The Editor in Chief of News Growl, Patricia McConnell, was working on a story on a naughty Alaska House of Representatives member earlier this week when she made a very surprising discovery. The Alaska Legislature website had been hacked by Black Hat SEOs, populating the site with over a thousand redirect links to porn, gambling, and illegal diet websites.
No one will find the links by accident. No real people I mean. The links are just there for the benefit of search engines. The Alaska Legislature website, akleg.gov, would provide any SEO practitioner with a highly valuable link because of the .gov suffix. When a website has a link from a .gov website Google and Bing will often think it is a real authority on something. After all, a government body is citing it or directing traffic towards it. The fact that this had happened at all is a scandal. The fact that it likely happened months or even years ago is a bigger scandal. But the really huge scandal is I can't get any media to pay any attention to this. Other than News Growl, it has been covered by no one. And we've issued press releases, tweeted to journalists, and even emailed several Alaskan newspapers of record. No one cares. Here's the thing: the Alaska Legislature is helping these sites appear on Google more often than they should. And it does matter, not just because porn and gambling sites are not, well, you know, the best thing on the internet. It is the diet sites that bug me. At least one of them is promoting HGC diet injections, which are downright dangerous. Don't believe me? Read this, and then think if the Alaska Legislature and the Alaska media should be more concerned about what their negligence is helping to spread on the internet. "HCG is used mainly to treat fertility issues. HCG is not approved for over-the-counter use, nor has it been proved to work for weight loss. Some over-the-counter HCG weight-loss products are labeled "homeopathic" — but the FDA says they're still not safe. Companies that sell over-the-counter HCG weight-loss products are breaking the law...Side effects have also been reported with the HCG diet and include fatigue, irritability, restlessness, depression, fluid buildup (edema), and swelling of the breasts in boys and men (gynecomastia). Another serious concern is the risk of blood clots forming and blocking blood vessels (thromboembolism)."(From the Mayo Clinic website)
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Is it something in the water, because politicians in Missouri seem to be acting really weird at the moment. For months the website I contribute to, News Growl, has been reporting on the scandals surrounding Republican Missouri Governor Eric Greitens. First he admitted to having an affair when the ex-husband of his mistress found out. Then it turns out he took a photo of her naked and in bondage as blackmail to keep her quiet (or so it is alleged). Now it appears that certain elements were not consensual. Facing one felony privacy invasion trial for that, he is now indicted for a second felony of stealing data from his former charity. And like a mini-Trump, Greitens is riding out the scandals, hoping to cling on. Missouri lawmakers may have to decide soon whether to impeach him or let him serve out his term. And speaking of Missouri lawmakers, it appears one Bob Burns, a Democratic representative from Missouri State House district 91, is a big fan of white supremacist broadcaster Bob Romanik. An intrepid activist has been logging the "best bits" of Romanik's morning talk show on St Louis area KQQZ for months, and finally this week someone noticed. Among the dozens of YouTube videos "Romanik Watch" has cataloged are six calls from Burns to Romanik (or so it appears, and Burns has yet to deny it was him). Burns always wants to talk veterans issues with the hyper-patriotic Romanik, and never gets into the details of how Romanik's racist dogma, but he clearly approves of Romanik's views generally. He is constantly saying how amazing he thinks Romanik is every time he calls up and how he's doing a great job with his show. So both the Democrats and Republicans are suddenly dealing with rogue politicians in their midst. I'm struggling to decide which one of these losers I like least. My guess is Burns will be gone by the end of this week, whereas Greitens will hang on for a few more months. Want to listen to Burns calling into Romanik's show? Here's a link to a clip from Romanik Watch's YouTube channel. Be warned, it's full of offensive language from the start. As a man I don't feel entirely qualified to weigh in on a group that calls itself the Women's Equality Party. And there is a party in the UK by that name which is fairly small (with a larger media profile) but reputable. I've been really shocked by what I've learned about the Women's Equality Party of New York, though, from my colleague Patricia McConnell at News Growl.
It's barely a real party. It has automatic ballot access thanks to a quirk in New York law, but it was started by a man (Governor Andrew Cuomo), is funded by his supporters, and as far as anyone can tell has no real purpose other than to endorse him for Governor every four years and to allow his name to appear on the ballot an additional time (making four times in total in 2014). Seriously? Why is this legal? Or why is it politically sustainable for a man to start his own party that exploits the good name of women's rights in a cheap gimmick to advance his political career? I really don't understand New York politics I guess. But I do understand this: exploiting the sympathy of a downtrodden group for political game is wrong. Imagine if Cuomo had stared a new Black Panther Party and endorsed himself for Governor — everyone would be up in arms! Why is this different? It must be because Cuomo simply has less respect (or fear) or women politically. So really, the Women's Equality Party is just proof that Women are not equal in politics — they are safe to exploit. Thanks for making this loud and clear, Governor Cuomo.
