Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 21/06/2022: Windows Downloads Getting Blocked in Russia



  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Late Night Linux – Episode 182 – Late Night Linux

        Thumbs up for Mozilla and KDE, mixed reaction to mobile Thunderbird and Microsoft, AI definitely isn’t sentient, and more.

      • Tux DigitalDestination Linux 283: The State of IDEs: VSCode or BS-Code?

        This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re going to be talking about IDE monopolization is it going to be an issue in the future? Then we will be discussing Thunderbird going mobile. Plus, we have our tips/tricks and software picks. All this and more coming up right now on Destination Linux to keep those penguins marching!

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • uni TorontoWhat fast SSH bulk transfer speed (probably) looks like in mid-2022

        What this says to me is that SSH speed testing is not trivial and has non-obvious results that I don't (currently) understand. If we care about SSH speed in some context, we need to test it in exactly that context; we shouldn't assume that results from other servers or other network setups will generalize.

      • Frederic CambusDifferences between base and ports LLVM in OpenBSD

        As mentioned in my previous article, we do not use upstream build system to build LLVM in the base system, but hand-writen BSD Makefiles. Importing CMake into the base system was not an option, because of the size of the project and the large dependency chain it requires for building. As a drawback, the build is slower than it could be, were we able to take advantage of a more modern build system.

        Nowadays, Clang is the default compiler on the amd64, arm64, armv7, i386, macppc, octeon, powerpc64, and riscv64 platforms. It is also available in the sparc64 base system.

      • HowTo ForgeHow to Install OpenLiteSpeed Web Server on Ubuntu 22.04

        OpenLiteSpeed is a simple, lightweight, and high-performance HTTP server and can handle hundreds of thousands of concurrent connections. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install OpenLiteSpeed on Ubuntu 22.04 server.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install MongoDB 5.0 on Debian 11 Bullseye - LinuxCapable

        MongoDB is a free and open-source cross-platform document database. The software is characterized as a NoSQL database, a tool for storing JSON, or even a Document Database with optional schemas.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install NixNote on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS - LinuxCapable

        NixNote is a popular unofficial Evernote client for Linux desktops. It was initially known as NeverNote. It used to be written in Java until NixNote 2, when it was switched to C++ with Qt framework for a smaller memory footprint and improved performance. The author has been using it since 2013 and provides an overview of the available features, installation, usage, and customization options. -Conclusion paragraph: If you are looking for a powerful note-taking app that runs on your Linux desktop, look no further than NixNote. It’s feature-rich, open-source, and completely free.

        In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install NixNote on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish desktop using the command line terminal with tips about installing the alternative development version and removing the application if required in the future.

      • FOSSLinuxBeginner’s guide to Debian package management

        Package management is one of the fundamental features of a Linux system. The package management tools and the package format vary from distro to distro, but most distros use one of the two core tools.

        The RPM packaging format and tools like rpm and yum are common for Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based distros (such as RHEL itself and Rocky Linux). The other major family utilized by Debian, Ubuntu, and related distros is the .deb packaging format and tools like apt and dpkg.

        All these Debian Linux distros offer a vast number of package management systems that, in turn, provide access to an organized database of over 6000 packages.

      • Linux Shell TipsHow to Install Dropbox in Fedora Linux

        File storage is a must-have routine for every Linux user. Dropbox gives such users remote and virtual control over their personal, work, or project files. Data storage solutions offered by this cloud-based file hosting service come with big benefits as we shall look at shortly.

        For Linux users working on team projects or as part of a distributed team, the Dropbox cloud storage solution guarantees a better file management approach, flexible data sharing, and reasonable access.

      • How to Upgrade Linux Kernel to 5.19 Release on Ubuntu 20.04

        In this tutorial, we are going to learn how to upgrade Linux Kernel to 5.19 mainline release on Ubuntu 20.04.

        Linux Kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking Unix-like operating system. It is the main component of a Linux operating system and is the core interface between the computer’s hardware and its processes. It makes communication possible between computer hardware and processes running on it and it manages resources effectively.

        Linux 5.19 mainline was released recently by Linux Torvalds with better new features to try out. The mainline tree is maintained by Linus Torvalds and It is where all new features are added and releases always come from.

      • FOSSLinuxHow to mount a drive in Ubuntu

        Users who use multiple operating systems have to create separate partitions for each operating system. Most users have dual-boot of Windows and Ubuntu, where you have to make different partitions for each operating system. Windows partitions are formatted as NTFS or FAT32 filesystems, whereas most Linux distributions are formatted with Ext4 filesystems, including Ubuntu.

