FOCUS | Destroy Greece: IMF and Europe Disagree on the Method!
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=20636"><span class="small">Julian Assange, WikiLeaks</span></a>
Monday, 04 April 2016 12:09
Assange writes: "According to the internal discussion, the IMF is planning to tell Germany that it will abandon the Troika (composed of the IMF, European Commission and the European Central Bank) if the IMF and the Commission fail to reach an agreement on Greek debt relief."
Julian Assange. (photo: Yui Mok/PA)
Destroy Greece: IMF and Europe Disagree on the Method!
By Julian Assange, WikiLeaks
04 April 16
oday, 2nd April 2016, WikiLeaks publishes the records of a 19 March 2016 teleconference between the top two IMF officials in charge of managing the Greek debt crisis – Poul Thomsen, the head of the IMF’s European Department, and Delia Velkouleskou, the IMF Mission Chief for Greece. The IMF anticipates a possible Greek default co-inciding with the United Kingdom’s referendum on whether it should leave the European Union (‘Brexit’).
“This is going to be a disaster” remarks Velkouleskou in the meeting.
According to the internal discussion, the IMF is planning to tell Germany that it will abandon the Troika (composed of the IMF, European Commission and the European Central Bank) if the IMF and the Commission fail to reach an agreement on Greek debt relief.
Thomsen: “Look you, Mrs. Merkel, you face a question: you have to think about what is more costly, to go ahead without the IMF–would the Bundestag say ‘The IMF is not on board?’, or [to] pick the debt relief that we think that Greece needs in order to keep us on board?”
Remaining in the Troika seems an increasingly hard sell internally for the IMF, because non-European IMF creditor countries view the IMF’s position on Greece as a violation of its policies elsewhere of not making loans to countries with unsustainable debts.
In August the IMF announced it would not participate in last year’s €86 billion Greek bailout, which was covered by EU member states. IMF Chief Christine Lagarde stated at the time that the IMF’s future participation was contingent on Greece receiving “significant debt relief” from creditors. Lagarde announced that a team would be sent to Greece, headed by Velkouleskou.
Thomsen said internally that the threat of an imminent financial catstrophe is needed to force the other players into a “decision point”. For Germany, on debt relief, and In the case of Greece, to accept the IMF’s austerity “measures,” — including raising taxes and cutting Greek pensions and working conditions. However the UK “Brexit” referendum in late June will paralyse European decision making at the critical moment.
“I am not going accept a package of small measures. I am not…” said Thomsen. “What is going to bring it all to a decision point? In the past there has been only one time when the decision has been made and then that was when [the Greeks] were about to run out of money seriously and to default. […] And possibly this is what is going to happen again. In that case, it drags on until July, and clearly the Europeans are not going to have any discussions for a month before the Brexits…”
Last year Greek Finance Minister Tsakalotos accused the IMF of imposing “draconian measures,” including on pension reform. While Velkouleskou concedes in the meeting that “What is interesting though is that [Greece] did give in… they did give a little bit on both the income tax reform and on the…. both on the tax credit and the supplementary pensions.”
But Thomsen’s view is that the Greeks “are not even getting close [to coming] around to accept[ing] our views.” Velkouleskou argues that “if [the Greek government] get pressured enough, they would… But they don’t have any incentive and they know that the Commission is willing to compromise, so that is the problem.”
Velkouleskou: “We went into this negotiation with the wrong strategy, because we negotiated with the Commission a minimal position and we cannot go further [whereas] the Commission is just starting from this one and is willing to go much further. So, that is the problem. We didn’t negotiate with the Commission and then put to the Greeks something much worse, we put to the Greeks the minimum that we were willing to consider and now the Greeks are saying [that] we are not negotiating.”
While the Commission insists on a Primary Government Budget Surplus (total tax minus all government expenditure excluding debt repayments) of 3.5%; the IMF thinks that this target should be set at 1.5% of GDP. As Thomsen puts it, “if [Greece] come around to give us 2.5% [of GDP in tax hikes and pension-wage-benefits cuts]… we should be fully behind them.” — meaning that the IMF would, in exchange for this fresh austerity package, support the reduction of the Primary Surplus Target imposed upon them from the 3.5% that the European Commission insists on to 1.5%.
