Category Archives: Traitor

Trump feud continues as Florida congresswoman calls John Kelly a liar | US news | The Guardian – Kelly lied to score points for his boss and dis a Black-African-American woman Congressperson!

Wilson said Trump’s comments were “not a good message to say to anyone who has lost a child at war”.Advertisement“You don’t sign up because you think you’re going to die,” Wilson said. “You sign up to serve your country. There’s nothing to misinterpret. He said what he said. I just don’t agree with it. I just don’t agree with that’s what you should say to grieving families.”Johnson’s mother was also offended by Trump’s tone, telling reporters this week: “President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband.”Kelly also attacked Wilson for allegedly taking credit for securing funding from Barack Obama for an FBI field office, at a 2015 ceremony which he also attended.Wilson said she was not a member of Congress in 2009 when the funding mentioned by Kelly was secured. Her role, she said, was in having the building dedicated to two FBI agents who were killed in a 1986 shootout in Miami.“That’s a lie,” Wilson said of Kelly’s characterization. “How dare he?”She added: “I feel sorry for General Kelly. He has my sympathy for the loss of his son. But he can’t just go on TV and lie on me.”A video of Wilson’s remarks at the ceremony, published by the SunSentinel on Friday, support the congresswoman’s account. She briefly discusses her efforts to dedicate the building for the fallen agents, but at no point takes credit for securing funding.Wilson said she was seeking answers about the attack in Niger, in which Johnson reportedly became separated from the rest of his unit. The Pentagon has offered few details, prompting the Arizona senator John McCain to threaten the White House with a subpoena to elicit more information.“Why did it take 48 hours to find him?” Wilson said. “Was he still alive? Was he kidnapped? I am distraught and so is the family. There are so many questions that should be answered.”

Source: Trump feud continues as Florida congresswoman calls John Kelly a liar | US news | The Guardian

Twitter and White Supremacy, A Love Story | Dame Magazine – does anyone need another reason to leave Twitter? Encourage celebrities to leave as well!

Indeed, the kind of harassment Leslie Jones faced is exactly what Black women have had to deal with on Twitter, day-in, and day-out, for years.  But without the prominence of being Leslie Jones, one doesn’t get the benefit of personal intervention from Jack Dorsey.“It’s the gamificiation of hate,” says author Mikki Kendall. “I was going to leave Twitter at one point. It just wasn’t usable for me. I would log on and have 2,500 negative comments. One guy who seemed to have an inexhaustible energy would Photoshop my image on top of lynching pictures and tell me I should be ‘raped by dogs,’ that kind of thing.” When Kendall was living in Tennessee, she says she received a picture of her and her family in a photo that “looked like it had been sighted through a rifle.” She was also doxxed—that is, had her address posted online. She moved shortly thereafter. “I had two minor children in my home then. I had to do something different.” She lives on the southside of Chicago now and says she feels much safer.  “No one’s going to come for me here. If they do, I’d like to watch them try.”Kendall has been deft at figuring out tech-savvy ways to both document and battle online harassment. She did a “race swap” experiment with a white guy—they traded Twitter avatars. “For me, it was like, Oh my God, it’s so quiet! People told me how smart I was and perceptive,” she says. Kendall has also figured out how to turn the tables on the algorithms by coding her own auto-blockers that sniff out potentially harmful Twitter accounts and blocks them.When I asked her why she thought Twitter wasn’t more responsive to reports of abuse on the site, she said, “Being a white guy on Twitter is a whole other world. I think that what’s happening with Jack and Biz (Twitter executives) is they’re experiencing a whole other Twitter.”White supremacists have used Twitter to target Jews, as well, in ways both banal and life-threatening. In June 2016 several highly visible Jewish political reporters began to report a barrage of online harassment that involved a symbolic gesture: triple parentheses placed around their names, like (((this))). The ADL added the triple parentheses to their catalog of hateful symbols. One report called them “the digital equivalent of a yellow star,” intended to separate Jews from the rest of the population and pave the way for worse.

Source: Twitter and White Supremacy, A Love Story | Dame Magazine

Jeff Sessions shifts ground on Russia contacts under Senate questioning | US news | The Guardian

“The attorney general got himself into deeper water in his answers to Senator Leahy,” said Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor and co-editor of the Just Security website. “Sessions’ response to Leahy effectively amounts to an admission that he was either not truthful in his written replies during his confirmation hearing when he said emphatically that he did not have certain conversations with the Russians or else he was not truthful in his later testimony when he said he could not recall the content of these conversations.”“Also Sessions now admits he may have discussed candidate Trump’s positions with the Russians during the elections, which directly contradicts what Sessions said in his statement in March,” Goodman added. “Sessions’ testimony appears to be an admission that the Washington Post report got it right, that he had indeed discussed campaign matters with the Russian ambassador.”

