Tag Archives: national security

Sean Spicer: Hitler "Didn’t Even Sink to Using Chemical Weapons"

by ThereseAmbrose Posted on April 11, 2017

Mother Jones

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White House press secretary Sean Spicer attempted to compare Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad to Adolf Hitler on Tuesday, arguing—incorrectly—that unlike Assad, Hitler never used chemical weapons during World War II. When a reporter gave Spicer a chance to clarify his remarks, Spicer followed up with an explanation that was arguably even more problematic.

“You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” Spicer said in response to a question about Russia’s ongoing support for the Assad regime.

When a reporter asked Spicer what he meant by this comment, Spicer explained that Hitler “was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing.” Apparently referring to Nazi death camps, Spicer acknowledged that Hitler “brought them into the Holocaust Center, I understand that.”

Reporters and pundits on Twitter quickly pointed out that Hitler justified the Holocaust in part by claiming that German Jews were not really Germans.

Nearly 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust from systemic murder that included the use of gas and shooting, as well as starvation and disease. This included between 160,000 to 180,000 German Jews. The Third Reich also targeted non-Jewish Germans it deemed “unworthy of life,” including people with mental and physical disabilities. These were among the first victim’s of Hitler’s use of poison gas beginning in 1939.

On MSNBC, the chyron fact-checking Spicer’s comments was particularly stunning.

After his briefing, Spicer sent out a second clarification, followed by a third:

And then a fourth:

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Sean Spicer: Hitler "Didn’t Even Sink to Using Chemical Weapons"

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Some of Trump’s Biggest Supporters Are Furious About the Syria Strike

by tamerazelaya12 Posted on April 7, 2017

Mother Jones

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Some of President Donald Trump’s biggest supporters are going ballistic over last night’s strike in Syria, which the commander-in-chief ordered in response to the Syrian government’s chemical weapons attack on civilians earlier this week. Many on the far right say war simply isn’t what they voted for. White nationalist Richard Spencer accused the president of “betrayal.”

Of course, not all of Trump’s right-wing internet supporters are criticizing the strike:

InfoWars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones appears ambivalent about the whole thing. One headline on Jones’ site Wednesday read, “REPORT: EVIDENCE MOUNTS THAT SYRIAN GAS ATTACK IS FALSE FLAG.” On his show, Jones has suggested that Trump is being deceived by the left on the Syria issue and even said today that president is “disintegrating in my eyes on so many levels.” At the same time, Jones has said that perhaps Trump does understand what is really going on in Syria and that the airstrikes were actually a brilliant geopolitical move. “We’ll see if this is a Machiavellian stroke of genius by Trump for the good, or whether he’s been manipulated by the neo-cons toward a wider war,” he said.

At least one Trump backer, internet super-troll Charles Johnson, claimed the United States may not have even attacked Assad, according to Politico:

Meanwhile, internet troll Charles Johnson was not prepared to accept that the U.S. really had struck at Assad, saying that a source at CENTCOM told him the strike had actually targeted the Islamic State. “I’m very skeptical of any claims made in the media on military matters,” he said. “Especially since the Iraq War.”

At the same time, reaction among Republican elected officials has been mixed—some have applauded the move, while others are criticizing him for not seeking Congressional approval first.

And then there’s Rush Limbaugh, who posted this on his website Wednesday evening: “My message to scared liberals: Syria lied to Obama and Kerry about getting rid of WMD…This attack was taken to uphold Obama’s honor. Trump’s ‘Red Line’ was lying to America’s first black president. Does that make it better?”

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Some of Trump’s Biggest Supporters Are Furious About the Syria Strike

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Michael Flynn Has Just Resigned As National Security Adviser

by AgnesCoronado Posted on February 14, 2017

Mother Jones

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Embattled National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has resigned in the face of a mounting scandal related to his communications with the Russian government.

The resignation capped a day of political turmoil for Flynn and the White House. Just hours earlier, all 17 Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform signed a letter demanding a full investigation of Flynn’s alleged discussions of sanctions with the Russian ambassador to the US during the month before President Trump took office.

