16 June - Netvibes - oldephartteintraining

Former N.B. premier Frank McKenna to head search for next RCMP commissioner - The federal government has asked former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna to head a selection committee of up to 10 people to begin the process of finding the next commissioner of the RCMP, CBC News has learned.2:16 PM

Fuel tanker grounded in St. Lawrence west of Cornwall, Ont. - The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is investigating after a tanker grounded west of Cornwall, Ont., late Thursday night.2:15 PM

Men accused in Jeanenne Fontaine's death facing murder charges in Saskatchewan - The men charged in the shooting death of Jeanenne Fontaine are now facing separate murder charges in the death of Regina man.1:34 PM

Probation lifted at McGill's med school, but accrediting body slams program's diversity - McGill's prestigious medical school is no longer on probation, but the accrediting body that oversees the program says there are still too few minorities admitted into the program.1:34 PM

Canada enacts protections for transgender community - New federal protections for transgender Canadians are about to become law after a strong show of support for the landmark legislation in the Red Chamber.11:09 AM

Trump, Sanders stoked fear, protectionist sentiments in U.S. for years: Mulroney - Former prime minister Brian Mulroney says the new anti-globalization bent in the United States is hardly surprising, given that both left and right-wing voices have been stoking the sentiment for years.10:35 AM

Chief wants apology after Miramichi doctor posts 'disturbing' note to Indigenous patients - Chief George Ginnish of Natoaganeg First Nation in northern New Brunswick calls for an apology from a Miramichi doctor who displayed a note in his office asking "native patients" not to request tranquillizers or pain medications.10:14 AM

Alleged Yahoo hacker is considering waiving extradition hearing - K

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Ivanka Trump Pressured to Address Activists Detained in China - Late last month, three labor activists working undercover at two Huajian Group-owned factories that supply shoes to Ivanka Trump’s brand and other companies were criminally detained under accusations of the illegal use of eavesdropping equipment. The detained activists were conducting research into the factories for China Labor Watch, and reportedly discovered exceptionally adverse working conditions including a lack of worker protections, regular verbal abuse, excessive overtime, fines for sick leave, and wages below China’s legal minimum wage. Huajian, who has reportedly been gearing up to outsource China-based factory jobs to Ethiopia to save on costs, denied the allegations, and claimed that they ceased producing for the Ivanka Trump brand months ago. The U.S. state department issued a call for China to release the activists, which China’s foreign ministry responded to by defending the detention. On June 6, the AP’s Erika Kinetz reported on the denial and on the detention conditions of Hua Haifeng, one of the detained activists: Hua Chunying, spokeswoman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a regular news briefing Tuesday that the men working with China Labor Watch had been accused of using secret recording devices to disrupt normal commercial operations and would be dealt with under Chinese law. “Other nations have no right to interfere in our judicial sovereignty and independence,” she said, adding, “The police found these people illegally possessed secret cameras, secret listening devices and other illegal monitoring devices.” Hua Haifeng’s lawyer, Wen Yu, said Tuesday that all three of the activists are being held at the Ganzhou City Detention Center in southeastern Jiangxi province and that after a day and a half of waiting he was finally able to consult with his client Tuesday afternoon. “His condition inside is OK. Nobody beat him,” Wen said. “It’s just that he has to sleep next to the toilet. People go to pee all night.” He said the cell was crowded with 21 people, who have been ordered not to speak with Hua. The lawyer said he had applied for bail for Hua, who faces imprisonment of up to two years if found guilty. Then Wen was contacted by city authorities who told him not to speak with foreign media and he stopped responding to questions. [Source] On June 7, the Hong Kong Free Press’ Catherine Lai reported in more detail on the charges levied against the three activists, citing state-affiliated news outlet The Paper: Police in Ganzhou, a large city in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, said they had arrested Hua, and two other suspects named Su Heng and Li Zhao. According to The Paper, the police received a complaint from a factory saying that one of its employees had been secretly filming inside the factory. The factory suspected that its commercial secrets had been stolen. The three were summoned for questioning at a local guesthouse where they were staying on May 27 and 28. Police found watches equipped with hidden cameras and flash drives and laptop computers containing photos, audio files and footage of the Ganzhou factory in their possession, the outlet reported. The police found that Hua, Su, and Li were instructed by others and carefully planned to enter the Ganzhou factory as employees and use the spy watches to “collect internal information on production, labour, standard wages and others involving factory trade secrets, and supply it to related foreign organisations with the goal of obtaining funds from these organisations,” The Paper reported. [Source] China Labor Watch’s New York-based executive director Li Qiang has said that the conditions discovered at the Huajian factories were some of the worst his organization has seen in their over 600 probes. He has reportedly suspended the organization’s other investigations in China following the detentions, turning his attention towards their release and towards eliciting an official response from Ivanka Trump. Trump, who distanced herself from her brand after she took an official White House role, has so far not responded to queries about the situation. From a Bloomberg profile of Li Qiang, by Stephane Hoi-Nga Wong: By homing in on factories that supply Ivanka Trump-branded products, the founder of New York-based China Labor Watch thought the daughter of newly elected President Donald Trump could become a potent illustration of the problems facing Chinese workers like those employed by one of her suppliers — whom he said are often overworked, underpaid and unprotected. […] “I feel a bit lost,” said Li, 45. “It’s hard to understand why the Chinese government wanted to lock them up.” […] Li said she must address the matter [… despite her recent distance from her brand]. He said he wrote to her again on June 6, enclosing a flash drive of data and images from the Chinese factory and urging her to help secure the release of the three investigators. He has received no response from her so far. “She has the responsibility to put things right,” he said. Li has been a labor advocate since the 1990s. The son of construction workers from Sichuan province, he saw his parents treated unfairly by their company, including a refusal to pay his mother’s hospital bills. The 18-year-old studied law even as he worked as a carpenter. […] [Source] In a June 2 blogpost, China-focused legal scholar Jerome Cohen also urged more public commentary from Trump and her brand on the situation in Ganzhou: For the detained labor activists striving to improve working conditions, Ivanka Trump’s company has a moral responsibility to speak out. It would be helpful to the situation of the activists if the company would issue a statement expressing deep concern over their detention. That alone might bring about their release. In any event it would stimulate local police to treat the detained better than otherwise; detention house conditions in China are often appalling with a large number of suspects confined in a single cell in an often disgusting and personally dangerous environment. A Trump expression of concern might well result in a faster, more lenient decision about how to deal with the case.The Marc Fisher company at least made a prompt statement promising to inquire into the facts. Ivanka’s company has a moral responsibility not only to those detained but also to all workers who are exploited by Chinese companies striving to make a profit while competing with rivals to successfully respond to the demands of foreign companies for ever cheaper prices. It would also be good public relations for Ivanka to take the lead in supporting more humane working conditions. She should not see the human rights monitors as antagonists but as collaborators in the difficult effort to assure improved labor conditions. [Source] See also a June 7 Democracy Now interview with former China Labor Watch program coordinator Kevin Slater, who highlighted the connection that Trump still has with her brand as she continues to profit from it, despite any titular distance. © josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), get_post_time('Y'). | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: activists, factories, human rights activists, Ivanka Trump, labor conditions, labor rightsDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall7:23 PM

Photo: Daily Life in Beijing, by Alex Berger - Daily Life in Beijing © Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), get_post_time('Y'). | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Alex BergerDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall2:55 PM

Minitrue: Watch Sources and Comments on Kindergarten Blast - 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. With regard to the explosion in Jiangsu’s Feng county, pay attention to sourcing standards when passing on information. Review comments, and eliminate any negative related political speech. (June 15) [Chinese] At least eight were killed and 65 injured in an explosion outside a kindergarten in Xuzhou, Jiangsu on Thursday afternoon. From Philip Wen and Christian Shepherd at Reuters: The official Xinhua news agency reported that police had made a preliminary judgment that the blast was a "criminal offence" and they had identified a suspect. […] Local authorities held an early-morning press conference on Friday and said that contrary to early reports the blast did not occur while parents were picking up children after school, according to the People’s Daily. No kindergarten students or teachers were injured in the blast. […] Blasts and other accidents are common in China, because of patchy enforcement of safety rules, although the government has pledged to improve checks to stamp out such incidents. Police from Xuzhou city urged social media commentators to share only information from official channels after some users posted videos of an April explosion which they said depicted Thursday’s incident. [Source] Xinhua reports that Deputy Public Security Minister Huang Ming has been dispatched to supervise the investigation. Authorities have not yet stated whether malice or negligence is suspected. From The New York Times’ Javier C. Hernández: The blast appears likely to provoke public anger and worry about safety around schools, including dangerous chemicals, fire hazards and explosive materials. In 2001, Zhu Rongji, then the premier, apologized about an explosion at a rural schoolhouse in southeast China that killed 42 people, including 38 children. Mr. Zhu had initially dismissed reports, which turned out to be true, that the children had been making fireworks. Since then, safety around Chinese schools has generally improved. But the country’s feverish growth has created hazards. Food vendors often use portable gas tanks carried on bicycles and carts. [Some reports have cited witnesses identifying this as the source of Thursday’s explosion.] In 2013, an explosion on a cycle killed two people outside a school in the Guangxi region in southern China. Schools have been targeted in past instances, but officials made no suggestion that the explosion on Thursday was deliberate and asked people to wait for the results of a full investigation. [Source] 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: accidents, censorship, children, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, explosions, kindergarten, public safety, rumorsDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall12:12 AM

Registration of Foreign NGOs Crawls Past 1% - China’s new foreign NGO management law came into effect on January 1, bringing strict registration and oversight requirements and financial controls in exchange for tax benefits and greater legal clarity about organizations’ rights and responsibilities. Some civil society experts have argued that general alarm at the new rules is premature, but the law’s emphasis on national security and the central role of the Ministry of Public Security instead of the Ministry of Civil Affairs have left some in the sector feeling that they are regarded as “enemies of the state.” The arrest of Taiwanese NGO worker Lee Ming-che for subversion after a lengthy and opaque detention has done nothing to reassure anxious parties about the new climate, or to dispel fears that the new law is part of what NYU’s Jerome Cohen has labeled “a comprehensive legislative agenda designed to confirm China as a de facto garrison state.” At South China Morning Post this week, Nectar Gan provided an in-depth report on slow progress in the registration of foreign NGOs. Little more than one percent of the 7,000 active FNGOs have successfully registered, she wrote, and many of those still in limbo have shuttered, suspended, or relocated their Chinese operations. The lack of clarity surrounding the law has reportedly deterred government departments from agreeing to provide the legally required supervision, while the law’s national security focus continues to fuel uncertainty and unease. Many groups trying to register are running into problems – especially those working in politically sensitive areas – and have found it difficult to convince potential government sponsors to work with them due to a lack of detailed guidance on the law’s implementation and a lack of incentives for sponsors. No groups advocating human rights, workers’ rights or the rule of law have successfully registered so far. And even some of the NGOs that have registered are uncertain how strict their government supervisors will be and whether they will be able to carry on working as before. […] “We chose to stop all activities to avoid putting ourselves and partners at risk … it’s not like the law allows any wriggle room,” said [one U.S. environmental organization’s] China programme director, who asked not to be identified because her organisation was still trying to register. “If someone wanted to target you they could easily do so as the law is clear that registration is required.” […] Although the new law applies to foreign NGOs, its impact has rippled through to their Chinese counterparts, especially those who rely on overseas sources for most of their funding. […] The deputy director of the Guangzhou-based NGO said the municipal office that managed foreign NGOs and their applications had only been set up on March 1, two months after the registration process was supposed to start, and she had never seen its heavy, burgundy wooden door open. [… The Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Anthony Spires said that] “The political freedom and human rights organisations are going to have the toughest time registering under the law, for sure. Some of them have left; some of them are considering the options; some of them will continue to stay in China and do their work despite the law and won’t attempt to get registered; and then others will simply pull out because it’s just too hard.” Source The Diplomat’s DD Wu also looked at the ongoing registration process last week: On April 1 (April Fools’ Day), China’s government-run Xinhua News Agency published an article claiming that “the foreign NGOs believe the registration procedure under new law is more convenient, efficient, and simple.” The article confirmed that by April 1, 62 foreign NGOs had legally registered in China. Interestingly, it also acknowledged that more than 780 foreign NGOs have consulted with the police on registration. Now it is still uncertain what is happening to the majority of foreign NGOs operating in China: have they decided to wait to see, or to leave, or not to register at all, or they have actually applied for registration but got no reply from the Chinese police? Yet at least one thing is for certain: those organizations that haven’t received official approval are supposed to stop operating in China, technically speaking. Otherwise, they would face on-site inspection by police, examination of documents, the freezing of their bank accounts, sealing of venues, seizure of assets, temporary or permanent suspension of activities, and staff members’ detention, according to the law. Source China Development Brief has been tracking new registrations as part of its deep coverage of the law’s implementation, and recently compiled a new landing page for these reports. Early last month, CDB founder Shawn Shieh categorized the then 62 registrants by field and country of origin, finding that the majority were American or from Hong Kong or Macau, and focused on either development or trade and economics. Four of Germany’s six party political foundations are among the more recent registrants: CDB describes these as “an institution specific to Germany. Subsidized by the German government, each party political foundation is affiliated with its respective political party. They engage in international aid and volunteer training activities.” © 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, Ministry of Public Security, NGOsDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great FirewallJun 15

Photo: Shanghai, by Masaki Tokutomi - Shanghai © Samuel Wade 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 FirewallJun 15

Currency of the Week: Panbucks - The Word of the Week comes from the Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon, a glossary of terms created by Chinese netizens and encountered in online political discussions. These are the words of China’s online “resistance discourse,” used to mock and subvert the official language around censorship and political correctness. Pānbì 潘币 One Panbuck from the “SOHO Real Estate Bank of China.” SOHO China, Pan’s real estate company, is the biggest developer in Beijing. (Artist: Rebel Pepper) A fictional currency invented by netizens to mock property tycoon Pan Shiyi and simultaneously express disgust with the housing bubble. Pan is the chairman of SOHO China, China’s largest prime office real estate developer, a firm he co-founded with his wife Zhang Xin in 1995. Steve Jobs’ death on October 5, 2011 triggered an enormous reaction from Chinese netizens. On Weibo, Beijing real estate tycoon Pan Shiyi chimed in with the following post: PanShiyi (@潘石屹): Apple’s board of directors should make the following decision: To immediately manufacture iPhones and iPads that are under 1000 yuan [about US$157] so that more people can afford Apple products. This is the best way to commemorate Jobs. “苹果”董事会应该马上做一决定：大量生产1000元人民币以下一部的iPhone手机和iPad，让更多(人)用上”苹果”，这是对乔布斯最好的纪念。[Chinese] One netizen replied: @TangRouding9983 (@唐若丁9983): When Mr. Pan passes away some day, your company should offer homes that are under RMB1000 per square meter. Over a billion people will commemorate you then. 潘总哪天要也去世了，也请贵公司推出1000一平米的房子吧，十几亿人民都会纪念您。[Chinese] Pan soon deleted the original post, but his new title, “1000 Pan,” spread rapidly. Netizens turned their frustration at China’s housing bubble on Pan by naming a new form of money, the Panbuck (Pānbì 潘币, literally “Pan currency”), in his honor. The base unit of the currency is derived from @Tangrouding9983‘s suggestion: one Panbuck is equivalent to 1000 yuan per square meter. Thus, an apartment that normally costs 24,000 yuan per square meter would only cost 24 Panbucks per square meter. In May 2017, exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui, who has known connections to China’s Ministry of State Security and is engaged in a heated publicity battle with Zhongnanhai, levied allegations of bribery and bid-rigging against Pan Shiyi. Pan was one of many businessmen, media professionals, and ranking Party officials targeted by Guo’s many unverified claims in recent months. After Pan denied the allegations, Guo chided him to file a lawsuit. In June, Pan became the first to publicly strike back at Guo by filing a defamation suit against him in New York. Years after netizens created the Panbuck, resentment of the superheated real estate market and the government’s sometimes intrusive efforts to cool it down continue to fester in major Chinese cities. Helen Gao described these frustrations on Thursday in an op-ed at The New York Times: More than just a place to live, private housing in the past two decades came to underpin the aspirations of urban Chinese. Homeownership, especially in cities, proved to be a reliable investment outlet. The skyrocketing values of housing have been providing money for sickness and old age in a country where the state has largely dismantled the welfare system. Real estate profits have allowed parents to finance their children’s education abroad. But the impressive size and wealth of the propertied class belies the growing strains plaguing new home buyers. The country now has some of the least affordable housing markets in the world. The ratio of median home price to median income, a common measure of affordability, in most first-tier cities has soared to higher than that of London. […] To address the overheated housing market, city governments should stop relying on stopgap measures that encumber urban residents and just exacerbate the problem over time. Instead, they need to devise long-term structural solutions, such as delinking housing and public services like schooling, or increasing the subsidized-housing supply, to fix market imbalances. […] [Source] These issues have boiled over in separate protests in Beijing and Shanghai this week, stemming from municipal crackdowns on apartment buildings in commercially zoned districts that have set property values plummeting in recent months. Residents of the Zijinxinganxian community in Beijing’s Changping district staged two days of protest after learning that their children would be bussed to school in a less affluent area. In Shanghai, hundreds of residents reportedly took part in a tense standoff with police in a shopping district over a similar crackdown on commercial-zoned real estate, and web-users shared images of the protest along with critique of authorities. 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: currency, housing market, housing prices, pan shiyi, real estate market, word of the weekDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great FirewallJun 15

Putin Dubs Xi a “Lone Warrior”; Censors Pounce - Xi Jinping has gathered an impressive array of titles over the past four years, from the official through the avuncularly casual to the firmly unapproved. Last week, he gained another at a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the 17th Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in the Kazakh capital, Astana. Xinhua’s account of the meeting focused on the two sides’ pledges to deepen bilateral ties on various fronts, and to promote the SCO’s unity, coordination, and international influence. But Russia Today noted that most of the Chinese delegation was late to the meeting, leaving Xi and an aide to face the Russian team alone. As they waited for the latecomers, Putin jokingly labeled Xi a "lone warrior." Despite the episode’s relatively innocuous nature, it has been the subject of censorship on Chinese social media, including WeChat and Weibo. Related images as well as text comments have been targeted: images have traditionally been regarded as more resistant to automatic filtering, but a recent Citizen Lab report on censorship related to the Black Friday or 709 crackdown on rights lawyers found that this was beginning to change. The following post was deleted from Weibo, together with its comments. A selection of these gathered by CDT’s Chinese editors show users mining the incident for tongue-in-cheek political omens or broader humor: “At a meeting with Putin in Kazakhstan, the Chinese delegation was late, so Chairman Xi was left alone facing the Russian team. His translator hadn’t arrived yet either. You can see his aide Ding Xuexiang’s impatient expression. So awkward! I don’t know if it was a protocol problem on the Kazakh side or an error in the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s arrangements, but someone should take responsibility. Putin laughed that Xi was a "lone warrior"! There have been no news reports, but it’s on YouTube. This isn’t a story, it’s a big accident” [a pun on gùshì (故事, story) and shìgù (事故, accident)] JiuyueJiuDeJiu (@九月九得酒): Baobao [a nickname for Xi based on his conspicuously humble steamed bun consumption] must have been panicking, wondering if there’d been a coup BijiaoWuliaoDeSheshou (@比较无聊的射手): This photo’s already been deleted from my WeChat group BiaoShaoFeihuaBiao (@灬少废话灬): Outstanding leadership. Stood out too far. LurouFanZaiJiaGeDan (@卤肉饭再加个蛋): Pooh Bear versus the Russian Bear [a reference to a series of memes in 2013 comparing Xi and Barack Obama to Winnie the Pooh and Tigger.] ShengbanNiurouShala (@生拌牛肉沙拉): Truly, a loner XingjianXiaowu_3 (@行健小屋_3): Let the leaders go first! [A reference to an infamous cry at the Karamay theater fire in 1994, from which 20 officials escaped while 288 children died.] JijiNulizilü (@积极努力自律): Perhaps this shows us the reality patiencepeace (@patiencepeace): That does it. When loyalty is not absolute, it’s absolutely not loyalty. [Chinese] Other comments alluded to Xi’s boasts of Herculean feats of strength as a sent-down youth and prodigious consumption of international literature, and to his purportedly low level of education: ZhaoXGuoshi (@走X国师): He should have recited a list of book names from memory, or hoisted the table onto his shoulder and gone on one of his three mile runs Leyuan_Wuzei (@乐园_乌贼): The elder [Jiang Zemin] is so proficient in Russian, he doesn’t even need a translator. Then you have this guy with a middle-school educational level FeiZiLiangXiDianguoLuZhe (@肥仔梁曦掂过碌蔗): He’s brought shame to junior high schoolers ShangDangJun (@上党君): Since there’d already been a diplomatic breach, there was no need to be scared about whether he’d actually read all those books. He should have taken the chance to chat to Putin about the great works of Russian literature, as Putin had a translator there. [Chinese] Xi’s secondary schooling was cut short by the Cultural Revolution, and detractors are skeptical that his later under- and postgraduate studies at Tsinghua University were more than a fig leaf afforded by his political pedigree and later rank. As a result, some refer to him as Chūzhōngshēng (初中生), or "the junior high-schooler." Such doubts were fueled by an error in a speech last year, when he accidentally said "loosen clothing" instead of "be lenient to farmers." "Even someone with a middle school education should not have made such a mistake," the University of Pennsylvania’s Victor Mair commented at the time. © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), get_post_time('Y'). | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: censorship, kazakhstan, Russia, Russia relations, shanghai cooperation organization, sina weibo, social media, Vladimir Putin, WeChat, weibo, Xi Jinping, Xi Jinping imageDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great FirewallJun 14

