#alex jones is owned by the libs now

[tomorrowusa]

Conspiracy crackpot Alex Jones lost a massive lawsuit brought by families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting. In a bankruptcy sale, Jones's conspiracy site Infowars was bought by The Onion which plans to turn Infowars into a satirical self-parody.

If you enter www.infowars.com into your browser and hit return, you won’t see Alex Jones anywhere. The site’s longtime host and conspiracy theorist has been replaced by a vast expanse of white on the site’s landing page, along with five words in small type: “site unavailable till further notice.” On Thursday, the site’s new owners, a company called Global Tetrahedron—parent company of the satirical news site The Onion—said Infowars will return in January, when the far-right site will be rebranded as, essentially, a parody of itself. “We thought this would be a hilarious joke,” said Ben Collins, chief executive of Global Tetrahedron in an interview with The New York Times. “This is going to be our answer to this no-guardrails world where there are no gatekeepers and everything’s kind of insane.” Launched by Jones in 1999, Infowars grew into a giant, drawing 10 million visits every month — mostly people drawn to Jones, who argued that the 9/11 attack and the mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut were “false flag” events carried out by the government and “crisis actors” posing as children. It was Jones’ repeated lies about the shooting that led Sandy Hook families to sue Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems. The families alleged defamation and won, and in 2022 were awarded $1.4 billion — leading Free Speech Systems to declare bankruptcy. An auction held to sell off the site’s assets led Collins to make a successful bid for the site, with the consent of the Sandy Hook families. "The dissolution of Alex Jones’ assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for," said Robbie Parker, whose daughter was killed in the 2012 school shooting.

Instead of cranking out fake news, Infowars will become a site making fun of fake news starting in January.

A research study published by The University of California, Berkeley, found that Infowars was the third-largest fake-news domain, accounting for more than 17% of all fake news traffic online.

Think of Twitter/X if The Onion somehow gained ownership of it. 😆

EDIT: Gotta love this headline at Daily Kos...

[lookwhatilost]

i wanted to write a while back about the weird right wing funhouse mirror conceptualization of "free speech". specifically the kanye's shitshow of a media tour at the end of last year, and the self-evidently bad idea to run walker. but now i've had more time to think about it. and i have some time to scribble it down. enjoy a take that has been sitting in the freezer for two months.

when jane coaston was still writing for vox, she used to talk a lot about guardrails in a political movement or social institutions. and i think she's dead on with this – it's especially important if you believe in free speech, and if you don't want a sort of heavy-handed set of rules driving your beat, to exert some kind of guardrails and discipline.

kanye west is not a deep thinker on public policy issues. it's not who he is. he was a celebrated recording artist and sometimes fashion entrepreneur. so you have to ask yourself when you're deliberately taking on somebody, "do i want to hold this person up as the representative of my movement? is this somebody who people in my cause should care a lot about with what they have to say?" you have to think about why you want to do that.

the best reason to draw a celebrity entertainer to a political movement is because that person is making a really banal point that has almost no content to it. like, think taylor swift saying she believed in marriage equality, or katy perry endorsing hillary clinton. we want their large fanbases to hear these analytically simple things. the whole kanye thing just kind of reeked of this... desperation to own the libs by finding a black person to say something provocative about race? and with so much interest in that, that you don't pay any attention at all to questions like "does he know what he's talking about?" or "does this person have any information at all?"

something similar happened with herschel walker where he'd say things that conservatives would want to hear, but would shy away from a lot of uncomfortable stuff, like paying his ex girlfriend's abortion tab or holding a gun to his wife's head. and the argument conservatives made when the audio of that was leaked was "herschel is being smeared! there's an interview where she says she's forgive him for that behavior!" i mean, it's a salient fact in his history that this is something he did, which he admitted to, and he has a bit of a history with this violent behavior against women. so if you want to hold up an example of The Libs are Attacking Somebody, maybe you shouldn't pick the guy who had a gun to his wife's head? same with the guy who's spouting antisemitic stuff.

