Earlier today, reports surfaced about an email sent to House of Representatives staffers about ransomware. Gizmodo has obtained the email in full.
According to the email sent in late April by the House’s Technology Service Desk, there has been an increase in ransomware attacks sent through Gmail, YahooMail, and other public email services. Ransomware attacks work by tricking users into opening malicious files that then encrypt a computer’s contents and lock users out. The computer can only be unlocked by paying a ransom to hackers who hold the keys.
According to a congressional staffer who spoke anonymously to Gizmodo, at least one of the ransomware attacks was successful. Once the computer was affected, House IT was able to remotely shut down the machine within 20 minutes. The staffer eventually had to reformat their computer.
In response to the attacks, the House’s IT desk blocked access to YahooMail “Until further notice.”
Here’s the email:
From: Technology Service Desk Sent: Saturday, April 30, 2016 11:53 AM To: All House Staff Subject: Increase in Ransomware at The House Importance: High
In the past 48 hours, the House Information Security Office has seen an increase of attacks on the House Network using third party, web-based mail applications such as YahooMail, Gmail, etc. The attacks are focused on putting “ransomware” on users’ computers. When a user clicks on the link in the attack e-mail, the malware encrypts all files on that computer, including shared files, making them unusable until a “ransom” is paid. The recent attacks have focused on using .js files attached as zip files to e-mail that appear to come from known senders. The primary focus appears to be through YahooMail at this time.
The House Information Security Office is taking a number of steps to address this specific attack. As part of that effort, we will be blocking access to YahooMail on the House Network until further notice. We are making every effort to put other mitigating protections in place so that we can restore full access as soon as possible.
Please do your part to help us address this recent attack and protect the House Network going forward by following proper cyber practices at all times. Phishing e-mails can look very legitimate and appear to come from known senders. Be very careful about clicking on attachments or links in e-mails, particularly when you are using non-House e-mail systems.
If you have any questions, please contact the CAO Technology Service Desk (REDACTED) at REDACTED or REDACTED.
We have reached out to Yahoo and will update this story if we hear back.
Update (8:10 PM EST):
Yahoo emailed this statement to Gizmodo:
“We take the security of our users very seriously, and we’re collaborating closely with House IT staff to ensure that they have the right solutions in place to best protect their accounts.”
In a clip released earlier that day, Vice President Joe Biden told ABC News he felt “confident” Hillary Clinton would be both the nominee and the next president. And when asked about the race last week, President Obama told reporters, “I think everybody knows what that math is.”
Shortly after polls closed on Tuesday, Sanders sent supporters an email celebrating the win while recognizing the campaign’s difficult path ahead.
“We fully acknowledge we have an uphill climb ahead of us, but we’re used to that,” wrote Sanders. “We have been fighting uphill from the day this campaign began, and we’re going to stay in the race until the last vote is cast.”
On Tuesday, an attacker believed to have stabbed multiple people after crashing into a Macy’s store in Massachusetts was shot by an off-duty police officer, WCVB-TV reports. Authorities say two victims and the suspect have died.
According to police, the suspect crashed into the Silver City Galleria mall in Taunton, Massachusetts and stabbed two people before being shot. In a separate, related incident, two other victims were reportedly stabbed in a nearby home.
A witness told WBZ-TV that one victim was pregnant. The conditions of the two living victims are not known.
After urging supporters in West Virginia not to vote, Donald Trump nonetheless won overwhelming victories in that state and Nebraska on Tuesday, soundly defeating two men who dropped out of the race last week.
As their names remained on the ballots after suspending their campaigns, both Ted Cruz and John Kasich served as a potential protest votes in the primaries. On Tuesday, Cruz even suggested he might reenter the race if Nebraska “changed circumstances,” before clarifying he believed he was done being humiliated for now.
“The reason we suspended the race last week was that with Indiana’s loss I didn’t see a viable path to victory,” said Cruz. “But let’s be clear, we’re not going to win Nebraska today.”
Let’s be clear, he wasn’t going to win Nebraska today.
Queen Elizabeth II was overheard Tuesday calling Chinese officials “very rude,” in a conversation with a police officer who’d been responsible for security during the state visit in October.
Commander Lucy D’Orsi told the queen that coordinating Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit had been a “testing time.”
“They were very rude to the ambassador,” the queen said.
