Executive Producers & 880 Club Members: Marc Power-Sir Marko Drakos of Deep Thought, Sir Henry Claeys, Anthony Tursgnich, Lex from Brooklyn, Demetrios Nafpliotis-Sir James of Cornucopia, Duke Nussbaum, Sir Ignatio Salomi, AnOnymous, Sir Kieth Warford, Sir Tritt, Sir Gregory Whorley, Dame Kit, Sir Dwayne Malancon Duke of the Pacific Northwest, Sir Borislav Marinov, Sir Justin Karsk, Sir Ray Martin, Sir Jason of Cascadia
Associate Executive Producers: Squire Stickton, Tom, Timothy Keirnan, Mats Kjesrud, Craig Allen
Become a member of the 881 Club, support the show here
Knights & Dames: Marc Power -> Sir Marko Drakos of Deep Thought, Amy Pousson-Noonasn -> Dame Amy of The House Poo(h)-Noo, Demetrios Nafpliotis ->> Sir James of Cornucopia
I was messing around with these before the election... is pretty fun as you can have the extensions replace your least favorite candite with something like "Poop Eater" or whatever
I'd like to figure out how to get it to swap/block images of Hillary or whoever, but that would probably be pretty difficult...
http://trumpfilter.com
http://hillaryfilter.com
Michigan Meetup Email List
Adam, Happy Thanksgiving to you, Tina the Keeper, Uncle Don, and Aunt Meg. In my donation note for today's show I asked you to promote the subscription link for our No Agenda Michigan Producers List, and I want to assure you it is legit.
http://goo.gl/forms/fFqzfxH7Xa
I am copying Jeff Lundberg the listowner on this if you have any questions. He created it when John visited us in 2013 and we still use it to communicate southeast Michigan meetups because the No Agenda Meetup.com website has never worked right for us, and my attempts to communicate with the site owners have been ignored. So we use Jeff's list.
Please come to Michigan in the Airstream of Consciousness this spring! We got John, now we need you.
Timothy Keirnan
NA iMessage Stickers
In The Morning Adam,
Longtime listener & monthly PayPal subscriber for many years.
I’m also an iOS developer with my company Sugar Coded Apps & have recently started making sticker packs for iMessage, because hey, why not… I mean, us slaves love texting & stickers. I recently completed some custom badge stickers inspired by No Agenda's jingles & catchphrases.
No Agenda Podcast Stickers are now available so fans & listeners can propagate the formula with 33 classic jingles turned into iMessage badges.
Share the fun of the podcast with your friends, family, & other fellow listeners. Sticker include:
-"You've Got Karma"
-"In The Morning"
-"Shut Up Slave"
-"Hey Citizen"
-"Thank You For Your Courage" & many more!
Keep in mind that every time someone sends one of these stickers to an iOS user, they will see 'Sent from No Agenda Podcast' in their iMessage feed. This is an easy & fun way to help promote the show.
They are .99 cents in the iMessage App Store. Apple keeps a third of the proceeds (of course), but I plan to donate 50 cents per sale back to the show. If they get enough traction I’d even like to press some as real physical stickers for sale, because they look pretty nifty IMO.
Thank you for your courage & continued dedication to media deconstruction,
Eric
Here’s the iTunes Link: https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=1178858055&mt=8
Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised that Donald Trump could be elected president, but I was. I live in Brooklyn and work in Manhattan, two of the most liberal places in the country. But even online, I wasn't seeing many signs of support for him. How did that blindness occur? Social media is my portal into the rest of the world '-- my periscope into the communities next to my community, into how the rest of the world thinks and feels. And it completely failed me.
In hindsight, that failure makes sense. I've spent nearly 10 years coaching Facebook '-- and Instagram and Twitter '-- on what kinds of news and photos I don't want to see, and they all behaved accordingly. Each time I liked an article, or clicked on a link, or hid another, the algorithms that curate my streams took notice and showed me only what they thought I wanted to see. That meant I didn't realize that most of my family members, who live in rural Virginia, were voicing their support for Trump online, and I didn't see any of the pro-Trump memes that were in heavy circulation before the election. I never saw a Trump hat or a sign or a shirt in my feeds, and the only Election Day selfies I saw were of people declaring their support for Hillary Clinton.
To be clear, I'm not blaming the algorithms for what I assume to be their role in augmenting my worldview. They did exactly what I told them to do, blocking out racist, misogynist and anti-immigrant comments, hiding anyone who didn't support Black Lives Matter, all with such deftness that I had no idea that a candidate who ran a campaign on exactly those values had gained enough popularity to win the election. But considering that more than 40 percent of our country's population consumes news on Facebook, finding alternative perspectives shouldn't have been that hard. I knew about Eli Pariser's theory on filter bubbles, or the idea that online personalization distorts the type of information we see, and even so, I still chose to let algorithms shape how I perceive the world. Everything I could want to see is available at my fingertips, and yet I didn't look.
In April, Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, addressed a room of developers about the importance of his social network. Facebook, he said, has the power to bring people together who might otherwise never have the chance to meet. ''The internet has enabled all of us to access and share more ideas and information than ever before,'' he said. ''We've gone from a world of isolated communities to one global community, and we are all better off for it.''
But that's not what has happened. Zuckerberg's idealism is belied by his desire to duck responsibility for mediating the content of his site. On Facebook, the political divide has only been entrenched further. It's the BuzzFeed dress debate, only for our entire lives: We are two countries, one that sees blue and black and the other that sees white and gold. The internet once offered outlets we could use to understand one another. But they are rapidly disappearing.
Most social media '-- like Facebook and Instagram '-- is curated by software built to manage the high influx of information flowing into it, but there have still been a few islands of digital wilderness, a Galpagos of sorts, where culture thrived untouched. They included Vine (whose closure was announced in October) and Snapchat, and even Tumblr, which were homes for marginalized ideas, theories and lifestyles.
The video-sharing app Vine was the first place I got a glimpse of cultures beyond my own, including those of the Middle East. I was able to see how some women there wanted us to see them: prospering, aware. A young woman living in Saudi Arabia who goes by the name Amy Roko used Vine to show clips of herself living her life '-- her version of normalcy '-- at the mall, goofing off at home. In her most viral video, she stares into the camera, her face covered in a niqab, save for her perfectly outlined eyes. ''[expletive] called me ugly,'' she snaps. ''I said, [expletive] where?'' The emphasis on the last word becomes the punch line as she whips off one niqab to reveal a second underneath. I was thrilled to realize that women living there could have a sense of humor similar to my own.
Vine was born as an app and intended to be a social community. But Vine links could be shared independent of the network, and people did so with abandon, meaning that Vines appeared scattershot around the web, defying the sorting mechanism of streams and feeds. They could land on your screen via text message, direct message, email.
Roko's Vine was a riff on one originally posted by a young black American named Brionna London, who was miffed that someone thought she needed makeup to be pretty. You can draw a straight line from brown women in Saudi Arabia to black women in America, a marvel unto itself, a window into the way the internet flattens space and time '-- a vivid example of its fulfilling its promise to bridge divides. At Vine's peak, it had more than 200 million monthly users who watched videos billions of times, and it excelled at showing these sorts of commonalities: that, say, black kids in New Orleans lived and looked a lot like white kids in Florida. (At the very least, they shared a similar humor and taste in music, which gave me hope that they would share a sense of humanity as well.)
And yet Twitter, which owns Vine and is struggling to turn a profit while keeping its main service appealing to advertisers, could seemingly no longer afford to keep the video feature (which reportedly costs millions a month to maintain) afloat. Following news about Twitter's decision to close the service, there were rumors that outside companies made inquiries about purchasing Vine's remains. But it's most likely too late to salvage the community there.
In its earlier days, Snapchat offered its own version of cultural exchange. The app had an incredible series on ''city life'' that gave users direct windows into different worlds. People submitted short video diaries about life in their cities, which the company compiled into a single video, viewable by anyone using the app. I remember feeling delighted watching people in Istanbul and S£o Paulo showing off their routines and customs. But the company is now prioritizing ''live stories,'' which feature more mainstream events like the Super Bowl and music festivals. The effect is still fascinating, but less intimate. Snapchat seems to be betting that people are more interested in the familiar.
The future of Tumblr, the blogging platform whose endless warren of rabbit holes about gender theory, critical feminist thought and identity politics is unlike any other on the internet, is the most uncertain. Yahoo, its parent company, succumbed to financial struggles and has announced plans to be acquired by Verizon, raising questions about the future of its properties.
What we're seeing with Snapchat, Tumblr and Vine reflects a larger shift in the social-media economy. User-generated content, by and large, is not lucrative at a scale that satisfies investors, and as a result, most social-media companies are changing direction toward other revenue streams. One of the more significant shifts is the move into social messaging. Semiprivate messaging applications '-- group text threads and applications like WhatsApp (which is owned by Facebook) and Slack '-- have grown in popularity as people move away from public arenas for conversation, a shift caused in part by spikes in unchecked harassment on major social networks. New features are introduced daily, it seems, to make messaging with your friends more ''fun.'' The latest version of the iPhone's software includes the ability to make messages ''explode'' with confetti. WhatsApp now offers the ability to tag people in messages, as you might tag them in a photograph online. These changes have probably been spurred by messaging applications overseas, which used similar features to attract and retain customers. (Line, a Japanese company that built an addictive messaging app with 220 million monthly users worldwide, had one of the biggest initial public offerings '-- $1.1 billion '-- earlier this year.) These new messaging features work to bind private groups tighter together, by making it more fun to talk to one another than to engage with the world at large.
What happens when we would rather look inward? I have found something of an answer in a short story called ''The Great Silence,'' by Ted Chiang, about humankind's search for signs of alien life. The story is narrated by a parrot in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, home to one of the largest radio telescopes in the world. ''Their desire to make a connection is so strong that they've created an ear capable of hearing across the universe,'' the creature begins. ''But I and my fellow parrots are right here. Why aren't they interested in listening to our voices?'' The paradox is not to be missed: We are more interested in locating alien species than understanding the humanity among the species we already live with. The story ends on a somber note. ''Human activity has brought my kind to the brink of extinction,'' the narrator explains. ''They didn't do it maliciously. They just weren't paying attention.''
Chiang's lesson hits hard in this new political and cultural moment. Social media seemed to promise a way to better connect with people; instead it seems to have made it easier to tune out the people we don't agree with. But if we can't pay attention to one another, we might as well not live on the same planet at all.
Vice President-elect Mike Pence's ''homophobia'' is perhaps this election's most noisome shibboleth. Pence is no defender of LGBT rights, but the evidence Trump's running mate is America's nastiest anti-gay politician is surprisingly thin.
(Full disclosure: I voted for Kaine, and my alarm at the incoming regime is literally sending me into exile.)
Gay pundits portray Pence as some 21st century Jesse Helms. To John Aravosis, he's a ''raging homophobe'' and Michelangelo Signorile lamented his ''blatant anti-LGBT extremism.'' Many LGBT Americans were disappointed moderator Elaine Quijano did not challenge Pence on his ''bigotry'' during the vice presidential debate.
But gay Democrats unfairly distort Pence's record with distractions '' and sometimes outright lies. Facing the most gay-friendly Republican nominee in history, the LGBT intelligentsia have engineered a phobic Frankenstein Veep to keep their minions from considering non-leftist alternatives.
Start with the most fabulously contrived lie about Mike Pence: that he supports ''conversion therapy,'' or in one grotesque iteration, that Pence ''advocated forpublic spending on conversion therapyin Indiana.'' (Bold in original.) The article's hyperlinks provide no support for the baseless charge.
Conversion (or ''reparative'') therapy noxiously tells people, including teens participating involuntarily, that navel-gazing, role-playing, and prayer can ''heal'' their homosexuality. I've been denouncing this fraudulent practice for a decade, since it doesn't work, misrepresentsgenuine religion, insults the integrity of queer experience, and tortures innocent youth.
But by definition, CONVERSION therapy (sometimes called ''reorientation therapy'') exploits the lie that homosexuality is a curable orientation, not some set of behaviors. A celibate reparative patient who remains drawn to the same sex is an utter failure to the conversion crowd. The ''ex-gay'' focus on orientation rather than behavior is why the phenomenon is so destructive.
Obviously a queer person can temporarily stop having sex '' or at least reduce their same-sex encounters. But the ''conversion'' model is devastating to participants and, in fact, to the entire gay community, because it causes Americans to think, ''they wouldn't be gay anymore if they only got some help.''
By contrast, an anti-HIV program helping gay men reduce or eliminate high-risk sexual activity seems almost quaint.
And that's what the people penning Mike Pence's Web site (I've seen no evidence he wrote it personally) referred to in 2000 when they said federal AIDS money should be redirected ''toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.''
Those 14 words are the only evidence Pence's detractors have proffered to show the man supports conversion therapy. But conversion therapy is about changing sexual orientations, not behavior. That's why we've been fighting it so hard!
Then there's the widespread claim that in 2006 Pence called being gay a choice, or '' as Signorile and others have quoted it '' ''a choice.''
Poppycock!
Even novice journalists don't treat paraphrases as quotes. Anything between quotation marks must have been literally spoken. Try, for fun, to find the phrase ''a choice'' in the only relevant section of Pence's speech that year:
''This debate today is not about discrimination. I believe that if someone chooses another lifestyle than I have chosen, that is their right in a free society.''
A tendentious but fair reading would interpret ''lifestyle'' as sexual orientation, thus allying Pence with the silly notion that people pick ''lesbian'' out of the sexuality catalog. A more generous reading, though, suggests ''lifestyle'' in the dictionary sense of ''habits, attitudes, tastes, moral standards, economic level, etc. that together constitute the mode of living.'' Under that denotation, gay people really do choose their lifestyle. Nobody is ''born that way'' loving show tunes or the LPGA.
But even a journalist who's sure Pence meant people select a sexuality at will must acknowledge the ambiguity '' and never snuggle a two-word invented phrase (''a choice'') between quotation marks as if Pence said it himself.
(By the way, Signorile and Aravosis would be well-advised to stop hyperlinking to articles that demonstrate their own deceit. Come on, make this a little challenging!)
Many complaints about Pence relate to dead issues like gay marriage and gays in the military that courts and Congress have settled, with dubious prospects for revival. It's possible given a few years of gay marriage normalcy that Pence's views would evolve like President Obama's did, and it's unfair to fossilize his defunct positions.
Finally, Pence's promotion of Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) attracted unflattering attention. I've already writtenaboutthis subtle topic at length, but briefly: Pence did not try to help people refuse services to LGBT people as people. In fact, the notorious bakers and florists have repeatedly said they're happy to sell a lesbian a cookie or select a gay guy's corsage. They simply refuse to celebrate an EVENT solemnizing a union they consider unholy.
If I tried to buy a wedding cake for my straight cousin, they'd serve me whatever my own sexuality. But if my straight brother ordered a cake for MY same-sex wedding (dream on, Mom), they'd politely decline. Because they're not discriminating on sexual orientation, just '' pardon the wordplay '' on ceremony.
Perhaps the rectitude of Pence's protection of religious freedom would be more clear regarding a non-gay issue like Jewish remarriage
The people at my Orthodox synagogue observe Divine legislation with harsh consequences for the remarriage of a religiously un-divorced woman: a near-curse on the social and religious status of the descendants of that union for eternity. You probably don't understand, but that's almost the point '' you don't have to embrace Orthodox Judaism to agree that Indiana should not force a Jewish florist to succor a ceremony she believes would inflict spiritual carnage. (I'm not exaggeratinghere. Ask any Orthodox Jew.)
Now, on LGBT concerns, Pence is no Tim Kaine '' or Donald Trump. He is an Evangelical Christian with no doubt some old-fashioned, even off-putting attitudes. But not more than most Evangelical Republicans '' and many Southern Democrats until a few years ago, for that matter. People grow.
Which is my hope for Pence. For the first time in his life, he has a boss who operates at complete ease with LGBT people and has admirable instincts on gay issues. As Pence gets to know the country he serves, he may gain comfort with gay concerns, though pundits should holding him accountable if he says anything inaccurate or hurtful about LGBT lives. I intend to do so myself.
Criticism of Pence for lacunae on matters important to America's gay community '' he doesn't support a federal non-discrimination law, for example '' is also fair. But the chattering class has to stop '' right now '' abusing thin reeds of evidence to portray him as the most hateful kind of bigot.
I mean, some internet memes even assert Pence supports federal spending on electroshock therapy for gay teenagers.
Scapegoating Pence as some monster may help Democrats raise money and rally troops, but it's not what's best for the LGBT community. Why not instead cheer that he's on the most gay-friendly Republican ticket in American history? America's demagogue-elect achieved the White House by promiscuously bashing American subgroups '' Mexicans, Muslims, the disabled, veterans '' and inveighed against gays not a single time.
A dubious honor, I know, but a watershed moment nonetheless. Let's encourage Pence to learn about gay lives, enticing him with honey, not acid. That's how many once-hostile Democrats became LGBT allies. He's going to be the Vice President. Shouldn't we try for the same result with him?
David Benkof is Senior Political Analyst at The Daily Caller. Follow him on Twitter (@DavidBenkof) or E-mail him at [email protected].
In a special post-American election edition of 'Zoek de Nederlander' ('Find the Dutch person') where the Dutch media finds remote Dutch connections for the sake of a story, Groningen-born, Republican Pete Hoekstra is being touted as the new big cheese of the CIA. Hoekstra, 63, who lives in Michigan and may or may not speak a few words of Dutch, claimed he worked hard on Trump's campaign and knows which direction he wants to take the United States [insert all of the jokes right here].
Hoekstra is an American who emigrated when he was three, which is why 'Zoek de Nederlander' is always a sad attempt by the Dutch press to remain internationally relevant, the same press that treats long-time Dutch folks of other ethnicities as if they didn't count when it suits them. Other attempts at finding 'Dutchiness' have included Britney Spears, Tiger Woods and Dave Benton. On the opposite end of the scale is Anne Frank who was never Dutch (she was German), but many people think she was or enjoy saying that her not being Dutch was 'just a formality'.
(Link: nos.nl)
This entry was posted on Monday, November 21st, 2016 at 4:33 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Tags: CIA, Groningen, United States, Zoek de Nederlander
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JUST IN: Melania and Barron Are NOT Moving Into the White House After...
I would think most wives of presidents are eager to move into the White House after their husband is named president-elect.
But I guess most wives never lived in Trump Tower.
Future First Lady Melania Trump and son Barron won't be moving to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. after inauguration day so that Donald's youngest child can remain at his New York private school.
From New York Post:
Future First Lady Melania Trump and son Barron will not be moving to the White House after Donald Trump's inauguration in January, The Post has learned.
The president-elect's 46-year-old wife and their 10-year-old son are staying put at the family's glitzy Trump Tower penthouse so that Barron can continue attending his Upper West Side private school, sources told The Post.
''Melania is extremely close to Barron, and they have become closer during the campaign,'' said a source close to Trump's transition team. ''The campaign has been difficult for Barron, and she is really hoping to keep disruption to a minimum.''
Another source said Melania Trump will travel to the White House as needed, but that her primary focus is on Barron.
''Melania is very supportive of her husband and is fully on board of doing everything that's needed as first lady,'' said the second source familiar with the Trump transition.
That source said also that there is a possibility that Melania and Barron may move to the White House at the end of the school year, but no plans are in place.
Other than the year-round traffic nightmare this will cause New Yorkers near Central Park, I doubt most people will object to a woman wanting to do what she feels is best by her child.
After all, America didn't elect Melania.
What do you think?
Hit me'...
H/T: Weasel Zippers
I hated this article. I'm a liberal.
Some Hamilton stars haven't voted in years despite clash with Mike Pence | Daily Mail Online
Some members of the cast of Hamilton, who delivered a message to Vice President-elect Mike Pence about their fears of the new administration, have abstained from voting for years, records show.
There are no records available for this year, so it's unclear if the cast members voted in 2016, but years prior show many were absent on Election Day.
The Broadway smash hit players caused a controversy after Brandon Dixon, who plays Aaron Burr, read the message to Pence, who arrived on Friday to taken in the show with his family.
Even though there are no records yet from this year, some of the cast members from the Broadway hit Hamilton haven't voted in years
The actors caused a controversy after Brandon Dixon (center), who plays Aaron Burr, read a message to Mike Pence, who arrived on Friday to taken in the show with his family
Audience members booed Pence as he entered the theater and after the cast's curtain call, the statement was read.
Dixon's message was written by show creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, director, Thomas Kail and lead producer, Jeffrey Seller, according to the New York Times.
'We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. We truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us,' Dixon said, reading the message aloud.
Javier Munoz (left),who plays Hamilton, hasn't voted since the 2006 midterm elections. Dixon's (right) records show he didn't vote in 2012
Okieriete ''Oak'' Onaodowan, who players James Madison and Hercules Mulligan, registered to vote in 2005 but hasn't been on record voting since. Seth Stewart, who plays Thomas Jefferson, voted in 2008 but not in 2012
But cast members were able to give input. RadarOnline investigated whether or not the actors had voted and revealed many leads hadn't in years.
Dixon's records show he didn't vote during president Obama's reelection bid in 2012.
Javier Munoz, playing the titular role of Hamilton, registered to vote in 2006 and voted in the mid-term elections, but hasn't been on record as voting since.
Seth Stewart, who plays Thomas Jefferson, voted in 2008 when Obama ran for the first time. He did not vote in 2012.
Okieriete ''Oak'' Onaodowan, who players James Madison and Hercules Mulligan, registered to vote in 2005 but hasn't been on record voting since.
Since the clash with the Hamilton cast, Pence told Fox News he wasn't offended by the message and said the booing 'is what freedom sounds like'.
Even though Pence said he wasn't offended by the cast, Donald Trump took to Twitter to sound off
However, the president-elect Donald Trump went on a Twitter rampage writing four tweets about the incident, although one he has since deleted.
'The cast and producers of Hamilton, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologize to Mike Pnece for their their terrible behavior,' Trump tweeted on Sunday.
Trump transition names agency leadsBy Chase GunterNov 21, 2016President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence held meetings with potential Cabinet nominees on Nov. 19 at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. (Photo Credit: a katz / Shutterstock.com)
The Trump administration's transition team has appointed leaders of the landing teams that will meet with domestic agencies.
Transition spokesman Jason Miller said the transition team planned to send those names to the White House by noon on Nov. 21 and expected the domestic team to meet with agencies on Nov. 22 or Nov. 23.
