| QAnon Says FBI Labeling Them a Terror Threat Just Proves There’s a Deep-State Conspiracy Against Them Posted: 02 Aug 2019 10:51 AM PDT  Scott Olson/GettyOn paper, Thursday was a bad day for followers of the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon. A newly revealed FBI report warned that the theory's followers presented a heightened risk for terrorism. Multiple popular predictions by QAnon followers also failed to materialize.But for hardcore Q followers, the rough week won't shake their faith.The FBI memo, which was published in late May and first reported by Yahoo News, warned of the theory's likelihood to "spread and evolve in the modern information marketplace." So far, the warning has proven true. Despite a series of violent QAnon-inspired incidents and failed Q prophecies, movement followers still say they see nothing wrong with it, and even suggest that the FBI report is part of a conspiracy against them.The memo names QAnon supporters, alongside followers of other fringe political conspiracy theories like Pizzagate, as being likely to carry out extremist acts in the name of their beliefs."One key assumption driving these assessments is that certain conspiracy theory narratives tacitly support or legitimize violent action," the memo reads. "The FBI also assumes, but not all individuals or domestic extremists who hold such beliefs will act on them. The FBI assess these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts."What Is QAnon? The Craziest Theory of the Trump Era, ExplainedQAnon followers believe President Trump's opponents are involved in a vast conspiracy of Satanic child sex-trafficking and cannibalism, and that Q, an anonymous poster on the forum 8chan, is actually a high-level military operative feeding them information on mass arrests that are totally coming this time around. The movement has been suspending its disbelief for nearly two years of unfulfilled promises of purges and revolutions.They saved plenty of skepticism for the very real FBI memo. Maybe the FBI report was fake, a prominent Q peddler suggested on Twitter. (When asked about the memo, the FBI told Yahoo it "routinely shares information with our law enforcement partners.")Other Q followers on Twitter accused FBI Director Christopher Wray of acting against Trump, and suggested that he needed to be fired. A third set suggested the memo was actually good. This crowd claimed the memo was an elaborate ruse to trick the media into asking Trump about QAnon. (For reasons not entirely clear, many QAnon supporters believe that Trump supports QAnon but won't speak openly about it unless asked by a reporter.)But QAnon followers have stuck with their conspiracy theory through other rough patches. The theory's followers have gone on to commit violence, including a follower who led an armed standoff at the Hoover Dam last summer, inspired by his frustration that one of Q's clues never materialized. Months later, a vlogger who made QAnon videos was arrested for allegedly threatening a massacre at YouTube, which he believed was censoring him. In January, a Q believer allegedly murdered his brother with a sword over a conspiratorial idea. Leaders of multiple heavily armed groups on the southern border were led by QAnon believers, who were later arrested for various counts of trespassing and weapons violations. A man accused of murdering a New York mob boss scribbled a Q on his hand in court and claimed to have been motivated by his belief in the conspiracy theory.Despite those incidents, major figures in Trump World have still flirted with the conspiracy theory. "Now do ANTIFA," Donald Trump Jr. tweeted after the FBI memo was revealed, in reference to the anti-fascist movement. (In fact, federal agencies have already released memos about anti-fascists, some of them based on right-wing hoaxes, The Daily Beast previously reported. Figures on the right are currently trying to have the FBI classify the anti-fascist movement as a domestic terror group, something it cannot do because anti-fascism is not a group, and the FBI makes no such domestic classifications. The same holds true for QAnon believers.)At Trump's rally in Cincinnati hours after the memo was revealed, warm-up speaker Brandon Straka invoked one of the movement's slogans. The crowd around him was full of Q shirts and signs.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Family told dead Chinese scholar's body may be in landfill Posted: 02 Aug 2019 02:27 PM PDT  The family of a visiting Chinese scholar whose body was never recovered after a former University of Illinois doctoral student kidnapped and killed her has been told the woman's remains may be in a landfill in eastern Illinois, an attorney for the slain scholar's family said Friday. In a statement, attorney Steve Beckett said the family of Yingying Zhang was notified by prosecutors that Brendt Christensen's attorneys provided information that led investigators to think the "potential site" of the remains is the landfill in Vermilion County along the Illinois-Indiana border. Christensen was convicted in federal court last month and sentenced to life in prison.
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| Salvadoran family mourns death of young father across U.S. border Posted: 03 Aug 2019 02:27 PM PDT ![Salvadoran family mourns death of young father across U.S. border]( "Salvadoran family mourns death of young father across U.S. border") Like many Salvadoran migrants before them, Marvin Gonzalez and his eight-year-old daughter Joselyn set off from their farm surrounded by corn and sugarcane one morning in early July with dreams of better lives in the United States. Gonzalez, 32, planned to reunite the girl with her mother in North Carolina, and later send for his current wife from El Salvador. The two made it across the U.S. border in late July.
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| Three journalists slain in Mexico in a week Posted: 02 Aug 2019 05:01 PM PDT  Two journalists were shot dead in Mexico Friday, bringing to three the number of journalists killed in the country this week, officials say. Jorge Celestino Ruiz, who worked for the newspaper El Grafico de Xalapa, was killed on Friday night in the violence-plagued state of Veracruz, the mayor of the state's capital Paulino Dominguez told AFP. Ruiz's house was shot at in October and bullets were also "fired at his vehicle to intimidate him," said a police source, who asked for anonymity, and did not give further details.
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| Nigel Farage says Trump’s racist attack on Democratic congresswomen was ‘genius’ Posted: 02 Aug 2019 03:23 PM PDT  Nigel Farage has enthusiastically praised Donald Trump's "go back" comments, directed at four congresswomen of colour.The US president's remarks were widely condemned as racist after he told Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, to return to the "broken and crime infested places from which they came".All of the Democrats, known as the Squad, are American citizens. Three of the four were born in the country.Ms Omar, the fourth, arrived in the US as a child refugee.The president described the women as people"who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world"."Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came?" he asked.Despite the significant controversy generated by the remarks, Mr Farage said the comments were shrewd."I thought, 'Dear, oh dear, oh dear'. You realise, 48 hours on, it was genius because what's happened is the Democrats gather round the Squad, which allows him to say, 'Oh look, the Squad are the centre of the Democratic Party'," he said."He's remarkably good at what he does," Mr Farage added, in an interview with The Times."He does things his way. But he is a remarkably effective operator."Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had condemned Mr Trump's remarks as "racist" at the time, challenging Boris Johnson to do so too during the Conservative leadership contest.Mr Johnson, now the prime minister, refused to, but did describe the comments as "totally unacceptable".Former Ukip leader Mr Farage has also found himself mired in race-related controversy at times in the past.In May 2014, he was accused of a making a "racial slur" against Romanians after he suggested he would be concerned living next to a house of them.Later that year, he used an interview with radio station LBC to defend a Ukip candidate who had used the word "ch**ky" to describe a Chinese person."If you and your mates were going out for a Chinese, what do you say you're going for?" Mr Farage asked presenter Nick Ferarri.Mr Ferarri responded by saying he "honestly would not" use the phrase in such a context."A lot would," Mr Farage replied.
