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Javier E

Trump's New Spy Chief Used to Work for a Foreign Politician the US Accused of Corruptio... - 0 views

  • Undisclosed work for a foreign politician would ordinarily pose a problem for anyone applying for a security clearance or a job in a U.S. intelligence agency because it could make the person susceptible to foreign influence or blackmail, according to the official policy from the office that Trump tapped Grenell to lead.
  • “That’s really easy, he should not have a clearance,” said Kel McClanahan, a Washington-area lawyer specializing in security clearances. “If he were one of my clients and just a normal [federal employee], he would almost assuredly not have a clearance.”
  • As Trump’s pick for acting director of national intelligence, Grenell will have access to the country’s most sensitive secrets. Grenell isn’t subject to Senate confirmation because Trump appointed him on a temporary basis.
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  • McClanahan said it’s unclear how Grenell could have already gotten a clearance as an ambassador. The House Oversight Committee is investigating whether the Trump administration has overruled career officials in granting security clearances to political appointees.
  • “The reality is he’s pro-himself and nothing more,” Valeriu Pașa, who leads a prominent civil society group in Moldova called WatchDog.MD, said of Plahotniuc. “He was playing both sides for 15 years at least.” Plahotniuc lost power in 2019 and fled Moldova. His current whereabouts are unknown.
  • “In his official capacity, Plahotniuc was involved in corrupt acts that undermined the rule of law and severely compromised the independence of democratic institutions in Moldova,” the State Department said in its announcement. “Today’s action sends a strong signal the United States does not tolerate corruption and stands with the people of Moldova in their fight against it.”
brickol

Coronavirus in America: why the US has struggled to tackle a growing crisis | US news |... - 0 views

  • Exactly a month after Donald Trump tweeted that the US had the coronavirus outbreak “very much under control”, the World Health Organization delivered a stark and jarring reality check: America faces being the centre of a pandemic that has paralysed much of the world.
  • Coronavirus has raced across the American continent with the aid of a chronic lack of preparation, deep-rooted dysfunction in the US healthcare system, and a president who has repeatedly dismissed the crisis and is now looking to scale back containment efforts in favour of restarting economic activity.
  • More than 46,000 people in the US have been diagnosed with Covid-19 and nearly 600 have died.
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  • The sharp acceleration in cases – just two weeks ago the official number was less than 2,000 – has led to the WHO warning that the US is overtaking countries such as Italy as the global hotspot for the virus.
  • early one in 10 Americans have no health insurance, while a widespread lack of sick pay across the country has forced many ill people into work despite the risk of spreading the virus.
  • the US response has been hobbled by the administration’s rejection of standard WHO testing kits, instead opting to develop its own, which turned out to be faulty.
  • Muddled messaging from the White House, where Trump has often contradicted the sombre warnings of his top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, has done little to Americans stop congregating on beaches or in shopping malls.
  • The true scale of infection in the US is almost certainly far worse, with a severe lack of testing having stymied efforts to contain Covid-19 once it emerged near Seattle
  • Authorities in New York are scouring the world for the ventilators, masks and gowns needed for an unfolding public health emergency that is expected to peak in the next three weeks.
  • The apex of this pandemic is higher and sooner than we thought,” said Andrew Cuomo, the New York governor who has garnered praise for his handling of the crisis. “I will turn this state upside down to get the hospital beds we need.”
  • Cuomo also condemned Fema and the Trump administration again, saying: “You want a pat on the back for sending 400 ventilators? What are we going to do with 400 ventilators when we need 30,000 ventilators? You’re missing the magnitude of the problem, and the problem is defined by the magnitude.”
  • The number of cases was higher in New York, he said, “because it started here first because we have global travelers coming here first. Because we have more density than other places. You will see this in suburban communities across the country. We are just a test case. We are just a test case. And that’s how the nation should look at it. Where we are today, you will be in three weeks or five weeks or six weeks.”
  • Trump has signaled that he is prepared to wind down restrictions at the end of a 15-day window in an attempt to bolster the economy and a sagging stock market.
Javier E

