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September 19, 2016

He’s the FBI’s “main guy”: Alleged NYC bomber Ahmad Khan Rahami wasn’t part of terror cell, officials say

Bill De Blasio Presser

Bill de Blasio and James O'Neill at a news conference on September 19, 2016 in New York City. (Credit: Getty Images/Spencer Platt)


Investigators probing bomb blasts in New York and New Jersey say they’ve found no evidence so far that the suspect in the attacks was part of a broader terrorist cell.


In a news briefing Monday, the assistant director of the FBI’s field office in New York, William Sweeney Jr., said, “There is no indication that there’s a cell” in the area.


A law enforcement official said that Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, who was arrested Monday morning after a shootout with police, was the “main guy.” Officials are looking into whether any others had a role.


New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday there is “every reason to believe this was an act of terror.”


The three bombs had one component in common: a flip-style cellphone.


According to a federal law enforcement official, a pipe bomb that exploded in Seaside Park, New Jersey, was constructed with a threaded pipe and black powder.


The official said two devices found in New York City included pressure cookers, similar to the devices used in the 2013 attack at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and wounded hundreds. The device that exploded in Chelsea contained residue from the commercially available explosive compound Tannerite.


One of the bombs went off, injuring 29 people. The other didn’t explode.


The official was not authorized to publicly to discuss the case and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the ongoing investigation.

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Published on September 19, 2016 11:37

September 14, 2016

Espionage Insiders: The Existential Threat

Screen Shot 2016-09-05 at 10.09.55 PM

You’ve probably never been on the Dark Web—but your information has.


If you’ve ever been a part of a massive security breach (think Target, Amazon, or even the IRS), it’s likely that your personal data has appeared for sale in this secret corner of the digital realm where users, thanks to a cloak of anonymity, move in secret—creating a breeding ground for criminal activity.


“If your data has been compromised in a leak, it’s been bought and sold on the Dark Web,” says Dan Patterson, a tech journalist who specializes in matters of cybersecurity, politics, and government.


Don’t panic just yet. “That’s not where the money is,” explains Patterson, who says the majority of hackers deal in what’s known as Zero Days threats—finding security loopholes within corporations and agencies and exploiting them for a price.


Taken on its own, the Dark Web is disconcerting enough: a virtual dark alley filled with bogeymen and unseemly characters ready to trade private information to the highest bidder. It’s something most citizens probably prefer not to think about—but in 2013, Edward Snowden proved that we have to.


“What Snowden did was reveal a profound existential threat,” says Patterson. “He showed that the NSA wanted not only to break encryption, but to [obtain] all of the code, all of the information—they wanted everything.”


While the NSA was acting in a way that Patterson describes as “contrary to the ideas of freedom and liberty,” it wasn’t the surveillance that was surprising—it was the careless way they collected it, leaving open large loopholes for potential exploitation. By failing to follow basic safeguards that would keep our information out of the hands of criminals, he explains, the government made us more vulnerable—in the name of national security.


“Imagine that you stockpile all of the nuclear weapons in one place,” explains Patterson. “Nobody knows you’ve been stockpiling them, or where they are. Let’s say you’ve been storing them all in Missouri. Once we have found them there, we have found everything. We have them all.”


“We are creating information at a rapid pace,” he continues. “Of course, someone will want to collect the information and make sense of it… organizations, private companies, and so on. But it was remarkably reckless and undermined the faith and trust that the people had in the United States.”


That recklessness places our country in tremendous peril. In the new warfare, the weaponization of information is a development as impactful and important as the development of the atomic bomb in 1945.


And, to be clear, this isn’t an obscure future-of-battle idea. Cyber warfare has been here, in use, for a long time. In 2007, the Stuxnet Worm—a virus that many believe was jointly built by the United States and Israel—was used to attack Iran’s nuclear program. It was a game changer: with one program, we could control large-scale industrial facilities such as power plants.


“We had never used code offensively to destroy infrastructure before,” notes Patterson. “This broke the dam.”


“It’s the idea of proportional response,” he explains. “We get hacked by another country and never know, and our government responds in kind. Governments are hacking each other all the time. Day and night.”


In that light, it makes the NSA’s collection of personal data—without proper security—a potentially catastrophic event.


There is a bright side, however—even in relation to the Dark Web. Our government is employing thousands of hackers to counterbalance the threat, explains Patterson, who also points out that in a day when nothing is private, the Dark Web offers the privacy that is essential for whistleblowers. “We need people who live under oppressive regimes to be able to communicate with the outside world,” he says—a possibility afforded by encryption and anonymity.


