17 November 19
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16 November 19
The New York Times Editorial Board | Did President Trump Just Earn Himself Another Article of Impeachment?
The New York Times Editorial Board
Excerpt: "Republican defenders of Donald Trump have argued that he withheld congressionally mandated military aid to Ukraine and a promised White House meeting because he wanted assurances that Ukraine's new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was serious about fighting corruption."
The New York Times Editorial Board
Excerpt: "Republican defenders of Donald Trump have argued that he withheld congressionally mandated military aid to Ukraine and a promised White House meeting because he wanted assurances that Ukraine's new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was serious about fighting corruption."
EXCERPT:
David Holmes, an official in the American Embassy in Kiev, testified to lawmakers privately that he had overheard a telephone conversation in which the ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, assured the American president that his Ukrainian counterpart “loves your ass” and will do “anything you ask him to,” including to open investigations into the family of Mr. Trump’s leading Democratic rival, Joe Biden.
Mr. Holmes said that he overheard the conversation while sitting at a restaurant in Kiev with Mr. Sondland. Mr. Trump was speaking so loudly, Mr. Holmes said, that the ambassador held the phone away from his ear and Mr. Holmes could hear Mr. Trump demanding to know if Mr. Zelensky had committed to the investigations. Thus, apparently, is diplomacy conducted at the highest levels of the Trump administration.
Representative Adam Schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, interrupted the questioning to let the ambassador know that the president was attacking her.
After reading Ms. Yovanovitch one of the belligerent tweets, Mr. Schiff asked: “What effect do you think that has on other witnesses’ willingness to come forward and expose wrongdoing?”
“Well, it’s very intimidating,” she said, visibly shaken.
Mr. Schiff assured her that “some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously.”
Translation: The president may just have earned himself an article of impeachment.
In a refreshing development, the ensuing criticism of Mr. Trump’s Twitter fit was bipartisan. Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, said the president’s tweeting “was wrong.”
“Extraordinarily poor judgment,” said Kenneth Starr, the former independent counsel at the center of President Clinton’s impeachment, on Fox News. “Obviously this was quite injurious.” Fox News’ Bret Baier called it “a turning point in this hearing.”
Even an effort by Republican lawmakers on Friday to clear the president wound up underscoring how indifferent he was to wrongdoing by officials in Ukraine.
Stephen Miller. (photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
ALSO SEE: White House Ignores Calls for Stephen Miller
to Step Down After White Nationalist Emails Leaked
to Step Down After White Nationalist Emails Leaked
Stephen Miller Is No Outlier. White Supremacy Rules the Republican Party
Cas Mudde, Guardian UK
Mudde writes: "This week, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) published a bombshell article revealing troubling emails that White House senior policy advisor Stephen Miller sent to editors at Breitbart News, the far-right media outlet previously led by Steve Bannon."
Cas Mudde, Guardian UK
Mudde writes: "This week, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) published a bombshell article revealing troubling emails that White House senior policy advisor Stephen Miller sent to editors at Breitbart News, the far-right media outlet previously led by Steve Bannon."
EXCERPT:
It also externalizes white supremacy, as if it lives in the margins. But it has been hiding in plain sight within the Republican Party for decades. Miller wrote the emails to Breitbart when he was still an aide to Senator Jeff Sessions, who has been a consistent voice of white supremacy in Congress since 1997. And the Alabama Senator was not alone in Congress either. Representative Steve King has been the most open and unapologetic voice for the cause since 2003. Others, like representatives Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, Tom Tancredo and Dana Rohrabacher, might not be as open in their support, but they all encourage white nationalism to varying degrees.
But white supremacy in the Republican party is not limited to just these individual congressmen and women. It runs much deeper than them. White supremacy was at the core of the “Southern Strategy”, dating back to the unsuccessful 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, which was formative for the future conservative movement. Perfected by President Richard Nixon, with the help of speechwriter Pat Buchanan, dog whistles to white supremacy have been at the heart of virtually every Republican campaign since the 1970s.
Talking of Buchanan, more than 25 years ago he gave his now famous “culture war” speech at the 1992 Republican convention. While the term has become mainly linked to the religious right, Buchanan is at least as much a white supremacist as a Christian fundamentalist. In many ways, he is the intellectual father of the Trump administration, personifying Mike Pence and Donald Trump in one.
