Tag Archives: jones

North Carolina Republicans Try to Block Transgender People From Bathrooms—Again

Mother Jones

Republican lawmakers in North Carolina have filed a bill that could make it more difficult for transgender people to use the bathroom by imposing stiff penalties on anyone convicted of “trespassing” in a restroom.

House Bill 562, co-sponsored by state Rep. Brenden Jones, was filed on Tuesday, shortly after the NCAA announced that it was lifting its boycott of North Carolina because the state’s Legislature partially repealed a law that had required people to use bathrooms consistent with the sex they were assigned at birth.

The text of the new bill does not mention transgender people or even refer to a person’s sex. Instead, it states that entering or remaining in a bathroom “without authorization” after being asked to leave by the owner of the facility, a manager, or anyone else in the room will be considered trespassing. “My bill will do two things,” Jones wrote in a Facebook post last Thursday. “First, it will specifically state it is a second degree trespass for entering the restroom or changing room of the opposite sex; secondly, it would enhance the punishment from what is now, a class 3 misdemeanor punishable up to only 10 days, to a class 1 misdemeanor, punishable up to 120 days in jail.” Jones did not respond to a request for comment.

Requiring “authorization” to be in a bathroom could be particularly harmful for transgender people, says Cathryn Oakley of Human Rights Campaign, a gay and transgender rights advocacy group. By Oakley’s reading of the bill, a trans male college student could be prosecuted for trespass if he uses the men’s room on his campus after being asked to leave by another student in the room.

Last week, the state Legislature replaced House Bill 2, the so-called bathroom bill, with a new law that LGBT groups have described as “HB2.0” because it opens the door for these types of restrictive regulations. The replacement law prevents cities, schools, and localities from passing nondiscrimination ordinances for trans people in bathrooms, preventing any local guarantees that trans people can use facilities consistent with their gender identity. “There’s no backstop to prevent further anti-LGBTQ legislation from being introduced, debated, and potentially passed,” Oakley says. “The North Carolina General Assembly is not going to stop going after transgender people.”

The latest bill, says Democratic Rep. Deb Butler, appears to be a direct response to the recent replacement of the original bathroom bill. “A faction of the Republican Party here in North Carolina is angry that HB2 was repealed,” she says. “They wanted it, they liked it just the way it was. This is, I am sure, their attempt to thumb their nose at the compromise.” Butler says the new bill will likely be introduced to the Legislature on Wednesday and assigned to a committee. “The lunacy persists.” A companion bill has been filed in the state Senate.

Jones voted in favor of the HB2 replacement last week. Jones wrote on Facebook after the vote that “our children will not be forced to share bathrooms with those of the opposite sex…I will never waiver on this vital issue of privacy.” Police officers and other experts note that there is no evidence that sexual predators are taking advantage of legal protections for transgender people in public restrooms.

Update, 10:30 p.m.: Gov. Roy Cooper has come out against the trespassing bill. “The Governor is not supportive of efforts such as these as he believes we ought to be working to expand statewide protections for LGBT North Carolinians,” Ford Porter, a spokesman for Cooper, said in a statement.

Continue reading here: 

North Carolina Republicans Try to Block Transgender People From Bathrooms—Again

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on North Carolina Republicans Try to Block Transgender People From Bathrooms—Again

Businesswoman Who Bought Trump Penthouse Is Connected to Chinese Intelligence Front Group

Mother Jones

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

When a Chinese American businesswoman who sells access to powerful people recently purchased a $15.8 million penthouse in a building owned by President Donald Trump, the deal raised a key question. Was this a straightforward real estate transaction, or was this an effort to win favor with the new administration? The woman, Angela Chen, refused to discuss the purchase with the media. The White House and the Trump Organization would not comment on it. Further investigation by Mother Jones has unearthed a new element to the story: Chen has ties to important members of the Chinese ruling elite and to an organization considered a front group for Chinese military intelligence.

Chen, who also goes by the names Xiao Yan Chen and Chen Yu, purchased the four-bedroom condo in the Trump Park Avenue building in New York City on February 21. As Mother Jones first reported, Chen runs a business consulting firm, Global Alliance Associates, which specializes in linking US businesses seeking deals in China with the country’s top power brokers. “As counselors in consummating the right relationships—quite simply—we provide access,” Chen’s firm boasts on its website. But Chen has another job: She chairs the US arm of a nonprofit called the China Arts Foundation, which was founded in 2006 and has links with Chinese elites and the country’s military intelligence service.

The China Arts Foundation was created by Deng Rong, the youngest daughter of Deng Xiaoping, the iconic revolutionary figure and Chinese leader. Deng Rong is what’s known in China as a princeling—a term used for the sons and daughters of former high-ranking officials or officers in the Chinese Communist Party who now hold significant sway in business and political circles. Since 1990, Deng has also served as a vice president of the China Association for International Friendly Contacts, which is an affiliate of the intelligence and foreign propaganda division of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). China experts say CAIFC exists to cultivate relationships with former leaders and retired military officials and diplomats of various countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, in order to influence foreign defense policies toward China and the Far East.

To sum up: An influence-peddler who works with a princeling tied to Chinese military intelligence placed $15.8 million in the pockets of the president of the United States.

Mark Stokes, executive director of the Project 2049 Institute, a Virginia-based think tank that focuses on national security policy with respect to Asia, says CAIFC’s leadership consists largely of retired (and some current) Chinese military and government officials. Stokes, who has written about Chinese political warfare, says CAIFC has become “an important channel of access to Chinese Communist Party princelings.” He adds that “by influencing perceptions” of China (especially in connection to controversial issues, such as China’s stance toward Taiwan), CAIFC hopes to “influence policies of foreign governments, particularly related to defense and national security.”

The China Arts Foundation bills itself as a promoter of cultural exchanges between the United States and China, often involving classical music. The group has a branch in New York, which is run by Angela Chen, and another in Hong Kong. Various members of China’s elite serve on the group’s board, including Wang Boming, one of the founders of China’s stock market; Hong Kong orchestra conductor Long Yu; and Marjorie Yang, a political power broker and textile magnate who’s nicknamed the “cotton princess.” (Yang is reportedly bankrolling the campaign of John Tsang, a candidate for chief executive of Hong Kong, the city’s highest office.) Li Zhaoxing, a former foreign minister, and Guo Shuqing, the chairman of China’s banking regulation commission, were named as board members in a promotional video posted on the website of the foundation’s American branch.

On Tuesday, after Mother Jones made inquiries, the website for the China Arts Foundation International went offline. (You can view an archived version of the site here.)

Angela Chen’s role with the China Arts Foundation has brought her into contact with prominent American and Chinese figures. In 2014, the foundation hosted its Chinese New Year gala at New York’s Le Cirque restaurant on behalf of Deng Rong, and the guests included billionaire Chinese real estate developer Zhang Xin, philanthropist and banker Steven Rockefeller, and Stephen Schwarzman, the billionaire investor and CEO of the Blackstone Group. The Chinese consul general in New York, Zhang Qiyue, and former US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman attended a 2015 benefit dinner hosted by the foundation.

The promotional video indicates that there has been a working relationship between the China Arts Foundation and CAIFC. In it, Chen’s group takes credit for sponsoring numerous international summits, including a meeting of international business leaders and think tank experts called the Sanya Forum, which was organized by CAIFC. Several China experts tell Mother Jones that CAIFC engages in legitimate cultural exchange activities but that it has long been seen as part of the Chinese military intelligence apparatus. In a 2002 article published in the China Quarterly, a peer-reviewed British academic journal, George Washington University professor and China scholar David Shambaugh characterized CAIFC as an offshoot of the intelligence bureau of the People’s Liberation Army. He noted that CAIFC’s offices are located in a Beijing compound used by military units.

In 2012, the Republican National Committee considered a resolution expressing concern about a cultural exchange program organized by CAIFC because of the group’s ties to Chinese military intelligence. The resolution, which was not adopted, was fueled by a report from a congressional committee that studies US-China relations. The report labeled CAIFC “a front organization for the International Liaison Department of the People’s Liberation Army’s General Political Department.”

