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The latest revelations mark the beginning of the end for the House of Zuckerberg
Carole Cadwalladr
Sun 10 Oct 2021 08.30 BST
The Observer’s investigations into Facebook in 2018 exposed a toxic culture. But still the business thrived. That might be about to change
ations into Facebook.
Last week, it was the turn of Frances Haugen, a calm, articulate, authoritative voice from inside Facebook’s civic integrity department whose testimony has proved devastating to the company. She not only spoke compellingly about Facebook’s lies and deceptions, its harm to teenagers and devastating impact on democracy, she backed up her words with hard evidence – in eight complaints to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and documents handed to five attorney generals. Later this month, she will testify to the UK parliament.
If there’s one thing last week has proved, it’s that nothing beats a human face telling a human story. There was much of Haugen’s testimony that was already known or at least glimpsed. Every day for the last three years has brought a fresh tide of Facebook-so-toxic stories – they’ve just lost their ability to shock.
This is a tale of two testimonies: two testimonies that bookend the first chapter of the beginning of the end of Facebook. Because that’s what we are seeing, playing out, in slow motion: the Fall of the House of Zuck. It won’t happen today and it’s not going to happen tomorrow, but last week the cracks in its foundations became deepening crevasses. It is coming.
Wylie’s testimony in 2018 set the hares running. It precipitated numerous investigations into the company, investigations whose failure explains why, three years on, we are here again. Haugen testified to problems that are a direct result of a corrupt and corrosive internal corporate culture exposed then. Facebook’s executive suite should have been burned down three years ago. It wasn’t. In 2018, the mask came off. But the authorities failed to hold a single person to account. And we, and our increasingly fragile democracies and fraught teenagers, are living with the consequences. When the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fined Facebook a record $5bn (£3.6bn) for its part in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the only outcome was to send Facebook’s stock price even higher. After all, what’s $5bn to a company worth a trillion dollars?
And although the SEC found that Facebook had made “misleading disclosures”, including lying to journalists, it allowed Facebook to settle its suit with a $100m fine. No executive was harmed in the making of these penalties. Zuckerberg was not deposed. Sheryl Sandberg was not forced to account for her actions. Everyone got away with everything.
But now Facebook is in trouble. It is facing many legal and regulatory challenges, all the while in a weakened and bloodied state with its workforce shaken and disturbed. Because its greatest point of failure, at the moment, is itself. One of the most striking differences between 2018 and now was how incredibly organised and supported Haugen has been. An entire industry now exists to welcome and support tech whistleblowers. More will surely come. Striking, too, was how expertly briefed and informed were the senators who questioned Haugen.
All this has happened in three years. But there’s more. There are existential threats to Facebook’s business model, not the least of which is the FTC’s suit to break the company up. State attorney generals, many with cases already proceeding, are scenting blood. A Texas lawsuit names Sandberg for possible market rigging.
And perhaps most toxic of all is the radioactive waste left by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. A new shareholder lawsuit, filed in Delaware, based on freshly disclosed internal documents, claims it can prove that Facebook senior executives and board members lied to investors. If it can do that, it will set in motion a chain of consequences that will make Enron look like a teddy bears’ picnic.
Three years ago, Sandy Parakilas, an earlier Facebook whistleblower, explained to me the power of the SEC, which regulates the financial markets, by telling me that in America, money will enable you to get away with most things. “But the one thing you can’t do,” he said, “is to fuck with our capitalism.”
The UN found Facebook helped facilitate a genocide in Myanmar. We know that it helped foment an insurrection at the US Capitol. And its own research says it is harming teenagers. (A 2019 Facebook presentation slide, just revealed, said: “We make body-image issues worse for one in three teenage girls.”)
That’s all fine, it turns out, but if this suit can prove it’s lied to investors, someone is going to jail. If I were a Facebook employee, I’d be browsing the whistleblower section of the SEC’s website, which grants immunity from prosecution, very, very carefully. (Note: you can also receive protection if you make these disclosures to a journalist. Please feel free to contact me.)
Three years ago, it was Wylie who was caught in the firestorm and, as one of the journalists who put him there, I’ve had my own strange and unsettling flashbacks over the past week. But what recent events have reminded me of most forcefully is a judicial report published after the murder of the Maltese investigative journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia.It described a “culture of impunity” that had allowed those at the heart of the government to believe they could get away with anything.
That’s what corruption does – and a similar culture of impunity exists at Facebook. But the gig is up. No one is immune. Not even Mark Zuckerberg.
Carole Cadwalladr led the Observer’s investigations into Facebook in 2018 and is a founder of the Real Facebook Oversight Board
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/10/latest-revelations-mark-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-the-house-of-zuckerberg
Ocean Cleanup Just Scooped a Colossal Pile of Garbage From the Ocean
Can we clean the great Pacific Garbage Patch?
By Loukia Papadopoulos
Oct 09, 2021 (Updated: Oct 09, 2021 18:18 EDT)
https://interestingengineering.com/ocean-cleanup-just-scooped-a-colossal-pile-of-garbage-from-the-ocean
In September of 2021, we brought you the launch of the world's first ocean cleanup system led by a Dutch non-profit organization appropriately named the Ocean Cleanup. At the time the Ocean Cleanup had called the system System 001 and it was headed for the Great Pacific garbage patch, an oceanic accumulation of trash so large, it is often referred to as a garbage island.
Garbage island measures twice the size of Texas and is considered the world’s largest zone of ocean plastics, estimated to contain up to 1.8 trillion pieces of debris.
We then followed all the company's advancements including its deployment of new vessels. Now, it seems the firm's latest system System 002 has collected a fresh batch of garbage. The Ocean Cleanup made the announcement on LinkedIn.
"BREAKING: the final test of System 002 is completed, and we have another big catch on deck. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch can now be cleaned. The crew is already sorting the catch, and lots of information is still to be processed. Stay tuned!" said the post.
Founded by university drop-out Boyan Slat, The Ocean Cleanup has designed and engineered a truly revolutionary unique system that is ideal for ridding the oceans of hard-to-grasp floating plastic.
The system (ie both System 001 and System 002) uses large floating tubes of durable plastic that sit on the ocean's surface in a u-shape that allows them to catch the plastic waste while it swims by. The garbage is then collected with the intention of being recycled.
The system also features a strong nylon screen, attached underneath, that can catch the plastic below the surface without capturing or harming marine life. It's an ingenious system that could soon see our oceans cleaned of what was once deemed an insurmountable problem. Bravo Ocean Cleanup!
https://interestingengineering.com/ocean-cleanup-just-scooped-a-colossal-pile-of-garbage-from-the-ocean
Schumer ‘poisoned well’ over debt limit, McConnell says in insult-laden letter
Republican leader lashes out in letter and call to Biden
Senate GOP sows disinformation after debt ceiling deal
Martin Pengelly and agencies
@MartinPengelly
Sat 9 Oct 2021 13.15 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/09/mitch-mcconnell-chuck-schumer-poisoned-the-well-republicans-debt-ceiling
Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, sought to fight his way out of a corner on Friday by releasing an angry letter in which he blamed Democrats for the impasse over the debt ceiling he broke by ending a refusal to co-operate he had said was absolute.
In the letter to Joe Biden, McConnell complained about a speech in which the Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, attacked Republicans for their behaviour.
Lamenting Schumer’s lack of civility – which prompted angry scenes in the Senate – McConnell levelled a string of insults at his opposite number.
“Last night,” the minority leader wrote, late on Friday, “in a bizarre spectacle, Senator Schumer exploded in a rant that was so partisan, angry and corrosive that even Democratic senators were visibly embarrassed by him and for him.
“This tantrum encapsulated and escalated a pattern of angry incompetence from Senator Schumer … this childish behavior only further alienated the Republican members who helped facilitate this short-term patch. It has poisoned the well even further.”
Democrats argue it was McConnell who poisoned the well by refusing to co-operate with raising the debt limit, a step they took repeatedly with Donald Trump in power. Experts say a US default would be catastrophic for the global economy.
McConnell insisted: “In light of Senator Schumer’s hysterics and my grave concerns about the ways that another vast, reckless, partisan spending bill would hurt Americans and help China, I will not be a party to any future effort to mitigate the consequences of Democratic mismanagement.”
McConnell also spoke to Biden, media outlets reported.
The Kentuckian made his move a day after he and 10 other Republicans provided decisive support for a $480bn federal debt limit rise, enough to last two months. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen had said that without such a rise, the US would default on its debts by mid-October.
Some Republicans criticized McConnell for not holding out longer, which they said would have sharpened their contention that a multibillion-dollar package of Biden’s domestic spending priorities, currently making its way through Congress, is wasteful and damaging.
Trump, who remains influential in the party and will stage a rally in Iowa on Saturday, was among those to lambast McConnell for what Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, called his “complete capitulation”.
In his speech, Schumer lauded Democrats for overcoming a “Republican-manufactured crisis. Despite immense opposition from Leader McConnell and members of his conference, our caucus held together and we have pulled our country back from the cliff’s edge that Republicans tried to push us over”.
As Schumer spoke, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a key centrist Democrat, was seen to bury his head in his hands. Among Republicans angered by Schumer’s lack of comity and politesse was Mitt Romney of Utah – who had voted against helping raise the debt ceiling.
Romney told reporters: “There’s a time to be graceful and there’s a time to be combative, and that was a time for grace.”
John Thune of South Dakota, a member of Republican leadership who voted with McConnell, said Schumer was “totally out of line”. Of his own confrontation with the New Yorker, he said: “I let him have it.”
But Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, tweeted: “Some of my Republican colleagues didn’t like that Schumer called them out … just unreal that they thought they deserved applause for courting economic disaster and then, at the very last minute, delivering the absolute minimum number of votes to avoid it.”
One way for Democrats to raise the debt limit on their own would be to shield debt legislation from filibusters, delays that mean 60 votes are needed in the 50-50 Senate.
Two key Democrats, Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, oppose that, as they have opposed ending the filibuster to protect voting rights or Biden policy priorities. Republicans have said one factor in McConnell providing the two-month debt lifeline was fear that Manchin and Sinema might support ending filibusters on debt legislation.
Democrats accused McConnell of creating a crisis over a debt of around $28tn which covers spending already approved – including around $7tn under Trump.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/09/mitch-mcconnell-chuck-schumer-poisoned-the-well-republicans-debt-ceiling
Trump’s D.C. hotel made millions from foreign governments but still struggled, federal documents show
Hundreds of pages of the hotel’s financial documents show that the federally leased hotel lost $71 million while Trump was in office
By Jonathan O'Connell and David A. Fahrenthold
Today at 9:39 a.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/08/trump-hotel-millions-foreign-governments/
Donald Trump’s luxury Washington hotel lost more than $70 million while he was in office despite reaping millions in payments from foreign governments, according to federal documents released by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on Friday.
The committee, chaired by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), released hundreds of pages of financial documents on the property Friday that it received from the General Services Administration, the agency that leased the federally owned property to Trump’s company beginning in 2013.
Maloney and Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) allege the documents show that Trump received an estimated $3.7 million from foreign governments and received preferential treatment from Deutsche Bank when the bank allowed Trump to defer payments for six years on the principal of the property’s $170 million loan.
The findings “raise new and troubling questions about former President Trump’s lease with GSA and the agency’s ability to manage the former President’s conflicts of interest during his term in office when he was effectively on both sides of the contract, as landlord and tenant,” the two Democrats said in a news release.
Maloney and Connolly also wrote a 27-page letter Friday to GSA administrator Robin Carnahan saying the documents warranted further investigation.
Previous reporting from The Washington Post showed the 263-room property was running about half empty and losing money, but the documents provide by far the most detailed accounting to date of the hotel and how Trump won the contract for the lease in 2013.
The documents show, for instance, the Trump’s company had to inject the hotel with more than $24 million in cash from his company’s coffers to offset losses.
Trump has called the investigations into his hotel and his finances, by both Democrats on Capitol Hill and New York prosecutors, politically motivated and without merit. A spokeswoman for Trump and spokespeople for his company did not immediately return requests for comment Friday morning. The GSA and Deutsche Bank also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump’s lease for the Pennsylvania Avenue property is currently for sale, and multiple bidders have expressed interest, according to two people familiar with the sale, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private business discussions.
Trump first put the lease up for sale in the fall of 2019, but when covid-19 struck, many hotels closed either completely or partially due to government shutdowns, and the company pulled the property off the market.
Sheila Johnson, owner of the Salamander Resort & Spa in Middleburg, Va., expressed interest in the property last year but it is unknown whether she is currently pursuing the property. She did not respond to recent calls and text messages seeking comment.
Trump’s company has previously floated $500 million as a possible target price. Industry experts say it is worth well short of that, but that top luxury hotel chains are likely to be interested in taking over the property and marketing it to a wider audience than Trump was able to given his politics.
Trump’s company spent an estimated $200 million renovating the building into a luxury hotel. Shortly after Trump entered the White House, the GSA ruled that his company remained in compliance with the lease. With Trump in office, the hotel became a gathering place for top Republicans and a magnet for conservative political fundraisers and lobbyists, as well as corporate and international groups seeking to curry favor with the administration.
