ROB FORD CRACK VIDEO MAY BE GONE

KING JESUS IS COMING FOR US ANY TIME NOW. THE RAPTURE. BE PREPARED TO GO.

ALL MY REPORTS ON THIS STORY SO FAR
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2013/06/duffy-and-ford-scandals-still-hot.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2013/05/some-say-rob-ford-must-resign-now.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2013/05/2nd-killer-in-rob-ford-drug-video.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2013/05/another-calls-for-fords-resignation.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2013/05/ontario-mayorcanada-senate-scandals.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2013/05/now-doug-ford-drug-selling-allegations.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2013/05/rob-ford-no-answers-to-drug-alligations.html 

DRUG PUSHERS AND ADDICTS

1 PET 5:8
8 Be sober,(NOT DRUGED UP OR ALCOHOLICED) be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:

REVELATION 18:23
23 And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries (DRUGS) were all nations deceived.

REVELATION 9:21
21 Neither repented they of their murders,(KILLING) nor of their sorceries (DRUGS AND DRUG PUSHERS), nor of their fornication,(SEX OUTSIDE MARRIAGE OR PROSTITUTION FOR MONEY) nor of their thefts.(STEALING)

I WROTE THIS JUNE 1.
ITS 12:18PM SAT JUNE 1,13 AND THERES A PUBLIC PEACEFUL PROTEST IN TORONTO FOR ROB FORD TO RESIGN OR TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT HIS DRUG ALLEGATIONS. THIS DRUG THING WILL JUST RUN ON AND ON AS FORD IS INTOXICATED BY POWER IF NOT DRUGS ALSO(UNCONFIRMED)-WHICH WOULD BE CONFIRMED IF THAT VIDEO WAS REVEALED TO THE WORLD.BUT SINCE THINGS HAPPEN.PEOPLE AND VIDEOS DISAPPEAR.IN SCANDALS.SO WE MIGHT NEVER KNOW.AND BUSINESS AS USUAL WILL GO ON AT TORONTO WITHOUT ANY ACCOUNTABILITY.MAYOR ROB FORD-GET THE TRUTH OUT-SO YOUR OUT OR IN FOR SURE.QUIT THE COVERUP PLEASE AND THANK YOU.

crackstarter

John Cook Today 5:43pm  55,410 222

The Rob Ford Crack Video Might Be "Gone"

Before the Rob Ford Crackstarter—our crowdfunding effort to purchase and publish a video of Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine—reached its $200,000 goal last month, we let everyone know that we had lost contact with the people who have custody of the video. At the end of last week, after a long silence, the video's owner reached out to the intermediary we have been dealing with. He told him the video is "gone."Rob Ford, Toronto's conservative mayor, is a wild lunatic given to making bizarre racist pronouncements and randomly slapping refrigerator… Read…What does that mean? We don't really know. A few days after we posted our story about having viewed the video in a car in a parking lot in Toronto, the owner went silent. Two Toronto Star reporters had quickly followed our report, claiming to have seen the same video. Both Gawker and the Star reporters were introduced to the owner of the video by the same intermediary.The attention surrounding the breaking of the story had two important consequences: First, the owner of the video became angry at us, and at the intermediary. The owner was trying to sell the video, but he apparently didn't want or anticipate the media circus that erupted after the story broke. We decided to break it, with the consent of the intermediary, after a CNN reporter called one of Ford's ex-staffers about the video and word started to get out. The CNN reporter had learned about the video after we confidentially reached out to the network in an effort to partner in purchasing it.Our decision to publish was informed by 1) a desire to get ahead of any rival stories that the gossip mill might generate and 2) a fear that, once Ford was privately alerted to the existence of the video, he would start trying to track it down. That decision lit a match on this story that made it much more difficult—and maybe impossible—to get a deal done and bring the video to the light of day.Complicating matters was the fact that the Star's coverage contained several details—including the rough location where its reporters viewed the video, the rough location where it was purportedly recorded, a description of the intermediary's line of work, the ethnicity of the intermediary and the owner, and physical details about the video owner's appearance—that may have been helpful in identifying and locating the owner. Indeed, according to the Star and other outlets, Ford himself told his staff that the video could be found at a Toronto address—320 Dixon Rd.—near the location where the Star reporters wrote that they viewed it. (Whether he deduced that location—which may or may not be where the video was actually stored—from the Star's coverage or would have known anyway, we can't say.)