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| Atlanta's confederate monuments: how do ‘context markers’ help explain racism? Posted: 02 Aug 2019 11:00 PM PDT  Symbols dedicated to the south's soldiers have come under debate for not mentioning their roots in racial segregationThe Peace monument in Piedmont Park in Atlanta depicts a Confederate soldier halted by an angel. It was defaced in 2017 after the protests in Charlottesville, Virginia. Photograph: David Goldman/Associated PressAtlanta's monuments to its Confederate past cannot be taken down by law. But the city is now moving to provide much-needed historical context on the realities of slavery, the civil war and the era of Jim Crow segregation that followed.Homages to Atlanta's history crop up in many cemeteries and parks. Little context accompanies those stone memorials with engraved plaques referring to "heroic efforts" and the south's soldiers' efforts to "unite" the country after the civil war. There is no mention of racism or slavery and segregation.But now, Atlanta is placing four new context markers near some of the statues and monuments that will offer a fuller and more honest accounting of the south's history and its legacy of slavery and racism.One marker will go up near the 1935-constructed Peachtree Battle Avenue monument, a simple stone engraved memorial commemorating an 1864 civil war battle stressing peace between the north and south. The new additional panel next to it will point out flaws in the monument's inscription by saying: "[It] describes the United States after the civil war as a perfected nation. This ignores the segregation and disenfranchisement of African Americans and others that still existed in 1935."Another marker, at the Peace monument, built in 1911 in the midst of one of Atlanta's most popular parks, is a large statue of a Confederate soldier halted by an angel. The original plaque explains how a Confederate-era city militia was on a peace mission to unite America after the civil war. The added marker explains how it excludes 200,000 African Americans who served in the US army.Both monuments stress unity between the north and south in the wake of the civil war, but neither plaque commemorating the Confederacy mentions the reason for the war: pro-slavery southern states advocated for secession, wanting to continue the enslavement of African Americans.Both were erected not during the civil war or shortly after, but during the era of Jim Crow laws, enforcing racial segregation."There's a lot of people don't understand these monuments were not really put up right after the civil war," Heidi Bierich, the director of the Innocence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, explained. "[Confederate monuments] were assertions of when white people were gaining more power under Jim Crow, or the Klan in the 1920s. So it was a big old, you know: 'I reject civil rights, I reject black rights.'"Two other monuments in the Oakland cemetery – the Confederate obelisk and the Lion of the Confederacy – will also have markers to contextualize their continued placement on state-owned property. Both are some of the oldest Confederate symbols in the city, with the latter built in 1895 placing an enormous lion statue in the middle of a cemetery of thousands of unmarked Confederate graves. The Confederate obelisk, a looming stone pillar, is the tallest, most prominent focus of the Confederate part of the cemetery.Advocates for these new markers, like Bierich, say the new information panels are more truthful because now visitors won't see a Confederate monument without having some other narrative.They are necessary because a local political struggle over the fate of the monuments ended with them being protected by law, even as some other southern communities took down their Confederate statues.However, Atlanta's National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) president Richard Rose said the city shouldn't have compromised on the monuments. "You can't contextualize racism or compromise on racism," he said, adding that these markers "establish that racism is valid".In 2017, the city's then mayor Kasim Reed formed a committee to review street names and city-owned monuments, just months after white nationalists rallied in Charlottesville in protest at the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E Lee. Some of those marching had carried white power symbols as a car smashed into anti-racism protesters, killing Heather Heyer.Though the debate around memorials to Confederate history has continued since the violent rallies in Virginia, the 2015 shooting by Dylann Roof at a black church in South Carolina ignited the debate after the gunman posted pictures with the Confederate flag. South Carolina removed the flag from its statehouse grounds, but kept its monuments.The committee advised that Confederate monuments in Georgia be moved to storage, but a recent law signed by Republican governor Brian Kemp makes it illegal to remove any monument on property owned by the state. The NAACP denounced the law, saying the monuments "glorify treason and a hateful history of black subjugation, reinforced through domestic terrorism".Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, according to the SPLC, also have similar laws in place to protect Confederate monuments from removal.Of the seven states banning the removal of Confederate monuments, Atlanta is the only city within them to add context via plaques.Sheffield Hale, president and chief executive of the Atlanta History Center, said the markers – paid for in part by the center – help address the issue, but they are not a permanent solution."I do think it gives [people] a starting point, which is sorely needed right now, in our society, as a way to deal with contentious issues. Let's argue about the facts, let's put them down on paper – or on a marker – and have a conversation about them," he said.The final line to be added alongside the Peace monument is certain to do just that."This monument should no longer stand as a memorial to white brotherhood; rather, it should be seen as an artifact representing a shared history in which millions of Americans were denied civil and human rights," it says.But just miles from downtown Atlanta, the largest memorial of the Confederacy in the US still looms over the city with no context and a laser light show highlighting the state's most visited attraction. That is Stone Mountain, where families picnic under the gaze of a gigantic carving of Confederate leaders.
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| These Cheeky Vases Are Taking Over Our Instagram Feeds Posted: 02 Aug 2019 10:06 AM PDT |
| Police chief says officer faked shooting, distress call Posted: 02 Aug 2019 01:51 PM PDT  An Alabama police officer staged a shooting last month to make it appear as though he was under attack, a police chief said Thursday.
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| Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, spokesman leave her congressional office Posted: 02 Aug 2019 09:41 PM PDT  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff was previously criticized by some Democrats for posts on Twitter that attacked centrist members of the party.
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| De Blasio Says Justice Given to Eric Garner—Family Says No Posted: 02 Aug 2019 11:20 AM PDT  REUTERSNew York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday a measure of justice had finally been served for the death of Eric Garner after an NYPD judge recommended the police officer who killed him in 2014 be fired."Until today, the Garner family has been failed by this entire process," he said. "Today we finally saw a step towards justice and accountability," Daniel Pantaleo was immediately suspended without pay by the NYPD on Friday after a department judge recommended his termination for the death of Garner in 2014. The recommendation came after an NYPD trial this summer that heard Pantaleo violated department policy by using a prohibited chokehold on Garner—who cried out "I can't breathe" before dying. NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill will decide whether to fire Pantaleo.NYPD Judge Recommends Firing Officer Who Killed Eric GarnerGarner's mother, Gwen Carr, blamed de Blasio for waiting so long. "My family and I have been fighting for five long years for justice and accountability for Eric's murder—and Mayor de Blasio and the NYPD have put up roadblocks and delays every step of the way," she said.Carr said she feels "some relief" to learn of the recommendation, but bemoaned she can't read the judge's report—owing to a new interpretation of a longstanding state law protecting the privacy of civil servants that the city found shortly after Garner's death."It's past time for Mayor Bill de Blasio and the NYPD to end their obstruction, stop spreading misleading talking points, and finally take action for my son. My son deserves more than recommendations; he deserves justice."De Blasio blamed the Justice Department for why it took so long to begin the NYPD trial of Pantaleo, saying officials in Washington asked the city not to move ahead while federal prosecutors evaluated whether Pantaleo violated Garner's civil rights. The investigation languished in the department across two administrations before finally ending earlier this month with a decision not to not to charge Pantaleo, one day before the statute of limitations ran out.While the mayor said he did not read the judge's 47-page decision, he declined to say whether he agreed with the recommendation on Pantaleo, citing the "ongoing" legal process. Instead, de Blasio insisted the "fair and impartial" trial was the first step toward healing for the Garner family."I know the Garner family. They've gone through extraordinary pain," de Blasio said. They are waiting for justice and are going to get justice. There's finally going to be justice. I have confidence in that, in the next 30 days, in New York."Panteleo's lawyer said his client is "disappointed," saying he only "acted the way he was taught to act." The head of the city's largest police union unloaded on de Blasio, who he said has "lost the confidence" of police officers after his Friday remarks. Pat Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association, also called Garner protesters "criminal advocates," claiming that they have "frozen" the police department."The decision that was passed down today saying that this police officer was reckless is ludicrous. The New York City police officers now will be considered reckless every time they put their hands on someone," he said in a press conference."This is not just a fluke that happened one time in Staten Island, this can happen several times a tour," he added. "When you call 911, what do you expect us to do?"O'Neill is expected to make a decision within the next two weeks.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Exiled Thai critic attacked with chemicals in Japan Posted: 03 Aug 2019 09:16 AM PDT ![Exiled Thai critic attacked with chemicals in Japan]( "Exiled Thai critic attacked with chemicals in Japan") An exiled Thai critic of the country's military and monarchy said he was attacked in his home in Japan last month and believes Thai authorities were behind the incident, an accusation that was ridiculed by the kingdom's army chief. Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a 48-year-old associate professor at Kyoto University, said he was asleep with his partner when a man broke into their home last month at about 4 a.m. and sprayed the couple with a substance that burned their skin. Neither was seriously hurt, but Pavin said they have been told by police not to return home.
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| Hong Kong arrests eight protesters including prominent activist Posted: 02 Aug 2019 01:55 AM PDT  Hong Kong police arrested eight people, including a prominent political activist, suspected of possessing offensive weapons, fuelling further anger among the millions of anti-government protesters who have taken to city streets all summer. Police raided an industrial building on Thursday and arrested seven men and a woman, including Andy Chan, the founder of the Hong Kong National Party, a political group banned by city authorities last September. Supporters gathered late at night at a police station in the neighbourhood of Sha Tin, where the suspects were thought to be held, egging the building and chanting, "Free the martyrs!" Officers also raided a flat and seized 30 smoke bombs, though it remains unclear what the explosives were for and whether the cases were related. Earlier this week, someone shot fireworks at protesters gathering outside another police station in a drive-by attack. Hong Kong is embroiled in its worst political crisis since the former British colony was returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Protesters first called for the formal withdrawal of an extradition proposal that would send suspects to face trial in mainland China, where the ruling Communist Party influences the courts. Despite a pledge from city leaders to suspend the bill, demands have grown to include wider political reforms and ire is also being directed at the police for using increasing force. Tensions are running high and many in the city are growing weary, including protesters, public transit workers, police officers, health workers and first responders. But the demonstrations show no sign of waning – the territory is going into its ninth consecutive weekend of mass rallies, which now often end with police firing tear gas and rubber bullets to break up the crowds. The turmoil has led many to become more politically engaged, reflected in a surge of registered voters this year – nearly 386,000 people signed up to vote, the most since at least 2003, according to official figures. More than four million people are registered to vote in the city of about seven million. The unrest has also galvanised young people, many of whom have been on the frontlines. Those aged 17 to 35 registering to vote spiked more than 12 per cent in 2019. Hong Kong is gearing up for district council elections in the fall, the first citywide polls to be held since the city erupted in protests. More rallies are planned for this weekend, starting with civil servants gathering Friday night in the main business district. The government issued a statementon Thursday reminding civil servants to remain politically neutral. "At this difficult moment, government colleagues have to stay united and work together to uphold the core values of the civil service and not to affect the effective operation of the government because of personal beliefs as this may undermine public confidence in the impartial discharge of duties by civil servants," authorities said in a statement.
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| Saudi Arabia's reforms to allow some women to travel without men's permission will do nothing to help many of the vulnerable people trapped in the kingdom Posted: 02 Aug 2019 05:12 AM PDT  Many of the 1,000 women who flee Saudi Arabia each year are under 21, and must still escape abuse in dangerous and secretive circumstances.