That, Patterson says, is something we owe to Edward Snowden. “It was a radicalizing event,” he says. “It raised awareness of encryption, and now it is mainstream.”



Dan Patterson is a tech journalist and Senior Writer for TechRepublic, covering cybersecurity and the intersection of technology, politics, and government. To read his work , click here . Mr. Patterson’s perspective is offered as part of a four-part series by Salon.com on behalf of Open Road Studios in celebration of the film SNOWDEN , in theaters September 2016. To read more in this series, start here .

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Published on September 14, 2016 22:47

Snowden In Theaters Tomorrow

Snowden Featured Image

Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Shailene Woodley and directed by Oliver Stone. Get movie times and tickets here!

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Published on September 14, 2016 21:01

The night we almost lost Arkansas — a 1980 nuclear Armageddon that almost was

Titan Missile

A Titan 2 missile, as seen in "Command and Control" (Credit: PBS)


On a September night 36 years ago, we nearly lost Arkansas. Some people may regard that as a mixed blessing, even now — Bill Clinton and his wife, then the governor and first lady of that state, were less than 50 miles away in Little Rock, at the Arkansas Democratic Convention.


If the Titan 2 intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, that exploded inside its silo in Damascus, Arkansas, had detonated its nuclear warhead, both the Clintons and Vice President Walter Mondale (also attending the convention) would have been dead within minutes. So would have millions of other people in Arkansas and neighboring states, with a plume of deadly radioactive fallout extending from the mid-South to the East Coast, perhaps as far as Washington.


It’s not entirely fair to say that the near-catastrophe of 1980 was covered up. But Americans were not even remotely told the truth about how close we came to nuclear Armageddon in the heartland. In fact, when Mondale demanded to know whether the Damascus missile was armed with a nuclear warhead, the military initially refused to tell him. “In my book, I have a quote from someone who was in the room,” said author Eric Schlosser during a recent video interview in Salon’s New York office. “Mondale said, ‘Goddamn it, I’m the vice president of the United States! You should be able to tell me if there’s a nuclear warhead on this missile or not. Eventually they did.”


Schlosser’s book is called “Command and Control,” and is also the basis for a thriller-style documentary of the same title from “Food, Inc.” director Robert Kenner, who joined Schlosser for our conversation. As Schlosser explained, local and national news covered the Damascus accident for two or three days but without understanding quite how bad it was.


“It was one of the first stories covered by the new network called CNN,” he said. Then it quickly faded from view. “There was a presidential election going on,” Schlosser continued. “Jimmy Carter was running against Ronald Reagan. We had hostages in Iran — that was a daily news story.”


Schlosser added, “Most importantly, the Pentagon denied that there was any possibility that this warhead could have detonated and that was accepted by the media. It wasn’t until I really started researching this accident that I was able to do interviews and obtain documents that showed conclusively that this warhead was at risk of detonating accidentally.”


In the film, which opens in New York this week, Kenner interviews a former military contractor who designed the safety mechanisms on the Titan 2, the most powerful nuclear missile ever deployed by the United States. “I started to ask him whether the warhead really could have gone off because of this accident,” Kenner told me. “He interrupted me before I could finish the question. ‘Yes,’ he told me. ‘It absolutely could have.’”


How close did a simple maintenance mishap come to rendering at least one American state uninhabitable and killing an unknown number of people? And what does that tell us about the security and safety of the deadliest weapons ever built in human history? We don’t know the answer to the first question, and the second one raises extremely troubling issues.


I don’t want to spoil the gripping and improbable details of Kenner’s film, but how the Damascus accident started is no big secret. A pair of maintenance workers accidentally dropped an 8-pound socket into the shaft of the missile silo — essentially a larger version of the same type of socket a mechanic might use to remove engine bolts on your car. It bounced off a support gantry at high velocity and ricocheted into the side of the missile, opening a hole in the fuel tank that immediately began to spray compressed gas into the silo.


You might assume that a massively powerful nuclear warhead, which Schlosser said was “three times more powerful than all the bombs used by all the armies in the Second World War,” including the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan, would have multiple and redundant safety features to protect it from such a fluke event. You would be wrong.