Source: Jeff Sessions shifts ground on Russia contacts under Senate questioning | US news | The Guardian

Making a military widow cry: that is a classic Trump move | Richard Wolffe | Opinion | The Guardian

Like all bad habits, it follows a pattern. Trump was remarkably silent about the deaths in Niger, even though he and his fellow Republicans couldn’t stop talking about the US lives lost in the ambush in Benghazi in 2012. When he came under fire for not calling the relatives of the fallen soldiers, Trump said he had written letters which had not yet been mailed. The US Postal Service is obviously not what it used to be.When that bumbling excuse fell flat, he claimed Obama failed to call gold star families, including his own chief of staff, John Kelly, whose son died in Afghanistan. This claim has been forcefully rejected by Obama’s aides, while Kelly’s associates can recall no such thing.This kind of behavior might be normal among middle school students whose hormones interfere with their ability to finish their homework on time. Explaining Trump’s actions is altogether more unsettling.You can’t say there were no warning signs of this kind of weirdness. Trump lashed out at the gold star family of Humayun Khan who died in Iraq in 2004, when they attacked his Muslim travel ban. Naturally Trump went after Khan’s mother for no good reason, claiming she was forbidden from talking.Launching a personal attack on an emotionally vulnerable citizen without any foundation in fact: the signature Trump move.Then again, he recently mocked the Spanish accent of the long-suffering US citizens in Puerto Rico, threw paper towels into a San Juan crowd like he was shooting hoops, and threatened to pull out his own government support from the US territory.

Source: Making a military widow cry: that is a classic Trump move | Richard Wolffe | Opinion | The Guardian

Trump: ‘Ask General Kelly’ if Obama called after son died in Afghanistan | US news | The Guardian

A White House official told the Associated Press Obama did not call Kelly. The official did not immediately respond to questions about whether the former president reached out in another fashion.The AP also reported, however, that White House visitor records showed Kelly attended a breakfast Obama hosted for Gold Star families six months after his son died. A person familiar with the breakfast – speaking on condition of anonymity because the event was private – said the Kelly family sat at Michelle Obama’s table.

Source: Trump: ‘Ask General Kelly’ if Obama called after son died in Afghanistan | US news | The Guardian

Austria’s neo-Nazis finds friends in Israel | The Electronic Intifada

Europe’s new fascists and Israel’s right have also found an alliance in their common hatred of Muslims.In June, Strache welcomed to Vienna Likud lawmaker Yehuda Glick, a leader in the so-called Temple Movement, which aims to destroy Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque and replace it with a Jewish temple.A photo posted on Strache’s Facebook page shows the pair in a friendly meeting.European Jewish organizations have condemned Israeli outreach to Europe’s far right, including the Freedom Party. Last November, the leader of the Vienna Jewish community published a letter calling on Israeli politicians to shun such meetings and “to draw a very clear red line between us and those who represent hate, neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism.”

Source: Austria’s neo-Nazis finds friends in Israel | The Electronic Intifada

University of Cincinnati to allow white nationalist Richard Spencer to speak on campus – Columbus – Columbus Business First _ UC President not smart enough to realize that no one invited him to speak – but it’s ok that a UC Policeman murdered a local Black-American neighbor and got away with it?

University of Cincinnati President Neville Pinto issued a statement Friday evening saying that the university had a First Amendment obligation to allow a white nationalist, Richard Spencer, to speak on campus.

Source: University of Cincinnati to allow white nationalist Richard Spencer to speak on campus – Columbus – Columbus Business First

Right-wing Israelis rampage through Jerusalem’s Old City | The Electronic Intifada

Occupation authorities also barred Palestinian worshippers from accessing Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque during Sukkot so that the site – revered by Christians, Jews and Muslims alike – may be visited by Jews only.The mosque was partitioned by Israel following the massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers by an American Jewish settler at the site in 1994.The city itself has been partitioned, with an area of Hebron including the Old City and Ibrahimi mosque under full Israeli military control. In that area Israeli occupation forces severely restrict the movement of more than 30,000 Palestinians while Jewish settlers move about freely under army protection.

Source: Right-wing Israelis rampage through Jerusalem’s Old City | The Electronic Intifada

A Disaster in the White House for Puerto Rico – The New York Times

Americans have gotten into the uneasy habit of wondering how low President Trump might go each day in his multiple tirades against those he imagines as enemies, critics and easy targets. But did he really have to pick on the storm-ravaged American citizens of Puerto Rico, of all defenseless people, and reveal such a cold-hearted lack of empathy for their plight?Mr. Trump’s salvo of tweets on Thursday as the island struggled with devastation — suggesting people were ingrates responsible for much of their suffering — set a new low, even meaner than his usual harangues and self-aggrandizement. It called into question whether Mr. Trump grasps and accepts the responsibilities of his office when he imperiously suggested that federal emergency aid and workers could not be maintained on the island “forever.”In his rant, Mr. Trump made it sound as if the island’s 3.4 million residents were at his executive mercy. But in fact the federal emergency process, backed by congressional funding, typically stations workers on site for years to help communities recover from natural disasters.

Let Them Eat Paper Towels – The New York Times

It’s hard to make an accurate assessment of the initial emergency response to Hurricane Maria, although there are a number of indications that it was woefully inadequate, falling far short of the response to natural disasters in other parts of the United States. What is clear, however, is that recovery has been painfully slow, and that life is actually getting worse for many residents as the cumulative effects of shortages of power, water and food take their toll.And the Trump administration seems increasingly to see this tragedy as a public relations issue, something to be spun — partly by blaming the victims — rather than as an urgent problem to be solved.