LibrosVisit source:
Mother Jones
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
As President Donald Trump escaped Washington on Friday for his first overseas trip, the White House announced that he wasn’t yet ready to reveal his pick to replace James Comey, the FBI director he brazenly fired the previous week. But one name on his list appeared to be ahead of the others: former Sen. Joe Lieberman, the onetime Democrat who was Vice President Al Gore’s running mate in the 2000 presidential campaign.
Lieberman may not be an odd choice for Trump. He finished up his Senate career as an independent. Perhaps more important, since leaving the Senate in 2013, Lieberman has been a senior counsel at the Kasowitz Benson Torres law firm, which has defended Trump in numerous disputes over the years. But as a member of that law firm, Lieberman also had the unusual job of promoting and representing a Libyan businessman and politician who tried to court an alleged terrorist accused of leading the 2012 attack on the Benghazi compound that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
In Lieberman’s final days as a senator, a reporter asked him if he would become a lobbyist. “No, I’m not going to do that,” he replied. But in November 2013, as Politico reported at the time, his law firm signed up as a foreign agent for Basit Igtet, a Libyan businessman and activist who was considering running for prime minister in Libya. Igtet made his money through assorted ventures in Switzerland, where his family had sought exile. He married Sara Bronfman, the daughter of Edgar Bronfman, who had been the billionaire chairman of Seagram and the president of the World Jewish Congress. The foreign agent registration form filed at the Justice Department noted that Lieberman would be part of the team handling this $100,000 project that would provide “government relations services” to Igtet.
A Benghazi native, Igtet was a long-shot candidate for prime minister. As Forbes noted, “Igtet believes he’s got the technocratic prowess to transform his country of six million people from the brink of civil war into the crown jewel of northern Africa. But skeptics say his status as a longtime expatriate and his lack of national security experience leave him ill-prepared to grasp control of deteriorating relations among warring rebel factions, police and the army.” And having a Jewish wife was probably not an asset.
As part of his campaign, Igtet emphasized his connections to the United States, pointing out his wife was involved with the US-Libya Chamber of Commerce and boasting that he personally knew Secretary of State John Kerry and Sen. John McCain. But Foreign Policy reported in early 2014 that as part of his campaign, he also sought out a terrorist suspect wanted by the United States for orchestrating the attack on the Benghazi facility:
Igtet not only has built ties with America’s friends, he’s also met with its enemies. He sat down last year with Ahmed Abu Khattala, the Benghazi militant charged by the Justice Department for his involvement in the 2012 attack on the American mission in Benghazi that killed US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. The State Department declared Abu Khattala a specially designated global terrorist in January.
Igtet says he told Abu Khattala that he is opposed to Libyans “being kidnapped or transferred somewhere else”—a reference to the U.S. policy of rendition, which Libyans saw firsthand last year when US commandos snatched al Qaeda suspect Abu Anas al-Libi off a Tripoli street and eventually brought him to New York to stand trial. Abu Khattala fears this could be his own fate.
“We are Libyans, this is our country and if someone has done something wrong here, they have to be judged in this country,” said Igtet. “Abu Khattala told me he is sure of his innocence. He said he has no problem to go to the court in Benghazi and face these issues there.”
Khattala never made it to a Benghazi court. In June 2014, he was captured by US special forces in a villa south of Benghazi, interrogated on a Navy ship for 13 days, and brought to the United States. US prosecutors have accused him of being a ringleader of the Benghazi assault. He has denied the charge. His trial is scheduled to begin in September.
Contacted by Mother Jones, Lieberman’s office said he was not available for comment.
When Khattala was nabbed, he was one of the FBI’s most-wanted terrorists, and bureau agents participated in the mission that grabbed him. Yet months earlier, Lieberman was working for a Libyan who had reached out to Khattala. Now, Lieberman may be Trump’s choice for FBI chief. If Lieberman does end up in the job, it will certainly be a first: an FBI director who once was a foreign agent for an overseas politician who cozied up to an alleged terrorist accused of killing Americans.
Will Republicans and conservatives care about this Benghazi connection?
See the article here:
Mother Jones
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
On Tuesday, Russian officials confirmed for the first time that a homemade explosive was found on the downed Metrojet airliner that crashed in Egypt last month, killing all 224 people on board.
Shortly after the confirmation, Russia announced the country was stepping up air strikes in Syria, hoping to work directly with France in the fight against ISIS.
“We will find them anywhere on the planet and punish them,” President Vladimir Putin said in a meeting with Russian security authorities.
Russia’s FSB security service also announced a $50 million reward for anyone who could provide intelligence leading to the arrests of the terrorists responsible for the attack.
The announcement comes amid the ongoing international manhunt for suspects connected to the coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday. Authorities are said to be specifically targeting Belgian-born, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, the suspected eighth terrorist behind Friday’s siege.
On Monday, authorities conducted 128 overnight raids throughout France, searching for people involved with the attacks. Several arrests in Germany have already been made, but officials say they were not “closely”connected” to Friday’s attacks.
