http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/25/politics/jewish-republicans-trump-relationship/
>Two top Jewish donors sat before their friends and shared how they would support the new President.
>"He has to call hundreds of people," said billionaire Sheldon Adelson, seated alongside fellow casino magnate and the Republican National Committee new chief fundraiser, Steve Wynn. "I just have to discuss it with my wife.
>No matter the number of zeros behind the checks they cut, both financiers will be focal points in Donald Trump's new political infrastructure — and are installing unflinching fidelity to the President in their powerful ranks.
> Elite Jewish Republicans, once as skeptical of Trump as nearly any other donor group, are quickly locking arms with the new administration and fusing their mission with the President's.
>That's led to a recalibration at the Republican Jewish Coalition. Outside groups of every ideological stripe are rethinking their identities in Trump's Washington, and the RJC, out of power for eight years, is no different. That transformation was on vivid display here at Adelson's luxury Venetian hotel and casino this weekend, as the RJC transitions from an outside pressure player to an inside machinator.
>"The difference between being offense and defense," remarked Matt Brooks, the RJC's executive director.
>A once tepid and fractious relationship between establishment Jewish donors and an insurgent eager to poke them in the eye has suddenly blossomed into a full-bore embrace. Loyalty to Trump — whom Adelson also called likely to be the "best President for Israel ever" in his remarks, which were relayed by multiple attendees — now reigns supreme.
...
>At the first RJC meeting since Trump was inaugurated, one never had to look too far to find an organization being molded in Trump's image. Administration hands like Rep. Devin Nunes and communications aide Boris Epshteyn worked the Board of Directors, briefing the 50 most generous RJC donors behind closed doors on the White House's thinking.
>Industry titans like Wynn hunted for donations to Trump's RNC, even though Wynn hasn't even said whether he voted for him in November and isn't technically a member of the RJC ("Did Steve Wynn hit you up for some money yet?" one top fundraiser asked another on Saturday.)
>And perhaps most tellingly, top Jewish Republican donors showed little eagerness to blame Trump for occasionally crossing them, such as when he slow-walked acknowledging the anti-Semitism behind the Holocaust this month or the recent threats at Jewish community sites this week.
>"You get that with the package," said top GOP fundraiser Mel Sembler, who chalked up those controversies to mere political naïveté. "We've got a new president. We want him to win. We're here to support him."
>Some elements of the RJC, though, won't be subsumed by the Trump power structure — including its political deal-making. It unfolds over poker tournaments and Shabbat dinners here as donors ask for an audience and candidates ask for a dollar. Top Senate recruits paced the halls, handing out business cards to top GOP fundraisers and seeking out introductions to potential super PAC donors. Josh Mandel, the Ohio Senate candidate who is particularly close with Jewish Republican givers, hosted possible donors a few miles off the premises of the Venetian, and Jeff Bartos, a wealthy Pennsylvania realtor weighing a Senate challenge against Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, roamed the Venetian to network.
...
>But down-ballot candidates, used to being hot commodities for a party out of power, are now fighting for attention with an administration that suddenly dominates the political oxygen breathed by Jewish Republicans. Their newfound allegiance reached a zenith on Friday evening, when Vice President Mike Pence delivered a steady, well-received address in a dim ballroom over Shabbat dinner.
>"Hatred and anti-Semitism have no place in America," Pence told the crowd, recalling his recent visit to the Missouri cemetery desecrated by vandalism. "If the world knows nothing else, the world will know this: America stands with Israel."
>Yet that kind reaction wasn't always a guarantee. Trump pursued a topsy-turvy courtship with RJC contributors that to this day elicits head-shakes from top supporters. He spent much of the campaign openly mocking big-money donors — including Adelson, who is almost always sycophantically flattered by presidential aspirants — and telling them that "I don't want your money" in a December 2015 speech to RJC leadership.
>All that however faded to mere political turbulence when Trump staked out a hawkish position on Israel that positioned him to the right of even most Republicans. That's elated at least one interested party: Adelson, who has dined at the White House during the opening weeks of the administration and earned a private audience with Pence on Friday evening before his remarks to the full ballroom.
>But Jewish GOP leaders have already witnessed at least two cultural flashpoints that Trump managed to ignite. At least some Republicans have criticized Trump for a series of cultural missteps, such as his lack of hurry to condemn a recent spate of anti-Semitic attacks and omitting any mention of the Jews in a statement issued on Holocaust Remembrance Day, which earned him a rare rebuke from the RJC.
...
>"He is who he is," said former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, the new chair of the RJC Board of Trustees, when asked if Trump had more work to do on Jewish cultural issues. "We're not shy about speaking out and saying 'OK.' If there's something that we think isn't exactly the way we would want it to be, we'll articulate that."
>Both big-money and rank-and-file RJC members, in a series of interviews this weekend, evinced little concern about the miscues, dismissing them as oversights, especially given the number of high-ranking Jews in his family and the West Wing ("enough to make a minyan," one joked.)
And besides, on their signature issue, Israel — donor after donor said — Trump couldn't align with them better. That trumps all.
>"The idea that he didn't happen to say the right word, or the word that somebody was looking for," said Marc Goldman, an influential RJC donor from Florida, "it doesn't to me change anything about where he's coming from."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/39080356
>Addressing the Conservative Political Action Congress (CPAC), he vowed to always put American citizens first and build a "great, great border wall".
He also promised to focus on "getting bad people out of this country".
Mr Trump was greeted by chants of "USA, USA, USA!" as he addressed the annual forum in Maryland.
"We're building the wall," he said. "In fact it's going to start very soon. Way ahead of schedule. It's way, way, way ahead of schedule."