        In Linux, you can easily access the Windows partitions through the file manager or the command-line interface. In recent years, Ubuntu has developed a better graphical user interface, so if you are not so used to the command line, you can still mount the partitions using the file manager.

      • HowTo ForgeHow to use loops in Terraform

        Terraform is an Open source tool developed and maintained by HashiCorp. It uses its own Hashicorp Configuration Language- HCL to provision multiple cloud service providers. In this tutorial, I will show you how to use loops in Terraform. We will see several examples of using some loop constructs.

    • Games

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • OMG UbuntuGNOME Devs Mockup the Linux Image Viewer I've Been Dreaming Of - OMG! Ubuntu!

          Back in 2019 I opined that Ubuntu needs a better image viewer than the one it currently offers (which is Eye of GNOME, if you didn’t know, a core GNOME app).

          Alas, that hasn’t happened yet. Ubuntu still uses an image viewer that doesn’t offer all of the features that rival operating systems do (yes, even the ChromeOS image viewer can do more out-of-the-box).

          But hope is on the horizon.

          GNOME design genius Allan Day has recently revised his mockups for a more comprehensive GNOME image “previewing” experience.

        • GamingOnLinuxMicrosoft chucks GNOME $10,000 from their FOSS Fund [Ed: Microsoft chucks GNOME $10,000 for "political capture"]

          Everyone knows that Microsoft absolutely loves Linux right? Well, that's debatable but hey they did just reach down the back of the sofa and chuck GNOME some cash.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • SUSE/OpenSUSE

      • SUSE's Corporate BlogVisibility and consistency are essential for container security

        As I discussed in my previous article, business and technology leaders are under more pressure than ever to transform. That pressure flows directly to development teams tasked with unlocking organisational agility and meeting the changing needs of customers.

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • TalospaceFedora 36 Mini-Mini-Review On The Blackbird

        For the past couple weeks I've been experimenting on the Blackbird to see what window managers and desktop environments seem to work well with Fedora on ppc64le before I try to migrate my main Talos II workstation to whatever I end up picking. But I also know a few of you are itching to upgrade and waiting to see if there were any problems, and of course for those of you running a distro other than Fedora, Fedora's going to find problems earliest. So, this will be a mini-mini-review instead of what we traditionally do: what I've been testing on the Blackbird and how well it appears to work, keeping in mind that my Blackbird is a GPU-less machine using only the ASPEED BMC for graphics and a 4-core CPU with 16GB of RAM. I'd call it "low end," at least within the spectrum of practical OpenPOWER desktops.

      • IBM Transforms Business Operations with the RISE with SAP Solution in Expanded Partnership with SAP [Ed: IBM is a proprietary software pusher. This means Red Hat too will increasingly abandon any spirit of "openness" (look what happened to CentOS and Fedora already)]
    • Debian Family

      • Amnesty International & Debian Day suicides comparison

        When Gaëtan Mootoo, an extraordinarily gifted Amnesty International employee, decided to take his own life, he did it in his workplace, the Amnesty office in Paris.

        Debian doesn't have a workplace. Nonetheless, when Frans Pop chose to take his own life, he sent a formal email announcing his resignation from Debian at 9:41pm on the evening before the Debian anniversary, Debian Day, 16 August 2010. For a virtual organization, for all intents and purposes, this was the closest you get to taking your life in the office.

        Amnesty and Debian have both had a number of tragic deaths that could have been avoided. Let's put them head to head and see how they compare.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • CNX SoftwareIngenic T31-based WiFi AI camera development kit promises over a year of battery life - CNX Software

        We’ve previously seen WiFi security cameras promising a year of battery life with products like the Eufy EverCam, but the Ingenic T31-based Smart Video Application Development Kit by Innophase may allow for the development of even more power-efficient WiFi AI security cameras with AI processing last can last over one year.

        The development kit combines Ingenic T31 MIPS & RISC-V camera SoC with Innophase Talaria TWO INP101x ultra-low-power (57€µA @ DTIM10) Wi-Fi & BLE wireless module, that is estimated to last 14.4 months on a 3,000 mAh battery while operating at a 99.3% idle, 0.7% video capture ratio.

      • CNX SoftwareVecow unveils MediaTek Genio 350, Genio 500, and Genio 1200 system-on-modules and development kits - CNX Software

        Vecow has announced a series of new system-on-modules and development kits based on Mediatek Genio 350, Genio 500, or Genio 1200 processors for AIoT applications ranging from smart security, smart retail, and traffic vision to digital signage.

