Saturday, February 04, 2017

4 February - Netvibes - oldephartteintraining


The Atlantic Wire

James Baldwin and the Raised Fist: The Week in Pop-Culture Writing - James Baldwin Should Make You Feel Uncomfortable K. Austin Collins | The Ringer “He’s never left us. And yet his popularity has risked flattening some of the most important tensions in his work. The meme-friendly Baldwin quotations adorning our dating profiles and dormitory walls lack self-awareness. The urgency of his thought prevails, but the consciousness-raising sense of antagonism, the resistance to easy takeaways or preordained political credibility, is smoothed over. If you have Baldwin on your bookshelf or quoted on your Facebook page, you’re signifying that you’re already hip to his message: He attests to your hard-won knowledge, not to the fact that you need further education. (We all do.)” High on the Apocalypse Jessa Crispin | The Baffler “Maybe we all just decided it was cooler to be George Orwell (who came from money) than H. G. Wells (who did not)—cooler to be the smirker saying, ‘Pah, it’ll never work,’ than to be the kid chirping, ‘Here is what we can do.’ The H. G. Wells we find profiled in Krishan Kumar’s Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times was someone who suffered greatly and wanted to help prevent the suffering of future generations. He was someone who cycled through great optimism and great despair, but kept coming back to optimism, believing that equality is possible without totalitarianism.” 24 Is Back to Make You Fear Muslim Terrorists Again Gazelle Emami | Vulture “24: Legacy’s arrival at this moment in American history highlights the awkward tension inherent to TV reboots, particularly ones linked to a larger, arguably dated, cultural discourse (see also: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy). In many ways, 24 reflected the Bush era’s war on terror mentality, and was largely accepted by critics and viewers at the time within that context. When a show reboots, especially one with such explicit political overtones, should it pretend like nothing has changed in its absence?” The Unusual Genius of the Resident Evil Movies Daniel Engber | The New Yorker “I wouldn’t call them soulful—they’re highly processed and derivative, as one might expect—but they also have a real electric spark. It’s as if the robotic process that created them had Easter eggs hidden in its code, producing moments when calculated mayhem bursts into abstraction. [Paul W. S.] Anderson may be a Hollywood hack, but he’s one who has found a way to break into the industry machine and turn what should have been an empty-headed action-horror franchise into a vehicle for his spectacular, maximalist aesthetic.” What Does the Raised Fist Mean in 2017? Niela Orr | BuzzFeed “Certain mottos and slogans from the civil rights and Black Power movements have fallen out of fashion, but the raised fist remains a hugely popular visual signal of defiance and solidarity. The co-optation of the raised fist as a patriotic symbol, winking cultural reference, and even totem of irony show that it is just as much about how we perform protest in the 21st century as it is about communicating resistance.” Ghost in the System: Has Technology Ruined Horror Films? Scott Tobias | The Guardian “As physical media has disappeared, and the digital realm of streaming and smartphones has taken over, the movies have struggled to figure out how to make technology a threat again. The telephone was once a reliable scare tactic: the abrupt shock-scare of a ring, the raspy taunts of a serial killer, the cutting of a landline, the cord as a strangling implement, and even the phone itself as a blunt force object in films like The Stepfather. Starting with the dawn of cellphones, however, the new technology has become more a hassle than an opportunity.” Sampha’s Debut Album Speaks to Anyone With Anxiety Aimee Cliff | The Fader “Like the process of navigating any mental health issue, Sampha’s album is not linear or predictable. With its glittering synth melodies and lyrical imagery, it's flooded with sunlight—but this brightness doesn’t always offer comfort. But in the end, Process acts like a musical balm for anxious minds, ending with the message of how important it is to accept the things we can't change about ourselves.” The Rise of the Female Nerd Inkoo Kang | MTV News “Living well is the best revenge, the poet George Herbert wrote—and by that metric, nerdy girls and women should star in their own Tarantino flick. Theirs has been a quiet but steady vengeance, as smart female protagonists and fan favorites have vanquished their previous invisibility or two-dimensionality to claim their place in pop culture, though mostly on TV. The gradual fusion between the nerdy and the normal has heralded a greater acceptance of women who tend to prize their own bright minds as people worth humanizing and getting to know. (It’s an event that Stranger Things, in its salivating adulation for the ’80s, completely missed about Barb, whom it treated as mere fodder.)” How Pepsi Used Pop Music to Build an Empire Jeremy Larson | Pitchfork “If there still exists two separate states of art and commerce, they are often smeared together by the marketing concept of creativity: the extremely clever ad, the artist-facing sponsored content, the spectacular Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show. As long as there is the appearance of creativity, the brand underwriting the show will fade into the background and the consumer will fawn upon its aesthetic bona fides. It may even be truly transcendent, leaping from mere creativity to high art.” 29 min
The Atlantic's Week in Culture - Don’t Miss The Complicated Relevance of Dr. Seuss’s Political Cartoons—Sophie Gilbert traces the reemergence of the children’s author’s earlier, more controversial works. Myles Aronowitz / Dave King / Netflix / Guy D'Alema / FX / HBO / Kelsey McNeal / Eric McCandless / ABC / OWN / Zak Bickel / The AtlanticTelevision Claiming the Future of Black TV—Angelica Jade Bastién asks whether the industry can normalize the success of African Americans on television, after a banner year in 2016. Samantha Bee Will Host a Shadow White House Correspondents’ Dinner—Megan Garber discusses the Full Frontal host’s recently announced alternative to the annual event. Superior Donuts Tries to Update an Old Classic—Sophie Gilbert argues that the new CBS sitcom, while stodgy in format, has some genuine moments of freshness. The Daily Show Lives On (on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert)—Megan Garber recaps Jon Stewart’s surprise appearance on Colbert’s program. Santa Clarita Diet: A Marital Comedy With a Heart (and Brains)—Sophie Gilbert watches the new Netflix show which follows Drew Barrymore’s transformation to a zombie. South Park’s Creators Have Given Up on Satirizing Donald Trump—Megan Garber looks into the Comedy Central show’s decision to back off making jokes about the president. NetflixFilm The 15 Most Talked-About Films From Sundance—David Sims lists some of the more exciting movies to take note of from this year’s festival. A Politically Charged Night at the SAG Awards—David Sims recaps a night at the ceremony that saw almost every actor address the Trump presidency. Nominated for an Oscar, Barred From America—Lenika Cruz speaks to a film scholar about the implications of the immigration ban for Iranian cinema. Should There Be an Oscars This Year?—David Sims questions the political relevance of the awards ceremony and what cancelling it would accomplish. Rings Would Be Better Off at the Bottom of a Well—Lenika Cruz bemoans the strange sequel to the terrifying American remake of a Japanese horror classic. The Comedian Is a Laugh-Free Nightmare—David Sims reviews the interminable new film starring Robert De Niro as a grumpy standup. USA Today Sports / Jim Tanner / Mario Anzuoni / Paulo Whitaker / Reuters / Jim Rogash / Paras Griffin / Getty / Paul Spella / The AtlanticSuper Bowl Super Bowl 2017: It’s Not Too Late to Chose a Side—Robert O’Connell helps the undecided pick a team to root for, ahead of this weekend’s match-up between the Falcons and the Patriots. How Political Will the 2017 Super Bowl Ads Be?—Sophie Gilbert wonders if the commercials at this year’s sporting event will speak to the current divisive times. Which Lady Gaga Will We Get at the Super Bowl?—Spencer Kornhaber questions if the singer, who spoke out against Trump during the election, will make a political statement at the half-time show. Melville HouseBooks How Culture Became a Powerful Political Weapon—Sophie Gilbert talks to Nato Thompson about his new book, which explores the history of how music, TV, games, and advertising have been used to influence consumers. ‘First They Came’: The Poem of the Protests—Megan Garber analyzes the reemerging significance of Martin Niemöller’s lines, written after the Holocaust. Why It Took So Long to Translate a Dutch Classic—James Reith explores the reason and significance behind the much-delayed translation of Gerard Reve’s The Evenings. David Gray / ReutersSports The Australian Open Turned Back the Clock—Arnav Adhikari pinpoints the significance of the finals of the tennis tournament, which saw the unlikely return of two iconic rivalries. Mario Anzuoni / ReutersMusic Superstars May Be Rebelling Against the Grammys—Spencer Kornhaber connects the rumored absences of Kanye and Justin Bieber to the lack of inclusivity at the music awards. Beyoncé’s High-Art Pregnancy Photo—Spencer Kornhaber analyzes the visual lineage behind the singer’s Instagram post, in which she announced she’s expecting twins. Pop Culture’s Fraught Obsession With Celebrity Baby Bumps—Spencer Kornhaber talks to the author of Pregnant With the Stars about the larger significance of Beyoncé’s announcement. 3 Feb
Rings Would Be Better Off at the Bottom of a Well - In the entirely hypothetical ranking of various rings, the new horror movie Rings belongs somewhere far, far below the following: Wagner’s Ring Cycle, onion rings, engagement rings, The Lord of the Rings, the rings inside trees, the rings encircling the planet Saturn, Ring Pops, and the botched Olympic ring at the Sochi Games in 2012. That Rings is not good will probably come as no surprise to those who’ve seen the trailer, or who know how horror franchises tend to go after the second film. Still, it’s disappointing enough for anyone who enjoyed the 1998 Japanese classic Ringu or either of the American films it inspired, 2002’s The Ring and 2005’s The Ring Two. Fifteen years after mainstream U.S. audiences were first introduced to J-horror, Rings is presumably making some kind of nostalgia play by bringing back one of the scariest monsters in recent cinema: the undead girl who crawls out of the TV and kills you seven days after you watch her videotape unless you make a copy and show it to someone else. But the story of Samara Morgan, once potent nightmare fuel, has become less scary with each new iteration, culminating in this new, ridiculous installment directed by F. Javier Gutiérrez. Rings begins with two short, irritating backstories that shakily aim to set up the plot: a plane crash, and an estate sale in which a the deadly video tape is uncovered. But 20 minutes in, it’s still completely unclear how the movie will seek to expand on the Samara mythology. The protagonist is Julia (played by the Italian actress Matilda Lutz), whose boyfriend Holt (Alex Roe) goes off to college and quickly gets roped into a secret experiment involving the video tape, which was found by a college professor named Gabriel (The Big Bang Theory’s Johnny Galecki) who’s now seeking to prove the existence of the human soul. All this—the going away to college, Julia’s discovery of the experiment, her discovery of Holt’s involvement, Gabriel’s explanation of the experiment—manages to take up the first one-third or so of the film. And it unfolds in the most awkward, unintuitive way possible, with odd time jumps, cringe-worthy character interactions, unexplained tonal shifts, and weird dream sequences. Given the amount of time spent setting up this storyline, it seems for a while that Rings is going in a somewhat intriguing, and unexpected, science-fiction-y direction. But then the story lurches again, trudging down a totally different, more predictable path involving Samara’s origin story. As the first film in the American franchise without Naomi Watts, Rings makes it immediately clear how much the Anglo-Australian actress elevated the story. Lutz and Roe do what they can in their roles, but they’re not nearly magnetic enough to overcome the jumbled mess they’re stuck with (few are, to be fair). Julia’s inexplicably fearless obsession with the video tape and the visions she’s suddenly plagued with is meant to drive the plot, but her reasons never feels authentic, despite her half-hearted insistences that she has a connection with Samara. (“I can feel her pain and suffering; I’m sick with it and it’s getting worse.”) The only merciful thing to do at this point would be to put the story of Samara Morgan to rest for good.As for the scariness: Rings largely fails at re-capturing the terror of Samara, whether it’s trying to remind old fans or convert newcomers. That’s because it sells her malevolence with two lazy approaches. First, it makes different characters discuss the urban legend in the most basic ways possible (“There’s this video, and a chick calls you in seven days.” ) Second, the movie bashes viewers over the head with the sheer freakiness of Samara and her tape, both of which make a dizzying number of appearances, diluting the suspense considerably. Ringu and The Ring, meanwhile, deployed the girl and the video strategically, to maximize scares and to cultivate some mystery. Rings takes itself way too seriously, which, combined with a weak grasp on tone, translates to the film being unintentionally hilarious from start to finish. When Gabriel heard the voice whisper “seven days” on the phone and demanded, “Who is this!”—the audience in my theater laughed. When a student (played by Aimee Teegarden) called Julia over Skype and screamed, “She’s coming! There’s no stopping her!”—they laughed again. When Vincent D’Onofrio appeared later and intoned mysteriously, “You’re looking for the girl,”—they laughed some more. Which may offer a glimmer of hope to those who still feel any desire to see Rings: It’s pretty funny! (It may also be a small comfort that the trailer has little to do with the main plot, so there are some surprises left in store.) After watching, it’s hard not to assume production was a torturous process requiring a ton of revisions—the film was originally due out in November 2015, and the story feels like a large puzzle that someone just sort of randomly taped together. So the only merciful thing to do at this point would be to put the story of Samara and her perpetually sodden hair-mop to rest for good. Unfortunately, the logic of her curse closely mirrors the logic of sequel-making: Watch the story, make a copy, and force someone else to watch it quickly as possible, no matter the cost. The real-life version of this curse is far scarier than Rings—and far less funny. 3 Feb
Pop Culture's Fraught Obsession With Celebrity Baby Bumps - At a time of national political controversy, no one would argue that Beyoncé’s pregnancy with twins is particularly consequential news. But no one can deny the public’s fascination with it, either. Her colorful and evocative Instagram post about the matter quickly became the most-liked in history, and celebrity pregnancies have been objects of widespread obsession for years. In her 2015 book Pregnant With the Stars: Watching and Wanting the Celebrity Baby Bump, Renee Cramer argued that the way that famous mothers-to-be are discussed and obsessed over reflects deep-seated attitudes about gender, race, and reproductive rights. A professor and chair of law, politics, and society at Drake University, she analyzed Beyoncé’s 2011 pregnancy with Blue Ivy while writing the book. I spoke with Cramer on Thursday. This conversation has been edited. Spencer Kornhaber: You wrote about Beyoncé’s first pregnancy in your book. What did you say about it? Renee Cramer: What I argued was that the pregnancies of women of color were being covered in popular culture and the blogosphere in ways that replicated the ways that dominant culture talks about women of color in general: that they were hypersexualized, overly abundant, dangerously fertile. With Beyoncé in particular, people didn’t believe that she was pregnant—[they believed] that this was just a media stunt meant to solidify her relationship with Jay Z in the public eye. This sense of the black female body as untrustworthy was a real dominant narrative of coverage of her pregnancy. This time, I’m not seeing that [suspicion] at all. Maybe that’s because the announcement was made with a photo that is an undeniable baby belly. It’s there. I actually don’t know what the gestational age of the twins is, but it seems as though this is a later announcement than the Blue Ivy announcement. Women show their second pregnancies more quickly, and in a twin pregnancy certainly [they show more]. Kornhaber: What were some examples of other celebrity pregnancies you compared her to? Cramer: There are all these different ways we can see celebrities. They can be “good girls” like Jennifer Garner, Julia Roberts. There are “bad girls” like Britney Spears, there are “bad girls redeemed” like Angelina Jolie. They can be this docile and worried-over woman like Katie Holmes or Nicole Kidman. But women of color in particular—not just black women but also Latinas—are treated as much more sexualized objects than the white women. With Halle Berry, almost every headline about her was titled with “whoa,” like, “Whoa, sexy mama!” With J. Lo it was an obsessive emphasis on how quickly she returned to her pre-pregnancy bod, and of course the booty. So less an emphasis on the bump for these women and more on the bust line and the back side. Kornhaber: What do you make of how Beyoncé announced her twins? Cramer: There’s a huge market in the images of pregnancy and babies. Jay Z and Beyoncé have been amazingly good at stifling that market, or at least using it to their own benefit. They have privatized these images and made fans feel part of the family circle that gets to see them, rather than selling them—or worse, having the paparazzi grab them.    It disrupts this narrative we have of the media being in control of outing celebrities when they’re pregnant, and it really refocuses on her choice to say “yes, I am [pregnant].” Just like her choice to discuss her miscarriage in 2013. These are private moments that are selectively curated, much in the way that all social-media users do, but to maintain an image of control. “Our obsession is a double-edged sword.”Kornhaber: In the photos she released, there are ones of her nude, which calls back to pictures like Demi Moore’s famous Vanity Fair cover. What is an image like that typically trying to do? Cramer: It used to be an image like that was trying to shock and reclaim women’s sexuality in pregnancy. Now, I think there’s a different resonance to those photos, and it’s more of an assertion of comfort. As I’ve watched how people are responding to the announcement, I’m noticing much more glee and happiness than shock or disdain. Our obsession is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s lovely to be distracted from some of the crap that’s going on in the world by following some celebrity’s pregnancy. On the other hand, doing so enables us to feel comfortable being surveilled in our own reproductive lives. I see a lot more of the former in this one. People are going, “thank you for announcing right now because we really needed a distraction, and we recognize it as a distraction.” I’ve seen speculation that the announcement is timed in such a way as to celebrate black fertility at a moment when that feels powerful but not overtly political. Kornhaber: Why should we care about celebrity pregnancies? Cramer: Because we do. She broke the internet. It was the most liked picture on Instagram. That’s insane. When a celebrity announces she’s pregnant, magazine sales go through the roof, [as do] social-media clicks. People care. They care for lots of different reasons, but the fact that they are so interested in someone else’s pregnancy and body is an important thing to notice. Kornhaber: In your book you say some celebrities have an “inscrutable pregnancy.” What does that mean? Cramer: I used it to apply to a couple of ways of parenting. So moms who parent without the bump: Melissa Harris-Perry or Sarah Jessica Parker have surrogates, that’s a subversive act. Moms who parent without dads, whether they’re lesbian moms or whether they’re Minnie Driver, who for a long time refused to say who the dad was. M.I.A.’s performance of pregnancy was outside the boundaries of what pop culture has seen when she rapped three days before she had Ikhyd. And Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher used pregnancy subversively—naming a daughter Wyatt as a new gender-neutral name, the way they played with baby pictures. Those things are part of their curated image, but they also disrupt a coherent narrative. And when we disrupt coherent narratives, that’s where social-movement activism and peoples’ capacity to recreate their own lives comes in. Kornhaber: Any other thoughts on Beyoncé? Kramer: She is so in charge of the image. And the fact that she is in charge of her image gives women a deep desire to also be in charge of their bodies. Kornhaber: So you think she is pushing back on social control of women’s bodies? Kramer: Yes. Of course she has tremendous wealth, and that helps. But my goodness, I live in a state that’s going to vote in about 20 minutes to defund Planned Parenthood. It isn’t something I intended to have the book become about, but clearly in the last 10 years as our obsession with celebrity pregnancy has risen, so has other peoples’ obsession with controlling the reproductive capacity of average women. And [Beyoncé’s] image of an empowered black woman embracing her own autonomy as a reproducing human, I think that resonates with people. 3 Feb
South Park's Creators Have Given Up on Satirizing Donald Trump - “Jokes about Donald Trump aren’t funny anymore,” The Economist declared in 2015. The magazine took the example of the Roman poet Juvenal, noted practitioner of the art of Satura, who once noted that it was hard not to write satire, when one lived within the corruption and decadence of the “unjust City.” Trump, the magazine noted, “poses a curious inversion to this: He makes satire almost impossible.” It’s a complaint that has been often articulated about Trump, as the larger-than-life mogul became a larger-than-life presidential candidate became a larger-than-life actual president: How do you mock someone who so readily mocks himself? How do you penetrate those layers of toughness and Teflon to reveal its underlying absurdities? How, as The Economist noted, do you take a tweet like this—“Sorry loses and haters, but my IQ is one of the highest and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault”—and make it even more ridiculous? Related Story South Park Imagines the Trumpocalypse One answer: You don’t. That’s the solution come to, at any rate, by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators and writers of, among other works of irreverent pop culture, the long-running show South Park. As Parker told the Australian Broadcasting Company in a recent interview, while promoting the Australian premiere of The Book of Mormon: Making fun of the new U.S. government is more difficult now than it was before, “because satire has become reality.” Parker noted how challenging it had been for him and Stone to write the last season (season 20) of South Park, which attempted to create a pseudo-Trump through the person of South Park Elementary’s fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Garrison. Mr. Garrison’s political fortunes rose throughout the season, to the extent that its finale—spoiler—found Garrison becoming the 45th president of these United States. It might have been a cheeky take on Trump’s own unconventional rise to power; instead, the season struck something of a sour note. As Esquire put it, “South Park’s 20th Season Was a Failure, and Trey Parker and Matt Stone Know It.” It explained, of the season’s frantic creative process: Ideas were started and abandoned. Story lines fizzled out (What happened to the gentlemen’s club? What exactly happened with the Member Berries?). The stories that were completed either made no sense or seemed like they were forced together, as if Parker and Stone tried to shove a puzzle piece into the wrong spot. (Why was SpaceX involved? What were they trying to say with Cartman’s girlfriend? What was the deal with Star Wars and J.J. Abrams?) It was a season of half-thoughts and glimmers of brilliance that never amounted to anything. And because they were trying to keep up with the rapid changes in the election, the jokes and analysis suffered. South Park in many ways suffered from the same thing that plagued many creators of pop culture in the aftermath of the election: Things hadn’t gone as many had thought they would. They had to adjust not just their expectations, but also their creative plans. Which was unfortunate: The 2016 election came on the heels of a 19th season that was exceptionally prescient in its assessment of Trump. One episode, the much anticipated “Where My Country Gone?,” was expected to take on immigration. It did, but its story also doubled as a dire warning about treating a man who was, in 2015, still a long-shot presidential candidate as a joke. (“Nobody ever thought he’d be president!” one of the episodes Canadian refugees wailed, about the man who had turned his country into an apocalyptic hellscape. “It was a joke! We just let the joke go on for too long. He kept gaining momentum, and by the time we were all ready to say, ‘Okay, let’s get serious now, who should really be president?’ he was already being sworn into office.”) The 2015 episode was smart. It was nuanced. It was Neil Postman, in the guise of Eric Cartman.The episode was smart. It was nuanced. It was Neil Postman, in the guise of Eric Cartman. But it worked because it was able to do what the best satire always does: to point out that which is hiding in plain sight. It warned about laughing at Donald Trump long before it occurred to other people to adopt the same anxieties. And now that @realDonaldTrump is also President Donald Trump, the threats he represents to American democratic institutions are more obvious than they were before. Trump himself, through his executive orders and his seemingly stream-of-consciousness Twitter feed, has made them obvious. Satire, in that context, is more difficult. South Park’s role—and the value it can add—is less clear. So, Parker explained, “we decided to kind of back off and let them do their comedy and we’ll do ours.” It’s a fairly shocking decision, coming from writers who have, for so many years, reliably delighted in the absurdities of American culture. There’s a certain defeatism to it. But there’s a certain realism, too. As Stone put it: “People say to us all the time, ‘Oh, you guys are getting all this good material,’ like we’re happy about some of the stuff that’s happening. But I don’t know if that’s true. It doesn’t feel that way. It feels like they’re going to be more difficult. We’re having our head blown off, like everybody else.” 3 Feb
Santa Clarita Diet: A Marital Comedy With a Heart (and Brains) - One of the more typical scenes of Santa Clarita Diet unfolds like this: Sheila (Drew Barrymore) and Joel (Timothy Olyphant) unload a heavy plastic tub from their car. “Guess what Kelly told me last night? She and Ben are selling their home,” Sheila says. Joel is more concerned with why the tub has no lid, and why Sheila can’t organize their storage better. They bicker amicably for a while, seemingly blasé about the fact that the container they’re squabbling about is filled with the bloody, viscous remains of a colleague whom Sheila has killed and eaten. That’s basically the whole premise for the new 10-part Netflix show, which debuts in its entirety Friday: the idea that it’s hilarious to splice a cozy marital sitcom with a gruesome, visceral (literally) zombie horror. And a lot of the time, it is, although it takes a while to warm up. The first episode is the most jarring with the shock and gore, testing viewer tolerance for graphic cannibalism and projectile vomiting, among other things, but if you can stick it out there are some killer punchlines ahead. The conceit for the show, created by Victor Fresco (Better Off Ted) was kept largely mysterious until January, when teasers were released showing Barrymore in character touting the virtues of a new diet, Jenny Craig-style (“I satisfy all my cravings and eat whoever I want”). So it’s not spoiling things to reveal that Sheila is a married realtor and mom who, somewhat unexpectedly, becomes undead. (She’s diagnosed by the teenager next door after the aforementioned projectile vomiting leaves her with no pulse, no pain threshold, and a sudden appetite for uncooked hamburger.) The twist is that Sheila actually likes her new state. Her energy skyrockets, her sex drive peaks, and life takes on a new kind of zest, illustrated by the show’s switch from a muted palette to vibrant color. The vague drama that unfolds hinges on how Sheila’s zombiehood affects her family, namely Joel and their daughter, Abby (Liv Hewson). After Sheila spontaneously eats a rival realtor (Nathan Fillion at his smarmiest) who won’t stop hitting on her, she discovers her true appetite for human flesh, and the show shifts again into a caper drama, as Sheila and Joel wrestle with whom they might ethically murder and how best to cover up their activities, Little Shop of Horrors-style. (“I hate eating so late,” Sheila pouts after they’re forced to go out at night. “Yeah, there’s a lot about this that isn’t ideal,” Joel responds.) Zombies, in culture, usually function as a metaphor, whether it’s for slavery or drug addiction or contagion or the decline of humanity. In Santa Clarita Diet, Sheila’s new affliction seems to be an excuse to consider how a midlife crisis might affect a marriage, where instead of having an affair, going on Atkins, or taking up Crossfit, she’s hunting and eating humans. (She buys a Range Rover impulsively, and brags to her friends about the miracle of her new all-protein diet.) And the show’s most sincere moments come as this dynamic is probed, like when Abby wonders if her mom still loves her now she’s undead. But for the most part, Fresco seems to be content using his series to set up increasingly ridiculous jokes about middle-class zombies. “Got your poncho?” Joel asks. “Keys? Remember your snack?” Sheila nods, holding up a bag of fingers. For the most part, though, the obvious cannibalism gags are less funny than the show’s sharp grasp on modern culture. (“Pharmaceutical rep hours are super flexible,” a neighbor explains at one point. “That’s why so many of us have time to go on The Bachelor.”) Barrymore is at her zany best as Sheila, gamely gnawing her way through entrails and getting face deep in her various food sources. Olyphant does stellar work with a demanding ask, having to play the straight man to Sheila’s wacky antics while also conveying Joel’s befuddled confusion and loyalty to his ever-more undead wife, coupled with his growing sense of emasculation. “We’re gonna kill people, sweetheart,” he says at one point. “We’re gonna kill them so you can eat them. We’ve been Joel and Sheila since high school. I’m not gonna bail on you now.” Just as engaging are the scenes featuring Abby and her besotted neighbor, Eric (Skyler Gisondo). Teenagers are enormously tricky for family comedies to get right, but Hewson nails Abby’s sharp intelligence, her cynical affect, and her vulnerability, while Gisondo’s geeky Eric is hugely charming. Santa Clarita Diet’s best scenes often emerge when Joel, Sheila, and Abby scheme to find ways to keep their unit intact ( after all, the family that slays together stays together). It largely makes up for the weak plotting and spotty structure, but whether or not it can hold up a show whose whole existence feels like an excuse to make cannibalism gags depends on your tolerance for (a) gratuitous carnage and (b) the same joke, over and over. (“Sometimes your pot smoking bugs me.” “Well, I don’t like that you’re soon gonna be killing and eating people.”) But if you can get with the gore, there’s frequently a sweet, oddball marital comedy fighting to get out. 3 Feb
The Comedian Is a Laugh-Free Nightmare - Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: There are some standup comedians out there (many of them irascible men) who dare to talk about their sex lives, their anger issues, and their various inadequacies on stage—often while using a lot of bad language. Further, the friendly sitcom stars of our youth, whom we know best as sanitized parent figures accompanied by a hearty laugh track, actually tend to be flawed individuals in real life. If all of this is news to you, then you may find Taylor Hackford’s film The Comedian to be a revolutionary piece of art. Otherwise, you’ll see it as a useless throwback—a fetid, overlong drama laden with bizarre subplots and an inexplicably star-studded supporting cast, built around the dated idea that standup comedians can, indeed, be jerks. The Comedian has all kinds of pedigree: a grumbly Robert De Niro in the title role, an Oscar-nominated director (for Ray, Hackford’s last big hit), and an ensemble that includes Edie Falco, Harvey Keitel, Patti LuPone, Charles Grodin, and Danny DeVito. But this film serves as a good reminder that in moviemaking, pedigree can only take you so far. The comedian in question is Jackie Burke (De Niro), once the star of a ’70s (possibly ’80s) sitcom where he played a wise-guy cop with a crazy family, who’s now a semi washed-up standup who makes his money at nostalgia comedy nights or signing autographs for increasingly older fans. He’s a toxic mix of bitterness, loneliness, and relative poverty, managed by a straight-faced comedy booker (Falco) and resented by his restaurateur brother (DeVito) and sister-in-law (LuPone). The insult comedian Jeff Ross has a writing credit on the film and supposedly provided much of its onstage material—rancorous and foul-mouthed, but lacking any hint of irony or an artistic sensibility. Like Louis C.K., but without the self-awareness. De Niro is coasting, as he so often has in recent years, but he’s still not bad. Being a standup requires a particular presence and a strangely confident approach to being pathetic; De Niro largely nails that, taking the stage with sullen ease, and barking penis jokes as if he’s done it for 40 years. His material isn’t special, but it’s authentic enough, the kind of thing one might expect from a night at the Comedy Cellar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, where a good chunk of the film takes place (including, alongside De Niro, snippets from several actual pro comedians). However, the life of an over-the-hill club comedian is hardly the stuff of heady cinema. It’s particularly well-worn territory given the recent efforts of TV stars like C.K. and of the director/producer Judd Apatow, the auteur of the “self-loathing bastard” subgenre (whose Funny People was a more piercing, if similarly bloated, exploration of the mind of a faded star). Perhaps you’d expect one other parallel plot for The Comedian, to run alongside Jackie’s efforts on the standup circuit. Instead, The Comedian’s saggy script (which has four credited writers, including Ross) tosses in every twist of fate imaginable. If you’ve dreamed of seeing De Niro croon fart jokes into a microphone, then The Comedian belongs on your bucket list.Early on, Jackie gets in an altercation with a heckler at a standup set and punches him; given the chance to apologize by a judge, he refuses and goes to prison. Stuck doing community service, he meets Harmony (Leslie Mann), a fellow self-loathing miscreant that he immediately falls for, despite their 29-year age difference. Unfortunately, that necessitates dealing with her father Mac (Keitel), some sort of retired mobster with a serious attitude problem. Burke also keeps getting on the wrong side of his brother, with a whole extended set piece taking place at his niece’s wedding. There’s also a bunch of funny business at the Friar’s Club, presided over by an imperious hack (Grodin); a segment in which Jackie hosts a Fear Factor-esque game show straight out of 2002; and a random trip to Florida, where he improvises a scatological version of “Makin’ Whoopee” to a crowd of scandalized geriatrics. On and on it goes, with each new plot element more nonsensical and disconnected than the last. It’s almost like The Comedian is trying to distract from the inherent ridiculousness of its central romantic pairing by throwing celebrity cameos and grumpy mobsters at the audience. Eventually, it resorts to a late-stage twist so hackneyed and groan-worthy I almost called it quits right there (fear not—I stuck it out through the ending, which includes a surprise time-jump). One could call The Comedian a waste of De Niro’s skill, but he’s also the man who made Dirty Grandpa last year. He’s not trying very hard here, but even so, he’s a fairly magnetic presence—though that certainly doesn’t justify the cost of admission. Mann, on the other hand, is a genuine talent so often thrust into these sorts of roles: women defined only as having a chip on their shoulders, in need of some half-hearted attempt at taming. The Comedian does her this usual disservice, despite her best efforts, and it’s similarly unappreciative of its supporting actors. If you’ve long dreamed of seeing De Niro croon fart jokes into a microphone, then The Comedian belongs on your bucket list. Otherwise, just wait for his next mediocre comedy—no doubt another one is right around the corner. 3 Feb
The Obama-Trump Truce Is Already Over - It took George W. Bush and Barack Obama a while to warm up to each other. They had many differences—in party, in age, in temperament, in style. Obama had risen to the presidency in part by peddling a harsh critique of Bush’s administration. The relationship grew gradually over time. The two men joked at the unveiling of Bush’s White House portrait in 2012. Bush invited Obama to the opening of his presidential library. By the time Michelle Obama and the former president embraced at the opening of the National Museum of African American History, stories emerged about the odd friendship between the couples. Related Story The Feedback Loop of Doom for Democratic Norms That growing warmth was fostered in part by a detente between the two men. While Obama fired broadsides against Bush on the campaign trail, Bush mostly shrugged it off. He instructed Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to keep Obama briefed on responses to the economic crisis, Jonathan Alter reported, with Paulson deeming Obama far more informed about the economy than John McCain. During the transition process, Bush invited Obama and his national-security appointees to war games. After Obama’s inauguration, Bush quietly left the scene and mostly avoided talking about politics. He repeatedly stressed the importance of allowing Obama to govern without the interference of an ex-president. The silence was so striking that when reports surfaced in April 2015, seven years into Obama’s presidency, that Bush had privately criticized Obama’s ISIS policy, it was headline news. Just as notably, former Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer disputed the reports.  “He never mentioned Obama. He gave direct, blunt answers to the hottest topics of the day involving politics of the Middle East,” Fleischer told CNN. Obama, in turn, responded to Bush’s withdrawal using the same method—he seldom mentioned Bush’s name. As conservatives did not fail to point out, whenever Obama was confronted with his administration’s struggles to get the economy rolling, he complained that he had been handed an extremely poor economy. But he usually avoided saying just who he had inherited that economy from. It was a small courtesy for the former president, and a token of Obama’s gratitude for Bush’s graciousness. Former Obama Chief of Staff Bill Daley told The Washington Post that Obama didn’t mention Bush much in private, either, though some of his staffers grumbled about the former president. (Many of Bush’s aides still found Obama’s criticisms of their old boss unfair and distasteful.) The public truce between Obama and Bush was notable because of the harsh tone of the 2008 campaign, but it followed the pattern set by previous commanders in chief: The outgoing president would stay out of the way and the incoming president would avoid attacking him. Despite Barack Obama’s attempts to build a rapport with Donald Trump during the presidential transition, and despite Trump’s public gratitude, the tradition seems moribund now. Obama had already declared his intention to deviate from tradition “if there are issues that have less to do with the specifics of some legislative proposal or battle, but go to core questions about our values and our ideals.” He has already broken his silence once, with a spokesman issuing a statement on protests last weekend over Trump’s immigration executive order. “President Obama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country,” the statement said, calling the demonstrations “exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake.” But if Obama is willing to fire a broadside at his successor,  Trump’s administration has shown its willingness to attack Obama in terms that are equally harsh, or even harsher. In a statement on Wednesday about Iran conducting a ballistic-missile test, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn spent nearly as much ink blasting Obama’s policies as he did the Iranians: The Obama Administration failed to respond adequately to Tehran's malign actions—including weapons transfers, support for terrorism, and other violations of international norms. The Trump Administration condemns such actions by Iran that undermine security, prosperity, and stability throughout and beyond the Middle East and place American lives at risk. President Trump has severely criticized the various agreements reached between Iran and the Obama Administration, as well as the United Nations—as being weak and ineffective. On Thursday, Press Secretary Sean Spicer also opened up on Obama. Spicer was being quizzed about a phone call between Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, which reportedly ended acrimoniously in part due to differences over an agreement by the Obama administration to accept 1,250 refugees from Australia. “The president is unbelievably disappointed in the previous administration’s deal that was made and how poorly it was crafted, and the threat to national security it put the United States on,” Spicer said, a statement remarkable not only for its directness but for the accusation that Obama had endangered American security. A showdown between presidents is unpredictable because it’s so rare. But Obama might feel emboldened by his public standing. He has a hefty advantage in approval ratings—he left office with a 59 percent approval rate, according to Gallup, against Trump’s current 45 percent. (Incidentally, he also had the upper hand when he entered office, with two-thirds of Americans approving of his performance against just 34 percent approval for Bush, which might have encouraged Bush to stay mum.) Nonetheless, these are likely only the opening skirmishes of a longer campaign of sniping between Obama and Trump. Trump’s agenda is full of just the kinds of items that Obama said would force him to speak up. The tone of Flynn’s attack on Obama startled White House reporters, who asked Spicer on Wednesday whether to expect more like that. Yes, came the answer. “I think in areas where there's going to be a sharp difference, in particular national security, in contrasting the policies that this president is seeking to make the country safer, stronger, more prosperous, he's going to draw those distinctions and contrast out,” Spicer said. “And so he's going to continue to make sure that the American people know that some of these deals and things that were left by the previous administration, that he wants to make very clear what his position is and his opposition to them. And the action and the notice that he put Iran on today is something that is important, because I think the American people voted on change.” One changed they voted on, whether they realized it or not, was the end of the tradition of comity between former and current presidents. 2 Feb
Should There Be an Oscars This Year? - The Academy Awards have long existed uncomfortably alongside politics. The ceremony’s most notable moments of public protest—Marlon Brando sending an activist for Native American rights to accept his trophy for The Godfather, or Michael Moore’s anti-George W. Bush speech in 2004—attracted as much ridicule as they did praise. The Oscars will always be the grandest industry party Hollywood throws for itself every year, making them inherently frivolous in many ways. As such, political speeches made at the event are often dismissed as a largely progressive industry preaching to the choir, or as egotistical posturing from out-of-touch stars. For this year’s ceremony, however, something more immediate is at stake. The Oscar-winning Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi, the director of The Salesman (nominated this year for Best Foreign Language Film), recently announced he would not attend this year’s ceremony. The decision was in response to President Trump’s recent executive order on immigration, which bars citizens of Iran and six other countries from entering the United States. Whether Farhadi could even attend (on some sort of waiver) was quickly put aside; as he explained in a statement, “[It] seems that the possibility of this presence is being accompanied by ifs and buts which are in no way acceptable to me even if exceptions were to be made for my trip.” He’s not the only one missing the show: Hala Kamil, the Syrian subject of the Best Documentary Short nominee Waitani: My Homeland, also cannot enter the U.S. under the executive order, and neither can the subjects of The White Helmets, another Documentary Short nominee about the Syrian refugee crisis. Their absence, and Hollywood’s generally outspoken response to President Trump, will make for a charged Oscar ceremony, similar to last weekend’s SAG Awards, where many of the night’s presenters and winners took the opportunity to speak out against the executive order. In response, some dramatic options have been floated: a boycott, or even canceling the ceremony altogether. But these ideas overlook the fundamental purpose of the Oscars, which—despite sometimes missing the mark—recognize some of the best cinema Hollywood has to offer, including films that deserve greater exposure. The suggestion that the Oscars be canceled this year stems in part from principle. The idea of artists being barred from attending the ceremony because of their country of origin is markedly against the global principles of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Though it’s often derided for its stodgy choices, the Best Foreign Language Film category does bring wider attention to international filmmaking. The Academy called Trump’s executive order “extremely troubling” in a statement, adding that the group “celebrates achievement in the art of filmmaking, which seeks to transcend borders and speak to audiences around the world, regardless of national, ethnic, or religious differences.” As a result, some critics and moviegoers are suggesting the awards be scrapped, as a grander, symbolic gesture. The prospect of not holding a ceremony at all, as explored by Vox’s Todd VanDerWerff this week, is an interesting one. Though it’s often decried as a “liberal Hollywood bubble,” the Academy Awards are watched by far more than just coastal elites. Their cancelation would be noticed around the country, though perhaps it wouldn’t be as deeply felt as the loss of, say, the Super Bowl. (A general boycott by nominees would also provoke widespread discussion, but would be even harder to coordinate.) Despite their perceived triviality, the Oscars also have the power to champion art that might otherwise be overlooked.The last time the Academy Awards abutted a huge moment in current events were in 2003, when the 75th Academy Awards aired just days after the beginning of the Iraq War. That ceremony was a subdued one, with barely any red-carpet festivities, but it aired as scheduled despite pleas from broadcaster ABC to delay it. That alone should indicate that the chances of the Oscar telecast ever being canceled, let alone delayed, are essentially zero. The ceremony is, after all, a crucial moneymaker for the Academy, which uses the revenue to pursue its other activities, such as film restoration and sponsoring fellowships for young writers and directors. It’s unlikely that a hypothetical total shutdown would even have the intended effect of drawing attention to protests over the executive order. The Oscars are, after all, first and foremost a celebration of art—even if that art is more often than not the middlebrow fare favored by a consensus vote of industry luminaries. The widely viewed awards ceremony provides a highly visible platform for less commercial work, taking care to highlight each of the year’s Best Picture nominees. The box-office impact of that attention is undeniable: Oscar-nominated films remain in theaters twice as long and can boost their take by several million dollars. La La Land, a throwback musical of no particular political import, is tipped to be the night’s biggest winner, but films like Moonlight, Hidden Figures, Loving, Fences, and Lion might not have otherwise received nationwide releases without awards attention. There are, of course, downsides that come with that audience. If La La Land dominates, as many suspect it will, the Oscars will seem more frivolous than ever, overlooking weightier cinematic efforts for a dreamy musical about show business in the opening months of the Trump presidency. Additionally, some of the nominees have attracted negative press because of incidents in their past—like the sexual-harassment allegations against the Best Actor nominee Casey Affleck, or the Best Director nominee Mel Gibson’s history of battery and anti-Semitic ranting. (Gibson’s publicity work for his film Hacksaw Ridge has doubled as a sort of apology tour that has largely lacked for a real accounting of his past behavior, which he has referred to as a “rough patch.”) There is no denying that the Oscars sometimes shine a spotlight on films, and filmmakers, that many would deem objectionable. But despite their perceived triviality and occasional misguidedness, the Academy Awards also have the power to champion art that might otherwise be overlooked. This influence makes the show a platform that can’t be ignored this month, no matter who will be in attendance. Even if no winner gives a charged speech, the Oscars are always an inherently political event based simply because of the works they honor. This is certainly not the year for the Academy to ignore that responsibility. 2 Feb
Is the Refugee Deal With Australia ‘Dumb’? - Donald Trump’s reportedly tense conversation on Saturday about refugees with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is indicative of just how much the president wants to limit who’s allowed into the U.S. At issue are the 1,250 refugees from Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Vietnam, and other countries that the Obama administration committed to accepting from an offshore Australian detention center after last November’s presidential election. That deal came two months after Turnbull agreed to help the U.S. resettle refugees fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. At the time, Australian officials rejected the idea that these Central American refugees would be swapped for those being detained in the offshore detention centers. “There will not be a people swap,” Scott Ryan, a special minister of state, said at the time. When asked last November about whether the incoming Trump administration would maintain that commitment to accept the refugees, Turnbull was circumspect: “We deal with one administration at a time,” he said. Indeed, he may have had reason to be cautious: Trump’s executive order last week suspended, among other categories of people, the U.S. refugee intake for 120 days, and barred all Syrian refugees indefinitely. The goal, Trump said, was to keep the homeland safe. Refugee advocates, human-rights groups, and even U.S. government officials, have criticized the order. But Australia’s refugee policy has long been the focus of similar criticism. Although Australia accepted 13,756 refugees in 2014-15, the period for which the most recent data are available, the country’s policy of offshore-detention centers for asylum-seekers who arrive by boat has been widely criticized. Under a longstanding policy, Australia maintained two offshore facilities—one in Nauru and one in Manus, located in Papua New Guinea. The numbers themselves are relatively small—about 400 in Nauru and more than 800 in Manus, according to the most recent data—but the reportedly poor conditions at the centers, and the time that asylum-seekers spend there, coupled with deaths and reports of sexual abuse, have made them an easy target for criticism. Indeed, Papua New Guinea’s Supreme Court apparently agreed, ordering the government in April 2016 to close the Manus Island center, calling the facility a violation of the migrants’ personal liberties. My colleague J. Weston Phippen, who wrote last year about the Australian policy here, pointed out: To be sure, it’s not that Australia has an issue with refugees––in fact, it has agreed to resettle 12,000 Syrians, atop the refugees it typically takes through its Humanitarian Programme. It granted 13,800 refugee visas between 2013 and 2014, and 20,000 between 2012 and 2013. But the arrivals by sea seem to prompt anger. One reason for this could be that migrants and refugees who try to reach Australia by sea are, in fact, coming illegally. Those that are being resettled through its Humanitarian Programme, meanwhile, are registered refugees being accepted under Australia’s international obligations. The two main parties also contend that its policies deter human-smuggling.   It’s these offshore detainees—about 1,200 of them—who would be coming to the U.S. under the onetime deal struck last November, terms of which were published by the Guardian and others. Trump, who spoke to Turnbull last Friday, reportedly called it the “worst deal ever,” according to The Washington Post—though Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, on Thursday called the conversation “cordial,” but said the president was “unbelievably disappointed in the previous administration’s deal.” Trump, the Post said, reportedly accused Turnbull of seeking to export the “next Boston bombers”—a reference to the Tsarnaev brothers whose parents came to the U.S. from Russia on a tourist visa in 2002, and applied for, and received, political asylum—and told the Australian leader that Trump was “going to get killed” politically, apparently because the refugee intake would run counter to his campaign pledges of keeping the homeland safe from those who wish to enter the U.S. posing as refugees and attacking the homeland. After news reports of the call emerged on Wednesday, Trump took to Twitter and cast doubts on whether the U.S. would keep its word. Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017 The Australian view of the call, as well as that of Spicer’s was different.   Turnbull said Thursday: “He is saying that this is not a deal he would have made, but the question is will he honor that commitment? He has already given it.” Spicer, speaking Tuesday, said: “Those people—part of the deal is that they have to be vetted in the same manner that we’re doing now.” “Extreme vetting” is what Trump has said all potential refugees to the U.S. should go through. The 120-day ban on refugees would allow the Trump administration to put in place new checks on who is allowed in. The top sources of refugees to the U.S. are Congolese, Somali, Burmese, Iraqi, and Syrian. They already undergo more rigorous screening than any other category of visitor to the U.S., often waiting as long as two years after they apply to be resettled in the country to make it to the United States. The last group of refugees who were in transit when Trump announced the ban last week was due to arrive in the U.S. on Thursday; the refugees excluded citizens of seven Muslim or predominantly Muslim countries—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria. Those refugees, numbering in the tens of thousands, who had been previously cleared for arrival in the U.S. will likely have to restart their applications once the ban has expired, said Linda Hartke, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. Hartke pushed back at the idea that the U.S. must control the refugees it allows in in order to put “America first.” “This is a big, generous, free, strong, great country, and part of its strength has been the willingness and, in fact, the desire, to welcome newcomers to this country,” she said. “If we turned the dial back and said ‘Americans First,’ this would be a thinly populated nation. The reality is the newcomer 20 years ago is the American today.” 2 Feb