If the fuel spraying into the missile silo ignited or the fuel tank decompressed and collapsed, the missile would surely have exploded. Whether such an explosion would be hot enough or powerful enough to detonate the Titan’s nuclear warhead or would not quite reach that level — well, according to Schlosser, no one was quite sure about that. “This is the one and only time that a warhead of this design was involved in a serious accident,” he said. “Obviously it didn’t detonate because we would know if it had. But you wouldn’t want to try this accident five times.”


In addition to claiming that the warhead was never in danger of detonating, the Pentagon’s official report on the Damascus accident described the socket accident as a “one-in-a-million” event. Kenner said that while filming inside the only surviving Titan 2 silo, an exact duplicate of the one in Damascus, his crew dropped 12 sockets down the silo shaft. Six of them bounced back and hit the side of the missile. Even so, the details of the Damascus accident are less important than what the incident tells us about “the whole experience of our history with nuclear weapons,” in Kenner’s words, and all the potential and hypothetical things that could go wrong.


“It’s a low-probability event that something could go wrong,” Kenner said during our video conversation. “But [there is] an incredibly high consequence if it does go wrong — unimaginably high. What made me want to make the film was the fact that we’ve stopped thinking about this.”


Kenner continued, “The consequence of a nuclear accident is perhaps the most important issue we’re not talking about. I’ve done a film on climate change [and its corporate deniers], called ‘Merchants of Doubt,’ and that’s an incredibly important issue. But we are talking about it. Here’s one where we’re not, and the more we don’t talk about it, the more dangerous it becomes.”


As both Schlosser’s book and Kenner’s film explore (the former in more detail), there have been numerous near-miss accidents in the history of our nuclear arsenal, and other nuclear nations have certainly had accidents that we don’t know about. In fact there was another serious accident during the same week in 1980, Schlosser said, when a bomber loaded with 12 hydrogen bombs caught on fire at an air base in North Dakota. And it’s not as if nuclear weapons suddenly disappeared or became harmless at the end of the Cold War. There was a potentially serious accident two years ago at a Minuteman missile site in Colorado, Schlosser said, that has received little attention.


What we know about the Colorado accident “is very similar to what happens in the film,” Schlosser said. “There were some maintenance guys working on a Minuteman missile in the silo. They were doing some diagnostic tests and something went wrong. They brought in another team the next day and something really went wrong.”


He pointed out, “We don’t know if the warhead was armed, and we don’t know how serious an accident it was. The Air Force by law is supposed to release an accident investigation report, and they’ve refused to do that in this case.”


While the danger of a nuclear-weapons accident partly results from aging and unreliable technology — most of our weapons systems are three to five decades old and run by antediluvian computer systems — the larger risk Schlosser sees is human error and imperfection. “A glitch in the software controlling our nuclear weapons or a mechanical fault within one of those weapons could destroy entire cities or start a war,” he said. “I know that sounds like hyperbole, but people much smarter than me with much more knowledge of the subject right now are really worried about it.”


Schlosser also sees a risk of nuclear apocalypse hidden in plain sight, amid the 2016 presidential campaign. In a portion of our interview that has already been circulated on social media, he said, “It’s extraordinary that there’s any possibility Donald Trump could be president of the United States and commander in chief [of our military] and in charge of our nuclear arsenal.”


He elaborated: “Under the law, the only person who’s authorized to order the use of nuclear weapons is the president. And he or she is pretty much unrestricted about when he or she wants to use them. If you’re a maintenance worker, if you’re a launch officer — anyone in the military who has to deal with nuclear weapons has to go through something called the personnel reliability program. It’s basically a personality test to see if you should be let anywhere near nuclear weapons. Donald Trump would fail that on every score.”


”Command and Control” is now playing at Film Forum in New York. It opens Sept. 23 in Toronto and Washington; Sept. 30 in Boston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia; Oct. 7 in Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis and San Diego; and Oct. 14 in Atlanta and San Francisco, with other cities, home video release and PBS broadcast to follow.

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Published on September 14, 2016 16:00

“Sixteen Candles” is begging for the “Ferris Bueller” treatment: 13 ’80s movies crying out for reissued — or long overdue — soundtracks

Labyrinth; Sixteen Candles; Purple Rain

For soundtrack and score obsessives, one Holy Grail finally became available this week. Thirty years (and some change) after “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” debuted in theaters, the movie finally has an official soundtrack album for sale. Not only does this CD feature Ira Newborn’s score, but the album contains most of the pop and rock songs from John Hughes’ classic film — from the zany electropop of Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s “Love Missle F1-11 (Ultraviolence Mix)” to the melancholy Dream Academy cover of the Smiths’ “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want.”