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| Raccoon trapped in drain cover freed after two-hour firefighter rescue Posted: 03 Aug 2019 10:10 AM PDT  A team of firefighters spent two hours freeing a trapped racoon from a grate covering a drain.A passer-by spotted the animal in Massachusetts while travelling to work on Thursday and called the fire brigade.The team tried several methods to free the trapped animal, according to NBC News.Firefighters attempted to lubricate the racoon with soap, to allow it to slip through the grate.They also pulled the grate loose, compressed the racoon's neck with medical gauze and called for an animal control officer.Every attempt failed.Eventually a vet arrived at the scene and sedated the animal, after which it was freed."We were able to rescue a juvenile racoon today with help from Waltham's Animal Control," a fire department spokesperson said on Twitter."He had been stuck for a while but we are happy to report he is free!!!"We rescue citizens both big and small!!!"The fire department said the racoon was doing well following its dramatic rescue.
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| Punches thrown outside Donald Trump rally in Cincinnati. Crowd chants 'lock him up' as police detain man Posted: 01 Aug 2019 05:47 PM PDT  One man was detained Thursday after he punched another man outside U.S. Bank Arena in Cincinnati as President Donald Trump held a rally inside.
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| How Trump Would Take Out North Korea's Nuclear Missiles in a War Posted: 03 Aug 2019 12:30 AM PDT  The intercept, taking place over the Pacific Ocean, used X-band radar to track the target for using a fire control solution to destroy the ICBM.A US military upgraded Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle, or EKV, a kinetic-force weapon that slams into its targets, destroyed an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time during a Missile Defense Agency test of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system several months ago.The Missile Defense Agency's first-ever successful intercept of an ICBM target using a Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, using the kinetic force of an Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) to destroy the target, is paving the way toward advanced future kill vehicles able to discern and attack multiple approaching threats, industry and Pentagon officials said.This first appeared in Scout Warrior here.During the test, an ICBM-class target was launched from the Reagan Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, a Missile Defense Agency statement said."Multiple sensors provided target acquisition and tracking data to the Command, Control, Battle Management and Communication (C2BMC) system," the statement added.The intercept, taking place over the Pacific Ocean, used X-band radar to track the target for using a fire control solution to destroy the ICBM.
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| US prosecutors accuse Honduran president of drug conspiracy Posted: 03 Aug 2019 05:18 PM PDT  U.S. federal prosecutors have accused the Honduran government of essentially functioning as a narco-state, with the current and former presidents having received campaign contributions from cocaine traffickers in exchange for protection. The filing comes just months after other U.S. federal court documents showed the current president and some of his closest advisers were among the targets of a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation, casting further doubt on the United States' assertion that Honduras has helped stop the flow of drugs.
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| Mitch McConnell Didn’t Stop Obama from Doing Anything about Russia in 2016 Posted: 02 Aug 2019 12:49 PM PDT  One of the enduring myths told by Democrats about the 2016 campaign is that President Obama was ready to issue a stern warning to the American people about Russian meddling that would have changed the course of the election but that he was thwarted by Mitch McConnell. This is self-serving nonsense, and the closer you look at the evidence, the weaker it becomes.Democrats and liberals have lately been campaigning to delegitimize McConnell by claiming that he is, in the words of Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, "a Russian asset." Julián Castro, a supposedly serious presidential candidate, called him "Moscow Mitch" in Wednesday night's debate — a faux-Trumpian nickname that Joe Scarborough and Twitter progressives have been trying to make happen. As Rich Lowry has detailed, their current case against McConnell as a paid Russian sleeper agent is based on his opposition to federalizing state election laws, something he and many other conservatives have been against for decades.The charge has its origins, however, in Team Obama's claim that McConnell stymied its efforts to protect the 2016 vote from Russian influence. The claim is equal parts attack on McConnell and excuse for Obama, peddled by Joe Biden and others looking to safeguard Obama's legacy. That's why it's worth revisiting now.The Accusation The Washington Post first told this story in December 2016, when Obama was still in office, sourcing it to "a senior administration official":> Officials devised a plan to seek bipartisan support from top lawmakers and set up a secret meeting with the Gang of 12 — a group that includes House and Senate leaders, as well as the chairmen and ranking members of both chambers' committees on intelligence and homeland security.> > Obama dispatched [counterterrorism adviser Lisa] Monaco, FBI Director James B. Comey and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to make the pitch for a "show of solidarity and bipartisan unity" against Russian interference in the election, according to a senior administration official.> > Specifically, the White House wanted congressional leaders to sign off on a bipartisan statement urging state and local officials to take federal help in protecting their voting-registration and balloting machines from Russian cyber-intrusions. [Emphasis added.]The Post described McConnell's reaction:> According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics. Some of the Republicans in the briefing also seemed opposed to the idea of going public with such explosive allegations in the final stages of an election, a move that they argued would only rattle public confidence and play into Moscow's hands.James Clapper, Obama's notoriously partisan director of national intelligence — and possibly the Post's source — made much the same claim in a 2018 book. From NPR:> "House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said they would not support a bipartisan statement that might hurt their nominee for president," Clapper writes. "I was disappointed but not surprised. It seemed they had decided by then that they didn't care who their nominee was, how he got elected or what effects having a foreign power influence our election would have on the nation, as long as they won."Biden, in remarks in 2018, told a slightly different story, suggesting that the appeal to McConnell was supposed to be aimed as a warning to Russia:> Brennan and company came up and said: Here's what we know. Why don't we put out a bipartisan warning to Russia — hands off, man, or there's going to be a problem? . . . Mitch McConnell wanted no part of having a bipartisan commitment that we would say essentially Russia's doing this, stop — bipartisan, so it couldn't be used as a weapon against the democratic nominee of a president trying to use the intelligence community. . . .> > . . . Could you imagine if the president of the United States called a press conference in October with this fellow, and Bannon and company, and said: Tell you what. The Russians are trying to interfere in our elections and we have to do something about it. What do you think would have happened? I imagine — I mean, I have a view, but I genuinely mean it. Ask yourselves, what do you think would have happened? Would things have gotten better, or would it further look like we were attempting to delegitimize the electoral process because of our opponent? [Emphasis added.]Biden's version of events produced headlines like this one, from Politico: "Biden: McConnell stopped Obama from calling out Russians."Say What? The first question that comes to mind is exactly what Obama or his administration proposed to say or do, as compared to what it actually did. Nobody has ever offered the text of any proposed statement, and accounts of what it was supposed to say are varying, vague, and hard to pin down. What was the issue: Russia hacking voting machines? Russia leaking stolen emails? Russian misinformation? Was the Obama administration hoping to paint Trump as the beneficiary of Russian help with the approval of Republican leaders? Was the intended audience American voters, American election officials, or Russia?As Politico noted, "McConnell's office disputed [Biden's] account, pointing to a letter signed by all four congressional leaders in September 2016 and sent to the president of the National Association of State Election Directors, urging cybersecurity precautions in light of reports of attempted hacking. That missive, however, did not address Russia specifically, or the larger topic of influence beyond voting systems."How strong was our intelligence on Russian attacks on voting systems at the time? According to the Post, "Though U.S. intelligence agencies were skeptical that hackers would be able to manipulate the election results in a systematic way, the White House feared that Russia would attempt to do so." Yet, on October 7, 2016, Clapper issued a "Joint Statement from the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security," warning that> some states have . . . recently seen scanning and probing of their election-related systems, which in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company. However, we are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian Government. The [intelligence community and the Department of Homeland Security] assess that it would be extremely difficult for someone, including a nation-state actor, to alter actual ballot counts or election results by cyber attack or intrusion. This assessment is based on the decentralized nature of our election system in this country and the number of protections state and local election officials have in place. States ensure that voting machines are not connected to the Internet, and there are numerous checks and balances as well as extensive oversight at multiple levels built into our election process. [Emphasis added.]As it happens, the Senate Intelligence Committee recently concluded that Russia was, in fact, probing state election systems for vulnerabilities. As federal authorities became aware of these efforts, they warned the state officials in charge of the systems: "On August 18, 2016, FBI issued an unclassified FLASH to state technical-level experts on . . . the attack on lllinois's voter registration databases. . . . DHS and FBI issued a second FLASH and a Joint Analysis Report in October that flagged . . . suspect IP addresses, many unrelated to Russia." Subsequent analysis confirmed that "IP addresses associated with the August 18, 2016 FLASH provided some indications the activity might be attributable to the Russian government, particularly the GRU."But the Intelligence Committee's report also found that, in October 2016, "the agencies did not understand the scope of the Russian effort. . . . Michael Daniel, President Barack Obama's cybersecurity coordinator, had been convinced that the Russians had gone after all 50 states — because they are thorough. But it was only two years later that official intelligence assessments concluded that he was right." As Biden conceded, "we didn't know the extent of it then either."In fact, Daniel confirmed in testimony to the Intelligence Committee that he had been told by Susan Rice, President Obama's national-security adviser, in a mid-2016 meeting to "stand down" and put responses to Russia's election-related cyberattacks "on the back burner," in part "because Rice feared the options would leak and 'box the president in.'" Rice was, rather obviously, not working at the direction of Mitch McConnell.As the New York Times acknowledged, "there was no evidence that any votes were changed in actual voting machines, [though] 'Russian cyberactors were in a position to delete or change voter data' in the Illinois voter database. The committee found no evidence that they did so." While this should deeply worry us going forward, there has never been any evidence unearthed that any of it affected the outcome of the election in the slightest. That hasn't stopped the widespread conspiracy theory that it did from taking hold among Democratic voters: A December 2016 YouGov poll found that 52 percent of Democrats believed that it was probably or definitely true that "Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected President." By late March 2019, that number had risen to 67 percent.Was the real issue Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee? The October 2016 Clapper statement also addressed that:> The U.S. Intelligence Community . . . is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow — the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.According to the