CAIFC has also prompted concerns at the US State Department. During Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, an aide to Bill Clinton sought the State Department’s approval for the former president to make a November 2012 speaking appearance co-sponsored by CAIFC and the China Arts Foundation, according to government emails released through the Freedom of Information Act. An official at the State Department noted that CAIFC’s leadership included current and former Chinese government officials and wrote to Clinton’s aide, “I don’t believe we’ve approved Chinese gov’t entities in the past and so we will need to further consider this one.” In the end, Clinton’s aide told the State Department that the former president was backing out of the appearance.

In 2015, a high-ranking CAIFC official was detained as part of an anti-graft campaign by the Chinese army. A South China Morning Post story on the arrest described him as “the chief of a Chinese military intelligence agency.” The paper noted that the official “was in charge of overseas espionage and is better known to the West as the vice-chairman of the government-backed China Association for International Friendly Contact, which used to be the Department of Enemy Work.”

Chen’s purchase of the penthouse unit from Trump was the first deal consummated by Trump’s company since he became president. Prior to taking office, Trump claimed he would remove himself from the daily operations of his business empire, but he remains the owner of the limited liability company that sold Chen the unit. How the deal went down remains a mystery. Chen apparently paid cash, and the apartment she purchased, unlike other penthouse units in the Trump Park Avenue building, was not publicly listed for sale. Chen currently lives in an apartment on a lower floor of the building and uses the unit as a mailing address for the China Arts Foundation and her consulting company. Before moving to Washington, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump lived in the same building. (They are currently trying to sell their apartment.)

Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who, along with Trump’s two adult sons, was handed the task of running Trump’s business empire while he is in the Oval Office, signed the sale documents with Chen. He did not respond to a request for comment. Chen also did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the apartment deal or her relationship with Deng Rong and CAIFC. CAIFC did not respond to an email seeking comment.

When Trump became president, the Trump Organization enlisted an ethics adviser, attorney Bobby Burchfield, to vet potential business deals involving Trump. Burchfield declined to comment about the Chen transaction or explain the vetting process for her purchase of the Trump Park Avenue penthouse.

Norm Eisen, who served as President Barack Obama’s lead ethics lawyer, says the links between Chen, the foundation, CAIFC, and the Chinese government and military raise “a series of very profound and troubling questions.” He notes that there is no transparency regarding the vetting of business deals benefiting Trump. Without such a process, he points out, there are well-founded questions about the true source of the funds used to buy the $15.8 million condo. “When, as here, the public interest is implicated, we’re left at a loss,” Eisen says. “You shouldn’t be asking these questions about a president.”

View this article – 

Businesswoman Who Bought Trump Penthouse Is Connected to Chinese Intelligence Front Group

Posted in alo, Anker, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Businesswoman Who Bought Trump Penthouse Is Connected to Chinese Intelligence Front Group

Here’s What It’s Like to Be Muslim in the Bible Belt in 2017

Mother Jones

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

In August 2012, a mosque opened in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, a bustling college town outside of Nashville that is home to students, long-time residents, refugees, suburban families, and everyone in between. The national headlines for the stories about the event suggested some of the conflicts that had led to this moment: The New York Daily News wrote, “Tennessee Mosque Opens After Years of Controversy,” the New York Times wrote “After a Struggle, Mosque Opens in Tennessee”, and NPR wrote “Murfreesboro Mosque Finally Opens.”

But the summer day when it opened was peaceful and harmonious, with the exception of a lone protester, wearing an “I Love Jesus” hat and a shirt bearing the 10 Commandments. The day was one for celebration, and the members of the Muslim community who had gathered were not dwelling on the fact that during court battles over permits, Rutherford County had spent more than $340,000 in legal fees fighting the right to build this place of worship. Or that the lieutenant governor of Tennessee at the time, Ron Ramsey, had described Islam as a “cult” while voicing opposition to the mosque.

The community itself was split between those attacking the approximately 300 families of the mosque for being Muslim and those who banded with their Muslim neighbors. The peaceful community was the target of a bomb threat—the anonymous caller, later found to be a Texas man, promised it would go off inside the office space where the community was worshipping in the interim on Sept. 11. A vandal scrawled “not welcome” across a sign announcing the construction of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. Construction equipment used to build the walls of the mosque was set on fire, its charred remains a warning to worshippers that they were not safe. But after two troubled years, the mosque finally opened, and residents began to take its presence on Veals Road for granted.

Then Donald Trump was elected, and the anti-Muslim rhetoric that once inflamed the Bible Belt town of 126,000 was reignited.

Murfreesboro is home to a very small fraction of American Muslims, but it was primed for a backlash in a unique way. Most residents remember the saga of the mosque, and the Baptist church next door made its anti-Islam position very clear by erecting 13 10-foot-tall crosses into the ground “to make a statement.” There are residents of Murfreesboro who stood with their Muslim neighbors, leaving flowers and handwritten cards at the front door of the mosque, but there are increasingly louder voices that threaten the safety of others who happen to be Muslim. It’s a sort of microcosm of what has happened across the country, where tensions and even violence have escalated against Muslims in the wake of the inflammatory rhetoric of President Donald Trump.

“People are afraid, and they won’t tell others about harassment,” says Saleh Sbenaty, a leader in the Muslim community, who was deeply involved in the struggle to get the mosque built. “It’s really scary and dangerous.”

He added that some members of the mosque have told him they are considering not attending services because they are frightened of the possibility of an attack. When news broke that a mosque in Texas had been set on fire shortly after Trump announced an executive order temporarily banning refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries, they prayed for safety. When a shooting at a Quebec City mosque by a 27-year-old white male who was reportedly “a right-wing troll who frequently took anti-foreigner and anti-feminist positions and stood up for U.S. President Donald Trump” left six dead and more injured three days after Trump’s executive order, they felt their worst fears were being confirmed.

The Sbenaty family left Syria because it was unsafe, and they wanted a better life for themselves and their children. His daughter Dima was born in Damascus, but her mother brought her to the United States when she was eight months old to join Saleh, who was earning his PhD at the time. Their son, Salim, was born in Murfreesboro. A week after the election, 20-year-old Salim, was waiting tables at a local restaurant when he was asked, “Son, where are you from?”

“I was born and raised here in Murfreesboro,” he replied.

The response was abrupt. “You look foreign.”

“My parents came from Damascus a long time ago,” Salim said. The man stared.

“I’m going to the car to get my gun.”

Later that night, he told his father, who was horrified, and asked how he responded. Salim said the man had probably never met anyone who looked like him before, and he did not want to deepen his hatred. Saleh says many people in the Muslim community in Murfreesboro would have done the same, although he encouraged his son to report the incident.

During his campaign, Trump went back and forth on a proposal to create a “Muslim registry.” When he was asked about it in November 2015, he said, “We’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely. We’re going to have to look at the mosques.” Later, he said he wanted to have a database on Syrian refugees who immigrate into the United States. Less than a month later, in December 2015, he proposed banning all Muslim immigration. Trump has consistently talked about the threat of “radical Islam,” and in an interview with CNN last year, he told Anderson Cooper, “I think Islam hates us.”

Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, has also been vocal about his views on Islam. “We are in an outright war against jihadist, Islamic fascists,” Bannon said in a 2014 speech. He also said the religion was metastasizing—like cancer.

Some Tennessee lawmakers have spouted similar claims—Tennessee state Sen. Mae Beavers told town hall attendees on Feb. 16 that Muslim terrorists were “infiltrating churches” and planning jihad in the Bible Belt. She also has expressed support for Trump’s “Muslim ban.” Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who served as a vice chair of Trump’s transition team, said Trump’s immigration order was a “security test, not a religious one.”

“Our intelligence and security agencies must ascertain the scope of the Islamic terror threat in order to develop proper refugee vetting protocols—if possible,” she wrote in an op-ed for The Tennessean.

And now, according to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, anti-Muslim hate groups have tripled since 2015.