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Photo: 2017 Chinese New Year, by Iris Liu - 2017 Chinese New Year © Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), get_post_time('Y'). | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall 3 Feb
The Origins and Intentions of China’s Foreign NGO Law - China’s long-awaited Foreign NGO Management Law took effect on January 1st, after an unusually lengthy process of drafting, public consultation, and revision. The law is part of an unprecedented wave of civil society regulation that formed over the course of 2016. In recent weeks, registration certificates have been issued to NGOs including the World Economic Forum, the Gates and Paulson Foundations, and numerous overseas Chambers of Commerce. In a blog post republished this week at China File, civil society expert and China Labour Bulletin director Shawn Shieh examined the history of foreign NGO regulation in China; the national security focus of both the new law and Xi Jinping’s administration in general; and the final law’s relative moderation compared with both its predecessors and its more “draconian” first draft. In contrast with many more pessimistic observers, Shieh reiterates his long-standing argument that foreign NGOs still have room to maneuver and to shape the new law’s implementation. The way the law has evolved makes it clear that Xi Jinping’s rise to power and his concerns about China’s security environment were the major drivers behind the law’s establishment and timing. In recent years, Chinese leaders, perhaps learning from Russia, Egypt, and other countries, have paid close attention to accusations of foreign NGO involvement in the “color revolutions” in the former Soviet Union and in the Arab Spring uprisings, and are worried about foreign NGOs funding social forces in China that may eventually metastasize into an organized opposition. In addition, the time spent on the drafting and revisions suggests the law is being taken seriously by Chinese leaders as a governance tool to strengthen “law-based administration” (yifa xingzheng), recognize the role played by foreign NGOs in China’s development, and strengthen their regulation. In this sense, the law can be seen as part of Xi Jinping’s broader “governing the country according to law” (yifa zhiguo) campaign to improve Party discipline and governance over both the Chinese state and society. By strengthening regulation of a group of social actors associated with foreign values and agendas, the law is intended to provide legal channels for those actors to carry out their activities while also strengthening the authorities’ ability to collect information on these actors and better protect China from perceived external threats to its sovereignty and social stability. […] […] The intended effect, in my view, was not to drive NGOs from China but to corral them into officially-sanctioned areas and away from more sensitive areas working with grassroots NGOs working on rights protection, advocacy, religion, etc. […] […] Getting the intent of the law right is important because the Ministry of Public Security will be judged on its performance in implementing the law so that it achieves its intended effect. If the intent of the law is truly to make life difficult for foreign NGOs and encourage them to leave the country, then the Ministry of Public Security has an easy job to do, and there is little that NGOs can do to shape implementation. But if the intent of the law is to ensure that foreign NGOs are able to work legally in officially-sanctioned areas, then the Ministry of Public Security has its work cut out for it and foreign NGOs have some leverage to shape the law’s implementation by monitoring and holding the Ministry of Public Security and other government agencies accountable for implementing and enforcing the law in an effective and impartial manner. [Source] While one claimed benefit of the new law is the greater clarity it offers, Shieh recently noted widespread confusion “both among NGOs and among the Public Security officials who are charged with implementing this law,” as well as “problems with the official English translation, and […] subtle omissions in the law that require a close reading to understand what the law allows and does not allow.” Read ongoing updates on implementation at Shieh’s NGOs in China blog. The University of Nottingham’s Andreas Fulda offered a less positive assessment last month. From the university’s China Policy Institute: Analysis blog: [… T]here is a risk that the law will be applied in a non-transparent and inconsistent way. Foreign NPOs working in the field of civil rights and the rule of law are more likely to be targeted than those working in less politically sensitive areas. […] In December 2016, the MPS published a detailed list of government organisations that will be in charge of supervising foreign NPOs. But the list does not include supervisory units for NGOs operating in sensitive areas such as legal reform and rights issues. There are also very few incentives for nominated Chinese supervisory bodies to take over responsibility for the activities of foreign NPOs in less politically sensitive fields. The result could be a situation where a majority of foreign NPOs remain in a legal limbo. […] The new law is also a problem because it carries a high risk and probability of administrative abuse – particularly true regarding cooperation with some kinds of Chinese grassroots NGOs working in politically sensitive areas. Just two days before the law came into effect, the premises of the overseas-funded Migrant Workers Home, a Beijing-based service-delivery and advocacy group for rural migrants, were ransacked. One way forward would be for foreign NPOs to adopt a strategy of “smart indigenisation”. This would mean providing grants to allow Chinese partners to sit in the driving seat of projects and programmes, thereby ensuring Chinese ownership and sustainability of initiatives. Arguably, Chinese problems will need be solved primarily by Chinese people drawing on Chinese resources. [Source] The climate for domestic groups has become increasingly politically sensitive in recent months, however, particularly where overseas funding is involved. The new Foreign NGO Management law had already given some Chinese partners the sense that they were viewed as “enemies of the state,” and details of the recent trials of Guangdong labor activists and detentions of citizen journalists can have offered little reassurance. © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), get_post_time('Y'). | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: civil society, foreign ngos, laws, legal system, national security, NGOs, regulation, Xi JinpingDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall 3 Feb
News on Tiananmen Crash Circulates, and is Deleted - An overturned jeep in front of Tiananmen Square has generated discussion online as netizens share photos and video of the dramatic incident. Weibo posts on the topic are being censored and videos have been deleted. Beijing police issued a statement on the incident which concluded, “[we] urge the general public on the internet not to believe or spread rumours.” Catherine Lai at Hong Kong Free Press reports: The incident occurred at 7:20 on Friday, Beijing traffic police said in a statement posted on its Weibo account. It said that a car accident occurred on the north side of the National Museum, without naming the square. The driver and one passenger were injured, they said. Westbound traffic on Chang’an Avenue was congested for over an hour, the Beijing Youth Daily reported. On Friday evening, another statement was released, saying there was no alcohol content in the driver’s blood. The driver was a local 26-year-old man surnamed Zhang, it said. [Source] #BREAKING: Vehicle rollover near Tiananmen Square, north of the National Museum, driver and cyclist injured, Fri morning: Beijing police pic.twitter.com/PtGu40T1Xi — People's Daily,China (@PDChina) February 3, 2017 Netizens have since discovered that the jeep had military license plates, though little else is known about the driver or circumstances of the crash. The following videos and images were being spread on Weibo and other platforms but have since been censored: 天安门被撞了，有谁知道是不是今天？ pic.twitter.com/B1al7xtZm6 — 王法展 (@wangfazhan0) February 3, 2017 2017年2月3号早晨7点20分左右，天安门广场东侧发生一起交通事故，红色字开头的JEEP侧翻在地，武警驱逐游客禁止围观。红字车牌可能为“武警” 或“军”。北京交警对事故介绍语焉不详，连车辆型号和颜色都没有介绍。 pic.twitter.com/kh15D3vQ5i — 佐拉 (@zuola) February 3, 2017 Read more about the crash and the online reaction, via CDT Chinese. In 2013, a jeep plowed into bystanders near Tiananmen Gate, killing five, in what authorities later determined was a terrorist attack. In 2014, eight people from Xinjiang were executed for “masterminding” the crash. © Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), get_post_time('Y'). | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Tiananmen crash 2013, Tiananmen Square, weiboDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall 3 Feb
Photo: Coincés, Xizhou, by Astrid Berglund - Coincés, Xizhou © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), get_post_time('Y'). | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Astrid BerglundDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall 3 Feb
Internet Users Detained for Insulting Police Officers - At least two Weibo users have been detained after writing disparaging comments about a police officer who was killed in Harbin while responding to a bar fight. Kinling Lo at the South China Morning Post reports on the incident: According to a screen grab published in Guangzhou’s Xinxi Daily on January 27, the Weibo blogger lukehcen0 shared news that police officer Qu Yuquan had been fatally assaulted by five people at a karaoke bar in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province. In the caption beneath the news, lukehcen0 wrote : “Anyone who kills or beats up a cop is a hero. Thumbs up!” [Source] Catherine Lai of Hong Kong Free Press reports: Qu Yuquan, a 38-year-old police officer in Harbin, was attacked after being called to a brawl at a KTV bar on Friday night, according to a post on the Harbin police’s Weibo account. Qu died from his injuries after being taken to hospital. After Harbin police posted the news on Weibo, a user with the handle lukehcen0 posted a message “insulting the sacrificed police officer and inciting violent assault of police,” according to the Legal Evening News, a newspaper under a Communist Party media organisation. “His actions have violated the country’s Public Security Administration Punishments Law,” it said. He was taken in for questioning on Saturday as part of a coordinated effort between police in Beijing and Guangzhou under the direction of the Ministry of Public Security, the paper said. [Source] Another internet user who posted messages about Qu’s death under the user name Changchun Social Sister has also been detained, according to the HKFP report. As Radio Free Asia reports, these detentions come as at least six people have been detained for insulting police online: In total, six people have been arrested in recent weeks for “insulting a police officer,” according to a social media post from police in the eastern province of Shandong. They included a steel mill manager surnamed Zhao from the central province of Henan, detained for “slandering the [ruling Chinese Communist] Party and the People’s Police,” and a resident of Tieling in the northeastern province of Liaoning who is accused of hurling “abuse” at dead traffic policeman Luo Zhenbo via his account on the WeChat smartphone app. “Another dog dies, great! That’s one less of them,” the man, identified only by his surname Zhang, allegedly commented on the local traffic police WeChat channel. Zhang was handed a 10-day administrative sentence for “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble” for the comment, the post said. [Source] © Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), get_post_time('Y'). | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: detention, Harbin, Internet censorship, police, weiboDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall 2 Feb
Person of the Week: Yu Jianrong - CDT is expanding its wiki beyond the Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon to include short biographies of public intellectuals, cartoonists, human rights activists, and other people pushing for change in China. The wiki is a work in progress. 于建嵘 Yu Jianrong with one of his paintings of a petitioner. (Source: Southern Metropolis Weekly) Yu Jianrong is a rural sociologist and advocate for the rural poor. He is the director of the Rural Development Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Yu has firsthand experience with the struggle faced by those on the margins of Chinese society. He was born in 1962 in Hengyang, Hunan Province, four years shy of the Cultural Revolution. His father had been a Kuomintang guerilla, and so his family was stripped of its household registration (hukou) as punishment. Without a hukou, Yu could not legally go to school, and the family was ineligible for government rations and clothes. Yu’s mother tried to move herself and her children to her hometown, but the villagers rejected them as a “black household.” As the Cultural Revolution wound down, Yu made a place for himself in journalism, business, and finally the academy. He graduated from Hunan Normal University, where he stayed on to teach until 2003. He earned his PhD in law from the China Rural Issues Institute at Central China Normal University in 2001. Yu went on to a postdoctoral position at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, where he has stayed ever since. Yu remains deeply engaged with marginalized communities through extensive fieldwork and advocacy. He has devoted his career to exposing the mistreatment of petitioners, and institutionalized disadvantages such as the hukou system and the challenges faced by migrant workers and their families. Netizens know Yu best for his 2011 Weibo campaign “Take a Photo, Save a Child Beggar.” Yu called on the public to post photos of child beggars in order to shed light on the abuse they suffer at the hands of the adults who control them. Many of the children had been crippled and maimed in order to make them easier to control. The posts transformed into a lost-and-found board for missing children. Yu is at once an “establishment intellectual” and the “poster boy for the Chinese democracy movement,” as Andreas Fulda of the University of Nottingham has said. Yu has written bold criticisms of the Chinese political system and offered recommendations for reform. Foreign Policy named him a 2012 Global Thinker for his “10-Year Outline of China’s Social and Political Development.” In December 2016, he proffered ten “do not’s” to the central government, warning them that there is “a price to pay for using the constitution as toilet paper.” His liberal writing has cost him his WeChat account, which disappeared in late 2016, but he continues to post to Weibo as of January 2017. Yu has found release—and a new approach to the problems he researches—in art. He has painted portraits of petitioners and curated an exhibition of portraits of missing children. The archive of Yu’s WeChat account is available from chuansong.me. Entry written by Anne Henochowicz. Can’t get enough of subversive Chinese netspeak? Check out our latest ebook, “Decoding the Chinese Internet: A Glossary of Political Slang.” Includes dozens of new terms and classic catchphrases, presented in a new, image-rich format. Available for pay-what-you-want (including nothing). All proceeds support CDT. © josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), get_post_time('Y'). | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: hukou, migrant workers, public intellectuals, rural poor, social inequality, word of the week, Yu JianrongDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall 2 Feb
Photo: Rooster, by Sleeve Collar - Rooster, Yunnan © josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), get_post_time('Y'). | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: skoller, Sleve CollarDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall 1 Feb
Billionaire Xiao Jianhua’s Whereabouts Still a Mystery - Following reports that Chinese-born Canadian citizen and Hong Kong permanent resident Xiao Jianhua—a billionaire former dealmaker for CCP elites—had been abducted from Hong Kong and taken to the mainland by Chinese agents, Chinese censors ordered information on Xiao and his company Tomorrow Group to be deleted. State media then denied any abduction, and statements ascribed to Xiao claiming that he had not been abducted, was undergoing medical treatment abroad, and believes Beijing to be “civilized and adherent to the rule of law” were also posted to Tomorrow Group’s public WeChat account. Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper ran a similar statement as an ad, allegedly commissioned by Xiao. The WeChat statements were later deleted, and an unnamed associate of Xiao’s told The New York Times they were untrue and meant to dampen public interest in the story. At Bloomberg, David Tweed and Cathy Chan survey more recent, mostly opaque statements from various sources on Xiao’s whereabouts: As of Wednesday, Xiao remained outside China, according to a subordinate in contact with him daily. That person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private, declined to be more specific. The Canadian consulate in Hong Kong declined Wednesday to confirm whether Xiao is a Canadian citizen, citing privacy issues. Consulate officials had been in touch with local authorities for information following the media reports, said Cindy Tang, a spokeswoman. […] A Hong Kong police statement released Tuesday about “a Mainland citizen in Hong Kong” didn’t name the person. Officers received a “request for police assistance” on Jan. 28, but a family member later said the person contacted relatives and was safe, so the report was withdrawn. The investigation showed the person entered China from Hong Kong on Jan. 27, which is the day Xiao reportedly left [his residence at] the Four Seasons. A spokeswoman for the Four Seasons Hotel, Priscilla Chan, declined to comment Wednesday. […] [Source] The Wall Street Journal’s Josh Chin and Chester Yung report that Hong Kong police launched a probe into the missing billionaire’s location on Wednesday, and note other recent official non-confirmations as to Xiao’s whereabouts: Hong Kong police waded into a mystery surrounding the whereabouts of a Chinese-born billionaire on Wednesday, saying they had asked mainland authorities for more information after determining the businessman crossed the border into China. […] Disquiet over Mr. Xiao’s fate is likely to spread further if it emerges that Mr. Xiao, a well-connected businessman, was subject to the same treatment as Mr. Lee, the bookseller [believed to have been detained by Chinese agents, but who later denied that he was abducted], in a city long celebrated as a capitalist sanctuary. Mr. Lee returned after three months and gave few details of his absence beyond saying he had gone to the mainland voluntarily to assist in an investigation. […] An official in the press office of China’s Ministry of Public Security said the office couldn’t process requests for comment during the Lunar New Year holiday. Calls to the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office went unanswered. A number of high-profile businessmen have gone missing since President Xi vowed to sweep away corruption four years ago. One notable example is Hua Bangsong, the founder of refinery designer Wison Engineering Services Co., who was detained by investigators in 2013 and sentenced in 2015 to three years in prison for bribery. Days after he was detained, he made his debut on the Hurun Report rich list at No. 335 with an estimated worth of $900 million. [Source] The mystery of Xiao’s whereabouts have stoked ongoing political anxiety in semiautonomous Hong Kong, coming on the heels of the disappearances of five Hong Kong booksellers in late 2015 and early 2016, and as concerns fester about the future of the semiautonomous territory’s legal autonomy and media freedoms. Freedom House’s most recent Freedom in the World report, released this week, warned against Beijing’s continuing encroachment on civil liberties in Hong Kong. At the Hong Kong Free Press, Kris Cheng reports on Hong Kong Chief Executive candidate Regina Ip’s claims that the mystery surrounding Xiao highlights the need for an extradition agreement between Hong Kong and Beijing: Chief executive contender Regina Ip has said the issue behind the reported abduction of a Chinese billionaire from Hong Kong was that the city has no fugitive extradition agreement with the mainland. “It has not been followed up with after I left [the government],” said Ip, the former security secretary. “If there is a formal legal fugitive extradition agreement, we can provide assistance if the mainland requires any investigative needs; but we do not have a fugitive extradition agreement or a mutual legal assistance agreement, so there may be cases that Hongkongers are concerned about. The next administration should put forward [an agreement].” [Source] See also the South China Morning Post’s list of publicly traded companies in Hong Kong and China linked to Xiao Jianhua. © josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), get_post_time('Y'). | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: billionaires, cross-border detentions, hong kong basic law, Hong Kong self-rule, Internet censorship, Xiao JianhuaDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall 1 Feb
Minitrue: Delete Reports of Billionaire’s Abduction - The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. The name of the issuing body has been omitted to protect the source. All websites, including Wechat and Weibo accounts, media apps, and affiliated self-media, please immediately find and delete information on the “Tomorrow Group” and Xiao Jianhua. (January 31) [Chinese] The directive follows reports that Xiao, a billionaire former “bagman” or dealmaker for Party elites, was taken from Hong Kong by Chinese agents last Friday. Xiao was allegedly escorted from the Four Seasons Hotel where, according to a 2014 New York Times profile, he lived “surrounded by aides who arrange his meetings with bankers and Asian tycoons and female bodyguards who even wipe the sweat from his brow.” The incident follows the disappearances of five Hong Kong booksellers, among other developments seen as eroding of the territory’s legal autonomy. The Times’ Michael Forsythe reports: In recent years, Mr. Xiao has acted as a kind of banker to the ruling class, paying $2.4 million in 2013 to buy shares in an investment firm held by the sister and brother-in-law of China’s president, Xi Jinping. A company he helped to control financed a deal that helped the son-in-law of a top former leader, Jia Qinglin, The New York Times reported in 2014. […] His fate in recent days has been the focus of media attention and confusion in Hong Kong and in the overseas Chinese-language press after reports emerged that he had been arrested. On Tuesday, Mr. Xiao posted two notices on his company’s WeChat account saying he had not been taken from Hong Kong to the mainland and instead was “recuperating abroad” and soon would meet with media organizations. In Chinese, there is no ambiguity: “Abroad” means outside the mainland. Those posts have since been removed. Those statements were untrue, according to the person close to Mr. Xiao, and were meant to tamp down interest in the story, because the Chinese government did not want it publicized. [Source] The two statements have been archived by FreeWechat.com, and translated by CDT: In light of people’s recent interest, I wish to make the follow special announcement: I, Xiao Jianhua, am currently convalescing abroad, and am quite safe! Tomorrow Group’s business is proceeding as usual! Thank you, everyone, for your concern! Xiao Jianhua, January 30 2017 [Chinese] I thank everyone for their concern. I am currently undergoing medical treatment abroad. I will promptly meet with the media as soon as this course of treatment is complete. I believe that the Chinese government is civilized and adheres to the rule of law. Let there be no misunderstanding! It’s not true that I’ve been abducted and taken back to the mainland. I am a patriotic overseas Chinese, and have always loved the Party and country. I have never taken part in anything to harm the national interest or government’s image, and have never supported any opposing power or organization. As a Canadian citizen and permanent resident of Hong Kong, I receive the protection of both Canadian consular authorities and Hong Kong law. As the holder of a diplomatic passport [from Antigua], I also have diplomatic immunity. So everyone please be reassured! Xiao Jianhua, January 31 2017 [Chinese] Storyful’s Aaron McNicholas noted further thinning of Tomorrow Group’s online presence: Xiao Jianhua's company, Tomorrow Group, now has an empty Weibo page. Compare now to Baidu's cache dated January 21 https://t.co/KS2geogd5v pic.twitter.com/zHNCUiOEoQ — Aaron Mc Nicholas (@aaronMCN) January 31, 2017 The 2014 New York Times profile, written by Michael Forsythe and David Barboza, drew connections between Xiao’s business success with his loyalty to the government as head of the Peking University student union during the 1989 Tiananmen protests. Xiao responded with a statement insisting that his wealth was “completely the results of hard work in investments” rather than political connections. A leaked media directive ordered the suppression of related news. This week, meanwhile, South China Morning Posts reports the reappearance of mainland tycoon Guo Wengui, who broke a two-year public silence with allegations of corruption and political machinations against Politburo Standing Committee members and faltering security star Fu Zhenghua. Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. Some instructions are issued by local authorities or to specific sectors, and may not apply universally across China. The date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. See CDT’s collection of Directives from the Ministry of Truth since 2011. © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), get_post_time('Y'). | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: censorship, cross-border detentions, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, Hong Kong self-rule, online censorship, ruling elites, WeChatDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall31 Jan
Photo: Free-range, by Daniel Parks - Free-range, Guangxi, China © josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), get_post_time('Y'). | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Daniel ParksDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall31 Jan

