Is the United States sliding toward tyranny? That is the question posed by Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder in his new book that draws on his decades of experience writing about war and genocide in European history in order to find 20 key lessons that can help the United States avoid descending into authoritarianism. "I was trying to get out front and give people very practical day-to-day things that they could do," Snyder says. "What stood behind all of that was a lifetime of working on the worst chapters of European history, a sense of how things can go very wrong."
Tuesday, May 30th 2017: Trump Purge Imminent - President Trump will soon begin a large personnel shakeup to confront the growing scandals weighing down his administration. Roger Stone joins the broadcast in studio and Dr. Jerome Corsi shares the latest details on the Seth Rich murder investigation. Also, legendary guitarist Rick Derringer [with wife Jenda, and Trey Smith] gives his take on the Trump administration thus far. Paul Joseph Watson hosts the final hour.
InfoWars editor admits to rare disorder — he literally eats books Editor at Large for InfoWars, Paul Joseph Watson, believes books are for eating instead of reading. 02 Jun 2017 With Americans of all political stripes increasingly concerned with this era of fake news, the right-wing conspiracy site InfoWars has emerged as one of the most ridiculous websites for American citizens to get their information. InfoWars Editor at Large Paul Joseph Watson was asked [ https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/forget-juicing-try-the-infowars-diet ] a pedestrian question about his diet, when the crazy poured forth. “Funny you should ask—my eating habits are not normal,” began Paul Watson, with a clear tell that his next sentence would be fascinating. “I literally eat books. Pages of older books especially,” Watson explained, offering an alternative theory of books’ utility beyond conveying knowledge. Watson says he suffers from Pica, or more precisely papyrophagia. Pica is named for the magpie, a bird that will eat almost anything. InfoWars has been called, “QVC for conspiracy [ http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/qvc-for-conspiracy-ex-employees-reveal-how-alex-jones-bilks-fans-with-quack-cures-and-phony-politics/ ]” and has been accused of bilking fans with quack cures. [...] https://www.rawstory.com/2017/06/infowars-editor-admits-to-rare-disorder-he-literally-eats-books/ [with comments]
About Trump's not quite 'home run' of a foreign trip
All In with Chris Hayes 5/30/17
'When it comes to diplomacy, President Trump is a drunk tourist,' said a State Department official. 'Loud and tacky, shoving his way around the dance floor.' Duration: 1:49
Why Darrell Issa retreated to his office building roof
All In with Chris Hayes 5/30/17
A California attorney running for Congressman Darrell Issa's seat tweeted a photo of Issa on the roof of his district office building, saying the congressman was 'too afraid to come peak with assembled constituents below.' Duration: 2:15
Six months after her historic loss, Hillary Clinton tells Rebecca Traister in a new profile, 'I would have won had I not been subjected to the unprecedented attacks by Comey and the Russians.' Duration: 6:25
Multiple Trump investigations risk hindering each other
The Rachel Maddow Show 5/30/17
Congressman Eric Swalwell of the House Intelligence Committee talks with Joy-Ann Reid about the witness list and evidence the committee is hoping to collect in its investigation of the Donald Trump campaign's ties to Russia. Duration: 15:34
Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, talks with Joy-Ann Reid about Donald Trump's poor performance dealing with European allies on his recent trip abroad meeting with NATO and G7 leaders. Duration: 8:21
Civil rights protections wither under Trump, Sessions
The Rachel Maddow Show 5/30/17
Vanita Gupta, former head of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, talks with Joy-Ann Reid about the Trump administration's dismantling of important civil rights protections that are the responsibility of the Justice Department. Duration: 7:11
Lawrence: Trump's worst impulse is appointing incompetent people
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 5/30/17
Donald Trump's longtime lawyer Michael Cohen has been asked to provide documents & information in the Russia probe. Lawrence O'Donnell says if Cohen handles the probe like he's handled Trump's legal cases, the president is in trouble. Ron Klain & Jeremy Bash join. Duration: 9:28
Trump loses his Communications Director after less than 4 months in office and reportedly wants to bring one of his most controversial campaign aides to his Russia White House war room. Obama press secretary Josh Earnest and Eli Stokols join Lawrence O'Donnell. Duration: 10:20
Wendy Sherman: Kushner backchannel defense 'took my breath away'
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 5/30/17
Ambassador Wendy Sherman says President Trump's actions on his recent European trip shows that he "plays checkers while other leaders play chess." She agrees with Lawrence O'Donnell that French President Emmanuel Macron is now "leader of the free world." Duration: 5:33
White House doesn't deny Kushner sought secret link with Russia
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 5/30/17
Did Trump son-in-law and White House aide Jared Kushner seek a secret communications channel with the Kremlin? The White House won't say yes or no. Our reporter roundtable reacts. Duration: 7:52
NYTimes: No job is safe in Trump White House, not even Kushner's
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 5/30/17
Reports of an imminent staff shakeup in the Trump White House now put his own daughter and son-in-law on the list of those who may be on the way out. Brian Williams discusses with our panel. Duration: 3:50
Fmr. DOJ prosecutor: If Kushner's truthful it could mean a felony
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 5/30/17
Our legal minds discuss what the Russia probe on Capitol Hill and by Special Counsel at the Dept. of Justice could mean for Jared Kushner after reports he sought a secret link to the Kremlin. Duration: 6:55
Fmr. WH speechwriter: FBI probe means 'misery' for Jared Kushner
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 5/30/17
Walter Shapiro, journalist and former White House speechwriter for Pres. Carter, joins MSNBC's Brian Williams to explain why an FBI probe means nothing but worry ahead for Jared Kushner. Duration: 5:26
During his first official trip abroad, President Trump makes an arms deal with Saudi Arabia, gets rebuffed by First Lady Melania Trump and jeopardizes U.S. alliances.
Full Show - Alex Jones Launches 200K Contest To Expose Terroristic, Bullying MSM - 05-31-2017
Published on May 31, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel
Wednesday, May 31st 2017[, with an appearance by Mike Cernovich]: Trump Pulls Out of Globalist Climate Deal - President Trump plans to withdraw from the Paris Climate Deal as a new generation of Republicans moves to purge establishment Dems from office. GOP House candidate Omar Navarro reveals his gameplan to oust Maxine Waters and Roger Stone shares insider baseball from Washington DC.
There’s no better person to talk about our fractured political landscape than someone who has spent 40 years in public service, including as First Lady, U.S. Senator, U.S. Secretary of State and the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016. Hillary Rodham Clinton was the first woman to be nominated for president by a major U.S. political party and is a longtime advocate on gender equality issues.
Watch her live interview from the Code Conference stage. Date: May 31, 2017 Time: 12:05 PM PT / 3:05 PM ET
New subpoenas in House Trump Russia probe, with an extra twist
The Rachel Maddow Show 5/31/17
Jonathan Landay, D.C. national security correspondent for Reuters, talks about a new set of subpoenas issued by the House Intelligence Committee, some of Trump associates, and some by supposedly recused Devin Nunes to Obama era officials. Duration: 16:06
Trump may reverse Obama ejection, return Russian compounds: WaPo
The Rachel Maddow Show 5/31/17
Adam Entous, national security reporter for the Washington Post, talks about his reporting that Donald Trump is considering the return of Russian facilities in the U.S. just months after former President Obama ejected Russians from the compounds as punishment for interfering in the 2016 election. Duration: 7:52
Andrea Mitchell, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent, talks about Hillary Clinton's remarks in an interview at the ReCode tech conference, addressing her 2016 loss, Donald Trump, authoritarianism, Russia, and misogyny. Duration: 9:25
Trump is rewarding the Russians as he reportedly moves back two diplomatic compounds vacated to punish Russia for its interference in the 2016 presidential election. Evan McMullin, Mieke Eoyang, and Eugene Robinson join Lawrence O'Donnell. Duration: 15:16
Franken breaks news on addt'l reported Sessions-Kislyak meeting
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 5/31/17
Sen. Al Franken reacts to reports investigators are looking into another undisclosed meeting between Jeff Sessions and Russian diplomat Sergey Kislyak. He reveals lawmakers asked Comey to look into Sessions' contacts, including this meeting, before Comey was fired. Duration: 6:21
Comey due to testify to Senate Intel Cmte on Russia next week
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 5/31/17
Special Counsel Bob Mueller has cleared fired FBI Director Comey to testify on the Hill. MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell talks to Eli Stokols, Anita, Kumar, and Jeremy Bash. Duration: 8:12
Spicer suggests Trump's 'covfefe' tweet was secret code
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 5/31/17
In an exchange that left reporters clamoring for more answers, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer suggested that Trump's bizarre tweet was code to a select few. Eli Stokols reacts. Duration: 3:21
White House staff shakeup? Trump could replace Reince Priebus
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 5/31/17
New leaks from the White House indicate Trump's Chief of Staff Reince Priebus could very likely get the ax. Stephanie Ruhle, Michael Steele, and Barry Bennett join MSNBC's Brian Williams. Duration: 8:04
Michael Steele: Trump is the cause of chaos in the White House
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 5/31/17
Reacting to reports of a possible White House staff shakeup, fmr. RNC Chairman Michael Steele says the 'dysfunction' in the White House exists because Trump allows it. Duration: 1:27
House Dem: There's a cloud of corruption over Trump White House
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 5/31/17
House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) responds to the latest headlines on the Russia investigation including news James Comey will testify on the Hill. Duration: 4:47
Biden 2020? Fmr. Veep's new PAC kick starts the rumors
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 5/31/17
Former Vice President Biden is launching a new Political Action Committee. Does that mean he's gearing up for a run in 2020? MSNBC's Brian Williams talks to Eli Stokols and Jonathan Lemire. Duration: 4:18
Who Will Be Trump’s John Dean? | May 31, 2017 Pt. 3 | Full Frontal on TBS
Published on May 31, 2017 by Full Frontal with Samantha Bee
Sam sits down with the man who had a front-row seat for the Nixon administration’s downfall and asks, “Who’s the John Dean of Trump?” Also, did you know if you say “John Dean” three times Dick Cavett just shows up?
The Truth About "Covfefe" & The Trump Propaganda Machine: The Daily Show
Published on May 31, 2017 by The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
Trevor tries to figure out the meaning of the word "covfefe," and the White House peddles President Trump's disastrous trip abroad as an unprecedented success.