Opinion | What We Pretend to Know About the Coronavirus Could Kill Us - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Public health experts like Dr. Emanuel tend to be cautious about predictions and transparent about what they don’t know. In the case of the coronavirus, that can cause a dearth of definitive information — and an opportunity for reckless information that’s partly true but politically skewed.
  • The dynamic is on display during the daily White House news conferences, where President Trump’s claims are often hedged or corrected by public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci.
  • much of the pernicious false news about the coronavirus operates on the margins of believability — real facts and charts cobbled together to formulate a dangerous, wrongheaded conclusion or news reports that combine a majority of factually accurate reporting with a touch of unproven conjecture.
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  • armchair epidemiology, which Slate described as “convincing but flawed epidemiological analyses.”
  • The prime example is a Medium blog post titled “Covid-19 — Evidence Over Hysteria” by Aaron Ginn, a Silicon Valley product manager and “growth hacker” who argued against the severity of the virus and condemned the mainstream media for hyping it.
  • Conservative pundits, who’d spent weeks downplaying the seriousness of the virus, were drawn to Mr. Ginn’s conclusion that “shuttering the local economy is a distraction and arbitrary with limited accretive gain outside of greatly annoying millions and bankrupting hundreds of businesses.”
  • The Fox News political analyst Brit Hume tweeted the post, and then so did the anchors Bret Baier and Laura Ingraham. Within hours, the blog post was amplified across conservative media.
  • “I am seeing this playbook more and more,” Dr. Bergstrom said. “Secondhand data showing a crisis narrative that feels just a bit too well crafted. Mixing the truth with the plausible and the plausible with that which seems plausibly true in a week.”
  • Epidemiologists disagreed, pointing to some of Mr. Ginn’s assumptions as “unsubstantiated” and ignorant of “first-chapter-of-the-epidemiology-textbook stuff.”
  • After a 31-tweet thread from the infectious-disease expert Carl Bergstrom debunking Mr. Ginn’s data as cherry-picked, Medium took the post down, prompting a backlash in conservative spheres. More than two million people had already viewed it.
  • Mr. Ginn’s post, which seems informed by his reflexive skepticism of the mainstream media, filled two needs for readers: It offered a scientific-seeming explanation that real scientists would not provide. And it provided a political foil, the media.
  • This, according to Dr. Bergstrom, is what makes armchair epidemiology so harmful. Posts like Mr. Ginn’s “deplete the critical resource you need to manage the pandemic, which is trust,
  • “When people are getting conflicting messages, it makes it very hard for state and local authorities to generate the political will to take strong actions downstream.”
  • At first glance, the piece looked quite convincing. Mr. Ginn drew heavily from charts from the C.D.C., Johns Hopkins and the Financial Times. “You don’t need a special degree to understand what the data says and doesn’t say,” he claimed.
  • Dr. Bergstrom argues that the advances in available data make it easier than ever for junk-science peddlers to appear legitimate.
  • “Statistical analysis is a black box to most of us,” Dr. Bergstrom said. “And it’s like, ‘I can’t challenge a multilinear statistical regression because I don’t know what that is,’
  • “And so a form of authority gets imposed on a reader and we tend not to challenge data the way we’ve learned to challenge words.”
  • Mr. Evans is concerned that ultimately important nuance will be lost and pro-Trump pundits will use the news to exclusively scapegoat China and divert blame away from domestic failings. “What’s scary is how smart the false stuff is,” he said.
  • Covid-19 and the immediate threat to public health means that networks like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been unusually decisive about taking down misinformation. “In a case of a pandemic like this, when we are seeing posts that are urging people not to get treatment,” Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said recently, “that’s a completely different class of content versus the back-and-forth of what candidates may say about each other.”
  • The Trump administration and right-wing media watchdogs will weaponize changing facts about the virus, pointing to them as proof of a deep state bent on damaging the president or a media apparatus trying to swing an election
  • Others will try to pin the blame for the pandemic solely on the Trump administration
  • What we don’t know about Covid-19 will degenerate into ever more intricate conspiracies — some almost believable, some outrageous but all dangerous.
  • “We’re in a stream of ever-evolving data, and it’s being shaped around cognitive biases, partisanship and preferences embedded in our cultural identities,”
  • I called Mr. Pomerantsev because the information vacuum around the virus made me think of the title of his earlier book on Russia — “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible.
  • In the absence of new, vetted information, reckless speculation takes its place, muddling our conception of the truth.
  • in crisis situations — especially early on — our desire for information exceeds our ability to accurately deliver it. Add to this the complexities of epidemiology: exponential growth; statistical modeling; and the slow, methodical nature of responsible science.
  • Together, they create the ideal conditions for distrust, bad-faith interpretations and political manipulation, the contours of which we’re only beginning to see.
  • “The really big question that haunts me is, ‘When do we return to reality?’” Mr. Pomerantsev mused over the phone from his own quarantine. “Or is it that in this partisan age absolutely everything is chopped, cut and edited to fit a different view? I’m waiting for society to finally hit up against a shared reality, like diving into the bottom of swimming pool. Instead we just go deeper.”
malonema1

WH social media director Dan Scavino warned after tweet - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

  • White House social media director Dan Scavino warned after tweet
  • enior White House aide Dan Scavino was reprimanded by the US Office of Special Counsel for violating the Hatch Act in a tweet, according to a letter posted by a Washington watchdog group.The letter addressed to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington states that Scavino, the White House director of social media, violated the Hatch Act on April 1 when he sent a tweet calling for the defeat of GOP Rep. Justin Amash in a primary.
ethanshilling

Police Mishandled Black Lives Matter Protests, Reports Say - The New York Times - 0 views

  • For many long weeks last summer, protesters in American cities faced off against their own police forces in what proved to be, for major law enforcement agencies across the country, a startling display of violence and disarray.
  • In Philadelphia, police sprayed tear gas on a crowd of mainly peaceful protesters trapped on an interstate who had nowhere to go and no way to breathe.
  • In Chicago, officers were given arrest kits so old that the plastic handcuffs were decayed or broken. Los Angeles officers were issued highly technical foam-projectile launchers for crowd control, but many of them had only two hours of training
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  • Now, months after the demonstrations that followed the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police in May, the full scope of the country’s policing response is becoming clearer.
  • In city after city, the reports are a damning indictment of police forces that were poorly trained, heavily militarized and stunningly unprepared for the possibility that large numbers of people would surge into the streets
  • The New York Times reviewed reports by outside investigators, watchdogs and consultants analyzing the police response to protests in nine major cities, including four of the nation’s largest.
  • Almost uniformly, the reports said departments need more training in how to handle large protests.
  • Those first days of protest after Mr. Floyd’s killing presented an extraordinary law enforcement challenge, experts say, one that few departments were prepared to tackle.
  • The reports are strikingly similar, a point made by the Indianapolis review, which said that officers’ responses “were not dissimilar to what appears to have occurred in cities around the country.”
  • Departments also were criticized for not planning for protests, despite evidence that they would be large
  • As with the protests in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 that culminated in the Capitol riot, police also did not understand how angry people were, in some cases because they lacked resources devoted to intelligence and outreach that would have put them in better touch with their communities.
  • On May 29, Indianapolis police showed up with helmets, face shields, reinforced vests and batons. Protesters told investigators this “made the police look militarized and ready for battle.”
  • The reports repeatedly blamed police departments for escalating violence instead of taming it. At times, police looked as if they were on the front lines of a war.
  • In Portland, where protests continued nightly, police officers used force more than 6,000 times during six months, according to lawyers with the U.S. Department of Justice
  • In Denver, officers used similar “less lethal” weapons against people who yelled about officers’ behavior. Officers also improperly fired projectiles that hit or nearly hit heads and faces, according to the report by the city’s independent police monitor.
  • For decades, criminal justice experts have warned that warrior-like police tactics escalate conflict at protests instead of defusing it.
  • The independent report on the Los Angeles police, commissioned by the City Council, said officers who may have had insufficient training in how to use the weapons fired into dynamic crowds. “To be precise takes practice,” it said.
  • The Chicago police response on the night of May 29, when hundreds of people marched through the streets, “was marked by poor coordination, inconsistency, and confusion,” the city’s Office of Inspector General found.
  • Chicago police also did not have enough computers to process large numbers of arrestees. In Los Angeles, police did not have enough buses to transport arrested people — a problem the department has had for a decade
  • All told, the reports suggest the likelihood of problems in the event of future protests. The trial now underway in Minneapolis of the officer facing the most serious charges in Mr. Floyd’s death, Derek Chauvin, is one potential trigger.
anonymous

