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Who's paying for the Democratic Convention? Committee members want to keep the donor list secret

Maryclaire Dale
AP
Thu, 21 Jul 2016 16:36 UTC
DNC convention
The host committee for the Democratic National Convention wants to keep its donor list under wraps until after the convention even though a state open records agency has ordered its release.

A Philadelphia 2016 Host Committee lawyer told a judge Thursday the release of fundraising records could harm the organization's last-minute efforts to seek donations and negotiate vendor contracts.

Lawyer David Pittinsky said those efforts were still ongoing even though the four-day convention starts Monday.

The host committee set out to raise about $60 million from private sources, but secured a $15 million line of credit from the city as a safety net. The committee must therefore file financial updates with the city.
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Magnify

Bluster or true feelings? Trump voices support for LGBTQ community in GOP nomination speech

Josh Lederman
Associated Press
Fri, 22 Jul 2016 16:31 UTC
gop convention
© AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Entrepreneur Peter Thiel speaks during the final day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Thursday, July 21, 2016
With five letters, Donald Trump brushed off decades of Republican reluctance to voice full-throated support for gay rights — at least for a night.

Trump's call in his speech to the Republican National Convention for protecting the "LGBTQ community" was a watershed moment for the Republican Party — the first time the issue has been elevated in a GOP nomination address. Four years ago, Mitt Romney never uttered the word "gay," much less the full acronym — standing for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning.

But Trump, as if to drive the point home, said it not once, but twice.

"I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology," Trump said, adding for emphasis: "Believe me."

If Republican delegates gathered in Cleveland to nominate Trump were caught off-guard, they didn't show it. They cheered him — loudly.

Comment: While some may be encouraged by Trump's comments, there are others in the LGBTQ community who have been angered by them:

LGBTQ viewers baffled, angered by Trump offer of protection from 'foreign ideology'


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Fire

Damage control - Kerry responds to Trump, says U.S. 'fully committed' to NATO


Radio Free Europe
Fri, 22 Jul 2016 15:58 UTC
kerry Nato Trump
© Reuters
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States remains "fully committed" to the defense of NATO's Eastern European members.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has assured NATO allies in Eastern Europe that the United States remains "fully committed" to defending them.

"I want our NATO partners to be clear where we stand. This administration, like every single administration Republican or Democratic alike since 1949, remains fully committed to the NATO alliance and to our security commitments" under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that an attack on any member state is considered an attack on every NATO member, he said in Washington on July 21.

Kerry added that this commitment is "absolutely bedrock to our membership" in NATO.

The top U.S. diplomat was responding to remarks by U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in an interview with The New York Times on July 20, saying if he were president he would not automatically come to the aid of the Baltic states if they were invaded by Russia.

Trump said he would first review whether such countries had "fulfilled their obligations to us" before deciding whether to come to their aid in the event of an attack by Russia.

Comment: Trump seems to speaking from the view of NATO as a business (which it is, an arms business), with some departments not pulling their weight. Trump is basically saying if he's president he will scrap the mutual defense clause. That's huge. (Not that he's serious or that he'd actually be able to do it). It's hilarious that Trump is making a fool of himself, saying what everyone wants to hear, and people like Kerry have to run around apologizing for all his outrageous statements (which people actually like, because many of them make sense.)

Graham's assessment is overblown. Putin's remarks on Donald Trump are a realistic assessment of the person he may have to deal with in the future.



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Snakes in Suits

US think tank: Poland must target Kaliningrad, Moscow Metro and RT to deter Russian invasion


RT
Fri, 22 Jul 2016 16:19 UTC
Poland's special commando unit
© Kacper Pempel / Reuters
Russia is unpredictable and may attack the Baltic states and Poland at any moment, so Warsaw should strengthen its military and be prepared to hit the city of Kaliningrad with missiles and shut down RT, a think tank with close ties to NATO has said.

Called 'Arming for Deterrence', the 25-page document released by the US-based Atlantic Council says what NATO in general and Poland in particular should do to "counter a resurgent Russia." The threat of such an attack is imminent, the report states.

"Even if Moscow currently has no immediate intent to challenge NATO directly, this may unexpectedly change overnight and can be implemented with great speed, following already prepared plans. The capability to do so is, to a large extent, in place," the report warns.

Comment: This ridiculous report displays the mind set of US/NATO against Russia to keep the military/industrial complex rolling along.

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Boat

China encirclement underway: France prepare to lead EU missions in South China Sea

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya / Yo-Jung Chen
Asia-Pacific Research / The Diplomat
Fri, 22 Jul 2016 16:06 UTC
french aircraft carrier
© Reuters
The naval encirclement of China is well underway. It was started over a decade ago by the United States with the re-militarization of Japan and the tightening of Washington's military partnerships with countries like Australia and South Korea. The same is true about the missile shield being erected in South Korea, which targets China, Russia, and North Korea.

The excerpts that will follow are taken from a 14 July 2016 article written by Yo-Jung Chen, a Japanese-educated naturalized French diplomat that immigrated to France from Taiwan. The retired French diplomat wrote the article in The Diplomat seeking to justify the deployment of the French military into the South China Sea. Coming from a retired French diplomat who was stationed in Asia, the article offers some some insights. Aside from his post as the deputy consul of the French Consulate-General in San Francisco, Yo-Jung's Chinese background helped qualify him as the press attaché for the French Embassy in China and deputy consul at the French Embassy in Singapore.