Full Show - The Death of Globalism is Here, Trump Blows Paris Accord Out of the Water - 06/01/2017
Published on Jun 1, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel
Thursday, June 1st 2017[, with appearances by Jerome Corsi and Jon Rappoport]: Bilderberg Global Elite Meet in Secret - Infowars is on the ground in Chantilly, Virginia, the site of the 65th annual Bilderberg elitist confab. Among topics to be addressed at the secretive meeting: Russia, "the war on information" and the Trump administration. Lord Monckton joins Alex Jones via Skype to discuss the bogus claims that support Climate Change policies.
The French government released its own version of the White House video on the Paris climate accord Friday, complete with what it views as corrections to the Trump administration’s stance on the deal.
France Diplomacy @francediplo_EN We’ve seen the @WhiteHouse video about the #ParisAccord. We disagree – so we’ve changed it. #MakeThePlanetGreatAgain. [non-YouTube original of this YouTube embedded] 1:52 PM - 2 Jun 2017 https://twitter.com/francediplo_EN/status/870699642509512704 [with comments]
What does it mean for the world's second biggest carbon emitter to abandon the most ambitious global effort to do something about climate change? Duration: 7:36
Putin says Russians might have been behind DNC hack
All In with Chris Hayes 6/1/17
The Russian president continues to deny any involvement at the state level, but said private hackers could have taken it upon themselves to meddle in the U.S. election. Duration: 6:22
Trump interest in Russia sanctions alarmed outgoing State staff
The Rachel Maddow Show 6/1/17
Dan Fried, former State Department chief coordinator for sanctions policy, talks about what he heard from colleagues about the eagerness of the Trump administration in its early days to lift sanctions on Russia without condition. Duration: 13:17
Farage a 'person of interest' in Trump-Russia probe: report
The Rachel Maddow Show 6/1/17
Ari Melber relays news from The Guardian newspaper that British politician and Donald Trump associate Nigel Farage is a "person of interest" in the FBI's investigation of the Donald Trump campaign's ties to Russian election interference. Duration: 3:50
Comey brings authority, experience to Trump-Russia probe hearing
The Rachel Maddow Show 6/1/17
Ron Klain, former chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, talks about the reputation, integrity, and experience former FBI Director James Comey will bring to upcoming testimony in the Senate Trump-Russia investigation. Duration: 9:59
California set to leave Trump behind on climate policy
The Rachel Maddow Show 6/1/17
Governor Jerry Brown talks about California's aggressive climate action policy, the deals his state is considering with Canada, Mexico, and China, and why Donald Trump is wrong on the Paris climate accord. Duration: 10:02
'Adults in the room' questioned as Trump containment strategy
The Rachel Maddow Show 6/1/17
Thomas Ricks, Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporters, talks about why he thinks Donald Trump is toxic to the reputations of those who work with him, and why Trump should be left alone in his incompetence. Duration: 5:12
Lawrence on Jared Kushner and 'Putin's slush fund'
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 6/1/17
Jared Kushner's explanation for meeting with a Russian banker contradicts the Russian bank's explanation, and Trump reportedly tried to lift sanctions on Russia just after taking office, reports say. Ken Dilanian, Peter Baker, and Joy Reid join Lawrence O'Donnell. Duration: 13:52
Rather: Trump most 'psychologically troubled' POTUS since Nixon
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 6/1/17
Dan Rather joins Lawrence O'Donnell to react to Donald Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate accord. Rather says the pressure of the Russia investigation is causing Trump to "lash out." Duration: 11:04
Report: Team Trump had secret plan to ease Russia sanctions
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 6/1/17
Veteran DC reporter Michael Isikoff details the Trump administration's alleged plan to ease Russian sanctions as soon as Trump took office. MSNBC's Brian Williams gets reaction from his panel. Duration: 5:37
World leaders & big business blast Trump's climate deal exit
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 6/1/17
World leaders, business CEOs, and even energy companies are criticizing Trump's move to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords. Our panel reacts to the move which could isolate America. Duration: 7:08
White House says nothing after Putin's election hack taunts
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 6/1/17
Fmr. U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul blasts the Trump White House for staying quiet after Vladimir Putin suggests perhaps some Russians outside his government may be behind election hacks. Duration: 4:20
Sen. Warren launches effort to track Trump's Education Dept.
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 6/1/17
It's called 'DeVos Watch.' Massachusetts Democratic Senator is pledging a new effort to track Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. USA Today's Heidi Przybyla joins MSNBC's Brian Williams. Duration: 2:19
France's Macron to America: 'Make our planet great again'
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 6/1/17
Speaking in English directly to America, newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron gave a defiant yet hopeful message to Americans after Trump pulled the U.S. from the Paris climate deal. Duration: 1:21
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian PM Narendra Modi, and Federal Chancellor of Austria Christian Kern take part in the plenary session of the 21st St. Petersburg International Economic Forum [with Megyn Kelly].
The 21st St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF 2017) has become Russia’s foremost gathering of business and government leaders, and world experts representing science, media, and society. They will discuss the key economic issues facing Russia, emerging markets, and the world as a whole. The theme of this year’s forum is ‘In Search of New Balance in the Global Economy.’
Full Show - Bilderberg Elites Plot Trump’s Downfall After Their Climate Change Agenda Is Destroyed
Published on Jun 2, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel
Friday, June 2nd 2017[, with Mike Cernovich hosting the fourth hour with an appearance by George Webb and Jason Goodman]: Paris Climate Aftermath - After Trump announced his decision to pull the U.S. out of Paris climate accord liberals went completely insane. Survivalist expert and author James Wesley Rawles joins today's program along with James O'Keefe of Project Veritas who is currently being sued over an undercover video released last year. Infowars reporters will be joining the show live from Chantilly, Virginia for this year's coverage of Bilderberg.
White House weighing attempt to block Comey testimony
All In with Chris Hayes 6/2/17
The President is consider whether to try and stop former FBI Director James Comey from testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee next week by invoking executive privilege. Duration: 9:59
Mueller inquiry could include Sessions' role in Comey firing: AP
The Rachel Maddow Show 6/2/17
Eric Tucker, Justice Department reporter for the Associated Press, talk about new reporting that according to Deputy A.G. Rod Rosenstein, the scope of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation could include Jeff Sessions. Duration: 10:10
Obstruction case could target Trump aides over Comey firing
The Rachel Maddow Show 6/2/17
Nicker Akerman, former Watergate special prosecutor, talks about the scope of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation and who could be a target in an obstruction case surrounding the firing of James Comey. Duration: 5:26
Mueller's broadening Trump investigation could gain resources
The Rachel Maddow Show 6/2/17
Rachel Maddow reacts to news that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is expanding his investigation to include Mike Flynn's dealings with Turkey and could include Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein, and will also take over the Paul Manafort investigation. Duration: 7:12
Trump blabbing would hurt executive privilege claim over Comey
The Rachel Maddow Show 6/2/17
Barbara McQuade, former U.S. attorney, talks about Donald Trump would have a hard time asserting executive privilege to prevent former FBI Director James Comey from testifying. Duration: 6:01
Trump attacks birth control amid scandal circus distraction
The Rachel Maddow Show 6/2/17
Ari Melber points out how Donald Trump is set to offer employers a 'moral convictions' loophole to offering health care, a move that could affect the birth control coverage of hundreds of thousands of women. Duration: 3:56
Robert Mueller widens the Russia probe's scope and may even focus on the role AG Sessions & Deputy AG Rosenstein played in firing Comey. Plus, the WH weighs blocking Comey's testimony and Democrats have a warning. David Frum, Renato Mariotti, and John Harwood join. Duration: 11:56
Trump says he chose to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord to put America first but a more likely reason is more basic. Max Boot says other nations will try to lead the world to America's detriment. Boot and Michael Grunwald join Joy Reid. Duration: 8:14
How Trump's tweets on Russia are 'making a bad situation worse'
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 6/2/17
Former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks and Criminal Defense Attorney Brian Wice discuss whether Pres. Trump can invoke executive privilege and stop James Comey from testifying. Duration: 6:52
Trump: We're exiting climate deal. Mayors & Guvs: No we're not
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 6/2/17
Mayors & governors, both Democrats & Republicans, pledge their cities & states will follow the Paris Climate Deal after Pres. Trump said the U.S. was out. Seema Mehta & Jamil Smith discuss. Duration: 5:27
Sen. Franken: Trump Team not acting like there's nothing to hide
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 6/2/17
Minnesota Democrat Sen. Al Franken joins MSNBC's Brian Williams to discuss the actions of the Trump White House in the face of an increasing number of stunning reports on Russia. Duration: 4:40
Bigger threat: Putin or climate change? Sen. Al Franken answers
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 6/2/17
Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota joins MSNBC's Brian Williams to discuss which is a greater threat: the threat Russia poses to American democracy or the threat climate change poses to the globe. Duration: 1:25
Sen. Franken & Brian Williams judge Franken's book by its cover
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 6/2/17
The old saying goes, you can't judge a book by its cover. But that didn't stop MSNBC's Brian Williams & Sen. Al Franken (D-MN). The two discuss the hilarious cover of the senator's new book. Duration: 2:22
Joy Reid and her panel[, including Malcolm Nance,] discuss the controversy swirling around Jared Kushner meeting with Russian banker Sergey Gorkov, who was known as a spy before entering banking. Duration: 14:31
Joy Reid sat down with Sen. Elizabeth Warren to discuss how to fight Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, who are refusing to debate issues as they push through legislation that many believe harms Americans. Duration: 9:15
She says she’s not running, but Joy Reid and her panel discuss whether Sen. Warren might change her mind, or if the Democrats might be better off with a younger candidate, a person of color, or someone who draws the white working class. Duration: 7:51
LeBron James is one of the victims of the both apparent and confirmed hate crimes perpetrated in recent weeks, which authorities say have increased since Donald Trump’s election. Joy and her panel discuss. Duration: 13:38
If Stacey Abrams becomes the governor of Georgia, she will be the first black person and woman to do so. Abrams tells Joy Reid how she plans to do it. Duration: 6:02
Joy Reid and her panel discuss a new project, which seeks to increase the Democrats’ appeal to white rural voters by distancing its candidates from what is perceived as the political donor class. Duration: 14:15
