11 February 20
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11 February 20
Jonathan Chait | Lindsey Graham Implicates William Barr in Massive Scandal, on Live Television
Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine
Chait writes: "Yesterday, Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on Face the Nation and blurted out an apparent confession of what, if true, would be a scandal of Nixonian proportions."
Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine
Chait writes: "Yesterday, Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on Face the Nation and blurted out an apparent confession of what, if true, would be a scandal of Nixonian proportions."
EXCERPT:
Graham explained why, in his opinion, this state of affairs is appropriate: “Rudy Giuliani is a well-known man. He’s a crime fighter. He’s loyal to the president. He’s a good lawyer.” On the contrary, he is describing an arrangement that is not only the appearance of a conflict of interest but a massive abuse on its face.
First, Giuliani is not a government official. He is representing Donald Trump as an individual, a fact he has made perfectly clear. He boasted to the New York Times last May that he was seeking to uncover “information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.” The distinction between “will” and “may” was Rudy’s open acknowledgement that he was looking out for Trump, not the U.S. government, and that the interests of the two might not be the same. He was even more clear in a letter to Ukrainian President Zelensky, which his former partner, Lev Parnas, produced. The letter stated Giuliani was representing Trump “as a private citizen, not as President of the United States”.
So, can any private citizen have their lawyer send allegations to Barr? What is this special “process” he created to let Rudy supply him with allegations? Is it a 1-800 number, a drop box, or what? Has Barr told the Democratic candidates how the process works so they can have their lawyers feed their own leads to him?
The second problem here is that Giuliani is not only representing a presidential candidate as his personal client. He is working in close contact with foreign partners who have a combination of personal interests and foreign-policy goals that do not line up with U.S. interests. He has not disclosed who is paying him for his work, but he was paid half a million dollars by Parnas, who was in turn paid by Dymtro Firtash, a Russian oligarch whose work tends to advance Russian foreign-policy interests. This raises the strong possibility that Giuliani is effectively a paid backchannel for Russian propaganda, and he now has a special line into the Department of Justice.
Third, Giuliani himself is the reported subject of a criminal investigation. Two of his partners have already been arrested, and the Department of Justice is reportedly pursuing the possibility of charges against Giuliani as well. (He allegedly pursued his own profit-making scheme in Ukraine, and seems to have committed campaign finance violations, by funneling foreign donations to Republican allies.)
Normally, people who are being investigated by the DOJ don’t have a special back channel that lets them feed allegations of their own to the attorney general. I am pretty sure that, if the DOJ opened up an investigation of me, and arrested two of my partners as they tried to leave the country with one-way tickets, I couldn’t just open up my own back channel to their boss.
Juerg Spoerndli is an electrical engineer who spent 16 years working at Crypto. Deceived employees said the revelations about the company have deepened a sense of betrayal, of themselves and customers. (photo: Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
For Decades, CIA Read Encrypted Communications of Allies and Adversaries
Greg Miller, The Washington Post
Miller writes: "For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret."
Greg Miller, The Washington Post
Miller writes: "For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret."
EXCERPT:
The company, Crypto AG, got its first break with a contract to build code-making machines for U.S. troops during World War II. Flush with cash, it became a dominant maker of encryption devices for decades, navigating waves of technology from mechanical gears to electronic circuits and, finally, silicon chips and software.
The Swiss firm made millions of dollars selling equipment to more than 120 countries well into the 21st century. Its clients included Iran, military juntas in Latin America, nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, and even the Vatican.
But what none of its customers ever knew was that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA in a highly classified partnership with West German intelligence. These spy agencies rigged the company’s devices so they could easily break the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages.
The decades-long arrangement, among the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War, is laid bare in a classified, comprehensive CIA history of the operation obtained by The Washington Post and ZDF, a German public broadcaster, in a joint reporting project.
