Category Archives: Cyber

Exclusive: The Democratic National Committee Has Told the FBI It Found Evidence Its HQ Was Bugged

by CristinDraper Posted on November 4, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In an episode reminiscent of Watergate, the Democratic Party recently informed the FBI that it had collected evidence suggesting its Washington headquarters had been bugged, according to two Democratic National Committee officials who asked not to be named.

In September, according to these sources, the DNC hired a firm to conduct an electronic sweep of its offices. After Russian hackers had penetrated its email system and those of other Democratic targets, DNC officials believed it was prudent to scrutinize their offices. This examination found nothing unusual.

In late October, after conservative activist James O’Keefe released a new set of hidden-camera videos targeting Democrats, interim party chairwoman Donna Brazile ordered up another sweep. There was a concern that Republican foes might have infiltrated the DNC offices, where volunteers were reporting to work on phone banks and other election activities. (For some of their actions, O’Keefe and his crew have used people posing as volunteers to gain access to Democratic outfits.)

The second sweep, according to the Democratic officials, found a radio signal near the chairman’s office that indicated there might be a listening device outside the office. “We were told that this was something that could pick up calls from cellphones,” a DNC official says. “The guys who did the sweep said it was a strong indication.” No device was recovered. No possible culprits were identified.

The DNC sent a report with the technical details to the FBI, according to the DNC officials. “We believe it’s been given by the bureau to another agency with three letters to examine,” the DNC official says. “We’re not supposed to talk about it.”

A Democratic consultant who has done work for the DNC, who asked not to be identified, says he was recently informed about the suspected bugging.

The DNC officials will not say what countermeasures were subsequently taken. “As a general policy, we don’t talk about such efforts,” the other DNC official says. But this official adds, “You have to take all of this incredibly seriously.” The first DNC official notes, “We are the oldest political party in this country, and we are under constant attack from Russia and/or maybe others.”

Adam Hodge, a spokesman for the DNC, says, “The DNC is not going to comment on stories about its security. In all security matters, we cooperate fully with the appropriate law enforcement agencies and take all necessary steps to protect the committee and the safety and security of our staff.”

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

View article: 

Exclusive: The Democratic National Committee Has Told the FBI It Found Evidence Its HQ Was Bugged

Posted in Cyber, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Exclusive: The Democratic National Committee Has Told the FBI It Found Evidence Its HQ Was Bugged

The most dramatic climate fight of the election is in Washington state

by FlynnStahl Posted on October 31, 2016

Voters in a progressive Pacific Northwestern state could approve the nation’s first carbon tax next week, providing a much-sought victory to proponents of legislative climate action — and possibly a model for the rest of the country.

And yet the ballot measure is at equal risk of failing spectacularly. Not because of the usual oil and coal industry foes, or even because it includes the dreaded t-word. No, the biggest obstacle in its way: other environmentalists.

An unlikely array of local and national organizations have come out against — or declined to support — Washington state’s carbon tax initiative, which will appear on the ballot as I-732. Their concerns: That a revenue-neutral carbon tax wouldn’t raise money for investing in clean energy and communities, and that people of color didn’t get a fair say in crafting the policy.

Although the split became public last year, it’s only been in the last few months that a barrage of organizations have proclaimed their opposition. Washington Conservation Voters called the measure “flawed,” while Sierra Club Washington noted its members have “deep concerns.”

Infighting is not uncommon in the environmental movement, which actually represents a fairly large and loose coalition of diverse local, state, and national interests. But the carbon tax battle in Washington state appears to stem from a recent and fundamental shift: Following the lead of more community-minded activists, the nation’s most powerful environmental groups are attempting to change their emphasis from a largely white perspective to one that is more diverse and equitable. And that means a new approach to issues like climate legislation.

“We have to find a different climate movement going forward.” –Gregg Small, Climate Solutions executive director

Many of those groups have come to the realization in recent years that they can’t fight climate change without including a broader range of people in their solutions. Attempts to remake policy so it is equitable and impactful has resulted in two main visions for how to approach climate action.

The tension between a narrowly focused environmental campaign and a newer approach that involves more consensus around a broader progressive agenda has been simmering for a long time. With I-732, it’s broken out into the open.

False starts have plagued the climate movement for years. The failed 2009 Waxman-Markey bill, which would have capped carbon emissions and created a national market for trading credits (hence the name “cap and trade”), sent the movement into existential soul-searching.

Since then, Congress has only become more hostile to climate action, meaning any successes have largely come at the state level or inside the White House. As Republicans at the national level have been less and less involved in a serious fight against climate change, the solutions have evolved without them.

Progressive states including California, New York, and yes, Washington have recently made significant strides on climate policy. Part of the movement’s post-Waxman-Markey strategy was to broaden the base of support for climate policy beyond a very white core — not by appealing to increasingly intransigent conservatives, but by listening to the people representing low-income communities and communities of color, which are disproportionately impacted by pollution and climate change.

“It isn’t just about reducing emissions,” said Green for All’s Vien Truong, who works on climate justice policy initiatives in California and other states. “It is that, but we have to move forward.” This includes bringing people to the movement who “feel the pinch of climate change” most.

Gregg Small of the Washington-based Climate Solutions noted that the cap-and-trade bill’s failure was a teaching moment. “We have to find a different climate movement going forward,” he said. “The climate community can’t do it on their own.”

Despite the recognition by many environmentalists that a new, more inclusive approach was needed, it was a divided effort that helped set the stage for the current battle in Washington state.

Two years ago, a new-school coalition of social justice and environmental groups that became the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy began working on a climate action proposal, gathering extensive input from community organizations.

But a smaller, grassroots-based climate group, known as Carbon Washington, got its carbon tax proposal on the ballot first. I-732 would phase in next year, tax carbon emissions at $25 per metric ton in 2018, and gradually ramp up over 40 years to $100.

What’s troubling some opponents is where that money would go: cutting the state’s sales tax by 1 percent, cutting taxes for manufacturers, and providing tax rebates to more than 400,000 low-income households. That’s allowed I-732 proponents to try to appeal to conservatives by calling it revenue neutral, but it doesn’t sit well with the Alliance-affiliated enviros.

