Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Massive Twitter data release sheds light on Russia's Trump strategy
Politico | Nancy Scola | date

Twitter on Wednesday released a trove of 10 million tweets it says represents the full scope of foreign influence operations on the platform dating back nearly a decade -- including Russia's consistent efforts to disparage Hillary Clinton and an initially erratic approach to Donald Trump that eventually settled on a concerted pro-Trump message during the 2016 campaign.

The huge data cache consists of tweets from some 3,400 accounts tied to the Kremlin troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency and 770 others linked to Iran. It also includes some 2 million GIFs, videos and other pieces of visual content. Twitter said it's making the information available to "enable independent academic research and investigation," according to a company blog post. ... Read more
Data archive

You Think The GOP Is Extreme Now? It'll Be Worse If They Win In November.
HP | Jesse Lee | 10/18/18

The Republicans' last-ditch campaign message before the midterms has gone exactly where you might have expected: trying to instill sheer terror of what Democratic control of one branch of government might bring. The president's auxiliary super PAC raises the ominous specter in a closing ad: "violence," "socialism" and "undefended open borders."

Far more real are the catastrophic prospects of another two years of total GOP control. If Republicans squeak by in both chambers and have another two-year runway to do whatever they want, to grab whatever they can and to rig the 2020 election, we don't have to imagine what will happen. They have already told us.

Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will be gutted. ... Read more

Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras by Adrienne Pine (2008)

"Honduras is violent." Adrienne Pine situates this oft-repeated claim at the center of her vivid and nuanced chronicle of Honduran subjectivity. Through an examination of three major subject areas?violence, alcohol, and the export-processing (maquiladora) industry?Pine explores the daily relationships and routines of urban Hondurans. She views their lives in the context of the vast economic footprint on and ideological domination of the region by the United States, powerfully elucidating the extent of Honduras's dependence. She provides a historically situated ethnographic analysis of this fraught relationship and the effect it has had on Hondurans' understanding of who they are. The result is a rich and visceral portrait of a culture buffeted by the forces of globalization and inequality.

Joe And Mika: We Need Nothing From Saudi Arabia | Stephen Colbert | 10/19/18 | 6:15

Mike Pompeo's Worldview? Do As Trump Does.
TheAtlantic | Uri Friedman | 10/19/18

Even when they are thousands of miles apart, President Donald Trump and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, act in symbiosis.

As Trump speculated from Washington this week that "rogue killers" rather than Saudi leaders might have targeted the missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Pompeo smiled with the crown prince in Riyadh and sidestepped mounting evidence that Khashoggi was murdered by the Saudi state, citing ongoing investigations. From the Oval Office and Brussels airport, each man emphasized how vital Saudi Arabia is to the U.S. economy and to American priorities like countering Iran and terrorist groups. ... Read more

Is Fraud Part of the Trump Organization's Business Model?
NewYorker | Adam Davidson | 10/17/18

What, exactly, is Donald Trump's business? The Trump Organization is unusual in that it doesn't appear to do the same thing for very long. It was a builder of apartments for the lower middle class, then a builder of luxury buildings and hotels, then a casino company, and, most recently, a brand-licensing firm, selling its name to anybody who wanted "trump" emblazoned on a building, bottled water, or whatever else. These are wildly different businesses. The way a company raises money, plans projects, and gains profit are entirely different in each of these fields. Middle-class housing, for example, is typically a slow, steady business in which profits come from careful cost control; luxury housing, by contrast, is riskier, with bigger and faster rewards but a higher chance of failure. One hires different sorts of accountants and salespeople and construction managers. Casinos are something else entirely, and licensing is entirely different from any of those other businesses. ...

... Rather famously, Trump overinvested in luxury housing, spent too much on his casinos, and completely blew his brief foray into a regional airline. Far worse, Trump did the very opposite of insuring a long record of fiscal prudence that would allow him to borrow money cheaply. Despite the company's mixed record, it has survived and grown. It's doing something well, so what is it? ... Read more