His comments come a day after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly met their Mexican counterparts in Mexico City.
>>114932
>Neither made any mention of the wall in Thursday's news conference after their closed-door meetings.
The wall could cost up to $21.5bn (£17.2bn), according to Reuters, citing a Department of Homeland Security internal report - much higher than Mr Trump's estimated price tag of $12bn (£9.6bn).
>>114933
Not bad. Illegal immigration costs us 84 billion dollars a year. It'll pay for itself in a few months
>>114945
So you assume all immigrants just walk through the border, eh.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/24/middleeast/iraq-conducts-first-airstrikes-against-isis-in-syria/
>For the first time, Iraqi fighter jets carried out airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria, according to a statement issued Friday by Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, and Iraq's Joint Operation Command.
>A spokesman with the Joint Operation Command confirmed to CNN the airstrikes that hit ISIS targets in Syria were coordinated with the Damascus government.
>The statements say the airstrikes were a response to car bomb attacks in the al-Bayaa and al-Habibiya neighborhoods of Baghdad that killed scores of people earlier this month.
>"Our heroic Air Force pilots carried out those strikes in response to the terrorists and they were successfully executed," the prime minister said.
>"Intelligence and operation command worked hard to track the perpetrators who planned and executed those attacks," according to the statement from the Joint Operation Command.
>F-16s were used to carry out the strikes, which destroyed ISIS hideouts and headquarters in the border towns of Albu Kamal in Syria and Husaiba in Iraq's western Anbar province, the statement said.
footage:
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/video-footage-iraqi-air-force-bombing-isis-syria/
>>114792
The guy way: blow stuff up.
>>115615
>The guy way
WTF I hate girls now.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2599048/4chan-donald-trump/
>Its users have been behind dozens of high profile pranks, coordinating attacks against other websites, and posting threats of violence.
>When one anonymous user posted a bogus theory about Donald Trump’s dirty dossier, the President-elect’s supporters were quick to jump on the bandwagon.
>The unknown poster claimed he made up false information and passed it onto Trump-hating Republican strategist Rick Wilson, who then handed it over to a spy contact.
>His post reads: “So they took what I told Rick Wilson and added a Russian spy angle to it.
“>They still believe it. Guys, they’re truly f*****g desperate – there’s no remaining Trump scandal that’s credible.”
>But Wilson has slammed the bogus claims that he handed the widely discredited document to the intelligence services.
>Since the story has developed, the 4chan theory has now been completely discredited.
When is the rest of 4chan going to publicly denounce /pol/?
#NotAll4Chan
>>99888
>4Chan
Look Ma I'm taking the bait.
Ukraine's prime minister from 2014 to 2016, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, speaks to HARDtalk's Stephen Sackur about the conflict in eastern Ukraine, corruption and US President Donald Trump
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04v48h7
Here's a video version.*
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/n3ct0c81
>*Television licence might be required.
The Keystone XL pipeline will not have to comply with President Trump's executive order prioritizing the use of American steel in pipeline projects, the White House said on Friday .
>“Well the way that executive order is written … it’s specific to new pipelines or those that are being repaired," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Friday. "And since this one is already currently under construction, the steel is already literally sitting there, it would be hard to go back."
>Despite repeated assertions from Trump that he has formally required new pipelines use American steel — a pledge he repeated in his address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday — the order he signed is not nearly as broad.
>Trump signed an executive order in January telling the Commerce Department to write a plan “under which all new pipelines, as well as retrofitted, repaired, or expanded pipelines … use materials and equipment produced in the United States."
>That measure came the same day Trump signed orders reviving the Keystone XL project, a pipeline that would bring crude oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast, which then-President Obama shot down in 2015.
>The Commerce study is still in progress and it will only yield a requirement that developers use American steel “to the maximum extent possible and to the extent permitted by law,” language that raises questions about how firm the requirement will end up being.
>Keystone developer TransCanada already owns the pipe it intends to use for the project. The Dakota Access Pipeline, another project Trump insisted would be built with American steel, will only be 57 percent American-made.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/322154-white-house-keystone-xl-exempt-from-trumps-american-steel-push
>TransCanada this week formally suspended its $15 billion legal challenge to the United States’ decision to block the project. A Reuters writer reported on Thursday that TransCanada could have restarted that lawsuit if Trump's American steel requirement had been binding.
Good. It's called economics, you Trump commies.
duplicate thread
>>117845
President Trump recently tweeted claiming that former President Obama wiretapped him during his campaign. One can only imagine how nuts the media would have gone if the roles had been reversed: President Trump wiretapping either Obama or the Clintons, though his DOJ could have authority to do just that given the expansive leaks of intelligence information by Obama and Clinton supporters the last few months. Heck, he could wiretap the media at this point, legally and legitimately, as the sources of these unlawful leaks, for which Obama himself set precedent. Do liberals understand what Pandora’s Box Obama opened up by Obama using the powers of the NSA, CIA and FBI to spy on his political opponents? Even Nixon never did that.