if i were to ask someone like tucker carlson what he thought about affirmative action, he'd probably tell me "well, i'm concerned that we're diluting important meritocratic qualities in pursuit of diversity." but then you look at how the conservative movement structures, well, itself, they wanted walker to run against warnock. they wanted kanye to counter BLM. they're reaching for people who aren't at all informed about public policy. the state of georgia is not at all lacking in regular politicians that don't have the scandals that dogged walker and can speak coherently about issues. even if you set the scandals aside, he's up on a debate saying "people with diabetes just need to eat better". so, no type 1 diabetes exists? it's dumb, and it's sort of a gaffe, but he's also a football star with no background in politics at all in a state that's historically been very republican. why did you pick him?

it's, like, it's getting lost in the weeds with someone's personal draw that no one ever stops to think, "wait, why the fuck are we interviewing this guy?"

it's baffling that alex jones still brought kanye on infowars and elon gave him his twt back after the red wave that never happened. you'd figure that if you were a right winger, this would be a wakeup call that it isn't politically working out for you to have your face of your movements to be Some Guy.

but then again, they might be backed into a corner, because they've leaned so far away from policy in their political strategy. "so what do you guys plan to do about the debt ceiling?" "blue lives matter!" "wtf?"

[jeanjauthor]

Full thread is unrolled here:

It's usually considered impolite to murder family members at thanksgiving. This year, tons of people will do just that, gleefully, killing not only their shitty uncle but also their father, because of a facebook meme they saw

A month later, you'll be able to correlate this murder to specific youtube channels and *videos* "people in which one family member saw this dim pool video were 3x more likely to die than the national average"

A month later, you'll be able to match youtube channel subscriptions to death tolls. "here's 189,000 of his US subscribers. Notice outbreaks in each of these locations following thanksgiving"

Afterward, you'll be able to construct social media graphs of the outbreaks. "These 6,000 people are all one facebook friend away from alex jones"

Afterward, you'll be able to pick and choose Before and After social media posts. "going to hug my grandpa to own the libs!" "in this difficult time we ask you to remember Frank as a loving and kind grandfather."

In other words: it will be the most well-documented mass murder event in human history. Every step of planning and preparation lovingly posted to social media.

You will be able to see people construct diagrams of the table from instagram posts, construct a minute by minute chronology of the festivities, and contact trace exactly who killed who with which cough.

It'll be like if everyone at Jonestown had twitter and instagram and posted every single thing that led to their deaths.

And, all of that data, all that evidence of depraved indifference to human life and mass murder, will persist. Years from now, you will know exactly why and how your self-isolating friend died. Because their spouse delivered food to a thanksgiving, and was hugged on camera Thanksgiving 2020 will be the largest, most well documented mass murder in human history. It will have a death toll equivalent to entire months of infection, rolled into one day. And, all the proof will be right there. In loving detail. And, that data will not go away. Specific family gatherings will be used years later as epidemiological models, forensically reconstructed from social media

"this family gathering resulted in 900 cases, 28 deaths. None of those who died had attended the event."

The really interesting thing is that documenting, in meticulous detail, your plan to kill your loved ones, and how you did it, is the kind of thing that usually results in grudges.

I mean, people already have fistfights and shouting matches at thanksgivings because of stuff that happened decades ago. Imagine how thanksgiving 2023 will go if your whole family knows *you* killed grandpa.

They not only know, but can pinpoint exactly what you did to do it. Thanksgiving 2020 will result in countless dead uncles and aunts and parents. Thanksgiving 2023 will result in at least a few people bleeding out.

[careygly]

Thin The Herd

He’s not wrong!

