Home · News · News Oct 2018 · Oct 19 2018
Friday October 19, 2018

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
Joe And Mika Talk Prospective 2020 Candidates (From Both Parties) | Stephen Colbert | 10/19/18 | 6:12

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

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, October 19 [13:27]
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, October 19 (FULL) | 59:02
Note: on the full 59:02 video look for small white (or black) circles on the Progressbar they denote the different news stories. You can move the pointer on the Progressbar to jump to each story, and around the video.
  1. Headlines
  2. Dissident Saudi Academic Madawi Al-Rasheed on Khashoggi's Disappearance, U.S.-Saudi Relations & More
  3. Dr. Madawi Al-Rasheed: In Khashoggi Murder, Saudi Arabia Must Not Be Allowed to Investigate Itself
  4. Netanyahu Attacks Israeli Human Rights Group B'Tselem for Criticizing Israeli Occupation at U.N.
Honduran Migrant Caravan 4000 Strong Marching To US Border, Trump Apoplectic | TRNN | 10/18/18 | 14:25
Don McGahn Runs Away From Robert Mueller | TYT | 10/18/18 | 4:43
Who Says White Culture Is Lost? | TYT | 10/18/18 | 11:17
Laura Ingraham: DON'T LET BROWN PEOPLE REPLACE YOU! | TYT | 10/18/18 | 10:07
Trump Has Nightmares About THIS Candidate | TYT | 10/18/18 | 5:04
The1a.org
Friday News Roundup -- Domestic | 1a.org | 10/19/18 | 1hr
  1. This week, incumbent Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) debated his Democratic challenger, Congressman Beto O'Rourke. O'Rourke's campaign has garnered a lot of attention...and it's not just because he was in a punk band. You might think that a Democrat can't win in Texas. But recent polls put O'Rourke within four points of Cruz.
  2. In Georgia, Secretary of State Brian Kemp -- who is also running for governor -- has come under fire for keeping more than 53,000 Georgia residents off voter registration rolls. Most of them are black.
  3. And one-time retail giant Sears filed for bankruptcy this week. On Twitter, historian Louis Hyman weighed in on what you may not know about the store's legacy.
  4. The death toll for Hurricane Michael rose to at least 29 people. And a new article in The Washington Post suggests that the storm did "what scientists could not," and helped convince some Republican residents that climate change is real. But not everyone was convinced.
  5. The budget deficit is on track to reach a trillion dollars by 2020, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Treasury Department said the U.S. budget deficit grew to $779 billion in Donald Trump's first full fiscal year as president. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke to Bloomberg News about it.
Friday News Roundup -- International | 1a.org | 10/19/18 | 1hr
  1. Inside the provincial governor's compound in Kandahar City, at least one attacker fatally shot the region's powerful police chief, Gen. Abdul Raziq and the provincial intelligence chief. The gunfire wounded the provincial governor, another police commander and three Americans, Afghan officials said. The Wall Street Journal reported that the 1.3 million residents of Ghazni province "won't go to the polls because the country's security forces can't protect polling stations there." They also reported that "after planning to operate 7,384 polling places nationwide, authorities said this week only 5,074 would be open, a drop of almost one-third."
  2. We'll also update you on a story we've been covering all week. Journalist Jamal Khashoggi is feared dead after gory details were leaked by the Turkish government about audio recordings that tracked his death. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flew to Ankara, Turkey this week to investigate the journalist's death, as Khashoggi lived in Virginia and worked for The Washington Post.
  3. Canada officially legalized marijuana this week. Now it doesn't even need to be 420 for Canadians to blaze it.
NPR Fresh Air with Terry Gross
*'Times' Journalists Puncture Myth Of Trump As Self-Made Billionaire | NPR Fresh Air | 10/18/18 | 36:45
Opioid Overdose Victim's Obituary Captures The Nation's Attention | Velshi & Ruhle | MSNBC | 10/18/18 | 5:45
Vetoed! Watch President Trump Name Ripped Off NYC Building | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC | 10/18/18 | 4:27
Roger Stone Insider: Manafort Flip Would Be 'Tremendous Betrayal' | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC | 10/18/18 | 9:57
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Trump Goes Out On A Limb, Predicts Khashoggi Is Dead | Stephen Colbert | 10/18/18 | 6:45
Here's Why White Supremacists Are Chugging Milk | Stephen Colbert | 10/19/18 | 5:22
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
*GOP Voter Suppression Ramps Up in Georgia | The Daily Show | 10/18/18 | 6:56
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee
*The Front Lines of the Culture War | Samantha Bee | 10/17/18 | 2:29
Voter Suppression | Samantha Bee | 10/17/18 | 6:06

10.19.2018. 12:47



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Lindsey Graham Mashups
Lindsey Graham

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the quiet part aloud on why he’s still so close to former President Donald Trump: because we can use him for our goals. "President Trump has gotten people who wouldn't give me or Romney or anybody else the time of day. They believe he is on their side," the senator told the America First Agenda Summit crowd on Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

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Environment & Climate Change
Environment

The term "climate change" is often used to refer specifically to anthropogenic climate change (also known as global warming). Anthropogenic climate change is caused by human activity, as opposed to changes in climate that may have resulted as part of Earth's natural processes.

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AI - Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning | Deep Learning
AI - Artificial Intelligence

AIArtificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, as opposed to the natural intelligence displayed by animals including humans. AI research has been defined as the field of study of intelligent agents, which refers to any system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of achieving its goals.