The White House took contradictory positions on Flynn Monday. Senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway first insisted that Flynn enjoyed “the full confidence of the president,” but less than an hour later, Sean Spicer, the press secretary, announced Trump was “evaluating the situation.”

But a bombshell news report on Monday night by the Washington Post appeared to finally set Flynn’s resignation in motion. The Post reported that then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates told the White House in late January that she believed “Flynn had misled senior administration officials about the nature of his communications with the Russian ambassador.” The paper reported that Yates had “warned that Flynn was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail.”

In a resignation letter posted by the White House soon after the news broke, Flynn admitted that he had “inadvertently” provided “incomplete information” to Vice President Mike Pence about the content of his calls to the Russian ambassador.

Flynn’s resignation was accepted late Monday by President Trump who named Lt. General Joseph Keith Kellogg, Jr. as Acting National Security Adviser.

Here’s the full text of Flynn’s resignation, courtesy of the White House:

In the course of my duties as the incoming National Security Advisor, I held numerous phone calls with foreign counterparts, ministers, and ambassadors. These calls were to facilitate a smooth transition and begin to build the necessary relationships between the President, his advisors and foreign leaders. Such calls are standard practice in any transition of this magnitude.

Unfortunately, because of the fast pace of events, I inadvertently briefed the Vice President Elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian Ambassador. I have sincerely apologized to the President and the Vice President, and they have accepted my apology.

Throughout my over thirty three years of honorable military service, and my tenure as the National Security Advisor, I have always performed my duties with the utmost of integrity and honesty to those I have served, to include the President of the United States.

I am tendering my resignation, honored to have served our nation and the American people in such a distinguished way.

I am also extremely honored to have served President Trump, who in just three weeks, has reoriented American foreign policy in fundamental ways to restore America’s leadership position in the world.

As I step away once again from serving my nation in this current capacity, I wish to thank President Trump for his personal loyalty, the friendship of those who I worked with throughout the hard fought campaign, the challenging period of transition, and during the early days of his presidency.

I know with the strong leadership of President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence and the superb team they are assembling, this team will go down in history as one of the greatest presidencies in U.S. history, and I firmly believe the American people will be well served as they all work together to help Make America Great Again.

Michael T. Flynn, LTG (Ret) Assistant to the President / National Security Advisor

This is a developing story. We’ll update as more news comes in.

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Michael Flynn Has Just Resigned As National Security Adviser

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Nancy Pelosi Repeatedly Calls Steve Bannon a “White Supremacist”

by MarionTillery Posted on February 2, 2017

Mother Jones

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has added her name to a growing list of Democrats to denounce Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, as a “white supremacist”—a label she repeatedly used on Thursday to criticize Bannon’s recent appointment to the National Security Council.

“What’s making America less safe is to have a white supremacist named to the National Security Council as a permanent member, while the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Director of National Intelligence are told, ‘Don’t call us we’ll call you,'” Pelosi said during her weekly press conference.

“It’s a stunning thing that a white supremacist would be a permanent member of the National Security Council,” she continued.

President Trump’s decision to grant Bannon a permanent seat at the National Security Council, a role that will provide the former Breitbart CEO access to the most sensitive pieces of government information, has sparked an outcry of opposition from those protesting his deep roots to the alt-right community and record of spreading Islamophobia.

The increased alarm also comes amid outrage over some of the Trump’s latest policy announcements, including an executive order temporarily stopping all refugee resettlement, and barring immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries. Bannon, along with White House adviser Stephen Miller, reportedly helped write the executive order.

The Trump administration is also reportedly considering restructuring a counter-terrorism program to no longer include a focus on white supremacists by instead concentrating its efforts solely on Islam.