“Well, well. Look at that. Another politician died from COVID. A tragedy, said the news. A terrible tragedy.   Yes, a tragedy. He leaves behind a family. Friends. A job undone. He was so young. He was in the prime of life. And now, he's dead. It's so sad. Yes, yes. So very sad. He was a politician, you see. He was an elected "leader." He was that species of conservative we've grown all too familiar with of late: A vocal antivaxxer, a conspiracy theorist, loudly dismissive of the severity of the disease, profit over people, and who actively campaigned against any measure to contain the pandemic. Who am I talking about? What was his name? Is it that guy yesterday from Washington state? Or the one last week from Florida? Maybe those (several) politicians from Texas or that one antivaxxer who was elected in Louisiana but died from COVID before he could take office? While we're at it, what about that semi-famous YouTuber, or that media personality, or those various prominent preachers? I mean, that's the thing, isn't it? That, right there. It could be any of them. Every day, there's another one. Another dead idiot. Another jackass politician, another fanatical preacher, another red-faced talk show host, dead from a preventable disease after a month of sucking oxygen through a tube. Do the names even matter at this point? It's just another unvaccinated moron, drowned in his own snot. Another suicide by petulance. Do the names even matter? What's that? Oh. I see. I should be a better person. Take the high road, right? Like that. Have some sympathy. Think of the families. Think of how these poor deluded fools were taken in by conspiracy and delusion. Have some empathy, man. Be the better person. That's what you're saying. Be the better person. Don't cheer these deaths. Don't celebrate these fools killing themselves off. Don't raise up a huzzah to Darwin. It's not their fault, right? They were led astray. That's what Twitter told me, when I mentioned the latest death from stupidity. Be the better person. Yeah. Well, Folks, you can just stop with "be a better person" bit. Because that just ain't going to happen. That ship not only sailed, it hit a rock outside the harbor and went down with all hands. I am all out of fucks to give. I'm not going to feel bad for some obnoxious idiot politician, some loud mouthed media personality, some fanatical religious nut, who not only refused to get vaxxed, but actively tried to keep the public from the vaccine. These assholes are killing people. It's bad enough they killed themselves, but they are enthusiastically trying to take the rest of us with them. Deliberately causing your own death from a preventable disease isn't a tragedy. It's evolution. And you can likewise stop with the "You should feel bad for his family" routine too. His family? His family, forsooth. LOL. These people, they don't give a shit about their families. Or you. Or anybody else. The only thing they care about is their fanatical ideology. They're willing to kill themselves for it, and they'll take you with them just to own some libs. Let's go, Brandon! Yeah! We're years into this now. And at this point if you believe Alex Jones and Sean Hannity over actual doctors, then you are a fucking moron. You. Are. A. Moron. Hell, even Donald goddamn Trump thinks you should get vaccinated. At this point in human history, if you're an antivaxxer, you deserve every bit of scorn, mockery, and contempt we can heap upon you. You're a plague rat. You're Typhoid Mary and you should be exiled to a remote island somewhere beyond the edge of the map and left to rot. You want me to care about your family when you don't? Fine. Maybe now that another idiot politician is dead from stupidity, his kids will have at least chance for a better life. I mean, hell, if he couldn't be the kind of parent who was willing to put his ideology aside for his own children, then at least maybe his selfish miserable death will serve as a lesson to his children to be better people than their asshole of an old man. I dunno. Maybe I am a callous son of a bitch, as Twitter accused me of being yesterday. Maybe I am. Twenty years in the military, a couple of wars, there's been a lot of dead bodies along the way, so, yeah, maybe I am a callous son of a bitch. So? So what? I just can't see the death of another antivaxxer as a tragedy. Not to me. Not to you. Not even to his family. The world is better off without these assholes. Folks, the world is full of tragedy. Real tragedy. Kids going hungry in a nation where we throw food away? Yeah, that's a tragedy. People sleeping in boxes under a viaduct while the rich fly into space as a goof? That's a tragedy. I live in a state that this morning is surging in COVID cases, where deaths from the pandemic are at all time high, where the hospitals are overflowing -- and thus the profits are likewise at all time high. Healthcare for profit, now, that is a tragedy. Down here in The South, every day I see kids with their teeth rotted out of their heads, because their idiot, ignorant, asshole parents bought AR-15s and $400 worth of cigarettes this month instead of dental care. That's a goddamn tragedy. In my lifetime, we've spent untold trillions on decades of one futile miserable war after another, wars that left millions dead, millions more maimed, and the world measurably worse off than when it started. And no one was ever held to account. All those lives, all those people, all those families, bombed, burned, maimed, forgotten, and no one politician responsible was ever, not once, held to account. That's a not just a tragedy, that's a goddamn crime. There are a million tragedies large and small every day in this world and you want me to feel bad because some asshole politician, a grown goddamn man, who should have known better -- AND WHO NO DOUBT DID KNOW BETTER -- but who was determined to endanger himself as a political stunt, died? Died from his own determined and deliberate stupidity? These deaths aren't an accident, they are on purpose. Why shouldn't I celebrate that death? Why not? I mean, he got what he wanted. He made his point. Right? Callous. You damn right, I'm callous. And why shouldn't I be? These selfish miserable bastards, we've tried everything. We've tried reason. We've tried science. We've tried appealing to their better nature, their sense of community and duty to their fellows. They've been babied, cajoled, begged, shamed, and finally mandated. But still, they are determined to die and take us with them. And so they do. They die. Alone. Scared. Drowning in their snot. That's not a tragedy. That's natural selection. These people, these antivaxxers, they're not heroes. They're not standing on principle. It's not about freedom. It's not a tragedy. You can't appeal to their better nature, because they don't have any. They're just ASSHOLES. And the world is better off without them. Viruses don't give a shit about your politics or your freedom or your idiotic political beliefs. OR my callous disregard. Look here: either you're part of civilization and you're willing to do whatever it takes to hold it together or you're not. If you're not willing to put aside your political ideology to protect your own families, and the rest of us, from a preventable disease, if you don't care that much, then I've got no fucks to give for you. I have plenty of sympathy. I have plenty of empathy. I bleed for every real tragedy or I wouldn't have spent most of my adult life sworn to the defense of this nation and its people. But not for you. I have no fucks to give for you. If you're trying to burn down civilization, if you'd rather kill yourself and everyone around you, for a political stunt, then I've got nothing but contempt for you and yours. You're an asshole and you deserve what you get. You don't like that? It makes you mad? You want empathy and respect and concern for your wellbeing? That's a two-way street. You first. Step up. Stop being an asshole.”