The term "artificial intelligence" had previously been used to describe machines that mimic and display "human" cognitive skills that are associated with the human mind, such as "learning" and "problem-solving". This definition has since been rejected by major AI researchers who now describe AI in terms of rationality and acting rationally, which does not limit how intelligence can be articulated.
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Quantum mechanics | AI - Artificial Intelligence
Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles.  It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, quantum field theory, quantum technology, and quantum information science.
Classical physics, the collection of theories that existed before the advent of quantum mechanics, describes many aspects of nature at an ordinary (macroscopic) scale, but is not sufficient for describing them at small (atomic and subatomic) scales. Most theories in classical physics can be derived from quantum mechanics as an approximation valid at large (macroscopic) scale.
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Economy, Wall Street and Banksters

Wall Street and Banksters

Wall Street is an eight-block-long street running roughly northwest to southeast from Broadway to South Street, at the East River, in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial services industry (even if financial firms are not physically located there), or New York-based financial interests.

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Intelligence Agencies/Deep State?

Intelligence Agencies/Deep State?

An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, and foreign policy objectives. Means of information gathering are both overt and covert and may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis,.

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Daniel Ellsberg | Pentagon Papers
Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg and Paul Jay explore Ellsberg's latest book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. In the introduction to the book, Ellsberg writes: "No policies in human history have more deserved to be recognized as immoral or insane. The story of how this calamitous predicament came about and how and why it has persisted over a half a century is a chronicle of human madness".

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Nukes
Nukes

Nuclear weapons have come a long way and come in all types of different sizes. Some are relatively small while others are enormous, so big they boggle the mind at what they can be capable of, i.e. the Soviet 'Tsar Bomba' is/was 3,000 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb.

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Rana Foroohar and Fall of American Business
Rana Foroohar

Ms. Foroohar says financialization delivers stagnant wages, inequality and economic crisis; the Financial Times columnist and author of "Makers and Takers" says the financial sector represents only 7 percent of the U.S. economy, but takes around 25 percent of all corporate profit while creating only 4 percent of all jobs.

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The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone & Petere Kuznick

The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone & Petere Kuznick | 2014 | 10 Episodes

Oliver Stone and American University historian Peter J. Kuznick began working on the project in 2008. Stone, Kuznick and British screenwriter Matt Graham cowrote the script. It covers "the reasons behind the Cold War with the Soviet Union, U.S. President Harry Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, and changes in America's global role since the fall of Communism." Stone is the director and narrator of all ten episodes.

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Kuznick Interviews

Kuznick Interviews

Historian Peter Kuznick says Eisenhower called for decreased militarization, then Dulles reversed the policy; the Soviets tried to end the cold war after the death of Stalin; crazy schemes involving nuclear weapons and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba put the world of the eve of destruction - with host Paul Jay

The Untold History of the United States by Kuznick, Peter.mobi | Book | 6.99 MB

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China Valley of Tunnels

China Valley of Tunnels

A report written by a Georgetown University team led by Phillip Karber conducted a three-year study to map out China’s complex tunnel system, which stretches 5,000 km (3,000 miles). The report determined that the stated Chinese nuclear arsenal is understated and as many as 3,000 nuclear warheads may be stored in the underground tunnel network.

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911
911

On September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists attacked the Unites States. They hijacked four airplanes in mid-flight. The terrorists flew two of the planes into two skyscrapers at the World Trade Center in New York City. The impact caused the buildings to catch fire and collapse. Another plane destroyed part of the Pentagon (the U.S. military headquarters) in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Officials believe that the terrorists on that plane intended to destroy either the White House or the U.S. Capitol. Passengers on the plane fought the terrorists and prevented them from reaching their goal. In all, nearly 3,000 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks.

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The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's ten-part, 18-hour documentary series, THE VIETNAM WAR, tells the epic story of one of the most consequential, divisive, and controversial events in American history as it has never before been told on film. Visceral and immersive, the series explores the human dimensions of the war through revelatory testimony of nearly 80 witnesses from all sides--Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, as well as combatants and civilians from North and South Vietnam. Ten years in the making, the series includes rarely seen and digitally re-mastered archival footage from sources around the globe, photographs taken by some of the most celebrated photojournalists of the 20th Century, historic television broadcasts, evocative home movies, and secret audio recordings from inside the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations.

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Trump's Mashups
Trump's Mashups

Donald Trump talks a lot, but what is he actually saying? VICE News' "Trump Talk" mashup series tries to answer that. And, we're happy to say, it was just nominated for two Webby Awards. Now you can watch all the nominated videos.

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Trump's Sexcapades
Trump's Sexcapades.

Jessica Leeds (1980s)
Kristin Anderson (1990s)
E. Jean Carroll (1995 or 1996)
Lisa Boyne (1996)
Cathy Heller (1997)
Temple Taggart McDowell (1997)
Karena Virginia (1998)
Mindy McGillivray (2003)
Jennifer Murphy (2005)
Rachel Crooks (2005)
Natasha Stoynoff (2005)
Juliet Huddy (2005 or 2006)
Jessica Drake (2006)
Ninni Laaksonen (2006)
Cassandra Searles (2013)
Allegations of pageant dressing room visits(1997)
Mariah Billado,
Victoria Hughes,
and three other Miss Teen USA contestants
Bridget Sullivan (2000)
Tasha Dixon (2001)
Unnamed contestants (2001)
Samantha Holvey (2006)

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Trump's Speeches | Rallys |Interviews
Trump's Speeches | Rallys

Donald Trump talks a lot, but what is he actually saying? Watch Trump at some of his rallys and see what you think.

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