This is why calling for Stephen Miller’s resignation wouldn’t change much. Neither Miller nor Bannon “made” Trump the white-supremacist-in-chief. And Trump is not the only problem either, as Joe Biden seems to believe. He won the Republican primaries, and presidential elections, not despite white supremacy but because of it.
Rep. Max Rose. (photo: Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images)
Two Democrats Are Introducing a Bill to Ban Corporate PACs
Ella Nilsen, Vox
Nilsen writes: "Two moderate House Democrats are introducing a bill aiming to root out corporate influence where it currently thrives: Washington, DC."
Ella Nilsen, Vox
Nilsen writes: "Two moderate House Democrats are introducing a bill aiming to root out corporate influence where it currently thrives: Washington, DC."
EXCERPT:
On Friday, Reps. Max Rose (NY) and Josh Harder (CA) will introduce the “Ban Corporate PACs Act,” which would ban for-profit corporations from being allowed to sponsor, operate, or fund PACs. Vox was given an exclusive first look at the legislation.
The bill’s co-authors see it as a necessary addition to the HR 1 — also known as the “For the People Act” — the vast anti-corruption bill that was House Democrats’ first priority after taking back the majority in 2018. HR 1 passed the House way back in early March, but it has gone nowhere as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vehemently opposes it.
“We always said HR 1 was just the beginning,” Rose told Vox in an interview. Rose called corporate PACs “legalized bribery” that “should not have a place in this town.”
Salvadorans commemorate the murder of six Jesuit priests and two women at UCA in San Salvador - one of the civil war's most notorious crimes. (photo: Oscar Rivera/EPA/Corbis)
30 Years Ago Today in El Salvador, US-Trained Soldiers Murdered 6 Priests in Cold Blood
Hilary Goodfriend, Jacobin
Goodfriend writes: "Today marks thirty years since the massacre of six Jesuits, their housekeeper, and her daughter by US-trained forces. But US brutality in Latin America isn't a thing of the past: top military officials involved in the coup against Bolivian president Evo Morales were trained by the United States, too."
Hilary Goodfriend, Jacobin
Goodfriend writes: "Today marks thirty years since the massacre of six Jesuits, their housekeeper, and her daughter by US-trained forces. But US brutality in Latin America isn't a thing of the past: top military officials involved in the coup against Bolivian president Evo Morales were trained by the United States, too."
EXCERPT:
n November 16, 1989, six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter were murdered in their residence on the campus of the Jesuit Central American University (UCA) in San Salvador, El Salvador. Thirty years later, the massacre remains emblematic of the indiscriminate savagery exercised by the servants of the Salvadoran ruling class, the impunity they enjoy, and the devastating legacies of US intervention in the region.
The Jesuit murders drew international outcry, but the victims were only eight of some seventy-five thousand killed and ten thousand more disappeared during the twelve-year civil war (1980–1992). Formally, the conflict pitted the US-backed military dictatorship against the Farabundo Martà National Liberation Front (FMLN) leftist guerillas. But the Salvadoran state tortured and slaughtered civilians with abandon. At the war’s close, a 1993 United Nations Truth Commission report attributed only 5 percent of the bloodshed to the insurgents. The regime and its paramilitaries bore responsibility for the vast majority of the conflict’s deaths, disappearances, and displacements.
The Salvadoran security forces didn’t carry out these horrors alone. They were armed, trained, funded, and advised by the United States. The attack at the UCA was carried out by members of the Atlacatl Battalion, an elite counterinsurgency force trained at the infamous School of the Americas (SOA) in Fort Benning, Georgia. Several members of the military high command who gave the orders and participated in the cover-up were also graduates of that illustrious institution. The best way we can honor the victims of the Jesuit massacre and US-backed atrocities worldwide today is to stop them from recurring by severing the global tentacles of US empire.
The new rule requires U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to have a signed judicial warrant if they plan to enter a courthouse to make an arrest. (photo: Newsy)
Oregon Supreme Court Bars Warrantless ICE Courthouse Arrests
Conrad Wilson, Oregon Public Broadcasting
Wilson writes: "Oregon Supreme Court Chief Justice Martha Walters enacted a new rule Thursday that will make it harder for immigration agents to make civil arrests in the state's courthouses."
READ MORE
Conrad Wilson, Oregon Public Broadcasting
Wilson writes: "Oregon Supreme Court Chief Justice Martha Walters enacted a new rule Thursday that will make it harder for immigration agents to make civil arrests in the state's courthouses."