The account identifies the CIA officers who ran the program and the company executives entrusted to execute it. It traces the origin of the venture as well as the internal conflicts that nearly derailed it. It describes how the United States and its allies exploited other nations’ gullibility for years, taking their money and stealing their secrets.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. (photo: Andrew Harrer/Getty)
Amazon Wants to Question Trump Over Loss of Billion 'War Cloud' Contract
Associated Press
Excerpt: "Amazon wants Donald Trump to submit to questioning over the tech company's losing bid for a billion military contract."
READ MORE
Associated Press
Excerpt: "Amazon wants Donald Trump to submit to questioning over the tech company's losing bid for a billion military contract."
READ MORE
FBI Director Christopher Wray. (image: Daily Beast)
The FBI Makes a Bizarre Claim About Pro-Choice Terrorism
Spencer Ackerman and Emily Shugerman, The Daily Beast
Excerpt: "The FBI is expanding its focus on domestic terrorism, and that includes pro-choice violence - even though such violence is so vanishingly rare, it's all but nonexistent."
Spencer Ackerman and Emily Shugerman, The Daily Beast
Excerpt: "The FBI is expanding its focus on domestic terrorism, and that includes pro-choice violence - even though such violence is so vanishingly rare, it's all but nonexistent."
In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray disclosed that the bureau has recently “changed our terminology as part of a broader reorganization of the way in which we categorize our domestic terrorism efforts.” It’s part of a much-heralded reinvigoration of the bureau’s domestic terrorism focus after a rising tide of mostly white-supremacist terrorism.
Among four broad categories of domestic terrorism that the FBI confronts, Wray said, is “abortion violent extremism.”
But Wray wasn’t only talking about the pro-life extremism that murders abortion providers in their churches, he hastened to add, but “people on either side of that issue who commit violence on behalf of different views on that topic.”
His questioner, Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), was puzzled at Wray’s seeming equivalence: “People on either side of that issue don't commit violence.” In fact, the FBI pointed The Daily Beast to just one episode of pro-choice-inspired terrorism—one that did not involve an actual act of violence, but rather a threat in an online comments section.
But Wray persisted: “Well, we've actually had a variety of kinds of violence under that, believe it or not. But at the end of the day.” Bass asked, “Really, that blow up buildings and threaten doctors?” Rather than responding, Wray moved on to detailing the FBI’s next domestic-terrorism category, one about “animal rights and environmental extremism.”
Wray’s comments weren’t the first instance of the bureau promoting the idea of pro-choice violence as a real threat.
In 2017, the FBI distributed a brief “Abortion Extremism Reference Guide” at a counterterrorism training for local law enforcement, listing “pro-choice extremists” as a group of domestic terrorists. The document, first reported by Jezebel, claimed that these extremists “believe it is their moral duty to protect those who provide or receive abortion services”—though even this document noted that only one “pro-choice extremist” had ever been prosecuted. Additionally, an earlier FBI training document obtained by the ACLU in 2012 referenced pro-choice violence but did not “provide a single example of violence against abortion opponents,” the ACLU wrote.
“Abortion violent extremism” of any sort accounts for a only small percentage of FBI domestic terrorism cases. Wray on Wednesday that the “top threat” of domestic terrorism comes from what he called “racially/ethnically motivated violent extremists.” Out of approximately 850 current cases that a senior FBI official cited in congressional testimony last May, about half concern anti-government extremism and another 40 percent concern racist terrorism. That leaves around 85 cases of violence motivated by animal rights, ecological degradation, abortion and miscellaneous cases. An FBI spokesperson confirmed the total caseload and the breakdown are still current.
But abortion extremism doesn’t have an “either side.” The primary case of pro-choice violent extremism that the FBI pointed The Daily Beast toward—the same one cited in the 2017 FBI document—is the 2012 conviction of Theodore Schulman, who had a long history of threatening anti-abortion activists.
Schulman’s ultimate downfall was the result of posting a threat in the comments section of religious conservative outlet First Things: “if Roeder is acquitted, someone will respond by killing” Princeton’s Robert George and Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life, he wrote. That itself spoke to the discrepancy in violence between the two sides. “Roeder” was a reference to Scott Roeder, who murdered abortion provider George Tiller in the foyer of a Wichita church in 2009.
