NOVEMBER 30, 2018


NEWS AND VIEWS


HERE’S A SANDERS AND WIFE INTERVIEW. I THINK THEY ARE PROBABLY A GENUINELY HAPPY COUPLE. I HOPE SO!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/us/politics/bernie-sanders-wife-jane.html
Bernie Sanders Steps Out With His Favored Political Partner: His Wife
By Sydney Ember
Nov. 30, 2018

PHOTOGRAPH -- Jane Sanders, the wife of Senator Bernie Sanders, is one of his closest advisors and was a regular presence on the 2016 presidential campaign trail.CreditCreditMary Altaffer/Associated Press

BURLINGTON, Vt. — When Jane Sanders introduced her event’s keynote speaker here on Thursday night, she called him “my best friend” but didn’t say his name.

“I won’t tell you who that is because I don’t want to give it away,” she quipped from the stage.

Exactly no one was surprised when her husband, Bernie Sanders, marched to the podium.

As speculation grows about whether Mr. Sanders will mount another bid for the White House, the Vermont senator had returned with his wife to his home state for the inaugural Sanders Institute Gathering, a three-day symposium to discuss issues like Medicare for All that he had pushed to popularize.

“The message of this weekend is we’re going to try to break through the silos that exist within the progressive community,” Mr. Sanders told a devoted crowd of about 200 people at a small presentation hall on the shores of Lake Champlain.

“Bernie 2020!” someone in the audience shouted later. The senator did not oblige.

Still, if the last days of 2018 are about trying to divine clues from potential presidential candidates — the words in their speeches, the tone of their tweets — Mr. Sanders’s appearance here with his wife, a fixture on the 2016 campaign trail and one of his closest advisers, would seem to be a big one.

Ms. Sanders has strode beside Mr. Sanders on every step of his political career, a devoted confidante but also a savvy strategist. They met during his campaign for mayor of Burlington in 1981. When he was elected to Congress in 1990, she served as a chief of staff. She helped him get elected to the Senate in 2006.

And in 2016, it was Ms. Sanders who helped smooth out her husband’s rough edges — warm where he could be gruff — playing a key role in the kind of humanizing effort that all campaigns undertake for a candidate. Should Mr. Sanders run for president again, it is a part she will almost certainly reprise.

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Mr. Sanders delivered the keynote address at The Sanders Institute Gathering in Burlington, Vt., on Thursday.

Credit -- April Mccullum/The Burlington Free Press, via Associated Press
Image -- Mr. Sanders delivered the keynote address at The Sanders Institute Gathering in Burlington, Vt., on Thursday.CreditApril Mccullum/The Burlington Free Press, via Associated Press

Ms. Sanders has also created some political tension for her husband. Federal authorities had been investigating her role in a 2010 land deal for a Vermont college that she ran at the time. His aides recently said prosecutors had dropped the investigation, which could not be independently verified.

Last year, Ms. Sanders helped found the Sanders Institute, a progressive think tank with a mission to “revitalize democracy.” It is, organizers insist, separate from the senator’s political campaigns.

But on Thursday night, many key figures in his orbit — including Jeff Weaver, his 2016 campaign manager; Nina Turner, now the president of the Sanders-aligned group Our Revolution; and Phil Fiermonte, a longtime aide — were in attendance, chummily holding court by the stage during the opening cocktail reception.

The actor Danny Glover was there, too, as was Cornel West, the scholar and activist. Even Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, no doubt thrilled to be considered a progressive leader, was expected to make an appearance.

“It’s a gathering of the tribe,” Gunnar Lovelace, an entrepreneur from Los Angeles and a Sanders supporter, said as he eyed the attendees. Many had loaded their plates with Vermont cheeses and charcuterie.

Even with the hard-to-ignore undercurrent of 2020, however, the focus appeared to be more on policy than politicking. Mr. Sanders called again for the United States to end its support for Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen, a foreign policy issue that has increasingly become a pillar of his message. He hit other high points of his stump speech, repeating his favorite lines about economic inequality and a $15 minimum wage.

“People do believe in our ideas,” he said, trumpeting his role in moving the Democratic Party to the left. “So what do we do?”

“We have got to make sure that the Democratic Party is not just a party of the east coast and the west coast,” he said, not quite taking the reins but not dropping them either. “It is a party of every state in this country.”

At the end of the night, he stepped off the stage and mingled with the audience. He did not seem like someone who wanted to leave.


ZUCKERBERG IS STILL IN THE HOT SEAT, OR RATHER, HE’S IN IT AGAIN. I REALLY WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT HIS PERSONAL ROLE IN THE 2016 ELECTION, AND HIS INTENTIONS. HE ALWAYS PLAYS THE INNOCENT, AND IT LOOKS MORE AND MORE LIKE HE WAS THE PUPPETEER AND WE ALL WERE THE PUPPETS. IT SEEMS TO ME THAT CEOS OF FACEBOOK AND OTHER CORPORATIONS SHOULD BE LEGALLY LIABLE FOR DISHONEST OPERATIONS, RATHER THAN SHIELDED FROM HARM BY THE CORPORATE STRUCTURE. WE NEED TO CHANGE THE FORM OF CORPORATIONS AND THE RULES UNDER WHICH THEY OPERATE, PERHAPS. ALL OF THAT CORPORATE PERSONHOOD IS ILLOGICAL AND WRONG, WITH UNFAIR RESULTS.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46401783
Tech Tent: Missing Mark Zuckerberg
Rory Cellan-Jones
Technology correspondent
@BBCRoryCJ on Twitter
NOVEMBER 30, 2018 5 minutes ago

PHOTOGRAPH -- An empty chair was prepared for Mark Zuckerberg REUTERS

For three hours this week Richard Allan was in one of the world's most uncomfortable seats.

