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Democrats Turn Up Pressure on Republicans for Russian Hacking Investigation

by StewartPeachey Posted on January 6, 2017

Mother Jones

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At Thursday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Russian hacking of Democratic targets during the 2016 campaign, it was obvious that most Republicans don’t want to get involved with a matter that puts them on the wrong side of Donald Trump, who has repeatedly questioned the intelligence community’s conclusion that Moscow meddled in the election in order to help him win. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the chair of the committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), did each decry the Russian intervention and called for a thorough investigation. Yet the other GOPers on the panel were largely mute. This silence suggested that Rs on the Hill are generally not eager to dig into this touchy (for Trump) subject. And that explains why McCain has so far failed in his effort to persuade Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to set up a special select committee to conduct a probe. Instead, McConnell prefers to leave most of this work to the (naturally) overly secretive Intelligence Committee, on which neither McCain nor Graham, the two loudest Republican voices on this front, sit. These machinations demonstrate that politics is shaping how congressional Republicans are reacting to a fundamental threat to American democracy and electoral integrity. And that makes all the more relevant a revived Democratic push to create an independent commission to investigate Russian intervention in the election.

Last month, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Government Oversight Committee, and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, introduced a measure to create a bipartisan commission—much like the highly praised 9/11 commission—to probe the Russian hacking. Their proposal did not gain a great amount of attention. Even top Democrats on Capitol Hill who supported the idea were not loudly demanding a robust investigation. But on Friday afternoon, Cummings and Swalwell reintroduced the bill, and this time more than 150 of their fellow House Democrats, including the top Democrat on every House committee, were co-sponsoring the proposed legislation.

The bill would establish a 12-member commission with the authority to interview witnesses, obtain documents, issue subpoenas, and receive public testimony. The panel would examine attempts by the Russian government to influence, interfere with, or undermine trust in last year’s US elections. And the commission would have to issue a report with recommendations within 18 months.

With this move, House Democrats are upping the ante, just as the Obama administration is completing its review of the Russian intervention in the election and Trump keeps tweeting positively about Vladimir Putin and suggesting the story has been hyped to taint his election. This week, a bipartisan collection of former senior intelligence and defense officials—including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and former Acting Director of Central Intelligence Michael Morrell—issued a letter urging Congress to create this sort of commission to “understand fully and publicly what happened, how we were so vulnerable, and what we can do to protect our democracy in future elections.”

It’s unlikely that many, if any, Republicans on the Hill will embrace this proposal. But Dems are attempting to generate political pressure. “There’s overwhelming agreement across America that our democracy was attacked this past presidential election,” Swallwell says. “Now everyone’s asking what our nation’s leaders will do about it.” For most Republicans, the answer seems to be: not much.

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Democrats Turn Up Pressure on Republicans for Russian Hacking Investigation

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At Russian Hacking Hearing, Most Republican Senators Express No Outrage

by FranklyPonce Posted on January 5, 2017

Mother Jones

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At Thursday morning’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about Russian hacking during the 2016 elections, little new information was revealed about Moscow’s meddling in the presidential campaign. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper did say that the intelligence community’s review ordered by President Barack Obama of the Russian operation will be done early next week and will yield an unclassified report for public release. “I intend to push the envelope as much as I can,” Clapper said, referring to information the report will make public.

Clapper also noted that the intelligence community is now more “resolute” in its assessment that Russian intelligence was behind the cyber thefts and subsequent public dissemination of emails from the Democratic Party and John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. He also testified that the public report will include an assessment of Moscow’s motives behind this operation—the CIA concluded weeks ago that the motive was to boost Donald Trump’s prospects—and that there was “actually more than one motive.”

Though the hearing did not expand public knowledge of the Russian hack, it did serve a political purpose: to slap Trump for both his refusal to acknowledge Russian involvement in the hacking and his related disparagement of the intelligence community. Several senators seized the opportunity to challenge the president-elect’s denialism and to send him a message. Some referred to him directly; some took veiled—though barely veiled—shots. Opening the hearing, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the committee’s chairman, said there was “still much we don’t know…But Russian intrusions in the election…are not in any doubt.” And Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the senior Democrat on the committee, scoffed at the “indifference of some to this matter” and asked Clapper if the hacking was a stand-alone Russian operation. (Clapper replied, “This was a multifaceted campaign. The hacking was only one part of it. It also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news.”)