Defying rules, anti-vaccine accounts thrive on social media - 0 views

  • For years, the same platforms have allowed anti-vaccination propaganda to flourish, making it difficult to stamp out such sentiments now. And their efforts to weed out other types of COVID-19 misinformation — often with fact-checks, informational labels and other restrained measures, has been woefully slow.
  • But since April 2020, it has removed a grand total of 8,400 tweets spreading COVID-related misinformation — a tiny fraction of the avalanche of pandemic-related falsehoods tweeted out daily by popular users with millions of followers, critics say.
  • “While they fail to take action, lives are being lost,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a watchdog group.
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  • “It’s a hard situation because we have let this go for so long,” said Jeanine Guidry, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies social media and health information. “People using social media have really been able to share what they want for nearly a decade.”
  • One such page, The Truth About Cancer, has more than a million Facebook followers after years of posting baseless suggestions that vaccines could cause autism or damage children’s brains. The page was identified in November as a “COVID-19 vaccine misinformation super spreader” by NewsGuard.
  • Facebook said it is taking taking “aggressive steps to fight misinformation across our apps by removing millions of pieces of COVID-19 and vaccine content on Facebook and Instagram during the pandemic.”
  • As U.S. vaccine supplies continue to increase, immunization efforts will soon shift from targeting a limited supply to the most vulnerable populations to getting as many shots into as many arms as possible.
  • YouTube, which has generally avoided the same type scrutiny as its social media peers despite being a source of misinformation, said it has removed more than 30,000 videos since October, when it started banning false claims about COVID-19 vaccinations.
  • Prior to the pandemic, however, social media platforms had done little to stamp out misinformation, said Andy Pattison, manager of digital solutions for the World Health Organization.
  • “It’s a very fine line between freedom of speech and eroding science,” Pattison said. Purveyors of misinformation, he said, “learn the rules, and they dance right on the edge, all the time.”
  • But blatantly false COVID-19 information continues to pop up. Earlier this month, several articles circulating online claimed that more elderly Israelis who took the Pfizer vaccine were “killed” by the shot than those who died from COVID-19 itself. One such article from an anti-vaccination website was shared nearly 12,000 times on Facebook, leading earlier this month to a spike of nearly 40,000 mentions of “vaccine deaths” across social platforms and the internet, according to an analysis by media intelligence firm Zignal Labs.
  • Facebook also banned ads that discourage vaccines and said it has added warning labels to more than 167 million pieces of additional COVID-19 content thanks to our network of fact-checking partners.
  • “Vaccine hesitancy and misinformation could be a big barrier to getting enough of the population vaccinated to end the crisis,” said Lisa Fazio, a professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University.
  • “If someone truly believes that the COVID vaccine is harmful and they feel a responsibility to share that with friends and family ... they will find a way,” Guidry said.
  • When the Center for Countering Digital Hate recently studied the crossover between different types of disinformation and hate speech, it found that Instagram tended to cross-pollinate misinformation via its algorithm.
katherineharron

US officials plead for caution as coronavirus variants spread -- Coronavirus Fact vs. F... - 0 views

  • Dr. Anthony Fauci has pleaded with the US public to "hold out just a bit longer" as health experts fear coronavirus variants and pandemic fatigue could lead to a spring surge in Covid-19 cases.
  • "We're concerned that [cases have] plateaued at a high level, an unacceptably high level,"
  • The B.1.1.7 variant was first spotted in the United Kingdom. It spreads more easily and appears to be deadlier as well.
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  • "We can't claim victory prematurely," he said. "Everybody, including myself, has some degree of Covid-19 fatigue, but the thing we try and emphasize is that this will end."
  • The spike is causing tension between the White House and some state governors who are pushing ahead with relaxed restrictions. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Tuesday he was lifting the state's mask mandate, while Alabama's Kay Ivey plans to do the same next week. New Orleans city leaders said Wednesday that they were relaxing capacity limit caps on gatherings. Meanwhile, Florida has welcomed crowds of spring breakers -- many of whom are unvaccinated and maskless.
  • Fauci's comments echoed those of President Joe Biden from earlier this week. Biden said Monday that "now is not the time" to ease social restrictions
  • People who have had both Covid-19 shots can gather indoors without wearing masks, meaning that the celebration can be held with some semblance of normality.
  • The agency said it still advises fully vaccinated people to wear masks outdoors and to take precautions until more is known about how vaccines protect against coronavirus.
  • The protection offered by the Pfizer and Moderna coronavirus vaccines is likely to last longer than six months, and maybe even years, vaccine experts told CNN, after data was released showing good protection half a year after people were inoculated.
  • The British medicines watchdog has identified 30 cases of rare blood clots in people who have received the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine -- 25 more than previously reported -- but none with the Pfizer/BioNTech shot.
  • the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said it received 22 reports of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and eight reports of other thrombosis events, out of a total of 18.1 million doses of the vaccine
  • The MHRA said people should continue to get the AstraZeneca vaccine, because the benefits greatly outweigh the risks.
  • Germany has this week limited the AstraZeneca vaccine to people over 60, following reports of a rare blood clot in the brains of 31 people who had received a first dose in the country.
  • Side effects from Covid-19 vaccines won't last long
delgadool

