Tag Archives: turkish

The Flynn Scandal Explodes: What This Means and How It Happened

Mother Jones

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

On Wednesday, not one but two bombshells exploded concerning Michael Flynn, the national security adviser President Donald Trump was compelled to fire after only 22 days on the job. The New York Times reported that on January 4—weeks before the inauguration—Flynn informed Trump’s transition team that he was under Justice Department investigation for his undisclosed lobbying work on behalf of Turkish interests. And McClatchy revealed that six days later, Flynn attended a meeting with Susan Rice, President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, and asked her to delay a planned US-Kurdish military operation against a top ISIS target, an action that Turkey, which had opposed joint US-Kurdish operations, would not have supported.

Together these two stories present a stunning scenario: Trump’s team allowed a lobbyist for foreign interests who was under federal investigation to become the president’s top national security aide and to participate in decision-making related to his lobbying.

The story gets worse. It was 16 days after Flynn’s meeting with Rice that Sally Yates, then the acting attorney general, informed the Trump White House that Flynn had lied about conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak regarding the sanctions Obama imposed on Moscow for its covert intervention in the 2016 campaign. Yates also warned Don McGahn, the White House counsel, that Flynn was now vulnerable to Russian blackmail. Still, the White House kept Flynn in the job for another 18 days. It was only after the extent of Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak was publicly exposed by a Washington Post story that Trump fired him. (On Thursday morning, Yahoo News reported that on April 25, Flynn told a group of friends that Trump had recently sent him a message: Stay strong.)

Flynn, who has offered to testify before Congress if granted immunity from prosecution, has emerged as central figure in the Russia scandal enveloping the Trump administration. The retired lieutenant general who led “lock her up” chants during the presidential campaign is currently under investigation on several fronts. The Justice Department is probing his Turkish lobbying, and the FBI is investigating his contacts with Russian officials during the presidential campaign and transition period. The Senate intelligence committee recently subpoenaed Flynn for records of his Russian contacts.

The latest Flynn revelations are a tremendous blow for a White House already reeling from the Trump-Russia scandal, the news that Trump disclosed highly sensitive top-secret information to Russian officials in the Oval Office, Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey, and the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. The Flynn affair, which has the potential to derail Trump’s presidency, is full of twists and turns, and it seems like there’s more to come. Here’s how it has unfolded so far.

April 30, 2014: Flynn announces his retirement form the military about a year earlier then expected. He has reportedly been forced out as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency by the Obama administration. Flynn subsequently forms the Flynn Intel Group.

October 8, 2014: The counsel’s office of the Defense Intelligence Agency responds to an inquiry from Flynn about ethics restrictions that will apply to him after his Army retirement. The office explains in a letter that he can not receive foreign government payments without prior approval, due to the Constitution’s emoluments clause. “If you are ever in a position where you would receive an emolument from a foreign government or from an entity that might be controlled by a foreign government, be sure to obtain advance approval from the Army prior to acceptance,” the letter states.

December 10, 2015: Flynn travels to Moscow to attend the 10th anniversary dinner of Russia Today, a media outlet owned by the Russian government. Flynn is paid more than $30,000 to speak at the event and is seated next to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

February 2016: Flynn begins advising the Trump campaign.

July 18, 2016: During his speech at the Republican National Convention, Flynn eggs on the chanting crowd, saying, “Lock her up, that’s right. Yep, that’s right: Lock her up!”

August 9, 2016: Flynn and his company, the Flynn Intel Group, ink a $600,000 contract with Inovo BV, a company owned by Ekim Alptekin, a Turkish businessman and ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to the New York Times, the contract calls for Flynn’s company to “run an influence campaign aimed at discrediting Fethullah Gulen, an reclusive cleric who lives in Pennsylvania and whom Mr. Erdogan has accused of orchestrating a failed July 2016 coup in Turkey.”

August 17, 2016: Trump receives his first classified intelligence briefing as the GOP nominee for president. He brings Flynn with him to the meeting, which includes discussion of the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia was interfering in the US election.

November 8, 2016: On Election Day, Flynn publishes an op-ed in the Hill that calls Gulen “a shady Islamic mullah” and “a radical Islamist.”

November 10, 2016: During a meeting at Trump Tower with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Flynn says he wants the national security adviser post in the new administration, NBC News reports. Kushner and Trump indicate that “President-elect Trump would certainly approve of that request to reward Flynn’s loyalty,” according to NBC. That day, Trump meets with Obama in the Oval Office, where Obama warns him against hiring Flynn.