Other Democratic senators also banged on Trump. Sen. Claire McCaskill thanked McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), another member of the committee, for defending the intelligence community against Trump’s insults. And referring to Trump’s approving tweets about WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange—Trump indicated he believed Assange was more credible that US intelligence—McCaskill thundered that Trump placing “Julian Assange on a pedestal” relative to the men and women of the US intelligence community ought to cause bipartisan outrage. Pointing to widespread Republican silence on this front, she added, “Mark my word, if the roles were reversed, there would be howls from the Republican side of the aisle.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) later chimed in that Trump’s “disparagement” of the intelligence community “has been a terrible disservice to our nation…I hope that we will see a change.”

Graham also scolded Trump. “It’s okay to challenge the intel,” he said, adding, “but what I don’t want you to do is undermine” the intelligence community. Noting that Clapper was due to brief Trump on Friday on Russian hacking and other intelligence matters, Graham asked the nation’s top intelligence officer if he was ready to be challenged by the president-elect. “Yes,” Clapper replied.

Other than McCain and Graham, the Republican members of the committee shied away from referring to Trump or even the main matter at hand: the Russian hacking. Many asked about other cyber threats and attacks, such as the Chinese hack that penetrated the US government’s personnel system. It was just too awkward or politically incorrect for them to question Clapper and the other witnesses about the Moscow operation and Putin’s intentions. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) even tried to undermine the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia intended to help Trump. “There’s a widespread assumption—this has been expressed by Secretary Clinton herself since the election—that Vladimir Putin favored Donald Trump in this election,” Cotton said. “Donald Trump has proposed to increase our defense budget, to accelerate nuclear modernization, to accelerate ballistic defenses, and to expand and accelerate oil and gas production, which would obviously harm Russia’s economy. Hillary Clinton opposed, or at least was not as enthusiastic about all those measures.” Cotton asked Clapper, “Would each of those put the United States in a stronger strategic position against Russia?” Clapper said that “anything we do to enhance our military capabilities, absolutely.” Then Cotton made his point: “So there is some contrary evidence, despite what the media speculates, that perhaps Donald Trump is not the best candidate for Russia.” He was suggesting that because Trump’s campaign platform had a hawkish military plank, the intelligence community’s assessment was wrong and that Trump was not Putin’s preferred candidate. Clapper did not respond to this argument.

And Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) won the blame-America-first-to-protect-Trump prize. He tried to diminish the Russian hacking that profited Trump by pointing out that the United States, too, has tried to influence elections overseas:

The glass house comment is something I think is very important. There was a study by a professor up at Carnegie Mellon that’s estimated that the United States has been involved in one way or another in 81 different elections since World War II. That doesn’t include coups or regime changes, so tangible evidence where we’ve tried to effect an outcome to our purpose. Russia’s done it some 36 times. In fact, when Russia was apparently trying to influence our election, we had the Israelis accusing us of trying to influence their election. So I’m not here to talk about that, but I am here to say that we live in a big glass house and there are a lot of rocks to throw and I think that that’s consistent with what you said on other matters.

Actually, Tillis was indeed here to talk about this in order to not talk about how Russian intelligence subverted an American election and aided Trump.

Toward the end of the hearing, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Clinton’s running mate, took a seat on the dais. When it was his turn to question the witnesses, he noted that a few years ago he was chairman of the Democratic Party and that the party’s office contained a filing cabinet that had been rifled during the Watergate break-in. That burglary, he noted, led to a “high moment” for Congress, when the House and the Senate conducted bipartisan investigations that sought to protect the integrity of American elections. Referring to the Russian hacking, Kaine said, “This is a test of this body.” He wondered if the current Congress would act in a bipartisan fashion to preserve the “integrity of elections.” Judging from the ho-hum attitude of most Republicans on the panel toward the Russian intervention, Kaine may end up being disappointed.

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At Russian Hacking Hearing, Most Republican Senators Express No Outrage

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Trump Is Desperately Seeking A Latino For His Cabinet

by StellaLamothe Posted on December 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump triumphed in politics after a long stint as a reality TV star. And now, as he scrambles to fill his final cabinet slots, the pesident-elect is taking a close look at a Republican who tried his best to move in the opposite direction.

Meet Abel Maldonado, who runs a large farm and a small vineyard on California’s Central Coast and is suddenly in the running for agriculture secretary. Maldonado, the son of Mexican immigrants, has seen his star rise amid speculation that Trump (who constantly lashed out at Mexican and other immigrants during his campaign) “is scrambling to appoint a Hispanic official to serve in his Cabinet,” Politico reports. If Trump fails to include a Latino in his cabinet, he’ll be the first president since Jimmy Carter to do so. There are only four slots left, and Politico adds that “Trump has narrowed his focus to agriculture secretary as the best possibility” for choosing a Latino.