Despite a series of lawsuits and Congressional hearings launched by Democrats accusing the president of corruption and constitutional violations, his company was able to maintain control of the hotel.
By Jonathan O'Connell
Jonathan O'Connell is a reporter focused on business investigations and corporate accountability. He has covered economic development, commercial real estate and President Donald Trump's business. He joined The Post in 2010. Twitter
By David Fahrenthold
David A. Fahrenthold is a reporter covering the Trump family and its business interests. He has been at The Washington Post since 2000, and previously covered Congress, the federal bureaucracy, the environment and the D.C. police. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/08/trump-hotel-millions-foreign-governments/
Manu Raju @mkraju Senate Judiciary releases 394-page staff report entitled:
“Subverting Justice: How the Former President and his Allies Pressured DOJ to Overturn the 2020 Election.”: https://judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Interim%20Staff%20Report%20FINAL.pdf
Durbin’s office says these are the key findings
12:31 PM · Oct 7, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
THREAD
Senate Judiciary releases 394-page staff report entitled: “Subverting Justice: How the Former President and his Allies Pressured DOJ to Overturn the 2020 Election.”: https://t.co/zASBtOCu5w Durbin’s office says these are the key findings pic.twitter.com/zWgiVbEp8N
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) October 7, 2021
Top Trump aides set to defy subpoenas in Capitol attack investigation
Source says Meadows, Bannon and others will move to undercut House select committee inquiry – under instructions from Trump
Hugo Lowell in Washington
Wed 6 Oct 2021 06.30 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/06/trump-aides-capitol-attack-house-select-committee
Former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and other top aides subpoenaed by the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack are expected to defy orders for documents and testimony related to 6 January, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The move to defy the subpoenas would mark the first major investigative hurdle faced by the select committee and threatens to touch off an extended legal battle as the former president pushes some of his most senior aides to undercut the inquiry.
All four Trump aides targeted by the select committee – Meadows, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, strategist Steve Bannon and defense department aide Kash Patel – are expected to resist the orders because Trump is preparing to direct them to do so, the source said.
The select committee had issued the subpoenas under the threat of criminal prosecution in the event of non-compliance, warning that the penalty for defying a congressional subpoena would be far graver under the Biden administration than during the Trump presidency.
But increasingly concerned with the far-reaching nature of the 6 January investigation, Trump and his legal team, led by former deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin, are moving to instruct the attorneys for the subpoenaed aides to defy the orders.
The basis for Trump’s pressing aides to not cooperate is being mounted on grounds of executive privilege, the source said, over claims that sensitive conversations about what he knew in advance of plans to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory should remain secret.
Philbin appears less convinced than Trump about the strength of the legal argument, the sources said, in part because the justice department previously declined to assert the protection for 6 January testimony, suggesting it did not exist to protect Trump’s personal interests.
The former president’s lawyer, sources said, instead seems to view the strategy more as an effective way to slow-walk the select committee, which is aiming to produce a final report before the 2022 midterm elections, to keep the inquiry non-partisan.
It was not clear on Tuesday whether Trump would push aides to defy all elements of the subpoenas, the source cautioned – access to some emails or call records demanded by the select committee might be waived.
But Trump’s strategy mirrors the playbook he used to prevent House Democrats from deposing his top advisors during his presidency. Former White House counsel Don McGahn, for instance, only testified to congress about the Mueller inquiry once Trump left office.
House select committee investigators had demanded that the four Trump aides turn over emails, call records and other documents related to the Capitol attack by Thursday and then appear before the panel for closed-door depositions next week.
But with the former president expected to insist to Philbin that Meadows, Scavino, Bannon and Patel mount blanket refusals against the subpoenas, the sources said, the select committee at present appears likely to see none of the requests fulfilled.
The move means that House select committee investigators now face the key decision over how to enforce the orders – and whether they make a criminal referral to the justice department after the Thursday deadline for documents or next week’s crunch date for testimony.
House select committee chairman Bennie Thompson told reporters recently that he was prepared to pursue criminal referrals to witnesses who defied subpoenas and subpoena deadlines, as the panel escalates the pace of its evidence-gathering part of its investigation.
“We’ll do whatever the law allows us to do,” Thompson said last Friday on the subject of prosecuting recalcitrant witnesses. “For those who don’t agree to come in voluntarily, we’ll do criminal referrals.”
A spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment about how the panel intended to secure compliance.
The legal battle to force some of Trump’s most senior White House aides to comply with the subpoenas – however it is manifested – is likely to lead to constitutional clashes in court that would test the power of Congress’s oversight authority over the executive branch.
But members of the select committee in recent days have expressed quiet optimism at least about the potential prosecution of witnesses who might defy subpoenas, in part because of the Biden administration’s public support for the investigation.
The select committee said in the subpoena letters to Meadows, Bannon, Scavino and Patel that they were key persons of interest over what they knew about the extent of Trump’s involvement in the Capitol attack, which left five dead and more than 140 injured.
Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, remains of special interest to House select committee investigators since he was involved in efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election and remained by Trump’s side as rioters stormed the Capitol in his name.
He was also in contact with Patel over at the defense department, the select committee asserted, and communicated with members of the Women for America First group that planned the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally that deteriorated into the 6 January insurrection.
Scavino, the former White House deputy chief of staff, became a person of interest after it emerged that he met with Trump the day before the Capitol attack to discuss how to persuade members of Congress not to certify the election, according to his subpoena letter.
The select committee said in the subpoena letter to Bannon that they wanted to hear from Trump’s former chief strategist, who was present at the Willard Hotel on 5 January to strategize with Trump campaign officials how to stop the election certification.
Patel, meanwhile, is under scrutiny since he was involved in Pentagon discussions about security at the Capitol before and after the riot. The select committee added they were also examining reports Trump tried to install him as deputy CIA director.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/06/trump-aides-capitol-attack-house-select-committee
Donald Trump is no longer one of Forbes' 400 richest people in America
Chris Cillizza
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
Updated 1800 GMT (0200 HKT) October 5, 2021
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/05/politics/donald-trump-forbes-400-rich/index.html
(CNN)Donald Trump takes tremendous pride in being rich. Just ask him.
"I'm really rich," he said in his presidential announcement speech back in 2015.
Which is still true! But, according to the newly-released rankings from Forbes magazine, Trump is no longer one of the 400 richest people in America. It's the first time in more than two decades that Trump has not made the Forbes 400.
Trump, with a net worth of $2.5 billion, missed making the list by roughly $400 million. His net worth is the same as last year, according to Forbes, but a significant comedown from where he was at the start of his presidency. In 2016, Trump was worth $3.7 billion, according to Forbes. That dropped to $3.1 billion in 2017 and held there for 2018 and 2019.
Whose to blame for Trump falling off the list? Forbes says Trump should look in the mirror. Wrote the magazine's Dan Alexander:
"If Trump is looking for someone to blame, he can start with himself. Five years ago, he had a golden opportunity to diversify his fortune. Fresh off the 2016 election, federal ethics officials were pushing Trump to divest his real estate assets. That would have allowed him to reinvest the proceeds into broad-based index funds and assume office free of conflicts of interest ... Trump decided to hang onto his assets."
Falling off the Forbes list will land hard on Trump, who cares deeply about these sorts of ratings and rankings as public-facing proof of his many successes.
This, from Jonathan Greenberg, a one-time reporter for Forbes, makes clear how much Trump cares:
"In May 1984, an official from the Trump Organization called to tell me how rich Donald J. Trump was. I was reporting for the Forbes 400, the magazine's annual ranking of America's richest people, for the third year. In the previous edition, we'd valued Trump's holdings at $200 million, only one-fifth of what he claimed to own in our interviews. This time, his aide urged me on the phone, I needed to understand just how loaded Trump really was.
"The official was John Barron -- a name we now know as an alter ego of Trump himself."
(Sidebar: For more on John Barron, read this.) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/21/the-amazing-story-of-donald-trumps-old-spokesman-john-barron-who-was-actually-donald-trump-himself/
In fact, Trump's wealth -- and the promise that he could make every American rich -- was at the center of his 2016 pitch. In the same speech in which he proclaimed that he was "really rich," Trump said this while waving a document around:
"I have assets -- big accounting firm, one of the most highly respected -- 9 billion 240 million dollars. So I have a total net worth, and now with the increase, it'll be well over $10 billion. But here, a total net worth of -- net worth, not assets, not -- a net worth, after all debt, after all expenses, the greatest assets -- Trump Tower, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, Bank of America building in San Francisco, 40 Wall Street, sometimes referred to as the Trump building right opposite the New York -- many other places all over the world. So the total is $8,737,540,00."
Trump's net worth, as documented by Forbes, has always been considerably less than he claimed publicly -- although no one disputes that he is wealthy.
How rich Trump actually is more than just a theoretical argument. As The New York Times documented after obtaining two decades worth of Trump's tax returns, the businessman has major debts coming due in the next few years. (Trump, breaking tradition, never released any of his tax returns either during his run for president or when serving in office.)
As the Times wrote of Trump in September 2020:
"He appears to have paid off none of the principal of the Trump Tower mortgage, and the full $100 million comes due in 2022. And if he loses his dispute with the I.R.S. over the 2010 refund, he could owe the government more than $100 million (including interest on the original amount)...He appears to be responsible for loans totaling $421 million, most of which is coming due within four years."
Trump's financial situation could well be the X factor as he decides on whether to run for president again in 2024. If his finances are perilous, he may not be in a position to mount a second bid. Or maybe he would do so in hopes of staying relevant -- and attractive to potential clients and businesses.
Either way, the story of how rich Trump is -- and how much he owes (and to whom) -- isn't going away anytime soon.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/05/politics/donald-trump-forbes-400-rich/index.html
The Republican Accountability Project @AccountableGOP Today, Donald Trump claimed, "the real insurrection...took place on November 3rd, not on January 6th."
VIDEO
Today, Donald Trump claimed, "the real insurrection...took place on November 3rd, not on January 6th." pic.twitter.com/A9QDnE9GSs
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) October 5, 2021
Today, Donald Trump claimed, "the real insurrection...took place on November 3rd, not on January 6th." pic.twitter.com/A9QDnE9GSs
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) October 5, 2021
Analysis of Greenpeace's business model & philosophy: Greenpeace wants a piece of your green
December 2018
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329680852_Analysis_of_Greenpeace%27s_business_model_philosophy_Greenpeace_wants_a_piece_of_your_green
Using Greenpeace's published reports, statements and web-pages amongst other things, we carried out a detailed assessment of their approach to campaigning. We then compared their campaign claims to the relevant empirical evidence and scientific literature. We found that Greenpeace is a very successful business.
Their business model can be summarized as follows: 1) Invent an “environmental problem” which sounds somewhat plausible. Provide anecdotal evidence to support your claims, with emotionally powerful imagery. 2) Invent a “simple solution” for the problem which sounds somewhat plausible and emotionally appealing, but is physically unlikely to ever be implemented. 3) Pick an “enemy” and blame them for obstructing the implementation of the “solution”. Imply that anybody who disagrees with you is probably working for this enemy. 4) Dismiss any alternative “solutions” to your problem as “completely inadequate”. We argue that through this approach, Greenpeace are not actually helping to protect the environment, or exposing real problems. Instead, we believe that their campaigning is hindering genuine environmentalism, as well as actively discouraging scientific inquiry. A copy of this report has also been published here:
https://www.heartland.org/publications-resources/publications/analysis-of-greenpeace-business-model
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329680852_Analysis_of_Greenpeace%27s_business_model_philosophy_Greenpeace_wants_a_piece_of_your_green
The Great Plastics Distraction Part Two 2021
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Oct 5, 2021
Trump has lost $1 billion in personal wealth since running for president
Some wealthy patrons are steering clear of Trump properties, saying the country club experience is now ruined "by metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs."
Oct. 3, 2018, 6:22 PM BST
By Claire Atkinson
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/trump-has-lost-1-billion-personal-wealth-running-president-n916221?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma
The presidency has been bad for Donald Trump's finances, with his personal net worth falling from $4.5 billion to $3.1 billion over the past two years, according to the latest Forbes billionaires list.
Trump dropped 138 spots to 259 on the Forbes 400, an annual measure of the richest people in the U.S. During that same period, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos rose to the top spot, with an estimated fortune 52 times greater than that of the president, at $160 billion.
Forbes attributed the decline of Trump's fortune to three main factors: e-commerce eating into the value of Trump's real estate holdings, the intrusion of heightened security at Trump's resorts, and Trump's own over-reporting of the size of his penthouse.
"Much as he's trying — and he's definitely trying — Donald Trump is not getting richer off the presidency," according to Forbes.