Mexico Set to Reshape Power Sector to Favor the State - The New York Times - 0 views

  • MEXICO CITY — President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has never been short of criticisms about his predecessor’s legacy. But he has reserved a special contempt for the sweeping overhaul that opened Mexico’s tightly held energy industry to the private sector.
  • The measure, which was recently approved by Mexico’s Congress with the forceful support of Mr. López Obrador, would also limit the participation of private investors in the energy sector. Both effects are central to his long-held aim of restoring energy self-sufficiency and safeguarding Mexican sovereignty.
  • Opponents of the legislation say that it would not only fail to resuscitate the energy sector or help achieve energy independence but that it would also violate Mexico’s international commitments to reducing carbon emissions, run afoul of trade agreements and further chill foreign investment in Mexico just as the nation is struggling to regain economic momentum amid the pandemic.
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  • has faced almost universal criticism from opposition legislators, environmentalists, industry analysts, Mexican and international business groups and even Mexico’s antitrust watchdog.
  • But the new legislation effectively restores preferences for state-run, fossil-fuel-driven plants that generate power at higher costs and produce greater carbon emissions.
  • “I think the impact of this reform is a major reversal,” said Lourdes Melgar, who was a top energy official in the administration of Mr. López Obrador’s predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto. The Mexican president, she said, “has had a very nationalistic view of how to utilize resources.”
  • Gas-fired plants generate more than half of Mexico’s power; the vast majority of the natural gas is imported, with most of it coming from the United States, according to the Mexican government.
  • “This doesn’t have any economic logic,” said Víctor Ramírez Cabrera, spokesman for the Mexico, Climate and Energy Platform, a research group in Mexico City. He called the new model for power sourcing “absurd.”
  • “There is no way to comply with the Paris Agreement under these conditions,” Mr. Ramírez said. “Just give it up for dead.”
  • “Investment levels are dropping, and nobody wants to invest here,” said Israel Tello, a legal analyst at Integralia, a Mexico City-based consultancy group. “Legal uncertainty is the most lethal weapon against investment.”
aidenborst

FEC fines National Enquirer publisher over Trump hush-money payment - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • The Federal Election Commission on Tuesday said it had fined the publisher of the National Enquirer for its role in a "hush-money" payment made to quiet a woman who alleged an affair with former President Donald Trump during the 2016 election cycle, according to documents made public by Common Cause, a watchdog group.
  • The $187,500 fine came after the commission found that American Media Inc., whose successor is A360 Media, LLC, made an illegal corporate campaign contribution by paying $150,000 during Trump's first presidential campaign to prevent former Playboy model Karen McDougal from going public with her claims of an affair. Trump has denied the affair.
  • The FEC conciliation agreement with A360 Media -- made public by Common Cause, which had filed a complaint about the McDougal payment -- came after AMI signed a 2018 non-prosecution agreement with Manhattan federal prosecutors in which it admitted that its "principal purpose in entering into the agreement" to pay McDougal "was to suppress [McDougal's] story so as to prevent it from influencing the election."
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  • The McDougal payment was orchestrated by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign violations stemming from his role in two hush-money payments: the one AMI made to McDougal and a separate $130,000 payment he made to another woman, Stormy Daniels, who also alleged an affair that Trump denies.
  • When the FEC's vote on the matter became public in May, Trump praised the results, saying it closed the book on what he called the "phony case against me."
saberal

Iran agrees to extend deal on cameras at its nuclear sites | Fox News - 0 views

  • Iran and the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agreed Monday to a one-month extension to a deal on surveillance cameras at Tehran’s atomic sites, buying more time for ongoing negotiations seeking to save the country’s tattered nuclear deal with world powers.
  • Speaking at a news conference Monday in Vienna, IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi told journalists that came after a discussion with Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s civilian nuclear program. He acknowledged that challenges remain, however, as the agency still can’t access images taken by its cameras.
  • Under a confidential agreement called an "Additional Protocol" with Iran, the IAEA collects and analyzes images from a series of surveillance cameras installed at Iranian nuclear sites. Those cameras helped it monitor Tehran’s program to see if it is complying with the nuclear deal.
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  • Negotiations continue in Vienna to see if both the U.S. and Iran can re-enter the deal, which limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Iran and the U.S. aren’t directly negotiating, however.
  • He also acknowledged Iran’s upcoming June 18 presidential election could mean new faces at the negotiating table. So far, Grossi has been dealing with the administration of the relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani, which clinched the nuclear deal. Analysts believe hard-liners have an edge going into the vote.
anonymous