Queen Elizabeth II rarely comments in public on political issues, the Associated Press observes. Media are generally asked not to intrude upon her private conversations; however, this video was recorded by an palace cameraman and has been officially released to journalists.
AP
Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang evaded questions about the queen’s remarks, telling reporters that the president made a “very successful visit.”
“The working teams from both sides made huge efforts to make this possible. This effort has been highly recognized by both China and Britain,” Lu said.
Nevertheless, the AP reports, China has taken steps to suppress the queen’s comments, censoring them on the Internet and cutting the BBC signal when it reported on the story.
Via the New York Times, here is the transcript of Tuesday’s conversation (bolding ours):
Lord Chamberlain: “Can I present Commander Lucy D’Orsi, who was Gold Commander during the Chinese state visit…”
Queen Elizabeth: “Oh, bad luck.”
Lord Chamberlain: “… and who was seriously, seriously undermined by the Chinese, but she managed to hold her own and remain in command. And her mother, Judith, who’s involved in child protection and social work.”
Commander D’Orsi’s mother: “Yes, I’m very proud of my daughter.”
Lord Chamberlain: “You must tell your story.”
Commander D’Orsi: “Yes, I was the Gold Commander, so I’m not sure whether you knew, but it was quite a testing time for me.”
Queen: “Yes, I did.”
Commander D’Orsi: “It was, er, I think at the point that they walked out of Lancaster House and told me that the trip was off, I felt that…”
The Queen: “They were very rude to the ambassador.”
Commander D’Orsi: “They were. Well, she was, yes, Barbara, she was with me and they walked out on both of us.”
Finally: A reason to care about the Panama Papers leak—attractive people you know from your teevee screen.
Actress Emma Watson has turned up in the Panama Papers, now available as a searchable database, as the owner of a British Virgin Islands company called “Falling Leaves Ltd.” Her spokesperson said she’d set up the offshore account for “privacy.”
“UK companies are required to publicly publish details of their shareholders and therefore do not give her the necessary anonymity required to protect her personal safety, which has been jeopardised in the past owing to such information being publicly available,” the spokesperson said.
“Offshore companies do not publish these shareholder details. Emma receives absolutely no tax or monetary advantages from this offshore company whatsoever—only privacy.”
According to The Times, Watson used the anonymous holding company to purchase a £2.8 million ($4 million) home in London. She’d have been better off staying at 12 Grimmauld Place!
Philippe Reines in 2012, listening to testimony at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Benghazi. Photo: Getty
Near the end of her tenure as Secretary of State, one of Hillary Clinton’s closest aides, Philippe Reines, claimed in emails to colleagues and journalists covering the State Department that James Rosen, the 48-year-old chief Washington correspondent at Fox News, had been removed from his post at the agency over allegations of sexual harassment. In one such email, dated January 2013 and addressed to a CNN producer and another State Department staffer, Reines, then serving as a deputy assistant secretary of state, wrote, “Fox has had nobody assigned to State for the last two years after they pulled James Rosen for sexual harassment.”
Gawkerwasunable to verify Reines’ claims against Rosen with any of the involved parties. Nor wasGawkerable to identify the complainant or their institutional affiliation. Reached by telephone in Washington, Rosen declined to comment and referred our questions to Fox’s media relations team. Irena Briganti, a spokesperson at the channel’s Manhattan headquarters, did not return messages.
Reines and his email’s recipients—Virginia Moseley, CNN’s deputy Washington bureau chief, and Caroline Adler, who oversaw the State Department’s office of strategic communications and now serves as First Lady Michelle Obama’s communications director—did not respond to requests for comment, either. In an email to Gawker, a State Department spokesperson wrote, “We decline to comment.”
Aside from Fox News’santagonistic stance toward the Obama administration in general and Hillary Clinton in particular, there is no apparent reasonthatReines mightfalsely claim that Rosen had been accused of sexual harassment and re-assigned. Yet the same trove of emails containing Reines’ assertion suggests there had been longstanding tensions between the two men, which apparently boiled over in September 2012, shortly after BuzzFeed reporter Michael Hastings conducted, and later published, an expletive-heavy correspondence with Reines about the State Department’s response to the attacks in Benghazi, Libya.