Saudis Signal Expanded Executions Policy After Donald Trump’s Visit The president’s first trip abroad also appears to have sparked crackdowns in Bahrain and Egypt. WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia this month encouraged the kingdom to expand its controversial use of the death penalty, including toward peaceful protesters, a top human rights advocacy group says. The state has executed 39 people so far this year, according to Reprieve, a London-based nonprofit, which exclusively shared its latest statistics on Saudi executions with HuffPost this week. At the current rate, the kingdom is on track to have executed 2,020 people between the coronation of a new king, Salman, in 2015 and 2030, the target date for a loudly promoted reform plan that promises a more progressive Saudi Arabia but is viewed with skepticism by human rights advocates. Reprieve noted that a contentious terrorism court upheld on Thursday the death sentence of a 23-year-old man with disabilities for protesting in 2012. It’s the first time the Saudis have taken such a step since they included detained dissidents in a mass execution last year, sparking global outrage. Maya Foa, Reprieve’s director, blamed Trump for the Saudis’ apparent new sense of impunity. “International condemnation of the mass killing is thought to have been a key factor in the kingdom’s decision to halt the executions of protesters,” Foa told HuffPost in an emailed statement on Wednesday. “But it appears that president Trump’s recent visit, and his explicit approval of the Saudi regime despite gross human rights abuses, may have emboldened Saudi authorities, who are now signalling their intention to resume protest-related executions.” The jailed protester, Munir Adam, is being punished on the basis of a forced confession he made under torture in a Saudi prison, according to Reprieve. He has one more opportunity to appeal before the king signs his death warrant and he is placed on death row. Trump speaks of the Saudi leg of his first foreign trip as its highlight, and he celebrated the U.S. relationship with the kingdom by delivering a speech parroting Saudi rulers’ worldview and offering them a huge, potentially illegal arms deal. He and his team seem at best blind to the way the authoritarian Saudi regime rules: After Trump returned from the kingdom, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC he was impressed with the lack of protesters on the streets. When an anchor said that might simply reflect the way the Saudis punish dissent, Ross said, “In theory, that could be true.” The Trump administration has said it wants to raise human rights concerns only in private. But critics believe foreign governments will understand that preference to mean that that the U.S. does not care if other countries respect rights, universal standards or the rule of law. Two governments aligned with Saudi Arabia have also taken repressive steps since Trump, a long-time fan of authoritarian tactics and leaders, indicated to their leaders at the Saudi summit that he was willing to embrace them and not “tell other people how to live.” Three days after Trump’s May 21 photo op with the king of Bahrain, Bahraini security forces raided the home of an activist cleric, killing at least one person and arresting hundreds involved in a sit-in demonstration. Officials said the action was necessary because the protesters were harboring fugitives aligned with Iran and refusing to disperse peacefully, but rights watchdogs were not convinced. “Yet again the architects of bloody destabilizing violence in Bahrain appear to be the [U.S.-friendly] Al Khalifa government, and the timing of this operation - two days after King Hamad’s convivial meeting with President Trump - can hardly be a coincidence,” Human Rights Watch said. On Wednesday, a Bahraini court prompted further concern when it dissolved a major political opposition group known as Waad or the National Democratic Action Society. “Bahrain is now heading towards total suppression of human rights,” said Lynn Maalouf, an Amnesty International official, in a statement. “The suspension of Waad is a flagrant attack on freedom of expression and association, and further proof that the authorities have no intention of delivering on promises of human rights progress.” Authorities shut down the chief opposition party, Al Wefaq, last summer. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi has also been busy since the Saudi conference. He authorized new media controls and the arrests of political opponents last week, and on May 29 ratified a brutal new law allowing for far greater government interference in civil society. [...] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/saudi-arabia-executions-trump-visit_us_592f2f89e4b0e09b11ed4c83 [with embedded links]
Thunder’s [center] Enes Kanter says his father has been arrested and faces torture in Turkey Last month, Oklahoma City Thunder center Enes Kanter was briefly detained at the airport in Bucharest, Romania, after the Turkish government tried to pull some shenanigans with his passport. Kanter, a frequent critic of the regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, eventually was allowed to leave on a flight to London after he broadcast his plight to the world via Twitter. He eventually made his way back to New York on a green card. On Friday, Kanter announced that his father has been arrested by the Turkish government and again called Erdogan “the Hitler of our century.” Later in the day, he released a further statement regarding his father’s arrest on his website. [...] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/06/02/thunders-enes-kanter-says-his-father-has-been-arrested-and-faces-torture-in-turkey/
Trump Administration Starts Returning Copies of C.I.A. Torture Report to Congress WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has begun returning copies of a voluminous 2014 Senate report about the Central Intelligence Agency’s detention and interrogation program to Congress, complying with the demand of a top Republican senator who has criticized the report for being shoddy and excessively critical of the C.I.A. The Trump administration’s move, described by multiple congressional officials, raises the possibility that copies of the 6,700-page report could be locked in Senate vaults for good — exempt from laws requiring that government records eventually become public. The C.I.A., the office of the Director of National Intelligence and the C.I.A.’s inspector general have returned their copies of the report, the officials said. The report is the result of a yearslong investigation into the C.I.A. program by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, telling the story of how — in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — the C.I.A. began capturing terrorism suspects and interrogating them in secret prisons beyond the reach of the American judicial and military legal systems. The central conclusion of the report is that the spy agency’s interrogation methods — including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other kinds of torture — were far more brutal and less effective than the C.I.A. described to policy makers, Congress and the public. It is the most comprehensive accounting of the Bush-era program that exists, and a declassified executive summary of the report was made public in December 2014 — with the support of some Republicans on the committee. The committee, which was then run by Democrats, also sent copies of the entire classified report to at least eight federal agencies, asking that they incorporate the report into their records — a move that would have made it subject to requests under the Freedom of Information Act. That law, which allows citizens, the media and other groups to request access to information held by the federal government, does not apply to congressional records. The agencies all refused, and instead kept their copies of the report locked up and unread, prompting the American Civil Liberties Union to sue the C.I.A. for access to the full Senate document. After Republicans took over the Senate in early 2015, Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, the Republican chairman of the committee, asked the Obama administration to return all the copies of the report that had been sent to the C.I.A., the Pentagon, the Justice Department and other executive-branch agencies. The Obama administration instead left the matter to the courts, and the case was still being heard when the Trump administration took over. It ended in April, clearing the way for the agencies to return their copies of the report. Mr. Burr has called the report nothing more than a “footnote in history.” His committee is now conducting an investigation into whether any of Mr. Trump’s campaign advisers or associates assisted in the Russian effort to disrupt last year’s presidential campaign. The return of the report to the Senate committee “is extremely disturbing on a number of levels,” said Katherine Hawkins, senior counsel at the Constitution Project, an advocacy organization. “First, it remains absurd that no one in the executive branch will open the full report. Second, Senator Burr’s ongoing attempts to bury the torture report casts doubt on his willingness to follow the facts to conclusions that would damage the administration in the Russia probe.” The C.I.A. and the office of the Director of National Intelligence both declined to comment. The full report is not expected to offer evidence of previously undisclosed interrogation techniques, but the interrogation sessions are said to be described in great detail. The report explains the origins of the program and identifies the officials involved, and also offers details on the role of each agency in the secret prison program. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/us/politics/cia-torture-report-trump.html
Sources: Russians discussed [having] potentially 'derogatory' information about Trump and associates during campaign The US intercepted discussions of Russian officials bragging about cultivating relationships with Trump campaign aides Sources caution the claims "could have been exaggerated or even made up" http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/30/politics/russians-trump-campaign-information/
Moscow may demand US compensation for confiscating Russian diplomatic compounds "So far, we haven’t received any proposals from the US side," the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman has noted http://tass.com/politics/948961
Russia escalates spy games after years of U.S. neglect Lawmakers and intelligence officials say that the United States missed opportunities to crack down on Russian espionage efforts. In the throes of the 2016 campaign, the FBI found itself with an escalating problem: Russian diplomats, whose travel was supposed to be tracked by the State Department, were going missing. The diplomats, widely assumed to be intelligence operatives, would eventually turn up in odd places, often in middle-of-nowhere USA. One was found on a beach, nowhere near where he was supposed to be. In one particularly bizarre case, relayed by a U.S. intelligence official, another turned up wandering around in the middle of the desert. Interestingly, both seemed to be lingering where underground fiber-optic cables tend to run. According to another U.S. intelligence official, “They find these guys driving around in circles in Kansas. It’s a pretty aggressive effort.” It’s a trend that has led intelligence officials to conclude that the Kremlin is waging a quiet effort to map the United States’ telecommunications infrastructure, perhaps preparing for an opportunity to disrupt it. [...] http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/01/russia-spies-espionage-trump-239003
The Age of Treason - Why Russia? It has become increasingly clear that the November election was a hostile takeover of the United States. The White House is full of traitors, from the top down. Those of us who’ve followed the citizen journalists, known as OSINT (open source intelligence), on Twitter and various blogs have known the facts that are now being reported in the mainstream media as “game-changing” for months. The actions that smell of espionage and treason have been increasingly evident since FBI Director Comey was fired on May 9th. The question that is repeatedly being asked is, “Why Russia?” The trite answer used for cover is “ISIS/Syria/radical Islamic terrorism/containing China,” as if the IC (intelligence community) isn’t fully aware that Putin uses Islamophobia and false flag terrorist acts to advance his own interests. There is, however, a more accurate and concerning answer, that ties in with this regime’s actions at home. It’s been touched on tangentially in the media over the past two years, but often fades from consciousness quickly. It’s complementary to the usual answer, which is also very much in play here, to “follow the money.” In this case, David Frum has revised the classic core Watergate maxim, “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” to “What does the president owe, and to whom does he owe it?” The Trump/Kushner organized crime family has been intimately involved with Russian money for decades, and may very well be in hock for hundreds of millions of dollars. The question remains, however, as to why Russia, rather than some other authoritarian state? Why were all the transition team’s actions related to Russia, and why did they leave only Russia off their clearance forms, and lie about meetings with Russians? [...] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-age-of-treason-why-russia_us_592ef6b4e4b0d80e3a8a3268
Nigel Farage 'doubts' FBI Trump probe claim Nigel Farage says it is "extremely doubtful" he could be a "person of interest" to the FBI's investigation into Donald Trump and Russia. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-40122179