Revenue from Trump-branded ties, whiskies, MAGA hats and other merchandise has plummeted to just $3 million from $23 million in 2015. “He has significantly tarnished the brand,” licensing expert Jeff Lotman told Forbes.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/trump-has-lost-1-billion-personal-wealth-running-president-n916221?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma
EU blacklist on tax havens branded ‘a joke’ after Pandora papers leak – live
Follow the latest reaction and fallout from the biggest leak of offshore data
EU action against tax havens is inadequate, say MEPs
Revealed: owners of offshore-held UK property worth £4bn
Senior Conservatives dodge questions about donors – video
LIVE Updated 16m ago
Matthew Weaver
Tue 5 Oct 2021 12.21 BSTFirst published on Tue 5 Oct 2021 08.54 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/news/live/2021/oct/05/pandora-papers-expose-eu-plans-on-tax-havens-as-absurd-meps-claim-live
Money from ‘world’s biggest bribe scandal’ invested in UK property
Leak appears to show at least £7.5m of Unaoil proceeds were laundered via offshore firms
Simon Goodley and Rob Evans
Tue 5 Oct 2021 12.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/05/money-from-worlds-biggest-bribe-scandal-invested-in-uk-property
Criminal inquiry into Trump’s Georgia election interference gathers steam
The disgraced former president faces a range of possible charges – including conspiracy and election fraud
Peter Stone in Washington
Tue 5 Oct 2021 10.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/05/donald-trump-criminal-investigations-georgia-election-interference
Donald Trump is facing increasing legal scrutiny in the crucial battleground state of Georgia over his attempt to sway the 2020 election there, and that heat is now overlapping with investigations in Congress looking at the former president’s efforts to subvert American democracy.
A criminal investigation into Trump’s 2 January call prodding Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “just find” him 11,780 votes to block Joe Biden’s win in the state is making headway. The Georgia district attorney running the inquiry is now also sharing information with the House committee investigating the 6 January attack on the Capitol in Washington DC.
Meanwhile, a justice department taskforce investigating threats to election officials nationwide has launched inquiries in Georgia, where election officers and workers received death threats or warnings of violence, including some after Trump singled out one official publicly for not backing his baseless fraud claims.
Despite these investigations, Trump is still pushing bogus fraud claims in Georgia. Trump wrote to Raffensperger in September asking him to decertify the election results, which is impossible, and with an eye on the 2022 elections is trying to oust Raffensperger, as well as the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, and other top Republicans who defied his demands to block Biden’s win.
Former justice department officials and voting rights advocates say Trump’s conspiratorial attacks on Georgia’s election results, and the threats to public officials, need to be investigated diligently, and prosecuted if warranted by law enforcement, to protect election integrity and public officials.
Experts add that Trump’s alarming refusal to accept the Georgia election outcome and seek revenge on Republican officials who ignored his baseless fraud charges may affect a few pivotal 2022 races. His efforts may also encourage extremism and restrictions on minority and other voting rights similar to ones the Georgia legislature enacted this year.
Veteran DoJ officials and prosecutors say the criminal inquiry launched by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, into Trump’s call to Raffensperger and other efforts Trump made to overturn the Georgia results, seems well grounded, with ample public evidence. But they said it will probably take some time before Willis decides whether to bring charges.
Willis has said prosecutors are scrutinizing “potential violations of Georgia law prohibiting the solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election’s administration”.
The Georgia investigation’s merits were bolstered in late September by the release of a well-documented 107-page study from the Brookings Institution detailing Trump’s high-pressure drive to block Biden’s win in the state. The report concluded that Trump faced “substantial risk of possible state charges predicated on multiple crimes”.
Boasting extensive documentation from the public record, the report notes that Trump’s broad effort to nullify the outcome in Georgia included personal contacts with the governor, the state attorney general and the secretary of state’s chief investigator.
“Trump engaged in a pattern of repeated personal communications aimed at altering the vote count and making himself the winner in Georgia,” Donald Ayer, one of several authors of the Brookings report and a former deputy attorney general in the George HW Bush administration, said in an interview.
“He did so in the absence of any even arguable evidence of voting or counting irregularities. Unless there are other presently unknown facts that would explain it, this conduct appears to satisfy the requirements of a number of Georgia criminal statutes.”
To further the Georgia inquiry, Willis reportedly has in recent weeks turned to the House select committee looking into the 6 January attack on the Capitol to share documents and information that could assist her work.
Willis’s outreach to the congressional committee doesn’t surprise some expert observers.
“Her resources to address local crime are already taxed and any investigative steps taken on Capitol Hill means her likely marathon of a case against the former president may be a little closer to the finish line,” Michael J Moore, a former Georgia prosecutor and Democrat, said in an interview.
The district attorney’s progress was underscored by Raffensperger telling the Daily Beast in August that Fulton county investigators had “asked us for documents, they’ve talked to some of our folks, and we’ll cooperate fully”.
According to the news outlet, at least four people in Raffensperger’s office have been interviewed, including attorney Ryan Germany and the chief operating officer, Gabriel Sterling.
On another legal front, the FBI has begun interviews in recent weeks with several Georgia election officials about death threats and other dangerous warnings they received in the months after the election from Trump backers suggesting falsely that Georgia officials were involved in election rigging.
For instance, Richard Barron, who heads the Fulton county board of elections, told the Guardian he was interviewed by two FBI agents in early September and informed them about two death threats he received, including one in the summer “full of white supremacist language” which warned he would be “served lead”.
“I hope the FBI makes some arrests,” Barron added. “People need to be held accountable for making threats against public officials.” Barron noted that threats against him and his majority Black staff rocketed after the election, when Democrats also won two Senate seats in the historically red-leaning state. Threats against Barron escalated further after Trump singled him out by name at a rally, he said.
Former justice department prosecutors say that the taskforce looking into these threats has to be aggressive. “Absent rigorous law enforcement, responsible citizens will shy away from seeking these types of important public jobs, especially if they feel their families will be under threat,” said Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of the fraud section at DoJ.
But even with these inquiries heating up, Trump has continued to spread his false claims about the election results, as he did at a campaign-style rally in Perry, Georgia, on 25 September, where a few of his favored Georgia candidates spoke –including Representative Jody Hice, who is hoping to defeat Raffensperger in a primary contest.
Trump’s drive to retaliate against Republican politicians who defied his efforts to overturn Biden’s Georgia win has dismayed some veteran party operatives who see them as counterproductive.
“I think the Trump presence in Georgia has not been good for the GOP’s politics the last two years,” said Republican lobbyist Ed Rogers, who hails from Alabama. “Politics is about addition, and vengeance is not consistent with addition.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/05/donald-trump-criminal-investigations-georgia-election-interference
Update about the October 4th outage
https://engineering.fb.com/2021/10/04/networking-traffic/outage/
By Santosh Janardhan
To all the people and businesses around the world who depend on us, we are sorry for the inconvenience caused by today’s outage across our platforms. We’ve been working as hard as we can to restore access, and our systems are now back up and running. The underlying cause of this outage also impacted many of the internal tools and systems we use in our day-to-day operations, complicating our attempts to quickly diagnose and resolve the problem.
Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers caused issues that interrupted this communication. This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt.
Our services are now back online and we’re actively working to fully return them to regular operations. We want to make clear at this time we believe the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change. We also have no evidence that user data was compromised as a result of this downtime.
People and businesses around the world rely on us everyday to stay connected. We understand the impact outages like these have on people’s lives, and our responsibility to keep people informed about disruptions to our services. We apologize to all those affected, and we’re working to understand more about what happened today so we can continue to make our infrastructure more resilient.
Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded to two U.S.-based scientists ‘for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch’
By Carolyn Y. Johnson
Today at 5:45 a.m. EDT
The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to two U.S. scientists whose fundamental work revealed the basic biology that underlies the sensations of temperature and touch.
David Julius at the University of California at San Francisco and Ardem Patapoutian at Scripps Research share the award.
“Our ability to sense heat, cold and touch is essential for survival and underpins our interaction with the world around us. In our daily lives we take these sensations for granted, but how are nerve impulses initiated so that temperature and pressure can be perceived?” the Nobel Assembly wrote in announcing the award.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/10/04/nobel-prize-medicine-julius-patapoutian/
World news ·4 hours ago Pandora Papers leak allegedly reveals hidden wealth worldwide, including heads of state
A report on nearly 12 million leaked documents published on Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which involved 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries, is being dubbed the Pandora Papers.
The files allegedly expose the secret financial affairs of a range of global figures, including 35 current and former world leaders, and more than 330 politicians and public officials in 91 countries and territories, according to the ICIJ.
THREAD
https://twitter.com/i/events/1444821520371486724
Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla NEW: The Facebook whistleblower who’s been leaking to @WSJ emerged last night.
She’s filed 8 complaints with SEC.
Has given evidence to 5 state attorney generals.
Is set to testify to UK parliament.
And says ‘Facebook should declare moral bankruptcy’
VIDEO
NEW: The Facebook whistleblower who’s been leaking to @WSJ emerged last night.
— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) October 4, 2021
She’s filed 8 complaints with SEC.
Has given evidence to 5 state attorney generals.
Is set to testify to UK parliament.
And says ‘Facebook should declare moral bankruptcy’
pic.twitter.com/Y6It0qABkC
NEW: The Facebook whistleblower who’s been leaking to @WSJ emerged last night.
— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) October 4, 2021
She’s filed 8 complaints with SEC.
Has given evidence to 5 state attorney generals.
Is set to testify to UK parliament.
And says ‘Facebook should declare moral bankruptcy’
pic.twitter.com/Y6It0qABkC
Is plastic sustainable? The answer may surprise you…
Because plastic is often extremely ‘resource efficient’, it can mean it uses less energy and resources to do the same job as other materials. This can help us lower greenhouse gas emissions…
We just need to ensure we collect, reuse and recycle our plastic, to ensure it never ends up in the environment!
Former Special Forces soldier and onetime congressional candidate arrested in Capitol riot case
By Derek Hawkins
Yesterday at 2:55 p.m. EDT
Former Special Forces soldier and onetime congressional candidate arrested in Capitol riot case https://t.co/rGhfYoC8La
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 3, 2021
Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla First interview with @wsj ’s Facebook whistleblower tonight on @60Minutes tonight
A BIG deal. The total failure to hold Facebook to account after Cambridge Analytica is coming home to roost.
How many more insurrections have to happen before we do?
VIDEO
🚨First interview with @wsj’s Facebook whistleblower tonight on @60Minutes tonight🚨
— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) October 3, 2021
A BIG deal. The total failure to hold Facebook to account after Cambridge Analytica is coming home to roost.
How many more insurrections have to happen before we do?
pic.twitter.com/Di1WtkHL1A
🚨First interview with @wsj’s Facebook whistleblower tonight on @60Minutes tonight🚨
— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) October 3, 2021
A BIG deal. The total failure to hold Facebook to account after Cambridge Analytica is coming home to roost.
How many more insurrections have to happen before we do?
pic.twitter.com/Di1WtkHL1A
the facebook files - A Wall Street Journal investigation
Facebook Inc. knows, in acute detail, that its platforms are riddled with flaws that cause harm, often in ways only the company fully understands. That is the central finding of a Wall Street Journal series, based on a review of internal Facebook documents, including research reports, online employee discussions and drafts of presentations to senior management.
Time and again, the documents show, Facebook’s researchers have identified the platform’s ill effects. Time and again, despite congressional hearings, its own pledges and numerous media exposés, the company didn’t fix them. The documents offer perhaps the clearest picture thus far of how broadly Facebook’s problems are known inside the company, up to the chief executive himself.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039
Whistle-Blower to Accuse Facebook of Contributing to Jan. 6 Riot, Memo Says
In an internal memo, Facebook defended itself and said that social media was not a primary cause of polarization.
By Mike Isaac
Oct. 2, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/02/technology/whistle-blower-facebook-memo.html
SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook, which has been under fire from a former employee who has revealed that the social network knew of many of the harms it was causing, was bracing for new accusations over the weekend from the whistle-blower and said in a memo that it was preparing to mount a vigorous defense.
The whistle-blower, whose identity has not been publicly disclosed, planned to accuse the company of relaxing its security safeguards for the 2020 election too soon after Election Day, which then led it to be used in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, according to the internal memo obtained by The New York Times. The whistle-blower planned to discuss the allegations on “60 Minutes” on Sunday, the memo said, and was also set to say that Facebook had contributed to political polarization in the United States.
The 1,500-word memo, written by Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of policy and global affairs, was sent on Friday to employees to pre-empt the whistle-blower’s interview. Mr. Clegg pushed back strongly on what he said were the coming accusations, calling them “misleading.” “60 Minutes” published a teaser of the interview in advance of its segment on Sunday.
“Social media has had a big impact on society in recent years, and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out,” he wrote. “But what evidence there is simply does not support the idea that Facebook, or social media more generally, is the primary cause of polarization.”
Facebook has been in an uproar for weeks because of the whistle-blower, who has shared thousands of pages of company documents with lawmakers and The Wall Street Journal. The Journal has published a series of articles based on the documents, which show that Facebook knew how its apps and services could cause harm, including worsening body image issues among teenage girls using Instagram.
Facebook has since scrambled to contain the fallout, as lawmakers, regulators and the public have said the company needs to account for the revelations. On Monday, Facebook paused the development of an Instagram service for children ages 13 and under. Its global head of safety, Antigone Davis, also testified on Thursday as irate lawmakers questioned her about the effects of Facebook and Instagram on young users.