These targets are described as “very crucial” to the IMF. The IMF officials ask Thomsen “to reinforce the message about the agreement on the 2.5%, because that is not permeating and it is not sinking very well with the Commission.”
At one point, Velkouleskou refers to an unusual solution: to split the problem into two programs with two different targets: “The question is whether [the Europeans] could accept the medium term targets of the Commission, for the purposes of the program, and our targets for the purposes of debt relief.” Thomsen further explains that “They essentially need to agree to make our targets the baseline and then have something in that they hope that will overperform. But if they don’t, they will still disburse.”
The EWG [Euro Working Group] needs to “take a stand on whether they believe our projections or the Commission’s projections.” The IMF’s growth projections are the exact opposite of the Commission’s. The Commission projects a GDP growth of 0.5%, and the IMF a GDP decline of 0.5% (even if Greece accepts all the measures imposed by the IMF).
FOCUS: Democratic Race Heating Up, Not Winding Down
Monday, 04 April 2016 10:27
Galindez writes: "The pundits and the political hacks are calling for Bernie Sanders to either drop out or to 'tone down' his message. Instead, both campaigns, in a sign that neither really thinks the race is over, have turned up the heat."
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a New Deal-style liberal, at a campaign event on Sunday at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. (photo: Max Whittaker/NYT)
Democratic Race Heating Up, Not Winding Down
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
04 April 16
he pundits and the political hacks are calling for Bernie Sanders to either drop out or to “tone down” his message. Instead, both campaigns, in a sign that neither really thinks the race is over, have turned up the heat. Hillary Clinton is holding conference calls with victims of gun violence trying to paint Sanders as pro-gun. Sanders is pressing for a debate in Brooklyn prior to the New York primary.
Sanders has pulled ahead in Wisconsin and is already making appearances in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New York. Clinton has been forced to spend time in New York, where Bernie is pushing hard for a debate before the April 19th primary. Sanders also seems to be getting under Clinton’s skin. She blew up at a Greenpeace activist who asked whether she would pledge to reject money from the fossil fuel industry going forward. Clinton claimed she was not taking their money and in an angry tone said she wished Bernie Sanders would stop lying.
Eva Resnick-Day, the activist who asked Clinton to take the pledge, said the following in an op/ed on the Greenpeace web site:
To be clear, we are talking about more than just individual contributions from oil and gas employees. According to data compiled by Greenpeace’s research department, Secretary Clinton’s campaign and the Super PAC supporting her have received more than $4.5 million from the fossil fuel industry during the 2016 election cycle. Eleven registered oil and gas industry lobbyists have bundled over 1 million dollars to her campaign.
Greenpeace USA, along with 20 other organizations, launched the pledge to #FixDemocracy, asking all presidential candidates to reject future fossil fuel contributions, champion campaign finance reform, and defend the right to vote for all.
When we launched the campaign, Sanders signed the pledge immediately. Hillary’s campaign responded, but did not sign. Unsurprisingly, the Republican presidential candidates who won’t even admit that climate change is real – while real communities on the frontlines are already impacted – did not respond to our request.
The Clinton campaign also attacked Bernie Sanders on guns when they held an event with parents of an Aurora, Colorado, shooting victim. The parents attempted to sue the gun manufacturer, but the case was thrown out because of immunity laws that protect gun manufacturers. Sanders supported the legislation that granted immunity but has expressed willingness to re-address the issue.
Hillary Clinton is also taking aim at Sanders’ time as an Independent, claiming that her long ties to the Democratic Party should mean something.
Let’s be clear, if the Clinton campaign thought they had the nomination wrapped up, they would not be attacking Sanders. They will need his supporters in November to beat the Republican nominee.
Sanders has also turned up the heat, challenging Clinton to a debate in New York. The pressure seems to be working, and it appears that both sides are close to a date and location. If Sanders were no longer a threat there would be no New York debate talks.