Former FBI Director James Comey to testify in Senate June 8 Comey will testify in open session beginning at 10 a.m. ET A source told CNN Wednesday that Comey is also expected to address his private conversations with Trump http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/01/politics/comey-testify/
Nunes-led House Intelligence Committee asked for ‘unmaskings’ of Americans The Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee asked U.S. spy agencies late last year to reveal the names of U.S. individuals or organizations contained in classified intelligence on Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, engaging in the same practice that President Trump has accused the Obama administration of abusing, current and former officials said. The chairman of the committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), has since cast the practice of “unmasking” of U.S. individuals and organizations mentioned in classified reports as an abuse of surveillance powers by the outgoing Obama administration. Trump has argued that investigators should focus their attention on former officials leaking names from intelligence reports, rather than whether the Kremlin coordinated its activities with the Trump campaign, an allegation he has denied. “The big story is the ‘unmasking and surveillance’ of people that took place during the Obama administration,” Trump tweeted Thursday. [...] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nunes-led-house-intelligence-committee-requested-unmaskings-of-americans/2017/06/02/5c098dc0-47bc-11e7-98cd-af64b4fe2dfc_story.html
Supreme Court sets deadline for travel ban filings The Supreme Court is giving the challengers to President Donald Trump’s travel ban executive order more than a week to respond to the government’s emergency request to let the order take effect. The court announced Friday a deadline of 3 p.m. June 12 to address the Justice Department’s filings Thursday night urging the high court to review the legality of the travel ban and to allow it to go into force while the litigation goes forward. A key part of the order — a 90-day suspension of issuance of visas to citizens of six majority-Muslim countries — is currently blocked by two different district courts, one in Maryland and the other in Hawaii. The Hawaii order also blocked a 120-day halt Trump planned to refugee admissions to the U.S. from around the globe. Last week, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals voted, 10-3, to uphold the Maryland-based judge’s injunction. A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit is considering the Hawaii injunction but has not yet ruled on it. [...] http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2017/06/02/supreme-court-trump-travel-ban-239084
CBS Tells FCC That Stephen Colbert's Trump Jokes Weren't Indecent Nor Obscene The broadcaster looks to avoid any "character" test in a license review. Apparently, the FCC's decision not to fine CBS for crude jokes made by The Late Show's Stephen Colbert isn't the final word on the subject. In a comment to the agency posted on Tuesday, CBS stood behind Colbert's joke-filled rant that included a remark about how the only thing President Donald Trump's mouth is good for "is being Vladimir Putin's cock holster." "The Late Show, like all CBS news and entertainment programming, is entitled to the full force of the law’s safeguards for protected speech," stated the network's comment. "The broadcast in question was not indecent, let alone obscene." FCC chairman Ajit Pai got way too much attention for telling a radio interviewer earlier this month that the agency would be following "standard operating procedures" by reviewing indecency complaints. Unsurprisingly, given that the hours between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. are considered to be a "safe harbor" zone for broadcasters, the FCC later concluded there was "nothing actionable." So why is it now coming up? The FCC is reviewing the transfers of licenses in a merger between CBS Radio and Entercom. One of the objectors is Ed Stolz, the head of Royce International Broadcasting, which owns some radio stations in California. He has filed a petition to deny, but after the controversial Late Show episode aired — which led to a #FireColbert backlash on social media — Stolz requested the opportunity to submit new information based on what Colbert said. [...] http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/cbs-tells-fcc-stephen-colberts-trump-jokes-werent-indecent-obscene-1009034
Trump misunderstood MIT climate research, university officials say Massachusetts Institute of Technology officials said U.S. President Donald Trump badly misunderstood their research when he cited it on Thursday to justify withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. Trump announced during a speech at the White House Rose Garden that he had decided to pull out of the landmark climate deal, in part because it would not reduce global temperatures fast enough to have a significant impact. "Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100," Trump said. "Tiny, tiny amount." That claim was attributed to research conducted by MIT, according to White House documents seen by Reuters. The Cambridge, Massaschusetts-based research university published a study in April 2016 titled "How much of a difference will the Paris Agreement make?" showing that if countries abided by their pledges in the deal, global warming would slow by between 0.6 degree and 1.1 degrees Celsius by 2100. [...] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-trump-mit-idUSKBN18S6L0
Trump Plans to Shift Infrastructure Funding to Cities, States and Business WASHINGTON — President Trump will lay out a vision this coming week for sharply curtailing the federal government’s funding of the nation’s infrastructure and calling upon states, cities and corporations to shoulder most of the cost of rebuilding roads, bridges, railways and waterways. He will also endorse a plan to privatize and modernize the nation’s air-traffic control system. That plan, which is to be introduced on Monday at the White House and the subject of a major speech in the Midwest two days later, will be Mr. Trump’s first concrete explanation of how he intends to fulfill a campaign promise to lead $1 trillion in United States infrastructure projects. The goal is to create millions of jobs while doing much-needed reconstruction and updating. But the actual details of the initiative are unsettled, and a more intricate blueprint is still weeks or even months from completion. What the president will offer instead over the coming days, his advisers said, are the contours of a plan. The federal government would make only a fractional down payment on rebuilding the nation’s aging infrastructure. Mr. Trump would rely on a combination of private industry, state and city tax money, and borrowed cash to finance the rest. It would be a stark departure from ambitious infrastructure programs of the past, in which the government played a major role and devoted substantial resources to paying the cost of large-scale projects. “We like the template of not using taxpayer dollars to give taxpayers wins,” said Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council and an architect of the infrastructure plan, in an interview Friday in his West Wing office. [...] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/us/politics/trump-plans-to-shift-infrastructure-funding-to-cities-states-and-business.html
White House Details Ethics Waivers for Ex-Lobbyists and Corporate Lawyers WASHINGTON — President Trump has given at least 16 White House staff members dispensation to work on policy matters they handled while employed as lobbyists or to interact with their former colleagues in private-sector jobs, according to records released late Wednesday [ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/disclosures/ethics-pledge-waivers ]. The details on these so-called ethics waivers — more than five times the number granted in the first four months of the Obama administration — were made public after an intense dispute between the White House and the Office of Government Ethics, which had been pushing the Trump administration to stop granting such waivers in secret. The list of waivers includes high-profile names such as Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, and Kellyanne Conway, a senior White House adviser. They had to be granted waivers because of their prior work with organizations such as the Republican National Committee, which Mr. Priebus once ran, and because they continue to have contact with those organizations as part of their White House work. But the waivers granted by the White House are also going to former lobbyists, despite Mr. Trump’s campaign vow to try to reduce the influence of lobbyists in Washington. [...] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/us/politics/lobbyist-ethics-waivers-trump-administration.html
Trump misses a key point when he urges the Senate to blow up its rules President Donald Trump urges the Senate to changes its rules to allow legislation to pass with only a majority vote. Senate Republicans are already using a budget process that will allow them to pass health-care and tax-reform bills with a majority vote. http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/30/trump-misses-a-key-point-when-he-urges-the-senate-to-blow-up-its-rules.html
Obama Unwittingly Handed Trump a Weapon to Cripple the Health Law WASHINGTON — Obama administration officials knew they were on shaky ground in spending billions of dollars on health insurance subsidies without clear authority. But they did not think a long-shot court challenge by House Republicans was cause for deep concern. For one thing, they would be out of office by the time a final ruling in the case, filed in 2014, was handed down. They also believed that a preliminary finding against the administration would ultimately be tossed out. Finally, they figured that President Hillary Clinton could take care of the problem, if necessary. Well, they are out of office, Mrs. Clinton is not president and the uncertain status of the cost-sharing payments now looms as the biggest threat to the stability of the insurance exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act. A dubious decision made by the previous White House has handed the current administration a powerful weapon to wield against the health care legislation that it despises. “The administration should not have found an appropriation where none existed,” said Nicholas Bagley, a University of Michigan law professor who has studied and written about the issue. “The Obama administration argument that the Affordable Care Act included an appropriation for the cost-sharing payments never held water.” Judge Rosemary M. Collyer agreed with that assertion last year. She ruled that the Obama administration had no explicit authority to pay as much as $130 billion over 10 years to insurance companies to cover out-of-pocket health costs for millions of lower-income Americans obtaining insurance on the new health exchanges. At the same time, she found that the Republican-led House had the standing to sue the administration — a potentially far-reaching decision that many constitutional law experts predicted would be overturned on appeal, causing the suit to be dismissed. Then November’s election upended all the calculations. Donald J. Trump won, and his interest in defending the executive branch against the House lawsuit was nonexistent given his antipathy for the health care law. But neither he nor congressional Republicans were in any hurry to drop the appeal initiated by the Obama administration because that would mean the subsidies would be immediately cut off, throwing the health insurance market into turmoil. Instead, the lawsuit has been essentially suspended and the payments have become a new bargaining chip in Washington. The administration is essentially doling them out on a month-to-month basis while Republicans struggle to come together on their own health care replacement plan. Republicans say the fight over the subsidies is just one element contributing to a failure of the health care law. “This law is in the middle of a collapse,” Speaker Paul D. Ryan told reporters before the House went on its Memorial Day break. “We need to bring down the cost of coverage, and we need to revitalize the market so that people have real choices and real access to affordable health care.” Democrats and other critics say it is the Trump administration’s position on the cost-sharing payments that is a chief contributor to the shakiness in the market, with insurers abandoning the program or raising premiums in anticipation of the federal dollars disappearing. They say that the White House maneuvering on the subsidies is simply the latest in a series of calculated moves meant to sabotage the insurance program, starting with an order to end enforcement of the requirement that people obtain insurance. While some Democrats acknowledge that the Obama administration left the law vulnerable to attack with the way it funded the subsidies, they say it is Republicans who will now pay politically if the program collapses on their watch. “This would put their hands on