This Week's News: Civil Rights, Politics and War
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-05 15:43:23 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-09 05:48:14 UTC
Civil Rights
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On The Media’s coverage of the subject started when US Customs and Border Protection detained their own producer Sarah Abdurrahman, her family, and her friends for hours on their way home from Canada last year. But this week’s program expanded on her experience to document, as they put it, some of the “countless stories of inhumanizing intrusions and detentions at the border that would seem to be unconstitutional anywhere else.”
Ms. Abdurrahman is far from the only journalist this has happened to in recent years. Huffington Post journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin wrote a powerful piece last month about his experiences repeatedly being detained while going over the border for the crime of having a Muslim name.
Drones
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While United States leaders lecture Russian President Vladimir Putin on respecting sovereignty and international law by not waging a war of aggression on Ukraine, the sovereignty of Yemen continues to be undermined by US drone strikes.
Reportedly, at least one drone strike, the first in over a month, occurred in Yemen early in the morning on March 3 or in the night on March 2. It killed three people, including an alleged al Qaeda fighter.
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A US drone strike was confirmed against the Shabwa Province of Yemen today, destroying a car and killing three people, wounding two others. All were labeled “terrorist suspects,” though none were identified.
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So far as we know, Al-Shami isn’t on the verge of a suicide bombing or self-immolation. If he dies in the coming weeks, it will likely be at the hand of another. Well, hand might be putting it strongly, since the hand that presses the button that looses the missile from the drone that kills him may be halfway across the globe. But if the bomb lands true, al-Shami will be the fifth American citizen assassinated by his government in the War on Terror.
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This extrajudicial killing program should make every American queasy. Based on largely secret legal standards and entirely secret evidence, our government has killed thousands of people. At least several hundred were killed far from any battlefield. Four of the dead are Americans. Astonishingly, President Obama's Justice Department has said the courts have no role in deciding whether the killing of U.S. citizens far from any battlefield is lawful.
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Members of the Sacramento group Veterans for Peace demonstrated quietly outside the federal courthouse in downtown Sacramento this morning ahead of an arraignment hearing for Shirley Osgood of Nevada County. She is being charged with trespassing onto Beale AFB property during an anti-drone protest.
CIA and Torture
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The CIA Inspector General’s Office has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations of malfeasance at the spy agency in connection with a yet-to-be released Senate Intelligence Committee report into the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation program, McClatchy has learned.
The criminal referral may be related to what several knowledgeable people said was CIA monitoring of computers used by Senate aides to prepare the study. The monitoring may have violated an agreement between the committee and the agency.
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Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, a member of the AAP National Council, suspects his party — or its leadership at least — has connections with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
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I agree with the editorial (“NYPD’s spies get a pass,” Feb. 24) about the fallacies inherent in a federal judge’s ruling, dismissing a lawsuit against the NYPD over its domestic spying operation.
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A Pakistani man known for his vocal opposition to the U.S. drone program whose kidnapping outraged activists throughout the world has been returned home after being tortured and interrogated, his lawyer announced Friday.
Kareem Khan was last seen in the early morning hours of Feb. 5 outside his home approximately nine miles from Islamabad. He is said to have been abducted by 15–20 men, some of whom were wearing police uniforms, and taken away.
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On his watch, the CIA has been permitted to keep secret a report on its own misconduct, even as misleading information was released to the public.
NSA
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You might notice the AT&T logo in the middle there. That's not there just for show. Many years before the world knew of Ed Snowden, an AT&T technician by the name of Mark Klein literally walked in the front door of the EFF's old offices, and revealed how the NSA was installing hardware directly on AT&T's premises to tap directly into the internet backbone, in order to collect basically all internet traffic.
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A police department in Florida failed to tell judges about its use of a cell phone tracking tool "because the department got the device on loan and promised the manufacturer to keep it all under wraps," the American Civil Liberties Union said in a blog post today.
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The outgoing director of the National Security Agency lashed out at media organizations reporting on Edward Snowden’s surveillance revelations, suggesting that British authorities were right to detain David Miranda on terrorism charges and that reporters lack the ability to properly analyze the NSA’s broad surveillance powers.
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Barton Gellman, one of the few journalists that has been given access to the entire trove of documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, told the RightsCon conference Tuesday that American federal authorities have declined to provide him with a secure means to communicate with them.
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SURVEILLANCE WHISTLEBLOWER Edward Snowden will appear before an audience via a live video link for the first time at next week's South by Southwest (SXSW) technology conference.
Snowden will be hosted by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and he'll be talking with ACLU technology leader Christopher Soghoian and Ben Wizner, a First Amendment advocate and director of the ACLU speech, privacy and technology project.
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Whether the warrantless surveillance program carried out by the National Security Agency (NSA) under President George W. Bush was legal is a question the United States Supreme Court is not going to answer.
In a case very similar to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) against warrantless surveillance made “legal” by the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) of 2008, which the Supreme Court declined to grant “standing” in February 2013, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) announced the Court had rejected their lawsuit against Bush-era warrantless surveillance.
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President Barack Obama promised the American people the National Security Agency wasn't reading the content of their emails.
