Michael Ames
@mirkel
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AMERICAN CIPHER @penguinpress . Stories for @rollingstone , @newyorker , @harpers , and other zines. Esto perpetua.
Joined March 2009
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Pras Michel, who was convicted of working as a secret Chinese agent, has lost his bid for a retrial.
My latest
@vulture
on Pras's legal saga and how his case matches up against the
#FARA
furor involving
@Timcast
@RubinReport
@bennyjohnson
:
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@AGHamilton29
After botching her own bomb, she was given two reconstructive surgeries while in Israeli custody and then complained when she didn’t received a third.
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The
@Newsweek
latest is bonkers. Comrade Trump recited a Russian email hoax that plagiarized
@kurteichenwald
:
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The issue here isn’t progressivism, it’s tribalism. The moment someone doesn’t agree 100% on every issue, they are deemed an apostate and a traitor. Moderates and independents aren’t welcome in either party.
Now
@JohnFetterman
is telling everyone how he's not a progressive, he rejects us and is now calling Harvard "pinko." What the fuck? This is why people lose hope, because of frauds like Fetterman. You work hard to get a progressive elected and they turn into Republicans instantly.
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We need propaganda education for all Americans starting in grammar school but first let’s start with Washington Post employees.
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The White House keeps leaving these lanes wide open, and he’s savvy enough to exploit their incompetence.
🚨 President Trump announces he will ask Congress to eliminate all taxes on TIPS for restaurant workers and hospitality workers
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Explicitly telling people not to trust their own eyes and ears is the exact definition of gaslighting, innit?
2/ And that’s exactly what Republicans want. Democrats are—per usual—playing into the hands of their political opponents by refusing to be loyal to their leaders, adamant in their principles, and *unafraid* of concern trolling and gaslighting from scheming far-right Republicans.
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My great-uncle Yale Apter was in the second wave of Allied troops sent to Utah Beach on
#DDay
. After the war, he worked as a NJ Superior Court judge. When he stood, half of his torso curled forward, bent around the shrapnel he carried in his back for the rest of his life. ... 🧵
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@chrislhayes
Simpson is responsible for creating some of the most critical wilderness areas in central Idaho, working respectfully with environmental groups,
@Carole_King
, and others. Unlike Gaetz, he has a long record of productive bipartisan legislation. FWIW.
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To be clear, this is not a "scoop." It's political activism masquerading as journalism.
This activist crew is running interference for Hamas after it executed 6 hostages, an atrocity unmatched in global hostage cases since ISIS murdered 4 US citizens in 2014.
🚨 Scoop from
@jeremyscahill
: Internal ceasefire documents show the talks ought to have effectively revolved on July 2, when Hamas accepted the ceasefire-hostage framework put forward by Israel and the US on June 24.
The US has since allowed Netanyahu to undermine the deal,
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Hot take:
Cyclical classified document sagas are the inevitable result of a bloated, self-protecting intelligence community hoarding the authority it has over other agencies and wielding classification as a weapon in those bureaucratic turf wars. ...
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"If a fertilized egg is a person...then IVF as it is currently practiced becomes either illegal or highly legally risky in a state that imbues a fertilized egg with a full set of rights."
Fascinating, withering analysis from
@JillFilipovic
:
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@AaronKatersky
Truly wild. Thank you for reporting!
This is same Guo Wengui at the center of the alleged conspiracy that has Pras Michel facing 22 years in prison. Pras broke his silence about it for this week’s Rolling Stone feature:
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If they can go after one man who took overt actions to overturn an election and disenfranchise millions, they can go after anyone.
The hatred for Trump is so all-encompassing that legal experts on the political left have ignored the chilling implications of this indictment. It would could allow the government to arrest those who are accused of spreading disinformation in elections...
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Incredible reporting on CIA-led sabotage campaigns in Russia from
@JackMurphyRGR
. Let’s hope the national media follows his lead.
