You are still desperately clutching at that straw of alleged “partisan” support for Omar by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and you’re still wrong about it.
The Star Tribune has been publicizing accusations, allegations and the occasional discreditable fact against Omar ever since she became prominent in politics. It’s got fuck-all to do with “partisanship”. It’s because scandal and controversy about politicians sell newspapers.
Here are just a few of the many examples prior to this week’s so-called “revelations”:
If it’ll scratch that itch that seems to be bothering you so much, I’m perfectly happy to acknowledge that most of the media organs that publicize accusations, allegations and discreditable facts about, say, President Trump are also doing it more because it sells well than for motives of political partisanship.
…you do realize that the so-called-mainstream-media covered the story that the “New York City Police Department allegedly discovered a pedophilia ring linked to members of the Democratic Party while searching through Anthony Weiner’s emails?”
They cover absurd stories with zero evidence and zero credibility all the time. And the “main-stream media” cannot by any stetch of the imagination be characterized as “liberal” and the assertion that a person is a fellow to the media is a fucking stupid characterization.
The distinction is not what the reporting reports, but what the reporting asserts as true. Nobody is disputing the facts reported in the Minnesota Star Tribune. There is nothing in the article that comes close to slander. But the paper also doesn’t support anything that you are alluding to in this thread. I’m a big fan of Ilhan Omar. If the conspiracy theory turns out to be true then I will reconsider my support.
But the only thing I know is that you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about. This is happening right now in America but what you are worried about is the imaginary slur on the reputation of an anonymous poster on a messageboard. Your priorities are out of fucking whack.
Omar has been in constant cohabitation with her current husband since they met. There’s no indication that they have ever lived apart, and a fair amount of documentation (e.g. police reports) that they lived together while Omar was married to Elmi. While I can’t confirm this, if you say that there’s such documentation and it doesn’t exist, you’re highly susceptible to libel suits and it is stated by the Washington Examiner, which is a reputable journal, even if it is a right-wing one.
Elmi is 3 years her junior. It is somewhat questionable that she would marry a mystery British man, 3 years younger and with no job prospects, as a single mom to two children.
Based on Somali naming tradition, if Omar’s dad is named Nur Said Elmi Mohamed, then a son would likely be named something like Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. This is in accordance with non-right wing reporting on the subject that was written without Omar in mind. It was just an informational piece about Somalia.
It is easy to confirm that Omar’s father goes by “Nur Said”.
There are screenshots that state that his name was given by Omar to City Pages as “Nur Said Elmi Mohamed” but then the editor changed it and republished the article. I tried to use Wayback to confirm this, but I was unable to. The article’s URL may have changed with the edit and I don’t know what it was before. However, it would be an easy libel suit if this was not true. I believe that it can be trusted to be true.
Supposedly, a “Nur Said Elmi Mohamed” signed a letter calling for a Jubaland to be created in Somalia that was circulated in the Minnesota Somali community. I have no way of knowing whether there are two men with that name in the region but it seems unlikely that there would be two with such a close connection to politics. And I do expect that the letter exists, at least, or it would be an easy libel suit.
Omar has spoken in support of Jubaland. This can be confirmed.
There are screenshots that indicate that the Elmi who owns the Instagram account @ahmednelmi has a preoccupation with “nieces” and that a niece had a baby or a baby was added to the pool of nieces the day after Omar gave birth. I cannot confirm the baby photo that is supposed to exist, but I have confirmed that Elmi talks about his nieces and that one of them did an art piece that includes a photo that looks like a person of Omar’s general appearance.
There are emails that are purported to be between @ahmednelmi and Alpha News. I have no way of confirming these, but it would be an easy libel case if they don’t exist. In them, Elmi confirms that it is him in a number of photos, where we can see both him and Omar together. Those photos no longer exist or are unaccessible or were falsified. Again, if falsified, that would be an easy libel suit.
In the emails, Elmi gave his birthday as being May 19. In a screenshot of a photo, he had a hospital wristband that gave his birthday as April 4. I cannot confirm the existence of this photo, but it would be an easy libel case if it didn’t exist.
According to the Elmi who owns the Instagram account, he has never married Omar and is the wrong person. However, he admits going to the same school as Omar, just not knowing her.
Purportedly, the school records indicate that there was only one Elmi who went there at that time, and his birthday was April 4. I can’t confirm this, but it seems like an easy libel suit if it is false. There’s a strong indication that Elmi is lying and that he has deleted photos from his Instagram account.
So it’s a liberal Republican-owned newspaper that’s batting around sensational allegations about a liberal congresswoman, admitting all the while they can’t prove them, just to provide a veneer of cover to right-wing outlets who can point to a hitherto-fairly respectable source as they repeat the sensational parts without the “no evidence” part? If the Star-Tribune is supposed to be Congresswoman Omar’s friend, she needs better ones.
Meanwhile, in spite of the OP’s claim, no new info. Even if there were, still wouldn’t mean past behavior of an SDMB member wasn’t reprehensible.
Even if the worst of the slurs were true, still pretty weak. Certainly not enough to outweigh the wonderful fact that Women and Muslims and other minorities are finally beginning to increase their numbers and power in this country and in the government, and we can all celebrate that.
The little shreds I’ve seen of this are based on things like uncited screenshots that are awfully easy to fake, whether with graphics programs like Photoshop or by making fake social media accounts with fake posts. This sounds no more like an actual chain of evidence than the ridiculous birth certificate images and files offered by Orly Taitz and others like her.
Please provide a person who can conclusively attest that you are not an attention-starved member of any high school debate team. Note, you will need to provide evidence for every debate team of which you claim non-membership.
