*president trump is seriously dangerous*

[seemslikeadream]

5 Disturbing New Revelations About Trump's Dysfunctional National Security Council

It might be funny if these people weren't charged with keeping the country safe.
By Ilana Novick / AlterNet February 13, 2017


The National Security Council is intended to help presidents make sense of the daunting world of foreign policy and security threats. Not so in the Trump administration. According to a frightening inside look from Monday's New York Times, it appears staff is concerned not only with threats from adversaries, but with those from within. The appointment of the white supremacist Steve Bannon to the Council was just the beginning. From a National Security advisor who knows how to reach Putin but doesn't know how to call the National Guard, to botched executive orders and Make America Great again mugs showing up at meetings with foreign leaders, it is "so far a very dysfunctional NSC,” Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee told the Times.

The rest of the sources for the article were anonymous, for fear of retaliation, but the revelations they bring to light are disturbing to say the least. Below are five of them.

1. Foreign policy is being conducted on Twitter.

Much like the cabinet fumbling around for light switches and a door knob leading out of the Oval Office from last week's damning article, National Security Council staff wake up in the dark. They "get up in the morning, read President Trump’s Twitter posts and struggle to make policy to fit them." In other administrations they'd have non-social media data to operate on. In the reign of Trump, Twitter is their only source of information about what the commander-in-chief is thinking. The Times continues, "most are kept in the dark about what Mr. Trump tells foreign leaders in his phone calls." Because of all the leaks, many NSC staff are making their own communications encrypted, for fear of being monitored for leaks.

2. Michael Flynn is a little too cozy with Russia, and Trump continues to play dumb.

National Security Advisor Michael Flynn is being investigated to determine whether he unlawfully discussed lifting President Obama's sanctions on Russia, and other potential areas of cooperation with the Russian government before Trump was in office. According to an earlier Times report, he indicated "that the Obama administration was Moscow’s adversary and that relations with Russia would change under Mr. Trump." Trump, when asked about Flynn's Russia ties on Air Force One, suggested he was unware of the controversy.

When aide Stephen Miller was asked about the connections on Meet the Press Sunday, he demurred, saying, "that is a question for the president," though he readily shared his views on a range of other topics. Meanwhile, according to the Times, "aides said over the weekend in Florida — where Mr. Flynn accompanied the president and Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe — that Mr. Trump was closely monitoring the reaction to Mr. Flynn’s conversations." In case readers needed additional nightmare fodder, Flynn also apparently has no idea how to call the National Guard in the event of a Hurricane Katrina-like natural disaster or a terrorist attack in a major city.

3. Trump can't read a full policy memo, demands maps and graphs.

President Obama, the Times notes, preferred policy memos to be three-to-six pages. Trump on the other hand, can only handle a single illustraged page. "The president likes maps," one anonymous official told the New York Times. Sure, every boss wants concise memos, but one would hope the leader of the free world might have the patience for more than a page filled mostly with pictures.

4. The director of the CIA and the Secretary of Defense never saw many of Trump's executive orders.

Considering the most controversial executive order involved a supposed national security threat from immigrants, one would think the president's top advisors on these matters might need to be consulted, or at least in the loop. The lack of communciation was so bad that CIA director Michael Pompeo thought he had been booted from the NSC: "One order had to be amended after it was made public, to reassure Mr. Pompeo that he had a regular seat on the council." Another Pentagon official the Times spoke to only saw a draft order on prisoner treatment because it was leaked: "He called the White House to find out if it was real and said he had concerns but was not sure if he was authorized to make suggestions."

5. KT McFarland treats NSC staff meetings like Fox News.

McFarland, a Reagan veteran who most recently worked for Fox News, can't seem to shake the television tics. She uses her television experience to force council members to make their points quickly, and, "she signals when to wrap up, several participants said." She also repeatedly tells staff to Make America Great Again. Trump, who never met a branding opportunity he didn't love, apparently has enough mugs with the phrase that staff members bring them into meetings with foreign dignitaries.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politi ... ty-council

[Luther Blissett]

5 Disturbing New Revelations About Trump's Dysfunctional National Security Council

It might be funny if these people weren't charged with keeping the country safe.
By Ilana Novick / AlterNet February 13, 2017


The National Security Council is intended to help presidents make sense of the daunting world of foreign policy and security threats. Not so in the Trump administration. According to a frightening inside look from Monday's New York Times, it appears staff is concerned not only with threats from adversaries, but with those from within. The appointment of the white supremacist Steve Bannon to the Council was just the beginning. From a National Security advisor who knows how to reach Putin but doesn't know how to call the National Guard, to botched executive orders and Make America Great again mugs showing up at meetings with foreign leaders, it is "so far a very dysfunctional NSC,” Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee told the Times.