In a Westminster committee room, parliamentarians from nine countries battered Facebook's European policy chief, mostly over one issue: why was he there instead of Mark Zuckerberg?

On this week's Tech Tent podcast, we ask whether - beyond the theatre - we learned anything new from the inquisition of Richard Allan.

Stream or download the latest Tech Tent podcast
Listen live every Friday at 15:00 GMT on the BBC World Service

He was on the back foot as the politicians accused his company of everything from playing fast and loose with user data, to aiding repression in Myanmar and threatening democracy around the world.

The best zinger came from a Canadian MP who said: "Our democratic institutions have been upended by fratboy billionaires from California, and Mr Zuckerberg's decision not to appear speaks volumes".

But what everyone was waiting to find out about was those internal Facebook documents seized from a businessman who is in a legal dispute with the social media giant.

In the event, the committee chairman Damian Collins opted not to publish the documents immediately.

But he did pluck one email from the pile. It was from a Facebook engineer in 2014 apparently sounding the alarm about a high level of Russian activity, with three billion data points a day being accessed from Russian IP addresses.

Richard Allan did not really have an answer when asked what action had been taken about this warning. Later, Facebook published the whole email chain which appeared to show that the engineers who had raised the issue subsequently concluded that there was not actually clear evidence of Russian activity.

Image copyrightAFP
Image caption
Facebook's European policy boss Richard Allan faced stiff questioning from MPs

So Facebook emerged from that clash relatively unscathed. But late in the day came evidence from another witness who suggested that on wider issues about access to user data, Richard Allan had been less than frank with the committee.

Easy access
Ashkan Soltani, a former technology advisor to the US Federal Trade Commission said that version one of the Facebook platform - before it was changed in 2014 - did allow developers unfiltered access to users' data, contradicting the evidence given earlier.

He also said that, in the 2011 settlement of its privacy case against Facebook, the FTC alleged that if a user had an app installed it had access to nearly all the users' profile information, even if set to private.

The following day Damian Collins was very critical of the performance of Richard Allan, telling a conference: "I don't think he was straight with the committee. Was it disingenuous? Yes. Was it misleading? Yes. Did he probably hold back relevant and important information? Almost certainly yes."

Facebook disputes that - and disagrees with the version of events laid out by Mr Soltani. The social media giant is also aggrieved at what it sees as the selective and biased use of documents obtained from a litigant, the app developer Six4Three, determined to paint it in the worst possible light.

This is a battle that is only going to get more bitter. In the coming days, Damian Collins plans to release a redacted version of the documents which may shed light on internal discussions at Facebook about how far to go in allowing developers access to users' data.

Prepare for more fireworks….


WITHOUT TRYING TO GET TOO DEEPLY INTO UNDERSTANDING THE CASE OF MYANMAR, BECAUSE IT’S REALLY COMPLICATED; IT LOOKS TO ME AS THOUGH WE HAD IN THIS COUNTRY THE SOWING OF VERY SIMILAR GROUP DIVISIVENESS AS THAT WHICH OCCURRED THERE AMONG THEIR PEOPLE, PERHAPS BECAUSE MANY “GOT ALL OF THEIR NEWS FROM FACEBOOK.” I HAVE NO TEMPTATION TO DO THAT, BECAUSE IT IS CLEARLY TO ME NOT A PRIMARY NEWS SOURCE. SEE WHAT YOU THINK. I WANT TO THINK THAT FACEBOOK DOESN’T DO THESE THINGS PURPOSELY, BUT PERHAPS BECAUSE REALLY HANDLING ALL THAT DATA IS TOO DIFFICULT FOR THE TECHS AT FACEBOOK TO SUCCEED ENTIRELY. FACEBOOK AS A GENUINE HUMAN INTERACTION TOOL IS TOO PROMISING TO HAVE TO SCRAP IT, BUT IF IT CAN’T CONTAIN ITSELF, THEN THE GODS OF THE INTERNET MAY NEED TO LIMIT THE WAY THEY FUNCTION OR THEIR SIZE, I THINK.

https://www.wired.com/story/how-facebooks-rise-fueled-chaos-and-confusion-in-myanmar/
HOW FACEBOOK’S RISE FUELED CHAOS AND CONFUSION IN MYANMAR
The social network exploded in Myanmar, allowing fake news and violence to consume a country emerging from military rule.
MCLAUGHLINBY TIMOTHY MCLAUGHLIN
JULY 6, 2018

THE RIOTS WOULDN’T have happened without Facebook.

On the the evening of July 2, 2014 a swelling mob of hundreds of angry residents gathered around the Sun Teashop filling the streets in the commercial hub of Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city. The teashop’s Muslim owner had been accused, falsely, of raping a female Buddhist employee.

The accusations against him, originally reported on a blog, exploded when they made its way to Facebook—by then, synonymous with the internet in Myanmar. Many among the crowd had seen the Facebook post, which was widely shared including by a Mandalay-based ultra-nationalist monk named Wirathu, who has a massive following across the country.

As anger rose among the throngs of men, police struggled to disperse the growing crowds, firing rubber bullets and trying to corral rioters into certain sections of the city. Their efforts were largely unsuccessful. Soon, armed men were marauding through the streets of the royal capital on motorbikes and by foot wielding machetes and sticks. Rioters torched cars and ransacked shops.