Post, "Early drafts accused Putin by name, but the reference was removed out of concern that it might endanger intelligence sources and methods." Still, this statement hardly went unnoticed: The New York Times quoted it extensively in a front-page article entitled "U.S. Accuses Russia of Directing Hacks to Influence the Election." The story was overtaken by events — the Access Hollywood tape dropped an hour later, swamping the news cycle — but nothing would have prevented Obama from using the bully pulpit of the White House to emphasize the issue, if he had seriously believed that the public or the states needed to be warned.'No Puppet' That, of course, presupposes that the public had not already been warned. Were voters really unaware, before the election, of the arguments that Donald Trump was unduly sympathetic to Vladimir Putin, that Putin was meddling in the election in ways that in turn helped Trump, and that Russia was behind the hacking of Democrats and the release of hacked information by WikiLeaks and Guccifer? A sampling of what was publicly known and speculated about during the election suggests that the answer is a firm "no":October 17, 2015 — The Washington Examiner's David Drucker, "Putin Loves Donald Trump": "Donald Trump has said that as president he would get along with Vladimir Putin, and there's evidence that the Republican front-runner's apparent fondness for the Russian strongman is being reciprocated" by the "propagandist arm of the Putin government machine." (Trump himself approvingly tweeted the article: "Russia and the world has already started to respect us again!")December 17, 2015 — Vanity Fair's Tina Nguyen, "Putin Endorses Trump": "The Russian president took time from his address to hail the billionaire real-estate mogul as 'a very outstanding person, talented, without any doubt.'"December 29, 2015 — Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid, "Is Trump the New Armand Hammer?":> With the business dealings in Moscow, and the Roger Stone and Alex Jones associations, a pattern has emerged in the case of Trump, suggesting that he is indeed the Kremlin's candidate and that his purpose is to disrupt and sow confusion in the Republican Party and conservative ranks. On NBC's "Meet the Press," former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul noted, 'Vladimir Putin does only things that are in Russia's national interest. So for him to be endorsing Mr. Trump, that's because he thinks it's in Russia's national interest for Mr. Trump to be the leader in the United States.'"February 26, 2016 — Reuters's Mark Hosenball and Steve Holland, on Trump's being advised by Michael Flynn: "Flynn raised eyebrows among some U.S. foreign policy veterans when he was pictured sitting at the head table with Putin at a banquet in Moscow late last year celebrating Russia Today."March 30, 2016 — Bloomberg's Zachary Mider on Carter Page: "Trump's New Russia Adviser Has Deep Ties to Kremlin's Gazprom"April 7, 2016 — The Resurgent's Erick Erickson:> Vladimir Putin is the one guy with whom Trump has not engaged in insult comedy. Frankly, given Putin's behind the scenes dabblings in the affairs of other countries, Trump is just the sort of man he'd want to prop up to destabilize the West. . . . Trump has certainly gained a following nationally, but he needed real support on Day 1. According [to] various press reports, Trump's solution was to pay people to attend his campaign launch and cheer him on . . . a lot of it is manufactured to convince the press and others that Trump's support is larger than it actually is.April 8, 2016 — The Daily Caller's Derek Hunter on how, "Some of Donald Trump's support on Twitter comes from accounts with zero followers who tweet identical messages and who have been part of social media marketing campaigns in the past" including in Russian.April 2016 — Politico's Michael Crowley, "The Kremlin's Candidate": "In the 2016 election, Putin's propaganda network is picking sides [for Trump]."May 6, 2016 — Buzzfeed's Ben Smith and Meredith Kennedy on Paul Manafort: "U.S. foreign policy figures of both parties are raising concerns about a close Trump aide's ties to allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin. . . . Manafort's close ties to Russia's authoritarian ruler match Trump's own praise for Putin."June 15, 2016 — The Sydney Morning Herald's Chris Zappone, "Donald Trump–Vladimir Putin: Russia's information war meets the US election":> It's no secret that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump like each other. But what's less known is how Russia is attempting to support Trump through social media, by helping galvanise and motivate extremists who in turn support the controversial Republican candidate. A network of Russian-backed anti-Western websites are linked with American white supremacist, sovereign citizen, and conspiracy theory sites. Activists connected to those sites support the Trump campaign, often parroting Moscow's criticism of the US, NATO and the general ills of Western society.July 23, 2016 — Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall, "Trump & Putin. Yes, It's Really a Thing": "Over the last year there has been a recurrent refrain about the seeming bromance between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. . . . There is a lot of Russian money flowing into Trump's coffers and he is conspicuously solicitous of Russian foreign policy priorities."July 24, 2016 — CNN's Evan Perez, "Sources: US officials warned DNC of hack months before the party acted":> Hillary Clinton's campaign has accused Russia of meddling in the 2016 presidential election, saying its hackers stole [Democratic National Committee] emails and released them to foment disunity in the party and aid Donald Trump. Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, said on Sunday that "experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, [and are] releasing these emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.". . . Mook told CNN's Jake Tapper . . . that "changes to the Republican platform to make it more pro-Russian" . . . could provide some of the motive behind the hacks.July 24, 2016 — Defense One's Patrick Tucker:> Close your eyes and imagine that a hacking group backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin broke into the email system of a major U.S. political party. The group stole thousands of sensitive messages and then published them through an obliging third party in a way that was strategically timed to influence the United States presidential election. Now open your eyes, because that's what just happened.July 24, 2016 — Politifact: "The U.S. government has not yet publicly named the culprit behind the DNC hack. But there seems to be widespread agreement among cybersecurity experts and professionals that the attribution belongs to Russian intelligence actors."July 25, 2016 — Garry Kasparov: "Kremlin troll master Konstanin Rykov registered 'Trump2016.ru' in August, 2015."July 27, 2016 — Business Insider's Natasha Bertrand: "It looks like Russia hired internet trolls to pose as pro-Trump Americans. . . . Russia's troll factories were, at one point, likely being paid by the Kremlin to spread pro-Trump propaganda on social media."July 27, 2016 — Donald Trump, in a nationally televised press conference:> Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. . . . I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. . . . By the way they hacked, they probably have her 33,000 e-mails. I hope they do. They probably have her 33,000 e-mails that she lost and deleted because you'd see some beauties there. So let's see.October 19, 2016 — Marco Rubio, warning that the DNC hacks are "an effort by a foreign government to interfere with our electoral process" and blaming them on Putin.October 19, 2016 — Hillary Clinton, in perhaps the most memorable moment of the fall 2016 debates, interrupting a Trump answer about Putin's not respecting her:> Clinton: Well, that's because he'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States.> > Trump: No puppet. No puppet.> > Clinton: And it's pretty clear . . .> > Trump: You're the puppet!> > Clinton: It's pretty clear you won't admit . . .> > Trump: No, you're the puppet.> > Clinton: . . . that the Russians have engaged in cyberattacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list — break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do — and that you continue to get help from him, because he has a very clear favorite in this race. . . . We've never had a foreign government trying to interfere in our election. We have 17 — 17! — intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin and they are designed to influence our election.Anyone who cared to know had plenty of opportunity to hear that Trump was uncomfortably cozy with Putin, that Putin returned the favor, that Putin was widely believed to be behind the DNC hacks, that Trump was perfectly and openly happy to receive that kind of help, that the Trump campaign benefited from a variety of shady third-party online tactics, and that some of those tactics, at least, could be traced to the Russians. Much of this, in fact, was well known during the Republican primaries, openly discussed by conservative commentators, and stated explicitly during the fall campaign by Rubio, one of the most prominent Republicans in the Senate. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that an additional warning by Obama — whatever its content — would have changed anything.Why Obama Didn't Say More In order to understand why Obama didn't come out and say more about Russia, it is also important to review both the political context of the fall of 2016 and the Obama administration's posture toward Russia.Politically, it is worth recalling that, between July and October 2016, basically everyone in the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration expected Hillary Clinton would win the election. The overriding concern of both Obama and Clinton was to ensure the public legitimacy of her anticipated victory.On August 5, 2016, at a White House press conference, Obama blasted Trump for spreading the "conspiracy theory" that the election would be "rigged," and insisted that "Of course the elections will not be rigged. . . . This will be an election like every other election."At a Rose Garden ceremony on October 18, 2016 — the day before the "no puppet" debate — Obama doubled down:> We recognize that there's something more important than any individual campaign. And that is making sure that the integrity and trust in our institutions sustains itself. . . . I have never seen, in my lifetime or in modern political history, any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before votes have even taken place. . . . It happens to be based on no facts; every expert, regardless of political party, regardless of ideology, conservative or liberal, who has ever examined these issues in a serious way, will tell you that instances of significant voter fraud are not to be found. . . . There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even . . . rig America's elections, in part because they are so decentralized and [because of] the numbers of votes involved. There is no evidence that that has happened in the past or that there are instances in which that will happen this time. And so I'd invite Mr. Trump to stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes. [Emphasis added.]As the Times said of this statement at the time, Obama's "sharp words reflected rising concerns among Democratic and Republican leaders. . . . Many worry that if Mrs. Clinton wins and Mr. Trump refuses to accept the result, his stand will undermine her authority going into office and sow doubts about the legitimacy of the process." It would have been at odds with everything Obama saw as his own political interest at that moment to warn publicly that America's elections were being fatally compromised by foreign interference. As the Post later reported, "Obama officials feared providing fuel to such claims, playing into Russia's efforts to discredit the outcome and potentially contaminating the expected Clinton triumph." Biden, too, ultimately conceded that, "unless you can give harder data than we have now, you're going to be in a terrible position and it's going to play into the delegitimizing of our electoral process, which was initially what the intelligence community . . . thought . . . this was all about."What's more, the Obama administration had always recognized the double-edged sword of complaining about foreign hacking of emails at precisely the same time that the chief line of attack against the Democratic nominee was that she had recklessly exposed her email communications to foreign hacking while serving as secretary of state. Victoria Nuland, who served as assistant secretary of state for Europe during the Obama administration, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2018 "that she had been briefed as early as December 2015 about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee — long before senior DNC officials were aware of it — and that the intrusion had all the hallmarks of a Russian operation." The Obama administration itself had sat on that information until the public release of the DNC emails forced its hand. Focusing even more attention on email hacking in October 2016 would have had real political downsides for Democratic leaders.And