the bloody knife,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who is heading the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Mr. Bagley, the law school professor, agrees that Republicans would be held accountable for a failure in the marketplace. He says they should be because of the actions they have taken to undermine it. “The biggest source for the instability in the markets in 2018 is the president,” he said, warning of a run of damaging headlines for Republicans beginning this fall if things proceed on their current course. Republicans dismiss such talk and say that the public knows just where the problems with the health care law originated — and it is not with them. “The blame belongs with Obamacare,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said recently. “There’s just no serious way to now try and spin away these years and years of Obamacare failures on cost.” The ongoing debate overlooks an underlying problem with the Affordable Care Act. In the past, disputes such as the funding fight would have been resolved with corrective legislation. Congress has traditionally taken years to resolve disagreements and unintended consequences arising from complex pieces of social legislation, as they continue to do with Medicare, which became law in the 1960s. But the bitter partisan divide over health care has prevented any such tweaking. What to do about the payments will no doubt arise in budget talks between Capitol Hill and the White House. The Trump administration could try again to extract concessions from Democrats by trading a commitment to continue funding the subsidies even though the White House was unsuccessful in doing so this year. And if the Republican effort to find a substitute to the health care law ends in failure, which now seems a real possibility, perhaps Republicans and Democrats could find a way to come together to make repairs to the Affordable Care Act and resolve doubts surrounding the payments. But for now, the uncertainty continues to imperil both the Affordable Care Act and the politicians who could be held accountable for any failure. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/us/politics/obama-trump-health-law.html
Lawsuit: East Lansing violated farmer's religious freedom LANSING – When the East Lansing Farmers Market resumes Sunday, produce from Country Mill Farms will be missing for the first time since 2010. Steve Tennes, owner of Country Mill Farms in Charlotte, said he’s been excluded from the 2017 season because of views he expressed on Facebook regarding marriage. The city’s decision to exclude Tennes from the farmers market prompted Tennes and a religious freedom advocacy group, Alliance Defending Freedom, to file a federal lawsuit Wednesday. Tennes, who sold organic apples and produce at the farmers market, said his Catholic faith has made him a target of government discrimination. [...] http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2017/05/31/farmer-sues-east-lansing-alleged-violation-religious-freedoms/358030001/
This WHITE Teen Admitted She Made Up Claims She Was Abducted And Raped By "Three Black Males" - Denison, Texas Local police called the hoax “offensive to the African-American community.” The false accusations were also used by white nationalists to push their agenda online. https://www.buzzfeed.com/tanyachen/teen-claims-she-was-raped-by-three-black-males-hoax
White nationalist claims Trump directed rally violence Trump supporter asks a federal court to hold the president liable for any damages stemming from a lawsuit filed by protesters who attended a Kentucky campaign stop. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/donald-trump-rally-violence-237302
Trump lawyer: ‘No right’ to protest at rallies The president’s lawyers file a motion to derail a lawsuit brought by protesters President Donald Trump’s lawyers argued in a Thursday court filing that protesters “have no right” to “express dissenting views” at his campaign rallies because such protests infringed on his First Amendment rights. The filing comes in a case brought by three protesters who allege they were roughed up and ejected from a March 2016 Trump campaign rally in Louisville, Kentucky, by Trump supporters who were incited by the then-candidate’s calls from the stage to “get 'em out of here!” Lawyers for Trump’s campaign have argued that his calls to remove the protesters were protected by the First Amendment. But the federal district court judge hearing the case issued a ruling late last month questioning that argument, as well as the claim that Trump didn’t intend for his supporters to use force. The ruling cleared the case to proceed into discovery and towards a trial. Thursday’s filing by Trump’s campaign lawyers asks the judge to pause the proceedings and allow Trump’s legal team to appeal the ruling to a higher court “before subjecting the President to ‘unique’ and extraordinary burdens of litigation.” Specifically, Trump’s lawyers want the appeals court to reconsider whether Trump’s calls to remove the protesters were protected speech under the First Amendment and whether it’s reasonable to construe the calls as an incitement to violence. [...] http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/20/donald-trump-protest-rallies-speech-237431
Trump lawyers seek a quick end to rally violence lawsuits - and they might get it Do protesters really “have no right” to dissent at Trump rallies? President Donald Trump’s lawyers want judges to dismiss a lawsuit over violence at his campaign rallies because protesters don’t actually have the right to dissent inside his speaking halls. People can “express dissenting views” but “have no right to do so as part of the campaign rally of the political candidates they oppose,” Trump’s team argued in a Thursday court filing. The case involves the avowed white nationalist Matthew Heimbach, who physically assailed a black woman named Kashiya Nwanguma as she protested inside a Trump rally in Kentucky in 2016. Heimbach, Trump, and the Trump campaign are co-defendants. Heimbach recently argued to the court that Trump and his campaign are the only people who should be liable for what rally attendees did or didn’t do to Nwanguma that day. Fellow Trump supporter Alvin Bamberger helped Heimbach and is also named in the suit. His lawyers argue, as Heimbach does, that their client would never have done anything to Nwanguma if Trump hadn’t told him to. “To the extent that Bamberger acted, he did so in response to - and inspired by - Trump and/or the Trump Campaign’s urging to remove the protesters,” they wrote in a recent filing. The supporters’ arguments and Trump’s own thus appear to be at odds. But Trump’s lawyers aren’t denying that supporters acted in response to what he said - they’re saying he was within his rights to try to remove protesters, with physical force, and is not culpable if the force they actually used went beyond what was necessary to get protesters out of the building. [...] https://thinkprogress.org/trump-rally-violence-lawsuit-25f8f1f79b81
Serena Williams’ Response To Racist Comments: ‘Does My Sassiness Upset You?’ The tennis star quoted Maya Angelou after Ilie Nastase’s alleged comments about Williams’ unborn child. Serena Williams responded Monday to Ilie Nastase’s alleged racist comments about her unborn child. Nastase was allegedly heard saying, “Let’s see what color it has. Chocolate with milk?” in Romanian when one of his players was discussing Williams’ pregnancy during a press conference. The former singles champion has a reputation for bad behavior and is nicknamed “Nasty.” His comments were made in reference to Williams’ fiancé, Alexis Ohanian, who is white. Williams - who announced her 20-week pregnancy last week - addressed Nastase’s remark in a text post on Instagram. [...] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/serena-williams-responds-to-ilie-nastases-racist-comments_us_58fe5b6ae4b018a9ce5dc6df
A black teen died following an encounter with police near Dallas. His death has just been ruled a homicide. - shot in head by police rifle - outrageous case Police have retracted earlier accounts that a vehicle was reversing toward officers in an “aggressive manner” when one of the officers opened fire, striking and killing 15-year-old Jordan Edwards in a Dallas-area suburb Saturday night. In a news conference Monday, Balch Springs Police Chief Jonathan Haber said that he initially “misspoke” and that the vehicle had begun to drive away at the time the officer opened fire. He questioned whether the shooting was necessary. “I unintentionally (was) incorrect when I said the vehicle was backing down the road … in fact I can tell you that I do have questions in relation to my observation (of) the video,” Haber said. “After reviewing the video, I don’t believe that (the shooting) met our core values.” Haber, who declined to release the video footage of the shooting as well as the name of the officer involved, said that evidence will be presented to a grand jury. Jordan is the youngest of the more than 330 people who have been shot and killed by police in 2017, according to a Washington Post database tracking such shootings. About 25 percent of those fatally shot by police this year have been black, and about 7 percent of those killed have been unarmed at the time they were shot. At least 10 people shot and killed by police this year were under 18. [...] Lee Merritt, an attorney for Edwards’s family, said at a news conference Monday that the family is calling on the police department to release the name of the officer as well as audio and video footage of the incident. “We are declaring war on bad policing. This has happened far too often,” he said. “We are tired of making the same rhetorical demands, of having the same hashtags; our community is fed up with the same tired excuses, once again offered by Balch Springs Police Department yesterday, that this was somehow the fault of the victims — teenage kids with no criminal records, with no motive to attempt to hurt anyone, with no evidence that they ever attempted to hurt anyone.” “Another family ripped apart by police brutality,” he wrote Sunday on Twitter. “There was absolutely no justification for this murder. We demand justice!” In a phone interview with The Post on Sunday night, Merritt said that Jordan, his 16-year-old brother and three other teenage boys were at a party on Baron Drive when they learned that police were on the way. They went to the car parked outside, saw flashlights and heard gunshots, Merritt said. As they climbed into the car, the teens apparently heard somebody yell profanities. Then they were being fired upon. They fled for about a block, Merritt said, before they noticed that there was smoke coming from Jordan’s head. The driver of the car, the boy’s older brother, stopped the car, and they flagged down an approaching police cruiser for help. Several of the teens played on the football team together. Jordan was going through spring training for next year’s season. “They’re never going to be the same,” Merritt said. “These kids are never going to be the same.” Merritt said that three bullets were fired into the car. They came through the driver’s side window, he said. Jordan and the four teens with him had not been drinking, according to Merritt. They were not cited for underage drinking and have not been charged with any crimes, he said. [...] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/05/01/officer-fatally-shoots-15-year-old-boy-in-dallas-suburb/
Alton Sterling shooting death: Reports suggest no federal charges Reports: No federal charges in Alton Sterling shooting death Sterling was selling CDs outside a Baton Rouge convenience store http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/02/us/alton-sterling-shooting-death/
Ex-officer Michael Slager pleads guilty in shooting death of Walter Scott As part of a plea deal, two other federal charges and state charges will be dropped Slager killed 50-year-old Walter Scott as Scott was running away http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/02/us/michael-slager-federal-plea/
Georgia Wonders: Will Newcomers Dye the Suburbs Blue? JOHNS CREEK, Ga. — At first blush, this bedroom city of 83,000 a half-hour north of Atlanta might be mistaken for the perfect example of a white-flight Sun Belt suburb. It sits squarely in the congressional district once represented by Newt Gingrich, with excellent public schools and master-planned communities so pristine they could have been built by a model train aficionado. In 2015, the all-white City Council rejected the idea of expanding public transit out from majority-black Atlanta on the grounds that it “would increase high-density housing.” But something has been happening in Johns Creek — and, indeed, across much of the vast archipelago of cul-de-sac communities north of Atlanta that served as the launchpad for Mr. Gingrich’s 1994 Republican revolution. The promise of a suburban idyll has been increasingly attracting all kinds of people — many of whom are not white, and not Republican. Today, 24 percent of people in Johns Creek are of Asian heritage. Indian-Americans shop for saris at the Medlock Crossing strip mall and flock to the latest Bollywood hits at the multiplex. Chinese-Americans and food lovers of all stripes head to the Sichuan House, near the Target and Home Depot stores, for sliced pork ears in chili sauce and “tearfully spicy” mung bean noodles. [...] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/us/politics/ossoff-handel-georgia-sixth-district.html