A Facebook spokesman declined to comment. A spokesman for “60 Minutes” did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Inside Facebook, executives including Mr. Clegg and the “Strategic Response” teams have called a series of emergency meetings to try to extinguish some of the outrage. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer, have been briefed on the responses and have approved them, but have remained behind the scenes to distance themselves from the negative press, people with knowledge of the company have said.
The firestorm is far from over. Facebook anticipated more allegations during the whistle-blower’s “60 Minutes” interview, according to the memo. The whistle-blower, who plans to reveal her identity during the interview, was set to say that Facebook had turned off some of its safety measures around the election — such as limits on live video — too soon after Election Day, the memo said. That allowed for misinformation to flood the platform and for groups to congregate online and plan the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol building.
Mr. Clegg said that was an inaccurate view and cited many of the safeguards and security mechanisms that Facebook had built over the past five years. He said the company had removed millions of groups such as the Proud Boys and others related to causes like the conspiracy theory QAnon and #StopTheSteal election fraud claims.
The whistle-blower was also set to claim that many of Facebook’s problems stemmed from changes in the News Feed in 2018, the memo said. That was when the social network tweaked its algorithm to emphasize what it called Meaningful Social Interactions, or MSI, which prioritized posts from users’ friends and family and de-emphasized posts from publishers and brands.
The goal was to make sure that Facebook’s products were “not just fun, but are good for people,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in an interview about the change at the time.
But according to Friday’s memo, the whistle-blower would say that the change contributed to even more polarization among Facebook’s users. The whistle-blower was also set to say that Facebook then reaped record profits as its users flocked to the divisive content, the memo said.
Mr. Clegg warned that the period ahead could be difficult for employees who might face questions from friends and family about Facebook’s role in the world. But he said that societal problems and political polarization have long predated the company and the advent of social networks in general.
“The simple fact remains that changes to algorithmic ranking systems on one social media platform cannot explain wider societal polarization,” he wrote. “Indeed, polarizing content and misinformation are also present on platforms that have no algorithmic ranking whatsoever, including private messaging apps like iMessage and WhatsApp.”
Mr. Clegg, who is scheduled to appear on the CNN program “Reliable Sources” on Sunday morning, also tried to relay an upbeat note to employees.
“We will continue to face scrutiny — some of it fair and some of it unfair,” he said in the memo. “But we should also continue to hold our heads up high.”
Here is Mr. Clegg’s memo in full:
OUR POSITION ON POLARIZATION AND ELECTIONS
You will have seen the series of articles about us published in the Wall Street Journal in recent days, and the public interest it has provoked. This Sunday night, the ex-employee who leaked internal company material to the Journal will appear in a segment on 60 Minutes on CBS. We understand the piece is likely to assert that we contribute to polarization in the United States, and suggest that the extraordinary steps we took for the 2020 elections were relaxed too soon and contributed to the horrific events of January 6th in the Capitol.
I know some of you – especially those of you in the US – are going to get questions from friends and family about these things so I wanted to take a moment as we head into the weekend to provide what I hope is some useful context on our work in these crucial areas.
Facebook and Polarization
People are understandably anxious about the divisions in society and looking for answers and ways to fix the problems. Social media has had a big impact on society in recent years, and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out. So it’s natural for people to ask whether it is part of the problem. But the idea that Facebook is the chief cause of polarization isn’t supported by the facts – as Chris and Pratiti set out in their note on the issue earlier this year.
The rise of polarization has been the subject of swathes of serious academic research in recent years. In truth, there isn’t a great deal of consensus. But what evidence there is simply does not support the idea that Facebook, or social media more generally, is the primary cause of polarization.
The increase in political polarization in the US pre-dates social media by several decades. If it were true that Facebook is the chief cause of polarization, we would expect to see it going up wherever Facebook is popular. It isn’t. In fact, polarization has gone down in a number of countries with high social media use at the same time that it has risen in the US.
Specifically, we expect the reporting to suggest that a change to Facebook’s News Feed ranking algorithm was responsible for elevating polarizing content on the platform. In January 2018, we made ranking changes to promote Meaningful Social Interactions (MSI) – so that you would see more content from friends, family and groups you are part of in your News Feed. This change was heavily driven by internal and external research that showed that meaningful engagement with friends and family on our platform was better for people’s wellbeing, and we further refined and improved it over time as we do with all ranking metrics. Of course, everyone has a rogue uncle or an old school classmate who holds strong or extreme views we disagree with – that’s life – and the change meant you are more likely to come across their posts too. Even so, we’ve developed industry-leading tools to remove hateful content and reduce the distribution of problematic content. As a result, the prevalence of hate speech on our platform is now down to about 0.05%.
But the simple fact remains that changes to algorithmic ranking systems on one social media platform cannot explain wider societal polarization. Indeed, polarizing content and misinformation are also present on platforms that have no algorithmic ranking whatsoever, including private messaging apps like iMessage and WhatsApp.
Elections and Democracy
There’s perhaps no other topic that we’ve been more vocal about as a company than on our work to dramatically change the way we approach elections. Starting in 2017, we began building new defenses, bringing in new expertise, and strengthening our policies to prevent interference. Today, we have more than 40,000 people across the company working on safety and security.
Since 2017, we have disrupted and removed more than 150 covert influence operations, including ahead of major democratic elections. In 2020 alone, we removed more than 5 billion fake accounts — identifying almost all of them before anyone flagged them to us. And, from March to Election Day, we removed more than 265,000 pieces of Facebook and Instagram content in the US for violating our voter interference policies.
Given the extraordinary circumstances of holding a contentious election in a pandemic, we implemented so called “break glass” measures – and spoke publicly about them – before and after Election Day to respond to specific and unusual signals we were seeing on our platform and to keep potentially violating content from spreading before our content reviewers could assess it against our policies.
These measures were not without trade-offs – they’re blunt instruments designed to deal with specific crisis scenarios. It’s like shutting down an entire town’s roads and highways in response to a temporary threat that may be lurking somewhere in a particular neighborhood. In implementing them, we know we impacted significant amounts of content that did not violate our rules to prioritize people’s safety during a period of extreme uncertainty. For example, we limited the distribution of live videos that our systems predicted may relate to the election. That was an extreme step that helped prevent potentially violating content from going viral, but it also impacted a lot of entirely normal and reasonable content, including some that had nothing to do with the election. We wouldn’t take this kind of crude, catch-all measure in normal circumstances, but these weren’t normal circumstances.
We only rolled back these emergency measures – based on careful data-driven analysis – when we saw a return to more normal conditions. We left some of them on for a longer period of time through February this year and others, like not recommending civic, political or new Groups, we have decided to retain permanently.
Fighting Hate Groups and other Dangerous Organizations
I want to be absolutely clear: we work to limit, not expand hate speech, and we have clear policies prohibiting content that incites violence. We do not profit from polarization, in fact, just the opposite. We do not allow dangerous organizations, including militarized social movements or violence-inducing conspiracy networks, to organize on our platforms. And we remove content that praises or supports hate groups, terrorist organizations and criminal groups.
We’ve been more aggressive than any other internet company in combating harmful content, including content that sought to delegitimize the election. But our work to crack down on these hate groups was years in the making. We took down tens of thousands of QAnon pages, groups and accounts from our apps, removed the original #StopTheSteal Group, and removed references to Stop the Steal in the run up to the inauguration. In 2020 alone, we removed more than 30 million pieces of content violating our policies regarding terrorism and more than 19 million pieces of content violating our policies around organized hate in 2020. We designated the Proud Boys as a hate organization in 2018 and we continue to remove praise, support, and representation of them. Between August last year and January 12 this year, we identified nearly 900 militia organizations under our Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy and removed thousands of Pages, groups, events, Facebook profiles and Instagram accounts associated with these groups.
This work will never be complete. There will always be new threats and new problems to address, in the US and around the world. That’s why we remain vigilant and alert – and will always have to.
That is also why the suggestion that is sometimes made that the violent insurrection on January 6 would not have occurred if it was not for social media is so misleading. To be clear, the responsibility for those events rests squarely with the perpetrators of the violence, and those in politics and elsewhere who actively encouraged them. Mature democracies in which social media use is widespread hold elections all the time – for instance Germany’s election last week – without the disfiguring presence of violence. We actively share with Law Enforcement material that we can find on our services related to these traumatic events. But reducing the complex reasons for polarization in America – or the insurrection specifically – to a technological explanation is woefully simplistic.
We will continue to face scrutiny – some of it fair and some of it unfair. We’ll continue to be asked difficult questions. And many people will continue to be skeptical of our motives. That’s what comes with being part of a company that has a significant impact in the world. We need to be humble enough to accept criticism when it is fair, and to make changes where they are justified. We aren’t perfect and we don’t have all the answers. That’s why we do the sort of research that has been the subject of these stories in the first place. And we’ll keep looking for ways to respond to the feedback we hear from our users, including testing ways to make sure political content doesn’t take over their News Feeds.
But we should also continue to hold our heads up high. You and your teams do incredible work. Our tools and products have a hugely positive impact on the world and in people’s lives. And you have every reason to be proud of that work.
Mike Isaac is a technology correspondent and the author of Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, a NYT best-selling book on the dramatic rise and fall of the ride-hailing company. He regularly covers Facebook and Silicon Valley, and is based in The Times's San Francisco bureau. @MikeIsaac • Facebook
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 3, 2021, Section A, Page 27 of the New York edition with the headline: Whistle-Blower to Accuse Facebook of Contributing to Capitol Riot, Memo Says. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/02/technology/whistle-blower-facebook-memo.html
Jim Acosta @Acosta This is where the last one hundred thousand Americans who died of COVID took their last breaths… Overwhelmingly in the South… Overwhelmingly in red states… Overwhelmingly in places where Fox News occupies a lot of screen time:
VIDEO
This is where the last one hundred thousand Americans who died of COVID took their last breaths… Overwhelmingly in the South… Overwhelmingly in red states… Overwhelmingly in places where Fox News occupies a lot of screen time: pic.twitter.com/m5XMzJgw9F
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) October 2, 2021
This is where the last one hundred thousand Americans who died of COVID took their last breaths… Overwhelmingly in the South… Overwhelmingly in red states… Overwhelmingly in places where Fox News occupies a lot of screen time: pic.twitter.com/m5XMzJgw9F
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) October 2, 2021
New York Post @nypost ·17h US kills senior al-Qaeda leader in Syria drone strike
https://trib.al/vqUj7FT
1:04 AM · Oct 1, 2021·SocialFlow
THREAD
US kills senior al-Qaeda leader in Syria drone strike https://t.co/wlPDbGCznm pic.twitter.com/FHqlVbgRit
— New York Post (@nypost) October 1, 2021
Sebastian Murdock @SebastianMurdoc SCOOP: A Texas judge has ruled default judgements against Alex Jones and Infowars in two separate Sandy Hook cases. He will now be liable for all damages and a jury will now be convened to determine how much he will owe the plaintiffs.
Alex Jones Just Lost 2 Sandy Hook Cases
A judge issued default judgments — a rarity in the legal world — against Jones and Infowars after the conspiracy theorist failed to produce discovery records.
By Sebastian Murdock, HuffPost US
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/alex-jones-lost-two-sandy-hook-cases_us_61561020e4b008640eb1d56a?ri18n=true
THREAD
SCOOP: A Texas judge has ruled default judgements against Alex Jones and Infowars in two separate Sandy Hook cases. He will now be liable for all damages and a jury will now be convened to determine how much he will owe the plaintiffs. https://t.co/9TOSYkbYhZ
— Sebastian Murdock (@SebastianMurdoc) September 30, 2021
World's longest under-sea power cables switched on - and they're bringing hydropower from Norway
It's estimated that the interconnector will lower the UK's carbon emissions by 23 million tonnes between now and 2030 as it reduces the need to resort to fossil fuel power stations when the output drops from wind and solar farms.
Thomas Moore Science correspondent @SkyNewsThomas
Friday 1 October 2021 13:05, UK
https://news.sky.com/story/worlds-longest-under-sea-power-cables-switched-on-and-theyre-bringing-hydropower-from-norway-12422294
The world's longest under-sea power cables, stretching from Norway to Northumberland, should reduce the UK's carbon emissions as well as customer bills, according to experts.
The 450-mile-long North Sea Link connects the UK to Norway's power grid, which is almost entirely sourced from clean hydro-electricity.
From today, two parallel cables will carry 700 megawatts - increasing to 1,400 megawatts over the next three months. When they reach full capacity they'll provide enough electricity to power 1.4 million UK households.
Sky News was given exclusive access to the site where the interconnector starts its journey at Norway's largest hydropower station in Kvilldal, a tiny village north of Stavanger.
In a helicopter we flew above the route of the high-voltage cables as they snake through valleys, pass through mountains and plunge up to 600 metres beneath lakes and fjords, out towards the open sea.
They come ashore in the UK near Blyth.
The joint venture between the UK's National Grid and Norway's power operator Statnett took six years and £1.4bn to build.
Nicola Medalova, the director of interconnectors for the National Grid, said it was a major milestone in the UK's move towards net-zero.