Despite the three-decade wait, it’s certainly a case of better late than never. “Obviously, it’s nice to tie in a release with the 30th anniversary for promotion,” co-producer Dan Goldwasser told Salon. “But there’s such a huge fan base for ‘Ferris’ and 30 years worth of people clamoring for a soundtrack that fans would be happy [to have] regardless of when it came out.”


As streaming-music platforms have shown consumers, it’s far too easy for art to slip through the cracks or become lost to time. That’s why it’s so important that soundtracks like the one for “Ferris Bueller” eventually emerge: They function as vital artistic archives in addition to being entertainment.


After all, “Ferris Bueller” the movie featured a handful of exclusive songs that were (until now) unavailable elsewhere, which meant this music remained stubbornly obscure. This phenomenon isn’t an anomaly: Thanks to complications with rights and licensing, the original music that has appeared in many ’80s movies disappeared when films aired on TV or made it to VHS and DVD formats. Plus, the decade’s movies could be difficult to find. For example, the beloved, John Cusack-starring 1985 film “Better Off Dead” was unavailable for years (except on antiquated formats such as LaserDisc), while Nicolas Cage’s early movie “Valley Girl” was only available on VHS until about a decade ago.


YouTube and other video sites have certainly been a boon for obscure movies and soundtracks, of course. However, physical copies of soundtracks remain popular, especially as fodder for vinyl reissues. So in honor of the “Ferris Bueller” soundtrack finally seeing the light of day, here are 13 other ’80s movie soundtracks deserving of a reissue — either due to eye-popping resale prices, sentimental value or because they never officially existed in the first place.


1.”Weird Science” (1985)



The soundtrack to this Hughes film features wacky New Wave and alternative-leaning rock and pop: Killing Joke’s “Eighties,” Wall of Voodoo’s “Deep in the Jungle,” Taxxi’s “Forever” and, of course, Oingo Boingo’s title track. Incredibly enough, however, the “Weird Science” soundtrack has never received an official release on CD — and there are plenty of in-movie songs (including Los Lobos’ “Don’t Worry Baby,” the Del Fuegos’ “Nervous and Shakey” and Van Halen’s “(Oh) Pretty Woman”) and Ira Newborn score bits that aren’t on the vinyl edition. In fact, a late-2015 vinyl reissue omits the Newborn song “Weird Romance,” which appeared on the original soundtrack LP. An official, comprehensive version would be well-deserved.


2. “Sixteen Candles” (1984)



Technically, this beloved 1984 teen-movie classic did have a soundtrack: a mini-album featuring five songs, including tje Thompson Twins’ film-ending love song “If You Were Here.” This EP could very easily be fleshed out, however, and expanded into a full-length album. Like all Hughes films, the movie is chock full of plot-pushing songs — to name a few, Altered Images’ “Happy Birthday,” Wham!’s “Young Guns” and Nick Heyward’s “When It Started to Begin,” along with tunes from AC/DC, Night Ranger and the Specials. In short, “Sixteen Candles” is begging for the “Ferris Bueller” treatment.


3. “Labyrinth” (1986)



Forget a deluxe reissue: How about a straightforward reissue? Original vinyl copies of this soundtrack/score hybrid are pricey on Discogs and Amazon, and even the CD is tough to find at an affordable price. The premium makes sense: Not only is the 1986 Disney movie a cult classic, but the album features original music from David Bowie, who played Jareth the Goblin King in the movie. The songs he contributed — including the dramatic “Within You” and the exuberant “Magic Dance” — stand on their own as solid compositions.


4. “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” (1989)



This beloved holiday film was accompanied by a low-key musical release: a promo 7-inch of Mavis Staples’ “Christmas Vacation,” released via her then-label, Paisley Park Records. That was it, however. In fact, there’s never been a soundtrack released — save for a dubious (and hard-to-find) 1999 CD pressing of a 10th-anniversary edition of the soundtrack, featuring more holiday tunes and parts of the score penned by the legendary Angelo Badalamenti.