A curfew was imposed in the city and surrounding townships. Authorities were fearful that the violence would spread to other towns that had seen outbreaks of religious violence the previous year. The mayhem did not spread, but during the multi-day melee in Mandalay two men—one Muslim and one Buddhist—were killed and around 20 others were injured.

The unrest was the latest in a string of flare-ups, often violent, between minority Muslims and Buddhists in the majority-Buddhist country of around 51 million since restrictions on free speech and the internet were steadily loosened starting in 2010. Waves of violence broke out in the western Rakhine state in 2012 between Muslims and Buddhists, leaving nearly 200 dead and displaced some 140,000, mainly Rohingya Muslims and reverberated across the country in the months and years that followed.


A firefighter sprays a smoldering building in the wake of clashes between Buddhists and Muslims that left at least 20 people dead in a the central Myanmar town of Meikhtila in 2013. KHIN MAUNG WIN/AP

After the unrest, which left scores of buildings in flames, Myanmar’s army took control in the city. KHIN MAUNG WIN/AP
In Naypyitaw, the country’s vast capital some 170 miles south of Mandalay, government officials quickly realized the seriousness of the unfolding situation. Chris Tun, the head of Deloitte’s Myanmar operations and a longtime member of the country’s tech community, received a frantic phone call. On the line was Zaw Htay, a senior official in the office of President Thein Sein, a retired general who until a few years earlier had served as the fourth most powerful figure in the junta and a loyal comrade to dictator Than Shwe.

Thein Sein’s military-backed party suffered a near-total defeat by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy at the polls in November 2015. His term ended in March 2016. Aung San Suu Kyi, who is barred by the constitution from holding the presidency, serves as the country’s de facto leader with the title of State Counsellor. But the military is not under civilian oversight and retains an outsized role in the country’s political arena, controlling a quarter of all parliament seats as well as three key ministries.

Desperate for a way to stem the mayhem, Zaw Htay asked Tun—who worked previously in the United States and was involved in the US-ASEAN Business council, a Washington-based lobbying group focused on Southeast Asia—to try to contact Facebook on behalf of the President’s Office to see if anything could be done to halt the spread of disinformation.

Protesters hold placards and chant during a demonstration against Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as she attends an event at the Guildhall in the City of London on May 8, 2017.CHRIS J RATCLIFFE/GETTY IMAGES
“They started to panic and they did not know what to do,” says Tun, who left Deloitte last year. “He was quite worried.” Facebook does not maintain an office in Myanmar, and there was, according to Tun, confusion over how to reach officials at the company. Zaw Htay, who now serves at the spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi's government, confirmed the phone call took place.

Tun’s attempts to contact Facebook officials in the United States dragged into the night but were unsuccessful. He eventually fell asleep. Soon, a decision was made by the President’s Office to temporarily block access to Facebook in Mandalay, Zaw Htay says.

The decision was the right one, he says, because it put a stop to the clashes. When Tun awoke the next morning, he had five or six emails from Facebook officials concerned over the site being unreachable, he says. (Five people, including a woman who admitted she was paid to make the false rape claim, were eventually sentenced to 21 years in prison for their roles in starting the riots.)

ON JULY 20, 2014, a little more than two weeks after the unrest, members of Myanmar’s budding tech scene gathered in a conference room at MICT Park, a badly dated office complex built in Yangon by the junta in a largely unsuccessful attempt to advance the country’s tech prowess.

A panel discussion had been hastily arranged after the riots with the help of Tun, Zaw Htay, and others. The participants included representatives from Google, the Asia Foundation, and the government, but most in the audience had come to hear—and demand answers—from Mia Garlick.

Garlick, Facebook’s director of policy for the Asia-Pacific region, whose remit included Myanmar, told the audience that in response to the violence the company planned to speed up translation of the sites’ user guidelines and code of conduct into Burmese. Garlick also explained how content was reviewed after it was flagged by users who found it to be offensive, though it was unclear how many people fluent in Burmese language were doing this work.

The Burmese language community standards promised by Garlick, however, would not launch until September 2015, 14 months after she spoke in Yangon. And even now, nearly four years later, Facebook will not reveal exactly how many Burmese speakers are evaluating content that has been flagged as possibly violating its standards.

Facebook also had at least two direct warnings before the 2014 riots that hate speech was exploding on the platform and could have real-world consequences.

Aela Callan, a foreign correspondent on a fellowship from Stanford University, met with Elliot Schrage, vice president of global communications for Facebook, in November 2013 to discuss hate speech and fake user pages that were pervasive in Myanmar. Callan returned to the company’s Menlo Park, California, headquarters in early March 2014, after follow-up meetings, with an official from a Myanmar tech civil society organization to again raise the issues with the company and show Facebook “how serious it [hate speech and disinformation] was,” Callan says.

But Facebook’s sprawling bureaucracy and its excitement over the potential of the the Myanmar market appeared to override concerns about the proliferation of hate speech. At the time, the company had just one Burmese speaker based in Dublin, Ireland, to review Burmese language content flagged as problematic, Callan was told.

A spokeswoman for Facebook would say only that the content review team has included Burmese language reviewers since 2013. “It was seen as a connectivity opportunity rather than a big pressing problem,” Callan says. “I think they were more excited about the connectivity opportunity because so many people were using it, rather than the core issues.” Hate speech seemed like a “low priority” for Facebook at the time, she says.