finally, the Obama administration had spent years trying to avoid conflict with Russia, from Clinton's famous "reset" button to Obama's "more flexibility after the election" promise to Putin and his mocking dismissal of Mitt Romney's warnings about the Kremlin: "The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back." That cavalier attitude was gone by 2016, but Obama was still hesitant to pick a fight. Obama said after the election that he had personally warned Putin at a September G20 summit to "cut it out, there were going to be serious consequences if he didn't," and maintained this was effective, insisting that, "In fact we did not see further tampering of the election process." But he also admitted that he had pulled his punches:> I know there have been folks out there that suggest somehow, if we went out there and made big announcements and thumped our chests about a bunch of stuff, that somehow that would potentially spook the Russians. But keep in mind that we already have enormous numbers of sanctions against the Russians. . . . The idea that somehow public shaming is going to be effective, I think, doesn't read the thought process in Russia very well.As the Post characterized the thinking, "White House officials were concerned that covert retaliatory measures might risk an escalation in which Russia, with sophisticated cyber-capabilities, might have less to lose than the United States, with its vast and vulnerable digital infrastructure." The Clapper statement was also released right in the midst of Secretary of State John Kerry's attempts to respond to Russian involvement in Syria.In short, the Obama White House had multiple motives to avoid vigorous public confrontations with Russia in September and October of 2016.The Hunt for Red Excuses And that is the bottom line: The Obama Administration tried to respond to Russian interference in the 2016 election, but it was too little, too late. By the fall of 2016, there wasn't much more anyone could do. Russian actors had succeeded in spreading embarrassing stolen communications, and they had also spread a certain amount of misinformation. The Russian effort remained a drop in the bucket compared to the vast scale of information and opinion (true and otherwise) that circulates during a multi-billion-dollar two-year American presidential campaign, but it was nonetheless a particular irritant to Democrats. The most alarming possibility — Russian hacking of the voting process — never came to pass.Facing an election that surprisingly ended in Clinton's defeat, and under pressure from partisans to find someone to blame, Obama administration figures settled on Mitch McConnell. McConnell, for his part, likely suspected at the time of his meeting with Monaco, Comey, and Johnson that he was being set up to take the fall for the White House's mistakes. Simply adding his name to something that looked like the Clapper statement would not have made any difference. Painting his refusal to do so as evidence that he is a "Russian asset" glosses over Team Obama's own doubts at the time about the available intelligence and its own hesitancy, for its own reasons, to act more vigorously. As Harry Truman used to say, the buck stops at the president's desk. If there was something more Obama could or should have done, well, that's on him. He was the elected commander-in-chief, after all.
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| Navy identifies Lemoore pilot killed in crash in Death Valley National Park Posted: 02 Aug 2019 07:11 PM PDT  The Navy has identified the Lemoore pilot killed in a crash in Death Valley National Park earlier this week.
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| US to pull out thousands of troops under Taliban deal Posted: 02 Aug 2019 04:34 AM PDT  America could withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan in the coming months as part of an initial peace agreement with the Taliban. American and militant envoys meeting in Qatar's capital said they were optimistic of soon clinching a deal to end America's 18-year-old conflict. An initial deal would see US troop numbers fall to as low as 8,000 from their current level of 14,000, the Washington Post reported. In return the Taliban would have to give guarantees Afghan soil would not become a launchpad for transnational terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. They would also begin negotiating with the Afghan government to find a wider political settlement to the world's deadliest conflict. "I would say that they are 80 or 90 percent of the way there," one official told the paper. "But there is still a long way to go on that last 10 or 20 percent." Sources familiar with the talks said argument among the Taliban may still scupper a deal. The militants have until now demanded a full US withdrawal before they talk to Ashraf Ghani's government and it is unclear if hardliners will accept a partial withdrawal to start. Details of how and agreement might be monitored or verified were also still being hammered out. The conflict is now the deadliest in the world Credit: Reuters "Dissension in the Taliban ranks may yet throw spanners in the works. But overall it's positive," said one official. It was not immediately clear if there was progress on the other element of talks, the Taliban's agreement to a ceasefire. Zalmay Khalilzad, Donald Trump's peace envoy, has said until now that a deal cannot be finalised until all the elements, including a truce, are agreed. Casualties have continued to mount steeply as sides in the conflict have continued to fight while negotiating. Mr Khalilzad is under intense pressure to find Mr Trump a way out of the war, which the US president has dismissed as a costly failure. The talks are also overshadowing campaigning for September's the Afghan presidential elections, with candidates unsure whether an election will even be held in the event of a deal.
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| The Day That Obsessed Adolf Hitler Posted: 03 Aug 2019 02:48 AM PDT  Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/GettyThis summer marked the centennial of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, on June 28, 1919. The treaty put a formal end to World War I, one of the deadliest military conflicts in history. Yet the anniversary went mostly unnoticed.That's a shame because the treaty's contents, and the reaction that they caused, were essential to paving the way for the ascent of Adolf Hitler and the rise of fascism in Europe.World War I broke out in the late summer of 1914, when the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated by Serbian separatist Gavrilo Princip. Their deaths triggered a set of byzantine military alliances across Europe and Russia that were the result of grievances that had been building throughout the 19th century. The main combatants at the beginning of the war were the Allied Powers (France, Great Britain, and Russia) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire). In 1917, the Russian Revolution forced Russia out of the war. That same year, the United States joined the conflict.When the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, after negotiations led by President Woodrow Wilson, the four empires that had dominated east and central Europe for centuries—Germany, Austria-Hungary, Czarist Russia, and the Ottomans—were all gone. Millions of people were displaced and without a country. States had collapsed and national borders had ceased to exist. Out of this chaos, the peace congress that convened in Paris needed to create order.How WWI Produced the HolocaustThe treaty that was signed on June 28, 1919 was considered a missed opportunity before the ink of the signatures had dried on the page. The negotiations that took place between Great Britain, France, the United States, and Italy (known as the Big Four) were without structure and with no list of priorities. Germany and Austria-Hungary were excluded from the negotiations, as was Russia, mainly because no one really knew what to make of its new Bolshevik government. None of the Big Four was happy with the outcome of the peace congress, and Germany was shocked by the terms of its defeat.This shock came to set the course for much of Germany's domestic and foreign policies during the 1920s and 1930s. The German people were unprepared for the armistice deal when it was signed in November 1918. German war propaganda claimed they were winning the war right up to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and the declaration of defeat by the government that took his place.According to historian Sally Marks, in order to handle their confusion, the Germans latched on to the use of the word "armistice," which to them came to mean that the war had ended in a draw. When the Treaty of Versailles treated Germany as a defeated aggressor, there was a backlash. Or, as Marks puts it, "the real difficulty was not that the Treaty was exceptionally unfair, but that the Germans thought it was, and in time persuaded others that it was."GettyThe unfair conditions of the treaty that Germany objected to, but in the end was forced to accept, included the demilitarization of the Rhineland, which is a border region with France; the re-creation of Poland as a self-governing state; the constraint of German forces to a certain size; and the transformation of German border regions into minority enclaves in newly created nation states, such as the Sudetenland, which became part of Czechoslovakia.The most crushing blow to Germany was the article of the treaty that made Germany and its allies responsible for the war. As a result, Germany was expected to pay reparations to France and Great Britain. They saw this as an opportunity to make Germany pay for all their war costs, rather than just paying damages.One of the people who took Germany's defeat and the terms of the Treaty of Versailles particularly hard was Adolf Hitler. A failed artist without a direction in life, Hitler found a purpose in the German army during World War I. When Germany lost the war and signed the treaty, Hitler felt personally betrayed.In response to the humiliating nature of the treaty, Hitler had his political awakening. In his biography on Hitler's formative years, Ian Kershaw shows that the Treaty of Versailles was at the forefront of Hitler's rhetoric early on, and he blamed the Jews for Germany's misfortunes. Major steps in Hitler's domestic and foreign policy after the Nazis took power in 1933 were taken with the intention of removing "the shackles of Versailles."Nazi Germany's remilitarization of the Rhineland, its annexation of the Sudetenland, the creation of the Luftwaffe and the conscript-based army are all examples of this policy, as was the invasion of Poland in 1939, which sparked World War II. The Germans saw Poland as a failed state that should be under German rule. The cease-fire agreement between France and Nazi Germany in 1940 was, in effect, a reversal of the armistice of 1918.A common conclusion whenever the two world wars are discussed in relation to each other is that World War I caused World War II to happen. This is only partially correct. With Hitler's political career in mind, it is more accurate to say that World War II wouldn't have happened without the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler's intention from the beginning, says historian Alan Sharp, was to nullify the outcome of World War I and Versailles.GettyWhen Hitler deliberately violated the clauses of the treaty, he continued the work of the Social Democratic and Liberal governments of Germany's interwar Weimar Republic. The difference between the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany is that the Republic used negotiation to achieve its goals; Hitler used force.In other words, had it not been for the Treaty of Versailles there would not have been a breeding ground for Nazi Germany to take shape. And without Nazi Germany there wouldn't be a modern neo-Nazi movement glorifying Hitler's actions. The problem with our selective amnesia regarding World War I is that by not commemorating the Treaty of Versailles we are disregarding a crucial moment in the creation of the modern world.Because even though one of the consequences of the treaty turned out to be a totalitarian ideology we are still forced to combat, in the treaty the Big Four also described the world they wanted to see in the future. In this world, women had the right to vote. People didn't have to work more than eight hours a day, and they were given one day off per week. They were also allowed to join unions, earn a living wage, and men and women received equal pay for equal work. Before the end of the 1920s all of these points had come true. Except for one.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| 'She Went Back With Me.' Ilhan Omar Trolls Trump by Posing With Pelosi in Ghana Posted: 01 Aug 2019 11:54 PM PDT  The Congresswoman posted photos of herself and Nancy Pelosi in Ghana
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| 15 Fun, Affordable Cars That Aren't Likely to Depreciate Posted: 03 Aug 2019 06:00 AM PDT |
| Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is again the most-searched candidate on Google during Democratic debate Posted: 01 Aug 2019 05:48 PM PDT  Being the most searched candidate during the first round of the debate in Miami didn't translate into a boost in the polls for Gabbard.