If the stories are correct, Obama or his officials might even face prosecution. But, we are still early in all of this and there are a lot of rumors flying around so the key is if the stories are correct. We just don’t know at this time. The stories currently are three-fold: first, that Obama’s team tried to get a warrant from a regular, Article III federal court on Trump, and was told no by someone along the way (maybe the FBI), as the evidence was that weak or non-existent; second, Obama’s team then tried to circumvent the federal judiciary’s independent role by trying to mislabel the issue one of “foreign agents,” and tried to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “courts”, and were again turned down, when the court saw Trump named (an extremely rare act of FISA court refusal of the government, suggesting the evidence was truly non-existent against Trump); and so, third,
http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/yes-obama-could-be-prosecuted-if-involved-with-illegal-surveillance/
Obama circumvented both the regular command of the FBI and the regularly appointed federal courts, by placing the entire case as a FISA case (and apparently under Sally Yates at DOJ) as a “foreign” case, and then omitted Trump’s name from a surveillance warrant submitted to the FISA court, which the FISA court unwittingly granted, which Obama then misused to spy on Trump and many connected to Trump. Which parts of these stories are true is not yet fully known, but if any part of them then Obama could face serious trouble.
Can a President be charged with a crime? Only once out of office. While in office, impeachment remains the exclusive remedy in order to avoid a single judicial branch trying to overturn an election, such as a grand jury in any part of the country could. Once out of office, a President remains immune from civil liability for his duties while President, under a 1982 decision of the United States Supreme Court. However, as the Nixon pardon attests, nothing forecloses a criminal prosecution of the President after his presidency is complete for crimes against the country. Obama, the Constitutional lawyer, should know that.
What crimes could have been committed? Ironically, for Democrats falsely accusing Attorney General Sessions, perjury and conspiracy to commit perjury, as well as intentional violations of FISA. Rather shockingly, no law current forbids misusing the power of the Presidency to spy on one’s adversaries. What the law does forbid is lying to any judicial officer to obtain any means of surveillance. What the law does forbid, under criminal penalty, is the misuse of FISA. Both derive from the protections of the Fourth Amendment itself. Under section 1809, FISA makes it a crime for anyone to either “engage in” electronic surveillance under “color of law” under FISA without following the law’s restrictions, or “disclose” or “use” information gathered from it in contravention of the statute’s sharp constrictions.
FISA, 50 USC 1801, et seq., is a very limited method of obtaining surveillance authority. The reason for its strict limits is that FISA evades the regular federal court process, by not allowing regularly, Constitutionally appointed federal judges and their magistrates to authorize surveillance the Fourth Amendment would otherwise forbid. Instead, the Chief Justice handpicks the FISA court members, who have shown an exceptional deference to the executive branch. This is because FISA court members trust the government is only bringing them surveillance about pending terror attacks or “grave hostile” war-like attacks, as the FISA statute limits itself to. Thus, a FISA application can only be used in very limited circumstances.
One important reminder about electronic surveillance. Occasionally, a law enforcement officer will hear or see or record information not allowed by the warrant, but incidental or accidental to otherwise lawful surveillance. Their job is to immediately stop listening, stop recording, and to delete such information. This is what you occasionally see in films where the agent in the van hears the conversation turn away from something criminal to a personal discussion, and the agent then turns off the listening device and stops the recording. Such films simply recognize long-standing legal practice.
FISA can only be used for “foreign intelligence information.” Now that sounds broad, but is in fact very limited under the law. The only “foreign intelligence information” allowed as a basis for surveillance is information necessary to protect the United States against actual or potential “grave” “hostile” attack, war-like sabotage or international terror. Second, it can only be used to eavesdrop on conversations where the parties to the conversation are a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. An agent of a foreign power cannot be a United States person unless they are knowingly involved in criminal espionage.
No warrant is allowed on that person unless a FISA court finds probable cause the United States person is knowingly engaged in criminal espionage. Even then, if it involves a United States person, special steps must be taken to “minimize the acquisition and retention, and prohibit the dissemination, of non publicly available information concerning unconsenting United States persons.”
This includes procedures that require they never identify the person, or the conversation, being surveilled, to the public where that information is not evidence of a particular crime. Third, the kind of information sought concerns solely information about a pending or actual attack on the country. That is why the law limits itself to sabotage incidents involving war, not any form or kind of “sabotage,” explicitly limiting itself to those acts identified in section 105 of Title 18 of the United States Code.
This bring us to Watergate-on-Steroids, or #ObamaGate. Here are the problematic aspects of the Obama surveillance on Trump’s team, and on Trump himself. First, it is not apparent FISA could ever be invoked. Second, it is possible Obama’s team may have perjured themselves before the FISA court by withholding material information essential to the FISA court’s willingness to permit the government surveillance. Third, it could be that Obama’s team illegally disseminated and disclosed FISA information in direct violation of the statute precisely prohibiting such dissemination and disclosure. FISA prohibits, under criminal penalty, Obama’s team from doing any of the three.
At the outset, the NSA should have never been involved in a domestic US election. Investigating the election, or any hacking of the DNC or the phishing of Podesta’s emails, would not be a FISA matter. It does not fit the definition of war sabotage or a “grave” “hostile” war-like attack on the United States, as constrictively covered by FISA.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4280502/Anonymous-Wikipedia-activists-promote-warped-agenda.html
>Michael Cockram is a ginger-haired 35-year-old from Bournemouth who, like many men his age, offers a window into his soul via Facebook.
>Here, you will learn that he’s ‘single’, is a fan of graffiti and folk music, and has worked variously as an ‘artist’ and ‘education management professional’.
>Cockram boasts 153 online friends, and claims to live in Angoisse, a village in the Dordogne in south-western France. He also appears to take great pleasure in regularly circulating obscene images and racist sentiments via the social network.
>His Facebook page includes an image of two gay men performing a sex act in public, a photograph of a naked, dark-haired man having oral sex with himself, and a painting that depicts bestiality between a man and a sheep.
>Three years ago, Cockram wrote on his timeline that ‘all Muslim men admitted to Paradise will have an ever-erect penis and they will each marry 70 wives, all with appetising vaginas’.
