27 pages per minute, and print in duplex. Plus, unlike similarly-priced inkjet alternatives, replacement toner cartridges are affordable, and they won’t dry out if you don’t use them for a few weeks. [Brother HL-L2300D Monochrome Laser Printer, $40]
Amazon’s offering some of the best per-gigabyte pricing on SSDs that I’ve ever seen right now. Even if your computer is already equipped with SSD storage, you could toss one of these into a cheap enclosure to create a super-fast external drive.
This discounted flash drive doesn’t look like anything special at first blush, but hit one button, and it transforms into tiny wireless media server, allowing you to pull up files on any of your devices, including phones and tablets.
That means next time you travel, you can stream movies to your tablet or store photos from your phone without filling up your device’s precious onboard storage. Today’s $35 price tag is an all-time low for the 64GB model. [SanDisk Connect Wireless Stick 32GB for Smartphones and Tablets, $35]
You can’t control these power outlets with your smartphone, or tie them to IFTTT recipes like the Belkin WeMo line, but they sell for a tiny fraction of the cost of their smarter brethren, and can be controlled from across the room via the included remote. It’s only a half-measure towards creating a smart home, to be sure, but they might be worth a look at the price. [3-Pack Etekcity Wireless Remote Control Electrical Outlet Light Switch, $14 with code GPMNXU4Z]
Water resistant Bluetooth speakers are great for camping trips, or just for singing in the shower, and we’ve got deals on two of them today. One is a Gizmodo favorite, and a member of the distinguished UE line of speakers. The other costs $19, so...it won’t sound quite as good. But still; it’s a wireless speaker that you can get wet. That’s really cool!
This seemingly-basic remote might not look like much at first blush, but it can actually control eight of your favorite home theater devices, and even turn your smartphone into a universal remote as well.
You’re probably used to seeing Logitech Harmony remotes with screens built-in, but it turns out that you already carry a much better screen in your pocket. So in addition to controlling your TV, cable box, game console, stereo, and more from the remote itself, the Logitech Harmony Smart Control can now do the same from your iPhone or Android from anywhere in the house. That’s especially handy when your favorite show is about to start and you can’t find the remote anywhere. Today’s $70 deal is the best is a match for the best we’ve ever seen, but I’d expect it to sell out quickly. [Logitech Harmony Smart Control with Smartphone App and Simple Remote, $70]
Today you can grab a Fitbit Aria smart scale on eBay for an all-time low $75, and with no tax for most. The Aria will give you your weight, BMI, and body fat % and of course sync them to your Fitbit app to track changes over time. [Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi Weight/Body Fat/BMI Digital Smart Scale, $75]
Despite the extremely low price, this 1080p dashcam has really solid Amazon reviews, and the sample videos and video stills uploaded by reviewers look perfectly serviceable. It’ll even automatically detect accidents, and lock the footage accordingly. [DBPOWER Ultra thin HD Dash Cam, $30 with code L2EEUTNM]
If your gas station of choice is operated by ExxonMobil, this discounted gift card essentially amounts to eight free dollars. These days, that’s like five free gallons of gas! [$100 ExxonMobil Gift Card, $92]
Apple’s expansive (and expensive) iPad Pro is finally starting to get some discounts, and today, you can save $100 on the base 32GB Wi-Fi model, or $150 off the 128GB model. Those are the best deals we’ve seen to date. [Apple iPad Pro, $700-$800]
If you enjoy cooking, and you don’t own a KitchenAid mixer, it’s a pretty safe assumption that you want one. You can pick up a refurb of the KitchenAid Artisan on eBay today in a spectrum of colors for just $170, one of the lowest prices we’ve ever seen. [Refurb KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer, $170]
If you ever pay for iOS apps, movies, music, or iCloud storage with your credit card, you’re throwing money down the drain. Instead, stock up on iTunes gift cards at a 20% discount. [$50 iTunes Gift Card, $40]
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It’s not that it’s surprising a political ad would feature indiscriminately selected, wholly unrelated b-roll to sell a candidate to the American public. It’s that they didn’t even bother to excise the Canadian flag from the opening shot clearly featuring Vancouver’s skyline.
Unless that was what they wanted us to think—got me to watch the dumb ad.