November 11, 2016: The Daily Caller reveals Flynn’s contract with Inovo BV.

November 2016: “Days after” seeing the Daily Caller story, according to the New York Times, Trump campaign lawyer William McGinley holds a conference call with members of Flynn Intel Group to gather more information about its foreign business dealings.

November 17, 2016: Trump names Flynn as his national security adviser.

November 30, 2016: The Justice Department notifies Flynn in a letter that it is investigating his Turkish lobbying work.

December 2016: Flynn and Kushner meet with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at Trump Tower. Kislyak was not caught on tape entering the building, suggesting that he may have been brought in through a back entrance.

December 29, 2016: Obama announces sanctions against Russia in response to that country’s interference in the US presidential election. The measure includes the ejection of 35 Russian diplomats from the United States; the closure of Cold War-era Russian compounds in New York and Maryland; and sanctions against the GRU and the FSB (Russian intelligence agencies), four employees of those agencies, and three companies that worked with the GRU. Flynn holds five phone calls with Kislyak that day, during which they at some point discuss US sanctions against Russia. (White House press secretary Sean Spicer later claims falsely that they held just one call, in which they merely discussed “logistical information.”)

January 2017: The FBI begins investigating Flynn’s December phone conversations with Kislyak.

January 4, 2017: Flynn tells McGahn, who at the time was the transition team’s top lawyer, that he is under investigation for failing to disclose his work as a lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign.

January 6, 2017: Flynn’s attorney and transition team lawyers hold another discussion about the investigation involving Flynn.

January 10: According to McClatchy, Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, informs Flynn of the Pentagon’s plan to use Syrian Kurdish forces to retake the Islamic State’s de facto capital, Raqqa. Flynn asks Rice to delay the operation, a position that “conformed to the wishes of Turkey.”

January 15, 2017: In an appearance on CBS’ Face the Nation, Vice President-elect Mike Pence says Flynn told him that he did not discuss US sanctions during his conversations with Kislyak.

January 23, 2017: Spicer holds his first White House press briefing. He insists that Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak included no discussion of US sanctions.

January 24, 2017: The FBI interviews Flynn about his phone conversations with Kislyak. Flynn reportedly denies having discussed US sanctions on Russia.

January 26, 2017: Yates, the acting attorney general, informs McGahn—who by then was the White House counsel—that Flynn had discussed US sanctions on Russia with the Kislyak, despite Flynn’s claims to the contrary. Yates also warns McGahn that as a result, Flynn could be vulnerable to Russian blackmail. McGahn subsequently informs Trump of Yates’ report.

January 27, 2017: Yates and McGahn meet again at the White House.

January: Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney, meets at a Manhattan hotel with Felix Sater and a pro-Putin Ukrainian lawmaker to discuss a potential peace plan for Ukraine and Russia, according to the New York Times. The Times reports that Cohen delivered this plan to Flynn. Cohen confirms he met with Sater and the Ukrainian lawmaker but denies that they discussed a Ukraine-Russia peace plan or that he delivered such a plan to Flynn or the White House.

February 1, 2017: In a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis, the ranking Democrats on six House committees demand an investigation into Flynn’s connections to RT.

February 8, 2017: In an interview with the Washington Post, Flynn denies discussing US sanctions with Kislyak.

February 9, 2017: A spokesman for Flynn softens the national security adviser’s denial, telling the Washington Post that “while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.”

February 10, 2017: Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump says he is not aware of reports that Flynn has discussed US sanctions with Kislyak. He has in fact been aware of Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak since late January. His transition team has known Flynn was under Justice Department investigation for more than a month.

February 13, 2017: Flynn resigns following reports that Yates warned the White House that Flynn had misled senior members of the administration, including Pence, about whether he discussed US sanctions with Kislyak.

February 14, 2017: In an Oval Office meeting with Comey, Trump asks the FBI director to drop the bureau’s investigation of Flynn. “I hope you can let this go,” Trump says, according to a two-page memo of the conversation reportedly drafted by Comey.

February 15, 2017: During a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump does not answer a question about potential connections between his campaign and Russia during the election. He blames Flynn’s ouster on leaks. This is a different position than the one taken by the White House previously: that Flynn was asked to resign because he misled Pence about his communication with the Russian ambassador.

March 7, 2017: Flynn retroactively registers as a foreign agent in connection with his Turkish lobbying work.

