zaterdag 25 februari 2017

Trump's media war threatens journalists globally, protection group warns

Committee to Protect Journalists says president is sending a signal to countries such as Turkey, Ethiopia and Venezuela that ‘it is OK to abuse journalists’

Edward Helmorein New York

Donald Trump has declared the mainstream media the ‘enemy of the people’, and blocked several outlets from attending a recent press briefing. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

The Trump administration should “act as a champion of press freedom”, a senior member of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said on Saturday, rather than prosecute a war with mainstream US media that could “send a signal to other countries that it is OK to verbally abuse journalists and undermine their credibility”.

Rob Mahoney, deputy executive director of the CPJ, a nonprofit that promotes press freedom worldwide, told the Guardian Trump’s attacks on the press do not “help our work trying to deal with countries like Turkey, Ethiopia or Venezuela, where you have governments who want to nothing more than to silence and intimidate the press.”

Mahoney also said attempts to favour conservative press outlets and declare the mainstream media the “enemy of the American people”looked like a deliberate effort by the White House to “inoculate itself from criticism”.

“Any time the press now uncovers an scandal or wrongdoing the administration can dismiss it as false,” he said.

On Friday, the administration blocked a number of media outlets, including the New York Times, CNN and the Guardian, from an off-camera briefing with press secretary Sean Spicer.

Spicer later said the White House planned to “aggressively push back” against the press. “We’re just not going to sit back and let false narratives, false stories, inaccurate facts get out there,” he said.

On Friday night, Trump kept up his attack, using Twitter to say: “FAKE NEWS media knowingly doesn’t tell the truth. A great danger to our country. The failing @nytimes has become a joke. Likewise @CNN. Sad!”

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Trump at CPAC: I oppose fake news, not the media

Within the press, reaction was furious. New York Times editor Dean Baquet said “nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations”.

Lee Glendinning, editor of Guardian US, said: “This is a deeply troubling and divisive act. Holding power to account is an essential part of the democratic process, and that’s exactly what the Guardian will continue to do.”

The White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) attempted to play down the issue, noting the administration was still providing near-daily briefings.

“I don’t think that people should rush to judgment to suggest that this is the start of a big crackdown on media access,” WHCA president Jeff Mason told the New York Times.

Nonetheless, the episode came a day after senior Trump adviser Steve Bannon, in an appearance at the conservative CPAC event in Maryland, denounced the “corporatist, globalist media”, which he said was “adamantly opposed to an economic nationalist agenda” and “always wrong” about the administration.

“Every day there is going to be a fight,” Bannon said.

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Bannon scorns media in rare public appearance at CPAC

Rather, 85, added: “These are the dangers presidents are supposed to protect against, not create. For all who excused Mr Trump’s rhetoric in the campaign as just talk, the reckoning has come. I hope it isn’t true, but I fear Mr Trump is nearing or perhaps already beyond any hope of redemption.”

Opposing the mainstream media plays well with Trump’s base. Mahoney said it also serves the administration’s aim to protect itself against legitimate criticism.

“If you go back to the early 1970s and the terrible relations between Nixon and the press,” he said, “it was nonetheless allowed to do its job, and we got Watergate.”

Suzanne Nossel, executive director of PEN America, said in a statement the White House was doing “a grave disservice to the American people”.

“The president’s worries over probing questions and damaging revelations cannot outweigh his duty to allow the American people to gain the information and insight they deserve,” she added.

Several organisations, including the Washington Post, are developing Trump-focused investigative units, which will likely rely on anonymously sourced stories. Trump has attacked the practice of quoting anonymous sources, while chief of staff Reince Priebus called on the media to “stop with this unnamed source stuff”.

The president, however, has left himself open to charges of hypocrisy. In the 1980s and 1990s, he regularly spoke to the press under aliases, in order to promote himself.

Moves to choose which outlets are briefed by the administration also conflicted with remarks made by Spicer as recently as December, when he said media outlets should not be stopped from covering the White House.

The dispute is carrying over into areas where detente is usually observed, for example the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The 29 April event has been plagued by withdrawals. The New York Times has not attended since 2008; the Guardian will not attend this year. Buzzfeed reported this week that CNN may not attend either.

The news service owned by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is reportedly backing a prominent pro-immigration campaign, is pulling out of hosting an afterparty. Vanity Fair and the New Yorker have said they will not host parties either.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/25/trump-media-war-committee-protect-journalists-warning

donderdag 23 februari 2017

I Was a Muslim in Trump's White House

I Was a Muslim in Trump's White House

When President Obama left, I stayed on at the National Security Council in order to serve my country. I lasted eight days.