Maldonado is is the latest in a parade of names Team Trump has floated for USDA, a chaotic process that I last updated here. In California politics, Maldonado is seen as a fallen prodigy. His political career peaked in 2009, when then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed the then-state senator as lieutenant governor. Less then a year later, Maldonado’s campaign to retain that office failed miserably. Since then, he has made unsuccessful bids for a seat in the US House and governor.

In 2016, Maldonado reportedly pitched himself as a potential reality TV star. Here’s The Sacramento Bee:

A video compilation that has rocketed around the Internet recently opens with an apparent working title: Meet the Maldonados. In it, the former state legislator and unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial candidate can be seen drinking wine with his daughter, asking his son about having a condom and laughing after his wife informs their daughter that “we watched porn when you were conceived.

At one point, a horse starts relieving itself in Maldonado’s house. “Yeah, Sacramento’s better than this,” a flustered Maldonado mutters as he cleans up.

The Bee reports that the show wasn’t picked up, and I failed to find the video compilation that “rocketed around the Internet,” despite an exhaustive search.

Maldonado met with the president-elect on Wednesday at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. On the surface, Abel would bring a compelling back story. The son of immigrant farm workers from Mexico, he built his family’s plot from “a half acre of strawberries into a farm that now works over 6,000 acres and employs over 250 people and ships produce all over the world,” according to one bio. With his daughter, he runs a winery called Runway Vineyards.

But his ag businesses have had their own troubles. Agro-Jal, Maldanado’s produce farm, “has accumulated dozens of violations from Cal/OSHA since 1990, hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax liens, and multiple citations for exposing workers to toxic pesticides and skirting clean water regulations, government records show,” The Los Angeles Times reported in 2010. Maldonado he was a victim of overzealous regulators, the Times added.

In 2015, the operation was hit with a class-action suit from former workers alleging unpaid minimum and overtime wages, as well as denial of sufficient breaks and meal periods. The suit is ongoing and now in the discovery phase, Allen Hutkin, the San Luis Obispo lawyer who filed the suit on behalf of the workers, told me.

And as Ed Kilgore notes at New York Magazine, Maldonado is generally seen as a moderate Republican—which would put him out of step with the Senate Republicans who will vet the USDA pick.

Meanwhile, Elsa Murano, a former high USDA official and now director of the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture at Texas A&M, also is under consideration for USDA. Born in Cuba to parents who soon migrated to the United States, she too would qualify as Trump’s only cabinet pick with Hispanic heritage.

As I reported last week, Murano is also a classic example of the revolving door between industry and regulatory agencies. In 2004, Murano stepped down from her post as chief of the USDA division that oversees food safety at the nation’s slaughterhouses. Two years later, she joined the board of directors of pork giant Hormel, a company that runs some of the nation’s largest slaughterhouses. She has held that post ever since, with annual compensation of $237,980 and stock holdings worth $2,484,262 as of 2015.

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Trump Is Desperately Seeking A Latino For His Cabinet

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This American Fought ISIS. Now He’s Trying to Get Washington to Untangle Its Syria Policy

by DanteDunckley79 Posted on December 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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“This reminds me of when I was fighting ISIS,” Robert Amos told me, improbably, one sunny September day as we rode in a white Jeep through the streets of downtown Washington, DC. The vehicle was packed with four elderly Kurdish passengers in sweaters and suit jackets, members of the American Kurdish Information Network, a non-profit organization. They complained in their native Kurmanji dialect about the broken A/C, and Amos occasionally chimed in with phrases that he learned during six months he spent as a soldier with the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, the predominately Kurdish militia that controls a 200-mile stretch of territory in northern Syria known as Rojava.

Amos, who is 30, Jewish, and grew up in West Virginia, has hair the hue of desert sand, and he wore big black granny sunglasses. “We’d always be driving through the desert in cars like this,” he said. “One time, during a battle, ISIS guys came streaming out of a tunnel at the bottom of a hill and I thought we were going to die. My friend kissed me on the cheek and said ‘goodbye.’ I survived, but he didn’t.”

Today Amos is fighting a new war. Since returning home in late 2015, he’s formed the American Veterans of the Kurdish Armed Forces, a group that aims to increase visibility and support for the YPG as well as the approximately 200 Americans who have joined them. The Pentagon has provided Special Forces troops to advise the YPG and air strikes to assist them on the battlefield. But Amos believes this isn’t enough, and his group has lobbied the Obama administration to provide more military assistance. It now plans to do the same with the incoming Trump administration, whose policy toward the Syrian Kurds remains—like most things Trump-related—wildly unpredictable. “Obama, Trump, none of them know what’s going on over there,” Amos said.