FBI Director Wray Interview: Capitol Attack, Atlanta Shootings : NPR - 0 views

  • Christopher Wray is only the eighth director to lead the FBI — and the only one whose appointment was announced on Twitter.For the past 3 1/2 years, he has been grinding through fierce criticism by former President Donald Trump. He's also guided the bureau through some wounds the FBI inflicted upon itself, including employees' text messages about political candidates in 2016, the guilty plea by an FBI lawyer for altering a document, and a watchdog report that uncovered surveillance applications filled with big mistakes.
  • Now the laconic Wray, 54, is opening up, ever so slightly, to address what he calls a metastasizing threat of violent domestic extremists and the sprawling investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.He spoke with NPR on Thursday afternoon about the state of the bureau and how the FBI is confronting white supremacist and militia-based terrorism. He also addressed the ongoing investigation into the recent shootings in the Atlanta area.
  • The FBI is supporting state and local law enforcement, specifically APD, the Atlanta Police Department, and the [Cherokee County] Sheriff's Office. So we're actively involved but in a support role. And while the motive remains still under investigation at the moment, it does not appear that the motive was racially motivated.
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  • I elevated racially motivated violent extremism to our top threat priority level about a year and a half ago or so.
  • We have doubled the number of domestic violent extremist investigations we've had since where they were when I started as director, and we were up to about 2,000. And that was before the Jan. 6 siege.
  • And so at the same time, the international terrorism threat — especially international terrorist organizations that inspire homegrown violent extremists here in the U.S. — hasn't gone away by any stretch of the imagination.
  • I was appalled that something like that could happen in this country and determined to make sure that it doesn't happen ever again. ...
  • If we have the evidence to charge somebody and they committed a crime on that day, I expect them to be charged. ...
  • We've arrested people all over the country. I think we have ... open investigations specifically related to the Jan. 6 siege in all but one of our 56 field offices, which gives you a sense of the national sprawl of the investigation.
  • we had been reporting and warning for a good chunk of 2020, together with the Department of Homeland Security and in a number of instances about the domestic violent extremist threat, about the possibility that the domestic violence extremist threat would carry into the election and beyond the election.
  • Now, what we did not have, as far as I can tell ... is any indication that hundreds and hundreds of people were going to breach the U.S. Capitol. And so we'll be looking hard to figure out, is there more we can be doing? How can we do more, even better?
  • Our approach, the FBI's approach — we have one approach, which is if you take the law in your own hands and commit violence, it doesn't matter what your motivation is, what your ideology is, we're going to pursue you to the fullest extent of the law. And that ... was our approach over the summer. That's been our approach with jihadists-inspired violent extremists, and that's been our approach to the siege on the Capitol.
  • So in the last two years, the number of people across this country, qualified people, applying to be special agents, has tripled the years before, and it's the highest it's been in about a decade. So it was around 12,000 a year my first few years as director and went up to [36,000], 37,000.
  • If you were a victim ... who would you most want trying to seek justice on your behalf? And if you were a bad guy, who would you least want on your tail? And I think the FBI is the answer to both questions, 99 out of 100 times all over the country, and that to me is ultimately what really matters in terms of our brand.
Javier E

Mob Violence Against Palestinians in Israel Is Fueled by Groups on WhatsApp - The New Y... - 0 views

  • Last Wednesday, a message appeared in a new WhatsApp channel called “Death to the Arabs.” The message urged Israelis to join a mass street brawl against Palestinian citizens of Israel.
  • “Together we organize and together we act,” read a message in one of the WhatsApp groups. “Tell your friends to join the group, because here we know how to defend Jewish honor.”
  • The episode was one of dozens across Israel that the authorities have linked to a surge of activity by Jewish extremists on WhatsApp, the encrypted messaging service owned by Facebook.
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  • Since violence between Israelis and Palestinians escalated last week, at least 100 new WhatsApp groups have been formed for the express purpose of committing violence against Palestinians, according to an analysis by The New York Times and FakeReporter, an Israeli watchdog group that studies misinformation.
  • While social media and messaging apps have been used in the past to spread hate speech and inspire violence, these WhatsApp groups go further, researchers said. That’s because the groups are explicitly planning and executing violent acts against Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up roughly 20 percent of the population and live largely integrated lives with Jewish neighbors.
  • That is far more specific than past WhatsApp-fueled mob attacks in India, where calls for violence were vague and generally not targeted at individuals or businesses
  • Even the Stop the Steal groups in the United States that organized the Jan. 6 protests in Washington did not openly direct attacks using social media or messaging apps,
  • In the groups, attacks have been carefully documented, with members often gloating about taking part in the violence, according to The Times’s review. Some said they were taking revenge for rockets being fired onto Israel from militants in the Gaza Strip, while others cited different grievances. Many solicited names of Arab-owned businesses they could target next.
  • “It is a perfect storm of people empowered to use their own names and phone numbers to openly call for violence, and having a tool like WhatsApp to organize themselves into mobs,” said Achiya Schatz, director of FakeReporter.
  • Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the Israeli police, said, “Police are tracking social media and monitoring movements on the ground.” He said that while Israelis have been involved in some attacks, they were largely “protecting themselves” against attacks by Palestinian citizens of Israel. He added, “Police investigations are continuing.”
  • One official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, added that the police had not seen similar WhatsApp groups forming among Palestinians.
  • Islamist movements, including Hamas, the militant Palestinian organization that controls the Gaza Strip, have long organized and recruited followers on social media but do not plan attacks on the services for fear of being discovered.
  • A WhatsApp spokeswoman said the messaging service was concerned by the activity from Israeli extremists. She said the company had removed some accounts of people who participated in the groups. WhatsApp cannot read the encrypted messages on its service, she added, but it has acted when accounts were reported to it for violating its terms of service.
  • The groups have since grown steadily in size, Mr. Schatz said. Some have become so big that they have branched off into local chapters that are dedicated to certain cities and towns. To evade detection by WhatsApp, organizers of the groups are urging people to vet new members, he said.
  • On one new Telegram channel that The Times reviewed, “The Revenge Troops,” people recently shared instructions for how to build Molotov cocktails and makeshift explosives. The group asked its 400 members to also provide addresses of Arab-owned businesses that could be targeted.
  • In another group with just under 100 members, people shared photos of guns, knives and other weapons as they discussed engaging in street combat in mixed Jewish-Arab cities. Another new WhatsApp group was named “The unapologetic right-wing group.”
  • “We destroyed them, we left them in pieces,” said one person in “The Revenge Troops” Telegram channel, alongside a photo showing smashed car windows. In a different group, a video was uploaded of black-clad Jewish youths stopping cars on an unnamed street and asking drivers if they were Jewish or Arab.
  • We beat “the enemy car-by-car,” said a comment posted underneath the video, using an expletive.
  • “Our government is too weak to do what is necessary, so we take it into our own hands,” wrote one person in a WhatsApp group dedicated to the city of Ramle in central Israel. “Now that we have organized, they can’t stop us.”
anonymous

