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The Man Behind ‘Unskewed Polls’ Levels Up in Conspiracy Theories

Dean Chambers, the man who started up the now discredited “Unskewed Polls” after he thought 2012’s election polls were part of the whole biased liberal media conspiracy thing, is back. And this time, he thinks the president was high on cocaine during the Benghazi attack. 

In an article published to the Examiner on Sunday (and noticed by Ezra Klein, who called it “the most amazing article I’ve ever read”), Chambers experimented with the word “allegedly.” Apparently, it can go in front of anything! As in, “While our consulate in Benghazi was attacked during the night of September 11 of last year, our fearless leader was allegedly hiding away somewhere getting ‘high as a kite’ on cocaine.” 

The idea, which actually comes from a blog post by Kevin DuJan, revolves around a sticking point for Benghazi conspiracy theorists: where was the president during the night of the Benghazi attacks? This question was reasserted in a Politico piece by the National Review’s Rich Lowry last week, to which DuJan’s post is apparently a response. Here’s HIS timeline of events for the President on September 11, 2012: 

“Barack Obama retired to his private quarters (perhaps with Reggie Love…or maybe one of the other low-ranking young men who are forever suspiciously palling around with this president, unlike any president before him) sometime around 6pm EST or so on 9/11/12.  He then seems to have taken drugs (which I believe most likely involved cocaine).  Hillary Clinton either showed up to kill his buzz or she kept calling on the phone over and over again until he answered at 10pm.  I’m sure he hung up on her as fast as he could, because the woman scares him (and no doubt scolds his sorry ass every chance she gets).

From then until the staff was finally able to rouse, dress, and make him presentable enough for the public at 1030am the next day Barack Obama appears to have been out of his mind high on drugs.”

To be honest, I’m not totally sure if DuJan, who previously claimed that Obama was a regular in Chicago’s gay club scene before becoming president, could possibly be for real. DuJan’s post almost reads like a joke — a Swiftian attempt to accuse Obama of the most preposterous thing possible in order to force him to disclose his whereabouts that night. That would explain his offer to “retract” the story if it’s proven wrong: 

“I would gladly retract this story if the White House would sufficiently explain Barack Obama’s whereabouts during those missing hours and prove he was not out of his mind on cocaine at the time (or gluttonously engaged in gay sex, as my friend Justine believes).”

But the evidence indicates that he’s serious. For one thing, DuJan is just one of a handful of conservative fringe writers who allege that the president uses cocaine, apparently seriously. DuJan isn’t a stranger to the conservative blogosphere: he’s behind Hillbuzz, self-described as a Democratic convert to the GOP. And judging by the comments on the original piece, along with Chambers’s straight post on the story, those who are willing to believe anything to support the Benghazi conspiracy theory will believe this, too. 

    

via The Atlantic Wire http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/05/man-behind-unskewed-polls-levels-conspiracy-theories/65626/

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3,000 More Dead Pigs Won’t Making the Huangpu River Any Worse

The Huangpu River, a source of drinking water to Shanghai’s 23 million residents, should basically be called rotting swine soup. Some 3,000 more decomposing pigs have been found in the river near Shanghai since Monday, bringing the number to about 6,000 dead hogs, but authorities claim that water is just fine.

“If the water is contaminated, we will put more disinfectants and activated carbon to purify the water,” Qian Huizhong, Deputy Director of Xiaokunshan Water Plant in Shanghai was quoted as saying in Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency. Officials also said “no pollution has been found” in Shanghai’s water quality. Officials said “the city is working to ensure its water quality, including removing pigs while they are further upstream, setting up aquatic plant barriers and increasing the frequency of quality checks,” reports Shanghai Daily. The local government released a statement explaining that “the water quality of the upper reaches of the Huangpu river is generally stable, basically similar to the same period last year.”

