Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Part 190, some of Russian meddling, and related, material from F6 big ones. These from a post Sunday, 04/22/18, covering March 23,
2018, and headed, Trump’s Most Alarming Foreign Policy Move Yet? Warmonger John Bolton Named National Security Adviser
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=140227097

The second and third

Major New Investigation into Trump Real Estate Deals in India Reveals Corruption, Lawsuits, Fraud

Published on Mar 23, 2018 by Democracy Now!
A major new investigation has just been published into Trump’s business partnerships in India and the conflicts of interest these deals pose for the White House. The new cover story for The New Republic is titled “Political Corruption and the Art of the Deal [ https://newrepublic.com/article/147351/political-corruption-art-deal ].” In it, journalist Anjali Kamat notes the Trump Organization has entered into more deals in India than in any other foreign country. These deals, she writes, are worth an estimated $1.5 billion and produced royalties of up to $11 million between 2014 and 2017. During her year-long investigation, Kamat traced Trump’s India partners’ long history of facing lawsuits, police inquiries and government investigations that contain evidence of potential bribery, fraud, intimidation, illegal land acquisition, tax evasion and money laundering.
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/3/23/major_new_investigation_into_trump_real [with embedded video, and transcript]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgG2vrAjdaM [with comments]

*

Meet the American Professor Suing Cambridge Analytica for His Psychographic Profile

Published on Mar 23, 2018 by Democracy Now!
We turn now to the burgeoning scandal around voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica. Startling revelations show the company harvested the data of more than 50 million Facebook users, without their permission, in efforts to sway voters to support President Donald Trump. Cambridge Analytica was founded by billionaire Robert Mercer. Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon of Breitbart News was one of the company’s key strategists. Cambridge Analytica used the data to turn a voter-profiling company into a powerful psychological tool, which began launching targeted political ads aimed at carrying out Robert Mercer’s far-right political agenda. We speak to David Carroll, an associate professor of media design at Parsons School of Design, who has filed a claim to force Cambridge Analytica to turn over all of the data it harvested on him.
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/3/23/meet_the_american_professor_suing_cambridge [with embedded video, and transcript]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt5CSERWs7g [with comments]

Whew!

The thirty-first

Revealed: secret memo warned Trump data firm about breaking U.S. Law

The Beat with Ari Melber
3/23/18
New reporting reveals the person behind the 2016 DNC email hack worked directly for Vladimir Putin’s military intelligence service. This, as a search warrant is approved for the headquarters of Trump digital firm Cambridge Analytica and NBC obtains a memo indicating the firm was warned they could violate U.S. Law during the 2016 campaign. Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul tells Ari Melber “it’s ludicrous” to suggest Russian election meddling had “no impact” on the U.S. Election.
©2018 NBCNews.com

The forty-third

Congress Doesn't Know How To Stop More Facebook Data Breaches, But States Do (HBO)

Published on Mar 23, 2018 by VICE News
As Congress grapples with how to respond to the scandal engulfing Facebook’s data sharing practices, state attorneys general are taking action, launching investigations and promising lawsuits against the company, if warranted.
At least four states have now asked Facebook to answer questions about the access it gave companies to users' data, an inquiry prompted after press reports revealed the voter targeting firm used by Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, Cambridge Analytica, harvested data from thousands of Facebook users without their permission. On Thursday, Facebook held a conference call with a handful of the state officials to answer their requests.
One state official, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, told VICE News after the call that the states are "just at the beginning stages of this" inquiry. He believes Facebook could have violated two state laws by allowing Cambridge Analytica access to users’ data, even if it was without the company’s explicit knowledge.
That's because Facebook has a responsibility to protect consumers in Pennsylvania, he said, "And if there was a breach — and it seems like there was a few years ago — there is a responsibility to notify the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and other states as well."
Shapiro said there needs to be tougher federal laws on the books when it comes to regulating companies like Facebook, but he is hopeful the pressure from the states — and the potential fines and negative publicity that go along with it — might be enough to encourage Facebook and other tech companies to focus more on protecting consumer privacy.
“Make no mistake — if we uncover the fact that Facebook failed to adequately protect your information and allowed… someone literally to go into the warehouse, take the information and leave, because they gave them the keys, there can be severe penalties on them,” he said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otcLaDOWN1o [with comments]
http://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari-melber/watch/revealed-secret-memo-warned-trump-data-firm-about-breaking-u-s-law-1193860163694 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbFBhJB22zA [with comments]