Those leaders include:
Agriculture: Joel Leftwich, staff director of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry CommitteeEducation: James Manning, a senior Education Department official during the George W. Bush administrationEnergy: Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy AllianceEnvironmental Protection Agency: Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and self-professed skeptic of the science behind climate changeHealth and Human Services: Andrew Bremberg, policy adviser and counsel on nominations for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Paula Stannard, health care lawyer at Alston and BirdHomeland Security: James Carafano, vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, and Michael Dougherty, CEO of the Secure Identity and Biometrics Association and former ombudsman at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration ServicesHousing and Urban Development: Elliot Berke, former HUD special counselIntelligence: Jeffrey Kahn, law professor at Southern Methodist University and commentator on intelligence mattersInterior: Douglas Domenech, former deputy chief of staff at Interior and George W. Bush administration appointee to the White House Working Group on the Political Status of Puerto RicoLabor: Jane Norris, former deputy assistant secretary of public affairs at LaborTransportation: Nancy Butler, former director of communications and external affairs at Transportation under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.Veterans Affairs: Retired Brig. Gen. Michael Meese, who served as executive director of the secretary of the Army's transition team in 2005
President-elect Donald Trump's was scheduled to meet on Nov. 21 with former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who is being considered for secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. However, Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), who is retiring from Congress this year and was chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, is widely believed to have the inside track for that post.
As far as addressing the future of any specific agencies or subagencies, Miller said, "there'll be plenty of time to talk agency specifics after he's sworn in. Right now, we're really preparing for what we're going to go and do on Day One."
The Trump transition efforts have picked up speed in recent days, after initial delays when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and key members of his team were pushed out and Pence took over as transition chairman. And Martha Joynt Kumar, director of the nonpartisan White House Transition Project, predicted that early preparation by the Trump team, federal agencies and good-government groups would still pay dividends.
The transition-team shakeup caused a inconvenient pause, Kumar told FCW at the Nov. 17 meeting of the National Academy of Public Administration, but vast amounts of reference materials and written guidance were put together in the months leading up the election. "It's my assumption that all the materials will stay, even as the people leave," she said.
And Kumar noted in her NAPA presentation that, thanks to the 2015 Presidential Transition Act, official government participation in transition planning started in early May, with a council of agency representatives meeting regularly to prepare for the president-elect's "landing teams."
"It's very fortunate," she said, given the change in composition of the Trump transition team, "that the government is really ready."
Troy K. Schneider contributed to this report.
About the Author
Chase Gunter is a staff writer covering civilian agencies, workforce issues, health IT, open data and innovation.
Prior to joining FCW, Gunter reported for the C-Ville Weekly in Charlottesville, Va., and served as a college sports beat writer for the South Boston (Va.) News and Record. He started at FCW as an editorial fellow before joining the team full-time as a reporter.
Gunter is a graduate of the University of Virginia, where his emphases were English, history and media studies. Connect with him on Twitter: @WChaseGunter
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard on Meeting with President-Elect Donald Trump '' Antiwar.com Blog
U.S. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02) today released the following statement on her meeting with President-elect Donald Trump regarding Syria:
''President-elect Trump asked me to meet with him about our current policies regarding Syria, our fight against terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS, as well as other foreign policy challenges we face. I felt it important to take the opportunity to meet with the President-elect now before the drumbeats of war that neocons have been beating drag us into an escalation of the war to overthrow the Syrian government'--a war which has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives and forced millions of refugees to flee their homes in search of safety for themselves and their families.
''While the rules of political expediency would say I should have refused to meet with President-elect Trump, I never have and never will play politics with American and Syrian lives.
''Serving the people of HawaiÊ>>i and our nation is an honor and responsibility that I do not take lightly. Representing the aloha spirit and diversity of the people of HawaiÊ>>i, I will continue to seek common ground to deliver results that best serve all Americans, as I have tried to do during my time in Congress.
''Where I disagree with President-elect Trump on issues, I will not hesitate to express that disagreement. However, I believe we can disagree, even strongly, but still come together on issues that matter to the American people and affect their daily lives. We cannot allow continued divisiveness to destroy our country.
''President-elect Trump and I had a frank and positive conversation in which we discussed a variety of foreign policy issues in depth. I shared with him my grave concerns that escalating the war in Syria by implementing a so-called no fly/safe zone would be disastrous for the Syrian people, our country, and the world. It would lead to more death and suffering, exacerbate the refugee crisis, strengthen ISIS and al-Qaeda, and bring us into a direct conflict with Russia which could result in a nuclear war. We discussed my bill to end our country's illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government, and the need to focus our precious resources on rebuilding our own country, and on defeating al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other terrorist groups who pose a threat to the American people.
''For years, the issue of ending interventionist, regime change warfare has been one of my top priorities. This was the major reason I ran for Congress'--I saw firsthand the cost of war, and the lives lost due to the interventionist warmongering policies our country has pursued for far too long.
''Let me be clear, I will never allow partisanship to undermine our national security when the lives of countless people lay in the balance.''
Fashion Begins to Speak Out About Dressing and Covering the Trumps - NYTimes.com
American fashion is emerging from its shellshocked postelection state, and is beginning to wrestle with how it is going to handle the advent of Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States. And just like everything else affected by the recent vote, a great divide has opened up.
Diane von Furstenberg, chairwoman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America and a very public supporter of Hillary Clinton, has sent a letter to the more than 500members of the council urging them to consider, ''How can we help on the eve of this new era?'' and suggesting that the answer was to ''embrace diversity, be open-minded, be generous and have compassion'' and to ''be an example of good.'' Nonetheless, last week, Sophie Theallet, a French designer and self-described ''immigrant'' to New York who has made a signature out of elegance for all body types and ages, became the first C.F.D.A. member to declare publicly that she would not dress Melania Trump.
Ms. Theallet posted an open letter on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter explaining her position and inviting fellow designers to join her.
This got a lot of people very excited, and prompted headlines such as ''Designer Sophie Theallet calls for Fashion Boycott of Melania Trump.'' The post with the open letter has been retweeted about 7,700 times and liked around 14,000 times on Twitter alone, and it has provoked both cheers and vitriol in the comments, as might be expected. Mrs. Trump has not been associated with any of Ms. Theallet's looks, however, and it is unclear whether the soon-to-be first lady had any intention of asking to wear Ms. Theallet's clothes, so it is possible the stand is less dramatic than it first appears.
As of Monday, four days later, no other designer had officially joined Ms. Theallet's cause, and she was declining all requests for further comment on her stand and on how it had been received.
Still, it broke the ice.
Humberto Leon, half of the design team behind Opening Ceremony and Kenzo (the other half is Carol Lim), who is not a member of the C.F.D.A., did post a message of encouragement on his Facebook page. ''No one should and if she buys your clothes, tell people you don't support it. You know who you are!'' he wrote of dressing Mrs. Trump.
(Again, Mrs. Trump has not been associated with Opening Ceremony or with Kenzo.)
The day after Ms. Theallet's letter, Fashionista, a fashion website with more than 2.5 million monthly readers, offered an editorial explaining, ''How we plan covering (or not covering) Melania Trump's fashion choices.''
Interactive Feature | NYT Living Newsletter Get lifestyle news from the Style, Travel and Food sections, from the latest trends to news you can use.
''We plan on having no part in normalizing the Trump family, particularly when it comes to cataloging the first lady's fashion choices,'' it wrote. ''As individuals, we don't want to contribute to humanizing or making light of an administration that poses such serious threats to women, minorities, immigrants and more, and that has so many other troubling implications that we can't ignore '-- but that we also can't talk about in sufficient depth, because this is first and foremost a site about fashion and beauty. We won't go so far as to say we'll never write about what Mrs. Trump is wearing, but we're going to reserve it for strictly newsworthy occasions.''
As to what those might be: the Met Gala, state dinners, the usual. What they might not be: stepping off Air Force One.
It will be interesting to see if such public statements of intent continue. More common, so far, has been the reaction of another designer, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not ready to take an official position, but who told me that he had been contacted by a member of the Trump family who wanted to borrow a dress for a public occasion and had simply pretended he did not get the message.
In any case, the conversation is heating up and the stakes are rising.
Personally, I think it makes more sense for everyone involved to take a deep breath and see what happens when Mr. Trump actually goes to Washington (or stays there for at least part of the week).
It is absolutely fair to ask questions and to watch closely: the choices Mr. and Mrs. Trump make about how they use (or don't use) what they wear; whether they support homegrown industry or, as in the past, brands made overseas; what messages they send with their clothes '-- if they are about aspiration (the Reagan model), or accessibility (the Carter model), or diplomacy (the Obama model), or something altogether different (given the campaign, very possible).
And it is fair to ask whether it is better, in the end, for American fashion to reject an American president, or to try to effect change from within, in whatever way it can.
There will be plenty of time to judge, and plenty of evidence to judge by, when Mr. Trump actually takes office. That judgment will start with what is worn to the inauguration, an event that will send a very clear signal about his and his family's intentions when it comes to sartorial semiology: whether it will be full of content, or simply style and fancy, signifying nothing.
Then we can all stop guessing, and start assessing.
Sir Elton John denies he will play at Trump inauguration - BBC News
Image copyrightEPAImage caption Mr Trump had used Sir Elton's songs at his campaign rallies Sir Elton John will not perform at Donald Trump's presidential inauguration, a spokeswoman for the singer has said.
Anthony Scaramucci, a member of Mr Trump's transition team, had told BBC HARDtalk that Sir Elton would perform in Washington DC in January.
"Elton John is going to be doing our concert on the mall for the inauguration," Mr Scaramucci said.
But this was "categorically denied" by Sir Elton's representative in London.
"There is no truth in this at all," she told BBC News.
Media captionAnthony Scaramucci said he believed Sir Elton John would play at the inaugurationDuring the election campaign, Sir Elton had expressed support for Mr Trump's opponent, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Performing at a fundraising event for Mrs Clinton in Los Angeles in October, he was reported to have told the crowd: "We need a humanitarian in the White House, not a barbarian."
Mr Trump had used Sir Elton's songs Rocket Man and Tiny Dancer - without the singer's endorsement - at his campaign rallies.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.
Ministry of Truthiness
Angela Merkel in Deutschland
Angela Merkel wants to regulate content on the Internet
Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to regulate false notifications on the Internet. It is still not clear when a report is classified as incorrect by the Federal Government.
Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel has asked the Bundestag to deal with new digital possibilities of political manipulation such as social bots or false declarations. According to the news agencies AFP, Reuters and dpa. This is necessary if one wants to preserve the stability of Germany "in a completely different media environment", said Merkel on Wednesday in the Bundestag. "We need to know that in order to reach people, to inspire people, we must deal with these phenomena and, where necessary, regulate them," the CDU chairman said.
Citizens informed themselves quite differently than 25 years ago. This means "today's fake pages, bots, trolls, and opinion-making can falsify," said Merkel. With regard to social networks such as Facebook, she added that there could be "speech enhancers" through algorithms. Unlike the classical media, however, there is no self-regulation and control for these areas.Therefore, it supports the initiative of Justice Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) and Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maiziere (CDU) to "press on hate commentaries on the Internet" and do everything possible to prevent this because our principles contradict our principles. "
Hans-Georg Maaßen, President of the German constitution, had warned that foreign governments like Russia could try to influence public opinion in Germany in the 2017 elections.
Image copyrightGetty ImagesI've long suspected that Mark Zuckerberg, who often refers to himself as the ''leader'' of Facebook, has dreams of high office.
This week, a taster of what that might be like has been knocking at his door in the wake of the US election result.
While Donald Trump's visit to the White House was an apparently sobering experience about the level of responsibility he'd soon inherit, Zuckerberg has had a brutal political awakening of his own.
Facebook's ''fake news'' crisis has had the normally stoic 32-year-old visibly irritated, and that's because for the first time he is being treated like a politician, rather than just a tech CEO.
With that comes distrust and anger, not to mention disloyalty in the Facebook ranks and what for him must be the growing realisation that it's impossible to please everyone.
Whether Zuckerberg was right to say fake news had little impact is largely irrelevant. By dismissing it apparently without second thought as ''crazy'', he attracted a global pitchfork of people demanding that he at the very least acknowledge the potential role his empire had in Donald Trump's election win.
That interview, carried out by journalist David Kirkpatrick, also contained one other exchange which should give Zuckerberg some serious food for thought - 'and may even represent the biggest threat the network and its leader is yet to face.
Checks and balancesKirkpatrick first laid out the context.
Facebook, he said, was the most influential commercial enterprise ever created, with unparalleled power that is yet to be fully understood.
Zuckerberg himself is a multi-billionaire in charge of a network that has intricate personal data on 1.8 billion people and counting.
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption Mark Zuckerberg often describes himself as the "leader" of Facebook ''What are the checks and balances that need to exist for this new kind of entity?'' asked Kirkpatrick.
''Do you think about that? At the moment it seems like you are the check and balance.''
Zuckerberg's answer didn't come close to addressing the question. He said it was about ''listening to what people want'', and continuing to give people ''the power to share'' and to make ''the world more open and connected''.
But is he confident the checks and balances are in place to stop Facebook over-stepping the mark?
''I mean'... yeah,'' he said, peering out into the audience for support.
Even though I was watching via a live stream, I could tell the room took an awkward turn. Kirkpatrick moved on - but the issue won't.
The accountability gapThe exchange had touched upon a problem that surely deserves more attention.
There's an urgent accountability gap between what technology companies do and what the public is allowed to know.
This isn't about giving up trade secrets. You can inspect KFC's kitchen without knowing the Colonel's secret recipe.
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption The 32-year-old has defended his site over accusations it negatively influenced the election It's about being able to examine the reach and influence of technology companies, where supremely powerful men, and a few women, are able to control without any genuine scrutiny other than what appears every three months on a company earnings sheet (and even that's unnecessarily cryptic).
Revealing moments like the one Kirkpatrick summoned from the usually robotic Zuckerberg are few and far between. The depressing accepted reality in technology journalism is that if you give a company a hard time, they'll shut you out.
And that's because many major technology companies guard their work with barbed wire, and wrap their executives in cotton wool.
Interactions between big tech and the outside world are orchestrated and engineered to the nth degree. On those rare occasions, even the mildest scrutiny about anything other than the new product being flogged that day is swiftly shot down with tech's unofficial motto.
''Sorry'... but that's not what today is about.''
Unprecedented powerSo what, you might think. So what if technology companies want to keep their affairs to themselves - 'it's not a public service or anything.
You might also think that this is a technology journalist throwing his connected toys out of his smart pram - 'and for the most part you'd be right, I'm not ashamed to say.
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption What do we really know about how Google works? But what Facebook's challenges over fake news reveal, I think, is that we're in completely uncharted territory.
Never has any private company had such immediate power over the way we act, feel, think, date, buy, fight - whatever.
And it's impossible, if you plan on living in the modern world, to avoid Facebook or Google.
Even if you never create a Facebook account, your browsing habits will be logged when you visit pages that contain the Facebook 'like' button. Google's near-$500bn value is made up almost entirely from selling advertising, which is why they're absolutely everywhere on the internet. It's the scale that makes the money.
How the internal cogs of these sites work is a complete mystery. My colleague Rory Cellan-Jones' recent radio documentary into Google summarised that its algorithm was so complex that no single person could possibly grasp how it worked.
At oddsThis situation, this imbalance, will surely not be able to last much longer. While technology bosses, Zuckerberg in particular, talk about their ''mission'' to ''connect the world'', we do know that under their watch unacceptable things do take place.
Thanks to whistleblowers and investigative journalists, for instance, we know that Google at one time scooped up private wi-fi data from homes as it carried out its Street View trips. We know that Facebook knowingly manipulated News Feeds in an attempt to alter users' emotions.
Image copyrightFacebookImage caption Mark Zuckerberg in 2009 talking about Facebook's governance You can see how both of those examples could have seemed harmless - 'or at least fascinating - to the engineers involved.
But what they demonstrate is that what may seem a bright idea for the tech sites may be directly at odds for what is good for the users themselves.
One person in agreement with this is Zuckerberg, in 2009 at least. That was when Facebook was at around 200m users, and he posted a video message (in a shirt and tie!) saying how he wanted users to have a bigger say in how the site is governed.
A special section - 'FB Site Governance - was set up. Check on it today and you'll see there have been no significant updates since 2012 - other than to tell people about privacy policy changes.
Soft power
Zuckerberg's political ambitions, if he has them, are off to a very rocky start. The fake news row was a big test, and he handled it poorly - 'dragging out the issue in the news agenda for well over a week.
Had he been thinking like a politician, as he now must, things could have gone differently. The new reality for Zuckerberg is that it's no longer okay to be an awkward tech nerd. Instead he must deal with his users' concerns with respect, and not call them ''crazy''.
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption Mark Zuckerberg welcomed the Indian prime minister to Facebook's campus last year There's a lot in it for him to get things right. Zuckerberg's global ambitions will live or die on his ability to be an astute political operator. He already played a bad hand in India, where local businesses said he was harming their chances online.
If Facebook is to hit the potential of connecting the unconnected, Zuckerberg will need to think like a world leader and engage in soft power and openness in order to build, or restore, trust.
And he must stop using ''increased engagement'' as the key metric for Facebook's success. What's popular isn't always good, and what's good isn't always popular.
Zuckerberg's record on dealing with controversy has been pretty solid, and there's of course no suggestion he has any bad intentions with Facebook.
But this week has demonstrated that it's simply no longer enough for Zuckerberg to deny an issue and expect people to blindly take his word for it. Even if he is right, he'll have to learn how to prove it.
Because the message the public appears to have given Zuckerberg, and perhaps all of Silicon Valley, is that when you're unfathomably powerful, ''no comment'' is fast becoming not good enough.
Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC and on Facebook
Donald Trump's media summit was a 'f''''''ing firing squad' | New York Post
Donald Trump scolded media big shots during an off-the-record Trump Tower sitdown on Monday, sources told The Post.
''It was like a f''''''ing firing squad,'' one source said of the encounter.
''Trump started with [CNN chief] Jeff Zucker and said, 'I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed,' '' the source said.
''The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing-down,'' the source added.
A second source confirmed the fireworks.
''The meeting took place in a big boardroom and there were about 30 or 40 people, including the big news anchors from all the networks,'' the other source said.
''Trump kept saying, 'We're in a room of liars, the deceitful, dishonest media who got it all wrong.' He addressed everyone in the room, calling the media dishonest, deceitful liars. He called out Jeff Zucker by name and said everyone at CNN was a liar, and CNN was [a] network of liars,'' the source said.
''Trump didn't say [NBC reporter] Katy Tur by name, but talked about an NBC female correspondent who got it wrong, then he referred to a horrible network correspondent who cried when Hillary lost who hosted a debate '-- which was Martha Raddatz, who was also in the room.''
The stunned reporters tried to get a word in edgewise to discuss access to a Trump administration.
Wolf BlitzerPhoto: Getty Images
Gayle KingPhoto: Getty Images
George StephanopoulosPhoto: Getty Images
Charlie RosePhoto: Reuters
John Dickerson (left) and Charlie Rose (right)Photo: Reuters
Wolf Blitzer (center) and Lester Holt (right)Photo: Reuters
Jeff Zucker (left)Photo: Reuters
Erin Burnett (center)Photo: Getty Images
Up NextMTA rejects subway ad exposing its workers' bloody injuries:0The MTA is refusing to allow its workers' union to...
''['CBS Good Morning' co-host Gayle] King did not stand up, but asked some question, 'How do you propose we the media work with you?' Chuck Todd asked some pretty pointed questions. David Muir asked, 'How are you going to cope living in DC while your family is in NYC?' It was a horrible meeting.''
Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway told reporters the gathering went well.
''Excellent meetings with the top executives of the major networks,'' she said during a gaggle in the lobby of Trump Tower. ''Pretty unprecedented meeting we put together in two days.''
The meeting was off the record, meaning the participants agreed not to talk about the substance of the conversations.
The hour-long session included top execs from network and cable news channels. Among the attendees were NBC's Deborah Turness, Lester Holt and Chuck Todd; ABC's James Goldston, George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and Martha Raddatz; CBS' Norah O'Donnell, John Dickerson, Charlie Rose, Christopher Isham and King; Fox News' Bill Shine, Jack Abernethy, Jay Wallace and Suzanne Scott; MSNBC's Phil Griffin, and CNN's Jeff Zucker and Erin Burnett.
Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, plans to meet with Trump on Tuesday.
There was no immediate comment from the Trump Team.
Media Stars Agree to Off-The-Record Meeting with Trump, Break Agreement, Whine About Mistreatment
A glittering array of media stars and network executives made pilgrimage on Monday to the 25th floor of Trump Tower to meet with the president-elect. They all agreed that the discussions would be ''off-the-record'': meaning they would conceal from their viewers what they discussed. Shortly after the meeting ended, several of the stars violated the agreement they made, running to The New York Post and David Remnick of the New Yorker to whine about Trump's mean behavior. ''The participants all shook Trump's hand at the start of the session and congratulated him,'' Remnick reported, ''but things went south from there.'' It's difficult to identify the shabbiest and sorriest aspect of this spectacle, but let's nonetheless try, as it sheds important light on our nation's beloved media corps and their posture heading into a Trump presidency.
To begin with, why would journalistic organizations agree to keep their meeting with Donald Trump off-the-record? If you're a journalist, what is the point of speaking with a powerful politician if you agree in advance that it's all going to be kept secret? Do they not care what appearance this creates: the most powerful media organizations meeting high atop Trump Tower with the country's most powerful political official, with everyone agreeing to keep it all a big secret from the public? Whether or not it actually is collusion, whether or not it actually is subservient ring-kissing in exchange for access, it certainly appears to be that. As the Huffington Post's Michael Calderone put it: ''By agreeing to such conditions, journalists expected to deliver the news to the public must withhold details of a newsworthy meeting with the president-elect.''
The pretext these media stars offer for such meetings is unpersuasive in the extreme. ''Oh, we need,'' they claim, ''to negotiate access and how we're going to work together, and this discussion can be productive only if everyone is confident that it won't be reported.'' But why do media organizations need to have cooperative access agreements with politicians? Just report on and investigate what he says and does. Don't agree to ground rules that limit or subvert your ability to report aggressively. Don't turn yourselves into vassals in order to be granted access to the royal court.
More to the point, nobody really believes that a discussion that takes place in a room filled with a couple dozen TV stars and their media bosses is going to be kept private, so the ''off-the-record'' agreement does not actually foster candor. It's instead designed to achieve nothing other than creating a cozy atmosphere where '' just as they do at the sleazy, Versailles-like White House Correspondents' Dinner and on so many other occasions '' media stars get to feel like they're colleagues and friends with the President rather than his adversaries.
And, as was completely predictable, some of the TV stars immediately breached the off-the-record commitment they made '' not by bravely reporting what occurred but by slinking around in the dark to anonymously whisper and gossip about what Trump said to them. Which is worse: agreeing to an off-the-record meeting with Trump, or then unethically violating the agreement by disclosing exactly what you promised in advance you would not disclose? (This is not the first time journalists have dubiously promised Trump off-the-record privileges and then violated their own commitments.)