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Nancy Pelosi Repeatedly Calls Steve Bannon a “White Supremacist”

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Trump’s CIA Pick is Oblivious to a Major National Security Threat

by JulianaGraziani Posted on January 12, 2017

Mother Jones

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What does the CIA director have to do with climate change? A lot more than Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s pick for the agency’s top job, seems to appreciate.

During his Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing Thursday, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) examined the sitting Kansas congressman’s views on climate science. Quoting CIA Director John Brennan, who had a 25-year career at the agency, Harris noted that he cited climate change as one of the “deeper causes of rising instability.”

“Do you have any reason to doubt the assessment of these CIA analysts?” Harris asked.

“I haven’t had a chance to read those materials with respect to climate change,” Pompeo answered. “I do know the agency’s role there. Its role is to collect foreign intelligence, to understand threats to the world. That would certainly include threats from poor governance, regional instability, threats from all sources and to deliver that information to policymakers. To the extent that changes in climatic activity are part of that foreign intelligence collection task, we will deliver that information to you all and to the president.”

Harris pressed Pompeo on his past comments in which he questioned the scientific consensus on climate change.

He replied that most of his commentary “has been directed to ensuring that the policies that America puts in place actually achieve the objective of ensuring we don’t have catastrophic harm that result from a changing climate.” He then added that he didn’t see any reason why climate change should be his concern at the CIA.

“Frankly, as the director of CIA, I would prefer today not to get into the details of the climate debate and science,” he said. “My role is going to be so different and unique from that. It is going to be to work alongside warriors keeping Americans safe. And so, I stand by the things that I’ve said previously with respect to that issue.”

Since the George W. Bush administration, officials in intelligence and at the Pentagon have warned that climate change poses a real security threat. The Department of Defense has described climate change as a “threat multiplier” that exacerbates disease, hunger, and terrorism. The State Department under John Kerry readily acknowledged that “climate change is a threat to the security of the United States” and countries around the globe.

Pompeo promised Harris he’d take a closer look at NASA’s climate research but couldn’t comment on Thursday. “I haven’t spent enough time to look at NASA’s findings in particular. I can’t give you any judgment on that today,” he said.

But Pompeo has vowed to take a closer look at the science for at least five years. Asked by CSPAN in 2013 whether he believed global warming was a problem, Pompeo, who was then serving his second term in Congress, was equivocal, repeating the debunked claims that there’s a pause in global warming and that the climate is cooling:

“I think the science needs to continue to develop. I’m happy to continue to look at it. There are scientists who think lots of different things about climate change. There’s some who think we’re warming, there’s some who think we’re cooling, there’s some who think that the last 16 years have shown a pretty stable climate environment.”

At another hearing on Wednesday, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, former CEO of Exxon Mobil Rex Tillerson, admitted, “I don’t see climate change as an imminent national security threat, but perhaps others do.” Tillerson, like Pompeo, might want to check in with the department he could soon lead.

For Harris’ part, the freshman senator is not sold on the next CIA director unless he is “willing to accept the overwhelming weight of evidence when presented, even if it turns out to be politically inconvenient or require you to change a previously held position.” Pompeo pledged he would look again at the facts, just as he’s been promising for years.

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Trump’s CIA Pick is Oblivious to a Major National Security Threat

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This Judge Just Smacked Down A Key NSA Spy Program

by RosemarDavies Posted on May 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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A panel of federal judges slapped down the National Security Agency’s telephone metadata collection program Thursday, effectively saying that the program goes way beyond what the law allows. In a 97-page decision released by the 2nd US Court of Appeals, the three-judge panel found that the Patriot Act doesn’t allow the government to collect phone records in such a blanket way.

The court’s ruling won’t stop the program, as the New York Times notes. Rather, it punts the issue back to lower courts and Congress to determine exactly what’s okay and what isn’t. But the decision, written by Judge Gerard E. Lynch, doesn’t pull any punches either. “Congress cannot reasonably be said to have ratified a program of which many members of Congress—and all members of the public—were not aware,” he wrote.

