Note: Scott Adams actually believes this

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Today’s amazing thing on the Internet: MRA Dilbert, a new Tumblr blog that mixes the art of Scott Adams’ Dilbert comic strips with Adams’ ludicrous, insufferable, and actually completely serious opinions on such subjects as women, women, and women.

It’s pretty awesome. I’m just jealous that I did’t think of it first.

Fake Tweets, real harassment

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Anita Sarkeesian’s assorted haters frequently demand “proof” that she’s really been harassed. Sarkeesian regularly provides proof, in sickening detail; her haters resolutely ignore the evidence.

In a blog post yesterday that everyone concerned about online harassment should read, Sarkeesian documented yet another example of what she’s had to endure ever since she started expressing her opinions about video games on YouTube, looking in detail at the wave of harassment and threats she received this past July after 4chan trolls and other haters spread around “screenshots” of phony Tweets deliberately designed to whip up hatred against her.

The phony Tweets — so obviously fake that one of them contained more characters than Twitter even allows — made it appear that Sarkeesian had responded to the death of  Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata by declaring him a “male supremacist” and saying she was “glad he’s gone” from the game company.

Sarkeesian’s haters are hardly the only ones who’ve used fake Tweets and fake quotes in order to unleash hatred upon their enemies online. As I’ve documented here, A Voice for Men’s social media director “Janet Bloomfield” used fake quotes attributed to feminist writers Jessica Valenti in an attempt to smear her; on at least one occasion she’s posted fake Sarkeesian Tweets as well. (“Bloomfield” was banned from Twitter for this sort of targeted abuse; she’s now attempting to get around the ban by posting under her real name Andrea Hardie.)

In the case of the fake Iwata Tweets, Sarkeesian made clear that she hadn’t posted them  — saying it was “disheartening” that people were using the “sad event” of Iwata’s death to whip up phony outrage against her.

But it didn’t matter. Because, as Sarkeesian points out, many of those attacking her knew all along that the Tweets were fake.

They just didn’t care, because their goal was simply to discredit me and to generate so much animosity against me that I would stop speaking critically about video games.

A Twitter user who tracks GamerGate found the origin of the attack on 4chan and shared proof that the harassers knew they were spreading misinformation. They were the ones doing exactly what many of the harassers they spurred on accused me of doing: callously using a man’s tragic death as an opportunity.

They seized it and turned it into a weapon to use against me.

Some harassers knew, others were tricked, but the end result was a cybermob of hate that lasted most of the week.

Sarkeesian ended her post with several dozen examples of the harassing and threatening Tweets that were sent to her that week. Here are a handful of the more striking ones.

I left out a number referring to Sarkeesian with the c-word because, as I write this, it’s 9 AM, and way too early for that sort of crap. Unfortunately, Sarkeesian has to face this kind of harassment every single day.

This would be a totally Apple-y thing to do. The standard headphone jack is old (ancient, really), thick, and deep. The only thing good about it is compatibility with existing headphone, and “compatibility with old stuff” is never high on Apple’s list of priorities.

In an audio recording of a strategy session obtained by The Intercept, major trade association lobbyists discussed how the refugee crisis has changed the political dynamics in Washington to their advantage.

In the conference call held last week, lobbyists representing a number of high-polluting industries agreed that the battle between Congress and President Obama on refugee policy will give them the cover they need to attach a legislative rider to the omnibus budget bill that rolls back newly expanded clean water regulation.

“I think that probably helps us,” one participant said, referring to the coming confrontation over refugee policy.

The White House has issued veto threats against previous attempts by Congress to block the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, a regulation finalized this year that extends Clean Water Act protections to millions of acres of wetlands and streams. So attaching a rider blocking WOTUS to the omnibus was potentially going to attract a lot of attention. Until now.

Now, lawmakers are expected to attach a provision to the omnibus bill to block Syrian refugee resettlement —  a move that is bound to become the focus of any government shutdown confrontation between Congress and the White House.

“We’re suddenly not the big issue,” said one call participant. “I mean, this is all going to turn on refugees.”

“I think that helps us,” said another call participant. “I think it helps us with the White House being on defense,” another legislative strategist on the call said.

The remarks were made during a political strategy call hosted last week by energy utility industry lobbyists. A recording was sent to The Intercept by someone on the call.

Listen to the exchange below. The comments about the refugee crisis begin at (2:15).

The call was hosted by the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group for major electric utility companies. It was organized to discuss strategies for defeating the WOTUS rule, which clarifies existing law to provide Clean Water Act protections to two million miles of streams and 20 million acres of wetlands.

Participants in the call included senior officials and lobbyists from some of the largest trade associations in Washington, including the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, the American Forest and Paper Association, the National Association of Home Builders, and the American Farm Bureau. The total attendance list for the call, however, is not clear given that some participants did not identify themselves or only identified themselves by first name.

Lobbyists have worked for months on efforts to block the WOTUS rule, including a challenge in federal court and legislative proposals to block implementation.

Asked for comment, Liz Thompson, the director of media relations with the National Association of Home Builders, said Courtney Briggs, the NAHB federal legislative director and a participant in the strategy call, did not remember discussing the refugee issue to advance a rider on the WOTUS rule.

“Having spoken to Courtney, she doesn’t recall anyone saying the quote you referenced. The Syrian crisis has absolutely no bearing on our discussions. With only two weeks left in the legislative calendar, the purpose of the call was to have an open discussion on the options available to us, including possibly adding a rider in the final omnibus appropriations bill,” Thompson said in a statement.

EEI did not provide a comment for this story. The Farm Bureau did not respond to a request for comment.