Ossama Bahoul, the former imam at the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, said there is a big difference between what the Muslim community in Middle Tennessee went through when the mosque was being built and what is happening now. Back then, the government was on their side—it defended his people’s right to worship and promised to take swift action against anyone who threatened them. Now, he hears the Islamophobia that used to come from the mouths of protesters coming from the government. “It is really disturbing for me to be talking about this,” Bahloul said. “The people who are supposed to protect us are singling our community out. That’s tough.”

Bahloul and Saleh Sbenaty tell Mother Jones about women who had been threatened for wearing the hijab and sometimes, Bahloul said, people have tried to assault them. Schoolchildren have come home crying because other children asked if their headscarves are hiding a bomb. Other Muslims have told him they have heard mutterings of “it’s about time to clean up America” and “go back home” when they pass by.

Recently, when another student at school referred to one of the children in his congregation as “Bin Laden,” Bahloul found himself at a loss. “Our kids were born in America—they don’t speak any language but English,” he said. “They are American kids, and they will come at a very young age and say, ‘Why do they hate us?'”

The effects of Trump’s comments about Muslims is not restricted to the random acts of violence directed at Muslims in the United States. The executive order he signed banning refugees and immigrants from seven predominantly-Muslim countries—including Syria—mean the Sbenatys and other families fear they’ll be separated from family members for quite some time. Saleh hasn’t seen his mother, who is 83, in 11 years. He wants to bring her to America, but the recent events make that seem unlikely. His siblings got married after he left Syria, and he has nieces and nephews he has never met. Minutes after the Ninth Circuit Court filed a preliminary injunction against Trump’s immigration order, effectively putting it on hold, Trump tweeted, in all caps: “See you in court, the security of our nation is at stake!”

“Now there is no option for me to go and visit or for them to come over here,” Saleh told Mother Jones before the court ruling. “It’s something you cannot explain in words.”

Dima Sbenaty, Saleh’s daughter, is a 27-year-old clinical coordinator for the stroke unit at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. The week after Trump’s “Muslim ban” took effect, she spoke at a vigil in support of Muslim Americans. Thousands showed up. “Islam taught me to give back…As a Muslim, it is my obligation to you to be strong, to uphold justice, and to protect your rights,” she told the crowd that night. “That is how America raised me.”

Recently, she decided to start wearing a hijab, and because of the outward signifier that she is Muslim, she has encountered some animosity in the workplace. Sometimes, when she’s out running errands, she gets an uncomfortable sensation, like she’s being watched by someone with less-than-friendly intentions. But she’s determined not to let fear rule her. “I’m practicing my freedom by covering my hair; I’m practicing my freedom by saying that I’m Muslim and going to the mosque,” she tells Mother Jones. “That’s my freedom as an American, and I don’t think I should be afraid…Refugees are leaving a place where they’re being dehumanized. They’re coming into America to seek refuge, and they’re entering another hell.”

As for Imam Bahloul, he is still wrestling with how to explain to the community what is happening and how to deal with being targeted. “For a girl to cry and say, ‘I want to cover my hair, but I’m scared,’ that girl must not be scared in America,” he said. “We’re part of the American fabric.”

Original source:

Here’s What It’s Like to Be Muslim in the Bible Belt in 2017

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s What It’s Like to Be Muslim in the Bible Belt in 2017

Republican Election Commissioners Just Released Key Legal Documents—Nearly a Decade Too Late

Mother Jones

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

A strange thing happened last week at the Federal Election Commission, the nation’s watchdog for campaigns and elections. On Friday evening, the FEC’s three Republican members quietly released a slew of missing legal memos related to cases dating back as far as 10 years. The commissioners gave no reason for why they decided to act now, after a decade of silence on the cases in question.

But it turns out that the newly released memos were the result of a Freedom of Information Act request recently filed by Mother Jones. The request was a modest one and asked only for a list of all such overdue legal documents at the FEC. That list would show every case for which FEC commissioners had failed to perform a customary part of their jobs: explaining to the public why they had voted a certain way on cases that had come before the agency. Dismiss a complaint, open an investigation, assess a fine—whichever way a commissioner decides, he or she is expected to explain that decision in a memo made available to the public.

In a move that perplexed several legal experts, the FEC denied our FOIA request. Yet soon after that, the FEC’s three Republican commissioners hastily wrote and released to the public 11 of these long-overdue legal memos. When Mother Jones asked the three Republican commissioners if our FOIA request had anything to do with their decision to act, two of them, Lee Goodman and Matthew Petersen, confirmed that it had. “Most of these were on the back burner as our reasons were either already clear or changes in the law made the issues moot,” Petersen says. “Your request was a useful reminder to bolster the record with formal statements.”

Congress created the FEC in the 1970s to police campaign-related abuses and enforce election laws passed in the wake of Watergate. Unlike most federal agencies, the FEC has an even number of commissioners—six—divided equally by political party. In today’s hyper-partisan environment, with frequent 3-3 deadlocks on key votes, it’s hard not to see the FEC as an institution designed to fail. (The commission will be without a sixth member now that Democrat Ann Ravel has announced her resignation, effective March 1.)

But for most of its 40-year history, the FEC worked mostly fine. The commissioners regularly found the four-vote majority they needed to act—to investigate potential wrongdoing, assess fines against lawbreakers, and provide guidance to candidates, committees, political parties, and other outfits looking to get involved in federal elections. That began to change in the mid-2000s. Three new Republicans came aboard who took a more ideological approach to campaign finance laws and free speech. Led by then-Commissioner Donald McGahn, who is now President Donald Trump’s White House counsel, the Republicans often voted in lockstep to block enforcement actions. A Public Citizen analysis found that the FEC hit a 3-3 vote on enforcement actions roughly 1 percent of the time between 2003 and 2007. In 2008, deadlocks rose to 10 percent. In 2013, they hit a peak of 23 percent. “For nearly every case of major significance over the past several years, the Commission has deadlocked on investigating serious allegations or has failed to hold violators fully accountable,” outgoing Democratic Commissioner Ann Ravel wrote in a recent report titled Dysfunction and Deadlock.

When FEC commissioners vote on a case to go against what the agency’s lawyers recommend, they are required to publish a legal justification—a Statement of Reasons, in agency jargon—for why they voted the way they did. These memos educate the public on the legal underpinnings of the commission’s decisions and give outside parties a basis to sue the agency if they disagree. But starting in the mid-2000s, the FEC’s Republicans simply stopped explaining many of their decisions. Some or all of the Republican commissioners failed to write Statements of Reasons in 25 such cases over a 10-year span, according to an unofficial tally obtained by Mother Jones earlier this month. (The tally shows that Democratic commissioners had no overdue Statements of Reasons.)

Larry Noble, a former FEC general counsel who now works at the Campaign Legal Center, a group that supports tighter political donation limits and more transparency in elections, says that failure to file Statements of Reasons is longstanding problem that has worsened over time. “Delaying them deprives the public of knowing what’s going on or why commissioners did what they did,” Noble says.

A few weeks ago, Mother Jones filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the FEC’s own list of all overdue legal Statements of Reasons. In its February 17 denial letter, an FEC official cited FOIA Exemption 5, which shields from disclosure “documents covered by the attorney work-product, deliberative process, and attorney-client privileges.”

Two hours after the denial, the FEC posted its weekly digest. It included the 11 Statements of Reasons authored by Republican commissioners relating to old cases. The documents were all signed and dated within a four-day span last week, and each one is only several pages long, unlike the lengthy, footnote-laden documents typically produced by the commissioners and their staffs.

Ellen Weintraub, the senior-most Democratic commissioner at FEC, applauded the release of the 11 legal memos. “I am pleased on behalf of the American people that they are finally getting some kind of explanation for the commission’s failure to act in so many cases,” she says.