Myanmar was a small but unique market for the company, and Facebook has taken a multi-faceted approach in recent years to better serve users, Garlick says. This includes hiring additional Burmese speakers to review content, improving reporting tools, and “developing local and relevant content” to educate users on how to best use the platform. “We have been working over the years to sort of increase our resourcing and the work that we can do to try to reduce misuse and abuse of our platform and to try to drive the benefit that connectivity can have within the country,” she says.

To critics of the social media company, the early response to the Mandalay riots were harbingers of the difficulties it would face in Myanmar in the coming years—difficulties that persist to this day: A slow response time to posts violating Facebook’s standards, a barebones staff without the capacity to handle hate speech or understand Myanmar’s cultural nuances, an over-reliance on a small collection of local civil society groups to alert the company to possibly dangerous posts spreading on the platform. All of these reflect a decidedly ad-hoc approach for a multi-billion-dollar tech giant that controls so much of popular discourse in the country and across the world.

Today, four years since the riots, Facebook’s role in society is again under intense scrutiny, both in Myanmar and around the world. Myanmar’s military has been accused of rape, arson, and arbitrary killing of Rohingya Muslims during a campaign launched last year after militant attacks on police posts. The UN lambasted Facebook’s conduct in the crisis, which the global body says "bears the hallmarks of genocide,” by serving as a platform for hate speech and disinformation, saying Facebook had "turned into a beast.”

At the same time, Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg are under global pressure for mishandling users’ data and the part the company played in influencing elections, particularly in the the United States. In April, Zuckerberg testified before Congress over two days on a myriad of problems within his company, from Russian agents using the platform to influence the US elections to a lack of data protections.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies at a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees in April. He told Congress in written testimony that he is "responsible for" not preventing the social media platform from being used for harm, including fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech. TING SHEN/XINHUA/ALAMY

Myanmar came up in the hearings too. Why, the legislators wanted to know, hadn’t the company responded sooner to issues raised there.

Zuckerberg said Facebook had a three-pronged approach to address issues in Myanmar— “dramatically” ramp up its local language content reviewers, take down accounts of individuals and groups that generate hate speech, and introduce products specially designed for the country, though he offered few details on what these would entail.

Zuckerberg’s admission that Facebook needed to improve came too late for some critics who said he failed to adequately take responsibility for what has been a long-term issue. (UPDATE, July 19, 2018: Facebook announced on July 18 that it would expand its efforts to remove material that could incite violence.)

"From at least that Mandalay incident, Facebook knew. There were a few things done in late 2014 and 2015 and there was some effort made to try to understand the issues, but it wasn’t a fraction of what was needed,” says David Madden, a gregarious Australian who in 2014 founded Phandeeyar, a tech-hub in Yangon, the country’s largest city, that helped Facebook launch its Burmese language community standards. “That’s not 20/20 hindsight. The scale of this problem was significant and it was already apparent."


FOR THOSE OF US WHO BELIEVE IN LIFE, THIS IS A NO-BRAINER.

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-11-30/trump-oks-seismic-tests-for-oil-in-atlantic
Trump OKs Seismic Tests for Oil in Atlantic
The surveys, which haven't been conducted in decades, are criticized by environmentalists as extremely harmful to marine life.
By Alan Neuhauser, Staff Writer Nov. 30, 2018, at 3:59 p.m.

PHOTOGRAPH -- A blue whale spouts near oil rigs off the coast of Long Beach, Calif. MEL MELCON/LOS ANGELES TIMES VIA GETTY IMAGES

ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS slammed the Trump administration's announcement Friday that it plans to allow oil-seeking seismic surveys across an enormous swath of the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in decades, saying the tests will take a massive toll on ocean wildlife.

The move, which would allow five companies to conduct the tests in waters spanning Delaware to Florida, marks the most significant step since the 1970s to open the Atlantic to drilling, although several steps remain before such production might begin.

"What's exceptional is to see five companies all covering a region at this scale at the same time. It reflects a gold rush mentality," says Michael Jasny, director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Seismic surveys are believed to be particularly harmful to marine life. The tests involve repeatedly blasting deafening booms underwater, often seconds apart for months at a time. Whales and dolphins, as well other underwater creatures, have especially sensitive hearing, and environmentalists fear the tests will injure or kill thousands of the mammals as well as fishes.

"Seismic airgun blasting would harm marine mammals and threaten fishing, and it is a precursor to drilling that coastal communities strongly oppose," Alex Taurel, director of the conservation program at the League of Conservation Voters, said in a statement. "Rather than setting our shores on the path to dirty and dangerous drilling, we should be investing in our nation's clean energy economy."

The move by the Trump administration Friday inherently acknowledges the harm that environmentalists fear. The National Marine Fisheries Service, which is part of the Commerce Department, issued what's known as an "incidental take" permit, which allows companies to injure even endangered and threatened wildlife while engaging in activities such as seismic surveys.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a division of the Interior Department, still needs to issue its own permits before the tests can begin, but the agency's acting director told Congress earlier this year that he would expect to greenlight the surveys as soon as two weeks after the approval from the Fisheries Service. A legal expert for one environmental group called is "a fait accompli."

The administration's approval for the surveys was not unexpected: Trump last year moved to open much of the U.S. coastline to oil and gas drilling. Nonetheless, the decision to move ahead Friday would appear to buck the governors of all seven of the affected states, including the Republican leaders of Maryland, South Carolina and Florida – both current Gov. Rick Scott and his newly elected successor Ron DeSantis.

