7 Years Before Russia Hacked the Election, Someone Did the Same Thing to Climate Scientists
"Why does this story sound so darned familiar?"
REBECCA LEBER AND AJ VICENSJANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 ISSUE
One Saturday morning in June, two days after the president had announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement, Michael Mann was tweeting about Donald Trump.
Mann, a Penn State professor who is one of the world's most prominent climate scientists, was thinking about the daily barrage of revelations surrounding Russia's efforts to help Trump win the previous year's election. The hacked Democratic documents posted on WikiLeaks. The media craze over private emails that had been ripped out of context. Smear campaigns circulating on social media.
"#Russia #Wikileaks #HackedEmails #Sabotaged #ClimateAgreements," tweeted Mann. "Why does this story sound so darned familiar?"
Seven years earlier, Trump was riffing on a very different set of hacked emails. The real estate mogul had called into Fox News after a blizzard to declare that climate change was a hoax. Trump claimed that "one of the leaders of global warming" had recently admitted in a private email that years of scientific research were nothing but "a con."
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In hindsight, the Climategate hack, clearly timed to disrupt the Copenhagen negotiations, looks like a precursor to the hack that helped shape the outcome of the 2016 election. That's how John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman whose stolen emails were posted on WikiLeaks in the final weeks of the campaign, sees it. The parallels go beyond the hacks themselves. "I think it was the intentionality of influencing the public debate," he says.
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Society's Child