Then there's the content of their complaints. Trump, apparently, was very mean to them. His tone was unpleasant and uncivil '' hostile even. He did not treat the august press corps with the respect and admiration to which they are entitled. At least two of them ran to David Remnick to whine about how mean and critical Trump was. Remnick himself was outraged on their behalf, and conveyed this pitifully amusing anecdote:
Another participant at the meeting said that Trump's behavior was ''totally inappropriate'' and ''fucking outrageous.'' The television people thought that they were being summoned to ask questions; Trump has not held a press conference since late July. Instead, they were subjected to a stream of insults and complaints'--and not everyone absorbed it with pleasure.
''I have to tell you, I am emotionally fucking pissed,'' another participant said. ''How can this not influence coverage? I am being totally honest with you. Toward the end of the campaign, it got to a point where I thought that the coverage was all about [Trump's] flaws and problems. And that's legit. But, I thought, O.K., let's give them the benefit of the doubt. After the meeting today, though'--and I am being human with you here'--I think, Fuck him! I know I am being emotional about it. And I know I will get over it in a couple of days after Thanksgiving. But I really am offended. This was unprecedented. Outrageous!''
Where to begin with this? First, if they really believed ''that they were being summoned to ask questions,'' a form of a press conference, then what remote justification is there for keeping it a secret? This expectation obliterates the standard excuse offered for why such meetings are appropriate.
Second, I'm really sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but yes: Donald Trump hates the U.S. media, as does the overwhelming majority of Americans. Even though every pampered star in that room is paid many millions of dollars a year and is flattered on a daily basis by teams of underlings, they are not actually entitled to respect and admiration, especially not from the powerful politicians they cover. The media was quite critical of Trump, and he hates them back. If they don't want to be disliked by powerful politicians '' if confronting hostility of this type traumatizes them this way and sends them running to David Remnick for therapy and comfort '' then they should go find other work. Who cares if Trump is nice to Wolf Blitzer and Phil Griffin?
Third, the above-quoted journalist pronounced themselves so profoundly ''offended,'' crying: ''This was unprecedented. Outrageous.'' But in the next breath said this about the brutality they suffered: ''I know I will get over it in a couple of days after Thanksgiving.'' I have no doubt that's true. Rather than doing their jobs and being adversarial to Trump, rather than responding to this sort of bullying with some dignity and return aggression, it is a very good bet that they will respond with greater submission (the way they all stayed passively in their assigned press pens during Trump rallies). The supreme religion of the U.S. press corps is reverence for power; the more Trump exhibits, the more submissive they will get. ''I know I will get over it in a couple of days after Thanksgiving.'' We believe you.
Finally, after everything Trump has said '' about immigrants, Muslims, women, etc. '' this is what upsets these journalists: that he criticized them to their faces using a mean tone. Remnick writes that ''Trump whined'' in the meeting and showed how ''vain'' he is. That may be true, but the same is true of his anonymous friends for whose petty grievances he is crusading. There is much oppression in the world and many serious concerns as Trump heads to the Oval Office; how Trump speaks to Chuck Todd and Jeff Zucker is not on that list.
All presidents have the temptation and potential to abuse their power. That's why the American founders were preoccupied with creating safeguards against that, and one of those was a free press. The homage these TV stars and executives were prepared to make inside Trump Tower, followed by their self-absorbed whimpering afterward, suggests that one should look elsewhere for the vital checks that an aggressive press must provide.
REPORT on EU strategic communication to counteract propaganda against it by third parties - A8-0290/2016
on EU strategic communication to counteract propaganda against it by third parties
(2016/2030(INI))
The European Parliament,
'' having regard to its resolution of 2 April 2009 on European conscience and totalitarianism(1),
'' having regard to the Strasbourg/Kehl Summit Declaration of 4 April 2009 adopted on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of NATO,
'' having regard to its resolution of 11 December 2012 on a Digital Freedom Strategy in EU Foreign Policy(2),
'' having regard to the Foreign Affairs Council conclusions on counter-terrorism of 9 February 2015,
'' having regard to the European Council conclusions of 19 and 20 March 2015,
'' having regard to the Council conclusions on the EU Regional Strategy for Syria and Iraq as well as the ISIL/Daesh threat of 16 March 2015, which were reconfirmed by the Foreign Affairs Council on 23 May 2016,
'' having regard to the report of 18 May 2015 of the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (VP/HR) entitled 'The European Union in a changing global environment '' A more connected, contested and complex world', and to the ongoing work on a new EU Global Security Strategy,
'' having regard to its resolution of 10 June 2015 on the state of EU-Russia relations(3),
'' having regard to the EU Action Plan on Strategic Communication (Ref. Ares(2015)2608242 - 22/06/2015),
'' having regard to its resolution of 9 July 2015 on the review of the European Neighbourhood Policy(4),
'' having regard to the NATO Wales Summit Declaration of 5 September 2014,
'' having regard to its resolution of 25 November 2015 on the prevention of radicalisation and recruitment of European citizens by terrorist organisations(5),
'' having regard to the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions of 28 April 2015 on the European Agenda on Security (COM(2015)0185),
'' having regard to the Joint Communication to the European Parliament and the Council of 6 April 2016 entitled 'Joint framework on countering hybrid threats: a European Union response' (JOIN(2016)0018),
'' having regard to the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the European Council and the Council of 20 April 2016 on delivering on the European Agenda on Security to fight against terrorism and pave the way towards an effective and genuine Security Union (COM(2016)0230),
'' having regard to the European Endowment for Democracy feasibility study on Russian Language Media Initiatives in the Eastern Partnership and Beyond, entitled 'Bringing Plurality and Balance to the Russian Language Media Space',
'' having regard to the Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism (A/HRC/31/65),
'' having regard to General Comment No 34 of the UN Human Rights Committee (CCPR/C/GC/34),
'' having regard to Rule 52 of its Rules of Procedure,
'' having regard to the report of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the opinion of the Committee on Culture and Education (A8-0290/2016),
A. whereas the EU has committed to guiding its actions on the international scene in compliance with principles such as democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as media freedom, access to information, freedom of expression and media pluralism, the last of which can, nevertheless, be limited to a certain extent as stipulated in international law, including in the European Convention on Human Rights; whereas third-party actors aiming to discredit the Union do not share the same values;
B. whereas the EU, its Member States and citizens are under growing, systematic pressure to tackle information, disinformation and misinformation campaigns and propaganda from countries and non-state actors, such as transnational terrorist and criminal organisations in its neighbourhood, which are intended to undermine the very notion of objective information or ethical journalism, casting all information as biased or as an instrument of political power, and which also target democratic values and interests;
C. whereas media freedom, access to information and freedom of expression are the basic pillars of a democratic system, in which the transparency of media ownership and the sources of financing of media are of the utmost importance; whereas strategies to ensure quality journalism, media pluralism and fact-checking can only be effective as long as information providers enjoy trust and credibility; whereas, at the same time, there should be a critical assessment of how to deal with media sources that have a proven record of having repeatedly engaged in a strategy of deliberate deception and disinformation, especially in the 'new media', social networks and the digital sphere;
D. whereas information warfare is a historical phenomenon as old as warfare itself; whereas targeted information warfare against the West was extensively used by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and has since been an integral part of modern hybrid warfare, which is a combination of military and non-military measures of a covert and overt nature, deployed to destabilise the political, economic and social situation of a country under attack, without a formal declaration of war, targeting not only partners of the EU, but also the EU itself, its institutions and all Member States and citizens irrespective of their nationality and religion;
E. whereas with Russia's annexation of Crimea and the Russian-led hybrid war in the Donbass, the Kremlin has escalated the confrontation with the EU; whereas the Kremlin has stepped up its propaganda war, with Russia playing an enhanced role in the European media environment aimed at creating political support in European public opinion for Russian action and undermining the coherence of the EU foreign policy;
F. whereas propaganda for war and any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence is prohibited by law in accordance with Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;
G. whereas the financial crisis and the advance of new forms of digital media have posed serious challenges for quality journalism, leading to a decrease in critical thinking among audiences, thus making them more susceptible to disinformation and manipulation;
H. whereas the propaganda war and the intrusion of Russian media is particularly strong and often unmatched in the countries of the Eastern neighbourhood; whereas national media in these countries are often weak and not able to cope with the strength and the power of Russian media;
I. whereas information and communications warfare technologies are being employed in order to legitimise actions threatening EU Member States' sovereignty, political independence, the security of their citizens and their territorial integrity;
J. whereas the EU does not recognise ISIL/Daesh as a state or an organisation similar to a state;
K. whereas ISIS/Daesh, Al-Qaeda and many other violent jihadi terrorist groups systematically use communication strategies and direct propaganda both offline and online as part of the justification of their actions against the EU and the Member States and against European values, and also with the aim of boosting recruitment of young Europeans;
L. whereas following the NATO Strasbourg/Kehl Summit Declaration stressing the increasing importance for NATO to communicate in an appropriate, timely, accurate and responsive manner on its evolving roles, objectives and missions, the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (NATO StratCom COE) was established in Latvia in 2014, which was welcomed in the NATO Wales Summit Declaration;
EU strategic communication to counteract propaganda against it by third parties
1. Underlines that hostile propaganda against the EU comes in many different forms and uses various tools, often tailored to match EU Member States' profiles, with the goal of distorting truths, provoking doubt, dividing Member States, engineering a strategic split between the European Union and its North American partners and paralysing the decision-making process, discrediting the EU institutions and transatlantic partnerships, which play a recognised role in the European security and economic architecture, in the eyes and minds of EU citizens and of citizens of neighbouring countries, and undermining and eroding the European narrative based on democratic values, human rights and the rule of law; recalls that one of the most important tools used is incitement of fear and uncertainty in EU citizens, as well as presenting hostile state and non-state actors as much stronger than they are in reality; notes that other authoritarian regimes around the world are using strategies similar to those developed by the Kremlin;
2. Calls on the EU institutions to recognise that strategic communication and information warfare is not only an external EU issue but also an internal one, and voices its concern at the number of hostile propaganda multipliers existing within the Union; is concerned about the limited awareness amongst some of its Member States that they are audiences and arenas of propaganda and disinformation; in this regard, calls on the EU actors to address the current lack of clarity and agreement on what is to be considered propaganda and disinformation, to develop in cooperation with media representatives and experts from the EU Member States a shared set of definitions and to compile data and facts about the consumption of propaganda;
3. Notes that disinformation and propaganda are part of hybrid warfare; highlights, therefore, the need to raise awareness and demonstrate assertiveness through institutional / political communication, think tank / academia research, social media campaigns, civil society initiatives, media literacy and other useful actions;
4. Stresses that the strategy of anti-EU propaganda and disinformation by third countries may take various forms and involve, in particular, traditional media, social networks, school programmes and political parties, both within and beyond the European Union;
5. Notes the multi-layered character of current EU strategic communications at various levels, including the EU institutions, the Member States, various NATO and UN bodies, NGOs and civic organisations, and calls for the best possible coordination and information exchange between these parties; calls for more cooperation and exchange of information between various parties that have voiced concern at these propaganda efforts and wish to draw up strategies for countering disinformation; believes that, in the EU context, Union institutions should be tasked with such coordination;
6. Recognises that the EU must consider its strategic communication efforts as a priority, which should involve relevant resources; reiterates that the EU is a successful model of integration which continues, amid crisis, to attract countries wanting to replicate this model and become part of it; underlines, therefore, that the EU needs to put out its positive message about its successes, values and principles with determination and courage, and that it needs to be offensive in its narrative, not defensive;
Recognising and exposing Russian disinformation and propaganda warfare
7. Notes with regret that Russia uses contacts and meetings with EU counterparts for propaganda purposes and to publicly weaken the EU's joint position, rather than for establishing a real dialogue;
8. Recognises that the Russian Government is aggressively employing a wide range of tools and instruments, such as think tanks and special foundations (e.g. Russkiy Mir), special authorities (Rossotrudnichestvo), multilingual TV stations (e.g. RT), pseudo news agencies and multimedia services (e.g. Sputnik), cross-border social and religious groups, as the regime wants to present itself as the only defender of traditional Christian values, social media and internet trolls to challenge democratic values, divide Europe, gather domestic support and create the perception of failed states in the EU's eastern neighbourhood; stresses that Russia invests relevant financial resources in its disinformation and propaganda instruments engaged either directly by the state or through Kremlin-controlled companies and organisations; underlines that, on the one hand, the Kremlin is funding political parties and other organisations within the EU with the intent of undermining political cohesion, and that, on the other hand, Kremlin propaganda directly targets specific journalists, politicians and individuals in the EU;
9. Recalls that security and intelligence services conclude that Russia has the capacity and intention to conduct operations aimed at destabilising other countries; points out that this often takes the form of support to political extremists and large-scale disinformation and mass media campaigns; notes, furthermore, that such media companies are present and active in the EU;
10. Points out that the Kremlin's information strategy is complementary to its policy of stepping up bilateral relations, economic cooperation and joint projects with individual EU Member States in order to weaken EU coherence and undermine EU policies;
11. Argues that Russian strategic communication is part of a larger subversive campaign to weaken EU cooperation and the sovereignty, political independence and territorial integrity of the Union and its Member States; urges Member State governments to be vigilant towards Russian information operations on European soil and to increase capacity sharing and counterintelligence efforts aimed at countering such operations;
12. Expresses its strong criticism of Russian efforts to disrupt the EU integration process and deplores, in this respect, Russian backing of anti-EU forces in the EU with regard, in particular, to extreme-right parties, populist forces and movements that deny the basic values of liberal democracies;
13. Is seriously concerned by the rapid expansion of Kremlin-inspired activities in Europe, including disinformation and propaganda seeking to maintain or increase Russia's influence to weaken and split the EU; stresses that a large part of the Kremlin's hostile propaganda is aimed at describing some European countries as belonging to 'Russia's traditional sphere of influence', thereby undermining their sovereignty and deeply rooted European identity, which in the past has been undermined by communist regimes; notes that one of its main strategies is to circulate and impose an alternative narrative, often based on a manipulated interpretation of historical events and aimed at justifying its external actions and geopolitical interests; notes that falsifying history is one of its main strategies; in this respect, notes the need to raise awareness of the crimes of communist regimes through public campaigns and educational systems and to support research and documentation activities, especially in the former members of the Soviet bloc, to counter the Kremlin narrative;
14. Stresses that Russia is exploiting the absence of a legal international framework in areas such as cybersecurity and the lack of accountability in media regulation, and is turning any ambiguity in these matters in its favour; underlines that aggressive Russian activities in the cyber domain facilitate information warfare; calls on the Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS) to pay attention to the role of Internet Exchange Points as critical infrastructure in the EU's security strategy; underlines the crucial need to ensure resilience of the information systems at EU and Member State level, especially against denials and disruptions that can play a central role in hybrid conflict and countering propaganda, and to closely cooperate in this regard with NATO, especially with the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence;
15. Invites the Member States to develop coordinated strategic communication mechanisms to support attribution and counter disinformation and propaganda in order to expose hybrid threats;
Understanding and tackling ISIL/Daesh's information warfare, disinformation and radicalisation methods
16. Is aware of the range of strategies employed by ISIL/Daesh both regionally and globally to promote its political, religious, social, hateful and violent narratives; calls on the EU and its Member States to develop a counter-narrative to ISIL/Daesh involving the education system and including through the empowerment and increased visibility of mainstream Muslim scholars who have the credibility to delegitimise ISIL/Daesh propaganda; welcomes the efforts by the Global Coalition to counter ISIL/Daesh and in this regard supports the EU Regional Strategy for Syria and Iraq; urges the EU and the Member States to develop and disseminate a counter-narrative to jihadist propaganda, with particular emphasis on an educational dimension demonstrating how the promotion of radical Islam is theologically corrupt;
17. Notes that Islamist terrorist organisations, especially ISIL/Daesh and Al-Qaeda, are engaged in active information campaigns with the aim of undermining and increasing the level of hatred against European values and interests; is concerned about the widespread use by ISIL/Daesh of social media tools and especially Twitter and Facebook to advance its propaganda and recruitment objectives, especially among young people; in this regard, underlines the importance of including the counter-propaganda strategy against ISIL/Daesh in a broader, comprehensive regional strategy that combines diplomatic, socio-economic, development and conflict-prevention tools; welcomes the creation of a Stratcom Task Force dedicated to the South, which has the potential to contribute effectively to the deconstruction and to the fight against ISIL/Daesh extremist propaganda and influence;
18. Emphasises that the EU and European citizens are a major target for ISIL/Daesh and calls for the EU and its Member States to work more closely to protect society, in particular young people, from recruitment, thus enhancing their resilience against radicalisation; emphasises the need for more enhanced focus on improving EU tools and methods, mostly in the cyber area; encourages each Member State, working closely with the Radicalisation Awareness Network Centre of Excellence established in October 2015, to investigate and effectively address the underlying socio-demographic reasons that are at the root cause of vulnerability to radicalisation as well as institutional multi-dimensional arrangements (linking university research, prison administrations, the police, the courts, social services and education systems) to combat it; underlines that the Council has called for the promotion of criminal justice response measures to counter radicalisation leading to terrorism and violent extremism;
19. Calls on the Member States to work on cutting ISIL/Daesh's access to financing and funding and to promote this principle in the EU's external action and stresses the need to expose ISIL/Daesh's true nature and to repudiate its ideological legitimisation;
20. Calls on the EU and its Member States to take consistent, EU-wide action against the hate speech being systematically promoted by intolerant, radical preachers through sermons, books, TV shows, the Internet and all other means of communication that create a fertile ground for terrorist organisations like ISIL/Daesh and Al-Qaeda to thrive;
21. Underlines the importance for the EU and Member States of cooperating with social media service providers to counter ISIL/Daesh propaganda being spread through social media channels;
22. Underlines that Islamist terrorist organisations, especially ISIL/Daesh and Al-Qaeda, are engaged in active disinformation campaigns with the aim of undermining European values and interests; highlights in this regard the importance of a specific strategy to counter Islamist anti-EU propaganda and disinformation;
23. Stresses that unbiased, reliable and objective communication and flows of information based on facts concerning developments in EU countries would prevent the dissemination of propaganda fuelled by third parties;
EU strategy to counteract propaganda
24. Welcomes the Action Plan on Strategic Communication; welcomes the joint communication on the 'Joint Framework on countering hybrid threats' and calls for the endorsement and implementation of its recommendations without delay; stresses that the actions proposed require the cooperation and coordination of all relevant actors at EU and national level; is of the opinion that only a comprehensive approach can lead to the success of EU efforts; calls on the Member States holding the rotating presidency of the EU to always include strategic communications as part of their programme in order to ensure continuity of work on this topic; welcomes the initiatives and achievements of the Latvian Presidency in this regard; calls on the HR/VP to ensure frequent communication at political level with the Member States in order to better coordinate EU actions; stresses that cooperation between the EU and NATO in the field of strategic communication should be substantially strengthened; welcomes the intention of the Slovak Presidency to organise a conference on totalitarianism on the occasion of the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of the Totalitarian Regimes;
25. Requests that the competent EU institutions and authorities closely monitor the sources of financing of anti-European propaganda;
26. Emphasises that more funding is necessary to support freedom of the media in the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries within the scope of EU democracy instruments; calls on the Commission in this respect to ensure the full exploitation of existing instruments such as the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), the ENP, the Eastern Partnership Media Freedom Watch and the EED with regard to the protection of media freedom and pluralism;
27. Notes the huge resources dedicated to propaganda activities by Russia and the possible impact of hostile propaganda on decision-making processes in the EU and the undermining of public trust, openness and democracy; commends the significant work accomplished by the EU Strategic Communication Task Force; calls therefore for the EU Strategic Communication Task Force to be reinforced by turning it into a fully fledged unit within the EEAS, responsible for the Eastern and Southern neighbourhoods, with proper staffing and adequate budgetary resources, possibly by y means of an additional dedicated budget line; calls for enhanced cooperation among the Member States' intelligence services with a view to assessing the influence exerted by third countries seeking to undermine the democratic foundation and values of the EU; calls for closer cooperation between Parliament and the EEAS on strategic communication, including through the use of the Parliament's analytical capacities and Information Offices in the Member States;
28. Stresses that it is essential for the EU to continue to actively promote through its external actions respect for fundamental rights and freedoms; considers that supporting freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the right to access information and the independence of the media in the neighbouring countries should underpin the EU's actions in counteracting propaganda;
29. Underlines the need to strengthen media plurality and the objectivity, impartiality and independence of the media within the EU and its neighbourhood, including non-state actors, inter alia through support for journalists and the development of capacity-building programmes for media actors, fostering information-exchange partnerships and networks, such as content-sharing platforms, media-related research, mobility and training opportunities for journalists and placements with EU-based media to facilitate exchanges of best practices;
30. Highlights the important role of quality journalism education and training inside and outside the EU in order to produce quality journalistic analyses and high editorial standards; argues that promoting the EU values of freedom of the press and expression and media plurality includes supporting persecuted and imprisoned journalists and human rights defenders in third countries;
31. Advocates stronger cooperation between the EU institutions, the European Endowment for Democracy (EED), the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe and the Member States in order to avoid duplication and ensure synergy in similar initiatives;
32. Is dismayed at the major problems relating to the independence and freedom of the media in certain Member States, as reported by international organisations such as Reporters Without Borders; calls on the EU and the Member States to take appropriate measures to improve the existing situation in the media sector, with a view to ensuring that EU external action in support of freedom, impartiality and independence of the media is credible;
33. Asks the Strategic Communication Task Force, thus reinforced as proposed and under the Twitter username @EUvsDisInfo, to establish an online space where the public at large can find a range of tools for identifying disinformation, with an explanation of how they work, and which can act as a relay for the many civil society initiatives focused on this issue;
34. Affirms that an efficient communication strategy must include local communities in discussions about EU actions, provide support for people-to-people contact, and give proper consideration to cultural and social exchanges as key platforms for combating the prejudices of local populations; recalls that, in this regard, EU delegations must maintain direct contact with local grassroots stakeholders and representatives of civil society;
35. Underlines that incitement of hatred, violence or war cannot 'hide' behind freedom of expression; encourages legal initiatives to be taken in this regard to provide more accountability when dealing with disinformation;