Despite the media narrative, Bernie Sanders does have a path to victory. The media is doing everything they can to spin for Clinton. One example is John King reporting on CNN that he has run the numbers and if Bernie won the rest of the races with 55% of the vote he would not catch Clinton. Why did King pick 55%? Maybe it has something to do with Nate Silver showing how Sanders would catch Clinton with 56% of the remaining vote.
OK, 56.6% – not an easy task, but possible. King did point out that if Sanders got 55% of the remaining delegates Clinton would not have enough delegates to win on the first ballot, but she would be ahead. Even with that admission, it is so clear that the mainstream media is trying to tell voters what will happen instead of reporting what is happening. There are over 2,000 pledged delegates left to be allocated and 208 super delegates who are uncommitted. Of course, the super delegates who have committed can change their mind at any time. So while Hillary Clinton has the easiest path to the nomination, it is not a sure thing.
Many Sanders supporters have had enough of the media spin and are taking to the streets. On Sunday over 1,000 protesters showed up at CNN’s Los Angeles headquarters to protest the lack of coverage of the Sanders campaign. The strength of his campaign despite the biased media coverage Sanders has received makes you wonder where he would be if the media did their job and didn’t constantly dismiss his chances.
All signs are pointing to a big night for Sanders on Tuesday. It remains to be seen if his momentum will continue to New York and the other eastern states that round out April. Perhaps we should all wait and see how people vote before dismissing Bernie’s chances. I expect Sanders to go all the way to the convention. After all, the political revolution is about more than Bernie. It is also about reforming the Democratic Party. If Bernie dropped out before the convention, the power that his delegates would hold at the convention would all but vanish. Expect the Sanders delegates to arrive in Philadelphia with a reform agenda that includes things like an end to super delegates. Win or lose, the political revolution will continue. As Harold Meyerson said, “Bernie Sanders’s campaign didn’t create a new American left. It revealed it.”
Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott will be spending a year covering the presidential election from Iowa.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Fighting Israeli Occupying Forces Is "Terrorism." Boycotting Is "Anti-Semitism." What's Allowed?
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=29455"><span class="small">Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept</span></a>
Monday, 04 April 2016 08:20
Greenwald writes: "When Palestinians fight against occupying troops on their soil, they are denounced - and often killed - as 'terrorists.' Meanwhile, nonviolent campaigns to end the occupation through a South Africa-style boycott are demonized as 'anti-Semitism' and officially barred - censored - in all sorts of ways, in numerous countries around the world."
Glenn Greenwald. (photo: Reuters)
Fighting Israeli Occupying Forces Is "Terrorism." Boycotting Is "Anti-Semitism." What's Allowed?
Israel has militarily occupied the West Bank for decades (it’s also still functionally occupying Gaza, as this two-minute video proves). The West Bank “occupation is illegal under international law and the United Nations has repeatedly told the country’s government to vacate Palestinian territory.” Even ardent defenders of Israel admit that “the West Bank is under a legal regime of belligerent occupation” and “Israel’s settlement enterprise is, and has always been, grossly illegal under international law.” Despite this world consensus, Israeli settlements continue to grow rapidly. Israel is not engaged in any meaningful efforts to negotiate an agreement to end the occupation, and leading Israeli ministers now openly oppose such efforts.
For those (such as myself) who have long contended that the term “terrorism” now has little meaning beyond “violence by Muslims against the West and its allies,” and no purpose other than to delegitimize violence by one side while legitimizing the other side’s, can there be any better proof than this?
There have been Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians of course (while far more Palestinian civilians have died at the hands of the Israeli army), but in these specific cases, these Palestinians are attacking purely military targets, not civilians. Those military targets are soldiers deployed to their soil as part of an illegal occupying army. In what conceivable sense can that be “terrorism”? If fighting an occupying army is now “terrorism” simply because the army belongs to Israel and the attackers are Palestinian, is it not incredibly obvious how this term is exploited?