In that exchange, after Reines told Hastings to “fuck off,” Hastings replied: “Hah—I now understand what women say about you, too! Any new complaints against you lately?”
The same documents released by the State Department show that, the day after Reines and Hastings’s exchange, Rosen emailed Reines to inquire about the slain U.S. Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, whose personal diary had been recovered by CNN at the American embassy in Benghazi. Reines forwarded the message to a BBC reporter named Nina Donaghy almost immediately, writing: “Look who popped up only hours after I’m being hit with the false sexual harassment bs that was really at him.” (Donaghy, who now works as a freelance reporter, did not return requests for comment.)
Reines responded to Rosen twenty-two hours later, but did not answer any of his questions, instead writing:
It has indeed been awhile since you covered State, at least a couple of years since you were re-assigned. I can’t recall exactly when that was, but I vividly remember why. I’ll admit that my antenna might be a little too sensitive these days given all that’s going on, but I can’t help but notice the timing of your note coming so soon after Michael Hastings posted online the unfortunate exchange he and I had—which alluded to a malicious accusation against me that you know better than anyone never happened, and is a vicious lie.
Reines concluded that it would be “inappropriate” for them to work together on the Stevensstory, and referred to Rosen to a different State employee for guidance.
In a lengthy response, Rosen acknowledged being re-assigned from the State Department beat but did not elaborate on what preceded the move:
As government officials never tire of telling reporters, and as is certainly apt in this instance, you were not privy to the decision-making process involved when I was re-assigned from State (in late July 2009) and accordingly it would not be a safe assumption for you to assume that you know why, or “remember why” said decision was made. This would be the case whether your purported understanding, or memory, is “vivid,” dim, or otherwise.
In the same reply, Rosen wrote, “I did not have—and do not today have—the faintest idea of what Hastings was talking (or writing) about.”
The State Department began releasing Reines’ emails with reporters last year, after Gawker Media sued the agency for failing to comply with our Freedom of Information Act request for them. Structured in monthly installments, the emails disclosed thus far have been haphazardly organized by the State Department’s FOIA office, making it difficult to discern the chronology and context of certain exchanges.
So it’s unclear, based on the latest releases, whether or not Reines and Rosen exchanged any emails of substance between September 2012 and January 2013, when Reines notified Virginia Moseley and Caroline Adler about the alleged circumstances of Rosen’s re-assignment. The only indication that the two men communicated during that period of time consists of a short note from Rosen to Reines on December 16, 2012, which reads in part: “I think you’ve blown off my last three requests for information—and they have been very basic stuff.” Reines does not appear to have replied to Rosen’s message.
Taken together, Reines’s emails suggest he came to believe Rosen had been re-assigned from the State Department over allegations of sexual harassment; and that someone had later spread rumors indicating Reines, rather than Rosen, had been accused of sexual harassment. This theory largely comports with what Reines wrote in an email to Gawker last year, after we asked him what Hastings had been talking about. Reines alleged that a Fox reporter had been accused of harassment, but not identify him or her:
I don’t know what he was referring to. And given his death I’m reluctant to guess. But I think he was referencing a rumor that stemmed from State’s FOX reporter being removed from the State beat because of a sexual harassment charge against him by a colleague, and said reporter tried to blame me. Which never made sense why he thought that would work. But I guess it kinda did if you’re asking me more than two years later.
There are some discrepancies in this account. In his email to Moseley, for example, Reines implied that Rosen had been re-assigned two years prior, which would have been in or around January 2011. But according to Rosen’s September 2012 reply to Reines, Fox re-assigned him much earlier, in July 2009.
Furthermore, it’s not immediately obvious that Hastings was, in fact, alluding to rumors concerning sexual harassment. “I now understand what women say about you” could mean a lot of things.Indeed, Reines’s relationship with women had been the subject of some prior coverage. A 2011 Washington Post profile noted that, when he first arrived in Washington to work for a congresswoman in 2000, Reines actively encouraged reporters to talk about his dating life: “Begrudgingly admiring colleagues studied how he wore women down with unabashed persistence. He became a frequent tipster — often about his own exploits — to online gossips. His bravado sometimes backfired, earning him a 2007 mention on the Web site DontDateHimGirl.com.”