The governors have sought exemptions from the Trump administration's drilling plan or have supported measures to shield their states' coastlines from offshore drilling, not only due to the impacts on wildlife but also due to potential disruptions to commercial fisheries as well as concern about leaks or ruptures that would befoul beaches and decimate tourism.

"We cannot afford to take a chance with the beauty, the majesty, and the economic value and vitality of our wonderful coastline," South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster told reporters in January.

Environmental groups said they were reviewing the permits granted by the Fisheries Service and exploring potential responses, including presumably possible lawsuits.

"The opposition to seismic blasting is broad and deep, and I know a lot of folks will want to fight this terrible decision and protect the coast in whatever way they can," Jasny says.


Fullscreen
Alan Neuhauser, Staff Writer

Alan Neuhauser covers law enforcement and criminal justice for U.S. News & World Report. He also contributes to STEM and Healthcare of Tomorrow, and previously reported on energy and the environment. You can follow him on Twitter or reach him at aneuhauser@usnews.com.


###

IF YOU WANT TO FISH, YOU GO WHERE THERE’S WATER, RIGHT?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-asks-mueller-hasnt-interviewed-hundreds-campaign-staffers-without-russian-contacts-164340382.html
Trump asks why Mueller hasn't interviewed 'hundreds' of campaign staffers without Russian contacts
Dylan Stableford Senior Editor, Yahoo News • November 26, 2018

Video -- Jeff Flake threatens to vote against judges

If you were running an investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives seeking to influence the 2016 presidential election, who would you interview: Trump campaign officials who you know met with Russians offering information on Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, and others who had documented contact with Kremlin officials — or the ones who didn’t?

Special counsel Robert Mueller, understandably, has focused his investigation on Trump associates who had known contacts with Russia, such as former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, who was scheduled to begin a 14-day sentence Monday for lying to the FBI. But President Trump, who has frequently urged Mueller to speed up his investigation, also wants him to interview “hundreds” of campaign associates who had no contact with Russia.

Donald Trump, Robert Mueller (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: AP)

He didn’t say what he thought Mueller should ask them, or what information they could provide about a subject they know nothing about.

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
When Mueller does his final report, will he be covering all of his conflicts of interest in a preamble, will he be recommending action on all of the crimes of many kinds from those “on the other side”(whatever happened to Podesta?), and will he be putting in statements from.....

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Donald J. Trump
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@realDonaldTrump
....hundreds of people closely involved with my campaign who never met, saw or spoke to a Russian during this period? So many campaign workers, people inside from the beginning, ask me why they have not been called (they want to be). There was NO Collusion & Mueller knows it!

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Mueller’s team has interviewed numerous Trump campaign officials and advisers, including Donald Trump Jr., senior adviser Jared Kushner, former communications director Hope Hicks and others.

Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that Mueller, a registered Republican, is conflicted in his role as special counsel, deriding the probe as a “witch hunt” and insisting there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia, and no obstruction of justice.

Earlier this year, Mueller referred several cases of U.S. lobbyists who may have failed to register their work supporting the Ukrainian government to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. The cases involved Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta; former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig and former Minnesota Republican Rep. Vin Weber. But none of them, to this point, have been charged.

Related Video: How Mueller’s probe has shaped Trump’s presidency

In August, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to tax evasion and bank fraud after Mueller referred his case to federal prosecutors in New York. Cohen also admitted in federal court to making illegal campaign contributions “at the direction of a candidate for federal office,” directly implicating Trump in efforts to suppress, on the eve of the 2016 election, the stories of two women who alleged they had affairs with Trump in 2006 and 2007.

Since being appointed special counsel in March 2017, Mueller’s Russia probe has resulted in the indictments or guilty pleas of more than 30 people, including Papadopoulos, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Manafort deputy Rick Gates.

Trump, who has refused to be interviewed by Mueller’s prosecutors, submitted answers to questions from the special counsel last week. Mueller is expected to eventually issue a report to the acting attorney general, Mark Whitaker, who could then, in turn, pass along the findings to Congress.

Whitaker, though, has been critical of the probe. And Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., have been trying to pass legislation to protect Mueller.

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor and frequent defender of Trump, said Sunday that the forthcoming report will be politically “devastating to the president.”

“I know that the president’s team is already working on a response to the report,” Dershowitz added.

_____

Read more from Yahoo News:

Trump’s new acting AG already has a plan to stop Mueller
White House authorizes ‘lethal force’ by troops at border
Trump raises baseless ‘infected’ ballot claims
Trump deflects questions on birtherism in Michelle Obama memoir
George Conway calls Trump administration ‘a dumpster fire’


YES, MR. PRESIDENT. OF COURSE, THEY DID.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/11/15/donald-trump-pushes-conspiracy-theories-florida-recount/1991767002/
Trump claims Florida voters wore disguises, latest in pattern of conspiracy theories
John Fritze, USA TODAY Published 6:00 a.m. ET Nov. 15, 2018 | Updated 6:29 p.m. ET Nov. 15, 2018

PHOTOGRAPH -- President Donald Trump delivers a speech during a ceremony at the American Cemetery of Suresnes, outside Paris, on Nov. 11, 2018, as part of Veterans Day and commemorations marking the 100th anniversary of the 11 November 1918 armistice, ending World War I.
(Photo: Saul Loeb, AFP/Getty Images)

“When people get in line that have absolutely no right to vote and they go around in circles," Trump told the Daily Caller in an interview. "Sometimes they go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again. Nobody takes anything. It’s really a disgrace what’s going on.”

He also suggested there was rampant voter fraud because of what he described as a lax approach to verifying identification.