Their four-page alternative proposal is murky on the details, though: It calls for a carbon “fee” that would redirect the revenue collected toward clean energy efforts, water quality improvement, and helping disadvantaged communities. It doesn’t cut taxes, and unlike 732, it establishes an absolute, though unknown cap on carbon emitted. The actual tax on polluters starts at $15 per metric ton, but is unclear on how it would ramp up over time. It promises some “compliance flexibility” for polluters, yet doesn’t say what that entails.

Small, a chair of the Alliance, said his group was ready to put its proposal on the 2016 ballot, but pulled its plans when 732 gained the signatures needed. Two competing ballot measures would likely have meant success for neither.

Carbon Washington met with the Alliance to figure out a compromise, but moved ahead without the full blessing of the organizations that had fought hard to bridge justice and environmental concerns. In return, there are now a slew of environmental and social justice groups slamming I-732 for not doing enough to fight climate change, not managing to be revenue-neutral, and failing on equity.

The founder of Carbon Washington, Yoram Bauman, defends his group’s approach. “I think that underneath, there’s a philosophic difference in how to provide benefits to low-income communities and communities of color,” he said. “Their approach was to fund community-directed investment. They wanted a pot of money that could be controlled by local communities to reduce emissions, create jobs, and lower pollution in communities of color. Our approach was we wanted to put money back [into the pockets of low-income] households.”

Bauman says that if his group’s measure passes, small tweaks and improvements could be made by the state legislature. But opponents say that a flawed model is not a good place to start from.

“Perfect shouldn’t be the goal,” Bauman argues. “I think folks who care about climate change need to support action on climate change. We don’t have many opportunities to take a swing at the ball, and there are serious questions about how many more years we want to wait.”

I-732 does have its share of supporters. Actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio, 28 environmental and energy-focused groups (including the Audubon Society’s state chapter), and dozens of Republican and Democratic lawmakers and economists have endorsed it. All this has lead to one very fractured environmental community.

The Seattle-based sustainability think tank Sightline Institute is neutral on 732, but still manages a good summary of the pro-side’s position in a lengthy analysis weighing the pros and cons: “Initiative 732 does exactly what the scientists and economists prescribe: it sets a science-based, steadily rising price on pollution,” Sightline writes. “The citizens’ initiative covers most of the state’s climate pollution, makes the tax code more progressive, and is administratively elegant.” Based on a Washington Office of Financial Management projection, the 732 carbon tax would raise $2 billion in fiscal year 2019 (4 percent of the state’s annual budget), which would go back to taxpayers in various forms.

Critics, however, remain convinced that 732 it doesn’t do enough to fight climate change, nor does it address justice concerns. They also felt shut out of the process.

“I think folks who care about climate change need to support action on climate change.” –Yoram Bauman, Carbon Washington founder

“We’ve got to get it done right the first time,” said Small, who was careful to make it clear that Climate Solutions is not opposed to I-732. “Effective carbon pricing needs to really do three things: It needs to put a meaningful price on carbon to drive down pollution; it needs to invest the money generated in clean energy solutions; and it should invest in those affected by climate change.”

A coalition of environmental justice organizations penned an open letter to the Sightline Institute, saying they took issue with the group’s analysis, arguing that it serves to “denigrate our perspective and profess to speak for the interests of our communities without our consultation or knowledge.”

“People who can actually begin to be part of the solution were hoping to be part of this clean energy future,” Green for All’s Truong said. “And this carbon tax essentially shut that effort down.”

Perhaps the most unexpected argument is that the tax won’t do the intended job of cutting emissions. Food and Water Watch issued a report claiming that the model for 732, a British Columbia carbon tax, “fails to demonstrate that it has reduced carbon emissions, fossil fuel consumption, or vehicle travel, as it purported to do.”

Technically, it would be possible to alter 732 in the legislature down the line if voters approve it in November, but it’s politically unfeasible. Some environmentalists would prefer to work with what they have if it passes, but in a few cases, the critics would rather see no tax at all. Seattle public radio station KUOW asked Alliance member and OneAmerica activist Ellicott Dandy if she would regret her position against I-732 if no other carbon tax ever passed.

Her answer: “No.”

The latest polling shows a close vote. In an early October poll, 21 percent of voters were undecided. In a late-October poll from KOMO News/Strategies 360, that number is even higher, with 28 percent unsure how they will cast their ballot. How the undecideds break makes all the difference for an initiative leading with just 40 percent of the electorate, and 32 percent opposed.

If 732 fails, the lessons for environmentalists will be clear: An approach designed to appeal to more conservative sensibilities — tax cuts, revenue neutral — isn’t going to help them bring in new voices on the left, who want to be heard and play a guiding role in the process.

“Carbon pricing is incredibly difficult and maybe impossible if people don’t come together,” Small said. “Other states will face similar types of dynamics here on the policy and strategy. I hope people learn from the painful lesson we have in Washington to, you know, work it out.”

Also read: Climate hawk vs. climate hawk: State carbon tax splits national climate hawks

More here:

The most dramatic climate fight of the election is in Washington state

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, Cyber, eco-friendly, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, PUR, Thermos, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The most dramatic climate fight of the election is in Washington state

Why Can’t We Rein In This Ridiculous Military Spending?

by EarthaRosenbaum Posted on October 30, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Through good times and bad, regardless of what’s actually happening in the world, one thing is certain: In the long run, the Pentagon budget won’t go down.

It’s not that the budget has never been reduced. At pivotal moments, like the end of World War II as well as the war’s end in Korea and Vietnam, there were indeed temporary downturns, as there was after the Cold War. More recently, the Budget Control Act of 2011 threw a monkey wrench into the Pentagon’s plans for funding that would go ever onward and upward by putting a cap on the money Congress could pony up for it. The remarkable thing, though, is not that such moments have occurred, but how modest and short-lived they’ve proved to be.