March 30, 2017: The Wall Street Journal reports that Flynn has told the FBI and the congressional committees investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russia that he will agree to be interviewed in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Flynn’s attorney says in a subsequent statement that the retired general “certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit.”

March 31, 2017: Trump tweets that Flynn “should ask for immunity in that this is a witch hunt (excuse for big election loss), by media & Dems, of historic proportion!” But NBC reports that the Senate intelligence committee has denied Flynn’s request for immunity, telling Flynn’s lawyer the request was “wildly preliminary” and currently “not on the table.”

April 4, 2017: The Pentagon launches an investigation into Flynn for accepting payments from a foreign government without prior approval, in potential violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause.

April 25, 2017: Leaders of the House Oversight Committee tell reporters that Flynn may have broken the law by failing to disclose the $34,000 payment he received for speaking at the 2015 RT gala. “As a former military officer, you simply cannot take money from Russia, Turkey or anybody else,” committee chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) says. “And it appears as if he did take that money. It was inappropriate. And there are repercussions for the violation of law.” The same day, Trump apparently reached out of Flynn. “I just got a message from the president to stay strong,” Flynn tells a group of loyalists during a gathering at a restaurant in Northern Virginia, according to a later report from Yahoo News.

May 8, 2017: Ahead of a Senate hearing, where Yates will testify about her warnings to the Trump administration over Flynn, Trump appears to blame his hiring of Flynn on his predecessor: “General Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama Administration – but the Fake News seldom likes talking about that,” Trump tweets.

May 9, 2017: Trump fires Comey. CNN reports that day that the US attorney’s office in Alexandria, Virginia, has issued grand jury subpoenas to Flynn associates.

May 10, 2017: The Senate intelligence committee subpoenas Flynn for documents concerning his communications with Russian officials.

May 16, 2017: The New York Times reports that Trump pressured Comey to end the bureau’s investigation into Flynn, according to the then-FBI director’s notes of their meeting.

May 17, 2017: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appoints former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the Trump-Russia investigation.

May 18, 2017: Trump tweets:

See original article: 

The Flynn Scandal Explodes: What This Means and How It Happened

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, Jason, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Flynn Scandal Explodes: What This Means and How It Happened

Turkey Says They Beat the Crap Out of Protesters Because of a "Provocative Demonstration"

Mother Jones

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

This would normally be big news, but it’s been overshadowed by all things Trump:

WASHINGTON – Supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, including his government security forces and several armed individuals, violently charged a group of protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence here on Tuesday night in what the police characterized as “a brutal attack.”

Eleven people were injured, including a police officer, and nine were taken to a hospital, the Metropolitan Police chief, Peter Newsham, said at a news conference on Wednesday. Two Secret Service agents were also assaulted in the melee, according to a federal law enforcement official.

The current story from Erdogan is that his folks were acting in “self defense,” which is absurd. Eyewitness accounts, along with the testimony of Washington DC’s police chief, confirm that the protest was loud but peaceful until Erdogan’s goons waded in and attacked.

This was all happening while President Trump was hosting a visit with Erdogan in the White House. Naturally they haven’t said anything about this. Hell, Trump probably wishes he had a security force that would do stuff like this.

I don’t have anything non-obvious to say about this. The descent of Turkey into a strongman state is discouraging, and there’s no sign that it’s going to turn around any time soon. I just didn’t want to let this pass without at least a mention.

Read more:  

Turkey Says They Beat the Crap Out of Protesters Because of a "Provocative Demonstration"

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Turkey Says They Beat the Crap Out of Protesters Because of a "Provocative Demonstration"

The Department of Defense Is Investigating Michael Flynn

Mother Jones

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

The Defense Department’s inspector general has opened an investigation to determine whether Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s former national security advisor, accepted payments from a foreign government without permission, according to documents released Thursday by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.).

“These documents raise grave questions about why General Flynn concealed the payments he received from foreign sources after he was warned explicitly by the Pentagon,” Cummings, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, said in a statement. “Our next step is to get the documents we are seeking from the White House so we can complete our investigation. I thank the Department of Defense for providing us with unclassified versions of these documents.” Earlier this week, Cummings blasted the White House for refusing to provide his committee with documents related to whether Flynn disclosed his foreign payments when he reapplied for a security clearance last year.