“If you buy a box of cereal – you have a voter ID,” Trump said.

The assertions were only the latest conspiracy theory embraced by Trump over the Florida gubernatorial and Senate elections as election officials raced to tally votes.

The machine recount of some 8 million votes cast in the races ended at 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Thursday after a federal judge in Florida declined a request by Incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and his allies to push the deadline back so more votes could be counted. Nelson is trailing Republican Rick Scott by about 13,000 votes.

Experts who study the use of conspiracy theories in politics say the ongoing recounts in Florida have all the preconditions needed to fuel Trump’s decades-old penchant for embracing claims of subterfuge. The outcome is uncertain, the drama is high and the complexity of the issue makes it hard for voters to separate fact from fiction.

“It fits the pattern of everything he’s done so far,” said Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami who has written on the issue. “The underlying message of all of Trump’s conspiracy theories is that the ‘elites’ sold out the interests of the American people.”

Trump’s use of conspiracy theories to rile up voters and shift the media’s attention is by now a well-known element of his communications strategy. He gained national prominence by questioning the citizenship of President Barack Obama. During his 2016 campaign he accused Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s father of associating with President John F. Kennedy’s assassin. He flirted with the notion that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in his sleep in early 2016, may have been murdered.

All of those claims were baseless.


Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
When will Bill Nelson concede in Florida? The characters running Broward and Palm Beach voting will not be able to “find” enough votes, too much spotlight on them now!

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After winning the election, Trump explained his second-place finish in the popular vote by claiming millions of illegal ballots were cast for Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump appointed a commission to investigate voter fraud, which never presented formal findings nor evidence to support his claim. Trump disbanded the group in January.

In the run-up to the midterm, Trump said that a caravan of Central Americans inching through Mexico toward the U.S. border included criminals and "unknown Middle Easterners." His administration never backed up the claim.

In theorizing about the razor-thin margin in the Florida governor and Senate races, Trump is returning to an issue – and a state – that has befuddled many Americans since the contested 2000 presidential race between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. The election was decided by the Supreme Court after a recount in Florida.

Election officials were once again racing to wrap up a statewide recount amid a flurry of lawsuits filed by candidates from both parties.

An email reviewed by the USA TODAY NETWORK showed a Democratic party leader in Florida encouraged volunteers to send altered election forms to voters in an effort to fix ballot signature problems. Though it’s not clear that any of those requests were accepted, election experts said the revelation is likely to raise new questions about the vote-counting process.

More: Email shows Florida Democratic official sought to use altered forms for reaching voters with ballot problems

Initial results put Scott ahead of Nelson in the state’s Senate race and indicated Republican Ron DeSantis had a healthy lead over Democrat Andrew Gillum in the state’s contest for governor. Those margins have shrunk, however, as election officials count outstanding ballots.

Trump and other Republicans have zeroed in on Broward County, which has struggled to meet state-imposed deadlines to post up-to-the-hour tallies of the count. They also point to a ruling against Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes that found she violated state law by destroying ballots too quickly after the 2016 election.

“When they call this woman incompetent, they’re wrong,” Trump told The Daily Caller. “She’s very competent but in a bad way.”

Though the issues Trump and others have raised have sparked bipartisan concern, there is no evidence Snipes or other officials are tampering with the outcome of the election. Democrats have suggested the problems have more to do with outdated voting machines and underfunded election offices.

Experts said the Florida recount is fertile ground for conspiracy theorists.

It’s “a perfect situation on which such theories can rest,” said Joanne Miller, a political scientist at the University of Delaware who has studied the issue. High uncertainty and high anxiety, she said, are among the factors that can cause people to believe unsubstantiated claims.

“There's also another aspect of elections that makes them ripe for conspiracy theories: The inherent competition surrounding an election, and therefore the stakes of the outcome, are high,” Miller said.

“It's more self-esteem protective to believe that an election outcome was due to fraud than to believe, for example, that it was due to the fact that the other party had policy positions that resonated better,” she said.

Trump, of course, is not the first president or high-profile figure to hold such theories. Then-first lady Hillary Clinton referred to what she described as a “vast, right-wing conspiracy” to explain the impeachment of her husband, President Bill Clinton, in 1998.

President Richard Nixon harbored theories that Washington insiders were out to end his presidency.

But Trump is unusual in his embrace of conspiracies and his desire to share them with supporters, experts said. Both the frequency and the extent of the claims Trump makes without offering evidence make him unique in his use of them, they said.

Those who have studied the president for years – including before his political debut – note that his approach, even in business, is to keep foes and friends alike off kilter and uncertain of his motives.

“He’s a salesman,” said Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer. “The only way it works is if people keep watching.”


INFECTED FALSE BALLOTS -- THIS IS A VERY GOOD RUNDOWN OF THE TECHNICALITIES OF HOW ONLINE BALLOTING COULD BE HARMFUL, NOT THE LEAST OF WHICH IS SPREADING MALWARE ALL OVER OUR VOTING DATA. THAT SHOULD MAKE PEOPLE THINK. JUST GET A STAMP AND CARRY IT ON DOWN TO THE POST OFFICE.

https://www.commoncause.org/page/email-and-internet-voting-the-overlooked-threat-to-election-security/
Executive Summary

Over the past two years, revelations that our election systems have been targeted for cyberattack have roiled the U.S. Leaders of our national security apparatus have repeatedly warned that our election infrastructure continues to be targeted for online attacks by foreign intelligence. As state election officials grapple with the looming threat of cyberattack on election technology, there is a significant vulnerability that has been roundly ignored: transmission of ballots over the internet, including by email, fax and blockchain systems.