"This cable, like other interconnectors, will allow us to access different types of energy from all over Europe.
"There is renewable energy that we can import to the UK to reduce our carbon footprint and reduce the cost of energy for UK customers."
It's estimated that the interconnector will lower the UK's carbon emissions by 23 million tonnes between now and 2030 as it reduces the need to resort to fossil fuel power stations when the output drops from wind and solar farms.
In effect Norway will act as an enormous green stand-by battery for Britain.
The North Sea Link is the UK's fifth interconnector. Other cables are already plugged into electricity networks in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Another is being built to Denmark.
They allow electricity to be bought at the lowest price across a vast area.
That flexibility will be increasingly important as Europe moves away from fossil fuel.
Last year a quarter of the UK's electricity came from wind power.
But an unusually calm summer led to a sharp drop in the amount being generated, just as the price of gas on the global market spiked.
"We have been vulnerable to gas prices," said Ms Medalova.
"But the more interconnectors we have, the more we can diversify our energy portfolio.
"We forecast that 90% of the energy coming into the UK from our interconnectors will be renewable by 2030.
"That makes us much less dependent on gas markets."
Norway is one of the world's largest producers of oil and gas. But around 93% of its domestic power, including home heating, is generated from water.
Its steep valleys and abundant rainfall are perfect for hydro-electricity. Water collected in huge reservoirs is fed through pipes that plunge downhill, turning powerful turbines.
But Thor Anders, the director of the Norwegian side of the project, said occasional dry years reduce the amount of water available for electricity generation.
"The match between hydropower and wind power is intriguing," he told Sky News.
"When the UK has a challenge with too little wind, we can support you with hydropower.
"And when you have excess wind, we can import it and we don't have to use up the water in our reservoirs. We can save it.
"It's a match that's good already and it's going to get even better as renewables develop in future."
https://news.sky.com/story/worlds-longest-under-sea-power-cables-switched-on-and-theyre-bringing-hydropower-from-norway-12422294
Lewandowski cast out of Trump operation after allegation of unwanted sexual advances The former Trump campaign manager lost his role running Trump's super PAC after POLITICO reported allegations a GOP donor made against him.
The 48-year-old Corey Lewandowski, who is married, has long been by Trump’s side — though it is not the first time he has been cast out by Trump.
By ALEX ISENSTADT
09/29/2021 09:59 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/29/lewandowski-fired-sexual-misconduct-allegations-514774
Corey Lewandowski, one of Donald Trump’s longest-serving, highest-profile advisers, has been exiled from the former president’s orbit following allegations, reported earlier Wednesday by POLITICO, that he made unwanted sexual advances toward a major Trump donor.
Lewandowski's roles advising Trump included overseeing the principal pro-Trump super PAC, Make America Great Again Action. But Taylor Budowich, a Trump spokesperson, announced on Twitter that Lewandowski was being removed from that job.
“Corey Lewandowski will be going on to other endeavors and we very much want to thank him for his service. He will no longer be associated with Trump World,” Budowich wrote.Corey Lewandowski, one of Donald Trump’s longest-serving, highest-profile advisers, has been exiled from the former president’s orbit following allegations, reported earlier Wednesday by POLITICO, that he made unwanted sexual advances toward a major Trump donor.
Lewandowski's roles advising Trump included overseeing the principal pro-Trump super PAC, Make America Great Again Action. But Taylor Budowich, a Trump spokesperson, announced on Twitter that Lewandowski was being removed from that job.
Earlier in the day, POLITICO detailed allegations that Lewandowski had pursued a female donor, Trashelle Odom, during a Sunday evening charity event in Las Vegas. Odom accused Lewandowski of touching her repeatedly, including on her leg and buttocks, talking about his genitalia and sexual performance, and following her throughout the hotel.
Odom also described being afraid and intimidated as Lewandowski allegedly talked about past violent behavior and boasted about his control over Trump's political activities.
The 48-year-old Lewandowski, who is married, has long been by Trump’s side — though it is not the first time he has been cast out by Trump. He served as Trump’s first campaign manager during the 2016 election but was fired ahead of the 2016 Republican convention.
He made a comeback during Trump's White House years, emerging as a key outside adviser and surrogate. After Trump lost reelection, he personally appointed Lewandowski to oversee the Make America Great Again Action super PAC.
Lewandowski's reentry into Trump's orbit following the 2016 firing came in spite of a history of unwanted touching. In late 2017, singer Joy Villa filed a police report alleging the former Trump campaign manager slapped her buttocks during a holiday party at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. Lewandowski was also charged with battery in 2016 after yanking the arm of a reporter, Michelle Fields, at a Trump event. The charges were later dropped, but Lewandowski claimed the incident never happened before video emerged confirming that it did.
In addition to Trump, Lewandowski has advised other Republican politicians around the country this year, including South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who was also in attendance at the Las Vegas event. As of late Wednesday night, Noem's operation had not yet said whether Lewandowski would remain on her team.
Trashelle Odom and her husband, Idaho construction executive John Odom, were among the donors to Make America Great Again Action this year. Prior to the weekend’s incident, the couple had given the Lewandowski-run super PAC $100,000. Those close to the Odoms said they planned to ask for their money to be refunded unless Lewandowski stepped aside from the organization.
Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and staunch Trump supporter, is to take Lewandowski’s place in steering the super PAC.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/29/lewandowski-fired-sexual-misconduct-allegations-514774
January 6th Committee @January6thCmte NEW: The Select Committee has issued a round of subpoenas to 11 individuals tied to the events and rallies leading up to the Jan 6th insurrection, including the Jan 6th rally at the Ellipse that immediately preceded the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol.
SELECT COMMITTEE SUBPOENAS ORGANIZERS OF RALLIES AND EVENTS PRECEDING JANUARY 6TH INSURRECTION
Sep 29, 2021
https://january6th.house.gov/news/press-releases/select-committee-subpoenas-organizers-rallies-and-events-preceding-january-6th
11:16 PM · Sep 29, 2021·Twitter Web App
THREAD
NEW: The Select Committee has issued a round of subpoenas to 11 individuals tied to the events and rallies leading up to the Jan 6th insurrection, including the Jan 6th rally at the Ellipse that immediately preceded the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. https://t.co/iQ8ixH4HAL
— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) September 29, 2021
Merck says experimental pill cuts worst effects of COVID-19
By MATTHEW PERRONE
59 minutes ago
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-science-business-health-pandemics-a9a2245fdcee324f6bbd776a0fffcc60?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP&utm_campaign=SocialFlow
WASHINGTON (AP) — Merck & Co. said Friday that its experimental COVID-19 pill reduced hospitalizations and deaths by half in people recently infected with the coronavirus and that it would soon ask health officials in the U.S. and around the world to authorize its use.
If cleared, Merck’s drug would be the first pill shown to treat COVID-19, a potentially major advance in efforts to fight the pandemic. All COVID-19 therapies now authorized in the U.S. require an IV or injection.
Merck and its partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics said early results showed patients who received the drug, called molnupiravir, within five days of COVID-19 symptoms had about half the rate of hospitalization and death as patients who received a dummy pill. The study tracked 775 adults with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 who were considered higher risk for severe disease due to health problems such as obesity, diabetes or heart disease.
Among patients taking molnupiravir, 7.3% were either hospitalized or died at the end of 30 days, compared with 14.1% of those getting the dummy pill. There were no deaths in the drug group after that time period compared with eight deaths in the placebo group, according to Merck. The results were released by the company and have not been peer reviewed. Merck said it plans to present them at a future medical meeting.
An independent group of medical experts monitoring the trial recommended stopping it early because the interim results were so strong. Company executives said they are in discussions with the Food and Drug Administration and plan submit the data for review in coming days.
“It exceeded what I thought the drug might be able to do in this clinical trial,” said Dr. Dean Li, vice president of Merck research. “When you see a 50% reduction in hospitalization or death that’s a substantial clinical impact.”
Side effects were reported by both groups in the Merck trial, but they were slightly more common among the group that received a dummy pill. The company did not specify the problems.
Earlier study results showed the drug did not benefit patients who were already hospitalized with severe disease.
The U.S. has approved one antiviral drug, remdesivir, specifically for COVID-19, and allowed emergency use of three antibody therapies that help the immune system fight the virus. But all the drugs have to given by IV or injection at hospitals or medical clinics, and supplies have been stretched by the latest surge of the delta variant.
Health experts including the top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci have long called for a convenient pill that patients could take when COVID-19 symptoms first appear, much the way the decades-old flu medication Tamiflu helps fight influenza. Such medications are seen as key to controlling future waves of infection and reducing the impact of the pandemic.
Merck’s pill works by interfering with an enzyme the coronavirus uses to copy its genetic code and reproduce itself. It has shown similar activity against other viruses.
The U.S. government has committed to purchase 1.7 million doses of the drug if it is authorized by the FDA. Merck has said it can produce 10 million doses by the end of the year and has contracts with governments worldwide. The company has not announced prices.
Several other companies, including Pfizer and Roche, are studying similar drugs that could report results in the coming weeks and months.
Merck had planned to enroll more than 1,500 patients in its late-stage trial before the independent board stopped it early. The results reported Friday included patients enrolled across Latin America, Europe and Africa. Executives estimated about 10% of patients studied were from the U.S.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-science-business-health-pandemics-a9a2245fdcee324f6bbd776a0fffcc60?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP&utm_campaign=SocialFlow
The ocean plastic sink that went away with the rivers
02/07/2021
Recerca
https://www.ub.edu/web/ub/en/menu_eines/noticies/2021/07/003.html
The amount of plastic discharged by rivers to our oceans and seas has been overestimated by two to three orders of magnitude. This would explain why a large volume of microplastics seems to disappear in a mysterious ocean sink. Erroneous calculations on the fluxes and overall mass of plastics discharged into the ocean result from a lack of critical vision, and of common methodologies and guidelines in international research in this area, according to an article published in the journal Science, which features Professor Miquel Canals, from the Department of Earth and Ocean Dynamics, Faculty of Earth Sciences of UB, as one of the co-authors.
The paper invites the international scientific community to unify criteria and overcome methodological biases in the studies about plastic pollution -specifically microplastics- of marine ecosystems. Other authors of the article are Lisa Weiss, Wolfgang Ludwig, Serge Heussner, Mel Constant and Philippe Kerhervé, from Centre of Education and Research on Mediterranean Environments (CEFREM) of the University of Perpignan; Jean-François Ghiglione, from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), and Claude Estournel, from the University Toulouse III.
The mysterious ocean plastic sink
Rivers are the main source for plastic discharge in the ocean. According to current assessments, the floating stock of microplastics at the ocean surface -from tens to hundreds of metric tons per year- would be just a small part of the millions of metric tons that are discharged by rivers. This unequal balance has led to the hypothesis of the existence of a large ocean plastic sink where the necessary amount of microplastics to make the budget fit would accumulate, so that the amount of those at the ocean surface plus those in the missing sink would equal those presumably discharged by rivers into the sea.
“The need for a sink where microplastics would massively end disappears if we consider that a key factor in the equation -i.e., the river contributions- is overestimated because of cumulative errors in the methodology and approach commonly applied by most research teams”, notes Professor Miquel Canals, head of the Consolidated Research Group on Marine Geosciences of the UB.
“Therefore, we can now firmly state that the missing ocean sink is no more needed as it has been taken away by the rivers, as shown after our critical review of methodologies, assumptions and calculations in previously published studies”, notes Canals.
The new study identifies the main methodological mistakes leading to erroneous assessments when quantifying the fluxes and overall mass of microplastics discharged by rivers into the sea at a global scale. In particular, mistakes result from the difficulty to obtain robust datasets for mass conversion after numbers of microplastics; from the integration of non-comparable scientific data that were obtained by means of different sampling techniques; and from assessments based on the relation between microplastic fluxes and the MPW index (mismanaged plastic waste). Regarding the latter, estimations become more consistent when adding the population density and the drainage intensity to the equation.
Thus, the time cycle of microplastics in the oceans known to date is distorted by erroneous calculations and overestimated values of the flux of plastics discharge by rivers into the oceans. Correcting methodological biases in the scientific literature "would involve changing the concept of residence time of microplastics on the ocean surface -so far considered ultrafast- for a more realistic and logical view that would involve periods of a few years", states Canals.
A fight without frontiers to preserve the planet’s oceans
The North Atlantic is the marine area with the most different estimations, as stated in the study. In this area, which receives less than 6% of the global river discharge, the value of the flux of river microplastics was considered, so far, to be low when compared to those from Asia and Africa. However, if the density of population and the intensity of drainage are considered, we get higher values that adjust much better to accumulations observed at the surface of this ocean.
Marine waste does not care about frontiers and has reached the most remote areas of our oceans and seas. To fight the pollution that results from microplastics, “we need to act on the sources where plastic waste is generated. That is, we need to act where we human beings are living, and change consumption habits of our waste society, and do it at a large scale, in extensive territories, worldwide”, affirms Canals.
