In response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, decentralized international hacktivist collective Anonymous has hacked into a Russian website and Linux terminal and nearly triggered an explosion in an industrial gas control system.
On Saturday (Feb. 26), Anonymous hacked into the Center for the Protection of Monuments website for a second time in two days and uploaded a rogue page featuring the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag and containing a number of defacements, including screenshots of a Linux terminal in Russia and an industrial gas control system in North Ossetia, a republic within Russia. At the time of publication, the altered page was still online, but in the event it is removed, Anonymous has saved an archived version on the Web Archive.
I have been investigating a lot of Emacs plugins recently, and these are a few of the ones that I thought were both fun and interesting--so much so that I have added these to my Doom Emacs config.
It's essential to stay in touch with family and friends, given the human need for socializing. Instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and many others have changed the very essence of communication, and their ready availability makes them a must-have option.
Given the innovations in digital communications, the Linux community is blessed with instant messengers, each winning users across premium and open-source OSes.
Here are some of the best instant messaging apps to use on your Linux desktop.
I write almost everything important in my life: thoughts, plans, notes, diaries, correspondence, code, articles, and entire books.
They are my extended memory — my noted self — my organized thoughts. I refer to them often. I search them, update them, and learn from them. I convert them into HTML to make websites, or LaTeX to make books.
My written words are my most precious asset. They are also a history of my life. That’s why I only use plain text files. They are the most reliable, flexible, and long-lasting option. Here’s why.
In this I describe the first executable HPKE specification using hacspec. It is not only an executable specification of HPKE, it is also an annotated version of the RFC that can be read instead of (or in addition to) the RFC. While the TL;DR on HPKE was intended for consumers or potential users of HPKE, this blog post is aimed at implementators that want to implement HPKE or understand it better.
It is a showcase for Cryspen’s technology stack. In a follow up blog post we will describe how to connect the hacspec specification to efficient cryptographic primitives and formal proofs.
OpenSSH ProxyJump and ProxyCommand directives tell the SSH client how to connect to a remote server via an intermediary server — often called a jump host, jump server, or bastion server.
RGB lights can bring fresh life to any boring computer setup. At this point, you can get the RGB lighting for almost every component of your PC — fans, keyboards, and mice — you name it. The cherry on top is that most of these component manufacturers ship their own software for controlling their lighting systems. However, things aren’t that simple for Linux users. Unfortunately, most of these programs are usually proprietary. To add insult to injury, these pieces of software aren’t available for Linux.
That’s where the open-source RGB control programs come in, OpenRGB in this case. In this guide, we will go over everything about OpenRGB: its features, how to install and use it, and more. Let’s get into it!
Lately, part of the community has been dedicated to creating tools that are an improvement to commands that already exist in Linux. Today, in this post, you will learn about the timer command in Linux.
LibreWolf is a Firefox fork that focuses on privacy and security by eliminating telemetry, which can be invasive to your personal information, along with increased protection against tracking and fingerprinting techniques, while also including a few security improvements.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install LibreWolf Browser on Manjaro 21 Linux. The tutorial will use the yay AUR helper, ideally most users may be using some wrapper for Pacman, for new users, it is essential to install one to keep your packages up-to-date while you learn Arch/Manjaro.
Ventoy is a free, open-source tool used to write media’s ISO image files directly onto storage media to create bootable USB flash drives. Ventoy provides many benefits, including operating on USB devices with low disk space. It also does not take up much room. Almost anyone can install it quickly, making it popular among users who don’t want their data saved in image files instead of directly onto removable media like SD cards or CF Cards (though there are some limitations).
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Ventoy USB Bootable Image Creator on Manjaro 21 Linux. The tutorial will use the yay AUR helper, ideally most users may be using some wrapper for Pacman, for new users, it is essential to install one to keep your packages up-to-date while you learn Arch/Manjaro.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to install RabbitMQ on Ubuntu 22.04/Ubuntu 20.04. RabbitMQ is the most widely deployed open source message broker written in the Erlang programming language and is built on the Open Telecom Platform framework for clustering and failover. It implements the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP), Streaming Text Oriented Messaging Protocol (STOMP), MQ Telemetry Transport (MQTT), and other protocols.
With Linux installed on your Chromebook, you can take advantage of full desktop Linux applications. Installing Linux apps on Chromebook requires knowledge or at least of the command line. There’s no single Google Play store-like website or app where you simply search and install any Linux App you want. Each vendor chooses whatever Linux distribution they wish to support and publish their apps to the respective repositories. You then use mostly command line tools to install the respective Apps. However, with flatpaks and snaps, you can browse and search Linux Apps in similar ways you do with Android or iOS apps.
Chromebooks are lightweight fast booting computers with all-day battery life. They have grown popular in the Education sector and even among professionals. I have a $299 Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Go which I use as my daily driver. While you can install Apps from the Google Play store and Chrome Webstore on Chromebooks, you can’t install full-desktop Apps unless you enable and install Linux on Chromebooks.
To swap my Asus Vivobook laptop for a lightweight Chromebook, I needed to be able to run some full desktop apps on my new Chromebook, specifically a music player, text editor and a photo editor. My traditional desktop apps include GIMP for photo editing, Sublime Text and VLC for offline music playback. These can be installed on Chromebook after you install Linux.
Terraform is a tool for provisioning infrastructure that uses Infrastructure as Code (IaC). It facilitates the operation of infrastructure, platform, and service by self-regulating and managing them. It also aids in the secure and systematic creation, change, improvement, and versioning of infrastructure. It is the world’s first multi-cloud Infrastructure as Code tool, created in the GO programming language. It’s a declarative, open-source infrastructure. Because the declarative architecture makes use of clear language, there is no need to explain how this automation works at each stage. It’s a modern method that automates the execution of the ultimate result and only requires you to specify what the end result should be rather than listing each step.
Terraform is an IaC tool for provisioning infrastructure. Take, for example, a project in which you wish to build infrastructure from scratch for the application that will run on it.
This time, you will learn how to install MailTrain App on Ubuntu / Debian
Mailtrain is a free, self-hosted open-source newsletter and email marketing application. It is developed using Node.JS and it uses MySQL/MariaDB as for Database. Mailtrain provides many features like list management, Template Editor, RSS Campaigns, Custom Fields, Email Automation, High-Level Encryption. If someone is starting and has a long list of subscribers, Mailtrain is a suitable option for anyone who is starting as it also provides a decent web based console for management.
I have used Fedora many times in the last decade, and currently, it is my main distro. Today’s article will not be about my reasons for choosing Fedora as my main OS or about its features, perhaps we will write about it in another article, as we will dedicate it to talking about RPM Fusion repositories and how to install them on Fedora, but hey, what is RPM Fusion? And why do you need to install it on Fedora?
Call it “the Steam Deck effect.” Valve’s console launch is having an immediately awesome impact on the entire Linux gaming ecosystem, and is clearly swaying publishers like EA. For PC gamers eagerly awaiting the arrival of their favorite multiplayer games on Linux — specifically the ones reliant on Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) — today brings incredibly positive news. Respawn’s hero shooter Apex Legends is up and running on Linux.
Were you hoping to play Destiny 2 on Steam Deck or a Linux desktop using Proton? Well, you're currently out of luck. Their updated Steam Guide has a newer section just for Steam Deck and it's not good news.