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The former Fugee Pras Michel breaks his silence about politics, life, and the surreal events that led to his upcoming federal trial and charges that he’s an agent of Chinese influence. My exclusive with
@PrasMichel
@RollingStone
:
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@RadioFreeTom
has an important and recommendable essay up about a very real social problem, while nevertheless straining to shoehorn Bowe Bergdahl into a thesis that a) does not fit his psychology and b) ignores the more important and relevant context of Bergdahl’s crimes. 🧵
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Following the news that Bowe Bergdahl's conviction was vacated, I write
@RealClearNews
about the decision and the pattern of cynical exploitation that has defined the case from the start.
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@JackMurphyRGR
In 2015, my sources helped me break this story. In 2017, it was confirmed at Bergdahl’s trial. In 2019, we documented it thru interviews with dozens of soldiers, officers, and officials who acknowledged the truth for American Cipher. But the myth lives on.
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SCOOP: I heard recently from the distressed family of an American political prisoner in Myanmar, ready to break their year of silence. Their exclusive story is live today
@RollingStone
. Many thanks to
@NoahShachtman
@SeanWoods12
for raising awareness.
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“the fact that ‘influencer’ is one of the most popular career goals for young people should make all of us pause and question what kind of empty, vapid society we’re creating.”
Amen
@JillFilipovic
.
Full post well worth reading:
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@dickstevenson
@AllMattNYT
@nickconfessore
Silicon Valley enjoyed essentially zero public interest journalism for the better part of a decade. There is a lot of retroactive explaining to do.
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Pras Michel trial Day 3:
Potential juror, young guy, good hair, presumes “defendants are guilty” and “must prove innocence.”
Judge: What do you do for work?
A: I work in news media
J: What do you do?
A: I’m an editor
J: Who are you an editor for?
A: Fox News
Juror dismissed
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From the Pentagon’s own newspaper...
Among their concerns: Annual US costs to run the war in Afghanistan now exceed $45B; the Taliban has gained control of more territory, and a lack of transparency and mixed-messaging now cloud U.S. war efforts.
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The Last Hostage:
It took more than 2 years, and 2 presidents, for the US government to finally negotiate and bring home the last man left behind. This is Mark Frerichs’s story. I’m honored he shared it with me. My full report
@NewYorker
@RohdeD
:
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Justice for Bergdahl comes late. There were several reasons to overturn this show trial. The government had much to hide. I hope this reinstates the medical benefits Bergdahl deserves after 5 years in solitary Taliban captivity (3.5 of those in an animal cage).
D.C. federal district judge Reggie Walton has *voided* the court-martial conviction of Bowe Bergdahl—concluding that the military judge who presided over the case should have been disqualified because of an undisclosed pending DOJ job application:
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Agitprop that aids and abets despotic foreign regimes should be called out when we see it. Slimy and gross for sure, but this is also deeply un-American.
Hamas are not terrorists, they’re an army fighting for their country against the worst terror organization on the planet.
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Biden gone based. No more fucks to give. Will happily lie to media for the politics while pursuing the same policies he has always supported.
Reporter Q yesterday: Mr. President, will you deploy more U.S. troops to the Middle East?
Biden: No
Pentagon today: A ‘few thousand’ U.S. troops to deploy to the Middle East
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Journalists demanding that the target of a hit piece display “professional courtesy” by not responding until after said hit is published…is why Americans don’t like journalists.
"[I]t’s totally unheard-of to post that response before the other outlet even publishes its story. If not ethics, professional courtesy should have restrained The Journal," said SPJ director of diversity and ethics
@rodhicks
.
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@GiorgioCafiero
Respectfully, do you see most manifestations of antisemitism as actually “humanization of Palestinians”?
Or do you think antisemitism exists, and, at the same time, the world needs to see Palestinians as fully human?
Can both things be true?
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It wasn't so long ago that Washington Post upheld strict standards of rigorous and objective foreign affairs and national security reporting. Now its reporters tweet sarcasm and snark, condescending to their own readers about events as they happen.
Israel carries out ‘targeted’ strike in Beirut suburb, military says
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@MrChuckD
@Russell22419327
When Pras testified last week in federal court that he went to Rutgers and Yale, you could see the judge's eyes pop from across the room.
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First proof-of-life video of Hersh, an American citizen, with all the signatures of a professional hostage-taking organization.