“Our study shows that marine microplastic pollution does not come only from Asian and African countries -with poor or zero waste management- as one might think, but also from countries with well-established waste management systems. Would the discharge of microplastics from rivers to the sea stop suddenly, the amount of floating particles and their harmful effects on marine ecosystems will still persist during many years at least”.
The study on the impact of plastics on the marine environment is a recent field of scientific research that has generated a high number of scientific publications in the last few years. For a while now, several research teams have started thinking on the strengths and weaknesses of the work conducted so far, including sampling and analytical protocols, the consistency of the results obtained to date and the future of marine litter research. The published article in Science is a call to the scientific community to overcome inertia from the past, correct mistakes and work on common protocols and guidelines for the progress of knowledge and the provision of sound information facilitating decision-making processes for the urgent environmental protection of our seas and oceans.
Reference article:
Weiss, L.; Ludwig, W.; Heussner, S.; Canals, M.; Ghiglione, J.F.; Estournel, C.; Constant, M.; Kerhervé, P. “The missing ocean plastic sink: Gone with the rivers”. Science, July 2021. Doi:10.1126/science.abe0290
https://www.ub.edu/web/ub/en/menu_eines/noticies/2021/07/003.html
Trump Server Mystery Produces Fresh Conflict
A recent indictment suggested that researchers who found strange internet links between a Russian bank and the Trump Organization did not really believe their own work. They are pushing back.
By Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman
Sept. 30, 2021 Updated 1:34 p.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/us/politics/trump-alfa-bank-indictment.html
WASHINGTON — The charge was narrow: John H. Durham, the special counsel appointed by the Trump administration to scour the Russia investigation, indicted a cybersecurity lawyer this month on a single count of lying to the F.B.I.
But Mr. Durham used a 27-page indictment to lay out a far more expansive tale, one in which four computer scientists who were not charged in the case “exploited” their access to internet data to develop an explosive theory about cyberconnections in 2016 between Donald J. Trump’s company and a Kremlin-linked bank — a theory, he insinuated, they did not really believe.
Mr. Durham’s version of events set off reverberations beyond the courtroom. Trump supporters seized on the indictment, saying it shows that suspicions about possible covert communications between Russia’s Alfa Bank and Mr. Trump’s company were a deliberate hoax by supporters of Hillary Clinton and portraying it as evidence that the entire Russia investigation was unwarranted.
Emails obtained by The New York Times and interviews with people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss issues being investigated by federal authorities, provide a fuller and more complex account of how a group of cyberexperts discovered the odd internet data and developed their hypothesis about what could explain it.
At the same time, defense lawyers for the scientists say it is Mr. Durham’s indictment that is misleading. Their clients, they say, believed their hypothesis was a plausible explanation for the odd data they had uncovered — and still do.
The Alfa Bank results “have been validated and are reproducible. The findings of the researchers were true then and remain true today; reports that these findings were innocuous or a hoax are simply wrong,” said Jody Westby and Mark Rasch, lawyers for David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist and one of the researchers whom the indictment discussed but did not name.
Steven A. Tyrrell, a lawyer for Rodney Joffe, an internet entrepreneur and another of the four data experts, said his client had a duty to share the information with the F.B.I. and that the indictment “gratuitously presents an incomplete and misleading picture” of his role.
A spokesman for Mr. Durham declined to comment. It is unclear whether he has finished his investigation into the Alfa Bank issue.
Mr. Durham’s indictment provided evidence that two participants in the matter — Mr. Joffe and Michael Sussmann, the cybersecurity lawyer accused of falsely saying he had no client when he brought the findings of the researchers to the F.B.I. — interacted with the Clinton campaign as they worked to bring their suspicions to journalists and federal agents.
Mr. Durham uncovered law firm billing records showing that Mr. Sussmann, who represented the Democratic National Committee on issues related to Russia’s hacking of its servers, had logged his time on the Alfa Bank matter as work for the Clinton campaign. Mr. Sussmann has denied lying to the F.B.I. about who he was representing in coming forward with the Alfa Bank data, while saying he was representing only Mr. Joffe and not the campaign.
Mr. Durham also found that Mr. Joffe had met with one of Mr. Sussmann’s law firm partners, Marc Elias, who was then the Clinton campaign’s general counsel, and researchers from Fusion GPS, an investigative firm Mr. Elias had commissioned to scrutinize Mr. Trump’s purported ties to Russia. Fusion GPS drafted a paper on Alfa Bank’s ties to the Kremlin that Mr. Sussmann also provided to the F.B.I.
In the heat of the presidential race, Democrats quickly sought to capitalize on the research. On Sept. 15, four days before Mr. Sussmann met with the F.B.I. about the findings, Mr. Elias sent an email to the Clinton campaign manager, Robbie Mook, its communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, and its national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, whose subject line referred to an Alfa Bank article, the indictment said.
Six weeks later, after Slate ran a lengthy article about the Alfa Bank suspicions, the Clinton campaign pounced. Mrs. Clinton’s Twitter feed linked to the article and ran an image stating the suspicions as fact, declaring, “It’s time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia.”
The F.B.I., which had already started its Trump-Russia investigation before it heard about the possible Trump-Alfa connections, quickly dismissed the suspicions, apparently concluding the interactions were probably caused by marketing emails sent by an outside firm using a domain registered to the Trump Organization. The report by the Russia special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, ignored the issue.
The data remains a mystery. A 2018 analysis commissioned by the Senate, made public this month, detailed technical reasons to doubt that marketing emails were the cause. A Senate report last year accepted the F.B.I.’s assessment that it was unlikely to have been a covert communications channel, but also said it had no good explanation for “the unusual activity.”
Whatever caused the odd data, at issue in the wake of the indictment is whether Mr. Joffe and the other three computer scientists considered their own theory dubious and yet cynically went forward anyway, as Mr. Durham suggests, or whether they truly believed the data was alarming and put forward their hypothesis in good faith.
Earlier articles on Alfa Bank, including in Slate and The New Yorker, did not name the researchers, and used pseudonyms like “Max” and “Tea Leaves” for two of them. Mr. Durham’s indictment did not name them, either.
But three of their names have appeared among a list of data experts in a lawsuit brought by Alfa Bank, and Trump supporters have speculated online about their identities. The Times has confirmed them, and their lawyers provided statements defending their actions.
The indictment’s “Originator-1” is April Lorenzen, chief data scientist at the information services firm Zetalytics. Her lawyer, Michael J. Connolly, said she has “dedicated her life to the critical work of thwarting dangerous cyberattacks on our country,” adding: “Any suggestion that she engaged in wrongdoing is unequivocally false.”
The indictment’s “Researcher-1” is another computer scientist at Georgia Tech, Manos Antonakakis. “Researcher-2” is Mr. Dagon. And “Tech Executive-1” is Mr. Joffe, who in 2013 received the F.B.I. Director’s Award for helping crack a cybercrime case, and retired this month from Neustar, another information services company.
In addition, the Alfa Bank suspicions were only half of what the researchers sought to bring to the government’s attention, according to several people familiar with the matter.
Their other set of concerns centered on data suggesting that a YotaPhone — a Russian-made smartphone rarely seen in the United States — had been used from networks serving the White House, Trump Tower and Spectrum Health, a Michigan hospital company whose server had also interacted with the Trump server.
Mr. Sussmann relayed their YotaPhone findings to counterintelligence officials at the C.I.A. in February 2017, the people said. It is not clear whether the government ever investigated them.
The involvement of the researchers traces back to the spring of 2016. Darpa, the Pentagon’s research funding agency, wanted to commission data scientists to develop the use of so-called DNS logs, records of when servers have prepared to communicate with other servers over the internet, as a tool for hacking investigations.
Darpa identified Georgia Tech as a potential recipient of funding and encouraged researchers there to develop examples. Mr. Antonakakis and Mr. Dagon reached out to Mr. Joffe to gain access to Neustar’s repository of DNS logs, people familiar with the matter said, and began sifting them.
Separately, when the news broke in June 2016 that Russia had hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers, Mr. Dagon and Ms. Lorenzen began talking at a conference about whether such data might uncover other election-related hacking.
Ms. Lorenzen eventually noticed an odd pattern: a server called mail1.trump-email.com appeared to be communicating almost exclusively with servers at Alfa Bank and Spectrum Health. She shared her findings with Mr. Dagon, the people said, and they both discussed it with Mr. Joffe.
“Half the time I stop myself and wonder: am I really seeing evidence of espionage on behalf of a presidential candidate?” Mr. Dagon wrote in an email to Mr. Joffe on July 29, after WikiLeaks made public stolen Democratic emails timed to disrupt the party’s convention and Mr. Trump urged Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton.
By early August, the researchers had combined forces and were increasingly focusing on the Alfa Bank data, the people said. Mr. Joffe reached out to his lawyer, Mr. Sussmann, who would take the researchers’ data and hypothesis to the F.B.I. on Sept. 19, 2016.
Defense lawyers contend the indictment presented a skewed portrait of their clients’ thinking by selectively quoting from their emails.
The indictment quotes August emails from Ms. Lorenzen and Mr. Antonakakis worrying that they might not know if someone had faked the DNS data. But people familiar with the matter said the indictment omitted later discussion of reasons to doubt any attempt to spoof the overall pattern could go undetected.
The indictment says Mr. Joffe sent an email on Aug. 21 urging more research about Mr. Trump, which he stated could “give the base of a very useful narrative,” while also expressing a belief that the Trump server at issue was “a red herring” and they should ignore it because it had been used by the mass-marketing company.
The full email provides context: Mr. Trump had claimed he had no dealings in Russia and yet many links appeared to exist, Mr. Joffe noted, citing an article that discussed aspirations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Despite the “red herring” line, the same email also showed that Mr. Joffe nevertheless remained suspicious about Alfa Bank, proposing a deeper hunt in the data “for the anomalies that we believe exist.”
He wrote: “If we can show possible email communication between” any Trump server and an Alfa Bank server “that has occurred in the last few weeks, we have the beginning of a narrative,” adding that such communications with any “Russian or Ukrainian financial institutions would give the base of a very useful narrative.”
Mr. Tyrrell, his lawyer, said that research in the weeks that followed, omitted by the indictment, had yielded evidence that the specific subsidiary server in apparent contact with Alfa Bank had not been used to send bulk marketing emails. That further discussion, he said, changed his client’s mind about whether it was a red herring.
“The quotation of the ‘red herring’ email is deeply misleading,” he said, adding: “The research process is iterative and this is exactly how it should work. Their efforts culminated in the well-supported conclusions that were ultimately delivered to the F.B.I.”
The indictment also quoted from emails in mid-September, when the researchers were discussing a paper on their suspicions that Mr. Sussmann would soon take to the F.B.I. It says Mr. Joffe asked if the paper’s hypothesis would strike security experts as a “plausible explanation.”
The paper’s conclusion was somewhat qualified, an email shows, saying “there were other possible explanations,” but the only “plausible” one was that Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization had taken steps “to obfuscate their communications.”
The indictment suggested Ms. Lorenzen’s reaction to the paper was guarded, describing an email from her as “stating, in part, that it was ‘plausible’ in the ‘narrow scope’ defined by” Mr. Joffe. But the text of her email displays enthusiasm.
“In the narrow scope of what you have defined above, I agree wholeheartedly that it is plausible,” she wrote, adding: “If the white paper intends to say that there are communications between at least Alfa and Trump, which are being intentionally hidden by Alfa and Trump I absolutely believe that is the case,” her email said.
The indictment cited emails by Mr. Antonakakis in August in which he flagged holes and noted they disliked Mr. Trump, and in September in which he approvingly noted that the paper did not get into a technical issue that specialists would raise.
Mr. Antonakakis’ lawyer, Mark E. Schamel, said his client had provided “feedback on an early draft of data that was cause for additional investigation.” And, he said, their hypothesis “to this day, remains a plausible working theory.”
The indictment also suggests Mr. Dagon’s support for the paper’s hypothesis was qualified, describing his email response as “acknowledging that questions remained, but stating, in substance and in part, that the paper should be shared with government officials.”
The text of that email shows Mr. Dagon was forcefully supportive. He proposed editing the paper to declare as “fact” that it was clear “that there are hidden communications between Trump and Alfa Bank,” and said he believed the findings met the probable cause standard to open a criminal investigation.
“Hopefully the intended audience are officials with subpoena powers, who can investigate the purpose” of the apparent Alfa Bank connection, Mr. Dagon wrote.
In the end, Mr. Durham came to investigate them.
Charlie Savage is a Washington-based national security and legal policy correspondent. A recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, he previously worked at The Boston Globe and The Miami Herald. His most recent book is “Power Wars: The Relentless Rise of Presidential Authority and Secrecy.” @charlie_savage • Facebook
Adam Goldman reports on the F.B.I. and national security from Washington, D.C., and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. He is the coauthor of “Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD's Secret Spying Unit and bin Laden's Final Plot Against America.” @adamgoldmanNYT
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/us/politics/trump-alfa-bank-indictment.html
Industrial plastic is spilling into Great Lakes, and no one's regulating it, experts warn
Plastic pollution is becoming a growing problem in the Great Lakes, especially near busy cities and industries
Inayat Singh, Alice Hopton · CBC News · Posted: Sep 27, 2021 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: September 28
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/plastics-waste-great-lakes-water-1.6185621
As the people of Toronto flocked to the Lake Ontario waterfront to swim, paddle and generally escape pandemic isolation, Chelsea Rochman's students at the University of Toronto were throwing plastic bottles with GPS trackers into the water.