Does China Have What it Takes to Be a Global Climate Leader? - Following President Trump’s announcement early this month that he would be withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate change—a non-binding pledge to limit carbon emissions that the Xi and Obama administrations played key, if reluctant, roles in creating—many were quick to point to China as a possible incoming global leader on climate action. Immediately after Trump’s announcement, The New York Times’ David E. Sanger and Jane Perlez summarized the withdrawal as “perhaps the greatest strategic gift to the Chinese, who are eager to fill the void that Washington is leaving around the world[.]” (Other analysts offered similar evaluations.) At Politico, China policy scholar Elizabeth C. Economy asks if handing China a leadership role truly is a strategic gift; if Beijing even wants the handout; and if so, whether or not they deserve it: […] The quick answer is no, no and no. True global leadership is costly: It requires vision, creativity, perseverance, deft diplomacy and often cold, hard cash. It also demands a willingness on the part of political leaders to align, and in some cases subordinate, their own narrow interests to those of the larger international community. The Chinese, including President Xi Jinping, understand this. That is why any number of Chinese analysts have been quick to reject the idea that Chinese leadership on climate change is realistic, arguing as one did, “Taking on global leadership is too much, too soon for China.” Xi Jinping, himself, is somewhat less willing to reject the idea out of hand. China as a global power shaping norms and institutions is a central element of his rejuvenation narrative. He therefore flirts with the prospect, proclaiming China ready to defend globalization and to protect the Paris climate agreement. But nowhere does Xi say that China will actually lead; that is left to others. […] [Economy outlines the good, including China’s diversification of its energy reliance and investment into green technology, its current pace at curbing emissions which show it to be ahead of track to meet the Paris pledge, and its plan to launch a CO2 cap and trade program in 2017…] Now the bad. China is still the largest emitter of CO2 on the planet by a substantial margin, contributing 29 percent of the world’s total CO2 emissions in 2015. The United States comes in a distant second at 14 percent. In addition, while Beijing is cutting back on coal-fired power plants—particularly in its wealthy and pollution-conscious coastal provinces—it is upping its count of CO2 emitting coal-to-chemical (including coal-to-gas) plants. There are 46 coal-to-chemical plants in operation and another 22 under construction that will add another 193 million tons of carbon emissions annually. A conservative estimate suggests that by 2020, such plants will contribute as much CO2 as all of Poland’s contribution to global carbon emissions, while the extreme scenario—if China builds all the coal-to-chemical plants outlined in its 13th Five Year Plan—will lead to a contribution of almost 800 million tons per year, more than German’s total carbon emissions in 2015, and equal to roughly 10 percent of China’s current CO2 contribution. [Economy continues to outline “the ugly”: China’s decidedly un-green policies abroad] […F]illing the void left by the United States must be earned, not simply granted by overeager officials and pundits. China may one day earn that right, but not today. [Source] Following a host of clean energy and green tech agreements resulting from California governor, high-profile Trump resistor, and climate change crusader Jerry Brown’s recent climate-focused diplomatic mission to China, many commentators across the globe continue to hail China as a likely successor to the mantle of global climate leadership. At the Huffington Post, Rachael Willis also disputes Beijing’s credentials to be a climate leader, and warns that Governor Brown’s climate diplomacy likely won’t be enough to shield the world from climate catastrophe: Brown is clearly willing to go to significant lengths to demonstrate that Trump’s irrational views on climate change do not reflect all American politicians. On the same day that President Trump announced his intention to exit the Paris Climate Accord, Brown was joined by the governors of New York and Washington in unveiling the United States Climate Alliance, a collection of states, cities, businesses and universities that have pledged to work with the United Nations (UN) and redouble their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Countless others will soon follow. But, no matter how many such coalitions emerge and how many international meetings are dedicated to climate change, local and state-level action is not nearly enough to offset the void left by the lack of federal support. Why? Because China is not the climate leader some hope it to be, and because local initiatives rarely form coherent global responses. In an act of unprecedented political immolation, Washington has chosen to turn its back on progress and be left by the wayside. If one thinks that China can simply pick up the mantle and shepherd the world to the Elysian ideal of a 2°C future, they can think again. As a coal-addicted developing nation, China is in no better shape to lead than the climate change-denying administration of Donald Trump. China’s banks have funded energy investment projects around the world; spending $160 billion on foreign energy infrastructure, with 53% of this investment being used to finance the construction of coal-fired power plants, outsourcing the majority of China’s pollution. Despite significant domestic progress on clean energy technologies and environmental regulatory reform, the country’s ability to establish itself as an international climate change leader is hampered by provincial and corporate interests. [Source] On the ground, China’s central leaders have been waging an official “war on pollution” for more than three years, amid which local officials have been held responsible for ecologically unfriendly policies, once secretive air quality data has become required and made public, an environmental protection law has been passed, and coal use has dropped contributing to a cut in emissions. Just as not all local authorities can be counted on to follow policies aimed at cutting pollution with full authenticity, not all Chinese companies have been operating in full accordance with pollution rules. At The New York Times, Edward Wong reports: Environmental inspectors in northern China have found that nearly 14,000 companies, or 70 percent of the businesses they examined, failed to meet environmental standards for controlling air pollution, according to a state news agency report. The inspectors working for the Ministry of Environmental Protection came up with those results after two months of work across 28 cities in northern China, said Xinhua, the state news agency. The companies and industries varied widely, including businesses such as wool processing and furniture production. More than 4,700 companies were in unauthorized locations, lacked the proper certificates and failed to meet emissions standards, said the report, which was published on Sunday. Even though Chinese leaders have vowed to crack down on polluters, the factories continue to contribute to severe levels of air, water and soil pollution. Chinese citizens cite the country’s widespread pollution as one of the issues of greatest concern to them. [Source] Elsewhere in the pages of the New York Times, Javier C. Hernández focuses on a chemical pollution scandal in Dapu, Hunan that has left 300 children with lead poisoning—another example of a massive failure to enforce central environmental policies at the local level, especially when they clash with powerful industry: After a decade in which companies in wealthier nations exported to poorer ones much of the dirty business of making hazardous substances, China is now the world’s largest manufacturer of industrial chemicals, claiming a third of global production by some estimates. But as the Chinese government has promoted the sector’s rapid growth, it has struggled with its impact on the environment. The chemical industry has quashed calls to strengthen oversight and force companies to publicly disclose what substances they produce. Local environmental bureaus are often politically feeble and understaffed. Even when companies acknowledge some responsibility for harming public health, as Meilun did, the remedies given to communities often fall far short of the victims’ needs. […] Under President Xi Jinping, the government promised a chance for people to fight back, declaring a “war on pollution” and enacting a law in 2015 to make it easier to sue companies and force them to cover the cost of cleaning up neighborhoods. The law was supposed to level the playing field by enabling nonprofit groups to file public interest lawsuits against polluters. Environmentalists heralded it as a breakthrough. But progress has been limited. In the Chinese courts, the Communist Party controls the decisions of judges, and they routinely rule on cases in consultation with officials who have a political and financial interest in the outcome. The police, at the behest of the local authorities, often harass lawyers and activists, hoping to deter them from bringing cases, advocates say. And the government decides which nonprofit groups can file public interest lawsuits. As a result, those who stand up to the chemical industry in China rarely prevail. […] [Source] © josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), get_post_time('Y'). | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: air pollution, chemical spill, climate change, global challenges, industry, international order, local officials, Paris climate summit, world powerDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great FirewallJun 14

Photo: Untitled (Shanghai), by Justine Lomba - Untitled (Shanghai) © josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), get_post_time('Y'). | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Justine LombaDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great FirewallJun 14

Photo: Shadow Puppet, Xi’an, by Mitch Altman - Shadow Puppet, Xi’an © josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), get_post_time('Y'). | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Mitch AltmanDownload Tools to Circumvent the Great FirewallJun 13

The Eyeopener from CBC Radio Calgary (Highlights)

Eyeopener Podcast for June 16, 2017 - Today's podcast: Changes to cell phone unlocking rules; McHugh House set to open in the Beltline; our beer columnist stops by with Father's Day picksJun 15

Eyeopener Podcast for June 15, 2017 - Today's podcast: Safe drug consumption site coming to Calgary; JazzYYC Festival set to begin; Alberta curler Wally Ursuliak honoured with the Order of the Rising Sun; we meet the woman behind the City of Calgary's social media accounts.Jun 14

Eyeopener Podcast for June 14, 2017 - Today's podcast: Calgary woman finds her photo on a voyeur's Twitter feed; Sears Canada looks to sell as they struggle to bring customers through the doors; efforts to save Canmore's coal mining history.Jun 13

Eyeopener Podcast for June 13, 2017 - Today's podcast: Hackers target Cowboys Casino; Angela asks kids about science; Mayoral candidate Bill Smith; K-Country residents protest logging near Longview.Jun 12

Eyeopener Podcast for June 12, 2017 - Today's podcast: Fatality inquiry into death of peace officer Rod Lazenby begins; Stephen Carter on Calgary's mayoral race; Calgarian makes it to the top of Mount Everest at age 64.Jun 11

Eyeopener podcast for Friday June 9, 2017 - Opposition Leader Brian Jean on his call for a judicial inquiry of the government's handling of the Fort McMurray fire; what works when it comes to environmental policies; details on the summer's biggest road hockey tournament; and perfect summer beer.Jun 8

Eyeopener podcast for Thursday June 8, 2017 - Cowboys talking about concussions and the Ty Pozuban foundation; we crash a James Comey watch party in Washington DC; meet one of the original volunteers of Spruce Meadows; why you can expect to hear cannons at the Military Museum this weekend.Jun 7

Eyeopener podcast for Wednesday June 7, f2017 - On today's podcast: Using psychedelic drugs to treat PTSD; one-way versus two-way streets. Which is better? We ask our Unconventional Panel; Calgarians at the Henley Royal Regatta.Jun 6

Eyeopener podcast for Tuesday June 6, 2017 - On today's podcast: Why a victim of crime was held in jail before facing her attacker; we talk to a criminologist about a recent spate of gun violence in our city; Dr. Raj Bhardwaj on fasting.Jun 5

Eyeopener podcast for Monday June 5 - Today's podcast: The Calgary connection to the London attacks; we talk about privacy rights at the U.S. border for Canadians making the crossing; and we meet the rattlesnake wrangler of Lethbridge.Jun 4

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Could the Grenfell Tower Disaster Happen in New York? - Don’t be complacent: High-rise building failures are never accidents, and contempt for the poor is global.3:54 PM

Making Sense of Trump’s Announcement About Dreamers - He left in place a policy protecting young undocumented immigrants while canceling protections for their parents. It’s unclear what’s next.3:40 PM

Officer Who Killed Philando Castile Found Not Guilty - Jeronimo Yanez, who faced a second-degree-manslaughter charge, testified that he feared for his life.3:23 PM

If the President Is Innocent, Then He Is Insane - Trump has made it impossible for Republicans to claim he is naive. Now, his behavior can only be explained by a guilty conscience or an unsound mind.2:42 PM

Donald Trump’s Childhood Home in Queens Will Have a New Tenant - The property was listed for rent on Thursday, and it’s already been snatched up.1:10 PM

Trump Announces Cancellation of Obama’s ‘Completely One-Sided Deal’ With Cuba - The president is clamping down on travel to and trade with the communist country.12:55 PM

The Pentagon Is Reportedly Going to Send 4,000 More U.S. Troops to Afghanistan - There are currently 8,400 U.S. troops in the country, along with 5,000 NATO soldiers.11:39 AM

Deputy Attorney General May Recuse Himself From Russia Probe - That would leave 

Daily Kos

Open thread for night owls: Cop acquitted in slaying of yet another black man who didn't matter - Collier Meyerson at The Nation writes—Police Officer Who Killed Philando Castile Is Found Not Guilty: When we got to the governor’s house, on Summit Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota, a hot rain exploded onto the protesters, the kind that offers no relief, no break in the weather, just an even worse humidity, if that’s possible in a Minnesota summer. I had walked along the protesters for a short distance, a block or two, from the elementary school where Philando Castile worked serving lunch to kids, to the governor’s house. At the front of the protest was Castile’s family and his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, crying as she held up a “Black Lives Matter” t-shirt—Reynolds, along with her 4-year-old daughter, witnessed a police officer shoot and kill Castile in his car after he announced to the officer that he had a licensed gun in the glove compartment. The protest was unlike any other I’d covered. It was truly diverse. There were so many residents of St. Paul’s black community there; the Castiles, a childhood friend told me, were “a big family” in St. Paul. And there were lots of people from his school, colleagues who attested to his warm and friendly character. He was one of those “perfect negroes,” I thought to myself, one of the ones you can’t mess up with a flimsy story about how he sold loose cigarettes, like Eric Garner was. “There probably wasn’t even a story raising questions about him stealing a cigarillo,” I thought to myself, sickly hopeful. Since all human beings are fallible, “perfect negroes” are an impossibility, but I thought, because I was desperate, that Philando Castile might be one. The only time I held out hope that there might be consequences for the police following the shooting death of a black American was for Tamir Rice, a child so young that to create a myth around him being a big, bad miscreant would be impossible. I was wrong there. And I’m wrong here. The “perfect negro,” a description so unfair it’s absurd, doesn’t work. The not-guilty verdict, returned after an initial deadlocked jury and after more than 25 hours of deliberation, proves that even a liberal enclave like the one Castile worked in and lived in, that having a licensed gun, like the one Castile had, that having a 4-year-old girl in the back of the vehicle he was operating, cannot bring worth to a black man’s life in the eyes of a cruelly racist justice system. [...] • An Activists’ Calendar of Resistance Events • Indivisible’s list of Resistance Events & Groups TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES QUOTATION “As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air—however slight—lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”                     ~Justice William O Douglas, 1976 letter to the Young Lawyers Section of the Washington State Bar Association TWEET OF THE DAY BLAST FROM THE PAST At on this date in 2005—GOP game plan for 2006: Okay. Now we know what the Republicans will run on in 2006. The White House accused Democratic leaders on Wednesday of obstructing President Bush's agenda in a second straight day of combative attacks against the minority party on Capitol Hill. "I think the American people reject those who simply say no and stand in the way of getting things done," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. Never mind that Republicans have the trifecta, with dominant majorities in both chambers of the legislature. What is this obstructionism that we keep hearing about So far [Bush] has been unable to gain traction in Congress over his proposals to overhaul Social Security and has had ongoing struggles over energy legislation and the proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement, among other items. On Social Security in particular, Bush has called on Democrats to offer their own proposals instead of simply attacking his, but the tactic has largely not worked. Listen, Mr. President, you have the numbers to pass your legislation in the House, but I haven't seen any of it introduced. Heck, I haven't even seen a social security bill from the White House, so I'm not sure what "plan" you're referring to. On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: A long look at the Senate Republicans’ secret Trumpcare “process,” what it means & how ridiculous their answers to simple questions about it are. Trump’s cronyism continues. More procedural damage to come in the Senate. Plus your weekend reading. x Embedded Content YouTube | iTunes | LibSyn | Keep us on the air! Donate via Patreon or Square Cash9:01 PM

Democrat pushing hateful Seth Rich conspiracy theory to run against Wasserman Schultz again - On Thursday, law professor Tim Canova announced that he would launch a primary challenge to Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Last year, Canova ran against Wasserman Schultz, who stepped down as head of the Democratic National Committee last August amid controversy, in South Florida’s safely blue 23rd Congressional District. Canova raised an insane sum from fellow Bernie Sanders backers who wanted to take their anger out on Wasserman Schultz over her perceived favortism toward Hillary Clinton during the presidential primaries. However, the well-connected Wasserman Schultz defeated Canova 57-43. (In between his two House bids, Canova didn’t rule out a primary bid against Sen. Bill Nelson, but that won’t be happening now.) Canova did, though, give Wasserman Schultz the closest race of her career, but he still fell far short. That primary took place just weeks after Wasserman Schultz left the DNC after WikiLeaks released unflattering emails stolen from the committee—at a time, in other words, when her image was at its most tarnished. But with the scandal long since faded, it’s tough to see how Canova could finish the job two years later. Moreover, while Canova tried to frame his contest as a battle between the progressive grassroots and a corrupt establishment, he himself has since become a peddler of revolting conspiracy theories. Prominent conservatives like Sean Hannity have worked themselves into a feverish froth of late insisting—without any actual evidence—that DNC staffer Seth Rich might have been murdered last year because he leaked DNC data to Wikileaks. The D.C. police and Rich’s family say that Rich’s death was the result of a botched robbery, but that hasn’t stopped Hannity from arguing that there’s something else at work—and Canova’s followed suit. Stunningly, back in January, Canova posted on Facebook that Rich “may have been the Wikileaks source of the leaked DNC emails. He was gunned down, assassinated under suspicious circumstances just days after publication of those leaked emails. Wikileaks has offered a substantial reward to help in the homicide investigation, which appears to be completely dormant.” And Canova hasn’t let it go. In March, he followed up with a since-deleted tweet declaring, “We need open nonpartisan investigation of @DWStweets lies & rigging against @SenSanders, total failure DNC 2010-16, murder of Seth Rich, etc.” Rich’s parents have repeatedly begged people to stop dragging their son through the mud to advance their own agenda, and we can only hope that Canova will listen and stop spreading these lies.8:37 PM

As NBC's reputation sinks, Alex Jones vows to release his own recordings of Megyn Kelly - Megyn Kelly’s self-inflicted Alex Jones nightmare continues. I debated whether to even share this because I loathe giving either of them a moment of attention for this repulsive, ratings-chasing episode. I am doing so because I hope it will lead to some accountability of NBC executives who have the power to pull this episode and put it in a dark, dank basement, as close to hell as they can find, for permanent storage.  As you may have heard, NBC plans to air an in-depth interview between Megyn Kelly and conspiracy theory-pushing nut job Alex Jones. The same man who has promoted vile conspiracies claiming 9/11 was an inside job, Hillary Clinton ran a pedophilia ring and by far, the most vile of them all, that the mass murder of 20 children and 6 teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary school might have been staged with actors. NBC executives have gone out of their way to defend their decision to give Alex Jones a huge platform to promote himself and his whack-a-doodle online show, all while the parents of the murder victims have made public appeals to Kelly herself, begging her and NBC to pull the plug on the episode. x Here you go @megynkelly - her name is Ana Grace Márquez-Greene. Say her name- stare at this & tell me it's worth it. @nbc #SandyHook pic.twitter.com/mKrU63KWmA— Nelba Márquez-Greene (@Nelba_MG) June 12, 20178:17 PM

ICE sweeps targeting dozens of Iraqi Christian immigrants in Detroit continue - The number of Iraqi Christian immigrants recently arrested by Donald Trump’s deportation force in the Detroit area could be as high as 100, with local community advocates warning that these deportations could mean a “death sentence” for immigrants. “If he gets sent back to Iraq,” said Julian Shamoun, whose brother is being detained, “he is being sent back to a country where a genocide is going on. We’re Christian.” And, according to Think Progress, even more ICE sweeps are expected in the next few weeks: ICE’s Detroit field office claimed in a statement to ThinkProgress that all of those arrested had criminal convictions such as “homicide, rape, aggravated assault” and others. But reports abound of ICE detaining people who lack criminals records, or whose crimes primarily involve immigration violations. Regardless, advocates say many Chaldeans arrested by ICE already served their sentences for smaller crimes years ago, and that sending them back to Iraq will only expose them to persecution. “There are laws that pertain to deportation, but there also laws that pertain to human rights,” Martin Manna, president of the Chaldean Community Foundation, told ThinkProgress. “The conditions in Iraq have worsened, they have not improved, especially for Christians.” “While ICE raids are becoming increasingly common under Trump’s administration,” notes Think Progress, “the mass detention of Iraqi Christians is peculiar in that it appears to be wrapped up in politics surrounding the stalled Muslim Ban.” In the negotiations involving Iraq getting cut from the second (and failed) version, the nation’s officials ultimately agreed to “take back Iraqi nationals living in the U.S. who are subject to final orders of removal.” Yup, Trump loves his deals, but this one could ultimately mean the persecuted Christians he said he would protect getting shipped off to possible death.7:40 PM

Gingrich says Trump 'cannot obstruct justice.' Uh, Newt? Remember that time you impeached Clinton? - So, this happened: x .@NewtGingrich speaking right now at the @PressClubDC: "The president of the United States cannot obstruct justice."— Teddy Davis (@TeddyDavisCNN) June 16, 2017 Now a flashback to 1998—when Newt was speaker of the house—and Article III from the Articles of Impeachment against Bill Clinton: In his conduct while President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has prevented, obstructed and impeded the administration of justice, and has to that end engaged personally, and through his subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or scheme designed to delay, impede, cover up and conceal the existence of evidence and testimony …  So, Newt, besides that sweet, sweet gig Callista is getting at the Vatican, what’s changed? 7:10 PM

As the Russia investigation intensifies, Trump's personal lawyer just hired a lawyer of his own - The last 24 hours in Trumpland have been a whirlwind of legal madness. First up was the news late Thursday that his vice president has enlisted a high-priced D.C. attorney to deal with the Russia investigation. Next up, Trump went on a crazy tweetstorm and inexplicably confirmed he is the target of an investigation. x I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 16, 2017 Then his campaign sent a letter to his 2016 campaign staff ordering them to preserve all records. And now comes word that Trump’s longtime personal attorney, Michael “Says Who” Cohen, has also hired his own outside counsel to deal with the investigation. Even the lawyers are getting lawyers.  x Exclusive: Trump personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, has hired his own counsel: Stephen Ryan, of McDermott, Will & Emery.- source w knowledge— Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) June 16, 2017 Katy Tur also reported Cohen will testify before the House Intelligence Committee: x Cohen will testify in front of House Intel on Sept 5. House intel source says the delay is due to scheduling and logistics.— Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) June 16, 20176:40 PM

Governors ask Senate leaders to stop Trumpcare rush - Campaign Action Might this be enough to embolden the bunch of mealymouthed "concerned" Republicans who won't stand up to Mitch McConnell on Trumpcare? Their governors—Republican and Democratic alike—are pleading with them not to destroy their home states. “While we certainly agree that reforms need to be made to our nation’s health care system, as Governors from both sides of the political aisle, we feel that true and lasting reforms are best approached by finding common ground in a bipartisan fashion,” the governors wrote in a letter to Senate leaders of both parties.   Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D), Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D), Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R), Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) signed the letter. Kasich and Sandoval are particularly notable for their warning against the current Senate GOP approach, given that senators from their states, Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.), are key votes on the bill. […] The governors are particularly concerned about the bill's Medicaid provisions. All of governors who signed the letter are from states that expanded Medicaid under ObamaCare, but the Republican bill in both chambers is set to end the federal funding for that expansion. These waffling Republican senators are getting all the cover they need from their fellow senators and now from their governors to derail McConnell's Trumpcare train. There's no excuse for them at this point to not understand the devastation the bill could bring to their constituents—their governors are telling them, point blank.6:06 PM

Cosby jury deadlock proves that some of us don't understand that consent isn't optional - The jury in the Bill Cosby case is deadlocked after 5 days of deliberation. This means that 12 people seriously cannot bring themselves to say that Cosby sexually assaulted Andrea Constand—even though he has admitted that he drugged her, put his hands down her pants, was intimate with her and that she did not agree to any of these things. This is truly frightening. It means that not only do we, as a society, have a problem separating out our own fantasies from reality about “America’s Dad” but that we also think that sex and rape are interchangeable. Both have incredibly important implications for the future and for how talk about what constitutes consent.  Obviously, the victim says that she was assaulted and Cosby says that it was consensual, but the facts aren’t really in dispute. Think about it this way: Andrea Constand came over to Bill Cosby’s house. Undisputed. Andrea Constand did not say “Bill Cosby, I’d like to have sex with you now.” Undisputed. Bill Cosby gave Andrea Constand drugs, and didn’t tell her what they were. Undisputed. Bill Cosby put his hand down her pants. Undisputed. He and she both don’t dispute that this happened. What exactly is hard about this? How is it that a woman’s right to say no, or better yet, her right to say yes is so confusing to people? Apparently, members of the jury finds this so difficult, so mind-boggling that they need the judge to clarify what reasonable doubt is. 5:46 PM

Cheers and Jeers: Rum and Resistance FRIDAY! - From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE… Late Night Snark: Must-Barf TV Edition Clip of Jeff Sessions at Intel hearing: Senator Wyden, I am not stonewallin'! Samantha Bee: That is actually true. He is not Stonewall. Stonewall Jackson happens to be the one Confederate icon Jefferson Beauregard isn’t named after. I guess his parents just ran out of space on the birth certificate. ---Full Frontal "Jeff Sessions said he doesn’t recall having any meetings with Russians at the Mayflower [Hotel]. For those of you who don’t know, 'doesn’t recall' is the Washington term meaning, 'I definitely recall and I’m in trouble.'" ---Jimmy Fallon "Sessions really seems to know nothing. Which explains why he was the first senator to endorse Trump." ---Stephen Colbert x Last Week Tonight is proudly sponsored by meatballs!Meatballs: Naked dumplings!— Last Week Tonight (@LastWeekTonight) June 11, 2017 "President Trump held a Cabinet meeting today in which each Cabinet member took turns praising the president. After hearing this, Kim Jong Un said: 'Man, even I’m not that insecure.'” ---Conan O'Brien “Fox News has announced it’s dropping its slogan Fair and Balanced. For the same reason United dropped Fly the Friendly Skies.” ---Seth Meyers Your west coast-friendly (and we really are friendly as long as you let us sniff your hand for a few seconds) edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]5:32 PM

McConnell won't even allow staff to meet with patient advocacy groups on Trumpcare - Once again, this is not normal. This is not how major legislation is done. The entire health sector—and millions and millions of people who have bodies and thus need health care—is being shut out of Mitch McConnell's Trumpcare efforts. Whether it's hospitals or physicians or advocacy groups, they are being as much kept in the dark about what the bill would do as the rest of the Senate is. This week, a group of more than 15 patients groups—including the American Heart Assn., the March of Dimes, the American Lung Assn. and the American Diabetes Assn.—asked McConnell’s office to meet with them next week, proposing any time between Friday and June 22. A representative from McConnell's office told them staff schedules were too busy, according to representatives of several of the organizations. Dick Woodruff, vice president of the American Cancer Society’s advocacy arm, said even when he and others have sat down with Republican congressional aides, it is often fruitless. "The Senate staff generally don't know anything," Woodruff said. "There are so few people who understand what is going on that having meetings isn't particularly productive. … This is such a closed process." Another representative of a leading patient group compared the experience to "talking to a wall." Here's the thing, though—this bitching about being shut out of the process sounds an awful lot like what we're hearing from Senate Republicans who are complaining but doing nothing about it. Earlier this week, The New York Time's David Leonhardt called out all of these same groups for their tepid response to Trumpcare. Where are the massive campaigns that we've seen in the past from them, taking to the public airwaves to stop this juggernaut? They've been shut out of the process—never mind there being no public hearings, they can't even get private meetings. They should be raising very public hell about that. And soon. Call your Democratic senator/s through the Capitol switchboard, 202-224-3121 and at their local offices and tell them you expect them to do everything in their power to make passing Trumpcare as painful as possible for Mitch McConnell and team.5:06 PM

Democracy Now!