It’s unclear, too, what it would have meant for Rosen to be “re-assigned” from the State Department, since he continuedto coverthe agency and its activities after July 2009. He was even the subject of a controversial Justice Department probe that began in June 2009, after he published a story concerning North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. (That probe, which continued into 2010, eventually identified one of Rosen’s State Department sources, a government advisor named Stephen Jin-Woo Kim.) In any case, Rosen’s physical access to the State Department, or Fox’s office therein, does not seem to have been suspended. In one of his September 2012 emails to Reines, Rosen mentioned that “I am reachable today at the Fox State [Department] booth.”
Now that Donald Trump all but has the Republican presidential nomination completely locked up, he has to start thinking about how to actually put his zany and evil ideas into practice. For instance: the Muslim ban. Who better to oversee it than his old pal Rudy Giuliani?
On Fox and Friends this morning, Trump said he was considering forming a commission on Islamic terrorism that could be headed by the ex-New York mayor and failed presidential candidate. The commission would also study his plan to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., the New York Post reports.
The Archdiocese of Baltimore has posted a list of several dozen priests and religious brothers accused of sexual abuse, including 14 priests who offended after the groundbreaking 2002 Boston Globe investigation broke the story of widespread sexual abuse.
The Baltimore Sun reports that the list includes 57 priests who were first named on the archdiocese website in 2002—eight months after the Globe investigation. That list was subsequently taken down. The new list contains at least 14 names that did not appear on the initial list because their offenses occurred after 2002.
When the 2002 list was published, Cardinal William Keeler called the abuse of children by priests “the spiritual equivalent of murder.”
Though all of the names had previously been disclosed, they had not been collected into a single place, as activists had requested. The new list was posted this past January, although the archdiocese did not publicize it because it did not include any “new” names, so-to-speak.
“We’ve wanted it a long time,” David Lorenz, Maryland director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told the Sun. “We’ve asked every diocese around the country to do it.” Archbishop William Lori decided to grant that request this year.
“The primary motivation in publicly disclosing an allegation is to encourage anyone else who may have been a victim of that individual to come forward,” archdiocese spokesman Sean Caine told the Washington Post. “We’ve heard from victim-surviors that one main obstacle is the sense that they’re alone. They’re the only one. They won’t be believed.”
The list includes a paragraph describing the allegations in a scroll-over text appended to each name.
“I think it’s to Lori’s credit,” Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, said. “Baltimore’s unusual in actually saying something about what the allegations are.”
“There are various ways in which the Church has over the years really limited everyone’s knowledge of this, and survivors are very, very aware of that. And when the Church finally says, okay, we’re not doing that anymore, that is a huge relief. It really lifts a terrible burden.”
If there’s one thing this election season has been lacking, it’s screen time devoted to the megalomaniacal ranting of a tiresome one-time television character. Thankfully, this morning Bloomberg News published an interview with the actor Jeff Daniels in which he reprises his character Will McAvoy from the deceased HBO broadcast news drama The Newsroom.
The interview is conducted by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, the two millionaires who recently got shit on by their billionaire boss. But if there’s anything the three of them share it might be a collective chub for the ultimate plutocratic fantasy: a straight-talking centrist who equally reviles the states of the Democratic and Republican primaries. Alas, the video cuts off before Halperin and Heilemann ask “McAvoy” to make a stirring argument for the Innovation Party.
The Obama presidency has left an indelible mark on American society, particularly on the issues of race and racism. Deep and enduring fractures across racial lines have been thrust to the forefront of the national conversation. Even though Obama’s presidency is nearing its end, issues of race continue to dominate the political news cycle, from Donald Trump’s comments about Latinos and Muslims, to Black Lives Matter activists challenging the Democratic candidates on the issue of race. The future of race in America will be defined by today’s youth, and some commentators (including one of us), have expressed skepticism about whether young whites truly hold different views from older whites. However, new data from the 2016 American National Elections Study (ANES) pilot survey suggest that, at least on some dimensions, young whites are quite a bit more racially progressive than their parents.
The ANES, which is widely used by political scientists, conducts national surveys of the American electorate, and has done so in almost every election year since 1948. The 2016 ANES pilot survey is a 1,200 person opt-in online survey performed between January 22nd, 2016 and January 28th 2016. The accuracy of well-designed opt-in panels has been confirmed by leading political scientists Stephen Ansolabehere and Brian Schaffner (Ansolabehere and Schaffner’s study examines a survey completed by YouGov, the same firm used by the 2016 ANES pilot study). The questions on the 2016 pilot related to race were formulated by a group of scholars (including Jardina) whose expertise is racial attitudes.