Amos’s inspiration for the group was an incident on August 24, 2016, when Vice President Joe Biden flew to Istanbul, where he and Turkish President Recep Erdogen reprimanded Kurdish fighters for being too effective against ISIS. “Move back across the Euphrates River,” Biden said at a joint press conference, referring to the YPG’s recent capture of Manbij, a strategic city north of Aleppo, from ISIS. (Three Americans died in combat during the two-month battle.) Soon after the meeting, 20 Turkish tanks, accompanied by 1,500 Syrian Islamists and aerial support from the US Air Force, rolled into Rojava. When they clashed with the YPG, the dizzying contradiction of the mission became clear: One US-sponsored force (Turkey and the Syrian rebels) was killing another US-sponsored force (the YPG).

A video, later posted on YouTube, showed a group of Syrian jihadists who’d participated in the Turkish invasion chasing 25 US Army soldiers out of the village of Al-Rai, where the Americans had gone to offer assistance to the pro-Turkey troops. On the tape, the Syrian rebels call the troops who’ve come to help them “dogs and pigs.” “Christians and Americans,” another man shouts, as the Americans flee, “have no place among us!”

Some Middle East experts have expressed outrage at the August invasion and the Obama administration’s support for it. Turkey’s attack on the YPG, said US Army Special Envoy Brett McGurk, was “unacceptable and a source of deep concern.” The incursion would be the beginning of “Erdogen’s Waterloo,” wrote David L. Phillips, a former advisor to President Obama and director of Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, in the Huffington Post. By backing Turkey’s invasion, he believes, the United States wasn’t just facilitating attacks on its own soldiers and allies, but inadvertently enabling jihadists to carry out those attacks. “Slipping into Syria’s quagmire is not in America’s interest,” Phillips wrote. “Nor is being played by Turkey.”

In response, on September 1st, Amos put on the olive fatigues he’d worn in Syria and drove six hours from Indiana, where he was living, to Parma, Ohio, to confront Biden. “Why did you tell the YPG to go back?” Amos shouted, as the vice president gave a speech to Hillary Clinton supporters at a union hall. An MSNBC segment called Amos “Biden’s heckler.” In the clip, his voice cracks as he cries out, “My friends died! My American friends!”

“If you’re serious,” Biden says, interrupting his speech, “come back after and talk to me about this. You have my permission.”

“Biden slipped out the back door,” Amos told me as our driver, Jay Kheirabadi, an Iranian Kurd who lives in Maryland, weaved erratically between lanes of traffic, as if dodging landmines. He honked and shouted out the window. “I think I have a perspective the vice president could learn from,” Amos said. “I just want to talk.”

The Jeep parked in front of Biden’s house at Number One Observatory Circle, near Massachusetts Avenue. Separated from the white Queen Anne-style mansion by stands of poplar trees, a steel fence, and a police checkpoint, the five men set up two large signs facing the road. One read, using a somewhat inscrutable reference to Turkey’s support for jihadist groups in Syria, “Joe Biden supports Diet ISIS.” The other read, “Kurds are fighting ISIS tooth and nail. America will you help them?”

Two other YPG veterans had promised to come but never arrived, and the lackluster turnout put Amos in a melancholy mood. Still, the protest’s modesty underscored its message: U.S. support of both Turkish and Kurdish groups who are killing each other in Syria is a danger to American interests, but no one is paying much attention. This point was made dramatically on November 24, when Turkish air strikes killed the first American YPG volunteer in Syria, an anarchist from California named Michael Israel. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that Americans fighting alongside the YPG would be treated as “terrorists…regardless of whether they are members of allied countries”.

A passing car honked. A man gave the middle finger out the top of his convertible. An Italian woman whizzed by on a mountain bike and shouted “Bongiorno!“

When I asked Azad Kobani, a former Syrian parliament member who now lives in Virginia, if American volunteers like Amos were crazy for risking their lives fighting in his home country, he said, “Fighting for democracy is never crazy. Not realizing Turkey doesn’t represent the US’s best interests is what’s crazy.”

Two Secret Service members crossed the street, playing Frogger against traffic. They rubbed their chins and stared down Amos, who is six-foot-two, a little plump, and who, in his sunglasses and YPG fatigues, appeared a bit deranged. “I fought ISIS,” Amos told the agents. “Biden promised he’d speak with me. He lied.”

“He does that,” one agent said, sarcastically.

“We went over there and fought and died,” Amos said after the agents had left, “and it’s like nobody cares.” Moments later a woman in a black SUV drove by, rolled down her window, and yelled an expletive at Amos. “Well,” he said, sighing, “I guess I need to keep fighting.”

