monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Former US President Barack Obama has warned against the irresponsible use of social media, in a rare interview since stepping down in January.

He warned that such actions were distorting people's understanding of complex issues, and spreading misinformation.

"All of us in leadership have to find ways in which we can recreate a common space on the internet," he said.

Mr Obama was quizzed by Prince Harry on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Prince Harry, fifth in line to the throne, is one of several prominent figures who are guest-editing the programme over the Christmas period.

The former president expressed concern about a future where facts are discarded and people only read and listen to things that reinforce their own views.

"One of the dangers of the internet is that people can have entirely different realities. They can be cocooned in information that reinforces their current biases.

"The question has to do with how do we harness this technology in a way that allows a multiplicity of voices, allows a diversity of views, but doesn't lead to a Balkanisation of society and allows ways of finding common ground," he said.

Mr Obama's successor Donald Trump is a prolific user of Twitter, but Mr Obama did not mention him by name.

Mr Trump has been accused of overusing Twitter and following only a narrow range of users, though he maintains it allows him to connect directly with the American people.

Mr Obama suggested face-to-face contact would help counteract extreme views.

"Social media is a really powerful tool for people of common interests to convene and get to know each other and connect.

"But then it's important for them to get offline, meet in a pub, meet at a place of worship, meet in a neighbourhood and get to know each other.

"Because the truth is that on the internet, everything is simplified and when you meet people face-to-face it turns out they're complicated."

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans once again are most likely to name Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as the man and woman living anywhere in the world they admire most, as they have for the past 10 years. The pair retain their titles this year, although by much narrower margins than in the past. Obama edges out Donald Trump, 17% to 14%, while Clinton edges out Michelle Obama, 9% to 7%.

The current president, who is suffering brutally low approval ratings as his first year in the White House comes to a close, was second to Obama, polling 14% to 17% for his predecessor. In 2016, Obama led Trump by 22% to 15%.

Clinton, who lost the presidency to Trump in the electoral college despite beating him in the popular vote by nearly three million ballots, was named as most-admired American woman by 9% of Gallup respondents.

That was enough to put her two points ahead of Michelle Obama and five ahead of Oprah Winfrey in third. Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren took 3% of the vote, just ahead of German chancellor Angela Merkel and Queen Elizabeth II, both with 2%.

Melania Trump scored 1%, as did former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, current United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, Kate Middleton and Beyoncé Knowles.

Pope Francis was the third-most admired man in the US this year, at 3%, with 2% tallies for Arizona senator John McCain, billionaire inventor Elon Musk and the Rev Billy Graham. The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders scored 1%, level with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Dalai Lama and vice-president Mike Pence.

Hotel workers in Chicago with Unite Here Local 1, for example, have pioneered a “Hands Off, Pants On” campaign to combat rampant sexual harassment and assault by hotel guests; their demands include access to panic buttons for anyone working alone. Members of the worker organization Restaurant Opportunities Centers United have mounted a campaign called “One Fair Wage” to eliminate the low minimum wage for tipped workers, which forces waitresses to overlook harassment from patrons and managers in order to ensure that they’ll be paid decently. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida has built language against sexual harassment and assault into its hard-won contracts and has actually managed to get abusive managers fired. These are struggles that we can learn from, and they must be expanded.

One way for them to grow: by channeling the largely unfocused female solidarity demonstrated at the marches earlier this year into concrete collective action. If those who showed up at the Women’s March with signs like “Pussy Grabs Back” meant what they said, they should now create more collective power by supporting or participating in unionization efforts, or by working to make labor organizations much more feminist than they currently are. High-profile women should get behind the campaigns of those less famous, to make #OneFairWage the next phase of #MeToo. And journalists should dig into the pervasive problem of sexual abuse, which working women have fought for decades without acknowledgment. The biggest blow we can strike against our predator in chief would be to turn the outrage he has engendered into a true mass movement for equality.

Many point to the election of Donald Trump, a man accused of sexual assault, harassment and misogyny, as a time of political awakening.

Freedman said: “The fact that a man who feels he has that privilege – ‘I have a right to speak this way, to touch, to feel, to intimidate’ – could be the president of the United States is a wake-up call to anybody who didn’t speak out before.”

A surge in female activism followed the election.

Martin said: “We can see it from the Women’s March and all the levels of increased political engagement that have happened since, where people report it is women who are calling Congress and who are showing up at the town halls.