So on the bright side, the water quality is basically the same as last year. And on the not-so-bright side, exactly how terrible was the water quality in the Huangpu if 6,000 dead pigs don’t move the needle? On Monday it was reported that the dead pigs were marinating in other refuse, like medical waste and a sex doll. According to CNN’s water expert, those Chinese water authorities might be minimizing the toll of those decomposing pigs are having on Shanghai’s water system: 

If the water treatment process is very effective and can handle the sudden glut of contaminants, it’s possible to minimize the impact, said Julian Fyfe, a senior research consultant specializing in water quality at the University of Technology Sydney.

But he added: “Most treatment plants would not be designed to accommodate that level of shock loading. It’s such an unsual event.”  […] “If they are chlorinating heavily, which a lot of places may do, especially if they’ve got a very polluted water body to start with, then the effects could potentially be small,” Fyfe said.

Even if Shanghai residents don’t believe what the authorities are feeding them about the water, they don’t really have a choice but to accept it. In China’s eastern province of Zheijhang,  environmentalist Chen Yuqian dared authorities to swim in a local, very-polluted river to make a point about how dirty it was. Late last month, Chen told Radio Free Asia that “40 unidentified people had showed up at his home and smashed it up, beating him up in the process.”

via The Atlantic Wire http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/03/3000-more-dead-pigs-isnt-making-huangpu-river-any-worse/63038/

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Mali Gets Its First Suicide Bomber

After French forces changed the dynamic of the conflict in Mali, it has now taken on another new, and sadly predictable, turn—suicide attacks. A Tuareg militant blew himself up next to a group Malian soliders on Friday, but fortunately he only killed himself and injured just one. It’s the first suicide attack in Mali since French forces joined the fight against Islamic militants last month.

It probably won’t be the last, either. For the first 10 months or so of the rebellious conflict that began last spring, it’s been a series of battles between armed militant groups and poorly-trained, but better armed Malian soliders. That meant skirmishes that more closely resembled a traditional guerrilla war. However, as we’ve seen in Afghanistan, Iraq, and even Pakistan and Yemen, as Western forces take over the conflict, they can overwhelm and scatter the insurgents, which is when they begin to rely on suicide attacks, IEDs, and other tactics that don’t require a stand-up fight against a much stronger force.

If that patten happens in Mali, France may soon find itself in a situation that will feel very similar to Americans, as they watch a traditional shooting war turn into a peacekeeping and counter-terrorism operation. And just like the American military in Afghanistan and Iraq found out, those are much harder to extract yourself from.

via The Atlantic Wire http://da.feedsportal.com/c/35094/f/648528/s/285e03b5/l/0L0Stheatlanticwire0N0Cglobal0C20A130C0A20Cmail0Egets0Eits0Efirst0Esuicide0Ebomber0C619350C/ia1.htm

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Fidel Castro Shows His Face for the Time in Three Years

While most of the Western world was focused on the Super Bowl, Fidel Castro came out of hiding to make his first public appearance since 2010. Castro emerged from seclusion to vote in Cuba’s general election on Sunday and is looking good for a guy everyone thought was pretty much dead just a year ago. Here are a couple more shots of Castro’s surprise visit: 

And one more:

The reason these pictures and Castro’s appearance is so important is because the 86-year-old Castro’s health, not unlike Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s currently, is usually a tightly guarded secret—tighter when he’s not doing so well and looser when he’s feeling better. It was just last October that there were reports that Castro had a stroke and was dangerously close to a “neurovegetative state”. Russian channel RT.com points out that this “is the first time, the Cuban hero has voted publically in the last three elections since falling ill in 2006 and handing over power to his brother Raul in 2008” and his first public appearance of any kind since 2010.  

And Castro used his surprise visit to, yes, spread a political message. “The people are truly revolutionary, they have really sacrificed. We don’t have to prove it, history will. Fifty years of the blockade and they haven’t given in,” Castro is quoted as saying in Reuters’s report.

via The Atlantic Wire http://da.feedsportal.com/c/35094/f/648528/s/2836f2d1/l/0L0Stheatlanticwire0N0Cglobal0C20A130C0A20Cfidel0Ecastro0Eshows0Ehis0Eface0Etime0Ethree0Eyears0C617540C/ia1.htm

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How Many Times Does Al Qaeda’s Number Two Need to Die?