The rest of the sources for the article were anonymous, for fear of retaliation, but the revelations they bring to light are disturbing to say the least. Below are five of them.

…

2. Michael Flynn is a little too cozy with Russia, and Trump continues to play dumb.

National Security Advisor Michael Flynn is being investigated to determine whether he unlawfully discussed lifting President Obama's sanctions on Russia, and other potential areas of cooperation with the Russian government before Trump was in office. According to an earlier Times report, he indicated "that the Obama administration was Moscow’s adversary and that relations with Russia would change under Mr. Trump." Trump, when asked about Flynn's Russia ties on Air Force One, suggested he was unware of the controversy.

…

Well…

[seemslikeadream]

now when did he say he was unaware?

January 23

Yates again raised the issue with Comey, who now backed away from his opposition to informing the White House. Yates and the senior career national security official spoke to McGahn, the White House counsel, who didn’t respond to a request for comment.

maybe McGahn will be the next to go

McGahn I am sure will say I never told the president

or will he?

Gen. Yellowkekc will need to get ready for the witness chair..it's really not about him anymore

[Elvis]

A little waterboarding should get the truth.

[Luther Blissett]

Haha.

I need to know who is next. What does the future hold?

[seemslikeadream]

bye bye executive privilege

John Fugelsang ‏@JohnFugelsang Feb 11
Karma is gonna build a wall around Donald Trump and make him pay for it.

John Fugelsang ‏@JohnFugelsang 15m15 minutes ago
The Trump administration without Michael Flynn is like a sad incomplete set of Russian Nesting Dolls

.

John Fugelsang ‏@JohnFugelsang 26m26 minutes ago
Michael Flynn resigns for lying exactly two weeks after Sally Yates is fired for telling the truth.

Diane N. Sevenay ‏@Diane_7A 4m4 minutes ago
"Am I president yet?"
#Michael #Flynn

Diane N. Sevenay ‏@Diane_7A 12m12 minutes ago
When you've chosen your scapegoat. #Michael #Flynn

Diane N. Sevenay ‏@Diane_7A 46m46 minutes ago
"Michael Flynn died in the Bowling Green Massacre."

[seemslikeadream]

HOW SILICON VALLEY CAN TAKE DOWN TRUMP
The technology industry has struggled to articulate its discontent with the new administration. But it has more power to check him than any other business. And it might just be getting started.

On the morning of January 18, 2012, millions of Americans started their day just like any other: getting up, pouring coffee, and jumping on the Internet. But when they checked their e-mail, scrolled through the news, or searched for a new bicycle on Craigslist, the Web was largely covered in black. Google had placed a black rectangle over its polychromatic logo; Wikipedia’s Web site was turned black; and Craigslist was shuttered. This was all a response to two proposed congressional laws—the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and the Protect IP Act, or PIPA—which would have had devastating effects on the way we all use the Web. Advocates of the bills suggested that the legislation could protect intellectual property, among other things. But many opponents saw it as a threat to free speech, advancement, and the spirit of the open Web. Even gamers got involved in the online revolt; the maker of Minecraft told its millions of players that “SOPA means LOSER in Swedish!” At the end of that day, protest organizers said that more than 115,000 Web sites, large and very small, had joined in the online demonstration.

This was the first time that tech companies had used their considerable tools and influence to retaliate against the government in such a broad manner. And boy, did it work. Largely in response to the blackout, more than 1 million messages were sent to Congress, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation; petitions quickly gathered millions of signatures; there were more than 2.4 million tweets referring to the bill. Influential senators withdrew support for the legislation, and a vote was hastily postponed. A few months later it was shelved indefinitely.

This moment, four years ago, provided a powerful and collective epiphany for Silicon Valley. Technology companies were largely astounded by their ability to wield power over lawmakers. The senators who at first appeared happy enough to push a corporatist agenda were slapped sideways by the public’s response. Yet since that day in 2012, there has not been any similar outcry—even though, in the last few months, we’ve encountered countless events that might negatively affect Americans in far more devastating ways than SOPA or PIPA ever could have.