The research team's goal is to track trash that ends up in the lake, to figure out where it accumulates in the water and where it's coming from in the first place.
Using information from the tracking bottles, they chose spots to put in Seabins — stationary cleaning machines that suck in water all day and trap any garbage and debris — at marinas along the waterfront. They are emptied daily, and the debris collected in them is examined to ferret out what kinds of trash is getting into the lake.
The waste includes well-known single-use culprits like takeout containers and clear plastic packaging, but they also include something that gets less attention: pre-production pellets, produced by the plastics industry.
"They're the tiny little pellets that are later melted down into plastic and different plastic products," Rochman said.
"So we can trace them back to industry, they have a very distinct look. And then we are now working with industry to try to make sure that they capture them at the source so they don't come down into the lake."
An estimated 10,000 tons of plastic waste are getting into the Great Lakes every year, threatening one of the largest reservoirs of freshwater on the planet that supports nearly 50 million people in Canada and the U.S. A 2021 study on seven fish species in Lake Ontario and Lake Superior found "the highest concentration of microplastics and other anthropogenic microparticles ever reported in bony fish."
While the plastics industry says it's working on the problem through industry-led initiatives, advocates say there's a lack of government regulations to address this kind of pollution.
Industry initiative to clean up plastic
Last year, Rochman's Tagging Trash team collected about 85,000 pieces of microplastics (smaller than 5 millimetres), along with larger pieces of plastic in the Toronto harbour. About 13 per cent of the microplastics they were capturing were pre-production pellets, which can fly off transport vehicles or facilities and end up in the water.
Rochman has taken her findings to industry groups and companies.
"We are now working with industry to try to make sure that they capture them at the source so they don't come down into the lake," she said.
The research program is part of the larger Great Lakes Plastics Cleanup, supported by various government agencies and private organizations. There are now Seabins installed at marinas across the Great Lakes region to help tackle the plastics problem.
The Chemistry Industry Association of Canada represents about 75 plastics companies. Last year, it signed onto Operation Clean Sweep, a global program to prevent plastic materials from industrial operations ending up in lakes and rivers.
"We're working with our members to make sure they're putting in place the leading technology, policies and practices and training of their own staff to ensure that these plastic pellets don't end up in the environment," said Elana Mantagaris, the vice-president of the plastics division at the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada.
"And if there is a spill because sometimes accidents do happen and we need to acknowledge that we have the appropriate processes to clean up those spills again, preventing the pellets from ending up in the environment."
The program starts with an assessment at their members' facilities, Mantagaris said, to pinpoint where plastics might be leaking or falling out. After that, the facilities would be required to bring in measures or equipment to capture that plastic.
For example, Mantagaris said one common spot for plastic pellets to fall out is during transport on trucks or trains, when they are loading their cargo into a facility. Screens can be placed on the rail tracks to catch the pellets spilling out and preventing them from ending up in the environment.
Calls for government intervention
Yannick Beaudoin, the director of innovation at the David Suzuki Foundation in Toronto, says it's time to be acting more seriously on the plastics problem.
"Do we know enough? Yes, we know enough. Things are bad," he said. "And the other part of it is there's no actual excuse for doing this, right?
"When it comes to things like pre-production plastic pellets, we know where it comes from. We know why it happens. And there's no real excuse for it to happen in the first place. "
Beaudoin says that while industry-led initiatives like Operation Clean Sweep do help, they do not solve the whole problem. Government intervention, along with pressure from consumers is necessary to cut down on these plastics and keep them out of the lake.
Figuring out which government agency or law should be applied can be a challenge. The issue crosses jurisdictional boundaries, with the federal government in charge of protecting transboundary waters as well as regulating chemicals and products that are toxic, Beaudoin said. However, it remains unclear if pre-production pellets are covered.
Provincial governments in theory have even more power over environmental protection, but Beaudoin says enforcement related to pre-production pellets is simply not applied.
Environment and Climate Change Canada referred CBC to its actions on achieving zero plastic waste by 2030. That effort is focused on single-use plastic products and "working with provinces and territories to make producers responsible for the plastic waste that their products generate."
The Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks sent CBC a statement after publication of this story. It did not outline regulations specifically targeted at pre-production pellets but pointed to Ontario's efforts to protect the Great Lakes, which include funding for local shoreline cleanup projects and efforts to work with industry to encourage best practices that prevent pollution.
The ministry also said that as part of a pilot project in York Region, just north of Toronto, it is inspecting plastic-based industries to "increase awareness of plastic pellet and scrap losses to waters, assess current industry control practices and identify industry processes that result in plastic pollution."
Across the border in the United States, a bill was introduced this year to address pre-production pellets. The Plastic Pellet Free Waters Act will require the U.S. Environmental Protection Administration to prohibit the discharge of these pellets into waterways from industry and transport sources. The bill is currently making its way through Congress.
"If you had an oil spill somewhere around here, you'd have to call a very specific government hotline and you have to get a process going because an oil spill is something that we deem quite visibly as toxic," said Beaudoin.
"Well, plastic pellets are oil. They're just a solid version of it. Why aren't we reacting in the same way?"
Artists and scientists collaborate
A 2020 study by researchers at Western University also found these pre-production pellets on beaches all over the Great Lakes. The study found that the problem was worse in areas with a lots of plastics industry, such as near Sarnia, Ont., and Toronto.
This map from the Western University study on plastic pellets in the Great Lakes shows which beaches had the most pollution. (Patricia L. Corcoran et. al 2020)
A group of artists participated in the study to bring the issue to life at an exhibition in Toronto. Plastic Heart: Surface All the Way Through is currently ongoing at the University of Toronto Art Museum, with its central focus on the pellets found through the Western study.
Tegan Moore is one of the artists in the exhibition. Her piece used over 7,000 pellets found on just one beach in the study.
The pellets are strewn in a way to emulate a strand line — the line between the land and water on a beach, where debris is deposited. The pellets in her piece represent the actual density of pellets on that beach in a 1x10 metre area.
Moore hopes her art will act as a sort of data visualization that can help people understand the pellet problem more vividly.
"I think that the piece can bring a visibility to this particular type of plastic pollution, which is just not known and it's really hard to see," she said.
"You know, next time someone goes to the beach, they might see them along a strand line and understand what they are."
That understanding is what researchers like Rochman hope will get more people interested in — and concerned about — the Great Lakes, hopefully leading to more pressure on governments and industry to bring in change.
"I think there's been a lot more people using the parks and the beaches this year, absolutely, with the pandemic. So hopefully that creates more appreciation," she said.
"I think there's a lot of love for the Great Lakes and hopefully that continues. And yes, with climate change and drought and the issues we live in, we're very lucky to live here. So we should appreciate the resource we have."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/plastics-waste-great-lakes-water-1.6185621
Takeaways: AP’s investigation of military gun tracking tech
By JUSTIN PRITCHARD and KRISTIN M. HALL
today
https://apnews.com/article/business-technology-science-radio-frequency-identification-98df6ba5bee6da41e502801ee513c4e8
A tracking tag that some units in the U.S. military are using to keep control of guns could let even low-tech enemies detect troops on the battlefield, an ongoing Associated Press investigation has found.
Radio frequency identification technology — RFID, as it is known — is everywhere in daily civilian life.
When embedded in military guns, thin RFID tags can trim hours off time-intensive tasks such as weapon counts and distribution. Outside armories, however, the same silent, invisible signals that help automate inventory checks could become an unwanted tracking beacon.
A few key takeaways from the latest in AP’s AWOL Weapons investigation:
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THE APPEAL
Convenience is a big selling point for retrofitting an armory with an RFID system.
Instead of hand-recording firearms on paper or scanning barcodes one-by-one, troops in an armory or arms room can read tags in a rack of firearms with the wave of a handheld reader — and without having to see each weapon. The tags tucked inside don’t even need batteries.
The benefits are real.
At Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, officials say the new RFID system in one armory cuts inventory time in half. That limits the need for two armorers, creating more schedule flexibility. Other military officials described how RFID streamlines the process of checking weapons in and out.
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THE TRADEOFF
New field tests showed that an enemy wouldn’t have to be cutting edge to identify U.S. troops at distances far greater than contractors who install RFID systems say the tags can be detected.
Contractors say tags can’t be read more than a few dozen feet away. In experiments organized by AP, prominent cybersecurity experts Kristin Paget and Marc Rogers were able to read a tag in a rifle 210 feet (64 meters) away using a $500 setup.
The hackers observed U.S. rules on radio signal strength. Paget has concluded that anyone who disregards those regulations could detect a tag from miles away.
A Department of Defense spokesman cited that kind of concern in saying Pentagon policymakers oppose embedding tags in firearms except in limited, very specific cases such as guns that are used only at a firing range — not in combat or to guard bases. “A significant operations security risk in the field,” is how Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Uriah Orland described RFID tags in guns.
___
THE EXTENT
In the Air Force and Army, unit commanders are allowed to add RFID systems to armories as a further layer of accountability. Spokespeople for the headquarters of each service said they did not know how many units have RFID armories. No service-wide requirement is planned.
AP found five Air Force bases that have operated at least one RFID armory, and one more that plans a retrofit. A Florida-based Army Green Berets unit confirmed it uses the technology in “a few” arms rooms where special forces soldiers can take tagged weapons into the field.
The Navy told AP it was using RFID in one armory. Then this week, after extended questioning, spokesman Lt. Lewis Aldridge abruptly said that the technology “didn’t meet operational requirements” and would no longer be used.
The Marine Corps said it has decided, across the service, not to tag weapons. Among the concerns: digital signal on the battlefield.
A top weapons expert from the Corps told AP he saw how tags can be read from afar during training exercises in the Southern California desert in December 2018.
“RFID tags on tanks, weapons, magazines, you can ping them and find the disposition of where units are,” said Wesley Turner, who was a Marine chief warrant officer 5 when he spoke in a spring interview. “If I can ping it, I can find it and I can shoot you.”
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Pritchard reported from Los Angeles. Contact him at https://twitter.com/JPritchardAP. Hall reported from Nashville, Tennessee. Contact her at https://twitter.com/kmhall.
___
Email AP’s Global Investigations Team at investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/. See other work at https://www.apnews.com/hub/ap-investigations.
https://apnews.com/article/business-technology-science-radio-frequency-identification-98df6ba5bee6da41e502801ee513c4e8
The 220-page document – which includes a statement of principles and an indication of members’ policy interests alongside a complete member list – was leaked and provided to journalists via transparency organization, Distributed Denial of Secrets.
Distributed Denial of Secrets
Distributed Denial of Secrets is a journalist 501(c)(3) non-profit devoted to enabling the free transmission of data in the public interest.
We aim to avoid political, corporate or personal leanings, to act as a beacon of available information. As a transparency collective, we don't support any cause, idea or message beyond ensuring that information is available to those who need it most—the people.
You can read more about our collective, and our decision to embrace all sources of information. At its core, however, our mission is simple:
Veritatem cognoscere ruat cælum et pereat mundus
(“Know the truth, though the heavens may fall and the world burn.”)
https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/Distributed_Denial_of_Secrets
Top Republicans rub shoulders with extremists in secretive rightwing group, leak reveals
Jason Wilson @jason_a_w
Thu 30 Sep 2021 10.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/30/revealed-council-national-policy-republicans-extremists
Wealthy entrepreneurs and media moguls also named on membership list for influential Council for National Policy
A leaked document has revealed the membership list of the secretive Council for National Policy (CNP), showing how it provides opportunities for elite Republicans, wealthy entrepreneurs, media proprietors and pillars of the US conservative movement to rub shoulders with anti-abortion and anti-Islamic extremists.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors rightwing hate groups, describes the CNP as “a shadowy and intensely secretive group [which] has operated behind the scenes” in its efforts to “build the conservative movement”.
The leaked membership list dates from September last year, and reveals the 40-year-old CNP put influential Trump administration figures alongside leaders of organizations that have been categorized as hate groups.
The group was founded in 1981 by activists influential in the Christian right, including Tim LaHaye, Howard Phillips and Paul Weyrich, who had also been involved in founding and leading the Moral Majority. Initially they were seeking to maximize their influence on the new Reagan administration. In subsequent years, CNP meetings have played host to presidential aspirants like George W Bush and 1999 and Mitt Romney in 2007, and sitting presidents including Donald Trump in 2020.
In videos obtained by the Washington Post in 2020, the CNP executive committee chairman, Bill Walton, told attendees of the upcoming election: “This is a spiritual battle we are in. This is good versus evil.”
The CNP is so secretive, according to reports, that its members are instructed not to reveal their affiliation or even name the group.
Heidi Beirich, of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said in an email that “this new CNP list makes clear that the group still serves as a key venue where mainstream conservatives and extremists mix”, adding that CNP “clearly remains a critical nexus for mainstreaming extremism from the far right into conservative circles”.
