The U.S. Government’s Indictment of Julian Assange Poses Grave Thre...
▻https://diasp.eu/p/8870014
The U.S. Government’s Indictment of Julian Assange Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedom
#Assange #Wikileaks #press #journalism #democracy #freespeech #PressFreedom
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Glen Greenwald, Micah Lee - 20190412
▻https://theintercept.com/2019/04/11/the-u-s-governments-indictment-of-julian-assange-poses-grave-threats-t
In April, 2017, Pompeo, while still CIA chief, delivered a deranged speech proclaiming that “we have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us.” He punctuated his speech with this threat: “To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.”
From the start, the Trump DOJ has made no secret of its desire to criminalize journalism generally. Early in the Trump administration, Sessions explicitly discussed the possibility of prosecuting journalists for publishing classified information. Trump and his key aides were open about how eager they were to build on, and escalate, the Obama administration’s progress in enabling journalism in the U.S. to be criminalized.
Today’s arrest of Assange is clearly the culmination of a two-year effort by the U.S. government to coerce Ecuador — under its new and submissive president, Lenín Moreno — to withdraw the asylum protection it extended to Assange in 2012. Rescinding Assange’s asylum would enable the U.K. to arrest Assange on minor bail-jumping charges pending in London and, far more significantly, to rely on an extradition request from the U.S. government to send him to a country to which he has no connection (the U.S.) to stand trial relating to leaked documents.
Indeed, the Trump administration’s motive here is clear. With Ecuador withdrawing its asylum protection and subserviently allowing the U.K. to enter its own embassy to arrest Assange, Assange faced no charges other than a minor bail-jumping charge in the U.K. (Sweden closed its sexual assault investigation not because they concluded Assange was innocent, but because they spent years unsuccessfully trying to extradite him). By indicting Assange and demanding his extradition, it ensures that Assange — once he serves his time in a London jail for bail-jumping — will be kept in a British prison for the full year or longer that it takes for the U.S. extradition request, which Assange will certainly contest, to wind its way through the British courts.
The indictment tries to cast itself as charging Assange not with journalistic activities but with criminal hacking. But it is a thinly disguised pretext for prosecuting Assange for publishing the U.S. government’s secret documents while pretending to make it about something else.
Whatever else is true about the indictment, substantial parts of the document explicitly characterize as criminal exactly the actions that journalists routinely engage in with their sources and thus, constitutes a dangerous attempt to criminalize investigative journalism.
The indictment, for instance, places great emphasis on Assange’s alleged encouragement that Manning — after she already turned over hundreds of thousands of classified documents — try to get more documents for WikiLeaks to publish. The indictment claims that “discussions also reflect Assange actively encouraging Manning to provide more information. During an exchange, Manning told Assange that ‘after this upload, that’s all I really have got left.’ To which Assange replied, ‘curious eyes never run dry in my experience.’”
But encouraging sources to obtain more information is something journalists do routinely. Indeed, it would be a breach of one’s journalistic duties not to ask vital sources with access to classified information if they could provide even more information so as to allow more complete reporting. If a source comes to a journalist with information, it is entirely common and expected that the journalist would reply: Can you also get me X, Y, and Z to complete the story or to make it better? As Edward Snowden said this morning, “Bob Woodward stated publicly he would have advised me to remain in place and act as a mole.”
Investigative journalism in many, if not most, cases, entails a constant back and forth between journalist and source in which the journalist tries to induce the source to provide more classified information, even if doing so is illegal. To include such “encouragement” as part of a criminal indictment — as the Trump DOJ did today — is to criminalize the crux of investigative journalism itself, even if the indictment includes other activities you believe fall outside the scope of journalism.
As Northwestern journalism professor Dan Kennedy explained in The Guardian in 2010 when denouncing as a press freedom threat the Obama DOJ’s attempts to indict Assange based on the theory that he did more than passively receive and publish documents — i.e., that he actively “colluded” with Manning:
The problem is that there is no meaningful distinction to be made. How did the Guardian, equally, not “collude” with WikiLeaks in obtaining the cables? How did the New York Times not “collude” with the Guardian when the Guardian gave the Times a copy following Assange’s decision to cut the Times out of the latest document dump?
For that matter, I don’t see how any news organisation can be said not to have colluded with a source when it receives leaked documents. Didn’t the Times collude with Daniel Ellsberg when it received the Pentagon Papers from him? Yes, there are differences. Ellsberg had finished making copies long before he began working with the Times, whereas Assange may have goaded Manning. But does that really matter?
Most of the reports about the Assange indictment today have falsely suggested that the Trump DOJ discovered some sort of new evidence that proved Assange tried to help Manning hack through a password in order to use a different username to download documents. Aside from the fact that those attempts failed, none of this is new: As the last five paragraphs of this 2011 Politico story demonstrate, that Assange talked to Manning about ways to use a different username so as to avoid detection was part of Manning’s trial and was long known to the Obama DOJ when they decided not to prosecute.