>Around the same time, he declared: ‘If you gently lick the outside of a Kinder Egg, you can slowly recreate the changing skin tones of Michael Jackson.’
>It’s lubricious, utterly unedifying stuff. Indeed, a casual observer could be forgiven for pigeon-holing Cockram as a bigoted oddball who spends rather too much of his life in darker corners of the internet.
...
>Yet in the modern world, bigoted oddballs who are over-familiar with the internet can wield tremendous power — and this potty-mouthed man is a case in point. For when he’s not posting obscene images or racist sentiments, Cockram is a regular editor of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, where (according to multiple posts on his Facebook feed) he operates under the alias ‘Hillbillyholiday’.
>Last month, ‘Hillbillyholiday’ was the architect of a cynical PR stunt which saw this newspaper publicly smeared by damning its journalism ‘unreliable’.
>He and 52 like-minded anti-Press zealots, almost all of whom remain anonymous, collaborated in a vote which persuaded Wikipedia, the sixth most popular website in the world, that it ought to ban the Daily Mail.
>The move by the online encyclopedia — which was founded in 2001 and has in a few short years become a hugely influential source of information — was revealed in the pages of the Left-wing Guardian newspaper.
>It reported that Wikipedia’s editors had decided, in a democratic ballot, that the Mail’s journalism cannot be trusted.
>No statistics were offered in support of this claim, which, incidentally, came days before the Mail won Sports Newspaper Of The Year for an unprecedented fourth straight time, and was shortlisted for 15 awards at the British Press Awards, the news industry’s Oscars. (Indeed, as we shall see, the Mail has an enviable record on accuracy.)
>Neither did Wikipedia, nor The Guardian, bother to shed much light on how this decision was reached.
...
>If they had, then it would have become apparent to readers that this supposed exercise in democracy took place in virtual secrecy, and that Wikipedia’s decision to censor the Mail — the only major news outlet on the face of the Earth to be so censored — was supported by a mere 53 of its editors, or 0.00018 per cent of the site’s 30 million total, plus five ‘administrators’.
>Curiously, though it has now placed a ban on this paper, the website remains happy to use the state propaganda outlets of many of the world’s most repressive and autocratic Left-wing dictatorships as a source for information.
>Wikipedia has not, for example, banned the Chinese government’s Xinhua news agency, Iran’s Press TV or the Kremlin mouthpiece Russia Today.
>Neither does it place a black mark against Kim Jong-un’s in-house propaganda outlet, the Korean Central News Agency, which in 2012 published a report claiming that archaeologists in the country’s capital, Pyongyang, had discovered the remains of a 1,000-year-old unicorn lair.
>Wikipedia even heralds Exaro, the now-defunct British website notorious for making false claims about an establishment paedophile ring which saw a number of innocent people arrested, as a valid ‘investigative news source’.
>And yet, it has declared that the Daily Mail — one of the most popular mainstream newspapers published in any Western democracy — is somehow too ‘unreliable’ to be included on its site.
...
>In an era where the term ‘fake news’ is increasingly used as a desperate slur, with Donald Trump applying it to CNN, the BBC and any major outlet that tends to disgruntle him, it’s tempting to suggest that both Wikipedia and The Guardian are guilty, in this deeply disturbing saga, of creating what might be regarded as false news.
>More worrying, this ban has set a dangerous precedent, raising profoundly troubling questions about free speech and censorship in the online era.
>And ultimately it provides an object lesson in the way well-organised campaigners from extremes of the political spectrum are now seeking to impose their prejudices on society by seizing control of the most valuable resource of the internet age: information.
>To understand how, you must first understand Wikipedia and the manner in which it works. Founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales, husband of Tony Blair’s former diary secretary Kate Garvey (Alastair Campbell played bagpipes at their wedding), the site is an encyclopedia whose pages can be written and edited by anyone in the world.
>Wales has said he wants it to contain ‘the sum of all human knowledge available to all in their own language’.
>Over time, the theory goes, successive contributors, or ‘editors’, will gradually improve and update every Wikipedia article. Thanks to the so-called ‘wisdom of crowds’, they will slowly but surely create an ever-more-valuable repository of facts.
...
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-03/despite-trump-pledge-no-requirement-for-u-s-steel-in-keystone
>The Keystone XL pipeline won’t be required to use American-made steel to earn construction approval from the Trump administration, the White House said Friday, despite President Donald Trump’s repeated claims.
>The president’s executive order mandating the use of U.S. steel is “specific to new pipelines or those that are being repaired,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday.
>“Since this one is already current, under construction, the steel is already literally sitting there, it would be hard to go back,” she said.
>That’s welcome news to TransCanada Corp. as its moves forward with the $8 billion project. The pipeline would span 1,179 miles (1,897 kilometers) from Alberta through three states -- Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska -- before connecting to an existing network feeding crude to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries. The line would carry as much as 830,000 barrels of oil a day, including some from North Dakota’s Bakken shale.
>In 2012, the company said it expected half of the 821,000 tons of steel needed to construct the pipeline to be produced inside of the United States. The remainder of the steel was expected to be imported from Canada, Italy, and India.
...
>But exempting Keystone XL from the president’s requirement to use American steel would seem to fly in the face of Trump’s public comments. Trump has repeatedly boasted that he forced pipeline companies to agree to use U.S. steel in their projects.
>During a Feb. 23 meeting with manufacturing CEOs at the White House, Trump told U.S. Steel Corp chief executive Mario Longhi that “the pipe is coming from the U.S.” for the Keystone project, as well as Energy Transfer Partners LP’s Dakota Access pipeline.