The Eyeopener from CBC Radio Calgary (Highlights)

Eyeopener Podcast for Feb. 2, 2017 - Today's podcast: Rick Hanson on Olympic bid exploration committee; Lethbridge assault victim released from hospital; Calgary Opera presents Filumena; long-time Calgary shoe store closes. 1 Feb
Eyeopener Podcast for Feb. 1, 2017 - Today's podcast: Panel of Calgary Muslims talk about events of the past week; Unconventionals on whether Facebook is bad for your mental health; surprising new discovery at the Burgess Shale.31 Jan
Eyeopener Podcast for Jan. 31, 2017 - Today's podcast: Uncertainty over U.S. travel restrictions; new plan to protect Banff’s Bow Valley wolf pack; Calgary soprano Kathleen Morrison needs vocal cord surgery.30 Jan
Eyeopener Podcast for Jan. 30, 2017 - Today's podcast: Why Orwell is back on top of the best-seller charts; centrist politics in Alberta; Jason Kenney on Trump immigration ban; Jonathan Love reviews ‘The Audience’ at Theatre Calgary; YYC Hot Chocolate Week gets underway.29 Jan
Eyeopener Podcast for Jan. 27, 2017 - Today's podcast: Symons Valley Ranch vendor loses inventory in fire; John Gilchrist visits Rau Bistro; Wildrose leader Brian Jean; Blue Jays broadcaster Buck Martinez.26 Jan
Eyeopener Podcast for Jan. 26, 2017 - Today's podcast: Conservationists react to CP’s plans to keep grizzlies safe; Calgary Flames continue to struggle; local board game designer finds Kickstarter success; turning Calgary cubicles into condos.25 Jan
Eyeopener Podcast for Jan. 25, 2017 - Today's podcast: Recap of Trudeau's U of C town hall; Mayor Nenshi on the past week in municipal politics; Greenpeace campaigner Mike Hudema on Keystone XL revival; Calgary doctor describes life in an Iraqi field hospital.24 Jan
Eyeopener Podcast for Jan. 24, 2017 - Today's podcast: Timothy Caulfield on Tamara Lovett trial; how the city deals with complaints about businesses; Dr. Raj Bhardwaj on how to manage pain when treating children; recap of the Oscar nomination announcement.23 Jan
Eyeopener Podcast for Jan. 23, 2017 - Today's podcast: Prime Minister Trudeau brings cabinet retreat to Calgary; story of the Bre-X scandal hits the big screen; new warehouse and welcome centre for Syrian refugees; students celebrate Chinese New Year.22 Jan
Eyeopener Podcast for Jan. 20, 2017 - Today's podcast: French skills in the Conservative leadership race; I.T. expert turns the tables on laptop thief; comedian Ali Hassan19 Jan

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Daily Kos

Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: The Chaos agents in the White House are on the defensive - Today we hear from some conservatives. Here is a remarkable piece from the Boston Globe, highlighting Rep. Seth Moulton (D), but also a smart approach (no shaming, but no quarter) to conservatives: “What I’ve heard from behind the scenes,’’ Moulton said during a telephone interview on Monday, is that Mattis and others who were left out of Trump’s decision-making loop on the immigration order are asking one another, “What will make you resign? What’s your red line?” “What I’ve heard from behind the scenes,’’ Moulton said during a telephone interview on Monday, is that Mattis and others who were left out of Trump’s decision-making loop on the immigration order are asking one another, “What will make you resign? What’s your red line?” … And Moulton’s getting noticed for his actions. Exhibit A: A Sunday tweet from Bill Kristol, a Republican and founder of the conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard, stating that it was Moulton — not Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell — “who spoke for me,” after Moulton blasted Trump’s executive order. In response, Moulton tweeted a thank you in which he praised Kristol’s “courage” and said, “We need more people on both sides to stand up for our shared American values.” “I’m not going to back down one bit in attacking Trump,” said Moulton. “I’m also reaching across the aisle to encourage Republicans to stand up for our country. . . . Regardless of who you supported, there’s a lot of unease.” Shared American values. That is the key. We all have them (though they might not be the same). And Trump/Bannon are threatening to rewrite them. Conservatives of all people should be defending them just as we do. More on that below. xGiven tonight's ruling against Trump's EO and news of old video find from Yemen raid, a Q for conservatives: what is your red line on Trump?— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) February 4, 2017 05:11
Open thread for night owls. Garrett—Oppose. Obstruct. Resist. - Educator Jeff Garrett has worked with historically underserved schools in New York City and Los Angeles and is a passionate advocate for social justice. He wrote the following piece at Project 1461. It is reprinted by permission:  Oppose. Obstruct. Resist. All right everybody, [the Women's March] was awesome, in the literal sense of the word. To see millions take to the streets, led by women, in a show of intersectional solidarity, opposing ascendency to power of the most dangerous and hateful right wingers among us, was critically important. But now we must sustain the outrage, the unity, and continue the work. There are a few things we can be sure of: Republicans don't care about our marches.   They will only care about them when our marches, and other forms of resistance, come with clear demands and the power to force changes in their behavior.   To do this we must be willing to sacrifice and change our behavior. To move our money, to use our time, to call and call and call, to speak up even when uncomfortable, to risk arrest, to vote differently, to build with our neighbors, to check our privilege, to unite across difference, to deny our labor, and sustain our moral outrage.   The agenda the Republicans are pushing is as unjust as it seems. We must maintain clarity about this. In a world where denying people the right to health care is called "relief from Obamacare" and where allowing dumping in our rivers is called the "clean drinking water act" we must not be distracted.   The basis of the right's communication at this moment in history is lies and manipulation. Do not assume positive intent. Distrust, and verify. Be a critical consumer of information.   We must hold liberals and progressives accountable in our movement. We cannot afford to compromise our principles for justice. Although politics in a democracy usually requires some compromise, that is the last step in the process of exercising power, not the first.   We must not begin to tear one another down. They will try to make us use our energy and resources to fight amongst ourselves. We will disagree, but we must remain focused on our principles and the objectives we have for change.   We must be willing to engage on the boring stuff. The leasing rights for mining given out by the Department of the Interior are not sexy. But they are core to the work of protecting our planet. We must know that the harm the right will attempt is often in the details, and we're going to have to get in there with them.   Mainstream media has shown itself to be inadequate, at best. Use alternate media. DemocracyNow, the Young Turks, social media, foreign press, there is diversity of reporting out there. We must seek it out to find the truth.   We must be willing to agitate. Frederick Douglass said this best I think: "Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." Oppose. Obstruct. Resist. QUOTATION OF THE DAY “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”                     —Frederick Douglass, 1857, speech in Canandaigua, New York TWEET OF THE DAY x#DressLikeAWoman for #TheJourneyToMars! pic.twitter.com/RPvxr8waUp— Cady Coleman (@Astro_Cady) February 3, 2017  BLAST FROM THE PAST At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—Fiorina's fail train at top speed: The hits keep on coming for Carly Fiorina, the failed CEO gasping for air in the GOP primary to take on Senator Boxer. Carly's campaign has been one unmitigated boatload of fail since its inception. Let's summarize: • The company she nearly ruined has now maxed out to Senator Boxer. • She trails primary opponent Tom Campbell badly in all the latest polling. • She has lied--twice--about her fundraising numbers. • And to top it off, her website rollout is often considered a nominee for all-time worst. The California Democratic Party has definitely taken notice, and today announced the creation of a parody site dedicated to exposing Carly's floundering campaign: carlyfailorina.com (it's pleasing that we blogger types aren't the only ones using the alliterative "fail" to describe Carly's drain-circling campaign). HIGH IMPACT STORIES • TOP COMMENTS  On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Where we you when it didn’t happen? #NeverRemember. #BowlingGreen. Muslim ban fallout: the OLC memo, former Norwegian PM detained. Commander Cuckoobananas skips the situation room. Trump threatens to yank the Johnson… amendment. x Embedded Content  YouTube | iTunes | LibSyn | Support the show via Patreon 3 Feb
Another super-wealthy Trump nominee runs into trouble with his ethics review - Ouch. Andy Puzder, the fast food CEO Donald Trump wants to put in charge of the Labor Department, had his confirmation hearing delayed for a fourth time earlier this week. The latest delay is reportedly because of hold-ups with his ethics review. He’s not pulling out, though, despite being called on to do something his future boss man flatly refused to do: Puzder began working on his ethics paperwork three weeks ago but encountered complications because CKE, which includes burger chains Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, is privately held, spokesman George Thompson said. Shares of publicly held companies can be sold easily on the stock market, but it can be more difficult to offload private holdings. If confirmed, Puzder would step down as chief executive of his fast-food business. Initially, Puzder wanted to move his stake in the company into a blind trust but was told by the Office of Government Ethics that he would need to divest, Thompson said.  Even without a hearing to draw attention to his awfulness, Puzder faces growing opposition. Campaign for Accountability has asked a court to unseal Puzder's divorce records, while 100 food and agricultural groups, including Friends of the Earth, Food Chain Workers Alliance, and Corporate Accountability International, have come out in opposition to Puzder as labor secretary.  Oddly enough, having run a company that commits rampant wage theft raises some eyebrows when you seek to be put in charge of preventing and punishing wage theft. 3 Feb
Ron Wyden wants to remind you—the FBI knows things about Trump and Russia that they're not sharing - It’s the story that Trump has been trying to avoid since he started his campaign. The one that Senate Republicans promised to investigate, then hoped that everyone will forget. Don’t need a select committee, don’t need to add staffers or increase the budget … oh, yeah, Republicans are all over this one.  But there are a few people in the Senate who are still trying to bring attention to the little fact that a foreign power interred in our election with the express intent of making Donald Trump president.  Now that the intelligence committees are supposedly on the case—and with the FBI not discussing whatever inquiries it may be holding on this front—the controversy (or scandal!) has been nudged to the back burner. This often happens in Washington: a secret investigation is launched, the story goes dark.  Helping cast those shadows is a press that seems to have instant amnesia about anything Russia related, to the extent that Russian forces attacking towns in Ukraine just one day after Trump and Putin had their contents unknown chat, wasn’t enough to push aside Trump’s latest tweets on television ratings. The connections between Putin and Trump, Manafort, Flynn, Page, and others in the regime seldom merits a mention. Enter Wyden. For the public, at this point, there is no way to tell if the intelligence committee is doing a good job investigating these dicey issues. Republicans on the committee certainly have an interest in not embarrassing, inconveniencing, or delegitimizing Trump. So it's up to Wyden and the other Democrats on the committee to monitor the probe and inform the citizenry if it ends up being a whitewash.  3 Feb
'Lie to me, baby' says the most sanctimonious Republican in the Senate - Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who's made a long career out of outraged sanctimony at Democrats doing the very thing he championed himself under the last president, now says that he's so tough on Republican cabinet nominees so that he knows they're clean. Nevertheless, no Republican asked by The Huffington Post over the last couple of weeks expressed the least bit of doubt about the sincerity of Trump’s nominees or whether their disagreements with their boss might be purely strategic. […] “No. These are big-time people. They know they’ve got to be truthful,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). “Listen, I work them over pretty hard when they come into my office. They know they’ve got to tell the truth to me.” So when confronted with the myriad and widely reported ethics problems of Rep. Tom Price and Steve Mnuchin's out and out lies to his own committee, Hatch blames it on the Democrats. He said he saw no attempts to deceive ― except maybe by Democrats, who he said were just out to derail the Trump administration. “These two candidates are about as honest and decent as you can be,” Hatch said, with particular contempt for the worries that Price’s activities, involving a company that benefited from his legislation, amount to insider trading. “Oh, come on. They found $300,” Hatch said, although he misstated the amount of the investment. “He invested $300 in this company, and it’s probably not going to be profitable. I mean, that’s bush-league crap. It really is.” Insider trading by a member of Congress—reported by that liberal rag The Wall Street Journal!—doesn't mean anything to Hatch. No more than the vaunted institution of the Senate he's constantly preaching about, until the rules of that institution get in his way. Then he's happy to trash them. 3 Feb
Trump's Muslim ban is a brain drain for the US, and a boon for others - Trump’s ill-timed, poorly planned Muslim ban did make someone very happy: A Toronto immigration lawyer says the time is ripe for Canada's technology sector to take advantage of the uncertainty created by a recent clampdown on immigration by President Donald Trump. …  "Right now there is a huge skill shortage when it comes to tech individuals," Stephen Green, a partner with the Toronto-based law firm Green-Spiegel who specializes in immigration law, told The Morning Edition host Craig Norris Wednesday.  "You've got some highly skilled people in the United States now that are quite candidly stuck or can't come back into into SIlicon Valley if they left," he said.  Meanwhile, on the side of the border where the Statue of Liberty looks increasingly ironic, the 100,000+ visas already chopped off by Trump’s ban are having an impact on science and technology. In the days since President Trump signed the executive order, it has already disrupted science communities in the United States and around the globe. Students and researchers have found themselves trapped out of the country, seen field work plans scuttled, or had long-awaited visits canceled. For many scientists engaged in the work of understanding and addressing the world's next great challenge—a changing climate and the transition to cleaner energy sources—it's clear that you can't stifle immigration without stifling innovation, too. If Republicans knew that Trump’s order was destroying the next generation of clean energy jobs, they would … definitely cheer even louder, since dragging out the transition from fossil fuels to generate maximum dollars to smokestack power is right at the top of their to-do list. But that’s not the limits of the damage. 3 Feb
Trump is getting a warm welcome to the authoritarian leaders club - America 2017, ladies and gentlemen: Authoritarian leaders greet Trump as one of their own That is an actual New York Times headline that accurately characterizes the content of an article with many data points. It’s not just Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Or murderous Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. For instance: In Kazakhstan, the country’s “president for life,” Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose poor human rights record is well documented, said Mr. Trump had called him in December and complimented him on the “miracle” he had wrought in his country over its 25 years of independence. Mr. Trump was apparently not referring to Mr. Nazarbayev’s 2015 re-election, which the Kazakh leader won with 97.7 percent of the vote. And also: Mr. Erdogan, who has jailed more journalists than any other leader in the past year, was almost gleeful after Mr. Trump shouted down the CNN reporter Jim Acosta at a news conference in January, responding to CNN and BuzzFeed reports on intelligence briefings regarding unsubstantiated allegations of Russian efforts to blackmail Mr. Trump. “Those who carried out that game back then in Turkey have done him wrong again during the news conference,” Mr. Erdogan said after the event, referring to CNN. “And Mr. Trump put the reporter of that group in his place.” No wonder Reuters editor-in-chief Steve Adler cited the news service’s coverage of Iran as a model for its future coverage of Trump. 3 Feb
Coal in the water and fire in the sky—Republicans banish environmental rules ... because they can - Republicans have gotten down to the business of gleefully slashing and burning their way through regulations, and they’re employing a tool that’s only rarely been employed in the past. The Congressional Review Act makes rules that were finalized within a few weeks of the end of an administration particularly easy to depose. Even though it may have taken years to gather the information, work through public review, and implement a rule with the CRA, Republicans can kill regulations with a simple majority vote in the House and Senate, with no chance to filibuster.  They’ve applied this power to destroying a rule that protects rivers and streams near mines. The Stream Protection Rule was worked on throughout the Obama administration, finally getting published in its waning days. Its repeal, while not unexpected, is a blow to environmentalists who helped shape the regulation and Appalachian communities concerned about the health of their waterways and water supplies. Republicans are treating the repeal as a “job creator” after mining companies complained that the rule was meant to drive coal out of business. Neither is even close to true. The Stream Protection Rule was simply a clarification of rules that have been in the Clean Water Act from its inception and which hadn’t been reviewed since 1983. The new rule would have affected exactly one type of mining—mountain top removal. In repealing this rule, Republicans won’t generate a single mining job, but they will make it possible for companies to increase their profits through techniques that create more pollution while employing fewer workers. But Republicans aren’t stopping with making sure that the ground and the water suffer. They’re also reaching for the sky. The Republican-controlled House has voted to overturn an Obama administration rule intended to clamp down on oil companies that burn off natural gas during drilling operations on public lands. The rule seeks to reduce waste and harmful methane emissions as part of a strategy to address climate change. It was finalized in November. 3 Feb
Federal judge grants immediate nationwide injunction on Trump's Muslim ban—the broadest ruling yet - A federal judge in Seattle on Friday afternoon temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s Muslim ban. The judge, James Robart, was appointed by former President George Bush. Buzzfeed writes: A federal judge in Washington issued the furthest reaching order yet against President Trump’s refugee and travel ban executive order, media at the Friday hearing reported, granting a nationwide order halting enforcement of significant parts of the order. “The decision shuts down the executive order immediately,” Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a news conference outside the courthouse after US District Judge James Robert issued his ruling in the lawsuit, brought by Ferguson on behalf of the state. Ferguson had been seeking an order halting enforcement of both the refugee and the section addressing travel from seven majority-Muslim nations. A written copy of the judge’s order, however, was not immediately available to determine the precise confines of the judge’s ruling. xEven @AGOWA Bob Ferguson seemed stunned at breadth of victory. "Holy cow.. OK" he said to colleagues following ruling #ImmigrationOrder— Jim Brunner (@Jim_Brunner) February 3, 2017 3 Feb
Cheers and Jeers: Rum and Resistance FRIDAY! - From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE… Late Night Snark: Documenting the Tiny-Handed Atrocity "I did a lot of hallucinogens when I was younger in order to prepare me for any eventual reality. I never saw this one coming." ---Lewis Black on The Late Show "The nation's airports were filled with people protesting President Trump's Muslim ban. It was the largest collection of angry people at an airport since every United Airlines flight." ---Conan O'Brien "At Dulles Airport, a 5-year-old Iranian boy was detained for hours and kept from his mother. Or as Kellyanne Conway calls it: alternative daycare." ---Stephen Colbert xAnyone point out that a Donald Trump anagram is Lord Dampnut?— Colin Mochrie (@colinmochrie) January 21, 2017 "If Donald Trump stops all the immigrants from coming into the country, where's he going to find his next wife?" ---Jimmy Kimmel "I, Donald J. Trump, do pronounce that America now finally has an official language. The new official language of the United States is bullshit. I have instructed my staff to speak only in bullshit." ---Jon Stewart reading other Trump executive orders on The Late Show And some perspective: "So far our new overlord has torn up treaties, taken the first steps toward a Muslim ban, ordered the construction of his dumbass wall, and threatened to invade Chicago like his own little Crimea. … So as the curtain goes up on Shit Show: The Musical, I want you to take the hands of the people sitting next to you, squeeze tight, and remember…really remember…that the president could only get Three Doors Down to play at his inauguration." ---Samantha Bee Remember, kids: from now on, it’s Lord Dampnut. Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!] 3 Feb

Democracy Now!

Jeremy Scahill: Trump CIA Deputy Director Pick Gina Haspel Ran Secret Torture Black Site - President Trump has selected Gina Haspel to be the new deputy director of the CIA. The Intercept reports Gina Haspel was directly involved in the CIA’s torture program under the George W. Bush administration. She was responsible for running a secret CIA black site in Thailand where prisoners were waterboarded and tortured. The Intercept also reports Haspel played a role in the 2005 destruction of two interrogation videotapes that depicted the torture of prisoners. We speak with journalist Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, which reported on Haspel’s record at the CIA. 3 Feb
Meet Lewis Wallace: Trans Reporter Fired for Writing About Journalistic Integrity in Trump Era - Until last week, Lewis Wallace was the only out transgender reporter at the public radio show "Marketplace." Then he published a blog post on the website Medium about journalistic neutrality and the challenges of being a transgender journalist who covers the current administration. Under the headline "Objectivity is dead, and I’m okay with it," he questioned whether people who hold "morally reprehensible" positions, such as supporting white supremacy, can be covered objectively, and he argued journalists shouldn’t care if they are called "politically correct" or "liberal." "Marketplace" said Wallace’s blog post violated its code of ethics. It suspended him for writing it and asked him to take it down. When he later republished it, he was fired. Lewis Wallace joins us to explain what he wrote, and why. 3 Feb
Yemen: Jeremy Scahill & Advocates Question "Success" of Trump Raid That Killed 24 Civilians - Questions are mounting about the first covert counterterrorism operation approved by President Donald Trump. Authorities say it was a success. The Pentagon now acknowledges that civilians were killed Sunday when members of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 joined with commandos from the United Arab Emirates to raid a Yemeni village where members of al-Qaeda were said to live. But human rights groups say up to 24 civilians were killed, including a newborn baby and an American 8-year-old girl, Nawar al-Awlaki, the daughter of the U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in Yemen by a U.S. drone strike in 2011. The U.S. suffered one fatality: William "Ryan" Owens, a veteran member of SEAL Team 6. We get response from Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, who has extensively covered Yemen; Pardiss Kebriaei, staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights; and Baraa Shiban, the Yemen project coordinator and caseworker with Reprieve. 3 Feb
Does Donald Trump Think Frederick Douglass is Alive? Douglass's Descendant Clarifies - The good news is that President Donald Trump opened Black History Month by mentioning the renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The bad news is he doesn’t seem to realize he’s dead. Speaking at a Black History Month event on Wednesday, Trump’s comments suggested he thought Douglass was alive. Douglass was born into slavery around 1818 and died in 1895. We set the record straight with our guest, Kenneth Morris Jr., great-great-great-grandson of Frederick Douglass, and feature an excerpt of James Earl Jones reading one of his most famous speeches, "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro." 3 Feb
Headlines for February 3, 2017 - Parents, Teachers Flood Capitol Phone Lines Demanding Senate Vote No to DeVosKellyanne Conway Invents Terrorist Attack to Justify Muslim BanWhite House Falsely Claims Iran Attacked U.S. ShipDefense Secretary Issues Warning to North KoreaWhite House Issues Tepid Warning to Israel over SettlementsAfter Trump's Phone Call, John McCain Tries to Smooth Over Relations with AustraliaTrump's Pick for Deputy CIA Director Ran Secret Torture Black SiteWall Street Journal: Trump to Dismantle Dodd-Frank RegulationsTrump Vows to "Destroy" Law Prohibiting Churches from Endorsing CandidatesNYC: 1,000 Yemeni-Owned Bodegas Strike over Trump's Muslim BanUber CEO Quits Trump's Economic Advisory CouncilMagazines Pull Out of White House Correspondents' Dinner Parties 3 Feb
Lizzy Ratner: "Nobody Wanted to Take Us In: The Story of Jared Kushner's Family, and Mine" - As attorneys and activists continue to fight Donald Trump’s travel ban on refugees and nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries, a new article takes a sweeping look at history to find what it portends. Perhaps more fascinating is that the story involves the family of one of the senior-most members of the Trump administration. In "Nobody Wanted to Take Us In: The Story of Jared Kushner’s Family, and Mine," Nation magazine senior editor Lizzy Ratner looks at the journey of both her family and that of Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, the husband of Ivanka Trump. Both Ratner’s and Kushner’s grandparents came to the United States as Jewish immigrants from Poland, as the German occupation was ramping up and U.S. borders were closing down. We speak to Lizzy and play video clips of Jared’s grandmother, Rae Kushner. 2 Feb
Nazis Once Published List of Jewish Crimes, Trump Now Pushing to Do the Same for Immigrant Crimes - The Trump administration has announced plans to publish a weekly list of crimes committed by unauthorized immigrants living in so-called sanctuary cities, where local officials and law enforcement are refusing to comply with federal immigration authorities’ efforts to speed up deportations. The plans for the weekly list, to be published by the Department of Homeland Security, were included in Trump’s executive orders signed last week. We speak to Andrea Pitzer. Her upcoming book is called "One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps." 2 Feb
The "De-Judification" of the Holocaust?: Trump Avoids Word "Jews" on Holocaust Remembrance Day - Prominent white supremacist and Donald Trump supporter Richard Spencer has praised Trump for not mentioning in a statement commemorating International Holocaust Memorial Day the 6 million Jews killed. Trump has faced widespread criticism for the omission, but the administration has repeatedly defended the statement. Sen. Tim Kaine went as far as calling it a form of "Holocaust denial." Spencer, however, praised the statement as the "de-Judification" of the Holocaust. We speak to Andrea Pitzer, author of the forthcoming book, "One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps." It looks at mass civilian detention without trial from 1896 to today. 2 Feb
Meet the Attorney Suing Trump for Barring Children from Entering U.S. to See Their Parents - New information is emerging that the U.S. State Department has provisionally revoked all nonimmigrant and immigrant visas of nationals from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. We speak to Matt Adams, legal director for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, lead counsel for a class action lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s executive order. His lawsuit was filed in Seattle on behalf of three parents legally living in the U.S. who are now restricted from bringing their children from Somalia, Syria and Yemen. 2 Feb
Resist or Resign: Facing Grassroots Pressure, Democratic Lawmakers Intensify Fight Against Trump - During a chaotic day on Capitol Hill, the Senate confirmed Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson by a vote of 56 to 43. Reuters reports it was the closest vote—by a wide margin—for a secretary of state nominee in at least a half-century. The Senate Judiciary Committee also approved the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions to be attorney general in a straight party-line vote. Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee boycotted committee votes on two of Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks: Steven Mnuchin for treasury secretary and Tom Price for health and human services secretary. The committee rules require at least one Democrat present to vote. Republicans on the committee then suspended the rules and voted to send the two nominations to the Senate floor. Democrats on the Environment and Public Works Committee also boycotted a vote on Scott Pruitt to become head of the Environmental Protection Agency. For more, we speak with Ryan Grim, Washington bureau chief for The Huffington Post. His most recent piece is titled "After Trying Everything Else, Democrats Have Decided to Listen to Their Voters." 2 Feb