This article is from:

Republican Election Commissioners Just Released Key Legal Documents—Nearly a Decade Too Late

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Republican Election Commissioners Just Released Key Legal Documents—Nearly a Decade Too Late

Mother Jones Wins “Best Picture Award for the Magazine Industry”

Mother Jones

It’s been an extraordinary few months for Mother Jones—from publishing a massive investigation on private prisons to breaking the story of a veteran spy’s allegations that Russia had sought to compromise Donald Trump, to launching a new model for investigative reporting on a foundation of reader support. Today, those breakthroughs and more were honored with the most prestigious award in the magazine industry, the 2017 Magazine of the Year award from the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME). MoJo also took home the award for Best Reporting for Shane Bauer’s “My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard,” and we were a finalist in the General Excellence category.

This was the first year Mother Jones was nominated for Magazine of the Year—our industry’s equivalent of the Best Picture Oscar—alongside The New Yorker, New York, Cosmopolitan, and California Sunday. Judges recognized our work on the most important political stories of the year, including Trump’s conflicts of interest, his ties to white nationalism, and the Russia memos, along with myriad investigative and immersive narratives, dramatically increased traffic and visibility, and a widely acclaimed redesign of our website and print magazine.

“Holy shit,” as our editor-in-chief, Clara Jeffery, put it in accepting the award, adding that she was “super proud of our entire team.” The recognition comes at an especially important time, she said, when “the media is under attack. Whether we are magazines that specialize in news and politics, or whether we are magazines that delight and distract, we are going to need both. I really hope we all stick together in the time to come.”

(Needless to say, at MoJo we plan to double down against attacks on freedom of the press and democracy as a whole. If you’d like to help support unrelenting investigative reporting, subscribe here or donate here.) And if you already do—or if you’re part of the MoJo community in other ways, as a frequent reader, sharer, or cheerleader, or as someone who uses our journalism to change the world: THANK YOU. MoJo is unique because we rely on users, not advertisers or deep-pocketed interests, to make our work possible. This award belongs to you.

Here’s what it looked like when Clara and the MoJo delegation learned the news at the awards ceremony:

Original post:

Mother Jones Wins “Best Picture Award for the Magazine Industry”

Posted in alo, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Mother Jones Wins “Best Picture Award for the Magazine Industry”

Go to Jail. Die From Drug Withdrawal. Welcome to the Criminal Justice System.

Mother Jones

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

When Tyler Tabor was booked in a jail outside Denver on a spring afternoon in 2015, he told a screening nurse that he was a daily heroin user and had a prescription for Xanax. A friendly, outdoorsy 25-year-old with a son in kindergarten, Tabor had started using opioids after he injured his back on the job as a welder. When he was arrested on two misdemeanor warrants, his parents decided not to pay his $300 bail, thinking he would be safer in jail and away from heroin for a few days.

Three days later, Tabor died of dehydration at the Adams County jail, according to a coroner’s report. The alleged cause: drug withdrawal.

A lawsuit filed by the Tabors against the county and Corizon Health, the jail’s private health care provider, describes in chilling detail the three days of missed opportunities and seemingly callous medical care. It draws on video footage, some of which is shown below, from a surveillance camera in Tabor’s cell. By the end of the first day in jail, Tabor was in the throes of severe withdrawal: vomiting, diarrhea, low blood pressure. He was too dehydrated to provide a urine sample. A day later, he could no longer walk or unclench his fingers. When a nurse came by to give him the usual withdrawal medications—a cocktail of things like Gatorade and Pepto Bismol—he fell to the ground, trembling. Later that night, he begged for an IV—he knew from a previous detox that withdrawing from the combination of heroin, an opioid, and Xanax, a benzodiazepine, was particularly risky. But, according to the complaint, he was told IVs were only used when “absolutely necessary.” He died six hours later, leaving behind a wife and a five-year-old son.

“A simple IV would have almost certainly saved his life,” reads the complaint.

Adams County officials declined to comment on the case. Martha Harbin, a spokesperson for Corizon Health, said the allegations in the complaint were “inconsistent with the known facts.” She added, “It certainly is not our policy to deny a patient appropriate and indicated treatment.”

Yet as the nationwide opioid epidemic continues to spiral, more and more inmates who use heroin, painkillers, or methadone are showing up in jails across the country, where withdrawal treatment can be rudimentary. “So many more people are coming in hooked on opioids,” says David Lane, the attorney representing the Tabors. “If the jails are not trained and they’re not ready for it, you get a Tyler Tabor.”

No organization tracks how many people have died from drug withdrawal in jail, but Mother Jones found 20 lawsuits filed between 2014 and 2016 alleging that an inmate died from opiate withdrawal complications. That number likely represents just a fraction of all jail withdrawal deaths, Lane says. In addition to the counties, many families also sue the companies that public jails often contract with to provide health care—like Corizon Health, in the Tabors’ case.

By the time of Tabor’s death, in May, at least four other inmates in jails around the country had died that year from complications of opiate withdrawal, according to lawsuits filed by their families. In March, 37-year-old Jennifer Lobato was booked into Colorado’s Jefferson County jail, just a half hour from where Tabor would die, for shoplifting $57 of merchandise from Old Navy with her son. A guard scoffed at Lobato, a regular heroin user, as she vomited before collapsing, according to a subsequent investigation by the sheriff’s office. A month later, an 18-year-old aspiring artist named Tori Herr collapsed in Pennsylvania’s Lebanon County jail. “I just want something to drink,” she said to her mom on the phone days before she died. “I want lemonade.”

Left: Tori Herr as a high schooler. Right: Herr in the hospital after withdrawal in jail. Courtesy of the Herr family

Jefferson County settled the Lobato case for $2.5 million last fall. County spokesman Mark Techmeyer said the jail’s withdrawal treatment and evaluation protocols changed in response to Lobato’s death; Lebanon County officials declined to comment on the Herr case.

Outside of jails, dying from opiate withdrawal is exceedingly rare because, with few exceptions, it is so preventable. Dehydration, the withdrawal symptom that usually kills people, can be treated with intravenous fluids. It’s nearly unheard of to withdraw from opioids without slowly tapering or having emergency medical care, says Kevin Fiscella, an addiction specialist who sits on the board of the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC), which accredits correctional health services. “What’s happening in jails, it’s kind of a natural experiment to see what happens,” he says. “And in fact some people do die.”

When a user quits opioids cold turkey, the body quickly starts to experience the opposite effects of the original drug, resulting in a rarely fatal but often tortuous withdrawal process that can persist for days or weeks. Where opioids reduce pain, withdrawal makes the body hypersensitive to it. Opioids induce euphoria; withdrawal feels like the world is going to end. Opioids cause constipation; withdrawal causes diarrhea and vomiting. If a person going through withdrawal can’t keep fluids down and is not given an IV, he or she can succumb to dehydration.

Fiscella notes that a number of factors can make withdrawal behind bars risky. Inmates don’t always tell nurses during the screening process that they’re drug users; sometimes, withdrawal kicks off a domino effect that makes other health conditions, like heart problems, act up. Lots of opioid users are also on benzodiazepines like Xanax or Valium, known for enhancing and extending the effects of heroin, painkillers, or methadone. Benzodiazepines can make withdrawal much more dangerous.

What’s more, many cash-strapped jails lack basic medications or medical equipment like IVs. And often, Fiscella says, there simply aren’t enough health care staff to check in regularly on each and every withdrawal patient. “In a lot of these deaths, people were simply ignored,” he says.

Of the 20 alleged opiate withdrawal deaths in jails that Mother Jones found, five occurred in jails served by a privately held company called Correct Care Solutions. Based in Tennessee, CCS is one of the country’s largest correctional health care services, providing medical services to 250,000 patients in jails, prisons, state hospitals, and forensic treatment centers throughout the country.

In 2015, the company brought in nearly $1 billion in revenue, according to the Nashville Business Journal. CCS President Patrick Cummiskey told the Journal that the company had “grown 20 percent-plus annually since inception, so growth is our norm.”

Related: Seven Charts That Speak Volumes About the Opioid Epidemic

Despite the company’s robust finances, treating withdrawal can fall through the cracks, according to four jail nurses who currently or recently worked for Correct Care Solutions. Their names have been changed to protect their privacy.