Take the current budget. It’s down slightly from its peak in 2011, when it reached the highest level since World War II, but this year’s budget for the Pentagon and related agencies is nothing to sneeze at. It comes in at roughly $600 billion—more than the peak year of the massive arms buildup initiated by President Ronald Reagan back in the 1980s. To put this figure in perspective: Despite troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan dropping sharply over the past eight years, the Obama administration has still managed to spend more on the Pentagon than the Bush administration did during its two terms in office.

What accounts for the Department of Defense’s ability to keep a stranglehold on our tax dollars year after endless year?

Pillar one supporting that edifice: ideology. As long as most Americans accept the notion that it is the God-given mission and right of the United States to go anywhere on the planet and do more or less anything it cares to do with its military, you won’t see Pentagon spending brought under real control. Think of this as the military corollary to American exceptionalism—or just call it the doctrine of armed exceptionalism, if you will.

The second pillar supporting lavish military budgets (and this will hardly surprise you): the entrenched power of the arms lobby and its allies in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. The strategic placement of arms production facilities and military bases in key states and congressional districts has created an economic dependency that has saved many a flawed weapons system from being unceremoniously dumped in the trash bin of history.

Lockheed Martin, for instance, has put together a handy map of how its troubled F-35 fighter jet has created 125,000 jobs in 46 states. The actual figures are, in fact, considerably lower, but the principle holds: Having subcontractors in dozens of states makes it harder for members of Congress to consider cutting or slowing down even a failed or failing program. Take as an example the M-1 tank, which the Army actually wanted to stop buying. Its plans were thwarted by the Ohio congressional delegation, which led a fight to add more M-1s to the budget in order to keep the General Dynamics production line in Lima, Ohio, up and running. In a similar fashion, prodded by the Missouri delegation, Congress added two different versions of Boeing’s F-18 aircraft to the budget to keep funds flowing to that company’s St. Louis area plant.

The one-two punch of an environment in which the military can do no wrong while being outfitted for every global task imaginable, and what former Pentagon analyst Franklin “Chuck” Spinney has called “political engineering,” has been a tough combination to beat.

The overwhelming consensus in favor of a “cover the globe” military strategy has been broken from time to time by popular resistance to the idea of using war as a central tool of foreign policy. In such periods, getting Americans behind a program of feeding the military machine massive sums of money has generally required a heavy dose of fear.

For example, the last thing most Americans wanted after the devastation and hardship unleashed by World War II was to immediately put the country back on a war footing. The demobilization of millions of soldiers and a sharp cutback in weapons spending in the immediate postwar years rocked what President Dwight Eisenhower would later dub the “military-industrial complex.”

As Wayne Biddle has noted in his seminal book Barons of the Sky, the US aerospace industry produced an astonishing 300,000-plus military aircraft during World War II. Not surprisingly, major weapons producers struggled to survive in a peacetime environment in which government demand for their products threatened to be a tiny fraction of wartime levels.

Lockheed President Robert Gross was terrified by the potential impact of war’s end on his company’s business, as were many of his industry cohorts. “As long as I live,” he said, “I will never forget those short, appalling weeks” of the immediate postwar period. To be clear, Gross was appalled not by the war itself, but by the drop off in orders occasioned by its end. He elaborated in a 1947 letter to a friend: “We had one underlying element of comfort and reassurance during the war. We knew we’d get paid for anything we built. Now we are almost entirely on our own.”

The postwar doldrums in military spending that worried Gross so were reversed only after the American public had been fed a steady, fear-filled diet of anti-communism. NSC-68, a secret memorandum the National Security Council prepared for President Harry Truman in April 1950, created the template for a policy based on the global “containment” of communism and grounded in a plan to encircle the Soviet Union with US military forces, bases, and alliances. This would, of course, prove to be a strikingly expensive proposition. The concluding paragraphs of that memorandum underscored exactly that point, calling for a “sustained buildup of US political, economic, and military strength…to frustrate the Kremlin design of a world dominated by its will.”

Sen. Arthur Vandenberg put the thrust of this new Cold War policy in far simpler terms when he bluntly advised President Truman to “scare the hell out of the American people” to win support for a $400 million aid plan for Greece and Turkey. His suggestion would be put into effect not just for those two countries but to generate support for what President Eisenhower would later describe as “a permanent arms establishment of vast proportions.”

Industry leaders like Lockheed’s Gross were poised to take advantage of such planning. In a draft of a 1950 speech, Gross noted, giddily enough, that “for the first time in recorded history, one country has assumed global responsibility.” Meeting that responsibility would naturally mean using air transport to deliver “huge quantities of men, food, ammunition, tanks, gasoline, oil and thousands of other articles of war to a number of widely separated places on the face of the earth.” Lockheed, of course, stood ready to heed the call.

The next major challenge to armed exceptionalism, and to the further militarization of foreign policy, came after the disastrous Vietnam War, which drove many Americans to question the wisdom of a policy of permanent global interventionism. That phenomenon would be dubbed the “Vietnam syndrome” by interventionists, as if opposition to such a military policy were a disease, not a position. Still, that “syndrome” carried considerable, if ever decreasing, weight for a decade and a half, despite the Pentagon’s Reagan-inspired arms buildup of the 1980s.

With the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Washington decisively renewed its practice of responding to perceived foreign threats with large-scale military interventions. That quick victory over Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein’s forces in Kuwait was celebrated by many hawks as the end of the Vietnam-induced malaise. Amid victory parades and celebrations, President George H.W. Bush would enthusiastically exclaim, “And, by God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.”

However, perhaps the biggest threat since World War II to an “arms establishment of vast proportions” came with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, also in 1991. How to mainline fear into the American public and justify Cold War levels of spending when that other superpower, the Soviet Union, the primary threat of the previous nearly half-century, had just evaporated and there was next to nothing threatening on the horizon? General Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, summed up the fears of that moment within the military and the arms complex when he said, “I’m running out of demons. I’m running out of villains. I’m down to Castro and Kim Il-sung.”

In reality, he underestimated the Pentagon’s ability to conjure up new threats. Military spending did indeed drop at the end of the Cold War, but the Pentagon helped staunch the bleeding relatively quickly before a “peace dividend” could be delivered to the American people. Instead, it put a firm floor under the fall by announcing what came to be known as the “rogue state” doctrine. Resources formerly aimed at the Soviet Union would now be focused on “regional hegemons” like Iraq and North Korea.

