A grand jury has returned an indictment for Maria Butina.
Mueller’s team is going to give “use immunity” to five witnesses in the Manafort trial. Judge Ellis has denied Manafort’s request to move the trial. This is one of a string of decisions against Manafort in recent days.
Trump tried to do damage control today after the treason summit. It was pathetic gaslighting and made him look even more guilty.
tomhsays
The real reason Republicans in Congress ride along with Trump no matter what – these kinds of regulations keep falling by the wayside.
The Trump administration will end a longstanding requirement that certsain nonprofit organizations disclose the names of their large donors to the Internal Revenue Service, a move that will allow some political groups to shield their sources of funding from government scrutiny.
The change, which has been long sought by conservatives and Republicans in Congress, will affect labor unions, social clubs and, most notably, many political groups like the National Rifle Association and the Koch network’s Americans for Prosperity, which collect what is known as “dark money.”
The effect will be that there will be no way to know if these contributions are legal or illegal, foreign or domestic.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has worked behind the scenes for the last year to “open doors” in the Trump administration for Viktor Orban, Hungary’s controversial nationalist prime minister, Israeli officials tell me.
…Orban, who has been called the “Donald Trump of Europe,” leads an ultra-nationalistic government and is working to turn Hungary into what he has termed an “illiberal democracy.” Cold relations that had existed between his government and the Obama administration carried forward to the first year under Trump. Israeli officials tell me that when Netanyahu met with Orban in Budapest last July, the Hungarian Prime Minister asked for his help in improving those relations.
…
An Israeli official tells me Israel’s ambassador in Washington, Ron Dermer, and other Israeli foreign ministry officials approached members of the Trump administration and asked them several times to open a new page with Orban.
…
…Tomorrow, Orban will land in Israel for his first visit as prime minister….
And Black Cube, with ties to the Israeli government, helped with Orbán’s election efforts. I feel like I can’t stress enough what an openly anti-Semitic campaign Orbán ran earlier this year. These actions by the Israeli government are shocking. Their enemies include: former Israeli officials who criticize current policies, human rights and BDS activists, leftwing Jewish people in Europe and the US. Allies include: overtly anti-Semitic rightwing regimes, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, far-Right Christianists in the US.
I have been toying with a hypothesis lately. Maybe it’s an old idea long ago expressed by others. Maybe it’s half-baked. Since the GOP and its followers have constructed so much of their identity around race, they literally cannot entertain the possibility that Russia is out to harm us because Russia is largely “white.” This is regardless of the fact that what is regarded as “white” has changed a lot over the years. It’s all I got at this point.
Plus, much of Russian culture is virulently homophobic and misogynistic. Hell, Nixon (not Cynthia) admired them for those traits and was recorded saying so.
Russian intelligence agencies are planning to ramp up operations targeting western countries now that the World Cup and the Trump-Putin Helsinki summit have ended, according to sources familiar with intelligence collected by the United Kingdom, the US and other allies.
…
What the renewed anti-western operations will entail isn’t known. But the increased Russian intelligence operations are aimed at exploiting political turmoil and destabilizing governments in the west, these officials believe. Russia has been accused of everything from influence and propaganda operations via social media and pro-Kremlin outlets, to harassment, assassinations and the novichok poisonings in the UK….
Further to some of my comments on the previous thread: Mike Pence, who was handpicked as Trump’s running mate by Paul Manafort, is in the Family, which is interesting.
jrkrideausays
is in the Family?
weylguysays
Predictions:
Mueller will discover that Putin gave Trump $200 billion to kill the sanctions
Trump’s taxes will be exposed, showing the payment from Russia
Videos will be discovered showing Trump conducting child sacrifice in the Oval Office
Videos will be discovered showing Mike Pence and other sycophants sucking Trump’s dick
The American people will reelect Trump in 2020
Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!
microraptorsays
Robert Westbrook @4:
The hypothesis I’ve most commonly seen floated around is that Putin simply represents the ideal of the way that Republicans wish they could run the US.
chrislawsonsays
weylguy@8–
$200 billion is way over market value. I’m thinking $100K plus a Big Mac with fries.
See (in addition to the link in the comment to which you’re responding) here and here on the previous thread. Articles from years ago and more recently suggest that Pence is a Family initiate.
Bill Browder: “BREAKING: After Putin accused me at the Helsinki Summit of donating $400m to the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Russian General Prosecutor* clarified that Putin should have said $400k. The real answer is I donated ZERO. Total amateur hour.”
But Putin and his gang are very professionally looting Russia’s wealth.
Hugh Dalton, Labour party minister, is forming a new secret anti-Nazi British guerilla organisation: “comparable to the Sinn Fein movement in Ireland.”
Dalton: “This ‘democratic international’ will use sabotage, strikes, propaganda, terrorism for traitors & German leaders, boycotts & riots” to resist any German occupation of Britain.
This sort of thing (which is weird – disturbing it was brought up) was classic Nazi US propaganda (and not just countries – “why should my son die for some Jews, who brought this on themselves?”).
gijoelsays
But he’s such a stable genius.
KGsays
I feel like I can’t stress enough what an openly anti-Semitic campaign Orbán ran earlier this year. These actions by the Israeli government are shocking. Their enemies include: former Israeli officials who criticize current policies, human rights and BDS activists, leftwing Jewish people in Europe and the US. Allies include: overtly anti-Semitic rightwing regimes, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, far-Right Christianists in the US. – SC@5
To the Israeli right (which now completely dominates Israeli politics), Jews outside Israel have only two functions: to pressure their governments to favour the Israeli right and its expansionist aims; and to migrate to Israel and more particularly, to the occupied territories. Increasing antisemitism is only a problem for them if it obstructs the first function, and is a positive advantage as regards the second.
President Donald Trump returned to undermining NATO on Tuesday by singling out the alliance’s smallest and newest member, Montenegro, following a European tour that Republicans heavily criticized for misrepresenting US values.
In an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday, Trump was asked why the US should answer the call to defend Montenegro — which was admitted to NATO in 2017 — in the event it was attacked.
…
“Let’s say Montenegro, which joined last year … why should my son go to Montenegro to defend it from attack,” Tucker asked Trump.
“I understand what you’re saying, I’ve asked the same question,” Trump said. “Montenegro is a tiny country with very strong people.”
…
But Trump added another wrinkle to the scenario and suggested Montenegro’s “aggressive people” could spark a global conflict and drag the US with it.
“By the way, they’re very strong people. They’re very aggressive people,” Trump said. “They may get aggressive. And congratulations, you’re in World War III.”
If Montenegro, a country with just over 620,000 people, became aggressive and started a war with Russia, they could not invoke Article 5 and require US involvement. That’s because it would not be in response to an attack on a NATO member, but it would instead be an attack from a NATO member.
…
Rather than instigating World War III with Russia, Montenegro has had to fend off what it describes as a Russian attempt to kill its prime minister in 2016.*
Describing NATO ascension, expansion, or NATO countries taking steps to defend their homelands as “aggressive” is a hallmark of Russian messaging in its opposition against the alliance.
He then told more disparaging lies about NATO, summing up: “It was very unfair. They weren’t paying, So not only are we paying for most of it, but they weren’t even paying and we’re protecting them. Add that to your little equation on Montenegro.”
The irony, as you may be aware, is that despite there being no provable link between the concepts, an article in the Guardian featuring a picture of Donald Trump and the word “idiot” will only reinforce the results further. Let’s hope no one clicks on this or links to it, and say only, very soberly: “Trump Trump Trump Trump idiot idiot idiot idiot.”
Israel has been engaging far-right groups and parties across Europe, ignoring their anti-Semitism.
[…]
Just recently, the Israeli government endorsed the Nation-State Bill, which among many racist provisions, calls for the establishment of Jewish-only towns. This bill alone should be enough to settle the silly debate on whether Israel can be both a Jewish nation-state and a democracy.
[… I]n Europe, Israel is actively pursuing alliances with far-right groups and parties as a state policy.
[…]
Israel embodies the perfect balance of different realities, while ensuring law and order. It surely is a role model for security and anti-terrorism policies, [the (now) Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini] said during his [March 2016] trip.
At the Karim Abu Salem crossing between Israel and Gaza, Salvini condemned the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, while announcing the League’s readiness to be part of the government of Italy.
To the north of Italy, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has also registered remarkable electoral success. And it, too, is establishing solid ties with Israel, despite its racist views.
“{T}he party derided for anti-Semitic, xenophobic views redolent of the Nazis is also staunchly supportive of Israel,” reported the Times of Israel. “{It is} one of a number of right-wing populist parties in Europe that have tried to make common cause with Israel’s tough stance toward terror and self-styled position as a forward bulwark against Islamic extremism.”
Last April, the anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic AfD, enthusiastically launched a campaign pushing for the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital […].
[… T]he move that perhaps best illustrates where Israel is headed in its support for the far right in the West is its decision to arm the Azov battalion, a neo-Nazi paramilitary organisation in Ukraine.
Human rights activists recently petitioned the High Court of Justice in Israel to stop the government from selling weapons to such groups after their appeal to the Israeli defence ministry produced no response.
Indeed, Israel’s embrace of far-right movements is now the defining Israeli attitude towards European politics, in general.
This Israeli strategy, of course, has its own logic. During his July 2017 visit to Budapest, Netanyahu met leaders from the so-called “Visegrad Group”, which includes Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
There, he hoped to find new allies that he can use to exert pressure on the rest of the EU. In an audio recording obtained by Reuters, Netanyahu derided Old Europe for daring to criticise Israel’s dismal human rights record, illegal settlement policies and military occupation. I think Europe has to decide whether it wants to live and thrive or it wants to shrivel and disappear, he said.
Netanyahu needs new ways to pressure Europe because pro-Palestinian policies and attitudes are slowly but steadily entering mainstream politics, as grassroots groups are becoming increasingly outraged by Israeli crimes against Palestinians.
[…]
The Israeli government seems intent on weakening Europe by investing in existing divisions and offering political validation to groups that, until recently, were on the political fringes.
It hopes that a divided Europe will be more easily controlled and coaxed back into Israel’s loyalty camp.
[…]
I myself would add that, unlike in the States, there is no large-ish scale Israel is always right ! groups (either legitimate or sham). And as noted in the excerpted opinion column, there are visible groups / demonstrations supporting Palestinian peoples, and I think(not checked!) BDS has much more support in “Europe” than in the States. That is, the policy of infiltration and pressure (which includes both bribery and espionage) that sort-of “works” in the States hasn’t been working, at least of late, in “Europe”.
The ‘birther’ movement led [sic†] by Trump insisted Barack Obama was born in Kenya. It wasn’t true. Neither is it true that Trump’s own dad was born abroad
[…]
In an interview recorded in Scotland, he said: Don’t forget both of my parents were born in EU sectors — my mother was Scotland, my father was Germany.
[…]
Trump’s mother, Mary MacLeod, was indeed born in Scotland […]. But his father, Fred Trump, was born in New York City, in the United States of America. Not Germany.
[…]
Fred Trump’s father, Friedrich Trump, was born in Germany […] but was kicked out for skipping military service. His son barely left New York. Until the 1980s, though, he pretended he was of Swedish ancestry, which he felt would be more palatable to many of his Jewish tenants.
His son repeated the Swedish claim in his bestselling book, The Art of the Deal […]
† Quibble — I’m not certain I’d say the birther nonsense was “led” by traitor don, only that he jumped on that broken cart and stayed inside as it keep going off cliffs, sometimes cliffs he suggested it go over. (This may be where he gets his liking for walls, to protect himself from repeatedly going over cliffs?)
Jason Leopold at BuzzFeed confirms that the SARs related to Michael Cohen hadn’t been removed/destroyed (as the whistleblower who leaked to Michael Avenatti had feared) – access was restricted because they were part of an ongoing investigation. It does appear there was a policy change last year concerning restricted access, so possibly (?) that’s what led the whistleblower to overreact when they couldn’t find them in the system.
Mandalay Bay owners claim no liability of any kind to 1,000 survivors or families over October 2017 massacre […]
MGM Resorts International has sued hundreds of victims of the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history in a bid to avoid liability for the gunfire that rained down from its Mandalay Bay casino-resort […].
[…]
MGM says the 2002 law limits liabilities when a company or group uses services certified by the US Department of Homeland Security and mass attacks occur. The company says it is not liable because its security vendor for the concert, Contemporary Services Corporation, was federally certified at the time of the 1 October shooting.
[…]
If defendants were injured by Paddock’s assault, as they allege, they were inevitably injured both because Paddock fired from his window and because they remained in the line of fire at the concert. Such claims inevitably implicate security at the concert — and may result in loss to CSC, according to the MGM lawsuits.
I’m very very curious how someone is supposed to move out of the line of fire of a series of (almost-)machine guns they cannot see. Doubly so in the case of the initial victims, shot when nobody but the terrorist had any idea what was happening.
[…]
Brian Claypool, an attorney who was at the music festival during the shooting, called the lawsuits a “hypocritical manoeuvre” that will turn into a “public relations nightmare for MGM”.
“We collectively view this as a bullying tactic to intimidate the survivors who are rightfully seeking social change and redress through the litigation process,” said Claypool, who represents dozens of victims.
[…]
Attorney Robert Eglet, who represents victims in a lawsuit pending in federal court in Nevada, decried the casino operator’s move, saying the company was filing complaints nationwide in search of a sympathetic judge. He told AP he had been flooded with calls from victims.
“This is absolute gamesmanship. It’s outrageous. It’s just pouring gasoline on the fire of {the victims’} suffering,” Eglet said. “They are very distraught, very upset over this. MGM is trying to intimidate them.”
I should point out that, despite the name, there is no affiliation with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. A boycott, e.g., of MGM films would be hitting the wrong target. (They were affiliated at one time, but that ended in the late(?) 1980s.) MGM Resorts International has an extensive list of properties and genuine affiliates around the world, and those are what should be, e.g., boycotted in protest.
James Comey: “This Republican Congress has proven incapable of fulfilling the Founders’ design that ‘Ambition must … counteract ambition’. All who believe in this country’s values must vote for Democrats this fall. Policy differences don’t matter right now. History has its eyes on us.”
[…]
Spain’s socialist government is to introduce a law on consent aimed at removing ambiguity in rape cases.
Under the law, consent would have to be explicit. It states that “yes means yes” and anything else, including silence, means no. Sex without explicit consent would therefore be considered rape.
The move follows outrage over the verdict in the la manada (wolf pack) case. The five men involved were accused of gang-raping an 18-year-old woman in Pamplona during the bull-running festival.
Two of the men filmed the assault, during which the woman is silent and passive. The judges interpreted this as consent — one judge even commented that she appeared to be enjoying herself — and the charge was dropped from rape to the lesser crime of sexual assault.
[…]
The law mirrors similar legislation that came into force in Sweden at the beginning of July.
It’s unclear from the article to what extent the law clarifies consent can be withdrawn at any time.
† I’m uncomfortable with the naming “yes means yes” as that can be construed in unintended ways; I’d be happier with “only a ‘yes’ means yes”.
I remember reading a while back (I thought it was in the Steele memos but I looked and can’t find it there now; must have been in a news report) that some in the Kremlin thought they should drop the operation in August or September of 2016, because, like Strzok and millions of others, they couldn’t imagine that Trump could possibly continue or win after his attacks on the Khan family.
On the first day of his visit, she wore a brooch given to her as a mark of friendship by the Obamas. By the end of the trip, it was Queen’s brooches 3, Trump 0
What fashion lessons can we learn from Trump’s visit? […] Well, none from Trump himself, other than the obvious; when meeting the Queen, it is best not to wear a suit that looks as if you found it at the bottom of a dry-cleaning pile and, for the love of God, button the jacket, man. Look at the state of you.
[…]
One person, however, who seems to have mastered how to handle Trump has been on top form over the past week. One who really knows how to get the better of him without even noticing. No, I am not speaking about Vladimir Putin, but, someone who may well be the greatest political mastermind of our age: our one and only Queen Elizabeth II.
Casual royal observers such as myself barely noticed the Queen’s fashion choices during Trump’s visit, because we were too busy cringing at Trump’s behaviour around her. Whether you give a fig about the royals or not — and I come very much from the “no fig” end of the spectrum — watching Trump galumph around in front of her, get in her way and generally act as if she wasn’t even there was, just on a human level, throw-up-on-your-own-shoes nauseating. She’s a 92-year-old woman, show her some respect, you giant Oompa-Loompa! But, of course, expecting thoughtfulness from a man who, earlier this year, was photographed holding an umbrella over his own precious head, leaving his young son exposed to the elements, brings to mind words such as “blood” and “stone”.
And the Queen, wisely, appeared to expect none either, because it turns out she was sending us all coded messages via the medium of her brooches. Yes, her brooches — read on and bow down in awe, James Bond. [… O]n the first day of the Trump visit, the Queen wore a simple green brooch that was given to her by the Obamas to signify their friendship. On the second day, she wore a brooch given to her by Canada, a country with which Trump is less than pleased at the moment (also, it was in the shape of a snowflake, a classic Trump term for people who disagree with him.) And, for the last day, she chose a brooch she wore to the funeral of her father, so not one associated with happiness and joy. Queen’s brooches: 3. Trump: 0.
[…]
Well done, Ms Windsor !
Some of the readers’s comments:
● “And notice the flying saucer shaped hat — ‘I’m dealing with a UFO here.’ Unspeakable, Fat Object.”
● “Then of course there is the official photograph [at the link –blf] which seems to have been taken in a cupboard full of bric-a-brac rather than one of the great state rooms. Nice one Queenie. […]”
● “It’s the wish-u-weren’t-here brooch.”
● “Not as daft as it sounds.
I once listened to former Sec of State Madelaine Albright give an after dinner speech on her ‘pins’ explaining how she wore one showing a snake and apple after the Iraqi press called her ‘an unparalleled serpent’, and several featuring insects when she met the then Russian FM after Russia tried to ‘bug’ the state department.
She even wrote a book about them, ‘Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box about her pins’.” [Several other readers have also pointed out Secretary Albright is noted for this sort of coded messaging (and yes, that book is real) –blf]
● “She wore blue — the colour of the Democrats!”
○ In reply: “And of the EU […]”
● “If you met Trump, and wanted to get a message through to him without it being eclipsed by his gargantuan ego, as an absolute minimum you need a hammer, some nails and a tin of tar — brooches aren’t really going to make the same impact.”
● “God bless Putinica the land of tge once free!
Or as an eloquent American puts it, Trump speaks English like it’s his second language and he was taught it by someone that learnt it a week ago.”
● “The day-2 brooch was of course also in the style of the NATO logo, so doubling-down really.”
blfsays
Another humorous closing Grauniad paragraph, Summit critics have Trump derangement syndrome — says Trump: “Senator Tim Kaine, who was Hillary Clinton’s running mate in the 2016 election, tweeted: ‘I keep hoping that maybe, just maybe, we will all find out soon that the Helsinki summit was actually just a Sacha Baron Cohen episode’.”
1. IMPORTANT: Among the many outrages in Helsinki, Trump appears to have bought (or been suckered) into providing fuel to Putin’s animus for former US Ambassador to Russia Mike @McFaul. The Administration needs to kill this outrageous proposal before it gets any legs.
2. Trump cited Putin’s “interesting idea” and “incredible offer” regarding the Mueller investigation. Russia would allow Mueller’s investigators to come to Russia to question the 12 operatives indicted in connection with interference in the US election. But there was a catch.
3. Putin conditioned the offer on Russia being able to send investigators to question those involved in alleged crimes involving Russia. He singled out Bill Browder &referenced a mysterious alleged plot he and “associates” were involved with to launder money to HRC’s campaign.
4. My 11-year old knows the offer is ludicrous and unacceptable. Russia will provide nothing on the 12 operatives, use any visit to gather intel on the investigation, & try to elevate garbage charges against Putin’s opponents to the level of Mueller’s well-documented allegations.
5. Trump didn’t get it. Or did. But it gets worse. Russian media reported that one of the targets of the probe suggested by Putin is none other than @McFaul. Putin has always hated McFaul, who he viewed, erroneously, as trying to engineer a revolution & ensure Putin’s overthrow.
6. Under no circumstances can the US government permit, or even contemplate, making those who have served the US government faithfully available to the spurious “investigations” of our adversaries. They owe it to past, current, and future US officials to uphold that principle.
7. The WH & @SecPompeo need to shut this down now. Immediately. They need to make clear that there will be no cooperation with Putin’s transparent intel op disguised as mutual aid to parallel investigations & no exposing @McFaul or other USG officials to Russian questioning.
8. This issue could not be more serious. Putin’s political opponents often wind up dead. The idea of a former US officials being questioned, arrested, or, God forbid, harmed by Russia needs to be rejected forcefully by the Administration. Today. END
Both CNN and MSNBC have reports talking to Trump supporters about how they still support Trump right now.
lumipunasays
There’s been some discussion on the case of Sam Husseini, a reporter for The Nation, who was removed from the infamous press conference here in Helsinki on Monday. He’s presenting it as a press freedom issue, which would throw some shade on Finland’s recent bragging with its top-level press freedom.
Based on various accounts, it seems like he was attempting mild protesting/heckling behavior to draw attention to his plea for nuclear disarmament. Meanwhile, the Finnish security was intent on shutting down anything that might embarrass or inconvenience the guests, aside from actual security threats. There may have been some misunderstanding on what exactly constitutes “protest” or “placard”, both of which were explicitly banned at the conference.
Many journalists have tweeted the incident but most seem to not be very sympathetic, of which Husseini complains about. I also think it was quite appropriate to remove him. What’s more troubling is that the police detained him overnight, as if on criminal suspicion, instead of just expelling him from the secure area, and didn’t inform his contacts. Someone lobbied him out by midnight, six hours after arrest. There’s no charge and the local police or other authorities haven’t issued a comment.
Husseini also claims he was roughandled and eventually cuffed on his way to the police jail, in response to what he claims was just shouting in protest. Then again, the video shows him wriggling from beginning of the incident, so it’s possible there was a case for him resisting arrest.
As he notes, this overreaction shouldn’t be blamed on “Russian thugs”, as some have done, but on Helsinki police and maybe Finnish security agents. As far as press freedom goes, Finnish national broadcaster posted a fairly accurate translation of his own early account, while the Russian MFA Sergei Lavrov seems to have mocked him publicly.
“Prosecutors in new court documents say alleged Russian operative, Maria Butina, before her arrest by the FBI was in contact with officials believed to be Russian intelligence operatives. FBI believes Butina was in constant contact with the FSB.”
[…]
We asked US voters to tell us how they viewed Monday’s meeting between President [sic] Trump and President Putin. Hundreds got in touch to share their views.
Many voiced their concerns about Trump’s undermining of the FBI and the US intelligence services […]. Others reacted more positively to the meeting […]
[…]
● It’s very important to have a good relationship with Russia because they they are a Christian nation […]: I think it was a great job on Trump’s part. The fear-mongering on Russia has reached a ridiculous level in the US and would not be possible if the American public were more educated and aware when it came to history, world events and foreign policy. We meddle in elections, too, and have actually overthrown many governments outright. The only reason to vilify Russia is to energize the military-industrial complex and for impractical liberal and pro-LGBT ideology that most Americans don’t buy into. It’s very important to have a good relationship with Russia because they they are a Christian nation and can serve as a counterweight to the nihilist secularism in the west.
[…]
● Trump is trying to work with this adversary for the better good of our country […]: I think the mass hysteria is laughable. He {Trump} has his reasons for not publicly calling out Putin. He is trying to work with this adversary for the better good of our country. He always puts our country first. He is not a seasoned politician so he doesn’t always state things in the right way. My question would be where are his communication team? They could have conveyed how he could state his case maybe in a better way. Maybe he just doesn’t listen to them? He has been tougher on Russia then any other president, especially Obama. Look at his actions not his words. It is very important that Trump has a good relationship with Russia. Same with Kim Jong-un. It is false outrage on the left. They just do not want him to succeed.
[…]
● “The urgent priority is to guarantee that Russian efforts to disrupt democratic institutions all over the world be thwarted” […]: “It is important that the relationship between Russia and America be good enough to prevent the outbreak of nuclear war. How much better it can be beyond that is hard to say because the next most urgent priority is to guarantee that Russian efforts to disrupt democratic institutions all over the world be thwarted. The real problem is that the Republican party, in its entirety, was hijacked in 2016 by right-wing extremists of the most vile kind, and the American constitutional system of government is now in more danger than it has been since the outbreak of the Civil War. Looking at the situation more philosophically, Marx got it wrong and Karl Polanyi got it right. When the middle class gets squeezed and the lower class gets exploited by gratuitous excesses of laissez-faire capitalism, they are far less likely to stage a socialist revolution than to turn to a fascist demagogue like Trump or Putin.”
[…]
● “It is concerning that the din of condemnation for Mr. Trump and his comments on the world stage is not deafening” […]: “[…] Some Congressional Republicans have criticized Trump; some have merely said that Russia is not an ally; others are silent. The end result is a mix of exasperation that Mr Trump is as inept as I had believed, of abject disappointment that one half of Congress will give him free reign, and of anger that this type of performance is not only tolerable but even allowed to have progressed to this level of blatant disrespect for American institutions.”
There’s a link to the prosecution’s motion for pretrial detention of Butina here.
It’s pretty blunt about her relationships with US people (a WaPo report has suggested she was “romantically” involved with Person 1, believed to be Erickson):
“Butina’s closest tie to the United States is the individual identified as U.S. Person 1 in the Indictment, but she appears to treat that relationship as simply a necessary aspect of her activities.”
“All of Butina’s known personal ties, save for those U.S. persons she attempted to exploit and influence, reside in the Russian Federation.”
From the motion: “In addition to her ties to the Russian government, there is evidence that Butina is well-connected to wealthy businessmen in the Russian oligarchy. Her Twitter messages, chat logs, and emails refer to a known Russian businessman with deep ties to the Russian Presidential Administration. This person often travels to the United States and has also been referred to as her ‘funder’ throughout her correspondence; he was listed in Forbes as having a real-time net worth of $1.2 billion as of 2018.”
The FBI has discovered text messages and emails between U.S. Person 1 and Butina in which Butina would routinely ask U.S. Person 1 to help complete her academic assignments, by editing papers and answering exam questions.”
“During the course of this investigation, the FBI has determined that Butina gained access through U.S. Person 1 to an extensive network of U.S. persons in positions to influence political activities in the United States. Butina, age 29, and U.S. Person 1, age 56, are believed to have cohabitated and been involved in a personal relationship during the course of Butina’s activities in the United States. But this relationship does not represent a strong tie to the United States because
Butina appears to treat it as simply a necessary aspect of her activities. For example, on at least one occasion, Butina offered an individual other than U.S. Person 1 sex in exchange for a position within a special interest organization. Further, in papers seized by the FBI, Butina complained about living with U.S. Person 1 and expressed disdain for continuing to cohabitate with U.S. Person 1.”
So Butina’s funder would appear to be one of these people:
Elena Baturina
Gleb Fetisov
Sergei Kolesnikov
Ziyavudin Magomedov
Andrei Molchanov
Boris Rotenberg
Igor Rybakov
Airat Shaimiev
Radik Shaimiev
Mikhail Shelkov
Leonid Simanovsky
Vadim Yakunin
[…]
Democratic lawmakers joined scientists, health and environmental officials and activists on Tuesday in denouncing a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), backed by industry, that could limit dramatically what kind of science the agency considers when making regulations.
One lawmaker called the Trump administration proposal a “thinly veiled campaign to limit research” that “supports critical regulatory action”.
The rule was introduced by the agency’s administrator, Scott Pruitt, before his resignation […]. Tuesday’s public hearing drew opponents and a much smaller number of industry and trade groups backing it.
If adopted, the rule would allow an EPA administrator to reject study results in making decisions about pollutants and other health risks if the underlying research data is not made public because of patient privacy concerns.
Joseph Stanko, a representative of a coalition of groups and companies ranged against what it says are increasingly stringent air-pollution regulations, said the Pruitt rule enables the public to more meaningfully comment on the science.
Opponents said the move would throw out the kind of public health studies that underlie enforcement of the Clean Air Act and other landmark controls, because such studies drew on confidential health data from thousands of individuals.
[…]
Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat, said the EPA proposal was similar to years of transparency legislation Congress had repeatedly rejected, and called it “an administrative attempt to circumvent the legislative process”.
New York state officials and representatives of public and private universities also spoke against the proposal. Critics including former EPA administrators and scientists said the policy shift was designed to restrict the agency from citing peer-reviewed public health studies that use patient medical records that must be kept confidential under patient privacy laws.
[…]
The proposal is open for public comment until mid-August, before any final EPA and White House review.
Uh…MSNBC is reporting that Trump said “No,” Russia is not still targeting the US.
blfsays
There’s a intriguing painting which has just gone on display in the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, Austin, “The City” by Vincent Valdez:
The most impressive achievement of Valdez’s The City, aside from its purely painterly aspects, is the creation of the field of anxiety and fear that emanates from the painting and envelops the viewer. This is set within the context of contemporary America. The artist uses perhaps the most recognizable symbol of terror in the American lexicon — the Ku Klux Klan — as the organizing image of the series of panels, but that is only the beginning. In fact, the shock value of a line of Klan members hidden behind their robes recedes and becomes integrated with a collection of references to modern consumer society: the late-model pickup truck, the urban sprawl of lights in the distance, the branded items such as the cellphone and baby shoes, as well as the fifth panel of urban disarray and waste. This is definitely not Reconstruction or the 1920s. Even more powerful to me is the choice to bathe the image in monochromatic tones, which, rather than soothing the viewer as they might in another context, reflect the gray sense of fear that so many feel across the population.
This leads me to another point that underlines the subtlety of Valdez’s work: The Klan members, aside from the striking, evil presence of one eye of the apparent leader, seem as scared as they would make the viewer of the picture. The City can be considered a history painting, but it seems to me that its power is in extending a set of emotions created by the iconography of the Klan to a much more contemporary setting. Through the face-to-face confrontation with Klan members we are forced to face their fears and our own, face them as hidden but clearly frightened human beings, caught in the gray anxiety of the hour and surrounded by the goods and decay that surround us.
Where are we in this picture? The genius of Valdez’s approach is that we are indispensable to it; we are obliged to confront the atmosphere of the historical Klan as well as the contemporary Klan and arguably even more dangerous “white supremacist” militias. It is not surprising that a Latino artist might be compelled to raise this issue, one that is especially relevant to Latinos, African Americans, Native Americans, and Jews as the most common targets of hate groups like the KKK. The power of the painting, however, is that it also draws us into the picture as participants in a society that continues to breed fear, animosity, and violence. “We” may not be “them,” but are part of their universe in this painting.
The above is the Professor of History and American Studies, Robert H Abzug (Audre and Bernard Rapoport Regents Chair of Jewish Studies) take on the painting, from Vincent Valdez: The City (4. Faculty and Community Perspectives). Or as Professor of Art & Art History Eddie Chambers puts it (same link as previous excerpt):
[… W]e seem to be presented with an assortment of hooded Klanspeople (the non-gendered plural noun is important, as the painting depicts Klanswomen and a Klan child, alongside the perhaps more historically familiar Klansmen). Valdez ensures that these hooded menaces are every bit as unsettling and disturbing to us as any of the more historical depictions of these personifications of American terror. Lest we be inclined to view the group portrait as something from previous, supposedly less enlightened times, Valdez ensures that we read the group as very much part of the here and now, by including, towards the center of the painting, a hooded menace tapping away at his smartphone, the light from the device reflecting in a ghostly, otherworldly way. We will each read the poses and activities of this motley assortment in different ways, but we will likely be struck by the symbolism of the smartphone, evoking as it does the use of social media in the contemporary age to further disseminate racist bile, oftentimes behind a cloak of anonymity.
[…]
“When myself and our two curators went to go see the painting, we were struck not just by the exceptional painterly quality and artistic integrity of the work, but also the power of it and the opportunity for dialogue,” says [museum director Simone] Wicha, who invited campus faculty and student leadership to see the piece before it was exhibited publicly. “As a university art museum, we are a key resource for the community and often the school district. So it was important to foster a positive dialogue so that we’re learning, as opposed to creating an environment that is more controversial.”
In so doing, Wicha arranged for a number of resources to augment the piece. First, its own website, where readers can find analysis of the painting by the Anti-Defamation League’s regional director and faculty from UT’s Department of African and African Diaspora Studies. There’s also a disclaimer in the gallery, warning that the piece “may elicit strong emotions”, and a comment box where visitors can share their thoughts. The opening will be followed by a series of talks and symposia addressing the painting and representations of race in art more broadly. It’s important, says Wicha, “to be clear that the intention is anti-racist”.
[…]
Though many of its participants were dressed in army fatigues and cargo pants rather than white robes, the painting calls to mind last summer’s rally in Charlottesville, where white separatists, neo-Nazis and klansmen clashed violently with counter-protesters, killing one. “It was eery in the sense that I started this piece with the intention of bringing light to something that hadn’t yet been spoken,” says Valdez. “But reflecting on the painting in 2018 only proves what I was trying to say: that these hoods, and the various disguises that have mutated themselves over the past few centuries, are more exposed by the day.”
[…]
Mr Valdez started on the work about the time traitor don announced his intention to run: “Valdez was not documenting the American electorate’s embrace of white nationalism in real time, though the painting’s timing was certainly uncanny.”
[…] Axios spoke to one of Trump’s own former National Security Council officials who described the situation as “a total [effing] disgrace,” adding, “The president has lost his mind.”
Well then.
The road that brought us to this point is long. As regular readers may recall, Candidate Trump was rather explicit in saying he wasn’t prepared to trust information he receives from American intelligence officials. He maintained this posture for months, at times even mocking agencies.
At one point, the Washington Post’s Michael Gerson, a former George W. Bush speechwriter, described Trump’s criticisms of the intelligence community as “an insanely dangerous antic that materially undermines American security.” Michael Hayden, a former director of the NSA and CIA, wrote a related piece soon after, raising practical concerns about the deteriorating relationship between the Trump and U.S. intelligence professionals.
That was in December 2016 – the month before Trump even took office.
Nineteen months later, the president stood on foreign soil and suggested he has greater confidence in Vladimir Putin’s denials than the judgment of American intelligence agencies.
The Trump White House seems to be issuing altered transcripts:
[…] Reuters reporter Jeff Mason asked, “President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?” There was an audio issue at the time, it’s not clear that the Russian leader heard the second part of the question. That said, he replied, “Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal.”
In context, Putin seemed to be responding directly to the first part of the question, about his political preference.
But Uri Friedman had an interesting piece in The Atlantic yesterday, noting that the official White House transcript presented the exchange in a way that paints a misleading picture.
If you watch the White House live-stream of the press conference or look at the transcript published by the White House, the first half of Mason’s question is not there. Without it, the meaning of the exchange is substantially different. […]
The discrepancies in the accounts of what was said also underscore the extent to which the Trump presidency has challenged a common understanding of reality. Even if the omission was accidental, it appears suspicious at a moment marked by the president’s repeated claims that legitimate news reports are “fake.”
To appreciate the nuances to this, take a look at the full piece in The Atlantic, which goes into detail. The way the White House transcript reads, when Putin said, “Yes, I did,” he seemed to be adding thoughts to an answer from moments earlier about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. But he wasn’t — the Russian president’s answer was about him favoring Trump in the 2016 race. […]
Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum had a good piece a while back, explaining, “Transcripts are not supposed to be ‘revised’ after the fact. Official White House transcripts record exactly what the person said, regardless of ‘what they meant to say.’” […]
Traitor don is even killing lobsters ! Yesterday at the market I bought a live lobster. Today, when I took it out of cold storage, it was very inert. Some poking and prodding, and eventually cutting it in half, confirmed it was dead, and had been dead for some time. The problem with dead lobsters is their “liver” releases toxins which are not necessarily destroyed by cooking. How long a lobster can be dead and remain safe to cook and eat I don’t know (a few hours ?), but this one seemed past that point. Damn. Fortunately, I discovered the disaster early in the evening, so I’ll just wander out to a restaurant… muttering dark thoughts at a collapsing world, dead lobsters, and teh proximate cause of it all, the cooked-lobster-coloured eejit in Wacko House with his lobster-murdering dalekocracy of henchfiends.
Russian asset Donald Trump’s Treasury Department has issued a new ruling that would protect the identity of donors to some tax-exempt organizations like […] the National Rifle Association. Yeah, the NRA that is increasingly proving to be another Russian asset helping Republicans win political power.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin defended the move, saying “Americans shouldn’t be required to send the IRS information that it doesn’t need to effectively enforce our tax laws, and the IRS simply does not need tax returns with donor names and addresses to do its job in this area.” He also said that it won’t make any difference in transparency, that the “same information about tax-exempt organizations that was previously available to the public will continue to be available, while private taxpayer information will be better protected.”
However, it also means that wealthy donors of dark money contributions to politically active groups—again, like the NRA—will have one more shield from exposure. Those organizations don’t have to disclose contributions to the FEC and now they can keep them secret from the IRS, too. However, and this pretty much exposes just how politically motivated this decision is, traditional charity groups still have to disclose donors. It’s just the politically oriented groups that can keep donors secret. […]
DHS advisory council members quit over ‘morally repugnant’ family separation policy:
Members of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) advisory council that conducts recommendations on policy have quit over the Trump administration’s barbaric “zero tolerance” policy, writing in a letter to DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen that if they had been consulted over the policy in the first place, “we would have observed that routinely taking children from migrant parents was morally repugnant, counter-productive and ill-considered.”
[…] as many as 3,000 migrant children being kidnapped from parents at the border. The four members—including former secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig and former director of the National Counterterrorism Center Matthew Olsen—write that ”we cannot tolerate association with the immigration policies of this administration, nor the illusion that we are consulted on these matters.”
Two other resigning members, former Democratic Congress member Elizabeth Holtzman and former DHS deputy general counsel David Martin, also sent separate letters condemning further hateful and racist actions and proposals from the administration, including the Muslim bans, the stupid border wall, and the rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which has left hundreds of thousands of young immigrants in limbo.
“DHS has been transformed into an agency that is making war on immigrants and refugees,” Holtzman wrote to Nielsen. “These actions,” Martin said, “have fueled polarization, alienated state and local governments, and moved us much further from a sustainable, effective, and strategically sensible immigration enforcement program.” […]
“The first public evidence that influence operations have specifically targeted American military families.”
[…] The letter, addressed to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, comes from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO). Sent last week, it details how Russian hackers posed as Islamic extremists — and targeted American military families in the process.
And according to one of the military spouses targeted by the hackers, the U.S. government has done nothing about it. […]
As Wyden and Gardner wrote:
We write to express our concerns about reports that Russian intelligence services posing as Islamic extremists threatened and harassed U.S. military families. We urge you to investigate this potential false flag operation and to hold any perpetrators accountable.
The letter pivots off of a May report from the Associated Press, which itself detailed how Russian hackers from the GRU, Moscow’s foreign military intelligence agency, posed as members of the so-called “Cyber Caliphate,” claiming to be affiliated with ISIS. The report highlighted how these Russian hackers in February 2015 sent a series of chilling Facebook messages to the spouses of those serving in the American military. […]
The senders claimed to be from the “Cyber Caliphate,” an online organization that also took credit for hacking the Twitter and YouTube accounts of U.S. Central Command in 2015. One of the first tweets sent from the hacked Twitter account read: “AMERICAN SOLDIERS, WE ARE COMING, WATCH YOUR BACK. ISIS.” The “Cyber Caliphate” also claimed to have released a trove of classified U.S. Army documents, though, as BuzzFeed noted, “many of those files were available online and were not confidential.” […]
But now, it appears the “Cyber Caliphate” never actually had anything to do with ISIS. As the AP wrote in May, the “repeated overlap” between the “Cyber Caliphate” operations and those of APT28 — the GRU unit accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee — shows that the military families were actually being targeted by members of Russia’s foreign military intelligence, not Islamist extremists. […]
Trump should appreciate this tactic, which is straight out of his playbook: Iran is suing the U.S.
Iran has resorted to one of the few legal mechanisms at its disposal to call the United States to the mat: It filed a lawsuit before the International Court of Justice, alleging President Donald Trump’s May decision to pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal and impose sanctions is a violation of a 1955 treaty between the two countries. […]
From Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif :
Today Iran filed a complaint @CIJ_ICJ to hold US accountable for its unlawful re-imposition of unilateral sanctions. Iran is committed to the rule of law in the face of US contempt for diplomacy & legal obligations. It’s imperative to counter its habit of violating int’l law.
A few details:
[…] In its claim, Iran cites several provisions of the 1955 Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations and Consular Rights, including Article IV, the first part of which holds that:
“Each High Contracting Party shall at all times accord fair and equitable treatment to nationals and companies of the other High Contracting Party, and to their property and enterprises; shall refrain from applying unreasonable or discriminatory measures that would impair their legally acquired rights and interests; and shall assure that their lawful contractual rights are afforded effective means of enforcement, in conformity with the applicable laws.
As a post on Lawfare points out, “The ICJ accepted jurisdiction based on this provision once before…It may well do so again.” […]
I agree that Trump should be called before the International Court of Justice.
Trump’s nominee to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has no background in consumer finance or banking.
Par for the course. All the best people.
But in her role at the White House Office of Management and Budget, Kathy Kraninger oversaw the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice—two federal agencies that have recently come under fire for implementing the administration’s policy of separating families at the border. […]
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio)—the committee’s ranking Democrat—sent a letter to Kraninger demanding she provide documentation and explain any part she played in the administration’s “cruel” policy of taking children away from their parents following arrival at the border. “The American people deserve to know what role you have played in developing and implementing this appalling process,” the senators wrote. Sen. Warren vowed to hold up Kraninger’s nomination if they didn’t get answers.
[…] all twelve Democratic members of the Senate Banking Committee sent a letter to chairman Mike Crapo (R-Id.) asking him to push the Trump administration to respond to their outstanding record requests before Thursday’s hearing—and if it doesn’t, to postpone the meeting until the information is provided. Without the documents, the senators wrote, “we will not be able to conduct the kind of oversight and questioning that allows the Senate to perform its constitutional role of providing advice and consent.” […]
[…] The president’s sons traveled overseas for Trump family business on two trips that cost the Secret Service nearly $250,000. Taxpayers footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars in hotels, airfare and other costs for Secret Service protection, according to documents obtained by nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. […]
In February 2017, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. traveled to Dubai together to open a golf club under the Trump brand. The trip cost the Secret Service $200,000, CREW says. According to the spending documents, the agency paid $125,000 for airfare, $75,000 for hotel rooms and $15,000 for miscellaneous expenses including cell phones and car service.
“The business trip cost taxpayers significantly more than the $73,000 in Secret Service cost for a 2018 trip to Dubai for the Trump sons to attend the wedding of the daughter of a business partner,” CREW said. […]
Schumer responded to Trump’s attempts to walk back his apparent agreement, (during the Helsinki press conference), with Putin that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 U.S. election:
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) blasted President Trump’s attempt to clarify his Helsinki comments, adding that he was already “walking back the walk back.”
“President Trump’s walk back performance was pathetic,” Schumer said. “It was weak, insecure and thoroughly unconvincing. The president read a scripted clarification yesterday like he was in a hostage situation. All you had to do was look at his face.”
On Tuesday, Trump said he had “full faith in our intelligence agencies” and that Russia was responsible for election meddling in the United States in 2016. But he then added: “Could be other people also. There’s a lot of people out there.”
Trump touted his Monday meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying in a series of tweets Wednesday that they discussed “many important subjects,” and that the summit could be an “even greater success” than last week’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit.
Schumer pointed to Trump’s tweets saying they “were walking back the walk back.”
“It’s clear from today’s tweets that he doesn’t mean it, that he doesn’t believe it and frankly neither does anybody else,” he said, referring to Trump’s comments that he supports the intelligence community’s findings. […]
When asked by reporters Wednesday if Russia still poses a threat to the U.S., Trump said no.
Schumer, in a tweet, quipped: “Mr. President. Walk this back too.”
During the first attempt at a walk back, Trump was truly pathetic. He failed to properly the read the text in front of him. He repeatedly stumbled, misread the text, and then added comments that negated his supposed agreement with U.S. intelligence agencies. And he looked like a petulant child reading text provided by his parents.
Trump is usually unnervingly good at selling a lie, but he fails miserably when he has to walk back his own mistakes. Especially mistakes that threaten U.S. national security, mistakes that make Trump look like a bumbling, subservient dolt.
Denaturalization, explained: how Trump can strip immigrants of their citizenship:
[…] the Trump administration announced [an] initiative targeting naturalized citizens: a “denaturalization task force.” In June, US Citizenship and Immigration Services Director L. Francis Cissna announced that he was launching a team of investigators to complete the work of “Operation Janus,” […]
The administration’s denaturalization push is working on two levels. As a policy matter, it’s relatively aggressive but not unprecedented — and constrained by law from getting too arbitrary. But for many immigrants, those legal constraints provide little comfort. The sense of vulnerability and fear the administration has been able to inspire among immigrants tends to ripple far beyond those who are directly in its sights, and this is no exception.
“The creation of the task force itself is undoing the naturalization of the more than twenty million naturalized citizens in the American population by taking away their assumption of permanence,” wrote author Masha Gessen in a widely circulated New Yorker column. “All of them — all of us — are second-class citizens now.”
Coming from an administration that often conflates being foreign-born with being foreign — and that is often accused of putting forth a vision of white Americans as “real” Americans and everyone else as suspect — an effort to strip people of the armor of citizenship can’t help but feel, to some, like more proof that the Trump administration is truly motivated by an atavistic, racist vision of “America,” and a desire to restrict the legal equality guaranteed by citizenship to “real” Americans. […]
Personal stories of some immigrants facing denaturalization proceedings are available at the link. Historical context is also provided in the article at the link.
Akira MacKenziesays
One has to wonder how soon Trump will look into stripping native-born citizens of their citizenship?
Not a good sign: Poll: only 28 percent of young voters say they will certainly vote in the 2018 midterms.
Democrats are winning over younger voters by huge numbers, but as a highly contentious voter turnout-dependent midterm election inches closer, there’s a serious question whether these young Democrats will come to the polls.
A recently released poll from Public Religion Research Institute and the Atlantic conducted in June showed only 28 percent of young adults, ages 18 to 34, say they are “absolutely certain” they’ll vote in midterms, compared to 74 percent of seniors.
[…] this is only one poll. There are other surveys with varied results; a recent poll conducted by the Associated Press and University of Chicago’s NORC found that 32 percent of young voters would certainly vote, and 56 percent were likely to. Another poll by Cosmopolitan magazine and Survey Monkey found that 48 percent of young voters were “absolutely certain” they’d vote in the midterms.
And it’s actually a big improvement for Democrats compared to past midterms. In the 2014 midterms, when Democrats lost control of the Senate, only 13 percent of young voters participated, according to the census.
But the takeaway is still serious: While Democratic voters are more enthusiastic to vote in the 2018 midterms than in past off-year election cycles — and recent polls show they’re more eager to get out to the polls than Republicans — young voter turn out could make the difference in 2018. […]
In other news, here are a few more responses to Trump’s attempt to walk back statements he made in Helsinki:
I would say that I completely believe President Trump misspoke and that he has full faith and confidence in the members of our intelligence community and understands that Putin and Russia were fully responsible for intervening in our election.
Sorry. I meant wouldn’t. [from Adam Schiff]
——————–
A man who unironically calls himself a “very stable genius” claims it took him 30 hours to realize he said “would” instead of “wouldn’t” [from Robert Maguire]
—————–
DON’T MAKE AMERICA NOT GREAT AGAIN
—————-
“I meant to say ‘how much wood WOULDN’T a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck COULDN’T chuck wood.’ Could be other woodchucks also.” [From James Robert Carroll]
————–
So did Kim Jong-Un say he #would or #wouldnt denuclearize? [From Cory Furlong]
Trump’s asinine tweets from 3:53 AM and 5:37 AM today:
So many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved my press conference performance in Helsinki. Putin and I discussed many important subjects at our earlier meeting. We got along well which truly bothered many haters who wanted to see a boxing match. Big results will come!
Some people HATE the fact that I got along well with President Putin of Russia. They would rather go to war than see this. It’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome!
Trump simplified the choice to: war … or work with Putin.
Oversimplification coupled with fear mongering.
[…] Dialogue with Putin isn’t a bad thing — but not pressing Putin on areas where he’s hostile to US interests and on his penchant for election meddling is. Diplomacy isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition — and getting along with an adversary for the sake of getting along isn’t exactly a foreign policy position. That’s what Trump’s critics are pushing back on.
What’s more, Trump’s elevation of Putin — as a world leader on par with that of the US — is exactly what the Russian strongman wanted. It’s not winning war, exactly, but it’s a victory for Putin nonetheless.
Good for him – when Sanders tried to move on to another reporter rather than answering Hallie Jackson’s second question, the reporter she was trying to move on to asked Jackson if she wanted to finish her question, which she did, and it was good: “You said Trump had been publicly critical of Putin – could you say when? Because I can’t recall it.” All Sanders could cough up was that saying Putin had meddled in the election was a pretty bold criticism.
She’s so awful – bad at her job, rude, dishonest, a disgrace to the position she occupies.
This week has been fun, yes? Donald Trump made completely platonic non-romantic man love to Vladimir Putin on Monday and absolved him of all responsibility for hacking the 2016 election, and then he “walked it back” Tuesday by saying he guesses Russia did some hacking in 2016 (BUT IT COULDA BEEN OTHER PEOPLE TOO).
Earlier today, reporters were talking to Trump, and somebody asked him if Russia was still attacking us with hacking. His answer? “No.” To which everyone replied “FUCK YOU, ANTI-AMERICAN TRAITOR!”
Now, to be fair, there was a lot of cross-talk, and it’s possible his “no” was meant in response to another question. […]
Or maybe, much like his “walk-back” yesterday, what he really meant to say was not “no” but “yes,” and when he goes back and reviews the one-word transcript of that answer he will realize where it all went wrong and WALK IT BACK.
If he meant it, though, that is yet another “fuck you” to his own DNI, Dan Coats, who just said on Friday that the lights are literally currently “blinking red” on Russian interference not just with the mid-terms, but with our entire democracy. After Trump’s abhorrent performance on Monday, Coats sent another statement, just saying that America really shouldn’t listen to President Shit-Grundle on this issue, because DID DAN COATS FUCKING STUTTER BEFORE? […]
From Wonkette’s liveblog of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ press briefing today:
Regarding Trump saying “no” about Russian election interference, SHS says he was saying “no” to answering more questions, not about Russian election inteference.
She also says the Trump administration is working hard to stop Russian hacking, UNLIKE PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATIONS.
This is a total fucking lie.
2:45: SHS just read off a prepared list of things the Trump administration is “doing” to prevent Russian election hacking. We believe her not one bit. ZERO BITS.
2:46: REPORTER: Oh hey, what about that Russian spy that’s in jail right now, for infiltrating the GOP by infiltrating the NRA?
SHS: […] WHY ARE YOU RACIST AGAINST RUSSIAN SPY REDHEADS?
2:50: SHS yet again says the Trump administration is going to protect elections LIKE OBAMA DIDN’T.
2:52: OH HEY, Sanders, what the fuck did Trump and Putin talk about during their little date?
ALL OF THE ISSUES, KATIE!
2:55: Why is Trump scared to say mean words to Vladimir Putin?
SHS: HE IS ALWAYS SO MEAN TO RUSSIA, WE CALL THEM OUT, WE ARE TOUGH!
Also, he is trying a “new approach” with Russia, which is lying on his back and wagging his tail and begging for belly scratches every time Vladimir Putin walks in the room.
DO NOT QUESTION HIS STABLE GENIUS!
2:57: A reporter is asking why Trump is so fucking stupid that he thinks Vladimir Putin offering to “help” Robert Mueller’s investigation is an “incredible offer.” SHS completely punts on it, because we guess even she doesn’t have the energy to make up a lie on that one today.
2:58: REPORTER: When Trump tries to deflect attention from Russia by saying “others” also hack, is he saying that based on intelligence, or is that just a thing that comes out of his ass-mouth involuntarily?
SHUCKABEE: Puuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunt!
2:59: SHS: “The president has credibility!”
Hahahahahahaha […]
Moving on!
REPORTER: Say a time Trump was anything but adoring toward Putin! SAY ONE!
Update!: Heather Nauert from the State Department was just asked about it. Said Russian claims about the plan and their allegations about these individuals are “absurd.”
Every year since a Russian missile downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 passengers and crew, the U.S. State Department has issued a statement to mark the anniversary.
But on the anniversary this year—a day after U.S. President Donald Trump met in Helsinki with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin—the State Department was conspicuously silent about it.
Officials there prepared a draft statement that was sharply critical of Russia for its alleged role in the attack. But for reasons the State Department has not explained, it was never issued.
“Four years after the downing of MH17, the world still awaits Russia’s acknowledgement of its role,” read the draft, a copy of which was obtained by Foreign Policy.
“It is time for Russia to cease its callous disinformation campaign and fully support the next investigative phase … and the criminal prosecution of those responsible for the downing of flight MH17.”
…
This anniversary was particularly significant because it was the first since the Dutch-led international investigation into the incident published its conclusion that the missile originated from a Russian military unit based near the border with Ukraine.
…
Foreign ministers of the G-7 group—including the U.S. secretary of state—released a statement on Sunday criticizing the attack and Russia’s role in it. The Canadian and British Foreign ministries promptly posted it on their websites. But the State Department did so only on Wednesday, after being asked about the issue by FP.
The statement posted Wednesday appeared to reflect a kind of carelessness about the matter….
…
The State Department draft was set to go out as early as Monday but was quashed at the last minute. Officials were told to “stand down” on releasing it because Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “did not approve” the language, according to one official familiar with the deliberations.
The statement said the evidence “conclusively proves” the missile came from a specific Russian military brigade, “was brought into sovereign Ukrainian territory from Russia, was fired from Russia-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine, and was then returned to Russian territory.”…
Full text of the prepared statement at the link.
Pompeo is scheduled to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next Wednesday. Asked about it just now, Nauert provided no explanation. We need to know what’s going on.
Michael McFaul: “I hope the White House corrects the record and denounces in categorical terms this ridiculous request from Putin. Not doing so creates moral equivalency between a legitimacy US indictment of Russian intelligence officers and a crazy, completely fabricated story invented by Putin.”
LOL at “Representatives for Madonna did not return a request for comment.”
jack16says
Treason is very specifically defined in the U. S. Constitution. Most of the accusations flying around don’t fit.
jack16
tomhsays
@ #75
How about “adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” Seems like a case could be made.
blfsays
One has to wonder how soon Trump will look into stripping native-born citizens of their citizenship?
A variant of that is the small-ish number of people, such as Senators McCain and Cruz, and myself, who are natural-born citizens born aboard (in my case, and Cruz’s, in an indisputably foreign country). I have a certificate from the State Dept, issued at the embassy of the country in which I was born, declaring me to be a natural-born citizen born aboard. In all the cited cases, to the best of my knowledge, it is the Naturalization Act of 1790 which is critical. It states that children born abroad to citizens are natural born citizens. (That law is actually quite racist and sexist.)
The problem here is since this dives into quite technical matters of who is, and isn’t, a “natural-born citizen” — a subject the courts have never(?) ruled on, and which is essentially undefined — traitor don & teh dalekocracy might easily trample all over it.
Deal is against Hungary’s security interests, says right-wing government that has taken tough anti-migration stand.
Hungary’s right-wing government is withdrawing from a United Nations pact on migration, saying the global deal encourages movements of people which are dangerous for the world.
After 18 months of negotiations, the draft for the Global Compact for Migration was approved on Friday by 191 UN member nations, but not the United States, which withdrew in December saying it was inconsistent with its immigration and refugee policies.
[…]
Péter Szijjártó, Hungary’s foreign minister, said on Wednesday that the document is entirely against Hungary’s security interests.
Its main premise is that migration is a good and inevitable phenomenon. We consider migration a bad process, which has extremely serious security implications, Szijjártó said […].
Hungary must step out of the approval process, and by doing so, make it clear that in no way does it consider any measure or guideline of the package to be the way forward, he added.
[…]
The text of the new treaty aims to create a worldwide framework for managing migration.
The pact is billed as the first international document on managing migration. It lays out 23 objectives to open up legal migration and better manage flows of people as the number on the move worldwide has increased to about 250 million.
[…]
Szijjártó said Hungary did not trust that the pact is “legally non-binding” as stated in the document’s final version.
[…]
(I have corrected the spelling of Péter Szijjártó’s name — another case of Al Jazeera seeming to have caught the France24 disease of omitting diacritics / accents. If this keeps up, I will throw a dead lobster at them.)
● “Trump collapses in the street, several passerby didn’t stop, eventually a good Samaritan stopped and saw somebody in need of help, he crouched down and saw the person is Trump — the good Samaritan sucked his teeth, and looked up to the sky and said ‘Can you hear me O Lord? You’re really testing my faith you fucker, I mean come on’.”
● “Worse than his cack handed mendacious ways are the reactions of his supporters. He could take a dump on a desk in congress and hoot like chimp and they would still back him as he plays to their prejudices.”
● “Why are these Fake News Mainstream Media cartoonists always poking fun at President Trump?
Now that Russian collusion, after over a year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.
Actually, throughout Donald’s life, his two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. Donald Trump went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star to President of the United States (on his first try!). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius….and a very stable genius at that!
Some people HATE the fact that he got along well with President Putin of Russia. They would rather go to war than see this. It’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome!
Not that Trump is deranged, he is NOT!. I did say that would qualify as not smart, but genius….and a very stable genius at that!
Who knows how it will all turn out in the end, but why isn’t the Fake News Mainstream Media talking about these wonderful facts? Because it is FAKE NEWS!”
○ After some viewers reply, the point whooshing over their heads, the authour explains: “It’s not satire, that’s what’s worrying. I cut and pasted that stuff from Trump’s Twitter feed.”
● “Only two faced? Are you sure?
Trump is / says whatever the last person he spoke to and who praised him would say.
He doesn’t read.
He doesn’t grasp detail.
He cannot speak coherently.
The quintessential snake oil salesman. He sees everything and every meeting as a ‘deal’.
Trump believes North Korea is sorted because he had tea with Kin Jong Un.