36. Highlights the importance of communicating EU policies coherently and effectively, internally as well as externally, and of providing tailored communications to specific regions, including access to information in local languages; welcomes, in this context, the launch of the EEAS website in Russian as a first step in the right direction and encourages the translation of the EEAS website into more languages, such as Arabic and Turkish;
37. Underlines the responsibility of Member States to be active, preventative, and cooperative in countering hostile information operations on their territories or aimed at undermining their interests; urges the governments of Member States to develop their own strategic communications capabilities;
38. Calls on each Member State to make the EU Strategic Communication Task Force's two weekly newsletters The Disinformation Digest and The Disinformation Review available to their citizens in order to create awareness among the general public of propaganda methods used by third parties;
39. Insists on the difference between propaganda and criticism;
40. Stresses that while not all criticism of the EU or its policies necessarily constitutes propaganda or disinformation, particularly when in the context of political expression, instances of manipulation or support linked to third countries and intended to fuel or exacerbate this criticism provide grounds to question the reliability of these messages;
41. Stresses that while a stand has to be taken against anti-EU propaganda and disinformation by third countries, this should not cast doubt on the importance of maintaining constructive relations with third countries and making them strategic partners in tackling common challenges;
42. Welcomes the adoption of the Action Plan on Strategic Communication and the establishment of the East StratCom Team within the European External Action Service (EEAS) with the aim of communicating EU policies and countering anti-EU propaganda and disinformation; calls for strategic communication to be further stepped up; believes that the efficiency and transparency of the work of the East StratCom Team needs to be further improved; invites the EEAS to develop criteria for measuring the efficiency of its work; highlights the importance of ensuring sufficient financing and adequate staffing of the East StratCom Team;
43. Notes that the Disinformation Review published by the East StratCom Task Force has to meet the standards provided for in the IFJ Declaration of Principles on the Conduct of Journalists; emphasises that the review must be drafted in an appropriate manner, without using offensive language or value judgments; invites the East StratCom Task Force to revisit the criteria used for drafting the review;
44. Believes that an efficient strategy to counteract anti-EU propaganda could be the adoption of measures to provide a target audience with adequate and interesting information about EU activities, European values and other issues of public interest, and underlines that modern technologies and social networks could be used for these purposes;
45. Calls on the Commission to advance certain legal initiatives in order to be more effective and accountable in dealing with disinformation and propaganda and to use the midterm review of the European Neighbourhood Instrument to promote the strengthening of the resilience of the media as a strategic priority; calls on the Commission to conduct a thorough review of the efficiency of existing EU financial instruments and to come forward with a proposal for a comprehensive and flexible solution which can provide direct support to independent media outlets, think tanks and NGOs especially in the target group native language and enable the channelling of additional resources to organisations that have the ability to do so, such as the European Endowment for Democracy while curtailing financial flows aimed at financing individuals and entities engaged in stratcom activities, incitement to violence and hatred; calls on the Commission to conduct a thorough audit of the efficiency of certain big scale media projects funded by the EU, such as Euronews;
46. Underlines the importance of awareness raising, education, online media and information literacy in the EU and in the Neighbourhood with a view to empowering citizens to critically analyse media content in order to identify propaganda; stresses in this sense the importance of strengthening knowledge on all levels of the educational system; points out the need for encouraging people to active citizenship and for developing their awareness as media consumers; underlines the central role of online tools, especially social media where the spread of false information and the launch of disinformation campaigns are easier and often face no hurdles; recalls that countering propaganda with propaganda is counterproductive, and therefore understands that the EU, as a whole, and the Member States, individually, can only fight propaganda by third parties by rebutting disinformation campaigns and making use of positive messaging and information and should develop a truly effective strategy which would be differentiated and adapted to the nature of the actors disseminating propaganda; recognises that the financial crisis and the advance of new forms of digital media have posed serious challenges for quality journalism;
47. Expresses concern at the use of social media and online platforms for criminal hate speech and incitement to violence, and encourages the Member States to adapt and update legislation to address ongoing developments, or to fully implement and enforce existing legislation on hate speech, both offline and online; argues that greater collaboration is needed with online platforms and with leading internet and media companies;
48. Calls on the Member States to provide and ensure the necessary framework for quality journalism and variety of information by combating media concentrations, which have a negative impact on media pluralism;
49. Notes that media education provides knowledge and skills, and empowers citizens to exercise their right to freedom of expression, to critically analyse media content and to react to disinformation; highlights, therefore, the need to raise awareness of the risks of disinformation through media literacy actions at all levels, including through a European information campaign around media, journalistic and editorial ethics and by fostering better cooperation with social platforms and promoting joint initiatives to address hate speech, incitement to violence and online discrimination;
50. Notes that no soft power strategy can succeed without cultural diplomacy and promotion of intercultural dialogue between and within countries, in the EU and beyond; encourages, therefore, long-term public and cultural diplomacy actions and initiatives, such as scholarships and exchange programmes for students and young professionals, including initiatives to support intercultural dialogue, strengthen cultural links with the EU and promote common cultural links and heritage, and the provision of proper training for staff of EU delegations and the EEAS to equip them with adequate intercultural skills;
51. Believes that public media should set the example of how to provide impartial and objective information in compliance with the best practices and ethics of journalism;
52. Underlines that particular attention should be paid to new technologies '' including digital broadcasting, mobile communications, online media and social networks, including those of a regional character '' which facilitate the dissemination of information about, and increased awareness of, the European values enshrined in the Treaties; recalls that such communications must be of a high standard, contain concrete best practices and highlight the EU's impact on third countries, including EU humanitarian assistance as well as the opportunities and benefits that closer association and cooperation with the EU bring for the citizens of third countries, in particular for young people, such as visa-free travel or capacity-building, mobility and exchange programmes where applicable;
53. Highlights the need to ensure that the new ENP portal '' currently being developed in the framework of the OPEN Neighbourhood Programme '' does not only accumulate content addressed to expert communities, but that it also contains a section customised for larger audiences; is of the opinion that the portal should contain a section on the Eastern Partnership, bringing together information on initiatives currently fragmented between numerous websites;
54. Points to the potential of popular culture and entertainment-education (EE) as a means of articulating shared human values and communicating EU policies;
55. Stresses its support for initiatives such as the Baltic Centre for Media Excellence in Riga, NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (NATO StratCom COE) or the Radicalisation Awareness Network Centre of Excellence; underlines the need for utilising their findings and analysis and strengthening EU analytical capabilities at all levels; calls for the Commission and the Member States to initiate similar projects, engage in the training of journalists, support independent media hubs and media diversity, encourage networking and cooperation between media and think tanks and exchange best practices and information in these areas;
56. Condemns the regular crackdowns on the independent media, journalists and civil society activists in Russia and occupied territories, including Crimea since its illegal annexation; stresses that since 1999, dozens of journalists have been killed, disappeared without trace or have been imprisoned in Russia; calls on the Commission and Member States to reinforce the protection of journalists in Russia and in the EU's Neighbourhood and to support Russian civil society and invest in people-to-people contacts; calls for the immediate release of journalists; notes that the EU is strengthening relations with its Eastern partners and other neighbours, and is also keeping the lines of communication with Russia open; recognises that the biggest obstacle to Russian disinformation campaigns would be the existence of independent and free media in Russia itself; considers that achieving this should be the goal of the EU; calls for special attention and sufficient resources to be provided for media pluralism, local media, investigative journalism and foreign language media, particularly in Russian, Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and Urdu as well as other languages spoken by populations vulnerable to propaganda;
57. Supports communication campaigns carried out by relevant actors in Syria, Iraq and in the region (including in the countries of origin of foreign fighters) to discredit ISIS/Daesh's ideology and denounce its violations of human rights, and to counter violent extremism and hate speech linked to other groups in the region; calls on the EU and its Member States, in their dialogue with MENA countries, to emphasise that good governance, accountability, transparency, the rule of law and respect for human rights are essential pre-requisites to protect these societies from the spread of intolerant and violent ideologies that inspire terrorist organisations such as ISIS/Daesh and Al-Qaeda; in the face of the growing terrorist threat from ISIS/Daesh and other international terrorist organisations, underlines the need to strengthen cooperation on security issues with countries, which have extensive experience in combating terrorism;
58. Calls on the HR/VP and the Council to confirm the EU's full support for the ongoing implementation process and to contribute financially to the realisation of the recommendations of the feasibility study on 'Russian-language Media Initiatives in the Eastern Partnership and Beyond', conducted the European Endowment for Democracy in 2015;
59. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, Member States, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the EEAS and NATO.
Save the Date: ISPU Annual Banquet 2016This year's annual banquet, ''A Community of Champions: Celebrating American Muslim Achievements,'' will feature comedian Dean Obeidallah. For more information on sponsorship, visit our event page.
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Breitbart News blacklisted by ad tech company for violating hate speech rules | Media | The Guardian
Steve Bannon was Breitbart's executive chair before being appointed as President-elect Donald Trump's chief strategist. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Major online ad technology company AppNexus will blacklist rightwing media outlet Breitbart, saying the company is in violation of its hate speech rules. Breitbart was run by President-elect Donald Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, until this summer.
The site has become increasingly popular this year, with 19 million unique visitors in October, up significantly from 12m the previous year.
AppNexus told Bloomberg that it believed the site's content has the potential to incite violence. ''We did a human audit of Breitbart and determined there were enough articles and headlines that cross that line, using either coded or overt language,'' an AppNexus spokesman, Joshua Zeitz, said.
''We determined that Breitbart was out of compliance with our hate speech rules,'' Zeitz told the Guardian. ''Hate speech being one of several prohibited categories.''
Bannon himself has come under fire for presiding over Breitbart when it published stories with headlines such as ''Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew'', ''Democrats Vote the Mentally Disabled'' and an interview with Roger Stone that quoted the conspiracy-loving Republican operative claiming that Hillary Clinton adviser Huma Abedin was ''most likely a Saudi spy'' with connections to a ''global terrorist entity''. The site has also warned of a ''Muslim invasion''.
AppNexus handles about $2.5bn in ad spending per year. The company made its fortune deploying ads strategically in milliseconds across a wide variety of websites in an industry where large ad buys were traditionally planned far in advance. Now, the rapid deployment of advertising is the norm, rather than the exception.
Companies like AppNexus are vital in an advertising ecosystem where companies are anxious about their logos appearing alongside controversial speech. News and news-like content fares particularly poorly in this world. Advertising, more than other industries, tends to be sensitive to the pressures of changing demographics; Breitbart's championing of white rights is a hard sell in an increasingly multiracial marketplace.
Donald Trump's 'alt-right' supporters express dismay at disavowal | US news | The Guardian
'Alt-right' leader Richard Spencer at the largest white nationalist conference of the year, which took place over the weekend. Photograph: Linda Davidson/AP
President-elect Donald Trump's disavowal of Richard Spencer and his far-right thinktank the National Policy Institute, a day after video of Spencer's supporters giving the Nazi salute at an event in Washington DC surfaced, has dismayed some of his supporters on the ''alt-right''.
''This constant virtue signaling needs to finally end, otherwise our civilization will simply collapse,'' a commenter wrote underneath the article of Trump's disavowal on right-wing news site Breitbart.
People in the myriad ''alt-right'' communities that have flourished online in recent years are also expressing their displeasure that Trump appears to have abandoned the most extreme of his policies '' at least for now '' such as building a wall and prosecuting Hillary Clinton.
They also objected to his visiting of the New York Times for an on-the-record meeting on Tuesday, at which Trump described the news organization as a ''world jewel''.
On /pol/, the political discussion board of the anonymous message-board 4chan, one poster wrote: ''Already reneging on his word before he even takes office?! People will remember that.''
Stephen Bannon and the alt-right in the White HouseA post on Reddit's r/altright board, one of the movement's home bases, linked to Trump's disavowal at the New York Times meeting and asked: ''Anyone here feeling bamboozled by the Donald?'' Dozens of commenters responded.
''You are fooled if you think Trump was going to give us some sort of permission slip to start cleansing America. He isn't our 'man on a white horse','' on said.
Another wrote: ''Trump can't be non-negative on the alt-right. We support him because he agrees with us on important policy goals, not because he flatters us.''
Over on 4chan's /pol/, fierce discussion was raging on the issue of how to deal with Richard Spencer and his neo-Nazi event. Many thought that Trump was right to disavow him.
Another wrote: ''The leaders of the Alt-Right no longer look like attractive, young, rebellious counter-culture intellectuals, but now they look like fat, dumb racists.''
Opinion on the board was split, with many saying that the entire debacle was a ''false flag'' operation cooked up to discredit their movement, and others '' a small minority '' calling for the board to rally in support of Spencer.
On Reddit's r/The_Donald board, one of the most popular pro-Trump corners of the internet, supporters urged patience in the face of signs discouraging to the ''alt-right'', like the rumors that Mitt Romney was the frontrunner for secretary of state.
One post urged people to ''stay fucking calm'' until the appointment of Romney '' who is a reviled figure amongst the ''alt-right'' '' was reported by Breitbart.
M.A. The University of ChicagoB.A. The University of Virginia
Richard Spencer is President and Director of The National Policy Institute and Washington Summit Publishers. He is the founder and Editor of Radix Journal and RadixJournal.com.
He was formerly an Assistant Editor at The American Conservative magazine and Executive Editor of Taki's Magazine (Takimag). In 2010, he founded AlternativeRight.com.
Spencer is a frequent essayist and blogger at Radix Journal; he hosts the weekly Radix Journal podcast; and records regular video blogs.
Spencer's publications and activities have been reported on by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, National Public Radio, TheRachel Maddow Show, Buzzfeed, Salon.com, Vice.com, among many others. Spencer has been a frequent guest commentator on the cable network RT International.
Spencer has addressed every NPI conference and has been a guest speaker at the Property and Freedom Society, The Traditional Britain Group, American Renaissance, and the HL Mencken Club.
Richard holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia and a Master of Arts from the University of Chicago. He was a doctoral student at Duke University, before becoming a journalist.
Dirty ATM's
From Sir Roadwolf
I have always been mystified as to why the use of copper / brass /
bronze for door handles and buttons have died off in the Modern era.
Copper based alloys such as these are naturally antimicrobial, and
should be used for ATM keypads, public telephone keypads, and elevator
buttons, just to name a few possible applications.
"Unfortunately and apparently under severe pressure of our colleagues, the leadership of this technical organization refused to meet this demand citing security grounds," Lavrov said.
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Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Source: Press photo
Russia is considering plans of delivering the samples of chemical weapons used by militants near eastern Aleppo to experts of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Nov. 22.
"Unfortunately and apparently under severe pressure of our colleagues, the leadership of this technical organization refused to meet this demand citing security grounds," Lavrov said. "As far as I know from colleagues in the defense ministry, we are looking into the possibility to deliver ourselves the collected samples to The Hague, to the OPCW."
"Then they will find it hard to get off," Lavrov said.
Source: TASS
Kaliningrad: New Russian missile deployment angers Nato - BBC News
Image copyrightAPImage caption Russia has used the Bastion missile launchers in Syria Nato has accused Russia of "aggressive military posturing" following reports that it has deployed anti-ship missiles in its westernmost Baltic region.
Russia's Interfax news agency said on Monday that Bastion missile-launchers had been sent to Kaliningrad.
In a statement to the Associated Press, Nato said the move "does not help to lower tensions or restore predictability to our relations".
The Kremlin has accused Nato of stoking tensions by expanding eastwards.
Kaliningrad is a Russian exclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.
Baltic warning over Russian move on Nato
Missile deployment in Kaliningrad ups the stakes for Nato
In October, Russia sent nuclear-capable Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad, a move Poland described as of the "highest concern".
Russia said the deployment was part of military exercises and had happened before.
Russian military build-up in KaliningradThe Russian exclave of Kaliningrad represents an important military outpost between Poland and Lithuania with its coastline on the Baltic Sea.
The accumulation of radars and air defence systems, as well as coastal anti-shipping missiles, all form part of Moscow's developing "anti-access and area denial strategy", which in essence seeks to push Nato forces away from Russia and to make it very difficult to reinforce Nato members in the Baltic region in the event of a crisis.
Strengthened under comprehensive reform of Russian armed forces announced in 2008. From 2008-2014 saw significant increases in personnel in missile, naval infantry, rifle and artillery brigades, in some cases doubledFrom 2012, deployment of new S-400 long-range air defence system (Nato name: SA-21 Growler)From 2012, deployment of Iskander-M short-range, nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. New deployment announced in October 2016October 2016: Two Buyan-class corvettes assigned to Baltic Fleet, armed with nuclear-capable Kalibr cruise missiles (Nato name: Sizzler)Coastal defences currently being strengthened with Bal land-based anti-ship missile system and Bastion mobile anti-ship defence systemHowever, in a separate statement on Monday, the RIA news agency quoted Russian defence committee chairman Viktor Ozerov as saying Iskanders and S-400 surface-to-air missiles were deployed in Kaliningrad to counter a planned US missile defence shield in eastern Europe.
The Bastion system fires Oniks cruise missiles, which have a range of up to 280 miles (450km). Russia has already used them in the Syrian civil war where it is supporting President Bashar al-Assad.
Image copyrightEPAImage caption The deployment of the Iskander system in Kaliningrad has alarmed Poland On Tuesday, Nato urged greater transparency on military activities "to avoid incidents and the risk of misunderstandings".
US state department spokesman John Kirby also called the latest Russian moves "destabilising to European security".
Kaliningrad factsKoenigsberg, as the city of Kaliningrad was once known, was founded by Teutonic knights in the 13th Century. It was once the capital of PrussiaAnnexed from Germany after WWII. Germans fled or were expelledIs more than 300km away from Russia, which can only be reached through an EU countryIt houses the Russian Baltic Fleet and is the country's only ice-free European portThe philosopher Immanuel Kant spent all his life in the city and died there in 1804Kaliningrad profile
"Russia has made threats to move its Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad for the past decade in response to a variety of developments in Europe, none of which demand such a military response," he said.
"We call on Russia to refrain from words or deeds that are inconsistent with the goal of promoting security and stability."
His comments brought a stinging rebuke from the Russian defence ministry, which said that "all recent threats to European security" were a consequence of US military policy.
The 'Aleppo Hospital' Smokescreen: Covering up Al Qaeda Massacres in Syria, Once Again | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization
Over April-May dozens of people were murdered across Aleppo as civilian areas and major hospitals were bombed by the NATO-backed 'rebel' groups.
They were even filmed firing their 'hell cannons' and saying ''throw it on the civilians''
Meanwhile, western media ran fantasy stories about the besieged city.
If you believed the western corporate media you might think that the Syrian Government, for some unknown reason, has been bombing its own hospitals, and had killed Aleppo's only paediatric surgeon. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Aleppo faces a large operation by the Syrian Army, after the liberation of Palmyra on 28 March, to reclaim those sections of the city held by Islamist fighters since 2012. Almost half Aleppo's population has been displaced because of the fighting, but there are still about 1.8 million residents.
The withdrawal of the Saudi-backed 'High Negotiations Committee' from the Geneva peace talks on 21 April was followed the very next day by a pre-emptive counter-offensive. Many hundreds of rockets were fired into government-held areas by a coalition led by the internationally banned terrorist organisation Jabhat al Nusra.
These attacks came mostly from 'hell cannons', which shoot large gas canisters filled with explosives and at times chemicals. They caused havoc, killing and wounding many people in the streets, residential areas, schools and hospitals. The Syrian Army responded by shelling the al Nusra hideouts.
Aleppo Doctor Dr Nabil Antaki (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44597.htm) estimates that 1.5 million live in the government controlled western parts of the city, with another 300,000 in the Islamist controlled mostly eastern areas. Dr Antaki complains bitterly that the western media ''only talk about loss of life in east of Aleppo which is entirely controlled by al Nusra. The three quarters of Aleppo under Syrian Government control, where numerous paediatricians are practising are of no consequence''.
He was referring to the string of NATO-Islamist bomb attacks on major state hospitals including Ibn Rushd, al Dabbit and al Razi. Many dozens of people were killed and injured. Those attacks were filmed by Syrian and Russian people on the ground, but very little of this reached the western media.
Photo caption: Aleppo Medical Association doctors stand with Syrian soldiers, demanding an end to the western mis-information about Aleppo attacks.
Dr Antaki wasn't the only Aleppo doctor who was upset. The Aleppo Medical Association, on its Facebook page denounced the western propaganda campaign (https://www.facebook.com/Aleppodoctors.org/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1174868069211596).
Twenty doctors in front of the heavily damaged al Dabbit Hospital declared their support for the Syrian Army. Their signs '' in English, Italian and German as well as Arabic '' read: 'Syrian Arab Army represents me', 'Long live Syria, long live Aleppo', 'Terrorists are killing our children', 'Armed opposition is destroying our civilisation', 'No for armed opposition'.
Yet the story of Russian or Syrian air attacks on the 'al Quds hospital' gained prominence in the western media. Stories were fuelled with information from the French group M(C)decins Sans Fronti¨res (MSF, Doctors without Borders) and the US Government funded group the 'White Helmets' (who you can see celebrating their 'revolution' with Jabhat al Nusra here: https://www.facebook.com/electronicresistanceteam/videos/1172411149468354/?hc_location=ufi). CCTV showed people leaving this 'hospital' before an explosion.
The building is in the southern al-Sukkari district, which has been a stronghold of Jabhat al Nusra for some years. Many Aleppans had never heard of 'al Quds hospital'. Dr Antaki says: 'This hospital did not exist before the war. It must have been installed in a building after the war began''. MSF reports seem to confirm this.
This facility was not a state run or registered facility. Nevertheless, MSF representatives Pablo Marco and Muskilda Zancada claimed: ''Al Quds hospital has been functional for more than 4 years so it was basically impossible that this information was not known '... the facts are pointing to this being a deliberate attack'' (http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/05/about-bias-and-propaganda-on-syria).
Photo caption: NATO-GCC backed terrorists in Aleppo load their weapon of choice, a 'hell cannon'
Indeed, MSF-backed medical facilities in Syria have almost exclusively been in al Nusra held areas, such as Douma, north east of Damascus. Often they provide money but not doctors.
There is some debate as to whether clinics or hospitals run to service banned terrorist organisations have protection under international humanitarian law. Certainly US law does not allow it. A few years back the US jailed US doctor Rafig Sabir for 25 years after it emerged he had been 'on call' to treat al Qaeda fighters in Saudi Arabia (http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1554703.html).
Registered hospitals certainly do have such protection, and it is a crime to attack them. However this protection disappears when the facility becomes militarised. 'Civilian objects are protected against attack, unless and for such time as they are military objectives' (https://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul_rule10).
Nevertheless, all three air forces that claim to be bombing terrorist groups in Syria '' Russia, Syria and the USA '' denied involvement in the 'al Quds hospital' incident. The US has engaged in bombing some areas around Aleppo (https://www.rt.com/news/332109-russian-jets-isis-warlords), but is not known to have carried out attacks on Jabhat al Nusra. That group is well embedded with the proxy armies Washington likes to call 'moderate rebels'.