Ehud Olmert, former prime minister of Israel and subject of a portrait painted by George W. Bush, reported to Maasiyahu Prison on Monday to serve his 19-month sentence for bribery and obstruction of justice.
In late December, the Israeli Supreme Court reduced his six-year prison sentence to 18 months after overturning the main part of his conviction on bribery charges. It upheld, however, his conviction in a lesser bribery case that was unrelated to the housing project.
Last week, a Jerusalem magistrate’s court extended Mr. Olmert’s sentence by a month after rejecting the terms of a plea bargain in an obstruction-of-justice case.
Mr. Olmert was also sentenced in May to eight months in prison for fraud and breach of trust, in a separate case involving an American businessman, Morris Talansky. The start of that term was postponed pending an appeal, and Mr. Olmert’s lawyers have been examining the possibility of any sentence being served concurrently with Mr. Olmert’s current prison term.
His office released a video statement on Monday, in which Olmert described his fall from grace as “painful and strange.” He admitted that he had “made mistakes” but maintained that he had not done anything criminally wrong.
“At this time, I want to say again what I said inside the court and outside: that I categorically deny the charges relating to bribery attributed to me,” Olmert said. “I accept the sentence with a very heavy heart. Nobody stands above the law.”
On Monday, Russia’s consumer watchdog Rospotrebnadzor confirmed the country’s first case of the Zika virus, Reuters reports. The Moscow resident began experiencing fever and rashes a few days after returning from her vacation in the Dominican Republic.
According to a city press agency, she’s feeling better, doesn’t pose a risk to the public and will be released home in a few days.
Russia is not considered to be at direct risk for infection. There are no Aedes mosquitoes there, except for some in tropical Sochi, but as Meduza reminds us, none of them have been reported to be carrying the virus... Yet?!!!
Following the news, Gennadiy Onishchenko, former Chief Sanitary Inspector of Russia, now serving as an aide to Prime Minister Medvedev, speculated to BBC Russia that “Americans” could be intentionally infecting mosquitos with the Zika virus in a lab in Tbilisi, Georgia.
I am worried about the Abkhazian shores, where this mosquito is registered. This worries me because within a hundred kilometers of this mosquito’s habitat, so very close to our borders, there is a US military microbiological laboratory.
And I think that even you won’t be persuaded by the allegations that today those American military microbiologists have suddenly turned into humanitarians, only concerned with protecting Georgian children from measles. That’s not why the Pentagon builds military biolabs.
He concluded that it is “increasingly likely” that the mosquitos were “deliberately contaminated.”
Onishchenko served as head of Russia’s Federal Service for Health and Consumer Rights (Rospotrebnadzor) until he was fired in 2013, but not before repeatedly warning the nation about the dangers of foreign food and protesting.
He continues with what The Moscow Times calls his “creative approach to medical advice.” Last summer, he argued in support of Russia’s proposed restrictions on condom imports, which he said would make citizens “more disciplined.”
“There is no case here,” Spitzer’s lawyer, Adam Kaufmann, said. “There was no assault.” Nevertheless, the NYPD is still investigating the woman’s allegations.
Initial reports indicated that the woman, who authorities have not named but who the New York Post identified as Svetlana Travis, called 911 to say that she was having a breakdown, and had cut her wrists. Police responded to the call, but were turned away by the ex-governor. “Everything’s fine. There’s no problem,” he reportedly told them. According to the Post:
The officers left, but called 911, telling an operator to phone Travis back. Travis told a dispatcher that she no longer needed help.
The cops went back anyway to check, although by then, she had left the room, the sources said.
After Spitzer opened the door a second time, the cops spied broken glass, bloodstains and clothing on the floor and started a search inside.
Travis reappeared, and the cops called EMS, which took her to Mount Sinai West Hospital, where she told staffers Spitzer had attacked her, sources said.
“This is someone that he had a relationship with in the past,” Kaufmann told the Times, although he would not say how how Spitzer and Travis knew each other. Apparently, Travis asked the attorney-turned-politician-turned-real-estate-developer to book a hotel room so they could meet up before she returned to Russia on Sunday. From the Times:
On Saturday afternoon, the former governor visited her at the Plaza and they talked for less than an hour — amiably, Mr. Kaufmann said — about her plans on her return to Russia.