After losing his hand and lower arm at the Nova festival, it's incredible he's alive.
Will the Biden admin bring him home?
The Goldberg-Polin family has given permission for the video of their son Hersh, who has been held captive by Hamas for 201 days, to be published and used after it was released by the terror organization Hamas today.
For more than 200 days, 133 hostages have been held captive by
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I admire
@radiofreetom
’s work and am hopeful that the next time he decides to use Bergdahl-the-myth to prove a theory, he instead looks at Bergdahl-the-man as a crucible of the complex and flawed American failure in Afghanistan.
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NEWS: Pras Michel goes from touring with The Fugees back to federal court in Washington this week with a new lawyer, former Alabama Democratic Senator Doug Jones. Full update from me on the artist charged as an agent of Chinese influence,
@vulture
:
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In his 2nd day on the witness stand, accused Chinese asset Pras Michel recalled when he first heard of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
“My lawyer asked me, ‘Do you know about FARA?’”
“I said, ‘Yeah, I love Farrah.’ … I thought he was talking about Farrah Fawcett.”
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The idea is to take the intelligence community seriously but not literally.
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The lesson here, to quote a wise friend, is that in America you can be Black or you can be corrupt, but you can't be both.
#EricAdams
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On the 10th anniversary of the Bergdahl prisoner trade, I wrote about dupes on the right, jokers on the left, and how foreign propaganda and the fallout from that scandal still poisons our politics today.
@RCPolitics
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@letsgomathias
I get it. And I’d respectfully suggest that, to the casual reader, it might be actually confusing to see quote marks around imaginary dialogue.
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According to sources within the campaign, the candidate struggles to focus for 30 minutes in a given day.
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Rubio had a night. Kasich is hot. Rand Paul is throwing the after-party. Ted Cruz has no friends. Trump is flying everyone to Cuba.
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@HashtagGriswold
Are you saying that because he is Jewish, he can't possibly be spreading anti-Semitism?
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@emptywheel
@dfriedman33
But wait, there's more! This is the same Guo Wengui at the center of the alleged conspiracy case against
@PrasMichel
that I featured in this week's exclusive
@RollingStone
:
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The primary conditions that led Bergdahl to his iconically misguided decision to walk off his remote outpost alone and unarmed into enemy territory were not narcissism or being “a lost boy,” but the more specific circumstances of his life, his mental health, and his deployment.
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@radiofreetom
omits the fact that Bergdahl first enlisted in and washed out of the Coast Guard. Twice volunteering for active service, a choice that distinguishes him from 99% of Americans, is not the typical path of the angry young loser.
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“During World War II, Mead and Bateson worked on a team that sought to use hypnosis and mind altering drugs in the fight against fascism. Later experiments went even further afield, with an effort to use LSD to teach dolphins how to talk.” 🎤🐬
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“Fauci ‘testified that the lab leak hypothesis—which was often suppressed—was, in fact, not a conspiracy theory. Further the social distancing recommendations forced on Americans 'sort of just appeared' and were likely not based on scientific data’."
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As German shells exploded in the water around them, he and the other 19-year-olds in his company began climbing down the rope nets draped over the gunwales to the landing craft below. When a shell exploded nearby, the shockwave lifted the net and the men on it high into the air…
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@JuliaCarmel__
She is a high-level member of your staff. Would your response be the same if she cheered on the murder and rape of Muslim children?
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He didn’t tell anyone in our family about his time in the war until I 1992, when I asked if I could interview him for a 6th grade history report. This is some of what he told me...
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It’s the path of someone who sought purpose and was thwarted in that search by factors personal, societal, and systemic. It’s the story of a young man who wanted to contribute to something that mattered, only to discover that the story he had been sold about Afghanistan was a lie
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b) Where prior media treatments of Bergdahl failed, and where
@radiofreetom
sidesteps, are the questions of the war itself. To assail Bergdahl as “lost,” “narcissistic,” or even “insane,” is to insinuate that US policy in Afghanistan was logical, altruistic, and rational.
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a) Bergdahl was assessed by a parade of psychiatrists and diagnosed with conditions which, the compelling argument was made at his court-martial, help explain his irrational stunt. For days in open court, his psyche was flayed and dissected. Narcissism was never mentioned.