Photo caption: 'al Quds hospital': not quite a pile of rubble, nor a designated hospital
There were other serious discrepancies in the 'al Quds hospital' story. Pablo Marco for MSF told CNN and PBS that ''there were two barrel bombs that fell close to the hospital '... then the third barrel bomb fell in the entrance''. Barrel bombs are dropped by helicopters. Yet the MSF press release spoke of an ''airstrike '... [which] brought down the building '... leaving a pile of rubble''. Reports of the death toll ranged from 14 to 50.
However that building is not a pile of rubble. As Rick Sterling pointed out in his 7 May 'Open letter to MSF' (https://off-guardian.org/2016/05/07/open-letter-to-msf-about-bias-and-propaganda-on-syria/), photos show that the facility is still standing and it appears to be a heavily sand-bagged residential building, ''a medical clinic in the ground floor of an unmarked and largely abandoned apartment building'' ().
Even more damaging for the MSF story is the report that Russian satellite imagery shows the damaged building was in much the same state back on 15 October last year. If this is correct, the MSF-backed 'al Quds hospital', apparently a field clinic for al Nusra fighters and their families, suffered no attack on 27 April.
The scale of coverage of the 'al Quds hospital' story obscured the ugly fact that several much larger, real public hospitals in Aleppo were actually being bombed by the al Qaeda groups. The former story covered up these poorly reported massacres. It is not that there was no western coverage of the real hospital attacks, the coverage was just removed to the very margins of western headlines.
Photo: Russian satellite imagery shows 'al Quds hospital' in the al Sukkari district had the same damage back in October 2015
Take the devastating bombing of al Razi hospital, which Al Alam reported as killing 4 and wounding 38 (http://en.alalam.ir/news/1812988), in days of 'rebel' shelling which left 57 dead and 150 injured. The Wall Street Journal mentioned western Aleppo casualties and al Razi in an article which led by blaming Russia for the alleged 'airstrike' on 'al Quds hospital'. The WSJ spent the next 28 paragraphs on that incident. Buried at paragraph 30 was this reference, from an anti-Syrian source: ''shells had [also] hit the Al-Razi Hospital, a facility in a government-held neighbourhood where many wounded were being treated''
The bombing of al Dabbit hospital did make it into the UK Independent. This hospital was said to be in 'regime controlled Aleppo'; apparently it pains them to say 'Syrian government'. The report opened: ''At least 19 civilians have been killed at a hospital and other parts of government-controlled Aleppo in shelling attributed to Islamist rebels''
(http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syrian-civil-war-hospital-in-regime-controlled-aleppo-partly-destroyed-by-rebel-shelling-as-more-a7011546.html). The Syrian news agency SANA reported on 3 May that the death toll from the bombing of al Dabbit hospital had risen to 16 dead and 68 injured (http://sana.sy/en/?p=76237).
Hardly mentioned in the western media was the bombing of the large Ibn Rushd hospital, but the Russian TV channel ANNA filmed the actual bombing and Latin American media ran that video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afEd5HBb-ik).
The attacks on Aleppo were extensive, well beyond hospitals. Vicar of Aleppo Mons. Georges Abou Khazen said ''we have been under continuous bombardment over the past few days in Aleppo with civilian deaths, injuries and destruction''. He pointed his finger at the front backed by the West, along with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, saying that ''These bombings '... are from the front of the so-called 'moderates' and '... in reality [they] are no different from other jihadists [Islamic State (IS) and the Nusra Front]'' (http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Vicar-of-Aleppo:-moderate-front-no-better-than-jihadists,-bombing-civilians-and-not-seeking-peace-36685.html).
I wrote back in January 2014 (http://www.globalresearch.ca/syrias-hospitals-targeted-by-nato-backed-armed-groups/5363563) that the al Qaeda groups' attacks on Syria's health system were far more systematic that any one incident could explain.
In just the first three years of this war, before ISIS came to Syria, the NATO and Gulf monarchy-backed armed groups had systematically attacked more than two thirds of Syria's public hospitals, and had murdered, kidnapped or injured more than 300 health workers.
When an Australian delegation met Syria's then Health Minister Dr Sa'ad al Nayef on 22 December 2013 he told us that foreign backed terrorists had just detonated two truck bombs, completely destroying Aleppo's al Kindi hospital, one of the biggest anti-cancer centres in the Middle East. All health workers inside were killed in the blast. Dr Malek Ali, Syria's then Minister for Higher Education added that Al-Kindi was a functioning educational hospital co-managed by his ministry. You can see one of the suicide truck bomb attacks here, proudly cheered on in the Jabhat al Nusra video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ4kPiKiQb4
In an Orwellian revision of events the BBC (21 December 2013) reported the destruction of Al-Kindi with the headline: ''Syria rebels take back strategic hospital in Aleppo''. The introduction claimed the ''massive suicide lorry bomb'' had managed ''to seize back a strategic ruined hospital occupied by Assad loyalists.'' Al-Kindi was said to have been ''a disused building'' and ''according to an unconfirmed report, 35 rebels died in the attack''.
In fact, these 'rebels' were a coalition of Free Syrian Army and Jabhat al Nusra, while the 'Assad loyalists' were the staff and security guards of a large public hospital.
Dr al Nayef told us that, since March 2011, 67 of the country's 94 national hospitals had been attacked and damaged, with 41 out of service. 174 health workers had been killed, 127 wounded and 33 kidnapped. Further, 1921 primary health centres had been damaged, and 678 were out of service. 421 ambulances had been lost or were out of service, and 197 support vehicles had been damaged, with 169 out of service.
The scale of destruction of health facilities, combined with attacks on pharmaceutical factories, schools, universities and civilians shows the armed groups have been intent on destroying a functioning state, with no interest in trying to win public support.
The Health Minister showed us a video of the FSA (Farouk Brigade) blowing up Homs National Hospital in April 2012, another of damage to Al- Salamiyeh National Hospital (in Hama) after an attack in January 2013 and a third of the damage to Al Zahrway Hospital (in Damascus) after yet another terrorist attack in May 2013.
He also gave us details of the 26 November 2013 terrorist attack on Deir-Ateya Hospital in Rural Damascus, where 11 medical staff (2 Anesthesiologists, 3 Resident doctors, 4 Nurses and 2 Drivers) were stabbed to death.
The al Qaeda attacks are often accompanied by skilled social media campaigns, assisted by western created agencies such as the White Helmets. In her article titled 'The storm of lies surrounding Syria's humanitarian crisis: Aleppo Is Burning campaign calls for Syria no-fly zone', investigative journalists Vanessa Beeley has compiled some of those campaigns in the 'Aleppo Hospital' smokescreen.
#pizzagate
Norwegian Police Arrest 20 Men In Pedo Ring - Your News Wire
Police in Norway have arrested 20 people they say belong to a huge pedophile ring involving an estimated 51 people.
Norwegian police are investigating the pedo ring that they say involves infants and one suspect who abused his own children.
Nytimes.com reports:
Deputy Police Chief Gunnar Floystad says that in Norway's largest abuse case to date they have arrested 20 men so far, with three convictions, in western Norway.
The 31 other suspects are from other regions in Norway.
Floystad told reporters Sunday that many of the suspects are highly educated, and include lawyers and politicians.
He said he could not reveal more details pending the conclusion of the investigation, known as ''Dark Room,'' which began in 2015.
Prosecutors said the perpetrators met in the dark web, using encryption and anonymity to hide their tracks.
Latest posts by Sean Adl-Tabatabai (see all)
Noorse politici in omvangrijk pedonetwerk|Buitenland| Telegraaf.nl
De Noorse politie heeft een netwerk van pedofielen ontmanteld die op grote schaal kinderen hadden misbruikt. De groep vergreep zich zelfs aan baby 's. Zo'n vijftig Noren zouden tot het netwerk behoren, twintig daarvan zitten inmiddels achter slot en grendel.
Op grond van vastgestelde internetcontacten zouden nog zo'n 5500 pedo's internationaal op de een of ander manier hebben deelgenomen aan het netwerk. Volgens de Noorse politie is het ontdekte pedonetwerk het grootste ooit in Noorwegen. Zo'n 150 terrabyte aan datamateriaal is daarbij in beslag genomen, waaronder films, foto's en chatsessies.
Delen daarvan blijken uiterst schokkend te zijn. Zo zouden er films in omloop zijn waarop kinderen zijn te zien die zijn vastgebonden en vervolgens misbruikt. Ook zouden kinderen tot seks met dieren zijn gedwongen.
De vijftig mannen die tot het pedonetwerk behoren, zouden via het Dark Web - een deel van het internet dat slechts beperkt toegankelijk is - onderling afspraken hebben gemaakt hoe zij de kinderen zouden misbruiken. Zo werd afgesproken dat een het misbruik van zijn eigen kind zou filmen en dat vervolgens via het Dark Web delen met de andere leden van het pedonetwerk.
Een ander zou hebben afgesproken hoe hij zijn toen nog ongeboren kind zou gaan misbruiken. Onder de vermoedelijke daders bevinden zich volgens de politie een politicus, een leraar van een basisschool en een politie-agent. De politie kwam het netwerk op het spoor met de arrestatie van een 24-jarige Noor uit de stad Bergen die een klein meisje zou hebben misbruikt.
Advertentie
Bij de gevonden software stuitte de politie op een lijst met 5500 gebruikersnamen. De gebruikers wisselden onderling kinderporno uit.
'Dit zijn daders die veel onderling contact hebben. Soms fantaseren zijn over kindermisbruik maar een deel daarvan is daadwerkelijk ook gepleegd'', aldus officier van justitie Janne R. Heltne die ervan uit gaat dat door het oprollen van het netwerk erger is voorkomen. 'We zijn erin geslaagd om het misbruik te stoppen''.
Report: Kanye West taken to hospital for evaluation - Story | WFLD
LOS ANGELES - Kanye West has been taken to the hospital for evaluation, according to TMZ.
TMZ reports that according to law enforcement sources cops responded to a call for a welfare check around 1:20 p.m. PT. TMZ is told that paramedics took the rapper to UCLA Medical Center.
This news comes after he abruptly pulled the plug on his Saint Pablo Tour. A representative for the rapper said Monday the remaining dates of West's current tour have been canceled. No reason was given.
The move comes after a complex weekend for the musician, who abruptly ended a concert in Sacramento, California, on Saturday, then canceled a performance Sunday in the Los Angeles area.
READ MORE: Kanye West cancels remaining dates on Saint Pablo Tour
Kanye West to 'save millions' after rapper took out insurance policy that covered him if illness prevented him from performing
The rapper was admitted to hospital six hours after cancelling all remaining tour dates of his Saint Pablo world tour
KANYE West's medical emergency may save him millions of dollars, it has been reported.
After cancelling all remaining tour dates six hours before being admitted to UCLA Medical Center, his insurance policy is expected to cover him for the $30million loss these shows will incur.
Getty Images
Kanye West looks set to save millions after taking out an insurance policy before cancelling his tourTMZ claims the policy covers the rapper ''if the event illness prevented him from performing''.
It continues: ''The policy provides the insurance carrier will pay Kanye for not only the money he'd make but the money he was obligated to pay others if 'accident or illness '... prevents any Insured Person from appearing or continuing to appear in any or all of the Insured Performance(s) or Event(s).'''
The rapper, who earlier this year revealed he was over $53 million in debt, is currently being treated for a ''temporary psychosis due to sleep deprivation and dehydration''.
GETTY
The policy covers the rapper ''if the event illness prevented him from performing''Kanye had 21 shows remaining on his current Saint Pablo world tour which he abruptly cancelled on Sunday.
The rapper stormed off stage on Saturday in Sacramento after just three songs before cancelling the following dates.
He ranted to the audience: ''There are methods, non-political methods to speaking that I like, that I feel were very futuristic.
''That style, and that method of communication has proven that it can beat a politically correct way of communication, and I f*** with that.''
X17Online.com
Kanye was admitted to UCLA Medical Center six hours after cancelling his tour Cheating deathMore pain for the Kardashians as Kris Jenner's car crash is to be shown on TV days after Kanye's 'breakdown'
GOLD DIGGERPoorly rapper Kanye West could be paid £2m for axing his tour if his cancellation insurance policy pays out
PRIVATE PROTECTIONKanye's security surround hospital as source reveals Kim's robbery may have sparked 'breakdown'
Wife of Pablo's FearsKim Kardashian 'terrified' for husband Kanye West as he receives help after 'psychiatric emergency'
MOMAGER'S COMINGKris Jenner and Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian rush to LA to support Kim after Kanye West's hospitalisation
'HIRE A PLANE, MOM!'Wendy Williams SLAMS Kris Jenner over her not joining Kim Kardashian as she rushed to Kanye's side
Kanye was admitted to the facility on Monday after ''acting erratically'' at the home of his personal trainer Harley Pasternak.
It was reported he was ''handcuffed'' to a stretcher after a call was made to the emergency services at 1:20pm for a ''medical emergency.''
His security team have since been pictured patrolling the area surrounding the hospital as wife Kim Kardashian rushed back to California to support her husband.
Xposure
The rappers security team surround UCLA Medical CenterIn February the rapper made a surprising admission about his finances on Twitter.
Despite coming 20th on Forbes wealthiest celebrity list in 2014, Kanye later claimed he was $53million in debt.
He tweeted: ''I write this to you my brothers while still 53 million dollars in personal debt'... Please pray we overcome'... This is my true heart'...
''My dreams brought me into debt and I'm close to seeing the light of day'....''
Getty Images
Kanye claimed in February he was $53million in debtKanye even begged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for money on Twitter.
He pleaded: ''I know it's your bday but can you please call me by 2mrw'... You love hip hop, you love my art'...
''I am your favorite artist but you watch me barely breathe and still play my album in your house '... World, please tweet, FaceTime, Facebook, instagram, whatever you gotta do to get Mark to support me'...(sic).''
Reuters
He even reached out to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg begging for moneyThe entrepreneurial 39-year-old's struggling finances come after he has launched a number of different ventures, but not all of them have been successful.
In 2011, he attempted to release a collection of high-end womenswear, but the luxury garments never made it to stores.
Founder of the French A.P.C. line Jean Touitou alleged that the fashion experiment lost Kanye £23million.
Kanye's expensive taste could be another reason why his bank balance hit rock bottom.
Not only do his lavish properties come at a price, he's also owns a Mercedes Maybach, which costs almost £150,000.
Splash News
Kanye has lost tens of millions over the years on failed business venturesHe is also renowned for his generosity.
He has splurged on pricey gifts for wife Kim Kardashian, including Birkin bags, a luxe Louis Vuitton fur coat and a £3.5 million Lorraine Schwartz engagement ring.
It's not just his partner that Kanye's famous for, as he's splashed the cash on behalf of friends and other family members.
Not only did he buy his toddler North a diamond tiara, it's also been reported that he spent £26,000 on a golden skull gift for fellow recording artist Jay-Z.
Kanye West suffers on stage meltdown before cancelling tourGot a story?email digishowbiz@the-sun.co.uk or call us direct on 02077824220
Police break up massive Norwegian paedophilia ring - The Local
Police revealed the paedophilia ring at a Sunday press conference. Photo: Marit Hommedal/NTB Scanpix
Norwegian police have filed charges against 51 individuals involved in a grotesque paedophilia ring thought to be one of the largest child sexual abuse cases in the nation's history.
Dubbed 'Operation Dark Room', the police action revealed a number of atrocities against children as young as infancy.
Police seized 150 terabytes of data material in the form of photos, movies and chat transcripts between members of various paedophile networks.
''The material shows the abuse of children of all ages, including infants,'' Hilde Reikr¥s, the head of Operation Dark Room, said at a press conference on Sunday.
Reikr¥s also gave examples of the scope of the horrific abuse.
''The material shows, among other things, the penetration of toddlers, children being tied up, children having sex with animals and children having sex with other children,'' she said.
Twenty of the 51 people involved in the cases were arrested by the Western Police District. The other 31 people are from other police districts across Norway, and those cases are still under investigation. An additional individual is also under investigation abroad.
Police stressed that their operation uncovered not just one paedophilia network, but several.
''We have the clear perception that like-minded individuals met with each other in the so-called dark net, where they could talk with one another and cultivate their interest in children in peace,'' Reikr¥s said.
''There are several highly educated [individuals] with high IT skills. They've used encryption and anonymity to hide their tracks,'' head police prosecutor Janne Ringset Heltne said at the Sunday press conference. She also said that all of the perpetrators involved are men.
One of the involved men had a pregnant girlfriend and discussed plans with another man to sexually abuse the child once it was born, police said.
Some of the accused men also live-streamed their abuse online and performed atrocities with their own children.
The accused include two current or former elected officials, one teacher and a lawyer.
According to VG, Norwegian police began their investigation after receiving a tip-off from the FBI, whose agents had managed to hack their way into one of the paedophilia sites and track its users.
Those facing charges can receive a maximum penalty of up to 15 years in prison.
James Alefantis, D.C. power-player, blasts 'insane' Reddit sleuthing on D.C. sex-trafficking ring - Washington Times
One of the most influential men in the nation's capital is livid with Internet sleuths who suspect him of having ties to a sex-trafficking ring.
The New York Times interviewed James Alefantis, the owner of a restaurant called Comet Ping Pong in Washington, on Tuesday to dispel rumors that he is tied to a child-abuse ring. Stolen documents belonging to former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, which were made public by WikiLeaks, linked the two men and sparked crowd-sourced research into his life on Reddit and 4Chan.
''From this insane, fabricated conspiracy theory, we've come under constant assault,'' Mr. Alefantis, 42, told the newspaper. ''I've done nothing for days but try to clean this up and protect my staff and friends from being terrorized.''
Reddit, YouTube, and Twitter users claim that ''PizzaGate'' should not be dismissed as a baseless conspiracy theory, given bizarre and sexually suggestive images from Mr. Alefantis' own Instagram account (now set to private).
YouTube videos taken from inside Comet Ping Pong, the sexual and macabre art commissioned for the restaurant's promotional material, and the Clinton campaign's ties to billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and Anthony Weiner have also fueled online calls for an FBI investigation.
Mr. Epstein is a convicted sex-offender and Mr. Weiner is under an active FBI investigation for illicit text messages he sent to a teenager.
Mr. Alefantis, who came in at No. 49 on GQ magazine's list of the 50 most powerful people in Washington in 2012, has contacted the FBI and local police to assist him in dealing with threats. He has also asked social media giants to censor posts on the story, which has gone viral across the globe.
''It's like trying to shoot a swarm of bees with one gun,'' Bryce Reh, Comet's general manager, told The Times.
Organized and highly detailed summaries of ''PizzaGate'' show up regularly on Reddit and YouTube. They have been viewed tens of thousands of times.
''I won't stop saying it. PizzaGate is real,'' former Huffington Post reporter David Seaman's tweeted Tuesday. ''Silence in face of evil is evil. My grandfather (US Army) helped liberate a concentration camp, RTing a few #PizzaGate articles is nada.''
Twitter has resorted to deleting posts on the subject and seemingly penalizing others through ''shadow bans,'' which means the user does not realize no one else sees the tweet.
Mr. Seaman's most recent YouTube videos on the subject have generated over 100,000 views in less than three days.
''It's endless,'' Mr. Alefantis told The Times of fallout from the coverage.
''Pizzagate'': How 4Chan Uncovered the Sick World of Washington's Occult Elite | EU
Posters over at 4Chan and Reddit have been conducting an extremely bizarre investigation following the John Podesta e-mail leak (Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman) and the results are surreal: They've apparently uncovered an elite child trafficking network which celebrates its tendencies using code words and disturbing artworks.
Warning: This article contains disturbing material
In my article Clinton's Campaign Chairman John Podesta Invited to an Occult 'Spirit Cooking' Dinner by Marina AbramoviÄ, I explained how a mundane dinner invitation found in the Podesta e-mail leaks was actually a clear link to bizarre occult ceremonies happening at the highest levels of power. While that by itself was rather shocking, it appears to only be the tip of a very disgusting iceberg.
4Chan effectively unearthed a strange network of high-powered people who, through art, events and social media, actually celebrate a culture that revolves around death, torture, cannibalism and '... child abuse. Most of this disturbing material was not even hidden, it was out there in the open, exposed on business' walls and posted on social media.
Furthermore, an analysis of the Podesta e-mails revealed that the network appeared to communicate using code words to coverup their shady dealings.
The epicenter of this entire thing is, believe or not, a hipster pizza place named Comet Ping Pong.
Comet Ping Pong
Comet Ping Pong is a 'family friendly' pizzeria where people can eat, drink and play ping-pong.
The Comet Ping Pong menu contains a logo that is strikingly similar to the 'child lover' logo used in these circles. Also, Play Eat Drink = PED.
The owner of Comet Ping Pong is James Alefantis who is, for some reason, ranked #49 in the top 50 'Most Powerful People in Washington' of GQ magazine.
Alefantis as featured on the GQ website. He is described as 'D.C. Radical Chic'.
Alefantis' boyfriend is David Brock, the founder of liberal media watchdog group Media Matters for America. He was described by Time magazine to be ''one of the most influential operatives in the Democratic Party''. The power couple was heavily involved in Hillary Clinton's campaign.
An invitation to a Clinton fundraising event featuring 'Chef James Alefantis of Comet Ping Pong', Clinton's campaign chair John Podesta and others.
Here's an e-mail sent by Alefantis to John Podesta.
A leaked John Podesta e-mail from James Alefantis sending Hillary's 'pizza logo'. Alefantis is therefore in direct connection with some of the most powerful people in the world.
In short, Alefantis is very connected to very powerful people. Now let's look at his Instagram account, which was publicly accessible until 4Chan began prying in. The account is filled with bizarre and disturbing pictures '' often involving small children. Here are some examples (I can't even post them all).
A young girl with her arms taped to a table with a man standing behind her. One of the comments say ''This is pretty creepy bro.'' This is beyond creepy bro.
A young girl inside a basket '... as if she was about to be bought. Many pictures allude to buying and owning children while preying on this innocence.
A closeup picture of another baby. Alefantis's (aka jimmycomet) posted #hotard '' which is slang for 'being a ho and a retard'. Yes, he posted this next to the picture of an INFANT.
Another strange pic involving a child and a weirdly placed yellow beads necklace. Also, notice the hashtag #chickenlovers.
Here's a definition of 'chicken lover' found with a basic web search.
A pic of a German baby doll for sale. Buying babies appears to be an important hobby.
''Pills n' bills'' before a trip. The comment 'Ping Pong in London sounds tempting' is obviously code for something else.
A picture posted by the barman at Comet Ping Pong. It heavily alludes to the fact that 'pizza' means something else in their strange code.
A screenshot of child beauty pageant girl wanting pizza.
A baby holding Euros. Why?
Making out with a dead dog. Don't google ''babybirding''.
A closeup of the eye of a dead pig.