        This follows last week’s news about ADLINK LEC-MTK-I12000 SMARC module and devkit powered by MediaTek Genio 1200 Cortex-A78/A55 AIoT processor, but Vecow also offers solutions based on the entry-level Genio 350 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor, and the mid-range Genio 500 octa-core Cortex-A73/A53 processor.

      • Linux GizmosAAEON presents new COM Express modules at Embedded World 2022

        AAEON has announced a few new products ahead of Embedded World 2022. The NanoCOM-TGU and COM-ICDB7 are COM Express modules that feature Intel’s Tiger Lake UP3 SoC processor and Intel’s SoC Xeon D LCC processor respectively.

        AAEON’s NanoCOM-TGU COM Express module offers support for the following 11th Gen processors from Intel...

      • HackadayBlinking An Arduino LED, In Julia

        The Julia programming language is a horrible fit for a no-frills microcontroller like the ATMega328p that lies within the classic Arduino, but that didn’t stop [Sukera] from trying, and succeeding.

  • Leftovers

    • The NationBullsh*t
    • Telex (Hungary)Ágnes Keleti, the most successful Hungarian gymnast and olympian of all time

      The oldest olympic champion of the world, the 101 year-old Ágnes Keleti is feeling well: she exercises every day, and she can still do the splits. Her son says that her decision to move back to Budapest from Israel in the 2000’s, definitely extended her life.

    • Hackaday3D Printed Concrete Beam Improves Sustainability

      Many of the 3D printed houses and structures we’ve seen use concrete and are — frankly — a little underwhelming. Making big squares out of concrete isn’t that hard and while we are sure there is some benefit, it isn’t overwhelming. [Andy Coward] apparently felt the same way and set out to find ways that 3D printing could offer unique benefits in building structures. The result: a beam that would be difficult to create with conventional techniques but is easy to make with a printer. The advantage is that it uses 78% less concrete than a conventional beam with the same properties.

    • Counter PunchThe Basilisks’ Blue Devotees
    • Hardware

      • HackadayDon’t Mind If I Ski-Do

        There is an age-old tradition among hackers of just making it yourself. Whether the real thing is too expensive or you think you can make a better one, the itch strikes, and it can quickly spread. [Homemade Madness] has quite the itch as he builds his own jetski.

      • HackadayWorking With BGAs: Design And Layout

        The Ball Grid Array, or BGA package is no longer the exclusive preserve of large, complex chips on computer motherboards: today even simple microcontrollers are available with those little solder balls. Still, many hobbyists prefer to stay with QFP and QFN packages because they’re easier to solder. While that is a fair point, BGA packages can offer significant space savings, and are sometimes the only choice: with the ongoing chip shortage, some other package versions might simply be unavailable. Even soldering doesn’t have to be complicated: if you’re already comfortable with solder paste and reflow profiles, adding a BGA or two into the mix is pretty easy.

      • HackadayScrambling Pocket Calculators Made Easy With EMP Box V2

        [Rostislav Persion] has for some time been interested in making small, portable EMP devices capable of interfering with nearby electronics. In these EMP devices, high voltage is used to create a portable spark gap generator, whose operation in turn creates electromagnetic pulses capable of resetting or scrambling nearby electronics such as pocket calculators.

      • HackadayWonderful Foldable Printable Dodecahedron

        Debra Ansell of [GeekMomProjects] fame came up with a neat, 3D design that prints flat and then folds up into everyone’s favorite Platonic solid: a D12.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • Counter PunchDecades of Research Document the Detrimental Health Effects of BPA

        BPA is one of many harmful chemicals in everyday products and a poster child for chemicals in plastics. It is probably best known for its presence in baby bottles due to campaigns by organizations such as Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families and Breast Cancer Prevention Partners.

        An extensive body of research has linked BPA to reproductive health problems, including endometriosis, infertility, diabetes, asthma, obesity and harming fetal neurodevelopment.

      • Common DreamsSpain Ravaged by Wildfires as Drought, Heatwave Broils Europe

        Hundreds of people have been forced from their homes and tens of thousands of acres have been burned through by wildfires across Spain, with global climate experts warning that nearly the entire country is at risk of facing the flames.

        "Nearly all the country faces extreme fire risk Friday as a result of the heatwave and drought" Spain and much of Europe is experiencing, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported Friday, noting that a Saharan dust cloud that's drifted north toward the continent may also have an impact on public health.

      • Common Dreams'It's a Public Health Issue!' MSNBC Host Makes Case for Medicare for All

        MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan used his major-network platform on Sunday to make the case for Medicare for All as a critical public health measure, pointing to a new study showing that a single-payer system designed to guarantee comprehensive coverage to everyone could have prevented more than 338,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States.