Like a lot of bigger games, they don't support Linux either natively or at all and right now it appears they don't have any plans to either.
Something that I’ve had since childhood is sweaty hands all year-round. Not sure what the cause is, but Gamer Goo is advertised as being able to prevent sweaty hands for a better grip on a controller, allowing a better gameplay session.
When will Bungie let Destiny 2 come to Valve’s Steam Deck handheld gaming PC? It’s looking like the answer is never — because the soon-to-be Sony subsidiary has published an help page that not only says the game’s unsupported, but outright threatens to ban prospective Steam Deck players (via Wario64).
GNOME 40 users: do you want to see your favourite apps in the application grid again?
Well, you can! There is (naturally) a GNOME extension that puts shortcuts for apps added to the dock back in the app grid, similar to how things were in GNOME 3.38 and earlier.
Admittedly if you’re yet to try GNOME 40/Ubuntu 21.10 you might be wondering what the heck I’m on about, so I’ll explain.
In GNOME 40 and above, applications that are “pinned” to the Ubuntu Dock (or added as a favourite in the vanilla Dash, which is what GNOME calls the dock) do not appear in the application grid as well...
For now, I’ll focus on the usual short summary of my work + personal + open-source discoveries and activities from 2021, without too much emphasis on the deeper chaos going on in that year.
Few days ago the launch of the new version of that of a completely “free” Linux distribution, €«Trisquel 10.0 Nabia€» which is based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS base package and is targeted for use by small businesses, educational institutions, and home users.
For those who are unaware of Trisquel, they should know that this distribution has the personal endorsement of Richard Stallman, officially recognized as completely free software by the Free Software Foundation and placed on the foundation's list of recommended distributions.
The distribution is notable for excluding all non-free components from the distribution, such as binary drivers, firmware, and graphics that are distributed under a non-free license or use trademarks.
On February 23rd, 2022 OpenSSH was updated to version 8.9.
There is a lot there which would be best to read in its entirety rather than attempting to summarize here. However, for the sake of emphatic repetition and encouragement from the community at large, this quote seems salient and worth sharing: [...]
The release manager for openSUSE Leap Luboš Kocman is expected to announce the Beta release phase of Leap 15.4 this week, according to the roadmap. That means the openSUSE Community can download, install and test the release.
Leap’s Beta phase has rolling updates until it’s official release, which will then transition the release to a maintenance phase.
To celebrate this Beta phase, why not have a Pizza Party and test the openSUSE Leap 15.4 Beta.
If there’s no party near you, organize your own; just add it to the wiki page and invite others from your local community to join you in testing openSUSE Leap. Get some pizza delivered to your home or office and bring friends and colleagues together. A new openSUSE user may show up! If you are unsure of how to do it, read this.
The AlmaLinux Foundation has announced the availability of a PowerPC version of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux rebuild for machines based on IBM's POWER architecture.
The new edition targets ppc64le – that is, little-endian 64-bit POWER-architecture. POWER and PowerPC processors were originally big-endian, as are IBM's z Series mainframes, as well as the Motorola 680x0 family that Apple replaced with PowerPC. However, x86 is little-endian, so support for little-endian operation makes it easier to port some x86 software to PowerPC.
Along with the project's original x86-64-only version 8.3, and the Arm Aarch64 edition it later added, the new edition means that AlmaLinux supports three out of the four CPU architectures that Red Hat itself supports. By comparison, its rival Rocky Linux still only supports x86-64 and Aarch64, although the project is working on it.
Debian was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock, named as a portmanteau of his name with that of his then-girlfriend, later wife, Deborah. Murdock wanted a Linux distribution that was as open and committed to free software as the GNU project. While leadership has changed since then, Debian is still committed to being "a universal operating system."
Known for its commitment to stability and its support for multiple processor architectures besides Intel, Debian is the basis for other popular Linux distros, especially Ubuntu.
Like the PineTime smartwatch from 2019, Pine64 launched another PineTime in mid-2021 with similar open nature to begin a Linux-based smart wearable. It comes with infiniTime firmware pre-installed, and of course, it is completely customizable in the software department. Moreover, PineTime is undoubtedly a great option with its aggressively low price tag.
The company Pine Microsystems, Inc. is actually a US-based PC software and hardware manufacturer. Pine A64 is one of their greatest manufacturers, which is a single-board computer. And this company used the same name to launch their new smartwatch. That is PineTime; I am talking about. And today, I am here to share my experience of using this watch.
In case you didn't know, the Raspberry Pi turns 10 today!
That's right—the Raspberry Pi model B (pictured above, front left) was launched on February 29th, 2012. And it sold out immediately.
I did get in touch with Fadell after that. But I realized I should have known better even before getting in touch with him. Apple operates in secrecy, but the origin story of the iPhone has been told several times from several sources. A very long story rendered very short: Fadell’s story adds up; Businessweek’s description of the embedded Linux project being led by Fadell does not. (Businessweek’s description of Forstall and Fadell as political rivals definitely adds up, though. The cutthroat internal politics of Apple under Steve Jobsââ¬â°—ââ¬â°strong personalities with large egosââ¬â°—ââ¬â°amidst tumultuous technical drama (see timeline below) sounds like the makings for a damn good show like Succession.1)
Internal files from the Swedish telecommunications equipment vendor Ericsson have been leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, showing details of how the firm allegedly paid bribes to the Islamic State terrorist group in Iraq in order to continue selling its services there.
The Chrome team is delighted to announce the promotion of Chrome 99 to the stable channel for Windows, Mac and Linux.This will roll out over the coming days/weeks.
Chrome 99.0.4844.51 for Windows,Mac and Linux contains a number of fixes and improvements -- a list of changes is available in the log. Watch out for upcoming Chrome and Chromium blog posts about new features and big efforts delivered in 99.
The filter rules preventing websites from portscanning the local machine have recently been tightened in Brave. It turns out there are a surprising number of ways to refer to the local machine in Chromium.
Arti is our ongoing project to create a working embeddable Tor client in Rust. It’s nowhere near ready to replace the main Tor implementation in C, but we believe that it’s the future.
Today, we've reached our 0.1.0 milestone: this means that we now consider Arti's high-level APIs to be "mostly stable", and ready for experimental embedding in other projects. (We don't promise no API breakage, but we don't break our high-level APIs without a good reason.) The 1.0.0 milestone, scheduled for September, will represent an even stronger API commitment.
For reasons beyond the scope of this entry, I run a self-compiled Firefox that's built from the latest Firefox development sources (as of when I build or rebuild it). Recently, I've noticed that my scrollbars have been flickering. At first I didn't clearly see what was going on; later, I realized that the 'flickering' was that the scroll bar would disappear after a while if I didn't move the mouse, then reappear the moment I nudged it even slightly or used the scroll wheel.
I find this sort of behavior quite irritating. I don't like things flickering in and out of visibility any more than I like blinking cursors, because my eye is reflexively distracted by change. It's slightly more tolerable now that I know what's actually causing it and it no longer feels random, but I still want it to go away. Today, having identified it, I managed to track down what's going on.
Foundation (FSF), a nonprofit that exists to promote software freedom, announced that Zoë Kooyman has been appointed as the organization’s new executive director.