They very clearly did run it with zero evidence. They were very careful in their rumormonging to make a factually true statement (that some allege she married her own brother), so they won’t run afoul of defamation laws, but the rumormongering is right there in front of our eyes, as is the lack of evidence.
Then Omar should sue. She would win wildly given the specificity and quantity of materials that have been fabricated.
But, as noted, it all looks good. The people who have commented on the photos are real acquaintances of Omar and Elmi. The spacing and fonts and everything in the screenshots match the real version and look professional.
If faked, they’re very good and, I would say, too good. You would need a professional graphic designer to do the fakery, and it would take them quite a number of hours.
Alpha News should be able to show the emails from Elmi in London to a court, if they exist. If they can’t, then they were real stupid to make them up.
If Elmi in London isn’t the correct Elmi, then it’s a heck of a coincidence that he would have been posting about his nieces before all of this became a thing.
It would be odd for the Washington Examiner and Alpha News and PJ Media to team up to both falsify information. Having not just one but three different news sources - one of which survives a health check - all open themselves up to massive libel suits seems implausible.
Overall, it’s a heck of a conspiracy to fake and the quality of the faked materials is impressive. Whoever did it would be massively exposed, legally, to have done it and would need to have convinced the Washington Examiner to go on the record and lie about having documentary evidence from a police force.
At minimum, it can be safely said that Omar and Emli never lived together. She has only ever lived with her current husband and is lying if she says otherwise.
We know that she’s lying. The theory fits the knowable facts and explains why she would lie.
Maybe if these conspiracy theories were actually going anywhere, but I haven’t seen them anywhere aside from extremist websites, and the occasional mention by mainstream sources that makes it clear this is a baseless conspiracy theory. Why would she want to bring more attention to them, when birtherism proved that evidence doesn’t matter with the right-wing nuts? This “theory” might die on its own if she ignores it.
Unless you’re a forensic computer scientist or the equivalent, I’m skeptical. From what I’ve seen, it’s very easy to make a fake account that mimics a real account, or even several fake accounts, that could lead to these screenshots looking “authentic”.
Little shreds that have nothing to do with the actual meat of the conspiracy theory (i.e. that she married her brother) might well be true – the most successful conspiracy theories often rely on little tiny shreds of truth. But this is the internet – it’s really not that hard to drum up a fake theory and set the extremists wild. We’ve seen it again and again. If there’s real, actual evidence for this conspiracy theory, someone will dig it up at some point. Until then, if all they have is easily fabricated (in my understanding) social media screen shots, plus a whole bunch of innuendo, then it’s nothing.
You are correct, I thought I linked that one but did not, no subterfuge intended, that was from the Minnesota Sun.
But different topic- there seems to be a disproportionate amount of anger over the thought that a beloved public figure may have committed a minor indiscretion as an 18 year old immigrant student by marrying a relative to get them free entry into NDSU or whatever the potential reason- surely no one here is equating “married her brother” to “is having an incestual relationship with brother?”
Because the level of sheer disbelief that someone could commit low level fraud as a teenager, a decade before public office, seems unusually high, which is all the accusation here is, at worst.
Sage Rat, you realize that when you make a series of assertions and they’re *all *accompanied by caveats like “I can’t confirm this,” and (paraphrased) “a public left-wing figure hasn’t yet sued a powerful right-wing newspaper, therefore it must be true,” “questionable,” “the son would likely be named something like,” “It is easy to confirm…I tried…but I was unable to,” “I have no way of knowing, but…” “There are screenshots…,” “I cannot confirm,” “I have no way of confirming these,” (more assertions that if somebody hasn’t sued for libel it must be true), “a number of photos…these photos no longer exist,” and on and on and on…
that there are better names for what you are summarizing than “evidence,” right?
Likely, there’s no records in Somalia. With Emli living in England, you probably can’t get him DNA tested to determine paternity.
The Washington Examiner makes it clear that Omar lied about living situation and that’s probably enough to open a criminal case. And that lie does indicate that there is something to have been hidden, if not this.
I expect that Bill Barr has already opened a case against her and will press charges of some form, before not too long. (E.g. a few months.)
Remember that most of the bad stuff you know about Trump comes from biased news sources. Ignoring this is just the same as allows all the people who support Trump to keep on supporting him.
Libel is a crime. It’s the great truth of the 21st century that seems to have escaped almost everyone in the country’s attention.
Most of the bad stuff in my views about Trump come from his own words, and the credible allegations against him.
If you’re right, we’ll see. Bill Barr, by his own words and actions, has shown himself to be a highly dishonest sycophant of Trump, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he initiated such a prosecution. If there’s actual evidence for it, it will come out. But so far I haven’t seen it. Just silliness from the birther playbook and innuendo.
No. That is the definition of evidence. You have materials of varying levels of reliability that you reject or accept on the basis of the likelihood that they have merit and are relevant.
Based on that, you form reasonable conclusions up to the level that the evidence allows.
There’s the evidence and how much you can trust it. You can trust that Omar and Emli are covering something up. Beyond that, the evidence is insufficient.
Criminal libel is almost never prosecuted, and it’s not even a crime at the federal level or in D.C. For all practical purposes, libel is a tort, one that is easy to defend against a public figure or someone domiciled abroad. Those are minor truths of the 21st century, but they have not escaped all of us.
Fine then libel is a tort. But it’s a very different ballgame between saying that someone told you that they heard that Brad Pitt is dating Sarah Jessica Parker and saying that you had an email conversation with Brad Pitt and these were his exact responses to your queries. The latter would lose you a few million dollars.