After the 9/11 attacks, the rogue-state doctrine morphed into the Global War on Terror (GWOT), which neoconservative pundits soon labeled “World War IV.” The heightened fear campaign that went with it, in turn, helped sow the seeds for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was promoted by visions of mushroom clouds rising over American cities and a drumbeat of Bush administration claims (all false) that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda. Some administration officials including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld even suggested that Saddam was like Hitler, as if a modest-sized Middle Eastern state could somehow muster the resources to conquer the globe.

The administration’s propaganda campaign would be supplemented by the work of right-wing corporate-funded think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. And no one should be surprised to learn that the military-industrial complex and its money, its lobbyists, and its interests were in the middle of it all. Take Lockheed Martin Vice President Bruce Jackson. In 1997, he became a director of the Project for the New American Century and so part of a gaggle of hawks including future Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, his future boss Donald Rumsfeld, and future Vice President Dick Cheney. In those years, PNAC would advocate the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as part of its project to turn the planet into an American military protectorate. Many of its members would, of course, enter the Bush administration in crucial roles and become architects of the GWOT and the invasion of Iraq.

The Afghan and Iraq wars would prove an absolute bonanza for contractors as the Pentagon budget soared. Traditional weapons suppliers like Lockheed Martin and Boeing prospered, as did private contractors like Dick Cheney’s former employer, Halliburton, which made billions providing logistical support to US troops in the field. Other major beneficiaries included firms like Blackwater and DynCorp, whose employees guarded US facilities and oil pipelines while training Afghan and Iraqi security forces. As much as $60 billion of the funds funneled to such contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan would be “wasted,” but not from the point of view of companies for which waste could generate as much profit as a job well done. So Halliburton and its cohorts weren’t complaining.

On entering the Oval Office, President Barack Obama would ditch the term “global war on terror” in favor of “countering violent extremism”—and then essentially settle for a no-name global war. He would shift gears from a strategy focused on large numbers of “boots on the ground” to an emphasis on drone strikes, the use of Special Operations forces, and massive transfers of arms to allies like Saudi Arabia. In the context of an increasingly militarized foreign policy, one might call Obama’s approach “politically sustainable warfare,” since it involved fewer (American) casualties and lower costs than Bush-style warfare, which peaked in Iraq at more than 160,000 troops and a comparable number of private contractors.

Recent terror attacks against Western targets—Brussels, Paris, Nice, San Bernardino, Orlando—have offered the national security state and the Obama administration the necessary fear factor that makes the case for higher Pentagon spending so palatable. This has been true despite the fact that more tanks, bombers, aircraft carriers, and nuclear weapons will be useless in preventing such attacks.

The majority of what the Pentagon spends, of course, has nothing to do with fighting terrorism. But whatever it has or hasn’t been called, the war against terror has proven to be a cash cow for the Pentagon and contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon.

The “war budget”—money meant for the Pentagon but not included in its regular budget—has been used to add on tens of billions of dollars more. It has proven to be an effective “slush fund” for weapons and activities that have nothing to do with immediate war fighting and has been the Pentagon’s preferred method for evading the caps on its budget imposed by the Budget Control Act. A Pentagon spokesman admitted as much recently by acknowledging that more than half the $58.8 billion war budget is being used to pay for nonwar costs.

The abuse of the war budget leaves ample room in the Pentagon’s main budget for items like the overpriced, underperforming F-35 combat aircraft, a plane that, at a price tag of $1.4 trillion over its lifetime, is on track to be the most expensive weapons program ever undertaken. That slush fund is also enabling the Pentagon to spend billions of dollars in seed money as a down payment on the department’s proposed $1 trillion plan to buy a new generation of nuclear-armed bombers, missiles, and submarines. Shutting it down could force the Pentagon to do what it likes least: live within an actual budget rather than continuing to push its top line ever upward.

Although rarely discussed because of the focus on Donald Trump’s abominable behavior and racist rhetoric, both candidates for president are in favor of increasing Pentagon spending. Trump’s “plan” (if one can call it that) hews closely to a blueprint developed by the Heritage Foundation that, if implemented, could increase Pentagon spending by a cumulative $900 billion over the next decade. The size of a possible buildup under Hillary Clinton is less clear, but she has also pledged to work toward lifting the caps on the Pentagon’s regular budget. If that were done, and the war fund continued to be stuffed with non-war-related items, the Pentagon and its contractors will be sitting pretty.

As long as fear, greed, and hubris are the dominant factors driving Pentagon spending (no matter who is in the White House), substantial and enduring budget reductions are essentially inconceivable. A wasteful practice may be eliminated here or an unnecessary weapons system cut there, but more fundamental change would require taking on the fear factor, the doctrine of armed exceptionalism, and the way the military-industrial complex is embedded in Washington.

Only such a culture shift would allow for a clear-eyed assessment of what constitutes “defense” and how much money would be needed to provide it. Unfortunately, the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned Americans about more than 50 years ago is alive and well, and gobbling up your tax dollars at an alarming rate.

William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. His latest book is Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.

Link to original:  

Why Can’t We Rein In This Ridiculous Military Spending?

Posted in Casio, Cyber, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, oven, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why Can’t We Rein In This Ridiculous Military Spending?

Shipping industry: Climate change? What’s the big rush!

by EthanRiggs Posted on October 29, 2016

A firm plan for potentially easing the shipping industry’s impact on the climate will be delayed for seven years under a roadmap drafted by a United Nations agency on Friday.

The lackluster outcome at the end of a week of environmental talks in London deepened the disparity between ship and plane operators and much of the rest of the world when it comes to tackling global warming. The shipping industry participated in the negotiations on behalf of some nations.

MaxGag

The U.N. agency, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), described Friday’s agreement as “another good news story for the #environment” on Twitter — even as it was being broadly criticized by others.