John Perkins

How to Be a Democracy Under Trump - I watched President Trump’s inauguration from an airport TV in Guatemala. I’d just finished leading 22 people on a pilgrimage to live, study and participate in ceremonies with Mayan shamans at sacred sites. For me, it was the first leg of a two-month working-journey. I am still in Latin America, teaching and speaking at a variety of venues. In the days since that inauguration, I, like so many, have felt the horror of the emerging Trump policies. Latin Americans cannot understand why so few of us voted in the last election and why so many who did, voted for Trump. A larger percentage of people vote in most Latin American countries than in the US; in several countries, voter turnout exceeds 90%. Many of these countries have a history of brutal dictatorships. Once free of these dictatorships, they revel in their rights to hold democratic elections; they see their ability to vote for their leaders as both a responsibility and a privilege. They wonder why such a relatively small percentage of voters would elect a potential dictator. And moreover, why those non-voters did not vote against him. The participants on the Guatemala trip ranged from successful business executives to community organizers and healers – with lots of other professions in between. They came from Canada, Ecuador, England, France, Indonesia, Italy, the United States, and Guatemala. Many – especially those from the US – arrived in Guatemala feeling disenfranchised, disempowered, depressed, and – yes, horrified – by the election. However, as we moved through the shamanic ceremonies, they grew increasingly convinced that the election is a wakeup call for Americans. We have been lethargic and allowed our country to continue with policies that hurt so many people and destroy environments around the world (including Washington’s involvement in the genocidal Guatemalan Civil War against the Mayas that raged for more than three decades). This election exposed a shadow side. It stepped us out of the closet. Many people expressed the realization that Americans had failed to demand that President Obama fight harder to end the wars in the Middle East, vacate Guantánamo, reign in Wall Street, confront a global economic system where eight men have as much wealth as half the world’s population, and honor so many of the other promises he had made. They recognized that he was up against strong Republican opposition and yet it was he who continued to send more troops and mercenaries to the Middle East and Africa, brought Wall Street insiders into his inner circle, and failed to inspire his party to rally voters to defeat Trump and what is now a Republican majority in both houses. We talked about how throughout the world, the US is seen as history’s first truly global empire. Scholars point out that it meets the basic definition of empire: a nation 1) whose currency reigns supreme, 2) whose language is the language of diplomacy and commerce everywhere, 3) whose economic expansions and values are enforced through military actions or threats of action, and 4) whose armies are stationed in many nations. The message became clear: we must end this radical form of global feudalism and imperialism. Those who had arrived in Guatemala disillusioned and depressed now found themselves committed to transforming their sense of disempowerment into actions. At the end of WWII, Prime Minister Churchill told his people that England could choose the course of empire or democracy, but not both.  We in the US are at such a crossroads today. For far too long we have allowed our leaders to take us down the path of empire. President Franklin Roosevelt ended a meeting with union leaders by telling them that now they knew he agreed with them, it was their job to get their members to force him to do the right thing. FDR understood that democracy depends on We the People insisting that our leaders do what they promise to do. We failed with our last president. Let’s not repeat that mistake with the new one. It is extremely important that We the People force Trump and his band of corporatocracy henchmen to keep the promises we heard in his inaugural address.  Let us hear “making America great” as “making America a true democracy!”  Let us hear “we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People” and “we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow” as an echo of Prime Minister Churchill’s contention that a country cannot be both a democracy and an empire. It is up to us to insist upon democracy. It is essential that we continue to demonstrate and march, to bombard Trump and our other elected officials with tweets, posts, phone calls, and emails; to rally, clamor, and shout; and in every way to get out the word that we must end the wars, feudalism, economic and social inequality, and environmental destruction; we must become the model democracy the world expects of us. When General George Washington was hunkered down with extremely depressed troops at Valley Forge in the bleak winter of 1777, he ordered that an essay by Thomas Paine be read to all his men. Some of the most famous lines are as applicable today as they were then: These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he who stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.  .  . A generous parent should say, “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace” . . .I love the man who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection.  By perseverance and fortitude we have the prospect of a glorious future. We have arrived at such a time again. We must each do our part. Let’s here and now commit to taking positive actions. I commit to writing and speaking out at a wide variety of venues. I commit to supporting the Love Summit business conference, a powerful event that is committed to bringing love and compassion into business and politics, to transforming a Death Economy into a Life (Love) Economy. What are your commitments? We have arrived at a time that tries our souls. We must gather strength from distress, grow brave by reflection, and know that by perseverance and fortitude we can achieve a glorious future. Let’s make sure that the combined legacies of Presidents Obama and Trump will create the opportunity – indeed the mandate – to show the world how a country can be a true democracy. These are the times. . . Featured Event: Writing a Bestseller: How to Tell & Sell Your Story with John Perkins 4 Sessions | May 30-June 20, 2017 | Limited to 24 Participants | Register Here31 Jan
What Will 2017 Bring? - It’s a question on many minds as we begin this new year. It is perhaps asked more now than ever before in my life-time – and that spans 7 decades. All we can say for sure is that we are in for big changes . . . on many fronts. Each of us is faced with the decision: Will we sit back and accept changes imposed by Washington, Moscow, Beijing, and Big Business? Or will we take actions that guide humanity to a saner world? I’ve had the opportunity to travel across this magnificent planet, speaking at a wide variety of events and talking with individuals from a multitude of jobs and lifestyles. Everywhere, I encounter more and more people who are committed to taking actions that will change consciousness. They realize that consciousness change is the key to altering what we call objective reality. They know that the big events in this world are molded by the ways we perceive ourselves and our relationship to all that is around us. By changing perceptions, we change the world. In a few days, I leave for a two-month journey that will take me to venues in the United States, Guatemala, Costa Rica, the Bahamas, and Ecuador. I will be speaking at the Conscious Life Expo, the Heartbeat Summit, and many other places. Every one of these is oriented toward using changes in our perceived reality to influence the way human beings impact each other and the world. What will 2017 bring? That depends on you. I encourage each and every one of you to make a New Year’s resolution right now that will commit you to taking the path that leads to action. The events of this past year, including those in the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, and the US serve as wakeup calls. One of the facts we awaken to is that business is the driving force behind politics and governments. Whether a leader’s name is Trump or Putin, Merkel or Xi Jinping, he or she serves at the pleasure of banks and other global corporations. And those banks and corporations depend on us – you and me – to buy their goods and services, work for, manage, and invest in them. Without us, they go the way of Woolworth’s, Polaroid, Pan Am, Bethlehem Steel, and so many others that have become corporate dinosaurs. However you feel about the new Oval Office occupant, know that his power base is the business community. However you feel about climate change, pipelines, vanishing forests, urban violence, wars, and just about every other issue, know that the twists and turns of that issue are shaped by business. However you feel about Monsanto, Exxon, Nike or any other business know that that business depends on its customers, workers, managers, and investors – us. Consumer movements work. They ended apartheid, installed seat belts, cleaned up polluted rivers, labelled fats, sugars, calories, and proteins in our foods, opened corporate doors wider to women and minorities, and so much more. In each of these areas we need to go further and we also need to expend these movements. We must insist that every company we support in any way be committed to serving us, the public, the world, future generations – not simply the bottom line. We must change the perception of what it means to be successful. That is our job and our pleasure. You have the power. Social networking makes it easier – and more fun – than ever to launch campaigns that will change the perception of what it means to be “successful.” It’s time for you and me to use all the tools at our disposal to show those who would drive us down a path of distraction, lethargy, depression, and mayhem that we simply will not stand for it. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for and we are here now. 2017 is our year! It will bring what we demand. Best wishes, John The Love Summit organized by the nonprofit Dream Change that John founded nearly 30 years ago is a powerful example of a movement that is going global to change businesses. 1 Jan
Message from the Legendary Elder Siblings - I write this in-flight, returning from a magical trip to the Kogi of Colombia. I write this having seen and heard the airport TV reports of the trauma that continues to dominate US politics, as well as those in many other countries. Last year my Ecuadorian partner, Daniel Koupermann, and I took a group to the amazing lands of the Kogi – people who have a message for us all. They came down from their mountain hideaways to meet us and to spread their message of the need for change. They were so impressed by the deep spirituality and commitment of that 2015 group that they invited us to bring another similar group – and this time to be the first ever to live among them, to sleep in their community, and to sit in their sacred ceremonial lodges. For the 19 of us it was a life-changing trip. We were surrounded by breathtaking scenes: the emerald Caribbean and palm-fringed beaches, the Sierra Nevada mountains that rise 18,000 feet up from the ocean to glacier-covered peaks, the rain forests, and the sparkling rivers that cascade from the glaciers into the Caribbean. But most of all it was the Kogi who impressed us! I have to admit that I was shocked – ecstatically – by the extent to which the Kogi invited us to share their lives and ceremonies. These up-til-now illusive people totally opened the doors to their homes and hearts to us. They invited us to come and learn from their Mamos (wise elders/teachers/shamans/spiritual leaders), to answer a call that dates back to a time when their forefathers retreated from the onslaught of Spanish conquistadors and the destructive nature of European cultures. Their Mamos told us of how their ancestors had fled up the valleys of the glacial rivers into the mountains. Choosing to remain isolated for centuries, they developed a new dream of the Earth, a revelation that balances the brilliant potential of the human mind, heart and spirit with all the forces of nature. To this day they remain true to their ancient laws and traditions—the moral, ecological, and spiritual dictates of a force they identify as “the Mother”—and are still led by sacred rituals. In the late 1900s, their Mamos understood that they are the Elder Siblings and that they had to come down and share that powerful message with the modern world, the people they call the Younger Siblings – us. They have shared their history with others. What was unique this time was their enthusiasm for embracing this group on very personal levels. I write this while flying home and it is all too close to me to be able to express in detail at this moment (a book to come, I think!) but I will say that the bonding we all felt is symbolized by a ceremony when a Mamo and his wife in whose community we had spent the night invited us to witness their 5-year-old son training to become a Mamo. We traveled many miles down from their community and stood with them on the bank of a glacial river where it meets the Caribbean while the young man gently offered the river the commitments we had all made and blown into tiny pieces of cotton from a local plant. The Kogi message, although similar to the one I received more than 40 years ago when I was a Peace Corps volunteer living with the Shuar in the Amazon and then again 20 years later from the Achuar, is more urgent now than ever. It is the message that birthed nonprofits, including Dream Change and the Pachamama Alliance. It is the message of the North American indigenous people and all those who join them at Standing Rock. It is a message that now has issued forth from indigenous cultures and organizations around the world. It is a message of hope, one that says we can transformer ourselves from societies that adhere to systems that threaten to destroy us to ones that will sustain us and future generations. I’ve written many times about the necessity to move from a Death Economy, based on warfare and ravaging the very resources upon which it depends, to a Life Economy, based on cleaning up pollution, regenerating destroyed environments, and developing new technologies that recycle and life-styles that give back more than they take from our Living Earth. Now, flying back from the Kogi, I feel rejuvenated and recommitted to spreading the message that is the underlying principle behind that economic shapeshift that needs to happen. We know we are facing severe crises. We know the climate is changing and that we humans are devastating the air, water, and land that support all life on this planet. We know that our government is incapable or unwilling to turn things around. It is easy to be discouraged. EXCEPT we also now know what our Elder Siblings understood long ago, that We the People must transform ourselves and our institutions. That is the message of the Kogi. It is the message of the Shuar, the Achuar, the people at Standing Rock and all our brothers and sisters around the globe. It is the message of the rising oceans, flooding rivers, melting glaciers, the hurricanes, the political traumas, and all the other crises. We are blessed to be hearing this message, to be inhabitants of this incredible organism that is our Living Earth and to be able to understand that the crises are themselves the message that it is time for us to come out of our isolation and create the change we want and know in our hearts, minds, and souls is necessary.13 Dec 16
JFK’s Advice for this Hour of Change and Challenge - As I travel around the world speaking at venues that range from corporate summits to rock festivals and from consumer groups to universities, I hear deep dissatisfaction with the current global political/economic system. This is reflected in Brexit, and in movements sweeping Iceland, Italy, Greece, and so many other countries. And it was reflected, perhaps most strongly, in the US elections. People everywhere understand that although the system that’s been in place for roughly a century has created amazing science, technology, medicine, and arts, it has run its course. It is not serving We the People. Not on any continent. It is broken. And it can’t be fixed with old tools. Perhaps more than any other message to take away from the 2016 US presidential election – as well as movements around the globe – is that people are discouraged and are demanding something different. Those on the right look for a conservative, authoritarian government while those on the left favor a progressive, socialistic one. Bernie’s popularity and Trump’s victory symbolize these two opposite ends of the spectrum. Hillary stood in the middle and symbolized the status quo. When I finish giving speeches, during the question-and-answer period, people often ask if I don’t think things have to fall apart before we can move into a new phase. I believe we would be wise to accept the recent events as symbols that things have fallen apart. People are waking up to the fact that our space station is headed for disaster and we must change course. Those who feel discouraged by the results of the recent election and those who are euphoric share a motivation to change our space station’s navigational system. This new administration and Congress will have impacts. The Supreme Court, health care, regulations governing Wall Street, energy, transportation, education, and the environment, as well as international relations: all of these will change. But let us understand that these are symptoms. The illness is much bigger. It is a systemic disease. And we must heal it. We must ask: how do we pull back from the brink of disaster? How do we maneuver human societies in ways that will direct us away from systems that are obviously failing, to ones that are themselves renewable resources? Since the illness is the political/economic system itself, we must change it. Regardless of policies implemented by national governments, we all need to dedicate ourselves to converting a Death Economy, based on militarism and excessive consumption, into a Life Economy, based on cleaning up pollution, regenerating environments, and developing sustainable non-extractive technologies. When the US felt threatened by the Soviet domination of space, President John Kennedy in September 1962 said, “We meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance.” He then announced his intention to beat the Soviets by being the first nation to send men to the moon. “And,” he added with an optimistic statement that seemed almost beyond possibility, “it will be done before the end of this decade.” Although he did not live to see it, the President’s promise was fulfilled; Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon in July 1969. We are at such a time now. This hour of change and challenge, hope and fear, knowledge and ignorance, demands our involvement. It is imperative for each of us to be creative, to take actions, to understand that democracy truly is based on all of us participating in the great adventure that is the next ten years. John Kennedy’s promise is a promise for each of us to make now: It will be done before the end of the decade.10 Nov 16

Channel NewsAsia Singapore News

3 UK documents cited for Malaysia's application to revise Pedra Branca decision - Malaysia claims the documents establish the new fact that “officials at the highest levels in the British colonial and Singaporean administration appreciated that Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh did not form part of Singapore’s sovereign territory”.04:23
3 UK documents cited for Malaysia's application to revise Pedra Branca decision - Malaysia claims the documents establish the new fact that “officials at the highest levels in the British colonial and Singaporean administration appreciated that Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh did not form part of Singapore’s sovereign territory”.01:40
ActiveSG partners youths to encourage elderly, families to get active - It is partnering with the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) College Central to run six programmes targeting senior citizens and families.01:19
Parliament to discuss driving against traffic, TPP on Feb 6 - A bill to amend the Presidential Elections Act will also be debated. The proposed changes include setting up a committee to certify the ethnicities of prospective candidates in the upcoming presidential election, which will be reserved for the Malay community.00:56
Amos Yee's 'humanitarian release' from detention denied: Law firm - Amos Yee, who is seeking asylum in the US, was denied humanitarian release by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and will remain in detention until his final asylum hearing on Mar 7, according to the law firm representing him.  3 Feb
3 UK documents cited for Malaysia's application to revise Pedra Branca decision - Malaysia claims the documents establish the new fact that “officials at the highest levels in the British colonial and Singaporean administration appreciated that Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh did not form part of Singapore’s sovereign territory”. 3 Feb
Singapore film-maker Kirsten Tan's POP AYE wins another international award - The film picks up the VPRO Big Screen Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2017 event.  3 Feb
Living life to the fullest: University students with special needs - Amid the nationwide push to be a more inclusive society, local varsities are ramping up their support for students with special needs.    3 Feb
Water monitor lizard spotted on Upper Serangoon Road during peak hour - Acres deputy chief executive Kalai Vanan says the animal rights group believes that the water monitor lizard was run over by traffic.  3 Feb
Malaysia applies for revision of ICJ's Pedra Branca decision; Singapore studying application - The government of Malaysia has filed an application for the revision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ)'s judgement over Pedra Branca, Middle Rocks and South Ledge. 3 Feb

Channel NewsAsia Front Page News

Staying calm, collected is S’pore’s approach to navigating through turbulent environment: Chan Chun Sing - In 2016, Mr Chan said Singaporeans witnessed the relative shifts of powers globally and as a small country, there will be differences in expectations on what Singapore should do. 25 min
Romania's ruling party head seeks solution to defuse graft decree conflict - Romania's ruling Social Democrats (PSD) are seeking a solution to defuse a conflict created by the government's approval of a decree decriminalising some corruption offences, PSD leader Liviu Dragnea said on Saturday.26 min
Bolt sprinkles star-dust as athletics goes Hollywood - The Nitro Series promised to make athletics a show and the sport's ultimate show-man Usain Bolt capped its first meeting in Melbourne on Saturday by propelling his team of international "All-Stars" to a crowd-pleasing win in the 4x100 metres relay.51 min
Australia, France progress to Davis Cup quarters - Australia and France moved into the Davis Cup quarter-finals on Saturday when their doubles teams got the victories that gave them unassailable 3-0 leads over the Czech Republic and Japan respectively.51 min
Mosley would have kept Ecclestone at F1 helm - Formula One's new owners Liberty Media may have made a mistake in ousting commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone immediately after completing their takeover of the sport, according to former FIA president Max Mosley.51 min
Mobile app helps China recover hundreds of missing children - A mobile app helped Chinese authorities recover hundreds of missing children last year, Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday, in a country where child trafficking is rampant.05:25
Regional party chief urges Fillon to drop French presidential bid - French presidential candidate Francois Fillon faced mounting pressure from his own conservative camp to withdraw from the race on Saturday, as a senator from The Republicans party warned it could split if he refused to bow out.05:20
Iran vows 'roaring missiles' if threatened, defies new sanctions - A Revolutionary Guards commander said Iran would use its missiles if its security is under threat, as the elite force defied new U.S. sanctions on its missile programme by holding a military exercise on Saturday.05:00
German magazine sparks furore with image of Trump beheading Statue of Liberty - German weekly magazine Der Spiegel sparked controversy at home and abroad on Saturday with a front cover illustration of U.S. President Donald Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty.04:00
250,000 homes without power as storm hits southwest France - Gale-force winds battered France's southwestern Atlantic coast on Saturday, leaving more than quarter of million homes without power, the national electricity grid Enedis said.03:50

Channel NewsAsia World News

Romania's ruling party head seeks solution to defuse graft decree conflict - Romania's ruling Social Democrats (PSD) are seeking a solution to defuse a conflict created by the government's approval of a decree decriminalising some corruption offences, PSD leader Liviu Dragnea said on Saturday.26 min
Le Pen kicks off campaign, promises French 'freedom' - France's far-right party leader Marine Le Pen kicked off her presidential campaign on Saturday, hoping promises to shield voters from globalisation boost her chances at a time of French political turmoil.57 min
Regional party chief urges Fillon to drop French presidential bid - French presidential candidate Francois Fillon faced mounting pressure from his own conservative camp to withdraw from the race on Saturday, as a senator from The Republicans party warned it could split if he refused to bow out.05:20
Iran vows 'roaring missiles' if threatened, defies new sanctions - A Revolutionary Guards commander said Iran would use its missiles if its security is under threat, as the elite force defied new U.S. sanctions on its missile programme by holding a military exercise on Saturday.05:00
Some airlines board barred passengers after blow to Trump travel ban - Citizens of seven mainly Muslim countries banned from the United States by President Donald Trump can resume boarding U.S.-bound flights, several major airlines said on Saturday, after a Seattle judge blocked the executive order.04:45
German magazine sparks furore with image of Trump beheading Statue of Liberty - German weekly magazine Der Spiegel sparked controversy at home and abroad on Saturday with a front cover illustration of U.S. President Donald Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty.04:00
250,000 homes without power as storm hits southwest France - Gale-force winds battered France's southwestern Atlantic coast on Saturday, leaving more than quarter of million homes without power, the national electricity grid Enedis said.03:50
US-backed Syrian force in new phase of Raqqa assault - An alliance of U.S.-backed militias said it had started a new phase of its campaign against the Islamic State-held city of Raqqa on Saturday, aiming to complete its encirclement and sever the road to militant strongholds in Deir al-Zor province.03:50
Philippine Catholic Church to slam 'reign of terror' behind war on drugs - The Philippines' Catholic Church will assail President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs for creating a "reign of terror" among the poor, in sermons to be read at services across the country this weekend, three church sources told Reuters on Saturday.03:45
Le Pen kicks off campaign, promises French 'freedom' - France's far-right party leader Marine Le Pen kicked off her presidential campaign on Saturday, hoping promises to shield voters from globalisation boost her chances at a time of French political turmoil.03:20

Channel NewsAsia Asia Pacific News

3 UK documents cited for Malaysia's application to revise Pedra Branca decision - Malaysia claims the documents establish the new fact that “officials at the highest levels in the British colonial and Singaporean administration appreciated that Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh did not form part of Singapore’s sovereign territory”.04:23
At least 9 killed in Indonesia boat accident - At least six people have been killed and three are missing after a fishing boat capsized in eastern Indonesia, an official said.04:05
Philippine Catholic Church to slam 'reign of terror' behind war on drugs - The Philippines' Catholic Church will assail President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs for creating a "reign of terror" among the poor, in sermons to be read at services across the country this weekend, three church sources told Reuters on Saturday.03:45
Australian foreign minister says US refugee swap proceeding - Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said on Saturday that a controversial refugee resettlement deal with the United States would go ahead, despite U.S. immigration officials postponing interviews with asylum seekers.02:45
Philippine Catholic Church to slam "reign of terror" behind war on drugs - The Philippines' Catholic Church will assail President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs for creating a "reign of terror" among the poor in sermons to be read at mass across the country this weekend, three church sources told Reuters on Saturday.02:05
3 UK documents cited for Malaysia's application to revise Pedra Branca decision - Malaysia claims the documents establish the new fact that “officials at the highest levels in the British colonial and Singaporean administration appreciated that Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh did not form part of Singapore’s sovereign territory”.01:40
China warns US after Mattis says Senkaku islands covered by treaty - China warned the United States Saturday not to destabilise East Asia after Donald Trump's new defence secretary said an island chain claimed by both Tokyo and Beijing was covered by a US-Japan military accord.01:30
Australian foreign minister says US refugee swap proceeding - Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said on Saturday that a controversial refugee resettlement deal with the United States would go ahead, despite U.S. immigration officials postponing interviews with asylum seekers.01:25
Vietnam legalises betting on football, racing - Punters in gambling-mad Vietnam cheered the easing of a ban on sports betting Saturday, as the communist government moves to bring a booming black market industry above board.01:17
Indians go to the polls in test for Modi's cash ban - Millions of Indians began voting on Saturday in regional elections seen as the first major test of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party after his controversial move to ban all high-value notes last year.01:04

Media Monarchy

#PumpUpThaVolume: February 3, 2017 - Media Monarchy plays Donna Dunne & The Mystery Men, Sallie Ford, Sohn and more on #PumpUpThaVolume for February 3, 2017. ♬ 3 Feb
#MorningMonarchy: February 3, 2017 - Merger minds, ticket schemes and magazine time + this day in history w/Iran options and our song of the day by London Grammar on your Morning Monarchy for February 3, 2017. 3 Feb
#MagazineTime: February 2017 - The latest new installment in the Media Monarchy kingdom is a monthly look at that oh-so-disposable, yet undeniably influential form of dinosaur media that refuses to go extinct, the magazine. 3 Feb
#NewWorldNextWeek: Syrian Speculation, Bitcoin Bandits, Pig Man Cometh (Audio) - This week on the New World Next Week: Trump pushes for Syrian kill zones and murders children in Yemen; a hotel gets ransomed when hackers lock all the doors; and pig-human hybrids are now officially being grown. 2 Feb
#NewWorldNextWeek: Hotel Hacked by Bitcoin Bandits (Video) - This week on the New World Next Week: Trump pushes for Syrian kill zones and murders children in Yemen; a hotel gets ransomed when hackers lock all the doors; and pig-human hybrids are now officially being grown. 2 Feb
#PumpUpThaVolume: February 2, 2017 - Media Monarchy plays Cover Letter, Justin Carter, The Veldt and more on #PumpUpThaVolume for February 2, 2017. ♬ 2 Feb
#MorningMonarchy: February 2, 2017 - West coast chaos, worldwide abuse and the Candlemas initiation + this day in history w/the murder of William Desmond Taylor and our song of the day by Angelic Milk on your Morning Monarchy for February 2, 2017. 2 Feb
#MorningMonarchy: February 1, 2017 - Factory farce, makin' it rain and the rise of the hupig + this day in history w/the Columbia disaster and our song of the day by Luxury Death on your Morning Monarchy for February 1, 2017. 1 Feb
#PumpUpThaVolume: February 1, 2017 - Media Monarchy plays A Tree Grows, Big Surr, Beth // James and more on #PumpUpThaVolume for February 1, 2017. ♬ 1 Feb
#PumpUpThaVolume: January 31, 2017 - Media Monarchy plays Sounds of Sputnik + Ummagma, SPC ECO, Emily Wells and more on #PumpUpThaVolume for January 31, 2017. ♬31 Jan
#MorningMonarchy: January 31, 2017 - RIP CCTV, Sundance cyberattack and a super dank database + this day in history w/the McMartin Preschool Trial and our song of the day by Ty Richards on your Morning Monarchy for January 31, 2017.31 Jan
#GoodNewsNextWeek: TPP Fail, Whistleblower Wins, Pressing Vinyl (Audio) - This week on #GoodNewsNextWeek: America's Next Top President makes his first few moves; pushing back against our new tech overlords; and making music again at an historic vinyl pressing plant.30 Jan
#GoodNewsNextWeek: And The Hits Just Keep On Comin’ (Video) - This week on #GoodNewsNextWeek: America's Next Top President makes his first few moves; pushing back against our new tech overlords; and making music again at an historic vinyl pressing plant.30 Jan
#MorningMonarchy: January 30, 2017 - Snuff the rooster, bad bans and dummy missiles + this day in history w/Ghandi's assassination and our song of the day by Matt Pond PA on your Morning Monarchy for January 30, 2017.30 Jan
#PumpUpThaVolume: January 30, 2017 - Media Monarchy plays William Matheny, Joel Gion, Known To Collapse and more on #PumpUpThaVolume for January 30, 2017. ♬30 Jan
#PumpUpThaVolume: January 20, 2017 - Media Monarchy plays Gorillaz, Arcade Fire, Sturgill Simpson and more on #PumpUpThaVolume for January 20, 2017. ♬20 Jan
#MorningMonarchy: January 20, 2017 - Liberal lawsuits, "Trained to Kill" and Obama's legacy + this day in history w/Iran's Inaugural hostages and our song of the day by Ghost on your Morning Monarchy for January 20, 2017.20 Jan
#BookSmarts: “Trained to Kill: The Inside Story of CIA Plots Against Castro, Kennedy, and Che” - Continuing where we left off discussing "Suddenly", we reach an inauguration day that brings America back to fractious times we've seen before - with the publication of the new book, "Trained to Kill: The Inside Story of CIA Plots Against Castro, Kennedy, and Che".20 Jan
#NewWorldNextWeek: Finger Photos, Robot Uprising, #Inauguration Madness (Audio) - This week on the New World Next Week: Researchers warn of fingerprint theft from peace sign photos; more human workers made redundant by AI; and madness swirls around the inauguration spectacle in Washington DC.19 Jan
#NewWorldNextWeek: World Braces for #Inauguration Madness (Video) - This week on the New World Next Week: Researchers warn of fingerprint theft from peace sign photos; more human workers made redundant by AI; and madness swirls around the inauguration spectacle in Washington DC.19 Jan
#PumpUpThaVolume: January 19, 2017 - Media Monarchy plays Jack Scott, Wiley, Hospitality and more on #PumpUpThaVolume for January 19, 2017. ♬19 Jan
#MorningMonarchy: January 19, 2017 - Fiery protests, institutional abuse and Obama's legacy + this day in history w/"You Nazty Spy!" and our song of the day by OK Go on your Morning Monarchy for January 19, 2017.19 Jan
#PumpUpThaVolume: January 18, 2017 - Media Monarchy plays Kevin Krauter, Strand of Oaks, Chavez and more on #PumpUpThaVolume for January 18, 2017. ♬18 Jan
#MorningMonarchy: January 18, 2017 - Caffeine consumption, the hot chocolate market and Obama's legacy + this day in history w/Marion Barry and our song of the day by Right Said Fred on your Morning Monarchy for January 18, 2017.18 Jan
#PumpUpThaVolume: January 17, 2017 - Media Monarchy plays The Routes, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Red Porch Kid and more on #PumpUpThaVolume for January 17, 2017. ♬17 Jan
#MorningMonarchy: January 17, 2017 - Ice station zebra, Cellebrite hacked and Obama's legacy + this day in history w/Eisenhower's warning and our song of the day by Nikki Lane on your Morning Monarchy for January 17, 2017.17 Jan
#GoodNewsNextWeek: Circus Shutdown, Penny Payment, Proof Of Life (Audio) - This week on #GoodNewsNextWeek: "The greatest show on earth" is closing down for good; monkey-wrenching the NWO with pennies, cannabis; and Hungary plans to kick out foundation-funded phonies.16 Jan
#GoodNewsNextWeek: The Circus Is Leaving Town (Video) - This week on #GoodNewsNextWeek: "The greatest show on earth" is closing down for good; monkey-wrenching the NWO with pennies, cannabis; and Hungary plans to kick out foundation-funded phonies.16 Jan
#PumpUpThaVolume: January 16, 2017 - Media Monarchy plays Springtime Carnivore, Creation Factory, Electric Wire Hustle and more on #PumpUpThaVolume for January 16, 2017. ♬16 Jan
#MorningMonarchy: January 16, 2017 - Fake anarchists, urgent change and Obama's legacy + this day in history w/Prohibition and our song of the day by London Grammar on your Morning Monarchy for January 16, 2017.16 Jan
#PumpUpThaVolume: January 13, 2017 - Media Monarchy plays Qiet, Tim Kasher, Hazel English and more on #PumpUpThaVolume for January 13, 2017. ♬13 Jan
#MorningMonarchy: January 13, 2017 - Interrupted broadcast, war reporting and "Suddenly" Sinatra + this day in history w/Donny Hathaway's death and our song of the day by Slowdive on your Morning Monarchy for January 13, 2017.13 Jan
#DeepFocus: “Suddenly,” Sinatra’s Original Assassination Film - With the inauguration coming up next week and threats of riots in the news, we want to take a look at a 1954 film that fell into public domain so it's available everywhere: "Suddenly".13 Jan
#PumpUpThaVolume: January 12, 2017 - Media Monarchy plays Mogwai, Simian, Slayer and more on #PumpUpThaVolume for January 12, 2017. ♬12 Jan
#MorningMonarchy: January 12, 2017 - Mass hysteria, corporate mediums and a Trump "Trackdown" + this day in history w/the Harrisburg Seven and our song of the day by Active Bird Community on your Morning Monarchy for January 12, 2017.12 Jan

NATO Latest News

Visit to NATO by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland - NATO Secretary General, Mr. Jens Stoltenberg, will meet with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland, Mr. Witold Waszczykowski, at NATO Headquarters on Monday, 6 February 2017. 3 Feb
Visit to NATO by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania - NATO Secretary General, Mr. Jens Stoltenberg, will meet with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania, Mr. Teodor-Viorel Meleşcanu, at NATO Headquarters on Monday, 6 February 2017. 3 Feb
NATO Secretary General: KFOR helping make Kosovo a safer place - NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reaffirmed NATO’s commitment to the security and stability of Kosovo during a visit to Pristina on Friday (3 February 2017). Meeting with KFOR Commander, Major General Giovanni Fungo, the Secretary General underscored the importance of NATO’s mission in Kosovo and the need for continued dialogue and normalisation between Belgrade and Pristina. He thanked KFOR troops from many Allied and partner countries for their service, describing KFOR as a success story. 3 Feb
NATO launches new Trust Fund for Montenegro - NATO launched a new Trust Fund in Montenegro on Thursday (2 February 2017) which will destroy 400 tonnes of surplus ammunition in a safe and environmentally friendly way. This is the latest example of NATO cooperation with Montenegro and will help keep people safe from harm. 2 Feb
NATO welcomes reform progress in Bosnia and Herzegovina - NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg commended Bosnia and Herzegovina for its contributions to Euro-Atlantic security during a visit to Sarajevo on Thursday (2 February 2017). At a joint press conference with Mladen Ivanić, Chairman of the Tripartite Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mr. Stoltenberg welcomed the reforms that Bosnia has undertaken in the defence and security sector, stressing that NATO stands ready to activate the Membership Action Plan once all immovable defence properties have been registered to the state. 2 Feb
NATO Secretary General to visit KFOR - The NATO Secretary General Mr. Jens Stoltenberg will visit KFOR on Friday, 3 February 2017. 2 Feb
NATO Secretary General to visit Bosnia and Herzegovina - The NATO Secretary General, Mr. Jens Stoltenberg will pay a visit to Sarajevo on Thursday 2 February 2017. 1 Feb
Visit to NATO by the Prime Minister of Libya - NATO Secretary General, Mr. Jens Stoltenberg will meet with the Prime Minister of Libya, Mr. Fayez al-Sarraj, at NATO Headquarters on Wednesday 1 February 2017.31 Jan
NATO Secretary General: Bulgaria is a valued Ally - NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed Bulgarian President Rumen Radev to NATO Headquarters on Tuesday (31 January 2017). Mr. Stoltenberg praised Bulgaria’s contributions to the Alliance – including troop commitments in Kosovo and Afghanistan, and providing ships to NATO patrols in the Black Sea. He noted that plans for an enhanced NATO presence in the Black Sea region will be finalised at February’s meeting of defence ministers, calling this “a strong sign of NATO solidarity”.31 Jan
From Warsaw Summit to Brussels Summit, NATO Chiefs of Defence discuss ongoing work - On 17 and 18 January 2017, the NATO Chiefs of Defence gathered for the 176th Military Committee in Chiefs of Defence Session (MCCS) at NATO Headquarters in Brussels. The meetings included discussions on improving NATO’s Command Structure, continuing defence & deterrence measures, projecting stability through Counter Terrorism projects and the continued support of the Resolute Support Mission. NATO Chiefs of Defence also met with Partner Nations to share views on regional security and enhanced cooperation. The MCCS concluded with a session dedicated to Russia and its relationship towards NATO.30 Jan

