Obama welcomes Chafee
Upon hearing that Chafee plans to affiliate with Democrats for his 2014 gubernatorial re-election run, Obama issues a statement through the Democratic National Committee.
I’m delighted to hear that Governor Chafee is joining the Democratic Party. For nearly 30 years, Linc Chafee has served his beloved Rhode Island as an independent thinker and leader who’s unafraid to reach across party lines to get things done. I enjoyed working with Linc when he was a Republican in the United States Senate, and I look forward to continuing that collaboration on the issues that matter not just to the Democratic Party, but to every American.
White House Press Secretary Carney tells reporters at the daily press briefing.
The president welcomes Governor Chafee to the party. Governor Chafee’s been a longtime supporter of President Obama, and – not as a party member, but as a supporter of the president and his policies both – but I don’t have any other response.
Upset at finishing second
James expresses his displeasure at finishing second in the voting for the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year award:
It sucks. It definitely sucks, though, finishing second. Who wants to finish second?
James averaged 6.8 defensive rebounds, 1.7 steals, and 1 block per game for the season, but he says the most important aspect of his defensive ability is his versatility:
I guard everybody on the floor. I don’t know if it’s one player in NBA history that’s guarded 1 (point guards) through 5 (centers). It’s over with now, but it’s cool.
Statement
Keys posts a statement about his firing to Tumblr.
Reuters claims that during my coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings, I violated a grievance aired by the company in a written warning issued in October 2012, explicitly that the company “must see immediate improvement in your communication with managers and more discretion in your social media practices.” (The company does not define what “more discretion” is)…Reuters said they particularly disagreed with my decision to continue tweeting scanner traffic after several other news organizations had reported a request from the Boston Police Department to not tweet information heard on scanner traffic.
Pluto moon named ‘Vulcan’
Nimoy reacts to Pluto’s moon being named Vulcan:
"Vulcan" is the logical choice. LLAP
— Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) February 14, 2013
Public Enemy #1
The Chicago Crime Commission names Guzman public enemy number one because he supplies a majority of illegal drugs to the city. Commission President:
Guzman is the major supplier of narcotics to Chicago. His agents are working in the Chicago area importing vast quantities of drugs for sale throughout the Chicago region and collecting and sending to Mexico tens of millions of dollars in drug money.
GOP must ‘evolve and adapt’
Paul says that GOP must evolve and adapt to ensure that the party has a bright future. He also says that he would make a decision on running for president within 2 years.
Whether or not I am going to run for president, that decision will come probably in two years, and [we] will in the meantime try to be part of the national debate…We think the Republican Party needs to evolve and adapt, or we are going to become a permanent minority party.
Father: son ‘killed by the government’
Robert Swartz says during the service in Highland Park that his son was hounded by the government.
He was killed by the government, and MIT betrayed all of its basic principles.
Swartz’s girlfriend, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, said:
Aaron wanted so bad to change the world. He believed you had to see the world for how it really was to change it. With this [upcoming] trial and everything he was facing the last two years, I think [Aaron] fell into the pain. I love him, I miss him and I’ve learned so much from him.
Tim Berners-Lee, who developed the World Wide Web, and Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, director of the Safra Center for Ethics where Swartz was once a fellow, also spoke at the funeral.
Claims he carried out spying operation
McAfee blogs that he organized a massive spying scheme to infiltrate the digital lives of the rich and powerful in Belize as revenge for a police raid on his home last year. He says that he gifted 75 laptops with keystroke spying software pre-installed to “government employees, police officers, Cabinet Minister’s assistants, girlfriends of powerful men, boyfriends of powerful women.” He claims that he hired 29 operatives to install similar tracking software on computers that targets already owned, sometimes getting close to them with sex. He also supposedly had lackeys join the ranks of two national phone companies to tap phones and get lists of contacts from Belizeans he wanted to keep his eye on. McAfee also arranged to have recorders “hidden under a bed, behind a piece of artwork, inside a pillow, in an old shoe” of government ministers. He claims to have evidence of numerous sexual affairs, the ordering of a murder by the nation’s prime minister and, above all, a Hezbollah trafficking plot to smuggling Lebanese men into the U.S.
Belize is clearly a central player in a larger network whose goal is to infiltrate the U.S. with individuals having links to terrorist organizations.
Describes escape
McAfee says he planted a lookalike (“my double — a man I have known for over 30 years and who years ago legally changed his name to John McAfee”) and had him picked up by authorities in the northern Belize-Mexico border, while he and a group of friends and reporters loaded up a truck and headed in the opposite direction, to a southern town called Punta Gorda. With the news that he’d been arrested broadcasting on a local news station, McAfee figured that checkpoint security would relax. McAfee followed another friend who was driving one of his pickup trucks to avoid checkpoints on the highway. This was another decoy:
If they stopped the truck, I knew the checkpoint officers would be swarming all over it. Subsequent traffic would be likely to be waved through.
McAfee made sure that his dash happened on a rainy day.
In Belize, no checkpoint officers will ever stop a car in the rain.
He says he blew through all three highway checkpoints on that early December day without ever being stopped. From Punta Gorda, he and his 20-year-old girlfriend Samantha Vanegas and two Vice reporters sailed into Livingston, Guatemala. A few days later, he was arrested.