>“We put you heavy into the pipeline business because we approved, as you know, the Keystone Pipeline and Dakota,” Trump told Longhi. “But they have to buy -- meaning, steel, so I’ll say U.S. Steel -- but steel made in this country and pipelines made in this country.”
>During a Feb. 16 press conference, the president said that in exchange for using “the powers of government to make that pipeline happen” the administration “want them to use American steel.”
>“And they’re willing to do that, but nobody ever asked before I came along,” he said. “Even this order was drawn and they didn’t say that. And I’m reading the order, I’m saying, why aren’t we using American steel? And they said, that’s a good idea. We put it in.”
>He repeated the claim a day later during a tour of a Boeing Co. plant in South Carolina.
>“You probably saw the Keystone pipeline I approved recently, and the Dakota,” Trump said. “And I’m getting ready to sign the bill. I said, where is the pipe made? And they told me not here. I said, that’s good -- add a little sentence that you have to buy American steel. And you know what? That’s the way it is. It’s the way it’s going to be.”
>Trump told a similar story later that weekend at a Feb. 18 rally in Melbourne, Florida.
...
>Noting that he had had moved to “begin the construction” of the Keystone and Dakota projects, Trump said that as he was about to sign the order, he asked who would be manufacturing the pipe.
>“Something this audience understands very well, right?” Trump said. “Simple question. The lawyers put this very complex document in front. I said, who makes the pipe? They said, sir, it can be made anywhere. I said, not anymore. So I put a little clause on the bottom: The pipe has to be made in the United States of America if we’re going to have pipelines.”
>A White House official who would only discuss the pipeline issue on the condition of anonymity said the Commerce Department was working on a plan for the president’s order requiring U.S. steel, so the administration couldn’t implement it until that effort had completed. Moreover, the official said, because the Keystone XL pipeline is currently under construction it does not count as a new, retrofitted, repaired, or expanded pipeline.
>Asked about the issue, TransCanada issued a statement saying it continued “to be encouraged as our Presidential Permit application makes its way through the approval process.”
>“This project will support U.S. energy security, create thousands of well-paying U.S. jobs and provide substantial economic benefits,” the company said.
>Canada’s U.S. ambassador, David MacNaughton, said Friday in an interview that negotiations on Keystone’s route are going "extremely well" with federal authorities and "I don’t see any big hurdles" from the Trump administration. He called the outlook for the project "very positive."
>>117845
(((((Bloomberg))))))
http://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/02/pence-used-personal-email-state-business----and-hacked/98604904/
>Vice President Mike Pence routinely used a private email account to conduct public business as governor of Indiana, at times discussing sensitive matters and homeland security issues.
>Emails released to IndyStar in response to a public records request show Pence communicated via his personal AOL account with top advisers on topics ranging from security gates at the governor’s residence to the state’s response to terror attacks across the globe. In one email, Pence’s top state homeland security adviser relayed an update from the FBI regarding the arrests of several men on federal terror-related charges.
>Cyber-security experts say the emails raise concerns about whether such sensitive information was adequately protected from hackers, given that personal accounts like Pence's are typically less secure than government email accounts. In fact, Pence's personal account was hacked last summer.
>Furthermore, advocates for open government expressed concerns about transparency because personal emails aren't immediately captured on state servers that are searched in response to public records requests.
...
>Pence's office in Washington said in a written statement Thursday: "Similar to previous governors, during his time as Governor of Indiana, Mike Pence maintained a state email account and a personal email account. As Governor, Mr. Pence fully complied with Indiana law regarding email use and retention. Government emails involving his state and personal accounts are being archived by the state consistent with Indiana law, and are being managed according to Indiana’s Access to Public Records Act.”
>Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb's office released 29 pages of emails from Pence's AOL account, but declined to release an unspecified number of others because the state considers them confidential and too sensitive to release to the public.
>That's of particular concern to Justin Cappos, a computer security professor at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering. “It’s one thing to have an AOL account and use it to send birthday cards to grandkids," he said. "But it’s another thing to use it to send and receive messages that are sensitive and could negatively impact people if that information is public.”
>Indiana law does not prohibit public officials from using personal email accounts, although the law is generally interpreted to mean that official business conducted on private email must be retained for public record purposes.
>Pence's office said his campaign hired outside counsel as he was departing as governor to review his AOL emails and transfer any involving public business to the state.
...
>Concerns also surrounded Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server and email account during her tenure as secretary of state. Pence as governor would not have dealt with national security issues as sensitive or as broad as those handled by Clinton in her position or with classified matters.
>Pence fiercely criticized Clinton throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, accusing her of trying to keep her emails out of public reach and exposing classified information to potential hackers.
>Pence spokesman Marc Lotter called any comparisons between Pence and Clinton "absurd," noting that Pence didn't deal with federally classified information as governor. While Pence used a well-known consumer email provider, Clinton had a private server installed in her home, he said.
>Cybersecurity experts say Pence’s emails were likely just as insecure as Clinton’s. While there has been speculation about whether Clinton's emails were hacked, Pence’s account was actually compromised last summer by a scammer who sent an email to his contacts claiming Pence and his wife were stranded in the Philippines and in urgent need of money.
>Corey Nachreiner, chief technology officer at computer security company WatchGuard Technologies, said the email accounts of Pence and Clinton were probably about equally vulnerable to attacks.
>"In this case, you know the email address has been hacked,” he said. “It would be hypocritical to consider this issue any different than a private email server.”
>He and other experts say personal accounts such as the one Pence used are typically less secure than government email accounts, which often receive additional layers of monitoring and security, and are linked to servers under government control.