New York State Sues NYPD Over Its Handling Of 2020 Racial Justice Protests : NPR - 0 views

  • New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed a lawsuit against the New York City Police Department, citing "a pattern of using excessive force and making false arrests against New Yorkers during peaceful protests" that sought racial justice and other changes.
  • The Black Lives Matter movement and other activists organized large protests in New York and other states last year, after the Memorial Day death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. Demonstrations grew over similar incidents, including the killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky.
  • "more than 1,300 complaints and pieces of evidence" about the police response to the protests in New York City. It's now seeking a court order "declaring that the policies and practices that the NYPD used during these protests were unlawful."
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  • Along with the court order, the attorney general is asking for policy reforms, as well as a monitor to be installed to oversee the NYPD's tactics and handling of future protests.
  • The NYPD has been sharply criticized over a number of its officers' actions in the past year. Last May, police SUVs were shown in a video of a protest in Brooklyn, surging into a crowd that had surrounded them. In another incident, an officer drew his gun and pointed it at a crowd of people.
  • The police actions broke state and federal law, James says. The lawsuit alleges that New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea and NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan "failed to prevent and address the pattern or practice of excessive force and false arrests by officers against peaceful protesters in violation of the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution"
  • The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. After the lawsuit was filed, the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York issued a statement blaming the city's leadership for the problems at the protests.
  • James announced the lawsuit against the NYPD Thursday morning, in a virtual news conference that began shortly before New York Gov.
  • Last June, the NYPD suspended at least two officers for their behavior during protests, including an officer who was captured on video pushing a woman to the ground in Brooklyn. Another officer was punished for "pulling down an individual's face mask in Brooklyn and spraying pepper spray at him,
  • Human Rights Watch, an independent watchdog group, issued a report last year on the police misconduct in Brooklyn which said that clearly identified medics and legal observers were among those zip-tied and beaten by police, in a response to the protest which was "intentional, planned, and unjustified."
  • The lawsuit says the police department sent thousands of poorly trained officers to cope with large-scale protests, resulting in mass arrests and attempts to suppress demonstrations. It also says the NYPD made a practice out of "kettling" – corralling people by using physical force and obstructions – to arrest protesters rather than allow crowds to disperse.
  • A Minnesota judge ruled this week that Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who kept his knee on Floyd's neck for several minutes, will stand trial alone when proceedings begin in March. Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter. Readability mode is unavailable for this webpage. Please visit cache page or original page Top - A + ==== Serif ====PT SerifMerriweatherMartelNoto SerifSlabo 27pxAndadaLoraRoboto Slab== Sans Serif ==Source Sans ProOpen SansLato
aleija

Facebook will temporarily stop showing ads for gun accessories and military gear. - The... - 0 views

  • Facebook will temporarily stop showing ads that “promote weapon accessories and protective equipment in the U.S. at least through Jan. 22,” two days after Inauguration Day, according to a statement by the company.
  • The social media platform had been showing ads for military equipment, like body armor and gun holsters, to users who were engaging with content promoting misinformation about the presidential election and news about the Capitol riot, according to an article by Buzzfeed News. Ads for weapon accessories were also being shown to people who followed right-wing extremist pages or groups on Facebook, according to the article, which cited data from the Tech Transparency Project, a nonprofit watchdog group.
  • Much of the planning for last week’s attack on the Capitol was conducted in the open on social media networks, including on mainstream sites like Facebook and Twitter, and also on lesser-known sites used by the far right such as Parler and Gab.
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  • “Facebook must hold itself accountable for how domestic enemies of the United States have used the company’s products and platform to further their own illicit aims,”
  • “We believe that Facebook’s micro-targeted advertising of such gear, including to audiences that have an affinity for extremist content and election misinformation, could promote and facilitate further politically motivated attacks,” the attorneys general wrote.
mariedhorne