Needless to say, both Americans and Israelis (along with most others in the world) reserve for themselves the absolute right to fight against any foreign army that occupies their land. Indeed, Hollywood, in the 1980s, produced a film called Red Dawn, which imagined an occupation of the U.S. by the Soviet Union and its Nicaraguan and Cuban allies. It told the story of the heroic U.S. citizens, led by high school students, who waged a guerrilla war against the occupying troops, killing dozens upon dozens of them. Imagine the widespread confusion, and outrage, that would have resulted if someone accused the filmmakers of glorifying “terrorism” by demonizing the fictional American resisters as “terrorists”:
The film was updated in 2012 with a sequel depicting “one group of unlikely [American] heroes” who waged guerrilla warfare against North Korean forces who had invaded and occupied the U.S. (the film originally depicted these American heroes attacking and killing an occupying army from China, but, in post-production, the producers changed the identity of the occupiers to North Korean in order to preserve access to Chinese theaters):
When Americans resist military occupation by fighting against occupying troops on their soil, they are noble heroes. But when Palestinians do this, they are “terrorists.” This discourse, by design, equates Palestinians resisting occupation by fighting against an occupying army with al Qaeda and ISIS, and thus posits that any use of force by Palestinians to resist Israeli occupation — even when done on Palestinian soil, aimed exclusively at Israeli military targets there — is illegitimate.
So if violent resistance is illegitimate “terrorism,” what about other alternatives for resisting the decades-old, still-expanding illegal Israeli occupation? The nonviolent route embraced by Palestinian activists and their anti-occupation allies around the world is a campaign of boycott, sanctions, and divestment (BDS) aimed at Israel, modeled after the campaign that helped end South Africa’s apartheid regime in the 1980s (a regime that, just by the way, was a close ally of both the U.S. and Israel).
But there is a highly successful campaign by Israel and its U.S. allies not only to decree this nonviolent boycott campaign illegitimate, but literally to outlaw it. Official bodies are enacting rules to censor and officially suppress it by equating the campaign with “anti-Semitism” even though, as fervent Israel supporter Eric Alterman wrote in the New York Times this week, “it is filled with young Jews.”
So look at what has happened here. When Palestinians fight against occupying troops on their soil, they are denounced — and often killed — as “terrorists.” Meanwhile, nonviolent campaigns to end the occupation through a South Africa-style boycott are demonized as “anti-Semitism” and officially barred — censored — in all sorts of ways, in numerous countries around the world.
If fighting Israeli occupying forces is barred as “terrorism,” and nonviolent boycotts against Israel are barred as “anti-Semitism,” then what is considered a legitimate means for Palestinians and their allies to resist and end the decadeslong, illegal Israeli occupation? The answer is: nothing. Palestinians are obliged to submit to Israeli occupation in a way that none of the people demanding that would ever themselves submit to occupation of their land. All forms of resistance to Israeli occupation are deemed illegitimate. That, manifestly, is the whole point of all of this.
A New Day for Rasmea Odeh: Throwing the Spotlight on Israeli Torture
Sunday, 03 April 2016 12:57
Bernstein writes: "The details behind Odeh's arrest go to the heart of the matter of an ongoing relationship between the US and Israel - a national security collaboration that allows the Israelis to push forward with a policy that can only be described as ethnic cleansing."
Rasmea Odeh raises her fist as she leaves federal court in Detroit Thursday, March 12, 2015. (photo: AP)
A New Day for Rasmea Odeh: Throwing the Spotlight on Israeli Torture
By Dennis J. Bernstein, Reader Supported News
03 April 16
hat would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?” wrote the late poet and biographer Muriel Rukeyser: “The world would split open.” And what would happen if the one woman telling the truth were Palestinian, and she was blowing the whistle about systematic torture of Palestinian prisoners, including the rape of women under Israeli custody?
Meet Rasmea Odeh. Odeh is a 67-year-old Chicago-based Palestinian community leader. She immigrated to the US in 1994 and received her United States citizenship in 2004. Since that time she has worked diligently and effectively with community organizations that provide crucial care and support for immigrant women.
