Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Is Donald Trump Working for Russia? -- NYMag

Is Donald Trump Working for Russia? -- NYMag

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Donald Trump is not a Russian agent in the sense that Philip and Elizabeth from The Americans are Russian agents. There’s no hidden radio in his laundry room where he transmits secrets to the Kremlin. But his relationship with Russia is disturbing and lends itself to frightening interpretations.
Franklin Foer has detailed the connections between the Republican nominee and the Kremlin. In short, it includes a long series of economic and social ties, which fit the pattern Vladimir Putin has used to infiltrate and undermine governments elsewhere — including in Ukraine, a coup Putin pulled off through Paul Manafort, who is now Trump’s campaign manager. Michael Crowley and Julia Ioffehave both described how the Russian propaganda apparatus has thrown itself behind Trump’s campaign. As Foer notes, Trump’s lack of creditworthiness makes him unusually reliant on unconventional sources of financing. This makes him vulnerable to financial leverage by an unscrupulous foreign entity.
The evidence of Trump’s unseemly affinity for Putin is extensive but circumstantial. Yet the most disturbing explanation for the evidence continues to get more plausible. Today, Josh Rogin reports, the Republican Party officially altered its platform on Ukraine and Russia. The previous platform advocated “providing lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine, reflecting the virtually unanimous position of the Republican Party Establishment. Trump staffers prevailed on the Platform Committee to replace that language with a milder endorsement of “appropriate assistance.
Given how little attention Trump has paid to the substance of the platform, the intervention is striking. At the very least, it suggests that the candidate’s extensive, fulsome praise for the Russian dictator is more than a passing fancy. Reporters who investigate these ties are being very careful about their conclusions, but this looks really bad.


Monday, July 18, 2016

Terror Attacks Provide Russia With Foreign Policy Opportunity


Terror Attacks Provide Russia With Foreign Policy Opportunity - The Moscow Times Editorial

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Russian President Vladimir Putin went on television to express his condolences to the French people and President Francois Hollande over the horrendous act of terror in the southern town of Nice on July 14. He called for a joining of forces with Russia to combat the global scourge of terrorism. It was a humane and obviously strongly-felt gesture, similar to past gestures to Western leaders when terrorism had struck their lands.
Putin is usually less prompt in reacting to acts of terror when they strike Russia, sometimes taking days to address the nation.
Russia has viewed terrorism as a national security threat, waged a war on terror and has been conducting counterterrorism operations in the North Caucasus region and in Syria. It sees value in close counterterrorism cooperation with all interested parties. But when Moscow calls for joining forces with the West to combat global terrorism, it inevitably pursues a hidden political agenda.
The war on terror is instrumental in advancing Russia's other foreign policy goals. By enticement and, if necessary, by force, the West is made to accept Russia as a valuable ally in defeating an existential threat, while tacitly accepting Moscow’s “legitimate interests” in the former Soviet space and the Middle East. It is a deft move to create a situation where the maintenance of Western sanctions imposed on Russia for its shenanigans in Ukraine would be politically and morally untenable — one does not sanction a valuable war ally.
Moscow justified its military intervention in Syria last year as its contribution to defeating Islamic State, with Putin at the UN calling on the West to unite with Russia in a new edition of the “anti-Hitler coalition.” But the primary objective was to help Syrian President Bashar Assad defeat the armed uprising against his brutal rule, while piercing the diplomatic isolation of Russia imposed by the United States. It has successfully brought Russia back in from the cold, but failed to achieve the more intimate relationship characteristic of a military alliance and did not result in any geopolitical trade-offs. The West was stunned to see Russia focusing its airstrikes on the Western-backed rebels while leaving Islamic State largely alone until recently.
Moscow has kept insisting on close military-to-military intelligence sharing and even joint combat operations with the United States in the hope that this could help secure other Russian political objectives. In the end Russia had to bomb its way to the discussion by deliberately striking U.S.-backed Syrian rebels. This brought U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to Moscow last week with a proposal for close U.S.-Russian coordination and even joint operations against “Al-Nusra” and Islamic State in Syria, essentially granting Russian wishes. There was a string attached, however. Moscow had to ground Assad’s air force and stop offensive operations against pro-Western rebels.
That Kerry spent six extra hours negotiating in Moscow and left without closing the deal is a sign that the Russian contribution to the war on terror in Syria may be somewhat over-hyped, and the differences in strategy and tactics unbridgeable.
While Russia’s cooperation on the ground in Syria in facilitating local ceasefires, securing the cooperation of the regime and delivering airstrikes on Islamic State and Nusra targets is valuable, it is harder to see Russia’s contribution to stopping jihadist terrorism in the West. Moscow continues to struggle with jihadists in Russia's North Caucasus region, and it is not clear on what evidence its claim of killing about 2,000 Russian jihadists in Syria was based.
Russia is unlikely to have credible intelligence sources in Europe's Muslim communities, much less actionable intelligence to disrupt specific terrorist operations. In France, most terrorists have been French citizens and the problem is homegrown, albeit foreign inspired. Russia’s preference for dealing with this threat is to install a brutal dictatorship, hence the support for Assad, or Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. Their domestic solution was Ramzan Kadyrov in the Chechen Republic. But who wants a Chechnya in France? ...