She will replace John Sullivan, who held the role for the past 12 years. Sullivan will stay with the organization for the next few months in order to ensure a smooth transition.
The FSF defines free software as “software that gives you the user the freedom to share, study and modify it.” One such example is the GNU operating system, of which the FSF is the steward.
Kooyman joined the FSF in 2019 as a program manager, and has been the lead organizer of the FSF’s LibrePlanet event since 2019, including successfully converting the 2020 event online in just five days at the very start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many programs have already safeguarded against this by storing Unix timestamps in a 64-bit integer (that kicks the problem 292 billion years into the future), but some legacy programs will inevitably fail in unexpected ways. We'll have a lot more legacy software in 2038 than we did in 2000 (Y2K).
The two sum problem is a version of the subset sum problem and is a common programming question. Although there is a popular dynamic programming solution for the subset sum problem, we can construct an O(n) time approach for the two sum problem. The goal is to identify all the pairs of two numbers that add up to a certain “S” in an unsorted array. This article is about a famous coding task frequently asked in Python interviews.
This article provides a guide on how to utilize the Tkinter Scrollbar fully. This tutorial highlights having a useful Tkinter application containing long lists or a widget that is too big to fit in the application window. In addition, we discussed the Scrollbar widget could be used for said applications.
Python has several options for constructing a graphical user interface. Tkinter is the most widely used GUI technique out of all the options. It’s a Python language interface to the Python-provided Tk GUI toolkit.
A Scrollbar is a Python Tkinter widget that provides continuous data to be scrolled in a predetermined direction on the screen. The direction can either be horizontal or vertical. Scrollbars are inserted when the content surpasses the screen orientation, allowing the user to travel to unseen material in either a right-to-left or upward-to-downward direction.
When creating a GUI with Tkinter, the size of the window is usually determined by the size and location of the components in the window. However, you can regulate the window size by giving it a specific width and height. The geometry() function on the window with the width and height strings supplied as arguments can be used to change the size of the Tkinter window. In this tutorial, we have provided you with guidelines on how to specify a window size for a Tkinter GUI application in Python.
The way you access and modify Unix environment variables in Python programs is generally through os.environ; Python 3 being Python 3, sometimes you need os.environb. In Unix, what can go in the environment is somewhat fuzzy and while Python has some issues with character encodings, it's otherwise surprisingly liberal in a number of ways.
Any modern UNIX/Linux operating system comes with the sh and the Bash shells installed by default. While both of them are very similar in nature, one offers more than the other.
This guide will dive deep into the differences and similarities between the sh and the Bash shells.
Switch statement is a decision-driven statement that is used to test a variable/expression against a list of values. These values are referred as cases and the variable will be tested for each case. One switch expression/statement can have multiple cases therefore switch statement can be used to select a specific code block from multiple choices.
I read this article which examines why CSS is the way it is from the perspective of a technical director at the W3C.
It’s easy, in hindsight, to critique things CSS got wrong or should’ve prioritized differently. But I want to take a moment to marvel at the things they got right.
But in the decades after the Civil War, Black writers looking to faithfully depict the horrors of slavery had to contend with readers whose worldviews were colored by racism, as well as an entire swath of the country eager to paper over the past.
Charles Chesnutt was one of those writers. Forced to work with skeptical editors and within the confines of popular forms, Chesnutt nonetheless worked to shine a light on the legacy of slavery.
Stephen Crane became famous with the publication of The Red Badge of Courage in September 1895, when he was 24 years old; for the rest of his short life, he would—somewhat to his chagrin—be known as “the author of Red Badge.” Less a novel than a dreamlike meditation on practical versus theoretical knowledge, it argues for the former with a command, and a disillusion, belying the fact of its author’s birth six years after the end of the war it depicts. As such, it points to a fundamental ambiguity in Crane’s writing and career, in which reports on experience preceded experience itself, prompting the writer’s ardent efforts to live up to his own authority. His life repeated the path of his protagonist. His dreams became real, then became nightmares.
Following (now) multiple reports of the ransom cyber attack on NVIDIA servers, the [cracking] group LAPSUS$ now demands NVIDIA should release their drivers for Windows, MacOS and Linux as open source. Should NVIDIA fail to meet this demand, the group threatens to release chipset files, graphics, and silicon information for existing and upcoming GPUs.
I don't know who that is, or what internal events at IBM they're privy to, so it should be taken with a grain of salt. (If they read this blog, feel free to follow up in the comments or with me in E-mail.) Still, it makes more sense than IBM suddenly slamming the door on OpenPOWER after the tremendous goodwill built up with POWER8 and especially POWER9. It does also suggest, however, that the situation with Power10 is more or less baked in. The roadmap for POWER9, currently the OpenPOWER architecture with the widest install base, basically blew up and the long-promised POWER9 AIO "Axon" or "Axone" never arrived. I'm predicting that Power10 will have a smaller install base than POWER9 because it's still IBM-exclusive, no other vendors so far have announced machines, and Raptor (the only "low-end" vendor of OpenPOWER workstations) has said they won't ship a Power10 system with blobs. If there wasn't enough money on the table to release Axon for IBM's biggest OpenPOWER ecosystem, there won't be for a newly-freed "Power10+."
We’ve been contacted by [Cedric], telling us about the smallest MCU he’s ever seen – Huada HC32L110. For those of us into miniature products, this Cortex-M0+ package packs a punch (PDF datasheet), with low-power, high capabilities and rich peripherals packed into an 1.6mm x 1.4mm piece of solderable silicon.
This is matchstick head scale computing, with way more power than we previously could access at such a scale, waiting to be wrangled. Compared to an ATTiny20 also available in WLCSP package, this is a notable increase in specs, with a way more powerful CPU, 16 times as much RAM and 8-16 times the flash! Not to mention that it’s $1 a piece in QTY1, which is about what an ATTiny20 goes for. Being a 0.35mm pitch 16-pin BGA, your typical board house might not be quite happy with you, but once you get a board fabbed and delivered from a fab worth their salt, a bit of stenciling and reflow will get you to a devboard in no time.
Quite a few hackers nowadays share their tips and tricks on Twitter – it’s easy to do so, and provided either an existing audience or a bit of effort to get one, you’ll get at least a few notifications telling you that people appreciated what you had to share. Today, we’re covering two desoldering hacks highlighted there that will be useful some day, exactly when you need them. Both of them use a piece of wire and, in a way, extend the reach of your soldering iron’s tip. Copper wire would work better because of superior thermal conductivity, but other types of solid core wire will work in a pinch.
First hack is brought to us by [Erin Rose] – desoldering a microUSB socket. You need to heat up the entire shield and the pins at the same time, which the wire acts as a thermal gateway for. As long as there are melted solder bridges from sections of the wire to all the copper-to-part connection points, it should be easy to pump enough heat into the solder joints for all of them to eventually melt and give in at once.
“Sivert’s sisters are five, six, and seven years older than he is, and so we watched how social media at a young age affected them. We tried to limit their social media as teenagers with varying degrees of success. One daughter, in particular,(social media)became something that was really affecting her mood, her self-esteem, and she was really struggling with it in a noticeable way. We ended up taking her phone away, which she didn’t love. But after about three weeks we started to see an incredibly noticeable change in her behavior.”