I listen to a LOT of podcasts, mostly about politics, and most of them have done an entire show or a large part of a show about the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Most have misunderstood exactly what CA have supposedly done with "psychographics" in the 2016 election. They were hired by the Ted Cruz campaign to do this microtargeting that has everyone up in an uproar, but it didn't work and Ted Cruz lost in the primary to Trump. They were then hired by Trump but his campaign lacked the infrastructure for such work so they just did standard social media stuff for him. They are really horrible people I'm sure, but they didn't install Trump into the Oval Office. And the frightening-sounding things they claim they can do did not work. Only the Weeds from Vox.com explained this fully. I thanked the team (Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, and Sarah Kliff) for really explaining everything thoroughly. Mr Yglesias retweeted me, and my phone kinda melted for a bit.
The power of the #MeToo movement to transform societies has exerted pressure in a place few would have suspected it could ever reach: Russia. It sounds crazy following Vladimir Putin's 76% reelection total to talk about a free press in Russia, but at least in one respect journalists have found an issue to fight back on: sexual harassment.
As the World Editor of News Growl, it fell to me to write an article on yesterday's election for the presidency of the Russian Federation. Surprise, surprise, Vladimir Putin won with roughly 76% of the vote.
Of course, it was no surprise. But my gosh, some of the tactics that Putin supporters used to get out the vote were really weird. Lingerie models? Nice to look at, of course, but why use them to promote voting? Is this what Russian men need in order to take part in the political process? Yet that is exactly what Maxim magazine did. Their editor makes it clear (as quoted in my article on the Russian election result) that he wasn't really comfortable with the idea but had no choice. It was a "compromise" he had to make. That's weird, but by far the weirdest thing I came across was an unofficial but professionally produced video that drew on racism, homophobia, and paranoia to urge Russians to vote on Sunday. Imagine waking up one morning to find military conscription officers at your door (even though you are 52). That's bad, but one of the men at the door is black! Oh no! But it gets worse, there's a gay man in your kitchen. You have to house him because the government passed a law that forces people to take untaken gay men into their homes. Okay, this last part doesn't make any sense, but that's what the video says. Then, it says if the gay man doesn't find a partner in time, you yourself (presumably a God-fearing heterosexual) will have to become his partner. Frankly, when I read about this video I didn't believe what I read about it. Surely there was some sort of cultural miscommunication going on here. But then I found this video from Radio Free Europe which shows part of it and it's all true. Crazy One thing you can say for sure about the EU is they like their rules.
Take for instance Martin Selmayr. Not so long ago pretty much no one had ever heard of this guy even though he held one of the most powerful positions in the entire EU: chief of staff of the President of the EU Commission. Many people think it is actually him who has been running the Commission since 2014, not his boss Jean-Claude Junker. But anyway, Selmayr had a lot of power and really only one cloud on his horizon: Junker's term was set to end next year and as his chief of staff, Martin Selmayr's power would disappear in a great big poof! But, thankfully for Selmayr, the EU is full of complicated rules. Like all complex rules systems, there are plenty of loopholes if you know where to look. And luckily for Selmayr, the Eurotocracy will let you do pretty much anything as long as you stay within the rules, loopholes or not. Selmayr spotted that if he made the jump from staff for an elected official to civil servant, he would no longer have his power limited by the shelf-life of any benefactor. In the EU Civil Service, you get to stay as until you are ready to collect your (very generous) pension. If Selmayr could find a way to become General Secretary for the EU Civil Service, he would have a position more or less as powerful as the one he has now. And his current boss, the EU Commission President, can appoint the General Secretary of the EU Civil Service. So he had a clear path to ongoing power. There was just one problem. The EU already had a General Secretary of the Commission, and to be eligible to be appointed EU General Secretary you have to first serve as a Deputy General Secretary. How he did the next bit, I don't know exactly. I only know what he did: 1) He convinced the current General Secretary, Alexander Italianer, to resign. Like I say, I don't know how. But I bet it was cunning however he did it. 2) He got himself appointed Deputy General Secretary just as Italianer resigned. Then, at a meeting of the EU Commission that was held just after Italianer had resigned and he had been made Deputy General Secretary, he got his boss Jean-Claude Junker to announce Italianer's resignation and his appointment as Deputy General Secretary, and then slipped in a vote on Martin Selmayer being appointed General Secretary so late in the day that no one had noticed it was on the agenda. Job done. He also may have promised some incredibly generous golden handcuffs to the outgoing commissioners who are set to leave in 2019 as well. That would get him votes anyway. So Martin Selmayr is my hero. Not because he is good, or ethical. The guy just knows how to work a system. Really well. You've got to admire than, no matter how cynical his power grab was. |
AuthorSteve has many disparate and unconnected interests. This, he thinks, entitles him to claim the label "Renaissance Man." Archives
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