RUMANA AHMED
23-02-2017 10:09 AM ET

In 2011, I was hired, straight out of college, to work at the White House and eventually the National Security Council. My job there was to promote and protect the best of what my country stands for. I am a hijab-wearing Muslim woman––I was the only hijabi in the West Wing––and the Obama administration always made me feel welcome and included.

Like most of my fellow American Muslims, I spent much of 2016 watching with consternation as Donald Trump vilified our community. Despite this––or because of it––I thought I should try to stay on the NSC staff during the Trump Administration, in order to give the new president and his aides a more nuanced view of Islam, and of America's Muslim citizens.

I lasted eight days.

When Trump issued a ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries and all Syrian refugees, I knew I could no longer stay and work for an administration that saw me and people like me not as fellow citizens, but as a threat.

The evening before I left, bidding farewell to some of my colleagues, many of whom have also since left, I notified Trump’s senior NSC communications adviser, Michael Anton, of my departure, since we shared an office. His initial surprise, asking whether I was leaving government entirely, was followed by silence––almost in caution, not asking why. I told him anyway.

I told him I had to leave because it was an insult walking into this country’s most historic building every day under an administration that is working against and vilifying everything I stand for as an American and as a Muslim. I told him that the administration was attacking the basic tenets of democracy. I told him that I hoped that they and those in Congress were prepared to take responsibility for all the consequences that would attend their decisions.

He looked at me and said nothing.

It was only later that I learned he authored an essay under a pseudonym, extolling the virtues of authoritarianism and attacking diversity as a “weakness,” and Islam as “incompatible with the modern West.”

My whole life and everything I have learned proves that facile statement wrong.

My parents immigrated to the United States from Bangladesh in 1978 and strove to create opportunities for their children born in the states. My mother worked as a cashier, later starting her own daycare business. My father spent late nights working at Bank of America, and was eventually promoted to assistant vice president at one of its headquarters. Living the American dream, we’d have family barbecues, trips to Disney World, impromptu soccer or football games, and community service projects. My father began pursuing his Ph.D., but in 1995 he was killed in a car accident.

I was 12 when I started wearing a hijab. It was encouraged in my family, but it was always my choice. It was a matter of faith, identity, and resilience for me. After 9/11, everything would change. On top of my shock, horror, and heartbreak, I had to deal with the fear some kids suddenly felt towards me. I was glared at, cursed at, and spat at in public and in school. People called me a “terrorist” and told me, “go back to your country.”

My father taught me a Bengali proverb inspired by Islamic scripture: “When a man kicks you down, get back up, extend your hand, and call him brother.” Peace, patience, persistence, respect, forgiveness, and dignity. These were the values I’ve carried through my life and my career.

I never intended to work in government. I was among those who assumed the government was inherently corrupt and ineffective. Working in the Obama White House proved me wrong. You can’t know or understand what you haven’t been a part of.

Still, inspired by President Obama, I joined the White House in 2011, after graduating from the George Washington University. I had interned there during my junior year, reading letters and taking calls from constituents at the Office of Presidential Correspondence. It felt surreal––here I was, a 22-year-old American Muslim woman from Maryland who had been mocked and called names for covering my hair, working for the president of the United States.

In 2012, I moved to the West Wing to join the Office of Public Engagement, where I worked with various communities, including American Muslims, on domestic issues such as health care. In early 2014, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes offered me a position on the National Security Council (NSC). For two and a half years I worked down the hall from the Situation Room, advising President Obama’s engagements with American Muslims, and working on issues ranging from advancing relations with Cuba and Laos to promoting global entrepreneurship among women and youth.

A harsher world began to reemerge in 2015. In February, three young American Muslim students were killed in their Chapel Hill home by an Islamophobe. Both the media and administration were slow to address the attack, as if the dead had to be vetted before they could be mourned. It was emotionally devastating. But when a statement was finally released condemning the attack and mourning their loss, Rhodes took me aside to to tell me how grateful he was to have me there and wished there were more American Muslims working throughout government. America’s government and decision-making should reflect its people.

Later that month, the evangelist Franklin Graham declared that the government had “been infiltrated by Muslims.” One of my colleagues sought me out with a smile on his face and said, “If only he knew they were in the halls of the West Wing and briefed the president of the United States multiple times!” I thought: Damn right I’m here, exactly where I belong, a proud American dedicated to protecting and serving my country.

Graham’s hateful provocations weren’t new. Over the Obama years, right-wing websites spread an abundance of absurd conspiracy theories and lies, targeting some American Muslim organizations and individuals––even those of us serving in government. They called us “terrorists,” Sharia-law whisperers, or Muslim Brotherhood operatives. Little did I realize that some of these conspiracy theorists would someday end up in the White House.