Illness a ‘ruse’
McAfee says he faked the illness in order to buy some time for a judge to hear his case and stay his deportation to Belize.
It was a deception but who did it hurt? I look pretty healthy, don’t I?
When asked whether he believes Belize officials were inept.
I was on the run with a 20-year-old girl for three and a half weeks inside their borders and everyone was looking for me, and they did not catch me. I escaped, was captured and they tried to send me back. Now I’m sitting in Miami. There had to be some ineptness.
McAfee also answers critics who called his adventures a publicity stunt:
What’s a better story, millionaire mad man on the run. You [the media] saved my ass. Because you paid attention to the story. As long as you are reporting, it is hard to whack somebody that the world is watching.
Wants to return to the U.S.
In a phone call to Reuters from the immigration facility where he is being held for illegally crossing the border to Guatemala with his 20-year-old girlfriend, McAfee says he wants to return to the U.S.
My goal is to get back to America as soon as possible. I wish I could just pack my bags and go to Miami. I don’t think I fully understood the political situation. I’m an embarrassment to the Guatemalan government and I’m jeopardizing their relationship with Belize.
Intends to stay in Guatemala
McAfee says he plans to settle down in Guatemala.
I have a passport. I am in no trouble with the U.S. I can return any time I like. I have been back to America many times since I have been in Belize. I have no interest of going this month or next but … I can come and go freely to America any time I want. I am not concerned because I have not been charged with a crime, so there is no basis for extradition. No one has blamed me for the murder. I have not been charged, I am not a suspect…They merely want to question me…I like Guatemala. I think the legal system in Guatemala is superior to the legal system in Belize.
Belizean police:
He’s really gone out of his way to make the country look bad, and we just believe he should, if he’s innocent as he’s saying he is, he should bring in his lawyer, and let’s get to the bottom of this and say what he needs to say and let’s move on.
Claims he faked photo info
McAfee claims he manipulated the Vice photo info.
I openly apologize to Vice Magazine for manipulating their recently published photo… I, for my own safety, manipulated the xif data on the image taken from my cellphone, and created a fake emergency so that the urgency of movement led, as I knew it would, to the hasty posting on their website. I felt that our tenuous situation demanded action, and that was the action that I chose.
Photo metadata shows McAfee in Guatemala
In the photo in their post announcing that they shadowing McAfee, Vice leaves exif data in the image that allows it to be pinpointed to a location in Guatemala.
Say he is ‘safe’
McAfee writes that he has not been arrested, saying that he will return to Belize, and that the Vice story will make everything clear.
I am currently safe and in the company of two intrepid journalist from Vice Magazine, and, of course, Sam. We are not in Belize, but not quite out of the woods yet.
Blog: McAfee arrested
A message on McAfee’s blog said that he has been arrested. The news is picked up in other media, but there is no confirmation.
We have received an unconfirmed report that John McAfee has been captured at the border of Belize and Mexico.
Police: McAfee not arrested
Belize national police confirm that the whereabouts of the multimillionaire software developer are still unknown. Additionally, authorities have issued no arrest warrant in the murder of McAfee’s neighbor.
Claims police planted cocaine in weapons donation
According to McAfee’s blog the reason for the raid is that one of the cases containing the weapons he donated to the police contained a bag of cocaine. McAfee denies that he takes or deals in drugs.
I would indeed have to be the stupidest man in the world to donate stuff to the police that contained cocaine.
Accuses former employeee of trying to kill him
McAfee publishes a transcript of an alleged conversation he claims to have obtained through secret recording devices kept in the grounds of his property between an ex-employee and a younger man who works for him. The transcript, taken from a recording posted on November 20, appears to implicate the older man in a plot to frame and murder McAfee, possibly in retribution for firing him. The employee is supposed to have said:
You and I we are going to plan how to make a bomb so that it explodes on that m—– f—–. I am going to wait and as he come out am going to shoot him. Because I was a BDF (Belizean Defence Force) I now have something that’s round. I could give it to you. you pull the pin like this. You walk pass the gate and when no one notices then you pull out the pin you turn it then a lot of them are going to get f—–. “
The current employee is then quoted as describing a wider conspiracy involving the local police, who would be called to the scene of the crime when the bomb was planted, potentially framing McAfee for possessing explosives.
With the white men [McAfee] we are going to plant the thing there then we are going to call the higher officials and tell them were the thing is planted. And then tell them about Noel as well, then there are both going to get f—–.”
Noel is a close friend of McAfee’s and a bar owner in Carmelita, a village in north Belize. The transcript is paired with a handwritten letter McAfee received containing a death threat.
Claims Stuffmonger drug story was hoax
McAfee describes a story on Bluelight drug forums: A user named Stuffmonger had claimed to have re-discovered a legendary drug that appeared a dozen years ago, was praised as the drug of drugs, and, after a few months, was then lost to history. The resulting discussion goes on for more than 1,000 pages, many devoted to those trying to recreate the technique that Stuffmonger described. As Stuffmonger stated he lives in Belize, speculation arose that McAfee was Stuffmonger and had the secret drug recipe. McAfee says that, in fact, he is Stuffmonger, but that he does not do drugs, and that the thread was an elaborate hoax.
I bet a close friend that I could create a thread in Bluelight and get 1,000 posts, not counting mine. I won the bet. I believe it is the longest in Bluelight history.