“The fact that there’s a roadmap is good,” said John Maggs, a policy advisor at the nonprofit Seas At Risk who attended the talks. But he criticized it for lacking targets or meaningful timelines and for lacking ambition. “There’s nothing in the roadmap.”

Climate-changing pollution escapes from ships as they burn some of the most polluting types of fuel available. Ships are blamed for 2 to 3 percent of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide released each year and their emissions may grow by 50 to 250 percent by 2050.

Temperatures have risen about 1 degree C or nearly 2 degrees F since the Industrial Revolution, causing seas to rise and amplifying heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, and storms. A global climate pact will take effect next week following talks in Paris last year, but it largely ignores ships and airplanes, which traverse national borders and are overseen by industry-specific U.N. agencies.

Under the agreement reached Friday, an interim strategy for addressing greenhouse gas pollution from ships will be released in 2018. That will be followed five years later by the potential publication of a timeline describing climate-protection measures that could be imposed on ship operators and owners. Owners of large ships will provide confidential information about fuel consumption to the U.N. beginning in 2019.

The roadmap did not set any targets for greenhouse gas reductions, such as those that have underpinned national climate protection strategies and pledges under the Paris climate agreement. Nor does the roadmap commit the sector to setting such targets in 2023.

“Not being prepared to agree to a reasonable short-term framework for developing a target is a bad signal,” Maggs said. “Having an objective is important.”

The European Union is considering expanding its cap-and-trade system, which limits greenhouse gas pollution and imposes fees to reduce fossil fuel demand, to cover ships docking at its ports. Maggs said that may have helped force the shipping industry to take global warming a little more seriously.

“Individual countries and regions making an effort builds pressure at the IMO,” Maggs said. “The view at the IMO is that it’s the only place where you can regulate the shipping industry. When others come along and start regulating regionally, the IMO doesn’t like it.”

chumlee10

The IMO also resolved on Friday to postpone any potential decisions that could force shipbuilders to produce more fuel-efficient vessels. Bill Hemmings, a clean energy campaigner with European group Transport and Environment who attended the talks, described that decision as “very disappointing.”

“There’s no logic behind that,” Hemmings said. “Making new ships more efficient is a no-brainer.”

The shipping industry was largely silent on Friday afternoon about the outcome of the talks, while the IMO issued a press release describing what it called an “important milestone on the road to controlling greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping.” The International Chamber of Shipping said it planned to issue a statement on Monday.

The IMO in 2004 imposed far-reaching restrictions on journalists covering its meetings. That made it difficult for reporters gathered in London this week to describe how countries and organizations were obstructing or supporting efforts to ease climate impacts.

Unusually for United Nations agencies, corporations have seats at IMO negotiations. The influence of individual countries at the IMO is based partly on the number of ships that fly under their flags. Countries such as Liberia were represented at the talks by groups that operate those ships.

The Marshall Islands, which is highly vulnerable to the effects of rising seas and under whose flag a large number of ships fly, led a push for more stringent rules on greenhouse gas pollution from ships. It was joined by a coalition of small island states and some European countries.

Opposition to stringent climate measures was led by large developing countries, such as India and China, and by countries at the ends of long trade routes — for whom importing and exporting goods by ship requires large amounts of fuel.

Unlike power plants and motor vehicles, which operate according to national rules, international ships and airlines often operate outside the direct regulation of any nations.

“The international nature of shipping and commercial aviation means that some, even most emissions take place outside of the legal jurisdictions of countries,” said Robert Stavins, an economics professor at Harvard who researches and tracks environmental diplomacy.

Stavins said nations and regions could reduce the climate impacts of ships and planes by including them in the growing number of carbon tax and cap-and-trade systems when they reach their ports.

While a U.N. agreement to reduce the use of climate-changing chemicals called HFCs this month was heralded as a sign that world leaders are ready to take the warming crisis seriously, an earlier International Civil Aviation Organization agreement to address global warming was broadly criticized for its weakness. It directs airlines to begin buying carbon credits in 2021 instead of reducing emissions from their aircraft.

“The costs of phasing out HFCs are trivial, as are the political challenges, compared with carbon dioxide,” Stavins said. “The number of countries involved is small, the cost of abatement is relatively low, and substitutes already exist.”

The outcome of this week’s talks shows that the shipping industry, like the aviation industry, remains reluctant to address its role in warming the planet, and it suggests global support for easy climate solutions hasn’t yet translated into strong support for tougher measures.

Continued – 

Shipping industry: Climate change? What’s the big rush!

Posted in alo, Anchor, Cyber, FF, GE, Landmark, ONA, solar, solar power, Thermos, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Shipping industry: Climate change? What’s the big rush!

This Guy Is So Smart, He’s Got His Own Academic Journal

by DVXMaggiekzwior Posted on October 22, 2016

Mother Jones

Slavoj Žižek is part philosopher, part international phenomenon. And if that seems impossible in this day and age, consider: Žižek, a Slovenian cultural theorist, has published more than 40 books in English, has starred in four films, and even has an academic journal (International Journal of Žižek Studies) dedicated to his work. Renowned for his gymnastic thinking and mastery of counterintuition, Žižek has been called “the most dangerous philosopher in the West” by the New Republic and “one of the world’s best known public intellectuals” by the New York Review of Books.

Out this week, his latest book, Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles With the Neighbors is an urgent and entertaining diagnosis of the ongoing refugee crisis and global terror threat, highlighting the glaring contradictions in our attitudes and actions. True to form, Žižek, an avowed Marxist, takes this fraught historical moment as an opportunity to apply his particular brand of bombastic, unconventional salve. His past positions have chafed liberals and conservatives alike, and this book will be no exception. (See below.) I caught up with Žižek to talk about the limitations of democracy, orphan prophets, and America’s ugly presidential election.

Mother Jones: What, specifically, is the biggest problem that the refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East, and to a lesser extent in North America, has exposed?