Prior to working for Trump, Flynn had led the Defense Intelligence Agency under former President Barack Obama. Flynn was pushed out of that job in 2014 and the DIA explicitly told Flynn that he could not to accept any compensation from a foreign state without prior permission from the federal government. Flynn, however, took $45,000 in speaking fees from television network RT (formerly know as Russia today), which U.S. intelligence officials describe as a Russian propaganda outlet.

Flynn claims the DIA was briefed on the payment, but the information released by Cummings shows that the agency cannot find any documentation “referring or relating” to his “receipt of money from a foreign source.” There’s also another relationship that Cumming says is alarming and may not have been properly disclosed: Flynn’s company received $530,000 from a firm owned by a Turkish businessman with close ties to the government. Flynn’s lawyer wrote that the business relationship “could be construed to have principally benefited the republic of Turkey,” and Flynn filed belated paperwork identifying his work as a foreign agent after losing his post in the Trump administration.

During Thursday’s White House briefing, Press Secretary Sean Spicer blamed the Obama administration when he was asked about the thoroughness of Flynn’s vetting by Trump’s transition team. “There’s an issue…that the Department of Defense Inspector General is looking into,” Spicer said. “We welcome that, but all of that clearance was made by the Obama administration and apparently with knowledge of the trip that he took.”

Earlier this week, Cummings and House oversight committee chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) held a joint press conference, during which they revealed that Flynn may have broken the law by not disclosing the payment from RT when he reapplied for a security clearance last year.

But Republicans on the oversight committee are furious about Cummings’ decision to make the documents public. “Though we’ve walked hand-in-hand with the Democrats during this investigation, this morning they broke with long-standing protocol and decided to release these documents without consulting us,” a spokeswoman for Chaffetz said on CNN.

Democrats say they’ve been working with the Pentagon to release unclassified versions of the documents to the public. A spokeswoman for Cummings said Republicans on the committee were informed the documents would be released this morning. “I honestly don’t understand why the White House is covering up for Michael Flynn,” Cummings said at a press conference today following the release of the documents. “There is a paper trail that the White House does not want our committee to follow it.”

Original post – 

The Department of Defense Is Investigating Michael Flynn

Posted in FF, GE, Jason, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Department of Defense Is Investigating Michael Flynn

Hackers Stole Voter Registration Data in at Least Two States

Mother Jones

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

The FBI believes hackers tried to get data from the State Board of Elections in at least two states in July and August, according to a notice sent to elections officials around the country and published by Yahoo News Monday morning. It’s unclear what data the hackers were able to get, but the information suggests they scanned the state elections boards’ websites looking for vulnerabilities. They found several and attempted to enter the systems, and some “exfiltration”—which refers to theft of data—occurred.

On August 18, state elections officials received a “Flash,” a notice sent by the FBI to various relevant parties, titled “Targeting Activity Against State Board of Election Systems.” The FBI reported that it had received reports of an additional IP address—a unique series of numbers that identifies every device that connects to the internet—within the logs of one state’s board of election’s system in July, and then another attempt at breaking into a separate state’s system in August. The IP address numbers can be easily masked to hide an attacker’s true origin, but the flash included detailed information about the methods used by the hackers. The FBI asked state election officials to scan their own network logs for similar activities.

The FBI didn’t identify the states involved, but Yahoo News, citing “sources familiar with” the FBI flash, reports that the attacks likely targeted voter registration databases in Arizona and Illinois. In Illinois, state election officials shut down the state’s voter registration system for 10 days in late July, Yahoo News reports, while the attack in Arizona was more limited.

The FBI flash does not attribute the attacks to anyone specifically, but the revelation comes following recent hacks of the Democratic National Committee and other major Democratic Party organizations and officials that, the US government says, implicated hackers working with or on behalf of Russia. The hacker who has claimed responsibility for the DNC hacks, Guccifer 2.0, has told Mother Jones and others that he was born in Eastern Europe and is not at all connected to Russia, a claim doubted by outside security officials. Russian officials have repeatedly denied that the Russian government had anything to do with the hacks.

The IP addresses provided by the FBI in the flash point to computer systems in the Netherlands and Delaware, according to online IP tracking tools, but Wired says further analysis shows at least one of the IP addresses appears to be linked to a website linked with the Turkish AKP political party. The Yahoo News report cites a cybersecurity expert saying one of the IP addresses has “surfaced before in Russian criminal underground hacker forums,” and the attack methods resemble a hack of the World Anti-Doping Agency earlier this month. Others have blamed that hack on Russia as well. But the types of attacks, methods, and tools detailed by the FBI flash are quite common in the hacking world. That means blaming Russia or anybody else at this point is only speculative.