This report reviews the research that has been conducted by the federal government concluding that secure online voting is not yet feasible. We examine the insoluble security problems that are inherent to casting ballots online, including server penetration attacks, client-device malware, attacks to emailed and faxed ballots in transit, denial-of-service attacks, disruption attacks and the challenge to reliably authenticate voters.

The report foregrounds a serious, yet widely overlooked cybersecurity threat to state and county election infrastructure that receive ballots sent as attachments in the form of emails or digital faxes. In jurisdictions that receive ballots by PDF or JPEG attachment, election workers must routinely click on documents from unknown sources to process emailed or faxed ballots, exposing the computer receiving the ballots — and any other devices on the same network — to a host of cyberattacks that could be launched from a false ballot laden with malicious software. An infected false ballot would enter the server like any other ballot, but once opened, it would download malware that could give attackers backdoor access to the elections office’s network.

A review of publications on security best practices from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Association of Election Officials found no published guidance regarding the security of emailed ballots or recommendations for securing a computer terminal receiving emailed ballots.

Findings:

Federal government, military and private sector studies have examined the feasibility of internet-based voting and have concluded it is not secure and should not be used in U.S. government elections.

Thirty-two states permit online voting for some subset of voters.

In the 2016 general election, over 100,000 ballots were reported to have been cast online, according to data collected in the EAC’s Election Administration and Voting Survey. The actual number is likely much higher.

The federal agencies supporting states in improving their election security have not issued any warnings regarding the online return of voted ballots.

Ballots returned online can be undetectably changed by a variety of cyberattacks, including via malware on a user’s computer and server penetration attacks. The latter has been demonstrated live and in a “test” election.

Internet voting expands the opportunity for an attacker to engage in damaging disruption and denial-of-service attacks, aimed at disabling the system, prohibiting voters from casting ballots, and undermining voter trust in the election.

Receiving ballots as attachments can also expose a state or county election system to systemic election system attacks. Sophisticated attackers can spoof a legitimate voter’s emails and use fake ballots to deliver malware that can be used to gain entry into county or state election infrastructure.

New technologies, including blockchain, fail to resolve the insoluble security issues inherent with online voting. These issues include server penetration attacks, client-device malware, denial-of-service attacks and disruption attacks.

Conclusion

Until there is a major technological breakthrough in or fundamental change to the nature of the internet, the best method for securing elections is a tried-and-true one: mailed paper ballots. Paper ballots are not tamper-proof, but they are not vulnerable to the same wholesale fraud or manipulation associated with internet voting. Tampering with mailed paper ballots is a one-at-a-time attack. Infecting voters’ computers with malware or infecting the computers in the elections office that handle and count ballots are both effective methods for large-scale corruption.

Military voters undoubtedly face greater obstacles in casting their ballots. They deserve any help the government can give them to participate in democracy equally with all other citizens. However, in this threat-filled environment, online voting endangers the very democracy the U.S. military is charged with protecting.

Considering current technology and current threats, postal return of a voted ballot is the most responsible option. States that permit online return of voted ballots should suspend the practice. Federal agencies such as DHS and EAC should acknowledge the vulnerabilities introduced by permitting online voting and recommend that states curtail all online ballot return. Until they do, the integrity of Americans’ votes are at stake, and in many cases, the integrity of the election system is at risk.

Summary Recommendations

We recommend some basic precautions that election officials and voters should follow. [A comprehensive set of recommendations is at the end of this report.]

Recommendations for election administrators:

Map the network to ensure that the computer used to receive emailed or digitally faxed ballots is not connect- ed to or on the same network as the voting machine network, election management system (EMS) or voter registration system through the wired or wireless means.

Scan all incoming email and digital attachments for malware. The mail program should be configured to verify that attachments are of the expected type and fall into the typical size range. Important: Scanning may find attachments for executable malware programs but may be unable to detect malware inside a PDF or JPEG file. Malware inside such files is much more complex.

Ensure all ballots returned by electronic means are printed for counting and not electronically transmitted to the EMS for tallying.

Provide all voters with information and options for mailing ballots back by postal mail.

Ensure military voters are aware of the free expedited postal mail option available to them.

Recommendations for voters:

Voters who receive blank ballots in the mail are encouraged to mark the ballots and mail them back.

Voters who receive blank ballots by email are encouraged to print out the ballot and mark it by hand if possible. If marking the ballot using a computer, print out the final version and carefully review the choices before mailing it back.

Send the ballot back by postal mail. Military personnel in army, fleet or diplomatic post office (APO/FPO/ DPO) locations can return absentee ballots via Priority Mail Express using the free Express Mail Label 11-DOD.

After the 2018 general election, states that permit online return of voted ballots should eliminate the practice. This will require legislative action in most states. While imposing a quarantine on incoming ballots is helpful, that will by no means stop a sophisticated attacker from attempting to use ballots in a spear phishing attack or corrupting ballots in transit. Additionally, federal agencies charged with assisting states in strengthening their election security should exercise leadership and publish warnings regarding the online return of voted ballots.