...
>Indiana law requires all records dealing with state business to be retained and available for public information requests. Emails exchanged on state accounts are captured on state servers, which can be searched in response to such requests. But any emails Pence sent from his AOL account to another private account likely would have been hidden from public record searches unless he took steps to make them available.
>Indiana Public Access Counselor Luke Britt, who was appointed by Pence in 2013, said he advises state officials to copy or forward their emails involving state business to their government accounts to ensure the record is preserved on state servers.
>But there is no indication that Pence took any such steps to preserve his AOL emails until he was leaving the governor's office.
>When public officials fail to retain their private-account emails pertaining to public business, "they're running the risk of violating the law,” Britt said. “A good steward of those messages and best practice is going to dictate they preserve those."
>All of the emails provided to IndyStar, part of the USA TODAY Network, were ones captured on state servers.
>The emails were obtained after a series of public records requests that the Pence administration did not fulfill for nearly four months before Pence left office.
>The administration of Pence’s successor, Gov. Eric Holcomb, released 29 pages of emails late this past week. But it withheld others, saying they are deliberative or advisory, confidential under rules adopted by the Indiana Supreme Court or the work product of an attorney.
>Holcomb’s office declined to disclose how many emails were withheld.
>Cyber-security experts and government transparency advocates said Pence's use of a personal email account for matters of state business — including confidential ones — is surprising given his attacks on Clinton's exclusive use of a private email server.
...
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/592309/Mount-Etna-Eruption-Italy-Explosion-Lava-Ash-Catania-Earthquake-Disaster-Sicily-Video
http://www.euronews.com/2017/02/28/skiers-brave-the-slopes-of-mount-etna-as-it-erupts
>Mount Etna has erupted in a fiery show of lava in eastern Sicily – sending giant orange fountains of lava spewing into the air.
>The firework show can be seen from the city of Catania and the resort town of Taormina.
>There are now fears the eruption could get worse and spew out an ash cloud which could ground international flights.
>Etna is Europe's highest and most active volcano.
>The fire-spitting mountain began to spurt lava last night.
...
___
>Giant orange fountains of lava have spewed into the air over Sicily overnight as Mount Etna surged into life.
>Streams of orange lava are flowing down the sides of the mountain, which is Europe’s largest volcano.
>Is it dangerous? No.
>Despite being visible from as far away as Catania and Taormina, experts say this latest eruption is not dangerous.
>The airport at Catania is still open and operating.
>People are still skiing on the volcano’s snowy slopes.
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/weekly-wrap-up-deadly-tornadoes-spin-across-midwestern-us-mount-etna-erupts-in-fiery-display/70001014
this isnt news unless they do sick tricks n flips over the eruption
>>118269
One day they will perfect lava proof snow and this will be a sport.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/02/25/turkey-iconic-hagia-sophia-mosque/98169256/
>ATHENS — For eight decades, the iconic Hagia Sophia museum in Istanbul has stood as a symbol of Turkey's commitment to a secular society. Now that tradition is under siege by growing calls to convert the historic structure back into a practicing mosque.
>The 1,500-year-old structure originally was built as an Orthodox Christian cathedral. It was turned into a mosque in the 15th century after the Ottoman Turks defeated the Greek emperor in Constantinople and renamed the city Istanbul. In the 1930s, the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, turned it into a museum in his drive to create a secular republic on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
>Now that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is promoting a more prominent role for Islam in Turkey, whose citizens are overwhelmingly Muslim, the idea of turning the popular tourist attraction into a house of worship again has become more appealing.
>"We want Hagia Sophia to open as a mosque," said Yusuf Yalcin, 37, of Istanbul, an information technology manager who co-founded a group devoted to that cause. "Hagia Sophia is the relic of our ancestors and symbol of our freedom."
>The idea appears to have traction in Turkey’s political circles. Last year, the Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs appointed an imam to the Hagia Sophia. That appointment came a few months after a muezzin, who calls the faithful to pray, chanted the Islamic morning prayer inside the Hagia Sophia for the first time since 1935. Sung during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the muezzin’s call was broadcast on Turkish state television.
>Those moves are causing a backlash among Greeks here. “Obsessions, verging on bigotry, with Muslim rituals in a monument of world cultural heritage are incomprehensible,” the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. “Such actions are not compatible with modern, democratic and secular societies.”
>Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Tanju Bilgic said in a strident retort on state television that the Greek government goes out of its way to thwart the practice of Islam in Greece.
>“Greece has not given permission for the construction of a mosque in its capital for years, permanently intervenes in the freedoms of religion of the Turkish minority of Western Thrace and mistakes being against Islam for being modern,” said Bilgic.
>Yalcin said Turkey, by contrast, is more open to letting Christians practice their religion. “Many churches have been functioning freely in Istanbul" ever since the city was captured by the Ottomans, he said.
>That doesn't satisfy Greeks who still feel bitter over the loss of Constantinople, once the heart of the Byzantine Empire, whose Greek-speaking citizens were among the most cosmopolitan in the world.
>Visiting the Hagia Sophia last year was the trip of a lifetime for Dimitra Anagnostopoulou, 59, a Greek bookseller. “I felt awe,” Anagnostopoulou said. “But I was a bit let down by the Arabic signs left there from the time Hagia Sophia was turned into a mosque.”
>Some Turks also worry about the campaign to convert the museum. “Turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque has always been a cause for many conservative Islamists,” said Istanbul Bilgi University anthropologist Erkan Saka.