The hack, combined with other vulnerabilities in the American election infrastructure, including voting machines that produce no verifiable paper audit trail, reinforces the notion that the US election system is vulnerable to disruption.

“This is a big deal,” Rich Barger, the head of cybersecurity firm ThreatConnect, told Yahoo News. “Two state election boards have been popped and data has been taken. This certainly should be concerning to the common American voter.”

Link to article: 

Hackers Stole Voter Registration Data in at Least Two States

Posted in bigo, Cyber, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Hackers Stole Voter Registration Data in at Least Two States

Thomas Friedman: The world is hot

Thomas Friedman: The world is hot

By on 19 Aug 2015commentsShare

In his New York Times column on Wednesday, Thomas Friedman began with a bet:

Here’s my bet about the future of Sunni, Shiite, Arab, Turkish, Kurdish and Israeli relations: If they don’t end their long-running conflicts, Mother Nature is going to destroy them all long before they destroy one another.

We may not know the stakes, but it is a provocative wager nonetheless. I like to imagine Friedman, steeped in cigar smoke, sitting around a poker table with Netanyahu, Erdoğan, half a dozen sheikhs, and Julia Roberts. Julia is there because when I hear “Mother Nature,” I cannot but hear her intone, “I have been here for eons”:

This is Julia at her fiercest. But I digress. Friedman was writing on the relationships between climate and state fragility in the Middle East. It is a story of extreme drought, the politicization of air-conditioning, and revolutionary sparks. He concludes with a call for cooperation:

All the people in this region are playing with fire. While they’re fighting over who is caliph, who is the rightful heir to the Prophet Muhammad from the seventh century — Sunnis or Shiites — and to whom God really gave the holy land, Mother Nature is not sitting idle. She doesn’t do politics — only physics, biology and chemistry. And if they add up the wrong way, she will take them all down.

The only “ism” that will save them is not Shiism or Islamism but “environmentalism” — understanding that there is no Shiite air or Sunni water, there is just “the commons,” their shared ecosystems, and unless they cooperate to manage and preserve them (and we all address climate change), vast eco-devastation awaits them all.

In a move that should shock few, Friedman glosses over some salient points here. Climate change and political fragility are intersectional, but they don’t have the same solutions. You can’t convert from Shiism to environmentalism. (They’re also not mutually exclusive.) Moreover, it’s the Islamic State that’s bulldozing the Middle East, not “all the people in this region.” Preaching the promise of “shared ecosystems” in a world of Daesh is naive. The lack of distinction here also ignores the fact that most people in the Middle East are just trying to live their lives, not actively fighting over who is caliph.

Luckily, on the climate front, the world recently came one step closer to the cooperation hinted at in Friedman’s throwaway parenthetical: “and we all address climate change.” On Tuesday, a group of leading academics released the first Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change, a call to the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims and Muslim countries to “increase their efforts and adopt the pro-active approach needed to halt and hopefully eventually reverse the damage being wrought” on the environment.

The declaration calls for an “equitable and binding” climate agreement in Paris this December, financial support for developing countries, preferably a 1.5 C target, and commitment to a zero-emissions strategy as soon as feasibly possible. And while it’s safe to say that the declaration was not signed by members of ISIS, this type of call for cooperation — from within the Muslim community — is already fostering the kind of environmental dialogue that Friedman asserts is absent.

The body of research linking climate and conflict is formidable and growing — as Friedman is well aware — and the triggers and threat multipliers that tie together drought, rising temperatures, and political unrest are very real. Something as abstract as climate change is made more tangible when viewed through the lens of political conflict, but that lens doesn’t get you any closer to solutions. And it certainly doesn’t get you any closer to pacifying the political and religious woes of the Middle East.

Friedman is right about Mother Nature, though: She is not sitting idle. As Julia Roberts once said, “I have fed species greater than you, and I have starved species greater than you.”

Source:
The World’s Hot Spot

, The New York Times.

Share

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

A Grist Special Series

Oceans 15


This chef built her reputation on seafood. How’s she feeling about the ocean now?Seattle chef Renee Erickson weighs in on the world’s changing waters, and how they might change her menu.


How do you study an underwater volcano? Build an underwater laboratoryJohn Delaney is taking the internet underwater, and bringing the deep ocean to the public.