Russia is sorted because his new best friend Putin said so.
NATO is obsolete because it is nearly as old as he is…
The UK is a ‘hot place’ — not sure if that was from the Fox Fake News weather report or just a small word Trump could handle.
He is a narcissistic and dangerous.
He is a sociopath.
He lies as easily as he breathes.
If he were a dog you’d have him put down out of compassion.
Trump is multi-faced with multiple personality disorder…
[…]”
● “An unbelievably illiterate serial liar, and now most of the Republicans have decided to go along with this unhinged loose cannon.”
● “It’s an understatement to say that Trump has adopted more positions than the Kama Sutra about everything.He appears to have the memory retention of an amoeba.”
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
Sally Yates will be on Rachael Maddow’s show tomorrow night, according to the promos. Must see TV.
EnlightenmentLiberalsays
This seems like a good place to ask this. I thank you all for any help in advance.
Specifically, here are some complaints about the LGBT movement from some (probable) TERFs.
Promotes the social transition of lesbians, encouraging them to present as straight men thus favouring the pretence of heterosexuality over lesbianism – this is nothing more than a form of conversion therapy. Promotes the medical transition of lesbians and pushes harmful drugs (untested hormone blockers, Lupron etc.) as well as unnecessary medical practices on perfectly healthy bodies – these are a form of misogynist medical abuse against lesbians.
Promotes the rights of heterosexual males who “identify” as women and lesbians (despite most of them still retaining their male genitals) over the rights of lesbians to choose their sexual partners. This new ‘queer’ LGBT politics thus coerces lesbians to accept the penis as a female organ and promotes heterosexual intercourse between male and female as a form of lesbian sex.
As a cis-straight white male with almost no first-hand exposure to these issues and people with these issues, I have some questions to ask, which I hope are innocent and reasonable.
I can envision the possibility that maybe some male-to-female persons might get upset on a personal and individual basis when a born-female lesbian doesn’t want to be in a sexual relationship with them, and especially if they still have a penis. But I cannot imagine how the particular TERF claims, quoted above, could possibly be an accurate description of any reputable and mainstream LGBT group. Basically, the two TERF claims here are just doing a massive strawman, right?
I assume so, and hope so, because on the ridiculously off chance that they’re not strawman, I think I agree with the TERFs.
Again, sorry if this is part of some intro 101 paper that I should of already read or something.
I cannot imagine how the particular TERF claims, quoted above, could possibly be an accurate description of any reputable and mainstream LGBT group. Basically, the two TERF claims here are just doing a massive strawman, right?
Right.
sorry if this is part of some intro 101 paper that I should of already read or something.
It’s not new rhetoric at any rate. I think I saw an AnaMardoll twitter thread a year or two ago refuting “coercion of lesbians to accept penises”. Can’t find it.
TERF warning signs (most of which appear in that article/flyer): “radfem”,” gender critical”, pitting letters of the alphabet against each other (and enbies against T), obsession with genitals defining womanhood, contempt for ‘identity’, contempt for non-binary, contempt for intersectionality (e.g., race), “gender non-conforming”, framing penis-havers as a threatening male infiltration into womens’ space (association of trans women and rape),
Results from a cursory hashtag search…
Video: FangedMuffin – A response to #TERF nonsense by #GetTheLOut at London Pride 2018 (3:00)
The one thing that they did get right. Yes, queer politics does indeed believe that trans women are women, and that any genitals that women have are women’s genitals… which ergo does mean it believes that some penises are womens’ penises. Everything after that point though: bit of a leap. The idea that trans activists are trying to remove anyone’s rights to choose their own sexual partners is absurd.
it’s not ACTUALLY about not telling lesbians they have to like dick, it’s about excluding trans-inclusive gays and lesbians as well as trans people from their spaces while reinforcing and leveraging dangerous public sentiment against trans women.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@EnlightenmentLiberal #81:
I’ve often seen the following user, RT’d by trans users more immersed in that discourse than I, regarding history and theoretical understanding of TERFs.
Twitter Thread: CaseyExplosion – when I say that TERFs are like union busters, this is what I mean
This is what TERFs are. They are a front for the US anti-LGBT evangelical movement, they further that movement’s goals towards rolling back LGBT rights. This is something that cis gay folks need to understand intimately, that they are an existential threat to your rights.
[…]
This is something that everyone in the LGBT community need to understand, it’s not just about trans rights, they’re coming for *all* of our rights. Trans rights is just the small end of the wedge, once they’re done with us, they’re coming for everything cis LGB folks worked for.
The claim: that mainstream feminist discourse is dominated by trans people, and thus excluding “real” feminist issues.
The reality: that TERF discourse is obsessed with trans people almost exclusively.
[…]
What they want is to hollow out any feminist spaces so that only TERFs and people like them are left, and they are often so utterly caustic and hateful in their discourse that if you let them into your spaces, any reasonable feminists will abondon it.
let’s talk about Catholic nuns, Reagan and the stripping of healthcare from trans people during the 80’s, and how TERFs were always aligned to the right, arming them with arguments and rhetoric to better discriminate against trans people.
Omitted Link: Not sure of the link cap here. This is from another thread…
This is the way folks need to understand TERF conspiracies, they’re throwing it at the wall and seeing what sticks. They don’t concern themselves with what’s true, what’s ideologically consistent, only that it potentially drives more hatred towards trans people.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@EnlightenmentLiberal #81:
Article: PinkNews – Pride in London head condemns transphobic parade hijack
Pride in London was overshadowed on Saturday when a group of transphobic, lesbian protesters hijacked the front of the parade, and and led much of the march
[…]
In a statement on Sunday, Pride in London condemned the “vile” actions of the group, saying: “We are sorry.” However, organisers were criticised for initially releasing a statement citing “hot weather” and “safety” behind the decision to let the protest group to lead the parade.
[…]
co-chair Alison Camps spoke to PinkNews
[…]
We do not have right to physically remove people and they did everything within their power to stay within the law, which meant the police could not make any arrests – because people have a right to peaceful protest. The Met has confirmed that no offence was committed. […]
We tried to surround them and move them off the parade but were not successful. We did not want a photo of them being forcibly dragged off the streets by their armpits to grace national news everywhere, making them martyrs for their cause.
Ultimately, with the heat and need to ensure the safety of 30,000 people waiting under a very hot sun – including, importantly, older LGBT+ people and those with access requirements – we took the uncomfortable decision to send them as far ahead as we could as they were showing no signs of moving. In hindsight, I honestly wish I had been the one to cause a breach of the peace, so that the police had to intervene.
[…]
The actions of eight people have tarnished Pride for so many people who didn’t experience the roars of the crowd that followed. They undid all of the hard work that we put in to push us forward as an event, and a community. We are going through a lot of introspection as to why it happened and to make sure it never happens again.
We need to show that this kind of bigotry has #NoPlaceAtPride. We also need to show that we are stronger when we have the #LWithTheT. My team have been making videos to show their support – it’s not a huge thing, but being vocal is really important.
The trans community needs to feel our support both emotionally and practically, to be welcomed into our lives and our spaces. To make sure that we understand the issues they face and how we can help, for example by giving cover when they come under attack.
EnlightenmentLiberalsays
To CompulsoryAccount7746
Thanks very much! Sorry for you doing so much work for me. So, it seems like a large portion of TERFs is just a front for standard reactionary anti-LGBT conservatives. Figures. Doesn’t surprise me one bit. “Liars for Jesus”, or at least “paid by Jesus”.
Péter Szijjártó, Hungary’s foreign minister, said on Wednesday that the document is “entirely against Hungary’s security interests”.
“Its main premise is that migration is a good and inevitable phenomenon. We consider migration a bad process, which has extremely serious security implications,” Szijjártó said […].
…The first large wave of emigration from Hungary to the United States occurred in 1849-1850 when the so-called “Forty-Eighters” fled from retribution by Austrian authorities after the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848….
During the last decades of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century, the United States saw an immigration boom primarily of Southern and Eastern Europeans, among them approximately 650,000-700,000 ethnic Hungarian speakers. Unlike the educated classes who formed the core of the 1849 wave, the second Hungarian wave was mostly poor and uneducated immigrants seeking a better life in America.
An increase of immigration from Hungary was also observed after World War II and The Holocaust, a significant percentage of whom were Jewish.
The circumstances of the third wave of emigration had much in common with the first wave. In 1956, Hungary was again under the power of a foreign state, this time the Soviet Union, and again, Hungarians rose up in revolution. Like the 1848 revolution, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution failed and led to the emigration of 200,000 “56-ers” fleeing persecution after the revolution, 40,000 of whom found their way to the United States.
There was a renewed economic migration after the end of communism in Hungary during the 1990s to 2000s….
“First on CNN: President Trump’s military parade in DC is expected to cost $12M according to US officials, nearly as much as the now canceled military exercise with South Korea, Freedom Guardian, which Trump called ‘tremendously expensive’ & said cost ‘a fortune’ (est. cost $14M).”
Police are believed to have identified the suspected perpetrators of the Novichok attack on Russian former spy Sergei Skripal, it is being reported.
Officers think several Russians were involved in the attempted murder of the former double agent and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury and are looking for more than one suspect, the British-based news agency Press Association claims.
A source with knowledge of the investigation told PA: “Investigators believe they have identified the suspected perpetrators of the novichok attack through CCTV and have cross-checked this with records of people who entered the country around that time. They (the investigators) are sure they (the suspects) are Russian.”
The news comes as an inquest is due to open on Thursday for Dawn Sturgess, 44, who died earlier this month, eight days after coming into contact with novichok. Police are working on the assumption that it came from the same batch used in the attempted murder of the Skripals in March.
Her partner Charlie Rowley, 45, was left critically ill after also being contaminated by the nerve agent.
It is understood Sturgess was exposed to at least 10 times the amount of novichok the Skripals came into contact with, PA said.
Investigators are working on the theory that the substance was in a discarded perfume bottle found by the couple in a park or elsewhere in Salisbury city centre and Sturgess sprayed novichok straight on to her skin, the source said.
…
Public Health England said the risk to the public remains low but it continued to “strongly advise” not to pick up any unknown “strange items” such as syringes, needles, cosmetics or similar objects made of materials such as metal, plastic or glass.
The part about the perfume bottle is so awful.
KGsays
The British government would have lost a crucial Brexit vote on Tuesday if four Labour Brexiteers had not voted with the government. The vote was on an amendment which would have obliged the government to seek a customs union with the EU if negotiations for a free-trade deal without one failed. In the same vote, a Tory MP broke a “pairing” arrangment with a LibDem on maternity leave (this system is used to prevent unavoidable absence changing a result) and there are reports that the Tory Chief Whip urged three Tory MPs to renege on their pairing agreements. The government did lose a vote over ensuring UK membership of the European Medicines Agency, and one where they tried to end the parliamentary session early.
Exactly right. Josh Marshall: “Precisely. Of course he ‘believes’ it. He knew before the intel folks knew. He doesn’t just believe it, he knows it. The whole charade about what he ‘believes’ is just an elaborate misdirection by him and his staff.”
Eric Swalwell: “Take this to the bank, @realDonaldTrump: you turn over former U.S. Ambassador @McFaul to Putin, you can count on me and millions others to swiftly make you an ex-president.”
“Breaking: Two suspects British authorities believe they have identified in #Skripal investigation left the UK for #Russia after the poisoning, a source with knowledge of the investigation tells CNN.”
Two weeks before his inauguration, Donald J. Trump was shown highly classified intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election.
The evidence included texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.
Mr. Trump sounded grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence briefing. But ever since, Mr. Trump has tried to cloud the very clear findings that he received on Jan. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders have unanimously endorsed.
…
Almost as soon as he took office, Mr. Trump began casting doubts on the intelligence on Russia’s election interference, though never taking issue with its specifics.
He dismissed it broadly as a fabrication by Democrats and part of a “witch hunt” against him. He raised unrelated issues, including the state of investigations into Mrs. Clinton’s home computer server, to distract attention from the central question of Russia’s role — and who, if anyone, in Mr. Trump’s immediate orbit may have worked with them.
In July 2017, just after meeting Mr. Putin for the first time, Mr. Trump told a New York Times reporter that the Russian president had made a persuasive case that Moscow’s cyberskills were so good that the government’s hackers would never have been caught. Therefore, Mr. Trump recounted from his conversation with Mr. Putin, Russia must not have been responsible.
Since then, Mr. Trump has routinely disparaged the intelligence about the Russian election interference. Under public pressure — as he was after his statements in Helsinki on Monday — he has periodically retreated. But even then, he has expressed confidence in his intelligence briefers, not in the content of their findings.
That is what happened again this week, twice….
tomhsays
In a CBS poll out today, 70% of Republicans approve of the way Trump handled his summit with Putin.
…The scuttled Mashburn interview is one of a number cases where the partisan acrimony on the House Intelligence Committee has hampered the Democrats’ efforts to continue the Russia investigation that the panel’s Republicans ended in March. Since then, Republicans have erected several hurdles making it harder for Democrats to continue their own investigation into connections between Trump campaign officials and Russians after the GOP ended the committee’s probe in March, Democratic lawmakers and aides said. The moves, in turn, have prompted Democrats to take their own steps to try to counter the Republicans.
Given the intense partisanship in the House, it’s not unusual for any majority in either party to squelch efforts by the minority party to act unilaterally. But Democrats say House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, a Republican from California, has taken it to a whole new level.
Democrats say Republicans have been playing petty games preventing them from carrying out basic tasks, including spending any money to cover the costs of flying witnesses to Washington. They say the GOP has prevented the Democrats from using the committee spaces for interviews.
Democrats contend that the GOP has even taken the step of denying the use of free-of-charge House transcription services. Instead, they have had to rely on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office to pay for outside transcription services and to use her offices to conduct interviews — as they did when the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, Christopher Wylie, met with the panel in April and for Wednesday’s interview with Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos.
But beyond the small-bore disputes, there is one serious matter at hand, Democrats say: They want to share the transcripts of their witness interviews with special counsel Robert Mueller over concerns that some witnesses may have been untruthful, but Nunes, they say, isn’t cooperating.
…
Schiff has contended that some of the witnesses who testified during the GOP-led Russia probe may have lied, which is a crime, and he wants Mueller to know about it. But without Nunes’ help, Schiff said, Democrats are exploring other ways to provide Mueller with the information unilaterally.
“We’re trying determine whether evidence of a crime is an exception to the executive session rules,” Schiff said. “We’re looking at what legal recourse there may be if the committee takes evidence of a potential crime, but we don’t have a final legal judgment on that yet.”
blfsays
KG@91, The UK “government” would also have lost that critical vote had the Sinn Féin MPs voted. As quite a number of people are observing, their adherence to a 100-ish year-old boycott of Parliament means they’ve just acted against the interests of both N.Ireland and the Irish Republic — that is, the entire island of Ireland — which they claim they want to unite. They are getting quite a lot of flack about this from both sides of the Irish border. (I do not know how, or even if, they are responding to the criticism, albeit past practice suggests it will be with bluster, diversion, and throwing toys out of the playpen.)
Hillary Clinton: “Ambassador @McFaul is a patriot who has spent his career standing up for America. To see the White House even hesitate to defend a diplomat is deeply troubling.”
McFaul: “Thank you @HillaryClinton for your support.”
(He thanked everyone supporting him on Twitter yesterday. I think he was taken aback by the WH response.)
Swalwell: “#BREAKING On the @HouseFloor, @housegop voted to ZERO out our election security funding. @RepMikeQuigley & @WhipHoyer passionately spoke to defend the USA. @HouseDemocrats broke into chant of ‘USA! USA!'”
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia warned on Thursday that certain political forces in the United States — a formulation that usually refers to a supposed anti-Russian cabal in the American national security establishment — were trying to undermine what he called a successful meeting this week with President Trump.
“We see that there are forces in the United States that can easily sacrifice Russian-U.S. relations for the sake of their own ambitions,” Mr. Putin said in a foreign policy speech to Russian ambassadors. “Let’s see how the events develop, especially considering that certain forces are trying to disavow the results of the meeting in Helsinki.”
…
The comments were some of the most extensive to date by Mr. Putin about the Russian view about whether a “deep state” of national security elites dominates American politics and conspiring to thwart Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump, too, seemed to feel that the talks in Finland were fruitful and underappreciated. “The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media,” he said on Twitter. “I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed, including stopping terrorism, security for Israel, nuclear
….proliferation, cyber attacks, trade, Ukraine, Middle East peace, North Korea and more. There are many answers, some easy and some hard, to these problems…but they can ALL be solved!”…
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a nationalist whose policies have raised concerns among Jews in his country, said on a visit to Israel on Thursday they should feel safe under his government.
Paying a reciprocal visit to Israel a year after hosting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest, Orbán reaffirmed that Hungary would show zero tolerance for anti-Semitism.
All of the Jewish citizens in Hungary are under the protection of the government, Orbán said, according to a Hebrew translation of his remarks to reporters in Hungarian at the start of talks with the right-wing Israeli leader.
[…]
Last year, Orbán raised concerns in Hungary’s Jewish community when he praised the country’s interwar leader Miklós Horthy, a Hitler ally, and used an image of George Soros, a Jewish US financier and philanthropist of Hungarian origin, in an anti-immigration billboard campaign.
Netanyahu and Orbán […] have found common cause on the issue of Soros and his support for non-governmental organisations that have criticised their governments’ policies.
Netanyahu’s embrace of Orbán has drawn criticism from Israeli opposition politicians and raised eyebrows in the European Union […].
But greeting Orbán on Thursday, Netanyahu called him a true friend of Israel.
The Israeli leader has sought closer ties with European nations willing to provide strong backing to Israel.
Hungary in December abstained when the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to reject the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
It also joined the Czech Republic and Romania in blocking a European Union statement criticising Washington’s decision to move its Israel embassy to Jerusalem.
You have stood up for Israel time and time again in international forums, Netanyahu said. It is deeply appreciated, and it is important.
[…]
A Hungarian patriot and a Jewish Israeli patriot will always find something in common, Orbán said, while his host added that the two leaders both understand that the threat of radical Islam is a real one.
[…]
In a break with protocol for EU leaders, who usually meet Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah during such visits, he has no scheduled talks with Palestinian leaders.
I’m not sure which nazi’s toadying is more sickening. The appalling thing is some people will actually believe even some of the garbage spouted. As discussed previously in this series of threads, what’s really going on is Israel’s nazis are attempting to weaken Europe’s objections to their apartheid policies. The European loons are being played by Israel, and also very probably being bribed.
(As usual with France24, I’ve had to restore the missing diacritics / accents to the various names (corrections not marked). This is getting tiresome !)
Today’s statements from the spokesperson of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs are a characteristic example of disrespect for a third country and a lack of understanding of today’s world, in which states, regardless of their size, are independent and can exercise an independent, multidimensional and democratic foreign policy.
Moreover, it was negative thinking of this kind that prompted the four Russian citizens to proceed to actions that led to their expulsion from, or prohibition from entering, Greece. The evidence based on which Greece acted was presented to the Russian authorities in a timely manner. In any case, the Russian authorities themselves are very well aware of what their people do.
From the outset, Greece attempted to keep the actions of these persons separate from official Russian foreign policy. But in today’s statement, the spokesperson of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs embraces and seems to want to legitimise these illegal actions.
The constant disrespect for Greece must stop. No one can or has the right to interfere in Greece’s domestic affairs.
Finally, unsubstantiated claims to the effect that this decision was taken following pressure from third parties are unworthy of comment and indicate a mindset of people who do not understand the principles and values of Greek foreign policy.
The Government of Montenegro, taking into account the interest of numerous domestic and foreign media to comment on yesterday’s statement by US President Donald Trump given in an interview with TV FOX, adopted at today’s 86th Cabinet session the following stance:
Montenegro is proud of its history and tradition and peaceful politics that led to the position of a stabilising state in the region and the only state in which the war didn’t rage during disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.
The country that has hosted and protected 120,000 affected people and families.
The country that was the first in Europe to resist the Fascism, and today as a new NATO member and a candidate for the EU membership it contributes to peace and stability not only on the European continent but worldwide, along with US soldiers in Afghanistan.
We build friendships, and we have not lost single one, and at the same time we are able to boldly and defensively protect and defend our own national interests.
In today’s world, it does not matter how big or small you are, but to what extent you cherish the values of freedom, solidarity and democracy.
Therefore, the friendship and the alliance of Montenegro and the United States of America is strong and permanent.
KGsays
blf@99,
Quite true. The SF elected representatives really should swallow their pride, and take the oath of allegiance while crossing their fingers. Of course, it may be that they want a no-deal Brexit and a hard border because they think it will bring Irish unification closer.
“Senate will vote on Schumer resolution calling for U.S. not to turn over former US Ambassador McFaul and others to Russian intelligence for questioning.”
The American intelligence community has been on edge over Trump practically from the start. But after Helsinki their hair must be on fire. This [the revelation that Trump was informed two weeks before his inauguration] is basically a declaration of war against Trump, a public accusation that he’s known all along Putin ordered the election interference. One way or another, this is not going to end well.
From southpaw:
I’d speculate the intel sources here reasonably concluded that Trump has already burned their sources and methods to Putin.
Team Trump’s financial experts get almost everything wrong:
[…] Larry Kudlow, the director of the Trump White House’s National Economic Council, boasted that the U.S. budget deficit “is coming down, and it’s coming down rapidly.” This was, of course, spectacularly wrong. Though the deficit shrunk during Barack Obama’s presidency, it’s grown considerably larger since Donald Trump took office.
Asked soon after how he managed to get reality backwards, Kudlow conceded that the deficit isn’t really coming down now, but he believes it will start shrinking in the near future as Republican economic policies continue to kick in.
[…] The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday:
The Trump administration expects annual budget deficits to rise nearly $100 billion more than previously forecast in each of the next three years, pushing the federal deficit above $1 trillion starting next year. […]
The White House budget office now estimates that the deficit will rise to nearly $1.1 trillion in the fiscal year that begins this October, or 5.1% of gross domestic product, up from $984 billion projected in February’s budget proposal.
According to the White House budget blueprint from February, the Trump administration expected to add $7.1 trillion in cumulative deficits to the national debt over the next 10 years. This new revision has increased that total to $8 trillion.
These latest figures tell us a few important things. First, Larry Kudlow’s track record for accuracy on issues like these really is embarrassing. Second, Donald Trump’s campaign commitments about balancing the budget should probably be near the top of the list of his broken promises.
Third, every Republican who said the GOP tax breaks for the wealthy would pay for themselves ought to face some renewed questioning about how very wrong they were. […]
When the economy is in trouble, it makes sense for the United States to borrow more, invest more, cushion the blow, and help strengthen the economy.
The Trump White House and the Republican-led Congress, however, decided to approve massive tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations when the economy was already healthy – not because they were addressing a policy need, but because they were fulfilling an ideological goal.
On Thursday morning, House Intelligence Committee members Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) moved to subpoena the only American witness to President Trump’s secret meeting in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin — the interpreter.
This was voted down by every Republican on the committee.
House Intel Dems just moved to subpoena the translator from the #TrumpPutin private meeting. We must know, did @realDonaldTrump — who has sided with Putin time and again — make any secret deals or risk national security secrets? EVERY Republican voted against the motion.
Schiff and Swalwell’s effort comes as Trump — whose campaign is currently under active criminal investigation for colluding with Putin during the 2016 presidential campaign — is being extremely evasive about what he and the Russian strongman actually discussed during their meeting. […]
It’s looking increasingly likely (though not certain) that U.S. Person 2 in the Butina complaint is George O’Neill, Jr. A bit more about him:
While the American remains unidentified, all of the information in the complaint matches the descriptions of George O’Neill Jr., a Rockefeller scion and conservative activist. In early February 2017, O’Neill hosted a luxurious dinner for, as he later wrote, “former and current Russian officials” and “a number of prominent U.S. Republicans and conservatives,” among others.
The four-hour dinner included, unsurprisingly, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), the most outspoken pro-Putin member of Congress, as well as Rep. Thomas Massie (R.-KY). Also confirmed in attendance? Torshin, Butina, and Erickson.
O’Neill, for good measure, has also been outspoken in publicly pushing conservatives to support Russia. In The American Conservative last year, O’Neill wrote that he supports using conservatives’ efforts to build a “good relationship” with Russia. Among the voices O’Neill recommended listening to: Stephen Cohen, who is now writing for Russian propaganda channel RT; Pat Buchanan, who has written that Putin has God on his “side”; and writers for anti-Semitic sites like Russia Insider and Unz Review.
That wasn’t all, though. For O’Neill, any suggestion that conservative activists were acting as unwitting dupes of Russians was laughable. As he wrote, “the suggestion that American conservatives might be susceptible to manipulation by foreign officials certainly betrayed a lack of understanding[.]”
Given that we now know just how many conservative activists and Republican leaders have been caught up in Butina’s and Torshin’s infiltration efforts — to say nothing of the efforts from other Russian nationals, official or otherwise — O’Neill may want to rethink his claims.
[…] in a video meant to prove that he takes the intelligence community’s conclusion about Russian interference seriously, Trump contradicts the intelligence community’s conclusion no fewer than a half-dozen times. […]
The Federal Emergency Management Agency was already supporting 692 federally declared disasters when hurricane season started last year. Then came the most destructive disaster season in U.S. history, causing $265 billion in damage and forcing more than a million Americans from their homes. FEMA was overwhelmed.
So the agency has a novel suggestion for Americans as the 2018 disaster season heats up: Don’t rely on us.
In a report last week evaluating its response to last year’s disaster, FEMA details “how ill-prepared the agency was to manage a crisis outside the continental United States, like the one in Puerto Rico,” The New York Times reported. “And it urges communities in harm’s way not to count so heavily on FEMA in a future crisis.”
“The work of emergency management does not belong just to FEMA,” the agency stated near the end of the report. “It is the responsibility of the whole community, federal, [state, local, tribal and territorial governments], private sector partners, and private citizens to build collective capacity and prepare for the disasters we will inevitably face.” […]
FEMA is certainly correct that disasters must be managed at all levels, but the most important lesson of the 2017 disaster season is that weather disasters are becoming more frequent and more damaging. The government’s failure to grapple with that reality contributed to FEMA’s poor response. For example, the 1988 Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act—the law that gave FEMA its authority to coordinate disaster relief efforts—ensured that the agency could only re-build Puerto Rico’s weak electricity system after it was wiped out by Maria; it was not allowed to spend money on rebuilding a more resilient electricity system. […]
Butina’s arrest is significant in light of her apparent efforts to penetrate the Trump campaign and to get the GOP candidate to commit to lifting sanctions on Russia at a time relations with Moscow were hardly a front-burner issue in the presidential race. In July 2015, just weeks after Trump announced his candidacy, Butina showed up at a conservative evangelical Christian event in Las Vegas, where she questioned the new candidate about his position on sanctions against Russia. “Do you want to continue the politics of sanctions that are damaging both economies?” Butina asked Trump after he called on her in a question and answer session. Trump replied in the course of a rambling five-minute answer: “I know Putin. … I believe I would get along very nicely with Putin, OK? I don’t think you’d need the sanctions.”
[…] Trump adviser Steven Bannon and Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus shared concerns about Butina and her agenda after viewing video of her questioning Trump.
“How was it that this Russian woman happened to be in Las Vegas for that event?” Bannon and Priebus discussed among themselves, according to [the book] “Russian Roulette.” “And how was it that Trump happened to call on her? And Trump’s response? It was odd, Bannon thought, that Trump had a fully developed answer. Priebus agreed there was something strange about Butina. Whenever there were events held by conservative groups, she was always around, he told Bannon.”
There’s video of the Butina/Trump exchange behind the link. It’s so weird to hear the Trump of three years ago, he sounds quite different nowadays.
…Here I think you can see a real shift. Over the last three days I’ve seen a number of establishment figures, the people always resist the outlandish explanations, who always stay basically conventional in their opinion and statements saying simply: Putin must have something on Trump.
Sometimes it’s specific, some kind of corrupt alliance; other times it’s amorphous, some kind of inexplicable hold Putin has over Trump by force of personality. But the kind of people who never said this kind of thing are saying it now. Somehow the President is compromised. Putin has something on him; or he has tempted his avarice with something. But there’s simply no innocent explanation for what we’re seeing.
That’s the shift. The Monday press conference made cautious, prominent people start to come to grips with the reality that Donald Trump, as crazy as it sounds and as difficult as it may be to believe, is under some kind of influence or control by a foreign adversary power, whether by fear or avarice or some other factor.
As yet, there’s little difference of behavior from elected Republicans. And I don’t expect any. What veteran foreign policy or diplomatic hands say on CNN is not the most important thing. But I think they are indicators of a change, a change of perception I expect is occurring among many who can’t yet speak.
The Hungarian government is in breach of the EU’s charter of fundamental rights over a law that criminalises people who help asylum seekers, the European commission has said.
The commission, the guardian of EU law, announced on Thursday it had sent the Hungarian government a letter of formal notice over the “Stop Soros” law. The letter is the first step in a legal process that could lead to Hungary being taken to the European court of justice (ECJ) and told to change the law.
Separately, the commission said it was referring Hungary to the ECJ for breaking other EU asylum rules, linked to the country’s detention camps for asylum seekers.
The announcements are a sign of the deepening standoff between Brussels and Viktor Orbán, who was re-elected in April for a fourth term as Hungary’s prime minister, after a campaign dominated by charged rhetoric against migrants….
“MUELLER is interested in the work that @TadDevine, who was the chief strategist for @BernieSanders 2016 presidential campaign, did with MANAFORT on behalf of the RUSSIA-aligned Ukrainian Party of Regions, based on this list of exhibits to be presented at trial starting next week.”
“Putin Tells Diplomats He Made Trump a New Offer on Ukraine at Their Summit”: “Vladimir Putin told Russian diplomats that he made a proposal to Donald Trump at their summit this week to hold a referendum to help resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine, but agreed not to disclose the plan publicly so the U.S. president could consider it, according to two people who attended Putin’s closed-door speech on Thursday.”
Vladimir Putin told Russian diplomats that he made a proposal to Donald Trump at their summit this week to hold a referendum to help resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine, but agreed not to disclose the plan publicly so the U.S. president could consider it, according to two people who attended Putin’s closed-door speech on Thursday.
Details of what the two leaders discussed in their summit in Helsinki, Finland, remain scarce, with much of the description so far coming from Russia.
From Trumpian mouthpiece, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen:
“I haven’t seen any evidence that the attempt to interfere in our election infrastructure was to favor a particular political party,” Nielsen responded when asked about Russia’s intentions Thursday during the Aspen Security Forum.
“What we’ve seen on the foreign influence side is they were attempting to intervene and cause chaos on both sides,” she continued.
[…] if this story seems familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before. In May, Nielsen also looked past the evidence and told reporters, “I do not believe that I’ve seen that conclusion that the specific intent [behind the Russian election attack] was to help President Trump win. I’m not aware of that.”
[…] two months later, Nielsen managed to make the identical mistake.
It’s almost as if she’s trying to undermine her own credibility, which was already severely damaged. It was just last month, for example, that the DHS chief wrote via Twitter, “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period,”
It followed Senate testimony Nielsen gave in which she said she didn’t know that Norway’s population is largely white.
[…] it’s easy to forget just how massive the Department of Homeland Security is. The nation’s newest cabinet agency, created in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, has nearly a quarter of a million employees, tackling a wide variety of tasks: DHS includes everything from FEMA to Customs and Border Protection to the Secret Service.
It’s therefore important for Americans to have confidence, not only in the department, but in its leadership. […] Americans are left to wonder whether the secretary can be counted on to tell the truth.
Update: At today’s event, the cabinet secretary went on to say she agrees with the intelligence community’s findings “full stop.” Reconciling this categorical statement with her other comments is difficult.
Another attack by team Trump on legal immigration:
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is considering a plan that would drastically and unilaterally restrict legal immigration to only the wealthiest and most privileged applicants.
An archaic federal immigration provision called the “public charge” test is currently being drafted by the Trump administration. Immigrants coming to the United States would generally fail this new rewritten test if they had a medical condition and no source of subsidized health insurance.
The test also places a premium on an applicant’s income and assets. Applicants must make at least 250 percent of the federal poverty guidelines, which, in 2018, means $30,350 for a one-person household and $62,750 for a four-person household. By comparison, the average American working full-time typically makes around $51,640 for men and $41,554 for women.
According to a new report from the Center For American Progress, if every American citizen were forced to take the Trump administration’s test, more than 100 million people — roughly one-third of the U.S. population — would fail. […]
The test was initially aimed preventing the immigration of Irish Catholics to the United States and was later used by immigration officials to keep out Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany along with LQBTQ immigrants, individuals with disabilities, and even unmarried women. […]
…The pair left the UK in the wake of the attack on what is believed to have been a commercial flight, the source added.
Their departure was revealed in a coded Russian message to Moscow sent after the attack, which was intercepted by a British base in Cyprus, the source said. The British government blames the Skripals’ poisoning on Russia.
…
An Aeroflot flight at Heathrow airport in London was searched on March 30, an action the British government described at the time as “routine.”…
The GOP’s bid to transform the federal bench with conservative judges hit its first significant snag Thursday, after Senate Republicans were forced to withdraw the nomination of Ryan Bounds, Trump’s pick to serve on the powerful 9th Circuit appeals court.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced he would withdraw Bounds’s nomination after the vote to confirm him was delayed for nearly an hour, prompting speculation that the GOP did not have support it needed to carry Bounds’ nomination.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters Thursday that the decision was made with the White House, following concerns Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) raised about the nomination….
A Trump judicial nominee is shown the door. Thank goodness that one GOP Senator defected and voted no.
Ryan Bounds’ nomination to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was derailed on Thursday when South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott announced he could not support the nominee because of his history of racist writings.
[…] A staunch conservative, immigration hardliner, and member of the Federalist Society, Bounds appeared to be coasting to an easy confirmation until the liberal group Alliance for Justice uncovered bigoted statements he made as a Stanford student in the 1990s. Among other inflammatory claims, Bounds wrote that:
[…] “strident racial factions in the student body … seem always to contribute more to restricting consciousness, aggravating intolerance, and pigeonholing cultural identities than many a Nazi bookburning.” […]
“Expelling students [found guilty of rape] is probably not going to contribute a great deal toward a rape victim’s recovery; there is no moral imperative to risk egregious error in doing so.”
Bounds did not disclose these past statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee. After they came to light, he apologized for his “obnoxious tone and misguided sentiments.” That, apparently, satisfied the committee’s Republicans, who approved his nomination on a party line vote. […] as Scott declared his opposition to Bounds. Sen. Marco Rubio quickly joined him, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell withdrew the nomination. […]
Thanks to Republican cooperation, the president has already appointed 23 judges to the courts of appeals and 20 district court judges, far outpacing his predecessors.
Nope. Republicans do NOT want to secure voting systems in the USA.
[…] the House is expected to vote Thursday on a version of the bill that excludes more grants for election security […]
Democrats asked for the funds in light of the latest developments of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. […]
The debate on Wednesday in the House followed comments from President Trump this Monday in which he denied that Russia had sought to undermine the U.S. elections. Following backlash from both parties, Trump lightly walked back those comments on Tuesday, saying that he does accept the U.S. intelligence community’s charges of Russian efforts to sabotage American elections. On Wednesday he said “no” when asked if the Kremlin is still “targeting” the United States, even though his administration’s own intelligence officials disagree.
None of this was enough for House Republicans to seize an opportunity to help states update and lock down their election systems.
This November, most states will use voting machinery and software that’s more than 10 years old […]
Those machines are largely using archaic software systems that are no longer routinely patched for security vulnerabilities. Thirteen states will still use electronic paperless voting machines this year, which are particularly susceptible to attack, since they don’t leave a paper trail that can be confirmed by the voter and rechecked by election officials—and in the case of a system crash these machines could permanently lose votes that cannot be recovered. […]
Interesting – looking through the list of exhibits for the Manafort trial, and this does appear to be involved. There are several email chains listed related to Calk.
blfsays
In the UK, the minister for malicious madness (brexit) was David Davis, who was useless and resigned in protest over an attempt to do a small part of what he should have done a long long time ago (define the British position (Davis didn’t talk much to the EU and warbled all over the place, essentially always spouting contradictory nonsense and then saying it was all the EU’s fault)). His replacement is now in Brussels for his first meetings. In the Grauniad, Ben Jennings Dominic Raab in Brussels (cartoon). Two notable objects are the cake (a reference to the Davis, et al., nonsenses as “have your cake and eat it”; and the red bus, a reference to perhaps the most notorious lie of the brexit leave campaign, that leaving the EU would somehow make so much money available the NHS would get more money than the UK’s share of EU funding).
These two things happened within a few hours of each other:
– Hungary’s authoritarian leader, Victor Orban, landed in Israel as the warmly welcomed guest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
– On a party-line vote, Israel’s parliament passed Netanyahu’s flagship piece of legislation, the Nation State Law—which enshrines second-class status for the country’s Arab citizens as a constitutional principle.
Coincidence? Yes, and no.
Orban’s visit wasn’t orchestrated to celebrate Netanyahu’s victory. The law passed in a rush before the Knesset recessed for the summer. The visit was planned separately[.]
That said, the timing was scarily perfect. The Nation State Law is a historic turning point in transforming Israel into an illiberal democracy. Netanyahu’s embrace of Orban—and of other Central European leaders of his ilk, and of Donald Trump—shows his conscious identification with the new Illiberal International.
…
In that pre-recess rush, the Knesset passed several other laws. One gave new authority to the minister of education to bar outside speakers from public schools. The purpose is to keep high schools from inviting speakers from Breaking the Silence, the veterans’ group that collects soldiers’ testimony on serving in the occupied territories. A last-minute amendment was aimed at barring other human rights groups.
Another new law bans the police practice of publicizing why an investigation has ended without charges against a suspect. That’s aimed at protecting Netanyahu personally. If one or more of the investigations ends without an indictment, the police can’t tell the public what they did find—which might well be of political importance, even if it doesn’t add up to a crime.
All of these measures were passed by an elected majority. Together they shield the leader from scrutiny, suppress dissent, prevent pluralism and add to the stench of paranoia emanating from the prime minister’s residence. They epitomize illiberal democracy.
…
Netanyahu has had an illiberal streak for years, and his abuse of a Knesset majority isn’t new. He’s always faced political resistance within Israel—even from the right—and pressures from the United States and Europe.
These days the international arena encourages his worst tendencies. He’s best buddies with India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister Narendra Modi. He has forged close ties with the Visegrad Group, Central Europe’s ultra-nationalist bloc of Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Poland. The man who saw anti-Semitism everywhere ignores Orban’s anti-Jewish rhetoric and drew the fury of historians for a recent agreement with Poland that papers over the complicity of Poles in the Holocaust.
And he can count on the support of Donald Trump, president of the country that formerly led the free world.
I write this with a great deal of pain. Netanyahu has changed Israel for the worse. It’s important to remember that he faced a great deal of resistance, and that his parliamentary majority was narrow. The struggle to take the country in a better direction isn’t over. It’s more difficult, and more desperately important than ever.
SHS just tweeted: “In Helsinki, @POTUS agreed to ongoing working level dialogue between the two security council staffs. President Trump asked @Ambjohnbolton to invite President Putin to Washington in the fall and those discussions are already underway.”
Happened while Andrea Mitchell was interviewing Dan Coats at the Aspen Forum, after he’d talked extensively about the threat from Russia.
.@mitchellreports: “We have some breaking news. Vladimir Putin is coming to the White House in the fall.”
Dan Coats: “Say again?”
In the past several hours, Coats’ live interview in which he said several things that could make Trump angry (because he’s a corrupt, traitorous lunatic); statement from Montenegro; Bounds nomination withdrawn; Senate unanimously passed resolution rebuking openness to agreement with Putin; Greek statement about Russia; Putin told diplomats he had talked with Trump about a deal selling out Ukraine and promised not to tell the public; Trump was angry with the Fed’s raising interest rates; news about the Novichok suspects and the coded message to Moscow (with official British statement coming shortly?); possibly other things (related to Cohen or Manafort?) that we don’t know about;…
The tweet about Putin coming to Washington was very likely sent out in a rage, and the direction that rage took is telling.
Jon Favreau: “I look forward to the debate about whether Putin will be an asset or liability to the Republican Party when he starts stumping with Donald Trump in battleground states this fall.”
Yes, “Doesn’t this appeal to midwestern voters who want to see things shaken up? Aren’t the Dems hurting themselves with their exclusively anti-Putin message? Shouldn’t they leave this alone and focus on the kitchen-table issues people in Pennsylvania diners care about? Aren’t the protests hurting their cause? What does Bernie Sanders think?”
[…]
Staff at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) organized for a new office desk to air out in a remote warehouse for a week so that former agency head Scott Pruitt wouldn’t have to breathe in any traces of the carcinogenic chemical formaldehyde from his furniture, emails obtained by Politico have revealed.
At the same time, Pruitt was refusing to more strictly regulate the chemical, despite sitting on a report that said it’s putting Americans at risk of leukaemia and throat cancer.
Last month it emerged key figures in the EPA were suppressing an agency report, completed just before Trump took office, that found that a majority of Americans inhale unacceptably high levels of formaldehyde vapor in the course of daily life, which puts them at risk of developing cancer of the blood, throat and nose. According to Politico, a trade group representing the businesses that could face new regulations if the study were released had frequent access to EPA officials and successfully pressured them to refrain from publishing the report.
Pruitt himself, however, was protected from inhaling the chemical.
As part of the $9,500 refurbishing of his office — which had already caused controversy for surpassing the $5,000 limit set by Congress for redecoration costs — Pruitt ordered a new desk. When it emerged that the it contained formaldehyde, aides sought advice about whether it would be safe for Pruitt.
Deputy chief of staff Reginald Allen emailed Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, then serving as acting head of the EPA’s toxic chemicals office to ask for more information about formaldehyde safety. Cleland-Hamnett told him the desk was made in California, where formaldehyde is more stringently regulated, and was therefore likely to be fine — but to be sure they could air it out for a few days.
[…]
While EPA officials went to such lengths to ensure Pruitt’s safety, they have done nothing to regulate levels of formaldehyde, and continue to delay the report’s release. […]
[…]
At Shahi Exports, India’s largest apparel exporter, several union supporters were this spring circulating a petition that asked management to provide cleaner water and increase pay. Shahi managers responded, an independent monitoring group found, by making death threats to several pro-union workers and directing other employees to beat them.
One manager at Shahi’s “Unit 8” factory in Bangalore told a female union supporter: It won’t be a sin if people kill you and get rid of you.
He then reportedly urged other workers to beat her, with one nearly strangling her, an investigation by the monitoring group found.
[… other atrocities…]
The investigation by the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), a Washington-based group that monitors factories for 190 universities in the US, Canada and the UK, found that eight managers were responsible for the violence and death threats and that 15 pro-union workers had been wrongly suspended.
[…]
WRC called on Shahi to fire those managers, reinstate the workers and recognize the union. But when Shahi denied the managers’ responsibility for any violence and refused to fire them, the WRC urged major western brands that buy apparel from Shahi — including H&M, Benetton, Abercrombie & Fitch and Columbia Sportswear — to press Shahi to fire the managers and apologize to the 15 workers.
Facing increased pressure from the WRC and western companies, Shahi said early this month […] that it had terminated five managers and had begun termination proceedings against four others. Shahi also reinstated the 15 workers, paid them back pay and agreed to recognize and negotiate with the union […]
[… WRC executive director Scott] Nova voiced dismay that several brands that buy apparel from Shahi knew nothing about the beatings or threats at the 3,000-employee factory until the WRC had informed them. “The brands claim strict labor standards” and extensive monitoring, Nova said. “Yet managers at a key supplier assaulted workers and threatened to kill them, faced no disciplinary action, and more than two months later were still helping churn out product for brands like Benetton and Abercrombie & Fitch.”
[…]
“If we had left it to the brands,” Nova said, “the union would be dead, its leaders blacklisted, the workforce terrorized into silence, and the managers who authored the anti-union violence probably in line for promotion.”
[… Director of the Center for Global Workers’ Rights at Penn State University, Mark] Anner noted that the price western buyers pay for apparel in India and Bangladesh has gone down since 2000. “That creates incentive to avoid unions at all cost,” he said. He said companies with corporate responsibility programs are often far too slow to detect and address abuses against workers. “We still have to depend far too often on independent campaigns and media exposés to get companies to address serious violations,” he said.
[…]
The Independent [a UK newspaper –blf] has joined up with a media group that has close links to the Saudi royal family to launch websites across the Middle East and Pakistan in a deal that will raise questions about the growing influence of Gulf finance in the British media.
The joint partnership will see four Independent-branded sites launched in Arabic, Urdu, Turkish and Persian by the end of 2018.
Although the sites will be Independent-branded, the content would be almost entirely produced by Saudi Research and Marketing Group (SRMG) journalists based in London, Islamabad, Istanbul and New York, with the Independent contributing only translated articles from the English-language website. […]
[… Q]uestions will be raised about the journalistic decision to partner with a publisher with strong links to the Saudi government.
Reporters Without Borders rates Saudi Arabia at 169 out of 180 countries on its World Press Freedom Index. It said the country had “no independent media” and the “level of self-censorship is extremely high”.
[…]
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have been involved in a web of geopolitical alliances, rivalries and hostilities, with the battle increasingly involving attempts to influence press coverage and dominate social media.
The decision to launch a Persian-language version of the Independent, staffed by SRMG journalists, would come under particular scrutiny given the Saudi state’s hostility to Iran, with both countries backing rival sides in the ongoing war in Yemen.
The Independent is not the first media company from the west to partner with SRMG. Last year Bloomberg signed a deal to produce an Arabic-language version of financial news service.
[…]
Hj Hornbecksays
Meanwhile, as the Republicans refuse to increase funding for election security or deny there’s a problem, the Kremlin continues on.
Speaking on a panel at the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday, Tom Burt, Microsoft’s vice president for customer security and trust, said that his team had discovered a spear-phishing campaign targeting three candidates running for election in 2018. Analysts traced them to a group Microsoft has nicknamed Strontium, which is closely tracked by every major threat intelligence company and is widely accepted to be run by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.
Burt declined to name the candidates during the event, citing privacy concerns, and didn’t say which party they belonged to, but implied they were candidates of note and running for reelection. “They were all people who, because of their positions, might have been interesting targets from an espionage standpoint, as well as an election disruption standpoint,” Burt said.
Speaking in Montenegro, which defied Russia by becoming the newest member of NATO in June, Mr. Pence praised the tiny nation for its independence. “Your courage, particularly in the face of Russian pressure, inspires the world and I commend you for that,” Mr. Pence said at a dinner on Tuesday evening.
Russian officials were so incensed by Montenegro’s decision to join NATO that they plotted a coup attempt in October to try to block the country from joining the alliance, Mr. Pence said — an accusation that Russia denies.
On Wednesday, in a 19-minute address to leaders at the Adriatic Charter Summit meeting, the vice president called Russia an “unpredictable country that casts a shadow from the east.”
“Russia continues to seek to redraw international borders by force,” Mr. Pence said. “And here in the western Balkans, Russia has worked to destabilize the region, undermine your democracies and divide you from each other and from the rest of Europe.” […]
Echoing a point made by Montenegro’s prime minister, the vice president said: “NATO is made up of large countries and small countries, but the U.S. has no small allies and we cherish our new alliance with Montenegro through NATO.”
At a NATO summit meeting in May, Mr. Trump was recorded on video appearing to shove his way past [prime minister] Markovic while making his way to the front of the group for a photograph of the alliance’s leaders.
I suspect Tucker Carlson had a reason for bringing up Montenegro…
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
Sally Yates on TRMS after the break.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
Think I can get a good night’s sleep dreaming of Sally Yates as AG, with Rep. Adam Schiff as Dept. AG.
Akira MacKenziesays
I’m angry and tipsy, so excuse the following rant:
Dear Democrats:
I’m a less-than 30k/year call center cubicle rat who has to juggle cost-of-living expenses on top of student loan payments. While I know that Trump and the GOP won’t help.me, why should I expect a party that caters only to upper-class, urban professionals, tech sector hipsters, and whatever disenfranchised group is fashionable to pander to at the moment to help me? All I seem to hear from you is ”as a privileged white male, you have nothing to complain about, so shut up and vote for the capitalist-pig-backed ex-First-Lady who tells me that we’re not Dennark?”
…Thursday’s announcement was the latest unexpected turn in a week in which Trump has faced a torrent of bipartisan criticism over his cozy approach to Putin and his vacillating utterances about Moscow’s election interference, all while brushing aside warnings that the Russian leader should be viewed as an adversary.
“The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media,” Trump wrote in a morning tweet. “I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed.”
The tensions within the administration have been most evident between Trump and Coats. When asked in Helsinki whom he believed regarding Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, he appeared to give equal weight to Coats’s warnings and Putin’s denial of Russian interference.
…
Inside the White House, Trump’s advisers were in an uproar over Coats’s interview in Aspen, Colo. They said the optics were especially damaging, noting that at moments Coats appeared to be laughing at the president, playing to his audience of the intellectual elite in a manner that was sure to infuriate Trump.
“Coats has gone rogue,” said one senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide a candid assessment.
…
Trump’s close guarding of information about his discussions with Putin reflects his anger over leaks earlier this year, according to current and former White House officials.
He was enraged when it was reported in May that he did not follow specific warnings from his national security advisers and congratulated Putin on his reelection. The warnings from aides included a section in his briefing materials in all-capital letters stating “DO NOT CONGRATULATE.”
Trump urged senior White House officials to “fire someone,” in the words of one former senior administration official, and mentioned to others the names of low-level National Security Council staffers who he thought could be responsible for the leak.
Trump has since complained that many within his own government do not want him to have a friendly relationship with Putin and has been skeptical of making others privy to his conversations with the Russian leader — afraid that they will become public, according to the officials….
Research by the University of Alabama shows attacks by Muslims receive an average of 105 headlines, others just 15
Terrorist attacks committed by Muslim extremists receive 357% [grrrrrrr… (calm down, no ranting please)] more US press coverage than those committed by non-Muslims, according to new research from the University of Alabama. […]
Terrorist attacks committed by non-Muslims (or where the religion was unknown) received an average of 15 headlines, while those committed by Muslim extremists received 105 headlines.
The findings […] were based on all terrorist attacks in the US between 2006 and 2015 […]. The disparity in media coverage is particularly out of sync with the reality given that white and rightwing terrorists carried out nearly twice as many terrorist attacks as Muslim extremists between 2008 and 2016.
[…]
Not all headlines have the same audience, though. Lead researcher Erin Kearns explained: “We broke it down by the two different types of sources and we found that the over-coverage is much bigger among national news sources than local papers.”
Mainly female workforce in shops not allowed to sit, lean against a wall or use a lift
Cybil Wilson has worked in one of Kerala’s big, shiny, brightly-lit sari shops for 10 years.
Her salary at the shop, in Trivandrum, has been consistently low but it is the pain and swelling in her legs that troubles her the most. Her employer forbids Wilson, and the other 120 female sales assistants working across the four floors, from sitting down during a 12–14 hour shift.
“We can’t use the lifts either. All customers pay on the ground floor for their purchases and we have to accompany them so we are up and down the stairs all day. A few times, when we did use the lift, customers complained about having to share it with us,” said Wilson.
Now the Kerala government has announced it will amend its labour laws to include a clause obliging employers to let women sit — the result of a fight by a women’s union for “irippu samara” (the right to sit in Malayalam) for these unrepresented shop workers.
Most owners of sari shops and other retail outlets forbid women, the bulk of the shop workforce, to sit. Even leaning against a wall can be punished. Lunch is 30 minutes. Toilet breaks are strictly limited. Talking to colleagues can lead to salary deductions. Employers monitor CCTV footage to check for compliance.
The women’s union, called Amtu, was set up by Viji Penkoot, the leader of a women’s collective, Penkootu, when the male-dominated unions in the state ignored the issue.
[…]
The new law will stipulate a minimum monthly starting salary of 10,000 rupees (£110 [145$]), an eight-hour day, a chair or stool, an afternoon tea break, and a lunch break, with a duration yet to be decided by the Kerala cabinet, be provided.
Ex-Israel deputy FM justifies Israel’s killings of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza, saying they came with harm intention.
Israel’s former deputy foreign minister has said the group Hamas is solely to blame for the recent bloodshed in the besieged Gaza Strip, claiming that Palestinians represent a culture of terror, while absolving Israeli forces for the killings of more than 130 protesters, journalists and medics at the border.
Danny Ayalon told Al Jazeera […] the killings by Israeli snipers of unarmed Palestinians, including paramedic Razan al-Najjar and journalist Yasser Murtaja, were unfortunate but justified because they came with harm intention.
Indeed. Paramedics are exceptionally dangerous. They have sterile dressings ! But they are nothing compared to journalists. Nasty nasty journalists, with cameras & recorders.
[…]
According to the World Health Organization, hundreds of health personnel and dozens of ambulances have been targeted by Israeli forces since the start of the Great March of Return movement.
[…]
In the case of al-Najjar, Ayalon claimed the deceased paramedic was carrying and incendiary bomb, but offered no proof for his allegations.
This mysterious bomb was not mentioned by the Israeli army in their whitewash of a report on the incident. They claim their soldiersexecution squad were not shooting at the paramedic, and she was kill by a ricochet.
He also said the Israeli army did not commit any wrongdoing because it’s not a human rights situation. It’s an area in conflict. It’s an armed conflict.
In comments that shocked the audience watching his interview, Ayalon later described Palestinians more generally as a culture of terror.
If you send your kids to schools where they are taught to kill Jews, when you have summer schools with Palestinian kids go with straps, you know like make-believe suicide bombs, this is a culture of terror, he said.
In the same programme, Diana Buttu, an Israeli-Palestinian, said that Israel is now an “apartheid state” founded on the principle of “Jewish privilege”.
Ayalon responded, Have you ever been arrested by Israeli police? Have you ever been beaten by Israeli police?
When she replied, “Yes, actually I have,” he said: You can check the bruises, she is all bruised up, right?
[…]
The nazi then goes on to bellow with great gobs of flying spittle that (paraphrasing) Iran has become ten times more aggressive since signing the nuclear deal:
Israeli-British historian Avi Shlaim […] challenged Ayalon’s argument, saying that in the last 40 years, Israel has been conducting a “systematic campaign of disinformation about Iran”.
Shlaim said that while Iran may be a strategic threat, Israel “poses an existential threat to Iran”.
Indeed. That long-standing hatred of Iran is one of the drivers behind Saudi Arabia’s fairly quiet cozying-up to Israel, What is behind the covert Israeli-Saudi relations? (Nov-2017): “The covert ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, based on an alliance against the common threat of Iran, are part of a new regional paradigm, analysts say.”
Amid the controversy over President Trump’s recent summit with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, the neo-Confederate League of the South announced this week that it will soon be introducing a Russian language section to its website.“To our Russian friends,” a missive on the League’s website, is signed by Michael Hill, the group’s president. An excerpt:
We understand that the Russian people and Southerners are natural allies in blood, culture, and religion. As fellow Whites of northern European extraction, we come from the same general gene pool. As inheritors of the European cultural tradition, we share similar values, customs, and ways of life. And as Christians, we worship the same Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and our common faith binds us as brothers and sisters.
We Southerners believe in societies based on real, organic factors such as shared blood, culture, and religion, and all that stems naturally from these salient factors in the human experience. As fellow White Christians who are grounded in the sublime traditions of our common European cultural heritage, we believe that the Russian people and the Southern people are natural allies against the destructive and impersonal impulses of globalism.
Hill, who teaches that the defeat of Nazi Germany was “an unmitigated disaster for Western Christian civilization,” warned in this week’s post that there are “forces that would like to pit us against one another.” He signs off with, “May the God of our Fathers bless our efforts to preserve our peoples and their shared faith and culture.”…
His inclusion of both Russians and Nazi Germany in the race club would have come as a surprise to the Nazis:
The Jews and the Slavic peoples were the Untermenschen – subhumans. To Hitler they had no right to live, except as some of them, among the Slavs, might be needed to toil in the fields and the mines as slaves of their German masters. Not only were the great cities of the East, Moscow, Leningrad and Warsaw, to be permanently erased [Leningrad and its entire population “wiped off the face of the earth” per Hitler’s order of September 18, 1941] but the culture of the Russians and Poles and other Slavs was to be stamped out and formal education denied them….
…
[Himmler]:
Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an antitank ditch interests me only in so far as the antitank ditch for Germany is finished….
This obsession of the Germans with the idea that they were the master race and that the Slavic peoples must be their slaves was especially virulent in regard to Russia….
[From William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, MJF Books, pp. 937-9]
One could almost think white supremacists’ racial, cultural, and religious categories shift opportunistically.
Let me get this straight. Trump, in his rage at Coats and others, rushed to announce the invitation before it had even been accepted, leaving this third-rate autocrat the opportunity to further pressure him and humiliate him and the US by leaving open the possibility the invitation could be declined. Yup, sounds about right.
…This week…a new possibility came into focus. Perhaps, rather than covering for Trump, some Republicans are covering for themselves.
Last Friday, Robert Mueller, the special counsel, indicted 12 members of Russian military intelligence for their interference in the 2016 election. The indictment claims that in August 2016, Guccifer 2.0, a fictitious online persona adopted by the Russian hackers, “received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress.” The Russian conspirators obliged, sending “the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate’s opponent.” Congress has, so far, done nothing discernible to find out who this candidate might be.
Then, on Monday, we learned of the arrest of Maria Butina, who is accused of being a Russian agent who infiltrated the National Rifle Association, the most important outside organization in the Republican firmament. Legal filings in the case outline a plan to use the N.R.A. to push the Republican Party in a more pro-Russian direction.
…
If the N.R.A. as an organization turns out to be compromised, it would shake conservative politics to its foundation. And this is no longer a far-fetched possibility. “I serve on both the Intelligence Committee and the Finance Committee,” Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, told me. “So I have a chance to really look at this through the periscope of both committees. And what I have wondered about for some time is this whole issue of whether the N.R.A. is getting subverted as a Russian asset.”
This is not a question that Republicans are eager to answer. Before Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee abruptly closed their investigation into Russian election interference, committee Democrats wanted to interview both Butina and Erickson. Their Republican colleagues refused. “If there were efforts towards a back channel towards the N.R.A., they didn’t want to know,” Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who is the ranking member on the committee, told me. “It was too hot to handle.”