>Historians note that such changes have occurred throughout history, as Christians have turned pagan temples and mosques into churches or for secular uses. “The same happens today in the West, when empty Christian cathedrals are sold as secular buildings,” said Sotiris Mitralexis, a philosophy professor at the City University of Istanbul.
>Yalcin said everyone can be satisfied by using the Hagia Sophia as both a mosque and a museum. “All of the mosques in Turkey are open to everybody,” he said. “We even recommend that the upper floor be used as a kind of museum as it is now with the display of historical works.”
I don't see what's wrong with setting aside a few of the many rooms in the place so they can kneel and pray. It's a muslim country after all, and like the article says, they Turks are more tolerant of other religions than the orthodox Christian Greeks.
>>115418
The reason why Orthodox Christians, especially the Balkan ones, aren't tolerant of muslims and the Turks/Ottomans in general is because of the history they have with it.
You can't really pretend the sentiment came out of nowhere or that it isn't justified. For all that they blather about being tolerant, I'm not seeing one of their bigger mosques being converted into an Orthodox Christian church.
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/02/27/517037537/how-the-media-are-using-encryption-tools-to-collect-anonymous-tips
>There was a time when a whistleblower had to rely on the Postal Service, or a pay phone, or an underground parking garage to leak to the press.
>This is a different time.
>A renewed interest in leaks since Donald Trump's surprise election victory last fall, and a growth in the use of end-to-end encryption technology, have led news organizations across the country to highlight the multiple high-tech ways you can now send them anonymous tips.
>The Washington Post, The New York Times and ProPublica have launched webpages outlining all the ways you can leak to them. ProPublica highlights three high-tech options on its page (in addition to the Postal Service): the encrypted messaging app Signal, an encrypted email program called PGP (or GPG) and an anonymous file sharing system for desktop computers called SecureDrop. The Washington Post goes even further, highlighting six digital options.
>Jeff Larson, a reporter at ProPublica, says of all this, "We're living in almost a golden age for leaks."
>Some tools like SecureDrop, created by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, were made just for newsrooms to accept anonymous tips. Others, like Signal, the premier encrypted messaging app on the market right now, were created with a different, and more universal purpose.
...
>Moxie Marlinspike, one of the creators of Signal, says it's for everyone who might not be aware that a lot of their communication might not actually be private.
>"What we're really trying to do is bring people's existing reality in line with people's expectations," Marlinspike says. "Most of the time when people send someone a message, their assumption is that that message is only visible to themselves and the intended recipient. It's always disappointing when that turns out not to be true."
>Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, says newsrooms' and leakers' reliance on these tools also speaks to a new reality.
>"We're living in a golden age of leaks but we're also living in a golden age of surveillance," Timm says. "It is very easy for the government, for example, to subpoena a Google, or a Verizon, or an AT&T to get a journalist's phone records, or email records, that tells them who they talked to, when they talked to them, and for how long. Over the past eight or 10 years, the government has been able to prosecute a record number of sources, and the primary way they've been able to do this is because of their increased surveillance capabilities."
>That heavier scrutiny of the press and its sources has come from both sides of the aisle. This month, President Trump directed the Justice Department to investigate what he calls "criminal leaks" coming from the federal government, and in a speech Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, he said journalists should not be allowed to use unnamed sources.
...
>The Obama administration used the Espionage Act multiple times to prosecute leaks (more than any other administration, according to PolitiFact), as well as secretly seizing Associated Press reporters' phone records.
>While many encryption apps are used to bypass such surveillance of communications between leakers and the press, some apps are being used by staffers within the government to communicate with each other. A recent Washington Post article stated that some White House staffers are relying on an encrypted messaging app called Confide to communicate with each other without using official phones or email, out of a fear of leaks.
>But using an app like that — to make official White House communications private — raises red flags for Chris Lu, former deputy labor secretary under President Barack Obama.
>"At the White House and at the Department of Labor," Lu says, "we were given very clear training and guidance about the Presidential Records Acts and maintaining documents." The Washington Post story, he says, "instantly raised red flags whether it was in compliance with the Presidential Records Act. And it clearly is not." (That law is meant to ensure that communications in the White House are maintained for historical purposes.)
>Confide CEO Jon Brod says his company advises all users to follow the rules of their employers, if they're using Confide to talk to co-workers.
>"There are certain industries and sectors where specific people and certain types of conversations are regulated," Brod says, pointing to financial services, health care and parts of the government. "If you are in one of those industries or sectors, it's important that you use Confide in a way that conforms to any of those regulations that may be relevant to you."
>Of course, the legality and ethics of such communications between government workers, as well as between the press and government leakers, often depends on whom you ask.
...
>For Moxie Marlinspike of Signal, there is no question on one thing: whether apps such as his are good for society. "I think what we're seeing is things like Signal almost democratizing that ability (to leak)," he says. "So people who are not necessarily at these high-level posts, but just ordinary workers, are able to communicate what's going on to people outside of government. If you're the director of the CIA, you don't need Signal."
>But with the growth of apps like Signal and encryption technology, there might not ever be a way to tell just how ubiquitous all this high-tech leaking becomes. Often the data is so secret that there are few metrics to read, if there are any at all. "We don't have any information about our users," Marlinspike says. "That's how end-to-end encryption works: Even us, we don't have that kind of information."
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/busted-donald-trumps-twitter-account-linked-to-a-private-gmail-address/
>The most powerful Twitter account in the world was apparently linked to a private Gmail account that may or may not be protected with two-step authentication.
>A hacker known on Twitter as @WauchulaGhost told CNN that the president’s account was linked to a personal email account — most likely one belonging to Dan Scavino, his social media chief.