If you watch TV, you’ve likely been inundated with ads about tax prep services that promise to meet your every need or let you file for free.
It’s the time of year when people open search engines and ask: “Is TurboTax free?”
Remote test-taking spyware company Proctorio has spent months turning itself into an internet villain. It all started when student and security researcher Erik Johnson decided to take a look at the inner workings of Proctorio’s spyware, noting that it tracked everything from eye movement to mouse movement (with plenty in between) in apparent hopes of keeping students from cheating.
A Ukrainian security researcher this week leaked several years of internal chat logs and other sensitive data tied to Conti, an aggressive and ruthless Russian cybercrime group that focuses on deploying its ransomware to companies with more than $100 million in annual revenue. The chat logs offer a fascinating glimpse into the challenges of running a sprawling criminal enterprise with more than 100 salaried employees. The records also provide insight into how Conti has dealt with its own internal breaches and attacks from private security firms and foreign governments.
This post explains the issue packagers run into very well – and it sure does look like these newer platforms are not very good citizens. I know this isn’t related, but this gives me the same feelings and reservations as Flatpak, Snap, and similar tools.
With an appeal filed on Friday, Member of the European Parliament Patrick Breyer is challenging a 2021 court decision on secretive EU-funded development of an AI-driven ââ¬Å¾video lie detector“ and risk classification to be used on travellers to Europe (ââ¬Å¾iBorderCtrl“). The European Court ruled on 15 December 2021 that the public can partially access the project documentation where it generally discusses the reliability, ethics and legality of such technology. However the Court considered that commercial interests rule out public access to information on the specific iBorderCtrl technology, including its legality, its reliability (false positives), the risk of discrimination and mitigation measures. Following Breyer’s appeal the European Court of Justice will revisit the first instance decision.
The ALA is concerned that it will be forced to breach privacy policy if it is required to report the effectiveness of money coming from the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act. Because of this fear, the ALA has requested that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration ensure their reporting requirements don’t call for things like specific searches citizens may have used while on a federal computer funded by the IIJA, as that act would be unconstitutional.
Notes: Harvey Wasserman has been a clean-energy and anti-nuclear activist for decades. His recent article on the nuclear hazards in Ukraine, Chernobyl 2.0, was published at The Progressive. Peter Kuznick is Professor of History at American University in Washington DC, and also directs the Nuclear Studies Program at that institution. He and Oliver Stone wrote The Untold History of the United States.
The prospect of war raises the stakes and heightens the intensity of political disagreement. But the outbreak of war often has the reverse effect, with pressures for national unity narrowing the spectrum of debate. In the weeks leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, arguments within the Republican Party were particularly intense, leading analysts like Amber Phillips of The Washington Post to write about “a huge split among Republicans on how to characterize what’s happening.”
The invasion ended in February, and soon after, I visited what had been a gleaming city. Light still glinted off towering office buildings, six lane highways still sped international traffic in and out. Public parks offered shade and modern art and manicured gardens where older women walked with children and bought ice cream and pastries from roadside carts.
As Masouma Tajik walked the narrow, medieval streets of Lviv, Ukraine, on Thursday, she was struck by the similarities to what she saw in Afghan cities before their fall to the Taliban. “There is an eerie silence I remember that had taken over Kabul in the night before August 15,” she said, referring to the day the Taliban seized the Afghan capital.
Of course, Yarmuth’s stock purchases create obvious conflicts of interest. As Budget Committee Chair, he oversees a group which, according to Sludge’s DavidMoore, “writes the annual concurrent budget resolution that declares appropriate budget levels for categories of the government including national defense.” Additionally, Rep. Yarmuth’s investments in BMS came at a time when the Build Back Better Act, which included attempts to reform drug pricing, faced great opposition from many House Democrats. BMS, which is a prime manufacturer of common Medicare treatments that cost Medicare and patients billions of dollars each year, also belongs to two trade associations, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). Each has lobbied against measures involving drug price negotiation, meaning Rep. Yarmuth has invested in companies which benefit from legislation he has a hand in passing.
The day before Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine was a national holiday dedicated to Defenders of the Fatherland. Mobile Internet traffic swelled with reposted patriotic memes and videos. One viral TikTok reel opens with a photo of Vladimir Putin flanked by a pair of nuclear submarines and proclaims: “Russians will always return to take back what is theirs.”
Commentators argue that Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has overturned the postwar world order. But the reality is perhaps more dangerous than that.
BUENOS AIRES – Argentina’s Defense Minister Jorge Tayana and his Venezuelan counterpart, Minister of People’s Power for Defense Vladimir Padrino López, have agreed to cooperate in pursuing their investigation of Puma, a series of military exercises conducted in Argentina in 2019 with the aim of invading Venezuela and overthrowing the government. The military drills – which were overseen by Argentina’s former rapid deployment force army commander and current head of the army, General Juan Martín Paleo – were undertaken between April and July 2019, during the presidency of Mauricio Macri.
Economic Consequences for Russia
The immediate effect on the Russian economy in the initial days was a sharp fall in its stock and financial asset markets. Investors began cashing out and running for the sidelines to wait out subsequent developments.€ But not too much should be made of that.€ Financial asset price deflation is just paper value and doesn’t impact the Russian consumer or its general economy all that much.
Almost 60 years ago, another autocrat, Nikita Khrushchev, installed medium-range missiles in Cuba; his risk-taking led to a disgraceful ouster from power.€ Vladimir Putin has taken on a huge risk in Ukraine that will render him a global pariah.€ But he has accumulated the powers of a Czar as opposed to a Communist Commissar, and there is no Politburo as a possible center for creating opposition to his leadership.€ Moreover, Putin has surrounded himself with former KGB colleagues at the key positions of Defense Minister, Intelligence Chief, and Security Advisor.€ Russia’s influential oligarchs will feel the pain of Western sanctions against Russia, but they are no more likely to challenge Putin than Germany’s business class would challenge Adolf Hitler.
Putin’s pathological and paranoid speech on the eve of the invasion was Hitlerian, reminiscent of Nazi justifications for using force in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Soviet Union.€ The delusional references to Ukraine’s “aggressive Russophobia and neo-Naziism,” the “kidnapping [of] Russian citizens,” and the “genocide perpetrated against 14 million people” testify to the madness of Putin’s methods.€ Once upon a time, it could be argued that the ill-fated decisions of Presidents Clinton and Bush to enlarge the North Atlantic Treaty Organization were responsible for some of Putin’s not unreasonable demands, but today’s exercise in regime change indicates that it was the fear of a Western-style democracy on his sensitive western border that was uppermost.€ Putin has enormous personal power, unlike his immediate predecessors, with no one, no institution, to restrain him.
On February 11th, US President Joe Biden announced that the United States will steal seven billion dollars of Afghanistan’s currently frozen assets. This act of theft guarantees the collapse of Afghanistan’s central bank, and an increase in instability and the starvation of perhaps the most stricken people on earth.
Over the past twenty years, the death toll from the US war in Afghanistan may well be in the low millions. Rather than pay reparations to the victims of the US occupation, the US is sadistically punishing the victims through deliberate economic warfare. One hardly needs to be a legal expert to know that impunity for these acts is not allowed under US or international law. Biden’s action is both inhumane and lawless.