There are only two new events that explain today’s indictment of Assange: 1) The Trump administration from the start included authoritarian extremists such as Sessions and Pompeo who do not care in the slightest about press freedom and were determined to criminalize journalism against the U.S., and 2) With Ecuador about to withdraw its asylum protection, the U.S. government needed an excuse to prevent Assange from walking free.
A technical analysis of the indictment’s claims similarly proves the charge against Assange to be a serious threat to First Amendment press liberties, primarily because it seeks to criminalize what is actually a journalist’s core duty: helping one’s source avoid detection. The indictment deceitfully seeks to cast Assange’s efforts to help Manning maintain her anonymity as some sort of sinister hacking attack.
The Defense Department computer that Manning used to download the documents which she then furnished to WikiLeaks was likely running the Windows operating system. It had multiple user accounts on it, including an account to which Manning had legitimate access. Each account is protected by a password, and Windows computers store a file that contains a list of usernames and password “hashes,” or scrambled versions of the passwords. Only accounts designated as “administrator,” a designation Manning’s account lacked, have permission to access this file.
The indictment suggests that Manning, in order to access this password file, powered off her computer and then powered it back on, this time booting to a CD running the Linux operating system. From within Linux, she allegedly accessed this file full of password hashes. The indictment alleges that Assange agreed to try to crack one of these password hashes, which, if successful, would recover the original password. With the original password, Manning would be able to log directly into that other user’s account, which — as the indictment puts it — “would have made it more difficult for investigators to identify Manning as the source of disclosures of classified information.”
Assange appears to have been unsuccessful in cracking the password. The indictment alleges that “Assange indicated that he had been trying to crack the password by stating that he had ‘no luck so far.’”
Thus, even if one accepts all of the indictment’s claims as true, Assange was not trying to hack into new document files to which Manning had no access, but rather trying to help Manning avoid detection as a source. For that reason, the precedent that this case would set would be a devastating blow to investigative journalists and press freedom everywhere.
Journalists have an ethical obligation to take steps to protect their sources from retaliation, which sometimes includes granting them anonymity and employing technical measures to help ensure that their identity is not discovered. When journalists take source protection seriously, they strip metadata and redact information from documents before publishing them if that information could have been used to identify their source; they host cloud-based systems such as SecureDrop, now employed by dozens of major newsrooms around the world, that make it easier and safer for whistleblowers, who may be under surveillance, to send messages and classified documents to journalists without their employers knowing; and they use secure communication tools like Signal and set them to automatically delete messages.
But today’s indictment of Assange seeks to criminalize exactly these types of source-protection efforts, as it states that “it was part of the conspiracy that Assange and Manning used a special folder on a cloud drop box of WikiLeaks to transmit classified records containing information related to the national defense of the United States.”
The indictment, in numerous other passages, plainly conflates standard newsroom best practices with a criminal conspiracy. It states, for instance, that “it was part of the conspiracy that Assange and Manning used the ‘Jabber’ online chat service to collaborate on the acquisition and dissemination of the classified records, and to enter into the agreement to crack the password […].” There is no question that using Jabber, or any other encrypted messaging system, to communicate with sources and acquire documents with the intent to publish them, is a completely lawful and standard part of modern investigative journalism. Newsrooms across the world now use similar technologies to communicate securely with their sources and to help their sources avoid detection by the government.
The indictment similarly alleges that “it was part of the conspiracy that Assange and Manning took measures to conceal Manning as the source of the disclosure of classified records to WikiLeaks, including by removing usernames from the disclosed information and deleting chat logs between Assange and Manning.”
Trump’s sending troops to the border to take on 200 kids and parents
According to President Donald Trump, the mightiest, richest country in the world is under a threat so huge and scary that it will require the deployment of military forces — as many as 2,000 to 4.000, Trump said Thursday — along its 2,000-mile southern border. The danger consists of a ragtag caravan formed by several hundred impoverished people, many of them children from tiny Central American nations. Yes, the time has come to protect America from marauding youngsters and their parents.
▻https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/05/opinions/trump-has-no-shame-on-immigration-fernandez-kelly-opinion/index.html?sr=twCNN040518trump-has-no-shame-on-immigration-fernandez-ke
#Trump #frontières #armée #militarisation_des_frontières #USA #Etats-Unis
The cost of 2 National Guard border arrests would help a homeless vet for a year
President Donald Trump’s decision to send #National_Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border has drawn a mixed response. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey welcomed the move, while California Gov. Jerry Brown’s National Guard said it would “review” the request.
Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., had a specific complaint: He said it was a poor use of tax dollars.
“Using the National Guard to do border security is very expensive,” Gallego tweeted April 3. “For what it would cost the Guard to make just TWO arrests at the border, we could give a homeless veteran permanent housing for an entire year.”