How much plastic is in our oceans? Ask the woman trying to clean it upCarolynn Box, environmental program director of 5 Gyres, talks about what it’s like to sail across the ocean, pulling up plastic in the middle of nowhere.


How catching big waves helped turn this pro surfer into a conservationistRamon Navarro first came to the sea with his fisherman rather, found his own place on it as a surfer, and now fights to protect the coastline he loves.


What seafood is OK to eat, anyway? Ask an expertWhen it comes to sustainable seafood, you could say director of Seafood Watch Jennifer Dianto Kemmerly is the ultimate arbiter of taste.

Get Grist in your inbox

Advertisement

Original post:  

Thomas Friedman: The world is hot

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, global climate change, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, Oster, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Thomas Friedman: The world is hot

Donald Trump Was Totally Right to Skip the Big Candidate Forum in New Hampshire

Mother Jones

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

So this is what it looks like when Donald Trump stays home. The businessman and board game magnate, who is currently leading the Republican presidential field by a mile, skipped the first full candidate forum of the 2016 presidential race on Monday in New Hampshire. His official reason: the host newspaper, New Hampshire’s Union-Leader, had already signaled that it wasn’t interested in endorsing his campaign. But maybe he had an inkling of what we know for certain now—14 candidates racing against the clock to recite canned talking points makes for a total snoozefest.

The moderator, Jack Heath, deliberately steered clear of any Trump-related questions, which is a shame, because Trump, even in absentia, might have have at least forced the candidates to talk about something besides themselves. As it was, Monday’s forum, the first of three such Q&A sessions in early primary states and a dress rehearsal of sorts for the first GOP debate on Thursday, was like freshman orientation in a class of introverts. The candidates were provided the most generic of icebreaker questions (Carly Fiorina was asked for an example of a time she showed leadership), which they promptly segued away from, and pivoted to the boilerplate speeches they’ve already been delivering in Iowa and New Hampshire for months. Because it was a forum, not a debate, the candidates weren’t allowed to interact with each other. Save for Scott Walker noting that no one in his family had been president before, none of them even tried. In a rare moment of drama, the C-SPAN cameras caught Chris Christie with a finger (his) wiggling in his ear.

But there were still a handful of highlights:

Four years after famously forgetting the third federal agency he intended to eliminate, former Texas governor Rick Perry was offered a shot at a do-over. “I’ve heard this question before!” he said eagerly. Then he pivoted to another topic and never answered it.
Jeb Bush said the president needs to do more to combat the “barbarians” of ISIS, but perhaps wary of unpleasant comparisons to that other Bush (or both of them, really), stopped short of saying “boots on the ground” were needed in the Middle East beyond special forces Ttroops.
Fortunately, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham was happy to do just that, calling on an America-Turkish-Egyptian force to bring Syria back under control. He’d tell those allies, “You’re gonna pay for this war, we paid for the last two. We are gonna pull the caliphate up by its roots.”
Graham, who could surely use the boost, also got a laugh from the audience when he suggested that the solution to Washington’s gridlock was to “drink more.”
Ben Carson announced that he would reform the tax code by consulting with “the fairest individual in the universe—that would be God.” The result, he explained, would be a base tax rate of around 10 to 15 percent, similar to a church tithe. But an hour later, he informed the audience that taking more than 10 percent of a billionaire’s income is “called socialism.”
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said President Obama has “declared war on trans-fats and a ceasefire with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.” (That would be Iran.) His first act as president: hold a huge meeting with the Joint Chiefs to announce that America “is back.”
Much has been made of the Republican party’s recent shift toward criminal justice reform, which includes lighter sentencing for many drug crimes. But Florida Sen. Marco Rubio offered a snapshot on how elements of the party might push back. Seizing on northern New England’s heroin epidemic, he reprised an argument that any legalization of marijuana except for strictly medicinal uses would only contribute to drug abuse. Expect this to come up again at a later date, when candidates are allowed to talk to each other.
How will the next president’s policies on climate change be affected by the White House’s big new plan to fight global warming? We still have no idea, because only one candidate was asked about the proposal, and then only in passing. For the record, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says it will be a “buzzsaw to the nation’s economy.”