For some reason, Alefantis posted a picture of a cavernous room. EVERY SINGLE comment next to this picture is EXTREMELY CREEPY, almost as if they knew that something awful was about to happen there.
A bizarre, ritualistic, 'Eyes Wide Shut'-style pic involving young people.
This is the mural prominently on display at Comet Ping Pong by artist Arrington de Dionyso. It depicts strange people holding the heads of smaller people.
This is another painting de Dionyso. His work often contains MKULTRA-related themes such as dual personalities (two heads), the exploitation of children '' often mixed with occult symbolism.
A regular guest at Comet Ping Pong is the performer Majestic Ape from the group Heavy Breathing.
A screenshot from a video of Majestic Ape hosting a birthday party at Comet Ping Pong.
A screenshot from one of Majestic Ape's music video where she jokes about '... sigh.
Here's another video of that Ape joking about '... sigh.
Another 'radical' artist that is close to Comet Ping Pong is Marina Abramovic.
A picture of Marina Abramovic posted by Alefantis holding a bundle of sticks.
Abramovic on the cover of dust magazine covering the eyes of a shirtless child.
A screenshot from Marina's 'Spirit Cooking' video where she throws pig blood at a statue shaped like a small child.
Lady Gaga and Marina at the 20th Annual Watermill Center benefit in a place called 'Devil's Heaven' (can't make this up). They are partaking in pretend cannibalism.
Lady Gaga with 'a friend' during the same event. Why are there children there? RUN AWAY KID!
The Podesta Wikileaks dump revealed that John Podesta and his brother Tony were personally invited to Marina's Spirit Cooking event.
John Podesta
A screenshot of John Podesta sitting in his office during an interview. Hanging on the wall is a painting that clearly alludes to cannibalism.
John David Podesta was the Chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. He previously served as Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton and Counselor to President Barack Obama. Wikileaks released thousands of Podesta's e-mails and it was soon discovered that an inordinate amount of messages referred to 'pizza' and 'hot dogs'. Often times, these words were used in bizarre contexts and in sentences that did not make any sense.
One of many e-mails where 'pizza' clearly alludes to something else.
Some observers believe that handkerchiefs are used as 'mementos' in MK abuse. This is a painting from Monarch mind control survivor Kim Noble depicting a victim being abused. There's a piece of cloth underneath the child. The body appears to be levitating, which represents dissociation after extreme trauma.
Read my full article about Kim Noble here.
This is an ad for Comet Ping Pong which appears to use the same ''dissociation'' symbolism.
Then there's John Podesta's brother Tony, whose strange taste in art has even made the news. Here's an article from the Washington Post describing how guests were 'horrified' by the art inside Podesta's bedroom.
Podesta's most notable piece is Louise Bourgeois' 'The Art of Hysteria' '' a sculpture of a headless man violently arching back. This sculpture was posted by Alefantis on Instagram. He apparently visited Podesta's home.
The sculpture depicts the violent physical reaction of patients suffering from hysteria.
''The physical tension of the hysterical arch '' an intense muscular contraction, resulting in immobility and paralysis of the limbs '' is emblematic of an equally extreme emotional state. Bourgeois makes this highly vulnerable position even more so by suspending her male figure from the ceiling.'''' National Gallery of Canada
Bourgeois was inspired by studies on hysteric women. The subject of her art is however a man.
The sculpture is also strikingly similar to one of Jeffrey Dahlmer's headless victims. I won't post the picture in this article but it can be found here. Dahlmer was a serial killer who abused and cannibalized young men. He often placed his victims in symbolic positions and took pictures of them.
An article from Washington Life describes Podesta's love from Marina Abramovic (do see the links connecting?) as well as ''under-the-radar'' artist named Biljana Djurdjevic.
''If you've ever dreamed of strolling through a museum with a slice of pizza and glass of wine in hand, you need to befriend superlobbyist Tony Podesta. Known about town as a legendary political ''fix-it'' man, Podesta has turned his Kalorama home into a shrine to contemporary art, ranging from relatively under-the-radar artists such as Serbian painter Biljana Djurdjevic to those who are much better known (like French sculptor Louise Bourgeois). ('...)
Currently he has collected from 40 different artists in some depth, with his top five being Marina Abramovic, Vik Muniz, Bourgeois, Olafur Eliasson and Antony Gormley.'''' Washington Life, Inside Homes: Private Viewing
Podesta has a large paint of Djurdjevic in his living room. Here's another painting by Djurdjevic.
Rationalize it all you want, but this is a painting of a child being tortured.
In Conclusion
This article only contains some of the findings uncovered by 'private investigators' online. What has been exposed is, most likely, only the tip of the iceberg of a huge, complex network that has many ramifications. Each thread could probably be investigated further and lead to even more disturbing facts connecting even more high-powered individuals.
Going through the material of this article is a difficult and painful process, but it exposes the true mind-state and philosophy of the occult elite. They publicly celebrate a specific culture of death, abuse and dehumanization through their art and events, leaving us to only speculate about what they do behind closed doors. The symbolism in the above images is in perfect accordance with the occult elite's culture that I have been describing on Vigilant Citizen for years.
The ''Pizzagate'' investigation reveals, at best, the disturbing culture of the elite and, at worst, an all-out child trafficking ring. And don't believe that only Democrats are into this. This is the true culture of the occult elite, a circle of powerful people who operate far above political parties, and far above the law.
Fake News Onslaught Targets Pizzeria as Nest of Child-Trafficking - NYTimes.com
WASHINGTON '-- Days before the presidential election, James Alefantis, owner of a local pizza restaurant called Comet Ping Pong, noticed an unusual spike in the number of his Instagram followers.
Within hours, menacing messages like ''we're on to you'' began appearing in his Instagram feed. In the ensuing days, hundreds of death threats '-- one read ''I will kill you personally'' '-- started arriving via texts, Facebook and Twitter. All of them alleged something that made Mr. Alefantis's jaw drop: that Comet Ping Pong was the home base of a child abuse ring led by Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief, John D. Podesta.
When Mr. Alefantis discovered that his employees were getting similar abusive messages, he looked online to unravel the accusations. He found dozens of made-up articles about Mrs. Clinton kidnapping, molesting and trafficking children in the restaurant's back rooms. The articles appeared on Facebook and on websites such as The New Nationalist and The Vigilant Citizen, with one headline blaring: ''Pizzagate: How 4Chan Uncovered the Sick World of Washington's Occult Elite.''
None of it was true. While Mr. Alefantis has some prominent Democratic friends in Washington and was a supporter of Mrs. Clinton, he has never met her, does not sell or abuse children, and is not being investigated by law enforcement for any of these claims. He and his 40 employees had unwittingly become real people caught in the middle of a storm of fake news.
''From this insane, fabricated conspiracy theory, we've come under constant assault,'' said Mr. Alefantis, 42, who was once in a relationship with David Brock, a provocative former right-wing journalist who became an outspoken advocate for Mrs. Clinton.
Mr. Alefantis suspects those relationships may have helped to make him a target. ''I've done nothing for days but try to clean this up and protect my staff and friends from being terrorized,'' he said.
Fake news online has been at the center of a furious debate for the past few weeks over how it may have influenced voters in the presidential election. President Obama warned last week that we are ''in an age where there's so much active misinformation and it's packaged very well'' on social media sites. The criticism has buffeted web companies such as Google and Facebook, whose chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has promised to work on technology tools to slow the gusher of false digital information.
But Mr. Alefantis's experience shows it is not just politicians and internet companies that are grappling with the fake news fallout. He, his staff and friends have become a new kind of private citizen bull's-eye for the purveyors of false articles and their believers.
For more than two weeks, they have struggled to deal with the abusive social media comments and to protect photos of their own children, which were used in the false articles as evidence that the pizza restaurant was running a pedophilia ring. One person even visited Comet Ping Pong to investigate the allegations for himself.
The Comet Ping Pong pizzeria.
Chad Bartlett for The New York Times
To combat the fake news tide, Mr. Alefantis has contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the local police, and he has asked Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Reddit to remove the articles. Yet the misinformation has continued to spread, growing into a theory known as #pizzagate that has traveled to Ireland. At one point, Comet's staff counted five #pizzagate Twitter posts a minute. As recently as Sunday night, the Twitter message ''Don't let up. #PizzaGate EVERYWHERE'' was reposted and liked hundreds of times.
''It's like trying to shoot a swarm of bees with one gun,'' said Bryce Reh, Comet's general manager, whose wife asked him to leave his job because of the threats and vulgar messages they both have received on their social media accounts.
Mr. Alefantis, an artist born and raised in Washington, co-founded Comet Ping Pong 10 years ago as a casual spot for clay oven pizza. The restaurant has kid-friendly features like Ping-Pong tables and a craft room. Famous natives like members of the band Fugazi have held small shows there. The eatery, which seats 120, is a mash-up of red and white checkered tablecloths and modernist murals and paintings from friends of Mr. Alefantis.
Mr. Alefantis mingles with other Washington chefs and his establishment helped him to be named No. 49 in GQ magazine's 50 most powerful people in Washington in 2012. His customers include some high-powered locals, such as Tony Podesta, the brother of John Podesta, whom Mr. Alefantis knows casually. Mr. Alefantis and Mr. Brock, who is the founder of Media Matters for America, a website that tracks press coverage critical of the Clintons and works to debunk misinformation in the conservative press, broke up five years ago.
The misinformation campaign began when John Podesta's email account was hacked and his emails were published by WikiLeaks during the presidential campaign. Days before the election, users on the online message board 4Chan noticed that one of Mr. Podesta's leaked emails contained communications with Mr. Alefantis discussing a fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton.
The 4Chan users immediately speculated about the links between Comet Ping Pong and the Democratic Party. Some posited the restaurant was part of a larger Democratic child trafficking ring, which was a theory long held by some conservative blogs. That idea jumped to other social media services such as Twitter and Reddit, where it gained momentum on the page ''The_Donald.'' A new Reddit discussion thread called ''Pizzagate'' quickly attracted 20,000 subscribers.
Glen Caplin, a former campaign official for Mrs. Clinton, did not comment directly about Comet Ping Pong but said, ''WikiLeaks has spawned several conspiracy theories that have been independently debunked.'' Mr. Podesta did not respond to requests for comment.
Soon, dozens of fake news articles on sites such as Facebook, Planet Free Will and Living Resistance emerged. Readers shared the stories in Saudi Arabia and on Turkish and other foreign language sites.
Last week, one supporter of the Pizzagate theory shot a live video from within the restaurant during a busy dinner shift. Local police, who had parked across the street after Mr. Alefantis filed a report about the fake news stories and threats, told the man to leave.
In a statement, the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department said it was monitoring the situation and is ''aware of general threats being made against this establishment.'' The F.B.I. said it ''does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations.''
Most troubling for Mr. Alefantis and staff has been the use of children's images, pilfered from the restaurant's social media pages and the personal accounts of friends who had ''liked'' Comet Ping Pong online. Those photos have been used across dozens of websites. Parents, who declined to talk publicly for fear of retribution, have hired lawyers to get the photos removed.
Musicians who have performed at Comet Ping Pong have been pulled in, too. Amanda Kleinman, whose band, Heavy Breathing, has performed there several times, deleted her Twitter account after the abusive comments became overwhelming. Similar comments have flooded her YouTube music clips.
''We are at a dangerous place in American culture where a good percentage of people aren't distinguishing what is a real news source based on real reporting and fact-checking and only reinforcing pre-existing ideas they have,'' Ms. Kleinman said.
The frustration has been compounded by the lack of recourse for Mr. Alefantis, his friends and employees. Yelp blocked the comments sections of Comet Ping Pong's review page after reports of abusive comments and fake news in reviews. YouTube said it prohibits threats, harassment and hate speech and has tools for flagging violations and filing complaints for the site to take further action, but has largely not blocked comments on these videos. Twitter declined to comment, and Facebook did not have any further comment.
After employees and Mr. Alefantis complained to Reddit about how Comet Ping Pong was being targeted on the site, the #pizzagate discussion thread posted a warning that revealing personal information about individuals was prohibited.
''We know that we have more work to do and we take our responsibility to address online abuse seriously,'' Reddit said in a statement.
Little relief appears in sight. Over the weekend, Comet Ping Pong received dozens of calls from people screaming obscenities and threats. Mr. Alefantis got 50 nasty Instagram direct messages, including one that warned, ''This place should be burned to the ground!''
On Monday morning, when Mr. Alefantis picked up his phone, he saw a text from a staff member warning that an individual might protest in front of the restaurant.
''It's endless,'' he said.
Doris Burke contributed research from New York.
EuroLand
Defence: MEPs push for more EU cooperation to better protect Europe | News | European Parliament
Terrorism, hybrid threats and cyber- and energy insecurity leave EU countries no choice but to step up their security and defence cooperation efforts, thus paving the way to a European Defence Union, say MEPs in a resolution passed on Tuesday. They suggest devoting 2% of GDP to defence, establishing multinational forces and EU headquarters to plan and command crisis management operations, and enabling the EU to act where NATO is unwilling to do so.
''Our Union is not equipped to face overwhelming defence challenges. For almost 30 years, most of its member states have been cutting their defence budgets, leading to smaller armed forces. Cooperation among member states is occasional and Europe continues to rely heavily on NATO capabilities and on the US solidarity'', said rapporteur Urmas Paet (ALDE, ET), in the debate on Monday. He stressed that ''the momentum to move towards a working European Defence Policy has come.''
The security situation in and around Europe has worsened significantly in recent years, due to challenges like terrorism, hybrid threats or cyber and energy insecurity, that no country is able to tackle alone, says a resolution on the European Defence Union, approved by 369 votes to 255, with 70 abstentions. ''Solidarity and resilience require the EU to stand and act together'', it says.
Pool military resources
MEPs want the EU to respond faster and more robustly to real threats, which, they say, demand that Europe's armed forces work together better. Duplication, overcapacity and barriers to defence procurement result currently in annual waste of '¬26.4 billion, they say.
MEPs call on member states to pursue joint purchases of defence resources, and to pool or share non-lethal material such as transport vehicles or aircraft. They suggest introducing a ''European Defence Semester, whereby member states would consult each other's planning and cycles and procurement plans'' and advocate strengthening the European Defence Agency's coordination role.
The resolution asks the European Council to lead the creation of ''common Union defence policy and to provide additional financial resources ensuring its implementation.''
An EU headquarters should be set up to plan and command crisis management operations, say MEPs. EU member states should aim to spend 2% of GDP on defence and should establish ''multinational forces within the Permanent Structured Cooperation and make these forces available to the common security and defence policy'', they add.
EU support for defence research
MEPs back the proposed EU investment in defence-related research projects ''of at least 90 million euro during next three years'', suggesting that this should be followed up by a separate European Defence Research Programme with an annual budget of '¬500 million.
Full synergy with NATO
MEPs stress that the EU and NATO should cooperate more, particularly in the east and the south, to countering hybrid and cyber threats, improve maritime security and develop defence capabilities. However, the EU should also be prepared to act autonomously in cases where NATO is not willing to take the lead, MEPs add.
MEPs will also debate a separate resolution on the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) on Tuesday evening, and vote on it on Wednesday. The draft text suggests radically overhauling the CSDP and launching a training operation in Iraq to support member states involved in the coalition against Daesh.
Procedure: Non-legislative resolutions
Brexit
Richard Branson's Virgin to bankroll secret Blairite campaign to stop Brexit | The Independent
Richard Branson's Virgin Group is to help bankroll a campaign set up in secret by Blairite former ministers and advisers to derail Brexit, The Independent can reveal.
An email seen by The Independent highlights the scale of backing the group has already secured. It shows the campaign has been months in the planning and claims ''substantial progress'' has already been made, including the identification of ''an excellent potential CEO''. The memo was written by Alan Milburn, who was one of Tony Blair's closest Cabinet allies.
It reveals the group has heavy financial, political and corporate backing and is receiving advice and support from a host of high-level business and communications organisations.
High-profile MPs including former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Labour MP Chuka Umunna are believed to have had contact with the group, as have celebrities such as Bob Geldof.
Freuds, a leading public relations agency that was founded by Matthew Freud, a close friend of both Mr Blair and David Cameron, is understood to have been commissioned to manage the strategy and marketing of the campaign.
The email says: ''We have been beavering away over the last few months to get a Europe campaign up and running. I'm pleased to say that substantial progress has been made.''
''I have met the Freuds team several times and we are making good progress.
''I have been in discussions with an excellent potential CEO to lead the campaign.
''Virgin '... are keen to help ... Since we last spoke [they] have offered a further £25k, plus bigger office space, help with legal advice and a possible secondment.
''I have held discussions with Stronger In, Chuka Umunna, a new organisation called Common Ground, Bob Geldof and a number of senior politicians across the party spectrum.'' Mr Milburn declined to comment.
Bob Geldof at a March for Europe rally in July (Getty)
Backers of the new group hope that public support for a rethink will grow if the economy deteriorates and the EU negotiations point to a bad deal for Britain.
The Independent understands that £1m in funding has already been pledged to the campaign, which could eventually focus on securing a second referendum on the exit terms that emerge after two years of UK-EU negotiations due to start next year.
Chuka Umunna is thought to have had talks with the group (PA)
One source involved in the campaign said: ''A number of people from across the political spectrum, business community and voluntary sector have been talking about what can be done about the Brexit mess. Discussions continue.''
The group also includes two other New Labour cabinet ministers, John Hutton and Douglas Alexander, as well as three Downing Street advisers to Mr Blair '' Sally Morgan, Peter Hyman and Kate Garvey. It is backed by Sir Clive Cowdery, an insurance millionaire who founded and now funds the Resolution Foundation think tank.
Also involved in the cross-party campaign are Stephen Dorrell, a former Conservative Health Secretary who was an MP for 36 years before he stepped down last year, and Labour MP and former minister David Lammy, who is working closely with anti-Brexit MPs and peers.
The group is understood to have held several meetings in recent months, although one source said progress so far had been slow.
According to the email, Virgin, the company founded and run by Sir Richard Branson, has pledged at least £25,000 towards the costs of the campaign. Other businessman, financial investors and campaign specialists are also involved.
One source said the aim of the campaign, which will launch formally in the New Year, is to secure a second referendum on Brexit. The group is likely to work alongside Open Britain, the successor to the Stronger In official Remain campaign in the referendum, which now aims to ensure a soft Brexit in which Britain would remain in the European single market.
Despite the role played by several close Blair allies, the former Prime Minister is not directly involved in the new organisation. It is not linked to a not-for-profit institute Mr Blair plans to launch in the New Year as he tries to return to domestic politics in order to influence the Brexit debate. He has argued that the public should be given a chance to change their mind on leaving the EU once the Brexit terms become known, possibly in a second referendum.
Pro-Brexit campaigners welcomed the involvement of Mr Blair, because they claim he is seen as ''toxic'' by many voters, and suggested it would undermine anti-Brexit efforts.
The apparent attempts to slow down the process of Britain leaving the EU comes after polls suggested some former Leave supporters had changed their mind and would now back a vote for Britain to remain in the EU. A BMG Research survey earlier this month found a small majority (51 per cent) backed Britain staying in the EU while 49 per cent still support Brexit.
A Virgin spokesperson said: ''Since the EU referendum, Virgin has not made any payments to any Brexit campaign or organisation. It is well known that Richard supported the Remain campaign before the referendum, and as a result people involved in all sides of the debate are interested in Virgin's views on Brexit and its impact on business. Virgin is interested in engaging with different organisations to understand the impact Brexit will have on the UK.''
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Zika
It's Official: Zika Is a Sexually Transmitted Infection
A medical researcher looks at blood test results at the Gorgas Memorial Laboratory in Panama City.
Arnulfo Franco, AP PhotoFourteen Miami-area residents who have caught Zika virus in the city are the first believed to have been infected by U.S. mosquitoes. The news confirms what public health experts have been predicting for months: At some point this summer in the United States, Zika would cease to be only an imported illness and become a locally transmitted one.
But reaction to the Florida discoveries'--four cases announced Friday and ten today'--obscures another development. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed something that's been implicit in discussions of the virus for a while: Zika is effectively a sexually transmitted disease.
Public health experts now know that Zika can be passed in bodily fluids between one man and another, between a man and a woman, and from a woman to a man'--and though no case has been made public, they assume it can be transmitted between female partners as well.
So far, in the continental United States, 15 cases of Zika are confirmed to have been transmitted by sexual contact. That's out of 1,657 cases of infection. (In Puerto Rico, where Zika is spreading very rapidly'--4,684 cases as of July 29'--analysis for sexual transmission hasn't been done.)
The CDC's updated advice'--a result of the discovery two weeks ago that a woman in New York City passed Zika to a man she had sex with'--expands advice the agency previously gave about protecting pregnant women. Now it says: ''Men and women who want to reduce the risk for sexual transmission of Zika virus should use barrier methods against infection consistently and correctly during sex or abstain from sex when one sex partner has traveled to or lives in an area with active Zika virus transmission.''
The point of the new advice is twofold: to protect pregnant women, or ones about to become pregnant, from risking a devastating birth defect; and also to slow down the transmission of Zika from infected travelers into the rest of the population. But it emphasizes the tricky nature of detecting and preventing the advance of Zika, since four out of five people infected show no symptoms.
''We have been a little bit frustrated by the lack of focus on Zika as an STD,'' William Smith, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors, said by phone, ''when there has been credible evidence that sexual transmission could be as important a focus for us in preventing Zika as mosquito-borne transmission.''
CDC-sponsored signs at airports, he pointed out, talk about avoiding bites and wearing mosquito repellent, but don't show condoms. ''We have a great tool to prevent this,'' he said.
John Brooks, a physician who's leading the sexual-transmission section of the CDC's Zika response, said by phone that the agency had been expecting to add sexual transmission of Zika to the ways the disease can be passed. It has been reported in ten other countries, he said, and in the United States, the known first case of sexual transmission (in a tropical-disease researcher returning home) was in 2008.
Until the giant South American outbreak began, Zika was under-researched, and that was true for sexual transmission of the disease as well, Brooks said. But based on those, it seems clear that Zika virus can persist in some bodily fluids longer than it does in the bloodstream, which is where mosquitoes pick it up. Some small studies have shown viral persistence in urine and saliva up to 21 days, and a recent study revealed the virus lingers in cervical mucus as well.
The biggest risk appears to be semen: Studies have shown molecular traces of the virus, though not necessarily infectiousness, for as long as 93 days. But the science that could determine how long that transmission risk lasts, and whether it is the same for people with no symptoms, has not yet been done.
''We are launching some big studies to try to understand persistence in bodily fluids,'' Brooks said.