Lobbyists frequently use “must pass” legislation, such as raising the debt-ceiling and government appropriation bills, to enact proposals that would otherwise face a presidential veto. In the last omnibus spending bill, legislators slipped riders onto the bill that repealed rules that prevent banks from using taxpayer-backed funds from trading in derivatives, as well as more than $3 billion in weapons programs the Pentagon did not ask Congress to fund.

This year, lobbyists are working to attach a slew of legislative riders, on issues ranging from repealing regulations on coal-burning power plants to the oversight of payday lenders.

Before the attacks in Paris on November 13 fueled outrage at Syrian refugees, the Obama administration had prepared to face off with Congress over the various financial and environmental riders.

But the dynamics have shifted. If congressional leaders attach provisions to the omnibus to block Syrian refugee settlement, the Obama administration may be forced to accept a compromise that allows for other legislative riders to sneak through.

The participants on the EEI call appeared eager to use the refugee fight to distract the administration.

“In our big meeting this morning, all our lobbyists, their report back from the Hill over the last couple of days in House and Senate is that offices have been saying they are hearing more on this refugee issue than they have heard on any other issue in the last eight years, more than Obamacare, more than anything,” one the legislative strategists remarked.

The post Lobbyists, in Strategy Session, Conclude That Refugee Crisis “Helps Us” Defeat Regulations appeared first on The Intercept.

THE ADE 651 IS A SMALL, HANDHELD WAND The ADE 651 is a small, handheld wand  with a plastic grip and and a swiveling antenna, designed by a British company named British company ATSC for the ostensible purpose of finding hidden explosives. I saw one of these devices firsthand in person last year while driving up to a security checkpoint at Jinnah International airport in Karachi, Pakistan. As our vehicle approached, a security officer walked past us, waving the wand alongside our doors. In theory, had there been a bomb located inside, the device’s antenna would have moved, alerting officials to the danger nearby.

Happily, there wasn’t any bomb.

However, even if there were, was, the fact is that the ADE 651 wouldn’t actually have found it. In fact, although it remains in use at sensitive security areas throughout the world, the ADE 651 is a complete fraud. A 2010 BBC Newsnight investigationinto the device determined that it was based on pseudoscience and amounted to nothing more than a divining rod. Investigators from BBC also found that the ADE-651’s manufacturer sold it with the full knowledge that it was useless at detecting explosives.

The device is once again back in the news as it was reportedly used for security screeningat hotels in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh. A Russian airliner that took off from el-Sheikh after the downing of a Russian airliner near that city’s airport was recently destroyed in a likely bombing attack in an apparent bombing by the militant Islamic State group. Speaking to The group Islamic State. Speaking to the Independent about the hotel screening, the  U.K. UK Foreign Office stated it would “continue to raise concerns” over the use of the ADE 651.

The sordid story of how the ADE 651 came into use involves the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. At the height of the conflict, as the new Iraqi government battled a wave of deadly car bombings, it purchased more than 7,000 ADE 651 unitsworth tens of millions of dollars in a desperate effort to stop the attacks. Not only did the units not help, the device actually heightened the bloodshed by creating “a false sense of security” that contributed to the deaths of hundreds of Iraqi civilians, according to the inspector general Inspector General of Iraq’s Interior Ministry. Although the manufacturer claimed the ADE 651 worked via sophisticated “electrostatic ion attraction,” U.S. military officials in Iraq derided its use, describing it as essentially a “magic wand.” Researchers who tested the device found that it served no better than random chance in predicting the location of explosives.

The BBC investigation led to a subsequent export ban on the devices, as well as a 10-year prison sentence for the British businessman behind them, James McCormick, responsible for their  its manufacture and sale. An employee of McCormick who later became a whistleblower said that after becoming concerned and questioning McCormick about the device, McCormick told him the ADE 651 “does “Does exactly what it’s designed to. It makes money.”

Despite being widely discredited, the imaginary bomb-detecting device, and imitations of it, remain  continue  in widespread use. Versions of it are marketed under names such as Quadrotracker, HEDD1, Sniffex, and GT200, and can be boughtthrough online corporate wholesalers.

Some sellers have claimed the device can be reprogrammed to detect other substances, even diseases, by inserting a sticker that responds to  “vapors” “vapours” of the target substance. This purported technical flexibility has led to speculation that a version of the device was being employed by the Egyptian military government in health care. healthcare. The Egyptian government last year bizarrely claimed to have developed a handheld technology that could detect HIV, hepatitis, and other diseases. Images released of this supposed detector bore striking resemblance to the infamous bomb detector.

Dan Kaszeta, a research fellow Research Fellow at the International Institute for Non-Proliferation Studies and former U.S. Secret Service physical security specialist, has been tracking the proliferation of the fraudulent bomb detectors ever since he was approached by a seller of one in 2006, while he was an employee of the U.S. government.

“The ADE 651 doesn’t work, nor do any of the other devices,” Kaszeta said. “The various pseudoscientific says. “The various pseudo-scientific nonsense phrases and sentences used by the sellers to explain how these devices device ‘work’ are intended to baffle customers, but there is in fact zero science behind any of them.”

Although it is not precisely known how many of the fake bomb detectors bomb-detectors are in circulation, Kaszeta says that sales of the device and similar knockoffs continue in less-developed countries, thanks to corrupt and sometimes credulous local officials. “Any use of such a widely discredited device is dangerous,” Kaszeta said. says. “People are dead because of these devices.”

The post This Fake Bomb Detector Is Blamed for Hundreds of Deaths. It’s Still in Use. appeared first on The Intercept.