Democrats Launch "Resistance Summer" Focused on Healthcare, Education & Social Security - As President Trump goes to Miami today to announce the closing down of the opening of the relationship between Cuba and the United States, that President Obama started, after 50 years, we get response from Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MI), who says Trump is "dragging us back to the failed past, that didn’t work." Ellison says opposition to Trump’s policies will be the focus of a so- called Resistance Summer announced by the Democratic National Committee.6:56 AM

Did Trump Violate Emoluments Clause from Day One by Receiving Payments to Trump Hotels, Trademarks? - We speak with Congressmember Keith Ellison, who is among nearly 200 Democratic lawmakers who are suing President Donald Trump, accusing him of violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution by accepting millions of dollars in payments from foreign governments to his companies while serving as U.S. president. The suit alleges that Trump accepted foreign payments which benefit him directly, without first obtaining consent from Congress.6:54 AM

Keith Ellison: GOP Is Pushing "Tax Cut Wrapped in Veneer of a Healthcare Bill" Under Extreme Secrecy - President Trump and top Republican lawmakers are continuing their push to repeal and replace the Affordable Heathcare Act under extreme secrecy, and some senators say they have no idea what the new version of Trumpcare will include. It is "essentially a tax cut wrapped in the veneer of a healthcare bill," argues our guest, Rep. Keith Ellison, Minnesota Democratic congressmember and co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus. He’s the first Muslim member of Congress. "Call your senator. Get involved, because this thing is probably going to go quick once it starts."6:51 AM

Rep. Ellison Responds to Scalise Shooting: Wild West Atmosphere of Firearm Regulation is Ridiculous - On Wednesday, a rifle-wielding man opened fire on Republican lawmakers during a congressional baseball practice, wounding Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and four others. The assailant, James Hodgkinson, died after officers in Scalise’s security detail fired back at him. The attack has reignited the debate over gun control. Scalise has an A+ rating from the National Rifle Association, which opposes gun-control measures. We speak with Congressmember Keith Ellison, who has been slammed by the NRA as an "Anti-Second Amendment Radical," but he says he has been mischaracterized.6:43 AM

Standing Rock Sioux Launch Wind & Solar Renewable Energy Projects After Winning Henry Wallace Award - We speak with Dave Archambault II, 45th chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and Nick Tilsen of the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, who are in New York City for the Standing Rock Sioux to receive the inaugural Henry Wallace Award, which comes with a $1 million investment in renewable energy projects, like wind and solar, from the Wallace Global Fund. "What would be a dream or goal is to have all 12 communities powered off of renewables," says Archambault. "At the community level, then at the national level, if tribes, Native tribal nations can say we are 100 percent powered and 100 percent that we consume renewable energy, that builds awareness for other communities and then maybe the nation."6:37 AM

Standing Rock Sioux Chair on Militarized Repression & Ongoing Lawsuit to Stop Dakota Access Pipeline - The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has won a major legal victory in federal court which may have the power to force the shutdown of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. District Judge James Boasberg ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration failed to conduct an adequate environmental review of the pipeline, after President Trump ordered the Army Corps to fast-track and greenlight its approval. The judge requested additional briefings next week on whether the pipeline should be shut off until the completion of a full review of a potential oil spill’s impacts on fishing and hunting rights, as well as environmental justice. The pipeline faced months of massive resistance from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, members of hundreds of other indigenous tribes from across the Americas, as well as non-Native allies. We speak with Standing Rock Sioux Chair Dave Archambault II and Nick Tilsen, executive director of the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation and a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.6:12 AM

Headlines for June 16, 2017 - Rep. Steve Scalise Remains in Critical Condition After 3 Surgeries Pence Hires Private Lawyer Amid Widening Probe of Trump Admin. Ties to Russia Pentagon Planning to Deploy Nearly 4,000 More U.S. Troops to Afghanistan Trump Slated to Roll Back Relations with Cuba Today in Miami London: Outrage Grows over Fire at Public Housing Building as Death Toll Rises to 30 Russian Military Says It May Have Killed ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi Egypt: Dozens of Activists Arrested in Raids Ahead of Planned Protests Today Trump Admin. Rescinds Deferred Action for Parents of Americans Program Pennsylvania: Jurors Deadlocked in Sexual Assault Trial of Bill Cosby Trump Taps His Family's Wedding Planner to Run Largest HUD Office in U.S. Ithaca: 28-Year-Old Transgender Woman Kendra Marie Adams Murdered Ferguson, MO: Reverend Carlton Lee, Mike Brown Sr.'s Pastor, Dies at 34 Egypt: 6 Men Sentenced to Death Based on Testimonies Extracted Under Torture6:00 AM

Rep. Barbara Lee: In Expanding Global Wars, Trump Is Creating More Havoc and Chaos & Has No Strategy - U.N. investigators say U.S.-led bombing has killed 300 Syrian civilians over the last three months in the city of Raqqa. A U.S.-led bombing campaign in Mosul has also reportedly killed dozens of Iraqi civilians over the last week alone. For more, we speak with Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California. In 2001, she was the lone vote against the Authorization for Use of Military Force after the September 11 attacks.Jun 15

Rep. Barbara Lee: Trump Should Keep Open Relations with Cuba, Not Reinstitute Failed U.S. Policy - On Friday, President Trump is expected to announce plans to roll back some of the United States’ new diplomatic and commercial relations with Cuba, which were brokered under the Obama administration. Bloomberg News reports the changes may include curbing travel between the U.S. and Cuba. Other changes may include reinstating restrictions on Americans visiting Cuba and bringing back famous Cuban goods, like cigars and rum. Officials also say Trump might demand the extradition of people who have received political asylum in Cuba, like Assata Shakur. For more, we speak with Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California.Jun 15

Rep. Barbara Lee on Shootings: We Must Reduce the Hate in This Country - House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana remains in critical condition this morning, after he and four other people were wounded Wednesday when a gunman opened fire at a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia. The lawmakers were practicing for tonight’s charity congressional baseball game when Scalise, the third-ranking Republican in the House, was shot in the hip. The gunman, who was shot dead by Capitol Hill police, has been identified as a 66-year-old white man named James Hodgkinson from Belleville, Illinois. He has a history of being arrested for domestic violence and has also made violent threats online. In one recent Facebook post, he wrote, "Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co." Hodgkinson received a license to have a gun earlier this year despite being arrested in 2006 for domestic battery and discharge of a firearm. For more on the Virginia shooting–as well as Wednesday’s shooting deaths of three UPS workers in San Francisco–we speak with Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California.Jun 15

John Perkins

Trump vs Putin: Molding Reality - We know from quantum physics, chaos theory, and modern psychology that perception governs human behavior. What we refer to as ‘mindfulness’ shares with shamanism the ability to be fully present in ways that allow us to use perceptions of reality to transform objective reality and bring us inner peace and true prosperity.  — From draft of John Perkins’ new book I’m in Russia, just finished speaking about the need to transform a Death Economy into a Life Economy at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, and listening to three days of amazing talks and discussions. I found the spirit of cooperation among people from many countries to be deeply inspiring. I was especially impressed by President Putin’s speech and his emphasis on the need to build bridges between countries in order to deal with the crises around climate change, nuclear weapons, terrorism, and internet crimes. On the other hand, Megyn Kelly, who moderated a roundtable discussion that included Putin and later broadcasted an interview with him over NBC, went on the attack. She sounded like an old-fashioned Cold Warrior as she tried unsuccessfully to get Putin to admit to rigging the US elections. Although I respect Kelly’s rights as a journalist to dig for the truth, she undermined that shortly after her session with him by her statements on an NBC broadcast that Putin had been “aggressive” and “defiant”. Yes, he was defensive when she attacked him, but he was not aggressive. Rather, he – like so many other business and government leaders at this forum – conveyed a perception of hope and cooperation, a perception that can facilitate a new reality in this world where divisiveness and rancor have pervaded for far too long. Does Russia spy on the United States? Absolutely. Am I defending Putin as a guy who wears a halo? Absolutely not. Does the United States spy on Russia? Of course; we even spy on our allies as we admitted when we were caught bugging Germany’s Chancellor Merkel and others – long before Trump even announced his candidacy. Do both countries hack other countries’ internets? What a silly question. All those actions are remnants of an old system, what I refer to as the Death Economy, a system that goes beyond economics, into politics and social structures. President Putin himself referred to the need to move from the old system to something much better when he discussed President Trump’s recent call for increased investment in NATO. Putin pointed out that NATO had been created as a counterbalance to the threats posed by the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. “There is no more Soviet Union, no more Warsaw Pact,” he said. “Why the need to increase NATO?” It is time to dump a system that results in constant strife, wars, terrorism, climate change, and outrageous inequality and injustice on every continent. What is needed today is a new system; in order to create such a new system, it is essential that we develop new perceptions of what it means to be human on this very fragile space station we call our home. Corporate executives and other economists and writers I talked to at this forum admitted that they find it challenging to be Americans at a time when the US president seems determined to increase the perception of a world divided, of an “us versus them” philosophy. And when major US media outlets like NBC hark back to attitudes that characterized the Cold War. At the same time, many were encouraged to hear President Putin, UN Secretary General Guterres, and many other business and government leaders try to reverse this perception by expressing hope that President Trump will come around in the next couple of crucial years, that he will change his mind about climate change and other issues – as he has done so many times before. Throughout this forum, I was struck by the role that perception plays in molding political, environmental, social, and economic realities. Much of my writing and speaking these days focuses on this very subject, including my upcoming webinar, How to Write a Bestseller (In Times of Crises) – Using the Power of Story to Accelerate Change and my Omega workshop, Prosperity through Creativity: Shapeshifting into a Mindful Future. I look forward to my next stop, another major economic summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, where I will speak and advocate the need to transform a Death into a Life Economy during a roundtable discussion with President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan.What role will perceptions play? Stay tuned. . . UPCOMING EVENTS July 11 – September 29: Writers’ WebinarLearn how to write a bestseller in times of crises and use the power of story to accelerate change | 4 Sessions, Tuesdays, July 11 – September 29 September 8-10: Omega Institute Workshop – Prosperity Through Creativity  Tap into your deepest creativity, honor your passions, realize your true potential, and shapeshift your ideas into projects, books, works of art, successful businesses, fruitful relationships, and ultimately the life you want.October 12-13: The 2nd Love Summit Business Conference Hear TED-style talks and participate in workshops with some of the most progressive business and thought leaders of our time. Speaker lineup: dreamchange.org/speakers. $200 off until July 1st: lovesummit2017.eventbrite.com.Jun 5

Creating Reality – Yours and the World’s - Join John at his “How to Write a Bestseller” webinar – a few spaces still available – and “Prosperity Through Creativity” September workshop at Omega. I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. – Michelangelo Michelangelo understood that creativity springs from perception. He perceived an image in the marble and – at other times – on the canvas; then he transformed that perception into artistic reality. My September 2016 blog was entitled “The Perception Bridge: Building a Better Reality.”  Since then, I’ve explored this concept – and the hope it offers for your future, our future – in great detail. I’ve discussed it with many writers, artists, philosophers, therapists, and scientists. It is the theme of the book I’m currently writing and it plays a large role in the Writer’s Webinar I’m facilitating that begins later this month, and the workshop entitled “Prosperity Through Creativity” I’ll be teaching at Omega Institute in September. The fact is that religion, culture, legal and economic systems, countries, and corporations are created and maintained by perceived reality. When enough people accept a perception or when it is codified into law, that perception changes objective reality. Before Copernican, it was an accepted “fact” that the earth was the center of the universe. The belief that we were the stewards, the lords, of a planet at the center of the universe had a profound impact on religion, science, philosophy, medicine – reality. When Copernicus proved that the earth revolved around the sun, people had to cross a new Perception Bridge. Overnight, our whole way of thinking about ourselves changed. Today our reality is molded by our perceptions of concepts expressed by words like success, sustainability, justice, democracy, capitalism, and prosperity. Individuals struggle with what it means to prosper in a world where that very word is generally understood in materialistic terms. Business executives define capitalism within very narrow and highly predatory limits and success as being solely about maximizing shareholder profits. People across the planet are challenged to envision what democracy and sustainability truly look like. Michelangelo’s genius lay in his ability to cross a Perception Bridge. His Objective Reality 1 was a hunk of marble. His Perceived Reality, the vision of an angel within the marble, transported him to Objective Reality 2 – the beautiful statue of an angel. My job as an EHM illustrates another Perception Bridge. Objective Reality 1 was that countries had resources US corporations wanted. We EHMs promoted the Perceived Reality that using those resources as collateral on loans to finance the building of infrastructure projects would create economic growth and prosperity for everyone in those countries. Government leaders used our econometric models and glowing forecasts of unfettered prosperity to sell this perception to their people. The Perception Bridge was crossed, into Objective Reality 2, a situation where economic growth did occur – at least at the statistical level, as measured by GDP. However, since GDP statistics are skewed in favor of big business and the wealthy, the fact was that only our companies and the wealthy families benefited. The rest of the population suffered. Money was diverted from education, health care and other social services to pay interest on the loans. National resources were exploited by foreign companies. In many cases this has led to political unrest, resentment, and the rise of various forms of radicalism and terrorism. I recently spent time with Dr. Deepak Chopra, a cardiologist by training who has gained world-wide fame as a philosopher and advocate of new ways to look at medicine and the world, and Dr. Menas Kafatos, a physicist who specializes in cosmology, quantum mechanics, and climate change. The three of us were teaching at the same venue in the Bahamas the week the book they co-authored, You Are the Universe, was published. We spent lots of time discussing the impact perception has on reality. A sentence in their book echoes Michelangelo: “Words aren’t stored in a physical state in brain cells; instead, they exist invisibly but ready at hand – in a virtual state. . .” When you come right down to it, just about everything we humans do originates in that virtual state – which is another way of saying that our words, art, ideas, and actions are driven by perception. Sculptures, books, music, medicines, computers, rockets that fly to other galaxies – they all are germinated by perceptions. Human perceptions have created the wars, pollution, species extinctions, social injustices and other crises that currently threaten our planet. Your perceptions have created the life you are currently living. Since writing that September blog, I’ve traveled to many countries and spoken at a variety of venues – ranging from a dinner for billionaire real estate executives at an outrageously plush California resort to a rock concert in the jungles of Costa Rica (and just about everything in between!). I’ve seen how perceptions are changing. We humans collectively are waking up to the realization that in order to survive we must rise to a higher consciousness. And we humans individually are waking up to the realization that we can in fact realize prosperity – however we define it – through our own creativity. All we have to do is look at where we want to go, at the angel hiding in our version of Michelangelo’s marble, our current objectivity, and then create and cross a Perception Bridge that takes us to the new reality we desire. You can do it for yourself. You and I can do it for the world. Upcoming Events Writer’s Webinar “How to Write a Bestseller”4 sessions, every Tues. from July 11 – Sept 29, 2017 // 7 PM – 8:30 PM EST Do you want to write a bestseller that accelerates change? In my upcoming writer’s webinar, I will share my experiences of many years of writing bestsellers to help you improve your skills, get published, and reach large audiences. This writer’s salon is limited to 24 participants and there are just a few spots left. Reserve yours today. Omega Workshop “Prosperity Through Creativity”September 8 – September 10, 2017 // Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, NY Tap into your deepest creativity, honor your passions, realize your true potential, and shapeshift your ideas into projects, books, works of art, successful businesses, fruitful relationships, and ultimately the life you want. To register, click here.May 17

Join Me This Fall at the #LoveSummit2017 - The Love Summit has the potential to be one of the most provocative, most transformational get togethers you have ever participated in. — Dan Wieden, Creator of Nike’s slogan “Just Do It”, Co-Founder & Chairman, Wieden+Kennedy This October 12-13, join me and my nonprofit organization, Dream Change, for our 2nd Love Summit business conference at LPK headquarters in The Queen City Cincinnati! We’ll be covering the latest trends in heart-centered enterprise—exhibiting how #BottomLineLove business practices can help solve the most pressing social, environmental and economic issues of our time. Join us for: Game-changing TED-style talks by some of the most pioneering business and thought leaders of our time; Interactive breakout sessions for hands-on, experiential learning; And fun networking events to build and broaden your network. The summit will sell out, so reserve a spot for you and your colleagues soon. I had the privilege of hosting the 1st Love Summit with my dear friend, Dan Wieden — creator of Nike’s slogan Just Do It, and co-founder and chairman of Wieden+Kennedy. As Dan says, “The Love Summit has the potential to be one of the most provocative, most transformational get togethers you have ever participated in.” I couldn’t agree more. Please join us for another amazing event! Save $200 by registering before July 1. Watch the short video below to hear Dream Change’s executive director, Samantha Thomas, and me explain more about the Love Summit conference and cause. See you in Cincinnati!May 13

Media Monarchy

#MorningMonarchy: June 16, 2017 - Typo terror, hail Caesar and mystery theatre + this day in history w/OK Computer and our song of the day by Queens Of The Stone Age on your Morning Monarchy for June 16, 2017.2:57 PM

#MorningMonarchy: June 15, 2017 - Another attack, towering infernos and the Dark Knight dies + this day in history w/the Manson trial and our song of the day by The Black Angels on your Morning Monarchy for June 15, 2017.Jun 15

#MorningMonarchy: June 14, 2017 - Defibrillator drones, chemical straightjackets and reversing death + this day in history w/In God We Trust and our song of the day by Courtney Barnett on your Morning Monarchy for June 14, 2017.Jun 14

#MorningMonarchy: June 13, 2017 - Malware power, Sirius stake and Apple sauced + this day in history w/the Pentagon Papers and our song of the day by Tuxedo on your Morning Monarchy for June 13, 2017.Jun 13

#MorningMonarchy: June 12, 2017 - Portland militia, constitution rewrite and Saber Guardian + this day in history w/Medgar Evers assassinated and our song of the day by Death From Above on your Morning Monarchy for June 12, 2017.Jun 12

#MorningMonarchy: June 9, 2017 - Blockbuster brands, 'Music Mafia' and 'American Made' + this day in history w/the Hollywood Madam and our song of the day by Living Colour on your Morning Monarchy for June 9, 2017.Jun 9

#MorningMonarchy: June 8, 2017 - Ghost ship, gay demons and groping Cosby + this day in history w/USS Liberty 50 and our song of the day by She-Devils on your Morning Monarchy for June 8, 2017.Jun 8

#MorningMonarchy: June 7, 2017 - Old as dirt, pink slime trial and death caps + this day in history w/R. Kelly arrested and our song of the day by Secret Sisters on your Morning Monarchy for June 7, 2017.Jun 7

#PumpUpThaVolume: June 6, 2017 - Media Monarchy plays Eliot Lipp, Mux Mool, Michael Hix and more on #PumpUpThaVolume for June 6, 2017. ♬Jun 6

#MorningMonarchy: June 6, 2017 - Stingray sniffers, Reality Winner(s) and doughnut drones + this day in history w/the first drive-in and our song of the day by Brazilian Girls on your Morning Monarchy for June 6, 2017.Jun 6

NATO Latest News

NATO Secretary General to visit the Republic of Lithuania - The NATO Secretary General, Mr. Jens Stoltenberg, will visit the Republic of Lithuania on Tuesday, 20 June 2017.3:44 AM

'Australia is a highly valued, reliable and respected Partner’, says Chairman of the NATO Military Committee - General Petr Pavel, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee visited Sydney and Canberra while in Australia 9 to 14 June 2017. During his visit, the Chairman met with Mr. Brendan Sargeant, Acting Secretary of the Department of Defence; Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, the Chief of the Australian Defence Force; Vice Admiral David Johnston, Chief of Joint Operations; Major General Gavan Reynolds, Australia’s Military Representative to NATO; Commodore Luke Charles-Jones, Acting Australian Fleet Commander; Captain Ashley Papp, Commanding Officer of HMAS Canberra; The Honourable Dr. Brendan Nelson, Director of the Australian War Memorial; and Major General Simone Wilkie, Commander of the Australian Defence College. General Pavel also attended a meeting of the Special Chiefs of Service Committee.Jun 15

Norway strengthens scientific cooperation with NATO partners - Scientists and experts from Norway and NATO partner countries discussed opportunities for practical cooperation to address common emerging security challenges during a Science for Peace and Security (SPS) Programme Information Day held in Oslo on 14 June 2017. Successful cooperation between Norway and NATO’s SPS Programme included activities in the areas of Women, Peace and Security and unexploded ordnance (UXO) detection.Jun 15

Director General of the NATO International Military Staff addresses the Black Sea and Balkans Security Forum - Lieutenant General Jan Broeks, Director General of the NATO International Military Staff (DGIMS) visited Romania on 9-11 June 2017. During his visit, Lieutenant General Broeks addressed the Black Sea and Balkans Security Forum and held staff talks with Romanian officials.Jun 13

Energy experts brief the North Atlantic Council - Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller welcomed three eminent energy experts to NATO Headquarters on Tuesday (13 June 2017) for discussions on global energy developments and their security implications.Jun 13

Secretary General welcomes Prime Minister Zaev to NATO Headquarters - Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed Prime Minister Zoran Zaev to NATO headquarters on Monday (12 June 2017) for talks on the partnership between the Alliance and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia¹. The Secretary General congratulated Prime Minister Zaev on his appointment and welcomed the formation of a new government.Jun 12

NATO partners with Polish university for e-learning - Cuiavian University in Wloclawek, Poland agreed on 7 June 2017 to support NATO’s work with partners on defence education through advanced distance learning (ADL).Jun 12

Deputy Secretary General discusses European security and NATO-EU cooperation in Prague - NATO’s Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller called for increased complementarity between the European Union and NATO in tackling today’s security challenges at the Defence and Security Conference, held today (09 June). At the event held in Prague, she spoke alongside Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker and EU High Representative Federica Mogherini.Jun 9

Montenegro joins NATO as 29th Ally - Montenegro became NATO’s newest member on Monday (5 June 2017), upon depositing its instrument of accession to the North Atlantic Treaty with the US State Department in Washington DC. At a ceremony marking the occasion, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg underlined that Montenegro’s accession to the Alliance contributes to international peace and security, and sends a strong signal that NATO’s door remains open. The ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Duško Marković and by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Montenegro Srdjan Darmanović and was hosted by the United States Undersecretary for Political Affairs Thomas A. Shannon.Jun 9

Visit to NATO by the Prime Minister of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia¹ - The NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will meet with the Prime Minister of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia¹, H.E. Mr. Zoran Zaev on Monday, 12 June 2017.Jun 9