Support for this article was provided by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

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This American Fought ISIS. Now He’s Trying to Get Washington to Untangle Its Syria Policy

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Why You Should Eat More Sugar

by SelmaGrullon183 Posted on December 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Monday, a prominent medical journal broke with the flurry of studies recommending that Americans eat less sugar. The Annals of Internal Medicine (AIM) published a study that reviewed nine guidelines on sugar intake and determined that they “do not meet criteria for trustworthy recommendations and are based on low-quality evidence.”

The problem with the study: The Washington-based group, The International Life Sciences Institute, that funded it is supported by sugar-peddling companies including Hershey’s, Coca-Cola, Red Bull, General Mills, McDonald’s, Nestlé, and Kellogg. Additionally, one of the authors, Joanne Slavin, is on the advisory board for one of the largest suppliers of high-fructose corn syrup.

Because of these industry ties, the study sparked outrage. Marion Nestle, a professor at New York University who studies conflicts of interest in nutrition research, told the New York Times, “This is a classic example of how industry funding biases opinion. It’s shameful.”

The outrage extended even to the pages of AIM, as the journal simultaneously released an editorial criticizing the study, calling it a “politicization of science.”

As Mother Jones reported previously, “a growing body of research suggests that sugar and its nearly chemically identical cousin, HFCS, may very well cause diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of Americans every year, and that these chronic conditions would be far less prevalent if we significantly dialed back our consumption of added sugars.” In Big Sugar’s Sweet Little Lies, Gary Taubes and Cristin Kearns Couzens chronicled the sugar lobby’s decadeslong campaign to spin its product as “a nutrient so seemingly innocuous that even the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association approved it as part of a healthy diet.”

The same story reported that “Big Sugar used Big Tobacco-style tactics to ensure that government agencies would dismiss troubling health claims against their products.” Similarly, in November, a study of historical records of the Sugar Research Foundation revealed a campaign to divert attention from the heart-health risks of sugar consumption.

It wasn’t until this year that the Food and Drug Administration introduced labels that showed added sugars in addition to total sugars. Added sugars, as Mother Jones‘ Maddie Oatman noted in 2015, are particularly harmful because they lack the fiber found in naturally occurring sugary foods (like fruit), which help regulate the absorption of food, allowing the sugar to overwhelm your system.

The lead author of the AIM paper acknowledged the industry ties to the New York Times but said he hoped people would not “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” The editor-in-chief of AIM, Dr. Christine Laine, defended the decision to publish the study even though the editors knew of the funding source’s industry connections. Laine told the New York Times, “We thought that this was something that our readers would be interested in, and we thought the methods of the systematic review were high quality.”

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Why You Should Eat More Sugar

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Russian Official Blames "Western Media" for Turkish Ambassador’s Assassination

by ild4sho Posted on December 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Monday, Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov was assassinated in an Ankara art gallery by a gunman who shouted, “Don’t forget Aleppo! Don’t forget Syria!”

Alexei Pushkov, a member of the Duma—the Russian legislature—and the former chairman of its foreign affairs committee, was quick to blame the Western media for inciting the attack through its coverage of Syria.

“The hysteria around Aleppo raised by the Western media has consequences,” he told LifeNews, a pro-Putin online news outlet and TV channel. “This murder is precisely a consequence of attempts to blame Russia for all the sins and crimes she did not commit. They are completely ignoring the crimes of fighters in Aleppo, and that forms a distorted and false picture of what is happening in this city, which contributed to this terrorist act…This is a result of anti-Russian hysteria, raised in the West and supported by a certain part of Turkish society.”

Pushkov made a similar point on his Twitter account, writing that “the death of the Russian ambassador in Turkey, a terrorist act, is the result of political and media hysteria around Aleppo from Russia’s enemies.”

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Russian Official Blames "Western Media" for Turkish Ambassador’s Assassination

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Did Russia Spy on Donald Trump When He Visited Moscow?

by WalterHua9800982 Posted on December 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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With the Washington Post‘s bombshell report that the CIA has assessed the Russian hacking of Democratic targets was done as part of a Kremlin operation to help Donald Trump win the election, here’s an intriguing question: has Russian intelligence spied on the president-elect and, if so, what private information has it collected on him? A counterintelligence veteran of a Western spy service in October told Mother Jones that he had uncovered information—and had sent it to the FBI—indicating Russian intelligence had mounted a years-long operation to cultivate or co-opt Trump and that this project included surveillance that gathered compromising material on the celebrity mogul. Yet there have been no indications from the FBI whether it has investigated this lead. Still, several intelligence professionals say that Trump would have indeed been a top priority for Russian intelligence surveillance—especially when he was in Moscow in November 2013 for the Miss Universe pageant, which he owned at the time.