Odeh is the associate director of the Chicago-based Arab-American Action Network and a founder of the Arab Women’s Committee, which provides ESL, social services, civil rights education and leadership training to over 800 immigrant and refugee women in the Windy City. She is also a convicted felon.
In October 2013 Rasmea was arrested, charged, and ultimately convicted of one count of unlawful procurement of naturalization (of her US citizenship). A few months prior to her arrest by Homeland Security, she received the Outstanding Community Leader Award from the Chicago Cultural Alliance for her work with Arab-Americans, women in particular.
The details behind Odeh’s arrest go to the heart of the matter of an ongoing relationship between the US and Israel – a national security collaboration that allows the Israelis to push forward with a policy that can only be described as ethnic cleansing. The policy’s core is seizing Palestinian land by any means necessary, while supporting an expanding settlers’ movement. Illegal arrest, imprisonment, and torture are tools used daily by Israeli occupiers to quell Palestinian resistance to the seizure of their land, house by house and acre by acre.
On February 25, Rasmea Odeh was granted an appeal for a possible new trial. I sat down with Lina Baroudi, a staff attorney for the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) to talk about the details of the case. AROC is a partner organization with the Arab-American Action Network where Rasmea Odeh is associated. They are working together on a national defense committee. Let’s begin in occupied Palestine.
Dennis Bernstein: Please explain how Rasmea Odeh’s treatment as a Palestinian woman by Israeli forces began.
Lina Baroudi: In October 2013 Rasmea was charged with one count of unlawful procurement of naturalization, which is US citizenship. She is accused of failing to report a prior conviction on her naturalization application, which was filed in 2004. The accusation is related to her conviction by an Israeli military court more than 45 years ago and her subsequent imprisonment for 10 years in an Israeli prison.
DB: Ten years, 45 years ago.
Baroudi: Absolutely. She is one of the few women who have publicly spoken about the brutal, sexual, psychological, and physical torture Palestinian prisoners endure at the hands of the Israeli government. That torture is what ultimately led to her coerced confession and conviction, a conviction she been very public about and has testified about before the United Nations.
DB: It took them ten years to come after Rasmea Odeh for this one count: How do you explain the timing? There must have been somebody pushing for this in the US.
Baroudi: Yes. The immigration charge was a pretext to attack Rasmea as an icon of the Palestine Liberation Movement. She’s been long involved with that movement in the US and the case against her grew out of an investigation of 23 anti-war and Palestinian community organizers in Chicago and Minneapolis in 2010, all of whom were subpoenaed to a Grand Jury but were never ultimately charged with anything.
DB: This is how they came back to her.
Baroudi: Exactly.
DB: She went from a respected community leader to handcuffs and jail. There must be multiple sufferings as a result.
Baroudi: Yes, in 2014, the US District Court in Detroit convicted her of the charge of unlawful procurement of naturalization. She was sentenced to 18 months of imprisonment and subsequent deportation from the US, where she’s lived for so many years. During the unfair trial, Rasmea was prevented from presenting evidence about the events that led to her conviction by an Israeli military tribunal.
DB: So she couldn’t talk about the torture.
Baroudi: She couldn’t talk about any evidence. The judge, ironically, allowed in the actual conviction documents, but she wasn’t allowed to testify about the conviction or the circumstances that led to her arrest, her torture, her coerced confession, her imprisonment, or the subsequent Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from which she suffers to this day. In addition, her expert witness on PTSD was also barred from testifying. It’s incomprehensible that the judge admitted her conviction into evidence but barred any mention of the torture and coerced confession that led to it, because he said they were irrelevant. The Israeli military court system has a conviction rate of 99% for the Palestinians brought before it. This flaw in the judge’s reasoning was the basis of the appeal, which is that Rasmea was denied the right to present a complete defense because the trial court precluded her and her expert witness from testifying about how her PTSD affected the naturalization process.
DB: On what grounds was the appeal granted?