National Post

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‘I’m sorry I shot you:’: Teen who killed four in La Loche apologizes at sentencing hearing - MEADOW LAKE, Sask. — A teenager who killed four people and injured seven others during shootings at a home and a high school in northern Saskatchewan apologized Friday to those who died, those who survived and their families. People wept as the teen addressed each of his victims at a hearing to determine if he is sentenced as an adult or a youth for his actions in La Loche in January 2016. The teen tearfully said if he could talk to teacher Adam Wood, who died from his injuries, he would tell him he was sorry. “If he was here right now, I would say to him: ‘I didn’t really know you, but I heard you were a good person, a kind person … and I’m sorry I shot you. You were not a target.”‘ The teen said the same about teacher’s aide Marie Janvier, who also died, and apologized to her mother. “I’m sorry I ruined your life and took your daughter away. All she wanted to do was help students,” he said to Jackie Janvier, who sat through every day of the two-week sentencing hearing. Some of the seven survivors are students who can’t be named. About substitute teacher Charlene Klyne, the teen said he was sorry for shooting her while she was sitting in her classroom. “I’m sorry for ruining your life that day,” he said. “You weren’t someone who was a target.” Klyne lost all vision in her left eye, can only see dark shadows in her right eye and has numerous pellets lodged in 13 different spots from her jaw to her chest. She’s been told it’s too risky to have surgery to remove the pellets. She was not in court. The teen said he didn’t know what he was thinking when he pulled the trigger. Earlier Friday, a neuropsychologist testified for the defence that the teen had an IQ of 68, which is considered well below average. Dr. Monty Nelson said “thinking quickly was a major difficulty” for the teen. A defence psychiatrist testified that the teen has symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, an intellectual disability, major depressive disorder and displays signs of fetal alcohol syndrome. A child psychiatrist who testified for the Crown said the teen did not come across as being clearly developmentally delayed or slow. The teen — who cannot be named because he was just shy of his 18th birthday when the shooting occurred — killed brothers Dayne and Drayden Fontaine in a home before shooting up the high school where Wood and Janvier died. Related Motive for La Loche teen’s deadly shooting spree still a ‘puzzle’: psychiatrist ‘Cold-blooded killer’: Court hears graphic details at sentencing hearing for La Loche shooter ‘Get out of here!’: The story from inside the La Loche school shooting During the first week of the sentencing hearing in May, an agreed statement of facts detailed the shooter’s murderous path from the home to the community’s high school. Court heard Dayne, 17, pleaded for his life before he was shot 11 times, including twice in the head. Drayden, 13, was shot twice. Surveillance footage captured his frightening walk through the halls, his shotgun raised, as students and staff ran in fear. When police arrived, the shooter ran into a women’s washroom where he put his weapon down and gave himself up. He pleaded guilty last fall to two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of second-degree murder and seven counts of attempted murder. The teen told court he knows the boys’ mother forgives him. “I know she knows I am sorry for what I did.” Court heard from Alicia Fontaine last month. She said the teen called her two days after the shooting to apologize and she forgave him. Lawyers are to make final submissions to Judge Janet McIvor on Aug. 25. McIvor said she would release her decision and sentence the shooter in La Loche, but no date was set. La Loche Mayor Robert St. Pierre suggested McIvor should consult the community first. “There’s some mixed emotions,” the mayor said outside court. “A lot of people have expressed they’d like to have it in La Loche for some closure, and some have expressed they would rather not have it in La Loche because it will dredge up bad memories and bad emotions.”29 min

Police officer cleared in shooting death of black motorist that was streamed on Facebook - ST. PAUL, Minn. — A Minnesota police officer was cleared Friday in the fatal shooting of Philando Castile, a black motorist whose death captured national attention when his girlfriend streamed the grim aftermath on Facebook. Castile’s family stormed out of the courtroom after the verdict was read, and the city of St. Anthony swiftly announced plans to dismiss Officer Jeronimo Yanez, despite his acquittal. Yanez was charged with manslaughter in the death of Castile, a 32-year-old school cafeteria worker, during a July 6 traffic stop that turned deadly seconds after Castile alerted the officer that he was carrying a gun. Castile had a permit for the weapon. “The fact in this matter is that my son was murdered, and I’ll continue to say murdered, because where in this planet (can you) tell the truth, and you be honest, and you still be murdered by the police of Minnesota,” his mother, Valerie Castile, said, referring to the fact that her son was shot after he volunteered to Yanez, “Sir, I have to tell you, I do have a firearm on me.” “He didn’t deserve to die the way he did,” Philando Castile’s sister, Allysza, said, through tears. “I will never have faith in the system.” A few hundred people gathered Friday evening at the nearby state Capitol to protest the verdict. The mixed-race crowd, including many people with children, carried signs that read “Unite for Philando” and “Corrupt systems only corrupt.” Diamond Reynolds via Facebook/APA police officer points a gun at Philando Castile after shooting him during a traffic stop on July 6, 2016 in Falcon Heights, Minn. John Thompson, who worked with Castile in St. Paul’s public schools, stirred the crowd with profanity-laden remarks screamed into a microphone. “You all murdered my friend and got away with it!” he shouted. “He got away with murder!” City officials in St. Anthony said they would offer Yanez a “voluntary separation” because they had concluded “the public will be best served” if he is no longer an officer there. Jurors deliberated for about 29 hours over five days before reaching the verdict. Prosecutors argued that Yanez had overreacted and that Castile, a school cafeteria worker, was not a threat. Yanez, who is Latino, testified that Castile was pulling his gun out of his pocket despite his commands not to do so. The defense also argued Castile was high on marijuana and said that affected his actions. Yanez stared ahead with no reaction as the verdict was read. Afterward, one of his attorneys, Tom Kelly, said the defense was “satisfied.” “We were confident in our client. We felt all along his conduct was justified. However that doesn’t take away from the tragedy of the event,” Kelly said. Related Calm in the face of death: Diamond Reynolds’ remarkable live streaming of boyfriend’s shooting by police Minnesota governor: Philando Castile would still be alive if he weren’t black Minnesota police officer fatally shoots man during traffic stop, aftermath broadcast on Facebook Prosecutor John Choi, who made the decision to charge Yanez, said he knows the acquittal is painful for many people, but that the verdict “must be respected.” “I don’t doubt that Officer Yanez is a decent person, but he made a horrible mistake from our perspective, and that’s what this case was about. I know that if he could, he would take back what he did, and we all wish, and he would too, that this never happened,” Choi said. Castile’s shooting was among a string of killings of blacks by police around the U.S., including two other cases on trial this week in Ohio and Wisconsin. The livestreaming of its aftermath by Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, who was in the car with her then-4-year-old daughter, attracted even more attention. The public outcry included protests in Minnesota that shut down highways and surrounded the governor’s mansion. Castile’s family claimed he was profiled because of his race, and the shooting renewed concerns about how police officers interact with minorities. In reaction to the verdict, Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton offered his condolences to the Castile family, calling his death “a terrible tragedy” in a statement that made no mention of Yanez. Dayton drew criticism in the days after the shooting for suggesting that Castile might not have been shot if he was white. The evidence included squad car video, but its wide view didn’t capture exactly what happened inside the car – leaving jurors to essentially decide whether they believed Yanez when he said Castile had his hand on the gun. Prosecutors questioned whether Yanez had even seen it, and witnesses testified that it was in a pocket of Castile’s shorts when paramedics pulled him from the car. He didn’t deserve to die the way he did Juror Dennis Ploussard said the jury was split 10-2 early this week in favor of acquittal. They spent a lot of time dissecting the “culpable negligence” requirement for conviction, and the last two holdouts eventually agreed Friday on acquittal. He declined to say whether he thought Yanez acted appropriately, but said the jury sympathizes with the Castile family. “We struggled with it. I struggled with it. It was very, very hard,” Ploussard said, adding that he thought the jury delivered the right verdict. He would not identify the two early holdouts, but said they were not the jury’s only two black members. The rest of the jurors were white. None was Latino. Yanez was charged with second-degree manslaughter, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, though sentencing guidelines suggested around four years would have been more likely. Yanez was also cleared of lesser counts related to endangering Castile’s girlfriend and her daughter for firing his gun into the car near them. Yanez testified that he stopped Castile in the St. Paul suburb of Falcon Heights because he thought he looked like one of two men who had robbed a nearby convenience store a few days earlier. Castile’s car had a faulty brake light, giving the 29-year-old officer reason to pull him over, several experts testified. The squad-car video shows Yanez approaching Castile’s car and asking for a driver’s license and proof of insurance. Castile appears to give something to Yanez through the driver’s side window. Castile then informs the officer he’s carrying a weapon, but before he finishes his sentence, Yanez has his hand on his own gun and is pulling it out of the holster. There is shouting, and Yanez screams, “Don’t pull it out!” before he fires seven shots into the car, five of which hit Castile. Prosecutors say Castile’s last words were: “I wasn’t reaching for it.” After shooting Castile, Yanez is heard on the squad-car video telling a supervisor that he didn’t know where Castile’s gun was, then that he told Castile to get his hand off it. Yanez testified that he meant that he didn’t see the gun at first, then saw it in Castile’s “right thigh area.” He said Castile ignored his commands to stop pulling it out of his pocket. Yanez’s voice choked with emotion as he talked of being “scared to death” and thinking of his wife and baby daughter in the split-second before he fired. Prosecutors argued that Yanez could have taken lesser steps, such as asking to see Castile’s hands or asking where the gun was. Reynolds testified that she began recording the shooting’s aftermath because she feared for her life and wanted to make sure the truth was known. Defense attorneys pointed to inconsistencies in several of her statements.9:37 PM

‘Evil glamour’: How Anita Pallenberg nearly broke up the Rolling Stones during ill-fated Toronto trip - Anita Pallenberg, known as a muse to the Rolling Stones, came close to breaking up the band during a fateful 1977 trip to Toronto. The actress and model, who died Tuesday at age 75, travelled with the Stones on tour and frequently took heroin with Keith Richards, her longtime boyfriend. She and Richards had three children and lived together from 1967 until 1980. Once called an “evil glamour” by Jagger’s former lover Marianne Faithfull, Pallenberg has been credited with shaping the band’s image in popular culture. In 1977, the Rolling Stones visited Toronto to secretly record a live album at the El Mocambo club. Richards was heavily using heroin at the time, although he later claimed that Pallenberg was unaware that he had bought a large stash of heroin in Toronto. Pallenberg brought 28 pieces of luggage on the trip, inviting the suspicion of police in the airport. RCMP officers searched her luggage and found hashish and traces of heroin, according to Rolling Stone magazine. They began an investigation that led them directly to Keith Richard’s hotel room three days later. AP/Blaise EdwardsKeith Richards at a Toronto press conference in 1978, following his sentencing for a heroin bust the year before. On Feb. 27, 1977, officers from the RCMP and Ontario Provincial Police raided Richards’ room (he claims they slapped him to wake him up from a daze) and found cocaine and 26 grams of heroin in his room. He was arrested and faced a minimum seven-year sentence for possessing cocaine and heroin with intent to traffic, Rolling Stone reported. Canadian authorities intended to pursue the maximum penalty — life in prison — which would have broken up the Rolling Stones. York County Judge Lloyd Graburn eventually ruled that jailing Richards would be inappropriate because he was seeking treatment for drug addiction and provided “long-term benefit” to the community, Rolling Stone magazine reported at the time. Richards claimed in his 2010 memoir Life that a blind woman made an appeal to the judge for leniency after Richards had made arrangements to care for her safety at concerts. Richards received a one-year suspended sentence and was placed on a year’s probation, and charges of possession with intent to traffic were reduced to mere possession. He was also ordered to play a benefit concert for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s estranged wife Margaret Trudeau was also spotted at the Rolling Stones’ hotel, which became the subject of tabloid speculation. When Prime Minister Trudeau was told she had arrived in a limousine alongside Mick Jagger, he sighed and said, “I hope that she doesn’t (also) start to see the Beatles.” An anonymous confidant for the Rolling Stone magazine later said some members of the band blamed Pallenberg’s “erratic behaviour” at airport customs and her drug arrest for Richards’ conviction. Mick Jagger also blamed her for Richards’ drug addiction, and she became somewhat of an outcast to the band. The final straw for Richards was in 1979, when 17-year-old Scott Cantrell — who was later rumoured to be having an affair with Pallenberg — shot himself in the head while he was with her in Keith Richards’ New York home. McCarthy/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesRolling Stone Keith Richards and his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg, on Dec. 9, 1969. Keith Richards wrote in his 2010 memoir that “the story goes” they were playing Russian roulette, although Cantrell’s death was officially ruled a suicide. Pallenberg was charged with possessing stolen property and an unregistered weapon. “I didn’t feel anything,” Pallenberg later told The Guardian about his death. “That’s one of the wonders of drugs and drink.” Although Pallenberg was cleared of any responsibility for Cantrell’s death, her relationship with Richards was over. They split up in 1980. The German-born model met the Rolling Stones in 1965 when she managed to get backstage during a concert in Munich, Germany. She dated then-guitarist Brian Jones for two years, but he was reported to have been physically abusive. She and Richards started a relationship during a trip from Morocco to England in 1967. Brian Jones was pushed out of the band in two years later in 1969, and he was found dead in a swimming pool later that year. Pallenberg was also rumoured to have had a brief affair with Mick Jagger while making the film Performance in 1970, although she denied it. She and Richards had a son named Marlon and daughter name Dandelion, who later changed her name to Angela. Pallenberg’s third child, a son named Tara, died in infancy in 1976. With files from the Daily Telegraph and the Washington Post Related ‘The sixth Stone’: Anita Pallenberg, Keith Richards’ partner and muse to the Rolling Stones, dead at 73 The hidden history of how the Rolling Stones pulled off their legendary secret El Mocambo show9:08 PM

Survivors, witnesses recall horror and heartache of London high-rise fire - The fire in Grenfell Tower had been raging for about an hour when the mother half-way up the building ran out of options. Clutching her baby, she leaned out of the window and screamed to the firefighters and onlookers below. She had no choice. The flames had engulfed the building and thick smoke was pouring out the windows. Somebody would have to catch her baby. She dropped her child out of the window. It is not clear if anybody managed to catch the child. James Wood, a 32-year-old graphic designer who lives opposite, watched the horror unfold. “The most traumatic part was seeing the children at the window screaming for help. Then the rooms would just go up in flames,” he told The Telegraph. “There was a woman hanging her baby out of the window, about mid-way up the tower. She was crying out. She wanted to drop the baby and was trying to make sure there was a safety net.” From his vantage point, Wood could not see what happened next and whether the baby lived or died. Natalie Oxford/AFP/Getty ImagesFlames engulfs the Grenfell Tower early June 14, 2017 in London. Some residents knotted together sheets to make ropes that were woefully short and not strong enough. Others, according to eyewitnesses, tried to manufacture makeshift parachutes from bin bags and bedding and then leapt out of windows, hoping their falls would be slowed enough to survive. Survivors who fled down the smoke and fire-filled central staircase – the only staircase in the tower block – told of the “hell on earth” of stepping over bodies to make their way to safety. The fire had broken out at just before 1am at the 24-storey tower block in an impoverished neighbourhood in Britain’s wealthiest borough. More than 600 people were living in 120 flats in the block. Their escape route was a single staircase at the building’s centre. The cause of the fire will be subject to a lengthy investigation but one survivor said it had begun on the fourth floor, the result of a fridge that exploded. Aalya Moses’s doorbell rang at about 12.50am. It was her neighbour in flat 16, banging on the door. “He was shouting that his flat was on fire,” she said. She raced out the building. Mahad Egal, who lives on the fourth floor, led his wife and two young children to safety, reaching the ground floor at about 1.10am. Egal said: “The fire started on the fourth floor. My neighbour told me it was his fridge that exploded. “We were one of the first 10 families who got out. At this point the fire was no higher than an average tree.” Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty ImagesPedestrians look up towards Grenfell Tower, a residential block of flats in west London on June 14, 2017 Interviewed by the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire, tearful Egal could not contain his distress. “At first it seemed it was controllable, but really quickly the fire started to rise as the cladding caught fire,” he said. “The stairwells were full of smoke, dark, scary… some lights weren’t working. It is incredible we survived.” He lamented the friends and relatives who had not made it out. “So many people were left; we had so many relatives and families who were still trapped, calling and saying, ‘Please let the fire services know that we are still here.’ “There was a kid that called and said he was trapped in his room. There were people jumping out of the place; a man who threw two of his children out.” As the fire spread, residents were in two minds about what to do. The official advice posted in communal hallways told them not to evacuate. “There is a ‘stay put’ policy for residents unless the fire is in or affecting your building,” the guidance stated. Related London high-rise fire has done what terror attacks couldn’t: opened a divide in Britain Anger is palpable in the streets of London as death toll from Grenfell apartment fire swells to 30 Amid anger following deadly London high-rise fire, a search for the missing and for answers On the 14th floor, Zainab Dean and her two-year-old son Jeremiah were being told to stay where they were. She telephoned her brother Francis Dean, 47, at about 2am to tell him a fire had broken out. “I told her to leave by the stairs but she said she had been told to stay inside her flat,” said Dean, “That was in the early hours of today and I’ve not heard from her since. I fear the worst. I’m so upset. Jeremiah was a wonderful boy; always happy, always smiling. He loved playing football with me.” Dean raced to the scene. As he was speaking to his sister a firefighter grabbed his phone. “He told her to keep calm and that they were coming to get her. He kept saying that to her again and again,” he said. “But then he handed me the phone and said to me, ‘Tell her you love her’. I knew then to fear the worst. The phone went dead and I couldn’t talk to her.” Others ignored the official advice. Jamal Ali, 28, said his aunt, Zainab Ali, had been told by police to stay in her flat but she had ignored them, fleeing to safety with her five children. “The police were telling her to stay inside, but she ran down the stairs with her kids and managed to get away – otherwise she’d be dead.” Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty ImagesDebris falls from the burning Grenfell Tower block in London on June 14, 2017. On the seventh floor, Mickey Paramasivan, 37, was woken by the stench of burning plastic. He described the chaos as he grabbed his girlfriend Hannah West and her five-year-old daughter Thea and made their way down the one cramped staircase. “It was horrendous. There were explosions everywhere you looked; lots of bangs, blue gas coming out everywhere you looked,” he said, “About 12 floors up I saw three children waving from a window and then there was just an explosion and they disappeared. They were three kids. They were banging on the windows – you could see their silhouettes – and then ‘bang’; it just went up.” Confusion had reigned. “There was one woman on the 12th floor who left with her six kids. When she’s got to the ground floor, there’s only four of them with her,” said Paramasivan. To others it felt like a repeat of the attack on the Twin Towers. Muna Ali, 45, said: ‘I have never seen anything like it. It just reminded me of 9/11. The fire started on the upper floors… oh my goodness, it spread so quickly,; it had completely spread within half an hour.” Photographs suggested the fire had grabbed hold in different places at different speeds. On the north and west sides, the tower block was gutted from the fourth floor upwards. On the south side, the damage was extensive from the 13th floor upwards. Lower storeys on the east side also escaped the worst. About an hour into the incident, 82-year-old Ali Yawar Jafari, his wife and daughter decided to evacuate their flat on the 11th floor. The pensioner decided to take the lift. One floor into his journey, the old man was overcome by smoke and decided to get out of the lift. He has not been seen since. His son Hamid Ali Jafari said: “The lift stopped on the tenth floor and he said that there was too much smoke and he couldn’t breathe and he got out of the lift and then the doors shut and it didn’t stop again till the ground floor.” Down below Wood watched survivors trying to scramble higher up the building. “After a few hours you could see a few people had got together and moved into the very top left flat, all into one room. They were all at the window flashing their phones,” he said. A photograph taken at 3.15am showed two people stuck in a flat on the 23rd floor, waving frantically for help while flames appeared around them. They appeared to have little or no chance of survival. On the ground, firefighters were frustrated. More than 200 firefighters and 40 engines tried to tackle the “unprecedented” inferno. They pulled 65 out; other residents escaped unaided. Fire crews could not fight the fire from inside the building because the flames were licking up the sides where the cladding, recently fit as part of a pounds 10 million refurbishment, was in place. Hoses from the ground floor could not reach the upper storeys. By 2am, parents were desperate. Bystanders watched them trying to save their children by dropping them. Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty ImagesFire engulfs the Grenfell Tower early June 14, 2017 in west London. Joe Walsh, 58, said: “I saw the parent throw two kids out of the window. I don’t know where they landed because I was on the other side. I doubt anyone caught them. I hope they did. It wasn’t that high up – the fifth or sixth floor.” Eye witness Tiago Etienne, 17, told how he saw several small children flung by their desperate parents. “I looked from my flat opposite the tower and saw about three young children being thrown from some of the burning flats,” said Etienne, “Thank God they were caught by people standing below. The kids were aged between four and eight. I couldn’t see whether it was firefighters or just the public who caught them but I think they survived. It was awful. I could hear people screaming and kids screaming.” Samira Lamrani witnessed a woman trying to save her baby by dropping the child from a window “on the ninth or 10th floor”. It is not clear if it was the same incident as others had witnessed. “People were starting to appear at the windows, banging and screaming,” she said. “A woman was gesturing that she was about to throw her baby and if somebody could catch her baby. Somebody did, a gentleman ran forward and managed to grab the baby.” From below, the public shouted their support. “We were reassuring them,” said Lamrani, “but obviously the look on their face was death. “My daughter’s friend said she observed an adult who made some sort of homemade parachute and tried to lower himself out of the window.” Those trapped used their phones to shine a light outside, notifying fire crews where they were trapped. Video footage showed one firefighter trying to reach windows on a cherry picker as burning debris rained down on him. Denise Bloomfield, 37, who was evacuated from a nearby flat, said: “There were people who were just surviving… and waiting for the fire to take them, just waiting to die.” Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty ImagesAn automated hose sprays water onto Grenfell Tower, a residential tower block in west London that was caught in a massive, deadly fire on June 15, 2017. Throughout the night, the fire crews worked and the death toll rose. At noon, 11 hours after the rescue operation had begun, there was a brief moment of respite. A partially-sighted man, thought to be in his 70s, had been waving for attention using an improvised white flag, made from his sweater, out of the window of the 11th floor. His image had been captured on television and broadcasters had shown him waiting for help. Miraculously the fire and smoke missed his flat. Shortly after 12pm, the man was photographed being carried to safety by firefighters as police officers protected them from falling debris with riot shields. It is not known how many will have perished in the fire. But the death is expected to be “significantly higher” than the 12 officially confirmed dead. A community leader, who did not wish to be named, suggested nobody on the top three floors would have survived. “It’s possible there are more than 50, possibly hundreds,” he said. Last night, rescue workers began the grim task of bringing out the bodies. It is an operation that will take days. The repercussions will last years.8:35 PM