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| Iran Watch: Should Trump Fear Tehran's Last Missile Test? Posted: 03 Aug 2019 05:00 AM PDT  Iran does test medium-range ballistic missiles, although not commonly. What HappenedFor the first time since a standoff between the United States and Iran escalated into attacks on oil tankers, Iran has conducted a medium-range ballistic missile test. According to U.S. officials, Iran test-fired a Shahab-3 medium-range ballistic missile earlier this week that traveled 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) — distance enough to hit Saudi Arabia and come close to Israel.Iran's strategy in carrying out the test is likely twofold. For one, Tehran is engaging in a show of force against the United States as part of the aggressive regional strategy it has pursued over the last three months. At the same time, the launches provide Iran's engineers and missile designers an important opportunity to test technical and operational designs as part of the country's wider ballistic missile program. Iran's Missile Motivations
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| Gunman kills 20 at Texas Walmart store in latest US mass shooting Posted: 03 Aug 2019 05:20 PM PDT  A gunman armed with an assault rifle killed 20 people Saturday when he opened fire on shoppers at a packed Walmart store in the latest mass shooting in the United States. As residents of the southern border town of El Paso in Texas tried to absorb the full horror of what is being treated as a potential "hate crime," fresh calls rang out to end the nationwide "epidemic" of gun violence. It was the second fatal shooting in less than a week at a Walmart store in the US and comes after a mass shooting in California last weekend.
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| Beijing says progress on China-Australia ties 'unsatisfactory' Posted: 02 Aug 2019 06:51 PM PDT  The progress of repairing China-Australia ties, strained over Canberra's concerns about Chinese influence in its domestic affairs, has been "unsatisfactory," said China's top diplomat after meeting his Australian counterpart. "During our diplomatic and strategic dialogue in Beijing last November, we agreed to calibrate and relaunch China-Australia relations, but the process of improving our ties has not been satisfactory," said State Councillor Wang Yi after the Bangkok meeting on the sidelines of a regional security forum. Beijing says it never interferes in the internal affairs of another country.
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| Battle Brews to Dump Jim Crow-Era Voting Rules in Deep South Posted: 02 Aug 2019 08:25 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Mississippi has the highest percentage of African Americans of any state in the U.S. It hasn't elected a black official statewide in more than 130 years. Jennifer Riley Collins wants to break that streak.To become Mississippi's first black attorney general, Collins, a decorated U.S. Army colonel and civil rights lawyer, is getting help from the country's first black attorney general, Eric Holder. He's leading a lawsuit aimed at the state's 1890 constitution, which more than a century later still has provisions expressly crafted to stop African Americans from getting elected.If successful, the federal suit would scrap rules requiring candidates for statewide office to win both more than 50% of the popular vote and more than half the state's 122 state legislative districts -- two-thirds of which are majority white. If a candidate doesn't meet both conditions, the state House of Representatives chooses the winner regardless of who got the most votes.As racial divisions emerge as a subtext in the 2020 U.S. presidential race, the litigation could rewire the power structure in one of the nation's reddest states. Even if unsuccessful, it is bringing fresh attention to an extreme example of voter suppression: In Mississippi, racial animus isn't just a subtext. It's codified in the text that governs the state, lawyers and state politicians say."Our system was specifically designed to minimize the chances of an African-American being elected to statewide office in Mississippi,'' said Democratic House Minority Leader David Baria.The U.S. Supreme Court blessed partisan-drawn political boundaries in a June ruling, six years after the court weakened minority-voting protections across the U.S. But Mississippi stands out as an example of the consequences of gerrymandering on steroids."I can't think of another law I've been involved in challenging that was put in place specifically to discriminate against black voters and would have such a profound statistical effect on their ability to elect a state official statewide,'' said Marc Elias, who is involved in the Holder case and is considered one of the country's top Democratic elections attorneys.Sharing a fish dinner with two colleagues at the wood-paneled Parlor Market near the Capitol in Jackson, Baria said the state's election system is outrageous even among "the other racist states.''"Even Alabama doesn't do this,'' added lawmaker Earle Banks.The Holder suit was filed against Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann and Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, both Republicans. In a response to the suit, attorneys for them rejected the claims of racial intent."Neither the Speaker nor the Secretary wish to defend the motivations behind a law allegedly enacted with racial animus," the response stated. "However, both the allegations in the complaint and the timing of its filing demonstrate that this lawsuit is not about race, and it is not about vindicating alleged wrongs to plaintiffs' rights to vote -- it's about partisan politics."The Mississippi power structure has survived both the Democrats who created it and the Republicans who now oversee it.But just this week a federal appeals court affirmed a ruling that Mississippi's legislature illegally gerrymandered a state Senate district in 2012 by adding a portion of a wealthy predominantly white county to the poorer Delta counties to dilute black voters there. About a third of the state's African-Americans live in the Delta region.The fight in Mississippi is part of a larger political battle over voting rights prompted by the changing demographics of the electorate. Holder is fighting gerrymandering across the U.S. with his National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which Elias said looks for "provisions that are going to affect the voting rights of individuals in ways that could, down the road, affect redistricting.''In Mississippi, the voting-eligible black population is nearly 37% of the total -- the highest of any state, according to the most-recent U.S. Census.'Control of White People'The white men who penned the state constitution -- then part of the segregationist Democratic Party -- made no secret of their intent, saying openly that they wished to blunt African Americans' post-reconstruction political power. Mississippi's senior U.S. senator at the time, James George, called the 1890 constitutional convention to create a governing document that would ensure "a home government, under the control of the white people of the state.''The constitution used proxies for race to discriminate against black voters without saying so outright in its text. Most have been outlawed over time.The surviving provisions are the target of two federal lawsuits: Holder's, which was filed by the Mississippi Center for Justice in Jackson, and a consolidated suit by the justice center and the Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center. The latter targets language intended to strip voting rights from black felons but not whites. Daniel Jordan III, a federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush, granted that suit class-action status in February.Almost one in 10 Mississippi adults was disenfranchised in 2016 (the most recent statistics), more than triple the national rate. Nearly 16 percent of the state's African-American adults have lost their voting rights, according to The Sentencing Project.'Socially Estranged'The fight over Mississippi's constitution reflects a national one over how easy it should be to vote. Democrats have pushed convenience while Republicans have advocated stricter limits in the name of preventing voter fraud, including President Donald Trump's short-lived election integrity commission in 2017.The issue for both major political parties is the population growth of demographic groups across the nation that have traditionally voted for Democrats, at the same time the recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have cleared the way for a new wave of restricting voter participation, said Greg Magarian, a constitutional law professor at Washington University in St. Louis."The Supreme Court's racial-jurisprudence has been getting more conservative for 50 years,'' he said.States have enacted voting restrictions that -- like Mississippi's constitution -- don't explicitly say they target minorities but disproportionately affect them, even as they hurt some poorer whites, too. "They target the socially estranged, or people without driver's licenses or who don't know how to use government documents,'' Magarian said.Partisan gerrymandering, which the Supreme Court legalized in June, also serves as a proxy for illegal racial gerrymandering, he said.Even if the effort is driven by partisanship rather than racial intent, the effect is the same, he said: "I wouldn't be surprised if some of these conservative lawmakers don't have a racist bone in their bodies. But you screw over the Democrats, you're screwing over African-Americans.''Mississippi makes it harder to vote than any other state, according to a study published last year in Election Law Journal, a peer-reviewed legal publication focusing on voting rights. Gerrymandering, a strict voter ID law, and deep legislative disinterest in making voting easier all contribute, as do the surviving barriers in the state constitution, said Corey Wiggins, director of the Mississippi NAACP.'Furtive' OffensesThe lawsuit that includes the Southern Poverty Law Center challenges a constitutional list of crimes that cost felons the right to vote. It was designed to capture the mostly non-violent felonies historically believed to be more common among blacks. A state Supreme Court opinion in 1896 declared that the black population was "careless, landless ... and its criminal members given rather to furtive offences than to the robust crimes of the whites." Today, theft costs Mississippi felons the vote. Aggravated assault does not.The constitution's authors provided a remedy – for whites. To get voting rights back, an ex-convict must find a legislator willing to sponsor a bill in his name, get it passed by two thirds of both the House and Senate and signed by the governor. The intent was a fix "for white men who could negotiate the system,'' according to historian Dorothy Pratt, whose book on the 1890 convention, "Sowing the Wind," is cited in both constitutional challenges.The provision targeted in the Holder lawsuit has a broader effect. Today, an African-American backed candidate for statewide office needs 55 percent of the popular vote to win enough districts to clear the constitutional hurdle, the suit says.Holder's group has looked at the data and found the discriminatory law could have "a real effect on electoral outcomes this year,'' says Elias. "It's a fairly unusual circumstance.''One of the likeliest beneficiaries is white – and could directly impact Holder's long term goal. Mississippi attorney general Jim Hood, the only Democrat in statewide office now, is in a tight race for governor, an office with veto power over redistricting maps.His current campaign statement: "The candidate with the most votes should win, period.''Collins, the attorney general candidate and former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Mississippi, also stands to benefit if it succeeds. She hopes the state settles."I think Mississippi is ready to move forward," Collins said in an interview at her downtown Jackson campaign office. "We just have to make sure that barriers that were intentionally put in place to exclude or marginalize one community over another are torn down."