Well, why not? Obama and NSA Chief Keith Alexander have never been deterred by the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, nor by our right to privacy, as recognized by the Supreme Court.
So why isn't the NSA tracking and recording the movements of every U.S. citizen who owns a mobile phone via cell-tower triangulation? Why isn't it recording all our phone conversations? Why isn't it keeping track of every Web search we make?
Why don't government officials recruit spies from among us to report on our suspicious activities? Why don't they generate a file on everyone they believe has a deviant political or religious philosophy? Why don't they round them up?
Privacy in the UK
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Britain's National Health Service is riddled with old and insecure WordPress-based websites. Many of these sites have severe flaws including being vulnerable to XSS attacks.
Russia and Ukraine
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There are many on both the left and right who see the CIA as a monolithic, all knowing, all powerful entity. Many overseas see the agency in more apocalyptic terms - an evil force capable of mind control and other flights of fancy.
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What has occurred in Ukraine was not a popular revolution, it was a carefully orchestrated coup d’état. The "demonstrators" with the metal barricades, bullet proof vest, army helmets, weapons, shield and masks were very well organized and trained. The whole affair was orchestrated by the West in an attempt to bring Ukraine into NATO and split Russia. Mr. David Shayler a former MI5 officer spoke to the Voice of Russia on the activities of the intelligence services and on what the forces behind the scenes are doing. He says President Putin is merely protecting his country and his people and is in a strong position.
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The Obama administration “plotted” and “abetted” the ouster of Ukraine's Russian-backed president to install a “puppet regime,” a retired CIA officer and political activist says.
“Never before in my 50 years in Washington has it been so clear that the United States has plotted, has aided and abetted and tried to put in the new premier or the new prime minister of the Ukraine,” said Ray McGovern.
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Secretary of State Kerry, who voted for George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion in 2003 and wanted to bomb Syria last year, and President Obama, who’s crossed borders regularly to kill enemies, are outraged that Russia has intervened in Ukraine, a case of double-talk and double-think, says Norman Solomon.
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A leading principle of international relations theory is that the state's highest priority is to ensure security. As Cold War strategist George F. Kennan formulated the standard view, government is created "to assure order and justice internally and to provide for the common defense."
The proposition seems plausible, almost self-evident, until we look more closely and ask: Security for whom? For the general population? For state power itself? For dominant domestic constituencies?
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Hypocrisy seems to be massively in fashion. This from William Hague renders me speechless: “Be in no doubt, there will be consequences. The world cannot say it is OK to violate the sovereignty of other nations.”
Then today we have the British Establishment at a closed event in Westminster Abbey in memory of Nelson Mandela. Prince Harry, David Cameron, all the toffs. I was never more than a footsoldier in the anti-apartheid movement, but I trudged through the rain and handed out leaflets in Dundee and Edinburgh. I suspect very few indeed of the guests at this posh memorial service did that. David Cameron was actively involved in Conservative groups which promoted precisely the opposite cause.
Venezuela
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Violent opposition groups attacked government buildings and civilians, and clashed with police and government supporters following peaceful marches commemorating the Day of Youth.
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The latter are hoping that the recent unrest in their country signals the end of the Bolivarian process and the overthrow of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, successor to the late President Hugo Chavez. The protest they staged at the Embassy was to help this become so.
Recent Techrights' Posts
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- Turkey (Eurasia) is another example of Microsoft failing with LLM hype and just burning a lot of energy in vain (investment without returns)
- Backlash and Negative Press After Microsoft Tells Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) People to DIE
- Follow-up stories
- Censorship as Signal of Opportunity for Reform
- It remains sad and ironic that Wikileaks outsourced so much of its official communications to Twitter (now X)
- The World Wide Web Has Been Rotting for Years (Quality, Accuracy, and Depth Consistently Decreasing)
- In the past people said that the Web had both "good" and "bad" and that the good outweighed the bad
- Comoros: Windows Plunges to Record Low of About 6% in Country of a Million People (in 2010 Windows Was 100%)
- Many of these people earn a few dollars a day; they don't care for Microsoft's "Hey Hi PC" hype
- The Mail (MX) Server Survey for July 2024 Shows Microsoft Collapsing to Only 689 Servers or 0.17% of the Whole (It Used to be About 25%)
- Microsoft became so insignificant and the most astounding thing is how the media deliberate ignores it or refuses to cover it
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- Microsoft Windows in Algeria: From 100% to Less Than 15%
- Notice that not too long ago Windows was measured at 100%. Now? Not even 15%.