Sunday, July 17, 2016

Baton Rouge Police Officers Shooting

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Baton Rouge Cop Killer Gavin Long Was Nation Of Islam

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A Youtube account operated by Gavin Eugene Long and discovered by The Daily Caller reveals key insight into what might have motivated the 29-year-old black man who killed three Baton Rouge police officers Sunday morning.
Videos on Long’s account show that he was a former Nation of Islam member. He also ranted against “crackers” and made references to Alton Sterling, the black man killed by police in Baton Rouge on July 5.
Other information about Long shows that the Kansas City native, who CBS reported was honorably discharged from the Marines in 2010, went by the name Cosmo Ausar Setepenra.
In one video filmed from Houston and posted to Long’s Youtube account on July 12, the suspected guman discusses being in the Marines and reaching the rank of E-5.
Long, who was reportedly carrying a rifle and wearing all-black attire when he confronted police, posted several videos within recent weeks discussing various police-involved shootings.
“If I would have been there with Alton — clap,” Long says in a video posted on July 14.
In the video, Long met with several men he seemed to not have known prior to their encounter. He promotes a book he wrote and discusses black liberation ideology.
“I wrote it for my dark-skinned brothers,” Long said of his book.
“If you look at all the rebels like Black Panthers, Huey P. Newton, Malcolm X…Elijah Muhammad, they was light-skinned. But we know how hard y’all got it,” Long continued.
Phone numbers on buildings in the video show that it was filmed in Baton Rouge. Calls placed to the numbers were not answered because they were out of service.
“I just got here I’m not really into the protesting. I do education because that’s our real freedom,” he is heard telling two men in the video.
He called protesting “emotional” and “for the women.”
In the video Long is heard lamented “working for the white people.” He encouraged one man riding in his vehicle as he filmed using a body camera to shop only at black-owned businesses. He brought up a hypothetical scenario in which a family member who wanted to buy carpet was forced to buy from non-black business owners.
“Who’s she going to fuck with? The cracker, the Arab, the Chinese,” Long says in the video.
“These Arabs, these Indians, they don’t give two fucks about us.”
Law enforcement officials said Sunday that the shooting does not appear to have been race-related. At least one of the officers killed in the attack was black. Officials are still investigating whether Long acted alone. Initial reports said that three men may have been involved.
Long also appears to have been in Dallas in the days after Micah X. Johnson killed five police officers during protests there earlier this month. Like Long, Johnson had also served in the military and was affiliated with the radical black liberation movement.
Gavin Eugene Long. (Youtube screen grab)
Gavin Eugene Long. (Youtube screen grab)
“If I’m peaceful protesting…I know they would try to arrest me, and I would die right there because you’re not going to kidnap me. I know my rights, but I stand on my rights. That’s what separates me, that’s why they’re afraid of me,” he says in the video.
In other videos Long analyzed the video of Sandra Bland being arrested by a Texas highway patrolman last year. Bland died in a Waller County jail cell after hanging herself.
Another video on Long’s Youtube account is of a man named Myron May discussing a conspiracy theory called gang-stalking.
People who believe they are victims of gang-stalking — they call themselves “targeted individuals” — believe that groups of government agents are tracking them at all times and attempting to manipulate their actions.
In Nov. 2014 May shot three people at the Florida State University library before being fatally shot by police. It was later revealed that May, who was black, believed that he was being stalked by government agents.
Long believed he was also a “targeted individual.” In one Internet posting discussing gang-stalking, Long offered what he said were solutions for people who believed they were victims of gangstalking.
Lets all start:
1. Wearing Body Camera’s
2. Before you move into neighborhood, put every house on notice to what gang stalking is with link’s to websites & videos & program names. And Let them know your situation, standing & your philosophy on life
3. Start telling the companies’s, worker’s, & managers & owners that we are going to expose your involvement and rate your poor performances & games on the internet on sites like Yelp, Google Map’s & the Yellow Pages etc. as horrible service & accessories to Gang Stalking. (Not only will this spread the word to others who view the businesses, but will inform fellow T.I.s as well)
Long, who operated a self-motivation website called “Convos with Cosmo,” also appears to have tweeted hours before the attack unfolded.
In one video posted in recent weeks, Long left a cryptic message that may have foretold Sunday’s attack. And though he said he was once a member of the Nation of Islam, the radical sect led by Louis Farrakhan, Long also said that he had no affiliations with outside groups.
“I thought my own thoughts. I made my own decisions. I’m the one who’s got to listen the judgement. That’s it. And my heart is pure,” he said.
“If anything happens with me, because I’m an alpha male, I stand up, I stand firm, I stand for mine, until the end,” he said.
“Yeah, I also was a Nation of Islam member. Don’t affiliate me with it. Don’t affiliate me with anything.”
Law enforcement officials have reportedly said that Long was a member of a sovereign citizen movement.
This post has been edited for clarity.
Read the whole story
 