5. “Heathers” (1989)



The soundtrack of this 1989 dark comedy is the delightfully unsettled score from David Newman. “Heathers” is ripe for a reissue, however, due to its scarcity and glaring omissions: two versions of “Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)” — by Syd Straw and Sly & The Family Stone, respectively — and the indelible “Teenage Suicide (Don’t Do It).” The latter tune was written by noted producer-musician Don Dixon and performed by the ’80s power-pop dream team of Dixon, Mitch Easter, Angie Carlson and Marti Jones. (Completists needing a physical copy of the song can find it on Dixon’s 1993 greatest hits album, “(If) I’m A Ham, Well You’re A Sausage.”)


6. “Purple Rain” (1984)



In 2014, Warner Bros. sent out a press release touting that it had forged a partnership with Prince. Part of this new relationship involved celebrating the 30th anniversary of his classic movie and album “Purple Rain,” the release noted: “For the first time, Prince will be releasing a digitally re-mastered, deluxe version of this classic album.” Considering the music and live material reportedly sitting in Prince’s vault, this was a tantalizing news tidbit. But to the chagrin of fans, the promised reissue has yet to materialize, leaving nothing but guesses as to when — or if — something might surface.


7. “Valley Girl” (1983)



Back in 1983, New Wave movie classic “Valley Girl” received the “Sixteen Candles” soundtrack treatment: a six-song EP featuring tracks from acts such as the Plimsouls, Josie Cotton and Sparks. Rhino Records remedied this scant soundtrack in the mid-’90s by releasing two CDs: a fleshed-out full-length album and a second volume called “Valley Girl: More Music From the Soundtrack” with tunes from (and inspired by) the film. The latter is out of print and features some crucial tunes from the movie, including Sparks’ “Eaten By The Monster of Love” and Bonnie Hayes with the Wild Combo’s “Girls Like Me.” Put simply, we’re long overdue for a true, comprehensive “Valley Girl” soundtrack.


8. “Times Square” (1980)



This double LP accompanying the ambitious (but underperforming) New York City-set movie functioned as a primer to the nascent punk, post-punk and New Wave movements: The track list includes Roxy Music, Pretenders, Talking Heads, Joe Jackson, Lou Reed and XTC, to name just a few. It’s easy to find on vinyl, but a deluxe reissue detailing why the movie and music still matter would be well-deserved.


9. “Smithereens” (1982)



In the same vein as “Times Square,” this disorienting, nihilistic cult punk flick “Smithereens” shows New York at its grittiest. Appropriately, the indie film features jittery, unsettled music composed by members of the Feelies, as well as cuts from the band’s 1980 debut, “Crazy Rhythms,” and songs from Richard Hell & the Voidods and ESG. Unlike “Times Square,” however, there’s never been an official soundtrack released — an appalling oversight.


10. “Vision Quest” (1985)



The “Vision Quest” soundtrack was notorious for featuring Madonna’s hit “Crazy For You,” along with songs from Journey, Sammy Hagar and the Style Council. It’s also quite easy to find at a cheap price. The “Vision Quest” score, however, was composed by the legendary Tangerine Dream (back in the news thanks to the popularity of Netflix’s “Stranger Things”) and is only available via unofficial, bootleg means. A reissue with the Tangerine Dream music tacked on — or even a compilation of impossible-to-find scores from the group — would be a boon.


11. “Dogs In Space” (1986)



You’d be forgiven if you aren’t familiar with this obscure Australian movie, which starred late INXS frontman Michael Hutchence. The equally rare “Dogs In Space” soundtrack, however, deserves to be plucked from oblivion, thanks to rare instances of Hutchence’s solo work, as well as songs from Iggy Pop, Gang of Four and Brian Eno.


12. “Thrashin'” (1986)



There was never an official soundtrack for this cult skate movie, despite a rowdy in-movie appearance by Red Hot Chili Peppers and songs from Circle Jerks, Fear, Devo and Meat Loaf. Although certain tunes (such as the Bangles’ “Want You”) have surfaced elsewhere, a compilation of music from “Thrashin'” would hang together nicely.


13. “Better Off Dead” (1985)



The soundtrack to “Better Off Dead” is difficult to find these days. What makes it ripe for reissue, however, is what wasn’t included on it — stellar songs such as Hall & Oates’ “She’s Gone,” Simple Minds’ “Street Hassle” and Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy,” all of which appeared in the movie. An expanded, more complete edition makes perfect sense, considering the enduring popularity of the movie.

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Published on September 14, 2016 15:59

New York AG Eric Schneiderman opens inquiry into Trump Foundation

Donald Trump

Donald Trump (Credit: Reuters/Jay LaPrete)


New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman launched an investigation into Donald Trump’s nonprofit foundation Tuesday amid backlash over his shady political contribution to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. The inquiry will probe the charity’s compliance with New York state laws.