Here are some highlights from his ruling, which you can read in full below:

On the government using “inapplicable statutes and inconclusive legislative history” in its arguments:

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On the government’s “unprecedented and unwarranted” definition of what material is relevant to an actual investigation:

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dc.embed.loadNote(‘//www.documentcloud.org/documents/2074277-appeals-court-ruling-aclu-v-clapper/annotations/216834.js’);

On whether Congress, or the public, fully understood what the government was going to do with this program:

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Full decision:

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Appeals Court Ruling ACLU v. Clapper (PDF)

Appeals Court Ruling ACLU v. Clapper (Text)

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This Judge Just Smacked Down A Key NSA Spy Program

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How Hackers and Software Companies are Beefing Up NSA Surveillance

by xf0ks040u Posted on February 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Imagine that you could wander unseen through a city, sneaking into houses and offices of your choosing at any time, day or night. Imagine that, once inside, you could observe everything happening, unnoticed by others—from the combinations used to secure bank safes to the clandestine rendezvous of lovers. Imagine also that you have the ability to silently record everybody’s actions, whether they are at work or play without leaving a trace. Such omniscience could, of course, make you rich, but perhaps more important, it could make you very powerful.

That scenario out of some futuristic sci-fi novel is, in fact, almost reality right now. After all, globalization and the Internet have connected all our lives in a single, seamless virtual city where everything is accessible at the tap of a finger. We store our money in online vaults; we conduct most of our conversations and often get from place to place with the help of our mobile devices. Almost everything that we do in the digital realm is recorded and lives on forever in a computer memory that, with the right software and the correct passwords, can be accessed by others, whether you want them to or not.

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How Hackers and Software Companies are Beefing Up NSA Surveillance

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TSA Is Making Airport Valets Search Your Trunk

by Irena Barbe Posted on July 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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A New York woman who used a valet service recently to park her car at Greater Rochester International Airport discovered upon her return, through a notice left on her car, that it had been searched under TSA regulations without her consent. Furious, she got in touch with a local TV station, and the story went viral. TSA quickly put out a statement saying that its agents don’t search cars—but searches can be included in a TSA-approved security plan. Mother Jones has found that not only does TSA approve searches of the trunks and interior of unattended cars in an undefined perimeter that’s considered dangerously close to the airport—like a car left with valet parking—but if a valet attendant finds illegal drugs instead of bombs, they will call the police. Privacy experts say these searches could be a violation of a person’s Fourth Amendment rights.

“We search every car, we open the trunk and take a look around,” says Saour Merwan, a keymaster at the valet service at San Diego International Airport. “We were told by airport authority to do that, since about two years ago. We keep an eye out for something suspicious, like wires and cables. The airport has security regulations and we have to follow them.” Merwan says the service doesn’t inform anyone that they’re checking out the inside of the vehicles, and when asked what he’d do if he found illegal drugs, he says, “Of course we’d call the police.”

“This is exactly what the Fourth Amendment was designed to say the government can’t do, generally search everything without suspicion,” says Fred H. Cate, a professor at the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University. “At the same time, the Supreme Court has made an exception to searching items that you’ve voluntarily given to someone else—like a car. It’s a crazy argument, but that’s not bothered the courts before.”

As David Castelveter, a spokesman for TSA explains, each airport in the United States is required to come up with a TSA-approved plan to deal with security risks. That includes “unattended vehicles parked curbside at the terminal.” Approved measures to deal with that risk can include “searches of cars queued for curbside valet parking” (not all airports have valet services, but those that do tend to leave the cars in lots close to the airport.) Mother Jones asked Castelveter whether the definition of “curbside” can include any parking lot close to the airport—including those that may contain locked, non-valet cars—but he said TSA looks at each airport security plan on a “case-by-case basis.” Obviously, valet cars are easier to search than other vehicles, as the valet company has the keys.

“If TSA is made aware that evidence of illegal activity is discovered incidental to a search for explosives, that information will be relayed to law enforcement,” Castelveter adds.

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TSA Is Making Airport Valets Search Your Trunk

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