It is not surprising that Republicans would want to protect the N.R.A. According to an audit obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics, the N.R.A.’s overall spending increased by more than $100 million in 2016….
…
Wyden said Republicans on the Intelligence Committee have thwarted his attempts to look deeply into the Russian money trail. “The Intelligence Committee has completely ducked for cover on follow-the-money issues,” he said. (As it happens, Richard Burr, the North Carolina Republican who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, is one of Congress’s leading recipients of N.R.A. support.)
On Monday, a few hours after news broke of Butina’s arrest, the Treasury Department announced a new rule sparing some tax-exempt groups, including the N.R.A., from having to report their large donors to the I.R.S. Wyden called the move “truly grotesque,” saying it would “make it easier for Russian dark money” to flow into American politics. You might ask who benefits. The answer is: not just Trump.
[Janet Yellen] should have raised the rates, but she’s not doing it because the Obama administration and the president doesn’t want her to.
What Trump is saying now:
I don’t necessarily agree with it [Fed’s two rate hikes this year]. I’m not thrilled, because every time we go up, they want to raise rates again. But at the same time I’m letting them do what they feel is best.
I meant to add this to the quote of Trump’s recent remarks, (see comment 162):
I don’t like all of this work that we’re putting into the economy and then I see rates going up.
KGsays
SC@157,
I wouldn’t think Michael Hill’s belief that the defeat of the Nazis was a disaster would go down too well with most Russians either – even Putin-fans. The “Great Patriotic War” is still a major feature in Russian nationalist propaganda.
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, secretly recorded a conversation with Mr. Trump two months before the presidential election in which they discussed payments to a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump, according to lawyers and others familiar with the recording. The F.B.I. seized the recording this year during a raid on Mr. Cohen’s office.
blfsays
KG@164, That seems to presume they know about Hill’s rubbish; Believe the reports of Hill’s rubbish; and There is no overwhelming reason to ignore (nor any bright new shiny toy to distract from) Hill’s rubbish. As an analogy, consider the high support for traitor don in the States among evangelicals, despite his “pussy-grabbing” and other abhorrences (children in cages, …): Lots of distractions, and the potential of overturning Roe v Wade.
“NEW: There are other tapes of Michael Cohen and other ‘powerful’ individuals that the FBI seized beyond the president but could be embarrassing for the people on the tape and for Cohen, according to a source familiar with the tapes. @DanaBashCNN and @GloriaBorger report.”
Maggie Haberman was just on CNN and went farther than her co-bylined New York Times bombshell that Michael Cohen secretly taped Donald Trump discussing payments to Playboy model Karen McDougal, with whom he allegedly had an affair.
She explained that Trump and Cohen were allegedly talking about both payments from AMI to McDougal, as well as another potential payment from Trump to McDougal, via Cohen.
The biggest thing we learned from this is that there is a brief recording of Michael Cohen talking to Donald Trump. Michael Cohen was at that time Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. Donald Trump was not the president yet, and they are discussing some details related to payments by AMI, which owns the National Enquirer, to Karen McDougal, a woman who had alleged that she had an affair, with not candidate yet Donald Trump.
And this conversation had something to do with making an additional payment from Mr. Cohen to Karen McDougal. His lawyer Rudy Giuliani told us that he had on the recording apparently instructed that it be done by check, so that it was done properly, as opposed to cash, that payment we understand was not made.
Again, the original version of the NYT story wasn’t clear on that point: that the recorded conversation was a discussion of the AMI payment.
If that’s correct, and there’s no reason to think it’s not, then it puts into play a couple of additional legal and political perils for Trump:
It recasts the Trump camp’s repeated denial that it knew about payments to McDougal.
It also makes it look much more like the Trump camp was colluding with AMI — something we’ve suspected, but for which there has not been solid evidence. Until today.
Concerns over migration drive support for the far right, which is also anti-EU, ahead of September 9 elections.
Sweden’s far-right party has gained support in the polls as it pushes an agenda focused on refugees and migrants.
The Sweden Democrats polled at a record high 20 percent in May, according to an Ispos poll in daily Dagens Nyheter, placing their chances at becoming kingmakers in the September 9 elections within the realm of possibility.
[…]
“It’s particularly sensitive in Sweden, where there is a very strong anti-racist norm in almost all walks of life,” Nicholas Aylott, an associate professor of political science at Sodertorn University, told Al Jazeera.
“Open expressions of conventional racism are really very rare in Sweden, and the rise of the Sweden Democrats, with its history, is terribly sensitive in Sweden and raises emotions.”
[…]
Jonas Hinnfors, a political science professor at the University of Gothenburg, [said] the party’s focus on migration allowed them to capitalise on frustrations among parts of the electorate.
Meanwhile, their Eurosceptic positions are less popular with Swedes.
[…]
Migration, however, appears to be the driving force for the Sweden Democrats’ surge in popularity.
“They very well could be kingmakers,” Hinnfors said, explaining that the far-right group had set the tone for electoral debate by dragging other parties into debates about migration.
If they did so, the Sweden Democrats would exert a far greater influence on policies and would likely continue its tunnel-vision focus on migration.
In turn, other parties, including the Social Democrats, have adopted a more hardline stance on migration and borders.
In May, the ruling party announced plans to cut nearly in half the number of refugees and migrants entering the country.
Gloria Borger on CNN is saying her source is telling her there are “definitely all kinds of tapes out there.”
KGsays
blf@166,
No, it doesn’t. The conditional form indicates that there is no such assumption. You can see this by sticking “If they heard about it” at either the start or the end of the first sentence in #164. I understand that English conditional forms are particularly tricky for non-native speakers, even if they are fluent.
The discussion on CNN is quite strange. Maggie Haberman’s reporting is completely different from Bash’s and Borger’s. The reports aren’t reconcilable.
KGsays
In May, the ruling party [Sweden’s Social Democrats] announced plans to cut nearly in half the number of refugees and migrants entering the country. – blf@171
sigh Idiots: you can’t fight fascists on their own ground – they will alwys outbid you.
Nicknamed the “hielera” or icebox, Casa Padre is a hellscape of cruel guards, sickening food, and psychological torture.
Children are sleeping on floors and being cussed out by guards, subsisting on meager rations of beans, crackers, and tortillas that leave them feeling ill, and passing the nights sleeping on floors under bright lights in a converted Walmart in south Texas.
The new reports of harsh physical conditions, humiliating psychological abuse, and basic deprivation at the so-called “Casa Padre” facility in Brownsville, Texas, come almost a month after […] Trump took symbolic steps to quash public outcry over his family separation policy aimed at punishing and deterring migrants.
[…] The conditions in which they find themselves today in the world’s richest and most powerful country shock the conscience — and almost certainly violate the conditions of the legal settlement that’s bound American officials in treatment of minors in immigration detention for decades, lawyers say.
In many cases, the only bathroom the children are allowed to use is located inside their holding pen. […]
“There is no privacy. It is dirty and they don’t clean it,” reported a Guatemalan boy named Erick. “The room is always cold. The guards took my sweater. I sleep on the floor. There are 3 mattresses, but the boys from Honduras have taken them,” he said, adding that those other boys threaten to stab him if he falls asleep. […]
Victor A., 17, fled Honduras after his mother was killed. With his father in jail and his mother’s killer still lurking, he told lawyers, he decided to seek safety in the U.S. After officials gave he and the other boys in his cell food, “everyone got sick.” The building is kept very cold and the lights are never turned off. “Last night, there were 10 of us kids in the room, but only 3 mattress pads available,” he told lawyers.
[…] After a friend didn’t pick up when he made the one call he’s allowed per week, the guard near the phones told him, “This is it for you. You’re fucked.” […]
Multiple children report being warned that they could be “written up” for any perceived transgression, and that such write-ups would go into the permanent file that an immigration judge would later review to determine whether or not their asylum claims were valid. That warning often constitutes the most information anyone has been given by U.S. officials about their legal futures — almost every statement reviewed by ThinkProgress includes a mention of being told to sign papers the detainee didn’t understand because they were written in English. Detainees repeatedly say they have never been told they have any rights or given any information about legal resources that might be available to help them navigate the frightening situation in which they’ve been placed by Trump’s administration. […]
Foreign Minister Stef Blok calls Suriname ‘a failed state’ and says ethnic divisions are genetically determined.
[…]
Footage of the speech [at an event for NGOs] was obtained by Zembla, a TV programme focused on investigative journalism.
Give me an example, of a multiethnic or multicultural society, where the original population are still living as well. {…} And where there are peaceful community relations. I’m not aware of any, Blok [a member of the liberal VVD (the largest party in the Netherlands)] said […]
After another audience member gave Singapore as an example, Blok said that is only because of Singapore’s strict immigration policy.
Singapore is indeed a small mini-country, extremely selective in its migration. Extremely selective, the FM said.
It is very difficult to ‘get in’. They don’t allow any poor migrants in. Well, maybe for cleaning, he added.
[… lots more spewing vomit from this loon …]
Green party MP Zihni Ozdil, who is of Turkish descent, said in a post on Facebook that Blok “not only offends people that look like me, but our whole national history and identity”.
Leader of the far-right PVV party Geert Wilders called Blok a weakling for apologising for his comments and said he completely agreed with Blok’s remarks.
[…]
Following the publication of the video, Blok said he was sorry for the remarks he made in a letter addressed to the Dutch parliament.
In the letter, Blok said his comments were merely made to provoke, that his wording was too sharp and that he is sorry if his comments led to anyone being offended.
A variant in the “dog ate my brain” / “it was just a joke” / “would means wouldn’t” family of not-pologies.
Jeff Sessions is pushing asylum officers to reject more migrants.
The next battlefield at the border is in asylum interview rooms.
[…] The administration has treated immigrants who come without papers punitively — separating families for several weeks, seeking to keep families in immigration detention indefinitely, detaining asylum seekers without a chance at parole — in the hopes of deporting them efficiently and deterring other people from coming in.
Despite the crackdown, the administration still couldn’t eliminate the extra protections in place for asylum seekers, children, and families that the administration calls “loopholes” or “catch and release.”
But now it may finally have cracked the code. Lawyers representing asylum seekers report that very few of their clients are passing the very first step in the asylum process […] Those rejections consequently set them up to be deported without trial. […]
Asylum officers have been given instructions by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that are designed to nudge them toward rejecting more migrants. But line officers still have discretion over individual cases — and they don’t necessarily share the administration’s instincts toward mass rejection. […]
In early June, Attorney General Sessions issued a sweeping decision that had the potential to overhaul asylum policy.
In the case Matter of A-B-, he overruled an immigration court decision to grant asylum to a woman fleeing domestic violence and police indifference in her home country. In the process, he overruled a 2014 precedent that affirmed that “married women who are afraid to leave their husbands” in a particular country constituted a “particular social class” […]
And with sweeping rhetoric, Sessions declared that “generally,” people fleeing violence from non-government actors — whether it was domestic or gang violence — should not be granted asylum protections, or even pass their screening interviews. […]
USCIS’s [US Citizenship and Immigration Services] initial guidance, circulated privately to officers […] emphasized that asylum officers should make decisions on a case-by-case basis […]
Its final guidance, however — which was unsigned — was much more aggressive. Echoing Sessions’s rhetoric, it deemphasized the need for case-by-case adjudication and made broad claims about what “generally” would or would not be accepted. […]
[…] guidance sent out to asylum officers spelled out that the burden was on the asylum applicant — even in a preliminary screening interview — to show how her case conformed to Sessions’s interpretation of the law. Among other things:
– The applicant has to, herself, define the particular social group of which she’s a member, and on the basis of which she’s claiming asylum
[…]- She has to show how the group would be clearly recognized within society as a group of people — not just as individuals in particular circumstances, such as “women afraid to leave their husbands”
– She has to show either that she’s being persecuted by the government, that the government “condoned” the persecution, or that the government “demonstrated a complete helplessness to protect the victim”
[…] the memo erects pretty high barriers to claims of domestic or gang violence […]
Additionally, it opens the door for asylum officers to deny an asylum seeker if she’s been convicted of illegal entry after crossing into the US between ports of entry […] even if she meets all the above standards. The memo says that officers may decide an illegal entry conviction weighs against deciding to show discretion in an immigrant’s favor. […]
The acting watchdog at the CIA, who has been accused of retaliating against whistleblowers, is resigning.
Christopher Sharpley, whose confirmation as CIA inspector-general was stalled in the Senate, sent a memo to employees at the CIA’s IG office, saying he was stepping down.
…
The CIA’s announcement did not say why Sharpley decided to step down, but two attorneys representing former CIA whistleblowers say the allegations that he retaliated against whistleblowers played a key role in his departure.
I wouldn’t think Michael Hill’s belief that the defeat of the Nazis was a disaster would go down too well with most Russians either – even Putin-fans. The “Great Patriotic War” is still a major feature in Russian nationalist propaganda.
Brexit backing businessman Arron Banks sought financial help for his diamond mines from Russia, according to claims made in South African court documents obtained by Channel 4 News.
The documents were written and filed months before recent newspaper revelations of his multiple contacts and meetings with Russians.
The claims, made by his former business partner and contained in a sworn affidavit, were presented to the high court in Kimberley.
The court papers, obtained by Channel 4 News, relate to a civil action between Mr Banks’s diamond company, Distribution Rocks, and its partner firm, Supermix. Distribution Rocks is suing Supermix for failing to pay in excess of ZAR 7m he claims is owing to him.
They allege Mr Banks travelled to Russia and discussed Russian investment in his mines, which were struggling financially.
The statement of his former business partner says: “I was finally made aware in October [2015] that in truth, Banks had been dealing with Russians who contemplated investing in the mines…. I was informed by Banks that he had travelled to Russia and discussed with them the diamond opportunities as well as gold mining opportunities in Russia. He further indicated that he would be meeting with the Russians again during November [2015].”
He also claims in the documents that Banks raised money from investors for the mines, but instead put the funds into the Brexit campaign and other interests.
…
The claims of Russian involvement were included in the affidavit, which was filed in the court in Kimberley on the 28th of February 2018, months before The Sunday Times and others revealed Mr Banks had had more extensive contact with Russians than he had previously admitted.
Damian Collins MP, the Chair of the DCMS Select Committee who called Mr Banks to give evidence to the Committee told Channel 4 News: “I think the allegations throw a completely different light on Arron Banks’s relationship with the Russians….”
…
“There is also this issue of the bond he sought to raise. Now some people would say that if he is so rich that he can afford to spend millions of pounds on Brexit, why does he have to go running around the world trying to raise money through a bond issue to support his mining interests? So where does Arron Banks’s money really come from?”…
Peter Geoghegan remarks: “While @Channel4News was looking at Arron Banks’s empty looking South African mines they could have gone the road to Banks’s Lesotho mines, which produced ‘geologically impossible’ diamonds as @openDemocracy reported.” I had linked to his article about Banks’s lies about his Lesotho mines back in April.
Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos: “Very satisfied about my contribution to the truth with #houseintelligence. @AdamSchiffCA , in particular, was very professional and a real gentleman.”
“Mattis: ‘Russia should suffer consequences for its aggressive, destabilizing behavior and its illegal occupation of Ukraine’, U.S. defense secretary says in statement.”
‘Obviously, there is an ongoing investigation, and we are sensitive to that. But suffice it to say that when the recording is heard, it will not hurt Mr. Cohen. Any attempt at spin can not change what is on the tape’.”
By the way, Lanny Davis bears great personal responsibility for much of the human misery described in Lynna’s #176.
He’s scum. (It’s something often forgotten about Paul Manafort’s decades of spinning for dictators – the suffering and injustice for which he’s responsible around the world.)
militantagnosticsays
SC @186
Also, I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility that even if they didn’t reimburse AMI directly (and it’s possible they’re lying about that in any event), it was because it became part of some quid pro quo in which AMI, which has been losing money, received that strange, mysterious, and totally shady deal with the regime in Saudi Arabia.
I had always thought that is was simply payment for the support for trump and Clinton slander in the National Perspirer. Not sure what the Saudis are getting out of it – possibly Herr Twitler’s efforts to derail attempts to reduce carbon emmisions?
militantagnosticsays
First paragraph of 189 was supposed to be blockquote.
Sean Spicer is dropping some serious cash into Trump’s pocket by renting space in Trump’s hotel:
Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer is hosting a book launch party at the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C., but will be charged $10,000 to use the space.
Spicer told The New York Times that the Trump family is charging $10,000 for use of the hotel’s lobby for Spicer’s exclusive invite-only event, which is expected to be attended on Thursday by Cabinet members and other Trump administration officials. […]
Hj Hornbecksays
If you haven’t heard Rachael Maddow’s analysis of the Cohen tapes, I definitely recommend it. Long story short, it’s almost certain Trump’s legal team leaked the existence of that tape. Why? A) it disrupts the news cycle about whether or not Trump is compromised by the Kremlin, B) it prevents Cohen from giving the tape to prosecutors in return for leniency, C) as Cohen can’t talk about any of his tapes (see SC’s 187), Trump’s legal team can control the narrative over what those tapes say for months, and D) Trump may be convinced he’ll never have to deal with the many legal entanglements caused by the tape because of Brent Kavanaugh.
It’s quite diabolical, if Maddow’s analysis is correct.
[…]
Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega has hit out at what he has claimed is a murderous, coup-mongering satanic sect behind a three-month uprising against his rule that has left more than 300 dead.
There is growing international consensus that Ortega’s own forces and pro-government militias are responsible for the overwhelming majority of the violence that has gripped Nicaragua since protests erupted in April.
However, during a pro-government rally in Managua on Thursday, Ortega sought to shift blame for the bloodshed on to the diabolical force he claimed was part of a US-backed conspiracy to topple him.
[…]
Ortega has faced growing international condemnation over the killings in recent days, including from one-time supporters.
Uruguay’s former leftwing president, José Mujica, this week said he feared the Sandinista dream had strayed into autocracy, adding: “There are times in life when you must say: ‘I’m off’.”
Thirteen Latin American countries — Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay — have denounced “the acts of violence, intimidation and the threats directed towards Nicaraguan society”.
That criticism coincides with what observers call an intensifying government propaganda campaign intended to blunt growing international pressure.
[…]
Mr Trump cannot seem to abide strongmen when it comes to Latin America. On Cuba policy, Mr Trump reversed the rapprochement — President Barack Obama’s chief legacy in Latin America — with renewed sanctions “until freedoms are restored.” Soon after the 2016 election, Mr Trump celebrated the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s death and has used aggressive rhetoric against Fidel’s brother Raul Castro […].
This exception is similarly evident in Venezuela, which is in desperate straits and where an almost two-decade slide into dictatorship culminated in a brazenly stolen election in May. (While Venezuela’s sham election was rightly condemned, Russia’s, two months earlier, elicited a congratulatory phone call from the president [sic].) Indeed, Mr Trump reportedly discussed invading Venezuela to forcefully remove the strongman Nicolás Maduro from power. Fortunately, White House advisers and Latin American leaders told the president [sic] repeatedly that threatening military action would be unwise and counterproductive.
Mr Trump, though not known for consistency, seems to view the region as fertile ground to impose his will without any cost, as the United States’ strategic prerogative and backyard. Such an outmoded mind-set marks a sharp reversal to what had been a welcome tendency in the post-Cold War era to treat countries in the region as equal partners.
Last February, for instance, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the Monroe Doctrine […] as relevant today as it was the day it was written while paradoxically calling China’s growing presence in the region imperial.
[…]
† In general, that is. As the excerpted opinion column notes, traitor don and teh dalekocracy do seem to adore the authoritarians in, e.g., Honduras. For example, US recognizes re-election of Honduras president despite fraud allegations: “The United States has recognized the re-election of Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, despite widespread allegations of fraud in last month’s election and calls from the Organization of American States (OAS) and US Congress to hold a new vote.”
Oggie.says
There are lots of internet rules out there. I hereby propose a new one:
THE TRUMP RULE: No matter how bad you think it is going to get, no matter how completely you think Trump will screw it up, no matter how omnincompetent this President and his advisers appears to be, he, and/or his cronies, will find a way to be worse on every level than you could possibly have imagined in your worst anchovy-pizza and twelve-way-chocolate-ice-cream fueled nightmares. The Trump Rule: No matter how bad you think it could get, he will be worse.
blfsays
● The Pence Corollary to the Trump Postulate†: Pence is worse. And slightly more competent. Therefore, should teh evil one disappear, it will get worse, very very worse.
● Teh Thug Conjecture to the Pence Corollary: As long as there is any elected Republican anywhere, it must get worse.
● The Dummie Conjecture to teh Thug Conjecture: The resistance will fail to bury their differences (split and dilute their vote), or not vote, and hand victory after victory to teh thugs.
● Teh Co-opted Corollary to the Dummie Conjecture: After several thug victories, the probability that only the dummies or other non-thugs which do happen to be elected are indistinguishable from thugs approaches one.
Please note a Postulate is an axiom, a statement which is trivially obvious and needs no proof; A Corollary is something which automatically / trivially follows from a true / proven statement; and A Conjecture is a plausible hypothesis, whilst not (yet) proven, it seems to be true. These terms were used very deliberately in the above naming.
† I refuse to call it the (as proposed @194) “trump rule”, as that can be construed as, e.g., “trump rules” or “trump’s rules” or similar.
[…]
We arranged to meet outside John Lewis. As I waited for my mother in the midday sun, I thought about the other times we’d come here, just the two of us: shopping for school jumpers and, later, bedding for university, which included an enormously angst-ridden search for the perfect conversation-starter duvet cover that would convey my fun-loving ways, artistic soul and effortlessly cool attitude in one striking image. That image, I can exclusively reveal without the slightest retrospective regret, was Garfield the cat. Twenty years later, my mother and I were on Oxford Street again because of another orange cartoon creature.
We never actually discussed going to the anti-Trump protests. It was so much of a given that on the Friday morning we texted: “Time?” “Starts 12.30. 12.15 Oxford St?” “John Lewis?” “Y.” Should the police ever seize my phone, they will assume I am a spy, or at the very least a drug dealer, as opposed to someone who gets their political righteousness on with a person they know so well that full sentences are unnecessary.
My family moved to London decades ago, yet time cannot wither my mother’s midwest accent, nor London stale her infinite Americanness. As we walked towards the protest, my mother, in a carefully chosen red, white and blue outfit, stopped people to take photos of their placards, so she could put them on Facebook and show her friends in the US: “Oh my gawd, his sign is a stitch! Look at that one, sweetie! But what is ‘a berk?’” If the US embassy was right, that Americans in London were best off keeping a low profile on the day of the Trump march, then we were in mortal peril.
Yet we didn’t feel it. Only those whose job depends on assuaging the feelings of a giant man baby could pretend that the march was against America, not Trump, and mine does not. In fact, it was striking how many other Americans were on it, declaring their Americanness through their placards, which lacked a little when it came to British wit and irony, but compensated with good ol’ American earnestness (“American and angry!” “I pay my taxes — how about YOU, Donald?”).
[…]
We started with the political chat: wasn’t it embarrassing that Britain even had to protest this tragic D-list minor celebrity who had somehow become leader of the free world? (Yes.) Wasn’t it insane that he was even still a thing, when we both remembered him as a local Manhattan joke in the 1980s, a property developer who tried to flog junk bonds? (Yes.) Was there even any point in protesting if the British prime minister was so craven, she still held his tiny racist hand? (Yes yes yes.) […]
All around us, British protesters chanted, full of certainty that America deserves a better leader — the land of Lincoln! Roosevelt! Kennedy! […] Someone from the Socialist Workers party approached us offering pamphlets, protesting about Trump’s racism. “That’s all you can protest about him, given that you’re anti-Nato and anti-EU, just like him,” I snarled at the hapless activist. “Surely you’re thrilled he won the presidency instead of Clinton!”
Oh gads, I’d managed to mostly-forget all about those loons. They are not, to the best of my now-faded recollection, racist, but that is almost-all I can say which is supportive of them. Otherwise, they are an embarrassment. Think Lyndon LaRouche for a States-side analogy (albeit I don’t believe they claim Ms Windsor controls the world’s illicit drugs trade): Take an old, albeit still valid, point (e.g., industrial-military complex), throughly misunderstand it, and extend that misunderstanding so far it can (to borrow a phrase from Terry Prachett) “see the curvature of the universe”. Then do hyper-dimensional back-flips to “explain”-away the contradictions and counter-evidence.
[…] Media helicopters hovered overhead and the collective mood was joyful. My mother and I fell silent, genuinely moved to see all these British people partaking in a fight that so many Americans feel exhausted by. […]
[…]
Nigel Farage did not so much sweep as creep into Pennsylvania on Friday, for a low-key appearance at a fundraiser for a Trump-supporting Republican Senate candidate that illustrated the toxicity of the US immigration debate.
Farage’s presence was presumably meant to draw donors for Barletta’s struggling campaign for the US Senate, against incumbent Democrat Bob Casey. The fundraiser was closed to the press, however, after Barletta spent days distancing himself from the Brexit talisman, who Casey’s campaign portrayed as an extremist.
Perhaps aware of this, Farage had been unusually reluctant to talk about his latest American adventure.
[… I]t seemed they may have overestimated the allure of Farage and Barletta. There were no protests and the scale of the police presence — at least 10 cars were stationed near the house — seemed a little heavy. The Guardian was the only media present.
[…]
Farage managed to upset some people before he arrived. The manager of the yacht club next door was unimpressed to be told attendees would be parking their cars on his property. He acted swiftly, hiring a security guard to turn people away.
Instead, a minibus — albeit a high-end one, with blacked-out windows and a driver wearing a bow-tie — ferried guests from a church carpark about half a mile away. For people so eager to attend a party with Nigel Farage, few seemed to want to talk about it. A series of attendees gave the Guardian short shrift.
[…]
Better luck came when Barletta arrived. One of the first politicians to support Donald Trump’s presidential run, his backing seems to have extended to adopting the president’s [sic] look: white teeth, deep tan.
Barletta […] strode up to the wooden front door. Unfortunately, guests had been entering via a driveway to the side. As the Senate candidate wavered the Guardian was able to ask him why he was so keen to appear with Farage.
Barletta turned, looking a little bewildered. He seemed about to say something when a police officer, possibly keen to have something to do, sprinted across the road and shouted at the Guardian to get off the driveway.
An hour after the party there had been no sign of Farage. Women in dresses and men in chinos continued to be dropped off while police stood around, trying to escape the sun.
Thankfully, some members of the yacht club, which overlooked the party, were able to confirm Farage had been present. Pictures taken by a college-paper photographer showed the British politician smiling gaily […] in the company of Barletta and Mississippi governor Phil Bryant.
[…]
For all the fuss, bluster and policing, those photographs[†] were the only evidence Farage had ever been there.
From Judge Voids Ordinance on Illegal Immigrants (July 2007(! — kook Barletta has been bellowing for over a decade); link embedded in above excerpt):
[…]
Judge [James M] Munley ruled that ordinances first passed last July by the Hazleton City Council interfered with federal law, which regulates immigration, and violated the due process rights of employers, landlords and illegal immigrants.
[…]
The judge emphasized that illegal immigrants had the same civil rights as legal immigrants and citizens.
[…]
Mr Barletta, the Hazleton mayor, has championed the city’s ordinances because he said illegal immigrants had unleashed a crime wave in Hazleton and had overburdened health and other public services.
At the nine-day trial in March, ACLU lawyers worked as hard to debunk those claims as they did to undercut the city’s legal arguments. They showed that 4 of 428 violent crimes in Hazleton in the last six years could be attributed to illegal immigrants.
“This opinion should be a glaring red stop light for any local officials thinking about passing similar laws,” said Witold Walczak, the lead ACLU lawyer in the case.
[…]
Mr Barletta and his campaign against illegal immigrants have remained popular in Hazleton, a faded coal-mining center 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia that has recently seen a manufacturing revival. In a mayoral primary in May, Mr Barletta handily won both the Republican and the Democratic nominations.
Both the thug & dummie nominations ! Perhaps the good news is he’s now lagging by c.16% in the current midterm congressional campaign.
† Some of the photographs — which are credited to Eric Davies — are at the link. The Grauniad does not seem to identify the college paper Mr Davies (presumably) was photographing-for, and an admittedly quick search is inconclusive.
Former White House chief advisor says he wants to rival to George Soros’s influence
[… He] told the Daily Beast that he wanted to offer a rightwing alternative to George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, which has given away $32bn to largely liberal causes since it was established in 1984.
[…]
The foundation, which Bannon said would be called The Movement, will offer polling, advice on messaging and data targeting and research to a network of rightwing parties across Europe […].
Bannon has met rightwing politicians across the continent in the past 12 months, including Ukip’s former leader, Nigel Farage, members of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in France[†] and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.
He told the Daily Beast that he envisioned a supergroup within the European parliament that could supply as many as a third of MEPs after next May’s Europe-wide elections. He also said he planned to spend half of his time in Europe once the US midterm elections are over in November.
[…]
The article also claims: “His campaign to replace dozens of Republican incumbents in the Senate with new blood has largely run into the ground.” I suppose that’s possible, but there is still a probably of some thugs winning (both incumbents and new frothering-at-the-mouthers).
(Annoyingly, there doesn’t seem to be a link or clear citation to the Daily Beast’s report in the above-excerpted article. I realise it is (probably) easy-to-find at the moment, but as time passes (e.g., a few months from now), that quite possibly won’t be the case.)
Taking down the wall that separates church and state in the USA:
The House voted Thursday to make it harder for the government to punish churches that get involved in politics.
In a 217-199 vote, lawmakers approved legislation barring the IRS from revoking the tax-exempt status of churches that back political candidates, unless it is specifically approved by the commissioner of the agency.
The provision, buried in a budget measure setting IRS funding for the upcoming year, amounts to a backdoor way around the so-called Johnson amendment, a half-century-old prohibition on nonprofits getting involved in political campaign activities.
Nonprofits denounced the measure, and noted it came only days after the Treasury Department announced it was dropping requirements that most charitable organizations disclose their big donors to the IRS. […]
In other news, blf in comment 196, thanks for posting that. It was a good read, and provided personal insight into the protests against Trump that were held in London.
blf @197 and 198, I know that Farage and Bannon are flying hither and thither to goad extreme right wingers into action, but I also see the celebrity status of both men diminishing. May their influence also wane.
[…] imagine if a foreign government, eager to secretly help put a specific candidate in power, decided to start funneling money to specific churches, knowing that those ministries would in turn use the resources to support that candidate. The churches would never have to disclose any of this, and the public would be kept in the dark.
The GOP proposal fixes a problem that doesn’t exist. There’s no public demand for such a change, and there’s no reason to create this campaign-finance nightmare.
But the efforts continue anyway. This week wasn’t the first time House Republicans approved a change to the status quo, but in each previous instance, the Senate has balked. We’ll see soon enough whether this time is any different.
Trump’s response seems to be to dump Cohen. For good this time?
Inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer’s office (early in the morning) – almost unheard of. Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client – totally unheard of & perhaps illegal. The good news is that your favorite President did nothing wrong!
First, there was no “break into” Cohen’s office. A legally obtained warrant allowed entry into the office (and other places), and it allowed the seizure of documents, etc. Trump continues to repeat “break in” as if the Southern District of NY had done something criminal.
Also, Cohen was a less a “lawyer” than a “fixer.” A vanishingly small amount of the material taken by investigators was deemed to be in the “privileged” category thanks to attorney-client privilege.
And, yes, Cohen can tape Trump.
[…] New York is a “one-party” consent state, meaning recordings can legally be made without anyone else’s knowledge.
CNN reported on Friday that Cohen — well known for quietly recording conversations — taped several discussions he had with Trump, including a phone call about a payment that was made to a former Playboy model who has said she had a longterm sexual relationship with Trump.
Trump reportedly did not know about the recordings, which are now in the FBI’s possession, and was hurt when he heard of their existence.
“I can’t believe Michael would do this to me.” […]
This news has made for some memorable headlines. As part of the new, Trumpian reality in the USA, the “Manhattan Madam” has been added to the Russia probe. Mueller has subpoenaed Kristin Davis, the infamous “Manhattan Madam” who also is a former Roger Stone aide.
Roger Stone is spinning this as harassment of him. More details:
[…] Davis was jailed for running a prostitution ring that was used by New York governor Elliot Spitzer, who resigned in 2008 after he was caught admitting he was a client. Stone managed Davis’ short-lived 2010 gubernatorial campaign in New York.
Stone suggested Mueller’s subpoena of Davis could be payback for his reporting on Infowars during an appearance on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 Friday night:
“In my view, in all honesty, this is a fishing expedition. Perhaps it is the payback for the fact that I broke the story yesterday on Infowars that Tony Podesta has been, that the special counsel has asked for immunity for him in the Manafort investigation, or the Manafort prosecution. I know that has not yet been reported on CNN, but I reported it yesterday at Infowars. I have multiple sources. Fox has also reported it. I believe it to be true. Perhaps this is payback for that.”
Oh, no. Not another Roy-Moore type of pedophile. Birds of a feather?
Failed Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore was endorsed by Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin despite numerous accusations of Moore’s inappropriate sexual behavior with minors. Now Entrekin has also been accused of having sex with underage girls.
AL.com, the publication that broke much of the news regarding Moore’s alleged sexual misconduct, reports Entrekin is under investigation after being accused of sexual misconduct at “drug-fueled parties he hosted for fellow law enforcement officers and other adult men in the early nineties.” […]
Sheesh! The number of immigrant children being detained in Texas continues to rise!
A new report in The Texas Tribune found that despite a federal court order that immigrant children separated from their families be reunited with their parents, the number of of youngsters being detained in the state is on the rise.
According to The Tribune, the number of children housed in Texas shelters rose from 4,919 on June 21 to 5,024 on July 13. This includes both immigrant children who arrived at the border unaccompanied and children that were separated from their families by federal authorities.
The report says that there are applications for up to four additional shelters to be built in Texas. The shelters would be built to “care for unaccompanied boys and girls up to 17 years old or as young as infants.”
These findings come on the heels of the Trump administration’s claims that it has reunited hundreds of children with their families. The administration claims it currently has 2,551 immigrant children between the ages of 5 and 17 in its care who were separated from their parents under Trump’s zero-tolerance policy. So far, only 364 of those children have been reunited.
Children currently being held also face extremely harsh living conditions. Previous reporting has found that some children are being housed in vacant warehouses, while others are being sent to unsafe homes. […]
The former C.I.A. operative Jack Devine watched Donald Trump’s performance standing next to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday, and his first thought was, “There is no way Trump is a Russian agent.” The proof, he told me, was right in front of us. If Trump were truly serving as a Russian intelligence asset, there would have been an obvious move for him to make during his joint press conference with Putin. He would have publicly lambasted the Russian leader, unleashing as theatrical a denunciation as possible. He would have told Putin that he may have been able to get away with a lot of nonsense under Barack Obama, but all that would end now: America has a strong President and there will be no more meddling. Instead, Trump gave up his single best chance to permanently put to rest any suspicion that he is working to promote Russian interests.
[…] Trump shows no signs that he can be gratified by secret triumphs. He seems to need everyone, everywhere, to see whatever it is that he thinks deserves praise. His need for public attention is a trait that would likely cause most spies to avoid working with Trump.
There is no need to assume that Trump was a formal agent of Russian intelligence to make sense of Trump’s solicitousness toward Putin. Keith Darden, an international-relations professor at American University, has studied the Russian use of kompromat—compromising material—and told me that he thinks it is likely that the President believes the Russians have something on him. “He’s never said a bad word about Putin,” Darden said. “He’s exercised a degree of self-control with respect to Russia that he doesn’t with anything else.” Darden said that this is evidence that Trump isn’t uniformly reckless in his words: “He is capable of being strategic. He knows there are limits, there are bounds on what he can say and do with respect to Russia.” […]
Darden believes it is unlikely that sexual kompromat would be effective on Trump. Allegations of sexual harassment, extramarital affairs, and the payment of hush money to hide indiscretions have failed to significantly diminish the enthusiasm of Trump’s core supporters. But another common form of kompromat—proof of financial crimes—could be more politically and personally damaging.
Trump has made a lot of money doing deals with businesspeople from the former Soviet Union, and at least some of these deals bear many of the warning signs of money laundering and other financial crimes. […]
[…] skeptical that Putin, years ago, ordered an effort to collect kompromat on Trump. Instead, it is possible that there is kompromat in the hands of several different business groups in the former Soviet Union. Each would have bits and pieces of damaging information and might have found subtle (or not so subtle) ways to communicate that fact to both Trump and Putin. Putin would likely have gathered some of that material […]
If everyone sees potential land mines everywhere, it dramatically increases the price for anybody stepping out of line.
The scenario that, to my mind, makes the most sense of the given facts and requires the fewest fantastical leaps is that, a decade or so ago, Trump, naïve, covetous, and struggling for cash, may have laundered money for a business partner from the former Soviet Union or engaged in some other financial crime. […] He fears there is kompromat out there—maybe a lot of it—but he doesn’t know precisely what it is, who has it, or what might set them off. […]
In ICE detention, parents who were seeking asylum due to threats of violence or harm back home are being pressured to abandon their claims.
The article provides a lot more detail than my excerpt posted here shows. It’s worth reading.
[…] I received a phone call from Linda Corchado, an immigration attorney in El Paso, Texas. One of her clients, a Honduran asylum seeker in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who had been separated from her two children for more than a month, was being moved to a new detention facility. Abrupt transfers sometimes signal the start of the deportation process. But ice hadn’t said anything to Corchado ahead of the move. She spent the weekend calling and e-mailing ice officials, as well as staff at the Honduran consulate, to try to get more information. “I thought my client was supposed to be covered by a judge’s order,” she told me, in reference to an injunction, issued late last month, by Dana Sabraw, a federal judge in San Diego […]
The government had already missed one of the judge’s deadlines, set for last week, to reunite parents with children under the age of five. Corchado’s client was proof of this: she crossed the border with two daughters, a sixteen-year-old and a two-year-old. Fearing that her client might be deported before being reunited with them, Corchado got in touch with the American Civil Liberties Union […] Corchado wasn’t the only lawyer to contact the A.C.L.U. with such a story. On Monday morning, the A.C.L.U. filed an emergency motion, and in response Sabraw issued a stay, blocking, for one week, the deportation of adults who were supposed to be reunited with their children.
The judge’s additional intervention was an acknowledgement that simply telling the government to reunite families wasn’t enough to make it actually happen. […] lawyers had worried about parents who were agreeing to voluntary departure—essentially, deportation—either because they were distraught after being separated from their kids, confused, or misled to believe that they would see their children sooner if they agreed to sign whatever forms the government put in front of them. […]
“People were told, ‘You don’t have the option to seek asylum and be reunited with your children,’ ” [said] Gracie Willis. […] “The government plan is to deport parents who have final orders of removal and then the parents will decide whether to leave their children behind,” Lee Gelernt, of the A.C.L.U., told me.
[…] “From my very first day in detention, agents said, in front of my daughters, that I was a criminal,” [Wendy Santos] told me. “They said I was going to jail, that they were going to deport me. I said to one of them, ‘If you promise me that I won’t be separated from my children, I’ll sign whatever you want.’ But he said to me, ‘No, you’re a criminal. You’re going to jail first.’ ” A few days later, from a federal prison in New Mexico, Santos managed to call her longtime boyfriend, Miguel Calix. […] Together, they agreed that Santos should pursue her asylum claim while Calix tried to get the girls out of government custody. When he called a caseworker at the shelter, however, she told him that immigration authorities wouldn’t allow it. “I am a U.S. citizen with no criminal record,” Calix told me. “And yet I couldn’t reclaim my own daughter from the government.” […]
Charles bethea, writing for The New Yorker, explains that Trump’s steel tariffs are already causing damage:
[Stuart Speyer is thepresident of Tennsco Corporation] His father founded the company in 1962, and it now counts seven hundred workers and reports annual revenues of more than a hundred million dollars. The company’s products include lockers, filing cabinets, bookcases, shelving, and library stacks—all of which count sheet metal among their primary components.
”Ninety-nine per cent” of the steel that Speyer buys, he recently explained to me, is manufactured by domestic suppliers, including Nucor, the biggest steelmaker in the U.S. This year, Nucor posted second-quarter profits twice as large as those it made during the same period in 2017—and 2017 had already been a great year for the steel business. Trump’s tariffs on imported steel are helping Nucor and others keep their prices high: a boon for steelmakers but a major concern for steel consumers like Tennsco.
“I don’t mind them making profits,” Speyer told me. “I believe in profits. But nobody is thinking of us consumers of steel downstream. There are scores of downstream jobs for every job in the steel industry. So we may save steel jobs, but there’s a lot more jobs at stake for steel consumers.” He added, “I’m not a happy camper.”
Steel usually accounts for a third of Tennsco’s manufacturing costs […] Last year, Speyer said, he bought forty thousand tons of steel. “For every penny the price of steel goes up per pound, we pay eight hundred thousand dollars more for steel annually,” he told me. “And now we’re talking a fifteen-cent increase for hot roll and ten cents for cold roll” […] “The cost we have to largely pass on is over ten million dollars. We can’t absorb it.” […]
“The U.S. steel industry is already highly insulated from foreign competition with over 160 trade actions in place limiting importing of steel.” […] U.S. steel was priced sixty-five-per-cent higher than the world export-market price and eighty-per-cent higher than China’s price: an untenable gap for U.S. steel consumers. [Those gaps have recently increased.] […]
“Let us hope cooler minds will prevail in Washington and a reasonable solution can be found to the trade dispute. I fear much of the damage will not be easily undone. […] It also would not hurt to reach out to your elected officials and express your concerns.” […]
Craig Umans is the president and C.E.O. of Pipp Mobile Storage Systems [said], “This President might save two hundred jobs in a steel mill,” he said, of Trump, “while impacting some twenty thousand jobs downstream. There’s such a disconnect there.” […] “We make the best effort to buy U.S. when we can,” he told me. “But we do business with China as well. You have to these days. You can’t help it. […] I hope I’m not forced to move completely to an Asia supplier.”
blfsays
blf in comment 196, thanks for posting that. It was a good read, and provided personal insight into the protests against Trump that were held in London.
Thanks. The authour, Ms Freeman, is one of my favourite Granuiad writers, along with Gary Younge and several others. She started(?) as a fashion journalist, and still writes a weekly(?) fashion column, which I’ve excerpted here previously on several occasions due to her snarking or spot-on comments about econ-/politi-fashionist absurdities. For some years now, she’s also been writing on other subjects.
There’s quite a lot of reader’s comments, but this one immediately caught my eye:
● “Never in the field of human conflict was so much damage done to so many by so few.” In reply: “The 99% should learn how to control the 1%, as opposed to being manipulated by it.”
In an unprecedented move, the FBI released a redacted version of the 400-page FISA application for a warrant to surveil Carter Page.
Spoiler alert, the document debunks all of the major Republican talking points, rebuts Carter Page’s claims, and shows Devin Nunes to be a clown:
The document blows the Devin Nunes memo out of the water.
The document confirms, once again, that the rightwing talking point claiming that the FISA warrant was based on the Steele dossier is both ignorant and wrong.
The document confirms, again, that Carter Page certainly should have been surveilled:
The FBI believes that Page has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government. There is probable cause that such activities involve or are about to involve violations of the criminal statutes of the United States.
The document confirms that four (4!) Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges all appointed by Republican presidents approved the FISA warrant
The document debunks the rightwing talking point that the judges were not properly informed concerning the Steele dossier:
[…] as Lawfare’s David Kris noted, “the footnote disclosing Steele’s possible bias takes up more than a full page in the applications, so there is literally no way the FISA Court could have missed it.”
The document confirms that Page had left the Trump campaign before the FISA warrant went into effect.
Nevertheless, Trump tweeted this nonsense at about 4:48 AM today:
Congratulations to @JudicialWatch and @TomFitton on being successful in getting the Carter Page FISA documents. As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of “Justice” and FBI misled the courts. Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam!
————-
Looking more & more like the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon (surveillance) for the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC. Ask her how that worked out – she did better with Crazy Bernie. Republicans must get tough now. An illegal Scam!
——————
Andrew McCarthy – “I said this could never happen. This is so bad that they should be looking at the judges who signed off on this stuff, not just the people who gave it. It is so bad it screams out at you.” On the whole FISA scam which led to the rigged Mueller Witch Hunt!
————-
.@PeteHegseth on @FoxNews “Source #1 was the (Fake) Dossier. Yes, the Dirty Dossier, paid for by Democrats as a hit piece against Trump, and looking for information that could discredit Candidate #1 Trump. Carter Page was just the foot to surveil the Trump campaign…” ILLEGAL!
From Talking Points Memo:
[…] The New York Times and Washington Post both noted that they hadn’t found another example of a FISC warrant application that had been released publicly since the enactment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act four decades ago.
Revealing that the physical world could no longer bear the weight of numerous contradictory realities, sources confirmed Friday that dozens of Whites Houses have begun to leak from a temporal vortex as President Trump’s rapidly changing story of meeting Putin tears apart space-time. “A White House is blinking in and out of reality atop the Washington Monument, and another has materialized inside the wall of a Georgetown apartment building — it appears the fourth dimensional plane is collapsing in on itself as Trump’s untenable, competing statements rupture the very foundation of time and relativity,” said astrophysicist Maria Steagall, who confirmed an entire unit of the Army National Guard was instantly vaporized attempting to enter the vortex, and several members of the White House press corps were reportedly stretched out for the entire length of the Milky Way Galaxy and then collapsed to the size of a single atom after simply trying to make sense of the president’s conflicting remarks. “One witness reported seeing 6,000 Mike Pences pouring out of a small wormhole in the Cabinet room before suddenly vanishing. Countless universes are colliding and folding over each other every time Trump disputes his earlier statements; this is one of the greatest traumas the fabric of the universe has suffered since the Big Bang. In fact, the sheer heat being created by all these Putin stories battling each other to stabilize space-time may cause a black hole to form at the Earth’s core, causing the planet to implode.” At press time, scientists studying the vortex had confirmed that Trump was President in every single Earth reality and would be forever.
The mildly deranged penguin claims The Onion is being uncharacteristically subdued and mild.
From Adam Peck, writing for Think Progress: The only thing the newly released FISA documents show is that Republicans have been lying for months.
Excerpt:
Oddly, both Donald Trump and Carter Page tried to spin Saturday’s disclosure as some kind of victory. Several members of the far-right fringe in Congress — led by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) — lied to the public several months ago via a memo that falsely asserted the FBI sought the warrant on the sole basis of the infamous Steele dossier […]
As Democrats and the FBI later disclosed — and as Saturday’s release makes clear — the dossier was far from the only evidence provided to the FISA court, and its inclusion contained a lengthy caveat noting the politicized nature and unsubstantiated claims contained within the document. Incidentally, several of the allegations contained in the dossier have since been verified. On Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper invited Page to respond to Saturday’s revelations, and it took exactly one question for him to trip over the facts of the case.
“The document accuses you of being an ‘agent of a foreign power.’ Were you?,” asked Tapper.
“Jake, this is so ridiculous, it’s just beyond words,” said Page. “You know, it’s — you’re talking about misleading the courts. It’s just so misleading, going through those 400-plus page documents, where do we even begin? It’s literally a complete joke, and it only continues. It’s just really sad.”
After more stammering, Page finally got around to a “no,” before immediately admitting that he had, in fact, served as an advisor to the Kremlin and met several times with Russian officials during multiple trips to Russia over a period of years leading up to and including 2016.
Page went on to claim that the courts were misled by the FBI, alleging the agency knowingly relied on incorrect or incomplete information in seeking their warrant. He offered no basis for those allegations however, and the documents released on Saturday in fact make it clear that the FBI was very forthright about the sourcing of its information. […]
Chris Riddell in the Grauniad, All behind you, Boris Johnson (cartoon): “After the foreign secretary’s resignation, Chris Riddell gives his own take on David Low’s famous cartoon of Winston Churchill“.
Ha! That was hilarious, especially when compared to David Low’s cartoon. Perfect.
In other news, Trump is reportedly fuming over North Korea’s failure to honor his handshake.
[…] Among experts on North Korea, there was near universal agreement that Donald Trump’s much ballyhooed summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was a colossal failure and an utter waste of time.
The joint statement signed by both leaders contained exactly zero new commitments, and in fact undercut previous negotiations by failing to provide any timeline for North Korea’s promised denuclearization efforts.
Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at New America, offered this sobering assessment: “The summit statement is big on hyperbole and short on substance – it reads like it was written by the North Korean negotiating team. […]
[Trump tweeted]: “I have confidence that Kim Jong Un will honor the contract we signed &, even more importantly, our handshake. We agreed to the denuclearization of North Korea. China, on the other hand, may be exerting negative pressure on a deal because of our posture on Chinese Trade-Hope Not!”
[…] Not a single Korean War service member’s remains have been returned to the United States, despite Trump’s claim that 200 fallen soldiers have already been repatriated. And there is evidence that North Korea is working to conceal the true scope of its nuclear weapons program despite its purported commitment to denuclearization.
[…] Trump has requested daily briefings about the status of the ongoing discussions with North Korea, and is angry that the media’s assessment of his sham summit has largely come to pass. Perhaps next time he should insist upon a pinky promise. […]
Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer is sticking to his assertion that […] Trump had the largest inauguration audience in history.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Spicer acknowledged that his assertion that Trump’s inauguration was the largest in history was misleading. […]
“If you look at the statement that I actually made — and I will admit that we should have made it clearer — we should have focused on total audience size and not let people believe that we were talking about the Mall itself, I will concede that,” he told the Post.
He said, however, that the number of people who viewed Trump’s inauguration was larger, because of technologies that were not available to past presidents, like Barack Obama.
“But where has any evidence been that suggests that I’m wrong about the total population that watched it?” he added. “This isn’t a partisan thing. The bottom line is that there are platforms available today that weren’t available for Obama.” […]
[…] By far and away, my choice for “Comment of the Week” goes to Chuck Rosenberg, a former federal prosecutor. Talking on MSNBC about Trump’s invitation for Vlad the Imp to pop over this fall and plant some bugs in the Oval Office, Rosenberg quipped, “I just hope that Mr Putin doesn’t decide to bring his children with him, because they’ll be forcibly separated at the border.” Priceless.
No matter how you cut it, this was a disastrous week for Trump. […] And bless his little heart, Rudy Ghouliani desperately tried to keep up with his boss. Only a drooling dotard can say that Donald Trump discussing with Michael Cohen about whether to pay Karen McDougle directly to shut her up, or repaying AMI for doing it for them with a check rather than cash was somehow exculpatory. […]
The same has happened with Trump’s trade war. The reasoning for the action was so convoluted that even Trump supporters could see “Stupid” written all over it. Non retiring GOP incumbents like Jodi Ernst and even Mitch McConnell have directly criticized the tariffs, and there is even talk of legislative action to take Baby Trump’s toy away from him. once again, Trump is threatening to double down with more sanctions on China and the EU. And as a result, some of Trump’s greatest supporters, Midwest soy farmers, are converging on Washington, to try to convince Republican lawmakers to give The Cheeto Prophet more of whatever it is that they use to keep him docile.
And now the debacle in Helsinki […] Robert Mueller rained on that particular parade before it even left the staging area, by indicting the 12 GRU intelligence officers. Now, not only is everybody screaming bloody murder about his press conference, but Putin is slyly sticking it to Trump by leaking some of the goodies that Trump may or may not have agreed to in that private meeting to the world. Trump has tried a twofer here. First, he had Sarah “Who’s a pretty birdie” Sanders tweet out his invitation for Putin to the Casa Blanco. This idea is going over like a lead balloon, so he went to his backup, misdirection, leaking the story about the secret Cohen recording to change the subject. But, while the media is more than happy to remind everybody what a sex degenerate Trump is, there’s plenty of time left in the hour to hammer the $1 Store Caligula about Putin. […]
[…]
From 1 August, thanks to the Trump administration, a commercially available software blueprint will allow people to make their own guns using ABS plastic resin and a 3D printer.
The green light came late last month, with a court settlement between the designer of the blueprint and the US state department. Gun rights advocates celebrated.
[…]
The lawsuit arose from a software file developed by a University of Texas law student, Cody Wilson. It was a blueprint for a single-shot 3D-printed handgun, named The Liberator. The state department ordered Wilson to cease work, arguing that making the blueprint available would be akin to a violation of arms export statutes.
The libertarian-minded Wilson swiftly turned from a hobbyist to a crusader. All I tried to do in law school was print a pistol and put it on the internet, he told the Guardian in 2016. Now I’m on a ride I can’t get off.
Wilson sued on the grounds that his design was protected by the first amendment. He also founded a non-profit, Defense Distributed. Celebrating the settlement, he tweeted an image of flowers laid at a plaque in memory of “American gun control”.
[…]
blfsays
The Flemish tourist board, Toerisme Vlaanderen, hilariously trolls farcebork, 16th c. Rubens paintings versus 21st c. Social media regulations (video). The “fbi” — not quite sure what that stands for, “Flemmish(? Flanders?) something…”, I presume — “Social media inspectors: For your safety”, prevent “‘nudity viewers’ with a Facebook account from viewing nudity”. What’s going on is explained briefly in the Grauniad, Barefaced cheek: Rubens nudes fall foul of Facebook censors: “Flanders tourist board chides firm for removing ads featuring the Flemish master’s works”.
War-mongering from team Trump, and from Trump himself:
After President Donald Trump delivered a cryptic warning to Iran on Twitter Sunday evening, his national security adviser backed up his threats and mirrored the President’s war-mongering language.
“I spoke to the President over the last several days, and President Trump told me that if Iran does anything at all to the negative, they will pay a price like few countries have ever paid before,” Bolton said in a written statement.
Trump responded Sunday evening to what has been interpreted as threats from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who sent Trump a message not to “play with the lion’s tail or you will regret” and that “war with Iran is the mother of all wars.” […]
Tensions between Trump and Iran have been high since the President decided to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, […]
To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!
The New York Daily News is local media for New York, but now it has been seriously hobbled.
Dozens of reporters lost their jobs Monday, and the future of local media in New York looks bleaker than ever.
Tronc, publishing company and enemy of local news everywhere, sunk its claws into The New York Daily News Monday, laying off half the editorial staff and carving out the heart of local news in the U.S.’s largest city.
Staffers received an unsigned, nameless email from Tronc’s “talent and engagement” team Monday, which included the announcement that the News would cut 50 percent of their editorial staff as part of an effort to “transform the New York Daily News into a truly digitally-focused enterprise.” […]
As one News reporter told CNN, “Generic from tronc. Perfect — death by faceless hacks.” […]
The news outlet has 11 Pulitzer prizes to its name.
“Local journalism acts as a fundamental check on power,” the News tweeted. “It attempts to give the disenfranchised in our community a megaphone to amplify injustices that would otherwise be swept under the rug.”
The NY Daily News has consistently been among the most fearless papers covering Trump, from his time as a real estate mogul in the city to his presidency today. Recently, […] the paper [called Trump] “the clown who plays king.” […]
The mass layoffs at the News is hardly the first time Tronc has slashed editorial operations at local outlets. In April, it laid off dozens of employees at the Los Angeles Times, […] and in March, the company cut more than a dozen staffers at the Chicago Tribune. […]
Monday’s layoffs come a little more than eight months after billionaire Trump ally and Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts shut down two local news sites, DNAinfo and Gothamist, after staffers at the two sites voted to unionize. The move put 115 staffers out of work in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.
From former editor-in-chief Jim Rich:
If you hate democracy and think local governments should operate unchecked and in the dark, then today is a good day for you. […]
Just a guy sitting at home watching journalism being choked into extinction.
Nothing like a bold war to distract from internal issues.
This, of course, yields also for Rouhani. – F.O.@216
Did you actually read the article you linked to? It says the precise opposite of what your comment suggests it does:
Hassan Rouhani. He is increasingly being seen as a lame duck as he proves unable to fight off hardliners and pursue his agenda. One pledge he has delivered on – the landmark 2015 nuclear deal – is unravelling after Donald Trump pulled the US out of the framework in May.
[…]
A Kuwaiti social media star is facing a backlash after criticising new laws improving conditions for the country’s Filipino domestic workers.
Sondos Alqattan, an Instagram star and makeup artist with over 2.3 million followers, criticised new laws giving Filipino workers a day off per week and preventing employers from seizing their passports.
How can you have a servant at home who keeps their own passport with them? What’s worse is they have one day off every week, she said in a video posted online, which has gone viral and attracted criticism in the Middle East and the Philippines.
Alqattan slated reforms introduced in May to protect the rights of Filipino domestic workers: If they run away and go back to their country, who will refund me? Honestly I disagree with this law. I don’t want a Filipino maid any more.
[…]
Roughly 660,000 people out of Kuwait’s population of 4 million are domestic migrant workers. According to Human Rights Watch, the country’s “kafala” system, which gives employers extensive powers over migrant workers, often forces them to remain with abusive bosses, while those who flee can be punished and imprisoned.
Some searching suggests a few companies are now suspending or cutting their ties with this slave-owner, but not everyone gets it, Brands begin to cut ties with controversial Kuwaiti influencer (Gulf News — whose reliability is unknown to me — edits in {curly braces}):
While three beauty companies have distanced themselves from her, many of her largest sponsors including MAC Cosmetics have yet to comment
[…]
When reached by Gulf News, the founder of a Kuwaiti company that has sponsored Alqattan, said she had received a large amount of messages following the influencer’s remarks.
It’s {unfair} to judge without giving her a right to defend herself, the founder said.
I’m with {giving maids} the time off, but the passport, no — unless the country makes it a law not to leave the country without a letter from the employer, she said. We pay money to get workers, around $4,000, and she might stay a week, and if she doesn’t like the situation, she leaves. Who will compensate me?
In other words: The slave is expensive and I don’t want her (usually) running away. If she does escape, it’s all her fault. I even now let her have a day off. Ungrateful chattel.
Kafala slavery is practiced in “Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.” In Qatar, “[m]ost of the workers labor under near-feudal conditions that Human Rights Watch has likened to ‘forced labor’.” (Qatar is home to Al Jazeera, who does not (yet?) have anything on this story — this could be benign / coincidence, but a known problem with Al Jazeera is they are very muted on anything which is, or could be construed to be, critical of Qatar (which is not saying they are a Qatari propaganda site, only they do appear to practice self-censorship on some Qatari stories).)
blfsays
Oh for feck’s sake, China: Hundreds of thousands of children given fake vaccines (video): “Executives from China’s second-largest pharmaceutical company, Changsheng Bio-Technology Company, have admitted to falsifying test results and producing fake vaccines.”