During the evening shift at the Brown County jail in Green Bay, Wisconsin, there is one nurse—and no other medical staff—for roughly 700 inmates, according to nurses who worked at the facility. “I had people detoxing, I had people with chest pain, I had people getting into fights, I had emergencies where people aren’t breathing,” said Abby, who worked at the facility for nine months before leaving last fall. “I can’t assess somebody three times a shift when there’s one nurse for 700 inmates, and do a meaningful assessment, and also provide interventions when I have 20 people on opiate withdrawal.”

Abby says she bought her own medical supplies because the blood pressure cuffs, thermometers, and stethoscopes provided by CCS didn’t always work. She often found herself stuck between a rock and a hard place: There was no IV therapy in the jail, but sending inmates to the hospital was frowned upon. In order to send a withdrawal patient to the hospital, she said, the inmate would “need to be at the point where their vital signs were dropping, their internal organs were starting to become compromised.”

Abby left CCS last fall because she was worried that the quality of care at the jail was so low that she was violating her nursing license. “If I was called into court, I couldn’t say truthfully that I am providing good nursing care,” she said.

Brown County declined to comment for this article.

Greta, a nurse at a different jail served by CCS, described a similar scene. During a typical medical check, Greta had about 30 seconds to take an inmate’s vital signs, hand out medications, and gauge withdrawal symptoms—often in dim lighting and always standing next to a deputy jail guard. On top of it, she said, “You’re using your eyes and your ears because you don’t really have technology. You’re lucky to have a blood pressure cuff.”

Asked about the allegations, CCS spokesman Jim Cheney wrote in an email to Mother Jones, “While it is very difficult to respond to an anonymous source when determining the credibility of their assertion, CCS employs regional executives across the country to ensure that the service standards we have established are upheld. It is difficult to imagine a scenario in which a facility was not provided the instruments necessary for routine healthcare, and should there be a need, our nurses have immediate and direct access to administrative teams who can facilitate those resources in short-order.” He added that the staffing ratio is determined by “facility capabilities,” and the company does not frown upon the use of outside providers. In the event that the medical needs of an inmate fall beyond what the facility can provide, he said, “we rely on our medical partners in the community for support.”

Watch: WDIV investigates the death of David Stojcevski

But in some cases no one calls for support before it’s too late. A video strikingly similar to that of Tabor shows David Stojcevski, a 32-year-old from outside Detroit, losing 50 pounds over 16 days of vomiting, diarrhea, and trembling on the ground before his death in the summer of 2014. Stojcevski had been booked at the Macomb County Jail, also served by CCS, for being unable to pay a $772 fine for driving carelessly. Though he notified nurses of his prescriptions to methadone and Xanax, an opioid and a benzodiazepine, respectively, he never received either medication in jail, according to a lawsuit later filed by his parents.

A Department of Justice investigation of the case found no criminal wrongdoing on the part of Macomb County or CCS, saying there wasn’t enough evidence that jail staff acted with criminal intent to prosecute the case. The lawsuit filed by the family is ongoing; county officials declined to comment on the case. Cheney described CCS’s withdrawal protocol as “one of most advanced and respected in the industry,” adding that CCS follows standards from the NCCHC and the American Correctional Association. He added that “while tragic situations do occur, there are exponentially more circumstances in which our professionals save lives and improve the health of the individuals that they treat.”

Corizon Health, the health care provider in Tabor’s case and the nation’s largest privately held correctional health company, is currently facing at least one other lawsuit alleging an opiate withdrawal death. A year before Tabor died, Madaline Pitkin, a 26-year-old from Portland, Oregon, died of heroin withdrawal after repeatedly requesting help on medical forms, according to a lawsuit filed by her family. In her final request, she wrote, “This is a 3rd or 4th call for help. I haven’t been able to keep food, liquids, meds down in 6 days…I feel like I am very close to death. Can’t hear, seeing lights, hearing voices. Please help me.”

Harbin, the Corizon spokesperson, declined to comment on the specifics of Tabor’s or Pitkin’s cases because of active litigation and patient privacy rules. “One of the most common misconceptions about our company is that we somehow benefit from providing lower quality care,” she wrote in an email. “To the contrary, what makes good medical sense and good business sense is proactive preventive care—intervening early to treat conditions before they become serious and more costly to treat.”

Tabor’s family, meanwhile, is still reeling from their loss. Tyler’s son, D.T., an energetic six-year-old who loves fishing and biking, still regularly asks when his dad will come home. Tyler’s father, Ray, a manager at the local Safeway, tells D.T. that he went to heaven. “It’s one thing to lose a child,” says Ray. “But it’s another thing knowing that he died in a jail cell alone on the floor, asking for help.”

Originally posted here: 

Go to Jail. Die From Drug Withdrawal. Welcome to the Criminal Justice System.

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Pines, Radius, Safer, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Go to Jail. Die From Drug Withdrawal. Welcome to the Criminal Justice System.

Enormous Crowds Expected at Women’s Marches Around the World

Mother Jones

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

On Saturday, January 21, more than 200,000 women are expected to march in Washington, DC, to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump. The organizers predict that they’ll be joined by more than 2 million women in more than 600 marches worldwide. Want to find a march near you? Use this tool.

Mother Jones reporters will be on the scene at the marches. Check back here Saturday for the latest.

Link: 

Enormous Crowds Expected at Women’s Marches Around the World

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Enormous Crowds Expected at Women’s Marches Around the World

Investigators on the Trump-Russia Beat Should Talk to This Man

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
Sergei Millian, left, pictured with Donald Trump and Jorge Perez. Millian’s Facebook page

Last week, the Senate intelligence committee announced it was commencing an investigation of Russian hacking during the 2016 campaign that would include an examination of connections between Russia and the Trump camp. And a veiled but pubic exchange between Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the committee, and FBI Director James Comey during a hearing on January 10 suggested the FBI has collected information on possible ties between Trump associates and Russians and may still be probing this matter. So with subpoena-wielding investigators on this beat, here’s a suggestion: the gumshoes ought to talk to an American from Belarus named Sergei Millian, who has boasted of close ties to Trump and who has worked with an outfit the FBI suspected of being a Russian intelligence front. If they haven’t already.

Millian, who is in his late 30s and won’t say when came to the United States or how he obtained US citizenship, is an intriguing and mysterious figure with a curious connection to Trump. He is president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce in the USA (RACC) and the owner of a translation service. The RACC, a nonprofit which Millian started in Atlanta in 2006 and which has survived on shoestring budgets, advocates for closer commercial ties between Russia and the United States and assists US firms looking to do business in Russia. In 2009, the group called for the US Congress “to foster necessary political changes to produce a healthier economic environment” and grant permanent normal trade relations status to Russia. Its website notes that it “facilitates cooperation for U.S. members with the Russian Government, Russian Regional Administrations, U.S. Consulates in Russia, Chambers of Commerce in Russia, and corporate leaders from CIS Commonwealth of Independent States countries.”

The Russian-American Chamber of Commerce’s 2011 tax return reported the group was based in an apartment in Astoria, Queens, where Millian lived—though the group’s letterhead that year listed a Wall Street address—and that year it brought in only $23,300 in contributions and grants and $14,748 in program revenue. The tax return noted that the chamber “successfully hosted four universities from Russia in New York City” and hosted a trade mission from Belarus. In 2015, Millian received a Russian award for fostering cooperation between US and Russian businesses.

On his LinkedIn page, Millian notes he is also the vice president of an outfit called the World Chinese Merchants Union Association, a group that has only a slight presence on the Internet and that seems to have an address in Beijing. According to a LinkedIn post published by Millian in April 2016, he met that month in Beijing with a Chinese official and the Russian ambassador to the Republic of San Marino to discuss industrial and commercial cooperation between China and Russia.

Millian’s online bio notes he graduated from the Minsk State Linguistic University with the equivalent of a masters degree in 2000. His bio says he is a real estate broker who works in residential and commercial properties in the United States and abroad. He used to go by the name Siarhei Kukuts—that’s how he’s listed on tax returns for the RACC—and it is unclear why he changed his name. Millian also has repeatedly claimed he had a significant business association with Trump.