(Updates with today's outcome of a federal voting rights lawsuit in paragraph 13.)\--With assistance from Michael Sasso.To contact the reporters on this story: Margaret Newkirk in Atlanta at mnewkirk@bloomberg.net;Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Anita Sharpe at asharpe6@bloomberg.net, Flynn McRobertsFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Celebrities, royals and politicians brace themselves as court orders release of explosive Jeffrey Epstein files Posted: 03 Aug 2019 11:07 AM PDT  In Room 270, the records management unit, on the second floor of an imposing granite and marble courthouse in lower Manhattan, 167 documents totaling more than 2,000 pages are being kept under lock and key. But they are about to be unsealed and made public - making a host of important people around the world, including celebrities, politicians and royals, very nervous. The files contain explosive allegations in the case of Giuffre v Maxwell, in which Virginia Giuffre, a woman who claims to have been Jeffrey Epstein's teenage "sex slave", sued Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite and the billionaire's former girlfriend, for defamation. The case was settled in May 2017 on the eve of the trial but the details were not disclosed and the final judgment and supporting documents were sealed, with the court noting the "highly sensitive nature of the underlying allegations." According to other court documents that have been published, Ms Giuffre has made allegations of sexual abuse against "numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well‐known Prime Minister, and other world leaders." An appeal to unseal the rest of the documents was launched by the Miami Herald newspaper, which has spearheaded media investigations into Epstein. It was rejected three times. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell became a fixture on the New York social scene after she moved to the city in 1991 Credit: Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images But last month the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered their release, ruling that the public's right to know outweighed the privacy rights of the high-profile individuals named. It what may be an indication of the fame of those individuals, the judges made a striking plea to the media to "exercise restraint" in reporting the allegations about to come to light. They also allowed parties involved to apply for minor redactions, delaying the release. Another delay is possible as Miss Maxwell has launched an appeal to keep the documents sealed, her lawyers arguing that a full release would trigger a "furious feeding frenzy." They wrote: "Plaintiff Giuffre made numerous allegations of sexual, if not criminal, conduct against a wide range of third parties. Because of the media no reference to anyone in this case is benign: a reference to any person is toxic and lethal to that person's reputation. Facts and truth are all but irrelevant." The legal battle between Ms Giuffre and Miss Maxwell began in late 2014 when Ms Giuffre claimed that Epstein sexually abused her starting in 2000 when she was 16, with the "assistance and participation" of Miss Maxwell. She also made allegations against the Duke of York, which were categorically denied by Buckingham Palace. Miss Maxwell described the claims as "obvious lies," and Ms Giuffre then sued her for defamation. Buckingham Palace has categorically denied any misconduct on the part of Prince Andrew, who was pictured with Virginia Giuffre, then Virginia Roberts, and Ghislaine Maxwell in 2001 In a recent statement Josh Schiller, a lawyer for Ms Giuffre, said the appeal court was unlikely to overturn an unsealing decision, and he believed Miss Maxwell's appeal would cause only a "short delay" in releasing the documents. He added: "There is an overwhelming public interest." The appeal court's decision to release the documents came just three days before Epstein was arrested last month, charged with sex trafficking. Prosecutors in New York have accused him of assaulting dozens of girls as young as 14. The case has thrown the Marlborough College and Oxford-educated Miss Maxwell, 57, back into the spotlight. She moved to New York in 1991, the year her father - disgraced newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell - died. In New York, herself and Epstein became a fixture on the social scene. Miss Maxwell was well-connected. Guests including Donald Trump had partied on her father's yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, as far back as 1989. She is a private helicopter pilot and a deep water submarine pilot. In 2012 she founded the TerraMar Project in New York, aimed at creating a "global ocean community" to protect international waters, and spoke about it at the United Nations. Last month, six days after Epstein's arrest, the TerraMar Project announced it would "cease all operations." Miss Maxwell sold her Manhattan townhouse for $15 million in 2016, and her current whereabouts are unclear.
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| Will Hurd’s Departure Shows That Trump’s GOP Is Becoming No Party for Black Reps Posted: 02 Aug 2019 10:55 AM PDT  Bill Clark/GettyAn unexpected political earthquake shook national Republican party circles Friday night, when the party's lone African American Congressman, William Hurd (R-TX), announced he is retiring after only three terms in the House of Representatives. This is a huge loss for the Republican party, and an ominous sign about where it is headed. Notably, his only mention of the party comes in the closing line of his statement about leaving: "I will keep fighting to remind people why I love America: that we are neither Republican nor Democrat nor Independent; We are better than the sum of our parts."A former intelligence officer for the CIA, a soft-spoken gentleman, family man, and African American who represents Texas's southernmost border, Hurd had been seen as someone who's prospects in the party were limitless, potentially even including a future run at the presidency. Now he is walking away from his hard-won seat as the president runs for reelection by using race and immigration to promote division in the electorate. Hurd had been the only Republican on the House Intelligence Committee who actually asked questions during Robert Mueller's testimony about the security of America's elections, and the role Russia is actively playing in trying to undermine them. One of just four Republican House members to condemn, along with former Republican turned independent Justin Amash, President Donald Trump's racist tweets and comments about the four Democratic congresswomen known as The Squad. And he had been an outspoken maverick about the need for the GOP to look more like America, particularly in Texas where Beto O'Rourke almost turned the red state blue in 2018. With his exit, the party lost a key member of a new generation of black conservatives with appeal in swing districts in traditionally blue areas. Now, the Party's hope for finally building a more diverse and female political leadership is fading quickly. Two of the House Republican's 13 female members are retiring. When Hurd departs, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) will be the only black Republican in Congress. The party has been here before, too many times. I worked on the Hill when Rep. J..C. Watts (R-OK) was the lone black Republican in Congress. I also remember Rep. Gary Franks (R-CT) when he was in the House. And, of course, Rep. Mia Love (R-UT) made history when she was elected to the House of Representatives in 2014 as the first black female Republican ever elected to the Congress, only to lose her seat in 2018 after splitting with Trump. This is not the way to build a "big-tent" party.As a black female Republican who has been screaming into the wind for over 25 years for party leadership to shift and embrace America's changing demographic landscape, the reign of Donald Trump is my worst nightmare come true. This is not the party of Jack Kemp that I enthusiastically joined at age 20 in 1988. Does it not worry leaders at the NRCC and RSC that the Republican party is pretty much all white, all male, and over 55, with very few exceptions?Hurd's decision to depart came days after the release of a taped racist conversation between President Nixon and then California Gov. Ronald Reagan and as the Republican Party is getting more and more aligned with Trump's nativism, and less aligned with the party's once great legacy on racial equality, women's rights, economic empowerment, and a strong national defense. It was Republican presidents who fought the evil Russian empire in the '80s and '90s. No more. President Trump has embraced dictators, tyrants, and murderous regimes so long as they will pay him false homage above all.The Hurd exit, is I believe the first sign of a Republican exodus from the party. Not even long-time conservatives like Bill Kristol, George Will, Tom Nichols, and others can stomach the new Trump GOP. It is an openly racist, sexist, mean-spirited party, not of ideals, but of grievances, gripes, and personal grudges. I am not sure the party can be turned around even after Trump is gone (whether that is in 2020 or 2024), but I think that patriots who love their country, like Rep. Justin Amash, Rep. Will Hurd, Rep. Fred Upton, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, Gov. John Kasich, Rep. Susan Brooks, Gov. Bill Weld, and many more will have to stand up to President Trump and fight to make once revered Republican values, like faith, family, morals, and American leadership great again. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Footage shows Bangkok bombing in mall minutes from ASEAN summit Posted: 03 Aug 2019 02:31 AM PDT  Footage emerged Saturday of the moment a bomb exploded in a Bangkok mall as the city hosted a major summit, the device apparently hidden inside a cuddly toy animal. There were nine successful or attempted bomb blasts on Friday throughout Bangkok which left four wounded as the city hosted a regional summit attended by top diplomats, including US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Footage showed an explosion in a shopping mall minutes from the summit venue in the early hours of Friday morning, after it was apparently planted by a man dressed in a student's uniform about 12 hours earlier.