Pharmaceutical firm pursued big profits through aggressive marketing and, according to court documents, even bribery
[… I]t was exposed supplying ineffective DPT (diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus) vaccines to be used on babies as young as three months old, and forging data for its rabies vaccines […]
[…]
Changsheng Bio-tech has so far been fined 3.4 million yuan over the DPT vaccines — a small sum for the company, which reported 566 million yuan in net profits in 2017, according to its annual report. It also received 48.3 million yuan in new government subsidies last year.
Piece in Forbes magazine said libraries ‘don’t have the same value they used to’ and cost taxpayers too much
Panos Mourdoukoutas, a professor of economics at LIU Post in New York, wrote for Forbes that libraries don’t have the same value they used to and should be replaced permanently by Amazon book shops.
At the core, Amazon has provided something better than a local library without the tax fees. This is why Amazon should replace local libraries, wrote Mourdoukouta. The move would save taxpayers money and enhance the stockholder value of Amazon all in one fell swoop.
Librarians and library users have responded furiously, arguing that libraries provide services that could never be matched by a private company, that they are key places for those who are disenfranchised to use services, and represent value for money for the taxpayer.
“[… A] little research would prevent you from publishing this kind of twaddle,” wrote the Harris County Public Library in Texas in a response to the article on Facebook.
“Perhaps, in the future, you could ask a librarian for help. Study after study has shown that public libraries more than pay for themselves. In Texas, for example, for every $1 of taxpayer money spent on public libraries, public libraries return $4.64 to the economy.”
[…]
The San Francisco public library speculated that Forbes might have an ulterior motive for the story: “Maybe @Forbes doesn’t like that you can download their magazine free with your #SF library card.”
[…] Amanda Oliver, who has been a librarian in Washington DC for the last seven years, said the value of libraries could be seen in the services provided to a huge range of people.
“It’s librarians helping people fill out free housing forms and visa forms and all things related to basic human needs,” wrote Oliver. “It’s shelter when it’s freezing or raining or scorching hot. It’s access to free newspapers and conversation. It’s so much for so many.” [And] “Visit your local library for one day. Sit and watch who comes in to use the services — it’s not just people checking out free books. It’s one of few places in our society where the underserved can be treated with dignity and respect. It’s WiFi. It’s translators. It’s kindness.”
[…]
Librarians also took issue with the argument that libraries were no longer needed as venues for public events or as places for people to read, work and socialise because school auditoriums or coffee shops like Starbucks were now being used for those purposes.
“Did you know that school auditoriums aren’t easy to rent (or cheap)? … Thanks for having absolutely no idea how libraries work in 2018,” wrote one librarian. […]
[…]
As one Twitter user wrote, watching the librarians savage the article online: “Damn library twitter rolls hard”.
New authorial move from Hair Furor and his team, as announced by Sarah Huckabee Sanders:
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday that President Donald Trump is “looking to take away” the security clearances of former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden, former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.
Rand Paul added some fuel to the fire by making claims he cannot back up with evidence:
Is John Brennan monetizing his security clearance? Is John Brennan making millions of dollars divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on @realDonaldTrump ?
Today I will meet with the President and I will ask him to revoke John Brennan’s security clearance!
Brennan is being too effective on various media platforms when he criticizes Trump, therefore the authoritarian hammer is about to come down. I doubt that will silence former CIA Director John Brennan.
I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that the purpose of these previous officials retaining their security clearance wasn’t special honorary treatment for them but to aid national security – current officials can communicate with them about contemporary crises and issues for which they can provide useful background knowledge, and intelligence continuity is preserved. If that’s the case, removing their clearance out of spite is just another action that harms national security.
Let’s take a look at a post from Steve Benen, a post that includes an analysis of Trump’s view about tariffs as revealed in an interview on CNBC, <blockquote<This is the time. You know the expression we’re playing with the bank’s money,” he [Trump] told CNBC’s Joe Kernen in a “Squawk Box” interview aired Friday. […]
Trump added the market would likely be much higher if he didn’t escalate the trade issues with China and the rest of the world.
From Benen:
If you’ve ever wondered how Donald Trump managed to lose money running a casino, he occasionally helps answer the question.
Here’s the president’s pitch in a nutshell: Wall Street gains have generated a certain amount of wealth, which Trump believes puts him “ahead.” If his trade war prevents the stock markets from doing even better, it will mean less generated wealth, but it won’t wipe out all of the previous gains.
Ergo, he’s “playing with the bank’s money.” No matter how bad things get as a result of his agenda, the gains probably won’t be wiped out entirely, which means he won’t fall “behind.”
Except this isn’t a responsible way to look at the debate. As Trump really ought to know by now, the stock market is not the economy, which makes this the wrong metric. To see Wall Street gains and losses as some real-time daily barometer of the nation’s economic health is absurd.
And even if the White House were to consider market gains as the only thing that matters, it’s not exactly reassuring for Trump to tell investors that he’s deliberately pursuing policies that he knows will undermine their returns. Indeed, he’s practically encouraging people to get out of the market.
What’s more, it’s not really “the bank’s money” the president is playing with; it’s our money. The more Trump’s policies have an adverse effect on the economy, the more real people will feel the pinch. (Banks, meanwhile, will be fine.)
How is it, exactly, that the president is going to tell a whole lot of struggling farmers that their plight doesn’t much matter because the S&P 500 gives him some “leeway”?
I have not seen any evidence that Brennan is abusing his security clearance. Ditto for the other names on that list. Kushner on the other hand did abuse his.
This idea that “John Brennan [is] making millions of dollars divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on @realDonaldTrump” is a conspiracy theory primed to metastasize on Fox News and on other rightwing media.
Susan Hennessey confirms what I thought: “Also, former high-ranking national security officials typically stay in access in order to support their successors and provide insight and continuity when necessary.”
Remember those five witnesses to whom Mueller granted a limited kind of immunity so that they could testify against Paul Manafort? W know know who the witnesses are:
The witnesses, who Mueller’s team had sought to keep from public view until they were called to testify, are:
James Brennan
Donna Duggan
Conor O’Brien
Cindy Laporta
Dennis Raico
I have not seen any evidence that Brennan is abusing his security clearance. Ditto for the other names on that list. Kushner on the other hand did abuse his.
And as the tweet to which Hennessey is responding points out, Comey and McCabe haven’t had a clearance for months.
Here’s what Sarah Huckabee Sanders said today as she obviously repeated the current conspiracy theory:
Sanders said Trump believes the former officials “politicized” their positions by accusing Trump of inappropriate contact with Russia, and she said in some cases they “monetized their clearances,” without clarifying what she meant.
“The fact that people with security clearances are making baseless charges provides inappropriate legitimacy to accusations with zero evidence,” Sanders said.
Irony meter alert: Sanders has zero evidence to back up her accusation.
Lynna @ #232, I recognize several of those names (O’Brien, Laporta, and Raico) from the email chains in the evidence list. They appear to be either his financial managers or lawyers or representatives of banks he was dealing with, which makes sense. I had expected Calk to be on the list, though.
KGsays
It’s [the public library is] one of few places in our society where the underserved can be treated with dignity and respect. – blf@225 quoting a librarian
That, of course, is precisely why the contributor to Forbes hates them so much.
Trump went after the Washington Post and Amazon … again.
The Amazon Washington Post has gone crazy against me ever since they lost the Internet Tax Case in the U.S. Supreme Court two months ago. Next up is the U.S. Post Office which they use, at a fraction of real cost, as their “delivery boy” for a BIG percentage of their packages….
….In my opinion the Washington Post is nothing more than an expensive (the paper loses a fortune) lobbyist for Amazon. Is it used as protection against antitrust claims which many feel should be brought?
Trump’s claim that Amazon uses the U.S. Post Office “at a fraction of real” has been debunked dozens of times, including by the U.S. Post Office. Trump continues to repeat the lie anyway.
And Trump is also wrong about taxes on internet goods, at least as far as Amazon is concerned:
The president has previously accused Amazon of failing to collect sales taxes in certain states. In fact, the retail giant already collects taxes on items purchased directly from Amazon. And while third-party vendors aren’t required to collect those taxes, Amazon has backed legislation that would allow states to require online sellers to collect those taxes.
Yes, judging from the context (evidence list available here), they all appear to be financial people involved with his loans/mortgages and possibly taxes.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Monday slammed President Trump for considering a revocation of his and other former intelligence officials’ security clearances, calling it a “petty thing to do.” […]
“The security clearance has nothing to do with how I, or any of us feel about the president. And I don’t get the briefings, I don’t have access to any classified information,” Clapper said, calling the continuing clearance a “courtesy” for former intelligence officials.
“I don’t know what to say,” he added. “I think this is just a very, very petty – a petty thing to do. And that’s about all I’ll say about it.”
Clapper added that typically, an official would go through a formal process in which their security clearance would be revoked or suspended because of an allegation of misuse or wrongdoing. He added that the president does have the legal power to take away clearances unilaterally.
“If he chooses to do it for political reasons, well that’s – I think that’s a terrible precedent and I think that’s a very sad commentary. And it’s an abuse of the system,” Clapper said. […]
“GOP Lawmaker Apologizes, But Won’t Resign Over ‘Ugly,’ Racist Behavior In TV Show”: “After footage aired Sunday of Georgia state Rep. Jason Spencer (R) shouting racial slurs and pulling down his pants during a fake terrorism defense class on Sacha Baron Cohen’s Showtimes series, the lawmaker has apologized but refused to resign….”
I watched the latest episode earlier and I’m still in shock.
NBC News: The 5 names of the potential ‘use immunity’ witnesses in the Paul Manafort trial have been unsealed.
One person named is an employee of the Federal Savings Bank and is tied to this transaction [Calk – SC] that NBC News first reported on earlier this year:…
MORE: Based on a review of public filings and reports it appears all 5 are employees of institutions that have been involved with Paul Manafort’s finances.
Previously, Fox News reported that Tony Podesta was offered use immunity and he is NOT named in these filings.
tomhsays
@ 227
Rand Paul has some leverage with Trump since he claims to be undecided on the SC vote, so Trump will probably listen to him since it’s what Trump wants to do anyway.
Would be pretty fun if the Democrats took the House in November; then Trump and Pence had to resign or were impeached for collusion, lying, etc.; and we ended up with President Nancy Pelosi.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@SC #243:
“Georgia state Rep. Jason Spencer (R) shouting racial slurs and pulling down his pants”
[…]
I watched the latest episode earlier and I’m still in shock.
Geeeez. And that stinger after the credits.
Summary: Waving a knife at the camera, shouting another racial slur, chopping off an effigy’s sausage penis, takes a bite (?), and threatening to do that to anyone from the Middle East then feed it to them so they’ll be unable to rape anyone. Jumpcut, “I’m Jason Spencer. I’m an elected official in the state of Georgia.” 0.0
“New from latest Manafort hearing: Govt. said explicitly that banker Stephen Calk knew Manafort submitted a fraudulent loan application but approved it anyway because he wanted a Trump job.”
Manu Raju: “Just asked Nunes if he stood by all the contents of his memo after release of Carter Page docs – and he attacked CNN instead. I then asked him if he read FISA application (since in Feb he acknowledged not reading it) and he said: ‘You are ignoring what I said’ and walked on floor.”
A casting agency advertised for paid extras to come and stand outside the gates of Downing Street when the emir of Qatar visits on Tuesday, amid accusations that the country’s Gulf rivals are paying protesters to oppose the country’s activities and create the impression of an upswell of British support against the country.
“This is NOT a film or TV production,” said the advert from booking agency Extra People, offering £20 to respondents willing to take part. “The company are looking for a large group of people to fill space outside Downing Street during the visit of the president of Quatar [sic]. You will not have to do or say anything, they just want to fill space.”
A Qatari diplomat blamed the country’s regional rivals, who have placed it under an economic blockade since last year, creating a vicious and expensive media war often fought through lobbyists, online advertising and selective leaks to journalists in the UK and US.
…
The casting agency later retracted the advert and said that they did not want to be involved in providing extras for the event, which was arranged to coincide with the arrival of Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to meet prime minister Theresa May.
…
The agency declined to identify their client but said they backed out when they realised the event would involve the extras protesting outside the gates of Downing Street.
…
The advert raises questions over the growing influence of Gulf money in the UK, with the ongoing political struggle between Qatar and the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. It follows an agreement by the Independent to licence its brands to a publishing business with close links to the Saudi government to produce Middle Eastern versions of its publications….
Michael A. McFaul, a former U.S. diplomat and fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, will visit the White House on Tuesday for a private meeting with President Trump’s top adviser on Russia, according to two people familiar with the planned meeting.
McFaul, who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, will meet with Fiona Hill, a senior director on the National Security Council who joined the president for last week’s summit with Putin in Helsinki, said the people familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Hill is widely seen within the administration as one of Trump’s most hawkish advisers on Russia and has written extensively and critically of Putin, including a 2013 biography of the former KGB officer.
Hill’s influence on Trump has drawn new scrutiny in recent days as the president has made overtures to Putin. But her willingness to meet with McFaul could be a sign that she is, at the least, interested in connecting with the Stanford University professor as McFaul deals with the fallout from an offer from Putin to Trump. […]
McFaul is one of the people that Putin would like to question/interrogate in Russia, an idea to which Trump initially agreed before he (surprise!) got a lot of negative feedback.
Team Trump finds yet another way to ignore facts when making policy decisions:
In a quest to shrink national monuments last year, senior Interior Department officials dismissed evidence these public lands boosted tourism and spurred archaeological discoveries, according to documents the department released this month and retracted a day later.
The thousands of pages of email correspondence chart how Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his aides instead tailored their survey of protected sites to emphasize the value of logging, ranching and energy development that would be unlocked if they were not designated national monuments.
Comments the department’s Freedom of Information Act officers made in the documents show that they sought to keep some of the references out of the public eye because they were “revealing [the] strategy” behind the review. […]
Trump rejected Putin’s offer to settle the conflict in eastern Ukraine with a referendum in the disputed region, the White House said. Okay, good. That’s one more really bad idea thrown in the trash.
The White House said Trump rejected the offer. My bet is that other people around Trump finally talked him out of accepting the idea. It took them from Monday to Friday to do so.
F.O.says
@KG #222: yes I did. I see it as Rouhani switching to nationalist rhetoric, but it’s entirely possible that my reading of his declaration was not as charitable as it could have been.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@Lynna, OM #253:
In a quest to shrink national monuments last year, senior Interior Department officials dismissed evidence these public lands boosted tourism and spurred archaeological discoveries
Reminds me of underhandedness I’d heard back in January / March…
They say things, and I think I understand what those words mean… but they mean them in ways that are entirely different
I have heard over and over again, that Obama making Bears Ears a national monument was the biggest “land grab” in the history of the United States. […] Zero acres! […] The federal government saying, “Y’know, we have this land already. We’re gonna put a line around it and add extra protection” […] That’s not what land grab means!
[…]
Zinke had the temerity to talk about opening Bears Ears back up to traditional uses of the land. When I hear “traditional use”, I think of, “Native Americans collect medicinal plants there.” I think, “Evangelical Christians baptize their people in that stream, something they’ve done for generations.” That’s a traditional use. Traditional use is not COAL MINING!
[…]
The Secretary of the Interior, and the people who support him, characterize as a “special interest”: people who like to go outside. So if you like going outside, you’re a member of a special interest group! […] But the NON-special interests are people who own coal mining companies and uranium mining companies.
It is “War is peace”. It is “Freedom is slavery”. It is “Ignorance is strength”.
Sara Head (host):
If they come out right away like, “I wanna mine for uranium in Bears Ears because reasons!” everybody’s gonna be like “No, we don’t want that.”
But if they change the definition of the words that people are already using […], and they make them bad, then it’s a lot easier to change and control the narrative. Then people can be like, “Oh, you’re not mining for uranium in Bears Ears. You’re giving the land back to the people.”
Podcast: Archaeological Fantasies – 2018-03-05 #93 Bears Ears Rock Art with Vaughn Hadenfelt (1:02:00)
[Zinke’s] main look at Bears Ears was flying over it in a Black Hawk helicopter, one little horseback ride, and one short walk. […] he decides 85% of that monument can disappear.
My organization was one of the few that he met with on the environmental side. I got 30 minutes with him when he came to Utah. I started my little spiel about Bears Ears and the 100,000 archaeological sites.
He stopped me quickly, and he said, “Wait a minute. A hundred thousand archaeological sites? How many of these sites have been recorded?”
[…]
Well, we’ve only actually surveyed 8-10% of the land area […], and within that survey, we’d recorded at this point 30,000 archaeological sites. If that’s only 10%, we still have a lot to go…
“Well,” Secretary Zinke said, “then that’s what you really have. You have 30 thousand sites in the Bears Ears.”
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @256, thanks for that excellent summary. The “War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery,” and “Ignorance is strength” section was particularly good. Also, I hadn’t seen that debunking of “land grab” before. It made me laugh. But at the same time, this is all so painful.
Zinke seems to be incapable of absorbing or evaluating all of the relevant information, as shown by his reaction concerning the archaeological sites in the Bears Ears.
In other news, Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, doesn’t agree with Trump:
Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Monday that Russia is “never going to be our friend,” but downplayed concerns over President Trump’s meeting and press conference last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We don’t trust Russia. We don’t trust Putin. We never will. They’re never going to be our friend. That’s just a fact,” Haley told Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody.
The Attorney General of the United States, Jeff Sessions, participated briefly in a “Lock her up!” chant when he spoke to Turning Point USA’s High School Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. today.
“Lock her up!” Sessions said. “Well, so, I heard that a long time during the last campaign.” He laughed.
While he had a laugh about the prospect of throwing Clinton behind bars, Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is actually in prison awaiting trial for money laundering, tax evasion, and conspiring against the United States.[…]
[…]
After winning a record number of primary contests last month, women could make up nearly two-thirds of the statehouse by 7 November, the Reno Gazette Journal reported.
“In the past, we’ve had to ask women five, six, seven times to run for office,” said Danna Lovell, director of Emerge Nevada, a Democrat-linked candidate-training non-profit based in Las Vegas. “Whereas now, they’re worried. They’re scared about what’s going on in their communities … I think there’s an extremely great possibility for a female majority.”
[…]
a_ray_in_dilbert_spacesays
Jason Spencer really isn’t to blame. His performance just loses something when not enjoyed by the light of a burning cross.
The anchors on Fox News and Friends were caught off-guard when they thought they were about to interview a Democrat who supports Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s actions at the Mexico–US border. Instead they were greeted by Barbara L’Italien, a Democratic senator who is also running for Congress.
L’Italien slammed Donald Trump and the tactics used at the border, including separating children from their families.
Her live feed was stopped when they realised they had the wrong guest.
Fox had wanted to interview Ann Kirkpatrick, a former Democratic congresswoman. She later tweeted that Fox News inaccurately described her position on ICE, which she said needs ‘top-to-bottom reform’.
[…]
One of Donald Trump’s lawyers is using the Trump administration’s scrutiny of Planned Parenthood to raise money for his conservative activist group, which has directed millions of dollars to his law firm and his family.
Jay Sekulow, a personal attorney to the president [sic], has contracted telemarketers to collect money from the public for his not-for-profit organisation using a script that highlights the justice department’s examination of foetal tissue transfers by groups including the women’s clinic network.
Planned Parenthood is under full investigation by the Department of Justice for aborting babies and selling their body parts, the script states, between references to anti-abortion litigation brought by […] the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).
It was unclear from the ACLJ script whether Sekulow was merely repeating past media reports of preliminary inquiries made by the justice department, or if the president’s [sic] lawyer had learned of a previously undisclosed full investigation.
[…]
Sekulow is representing Trump in investigations into Russia’s attack on the 2016 presidential election. ACLJ has in recent months used its website to publish attacks against the so-called deep state and the former FBI director James Comey, who is a key witness in the Trump-Russia inquiries.
The telephone scripts citing federal inquiries into Planned Parenthood were included in contracts with a marketing company that were personally signed by Sekulow. The contracts outlined a new ACLJ fundraising drive scheduled to begin last month and run until next year. Copies of the contracts were obtained by the Guardian from state regulators.
Copies of the contracts are available at the link.
[…]
ACLJ and an affiliated Sekulow non-profit, Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (Case), have an unusual financial relationship that complicates analyses of their finances. Despite the two not-for-profit organisations being separate groups, Case also operates under the ACLJ name.
In its latest annual filing to the IRS, Case said it received $52.3m in donations during 2016 and gave $16.8m of this to ACLJ. Meanwhile ACLJ, which uses a different financial calendar, reported a total of $21.3m in donations between April 2016 and April 2017.
The Guardian reported last year that since 2000, ACLJ and Case had paid more than $60m of contributions to Sekulow’s law firm, members of his family and their businesses for various services. These payments have continued since the article was published, according to more recent IRS filings. ACLJ paid Sekulow’s law firm $5.3m in its last reporting period.
The activist group [unclear if ACLJ, Case, or both meant –blf] has reported using millions of dollars in contributions to buy properties used as residences by Sekulow family members. The Daily Beast reported in March that ACLJ’s Washington headquarters, which is also funded by contributions from supporters, had been used for work by Trump’s legal team.
Other telemarketing contracts agreed last year, before Sekulow joined Trump’s legal team, show that ACLJ sought to capitalise on excitement among conservatives about Trump’s election victory and promise to repeal Obamacare. With a new administration and congress, this is our moment to save lives, telemarketers said in fundraising calls.
[… S]he has said that the outcry she received was unjustified, though she has since deleted the video.
[…]
I have not {in} any circumstances in present or past… degraded or in any way mistreated an employee of mine, she said in an Instagram post on Tuesday.
I consider all employees as equal human being {sic}.
The full reply is at link. It is incoherent. Even allowing she’s (very probably) not using her native language, it’s rather clear she simply does not understand. She’s constantly going on about her, her powers as an “employer”, and the employees’s responsibilities to her. She does not appear to have even tried to imagine herself as a kafala slave, or indeed someone who is neither wealthy or (comparatively) privileged.
With his latest pedophilia accusations, Alex Jones and Infowars continue to test the limits of Facebook’s rules. And Facebook continues to allow it.
On his Monday afternoon show, Alex Jones issued a prolonged rant against special counsel Robert Mueller, accusing him of raping children, and overseeing their rape, and then pantomiming shooting the former FBI director. The show was streamed live on Jones’ personal, verified Facebook page, which has nearly 1.7 million likes.
In the clip, Jones baselessly accused Mueller of having sex with children. “They’d let Mueller rape kids in front of people, which he did,” he said on the show.
Jones also suggested that Mueller enabled pedophiles. “I mean, Mueller covered up for a decade for [Jeffrey] Epstein kidnapping kids, flying them on sex planes, some kids as young as seven years old reportedly, with big perverts raping them to frame people,” he said. “He’s even above the pedophiles, though. The word is he doesn’t have sex with kids, he just controls it all.”
…
Following the pedophilia accusations, Jones then pantomimed shooting Mueller “politically, at high noon” in an old west-style shootout. “Make the move first, and then it’s going to happen. It’s not a joke. It’s not a game. It’s the real world. Politically. You’re going to get it, or I’m going to die trying, b****. Get ready.”
The rant was Jones latest outlandish provocation for Facebook, which has stated recently that it would not remove Infowars from its platform for spreading false news. As the clip of Jones went viral Monday evening, multiple observers flagged it as a threat of violence, which would be a violation of Facebook’s rules. But on Tuesday morning, a Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that Jones’ comments did not violate the company’s community standards as they were not a credible statement of intent to commit violence….
While this is a notable step in the right direction [hm – SC], it’s a small one that comes much too late. She reportedly realized that there were too many potential conflicts of interest to avoid, something many observers warned about from the beginning. The many ethics issues arising from her business were not limited to Ivanka Trump herself—Kellyanne Conway was reprimanded for doing a ‘free commercial’ for the brand from the White House.
Ivanka Trump received trademarks from the Chinese government that concerningly coincided with several of her father’s actions towards China. Though the business is ‘shutting down,’ it will reportedly continue to file for new trademarks, which raises questions as to how serious this ‘shut down’ really is and whether the brand will continue to create conflicts of interest.
The ethics issues that arise from her ownership of the Ivanka Trump Brand also arise from her ownership stake in the Trump Organization, and still more issues arise from her father’s ownership of that business. If the Trump family truly cared about ethics, they would fully divest themselves of these assets—something they should have done before they entered the White House.
Update to #159 above – “Kremlin, coy on new summit idea, says Putin and Trump can meet at G20”: “The Kremlin was reticent on Tuesday about whether it would accept an invitation from U.S. President Donald Trump to hold a summit with Vladimir Putin in Washington later this year, saying only that the two men had other chances to meet as well….”
White supremacists in the Republican party are running for office.
From the Washington Post:
Many such characters have crawled out from under rocks and onto Republican ballots in 2018: A candidate with ties to white nationalists is the GOP Senate nominee in Virginia (and has President Trump’s endorsement); an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier is the Republican candidate in a California House race; a prominent neo-Nazi won the GOP nomination in an Illinois House race; and overt racists are in Republican primaries across the country.
The Hawaii Republican Party formally expelled one of its state House candidates this week after learning about his background as a white supremacist. As the Associated Press reported, the GOP candidate says he wants an “all-white nation,” and describes himself in campaign materials as “pro-white.” […]
The developments in Hawaii follow a story out of New Jersey, where Republican congressional hopeful Seth Grossman was also denounced by his party for having used racist rhetoric. Though he hasn’t yet been rejected by his party, Rep. Jason Lewis (R-Minn.) is facing related accusations in his own re-election bid. […]
[…] a Republican white supremacist who won his party’s nomination for a North Carolina state House seat, a Republican congressional candidate in Wisconsin who calls himself “pro-white” and was booted from Twitter for racism, and a GOP state Senate candidate in California who, after losing in a primary, attributed his defeat to fraud by “Jewish supremacists.” […]
[…] We decided to commission this series on voting rights and democracy early this year because voting rights are more under siege than at any time in most of our lifetimes and because the issue of democracy and voting rights has a particular salience during a critical election. […]
The first article can be read at the link. It provides an historical overview, debunks some myths about voting rights, and lays out the scope of succeeding articles.
Trump spoke today at a Veterans of Foreign Wars gathering in Kansas City, Missouri. As is his wont, Trump turned the whole thing into a campaign rally. He hit some of his favorite highlights, like dissing the media:
Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. I mean, I saw a piece on NBC today– NBC, not just CNN. CNN’s the worst. But I saw a piece on NBC. It was heart throbbing. They were interviewing people. They probably go through 20 and then pick the one that sounds like the worst. But they went through a group of people. In fact, I wanted to say, “I got to do something about this Trump.”
Praising the Trump version of patriots:
We don’t apologize for America anymore. We stand up for America. We stand up for the patriots who defend America.
And we stand up for our national anthem. […]
We’re calling the threat by its real name, the name that wasn’t mentioned for a long time. It’s called radical Islamic terrorism.
Immigration:
Instead of supporting our ICE officers, many of these democrat politicians –– who are really disciples of a very low IQ person, Maxine Waters, and perhaps even worse, Nancy Pelosi –– they’ve launched vicious smears on the brave men and women who defend our community.
Tariffs:
The farmers will be the biggest beneficiary. Watch. We’re opening up markets. You watch what’s going to happen.
Just stick with us. Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news.
Following his rant about Tariffs, and following his pie-in-the-sky promises, Trump’s Department of Agriculture announced that it would spend $12 billion to help farmers hurt by Trump’s tariffs. That’s taxpayer money.
I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election. Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!
[…] we can infer from this, perhaps, that a core group of White House idiots has finally come to the recognition that Republicans may be in deep, deep trouble in the November midterms and need to come up with an excuse for why that may happen—and a way to delegitimize the elections themselves, if it does.
[…] if the Democrats take back one or both houses of Congress in November, does anyone actually think Trump’s stable of stable geniuses on Fox and in the House GOP won’t be ready and willing to join him in caterwauling about how the Dems just stole the election, and the RUSSIANS HELPED? Does anyone think they won’t do this despite how Vladimir Putin stood next to Trump and endorsed him for president after the fact in Helsinki, which kind of gives us the tiniest hint as to what Putin’s into, in an electoral way? They will demand Rod Rosenstein appoint a second special counsel to investigate it, assuming Rosenstein hasn’t been YOU’RE FIRED by then.
[…] despite what Trump’s dumbfucking tweet up there says about him being “tough on Russia” — LOL, we know about the temper tantrum the president threw about having to do Russian sanctions — there is nobody in America with a triple-digit IQ who can’t see that Trump’s ass is a wholly owned subsidiary of Putin’s Russia. Even people who were previously skeptics are coming around, after seeing Trump make Stinky In Helsinki while Putin gazed approvingly at his intelligence asset. […]
In 2018, Democrats are fired up and ready to go, in every state and in every district. Turn-out is off the charts and all signs point to a massive blue wave in November that will take the House and maybe even the Senate.
And when/if that happens, we’d better all be ready for Trump to suddenly believe 100% in Russian interference, and lie through his teeth on a daily basis about how Dems only cleaned up because the Russians did it for them. Don’t worry, he won’t make the Russians mad, because Putin will be in on the scam. Hell, they might’ve talked about it in Finland during their super secret one-on-one meeting! […]
The new Q poll press release is making my day. Setting aside the content, I love that they’re going out of their way to point out: “Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack).” Especially because one of the weird ways cable news people have taken to pronouncing it is “kwin-uh-PEE-ack),” which is amusing in light of this one’s subject.
Trump tweeted: “Tariffs are the greatest! Either a country which has treated the United States unfairly on Trade negotiates a fair deal, or it gets hit with Tariffs. It’s as simple as that – and everybody’s talking! Remember, we are the ‘piggy bank’ that’s being robbed. All will be Great!”
He has no idea what he’s doing, so all he can do is revert to cheap grifter talk.
…Mr. Broidy was a client of Mr. Gates, and had paid him at least $125,000. For that money Mr. Gates advised Mr. Broidy on how to pursue both a contract for his business and appointments for his associates and provided insight into the new administration’s foreign policy plans, according to interviews as well as internal emails and documents obtained by The New York Times.
Their financial arrangement, not previously reported, was emblematic of the way a small circle of Mr. Trump’s associates at the beginning of his presidency aggressively marketed their administration access to well-paying clients, and sheds light on the activities of Mr. Gates, who has emerged as a key figure in the investigation of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.
Those activities are detailed in a batch of Mr. Broidy’s emails that was hacked and provided to The Times and other news outlets by an anonymous individual or group opposed to Mr. Broidy’s work in Washington for foreign countries, including the United Arab Emirates. The emails detailing Mr. Gates’s work with Mr. Broidy were corroborated by people familiar with the arrangement, as well as additional documents from other sources.
…
Although Mr. Gates’s role on Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign had shrunk dramatically after Mr. Manafort resigned under pressure as its chairman months before the election, he maintained connections to numerous Trump advisers, including two key players in Mr. Trump’s orbit with whom he had worked planning the presidential inauguration — Mr. Broidy, who was a vice chairman of the inaugural committee’s finance team, and the billionaire California investor Thomas J. Barrack Jr., who served as chairman of the inaugural committee.
After the inauguration, Mr. Gates began receiving monthly consulting payments for help navigating the new administration from a company headed by Mr. Barrack, Colony NorthStar, which paid Mr. Gates $20,000 a month, and one owned by Mr. Broidy, which paid Mr. Gates $25,000 a month, according to documents and people familiar with the relationships, who requested anonymity to discuss private business arrangements.
…
The invoices [submitted by Gates to Broidy in July, 2017] requested payments to a company owned by Mr. Gates called Konik Madison Group LLC, which had also received nearly $37,000 from the Trump campaign in the weeks before Election Day, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The campaign listed the payment as “strategic consulting,” but a campaign official said Tuesday that Mr. Gates “was a volunteer” for the campaign, and that the payment was reimbursement for “travel, meals and other appropriate expenses.”…
a_ray_in_dilbert_spacesays
SC@278, Well, in fairness, I suppose that 9% also actually believe in witches.
quotetheunquotesays
Toronto had a terrible shooting two days ago, so naturally Faux News was all over it; “Terrorism not ruled out!” went the oh-so-subtle headline; what a (predictable) bunch of low-lifes. People here are having none of it.
A candidate that Trump backed has won the primary run-off in Georgia. Brian Kemp, the Georgia Secretary of State, is now the GOP nominee for Governor of Georgia.
Weirdly, (or perhaps not, considering how things are going), Kemp seems to have a Russia connection of sorts.
[…] In August 2016, as Obama administration officials were trying to enlist the support of state election officials to counter unfolding Russian election interference and efforts to hack into state election systems, Kemp was an outspoken hold out, attacking the initiative an assault on state’s rights.
Here’s a key passage from a June 2017 Washington Post retrospective on the Obama administration efforts to counter Russian attacks in the second half of 2016.
Jeh Johnson, the homeland-security secretary, was responsible for finding out whether the government could quickly shore up the security of the nation’s archaic patchwork of voting systems. He floated the idea of designating state mechanisms “critical infrastructure,” a label that would have entitled states to receive priority in federal cybersecurity assistance, putting them on a par with U.S. defense contractors and financial networks.
On Aug. 15, Johnson arranged a conference call with dozens of state officials, hoping to enlist their support. He ran into a wall of resistance.
The reaction “ranged from neutral to negative,” Johnson said in congressional testimony Wednesday.
Brian Kemp, the Republican secretary of state of Georgia, used the call to denounce Johnson’s proposal as an assault on state rights. “I think it was a politically calculated move by the previous administration,” Kemp said in a recent interview, adding that he remains unconvinced that Russia waged a campaign to disrupt the 2016 race. “I don’t necessarily believe that,” he said.
[…]
Chris Hayes hosted an excellent segment tonight on the status of migrant families that were separated at the border.
New data shows that possibly as many as 463 immigrant parents whose children were taken away from them at the border may already have been deported without getting their children back.
Donald Trump can be heard on tape discussing with his attorney Michael Cohen how to purchase the rights to former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story about her alleged affair with Trump, in a recording obtained by CNN.
The tape, which aired late Tuesday, was released to the network and public for the first time by Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, who argued that its contents proved his client tried to handle the payment legally whereas Trump instead sought to pay in cash.[…]
In the tape, Cohen can be heard explaining to the then presidential candidate his plans to open a company through which he would finance the purchase of the rights to McDougal’s story. McDougal has alleged she had an affair with Trump about a decade ago – an allegation the White House has vehemently denied.
Trump interrupts Cohen in the record to ask: “What financing?” Cohen proceeds to tell Trump: “We’ll have to pay,” after which Trump is heard saying: “Pay with cash.” But the recording is muddled, making it difficult to confirm the full context of Trump’s comments.
It’s not a terribly good fight, honestly: the problem with burying McDougal’s story isn’t how Cohen was paid and when, but that the story was buried in the first place. By admitting he was setting up a company to purchase the story, Cohen can still complicit.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
“BREAKING: Ga. lawmaker who used racial slurs in TV show resigns.”
State Rep. Jason Spencer faced increasing pressure to step down shortly after the episode of “Who is America?” aired Sunday night, and some politicians were urging a special session to oust him if he refused. He will step down at the end of the month
[…]
If he had remained in office through January, he would have logged eight years of service and become eligible for taxpayer-subsidized health insurance for life.
[…]
A lone student activist on board a plane at Gothenburg airport has prevented the deportation of an Afghan asylum seeker from Sweden by refusing to sit down until the man was removed from the flight.
Elin Ersson […] bought a ticket for the flight from Gothenburg to Turkey after she and other asylum activists found out that a young Afghan was due to be deported on it, according to Swedish press reports.
As she entered the plane Ersson started to live-stream her protest in English. The video received more than half a million hits on Tuesday.
Facing both sympathy and hostility from passengers, the footage shows Ersson struggling to keep her composure.
“I don’t want a man’s life to be taken away just because you don’t want to miss your flight,” she says. “I am not going to sit down until the person is off the plane.”
Repeatedly challenged by a steward to stop filming, Ersson says: “I am doing what I can to save a person’s life. As long as a person is standing up the pilot cannot take off. All I want to do is stop the deportation and then I will comply with the rules here. This is all perfectly legal and I have not committed a crime.”
When an angry passenger, who appears to be English, tries to seize her phone, she tells him: “What is more important, a life, or your time? … I want him to get off the plane because he is not safe in Afghanistan. I am trying to change my country’s rules, I don’t like them. It is not right to send people to hell.”
After a tense standoff, during which the airport authorities declined to use force to eject Ersson, passengers broke into applause when the asylum seeker was taken off the plane.
[…]
Congratulations to Ms Ersson (and to the “airport authorities” for not escalating the situation).
Pablo Villavicencio freed as attorney calls decision a rebuke to Trump administration’s ‘crusade to tear families apart’
A federal judge said Tuesday that an Ecuadorean immigrant detained while delivering pizza to a New York army installation must be immediately released from a New Jersey lockup and can remain in the United States while he exhausts his right to try to gain legal status.
[… Judge Paul] Crotty had asked if the US government had “any concept of justice” as he questioned the need to deport Villavicencio, who had been kept apart from his American wife and two young children.
[…]
He also questioned the motivations behind the government’s decisions to put Villavicencio […] on the brink of expulsion.
“Well, the powerful are doing what they want, and the poor are suffering what they must,” Crotty said after hearing assistant US attorney Joseph Cordaro defend the government’s actions.
“I mean, is there any concept of justice here or are we just doing this because we want to?” the judge asked. “Why do we want to enforce the order? It makes no difference in terms of the larger issues facing the country.”
[…]
Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo issued a statement on Tuesday saying the federal government has “cruelly” kept Villavicencio from his wife and two young daughters “for no legitimate reason”.
[…]
Villavicencio and his wife, Sandra Chica, have two girls, aged two and four, who played with toys in court on Tuesday. […]
“Why is he being detained? Is he a threat to the community? Is he a risk of flight?” Crotty asked. “What is the danger to the community for a man who has committed no crime?”
[…]
Al-Qattan told AFP by phone that the outcry was unjustified and did not require an apology.
All I said was that the employer was entitled to keep the servant’s passport and that many Kuwaitis and Gulf nationals agree with me, said al-Qattan.
I have the right as a kafil (sponsor) to keep my employee’s passport, and I am responsible for paying a deposit of up to 1,500 dinars ($4957), she said.
She insisted the practices are not an insult to the employee and do not concern humanity or human rights because I did not deprive the employee of her salary or beat her.
Al-Qattan’s new comments have added to the outrage on social media.
“To accept compliments on her looks but to show utter disregard for dignity & human rights is appalling,” one Twitter user said.
“There is not one ounce of regret in her speech. This sick woman is so unapologetic & unconscionable it should be illegal for her to promote anything.”
Others called out al-Qattan’s “ignorance”:
So instead of a public apology for her disgraceful opinions on domestic wokers’ [sic] rights, Sondos Al Qattan decides to bask in ignorance and defend her wrongfulness?? This is messed up on so many levels […]
[…]
According to changes in the Kuwaiti law, a domestic worker will work 12 hours a day, with a one hour break. The worker must be provided with a personal mobile phone with internet connection and must have their passport with them at all times.
The law also requires one day off a week, and an annual holiday of 22 days paid for by the employer. The worker must also be given a ticket home after two years.
[…] Kuwaiti authorities in April expelled Manila’s ambassador over video footage of Philippine embassy staff helping workers escape employers accused of mistreatment.
As I somewhat suspected might happen, Al Jazeera doesn’t mention the underlying system of kafala slavery, or that it is also practiced in Qatar and several other countries. They do report on it every now and then, for example, Qatar introduces changes to labour law (Dec-2016):
Labour ministry urges patience with reforms, but Amnesty International says changes are insufficient.
A work-sponsorship system, known as Kefala[‡], currently requires all foreign workers to obtain their employer’s consent to travel abroad or switch jobs, a measure that rights groups say leaves workers prone to exploitation and forced labour.
The reforms will establish the creation of state-run “grievance committees” to which workers can appeal if employers deny them permission.
They will also allow workers who have completed contracts to change jobs freely and imposes fines of up to 25,000 riyals ($6,860) on businesses that confiscate employees’ passports.
[…]
Although he is in possession of his passport, [Ashish (not his real name)] from India’s Uttar Pradesh state said overtime pay was an issue, and that his overtime pay was often late by as much as six months.
“Sub-contractors are rubbish; they don’t pay on time. They withhold salaries up to six months,” he said.
[…]
Amnesty International said in a statement that the new law would “barely scratch the surface of an abusive system”.
The UK-based rights group called on Qatar to abolish exit permits altogether and ban passport confiscation, as leaving those mechanisms in place leaves workers “at serious risk of human rights abuses”.
[…]
Indeed, Ye Pffft! of All Knowledge quotes James Lynch, Deputy Director for Global Issues at Amnesty International, on those 2016 Qatari “reforms”:
This new law may get rid of the word ‘sponsorship’ but it leaves the same basic system intact. It is good that Qatar has accepted that its laws were fuelling abuse, but these inadequate changes will continue to leave workers at the mercy of exploitative bosses.
It also notes that, in Qatar, kafala slavery applies to essentially all foreign workers, including professionals:
Little discussed is the fact that high-income professional expatriate workers are also deeply affected by the abuse of the system by companies. A confounding issue is that many of the companies are based out of western nations from the EU, and the US.
The most typical form of abuse by these companies is the refusal to release employees once their employment has ended with the company. This lack of release (typically through a No Objection Certificate or NOC) restricts employees from moving to another company in Qatar after employment has ended with the present employer.
This prohibition executed by the company will keep the typical employee from working in Qatar for two years beyond the time their employment ended. In worse cases, the company holds the employee indefinitely in an effort to extort money from the employee when business opportunities fail. […]
† Other sites, including the BBC and the Grauniad — both of whom usually try to get these things right — spell her surname Alqattan (and I have also seen it spelled Al Qattan). I have no idea what her preference is, and presume this is just variations in Arabic orthography (e.g., Al Jazeera spells its own name that way, but other sites often spell it al-Jazeera).
KGsays
F.O.@255,
Rouhani may indeed be shifting to nationalist rhetoric – but that still doesn’t mean the prospect of war “yields also for Rouhani”. His whole political strategy was based on improving relations with the outside world, and particularly the USA – and hence getting sanctions lifted and improving the economy. If he shifts to nationalist rhetoric, it’s an admission that the strategy has failed, and he’s unlikely to be the one who benefits. As the article says, ramping up tension benefits the hardliners in Iran. That is no doubt a feature rather than a bug from Bolton’s perspective.
With the recent outbreak declared over in little more than two months, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s health minister [Oly Ilunga Kalenga] explains how a major crisis was avoided
The ninth and latest outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is now over. I did not think I would be able to utter these words so soon after it all started on 8 May. This outbreak, the most challenging the country has ever faced, had all the makings of a major crisis.
[…]
Local ownership remains the cornerstone of a successful response. The Ministry of Health stepped up to lead the efforts on the ground. By the time international support arrived in DRC, the major elements of a full-blown response were already in place and functioning.
Swift mobilisation of finances is another key factor. The government’s $56.8m (£43.3m) three-month action plan was fully financed within 48 hours of it being released […]. International partners including donor governments and the World Bank also stepped up — the latter triggered its newly operational pandemic emergency financing facility for the first time and swiftly repurposed funds through its existing health programme in DRC to support the effort. […]
The use of the Ebola vaccine, which proved highly effective in a clinical trial in Guinea in 2015, was one of the most innovative components of this response. The new vaccine has not just proved safe and effective against Ebola; it also changed community perceptions of the disease, which is now seen as treatable. Throughout the outbreak, more than 3,300 people were vaccinated. I was vaccinated myself to show the vaccine’s safety and break the stigma around it.
[…] Church and traditional leaders are your best allies to carry public health messages that require communities to change age-old habits and challenge their traditions. In Mbandaka, our strongest health advocates became the 4,000 motorcycle taxi drivers, whose daily work put them at risk of transporting infectious people. They started promoting vaccination and hygiene messages on local radio.
[…] Health responders from Guinea participated in the vaccination efforts, epidemiologists from the newly created Africa Centres for Disease Control and the African Field Epidemiology Network worked with our experts on surveillance. […]
[…]
The relatively small number of deaths follows the use of an experimental vaccine, which may have saved hundreds, or even thousands of lives.
[…]
However, keeping the vaccine safe and making sure it reached the right people was not a straightforward task.
The vaccine must be kept extremely cold, at minus 70C.
This is difficult and expensive to do in a remote environment with unreliable electricity. Alongside the vaccine, fridges and generators had to be flown into the region by helicopter.
Isolation and treatment facilities had to be built, mobile laboratories set up and local laboratory technicians trained to test samples and confirm cases of Ebola.
For the vaccine to be effective, it had to be given to the right people.
Health workers spoke to patients, their families and the wider community to dispel rumours, build trust and avoid panic.
This, they explained to community leaders, was not a mass campaign.
Vaccinations were given to the Ebola patient, plus a “ring” of friends, family and contacts — as well as healthcare workers and people involved in burials. All had to give their consent.
Identifying and finding all the people suspected Ebola patients had been in contact with was a major challenge because of the location.
Health workers had to travel by motorbike to places where there are no paved roads.
Despite these challenges, there has been high uptake rate and an estimated 98% of those eligible were vaccinated.
[…]
There has also been work to reintegrate survivors with their community because in former outbreaks survivors were sometimes ostracised by their families and neighbours.
[…]
Two years after it was first tested, the vaccine still works, but we don’t yet know how long-lasting the protection will be.
More than one Ebola vaccine is needed, so we’re not reliant on just one manufacturer.
[…]
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of WHO, is quoted as saying “The government was quick to respond, quick to invite support where needed, and quick to inform the public about the risks of the disease. This kind of leadership saves lives” (How the Democratic Republic of Congo ended the Ebola outbreak).
Congratulations to DRC, and to WHO and others who responded promptly and effectively to DRC’s requests.
The Justice Department has instructed US attorneys offices not to use the term “undocumented” immigrants and instead refer to someone illegally in the US as “an illegal alien,” according to a copy of an agency-wide email obtained by CNN.
According to the email, the Justice Department uses terms in the US Code to describe an individual who is illegally in the US, and thus refers to them as “an illegal alien.”
“The word ‘undocumented’ is not based in US code and should not be used to describe someone’s illegal presence in the country,” the email states.
…
The issue of how to describe people in the US illegally has long been a subject of heated debate. In 2013, The Associated Press Stylebook changed its terminology to not describe a person as illegal, only actions. The AP Stylebook is widely followed across media outlets in the US. Most outlets, including CNN use the term “undocumented immigrant,” and only use terms like “alien” when directly quoting a government agency or official.
…
A Justice Department spokesman did not dispute the authenticity of the email and pointed to the line about seeking consistency and remedying confusion.
The White House has suspended the practice of publishing public summaries of President Donald Trump’s phone calls with world leaders, two sources with knowledge of the situation tell CNN, bringing an end to a common exercise from Republican and Democratic administrations.
It’s unclear if the suspension is temporary or permanent. A White House spokesman declined to comment.
Official descriptions of the President’s calls with foreign leaders — termed “readouts” in Washington parlance — offer administrations the chance to characterize in their own terms the diplomacy conducted at the highest levels between countries. While news is rarely contained in the rote, often dry descriptions, they do offer the only official account that a phone call took place. Readouts are still released internally.
Trump has had at least two calls with other leaders in the last two weeks, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The White House confirmed that the calls took place after they were reported by foreign media, but declined to elaborate on what was said.
The White House has not published a readout of a call between Trump and a world leader since mid-June when he called to congratulate the Hungarian prime minister on his re-election victory….
…The Russian hackers, in other words, are the modern equivalents of the Watergate burglars in 1972. The only difference is the technology. The Watergate burglars broke into the Democratic campaign offices to tap phones and steal documents; the Russian hackers used malware and “cloud-based accounts” to achieve the same goal.
Did they share this information with the Trump campaign? If so, the timing is interesting. In October, a few weeks after the hackers broke into the DNC servers, New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman observed a major shift in the way the Trump campaign was spending its advertising budget. Access to Democratic Party data would, of course, have been useful in redirecting that spending. At about the same time, Trump also began using a curious set of conspiratorial slogans and messages, all lifted directly from Russian state television and websites. From Barack Obama “founded ISIS” to Hillary Clinton will start “World War III,” Trump repeated them at his rallies and on his Twitter feed. It was as if he had some reason to believe they would work.
It’s important to stop and acknowledge that the evidence we have does not establish this kind of connection between Russian hackers and the Trump campaign; the Mueller probe needs to continue unimpeded to help determine what happened and what did not. But shared data could explain why Russian state media, the Russian Internet Research Agency and the Trump campaign were all doing the same kinds of things at the same time….
On the Trump/Cohen tapes that @CNN published tonight, Allen Weisselberg, the CFO of the Trump Org, is referred to by Cohen – who says Weisselberg was aware of LLCs being used to funnel payments…. [link to his May article on Weisselberg’s significance]
Weisselberg worked as Fred Trump’s accountant and has been Donald Trump’s CFO for years.. He knows more about the Trump Organization’s finances than almost anyone. If he’s now exposed to investigators, this all moves into the heart of Trump’s business dealings.
Jeff Zeleny: “It’s increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to tell the difference between an official White House event (funded by taxpayers) and a Trump campaign rally (funded by donors.)”
On the first couple’s recent trip overseas, Melania Trump’s television aboard Air Force One was tuned to CNN. President Trump was not pleased.
He raged at his staff for violating a rule that the White House entourage should begin each trip tuned to Fox — his preferred network over what he considers the “fake news” CNN — and caused “a bit of a stir” aboard Air Force One, according to an email obtained by The New York Times. The email, an internal exchange between officials in the White House Military Office and the White House Communications Agency last Thursday, also called for the ordering of two additional televisions to support Beam, a TiVo-like streaming device, to make sure the president and first lady could both watch TV in their separate hotel rooms when they travel.
At the end of the email chain, officials confirmed that tuning the TVs to Fox would be standard operating procedure going forward.
The channel-flipping flap was the latest example of how Mr. Trump, at a pivotal moment in his presidency, is increasingly living in a world of selected information and bending the truth to his own narrative. As his aides work to keep him insulated from the outside world, Mr. Trump is doubling down in his efforts to tell supporters to trust him over the words of critics and news reports….
(I’ll note that the Access Hollywood comments were not said in private, as he claims. The reason he and Bush were wearing microphones is that they were doing a television appearance, for which they were paid. Those comments were made in a workplace.)
It’s entirely speculative at this point, but if Trump is talking to FL AG Pam Bondi here it would be pretty explosive. (Seems entirely possible that Trump is confusing Charleston with Charlotte, as many people would in the rush of events.)
[…]
On the video Elin Ersson streamed live on Facebook on Monday, you can hear irate plane passengers shouting: We want to go, sit down! Ersson, her cheeks reddening slightly and her eyes becoming teary, remains standing, and her voice is steady. A member of the cabin crew on the flight from Gothenburg to Istanbul repeatedly asks her to turn off her phone and sit down, or leave the plane. He describes her as an unruly passenger. Ersson, young and slight, stands her ground. “I’m doing what I can to save a person’s life,” she says.
Did she feel awkward, or exposed? “I was so caught in the moment that I didn’t really realise that everyone was looking at me,” says Ersson […]. “My focus was all on stopping a deportation to Afghanistan.”
More than two million people have now watched the video of Ersson’s protest as she attempted to stop the deportation of an asylum seeker. “I’m not going to sit down until this person is off the plane,” she says, and she remains standing, her phone’s camera focused on her face because other passengers didn’t want to be filmed. The atmosphere seems hostile. An unseen British man approaches her. You’re upsetting all the people down there, he says. I don’t care what you think. He tries to take her phone, but a flight attendant gives it back. Someone else says: You’re preventing all these passengers going to their destination. Ersson has an untouchable comeback: “But they’re not going to die, he’s going to die.”
She finally breaks down on the film, not from the hostility of a handful of people, but from the uplifting support of other passengers. People start applauding her; a man three rows away stands up to tell her he is with her. A football team at the back of the plane stand up, too.
[…] In 2015, 163,000 people sought refuge in Sweden, including 35,000 unaccompanied minors, but the government has been pursuing a deportation policy, especially of Afghans. Afghans make up more than half of refugees, but only 28% have been granted asylum. Afghanistan is considered safe, although humanitarian groups point out it is a fragile country in the grip of conflict — more than 3,000 civilians were killed and 7,000 wounded in 2017.
[…]
As it turns out, the man who was on the aeroplane to be deported is not the individual Ms Ersson and her colleagues thought would be onboard. As the interview concludes:
The tragic postscript is that she believes the young man she was originally trying to stop getting deported was taken to Stockholm and put on a flight there. “This is how deportations in Sweden work. The people involved know nothing and they are not allowed to reach out to their lawyers or family,” she says […]. “My ultimate goal is to end deportations to Afghanistan.”
What happened to the man she did stop from being deported is unclear.
…Our transcript and the White House’s were apparently based on the feed that runs only in the right channel. A White House official told CNN’s Abby Phillip that its transcript “did not have Mason’s audio turned up in time,” referring to Reuters reporter Jeff Mason, who asked the question.
This is not a conspiracy from the White House. While the White House certainly has a track record of misrepresenting facts, this would have been a remarkably futile revision of reality to attempt. As it turns out, they didn’t.
[…] Ivanka Trump is shutting her fashion line. What to make of this?
Is “ha ha ha ha ha ha” an unprofessional answer? Because, if so, you are testing my professionalism […].
After picking myself off the floor and mending the ribs I cracked from laughing so much, the next thing I would say is what an ingenious turn of events this is. Sales of the brand have been plummeting since the Trumps moved into the White House, and lo, the inevitable has come to pass. There has been much fretting of late from liberals about how to deal with the president, given that he thrives on insults and blossoms under attack. Well, going after the Trump pocketbook and humiliating his daughter, Ivanka, AKA Favourite Child, at the same time is a damn near brilliant double-hander. The only thing that could possibly have hit him more in the gut is if all of his wives, current and ex, ran off with Barack Obama. But we all know No Drama Obama would never betray his wife, unlike some presidents we could mention, and so we must content ourselves with the end of Ivanka’s fashion brand.
The next thing to marvel at is that her fashion brand still existed at all. President Jimmy Carter had to put his peanut farm into a blind trust before he became president; meanwhile, the Trumps continue to leverage their brand (whatever that’s worth) and various businesses around the world, milking the presidency for every penny it’s worth. According to the Wall Street Journal report, Ivanka has grown “frustrated by the restrictions she placed on the company […] to avoid possible conflicts of interest while serving in the White House”. Oh, frustrations about having to avoid conflicts of interest! Poor diddums!
What I find so fascinating about Ivanka, exemplified by this story, is how clueless she is. I don’t mean that she is dumb […], what I mean is how she expected things to go a certain way when they were clearly going to go another. [… I]t’s hard to claim you care so much for the welfare of women and babies when your father is literally putting the latter in cages, trying to make abortion inaccessible to most American women by defunding Planned Parenthood and choosing anti-choice zealots for the Supreme Court. Don’t worry, American women, if you need an abortion you can go to Ireland!
[…]
It’s astounding how many people thought at the beginning of this presidency — and continue to think — that all that matters is enjoying President [sic] Trump’s proxy spotlight and power, and even more astounding that they thought that is all the general public cares about, too. Anyone can get a selfie with a celebrity these days — standing next to power is not in itself impressive. That noise you hear? That’s the screaming inside these people’s heads as they try to block out how they’re going down in history: not as princes and princesses to the king, but a clutch of Squealers from Animal Farm.
One of the readers adds, in the comments, “let’s not forget this is the woman who stood a few km’s away from the suffering in Gaza, while unveiling the US embassy in Jerusalem; and hugged her children as others were torn from their arms under daddies orders. Let Ivanka go down in history as bringing a new meaning to TBD; To Be Despised.”
Tony Schwartz: “Can you imagine the utter contempt and disdain that Trump actually has for the people — his base — who are willing to believe even his most outrageous lies?”
Government to assess policies where women wearing sleeveless shirts, flip-flops, short skirts and shorts are barred entry
Before making a trip to visit her daughter in Trinidad and Tobago, the Jamaican author Melanie Schwapp needed to get a yellow fever shot.
But when she arrived for her appointment at a government-run health clinic, she was turned away by a security guard who told her she could not be admitted because she was wearing a sleeveless shirt.
“I find it ridiculous,” says Schwapp. “If you are dressing decently, what is the problem if your shoulders are exposed?”
Cooties.
[… T]he country’s government has now ordered a review of the unofficial policies under which women are barred entry for wearing sleeveless shirts or blouses — as well as flip-flops, short skirts or shorts.
[…]
The debate over the “decorum rule” was reignited after Theresa May wore a sleeveless gown during Donald Trump’s visit the UK — prompting women to point out that the British prime minister would probably not be allowed to enter a Jamaican school or hospital wearing the same dress.
Women often express frustration with the custom, which can cause extreme inconvenience in a Caribbean country where temperatures regularly exceed 30C (86F).
After lodging a string of access to information requests, local activist Susan Goffe found there was no legal basis or government policy to justify the “rule”, which many see as a remnant of colonial attitudes.
“It has always struck me as being a ridiculous rule to apply in a tropical country,” said Goffe. But beyond the absurdity, Goffe warned the rule can result in women being denied public services.
[…]
So perhaps UK PM Theresa May isn’t completely useless, at least not for women in Jamaica.
From the podcast to which SC linked in comment 293: “Wherever Steve Bannon was, Robert Mercer’s money was […]”
So Bannon was in upper management at Cambridge Analytica, and Mercer’s money funded the nefarious schemes that CA used to promote propaganda supporting Brexit. Ditto for the Trump campaign.
International criminal activity.
Bannon doesn’t seem to be doing so well now that he doesn’t have the Mercer money. At least, as far as I can tell, he no longer has Mercer money.
[…]
Two Muslim men were subjected to racist and Islamaphobic harassment while working at the American multinational energy corporation Halliburton in US state of Texas, according to a federal lawsuit.