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President Obama on the Attack on Law Enforcement in Baton Rouge 

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Watch live at 4:30pm ET as President Obama delivers a statement:


Earlier today, President Obama made the following statement on the attack on law enforcement in Baton Rouge, LA: 
"I condemn, in the strongest sense of the word, the attack on law enforcement in Baton Rouge.  For the second time in two weeks, police officers who put their lives on the line for ours every day were doing their job when they were killed in a cowardly and reprehensible assault.  These are attacks on public servants, on the rule of law, and on civilized society, and they have to stop.  
"I’ve offered my full support, and the full support of the federal government, to Governor Edwards, Mayor Holden, the Sheriff’s Office, and the Baton Rouge Police Department.  And make no mistake – justice will be done.
"We may not yet know the motives for this attack, but I want to be clear:  there is no justification for violence against law enforcement.  None.  These attacks are the work of cowards who speak for no one.  They right no wrongs.  They advance no causes.  The officers in Baton Rouge; the officers in Dallas – they were our fellow Americans, part of our community, part of our country, with people who loved and needed them, and who need us now – all of us – to be at our best.
"Today, on the Lord’s day, all of us stand united in prayer with the people of Baton Rouge, with the police officers who’ve been wounded, and with the grieving families of the fallen.  May God bless them all."

Three Police Officers Killed in Baton Rouge Shooting; One Suspect Is Dead

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Seven officers were shot, and three have died after an incident in Baton Rouge, La.,Sunday morning. Photo: Reuters/Joe Penney
Three officers were killed and three others were injured in Baton Rouge, La., following a shooting incident Sunday morning, authorities said.
The alleged gunman, who was killed by police, has been identified as Gavin Long, a 29-year-old black man, according to a person briefed on the investigation. The suspect, who was carrying a rifle and dressed all in black, was from Missouri and was affiliated with an antigovernment group called the New Freedom Group, the person added.
Two others detained for questioning in the shooting were captured across the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge, the person briefed on the investigation said.
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The shooting occurred at about 9 a.m. on Airline Highway near Old Hammond Highway, a commercial area of the city, according to the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office. Numerous officers from that agency and the Baton Rouge Police Department suffered injuries and were taken to local hospitals, the sheriff’s office said.
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Five police officers were transported to Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center. Other than the three officers who were killed, one was in critical condition and another in fair condition, a hospital spokeswoman said. A sixth officer was being treated at Baton Rouge General Medical Center and is in fair condition.
Authorities also said there was no longer an “active-shooter scenario” in the city.
A member of the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office, Casey Hicks, told local news station WAFB that law enforcement may have been responding to an initial shooting incident not involving police.
Police-community relations in Baton Rouge have been especially tense since the killing 37-year-old Alton Sterling, a black man, by a police officer on July 5. The killing was captured on cellphone video and circulated widely on the internet.
The next day, another black man, 32-year-old Philando Castile, was killed by a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis and St. Paul. His girlfriend livestreamed the aftermath of his death on Facebook.
Later in the same week, five police officers were killed in a shooting in Dallas during a march protesting police brutality, which was sparked by the incidents in Louisiana and Minnesota. Police said the shooter, 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson, an Army veteran, had planned a wider assault on the city.
It wasn’t clear yet if the Baton Rouge police shooting is related to the death of Mr. Sterling, but “it’s easy” to imagine it might be, U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.) said in an interview on CNN.