There was no online blackout, for instance, when Russia hacked the D.N.C., leaked John Podesta’s e-mails, or tried to sway the election for Donald Trump. I didn’t see 115,000 Web sites come out to help protect our democracy after Trump publicly declared that he lost the popular vote on account of voter fraud. Or when the president started discussing the construction of his big, pointless wall along the Mexican border. Or when President Steve Bannon was placed on the White House’s National Security Council. Or when President Bannon race-baited Silicon Valley by saying that “two-thirds or three-quarters” of its C.E.O.s are Asian. (Even if that number were correct, which it is not, so what?) The makers of the Internet do not appear to stand up with their considerable juice when Trump repeats that the media he disagrees with is fake—perhaps his most dangerous lie—or that the polls that he doesn’t like are inaccurate. Where have the banners been on Google’s logo? Or the blacked-out Wikipedia pages?

Weeks after Trump’s victory, leaders from Silicon Valley sat around a table at Trump Tower like catatonic deer. Three weeks into Trump’s terrifying administration, however, the tech world, while coming nowhere near the SOPA-like protests, is beginning to find its voice. On Sunday evening, more than 100 tech companies filed an amicus brief noting that Trump’s executive order, which halted refugee immigration and restricted travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries, “violates the immigration laws and the Constitution.” (Few industries rely as heavily on H-1B visas as Silicon Valley.) On Tuesday, some 1,200 tech workers coordinated an effort to celebrate Pi Day (March 14, or 3.14 on the calendar) by walking off their jobs at noon to attend an anti-Trump rally. Some C.E.O.s have also begun to advocate publicly. Sergey Brin attended the protests at San Francisco Airport last week. Sheryl Sandberg recently wrote a forceful piece regarding the administration’s policies on reproductive rights. Facebook is also currently helping French voters try to discern which stories in their newsfeed are fake.

But all of this feels like barely a smidgen of what Silicon Valley can really do. The tech industry has the power to reach more minds than any conglomerate on the planet. The traditional media machine, which Trump adores so much, is like a three-year-old on a tricycle racing the Valley’s Boeing 747. Individual cable news networks can reach a couple million viewers at a time during peak hours, and sometimes far less, while in comparison, 1.21 billion people engage with Facebook every single day. The “failing” New York Times has less than a million people who subscribe to the print paper and 1.6 million who pay for the outlet’s Web site, and yet people go to Google 1.2 trillion—yes, trillion, with a “t”—times per year. Sure, Trump may have 23 million followers on Twitter (or half that if you take away all the bots), but Wikipedia surfaces some 18 billion page-views every month. And it’s not just Web sites. Look at all the brick-and-car start-ups out there—Airbnb, Uber, Postmates, etc.—and how many people engage with their services on a daily basis.

What exactly could these companies do? The better question is: What couldn’t they? Google could ensure that search results around important topics, like immigration and the environment, point to the work of factual nonpartisan groups, not the nonsense from fake-news Web sites, or even messaging from the White House. For example, when people search “Is crime at an all-time high,” which Trump has falsely asserted, Google could ensure it sends users to F.B.I. data that shows that crime, in fact, has fallen steadily for decades. Apple, likewise, could push an update out to Americans’ iPhones giving them an option to add contact information for their local and state officials. When your Uber or Lyft arrives, the companies could alert riders to issues currently being debated in Congress or local courts that could affect their area and how to go about responding to them. When you open Twitter in the morning, the social network could figure out how to marry contentious tweets with corresponding viewpoints. Amazon could mail everyone a copy of the U.S. Constitution. (At the very least, they could send a couple of copies to the White House.) These are not partisan issues, but democratic ones. And modern brands, which purportedly stand for things, should be allowed to express a viewpoint in our post–Citizens United world—and they should also have the courage to do so confidently without fearing reprisals from investors on Wall Street.