[nickyschneiderus]

Brett Kavanaugh has the only conservative criteria that matters

Last night, President Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh as his choice for the Supreme Court. And what do you think leading conservatives were touting online as news of the pick broke?

Was it his narrow interpretations of Roe v. Wade, showing he might be the deciding vote to overturn the ruling that most infuriates the right? His wide reading of Heller v. D.C. that firmly entrenches the right to own semi-automatic weapons in America?

Ha ha ha hell no. This is conservatism in 2018. There is only one overarching, abiding principle, and that is “owning the libs.”

That’s right, Brett Kavanaugh is the right pick for Supreme Court because half of America dislikes what he stands for. That’s pretty much the only cogent case conservatives could make last night.

*Flash Flood Warning Tonight at 9PM EST*

This is not a joke. Liberal tears will be flowing like Niagara Falls when #POTUS announces his second #SCOTUS pick.

Please take all necessary precautions & bring an inner tube or boogie board to ride this blue wave.

#maga

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 9, 2018

I can't stop it from overflowing! WHAT DO I DO?! pic.twitter.com/iKjU8V5Vef

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) July 10, 2018

pic.twitter.com/hmEDVEYkts

— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) July 10, 2018

To answer the number one question I'm sure most of you had: yes, Kavanaugh has a history of owning the libs pic.twitter.com/Bf1YoGF26y

— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) July 10, 2018

Kavanaugh:

Owning the libs https://t.co/iGS1umbGNs

— Christopher Jones (@JonesChrisA) July 10, 2018

Owning the Libs by appointing Neil Gorsuch.

Owning the Libs by appointing Brett Kavanaugh.

Still not tired of winning. #ScotusPick #SCOTUS pic.twitter.com/dYNDqQO1vT

— Hirsty

(@TheHirsty) July 10, 2018

The thing is, though, happy as they are for Kavanaugh, who is as conservative as they come, this isn’t really some profound stance. Anyone Trump nominated—save for maybe Thomas Hardiman—would have “owned the libs.”

A conservative president nominating a conservative justice isn’t an earth-shattering surprise. It’s… a thing that was expected to happen that happened.

But while conservatives relish in the libs being owned, it’s a situation they wouldn’t be able to handle in reverse.

