General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 348

The Million Dollar Dissident: NSO Group's iPhone Zero-Days used against a UAE Human Rights Defender - The Citizen Lab

PS: Update your iPhones

 

Owen Smith came across as overly desperate and pathetic at the Labour Leadership debate tonight. He's utterly failed to convince me (and I'm sure many others) over the last few weeks that he would be a better leader than Jeremy Corbyn. I voted online for Corbyn yesterday.

 

Abolish the police? Organizers say it’s less crazy than it sounds. | Feature | Chicago Reader

 

Ugh, Throw Momma From the Train ruined the name Owen for me. Every time I hear it, I hear this woman screaming it.

 

This was my favourite moment from the debate, lol.

 

So, they should go back to Europe. I don't understand the problem here. I'm sure indigenous people would be stoked if that were to occur.

 

The Clinton Foundation Is Not a Scandal. It’s a Phenomenal, Life-Saving Success.

Mostly lost in this debate, however, is what the Clinton Foundation actually does. I suspect many Americans have fallen for the myth, tirelessly perpetuated by the Weekly Standard and other GOP water-carriers, that the foundation is “more a slush fund than a charity.” I also suspect that the authors of these traducements—as well as the editorial board writers blithely demanding that the Clintons withdraw from their own charity—have never seriously examined the foundation’s work. That makes sense: The Clinton Foundation runs one of the most phenomenally successful AIDS relief program of all time, and AIDS relief is simply not on most straight people’s radars. But let me provide a bit more background about the foundation’s work to provide a more complete picture of this purported “slush fund.”

Here’s how Trump got the AP story on Clinton Foundation donors all wrong

In her Aug. 24 interview on CNN, Clinton said the AP report excluded nearly 2,000 meetings and looked at a small portion of her time as secretary of state. Drawing a conclusion that she met with people like Wiesel, Gates and Yunus because of their foundation connections, rather than their status as global leaders, “is absurd,” Clinton said.

“These are people I was proud to meet with, who any secretary of state would have been proud to meet with and hear about their work and their insight,” Clinton said on CNN.

What we know about the charitable giving by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump

The Clinton Foundation is a globally recognized philanthropy, known for helping to lower the cost of AIDs treatment and other drugs in the developing world. Its donors have traditionally included a bipartisan array of corporate leaders and ordinary people. If asked, many would say they gave simply to support the charitable aims of the organization.

As is not uncommon in the world of charity, donors also received prestige from being associated with the well-known organization, a reputational benefit boosted by the group’s association with Bill Clinton, a globally popular figure.

Critics charge that donors also gave to curry favor with the Clintons, particularly Hillary Clinton, who has held public office and presidential ambitions for most of the foundation’s existence.

Trump and other Republicans have alleged that Clinton Foundation donors were given favors by Hillary Clinton’s State Department. Emails have emerged showing how some foundation donors were able to gain access — particularly in making requests for meetings — to Clinton’s closest aides and sometimes to Clinton herself. But the emails show that the donors did not always get what they wanted, particularly when they sought anything more than a meeting. And there is no evidence that foundation donors received special treatment in direct exchange for their contributions.

AP really botched this entire thing by trying to publish wayyyyy too early, and sloppily.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/opinion/anne-frank-today-is-a-syrian-girl.html

In this political environment, officials and politicians lost all humanity.

“Let Europe take care of its own,” argued Senator Robert Reynolds, a North Carolina Democrat who also denounced Jews. Representative Stephen Pace, a Georgia Democrat, went a step further, introducing legislation calling for the deportation of “every alien in the United States.”

A State Department official, Breckinridge Long, systematically tightened rules on Jewish refugees. In this climate, Otto Frank was unable to get visas for his family members, who were victims in part of American paranoia, demagogy and indifference.

History rhymes. As I’ve periodically argued, President Obama’s reluctance to do more to try to end the slaughter in Syria casts a shadow on his legacy, and there’s simply no excuse for the world’s collective failure to ensure that Syrian refugee children in neighboring countries at least get schooling.

Today, to our shame, Anne Frank is a Syrian girl.

This article was very hard to get through dry eyed.

 

New Lawsuit Has a Real Chance to Help Bring Obama’s Immigration Actions Back In Many States

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the legal battle against President Barack Obama’s immigration executive actions is the fact that a single district judge in Texas claimed the authority to block a federal program in all 50 states. Now an ambitious lawsuit is attempting to unfreeze Obama’s actions in 24 states—and thanks to the Supreme Court’s hobbled state, it might actually have a shot.

All of this may sound confusing and arcane, but the legal maneuvering here is actually quite simple. When Obama announced his plan to defer deportation for the undocumented parents of citizens and permanent residents, 26 states sued, arguing that he had exceeded his executive authority. U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen agreed, issuing a preliminary injunction to halt the program’s implementation in all 50 states. Soon after, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit affirmed Hanen’s decision. Then, last June, the Supreme Court deadlocked on the merits of the program, leaving the judge’s ruling in place without actually affirming it.

 

Background Report: Donald Trump: Mainstreaming a Hate Movement

As the Southern Poverty Law Center has written, Alt-Right “is a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that ‘white identity’ is under attack by multicultural forces using ‘political correctness’ and ‘social justice’ to undermine white people and ‘their’ civilization.” It has been compared to various far-right anti-immigrant parties in Europe as well as to the 1992 movement in support of Pat Buchanan’s run for President. Donald Trump, through his own words and policies, his choice of advisers and associates, and his signals to supporters and followers, has capitalized on a symbiosis with this movement.

Long before he launched his presidential bid, Trump was known for controversial comments, conspiracy theories, and hubristic style. He was the most prominent proponent and amplifier of “birtherism”—the movement that called into question the citizenship and legitimacy of the first African-American President. Today, Trump and his fringe allies are again surfacing theories about Hillary Clinton, doctoring medical reports to call her health into question, and suggesting that she co-founded ISIS. These tactics are not new.

With the hiring of Steve Bannon as his new campaign CEO - a man who proudly proclaimed just weeks ago that he and his former media company, Breitbart was the “platform for the Alt-Right” - Trump has now given an official leadership role to these hateful, fringe conservative movements, alongside other advisors and allies that traffic in hate, such as Roger Stone and Alex Jones. A Trump presidency would legitimize what most Americans rightfully deem unthinkable, grotesque, and dangerous: it would elevate this fringe movement to the Oval Office.

 

Why has Trump not just disavowed the racism, and DD, and said he doesn't want a single Nazi vote, and all of that, instead he attacked the length of the speech ... ohwaitiknow.

 

imagine thinking white people are being "purposely ethnically cleansed" in this country. it literally breaks my brain to even try to figure out the process to arrive at that conclusion.

 

About as sickening a case as I've recently seen. Fuck.

Pennsauken Man Charged In Alleged Beating Death Of 2-Year-Old

 

Watch the climate debate devolve into nonsense in the 10 years since An Inconvenient Truth

 

there are hundreds to thousands of people using the phrase "white genocide" too, it's somewhat legitimate even though it's nonsense

 

The tactical call from the Trump campaign to make Hillary's health an issue has lowered the expectations that every time she just stands up and speaks she blows them away and makes his claim look like the stupid lie it is. What a massive mistake.

 

huh, i didn't know Margot Kidder is such a badass. after the DNC:

My Fellow Americans: We Are Fools

 

Trump's candidacy resonates with white guys who ask,"why can't we say the n word when they say it?"

 

Anyone follow the Fed Up stuff?

 

“The Spoiler” Speaks | Jacobin