Putin’s first argument is, Washington invented the model of aggressive, illegal invasions, and destruction of distant countries that never threatened U.S. security. Millions have died, been injured, and sickened in defenseless countries attacked by U.S. armed forces. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney killed over a million innocent Iraqis and devastated the country in so many ways that scholars called it a “sociocide.”
Putin’s second argument is that Russia is being threatened on its sensitive western border, which had been invaded twice by Germany and caused the loss of 50 million Russian lives. Soon after the Soviet Union collapsed, the West’s military alliance against Russia began moving east. Under Bill Clinton, NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organization) signed up Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1999 leading to major arms sales by the U.S. giant munitions corporations.
Every international conflict tests that conviction: Will THIS be the one war that makes me reconsider and conclude “hey, THIS war, unlike any other I’ve witnessed, is unavoidable, necessary, and just?”
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is not that war.
Our first concern must be for civilians across the country, now facing violence and displacement. And our first call must be for an immediate ceasefire, a pull-back of Russian troops from Ukraine, and international support for the humanitarian challenges already underway in the region.
As for resolving the conflict, that requires understanding its causes — which has everything to do with when we start the clock.
A large and powerful nation attacks a small and weaker nation. Fiery explosions light up the night. Their thunder roars across the landscape while armored columns roll over the border. Shock and awe. Kyiv 2022. Bagdad 2003. It all looks much the same.
Empires press against each other. People are caught in the middle. In Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, to name a few of the recent battlegrounds. Roadkill in the imperial struggle for power. Leave aside the justifications and charges each side will throw against one another. The problem is as old as civilization itself. The problem is empire.
As a bloody and dangerous war is raging in Ukraine between the armies of Russia and Ukraine, the latter backed by arms being supplied by the US and its NATO allies, instead of masses of protesters converging on Washington to demand that the US end the conflict in Ukraine by announcing that it would never again permit the expansion of NATO membership to Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova or any other former Warsaw Pact country or former Soviet state of the former Soviet Union, the only demonstration in the nation’s capital is truckers protesting Covid vaccine and mask mandates .
For decades since the Korean War (the last time the US sought Security Council approval before going to war), the US has been committing the illegal war crime of attacking another country that does not present any imminent threat of attack to it as required under the UN Charter, yet not since the Biden administration took office, and only rarely under prior Democratic presidential administrations from Carter through Obama, has a US peace movement risen up to seriously protest US militarism.
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, veteran journalist Andrew Cockburn and Yale historian Timothy Snyder discuss the history of the region and what role NATO’s expansion played in the current crisis. Cockburn says the United States and its allies broke promises made in the 1990s not to expand the military alliance into Eastern Europe, setting the stage for an eventual confrontation. “What Putin has done is absolutely disgraceful, but it’s kind of easy to understand. There has been sustained efforts to push NATO forward,” he says. But Snyder says the focus on NATO ignores the agency of leaders in Ukraine and elsewhere who have the right to seek their own arrangements. “It’s very important to remember that the world isn’t just about Washington and Moscow. It’s also about other sovereign states and other peoples who can express their desires and have their own foreign policies,” says Snyder.
Russia has escalated attacks against Ukraine, launching a missile strike hitting a government building and shelling civilian areas in Kharkiv, reportedly targeting civilians with cluster and thermobaric bombs, and killing more than 70 Ukrainian soldiers at a military base in Okhtyrka. Meanwhile, the U.S. rejected Ukrainian President Zelensky’s demand for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, saying it could lead to a war between the U.S. and Russia. This comes as Ukrainian and Russian negotiators failed to reach an agreement on Monday and the European Union approved Ukraine’s emergency application to be a candidate to join the union. We go to Kyiv to speak with Yurii Sheliazhenko, executive secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, who says “support of Ukraine in the West is mainly military support” and reports that his country “focuses on warfare and almost ignores nonviolent resistance to war.” He also discusses Zelensky’s response to the crisis, the European Union’s approval of Ukraine’s emergency application, and whether he plans to leave the war-torn city of Kyiv soon.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday accused Russia of engaging in "frank, undisguised terror" after a missile struck the main square of Ukraine's second-largest city, killing at least seven people, injuring dozens, and damaging an administrative building.
"They are using terror trying to break us," Zelenskyy said in an address to the European Parliament on day six of Russia's deadly assault on Ukraine.
This is a developing news story... Check back for possible updates...
The Russian Defense Ministry on Tuesday warned Kyiv residents to leave their homes immediately as Russia's forces advanced on the Ukrainian capital and announced plans to bomb targets in the city.
To protest Moscow's war on Ukraine, roughly 100€ diplomats from countries around the globe€ walked out of a speech by Russian€ Foreign Minister Sergey€ Lavrov at€ the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday.
Ukraine's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Yevheniia Filipenko, led the walkout, which left a mostly empty conference hall to hear Lavrov's pre-recorded video message during the council's meeting on disarmament.
As Russian forces attacked the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Tuesday, the United Nations refugee agency and other humanitarian groups called for funding from across the globe to help aid millions of displaced and suffering Ukrainians amid warnings that the situation in the country and across Eastern Europe is "deteriorating rapidly."
"We already see long-term disruptions in regular water and electricity supplies. People calling our hotline in Ukraine are desperately in need of food and shelter."
Saturday Night Live responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by devoting its "cold open," which typically involves a comedy routine based on current events, to a solemn performance by a New-York based Ukrainian chorus. It was a moving moment. It's impossible not to be moved by Ukraine's suffering, and was glad to see their courage being honored.
"When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers," an old African proverb teaches. Sadly, we now witness its truth in the horrors visited upon Ukraine by Russia's invasion. The elephants—Russia and the U.S. with its NATO allies—fought over Ukraine, and now Ukrainians are paying a horrible price.
Russia further elevated concerns about global catastrophe on Tuesday as its "nuclear submarines sailed off for drills in the Barents Sea and mobile missile launchers roamed snow forests" in Siberia just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and put his nation's nuclear forces on "special alert."
"Drills with nuclear weapons are never acceptable and are particularly dangerous in tense times."
While unequivocally condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin's brutal war on Ukraine, some U.S. experts on Tuesday made the case for prioritizing diplomacy and humanitarian assistance over military aid to end the violence, help suffering Ukrainians, and promote long-term peace.
"Rather than build up weaponry in Europe, could the United States initiate negotiations about shared security, disarmament, and a military stand-down?"
Though U.S. and NATO policy in recent years has contributed to the current tragedy unfolding in Ukraine, responsibility rests unequivocally with the Kremlin. It is an illegal war of aggression which has quite deservedly resulted in worldwide condemnation.
While the military and officials confirm that Estonia is currently not under direct military threat, resources such as the Be Prepared! ("Ole valmis!") app created by the Women's Voluntary Defense Organization (Naiskodukaitse) are helping residents prepare for emergencies. This app notes that the best place to shelter from an airstrike, for example, is in a basement.
Iran likely suffered another failed launch of a satellite-carrying rocket in recent days, even as Tehran faces last-minute negotiations with world powers to save its tattered nuclear deal in Vienna.