The document – which reveals email addresses and phone numbers for most members – shows that the CNP includes members of SPLC-listed hate groups.
They include leaders of organizations listed as anti-Muslim hate groups, including:
Frank Gaffney, founder and executive chairman of the Center for Security Policy (CSP)
Brigitte Gabriel, founder and chairman of Act For America (AFA)
They also include several founders or leaders of groups listed anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups, such as:
Michael P Farris, president and CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)
Brad Dacus, founder and president of the Pacific Justice Institute
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council
Matthew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel
Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association
Also, there are members of organizations listed as anti-immigrant hate groups, including James and Amapola Hansberger, co-founders of Legal Immigrants For America (Lifa).
Additionally, the list includes members of groups that have been accused of extremist positions on abortion. They include Margaret H Hartshorn, chair of the board of Heartbeat International, which has reportedly spread misinformation worldwide to pregnant women.
Several high-profile figures associated with the Trump administration, or conspiracy-minded characters in Trump’s orbit, are also on the list, such as Jerome R Corsi, who has written conspiracy-minded books about John Kerry, Barack Obama and the September 11 attacks. Corsi is listed as a member of CNP’s board of governors.
Along with these representatives of extremist positions, the CNP rolls include members of ostensibly more mainstream conservative groups, and representatives of major American corporations. Other still come from the Republican party, a network of rightwing activist organizations, and the companies and foundations that back them.
A newcomer to the group since a previous version of the member list was exposed is Charlie Kirk, founder and president of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a conservative youth organization.
Although TPUSA works hard to make inroads into mainstream culture with stunts and on-campus events, Kirk has recently staked out more hard-right positions, saying recently that Democratic immigration policies were aimed at “diminishing and decreasing white demographics in America”, a day after Tucker Carlson ventilated racist “great replacement” conspiracy theories on his Fox News program.
Conservative movement heavyweights in the group include Lisa B Nelson, chief executive of the American Legislative Exchange Council; Eugene Mayer, president of the Federalist Society; Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Return; Daniel Schneider, executive director of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the CPac conference; and L Brent Bozell III, the founder of the Media Research Center and a member of the Bozell and Buckley dynasties of conservative activists.
Other members include pillars of the Republican political establishment, including former GOP congressional majority leader, Tom DeLay; former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker; Reagan administration attorney general Edwin Meese III; and former RNC chair and Trump White House chief of staff Reince Priebus.
Their number also includes sitting congressmen such as Barry Loudermilk and influential operatives like David Trulio, who was the senior adviser and chief of staff to the under-secretary of defense in the Trump administration.
The member list also includes representatives of major US corporations, such as Marc Johansen, vice-president for the satellites and intelligence program for Boeing; Jeffrey Coors, of the Coors brewing family, who have extensively sponsored conservative groups; Lee Roy Mitchell, the founder and chairman of the board for movie chain owner Cinemark Holdings; Steve Forbes, the founder and chief executive of the Forbes business media empire; and Scott Brown, a senior vice-president at Morgan Stanley.
Other members of the group represent organizations that operate under a veil of secrecy, with conservative “dark money” organizations well represented.
One member, Lawson Bader, is the president of Donor’s Trust and Donors Capital Fund, non-profits that disguise the identities of their own donors, and whose largesse to rightwing causes has seen them described as “the dark-money ATM of the conservative movement”.
Another member, Richard Graber, is the president and chief executive of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. The Bradley foundation has long bankrolled conservative movement causes, including Donors Trust, and has reportedly also sponsored widespread efforts to discredit the election of Joe Biden in 2020.
Conservative media figures are also on the list: Neil Patel, co-founder and publisher of the Daily Caller; Larry Beasley, chief executive of the rightwing newspaper the Washington Times; and Floyd Brown, the founder of the Arizona-based Western Journal and founder of the Citizens United Pac.
Pro-gun groups are also represented, with NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre and Gun Owners of America founder Tim Macy each listed as members.
The 220-page document – which includes a statement of principles and an indication of members’ policy interests alongside a complete member list – was leaked and provided to journalists via transparency organization, Distributed Denial of Secrets.
Emma Best from that group said in a messenger chat that CNP was “a secretive forum for ultra-wealthy and elite conservatives to strategize and form long-term plans that have national and international impact”. Therefore, she said, “any opportunity to shine a light on their members, activities and interests is clearly in the public interest”.
The Guardian repeatedly requested comment from CNP staff, including Executive Director Brad McEwen, and other groups mentioned in this story but received no immediate response.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/30/revealed-council-national-policy-republicans-extremists
YouTube is banning prominent anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content
The Google-owned video site previously only banned misinformation about coronavirus vaccines. Facebook made the same change months ago.
By Gerrit De Vynck
Today at 9:00 a.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/29/youtube-ban-joseph-mercola/
SAN FRANCISCO — YouTube is taking down several video channels associated with high-profile anti-vaccine activists including Joseph Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who experts say are partially responsible for helping seed the skepticism that’s contributed to slowing vaccination rates across the country.
As part of a new set of policies aimed at cutting down on anti-vaccine content on the Google-owned site, YouTube will ban any videos that claim that commonly used vaccines approved by health authorities are ineffective or dangerous. The company previously blocked videos that made those claims about coronavirus vaccines, but not ones for other vaccines like those for measles or chickenpox.
Misinformation researchers have for years said the popularity of anti-vaccine content on YouTube was contributing to growing skepticism of lifesaving vaccines in the United States and around the world. Vaccination rates have slowed and about 56 percent of the U.S. population has had two shots, compared with 71 percent in Canada and 67 percent in the United Kingdom. In July, President Biden said social media companies were partially responsible for spreading misinformation about the vaccines, and need to do more to address the issue.
The change marks a shift for the social media giant, which streams more than 1 billion hours’ worth of content every day. Like its peers Facebook and Twitter, the company has long resisted policing content too heavily, arguing maintaining an open platform is critical to free speech. But as the companies increasingly come under fire from regulators, lawmakers and regular users for contributing to social ills — including vaccine skepticism — YouTube is again changing policies that it has held onto for months.
YouTube didn’t act sooner because it was focusing on misinformation specifically about coronavirus vaccines, said Matt Halprin, YouTube’s vice president of global trust and safety. When it noticed that incorrect claims about other vaccines were contributing to fears about the coronavirus vaccines, it expanded the ban.
“Developing robust policies takes time,” Halprin said. “We wanted to launch a policy that is comprehensive, enforceable with consistency and adequately addresses the challenge.”
Mercola, an alternative medicine entrepreneur, and Kennedy, a lawyer and the son of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy who has been a face of the anti-vaccine movement for years, have both said in the past that they are not automatically against all vaccines, but believe information about the risks of vaccines is being suppressed.
Facebook banned misinformation on all vaccines seven months ago, though the pages of both Mercola and Kennedy remain up on the social media site. Their Twitter accounts are active, too.
YouTube, Facebook and Twitter all banned misinformation about the coronavirus early on in the pandemic. But false claims continue to run rampant across all three of the platforms. The social networks are also tightly connected, with YouTube often serving as a library of videos that go viral on Twitter or Facebook. YouTube has removed over 133,000 videos for broadcasting coronavirus misinformation, Halprin said.
The companies have hired thousands of moderators and used high-tech image- and text-recognition algorithms to try to police misinformation. There are also millions of people with legitimate concerns about the medical system, and social media is a place where they go to ask real questions and express their concerns and fears, something the companies don’t want to squelch.
In the past, the company’s leaders have focused on trying to remove what they call “borderline” videos from its recommendation algorithms, allowing people to find them with specific searches but not necessarily promoting them into new people’s feeds. It’s also worked to push more authoritative health videos, like those made by hospitals and medical schools, to the top of search results for health-care topics.
But those methods haven’t stopped the spread of anti-vaccine and coronavirus misinformation. More than a year after YouTube said it would take down misinformation about the coronavirus vaccines, the accounts of six out of 12 anti-vaccine activists — identified by the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate as being behind much of the anti-vaccine content shared on social media — were easily searchable and still posting videos. Wednesday’s policy change means many of those will now be taken down.
The anti-vaccine movement goes back to well before the pandemic. False scientific claims that childhood vaccines caused autism made in the late 1990s have contributed to rising numbers of people refusing to let their kids get shots that had been commonplace for decades. As social media took over more of the media landscape, anti-vaccine activists spread their messages on Facebook parenting groups and through YouTube videos.
When the pandemic hit, and vaccines became a topic that was suddenly relevant to everyone, not just parents of young children, many went looking for answers online. Influencers like Mercola, Kennedy and alternative health advocate Erin Elizabeth Finn were able to supercharge their followings. Some anti-vaccine influencers, including Mercola, also sell natural health products, giving them a financial incentive to promote skepticism of mainstream medicine.
The anti-vaccine movement now also incorporates groups as diverse as conspiracy theorists who believe former president Donald Trump is still the rightful president, and some wellness influencers who see the vaccines as unnatural substances that will poison human bodies. All of the government-approved coronavirus vaccines have gone through rigorous testing and have been scientifically proved to be highly effective and safe.
YouTube’s new policy will still allow people to make claims based on their own personal experience, like a mother talking about side effects her child experienced after getting a vaccine, Halprin said. Scientific discussion of vaccines and posting about vaccines’ historical failures or successes will also be allowed, he said.
“We’ll remove claims that vaccines are dangerous or cause a lot of health effects, that vaccines cause autism, cancer, infertility or contain microchips,” Halprin said. “At least hundreds” of moderators at YouTube are working specifically on medical misinformation, he added. The policy will be enforced in all of the dozens of languages that YouTube operates in.
The company is also expanding its work to bring more videos from official sources onto the platform, like the National Academy of Medicine and the Cleveland Clinic, said Garth Graham, YouTube’s global head of health care and public health partnerships. The goal is to get videos with scientific information in front of people before they go down the rabbit hole of anti-vaccine content.
“There is information, not from us, but information from other researchers on health misinformation that has shown the earlier you can get information in front of someone before they form opinions, the better,” Graham said.
By Gerrit De Vynck
Gerrit De Vynck is a tech reporter for The Washington Post. He writes about Google and the algorithms that increasingly shape society. De Vynck also helps lead The Post's coverage of ransomware and misinformation. He previously covered tech for seven years at Bloomberg News. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/29/youtube-ban-joseph-mercola/
Donald Trump Jr just got destroyed
Bocha Blue | 2:42 pm EDT September 28, 2021
https://www.palmerreport.com/community/donald-trump-jr-just-got-destroyed/41722/
I just love Ana Navarro.
There are some individuals that just make the world a better place in so many ways. I’ve long been a fan of Navarro. I secretly have a job I’d love for her to be offered.
I always felt Navarro would be a great host of “Meet the Press.” She’d certainly be better than who we have now. (Sorry, Chuck.)
And Ana is exceptionally skilled at smart verb take-downs of pathetic and stupid morons. Of course, the king of morons is the orange tumor and exiled insurrectionist, but one cannot forget his spawn, who often presents stiff competition to his daddy-oh in the brainless department.
I am speaking of Donald Trump Junior. Way uncool Junior got destroyed verbally by Navarro, and it was a wonderful thing to see.
As you may have heard, Navarro and View Host Sunny Hostin were asked live to leave the set of The View after testing positive for coronavirus.
It turned out they were false positives.
But Junior, being the mindless cretin that he is, took a jab at Navarro that was in such poor taste. I really wish he’d lost his Twitter account over it.
“Given the Ana Navaro news, I think it’s time for a national conversation about the dangers of Covid-19 & obesity.”
It is also important to note that Junior did NOT know the positive test would turn out to be false.
Cyber-bullying, joking about one’s physical health, weight-shaming. In Junior’s case, the apple does not fall far from the tree where his daddy is concerned.
But Navarro wasn’t about to take that crap sitting down. She fired back, and her response was incredible.
“He thought it was appropriate to take advantage of the false news that I had COVID to take a shot at my weight,” Navarro said. It gets better.
“First of all, I mean, I know that when you are a dimwit. with no skill, or talent or significant accomplishments, living off your father’s fame and name and fortune.”
“You’ve got to draw attention to yourself.”
“But baby, if you want to have a conversation about COVID and obesity, you could have had it last October, when your elderly obese father had it.”
Ouch! Moral of this story: Be careful who you mess with, Junior. As for Navarro — one of the best take-downs ever seen.
https://www.palmerreport.com/community/donald-trump-jr-just-got-destroyed/41722/
Laurence Tribe @tribelaw “As appropriate, the Secretary of the Treasury shall compute and is authorized to adjust the borrowing limit to prevent the United States from defaulting on the obligations created under this and previous fiscal measures.” —
@NeilHBuchanan’s smart way out of the debt ceiling mess
11:50 AM · Sep 29, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
THREAD
“As appropriate, the Secretary of the Treasury shall compute and is authorized to adjust the borrowing limit to prevent the United States from defaulting on the obligations created under this and previous fiscal measures.” — @NeilHBuchanan’s smart way out of the debt ceiling mess
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) September 29, 2021