Mr. Cassidy urged citizens not to let the shooting further divide the community and stressed the importance of supporting law-enforcement officers, whom he said have had to endure the tension of keeping protesters safe, while also being concerned for their own safety.
He urged calm, calling police the “thin line between civil society and anarchy.” For those who would lash out at police Sunday, he said, “I would ask them just to bury that.”
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Baton Rouge police and East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s vehicles on Airline Highway after the shooting. Max Becherer/Associated Press 
Police guard the emergency room entrance of Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, where wounded officers were brought in Baton Rouge, La. Three law-enforcement officers ...
Police officers block off Airline Highway near the scene of a fatal shooting. The alleged gunman, who was killed by police, has been identified as 29-year-old Gavin Long of Missouri, according to a person briefed on the investigation. Sean Gardner/Getty Images 
Police stop a car that was coming from the direction of the shooting on Airline Highway. Max Becherer/Associated Press 
A police helicopter near the scene where the officers were shot. Jonathan Bachman/Reuters 
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards speaks at a news conference. In an earlier statement, he called the shooting an ‘unjustified attack on all of us at a time when we need unity and healing.’ Joe Penney/Reuters 
Officers operate a road block on Airline Highway at Goodwood Boulevard, near police headquarters.Max Becherer/Associated Press 
FBI agents patrol the perimeter of the crime scene in an armored vehicle. Gerald Herbert/Associated Press 
Police guard the entrance to Our Lady of the Lake hospital. Jeff Dubinsky/Reuters 
Baton Rouge Police run from the emergency-room ramp as a man is taken into custody after a gun was found in his vehicle near the entrance of Our Lady of the Lake hospital. Hilary Scheinuk/The Advocate/Associated Press 
Baton Rouge police and East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s vehicles on Airline Highway after the shooting. Max Becherer/Associated Press 
Police guard the emergency room entrance of Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, where wounded officers were brought in Baton Rouge, La. Three law-enforcement officers were killed and three others wounded Sunday morning by a gunman less than a mile from police headquarters.Gerald Herbert/Associated Press 
Officers who arrived on the scene said they were shot at without even knowing where the gunfire was coming from, U.S. Rep. Garret Graves (R., La.) said in televised remarks.
A witness, Brady Vancel, said in a televised interview that there was gunfire even before officers showed up. Mr. Vancel, who was working on a job site nearby, said he saw a man with a rifle who was dressed in all black and wearing a mask “acting out on the street.”
Over the weekend, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Baton Rouge, St. Paul and other U.S. cities to protest the recent killings of the two black men. About 200 people were arrested in Baton Rouge after a tense standoff with police.
Last week, Baton Rouge police said they had arrested three people—a 20-year-old man and two teenagers—alleging they broke into a pawnshop and stole eight guns. One of the men caught told law-enforcement officials during questioning that he and three others stole the guns and were going to get bullets to shoot police, authorities said. Later, a fourth person was arrested.
Speaking from the White House Sunday, President Barack Obama said authorities had yet to determine the motive of the man who fatally shot three police officers and wounded three others in Baton Rouge, La., and he urged Americans to “temper” their words until more is known.
However, he said, “We as a nation have to be loud and clear that nothing justifies violence against law enforcement.”
Meanwhile, news of the Baton Rouge shootings has prompted other police departments around the country to take extra precautions. The New York Police Department instructed all supervisors to assign officers only in pairs, while also stationing a security officer at the entrance to all station houses. The Chicago Police Department also continued to require officers to continue to patrol in pairs and in uniform, as they have since the slayings of five officers in Dallas.
—Yogita Patel and Jon Kamp contributed to this article.
Write to Jennifer Levitz at jennifer.levitz@wsj.com and Alejandro Lazo at alejandro.lazo@wsj.com
Read the whole story
 