Other instances of anti-abortion violence include a trio of bombings at Florida abortion clinics in 1985, a string of arson attacks on a Washington clinic in 1983, and a 2015 shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood that killed three. Between 1993 and today, anti-abortion activists murdered 11 people and attempted to kill another 26, according to the National Abortion Federation.
“Anti-choice violence as we know it is constant, pervasive, and escalating dramatically, and it threatens the civil liberties as well as the lives of our patents, our members, our society,” NAF President Katherine Ragsdale told The Daily Beast.
Wray’s comments, she added, are a “danger to public perception.”
“It tars everyone with the same brush when in fact pro-choice folks simply are not doing this,” she said.
The Daily Beast has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI to document the extent of its focus on alleged pro-choice violent extremism.
Mila Johns, a domestic terrorism researcher affiliated with the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database, said violence was “very much lopsided in the other direction,” the anti-abortion side, and called Wray’s equivalence “a very political statement.”
The database, which tracks terrorist attacks across the world since 1970, records about 300 incidents related to anti-abortion violence and none for pro-choice violence. However, an Austin woman in 2016 was charged with throwing a crude Molotov cocktail at anti-abortion protesters. And last year, an 85-year old anti-abortion protester in San Francisco was knocked to the ground after he attempted jamming the bicycle spokes of a man who appears to have stolen a pro-life group’s banner.
Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue—a radical anti-abortion group that moved its headquarters to Wichita, Kansas, specifically to target Dr. Tiller—said his movement has been on the receiving end of threats. He estimated he had made between 20 and 50 complaints to federal law enforcement over the last two decades, for everything from anthrax scares to online intimidation. Wichita resident Christopher Thompson, he noted, was sentenced to 12 months in jail last year for making menacing calls to Operation Rescue’s office and employees.
But when asked about specific instances of pro-choice violence, Newman cited only the murder of James Pouillon, an Operation Save America activist who was shot while protesting abortion outside a high school in 2009. (The judge in that case said the killer’s motivations were not tied to abortion.) Newman declined to give examples of abortion-rights violence of the scale and magnitude of that enacted by the anti-abortion movement. “You got your scorecard and I got mine,” he said. “All of them are terrible.”
The FBI’s position is that pro-choice activists and groups not concerned with violence don’t need to worry about the new domestic terrorism categorization. “We don't investigate ideology or rhetoric or anything of that sort,” Wray testified.
An FBI spokesperson declined to comment, but pointed to comments from the bureau’s former assistant director for counterterrorism, Mike McGarrity, from last June. “It is important to remember that in line with our mission to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States, no FBI investigation can be opened solely on the basis of First Amendment-protected activity,” McGarrity testified to a House panel in June. “Rather, domestic terrorism investigations on individuals are opened on the basis of information concerning the occurrence or threat of violent criminal actions by the individual in furtherance of an ideology.”
However, prior episodes during the 18-year-old war on terror show the FBI does not always hold a rigid distinction between ideology that isn’t to be investigated and violence that is. In 2011, its counterterrorism training at Quantico included instructional material that held Islam was an ideology, rather than a religion, with violence baked into its doctrines. The point of the training was to portray Islam itself as a threat to national security—which, for an investigative entity with broad domestic powers, was ominous enough for the Obama administration to order the training materials removed.
Michael German, a former FBI special agent who investigated domestic terrorism, said the FBI was not only engaging in a false equivalence but “the manufacturing of an imaginary violent movement,” reminiscent of its now-discarded “black identity extremism” category.
The bureau “seems to be grasping a tiny number of unrelated incidents that are not part of any organized effort to falsely imply that such a ‘domestic terrorist’ movement exists,” said German, now with the Brennan Center for Justice. “This is a misleading analysis of dubious purpose, apparently to satisfy some political constituency, which is not what an objective law enforcement agency should be doing.”
But for some in the reproductive rights space, the threat posed by anti-abortion violence is enough that they are willing to accept dubious FBI categorization to ensure it gets investigated.