Earlier this month, Trump’s campaign revealed the GOP nominee paid the IRS a $2,500 penalty this year after his charitable foundation violated tax laws by improperly donating a $25,000 gift to a campaign group connected to Bondi.


In an interview Tuesday on CNN’s “The Lead,” Schneiderman confirmed the investigation, “We’ve inquired into it,” he told host Jake Tapper. “My interest in this issue really is in my capacity as regulator of nonprofits in New York state. And we have been concerned that the Trump Foundation may have engaged in some impropriety from that point of view.”


Schneiderman, a Democrat, has sued Trump in the past. In 2013, Schneiderman’s office sued Trump and his now-defunct university for fraud, seeking $40 million in damages.


Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung says the inquiry into the Donald J. Trump Foundation is politically motivated, calling the attorney general a “partisan hack.”


The investigation comes at a time when Hillary Clinton’s own foundation has aroused intense criticism and scrutiny. But while conjecture involving Clinton and her “pay-to-play” politics remains speculative at best, evidence that Trump has paid to play is rather convincing.


At the time of the $25,000 donation connected to Bondi, Florida’s attorney general was trying to determine whether she should open her own inquiry into fraud allegations against Trump University. She ultimately decided not to pursue the case.

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Published on September 14, 2016 14:15

U.S. boosts military aid to Israel to $3.8 billion per year in largest package in U.S. history

Israeli border policemen detain a Palestinian protester during a protest against Jewish settlements in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah

Israeli forces detain a Palestinian protester during a demonstration against illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah on September 4, 2015 (Credit: Reuters/Mohamad Torokman)


The Obama administration is breaking records, boosting military aid to Israel to an unprecedented $3.8 billion per year.


Under a new 10-year deal, called the Memorandum of Understanding, the U.S. is providing Israel with $38 billion of military aid from 2019 to 2028.


The U.S. State Department stressed that the new agreement is “the single largest pledge of bilateral military assistance in U.S. history.‎”


The deal comes at a moment while Israel is rapidly expanding illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Violence also continues to escalate under Israel’s military occupation, which has continued unabated, in contravention of international law, since 1967.


National Security Advisor Susan Rice spoke at the State Department’s signing ceremony on Wednesday.


“I’m delighted to join you as we reaffirm the unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel,” she said. She noted the “ironclad bond” has been maintained “across parties and administrations.”


“This marks a significant increase over our existing funding,” Rice stressed. “At a time when we’re tightening our belts across the board, with the harmful sequestration spending cuts set to return in just a couple of years, this MOU nonetheless greatly increases our military assistance commitment to Israel.”


“And that’s not an accident; it’s a reminder of the United States’ unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security,” she stressed.


.@AmbassadorRice speaks at signing of new Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and #Israel https://t.co/k4z0yIUl3e


— Department of State (@StateDept) September 14, 2016




In the past eight years, the U.S. gave Israel nearly $24 billion in military aid. At least $3 billion was spent on the Iron Dome, Israel’s missile interception system.


The bulk of the new aid package, $33 billion, will be foreign military financing funding. The other $5 billion is for missile interception systems like the Iron Dome.


Israel was already the largest recipient of U.S. foreign military aid — by far. It presently receives more than half of U.S. foreign military aid, at an annual average of $3.1 billion.


The second-largest recipient is Egypt, which takes in approximately $1.5 billion. Together, Israel and Egypt receive roughly 75 percent of U.S. foreign military aid.


In her speech, Rice said a lot about Israel’s security, but said little about Palestinians, who have lived under illegal Israeli military occupation for nearly 50 years. She only briefly mentioned the Palestinians at the end of her speech; in two short sentences, she called for a two-state solution to the conflict.


Rice said nothing of the occupation, nor did she acknowledge the continued expansion of segregated settlements on occupied Palestinian land, which the U.N. has made clear are illegal.


The social justice group Jewish Voice for Peace, one of the fastest growing U.S. Jewish organizations, with more than 60 chapters and 200,000 members and supporters, released a statement condemning the agreement.


“Just a few months after Palestinians in the occupied territories began their 50th year living under repressive Israeli military rule, the United States is once again committing to a decade of increased military aid to Israel, despite that country’s deplorable human rights record,” said Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace.


“The main beneficiaries of this unprecedented amount of aid will be not just the Israeli military, but also the U.S. arms industry,” she stressed.