For some tech companies, even the biggest ones, going up against the Trump administration is probably a little daunting. Take, for example, Trump’s taunts toward Amazon and Jeff Bezos. “Believe me,” Trump said about Amazon during one of his public fulminations last year, “if I become president, oh, do they have problems; they’re going to have such problems.” With Jeff Sessions as the attorney general, and his alleged history of unethical statements and actions, you could easily imagine anti-trust threats being used to fend off a tech giant like Amazon. But at the end of the day, Trump isn’t going to want to do anything that could hinder his job growth. And going after a company that employs more than 268,000 people won’t be a smart move, even for Trump.

What’s been clear over the past few weeks is that people all across America can effect change. Protests and marches have brought important issues to light. And while they sometimes haven’t worked, public outrage has caused real trouble for the Trump White House. We’ve seen this happen over the past few weeks, for instance, as Nordstrom dropped Ivanka Trump’s clothing line after interest in it declined and Patagonia withdrew its outdoor retailer in Utah in response to Trump’s bill to transfer public lands to the states. A grassroots campaign has helped nearly 1,000 companies pull their advertising from Breitbart.

Imagine how much people would be able to get done if the tech industry was standing behind them. Maybe it’s time for tech companies to use their gargantuan power and might to ensure that the America that created Silicon Valley isn’t destroyed by a White House that wants to turn our democracy into an autocracy.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/02/ ... down-trump

Brad Heath ‏@bradheath 2h2 hours ago
More
If Gen. Petraeus is selected as the new national security adviser, he will have to notify his probation officer within 72 hours. pic.twitter.com/tgqIcKiGTX

[seemslikeadream]

Haha.

I need to know who is next. What does the future hold?

Gen. Yellowkekc

trumpty dumbty

Carter Page

Roger Stone

Paul Manafort

Rudy Gooliania

[semper occultus]

How the Trump regime was manufactured by a war inside the Deep State

A systemic crisis in the global Deep System has driven the violent radicalization of a Deep State faction

By Nafeez Ahmed

https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-trump-regime-was-manufactured-by-a-war-inside-the-deep-state-f9e757071c70#.8xknxmoj0

[seemslikeadream]

^^^^^^


The Trump regime is not operating outside the Deep State, but mobilizing elements within it to dominate and strengthen it for a new mission.


......


Currently a Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), he was a staunch advocate of the 2003 invasion of Iraq (he was directly involved with the Yellowcake forgeries attempting to fabricate a weapons of mass destruction threat to justify the war) and has campaigned for military interventions in Syria, Iran and beyond. Ledeen’s aggressive foreign policy vision was deeply influential in the formation of the Bush administration’s foreign policy strategy.
It’s worth noting how low Ledeen stoops with his political philosophy. In his 2000 book, Tocqueville on American Character, Ledeen argues that in some situations, “[i]n order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to ‘enter into evil.’” (p. 90) He even argues that this is sanctioned by the Christian God: “Since it is the highest good, the defense of the country is one of those extreme situations in which a leader is justified in committing evil.” (p. 117)
That sort of thinking has led him to endorse the ‘cauldronization’ of the Middle East. In 2002, he wrote in support of invading Iraq that: “One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today.”

.........


But this connects senior Trump officials to a grim history of neo-Nazi agitation in the US. Tanton received large sums of early money for FAIR from the Pioneer Fund, a pro-Nazi grant-giving organization which funded eugenics — the discredited ‘science’ of ‘racial hygiene’. Tanton’s various anti-immigrant platforms received money from the Pioneer Fund as late as 2002. According to a study in the Albany Law Review, the Pioneer Fund had direct ties to Nazi scientists, and its founding directors were Nazi sympathizers. One of them had even travelled to Germany in 1935 to attend a Nazi population conference.

Why Is Trump Adviser Wearing Medal of Nazi Collaborators?

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... &start=405

Elliott Lusztig ‏@ezlusztig 1h1 hour ago

Elliott Lusztig Retweeted Michael McFaul
Republicans: This is your last chance to claim the mantle of national security. It's all downhill from here. Jump off while you can.

[Pele'sDaughter]

Ledeen argues that in some situations, “[i]n order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to ‘enter into evil.’” (p. 90) He even argues that this is sanctioned by the Christian God: “Since it is the highest good, the defense of the country is one of those extreme situations in which a leader is justified in committing evil.” (p. 117)

No less insane and dangerous than all of the extremist mullahs together. Anyone else feel like a witch in Salem right now?