London high-rise fire has done what terror attacks couldn’t: opened a divide in Britain - Recent months have given the British plenty of reason to be knocked off kilter. In March, a terrorist struck in the shadow of Big Ben. Last month, a suicide bomber blew up concert-going children and their parents in Manchester. Two weeks ago, jihadis plowed a van into London Bridge pedestrians before going on a stabbing rampage through a busy pub district. If anything, the attacks hardened British resolve, as people headed back out to pubs and concerts in a spirit of defiance and took to social media to mock the notion that a few miscreants with knives could leave their nation reeling. But where bombs and vehicles and knives failed, a horrific fire this week in a London apartment block has succeeded in opening a deep divide in British society. On Friday, working-class Londoners outraged at the loss of life in the Grenfell Tower fire – 30 confirmed dead and dozens missing — took to the streets. They heckled Prime Minister Theresa May, calling her a coward as she visited survivors, stormed a town hall and, as dusk approached, gathered outside the charred apartment block, demanding justice and accusing authorities of negligence. “We need answers and we need answers now,” one man said through a megaphone. “This should not be happening in the United Kingdom, this should never happen.” Carl Court/Getty ImagesProtesters in London attend a rally on Friday calling for justice for those affected by the deadly Grenfell Tower fire. A high-rise housing hundreds of families should not go up like a tinderbox, not anywhere and certainly not in an industrialized country with the best technology at its disposal. But the fire has exposed that in London, blocks apart, live two different worlds. Labour MP David Lammy, who lost a friend in the fire, said the tragedy is proof of the disintegration of the safety net that protected the country’s most vulnerable. “This is a tale of two cities,” he told Channel 4 News. “This is what Dickens was writing about in the century before the last, and it’s still here in 2017. It’s the face of the poorest and most vulnerable.” He said his friend, a young artist named Khadija Saye, died with her mother, trapped on the 22nd floor of the Grenfell. “It breaks my heart that that’s happening in Britain in 2017,” he said. The Grenfell Tower is in North Kensington a district ranked among the 10% poorest in England. Completed in 1974, the 24-storey building provided subsidized council housing to roughly 600 people in 120 apartments. But it is not far from posh mansions that sell for millions of pounds, many bought by foreign owners who rarely inhabit them. In fact, overall the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea is London’s richest, and its less fortunate residents have long felt they were an afterthought. Seb/WENN.comThe burned-out Grenfell Tower in London. Some have accused the borough of seeking to squeeze the poor out by failing to provide adequate housing. In 2015, a tenants’ rights group accused the borough of “social cleansing” when it proposed buying affordable housing for the poor outside city limits. John Elledge of the New Statesman reports that the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea was the worst in London and third worst in England in increasing its housing stock, adding just 1 percent between 2004 and 2014. “It is – let’s be charitable about this – not obvious that RBKC has gone out of its way to meet its duty of care to its poorer residents,” Elledge wrote Friday. Authorities cannot say they weren’t warned. Last November the same group that accused the borough of social cleansing, the Grenfell Action Group, warned that apartment blocks in the neighbourhood were firetraps. They said residents had received no proper fire-safety instructions and were informed by a notice in the elevator to remain in their apartments in the event of a fire. “The Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord,” it wrote on its blog, warning later of “an incident that results in serious loss of life.” Related The anger is palpable in the streets of London as death toll from Grenfell apartment fire swells to 30 Amid anger following deadly London high-rise fire, a search for the missing and for answers An exploding refrigerator is believed to have ignited the fire, but fire safety experts suspect its rapid spread was aided by cladding that had recently been installed on the building’s exterior to spruce it up. “They really don’t care about us,” one resident told The Guardian. The borough spent a reported $4.4-million on cladding and replacement windows so it would look nice to passersby, he said. “But you don’t come and fix some fire alarms or put some sprinklers, and people die.” The investigation of a 2016 apartment block fire found that foam inside cladding caught fire and fuelled the fire’s spread. London fire chiefs wrote to borough councils warning them of the danger, but nothing was done.  Arnold Turling, a member of the Association of Specialist Fire Protection, said he warned a conference three years ago of the dangers of cladding that is not sufficiently fire retardant. He called the Grenfell fire “entirely avoidable.” Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty ImagesDays after the Grenfell Tower fire started in London, dozens of people are still missing. It is the sense of negligence, that the lives of the poor are not worthy of the same protection as the rich, that is fuelling the anger in London’s streets. Much of it has been directed at May, whose precarious hold on government after the June 8 election has been shaken further by the fire. On Thursday she was severely criticized for visiting the site but failing to meet with survivors, talking instead to firefighters. In an exchange captured on video by reporters Friday, one resident took Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the House of Commons, to task for the prime minister’s fly-by visit. “At least she could have met the victims, at least. Corbyn, Corbyn’s a good man, and he met them,” the man said, referring to the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. “He came and met the people.” When May sought to make amends Friday, visiting families of the missing at a church, she was chased off, with people shouting at her to go home and knocking on the windows of her Range Rover. Wheatley/WENNProtesters march to Downing Street calling for justice and answers over the Grenfell Tower disaster. May is discovering that not all moments of national tragedy are equal. Because terrorism strikes randomly, it is easy for anyone to picture themselves or a loved one as a victim. And when the driving force is religious fanaticism based in a distant land, there is no easy outlet for anger. But the people of London know the fire that consumed Grenfell Tower would never have happened in one of the new luxury buildings a few kilometres away, equipped as they are with the sprinklers and fire protection their wealthy residents demand. And when the grieving and displaced seek out who is responsible for the deadly disparity, they can find them much closer to home. In an editorial this week, The Independent wrote that it is in London where the disparity between the country’s haves and have-nots is most pronounced. “When the dust settles, and the ash,” the newspaper wrote, “we must consider whether this tragedy is not only a personal nightmare for all who are directly affected but is also an emblem of a broken society.” With files from The Daily Telegraph • Email: ghamilton@nationalpost.com | Twitter: grayhamilton Giulio Thuburn/AFP/Getty ImagesFlames engulf the Grenfell Tower early on June 14.7:37 PM

Massive U.K.-based scheme aimed to swindle $52M in tax refunds from Canadian government - The website for telecommunications service provider, 5G Global Inc., showed an address in the heart of downtown Ottawa. In reality, it was just a “virtual” office. Investigators with the Canada Revenue Agency knew something was really fishy when they looked at the pictured staff members. One smiling woman holding glasses up to her chin was listed as “Natalie Roberts, General Director,” while a silver-haired man was identified as “Allen Bailey, Manager.” However, the same people were pictured on the website of a different company under the names “Jessica Cox, Lawyer” and “Dominic Simmonnet, Director.” Fake websites were just one part of a massive international scheme to try to dupe the Canadian government into paying $52 million in sales tax refunds or rebates through fraudulent claims, court records obtained by the National Post show. 5G Global Inc. website In the end, 11 foreign nationals based in Britain managed to squeeze $4.7 million out of federal coffers over five years before auditors and investigators caught on, the records state. The proceeds were put into Canadian banks, then transferred to offshore accounts or used in real estate transactions. Earlier this week, the Canada Revenue Agency announced investigators had carried out raids at three homes or businesses in Ontario (Richmond Hill, Victoria Harbour and Ajax), as part of their probe into the “tax fraud and money laundering scheme.” Their counterparts in Britain’s tax authority, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs department, did simultaneous searches at six locations in that country. “By increasing our collaboration with our domestic and international partners, the CRA is taking an active role in ensuring a fairer tax system, where those who abuse the laws face consequences for their actions,” the agency said in a statement at the time. The agency has been flexing its muscle as the federal government beefs up its criminal investigations division. Over the last two budgets, the government has invested close to $1 billion to help the CRA and its 500 investigators target schemes, such as this one, and crack down on tax evasion and avoidance, the agency says. The CRA reports that from 2011 through 2016, 508 individuals were convicted for tax evasion, resulting in $40 million in court fines and 244 years of jail time for the offenders. According to an application for search warrants — known as an Information to Obtain (ITO) — filed in B.C. Provincial Court by CRA investigator Denise Hartman, the alleged “carousel scheme” now under investigation stretched from 2011 through 2015. Eleven individuals in Britain set up 84 corporations in Canada and overseas. Most of the Canadian companies were either virtual offices or UPS Store mailboxes. Lengthy paper trails — including falsified bank statements and sales invoices — were created to make it appear that these companies had engaged in a series of transactions, such as the buying and selling of long-distance minutes or electronic equipment. The repeated movement of these goods from one party to the next was said to resemble a carousel. A typical scenario might look like this: Canadian Company A buys goods from Foreign Company A, then sells those goods to Canadian Company B. Canadian Company B then sells the goods to Foreign Company B. 5G Global Inc. websiteInvestigators with the Canada Revenue Agency knew something was really fishy when they looked at the pictured staff members. Canadian Company B then files a return to the Canada Revenue Agency seeking a refund for the GST/HST it allegedly paid to Canadian Company A, even though Canadian Company A never remitted any tax to the federal government. “The Canadian government is being asked to refund money that it never received to begin with,” Brian Heller, a Toronto lawyer who specializes in white-collar crime, said after the Post briefed him on the allegations in the ITO. “They’re basically sucking money out of the government.” According to the ITO, Noman Shaikh, 43, is believed to be the “catalyst in initiating and perpetuating the alleged carousel schemes. He will be shown to be an authorized signing officer for banking transactions and has written personal cheques on behalf of several of the Canadian corporations allegedly involved.” Shaikh is said to have received assistance from a bunch of individuals, described in the ITO as “enablers.” Over April and May 2013, Shaikh and eight of those individuals flew to Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, after which they set up bank accounts for several of the companies. As of Friday no charges had been laid in the matter, and the allegations have not been proven in court. The Post attempted to reach Shaikh through an email address mentioned in the ITO but did not get a response. Related Pointing the finger: CRA to collect fingerprints of accused tax evaders How the CRA’s Criminal Investigations Program brings tax cheats to justice Canadian tax-evasion software triggers major U.S. probe and leaves salesman facing up to 25 years The scheme began to unravel when auditors with CRA’s Refund Integrity Program noticed patterns in many of the GST/HST returns they were reviewing: the companies were typically involved in telecommunications but showed little or no evidence of any business activity; high refunds — some exceeding $1 million — were claimed; shareholders were not Canadian residents; and addresses were virtual offices. “When viewed in its totality, the sequence and even some of the transactions do not make financial sense,” the CRA investigator wrote in the ITO. Only 20 of the Canadian companies had filed T2 corporate tax returns and did so only for the 2013 tax year, according to the ITO. All reported “nil net income.” The Ontario accounting companies that helped prepare those tax returns were the subjects of search warrants earlier this week. A woman who answered the phone at one of the companies said Friday the raid had been “hugely upsetting.” “I have nothing to do with what they’re after. All we did was file T2s based on information provided to us at the time. We did our best to verify things,” she said. “I think the reality is we were all conned.”5:25 PM

Everything you need to know about what’s going on in British Columbia politics - In this occasional feature, the National Post tells you everything you need to know about a complicated issue. Today, Stuart Thomson examines the political situation in British Columbia and the possibility of a new election: OK, let’s get this out of the way first. Are we headed towards another election? It seems likely, but it comes a lot sooner in one scenario than the other.  Philippe Lagassé, a Carleton University professor who studies our parliamentary system, said a new election is likely to be called soon, simply because the proposed NDP/Green alliance is so fragile. The two parties lose their majority if only one MLA is missing from the legislature, and that spells trouble for any government. This could lead to another election due to a failed confidence vote in the next year to 18 months, so at least British Columbians would have some time to catch their breath between elections. In the other scenario, current B.C. Premier Christy Clark would give her throne speech, lose the confidence of the house and then ask the lieutenant-governor to dissolve the legislature and launch another election campaign. Clark has said she won’t do that, but the idea has been cropping up recently in B.C. That could bring a new election in a matter of months. Why would an NDP/Green government be so fragile when they have a majority of seats? The NDP/Green government’s one-seat advantage — the seat count is 44-43 — is dicey because someone has to be the Speaker. If the Speaker comes from the NDP or Green party, they lose their majority and end up in a 43-43 tie with the Liberals. To pass anything, and to maintain the confidence of the house, the Speaker would have to cast a tie-breaking vote. Darryl Dyck / Canadian PressB.C. NDP Leader John Horgan in Coqutilam, B.C., on Tuesday May 9, 2017 Is the Speaker allowed to do that? Sure. But we’re talking about parliamentary customs here, instead of hard and fast rules. The Speaker is expected to remain non-partisan and maintain the status quo. There’s a practical concern here, though, which is that it’s better to have a working government than a legislature locked in a series of tied votes. “I’m a bit of a pragmatist on this. The purpose of the Speaker casting a tie vote is to prevent there from being a total logjam,” Lagassé said. The two parties have tried to shore up their fragile majority by setting a very high bar for a confidence vote. The agreement the two leaders signed states that “individual bills, including budget bills, will not be treated or designated as matters of confidence,” but the overall budgetary policy of the government will be. So what’s going to happen? If Clark doesn’t ask for dissolution, there are a few possible scenarios — some messier than others. Clark could appoint a Liberal Speaker and then that Speaker could continue on under the NDP/Green government after Clark’s Liberals lose a confidence vote. That would give the governing coalition a 44-42 voting advantage. It’s the cleanest option. But the Liberals don’t seem inclined to make things easy for their opponents and they are under no obligation to do so. CHAD HIPOLITO / CPB.C. Green party leader Andrew Weaver. And the messy options? That Liberal Speaker could resign, an act Green Party leader Andrew Weaver said would be “undermining democracy.” That would force the NDP/Green coalition to choose a Speaker from their own benches, deadlocking the house at 43-43. The Speaker would have to make some very tough decisions on when to break a tie and still maintain the status quo. It would be an unenviable position for someone trying to stay non-partisan while also being wary of bringing down the government and causing another election. We’re not in a constitutional crisis now, but should we expect one? Lagassé said the most troublesome situation would be if the coalition loses a vote that is widely considered to be a confidence vote and refuses to let the lieutenant-governor dissolve the legislature. There’s no rule saying what is and isn’t a confidence vote, so it could lead to an acrimonious dispute.  Lagassé said the fact that so many people are throwing around terms like “constitutional crisis” and talking about conventions that aren’t really conventions is a problem in itself and could muddy the water if things actually do go south. “When you cry wolf on unconstitutional behaviour, the less likely it is to be taken seriously when it is clearly unconstitutional behaviour. That’s what is concerning me a little bit, is they’re banging around these terms without really giving them a lot of thought,” he said. • Email: sxthomson@postmedia.com | Twitter: stuartxthomson3:44 PM

Canadian government abruptly pulls out of fighter jet meetings set for Paris Air Show - Canada has abruptly pulled out of meetings with aerospace companies that were planned at the Paris Air Show to kick off the Liberal government’s fighter jet competition. Companies were told Friday that their meetings, set up for next week, had been cancelled. The meetings at the prestigious Paris Air Show were being promoted as laying the groundwork for the upcoming competition to replace Canada’s CF-18 fighter jets. The Liberal government has announced it will purchase 88 new planes. Sources say the abrupt cancellation is an indication of the lack of direction in the fighter replacement program. “It’s embarrassing,” one aerospace executive. “They had all kinds of meetings lined up for next week and everything has been shut down.” The meetings with the aerospace firms were arranged so Canadian government officials could be updated on the latest capabilities being offered for the various fighter jets as well as receive details about future production plans. They had all kinds of meetings lined up for next week and everything has been shut down The cancellation was done at the behest of Public Services and Procurement Canada, sources say. Aerospace firms were told the Canadian officials would at some point instead meet with representatives of various governments to discuss jet procurement. Foreign government representatives, however, would have little information about future production plans of specific firms. Nor would they be able to discuss potential industrial arrangements between fighter jet companies and Canadian firms, sources noted. Maj.-Gen. Alain Pelletier, in charge of the Department of National Defence’s fighter jet program, along with Lisa Campbell, a senior official with Public Services and Procurement Canada who is in charge of military procurement, were to attend the Paris Air Show. Pelletier is still going to the show. It’s unclear whether Campbell will attend. Public Services and Procurement Canada did not answer questions about why the meetings with companies were cancelled. It noted that feedback from industry is important to the department. “Details of the delegation and schedule for the Paris Air Show are still being finalized,” the department noted in an email. The DND could comment at this time. The government has said they plan to accept bids for a new fighter jet in 2019. Related Liberals face tough questions on Afghanistan and interim fighter jets Kelly McParland: Freeland’s fighting words are at odds with all of the Liberals’ military practices in the past generation Liberals pledge $14 billion more to expand the Canadian Armed Forces, but delay most spending until 2019 Andrew Coyne: ‘Urgent’ Super Hornets just another pawn in Trudeau’s desire to prop up Bombardier In its new defence policy review the Liberal government committed to purchasing 88 fighter jets. That program will cost between $15 billion and $19 billion, although that price-tag does not include long-term maintenance. The Liberal government had also announced a plan to buy 18 interim fighter jets from Boeing to deal with a capability gap facing the Royal Canadian Air Force. But that plan to acquire Super Hornet jets has been thrown into limbo after Boeing filed a trade complaint in the U.S. against Bombardier of Quebec. The Liberal government broke off discussions with Boeing, although it is still talking to the U.S. government about a potential Super Hornet deal. Although he stopped short of cancelling the plan to purchase the 18 Super Hornets, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said Boeing had damaged its relationship with Canada. Boeing has complained to the U.S. government that Bombardier is receiving subsidies, which, in turn, allowed it to sell its C-Series aircraft at below-market prices. Boeing convinced the U.S. Commerce Department and International Trade Commission to launch an investigation into Bombardier. “It is not the behaviour of a trusted partner,” Sajjan recently told industry representatives in Ottawa. National Post • Email: dpugliese@postmedia.com | Twitter: davidpugliese2:57 PM

Canadian right-wing provocateur Gavin McInnes spearheads street-fighting trend in U.S. political protest - As Gavin McInnes strode toward the entrance of Washington’s National Press Club in January, a black-balaclaved “anti-fascist” protester lunged toward him. “Get the f— out of here,” the picketer shouted. The tuxedoed McInnes reacted swiftly. Spinning around, he grabbed the demonstrator’s mask and took a couple of long-range swings at the man. Some public figures might have, on reflection, voiced regret at the sudden resort to fisticuffs. Not so the Canadian right-wing provocateur, a VIP guest at the “Deploraball” celebrating Donald Trump’s election victory. “My fist went into his mouth,” McInnes gleefully recounted later to an interviewer from InfoWars, the website of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. “I felt his tongue … I felt so much moisture in there. I think I went right down his esophagus.” [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9j3YiNa8Tc&w=640&h=390] The Ottawa native and co-founder of the Vice media empire was, in effect, just practicing what he preaches. As head of the Proud Boys, a fledgling but high-profile branch of the American hard-right, McInnes is part of an unsettling new trend in U.S. politics: radicals on both the left and right willing to act out their ideological differences with force. He has pledged to fight back against violence from leftist activists, and his Proud Boys have repeatedly followed through – at raucous demonstrations from Berkeley to Portland, Chicago to New Orleans. They even have a spin-off organization – the Fraternal Order of the Alt-Knights – that McInnes describes as his “military division.” We’re the only ones fighting these guys, and it’s fun “We’re the only ones fighting these guys, and it’s fun,” he enthused in a recent video for The Rebel, the Canadian ultra-conservative online media outlet.  “When they go low, go lower. Mace ’em back, throw bricks at their head. Let’s destroy them. We’ve been doing it for a while now and I gotta say, it’s really invigorating.” Canada may be stereotyped currently as a liberal antidote to Trumpian America, but the father of the Proud Boys has injected an unruly Canadian voice into the heart of the populist, nativist revolution. Exactly what the group stands for is up for debate. It describes itself as a fraternal organization that promotes “Western chauvinism,” closed borders and housewives, and is against “racial guilt,” but insists it is not racist or even “alt-right.” Some of its tenets are slightly odd or deliberately whimsical – such as a ban on members masturbating and an initiation ceremony that involves naming five types of breakfast cereal. But some experts worry about the role being played by the caustic court jester and his followers at a seemingly dangerous time in American politics, as far-left groups trigger violence at rallies, and the far right eagerly responds. Michelle Siu for National PostGavin McInnes in 2012. The Proud Boys “have stepped into a politically volatile environment with a declaration of war,” says Ryan Lenz, an investigational writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center.  “When you come into an environment as politically charged and as volatile as this one with that kind of attitude, it’s almost inviting problems.” It’s a role that also seems miles from McInnes’s previous life, helping create what became arguably the most successful Canadian media export ever. Born in England to Scottish parents, he was four when the family immigrated to Canada and settled in Ottawa. McInnis studied at Carleton University in his home town, then at Montreal’s Concordia. It was in that city that he, Shane Smith and Suroosh Alvi started Voice of Montreal, originally a welfare-funded community magazine that morphed into Vice. It developed a cult following, attracted millions in venture capital and moved with its three founders to the United States in 2001. After early setbacks, the transplanted Vice took off as a gonzo, irreverent window on the urban world. The magazine – whose snarky, irony-laden voice is largely credited to McInnes – spawned a website, videos, retail, record labels, a series on HBO and more, eventually becoming a $4-billion conglomerate. Despite being known as the “godfather of hipsterdom,” though, he left the company in 2008, citing “creative differences.” Mitchel Raphael/National Post fileFrom left to right: Founders Suroosh Alvi, Gavin McInnes, Shane Smith with the first issue of Vice magazine. Smith and Alvi refused comment for this article, but some of McInnes’s public utterances – like saying “at least they’re white” about annoying residents of a trendy Brooklyn neighbourhood – had put him at odds with a media company increasingly tying itself to liberal causes. Vice now behind him, he started his own website, streetcarnage.com, and established himself as a conservative pundit with an acerbically comic edge. He appeared until recently on Fox News in the U.S., hosts his own talk show on Compound Media, writes for the right-wing Taki’s Magazine and contributes to Rebel in Canada. McInnes declined an interview request for this story, replying initially with two words: “Sorry Ratso.” He later elaborated that Proud Boys is no longer speaking to the media, and referred to a Rebel video where he complains of having explained at length to journalists from the New York Times, Salon and others that the group was not racist, only to be painted that way in the ensuing articles. Reporters for the mainstream media are like Ratso Rizzo, Dustin Hoffman’s “slimy New York hustler” character in the movie Midnight Cowboy, he said. “If you portray us as Alt-Right or racist, we will take you to court,” McInnes warned the National Post by email. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpWQHCCmb3c&w=640&h=390] In fact, he has said that Nazis and white supremacists were not welcome in the Proud Boys, while gay and black people are. His own wife is Native American. Some of his stated beliefs, though, would seem to place him near the outer edge of the conservative spectrum. He’s suggested “women should be at home with the kids, they’re happier that way,” and blasted attempts to remove Confederate monuments in New Orleans. The South did not fight the U.S. Civil War to defend slavery, he argued, but because the North “tried to tell them what to do.” There’s also a pattern of more inflammatory remarks that he later sought to explain away. “I love being white and I think it’s something to be proud of,” McInnes told the New York Times in 2003. “I don’t want our culture diluted.” Gawker quoted him afterward as saying the statement was only meant to goad easily offended liberals. I love being white and I think it’s something to be proud of He ended up leaving the ad agency he started after penning a 2014 column that suggested transsexuals were “mentally ill gays who need help, and that doesn’t include being maimed by physicians.” Afterward, he said he just tried to point out that transsexuals have a high suicide rate. And this March, McInnes drew ire from the Jewish community with a rant from a Rebel “fact-finding” trip to Israel. Noting that “I’m becoming anti-semitic,” he decried the “brain-washing” at Israel’s Holocaust museum, suggested Stalin’s deliberate starving of millions of Ukrainians was “by Jews,” and blamed the Versailles treaty that helped lead to Nazism on Jewish intellectuals. When David Duke, former Ku Klux Klan leader, and others in the white supremacist movement voiced their approval, McInnes insisted that his words had been taken out of context and that he liked Jews, not Nazis. The Proud Boys, meanwhile, have blipped onto the radar of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. The watchdog worries that – while disavowing white supremacy – McInnes’s group presents a more socially acceptable “gateway” into that movement. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgbYOQlBRYY&w=640&h=390] “It arouses the emotion of the same things and ideas that are in the alt-right orbit, while skirting a real commitment to exclusive white nationalism,” said Carla Hill, an investigative researcher with the League. “It can attract average Joes, because it appeals to classic forms of bigotry, such as misogyny and Islamophobia.” But how does all this align with the co-founder of a counter-culture institution that helped define cool for the millennial generation? Robert Bottenberg, an artist and contributor to Vice in its early Montreal days, said McInnes turbo-charged the magazine with his comic irreverence. “He was always a provocateur and s–t disturber — in a good way — back in the day,” said Bottenberg. “He has a sort of clinical lack of compassion, which, if you take on the task of challenging other people’s bulls–t is a good thing.” Related Gavin McInnes’s How to Piss in Public details ‘a hoser’s life’ How a former editor allegedly used Vice Canada to recruit drug mules for a global smuggling ring ‘Alex Jones is a story whether we like it or not’: Conspiracy theorist the most recent target of ‘no-platforming’ But the current McInnes seems like a different man, and his former colleague wonders if the “profound emotional impact” he probably felt at leaving Vice triggered the change. “This new iteration seems completely devoid of any real humour and just strikes me as nasty.” McInnes, though, portrays his cause as almost heroic. He alleges that the “antifas” – street jargon for anti-fascists – are using strong-arm tactics to suppress the free speech of conservatives like him, pointing to the recent cancellation of his appearance at a Chicago university. The Proud Boys, McInnes said recently, are ready for them. “The right isn’t violent, the left is,” he wrote in Taki Magazine. “By allowing these sociopaths to shut down free speech with violence, you are all but demanding a war. Okay, fine, you got it. It’s official. This is a war.” National Post • Email: tblackwell@nationalpost.com | Twitter: TomblackwellNP2:25 PM