“When these [sexual harassment] stories broke it happened in a cultural moment when women were all ready to stand up and say: ‘We are not going to accept what is unacceptable. It is not a sufficient response to say this is how the world is. We want to make a change.’”

In the end, 2017 turned out to be a good year.

Oh, don't get me wrong – it was also a terrible year. From the travel ban to the tax plan to the nuclear saber-rattling to the move to turn press briefings into "The Big Lie Variety Hour," the opening year of the Trump administration was dangerous, cruel and profane.

But for much of the year, the relentless focus on those things, important as they were, obscured a story that may prove to be of more lasting consequence: the women's backlash. If Jan. 20 was the start of a dark and troubling year, Jan. 21 was the start of a hopeful alternative.

That alternative 2017 began in the wake of the inauguration, marked by a dark address that detailed "American carnage" and in which President Donald Trump demanded "total allegiance" – ostensibly to the country, but for Trump, l'etat, c'est moi. The next day, as press secretary Sean Spicer took to the podium to argue and prevaricate about inauguration attendance numbers, hundreds of thousands of women took to the streets around the country – around the world, even – to protest the incoming administration.

Those protests were criticized for not being more than a march, but they were more, much more: They were an act of consciousness-raising and community organizing, the beginning of something much bigger. In the midst of the #MeToo moment, it's important to remember the symbol of the march, the pink pussy hat that reclaimed not just Trump's crudity, but his grotesque claim that women were there to be grabbed and groped. The "Access Hollywood" tape may not have been enough to keep Trump out of the White House, but it shaped the nature of his opposition, pushing women to the fore.

And not just to the fore of the marches – to the fore of the movement. At EMILY's List, the progressive organization that trains women to run for office, the numbers tell the tale. In the ten months of 2016 prior to the election, around 1,000 women reached out to the organization to learn how to put together a campaign. Since the election? 22,000.

In the Virginia elections earlier this year, we learned how transformative this new activism was. In the House of Delegates, Republicans saw their 66-34 majority sliced to either 51-49 or 50-50 (depending on the outcome of a contested recount). Eleven of the 15 seats Democrats picked up were won by women.

And then there was the #MeToo moment, one of the first times in modern history that several powerful men paid actual consequences for abusing women. There is a direct line between the "Access Hollywood" tape and that moment. Women witnessed someone admit to sexual assault on tape and get elected president anyway, over a woman who was immensely more qualified. The same jolt that sent women to EMILY's List sent them to the media as well, in important and impressive acts of mass courage.

In a year where it seemed like democracy might not make it, millions of Americans not only defended it, they lived it.

By and large, these two versions of 2017 split along partisan lines. The administration versus the resistance didn't have to shake out that way, but the vast majority of Republicans made it so, unwilling to break with an administration that regularly makes a mockery of every value they claimed to hold. They prostituted their principles, and possibly their party's future, for a Supreme Court seat and a corporate tax cut. Presumably they considered that a fair price; judging from the party's approval ratings, few Americans agree.

These competing strands of 2017 have set the stage for the coming year, a year in which women will be increasingly at the heart of American politics, where actions increasingly have consequences, where democracy increasingly feels a little more real, a little more fragile, a little more sacred. Given where we started, that's not a bad place to end up.

The conflicts of interest and corporate interests lurking behind op-eds in 2017

GOP leadership touted pro-tax plan op-eds that were deceptive cut-and-paste jobs

Procter & Gamble placed nearly identical pro-tax cut op-eds by supposedly different authors

Media outlets published anti-net neutrality op-eds from telecom-backed groups without disclosing the groups’ financial connections

Outlets across the country ran pro-pipeline op-eds without disclosing the writer’s financial ties to the pipeline industry

The Wash. Post continued to employ a lobbyist as a writer; Media Matters identified over a dozen times they didn't disclose his conflicts of interest

Newt Gingrich used his Fox position to push for-profit colleges without disclosing his conflict of interest

Former Sen. George Allen regularly appeared in the media to defend manufacturers on taxes and regulations without disclosure that he works for them

@MikeFarb1
#unhackthevote
Mueller Probe expands and now is focusing on Trumps Digital Operations!! Have I mentioned Trumps Subdomains pointed to St. Petersburg Russia? Crossing Paths with Wikileaks? This is going to be fun.

I'm having a hard time understanding your point.

American weapons going to Ukraine will include Javelin anti-tank missiles and sniper rifles.