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| Maldives police arrest ex-vice president who fled to India Posted: 03 Aug 2019 07:11 AM PDT  Maldives police said Saturday that they arrested a former vice president who had sought asylum in India after fleeing the Indian Ocean archipelago nation to avoid questioning over the alleged embezzlement of state funds and were bringing him back to the Maldives. Former Vice President Ahmed Adeeb fled the Maldives and arrived by boat at southern India's Tuticorin port on Thursday. On Saturday, Maldives police confirmed that Adeeb had been arrested.
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| A Texas police officer accidentally killed a woman while shooting at her dog Posted: 02 Aug 2019 07:05 AM PDT  Police in Texas say a patrol officer accidentally shot and killed a woman when he fired repeatedly at a dog that was charging at him.
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| Head-To-Head: Russia, Japan, South Korea, and China Face-Off in the Skies over the Pacific Posted: 02 Aug 2019 03:26 AM PDT  The South China Sea cauldron has been at a full boil now for nearly a dozen years, chiefly over the significance of various obscure reefs and rocks. But, thankfully, the occurrence of shooting among the claimants and external powers has been extremely rare, underlying the obvious risks that such a course would entail. Thus, it came as a surprise to many that South Korean interceptors fired warning shots at a Russian military aircraft over the Sea of Japan on the morning of 22 July.With four major powers suddenly appearing to lock horns in that same dispute, the incident would seem to be further evidence of the "great unraveling" in the world order. Indeed, the episode is bizarre in numerous respects, not least because the Russia-South Korea dyad has been one of the least conflictual in this volatile region over the last decade. In fact, as a symbol of these strengthening ties, President Moon Jae-in took the unusual step of making the long trip to Moscow to meet with President Vladimir Putin last summer. Moreover, the dangerous aviation encounter last week had the similarly strange effect of, at least temporarily, stealing the thunder from Pyongyang's recent missile tests that were apparently intended as "a warning to South Korean warmongers."
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| Missing Oregon 2-Year-Old Found Dead in Montana Posted: 02 Aug 2019 06:14 AM PDT  Police said an autopsy confirmed the two-year-old was Aiden Salcido, who had been missing since his parents were found dead in July.
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| 'There was no way that they could've survived': A Boeing 737 Max victim’s mom and brother are demanding justice from the FAA (BA) Posted: 02 Aug 2019 10:27 AM PDT  Samya Stumo was 24 years old when the Boeing 737 Max she was on crashed in Ethiopia. Now her family is demanding justice from the FAA.
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| Whistleblower Allegations Surfaced Just Before DNI Pick John Ratcliffe Withdrew Posted: 02 Aug 2019 07:15 PM PDT  Saul Loeb/GettyAn email disclosing Rep. John Ratcliffe's (R-TX) alleged involvement in a controversial whistleblowing case reached the White House prior to the announcement Friday that he was withdrawing his name from consideration for Director of National Intelligence, according to two sources with knowledge of the correspondence.The email, originally sent to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, laid out how Ratcliffe promoted a company accused of being instrumental in the reprisal against a whistleblower and their cybersecurity efforts, according to one of those sources. The Government Accountability Project, an organization that protects whistleblowers, is helping represent the unnamed government employee. Details about the case are being closely held in part because of security reasons. The organization sent information on its client's disclosure to the committee Wednesday morning. The email then circulated among Republicans in Washington, including some White House officials, who did not think Ratcliffe was up to the job of DNI, according to two sources with direct knowledge.White House spokespeople did not provide comment for this story. Ratcliffe did not respond to a request for comment.Ratcliffe's third-largest campaign donor in the 2019-2020 cycle, according to Open Secrets, a non-profit that tracks the intersection of money in politics, is a company that forced the shutdown of a critical government cybersecurity office. That's according to an individual familiar with the whistleblower's disclosure. Ratcliffe hosted the company in front of the House Homeland Security's Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, the source said."While I am concerned that there was never a complete review of the facts of this case as it related to Mr. Ratcliffe … I'm thankful the committee took this matter seriously," said Irvin McCullough, a national security analyst at the Government Accountability Project. "This engagement exemplifies the need for policymakers to continue championing their work with courageous whistleblowers willing to speak truth to power."News of the email comes as President Donald Trump considers multiple individuals for the position of DNI. Since Trump announced the nomination of Ratcliffe last week, U.S. media organizations have published multiple reports of holes in the congressman's biography and his exaggeration of the work he did as a former U.S. Attorney in Texas. Three sources with knowledge of the government's vetting process said Trump administration officials raised concerns about Ratcliffe's past over the last week. It's unclear whether the whistleblower disclosure email impacted Ratcliffe's nomination, or if the president himself was aware of the email.Trump Intel Pick John Ratcliffe Started Theory of FBI Anti-Trump 'Secret Society'Trump announced Ratcliffe's decision Friday afternoon."Our great Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe is being treated very unfairly by the LameStream Media. Rather than going through months of slander and libel, I explained to John how miserable it would be for him and his family to deal with these people," Trump said in a tweet. "John has therefore decided to stay in Congress where he has done such an outstanding job representing the people of Texas, and our Country. I will be announcing my nomination for DNI shortly."As of Friday night, Trump had not announced his nomination and his team was still actively considering multiple different individuals for the DNI posting. One of those individuals is U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands Pete Hoekstra, according to two individuals with knowledge of the Trump administration's search. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on Hoekstra's consideration on Friday.News of the president considering someone new for the DNI position came Friday morning when The Daily Beast reported the White House had asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) for a list of all its employees at the federal government's top pay scale who have worked there for 90 days or more. The White House asked for people in ODNI who maintained at least the GS-15 level (the pay grade for most top government employees, including supervisors).The request underscored the president's attempt to find a suitable replacement for the ODNI's top posting and raised questions about whether he attempted to oust Sue Gordon, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Under federal law the individual serving in that position is supposed to step up if the DNI departs. Last week DNI Dan Coates announced that he would leave his post August 15. The New York Times reported Friday that the president was in the throes of trying to circumvent Gordon and replace her with his own pick. But later Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the president was, in fact, considering Gordon for the job. It's still unclear who the White House is considering for the post. But as of Friday night, one thing was clear: Ratcliffe was out."I do not wish for a national security and intelligence debate surrounding my confirmation, however untrue, to become a purely political and partisan issue. The country we all love deserves that it be treated as an American issue," Ratcliffe said in a tweet Friday. "I have asked the President to nominate someone other than me for this position."\-- Betsy Woodruff contributed reporting Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Turkey starts filling huge Tigris river dam, activists say Posted: 02 Aug 2019 03:46 AM PDT ![Turkey starts filling huge Tigris river dam, activists say]( "Turkey starts filling huge Tigris river dam, activists say") Turkey has started filling a huge hydroelectric dam on the Tigris river, a lawmaker and activists said, despite protests that it will displace thousands of people and risks creating water shortages downstream in Iraq. Citing satellite images, they said that water was starting to build up behind the Ilisu dam, a project that has been decades in the making and which aims to generate 1,200 megawatts of electricity for southeast Turkey.
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| Newt Gingrich amazed by 'level of anger' exhibited by Democratic presidential candidates Posted: 02 Aug 2019 06:48 AM PDT  Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says he can't recall Americans electing an angry president.
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| McConnell fires back at 'Moscow Mitch' attacks by Democrats Posted: 03 Aug 2019 02:56 PM PDT  Primed for Russia-related attacks from his detractors at Kentucky's premier political event, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Saturday it's fitting for Democrats to wear "Moscow Mitch" shirts depicting the communist-era hammer and sickle. After all, McConnell reasoned, Democrats are from the party pushing for the Green New Deal and Medicare for all. Democrats broke into "Moscow Mitch" chants as they heckled the sixth-term Republican senator during the stump-style speaking at the Fancy Farm picnic.
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| India's Aircraft Carrier Caught On Fire. China Thinks It Knows Why. Posted: 01 Aug 2019 11:30 PM PDT  The blaze was extinguished, but not before an Indian Navy lieutenant commander, who led the firefighting effort, was overcome by fumes and later died in hospital, according to Indian media. He had gotten married just a month earlier.India's only aircraft carrier suffered a fire that left one sailor dead.And China, which is India's rival, says this is because Indians aren't competent enough to operate advanced military equipment.(This appeared first earlier May 2019.)The fire broke out in the engine room of the carrier Vikramaditya as it entered the Indian naval base at Karwar on April 26.The blaze was extinguished, but not before an Indian Navy lieutenant commander, who led the firefighting effort, was overcome by fumes and later died in hospital, according to Indian media. He had gotten married just a month earlier.The Indian Navy reported that the fire had not seriously damaged the combat capabilities of the vessel, which is India's only operational carrier. The 45,000-ton Vikramaditya – the ex-Soviet carrier Admiral Gorshkov \-- had just completed a deployment in the Arabian Sea, and was preparing to begin joint exercises with the French Navy's only aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, off the Indian coast.
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