The second consequence was that Toronto's tight-knit Somali ethnic community became angry. The Canadian media seized on the Star's repeated description of the owners as "Somali men involved in the drug trade." The story quickly became about Rob Ford and his "Somali crack dealers," and the Star's public editor subsequently criticized the paper for "going overboard" on the references to the Somali community. We don't know for certain the citizenship or immigration status of the video's owner, but shortly after the story broke, the intermediary told me: "We're all Canadians."According to the intermediary, these two factors—a fear of being identified, and a strong desire from the Somali community to make the whole thing go away—led the owner of the video to go to ground and soured the owner's relationship with the intermediary. I frankly find it difficult to believe that a crack dealer would be more responsive to the desires of his ethnic community than to a $200,000 bounty. But I have heard independently from others familiar with the goings-on in Toronto that leaders in its Somali community have determined who the owner is and brought intense pressure to bear on him and his family. Toronto's "Little Mogadishu" neighborhood is located in the ward Rob Ford represented when he was a city councillor; though he is a conservative and a racist buffoon, I am told he has long-standing connections to Somali power brokers there.Which brings us to this past Friday, when the intermediary called to tell me that he had finally heard from the owner. And his message was: "It's gone. Leave me alone." It was, the intermediary told me, a short conversation."It's gone" could mean many things. It might mean that the video has been destroyed. It might mean that it has been handed over to Ford or his allies. It might mean that he intends to sell or give it to a Canadian media outlet. It might mean that the Toronto Police Department has seized it and plans to use it as evidence in a criminal investigation. It might mean that it has been transferred to the custody of Somali community leaders for safekeeping. It might be a lie. The intermediary doesn't know. Neither do I.I do know that Gawker is currently sitting on $184,689.81 collected via our Rob Ford Crackstarter. (That's $201,254 raised in total, less $8,365.23 in fees extracted by PayPal, $8,043.96 taken by Indiegogo, and $155 in contributions raised that we have yet to receive.) It is obviously our hope that someone steps up to claim this money and provides us the video.The intermediary has claimed that a copy of the video was made and taken outside Toronto for safekeeping. We don't know if that's true, or if it is, whether that copy is also "gone." We can still imagine any number of scenarios in which this video comes to light. If you are reading this, and you have access to the video, and you like money, please email me at john@gawker.com.If this doesn't happen soon, we will—as we initially promised when we launched the campaign—select a Canadian nonprofit that addresses substance abuse issues to receive the money.Don't do crack. 

The media’s Rob Ford problem: Scandals manna from heaven for grievance-based politician

Chris Selley | 13/06/05 | Last Updated: 13/06/05 9:51 AM ET
More from Chris Selley | @cselley

Tyler Anderson/National PostHalf of Toronto thinks the press is out to get the mayor. For grievance politicians like the Ford brothers, this is manna from heaven.