READ MORE
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is pictured during a visit to the Pentagon, March 22, 2018. (photo: Cliff Owen/AP)
Saudi Spies Hacked My Phone and Tried to Stop My Activism. I Won't Stop Fighting.
Omar Abdulaziz, The Washington Post
Abdulaziz writes: "In the fight against the online campaigns targeting Saudi citizens, I had a powerful ally and friend in Jamal Khashoggi, who recognized the power of Twitter to shape public opinion in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world."
Omar Abdulaziz, The Washington Post
Abdulaziz writes: "In the fight against the online campaigns targeting Saudi citizens, I had a powerful ally and friend in Jamal Khashoggi, who recognized the power of Twitter to shape public opinion in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world."
Jamal was murdered because he was willing to fight trolls and propaganda with truth and ideas. But we are still learning how far Saudi Arabia — and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — is willing to go to monitor and silence critics online.
Last week, the Justice Department announced that it was charging two former Twitter employees with spying for Saudi Arabia by accessing the company’s information on dissidents on the platform. I was one of the targets.
It’s all been part of a coordinated campaign of harassment. Saudi Arabia, using spyware sold by the Israeli company NSO Group, hacked my phone to read my messages with Jamal, with whom I was working to identify and combat Saudi trolls on Twitter, which we called the “electronic bees.” We were working together to organize an army of volunteers to counter them.
The Saudi government deployed every tactic to get me to drop the project. They arrested my relatives and friends to pressure me. They imprisoned my brothers and asked them to convince me to stop working on our volunteer campaign. Jamal was shocked they had learned about it and asked me to never discuss it publicly.
To understand why they cared so much about protecting their Twitter trolls you have to understand the popularity and importance of Twitter for Saudis.
Since we didn’t have a lot of options for entertainment in Saudi Arabia, we coped with our environment by living a different reality on our smartphones. Twitter soon became crucial to exercise the first element of individual liberty: freedom of expression. The platform’s popularity exploded among Saudis virtually overnight. We lived democratically on Twitter. People posted freely.
Twitter even allowed people to engage with dissidents in exile, something that wouldn’t have been possible before. It also allowed the government to track public opinion. At first the government was responsive. Royal decrees were announced on Twitter. Rumors circulated but also got debunked. Officials faced pressure to be more transparent.
That all changed with the rise of MBS. Saudi Twitter gradually morphed into a propaganda platform, with the government deploying trolls and pressuring influencers to amplify its messages. More than 30 influencers told me that the Saudi government blackmailed them with material obtained by hacking their phones. They were given two options: Tweet propaganda or have your private content, including pictures, released on Twitter.
McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm, prepared a report on how public opinion is shaped on Twitter (according to a source the report was reviewed by MBS but the company denies it was prepared for him). They identified me among the top three most influential users on Twitter. I’m now in exile; another got arrested, and the third user vanished. His tweets were all deleted.
In September 2017, more than 100 Twitter influencers were arrested. The charges were never made public. In December of that year, Jamal tweeted: “Saudi government trolls have a devastating effect on the national public opinion."
In unison, Saudi trolls ridicule free folks and resistance, Jamal added. He worried the propaganda was dividing the country. He is right.
Fake accounts and hired writers spread hatred among Saudis with tribal and racist attacks.
But Twitter is still worth fighting for — it remains the only free platform for many Saudis. After Jamal’s death, my team spent months trying to counter the troll narratives with trending hashtags.
It’s sad to see that Twitter may be one of the factors behind Jamal’s brutal murder. It’s a heartbreaking development because we had so much hope on the platform.
In 2013, Jamal posted: “Someday Twitter will win a Nobel prize.” But now we see it’s slipping into darkness. Will Twitter take measures to protect our public square? Right now I’m worried, but I will continue to fight for free expression, at least online.
Sen. Bernie Sanders. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
What Critics of Bernie Sanders' Climate Plan Are Missing
Zoya Teirstein, Grist
Teirstein writes: "Bernie Sander's $16 trillion climate plan, which he calls the Green New Deal, would transition the electricity and transportation sectors to renewable energy by 2030, allegedly create 240,000 jobs a year, and essentially nationalize the nation's power sector."
READ MORE
Zoya Teirstein, Grist
Teirstein writes: "Bernie Sander's $16 trillion climate plan, which he calls the Green New Deal, would transition the electricity and transportation sectors to renewable energy by 2030, allegedly create 240,000 jobs a year, and essentially nationalize the nation's power sector."
READ MORE
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