Mereja Forum

[Zmeselo]

Mueller's report looks bad for Obama

By Scott Jennings

https://edition-m.cnn.com/2019/04/19/op ... index.html

Fri April 19, 2019



Editor's Note: (Scott Jennings, a CNN contributor, is a former special assistant to President George W. Bush and former campaign adviser to Sen. Mitch McConnell. He is a partner at RunSwitch Public Relations in Louisville, Kentucky. Follow him on Twitter @ScottJenningsKY. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion articles on CNN.)

(CNN) The partisan warfare over the Mueller report will rage, but one thing cannot be denied: Former President Barack Obama looks just plain bad. On his watch, the Russians meddled in our democracy while his administration did nothing about it.


Scott Jennings

The Mueller report flatly states that Russia began interfering in American democracy in 2014. Over the next couple of years, the effort blossomed into a robust attempt to interfere in our 2016 presidential election. The Obama administration knew this was going on and yet did nothing. In 2016, Obama's National Security Adviser Susan Rice told her staff https://www.huffpost.com/entry/stand-do ... 698a9d1112 to "stand down" and "knock it off" as they drew up plans to "strike back" against the Russians, according to an account from Michael Isikoff and David Corn https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... ding-down/ in their book "Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump".

Why did Obama go soft on Russia? My opinion is that it was because he was singularly focused on the nuclear deal with Iran. https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/16/politics ... index.html Obama wanted Putin in the deal, and to stand up to him on election interference would have, in Obama's estimation, upset that negotiation. This turned out to be a disastrous policy decision.



Obama's supporters claim he did stand up to Russia by deploying sanctions after the election to punish them for their actions. But, Obama, according to the Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics ... 171a57a5c4

approved a modest package... with economic sanctions so narrowly targeted that even those who helped design them describe their impact as largely symbolic.

In other words, a toothless response to a serious incursion.

But don't just take my word for it that Obama failed. Congressman Adam Schiff, who disgraced himself in this process by claiming collusion when Mueller found that none exists, once said https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... tion-trump that "the Obama administration should have done a lot more." The Washington Post reported https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics ... c44a63d65b that a senior Obama administration official said they "sort of choked" in failing to stop the Russian government's brazen activities. And Obama's ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, said, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... ack-report "The punishment did not fit the crime" about the weak sanctions rolled out after the 2016 election.

A legitimate question Republicans are asking is whether the potential "collusion" narrative was invented to cover up the Obama administration's failures. Two years have been spent fomenting the idea that Russia only interfered because it had a willing, colluding partner: Trump. Now that Mueller has popped that balloon, we must ask why this collusion narrative was invented in the first place.

Given Obama's record on Russia, one operating theory is that his people needed a smokescreen to obscure just how wrong they were. They've blamed Trump. They've even blamed Mitch McConnell, in some twisted attempt to deflect blame to another branch of government. Joe Biden once claimed McConnell https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way ... terference refused to sign a letter condemning the Russians during the 2016 election. But McConnell's office counters that the White House asked him to sign a letter urging state electors to accept federal help in securing local elections -- and he did. You can read it here. https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000157 ... 1f2aac0001

I guess if I had failed to stop Russia from marching into Crimea, making a mess in Syria, and hacking our democracy I'd be looking to blame someone else, too.

But the Mueller report makes it clear that the Russian interference failure was Obama's alone. He was the commander-in-chief when all of this happened. In 2010, he and Eric Holder, his Attorney General, declined to prosecute Julian Assange, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... e62c5f1a3b who then went on to help Russia hack the Democratic National Committee's emails in 2016. He arguably chose to prioritize his relationship with Putin vis-à-vis Iran over pushing back against Russian election interference that had been going on for at least two years.

If you consider Russian election interference a crisis for our democracy, then you cannot read the Mueller report, adding it to the available public evidence, and conclude anything other than Barack Obama spectacularly failed America. Subsequent investigations of this matter should explore how and why Obama's White House failed, and whether they invented the collusion narrative to cover up those failures.

[Zmeselo]

Julian Assange's verdict of Hillary Clinton: "A bright, well connected, sadistic sociopath"!