Forty-sixth

Maxine Waters on impeachment: We can't wait for 2020

All In with Chris Hayes
3/23/18
"We cannot wait" for the 2020 elections to do something about Donald Trump, says Rep. Maxine Waters. "It is too dangerous."
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/maxine-waters-on-impeachment-we-can-t-wait-for-2020-1193893443537 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTpaJR9a5wc [with comments]

LOL - Gotta include the next

Donald Trump's invisible plane

All In with Chris Hayes
3/23/18

As he touted defense spending in the $1.3 trillion budget bill, President Trump described the impressive
capabilities of the F-35 stealth fighter jet. But Trump didn't mean you literally cannot see it...right?
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/donald-trump-s-invisible-plane-1193909827736 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htyNQ8MK3xU [with comments]

Add: Some one should tell Trump, and it seems others, of this

The end of stealth? New Chinese radar capable of detecting ‘invisible’ targets 100km away
Stephen Chen | South China Morning Post
Published 9:54 PM ET Wed, 21 Sept 2016
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/21/the-end-of-stealth-new-chinese-radar-capable-of-detecting-invisible-targets-100km-away.html

To the forty-eighth and ninth

Donald Trump’s new national security adviser John Bolton is already entangled in Robert Mueller's Russia investigation
The Rachel Maddow Show
3/23/18
John Bolton, Trump’s new national security adviser, has connections to both Cambridge
Analytica and an NRA group that may have used Russian money to help the Trump campaign.
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/donald-trump-s-new-national-security-adviser-john-bolton-is-already-entangled-in-robert-mueller-s-russia-investigation-1193969731600

*

Colin Kahl: John Bolton believes that Trump should only meet with Kim Jong-un to get on with the bombing of North Korea
The Rachel Maddow Show
3/23/18
Former national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, Colin Kahl, talks with Rachel Maddow about new National Security Adviser
John Bolton’s extreme stances on North Korea and Iran and how that may impact upcoming national security tests for the president.
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/colin-kahl-john-bolton-believes-that-trump-should-only-meet-with-kim-jong-un-to-get-on-with-the-bombing-of-north-korea-1193976899516

Fifty-second

Stormy Daniels' lawyer sends 'warning shot' to Trump

The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
3/23/18
Michael Avenatti tweeted an image of a DVD that he says contains "evidence" of Stormy Daniels' relationship with Donald Trump. Judd
Legum says Avenatti's comments predict larger legal issues for Trump. Ruth Marcus weighs in on the Karen McDougal interview.
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/stormy-daniels-lawyer-sends-warning-shot-to-trump-1193983043743 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiXCgYIZlzo [with comments]

Leave two to

Donald Trump’s Week that Was

The 11th Hour with Brian Williams
3/24/18
Brian Williams recaps a tumultuous week in Donald Trump’s White House… again. But was it the week that was? Or was it just another week in Washington.
©2018 NBCNews.com
[originally aired March 23, 2018]
http://www.msnbc.com/brian-williams/watch/donald-trump-s-week-that-was-1194011715736 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzonpI7SyGg [with comments]

Aha! So Trump agrees in that one that the biggest mistake he has
made was running for president. He actually gets something right!

The next

Bush...Trump. Then...Now.