To present the contest in the Russian capital, Trump, who had long tried to do real estate deals in Russia, had teamed up with Aras Agalarov, a billionaire oligarch close to Vladimir Putin (whose son is a popular pop singer). The glitzy event, which included a swanky after-party, drew various Russian notables, including a member of Putin’s inner circle and an alleged Russian mobster. Trump later boasted that he had mingled with “almost all of the oligarchs.” Trump had hoped that Putin would attend the pageant—tweeting months earlier, “if so, will he become my new best friend?”—but the Russian leader was a no-show.

During Trump’s stay in Moscow, US intelligence experts note, he would have been a natural and obvious target for Russian intelligence. At the time, Trump was a prominent American, an international businessman, and a celebrity. He was also deeply involved in US politics. He had almost run for president in 2000 and nearly did so again in 2012, and he had been a leading foe of President Barack Obama, having pushed the conspiracy theory that Obama had been born in Kenya.

A former high-ranking CIA official, who asked not to be identified, says in an email,

It is nearly certain that Russian intelligence would have done some sort of surveillance on him. Could have been low-key physical surveillance (following etc) or deeper surveillance, such as video/audio of hotel room and monitoring of electronics (your communications while in Moscow is on their network).

James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, points out, “It’s safe to assume that high-profile public figures and billionaires attract the attention of the Russian security services, including bugging any hotel rooms.” And Malcolm Nance, a terrorism and intelligence expert and author of The Plot To Hack America, says that the Russian version of the National Security Agency, the Spetssvyaz, manages specialized technical teams that would have been all over Trump:

These communications intercept units are designated for high-importance personages of political and diplomatic standing, such as Donald Trump. These units would’ve employed the most advanced intelligence collection systems in the nation. Anything short of a highly encrypted communications suite using military-grade technology would be simple for Russian intelligence to exploit. Donald Trump’s mobile phone would be among the easiest to exploit. His mobile phone, Bluetooth, and laptops were most likely not shielded and could have been intercepted and exploited any number of ways. This means virtually everything he said, everything he texted, everything he wrote, and every communication he had in the electronic spectrum would be in the possession of Russian intelligence then and now. His guest rooms in Moscow could have had virtually undetectable voice and video communications intercept devices planted in such a way that nothing could be done by Trump in private and would defy detection. The Spetssvyaz would also employ Russian military intelligence subunits as well as Federal Security Service (FSB) surveillance units which could follow him anywhere that he goes with seemingly normal people and detect, document, and provide a record of anything and anyone he met.

Trump could have attempted to take counter-measures to defeat any surveillance. “About the only way to ensure against electronic surveillance,” the former CIA official says, “is to use a burner phone—one you’re not going to use again—stay off your normal personal email (use a one-time address you will not use again), and keep communications on that one to routine, non-sensitive messages… That was my practice in Moscow…during which all I sent were innocuous text messages on a phone I never used again.” And Lewis remarks, “If you used a mobile phone with an encrypted app and kept that phone in your possession for the entire trip, you could make it harder for them. A lot of people use Signal or Telegram for encrypted texting, but the Russians could still have many ways around this when you are in Moscow.”

Mother Jones asked Trump—through his transition team, his spokeswoman, and his lawyer—what he did to secure his communications and to thwart surveillance during his Moscow trip. Did he use secured phones and text services? Did he sweep his hotel room for surveillance devices? Trump’s representatives did not respond. Nor did the spokeswoman for Miss Universe when presented with a similar set of questions.

While he was in Moscow, Trump did continue his normal practice of tweeting often. Here are several tweets he sent out:

According to the Trump Twitter Archive, all the tweets Trump zapped out from Moscow came from an Android phone. A 2016 analysis found that Trump’s personal tweets—as opposed to those written by staffers on his account—were generated by an Android phone. (His staff-composed tweets came from an iPhone.)

The intelligence experts agree: Trump would have been in the sights of Russian intelligence. But what might Moscow’s spies have found? There is no telling. In the famous Access Hollywood video, Trump boasted of committing lewd (and illegal) action. Any intelligence operative would be delighted to catch Trump in such an act. Nance speculates:”That some of this would be salacious or information he would not want exposed to the public is without question. This unknown to the US intelligence community makes Donald Trump not just a national security threat but potentially a victim of blackmail by our oppositions intelligence agencies.” Nance also points out that if Russian intelligence penetrated Trump’s phone when he was in Moscow, its officers could have continued to intercept Trump’s conversations once he was back in the United States.