Filed earlier this month by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the lawsuit claims that Hassan Snoubar and Mir Ali were taunted and harassed by supervisors and fellow employees.
[…]
According to the lawsuit, coworkers accused Snoubar, who is of Syrian descent, of being linked to [daesh] and called him a terrorist and camel jockey.
[…]
The lawsuit adds that Ali, who is of Indian ancestry, was also called a terrorist, and that a supervisor regularly mocked him about having a magic carpet.
“Snoubar’s and Ali’s co-workers regularly broadcast derogatory name calling over radio headsets to other workers,” the lawsuit states, adding that supervisors and other employees mocked their “cultural attire” and claimed that “their ‘people’ engaged in bestiality”.
[… The lawsuit] also requests a permanent injunction barring Halliburton from discrimination based on national origin, religion and retaliation.
[…]
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees is cutting hundreds of jobs in the Gaza Strip and West Bank after swingeing cuts on its budget imposed by the Trump administration.
The loss of 250 jobs in the Palestinian territories, revealed on Wednesday, are the first to be announced since the US withdrew hundreds of millions dollars in aid.
[…]
The statement said the US cut represented an “existential threat” to the agency, which had been trying to raise the money from other donors.
“The decision of the US to cut $300m in funding to UNRWA this year has been described by our commissioner general as an existential threat to UNRWA,” he said.
[…]
The cuts follow the decision in January by Donald Trump to cut US aid to Palestinians, citing the decision by Palestinians to halt contact with Washington over the president’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem.
We pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect, Trump tweeted on 2 January, shortly before the funding freeze was announced.
With the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?
Nikki Haley blames Middle Eastern countries for not doing enough to financially help the Palestinians.
US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has blamed Middle Eastern countries for not doing enough to financially help the Palestinians and assist them with moving the peace process forward.
[…]
Haley highlighted US assistance to the Palestinians, saying that Washington provided $300m in bilateral aid last year, and “over six billion dollars in bilateral assistance to Palestinians” since 1993.
She also mentioned US aid to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) — but without saying that total has been significantly cut.
[…]
The move essentially cut the only lifeline available to millions of registered refugees across the Middle East who have been relying on UNRWA’s services for more than 70 years.
“New, from @jimsciutto: A European diplomat who’s been briefed by the State Department told CNN that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected make a formal declaration the US will never recognize Crimea as part of Russia.”
Seems like this leak is intended by the diplomat to lock Pompeo in before Trump can put a stop to it.
[…]
A Conservative MEP has come under fire for suggesting that Britain’s Treason Act should be updated to apply to citizens who are working undemocratically against UK through extreme EU loyalty.
David Bannerman, a former Ukip deputy leader who defected back to the Conservatives in 2011, […] tweeted on Wednesday: It is about time we brought the Treason Act up to date and made it apply to those seeking to destroy or undermine the British state. That means extreme jihadis. It also means those in future actively working undemocratically against UK through extreme EU loyalty.
[…]
Among those criticising Bannerman was the broadcaster Gavin Esler, who is chancellor at the University of Kent. He tweeted at the MEP: “Unfortunately your comment equating support for the EU with jihadis and treason requires no exaggeration — merely an apology to half the population who are sick of such Brexcrement. Since you are sucking on the euro-teat as an MEP have you no shame?”
Virendra Sharma, the Labour MP for Ealing Southall, accused Bannerman of “putting a knife into free speech”.
[…]
Bannerman said the relationship between the UK and the EU would change significantly in future, adding: The EU would become a separate power, a separate state and we would have to treat it in the same way as China or Russia.
I can’t help noticing his comparisons to the EU are authoritarian nations whose governments are generally considered, if not hostile, at least untrustworthy. Substitute Canada or Japan or New Zealand and the sinister tone of the loon’s bellowing becomes much more obvious.
The comments come amid concern about the tone of some of the language being used by Brexit-supporting media and supporters, including last year’s Crush the saboteurs front-page headline in the Daily Mail. Some have also said that the language used in attacks on the investor George Soros over a £400,000 donation to Best for Britain echoes the antisemitic campaign against him made by nationalist groups and governments in eastern European countries.
[…]
This particular überloon is now apparently flailing around wildly trying to clarify his comments. He’s using a large shovel.
Around 20 medical staff plan to hand back their decorations and deliver a letter to Downing Street
British doctors, nurses and midwives hailed as heroes for tackling Ebola are handing back the medals they received from the government in protest at undocumented migrants being denied free NHS care.
Around 20 NHS staff will on Tuesday return their medals to the Cabinet Office and hand in a letter to Downing Street, telling Theresa May of their “great sorrow and shame” that “hostile environment” immigration policies which she initiated are leading to needless suffering and early death.
A tough regime of checks on patients’ eligibility for NHS care, and insistence that migrants — often penniless — pay what can be huge sums upfront before they can be treated, began in 2014, when May was the home secretary. But it was tightened last year, when she was prime minister.
[…]
Lord Dubs, the humanitarian campaigner who fled to Britain in the 1930s to escape the Nazis, will join the health professionals as they hand in their letter at No 10 at lunchtime. “It is disturbing that the immigration checks in the NHS mean that many migrants, refugees and other vulnerable people are in practice all too often being denied access to life-saving medical care,” said Dubs.
More than 3,000 members of the armed forces, NHS staff, charity workers and others received the medals in 2015 in recognition of their role in helping to contain the outbreak of the Ebola virus that claimed about 11,000 lives in west Africa. It was the first time Britain has struck a medal to mark involvement in a humanitarian crisis, rather than a military conflict.
[…]
“These policies are short-sighted and there is no evidence that they save the NHS money. They place immigration enforcement above public health and effective delivery of healthcare. It is absolutely right that doctors and nurses speak out about the impact they are having on our hospitals,” said Anna Miller, UK policy and advocacy manager at Doctors of the World, a charity that provides free healthcare at a clinic in London to those who cannot otherwise get it.
“Our doctors and nurses have seen patients denied cancer treatment, cardiac surgery, palliative care and pregnant women too afraid to access maternity services.
“These include people fleeing from conflict and persecution, victims of trafficking and destitute people living on the streets with no means to feed themselves,” added Miller.
Rebecca Daniels of Medact, a public health campaigning charity, said: “We have heard time and time again from health professionals that patients are being racially profiled, that they are afraid to seek treatment and are being denied vital care.”
“#BREAKING: Maryland district court denies President Trump’s motion to dismiss D.C. and Maryland emoluments lawsuit, holding that the plaintiffs have indeed stated a claim that President Trump has violated both the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses:…”
[…]
The red, white and blue banners for Donald Trump’s second-term campaign […] are made in eastern China and soon could be hit by punitive tariffs of the president’s own making […]
The factory has turned out about 90,000 banners since March, said manager Yao Yuanyuan, an unusually large number for what is normally the low season, and Yao believed the China–US trade war was the reason.
“It’s closely related,” she said. “They are preparing in advance, they are taking advantage of the fact that the tariffs haven’t gone up yet, with lower prices now.”
It’s interesting that in the Trump-Cohen recording Cohen talks about setting up an account to pay for the rights to McDougal’s story and in this context – in which Trump brings up cash, because he’s obsessed with sleazy deals being done with cash – refers to arranging for “funding” and “financing.” This could give the impression that he was planning for the money to come from elsewhere and move through the secret entity, which is exactly how the Essential Consultants account was allegedly used.
…On Friday and Saturday, at least 165 people around the city overdosed — an unprecedented number, health officials said… Health officials believe it may have been heroin cut with an anticholinergic, a substance found in muscle relaxers and the antihistamine diphenhydramine (Benadryl) that causes dangerous side effects.
Yet the death toll — 10 people — is about the typical number of overdose deaths on a given weekend in a city where 1,217 people died of an overdose in 2017.
Still, the cluster tested the city’s response to overdoses and drove home a fact that advocates, law enforcement officials, and drug users have known for months: Philadelphia’s heroin supply, long noted for its purity and cheapness, is almost entirely contaminated, largely with the synthetic opioid fentanyl and sometimes with other substances.
Thomas Farley, the city health commissioner, said over the weekend that the alarming incidents are still more proof that the city needs to open a safe injection site, a controlled setting where people can get help more quickly….
[…]
Kuwaiti blogger and social media influencer Sondos Al Qattan has hit back at her critics, saying that the foreign media campaign against her is an attack on Islam, the Hijab and Kuwait.
In a video shared widely shared on Twitter, Qattan[†] says the criticism of her remarks concerning legislation protecting the rights of Filipino domestic workers is an intentional effort to damage Kuwait and the wider Gulf region.
In the video, she also asked why her critics have, in her view, expressed more outrage over her remarks than they have over humanitarian crises in Syria, Iraq and Gaza.
Qattan vowed to reveal any brands that have severed relationships with her, so that her followers can boycott them.
[…]
On Tuesday night, Qattan put up a post promoting perfumes produced by Al Jazeera Perfumes[‡], a Kuwait-based company.
On Wednesday, she posted another image of herself with the caption do what’s right and don’t do what’s trending.
[…]
Her threatened list of companies / brands who object to slavery sounds like the sort of list one wants to be on.
Popular Emirati influencer and vlogger Khalid Al Ameri has taken to Facebook to defend the rights of Filipino domestic workers in response to Kuwaiti social media star Sondos Al Qattan’s controversial criticism of legislation designed to protect their rights.
[…]
“How would you feel if you worked for someone that didn’t only not give you a day-off, but disagreed with the very ideology that you deserve a day-off?,” he asked. “If I’m not mistaken, almost every job in the world, barring a few security jobs and military jobs, have a day off. A day of rest, a day to go out, a day to enjoy life.”
Ameri added, “We’re not robots at the end of the day. We’re all humans and expect to have time to rest and time for ourselves.”
Ameri also expressed disapproval of what he termed Qattan’s “rant” in which she said she feared that giving workers access to their passports may lead to them fleeing the country.
“If I worked for you, I would run so far away, the CIA wouldn’t be able to find me, I would dig a hole so deep, you wouldn’t be able to smell my scent,” he said.
“I would disappear. I would cease to exist. I would never show my face in this world again out of fear you might find me and might ask me to work for you again.”
[…]
Both of the above excerpts are from ArabianBusiness, whose reliability is unknown to me.
† Yet another variation on Arabic orthography, I assume. (I thought omitting “al-” is generally considered poor form, albeit a quick search suggests it’s more complicated than that.)
SC @312, lots of corrections are needed to the transcript of that recording. So far, the White House has issued only incomplete and/or misleading transcripts. Looking forward to seeing the WH forced to correct the record.
In other news, I have other obligations starting tomorrow. I will be absent from this thread for a few days. Everyone knows the drill. Carry on.
PZ recently renewed this thread’s lease on life, so there should not be a problem with it timing out while I am gone.
At an official presidential event in Kansas City yesterday — not a campaign event — Trump told the VFW’s national convention about his support for Josh Hawley’s Republican Senate campaign in Missouri. The GOP candidate was also invited to say a few words to attendees.
[…]
TRUMP: And, your guy is a good guy. He’s a good –
COHEN: Who, Pastor Scott?
TRUMP: Can’t believe this. No, Pastor Scott. What’s, what’s happening –
COHEN: No –
TRUMP: Can we use him anymore?
COHEN: Oh, yeah, a hundred – no, you’re talking about Mark Burns. He’s, we’ve told him to [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
TRUMP: I don’t need that – Mark Burns, are we using him?
COHEN: No, no.
Without more details and context, it’s a little difficult to understand the exact nature of this exchange, though Trump and Cohen were almost certainly referring to Mark Burns and Darrell Scott, two Christian pastors associated with the Republican campaign in 2016.
The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins made the case that Trump was “asking about which pastor surrogates he can ‘use’ to cover for him,” which is probably not the sort of thing most ministers would want to hear, especially on a recording that deals with payoffs involving a former mistress.
But that’s what made Burns’ response so interesting.
On Twitter last night, Burns, who ran a failed congressional campaign in South Carolina this year, wrote, “I’ve been saying for almost 2 yrs some in the campaign tried to marginalize my role, in the closing days. This tape and the fact that I remained traveling with and speaking for the campaign after this conversation. is even more proof @realDonaldTrump remained in my corner. #maga”
In other words, the recording features Trump asking about using the conservative pastor, and instead of taking offense, Burns thinks this is great news.
“BREAKING: Pompeo says US will never recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea, demands Ukraine territorial integrity be restored.”
Bolton now saying the meeting with Putin (the invitation to which Putin hadn’t accepted) won’t go forward until 2019 – “until the Russia witch hunt is over.”
Pompeo’s doing a lot of dancing to avoid answering questions about Helsinki. I was washing dishes, but I don’t think anyone’s asked him yet about the “incredible” proposal to hand over McFaul and several other US officials.
Michael Cohen and the publisher of the National Enquirer forged an alliance over the years, looking out for the interests of Donald Trump and each other. Now, federal investigators are examining those ties as part of a wide-ranging probe into Mr. Cohen’s personal business dealings and his self-described role as Mr. Trump’s fixer.
In previously unreported interactions, some of which are memorialized in emails now under review, Mr. Cohen mediated a dispute between Omarosa Manigault-Newman, who had been a star on Mr. Trump’s “Apprentice” reality TV show, and the Enquirer over a story about her brother’s murder. He intervened in a separate legal case on behalf of David Pecker, chief executive of Enquirer parent American Media Inc. And when American Media paid a doorman who alleged that Mr. Trump fathered a child with one of his employees, a company executive ordered reporters to stop investigating after speaking with Mr. Cohen.
The revelations show a relationship characterized by mutual benefit and favor-trading on a greater scale than was previously known. The shared history could expose American Media, Mr. Cohen and by extension, Mr. Trump, to criminal campaign-finance charges. For example, federal agents and prosecutors in New York are investigating whether Mr. Cohen, acting as Mr. Trump’s representative, improperly coordinated with American Media to keep an ex-Playboy model’s account of an affair with Mr. Trump under wraps in the months before the 2016 presidential election, people familiar with the matter said.
One looming issue for both prosecutors and AMI is the publisher’s status as a media organization, which would afford it First Amendment protections. The Justice Department is examining whether American Media at times acted more like an extension of Mr. Trump and his campaign, a person familiar with the matter said….
The Omarosa story involves a legal action she brought against AMI concerning a reporter going to her murdered brother’s fucking funeral, interacting with people without divulging that she was a reporter, and then printing their comments as an “exclusive.” Omarosa settled in exchange for receiving a no-work job at AMI publications. I think I’m done reading about these people for today.
F.O.says
TL;DR: people are getting removed from voter registries without their knowledge.
I assume that the intention is that once election day comes, they’ll find out that they were un-registered only at the ballot and won’t be able to re-register in time.
Ari Melber is airing a special first-anniversary episode of “The Beat” right now. I’ve enjoyed the show’s first year immensely. He and Nicolle Wallace have been fantastic additions to the MSNBC lineup. (I do still miss Alex Wagner.)
“Wow. The U.S. passport office just called and told me that due to an ‘error’, the government has retroactively invalidated the change of gender marker it authorized on my passport last year. They won’t renew my passport w/ correct name & gender until i submit a new doctors note…”
…One of the most interesting sections of the book argues for a shifting legal focus. Spade suggests that an exclusive focus on reformist efforts to include trans people in marriage, the military, antidiscrimination and hate-crime laws should give way to campaigns that challenge the administrative systems that categorize and shape people’s life chances – healthcare institutions, welfare programs, employment, shelters, addiction “treatment” programs, immigration bureaucracies, prisons, and so on – and their practices of categorization and surveillance. These systems control “access to food, transportation, public safety, public health, and the like.” As such, they’re “the legal systems that distribute security and vulnerability at the population level and sort the population into those whose lives are cultivated and those who are abandoned, imprisoned, or extinguished.”
I was especially intrigued by the discussion of the “War on Terror” and the expansion of the security state and its surveillance apparatus. The security state, as it always has, attempts to shore up traditional categories and to exclude and police anyone whose identity or behavior is seen to threaten them. The ID programs of recent years also, as Spade points out, push in the direction of fixed and stable identities. “The augmentation of US security culture,” including the sharing and cross-referencing of information across agencies, “has raised the level of stability demanded of our identities and has sharpened the tools that heighten the vulnerability of those who are not ‘fully authorized’ in any particular administrative context.”…
An important aspect of Claudia Koontz’s The Nazi Conscience is the discussion of how people who abhorred the street violence of the SA became accustomed to the administrative violence of the regime, which was far more efficient. We have to work to remain cognizant of this kind of violence and oppression.
Chris Hayes hosted an excellent segment tonight on the status of migrant families that were separated at the border….
I agree – it was an excellent segment. I still can’t wrap my head around what they’ve done. Did they think the parents would just be deported and forget about their children? That no one would notice or mind? And what were they planning to do with the children?
I’m not sure which is the worse possibility: That they had a plan for how to dispose of the children or that they just didn’t even bother thinking about it.
HERE we GO: @RepMarkMeadows and his little red folder … files articles of impeachment against Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein on the House floor.
IMPORTANT note: Conservatives chose NOT to file this as a privileged resolution. That means that they don’t get to force a vote on it on the House floor. This avoids the GOP civil war that would take place if they DID try to force a vote on this. Rs VERY divided on the matter.
I’m not sure which is the worse possibility: That they had a plan for how to dispose of the children or that they just didn’t even bother thinking about it.
I was thinking the same thing. I try to imagine what was going through their heads and just end up sputtering in disbelief.
BREAKING: Raab promises government will “make sure there is adequate food” in Britain in the event of no Brexit deal. But says it is wrong to say government itself is stockpiling.
Britain has had long term decline in food self-sufficiency. This is well known. Govt stats show only 49% of food/drink consumer here produced here.
The leading foreign supplier of food consumed in the UK were countries from the EU (30%). Africa supplied 5%, Asia, North and South America all provided a 4%.
But we have whiskey to keep us going!
“In 2016 the value of imports was greater than value of exports in each of the broad categories of food, feed and drink except ‘Beverages’ which had a trade surplus of £1.35 bn, largely due to exports of Scotch Whisky.”
So rest easy, Brits!
In all seriousness, the WWII Victory Gardens really pushed towards self-sufficiency. One of my pet conspiracy theories is that they and the entire culture surrounding them were destroyed on behalf of a growing agribusiness (including chemical industries) lobby. I did a little research on the topic years ago, but it was too preliminary to reach any conclusions.
Adam Schiff: “These articles of impeachment against Rod Rosenstein were filed in bad faith and show extraordinary lengths to which House Republicans will go to protect Trump. History will record these Members as willing accomplices in the most serious threat to the rule of law in a generation.”
DE ARICA A PUNTA ARENAS LA MAREA VERDE SE HA TOMADO EL PAÍS!!! ABORTO LIBRE AHORA!!!”
Significant abortion-rights marches going on in Chile.
blfsays
This is a rather long article about James Thompson, who leans progressive, and is running in the district where the Kochs live. He almost won a special election last year, and is now rapidly closing the gap on the current thug, Ron Estes (who replaced Mike Pompeo in that special election). In the excerpt below, however, I’m concentrating mostly on how dummie central is acting: “It’s a herculean undertaking to fight the forces that work against Thompson’s campaign: Fox News, the Koch brothers, his own Democratic party.” They thought this was Trump country. Hell no:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders visited Wichita, Kansas, to woo progressives in support of congressional candidate James Thompson. Is the red state ready to turn blue?
[…]
A hard story often comes with hard language. During a period of homelessness, Thompson bathed, washed clothes and fished for food in a canal, fought for emancipation from an abusive parent and attended 16 schools before finishing high school. This is a not a man who, in the face of rising authoritarianism, will be “civil” to please pearl-clutching political leaders on either side of the aisle.
This is precisely his appeal in southern Kansas. Thompson might be a new star for coastal reporters. But his combination of progressive ideas and unapologetically impolite language has been gaining supporters — and even converting some Trump voters — for a year and a half without the national Democratic party lifting a finger.
[…]
[Ocasio-Cortez’s] 48-hour tour of Wichita, Kansas City, Kansas, and St Louis, Missouri, confirmed this theory [of the extent to which working-class voters have felt forgotten], recalling fellow community organizer Barack Obama’s musings about his well-received travels through the rural midwest as a black liberal.
“The thing that I hear over and over and over again is ‘Thank you for coming here’. ‘Thank you for coming,’” she said, her tone implying incredulousness that, besides Sanders, other Democrats with national platforms hadn’t deigned to visit. “Presence is such a basic thing to ask for.”
Sanders told me by phone from Washington, a few days after his Kansas stop, that a 50-state strategy is common sense.
“It is beyond comprehension, the degree to which the Democratic party nationally has essentially abdicated half of the states in this country to right-wing Republicans, including some of the poorest states in America, those in the south,” Sanders said. “The reason I go to Kansas and many so-called red states is that I will do everything that I can to bring new people into the political process in states which are today conservative. I do not know how you turn those states around unless you go there and get people excited.”
[…]
[Thompson] has already knocked 25 points off the Republican party’s lead — from 31 points when Pompeo won in 2014 to just six points in last year’s special election won by Representative Ron Estes. Before the rally with Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, Thompson reflected on the difference between his approach and that of opponent Estes when he’s back from Washington.
“(He) is either in a vehicle waving or walking down the center of the street waving,” Thompson said. “He had 400 individual donations in the special election. We had 29,000. As long as he’s got his 400 people that are willing to donate money, and the big corporate PACs giving money, he doesn’t need to dirty his hands shaking hands with people.”
On social media, Thompson has been challenging Estes to debate him in each of the district’s 17 counties — “show up or shut up” — with no response. While under a very different context, it’s not so unlike when New York representative Joe Crowley kept failing to appear at primary debates against Ocasio-Cortez.
“Thinking that you can get a job without showing up for the job interview just is wild to me,” Thompson said.
This is the great irony of conservative criticism of progressive candidates. Candidates such as Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Thompson are accused of seeking handouts for lazy moochers, while evidence suggests they are the hardest workers in the fight.
[…]
Meanwhile, leaders in the Democratic party from House minority leader Nancy Pelosi to former senator Joe Lieberman have been critical of this excitement, saying it won’t play in middle America or that moving left harms the party.
“If a centrist model is what works (in Kansas) then why has that centrist model not won the past 20 years, and in fact lost by 20–30 points in every election since (1992)?” Thompson asked me. “The idea that we need to be more like Republicans so we can beat Republicans is asinine. We need to have a clear choice. Something to vote for instead of against.”
One such thing would be Medicare for all, he said, which he acknowledged isn’t feasible under the current legislature but has pledged to work toward. When describing public healthcare or other programs that have been defunded or privatized into oblivion, he put it in language working-class voters might appreciate.
“It’s like taking a car, taking the battery out and going, ‘Oh, see, it doesn’t run anymore. So we need to get rid of it,’” Thompson said. “Put the battery back in.” [emphasis in original]
He laughed when I noted there are a lot of lawmakers who would never think of a car battery as an analogy — because they’ve never had to change one. Thompson explained that law school taught him to avoid legalese when addressing a jury.
“(Voters) want to hear me talking about real solutions in plain language that is not mealy mouthed and trying to play both sides of the fence,” said Thompson […] “Regardless of whether they agree or not, they’re going to respect that a lot more.”
[…]
While he does not identify as a Democratic socialist like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, Thompson is perceived at the national level as a party rebel for his stances on the minimum wage, health care and other basic assurances that all three candidates insist will summon voters regardless of location in midterm primaries and elections this year.
“They’re not radical ideas — they’re common sense ideas,” Thompson told the crowd at the convention hall. They laughed when he added, “That’s why we see a crowd of thousands here today when there was a MAGA rally four days ago that had 50 people at it.”
But Thompson got some of the event’s wildest cheers when he spoke about the supposedly more divisive matters of women’s reproductive rights — he is a staunch defender of Roe v Wade — and drug laws.
“When people talk about raising money for our state? Here’s an idea: legalize marijuana,” he said, and the crowd exploded.
“Cartoonist Avi Katz was fired from the @Jerusalem_Post for this absolutely brilliant reference to Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ in a caricature of the celebration by Israeli rightwingers after passage of controversial nationality law…”
[Cartoon at the link. See #135 and others above for background.]
Senior members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) met the wife of the Russian billionaire who allegedly gave financial support to a woman accused of being a secret agent for Moscow in the US.
The NRA members met Svetlana Nikolaeva, who is the head of a gun company that supplies sniper rifles to the Russian military and intelligence services, during a trip to Moscow during the 2016 election campaign.
Nikolaeva’s husband, Konstantin Nikolaev, allegedly provided funding to Maria Butina, a young Russian woman charged with carrying out an illicit spying operation in Washington. Nikolaev reportedly once invested in his wife’s gun company.
…
No senior NRA official has made any public statement about Butina’s case since news of the charges was announced by the US justice department on 16 July.
…
Nikolaev’s son, Andrey, is studying at Columbia University in New York. Andrey was quoted in an article about far-right speakers on campus that was published last year by a student journalist, and identified as a member of the Columbia University College Republicans. But his name was removed from the article following the identification of his father as a supporter of Butina. [?]
Konstantin Nikolaev also has American business interests. He is a director on the board of American Ethane, a Texas-based energy company that recently signed $26bn dollar export deal with China. The agreement, signed as part of Trump’s official visit to Beijing last year, was championed by the president.
The Guardian disclosed earlier this month that a former chief of staff to Putin had a previously unreported investment in American Ethane. The former Putin aide, Alexander Voloshin, is part of a consortium of Russian investors in the firm that also previously included the London-based oligarch Roman Abramovich.
Maria Butina, the alleged Russian agent arrested by the FBI last week, is said to have attended the National Prayer Breakfast in order to cultivate Republican officials.
But Butina is far from the religious group’s only questionable association.
The organization that runs the National Prayer Breakfast, the Fellowship Foundation, sent Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) to Romania in May of last year to meet with an infamous anti-Semitic political operative, Marian Munteanu, according to federal travel disclosure records. Once there, Aderholt met with Munteanu on two separate occasions. Other travel records show they met in May of 2015 as well, again at the behest of the organization.
…
The relationship that the Fellowship Foundation has with Munteanu doesn’t seem to be limited to Aderholt. Last year, Munteanu said in a post on his Facebook page that the Fellowship Foundation’s founder, Doug Coe, was a “close friend.” Also, Munteanu’s personal website includes a photo of him with Coe.
…
Munteanu attended last year’s National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, according to a Romanian report quoting Munteanu’s Facebook page. The report does not identify who invited him.
…
Last week, TYT reported that the Fellowship sent Aderholt to several eastern European countries shortly after Donald Trump won the Republican primary. TYT also reported that the Fellowship, along with its Ukrainian affiliate, sent at least four Republican members of Congress to various eastern European countries, where they worked with political advocates of anti-LGBT policies which could jeopardize E.U. membership.
…
Munteanu was not the only figure of controversy with whom Aderholt met during his 2017 trip. Aderholt also met with a number of scandal-plagued political and business elites.
On May 29, 2017, Aderholt met with the Prime Minister of Romania, Sorin Grindeanu, whose ministership would end up lasting all of five months….
On three separate occasions, from May 27 to 29 of 2016, Aderholt met with former defense minister of Albania, Fatmir Mediu….
…
On May 27, 2016, Aderholt met with Nenad Popovic, the pro-Russia president of the Serbian People’s Party….
On June 1, 2016, Aderholt met with Rinat Akhmetov, whom Forbes currently ranks as the 334th richest person in the world, and is known as Ukraine’s wealthiest citizen. Akhmetov reportedly had ties to the corrupt, pro-Russia Viktor Yanukovych, the former Ukrainian president who was ousted after mass protests in 2014. According to a leaked diplomatic cable, then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst called Akhmetov the “godfather” of Yanukovych’s political party, which Herbst described as a “haven for Donetsk-based mobsters.”
Jeff Sharlet tweeted: “Alabama GOP rep Bob Aderholt has been one of the Family’s most frequent fliers. When I wrote about him in C STREET, he was joining Mike Pence & Jeff Sessions to smooth arms deals for Sri Lanka’s brutal regime. Now, it seems, he’s making some really scary friends in Romania.”
VoteVets: “Trump has spent 123 days golfing, or 1/5 of his term, at a cost to taxpayers of $72,181,957 – and still hasn’t visited troops in a war zone. #NoTrumpParade”
Newly disclosed emails show Michigan Republicans angling to give their party a dominant position through gerrymandered maps and celebrating the plight of their Democratic rivals.
Republicans in the state have denied that they sought partisan gain when they drew new legislative boundaries in 2011. But a federal lawsuit, which argues the maps are unconstitutional, has unearthed records showing Republicans intent on drawing boundaries that would help their party.
The emails, disclosed in a filing on Monday, boast of concentrating “Dem garbage” into four of the five southeast Michigan districts that Democrats now control, and of packing African-Americans into a metropolitan Detroit House district. One email likened a fingerlike extension they created in one Democratic district map to an obscene gesture toward its congressman, Representative Sander M. Levin.
“Perfect. It’s giving the finger to Sandy Levin,” the author of the message wrote. “I love it.”
…
…The email excerpts disclose that Republican drafters wanted to create a map that would give the party 10 House seats and Democrats only four. That would have been too blatant, wrote Robert LaBrant, a Republican strategist, longtime executive at the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and a recognized expert at drawing political maps.
“We needed for legal and PR purposes a good looking map that did not look like an obvious gerrymander,” Mr. LaBrant wrote in May 2011 to Jeff Timmer, a consultant to the drafting process….
…
The Detroit News, citing another filing in the lawsuit, reported last week that Mr. LaBrant also pledged that month to give one Republican congressman at the time, Dave Camp, “whatever Dave wants in his district.”
“We’ve spent a lot of time providing options to ensure we have a solid 9-5 delegation in 2012 and beyond,” the email stated.
…
The newly unearthed emails could lend momentum to a proposed constitutional amendment to end gerrymandering, which is set to be on the ballot in Michigan in November. The amendment is written and promoted by a nonpartisan group called Voters Not Politicians.
The emails recall similar Republican redistricting efforts in 2016 in North Carolina…
…
“We’re seeing more and more of these cases in which the intent to gerrymander is so blatant and the ugliness of the process is becoming transparent to the courts and the general public,” Richard H. Pildes, an election-law scholar at the New York University School of Law, said in an interview. “That certainly can’t make the courts comfortable.”
The Supreme Court declined to rule on the constitutionality of partisan gerrymanders this spring, and many experts say they believe Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s retirement announcement last month have lowered the odds that the court will outlaw the practice.
“It looks like naked partisanship, and that might be permissible,” said Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “If it’s merely one party trying to harm the fortunes of the other, the court thus far has given that the green light, and it might continue to.”
Rep. Jayapal: “A mom told us her relationship with her 8yo daughter would never be the same. Officials lied to the daughter, saying her mom abandoned her. They said she’d live in a shelter until she was 18. When they reunited, the daughter believed that and wanted nothing to do with her mom.”
A former immigration official on CNN this morning said he thinks a number of these children will never be reunited with their parents – will become wards of the state, put in foster care, adopted. That CANNOT HAPPEN. This is insanity.
PM and allies drawn as pigs in magazine after passing law giving exclusive rights to Jews
You can guess, right now, what one of the claims about the caricature is.
An Israeli magazine has fired its long-serving cartoonist after he portrayed Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies as pigs from George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
The illustration referenced the Israeli prime minister and members of his party taking a congratulatory selfie after passing a contentious law in parliament that has been decried as giving Jewish people more rights than the country’s minorities.
Avi Katz parodied the photo with a depiction of the politicians as characters from the 1945 novella in a cartoon for the Jerusalem Report, an Israeli English-language magazine owned by the Jerusalem Post newspaper.
“All animals are equal. But some are more equal than others,” the cartoon quoted from the book […]
In Orwell’s work, inspired by the early 20th-century totalitarian Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, the pig leaders promise equality to all yet later declare themselves the privileged species.
The cartoon’s publication in the fortnightly magazine was met with online support but also anger by many on social media, some of whom suggested the portrayal of Israeli politicians as pigs was antisemitic.
See? Pigs = anti-Semitic = invalid criticism. So so predictable… and ludicrous.
[… T]he Jerusalem Post said it would no longer work with Katz, who has contributed to the company for three decades.
Katz told the Guardian he “thought the cartoon was relatively mild and my firing was idiotic, but I’m delighted to see the enormous support I’ve received over the last couple of days”.
The Union of Journalists in Israel called on the Post to retract “this unacceptable step” and a colleague of Katz’s resigned in protest.
Haim Watzman, a Jerusalem Report short fiction writer, published his resignation letter on Facebook, saying he could not “be associated with a publication that dumps a staff member simply because his work has upset some readers.
“Journalism, when done well, always angers some readers, and it is the duty of the newspaper or magazine’s editors and managers to stand by writers and other members of the staff when readers complain about the analysis and opinions expressed by its staff,” he wrote.
Interesting article – “Maria Butina was the ultimate NRA Cool Girl”: “The sexy narrative of Maria Butina is that she’s a devious femme fatale. But her maneuvering through Second Amendment circles revealed as much about her marks’ desires as it did about her own plotting. Maria Butina was NRA Cool Girl. Her Russian compatriots might have hacked into servers and political databases. She learned to hack the American psyche.”
Somewhat similar to what has now happened in Bavaria (Germany), in Italy there is apparently now a proposal to display torture devices in public spaces. Even the raping children cult is not impressed (at least in public), Pope Francis adviser decries Matteo Salvini’s ‘co-option’ of crucifix:
[…]
A close adviser to Pope Francis has strongly condemned a proposal by Italy’s far-right League party to make it obligatory for crucifixes to be displayed in all public spaces, including ports, schools, embassies and prisons.
The bill, introduced for debate in parliament earlier this week, would include fines of up to €1,000 […] for failing to comply.
In a tweet that went viral on Wednesday, Reverend Antonio Spadaro, the editor of the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, wrote that the crucifix should never be used as a political symbol and said politicians should keep their hands off.
[…]
The League has a strong following among devout Catholics, and Salvini — who is also Italy’s interior minister and deputy prime minister — often brandishes a rosary during public speeches.
Italian priests, however, have been the strongest opponents of his vitriolic anti-immigration stance since his party took power in coalition with the populist Five Star Movement in early June. The leading Roman Catholic weekly, Famiglia Cristiana compared him to Satan on its front cover on Wednesday.
Heh. That would sting if the Italian “government” loons were actually devote believers. Whilst I don’t know that they aren’t, they do seem to act more like cynical authoritarians quite happy to do anything to increase their wealth:
[…]
Salvini hit back. They are comparing me to Satan? I don’t deserve that, he wrote on Facebook. […]
Salvini […] often exploits religion to galvanise support. During a speech in early July he swore on the gospel to be loyal to his people while pledging to create a European-wide alliance against mass immigration.
“It’s ridiculous,” Gianfranco Formenton, a priest in Italy’s central Umbria region whom Salvini attacked in 2015 after he banned racists from his church, said. “He knows that by using the cross he gets consensus among voters. Spadaro said it perfectly.”
Allen Weisselberg, a longtime financial gatekeeper for President Donald Trump, has been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in the criminal probe of Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, according to people familiar with the investigation.
Mr. Weisselberg is considered a witness in the investigation, the people said. It isn’t known whether he has already appeared before the grand jury or what questions prosecutors of New York’s Southern District have had for him. The date of the subpoena couldn’t be determined.
For decades, Mr. Weisselberg has served as executive vice president and chief financial officer at the Trump Organization, and was once described by a person close to the company as “the most senior person in the organization that’s not a Trump.” After Mr. Trump was elected, he handed control of his financial assets and business interests to his two adult sons and Mr. Weisselberg.
…
The subpoena illustrates that investigators are seeking input from Mr. Trump’s closest colleagues in the Trump Organization, particularly those with knowledge of the company’s financial dealings….
Russia’s Foreign Ministry says a woman who was detained in the United States on charges of being a Russian agent is a political prisoner and must be released promptly.
The Russian government previously objected to Maria Butina’s arrest this month, but its characterization of her as a political prisoner on Thursday raises the level of complaint….
[…]
Two New Jersey radio hosts have been suspended after repeatedly describing the state’s attorney general, a practicing Sikh, as turban man and the guy who wears a turban on the air.
WKXW hosts Dennis Malloy and Judi Franco made the comments on Wednesday while discussing Gurbir Grewal’s recent order to temporarily suspend marijuana prosecutions in the state. Grewal is the first Sikh attorney general in US history.
Malloy wondered aloud: Is that highly offensive? Franco responded: To me? No. To people who wear turbans? Could be.
Malloy added: If that offends you then don’t wear the turban and maybe I’ll remember your name.
Announcing the suspension several hours after the remarks aired, station officials said in a statement: “We have taken immediate action and have taken them off the air until further notice.”
Condemnation of the remarks was swift, with the state’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, describing them as “abhorrent and xenophobic”. The New Jersey senator Cory Booker called for people to “denounce this ignorant and outrageous attack”.
The New Jersey ACLU added in a tweet: “Racism isn’t cute. It’s just racist.”
[…]
“This is not the first indignity I’ve faced and it probably won’t be the last,” Grewal said in response to the radio hosts’ comments. “Sometimes, I endure it alone. Yesterday, all of New Jersey heard it. It’s time to end small-minded intolerance,” he wrote in a tweet.
[…]
First off, congratulations to WKXW for their swift reaction. Whilst unlikely, I would have liked the station’s engineer to have shut down the pair’s microphones whilst still on-air, with a voice-over similar to the ACLU’s twittering, following by some appropriate musical protest songs (albeit at the moment I’m struggling to choose some tracks).
And secondly, I’m inclined to suggest Malloy & Franco be referred as something like “the two ex-radio hosts who cannot distinguish between a turban and their ignorance.”
The ones about animal welfare are creepy and disingenuous. (I’ve been noticing how many Russian bots and trolls lately have things like “animal lover” and “stop animal abuse” in their bios, sentiments which bear little relation to what they tweet about. Makes me furious.
David Carroll: “Irony of these demonstrably xenophobic, nativist, nationalist Vote Leave ads: they were done by a Canadian shop, the one with an exclusive IP license with SCL Elections, a firm largely financed by an American family, run on Facebook, controlled by American who won’t come to UK.”
The so-called government is saying 917 of the parents at the border are “ineligible” to be reunited with their children. You can’t become ineligible to have your kidnapped children returned. It’s not a fucking sweepstakes. It’s a human right, of both the parents and the children.
They’re just allegations at this point, and largely based on the testimony of a former associate with whom Banks is in a legal battle, but that said Banks is a known liar and his mining operation (and other business) is ridiculously sketchy.
blfsays
Martin Rowson in the Grauniad on Brexit bafflement in the heatwave (cartoon): “The Brexit Policy Paradigm in its Practical Application to Heat Waves”.
Thread on the AIQ Vote Leave ads. Also, Carole Cadwalladr points out that many lack identifying imprints, which are required by law. At the end of the interview @ #293 above, she argues that FB, which is totally unaccountable, shouldn’t be allowed to play a role in future British elections.
My gosh. Trump lies to U.S. Steel workers, at a U.S. Steel facility, that U.S. Steel is opening up seven plants. It isn’t.
…
Trump says that he used to order a lot of steel, when he was “in the construction business,” and sometimes, when it was foreign, “It wasn’t steel. It was a lotta garbage that looked like steel.”
[A reminder that two of Trump’s recent projects, in use today, the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas and the Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago, were built with cheap Chinese steel. – SC]
…
Trump falsely: “This is tough, but I did win that women’s vote, didn’t I…’Why would women vote for Trump?’ I don’t know, but I got more than she did.”
Exit polls said he only won among *white* women, had 41-42% with women overall.
[Why would women vote for Trump? I don’t know…’]
…
Trump falsely: “We’re rated number one in the world for growth and other elements.” (I don’t know what other elements are, no)
…
Trump on tariffs: “We are not starting a trade war: we’ve been in a trade war for many years and we’ve lost for many years. But over the last year and a half, we’re winning. We’re back, and we’re winning, and we are winning bigger than anyone understands.”
[We’ve always been in a trade war with Eastasia.]
Trump, loooose, says China is targeting soybeans “in the hopes we will SURRENDERRR our intellectual property” and continue to make money “off the big, fat, sloppy United States.”
…
Three rapid-fire NATO false claims in a row from Trump:
– Falsely says NATO spending was “going down” before him. (It rose in 2015 and 2016)
– Falsely says the U.S. pays 4.3% of GDP (3.5%)
– Falsely says other countries were “delinquent” (not how it works)
Trump then adds two more false claims:
– NATO spending has been up $44 billion according to Stoltenberg ($41 billion)
– At the meeting they agreed to hundreds of billions more (no)
…
Trump on the benefits to him of live speech coverage: “Look at all those cameras back there. It’s like the Academy Awards, there’s no difference…it’s covered live, much of it. And when I say it, they can’t do anything about it, ’cause I say it.”…
[THIS IS WHY THESE EVENTS SHOULDN’T BE COVERED LIVE.]
The Russian intelligence agency behind the 2016 election cyberattacks targeted Sen. Claire McCaskill as she began her 2018 re-election campaign in earnest, a Daily Beast forensic analysis reveals. That makes the Missouri Democrat the first identified target of the Kremlin’s 2018 election interference.
McCaskill, who has been highly critical of Russia over the years, is widely considered to be among the most vulnerable Senate Democrats facing re-election this year as Republicans hope to hold their slim majority in the Senate. In 2016, President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by almost 20 points in the senator’s home state of Missouri.
There’s no evidence to suggest that this particular attack was successful. Asked about the hack attempt by Russia’s GRU intelligence agency, McCaskill told The Daily Beast on Thursday that she wasn’t yet prepared to discuss it.
“I’m not going to speak of it right now,” she said. “I think we’ll have something on it next week. I’m not going to speak about it right now. I can’t confirm or do anything about it right now.”
In August 2017, around the time of the hack attempt, Trump traveled to Missouri and chided McCaskill, telling the crowd to “vote her out of office.” Just this last week, however, Trump said, on Twitter, that he feared Russians would intervene in the 2018 midterm elections on behalf of Democrats.
…
In October, Microsoft wrested control of one of the spoofed website addresses—adfs.senate.qov.info. Seizing the Russians’ malicious domain names has been easy for Microsoft since August 2017, when a federal judge in Virginia issued a permanent injunction against the GRU hackers, after Microsoft successfully sued them as unnamed “John Doe” defendants. The court established a process that lets Microsoft take over any web addresses the hackers use that includes a Microsoft trademark.
Microsoft redirected the traffic from the fake Senate site to its own sinkhole server, putting it in a prime position to view targets trying to click through to change their passwords.
The Daily Beast identified McCaskill as a target while investigating statements made by Microsoft VP Tom Burt last week in an appearance at the Aspen Security Forum….
Well, that was both sinister and comically pathetic – “Meadows backs off impeaching Rosenstein after leadership talks”: “Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) says he is tabling his efforts to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after having several meetings with Republican leadership, stating that he would instead pursue contempt if the Justice Department (DOJ) does not turn over documents Congress is seeking.”
“The exhibits contain detail, and casual conversation, about the political work the consultants did abroad, as much as a decade before the 2016 election. Manafort’s case seems likely to explore in depth the lucrative, insider world of Washington influence, and which cuts against the outsider image of Donald Trump, whose campaign Manafort chaired — and that of Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist whose campaign Devine produced ads for.”
Tad Devine is the Linda Evangelista of sleazy political operators.
Tad Devine, a political operative who served at the highest levels of the Bernie Sanders campaign, will assist in the special counsel office’s prosecution of Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, according to a statement released on Thursday.
“The Special Counsel has asked Tad Devine to assist in the prosecution of their case against Paul Manafort regarding his firm’s work on media consulting on past political campaigns in Ukraine,” reads a statement provided by Julian Mulvey, a partner at Devine’s political firm, Devine Mulvey Longabaugh.
“When the Special Counsel sought assistance from us in its ongoing investigation, we readily provided it.”
The firm, according to the statement, has been “assured by the special counsel’s office that we have no legal exposure and did not act unlawfully.”
Devine’s role in the investigation — first indicated last week by a court filing that included documents from Devine — nevertheless entangles the Sanders orbit in an expansive government inquiry that has probed questions surrounding Russia’s interference in the US election, Trump’s potential obstruction of justice, and the insider world of lobbying and influence in Washington….
I haven’t read through all of the documents @ #379, but I will recommend, to put them in context, the chapter on Manafort’s Ukraine work in Luke Harding’s book Collusion.
CNN is reporting that sources are telling them that “Cohen is prepared to tell Mueller Donald Trump knew, and approved of[,] Trump Tower meeting before it happened.”
Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, claims that then-candidate Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower in which Russians were expected to offer his campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton, sources with knowledge tell CNN. Cohen is willing to make that assertion to special counsel Robert Mueller, the sources said.
Cohen’s claim would contradict repeated denials by Trump, Donald Trump Jr., their lawyers and other administration officials who have said that the President knew nothing about the Trump Tower meeting until he was approached about it by The New York Times in July 2017.
Cohen alleges that he was present, along with several others, when Trump was informed of the Russians’ offer by Trump Jr. By Cohen’s account, Trump approved going ahead with the meeting with the Russians, according to sources.
To be clear, these sources said Cohen does not have evidence, such as audio recordings, to corroborate his claim, but he is willing to attest to his account.
…
After news of the meeting broke in July 2017, the Trump team offered misleading explanations and changed their story several times. But one claim stayed consistent: that Trump had no knowledge of the meeting beforehand, wasn’t told about it afterward and first learned about it one year later.
Those denials were repeatedly issued by Trump, his attorney Jay Sekulow, Trump Jr., Futerfas and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders. Those people denied that Trump had contemporaneous knowledge of the meeting on more than 15 occasions, according to CNN’s analysis.
…
But perhaps the highest-stakes denial was given by Trump Jr. in his testimony last year to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“He wasn’t aware of it,” Trump Jr. told lawmakers, referring to his father’s knowledge of the meeting. “And, frankly, by the time anyone was aware of it, which was summer of this year, as I stated earlier, I wouldn’t have wanted to get him involved in it because it had nothing to do with him.”…
Wait…I think Giuliani just said that if it did happen it won’t be as significant as the anti-Trump people are saying. Everything he’s saying here is basically an admission that it’s true.
I’m cringing watching him. He’s not mentally equipped to do this.
Matthew Miller: “Cohen is obviously a difficult witness, but if it’s true as he says that there were other people in the room, Mueller has a clear path to confirming that Trump knew about the Russian offer for help in advance. IF he doesn’t already have it.”
Update to #374 – Cadwalladr: “There are laws for leaflets to have imprints. But as @alexhern & @hugorifkind point out there were only ‘guidelines’ for digital ads. Electoral Commission explicitly told campaigners to include them. But they would have known it didn’t have force of law.”
David Corn: “If Cohen’s account is accurate, Trump knew from the start that Putin had a secret plot to hurt HRC & help him. Yet he constantly denied Russia was behind the attack on the US election. That is, he knowingly lied to protect a foreign adversary attacking the US. That’s betrayal.”
(Recall that an email to Jr. setting up the meeting openly described the information as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”)
“NEW: @MichaelAvenatti will represent 3 additional women who have come forward claiming they were paid by AMI for their stories about affairs with Trump. One of the women says she was impregnated.
Avenatti says these payments were made before the election.”
…It also seems…that the “dirt” was offered. It just wasn’t great dirt.
Notes taken by Manafort during the meeting suggest that the Magnitsky Act was discussed, as was Bill Browder, Magnitsky’s employer and the main driver of the law.
Veselnitskaya apparently made a case in that meeting that was similar to the one that Russian President Vladimir Putin offered during that news conference with Trump last week: Browder had given large contributions of allegedly illegally-gotten money to the Clinton campaign. (Browder denies any wrongdoing, the case against him and his company, and no evidence of large donations to the campaign exists.)…
Of course, much of what Putin claims about this is cynical propaganda, targeted harassment, and political gamesmanship. He lies constantly. But I think it’s possible that he and his circle actually believe that this conspiracy existed or exists. His paranoia about the US, like his paranoia about LGBT people, is genuine at some deep level (see Timothy Snyder’s The Road to Unfreedom). So it’s not far fetched to surmise that when he had this presented to the Trump campaign he really believed it was good dirt.
It took me a while to realize that many Trump supporters, including House Republicans, truly believed that when Nunes released his memo it would reveal a high-level FBI/DoJ/DNC anti-Trump conspiracy. While they have the same propagandistic and political motives as the Kremlin, at least some of the twisted reality they present to the public is rooted in their own twisted and paranoid understanding of reality. I don’t think we can count out that something similar is going on with Putin.
U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw set a deadline for midnight July 26 for the Trump administration to reunite the thousands migrant families it forcibly separated under its “zero tolerance” policy.
According to a court filing submitted Thursday night, the administration managed to reunite just 1,442 of those children with their parents in ICE custody. Another 378 were released under “other appropriate circumstances,” including reunification with a parent already released by ICE or released to another relative or approved sponsor.
The administration identified 711 children they say are not “eligible” for reunification by the court’s deadline.
Of those, 67 have a parent whose background check or case file review found a “red flag,” 79 have a parent who was released by ICE and who has not been located by the administration, 431 whose parent was deported, 94 whose parent has not been location for reasons not specified in the filing, and 120 whose parent the administration claims waived their right to be reunified.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the parents in court, submitted testimony earlier this week that many if not all of those who signed such waivers were coerced or misled into doing so, given mere minutes to make the decision, and given forms in languages they could not read.
Yet on a call with reporters Thursday night, Trump administration officials stood by their claim that these parents knowingly and willingly signed away their right to get their child back.
…
Though the court has ordered the administration to reunite the more than 400 parents they deported without their children, Albence seemed dismissive of that responsibility. “We don’t keep track of individuals once they’ve been deported,” he said.
Chris Meekins, the official overseeing reunifications at the Department of Health and Human Services, added that the administration is waiting for orders from Judge Sabraw before beginning to look for the deported parents.
…
The ACLU and the Trump administration will appear before Judge Sabraw on Friday.
Evil.
Akira MacKenziesays
I think I can official say that all my hope is gone. I do not believe for an instant that Trump will be removed from office. There are far too many constitutional and political barriers for that to happen. Nor do I expect the “Blue Wave” to occur. While kids in dog cages, a right-wing supreme court, and lost civil rights are horrific, the economy is limping along without the feared economic collapse and most people are happy with the status quo… and the millennials don’t seem to give a fuck enough to drag their asses from their Playstations and vote. No one has problem with white supremacists when they have job security and fat wallets.
It’s too late, They’ve won. Trump and his brand of right-wing goons is the new mainstream. Not that it really took that much to get there; America has been wallowing in racism, sexism, and capitalist greed since the beginning.
Ah – this makes sense: Cohen and Trump were reportedly talking about buying the rights to McDougal’s story because they thought Pecker might be leaving AMI and no longer have control over publication.
It’s nice to know that after your generation has fucked everything up, you’ve figured out how to shift blame to mine.
BTW, you do realize that Millennials aren’t kids anymore, right? The majority of Millennials are in their late twenties to mid thirties with jobs and families.
microraptorsays
Facebook just announced that it’s banning Alex Jones and has started taking down Infowars videos.
Hugo Rifkind says ‘Whatever you think of the referendum result, we can’t ever let there be a campaign like this again.’
Tough luck Hugo — if your side gets its way and there is another referendum, Vote Leave 2 will be much much worse for your side than VL1 was. VL2 will win by more than VL1 and the logical corollary will be to morph into a new party and fight the next election ‘to implement the promises we made in the referendum because the MPs have proved they can’t be trusted’. At a minimum VL2 will win the referendum and destroy the strategic foundations of both main parties. The Tories will be destroyed and maybe Labour too. The rotten civil service system will be replaced and the performance of government will be transformed for the better. Investment in basic science research will flow. Long-term funding for the NHS guaranteed by law. MORE high skilled immigrants, FEWER low-skilled. An agenda that could not be described as Left or Right. The public will love it. Insiders will hate it but they will have slit their own throats and have no moral credibility. Few careers will survive.
The who screed has a certain “November Criminals” ugliness to it.
“A day off is the minimum. She’s a human being, not a machine.”
[…]
Yet no one other than you or your legal guardian should ever be in possession of your passport, especially if you’re traveling or working abroad. Such a practice can hinder your ability to leave safely and identify yourself in emergency situations.
[…]
Kuwaitis have spoken out against Sondos Al Qattan, calling her an “embarrassment” after the beauty blogger said the backlash against her was an affront to Kuwaitis and the hijab.
Enraged by Al Qattan’s comments, many have taken to social media to denounce her and say they will boycott the brands that are still sponsoring her. This is in direct contrast to Al Qattan’s tirade, in which she said her followers would stop supporting the companies that had cut ties with her. Several brands sponsoring Al Qattan have revoked their deals after her controversial remarks, notably Max Factor and Mac.
“She’s an embarrassment. As far as I can remember, everyone knows that Sunday is a day off for those of us lucky enough to have help,” said Samia Al Duaij, who works at an international organisation in Kuwait. “Otherwise, it’s Friday if you’re Muslim. I don’t know where this new idea of no days off came from.”
[…]
Al Qattan has been so heavily criticised online that she made her Twitter account private and disabled comments on her Instagram page.
LS, who works in Kuwait at a marketing agency, said her defence was clearly aimed at trying to create a diversion.
“I think it’s ridiculous. It doesn’t represent who we are, it doesn’t represent how we treat our housekeepers, because at the end of the day we need them as much as they need us,” LS said. “They take care of my children, so if I don’t treat them well I am not setting a good example to my children.”
[…]
In the video Al Qattan also said that after reading headlines referring to her as a Muslim woman wearing a veil, she believes the media backlash is an attack on Islam and Kuwait.
Many Kuwaitis interviewed by The National suspected that she used the defence as a way to gather support from other Arabs and Muslims worldwide, to get them to see the matter as religious or ethnic.
[…]
No hint yet that she has the slightest understanding or comprehension.
blfsays
Facebook just announced that it’s banning Alex Jones and has started taking down Infowars videos.
[…]
Alex Jones, the American conspiracy theorist who runs the InfoWars website, has been suspended from Facebook for bullying and hate speech.
The suspension will last for 30 days, and affects only Jones’s personal account on the social network, not the main InfoWars account. His profile will continue to be published, but he will not be not be able to post content until the suspension elapses.
[…]
The suspension means Jones will not be able to post content to pages for which he is a “page admin”. As the suspension applies only to Jones personally, the channel bearing his name on Facebook will remain active, as will InfoWars itself, which has several page administrators. The intention is to prevent individuals from working around the ban by using multiple pages to violate policy.
Facebook has previously been accused of “light-touch” moderation for high-profile accounts, even if they seem to be repeatedly violating policies. Earlier this month, [UK TV] Channel 4 revealed, through undercover filming, that some accounts, including those of far-right icons such as Tommy Robinson and Britain First, were marked as “shielded” and prevented from deletion even when normal users would have faced action.
[…]
Earlier this week, YouTube removed four videos from the InfoWars channel — understood to be the same content that led to the Facebook action — and issued a “strike” against InfoWars for its conduct. It was the second such strike the channel had received, but although YouTube officially bans accounts when they receive three strikes, the strikes time out after 90 days. Additionally, the channel bundles multiple violations into individual strikes, protecting Jones from a potential ban.
Accounts that are subject to a content strike are not able to stream live on YouTube until the strike expires, but Jones is still a regular presence on the site: he is simply hosting his livestreams on other channels, donated by friends and supporters, forcing YouTube to ban those streams as it finds them.
Earlier this week, Jones broadcast a rant against Robert Mueller […], fantasising about shooting him and accusing him without evidence of paedophilia. It’s not a joke. It’s not a game. It’s the real world. Politically. You’re going to get it, or I’m going to die trying, bitch. Get ready. We’re going to bang heads, Jones said, miming firing a gun repeatedly.
It would be more accurate to say nothing has happened. Or to be a bit more pedantic, user(s?) claiming to be “Alex Jones” are slightly proscribed, and a handful of videos taken down.
Oh! This is clarifying. I’ve been confused about precisely this. Butina isn’t charged under FARA but under Section 951: “Perhaps the best way to think of the difference is that FARA is a cousin of the Lobbying Disclosure Act, while under Section 951, Butina faces a softened version of the espionage laws.”
[Probably part of the source of my confusion is that since FARA came about a decade before Section 951 – 1938 and 1948, respectively – it was, as I understand it, used in the war years to address the crimes later covered by Section 951 (e.g., Nazi spyish behavior and covert influence campaigns).]
blfsays
(My previous attempt at a reply seems to have been eaten by poopyhead’s filter — try again…)
Facebook just announced that it’s banning Alex Jones and has started taking down Infowars videos.
[…] The suspension will last for 30 days, and affects only Jones’s personal account on the social network, not the main InfoWars account. His profile will continue to be published, but he will not be not be able to post content until the suspension elapses.
[…] As the suspension applies only to Jones personally, the channel bearing his name on Facebook will remain active, as will InfoWars itself, […]
Facebook has previously been accused of “light-touch” moderation for high-profile accounts, even if they seem to be repeatedly violating policies. Earlier this month, [UK TV] Channel 4 revealed, through undercover filming, that some accounts, including those of far-right icons such as Tommy Robinson and Britain First, were marked as “shielded” and prevented from deletion even when normal users would have faced action.
[…]
Earlier this week, YouTube removed four videos from the InfoWars channel — understood to be the same content that led to the Facebook action — and issued a “strike” against InfoWars for its conduct. It was the second such strike the channel had received, but although YouTube officially bans accounts when they receive three strikes, the strikes time out after 90 days. Additionally, the channel bundles multiple violations into individual strikes, protecting Jones from a potential ban.
[…]
Earlier this week, Jones broadcast a rant against Robert Mueller […], fantasising about shooting him and accusing him without evidence of paedophilia. It’s not a joke. It’s not a game. It’s the real world. Politically. You’re going to get it, or I’m going to die trying, [redacted]. Get ready. We’re going to bang heads, Jones said, miming firing a gun repeatedly.
It would be more accurate to say nothing has happened. To to be a bit more pedantic, user(s?) claiming to be “Alex Jones” have been slightly inconvenienced. For a few days.