Imagine the fits of apoplectic rage if Democrats—with majorities in both Houses—tried to push Obamacare through Congress on the overarching basis that it would piss off conservatives, as opposed to arguing that it expanded access to healthcare to thousands of American people.

Like or dislike the policy, at least it had an identity behind it that simply isn’t trying to upset the other party.

But that’s not where the vast majority of conservatives in 2018 right now are. With their obsequious devotion to Trump—whose two guiding tenets are angrily undoing anything Barack Obama did and trolling—the main driving force in conservatism right now is echoing the vitriol that comes out of their leader’s mouth.

from Ricky Schneiderus Curation https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/brett-kavanaugh-owning-the-liberals/

[bountyofbeads]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/roger-stones-secret-messages-with-wikileaks/554432/

Here's a refresher course on #Trump campaign, #RogerStone and #WikiLeaks connection regarding the #Mueller #TrumpRussia investigation

Roger Stone's Secret Messages with WikiLeaks

Transcripts obtained by The Atlantic show Donald Trump's longtime confidante corresponded with the radical-transparency group.

There goes Roger Stone’s defense that he never communicated with Wikileaks ..

Dm messages released via @NatashaBertrand show otherwise

How many members of the @realDonaldTrump camp had DIRECT communications w Wikileaks??

Stone, Don Jr.. and I’m sure many more will be revealed

By Natasha Bertrand | Published Feb 27, 2018 |

The Atlantic Magazine | Reposted January 25, 2019

On March 17, 2017, WikiLeaks tweeted that it had never communicated with Roger Stone, a longtime confidante and informal adviser to President Donald Trump. In his interview with the House Intelligence Committee last September, Stone, who testified under oath, told lawmakers that he had communicated with WikiLeaks via an “intermediary,” whom he identified only as a “journalist.” He declined to reveal that person’s identity to the committee, he told reporters later.

Private Twitter messages obtained by The Atlantic show that Stone and WikiLeaks, a radical-transparency group, communicated directly on October 13, 2016—and that WikiLeaks sought to keep its channel to Stone open after Trump won the election. The existence of the secret correspondence marks yet another strange twist in the White House’s rapidly swelling Russia scandal. Stone and Trump have been friends for decades, which raises key questions about what the president knew about Stone’s interactions with Wikileaks during the campaign. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The depth of Stone’s relationship with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange has been closely scrutinized by congressional investigators examining whether Trump associates coordinated with Russia—or anyone serving as a cut-out for Moscow—to damage Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. Stone confirmed the authenticity of the messages, but called them “ridiculously out of context” and “a paste up.” He said that he provided the complete exchange to the House Intelligence Committee, but did not immediately respond to a request to provide his own record of the conversation to The Atlantic.

A screenshot of the exchange, which has not been previously reported, was provided to the House Intelligence Committee last year by a third-party source. The private messages confirm that Stone considered himself a “friend” of WikiLeaks, which was branded a “non-state hostile intelligence service” by CIA Director Mike Pompeo last April. Stone insisted that the messages vindicated his account. “They prove conclusively that I had no advance knowledge of content or source of WikiLeaks publications,” he said. “I merely had confirmed Assange’s public claim that he had information on Hillary Clinton and he would publish it.” He also narrowed the scope of his earlier denials, saying that he’d only denied having communicated directly with Assange, not with Wikileaks. Wikileaks did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“I have never said or written that I had any direct communication with Julian Assange and have always clarified in numerous interviews and speeches that my communication with WikiLeaks was through the aforementioned journalist,” Stone told the committee in his prepared statement in September. The full hearing was held behind closed doors and the transcript has not been made public. At least one lawmaker had already obtained a screenshot of the exchange before Stone testified, according to two sources familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.

The correspondence raises questions about whether Stone—who served as Trump’s lobbyist in Washington in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and had been encouraging him to run for president for over a decade—has kept secret any interactions that may be of interest to congressional investigators examining Russia’s election interference.