In an April 2016 interview with RIA Novosti, a Russian media outlet, Millian described his history with Trump. He said he met the celebrity real estate developer in 2007 when Trump visited Moscow for a “Millionaire’s Fair,” where he was promoting Trump Vodka. Millian noted that Trump subsequently invited him to a horse race in Miami. “Later,” Millian said, “we met at his office in New York, where he introduced me to his right-hand man—Michael Cohen. He is Trump’s main lawyer, all contracts go through him. Subsequently, a contract was signed with me to promote one of their real estate projects in Russia and the CIS. You can say I was their exclusive broker.”

Millian said he had helped Trump “study the Moscow market” for potential real estate investments. In the April 2009 issue of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce newsletter, Millian reported that he was working with Russian investors looking to buy property in the United States, and he said, “We have signed formal agreements with the Richard Bowers and Co., the Trump Organization and The Related Group to jointly service the Russian clients’ commercial, residential and industrial real estate needs.” Millian’s claim did jibe with what Donald Trump Jr. said at a 2008 real-estate conference in New York. Trump’s son noted, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.” He added, “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

In the 2016 interview, Millian asserted that Trump would be good for Russia if elected president. Trump, he noted would improve US relations with Russia and lift economic sanctions imposed by Washington on Russia. He said that Trump was interested in doing business in Russia: “I don’t want to reveal Trump’s position, but he is keeping Moscow in his sights and is waiting for an appropriate time.” Millian added, “In general Trump has a very positive attitude to Russians, because he sees them as clients for his business. Incidentally, he has done many projects with people from the Russian-language diaspora. For example, Trump SoHo in New York with billionaire Tamir Sapir.” (Sapir, who died in 2014, was an American billionaire real-estate developer from the former Soviet republic of Georgia.)

Millian apparently was proud of his association with Trump. In 2014, he posted on Facebook a photograph of him with Trump and Jorge Perez, the billionaire real-estate developer in Miami who owns the Related Group.

Millian seemed delighted to spin for Trump and push the impression he was a Trump insider. During the Republican convention, he told the Daily Beast that Trump was a “powerful, charismatic, and highly intelligent leader with a realistic approach toward Russia.” He added, “I, personally, wholeheartedly support his presidential aspirations. It’s been a great pleasure representing Mr. Trump’s projects in Russia.” But weeks later, as the Russia hacking controversy was heating up, Millian in another exchange with the Daily Beast, downplayed his connection to Trump. And the website reported that after its reporter spoke him, Millian removed mentions of his Trump association from an online biography. It also appears that references to the Trump Organization working with the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce in the USA were at some point scraped from its website.

Millian’s activities and ties to Trump have raised questions. In October, the Financial Times mounted an investigation of him and the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. It reported:

Most of the board members are obscure entities and nearly half of their telephone numbers went unanswered when called by the Financial Times. An FT reporter found no trace of the Chamber of Commerce at the Wall Street address listed on its website. At the same time, the chamber appears to have close official ties, arranging trips for visiting Russian regional governors to the US.

As part of its inquiry into Millian, the newspaper pointed to Millian’s connection to Rossotrudnichestvo, a Russian government organization that promotes Russian culture abroad. In 2013, Mother Jones reported that Rossotrudnichestvo was under investigation by the FBI for using junkets to recruit American assets for Russian intelligence. Through cultural exchanges, Rossotrudnichestvo, which operates under the jurisdiction of the Russian Foreign Ministry, was bringing young Americans—including political aides, nonprofit advocates, and business executives—on trips to Russia. The program was run by Yury Zaytsev, a Russian diplomat who headed the Russian Cultural Center in Washington, DC.

Americans who participated in the exchange trips who were later questioned by FBI agents told Mother Jones that the agents’ questions indicated the FBI suspected Zaytsev and Rossotrudnichestvo had been using the all-expenses-paid trips to Russia to cultivate Americans as intelligence assets. (An asset could be a person who directly works with an intelligence service to gather information, or merely a contact who provides information, opinions, or gossip, not realizing it is being collected by an intelligence officer.) After Mother Jones published a story on the FBI investigation, the Russian embassy in Washington issued a statement: “All such ‘scaring information’ very much resembles Cold War era. A blunt tentative is made to distort and to blacken activities of the Russian Cultural Center in DC, which are aimed at developing mutual trust and cooperation between our peoples and countries.” (A year later, in November 2014, Zaytsev spoke at a Moscow press conference and said, in reference to the upcoming US presidential elections, “it seems to me that the Russian ‘card’ will certainly be played out.” He added, “I think that this presidential election first of all will very clearly show a trend of further development” in US-Russia relations.)

Millian has collaborated with Rossotrudnichestvo. In 2011, he and the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce worked with Zaytsev and the Russian group to mount a 10-day exchange that brought 50 entrepreneurs to the first “Russian-American Business Forum” in Moscow and the Vladimir region, according to a letter Millian sent to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev after the initiative. In that letter, Millian praised Rossotrudnichestvo, and he added, “My entire staff, fellow participants, and I, here at the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce in the USA, very much look forward to assisting Rossotrudnichestvo with the preparations for next year’s trip.” (Millian now says, “We are not affiliated with Rossotrudnichestvo in any way.”)

Toward the end of the presidential campaign Michael Cohen, the Trump lawyer, told the Financial Times that Millian’s claims of working with Trump were “nothing more than a weak attempt to align himself with Mr. Trump’s overwhelmingly successful brand.” But the newspaper reported that Cohen “did not respond to questions about whether he interacted with Mr. Millian or why Mr. Millian is one of only 100 people he follows on Twitter.” (Cohen no longer follows Millian on Twitter.) Hope Hicks, Trump’s campaign spokeswoman, told the paper that Trump had “met and spoke” with Millian only “on one occasion almost a decade ago at a hotel opening.”

Cohen, Hicks, Sean Spicer, Trump’s designated White House press secretary, and the Trump presidential transition team did not respond to a request for information regarding Millian’s interactions with Trump and his associates.

Reached by telephone this week, Millian said he would not discuss his relationship with Trump and requested he be sent questions via email. Mother Jones subsequently sent him a list. Millian responded in an email with answers to a different set of questions, and he noted he would not answer any queries about his personal background or provide any details beyond what was in this reply. He said in the email, “I have a solid reputation with businesses around the world. It’s a common practice for immigrants to change name upon immigrating to the USA. I am US citizen and do not have and never had Russian citizenship. I live and work in NYC.”

In the email, Millian asserted, “I have never said that I worked personally for Trump. I said I was a broker for one of his many real estate projects. There are several brokers who work on such real estate projects. I never represented Mr Trump personally and I am not working with Mr Trump.” He added, “I have signed an official contract with talks of exclusivity that authorized me to represent Trump name project in Russia and CIS.” But he said he had never been paid by Trump for any work. He maintained that the last time he spoke to Trump was in 2008.

Millian insisted he had “never worked for Russian Government or Russian military as a translator or in any other capacity.” He said, “We never got any business with Rossotrudnichestvo.” And he made this point: “I’m a member of the Presidential Trust of NRC-GOP and supporter of Mr Trump who contributed to his campaign just the same way as many millions of Americans. I’m proud that Mr Trump became our president. I’m sure he will rebuild our great nation to the highest standards just as he did with his distinguished buildings. We desperately need better infrastructure, airports, railways in this country. Also, high time starting paying off national debts. I feel upset that press tries to distracts him from making our country great again by distributing fake news.” (A search of campaign finance records revealed no contribution from Millian to the Trump campaign or Republican National Committee; a contribution of $200 does not have to itemized.)

Millian’s response ignored several questions Mother Jones sent him. He would not say when he left Belarus or explain how he became an American citizen. He would not discuss the details of the deal he previously claimed to have struck with the Trump Organization. He would not say how many times he worked on projects or exchanges with Rossotrudnichestvo. (His response seemed to suggest he had nothing to do with the Russian organization, yet the 2011 letter he wrote indicated his Russian-American Chamber of Commerce had collaborated with Rossotrudnichestvo.) He did not explain why references to the Trump organization had been scraped from the RACC’s website and his bio. And he did not answer this question: “In the last year and a half, have you had any contacts with Donald Trump or any of his political or business associates?”