Guard border deployment creates issues for Pentagon
Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) have now sent two requests for assistance to the Pentagon’s new Border Security Support Cell, which was hastily established to help coordination between the Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of Homeland Security.
It’s estimated that it will cost $182 million to keep 2,093 guardsmen at the border through the end of September, which represents just more than half of the personnel approved.
The amount covers $151 million in pay and allowances for the 2,093 personnel, as well as $31 million for 12,000 flying hours for 26 UH-72 Lakota helicopters, according to a defense memo on the amount.
▻http://thehill.com/policy/defense/386617-guard-border-deployment-creates-issues-for-pentagon
The Cal. National Guard Is Working At the Mexican Border, But Mostly Behind The Scenes
In California - a state with strong differences with the White House on immigration policy - about 400 troops are on border duty. But they’re keeping a low profile.
Signalé par Reece Jones sur twitter, avec ce commentaire:
What are US National Guard troops doing at the border? Analyze intelligence, work as dispatchers, and monitor cameras “but not cameras that look across the border into Mexico”
L’armée américaine mobilisée pour défendre la frontière
En campagne pour les élections américaines de mi-mandat, le président Trump a focalisé son discours sur la caravane de migrants d’Amérique centrale qui fait route à travers le Mexique. Il a promis de tout faire pour empêcher ces demandeurs d’asile de pénétrer sur le territoire américain (“Personne n’entrera”), y compris de déployer “entre 10 000 et 15 000 soldats” en plus de la police aux frontières et de la police de l’immigration.
L’armée estime que seuls 20 % des migrants, soit 1 400 selon les estimations les plus hautes, iront jusqu’à la frontière qui se trouve encore à quelque 1 300 kilomètres et plusieurs semaines de marche, rapporte le Los Angeles Times. Le chiffre de 15 000 hommes correspond à peu près au nombre de soldats déployés en Afghanistan, observe le même quotidien. Les militaires envoyés à la frontière peuvent se poser des questions sur le sens de cette mission, comme l’illustre ici le dessinateur Chappatte.
U.S. Troops’ First Order at the Border: Laying Razor Wire
Soldiers fill local hotels, joke about finding ways to keep busy.
On Monday morning in this border town, about a dozen U.S. Army soldiers unfurled reams of razor wire on top of a wrought-iron fence alongside a bridge to Mexico.
The soldiers from the 36th Engineer Brigade at Fort Riley, Kan., who wore helmets but didn’t appear to be armed, are among thousands of troops deployed in recent days to the southwest U.S. border as part of Operation Faithful Patriot.
Around border crossings throughout Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, military personnel have filled up hotels and delivered trucks packed with coils of razor wire as they begin to support U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers.
The personnel were sent in advance of the anticipated arrival of thousands of Central Americans, including children, traveling in caravans currently several hundred miles south of the nearest U.S. border crossing.
At the DoubleTree Suites Hotel in McAllen, Texas, the bar did brisk business Sunday night as soldiers who had changed into civilian clothes chatted over drinks. Some joked about needing to find ways to keep soldiers busy during their deployment.
The Anzalduas International Bridge, where the Kansas-based troops were working, is used only for vehicle traffic to and from the Mexican city of Reynosa. The wire was placed on top of fences at least 15 feet high along each side of the bridge that sat several dozen feet above an embankment.
Outside the port of entry where vehicles from Mexico are stopped after crossing the bridge, shiny razor wire recently placed around the facility glistened in the afternoon sun.
Migrants seeking asylum who cross the border illegally generally don’t come to the port, but swim or wade across the Rio Grande and turn themselves in to Border Patrol agents.
Near another bridge connecting Hidalgo, Texas, to Reynosa, a concertina wire fence was recently erected along the river edge, a placement more likely to impede illegal migrants who arrive on foot.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have determined where the military placed razor wire, Army Col. Rob Manning, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters Monday during a briefing.
It is part of an effort previously announced by Air Force Gen. Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy, commander of the U.S. Northern Command, to “harden the points of entry and address key gaps.”
Near the Donna-Rio Bravo International Bridge about 22 miles southeast of McAllen, troops on Monday were working on what looked to be a staging area to prepare for coming work. Two armed military police officers stood guard, opening and closing a gate as flatbed trailers carrying heavy military trucks and transports with troops inside arrived. At least one tent apparently intended to house troops was in place Monday.
President Trump ordered the deployment last month after the first caravan made its way into Mexico. He had described the impending caravan’s arrival as an “invasion.”
The Pentagon said Monday that more than 5,000 troops are at or would be on their way to the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of the day, with about 2,700 in Texas, 1,200 in Arizona and 1,100 in California. Eventually, nearly 8,000 will be deployed, according to a U.S. official. Officials from the Department of Homeland Security have said the troops won’t be used to enforce immigration laws but will provide backup for Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers.