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Multiple Baton Rouge cops shot, 2 killed; gunman still at large

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Baton Rouge police are hunting for the gunman who killed at least two cops near a shopping center Sunday morning, officials said.
More than one Baton Rouge officers was shot near the Hammond Aire Plaza, police said. The city’s mayor said at least two cops died in the carnage, the Advocate reported.
The gunman is still at large, saying police are responding to an active shooter situation. 
It’s not clear if more officers were shot and injured.
No other details were immediately available. The Baton Rouge Police Department’s phone rang busy when the Daily News called for more information.
Hammond Aire Plaza is less than one mile from police headquarters and about five miles away from the Triple S Food Mart, where police shot and killed Alton Sterling on July 5.
This is a developing story Please check back for updates.
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baton rouge police officer shooting - Google Search

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Story image for baton rouge police officer shooting from The Advocate
The Advocate

Reports: Baton Rouge police officers shot

USA TODAY-26 minutes ago
Police officers have been shot in Baton Rouge, La., and authorities have begun a search for whoever fired on them, according to news reports.
Report: Three Baton Rouge police officers shot near BRPD HQ
<a href="http://WWLTV.com" rel="nofollow">WWLTV.com</a>-29 minutes ago
Police officers shot, wounded in Baton Rouge
Local Source-<a href="http://NOLA.com" rel="nofollow">NOLA.com</a>-27 minutes ago
Officers shot in area around BRPD HQ Sunday
Local Source-WBRZ-36 minutes ago

Police say more than 1 officer shot in Baton Rouge

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Police in Louisiana say that more than one officer has been shot in Baton Rouge.
     
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Reports: Baton Rouge police officers shot - USA TODAY

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New York Daily News

Reports: Baton Rouge police officers shot
USA TODAY
Police officers have been shot in Baton Rouge, La., and authorities have begun a search for whoever fired on them, according to news reports. Authorities said more than one officer was shot in the 9 a.m. incident, according to The Associated Press.
At least one Baton Rouge cop shot; gunman still at largeNew York Daily News
Police officers shot, wounded in Baton RougeNOLA.com
3 Baton Rouge police feared dead in shootingKOCO Oklahoma City
WCNC.com -The Advocate -Tucson News Now -Washington Times
all 23 news articles »