Explosion of forest tent caterpillars in Ontario and Quebec could be just the beginning, forester says - Individually, they’re beautiful: all furry gold and black and iridescent turquoise. But when they come by the hundreds, thousands even — in your drink, in your hair, smeared across the sidewalk, smeared across your windshield — well, that’s something else entirely. Spring 2017 has seen an explosion in the population of forest tent caterpillars, not just in the National Capital Region, but across Ontario and Quebec. And if you think it’s bad now, this could be just the beginning. “What we’re seeing is the early stages of what could be a couple of years of outbreak,” said Jason Pollard, a forester with the City of Ottawa. “It’s something that’s happening provincially. Typically with this bug, we’re looking at cycles of every 10 or 15 years and then we’re in it for two, sometimes three years, maybe even longer.” They were coming down like Spider-Man! Barrhaven seems to be Ground Zero for Ottawa, but foresters are also seeing the caterpillars in large numbers in Stittsville, Kanata and parts of Orléans. The wriggling critters have also overrun parts of Gatineau Park, Chelsea and Wakefield. Chris Latreille and his girlfriend were walking on the trails near Champlain Lookout in Gatineau Park Sunday and were astounded by the caterpillars, which were “literally raining down on us.” “It was really crazy,” Latreille said. “It was OK at first. We just saw them on the ground, but as we got deeper into the trail there were webs across my face. All over my hands. In my eyes. You look up and you’d see five or six coming down at you. They were coming down like Spider-Man!” Two species of tent caterpillar are found in the Ottawa area. The eastern tent caterpillar can be distinguished by the single, solid white down its back and the triangular silk “tents” it builds in the crooks of fruit trees. The forest tent caterpillar is identified by the dotted white line down its back. It doesn’t spin nests, but rather forms masses of several hundred caterpillars on the trunks of trees. Tony Caldwell / PostmediaCaterpillars seem to be popping up in especially big numbers in the Ottawa area. The caterpillars are voracious eaters, stripping leaves from a variety of trees, including poplar, birch, oak, maple and flowering fruit trees. The good news is the caterpillar is an early feeder, meaning many of the trees will be able to grow a second set of leaves later this spring. “I live an hour west of Ottawa and they’re all around me. I’ve had them down my back,” said Rob Lee, a biologist and member of the Ottawa Field Naturalist Club who lives near White Lake. “This won’t go on very long. They’re probably a week or two away from pupating and then they’ll become moths. They aren’t like gypsy moths that strip the trees later in the summer when they can’t recover. It’s a natural thing. It’s part of the forest.” Pollard said city crews are monitoring the outbreak and will be watching closely next year to see if the outbreak worsens. If that happens, the relatively isolated populations will coalesce to cover the city, he said. Saskatoon has endured the pest for a fourth straight summer with one homeowner posting a skin-crawling video of mounds of caterpillars crunching underfoot. Related ‘Major threat to agricultural trade worldwide’: Alien armyworm invading Africa may reach Asia, Mediterranean DEBUTANTE IN THE JUNGLE The caterpillars are harmless to humans but property owners can take steps to limit their spread, Pollard said. Clumps of caterpillars on a tree can be sprayed off with a garden hose or knocked into a bucket of soapy water. You can also wrap burlap around the trunk of the tree. The caterpillars will crawl underneath it to take shelter during the midday heat, then the burlap can be removed and disposed of. More information can be found on the city’s website. In the meantime, take time to appreciate the caterpillar’s beauty, says Lee of the Ottawa Field Naturalists Club. “If you’ve got small kids, have them look closely. They have beautiful turquoise on them and the eastern tent caterpillar has orange on it, too. They’re really pretty things — if you’ve got one or two. If you’ve got thousands of them, you’re not going to be happy.”2:25 PM

Greg Palast

Democracy Now reporter assaulted for exposing Jim Crow tactics in Ossoff-Handel race - Greg Palast reporting for the Thom Hartmann Show and Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! Watch the 8-minute broadcast—and get a full blast of weird. I was in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District to investigate strange doings in the race between Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel (who received an endorsement—and kiss on the lips—from President Trump). Handel was happy as a Smurf doll when I asked her if the Democrats were stealing the election. ("They’re pulling out all the stops!!") But when I asked about Republican Jim Crow tactics I’d uncovered, it got real ugly. First, a deep-fry-bloated goon jumped between me and the candidate then pushed me backwards. A second grabbed my arm while a third started muscling me around. Wow! And only because I asked—quite politely—if in her prior post as Georgia’s Secretary of State, she’d cleansed the voter rolls of voters of color. It was, honestly, more comical than threatening. Is this the new Republican method of answering uncomfortable questions? The bigger story in the report is my hunt to answer the question: How did tens of thousands of voter registrations simply VANISH? And why did Georgia Republican officials use Gestapo-style tactics to raid the offices of the Asian-American voter registration drive? You’ll hear Georgia Project leader Nse Ufot explain that 40,000 voters they’d registered never got on the rolls. The Republican Secretary of State denied they’d received the forms — but the Project had the photocopies! Now, Ufot faces criminal charges similar to the threats used to destroy the Asian-American vote drive. And behind it all is Trump’s new "Elections Integrity Commission" chieftain Kris Kobach, who created a 606,708-name voter purge list for GOP officials. You read that number right. As Dee Hunter of the Washington DC Civil Rights Center tells us, Ossoff already won. He fell just 3,700 votes short of an outright win in the first round of voting, but was denied victory by this onslaught of New Jim Crow tactics. If these tactics steal the Sixth, they’ll roll them out nationwide. *** Watch the clip, pass it on, then help me get back on the hunt for the missing voters. The report cost our foundation $27,000 to produce. A donor promised to cover the cost — then vanished like a Georgia voter. So my investigations team is deep in the hole. When the funding disappeared, we continued: the trail was too hot, the facts so chilling and important, we chose to continue and put the truth on credit cards. This ain’t no foolin’ around. Can you help by making a tax-deductible contribution to our continuing investigation? It continues in Georgia, but now we move to Virginia, Michigan, and Ohio. We are preparing an "Activist" update of our film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy—a shortened version specifically designed to open action meetings. Our first outing was right there in Georgia’s Sixth, at the Eagles Nest Church, Lee Jenkins, Pastor. You saw him in the Democracy Now! report. He screened The Best Democracy Money Can Buy then hosted a confab with the NAACP, Common Cause, ACLU, Georgia Project and many luminaries of the new voting rights movement, organized by Hunter of The Civil Rights Center. This butt-kicking team is going on the road—to Virginia next month, then Michigan, Ohio and wherever votes and voters are at risk. We will be there with them, with the facts. So, please, right now, make your tax-deductible contribution for any amount no matter how large or small. Or become a monthly contributor today. For a tax-deductible donation of $1000 we’ll list you in the credits of the Activist version of our film as a Producer. For $500 become a Co-Producer. Or, get the combo of the full-length film on DVD, with the book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, signed…and I’ll add in a link for you to stream it (in case you don’t have a DVD player). Already have the DVD and book? Well, get more, hand them out — and stir up trouble. The trouble I call "democracy." Excuse me while I answer the door. It’s the wolf, and I want to tell him to hold off because you are coming to our rescue. Palast Investigations Team can’t thank you enough. * * * * * 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. Stay informed, rent or buy the film on Amazon or get the signed DVD, a signed copy of the book companion or better still - get the Book & DVD combo. Palast is also the author of the New York Times bestseller Armed Madhouse and BBC Newsnight book of the Year Vultures' Picnic. Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive!  Become a monthly contributor today. 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 Democracy Now reporter assaulted for exposing Jim Crow tactics in Ossoff-Handel race appeared first on Greg Palast.Jun 15

Palast On Democracy Now!GOP Jim Crow Tactics Help Steal Handel-Ossoff Race - The most expensive Congressional race in history will be decided June 20. While most polls show Democrat Jon Ossoff ahead of Republican Karen Handel, civil rights leaders fear that racial vote suppression tactics could steal this special election. Here's my report, broadcast today on Democracy Now!, from Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. *** For more on Kobach's racially-biased-by-design Crosscheck vote-purging op, which is in play in Georgia to help Karen Handel, watch The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Rent or buy the film on Amazon or get the signed DVD, a signed copy of the companion book — or, better still, get the DVD and book combo by making a tax-deductible donation to the Palast Investigative Fund. 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. Or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive!  The post Palast On Democracy Now!GOP Jim Crow Tactics Help Steal Handel-Ossoff Race appeared first on Greg Palast.Jun 15

Catch Palast on Democracy Now! From Georgia’s 6th CD - Thursday, June 15, 8am ET – Greg Palast will be reporting on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman from the hot Georgia 6th Congressional District race. And on Friday 7pm ET an in-depth report with Thom Hartmann on RTTV. When Palast confronts GOP candidate Karen Handel with evidence that her party is using Jim Crow vote-suppression tactics, her thugs muscle reporter Palast. In the report Palast will expose the latest tricks to wipe out the voter registrations of African-American and Asian-American voters. Watch this space for the full report… * * * * * 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. Stay informed, rent or buy the film on Amazon or get the signed DVD, a signed copy of the book companion or better still - get the Book & DVD combo. Palast is also the author of the New York Times bestseller Armed Madhouse and BBC Newsnight book of the Year Vultures' Picnic. 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 Catch Palast on Democracy Now! From Georgia’s 6th CD appeared first on Greg Palast.Jun 14

Trump’s Chief Vote Suppressor Runs For Governor - By Zach D. Roberts for Nation of Change The man that well-coiffed racist, Richard Spencer, calls a “draconian illegal immigration enforcer” is now running for Governor of Kansas. That enforcer made his announcement just hours after the euthanasia of Governor Brownback’s “Kansas Experiment” by the state legislature. Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, stepping over the corpse of Brownback’s political career, took to the stage and announced that he would be starting his campaign for Kansas’ highest office. The Kansas Experiment, as coined by many, was a failed low-to-no business tax trickle down economics test that didn’t just not work, it nearly took the state's economy with it. Brownback, who got advice from the same right wing economists as Trump, in 2015 had “$44.5 million cut from public education” according to Vox.com. Kansas is, of course home to three things: yellow brick roads, the Koch Brothers and voter suppression laws. Here's a reminder of who Kris Kobach — a.k.a. "The Wizard of Crosscheck" — is: See full story on Nation of Change. For more on Kobach and his racially-biased-by-design Crosscheck vote-purging op, which helped Trump steal the White House in 2016, watch The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Rent or buy the film on Amazon or get the signed DVD, a signed copy of the companion book — or, better still, get the DVD and book combo by making a tax-deductible donation to the Palast Investigative Fund. 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 Trump’s Chief Vote Suppressor Runs For Governor appeared first on Greg Palast.Jun 12

Signed Kelly Slater Surfboard for Auction - Contact us with your bid Surfer Superstar Kelly Slater is offering a signed surfboard for auction to support The Palast Investigative Fund. Pick your choice of board and Kelly Slater will personally sign it and dedicate it to you. Opening Bid starts at $2,000  – or donate $5,000 and it's yours. Check out your choice of boards: Banana  |  Omni  |  Sci-fi The post Signed Kelly Slater Surfboard for Auction appeared first on Greg Palast.Jun 11

Handel’s handlers manhandle reporterto duck questions of her blocking Black voters - GOP Congressional candidate Karen Handel will do anything to duck questions about her role in purging Black and Asian voters in the Georgia run-off race against Jon Ossoff. Stay tuned for the full story of the Stealing of the Sixth CD — reports this week by Greg Palast for Thom Hartmann and Democracy Now! * * * * * 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. Stay informed, rent or buy the film on Amazon or get the signed DVD, a signed copy of the book companion or better still — get the Book & DVD combo. 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 Handel’s handlers manhandle reporterto duck questions of her blocking Black voters appeared first on Greg Palast.May 29

Did Black Turn-Out Fall in 2016?Greg Palast on AM Joy with Joy Ann Reid - Are Black people too lazy to vote? No. No one understands rhetoric. Behind Black vote drop: Jim Crow in Cyberspace. Reports claim black voter turnout fell for first time in 20 years. But it’s not that black voters are too lazy to come out to vote, it’s that they’re trying to vote and their names have disappeared from voter rolls. We estimate that before the last election, 1.1 million voters were removed from voter rolls in sates where Crosscheck was being used. Crosscheck is the flawed-by-design, racist vote purging system instigated by Trump’s Vote Suppressor in Chief, Kris Kobach, who this past week was appointed as the Vice Chair of the Presidential Commission for Election Integrity — see story. The intent is clear: The GOP are using the fake claims about millions of illegal alien and double voters as an excuse to take Crosscheck nationwide so they can whitewash voter rolls before 2018 and 2020. * * * * * 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. Stay informed, rent or buy the film on Amazon or get the signed DVD, a signed copy of the book companion or better still — get the Book & DVD combo. 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 Did Black Turn-Out Fall in 2016?Greg Palast on AM Joy with Joy Ann Reid appeared first on Greg Palast.May 14

The Voting Rights Project LaunchRoswell, GA — Saturday, May 27 - Join us for the launch of The Voting Rights Project on Saturday May 27, 2017 from noon until 3 pm. The event will feature a screening of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a panel discussion on "Georgia Voter Suppression Counter-Strategy and Tactics" and a press conference to demand voting rights reform. Time: Sat, May 27, 2017 — Noon until 3 pmPlace: Eagles Nest Church, 50 Mansell Court, Roswell, Georgia 30076Tickets: FREERegister: StopCrosscheck.orgSponsored By: The Civil Rights Center & The Palast Investigative FundCo-Sponsors: Eagle Nest Church, Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda, Common Cause Georgia, The Cobb County NAACP, and WRFG Radio * * * * * 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. Stay informed, rent or buy the film on Amazon or get the signed DVD, a signed copy of the book companion or better still — get the Book & DVD combo. 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 Voting Rights Project LaunchRoswell, GA — Saturday, May 27 appeared first on Greg Palast.May 13

Trump picks Al Capone of Vote Rigging To investigate Federal Voter Fraud - By Greg Palast for Alternet Kris Kobach is the GOP mastermind behind a secretive system that purged 1.1 million Americans from the voter rolls. Kris Kobach was spooning down vanilla ice cream when I showed him the thick pages of evidence documenting his detailed plan to rig the presidential election of 2016. The Secretary of State of Kansas, sucking up carbs at a Republican Party Fundraiser recognized the documents – and yelled at me, "YOU'RE A LIAR!" then ran for it while still trying to wolf down the last spoonful. But documents don't lie. That was 2015 (yes, the ballot heist started way back). Today this same man on the run, Kris Kobach, is now Donald Trump’s choice to head the new “Voter Integrity Commission.” It’s like appointing Al Capone to investigate The Mob. How did Kobach mess with the 2016 vote? Let me count the ways—as I have in three years of hunting down Kobach’s ballot-box gaming for Rolling Stone and Al Jazeera. Just two of Kobach’s vote-bending tricks undoubtedly won Michigan for Trump and contributed to his “wins” in Ohio, North Carolina and Arizona. First, Interstate Crosscheck. Kobach is the GOP mastermind behind this secretive system which purged 1.1 million Americans from the voter rolls. When Trump said, “This election’s rigged,” the press ignored the second part of his statement: “People are voting many, many times.” Trump cited three million votes illegally cast. The White House said Trump got this information from Kobach. Indeed, it specifically comes from a list of 7 million names—or, as Kobach describes it, a list of 3.5 million “potential double voters.” How did Kobach find these three million double voters? He matched their names, first and last. And that’s it. Here’s an unedited screen-shot of a segment of his list: James Edward Harris Jr. of Richmond, Virginia, is supposed to be the same voters as James R. Harris (no Jr.) of Indianapolis, Indiana. Really? Note that not one middle name matches. And here’s the ugly part. Both James Harris (in fact, hundreds of them) are subject to getting scrubbed off the voter rolls. And these are Kobach’s lists, tens of thousands of names I showed Kobach, falsely accused of the crime of double voting. And that’s why Kobach was stunned and almost dropped his vanilla, because he and his GOP colleagues kept the lists of the accused strictly confidential. (The first of the confidential lists was obtained by our investigative photojournalist, Zach D. Roberts, through legal methods—though howling voting officials want them back.) In all, about 1.1 million voters on that list have been scrubbed already—and they don’t know it. They show up to vote and they’re name has simply vanished. Or, the voter is marked “inactive.” “Crosscheck” is not marked on the victim voter’s record. It’s a stealth hit. And it’s deadly. Doubtless, Crosscheck delivered Michigan to Trump who supposedly “won” the state by 10,700 votes. The Secretary of State’s office proudly told me that they were “very aggressive” in removing listed voters before the 2016 election. Kobach, who created the lists for his fellow GOP officials, tagged a whopping 417,147 in Michigan as potential double voters. And not just any voters. Mark Swedlund, a database expert who advises companies such as Amazon and eBay on how not to mis-match customers was “flabbergasted” to discover in his team’s technical analysis, that the list was so racially biased that fully one in six registered African-Americans were tagged in the Crosscheck states that include the swing states of Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Arizona and more. The effect goes way beyond the Trump v. Clinton count. I spoke to several of the targeted voters on the list in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional district where the Democratic candidate fell just short of the margin to win a special election. Especially hard hit in the northern Atlanta suburbs were Korean-Americans, like Mr. Sung Park, who found he was tagged as voting in two states in 2012 simply because he had a name that is as common in Korea as James Brown. And Kobach, in fact, tagged 288 men in Georgia named James Brown on his Crosscheck blacklist. As Crosscheck spreads—and it was just signed into law in New Hampshire in the last days of a lame-duck Republican governorship—it will undoubtedly poison the count in the fight for Congress in 2018. And that’s why Trump needs Kobach on his “Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity”: To spread Crosscheck with an official federal endorsement and, likely, Congressional legislation. And if Crosscheck isn’t enough to scare you, Kobach is also pushing Trump to require voters to prove their citizenship. At first blush, it seems right to demand people prove they are US citizens to vote. But here’s the rub: We are not Red China and don’t carry citizenship cards. Resident Aliens holding Green Cards have, indeed are required to have, Social security cards and drivers’ licenses, if they drive or work. The readiest proof of citizenship is a passport. And what is the color of the typical passport holder, their income—and the color of their vote? The other form of proof, besides naturalization papers, is your original birth certificate. And there’s the rub: the poor, minorities and especially new young voters do not have easy access to a passport or their birth certificates. Kobach took his citizenship proof requirement out for a test drive in Kansas. The result: 36,000 young voters were barred from voting… that is, until a federal judge, citing the National Voter Registration Act, told Kobach that unless he could produce even one alien among those 36,000, she was ordering him to let them vote. Kobach’s response: a private meeting with Trump at Trump Tower where he proposed changing the Act. All of this to eliminate a crime which does not occur. Besides Trump’s claims of alien voters swimming the Rio Grande to vote for Hillary, I have found only two verified cases of votes cast by aliens in the US in the last decade. (One, an Austrian who confessed to voting for Jeb Bush in Florida.) Don’t laugh. The threat of “alien voters” – long a staple claim by Kobach on his appearances on Fox TV – will be the Kobach Commission’s hammer to smash the National Voter Registration Act’s protections. Based on the numbers from Kansas, and its overwhelming effect on young – read “Democratic” – voters, this shift alone could swing the election of 2018. Indeed, Kobach’s Crosscheck con together with his “alien” voter attack,could mean the choice of the electorate in 2020 may already be trumped. * * * * * 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. Stay informed, rent or buy the film on Amazon or get the signed DVD, a signed copy of the book companion or better still - get the Book & DVD combo. Palast is also the author of the New York Times bestseller Armed Madhouse and BBC Newsnight book of the Year Vultures' Picnic. 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 Trump picks Al Capone of Vote Rigging To investigate Federal Voter Fraud appeared first on Greg Palast.May 12

Turn-Around: Joy Reid Interviewed by Greg Palast - "It is difficult to get the issue of voter suppression on television at the moment, I think for a couple of reasons. Number one: Donald Trump — he sort of blocks out the sun. He’s taken up so much of the airtime on any given day that the media just feels that it can’t not talk about him. Between the insane things that he’s tweeting, or the policies that he’s putting forth that are draconian and scaring the hell out of people, I think that he sucks up so much of the oxygen that other stories are getting drowned out…The election of Donald Trump had a lot to do with the suppression of votes. It had a lot to do with the aftermath of gutting the Voting Rights Act… Unfortunately, we’re not focussing on it." — Joy-Ann Reid, host of #AMJoy on MSNBC * * * * * 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. Stay informed, rent or buy the film on Amazon or get the signed DVD, a signed copy of the book companion or better still — get the Book & DVD combo. 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 Turn-Around: Joy Reid Interviewed by Greg Palast appeared first on Greg Palast.May 7

Public Intelligence » Feed

(U//FOUO) Northern Virginia Fusion Center: Social Media Recommendations for Public Safety Personnel - (U) Overview • (U) Public Safety personnel are urged to use caution when sharing information via social media. With recent officer-involved shootings around the country, those who support attacks against public safety affiliates can gain access to information shared online and may use it to condone violence. • (U//FOUO) This Front Line provides recommendations for minimizing indicators of your public safety affiliations on social media to better protect you and your family’s identity. … (U) Remove all material from your social media accounts that reference your involvement or affiliation with the public safety sector. (U) Have all material that references your involvement with the public safety sector removed from family and friends’ social media accounts. (U) Do not list employment information on any social media websites. (U) Do not use your work email address to sign up for any social media accounts. (U) If signing into a social media account on a public computer, be sure the password is not saved after signing out. …Jun 11

Bilderberg Association Annual Report 2016 - 272706 – THE BILDERBERG ASSOCIATION Governing document CONSTITUTION ADOPTED 20TH DECEMBER 1976 Organisation type STANDARD REGISTRATION Where it operates THROUGHOUT ENGLAND AND WALES Registration history 24 January 1977 Registered Charitable objects TO PROMOTE THE STUDY OF, AND PUBLIC EDUCATION IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, ECONOMICS AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES WITH REFERENCE IN PARTICULAR TO THE POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS AFFECTING THE DEMOCRATIC COUNTRIES OF NORTH AMERICA AND WESTERN EUROPE AND THE EFFECTS OF INDUSTRIALISATION UPON THE SOCIAL STRUCTURES AND ENVIRONMENTS OF SUCH COUNTRIES.Jun 4

Bilderberg Association Annual Report 2015 - 272706 – THE BILDERBERG ASSOCIATION Governing document CONSTITUTION ADOPTED 20TH DECEMBER 1976 Organisation type STANDARD REGISTRATION Where it operates THROUGHOUT ENGLAND AND WALES Registration history 24 January 1977 Registered Charitable objects TO PROMOTE THE STUDY OF, AND PUBLIC EDUCATION IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, ECONOMICS AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES WITH REFERENCE IN PARTICULAR TO THE POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS AFFECTING THE DEMOCRATIC COUNTRIES OF NORTH AMERICA AND WESTERN EUROPE AND THE EFFECTS OF INDUSTRIALISATION UPON THE SOCIAL STRUCTURES AND ENVIRONMENTS OF SUCH COUNTRIES.Jun 4

American Friends of Bilderberg 2015 Tax Return - AMERICAN FRIENDS OF BILDERBERG, INC. C/O JAMES JOHNSON CAPITAL PARTNERS 607 14TH STREET NW WASHINGTON, DC 20005 (202) 347-9600 EIN: 51-0163715Jun 3

American Friends of Bilderberg 2014 Tax Return - AMERICAN FRIENDS OF BILDERBERG, INC. C/O JAMES JOHNSON CAPITAL PARTNERS 607 14TH STREET NW WASHINGTON, DC 20005 (202) 347-9600 EIN: 51-0163715Jun 3