At the Vaquero Hangout, an open-air bar within eyesight of the Anzalduas bridge, a flag declaring support for the U.S. military hung from the rafters. It was business as usual on Sunday evening. Some patrons watched the Houston Texans’ NFL game, while others were focused on a live band, George and the Texas Outlaws.
A few folks briefly took notice of flashing lights from a U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicle parked on the bridge as the soldiers lay down razor wire, an effort they would continue the next day.
▻https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-troops-first-order-at-the-border-laying-razor-wire-1541509201
#fil_barbelé #barbelé
Pentagon to begin drawdown of troops at border: report
The Pentagon is planning to begin a drawdown of troops at the southern border as soon as this week, the Army commander overseeing the mission told Politico on Monday.
Army Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan told the news outlet that the 5,800 active-duty troops sent to assist Customs and Border Protection at the U.S.-Mexico border should be home by Christmas.
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“Our end date right now is 15 December, and I’ve got no indications from anybody that we’ll go beyond that,” said Buchanan, who is overseeing the mission from Texas.
Buchanan said engineer and logistics troops, which make up the largest parts of the deployment, will begin returning home soon.
According to Politico’s report, some troops will begin leaving the area before the so-called migrant caravan arrives at the border.
The news of the troops’ return comes as critics call President Trump’s request to send thousands of troops to the border a “political stunt.”
Trump before Election Day stoked fears over an approaching group of Central American migrants heading towards the southern border, which he referred to as an “invasion.” He requested the deployment of thousands of troops to the border in a support mission just before Nov. 6.
Some lawmakers have accused Trump of wasting resources and manpower on the mission, as reports have emerged that the troops are restless and underutilized.
Thousands of participants in the caravan over the weekend reached Tijuana, Mexico, where they were met with vast protests. Some of the protesters are echoing Trump’s language, calling the group a danger and an invasion, The Associated Press reported.
Most of the members of the caravan are reportedly escaping rampant poverty and violence in their home countries.
▻https://thehill.com/policy/defense/417503-pentagon-to-begin-drawdown-of-troops-at-border-report
–-> commentaire sur twitter:
Just 3 weeks after deployment, Trump’s Pentagon is sending the military home from the border. They’ve served their purpose as the GOP’s 11th hour campaign force. Now we’re stuck with a hundred miles of trashy concertina wire and a $200 million bill.
▻https://twitter.com/LaikenJordahl/status/1064644464726048768
Troops at U.S.-Mexican border to start coming home
All the troops should be home by Christmas, as originally expected, Army Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan said in an interview Monday.
The 5,800 troops who were rushed to the southwest border amid President Donald Trump’s pre-election warnings about a refugee caravan will start coming home as early as this week — just as some of those migrants are beginning to arrive.
Democrats and Republicans have criticized the deployment as a ploy by the president to use active-duty military forces as a prop to try to stem Republican losses in this month’s midterm elections.
The general overseeing the deployment told POLITICO on Monday that the first troops will start heading home in the coming days as some are already unneeded, having completed the missions for which they were sent. The returning service members include engineering and logistics units whose jobs included placing concertina wire and other barriers to limit access to ports of entry at the U.S.-Mexico border.
All the troops should be home by Christmas, as originally expected, Army Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan said in an interview Monday.
“Our end date right now is 15 December, and I’ve got no indications from anybody that we’ll go beyond that,” said Buchanan, who leads the land forces of U.S. Northern Command.
The decision to begin pulling back comes just weeks after Trump ordered the highly unusual deployment.
In previous cases in which the military deployed to beef up security at the border, the forces consisted of part-time National Guard troops under the command of state governors who backed up U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other law enforcement agencies.
But the newly deployed troops, most of them unarmed and from support units, come from the active-duty military, a concession the Pentagon made after Trump insisted that the deployment include “not just the National Guard.”
Buchanan confirmed previous reports that the military had rejected a request from the Department of Homeland Security for an armed force to back up Border Patrol agents in the event of a violent confrontation.
“That is a law enforcement task, and the secretary of Defense does not have the authority to approve that inside the homeland,” Buchanan said.
The closure earlier Monday of one entry point along the California border near Tijuana, Mexico, was only partial and did not require more drastic measures, Buchanan said.
“About half of the lanes were closed this morning, but that’s it,” he reported. “No complete closures.”
Other ports might be closed fully in the future, he said, but he did not anticipate any need to take more drastic measures.
“If CBP have reliable information that one of their ports is about to get rushed with a mob, or something like that that could put their agents at risk, they could ask us to completely close the port,” Buchanan said. “You understand the importance of commerce at these ports. Nobody in CBP wants to close a port unless they’re actually driven to do so.”
The troop deployment should start trailing off as engineer and other logistics troops wind down their mission of building base camps and fortifying ports of entry for the Border Patrol.