Published on Mar 26, 2018 by Mike Malloy [ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpU4j-LN_aibXA1gONvWzxw / https://www.youtube.com/user/hschulein , https://www.youtube.com/user/hschulein/videos ]
Mike talks about the loss of innocence throughout recent history.
A three part confession you can´t miss.
[originally aired March 23, 2018]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K86IqpHQ4FA [with comments],
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL8-gDOIbpY [with comments],
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxeRa4YFVSA [with comments]

Shit. Hang in there, Mike.

To "stashed March 23, 2018:"

‘You should do it’: Trump officials encouraged George Papadopoulos’s foreign outreach, documents show
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/you-should-do-it-trump-officials-encouraged-george-papadopouloss-foreign-outreach-documents-show/2018/03/23/2dae8c8e-2d38-11e8-8688-e053ba58f1e4_story.html

Not just a 'coffee boy': Papadopoulos's role in Trump's campaign
Washington Post

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ3mlPYv_G4
New emails show George Papadopoulos communicated with Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon during Trump's 2016 campaign
Former Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos reportedly communicated with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and former national-security adviser Michael Flynn during the 2016 campaign.
The White House has sought to distance itself from Papadopoulos since he pleaded guilty in the Russia investigation last year, calling him a "coffee boy" with little access to the top ranks of the campaign.
But new emails obtained by The Washington Post indicate that top campaign officials — in addition to those listed in previous court filings — knew of and encouraged Papadopoulos' actions and outreach during the campaign to foreign officials.
http://www.businessinsider.com/emails-george-papadopoulos-communicated-with-bannon-flynn-others-2018-3

more: https://news.google.com/news/story/dVf50JTeLC4Md0MOI8aGS7NXl1SBM?ned=us&gl=US&hl=en

Bolton Was Early Beneficiary of Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook Data

( https://youtu.be/U4eYmHqGW6Y )
WASHINGTON - The political action committee founded by John R. Bolton, President Trump’s incoming national security adviser, was one of the earliest customers of Cambridge Analytica, which it hired specifically to develop psychological profiles of voters with data harvested from tens of millions of Facebook profiles, according to former Cambridge employees and company documents.
Mr. Bolton’s political committee, known as The John Bolton Super PAC, first hired Cambridge in August 2014, months after the political data firm was founded and while it was still harvesting the Facebook data.
In the two years that followed, Mr. Bolton’s super PAC spent nearly $1.2 million primarily for “survey research,” which is a term that campaigns use for polling, according to campaign finance records.
But the contract between the political action committee and Cambridge, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, offers more detail on just what Mr. Bolton was buying. The contract broadly describes the services to be delivered by Cambridge as “behavioral microtargeting with psychographic messaging.”
To do that work, Cambridge used Facebook data, according to the documents and two former employees familiar with the work.
“The data and modeling Bolton’s PAC received was derived from the Facebook data,” said Christopher Wylie, a data expert who was part of the team that founded Cambridge Analytica. “We definitely told them about how we were doing it. We talked about it in conference calls, in meetings.”
Cambridge Analytica, which rose to prominence through its work with Mr. Trump’s 2016 election campaign, has found itself confronting a deepening crisis since reports this past weekend in The New York Times and The Observer of London that the firm had harvested the data from more than 50 million Facebook profiles in its bid to develop techniques for predicting the behavior of individual American voters.
Cambridge’s so-called psychographic modeling techniques, which were built in part with the data harvested from Facebook, underpinned its work for Mr. Trump’s campaign in 2016, setting off a furious — and still unsettled — debate about whether the firm’s technology worked. The same techniques were also the focus of its work for Mr. Bolton’s super PAC.
“The Bolton PAC was obsessed with how America was becoming limp wristed and spineless and it wanted research and messaging for national security issues,” Mr. Wylie said.
“That really meant making people more militaristic in their worldview,” he added. “That’s what they said they wanted, anyway.”
Using the psychographic models, Cambridge helped design concepts for advertisements for candidates supported by Mr. Bolton’s PAC, including the 2014 campaign of Thom Tillis, the Republican senator from North Carolina, according to Mr. Wylie and another former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being dragged into the investigations that now appear to be engulfing Cambridge.
One advertisement, a video that was posted on YouTube, was aimed at people who scored high for conscientiousness, and were thought to respect hard work and experience. It emphasized Mr. Bolton’s time working for Ronald Reagan and how Mr. Tillis embodied the spirit and political ethos of the late president.
[...]
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/us/politics/bolton-cambridge-analyticas-facebook-data.html