National Post

Greg Palast

Join NAACP Voter Fund for Facebook LIVE broadcast of my film on How Trump Stole It - I have a simple request. I’m asking that, this Thursday, at 8pm ET/5pm PT, you join the NAACP-National Voter Fund, Rainbow/PUSH, Josh Fox of Climate Revolution and many, many more–and “share” the Facebook LIVE broadcast of my documentary–the film that exposes exactly how Trump and his cronies attacked the voting rights of a million minority voters to steal the White House. That’s all we are asking: Between 8pm and 9pm Eastern, on Inauguration Eve, you “share” the live-stream with your Facebook followers. The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, follows my crew’s undercover investigations for Rolling Stone and BBC-TV. "...Mainstream journalism has often struggled to cover the manipulation of data and the distortion of reality driven by billionaires like the Koch brothers or even Donald Trump... Palast slices through all the B.S.”- The Village Voice Pass this on to your friends, your organizations, and anyone who wants to get un-stupid about the theft of the 2016 election. I’ll be leading an online discussion right after the broadcast: What do we do now? Starting now you can share the trailer on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/GregPalastInvestigates/videos/10154917384607128/ And share the trailer on Twitter simply by retweeting this tweet:https://twitter.com/Greg_Palast/status/820218502405619712 Please also indicate that you are "going" to our virtual event on Facebook — and share it with your friends: https://www.facebook.com/events/980244978772589/ On Thursday, January 19 at 8pm ET, go to https://www.facebook.com/GregPalastInvestigates/. (If you’re late, you can scroll back to the beginning.) The film (with the help of my friends Rosario Dawson, Shailene Woodley Ice-T, Willie Nelson and more), tells the story of the GOP’s weapon of mass vote destruction – and exposes the billionaires behind Trump and the vote trickery. The film was updated just this week. I guarantee: you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll get revved up to resist. Trump didn’t win––his billionaire backers swiped it. We can take it back. Will you join me? - Greg Palast and the investigations team Make a tax-deductible donation to our Stolen Election Investigation *  *  *  *  * Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, now out as major motion non-fiction movie.Rent or buy the film from Amazon or Vimeo. Support The Palast Investigative Fund and keep our work alive. Or support us by shopping with Amazon Smile.AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Sustainable Markets Foundation for the benefit of The Palast Investigative Fund and you get a tax-deduction! More info. GregPalast.com The post Join NAACP Voter Fund for Facebook LIVE broadcast of my film on How Trump Stole It appeared first on Greg Palast.17 Jan
I get the Blues too… - A note to all who’ve made a donation to our Investigative Fund You are not only keeping us alive financially, but emotionally. Eventually, our stories make national news, but, in those months while the mainstream resists, your encouragement really means a lot. People ask me how I keep my sense of humor when I see all these horrors, from lost votes to lost lives. The truth is, I get the blues too. Support, good wishes, and remembering the tough world I came from are what gets me back on track. And here’s something they can’t steal from us:  a Happy New Year, from my family to yours. Thank you, Greg Palast, reporting Make a tax-deductible donation to our Stolen Election Investigation *  *  *  *  * Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, now out as major motion non-fiction movie.Rent or buy the film from Amazon or Vimeo. Support The Palast Investigative Fund and keep our work alive. Or support us by shopping with Amazon Smile.AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Sustainable Markets Foundation for the benefit of The Palast Investigative Fund and you get a tax-deduction! More info.   The post I get the Blues too… appeared first on Greg Palast.30 Dec 16
A note in the snow - Last week, I flew to Detroit with my team at the request of a major west coast publication. When I landed, they got cold feet; assignment cancelled. Without funding to continue, I should have headed home. But I was getting tips of nasty doings with the ballots in Motown. I could get the evidence that Trump’s victory was as real as his tan. So I tucked my long-johns under my suit, put on my fedora, and headed out to meet the witnesses, see the evidence and film an investigative report on the Theft of Michigan. With almost no sleep (and no pay), my producer David Ambrose and I put together an investigative film—and donated it, no charge, to Democracy Now! and several other outlets. As to the airfares, hotels, cars, camera batteries, sound equipment, local assistants and the rest, the bills have piled high as the snow and uncounted ballots. So, here I was, literally out in the cold, hoping you'd see the value of top-flight investigative reporting. So, buddy, can you spare a dime? Or $100 or so? For that, I’ll send you my new film, the one that, back in September, told you exactly how Trump would steal it. Or a signed copy of the book that goes with it: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a tale of billionaires and ballot bandits. I want to thank all of you who donated to get me to Washington DC to testify at the ad hoc Congressional hearing and to speak with the Justice Department about the suppression of minority votes. (On Monday, I was joined at the Washington Press Club by the nation’s top voting rights attorney, Barbara Arnwine; civil rights legend Ruby Sales; Muslim activist Sameera Khan. They announced plans to take legal and political action against Crosscheck, the Trumpistas’ latest Jim Crow tactic, the one our team uncovered for Rolling Stone. Khan joined me at Justice to present them 50,000 signatures (we unloaded reams of paper on them) gathered by 18 Million Rising, the Asian American advocacy group, to light a fire under Justice. On Tuesday, I joined the presidents of the NAACP chapters of Michigan and Wisconsin and other front-line voting rights leaders, to plan next steps for this week, for this year, for this decade. My presentation to Justice, to Congressmen and rights advocates, to the press, was so much more powerful because I arrived in DC with the goods, the evidence, the film, the facts from Michigan, from the scene of the electoral crime. So, in the end, my assignment wasn’t cancelled: I went to work for YOU. Because I have faith that my readers agree that this work is important, that I’m not on some fool’s errand. The US media doesn’t want to cover the vote theft—because, hey, the count is over—and we should get over it. I am not over it. I am standing my ground. Let me know if you think I’ve made the right decision. Feed the team. I have nothing to offer you in return except some signed discs and books (or the Combo)— and the facts. Continue Supporting the 2016 Stolen Election Investigation because it ain’t over and we’re not done. – Greg Palast   * * * * * Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, now out as major motion non-fiction movie. Rent or buy the film from Amazon or Vimeo. Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive!  Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile. AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Palast Fund and you get a tax-deduction! More info. GregPalast.com   The post A note in the snow appeared first on Greg Palast.18 Dec 16
The Republican Sabotage of the Vote Recounts in Michigan and Wisconsin - By Greg Palast for Truthout Photo of Michigan ballot with bubble. (Image courtesy of Palast Investigative Fund, 2016)Michigan officials declared in late November that Trump won the state's count by 10,704 votes. But hold on – a record 75,355 ballots were not counted. The uncounted ballots came mostly from Detroit and Flint, majority-Black cities that vote Democratic. According to the machines that read their ballots, these voters waited in line, sometimes for hours, yet did not choose a president. Really? This week, I drove through a snowstorm to Lansing to hear the official explanation from Ruth Johnson, the Republican secretary of state. I was directed to official flack-catcher Fred Woodhams who told me, "You know, I think when you look at the unfavorability ratings that were reported for both major-party candidates, it's probably not that surprising." Sleuthing about in Detroit, I found another explanation: bubbles. Bubbles? Michigan votes on paper ballots. If you don't fill the bubble completely, the machine records that you didn't vote for president. Susan, a systems analyst who took part in the hand recount initiated by Jill Stein, told me, "I saw a lot of red ink. I saw a lot of checkmarks. We saw a lot of ballots that weren't originally counted, because those don't scan into the machine." (I can only use her first name because she's terrified of retribution from Trump followers in the white suburb where she lives.) Other ballots were not counted because the machines thought the voter chose two presidential candidates. How come more ballots were uncounted in Detroit and Flint than in the white 'burbs and rural counties? Are the machines themselves racist? No, but they are old, and in some cases, busted. An astonishing 87 machines broke down in Detroit, responsible for counting tens of thousands of ballots. Many more were simply faulty and uncalibrated. I met with Carlos Garcia, University of Michigan multimedia specialist, who, on Election Day, joined a crowd waiting over two hours for the busted machine to be fixed. Some voters left; others filled out ballots that were chucked, uncounted, into the bottom of machine. When the machine was fixed, Carlos explained, "Any new scanned ballots were falling in on top of the old ones." It would not be possible to recount those dumped ballots. This is not an unheard of phenomenon: I know two voters who lost their vote in another state (California) because they didn't fill in the bubble – my parents! Meet mom and dad in my film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: How did Detroit end up with the crap machines? Detroit is bankrupt, so every expenditure must be approved by "emergency" overlords appointed by the Republican governor. The GOP operatives refused the city's pre-election pleas to fix and replace the busted machines. "We had the rollout [of new machines] in our budget," Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey said. "No money was appropriated by the state." Same in Flint. GOP state officials cut the budget for water service there, resulting in the contamination of the city's water supply with lead. The budget cuts also poisoned the presidential race. The Human Eye Count There is, however, an extraordinary machine that can read the ballots, whether the bubbles are filled or checked, whether in black ink or red, to determine the voters' intent: the human eye. That's why Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, paid millions of dollars for a human eyeball count of the uncounted votes. While labeled a "recount," its real purpose is to count the 75,355 votes never counted in the first place. Count those ballots, mostly in Detroit and Flint, and Trump's victory could vanish. Adding to the pile of uncounted ballots are the large numbers of invalidated straight-ticket votes in Detroit. In Michigan, you can choose to make one mark that casts your vote for every Democrat (or Republican) for every office. Voters know that they can vote the Democratic ballot but write in a protest name – popular were "Bernie Sanders" and "Mickey Mouse" – but their ballot, they knew, would count for Clinton. However, the Detroit machines simply invalidated the ballots with protest write-ins because the old Opti-Scans wrongly tallied these as "over-votes" (i.e., voting for two candidates). The human eye would catch this mistake. But Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette stymied Stein's human eye count. The Republican pol issued an order saying that no one could look at the ballots cast in precincts where the number of votes and voters did not match – exactly the places where you'd want to look for the missing votes. He also ordered a ban on counting ballots from precincts where the seals on the machines had been broken – in other words, where there is evidence of tampering. Again, those are the machines that most need investigating. The result: The recount crews were denied access to more than half of all Detroit precincts (59 percent). I met with Stein, who told me she was stunned by this overt sabotage of the recount. "It's shocking to think that the discounting of these votes may be making the critical difference in the outcome of the election," she said. This story was repeated in Wisconsin, which uses the same Opti-Scan system as Michigan. There, the uncounted votes, sometimes called "spoiled" or "invalidated" ballots, were concentrated in Black-majority Milwaukee. Stein put up over $3 million of donated funds for the human eye review in Wisconsin, but GOP state officials authorized Milwaukee County to recount simply by running the ballots through the same blind machines. Not surprisingly, this instant replay produced the same questionable result. Adding Un-Votes to the Uncounted Stein was also disturbed by the number of voters who never got to cast ballots. "Whether it's because of the chaos [because] some polling centers are closed, and then some are moved, and there's all kinds of mix-ups," she said. "So, a lot of people are filling out provisional ballots, or they were being tossed off the voter rolls by Interstate Crosscheck." Interstate Crosscheck is a list that was created by Donald Trump supporter and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to hunt down and imprison voters who illegally voted or registered in two states in one election. An eye-popping 449,092 Michiganders are on the Crosscheck suspect list. The list, which my team uncovered in an investigation for Rolling Stone, cost at least 50,000 of the state's voters their registrations. Disproportionately, the purged voters were Blacks, Latinos and that other solid Democratic demographic, Muslim Americans. (Dearborn, Michigan, has the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the US.) The Michigan Secretary of State's spokesman Woodhams told me the purpose of the mass purge was, "to clean our voter lists and ensure that there's no vulnerability for fraud. We've been very aggressive in closing vulnerabilities and loopholes to fraud." While Woodhams did not know of a single conviction for double-voting in Michigan, the "aggression" in purging the lists was clear. I showed him part of the Michigan purge list that he thought was confidential. The "double voters" are found by simply matching first and last names. Michael Bernard Brown is supposed to be the same voter as Michael Anthony Brown. Michael Timothy Brown is supposed to be the same voter as Michael Johnnie Brown. Woodhams assured me the GOP used the Trump-Kobach list with care, more or less. He said, "I'm sure that there are some false positives. But we go through it thoroughly, and we're not just canceling people." As to the racial profiling inherent in the list? Did he agree with our experts that by tagging thousands of voters named Jose Garcia and Michael Brown there would be a bias in his purge list? The GOP spokesman replied, "I've known a lot of white Browns." Jill Stein didn't buy it. Responding to both Michigan's and Trump's claim that voter rolls are loaded with fraudulent double voters, Stein said, "It's the opposite of what he is saying: not people who are voting fraudulently and illegally, but actually legitimate voters who have had their right to vote taken away from them by Kris Kobach and by Donald Trump." Crosscheck likely cost tens of thousands their vote in Pennsylvania as well. "It is a Jim Crow system, and it all needs to be fixed," Stein concluded. "It's not rocket science. This is just plain, basic democracy." * * * * * Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, now out as major motion non-fiction movie. Support the 2016 Stolen Election Investigation After investigating the REAL story of the recount, we stopped by the Department of Justice and handed them our Crosscheck petition, signed by 50,000 people. We have a lot more work to do and thankfully, our efforts are starting to get notice. We're not done... Join us bySupporting the Stolen Election Investigation Rent or buy the film from Amazon or Vimeo. Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive!  Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile. AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Palast Fund and you get a tax-deduction! More info. GregPalast.com   The post The Republican Sabotage of the Vote Recounts in Michigan and Wisconsin appeared first on Greg Palast.18 Dec 16
Palast Report for Democracy Now!:By Rejecting Recount, Is Michigan Covering up 75,000 Ballots Never Counted? - Investigative reporter Greg Palast has just returned from Michigan, where he went to probe the state’s closely contested election. Trump won Michigan by fewer than 11,000 votes out of nearly 4.8 million votes cast. Green Party presidential contender Dr. Jill Stein attempted to force Michigan to hold a recount, but a federal judge ordered Michigan’s Board of Elections to stop the state’s electoral recount. One big question remains: Why did 75,335 ballots go uncounted? Support the 2016 Stolen Election Investigation My team and I just returned from Michigan to report the REAL story of the recount. I’ve also been responding to urgent requests in the recount states for our technical files and analysis. We're in Washington and stopped by the Department of Justice yesterday and handed them our Crosscheck petition, signed by 50,000 people. Join us by Supporting the Stolen Election Investigation Last stop for Democracy • PLEASE, say, "Count me in to count the votes" by supporting the 2016 Stolen Election Investigation for a donation of any size no matter how small or large • Stay informed and get a signed DVD of my film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a signed copy of the book with the same title or better still - get the Book & DVD combo  • Be listed as a producer ($1,000) or co-producer ($500) in the credits of the broadcast version of the updated, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy:  THE THEFT OF 2016. * * * * * Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, now out as major motion non-fiction movie. Donate to the Palast Investigative Fund and get the signed DVD. Download the FREE Movie Comic Book. Rent or buy the film from Amazon or Vimeo. Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive!  Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile. AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Palast Fund and you get a tax-deduction! More info. GregPalast.com   The post Palast Report for Democracy Now!:By Rejecting Recount, Is Michigan Covering up 75,000 Ballots Never Counted? appeared first on Greg Palast.13 Dec 16
Crosscheck Is Not Just Crooked, It’s Criminal - After reading my report on the Kobach/Koch/Trump operation, which has removed tens of thousands of minority voters from the rolls in the swing states that surprisingly shifted to Trump, former federal judge (and now Congressman) Alcee Hastings told me Crosscheck is a criminal violation of federal law. Hastings has called for criminal indictments and written an official Congressional member letter to ask for investigation. hastings-crosscheck-letter-to-ag-lynch Hastings’ demand for justice is backed by a petition to expose and end Crosscheck’s racist attacks on voting rights. So far it's been signed by 50,000 people, including 29,507 members of 18 Million Rising, the Asian-American rights group. The group is joined by co-signers Rep. Keith Ellison, Bill Gallegos of Climate Justice, Martin Luther King III and others. On Tuesday, December 13 I will join the leaders of 18 Million rising in Washington, D.C. to present the petition to Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Stopping Crosscheck is the Standing Rock of racist vote suppression.  If we don’t open the investigations now, by January 21, Kris Kobach will be Homeland Security chief and Jeff Sessions Attorney General. Demand an investigation into Crosscheck, sign our petition — and then share it! For the full story, see the film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, the story of my investigation of Crosscheck. * * * * * Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, now out as major motion non-fiction movie. Donate to the Palast Investigative Fund and get the signed DVD. Download the FREE Movie Comic Book. Rent or buy the film from Amazon or Vimeo. Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive!  Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile. AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Palast Fund and you get a tax-deduction! More info. The post Crosscheck Is Not Just Crooked, It’s Criminal appeared first on Greg Palast. 5 Dec 16
The No-BS Inside Guide to the Presidential RecountSorry, no Russian hacker hunt - by Greg Palast for Truthout There's been so much complete nonsense since I first broke the news that the Green Party would file for a recount of the presidential vote, I am compelled to write a short guide to flush out the BS and get to just the facts, ma'am. Nope, they’re not hunting for Russian hackers To begin with, the main work of the recount hasn't a damn thing to do with finding out if the software programs for the voting machines have been hacked, whether by Putin’s agents or some guy in a cave flipping your vote from Hillary to The Donald. The Green team does not yet even have the right to get into the codes. But that's just not the core of the work. The ballots in the electoral “dumpster” The nasty little secret of US elections, is that we don't count all the votes. In Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania—and all over America—there were a massive number of votes that were simply rejected, invalidated, and spoiled. They were simply, not counted.  Officially, in a typical presidential election, at least three million votes end up rejected, often for picayune, absurd reasons. The rejects fall into three big categories:  provisional ballots rejected, absentee and mail-in ballots invalidated and in-precinct votes “spoiled,” spit out by a machine or thrown out by a human reader as unreadable or mis-marked. So, as Robert Fitrakis, lead lawyer for the recount tells me, their first job is to pull the votes out of the electoral dumpster—and, one by one, make the case for counting a rejected provisional, absentee or “spoiled” ballot. Spoiled:  over-votes and under-votes How does a vote spoil? Most fall in the categories of “over-votes” and “under-votes.” In Michigan, the Green team has found a whole lot of people who voted for TWO candidates for President.  These are the “over-vote”—votes that will count for neither candidate. How odd.  While the schools in Detroit are not stellar, its graduates do know that they can only have one president. Then, some folks didn’t vote at all.  They are the “under-voter.” But, Fitrakis and team suspect, many of these under- and over-voters meant to vote for a candidate but the robot reader couldn’t understand their choice. Here’s how it happens.  Voters in Michigan and Wisconsin fill in bubbles next to their choice.  The cards, filled up with darkened bubbles for each race, are gathered and fed through an “optical scanner.” These robotic eyeballs mess up all the time. This is what Fitrakis, an old hand at vote-machine failures (both deliberate and benign), calls “the calibration problem.” Are machines calibrated with a Republican or Democratic bias? No, that's not how it works. But just as poor areas get the worst schools and hospitals, they also get the worst voting machines. The key is an ugly statistic not taught in third grade civics class:  According to the US Civil Rights Commission, the chance your vote will be disqualified as “spoiled” is 900% more likely if you’re Black than if you’re white. So the Green Party intends to review every single one of the six million bubble-filled cards. They’ll use the one instrument that can easily tell one bubble from two, or one bubble from none: the human eye. As you can imagine, This will require several thousand eyes.  The good news is, Fitrakis reports, that well over a thousand volunteers have already signed up.  Training by Skype begins Tuesday morning. Support the 2016 Stolen Election Investigation The team and I are off to Ground Zero:  Michigan. Wisconsin. Pennsylvania. To report the REAL story of the recount. I’m also responding to urgent requests in the recount states for our technical files and analysis. And then it’s on to Washington—to the Department of Justice—while there’s a bit of Justice left. Join us by Supporting the Stolen Election Investigation Last stop for Democracy Provisional or “placebo” ballots According to the US Elections Assistance Commission (EAC), Americans cast 2.7 million provisional ballots in the last presidential election.  About a million were simply discarded.  What?! Yes.  Discarded, not counted.  You show up at your normal polling station and they can’t find your name, or they don’t like your ID, or you’re supposed to vote in another precinct.  Instead of letting you vote on a regular ballot, you fill out a “provisional” ballot and place it in an envelope, sign your name, and under penalty of jail time for lying, affirm you’re a properly registered voter. The polls close—then the magic begins.  It’s up to highly partisan election officials to decide if your vote counts.  Hillary Clinton only won one swing state, Virginia, notably, the only one where the vote count was controlled by Democrats.  She lost all swing states—Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida—where the GOP set the rules for counting these ballots and their hacks acted as the judge and jury on whether a ballot should be counted. Wisconsin generally rejects votes cast in the wrong precinct, even if they’re legal voters—and, says Fitrakis, “even if their official precinct was just another table in the same high school gym—and they were mis-directed by poll workers.” (That’s why I sometimes call “provisional” ballots “placebo” ballots.  They let you feel you’ve voted, even if you haven’t.) In Wisconsin, provisional ballots were handed to voters—mostly, it appears, students—who didn’t have the form of ID required under new Wisconsin law. These ballots were disqualified despite zero evidence even one voter was an identity thief. Fitrakis says the Stein campaign will fight for each of these provisional votes where this is clearly no evidence the vote is fraudulent. Mail-in, Early and Absentee Ballots go Absent If you’ve gone postal in this election, good luck!  According to EAC data, at least half a million absentee ballots go absent, that is, just don’t get counted.  The cause: everything from postage due to “suspect signature.” Fitrakis told me that in his home state of Ohio, you need to put your driver’s license number on the envelope, “and if you don’t have a driver’s license and leave the line blank—instead of writing ‘no driver’s license’—they toss your ballot. From Palast's book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits by Ted Rall It’s a “gotcha!” system meant to knock out the ballots the officials don’t want to count.  (Remember, your mail-in ballot is anything but secret.)  Team Green will try to fight for each absentee ballot rejected for cockamamie reasons. If the recount doesn’t change the outcome, can we feel assured the election was honest? Sadly, no.  As Fitrakis says, “If a student is given a provisional ballot because they didn’t have the right ID, or the state simply lost their registration, we can fight for the ballot to be counted.  But most students who voted off campus didn’t know their right to get a provisional ballot and most probably didn’t get offered one. Students and others were discouraged from voting because they lacked the proper ID (300,000 by the estimate of the experts with the ACLU—that’s thirty times Trump’s plurality).  But if you didn’t cast any ballot, provisional or otherwise, no one can fight for it. And final decisions may come down to the vote of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, God forbid.  As Norman Stockwell, the editor of Madison-based The Progressive explained to me, formerly, elections law adjudications were made by a panel of non-partisan judges.  These were replaced by this new commission of partisan shills appointed by GOP Governor Scott Walker. Trump says millions voted illegally. Is he crazy? Crazy like a fox.  There’s a method in his madness that affects the recount. While the media dismisses Trump’s claim that there are "millions of people that voted illegally," they have not paid attention to the details of his claim.  Trump explains that millions of people are “voting many, many times,” that is, voting in two states in the same election. Trump’s claim is based on a list of “potential duplicate voters” created by his operative, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.  Kobach (a top dog in Trump’s transition team)  directs a program for hunting down fraudulent voters using a computer system called, “Crosscheck.” It’s quite a computer:  Crosscheck identified a breathtaking 449,922 Michiganders who are suspected of voting or registering in a second state, a felony crime, as are 371,923 in Pennsylvania. I spent two years investigating the Trump/Kobach claim for Rolling Stone.  We obtained the “confidential” suspect list of several million citizens accused of voting twice.  In fact, it was no more than a list of common names—Maria Hernandez, James Brown, David Lee—that is, common to voters of color.  Read: Democrats.  A true and typical example: Michael James Brown of Michigan is supposed to be the same voter as Michael Kendrick Brown of Georgia. Page from The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (FREE) Comic book penned by Keith Tucker About 54,000 voters in Michigan, five times Trump’s plurality, lost their right to vote based on this nutty double-voter accusation.  In Pennsylvania, about 45,000 were purged. The problem for Fitrakis:  While he eventually plans to file suit against Crosscheck purges, in the meantime, it’s not clear he can challenge someone whose lost their vote because of a false accusation of double voting.  And those who found their names missing and didn’t demand a provisional ballot—there’s no hope at all of recovering their vote. Is Jill Stein going to get rich? Fitrakis laughs at this one.  “The FEC [Federal Elections Commission] has very strict rules on recounts. The donations for the recount are sequestered in a specially designated account and all spending is restricted to the recount.” The big problem is that the cost is somewhat out of Stein’s control.  Each state will bill the campaign for the “pro-rated salaries and benefits” of its county and state officials working on the recount. To add to the cost and just plain drive the Green team crazy, the Wisconsin Election Board announced on Monday that each separate county elections clerk will decide if they’ll even let the Green volunteers directly view the ballots.  Fitrakis and partners will have to get a court order to get into each county.  How does one recount ballots without seeing them?  (Hmm, is the Wisconsin board, stooges appointed by the GOP Governor, fearful that the viewing the ballots will expose the game?) Hillary joins the fray What will the Clinton camp add to the recount? “Lawyers,” said Fitrakis, though he’s yet to see them.  The Clinton campaign is apparently helping find one voter in each Pennsylvania county, as one is required in each jurisdiction to file for a recount of that state. And what about that hack job? While Fitrakis is not looking for Russkies in the computer code, he says, “We’re more concerned with the private companies that control the keys to the kingdom—to match what’s on paper to the official count.”  The “keys” are the little machines, memory cards and other electronic gewgaws that are used to suck the data from the voting machine—which are carried off to another state for tabulation by a private contractor.  Will these tabulations at each step match what the volunteers find in the on-the-ground recount? One problem is that the tabulation software is “proprietary.”  A private company owns the code to the count—and the privateers will fight fiercely, with GOP help, to keep the ballot counting code their commercial secret. Push and Pray Pennsylvania In the end, the single biggest impediment to a full and fair recount is that 70 percent of Pennsylvania voters used what are called, “Push and Pray” voting machines—Direct Recording Electronic touch-screens.  Push the screen next to your choice and pray it gets recorded. Pennsylvania is one of the only states that has yet to require some form of VVPAT (“vee-pat”) or voter-verified paper audit trail that creates an ATM-style receipt. Therefore, the Keystone State recount will have to rely on hopes of access to the code, statistical comparisons to counties that used paper ballots—and prayer. Maybe it IS the Russians The possibility that a Putin pal hacked the machines was championed by University of Michigan computer sciences professor J. Alex Halderman who proposed, “The attackers would probe election offices well in advance in order to find ways to break into their computers…and spread malware into voting machines.” I imagine some squat, middle-pay-scale civil servant in chinos and a pocket protector who works in the Michigan Secretary of State’s office approached, one late overtime night, by some FSB agent in high heels and a slinky dress split halfway up her thigh. The svelte spy would lean against the bureaucrat provocatively and whisper, “My handsome dahling, would you mind sticking this little thumb drive into that big old computer of yours?” Professor Halderman, if you want to help the recount, put down the James Bond novels and pick up some Opti-Scan ballots.  We’ve got a lot of bubbles to read.  End PLEASE, say, "Count me in to count the votes" by supporting the 2016 Stolen Election Investigation for a donation of any size no matter how small or large Stay informed and get a signed DVD of my film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a signed copy of the book with the same title or better still - get the Book & DVD combo Be listed as a producer ($1,000) or co-producer ($500) in the credits of the broadcast version of the updated, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy:  THE THEFT OF 2016. * * * * * Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, now out as major motion non-fiction movie. Donate to the Palast Investigative Fund and get the signed DVD. Download the FREE Movie Comic Book. Rent or buy the film from Amazon or Vimeo. Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive!  Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile. AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Palast Fund and you get a tax-deduction! More info. GregPalast.com   The post The No-BS Inside Guide to the Presidential RecountSorry, no Russian hacker hunt appeared first on Greg Palast.30 Nov 16