Supreme Court sets deadline for travel ban filings The Supreme Court is giving the challengers to President Donald Trump’s travel ban executive order more than a week to respond to the government’s emergency request to let the order take effect. The court announced Friday a deadline of 3 p.m. June 12 to address the Justice Department’s filings Thursday night urging the high court to review the legality of the travel ban and to allow it to go into force while the litigation goes forward. A key part of the order — a 90-day suspension of issuance of visas to citizens of six majority-Muslim countries — is currently blocked by two different district courts, one in Maryland and the other in Hawaii. The Hawaii order also blocked a 120-day halt Trump planned to refugee admissions to the U.S. from around the globe. Last week, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals voted, 10-3, to uphold the Maryland-based judge’s injunction. A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit is considering the Hawaii injunction but has not yet ruled on it. [...] http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2017/06/02/supreme-court-trump-travel-ban-239084
In Travis County custody case, jury will search for real Alex Jones - this and next two at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=130629223 Alex Jones and his ex-wife, Kelly, will be locked in a child custody trial the next two weeks in Austin. Alex Jones’ lawyers will make the case that their client should not be judged by his on-air persona. Lawyers for Kelly Jones will maintain that Jones’ public outbursts suggest he is not a fit parent. April 16, 2017 At a recent pretrial hearing, attorney Randall Wilhite told state District Judge Orlinda Naranjo that using his client Alex Jones’ on-air Infowars persona to evaluate Alex Jones as a father would be like judging Jack Nicholson in a custody dispute based on his performance as the Joker in “Batman.” “He’s playing a character,” Wilhite said of Jones. “He is a performance artist.” But in emotional testimony at the hearing, Kelly Jones, who is seeking to gain sole or joint custody of her three children with Alex Jones, portrayed the volcanic public figure as the real Alex Jones. “He’s not a stable person,” she said of the man with whom her 14-year-old son and 9- and 12-year-old daughters have lived since her 2015 divorce. “He says he wants to break Alec Baldwin’s neck. He wants J-Lo to get raped. “I’m concerned that he is engaged in felonious behavior, threatening a member of Congress,” she said, referring to his recent comments about California Democrat Adam Schiff. “He broadcasts from home. The children are there, watching him broadcast.” [...] http://www.mystatesman.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/travis-county-custody-case-jury-will-search-for-real-alex-jones/rnbWzMHnFCd5SOPgP3A34J/
Alex Jones Will Never Stop Being Alex Jones After two decades toiling at the fringes of politics, Alex Jones and his Infowars media empire have architected the current moment and helped usher a president into office. Now, the only person standing in Jones' way is Jones. AUSTIN - It was the winter of 1997 and Alex Jones couldn’t stop getting punched in the face. [...] https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/alex-jones-will-never-stop-being-alex-jones
Breitbart’s frustration with President Trump just boiled over Breitbart News cheered Donald Trump to victory in November but has been frustrated by some of Trump’s moves in office. Most notably, the hard-right site has been disappointed by the president’s failure to secure funding for the Southern border wall he promised during the campaign in a budget deal Republicans and Democrats recently struck. At Wednesday’s White House press briefing, Breitbart reporter Charlie Spiering got into a tense exchange with White House press secretary Sean Spicer. We have annotated the back-and-forth, using Genius. To see an annotation, click the yellow, highlighted text. To add your own, sign up for an account. [...] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/03/breitbarts-frustration-with-president-trump-just-boiled-over/
In Minnesota's worst measles outbreak, a battle of beliefs over vaccines An evolving community in the big city of Minneapolis is fighting a dangerous virus -- and a battle of beliefs. The largest measles outbreak in the Minnesota city in 25 years, this April, affected 34 people primarily between the ages of 0 to 5, according to the Minnesota Department of Health. Eleven have been hospitalized. The majority, 29, of the measles cases were among Somali Minnesotans, according to the state health department, which has been working to improve vaccination rates in their community. State and local officials have been searching for any other people exposed to the virus –- potentially 3,000 more -- who may be unvaccinated and vulnerable, to try and stop the spread of the disease. [...] http://abcnews.go.com/Health/minnesotas-worst-measles-outbreak-battle-beliefs-vaccines/story?id=47155531
Stocks Surged As Trading Floors Watched 'Breaking' InfoWars Video. It Was Two Weeks Old, and Wrong. Traders and analysts are wondering if “Infowars [is] a site I have to start reading now” to gauge what the average person believes is true in the middle of a “propaganda war.” As a video circulated that appeared to partially absolve President Donald Trump in the administration’s Russian meddling scandal on trading floors on Thursday, stocks surged for the first time in days on the apparent breaking news. The video, it turns out, was actually two weeks old, misleadingly edited with the intention of falsely accusing former FBI director James Comey of perjury—and was initially aired by conspiracy website InfoWars on Thursday around noon. Trump wasn’t cleared. In fact, since the video had been around since May 3rd, nothing had changed at all. But by the time traders found out, the dollar index had spiked anyway. The fallout of the story is leaving analysts wondering how to absorb information in a market that is suddenly waiting on bated breath for the latest rumors to come out of the White House—even when those rumors are intentionally misleading or untrue. “The market is used to trading on rumors. There are always rumors of takeovers or bankruptcies. In those situations, when you bet on a rumor, you lose big time,” Adam Button, the chief currency analyst at ForexLive, told The Daily Beast. “With political rumors, they don’t have to be true.” In other words, the news can be fake, but the rally it creates in the stock market is very real. Button was one of the first to trace the bump in the American dollar back to InfoWars on Thursday. “It’s an unprecedented time. The market is getting a taste of what the post-truth world looks like,“ said Button. An InfoWars segment and article posted around noon titled “Breaking! Comey Caught Committing Perjury to Congress” shows Comey saying “he has not been pressured to close an investigation." The clip on InfoWars omits that the question, asked by Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono, specifically asks Comey if the attorney general or Department of Justice has asked him to close the investigation, and doesn’t mention President Trump. The InfoWars story ends with the sentence “This story is developing,” even though Comey’s testimony had occurred 15 days ago. No further updates arrived. [...] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/18/stocks-surged-as-trading-floors-watched-breaking-infowars-video-it-was-two-weeks-old-and-wrong the video: Comey Caught Committing Perjury To Congress? - and 5-18-17 full show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEyYu4aJgiY This video proves that James Comey perjured himself to Congress claiming that no one had asked him to halt the investigation into the Trump/Russia connection. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OgDai05bkU
Slain DNC Staffer’s Family Orders Blabbing Detective to ‘Cease and Desist’ - at https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131520771 The family of slain Democratic staffer Seth Rich [ http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/dnc-staffer-s-murder-draws-fresh-conspiracy-theories-n760186 ] is threatening legal action against a private investigator after his "outrageous behavior" has given fuel to right-wing conspiracy theories about the unsolved murder of their son. An attorney representing the family of Rich, who was 27 when he was killed last July, sent a cease and desist letter Friday to Rod Wheeler, a Fox News contributor and former Washington, D.C., homicide detective who was employed by the family and earlier this week told a Fox affiliate that he believed police were covering up details about the crime. [...] Wheeler's contract with the Rich family prohibited him from speaking to the press without prior approval from the family, a clause he apparently violated when he spoke to Fox 5 D.C. Monday for a story that quickly went viral on the right. Rich's family also has demanded a retraction and apology from Fox 5 D.C. for the story, but has so far not received one. Wheeler has since completely recanted his story, both in the press and in a private message to Rich's family. The private investigator told other outlets the Fox reporter essentially put words in his mouth by giving him information that he then repeated in an on-camera interview. "That story on Fox 5 last night was inaccurate," he told BuzzFeed [ https://www.buzzfeed.com/claudiakoerner/the-private-detective-who-ignited-a-clinton-conspiracy ]. [...] http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/slain-dnc-staffer-s-family-orders-blabbing-detective-cease-desist-n762211
The Secret To Happiness Revealed - included in 12-28-16 Alex Jones Show Paul Joseph Watson talks about the death of Carrie Fisher and how now many people are completely unhappy no matter what the accomplish. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y-f8VLzMdM
DarkMatter2525 https://www.youtube.com/user/DarkMatter2525/videos Featured Channels https://www.youtube.com/user/DarkMatter2525/channels recent not posted yet, chrono as uploaded: If Muhammad Replaced Trump (. . .) Jul 24, 2016 If the ideals of Islamism came out of Trump's mouth, how would the Left & Right react? If any Muslims do respond to this cartoon, I have a couple predictions: 1. Some will respond by saying that the verses are out of context (standard response), but notice that none of these verses are actually justified by their context, and 2. Some other verse will be presented that contradicts one of the verses I used, which proves nothing other than the fact that the Islamic texts in question are contradictory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D1sW7tu6-s You Can't Escape - Episode 8 of "Power Corrupts" ( https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv--V1yc2QDJi6hFNhur3iAsyFpXRtB8w - further to http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=123593680 ) Aug 28, 2016 You might be able to escape religion, but you can't escape what caused it in the first place. All you can do is try to be cognizant of it, and try your best to keep it in check. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dspHj0Cj2-g Always Cry Wolf Sep 28, 2016 Human beings often unite during tragedies, foregoing our petty differences. Imagine if we didn't require the tragedy. While "crying wolf" is considered bad, the title of this video refers to what happened at Yellowstone, and in that light, the title's meaning is "always strive for balance". During my 40 years of life, I have learned that attaining balance is the greatest solver of problems. Be neither excessive nor neglectful. I believe that is a good rule for the macro as well, for society, and for our planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVsVgAqV9WI Don't Expect A Terrible Hereafter Oct 25, 2016 I was challenged to make a meaningful animation without speech. Thanks to my friend, known as C0ct0pusPrime here on YouTube, for challenging me to do this a while back. I had a lot of ideas, but this one stuck with me the most. Life is filled with dark irony. The very thing you want the most, might actually end up being the thing you'd least want. If you're not mindful, you might find out too late. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_jijoIUi2A King Solomon Nov 28, 2016 Marriage should be between 1 man and 1000 women. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zjjg7mmDN4 If Hitler Never Existed (. . .) Dec 21, 2016 This is basically a MUCH better version of "It's a Wonderful Life". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5TtDZlHqao The Horror of Your Desires Dec 29, 2016 If you somehow obtained ultimate power, the things you’d choose to do would show us far more clearly who you really are than you could possibly show us with your current limitations. You could choose to bend people to your will, even if only through threats and intimidation, or maybe you could enjoy life with us, help us, and teach us. The bible authors created a character in Yahweh who abuses his limitless power with wanton abandon, reeking of a crude tool of manipulation - not a loving, caring teacher. He is the ultimate bad guy, sold to us as the ultimate good guy - a monumental travesty of history. It certainly is a good thing that Yahweh is a fictional invention of ancient writers. My next animations will be about the life and times of King David, as found in 1st and 2nd Samuel (and a bit of 1st Kings). This animation was Episode 9 of my Power Corrupts series. Here’s a link to the full playlist of the Power Corrupts series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA5PlJiqOnk&list=PLv--V1yc2QDJi6hFNhur3iAsyFpXRtB8w - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv--V1yc2QDJi6hFNhur3iAsyFpXRtB8w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqJBD5SosZI King David Jan 22, 2017 This is the beginning of King David’s story from the Bible, the books of Samuel. I’d like to animate the rest of the books of Samuel, but that would take an enormous amount of work, and not only would your support via Patreon be greatly appreciated, but would also attach your name to the project (DarkMatter Army or above). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdtV9kbs_fo David, Goliath, and the 200 Cyclops Sleeves Feb 20, 2017 The Sunday School version of David and Goliath usually ends after David slings his rock, and for good reason; the rest isn’t quite wholesome family entertainment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZPhXoDI3F0 If Muhammad Became the President (. . .) Mar 17, 2017 If you dislike Trump, then you should probably dislike Muhammad 100x more. Oddly, it seems some people are confused on this issue. That confusion comes from the best of intentions, I'm sure, but it is ultimately self-defeating, and allows for tolerance of the intolerable. Please check the paragraph at the end of this video for elaboration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yJqWCBq6GI God Judges The Amazing Atheist Apr 4, 2017 Finally, The Amazing Atheist meets his maker. Who do you think God should judge next? The Amazing Atheist's channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheAmazingAtheist The Drunken Peasants Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/user/DrunkenPeasants https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e19DYf2lRIw If Your Body Were a Religion Apr 11, 2017 Most of the arguments I see online about this revolve around attacking strawmen with relative privation and tu quoque fallacies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pho9FMuBJgA A Dangerous Idea - next (last? - "Season Finale") one, #10, in Power Corrupts [ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv--V1yc2QDJi6hFNhur3iAsyFpXRtB8w ] May 15, 2017 Bad ideas need special protections to propagate. Good ideas stand up to criticism. This doesn’t only apply to religion, but also to many other forms of dogma. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L9RZYguI0Q
White House aims for Thursday signing of religious liberty executive order President Donald Trump has invited conservative leaders to the White House on Thursday for what they expect will be the ceremonial signing of a long-awaited—and highly controversial—executive order on religious liberty, according to multiple people familiar with the situation. Two senior administration officials confirmed the plan, though one cautioned that it hasn’t yet been finalized, and noted that lawyers are currently reviewing and fine-tuning the draft language. Thursday is the National Day of Prayer, and the White House was already planning to celebrate the occasion with faith leaders. The signing would represent a major triumph for Vice President Mike Pence—whose push for religious-freedom legislation backfired mightily when he served as governor of Indiana—and his allies in the conservative movement. The original draft order, which would have established broad exemptions for people and groups to claim religious objections under virtually any circumstance, was leaked to The Nation [ https://www.thenation.com/article/leaked-draft-of-trumps-religious-freedom-order-reveals-sweeping-plans-to-legalize-discrimination/ ] on Feb. 1—the handiwork, many conservatives believed, of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who have sought to project themselves as friendly to the LGBT community. Liberals blasted the draft order as government-licensed discrimination, and the White House distanced itself from the leaked document in a public statement. Pence and a small team of conservative allies quickly began working behind the scenes to revise the language, and in recent weeks have ratcheted up the pressure on Trump to sign it. The new draft is being tightly held, but one influential conservative who saw the text said it hasn’t been dialed back much—if at all—since the February leak. “The language is very, very strong,” the source said. [...] http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/02/donald-trump-religious-liberty-executive-order-237888
Why avoiding the Girl Scouts is a ‘sane, balanced’ move - Cstholic site Crux Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City has reached a sane, balanced conclusion in deciding to transition his diocese away from the Girl Scouts. Available evidence shows women are much better off if they take sex seriously, understand its natural links with marriage and kids, delay sex at best until marriage, practice a faith, and avoid nonmarital parenting, abortion, and divorce. https://cruxnow.com/commentary/2017/05/03/avoiding-girl-scouts-sane-balanced-move/
The PLasma for Alzheimer SymptoM Amelioration (PLASMA) Study (PLASMA) This study is ongoing, but not recruiting participants. Purpose The PLasma for Alzheimer SymptoM Amelioration (PLASMA) Study: Intravenously-Administered Plasma From Young Donors for Treatment of Mild-To-Moderate Alzheimer's Disease https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02256306
Two existing drugs halt neurodegeneration in mice Researchers have made a major leap forward in the treatment of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, after identifying two existing drugs that prevented brain cell death in mouse models of neurodegenerative disease. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317028.php
Science in America - Neil deGrasse Tyson - next two items are about this video (originally on Facebook) Apr 19, 2017 We offer this 4min video on “Science in America”, containing what may be the most important words Neil deGrasse Tyson has ever spoken. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MqTOEospfo
Sowing Climate Doubt Among Schoolteachers PAUL SMITHS, N.Y. — The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank known for attacking climate science, has been mailing a slim, glossy book to public school teachers throughout the United States. The institute says it plans to send out as many as 200,000 copies [ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/climate-change-skeptic-group-seeks-to-influence-200000-teachers/ ], until virtually every science educator in America has one. The book, “Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming [ https://www.heartland.org/publications-resources/publications/why-scientists-disagree-about-global-warming ],” presents the false premise that the evidence for human-driven climate change [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier ] is deeply flawed. To understand where the Heartland Institute is coming from, consider a recent comment by its president, Joseph Bast, who called global warming “another fake crisis” for Democrats “to hype to scare voters and raise campaign dollars.” The book was first published in 2015, to coincide with the Paris climate conference and influence policy makers. The second edition was released this year with an instructional DVD. Public school teachers are not the only ones on the institute’s mailing list. College educators are getting copies of the book, too. One academic in Albany told me that hers arrived in an envelope bearing the headline of a New York Times article about an investigation into Exxon Mobil for possibly lying about climate change. “I was in a rush, and all I noticed was the word ‘climate’ in a New York Times headline,” she said. “That made me open it rather than throw it out.” The cover letter inside, however, made the book’s premise clear. “Claims of a ‘scientific consensus’ ” on climate change, it read, “rest on two college student papers, the writings of a wacky Australian blogger, and a non-peer-reviewed essay by a socialist historian.” In fact, multiple surveys of the scientific literature show that well over 90 percent of published climate scientists have concluded that recent global warming is both real and mostly the result of human activity. [...] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/27/opinion/sowing-climate-doubt-among-schoolteachers.html
"We are not creating a Terminator": Russia denies risk as Putin's 'robot army' is trained to shoot guns Posting a clip showing armed robot FEDOR in action, Deputy PM insists teaching the androids to shoot will help improve their motor skills and decision-making abilities http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/we-not-creating-terminator-russia-10237755
"We are not creating a Terminator": Russia denies risk as Putin's 'robot army' is trained to shoot guns Posting a clip showing armed robot FEDOR in action, Deputy PM insists teaching the androids to shoot will help improve their motor skills and decision-making abilities http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/we-not-creating-terminator-russia-10237755
New human rights to protect against 'mind hacking' and brain data theft proposed A response to advances in neurotechnology that can read or alter brain activity, new human rights would protect people from theft, abuse and hacking New human rights that would protect people from having their thoughts and other brain information stolen, abused or hacked have been proposed by researchers. The move is a response to the rapid advances being made with technologies that read or alter brain activity and which many expect to bring enormous benefits to people’s lives in the coming years. Much of the technology has been developed for hospitals to diagnose or treat medical conditions, but some of the tools – such as brainwave monitoring devices that allow people to play video games with their minds, or brain stimulators that claim to boost mental performance – are finding their way into shops. But these and other advances in neurotechnology raise fresh threats to privacy and personal freedom, according to Marcello Ienca, a neuroethicist at the University of Basel, and Roberto Andorno, a human rights lawyer at the University of Zurich. Writing in the journal Life Sciences, Society and Policy, the pair put forward four new human rights that are intended to preserve the brain as the last refuge for human privacy. “The question we asked was whether our current human rights framework was well equipped to face this new trend in neurotechnology,” Ienca told the Guardian. Having reviewed the rights in place today, the pair concluded that more must be done to protect people. “The information in our brains should be entitled to special protections in this era of ever-evolving technology,” Ienca said. “When that goes, everything goes.” The suggested new rights assert what the researchers call cognitive liberty, mental privacy, mental integrity and psychological continuity. ... [...] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/26/new-human-rights-to-protect-against-mind-hacking-and-brain-data-theft-proposed
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in addition to (linked in) the post to which this is a reply and preceding and (other) following, see also (linked in):
The picture Comey paints of Trump is also, importantly, the picture Trump paints of himself: He is a man who lies constantly, who values loyalty over integrity, who has little understanding of nor respect for the values and restraints that people in power impose on themselves to keep from misusing their positions, and who intends to use both his powers of hiring and firing to stock the government with people who will serve him first and the country second.
And this man is the president of the United States of America.
The consequences of Trump’s behavior, ironically, are most clearly seen in the parts of Comey’s testimony that the president’s defenders are touting. Take Comey’s exchange with Sen. Marco Rubio. Rubio asked about Trump’s request that Comey end the investigation into Michael Flynn. If that request was so offensive, Rubio demanded, why didn’t Comey respond more forcefully?
-
RUBIO: At the time, did you say something to the president about, that is not an appropriate request, or did you tell the White House counsel, it's not an appropriate request? Someone needs to tell the president he can't do these things.
COMEY: I didn't, no.
RUBIO: Why?