Identity
Black and Latino issues and identities have been at the forefront of this election cycle. Candidates have discussed racial justice, mass incarceration, and police brutality. Democratic candidates attended a Black and Brown Forum dedicated specifically to discussing issues of import to communities of color. However, the election has also been defined by white identity politics, with GOP nominee Donald Trump appealing to a practically all-white base, including many self-declared white nationalists and even members of the Ku Klux Klan.
But are the prejudices and resentments Trump appeals to shared by whites of all ages? To explore the age gaps on these issues, the ANES asked a battery of questions relating to white identity and racial competition. First: “How important is it that whites work together to change laws that are unfair to whites?” Endorsing this idea has previously been linked to support for Donald Trump. Not all whites are equally likely to adopt this sense of group solidarity, however. The ANES data suggest that older whites are statistically significantly more likely to agree that whites should work to change laws than the youngest whites. Less than a quarter of the youngest whites say it is “very” or “extremely” important to change the laws, compared to nearly half of the oldest whites.
Donald Trump staunchly opposes pro-immigration reform, telling his supporters immigrants are “taking your jobs.” This message seems to resonate more with older voters, who are more likely to agree that it is “very” or “extremely” likely that “many whites are unable to find a job because employers are hiring minorities instead.” Twenty percent of young white people say it’s “very” or “extremely” likely, compared with 42 percent of those over 70. As with the question above, the biggest gaps are between the very youngest and oldest whites, suggesting that the Obama era could have led to less racial resentment among young whites, particularly liberals.
The Myth of Reverse Racism
Research by Michael Norton and Samuel Sommers finds that many whites now see “reverse discrimination” as equally important of a problem as actual racism. Research from the Public Religion Research Institute shows that young whites are far more likely to hold this view than young people of color. In 2012, 58 percent of young whites agreed that, “discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against Blacks and other minorities.” A YouGov survey shows that whites feel the government does more to help people of color than whites, even though the data suggest this is wholly false.
To explore feelings about who benefits from government services, the ANES survey asked, “In general, does the federal government treat whites better than blacks, treat blacks better than whites, or treat them both the same?” A solid 55 percent of whites over 70 believe that the U.S. federal government—the government that enforced segregation, redlining and mass incarceration during their lifetimes—treats blacks better. A mere 29 percent believe the federal government, which bulldozed black neighborhoods to create more car-friendly cities and originally excluded blacks from Social Security, treaties whites better. By contrast, nearly half of the youngest white believes that government favors whites, and a fifth agree that the government treats blacks better.
Privilege and Guilt
This survey is one of the few nationally-representative surveys that has asked questions about white privilege and guilt. When asked, “How much does being white grant you unearned privileges in today’s society?” more than half of white respondents denied that they had any privilege (and answered “not at all”). There were large age divides: 63 percent of whites 70 or older said “not at all,” compared to only a third of whites aged 18-29. It’s unsurprising then, that one of the starkest results in the battery was on the white guilt questions (after all, if whites have no privilege, why feel guilt?). Respondents were asked a series of questions about whether they feel guilt over their white privilege. One question asks, “When you learn about racism, how much guilt do you feel due to your association with the white race?” The survey also asked whites whether they feel guilt about the privileges and benefits they receive as a white person. A full 86 percent of whites 70 and older report little to no guilt (78 percent say no guilt). A majority (56 percent) of the youngest whites also describe little to no guilt, but only 38 percent say none, a 40 point difference between the youngest and oldest group.
The gaps between the youngest and oldest whites on the white guilt questions were highly significant. Young whites are more likely to feel guilt about white privilege. In response to the question, “how guilty do you feel about the privileges and benefits you receive as a white American?” 84 percent of whites 70 and over said “none,” compared with 45 percent of whites between 18 and 29.