Exclusive: Jill Stein just called, Green Party filing for recount in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania - by Greg Palast Jill Stein just called to say that I am the first one to be informed that the Green Party is formally petitioning for a recount in 3 states, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Trump’s margin is less than 11,600 in Michigan, 27,200 in Wisconsin and 68,000 in Pennsylvania. If just a few thousand votes are found in Wisconsin and Michigan, Hillary Clinton becomes president by 276 electoral votes verses 264 for Trump. Support the 2016 Stolen Election Investigation Stein told me “We’re filing in Wisconsin Friday because the votes were cast on proven hack-prone machines. This has been a hack-ridden election.” She said that it will be most difficult to recount the machines in Pennsylvania. When asked why the democrats are not bringing this action, Stein told this reporter that “Democrats do not act to protect the vote even when there is dramatic evidence” of tampering. The Green Party told us that Stein will be represented by experienced voting rights attorney’s John Bonifaz, Boston, MA and Robert Fitrakis, Columbus, OH. Stein said, “our voting system is on life support.” The presidential candidate also said, “The Green Party will continue to be the go to advocate for voting rights. That includes fighting vote suppression tactics such as the Interstate Crosscheck system.” Interstate Crosscheck is the program which wrongly purged hundreds of thousand of minority voters in this election, according to the investigation this reporter fro Rolling Stone Magazine. Stein received 50,700 votes in Michigan, five times Trump’s winning plurality, and 30,980 in Wisconsin, more than Trump’s margin. When asked the "Nader" question, "Isn’t it true that your votes in Wisconsin and Michigan, if they went to Clinton, would have blocked Trump?", Stein answered, "Not at all. Our polls showed that 61% of our voters would have simply sat out the election, and one-third of the remaining voters would have voted Trump." The candidate insisted, "We are the ‘un-spoilers.’" Stein said she acted when Clinton turned silent because, "Only candidates may formally demand a re-count and we have standing." * * * * * Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, now out as major motion non-fiction movie. Donate to the Palast Investigative Fund and get the signed DVD. Download the FREE Movie Comic Book. Rent or buy the film from Amazon or Vimeo. Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive!  Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile. AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Palast Fund and you get a tax-deduction! More info. GregPalast.com   The post Exclusive: Jill Stein just called, Green Party filing for recount in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania appeared first on Greg Palast.23 Nov 16
Here’s what we do now A personal note by Greg Palast - Being right never felt so horrid. “This is the story of the theft of the 2016 election. It’s a crime still in progress.” So opens my film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. And on Election night I waited for the returns to make a fool of me. Instead, the returns made the fool a President. And so, my vacation’s cancelled. My life’s cancelled; that is, a life of anything but sleuthing and exposing the details of the heist of our democracy. What’s at stake? No way around it, this is one frightening moment. Decades of progress created with sweat and determination face destruction.  Within the next six months, we may see the Voting Rights Act repealed—and civil rights set back 50 years; the entirety of our environmental protection laws burnt in a coal pit; police cruelty made our urban policy; the Education Department closed to give billionaires a tax holiday; and a howling anti-Semite as White House Senior Counselor. But the horror we face is countered by this one hard and hopeful fact:  Donald Trump did NOT win this election. Trump not only lost the popular vote by millions — he did not legitimately win the swing states of the Electoral College. Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, Ohio:  every one was stolen through sophisticated, and sickeningly racist vote suppression tactics. If you saw my report for Democracy Now! on election morning, it revealed that Ohio GOP officials turned off anti-hacking software on voting machines, forced Black voters to wait hours in line (while whites had no wait). And, crucially, I confirmed that purged tens of thousands of minority voters on fake accusations they’d voted twice.  I first exposed this bogus double-voter blacklist called Crosscheck, in Rolling Stone. It’s the sick excrescence crafted by Kris Kobach, the Trump transition team's maven who also created the Muslim-tracker software he’s bringing to the Trump administration. What can we do now? I have been INUNDATED with requests for my factual reports and findings by media and, most important, the front-line activist groups preparing for the fierce fight to protect our votes. Some examples: Rev. William Barber of the NAACP filed a suit based in North Carolina,  hoping to overturn the Trump "victory" — and protect the tiny margin of the Democrat’s win of the Governor’s mansion.  The NAACP cites my discovery of "Crosscheck" — in which North Carolina removed upwards of 190,000 voters on false charges they voted twice. They now need my facts. Congressmen Keith Ellison and Alcee Hastings of the Congressional Black Caucus, personally presented Attorney General Loretta Lynch with my investigative reports and demanded investigation — "and indictments."  That investigation must kick off immediately. They now need my facts. The Asian-American civil rights group 18 Million Rising has gathered 50,000 signatures to push the Justice Department to investigate my evidence of a massive attack on the Asian-American vote. They now need my facts. In Michigan, the ACLU is ready to take action on the purge scheme I uncovered, "Crosscheck," that wrongly gave the state to Trump. In Ohio, voting rights attorney Robert Fitrakis is going into court with evidence, much that I uncovered, of racist voting games — from 5-hour-long lines in Black precincts to shutting off ballot security measures on the voting machines. The team need my facts. I expect to be in Washington at the Justice Dept and meeting with civil rights groups in December before the Electoral College meets. Information—plus film, video, investigative reports And beyond the voluminous files and confidential documents my team has uncovered that is sought by activists, we are deluged with requests for our film, videos, writings and more. And now we have US networks, even major comedy shows, asking for our material and, of course, new investigative findings. Information and facts make a difference With our investigative reports, with our hard and unassailable evidence, we can challenge the legitimacy of the Trump "election."  Most important, we must begin the difficult but necessary work of protecting and restoring voting rights.  The 2018 Election — and the threat of more stolen elections — is upon us. What we need to keep going...  Your extraordinary support and faith in our work funded my film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, which is now more relevant than ever and being seen by ever more audiences. Now we need your financial support again to keep this fight going. We just did not budget for the GOP's in-your-face steal of the Congress and White House.  All our resources went into raising the alarm before the election. So, now, I have to re-hire the staff, hit the road again. Ohio, North Carolina, Washington DC and who knows where, retain attorneys—and retain our team of technicians from cameramen to outreach organizers. Can this new work be done? Is there any choice? Honestly and personally, I was hoping for some rest and time off. But a lifetime of your work and mine is now in the balance. ● PLEASE, say, "Count me in to count the votes" by supporting the 2016 Stolen Election Investigation for a donation of any size no matter how small or large ● Be listed as a producer ($1,000) or co-producer ($500) in the credits of the broadcast version of my film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy ● Stay informed and get a signed DVD of my film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a signed copy of the book with the same title or better still - get the Book & DVD combo. And does an angel have the $8K needed for our Washington work and filming?  If so, flap your wings. I can't thank you enough for all the years of support. Alas... our work is not done. Greg Palast and the Palast Investigations Team * * * * * Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, now out as major motion non-fiction movie. Donate to the Palast Investigative Fund and get the signed DVD. Download the FREE Movie Comic Book. Rent or buy the film from Amazon or Vimeo. Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive!  Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile. AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Palast Fund and you get a tax-deduction! More info. GregPalast.com   The post Here’s what we do now A personal note by Greg Palast appeared first on Greg Palast.20 Nov 16
Ethnic Votes Stolen in Crucial States Help Fix US Election For Trump Reveals Greg Palast - By Ben Gelblum | The London Economic Throughout the US election campaign one of The Donald’s main refrains was “this election is rigged.” Turns out this particular Trump election rallying cry wasn’t a lie… Well, not entirely. Veteran election investigator Greg Palast has uncovered the sickening truth. I spoke to Palast about evidence of widespread systemic election rigging, robbing black, hispanic and asian American voters of their right to vote in crucial states. – Enough votes to swing the election away from the Hillary Clinton victory predicted in polls – explaining suspicious exit polls inconsistencies – and towards a shock result for Trump and Republican victory in the Senate. “Before a single vote was even cast, the election was already fixed by Trump operatives,” explains Palast. “This country is violently divided. There simply aren’t enough white guys to elect Trump nor a Republican Senate. The only way they could win was to eliminate the votes of non-white guys—and they did so by tossing black provisional ballots into the dumpster, new strict voter ID laws that saw students and low income voters turned away—the list goes on.” Palast has spent the past decade and a half investigating and identifying several techniques used to suppress ethnic minority and young votes – the voters that statistically vote Democrat. And this is surely the biggest and most unreported scandal of the most bizarre election any of us can recall. According to The Guardian, Palast is the “most important investigative reporter of our time – up there with Woodward and Bernstein.” The fast-talking fedora-topped reporter has investigated election irregularities for publications such as The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and BBC’s Newsnight, ever since the controversial Bush v Gore election in 2000. The 2000 election was too close to call without Florida, where votes were counted and recounted for weeks before George W Bush won the state by a margin of just 537 votes out of almost 6 million, and as a result the presidency. Palast uncovered the purge of 56,000 black voters in Florida – wrongly deleted from voter rolls as ex-felons. Now Palast’s investigative team are certain that vote suppression techniques were instrumental in last week’s Republican presidential and Senate victory. “For years I have been following the American election process which is nothing like in England,” says Palast. “Election manipulation is a very big factor in US elections. I found we had a massive problem in Florida in 2000, similarly in 2004 in Ohio with tens of thousands of invalidated votes. And now we are back at it again.” So why were Trump and his acolytes constantly drawing attention to vote rigging during the campaign? Trump was constantly banging on about debunked claims of large scale voter fraud, urging supporters to volunteer to monitor the polls, and creating an atmosphere where hysteria and conspiracy theories abounded. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, talked about busloads of people voting numerous times in some big cities. He also quipped that “dead people generally vote for Democrats, rather than Republicans.” Yet truly, you are more likely to be struck by lightning in the next year (a one in 1,042,000 chance, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) than to find a case of voter fraud by impersonation (31 in over a billion ballots cast from 2000 to 2014, according to Loyola law school’s research). Trump allies often cited the fact that Mitt Romney failed to win a single vote in 59 out of 1,687 Philadelphia precincts that happened to be almost entirely black. But with their demographic make up it’s no surprise why and investigations by Philadelphia’s Republican Party and the Philadelphia Inquirer found nothing untoward. Nationwide, 93% of black voters voted for Barack Obama that year. In 2012, an Arizona State University study concluded: “while fraud has occurred, the rate is infinitesimal, and in-person voter impersonation on Election Day, which prompted 37 state legislatures to enact or consider tough voter ID laws, is virtually non-existent.” Yet despite the lack of evidence or convictions for the crime of multiple voting, certain Republican figures devised draconian systems to prevent it, which have also served to deny electorally significant sections of the population of their right to vote. – Disproportionately ethnic votes, which are way more likely to be Democrats. And now the election is over, according to Palast, Trump’s increasing hysteria about vote rigging served as the ultimate smokescreen for a systematic denial of hundreds of thousands of crucial votes in the name of preventing fraud. – A ‘bigly’ enough scam to win Trump the Whitehouse. Palast started investigating Donald Trump’s increasingly hysterical claims that the election was rigged by people voting many times for Rolling Stone Magazine, and made some shocking discoveries in his report last August: The GOP’s Stealth War Against Voters. As a response to constant paranoia about voter fraud, 30 mainly Republican states have adopted a system called the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program (Crosscheck), according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. This system was devised in 2005 by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, better known as the anti-immigration fanatic responsible for Trump’s idea of building a wall on the US / Mexico border and getting Mexico to pay for it. Kobach, like Trump, has given lip service to conspiracy theories, especially ones that bolster fears of the growing influence of racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S. And now, interestingly he has been rewarded by Trump with a job on his Transition Team as adviser on immigration. Kobach convinced other states, including crucial swing states such as Michigan and North Carolina, to share their voter lists to look for the same name potentially registered to vote in more than one state. Crosscheck supposedly matches first, middle and last name, plus birth date, and provides the last four digits of a Social Security number for additional verification. Seems like a sensible method to stop people voting more than once in separate states. Only it soon became clear that Crosschecking was neither accurate nor fair and was not being used as it should. Some states including Florida dropped out of the program due to doubts about the reliability of its data — though others joined despite them. Palast’s team discovered Crosscheck had amassed a list of 7.2 million voters accused of being potential double voters.  Yet despite such an enormous list of suspects, there has only been four arrests. “It is a crime to deliberately register to vote twice,” says Palast. “You go to jail for five years. And to organise double voting on a significant scale is practically impossible. They are basically arresting no one – about four arrests out of a list which identified around seven million potential double voters, and I doubt these arrests are even due to the list.” Palast’s team managed (legally) to get hold of over 2 million names identified as potential double voters and soon began to spot obvious mistakes. The failsafes of National Insurance number and date of birth meant to make the system foolproof were not attached and appeared to have been ignored. “The most common name in the world is Mohamed Mohamed,” explains Palast, scanning through the list of names, “so for example under this Trump hit list, Mohamed Said Mohamed is supposed to be the same voter as Mohamed Osman Mohamed – in fact about one out of four middle names don’t match and Jr and Sr don’t match – so for example with James Brown a very common black name – they are matching James Brown Sr to James Brown Jr and saying it’s the same voter and then the middle names don’t even match.” U.S. Census data shows that minorities are overrepresented in 85 of 100 of the most common last names. “If your name is Washington, there’s an 89 percent chance you’re African-American,” says Palast. “If your last name is Hernandez, there’s a 94 percent chance you’re Hispanic.” This inherent bias results in an astonishing one in six Hispanics, one in seven Asian-Americans and one in nine African-Americans in Crosscheck states landing on what Palast dubs “Trump’s hit list.”  Potential double registrants were sent a postcard and asked to verify their address by mailing it back. “The junk mail experts we spoke to said this postcard is meant not to be returned. It’s inscrutable small print, doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t even say you’re accused of voting twice. It just says, please confirm your voting address,” explains Palast, “and most people of colour, poor voters don’t respond to this sort of mailing and they know that.” According to the Census Bureau, white voters are 21 percent more likely than blacks or Hispanics to respond to official requests; homeowners are 32 percent more likely to respond than renters; and the young are 74 percent less likely than the old to respond. Those on the move – students and the poor, who often shift apartments while hunting for work – might not get the mail in the first place. So if a few older white people, more likely to vote Republican were caught up in the mainly ethnic hit list, they were more likely to return the card and retain their right to vote. If you do not reply to the missive, state officials have discretion over what to do next, and the process varies from state to state. What Palast’s investigation made clear is ethnic voters were disproportionately likely to be targeted and purged from voter lists. All this despite other states choosing a more reliable system to prevent double voting: the Electronic Registration Information Center, (ERIC) – adopted by 20 member states plus the District of Columbia, according to its website. A 2013 report found ERIC actually boosted voter registration and turnout and eliminated errors in voter files. Palast’s investigators calculated 1.1 million people, many spread over crucial swing states were deprived of their right to vote last Tuesday.  According to the exit polls last Tuesday, 88% of black voters voted for Hillary Clinton, as well as  65% of hispanic and asian American voters. “The list is loaded overwhelmingly with voters of colour and the poor,” says Palast. “Many didn’t discover that their vote was stolen until they turned up last Tuesday and found their name missing. In the US they are given something called a provisional ballot, but if your name is not on the voter roll, you can fill out all the provisional votes you like they’re not going to count your vote. – They can’t even if you’re wrongly removed. “Trump’s victory margin in Michigan was 13,107 and the Michigan Crosscheck purge list was 449,922. Trump’s victory margin in Arizona- 85,257, Arizona Crosscheck purge list- 270,824;. Trump’s victory margin in North Carolina was 177,008 and the North Carolina Crosscheck purge list had 589,393 people on it.” Crosscheck was by no means the only method that came to light to disenfranchise voters more likely to vote Democrat. Palast also cites statistics on vote spoilage – “In the UK, glitches, spoiled or empty ballots are random,  but here, the US Civil Rights Commission found in Florida you are 900% more likely to lose your vote to spoilage if you are black than if you are white.” Statistician Philip Clinker author of the study, has said that this is typical nationwide, and according to Palast, if anything, the situation has got worse since the 2000 study. In 2013, the Supreme Court overturned part of the Voting Rights Act enacted in 1965 at the heart of the Civil Right Movement to prohibit racial discrimination in voting. This allowed all kinds of shenanigans in the lead up to last week that previously could have been challenged by the Department of Justice. In North Carolina, for example, Republicans even bragged: “African American Early Voting is Down.” – This after a federal court federal court found their voting restrictions “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.” States, particularly those controlled by Republicans, made several changes this year, such as stricter voter ID laws and restricting polling booths, to make voting harder in a way that targeted generally Democrat-voting ethnic minority voters. There were reports of ridiculously long queues. As this is not the first election this has happened in, it appears to be a deliberate tactic. Harvard’s Stephen Pettigrew who studies polling lines found that ethnic minority voters were six times more likely to have to stand in line for over an hour. And losing out on work from disproportionately long queues costs people in ethnic minority areas proportionately more in lost income, which also puts them off voting next time. Pettigrew estimated that 200,000 people did not vote in 2014 because of queues encountered in 2012. “Election day was marred by long lines due to cuts in early voting and 868 fewer polling places,” adds Palast, “to say nothing of the untold millions who were unable to vote due to restrictive voter ID and felon disenfranchisement laws.” During the election last week, Palast also made a shocking discovery about voting machines in Ohio – one of the states in which he found many black voters were disenfranchised by a mixture of the Crosscheck and other systems, and exit polls differed markedly from the counted votes. “In the state of Ohio they have fancy new machines which can record an image of your vote and an anti-hacking function. They were turned off,” explains Palast. “I went to court with Bob Fitrakis a law professor in Ohio to have this overturned. I went into the judge’s chamber, and there the Republicans did not deny that it was turned off but they said to turn it back on would create havoc. – This after the FBI had issued a warning that they feared the machines would be hacked. “If you get such a warning, why would you turn off the anti-hacking mechanism? All this means we will never know if the machines were hacked and how many votes were lost if there was a challenge as there was no image of the vote recorded.” Greg Palast’s documentary and book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy  further details his warnings about voter suppression techniques we haven’t even mentioned in this article. “I stuck my neck out last year, saying they would steal this election, and I really hoped I would be left looking like an idiot.  “Turns out I was right though,” he adds. “The problem with the electoral college is a few thousand votes in tiny states can flip an election.” – An election President Elect Donald J Trump won despite still trailing nationwide in the popular vote. – A problem Donald Trump railed about too in the past, calling it “a disaster for democracy.” Civil rights organisation NAACP, which nine times managed to see off voter suppression of hundreds of thousands of votes in the federal courts over the past few months, is now mounting a legal battle to reinstate fully the Voter Registration Act. Palast and his team are certain that the chicanery they and others uncovered more than explains the difference between the outcome polls predicted and the result of the presidential and senate elections – especially when it comes to the exit polls taken as people had just voted. “Crosscheck does not account for all the shoplifting, but if you put it together with the other nine methods to steal votes that I identified, there’s little question that the exit polls were correct and Hillary Clinton won, or at least more voters voted for her in the swing states. Obviously she won the popular vote, but we have an electoral college system. If they counted all the votes in all the swing states the traditionally highly accurate exit polls would have been accurate,” adds Palast. Electoral Integrity blogger Theodore de Macedo Soares drew attention to the bizarre discrepancy between computer counted official vote counts and exit polls last week, writing: “According to the exit polls conducted by Edison Research, Clinton won four key battleground states (NC, PA, WI, and FL) in the 2016 Presidential Election that she went on to lose in the computerized vote counts.  With these states Clinton wins the Electoral College with a count of 302 versus 205 for Trump.  Clinton also won the national exit poll by 3.2% and holds a narrow lead in the national vote count still in progress. Exit polls were conducted in 28 states. In 23 states the discrepancies between the exit polls and the vote count favored Trump. In 13 of these states the discrepancies favoring Trump exceeded the margin of error of the state.” Palast believes such discrepancies, some far greater than any acceptable margin of error are indicative of systematic electoral rigging to steal Democrat votes: “The bane of pre-election polling is that pollsters must adjust for the likelihood of a person voting.  Exit polls solve the problem. The US State Department uses exit polling to determine whether you accept the outcome of a foreign election. The Brexit exit polls were extremely accurate. Yet in the Ukraine the US does not accept the result of the 2004 election because of the exit poll mismatch with the final official count. “And here for example in North Carolina we have the exit poll raw data at 2.1% favouring victory by Clinton, yet she loses by 3.8% in the final count. In Pennsylvania 4.4% victory suddenly became a 1.2 % loss; Wisconsin: 3.9% victory becomes a 1% loss; Florida: 1.1% victory becomes a 1% loss. “In the swing States we have this massive red shift because when people come out of the votes, exit pollsters can only ask, “How did you vote?” What they don’t ask, and can’t, is, “Was your vote counted?”” Kris Kobach did not give us a comment, but a statement from Kris Kobach’s office on the Crosscheck program said the Crosscheck program had been used for over a decade, and insisted “merely appearing as a potential match does not subject a voter to removal from a participating states’ voter registration roll/record.  Ineligible and/or unqualified persons who are registered voters are only removed from a states’ voter registration roll/record if the person is subject to removal pursuant to applicable state and federal elections provisions.”           The post Ethnic Votes Stolen in Crucial States Help Fix US Election For Trump Reveals Greg Palast appeared first on Greg Palast.15 Nov 16