During the campaign, Trump and his supporters railed about Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of her private email server and claimed she had jeopardized US secrets. Her actions—while never shown to have led to any compromise of classified information—were troubling. A related but different set of issues faces Trump. Did he fail to take precautions that would prevent the Russians from gaining access to his private personal and professional information? If so, might the Russians possess secret information on the next president of the United States? Should that be true, Nance adds, it could pose “a monumental potential intelligence crisis never before seen in American history.”

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Did Russia Spy on Donald Trump When He Visited Moscow?

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Films to Quench Your 60’s Music Nostalgia

by HymanLeist Posted on December 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Beatles
Eight Days a Week—The Touring Years
Capitol/UMe

T.A.M.I. Show/The Big T.N.T. Show
Shout! Factory

Courtesy of Apple Corps Ltd./UMe

Nostalgic fans of a certain age who like to pontificate about how great music was in the ’60s can cite a couple of new home video releases to back up their argument. Directed by Ron Howard, documentary Eight Days a Week—The Touring Years offers a concise, 100-minute survey of the Fab Four’s career up to the point they stopped touring in 1966. Inevitably, it only skims the surface, but the music is (of course) terrific and the footage of the lads sending audiences into a hysterical frenzy captures the bizarre, sometimes frightening energy of the day. Extras on the two-disc edition include charming reminiscences by American fans and uncut performances of five songs that prove what a cooking live act they were. While The Beatles probably had to stop touring just to preserve their sanity, it’s hard not to conclude from this engaging film that a special spark left their music when they retired from the road, even as their artistic ambitions expanded exponentially.

T.A.M.I. Show/The Big T.N.T. Show pairs two mid-’60s concert films presenting rock and soul acts live on stage, each delivering a brief set in the style of multiple-artist package tours of the day. The previously available T.A.M.I. Show offers strong performances from the likes of Chuck Berry, Marvin Gaye, The Beach Boys, Lesley Gore and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, among others, as well as a few duds, but the centerpiece remains James Brown’s surreal, over-the-top display of genius. Writhing and shouting, yet always fully in control, the Godfather of Soul embodies performance art at its mind bending best, and makes the Rolling Stones, who follow him in the movie, seem like capable but callow little boys by comparison. (T.A.M.I. is “Teenage Awards Music International,” fyi, but there were no such awards.)

Long unavailable, The Big T.N.T. Show isn’t quite in the same league, but more than bears watching. Highlights include the sloppy and charming Lovin’ Spoonful, witty country songsmith Roger Miller and early rock’n’roll great Bo Diddley, laying down deep grooves (not to mention The Byrds, Ray Charles and The Ronettes). The weirdest moment occurs when folk queen Joan Baez fronts an orchestra for a faithful cover of The Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” with Phil Spector, who produced the original, conducting the musicians. It’s as astounding in its own puzzling way as James Brown’s titanic “Please Please Please.” Those were the (strange) days.

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Films to Quench Your 60’s Music Nostalgia

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Democrats Intensify Push for Probe of Russian Meddling in 2016 Campaign

by TamiLemmon13 Posted on December 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Congressional Democrats are increasing the pressure for an official and public inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign. On Wednesday afternoon, Rep. Eric Swalwell, (D-Calif.), a Democrat on the House intelligence committee, and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the senior Democrat on the House government oversight committee, announced they were introducing legislation to create a bipartisan commission to investigate any attempt by the Russian government or persons in Russia to interfere with the recent US election. The commission they propose is modeled on the widely praised 9/11 Commission. It would consist of 12 members, equally divided between Democrats and Republicans. The members would be appointed by the House speaker, the Senate majority leader, and the two Democratic leaders of the House and Senate. This commission would be granted subpoena power, the ability to hold public hearings, and the task of producing a public report.

Cummings previously called on Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the chair of the House government oversight committee, to launch such an investigation via his committee. But Chaffetz, who before the election vowed to probe Hillary Clinton fiercely, has not replied to Cummings’ request, according to a Cummings spokesperson. Nor has Chaffetz responded to another Cummings request for a committee examination of Donald Trump’s potential conflicts of interest. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and incoming Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) have both endorsed Cummings’ proposal for a congressional investigation of Russian attempts to influence the 2016 campaign. Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) also have suggested that Congress examine Russian interference in the election.

The Democrats have not yet catapulted the issue of foreign interference fully into the media spotlight. But Swalwell and Cummings’ bill comes as more Democrats are demanding action. Last week, seven Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee publicly pressed the Obama administration to declassify more information about Russia’s intervention in the election. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who led that effort, wrote in a brief letter to the White House, “We believe there is additional information concerning the Russian Government and the US election that should be declassified and released to the public. We are conveying specifics through classified channels.”