David Cole, ACLU: “We will see them in court until ALL the families are reunited.”
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@SC #396:
I think it’s possible that [Putin] and his circle actually believe that this conspiracy existed or exists. His paranoia about the US, like his paranoia about LGBT people, is genuine at some deep level
[…]
It took me a while to realize that many Trump supporters, including House Republicans, truly believed […] While they have the same propagandistic and political motives as the Kremlin, at least some of the twisted reality they present to the public is rooted in their own twisted and paranoid understanding of reality. I don’t think we can count out that something similar is going on with Putin.
Whaaat? Russian conservatives don’t sound like Republicans at all. /s
Article: New Yorker – The Hundred-ruble Crusade (circa 2014)
Roman Khudyakov, a member of the Russian Duma, is gravely concerned about a moral threat to the country’s children: he recently discovered that youngsters are being exposed, on a daily basis, to a graphic image of male genitals. The object of Khudyakov’s outrage is the hundred-ruble note (worth a bit less than three dollars), which shows the façade of the Bolshoi Theatre, adorned with a world-famous sculpture of a chariot driven by the Greek god Apollo.
[…]
Khudyakov’s proposed solution was to mark the bill with an eighteen-plus rating. Better still, as he suggested in a letter to the Russian Central Bank, remove the morally improper bills from circulation and replace them with ones bearing an image of Crimea, annexed by Russia in March.
[…]
In this atmosphere, scores of public figures have rushed to call for bans on anything that smacks of Westernization or of moral impropriety – terms that are seen, in many quarters, as virtually synonymous.
[…]
As the major moral issues were exhausted, eager loyalists had to make do with minor causes. This year alone, new initiatives have included restrictions on the use of foreign words and bans on the sale, import, and production of lacy underwear and high heels. It was suggested that the legal ban on “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” be extended to all sexual relations; if adopted, this would imply that sex simply could not be discussed with children.
[…]
No initiative was too absurd to be picked up by Russian lawmakers, though luckily not all have been codified, and the ones that have been signed into law have not all been actively enforced. The lawmakers are arguably concerned primarily with demonstrating their loyalty, and do not aspire to turn Russia into a puritanical nation. Likewise, the Russian people at large do not regard the new legal norms as moral guidance.
Khudyakov’s demand to replace the morally improper hundred-ruble bill is not likely to succeed, either, but his attack drew new attention to the sculpture of Apollo on the Bolshoi Theatre. […] the Greek god now has his private parts covered by a fig leaf.
…Although the State Department did not directly respond to a question asking whether there had been a recent change in policy or internal guidance mandating new enforcement rules, a change would hardly be surprising. Since Trump took office, his administration has altered existing transgender-inclusive guidelines at the Department of Education, the Department of Justice and Bureau of Prisons, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Census, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Even the Centers for Disease Control was instructed in an internal memo not to use the word transgender — along with terms like “diversity” and “evidence-based.” It’s not unfair to say the Trump administration has stopped just short of outlawing transgender people entirely.
“I think there’s an internal policy change to make it as difficult as possible for trans people,” says Rose. “The goal is to create friction. They can’t change all these laws right away, but they can make it really hard.”
militantagnosticsays
From SC @376
Trump says that he used to order a lot of steel, when he was “in the construction business,” and sometimes, when it was foreign, “It wasn’t steel. It was a lotta garbage that looked like steel.”
Who the fuck would ever believe this? – especially people working in a steel mill. Does he expect them to believe this? This isn’t lying, so much as it is bullshit on stilts. Do his supporters know and just don’t care?
KGsays
In all seriousness, the WWII Victory Gardens really pushed towards self-sufficiency. One of my pet conspiracy theories is that they and the entire culture surrounding them were destroyed on behalf of a growing agribusiness (including chemical industries) lobby. – SC@346
Another likely contributer is the conversion of the urban and periurban land used to housing and business premises. That land, which I think was mostly owned by local councils, became “too valuable” to be used for growing food, once the WW2 bomb sites were used up. Early on the councils might build much-needed housing on it themselves, later they were under both financial and political pressure to sell it to private developers.
Social history anecdote:
The first place I lived, on the outskirts of London, my father had an “allotment” (the land was “alloted” at a low rent by local councils) almost immediately at the end of our back garden. He grew vegetables there, as well as in the garden itself. His father and two elder brothers were professional horticulturalists, so no doubt he had skills passed on from them. That land has since been built on – I’m not sure whether by private developers or the council (but if the latter, the houses will since have been sold off at knock-down prices and subsequently re-sold at huge profit).
Your cite mentions Dominic Raab, the new “Brexit Secretary”. I said when this nonentity was appointed that I thought it signalled May’s intention to run the negotiations with the EU herself. She has recently confirmed that, saying Raab will “deputise” for her. Since she has failed in two years to reach a settlement with her own party, and since it’s already clear the EU will not accept the cherry-picking of the “Chequers proposal” I think we can say a disastrous “No deal” Brexit has become a very real possibility.
Signs are that Vladimir Putin may already be hedging his bets on Donald Trump as a reliable tool for advancing several of Russia’s key goals, including his drive to get U.S. sanctions lifted, sow chaos in America’s elections and undermine NATO and the European Union, experts say.
Following the controversial Helsinki summit between the Russian and American presidents, Moscow’s media commentators greeted Trump’s deference toward Putin with a mix of concern, pity and ridicule, none of which could have been uttered without the Kremlin’s approval, says Ukrainian-born Julia Davis, an expert on Russian propaganda.
…
The Kremlin, she continued, is “growing very frustrated because there’s so many controls that are being placed on” Trump by Congress, starting with Russian sanctions, upgrades to the U.S. nuclear arsenal and beefed-up military aid to Ukraine, which is under assault by Moscow-backed forces in its eastern Donbas region. And then there are the ongoing investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections by special counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee, independent actions that would be unthinkable in Putin’s Russia.
Measures at Putin’s disposal include leaking a mix of real and fabricated details on Trump’s suspected debts to Russian bankers and oligarchs, said Milton Bearden, a legendary former CIA officer who worked against the Soviet target and later co-authored a book, The Main Enemy, with the cooperation of several former KGB officials.
…
Notwithstanding the potential for Putin to push a faltering or used-up Trump off the ledge, the former KGB officer will continue to employ covert “active measures” here that worked so well for him in 2016, said Sipher, a former Moscow station chief….
Canadian alt.righter @FaithGoldy interviewed the spox for the Greek Neo Nazi party Golden Dawn, which has murdered immigrants and leftists, brutally beaten queer folk, and waves a modified swastika flag. The spox himself punched a female MP on TV and is in trial for murder
The Golden Dawn that Goldy praises as “strong men” stabbed an anti-racist rapper in broad daylight and are charged with the disappearances of over a hundred immigrants.
Goldy is interviewing Ilias Kasidaris, a Holocaust denier who quotes The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and has a rap sheet for violent, politically motivated attacks going back over a decade.
Glad to see the alt.right dropping that last shred of “not a Nazi” pretense
on a TV panel with Kasidaris, a female MP mentioned his past armed robbery charges. He got triggered, threw a glass of water at her, repeatedly punched a second MP in the face when she tried to protest, then ran away and hid.
What a Big Strong Man
The Golden Dawn’s totally Not a Nazi logo.
I swear to god the alt.right is going to try to normalize these scum as the next “dapper white nationalists”
Another Strong Man of the Golden Dawn “Extolling the virtues of a “one-race nation”, Panagiotaros, lashed out at the minorities the party considers deviant, describing Muslim immigrants as jihadists and gays as “f—-ts”.”
Oh… Golden Dawn also posts articles blaming the Athens fires on …. atheism
Countdown to Trump publically praising the Golden Dawn like he did Le Pen
Images and more links in the thread.
Oggie.says
re: SC @420:
I suspect that Putin is pretty near the end when it comes to Trump. The goals of the operation have been more than met: destabilize the EU and NATO, sow distrust in US democracy, destabilize the US government, etc. I don’t know that there is all that much more that Trump’s administration can do to help Russia and hurt the US and its allies.
When Putin does finally drop the dime on Trump, it will include both fact and fabrication in order to cause further chaos in the US. If Russia releases information on nine crimes, but also information on one absolut fabrication, the left will talk about the crimes, the right will talk about the fabrication, and the content center will continue to ignore the assault on democracy. I think at this point, Putin can do more to harm the United States and allies by throwing Trump under the bus and watching the US tear itself apart.
Well done, Chris Wylie. Not only does she keep repeating “that’s an allegation,” but even says “That’s an allegation that you’re making.” It’s like the BBC is refusing to acknowledge the events of the past year.
So Dominic Cummings broke the embargo to leak the DCMS committee report (scheduled for release tomorrow) in order to get his spin out ahead. There’s a link to the report in the post I link to a link to @ #406, but I wouldn’t click on a link from any of those duplicitous douchebags. But some British publications evidently then broke the embargo themselves, so WaPo decided to do the same and publish its report.
The “very future of democracy” is being threatened by “fake news,” a British parliamentary committee is warning, and the government response should include making tech companies legally liable and subject to algorithm audits.
That’s the conclusion after a lengthy probe by Britain’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
…
The report concludes that an even bigger concern than obviously false information is the manipulation and misuse of personal data and the deliberate stoking of fears and prejudices — by state-sponsored actors, private companies and other groups agendas — to influence voting.
In an interview with The Post last month, Collins said that after interviewing U.S. tech companies and researchers in Washington in February, the commitee realized that fake news based on lies was only a small part of the problem.
“One of the bigger areas, the much more difficult area, is the relentless targeting of people with hyper-partisan content that’s not necessarily fake, but it’s highly skewed to a particular point of view,” Collins said. “The issue there is: Do people understand why they are receiving this information? And also where is it coming from?”
He added, “One of the big issues with the Russian activities is it’s not just that they are doing it but they are masquerading as people in your country.”
Among the commitee’s recommendations are that the government should update electoral law to account for modern campaigning techniques, consider new restrictions for political advertising on social media and “establish clear legal liability for the tech companies to act against harmful and illegal content on their platforms.”
The report suggests that companies should be responsible for both “content that has been referred to them for takedown by their users, and other content that should have been easy for the tech companies to identify for themselves.”
…
The report also proposes that the government should have the power to audit tech companies’ nonfinancial aspects, including their algorithms.
…
The wide-ranging report also highlights concerns over the funding of one of the campaigns that pushed for Britain to leave the European Union. “Arron Banks is believed to have donated £8.4m to the leave campaign, the largest political donation in British politics, but it is unclear from where he obtained that amount of money,” the report says. “He failed to satisfy us that his own donations had, in fact, come from sources within the UK.”
…
Collins said that during the 18-month probe, “what blew the doors off was when Wylie came forward.” That was the moment that “started to show the interconnectedness” of various digital advertising companies, such as Cambridge Analytica, SCL and AggregateIQ.
When asked if he thought micro-targeting by data analysis firms on sites such as Facebook actually influenced behavior, Collins said: “You wouldn’t spend millions of pounds doing it if you didn’t think it worked.”
…The MPs will raise concerns about foreign funding of Brexit campaign groups, saying they remained unconvinced about the source of some of the money spent by the leave side, especially the funding of Leave.EU.
“Arron Banks is believed to have donated £8.4m to the leave campaign, the largest political donation in British politics, but it is unclear from where he obtained that amount of money,” the MPs are expected to conclude. “He failed to satisfy us that his own donations had, in fact, come from sources within the UK.”
Andy Wigmore, Banks’ right-hand-man – who the report described as a “self-confessed liar” who had misled the committee – commented: “They would say that, wouldn’t they?”
Banks responded to the suggestion he used overseas funding by joking that he had received “bucket loads of roubles”.
The businessman later insisted he “couldn’t give a fuck” what the report said and pledged to take a lie detector test, in which he would deny claims his Brexit activities were funded by foreign money on any television programme that would host it.
…
The committee will urge the UK government to make a statement setting out how it is investigating potential Russian influence on British politics, insisting the country should not rely on the work of US investigator Robert Mueller. “It would be wrong for Robert Mueller’s investigation to take the lead about related issues in the UK,” it is expected to say….
Here in France, since that soccer thingy win, there’s been a scandal known as the “Benalla Affair” (affaire Benalla). Alexandre Benalla, the then-head of President Emmanuel Macron’s security detail, was filmed on May Day (May 1) wearing a police uniform and beating a protester. Both are illegal. Real police nearby did nothing. (Benalla was supposedly “observing” the policing of the protest.)
Benalla was suspended days later for two weeks, and then supposedly reassigned to different work. However, he was never reported to the authorities. In addition, apparently, during his “unpaid” suspension he was still actually paid. And at least one more video has since surfaced which shows a second attack on another protester.
Le Monde obtained the initial video and published it two-ish weeks ago. The Paris prosecutor is now investigating, as are two committees in Parliament. Benalla has been fired, charged with assault, and with impersonating a police officer (at least). (The inert nearby police, plus an associate, Vincent Crase, have also been charged.)
Until a few days ago, Macron has been silent, despite apparently being informed of the incident a days after it happened. His first comments were completely tone-deaf, albeit he’s since said he bears responsibility. However, he’s put his foot in his mouth again, with a traitor don style Fake NEWS! claim, Macron accuses press, opposition of blowing up Benalla Affair (France24 edits in {curly braces}):
[…]
Macron also slammed the media, echoing language that has been used by US President [sic] Donald Trump to defend his own actions.
We have a press that is no longer pursuing the truth, he said. What I see is media power that wants to become judicial power.
[…]
Clearly, the heat and fatigue are getting to Parisians because here everything is fine, he added, also questioning the timing of the crisis, two months and a half after {the incident} and a few days after the football World Cup.
[…]
The head of Human Rights Watch in France, Bénédicte Jeannerod, tweeted that Macron’s remarks were “dangerous rhetoric while journalists across the world are under attack by populist leaders and autocrats to discredit or stifle any criticism of power”.
To me, to-date, much of the affaire seems like a French case of the English disease of complete ineptitude. The following is all speculation: Each person in the Élysée Palace assumed someone else was responsible for reporting the incident to the authorities, no-one bothered to check the terms of the suspension were correctly applied, or that once the affaire became public than Macron, et al., were up-to-speed on what happened. Macron is frustrated that what should have been a fairly straightforward disciplinary / police matter has derailed his agenda / plans and dominated the news.
Space was intended for portrait of Trump — but officials have not received any donations towards cost of painting him
An unidentified prankster struck the Colorado state capitol this week, placing a portrait of Vladimir Putin in a space intended for a picture of Donald Trump.
[…]
According to Colorado Citizens for Culture, the group that pays for the presidential portraits, the pictures cost about $10,000 and are paid for through donations. Local TV stations reported the group had not received a single dollar towards the cost of painting and hanging Trump’s picture.
The president of the group, Jay Seller, told local TV it had taken about four months to collect the money for the portraits of Obama and George W Bush.
Key figures working with the official campaign for Brexit planned to pump out controversial pro-Leave advertisements to millions of voters via Facebook the day after the Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered in June 2016, despite an agreement by all sides to suspend national activities out of respect, it has emerged.
Evidence that Leave campaigners discussed their plans to re-start national activities with targeted, hard-hitting ads so soon drew a furious response from politicians and friends of the late MP.
Data released by Facebook to the all-party digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS) select committee suggested dozens of adverts were targeted at voters from the day after Cox’s murder and seen by more than 20 million people.
Jess Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley who knew Cox well, said it was “utterly despicable”. Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, called on Michael Gove and Boris Johnson – who led Vote Leave – to come clean and reveal what they knew.
…
Watson said that, if true, the fact that Vote Leave breached an agreement to suspend campaigning was “shocking beyond belief”. He told the Observer: “This must have been a political decision taken by Michael Gove and/or Boris Johnson and we absolutely demand that they come clean and tell us the facts. Did they breach an agreement made by all parties and campaigns after the assassination of our colleague?”
A spokesman for Gove said last night that the environment secretary would not be commenting. Johnson was unavailable for comment.
Silvester said that Vote Leave had suspended campaigning on 16 June and did not run any ads. He did not respond when sent the screenshots from his business partner, Massingham.
Damian Collins, the Tory MP who chairs the DCMS committee, said that to breach an agreement to stop campaigning in Cox’s honour would be “totally unacceptable, and those responsible should explain why they did it”….
Mr Cummings’ contemptuous behaviour is unprecedented in the history of this Committee’s inquiries and underlines concerns about the difficulties of enforcing co-operation with Parliamentary scrutiny in the modern age. We will return to this issue in our Report in the autumn, and believe it to be an urgent matter for consideration by the Privileges Committee and by Parliament as a whole.
What we found, time and again, during the course of our inquiry, was the failure on occasions of Facebook and other tech companies, to provide us with the information that we sought. We undertook fifteen exchanges of correspondence with Facebook, and two oral evidence sessions, in an attempt to elicit some of the information that they held, including information regarding users’ data, foreign interference and details of the so-called ‘dark ads’ that had reached Facebook users. Facebook consistently responded to questions by giving the minimal amount of information possible, and routinely failed to offer information relevant to the inquiry, unless it had been expressly asked for. It provided witnesses who have been unwilling or unable to give full answers to the Committee’s questions.
[Facebook CTO] Mike Schroepfer also said that removal of such bots can be difficult, and was evasive about how many fake accounts had been removed, telling us: “We are purging fake accounts all the time and dealing with fraudulent ads and we do not tend to report each specific instance. I know we report aggregate statistics on a regular basis, but it is not something we are reporting here or there, so I don’t know.[“] The problem with removing such bots without a systematic appraisal of their composition means that valuable information is then lost. Such information would prove invaluable to researchers involved in making connections, in order to prevent future attacks by malign players.
I’ll say. This practice sounds so stupid I almost hope Schroepfer is lying about it.
Mr. Schroepfer promised to submit supplementary evidence to give us that information. However, Facebook’s supplementary evidence stated: “We do not break down the removal of fake accounts by country. […] Myanmar [Burma] is a small market for Facebook. We do not publish country advertising revenue figures”. We sent yet another letter, asking why Facebook does not break down the removal of fake accounts by country, which seems a serious lapse in demonstrating how it takes responsibility when problems with fake accounts arise. To date, we have not received an answer.
Again, this would be so stupid that I have serious doubts about whether it’s true.
As recently as 20 July 2018, Facebook suspended another company that it believes harvested data from its site. Crimson Hexagon is based in Boston, US. Facebook is investigating whether this analytics firm’s contracts with the US government and a Russian not-for-profit organisation with ties to the Kremlin violated Facebook’s policies. For Crimson Hexagon to share such data with government agencies would be incredibly useful to those agencies, as it would show how large groups of people were feeling at a particular time, and could be used during political campaigns. Again, the same opportunities given by Facebook to, unwittingly, share their users’ data with Cambridge Analytica, via GSR, were being given, up until a few days ago, to Crimson Hexagon, despite Facebook’s reassurances that they were tightening their policies.
A complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission alleges the National Rifle Association violated U.S. law by using a common vendor to illegally coordinate with Ron Johnson’s 2016 campaign and three other Senate campaigns.
The complaint was filed by the Campaign Legal Center, which has been at the forefront of the campaign in Wisconsin for fair maps and fair elections.
Federal campaign finance law prohibits coordination between candidates and outside groups such as the NRA.
In an effort to preserve independence, FEC rules limit how a vendor can work for both a candidate and an outside group supporting that candidate.
CLC, citing a July 13 report by Politico Magazine, says the GOP consulting firm OnMessage set up a shell corporation called Starboard. The corporation was located at the same site as OnMessage and was virtually indistinguishable from its parent firm.
Starboard’s apparent purpose was to help the NRA evade FEC rules. As a result, the NRA may have made millions in illegal and excessive in-kind contributions, according to the CLC.
“There is substantial evidence that the NRA funneled millions through a shell corporation to unlawfully coordinate with candidates it was backing,” stated Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at the CLC. “The NRA using inside information about a candidate’s strategy to create ‘independent’ ads supporting him creates an unfair advantage and it violates the law.”
…
The NRA PAC and its lobbying arm have “illegally made excessive, corporate and unreported in-kind contributions to the Thom Tillis Committee, Cotton for Senate, Cory Gardner for Senate, and/or Ron Johnson for Senate Inc.,” the CLC states in the complaint….
Cambridge Analytica is currently being investigated by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) (and, as a leading academic institution, Cambridge University also has questions to answer from this affair about the activities of Dr Kogan).
There has been a continual reluctance on the part of Facebook to conduct its own research on whether its organisation has been used by Russia to influence others. Facebook knows its system better than anyone else, and should not be passively reacting to outside concerns before they carry out their own research and take action.
David Shuster: “According to defense lawyer who has dealt with Mueller team, the special counsel is proceeding without expectation of Trump testimony and plans report for Congress by end of September. I’m skeptical given plea deals, Manafort trial, + other loose ends. But, FYI.”
The federal judge overseeing the court-ordered reunification of 2,551 migrant children separated from their parents ordered the Trump administration to provide detailed information in order to locate hundreds of what he called “missing parents” the government had deemed ineligible for reunification.
Judge Dana Sabraw of the Southern District of California on Friday mandated that the Trump administration turn over a list by Wednesday of all parents deemed “ineligible” for reunification by the government, including those who have been deported, those who have been released into the United States and those who were not reunited because of criminal history.
The government on Friday said 650 children remained separated because their parents had been deemed ineligible.
The ruling was a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union, which had argued that the government has not given complete information about those parents. In the case of those deported or released, the ACLU has offered to provide pro-bono attorneys to help track down parents whose whereabouts are unknown and provide them legal counsel.
“The judge’s order requiring the government to provide us with information about missing or deported parents leaves no doubt that the court expects the remaining reunifications to get done promptly,” said ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt….
They actually tried to convince the judge that providing the information would interfere with reunification efforts.
David Lammy: “God, help us. This is not coming from Remainers. This is not project fear. Pro-Brexit Ministers are drawing up blueprints for the army to deliver food, fuel and medicine if we leave the EU with no deal. We have a duty to prevent this self-immolation.”
Avenatti: “.@RudyGiuliani – Are you denying that there were other hush payments made to as yet unnamed women in connection with the 2016 campaign? Asking for some friends… You better buckle up buttercup because Mr. Trump’s stupidity and disloyalty is about to catch up to him (and you).”
Despite senior ministers admitting it’s flawed, Netanyahu this evening doubles down on the nation-state law in what looks like the unofficial start of his 2019 election campaign. It all proves that the law was political to begin with and this is going to be a vicious campaign.
This going to be his message going in to the campaign: anyone who opposes the nation-state law is not a Zionist, not a patriot, is anti-Israeli. This is despite the fact that the law is far from being universally popular.
The latest polls show that 70 percent of Israelis are unhappy with Netanyahu’s handling of #Gaza and Likud is in danger of going below 25 percent. Netanyahu’s answer to that has been to make the nation-state law (which he wasn’t that crazy about originally) his main plank.
Netanyahu won in 2015 using similar tactics: branding his opponents as non-patriotic and inciting against Israeli-Arabs. But he did so only in the last few days of the campaign. Now he’s going all-out even before there’s an election date (could be anywhere from March to November)
Question is. Can Netanyahu sustain this campaign of incitement all the way to the election? And if not, can the extremely divded center-left get their act together? Bibi’s biggest asset is Yair Lapid who was very muted on the nation-state law and is splitting the centrist vote.
Lapid speaks of himself as an alternative to Netanyahu but all signs are that he’s prepared to join a Netanyahu coalition after the election in return for becoming foreign minister. With such a pathetic excuse for an opposition, Netanyahu is almost ensured of victory either way.
The next year in global politics is breathtakingly consequential.
…Much attention has been paid to Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, and the fear of a repeat in the upcoming midterms. Less examined, however, has been Russia’s abuse of Interpol and the American court system to persecute the Kremlin’s rivals in the United States—a problem that the Atlantic Council described in a recent report as another form of “interference” by Russia. Russia’s requests to Interpol to issue Red Notices—the closest instrument to an international arrest warrant in use today—against Kremlin opponents are being met with increasing deference by the Department of Homeland Security, according to immigration attorneys and experts in transnational crime and corruption with whom I spoke.
Interpol cannot compel any member country to arrest an individual who is the subject of a Red Notice, according to its guidelines, and “the United States does not consider a Red Notice alone to be a sufficient basis for the arrest of a subject because it does not meet the requirements for arrest under the 4th Amendment to the Constitution,” according to the Justice Department. But the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. immigration courts are effectively facilitating “backdoor extraditions,” as one immigration attorney said, in their reliance on Red Notices as a basis for detention and, ultimately, removal.
Brendan Raedy, a spokesman for ICE, told me that it is the agency’s “responsibility to carefully vet any alleged Russian criminal violator that has come to the United States, and make the very best and most educated determination of whether the individual is indeed a criminal: Do they present an ongoing threat, are they fleeing criminal prosecution, or have they lied about their criminal activity in order to gain entry to the United States?” Raedy noted that ICE has attaché offices who vet “criminal/fugitive leads to ensure that the individual in question is a true criminal, and not simply a political target of those in power.”
“Only after completing this process and determining which individuals are clearly the targets of legitimate criminal investigations do we then prioritize which of these criminals to pursue for either criminal investigation or deportation,” Raedy said. LaTonya Turner, Interpol Washington’s communications chief, declined to comment.
But Michelle Estlund, a criminal defense attorney who focuses on Interpol defense work, told me, “There is a disconnect between our decision to not have an extradition treaty with Russia and the decision to allow Russia to circumvent the extradition process using Red Notices. The effect is that we are removing people to countries that we would not normally extradite to.”
…
In essence, Russia has figured out how to use Interpol and U.S. immigration courts to go after Kremlin rivals. But it doesn’t end there. Anders Aslund, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who worked as an economic adviser to the Russian government from 1991 to 1994, believes Russia’s efforts to target its rivals abroad goes well beyond Red Notices and to the heart of the U.S. judicial system. “In recent years, Kremlin proxies have exploited U.S. courts by pursuing superficially legitimate lawsuits,” Aslund wrote in a recent report, in order to perpetrate “global harassment campaigns against the Kremlin’s enemies” and “enrich themselves through bad faith claims made possible by the Russian state’s abuse of disfavored individuals and their businesses.”
…
Estlund, the attorney who focuses on Interpol defense work, said, “The problem is that our courts act like, and think, that they are operating on the same type of playing field as the Russians. But they’re not—the system there is completely different from here. And when the courts are properly responding to what appears to be a legally authorized request for assistance with discovery, often what they’re doing is assisting with an extremely corrupt court proceeding.”…
KGsays
Interesting BBC video on “Georgia’s Rave Revolution” That’s Georgia in the Caucasus. LGBT youth and allies against Nazis, the Georgian Orthodox Church, and Russian money – oh, and the police.
Two prominent historians are leaving a public policy center at the University of Virginia in protest over its plan to hire a former aide to President Donald Trump, calling the aide, Marc Short, “complicit in the erosion of our civic discourse.”
William I. Hitchcock and Melvyn P. Leffler announced Monday they are resigning from the Miller Center, a wing of the university focused on presidential history and public policy, over its hiring of Short, Trump’s former legislative affairs director.
In their resignation letter, the historians blasted Short for not distancing himself from Trump’s response to the August 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., which resulted in the death of a 32-year-old woman and in which Trump famously blamed “both sides.”
…
It’s the latest fallout over the center’s decision to appoint Short to a one-year fellowship. Professors, alumni and others have strongly objected, calling it “unconscionable” as the one-year anniversary of the violent rally in Charlottesville approaches. An online petition with thousands of signatures blasts the school for hiring Short, saying “the university should not serve as a waystation for high-level members of an administration that has directly harmed our community.”
Leffler is a former dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at UVa. Hitchcock is a New York Times bestselling historian and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
In their joint resignation letter, the two wrote that the decision to hire Short was made “without adequate faculty discussion, deliberation and a vote” and “violates the values of the Center,” which describes itself as a “nonpartisan affiliate” of UVa….
Thousands protested in central Moscow on Sunday against a proposed increase to the retirement age and the crowd chanted slogans critical of President Vladimir Putin whose approval ratings have been dented by the bill.
The rally organized by the opposition Libertarian Party chanted “Putin is a thief” and “away with the tsar,” slogans common at anti-Putin and anti-government protests.
…
Around 90 percent of the population oppose the bill, according to a recent opinion poll, and a petition against it has attracted 3 million signatures online….
‘I don’t even know if that’s a crime — colluding about Russians. You start analyzing the crime — the hacking is the crime. The president didn’t hack!'”
[…]
Giuliani continued: What the hell are you picking on me for saying {Cohen} was an honest, honorable man when I didn’t know he had recorded a conversation with his client? He was shaking people down for money, he was lying about what was on a tape and manipulating, doctoring tapes?
As far as I am aware, the accusation Cohen doctored the tapes is one of the (presumed) lies traitor don and teh dalekocracy is currently spouting. I say “presumed lies” since Cohen is sufficiently untrustworthy it’s not impossible there is some judicious editing, and so stoooopid he actually would do that. (It presumably would not be as clumsy as the famous 18½ minute gap conveniently erasing a Watergate conversation at a critical point.)
[…]
Giuliani also repeatedly criticised Mueller’s team of investigators for perceived bias and said the special counsel was in bad faith over negotiations for an interview with the president. Trump’s team presented their conditions for such a sit-down 10 days ago, he said, and had not heard back.
[…]
The president’s lawyers, Giuliani said, want their client to answer questions only on collusion […] and not obstruction of justice, which Mueller is investigating.
[…]
† Not set in eejit quotes as this is one eejit bellowing about another eejit, and the description very plausibly applies to both eejits.
Guardian investigation reveals numerous cases of Amazon workers being treated in ways that leave them homeless, unable to work or bereft of income after workplace accidents
[…] A Guardian investigation has revealed numerous cases of Amazon workers suffering from workplace accidents or injuries in its gigantic warehouse system and being treated in ways that leave them homeless, unable to work or bereft of income.
[Vickie Shannon] Allen’s story began on 24 October last year when she injured her back counting goods on a workstation that was missing a brush guard, a piece of safety equipment meant to prevent products from falling onto the floor. She used a tote bin to try to compensate for the missing brush guard, and hurt her back while counting in an awkward position. The injury was the beginning of an ongoing ordeal she is still working to amend at Amazon. Over the course of a few weeks, Amazon’s medical triage area gave her use of a heating pad to use on her back, while Amazon management sent her home each day without pay until Allen pushed for workers compensation.
“I tried to work again, but I couldn’t stretch my right arm out and I’m right handed. So I was having a hard time keeping up. This went on for about three weeks,” Allen said. Despite not getting paid, Allen was spending her own money to drive 60 miles one way to the warehouse each day just to be sent home.
Once on workers compensation, Allen started going to physical therapy. In January 2018, she returned to work and injured herself again on the same workstation that still was not fixed.
Allen went back on medical leave and took an additional two weeks of unpaid leave because she didn’t have the money to drive to work. In April 2018, an MRI scan showed her back was still injured, but just five days after her diagnosis, she claims Amazon’s workers compensation insurer, Sedgwick, had the company doctor drop her as a patient.
“By June 2018, they finally had that station fixed. It took them eight months to put one little brush guard on this station,” Allen said. On 2 July, she met with management at the Amazon fulfillment center, who offered her a week of paid leave for the issues she had to deal with over the past nine months.
My father, who had responsibility for equipment / workspace safety in some of his roles, would be enraged to hear that not only did it take so long to fix the workstation, but that it was still being used whilst broken. (Not to mention, if he know about it, the way the injured people were being treated.) In addition, since he insisted on both routine and spot checks of the equipment, he would also not accept any excuses of “not knowing” (for such a long time (and certainly not after a report of a injury)) nor of continuing usage.
I can recall some incidents at home when he asked me to stop using my lab until an issue was fixed: The one I remember most clearly at the moment is asking me to stop soldering when he realised the bench surface was insufficiently heat- / flame-proof, and then searching for a suitable pad which was neither asbestos (for obvious reasons) or metal (due to the electrical / electronic equipment, some of which contained very high voltages). I have no recollection now where he got it (I presume he talked to colleagues / friends “in the industry”), but got this rather neat slate-like “stone” pad, which not only worked great, it looked really really cool. Sadly, I no longer have it.
Another incident I recall (albeit not involving my father) was at a previous job, when my lab bench was kicked out of an appropriate room to an ajoining desk in my office. The precise details of that move now elude me (albeit I vaguely recall it being done without consulting me (due to poor planning?)). Since some of the kit had exposed 440VAC current, and also some moving parts that could suck in stray hair / clothing (and would really really hurt†), I put up big warning signs. They worked — they scared the whatever out of the office cleaning staff — and the head of the facility came to see what the fuss was all about, and ordered room be made available for the lab bench in an appropriate room.
“They’re also going to pay me for 24 more hours for last week. They haven’t said anything else,” Allen explained. ”They offered me a buyout, only for $3,500, which meant I would have to sign a non-disclosure agreement to not say anything derogatory about Amazon or my experience.”
Allen said she rejected the buyout offer to speak out against Amazon’s treatment of her. She currently lives out of her car in the parking lot of the Amazon fulfillment center. “They cost me my home, they screwed me over and over and I go days without eating.”
Allen’s case is one of numerous reports from Amazon workers of being improperly treated after an avoidable work injury. Amazon’s warehouses were listed on the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health’s “dirty dozen” list of most dangerous places to work in the United States in April, 2018. The company made the list due to its pattern of unsafe working conditions and its focus on productivity and efficiency over the safety and livelihood of its employees. Amazon’s emphasis on fulfilling a high demand of orders has resulted in unsafe working conditions for its warehouse employees.
[… more horror stories…]
Amazon meanwhile insists that ensuring the safety of its workers is a priority and that it was “proud” of its record.
[…]
† There were automatic safety cut-outs, which worked: I tested them personally, both deliberately and accidentally (which is how I know it would really really fecking hurt, albeit with a low-seeming risk of injury). In normal usage, that equipment would be an enclosure with filters, making it very unlikely anything would be sucked inside. From memory, I had to deliberately bypass the “cover open” interlock intended to stop the equipment — in the lab setting, for the work I was doing, I needed access to the “guts” whilst it was operating, hence the removal of the covers.
Giuliani on Fox just now. I’m honestly astonished by the number of admissions here. Even the Fox interviewer is like, “Hmmmm…”
So now he’s alluded to some – no doubt terrible – discussion about the judge Trump smeared during the campaign (taped by Cohen, presumably). He also seems to be saying that Cohen is talking about the Russian conspiracy on the tapes, which would be far more damning for Trump than his bringing it up now. I have to think something will be appearing shortly in probably the NYT.
Matthew Miller: “A penny for Emmet Flood’s thoughts as he watches Rudy incriminate the president on live television, possibly with actual evidence of wrongdoing, possibly with third-hand gossip.”
The state department has yet to select an artist for next year’s Venice biennale — the latest sign of the Trump administration’s toxic relationship with the arts
[…]
Last week, Artsy reported that the US Department of State has yet to select an American artist to represent the country at the 2019 Venice Biennale, which opens in May. Typically, countries announce their representatives at least a year in advance so the artists have time to make new work for what is widely considered the world’s pre-eminent international art exhibition. There is something particularly germane about this year’s theme, too: titled May You Live in Interesting Times, the exhibition will include “artworks that reflect upon precarious aspects of existence today, including different threats to key traditions, institutions and relationships of the postwar order”, curator Ralph Rugoff explained.
Past US selections […] were announced at least a full year before the biennale. Now, with that deadline passed, state department staffers and art cognoscenti suspect an explicitly pro-Trump artist — like [Jon] McNaughton, or maybe Scott LoBaido, the self-titled “patriot artist” from Staten Island best known for his 16ft starred-and-striped T statue — will make the grade. Some, including Artsy reporter Nate Freeman, wonder if anyone will be selected at all, in keeping with a president [sic] whose shown a philistine disregard for the arts and international engagement.
LoBaido’s T statue (link embedded in above excerpt) is truly hideous. McNaughton’s One Nation Under God, which a reader claims is his most infamous painting, is nauseating. Warning: Following either of those links may result in permanent eyeball damage (probably due to self-inflicted gouging), brain rot (most functioning neurons will flee), and structural damage (not only to your head and desk, but also the building due to repeated forceful collisions). The amount of snark in this paragraph and its warning should not be assumed to be significant. (There is also a video about McNaughton’s You Are Not Forgotten at the excerpted article’s link. What remains of my floor, desk, and computer is already covered in seas of vomit, so I haven’t watched it. But the still image is responsible for at least one of those seas.) You. Have. Been. Warned.
“Trump seems utterly confused in even defining the word culture,” says Virginia Shore, former chief curator of the state department’s Art in Embassies programme, which since 1963 has commissioned US art for foreign embassies and consulates as a means of cross-cultural diplomacy. “I wish the president would spend time in a museum or gallery and learn the true meaning of culture.”
Oh for feck’s sake. Getting traitor don into a museum would accomplish nothing, other than some twitterings how MILLIONS are spent on them and they’d be better off run by Amazon (like the libraries (see @225)). Actually, presumably not Amazon in traitor don’s case, as he hates Bezos, but by his pals at AMI or in the Kremlin (after all, Russia does have some excellent museums).
[…]
When the White House requested a Van Gogh painting from the Guggenheim for the president’s [sic] living quarters, the museum rebuffed them and offered a solid 18-carat-gold toilet by the artist Maurizio Cattelan instead. And Trump, in his 2018 and 2019 budget plans, proposed eliminating funding the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), making him the first president [sic] to publicly suggest doing so since the agencies were established in 1965. Ultimately, Congress would pass a spending bill that saw a modest $3m funding increase for both endowments.
[…]
It’s foreseeable […] the Venice Biennale, funded in part by the state department, becomes another front in the culture wars, giving the president [sic] a chance to stick it to a community his backers consider frivolous and highbrow. Perhaps more likely, though, is continued disengagement. Eighteen months in, the administration has yet to award any national medals of arts or humanities, a White House tradition that dates back to the 1980s. It has, however, awarded medals for military service and law enforcement, a pattern that suggests Trump adheres to presidential [sic] orthodoxy only if it shores up his base.
[…]
One thing which amazes me is how few people and/or infrequently — or so it seems — visit museums, attend concerts, et al., in the States (outside of a few locales like NYC). In the UK, you trip over the things every few kilometres (or so it seems), from the quirky but interesting Pencil Museum to the well-known establishments in Edinburgh and other places. (Roughly the same is true here in France, albeit I think it’s reasonable to say Paris dominates, perhaps far more so than London.)
OK, as best I can tell, here’s what Giuliani is trying to say:
He’s getting information from two reporters (I assume from separate publications) about what Cohen is allegedly claiming re the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting. (This is already strange and somewhat suspect. If reporters are contacting him for comment and there’s supposedly no truth in what Cohen’s allegedly claiming, and no articles have even been published about it, why would he be going all over TV to try to swat down the claims?)
The information he says the reporters are asking him about – again, allegedly coming from Cohen/Davis, but there’s no evidence of that – concerns two alleged meetings prior to the Trump Tower meeting with Veselnitskaya and crew.
The first allegedly took place on June 7 – two days before the Trump Tower meeting. Giuliani claims that the reporters are telling him that Cohen is saying it was a planning meeting for the meeting with the Russians. (This also, notably, was the day that Trump announced that he would soon be giving a speech spilling the dirt on the Clintons.) Giuliani says that Cohen claims that the people involved were Jr., Kushner, Manafort, Gates, and two or three others. He’s very insistent that Trump isn’t alleged to have personally been part of this meeting. He seems to suggest that there was a meeting at this time (on this day?), but that it was about a different subject – he mentioned some discussion of the judge on the Trump “University” fraud case against whom Trump launched racist attacks, but I recall this being earlier in the year. He says the “witnesses” he’s talked to deny the alleged Cohen account of the subject of the meeting, but a) they’re not really witnesses and b) I seriously doubt he’s talked to Gates, who’s cooperating with Mueller.
The second meeting Giuliani says Cohen is alleging allegedly took place in Trump’s office in Trump Tower on June 9th just before the meeting with the Russians. Jr. came in and told Trump, in Cohen’s presence, that he was going to meet with the Russians. Giuliani claims that this never happened and Cohen can’t make his case here because it’s “two against one” and he has no corroborating evidence. He also says “two witnesses” refute Cohen’s alleged story, but I think he’s referring to Trump and Jr. who, again, aren’t witnesses here.
He also says he “doesn’t know” if the blocked-number calls came from Trump.
So we don’t know if this is even what Cohen is alleging or if Giuliani is accurately understanding or reporting what reporters might be telling him. In my view, though, both alleged claims are entirely plausible, and Giuliani is digging a deeper hole every time he tries to refute them.
Wikileaks is possibly the most opaque transparency organization. The group, founded by Julian Assange, sometimes hides its true motives, and has not published any information about its own finances in years, despite amassing tens of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency.
Now, an activist who has developed an adversarial relationship with the group has published over 11,000 Wikileaks Twitter direct messages.
“The idea was that the attitudes and behavior of WL [Wikileaks] behind closed doors is relevant, especially their coordination of PR, propaganda and troll ops through assets that are public supporters but not publicly known to take cues from WL,” Emma Best, the freedom of information activist, told Motherboard in a Twitter direct message.
The DMs concern a particular group chat between the official Wikileaks account and several supporters. In the chat—dubbed “Wikileaks +10” due to number of participants—Wikileaks would coordinate smear campaigns against the group’s rivals, including journalists, according to the DMs. The official Wikileaks account, widely believed to be controlled by Assange, also pushed antisemitic and transphobic messages, according to the messages.
Various outlets have reported on leaks from this group chat before, including The Intercept and The Daily Beast. But now anyone can scroll through the lightly redacted messages themselves. In an accompanying post, Best says the redactions were made to protect the privacy and personal information of “innocent, third parties.”…
I wish people in the media would stop saying that we don’t know if the US participants in the Trump Tower meeting could have been offered dirt about Hillary Clinton. We know from Manafort’s notes and the document the Russians left behind that they absolutely were offered dirt on Hillary Clinton. It didn’t turn out to be useful dirt, because it’s complicated, bullshit, and not really of interest in the US, but Putin’s people considered it dirt (as I discuss in #396 above). It’s what Veselnitskaya, in league with Chaika, had been trying to push in the US for months prior. Moreover, it took a pretty explicitly quid-pro-quo form: you help get rid of the Magnitsky sanctions and we’ll help you, which already compromised them collusion-wise.
That doesn’t rule out that they were also given hints about the hacked emails or other help that would be forthcoming, at the meeting or in its wake, but it’s just wrong to say that we don’t have evidence that they were given dirt at the meeting.
“Mueller’s office, unsurprisingly, opposes Manafort’s effort to keep prosecution evidence out of his Virginia trial slated to begin tomorrow. Among their points: Mueller intends to show Manafort made $60 million+ from his Ukraine work.”
In the early 1980s, a group of Israeli settlers plotted to blow up Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock—that iconic shrine with the golden dome that’s holy to Muslims everywhere. The people involved were religious Jews who felt that by getting rid of the shrine and rebuilding the ancient Jewish Temple in its place, they would hasten the coming of the Messiah.
The group plotted for years—and also staged bloody attacks on Palestinian civilians. But Israeli security officials arrested the perpetrators before they managed to destroy the shrine.
In a new documentary that has stirred controversy in Israel, filmmaker Shai Gal revisits the episode and describes how some of the plotters now hold positions of power in Israel. Gal is our guest on the podcast.
30-minute podcast at the link. Well worth listening through to the end.
An Israeli citizen who has lived in the United States for the past ten months was held up at Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv by Shin Bet security service officials for a “cautionary conversation” because of his involvement in left-wing organizations.
Moriel Rothman-Zecher, 28, had come for a visit with his wife, Kayla, and their infant daughter, who was born in the United States. Mrs. Rothman-Zecher and the couple’s daughter went through security without problems, but not Moriel.
Officials stressed that he was not suspected of anything and that the nature of the conversation was a general warning, according to Rothman-Zecher. He said he was asked, among other things, about his involvement in the left-wing organizations Breaking the Silence, an anti-occupation veterans’ NGO, and All That’s Left, an anti-occupation collective.
…
At the end of the conversation, Rothman-Zecher said, the interrogator told him that he should think of the conversation as a warning. “I just wanted to invite you for a conversation, which is our right to do. Think of it as a warning, because it’s a slippery slope. You go to a legitimate, nonviolent protest, and then you might slip into something more violent and less okay. So I’m glad to hear you don’t resort to violence and you’re against violence. It could be a slippery slope. I think you’re a good person and I just wanted to talk with you,” Rothman-Zecher quoted the investigator as saying.
…
The Shin Bet Security Services said in response: “Mr. Moriel Rothman was questioned by the Shin Bet in order to fulfill its mission and carry out its duty in accordance with its authority under the law.” Rothman-Zecher’s lawyer, Gaby Lasky, said: “The fact that Shin Bet investigators wait for Israeli citizens, whose only crime is involvement in human rights organizations, in order to caution them ought to keep us all awake at night. This government is apparently introducing the norms of a thought police and trying to intimidate normative citizens so they’ll cease their civic engagement.”
Rothman-Zecher is the third Israeli to be held up at Ben-Gurion Airport in recent months and asked about his involvement in left-leaning organizations….
The scene outside a Paris cafe is as short as is it shocking in its almost casual violence.
A young woman in a scarlet red dress passes a bearded man in a black T-shirt with his jacket slung over one shoulder. Both are walking briskly. The man says something to the woman. She turns her head and replies. Both continue walking.
Then the man picks up an ashtray and throws it in the direction of the woman, who is by now off camera. A second later the man is striding purposefully toward her and she has returned into view.
He approaches her and without warning hits 22-year-old architecture student Marie Laguerre with a blow so violent she stumbles and falls against the glass barrier of the cafe terrace.
As shocked customers drinking coffee and beer jump to their feet to remonstrate with the attacker, one brandishing a chair, he appears to argue with them briefly before walking off.
CCTV video of the attack on Laguerre, given to her by the cafe owner, has now gone viral after she posted it on Facebook. It has also bolstered the French government attempts to outlaw sexual harassment on the country’s streets and public transport.
…
The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened an inquiry into the incident, but so far the attacker has not been identified.
After the attack made the headlines, the French equalities minister, Marlène Schiappa, who persuaded the Assemblée Nationale to pass legislation in May introducing fines for sexual harassment on the street and public transport, said she was “outraged … but not surprised, unfortunately” by the assault.
The bill, which outlaws “annoying, following and threatening” a woman as well as making sexist comments, is scheduled to be adopted in the next week. Fines come into effect in the autumn.
…
Laguerre told journalists she did not regret challenging the man verbally. She said she could have run off but she “wasn’t going to look down and certainly wasn’t going to apologise”….
SC@478 just beat me to it (sticks out tongue)… what initially worried me about the incident is I know a Ms Laguerre in Paris — but the lady I know is not the young lady who was attacked. I’ve read elsewhere Marie Laguerre “has suffered from headaches and neck pain and has said that she is no longer comfortable in her own neighbourhood of La Villette”, Video of Parisian woman hit by street harasser leaves France shocked, which concludes:
According to a study conducted in 2016, one in two women in France said they will choose trousers over a skirt to avoid becoming the victim of sexual harassment on public transport.
Thread documenting racist attacks in Italy: “If you want to understand how inflammatory, dehumanising political rhetoric can break a society apart, look no further than Italy. A silent pogrom is happening right now, and its main instigator has a name and a surname: Matteo Salvini….”
It’s totally possible that the similarities amongst several of the attacks are the result of copycats, but also seems possible that some of the attacks are part of a coordinated terror campaign.
“BREAKING: Following the story we broke @reveal about the forced drugging of immigrant children, ‘the Court ORDERS Defendants to transfer all Class Members out of Shiloh RTC’. Story to come.”
In a related and non-sickening story, “Psychologists Respond to Mental Health Crisis at the Border”: “Antuña is one of more than 375 psychologists and other mental health professionals who are part of the Refugee Mental Health Resource Network, an APA interdivisional initiative led by Div. 56 (Trauma Psychology) to help agencies and organizations working with refugees. Psychologists in the network’s database volunteer their services to asylum seekers, refugees, migrants and internally displaced individuals.”
The Paris prosecutor’s office announced Monday that it has opened a new investigation into Alexandre Benalla for additional acts of violence committed on May 1 in addition to the beating of a protester that has sparked outrage in France.
This investigation was opened after two young people, aged 23 and 24, claimed to have been victims of a violent arrest at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. Images obtained by Libération showed Benalla and Vincent Crase at the scene.
The incident took place a few hours before the violent altercation with a protester occurred at the place de la Contrescarpe. Footage showed Benalla hitting a male protester and dragging away a woman while wearing a riot helmet and police tags.
The French president has dared those who have criticised his handling of the affair to ‘come get him’. They just might
[…]
The problem with what quickly became l’affaire Benalla wasn’t just that the Elysée knew about the aide’s violent acts and failed to take proper legal action (Benalla was suspended without pay for two weeks but his case was not taken to court, and it was later revealed that he did get paid during his time off). It was also that Macron and the Elysée remained silent on the whole affair, taking more than 36 hours to fire Benalla, before speaking out only to downplay the case’s importance, with an aplomb bordering on insolence.
For days, Macron avoided journalists, only declaring cryptically: “The republic is unalterable.” Six days after the scandal had broken, he spoke for the first time, at a private event with his party La République en Marche in Paris, where he appeared to make amends — “I am the only person at fault,” he said. Yet he then lashed out at the press, which he said is not looking for truth any more and wants to be a judicial power, and criticised MPs who had called for an investigation into the case. He even boasted, shamelessly: “If they want a person at fault, he stands before you. They can come and get me. I answer to the French people.”
Over the next days, he called the affair a storm in a teacup and was filmed laughing the whole thing off: We’re happy. Everything is fine! (Everything was not fine, and the French media continued to break details of Benalla’s extensive access to the Elysée, the French parliament and the police, while the government’s statements contradicted themselves.)
[…]
Benalla was in Macron’s inner circle. Questioned by the French parliament during the ongoing investigation into what the Elysée knew about Benalla’s actions, the Paris police commissioner described the case as a series of “unacceptable, reprehensible downward slides, against a backdrop of unhealthy cronyism”. Interviewed by Le Monde, Benalla himself said: “Everything at the Elysée is based on what can be exchanged in terms of proximity with the president. Is he smiling at you? Is he calling you by your first name? It’s a court phenomenon.”
[…]
Ariane Chemin, the journalist who first broke the Benalla story, explains that: “Macron and his close circle conquered the Elysée as a commando unit. But they don’t understand that they cannot rule as a commando unit.” As a result, Macron’s vision of the balance of powers is very restrictive. Le Monde has written about the president’s “distrust of counter powers” and journalists have expressed concerns over the “rupture” that it marks.
[…] MPs from the rightwing Républicains and several leftwing parties have filed two separate votes of no confidence. They have, after all, dared to “come and get him”.
The Front National [le penazis] made serious inroads in the Yonne [department c.120km SE of Paris] during last year’s presidential and legislative elections when disaffected voters branding themselves part of “forgotten France”, shunned mainstream parties. Here, as elsewhere, rumours, fake news and satirical reports quickly take root.
An exchange overheard in a supermarket queue kicked off with suggestions of an Élysée cover-up and quickly swerved into unpleasant terrain with the assertion that Benalla had changed his name to sound less Arabic — he did not — and an observation that the bearded, hoodie-wearing protagonist looked like one of those Islamic State [daesh] people.
Benalla was born in France, in Évreux (Normandy), to Moroccan immigrants(? not sure, all I can find is « sa famille est originaire du Maroc », not that it particularly matters).
The description of the Elysée as a “commando unit” operating on the basis of cronyism provides circumstantial support to my hypothesis of British-scale ineptitude — except that Benalla being in the inner-most circle is circumstantial support for the hypothesis of a deliberate cover-up. The two hypotheses are not orthogonal; for instance, a epically inept cover-up.
blfsays
SC@484, That’s the famous Swedish Rabbit Dance, alleged to be useful in putting out forest fires. I think it makes Thor & Co laugh so hard they forget to toss lightening bolts, and eventually start hiccuping, blowing out the fires. Also, their tears of laughter provide much-needed rain.
(Sweden, in case you don’t know, is currently suffering from numerous severe wildfires, and has called for help from elsewhere in Europe. There are Italian Canadair water bombers, and other resources from elsewhere, currently(?) in Sweden to help. At least one fire is(? was?) in(? near?) an artillery training range where there are very probably live unexploded shells.)
(Sweden, in case you don’t know, is currently suffering from numerous severe wildfires, and has called for help from elsewhere in Europe. There are Italian Canadair water bombers, and other resources from elsewhere, currently(?) in Sweden to help. At least one fire is(? was?) in(? near?) an artillery training range where there are very probably live unexploded shells.)
I didn’t know that. There are devastating fires in California, too.
I’ve read elsewhere Marie Laguerre “has suffered from headaches and neck pain and has said that she is no longer comfortable in her own neighbourhood of La Villette”,
“My experience with Mueller suggests he’s just as unconcerned today about the president using his first name in a tweet as he was earlier this week with Junior appearing at his airport gate.
Both of which, I’m confident, concerned him less than would a fly going by.”
“We are saddened beyond words to report the death of Captain Brian Hughes of the Arrowhead Hotshots. Hughes’ crew was on the #FergusonFire on @Sierra_NF when he was struck and killed by a tree. We grieve his loss.”
Saying the reports were a ludicrous attempt by the mainstream media to discredit him, President Donald Trump vehemently denied Monday the existence of 2016 Russia meeting commemorative merchandise available at the Trump Tower gift shop. “There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that exquisite, handcrafted Trump–Russia meeting decorative plates are on sale for just $39.99 per plate or $199.99 for the entire six-plate set,” said the president, noting that if such collectibles did exist, they would no doubt feature the portraits and signatures of those who attended the meeting as well as a bonus silver souvenir spoon hand-stamped with the date “6/9/16” at no extra charge. […] At press time, Trump denied that the low-low prices on the commemorative merchandise would be affected by recent tariffs on Chinese goods.
In response to resurfacing allegations that cast doubt on his brother’s version of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, Eric Trump aimed a laser pointer at Donald Jr Friday while rapidly flicking a light switch up and down in order to erase all his memories of the incident. “Come on, Don, keep your eyes super wide open so the memory ray can work,” said the 34-year-old, shining a Trump Organization-branded laser pointer into Donald Jr’s eyes while repeatedly shouting “You don’t remember the bad stuff! You don’t remember the bad stuff!” “[…] Here, drink this, too. It’s a forgetfulness potion I made out of all the pills in Dad’s medicine cabinet. He takes ’em all the time and he never remembers nothing.” […]
Mini-rant: I understand, but hate, that people apparently asked Laguerre whether she regretted her actions. I try not to repost clips of people clapping back on street harassment or authoritarian violence, not because I don’t think they’re brave or awesome, but because women, black people, immigrants, LGBT people shouldn’t have to walk around with our thick skin, de-escalation techniques, and rapier wit at the ready. It’s our fucking right to exist and be ourselves and dress as we wish and protest and whatever unmolested in public spaces. This is true if we’re shy, afraid, confrontational, sharp, tired, angry, or any other thing. We know there’s always a possibility of violence regardless of how we act. Public attention needs to focus not on us but on the weak, pathetic assholes who are terrified of a real public sphere.
Nancy Pelosi: “What’s one thing Donald Trump wanted to desperately pass? The #GOPTaxScam. Why? Because he knew it would overwhelming benefit the already-rich. Now, they’re plotting to destroy your Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. This isn’t a lie.”
Oh, and “Trump Administration Mulls a Unilateral Tax Cut for the Rich”: “The Trump administration is considering bypassing Congress to grant a $100 billion tax cut mainly to the wealthy, a legally tenuous maneuver that would cut capital gains taxation and fulfill a long-held ambition of many investors and conservatives….”
London’s packed with foreigners- refugees from war. It’s now home to six governments-in-exile who fled when their countries fell to Nazis: Czech-Slovak, Polish, Dutch, Belgian, Norwegian, & Free French (pictured).
Free French troops from Algeria in kepis, Dutch & Belgian Jews & Communists, Polish pilots fighting in RAF- London’s more cosmopolitan than ever.
Mini-rant: I understand, but hate, that people apparently asked Laguerre whether she regretted her actions.
Yeah, also apparently people were questioning the actions (or rather reactions) of the onlookers. When really there was only one person acting bad in that scene.
blfsays
apparently people were questioning the actions (or rather reactions) of the onlookers
Ms Laguerre has edited her original post in response to that (in translation): “To all those who want to say the witnesses didn’t reacted well enough, everything happened very quickly and they didn’t have the time to understand the situation. The attacker was dangerous. After the aggression, I went back and the witnesses gave me great support. Please don’t lynch them.”
A grand jury has returned an indictment for Maria Butina.
Mueller’s team is going to give “use immunity” to five witnesses in the Manafort trial. Judge Ellis has denied Manafort’s request to move the trial. This is one of a string of decisions against Manafort in recent days.
Trump tried to do damage control today after the treason summit. It was pathetic gaslighting and made him look even more guilty.
The real reason Republicans in Congress ride along with Trump no matter what – these kinds of regulations keep falling by the wayside.
NYT: I.R.S. Will No Longer Force Kochs and Other Groups to Disclose Donors
The effect will be that there will be no way to know if these contributions are legal or illegal, foreign or domestic.
“Israel worked to build Hungary’s Orban a bridge to Trump White House”:
And Black Cube, with ties to the Israeli government, helped with Orbán’s election efforts. I feel like I can’t stress enough what an openly anti-Semitic campaign Orbán ran earlier this year. These actions by the Israeli government are shocking. Their enemies include: former Israeli officials who criticize current policies, human rights and BDS activists, leftwing Jewish people in Europe and the US. Allies include: overtly anti-Semitic rightwing regimes, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, far-Right Christianists in the US.
I have been toying with a hypothesis lately. Maybe it’s an old idea long ago expressed by others. Maybe it’s half-baked. Since the GOP and its followers have constructed so much of their identity around race, they literally cannot entertain the possibility that Russia is out to harm us because Russia is largely “white.” This is regardless of the fact that what is regarded as “white” has changed a lot over the years. It’s all I got at this point.