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(U//FOUO) U.S. Army FM 2-22.2 Counterintelligence - This manual provides doctrinal guidance, techniques, and procedures for the employment of counterintelligence (CI) special agents in the Army. It outlines— • CI investigations and operations. • The CI special agent’s role within the intelligence warfighting function. • The importance of aggressively countering foreign intelligence and security services (FISS) and international terrorist organizations (ITO). • The roles and responsibilities of those providing command, control, and technical support to CI investigations and operations. • The need for effective dissemination of CI reports and products and the importance of cross-cueing other intelligence disciplines. • The significance of cultural awareness as a consideration to counter the foreign intelligence threat. This manual expands upon the information in FM 2-0 and supersedes FM 34-60. It is consistent with doctrine in FM 3-0, FM 5-0, FM 100-15, and JP 2-0. When published, FM 2-22.2 will provide further information on CI activities when Army forces are employed in tactical operations. … ARMY COUNTERINTELLIGENCE 1-1. CI focuses on negating, mitigating, or degrading the foreign intelligence and security services (FISS) and international terrorist organizations (ITO) collection threat that targets Army interests through the conduct of investigations, operations, collection, analysis, production, and technical services and support. 1-2. CI analyzes the threats posed by FISS and the intelligence activities of nonstate actors such as organized crime, terrorist groups, and drug traffickers. CI analysis incorporates all-source information and the results of CI investigations and operations to support a multidiscipline analysis of the force protection threat. COUNTERINTELLIGENCE SPECIAL AGENT 1-3. The CI special agent has the distinct mission of detecting, identifying, countering, and neutralizing FISS and ITO threats directed towards the Army through the execution of all CI functions. CI special agents should not be confused with human intelligence (HUMINT) collectors, military occupational specialty (MOS) 35M, and warrant officer (WO) area of concentration (AOC) 351M. They are specifically trained and certified for, tasked with, and engage in the collection of information from individuals (HUMINT sources) for the purpose of answering HUMINT-specific requirements. Although CI and HUMINT personnel may use similar methods, their missions are separate and distinct. Commanders should not use them interchangeably. Using CI personnel for HUMINT missions degrades the Army’s ability to protect its forces, information, and critical technology that provides the Army operational and technological superiority over existing and future adversaries. … COUNTERINTELLIGENCE MISSION 1-17. The mission of Army CI is to conduct aggressive, comprehensive, and coordinated operations, investigations, collection, analysis and production, and technical services. This CI mission is conducted worldwide to detect, identify, assess, counter, exploit, or neutralize the FISS and ITO collection threat to the Army and DOD to protect the lives, property, or security of Army forces. Army CI has four primary mission areas: • Counterespionage (CE). • Support to protection. • Support to research and technology protection (RTP). • Cyber CI. COUNTERESPIONAGE 1-18. CE detects, identifies, counters, exploits, or neutralizes the FISS and ITO collection threat targeting Army and DOD equities or U.S. interests. CE programs use both investigations and collection operations to conduct long-term operations to undermine, mitigate, or negate the ability of FISS and ITO to collect effectively on Army equities. CE programs also affect the adversarial visualization and decisionmaking concerning the plans, intentions, and capabilities of U.S. policy, goals, and objectives. The goal of CE is to— • Limit the adversary’s knowledge of U.S. forces, plans, intentions, and capabilities through information denial. • Limit the adversary’s ability to target effectively U.S. forces by disrupting their collection capability. COUNTERINTELLIGENCE SUPPORT TO PROTECTION 1-19. CI support to protection ensures the survivability and mission accomplishment of Army and DOD forces. 1-20. CI’s objective in supporting protection is to— • Limit the compromise and exploitation of personnel, facilities, operations, command and control (C2), and operational execution of U.S. forces. • Negate, mitigate, or degrade adversarial planning and targeting of U.S. forces for exploitation or attack. • Support the war on terrorism. SUPPORT TO RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY PROTECTION 1-21. Support to RTP is focused on preventing the illegal diversion or loss of critical technology essential to the strategic advantage of the U.S. 1-22. CI’s objective in supporting RTP is to— • Protect critical technology information from adversarial countermeasures development. • Ensure U.S. technological overmatch against existing and future adversaries. CYBER COUNTERINTELLIGENCE 1-23. Cyber CI protects information networks and provides an offensive exploitation capability against adversarial networks to ensure information superiority of U.S. forces. 1-24. CI’s objective in conducting cyber CI activities is to— • Maintain U.S. forces information dominance and superiority over existing and future adversaries. • Protect critical information networks from adversarial attack or exploitation. • Undermine adversarial information operations, systems, and networks. … COUNTERINTELLIGENCE INVESTIGATION OBJECTIVES 2-4. CI investigations are essential to counter threat collection efforts targeting Army equities. CI places emphasis on investigative activity to support force and technology protection, homeland defense, information assurance, and security programs. CI investigations focus on resolving allegations of known or suspected acts that may constitute national security crimes under U.S. law or the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). 2-5. The initial objective of CI investigations is to identify people, organizations, and other entities engaging in national security crimes and to determine the full nature and extent of damage to national security. The intent is to develop information of sufficient value to permit its use in the appropriate civil or military court. However, investigations should not be limited to the production of evidence. Investigative reports should include all relevant information as it pertains to the person or incident involved in the investigation. CI investigations are conducted to— • Identify people, organizations, and other entities engaging in national security crimes that impact Army equities. • Determine the full nature of national security crimes within the authority and jurisdiction of Army CI. • Prove or disprove allegations or indications that person or persons are engaged in national security crimes or incidents of CI interest. • Prevent the loss, control, or compromise of sensitive or classified defense information and technology. • Protect the security of Army personnel, information, operations, installations, and technology. • Acquire and preserve evidence used to support exploitation, prosecution, or any other legal proceedings or punitive measures resulting from CI investigations. • Detect and identify terrorist activities that may present a threat to Army, DOD, and national security. 2-6. CI investigations must conform to applicable U.S. laws and DOD and DA regulations. CI special agents must report information accurately and completely. They maintain files and records to allow transfer of an investigation without loss of control or efficiency. Coordination with other CI or law enforcement organizations ensures that investigations are conducted as rapidly as possible. It also reduces duplication and assists in resolving conflicts when jurisdictional lines are unclear or overlap. CI investigative activity must be discreet, ensuring the rights and privacy of individuals involved, as well as the preservation of all investigative prerogatives. This is required to protect the rights of individuals and to preserve the security of investigative techniques. 2-7. CI special agents need to have a thorough understanding of all investigative techniques and planning, approval processes, and legal requirements before requesting and initiating any type of CI investigative activity. A lack of understanding in any one of these areas may potentially invalidate any investigation from a prosecutorial standard and may jeopardize the ability to exploit a threat to the United States. … PRIMARY AUTHORITY 2-12. Army CI has investigative primacy for the national security crimes and incidents of CI interest listed below when they are committed by persons identified as subjects. If either the subject, potential subject, incident, or crime falls outside Army CI jurisdiction, Army CI may still retain joint investigative responsibilities. • Sedition. • Aiding the enemy by providing intelligence to the enemy. • Spying. • Espionage. • Subversion. • Treason. • Terrorism activities or materiel support to a known or suspected terrorist organization or person (DCS G-2, G-2 Memorandum (S//NF), 24 August 2005). • Incidents of CI interest. … INCIDENTS OF COUNTERINTELLIGENCE INTEREST 2-17. The following is not an all-inclusive list of incidents of CI interest: • The activities of ITO or material support to an ITO or person. Terrorist organizations are specified in DCS, G-2 Memorandum (S//NF), dated 13 February 2007, Operational Planning List (OPL) 2005 (U), as revised. • Unreported contact with foreign government personnel, persons or groups involved in foreign terrorism or intelligence, or unauthorized requests for classified or sensitive unclassified information. • Unauthorized disclosure of classified information or material. Not all incidents in this category may meet the threshold for a CI investigation. However, those that do will often include other indicators of espionage that are identified associated with the incident or when there are acts which are known methods of operations of FISS and ITO entities. Investigations are conducted to ascertain those entities involvement. CI special agents may also act to secure classified material and to determine if the actions of the subject were an act of omission or commission. The command requirements to report compromises or conduct inquiries as specified in AR 380-5, chapter VI, may also apply to these incidents. • Matters developed as a result of counterintelligence scope polygraph (CSP) examination as specified in AR 381-20. • Military personnel or DAC employees who perform unofficial travel to those countries designated in the operational planning list, who have unauthorized contact with official representatives of foreign countries, or who contact or visit foreign diplomatic facilities without authorization. • Attempts by authorized users of information systems to gain unauthorized access. • Known, suspected or attempted intrusions into classified or unclassified information systems when there is reasonable suspicion of foreign involvement or it has not been ruled out. • Unauthorized removal of classified material or possession of classified material in unauthorized locations. • Special category absentees (SCAs), which include those absent without leave (AWOL), deserters defectors, and military absentees who have had access to TS, SCI, SAP information, or TS cryptographic access or an assignment to a special mission unit within the year preceding the absence. CI special agents will conduct investigations of the circumstances surrounding the absences of SCA personnel using the guidelines presented in this manual. • Army military, civilian, or overseas contractor personnel declared AWOL and deserters who had access within the preceding year to TS, SCI, critical military technology as defined in AR 381-20, chapter 7, SAPs; personnel who were assigned to a special mission unit; personnel in the DA Cryptographic Access Program (DACAP); and personnel with access to critical nuclear weapons design technology. • Army military, civilian, or overseas contractor personnel who go absent without authority, AWOL, or deserters who do not have assignments or access; however, there are indications of FISS and ITO contact or involvement in their absence. • DA military and civilian personnel who defect and those persons who are absent without authorization and travel to or through a foreign country other than the one in which they were stationed or assigned. • DA military and civilian personnel detained or captured by a government, group, or adversary with interests inimical to those of the United States. Such personnel will be debriefed upon return to U.S. control. • Attempted or actual suicide or suspicious death of a DA member if they have an intelligence background, were assigned to an SMU, or had access to classified information within the year preceding the incident, or where there are indications of FISS and ITO involvement. • Suspected or actual unauthorized acquisition or illegal diversion of military critical technology, research and development information, or information concerning an Army acquisition program. If required, Army CI will ensure all appropriate military and civilian intelligence and LEAs are notified. Army CI will also ensure Army equities are articulated and either monitor the status of the agency with primary jurisdiction or coordinate for joint investigative authority. • Impersonation of intelligence personnel or unlawful possession or use of Army intelligence identification, such as badge and credentials. • Communications security (COMSEC) insecurities, except those which are administrative in nature. (See AR 380-40, chapter 7.) • Suspected electronic intrusions or eavesdropping devices in secure areas which could be used for technical surveillance. DA personnel discovering such a device will not disturb it or discuss the discovery in the area where the device is located. • Willful compromise of clandestine intelligence personnel and CI activities. … DECEPTION IDENTIFICATION AND DETECTION (BIOMETRICS) 6-38. Biometrics as a characteristic is a measurable biological and behavioral characteristic that can be used for automated recognition. Biometrics as a process is an automated method of recognizing a person based on a physiological or behavioral characteristic. Among the features measured are face, fingerprints, hand geometry, handwriting, iris, retinal, vein, and voice. Biometric technologies are becoming the foundation of an extensive array of highly secure identification and personal verification solutions. As the level of security breaches and transaction fraud increases, the need for highly secure identification and personal verification technologies is becoming apparent. 6-39. Identification specific mission areas that CI detection and identification processes and technologies support include, but are not limited to, the following: • Countering foreign intelligence through the detection, identification, and neutralization of espionage activities. • Support to military readiness and conduct of military operations through protection, including— • Surveillance of air, land, or sea areas adjacent to deployed U.S. forces, sufficient to provide maximum warning of impending attack. • Indication of hostile intelligence penetration or attempts at penetration. • Support to law enforcement efforts to suppress CT. • Identification and affiliation of terrorist groups. • Assessment of group capabilities, including strengths and weaknesses. • Locations of terrorist training camps or bases of operations. • Weapons and technologies associated with identified terrorist elements. … COMPUTER FORENSICS 6-43. Computer forensics is conducted to— • Discover and recover evidence related to espionage, terrorism, or subversion against the Army. • Develop CI investigative leads. • Collect and report intelligence. • Support exploitation efforts. 6-44. Processing and examining digital media evidence is a tedious and time-consuming process which requires specialized training and equipment. Failure to properly process and examine digital media evidence could corrupt the evidence or yield the evidence inadmissible during future legal proceedings. Due to the complexities of cyber investigations, computer forensics support to CI investigations will only be conducted by specially trained and qualified personnel assigned to cyber CI elements in each theater. 6-45. Requests for computer forensic support will be made through the appropriate ATCICA. Requests for assistance will include detailed descriptions of the digital media evidence to be seized and examined and will be germane to the approved CI investigative objectives. 6-46. Every CI special agent is responsible for identifying the need for computer forensics support to their investigations. Computer forensics examinations involve a methodical process which, depending on the size and complexity of the digital media evidence, may take a significant amount of time to complete. Computer forensic operations cannot be rushed and therefore investigative time lines may need to be adjusted to accommodate the time required to complete the support. If a CI special agent is in doubt about the capabilities of, or when to leverage, cyber CI units, the agent should contact his ATCICA for guidance. … COUNTERINTELLIGENCE NETWORK INTRUSION INVESTIGATIONS 7-10. CI network intrusion investigations involve collecting, processing, and analyzing evidence related to adversarial penetrations of Army information systems. These specialized CI investigations are generally conducted independently of other traditional CI investigations. However, given the jurisdictional issues which involve the Internet, network intrusion investigations may require coordination with other U.S. and foreign government intelligence and law enforcement entities. 7-11. Threats to Army information systems can range from exploitation of vulnerabilities in information systems which allow adversaries to penetrate Army computers and collect critical information, to trusted insiders who either willingly or unwittingly enable adversarial forces to exploit these critical infrastructure resources. Any adversary with the motive, means, opportunity, and intent to do harm poses a potential threat. Threats to Army information resources may include disruption, denial degradation, ex-filtration, destruction, corruption, exploitation, or unauthorized access to computer networks and information systems and data. Cyber CI units are uniquely qualified to investigate and counter these threats. 7-12. All CI network intrusion investigations will be coordinated, to the extent necessary, with the USACIDC, specifically the Cyber Criminal Investigations Unit (CCIU). This coordination is necessary to ensure that investigative activities are not duplicated and that each organization does not impede or disrupt each other’s investigative or prosecutorial options. 7-13. A CI network intrusion investigation may be initiated under, but not necessarily be limited to, the following circumstances: • Known, suspected, or attempted intrusions into classified or unclassified information systems by unauthorized persons. • Incidents which involve intrusions into systems containing or processing data on critical military technologies, export controlled technology, or other weapons systems related RDT&E data. • Intrusions which replicate methods associated with foreign intelligence or adversary collection or which involve targeting that parallels known foreign intelligence or adversary collection requirements. 7-14. The purpose for conducting a CI network intrusion investigation will be to— • Fully identify the FISS and ITO entity involved. • Determine the FISS and ITO objectives. • Determine the FISS and ITO tools, techniques, and procedures used. • Assist the appropriate authorities with determining the extent of damage to Army and Department of Defense equities. … 7-32. The trusted insider is the most serious threat to DOD information systems security. The following list of indicators that could be associated with an insider threat should be addressed during threat briefings to CI customers: • Unauthorized attempts to elevate privileges. • Unauthorized sniffers. • Suspicious downloads of sensitive data. • Unauthorized modems. • Unexplained storage of encrypted data. • Anomalous work hours and/or network activity. • Unexplained modification of network security-related operating system settings. • Unexplained modification of network security devices such as routers and firewalls. • Malicious code that attempts to establish communication with systems other than the one which the code resides. • Unexplained external physical network or computer connection. • Unexplained modifications to network hardware. • Unexplained file transfer protocol (FTP) servers on the inside of the security perimeter. • Unexplained hardware or software found on internal networks. • Network interface cards that are set in a “promiscuous” or “sniffer” mode. • Unexpected open maintenance ports on network components. • Any unusual activity associated with network-enabled peripheral devices, such as printers and copiers.29 Jan
U.S. Army War College Strategic Cyberspace Operations Guide - 1. This publication provides a guide for U.S. Army War College students to understand design, planning, and execution of cyberspace operations at combatant commands (CCMDs), joint task forces (JTFs), and joint functional component commands. It combines existing U.S. Government Unclassified and “Releasable to the Public” documents into a single guide. … 1. This guide follows the operational design methodology and the joint operation planning process (JOPP) and applies these principles to the cyberspace domain. Cyberspace is a global domain within the information environment consisting of the interdependent networks of information technology infrastructures and resident data, including the Internet, telecommunications networks, computer systems, and embedded processors and controllers. Cyberspace operations (CO) are the employment of cyberspace capabilities where the primary purpose is to achieve objectives in or through cyberspace. Commanders must develop the capability to direct operations in the cyber domain since strategic mission success increasingly depends on freedom of maneuver in cyberspace (see Figure 1-1). 2. The President and the Secretary of Defense (SecDef) provide strategic guidance to the joint force. This guidance is the common thread that integrates and synchronizes the planning activities and operations. It provides purpose and focus to the planning for employment of military force. 3. The commander and staff develop plans and orders through the application of the operational design methodology and by using JOPP. Operational design results in the commander’s operational approach, which broadly describes the actions the joint force needs to take to reach the end state. The commander and staff translate the broad operational approach into detailed plans and orders using JOPP.5 Planning continues during execution, with an initial emphasis on refining the existing plan and producing the operations order and refining the force flow utilizing employed assigned and allocated forces. 4. Commanders integrate cyberspace capabilities at all levels and in all military operations. Plans should address how to effectively integrate cyberspace capabilities, counter an adversary’s use of cyberspace, secure mission critical networks, operate in a degraded environment, efficiently use limited cyberspace assets, and consolidate operational requirements for cyberspace capabilities. While it is possible that some military objectives can be achieved by CO alone, CO capabilities should be integrated into the joint force commander’s plan and synchronized with other operations during execution. … 29 Jan
Department of State International Security Advisory Board Report on Gray Zone Conflict - The study addresses the challenges facing the United States from the increasing use by rivals and adversaries – state and non-state alike – of what have come to be called “Gray Zone” techniques. The term Gray Zone (“GZ”) denotes the use of techniques to achieve a nation’s goals and frustrate those of its rivals by employing instruments of power – often asymmetric and ambiguous in character – that are not direct use of acknowledged regular military forces. The report is organized according to the specific subjects the ISAB was directed to consider by the Terms of Reference (TOR) – Characteristics of GZ Operations, Policy Options and Concepts, and Deterrence/Dissuasion. I. Characteristics of GZ Conflict Perhaps the most widely used definition of Gray Zone conflict is that established by the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM): “gray zone challenges are defined as competitive interaction among and within state and non-state actors that fall between the traditional war and peace duality. They are characterized by ambiguity about the nature of the conflict, opacity of the parties involved, or uncertainty about the relevant policy and legal frameworks.” Read too broadly, this definition would embrace practically all international interaction, most of which is directed in some degree at affecting the actions or view of other countries. However, it is possible to describe the problem without seeking a universal and precise definition. The term “Gray Zone” may be new; the phenomenon is not. Although many of the techniques used now are based on modern technology, notably cyber and networked communication, many are as old as history. What are now being called GZ methods have been conducted in the past under such names as “political warfare,” “covert operations,” “irregular or guerrilla warfare,” “active measures,” and the like. In some sense, the Cold War was one protracted GZ campaign on both sides on a global scale. The Trojan Horse exploited many of the instruments of a GZ operation – creating confusion and division in enemy opinion, extending ostensible inducements, implanting hidden military forces, deception, and clandestine infiltration of enemy territory. The central characteristic of GZ operations is that they involve the use of instruments beyond normal international interactions yet short of overt military force. They occupy a space between normal diplomacy and commercial competition and open military conflict, and while often employing diplomacy and commercial actions, GZ attacks go beyond the forms of political and social action and military operations with which liberal democracies are familiar, to make deliberate use of instruments of violence, terrorism, and dissembling. Moreover, they often involve asymmetry in magnitude of national interests or capabilities between the adversaries. GZ techniques include: Cyber, information operations, efforts to undermine public/allied/local/ regional resistance, and information/propaganda in support of other hybrid instruments; Covert operations under state control, espionage, infiltration, and subversion; Special Operations Forces (SOF) and other state-controlled armed units, and unacknowledged military personnel; Support – logistical, political, and financial – for insurgent and terrorist movements; Enlistment of non-governmental actors, including organized criminal groups, terrorists, and extremist political, religious, and ethnic or sectarian organizations; Assistance to irregular military and paramilitary forces; Economic pressures that go beyond normal economic competition; Manipulation and discrediting of democratic institutions, including electoral system and the judiciary; Calculated ambiguity, use of /covert/unacknowledged operations, and deception and denial; and Explicit or implicit threat use, or threats of use of armed force, terrorism, and abuse of civilian populations and of escalation. Currently, the United States can reasonably be said to face GZ campaigns in a range of theaters: Russia has mounted a variety of GZ operations, not only in Ukraine where it actually employed thinly disguised military force and support for local militias as well as other instruments, but also targeting the Baltics, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the United States, and a range of European countries with a massive campaign (including expansive use of cyber) to spread its narratives, undermine confidence in legal, economic, and electoral systems, and manipulate political action, exemplified by the FSB/GRU cyber operation that hacked into networks used by U.S. political figures and organizations in what is assessed by the U.S. intelligence community and the FBI as an effort intended to influence the recent U.S. presidential election. China is aggressively advancing its disputed maritime claims in the South and East China Seas, by both incremental establishment of “facts on the ground,” by construction and occupation of disputed features, providing material incentives to accommodate to Chinese desires, and undermining confidence in U.S. credibility by an extensive media effort. Iran in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, and from Daesh and other radical Islamist groups in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere using terror, exploiting sectarian and ethnic divisions, and otherwise seeking to disrupt the established order in the region. North Korea has over the years, repeatedly used ostensibly deniable violence, political infiltration, intimidation by threats of massive escalation, and hostage-taking to divide the Republic of Korea and the United States and protect its failing system. 28 Jan
(U//FOUO) DHS Intelligence Note: Germany Christmas Market Attack Underscores Threat to Mass Gatherings and Open-Access Venues - (U) A 25-ton commercial truck transporting steel beams from Poland to Germany plowed into crowds at a Christmas market in Berlin at about 2000 local time on 19 December, killing at least 12 people and injuring 48 others, several critically, according to media reporting citing public security officials involved in the investigation. The truck was reportedly traveling at approximately 40 miles per hour when it rammed the Christmas market stands. Police estimate the vehicle traveled 80 yards into the Christmas market before coming to a halt. (U) German authorities are calling the attack a terrorist incident, with the attacker still at large. German authorities are warning that it is unclear if the attacker was a lone offender, acted as part of a cell, or if he received any sort of direction by a FTO, and expressed concern that additional attacks are possible. An individual who was initially detained on 19 December was released on 20 December, and is no longer considered a suspect, according to German police. The truck may have been stolen or hijacked with the original driver overpowered or murdered. The original driver, found dead in the truck cab, appears to have died from stabbing and shooting wounds, according to media reporting citing law enforcement officials. The truck tracking location system indicated repeated engine stalls in the time leading up to the attack, leading the owner of the vehicle to speculate this was unlikely if a veteran driver was operating the truck, unless there was some sort of mechanical trouble. In response to the incident, German authorities, as part of their heightened security posture, will place concrete barriers around access points at Christmas markets across Germany. … (U//FOUO) Vehicle Ramming Featured in Recent Terrorist Messaging (U//FOUO) I&A assesses that the 19 December likely terrorist attack at one of the largest Christmas markets in Berlin highlights terrorists’ continued use of simple tactics and is consistent with recent calls by the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) for attacks in the West using “all available means.” In an early December audio statement, ISIL spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir called for attacks in “their homes, markets, street gatherings and anywhere they do not think of.” Vehicle ramming has been featured in recent violent extremist publications and messaging—including in ISIL’s al Rumiyah magazine and al-Qaʻida in the Arabian Peninsula’s (AQAP) Inspire magazine—especially since the mid-July vehicle ramming attack in Nice, France. The early-November third issue of Rumiyah highlighted applicable targets for vehicle ramming attacks such as “large outdoor conventions and celebrations, pedestrian-congested streets, outdoor markets, festivals, parades, and political rallies.” The most recent Homeland attack featuring this tactic occurred at Ohio State University in Columbus on 28 November, where Abdul Razak Ali Artan ran over pedestrians and then continued the attack with an edged weapon after the vehicle came to a stop. (U//FOUO) On 20 December, ISIL’s A’maq News Agency called the attacker “an Islamic State soldier” consistent with previous instances of quickly posting claims of credit for operations. While the attack bears the hallmarks of ISIL’s tactics and targets, we have not been able to determine a definitive link to the group at this time. … (U//FOUO) I&A has no information indicating a specific or credible threat against individuals, locations or events in the Homeland, but several recent plots and attacks in the United States and overseas involving shopping malls, mass transit, and mass gatherings, including sporting events, have shown that homegrown violent extremists (HVEs) and terrorist groups are interested in attacking these types of targets. I&A assesses that commercial facilities—such as festivals, concerts, outdoor events, and other mass gatherings—remain a potential target for terrorists or HVEs, as they often pursue simple, achievable attacks with an emphasis on economic impact and mass casualties. The most likely tactics in a hypothetical terrorist attack against such events likely would involve edged weapons, small arms, vehicular assaults, and possibly improvised explosive devices. The 19 December events underscore the difficulties the private sector and law enforcement face in securing venues that are pedestrian-friendly, particularly in light of the large number of such areas.16 Jan
National Intelligence Council Global Trends Assessment: Paradox of Progress - We are living a paradox: The achievements of the industrial and information ages are shaping a world to come that is both more dangerous and richer with opportunity than ever before. Whether promise or peril prevails will turn on the choices of humankind. The progress of the past decades is historic—connecting people, empowering individuals, groups, and states, and lifting a billion people out of poverty in the process. But this same progress also spawned shocks like the Arab Spring, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, and the global rise of populist, anti-establishment politics. These shocks reveal how fragile the achievements have been, underscoring deep shifts in the global landscape that portend a dark and difficult near future. The next five years will see rising tensions within and between countries. Global growth will slow, just as increasingly complex global challenges impend. An ever-widening range of states, organizations, and empowered individuals will shape geopolitics. For better and worse, the emerging global landscape is drawing to a close an era of American dominance following the Cold War. So, too, perhaps is the rules-based international order that emerged after World War II. It will be much harder to cooperate internationally and govern in ways publics expect. Veto players will threaten to block collaboration at every turn, while information “echo chambers” will reinforce countless competing realities, undermining shared understandings of world events. Underlying this crisis in cooperation will be local, national, and international differences about the proper role of government across an array of issues ranging from the economy to the environment, religion, security, and the rights of individuals. Debates over moral boundaries—to whom is owed what—will become more pronounced, while divergence in values and interests among states will threaten international security. It will be tempting to impose order on this apparent chaos, but that ultimately would be too costly in the short run and would fail in the long. Dominating empowered, proliferating actors in multiple domains would require unacceptable resources in an era of slow growth, fiscal limits, and debt burdens. Doing so domestically would be the end of democracy, resulting in authoritarianism or instability or both. Although material strength will remain essential to geopolitical and state power, the most powerful actors of the future will draw on networks, relationships, and information to compete and cooperate. This is the lesson of great power politics in the 1900s, even if those powers had to learn and relearn it. The US and Soviet proxy wars, especially in Vietnam and Afghanistan, were a harbinger of the post-Cold War conflicts and today’s fights in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia in which less powerful adversaries deny victory through asymmetric strategies, ideology, and societal tensions. The threat from terrorism will expand in the coming decades as the growing prominence of small groups and individuals use new technologies, ideas, and relationships to their advantage. Meanwhile, states remain highly relevant. China and Russia will be emboldened, while regional aggressors and nonstate actors will see openings to pursue their interests. Uncertainty about the United States, an inward-looking West, and erosion of norms for conflict prevention and human rights will encourage China and Russia to check US influence. In doing so, their “gray zone” aggression and diverse forms of disruption will stay below the threshold of hot war but bring profound risks of miscalculation. Overconfidence that material strength can manage escalation will increase the risks of interstate conflict to levels not seen since the Cold War. Even if hot war is avoided, the current pattern of “international cooperation where we can get it”—such as on climate change—masks significant differences in values and interests among states and does little to curb assertions of dominance within regions. These trends are leading to a spheres of influence world. … Competing Views on Instability China and Russia portray global disorder as resulting from a Western plot to push what they see as self-serving American concepts and values of freedom to every corner of the planet. Western governments see instability as an underlying condition worsened by the end of the Cold War and incomplete political and economic development. Concerns over weak and fragile states rose more than a generation ago because of beliefs about the externalities they produce—whether disease, refugees, or terrorists in some instances. The growing interconnectedness of the planet, however, makes isolation from the global periphery an illusion, and the rise of human rights norms makes state violence against a governed population an unacceptable option. One consequence of post-Cold War disengagement by the United States and the then-USSR, was a loss of external support for strongmen politics, militaries, and security forces who are no longer able to bargain for patronage. Also working against coercive governments are increased demands for responsive and participatory governance by citizens no longer poor due to the unprecedented scale and speed of economic development in the nonindustrial world. Where political and economic development occurred roughly in tandem or quick succession, modernization and individual empowerment have reinforced political stability. Where economic development outpaced or occurred without political changes—such as in much of the Arab world and the rest of Africa and South Asia—instability ensued. China has been a notable exception. The provision of public goods there so far has bolstered political order but a campaign against corruption is now generating increasing uncertainty and popular protests have grown during the past 15 years. Russia is the other major exception—economic growth—largely the result of high energy and commodity prices—helped solve the disorder of the Yeltsin years. US experience in Iraq and Afghanistan has shown that coercion and infusions of money cannot overcome state weakness. Rather, building a stable political order requires inclusiveness, cooperation among elites, and a state administration that can both control the military and provide public services. This has proved more difficult than expected to provide. … 15 Jan
DoD Cybersecurity Discipline Implementation Plan February 2016 - Inspections and incidents across the Department of Defense (DoD) reveal a need to reinforce basic cybersecurity requirements identified in policies, directives, and orders. In agreement with the Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the DoD Chief Information Officer (CIO) identified key tasks needed to ensure those requirements are achieved. The DoD Cybersecurity Campaign reinforces the need to ensure Commanders and Supervisors at all levels, including the operational level, are accountable for key tasks, including those identified in this Implementation Plan. The Campaign does not relieve a Commander’s and Supervisor’s responsibility for compliance with other cybersecurity tasks identified in policies, directives, and orders, but limits the risk assumed by one Commander or Supervisor in key areas in order to reduce the risk to all other DoD missions. As part of the Campaign, this Implementation Plan is grouped into four Lines of Effort. The requirements within each Line of Effort represent a prioritization of all existing DoD cybersecurity requirements. Each Line of Effort focuses on a different aspect of cybersecurity defense-in-depth that is being exploited by our adversaries to gain access to DoD information networks. The four Lines of Effort are: 1. Strong authentication – to degrade the adversaries’ ability to maneuver on DoD information networks; 2. Device hardening – to reduce internal and external attack vectors into DoD information networks; 3. Reduce attack surface – to reduce external attack vectors into DoD information networks; and 4. Alignment to cybersecurity / computer network defense service providers – to improve detection of and response to adversary activity In conjunction with this Implementation Plan, a DoD Cybersecurity Scorecard effort led by the DoD CIO includes prioritized requirements within these Lines of Effort. Although similar to and supportive of one another, they maintain two distinct reporting mechanisms with two distinct targets. Commanders and Supervisors at all levels will report their status with the requirements in this Implementation Plan via the Defense Readiness Reporting System (DRRS), allowing leadership to review compliance down to the tactical level. In contrast, the Cybersecurity Scorecard is a means for the Secretary of Defense to understand cybersecurity compliance at the strategic level by reporting metrics at the service tier. Securing DoD information networks to provide mission assurance requires leadership at all levels to implement cybersecurity discipline, enforce accountability, and manage the shared risk to all DoD missions. By including cybersecurity compliance in readiness reporting, this campaign forces awareness and accountability for these key tasks into the command chains and up to senior leadership, where resourcing decisions can be made to address compliance shortfalls. The Cybersecurity Discipline Implementation Plan and Cybersecurity Scorecard efforts are critical to achieving the strategic goal of Defending DoD information networks, securing DoD data, and mitigating risks to DoD missions as set forth in the 2015 DoD Cyber Strategy. The aforementioned line of efforts and associated tasks shall be linked to DoD Cyber Strategy implementation efforts whenever possible. The DoD Cybersecurity Campaign, reinforced by the USCYBERCOM Orders, will begin as soon as possible. Reporting on cybersecurity readiness in the scorecard and DRRS will begin as soon as possible.15 Jan
(U//LES) Homeland Security Investigations Presentation: Criminal Exploitation of Digital Currencies - What is a Virtual Currency? • An alternative financial value system involving the exchange of funds to purchase precious metals or other value base which can later be used in exchange for products and services. • Is not registered anywhere and it is not governed by any law other than arbitration private forums. • Personal data is not required. • The system focuses strictly on activities of the forum. • Information stored for two months and then permanently deleted. Types of Virtual Currencies E-Currency / E-Wallets Digital Gold Virtual World Virtual Games Merchants (FB, Amazon) Crypto-Currencies ** … 13 Jan
(U//FOUO) U.K. Ministry of Defence Guide: Understanding the Arab People - The Arab World is a vast area which is home to people from diverse cultures. The way in which people behave and interact with you will therefore vary greatly across the region. This guide discusses aspects of Arab culture that you might experience in Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, the Palestinian Territories, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Yemen. Further reading on individual countries is recommended before you deploy. Most Arabs are Sunni Muslims who speak Arabic. However, there are many different religions, ethnic and social groups in the Arab world, among them Christians, Jews, Shi’a and Sunni Muslims, Kurds, Turks and Berbers. Some of these groups have suffered oppression in their countries, but many live happily as Arabs and as part of Arab society. While some Arab countries are very conservative and have strict rules about the role of women, others are more permissive in their approach to issues like alcohol, religion and education. The familiar stereotype of the Bedouin Arab with his camel, tent, robes and blood feuds is only a small part of Arab identity and history. In fact, this traditional way of life has died out in many parts of the Arab world, and is not significant today in areas like North Africa. With the improvement in technology and social media in recent years, people across the Arab World have been exposed to other cultures to a much greater degree than previous generations. Approximately 70% of the Arab World are under the age of 30 and so the entire region is undergoing a transformation as people try to find ways to integrate their traditional cultures into the modern world. … Religious Practice. Islam affects almost every aspect of life as a Muslim Arab. People use Islamic symbols to decorate their homes and cars, carry miniature Qur’ans with them, and go on pilgrimage to various holy shrines around the Arab world. Most Arabs follow a pattern of daily prayer, celebrate Islamic festivals and holidays, and adhere to the rules of Islam. Verses from the Qur’an are memorised. In most Arab countries, Islam also affects politics and law, influencing marriage, inheritance and divorce law, as well as many aspects of business and banking. It is common to see a copy of the qu’ran on car dashboards in Muslim countries. Sharia. Sharia is the law as revealed by God and based on the philosophy laid out in the Qur’an and Hadith (the sayings of the Prophet Muhammed). It provides the legal basis for all public rituals but also guides an individual in their personal life, such as how to wash and how to behave in relationships. Sharia is interpreted for the people by religious scholars (collectively known as an Ulema). In Saudi Arabia and Sudan, sharia is interpreted very strictly and encompasses all aspects of domestic and civil law. In other countries it is integrated with other influences. For example, Tunisia is a former French colony and during that period French civil law applied. Since gaining independence the law has developed and evolved to incorporate sharia into the existing framework, resulting in a more liberal interpretation. Christians. There are an estimated 12-16 million Christians in the Arab world, representing 5-7% of the total population. Larger communities are located in Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Sudan, Jordan and Iraq. The Coptic church is the most important Christian denomination in the Middle East, and suffers from discrimination in Egypt and elsewhere. A significant minority of these Christians do not consider themselves Arabs. … 8 Jan
(U//LES) ATF Chemical Analysis of Exploding Targets - Over the past few months, ATF Agents have contacted the Forensic Lab to inquire about the chemical components of various exploding targets. To assist Agents with their inquiry, exploding targets were purchased (September 2012 to October 2012) from numerous distributors and chemically analyzed. All exploding targets contain an oxidizer and a fuel (catalyst). When these two components are properly mixed, the resulting mixture becomes a shock sensitive explosive. The exploding target oxidizers and fuels were analyzed using Infrared Spectroscopy, Scanning Electron Microscope / Electron Dispersive Spectroscopy (SEM/EDS), and X-Ray Diffraction. All analysis was supervised by Forensic Chemist John Jermain. For additional questions and information, contact John at 925.280.3607. Additional studies dealing with exploding targets will be conducted by Forensic Chemist Brittany Crane and will be published at a later date. … 7 Jan
Office of the Director of National Intelligence Background Report: Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections - “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections” is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment that has been provided to the President and to recipients approved by the President. The Intelligence Community rarely can publicly reveal the full extent of its knowledge or the precise bases for its assessments, as the release of such information would reveal sensitive sources or methods and imperil the ability to collect critical foreign intelligence in the future. Thus, while the conclusions in the report are all reflected in the classified assessment, the declassified report does not and cannot include the full supporting information, including specific intelligence and sources and methods. The Analytic Process The mission of the Intelligence Community is to seek to reduce the uncertainty surrounding foreign activities, capabilities, or leaders’ intentions. This objective is difficult to achieve when seeking to understand complex issues on which foreign actors go to extraordinary lengths to hide or obfuscate their activities. On these issues of great importance to US national security, the goal of intelligence analysis is to provide assessments to decisionmakers that are intellectually rigorous, objective, timely, and useful, and that adhere to tradecraft standards. The tradecraft standards for analytic products have been refined over the past ten years. These standards include describing sources (including their reliability and access to the information they provide), clearly expressing uncertainty, distinguishing between underlying information and analysts’ judgments and assumptions, exploring alternatives, demonstrating relevance to the customer, using strong and transparent logic, and explaining change or consistency in judgments over time. Applying these standards helps ensure that the Intelligence Community provides US policymakers, warfighters, and operators with the best and most accurate insight, warning, and context, as well as potential opportunities to advance US national security. Intelligence Community analysts integrate information from a wide range of sources, including human sources, technical collection, and open source information, and apply specialized skills and structured analytic tools to draw inferences informed by the data available, relevant past activity, and logic and reasoning to provide insight into what is happening and the prospects for the future. A critical part of the analyst’s task is to explain uncertainties associated with major judgments based on the quantity and quality of the source material, information gaps, and the complexity of the issue. When Intelligence Community analysts use words such as “we assess” or “we judge,” they are conveying an analytic assessment or judgment. Some analytic judgments are based directly on collected information; others rest on previous judgments, which serve as building blocks in rigorous analysis. In either type of judgment, the tradecraft standards outlined above ensure that analysts have an appropriate basis for the judgment. Intelligence Community judgments often include two important elements: judgments of how likely it is that something has happened or will happen (using terms such as “likely” or “unlikely”) and confidence levels in those judgments (low, moderate, and high) that refer to the evidentiary basis, logic and reasoning, and precedents that underpin the judgments. Determining Attribution in Cyber Incidents The nature of cyberspace makes attribution of cyber operations difficult but not impossible. Every kind of cyber operation—malicious or not—leaves a trail. US Intelligence Community analysts use this information, their constantly growing knowledge base of previous events and known malicious actors, and their knowledge of how these malicious actors work and the tools that they use, to attempt to trace these operations back to their source. In every case, they apply the same tradecraft standards described in the Analytic Process above. Analysts consider a series of questions to assess how the information compares with existing knowledge and adjust their confidence in their judgments as appropriate to account for any alternative hypotheses and ambiguities. An assessment of attribution usually is not a simple statement of who conducted an operation, but rather a series of judgments that describe whether it was an isolated incident, who was the likely perpetrator, that perpetrator’s possible motivations, and whether a foreign government had a role in ordering or leading the operation. … 6 Jan