Various media outlets that have examined links between Trump and Russia have focused on Carter Page, a Moscow-connected foreign policy adviser for Trump ‘s presidential campaign (whom Trump spokesman Sean Spicer recently falsely claimed Trump did not know) and Paul Manafort, Trump’s onetime presidential campaign manager who had business ties to Russians and Putin-allied Ukrainians. Any official investigators would likely be interested in these two men. They also should schedule a sit down with Millian.

Originally posted here:

Investigators on the Trump-Russia Beat Should Talk to This Man

Posted in Casio, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, Prepara, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Investigators on the Trump-Russia Beat Should Talk to This Man

Review: "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" Isn’t Even About Two Stars That Go to War

Mother Jones

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

About a year ago Star Wars: The Force Awakens came out and Mother Jones’ Edwin Rios and Ben Dreyfuss had a chat certifying that it was, in fact, wonderful. Today, we are back again to discuss the latest entry in the universe, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. There are a lot of spoilers in this.

Ben Dreyfuss: Eddie! We’re doing this again. It’s becoming a tradition. We talk about the Star Wars films Friday after having seen late Thursday night showings. Maybe next year we’ll have the foresight to see an advance press screening.

Edwin Rios: Alright, let’s jump right in, because this new Star Wars flick was…something. Where do we begin?

BD: OK, Rogue One! So it’s set like right before A New Hope and some people are going to steal the plans for the Death Star so that Luke and friends can destroy it. And we start on some planet where Hannibal Lecter from the NBC show Hannibal is farming with his wife and daughter and an evil general comes to fetch him because Hannibal is the only person smart enough to build the evil general’s evil Death Star but Hannibal really doesn’t want to because Hannibal has a soul so to convince him to come they kill Hannibal’s wife, like you do, and his daughter runs away and then Hannibal goes “OK, OK, I’ll build the Death Star” and some many years later the daughter is in prison and the rebels, they need her, because of reasons, and…and…I am so bored even describing this movie.

ER: It doesn’t make sense why the rebels would capture the daughter of the guy who knows how to build the Death Star. To lure him out?

BD: Also, like why was she even in jail? Why didn’t Hannibal rescue her? Did they bother to explain any of that?

ER: No. I mean, it’s implied that he’s been holed up with a group of researchers on that one planet finalizing the plans for the Death Star. But that comes later. My question: Why didn’t Forest Whitaker just stick around and help Jyn.

BD: Oh shit that was Forest Whitaker? I thought it might have been but he had a bunch of space makeup on. (I also have clearly not done any research for this chat).

ER: Yeah, man. I thought he was pretty good, given how poor the writing was.

BD: Yeah, he was good. I think all the actors were actually pretty good. The girl, who’s the star, and also Diego Luna who is a Rebel fighter and also her bae.

ER: Ha, right. One of the movie’s issues: I didn’t feel emotionally invested in the characters. At all. The actors were stuck with a script that A.O. Scott called “surprisingly hackish.” They didn’t get the chance to connect with the audience. Like, Riz Ahmed (The Night Of) barely said anything of substance. He handed the message to Whitaker and was like, “Believe me!” Also, I guess he came up with the movie’s title…

BD: That moment was weird, but I actually didn’t mind it. But yeah him the guy from Nightcrawler. He was fine, too. But he had nothing to do but fly the plane and come up with the title of the film and die.

ER: And for most of the film, the droid and Captain Cassian (Diego Luna) flew the ship from planet to planet. So many planets. So Riz’s moment of greatness arose at the end of the film, like everyone else.

BD: So anyway, Diego Luna and Hannibal’s daughter and the guy from Nightcrawler and a blind man all team up to steal the plans to the Death Star and they spend a very long time sort of like not finding those plans and then in the last hour of the film do in fact find them in a big climactic battle scene.

ER: As far as Star Wars battle scenes go, that was pretty epic.

BD: Totally agree. There was this minor Twitter outrage about a Vox headline that said like “Rogue One is the first Star Wars movie to acknowledge that the whole franchise is about war.” And people were like, “ha ha WAR is in the title, Vox!” But I sort of get the writer’s point. Rogue One is a war film, and not a space opera.

ER: It’s no Saving Private Ryan. But at the heart of Rogue One is the side story we tend to forget about in the rest of the Star Wars series. A ragtag group of rebels have to find a way to upend the Empire. It was refreshing to see that, but the execution overall wasn’t great.

BD: I cannot stress how much I disliked the first half of this movie. It was so boring. I didn’t give a shit at all and on a scene level it wasn’t engaging.

ER: There were moments when I would get drawn to the characters, like when Felicity Jones has to watch the message from her father. But then she gave that cliché speech in front of the rest of the rebels, and I was like, shaking my head.

BD: OK, but all of that said: I did really enjoy the second half of the film. It was a very well done war movie, when they stopped talking about dumb bullshit and just got on with it.

ER: Definitely. Really, when Darth Vader showed up, I was thinking, “I can get back into this.” But the CGI recreations of that important imperial general guy and the very last one (I won’t spoil it) threw me off.

BD: Right, but also, what was with Darth Vader’s voice? I know they can’t have James Earl Jones do the same one again but this one felt like a weird slightly off imitation.

ER: I thought it was still James?

BD: Oh maybe it was but it still sounded different to me? But maybe I just am remembering his voice differently. Let’s talk about the droid.

ER: He was the only likeable character in that movie.

BD: I hated that droid in the beginning. He was making all those dumb remarks and I was like “why don’t they just shoot the droid?” Also because in The Force Awakens the ball robot is the best part. That ball stole the show. But then in the end of this one the droid had grown on me.

ER: His final scene was the moment I knew we’d be in for something surprising. What did you think about the fact that SPOILER everyone died?

BD: So I was trying to remember the line in A New Hope that sets this story up where someone is like “a band of brave people stole the Death Star plans” and I kept wondering if the line actually was “a band of brave people gave their lives stealing the Death Star plans” so the whole time I was like they are probably going to die.

ER: See, I couldn’t remember either if there was a reference in A New Hope. But it was a fitting end to a cast of lousy characters that died valiantly to protect the rest of the Rebel Alliance. Like, once K-2SO fell, I was thinking, “It’s time for everyone else to die.” But if you took the execution from the last battle scene and spread it throughout the movie, you’d have a pretty epic part of the Star Wars universe.

BD: So you’re a Star Wars fan. I’m not a huge fan. I really loved The Force Awakens but the others I thought were dumb. But did this movie not being great put you off future one-off Star Wars Universe side stories?

ER: That’s a good question, and I had been thinking about that last night. It made me question how good the Han Solo story is going to be. Say what you want about The Force Awakens, it set the standard for what a modern-day Star Wars film should be—packed with action, filled with emotion, and fueled by nostalgia. Rogue One felt like it was trying really hard to be part of that universe, but fell flat. It’s a story that needed to be told, but it wasn’t told well.

BD: Right, except for the second half battle. The second half was so much better than the first half that it made me believe that they can get these stories right. They just didn’t this time.

ER: No offense to the director and writers, but please change the director and writers next time.

BD: Hahaha. The director, whatever his name is, made that movie about the monster, whatever it was called. The monster who lives in the ocean. From Japan. And it like is made by nuclear bombs? And then attacks Hawaii?

ER: Godzilla.

BD: Godzilla! Yeah! Godzilla!

ER: We can’t not talk about some of the choice lines in this movie. Like, when Darth Vader made a pun about choking when choking that imperial dude. I seriously wish I could remember it.

BD: “I hope you don’t choke on your aspirations.”

ER: OMFG. I threw my head in my hands, shook my head, and whispered, “Nooooo.” I felt like I was watching an episode of Bob’s Burgers. (which I love.)

BD: Haha. I mean I think that the original movies had a lot of terrible lines as well. But I totally agree that that was terrible. Also the prequels! Remember when Anakin and Natalie Portman were like “we will make love in the field for freedom!” or something.