On Tuesday, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian made an official request to the European Union for assistance in the fight against ISIS. The Associated Press reports French President Francois Hollande will meet with President Obama in Washington and President Putin in Moscow next week to discuss the international effort.
View article:
Mother Jones
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
Jolie Holland in Brooklyn. Jacob Blickenstaff
Since the release of her 2003 album, Catalpa, Jolie Holland‘s music has evolved from close adaptations of pre-war blues and ballads into deeper, more complex works. Holland grew up in Houston, boxed up inside a strictly religious family. She left home after high school and was essentially homeless for more than years, squatting and bouncing between Houston, Austin, and New Orleans. In this environment, her musical education was direct and unmediated—the music of Blind Willie McTell as influential and intoxicating as that of John Cage.
Holland has often been pigeonholed as a folk-blues-soul singer, but even from the beginning there has been something experimental and immediate about her approach. With Wine Dark Sea, her just-released sixth album, Holland exerts more control as a bandleader, setting her voice, as serpentine and wily as a rattlesnake at a Pentecostal meeting, against a more improvisational ensemble consisting of two drummers, three additional guitarists, bass and reeds. Photographer Jacob Blickenstaff spoke with Holland recently in New York City. The following is in her words.
I have a really tight relationship with the I Ching. You can see the lyrical influence all over the record. One of the basic statements of the I Ching is there’s a time when the most effective thing is to just do nothing. It’s really enormous. It’s about the flow of circumstance and of seasons. Songs like “Waiting for the Sun,” “All the Love,” and even the Joe Tex cover, “The Love You Save,” say that:
I want you to stop! Find out what’s wrong
Get it right or leave love alone
Because the love you save today
May very well be your own
Observation and engagement with ideas without explicit teachers is the global norm of how to learn things. So many people aren’t ready to go to art or music school, because it destroys their own agency in the work. I remember that feeling when I was a young teenager and was learning how to play. When you’re an undeveloped musician or artist, learning too much about theory can put the cart in front of the horse.
The voice is at the center of the compositions. You have to make sure that the band is augmenting that while expressing themselves, but at the same time not flattening out that complexity. Indigo Street takes the first solo on the record on “On and On.” When I gave her direction for that solo, I said I just wanted her to sound like she didn’t know what a guitar was, like something started a fire in her hand. I’ve been playing with her for a long time and I was trying to get her to play more noise. But with the absence of drums, it was harder for her to feel like she could go there. She said that me having a “pretty” voice held her back.
The approach on this album is more about bandleading than anything else. On past albums, I couldn’t get people to do what I wanted them to do. More volume helped; getting more people on stage and not being polite. A track like “Wine Dark Sea” is totally huge. There are no overdubs on that song, we’re playing live. To make this album we had to find the right room to get two full drum sets in with enough separation to record but still together. There are three electric guitar players in that same room. I was in the isolation booth with piano or guitar. Recording it was a real challenge. Douglas Jenkins, my co-producer, had never engineered something like that before.
We developed the sound during a weekly residency at a small place called the Jalopy Theater in Brooklyn. We’d have two drum sets on the stage and we’d go through the songs, and then we’d also have an improvisation set. I would tell stories from the book that I’m working on—true ghost stories and strange occurrences told to me by friends—and the band would play behind me so they could get used to moving together. I think some of my nerdier fans didn’t like it but fuck it. I warned them, “This is not a normal show.”
My friend Stefan Jecusco has a great saying: “It’s impossible to be sexy and nostalgic at the same time.” Most people listen to old music and they experience it as nostalgic; they can’t get inside it and don’t have a nonlinear sense of history. When I first heard Blind Willie McTell, I just had a crush on him, it just felt real even though he was speaking and playing in a different way than people do now. I hear melody in a more complicated way than other people do—so much of it comes from Blind Willie McTell. He is the guy who taught me how to sing. It’s all about microtones and internal phrases.
One thing about old songs, if we are listening to them now, then we know they’re good. They went through the filter, they stood the test of time: McTell, Stevie Wonder, Prince, Beyoncé—a good song is a good song.
With singing covers, it’s not nostalgia; it’s happening right now. Being on stage is a responsibility, an opportunity. All of these people are paying attention to you. Your present psychological experience will be affecting everyone. The more you can release your resistance to being in the present moment, the more you are providing people an opportunity to do the same. If you are playing a song that you wrote, then you are still covering that song.
I love what Tom Waits said: “We all love music, but what we all really want is music to love us.” That kind of unity in your being on stage is what has that power.
“Contact” is series of portraits and conversations with musicians by Jacob Blickenstaff.
Original link:
Mother Jones
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
Marines assigned to 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) enter the well deck of the forward-deployed amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) on a Combat Raiding Rubber Craft (CRRC). Bonhomme Richard is lead ship of the Bonhomme Richard Amphibious Ready Group, and with the embarked 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), is conducting joint force operations in the U.S. 7th Fleet Area of Responsibility. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jerome D. Johnson/Released)
View original post here –