See the original article here:  

Donald Trump Was Totally Right to Skip the Big Candidate Forum in New Hampshire

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Donald Trump Was Totally Right to Skip the Big Candidate Forum in New Hampshire

Our Anti-ISIS Program in Syria Is a Bad Joke

Mother Jones

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

So how are we doing in our efforts to train moderate Syrian allies to help us in the fight against ISIS? Here’s the New York Times two days ago:

A Pentagon program to train moderate Syrian insurgents to fight the Islamic State has been vexed by problems of recruitment, screening, dismissals and desertions that have left only a tiny band of fighters ready to do battle.

Those fighters — 54 in all — suffered perhaps their most embarrassing setback yet on Thursday. One of their leaders, a Syrian Army defector who recruited them, was abducted in Syria near the Turkish border, along with his deputy who commands the trainees….Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter has acknowledged the shortfalls, citing strict screening standards, which have created a backlog of 7,000 recruits waiting to be vetted. Mr. Carter has insisted the numbers will increase.

Okay, I guess 54 is a….start. So how good are they? Here’s the New York Times today:

A Syrian insurgent group at the heart of the Pentagon’s effort to fight the Islamic State came under intense attack on Friday….The American-led coalition responded with airstrikes to help the American-aligned unit, known as Division 30, in fighting off the assault….The attack on Friday was mounted by the Nusra Front, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda. It came a day after the Nusra Front captured two leaders and at least six fighters of Division 30, which supplied the first trainees to graduate from the Pentagon’s anti-Islamic State training program.

….“This wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” said one former senior American official, who was working closely on Syria issues until recently, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence assessments….Division 30 said in a statement that five of its fighters were killed in the firefight on Friday, 18 were wounded and 20 were captured by the Nusra Front. It was not clear whether the 20 captives included the six fighters and two commanders captured a day earlier.

Let’s see, that adds up to either 43 or 51 depending on how you count. Starting with 54, then, it looks like Division 30 has either 11 or 3 fighters left, and no commanders. But apparently that’s not so bad!

A spokesman for the American military, Col. Patrick S. Ryder, wrote in an email statement that “we are confident that this attack will not deter Syrians from joining the program to fight for Syria,” and added that the program “is making progress.”

….A senior defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence reports, described what he called “silver linings” to the attack on Friday: that the trainees had fought effectively in the battle, and that coalition warplanes responded quickly with airstrikes to support them.

The trainees fought effectively? There are no more than a dozen still able to fight. That’s not the same definition of “effective” that most of us have. As for the US Air Force responding quickly, that’s great. But the quality of the US Air Force has never really been in question.

This is starting to make Vietnam look like a well-oiled machine. Stay tuned.

Original article:

Our Anti-ISIS Program in Syria Is a Bad Joke

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Our Anti-ISIS Program in Syria Is a Bad Joke

These Photos of World Lawmakers Pummeling Each Other Almost Make You Appreciate Congress

Mother Jones

Twice last week, brawls broke out in Turkey’s parliament over a controversial bill that would give the police more power to crack down on protestors. Punches were thrown, kicks landed, a chair launched. One MP fell down a flight of stairs. It was like the golden early days of cage fighting when rules were laughed out of the arena and MMA fighters’ posses joined in the mayhem. But at least no shots were fired, unlike the time in 2013 that a Jordanian MP tried to come after a colleague with an AK-47. (No one was harmed.)

While American members of Congress haven’t had a serious dust-up in decades, full-contact debate is more common in other deliberative bodies. Here are some memorable recent bouts of parliamentary fisticuffs. (And for many more examples, check out parliamentfights.)

Turkish lawmakers throw punches over a security bill in February 2015.

AP

A presidential decree to call up military reserves leads to a fight in Ukraine’s parliament in July 2014.

Sergii Kharchenko/NurPhoto/ZUMA Wire

Armed police force out South African opposition MPs after they challenged President Zuma over corruption allegations in February 2015.

Rodger Bosch, Pool/AP

Opposition politicians hurl chairs and attack the speaker during a Constituent Assembly meeting in Kathmandu, Nepal, in January 2015.

Bikram Rai/AP

In September 2013, a Jordanian MP fired a shot from his Kalashnikov outside the parliamentary chamber. No one was hurt.

ODN/YouTube

Venezuelan MPs duke it out over an election dispute in May 2013.

A mass brawl erupts Taiwan’s legislature in July 2010, after the speaker rejects a proposal to a debate a trade pact with China.

Wally Santana/AP

In November 2011, South Korean Rep. Kim Seon-dong explodes a tear gas canister in an attempti to block the ratification of a free trade agreement with the United States.