“At a time when the U.S. claims to oppose the expansion of Israeli settlements built illegally on occupied Palestinian land, increasing the military aid package is rewarding destructive Israeli behavior that violates longstanding official US policy and international law. As a result, the U.S. is effectively underwriting Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies towards the Palestinians,” Vilkomerson added.


Rice boasted in her speech that the U.S. is delivering the F-35 fighter jet to Israel — making Israel the only nation in the Middle East that has it. The funding increase, Rice noted, will help Israel update its fighter aircraft fleet and buy more F-35s and F-15s. The military aid will also allow the Israeli military to bolster its ground forces.


“This funding has permitted Israel to acquire the world’s most advanced military capabilities,” Rice said. She emphasized that it will ensure that Israel can “preserve its qualitative military edge.”


“Since the day he took office, President Obama has consistently provided Israel with all of the support it needs,” Rice added. “We are proud that no other administration in history has done more for Israel’s security.”


No other Administration has done more for Israel’s security, & US commitment to Israel will remain unshakeable. https://t.co/emy9PSIC2S


— Susan Rice (@AmbassadorRice) September 14, 2016




Yousef Munayyer, a political analyst and executive director of the advocacy group the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, also blasted the agreement. He pointed out that, mere days before the Memorandum of Understanding was signed, “the State Department slammed Israel’s settlement building, destruction of Palestinian homes, land seizure and displacement of Palestinians, and stated bluntly that these actions raise questions about Israel’s intentions toward peace.”


“Juxtaposed, these events highlight the abject failure of the United States to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to Israel policy. Is it any wonder that Netanyahu feels he can persistently bite the hand that feeds him and get away with it?” Munayyer added, referencing Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s hard-line right-wing prime minister.


In her speech, Rice also honored former Israeli President Shimon Peres, who had a stroke and was hospitalized this week. Rice noted that it has been 23 years since the Oslo Accords were signed between then-U.S. President Bill Clinton and then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.


In 2010, a video of Netanyahu speaking in 2001 in private to a group in an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank was leaked. The tape shows the present prime minister bragging, “I de facto put an end to the Oslo accords,” by using deceptive political tricks to seize Palestinian land.


The only way to deal with the Palestinians is to “beat them up, not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until it’s unbearable,” Netanyahu added in the leaked video.


Munayyer lamented that, “With this commitment, the United States is once again giving Israel a stamp of approval for a military occupation that just entered its 50th year, and what amounts to an Israeli military dictatorship that rules over millions of Palestinians who have no right to vote in the state that rules their lives.”


He added, “President Obama may point to this as an example of his efforts to support Israel despite his difficult relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but in the long run history will record that Obama helped support and prolong Israel’s apartheid policies, even as the world was increasingly turning against them.”

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Published on September 14, 2016 14:04

Watch: Pastor at black church interrupts Trump’s Clinton bashing

Trump Flint Church

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made a previously unannounced trip to Flint, Michigan, on Wednesday where he took a very brief tour of a water treatment plant and was later chastised by a local pastor for bringing politics into her pulpit.


Trump made his first visit to the town to visit residents affected by the 2014 lead poisoning of their water supply, an issue he has failed to address in detail thus far.


“First of all, it would have never happened [under a Trump administration], because it was so ridiculous,” Trump told NBC25-FOX66 news anchor Dave Bondy after touring the facility that has not been operational since last fall. “In order to save a small amount of money, they redo the whole thing, and now it’s a disaster,” he said, referring to the state appointed emergency manager’s decision to swap Detroit’s water supply in favor of improperly treated Flint River water.


“I will say this — my administration, we’ll get very much involved, and we’re going to get the problem solved. But it’s still not solved, and it’s hard to believe, but it’s really harder to believe that they did it in the first place. Should have never happened.”


Trump’s visit to the state, his second in the last 10 days, also included a pit stop to Bethel United Methodist Church where he lamented that previously “cars were made in Flint and you couldn’t drink the water in Mexico. Now cars are made in Mexico and you can’t drink the water in Flint.”


According to WRAL, Trump was heckled by several members of the small crowd before being chided by Rev. Faith Green Timmons for turning his policy speech into a political attack on his opponent Hillary Clinton.


“Hillary failed on the economy. Just like she failed on foreign policy,” he told the gathered crowd, a few of whom had heckled him. “Everything she touched didn’t work out,” he continued. “Nothing.”