[seemslikeadream]

The Spotlight Will Now Shift to the White House Counsel

By Jack Goldsmith Tuesday, February 14, 2017, 6:43 AM

I was pretty hard on White House Counsel Donald McGahn in connection with the horrible roll-out of the Trump Executive Order on immigration, and his inability or disinclination to control the President’s self-destructive attack on courts:

The White House Counsel is charged with (among other things) ensuring proper inter-agency coordination on important legal policies and with protecting the President from legal fallout. McGahn should have anticipated and corrected in advance the many foreseeable problems with the manner in which the EO was rolled out. And he should have advised the President after his first anti-Robart tweet, and after the other more aggressive ones, that the tweets were hurting the President’s legal cause.

If McGahn did not do these things, he is incompetent, and perhaps we can attribute impulsive incompetence to the President. But if McGahn did do these things—if he tried to put the brakes on the EO, and if he warned his client about the adverse impact of his tweets—then he has shockingly little influence with the President and within the White House (i.e. he is ineffectual).
And that was before we learned that the Ninth Circuit slapped down McGahn’s feckless effort to issue “authoritative guidance” to address problems in the Executive Order.

The Flynn imbroglio raises similar questions. Yesterday we learned that Acting Attorney General Sally Yates told “the White House counsel” late last month that she believed Flynn had misled senior administration officials about his Russian communications and “was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail.” As the Post notes, “It is unclear what the White House counsel, Donald McGahn, did with the information.” In the coming days it will be crucial to ask what McGahn did with this information, and when, and why.

Other questions will and should be asked about what McGahn has done to enforce ethics rules. Ethics compliance is one of the White House Counsel’s primary responsibilities. The multiple ethics problems swirling around the White House are squarely McGahn’s responsibility. There were early indications that McGahn ignored the usual protocols for ethics vetting of Cabinet officials. Since then the problem has only grown worse and has drawn bipartisan ire. One wants to know what McGahn’s role has been in ensuring (or not ensuring) compliance with relevant ethics rules, and (as several Democrat Senators asked last week) what “clear and specific steps the White House is taking to prevent further violations of government ethics laws by members of the White House”?

McGahn is also at fault if it is true that, as the NYT reported without attribution, Trump was angry because “he was not fully briefed on details of the executive order he signed” concerning the organization of the National Security Council and the Principals’ Committee.

It is possible, as I said in my original piece on McGahn, that the many White House screw-ups outlined above are less a result of McGahn's incompetence and more a result of his lack of access to the President. If that is so, then the blame is partly the Chief of Staff’s, and McGahn needs to insist that the problem be fixed or resign. I doubt this is the problem, however, since McGahn was Trump’s campaign lawyer and by all accounts remains a close senior advisor. A related problem may be that Trump is simply a rogue elephant whom no chains can bind, and that McGahn is giving Trump appropriate advice that is having no impact on his behavior. I doubt that is a full explanation either, since (among other reasons) many of the problems outlined above cannot have been a result of Trump’s intransigence.

It thus appears that the problems noted above are less about access or influence, and more about McGahn’s substance and style. McGahn is reportedly “an iconoclast bent on shaking things up.” Unfortunately for the President, that is not an attractive quality in a White House Counsel, whose main job is to ensure that the President and the White House steer clear of legal and ethical and related political problems.
http://www.lawfareblog.com/spotlight-wi ... se-counsel

[82_28]

I am never right about shit. But I do think in a "perfect world" trump is about to have a meltdown.

BUT!

It will make for great "ratings".

[seemslikeadream]

Published on
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
byCommon Dreams
Flynn Scandal Spotlight Falls on What Trump Knew and When He Knew It
Democratic lawmakers demand investigation into former national security advisor's talks with Russia
byLauren McCauley, staff writer

President-elect Donald Trump jokes with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn at a rally on Oct. 18 in Grand Junction, Colorado. (Photo: George Frey/ Getty)
President-elect Donald Trump jokes with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn at a rally on Oct. 18 in Grand Junction, Colorado. (Photo: George Frey/ Getty)

While President Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed the "real story" in the case of Gen. Michael Flynn's midnight resignation is why "there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington," many journalists, lawmakers, and concerned U.S. citizens are asking a different question: What did President Trump know and when did he know it?

Capturing the crux of the confusion, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway early Tuesday failed to articulate an adequate response when questioned over why the president kept Flynn on as national security adviser weeks after it was internally revealed that he had misled top officials about his communications with the Russian ambassador.