Trump made headlines on Thursday when he lashed out about immigration reform, demanding to know why the US should accept citizens from what he called 's**thole' countries.
Trump made headlines on Thursday when he lashed out in a meeting with lawmakers about immigration reform, demanding to know why the US should accept citizens from what he called 's**thole' countries.
He was speaking about people from Haiti, El Salvador and various African nations, people briefed on the meeting told the Washington Post.
'Why are we having all these people from s**thole countries come here?' Trump said.
Comment: You have to admire Trump's ability to court controversy, given even his throw-away statements can cause such an uproar. It's also rather telling that Trump's comments have been interpreted as 'racist' rather than how they were obviously intended. See also:
- Another Trump classic: "Why are we having all these people from s***hole countries come here?" - UPDATE
- Poll shows voters overwhelming support for Trump immigration policies
- The good news about the Trump Presidency is that stupid can be good!
- Yale psychology professor who publicly 'diagnosed' Trump apparently lacks a license
- Love Him or Loathe Him, Trump is Liberating us All From The Empire's Lies
These are the Palestinian children killed by Israel in 2017.
Fourteen Palestinian boys and girls under the age of 18 were shot dead by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the year.
There were 21 fewer children killed than in 2016, which was the deadliest year for Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank in the past decade.
In addition to those 14 shot and killed during 2017, a child died of wounds sustained in an Israeli drone strike years earlier.
Another was killed by Israeli ordnance while grazing livestock. A baby living in temporary shelter, his family homeless as a result of Israeli bombing, died of cold exposure.
Palestinian children also died because they were unable to secure permits to leave via the Israeli-controlled Erez checkpoint for medical treatment unavailable in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Emergency room doctors were unable to resuscitate a seriously ill 9-year-old girl in the West Bank after Israeli soldiers denied her family passage at a checkpoint; a trip that normally would take 15 minutes took her family 90 minutes after they were forced to detour and go through a different checkpoint.
No Israeli children were killed by Palestinians during the year. An Israeli woman wounded during a bus stop bombing in 2011, when she was 14, and who had never regained consciousness, died of her injures in 2017.
Comment: Children in Palestine are not just murdered by Israeli forces. In The IDF vs The Teenage Girl: Palestinian Activist Ahed Tamimi Arrested For Slapping Soldiers Who Shot Boy, we read:
Sadly, what is happening to Ahed is not the exception. Since 2000, at least 8,000 Palestinian children as young as 12 have been arrested and prosecuted by the Israeli military. The Israeli military detention system is notorious for the ill-treatment of children.The extent to which Shin Bet interrogators practice torture has been described as 'institutional'. In its 2016 report, Amnesty International found that Israeli forces and Shin Bet personnel had "tortured and otherwise ill-treated Palestinian detainees, including children, particularly during arrest and interrogation", with methods such as "beating with batons, slapping, throttling, prolonged shackling, stress positions, sleep deprivation and threats".
According to research of Defence for Children International - Palestine, almost two thirds of Palestinian children detained in the West Bank had endured physical violence after apprehension. In several cases (23% in 2013, for example), children have been either shown or made to sign documentation, presumably 'confessions', in Hebrew - a language they do not understand.
The increase takes effect next month and will cost $300 million on top of annual wage hikes that were already planned, the world's largest retailer said Thursday. The one-time bonus of up to $1,000 is based on seniority and will amount to an additional $400 million. The company is also expanding its maternity and parental leave policy and adding an adoption benefit.
Wal-Mart, the nation's largest private employer, has fought in recent years to improve its image in the U.S., as it weathered criticism over its treatment of employees. With the wage increase and bonus payment, the company seeks to even its pay gap with resurgent rival Target Corp., while simultaneously sending a high-profile thank you to the U.S. government for slashing the corporate tax rate.
Comment: Breitbart also reports:
Walmart plans to increase its employees' starting wage to $11 an hour, expand maternity and paternal leave benefits, as well as provide a one-time cash bonus up to $1,000. The company added that they will offer financial assistance to their associates who decide to adopt a child; the credit will total $5,000 per child and may be used for expenses such as adoption agency fees, translation fees, and legal costs.See also:
The combined wage and benefit increases will impact well over one million Walmart employees. McMillon added:We are early in the stages of assessing the opportunities tax reform creates for us to invest in our customers and associates and to further strengthen our business, all of which should benefit our shareholders. However, some guiding themes are clear and consistent with how we've been investing - lower prices for customers, better wages and training for associates and investments in the future of our company, including in technology. Tax reform gives us the opportunity to be more competitive globally and to accelerate plans for the U.S.The American economy continues to prosper under President Donald Trump. Well over 100 American companies gave their employees up to $2,000 in bonuses after President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Several corporations such as AT&T, Comcast, and Nationwide also increased their 401(k) match rate, raise their minimum wages, and increased domestic investment because of the Republican tax bill.
Reports suggest that Apple will repatriate roughly $200 billion in foreign cash because of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
American unemployment claim benefits remain at a record 17-year low and American consumer sentiment reached its highest level since 2000.
President Trump tweeted on Thursday, "In new Quinnipiac Poll, 66% of people feel the economy is "Excellent or Good." That is the highest number ever recorded by this poll."
- Trump's last laugh: Sweeping benefits of GOP tax law confirmed by CBS News Report, Bernie Sanders
- Why Trump's Tax Reform will lead to booming economic growth
- Trump's new tax bill in simple terms, without snarky comments
Right-wing media outlet Israel National News published an opinion piece Tuesday calling on Israel to launch nuclear bombs at Iran and Germany, only days after the outlet came under fire for publishing a piece accusing a war widow of killing her husband over her pro-peace views.
In the opinion article published Tuesday, the author claims that only through nuclear annihilation of Iran and Germany, with 20 or 30 nuclear bombs each, can Israelis prevent the state's destruction.
"If Israel does not walk in the ways of God's Bible," author Chen Ben-Eliyahu wrote in Hebrew, "it will receive a heavy punishment of near complete destruction and doom and only a few will be saved."
Comment: The pathological things that Israelis read on their media! Another example:
Disgusting Israeli journalist: Israel 'should exact a price' from Ahed Tamimi 'in the dark'
Asa Hutchinson, 21, from Chelmsford, Essex, claims she was not even present when the fisticuffs broke out between her friends and the 50-year-old man, who was reportedly intoxicated. The group were leaving Dusty's bar and restaurant in the Dubai International Financial Center when they saw the man had passed out on one of the couches.
Hutchinson's pals started taking selfies of him, but as the man returned to his senses and found himself at the center of a photoshoot, he started throwing punches at them.
Hutchinson, who works as a key account manager for global transportation company Time & Motion, claims she only arrived at the scene of the fight once she heard the commotion.
Walmart announced on Thursday it is closing 63 of its Sam's Club stores. In some cases employees showed up to work having not been told of the closures, a company spokesperson said, CNBC reports. They only learned the news when they found their stores locked up with a notice announcing the decision, according to Business Insider.
Sam's Club has not said how many employees are losing their jobs. Each Sam's Club warehouse employs around 175 people, meaning more than 11,000 could be affected by the layoffs, according to Business Insider.
However, one employee at a Sam's Club store in Alaska said all branches in the state are closing as part of a larger downsizing across the US.
As Knox News reports, Mullinax is charged with assault in Sevier County Circuit Court for causing Sevier County Sheriff's Office Deputy Justin Johnson to suffer a panic attack four minutes after Johnson opened fire in a neighborhood without warning in December 2016.
Highlighting the sheer tyrannical nature of these charges, Johnson suffered the attack as Mullinax was face-down on the ground, complying with all the orders, several yards away from the deputy.
Assistant Public Defender Aaron Kimsey says these charges are only being brought because Mullinax was suing the county.
To show just how much of a railroad case this is, despite the entire disturbing incident being caught on video, a year after it, and Johnson has yet to even be investigated.
What's more, Mullinax and Cody were both arrested during the incident-in which they did nothing wrong-and were illegally held without a hearing.
The new guidance allows states to apply for waivers, something that has never happened in Medicaid's 50-year history. Pregnant women, children, the elderly and the disabled are exempted from the requirements.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) administrator, Seema Verma, said on Twitter the new effort will "improve Medicaid enrollees health outcomes by incentivizing community engagement. This is about helping people rise out of poverty," Verma said in a conference with reporters, according to NPR. She cited studies that show a correlation between good health and having a job.
Comment: You have good health so you are able to work. It is much less likely having a job gives you good health.
Comment: Berg (above) said healthcare a human right. Is it?

Migrants keep warm with Red Cross blankets after arriving aboard a coast guard boat at Malaga's harbour on December 7, 2017
The refugee crisis in Europe may be subsiding, but migration globally will not stop. Today, on International Migrants Day, more than 244 million people are living outside their country of birth. Human mobility will increasingly define the 21st century. If we want to be ready for it, we need to start preparing now.













Comment: There you go. Climategate is also Russia's fault, along with interfering in the Mexican elections and Brexit and...well here's a list.