>To make matters worse, Trump apparently sends his own tweets from an unsecured Android phone, according to the New York Times.
>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/politics/president-trump-white-house.html
Ok,
Must a tweet require a secured phone?
WASHINGTON — During the 2016 campaign, Donald J. Trump’s second campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, had regular communications with his longtime associate — a former Russian military translator in Kiev who has been investigated in Ukraine on suspicion of being a Russian intelligence agent.
>At the Republican National Convention in July, J. D. Gordon, a former Pentagon official on Mr. Trump’s national security team, met with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, at a time when Mr. Gordon was helping keep hawkish language on Russia’s conflict with Ukraine out of the party’s platform.
>And Jason Greenblatt, a former Trump Organization lawyer and now a special representative for international negotiations at the White House, met last summer with Rabbi Berel Lazar, the chief rabbi of Russia and an ally of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.
>In a Washington atmosphere supercharged by the finding of the intelligence agencies that Mr. Putin tried to steer the election to Mr. Trump, as well as continuing F.B.I. and congressional investigations, a growing list of Russian contacts with Mr. Trump’s associates is getting intense and skeptical scrutiny.
>Democrats see suspicious connections and inaccurate denials as part of a pattern that belies Mr. Trump’s adamant insistence that he and his associates “have nothing to do with Russia.” The president’s supporters say innocuous encounters, routine for any incoming presidential team, are being treated for political reasons as somehow subversive.
>Mr. Trump denounced the furor over Russian connections on Thursday as a “total witch hunt” — but it may not have helped his case that the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, echoed his words on Friday, saying, “This all looks like a witch hunt.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/us/politics/trump-russia-links-washington.html?_r=0
>On Friday, Mr. Trump posted a picture on Twitter of a meeting between Mr. Putin and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, and wrote that “we should start an immediate investigation into @SenSchumer and his ties to Russia and Putin.”
>Paul Manafort, Donald J. Trump’s second campaign chairman, had regular contact with an associate linked to Russia during the 2016 campaign. Credit Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The issue has already had momentous consequences for the new administration. Michael T. Flynn lasted less than a month as national security adviser before being forced out for mischaracterizing his conversations with Mr. Kislyak. This week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions admitted to having meetings with Mr. Kislyak that he had not disclosed during his confirmation hearing.
>Mr. Sessions fended off demands that he resign but agreed to recuse himself from what may be the most important investigation his Justice Department is conducting: of Russian meddling in the election and whether any of Mr. Trump’s associates colluded in those efforts. And that did not end the issue; all nine Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee called on Friday for Mr. Sessions to testify about his inaccurate denials that he had met with Russian officials during the campaign.
>Part of the problem underlying disputes over such contacts may be Mr. Trump’s pugnacious style, which usually leaves little room for nuance. At a news conference last month, he said that he had “nothing to do with Russia,” and that “to the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does.”
>In fact, vigorous reporting by multiple news media organizations is turning up multiple contacts between Trump associates and Russians who serve in or are close to Mr. Putin’s government. There have been courtesy calls, policy discussions and business contacts, though nothing has emerged publicly indicating anything more sinister. A dossier of allegations on Trump-Russia contacts, compiled by a former British intelligence agent for Mr. Trump’s political opponents, includes unproven claims that his aides collaborated in Russia’s hacking of Democratic targets.
>Current and former American officials have said that phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.
>Former diplomats and Russia specialists say it would have been absurd and contrary to American interests for the Trump team to avoid meetings with Russians, either during or since the campaign.
>John R. Beyrle, the United States ambassador to Moscow from 2008 to 2012, said he feared that “we’re beginning to out-Russian the Russians” by treating all contacts as suspicious. When he returns to Russia now, he said, “this real anti-Western, anti-American frenzy” prompts some old acquaintances to refuse to meet him because they worry about being tagged as too friendly to the United States.
>“That’s the last behavior we should model — that simply meeting with a Russian official is wrong, without any knowledge of what was said,” Mr. Beyrle said.
>In a possible sign that Mr. Trump hopes to put behind him the impression that he is an uncritical admirer of Mr. Putin, he is expected to name Fiona Hill, a respected Brookings scholar, to the top Russia post at the National Security Council, according to administration officials.
>Ms. Hill, who served as national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia from 2006 to 2009, is viewed as a Putin skeptic, if not as outspoken in her criticism of the Russian leader as are some other academics. Angela Stent, a Russia expert at Georgetown, said Ms. Hill was “realistic about Putin” and praised the 2013 book she wrote with Clifford G. Gaddy, “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin,” as the best biography of the Russian leader.
>It might take a Russia scholar to unpack the significance of particular meetings that are now coming to light in the glare of investigations and bare-knuckle politics.
>Rabbi Lazar, who has condemned critics of Mr. Putin’s actions in Ukraine, is the leader of the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch group in Russia, where it is a powerful organization running dozens of schools and offering social services across the country, while maintaining links to a lucrative financial donor network.
>Mr. Greenblatt, who handled outreach to Jews for the campaign, said that Rabbi Lazar was one of several Chabad leaders he had met during the campaign. He said the two men did not discuss broader United States-Russia relations and called the meeting “probably less than useful.”
>Rabbi Lazar said they had spoken about anti-Semitism in Russia, Russian Jews in Israel and Russian society in general. While he meets with Mr. Putin once or twice a year, he said, he never discussed his meeting with Mr. Greenblatt with Kremlin officials.
>Michael T. Flynn, back right, who stepped down as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
>Joshua Nass, a public relations executive in New York, confirmed arranging the meeting between Mr. Lazar and Mr. Greenblatt.