Plus, much of Russian culture is virulently homophobic and misogynistic. Hell, Nixon (not Cynthia) admired them for those traits and was recorded saying so.
I dunno, it’s all I’ve got.
“Russia plans to increase aggression post-World Cup”:
Further to some of my comments on the previous thread: Mike Pence, who was handpicked as Trump’s running mate by Paul Manafort, is in the Family, which is interesting.
is in the Family?
Predictions:
Mueller will discover that Putin gave Trump $200 billion to kill the sanctions
Trump’s taxes will be exposed, showing the payment from Russia
Videos will be discovered showing Trump conducting child sacrifice in the Oval Office
Videos will be discovered showing Mike Pence and other sycophants sucking Trump’s dick
The American people will reelect Trump in 2020
Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!
Robert Westbrook @4:
The hypothesis I’ve most commonly seen floated around is that Putin simply represents the ideal of the way that Republicans wish they could run the US.
weylguy@8–
$200 billion is way over market value. I’m thinking $100K plus a Big Mac with fries.
See (in addition to the link in the comment to which you’re responding) here and here on the previous thread. Articles from years ago and more recently suggest that Pence is a Family initiate.
Bill Browder: “BREAKING: After Putin accused me at the Helsinki Summit of donating $400m to the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Russian General Prosecutor* clarified that Putin should have said $400k. The real answer is I donated ZERO. Total amateur hour.”
But Putin and his gang are very professionally looting Russia’s wealth.
This dude.
Tweet o’ the day.
LOL.
“Tucker: ‘Why should my son [ahem] die for Montenegro?’ […Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium, France, Latvia, Ukraine, Norway, England, Hungary, Italy,…]
Trump: ‘I understand and I feel the same way’
Jesus.”
This week in 1940:
Today in 1940: “‘Spontaneous’ (NKVD-organised) demonstrations by workers in Soviet-occupied Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania demanding USSR absorb them.”
“Why should my son die for Montenegro?”
This sort of thing (which is weird – disturbing it was brought up) was classic Nazi US propaganda (and not just countries – “why should my son die for some Jews, who brought this on themselves?”).
But he’s such a stable genius.
To the Israeli right (which now completely dominates Israeli politics), Jews outside Israel have only two functions: to pressure their governments to favour the Israeli right and its expansionist aims; and to migrate to Israel and more particularly, to the occupied territories. Increasing antisemitism is only a problem for them if it obstructs the first function, and is a positive advantage as regards the second.
More re #15 above – “Trump fundamentally undermines NATO, suggests ‘aggressive’ Montenegro may attack Russia to start World War III”:
He then told more disparaging lies about NATO, summing up: “It was very unfair. They weren’t paying, So not only are we paying for most of it, but they weren’t even paying and we’re protecting them. Add that to your little equation on Montenegro.”
That’s exactly what it was.
The final paragraph of the Grauniad’s article, Search ‘idiot’, get Trump: how activists are gaming Google Images, is amusing:
On Israel’s cozying up to nazis and other loons, from the opinion column, An unlikely union: Israel and the European far right (Al Jazeera edits in {curly braces}):
I myself would add that, unlike in the States, there is no large-ish scale groups (either legitimate or sham). And as noted in the excerpted opinion column, there are visible groups / demonstrations supporting Palestinian peoples, and I think(not checked!) BDS has much more support in “Europe” than in the States. That is, the policy of infiltration and pressure (which includes both bribery and espionage) that sort-of “works” in the States hasn’t been working, at least of late, in “Europe”.
Facebook data gathered by Cambridge Analytica accessed from Russia, says [UK] MP: “Damian Collins, who is leading a parliamentary inquiry into fake news, told CNN that the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) had found evidence that files were accessed from Russia and other countries.”
(And yes, that is about the entirety of the story (or at least the Grauniad’s current article) at the present time.)
Thread on Butina and Torshin.
Trump keeps saying his father was born in Germany — he wasn’t:
† Quibble — I’m not certain I’d say the birther nonsense was “led” by traitor don, only that he jumped on that broken cart and stayed inside as it keep going off cliffs, sometimes cliffs he suggested it go over. (This may be where he gets his liking for walls, to protect himself from repeatedly going over cliffs?)
Jason Leopold at BuzzFeed confirms that the SARs related to Michael Cohen hadn’t been removed/destroyed (as the whistleblower who leaked to Michael Avenatti had feared) – access was restricted because they were part of an ongoing investigation. It does appear there was a policy change last year concerning restricted access, so possibly (?) that’s what led the whistleblower to overreact when they couldn’t find them in the system.
Las Vegas shooting hotel sues survivors to avoid liability (Grauniad edits in {curly braces}):
I’m very very curious how someone is supposed to move out of the line of fire of a series of (almost-)machine guns they cannot see. Doubly so in the case of the initial victims, shot when nobody but the terrorist had any idea what was happening.
I should point out that, despite the name, there is no affiliation with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. A boycott, e.g., of MGM films would be hitting the wrong target. (They were affiliated at one time, but that ended in the late(?) 1980s.) MGM Resorts International has an extensive list of properties and genuine affiliates around the world, and those are what should be, e.g., boycotted in protest.
Thread (with clips) on the Trump-Carlson interview.
Jonathan Cristol: “I’m sort of surprised RT doesn’t just simulcast Tucker.”
James Comey: “This Republican Congress has proven incapable of fulfilling the Founders’ design that ‘Ambition must … counteract ambition’. All who believe in this country’s values must vote for Democrats this fall. Policy differences don’t matter right now. History has its eyes on us.”
Spain to introduce ‘yes means yes’[†] sexual consent law:
It’s unclear from the article to what extent the law clarifies consent can be withdrawn at any time.
† I’m uncomfortable with the naming “yes means yes” as that can be construed in unintended ways; I’d be happier with “only a ‘yes’ means yes”.
“It’s starting to feel like that movie trope where the beneficiaries of treachery nonetheless regard the betrayer as [] contemptible for being capable of such dishonor.”
I remember reading a while back (I thought it was in the Steele memos but I looked and can’t find it there now; must have been in a news report) that some in the Kremlin thought they should drop the operation in August or September of 2016, because, like Strzok and millions of others, they couldn’t imagine that Trump could possibly continue or win after his attacks on the Khan family.
Clintonista Joe Liberman endorses fellow “centrist” Joe Crowley because democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won’t kiss Israel’s genocidal ass.
Hadley Freeman, snarking in the Grauniad, Was the Queen sending coded messages to Donald Trump via her brooches? Absolutely:
Well done, Ms Windsor !
Some of the readers’s comments:
● “And notice the flying saucer shaped hat — ‘I’m dealing with a UFO here.’ Unspeakable, Fat Object.”
● “Then of course there is the official photograph [at the link –blf] which seems to have been taken in a cupboard full of bric-a-brac rather than one of the great state rooms. Nice one Queenie. […]”
● “It’s the wish-u-weren’t-here brooch.”
● “Not as daft as it sounds.
I once listened to former Sec of State Madelaine Albright give an after dinner speech on her ‘pins’ explaining how she wore one showing a snake and apple after the Iraqi press called her ‘an unparalleled serpent’, and several featuring insects when she met the then Russian FM after Russia tried to ‘bug’ the state department.
She even wrote a book about them, ‘Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box about her pins’.” [Several other readers have also pointed out Secretary Albright is noted for this sort of coded messaging (and yes, that book is real) –blf]
● “She wore blue — the colour of the Democrats!”
○ In reply: “And of the EU […]”
● “If you met Trump, and wanted to get a message through to him without it being eclipsed by his gargantuan ego, as an absolute minimum you need a hammer, some nails and a tin of tar — brooches aren’t really going to make the same impact.”
● “God bless Putinica the land of tge once free!
Or as an eloquent American puts it, Trump speaks English like it’s his second language and he was taught it by someone that learnt it a week ago.”
● “The day-2 brooch was of course also in the style of the NATO logo, so doubling-down really.”
Another humorous closing Grauniad paragraph, Summit critics have Trump derangement syndrome — says Trump: “Senator Tim Kaine, who was Hillary Clinton’s running mate in the 2016 election, tweeted: ‘I keep hoping that maybe, just maybe, we will all find out soon that the Helsinki summit was actually just a Sacha Baron Cohen episode’.”
Dan Shapiro, former US ambassador to Israel:
Both CNN and MSNBC have reports talking to Trump supporters about how they still support Trump right now.
There’s been some discussion on the case of Sam Husseini, a reporter for The Nation, who was removed from the infamous press conference here in Helsinki on Monday. He’s presenting it as a press freedom issue, which would throw some shade on Finland’s recent bragging with its top-level press freedom.
https://twitter.com/samhusseini
https://www.thenation.com/article/came-journalist-ask-important-questions/
(video of the incident)
https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-10309156
Based on various accounts, it seems like he was attempting mild protesting/heckling behavior to draw attention to his plea for nuclear disarmament. Meanwhile, the Finnish security was intent on shutting down anything that might embarrass or inconvenience the guests, aside from actual security threats. There may have been some misunderstanding on what exactly constitutes “protest” or “placard”, both of which were explicitly banned at the conference.
Many journalists have tweeted the incident but most seem to not be very sympathetic, of which Husseini complains about. I also think it was quite appropriate to remove him. What’s more troubling is that the police detained him overnight, as if on criminal suspicion, instead of just expelling him from the secure area, and didn’t inform his contacts. Someone lobbied him out by midnight, six hours after arrest. There’s no charge and the local police or other authorities haven’t issued a comment.
Husseini also claims he was roughandled and eventually cuffed on his way to the police jail, in response to what he claims was just shouting in protest. Then again, the video shows him wriggling from beginning of the incident, so it’s possible there was a case for him resisting arrest.
As he notes, this overreaction shouldn’t be blamed on “Russian thugs”, as some have done, but on Helsinki police and maybe Finnish security agents. As far as press freedom goes, Finnish national broadcaster posted a fairly accurate translation of his own early account, while the Russian MFA Sergei Lavrov seems to have mocked him publicly.
“Prosecutors in new court documents say alleged Russian operative, Maria Butina, before her arrest by the FBI was in contact with officials believed to be Russian intelligence operatives. FBI believes Butina was in constant contact with the FSB.”
Some excerpts from ‘Nothing short of treason’: US voters on the Trump-Putin summit (refomatted slightly (mostly unmarked); Grauniad edits in {curly braces}):
There’s a link to the prosecution’s motion for pretrial detention of Butina here.
It’s pretty blunt about her relationships with US people (a WaPo report has suggested she was “romantically” involved with Person 1, believed to be Erickson):
“Butina’s closest tie to the United States is the individual identified as U.S. Person 1 in the Indictment, but she appears to treat that relationship as simply a necessary aspect of her activities.”
“All of Butina’s known personal ties, save for those U.S. persons she attempted to exploit and influence, reside in the Russian Federation.”
From the motion: “In addition to her ties to the Russian government, there is evidence that Butina is well-connected to wealthy businessmen in the Russian oligarchy. Her Twitter messages, chat logs, and emails refer to a known Russian businessman with deep ties to the Russian Presidential Administration. This person often travels to the United States and has also been referred to as her ‘funder’ throughout her correspondence; he was listed in Forbes as having a real-time net worth of $1.2 billion as of 2018.”
The FBI has discovered text messages and emails between U.S. Person 1 and Butina in which Butina would routinely ask U.S. Person 1 to help complete her academic assignments, by editing papers and answering exam questions.”
“During the course of this investigation, the FBI has determined that Butina gained access through U.S. Person 1 to an extensive network of U.S. persons in positions to influence political activities in the United States. Butina, age 29, and U.S. Person 1, age 56, are believed to have cohabitated and been involved in a personal relationship during the course of Butina’s activities in the United States. But this relationship does not represent a strong tie to the United States because
Butina appears to treat it as simply a necessary aspect of her activities. For example, on at least one occasion, Butina offered an individual other than U.S. Person 1 sex in exchange for a position within a special interest organization. Further, in papers seized by the FBI, Butina complained about living with U.S. Person 1 and expressed disdain for continuing to cohabitate with U.S. Person 1.”
So Butina’s funder would appear to be one of these people:
Elena Baturina
Gleb Fetisov
Sergei Kolesnikov
Ziyavudin Magomedov
Andrei Molchanov
Boris Rotenberg
Igor Rybakov
Airat Shaimiev
Radik Shaimiev
Mikhail Shelkov
Leonid Simanovsky
Vadim Yakunin
(Can eliminate the first one – I forgot the motion refers to a man.)
EPA proposal to limit role of science in decision-making met with alarm:
Uh…MSNBC is reporting that Trump said “No,” Russia is not still targeting the US.
There’s a intriguing painting which has just gone on display in the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, Austin, “The City” by Vincent Valdez:
The above is the Professor of History and American Studies, Robert H Abzug (Audre and Bernard Rapoport Regents Chair of Jewish Studies) take on the painting, from Vincent Valdez: The City (4. Faculty and Community Perspectives). Or as Professor of Art & Art History Eddie Chambers puts it (same link as previous excerpt):
Originally spotted at the Grauniad, How a painting of the Ku Klux Klan is causing a stir in Texas:
Mr Valdez started on the work about the time traitor don announced his intention to run: “Valdez was not documenting the American electorate’s embrace of white nationalism in real time, though the painting’s timing was certainly uncanny.”
Video of #46.
Sums it up.
He’s now openly abetting an ongoing attack.
From the New York Times:
From Steve Benen, writing for The Maddow Blog:
The Trump White House seems to be issuing altered transcripts:
Link
Traitor don is even killing lobsters ! Yesterday at the market I bought a live lobster. Today, when I took it out of cold storage, it was very inert. Some poking and prodding, and eventually cutting it in half, confirmed it was dead, and had been dead for some time. The problem with dead lobsters is their “liver” releases toxins which are not necessarily destroyed by cooking. How long a lobster can be dead and remain safe to cook and eat I don’t know (a few hours ?), but this one seemed past that point. Damn. Fortunately, I discovered the disaster early in the evening, so I’ll just wander out to a restaurant… muttering dark thoughts at a collapsing world, dead lobsters, and teh proximate cause of it all, the cooked-lobster-coloured eejit in Wacko House with his lobster-murdering dalekocracy of henchfiends.
Dark money goes even darker:
Link
DHS advisory council members quit over ‘morally repugnant’ family separation policy:
Link
Senators detail how Russian hackers targeted American military families
“The first public evidence that influence operations have specifically targeted American military families.”
Trump should appreciate this tactic, which is straight out of his playbook: Iran is suing the U.S.
From Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif :
A few details:
I agree that Trump should be called before the International Court of Justice.
Trump’s Consumer Watchdog Nominee Refuses to Say if She Helped Plan Family Separations
Par for the course. All the best people.
Don Jr. and Eric Trump racked up nearly $250,000 in Secret Service costs in one month
Schumer responded to Trump’s attempts to walk back his apparent agreement, (during the Helsinki press conference), with Putin that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 U.S. election:
Link
During the first attempt at a walk back, Trump was truly pathetic. He failed to properly the read the text in front of him. He repeatedly stumbled, misread the text, and then added comments that negated his supposed agreement with U.S. intelligence agencies. And he looked like a petulant child reading text provided by his parents.
Trump is usually unnervingly good at selling a lie, but he fails miserably when he has to walk back his own mistakes. Especially mistakes that threaten U.S. national security, mistakes that make Trump look like a bumbling, subservient dolt.
Denaturalization, explained: how Trump can strip immigrants of their citizenship:
Link
Personal stories of some immigrants facing denaturalization proceedings are available at the link. Historical context is also provided in the article at the link.
One has to wonder how soon Trump will look into stripping native-born citizens of their citizenship?
Not a good sign: Poll: only 28 percent of young voters say they will certainly vote in the 2018 midterms.
Link
Akira @61: especially if they are brown or black?
In other news, here are a few more responses to Trump’s attempt to walk back statements he made in Helsinki:
Trump’s asinine tweets from 3:53 AM and 5:37 AM today:
Trump simplified the choice to: war … or work with Putin.
Oversimplification coupled with fear mongering.
Link
Good for him – when Sanders tried to move on to another reporter rather than answering Hallie Jackson’s second question, the reporter she was trying to move on to asked Jackson if she wanted to finish her question, which she did, and it was good: “You said Trump had been publicly critical of Putin – could you say when? Because I can’t recall it.” All Sanders could cough up was that saying Putin had meddled in the election was a pretty bold criticism.
She’s so awful – bad at her job, rude, dishonest, a disgrace to the position she occupies.
From Wonkette:
From Wonkette’s liveblog of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ press briefing today:
Re #65 – Jackson says it was Jordan Fabian from the Hill. She just thanked him on air.
I hope they start doing more of this. Solidarity is especially important right now.
Lynna @ 63
Brown, black. LGBTQ, atheist, registered Democrat, or anyone else who displeases Il Douche.
“.@maggieNYT asks @WHPressSec abt Russia’s call to intv @Billbrowder & @McFaul: ‘Pres will meet w/ his team & we’ll let you know when we have an announcement on that front’. Acknowledges the topic was discussed privately bween Trump & Putin.”
This is very dangerous.
Update!: Heather Nauert from the State Department was just asked about it. Said Russian claims about the plan and their allegations about these individuals are “absurd.”
Sorry – that was the wrong link @ #69, and now I can’t find that tweet. Here’s one that quotes the exchange.
Butina has been denied bail.
“A federal judge ordered Mariia Butina to be held in jail with no bond until her trial. Prosecutors also said the American person she was in a relationship with was separately under investigation for fraud in South Dakota, and she offered to help with the case.”
Here’s an article about fraudster Paul Erickson.
In previous years, the State Department issued a statement on the anniversary of the shooting down of MH17. This year, not.
“State Department Silent on MH17 Anniversary Following Trump-Putin Firestorm”:
Full text of the prepared statement at the link.
Pompeo is scheduled to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next Wednesday. Asked about it just now, Nauert provided no explanation. We need to know what’s going on.
Michael McFaul: “I hope the White House corrects the record and denounces in categorical terms this ridiculous request from Putin. Not doing so creates moral equivalency between a legitimacy US indictment of Russian intelligence officers and a crazy, completely fabricated story invented by Putin.”
Rep. Jason Lewis from MN sounds nice: “A GOP congressman once lamented not being able to call women ‘sl*ts’ anymore.”
LOL at “Representatives for Madonna did not return a request for comment.”
Treason is very specifically defined in the U. S. Constitution. Most of the accusations flying around don’t fit.
jack16
@ #75
How about “adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” Seems like a case could be made.
A variant of that is the small-ish number of people, such as Senators McCain and Cruz, and myself, who are natural-born citizens born aboard (in my case, and Cruz’s, in an indisputably foreign country). I have a certificate from the State Dept, issued at the embassy of the country in which I was born, declaring me to be a natural-born citizen born aboard. In all the cited cases, to the best of my knowledge, it is the Naturalization Act of 1790 which is critical. It states that children born abroad to citizens are natural born citizens. (That law is actually quite racist and sexist.)
The problem here is since this dives into quite technical matters of who is, and isn’t, a “natural-born citizen” — a subject the courts have never(?) ruled on, and which is essentially undefined — traitor don & teh dalekocracy might easily trample all over it.
Hungary follows US in pulling out of UN migration pact:
(I have corrected the spelling of Péter Szijjártó’s name — another case of Al Jazeera seeming to have caught the France24 disease of omitting diacritics / accents. If this keeps up, I will throw a dead lobster at them.)
Nicola Jennings in the Grauniad, The two faces of Donald Trump (cartoon). Some viewers’s comments:
● “Trump collapses in the street, several passerby didn’t stop, eventually a good Samaritan stopped and saw somebody in need of help, he crouched down and saw the person is Trump — the good Samaritan sucked his teeth, and looked up to the sky and said ‘Can you hear me O Lord? You’re really testing my faith you fucker, I mean come on’.”
● “Worse than his cack handed mendacious ways are the reactions of his supporters. He could take a dump on a desk in congress and hoot like chimp and they would still back him as he plays to their prejudices.”
● “Why are these Fake News Mainstream Media cartoonists always poking fun at President Trump?
Now that Russian collusion, after over a year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.
Actually, throughout Donald’s life, his two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. Donald Trump went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star to President of the United States (on his first try!). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius….and a very stable genius at that!
Some people HATE the fact that he got along well with President Putin of Russia. They would rather go to war than see this. It’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome!
Not that Trump is deranged, he is NOT!. I did say that would qualify as not smart, but genius….and a very stable genius at that!
Who knows how it will all turn out in the end, but why isn’t the Fake News Mainstream Media talking about these wonderful facts? Because it is FAKE NEWS!”
○ After some viewers reply, the point whooshing over their heads, the authour explains: “It’s not satire, that’s what’s worrying. I cut and pasted that stuff from Trump’s Twitter feed.”
● “Only two faced? Are you sure?
Trump is / says whatever the last person he spoke to and who praised him would say.
He doesn’t read.
He doesn’t grasp detail.
He cannot speak coherently.
The quintessential snake oil salesman. He sees everything and every meeting as a ‘deal’.
Trump believes North Korea is sorted because he had tea with Kin Jong Un.
Russia is sorted because his new best friend Putin said so.
NATO is obsolete because it is nearly as old as he is…
The UK is a ‘hot place’ — not sure if that was from the Fox Fake News weather report or just a small word Trump could handle.
He is a narcissistic and dangerous.
He is a sociopath.
He lies as easily as he breathes.
If he were a dog you’d have him put down out of compassion.
Trump is multi-faced with multiple personality disorder…
[…]”
● “An unbelievably illiterate serial liar, and now most of the Republicans have decided to go along with this unhinged loose cannon.”
● “It’s an understatement to say that Trump has adopted more positions than the Kama Sutra about everything.He appears to have the memory retention of an amoeba.”
Sally Yates will be on Rachael Maddow’s show tomorrow night, according to the promos. Must see TV.
This seems like a good place to ask this. I thank you all for any help in advance.
Context:
https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2018/07/08/lesbians-protest-erasure-at-london-pride-march-by-halting-then-leading-the-parade/
Specifically, here are some complaints about the LGBT movement from some (probable) TERFs.
As a cis-straight white male with almost no first-hand exposure to these issues and people with these issues, I have some questions to ask, which I hope are innocent and reasonable.
I can envision the possibility that maybe some male-to-female persons might get upset on a personal and individual basis when a born-female lesbian doesn’t want to be in a sexual relationship with them, and especially if they still have a penis. But I cannot imagine how the particular TERF claims, quoted above, could possibly be an accurate description of any reputable and mainstream LGBT group. Basically, the two TERF claims here are just doing a massive strawman, right?
I assume so, and hope so, because on the ridiculously off chance that they’re not strawman, I think I agree with the TERFs.
Again, sorry if this is part of some intro 101 paper that I should of already read or something.
Lawrence O’donnell is running with this NY Times article.
Trump was briefed on 1/6/17 that Putin ordered the hacks that elected trump with solid evidence.
@EnlightenmentLiberal #81:
Right.
It’s not new rhetoric at any rate. I think I saw an AnaMardoll twitter thread a year or two ago refuting “coercion of lesbians to accept penises”. Can’t find it.
TERF warning signs (most of which appear in that article/flyer): “radfem”,” gender critical”, pitting letters of the alphabet against each other (and enbies against T), obsession with genitals defining womanhood, contempt for ‘identity’, contempt for non-binary, contempt for intersectionality (e.g., race), “gender non-conforming”, framing penis-havers as a threatening male infiltration into womens’ space (association of trans women and rape),
Results from a cursory hashtag search…
Video: FangedMuffin – A response to #TERF nonsense by #GetTheLOut at London Pride 2018 (3:00)
Twitter Thread: cambrian_era – Another response
@EnlightenmentLiberal #81:
I’ve often seen the following user, RT’d by trans users more immersed in that discourse than I, regarding history and theoretical understanding of TERFs.
Twitter Thread: CaseyExplosion – when I say that TERFs are like union busters, this is what I mean
Twitter Thread: CaseyExplosion – TERF Spaces
Twitter Thread: CaseyExplosion – TERF Origins
Omitted Link: Not sure of the link cap here. This is from another thread…
@EnlightenmentLiberal #81:
Article: PinkNews – Pride in London head condemns transphobic parade hijack
To CompulsoryAccount7746
Thanks very much! Sorry for you doing so much work for me. So, it seems like a large portion of TERFs is just a front for standard reactionary anti-LGBT conservatives. Figures. Doesn’t surprise me one bit. “Liars for Jesus”, or at least “paid by Jesus”.
Quoted in blf’s #78:
WP:
Kind of like cracking down on violent crime but making an exception for murder.
“First on CNN: President Trump’s military parade in DC is expected to cost $12M according to US officials, nearly as much as the now canceled military exercise with South Korea, Freedom Guardian, which Trump called ‘tremendously expensive’ & said cost ‘a fortune’ (est. cost $14M).”
“Novichok poisoning: police ‘identify’ Skripal suspects – reports”:
The part about the perfume bottle is so awful.
The British government would have lost a crucial Brexit vote on Tuesday if four Labour Brexiteers had not voted with the government. The vote was on an amendment which would have obliged the government to seek a customs union with the EU if negotiations for a free-trade deal without one failed. In the same vote, a Tory MP broke a “pairing” arrangment with a LibDem on maternity leave (this system is used to prevent unavoidable absence changing a result) and there are reports that the Tory Chief Whip urged three Tory MPs to renege on their pairing agreements. The government did lose a vote over ensuring UK membership of the European Medicines Agency, and one where they tried to end the parliamentary session early.
Good thread.
Exactly right. Josh Marshall: “Precisely. Of course he ‘believes’ it. He knew before the intel folks knew. He doesn’t just believe it, he knows it. The whole charade about what he ‘believes’ is just an elaborate misdirection by him and his staff.”
Eric Swalwell: “Take this to the bank, @realDonaldTrump: you turn over former U.S. Ambassador @McFaul to Putin, you can count on me and millions others to swiftly make you an ex-president.”
“Breaking: Two suspects British authorities believe they have identified in #Skripal investigation left the UK for #Russia after the poisoning, a source with knowledge of the investigation tells CNN.”
“From the Start, Trump Has Muddied a Clear Message: Putin Interfered”:
In a CBS poll out today, 70% of Republicans approve of the way Trump handled his summit with Putin.
“Democratic push to investigate Russia stymied by partisan acrimony”:
KG@91, The UK “government” would also have lost that critical vote had the Sinn Féin MPs voted. As quite a number of people are observing, their adherence to a 100-ish year-old boycott of Parliament means they’ve just acted against the interests of both N.Ireland and the Irish Republic — that is, the entire island of Ireland — which they claim they want to unite. They are getting quite a lot of flack about this from both sides of the Irish border. (I do not know how, or even if, they are responding to the criticism, albeit past practice suggests it will be with bluster, diversion, and throwing toys out of the playpen.)
Hillary Clinton: “Ambassador @McFaul is a patriot who has spent his career standing up for America. To see the White House even hesitate to defend a diplomat is deeply troubling.”
McFaul: “Thank you @HillaryClinton for your support.”
(He thanked everyone supporting him on Twitter yesterday. I think he was taken aback by the WH response.)
What’s Jon Huntsman doing?
Swalwell: “#BREAKING On the @HouseFloor, @housegop voted to ZERO out our election security funding. @RepMikeQuigley & @WhipHoyer passionately spoke to defend the USA. @HouseDemocrats broke into chant of ‘USA! USA!'”
“Putin Says Trump’s Critics in U.S. Are Trying to Undermine Meeting”:
This is an emergency.
Update to #s 3, 19, and 22 above.
Hungary’s Orbán vows for anti-Semitism on Israel visit:
I’m not sure which nazi’s toadying is more sickening. The appalling thing is some people will actually believe even some of the garbage spouted. As discussed previously in this series of threads, what’s really going on is Israel’s nazis are attempting to weaken Europe’s objections to their apartheid policies. The European loons are being played by Israel, and also very probably being bribed.
(As usual with France24, I’ve had to restore the missing diacritics / accents to the various names (corrections not marked). This is getting tiresome !)
Update to #101 on the previous thread – the Greek MFA wasn’t pleased with the statements from the Russian MFA. Here’s their official statement (emphasis added):
In other statement news, here’s Montenegro’s in response to the Trump-Carlson interview (see above):
blf@99,
Quite true. The SF elected representatives really should swallow their pride, and take the oath of allegiance while crossing their fingers. Of course, it may be that they want a no-deal Brexit and a hard border because they think it will bring Irish unification closer.
In fact, I’m going to call McFaul’s yesterday’s tweet o’ the day.
“Senate will vote on Schumer resolution calling for U.S. not to turn over former US Ambassador McFaul and others to Russian intelligence for questioning.”
LOL.
Follow-up to SC’s comment 96.
From Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum:
From southpaw:
Team Trump’s financial experts get almost everything wrong:
link
Follow-up to SC’s comment 101.
Link
It’s looking increasingly likely (though not certain) that U.S. Person 2 in the Butina complaint is George O’Neill, Jr. A bit more about him:
Another rightwing prize.
Trump’s video of him ‘recognizing Russian meddling’ is an incredible self-own
Don’t count on FEMA:
Link
FEMA did not mention climate change in the report.
Shoot, I forgot about this bizarre event.
There’s video of the Butina/Trump exchange behind the link. It’s so weird to hear the Trump of three years ago, he sounds quite different nowadays.
The WH has a new short statement about the McFaul et al. catastrophe. I agree with Matthew Miller.
This is all bad faith and lies. We’re watching treason in plain sight and real time.
It’s useful to contrast the WH statement @ #118 with Greece’s @ #105.
Josh Marshall – “The Bigs Are Starting to Accept the Unimaginable”:
“Brussels opens legal proceedings over Hungary’s ‘Stop Soros’ law”:
“MUELLER is interested in the work that @TadDevine, who was the chief strategist for @BernieSanders 2016 presidential campaign, did with MANAFORT on behalf of the RUSSIA-aligned Ukrainian Party of Regions, based on this list of exhibits to be presented at trial starting next week.”
“Putin Tells Diplomats He Made Trump a New Offer on Ukraine at Their Summit”: “Vladimir Putin told Russian diplomats that he made a proposal to Donald Trump at their summit this week to hold a referendum to help resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine, but agreed not to disclose the plan publicly so the U.S. president could consider it, according to two people who attended Putin’s closed-door speech on Thursday.”
More evidence that government representatives shouldn’t meet one-on-one.
This could be Putin making shit up, in the hope of pushing the US further into crisis. We don’t know, and because Republicans have blocked all attempts at subpoena’ing Trump’s intepreter we’re unlikely to ever know.
Gaaah, beaten to the punch!
From Trumpian mouthpiece, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen:
From Steve Benen:
It’s not difficult, it’s impossible.
Another attack by team Trump on legal immigration:
Link
Update to #109 above – Michael McFaul: “98-0. Bipartisanship is not dead yet in the US Senate. Thank you all for your support.”
More re the suspected Novichok poisoners (emphasis added):
“Senate GOP withdraws judicial nominee Ryan Bounds, delivering a blow to Trump’s court plans”:
A Trump judicial nominee is shown the door. Thank goodness that one GOP Senator defected and voted no.
Link
Nope. Republicans do NOT want to secure voting systems in the USA.
Link
Interesting – looking through the list of exhibits for the Manafort trial, and this does appear to be involved. There are several email chains listed related to Calk.
In the UK, the minister for malicious madness (brexit) was David Davis, who was useless and resigned in protest over an attempt to do a small part of what he should have done a long long time ago (define the British position (Davis didn’t talk much to the EU and warbled all over the place, essentially always spouting contradictory nonsense and then saying it was all the EU’s fault)). His replacement is now in Brussels for his first meetings. In the Grauniad, Ben Jennings Dominic Raab in Brussels (cartoon). Two notable objects are the cake (a reference to the Davis, et al., nonsenses as “have your cake and eat it”; and the red bus, a reference to perhaps the most notorious lie of the brexit leave campaign, that leaving the EU would somehow make so much money available the NHS would get more money than the UK’s share of EU funding).
“Netanyahu Cements His Place in the Illiberal International”:
Much more at the link.
SHS just tweeted: “In Helsinki, @POTUS agreed to ongoing working level dialogue between the two security council staffs. President Trump asked @Ambjohnbolton to invite President Putin to Washington in the fall and those discussions are already underway.”
Happened while Andrea Mitchell was interviewing Dan Coats at the Aspen Forum, after he’d talked extensively about the threat from Russia.
In the past several hours, Coats’ live interview in which he said several things that could make Trump angry (because he’s a corrupt, traitorous lunatic); statement from Montenegro; Bounds nomination withdrawn; Senate unanimously passed resolution rebuking openness to agreement with Putin; Greek statement about Russia; Putin told diplomats he had talked with Trump about a deal selling out Ukraine and promised not to tell the public; Trump was angry with the Fed’s raising interest rates; news about the Novichok suspects and the coded message to Moscow (with official British statement coming shortly?); possibly other things (related to Cohen or Manafort?) that we don’t know about;…
The tweet about Putin coming to Washington was very likely sent out in a rage, and the direction that rage took is telling.
OMG.
Video of Coats being informed live onstage by Mitchell about the Putin “announcement.” He later confirmed that he didn’t know anything about this invitation.
Jon Favreau: “I look forward to the debate about whether Putin will be an asset or liability to the Republican Party when he starts stumping with Donald Trump in battleground states this fall.”
Yes, “Doesn’t this appeal to midwestern voters who want to see things shaken up? Aren’t the Dems hurting themselves with their exclusively anti-Putin message? Shouldn’t they leave this alone and focus on the kitchen-table issues people in Pennsylvania diners care about? Aren’t the protests hurting their cause? What does Bernie Sanders think?”
Scott Pruitt aides protected him from formaldehyde while suppressing report on its dangers:
US watchdog uncovers violence against pro-union workers at Indian factory:
Independent joins Saudi group to launch Middle East websites:
Meanwhile, as the Republicans refuse to increase funding for election security or deny there’s a problem, the Kremlin continues on.
“So today, Donald Trump posted a propaganda video clip from Russian state TV Channel One. Yes, really.”
Triggering the Libs by destroying a Democracy. eyeroll
Also, to elaborate on Montenegro, here’s something from August 2017:
I suspect Tucker Carlson had a reason for bringing up Montenegro…
Sally Yates on TRMS after the break.
Think I can get a good night’s sleep dreaming of Sally Yates as AG, with Rep. Adam Schiff as Dept. AG.
I’m angry and tipsy, so excuse the following rant:
Dear Democrats:
I’m a less-than 30k/year call center cubicle rat who has to juggle cost-of-living expenses on top of student loan payments. While I know that Trump and the GOP won’t help.me, why should I expect a party that caters only to upper-class, urban professionals, tech sector hipsters, and whatever disenfranchised group is fashionable to pander to at the moment to help me? All I seem to hear from you is ”as a privileged white male, you have nothing to complain about, so shut up and vote for the capitalist-pig-backed ex-First-Lady who tells me that we’re not Dennark?”
“‘That’s going to be special’: Tensions rise as Trump invites Putin to Washington”:
Someone’s gone rogue, and it’s not Coats.
Terror attacks by Muslims receive 357% more press attention, study finds (I’m will try… try… try to not rant about fecking spurious precision (as steam comes out of his ears)):
Thread on the situation with North Korea.
Truly incredible…and yet not at all incredible.
Speechless: “Austerity measures ‘must continue for 50 years’ to rescue UK finances.”
And speaking of female employees in India(see @153), ‘The right to sit’: Indian law change allows female workers to rest:
More blame-the-victims punching-downward lying distractions to “justify” Israel’s tactics of indiscriminate slaughter, Danny Ayalon: Palestinians have a culture of terror:
Indeed. Paramedics are exceptionally dangerous. They have sterile dressings ! But they are nothing compared to journalists. Nasty nasty journalists, with cameras & recorders.
This mysterious bomb was not mentioned by the Israeli army in their whitewash of a report on the incident. They claim their
soldiersexecution squad were not shooting at the paramedic, and she was kill by a ricochet.The nazi then goes on to bellow with great gobs of flying spittle that (paraphrasing) :
Indeed. That long-standing hatred of Iran is one of the drivers behind Saudi Arabia’s fairly quiet cozying-up to Israel, What is behind the covert Israeli-Saudi relations? (Nov-2017): “The covert ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, based on an alliance against the of Iran, are part of a new regional paradigm, analysts say.”
“League Of The South Reaches Out To ‘Russian Friends’”:
His inclusion of both Russians and Nazi Germany in the race club would have come as a surprise to the Nazis:
[From William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, MJF Books, pp. 937-9]
One could almost think white supremacists’ racial, cultural, and religious categories shift opportunistically.
blf @ #143, the Independent is owned by oligarch and former London-based KGB agent Alexander Lebedev, which makes the development possibly even more interesting.
“Russian ambassador to the U.S. on Trump’s invitation for Putin to come to Washington this fall: ‘We are ready for a discussion on that topic’.”
Let me get this straight. Trump, in his rage at Coats and others, rushed to announce the invitation before it had even been accepted, leaving this third-rate autocrat the opportunity to further pressure him and humiliate him and the US by leaving open the possibility the invitation could be declined. Yup, sounds about right.
This doesn’t seem accurate at all, really: “Bad News.”
Michelle Goldberg – “Are Republicans Covering for Trump, or for Themselves?”:
What Trump said in November 2015:
What Trump is saying now:
I meant to add this to the quote of Trump’s recent remarks, (see comment 162):
SC@157,
I wouldn’t think Michael Hill’s belief that the defeat of the Nazis was a disaster would go down too well with most Russians either – even Putin-fans. The “Great Patriotic War” is still a major feature in Russian nationalist propaganda.
This sounds like there’s more fun in store.
NYT: “Michael Cohen Secretly Taped Trump Discussing Payment to Playboy Model”
KG@164, That seems to presume they know about Hill’s rubbish; Believe the reports of Hill’s rubbish; and There is no overwhelming reason to ignore (nor any bright new shiny toy to distract from) Hill’s rubbish. As an analogy, consider the high support for traitor don in the States among evangelicals, despite his “pussy-grabbing” and other abhorrences (children in cages, …): Lots of distractions, and the potential of overturning Roe v Wade.
Matthew Miller: “Some days, all you can do is cry. But then there are the days that all you can do is laugh. Today is the latter.”
“White House now says it ‘is not considering supporting a referendum in eastern Ukraine’, despite Putin offer.”
Short statement from the NSC spokesman at the link. Quietly, on Friday afternoon, from an NSC spokesman, at the same time the tape news is breaking.
“NEW: There are other tapes of Michael Cohen and other ‘powerful’ individuals that the FBI seized beyond the president but could be embarrassing for the people on the tape and for Cohen, according to a source familiar with the tapes. @DanaBashCNN and @GloriaBorger report.”
More on the newly revealed Cohen tape:
Sweden Democrats: How will the far right perform in elections?:
Gloria Borger on CNN is saying her source is telling her there are “definitely all kinds of tapes out there.”
blf@166,
No, it doesn’t. The conditional form indicates that there is no such assumption. You can see this by sticking “If they heard about it” at either the start or the end of the first sentence in #164. I understand that English conditional forms are particularly tricky for non-native speakers, even if they are fluent.
The discussion on CNN is quite strange. Maggie Haberman’s reporting is completely different from Bash’s and Borger’s. The reports aren’t reconcilable.
sigh Idiots: you can’t fight fascists on their own ground – they will alwys outbid you.
Nicknamed the “hielera” or icebox, Casa Padre is a hellscape of cruel guards, sickening food, and psychological torture.
Think Progress link
More at the link
Michael Avenatti just told Wolf Blitzer that he “knows” there are multiple recordings of conversations between Cohen and Trump.
Dutch FM under fire for discriminatory remarks (Al Jazeera edits in {curly braces}):
A variant in the “dog ate my brain” / “it was just a joke” / “would means wouldn’t” family of not-pologies.
Follow-up to comment 176.
Jeff Sessions is pushing asylum officers to reject more migrants.
The next battlefield at the border is in asylum interview rooms.
Vox link.
Much more at the link.
“Acting CIA watchdog up for top job resigns”:
Whistleblowers about what?
KG @ #164:
Which Putin manages to promote while simultaneously backing the German far-Right, which dutifully sucks up to him.
“Exclusive: Court documents claim new Arron Banks links with Russia”:
Peter Geoghegan remarks: “While @Channel4News was looking at Arron Banks’s empty looking South African mines they could have gone the road to Banks’s Lesotho mines, which produced ‘geologically impossible’ diamonds as @openDemocracy reported.” I had linked to his article about Banks’s lies about his Lesotho mines back in April.
Update to #74 above.
Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos: “Very satisfied about my contribution to the truth with #houseintelligence. @AdamSchiffCA , in particular, was very professional and a real gentleman.”
“Mattis: ‘Russia should suffer consequences for its aggressive, destabilizing behavior and its illegal occupation of Ukraine’, U.S. defense secretary says in statement.”
“1. Here is a point-by-point explanation of why Rudy Giuliani’s contention that the Trump-Cohen tape is ‘exculpatory’ is completely wrong….”
Also, I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility that even if they didn’t reimburse AMI directly (and it’s possible they’re lying about that in any event), it was because it became part of some quid pro quo in which AMI, which has been losing money, received that strange, mysterious, and totally shady deal with the regime in Saudi Arabia.
“NEW: Statement from Michael Cohen attorney Lanny Davis:
‘Obviously, there is an ongoing investigation, and we are sensitive to that. But suffice it to say that when the recording is heard, it will not hurt Mr. Cohen. Any attempt at spin can not change what is on the tape’.”
By the way, Lanny Davis bears great personal responsibility for much of the human misery described in Lynna’s #176.
He’s scum. (It’s something often forgotten about Paul Manafort’s decades of spinning for dictators – the suffering and injustice for which he’s responsible around the world.)
SC @186
Also, I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility that even if they didn’t reimburse AMI directly (and it’s possible they’re lying about that in any event), it was because it became part of some quid pro quo in which AMI, which has been losing money, received that strange, mysterious, and totally shady deal with the regime in Saudi Arabia.
I had always thought that is was simply payment for the support for trump and Clinton slander in the National Perspirer. Not sure what the Saudis are getting out of it – possibly Herr Twitler’s efforts to derail attempts to reduce carbon emmisions?
First paragraph of 189 was supposed to be blockquote.
Sean Spicer is dropping some serious cash into Trump’s pocket by renting space in Trump’s hotel:
If you haven’t heard Rachael Maddow’s analysis of the Cohen tapes, I definitely recommend it. Long story short, it’s almost certain Trump’s legal team leaked the existence of that tape. Why? A) it disrupts the news cycle about whether or not Trump is compromised by the Kremlin, B) it prevents Cohen from giving the tape to prosecutors in return for leniency, C) as Cohen can’t talk about any of his tapes (see SC’s 187), Trump’s legal team can control the narrative over what those tapes say for months, and D) Trump may be convinced he’ll never have to deal with the many legal entanglements caused by the tape because of Brent Kavanaugh.
It’s quite diabolical, if Maddow’s analysis is correct.
Excepting that people are being killed (and other serious (and mostly directly-related) problems), this would be hilarious, Nicaragua: Ortega blames for uprising against his rule :
As others have noted, traitor don seems to adore authoritarians — which one notable exception, those in Central / South America† — Strongmen Have the Edge With Trump. Why Not Maduro?:
† In general, that is. As the excerpted opinion column notes, traitor don and teh dalekocracy do seem to adore the authoritarians in, e.g., Honduras. For example, US recognizes re-election of Honduras president despite fraud allegations: “The United States has recognized the re-election of Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, despite widespread allegations of fraud in last month’s election and calls from the Organization of American States (OAS) and US Congress to hold a new vote.”
There are lots of internet rules out there. I hereby propose a new one:
THE TRUMP RULE: No matter how bad you think it is going to get, no matter how completely you think Trump will screw it up, no matter how omnincompetent this President and his advisers appears to be, he, and/or his cronies, will find a way to be worse on every level than you could possibly have imagined in your worst anchovy-pizza and twelve-way-chocolate-ice-cream fueled nightmares. The Trump Rule: No matter how bad you think it could get, he will be worse.
● The Pence Corollary to the Trump Postulate†: Pence is worse. And slightly more competent. Therefore, should teh evil one disappear, it will get worse, very very worse.
● Teh Thug Conjecture to the Pence Corollary: As long as there is any elected Republican anywhere, it must get worse.
● The Dummie Conjecture to teh Thug Conjecture: The resistance will fail to bury their differences (split and dilute their vote), or not vote, and hand victory after victory to teh thugs.
● Teh Co-opted Corollary to the Dummie Conjecture: After several thug victories, the probability that only the dummies or other non-thugs which do happen to be elected are indistinguishable from thugs approaches one.
Please note a Postulate is an axiom, a statement which is trivially obvious and needs no proof; A Corollary is something which automatically / trivially follows from a true / proven statement; and A Conjecture is a plausible hypothesis, whilst not (yet) proven, it seems to be true. These terms were used very deliberately in the above naming.
† I refuse to call it the (as proposed @194) “trump rule”, as that can be construed as, e.g., “trump rules” or “trump’s rules” or similar.
Hadley Freeman, writing in the Gruaniad, Marching with my mother: why the anti-Trump march was the perfect day out (all emphasis in the original):
Oh gads, I’d managed to mostly-forget all about those loons. They are not, to the best of my now-faded recollection, racist, but that is almost-all I can say which is supportive of them. Otherwise, they are an embarrassment. Think Lyndon LaRouche for a States-side analogy (albeit I don’t believe they claim Ms Windsor controls the world’s illicit drugs trade): Take an old, albeit still valid, point (e.g., industrial-military complex), throughly misunderstand it, and extend that misunderstanding so far it can (to borrow a phrase from Terry Prachett) “see the curvature of the universe”. Then do hyper-dimensional back-flips to “explain”-away the contradictions and counter-evidence.
Putin assets working teh thugs, Nigel Farage flies under radar to support Trump-backed Senate candidate:
From Judge Voids Ordinance on Illegal Immigrants (July 2007(! — kook Barletta has been bellowing for over a decade); link embedded in above excerpt):
Both the thug & dummie nominations ! Perhaps the good news is he’s now lagging by c.16% in the current midterm congressional campaign.
† Some of the photographs — which are credited to Eric Davies — are at the link. The Grauniad does not seem to identify the college paper Mr Davies (presumably) was photographing-for, and an admittedly quick search is inconclusive.
Steve Bannon plans foundation to fuel far right in Europe:
The article also claims: “His campaign to replace dozens of Republican incumbents in the Senate with new blood has largely run into the ground.” I suppose that’s possible, but there is still a probably of some thugs winning (both incumbents and new frothering-at-the-mouthers).
(Annoyingly, there doesn’t seem to be a link or clear citation to the Daily Beast’s report in the above-excerpted article. I realise it is (probably) easy-to-find at the moment, but as time passes (e.g., a few months from now), that quite possibly won’t be the case.)
† Bannon spoke at the le penazi’s convention earlier this year.
Taking down the wall that separates church and state in the USA:
Politico link
In other news, blf in comment 196, thanks for posting that. It was a good read, and provided personal insight into the protests against Trump that were held in London.
blf @197 and 198, I know that Farage and Bannon are flying hither and thither to goad extreme right wingers into action, but I also see the celebrity status of both men diminishing. May their influence also wane.
Follow-up to 199.
From Steve Benen:
Follow-up to Hj @192.
Trump’s response seems to be to dump Cohen. For good this time?
First, there was no “break into” Cohen’s office. A legally obtained warrant allowed entry into the office (and other places), and it allowed the seizure of documents, etc. Trump continues to repeat “break in” as if the Southern District of NY had done something criminal.
Also, Cohen was a less a “lawyer” than a “fixer.” A vanishingly small amount of the material taken by investigators was deemed to be in the “privileged” category thanks to attorney-client privilege.
And, yes, Cohen can tape Trump.
Link
Hair Furor’s feelings are hurt.
Riffing off the lyrics of a song from the Beatles, someone put up a large sign reading:
Link
This news has made for some memorable headlines. As part of the new, Trumpian reality in the USA, the “Manhattan Madam” has been added to the Russia probe. Mueller has subpoenaed Kristin Davis, the infamous “Manhattan Madam” who also is a former Roger Stone aide.
Roger Stone is spinning this as harassment of him. More details:
Think Progress link
Manhattan Madam link: https://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/manhattan-madam-kristin-davis-prison
Oh, no. Not another Roy-Moore type of pedophile. Birds of a feather?
Link
Sheesh! The number of immigrant children being detained in Texas continues to rise!
Think Progress link
Joy Reid mentioned today that she would be covering this story in more depth tomorrow morning. Good.
From Adam Davidson, writing for The New Yorker:
From Jonathan Blitzer, writing for The New Yorker:
The article provides a lot more detail than my excerpt posted here shows. It’s worth reading.
Charles bethea, writing for The New Yorker, explains that Trump’s steel tariffs are already causing damage:
Thanks. The authour, Ms Freeman, is one of my favourite Granuiad writers, along with Gary Younge and several others. She started(?) as a fashion journalist, and still writes a weekly(?) fashion column, which I’ve excerpted here previously on several occasions due to her snarking or spot-on comments about econ-/politi-fashionist absurdities. For some years now, she’s also been writing on other subjects.
─────────────────────────
Chris Riddell in the Grauniad, All behind you, Boris Johnson (cartoon): “After the foreign secretary’s resignation, Chris Riddell gives his own take on David Low’s famous cartoon of Winston Churchill“.
There’s quite a lot of reader’s comments, but this one immediately caught my eye:
● “Never in the field of human conflict was so much damage done to so many by so few.”
In reply: “The 99% should learn how to control the 1%, as opposed to being manipulated by it.”
─────────────────────────
Also in the Grauniad, Martin Rowson on Donald Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin (cartoon). As usual with a Rowson cartoon, well worth a close study. (I haven’t yet worked out all the jabs myself.) It’s loosely-based on Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe.
In an unprecedented move, the FBI released a redacted version of the 400-page FISA application for a warrant to surveil Carter Page.
Spoiler alert, the document debunks all of the major Republican talking points, rebuts Carter Page’s claims, and shows Devin Nunes to be a clown:
The document blows the Devin Nunes memo out of the water.
The document confirms, once again, that the rightwing talking point claiming that the FISA warrant was based on the Steele dossier is both ignorant and wrong.
The document confirms, again, that Carter Page certainly should have been surveilled:
The document confirms that four (4!) Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges all appointed by Republican presidents approved the FISA warrant
The document debunks the rightwing talking point that the judges were not properly informed concerning the Steele dossier:
The document confirms that Page had left the Trump campaign before the FISA warrant went into effect.
Nevertheless, Trump tweeted this nonsense at about 4:48 AM today:
From Talking Points Memo:
Link
Dozens Of White Houses Materialize From Temporal Vortex As Trump’s Changing Account Of Putin Meeting Tears Apart Space-Time (quoted in full):
The mildly deranged penguin claims The Onion is being uncharacteristically subdued and mild.
From Adam Peck, writing for Think Progress: The only thing the newly released FISA documents show is that Republicans have been lying for months.
Excerpt:
More at the link.
blf @209:
Ha! That was hilarious, especially when compared to David Low’s cartoon. Perfect.
In other news, Trump is reportedly fuming over North Korea’s failure to honor his handshake.
Oh, FFS! Really, Sean?
The Hill link
From Murfster35:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/7/21/1782514/-The-game-just-fundamentally-changed-for-Trump-and-the-GOP
This may explain why he’s Sabre rattling with Iran.
Nothing like a bold war to distract from internal issues.
This, of course, yields also for Rouhani.
Birds of a feather…
DIY 3D-printed guns get go-ahead after Trump administration strikes court deal:
The Flemish tourist board, Toerisme Vlaanderen, hilariously trolls farcebork, 16th c. Rubens paintings versus 21st c. Social media regulations (video). The “fbi” — not quite sure what that stands for, “Flemmish(? Flanders?) something…”, I presume — “Social media inspectors: For your safety”, prevent “‘nudity viewers’ with a Facebook account from viewing nudity”. What’s going on is explained briefly in the Grauniad, Barefaced cheek: Rubens nudes fall foul of Facebook censors: “Flanders tourist board chides firm for removing ads featuring the Flemish master’s works”.
Follow-up to F.O.’s comment 216.
War-mongering from team Trump, and from Trump himself:
Link
I don’t even have to identify Trump’s tweets as his. Everyone can tell it is Hair Furor throwing a tantrum again. Who is demented?
From the comments: “Bolton wants his war, and Trump needs a new war, even one that we’ll lose.”
And a peek at twittering trolls, ‘I felt disgusted’: inside Indonesia’s fake Twitter account factories: “‘Buzzer teams’ are a growing part of politics, helping to churn up religious and racial divides”.
The New York Daily News is local media for New York, but now it has been seriously hobbled.
From former editor-in-chief Jim Rich:
https://thinkprogress.org/daily-news-layoffs-abadae70e9c3/
Did you actually read the article you linked to? It says the precise opposite of what your comment suggests it does:
Kuwaiti star faces backlash over Filipino worker comments:
Some searching suggests a few companies are now suspending or cutting their ties with this slave-owner, but not everyone gets it, Brands begin to cut ties with controversial Kuwaiti influencer (Gulf News — whose reliability is unknown to me — edits in {curly braces}):
In other words: The slave is expensive and I don’t want her (usually) running away. If she does escape, it’s all her fault. I even now let her have a day off. Ungrateful chattel.
Backlash against Kuwaiti Instagram influencer intensifies notes: “Alqattan has not responded on social media to the comments. Her most recent post in Saturday featured a shampoo product that supposedly treats dry hair.”
Kafala slavery is practiced in “Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.” In Qatar, “[m]ost of the workers labor under near-feudal conditions that Human Rights Watch has likened to ‘forced labor’.” (Qatar is home to Al Jazeera, who does not (yet?) have anything on this story — this could be benign / coincidence, but a known problem with Al Jazeera is they are very muted on anything which is, or could be construed to be, critical of Qatar (which is not saying they are a Qatari propaganda site, only they do appear to practice self-censorship on some Qatari stories).)
Oh for feck’s sake, China: Hundreds of thousands of children given fake vaccines (video): “Executives from China’s second-largest pharmaceutical company, Changsheng Bio-Technology Company, have admitted to falsifying test results and producing fake vaccines.”
The South China Morning Post reports, Changsheng Bio-tech, the vaccine maker behind China’s latest public health scare:
Some loonytrian (presumably) kook has apparently suggested Amazon is a replacement for libraries, ‘Twaddle’: librarians respond to suggestion Amazon should replace libraries:
Don’t. Anger. The. Librarian. Ook!
New authorial move from Hair Furor and his team, as announced by Sarah Huckabee Sanders:
Follow-up to comment 226.
Rand Paul added some fuel to the fire by making claims he cannot back up with evidence:
Brennan is being too effective on various media platforms when he criticizes Trump, therefore the authoritarian hammer is about to come down. I doubt that will silence former CIA Director John Brennan.
I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that the purpose of these previous officials retaining their security clearance wasn’t special honorary treatment for them but to aid national security – current officials can communicate with them about contemporary crises and issues for which they can provide useful background knowledge, and intelligence continuity is preserved. If that’s the case, removing their clearance out of spite is just another action that harms national security.
Let’s take a look at a post from Steve Benen, a post that includes an analysis of Trump’s view about tariffs as revealed in an interview on CNBC, <blockquote<This is the time. You know the expression we’re playing with the bank’s money,” he [Trump] told CNBC’s Joe Kernen in a “Squawk Box” interview aired Friday. […]
Trump added the market would likely be much higher if he didn’t escalate the trade issues with China and the rest of the world.
From Benen:
SC @228, I agree. That’s what I thought too.
I have not seen any evidence that Brennan is abusing his security clearance. Ditto for the other names on that list. Kushner on the other hand did abuse his.
This idea that “John Brennan [is] making millions of dollars divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on @realDonaldTrump” is a conspiracy theory primed to metastasize on Fox News and on other rightwing media.
Susan Hennessey confirms what I thought: “Also, former high-ranking national security officials typically stay in access in order to support their successors and provide insight and continuity when necessary.”
Remember those five witnesses to whom Mueller granted a limited kind of immunity so that they could testify against Paul Manafort? W know know who the witnesses are:
The witnesses, who Mueller’s team had sought to keep from public view until they were called to testify, are:
James Brennan
Donna Duggan
Conor O’Brien
Cindy Laporta
Dennis Raico
And as the tweet to which Hennessey is responding points out, Comey and McCabe haven’t had a clearance for months.
Follow-up to comments 226, 227 228 and 231.
Here’s what Sarah Huckabee Sanders said today as she obviously repeated the current conspiracy theory:
Irony meter alert: Sanders has zero evidence to back up her accusation.
SC @223, yeah. As usual, team Trump did not bother to get the facts right before they started fertilizing conspiracy theories.
Lynna @ #232, I recognize several of those names (O’Brien, Laporta, and Raico) from the email chains in the evidence list. They appear to be either his financial managers or lawyers or representatives of banks he was dealing with, which makes sense. I had expected Calk to be on the list, though.
That, of course, is precisely why the contributor to Forbes hates them so much.
Trump went after the Washington Post and Amazon … again.
Trump’s claim that Amazon uses the U.S. Post Office “at a fraction of real” has been debunked dozens of times, including by the U.S. Post Office. Trump continues to repeat the lie anyway.
And Trump is also wrong about taxes on internet goods, at least as far as Amazon is concerned:
Yes, judging from the context (evidence list available here), they all appear to be financial people involved with his loans/mortgages and possibly taxes.
Follow-up to comments 226, 227 228 and 231, 233, 234 and 236.
Link
Manafort’s trial is delayed until July 31 (a little less than a week).
Follow-up to comment 240.
Link
“GOP Lawmaker Apologizes, But Won’t Resign Over ‘Ugly,’ Racist Behavior In TV Show”: “After footage aired Sunday of Georgia state Rep. Jason Spencer (R) shouting racial slurs and pulling down his pants during a fake terrorism defense class on Sacha Baron Cohen’s Showtimes series, the lawmaker has apologized but refused to resign….”
I watched the latest episode earlier and I’m still in shock.
Tom Winter:
@ 227
Rand Paul has some leverage with Trump since he claims to be undecided on the SC vote, so Trump will probably listen to him since it’s what Trump wants to do anyway.