John Cook, the Gawker editor who first reported that he saw an alleged video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking what may have been crack cocaine, is now saying the video might be “gone.”In an article posted on the U.S. website Gawker Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Cook said that was what the owner of the alleged video told Gawker’s intermediary.“It’s gone. Leave me alone,” was the message Mr. Cook said he received Friday.Gawping at poll numbers has always been part of the Rob Ford Experience. “That can’t be right” was a common reaction during the campaign or, “they’ll change their minds. They have to!” Since Mr. Ford’s convincing victory, as his campaign promises one by one became punch lines and general chaos took hold, we often hear: “Still? How? Why?“ According to an Ipsos poll conducted last week, 34% of Torontonians would vote for him again.Part of it might be related to what American political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler call the “backfire effect.” The more incongruent some piece of information is to someone’s very committed political beliefs, the fiercer their internal counterargument is likely to be — as a result, they can actually wind up more convinced of their previous position. Professors Nyhan and Reifler demonstrated the effect by informing conservatives that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, and liberals that George W. Bush did not ban stem-cell research. The Mayor of Toronto smoking crack is pretty damn incongruent, too.Whatever the reason, voting intentions aren’t nearly the most remarkable findings in the Ipsos poll. Respondents were presented with two options: that the “alleged video showing Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine with drug dealers … exists and is real”; or that it’s “just a hoax and part of a conspiracy by the Mayor’s opponents to discredit him.” Fully 45% chose the hoax/conspiracy option. Meanwhile, 49% said they believed Mr. Ford when he said he “does not smoke crack cocaine”; and 49% agreed, either “strongly” or “somewhat,” that “this is another example of a persistent agenda by the Toronto Star and other media outlets to bring [Mr. Ford] down because they don’t like his agenda.”

I didn’t think I was under any illusions about the low esteem in which many Canadians hold the media. But I find those numbers amazing. They suggest that more people than would even vote for Mr. Ford believe he’s the victim of a bizarre conspiracy. If anything approaching half the population of Toronto believes that two well-respected Toronto Star reporters just made this up, or dialled down their credulity meters to such potentially career-destroying levels that they gave some crude forgery the benefit of the doubt, and that the rest of us just jumped aboard for squeaks and giggles — even the Toronto Sun has demanded Mr. Ford explain himself more fully or go away — well, that’s a pretty huge problem for the media.As the Fords claim, the Mayor has been subjected to a level of media scrutiny that Canadians are not at all accustomed to witnessing. I can’t think of another Canadian politician outside of Quebec who might even remotely deserve it — but I understand how a partisan of any stripe would perceive uncommonly aggressive legitimate reporting as a vendetta. And it sure doesn’t help when other journalists pile on: For example, there was nothing remotely offside about a Star reporter taking a look around a parcel of public land, abutting the Ford estate, that Mr. Ford wished to purchase; yet commentators for competing outlets (including the National Post) have repeatedly cast this as some kind of gutter tactic.Ford just keeps winning these battles, and in so doing he bolsters his case that he really is the subject of a vendetta.Are there lessons here for the media? I have to wonder how Star editors feel these days about posting a video of two people giggling in a car as they filmed Mr. Ford purchasing some fried chicken. I think the decision was technically defensible: The Mayor was on a public weight-loss campaign that wasn’t going well. But if I felt bad for the guy; how is a Ford voter going to feel? Newspapers shouldn’t be pulling punches for fear of generating sympathy for a politician their editorial boards don’t like; but if it discredits the whole profession, there’s a problem.
There are certainly lessons here for activists, I think. Mr. Ford’s various foes have been perfectly within their rights to lodge and vigorously pursue complaints against him — for a conflict of interest that nobody noticed at the time, pertaining to $3,150 in improperly raised funds for his football foundation; and for overspending on his campaign by $40,000. But both would have been terrible reasons to overturn the 2010 vote.Mr. Ford just keeps winning these battles, and in so doing he bolsters his case that he really is the subject of a vendetta, if not a “conspiracy,” to overturn the will of the people as expressed on Oct. 25, 2010. It is understandable that people would be miffed at that idea; and for a grievance-based politician like Mr. Ford, it’s manna from heaven. Mr. Ford is to blame for the chaos at City Hall, not the media or the left-wing hordes. But if half of Torontonians aren’t just discounting what they read in the newspaper, but believing the opposite, that chaos could go on indefinitely. That’s a serious problem for the city, and a serious puzzlement for the press gallery.National Post-Chris Selley: • cselley@nationalpost.com |