Friday, August 11, 2017

Stuck on Korea: Today's News for August 11th

Reuters:
If North Korea launches an attack that threatens the United States then China should stay neutral, but if the United States attacks first and tries to overthrow North Korea's government China will stop them, a Chinese state-run newspaper said on Friday.

President Donald Trump ratcheted up his rhetoric toward North Korea and its leader on Thursday, warning Pyongyang against attacking Guam or U.S. allies after it disclosed plans to fire missiles over Japan to land near the U.S. Pacific territory.
Say what you will about the Chinese, but they never cease to impress with their practical approach to most things, in this case international relations. Basically, they are telling North Korea, you start this war, and you are on your own. And they are telling the U.S., you start this war and you will make us very angry, and you won't like us when we are angry.


If you need to know why there will be no war, this is it.

If anything, this is all just a "wag the dog" distraction from a real news story:

The Nation:
It is now a year since the Democratic National Committee’s mail system was compromised—a year since events in the spring and early summer of 2016 were identified as remote hacks and, in short order, attributed to Russians acting in behalf of Donald Trump. 

...All this was set in motion when the DNC’s mail server was first violated in the spring of 2016 and by subsequent assertions that Russians were behind that “hack” and another such operation, also described as a Russian hack, on July 5. These are the foundation stones of the edifice just outlined. The evolution of public discourse in the year since is worthy of scholarly study: Possibilities became allegations, and these became probabilities. Then the probabilities turned into certainties, and these evolved into what are now taken to be established truths. By my reckoning, it required a few days to a few weeks to advance from each of these stages to the next. This was accomplished via the indefensibly corrupt manipulations of language repeated incessantly in our leading media.

Lost in a year that often appeared to veer into our peculiarly American kind of hysteria is the absence of any credible evidence of what happened last year and who was responsible for it. It is tiresome to note, but none has been made available. Instead, we are urged to accept the word of institutions and senior officials with long records of deception. These officials profess “high confidence” in their “assessment” as to what happened in the spring and summer of last year—this standing as their authoritative judgment. Few have noticed since these evasive terms first appeared that an assessment is an opinion, nothing more, and to express high confidence is an upside-down way of admitting the absence of certain knowledge. This is how officials avoid putting their names on the assertions we are so strongly urged to accept—as the record shows many of them have done.
In summary:

  • There was no hack of the Democratic National Committee’s system on July 5 last year—not by the Russians, not by anyone else. Hard science now demonstrates it was a leak—a download executed locally with a memory key or a similarly portable data-storage device. In short, it was an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system. This casts serious doubt on the initial “hack,” as alleged, that led to the very consequential publication of a large store of documents on WikiLeaks last summer.
  • Forensic investigations of documents made public two weeks prior to the July 5 leak by the person or entity known as Guccifer 2.0 show that they were fraudulent: Before Guccifer posted them they were adulterated by cutting and pasting them into a blank template that had Russian as its default language. Guccifer took responsibility on June 15 for an intrusion the DNC reported on June 14 and professed to be a WikiLeaks source—claims essential to the official narrative implicating Russia in what was soon cast as an extensive hacking operation. To put the point simply, forensic science now devastates this narrative.

Read the rest of the story at the link above for the science. Suffice it to say, it looks rock solid. Unless the government is sitting on evidence which contradicts what is allegedly known (and which this article disproves), then we must conclude Russiagate is a false narrative.

What is most annoying about Russiagate is it is a lie designed to discredit President Trump. Instead of allowing Trump to fail on his own, Russiagate had to be created. Now that Trump is failing, his supporters can just use Russiagate as an excuse to continue supporting him. Give the Left a Pogo award:

In other news...

Real Clear Life:
A billionaire’s assistant once asked for a raise and got a pink slip instead.

Elon Musk—the brilliant mind behind Hyperloop, SpaceX, and Tesla—fired his longtime assistant when she asked for a significant raise.According to Business Insider, Musk told Mary Beth Brown, his assistant of 12 years, to take two weeks off so he could assume her responsibilities to “see whether she was critical to his success.” The anecdote was recounted in Ashlee Vance’s 2015 biography, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future.

When Brown returned, she was told her work wasn’t needed. Musk felt her contributions weren’t enough to justify the raise she had asked for. According to Vance, Musk says he offered Brown another job after he fired her in 2014, but she didn’t return to the office.
Brutal! However, you have to give credit to Musk for having the guts to try to live without his assistant for two weeks. Too many execs would either fire the assistant outright, or give in to her demands. To take the time to do your assistant's job is the right thing to do.

But there are rumors that Musk actually let her go because his wife thought they were spending too much time together. Considering he had remarried Talulah Riley in 2013, and they filed for divorce in March, 2016, that would place this incident in the middle of that short-lived marriage.

Which of these stories is true remains to be seen, but the second one has more of the air of human nature about it.

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