Baroudi: There were several arguments put forth by her legal team. On February 25, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit granted the appeal and vacated her conviction. They looked at the de-naturalization statute, which they said criminalizes knowingly procuring naturalization, contrary to law. PTSD is relevant to whether Rasmea knowingly omitted information on her citizenship application. They found that the trial court’s conclusion – that her PTSD and circumstances of her arrest and torture were irrelevant – was wrong.
DB: The court implies they believe her that she was tortured and has a right to tell that story.
Baroudi: Yes. The court recognizes that PTSD is relevant to the immigration process and that when the process is asking about your background and arrests and the judge allows convictions from a military court system – referred to as a kangaroo court system by many organizations and well known scholars – then PTSD is going to be relevant.
DB: Where does it go? There are two possible outcomes.
Baroudi: The decision of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals becomes final on April 10. At that point the case goes back to the trial court. The first scenario is that the trial judge can find another basis to exclude Rasmea’s and her expert witness’s testimony and that she can appeal again to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. The more likely scenario is that the trial court allows in the PTSD testimony, and that Rasmea and her expert witness will be allowed to testify at a new hearing about the circumstances of her conviction by an Israeli military court and how the lifelong effects of her PTSD may have affected the naturalization process.
DB: What is your assessment as to the possibility of a positive outcome?
Baroudi: The Sixth Circuit decision language is encouraging the trial court to allow in the testimony because they made a finding that PTSD is relevant. I expect the second scenario, which is a new trial.
DB: Why was she targeted? Torture is such a touchy subject. The Israelis, who have so many complaints you can’t keep track of them, are sensitive on this front. Now the Americans are taking their lessons from the Israelis, so the American government is sensitive about torture. There are highly political forces operating, and some are coming down on her and others.
Baroudi: The case came out of an investigation of the 23 anti-war and Palestinian community organizers in Chicago and Minneapolis. She specifically came under attack by the US government because she’s a Palestinian, an Arab, an immigrant, and a woman. She’s under attack because for decades she’s organized for Palestinian liberation and self-determination, the right of return, and an end of Israeli occupation and colonization. This case is of special significance for immigrant activists in the US because it highlights the level of surveillance and repression employed by the US to further the interests of its allies, including the Israeli state – namely by silencing and intimidating those who speak out and organize against racism and Zionism. Last week the University of California regents adopted a statement condemning anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism on university campuses. Although it is unenforceable and raises First Amendment concerns, it’s another tool. Rasmea’s case is about stopping political speech that advocates for the self-determination of the Palestinians.
DB: This is the age of degrading, disparaging, undermining the Arab-American community. We have a candidate who wants to purge the community. This is happening in this cauldron.
Baroudi: Absolutely. In the post 9/11 climate, prosecutors have used fear mongering and growing anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia to target Arabs and Muslims and launch a smear campaign against people like Rasmea.
DB: Why is this case so important to you?
Baroudi: I am the staff attorney at the Arab Resource and Organizing Center in San Francisco and we work closely with the Arab-American Activist Network in Chicago, which Rasmea is the associate director of, so AROC has been on the national defense committee since its inception. We use local efforts to amplify the demands coming out of Chicago for Rasmea’s defense. We organize to raise awareness about the case, raise money for her legal defense, conduct educational forums and direct actions. As a staff attorney who represents immigrants of an Arab organization, this case will affect my clients and how they will be treated as well.
DB: Have you been monitoring an upsurge in violence, threats, and attacks?
Baroudi: Yes. We’ve definitely seen a rise in Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism in the Bay Area. We have many complaints, and much fear. We’ve also seen how they affect our immigration cases, which are being held up for security background checks for much longer than they used to be.
DB: Is Rasmea free pending appeal?
Baroudi: Yes, she is out as of last year on $50,000 bond. She is free, still working at the Arab-American Activist Network in Chicago, doing well. Now we’re waiting to see what will happen at the trial court.