[Zmeselo]

Nipsey Hussle Was Hailed as a Hero. But to California Officials, He Was Still a Gangster.


Thousands gathered to mourn Nipsey Hussle with a procession through the streets of South Los Angeles last week.
Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times

By Tim Arango

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/us/n ... gangs.html

April 19, 2019

LOS ANGELES — When a gunman rolled up to Nipsey Hussle’s Marathon Clothing store late last month, the first person to be shot was Kerry Lathan, recently released from prison and there to pick up a T-shirt. Mr. Lathan was shot in the back, before Hussle, the renowned rap artist, was killed.

Days later, Mr. Lathan, using a wheelchair while he recovered from his wound, was arrested and held in the Men’s Central Jail — not because he had committed a crime, but because he had violated parole by associating with a known gang member: Nipsey Hussle.

Never mind that Hussle had been lauded as a businessman and a philanthropist, mourned with a 25-mile procession through the streets of South Los Angeles, and celebrated by former President Barack Obama. Or that he had been killed one day before he was set to sit down with the city’s police chief to talk about reducing gang violence.

Mr. Lathan’s reimprisonment stirred outrage in the city’s black community, where memories of aggressive gang policing in the 1980s and 1990s are still raw. It also brought renewed attention to a system of parole and probation that can land people back behind bars for violating lengthy sets of conditions that can include curfews, random searches and control over where people can live and whom they can see.

After Mr. Lathan, 56, spent 10 days in jail, apparently even parole officials could no longer reconcile Nipsey Hussle the local hero with Nipsey Hussle the gang member. On Thursday, after appeals to Gov. Gavin Newsom by family members and calls to the governor’s office by reporters, the head of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Ralph M. Diaz, intervened, and the charges against Mr. Lathan were dropped.

Although there was a technical violation of the terms and conditions of Mr. Lathan’s parole, after reviewing the circumstances in more detail, C.D.C.R. requested the petition to be dismissed,

a department spokesman wrote.

More than 4.5 million people in the United States are on parole or probation — nearly twice as many as are incarcerated — and in some states people whose parole or probation was revoked account for more than half the prison population. According to a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts, about 20 percent of people https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-a ... ortunities released from state prisons are sent back for technical violations, meaning they did not commit a new crime but rather violated conditions, like a ban on entering places that serve alcohol or having any contact with the police — or, in the protracted case of the rapper Meek Mill, an order to take etiquette classes. https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainme ... -1.1386399

Critics say probation and parole often go on far longer than necessary and keep people enmeshed in the criminal justice system, and that those accused of violations have limited due process.

California, once a leader in get-tough-on-crime policies that swelled prison populations, is now seen as at the forefront https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/us/c ... ule=inline of national efforts to address mass incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal justice system. In recent years, the state has reduced some drug crimes and thefts to misdemeanors, passed a bill to outlaw cash bail and allowed more inmates to be released for good behavior.

But many parole violations involve alleged links to gang members.

“Gangs are the great exception” to the trend away from incarceration, said Jorja Leap, a gang expert at the University of California at Los Angeles. Even with significant questions about how gangs, gang membership and gang-related crimes are defined, such crimes carry enhanced punishments and a person tagged as having gang affiliations can find the label impossible to shake.

“If someone like Nipsey Hussle is viewed as always a gang member,”

Dr. Leap said,

what is happening to the average guy who has a low-level job, who’s trying to make it, and that’s his past? Or the average gal, because it’s men and women alike.

California has long maintained a database of gang members called CalGang, https://oag.ca.gov/calgang and apparently Hussle, who had spoken publicly about his past experience as a member of the Crips, was still listed, despite the turn in his life. The arresting document for Mr. Lathan called Hussle a “documented ‘Rolling 60’s Crip’ gang member.

A memorial for Hussle outside his clothing store. California has long maintained a database of suspected gang members and apparently Hussle was still listed, despite the turn in his life.Credit Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times

The database, which is available only to law enforcement, has long been seen in minority communities as a way for the state to criminalize young black and Latino men, with little oversight or due process. The database has also, academics and activists say, made it nearly impossible for those on parole to avoid contact with gang members, because so many names are on the list and no one really knows who.