Satellite images from Maxar Technologies seen by The Associated Press show scorch marks at a launch pad at Imam Khomeini Spaceport in Iran's rural Semnan province on Sunday. A rocket stand on the pad appears scorched and damaged, with vehicles surrounding it. An object, possibly part of the gantry, sits near it.
Less than two weeks before a major meeting in Geneva, top environmental groups on Tuesday argued that the wealthy nations most responsible for the global biodiversity crisis should pour billions more dollars per year into addressing the destruction of nature in developing countries.
"To move towards a nature-positive economy, we need to spend more directly on biodiversity conservation and end pressure on nature from harmful financial flows and subsidies."
This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration cofounded by Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation strengthening coverage of the climate story. The author is CCNow’s deputy director.
The Ukrainian arm of the climate movement Fridays for Future on Tuesday called for global demonstrations to demand an end to Russia's military assault.
"We ask all of our brothers and sisters from Fridays For Future to go on the streets, to demand this war to end, to fight for peace in our name," the group said in a Twitter thread.
On February 9, 2022, The California State Teachers' Retirement Systems (CalSTRS) convened a symposium about sustainability and investments, with speakers from CalSTRS, other financial experts, and several groups favoring divestment. This symposium came about from a request last year by State Superintendent of Public Education Tony Thurman requesting the CalSTRS Board place on the agenda a vote about fossil fuel divestment. At the symposium, the public had a chance to learn about how CalSTRS thinks their engagement with fossil fuel companies can lead to positive impacts for the climate.
Faced with a request by Ukrainian leadership to freeze the accounts of all people in Russia and Belarus, major [cryptocurrency] exchanges are steadfastly refusing, saying the tactic would unfairly harm civilians and “fly in the face” of the [cryptocurrency] community’s libertarian ideology.
In a tweet, Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov publicly asked the world’s major [cryptocurrency] exchanges over the weekend to freeze all accounts of the Russian people, as well as the people of Belarus, a Putin ally, rather than only those entities who have been legally sanctioned, thereby placing additional domestic pressure on Russia to end its war on Ukraine.
The funding round comes after DNABlock raised $1.2 million in September for its 3D avatar technology, called “Replikant,” that allows creators to design and mint NFTs of realistic avatars. As part of the latest funding round, Scott Broock, formerly a VR executive at YouTube and the evp of digital strategy at the NBCUniversal-owned animation studio Illumination (Despicable Me, Sing) has joined DNABlock as a chief strategy officer. DNABlock will also launch a creator studio in LA for talent in the NFT space.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are responsible for the carbon footprint associated with the consumption of millions of dollars worth of goods and services. Some artists believe that they can easily fix the issue, while others don't.
NFTs are digital tokens that can be used to create anything digital — art, GIFs, videos, or even a screenshot of Jack Dorsey's, Twitter former CEO, first tweet. But, NFTs can also generate greenhouse gas emissions and consume a large amount of power.
The resultant energy demand has created a backlash from environmentalists. Utilities and communities, meanwhile, see financial risk and opportunity costs if they cater to cryptocurrency miners that gobble up cheap electricity while creating few jobs. Serving miners may require utilities to make equipment upgrades, which could become superfluous if cryptocurrency prices crash and mining operations shut down.
Climate justice advocates celebrated Tuesday in response to insurance giant AIG's announcement that it will no longer invest in or provide insurance coverage for any new Arctic drilling activities nor will it finance or underwrite the construction of any new coal-fired power plants, thermal coal mines, or tar sands projects, effective immediately.
"AIG's new commitments to reduce underwriting for coal, tar sands oil, and Arctic oil and gas are a major step forward for people and the planet."
IMF Surcharges: Procyclical, Illogical, Unjust
One of the central topics of discussion was the IMF’s policy of imposing punitive and opaque surcharges, onerous fees that the Fund adds to the loan payments of countries with high levels of IMF debt. In recent years, the procyclical and regressive nature of these surcharges has gained increased attention, with civil society, development experts, and human rights advocates increasingly calling for their elimination. This growing demand for a reconsideration of IMF surcharge policy continued at the HFSC hearing.
In his State of the Union address, President Joe Biden will touch on the issues of the moment as he discusses Ukraine, inflation, and the nomination of the first Black woman to sit on the US Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson. But Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who will deliver the Working Families Party response to Biden’s Tuesday address, does not want the president to lose sight of the Build Back Better agenda that he outlined in 2021 as a framework for rebuilding the American middle class. That, she says, must be renewed in 2022.
In the summer, the Commission presented a four-step legislative package against money laundering and terrorist financing. This includes the establishment of a new authority and the introduction of a bank account register. The proposals are currently being discussed by the Council, slowly now the consultation of the Parliament is starting.
Some laws are ridiculously broad, making it impossible for teachers to develop a well-rounded curriculum. For instance, in Tennessee, lawmakers enacted a ban forbidding any classroom material which demonstrates “division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class, or class of people.” Penalties for recorded slip-ups may include fines against individual educators or revocation of their teaching licenses. Schools may even face losing state funds or their school district’s accreditation.
Senator Marco Rubio says he won't attend the State of the Union address because it requires a Covid test and he's too busy to swab his nose. Rubio's bizarre behavior is right in line with the GOP's embrace of poverty, disease, and death.
Ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden's first State of the Union address Tuesday night, Democratic leaders of various House caucuses called for urgent legislative action to advance Biden's domestic agenda, which has stalled in large part due to the obstructionism of corporate-funded lawmakers in both major parties.
"Real economic challenges remain for families. Congress must act quickly to address these challenges."
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin on Monday joined Senate Republicans in blocking legislation that would codify abortion rights into federal law, a vote that came as the conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court prepared to rule on a case that could strike a fatal blow to Roe v. Wade.
"Millions of Americans are on the cusp of losing the right to determine their own lives, health, and futures."
This€ article€ was funded by paid subscribers of The Dissenter Newsletter. Become a€ monthly subscriber€ to help us continue our independent journalism.The world is in a nuclear crisis, and instead of strongly supporting ceasefire talks to end the Russia-Ukraine war, Western countries are pouring gasoline on the fire. On February 24, delegations from Ukraine and Russia met on the Ukraine-Belarus border near the Pripyat river. It was the first round of negotiations since Russian military forces invaded Ukraine. No breakthrough occurred during the meeting, which lasted nearly five hours. Yet the two delegations agreed to meet again on March 2 near the border between Poland and Belarus.
According to Al Jazeera English, Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, said there were “certain points on which common positions could be foreseen.” Ukraine’s delegation was not as optimistic. “The talks were taking place against the backdrop of bombing and shelling of our territory, our cities. Synchronizing of the shelling with the negotiating process was obvious. I believe Russia is trying to put pressure [on Ukraine] with this simple method,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared in his evening address on February 28. Prior to the talks, French President Emmanuel Macron was urged by Ukraine to speak to Russia President Vladimir Putin. The Guardian reported that he asked “Putin to ensure that for the duration of the negotiations all strikes and attacks on civilians and their homes would be halted, civilian infrastructure would be preserved, and all main roads—particularly the road south out of Kiev—would remain safe to use.” Putin reportedly agreed.Videos of Russia attacking Kharkiv with “short- to medium-range, truck-mounted multiple-rocket launchers” known as “Grads” were posted to Telegram the day of talks, leading numerous media outlets to report on the shelling as a violation of Putin’s pledge to Macron. Yet it was unclear if Russian military forces “synchronized” the attack with negotiations.