Army and Marine engineers have now emplaced about 75 percent of the obstacles they planned to, including concertina wire, shipping containers, and concrete barriers at ports of entry. “Once we get the rest of the obstacles built, we don’t need to keep all those engineers here. As soon as I’m done with a capability, what I intend to do is redeploy it,” Buchanan said. “I don’t want to keep these guys on just to keep them on.”
Logistics troops, too, will be among the first to head home. “I will probably ask to start redeploying some of our logistic capability,” Buchanan predicted. “Now that things are set down here, we don’t need as many troops to actually build base camps and things like that, because the base camps are built."
Among the troops who will remain after construction engineers and logisticians start departing are helicopter pilots, planners, medical personnel, and smaller “quick response” teams of engineers who can help Border Patrol personnel shut down traffic at their ports of entry.
In contrast to the speed of the deployment in early November and the fanfare surrounding it, the withdrawal promises to be slower and quieter — but Buchanan expects it to be done before Christmas.
“That doesn’t mean it’s impossible,” he added. “But right now, this is a temporary mission, and we’re tasked to do it until the 15th of December.”
▻https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/19/troops-us-mexico-border-come-home-1005510
Trump’s Border Stunt Is a Profound Betrayal of Our Military
The president used America’s military not against any real threat but as toy soldiers, with the intent of manipulating a domestic midterm election.
A week before the midterm elections, the president of the United States announced he would deploy up to 15,000 active duty military troops to the United States-Mexico border to confront a menacing caravan of refugees and asylum seekers. The soldiers would use force, if necessary, to prevent such an “invasion” of the United States.
Mr. Trump’s announcement and the deployment that followed (of roughly 5,900) were probably perfectly legal. But we are a bipartisan threesome with decades of experience in and with the Pentagon, and to us, this act creates a dangerous precedent. We fear this was lost in the public hand-wringing over the decision, so let us be clear: The president used America’s military forces not against any real threat but as toy soldiers, with the intent of manipulating a domestic midterm election outcome, an unprecedented use of the military by a sitting president.
The public debate focused on secondary issues. Is there truly a threat to American security from an unarmed group of tired refugees and asylum seekers on foot and a thousand miles from the border? Even the Army’s internal assessment did not find this a very credible threat.
Can the president deny in advance what could be legitimate claims for asylum, without scrutiny? Most likely, this violates treaty commitments the United States made as part of its agreement to refugee conventions in 1967, which it has followed for decades.
The deployment is not, in the context of the defense budget, an albatross. We are already paying the troops, wherever they’re deployed, and the actual incremental costs of sending them to the border might be $100 million to $200 million, a tiny fraction of the $716 billion defense budget.
Still, we can think of many ways to put the funds to better use, like improving readiness.
It’s also not unusual for a president to ask the troops to deploy to the border in support of border security operations. Presidents of both parties have sent troops to the border, to provide support functions like engineering, logistics, transportation and surveillance.
But those deployments have been generally in smaller numbers, usually the National Guard, and never to stop a caravan of refugees and asylum seekers.
So, generously, some aspects of the deployment are at least defensible. But one is not, and that aspect is the domestic political use — or rather, misuse — of the military.
James Mattis, the secretary of defense, asserted that the Defense Department does not “do stunts.” But this was a blatant political stunt. The president crossed a line — the military is supposed to stay out of domestic politics. As many senior military retirees have argued, the forces are not and should not be a political instrument. They are not toy soldiers to be moved around by political leaders but a neutral institution, politically speaking.
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Oh, some might say, presidents use troops politically all the time. And so they do, generally in the context of foreign policy decisions that have political implications. Think Lyndon Johnson sending more troops to Vietnam, fearing he would be attacked for “cutting and running” from that conflict. Or George W. Bush crowing about “mission accomplished” when Saddam Hussein was toppled. Those are not the same thing as using troops at home for electoral advantage.
Electoral gain, not security, is this president’s goal. Two of us served in the military for many years; while all troops must obey the legal and ethical orders of civilian leaders, they need to have faith that those civilian leaders are using them for legitimate national security purposes. But the border deployment put the military right in the middle of the midterm elections, creating a nonexistent crisis to stimulate votes for one party.
When partisan actions like this occur, they violate civil-military traditions and erode that faith, with potentially long-term damage to the morale of the force and our democratic practice — all for electoral gain.
The deployment is a stunt, a dangerous one, and in our view, a misuse of the military that should have led Mr. Mattis to consider resigning, instead of acceding to this blatant politicization of America’s military.
The Military Is ’Securing’ a 1,900-Mile Border with 22 Miles of Razor Wire
“#Operation_Faithful_Patriot” is nothing more than a very expensive, politically motivated P.R. campaign.
Skim through the Pentagon’s media site for Operation Faithful Patriot—the fittingly ridiculous name for the deployment of some 7,000 American troops to various spots along the Mexican border—and you’ll see lots of razor wire.