COMEY: I don't know. I think — as I said earlier, I think the circumstances were such that it was — I was a bit stunned and didn't have the presence of mind. I don't know. I don't want to make you sound like I'm captain courageous. I don't know if I would have said to the president with the presence of mind, “Sir, that's wrong.” In the moment, it didn't come to my mind. What came to my mind is, “Be careful what you say.” I said, “I agree, Flynn is a good guy.” -
Comey made a similar point under questioning by Sen. Dianne Feinstein:
- FEINSTEIN: Now, here's the question, you're big. You're strong. I know the Oval Office, and I know what happens to people when they walk in. There is a certain amount of intimidation. But why didn't you stop and say, “Mr. President, this is wrong.” There is a certain amount of intimidation. But why didn't you stop and say, “Mr. President, this is wrong. I cannot discuss this with you.”
COMEY: It's a great question. Maybe if I were stronger, I would have. I was so stunned by the conversation that I just took it in. The only thing I could think to say, because I was playing in my mind — because I could remember every word he said — I was playing in my mind, what should my response be? That's why I very carefully chose the words. Look, I've seen the tweet about tapes. Lordy, I hope there are tapes. I remember saying, “I agree he is a good guy,” as a way of saying, I'm not agreeing with what you asked me to do. Again, maybe other people would be stronger in that circumstance. That's how conducted myself. I hope I'll never have another opportunity. Maybe if I did it again, I would do it better. -
Republicans have taken this as important to Trump’s defense. The reasoning, as I understand it, is that if Trump’s request of Comey was so egregious, then how come Comey didn’t tell Trump it was so egregious, or quit on the spot? You can see Trump’s son making a version of this argument on Twitter:
- Donald Trump Jr. @DonaldJTrumpJr
So if he was a "Stronger guy" he might have actually followed procedure & the law? You were the director of the FBI, who are you kidding??? 12:59 AM - 9 Jun 2017 -
Here is another way to understand this story. James Comey was the director of the FBI. He was elevated to that position precisely because he had proven himself unusually able to resist political intimidation .. https://thinkprogress.org/comey-breaks-silence-white-house-tried-to-force-incapacitated-ashcroft-to-back-spying-program-66fb293ac29 . As director of the FBI, he had a 10-year term designed to grant him independence, he led an agency with a proud culture of resisting outside interference, and he was exposed, daily, to the most unnerving secrets and profound threats that face the country.
In other words, Comey was, for reasons both of personality and position, one of the hardest civil servants to intimidate. But when trapped in a room with the president of the United States, and when his job and all the good he believed he could do in it was dangled before him, even he felt the pressure. To his credit, he didn’t crack. But he felt it, just as Trump knew he would.
[The conservatives including Trump's lawyer and children who are spinning this for all it's unworthiness, and ignoring the fact that Trump really is a nasty guy, should be ashamed of their abandonment of such worthy American values as integrity and simple human decency.]
- David Frum @davidfrum
Comey’s candidly self-critical answers about reluctance say No to a president exactly demonstrates the risk to free institutions from Trump 1:04 AM - 9 Jun 2017 -
This story is not exculpatory for Trump. It is damning for him, and unnerving for us. It is a reminder of how much harm the wrong man can do if he wields the power and prestige of the presidency unethically. And there is no doubt that Trump is wielding the power and prestige of the presidency unethically.
The picture Comey paints of Trump is grim — and so is the picture Trump paints of himself
Early in the hearing, Sen. Mark Warner asked Comey why he began taking notes on his meetings with Trump, which Comey said he didn’t do after his meetings with Presidents George W. Bush or Barack Obama.
Comey replied that his meetings with Trump were particularly concerning for three reasons. First, Trump repeatedly tried to meet with Comey alone, a breach of protocol that unnerved the FBI chief. Second, Trump wanted to discuss unusually sensitive topics. Third, Comey said, “I was honestly concerned he might lie about the nature of our meeting.”
Stop and consider Comey’s estimation for a moment. A longtime prosecutor, Justice Department official, and eventually FBI chief, Comey thought he couldn’t trust the president of the United States of America to meet with him without lying. And of course, Trump couldn’t. Trump lies constantly. And Comey was proven right in his particular case, as Trump has repeatedly lied about him.
Trump initially had his White House say Comey was fired over his handling of Hillary Clinton’s emails, only to later admit .. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/white-house-comey-firing-narrative-meltdown .. Comey was fired over the Russia investigation, only to later say it was actually .. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/trump-new-narratives-comey-firing .. the emails. Trump has said he may release tapes of his conversations with Comey — tapes he clearly doesn’t have (“Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” Comey said today). Trump repeatedly told Comey he was doing a great job only to turn around and tell the country he was doing a horrible job.
Put aside where you think the truth lies in any of these judgments. The simple fact is the president of the United States lies routinely, about matters big and small. He lies about the size of his Electoral College victory. He lies about whether he’ll cut Medicaid. He is a liar.
Similarly, the picture Comey paints of Trump is consistent with the picture Trump has painted of himself over the years. Asked what qualities he looks for in new hires, Trump replied .. http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/11/politics/trump-comey-loyalty/index.html , “The thing that’s most important to me is loyalty.” This is a bizarre statement. Ask most corporate executives to name the quality most important in new hires and they will say work ethic, or creativity, or brilliance, or persistence. “Loyalty” is the quality most prized by mafia dons, not managers.
But this preference of Trump’s runs deep. In an extraordinary passage in The Art of the Deal, Trump, praising his mentor Roy Cohn, explicitly honors those who place loyalty over integrity:
- Just compare that with all the hundreds of “respectable” guys who make careers out of boasting about their uncompromising integrity but have absolutely no loyalty. They only care about what’s best for them and don’t think twice about stabbing a friend in the back if the friend becomes a problem. What I liked most about Roy Cohn was that he would do just the opposite. -
This is the context in which to read Comey’s prepared testimony, which includes a darkly comic sequence in which Trump says, “I need loyalty. I expect loyalty.” Comey, in an effort to defuse Trump’s request, says, “You will always get honesty from me.” Trump, unwilling to let Comey leave without pledging some kind of loyalty, turns it back on him. “That’s what I want, honest loyalty,” he says.
Comey awkwardly agreed to Trump’s formulation, but, as Peter Beinart writes .. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/honest-loyalty-trump-comey/529608/ , these two ideas, as Trump well knows, are in tension. “If honesty means being true to oneself, loyalty means being true to others, even it that requires subordinating what you believe is right. Your best friend cheats on a test and your teacher asks whether she did it. The honest answer is yes. The loyal answer is no.”
There is no doubt which answer Trump wanted from Comey, and after realizing he wasn’t going to get it, Trump fired Comey. It is the height of naïveté to believe this same story isn’t playing out elsewhere in Trump’s administration, or to believe that every public servant Trump tries to intimidate will fare as well, or have as much integrity, as Comey.
Donald Trump’s behavior casts a shadow over everyone who serves him
Imagine that it wasn’t Comey who Trump had invited to dinner, but a candidate for the FBI directorship who shared Trump’s values, and was more focused on his advancement than his integrity. Imagine that Trump asked for loyalty and this person immediately agreed to it. In that case, we might never know the conversation had happened, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation would now be serving Trump, rather than the American people.
Perhaps we don’t have to imagine. That scenario might be playing out right now. On Wednesday, Trump nominated Christopher Wray to replace .. https://www.vox.com/2017/6/7/15753424/christopher-wray-fbi-director-trump .. James Comey as FBI director. Wray is arguably qualified — he led the criminal division of the Justice Department under George W. Bush. But as Matthew Yglesias wrote .. https://www.vox.com/2017/6/7/15758412/comey-testimony-trump-loyalty , Wray “has one critically disqualifying attribute — he interviewed for the job with Trump, and Trump decided he wanted to appoint him. That means of all the reasonably well-qualified candidates out there, Wray is the one who struck Trump as having the least integrity and the most inclination to display personal loyalty to him.”
Is this fair to Wray? Perhaps not. But this is the cloud of suspicion all governmental decisions and appointments will be under so long as Trump is president. We know Trump holds an office that gives him vast power for intimidation, patronage, and reprisal. We know he is a man who will use that power to serve his own ends. We know the people who survive in Trump’s employ will be those who carry out Trump’s commands. We know he is a man who will fire those, like Comey, who refuse his requests.
In the American system, the presidency is an office bounded by constitutional limits and competing institutions, but it is just as importantly bounded by the morality and personal rectitude of whomever occupies it. The power to use the executive branch to intimidate and to extract vengeance, alongside the power to pardon, means a president of poor moral character could do enormous harm. There was little doubt, before Comey’s presentation, that Trump was of poor moral character, but there is no doubt after it.
Trump’s advocates have retreated to lines of defense that, in normal times, would be considered damning condemnations. Trump, they say, was too naive to know the impropriety of what he was asking, and his presidency must be policed by staffers willing to regularly confront him over his unethical demands — even if that means they lose their jobs and anger a leader who values loyalty above all.
The US government has many dedicated and brave public servants, and some of them will do exactly that. But that is a poor foundation on which to base a presidency, and it leaves the public ignorant of whether the president has been quietly curbed, or whether his staff has backed down, and so his presidency is out of control.
This is day 139 of Donald Trump’s administration, and it is clear that he is dangerously unfit for the role. The question is whether Republicans will admit it to themselves, and if so, what they will do about it. I would ask Republicans reading this piece to imagine the word “Trump” replaced with “Clinton” or “Obama.” How would they feel? How afraid would they be? That is how they should feel now. The country needs more from them right now than excuses for behavior that they know is wrong.
U.S. government websites hacked with pro-ISIS rant, officials say
"Kushner may have sought Russian back channel for loans"
AP June 25, 2017, 9:01 PM
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Government websites, many of them in Ohio, were hacked Sunday with a message that purports to be supportive of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
A message posted on the website of Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich said, "You will be held accountable Trump, you and all your people for every drop of blood flowing in Muslim countries."
The message, left by "Team System Dz," also ended, "I love the Islamic state."
The same message also infiltrated government websites in the town of Brookhaven, New York, according to news reports in that state, as well as the website for Howard County, Maryland. In the past, the group also claimed responsibility for similar hacks in the past in Richland County, Wisconsin, and in places such as Aberdeen, Scotland, and Sweden.
Several other government websites were hacked in Ohio, including that of first lady Karen Kasich, Medicaid, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and the Casino Control Commission.
Tom Hoyt, chief communications officer for Ohio's Department of Administrative Services, was among Ohio officials who confirmed the hack.
"All affected servers have been taken offline and we are investigating how these hackers were able to deface these websites," he said. "We also are working with law enforcement to better understand what happened."
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