Stone also exchanged private Twitter messages in August and September of 2016 with a user known as Guccifer 2.0. Guccifer claimed in a posting on their Wordpress site to have “penetrated Hillary Clinton’s and other Democrats’ mail servers,” but the self-described hacker was later characterized by U.S. officials as a front for Russian military intelligence. Stone only published that exchange after it was revealed by The Smoking Gun, a website that publishes mugshots and other public documents.

On the afternoon of October 13, 2016, Stone sent WikiLeaks a private Twitter message. “Since I was all over national TV, cable and print defending wikileaks and assange against the claim that you are Russian agents and debunking the false charges of sexual assault as trumped up bs you may want to rexamine the strategy of attacking me- cordially R.”

WikiLeaks—whose Twitter account is run “by a rotating staff,” according to Assange—replied an hour later: “We appreciate that. However, the false claims of association are being used by the democrats to undermine the impact of our publications. Don’t go there if you don’t want us to correct you.”

“Ha!” Stone responded on October 15. “The more you ‘correct’ me the more people think you’re lying. Your operation leaks like a sieve. You need to figure out who your friends are.” Assange’s internet connection was cut off days later by the Ecuadorian embassy—which granted him diplomatic asylum in London in 2012—following WikiLeaks’ release of emails that had been stolen by Russian hackers from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s inbox. The morning after Donald Trump won the election, however, WikiLeaks sent Stone another message. “Happy? We are now more free to communicate.”

It is unclear whether Stone and WikiLeaks kept in touch, using Twitter or another platform, after the election. WikiLeaks continued to insist through at least last March that neither the organization nor Assange had ever communicated with Stone directly. Stone later identified radio host Randy Credico as the intermediary, but Credico denied that in an interview with The Daily Beast earlier this month. “There was no backchannel to Roger Stone, and I think that his testimony was a lot of bravado,” Credico said. “Roger’s a showman.”

The substance of the messages does seem to corroborate, however, Stone and WikiLeaks’ denials prior to October 13 that they had coordinated in any significant way. WikiLeaks indicated that Stone’s claims of association—even if through a backchannel, as Stone alleged—were false. But the screenshots do not show whether Stone and WikiLeaks communicated prior to October 13 or after November 9, 2016.

Democrats have asked GOP members to subpoena Twitter for the private messages of Trump associates currently under investigation in the Russia probe, according to one of the sources familiar with the internal proceedings. But the majority has so far refused. “It is important to verify that information by subpoenaing the records directly from third parties—a step the Majority has consistently refused to take,” said Adam Schiff, a California Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Mike Conaway, the Texas Republican who is leading the committee’s investigation, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. As The Atlantic’s Julia Ioffe first disclosed last fall, WikiLeaks also exchanged private Twitter messages with Donald Trump Jr., who provided the correspondence to congressional investigators. WikiLeaks continued to message Trump Jr. through July 2017, “actively soliciting” his cooperation on ventures ranging from obtaining the president’s tax returns to appointing Assange Australia’s U.S. ambassador.

On July 22, 2016, just before the Democratic National Convention kicked off, WikiLeaks published thousands of emails that had been stolen from Democratic National Committee servers by hackers the U.S. intelligence community has since linked back to Russia. Stone told the Southwest Broward Republican Organization on August 8 that he had “communicated with Assange” and believed that “the next tranche of his documents”—which Assange had hinted at in an earlier interview with CNN— pertained to the Clinton Foundation. Stone soon walked that back, claiming instead that he communicated with Assange via an intermediary who he identified last November as Randy Credico. He declined to identify the intermediary in his interview with the House Intelligence Committee, but later changed his mind and claimed it had been Credico.

On October 4, 2016, Assange held a press conference to mark WikiLeaks’s 10th anniversary. The event had been hyped by supporters of then-candidate Trump, including Stone, as an “October surprise” that would completely derail Clinton’s presidential campaign just over a month before the election. On October 2, Stone told the far-right talk-radio host Alex Jones that he had been “assured that the mother lode” was coming. The next day, he tweeted that he had “total confidence that @wikileaks” and his “hero Julian Assange” would come through.