On February 27, the Russian Attorney General’s Office promised to “make legal determinations” in the event that any Russian citizen provides “assistance to a foreign state to the detriment of the security of the Russian Federation” during the war with Ukraine. The agency stressed that providing any such assistance will be considered state treason, which carries a punishment of 12 to 20 years. Meduza asked lawyer Ivan Pavlov, head of the human rights group Department One, to explain what this means for Russians who speak out against the war in Ukraine.
Shelling killed dozens of people in Kharkiv on February 28, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry reported. In Kyiv, the fifth day of the Russian invasion was marked by the reopening of grocery stores and public transportation after a tightened curfew. The United Nations estimates that more than 500,000 Ukrainians have already left the country. In Gomel, Belarus, delegations from Russia and Ukraine held talks that ended with the parties agreeing to meet again. Meduza shares snapshots from this day.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: While this site typically focuses on whistleblower stories, during the Russia-Ukraine war we are expanding what we normally publish to promote more nuanced coverage of the conflict and reject a Cold War atmosphere that limits discussion of key issues.] The world is in a nuclear crisis, and instead of strongly supporting ceasefire talks to end the Russia-Ukraine war, Western countries are pouring gasoline on the fire. On February 24, delegations from Ukraine and Russia met on the Ukraine-Belarus border near the Pripyat river. It was the first round of negotiations since Russian military forces invaded Ukraine. No breakthrough occurred during the meeting, which lasted nearly five hours. Yet the two delegations agreed to meet again on March 2 near the border between Poland and Belarus.
According to Al Jazeera English, Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, said there were “certain points on which common positions could be foreseen.” Ukraine’s delegation was not as optimistic. “The talks were taking place against the backdrop of bombing and shelling of our territory, our cities. Synchronizing of the shelling with the negotiating process was obvious. I believe Russia is trying to put pressure [on Ukraine] with this simple method,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared in his evening address on February 28. Prior to the talks, French President Emmanuel Macron was urged by Ukraine to speak to Russia President Vladimir Putin. The Guardian reported that he asked “Putin to ensure that for the duration of the negotiations all strikes and attacks on civilians and their homes would be halted, civilian infrastructure would be preserved, and all main roads—particularly the road south out of Kiev—would remain safe to use.” Putin reportedly agreed.Videos of Russia attacking Kharkiv with “short- to medium-range, truck-mounted multiple-rocket launchers” known as “Grads” were posted to Telegram the day of talks, leading numerous media outlets to report on the shelling as a violation of Putin’s pledge to Macron. Yet it was unclear if Russian military forces “synchronized” the attack with negotiations.
My old boss Herman Kahn, with whom I worked at the Hudson Institute in the 1970s, had a set speech that he would give at public meetings. He said that back in high school in Los Angeles, his teachers would say what most liberals were saying in the 1940s and 50s: “Wars never solved anything.” It was as if they never changed anything – and therefore shouldn’t be fought.
Herman disagreed, and made lists of all sorts of things that wars had solved in world history, or at least changed. He was right, and of course that is the aim of both sides in today’s New Cold War confrontation in Ukraine.
It’s nothing new that video games are getting realistic enough at this point that some out there will use it and pass that footage off as things happening in real life. A rather innocuous example of this would be a real estate developer using images from a city-building game in a brochure, for instance. On the other hand, one of the more common ways we see this happen is with governments using footage from war simulation games to do things like pretend they have capabilities that they very much do not, pass off such footage as proof of IRL military strikes that didn’t occur in the manner shown in the footage, or the use of imagery from video games being used to accuse the United States of supporting ISIS when we very much did not.
Several days into Russia’s attack on Ukraine, we are already witnessing astonishing stories play out online. Social media platforms, after years of Techlash, are once again in the center of a historic event, as it unfolds.
After many days of challenging travels, people fleeing the war in Ukraine started arriving in Budapest. At the train stations, they are welcemed by aid organizations and volunteers. They told us that once across the border, their journey to the Hungarian capital has been smooth. They left because they did not feel safe in Ukraine, and their message to Putin is that his war is only making Ukrainians stronger. Subtitles: Andrea Horváth Kávai.
Though Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is just days old, Russia has been working for years to influence and undermine the independence of its smaller neighbor. As it happens, some Americans have played a role in that effort.
One was former President Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Another was Trump’s then-lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
The White House release calls Haugen a “specialist in algorithmic product management” and an “advocate for more humanity and transparency across the tech and social media industry, especially as it relates to teen mental health.”
Why it matters: Putin has done the unthinkable with his unprovoked assault, reversing decades of German defense and energy policy, turning a European peace project into a weapons dealer, and setting Ukraine on an accelerated path to EU membership.
Facebook, YouTube and other social networks are limiting access to Russian state-controlled media outlets RT and Sputnik across Europe, a move that will likely heighten tensions between some of the world's most popular social networks and the Russian government.
Facebook's parent company, Meta, said Monday it will limit access to Russian state-controlled media outlets RT and Sputnik across the European Union.
New Delhi, Meta (formerly Facebook) took down over 11.6 million pieces of content across 13 policies for Facebook and over 3.2 million pieces of content across 12 policies for Instagram in the month of January, the company said on Tuesday.
Between January 1-31, Meta received 911 reports through the Indian grievance mechanism, and responded to 100 per cent of these reports.
In a statement issued on Monday, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said a discussion paper, released on the same day, looked at possible ways of tackling issues in social media, search app marketplaces, online retail and ad technology.
Last year, news media laws drafted by the ACCC were put in place so that big digital firms could negotiate monetary deals with media organisations. While some organisations have reached agreement on payment, others — SBS and The Conversation are two prominent examples — have not been able to reach satisfactory deals.
As Major League Baseball’s scheduled March 31 opening day looms nearer without a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA), the nation’s sports media are pointing fingers squarely at both sides: the players’ union as well as team owners, who have been locked in so-far fruitless talks since the owners imposed a lockout in early December.
The machine has been struggling to keep reality at bay, however. The Kremlin had done nothing to prepare the public or its armed forces for the largest war in Europe since 1945. For months it was telling them that Russia was not about to invade Ukraine, and the rumour that it was reflected Western scaremongering. Some captured Russian soldiers, indeed, have appeared to be under the impression that they were taking part in a military exercise, and were surprised to have found themselves in Ukraine.
Matthew Remski, a co-host of the aforementioned Conspirituality podcast and a cult dynamics researcher, told Salon in an interview that QAnon's attempt to reduce the war in Ukraine to being about saving children isn't necessarily a way for the conspiracy theorists to rationalize what's happening, but instead a strategy to keep QAnon followers engaged and focused.
Anon followers have gleefully thrown their support behind Vladimir Putin after the Russian president ordered troops into separatist areas of Ukraine.
Putin's decision to recognize the rebel regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent of Ukraine and to move Russian troops across its border was applauded by influencers within the online conspiracy movement.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday ruled out imposing economic sanctions on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine and criticized what he called censorship of Russian media.