The End of White Grievance Politics
Over the past two decades, our country’s discourse around race has changed dramatically. Conceptions of white identity and guilt have entered the political lexicon. More Americans agree that many social programs have disproportionately benefited whites over time, and government policy worked to create a middle class that excluded people of color. However, very few surveys ask about these questions. The most recent ANES pilot allows for a unique opportunity to examine these attitudes. On these issues, very broad differences emerge. Older whites are more likely to think the government is working against them, and that whites should work together to change these laws. Older whites also feel dispossessed and believe that they are victims of reverse discrimination; unsurprisingly, many of these same whites have been drawn to the white nationalism of Trump.
On questions of privilege and guilt, another pattern emerges. Younger whites are far more likely to agree they themselves have benefited from unjust racism. Young whites are also dramatically more likely to express guilt over racism. This aligns well with the first result: While older whites are aggrieved, younger whites are more attuned to the realities of structural racism. How this will affect society remains to be seen, but it appears that, Donald Trump notwithstanding, there is room for improved discourse on race in American society.
However, there is still much more progress to be made. The fact that young whites are less racially resentful does very little to alleviate the fact that the median net worth for a white family is $134,000 compared to $11,000 for a black family. It does nothing to change the reality that racial segregation in both neighborhoods and schools is still rife and pervasive. But it offers a glimmer of hope: The politics of white grievance that have been so powerfully exploited during the 2016 election may not work with the next generation.
Sean McElwee is a policy analyst at Demos. Follow him on Twitter: @SeanMcElwee. Ashley Jardina is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duke University.
A small group of conservatives, who have been watching in horror as people who are not white straight men enjoy the same constitutional protections and benefits, are reportedly planning for a “battle” at the national convention. Ironic, in that they’re finally fighting for minorities—themselves.
The Politico reports today that the party’s ultra-conservatives—the ones who always talk about “natural marriage” and “traditional values” and “wide stances”—are nervous their staunch policies won’t last past the convention.
Citing “a multimillion-dollar campaign to soften the party’s stringent posture on social issues” and Donald Trump’s policies—god knows what they are—conservative leaders like Ted Cruz are currently strategizing ways to stack the convention with friendly delegates to set the party’s official platform for the next four years.
Others, frightened by the prospect of equality, are sending crazy emails:
There’s also consternation about a group of mainstream GOP donors, including New York City billionaire Paul Singer, who arebankrolling American Unity Fund, an organization devoted to moderating the GOP’s official position on same-sex marriage. The outfit has spent months courting delegates on the platform committee, hoping to convince them that greater flexibility on the issue will help the party expand. Last month, American Unity Fund officials traveled to Hollywood, Florida, to attend the RNC’s annual spring meeting.
Over the weekend, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, a Louisiana delegate who will have a seat on the Platform Committee, sent an email to supporters in which he derided Singer as a “sexual revolutionary” bent on “hijacking” and “radicalizing” the platform. The message was sent under the subject line, “New stealth attack threatens natural marriage.”
Thanks to a new rule passed by one North Carolina board of education, students in Salisbury-area high schools will be allowed to carry pepper spray with them on campus in the upcoming school year. According to one board member, the spray could be “pretty valuable” for female students, in case they encounter a trans woman in the bathroom.
The frightening remark, first reported by the Salisbury Post and later picked up by the Associated Press, came from a Rowan-Salisbury Board of Education member named Chuck Hughes. From the Post:
Board member Chuck Hughes was in favor of the sprays on campuses, saying that in his mind, they were purely defensive. He also referenced HB2, saying that the sprays might be useful.
“Depending on how the courts rule on the bathroom issues, it may be a pretty valuable tool to have on the female students if they go to the bathroom, not knowing who may come in,” he said.
Mr. Hughes’ remark is a perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with the right-wing rhetoric surrounding HB2, the so-called “bathroom bill.” One obvious point is that HB2 bans trans people from using the bathrooms that correspond to their gender; it doesn’t open those bathrooms up to them. Paranoid cis people don’t need pepper spray to shield them from whatever they’re so scared of. The law already does that for them.
More importantly, the remark makes plain a sad truth that lawmakers’ absurd rhetoric about “protecting” cis people attempts to conceal. There is no statistical evidence of trans people committing assault when using the bathrooms of their choice. There are, however, countless documented cases of trans people being berated, beaten, and worse by those who take their very existence as some grave offense—including, yes, in bathrooms. Pepper spray wouldn’t help cis students defend themselves against their trans classmates; it would help them attack. HB2 isn’t about making bathrooms safer for cis people. It’s about making them more dangerous for trans people.