At his press conference, however, Assange gave no hints of what was to come, leaving his fans, and many of Trump’s, disappointed. Still, Stone was not deterred. “Libs thinking Assange will stand down are wishful thinking. Payload coming #Lockthemup,” he tweeted on October 5, 2016.

The payload actually came two days later: WikiLeaks began publishing the contents of Podesta’s inbox, which had been infiltrated by Russian hackers seven months earlier. Stone told The Daily Caller on October 12 that Assange had delayed the email dump on purpose: “I was led to believe that there would be a major release on a previous Wednesday,” he said. He denied, however, that he had been given “advance knowledge of the details” and maintained that he was only in touch with Assange “through an intermediary.”

On the morning of October 13, WikiLeaks issued a clarification: “WikiLeaks has never communicated with Roger Stone as we have previously, repeatedly stated.” It was later that day when Stone confronted WikiLeaks in a private message, and accused the organization of “attacking” him. WikiLeaks did not seem fazed by the confrontation, and re-opened its line of communication with Stone on November 9. Fourteen months later, Stone visited the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where Assange has been holed up for more than five years.

“I didn’t go and see” Assange, Stone told The Daily Beast last month. “I dropped off a card to be a smart ass.”

[tinymixtapes]

Music Review: Roc Marciano - Behold a Dark Horse

Roc Marciano Behold a Dark Horse [Marci Enterprises; 2018] Rating: 5/5 I. Influence Roc Marciano’s direct influence can be heard in the works of each of the following artists, all of whom have at some point achieved commercial success and/or critical acclaim greater than or comparable to Roc’s, with music sonically indebted to his: Ka, Evidence, Mach Hommy, Westside Gunn, Conway, Daringer, Earl Sweatshirt, and more. To be fair, many other artists have achieved commercial sales and/or critical attention lesser than, if not approaching, Roc’s, with music sonically indebted to his: Hus “Wavo” Kingpin, SmooVth, Rosati, Giallo Point, SageInfinite, Shozae, Grandmilly, Tha God Fahim, Willie the Kid, Fly Anakin, Jalal Salaam, and countless others whose names appear in our SoundCloud feeds daily. And then, of course, you say, “Well, what about all those artists who influenced or inspired Roc Marciano and to whom his music is sonically indebted?” For argument’s sake, let’s look at the big ones: Rakim and Prodigy. Yes, you could make a strong case that both were more influential MCs. However — and here’s the ah-ha — neither of them is as renowned for his production prowess as Marciano is. And though they both certainly contributed to important beats throughout their respective careers, neither artist has demonstrated the ability to consistently hold down entire, or even close to entire, solo albums as Marciano has continued to do since making his official solo debut with 2010’s Marcberg. So, it can certainly be argued that to find a workable basis of comparison for what Roc Marciano has been doing in and for hip-hop over the course of the past decade, one can only look to other nearly-decade-long or longer runs by influential MCs/producers, such as Kanye West, Madlib, Dilla, DOOM, El-P, RZA, Q-Tip, Pete Rock, Large Professor, Dr. Dre, DJ Quik, Erick Sermon, Too Short, Pimp C, Schoolly D, and Kool Keith. And until a name from the first paragraph begins to approach Roc Marciano in terms of consistency and influence as both an MC and a producer, then perhaps as long as we’re comparing apples to apples, Marciano’s work is better considered in line with the names directly above. Furthermore, since few if any of the catalogs of these greats are without blemish, and since most all of them are more widely influential as either an MC or a producer, and not equally so in both regards as Roc is, well, I guess when it comes to his still-gaining influence and legacy, all one can really say is… Behold a Dark Horse. II. Control Marciano manager Jazz recently confirmed that the cover and title of Roc Marciano’s latest were directly influenced by the conspiracy literature classic Behold a Pale Horse by Milton William Cooper. The phrase comes from the King James Bible, which in the Armageddon myth of Revelation 6:8 reads, “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” Much like the KJB, Behold a Pale Horse contains mad batshit. There’s the secret government’s population control white paper, Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, which Cooper sourced to a used word processor purchased at a garage sale. There’s the entire Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which Cooper introduces by advising readers to substitute the word “Illuminati” for the