Saudi Arabia Curbs Death Penalty in Move to Soften Image - WSJ - 0 views

  • Saudi Arabia Curbs Death Penalty in Move to Soften Image - WSJSaudi Arabia Curbs Death Penalty in Move to Soften Image - WSJRIYADH, Saudi Arabia—Saudi Arabia said Monday it had imposed a moratorium on capital punishment for drug-related offenses that led to an 85% reduction in executions, as the conservative Muslim kingdom seeks to soften its image to attract Western tourists and foreign investment.
  • The state-backed Human Rights Commission said 27 executions were recorded in 2020. That is down from 184 the year before, according to rights watchdog Amnesty International, when Saudi Arabia trailed only China and Iran globally.
  • Prince Mohammed, the 35-year-old de facto ruler, has previously said the government was working to change the law to reduce the punishment for some crimes from execution to life in prison.
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  • “This is a required step and now we hope to increase alternative punishments after long years of increased killing,” Mr. Hajji said. “But we want that to be done in a lawful and disciplined way, not randomly and arbitrarily.”
  • The 2018 killing and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate sparked global outrage and government pledges of justice for the perpetrators. Five people convicted in Mr. Khashoggi’s murder were initially given the death penalty, but their sentences were reduced to 20-year prison terms after his son said he forgave them.
Javier E

'This is the golden age': eastern Europe's extraordinary 30-year revival | World news |... - 0 views

  • The “shock therapy” reforms that speedily pushed Poland and other countries in the region into capitalism have come in for criticism, but Leszek Balcerowicz, the architect of Poland’s reforms, still believes they were the best option for the country in the circumstances. “If you move fast from a bad system to a better one, you release new forces for growth,
  • While communism left the region an economic basket case, it did also provide some of the seeds for growth: well-educated societies with low levels of inequality
  • Particularly in Poland, the transition led to a class of entrepreneurs like Grabski, rather than a small group of oligarchs. “We had the Solidarity movement in the factories and they were like a watchdog. So directors couldn’t go into shabby deals like in Russia,”
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  • crucially, unlike in Russia and Ukraine, central European countries largely avoided a situation where a few people walked off with the majority of the prized former state assets.
  • if there is one factory that symbolises both central Europe’s growth over the last three decades and the potential pitfalls going forward, it is not the Gdańsk shipyard but the Audi plant at Győr, in north-west Hungary.
  • In some countries in the region, these institutional frameworks are still under attack from governments, but the situation compared with neighbouring Ukraine, for example, where the courts, police and tax authorities are hopelessly dependent on political and big business interests, is incomparable
  • “Joining the EU was the key moment, not because of subsidies, but because of frameworks: anti-monopoly rules, environmental protection and so on,” says Grabski
  • Things took off when Hungary joined the EU in 2004 and could be integrated fully into the manufacturer’s supply chain. Today, Audi Hungaria is a modern-day capitalist version of a Soviet monogorod, or one-factory town. The vast complex on the outskirts of Győr is a set of nondescript white hangars linked by an internal road system, and the plant has its own restaurants, medical clinic, fire station and postal service.
  • Going forward, the key will be moving away from an economic model of western European countries outsourcing production to the east, and towards one that sees ideas and innovation developed inside the region. Only in this way, analysts say, will the countries of the region be able to fully close the gap in wealth and living standards with the other half of Europe. So far, however, there is little sign of the spending on research and development, or institutional reforms, that would be required for such a long-term shift
  • on average even the poorest parts of society are better off than they were 30 years ago, this is little comfort to those in former industrial areas or rural regions where there is an overwhelming sense of decay; indeed, that decay can feel ever more pressing when compared to the progress experienced in shinier areas
  • In the three decades since independence, the populations of all the region’s countries have shrunk. Latvia has lost more than a quarter of its population, Bulgaria and Romania around a fifth. With higher salaries a short and easy flight away, the process was inevitable. In parts of the region, this has led to chronic shortages of doctors and other skilled workers.
  • it’s worth acknowledging just how fast things have improved. Poland has moved from 25% of German income levels 30 years ago to 60% today. “You can’t expect Poles to completely catch up with Germans within one generation. It’s only natural for people to aspire to a good life as quickly as possible. But it’s just unrealistic for this to happen. The whole region has been the dark periphery of Europe for the last 1,000 years,”
Javier E

How key Republicans inside Facebook are shifting its politics to the right | Technology... - 0 views

  • David Brock, founder and chairman of Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog, said: “Mark Zuckerberg continues to kowtow to the right and rightwing criticism. It began when he met with a bunch of rightwingers in May 2016 and then Facebook changed its algorithm policies and we saw a lot of fake news as a result.
  • “I think there’s a consistent pattern of Zuckerberg and the Breitbart issue is the most recent one where the right is able to make false claims of conservative bias on Facebook and then he bends over backwards to accommodate that criticism.”
  • The Republican strain in Facebook was highlighted in a recent edition of the Popular Information newsletter, which stated that the top three leaders in the company’s Washington office are veteran party operatives. “Facebook’s DC office ensures that the company’s content policies meet the approval of Republicans in Congress,” Popular Information said
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  • oel Kaplan, vice-president of global public policy at Facebook, manages the company’s relationships with policymakers around the world. A former law clerk to archconservative justice Antonin Scalia on the supreme court, he served as deputy chief of staff for policy under former president George W Bush from 2006 to 2009, joining Facebook two years later
  • Warren noted on Twitter this week: “Since he was hired, Facebook spent over $71 million on lobbying—nearly 100 times what it had spent before Kaplan joined.”
  • Kaplan has reportedly advocated for rightwing sites such as Breitbart and the Daily Caller, which earlier this year became a partner in Facebook’s factchecking program. Founded by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, the Daily Caller is pro-Trump, anti-immigrant and widely criticised for the way it reported on a fake nude photo of the Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
  • Facebook’s Washington headquarters also includes Kevin Martin, vice-president of US public policy and former chairman, under Bush, of the Federal Communications Commission – where a congressional report said his “heavy-handed, opaque and non-collegial management style … created distrust, suspicion and turmoil”
  • Katie Harbath, the company’s public policy director for global elections, led digital strategy for Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee. She has been the principal defender of the company’s decision to allow political advert
Javier E