When the faceless editors of Wikipedia decide an article is not fit for public consumption, it’s gone, only accessible to the site’s top editors—at least, it was. But now we’re keeping track of all the articles Wikipedia doesn’t see fit to print, to present you with very best of the site’s weirdest and worst. (Plus: An extra special audio bonus this week only.) Please, enjoy.
Manhunt International 2014 is a male beauty pageant that seems to have never actually happened and may or may not be postponed indefinitely. It does seem to have been a real thing in the past with actual winners, as its website will attest:
A reverse image search reveals that these are, in fact, real contestants who have actually won this contest. After 2012, though, things start to get weird.
Best line:
Or rather, best section:
And while Sy Lee most likely did not win Mr. Internet Popularity in 2014 because no Manhunt competition took place in 2014, the title would have unquestionably been his. Please, observe:
Side note: That is not where champagne goes, Sy Lee.
Why it got deleted:
All the information in this article appears to be referencing either the 2012 or the 2011 competition. An exact replica of the article had, however, at one point existed under the name Manhunt International 2013 (which is now also being considered for deletion). What’s more, this is actually the second or third time this particular incarnation has been put out of its misery.
An though the Manhunt International website does have a list of contestants for 2014, none of those people are actually listed on the Wikipedia page. As you can see from the image above, much to Sy Lee’s chagrin, Manhunt International 2014 is postponed.
The Party of Communists USA is exactly what it sounds like. More than just being communists, though, they are also staunchly pro-former Soviet Union. For instance, here’s a post they recently shared to their Facebook page:
The Party of Communists USA is a Marxist-Leninist organization formed from a split of Communist Party USA. The party takes an anti-revisionist line and upholds the former Soviet Union.
Why it got deleted:
Because “the only source found on the web is the organization’s website,” said the capitalist fascist pigs of Wikipedia.
Apparently, after the 2012 Olympics there was “an unusual rate of deaths” among participating athletes. The idea that this translated to a curse first started up in France after two French Olympians died in a helicopter crash March 9, 2015 while filming a survivor-esque TV show last year.
The last line in the article’s description states that “analysis has indicated that this number of deaths amongst the 10,568 participants is not statistically significant.” Which effectively disproves the entire article itself.
Unless, of course, someone is just trying to cover their tracks.
Why it got deleted:
Keeping the above in mind, user The Rambling Man points out that it is “actually less than significant” and “nonsensical tabloid garbage.”
On the other hand, does The Rambling Man does seem awfully keen on minimizing the evidence at hand. Why are you so afraid, Rambling Man? And what are you trying to hide? Or should I say—who?
All of which isn’t to say that The Rambling Man necessarily has anything to do with the curse, of course. We’re just asking questions.
Why it shouldn’t have:
The people deserve the truth, Rambling Man. Tell us what you know.
This entry purports to tell the tale of a relatively uneventful emergency landing. This particular emergency landing will be taking place next Monday.
Best line:
This is another short one, so we present the article in full:
Passengers: Crew: Date:May 16,2016 Fatalities:0 Injuries:0 Aircraft:737-8 MAX Survivors: Operator:United airlines United airlines flight 006 was a flight that made an emegency [sic] landing in May of 2016. The emergency landing took place in Seattle,Washington after the left engine started to make a groaning noise the plane started to dip to the left. Everyone on board the 737-8 MAX survived.
Why it got deleted:
Wikipedia’s editors say that “a google news search shows nothing in the news for an incident as described in the article. The article is totally unreferenced also. Even if the incident happened, delete as not notable aviation incident.”
The other issue, of course, is that what we’re dealing with here is more of a prophecy than anything else—all the more reason it must be preserved.
Why it shouldn’t have:
The people deserve to know! Please, if you have any plans to fly on United Airlines Flight 006 this coming Monday, do not—I repeat, do not—get on that plane. You’ll survive, sure. But making your connecting flight is going to be a bitch.
Here at Wikipedia Watch, we generally focus on Wikipedia pages themselves, not the content housed within the overwhelmingly wide world of the Wikimedia Foundation. This is because A) the code written by the brilliant Adam Pash is only set to save Wikipedia pages and B) I want to live my life. However! Today we make an exception.