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"The Afghan Adjustment Act costs the US very little and benefits us tremendously. We already broke so much in Afghanistan, including many of our promises. The least we can do is keep this one."
@JillFilipovic
confronts the darkness in Washington:
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To simplify Bergdahl as just another selfish “lost boy” provides a glib sort of pass to twenty years of failed policy-making that took him to Afghanistan in the first place. As the war fades from memory, veterans deserve more honesty and humility from the chattering classes.
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@AliAbunimah
@MarkAmesExiled
That’s because Ukrainians don’t have a long proven history of hiding arms caches and bunkers under hospitals.
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@jeremyscahill
The ICC has found no proof of genocide and has asked the plaintiff (South Africa) to provide evidence.
Most of the world is aware that politicizing the term "genocide" is itself an immoral act.
Has it occurred to you that you may be the one doing the gaslighting?
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Bergdahl’s story matters because he identified, quickly and clearly, the duplicity and disarray behind the entire doomed effort in Afghanistan. Bergdahl’s methods, to quote Martin Sheen channeling Joseph Conrad, may have been unsound, but his analysis of the war was not wrong.
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"If your decision to elevate Rep. Perry to this committee stands, he will be on the very committee that oversees the FBI while he is directly under investigation by this very agency."
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On June 5, 1944, his transport ship left Cardiff, Wales, and arrived off Normandy before dawn. They anchored 500 yards from Utah Beach. At sunrise, allied artillery fire from a battleship behind them whistled in the sky above. …
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Re-upping this from a year ago.
cc:
@JasonLeopold
When Flynn testifies about how he paid some guys to do some things in Macedonia, this will be extra sweet.
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Far and away the best news/politics/sanity newsletter I have yet to find. Sign up for TGIF from
@NellieBowles
@TheFP
. Read, laugh, dance, walk briskly, dance again. You will not be disappointed!
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The media has preserved Bergdahl’s case not as a factual event, but as a wartime myth, a fable of good guy heroes and one bad guy’s crime. Don’t let the facts get in the way of a story that satisfies the needs of entertainment and influence (both the Acela and Hollywood variety)
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@ryangrim
More than two-dozen eyewitness described gang rape and attendant murders they saw that day.
The U.N. confirmed the evidence.
Victims don't come forward because the victims are dead.
Why do you continue on this soulless campaign?
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Funny that, due to the climate protestors, lights and power at the US Open will stay on an extra half hour.
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Before I continue this screed, here’s the essay, which is worth reading:
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Read
@Peggynoonannyc
on the fantasy of "Sane Donald Trump." Yay for her hope and sense in hopeless, nonsense times.
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Click and read to learn how Mike Flynn (yes, that Mike Flynn) and others (e.g. Petraeus) sent troops on dangerous "search missions" in Afghanistan long after they knew that Bergdahl had been smuggled to Pakistan.
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@ASFleischman
It brings me no joy, as a former reporter there, that Newsweek is a journalistic ghost ship. Pay it no mind.
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Week 3 of the Pras Michel trial starts with an explosive update:
The attorney for alleged co-conspirator Frank White Jr. has confirmed that his client, if called to testify, will invoke his 5th Amendment privileges against self-incrimination.
Why is this important?
🧵 1/12
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@WendySiegelman
Thank you for the always illuminating threads
@WendySiegelman
!
For those new to the story, check out my recent report
@RollingStone
, where Pras Michel breaks his silence about the case and I break it all down for the uninitiated:
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@DovWaxman
@DNC
How about an Armenian-American? In the wake of Nagorno-Karabakh, is the DNC going to suppress the voices of ethnic cleansing?
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@ryangrim
@DesisRisingUp
When you say, “the US,” what exactly are you referring to?
Do you have evidence of who killed these people?
We’ve seen video of Hamas shooting ppl fleeing south.
You’re an investigative journalist. Why are you drawing conclusions with no investigation?
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@BCFinucane
Are secret communications devices distributed by a designated terror network to its agents in a time of war "harmless portable objects"? Is this the argument?
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