There are photos of American troops laying razor wire (technically known as concertina wire) along the California-Mexico border. Of wire being affixed to the top of fences and to the sides of buildings. Everywhere you look on the Pentagon’s site, you find wire, wire, and more wire. Photos of soldiers carrying rolls of unused wire, snapshots of forklifts bringing more of the stuff to the border, and even videos of wire being unrolled and deployed. It’s thrilling stuff, truly.
The message is not subtle. President Donald Trump might not have convinced Congress to blow billions for a fully operational border wall, but good luck to any immigrant caravan that happens to stumble into the thorny might of the American military’s sharpest deterrents.
The focus on concertina wire isn’t just in the Pentagon’s internal media. The Wall Street Journal dedicated an entire Election Day story to how troops in Granjeno, Texas, had “unfurled reams of razor wire on top of a wrought-iron fence alongside a bridge to Mexico.” Troops stringing wire also appeared in The New York Post, The Washington Post, and elsewhere.
There is so much concertina wire deployed to the southern border that if it were all stretched out from end to end, it would reach all the way from Brownsville, Texas, on the Gulf Coast to....well, whatever is 22 miles west of Brownsville, Texas.
Yes. Despite the deluge of photos and videos of American troops are securing the southern border with reams of razor wire, Buzzfeed’s Vera Bergengruen reports that “troops have deployed with 22 miles of the wire so far, with 150 more available.”
The U.S.–Mexico border is roughly 1,950 miles long.
The wire doesn’t seem to be getting strung with any sort of strategic purpose, either. That WSJ story about the troops in Texas hanging wire from a bridge says that the “wire was placed on top of fences at least 15 feet high along each side of the bridge that sat several dozen feet above an embankment” while the bridge itself remains open to vehicle traffic from Mexico. If there is a goal, it would seem to be making the border look more prickly and dystopian while not actually creating any sort of barrier.
It’s no wonder, then, that the troops deployed to the border are confused about why they are there. On Wednesday, when Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited some of the troops stationed near McAllen, Texas, he was met with lots of questions and provided few answers.
“Sir, I have a question. The wire obstacles that we’ve implanted along the border....Are we going to be taking those out when we leave?” one of the soldiers asked Mattis, according to Bergengruen. Another asked Mattis to explain the “short- and long-term plans of this operation.”
“Short-term right now, you get the obstacles in so the border patrolmen can do what they gotta do,” Mattis responded. “Longer term, it’s somewhat to be determined.”
Even at a time when most American military engagements seem to be conducted with a “TBD” rationale, this feels especially egregious. Mattis did his best on Wednesday to make the effort seem like a meaningful attempt to secure the border, while simultaneously admitting that he does not expect the deployed troops to actually come into contact with any immigrant caravans. Lately he’s been talking about how the deployment is supposedly good training for unconventional circumstances.
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Operation Faithful Patriot—a name so silly that the Pentagon has decided to stop using it—is nothing more than a very expensive, politically motivated P.R. campaign. Of the 39 units deployed, five of them are public affairs units. There seems to be no clear mission, no long-term objective, and no indication that the troops will add meaningful enforcement to existing border patrols.
As for all that wire? It doesn’t really seem to be working either.
▻https://reason.com/blog/2018/11/19/the-military-is-securing-a-1900-mile-bor
#Faithful_Patriot #barbelé
v. aussi :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/748944
Janvier 2019... l’histoire se répète...
Report says U.S. officials are concerned that Israel and others attempted to manipulate Kushner
Israel, China, the UAE and Mexico tried to sway Kushner to promote their interests, a report claims amid news that Trump’s son-in-law and adviser was stripped of his interim security clearance
Amir Tibon (Washington) Feb 28, 2018
WASHINGTON– Officials in the U.S. government and intelligence community are concerned that foreign governments, including the Israeli government, were trying to “manipulate” Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, according to a report published on Tuesday by the Washington Post. The report stated that officials from Israel, China, the UAE and Mexico had all discussed how they can use Kushner’s business interests to influence his foreign policy work in the White House.
According to the report, Trump’s National Security Adviser, General H.R. McMaster, “learned that Kushner had contacts with foreign officials that he did not coordinate through the National Security Council or officially report.” It also stated that “Officials in the White House were concerned that Kushner was ’naive and being tricked’ in conversations with foreign officials - some of whom said they wanted to deal only with Kushner directly and not more experienced personnel”.
Top secret downgrade
The report comes amidst tensions in the White House over the issue of Kushner’s access to top secret intelligence. Politico reported on Tuesday that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has decided to strip Kushner of his access to certain areas of sensitive intelligence, in light of the fact that Kushner has failed to obtain permanent security clearance from the U.S. intelligence community.