Thanks to writer Josh Fruhlinger, it’s come to our attention that what is perhaps the single most important audio file on Wikipedia is, at this very moment, in danger of being deleted. It is this file of Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus saying, “I am Reince Preibus.”
Best line:
“I am Reince Preibus.”
Why it might get deleted:
So far, the sole argument in favor of deleting the beloved and classic line comes from an editor who calls himself Magog the Ogre. Magog writes:
The GOP is the copyright holder on this, not the uploader.
Why it shouldn’t:
Not only is Mr. Ogre’s reasoning objectively false, but Reince, buddy, if you’re going to make a fake account to try to get the file taken down, at least put a little effort into it. Magog’s user page notes that he lives is Pennyslvania. And as we all know, Reince Preibus has been to Pennsylvania before. You do the math.
Just in case Wikipedia does acquiesce to Reince’s demands and decide to do the unthinkable, we’ve saved the file ourselves, which you’re free to revisit anytime you need a little Reince in your day.
Marc Mezvinsky, husband to Chelsea Clinton and occasionally successful hedge fund manager, thought it would be a good idea to bet on the Greek economy a few years ago. But unfortunately for him and the rest of his firm, it was not. Mr. Chelsea Clinton has fucked up.
Mezvinsky’s fund, dubbed Eaglevale Hellenic Opportunity, had originally raised $25 million to buy “Greek bank stocks and government debt,” according to The New York Times. As the Greek economy continued to fester, though, the fund lost about 90 percent of its value. And now, it’s forced to shut down entirely. Fromthe Times:
Eaglevale Partners, a Manhattan hedge fund firm founded by Mr. Mezvinsky and two former Goldman Sachs colleagues, raised money for the Hellenic fund at a time when some on Wall Street had hopes for a revival in the Greek economy. For a time, Mr. Mezvinsky appeared at hedge fund conferences promoting the Greece investment thesis.
The hedge fund game is an inherently risky business, sure. But this is just another mark against Chelsea Clinton in (what we presume is) the ongoing battle for Hillary’s love. At least Hillary can relate to Huma’s husbands fuck-ups.
Federal officials announced on Wednesday that the 2013 fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, that left 15 people dead and 160 others wounded was caused by a “criminal act.” Twelve of those killed in the explosion were first responders.
Officials from the Houston Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the Texas State Fire Marshal’s Office said they came to the conclusion that the fire at the West Fertilizer Company plant was incendiary in the past several months.
The investigation “ruled out all accidental and natural causes,” ATF Special Agent Robert Elder said, but a motive has not yet been determined. “I think it’s too early to speculate on murder charges,” he added.
No arrests have yet been made. ATF is offering a reward up to $50,000 for any information that leads to an arrest.
Earlier this year, the United State Chemical Safety Board issued a report identifying at least 19 plants in Texas alone that are, like the facility in West, dangerously close to surrounding nursing homes, schools, and housing.
“It’s possible for another type of incident like this to happen,” agency Chairwoman Vanessa Allen Sutherland said at the time.
The Donald Trump campaign formalized its association with America’s Stormfront posters yesterday when it named William Johnson, a well-known and avowed white nationalist, as one of its delegates in California. (The campaign attributed Johnson’s selection to a database error, but that seems unlikely.) Now, as Trump’s people continue to backpedal, the Huffington Post reports that they’ve missed the formal deadline to boot Johnson from the list.
According to a spokesperson for the California secretary of state, the deadline for candidates to revise their lists of candidates in the state was yesterday. The Trump campaign attempted to remove Johnson after Mother Jones broke the story yesterday, the spokesperson said, but was turned down because of the deadline.
Johnson first attracted the notice of those of us who are unconcerned about securing a future for white children a few months ago, when his explicitly pro-white American National Super PAC made explicitly pro-white robocalls to primary voters on Trump’s behalf. “I can be a white nationalist and be a strong supporter of Donald Trump and be a good example to everybody,” Johnson told Mother Jones after he learned that the campaign had chosen him as an official representative.
Sadly, Trump may still have a way out. Johnson has said that he will resign as delegate if they ask him to, and according to a California Republican Party spokesperson who talked to HuffPo, in that case Trump would be able to pick someone else. But even if Johnson’s official ties to the campaign are severed, his spirit will live on. The ideas that made Trump appeal to people like him in the first place aren’t going anywhere.