Mr. Spitzer left the hotel but heard from her again a couple of hours later, he said. This time, she sounded distraught and asked to see him again.
According to the lawyer, Mr. Spitzer went back to the hotel around 7 and found her in “a highly agitated state.” Mr. Kaufmann said she threatened suicide, made a superficial cut in her wrist and called 911, but then tried to cancel the call.
Kaufmann said Travis flew to Russia as originally intended, and sent the email to Spitzer on Monday. “I just read the news, I’m so sorry,” she wrote in a copy of the email provided to the Times. Apparently she also offered to tell the police “that my report was all fake,” and that she had attempted suicide “as I had before.”
“You tried to save me,” she apparently wrote.
Update – 10:57 PM
Citing an anonymous source, Inside Edition reports that Svetlana Travis is the author of an article published by Matter in 2014, “Sex Is Sex, But Money Is Money.” The author of that piece identifies herself as a 24-year-old former escort living in New York City.
The New York Daily Newshas further details about the night of the alleged assault:
In the hours after the alleged scrap, Spitzer was caught on hotel video wearing a wool cap pulled down low over his eyes. While Travis was in the hospital, someone identifying himself as “George” called twice to ask about seeing her, sources said.
Later, a man believed to be the same person showed up using the name “George” to see her, but was told that at that point he couldn’t see her, sources said.
Police believe the caller and the visitor were Spitzer because hospital video shows him wearing the same wool cap, sources said.
Spitzer has been known to use the alias “George Fox” — the name of a longtime friend and supporter — when he was soliciting hookers in 2008.
Spitzer issued a statement on Monday night denying that Travis was his girlfriend.
Though the Grammys began at something like 6 AM PST this morning, there will potentially be a nighttime amount of happenings. Everyone’s freaking out at the possibility of a Zayn/remaining members of possibly now-defunct boy band One Direction run-in. Rihanna is probably performing “Work”—in which she will no doubt wind—and possibly Beyoncé will do “Formation,” with a respective video and album to plausibly drop afterwards. And Kendrick Lamar may or may not be performing to a backdrop protesting mass incarceration.
Jezebel’s top-tier team of cultural pundits, wonks, and party zone folks will be deconstructing it all in its entirety. Break out your wine glass or vape (or whatever else you do, that’s your business), and join us for the most exciting music event of the year!
Syrian Civil Defense rescuers run from the site of a second explosion near a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Syria on Monday.
According to the United Nations, as many as 50 people were killed in northern Syria on Monday when four hospitals—including a Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) facility in Maarat al-Numan—were bombed. “Such attacks are a blatant violation of international laws,” the UN said.
France said the attacks constituted war crimes. MSF said that its hospital was hit by four missiles in quick succession, saying that it “wasn’t an accidental attack, that it was deliberate.” Seven people died in that attack. Eight are still missing. From the BBC:
Mego Terzian, president of MSF France, told Reuters “either the [Syrian] government or Russia” was “clearly” responsible.
But the Syrian ambassador to Moscow Riad Haddad, said the US was to blame, a claim the Pentagon dismissed as “patently false”.
“We have no reason to strike in Idlib, as Isil [Islamic State] is not active there,” spokesman Capt Jeff Davis said.
Russia maintains that it only targets “terrorists.” A U.N. spokesman, Farhan Haq, told the New York Times that two of the hospitals contained pediatric and maternity wards supported by Unicef, and that the 50 people killed on Monday included children.
According to Physicians for Human Rights, 697 health care workers have been killed in 336 attacks on medical sites since the Syrian conflict began. On Monday, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it would continue airstrikes against rebel positions even if a proposed cease-fire goes into effect.
Nikita Kamayev, the former head of the Russian anti-doping agency RUSADA, died on Monday at the age of 52. “Presumably, the cause of death was a massive heart attack,” wrote RUSADA in a press release.
Kamayev helmed RUSADA for almost five years, before resigning in December after the release of a World Anti-Doping Agency report that detailed massive state-sponsored doping and cheating in Russian track and field. The Russian Track Federation was formally suspended by the IAAF, and as things stand won’t be allowed to participate in the upcoming Rio Olympics.
While a 52-year-old dying from a heart attack is far from unprecedented, those who knew Kamayev seem especially surprised by his death. Via The Guardian:
The former Rusada general director Ramil Khabriev told the Tass news agency he believed Kamayev, 52, had a heart attack after cross-country skiing.