- Microsoft Windows "Market Share" in New Zealand Plunges to 25%
- Android rising
- SUSE Goes Aryan: You May Not Use the Germanic Brand Anymore (It's Monopolised by the Corporation)
- Worse than grammar Nazis
- Gratis But Not Free as in Freedom: How Let's Encrypt is Dying in Geminispace
- Let's Encrypt is somewhat of a dying breed where the misguided CA model is shunned
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- Microsoft Misogyny Will be the Fall of Microsoft (Covering Up for Misogynists is a Huge Mistake and Highly Misguided Short-term Strategy)
- Microsoft's undoing may in fact be its attitude towards women
- Red Hat Keeps Behaving Like a Microsoft Reseller (for Proprietary Stuff!), Microsoft Employees as Authors in redhat.com
- In some ways this reminds us of Novell
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- Let's Encrypt has just fallen again
- Links 17/07/2024: New Attacks on the Press, European Patents Squashed Even at Kangaroo Court (UPC)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 17/07/2024: Proponents of Censorship and New Arrivals at Gemini
- Links for the day
- Links 17/07/2024: School Budget Meltdown and Modern Cars as Tracking Nightmares
- Links for the day
- This Should Certainly be Illegal, But the Person Who Helped Microsoft Do This is Still Attacking the Critics of It
- perhaps time for an "I told you so post"
- [Meme] A Computer With an Extra Key on the Keyboard Isn't Everyone's Priority
- (so your telling me meme)
- Africa as an Important Reminder That Eradicating Microsoft Doesn't Go Far Enough
- Ideally, if our top goal is bigger than "get rid of Microsoft", we need to teach people to choose and use devices that obey them, not GAFAM
- Billions of Computers Run Linux and Many Use Debian (or a Derivative of It)
- many devices never get updated or even communicate with the Net, so exhaustive tallies are infeasible
- [Meme] Microsoft is Firing
- Don't worry, Microsoft will have some new vapourware coming soon
- More DEI (or Similar) Layoffs on the Way, According to Microsoft Team Leader
- What happened shortly before Independence Day wasn't the end of it, apparently
- [Meme] Many Volunteers Now Realise the "Open" in "OpenSUSE" or "openSUSE" Was Labour-Mining
- Back to coding, packaging and testing, slaves
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 16, 2024
- IRC logs for Tuesday, July 16, 2024
- [Meme] Ein Factory
- A choice between "masters" (or "master race") is a false choice that results in mass exploitation and ultimately eradication (when there's little left to exploit)
- Links 17/07/2024: Open Source Initiative Lies and Dark Net Thoughts
- Links for the day
- Media Distorting Truth to Promote Ignorance
- online media is rapidly collapsing
- Android Rises to New Highs of Almost 80% in Cameroon
- How many dozens of nations will see Windows at under 10% this coming winter?
- Links 16/07/2024: TikTok Ban in Europe and Yandex Split
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 16/07/2024: On Packrafting and on Trump Shot
- Links for the day
- [Meme] Firefox Users Who Think They Know Better Than Mozilla
- Enjoy Firebook
- Firefox Used to Have About Half the Market in Switzerland, But It Doesn't Stand a Chance Anymore (Chrome Surging This Summer)
- Mozilla has managed to alienate some of the biggest fans of Firefox
- Microsoft's Biggest Losses Are in Europe This Summer
- Microsoft's ability to milk a relatively rich Europe is fast diminishing
- How to Make Software Suck and Discriminate Against People at the Same Time
- ageism glorified
- Bing Was at 2.6% in Russia When LLM Hype Started. Now It's Down to 0.8% (for 3 Months in a Row Already)
- The sharp fall of Bing may mean that exiting the Russian market won't matter to anybody
- [Meme] Microsoft Seems to be Failing to Comply With WARN Act (by Refusing to Announce Mass Layoffs as They Happen)
- since when does Microsoft obey the law anyway?
- Microsoft Layoffs Are Still Too Frequent to Keep Abreast of and Properly (or Exhaustively) Classify
- The "HR" department knows what's happening, but whistleblowers from there are rare
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- statCounter only traces back about 1 in 20 Web requests to Windows
- Links 16/07/2024: Salesforce Layoffs and Microsoft's DMARC Fail
- Links for the day
- Antenna Abuse and Gemini Abuse (Self-hosting Perils)
- Perhaps all this junk is a sign of Gemini growing up
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- They will keep bailing out Microsoft to bail themselves out
- The Software Freedom Conservancy Folks Don't Even Believe in Free Speech and They Act As Imposters (Also in the Trademark Arena/Sense)
- Software Freedom Conservancy was already establishing a reputation for itself as a G(I)AFAM censor/gatekeeper
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- In Africa in general Microsoft lost control
- GNU/Linux Share Doubled in the United States of America (USA) in the Past 12 Months
- Or so says statCounter
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- Google at 93.26%
- [Meme] The Red Bait (Embrace... Extinguish)
- They set centos on fire, then offer a (de facto) proprietary substitute for a fee
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- segment of a Noam Chomsky talk
- [Video] Boston Area Assange Defense (Yesterday)
- It was published only hours ago
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- Guinea is not a small country
- Over at Tux Machines...
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- syndication is not a monopoly in Gemini and if one doesn't condone political censorship, then one can create one's own syndication service/capsule
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- What an announcement to make just before Independence Day
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- Links for the day
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- more countries entering the "single-digit Windows" (under 10%) club
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- Links for the day
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- Malta is probably easy for Microsoft to bribe
- IRC at 16
- Logging has been used for us and against us
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- statCounter milestone?
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- Links for the day
- 500 Days' Uptime Very Soon
- Good luck doing that with Windows...
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- Links for the day
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- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
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- IRC logs for Sunday, July 14, 2024