“Those of us in this movement have lost friends and family,” Ragsdale said. “By all means, investigate the escalating violence.”
“And if politics requires you to have a category that says pro-choice violence, go right ahead,” she added. “I’d be interested to see if anything ever pops up."
Democratic Presidential Candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders looks on during a press conference at his New Hampshire campaign headquarters on February 6, 2020 in Manchester, New Hampshire. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Students With Disabilities Deserve a Quality Education. Bernie's New Disability Rights Platform Would Give Them One.
Heather Gautney and Eric Blanc, Jacobin
Excerpt: "Bernie Sanders introduced a new Disability Rights platform this past week that, together with his Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education, offers a path to provide all students with a high-quality education, regardless of their background or zip code."
READ MORE
Heather Gautney and Eric Blanc, Jacobin
Excerpt: "Bernie Sanders introduced a new Disability Rights platform this past week that, together with his Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education, offers a path to provide all students with a high-quality education, regardless of their background or zip code."
READ MORE
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Chairwoman of German Christian Democratic Party, announces her resignation in Berlin, Germany on February 10, 2020. (photo: Emmanuele Contini/NurPhoto/Getty Images)
Why Angela Merkel's Successor Resigned
Jen Kirby, Vox
Kirby writes: "German Chancellor Angela Merkel's chosen successor resigned Monday, shaking up German politics and throwing Merkel's legacy into question."
Jen Kirby, Vox
Kirby writes: "German Chancellor Angela Merkel's chosen successor resigned Monday, shaking up German politics and throwing Merkel's legacy into question."
EXCERPT:
This makes the inevitable departure of Merkel all the more worrying. The German chancellor for a decade was a steadying hand across Europe; after Trump’s election in the US, she was cast into the role of defender of liberal democracy.
Merkel’s impending exit comes as Europe prepares for an uncertain time. The European Union is set to begin tough negotiations with the United Kingdom over its post-Brexit relationship. The US and the EU are on the verge of a potential trade war, and the potential reelection of Donald Trump could put even more strain on NATO and traditional Western alliances. Germany’s own political chaos could make all of this much more complicated.
A mountain gorilla. Four that have been killed from an apparent lightning strike in Uganda's Mgahinga national park include a male infant. (photo: Cliff Foltz/WWF/PA)
Endangered Mountain Gorillas 'Killed by Lightning' in Uganda
Agence France-Presse
Excerpt: "Four endangered mountain gorillas, including three adult females, have been killed by an apparent lightning strike in a Ugandan national park, a conservation group has said."
Agence France-Presse
Excerpt: "Four endangered mountain gorillas, including three adult females, have been killed by an apparent lightning strike in a Ugandan national park, a conservation group has said."
The four were members of a group known as the Hirwa family that had crossed into Mgahinga national park from Rwanda
our endangered mountain gorillas, including three adult females, have been killed by an apparent lightning strike in a Ugandan national park, a conservation group has said.
A post-mortem examination has been performed on the four, including a male infant, who died on 3 February in Mgahinga National Park in south-west Uganda.
“Based on the gross lesions from the post-mortem ... the tentative cause of death for all four individuals is likely to be electrocution by lightning,” the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration said in a statement on Saturday. Laboratory confirmation will take two to three weeks.
The four were members of a group of 17 known as the Hirwa family, which had crossed into the Mgahinga national park in August last year from Volcanoes national park in neighbouring Rwanda.
“This was extremely sad,” collaboration executive secretary Andrew Seguya told the BBC. “The potential of the three females for their contribution to the population was immense.”
The other 13 members of the group had been found.
In 2008, there were estimated to be only 680 of the great apes left, but thanks to conservation efforts and anti-poaching patrols, their population has grown to more than 1,000.
Due to these efforts, in 2018 the mountain gorilla – a subspecies of the eastern gorilla – was moved from “critically endangered” to “endangered” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “red list” of threatened species.
Covering the northern slopes of three volcanoes, Mgahinga National Park is part of the Virunga massif shared with Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The massif is one of the most important conservation sites in the world and one of only two places where mountain gorillas are found.
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