Over the course of the campaign, even when I was able to storm through the bad days, I realized the rhetoric was taking a toll on American communities. When Trump first called for a Muslim ban, reports of hate crimes against Muslims spiked. The trend of anti-Muslim hate crimes is ongoing, as mosques are set on fire and individuals attacked––six were killed at a mosque in Canada by a self-identified Trump supporter.

Throughout 2015 and 2016, I watched with disbelief, apprehension, and anxiety, as Trump’s style of campaigning instigated fear and emboldened xenophobes, anti-Semites, and Islamophobes. While cognizant of the possibility of Trump winning, I hoped a majority of the electorate would never condone such a hateful and divisive worldview.

During the campaign last February, Obama visited a Baltimore mosque and reminded the public that “we’re one American family, and when any part of our family starts to feel separate … It’s a challenge to our values.” His words would go unheeded by his successor.

The climate in 2016 felt like it did just after 9/11. What made it worse was that this fear and hatred were being fueled by Americans in positions of power. Fifth-grade students at a local Sunday school where I volunteered shared stories of being bullied by classmates and teachers, feeling like they didn’t belong here anymore, and asked if they might get kicked out of this country if Trump won. I was almost hit by a car by a white man laughing as he drove by in a Costco parking lot, and on another occasion was followed out of the metro by a man screaming profanities: “Fuck you! Fuck Islam! Trump will send you back!”

Then, on election night, I was left in shock.

The morning after the election, we lined up in the West Colonnade as Obama stood in the Rose Garden and called for national unity and a smooth transition. Trump seemed the antithesis of everything we stood for. I felt lost. I could not fully grasp the idea that he would soon be sitting where Obama sat.

I debated whether I should leave my job. Since I was not a political appointee, but a direct hire of the NSC, I had the option to stay. The incoming and now departed national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had said things like “fear of Muslims is rational.” Some colleagues and community leaders encouraged me to stay, while others expressed concern for my safety. Cautiously optimistic, and feeling a responsibility to try to help them continue our work and be heard, I decided that Trump's NSC could benefit from a colored, female, hijab-wearing, American Muslim patriot.

The weeks leading up to the inauguration prepared me and my colleagues for what we thought would come, but not for what actually came. On Monday, January 23, I walked into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, with the new staffers there. Rather than the excitement I encountered when I first came to the White House under Obama, the new staff looked at me with a cold surprise. The diverse White House I had worked in became a monochromatic and male bastion.

The days I spent in the Trump White House were strange, appalling and disturbing. As one staffer serving since the Reagan administration said, “This place has been turned upside down. It’s chaos. I’ve never witnessed anything like it.” This was not typical Republican leadership, or even that of a businessman. It was a chaotic attempt at authoritarianism––legally questionable executive orders, accusations of the press being “fake,” peddling countless lies as “alternative facts,” and assertions by White House surrogates that the president’s national security authority would “not be questioned.”

The entire presidential support structure of nonpartisan national security and legal experts within the White House complex and across federal agencies was being undermined. Decision-making authority was now centralized to a few in the West Wing. Frustration and mistrust developed as some staff felt out of the loop on issues within their purview. There was no structure or clear guidance. Hallways were eerily quiet as key positions and offices responsible for national security or engagement with Americans were left unfilled.

I might have lasted a little longer. Then came January 30. The executive order banning travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries caused chaos, without making America any safer. Discrimination that has existed for years at airports was now legitimized, sparking mass protests, while the president railed against the courts for halting his ban. Not only was this discrimination and un-American, the administration’s actions defending the ban threatened the nation’s security and its system of checks and balances.

Alt-right writers, now on the White House staff, have claimed that Islam and the West are at war with each other. Disturbingly, ISIS also makes such claims to justify their attacks, which for the most part target Muslims. The Administration’s plans to revamp the Countering Violent Extremism program to focus solely on Muslims and use terms like “radical Islamic terror,” legitimize ISIS propaganda and allow the dangerous rise of white-supremacist extremism to go unchecked.

Placing U.S. national security in the hands of people who think America’s diversity is a “weakness” is dangerous. It is false.

People of every religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and age pouring into the streets and airports to defend the rights of their fellow Americans over the past few weeks proved the opposite is true––American diversity is a strength, and so is the American commitment to ideals of justice and equality.

American history is not without stumbles, which have proven that the nation is only made more prosperous and resilient through struggle, compassion and inclusiveness. It’s why my parents came here. It’s why I told my former 5th grade students, who wondered if they still belonged here, that this country would not be great without them.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/rumana-ahmed-trump/517521/

dinsdag 21 februari 2017

Europe wrote the book on demonising refugees, long before Trump read it...