Big victory in the war on terror, folks: A previously unreported air strike in December killed Said al-Shihri, al Qaeda’s number two in command. This is third time he’s been reported dead, so he must definitely be dead now, right? That depends on your definition of dead.

Al-Shihri is serious terrorist. Described by some as a “veteran jihadist,” he was captured by the United States after fleeing to Afghanistan in the days after September 11, 2001, and spent six years in Guantanamo before being released to Saudi Arabia’s “jihadist rehab” program which, in ABC News’s words, “attempted to turn terrorists into art students by getting them to get ‘negative energy out on paper.'”

Well that didn’t work, because not long after finishing the Saudi program, Al-Shihri reappeared on the international terrorist circuit as Al Qaeda’s number two leader and was supposedly involved in seizing large tracts of land in Southern Yemen back in 2011. This is after he was reportedly killed in an airstrike on Christmas Eve in 2009. Then, in 2010 Yemen claimed to have captured Al-Shihri only to report a year later in September 2011 that he’d been killed along with six others in a drone strike. The apparently indestructible Saudi jihadist did not die in that strike, according to some DNA tests that were conducted last September. He was however implicated in a drone strike this week that left him in a coma, a coma from which he was unable to recover, according to “family sources.”

This is all obviously very confusing and, in a way, it’s supposed to be. Drones don’t just fire missiles at terrorists who send back “confirmed kill” messages. It’s a really messy operation. As we’ve pointed out here time and time again, we don’t even know how many people we’ve killed — terrorists, civilians or otherwise — in our blitz of unmanned aerial attacks over the course of these past few years. So how on Earth could we know if we’ve managed to finally take out Al Qaeda’s second in command? The family confirmation helps this time around, but of course it’s possible that some will remain unconvinced, especially since this is not the first but the third time we’ve allegedly killed this guy. 

We don’t necessarily need to kill him again. Chances are we’d actually be killing a goat farmer or something in the somewhat likely case that the drone strike earlier this week did the job. What makes more sense is come up with a better system of accountability so that we actually know what actually happens when the missiles from our drones hit the ground. Writing these sorts of rules and guidelines, however, does not seem to be a big priority for the administration. 

via The Atlantic Wire http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/01/how-many-times-does-al-qaedas-number-two-need-die/61403/

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Syrian Warily Discussing a Holiday Cease Fire

The United Nations envoy to Syria says Bashar al-Assad has agreed to cease fire during the upcoming Eid al-Adha holiday, but will he honor it? The U.N. and many Muslim leaders had been pushing for a truce ahead of the four day observance, but both sides in the ongoing civil war have shown no willingness to lay down their arms. Lakhdar Brahimi, the new U.N. negotiator is meeting with Arab League leaders today, this week in the hope that a temporary cease fire can lead to a longer peace, but given the current level of violence in Syria, 

The U.N. previously announced a cease fire way back in March of this, but neither side formally agreed to or honored it. Some rebel groups have reportedly agreed to this newest deal, but it seems unlikely to contain all of them. It may also be seen as a ploy by Assad to stop the gains made by rebels in recent weeks. The captial of Damascus has been hit by ever more powerful bombs and the Syria army has lost control of sever major highways and even some military installations.

In other Syrian news, a Russian military source says Syrian rebels are now using shoulder-mounted, anti-air-aircraft missiles that are made in the United States. Western countries have been hesitant to directly arm rebel groups, but the black market for these advanced weapons is clearly being supplied by major dealers. Russia supplies the Syrian government with most of it’s weapons.

Eid al-Adha begins on Thursday evening and is a celebration in honor of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son for God.

 

via The Atlantic Wire http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/10/syrian-warily-discussing-holiday-cease-fire/58283/