Yonhap/AP

Bonus: Then-Toronto mayor Rob Ford knocks down Councillor Pam McConnell as he runs toward hecklers in November 2013.

The Canadian Press, Paola Loriggio/AP

Read this article: 

These Photos of World Lawmakers Pummeling Each Other Almost Make You Appreciate Congress

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Jason, LAI, LG, ONA, Presto, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on These Photos of World Lawmakers Pummeling Each Other Almost Make You Appreciate Congress

Heartbreaking Photos From the Latest ISIS Attack

Mother Jones

A man sits and watches the Kobani border from afar. Kazim Kizil

The ongoing fight for Kobani, a strategically important city on the Turkey-Syria border, has become the latest front in ISIS’s crusade to create an Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. For weeks, ISIS fighters have been battling Syrian Kurds for control of Kobani. If the jihadist rebels win, ISIS would gain a direct route into Turkey and consolidate its grip on territory stretching across the northern areas of Syria. Kobani has been ravaged by air strikes, shelling, drones, and suicide bombs. It is now surrounded on three sides by ISIS forces. Syrian refugees have been fleeing the city into neighboring Turkish towns, where Turkish citizens have provided them with food, water, and shelter. Yet the situation for thousands is grim.

Kazim Kizil, a young man from Izmir, Turkey, has traveled to several border towns in the area, taking pictures of the refugee crisis and posting them on Facebook and Instagram. Here are some of his heartbreaking photos:

Young men in Suruc, Turkey watch on the border between Turkey and Syria. Kizil says that these men are Turkish civilians who are “giving moral support to YPG guerillas,” the Kurdish army that is defending Kobani. Smoke from air strikes billows in the distance.

A young girl carries her belongings on the border. Kizil says that refugees often arrive on the border and must sleep in the streets because other shelters are too crowded. Some refugees—especially mothers and children—are suffering from malnutrition, diarrhea, and vomiting.

Two young refugee girls on the border.

A sick, elderly man from Kobani is evacuated on a stretcher as a sandstorm approaches. Kizil says that many elderly people cannot leave the city because they are not strong enough to make the trip.

A child, dirty and running out of water, who migrated across the border from Kobani.

According to Kizil, thousands of people created a human chain on the border in solidarity with the Kurdish fighters.

The border vigil near Kobani goes on, as the sun sets on Wednesday night.

A refugee woman living on the street in a “tent city” in Suruc, Turkey. Kizil says many refugees are crammed into mosques, wedding halls, and empty shops, but most are living in tents or in the open.

A boy from Kobani waits at the border, clinging to a police fence.

A child from Kobani in the makeshift tent city.

Kizil captions this photo “I am looking at Kobani,” as a coalition air strike hits the town.

Taken from: 

Heartbreaking Photos From the Latest ISIS Attack

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Heartbreaking Photos From the Latest ISIS Attack

This Mime Laughing With Refugee Children On The Run From ISIS Is Surreal, Beautiful, And Starkly Human

Mother Jones

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

(function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)0; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1”; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));

As ISIS raises its menacing black flags to the East of Kobane, a Syrian city on the northern border with Turkey where Kurds are battling ISIS and hordes of civilians are evacuating, a mime puts on a show for Syrian refugee children in a scene straight out of Life is Beautiful. The mime, like Robert Benigni as Guido with his son Joshua in a Nazi concentration camp, makes light of a war-torn zone and the ultra-violent killers practically right outside the door by making a few practical jokes.

Reporters on the ground, including Jenan Moussa, have tweeted about ISIS’s “booby trapped cars” which exploded in Kobane, street fights, constant shelling and explosions, and the atmosphere of pure terror as night falls in Syria. But just outside the city, children watch and play along with a mime’s hand gestures, enraptured. In a second video, the mime plays with a puppet of a small child, and a member of his audience takes the puppet’s hand.

A screenshot of Kazim Kizil’s video of the mime and puppeteer in Kobane. Kazim Kizil/Facebook

The videos were posted by a Turkish Facebook user, Kazim Kizil, who has been watching and posting about the border area for several days. Kizil’s videos give a rare touching, lively insight into a land seized by blood, war, and terror.

From:

This Mime Laughing With Refugee Children On The Run From ISIS Is Surreal, Beautiful, And Starkly Human

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Mime Laughing With Refugee Children On The Run From ISIS Is Surreal, Beautiful, And Starkly Human