Dennis J. Bernstein is the executive producer of Flashpoints, syndicated on Pacifica Radio, and is the recipient of a 2015 Pillar Award for his work as a journalist whistleblower. He is most recently the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
How the Trump Campaign Spread a Dirty Meme About Protesters Paid by Clinton, Sanders, Soros
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=38775"><span class="small">Robert Mackey, The Intercept</span></a>
Sunday, 03 April 2016 12:54
Mackey writes: "Three weeks ago, when Donald Trump called off a rally in Chicago because hundreds of protesters managed to crash the party, a more introspective candidate might have asked himself what he had done to inspire such loathing. Instead, Trump seized on a more comforting explanation: the young people who refused to let him speak must have been dispatched by his rival insurgent, Bernie Sanders."
Protester at a Trump rally. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
How the Trump Campaign Spread a Dirty Meme About Protesters Paid by Clinton, Sanders, Soros
By Robert Mackey, The Intercept
03 April 16
hree weeks ago, when Donald Trump called off a rally in Chicago because hundreds of protesters managed to crash the party, a more introspective candidate might have asked himself what he had done to inspire such loathing.
Instead, Trump seized on a more comforting explanation: the young people who refused to let him speak must have been dispatched by his rival insurgent, Bernie Sanders.
One of Trump’s oldest political confidants, the former Nixon aide Roger Stone, developed a far more elaborate conspiracy theory. Stone, who has advised Trump off and on for decades, and has devoted himself to spreading rumor and innuendo about Hillary Clinton for nearly as long, rushed to Twitter to share his big idea: that the protesters must have been covert operatives for the Clinton campaign, paid to both impersonate Sanders supporters and provoke violence from Trump’s fans.
Given that Stone began his own career by going undercover for the notorious Committee for the Re-Election of the President in 1972, it is perhaps not surprising that he thinks he sees dirty tricks wherever he looks. As Jeffrey Toobin explained in the New Yorker:
He was just nineteen when he played a bit part in the Watergate scandals. He adopted the pseudonym Jason Rainier and made contributions in the name of the Young Socialist Alliance to the campaign of Pete McCloskey, who was challenging Nixon for the Republican nomination in 1972. Stone then sent a receipt to the Manchester Union Leader, to “prove” that Nixon’s adversary was a left-wing stooge. Stone hired another Republican operative, who was given the pseudonym Sedan Chair II, to infiltrate the McGovern campaign.
The day after the cancelled Trump rally, Stone found a way to present his Clinton theory to a much wider audience, giving an interview on the subject to Alex Jones, the conspiratorial radio host, that was viewed more than 300,000 times on Facebook.
Jones, a die-hard supporter of Trump who previously helped found the “9/11 Truth” movement, told his viewers that Stone had “sources inside” the covert operation who had confirmed to him that the disruption at the University of Illinois at Chicago was “a false flag.”
“These demonstrators are flying under a false banner: they are not Sanders supporters by-and-large,” Stone said. “This is an operation directed by supporters of Hillary Clinton, paid for by George Soros and MoveOn.”
Soros, a billionaire, is a favorite target of internet conspiracy theorists across the globe, particularly anti-Semites, since he uses his money to support activists from MoveOn.org and other civil society groups in the United States and abroad. Ken Zimmerman, director of U.S. programs for Soros’s Open Society Foundations, told The Intercept that the organization “does not fund people to take to the streets to protest against any individual, Donald Trump or otherwise.”
While Stop Trump-Chicago, a student group that used Facebook to organize the protest, acknowledged that MoveOn did offer to provide signs when it found out about the event, the demonstration “was started by students, organized by students, and led by students.”
Two days after the cancelled rally, Trump fully embraced the meme anyway, telling Fox News that the demonstrators “were real professionals — and they weren’t protesters, they were disrupters. They were professional disrupters.”
Over the course of the following week, the idea that all of the dissent at Trump rallies was coming from “paid protesters” morphed into a common talking point for his supporters on social networks and cable news, even though Fox noted that the campaign produced no evidence to support the claim.
A week after the mass protest in Chicago, when a coalition of mainly Latino activists briefly blocked access to a Trump rally outside Phoenix by chaining themselves to vehicles parked across a highway, the candidate called ABC News to accuse those protesters of being “professional agitators.”
