TDB Top 5 International Stories: Saturday 3rd December 2016

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5: OF 8 TECH COMPANIES, ONLY TWITTER SAYS IT WOULD REFUSE TO HELP BUILD MUSLIM REGISTRY FOR TRUMP

EVERY AMERICAN CORPORATION, from the largest conglomerate to the smallest firm, should ask itself right now: Will we do business with the Trump administration to further its most extreme, draconian goals? Or will we resist?

This question is perhaps most important for the country’s tech companies, which are particularly valuable partners for a budding authoritarian. The Intercept contacted nine of the most prominent such firms, from Facebook to Booz Allen Hamilton, to ask if they would sell their services to help create a national Muslim registry, an idea recently resurfaced by Donald Trump’s transition team. Only Twitter said no.

Shortly after the election, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty wrote a personal letter to President-elect Trump in which she offered her congratulations, and more importantly, the services of her company. The six different areas she identified as potential business opportunities between a Trump White House and IBM were all inoffensive and more or less mundane, but showed a disturbing willingness to sell technology to a man with open interest in the ways in which technology can be abused: Mosque surveillance, a “virtual wall” with Mexico, shutting down portions of the internet on command, and so forth. Trump’s anti-civil liberty agenda, half-baked and vague as it is, would largely be an engineering project, one that would almost certainly rely on some help from the private sector. It may be asking too much to demand that companies that have long contracted with the federal government stop doing so altogether; indeed, this would probably cause as much harm and disruption to good public projects as it would help stop the sinister ones.

The Intercept

 

4: Donald Trump picks James Mattis for defense secretary

President-elect Donald Trump has said he will nominate retired Marine Corps General James Mattis to be his defense secretary.

Mattis, who is known as “Mad Dog” and renowned for his tough talk, retired in 2013 after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If confirmed, Mattis would be the second retired general to serve as defense secretary
“We are going to appoint ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis as our secretary of defense,” Trump announced during a post-election victory rally in Cincinnati on Thursday. He said the formal announcement would be made on Monday.

His appointment would be another indication that Trump, a Republican, intends to steer US foreign policy away from Democratic President Barack Obama’s increased reliance on US allies to fight armed groups and to help deter Russian and Chinese aggression in Europe and Asia.

“Mattis has often been very critical of Washington, especially when it comes to the strategy in the Middle East, saying the US simply has no strategy,” Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett reported from Cincinnati.

Aljazeera

 

3: Why Hillary lost – Clinton’s campaign manager blames a “gale-force wind of change”

In his first extended public remarks since the presidential election, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager on Thursday night tried to explain Donald Trump’s shocking victory. Sitting next to Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway in their first-ever face-off, at an event in Cambridge, Mass., Robby Mook said there was a “gale-force wind of change” in the country that propelled the Republican businessman to the win.

He also said that if FBI Director James Comey hadn’t sent two letters to Congress about the investigation into Clinton’s email server in the campaign’s closing days, then she “would have won the election.” Comey’s decision was “mind-boggling” and a “breach of protocol” at a point in the race when there were a lot of undecided voters, he said.

Vice News

2: Trump’s Deal That “Saved Jobs” at Carrier Based on a $7 Million Tax Break & Reduced Regulations

President-elect Donald Trump kicked off his victory tour Thursday by touting his involvement in Carrier’s decision to keep some jobs in the U.S. instead of moving them all to Mexico. Carrier is a multibillion-dollar company, and the Pentagon is the largest customer of its parent company, United Technologies. Trump said the deal for Carrier to keep the jobs in state reportedly includes a $7 million incentive package with tax breaks and reduced regulations. Meanwhile, about 1,000 workers for the company in Indiana will reportedly still lose their jobs. We speak with Public Citizen’s president, Robert Weissman.

Democracy Now

 

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1:Trump supports Dakota pipeline – but claims it’s not due to his investment in it

Donald Trump has said he supports a controversial oil pipeline that runs next to a Native American reservation in North Dakota – a project that the president-elect is personally invested in.

A briefing from Trump’s transition team said that the real estate magnate supports the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline and that his backing “has nothing to do with his personal investments and everything to do with promoting policies that benefit all Americans”.

Financial disclosure forms released earlier this year show that Trump has a stake in Energy Transfer Partners, the Texas-based firm behind the pipeline, and Phillips 66, which will hold a share of the project once completed.

Trump’s investment in Energy Transfer Partners dropped from between $500,000 and $1m in 2015 to between $1,500 and $50,000 this year. His stake in Phillips 66, however, rose from between $50,000 and $100,000 last year to between $250,000 and $500,000 this year, according to the forms.

The financial relationship has run both ways. Kelcy Warren, chief executive of Energy Transfer Partners, gave $103,000 to elect Trump and handed over a further $66,800 to the Republican National Committee after the property developer secured the GOP’s presidential nomination.

The Guardian