The season for the mosquito species that transmit Zika has just begun, but there's no ''season'' for sex. The CDC estimates that 40 million people travel to the United States in a year from the Zika-affected zones. Doing some back-of-envelope calculations'--only a certain percentage of travelers will be infected, only a certain percentage of those will have symptoms, only some of those will have sex while in the U.S.'--Brooks said that, if sexual transmission were as important in spreading the virus as mosquitoes, the CDC believes more cases should have shown up by now.
On the other hand, that would require an alert doctor or nurse to notice the symptoms of fever, rash, and red eyes and ask questions'--which doesn't always happen. ''I think we have primed the clinical community and travelers in the United States pretty well by now,'' Brooks told me. ''If somebody showed up with a rash and conjunctivitis and a low grade fever, somebody would begin to probe.''
But uncovering the sexual link also requires the health-care professional to ask additional questions'--which, even after decades of the AIDS epidemic, turns out to be surprisingly hard. ''We clinicians are horrible at taking sexual histories and travel histories,'' Brooks agreed. ''But that is one of our jobs here at the CDC, to raise awareness about this.''
It was alert health-care workers who made the connection in Florida between Zika and the first four locally infected people. The Florida Department of Health says the new cases were ''likely contracted'' through the bites of local mosquitoes. (Before Friday's announcement, 386 Florida residents had been infected with Zika by traveling to places where the disease is circulating, including 55 pregnant women.)
''Florida has become the first state in the nation to have local transmission of the Zika virus,'' Florida Gov. Rick Scott said in Friday's press conference. Today, the Florida health department said all of the people infected are linked through a neighborhood called Wynwood, an entertainment district just north of downtown Miami.
Though the health department said no local mosquitoes had yet been found carrying the virus, the state said it would immediately begin spraying for mosquitoes and also perform urine testing of people living and working there to see if others are carrying the virus. Separately, the Food and Drug Administration asked blood banks in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties to stop collecting blood until they could begin testing it for the presence of Zika virus.
The CDC has taken the extraordinary step of advising pregnant women, or women thinking of becoming pregnant, to avoid that area of Miami, while the U.K. has issued a travel advisory that urges pregnant women to avoid traveling to the state.
CLIPS AND DOCS
VIDEO - Violent clashes erupt in the Netherlands over 'blacked up' childrens' Christmas parade | World | News | Daily Express
The tradition of ''Zwarte Pieten'', or Black Peter, sees followers paint their faces black, don red lips and afros during the festive season.
For the past 150 years residents have paraded though towns dressed as Saint Nicholas' helper, but processions have grown increasingly violent in recent years.
Anti-Racist groups have begun demonstrating against the parades, calling for the tradition to be scrapped claiming it is offensive to non-whites.
But followers have defended the practice, stating the colouring is to depict the soot from the chimneys, and is not referring to skin colour.
GETTY
The tradition of ''Zwarte Pieten'', or Black Peter, sees followers paint their faces blackCritics have likened the look to a colonial character, and several protest groups have been set up calling for the abolition of the practice.
Demonstrators from the group Kick Out Zwarte Piet clashed with police in Rotterdam last weekend, who tried to stop them en route to the parade.
Supporters took to social media after the scuffle criticising the group, with one person posting: "Let them continue spoiling a tradition and a children's festival.
Dramatic footage from the scene show bloodied men grappling with police, while dozens more are sat on the pavement before fighting breaks out among police and the crowd.
Tue, September 27, 20161 of 12
Our culture first
Nederlandse Volks-Unie
''Hope they choke on their 'racism'. Get lost already!"
And in the town of Maassluis, hundreds of police were drafted in the guard the procession, and visitors were required to undergo body searches before being allowed near the route.
GETTY
Followers have defended the practice, stating the colouring is to depict the soot from the chimneysDuring the procession neo-Nazi political group Nederlandse Volks-Unie (NVU), the Dutch People's Union, held a banner saying: ''Our culture first''.
The far-right group has called for the ''attacks'' on their culture and traditions to end.
Related articlesThere is currently a divide between cities and more rural areas, who are refusing to change their ways, claiming it is part of Dutch culture.
The countryside's dominant paper carried the headline "We believe in Zwarte Piet" at the beginning of this month, when the parade season kicks off.
GETTY
Several protest groups have been set up calling for the abolition of the practiceDefenders have said Dutch identity is at stake, which has been the subject of fierce debate as millions on migrants settle across the continent and integrate into European countries.
The first 'migrant party', DENK, or Think, was set up in the Netherlands last year, and is a fierce critic of the Black Peter parades.
GETTY
Defenders have said Dutch identity is at stakeThey are hoping to score big in the upcoming March elections, running on a staunch anti-racist ticket.
Throughout history the practice of people with blackened faces were referred to as 'minstrels' and usually performed songs in a band.
Related articles
VIDEO - 'EU gives away its own principles': RT's editor-in-chief slams 'free speech doublethink' - YouTube
[More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.]
On 22 November 2016, CBS This Morning anchors Charlie Rose, along with Gayle King and Norah O'Donnell, marveled over the show's "extraordinary collection" of comedians:
JON STEWART (from pre-recorded interview): There's a difference between satisfaction and joy. This gave me great satisfaction'--
CHARLIE ROSE: But?
STEWART: And it gave me great confidence. But joy '-- joy '-- driving a couple of knucklehead kids home from school that I get to sit and listen'--
ROSE: That's joy'--
STEWART: Joy.
GAYLE KING (live): God, that's so beautifully said!
NORAH O'DONNELL: Oh, I know!
KING: The difference between '-- there is a difference between satisfaction and joy. I just love him!
O'DONNELL: Yeah'--
KING: You '-- you really feel his '-- his absence, Charlie, during these times, don't you?
ROSE: Oh, yeah '-- indeed '-- yes. I mean, there was no '-- there was nothing quite like him. A lot of people did it very well'--
KING: Yeah'--
ROSE: And we see them and we show their work here during the political year'--
KING: Yeah'--
ROSE: But Jon had a special place.
KING: He did. That 'catch and release' '-- I forgot, though: it's no fun when you're on the other side of 'catch and release,' but it sure is fun to watch.
ROSE: But what's also amazing about 'The Daily Show' is they assembled such an extraordinary collection'--
O'DONNELL: Like Steve Carell!
ROSE: Steven Carell and Stephen Colbert'--
KING: Stephen Colbert'--
ROSE: And so many others '-- John Oliver '-- so many others'--
O'DONNELL: Samantha Bee'--
KING: Samantha Bee'--
ROSE: Samantha Bee '-- especially Samantha Bee. You can see my full conversation with Jon Stewart tonight on my PBS program.
VIDEO - Mitchell Makes Blanket Attempt to Tie Trump Supporters to Celebrating Win at Neo-Nazi Event | MRCTV
See more in the cross-post on the NewsBusters blog.
On the heels of CBS and NBC spending over five minutes providing a platform for a neo-Nazi conference, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell continued the media's normalization of bigotry (unlike what they try to do with religious freedom supporters) by sloppily insinuating that ''supporters of Donald Trump's election'' congregated with ''the alt-right'' at the National Policy Institute (NPI) conference.
''Supporters of Donald Trump's election and the alt-right gathered in Washington this weekend at the Reagan Building, a government facility, to celebrate with white supremacist speech and echoes of signature language from Nazi Germany,'' Mitchell declared at the onset of a six-minute segment about it.
VIDEO - Gayle King Shocked Trump Called CBS News 'Dishonest Media' | MRCTV
During an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers early Wednesday morning, CBS This Morninganchor Gayle King expressed surprise at being called the ''dishonest media.'' Meyers asked King about the news network's meeting with Donald Trump on Monday morning, where Trump reportedly called the journalists from each of the major networks in attendance, the ''dishonest media.'' King said the characterization made her ''uncomfortable'' but she felt that Trump wasn't talking about her network.
Read more of the blog here.
VIDEO - Blitzer Hounds RNC Spox: Why Doesn't Trump 'Make It Clear' That He Doesn't Support Neo-Nazis? | MRCTV
On Tuesday's The Situation Room on CNN, anchor Wolf Blitzer joined the rest of the media in spending endless hours harping on a gathering of 200 white supremacists expressing their support for Trump. While Trump denounced the group, and has done so in the past, this wasn't good enough for some journalists like Blitzer, who demanded that Trump do more. In an interview with RNC strategist Sean Spicer, Blitzer repeatedly asked Spicer why Trump hadn't come out in a video or a formal speech to denounce their support. Eventually Spicer snapped and asked Blitzer, ''Should he write it in the sky with an airplane? I mean at what point is it enough? I don't know but I think that he has been very clear, and it's time to move on.''
Read the rest of the blog here.
VIDEO - CBS Notices Electors 'Pressured' To Change Vote; Omits Death Threats | MRCTV
[More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.]
On the 23 November 2016 edition of CBS This Morning was the sole Big Three morning newscast to report that Hillary Clinton supporters are lobbying members of the Elector College to not vote for Donald Trump. Charlie Rose cited a USA Today article that "some Electoral College members are being pressured to change their votes....Hillary Clinton supporters want Donald Trump electors to change sides, but there are apparently no takers." However neither Rose, nor the original USA Today report, mentioned that some electors have received death threats in recent days.
Tap to find outDutch anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders has vowed never to be silenced on Wednesday, on the last day of his trial on charges of racial discrimination and inciting hatred.
In his televised ''closing statement'':https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9404/wilders-trial-closing-statement, Wilders described the proceedings as politically motivated and a ''charade'', saying millions of Dutch people were also being judged.
''I am not a racist and my supporters are not racists either,'' he said, calling the case an attack on free speech.
He called the trial ''absurd'' and ''political'' because it was ''being abused to settle a political score'' with an opposition leader who could not be defeated in parliament.
Prosecutors have demanded he be fined 5,000 euros after he led chants at a rally in 2014 calling for fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands.
When he asked supporters whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans, they chanted ''Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!''. Wilders replied ''we'll take care of that''. His party had just narrowly failed to become the largest group on the city council in The Hague. More than 6,000 people filed complaints to the police.
The politician explained in court that it was a call to carry out the policies of his Freedom Party (PVV) to expel criminals with dual Moroccan nationality, tighten immigration rules and implement an ''active voluntary repatriation policy''. He said that more than 40 percent of Dutch people agreed with his call.
Prosecutors argued that the comments were pre-planned, ''unnecessarily offensive'' and deliberately calculated to incite the crowd, and had targeted a specific group in violation of the Dutch constitution.
The Netherlands has around 400,000 Moroccans who make up about two percent of the population.
Geert Wilders, who was acquitted of an incitement case in 2011, had boycotted the trial at Schipol airport but said earlier this week that he would attend the last day.
His stance against Islam and immigration has been a prominent theme in the national debate ahead of parliamentary elections next March. Support for his party and that of conservative Prime Minister Mark Rutte is said to be very close.
In his speech Wilders added that he was part of a growing worldwide movement against the ''politically correct doctrines of the elite and their subordinate media''.
A verdict in the trial is due on December 9.
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Point of view"If you convict me, you will convict half of the Netherlands" Geert Wilders Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) leader
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VIDEO - Turkey slams EU for organising vote on halting accession talks
At least six electors '-- members of the Electoral College whose votes actually elect the President '-- have vowed to cast ballots that don't align with the popular vote results of their states, Politico reported Tuesday.
If they carry out their intentions '-- in effect, becoming "faithless electors" '-- they would narrow Donald Trump's margin-of-victory in the Electoral College over Hillary Clinton.
One elector, Michael Baca said in a statement that he wouldn't vote for Trump.
''The Founding Fathers created the Electoral College as the last line of defense, and I think we must do all that we can to ensure that we have a Reasonable Republican candidate who shares our American values,'' he said.
The Hail Mary to defeat Donald Trump: It's up to you, electors
Added elector Bret Chiafalo, who along with Baca is part of a small group called Hamilton Electors, ''All we're trying to do is honor what the Founding Fathers gave us.''
Some electors told Politico that they were attempting to persuade some of their Republican colleagues in the body to vote for someone other than Trump, but they would need at least 15 additional electors (and likely many more) to sway the race.
As it currently stands, Donald Trump has won 290 electoral votes, while Clinton has won 232. The results in Michigan, which has 16 electoral votes, remain too close to call.
84 photos view gallery
Election Night 2016: Joy and despair as Donald Trump is elected presidentIf Trump fails to win Michigan '-- an unlikely outcome, as he leads Clinton by more than 11,000 votes '-- Clinton would still need at least 22 electors to disregard their states' popular vote and pick her over Trump.
Trump will not probe Clinton's email server, family foundation
Alternatively, Trump could be prevented from winning the Electoral College if he '-- in addition to losing Michigan '-- saw at least 21 electors abstain from voting altogether.
That outcome would leave Trump with 269 electoral votes, which would then result in the House of Representative determining the election.
"If it gets into the House, the controversy and the uncertainty that would immediately blow up into a political firestorm in the U.S. would cause enough people '-- my hope is '-- to look at the whole concept of the Electoral College," one unnamed elector told Politico.
To win the election, a candidate must secure 270 electoral votes.
Clinton loses despite getting more popular votes than Trump
The Electoral College comprises 538 electors from the 50 states. The number of electors is determined by the number of senators and representatives for each state. Members will meet on Dec. 19 in their respective states to vote for President.
It is extraordinarily rare for an elector to not obey the will of the voters from her or her state. Throughout U.S. history, the highest number of faithless electors occurred in 1808, when six declined to vote for James Madison.
Tags:donald trump2016 electionhillary clintonSend a Letter to the EditorJoin the Conversation:facebookTweet
I listened as they called my President a Muslim. I listened as they called him and his family a pack of monkeys. I listened as they said he wasn't born here. I watched as they blocked every single path to progress that they could. I watched them shut down the government and hurt the entire nation twice. I watched them turn their backs on every opportunity to open worthwhile dialog. I watched them say that they would not even listen to any choice for Supreme Court, no matter who the nominee was. I listened as they openly said that they will oppose him at every turn. I watched as they did just that.I listened.....I watched.....I paid attention.Now, I'm being called on to be tolerant.To move forward. To denounce protesters. To "Get over it." To accept this...
I will not! I will do my part to make sure this great American mistake becomes the embarrassing footnote of our history that it deserves to be.I will do this as quickly as possible, every chance I get. I will do my part to limit the damage that this man can do to my country. I will watch his every move and point out every single mistake and misdeed in a loud and proud voice. I will let you know in a loud voice every time this man backs away from a promise he made to them.
Them. The people who voted for him.The ones who sold their souls and prayed for him to win. I will do this so that they never forget. And they will hear me. They will see it in my eyes when I look at them.They will hear it in my voice when I talk to them. They will know that I know who they are. They will know that I know what they are. Do not call for my tolerance. I've tolerated all I can. Now it's their turn to tolerate ridicule. Be aware, make no mistake about it, every single thing that goes wrong in our country from this dayforward is now Trump's fault just as much as they thought it was Obama's.I find it unreasonable for them to expect from me what they were entirely unwilling to give."
#TheResistance
VIDEO - CNN Leftist Charles Kaiser Uses N-Word Live on Air, Makes Anchor Cry - Breitbart
CNN.com contributor and author Charles Kaiser alleged that President-elect Donald Trump's chief strategist and senior counselor Stephen K. Bannon was ''a man who uses the word n*gger'' Tuesday afternoon on ''CNN Newsroom.''
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Kaiser said, ''I'm delighted that Mr. Trump has visited my alma mater at The New York Times and said he doesn't want to do this anymore, but I want to give him a little advice for the future if he does not want to stimulate the alt-right. First thing, he should never retweet someone with the name 'White Genocide' who lists his dress as Jew America. that's what he did in february. he should never ask his supporters again to give the Nazi salute, which he did at a rally in March. That's not a good idea.''
''And then of course in July he retweeted an image of his opponent with the six-pointed Jewish star on it,'' he continued. ''I thought that was a mistake, but we have bigger problems here. also in july, you know, he selected as his vice president the most homophobic man in American public life, a person who believes that gay people actually do not have the right too exist, and then, if you don't want to support the alt-right, don't choose as a White House Counselor a man who uses the word n*gger, whose wife says that he did not want his daughters to go to a school with too many Jews, and don't choose as an attorney general a man who calls the NAACP an un-American organization and who we learned in The Guardian today went so far as to prosecute ''.''
Anchor Brooke Baldwin then asked Kaiser not to say the ''n-word'' on her show.
Later on, Kaiser told Paris Dennard it was ''shameful'' that any African-American would support Jeff Sessions for attorney general.
At the end of the segment, a visibly upset Baldwin sharply criticized Kaiser for using the n-word, and said that ''the claim that Mr. Bannon used the n-word '-- I've never heard of this. So, there's that.''
Jonathan Haidt is Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University - he gave Newshour's Razia Iqbal his view on the rising popularity of nationalist, authoritarian politics in the US, following the election of Donald Trump.
(Picture: "Make America Great Again" baseball caps Credit: Getty)
VIDEO - Malcolm X: Black Democrats are 'chumps' - YouTube
The vote was not supported by everyone in the Strasbourg Parliament after it narrowly passed by 369 votes to 255, with 70 abstentions.
And astonishingly it has been agreed that the EU should also be prepared to act autonomously in cases where NATO is not willing to take the lead.
However the EU is celebrating this victory claiming the security situation in and around Europe has worsened significantly in recent years, due to challenges like terrorism, hybrid threats or cyber and energy insecurity.
GETTY
The EU has narrowly won a vote to create an EU armyRelated articlesGETTY
The EU has agreed to spend £420m a year on its new armyThe momentum to move towards a working European Defence Policy has come
Rapporteur Urmas Paet
It says no country is able to tackle defence alone and ''solidarity and resilience require the EU to stand and act together''.
European politicians have now guaranteed at least £420m-a-year in funding to set up their new European wide army which will be a "rapid response" team.
They suggest devoting an initial two per cent of the overall GDP to defence, establishing multinational forces and EU headquarters to plan and command crisis management operations, and enabling the EU to act where NATO is unwilling to do so.
GETTY
The EU army is happening after MEPs decided to ploughRapporteur Urmas Paet who supported the plans told the debate: ''Our Union is not equipped to face overwhelming defence challenges. For almost 30 years, most of its member states have been cutting their defence budgets, leading to smaller armed forces.
"Cooperation among member states is occasional and Europe continues to rely heavily on NATO capabilities and on the US solidarity.
''The momentum to move towards a working European Defence Policy has come.''
MEPs want the EU to respond faster and more robustly to real threats, which, they say, demand that Europe's armed forces work together better.
GETTY
The EU has taken steps that will override NATOThey say that duplication, overcapacity and barriers to defence procurement result currently in annual waste of '¬26.4 billion and they now want to pool resources meaning they will be able to action a plan to access defence strategies in individual countries.
MEPs call on member states to pursue joint purchases of defence resources, and to pool or share non-lethal material such as transport vehicles or aircraft.
They suggested introducing a ''European Defence Semester, whereby member states would consult each other's planning and cycles and procurement plans'' and advocate strengthening the European Defence Agency's coordination role.
The resolution also called upon the European Council to lead the creation of ''common Union defence policy and to provide additional financial resources ensuring its implementation.''
Thu, February 18, 2016GETTY
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The EU legislators have gone bananas over rules and directives - about bananas. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and co have overseen some wacky laws. Here are the craziest:
MEPs back the proposed EU investment in defence-related research projects ''of at least £76m (90 million euro) during next three years'', suggesting that this should be followed up by a separate European Defence Research Programme with an annual budget of '¬500 million.
The politicians believe that the EU and NATO should cooperate more, particularly in the east and the south, to countering hybrid and cyber threats, improve maritime security and develop defence capabilities.
MEPs will also debate a separate resolution on the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) on Tuesday evening, and vote on it on Wednesday.
The draft text suggests radically overhauling the CSDP and launching a training operation in Iraq to support member states involved in the coalition against Daesh.
GETTY
Ukip leader Mike Hookem has slammed the decision to vote for an EU armyMike Hookem said it was "Terrible news for democracy and sovereignty in the EU.
"Whilst our government is hamstrung by anti democratic MPs and the bloated House of Lords determined to railroad the referendum result the EU has pushed ahead with their dream of an EU military.
"We cannot delay any longer or we risk being caught up in this federalist nightmare.
"Our service personnel take an oath to Her Majesty not the President of the EU but if we don't extract ourselves soon not only will we be paying for it but we could be caught up in it."
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VIDEO - Kellyanne Conway -vs- CNN Moonbat Chris Cuomo'... | The Last Refuge
Inside the Webster's dictionary next to the word ''insufferable'' you'll find a picture of CNN moonbat Chris Cuomo. Earlier today Cuomo interviewed Donald Trump's former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway:
VIDEO - White Nationalists Salute the President-Elect: "Hail Trump!" - The Atlantic
That's how Richard B. Spencer saluted more than 200 attendees on Saturday, gathered at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., for the annual conference of the National Policy Institute, which describes itself as ''an independent organization dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world.''
Spencer has popularized the term ''alt-right'' to describe the movement he leads. Spencer has said his dream is ''a new society, an ethno-state that would be a gathering point for all Europeans,'' and has called for ''peaceful ethnic cleansing.''
For most of the day, a parade of speakers discussed their ideology in relatively anodyne terms, putting a presentable face on their agenda. But after dinner, when most journalists had already departed, Spencer rose and delivered a speech to his followers dripping with anti-Semitism, and leaving no doubt as to what he actually seeks. He referred to the mainstream media as ''L¼genpresse,'' a term he said he was borrowing from ''the original German''; the Nazis used the word to attack their critics in the press.
''America was until this past generation a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity,'' Spencer said. ''It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.''
The audience offered cheers, applause, and enthusiastic Nazi salutes.
Here is the video, excerpted from an Atlantic documentary profile of Spencer that will premiere in December 2016.
Leah Varjacques contributed reporting to this story.
VIDEO - CNN Tries To Push 'Trump Is Sexist' (edited for time) - YouTube
Trump vented about media coverage, according to sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He was highly critical of CNN and other news organizations.
But while Trump showed disdain for the news media, he also answered questions; listened to the journalists' arguments about the importance of access; and committed to making improvements.
A source in the room told CNNMoney that there was "real progress" made with regards to media access to Trump and his administration.
One specific topic was the importance of the "press pool," a small group of journalists that traditionally travels with the president.
The hour-long meeting was off the record, meaning the participants agreed not to talk about the substance of the conversations.
But Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, who arranged the meeting, said afterward that it was "very cordial, candid and honest."
While there was "no need to mend fences," she said, "from my own perspective, it is great to hit the reset button, it was a long, hard-fought campaign."
Some of the attendees were struck by Trump's anti-media posture. During the meeting, Trump revived some of the specific arguments he made weeks before winning the presidency.
According to Politico, among Trump's complaints, even as he asked for a "cordial" relationship, was that NBC had used unflattering pictures of him.