2017 Bilderberg Meeting Participant List - The following press release and participants list was obtained from the official website of Bilderberg Meetings. Participant lists from nearly every Bilderberg Meeting since 1954 are also available along with a collection of thousands of pages of internal Bilderberg correspondence and meeting reports. 2017 Bilderberg Meeting Chantilly VA, USA 1-4 June CHAIRMAN Castries, Henri de (FRA), Former Chairman and CEO, AXA; President of Institut Montaigne   PARTICIPANTS Achleitner, Paul M. (DEU), Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Deutsche Bank AG Adonis, Andrew (GBR), Chair, National Infrastructure Commission Agius, Marcus (GBR), Chairman, PA Consulting Group Akyol, Mustafa (TUR), Senior Visiting Fellow, Freedom Project at Wellesley College Alstadheim, Kjetil B. (NOR), Political Editor, Dagens Næringsliv Altman, Roger C. (USA), Founder and Senior Chairman, Evercore Arnaut, José Luis (PRT), Managing Partner, CMS Rui Pena & Arnaut Barroso, José M. Durão (PRT), Chairman, Goldman Sachs International Bäte, Oliver (DEU), CEO, Allianz SE Baumann, Werner (DEU), Chairman, Bayer AG Baverez, Nicolas (FRA), Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher Benko, René (AUT), Founder and Chairman of the Advisory Board, SIGNA Holding GmbH Berner, Anne-Catherine (FIN), Minister of Transport and Communications Botín, Ana P. (ESP), Executive Chairman, Banco Santander Brandtzæg, Svein Richard (NOR), President and CEO, Norsk Hydro ASA Brennan, John O. (USA), Senior Advisor, Kissinger Associates Inc. Bsirske, Frank (DEU), Chairman, United Services Union Buberl, Thomas (FRA), CEO, AXA Bunn, M. Elaine (USA), Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Burns, William J. (USA), President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Çakiroglu, Levent (TUR), CEO, Koç Holding A.S. Çamlibel, Cansu (TUR), Washington DC Bureau Chief, Hürriyet Newspaper Cebrián, Juan Luis (ESP), Executive Chairman, PRISA and El País Clemet, Kristin (NOR), CEO, Civita Cohen, David S. (USA), Former Deputy Director, CIA Collison, Patrick (USA), CEO, Stripe Cotton, Tom (USA), Senator Cui, Tiankai (CHN), Ambassador to the US Döpfner, Mathias (DEU), CEO, Axel Springer SE Elkann, John (ITA), Chairman, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Enders, Thomas (DEU), CEO, Airbus SE Federspiel, Ulrik (DNK), Group Executive, Haldor Topsøe Holding A/S Ferguson, Jr., Roger W. (USA), President and CEO, TIAA Ferguson, Niall (USA), Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University Gianotti, Fabiola (ITA), Director General, CERN Gozi, Sandro (ITA), State Secretary for European Affairs Graham, Lindsey (USA), Senator Greenberg, Evan G. (USA), Chairman and CEO, Chubb Group Griffin, Kenneth (USA), Founder and CEO, Citadel Investment Group, LLC Gruber, Lilli (ITA), Editor-in-Chief and Anchor “Otto e mezzo”, La7 TV Guindos, Luis de (ESP), Minister of Economy, Industry and Competiveness Haines, Avril D. (USA), Former Deputy National Security Advisor Halberstadt, Victor (NLD), Professor of Economics, Leiden University Hamers, Ralph (NLD), Chairman, ING Group Hedegaard, Connie (DNK), Chair, KR Foundation Hennis-Plasschaert, Jeanine (NLD), Minister of Defence, The Netherlands Hobson, Mellody (USA), President, Ariel Investments LLC Hoffman, Reid (USA), Co-Founder, LinkedIn and Partner, Greylock Houghton, Nicholas (GBR), Former Chief of Defence Ischinger, Wolfgang (INT), Chairman, Munich Security Conference Jacobs, Kenneth M. (USA), Chairman and CEO, Lazard Johnson, James A. (USA), Chairman, Johnson Capital Partners Jordan, Jr., Vernon E. (USA), Senior Managing Director, Lazard Frères & Co. LLC Karp, Alex (USA), CEO, Palantir Technologies Kengeter, Carsten (DEU), CEO, Deutsche Börse AG Kissinger, Henry A. (USA), Chairman, Kissinger Associates Inc. Klatten, Susanne (DEU), Managing Director, SKion GmbH Kleinfeld, Klaus (USA), Former Chairman and CEO, Arconic Knot, Klaas H.W. (NLD), President, De Nederlandsche Bank Koç, Ömer M. (TUR), Chairman, Koç Holding A.S. Kotkin, Stephen (USA), Professor in History and International Affairs, Princeton University Kravis, Henry R. (USA), Co-Chairman and Co-CEO, KKR Kravis, Marie-Josée (USA), Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute Kudelski, André (CHE), Chairman and CEO, Kudelski Group Lagarde, Christine (INT), Managing Director, International Monetary Fund Lenglet, François (FRA), Chief Economics Commentator, France 2 Leysen, Thomas (BEL), Chairman, KBC Group Liddell, Christopher (USA), Assistant to the President and Director of Strategic Initiatives Lööf, Annie (SWE), Party Leader, Centre Party Mathews, Jessica T. (USA), Distinguished Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace McAuliffe, Terence (USA), Governor of Virginia McKay, David I. (CAN), President and CEO, Royal Bank of Canada McMaster, H.R. (USA), National Security Advisor Mexia, António Luís Guerra Nunes (PRT), President, Eurelectric and CEO, EDP Energias de Portugal Micklethwait, John (INT), Editor-in-Chief, Bloomberg LP Minton Beddoes, Zanny (INT), Editor-in-Chief, The Economist Molinari, Maurizio (ITA), Editor-in-Chief, La Stampa Monaco, Lisa (USA), Former Homeland Security Officer Morneau, Bill (CAN), Minister of Finance Mundie, Craig J. (USA), President, Mundie & Associates Murtagh, Gene M. (IRL), CEO, Kingspan Group plc Netherlands, H.M. the King of the (NLD) Noonan, Peggy (USA), Author and Columnist, The Wall Street Journal O’Leary, Michael (IRL), CEO, Ryanair D.A.C. Osborne, George (GBR), Editor, London Evening Standard Papahelas, Alexis (GRC), Executive Editor, Kathimerini Newspaper Papalexopoulos, Dimitri (GRC), CEO, Titan Cement Co. Petraeus, David H. (USA), Chairman, KKR Global Institute Pind, Søren (DNK), Minister for Higher Education and Science Puga, Benoît (FRA), Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor and Chancellor of the National Order of Merit Rachman, Gideon (GBR), Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator, The Financial Times Reisman, Heather M. (CAN), Chair and CEO, Indigo Books & Music Inc. Rivera Díaz, Albert (ESP), President, Ciudadanos Party Rosén, Johanna (SWE), Professor in Materials Physics, Linköping University Ross, Wilbur L. (USA), Secretary of Commerce Rubenstein, David M. (USA), Co-Founder and Co-CEO, The Carlyle Group Rubin, Robert E. (USA), Co-Chair, Council on Foreign Relations and Former Treasury Secretary Ruoff, Susanne (CHE), CEO, Swiss Post Rutten, Gwendolyn (BEL), Chair, Open VLD Sabia, Michael (CAN), CEO, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec Sawers, John (GBR), Chairman and Partner, Macro Advisory Partners Schadlow, Nadia (USA), Deputy Assistant to the President, National Security Council Schmidt, Eric E. (USA), Executive Chairman, Alphabet Inc. Schneider-Ammann, Johann N. (CHE), Federal Councillor, Swiss Confederation Scholten, Rudolf (AUT), President, Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue Severgnini, Beppe (ITA), Editor-in-Chief, 7-Corriere della Sera Sikorski, Radoslaw (POL), Senior Fellow, Harvard University Slat, Boyan (NLD), CEO and Founder, The Ocean Cleanup Spahn, Jens (DEU), Parliamentary State Secretary and Federal Ministry of Finance Stephenson, Randall L. (USA), Chairman and CEO, AT&T Stern, Andrew (USA), President Emeritus, SEIU and Senior Fellow, Economic Security Project Stoltenberg, Jens (INT), Secretary General, NATO Summers, Lawrence H. (USA), Charles W. Eliot University Professor, Harvard University Tertrais, Bruno (FRA), Deputy Director, Fondation pour la recherche stratégique Thiel, Peter (USA), President, Thiel Capital Topsøe, Jakob Haldor (DNK), Chairman, Haldor Topsøe Holding A/S Ülgen, Sinan (TUR), Founding and Partner, Istanbul Economics Vance, J.D. (USA), Author and Partner, Mithril Wahlroos, Björn (FIN), Chairman, Sampo Group, Nordea Bank, UPM-Kymmene Corporation Wallenberg, Marcus (SWE), Chairman, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB Walter, Amy (USA), Editor, The Cook Political Report Weston, Galen G. (CAN), CEO and Executive Chairman, Loblaw Companies Ltd and George Weston Companies White, Sharon (GBR), Chief Executive, Ofcom Wieseltier, Leon (USA), Isaiah Berlin Senior Fellow in Culture and Policy, The Brookings Institution Wolf, Martin H. (INT), Chief Economics Commentator, Financial Times Wolfensohn, James D. (USA), Chairman and CEO, Wolfensohn & Company Wunsch, Pierre (BEL), Vice-Governor, National Bank of Belgium Zeiler, Gerhard (AUT), President, Turner International Zients, Jeffrey D. (USA), Former Director, National Economic Council Zoellick, Robert B. (USA), Non-Executive Chairman, AllianceBernstein L.P. CHANTILLY, 31 MAY 2017 The 65th Bilderberg Meeting will take place from 1-4 June 2017 in Chantilly, Virginia, USA. As of today, 131 participants from 21 countries have confirmed their attendance. As ever, a diverse group of political leaders and experts from industry, finance, academia and the media has been invited. The list of participants is available here. The key topics for discussion this year include: The Trump Administration: A progress report Trans-Atlantic relations: options and scenarios The Trans-Atlantic defence alliance: bullets, bytes and bucks The direction of the EU Can globalisation be slowed down? Jobs, income and unrealised expectations The war on information Why is populism growing? Russia in the international order The Near East Nuclear proliferation China Current events Founded in 1954, the Bilderberg Meeting is an annual conference designed to foster dialogue between Europe and North America. Every year, between 120-140 political leaders and experts from industry, finance, academia and the media are invited to take part in the conference. About two thirds of the participants come from Europe and the rest from North America; approximately a quarter from politics and government and the rest from other fields. The conference is a forum for informal discussions about major issues facing the world. The meetings are held under the Chatham House Rule, which states that participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s) nor any other participant may be revealed. Thanks to the private nature of the meeting, the participants are not bound by the conventions of their office or by pre-agreed positions. As such, they can take time to listen, reflect and gather insights. There is no desired outcome, no minutes are taken and no report is written. Furthermore, no resolutions are proposed, no votes are taken, and no policy statements are issued. Media Contact: media[@]bilderbergmeetings.orgMay 31

Robert Murphy Steering Committee Correspondence Related to 1969 Bilderberg Meeting - File Contents Letter to American Members of the Bilderberg Steering Committee from Joseph E. Johnson, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, December 13, 1968 Letter to Robert Murphy from Joseph E. Johnson regarding potential attendees for the 1969 conference, November 14, 1968 Letter to Robert Murphy from Joseph E. Johnson regarding potential attendees for the 1969 conference, November 27, 1968 Letter to the “Members of the Steering Committee” from Arnold Lamping of Bilderberg Meetings, November 14, 1968 Letter from Max Kohnstamm to professor E.H. van der Beugel regarding potential attendees for the 1969 conference, November 5, 1968 Confidential list of suggested Bilderberg participants for the 1969 conference, November 27, 1968 Letter from Robert Murphy to Joseph E. Johnson regarding the steering committee meeting in October 1968, November 1, 1968 Letter to Robert Murphy from Joseph E. Johnson containing the minutes of the October 1968 steering committee meeting, October 30, 1968 Minutes of the October 1968 steering committee meeting at Soestdijk Palace Letter from professor E.H. van der Beugel to steering committee members regarding the upcoming meeting in October 1968, September 24, 1968May 29

Bilderberg Discussion Paper: Some Reflections on the Japanese at Aspen - The performance, or rather the non-performance, of the two Japanese participants in the technology conference has provided an epitome of the general difficulty we face in involving the Japanese meaningfully in international conferences of this nature. I am very glad that I extended this seminar, because it has been an eye opener, and a number of ideas as to probable cause and possible remedy have presented themselves to me in the course of living with this problem during the last four days. The difficulties the Japanese had were of a linguistic — and social — nature, not one of substantive capabilities. Both Hayashi and Tanaka were excellent choices in the two fields represented, respectively, by Panels I and IV, Hayashi being one of the leading scholars who has addressed himself to problems of technology and value change, and Tanaka being one of the bright your bureaucrats charged with the task of charting the future development of the Japanese economy. If we limit ourselves to the very few highly Westernized Japanese with really good English and genuine social poise, we shall be cutting ourselves off from the ninety-five percent of the Japanese cultural, political and business elite. We shall be getting the same people, good as they may be (like Michio Nagai, or Shigeharu Matsumoto) over and over again — to the exclusion not only of luminaries like Tanga the architect or Kawabata the (Nobel prize-winning) novelist, but also of a whole host of younger artists, writers, political scientists, economists, party leaders, and what have you, all of whom ought to be involved in a fruitful East-West dialogue.May 29

Bilderberg Discussion Paper: Some Implications of the World Company - I propose to approach the subject of the “internationalization of business” by considering what I shall arbitrarily call the “world company.” This terminology seems to me more descriptive and less awkward than such expressions as the “international” or “multinational” corporation or company. A “world company, ” as I use the term, is a corporation, organized under the laws of a domiciliary country, that characteristically engages in some industrial activity or activities and that meets two standards: First, it does business all over the world – or at least in substantially all non-Communist areas – obtaining its capital and procuring its raw materials wherever they are available under the most advantageous conditions, producing wherever its goods can be most efficiently manufactured, and selling its products in all the markets of the world; and Second, the management of the world company shapes its policies not in terms of national economies but of the overall world economy. As thus defined. the world company is perhaps more archetypal than real, but more and more corporations are approaching the prescribed standards and there will be even more tomorrow, since the evolution of the world company responds to needs that are every day becoming more acute. At a time when the demand for goods of every kind ts multiplying almost at a geometric rate while world resources remain finite, we must find the means to use those resources with a maximum of efficiency and a minimum of waste or face a Malthusian debate on a global scale. It is to this end that the world company makes its unique contribution, by enabling men for the first time in history to deploy resources freely throughout the world in accordance with principles of comparative advantage measured by the objective standard of profit.May 28

Bilderberg Discussion Paper: What is Happening to Detente? Relations Between the West and the Communist Countries - For more than a decade now, relations between the Western powers and the Communist member states of the Soviet bloc have been characterized by the development of limited but important elements of cooperation along with the persistence of overriding conflict. The conflict, centered around the balance of world power between U.S.A. and U.S.S.R., and involving their respective European allies degrees in its diverse aspects, finds its expression in the competitive development of armaments, both nuclear and conventional; in the continuing military confrontation of the rival alliances in Europe and the promotion of rival concepts for the division of the continent and particularly for the future of Germany; in the expansion or Soviet influence in the Middle East and the increasing penetration of Soviet forces into the Mediterranean; in substantial deliveries of Soviet arms for North Vietnam; as well as in the spreading of rival interpretations of the world scene and rival views of the character of their respective political, economic and social systems by both sides. At the same time, elements of East—West cooperation have developed both from the recognition of certain common interests by the two “bloc leaders” and from the increasing tendency of the other members of both blocs to pursue their individual national interests independently. A common interest of U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. in avoiding a nuclear world war, and more generally in limiting the risks and burdens of their conflict, has been increasingly recognized by them ever since the Geneva summit meeting of 1955; after their confrontation in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, it has led to the beginnings of a diplomatic technique for joint crisis control as well as to intensified efforts for arms control – so far largely at the expense of other powers. A second common interest, as yet publicly avoided only by the U.S.A. and in fact given greater weight by them, but not ignored by the U.S.S.R. either, concerns the slowing don or the growth of Communist China’s power; this has shown itself particularly in common opposition to China’s nuclear armament, in common backing for India against China. and in common denunciation of China’s belligerent ideology and propaganda.May 28

Sunlight Foundation Blog

Restrictions on journalists in the US Senate violate core American principles - Are reporters currently allowed to ask questions and record the responses of Senators in the Senate halls on video, in keeping with years of precedent? All signs point to troubling new restrictions on the freedom of the press in the U.S. Capitol unilaterally imposed by Senator Richard Shelby. While Shelby claims no new changes have been made in a statement, multiple journalists have made it clear that their access was impeded today — and multiple United States Senators told the public today that the Rules Committee has restricted press freedom in the Senate, barring reporters from filing interviews in the halls. We asked the Senator if reported restrictions on the press were made under existing rules and received no answer. At minimum, any new policy that limits press access should be released and justified to the public, but every report that we’ve seen today suggests that there is no valid justification. Restrictions that prevent journalists from informing the public about public business violate fundamental principles of American democracy. Senator Shelby should ensure that freedom of the press in the first branch of government is not a victim of partisan polarization, particularly in light of the White House’s failure to defend the role of journalism in a democracy. America’s political leaders need to protect and defend the First Amendment, not restrict it. UPDATE: Hours after journalists first reported the issues, the Senate Rules Committee has reverted to the previous rules. We hope they stay that way. NEW: Senate Rules Committee reverses course on hallway interviews. "You may continue to follow the rules as if it was yesterday." — Kasie Hunt (@kasie) June 13, 2017Jun 13

Today in OpenGov: Open Sessions - As the first summer heat wave stifles DC, the eyes of official Washington turn to the Senate, where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions will testify in an open hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee at 2:30 PM. Read on for our take on that and much, much more in this edition of #Today in OpenGov. washington watch   Gianforte won't serve time for assault on journalist. "Montana Republican Rep.-elect Greg Gianforte will serve no jail time for his assault of a journalist but will do community service and undergo anger management counseling." (Roll Call) Senate Republicans not planning to publicly release their healthcare bill. "We aren't stupid," said one aide consulted by Axios. Senate leadership plans to send the bill directly to the CBO for scoring and is hoping for a vote before the July 4th recess. Our take? A legislative proposal that will reform 1/6th of the U.S. economy should be disclosed to the public online, marked up, and debated. In a setback for public transparency and accountability, the VA is no longer updating performance database.  "The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has stopped updating a performance database that charts error rates at local offices — a system vets advocates say was a useful tool to hold the agency accountable, including at the Boston office." (Government Technology) Sunlight joined a broad coalition of organizations — including the ACLU, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Liberty Coalition, Demand Progress, and more — in calling for the Director of the Office of National Intelligence to be more transparent about how many Americans are surveilled under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Read the letter here.  A reorganization at the GSA is raising questions about how 18F will function under with White House Office of American Innovation. "The General Services Administration announced Wednesday its tech wing—the Technology Transformation Service—will move into the Federal Acquisition Service in an effort to work better with the White House." (Nextgov) trumpland Jeff Sessions at his confirmation hearing. Image Credit: Office of the President Elect Attorney General Jeff Sessions to testify today in public hearing on Russia. After some concern that the hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee would be closed it was confirmed yesterday that an open session would be held today at 2:30 pm EST. (NBC News) Our take? It's important for the public to be informed about the Attorney General's actions before and after he took up his current post.  COVFEFE Act would ensure that presidential tweets remain official records. "Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., introduced Monday the Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement Act that would amend the Presidential Records Act to archive posts made on the president’s personal social media accounts. The COVFEFE Act, then, contains language that would have archived for future generations Trump’s deleted covfefe tweet." (Nextgov) Our take? While the National Archives has issued clear guidance to this effect, it is useful to codify the status of presidential social media use into law.  White House refuses to comment on potential existence of Comey tapes… "The White House refused to say Monday when President Trump would announce whether he recorded his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey." (The Hill) …While the Secret Service stated that it has no "tapes" of Oval Office conversations. Documents obtained via FOIA confirm that the Secret Service has no audio or transcripts made inside the White House. (Wall Street Journal) As we pointed out on Twitter, that doesn't mean no tapes exist. Trump allies float possibility of Mueller dismissal. "A friend of President Trump said Monday that Trump is considering firing special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the FBI investigation into potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia." (The Hill) Inspectors General among first casualties in Trump's war on oversight. "But Comey is far from the only watchdog Trump has tried to silence. Since the day the president took office, he has quietly been waging war on inspectors general—the federal officials charged with ferreting out government waste, fraud, corruption, and mismanagement." Our Executive Director John Wonderlich weighed in, noting that "the Trump administration has created an environment that demonstrates that they don’t really care about ethics…. And as we all know from experience, this is the kind of environment where waste and corruption flourish." (The New Republic) You can track the status of vacant Inspector General positions — some of which date back well into the Obama Administration — on the Project on Government Oversight's IG Vacancy Tracker. around the world Operation Serenata de Amor Brazilian President avoids campaign finance charges. "Brazil’s embattled President Michel Temer scored a breakthrough in his struggle to cling to power as Brazil’s top electoral court acquitted him of illegal campaign financing charges." (Bloomberg) Fighting corruption with data science and social media in Brazil. "A group of 10 data scientists has been using artificial intelligence to monitor public spending and publish suspicious activity on Twitter." (Vice Impact) Kremlin critic Navalny jailed for 30 days. "A Moscow court found Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny guilty of organizing illegal protests and sentenced him to 30 days’ detention late Monday." Reports indicate that over 1,000 demonstrators were arrested during protests on Monday. (POLITICO) Open data must be about people, not simply innovation. "But really, open data is about people, their problems, and giving them the power to solve them," writes Ana Brandusescu at SciDevNet. save the dates Civic Tech Fest Taipei June 14th, 11am EST: Using EITI to Disclose Social and Environmental Information Related to Extractive Activities, Webinar. The OGP Openness in Natural Resources Working Group is hosting this webinar aimed "at stakeholders, including representatives from government, civil society, and the private sector, who work on, or are interested in, transparency around socio-environmental information related to the oil, gas and mining sector. It will include a discussion on current trends, opportunities, and challenges regarding socio-environmental transparency and whether/how EITI can be a tool to disclose such information." RSVP here. June 27th: Legislative Data and Transparency Conference in Washington, DC. "The Legislative Data and Transparency Conference 2017 (#LDTC17), hosted by the Committee on House Administration, will take place on Tuesday, June 27, 2017in the Capitol Visitor Center Congressional Auditorium. The #LDTC17 brings individuals from Legislative Branch agencies together with data users and transparency advocates to foster a conversation about the use of legislative data – addressing how agencies use technology well and how they can use it better in the future." Learn more here. June 28th, 10am EST: How Can Demand Driven & Bottom Up Social Accountability Tools Improve Health Services? The Experience of Rural Mozambique, Webinar. "This webinar explores how Concern Universal has managed to find the intersections in incentives and goals between government and rural communities while helping overcome some crucial gaps in health service delivery. It focuses on lessons learned through application of collaborative government/citizen’s approach. More information here: http://bit.ly/2sUtR0C" June 29th: DATA Act Summit 2017 in Washington, DC. "The fourth annual DATA Act Summit, hosted by the Data Coalition and Booz Allen Hamilton, will bring together supporters of the open data transformation from across government and the private sector." Learn more and get your tickets here. July 5, 10am EST: ICT-mediated Citizen Engagement: Voice or Chatter? Webinar. "In this webinar, IT for Change will present the results of eight empirical case studies of citizen engagement through ICTs they undertook. This research, funded by Making All Voices Count, explored in each case how new forms of participation were shaped by IT, how IT affected power relations between government and citizens, and how the interactions between different actors continuously shape governance. More information here: http://bit.ly/2rb4TJ3" September 11th and 12th: TicTec@Taipei in Taipei. "TICTeC@Taipei is the first ever conference about the influence of civic tech to be held in Asia. We’ve invited members of academia, business, politics, NGOs, education to participate, and discuss their research. We hope through this event, we can build a global network of civic tech enthusiasts." The event is being held during #CivicTechFest 2017. Learn more, submit a session proposal, and register to attend here.   Tired of your boss/friend/intern/uncle forwarding you this email every morning? You can sign up here and have it delivered direct to your inbox! Please send questions, comments, tips, and concerns to todayinopengov@sunlightfoundation.com. We would love your feedback!  Jun 13