Slavoj Žižek: It’s an issue with democracy! When people complain Europe is not transparent—if, right now, you organized elections all across Europe, the first result would be to throw all the immigrants out. Unambiguously. This is the problem! I spoke with some Slovenian representatives in Brussels when they were negotiating to help Greece and immigrants. And they told me they were making deals in closed sessions, but if the debate were to be public, it would have been much worse for Greece and for immigrants, because public opinion in countries like Slovenia and Poland was much more against immigrants and against helping Greece. What shocks me is that the very same people who complain that the democratic process in Europe should be more transparent at the same time want more rights for immigrants.

MJ: And what does this mean for democracy?

SZ: The state wants to impose basic anti-racist measures, and then local communities controlled by right-wing fundamentalists block that. I am here on the side of the state, which I am ready to endorse up to the crazy end. We have to accept that the people are quite often not right. I believe in democracy but in a very conditional way. There are elections that are a miracle, in the sense that you can see that people were really, authentically, mobilized. For example, in spite of all the compromises that occurred later, the Syriza elections—this was an authentic choice. So miracles do happen, but they are exceptions. Don’t fetishize the people. Don’t mythologize the people, they are not right! Don’t mythologize the immigrants. This is the big motive running through my book.

MJ: This is one of those positions that won’t be too popular on the left.

SZ: My point is precisely that the ultimate racism is to endorse the immigrant other, but the idealized version of that other. They are ordinary, shitty people like all of us. The point is not to like them. The point is to accept them the way they are and try to help them. That’s why I don’t want to open my heart to the refugees. That’s for liberals to do. Let’s open our purses to them. Give them money! Let’s not get into this emotional blackmail.

MJ: You first bring up the term “double blackmail” in the book with regard to the supposedly irreconcilable opposition between secular capitalism and Islamic fundamentalism. Please explain that.

SZ: Although I’m totally opposed to Islamic fundamentalism, I don’t buy the story of stupid, radical leftists who claim Islamic fundamentalism is one of the big anti-capitalist forces. I think this is empirically not true. I read reports of Daesh ISIS. The nearest approximation is that they operate like a big mafia corporation, dealing with artifacts, cultural monuments, oil. Al Qaeda or the Islamic State, they are not traditional. Forget about their ideology; look at their organization! They’re a brutal centralized power. They are ultramodern in their mode of functioning.

The second reason I think the opposition is wrong is that a new form of capitalism is emerging. It’s a wrong, racist term, but “capitalism with Asian values,” which simply means capitalism no longer ideologically perceives itself as this hedonistic individualism. More and more, you can combine a certain religious, ethnic, or cultural commitment. Like India’s prime minister, Narenda Modi, my hero in a horrible sense. I am totally opposed to him. He is a neoliberal economist and Hindu fundamentalist. So again, this entire disposition of oppositions like “liberal permissive capitalism” versus religious fundamentalism is wrong—it doesn’t function like that. This is not where capitalism is moving.

MJ: An interesting illustration of this contradiction is Uber, which recently caught flack for taking $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia. So we have the technological vanguard of Silicon Valley in bed with one of the world’s most infamously regressive Islamic regimes, and yet Uber’s services in the kingdom have been portrayed as a social justice issue, since women aren’t allowed to drive.

SZ: So let me play the devil here. As Saudi Arabia I will tell you, “Fuck you. You preach multicultural tolerance. Such a role of women is an immanent part of our culture. Where is your tolerance for different cultures?” And in a way, I would be right! Because you cannot say, “We will correct women’s role in society and otherwise we leave to Saudis their culture.” A shameful story is how American feminists supported the invasion of Iraq, claiming it would bring liberation to Iraqi women. They were totally wrong. Saddam was still, with all the horrors, a secular leader. Women held public posts in Saddam’s Iraq. If anything, now the role of women is much lower. They are much more oppressed now. Isn’t this a beautiful irony?

The main social effect of the American occupation of Iraq was to worsen the position of women and, because of the rise of more orthodox Islam, most of the Christians left Iraq. Christians were a considerable minority there, a couple million of them for thousands of years. It took American intervention to see them thrown out. Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s foreign minister, was an Iraqi Christian. We should never forget this. The two states which are disappearing now in the Middle East, Iraq and Syria—are you aware that these are the only two states which were formerly secular? Assad was also horrible, but neither Syria nor Iraq defined themselves as Islamic states. They defined themselves as secular states.

MJ: Yet in your book, you focus as much on the impact of economic policy in creating these problems as you do on the impact of military intervention.

SZ: Economic trade agreements are more destructive; they’re even worse. I’m not even a priori against military interventions. Take the Republic of Congo. The state is simply not functioning—it’s the closest you can get to hell on earth. But of course nobody wants to intervene there because Congo’s local warlords all make deals with big companies who get minerals—like coltan for electronics—much cheaper. I would have nothing against a nice military intervention into Congo to simply establish it as a normal functioning state with basic services. But this I can guarantee will never happen. Big powers become interested in human rights violations only when there is some economic interest behind it.

MJ: Let’s talk about the American election.

SZ: When I was young, decades ago, my leftist friends were saying that those in power speak the official polite dignified language. To provoke them we should be more vulgar with words. But today it’s the opposite. Right-wing populism introduces vulgarity into public space. Trump is obviously a pure ideological opportunist. You know he makes the move to the right, then a little bit to the left. At some point he supports raising minimum wage, then he’s lowering it. At some point he said we should have more understanding for Palestinians; now he says we should recognize Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel. He is an opportunist, and I think that even with his provocations, he is nothing extraordinary. I don’t think there is anything remotely radical in his position. I am infinitely more afraid of people like Ted Cruz. Trump is a vulgar opportunist. Cruz is a monster. Do you think Ted Cruz is human?

What I find problematic about this demonization of Trump is that through this demonization, Hillary Clinton succeeded in building a common front. This is the only time I sympathize with Trump. When Bernie Sanders supported Hillary, Trump said, “It’s like Occupy Wall Street supporting Wall Street.” Hillary succeeded in building this totally ideological unity, from Clinton Foundation donations from Saudi Arabia to LGBT, from Wall Street to Occupy Wall Street. This consensus is ideology at its purest.

MJ: What do you make of the argument that, beneath all the racial animus we’re seeing toward immigrants and refugees, there’s some vague, misdirected frustration with neoliberal policy?