The Washington Post report concerning foreign governments’ alleged attempt to influence the senior White House aide could be seen as a possible explanation for Kushner’s difficulties in receiving his security clearance.
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A lawyer representing Kushner said in reply to the report: “We will not respond substantively to unnamed sources peddling second-hand hearsay with rank speculation that continue to leak inaccurate information.”
A spokesperson for the White said that General McMaster has “the highest regard” for Kushner and that both of them work closely together on foreign policy issues.
The Israeli Embassy in Washington refused to comment.
The report did not contain details about the alleged attempts by the foreign governments, including the Israeli government, to “manipulate” Kushner based on his business interests.
One of Kushner’s main areas of responsibility in the White House is leading the administration’s Middle East peace team, which is working on an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.
A mettre en perspective avec cet article :
Les liens financiers entre le gendre de Trump et Israël
Stefanie Schüler, RFI, le 8 janvier 2018
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/659440
#Jared_Kushner #Donald_Trump #israel #corruption #collusion #manipulation
Is FM Radio Norway’s Network Neutrality? Majority Still Opposes Shutdown - Radio Survivor
▻http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2017/12/20/fm-radio-norways-network-neutrality-majority-still-opposes-shutdown
Two years ago the world press reported, often breathlessly, on the Scandinavian country’s plans to end its national radio services on the #FM dial, switching them over to #digital_broadcasting. Lost in most of the reportage was the fact 200 local FM stations would remain on the air, while 65% of Norwegians opposed the shutdown. But, who lets facts get in the way of a sensational triumphalist headline declaring the first nail in radio’s coffin?
Last week more staid articles reported that the national FM shutdown has completed, with the last national FM stations in the northern Arctic reaches going silent. But the public won’t necessarily tolerate the silence.
According to a variety of sources, unlicensed FM broadcasts have popped up in cities around the country, including Bergen, Tønsberg, Ålesund, Fredrikstad and Førde. In Oslo, Norway’s largest city, the CBC’s “As It Happens” talked with one FM broadcaster—the CEO of a radio company and the chairman of the Norwegian Local Radio Federation—who refused to turn off his transmitter. He says that his station enjoys “great support” from listeners and is facing fines of more than $10,000 a day.
...
Even with the national FM switch-off complete, the digital transition still remains unpopular with the Norwegian public. A recent Dagbladet newspaper survey found 56% of Norwegians are “dissatisfied” with the conversion to DAB. Another national news survey says 50% of people who don’t have a DAB capable radio in the car have no plans to upgrade, in part because they’re willing to rely on the local broadcasters that remain on FM.
To me, this situation seems a lot like Network Neutrality here in the U.S. In Norway you have millions of people—a true majority—who were perfectly happy with FM radio and had no wish to trade it in for a digital model with difficult-to-perceive benefits, aside from being digital. In America, 52% of registered voters in a Morning Consult/Politico poll said they support #Net_Neutrality, while a record number of people submitted comments to the #FCC in support of the policy.
But like FM supporters in Norway, open internet supporters in the U.S. were screaming at deaf ears in #Washington.
That’s why in Norway unlicensed broadcasters are filling the enormous void left behind by the country’s national broadcast industry and regulator.
Les #médias numériques américains à la peine (en fait, on sait pas trop)
▻http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2017/11/25/les-medias-numeriques-americains-a-la-peine_5220415_3234.html
D’autres signes illustrent ce coup de froid : BuzzFeed et Vice Media, deux grands « pure players » mêlant info et divertissement à destination d’un public jeune, n’atteindront pas leurs objectifs de chiffre d’affaires en 2017, a annoncé le Wall Street Journal, le 16 novembre. Le premier devrait rater « de 15 % à 20 % » sa cible de 350 millions de dollars ; le second ne pas engranger les plus de 800 millions de dollars prévus. « Même BuzzFeed, l’un des médias numériques les plus puissants, est confronté à des incertitudes. C’est terrifiant pour tous les autres », analyse le journaliste senior de Newsweek Zach Schonfeld.
Le buzz négatif actuel – d’aucuns vont jusqu’à parler d’« apocalypse numérique » – est à la mesure de l’euphorie passée. Les deux tendances sont nourries par une opacité à propos des chiffres : Vice Media et BuzzFeed ne « commentent pas » leurs revenus et ils n’indiquent pas s’ils sont rentables.
Lire aussi « Métamorphoses du paysage médiatique américain, par Rodney Benson (@mdiplo, septembre 2017)
▻https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2017/09/BENSON/57835
Il y a un demi-siècle, le président américain Richard Nixon fustigeait « les médias » comme s’il s’agissait d’une seule entité indistincte. À une époque dominée par une poignée de chaînes de télévision, de magazines et de journaux, il n’avait pas tout à fait tort. Toutefois, depuis le début des années 2000, le paysage s’est largement diversifié.