Thank you, DC protesters.
Would be pretty fun if the Democrats took the House in November; then Trump and Pence had to resign or were impeached for collusion, lying, etc.; and we ended up with President Nancy Pelosi.
@SC #243:
Geeeez. And that stinger after the credits.
Summary: Waving a knife at the camera, shouting another racial slur, chopping off an effigy’s sausage penis, takes a bite (?), and threatening to do that to anyone from the Middle East then feed it to them so they’ll be unable to rape anyone. Jumpcut, “I’m Jason Spencer. I’m an elected official in the state of Georgia.” 0.0
“New from latest Manafort hearing: Govt. said explicitly that banker Stephen Calk knew Manafort submitted a fraudulent loan application but approved it anyway because he wanted a Trump job.”
Manu Raju: “Just asked Nunes if he stood by all the contents of his memo after release of Carter Page docs – and he attacked CNN instead. I then asked him if he read FISA application (since in Feb he acknowledged not reading it) and he said: ‘You are ignoring what I said’ and walked on floor.”
“Qatar accuses Gulf rivals of paying for political protest in London”:
What?
Washington Post link
McFaul is one of the people that Putin would like to question/interrogate in Russia, an idea to which Trump initially agreed before he (surprise!) got a lot of negative feedback.
Team Trump finds yet another way to ignore facts when making policy decisions:
Washington Post link
Trump rejected Putin’s offer to settle the conflict in eastern Ukraine with a referendum in the disputed region, the White House said. Okay, good. That’s one more really bad idea thrown in the trash.
The White House said Trump rejected the offer. My bet is that other people around Trump finally talked him out of accepting the idea. It took them from Monday to Friday to do so.
@KG #222: yes I did. I see it as Rouhani switching to nationalist rhetoric, but it’s entirely possible that my reading of his declaration was not as charitable as it could have been.
@Lynna, OM #253:
Reminds me of underhandedness I’d heard back in January / March…
Podcast: Archaeological Fantasies – 2018-01-08 #90 Bears Ears Update (56:50)
Kenneth Feder (host):
Sara Head (host):
Podcast: Archaeological Fantasies – 2018-03-05 #93 Bears Ears Rock Art with Vaughn Hadenfelt (1:02:00)
LOL.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @256, thanks for that excellent summary. The “War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery,” and “Ignorance is strength” section was particularly good. Also, I hadn’t seen that debunking of “land grab” before. It made me laugh. But at the same time, this is all so painful.
Zinke seems to be incapable of absorbing or evaluating all of the relevant information, as shown by his reaction concerning the archaeological sites in the Bears Ears.
In other news, Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, doesn’t agree with Trump:
The Hill link
The Attorney General of the United States, Jeff Sessions, participated briefly in a “Lock her up!” chant when he spoke to Turning Point USA’s High School Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. today.
“Lock her up!” Sessions said. “Well, so, I heard that a long time during the last campaign.” He laughed.
Link
The top law enforcement agent in the USA just laughed about the idea of locking up one’s political opponents.
Nevada could make history with first female-majority US state legislature:
Jason Spencer really isn’t to blame. His performance just loses something when not enjoyed by the light of a burning cross.
Fox mistakenly invites anti-Trump politician on air (video):
Trump lawyer uses government action on abortion to raise cash for own group:
Copies of the contracts are available at the link.
Alls teh besteringest peoples !
The BBC is reporting Sondos Alqattan (see @223) has doubled-down on her support for slavery, Kuwaiti influencer defends controversial remarks on Filipino workers (BBC edits in {curly braces}):
The full reply is at link. It is incoherent. Even allowing she’s (very probably) not using her native language, it’s rather clear she simply does not understand. She’s constantly going on about her, her powers as an “employer”, and the employees’s responsibilities to her. She does not appear to have even tried to imagine herself as a kafala slave, or indeed someone who is neither wealthy or (comparatively) privileged.
“BREAKING: Ivanka Trump is shutting down her fashion brand.”
“Facebook Says Alex Jones’ Threatening Rant Against Robert Mueller Doesn’t Violate Its Rules”:
CREW statement on closing of Ivanka Trump’s brand:
Tweet o’ the day.
Update to #159 above – “Kremlin, coy on new summit idea, says Putin and Trump can meet at G20”: “The Kremlin was reticent on Tuesday about whether it would accept an invitation from U.S. President Donald Trump to hold a summit with Vladimir Putin in Washington later this year, saying only that the two men had other chances to meet as well….”
Enjoy it while it lasts, Put.
White supremacists in the Republican party are running for office.
From the Washington Post:
From Steve Benen:
The Battle For The Right To Vote Has Never Been Won: Now We’re Losing Ground
The first article can be read at the link. It provides an historical overview, debunks some myths about voting rights, and lays out the scope of succeeding articles.
“Sen. Bob Corker characterizes Trump’s farm aid proposal: ‘You have a terrible policy that sends farmers to the poorhouse, and then you put them on welfare, and we borrow the money from other countries’.
‘It’s hard to believe there isn’t an outright revolt right now in Congress’.”
Hard to believe, indeed.
Trump spoke today at a Veterans of Foreign Wars gathering in Kansas City, Missouri. As is his wont, Trump turned the whole thing into a campaign rally. He hit some of his favorite highlights, like dissing the media:
Praising the Trump version of patriots:
Immigration:
Tariffs:
Following his rant about Tariffs, and following his pie-in-the-sky promises, Trump’s Department of Agriculture announced that it would spend $12 billion to help farmers hurt by Trump’s tariffs. That’s taxpayer money.
Extra special, super delusional tweet from Trump:
Analysis from Hunter:
Follow-up to comment 274.
Coverage from Wonkette on the same subject:
The new Q poll press release is making my day. Setting aside the content, I love that they’re going out of their way to point out: “Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack).” Especially because one of the weird ways cable news people have taken to pronouncing it is “kwin-uh-PEE-ack),” which is amusing in light of this one’s subject.
Lynna@270 I have a real hard time understanding how one can be a white supremacist in Hawaii. It’s surprising he can actually breathe without aid.
This detail is odd:
So 9% somehow manage to believe it’s both not unfair and an illegitimate witch hunt.
Trump tweeted: “Tariffs are the greatest! Either a country which has treated the United States unfairly on Trade negotiates a fair deal, or it gets hit with Tariffs. It’s as simple as that – and everybody’s talking! Remember, we are the ‘piggy bank’ that’s being robbed. All will be Great!”
He has no idea what he’s doing, so all he can do is revert to cheap grifter talk.
Thank you, Philadelphia protesters.
“Two Trump Allies, Seeing Unlimited Opportunity, Instead Drew Scrutiny”:
SC@278, Well, in fairness, I suppose that 9% also actually believe in witches.
Toronto had a terrible shooting two days ago, so naturally Faux News was all over it; “Terrorism not ruled out!” went the oh-so-subtle headline; what a (predictable) bunch of low-lifes. People here are having none of it.
Best twitter response.
A candidate that Trump backed has won the primary run-off in Georgia. Brian Kemp, the Georgia Secretary of State, is now the GOP nominee for Governor of Georgia.
Weirdly, (or perhaps not, considering how things are going), Kemp seems to have a Russia connection of sorts.
Link
All the best people.
Chris Hayes hosted an excellent segment tonight on the status of migrant families that were separated at the border.
Link
Hayes and his guests describe the chaos and confusion that still prevails. Hayes says “the Trump administration kidnapped children.”
The video is about six minutes long.
Looks like Cohen is fighting back against Trump’s spin.
It’s not a terribly good fight, honestly: the problem with burying McDougal’s story isn’t how Cohen was paid and when, but that the story was buried in the first place. By admitting he was setting up a company to purchase the story, Cohen can still complicit.
“BREAKING: Ga. lawmaker who used racial slurs in TV show resigns.”
Swedish student’s dramatic plane protest stops man’s deportation ‘to hell’:
Congratulations to Ms Ersson (and to the “airport authorities” for not escalating the situation).
New York pizza delivery man to be freed as judge questions motive to deport him:
Al Jazeera finally reports on Sondos al-Qattan† pro-slavery bellowing (see @223 & @264), Beauty brands ban Kuwaiti blogger over comments on Filipino maids:
As I somewhat suspected might happen, Al Jazeera doesn’t mention the underlying system of kafala slavery, or that it is also practiced in Qatar and several other countries. They do report on it every now and then, for example, Qatar introduces changes to labour law (Dec-2016):
Indeed, Ye Pffft! of All Knowledge quotes James Lynch, Deputy Director for Global Issues at Amnesty International, on those 2016 Qatari “reforms”:
It also notes that, in Qatar, kafala slavery applies to essentially all foreign workers, including professionals:
† Other sites, including the BBC and the Grauniad — both of whom usually try to get these things right — spell her surname Alqattan (and I have also seen it spelled Al Qattan). I have no idea what her preference is, and presume this is just variations in Arabic orthography (e.g., Al Jazeera spells its own name that way, but other sites often spell it al-Jazeera).
F.O.@255,
Rouhani may indeed be shifting to nationalist rhetoric – but that still doesn’t mean the prospect of war “yields also for Rouhani”. His whole political strategy was based on improving relations with the outside world, and particularly the USA – and hence getting sanctions lifted and improving the economy. If he shifts to nationalist rhetoric, it’s an admission that the strategy has failed, and he’s unlikely to be the one who benefits. As the article says, ramping up tension benefits the hardliners in Iran. That is no doubt a feature rather than a bug from Bolton’s perspective.
We’ve halted the spread of deadly Ebola in Congo — so what went right?:
The BBCs report, Ebola: How a killer disease was stopped in its tracks, points out using the vaccine in the local conditions was not at all straightforward:
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of WHO, is quoted as saying “The government was quick to respond, quick to invite support where needed, and quick to inform the public about the risks of the disease. This kind of leadership saves lives” (How the Democratic Republic of Congo ended the Ebola outbreak).
Congratulations to DRC, and to WHO and others who responded promptly and effectively to DRC’s requests.
This is a great interview with Carole Cadwalladr, distilling the key aspects of her reporting of the past two years: “Reporter Shows The Links Between The Men Behind Brexit And The Trump Campaign.”
“Justice Department: Use ‘illegal aliens,’ not ‘undocumented'”:
I wrote about the AP Stylebook change at the time in 2013. My post quotes Janet Napolitano dismissing the matter as “vocabulary wars.” I wonder how she feels about the new DoJ guidance.
“Exclusive: White House stops announcing calls with foreign leaders”:
Important – from Maddow last night: “Trump White House cuts Putin support for Trump out of transcript.”
Catching up on a few items from the weekend…
“Did Putin share stolen election data with Trump?”:
A related article about the suspicious surge of Kremlin-backed tweets just ahead of that fateful news day in October 2016.
Useful articles on the relationship between Putin’s regime and the Republican Party:
“The Trump GOP-Russia Alliance Is A Natural Alliance.”
“How the GOP Became the Party of Putin.” (From a year ago!)
Threads analyzing the Carter Page FISA applications from Matt Tait and Leah McElrath.
WTF.
NC Republicans again take the lead in the race for Worst State Republican Party.
Tim O’Brien:
Jeff Zeleny: “It’s increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to tell the difference between an official White House event (funded by taxpayers) and a Trump campaign rally (funded by donors.)”
“Spotting CNN on a TV Aboard Air Force One, Trump Rages Against Reality”:
Good job by Emily Maitlis of the BBC interviewing Sean Spicer (which pushed him to describe what he thought his role was – to put forward Trump’s “thoughts and feelings” rather than to convey accurate information to the US public).
(I’ll note that the Access Hollywood comments were not said in private, as he claims. The reason he and Bush were wearing microphones is that they were doing a television appearance, for which they were paid. Those comments were made in a workplace.)
It’s entirely speculative at this point, but if Trump is talking to FL AG Pam Bondi here it would be pretty explosive. (Seems entirely possible that Trump is confusing Charleston with Charlotte, as many people would in the rush of events.)
Follow-up to @288, Swedish plane protester Elin Ersson: ‘I knew I couldn’t back down — I had to do what I could’:
As it turns out, the man who was on the aeroplane to be deported is not the individual Ms Ersson and her colleagues thought would be onboard. As the interview concludes:
What happened to the man she did stop from being deported is unclear.
Re #296 above – Philip Bump at WaPo contests Maddow’s interpretation:
Hadley Freedman in the Grauniad, Ivanka Trump’s loyalty to her dad has ruined her fashion line. What a surprise:
One of the readers adds, in the comments, “let’s not forget this is the woman who stood a few km’s away from the suffering in Gaza, while unveiling the US embassy in Jerusalem; and hugged her children as others were torn from their arms under daddies orders. Let Ivanka go down in history as bringing a new meaning to TBD; To Be Despised.”
Tony Schwartz: “Can you imagine the utter contempt and disdain that Trump actually has for the people — his base — who are willing to believe even his most outrageous lies?”
Seriously.
Interesting – Russian speakers point out that Putin didn’t say “Yes, I did, Yes, I did,” but “Yes, I wanted him to win.”
Heh. An bit of possible good news from traitor don’s invasion of the UK, in an expected place, Jamaica to roll up sleeves and review sexist clothing rules: ‘We must evolve’:
Cooties.
So perhaps UK PM Theresa May isn’t completely useless, at least not for women in Jamaica.
From the podcast to which SC linked in comment 293: “Wherever Steve Bannon was, Robert Mercer’s money was […]”
So Bannon was in upper management at Cambridge Analytica, and Mercer’s money funded the nefarious schemes that CA used to promote propaganda supporting Brexit. Ditto for the Trump campaign.
International criminal activity.
Bannon doesn’t seem to be doing so well now that he doesn’t have the Mercer money. At least, as far as I can tell, he no longer has Mercer money.
More re the speculation @ #306 concerning who “Pam” is in the Trump-Cohen tape.
Muslim employees at Halliburton called : lawsuit:
Mike Pompeo will testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today – will be on C-SPAN3 (and possibly cable news) at 2:30.
Trump cuts cause 250 job losses at UN agency for Palestinian refugees:
Traitor don’s dalekocracy tries to shift the blame, US envoy to UN: Arab states do not really support Palestine:
“New, from @jimsciutto: A European diplomat who’s been briefed by the State Department told CNN that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected make a formal declaration the US will never recognize Crimea as part of Russia.”
Seems like this leak is intended by the diplomat to lock Pompeo in before Trump can put a stop to it.
Teh überbrexit nutters have gone even loonier, and are now proposing supporting the EU should become part of the legal definition of treason, Tory MEP says Treason Act should cover ‘extreme EU loyalty’:
I can’t help noticing his comparisons to the EU are authoritarian nations whose governments are generally considered, if not hostile, at least untrustworthy. Substitute Canada or Japan or New Zealand and the sinister tone of the loon’s bellowing becomes much more obvious.
This particular überloon is now apparently flailing around wildly trying to his comments. He’s using a large shovel.
In the UK, real heroes step up, Ebola heroes to protest over migrants being denied NHS healthcare:
“#BREAKING: Maryland district court denies President Trump’s motion to dismiss D.C. and Maryland emoluments lawsuit, holding that the plaintiffs have indeed stated a claim that President Trump has violated both the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses:…”
Traitor don is apparently stockpiling his and other bumpf, since it is made in China and likely to be hit by his own tariffs, Made in China: Trump re-election flags may get burned by his tariffs:
It’s interesting that in the Trump-Cohen recording Cohen talks about setting up an account to pay for the rights to McDougal’s story and in this context – in which Trump brings up cash, because he’s obsessed with sleazy deals being done with cash – refers to arranging for “funding” and “financing.” This could give the impression that he was planning for the money to come from elsewhere and move through the secret entity, which is exactly how the Essential Consultants account was allegedly used.
Horrific – “Drug overdose toll rises in Philadelphia as heroin prized for ‘purity’ turns out to be contaminated”:
Thread reporting from Butina’s status hearing today.
Apparently the demented slaver (see @223, @264 & @290) is now playing an Islamophobia card, Criticism of me is attack on Kuwait and Hijab, says Sondos Al Qattan:
Her threatened list of companies / brands who object to slavery sounds like the sort of list one wants to be on.
This gentleman seems to understand what she clearly does not, UAE vlogger criticises Sondos Al Qattan over Kuwaiti domestic worker comments:
Both of the above excerpts are from ArabianBusiness, whose reliability is unknown to me.
† Yet another variation on Arabic orthography, I assume. (I thought omitting “al-” is generally considered poor form, albeit a quick search suggests it’s more complicated than that.)
‡ No relation to Al Jazeera media.
SC @312, lots of corrections are needed to the transcript of that recording. So far, the White House has issued only incomplete and/or misleading transcripts. Looking forward to seeing the WH forced to correct the record.
In other news, I have other obligations starting tomorrow. I will be absent from this thread for a few days. Everyone knows the drill. Carry on.
PZ recently renewed this thread’s lease on life, so there should not be a problem with it timing out while I am gone.
blf @320, loving this word, Brexcrement, which appears in the text you quoted. How apt.
Follow-up to SC’s comment 303.
Link
Taxpayers are paying for Trump to stump for Republican candidates.
Christian pastors get mentioned by name in Cohen’s Trump tape
“BREAKING: Pompeo says US will never recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea, demands Ukraine territorial integrity be restored.”
Bolton now saying the meeting with Putin (the invitation to which Putin hadn’t accepted) won’t go forward until 2019 – “until the Russia witch hunt is over.”
Pompeo hearing starting shortly.
Tweet o’ the day.
Heh.
Really.
Pompeo’s doing a lot of dancing to avoid answering questions about Helsinki. I was washing dishes, but I don’t think anyone’s asked him yet about the “incredible” proposal to hand over McFaul and several other US officials.
Daniel Dale:
“National Enquirer’s Yearslong Dealings With Trump Lawyer Fall Under Federal Scrutiny”:
The Omarosa story involves a legal action she brought against AMI concerning a reporter going to her murdered brother’s fucking funeral, interacting with people without divulging that she was a reporter, and then printing their comments as an “exclusive.” Omarosa settled in exchange for receiving a no-work job at AMI publications. I think I’m done reading about these people for today.
TL;DR: people are getting removed from voter registries without their knowledge.
I assume that the intention is that once election day comes, they’ll find out that they were un-registered only at the ballot and won’t be able to re-register in time.
Americans, double check that you are actually registered.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/voter-roll-purges-surged-after-changes-voting-rights-act-new-n893056
This is outrageous. And that the reporter is Kaitlyn Collins is beyond belief.
Ari Melber is airing a special first-anniversary episode of “The Beat” right now. I’ve enjoyed the show’s first year immensely. He and Nicolle Wallace have been fantastic additions to the MSNBC lineup. (I do still miss Alex Wagner.)
“Wow. The U.S. passport office just called and told me that due to an ‘error’, the government has retroactively invalidated the change of gender marker it authorized on my passport last year. They won’t renew my passport w/ correct name & gender until i submit a new doctors note…”
I reviewed a book a few years ago about the importance of addressing administrative violence against trans people:
An important aspect of Claudia Koontz’s The Nazi Conscience is the discussion of how people who abhorred the street violence of the SA became accustomed to the administrative violence of the regime, which was far more efficient. We have to work to remain cognizant of this kind of violence and oppression.
Lynna @ #285:
I agree – it was an excellent segment. I still can’t wrap my head around what they’ve done. Did they think the parents would just be deported and forget about their children? That no one would notice or mind? And what were they planning to do with the children?
I’m not sure which is the worse possibility: That they had a plan for how to dispose of the children or that they just didn’t even bother thinking about it.
Rachael Bade:
LykeX:
I was thinking the same thing. I try to imagine what was going through their heads and just end up sputtering in disbelief.
Lisa O’Carroll:
So rest easy, Brits!
In all seriousness, the WWII Victory Gardens really pushed towards self-sufficiency. One of my pet conspiracy theories is that they and the entire culture surrounding them were destroyed on behalf of a growing agribusiness (including chemical industries) lobby. I did a little research on the topic years ago, but it was too preliminary to reach any conclusions.
“A decade ago Republicans protested strenuously against economic stimulus during the biggest recession since the Great Depression.
But today they are shrugging off $12 billion in subsidies to farmers made necessary because of a 1920’s era tariff policy from a GOP president.”
Bret Baier: “As a member of the White House Press pool- @FoxNews stands firmly with @CNN on this issue and the issue of access.”
Adam Schiff: “These articles of impeachment against Rod Rosenstein were filed in bad faith and show extraordinary lengths to which House Republicans will go to protect Trump. History will record these Members as willing accomplices in the most serious threat to the rule of law in a generation.”
Squalidarity.
southpaw on the Rosenstein impeachment resolution.
“SOMOS MÁS DE 50 MIL PERSONAS EN SANTIAGO!! 100 MIL EN TODO CHILE!!!
DE ARICA A PUNTA ARENAS LA MAREA VERDE SE HA TOMADO EL PAÍS!!! ABORTO LIBRE AHORA!!!”
Significant abortion-rights marches going on in Chile.
This is a rather long article about James Thompson, who leans progressive, and is running in the district where the Kochs live. He almost won a special election last year, and is now rapidly closing the gap on the current thug, Ron Estes (who replaced Mike Pompeo in that special election). In the excerpt below, however, I’m concentrating mostly on how dummie central is acting: “It’s a herculean undertaking to fight the forces that work against Thompson’s campaign: Fox News, the Koch brothers, his own Democratic party.” They thought this was Trump country. Hell no:
I do suggest reading the whole thing.
“Cartoonist Avi Katz was fired from the @Jerusalem_Post for this absolutely brilliant reference to Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ in a caricature of the celebration by Israeli rightwingers after passage of controversial nationality law…”
[Cartoon at the link. See #135 and others above for background.]
In Butina/Kremlin/NRA/Family/Republican news…
“Maria Butina: ties emerge between NRA, alleged spy and Russian billionaire”:
(Nikolaev didn’t appear in my list of possible funders @ #43 because he wasn’t listed under $1.2 billion in the Forbes list, but their individual profile of him has that amount as his current “real time net worth.”)
“Clandestine U.S. Christian Org Linked to Anti-Semitic Leader”:
Jeff Sharlet tweeted: “Alabama GOP rep Bob Aderholt has been one of the Family’s most frequent fliers. When I wrote about him in C STREET, he was joining Mike Pence & Jeff Sessions to smooth arms deals for Sri Lanka’s brutal regime. Now, it seems, he’s making some really scary friends in Romania.”
VoteVets: “Trump has spent 123 days golfing, or 1/5 of his term, at a cost to taxpayers of $72,181,957 – and still hasn’t visited troops in a war zone. #NoTrumpParade”
Update to #s 296, 308, and 312: the WH has now corrected the official transcript to include the question, but still hasn’t fixed the mistranslated response from Putin.
“New Emails Show Michigan Republicans Plotting to Gerrymander Maps”:
Rep. Jayapal: “A mom told us her relationship with her 8yo daughter would never be the same. Officials lied to the daughter, saying her mom abandoned her. They said she’d live in a shelter until she was 18. When they reunited, the daughter believed that and wanted nothing to do with her mom.”
A former immigration official on CNN this morning said he thinks a number of these children will never be reunited with their parents – will become wards of the state, put in foster care, adopted. That CANNOT HAPPEN. This is insanity.
BBC doing some minimal investigative reporting on Chief Inspector Dreyf…uh, Arron Banks.
Israeli cartoonist fired over ‘Animal Farm’ Netanyahu caricature:
You can guess, right now, what one of the claims about the caricature is.
See? Pigs = anti-Semitic = invalid criticism. So so predictable… and ludicrous.
Picture & cartoon at the link.
Interesting article – “Maria Butina was the ultimate NRA Cool Girl”: “The sexy narrative of Maria Butina is that she’s a devious femme fatale. But her maneuvering through Second Amendment circles revealed as much about her marks’ desires as it did about her own plotting. Maria Butina was NRA Cool Girl. Her Russian compatriots might have hacked into servers and political databases. She learned to hack the American psyche.”
“Nancy Pelosi on the motivation to impeach Rosenstein: ‘I don’t know, but what I’ve heard is Jim Jordan wants to take attention away from the scrutiny that he is under in Ohio, that could be a part of it’.”
Video clip at the link.
Ryan saying he doesn’t support the impeachment of Rosenstein. Jordan is reportedly announcing his bid for Speaker today (compare this dolt to Nancy Pelosi).
Somewhat similar to what has now happened in Bavaria (Germany), in Italy there is apparently now a proposal to display torture devices in public spaces. Even the raping children cult is not impressed (at least in public), Pope Francis adviser decries Matteo Salvini’s ‘co-option’ of crucifix:
Heh. That would sting if the Italian “government” loons were actually devote believers. Whilst I don’t know that they aren’t, they do seem to act more like cynical authoritarians quite happy to do anything to increase their wealth:
“Trump Organization Finance Chief Called to Testify Before Federal Grand Jury”:
“Russian Foreign Ministry: ‘Political Prisoner’ Butina Must Be Released”:
New Jersey radio hosts suspended for calling attorney general :
First off, congratulations to WKXW for their swift reaction. Whilst unlikely, I would have liked the station’s engineer to have shut down the pair’s microphones whilst still on-air, with a voice-over similar to the ACLU’s twittering, following by some appropriate musical protest songs (albeit at the moment I’m struggling to choose some tracks).
And secondly, I’m inclined to suggest Malloy & Franco be referred as something like “the two ex-radio hosts who cannot distinguish between a turban and their ignorance.”
Facebook (which is, to put it mildly, not having a good day) has released the AIQ Vote Leave ads to Damian Collins’ committee. I feel a little sick looking at them. The deceit, the false promises, the scamminess and surreptitious data collection, the fearmongering, the parallels with Kremlin propaganda.
The ones about animal welfare are creepy and disingenuous. (I’ve been noticing how many Russian bots and trolls lately have things like “animal lover” and “stop animal abuse” in their bios, sentiments which bear little relation to what they tweet about. Makes me furious.
David Carroll: “Irony of these demonstrably xenophobic, nativist, nationalist Vote Leave ads: they were done by a Canadian shop, the one with an exclusive IP license with SCL Elections, a firm largely financed by an American family, run on Facebook, controlled by American who won’t come to UK.”
BBC: “Vote Leave’s targeted Brexit ads released by Facebook.”
The so-called government is saying 917 of the parents at the border are “ineligible” to be reunited with their children. You can’t become ineligible to have your kidnapped children returned. It’s not a fucking sweepstakes. It’s a human right, of both the parents and the children.
New Ch4 report: “Diamonds, guns and Russian cash: The extraordinary new claims against Arron Banks.”
Video at the link.
They’re just allegations at this point, and largely based on the testimony of a former associate with whom Banks is in a legal battle, but that said Banks is a known liar and his mining operation (and other business) is ridiculously sketchy.
Martin Rowson in the Grauniad on Brexit bafflement in the heatwave (cartoon): “The Brexit Policy Paradigm in its Practical Application to Heat Waves”.
Thread on the AIQ Vote Leave ads. Also, Carole Cadwalladr points out that many lack identifying imprints, which are required by law. At the end of the interview @ #293 above, she argues that FB, which is totally unaccountable, shouldn’t be allowed to play a role in future British elections.
“Facebook’s earnings disaster erased $120 billion in market value — the biggest wipeout in US stock-market history.”
Daniel Dale livetweets Trump’s rally in Granite City, IL. A few of note, annotated:
“Russian Hackers’ New Target: a Vulnerable Democratic Senator”:
Well, that was both sinister and comically pathetic – “Meadows backs off impeaching Rosenstein after leadership talks”: “Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) says he is tabling his efforts to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after having several meetings with Republican leadership, stating that he would instead pursue contempt if the Justice Department (DOJ) does not turn over documents Congress is seeking.”
“Here’s The Evidence Paul Manafort Doesn’t Want A Jury To See About His Work In Ukraine: A cache of documents included in a filing Thursday largely includes emails and memos about campaign strategy and activities on behalf of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.”
“The exhibits contain detail, and casual conversation, about the political work the consultants did abroad, as much as a decade before the 2016 election. Manafort’s case seems likely to explore in depth the lucrative, insider world of Washington influence, and which cuts against the outsider image of Donald Trump, whose campaign Manafort chaired — and that of Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist whose campaign Devine produced ads for.”
Tad Devine is the Linda Evangelista of sleazy political operators.
“Bernie Sanders Adviser Is Assisting Special Counsel Investigation In Manafort Case”:
I haven’t read through all of the documents @ #379, but I will recommend, to put them in context, the chapter on Manafort’s Ukraine work in Luke Harding’s book Collusion.
McCaskill’s statement on the hacking attempt @ #377 above.
CNN is reporting that sources are telling them that “Cohen is prepared to tell Mueller Donald Trump knew, and approved of[,] Trump Tower meeting before it happened.”
CNN: source are saying Cohen alleges he witnessed Jr. tell his father about the upcoming meeting offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.
“Cohen claims Trump knew in advance of 2016 Trump Tower meeting”:
Matthew Miller: “If Cohen’s goal here is to try and get a deal from prosecutors, he is going about it in the stupidest way possible.”
Is he physically afraid?
…Oh dear god, Giuliani on with Chris Cuomo right now.
Wait…I think Giuliani just said that if it did happen it won’t be as significant as the anti-Trump people are saying. Everything he’s saying here is basically an admission that it’s true.
I’m cringing watching him. He’s not mentally equipped to do this.
This is painful. Giuliani’s mind isn’t all there.
WTF? How could Giuliani have talked to the people in the room when Jr. told Trump about the meeting if it didn’t happen?
This is just…
Matthew Miller: “Cohen is obviously a difficult witness, but if it’s true as he says that there were other people in the room, Mueller has a clear path to confirming that Trump knew about the Russian offer for help in advance. IF he doesn’t already have it.”
Josh Marshall noticed the same thing I had @ #388. Video clip at the link.
The long anticipated shift to “Collusion is fine.”
Update to #374 – Cadwalladr: “There are laws for leaflets to have imprints. But as @alexhern & @hugorifkind point out there were only ‘guidelines’ for digital ads. Electoral Commission explicitly told campaigners to include them. But they would have known it didn’t have force of law.”
This is so gross.
David Corn: “If Cohen’s account is accurate, Trump knew from the start that Putin had a secret plot to hurt HRC & help him. Yet he constantly denied Russia was behind the attack on the US election. That is, he knowingly lied to protect a foreign adversary attacking the US. That’s betrayal.”
(Recall that an email to Jr. setting up the meeting openly described the information as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”)
“NEW: @MichaelAvenatti will represent 3 additional women who have come forward claiming they were paid by AMI for their stories about affairs with Trump. One of the women says she was impregnated.
Avenatti says these payments were made before the election.”
Something occurred to me as I read this piece in WaPo:
Of course, much of what Putin claims about this is cynical propaganda, targeted harassment, and political gamesmanship. He lies constantly. But I think it’s possible that he and his circle actually believe that this conspiracy existed or exists. His paranoia about the US, like his paranoia about LGBT people, is genuine at some deep level (see Timothy Snyder’s The Road to Unfreedom). So it’s not far fetched to surmise that when he had this presented to the Trump campaign he really believed it was good dirt.
It took me a while to realize that many Trump supporters, including House Republicans, truly believed that when Nunes released his memo it would reveal a high-level FBI/DoJ/DNC anti-Trump conspiracy. While they have the same propagandistic and political motives as the Kremlin, at least some of the twisted reality they present to the public is rooted in their own twisted and paranoid understanding of reality. I don’t think we can count out that something similar is going on with Putin.
LOL.
“Trump Admin Reunites 1,442 Kids By Court Deadline, Hundreds Remain Apart”:
Evil.
I think I can official say that all my hope is gone. I do not believe for an instant that Trump will be removed from office. There are far too many constitutional and political barriers for that to happen. Nor do I expect the “Blue Wave” to occur. While kids in dog cages, a right-wing supreme court, and lost civil rights are horrific, the economy is limping along without the feared economic collapse and most people are happy with the status quo… and the millennials don’t seem to give a fuck enough to drag their asses from their Playstations and vote. No one has problem with white supremacists when they have job security and fat wallets.
It’s too late, They’ve won. Trump and his brand of right-wing goons is the new mainstream. Not that it really took that much to get there; America has been wallowing in racism, sexism, and capitalist greed since the beginning.
Thanks for sharing.
Correct. (And the idea that democracy and “kitchen-table issues” (a phrase I hate) are two separate spheres is asinine.)
Ah – this makes sense: Cohen and Trump were reportedly talking about buying the rights to McDougal’s story because they thought Pecker might be leaving AMI and no longer have control over publication.
Tweet o’ the day.
Akira MacKenzie @ 399
It’s nice to know that after your generation has fucked everything up, you’ve figured out how to shift blame to mine.
BTW, you do realize that Millennials aren’t kids anymore, right? The majority of Millennials are in their late twenties to mid thirties with jobs and families.
Facebook just announced that it’s banning Alex Jones and has started taking down Infowars videos.
In which Dominic Cummings sounds not at all loony:
The who screed has a certain “November Criminals” ugliness to it.
Teen Vogue on the slavery-promoter (see @327 & others), Kuwaiti Influencer Sondos Alqattan Is Facing Backlash for Her Comments on Domestic Workers’ Rights (emphasis in the original):
And Kuwaitis call Sondos Al Qattan’s video an ’embarrassment’:
No hint yet that she has the slightest understanding or comprehension.
NO, Facebook suspends US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (my added emboldening):
Tommy Robinson is a notorious UK nazi, currently in jail. Numerous loons are calling for his release, including Steve Bannon (Steve Bannon calls for Tommy Robinson to be released from prison).
It would be more accurate to say nothing has happened. Or to be a bit more pedantic, user(s?) claiming to be “Alex Jones” are slightly proscribed, and a handful of videos taken down.
Oh! This is clarifying. I’ve been confused about precisely this. Butina isn’t charged under FARA but under Section 951: “Perhaps the best way to think of the difference is that FARA is a cousin of the Lobbying Disclosure Act, while under Section 951, Butina faces a softened version of the espionage laws.”
[Probably part of the source of my confusion is that since FARA came about a decade before Section 951 – 1938 and 1948, respectively – it was, as I understand it, used in the war years to address the crimes later covered by Section 951 (e.g., Nazi spyish behavior and covert influence campaigns).]
(My previous attempt at a reply seems to have been eaten by poopyhead’s filter — try again…)
NO, Facebook suspends US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (my added emboldening):
Tommy Robinson is a UK nazi currently in jail. Assorted loons, including Steve Bannon, have called for his release (Steve Bannon calls for Tommy Robinson to be released from prison).
It would be more accurate to say nothing has happened. To to be a bit more pedantic, user(s?) claiming to be “Alex Jones” have been slightly inconvenienced. For a few days.
Wow – I had never seen this graph before somehow.
! – “Spotted: Robert Mueller and Donald Trump Jr. both waiting for their flights this morning at the 35X gate at DCA. And yes, there is a photo.”
Photo at the link.
If Mueller’s left town, does that mean no indictments today? I hope not.
David Cole, ACLU: “We will see them in court until ALL the families are reunited.”
@SC #396:
Whaaat? Russian conservatives don’t sound like Republicans at all. /s
Article: New Yorker – The Hundred-ruble Crusade (circa 2014)
“A spokesman for the special counsel confirms this is Mueller, waiting to board a flight. He adds, ‘If it’s accurate that the other person in the photo was Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Mueller was not aware of him and had no interaction with him’.”
“Cabinet officials and others invited to today’s NSC meeting on election security are leaving White House now. The meeting was set to start at 3 pm. If it started as scheduled, the president’s meeting on election security was less than 30 minutes.”
Further to #341 above, here’s an article expanding on the concerns in that thread – “Trans Women Say the State Department Is Retroactively Revoking Their Passports”:
From SC @376
Who the fuck would ever believe this? – especially people working in a steel mill. Does he expect them to believe this? This isn’t lying, so much as it is bullshit on stilts. Do his supporters know and just don’t care?
Another likely contributer is the conversion of the urban and periurban land used to housing and business premises. That land, which I think was mostly owned by local councils, became “too valuable” to be used for growing food, once the WW2 bomb sites were used up. Early on the councils might build much-needed housing on it themselves, later they were under both financial and political pressure to sell it to private developers.
Social history anecdote:
The first place I lived, on the outskirts of London, my father had an “allotment” (the land was “alloted” at a low rent by local councils) almost immediately at the end of our back garden. He grew vegetables there, as well as in the garden itself. His father and two elder brothers were professional horticulturalists, so no doubt he had skills passed on from them. That land has since been built on – I’m not sure whether by private developers or the council (but if the latter, the houses will since have been sold off at knock-down prices and subsequently re-sold at huge profit).
Your cite mentions Dominic Raab, the new “Brexit Secretary”. I said when this nonentity was appointed that I thought it signalled May’s intention to run the negotiations with the EU herself. She has recently confirmed that, saying Raab will “deputise” for her. Since she has failed in two years to reach a settlement with her own party, and since it’s already clear the EU will not accept the cherry-picking of the “Chequers proposal” I think we can say a disastrous “No deal” Brexit has become a very real possibility.
“How Vladimir Putin Will Take Down Donald Trump When He’s No Longer Useful”:
Molly Crabapple:
Images and more links in the thread.
re: SC @420:
I suspect that Putin is pretty near the end when it comes to Trump. The goals of the operation have been more than met: destabilize the EU and NATO, sow distrust in US democracy, destabilize the US government, etc. I don’t know that there is all that much more that Trump’s administration can do to help Russia and hurt the US and its allies.
When Putin does finally drop the dime on Trump, it will include both fact and fabrication in order to cause further chaos in the US. If Russia releases information on nine crimes, but also information on one absolut fabrication, the left will talk about the crimes, the right will talk about the fabrication, and the content center will continue to ignore the assault on democracy. I think at this point, Putin can do more to harm the United States and allies by throwing Trump under the bus and watching the US tear itself apart.
Faith Goldy is running for mayor of Toronto.
Well done, Chris Wylie. Not only does she keep repeating “that’s an allegation,” but even says “That’s an allegation that you’re making.” It’s like the BBC is refusing to acknowledge the events of the past year.
So Dominic Cummings broke the embargo to leak the DCMS committee report (scheduled for release tomorrow) in order to get his spin out ahead. There’s a link to the report in the post I link to a link to @ #406, but I wouldn’t click on a link from any of those duplicitous douchebags. But some British publications evidently then broke the embargo themselves, so WaPo decided to do the same and publish its report.
“British ‘fake news’ committee says democracy is facing a crisis”:
KG @ #419:
For sure.
So cool.
Guardian, with some added information – “Democracy at risk due to fake news and data misuse, MPs conclude”:
OT, but this is incredible.
Here in France, since that soccer thingy win, there’s been a scandal known as the “Benalla Affair” (affaire Benalla). Alexandre Benalla, the then-head of President Emmanuel Macron’s security detail, was filmed on May Day (May 1) wearing a police uniform and beating a protester. Both are illegal. Real police nearby did nothing. (Benalla was supposedly “observing” the policing of the protest.)
Benalla was suspended days later for two weeks, and then supposedly reassigned to different work. However, he was never reported to the authorities. In addition, apparently, during his “unpaid” suspension he was still actually paid. And at least one more video has since surfaced which shows a second attack on another protester.
Le Monde obtained the initial video and published it two-ish weeks ago. The Paris prosecutor is now investigating, as are two committees in Parliament. Benalla has been fired, charged with assault, and with impersonating a police officer (at least). (The inert nearby police, plus an associate, Vincent Crase, have also been charged.)
Until a few days ago, Macron has been silent, despite apparently being informed of the incident a days after it happened. His first comments were completely tone-deaf, albeit he’s since said he bears responsibility. However, he’s put his foot in his mouth again, with a traitor don style claim, Macron accuses press, opposition of blowing up Benalla Affair (France24 edits in {curly braces}):
At least one of the Parliamentary committees is having its own problems, Benalla affair: Opposition storms out of committee probing Macron aides. That however, may be just a bit of political posturing, which is the line Benalla himself is taking, Benalla Affair: Disgraced ex-bodyguard slams attempt to ‘get at Macron’. He has admitted he is the individual filmed, and is quoted as saying “I feel like I have done something really stupid. And have made a mistake”, albeit he has not, as far as I am aware, indicated that beating two protesters was wrong.
To me, to-date, much of the affaire seems like a French case of the English disease of complete ineptitude. The following is all speculation: Each person in the Élysée Palace assumed someone else was responsible for reporting the incident to the authorities, no-one bothered to check the terms of the suspension were correctly applied, or that once the affaire became public than Macron, et al., were up-to-speed on what happened. Macron is frustrated that what should have been a fairly straightforward disciplinary / police matter has derailed his agenda / plans and dominated the news.
Tweet o’ the day.
Hee hee ha ha ha ha ha hee hee (pauses to catch breath and remove a stray penguin feather) ho ho ha ha heee hee heeee… Colorado capitol prankster places Putin portrait where Trump’s should be:
Photo (also at the above link).
(staggers up off the floor, then falls over laughing again…)
Seems like a pretty significant thread about Mercury Public Affairs.
Update to #393 above – “Anger over use of Brexit ads in aftermath of Jo Cox murder”:
You can read the report here. Here’s the tweet from Shahmir Sanni referred to in the article.
Two more articles about the committee and its findings, both well worth reading:
“‘Plucky little panel’ that found the truth about fake news, Facebook and Brexit.”
“A withering verdict: MPs report on Zuckerberg, Russia and Cambridge Analytica.”
From the report:
From the report:
From the report:
I’ll say. This practice sounds so stupid I almost hope Schroepfer is lying about it.
DCMS report:
Again, this would be so stupid that I have serious doubts about whether it’s true.
DCMS report:
I had missed this completely. Here’s the story.
“Complaint alleges NRA used shell company to unlawfully coordinate with Johnson’s campaign”:
DCMS report:
Yes it does!
LOL.
DCMS report:
Thank you again, DC protesters.
David Shuster: “According to defense lawyer who has dealt with Mueller team, the special counsel is proceeding without expectation of Trump testimony and plans report for Congress by end of September. I’m skeptical given plea deals, Manafort trial, + other loose ends. But, FYI.”
The conspiracy continues…
I recommend he section of the DCMS report on SCL’s involvement in elections around the world (pp. 53-9).
“Judge orders Trump administration to help lawyers find ‘missing parents’ of migrant kids”:
They actually tried to convince the judge that providing the information would interfere with reunification efforts.
Oh, something’s going down.
“UK government shelves plan to publicise no deal preparations in case it turns public against Brexit…”
Excerpts and link to full report at the link.
David Lammy: “God, help us. This is not coming from Remainers. This is not project fear. Pro-Brexit Ministers are drawing up blueprints for the army to deliver food, fuel and medicine if we leave the EU with no deal. We have a duty to prevent this self-immolation.”
Link to article at the link.
Avenatti: “.@RudyGiuliani – Are you denying that there were other hush payments made to as yet unnamed women in connection with the 2016 campaign? Asking for some friends… You better buckle up buttercup because Mr. Trump’s stupidity and disloyalty is about to catch up to him (and you).”
Well.
Anshel Pfeffer:
The next year in global politics is breathtakingly consequential.
Mariana Atencio and Jacob Soboroff on AM Joy yesterday talking about the suffering at the border. (9-minute video at the link.)
“How Russia Persecutes Its Dissidents Using U.S. Courts”:
Interesting BBC video on “Georgia’s Rave Revolution” That’s Georgia in the Caucasus. LGBT youth and allies against Nazis, the Georgian Orthodox Church, and Russian money – oh, and the police.
“Hiring of former Trump aide at UVa prompts 2 historians to quit”:
“Protesters chant anti-Putin slogans at Moscow rally against retirement age plan”:
“Rudy delivers another hit.
‘I don’t even know if that’s a crime — colluding about Russians. You start analyzing the crime — the hacking is the crime. The president didn’t hack!'”
In summation, my client is guilty.
Video clip at the link.
Holy shit.
Trump lawyer Giuliani: ‘scumbag'[†] Cohen is a traitor like Iago and Brutus (Grauniad edits in {curly braces}):
As far as I am aware, the accusation Cohen the tapes is one of the (presumed) lies traitor don and teh dalekocracy is currently spouting. I say “presumed lies” since Cohen is sufficiently untrustworthy it’s not impossible there is some judicious editing, and so stoooopid he actually would do that. (It presumably would not be as clumsy as the famous 18½ minute gap conveniently erasing a Watergate conversation at a critical point.)
† Not set in as this is one eejit bellowing about another eejit, and the description very plausibly applies to both eejits.
One of the companies I refuse to knowingly do business with is Amazon. There are multiple reasons for this, here is another, Accidents at Amazon: workers left to suffer after warehouse injuries (my added emboldening):
My father, who had responsibility for equipment / workspace safety in some of his roles, would be enraged to hear that not only did it take so long to fix the workstation, but that it was still being used whilst broken. (Not to mention, if he know about it, the way the injured people were being treated.) In addition, since he insisted on both routine and spot checks of the equipment, he would also not accept any excuses of “not knowing” (for such a long time (and certainly not after a report of a injury)) nor of continuing usage.
I can recall some incidents at home when he asked me to stop using my lab until an issue was fixed: The one I remember most clearly at the moment is asking me to stop soldering when he realised the bench surface was insufficiently heat- / flame-proof, and then searching for a suitable pad which was neither asbestos (for obvious reasons) or metal (due to the electrical / electronic equipment, some of which contained very high voltages). I have no recollection now where he got it (I presume he talked to colleagues / friends “in the industry”), but got this rather neat slate-like “stone” pad, which not only worked great, it looked really really cool. Sadly, I no longer have it.
Another incident I recall (albeit not involving my father) was at a previous job, when my lab bench was kicked out of an appropriate room to an ajoining desk in my office. The precise details of that move now elude me (albeit I vaguely recall it being done without consulting me (due to poor planning?)). Since some of the kit had exposed 440VAC current, and also some moving parts that could suck in stray hair / clothing (and would really really hurt†), I put up big warning signs. They worked — they scared the whatever out of the office cleaning staff — and the head of the facility came to see what the fuss was all about, and ordered room be made available for the lab bench in an appropriate room.
† There were automatic safety cut-outs, which worked: I tested them personally, both deliberately and accidentally (which is how I know it would really really fecking hurt, albeit with a low-seeming risk of injury). In normal usage, that equipment would be an enclosure with filters, making it very unlikely anything would be sucked inside. From memory, I had to deliberately bypass the “cover open” interlock intended to stop the equipment — in the lab setting, for the work I was doing, I needed access to the “guts” whilst it was operating, hence the removal of the covers.
Giuliani on Fox just now. I’m honestly astonished by the number of admissions here. Even the Fox interviewer is like, “Hmmmm…”
So now he’s alluded to some – no doubt terrible – discussion about the judge Trump smeared during the campaign (taped by Cohen, presumably). He also seems to be saying that Cohen is talking about the Russian conspiracy on the tapes, which would be far more damning for Trump than his bringing it up now. I have to think something will be appearing shortly in probably the NYT.
“Here’s part 3 of Rudy’s walk back where Foxer basically says Rudes WTF are you talking about.”
And this is a second one!
Marshall has helpfully put the three tweets in #s 465 and 466 in one place.
Matthew Miller: “A penny for Emmet Flood’s thoughts as he watches Rudy incriminate the president on live television, possibly with actual evidence of wrongdoing, possibly with third-hand gossip.”
Trump v the art world: from a gold toilet to his latest culture war:
LoBaido’s T statue (link embedded in above excerpt) is truly hideous. McNaughton’s One Nation Under God, which a reader claims is his most infamous painting, is nauseating. Warning: Following either of those links may result in permanent eyeball damage (probably due to self-inflicted gouging), brain rot (most functioning neurons will flee), and structural damage (not only to your head and desk, but also the building due to repeated forceful collisions). The amount of snark in this paragraph and its warning should not be assumed to be significant. (There is also a video about McNaughton’s You Are Not Forgotten at the excerpted article’s link. What remains of my floor, desk, and computer is already covered in seas of vomit, so I haven’t watched it. But the still image is responsible for at least one of those seas.) You. Have. Been. Warned.
Oh for feck’s sake. Getting traitor don into a museum would accomplish nothing, other than some twitterings how are spent on them and they’d be better off run by Amazon (like the libraries (see @225)). Actually, presumably not Amazon in traitor don’s case, as he hates Bezos, but by his pals at AMI or in the Kremlin (after all, Russia does have some excellent museums).
One thing which amazes me is how few people and/or infrequently — or so it seems — visit museums, attend concerts, et al., in the States (outside of a few locales like NYC). In the UK, you trip over the things every few kilometres (or so it seems), from the quirky but interesting Pencil Museum to the well-known establishments in Edinburgh and other places. (Roughly the same is true here in France, albeit I think it’s reasonable to say Paris dominates, perhaps far more so than London.)
OK, as best I can tell, here’s what Giuliani is trying to say:
He’s getting information from two reporters (I assume from separate publications) about what Cohen is allegedly claiming re the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting. (This is already strange and somewhat suspect. If reporters are contacting him for comment and there’s supposedly no truth in what Cohen’s allegedly claiming, and no articles have even been published about it, why would he be going all over TV to try to swat down the claims?)
The information he says the reporters are asking him about – again, allegedly coming from Cohen/Davis, but there’s no evidence of that – concerns two alleged meetings prior to the Trump Tower meeting with Veselnitskaya and crew.
The first allegedly took place on June 7 – two days before the Trump Tower meeting. Giuliani claims that the reporters are telling him that Cohen is saying it was a planning meeting for the meeting with the Russians. (This also, notably, was the day that Trump announced that he would soon be giving a speech spilling the dirt on the Clintons.) Giuliani says that Cohen claims that the people involved were Jr., Kushner, Manafort, Gates, and two or three others. He’s very insistent that Trump isn’t alleged to have personally been part of this meeting. He seems to suggest that there was a meeting at this time (on this day?), but that it was about a different subject – he mentioned some discussion of the judge on the Trump “University” fraud case against whom Trump launched racist attacks, but I recall this being earlier in the year. He says the “witnesses” he’s talked to deny the alleged Cohen account of the subject of the meeting, but a) they’re not really witnesses and b) I seriously doubt he’s talked to Gates, who’s cooperating with Mueller.
The second meeting Giuliani says Cohen is alleging allegedly took place in Trump’s office in Trump Tower on June 9th just before the meeting with the Russians. Jr. came in and told Trump, in Cohen’s presence, that he was going to meet with the Russians. Giuliani claims that this never happened and Cohen can’t make his case here because it’s “two against one” and he has no corroborating evidence. He also says “two witnesses” refute Cohen’s alleged story, but I think he’s referring to Trump and Jr. who, again, aren’t witnesses here.
He also says he “doesn’t know” if the blocked-number calls came from Trump.
So we don’t know if this is even what Cohen is alleging or if Giuliani is accurately understanding or reporting what reporters might be telling him. In my view, though, both alleged claims are entirely plausible, and Giuliani is digging a deeper hole every time he tries to refute them.
“Activist Publishes 11,000 Private DMs Between Wikileaks and Its Supporters”:
I wish people in the media would stop saying that we don’t know if the US participants in the Trump Tower meeting could have been offered dirt about Hillary Clinton. We know from Manafort’s notes and the document the Russians left behind that they absolutely were offered dirt on Hillary Clinton. It didn’t turn out to be useful dirt, because it’s complicated, bullshit, and not really of interest in the US, but Putin’s people considered it dirt (as I discuss in #396 above). It’s what Veselnitskaya, in league with Chaika, had been trying to push in the US for months prior. Moreover, it took a pretty explicitly quid-pro-quo form: you help get rid of the Magnitsky sanctions and we’ll help you, which already compromised them collusion-wise.
That doesn’t rule out that they were also given hints about the hacked emails or other help that would be forthcoming, at the meeting or in its wake, but it’s just wrong to say that we don’t have evidence that they were given dirt at the meeting.
“Mueller’s office, unsurprisingly, opposes Manafort’s effort to keep prosecution evidence out of his Virginia trial slated to begin tomorrow. Among their points: Mueller intends to show Manafort made $60 million+ from his Ukraine work.”
Link to filing at the link.
Interesting – “From Casinos To Trump U: Subpoenaed Trump Org CFO Was Key To Major Endeavors.” (Also deep in the Trump Foundation crimes.)
“‘It Could Have Led to a Nuclear War in the Middle East’”:
30-minute podcast at the link. Well worth listening through to the end.
“Israeli Author Questioned by Shin Bet at Ben-Gurion Airport Over Involvement in Leftist Groups”:
In my view, though, both alleged claims are entirely plausible, and Giuliani is digging a deeper hole every time he tries to refute them.
Exhibit A.
“Italian opposition warns government of being ‘complicit’ in racist attacks”: “Italy’s center-left opposition warned Monday that the government risked being ‘complicit’ in a ‘spiral of racism’ by denying there was a growing problem after a black Italian athlete was attacked….”
“Uproar in France over video of woman hit by harasser in Paris street”:
Video at the link.
Tweet o’ the day.
SC@478 just beat me to it (sticks out tongue)… what initially worried me about the incident is I know a Ms Laguerre in Paris — but the lady I know is not the young lady who was attacked. I’ve read elsewhere Marie Laguerre “has suffered from headaches and neck pain and has said that she is no longer comfortable in her own neighbourhood of La Villette”, Video of Parisian woman hit by street harasser leaves France shocked, which concludes:
Thread documenting racist attacks in Italy: “If you want to understand how inflammatory, dehumanising political rhetoric can break a society apart, look no further than Italy. A silent pogrom is happening right now, and its main instigator has a name and a surname: Matteo Salvini….”
It’s totally possible that the similarities amongst several of the attacks are the result of copycats, but also seems possible that some of the attacks are part of a coordinated terror campaign.
“BREAKING: On eve of trial, Manafort drops appeal of dismissal of his civil suit challenging Mueller’s authority.”
“BREAKING: Following the story we broke @reveal about the forced drugging of immigrant children, ‘the Court ORDERS Defendants to transfer all Class Members out of Shiloh RTC’. Story to come.”
In a related and non-sickening story, “Psychologists Respond to Mental Health Crisis at the Border”: “Antuña is one of more than 375 psychologists and other mental health professionals who are part of the Refugee Mental Health Resource Network, an APA interdivisional initiative led by Div. 56 (Trauma Psychology) to help agencies and organizations working with refugees. Psychologists in the network’s database volunteer their services to asylum seekers, refugees, migrants and internally displaced individuals.”
I can’t stop watching this.
Here in France, l’affaire Benalla (see @430) grows, Prosecutors bring more charges against former Macron aide Benalla:
Pauline Bock, writing in the Grauniad, Macron thinks he’s untouchable, but the Benalla scandal could undo him:
There is a worrisome incident reported in ‘Does he think we are idiots?’ — La France périphérique sours on Macron:
Benalla was born in France, in Évreux (Normandy), to Moroccan immigrants(? not sure, all I can find is « sa famille est originaire du Maroc », not that it particularly matters).
The description of the Elysée as a “commando unit” operating on the basis of cronyism provides circumstantial support to my hypothesis of British-scale ineptitude — except that Benalla being in the inner-most circle is circumstantial support for the hypothesis of a deliberate cover-up. The two hypotheses are not orthogonal; for instance, a epically inept cover-up.
SC@484, That’s the famous Swedish Rabbit Dance, alleged to be useful in putting out forest fires. I think it makes Thor & Co laugh so hard they forget to toss lightening bolts, and eventually start hiccuping, blowing out the fires. Also, their tears of laughter provide much-needed rain.
(Sweden, in case you don’t know, is currently suffering from numerous severe wildfires, and has called for help from elsewhere in Europe. There are Italian Canadair water bombers, and other resources from elsewhere, currently(?) in Sweden to help. At least one fire is(? was?) in(? near?) an artillery training range where there are very probably live unexploded shells.)
Harebrawl. (I’ll show myself out.)
I didn’t know that. There are devastating fires in California, too.
I’m so upset and enraged by this.
Update to #471 above.
“My experience with Mueller suggests he’s just as unconcerned today about the president using his first name in a tweet as he was earlier this week with Junior appearing at his airport gate.
Both of which, I’m confident, concerned him less than would a fly going by.”
“We are saddened beyond words to report the death of Captain Brian Hughes of the Arrowhead Hotshots. Hughes’ crew was on the #FergusonFire on @Sierra_NF when he was struck and killed by a tree. We grieve his loss.”
I still don’t understand how Manafort blew through that much money.
And in The Onion:
● Trump Denies Existence Of 2016 Russia Meeting Commemorative Merchandise:
● Eric Trump Aims Laser Pointer At Don Jr While Flicking Lights On And Off To Erase Memory Of Russia Meeting:
Mini-rant: I understand, but hate, that people apparently asked Laguerre whether she regretted her actions. I try not to repost clips of people clapping back on street harassment or authoritarian violence, not because I don’t think they’re brave or awesome, but because women, black people, immigrants, LGBT people shouldn’t have to walk around with our thick skin, de-escalation techniques, and rapier wit at the ready. It’s our fucking right to exist and be ourselves and dress as we wish and protest and whatever unmolested in public spaces. This is true if we’re shy, afraid, confrontational, sharp, tired, angry, or any other thing. We know there’s always a possibility of violence regardless of how we act. Public attention needs to focus not on us but on the weak, pathetic assholes who are terrified of a real public sphere.
Nancy Pelosi: “What’s one thing Donald Trump wanted to desperately pass? The #GOPTaxScam. Why? Because he knew it would overwhelming benefit the already-rich. Now, they’re plotting to destroy your Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. This isn’t a lie.”
Oh, and “Trump Administration Mulls a Unilateral Tax Cut for the Rich”: “The Trump administration is considering bypassing Congress to grant a $100 billion tax cut mainly to the wealthy, a legally tenuous maneuver that would cut capital gains taxation and fulfill a long-held ambition of many investors and conservatives….”
Today in 1940:
Also today in 1940.
Yeah, also apparently people were questioning the actions (or rather reactions) of the onlookers. When really there was only one person acting bad in that scene.
Ms Laguerre has edited her original post in response to that (in translation): “To all those who want to say the witnesses didn’t reacted well enough, everything happened very quickly and they didn’t have the time to understand the situation. The attacker was dangerous. After the aggression, I went back and the witnesses gave me great support. Please don’t lynch them.”