"The fact is that Gen. Flynn continued in that position and was in the presidential general briefings as part of the leader's call as recently as yesterday," Conway told "Today Show" host Matt Lauer. "But as time wore on, obviously the situation had become unsustainable [for the president]."

Lauer responded: "Kellyanne, that makes no sense. Last month the Justice Department warned the White House that Gen. Flynn had misled them and as a result he was vulnerable to blackmail, and at that moment he had the complete trust of the president?"

Seizing on this ambiguity, Democratic lawmakers are doubling down on their calls for an investigation.

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) wrote on Twitter that Conway's "non-answer" only supports his call for floor debate on Trump's potentially impeachable conflicts of interest, which he noted, includes probing ties between Trump, Flynn, and the Kremlin.


Meanwhile, members from both parties on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that they intend to question Flynn over "What did he know? What did he do? And is there any reason to believe that anybody knew that and didn't take the kind of action they should have taken?" as committee member Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) told reporters.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the ranking minority member on the committee, echoed that concern, released a statement Tuesday saying that it is clear that the investigation into potential Russian interference "is more urgent than ever."

"Reports that the White House may have been briefed weeks ago on the nature of Gen. Flynn's calls raise deeply troubling questions," Warner said. "The American people deserve to know at whose direction Gen. Flynn was acting when he made these calls, and why the White House waited until these reports were public to take action."

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, issued a joint statement Tuesday declaring that Congress "need[s] to know who authorized his actions, permitted them, and continued to let him have access to our most sensitive national security information despite knowing these risks."

Taking to social media on Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also chimed in:


And on Monday, after the Washington Post broke the news that the White House had known about Flynn's deception, Democratic members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, frustrated over chairman Jason Chaffetz's (R-Utah) refusal heretofore to join an investigation into Flynn's security clearance information, sent a letter to the Republican leader blasting him for ignoring their requests.

"[A]ll Democratic Members of the Committee write to you jointly to request that you either reconsider your decision and initiate this investigation, or step aside and allow the Committee to vote on conducting basic oversight going forward," they wrote.

For his part, Chaffetz on Tuesday announced that he will not join the investigation, deferring to the Senate Intelligence Committee probe.

Chaffetz and other Republicans have repeatedly sidestepped efforts to dig into Flynn's ties to Russia, despite the seemingly ceaseless torrent of allegations connecting the Trump administration to the Russian government.

"Rarely does a day go by without at least one new and shocking revelation about this Administration's possible ties to the Russian government," said Ilya Sheyman, executive director of MoveOn.org Political Action, in a press statement. "These ties have already cost two of Trump's top aides, Flynn and former campaign manager Paul Manafort, their jobs," he noted.

"It is time that everyone acknowledge that the problem is not Trump's staff; it is Trump," Sherman continued. "Trump is at the center of the questions about ties to Russia and corruption that have dogged this administration."

Amid this flurry of activity, Trump's focus on the intelligence officials who leaked the damaging information to the Washington Post came off as another attempt to distract from the issue at hand while, at the same time, inadvertently reminding the public that "leaks work," as Trevor Timm, founder of the Freedom of the Press foundation, wrote Tuesday.

"Speaking to the press about confidential and classified material is a risky and often courageous move," Timm wrote at the Columbia Journalism Review.

"Many people, especially those close to the Obama administration, were highly critical of whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden in the past," he continued. "But it's now more clear than ever that we will need more people like them in the next few years if we really want to hold the Trump administration accountable."
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/0 ... he-knew-it

[seemslikeadream]

Netanyahu’s Silence on Trump and Anti-Semitism

by Mairav Zonszein

One year ago, former president Barack Obama delivered a speech on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in which he declared, “We are all Jews.” This is a far cry from the statement issued by the Trump Administration last week, which made no mention of Jews or anti-Semitism at all. White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus has since said that he does not regret the omission, but that “obviously” all of the Jewish people were “affected in the miserable genocide.” Apparently so obvious it does not warrant mention. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer went on to call the widespread backlash from both Jewish groups and Democrats as “pathetic” and added that “the president went out of his way to recognize the Holocaust.”