On peut distinguer au moins trois familles, tous genres et supports confondus. D’abord celle de l’info-divertissement de masse, avec des sites Internet bien établis comme BuzzFeed et le Huffington Post ainsi que de grandes chaînes de télévision nationales (CBS, ABC, NBC, leurs filiales locales et la chaîne d’information CNN. Puis vient la famille partisane (2), représentée par Fox News (conservatrice), MSNBC (progressiste), des radios principalement conservatrices, la blogosphère et les satires politiques comme le « Daily Show », présenté par Trevor Noah, et « Last Week Tonight with John Oliver ». La troisième famille privilégie un journalisme de qualité, avec des titres comme le New York Times, le Wall Street Journal, Politico, des magazines nationaux comme Time et The Atlantic, ainsi que les principaux journaux régionaux. Les secteurs public et associatif, minoritaires mais dynamiques, proposent parfois un contrepoids à ce système indexé sur l’économie de marché.
Mais les limites entre ces catégories sont floues et poreuses. Des chaînes de télévision et des sites comme le Huffington Post et Vox tentent de réconcilier journalisme de qualité et info-divertissement ; la neutralité politique affichée par le New York Times et d’autres médias dominants est vivement contestée, pas seulement par des critiques conservateurs. À l’autre bout du spectre, quand la plus grande télévision locale, Sinclair, regardée par 70 % des foyers américains, recrute un ancien porte-parole de M. Donald Trump au poste d’analyste politique en chef, on lui reproche d’utiliser ses 173 chaînes pour « promouvoir un programme essentiellement de droite ».
Pour bien comprendre l’avènement de ce nouvel écosystème, il faut revenir sur la période qui a suivi le prétendu « âge d’or » des années 1970, marqué par le Watergate (1972-1974) : les années 1980 et 1990, au cours desquelles le profit devint l’alpha et l’oméga des médias.
Trump Intensifies His Attacks on Journalists and Condemns F.B.I. ‘Leakers’ - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/us/politics/white-house-sean-spicer-briefing.html
Reporters from The Times, BuzzFeed News, CNN, The Los Angeles Times, Politico, the BBC and The Huffington Post were among those shut out of the briefing. Aides to Mr. Spicer admitted only reporters from a group of news organizations that, the White House said, had been previously confirmed.
Those organizations included Breitbart News, the One America News Network and The Washington Times, all with conservative leanings. Journalists from ABC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Fox News also attended.
Reporters from The Associated Press and Time magazine, who were set to be allowed in, chose not to attend the briefing in protest of the White House’s actions. The Washington Post did not send a reporter to the session.
Still, the Committee to Protect Journalists, which typically advocates press rights in countries with despotic regimes, issued an alarmed statement on Friday about Mr. Trump’s escalating language.
“It is not the job of political leaders to determine how journalists should conduct their work, and sets a terrible example for the rest of the world,” said the group’s executive director, Joel Simon. “The U.S. should be promoting press freedom and access to information.”
Mr. Trump, in his attack on the news media at the conservative gathering, complained at length about the use of anonymous sources in news stories, charging that some reporters were fabricating unnamed sources to level unfair charges against him.
“They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name,” Mr. Trump said. “Let their name be put out there.”
At another point, he said, “A few days ago, I called the fake news the enemy of the people because they have no sources — they just make it up.” He added that his “enemy of the people” label applied only to “dishonest” reporters and editors.
#journalisme #USA #Trump
What’s Going on With America’s White People? - POLITICO Magazine
▻http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/problems-white-people-america-society-class-race-214227
Donald Trump’s appeals to working-class white Americans have no doubt stoked racial tensions. But his popularity among these voters has also put an unexpected spotlight on their grievances—whether they feel left behind by globalization and immigration or resentful of an elite political class that seems to ignore them. Do poor white Americans suddenly feel more disgruntled than ever, or are the rest of us just now paying attention? How much of their pique has to do with economic factors versus matters of race or, simply, health? And what does it all mean for American politics—in 2016 and beyond? To answer those questions and more, Politico editor Susan Glasser and chief political correspondent Glenn Thrush convened four scholars from our Politico 50 list who have studied the history of white people in America and documented their recent troubles; Thrush also interviewed J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy, a bestselling memoir about working-class white culture. In a way, they all said, the discontent that propelled Trump to the nomination has been a long time coming.
Susan Glasser: I’d love to just jump right in and ask each of you: What is going on with America’s white people, and how much is that driving the Trump phenomenon in this year’s election?
L’Arabie saoudite veut soudoyer la Russie. Triste ou hilarant ?
▻http://vilistia.org/archives/11069
Dans un entretien accordé au journal américain Politico, le ministre saoudien des AE, Adel al Jubeir propose à Moscou de « lâcher Assad » en échange des » concessions faites par l’Arabie saoudite à la Russie au Moyen Orient ». Apparemment, ce sinistre individu … Lire la suite →