Yo-Jung Chen misleadingly identifies "Chinese aggression" as the reason for the plans of France to redeploy to the South China Sea and to lead a series of European Union military expeditions in the body of water against the People's Republic of China. Never questioning the French occupation of places like Polynesia or New Caledonia, the retired French diplomat also tries to naturalize the French military presence in the South China Sea by talking about the colonial history of France in Vietnam and the South China Sea and by referring to France as an Indo-Pacific nation. What Yo-Jung fails to identify and mention is the inalienable rights of the Chinese to peacefully navigate in the South China Sea and the security and military threats emanating from the US and its allies against the Chinese.

Comment: Further reading on the recent developments in the South China Sea:

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Eye 2

International tribunal finds US, UK and Australia complicit in 1965 Indonesian genocide, rape and torture

Samantha Hawley
ABC
Thu, 21 Jul 2016 16:11 UTC
1965 anti-communist crackdown in Indonesia

File footage of the 1965 anti-communist crackdown in Indonesia
A non-binding international tribunal at The Hague has found Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States were complicit in facilitating the 1965 mass killings in Indonesia.

Key points:
  • 500,000 Indonesians killed in anti-communist purge at height of Cold War
  • Report found Australia continued to back army despite knowing about the killings
  • President Joko Widodo has refused to apologise for historic murders
An estimated half a million people perished in what was one of the worst massacres of the 20th Century. The killings were triggered by a failed coup that led to the deaths of six army generals, followed by the mass targeting of communists.

The International People's Tribunal at The Hague has now ruled that Indonesia committed crimes against humanity, but the finding is non-binding and carries no legal weight.
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Blackbox

Is the Saudi 9/11 story part of the deception?

Paul Craig Roberts
Information Clearing House
Fri, 22 Jul 2016 13:13 UTC
9/11 rubble
© beforeitsnews.com
9/11, what are its secrets?
James Jesus Angleton, head of CIA counterintelligence for three decades, long ago explained to me that intelligence services create stories inside stories, each with its carefully constructed trail of evidence, in order to create false trails as diversions. Such painstaking work can serve a variety of purposes. It can be used to embarrass or discredit an innocent person or organization that has an unhelpful position on an important issue and is in the way of an agenda. It can be used as a red herring to draw attention away from a failing explanation of an event by producing an alternative false explanation. I forget what Angleton called them, but the strategy is to have within a false story other stories that are there but withheld because of "national security" or "politically sensitive issues" or some such. Then if the official story gets into trouble, the backup story can be released in order to deflect attention into a new false story or to support the original story. Angleton said that intelligence services protect their necessary misdeeds by burying the misdeed in competing explanations.

Watching the expert craftsmanship of the "Saudis did 9/11" story, I have been wondering if the Saudi story is what Angleton described as a story within a story.
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Stormtrooper

Parliament group: UK's government's new counter-terrorism strategy could make things worse


RT
Fri, 22 Jul 2016 15:49 UTC
london police
© Peter Nicholls / Reuters
A government strategy intended to steer young Muslims away from extremism should be reconsidered because it risks "driving a wedge" between communities, a parliamentary group has said.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights is calling on the government to review the controversial 'Prevent' strategy currently under development, saying that since plans for a Counter-Extremism Bill were first announced in 2015, proposals seem to have "stalled or even gone backwards."

That included some ministers backing away from proposals for Banning Orders and Extremism Disruption Orders to target radical groups and individuals, the report said.

Some ministers assumed radicalization began with religious conservatism and escalated to support for violent jihad, and that extremism could be tackled by imposing restrictions on religious conservatives, the report said.

But it said this link is "by no means proven or agreed" and that the government's aim should be to tackle extremism that leads to violence and not suppress views with which the government disagrees.

Comment: It's very common for governments to use the threat of terrorism to crack down on groups that having nothing at all to do with terrorism, but which can be a thorn in the side of the government. In that sense, perhaps the UK's new policies are meant to make things worse and create more antagonism. All the more reason for them to crack down on personal freedoms.

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Control Panel

No escape from wifi: Facebook test-flies solar-powered, internet-beaming drone


RT
Fri, 22 Jul 2016 15:41 UTC
internet drone facebook
© Facebook
Unrelenting wifi signal - Facebook's Aquila internet drone
Launching its internet-beaming drone into the sky for the very first time, Facebook has reached new heights. Named Aquila, it may soon deliver internet access to billions of people in the world's remotest corners.

"Today Connectivity Lab announced a big milestone in this work: the first full-scale test flight of Aquila, our high-altitude unmanned aircraft," Facebook said in a statement.

Connectivity Lab has specifically been created to help Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg make good on his plan to allow as many people internet access as possible.
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Treasure Chest

US spent $11.5 million per day for 542 days fighting ISIS

Kit O'Connell
Mint Press News
Fri, 22 Jul 2016 15:40 UTC
U.S. bombing campaign in Kobani
© AP Photo/Mehmet Shakir
In this picture taken on Saturday, April 18, 2015, a car passes in an area that was destroyed during the U.S. bombing campaign in Kobani, north Syria.
After two years of bombing, the U.S. recently marked a horrendous milestone in a war with no clear end in sight.

Vocativ reported that the American-led coalition in the Middle East has now dropped 50,000 bombs in the ongoing campaign against Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the terrorist group commonly known as ISIS or ISIL in the West) that began in August 2014.

The analysis noted that bombing has increased with time, peaking in June when coalition forces dropped 3,167 bombs on Iraq and Syria.

"By comparison, U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan have dropped just over 16,000 bombs in the last six years, military data shows," Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, a senior writer for Vocativ, wrote on Tuesday.
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