Russia’s censorship office is threatening to block all of Wikipedia in the country if the website doesn’t delete information about Russian soldier casualties and military violence against civilians.
Wikipedia’s Russia site editors received a memo from the company’s federal censorship arm on Tuesday, claiming that the article Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022) contains false information —the notice says that the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation is informing the website operators that the article in question is in violation of federal law. It specifically cites as false the article’s listing of Russian military casualties, as well as Ukrainian civilians and children—and demands the site operators to delete that information.
After 10 years of imprisonment, Saudi blogger Raif Badawi should have been released from prison on 28 February, but he continues to be held in Dahaban Central Prison, North of Jeddah. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the Saudi authorities to release Badawi immediately and allow him to join his family, who now live in Canada.
Taiga.Info website's representatives told RFE/RL on March 1 that the site was blocked almost immediately after editors received a warning letter from Roskomnadzor demanding the reports in question be removed from the site, which the editors did.
Controversy has long been a part of the job for American cartoonist Art Spiegelman. Decades after its publication, his Holocaust comic "Maus" has once again caused an uproar following its recent removal from the eighth-grade curriculum by a school board in Tennessee.
WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson also took part of the ceremony in Vienna. He described that in the Julian Assange case the truth has been imprisoned and those in power will stop at nothing to cover up their wrongdoings.
Special public prosecutor Zulfiqar Ali Arain informed the judge that the suspect was arrested on Feb 26 and during interrogation he disclosed his involvement in the murder of journalist Mateen.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) supports the efforts of Russia’s independent journalists and media outlets to provide reliable news coverage despite the clampdown imposed by the Kremlin as a result of its war in Ukraine, which has increased the many obstacles they have already had to deal with.
Nearly two years ago, Virginia’s former governor, Ralph Northam, a Democrat, approved the granting of about $1.6 million in tax dollars to expand Hershey’s Stuarts Draft factory. Fawning over the project, Northam said, “As we work to accelerate Virginia’s economic recovery, existing corporate partners like The Hershey Company are leading the way with new hiring and investment.” He continued, “We thank Hershey for its continued confidence in Virginia and its people.” Brian Ball, Virginia’s secretary of commerce at the time, was even more ingratiating than Northam, saying, “we stand ready to do what we can to ensure the company’s Stuarts Draft operation continues to thrive.” As a result of its investment, the company became eligible for tax breaks and credits in the state.
More than a year after Northam’s decision to invest public funds into the Virginia factory, the company posted significant profits, boasting in a press release about “stronger than anticipated consumer demand, an improved tax outlook and optimized brand investment, which, collectively, are expected to more than offset higher supply chain costs and inflation.” Months later, Hershey raised the prices of its products, in line with the increasingly common practice by corporations to squeeze greater profits from consumers and then blame “inflation” for the higher price tags.
The megamachine’s physical power often comes in the form of violence. This includes fear, humiliation, pain, physical injury, and, of course, death. From the beginning of the megamachine, those who dominate have often brought death to those they dominate through conquest, colonialism, imperialism, and the like.
The second way in which the megamachine operates is through the fear of economic hardship, social degradation, poverty, as well as a well-orchestrated terror – and the actual – loss of one’s livelihood. Those in power have always turned this around by exploiting a desire for social advancement to turn the megamachine’s underlings into willing tools.
Civil rights lawyers sued Maine officials on behalf of impoverished criminal defendants on Tuesday, alleging the state failed to create an effective public defense system in violation of defendants’ constitutional rights.
Maine doesn’t supervise the attorneys it contracts with to represent adults who are charged with crimes and cannot afford their own lawyer, said Zach Heiden, chief counsel for the Maine branch of the ACLU. For more than a decade, Maine has not implemented rules to evaluate attorneys, trained lawyers or compensated attorneys properly, he said. That has denied defendants of their Sixth Amendment right to counsel or creates an “unreasonable risk” of doing so, Heiden added.
U.S. infrastructure policy is treated as annoying and boring… until a crisis hits and suddenly everybody cares. As millions of Texans found out last year when the state’s energy infrastructure crumbled like a rotten old house under the weight of heating energy demands, leaving millions without power during a major cold snap. While the state engaged in a lot of performative nonsense in the wake of the breakdown, nothing much changed. Most of the state laws passed to “fix” the problem just punted any meaningful action down the road, while carving out big exemptions for natural gas companies that helped write the laws.
There’s a good reason we have strict standards for warrant requests — ones that requires plenty of probable cause and factual statements. Because if we didn’t have that, people would literally die when officers raid the wrong house or point guns at the wrong person. Innocent people would end up in jail and people’s rights would be routinely violated when subjected to searches backed by nothing but boilerplate and meaningless assertions about “training and expertise.”
I have heard rumors from multiple quarters that President Biden might mention Section 230 in tonight’s State of the Union speech, and I cannot think of any reason he should, unless it is to venerate it. Because it is only through the existence of Section 230 that we, or the world, stand a chance against the threats we face, especially right now.
I’ve heard some truly bizarre attacks on Section 230, but Senator James Lankford from Oklahoma has taken it all to a new level of nonsense. The already Trumpian Senator is apparently facing a primary from someone even Trumpier, which perhaps contributes to whatever brain damage caused him to tweet a bunch of total nonsense over the weekend ostensibly about Section 230, but really just demonstrating what a very uninformed man, Senator James Lankford is.
However, some provisions requested by the repair community were denied; removing DRM to repair game consoles and non-land vehicles (boats and airplanes) is still illegal, as is bypassing HDCP (HDMI copy protection) on TVs.
Sonos has long accused other tech giants of stealing its patents and technology, but in 2020, it actually sued Google for patent infringement. Sonos said that it had disclosed details about how its technology worked during negotiations to integrate Google’s voice assistant and that Google had copied the tech and then released cheaper products it subsidized with revenue from search advertising. Sonos recently won that lawsuit at the US International Trade Commission, which ruled that Google infringed all five patents Sonos brought to court. In response, Google had to change how some of its speakers worked, including reducing some functionality. Google is, of course, appealing, but you just don’t see this very often.
Adam Lackman, the self-described “former pirate” behind the Kodi add-on repository TVAddons, has agreed to pay $19.5 million ($25 million CAD) to a group of Canadian telecom giants over copyright infringement, according to a report from TorrentFreak.
As noted by TorrentFreak, TVAddons was still accessible up until last week before going offline (seemingly) for good. In its heyday, TVAddons was a site that allowed users to upload unofficial add-ons for Kodi, the open-source media library you can install on streaming devices like the Amazon Fire TV Stick and Google Chromecast. While Kodi itself is legal software, third-party apps, like TVAddons, can direct people to pirated content.
The former operators of SetTV, a pirate IPTV service that was ordered to pay $90 million in damages to DISH Networks, are reportedly back in business with several new services, in violation of a permanent injunction. Some of DISH's evidence comes from telephone recordings obtained from a country sheriff's office where one was incarcerated.
Most Pirate Bay proxies only exist to mirror the original torrent sites but extreme situations can trigger unprecedented actions. The Russian-operated Pirate-bays.net, which has millions of monthly users, is taking a clear stand against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The site has ditched its advertisements in favor of a "Stop Putin" banner, which solicits donations to the Ukrainian army.