At that point, Rev. Timmons interjected: “Mr. Trump, I invited you here to thank us for what we’ve done in Flint, not give a political speech.”


“Okay. That’s good then I’m going back to Flint,” Trump said.


Watch below, via CNN:



Flint pastor interrupts Trump: I didn’t invite you to “give a political speech.” https://t.co/VB1eN28c0U


— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) September 14, 2016



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Published on September 14, 2016 13:52

Donald Trump cut Hillary Clinton’s lead in half in a matter of weeks, Quinnipiac poll reveals

Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, left, and Republican presidential candidate Donal Trump in these 2016 file photos. Young people across racial and ethnic lines are more likely to say they trust Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump to handle instances of police violence against African-Americans. But young whites are more likely to say they trust Trump to handle violence committed against the police. (AP Photo) (Credit: AP)


The latest Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday shows the presidential race tightening substantially, with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton leading her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, by just five points nationally (48% to 43%).


Compare that to Quinnipiac’s August 25 poll, which had Trump down 10 points (41% to Clinton’s 51%).


A majority of both Clinton and Trump voters polled admitted they’re not so much supporting a candidate as they are voting against the other.


The poll found that 54% of Clinton’s voters said they’re voting against Trump; while 66% of Trump voters said they’re voting against Clinton.


“It’s the definition of ‘damned by faint praise,'” said the poll’s assistant director, Tim Malloy in a statement. “A presidential contest where a vote for a candidate is less an endorsement of that candidate than a stinging rejection of his or her opponent.”


The poll of 960 likely voters was conducted over phone between Sept. 8-13. The margin of error is +/-3.2%.

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Published on September 14, 2016 13:16

Can streaming #SaveNelly? Fan campaign shows how tough the revenue model is on artists

Nelly

Nelly (Credit: AP/Seivan M. Salim)


It seems like everything in the new music economy is a complex game of good news and bad news. Maybe that makes it no different from the old music economy, which was hardly perfect and sometimes led to musicians being caught in restrictive contracts with labels and managers. In any case, the new developments surrounding Nelly show just how strange things have become.


The story starts out fairly routinely: The St. Louis rapper, best known for songs like “Hot in Herre,” “Just a Dream” and “Pimp Juice,” has run up a federal tax bill of $2.4 million, along with about $150,000 in state taxes, according to TMZ.


Musicians — and those in any field in which people toil without a safety net — are hit with sudden or unexpected costs all the time. For musicians, it’s often a health problem that leads to a charity concert: These have helped Vic Chestnutt, Victoria Williams and others with life-threatening conditions.


The solution Spin has come up with for Nelly’s woes has a distinctly 21st-century shape: Sympathetic fans should stream Nelly’s songs enough times to defray the tax bill. Sounds good, right?


But the problem is the economics of music streaming. Here’s how it breaks down, according to Spin:



The Swedish company recently said that the payout for artists “per stream” lands between $0.006 and $0.0084. At the bare minimum, you’ll have to stream a Nelly joint 402,880,500 times to make a decent dent on his tax issues. If Nelly’s lucky enough to be on the $.0084 end of the royalty spectrum, the best case scenario sees you plugging through 287,176,547 streams. (Of course, the revenue has to also be divided between labels and publishers, but let’s hope they’ll be charitable herre.)



So given that the population of the United States is about 320 million, something like every resident of the nation would have to stream “Hot in Herre” or “Just a Dream” or whatever — and the other parties would have to stand down entirely from their cut of the Spotify revenue — to pay off Nelly’s debt.


The most notorious example of this kind of thing was a fight between David Lowery, the singer for Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, and Pandora. As one of the songwriters behind Cracker’s song “Low,” Lowery earned a mere $16.89 for more than a million plays of the song on Pandora. 

Part of what frustrates Lowery and others in the artists’ rights movement is that Spotify, Pandora and the rest are run by people who claim to love music — and many of them surely do — but they not only pay very low royalties to musicians, they also lobby governments to have these pitiful rates lowered further.


Artists from Taylor Swift to Lou Reed have, of course, complained similarly. “I understand young people were brought up on downloading,” Reed said in Cannes in 2013. “And Steve Jobs tried to make it into some kind of business which benefits Apple, but you get about a sixteenth of a penny.”


The lesson here, I guess, is to pay your taxes. And also, if you are a musician, be very, very careful with money. Even millions and millions of streams won’t save you.

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Published on September 14, 2016 12:50