It is hard to say whether the omission was a deliberate calculation that, as Virginia Senator Tim Kaine and others have already deemed, “soft-core Holocaust denial,” or simply an incredibly insensitive and disingenuous oversight. But what I can say is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s silence on the matter is resounding. The Israeli leader who never misses an opportunity to invoke the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, or the threat of the elimination of the Jewish state has remained utterly silent on this matter.

This is the same prime minister who never missed an opportunity to criticize or outright undermine Obama. Yet in this case he seems to be going out of his way to avoid any criticism of Trump. When asked for comment, Netanyahu spokesperson David Keyes told me, “I don’t have anything on that.” Netanyahu’s silence is even more deafening considering that staunchly conservative, pro-Trump, pro-Israel hawkish groups like The Republican Jewish Coalition, and the Zionist Organization of America broke ranks and criticized the White House statement.

At Yad Vashem on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Netanyahu implored: “Any person of conscience should speak out about resurgence of same attitude that decades ago openly said we are out to destroy Jewish people…. As prime minister of Israel I will not be silent, I have not been silent.” He only mentioned Europe and “the East.” When it comes to growing anti-Jewish rhetoric in the U.S., he has been deafeningly silent.

Where was he in the last few weeks as 48 Jewish institutions across the U.S. faced bomb threats? Why did he suddenly refrain from tweeting? Where was Netanyahu when Trump tweeted an anti-Semitic image of Clinton’s face superimposed on piles of money and a six-pointed Star of David? Where was Netanyahu when Trump essentially justified anti-Semitic attacks on journalist Julia Ioffe? And where has he been for the last year, with the upsurge in anti-Semitic hate crimes, the rise of the alt-right, unchecked neo-Nazi support for Trump, and his appointment of white supremacist Steve Bannon?

Netanyahu has already shown he has no problem commenting and imposing his views on Trump’s administration. Last weekend, he tweeted in support of Trump’s plan for a wall along the border with Mexico: “President Trump is right. I built a wall along Israel’s southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea.”

Mexico’s Jewish community, which historically leans right, condemned Netanyahu’s comments and demanded an apology.

Netanyahu — who has branded himself more than any other Israeli prime minister in history as the representative and savior of the Jewish people — continues to be silent on the issues most important to them. Perhaps most disturbing is his decision to remain silent in the face of Trump’s executive order, signed on Holocaust Remembrance Day no less, banning entry into the U.S. to people from seven Muslim countries — a ban all too reminiscent of the ones Jews have faced, and a blow to all minorities in the country who started out as refugees and immigrants. The U.S. Holocaust Museum issued a statement condemning Trump’s ban and directly linking it to the situation in the 1930s and 40s. Jews across the U.S. have been protesting the ban by sharing stories of their grandparents who managed to flee persecution in Europe and reach the U.S. – as well as those who were turned away and perished. They have increasingly expressed that they feel unsafe and fearful under Trump, and Netanyahu is nowhere to be found.

Netanyahu’s silence on this issue speaks volumes about where his priorities lie. One likely answer is that he is focused solely on ensuring Trump’s support for continued settlement growth, disbanding the deal with Iran, the denial of Palestinian rights, and continued U.S. military aid – all at the expense of Jewish values.

It could be that Trump’s racist and exclusionary policies tacitly jive well with Netanyahu and Zionism’s fundamental vision that Israel is the only safe place for Jews in the world — the place they should and will eventually end up once the rest of the world spits them out. This demonstrates the dangerously smooth convergence between rising anti-Semitic white nationalism and the right-wing Zionism that Netanyahu is peddling. It exposes the fact that the Israeli leader isn’t interested in defending the rights of Jews as human beings, and that he is totally out of touch with the values of the majority of American Jews.

A much more appropriate statement from the self-proclaimed leader of the Jewish people would have been what was so eloquently stated last year by the former president with a Muslim middle name: “Because anti-Semitism is a distillation, an expression of an evil that runs through so much of human history, and if we do not answer that, we do not answer any other form of evil. When any Jew anywhere is targeted just for being Jewish, we all have to respond as Roddie Edmonds did — we are all Jews.”

Mairav Zonszein is an independent writer, translator and editor. Her publications include The Guardian, The New York Times, Salon, The Daily Beast, National Geographic, Al Jazeera America, and The Forward. Republished, with permission, from +972 Magazine.
http://lobelog.com/netanyahus-silence-o ... -semitism/