Today in OpenGov: It’s still really about ethics in government - Some technical difficulties kept us from releasing roundups on Thursday and Friday of last week, but we're back today with an expanded edition! Former FBI Director James Comey's testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee dominated national headlines all weekend, but there is plenty of other transparency, accountability and anti-corruption news from around the USA and world to share. Here's just a sample: cities around the United States are using technology to tackle homelessness, the Library of Congress is working on rebuilding its outdated IT systems, the New York Attorney General is looking into Eric Trump's charity, the Open Data Charter has recommendations for using open data in the fight against corruption, and much more. testify Image Credit: Brookings Institution Sunlight's Deputy Director Alex Howard reflected on Comey's testimony, calling it an important step towards transparency. He also outlined how Congress, the Judiciary, and the White House should respond. In particular, "the Trump administration, faced with a public denunciation of its mendacity from one of America’s most well respected federal investigators, needs to fundamentally readjust its approach to governing, acknowledging the rights of the public to be informed, the assessments of our intelligence services with respect to what happened in last year’s election, and embracing transparency and accountability regarding who did what and when and last year’s campaign…Without that readjustment, there is little hope of ever moving beyond "the cloud" that hangs over this White House." (Sunlight Foundation Blog) As with the statement Comey entered into the record, we encourage all Americans to read a transcript of his words and watch his testimony prior to reading press accounts or listening to the opinions of pundits on air.   Trump team fights back by hitting Comey as a leaker and threatening a legal complaint. "President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, plans to file a misconduct complaint against James Comey for asking a friend to release the contents of memos documenting Comey's conversations with the president to the press, a source close to Trump's legal team told BuzzFeed News on Friday." (BuzzFeed) House Intelligence Committee asks White House for confirmation of and access to Trump-Comey tapes. "Leaders of the House Intelligence Committee are asking the White House to produce any tapes that might exist of President Donald Trump's conversations with ousted FBI director James Comey." They set a June 23rd deadline for action. (POLITICO) Sessions planning to testify on Tuesday in response to Comey. "In a letter to his former colleagues in the House and Senate, Sessions canceled a planned appearance before Congress' appropriations committees. Sessions said he instead plans to appear on Tuesday before the Intelligence panel to respond to questions stemming from former FBI Director James Comey’s bombshell testimony on Thursday." (POLITICO) Sessions should testify in open session. Among others, the ACLU and Senator Ron Wyden have called for Sessions to testify in an open session. We agree. The road back to public trust is paved with transparency and accountability, not secrecy.   trumpland President Trump. Image Credit: The Tennessee National Guard Public Affairs Office D.C. and Maryland Attorneys General to sue Trump over emoluments issues. "Attorneys general for the District of Columbia and the state of Maryland say they will sue President Trump on Monday, alleging that he has violated anti-corruption clauses in the Constitution by accepting millions in payments and benefits from foreign governments since moving into the White House." (Washington Post) Meanwhile, DOJ defends the President by noting that Washington and Jefferson may have sold crops abroad. "Legal consideration aside, the DOJ’s motion is sorely deficient in its use of history. The question isn’t whether James Madison sold crops to a foreign state entity. (We don’t know.) Rather, it’s why the founders bothered to draft the emoluments clause in the first place, and what ideological worldview guided their thinking. The answer isn’t one that the current president or his lawyers would welcome." (POLITICO Magazine) Our take on the President continuing to take payments from foreign governments via his business interests: He shouldn't.  Chairman Grassley pushes back on White House policy of only answering oversight request from Committee Chairman. "The Trump administration's policy of ignoring the oversight requests of Democrats and rank-and-file members has earned it a powerful enemy: Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley." (POLITICO) We applaud Chairman Grassley for his response to this toxic policy.  New York Attorney General investigating Eric Trump's charity. "New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is looking into why Eric Trump’s charity paid more than $1 million to use Trump Organization properties for charity events in recent years, after boasting to donors that the family’s assets were being used at no cost." (Bloomberg) Office of Special Counsel knocks White House social media advisor for Hatch Act violation. Responding to a complaint by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington the Office of Special Counsel found that Dan Scavino, the White House Director of Social Media, violated the Hatch Act by targeting Rep. Justin Amash for defeat while invoking his official position at the White House. Read more on out Twitter. Trump announces FBI nominee Christopher Wray on Twitter. "President Donald Trump will nominate Christopher Wray as the next director of the FBI, he announced on Twitter on Wednesday, the day before ousted FBI Director James Comey is to testify at a high-stakes Senate hearing." (POLITICO) Wray may have his own Russia related complications. As we noted on Twitter Avoiding a public appearance of a conflict of interest could lead Trumps nominee for FBI director to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. via USA Today washington watch U.S. Supreme Court Building. Image Credit: Joe Ravi The Supreme Court's millionaires. "At least six — and possibly all nine — Supreme Court justices are millionaires, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of new personal financial disclosures released Thursday." (Center for Public Integrity) Library of Congress moves to modernize following critical audits, years of poor IT management. "The troublesome findings, in particular, those from GAO, drove the library to hire a permanent chief information officer—something it hadn’t had since 2012—and laid out 30 recommendations to right the legislative branch’s IT ship." (Nextgov) Co-Sponsors of legislation to roll back Wall Street reforms raked in campaign cash from banks. "A MapLight analysis of campaign contributions found the 41 sponsors of the bill received almost three times more money during the 2016 election cycle from commercial banks and holding companies than representatives who are not sponsors of the legislation." (MapLight) Gowdy almost certain to be next Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy was selected by the Republican Steering Committee on Thursday to be the next chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee." The full GOP Conference is expected to vote to confirm the decision on Tuesday. (Roll Call)  states and cities Image Credit: Steven Harris Mayors weigh in on solutions to major urban challenges. The 10 biggest issues facing American cities offer an agenda of goals for urban renewal & collective problem-solving (Fast Company) Six cities fighting homelessness with technology. "Recently, we spoke with more than a half-dozen government officials who are involved with the homeless, and while obstacles and conditions varied among cities, all agreed that their work would be much easier with better tech-based solutions for the problems cited above." (Government Technology) Boosting quality of life with data in North Carolina. "Whether monitoring traffic counts, water and air quality or water lines for leaks, sensors and other evolving technologies are increasingly being used by cities in the Triangle and nationwide to make more informed, real-time decisions." (Government Technology) around the world The Open Data Charter's Open Up Guide Fighting global corruption with open data. Robert Palmer of the Open Data Charter shared his organization's new publication, Open Up Guide: Using Open Data to Combat Corruption, on the Sunlight Foundation Blog Improving data collection capacity in non-technical organizations. "Due to the challenge of governments providing open data in Africa, civil society organisations (CSOs) have begun to emerge as alternative data producers. The value these CSOs bring includes familiarity of the local context or specific domain where data may be of benefit.  In some cases, this new role for CSOs serves to provide additional checks and verification for data that is already available, and in others to provide entire sets of data where none exists. CSOs now face the challenge of building their own skills to effectively produce public data that will benefit its users." (Open Knowledge) Reforming the bureaucratic revolving door may prove difficult in France. "Unlike many other other developed countries, France allows bureaucrats to hold political office—multiple offices, in fact—without having to quit the civil service. And they have a guaranteed right to return. Should the bureaucrat-candidate lose an election, there’s a job for life waiting back at the Agriculture Ministry or the Ministry for Overseas Territories. And a pension at retirement." (Bloomberg) Cash is the common denominator in these four global scandals. "What fun is uncovering a ring of corruption if you can’t bust open a Walter White-style storage locker full of bills? Well, if American drama has you let down this season, then feel free to look abroad, where cash is king in several ongoing scandals." (The Atlantic) save the dates June 12th through 14th: Canadian Open Data Summit in Edmonton, Canada. "The Canadian Open Data Summit (CODS) is an annual event where the most pressing challenges facing the open data and open government communities are addressed on a national scale." Learn more here. June 12th through 14th: Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit in Washington, DC. "We are bringing government, education, and nonprofit technology leaders from around the world to Washington, D.C this June 12-14, 2017 for the eighth annual AWS Public Sector Summit. Spend three, action-packed days with the innovators who are changing the world with cloud computing. You’ll go home with new strategies and techniques to accomplish new projects, maximize budgets, and achieve your mission that you didn’t think possible." Learn more and register here. June 14th, 11am EST: Using EITI to Disclose Social and Environmental Information Related to Extractive Activities, Webinar. The OGP Openness in Natural Resources Working Group is hosting this webinar aimed "at stakeholders, including representatives from government, civil society, and the private sector, who work on, or are interested in, transparency around socio-environmental information related to the oil, gas and mining sector. It will include a discussion on current trends, opportunities, and challenges regarding socio-environmental transparency and whether/how EITI can be a tool to disclose such information." RSVP here.  June 27th: Legislative Data and Transparency Conference in Washington, DC. "The Legislative Data and Transparency Conference 2017 (#LDTC17), hosted by the Committee on House Administration, will take place on Tuesday, June 27, 2017in the Capitol Visitor Center Congressional Auditorium. The #LDTC17 brings individuals from Legislative Branch agencies together with data users and transparency advocates to foster a conversation about the use of legislative data – addressing how agencies use technology well and how they can use it better in the future." Learn more here. June 29th: DATA Act Summit 2017 in Washington, DC. "The fourth annual DATA Act Summit, hosted by the Data Coalition and Booz Allen Hamilton, will bring together supporters of the open data transformation from across government and the private sector." Learn more and get your tickets here. September 11th and 12th: TicTec@Taipei in Taipei. "TICTeC@Taipei is the first ever conference about the influence of civic tech to be held in Asia. We’ve invited members of academia, business, politics, NGOs, education to participate, and discuss their research. We hope through this event, we can build a global network of civic tech enthusiasts." The event is being held during #CivicTechFest 2017. Learn more, submit a session proposal, and register to attend here.   Tired of your boss/friend/intern/uncle forwarding you this email every morning? You can sign up here and have it delivered direct to your inbox! Please send questions, comments, tips, and concerns to todayinopengov@sunlightfoundation.com. We would love your feedback!  Jun 12

Comey’s testimony is another important step in transparency - Today’s open hearing with the former director of the FBI in the United States Senate Intelligence Committee was a signal moment in modern American history. Millions of people around the country and the world paused to watch and listen on our radios, televisions, computers and mobile devices, in workplaces, bars and homes. The ubiquity of senators’ questions and James Comey’s answers in our public life today shows how far we’ve come in using modern technology to bring events of great public interest directly to the public, in mediums and delivery methods that enable real-time participation that realize the aspirations of all but the most ardent open government advocates in last decades. As with the statement Comey entered into the record, we encourage all Americans to read a transcript of his words and watch his testimony prior to reading press accounts or listening to the span of pundits in for the cooperatives on air. What we learned today was extraordinary, in many respects. Building on the prepared statement that the former FBI director submitted into the record last night, shedding unprecedented light not only the interactions of a president and the director of an independent agency entrusted with pursuing an ongoing investigation into for a foreign influence into that president’s campaign but the thinking behind them. Comey said that the White House tried to derail the inquiry into the FBI’s probe of Russian meddling our politics, and said that the president of the United States had lied, “plain and simple,” tried to defame him and the FBI after he was fired, and expressed hope that their conversations had been recorded to corroborate his accounts of the encounters. Given the ongoing nature of the independent investigation under a special prosecutor, the former director was understandably circumspect about many questions he was posed, but crystal clear on other counts. Comey stood behind a basic truth with the Senate and public: yes, the Russian government did have a deliberate and directed influence and technical campaign directed at our politics last year, despite unfounded assertions from the White House and President Donald J. Trump regarding Russia’s acts. He also spoke to democratic principles, speaking directly to the American public about the importance of independent law enforcement, the integrity of institutions of justice, and shared purpose towards defending against the intrusion of foreign powers that can and should transcend partisan politics. It’s critical that we use the extraordinary direct access that is afforded to all of us to read the primary source and make up our own minds about what the FBI directors extraordinary statements mean, from his choice is to memorialize his nine different interactions with Trump to his assessment of why he was dismissed. What happened today was not normal: a former FBI director called the president a liar, and the president did the same in response. The accumulated loss of trust in the statements of this White House now matters to public judgment of the veracity of this FBI director statements, delivered in column, clear language that’s rich in detail and grounded in a career prosecutor’s wisdom. What happens next is not dramatically different than what was needed this morning. Congress needs to embrace its role as a separate but co-equal branch of government entrusted with overseeing the executive branch, from ethics to integrity. The Senate and House Intelligence Committees must take every opportunity to remove partisanship from the process and disclose as much to the public from their investigative work as as practical and possible. The judiciary needs to keep evaluating the constitutionality of the executive orders coming from this White House, from the restrictions on movement that the president himself called a travel ban to any request that the special prosecutor makes pursuant to his investigation. Mueller needs to be left alone to do his work, preserving his independence and showing up public and trust that our nation’s top federal law enforcement agency can and will pursue any leads, regardless of what investigators find under the rocks Comey referred to you today. The Trump administration, faced with a public denunciation of its mendacity from one of America’s most well respected federal investigators, needs to fundamentally readjust its approach to governing, acknowledging the rights of the public to be informed, the assessments of our intelligence services with respect to what happened in last year’s election, and embracing transparency and accountability regarding who did what and when and last year’s campaign. Without that readjustment, there is little hope of ever moving beyond “the cloud” that hangs over this White House.Jun 8

GUIDE: How to use open data to fight corruption - [Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Robert Palmer, the Partnerships and Communication Director of the Open Data Charter. This post on open data and corruption was originally published at the organization’s blog.] Corruption has a devastating impact on the lives of people around the world. When money that should be spent on schools, hospitals and other government services ends up in the hands of dishonest officials, everyone suffers. That’s why we’re launching the Open Up Guide: Using Open Data to Combat Corruption. We think that with the right conditions in place, greater transparency can lead to more accountability, less corruption and better outcomes for citizens. This guide builds on the work in this area already done by the G20’s anti-corruption working group, Transparency International and the Web Foundation. Inside the guide, you’ll find a number of tools, including: A short overview on how open data can be used to combat corruption. Use cases and methodologies. A series of case studies highlighting existing and future approaches to the use of open data in the anti-corruption field. 30 priority datasets and the key attributes needed so that they can talk to each other. To address corruption networks it is particularly important that connections can be established and followed across data sets, national borders and different sectors. Data standards. Standards describe what should be published, and the technical details of how it should be made available. The report includes some of the relevant standards for anti-corruption work, and highlights the areas where there are currently no standards. The guide has been developed by Transparency International-Mexico, Open Contracting Partnership, OD4D and the Open Data Charter, building on input from government officials, open data experts, civil society and journalists. It’s been designed as a practical tool for governments who want to use open data to fight corruption. It’s still a work in progress, however, and we want feedback on how to make it more useful. Please either comment directly on the Google Doc version of the guide, or email us at info@opendatacharter.net. As for next steps, we’re planning on road-testing the assumptions underlying the guide with a number of countries to understand how we can make the guide as useful as possible. The Charter team is in early conversations with the Government of Mexico about developing a methodology to road test the guide and ground this work to address real life challenges. The anti-corruption guide is part of a series of Open Up Guides that the Charter network is developing to help different sectors turn the Principles into practical action. The other areas of focus are agriculture and climate change. View the full guide to using open data to fight corruption. On June 6th, the Open Data Charter hosted an online conversation about using open data to fight corruption. You can watch the archived video below:Jun 7

Today in OpenGov: The president’s tweets and ethics in government… - In today's edition, we reflect on the president's Twitter habit, a retired senator works to improve congressional oversight, Minnesota reaches a transparency turning point, and more… trumpland Envisioning how a presidential seal could be used to verify a Tweet written by the President. Reflecting on Trump, Twitter and transparency. Alex Howard took to the Sunlight Foundation blog to discuss the president's Twitter use and its implications for transparency and public trust. "As with any tweet by @POTUS, the public should be able to know who wrote a @realDonaldTrump tweet. Someday, perhaps Twitter or Facebook will work with a White House to show tweets or updates written by a president differently, adding a Verified layer that acts as a watermark or a simple annotation in the meta data that changes how the text is displayed."  Meanwhile, Twitter users blocked by Trump are threatening to sue. On Tuesday, the Knight First Amendment Institute "a nonprofit organization affiliated with Columbia University, said it believes his account is a 'designated public forum' and threatened legal action if the president didn’t comply. In a letter addressed to Trump, his counsel, press secretary and social media director, the institute wrote on behalf of Holly O’Reilly and Joseph M. Papp, both of whom criticized the president on the social media platform in recent weeks and said they were blocked." (Bloomberg) Secrecy around waivers underlines systemic weakness in ethics rules. "It is difficult to fully assess how President Trump’s ethics pledge is working in practice without more information on the political appointees. In part, that’s due to the design of his ethics pledge. But the reliance on self-reporting by individuals, vague definitions, lack of transparency, and no general requirement for written recusals are systemic problems that transcend the Trump administration that should be addressed immediately." (Project on Government Oversight) OGE won't investigate emoluments issue, citing lack of jurisdiction. "In a letter Monday, U.S. Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub told Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) that his office lacks jurisdiction to examine whether benefits Trump gets from federal government dealings with his private businesses run afoul of the domestic emoluments clause in the Constitution." (POLITICO) Trump sons continue to blur the lines between ethics and politics. "Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., the president’s adult sons who took over the Trump Organization as their father took control of the White House, hit the morning show circuit this week to promote Trump Hotels’ newest line: a budget-friendly chain inspired by the sons’ time on the campaign trail with their father…But they often sounded more like surrogates for the White House." (POLITICO) How Eric Trump's "charity" golf tournament regularly benefited the Trump organization. Particularly worrisome is a report that "the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which has come under previous scrutiny for self-dealing and advancing the interests of its namesake rather than those of charity, apparently used the Eric Trump Foundation to funnel $100,000 in donations into revenue for the Trump Organization." (Forbes) washington watch Image Credit: Kate Ter Haar Leak arrest is a cause for concern among journalists. "But the arrest of Reality Leigh Winner, an intelligence contractor accused of leaking a classified report about Russian meddling in the 2016 election, has raised concerns about the measures taken by news organizations to protect confidential informers, with some reporters worrying about a chilling effect on potential sources." (New York Times) Working with whistleblowers in the digital age. "In particular, sources who want to make an anonymous disclosure of information should avoid making contact via government phones, email, or computers. In this age it is difficult to transfer information electronically without leaving a footprint that could be tracked in a leak investigation. Journalists must also consider how their methods to verify information with others might inadvertently expose a source to retaliation or prosecution, and how posting primary documents—even after scanning—may still leave detectable information that will quickly identify a source." (Project on Government Oversight) This Senator's retirement project is to improve congressional oversight. "More than 100 congressional staffers have now completed boot camps designed to boost the investigative skills of House and Senate staff, thanks in part to the retirement work of former Sen. Carl Levin." The two day trainings are led by bipartisan instructors with deep oversight experience. (Roll Call) State Department looking outside government for innovation inspiration. "The State Department’s Office of Global Partnerships is gathering information, strategies and ideas from all areas of the private sector to facilitate innovation and modernization in diplomacy, according to a request for information filed in May." (FedScoop) states and cities The Lost Angeles Index of Displacement Pressure. Image via Data-Smart City Solutions Searching for a more transparent budget process in Minnesota — and around the country. "It’s a familiar story that’s spanned decades and power shifts in St. Paul —and one that once again leaves lingering questions for legislators and the public. If moving up deadlines didn’t make the process more transparent, what will do the trick? Given the entrenched interests involved and the nature of the political process in Minnesota, can anything be done at all?" Alex Howard weighed in on the benefits of technology saying "It could be something as simple as a spreadsheet or something as complex as a living budget document…We have a representative democracy and it’s appropriate to see how we are being represented. Obviously we have a recourse in the ballot box, but the great promise of technology advancements is that citizenship isn’t something you just exercise on Election Day; you can exercise it every day.” (Minn Post) One thing is clear. When it comes to making state governments more transparent with modern technology, we're just at the end of the beginning. Leveraging maps to understand gentrification and fight inequality. "The first step in addressing gentrification is understanding where it has happened and where it is likely to happen in the future. A number of cities have found mapping to be a powerful tool for observing gentrification trends, allowing them to intervene before low-income residents are seriously affected." (Data-Smart City Solutions) Reigning in public records exemptions in Oregon. "Before [the legislative session ends in July], lawmakers owe Oregonians the successful passage of House Bill 2101 that would provide a process to review, and hopefully rein in, the ever-growing list of exemptions that help special interest groups and governmental agencies keep certain public documents private." (The Oregonian) save the dates What to expect at #PDF17 June 8th and 9th: Personal Democracy Forum 2017 in New York City. "The annual flagship conference brings together close to 1,000 top technologists, campaigners, hackers, opinion-makers, government officials, journalists, and academics for two days of game-changing talks, workshops, and networking opportunities to celebrate the power and potential of tech to make real change happen." Check out the panels and Learn more about #PDF17 and get your tickets here. June 12th through 14th: Canadian Open Data Summit in Edmonton, Canada. "The Canadian Open Data Summit (CODS) is an annual event where the most pressing challenges facing the open data and open government communities are addressed on a national scale." Learn more here. June 12th through 14th: Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit in Washington, DC. "We are bringing government, education, and nonprofit technology leaders from around the world to Washington, D.C this June 12-14, 2017 for the eighth annual AWS Public Sector Summit. Spend three, action-packed days with the innovators who are changing the world with cloud computing. You’ll go home with new strategies and techniques to accomplish new projects, maximize budgets, and achieve your mission that you didn’t think possible." Learn more and register here. June 14th, 11am EST: Using EITI to Disclose Social and Environmental Information Related to Extractive Activities, Webinar. The OGP Openness in Natural Resources Working Group is hosting this webinar aimed "at stakeholders, including representatives from government, civil society, and the private sector, who work on, or are interested in, transparency around socio-environmental information related to the oil, gas and mining sector. It will include a discussion on current trends, opportunities, and challenges regarding socio-environmental transparency and whether/how EITI can be a tool to disclose such information." RSVP here.  June 27th: Legislative Data and Transparency Conference in Washington, DC. "The Legislative Data and Transparency Conference 2017 (#LDTC17), hosted by the Committee on House Administration, will take place on Tuesday, June 27, 2017in the Capitol Visitor Center Congressional Auditorium. The #LDTC17 brings individuals from Legislative Branch agencies together with data users and transparency advocates to foster a conversation about the use of legislative data – addressing how agencies use technology well and how they can use it better in the future." Learn more here. June 29th: DATA Act Summit 2017 in Washington, DC. "The fourth annual DATA Act Summit, hosted by the Data Coalition and Booz Allen Hamilton, will bring together supporters of the open data transformation from across government and the private sector." Learn more and get your tickets here. September 11th and 12th: TicTec@Taipei in Taipei. "TICTeC@Taipei is the first ever conference about the influence of civic tech to be held in Asia. We’ve invited members of academia, business, politics, NGOs, education to participate, and discuss their research. We hope through this event, we can build a global network of civic tech enthusiasts." The event is being held during #CivicTechFest 2017. Learn more, submit a session proposal, and register to attend here.   Tired of your boss/friend/intern/uncle forwarding you this email every morning? You can sign up here and have it delivered direct to your inbox! Please send questions, comments, tips, and concerns to todayinopengov@sunlightfoundation.com. We would love your feedback!  Jun 7

On Trump, Twitter and transparency - As has been true of many mornings in 2017, President Donald J. Trump started the day by sending out a series of tweets from his personal Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump — including one regarding media criticism of his use of social media. The FAKE MSM is working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media. They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017 At least, we think the president tapped out a message on his iPhone and sent it. We don’t know for sure if he authored it — and that’s a problem for public trust and the historical record. Not all @realDonaldTrump tweets are written and sent by the President, and projects like the “@TrumpOrNotBot” that seek to determine if Trump wrote the tweet aren’t authoritative. As with any tweet by @POTUS, the public should be able to know who wrote a @realDonaldTrump tweet. Someday, perhaps Twitter or Facebook will work with a White House to show tweets or updates written by a president differently, adding a Verified layer that acts as a watermark or a simple annotation in the meta data that changes how the text is displayed. In the meantime, there are two strategies to address this: either the president starts adding -DJT or the Trump administration ends any “ghost tweeting” by White House staff, whether by Dan Scavino, the director of social media, or others. The latter option seems more likely, and a better choice. (The probability of this or any president being willing to add 5 characters to each tweet is low.) A presidential seal might be a fix, too, as illustrated below: There are larger issues with this president’s use of social media, Twitter included. There are both good and bad uses of social media by public officials, of which informing public is a key one, particularly regarding public safety or national security. Misinforming the public, attacking the press or private citizens, and insulting allies are all bad uses of social media. That includes the president, but special considerations apply. When any president tweets insults, false statements or unsubstantiated accusation, it erodes public trust. That’s one reason the Wall Street Journal editorial board took Trump to task today. The medium a president selects for the message isn’t the point: it’s the words he uses. Yes, they’re tweets, but it’s important to divorce the medium from the message. Each public statement by a President of the United States matters. In 2017, @realDonaldTrump tweets are statements by the President. The @RealPressSecBot, which formats each tweet into a White House press release, illustrates this point: A statement by the President: pic.twitter.com/6qhm9ibZRR — Real Press Sec. (@RealPressSecBot) June 6, 2017 We hope that the president and his staff choose those words carefully and transparently.Jun 6

Today in OpenGov: Disclosures,