SZ: This is always how racism works. Take anti-Semitism: The Jew was always the ersatz for the capitalist. The big achievement of anti-Semitism was to take class resentment and rechannel it into race resentment. Here we come to the true greatness of Bernie Sanders. Instead of just despising the ordinary farmers who fell for racist rhetoric, he got them on his side. He got those who by definition are conservative fundamental Republicans to the moderate left. This is a mega achievement. He is the answer for the left. To get this infamous silent majority on your side should be our strategy. The left should reappropriate things like public decency, politeness, and good manners. We shouldn’t be afraid of this. Capitalism has become an extremely vulgar space.

MJ: Back to the question of refugees. Nowhere do you advocate opening borders, or posit that everything will work itself out.

SZ: There are real cultural problems. You know in Cologne, Germany, the New Year’s scandal. This was of course not a rape attempt—if you want to rape you don’t go to the place full of light and people at the center of the city. This sort of thing happens all the time. It was happening at the anti-Mubarak protests at Tahrir Square. This is a typical lower-class Arab carnival ritual. You dance around women; you maybe pinch them a little bit, but you don’t rape. Of course, this is unacceptable for us. But we need to talk openly about this, because if we don’t talk about this we feed the opponents, the right-wing paranoiacs, Islamophobia. An open, honest debate should be risked here. And the first mistake we make is if we think we understand ourselves, we definitely don’t. Yes, criticize Islamic fundamentalists. But at the same time analyze ourselves.

MJ: So can progressive values and Islam be reconciled?

SZ: If you look at the Muslim tradition, there are terribly progressive elements of it. Islam is not a religion of family; it’s a religion of orphans, which is crucial—Muhammad was an orphan and so on. There is tremendous emancipatory potential in that. The Haiti revolution, the key ideologist was a guy named John Bookman, a slave who knew how to read, that’s why they called him Bookman. But you know which book he was reading? The Koran. Islam played a key role in mobilizing slaves in Haiti. Right now, I think we live in dangerous times. Who knows what turn it will take. But I think there is a chance for the left.

View the original here – 

This Guy Is So Smart, He’s Got His Own Academic Journal

Posted in Cyber, FF, GE, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, oven, PUR, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Guy Is So Smart, He’s Got His Own Academic Journal

Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele Announces He Will Not Be Voting for Donald Trump

by AngelikFosbery Posted on October 21, 2016

Mother Jones

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has added his name to a growing list of Republican figures disavowing Donald Trump, announcing on Thursday that he will not be voting for his party’s presidential candidate next month.

“I will not be voting for Clinton,” Steele said at the Mother Jones 40th anniversary dinner. “I will not be voting for Trump either.”

He singled out Trump’s first remarks disparaging Mexicans as rapists and criminals as the moment that party leaders such as current RNC Chairman Reince Priebus and House Speaker Paul Ryan should have stepped in to oppose Trump’s views.

“The chairman has the responsibility to provide law and order, in the sense that you want to inflect party discipline and instill party discipline where you need it,” he said, speaking from his experience as the party chair from 2009 until 2011.

He went on to describe Trump as the voice of the frustration of the “racist” and “angry” underbelly of America and noted, “I was damn near puking during the debates.”

Link:

Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele Announces He Will Not Be Voting for Donald Trump

Posted in Cyber, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele Announces He Will Not Be Voting for Donald Trump

Hackers Just Brought the Internet to Its Knees—And No One Knows Why

by kelliemclendon Posted on October 21, 2016

Mother Jones

A number of websites—including Twitter, Netflix, and PayPal—were disrupted today by an early morning cyberattack against a key company responsible for routing internet traffic. The company, Dyn, has been posting a series of updates throughout the day, claiming that it came under multiple Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. A DDoS attack floods a website or server with traffic from multiple sources, slowing the targeted site or shutting it down altogether.

In this case, the target was Dyn, a major provider of Domain Name Servers (DNS), which allow internet traffic to get routed properly. (Gizmodo has an excellent breakdown of how DNS servers work, and why an attack on a major provider of them would impact so many sites at once.) The attack started at about 7:10 a.m. on the East Coast of the United States, and the company was initially able to restore service. But later in the morning a second and more widespread attack ensued, and service disruption might have spread to Western Europe, according to Reuters.

Today’s attack is being investigated by the US government as a “criminal act,” Reuters reports, and it could be just the latest in what the Department of Homeland Security has characterized as increasingly powerful DDoS attacks. In an October 14 message posted on the DHS Computer Emergency Readiness Team page, the agency warned of “increased risks” of massive DDoS attacks because of poorly secured internet-connected devices such as cameras and home routers. “Recently, Internet of Things devices have been used to create large-scale botnets—networks of devices infected with self-propogating malware—that can execute rippling distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks,” the warning read.

Although it’s unclear who is behind the attack, in an early Friday evening tweet, WikiLeaks told its supporters:

By the way, here’s what a DDoS attack looks like when it’s visualized (via Gizmodo):

Link – 

Hackers Just Brought the Internet to Its Knees—And No One Knows Why

Posted in Cyber, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Hackers Just Brought the Internet to Its Knees—And No One Knows Why

Richard Branson Describes “Bizarre” Lunch in Which Donald Trump Waxed About Revenge

by MackenzTAVY Posted on October 21, 2016

Mother Jones

As our own David Corn noted just this week, Donald Trump loves nothing more than seeking cold revenge. It turns out billionaire Richard Branson has a Trump story that illustrates Trump’s obsession with vengeance perfectly.

Branson, the billionaire owner of the Virgin Group, wrote a post on his company’s website on Friday afternoon describing an out-of-the-blue lunch the two men shared “some years ago.” Branson says it was the first time he and Trump had met, but Trump had only one topic he wanted to discuss.

Even before the starters arrived he began telling me about how he had asked a number of people for help after his latest bankruptcy and how five of them were unwilling to help. He told me he was going to spend the rest of his life destroying these five people.

He didn’t speak about anything else and I found it very bizarre. I told him I didn’t think it was the best way of spending his life. I said it was going to eat him up, and do more damage to him than them. There must be more constructive ways to spend the rest of your life. (Hopefully my advice didn’t lead to him running for President!)

