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Category Archives: Profiteering
On a day when Pelosi gets the spotlight, Trump tries to get it back – Los Angeles Times
Source: On a day when Pelosi gets the spotlight, Trump tries to get it back – Los Angeles Times
“I am proud to shut down the government…I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not gonna blame you for it.”—Donald Trump, December 11
Trump May Have Accidentally Revealed Navy SEALs’ Identities
The president has the power to declassify information, which means that posting the video is not a crime. However, revealing the identities of currently serving special forces is a breach of protocol and could endanger the troops, according to former and current Department of Defense officials. “Operational security is the most important aspect of personnel deployments. The real names, faces, and identities, of personnel involved in special operations or activities, are usually a closely held secret in a combat zone,” Malcolm Nance, a former U.S. Navy intelligence specialist, told Newsweek. “Revealing them casually through an unusual media exposure … would prove a propaganda boom if any of this personnel are detained by a hostile government or captured by a terrorist group. There would be no denying who you are and what you do.” “The deployments of special operation forces, including Navy SEALs are almost classified events [sic]… to protect those men and women that are on the front lines of every overt and covert conflict the United States is involved in,” an unnamed Defense Department official told Newsweek. “Even during special operation demonstrations for congressional del
Source: Trump May Have Accidentally Revealed Navy SEALs’ Identities
How Did Rifles With an American Stamp End Up in the Hands of African Poachers? – The New York Times
The question is at the heart of investigations by Congress and federal agencies into whether an American gun manufacturer is entangled in the shadowy world of arms smuggling and wildlife poaching.
Trump attacks Mattis and complains others ‘take total advantage’ of US | US news | The Guardian
Trump regularly repeats inaccurate claims about payments to Iran. According to the website Politifact, the $1.8bn figure is a slight exaggeration of a transfer that covered an order for military equipment made before the 1979 revolution and thus never fulfilled. The attack on McGurk echoed remarks by Mulvaney and other aides. He was appointed as Isis envoy by Barack Obama in 2015 but his first senior jobs as a diplomat, on Iran and Iraq, were under George W Bush. Senators asked Trump to withhold a final decision on Syria for 90 days. But on Monday the Pentagon confirmed that Mattis had signed the withdrawal order. No operational details were provided. On Sunday, Trump tweeted: “President Erdoğan of Turkey has very strongly informed me that he will eradicate whatever is left of Isis in Syria … and he is a man who can do it plus, Turkey is right ‘next door’. Our troops are coming home!” In Syria, Turkish troops were reported to be concentrating near Manbij, a town held by Kurdish fighters.
Source: Trump attacks Mattis and complains others ‘take total advantage’ of US | US news | The Guardian
Kirstjen Nielsen Doesn’t Know How Many People Have Died in DHS Custody
When Rep. David Cicilline, a Democrat from Rhode Island, asked Nielsen how many people have died under DHS’s custody, she said didn’t know. “Did I understand you correctly to say that, as you sit here today, you do not know how many human beings have died while in custody of the department that you lead, and in preparation for today’s hearing, you didn’t ascertain that number?” “I don’t have an exact figure for you,” she said. “I’m talking about people who have died in your custody. You don’t have the number?” “I will get back to you with the number,” she said.
Source: Kirstjen Nielsen Doesn’t Know How Many People Have Died in DHS Custody
Trump Border Demand Threatens to Upend Shutdown Deal – The New York Times no guts, no glory, no government, lost House, now want to lose Senate and Presidency… Race to Bottom 2018!
After the Senate passed a spending bill, conservative anger has President Trump openly mulling whether he would sign it.
How McKinsey Has Helped Raise the Stature of Authoritarian Governments – The New York Times
About four miles from where the McKinsey consultants discussed their work, which includes advising some of China’s most important state-owned companies, a sprawling internment camp had sprung up to hold thousands of ethnic Uighurs — part of a vast archipelago of indoctrination camps where the Chinese government has locked up as many as one million people. One week before the McKinsey event, a United Nations committee had denounced the mass detentions and urged China to stop.
President Trump, hostage taker? – Los Angeles Times
Trump’s statement that he may intervene in the case against Meng could be one of his most dangerous “break the norms” moments since he won the White House. By putting her arrest in play as a bargaining chip in trade talks, Trump has told the world that hostage-taking is now a part of his approach to international negotiations too. It also is a further erosion of the independence of the Justice Department. Trump has already demanded that it investigate his political foes, including Hillary Clinton, though so far the department has refused to follow his lead. It’s unclear how much it could resist him in the Meng case, but to swap her prosecution for a trade deal tells the world that U.S. arrest warrants can be made to go away if Trump gets a trade concession. While Trump may have the legal authority to intervene in a specific case, that he is willing to do so not for reasons of justice, but for political gain, is an appalling blurring of policy goals and our concept of an independent and professional Justice Department.
‘They don’t care’: Facebook factchecking in disarray as journalists push to cut ties | Technology | The Guardian
Current and former Facebook factcheckers told the Guardian that the tech platform’s collaboration with outside reporters has produced minimal results and that they’ve lost trust in Facebook, which has repeatedly refused to release meaningful data about the impacts of their work. Some said Facebook’s hiring of a PR firm that used an antisemitic narrative to discredit critics – fueling the same kind of propaganda factcheckers regularly debunk – should be a deal-breaker. “They’ve essentially used us for crisis PR,” said Brooke Binkowski, former managing editor of Snopes, a factchecking site that has partnered with Facebook for two years. “They’re not taking anything seriously. They are more interested in making themselves look good and passing the buck … They clearly don’t care.”
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