Though law enforcement has defended the list as necessary to fight gang violence, a state audit in 2016 found that it was misused and rife with errors, including dozens of people listed as being less than 1 year old and hundreds who were not set to be purged from the list for more than a century — far longer than the law allowed.

“It’s really wrong to be permanently putting people on these lists,” said Vincent Schiraldi, an expert on probation at Columbia University.

It’s very racially divisive. It makes people in communities of color feel like they never have a chance to be viewed as equals.

Mr. Lathan was released last September for serving almost 25 years on a murder conviction, and like countless men coming out of prison whom Hussle was trying to help, he was loosely in the rapper’s orbit. Hussle had known his sister, Ellisa McKnight, and had given her a car full of clothes for her brother when he was released.

But Mr. Lathan barely knew Hussle, even though he had hopes of working with him in his programs to reduce gang violence.

“At the time of his death he was an icon of the community,” Ms. McKnight said of Hussle.

The whole city shut down to mourn this man. Even Congress https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nipsey-h ... 92ffcb2e43 recognized him. So how is it that Mr. Lathan was going to have a meeting with a person affiliated with a gang?

Mr. Lathan, in a recent interview https://www.vladtv.com/article/254071/k ... ole?page=2 from jail that was recorded by a friend and uploaded to VladTV, said he had taken a selfie with Hussle. “He’s a celebrity,” he said.

Everybody’s taking selfies, let me take one. That’s on my phone, in front of the Marathon store.

Mr. Lathan, who said he was feeling “bad as hell” without his pain medication, related his conversation with his parole officer at the time of his arrest:

The parole officer was like, ‘Well you have gang affiliations.’ I said, ‘Look man, I know Nipsey about as much as I know you. You’re my parole officer. I’ve met you. We’ve talked a few times. That’s as far as I know him.’

In a statement, the Los Angeles Police Department, trying to blunt criticism and put down rumors in the city’s black community that the police were behind Mr. Lathan’s arrest, said this week that Mr. Lathan was

being treated as a victim and a witness in this investigation.

The statement noted that it was the Department of Corrections that had arrested Mr. Lathan.

Steve Soboroff, the president of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, who was planning to meet with Hussle to talk about combating gang violence, said in an interview:

We don’t think he’s a gang member. If someone said, ‘Could Nipsey babysit my grandkids?’ I’d say ‘yes.’

Mr. Lathan had turned his life around in prison by participating in numerous programs and working closely with older inmates, his lawyer, Lauren Noriega, said.

“This area of the law is so flawed,” said Ms. Noriega, of parole policies and gang databases.

It doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t give these guys or these women any chance to prove that they have been rehabilitated and actually get a second chance.

Even as a gang expert who has testified in court, Dr. Leap said she had no access to the CalGang database:

Law enforcement controls it. And here’s the critical thing: No one ever makes it off that list. No one.

On April 9, as Mr. Lathan sat in jail for associating with Hussle, the city renamed a street intersection in Hussle’s honor.

[Zmeselo]

Sudan authorities seize Al Bashir cash stash

April 19 - 2019

https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-new ... cash-stash

KHARTOUM


Officers display some of the cash hoard found at the residence of deposed President Omar Al Bashir yesterday

Sudanese authorities confirm that a substantial amount of cash has been seized during a search of deposed President Omar Al Bashir’s residence in Khartoum yesterday. The cash has reportedly been safely deposited in the treasury of the Bank of Sudan and Al Bashir might face prosecution.

In a statement, the Senior Public Prosecutor Mutasim Mahmoud announced the seizure of $351 million, €6,7 million, and SDG 5 billion ($105 million*) at the residence of deposed President Omar Al Bashir.

Mahmoud confirmed that the cash is secure within the vaults of the Bank of Sudan, and that charges will be investigated against former President Al Bashir under the foreign exchange law and money laundering.

Some of the cash found was shown to reporters. It had been packed in sacks designed for 50kg of maize meal.

* As effective foreign exchange rates can vary in Sudan, Radio Dabanga bases all SDG currency conversions on the daily US Dollar rate quoted by the Central Bank of Sudan (CboS) https://cbos.gov.sd/en/exchange-rates

Visit www.dabangasudan.org for ongoing coverage and independent news from Sudan