I was baffled why he had invited me to lunch solely to tell me this. For a moment, I even wondered if he was going to ask me for financial help. If he had, I would have become the sixth person on his list!

Branson wrote earlier this month that “Mr Trump’s temperament is irrational and aggressive,” and added on Friday that those character defects are perhaps the scariest part of this election. “What concerns me most, based upon my personal experiences with Donald Trump, is his vindictive streak, which could be so dangerous if he got into the White House,” Branson wrote.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones.

Continued: 

Richard Branson Describes “Bizarre” Lunch in Which Donald Trump Waxed About Revenge

Posted in Casio, Cyber, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Richard Branson Describes “Bizarre” Lunch in Which Donald Trump Waxed About Revenge

This November, Marijuana Activists are Pushing Pot Over Pills

by MarceliDenney Posted on October 21, 2016

Mother Jones

With less than a month to go before Election Day, several state level marijuana legalization campaigns have rolled out messaging that pitches weed as an alternative to deadly opioid painkillers.

This week, groups backing recreational legalization in Arizona and Massachusetts launched ads arguing marijuana should be an option for pain patients. Arizona’s Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol campaign ran its ad during Thursday night’s NFL game, featuring former pro quarterback Jim McMahon, whose career included a stint with the Arizona Cardinals, talking about the painkillers he was prescribed for injuries.

“I was using them daily pretty much the rest of my career,” he says in the ad. “It takes its toll.”

Framing marijuana as an alternative medical treatment is of course not a new argument for pot proponents, but the strength and prominence of the country’s opioid epidemic has given marijuana activists a new chance to argue that cannabis offers a safe, overdose free option to fight pain.

Legalization activists are pointing to recent studies to make their case. One paper that came out last month found that states with medical marijuana saw fewer suspects in fatal traffic accidents test positive for opioids. And earlier this year, researchers at the University of Michigan found chronic pain patients who used medical marijuana were able to reduce their use of opioid drugs by 64 percent.

“It’s not just an argument, it’s an argument based on solid data,” said Jim Borghesani, communications director for the legalization campaign in Massachusetts, a state with one of the higher rates of drug overdoses in the country.

Earlier this month, Nevada backers of recreational marijuana legalization ran an ad showing a marine veteran who says he was prescribed OxyContin, Percocet, and Hydrocodone. After taking so many pills, “You’re addicted; You know you’re addicted,” he said. With marijuana, he says he can treat his pain but “I can also live.”

Proponents of a Florida bill legalizing medical use are running an online ad similar to the TV spots from the recreational legalization campaigns, showing a doctor who condemns prescription painkillers as “dangerous narcotics that have significant risks.”

The death toll from opioid painkillers is staggering, rivaling that of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the late ’80s and early ’90s. In 2014, there were nearly 19,000 opioid painkiller deaths, along with more than 10,500 heroin overdose deaths, according to data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Painkiller abuse has ravaged communities across the country, and opened the door for a heroin addiction crisis in some towns.

Marijuana advocates have long pitched the drug’s promise to bring relief to people diagnosed with serious diseases, highlighting an evolving series of conditions.

“For years, it was all about cancer and AIDS and glaucoma and these things, and then all of a sudden in 2013 with Sanjay Gupta it became about epilepsy and kids with intractable seizure disorders,” said Ben Pollara, head of the pro-medical-marijuana campaign in Florida. “What you’re seeing with opiate use and abuse and addiction as a rationale for marijuana reform has come about it a similar way.”

Just about three weeks out from the election, a new Gallup Poll shows 60 percent of Americans support legalization.

See the original post – 

This November, Marijuana Activists are Pushing Pot Over Pills

Posted in alo, cannabis, Cyber, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This November, Marijuana Activists are Pushing Pot Over Pills

FBI Now Pretty Sure Russia Is Behind Anti-Clinton Hacking

by ThaddeuPoupinel Posted on September 28, 2016

Mother Jones

The Wall Street Journal reports that the FBI is increasingly convinced that the recent hacks of the DNC and other organizations are being led by Russia:

A fuller picture of the operation has come into focus in the past several weeks. U.S. officials believe that at least two hacking groups with ties to the Russian government, known as Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, are involved in the escalating data-theft efforts, according to people briefed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe of the cyberattacks.

Following successful breaches, the stolen data are apparently transferred to three different websites for publication, these people say. The websites—WikiLeaks, DCLeaks.com and a blog run by Guccifer 2.0—have posted batches of stolen data at least 42 times from April to last week.

WikiLeaks has published U.S. secrets for years but has recently taken an overtly adversarial tone toward Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Cybersecurity experts believe that DCLeaks.com and Guccifer 2.0 often work together and have direct ties to Russian hackers.

Most of these leaks have been designed to hurt Hillary Clinton, who Vladimir Putin apparently hates. Meanwhile, Trump advisor Carter Page has left the Trump campaign over accusations that he’s a little too chummy with the folks in Russia responsible for all this hacking. Page says the whole thing is ridiculous, but apparently his erstwhile friends in Trumpland are throwing him under the bus anyway:

The Trump campaign has been distancing itself from Page. Although Page was one of Trump’s originally announced foreign policy advisers, campaign manager KellyAnne Conway told CNN on Sunday that Page is not really involved at with the campaign at this point.

“I have not spoken with him at all, in fact, meaning he’s not part of our national security or foreign policy briefings that we do now at all, certainly not since I have become campaign manager,” she said….Other Trump campaign sources told me that Page was never really part of Trump’s inner circle….Page has never met with Trump one on one and hasn’t been deeply involved in Trump foreign policy speeches or events, they said.

So…he was just some guy whose name they used so they’d look like they had some advisors. Apparently they’d rather publicly fess up to lying about their campaign announcements than take a chance that Page might become a liability. What nice folks.

Link:  

FBI Now Pretty Sure Russia Is Behind Anti-Clinton Hacking

Posted in Cyber, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on FBI Now Pretty Sure Russia Is Behind Anti-Clinton Hacking