But one of the participants told CNNMoney that Trump also asked for a positive relationship between his White House and the media. The participant said that a New York Post account -- which had a source describing it as Trump giving the assembled members of the media a "dressing down" like a "firing squad" -- was overstated.
Conway herself has also criticized the Post report.
Notably, she declined to say when the president-elect would hold a news conference. "Soon" was the only answer.
Presidents-elect typically hold a news conference within days of being elected. Trump was elected almost two weeks ago and has not taken questions in that setting yet.
However, he has been interviewed on the CBS newsmagazine "60 Minutes," and he answered a few shouted questions from reporters over the weekend. He will also be speaking with reporters from The New York Times on Tuesday.
Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. "and others are meeting with the President Elect tomorrow at the request of his team," the Times said in a statement Monday afternoon. "There will be a small, off the record meeting first, followed by an on the record session with Times reporters and editorial columnists."
President Obama and other government officials occasionally hold off the record sessions with reporters, anchors and other media bigwigs. Obama, for example, talked off the record with the reporters traveling with him on the way home from Peru on Sunday night.
By going off the record and giving up the right to quote the public official, the reporters gain candid insights. Both the journalists and the politicians can speak more bluntly.
Some top network anchors are traveling or on vacation this week, and thus were unable to attend Monday's meeting. But many others were present.
NBC's Chuck Todd and Lester Holt; CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Erin Burnett; CBS's Norah O'Donnell, Charlie Rose, John Dickerson, and Gayle King; and ABC's George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and Martha Raddatz were some of the anchors seen entering Trump Tower shortly before 1 p.m.
Several executives from the network news divisions were also spotted on the way into Trump Tower, including ABC News president James Goldston; CNN president Jeff Zucker; Fox News co-presidents Bill Shine and Jack Abernethy; NBC News president Deborah Turness; MSNBC president Phil Griffin; and CBS News vice president Chris Isham.
There was much for the group to talk about. Trump has long-standing relationships with many in the TV news business -- but he also waged an anti-media crusade during his campaign for president.
Related: No news conference by Trump yet
There are many looming questions about whether Trump will provide the same levels of press access that past presidents have permitted, like the traveling "press pool" and regular news conferences.
CNN's Dylan Byers contributed reporting.
CNNMoney (New York)First published November 21, 2016: 11:31 AM ET
VIDEO - Howard Dean goes on Canadian TV, calls Stephen Bannon a 'Nazi' '' TheBlaze
Former Vermont Democratic Gov. Howard Dean says President-elect Donald Trump's newly appointed chief strategist Stephen Bannon is a ''Nazi.''
Dean, who has indicated interest in reprising his role as Democratic National Committee chairman, made the comment to the Canadian news outlet CTV in an interview posted Sunday.
Referring to Trump's selection of RNC Chairman Reince Priebus to be White House chief of staff, Dean said Trump is a ''complicated guy.''
''He appoints a reasonable person, who's much more conservative than I am, but for somebody who can talk to, as chief of staff, and then his senior adviser is a Nazi,'' Dean said, adding that Bannon is ''anti-Semitic, he's anti-black and he's anti-women.''
Dean said he doesn't call anyone a ''Nazi,'' unless they fit all of those criteria.
''It's a big word, and I don't usually use it unless somebody's really anti-Semitic, really misogynist and really anti-black,'' Dean said.
Trump's appointment of Bannon to one of the most senior roles within his new administration has drawn the ire of both conservatives and liberals.
TheBlaze founder Glenn Beck has called Bannon a ''terrifying man'' and ''the most dangerous guy in American politics.''
''If people really want to '-- in the press '-- would like to call Donald Trump a racist, you might want to stop on that one and just spend a little time on Bannon,'' Beck said on TheBlaze TV on Nov. 14. ''Because Bannon has a clear tie to white nationalists. Clear tie.''
In a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter, however, Bannon denied charges of his alleged white nationalism, instead describing himself as an ''economic nationalist'' and vowing to begin a political movement ''greater than the Reagan revolution.''
(H/T: The Hill)
VIDEO - Jill Biden reveals her husband's oversharing during a visit with the Pences - The Washington Post
Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, hosted Vice President-elect Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, at their official residence in Washington. (Reuters)
The transfer of power from the Obama administration to the upcoming Trump one seemed to be going so well, judging from the cordial meetings between the president and the president-elect and their wives, and the confabs between Vice President-elect Mike Pence and Vice President Biden.
But behind the scenes? Near disaster! At least according to Jill Biden, who addressed the crowd of the city's diplomatic class at a Wednesday night party at Blair House. When the Bidens were getting ready to host the Pences at the vice president's residence at the Naval Observatory, Biden, who is a community college teacher, says she stashed in a closet the papers and books that were lying around and firmly instructed her husband not to open the door to reveal the embarrassing clutter during the tour they planned to give the soon-to-be residents of the home.
''I said, 'Joe, for gosh sakes, do not open that closet,''' she recalled. ''And what do you think he did? But that's Joe for you.''
But in all seriousness, Biden said their guests ''couldn't have been more gracious.''
Earlier in the day, Trump had just shocked foreign policy and diplomatic circles with a series of tweets boasting about his contacts with world leaders. That's usually something kept close to the vest. So it was an awkward night to celebrate, as the elegant invitation read, ''The Power of Diplomacy'' with the hosts, the U.S. chief of protocol and the Meridian International Center.
But what's going to be business as usual in a Trump administration? The crowd '-- which included ambassadors from around the globe, along with former assistant surgeon general Susan Blumenthal, former protocol chief Lloyd Hand, telecom exec Marie Royce and former White House social secretary Ann Stock '-- was full of whispered speculation about what the next four years might bring.
Jill Biden, though, offered some solace to the assembled diplomats and members of the international business community, based on the earlier luncheon with their successors: ''I think things are going to be better than you might think.''
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VIDEO - Spike in hate crimes prompts special NY police unit - CNN.com
The announcement coincided with an address at Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church, where Cuomo called for an end to the divisiveness that has gripped the country."The ugly political discourse of the election did not end on Election Day. In many ways it has gotten worse, [turning] into a social crisis that now challenges our identity as a state and as a nation and our people," he said.
President-elect Donald Trump wasn't specifically mentioned in his church address, but Cuomo has in the past criticized Trump and vowed in a New York Daily News op-ed that he would "reject the hateful attitudes that pervaded throughout the 2016 campaign."A toll-free hot line that Cuomo launched on November 15 to connect New Yorkers with the state Division of Human Rights to report incidents of bias and discrimination has received more than 400 calls since Friday, according to Cuomo's office.
Calling this kind of prejudice a "social poison [in] the fabric of our nation," the governor cited a number of recent incidents, including a scourge of swastika graffiti and the case of black freshmen at the University of Pennsylvania being sent pictures of lynchings and racial slurs.
Cuomo also vowed to set up a legal defense fund for immigrants who fear prosecution under a Trump administration. He said the fund would be the first of its kind.
The plan, he said, would be to set up a public-private partnership "to provide immigrants who can't afford their own defense the legal assistance they need ... because in New York, we believe in justice for all," Cuomo said.
He added, "If there is a move to deport immigrants then I say start with me. I am a son of immigrants. Son of Mario Cuomo, who is the son of Andrea Cuomo, a poor Italian immigrant who came to this country without a job, without money, or resources and he was here only for the promise of America."
Cuomo's plans also include the expansion of New York's Human Rights Law to protect students who are bullied or discriminated against.
New York Police Department Commissioner James O'Neill told a New York radio station on Sunday he was disturbed by the trends."We've had an uptick in hate crimes, actually a little bit more than an uptick. We're up 31% from last year. We had at this time last year 250, this year we have 328, specifically against the Muslim population in New York City -- we went up from 12 to 25, and anti-Semitic is up, too, by 9% from 102 to 111," O'Neill said.
"I have no scientific evidence as to why, but you've been paying attention to what's been going on in the country over the last year or so and the rhetoric has increased, and I think that might have something to do with it," O'Neill added.
Cuomo said on Sunday that New York's tolerance will lead the way for the rest of the nation, and his announcement came as an "anti-hate" rally was held in a Brooklyn park vandalized with swastikas and pro-Trump graffiti.
Swastikas and the words "Go Trump" were painted on playground equipment at Adam Yauch Park in Brooklyn, the NYPD says.
The rally, at a playground named after the late Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, was attended by band member Adam Horovitz, better known as Ad-Rock.
"Keep your eyes open, stand up for each other. This is homegrown terrorism for real," Horovitz told the crowd. "I reject Donald Trump's vision for America. New York City, I'm asking you to do the same."
VIDEO - MELANIA TRUMP: HIGH LEVEL ILLUMINATI MK-ULTRA/Monarch BETA Slave - YouTube
Last Monday night, less than a week after a near-plurality of voters chose Donald Trump as president, a special assistant from the departing administration sat at the basement bar of the Hay-Adams Hotel, in Washington, drinking a glass of wine. It was shortly after eight o'clock. The people at the bar were arguing about just how bad Trump would be. One man thought he would ''paint the White House gold.'' Trump would not be so bad, the special assistant assured him. The Bush people had the same fears when faced with the prospect of handing the keys to the kingdom over to Obama.
Outside, Washington had a feeling of quiet anxiety. The transition's ''landing teams'' had not yet arrived; many key appointments had not been announced. The deepest fears went unspoken. Not a week before, speakers at panel discussions had laughed off this future as though it were as unlikely as an asteroid strike. This week, they pushed on, sustained by inertia. Some exhibited classic symptoms of denial. Forty minutes into his scheduled interview with Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg ventured a question about ''recent events.''
''This is normal,'' Carter assured Goldberg, affirming the same message as the special assistant at the bar. ''This has been going on for two hundred and forty years '... all of our senior leadership have adhered to our tradition to stand apart from the political process. That's an important principle in this country.''
Monday's normal did not last. On Thursday night, news broke that President-elect Donald Trump had offered the job of national security adviser to retired Lieutenant General Michael Thomas Flynn, a career intelligence officer who previously served as head of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. He retired from the military in 2014, and became one of Trump's earliest boosters.
The national security adviser demands a calm strategist who can serve as an honest broker among different agencies. ''I think he'll be stretched a bit by this,'' former NSA and CIA head Michael Hayden said, on Sunday. Flynn's conspiratorial Twitter account reflect the weaknesses and insecurities of the man who chose him. ''I don't think every single Muslim in the world wants to kill the other seven billion people in the world,'' he said, in another interview, when asked about his tweet that ''Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.''
The position of national security adviser is not subject to confirmation by the Senate. It is so influential that some have called it the White House's second chief of staff. (I wrote about its history, and its powers, here.) Should America come under attack'--terrorist, nuclear, or otherwise'--it won't be Trump's phone that rings at three in the morning. It will be Flynn's phone, Flynn's decision to wake the president up, and Flynn's voice in the president's ear.
There have been hawkish national security advisers in the past. Some, like Condoleezza Rice, espoused a die-hard belief in American exceptionalism, defined American rivals as barbarians, and beat the war drums about weapons of mass destruction. Flynn said the same things in his speech at the Republican convention in Cleveland. Twenty minutes in, after Flynn castigated Hillary Clinton for her email practices, the crowd began to chant, ''Lock her up!'' ''Lock her up,'' Flynn repeated, tentatively, ''Yes, that's right. Lock her up. You guys are good.'' The chants continued. Flynn scanned the crowd. Then, having found his bearings, he broke out in a grin. ''Damn right. Exactly right! There's nothing wrong with that!''
In America, the winners of elections do not use their offices to punish the losers. George Washington said as much in his farewell address, where he warned about ''the alternate dominion of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge.'' The difference between an opponent on the ballot and an enemy on the battlefield, a crucial one to the maintenance of American democracy, is lost on Flynn, who called Hillary Clinton ''the enemy camp '... somebody who will leave Americans behind on the battlefield.'' This was more than campaign rhetoric, and ''Lock her up!'' was more than a chant. In a post-election interview, Trump declined to say whether he would continue to hound Clinton by appointing a special prosecutor. Reince Priebus, Trump's new chief of staff, evaded the question again in a Sunday interview with ABC News.
''If I did a tenth of what she did, I would be in jail today,'' Flynn said, at the Republican convention, of the candidate he called ''Crooked Hillary.'' And yet like Clinton, he was once accused of mishandling classified information. He accepted speaking fees from a T.V. network funded by the Russian government and sat next to Vladimir Putin at a gala dinner in Moscow, across the table from Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Flynn's company took tens of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees from a Turkish client and produced ''all-source intelligence support'' for other international clients, even as Flynn himself was receiving classified briefings as part of Trump's national security team. Flynn's actions are ''profoundly troubling and should be disqualifying,'' Norm Eisen, a former ambassador and White House ethics advisor told Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News.
Just six years ago, when Flynn had a smaller, more professional audience, he offered a more nuanced view. In 2010, he published an influential critique of the U.S. approach to intelligence in Afghanistan, arguing that careful study of the needs of the civilian population was just as important as hunting down the Taliban. But on the campaign trail, Flynn seems to have learned the usefulness of anti-Muslim rhetoric in uniting Trump's base.
Like Trump, Flynn's worldview is riddled with hyperbole, making it hard to tell where his rhetoric ends and his thinking begins. He has been inconsistent about whether he would re-authorize the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture, whether he would support Trump's theoretical ban on Muslim immigration to the U.S., and whether he would support the killing of terrorists' families. ''All options are on the table,'' Flynn said, in an interview earlier this year with the The Intercept. He praised Trump for ''being very unpredictable in the face of a determined enemy.''
In his 2016 book, The Field of Fight, Flynn characterized U.S. counter-terrorism efforts as ''a world war against a messianic mass movement of evil people.'' In a speech earlier this year, he called Islam ''a cancer'' and ''a political ideology. It definitely hides behind this notion of it being a religion.'' On Sunday, Priebus, Trump's chief of staff, was asked to respond to Flynn's remarks.
''Is he in line with how President-elect Trump views Islam?'' asked Martha Raddatz, the interviewer.
''I think so,'' Priebus replied. ''Clearly there are some aspects of that faith that are problematic. And we know them. We've seen it.''
Trump himself has seldom distinguished between Islam and ''radical Islam,'' which he has called an ''ideology of death that must be extinguished.'' Those are dangerous words. Flynn's appointment suggests that Trump intends to follow through on them.
VIDEO - Arvind Kejriwal: The fiery BBC interview that went viral in India - BBC News
Image caption Mr Kejriwal did not take kindly to the questions of BBC reporter Nitin Srivastava A BBC Hindi Facebook Live interview with the chief minister of the Indian capital Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, went viral after his angry responses to some of the reporter's questions about his stand on India's cash crisis. BBC Hindi's Nitin Srivastava describes what happened.
Mr Kejriwal, casually dressed in bathroom slippers and trousers, was a busy man that Friday evening, with back to back interviews planned at his official residence.
I was there with the BBC Hindi team for a scheduled Facebook Live session, then an interview, with Mr Kejriwal about his views on India's cash crisis.
The fiery chief minister has been one of the most vocal opponents of the government's shock decision to ban 500 and 1,000 rupee notes overnight. He is demanding that the move be entirely rolled back, citing the difficulties it is causing the common man.
The interview never took place. And that's because of what happened during the Facebook Live session.
Mr Kejriwal was combative right from the beginning, and grew increasingly agitated as the interview progressed.
He got particularly angry when I refused to let him use the live event as a platform to accuse several prominent businessmen of being corrupt with the blessings of the government.
What happened next was extraordinary.
Mr Kejriwal told me that the BBC and I were both "neech", which translates from the Hindi as "low class", adding that we were biased towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government. He refused to listen to my arguments.
The tipping point came, however, when he alleged that "55 people had died because of the cash crisis". I responded by asking him what proof he had to say this so conclusively.
A livid Mr Kejriwal now decided to address the audience himself. Looking straight into the camera, he said: "55 people have died over the issue and BBC says we can't link this to demonetisation. This is their honest journalism."
As the Facebook Live event ended, Mr Kejriwal stormed out of the room, refusing to participate in the sit-down interview we had agreed to. His parting words to me were: "This is not journalism and you have an agenda against me".
The live event was viewed more than 2.7 million times and was covered by all India's mainstream media organisations as it rapidly went viral in India.
Meanwhile the young and dynamic social media team that accompanies Mr Kejriwal everywhere he goes did not share the Facebook Live as promised earlier.
This is symptomatic of a worrying trend in India, where journalists are often accused of being "biased" towards one camp or another when they are only trying to do their job and ask valid and legitimate questions.
Such accusations are more worrying when it's not just supporters but politicians themselves who are making them.
The Facebook live in Hindi can be viewed here.
VIDEO - Putin talks Trump, Brexit, TTIP at APEC briefing in Lima '-- RT News
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he hopes both the EU and the UK use common sense in the Brexit process so that it doesn't have negative consequences. Putin also explained his position on US President-elect Donald Trump and the TTIP deal.
READ MORE: 'Progress in all areas': Putin to visit China as Moscow, Beijing expand trade, economic ties
Putin held a brief Q&A with the media in Lima on Sunday as the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit was coming to its end. The president was asked a wide range of questions, on subjects as varied as Brexit and the oil production cap to Russia's relations with US and Japan.
Brexit''With regard to Brexit, a lot will depend on the form of the UK exit, its speed,'' Putin said. ''There are, of course, certain threats, but I think that all our colleagues will have enough common sense. There are very good specialists in the EU and the UK.''
''I'm sure that the situation will develop in a sober way,'' he added.
Trump & ObamaSpeaking on Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election, Putin said Moscow would have to wait and see as rhetoric during presidential campaign could differ from actual White House policies. He noted that Trump has confirmed his willingness to improve US-Russian relations.
''The President-elect confirmed he is willing to normalize Russian-American relations. I told him the same.''
Read more
Putin said no concrete date for a meeting between the leaders has been chosen yet, adding that Washington and Moscow have agreed to arrange a meeting of representatives.
Commenting on his brief meeting with the outgoing US president, Barack Obama, Putin said they drew some conclusions on seven years of working together on global issues.
''We acknowledged that despite the fact that our dialogue was not easy '' if truth be told, it was difficult to work with each other '' but both President Obama and I noted that we have always respected the positions of one another, as well as each other [personally],'' Putin said.
''I thanked him for all the years of mutual work and said, that if he finds it possible or has the desire to do so, we will be glad to welcome him in Russia any time,'' Putin said.
TTIPWeighing in on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a proposed free trade deal between the US and the European Union, Putin argued that it would be detrimental to economic development.
''Creating closed trade [blocs] will not benefit the global economy,'' Putin said, stressing that ''regional unions must follow universal rules.''
''My view has not changed. Moreover, I said that Russia believes that one of the factors contributing to the restoration of global economic growth is the development of global trade. And global trade cannot effectively evolve without the free movement of goods, capital and labor,'' he added.
OPEC & oil outputAsked about Russia's stance on limiting oil output, Putin reiterated that Moscow will support a decision to cap oil production.
''As far as the upcoming OPEC meeting is concerned and our position, it remains unchanged and we have said it many times already: We are ready to freeze oil production at the level, at which it is now,'' Putin said.
READ MORE: OPEC optimistic on output deal with new offer to Iran
''I cannot say with 100 percent certainty if the agreement [to freeze oil production] will be reached, but there is a huge possibility,'' Putin said, stressing that Russia ''will, for its part, do everything what our OPEC partners expect from us to do.''
Corruption scandalReflecting on the arrest of Russian Economy Minister Alexey Ulyukayev, who was caught red-handed last week while accepting $2 million bribe for greenlighting a takeover involving state-controlled Russian oil companies, Rosneft and Bashneft, Putin said that this ''saddening event'' would not ''in any way'' affect the acquisition deal.
He also said that Ulyukayev's arrest did not change his attitude to the effectiveness of government's work, which he said was ''normal.''
''The government has always been under special public attention, each step of the government is being analyzed. We all do not work without mistakes, probably, the government could have done some things faster, but, in general, it is working effectively given the difficult conditions we have to operate within,'' Putin said, adding that he will resolve all remaining issues concerning the minister's replacement upon his return from the APEC summit.
Japan & Kuril Islands disputePutin noted the positive dynamic in Russian-Japanese relations, saying that both countries ''sincerely'' want to sign a peace treaty ending the formal state of war.
Read more
''Russia and Japan both sincerely want to sign this treaty and are looking for ways to do it'... I only know that this endeavor should be supported at all costs,'' he said, calling the absence of the pact a ''relic of the past'' which hinders progress in bilateral relations.
He admitted that that the recent renewal of ministerial consultation talks itself can be also perceived as ''progress, to a certain extent,'' adding that preparations to his scheduled visit to Tokyo in December ''have just started.'' Both Moscow and Tokyo are trying to find a compromise in the Kuril Islands dispute, which has prevented both sides from signing a peace treaty since World War II.
Touching on possible solutions to the Kuril Islands dispute, Putin said that Moscow still ''believes that at the moment [the four contested Kuril Islands] are sovereign Russian territory, enshrined in international documents.'' However, he added that dialogue continues and ''we are saying that different options are possible.''
READ MORE: Western nations start wars they are scared to fight themselves '' Duterte to Putin at APEC summit
----------- START---VIDEO - California family booed on flight bringing home soldier killed in Afghanistan, dad says | WBNS-10TV Columbus, Ohio | Columbus News, Weather & Sports
The father of a slain Northern California soldier said his family was booed on the flight to bring his son's body home from Afghanistan, CBS Sacramento station KOVR-TV reports.
Sgt. John Perry was killed on Saturday in Afghanistan by a suicide bomber.
His father, Stewart Perry, mourned the loss of his son at a service on Thursday.
''Most importantly, I want people to know about the heroic thing that my son did,'' he said.
His son stumbled on the suicide bomber before he could reach his target, a soldiers' 5K Veterans Day run.
''He would have killed possibly 100, 200, who knows?'' Perry said.
Perry said his son's death comes comes at a time military service is facing disrespect. He said his family was even booed on the flight to bring his son's body home over a delay.
''To hear the reaction of the flight being delayed because of a Gold Star family and the first class cabin booing, that was really upsetting, and it made us cry some more,'' he said.
Perry said his son's death also underscores why the American flag is sacred for service members, not just a symbol for protest.
''It's not for protest - it's for the death of the people that are saving us. That's what it's for,'' he said.
He also called out recent presidential campaign rhetoric, including President-elect Donald Trump's remarks about the Khan family.
''One example would be Donald Trump speaking badly about a Gold Star family, who I now am, and it really bothers me, but it also bothers me that people don't want to talk about the terrorism that killed my kid,'' he said.
A soldier's death defending his country has left a father defending his son.
''My kid was over there to help put a stop to this garbage, and he died,'' he said.
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