word “Jew” throughout. Cooper also spent a sizable portion of the book aping on UFO sightings and cover-ups, only to later in life refute all alien conspiracies, claiming that they were the single biggest false flag operation of all time. And yet, also like the KJB, there are some jewels in there, pearls of practical wisdom that Cooper takes time to reveal while digging the tome’s labyrinthine warrens. The one that comes to mind — and I’m paraphrasing here, as my copy of the book disappeared about a decade ago under mysterious circumstances — is this: It doesn’t matter if you believe in this grand conspiracy theory or any of its many facets, because even if only one man in power does, then countless people are doomed. Before dismissing this as a cop-out, consider how many politicians and CEOs wear their messianic complex like a badge of honor. Consider also that Cooper’s main point here may have been to draw readers’ attention to the nature and potential of control; that those who hold it can mold and manipulate and improve and wreck the lives of others at their whim, that those who do not are already closer to intangible numbers in a ledger than they are free and actualized human beings. Some who are familiar with Roc Marciano’s work, or the sex trade, might recognize in the above revelation parallels to the relationships between pimps, prostitutes, and johns. As a square, I’m not going to pretend to know anything about that life. I can’t assume that a pimp is powerful and a prostitute powerless, nor can I judge the john or anyone else involved in these necessarily transactional relations. I can only intimate that, as is the case with everything, there are degrees of control and power-sharing. And it’s these degrees, these increments of measure, that make all the difference in the world. It’s these degrees that separate needed questioning of authority from snowballing conspiracy theories, and Bill Cooper from Alex Jones from Ron Paul from Donald Trump. It’s these degrees that revise the literature misnomered history. III. Ends Sometime after Marcberg or Reloaded — I’m not sure exactly when, and I damn sure can’t find the interview anymore — when asked about where he wanted to take his music in the future, Roc Marciano said he wanted to sing. The irony here is that while Roc’s success since Marcberg has generally been tied to a renewed interest in 1990s boom-bap, he’s continued to flirt with the idea that his style shares as much in common with that of shiny-suit era Puffy, a pop sound long considered anathema by many hip-hop traditionalists. And yet, over a long enough timeline, all irony fades. If Puff came out today, he’d be considered boom-bap. Where it once felt novel to hear Roc slip a falsetto ad lib in between lines about singing Rick James tunes in the shower, he now confidently croons hooks throughout a whole album, slipping back into patently smooth murder verses and increasingly melodic cadences without missing a step. One gets the impression listening to Behold a Dark Horse that this project represents the realization of a goal years in the making. Yes, the Busta Rhymes and Q-Tip collaborations lend themselves to this idea, but it’s more than that. Between Rosebudd’s Revenge/RR2 — The Bitter Dose and Behold a Dark Horse, there’s a development that feels rooted in the same evolution that might have occurred between UN Or U Out and Marcberg/Reloaded. It’s as if Roc had been reaching for this sound, planning his way here all along. Perhaps he’d already arrived at the destination, but knew he needed to wait to bring us along for the ride, that we had to see more of the so-called past before we could glimpse the future’s brightness through our foggy present. On “Diamond Cutter,” Marciano raps, “Fuck who next up/ Rosebudd did its numbers, we doing chest bumps.” Consider the road here. After releasing The Pimpire Strikes Back and Marci Beaucoup on Man Bites Dog in 2013, Roc spent the next four years racking up paid guest features before returning with his first truly independent album, Rosebudd’s Revenge, released on his own Marci Enterprises LLC in 2017. Earlier in 2018, he brought us RR2 — The Bitter Dose, also on Marci Enterprises. The two albums presented Roc Marciano at his most romantic and murderous, peppering anecdotes about beachy lovemaking nearly as far and wide as his foes’ body parts. There was more singing than we were used to hearing from him, but the beats were also darker than ever, driven in part by the cold synths of Arch Druids Animoss and Doc C. On Behold a Dark Horse, though, there’s no need for peppering. Seasoned to perfection, the album documents Roc Marciano cementing his legacy as an MC, producer, and influence in control of his ends — that is, not only of his money, but of his destiny. Behold a Dark Horse. http://j.mp/2CxnB72