Piro Rexhepi

We’re told that Donald Trump is uniquely hardline in his anti-Muslim rhetoric. In fact, Europe’s draconian attitudes have helped to legitimise his approach

Migrants receive instructions after being evicted from the Calais camp.

Migrants receive instructions after being evicted from the Calais camp.

Refugees and migrants being evicted from the Calais camp. ‘The idea that Merkel and May’s Europe is more welcoming to refugees simply isn’t borne out by the facts.’ Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP

It has become an article of faith among liberals that Donald Trump is the world’s biggest enemy to refugees and Muslims, while the EU somehow offers them a safe harbour. After all, with the words “We can do it” Angela Merkel invited a million Syrian refugees into Germany, while Trump’s travel ban has slammed shut America’s door to some of the world’s most vulnerable displaced people. In today’s liberal mindset, it is Brexit that has stirred up hostility against migrants, while the EU is a bulwark of civilised values, protecting refugees from the threat of a resurgent far right.

If you were a migrant in a leaking boat approaching Lesbos, however, the treatment you would receive from Frontex, the EU’s border patrol, would be no less hostile than anything Trump could inflict. In Tunis last week a video showed Tunisian border police whipping cowering migrants from elsewhere in north Africa. This brutality was EU-sponsored. Like Libya, Morocco, Turkey and Egypt, Tunisia receives funding and training from Brussels through the European neighbourhood policy (ENP). Under a broader framework of “development” and “reforms”, these ENP countries serve as a buffer zone, making sure that refugees are intercepted and turned back – or, in Libya, locked up and tortured in refugees’ prisons – before these desperate people can reach the EU’s shores.

The idea that the Europe of Merkel and Theresa May is more welcoming to refugees than Trump’s America simply isn’t borne out by the facts. The EU’s deal with Turkey, condemned by humanitarian agencies, ensures that refugees arriving in Greece – regardless of their point of departure – will be sent to Turkey. Turkey now has the largest refugee population in the world, at about 3 million people.

This month Britain reneged on its promise to admit 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees. Concerned that the Balkan route is a weak link into Europe, Austria has mobilised aspiring EU members including Macedonia, Serbia and Kosovo into a Balkan frontier defence project to fortify the refugee entry points of the “Balkan corridor”. Last year Macedonian police used tear gas, grenades and stun guns against Iraqis and Syrians attempting to get through a razor-wire fence and into the country.

France dismantled the camp at Calais, leaving refugees to sleep in freezing woods, and last week Paris police placed boulders under a railway bridge near a refugee centre in order to prevent people from sleeping there. One of them told the Daily Mail: “We can’t get into the centre and are brutalised when we try to sleep nearby. The rocks are disgusting and inhuman.”

The EU even has far-right vigilantes guarding its borders, such as the Bulgarian Dinko Valev, filmed tying up Syrian refugees – including three women and a child – and claiming they were coming into the country to “kill us like dogs”. In many video recordings circulating online, others have flocked there to assist the vigilantes, claiming to be “protectors of women and faith”, and citing the Cologne attacks as their main incentive for protecting EU borders.

However, the anti-refugee, anti-Muslim rhetoric used by the vigilantes is not an exclusive feature of the far right. Trump openly expresses America’s hostility towards Muslims in a way no mainstream European politician would dare to do. Trump’s attitudes can be called out and exposed, but Europe’s are enacted far more covertly – and the current focus on Trump means that they are allowed to continue unchecked.

For instance, liberals threw up their hands in horror when Trump, in declaring his travel ban, declared that Christians from Syria but not Muslims would be admitted into the US. However, the EU revealed similar priorities when it admitted Georgia to the Schengen zone, within which EU nationals can move without a passport. Echoing Trump, the vice-president of the European parliament argued that Georgia is a Christian country and the heart of Europe – remarks that would have been greeted with incredulity not only by refugees but by the citizens of Kosovo. This country is far closer to the heart of Europe than Georgia, but has a mainly Muslim population, and its attempts to join the EU have been consistently rebuffed.

Trump justifies his own clampdown by painting a picture of a Europe overrun with Muslim refugees, raping white women and committing terrorist acts. Yet Europe wrote the book on demonising Muslim refugees. Last week Bild, Germany’s largest newspaper, had to apologise for false reports that refugees had raped German women in Frankfurt; the rightwing British press stokes fears of refugees on a daily basis. We’re told that Trump is uniquely hardline in his anti-Muslim rhetoric. In fact, Europe’s long-standing draconian attitudes towards refugees and Muslims have helped to legitimise his approach.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/21/europe-demonising-muslim-refugees-legitimise-trump