Another Cambridge Analytica Client To Join The Trump White House
John Bolton’s super PAC has paid the political firm more than a million dollars since 2014.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/john-bolton-cambridge-analytica-super-pac_us_5ab50dfee4b0decad0495633

A 2nd whistleblower has come forward to expose the inner workings of Cambridge Analytica and how it targeted Trump voters
A second former employee of Cambridge Analytica has come forward to describe the data firm's inner workings — in particular how it operated while working for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
The former employee, Brittany Kaiser, explained to The Guardian how a 27-page internal presentation outlined the methods the Trump campaign used to target voters on social media.
Cambridge Analytica is embroiled in an international controversy over its harvesting of the data of millions of Facebook users.
http://www.businessinsider.com/former-cambridge-analytica-employee-details-inner-workings-of-the-firm-2018-3

DNC hacker 'Guccifer 2.0' was reportedly confirmed as a Russian agent after forgetting to conceal his identity online
US investigators have reportedly concluded that the Russia-linked hacker Guccifer 2.0 is directly tied to Russian military intelligence.
Security experts and the US intelligence community have long suspected the hacker's ties to Russian intelligence. But a new report Thursday [ https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-lone-dnc-hacker-guccifer-20-slipped-up-and-revealed-he-was-a-russian-intelligence-officer ] said investigators recently obtained strong proof indicating Guccifer 2.0's ties to the Russian government.
The revelation directly contradicts President Donald Trump's claim that Russia was not working to tip the scales in his favor during the 2016 US election.
http://www.businessinsider.com/dnc-hacker-guccifer-confirmed-as-russian-agent-after-forgetting-to-conceal-identity-2018-3

DNC “lone hacker” Guccifer 2.0 pegged as Russian spy after opsec fail
"Hacktivist" logged into a social media account from an IP address at GRU HQ in Moscow.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/03/dnc-lone-hacker-guccifer-2-0-pegged-as-russian-spy-after-opsec-fail/

more: https://news.google.com/news/story/dhas5Alg2jl1qwMeTOX8dFygD-_jM?ned=us&gl=US&hl=en

Ex-Playboy model says she kept journal of days she met with Trump
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/22/trump-karen-mcdougal-playboy-model-interview-journal-482163

more: https://news.google.com/news/story/d-aaw5t_93VlL5M9EvkTitQr4uU3M?ned=us&gl=US&hl=en

Cambridge Analytica and the Dark Arts of Voter Manipulation
https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/cambridge-analytica-and-the-dark-arts-of-voter-manipulation

more: https://news.google.com/news/story/djTLLhoj6WyWVaMUO3SBL7GmUOlbM?ned=us&gl=US&hl=en

Cambridge Analytica offices searched over data storage
Eighteen enforcement officers working for the UK's information commissioner are searching the London headquarters of Cambridge Analytica.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43522775

We need a nationalised alternative to Facebook – and the BBC could provide the answer
Though we think of the BBC primarily as a programme maker and broadcaster, and it also tends to think of itself in those terms, it is also a public communications technology company that has throughout its life developed technology in the public interest
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/facebook-cambridge-analytica-bbc-nationalised-alternative-a8269066.html

more: https://news.google.com/news/story/d7y20q-ufvFoMQMGhWHf2GX1gIq_M?ned=us&gl=US&hl=en

After Another Week of Chaos, Trump Repairs to Palm Beach. No One Knows What Comes Next.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/us/politics/trump-chaos-trade-russia-national-security.html