###


FROM THE COMMENTERS SECTION BELOW, HERE IS A GEM: “LIFE ISN'T ABOUT WAITING FOR THE STORM TO PASS IT'S ABOUT LEARNING TO DANCE IN THE RAIN.” HOWEVER, THIS IS VERY LONG, SO I HAVE JUST SNIPPED OFF THE BOTTOM. TO SEE THEM ALL, GO TO THE WEBSITE.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/twitter-pelts-trump-with-photos-of-barack-obama-in-the-rain_us_5be76113e4b0769d24cdebb7?ncid=APPLENEWS00001
POLITICS 11/10/2018 08:56 pm ET Updated Nov 11, 2018
Twitter Pelts Trump With Photos Of Obama In The Rain After He Ditches Cemetery Visit
President dodges trip to honor U.S. war dead in France due to weather. Critics show how another leader behaved.
By Mary Papenfuss

Critics were stunned that President Donald Trump skipped a visit Saturday to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France – where U.S. war dead were being honored – because of rain. They zapped him with a a series of tweets showing Barack Obama in downpours honoring those who fought in wars in what was bound to be particularly galling to the president.

As many as 1,800 American soldiers killed in the World War I battle of Belleau Wood are buried in the French cemetery. But Trump ditched his planned visit and stayed in his hotel room because of unspecified “scheduling and logistical difficulties caused by the weather,” according to a White House statement. Instead, a delegation led by Chief of Staff John Kelly traveled to the cemetery 50 miles outside of Paris by car. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron were among the world leaders who made the trip.

Barack Obama wipes the rain off his face as he meets Pentagon staff and family members of the victims of the September 11 att
JIM YOUNG / REUTERS
Barack Obama wipes the rain off his face as he meets Pentagon staff and family members of the victims of the September 11 attacks in a ceremony marking the eighth anniversary of the tragedy at the Pentagon in 2009.
Winston Churchill’s grandson Nicholas Soames, a member of the British Parliament, blasted Trump as “pathetic” and “inadequate” for failing to show up.

Twitter responded with scads of photos of Obama campaigning or speaking at various events in the rain. A number of them featured the former president in pelting rain honoring veterans or those killed in battle.

View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter

Doc T.
@Recon7997
This is a real leader @realDonaldTrump. The rain...seriously? You have no idea what we go through in war and that's why us Vets should hold a special place in society. Thank you @BarackObama for being a pure class act! #Resist

12.7K
3:33 PM - Nov 10, 2018
4,111 people are talking about this
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Erik Wells
@Erik_Wells
A real leader supports our fallen men and women in uniform in the rain, snow, sun, day, night, at home or overseas. True leaders do this because it is not about them, but those who paid the ultimate sacrifice. Shame on you @realDonaldTrump. Thank you! @BarackObama

8,152
2:08 PM - Nov 10, 2018
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PoliticsVideoChannel
@politvidchannel
Dear @realDonaldTrump

Here's A photo of President Obama honoring our fallen war heroes in the Rain

Unlike You, a little rain never stopped him

4,128
3:57 PM - Nov 10, 2018
1,606 people are talking about this
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Zach Dendas
@Zdendas1
Hey @realDonaldTrump here’s a picture of President Obama in the rain supporting his American troops on Memorial Day. Sad to know you’re too much of a gerber baby to go outside to pay homage to our American hero’s.

2,240
4:12 PM - Nov 10, 2018
673 people are talking about this
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Jessiand2
@Jessiand2
@realDonaldTrump
Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass
It's about learning to dance in the rain.

Thank you @BarackObama

3,226
2:48 PM - Nov 10, 2018
1,161 people are talking about this
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Matthew
@BRSMatthew
@GenMhayden @SteveSchmidtSES @TheRickWilson to paraphrase out “Commander In Chief,” — I like presidents who aren’t afraid of the rain @BarackObama

6,028
5:30 PM - Nov 10, 2018
1,181 people are talking about this
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Louise Seeley
@liberrygirl65
Replying to @realDonaldTrump
This is what a real leader looks like.

1,231
6:08 PM - Nov 10, 2018
338 people are talking about this
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Andre
@aandrefpeltier
Hey, @realDonaldTrump, remember when @BarackObama had to stand in the rain? Your life is pretty rough, I guess. #resist #resistance https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/trump-visit-us-cemetery-france-canceled-due-rain-59110258 …

888
5:44 PM - Nov 10, 2018
226 people are talking about this
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Bethany Primrose
@BethanyPrimrose
Replying to @realDonaldTrump
You commemorate wars, not celebrate them. Also, you don’t pull a no-show because of rain. What a joke of leadership and respect. Thank God @BarackObama wasn’t afraid of melting in the rain.

1,420
5:50 PM - Nov 10, 2018
402 people are talking about this
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Denizcan Grimes
@MrFilmkritik
This might be my favorite pic of Obama. And it's in the rain.

4,419
5:46 PM - Nov 10, 2018
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Dirk Dirkleton
@Derek_Hennett
On the left we have trump speaking France about Veterans Day in the rain. On the the right we have Obama speaking on Veterans Day in the rain.

1,170
4:04 PM - Nov 10, 2018
324 people are talking about this
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katgal
@katgal2
Replying to @realDonaldTrump
3,866
7:02 PM - Nov 10, 2018
2,013 people are talking about this
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Concetta
@conbontalk
Replying to @BakerLuke
Obama in the rain.... Notice Michelle is using the umbrella..What difference between the two men!

1,414
11:24 AM - Nov 10, 2018
444 people are talking about this
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Mary Papenfuss
Trends Reporter, HuffPost



VIDEO ONLY -- I PUT THIS IN TO SEE WHAT WE MAY BE DOING WRONG, AND WHETHER THE TREND TO THE RIGHT CAN BE STOPPED. NOTE THE FILM TITLE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCu7IT81gh8
How & Why Germans Bought Hitler's Pitch 24:18