ER: Absolutely. No question. But, Ben, “Rebellions are built on hope.”

BD: Haha. I think that that clunker of a line is something that we can apply to this film universe. A lot of hope! This one didn’t make good on that hope though.

ER: I honestly thought K-2SO summed it up best with his quip: “I find that answer vague and unconvincing.” I found this movie, for the most part, vague and unconvincing. Like, would I watch again? Maybe once it comes up on the Apple TV queue.

BD: I’ll watch the last half again, but not the first half. But vague and unconvincing it definitely was.

ER: One more thing: How the heck did that hammer-headed ship destroy TWO imperial ships??

BD: Yeah I mean that whole thing was so hilariously stupid lol. But in conclusion we agree: not a great movie, but we’ll be back next year to watch the next Star Wars film.

ER: Shout-out to our colleague and fellow Star Wars fan, Pat Caldwell, who couldn’t make it to this chat. We asked him what he thought. What did he say?

BD: “Just know that it is the best movie ever and you are both WRONG…(actually, it is not that great, but solid popcorn viewing).” So, dear reader, we were going to have a fan who liked the movie in here for balance but even he admitted it was not very good and backed out at the last second.

ER: See you next year.

Link – 

Review: "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" Isn’t Even About Two Stars That Go to War

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Review: "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" Isn’t Even About Two Stars That Go to War

For Neil Young, the Trump Era Feels a Lot Like the ’60s

Mother Jones

Legendary rocker Neil Young continues to add to his 50-plus-year recording career with his just-released studio album Peace Trail. A shrewd collection of new songs, written and recorded quickly this past summer, the album is one of immediacy, with kinetic playing from a spare crew of Jim Keltner on drums and Paul Bushnell on bass. With bits of processed vocals added to the folk-rock core, and an amplified harmonica that sounds like Little Walter after a Marvel-esque dose of radiation, Young employs strategies meant to throw the whole thing off kilter and make you listen closer.

The songs cover the things on the singer’s mind right now, both within—old dreams broken and those newly forming—and in the world around him: Standing Rock, xenophobia, immigration, and technology. For an artist at 71, it’s beautifully charged, invigorated, and present work. While the call is urgent, Young doesn’t beat you over the head with the message so much as inject you with it. I spoke with Young over the phone while he was at his home in Colorado.

Mother Jones: Overall, it feels very much like this is an album about being present with things happening in the world, as well as with your own feelings. Tell us a bit about the emergence of this record.

Neil Young: I started writing “Peace Trail” here in Colorado, then I went back to California. I had a few other tunes going around in my head, so I had a couple of them finished after a few days and then I wanted to go into the studio. I like to go in right away as soon as I have things. I called the guys from Promise of the Real, whom I’ve been playing with, and they were all on the road. Right after I hung up the phone, I wrote another song and started writing another, and I’m going, “Hey, I can’t wait. I should be doing this now!” My experience tells me that when it’s there, it’s there, and you can’t make it wait. So I got Jimmy Keltner and Paul Bushnell, two good guys, and went in and did this record.

MJ: Both of those guys, obviously, are experienced session musicians. Did you relate specific things to them or did you all kind of feel things out together?

NY: I would play all the parts of the song, show them the way it went together. Then I’d basically break down an arrangement—I wouldn’t plan endings or beginnings—so they knew everything that was going on. I had the lyrics on a prompter so that I could remember everything I’d written, and I was able to just get into the groove and play with them. Most cases it’s Take 1 or Take 2 on that record. I think “Peace Trail” is one of the exceptions, where it’s a later take. It just happened really quickly. It’s the way I like to work for these kinds of songs. It was the right time of the month; everything was looking good.

MJ: I felt like the immediacy of the playing on this particular album, and some of the disruptive things you introduce, like the sound processing on the harmonica and vocals in places, make the listener pay more attention.

NY: The songs were written to have a certain simple form. Everything is minimal, and if it’s over, it’s over. We’re abrupt with things: in and out. Especially if it’s an overdub—it’s gone. It does something that’s not real. It’s not trying to be like it was there. I think the ultimate result of it is you can get inside the record. I do one take; I never overdubbed twice. I know there’s stuff that isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t matter: Nothing is perfect, and there is a magic there that is undeniable because of the fact that we don’t care about those things. We’re really more interested in what we’re saying than how we’re saying it.

MJ: On the song “Peace Trail,” you express a commitment to moving forward and a sense of optimism with the refrain, “Something new is growing.” Did the November election alter that outlook?

NY: Not really. I still feel the same about everything in there. There’s nothing I said that I would change or make different now. I’ve already gotten into the next record, so I started that on the 6th of November.

MJ: In the song “Can’t Stop Workin’,” you sing that work is “bad for the body but good for the soul.” What’s hard for you?

NY: I think it’s the constant work; performing and traveling. It gets to be a bit of a strain. But if you pace yourself, which I’ve managed to do, you can go pretty well. And now I’m at a point where I decided I’m going to be in the studio for a while, at least until I finish this record I’m working on now. I should have two, three, four of the sessions that I had that were similar to the sessions for Peace Trail before I have a complete record. But I’m off to a good start and it may happen faster. Who knows?

MJ: I had an unsettling feeling that the purpose of my own work as an artist should maybe change after this election, but I’m unsure how. You’ve lived through really turbulent times and have written some very powerful protest songs—”Ohio” and “Southern Man,” for example. So how do you view the responsibilities of being an artist in the years to come?

NY: This time is very similar to the ’60s, as far as I can tell. The artists always reflect the times, so there’s a lot to think about, a lot of unknowns, a lot of things that are describable. This is the closest I’ve seen to the kind of ambience that made the ’60s happen. It’s not about the artist having a responsibility to do anything. They have to be artists and express themselves and everything will work out fine. It’s all going to be great. The youth of this country are not behind what is going on. We all know that. If you looked at a political map of the United States 25 and under, it’s all-revealing. It’s a unified map.

MJ: What scares me is this rift in our understanding of one another. You have viewpoints so far apart, so colored by anger and frustration, that it’s very hard to find common ground. Do you have thoughts for how we might connect?

NY: It’s gonna happen. We had the Vietnam War in the ’60s, and there was a draft. The students didn’t believe in it, and it unified them. That brought the people together and made the ’60s like they were. The youth were very unified against the status quo—against the old line and the new old line. It’s the same exact thing today. Social media and young people, art, music, all communications make this one of the most active times for activism. It will be a time of change.

MJ: Speaking of activism, there’s your new song “Indian Giver,” about Standing Rock. What’s your view on the standoff?

NY: It’s injustice. It’s wrong. The pipeline companies didn’t get the permission. They didn’t do the things they should have done in the first place. They tried to just bully their way through there and they got stopped. But they’re not really stopping.

MJ: It’s become a new point of reckoning in the history of how Native Americans are treated.

NY: Five hundred years later we’re still doing it. This is a moment where we’re either going to reaffirm that’s what we do, that’s who we are, or we’re going to start moving toward change. A change won’t come easy, because there’s a lot of big money that doesn’t care about any of this. Standing Rock is the beginning of something. It’s a moment in history. We really have to grab it and go with it. We may only be halfway through the actual “Standing Rock” part, but it’s more than that—it’s the lessons of Standing Rock, of what you can do. How much can you make change happen? How long can you slow things down? How much attention can you bring to things that are unjust, unfair, in many cases illegal? Just exposing it, that’s the job of the social media, the musicians, the people who care, the real protectors around the world. They don’t have to be at Standing Rock. They just have to say they’re with the people at Standing Rock, and tell other people that what’s going on there is wrong. Learn about it. See what happened. See what they actually did. You won’t see it on corporate media, you have to go to social media.

MJ: So, it looks like we’re out of time here. Is there anything else you’d like to say?

NY: We love Mother Jones. That’d be the last thing to say.

MJ: We love you, too.

Originally posted here: 

For Neil Young, the Trump Era Feels a Lot Like the ’60s

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on For Neil Young, the Trump Era Feels a Lot Like the ’60s