“I’ve been told that he was out cross-country skiing, came home, and felt pain in the area of the heart,” Khabriev said. “I’d never heard him complain of anything to do with his heart. Perhaps his wife knew about some sort of problem.”
The acting director of Rusada, Anna Antseliovich, told state news agency R-Sport: “This is a big loss and surprise for us. He never complained about his heart and wasn’t sick.”
Kamayev isn’t even the first former RUSADA bigwig to die this month. Vyacheslav Sinev, who helped found RUSADA in 2008 and ran it for three years, died on February 3 of unspecified causes. He was the chairman of RUSADA’s board when the first WADA report came out, and resigned along with Kamayev and other leadership figures.
The poll comes just days before the South Carolina primary, and gives us a little “taste” of the sort of voting pool we’re dealing with here—shallow, cloudy, and with a lot of leaves floating around in it that no one has bothered to clean out with the net.
The good news is that now, a little more than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, a full three quarters of South Carolinians have come around to rejecting the doctrine of white supremacy (there was no poll question about the possibility of white inferiority). On the other hand, allowing for the poll’s margin of error, it’s possible that as many South Carolinians remain unsure about racial equality as are unsure about what kind of barbecue sauce they like to put into their mouths.
Meanwhile, though their opinions are divided about barbecue sauce, the voters appear to have formed a majority opinion about racist symbology. They’re for it:
(Trump backers are 70 percent in favor of the Confederate flag.)
The people of South Carolina are, to their credit, not yet ready to ban the entire religion of Islam outright, but they do lean toward supporting a national government registry of its practitioners:
A full 47 percent of those asked were either opposed to the legal practice of Islam in the United States or “unsure.” Donald Trump’s supporters are the one subgroup in the poll unable to muster a majority to support keeping a religion legal.
Here’s a good breakdown of GOP candidate support by white supremacists, with Trump leading the pack:
Marco Rubio has the most supporters who are unsure about white supremacy.
And here’s a breakdown of GOP candidate support by traitors:
Again, Trump supporters lead the field. A full 76 percent of them are not glad that the United States won the Civil War. This might seem, at first, an odd position for a nationalist campaign that praises winners and disparages losers. But maybe it’s wisdom. What quicker way would there be to make America great again, right now, than by removing South Carolina?
Photo of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Bojangles’ Southern 500 via Getty
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Candie Hailey did a three-year pretrial stint at Rikers Island before facing a jury on charges of attempted murder last year. She spent more than two thirds of that time in solitary confinement, and attempted suicide eight times. When Hailey finally got her day in court, the jury found her not guilty. “I would say I’ve been through hell and back,” Hailey told the Associated Press. “My soul died but my body is alive.”
An AP profile of Hailey published today shines light on the horrors of solitary and on the long pretrial jail terms that are commonly served by arrestees who are either denied bail or can’t afford it. Hailey, who suffers from borderline character disorder and other mental ailments, was first sent to what Rikers inmates call “the Bing” after a fight with another inmate over shower-cleaning duty. After that, she rarely left for any extended period of time.
The AP describes a counterintuitive strategy that Hailey adopted for escaping solitary: if she behaved badly enough, she would be granted reprieve in the form of temporary mental health treatment. But after that, of course, it’s back to the bing as penance for whatever transgression briefly got her out. “I would take the feces and I put it all over me,” she said when describing this method. “I said, ‘If you’re gonna treat me like a dog, I’m gonna act like one.’”
But Hailey’s story most closely resembles that of Kalief Browder, who was arrested as a 16-year-old for allegedly stealing a backpack. Like Hailey, Browder spent two years in solitary before ever being tried, and attempted suicide multiple times; like Javier, he was ultimately released after the Bronx District Attorney dropped his charges. Last year, two years after his release, Browder was found dead, his body hanging from a hole in the wall.
“I think what caused the suicide was his incarceration and those hundreds and hundreds of nights in solitary confinement, where there were mice crawling up his sheets in that little cell,” Browder’s lawyer told the Los Angeles Times at the time. “Being starved, and not being taken to the shower for two weeks at a time … those were direct contributing factors.… That was the pain and sadness that he had to deal with every day, and I think it was too much for him.”
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