Sunlight Foundation Blog

Crowsourcing a Constitution: Mexico City’s experiment in collaborative drafting - Editor’s Note: In 2016, Mexico City had the opportunity to collect a public input on a 142 page-long draft constitution that was delivered to the city’s first Constitutional Assembly. One of the the world’s largeest, busiest cities then set up about collaboratively editing the draft. Over the course of the year, traditional institutions and political practices clashed using the new tools, in the midst of a generalized public distrust in the constitutional process itself. This is the story of Mexico City’s efforts to crowdsource a constitution, as told by Bernardo Rivera-Muñozcano, a political advisor in General Counselor’s Office. The essence of any constitution is to capture a set of fundamental principles and rules that will shape public life and interactions within a society for any given moment in time. Drafting Mexico City’s constitution required a collective reflection on who we are as a city, and what we imagine for our city’s future. Having the same rights and liberties as any other State in the Republic has been a long fought social and political battle in the democratization process of Mexico’s capital city. It was not until 1997, that chilangos – as locals of Mexico City are called – got to elect their Mayor for the very first time (the head of government was previously appointed by the President) and their first local Congress. Twenty years later, the promulgation of the first local Constitution was supposed to be seen as another milestone towards the democratization of the city. But a complex local political scenario and a nationwide distrust in government raised some questions about the real utility of a new constitution for Mexico’s biggest city. In January 2016, both chambers of Congress approved a Constitutional amendment, presented by Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera, that would grant Mexico City more autonomy regarding federal authorities (though not sovereignty), through its first Constitution. This achievement was the result of a questionable negotiation process between political parties with almost no civic participation that threatened a lack of legitimacy of the Constitutional Assembly, and in general, in the whole constitutional process.  We knew that having people to participate and get involved in any public interest issues might be complicated in a society where 77% of its members don’t trust at all or show little trust in its government. Engaging people in the analysis and proposal of constitutional topics was a huge challenge given the current political and social circumstances. Acknowledging there was some public distrust in the process, the Mayor’s first action in drafting a constitution was to appoint a group of 30 individuals representing diverse spheres of the City’s life, that during 7 months would discuss and work in the first constitutional draft (called the Drafting Group). Our initial approach to generate social participation in the drafting process was to develop a collaborative editing tool where members of the Drafting Group would post essays on specific subjects with the comments and feedback generated by citizens and other experts. The Mayor instructed the city’s General Counsel to develop a mechanism that would channel opinions, ideas, and proposals generated by the people about the Constitution, with assistance from the Laboratorio para la Ciudad, Mexico City’s innovation and creativity department. The outcome was a digital platform we used for our first approach, designed both as an informative resource on the constitutional process and as a tool that would promote civic participation and systematize all citizen input on the constitution. Through an iteration process, the essays would eventually give way to the articles of the constitutional project. The support of the MIT Media Lab and the IT team of the Laboratorio was essential in adapting the PubPub platform for this task.   But the members of the Drafting Group weren’t fully convinced of the usefulness and reliability of the digital tool, and we found that essays on subjects as complex as constitutional topics proved to be unappealing to a general public. If we wanted to generate a broad and rich call for proposals,  we had to explore alternative participation channels besides the traditional collaborative editing approach to crowdsourcing. We then proposed the survey Imagina tu Ciudad as a way to materialize a collective reflection process and generate systematic inputs for the constitutional draft. In a 15-question survey, we asked participants to describe the three things that came to their minds when they thought about Mexico City. After they had identified the main obstacles for their ideal city to become a reality, the participant was asked to describe what they had to do for this vision of the City to become a reality. As expected, the results showed a big distrust in government; corruption, transportation and air pollution were identified as the city’s main challenges; and cultural sites, history and diversity, as Mexico City’s most valuable assets. Even though we thought the survey would gather the highest number of participants for our constitutional project, it was our collaboration scheme with Change.org Mexico that got the most participation. The idea behind the Change.org movement “Voces Ciudadanas en la Constitución CDMX” was simple: the Drafting Group would consider petitions launched through the Change.org platform and would give different levels of feedback to the petition-maker based on the number of signatures the petition gathered. At 5,000 signatures, the Group would send a legal and constitutional analysis of the proposal to the petition-maker. At 10,000, the participant could present their proposal to three members of the Drafting Group. The four petitions that exceeded 50,000 signatures were presented to the Mayor. This threshold-based scheme represented the first time in Mexican history that any government agency or authority had committed to react to online petitions. As of December 2016, there were more than 279,000 unique signers on more than 340 petitions with specific proposals for the Constitution. This feedback loop we generated between petition makers and top-level government officials, was highly appreciated and recognized by the participants. The collective reflection process we intended to start in our platform materialized in 76 articles of a constitutional project. Our original idea for an innovative collaborative editing tool ended up becoming a platform that would funnel different kinds of citizen input towards the co-creation of a constitutional project. During the seven months the platform was active, we learned that even if participatory channels are open, people won’t occupy them unless they’re given different mechanisms to express their opinions – participatory mechanisms that match their levels of public engagement and interest in public affairs. To me, a strong believer in open government, the lack of widespread interest in the collaborative editing tool came as disappointing but somewhat unsurprising news. When talking about the future of co-creation tools and processes in public affairs, and maybe the future of open government itself, we might want take some time to think who these tools and processes are intended for. If we don’t, the gap between the sophistication of our tools and the real interest they generate in the general public will just keep getting bigger, and the open government agenda might burst to disappointment in times of democratic effervescence, just when it is needed the most. Bernardo Rivera-Muñozcano is a Political Advisor in Mexico City’s General Counselor’s Office, where he is part of the team that oversaw the city’s first Constitution drafting. Bernardo has, as a public servant, designed and promoted innovation and open government projects, both in the legislative and executive branches. He’s a keen runner and passionate cities enthusiast. You can reach him at bernardo.riveramunozcano@gmail.com. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation. If you’re interested in writing a guest post for Sunlight, please email us at guestblog@sunlightfoundation.com 3 Feb
What we told Congress about oversight, ethics and open government - This week, the Sunlight Foundation joined a roundtable of nonprofits, Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and their staff in Congress to discuss ethics and open government. Sunlight has spoken out repeatedly on these issues in recent months, calling for the House Oversight Committee to do oversight, not threaten the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) and the presidential candidates to adopt ethical code of conduct prior to the election, as well as advocating for President Donald Trump to address his global conflicts of interest by disclosing and divesting. We were honored to be invited to share our views and hear from the Committee and other open government advocates on Tuesday. We were pleased to hear Chairman Jason Chaffetz and Ranking Member Elijah Cummings agree that the Office of Government should be fully funded, staffed and reauthorized. The House Oversight Committee has asked for specific recommendations to improve the OGE. We intend to do exactly that in the near future. Following is a summary of what Sunlight told the roundtable on Tuesday. First, we spoke about the chilling effects that comments by White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and the letter from the committee have on OGE specifically and federal civil servants in general, as documented in our list of agencies secretly directed not communicate with the public. Part of OGE’s mission is to inform the public about ethics, a matter of considerable public concern, given the number of billionaires nominated to lead agencies and the president’s conflicts of interest. We also opposed the Trump administration’s is attacks on the American free press, including repeated public attempts to delegitimize the New York Times and other publishers and media outlets as “fake news.”   Second, we said that President Trump’s recent executive order on ethics was a step backwards for open government, as it removed a mechanism requiring ethics waivers to be publicly disclosed and published online and allowed former executive branch officials to lobby the agencies they served in.   Third, we highlighted how the Trump administration’s initial approach to WhiteHouse.gov has not only failed to provide information about government staff, operations or policy, but lagged in disclosing executive actions to the public and affected government agencies when the president signs them, leading to misreporting and confusion, as the world saw this past weekend.   Finally, we brought up how President Trump’s decision to break four decades of democratic norms by refusing to disclose his tax returns set a diminished tone on ethics from the top of the federal government. We noted that without full disclosure, neither the public nor Congress will know whether the president has addressed his known conflicts or if hidden foreign entanglements have followed him into the White House. As a remedy, we recommended what we advocated for since May 2016: Congress should mandate tax return disclosure for presidential candidates. What the American public sees today in the Trump administration is the appearance of corruption created by the failure of President Trump to address the unprecedented conflicts of interest with which he entered the White House. We urged the House Oversight Committee to take preventative actions to ensure that the public does not see the reality of corruption in our federal government tomorrow. 2 Feb
Tracking collaborative policy for open data - Buffalo used the OpenGov Foundation’s Madison platform to solicit public feedback on their draft open data policy.There’s a rising trend in municipal open data. Local governments are increasingly looking for substantive ways to engage stakeholders online in the collaborative design and drafting of open data policy and programs. Sunlight has created an open spreadsheet — our Open Data Policy Crowdlaw Tracker — for tracking cases of these types of collaborative efforts (also called “crowdlaw”), and we hope this will provide inspiring examples for government officials. In 2016, Sunlight’s work on the What Works Cities initiative has included responding to local governments’ desire for support in undertaking crowdlaw practices, and we are excited to continue researching and supporting this work in 2017 and beyond! From access to collaboration As we think critically about the open data movement’s spread across US cities, it’s clear that significant progress has been made in increasing both technical and legal access to government data in cities across the country. However, the promise of open data has always been about more than simply access to datasets; it’s been about a new kind of relationship between city hall and the public, one that breeds positive community outcomes through collaboration. While we are not always seeing as many compelling examples as we would like of open data programs going beyond mere access toward something more like substantive collaboration for impact, one arena where this ethos is playing out successfully is in the collaborative development of open data policy and program-design through practices known (at least in the wonkish corner of the world that Sunlight inhabits) as “crowdlaw”. Open data crowdlaw on the rise According to the NYU GovLab, crowdlaw is “open, collaborative crowdsourced lawmaking”, further defined as “a tech-enabled approach for drafting [public policy], that offers an alternative to the traditional method of policymaking, which typically occurs behind closed doors and with little input from the people it affects.” As we have written previously, Sunlight believes that crowdlaw and open data policy make a perfect match, and, if 2016 is any indication, local governments agree. In 2016 alone, we saw examples of six local jurisdictions undertaking open data crowdlaw efforts, resulting in eight collaboratively developed open data policy drafts, nearly as many as the nine open data policy documents we had seen opened up for online feedback and co-creation in all local US governments prior to 2016. Here are those jurisdictions and the relevant policy drafts: Washington, D.C. – Although none have been adopted as of writing, in 2016 the District shared three draft open data policies online for collaborative public feedback via drafts.dc.gov, an instance of the OpenGov Foundation’s Madison tool: the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO)’s “Draft Open Data Policy”, Councilman David Grosso’s “Strengthening Transparency and Open Access to Government Amendment Act”, and the OCTO’s “District of Columbia Data Policy 0.1 (Draft)”. Las Vegas, Nev. – Adopted in April, Las Vegas’s “Policy and Procedure on Open Data” was first developed online as an open policy draft on Google Docs to allow for collaborative public feedback. Wichita, Kan. – Adopted in early September, Wichita’s “Administrative Regulation 8.4 – IT Open Data Policy” was first developed online with a “Draft Open Data Policy” version available for collaborative public feedback on drafts.wichita.gov, an instance of OpenGov Foundation’s Madison. Naperville, Ill. – Adopted in mid September, Naperville’s Open Data Policy City Council Resolution was first developed online with a draft “Open Data Policy” shared online via Madison for collaborative public and internal feedback. Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) – Adopted in October, the “San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District Open Data Resolution” was shared online in draft form via Madison for collaborative public feedback. Buffalo, N.Y. – Having made plans for online collaborative open data policy development in late 2016, the draft “City of Buffalo Open Data Policy” is now available online via Madison for collaborative public feedback, with Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown set to join city staff (as well as Sunlight and What Works Cities experts) to read, consider, and respond to public feedback during a televised work session. Largely thanks to our work on the What Works Cities initiative, Sunlight is thrilled to have been involved in directly facilitating and indirectly advising/contributing in all six of these jurisdictions’ open data crowdlaw efforts. Because of the success of this involvement, we have worked hard in 2016 to position our team to continue support for this practice in 2017 and beyond. Help us keep track of open data crowdlaw! Part and parcel with supporting open data crowdlaw practice is understanding open data crowdlaw practice and how it is shaping out in the real world. To that end, we are excited to share that Sunlight is now tracking all instances of online collaborative open data policy making in US local governments from the very first example we could find (Cook County, Ill. and Smart Chicago Collaborative’s use of RapGenius–now simply Genius–to annotate the county’s open data policy online in 2011) to the most contemporary (Buffalo, N.Y.’s use of Madison as part of a collaborative policy development process that is ongoing through January of 2017) and everything in between. Fittingly, we’d love to collaborate online with any and everyone interested as we continue to document these efforts, so we’ve compiled each instance of open data crowdlaw in an open google sheet we’re calling our “Open Data Policy Crowdlaw Tracker”. Take a look below, and please don’t hesitate to comment or email us at local@sunlightfoundation.com if you know of any instances of open data crowdlaw that we may have missed! It is our goal that in documenting this practice we will not only help our team better understand the trends, best practices, and benefits of open data crowdlaw, but will also help inspire other jurisdictions to join the list of places making online collaboration with public stakeholders an increasingly standard practice in open data policy and program design. 30 Jan
White House Office of Management and Budget missing from Trump WhiteHouse.gov - Every new administration has put its own spin on Whitehouse.gov since the website first went online way back in the 1990s. When a new President swings in, an archived version of the old site maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration remains online, but the incoming administration takes over the domain. President Donald Trump’s transition team decided to stick with the same design developed by his predecessor, but fill it with information about his administration and its policy priorities, which are — unsurprisingly — pretty different from those espoused on the Obama administration-era version of the site. But the Trump team did make at least one pretty shocking change to Whitehouse.gov: they appear to have banished some basic information about how the government works from the site — including the White House Open Government Initiative. Here’s one striking example: the entire section of the White House website devoted to the Office of Management and Budget was digitally wiped off the map. Trying to find OMB’s homepage now returns a page unavailable message urging visitors to “stay tuned” as the administration continues to update the website. Trying to navigate to the site via budget.gov re-directs to the same error message. That’s a big deal because OMB isn’t some minor part of the White House universe — it’s traditionally the largest entity within the Executive Office of the President. While OMB’s most prominent job is helping the President develop a budget, it also issues memorandums that advise federal agencies on how to carry out their roles in compliance with administration policies. Those memos provide key insights into how the government functioned in the past and still functions today. But when the Trump administration took the digital reins on January 20th, a digital archive of select memos going back to 1995 was removed from the White House website, along with everything else related to OMB other than two scant mentions on a page generally outlining the Executive Branch. This is a massive departure from how information about the office was handled over the past eight years. OMB’s online home was available via Obama’s version of Whitehouse.gov from the first day of his presidency, as shown by snapshots collected by the Internet Archive. Archives from near the beginning of President George W. Bush’s first term suggest his office also preserved a place for OMB when he took over the site, even though the Internet wasn’t yet the juggernaut it became by the time Obama took over. To be fair to Trump’s digital transition team, it’s not clear if they actually meant to erase OMB’s primary digital presence. The White House press team did not respond to an inquiry about if the office’s pages were removed on purpose and if the administration has plans to restore the information. The evidence available so far suggests that Trump’s digital team wasn’t equipped to handle the basics of transitioning the White House website — leaving open the possibility that they just didn’t realize they left out something important. For one thing, the site launched without a Spanish-language version and the related Twitter account — @LaCasaBlanca — has been silent since the inauguration. The transcripts of the three press briefings aren’t up: there is only the statement delivered by the Press Secretary on January 21st. Archived video of the briefings are available on the White House YouTube channel, as you can see below. Some features of the new Whitehouse.gov also have problems. Take the email button that appears on the Press Briefing page and some other places throughout the site, for example: clicking it turns up a “page unavailable” message rather than offering a way to sign up for email updates. (Sunlight asked a White House press secretary directly to add us to this list. We did not receive confirmation.) Broken jump links on the Executive Branch section, meant to help users more easily navigate to different parts of the page, suffer from the same problem. The White House “We the People” epetition platform remains live but there’s no associated Twitter account or comms channel. User accounts for the site also appear to have been deleted and new users have reported problems signing new petitions. Although previous administrations marked inaugurations with freshly designed digital digs, Trump’s Whitehouse.gov continues to use an open source code dubbed “FourtyFour” designed for the Obama WhiteHouse.gov. That last part isn’t necessarily a problem on its own– after all, why fix something that isn’t broken? But in the first few days of Trumps’ presidency, the administration seemed to have a hard time disclosing information about presidential actions online to the public in a timely manner. For example, although President Trump signed two executive orders on his first day in office, it took until January 23rd for even one of them to be published on Whitehouse.gov. Things had improved as of Wednesday evening — by that point information about two executive orders and eight memoranda were up — but the fact that they appear to have launched without a process for making basic online updates does not inspire confidence.  And — as the OMB example shows — the Trump transition team didn’t prioritize keeping non-political content that provides important transparency about government operations online when they inherited Whitehouse.gov. Besides OMB, pages for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) also do not appear to exist — meaning there’s no real public record of who, if anyone, actually works on those teams or is leading them now. Some of those decisions have broken incoming links from external government sites — such as those that relied on the OMB memo archive — and the broader World Wide Web, causing disruptions that ripple out beyond just Whitehouse.gov. All of those hiccups point to a new administration that wasn’t prepared to digitally hit the ground running. That said, the Trump administration reportedly does have plans to give Whitehouse.gov a facelift  —  eventually. Ory Rinat, who provided digital strategy advice to Trump’s transition team, recently told Politico that the redesign in the works will take months because the team “wanted to make sure this was done right and with the people who are going to be running the website involved.” Getting the redesign “done right” will means returning things like the OMB memos purged from Whitehouse.gov in the initial digital transition online and either using the previous URLs or setting up redirects. If it doesn’t, the good news is that the information is still available elsewhere through online caches and archives, perhaps most easily through the National Archives and Records Administration’s archive of Obama’s version of Whitehouse.gov. The bad news is that the Trump administration started its digital tenure by making it much harder for average citizens to find information about how our government actually works directly from the source. That’s a major step back for transparency. It’s a series of decisions that are stark against the background of how the Trump administration is approaching communications and disclosure of actions with the public so far. The White House and President of the United States are making claims that are baseless or easily proven false. Transition officials have issued directives for media blackouts to federal agencies, only for the Press Secretary to deny them to reporters after the directives have already been publicly confirmed by transition officials and disavowed or clarified by agencies. The Internet has an amazing capacity to open up governments to their citizens. Modern technology enables transparency, accountability, participation and engagement that was impossible before every connected person could look up information with just a few keystrokes or taps. Every administration in the Internet-era has taken some steps to expand the government’s engagement with the digital world, building on the progress of their predecessors. Continued progress in open government in the United States depends on having an administration with both the political will and the technical ability to not only be good stewards of platforms, processes and policies that make our government more accessible and accountable to the public. Judging by the Trump’s version of Whitehouse.gov to date, it’s unclear whether the new administration has either.26 Jan
Open Data Policy Wizard helps you create your own policy - One of the hardest parts of creating an open-data policy is figuring out where to start. Here at Sunlight, we have several resources to help with this, including our Open Data Policy Wizard. We already have a sample “firestarter” policy that incorporates our guidelines for open-data policies. This policy was developed in 2015 with feedback from many experts on open data, including Mark Headd, Josh Tauberer, Abhi Nemani, Ben Wellington, Joel Natividad, and Andrew Nicklin. The Wizard asks you several basic questions about your city (or other place) and then emails you a version of the sample policy that has your place’s information included in it. You also get a link to a Google Doc version of the policy, which you can directly edit. This is a starting point, not an ending point. In particular, we advise you make sure you fully understand how this policy incorporates our policy guidelines, explore other places’ policies and (perhaps most importantly) work together with community stakeholders to make sure the policy meets local needs, desires and concerns. In addition to using our sample policy, we strongly encourage people looking at create an open-data policy to check out our OpenDataPolicies.org site, which is a repository of municipal open-data policies from around the country. It's a great way to see real-world policies that have been implemented. --> We created the Wizard to support our work on the What Works Cities initiative. Several of our partners — including Salinas, Calif. — have already made use of it. We see this Wizard as a step toward our broader vision of democratic policymaking whereby citizens have tools that allow them to engage in the process more easily, and citizens, stakeholders and government officials have tools that allow for collaborative drafting of public policy.26 Jan
How federal agencies and Congress pass laws to deny individual FOIA requests - There’s a hidden process of lawmaking that is sabotaging Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Here’s how it works: Someone requests documents that a government agency does not want to release. Under current law, a judge may force an agency to comply. But, while the FOIA is pending, the agency asks Congress to pass a law allowing it to withhold the requested information. In 2014, I wanted to know if U.S. businesses had attempted to sell dangerous items, like surveillance equipment to foreign countries. If so, who was selling? And who was buying? To answer those questions, I turned to public records. To sell certain items abroad to certain countries, U.S. businesses apply for an export license from the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS).  Sometimes those requests are denied. A 2015 annual report from the BIS, in fact, showed 339 denials for the year. On October 22, 2014, I submitted a FOIA request to BIS for all export licenses that had been denied from 2000-2014. The agency, however, denied my request. While my appeal was being processed, Congress passed a law that authorized BIS to withhold my requested information. “Since you filed your appeal,” their letter read, “Congress has specifically recognized that Section 12(c) of the Export Administration Act (EAA) of 1979 is a statute covered by section 552(b)(3) of title 5, United States Code.” In their response, the Department of Commerce, of which BIS is a part, argued the EAA prohibited disclosure of the export license applications I sought. They were right. According to the Department of Justice, license applications under the EAA are exempt from disclosure. This exemption may be justified as a way to protect the integrity of the system. If export licenses become public, then that may be an incentive for businesses to withhold information from agencies like BIS, making it harder for BIS to its job. I didn’t dispute the wisdom of that, nor did I dispute the Justice Department’s interpretation of the EAA. Instead, I argued in my appeal that the EAA was expired law. I sent along a 2013 California Federal District Court decision to prove it. In that case, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit civil liberties group, had requested “records concerning the export of devices, software, or technology used to intercept or block communication.” EFF then sued for the documents. The U.S. District Court in California ruled that the EAA was a “temporary measure” that had expired in 2001. It had been reinstated many times, but it was not in effect during the trial nor when I sent my FOIA appeal on Nov. 25, 2014. The EFF’s suit is still on appeal. On Dec. 18, 2015, as part of a bill transferring U.S. naval vessels to Mexico, Congress passed a two-paragraph provision aimed at the FOIA argument I’d taken from EFF. “Certain confidentiality of information requirements of the Export Administration Act of 1979 have been in effect from August 20, 2001,” the new law stated. This was the same law that had been cited in the BIS denial letter sent to me. Eight days before the law passed, Representative Edward Royce revealed how the law was introduced on the U.S. House floor: Finally, the bill included a provision requested by the Department of Commerce to ensure that our export control regime will continue to protect sensitive information related to export licensing. In particular, it clarified that the business confidentiality protections of the lapsed Export Administration Act would remain in effect under another provision of the law and would continue to protect information related to export licensing. I emailed and called Congressman Royce’s office to ask why he believed the provision would, in his words, “protect U.S. national security and the competitiveness of American exporters.” I received no reply. I also emailed and called the Office of Information Policy, the agency responsible for FOIA compliance, and was directed to the Department of Justice spokesperson. I called and emailed the DoJ. I received no reply. I emailed and called the Department of Commerce and the Bureau of Industry and Security, asking why they had requested the provision. I received no reply. I asked EFF for comment. “The law was definitely passed with EFF’s FOIA case in mind,” Mark Rumold, an EFF staff attorney, told me in an email. “We’ve had Congress pass laws in response to our lawsuits before, but never in a FOIA lawsuit,” he added. This is not the only time Congress has intervened in public records requests. The American Civil Liberties Union sued the Department of Defense over a decade ago for photographs showing abuse and torture of detainees in U.S. overseas detention centers. In 2009, while the ACLU and DoD fought in court, Congress passed the Protected National Security Document Act, authorizing the DOD to withhold the photographs. In 2009, after an appeals court had ordered the photographs disclosed, former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri-al-Maliki “urged President Obama not to release them,” said Josh Bell, a strategist at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Center for Democracy Media. The law passed. The Secretary of Defense can now temporarily deny disclosure if a case can be made that disclosure might somehow seriously endanger national security. Some photos were released in February 2016. Then, on January 18, 2017, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said the government had not adequately shown how its threat assessment was made, concluding the Secretary of Defense’s method and standards for withholding must be explained. The lawsuit is ongoing. There may be other cases, but establishing a causal link between a single FOIA request and a provision that appears to target that FOIA is difficult. In 1998, the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmentalist nonprofit, sued for information that the Forest Service had collected on a rare bird. While the case was in federal district court, Congress passed the 1998 Parks Act, part of which states, “information concerning the nature and specific location of a National Park System resource which is endangered, threatened, or rare…may be withheld from the public in response to a request under FOIA.” The request and response appears to fit the profile of the ACLU and EFF cases. The Center for Biological Diversity, however, does not believe that to be true. “We don’t have reason to believe that it was a retaliatory measure to prevent disclosure of records specifically to the Center,” Margaret Townsend, an open government staff attorney at the center, told me. There’s also the problem of discerning motive. It’s possible, though unlikely, that the ACLU and EFF’s FOIA lawsuits were collateral damage, where Congress unintentionally denied a FOIA request as an accidental cost of doing business. This obscure process poses a problem for more than journalists and civil liberties nonprofits: it’s also a matter of judicial integrity. In April 2016, when the United States Supreme Court ruled 6-2 that an Iranian bank must pay nearly $2 million to the victims of a terror attack, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts dissented, arguing that Congress had overstepped its authority in passing a law that decided a case before the high court. “No less than if it had passed a law saying ‘respondents win,’ Congress has decided this case by enacting a bespoke statute tailored to this case that resolves the parties’ specific legal disputes to guarantee respondents’ victory,” he wrote, as reported by CNN. The law “violates the bedrock rule” that the “judicial power is vested in the judicial branch alone,” Roberts added.“The entire constitutional enterprise depends on there being such a line” between the legislative and judicial branches of government. In 2011, the Sunshine in Government Initiative compiled data showing that federal agencies had invoked more than 240 statutes to withhold information from FOIA requesters. In reporting on the data, ProPublica, a nonprofit news outlet, noted, “for years such provisions could be easily slipped into legislation without notice.” How many of those provisions were passed to disrupt pending FOIA requests is unclear, but my experience suggests there’s at least one. Daniel DeFraia is a freelance journalist and American Studies PhD student at Boston University. Previously, he worked for the Committee to Protect Journalists and before that GlobalPost.25 Jan
The White House should publish text of Presidential actions immediately online - We were glad to see the White House has finally published more of the executive orders that President Donald J. Trump has signed in office, but that’s not the 21st century standard for digital government that the American people deserves in Washington. Tweeting pictures without disclosing the text of the documents is transparency theater, not open government in the public interest. When President Trump took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution on January 20th, 2017, his new administration took over the physical and digital infrastructure of the White House. Unfortunately, the communications team that relaunched a slimmed down whitehouse.gov — the team retained the same open source architecture for public disclosure and participation – was not ready on Day One to share the new president’s first actions in office. On January 21st, the Trump administration had sections for “presidential actions“ including executive orders, memoranda and proclamations — but nothing on them. As we told McClatchy, not publishing text of the executive orders online, as has been the practice for eight years now, left millions of Americans uninformed, particularly Americans with disabilities. On January 23rd, the White House finally published one of the two executive orders that President Trump signed on his first day in office. As we told Motherboard, when a White House doesn’t publish statements, transcripts, briefings, releases, proclamations and executive orders online, they’re failing to take full advantage of the extraordinary capacity of social media and websites to inform all of the public. Depending on emailed orders to the press to inform the public falls far short of modern proactive disclosure. The Trump White House is delaying publication of executive actions, and media coverage is suffering as a result, which in turns damages public knowledge and trust. The global implications of the Trump administration’s memorandum on the Mexico City Policy were initially misreported due to lack of information. Text of President Trump’s proclamation that his inauguration was a “national day of patriotic devotion” was not available to the public until it was published in the Federal Register. The White House should publish the text of all Presidential actions on WhiteHouse.gov immediately upon the President’s signature. In 2017, the public should be able to be inform itself, in plaintext on a website that meets modern accessibility standards. Anything less invites disaster by creating the potential for disinformation and misinterpretation of legally binding directives.24 Jan
After MuckRock FOIA lawsuit, CIA publishes declassified documents online - When the Sunlight Foundation received an inquiry from the Central Intelligence Agency last week, we weren’t sure what to expect, given the recent pace of world events. The news turned out to be straightforward: the CIA was going to publish approximately 12 million declassified pages from its CIA Records Search Tool (CREST) on the Internet. This afternoon, the CIA carried through on its commitment from October 2016, making nearly a million individual archived documents available to the public online in its Freedom of Information Act reading room. The CREST collection goes back to the 1940s and the origins of the CIA, covering the Cold War, the Vietnam and Korean wars, the Berlin Tunnel project, aerial reconnaissance, and more. There’s even a section on a STARGATE project, which might lead to renewed speculation about what our federal government knows about extraterrestrial life. It’s important to emphasize that these documents aren’t new: they’ve been available to researchers at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. If this corpus of documents represented “the CIA’s secret history,” they haven’t done a particularly good job of keeping it that way over the past 17 years or so since the CREST tool first became available in 1999. The records in question have been declassified due to the provisions of Executive Order 13256, which used to be 12958, issued under President Clinton in 1995. The order required “the declassification of non-exempt historically valuable records 25 years or older.” If agency staff decided that records fell under an exemption of the Freedom of Information Act, in other words, you’re not going to find them online unless someone sued them out. The shift today is that the CIA has used the Internet to make the declassified files available to all of the public, wherever we go online. That’s not a minor shift: the impact of open government upon public knowledge and trust is predicated upon access. Declassifying millions of documents doesn’t inform anyone if they just sit in a dusty file cabinet. Given Sunlight’s decade of advocacy for more open government through technology, we took some time today to talk to the CIA’s director of information management, Joseph Lambert, a 32-year veteran of the civil service, about why the agency was broadening access beyond the walls of four computers in NARA. “The CIA is made up of American citizens just like you,” he told Sunlight, over the phone. “The people that I work with, we believe that we hold these records in trust for the American people. When their sensitivity attenuates over time, we feel we have a responsibility so the American people can judge them for themselves. It’s important that we put these source documents online.” When asked about which documents would be of the greatest public interest, Lambert noted that the materials from the Berlin Tunnel get a lot of attention in College Park. (The CIA knows this because they log file access and printing.) He also highlighted science and technology research and development files, reports from operations in the middle of the 20th century, and materials on secret writing and invisible ink. In the 21st century, we’ll now be able to see if public fascination with these aspects of spycraft endures, should the agency participate in the federal government’s Web analytics program. As more documents are declassified, the public should expect more of them to flow onto this reading room, along with other materials responsive to Freedom of Information Act requests. When asked how the agency was approaching declassification, Lambert said that they’ve been working on this over the past eight years. “We are focused on improving transparency and releasing what we can,” he went on. “We involve experts. The standard is damage to national security. We have classification and declassification guides that will guide if there will be damage. That is really the impetus for what makes it out the door and what does.” When asked if President Barack Obama’s Open Government Directive had an impact upon this work, Lambert said that it had, noting that he was involved in writing the CIA’s first open government plan, in 2010. (As we reported earlier this month, however, the CIA has not published a new open government plan since. When we called this to the CIA’s attention, Lambert said that they were “in the process of updating it now” and would follow up. We’ll note it if and when it happens.) “The focus on open government and transparency has had positive effects,” said Lambert. “We’ve had 9 declassification events. We’ve partnered with presidential libraries and major universities, and looked at our archives to see what compelling stories were there and if sensitivity had been attenuated. We’ve told stories that positive to CIA, told others where got wrong, like the Korean War. We’ve tried to get a body of work out there where American public can judge for themselves.” The challenges the agency has faced in its declassification efforts in the past, however, pale in comparison to what lies ahead, as the pace and scale of data and document creation increases. “When I was starting my job, about 2 million pages passed through my office every year,” said Lambert. “Now, it’s about 12 million pages. We are going to have to scale from tens of millions of pages to hundreds of millions of pages. We can’t do that with just people. I did the math: we would need 2.5 million people in one of my 3 divisions. We can’t just deputize all of Fairfax.” Lambert told us that the agency will be focusing on machine learning and natural language processing software to help them, bring technology to bear. “We have spent time with the Archivist of the United States and the White House on automating these efforts,” he said. What the agency’s public relations efforts left out, however, is that the public can also thank MuckRock, a nonprofit that helps people to file Freedom of Information Act requests, for today’s transparency watershed. (Sunlight provided a grant to help MuckRock started, years ago. Our investment has been more than returned by the public knowledge they have created since.) As Jason Leopold reported, MuckRock filed a lawsuit in December 2014 to gain access to the entire CREST database. “The CIA told MuckRock it would take at least six years to release all of the documents,” noted Leopold. “Frustrated, Michael Best, a journalist and researcher, launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to manually copy and scan all of the documents.” As it turned out, it took just over two years. (Here’s hoping the agency figures out how to accept FOIA requests over the Internet using a new FOIA.gov even faster, dumps that fax machine in the dustbin of history, and follows up on all outstanding FOIA requests.) While we’re not thrilled about the fact all of these documents have been published as PDFs, today is another step in the ultra-marathon that is open government in the United States. Progress is progress, and should be celebrated.17 Jan
OpenGov Voices: Making open data more accessible — three lessons from Boston - From left to right: Ben Green, Kayla Larkin and Renée Walsh setting up Boston Open Data’s pop-up table at the main branch of the Boston Public Library. (Photo credit: Howard Lim/City of Boston)How do you share open data in a meaningful way to help citizens convert data into knowledge about their city? Over the past few months, the City of Boston’s Open Data team has worked to explore this essential question by placing our computers aside. In our quest to bring the Open Data to Open Knowledge project (funded by the Knight Foundation) to life, the team set out to host conversations to learn from everyday Bostonians. Howard Lim is the project manager of the City of Boston’s Open Data to Open Knowledge initiative.Given the community’s ongoing trust in their local libraries and our ongoing partnership with the Boston Public Library, we decided to arrange these discussions to take place at neighborhood branch libraries. We set up Boston Open Data pop-up tables at five branch libraries and at the central branch to gauge the public’s ongoing concerns and knowledge about the city’s open-data work. We set up tables near entrances, adjacent to the children’s reading room, and wherever we could to speak with library patrons as they went about their busy lives. The team spoke to babysitting grandmothers, doting fathers, and busy teenagers across Boston and learned so much about how we can make Boston Open Data more accessible. We’ve shared our top three lessons below in the hopes that these lessons can be helpful to other municipalities as well.   Lesson 1: The term “open data” is confusing In our conversations, when we introduced the existence of Boston Open Data, many citizens expressed confusion about why such a platform existed. People even questioned the meaning of data itself. These insights suggest that open data by itself conveys little meaning about the underlying information. As a result, in our efforts to redevelop the City’s online sharing platform for data, we are working to sharpen our communications to convey what open data is and what it is not. By wrapping the platform with plain language (as suggested by 18F), we seek to broaden its reference and use by Boston’s citizens.   Lesson 2: Data rarely came up during our conversations When interacting with Bostonians, we found that most people seldom discuss their everyday concerns by requesting more access to City data. When asked if there was data about Boston that people wanted to see, they rarely had any requests. It’s evident that releasing City data without much context has few benefits, especially because people don’t seem to connect issues with data. As a result, in our ongoing efforts to publish City data, we seek to provide potential use cases to hopefully deepen this connection.   Lesson 3: Libraries are trusted institutions and librarians serve as gateways to building community knowledge Everyone we spoke with had nothing but positive things to say about their local library. Of course, people visited for a myriad of reasons — from paying a bill to studying for an exam — but all felt the library was an important pillar in their lives. Interestingly, we also learned that librarians have a great sense of the intellectual pulse of their communities due to their interactions with the public. For example, during one of our conversations with a librarian from Jamaica Plain (a Boston neighborhood), we got a great neighborhood perspective on civic life. Given these factors, we seek to work with librarians to provide greater public access to Boston Open Data. (Photo credit: Howard Lim/City of Boston)We want to incorporate these three lessons into our ongoing work to redevelop the City’s online portal for open data, which we plan to release by this spring. Additionally, by sharing our efforts on Sunlight’s blog, we hope to spark the open-government initiatives and transparency work found in other municipalities. Howard Lim is the project manager of the City of Boston’s Open Data to Open Knowledge initiative. Special thanks to the fellows and interns of the Boston Open Data team — Ben Green, Jean-Louis Rochet, Kayla Larkin, and Renée Walsh — who helped make these engagements come to life. You can reach him at howard.lim@boston.gov. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation.Interested in writing a guest blog for Sunlight? Email us at guestblog@sunlightfoundation.com17 Jan
Sending the wrong message to investors: Donald Trump and the rule of law - Every year, the consulting firm AT Kearney surveys executives for their opinions on where to invest. In mid- 2016, the United States topped the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Confidence Index for the fourth year in a row. AT Kearney found that global business executives are more optimistic about the economic outlook for the United States than for any other country. A significant percentage of business executives said, however, that they would reduce investment into the United States “if Americans elect a populist (far-left or far-right) president in the November election.” In November 2016, Americans elected a self-proclaimed populist president, Donald J. Trump, but the markets did not respond with fear. In the month since the election, global markets have generally risen. Analysts claim investors see opportunities in the President-elect’s plan to build infrastructure. Market actors, however, crave predictability, transparent regulatory processes, evenhandedness, and norms underpinning the rule of law. Some of the President- elect’s recent actions signal a decline in the rule of law. As a result of this signaling, foreign and domestic investment in the US is likely to decline. In countries with strong rule of law, government officials and agents, as well as individuals and private entities, are held to account. Laws and regulations are clear, publicized, stable, just, applied evenly, and protect fundamental rights. Policymakers enact, administer, and enforce the laws and regulations in an accessible, fair, and efficient manner. The court system provides a timely and even-handed approach to justice. Market actors know that although policies may change, these norms of good governance will persist. Thus, in the US, corporate investors presume that they will not be discriminated against because they hire Muslims, favor climate change accommodation, or choose to move their operations overseas. President Trump has used his words and actions in ways that undermine confidence that companies and individuals will be treated in a transparent, equitable, and accountable manner. Trump’s approach to trade policy illuminates how little he values evenhandedness and transparency, which are key norms underpinning the rule of law. In early December, Trump stressed that rather than applying the same tariffs to all companies, he would use punitive tariffs to punish companies that source overseas. First, under the Constitution, trade policymaking is a shared responsibility between the Executive and legislative branches. Congress has not indicated that it wants to single out specific companies for their production and employment decision. Hence, this approach is undemocratic, undermines longstanding US mores of evenhandedness, and violates trade commitments under the WTO, the international trade organization created by the US to discipline such practices. While it is laudable that the President elect wants to preserve jobs, executives may read into his action that the Trump Administration will act in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner. Secondly, Trump-affiliated companies are not modeling positive behavior. Trump subsidiaries and licensees make eye­glasses, perfume, cuff links and suits in Bangladesh, China, Honduras and other lower-wage countries, not in the USA. Executives may read into his actions that he is above the law and not fully committed to his own policies. In a similar manner, Trump’s refusal to put his family’s assets in a blind trust or to be fully transparent about his taxes or investments signals the wrong message about the rule of law. Without a blind trust, he risks conflicts of interest and raises questions about whether Executive Branch decisions are made in the public interest or the interest of his firm or cronies. Executives may read into this behavior that it is ok to have such conflicts of interest. Moreover, the United States may find it hard to promote good governance overseas when our new president’s approach to governance is opaque, unpredictable, and less accountable. Trump signals that his interests take precedence over the public’s right to know or the interests of other investors, who will not have the same access he and his family have to make good market decisions. Here again, his actions convey that the US will not adhere to the same levels of transparency, accountability and evenhandedness investors have long expected. Governance is not only about policy choices. It is also about signaling. President-elect Trump has indicated that he (and hence the US) are less committed to longstanding mores of good governance such as transparency, accountability and evenhandedness. Investors may send a signal in return by reducing their investments in US markets. Susan Ariel Aaronson is Research Professor and Cross Disciplinary Fellow at the George Washington University, where she teaches corruption and good governance. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation.16 Jan
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