George Luber isn't going away. The truth about climate change isn't, either. - The Wash... - 0 views

  • A researcher with the agency for 17 years, Luber focused on how a hotter planet will affect human health — including the potential for long heat waves that could kill tens of thousands and the likely spread of mosquito-borne diseases as waters where the insects breed grow warmer. Among climate scientists, Luber was something of a rock star, appearing with Matt Damon in Showtime’s “Years of Living Dangerously” series and frequently sought for media interviews and speeches.
  • guards have stopped him when he has tried to enter the CDC’s Atlanta campus, where he used to work, because his photograph is on a BOLO (Be On the Lookout) list. So Luber is assigned projects that can be done from home, focusing on subjects that have little to do with his interests or expertise.
  • None of this could be confirmed with the CDC. “Unfortunately, we cannot comment on personnel issues,” a spokeswoman told me
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  • Within moments of Trump becoming president, references to confronting “climate change” disappeared from the White House website. Luber says the stifling effect became apparent at his own agency when one of his bosses asked him to refrain from using the phrase.
  • “Can you find some other way to talk about it? Call it ‘extreme weather,’ ” Luber recalls being told. “I thought this was ridiculous and refused.”
  • Not long after, Luber was given a termination notice based on anonymous — and, he says, fabricated — charges against him. The allegations included submitting falsified timecards, writing a book without authorization, and showing up late and hung over for a speech. The CDC backed off after the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility came to Luber’s defense and the New York Times started looking into the effort to fire him.
  • Luber, however, was not able to stop the CDC from quietly folding his 18-person program into a much larger section of the agency that studies asthma
  • Nor is Luber part of it anymore. “While I’m still employed, I’m unable to continue the work that I’ve dedicated my career to,” he said. “I’ve been stuck in some dark corner of the agency, which is hoping I will eventually go away. I will not.”
blythewallick

Trump impeachment: White House broke law by freezing Ukraine aid, says watchdog - live ... - 0 views

  • House speaker Nancy Pelosi is speaking to reporters and said the impeachment trial is needed because “every day new, incriminating information comes forward.”
  • Pelosi then spoke about a poster in her grade school classroom which said: “What a tangle web we weave when we first practice to deceive,” and said with this White House, you see that happen “more and more.”
  • This year America will face an epic choice. The future of the White House and supreme court, abortion rights, climate policy and a range of other issues – all are in play, at the same time that misinformation makes rigorous reporting more important than ever. Across the world, similar challenges lie ahead: far-right populism, escalating inequality, and a growing number of autocrats in power.
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  • The GAO’s central argument is the White House can’t unilaterally decide to withhold foreign aid that has been appropriated by Congress. An OMB spokesperson said the office disagreed with the watchdog’s findings.
  • Government investigators says White House broke the law by freezing Ukraine aid
  • “Faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the report said.
  • Yesterday, the House voted to send articles of impeachment to the Senate, setting in motion the third impeachment Senate trial in US history.
  • Lev Parnas said while he did not speak directly with Donald Trump about efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating the former vice-president Joe Biden, a political rival, he had met with the president several times. Parnas also said Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, told Parnas he was updating Trump in an interview with the New York Times.
  • “My biggest regret is trusting so much,” Parnas said. “I thought I was being a patriot and helping the president,” he said, adding that he “thought by listening to the president and his attorney that I couldn’t possibly get in trouble or do anything wrong”.
  • Trump has denied misconduct, and it’s unclear how much this new material will be absorbed into the Senate impeachment trial.
  • Trump, meanwhile, has a quiet schedule for the day besides an announcement about prayer in schools in the afternoon.
clairemann

Beyond Impeachment, a Push for Ethics Laws That Do Not Depend on Shame - The New York T... - 0 views

  • they are also pressing ahead with a parallel effort to try to ensure that Mr. Trump’s four-year record of violating democratic and constitutional norms cannot be repeated.
  • Mr. Trump’s term has revealed enormous gaps between the ideals of American democracy and the reality. Even before he incited a mob to attack the Capitol and the legislative branch of government, he ignored watchdog rulings and constitutional safeguards, pressed to overturn the outcome of an election, and pardoned those who covered for him, all while funneling taxpayer dollars to his family business.
  • “We have to reconstruct some norms that have been damaged, but the idea is to strike a balance so that reform is effective without undermining a strong presidency,” he said.
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  • Protecting Our Democracy Act and H.R. 1, will be the main vehicles to address the sweep of questionable practices in the Trump era, which culminated in the president’s efforts to reverse the election outcome and provoke a riot to thwart the final electoral vote for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
  • “The mechanism that preserved that system was the fear of paying a political price,” said Susan Hennessey, an author of the book “Unmaking the Presidency: Donald Trump’s War on the World’s Most Powerful Office.” “Now we know that if there’s not a credible fear of that, we’re likely to see future presidents attempting to violate these rules or push the boundaries more and more.”
  • Right now, the office relies on a president’s desire to avoid scandal and impropriety, and the Senate’s reluctance to schedule confirmation hearings for nominees who have not filed the proper paperwork and committed to divestiture.
  • “The law is totally on my side, meaning the president can’t have a conflict of interest,” he said soon after he won election.
  • The bill would also expand legal protections for whistle-blowers to cover a president’s political appointees, and shield all whistle-blowers from retaliatory investigations, measures included after Mr. Trump’s efforts to identify an anonymous government whistle-blower who exposed the president’s attempt to enlist Ukraine in digging up dirt on Mr. Biden.
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