While Trump again offered absolutely no evidence for the claim, and was not asked for any, his supporters on the website 4chan set out to find some. To that end, they dug into the background of one of the three protesters arrested on the road outside Phoenix, Jacinta Gonzalez.
The Trump supporters discovered what looked to them like a smoking gun: Gonzalez had once received a fellowship from the Open Society Foundations. Apparently unaware that Gonzalez’s tangential connection to Soros — an 18-month stipend to support her work on behalf of day laborers and immigrant families in New Orleans — had ended in 2012, the 4chan group eagerly discussed how to use this information to help their man. “The Trump campaign is aware of Soros scheming,” one of the commenters wrote. “Tweeting this intel to his staff will give them even more ammo.”
It is not clear if any of their efforts to alert the Trump campaign succeeded, but a day later, Dan Scavino, the candidate’s social media director, triumphantly drew attention to a thinly sourced blog post on Gonzalez that incorrectly identified her as the “lead organizer” of the protest.
Like the 4chan thread, the blog post Scavino shared also included a number of other factual errors, like identifying Gonzalez as a resident of New Orleans (she now lives in Phoenix), and speculating that she might not be a U.S. citizen (she has been since birth, having been born to an American mother in Mexico).
Two days later, Stone laid out his theory again in a post for the Daily Caller, in which he also claimed to have confirmed it by “infiltrating” a rally against Trump in New York on March 19, and catching the protesters off-guard. “Several admitted answering a Craig’s list [sic] ad paying $16 an hour for protesters,” Stone insisted.
This “reporting,” from a political operative who has a long track record of spreading unsourced innuendo about candidates he works against — and claims to confer with Trump at least once a week — was quickly shared on social networks as absolute proof by one of Trump’s biggest fans, Ann Coulter, and his son, Eric Trump.
Stone did not reply to requests for comment from The Intercept.
Lewandowski shared the article on Twitter — only to be informed by other people who took the time to read the full text, and the description of the website, that it was a hoax — it was not from ABC News at all, but a website with a URL that was similar to it.
Like Ann Coulter, who also shared the hoax report, Lewandowski later deleted his tweet, but not before it had already been shared hundreds of times.
Then last week, Scavino drew attention to another Craigslist ad, supposedly offering $15 an hour “to protest the Donald Trump rally in Janesville, Wisconsin.”
That ad, which was later removed from Craigslist, looked like a prank too. As users on Reddit pointed out, the address listed as the meeting place “for pre-protest instructions and to get your time card,” was 3300 West Tripp Road in Janesville, which is the local wastewater treatment plant, more than 10 miles from the site of Trump’s rally.
Despite the likelihood it was another fake, several conservative websites, including Glenn Beck’s Blaze and Alex Jones’s InfoWars reported on it as if it were genuine proof of Stone’s theory, based merely on the Trump aide’s tweet.
Stone himself then tweeted a link to one of the reports on the deleted Janesville ad, which also cited his own Daily Caller column as evidence that such things were happening.
Ironically, reporters have been able to identify only one instance of actors being paid to attend a campaign rally. That was Trump’s announcement of his own candidacy, for which, the Hollywood Reporter discovered, a casting agency in New York had put out a call for “background actors” willing to “wear t-shirts and carry signs and help cheer him in support of his announcement.”
That report, backed up by the full text of an email sent to actors, in turn inspired a Simpsons parody of the announcement, in which Homer was hired to be part of the rent-a-crowd.
THE NEW STREAMLINED RSN LOGIN PROCESS: Register once, then login and you are ready to comment. All you need is a Username and a Password of your choosing and you are free to comment whenever you like! Welcome to the Reader Supported News community.
oday, 2nd April 2016, WikiLeaks publishes 
hat would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?” wrote the late poet and biographer Muriel Rukeyser: “The world would split open.” And what would happen if the one woman telling the truth were Palestinian, and she was blowing the whistle about systematic torture of Palestinian prisoners, including the rape of women under Israeli custody?