On Tuesday, seven high-ranking House Democrats sent a letter to President Barack Obama requesting a classified briefing on Russian involvement in the election, including “Russian entities’ hacking of American political organizations; hacking and strategic release of emails from campaign officials; the WikiLeaks disclosures; fake news stories produced and distributed with the intent to mislead American voters; and any other Russian or Russian-related interference or involvement in our recent election.” The signatories were Cummings, Rep. Steny Hoyer, the Democratic whip, Rep. John Conyers, the top Democrat on the judiciary committee, Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the foreign affairs committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the homeland security committee, Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the armed services committee, and Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee. They wrote:

We are deeply concerned by Russian efforts to undermine, interfere with, and even influence the outcome of our recent election. This Russian malfeasance is not confined to us, but extends to our allies, our alliances and to democratic institutions around the world.

The integrity of democracy must never be in question, and we are gravely concerned that Russia may have succeeded in weakening Americans’ trust in our electoral institutions through their cyber activity, which may also include sponsoring disclosures through WikiLeaks and other venues, and the production and distribution of fake news stories.

In September, Schiff joined Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, to release a statement blaming Russia for the hacks of Democratic targets during the campaign:

Based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the US election. At the least, this effort is intended to sow doubt about the security of our election and may well be intended to influence the outcomes of the election—we can see no other rationale for the behavior of the Russians. We believe that orders for the Russian intelligence agencies to conduct such actions could come only from very senior levels of the Russian government.

The Obama administration has reached the same conclusion. In October, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security released a joint statement declaring, “The US Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.” A week after the election, the director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Michael Rogers, was asked about the WikiLeaks release of hacked information during the campaign, and he said, “This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect.” He added, “This was not something that was done casually. This was not something that was done by chance. This was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily.”

For some reason, Moscow’s effort to influence the presidential election has not been as big a story as, say, Trump’s tweets about the musical Hamilton or Alec Baldwin. That may be because Democrats, busy licking their wounds, have not aggressively sought to keep the issue front and center. (Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have not said much on this subject.) And most Republicans have shown little interest in investigating an assault on American democracy that helped their party win the White House and retain majorities in both houses of Congress. But Cummings has been trying mightily to kick-start a public investigation. (Presumably, the FBI, CIA, and NSA have been looking into Russian hacking related to the election, but their investigations are not designed to yield public information—unless they result in a criminal prosecution.)

With the legislation to establish an independent commission, Cummings and Swalwell are opening another front. In the coming days, they will be signing up co-sponsors and looking for Republican support. Their bill provides a proposal that concerned voters—including upset Democrats and activists—can rally behind. (Were this measure to pass next year, Trump, who has steadfastly refused to blame Moscow for the hacks of the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign, would have to decide whether to sign it.)

In his recent letter to Chaffetz, Cummings noted, “Elections are the bedrock of our nation’s democracy. Any attempt by a foreign power to undermine them is a direct attack on our core democratic values, and it should chill every Member of Congress and American—red or blue—to the core.” So far, few Republicans, including Trump, have acknowledged feeling that chill, and there’s certainly more opportunity for the Democrats to turn up the heat.

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Democrats Intensify Push for Probe of Russian Meddling in 2016 Campaign

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There is child labor in your food.

by Daniel6615 Posted on November 30, 2016

Amnesty International investigators interviewed laborers as young as 8 working on plantations that sell to Wilmar, the largest palm-oil trader. Palm oil goes into bread, cereal, chocolate, soaps — it’s in about half of everything on supermarket shelves.

Wilmar previously committed to buying palm oil only from companies that don’t burn down forest or exploit workers. Child labor is illegal in Indonesia.

When Wilmar heard about the abuses, it opened an internal investigation and set up a monitoring process.

It’s disappointing that Wilmar’s commitments haven’t put an end to labor abuses, but it’s not surprising. It’s nearly impossible to eliminate worker exploitation without addressing structural causes: mass poverty, disenfranchisement, and lack of safety nets.

Investigators talked to one boy who dropped out of school to work on a plantation at the age of 12 when his father became too ill to work. Without some kind of welfare program, that boy’s family would probably be worse off if he’d been barred from working.

The boy had wanted to become a teacher. For countries like Indonesia to get out of poverty and stop climate-catastrophic deforestation, they need to help kids like this actually become teachers. That will require actors like Wilmar, Amnesty, and the government to work together to give laborers a living wage, and take care of them when they get sick.

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There is child labor in your food.

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