        "It's time to stop treating universal healthcare or single-payer or Medicare for All as some sort of fringe, left-wing issue, some political hobbyhorse for Bernie Sanders or 'The Squad,'" Hasan said during the three-minute segment. "No, it's a public health issue. It's a policy being pushed by some of the top scientific researchers in America. And frankly, it's a no-brainer."

    • Proprietary

      • The AtlanticIs Google Dying? Or Did the Web Grow Up?

        Most people don’t need a history lesson to know that Google has changed; they feel it. Try searching for a product on your smartphone and you’ll see that what was once a small teal bar featuring one “sponsored link” is now a hard-to-decipher, multi-scroll slog, filled with paid-product carousels; multiple paid-link ads; the dreaded, algorithmically generated “People also ask” box; another paid carousel; a sponsored “buying guide”; and a Maps widget showing stores selling products near your location. Once you’ve scrolled through that, multiple screen lengths below, you’ll find the unpaid search results. Like much of the internet in 2022, it feels monetized to death, soulless, and exhausting.

      • IT ProMicrosoft reportedly blocks Russian Windows 10 and Windows 11 downloads

        Copies of both operating systems (OS) are reportedly unavailable when users inside of Russia attempt to download them from official Microsoft servers, but downloading when using a VPN, with the IP address set to outside of Russia, allows the download to take place.

        [...]

        It is currently unclear if the situation is an “error”, as TASS reported, or if it was a deliberate decision taken by Microsoft.

    • Linux Foundation

    • Security

      • HackadayBreaking Google Nest Hub’s Secure Boot

        [frederic] tells a story about their team’s hack of a Google Nest Hub (2nd generation) — running Ubuntu on it, through bypassing Google’s boot image signature checks. As with many good hacks, it starts with FCC website pictures. Reverse-engineering a charger and USB daughterboard pin-out, they found a UART connection and broke it out with a custom adapter. With a debug console and insights into the process, they went on hacking, slicing through hardware and software until it was done with.

      • Krebs On SecurityWhy Paper Receipts are Money at the Drive-Thru

        Check out this handmade sign posted to the front door of a shuttered Jimmy John’s sandwich chain shop in Missouri last week. See if you can tell from the store owner’s message what happened.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • Patrick BreyerEU „chat control“ proposal: Germany takes the lead in defending confidentiality of communications

          In a leaked response to the EU Commission dated 10 June, the German government insists that proposed EU „chat control“ legislation to automatically search all private chats, messages, and emails for suspicious content be brought in line with „constitutional standards of protection for private and confidential communication“. The statement opposes „general monitoring measures and measures for the scanning of private communications“ which have been proposed by the European Commission to search for child sexual exploitation material and „child pornography“. The proposal involving searching of communications and cloud storage, network blocking, mandatory age verification and blocking of minors from app stores is being criticised by rights groups and industry, but also by the German Child Protection Association DKSB.

        • TruthOutFacebook Enables Anti-Abortion Clinics to Collect Data on Would-Be Patients
    • Defence/Aggression

    • Common DreamsOpinion | The Global Ruling Class, Endless War, and the Culture of Mass Death

      It is hard to be sanguine about the future. The breakdown of the ecosystem is well documented. So is the refusal of the global ruling elite to pursue measures that might mitigate the devastation. We accelerate the extraction of fossil fuels, wallow in profligate consumption, including our consumption of livestock, and make new wars as if we are gripped by a Freudian death wish. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—Conquest, War, Famine and Death—gallop into the 21rst century.

    • ScheerpostHedges: The Triumph of Death

      Opinion column argues that "Those who rule, servants of corporations and the global billionaire class, accompany the suicidal folly by cementing into place corporate tyranny. The plan is not to reform. It is to perpetuate the corporate pillage."

    • Counter PunchImagining the Pacific Republic

      A brick barbeque in the yard poignantly beckons, but I’m here too soon in the year for that. It’s late March, and the willful storm is insistently blowing thick clouds of raindrops north. Needing a break from the room, I braved the storm and walked out on the beach a little while ago. It rapidly soaked through my inadequate jacket. But some like it wet, especially many of us who inhabit the raincoasts along the North Pacific rim of North America. Our thick forests, luxuriant rivers and streams with their rich salmon runs, the snowcaps atop our mountain ranges that feed water to cities and farms year round, all are gifts of the North Pacific and its rain and storms. We might feel some wet discomforts, and suffer cabin fever and light deprivation through the cloudy gray months. But we know which side our iconic bread is buttered on.

      I am at a place on the Washington coast that has particular personal significance, the small community of Moclips. In 1984, this was the first place I touched the Pacific after an eventful road trip across the U.S. from Atlanta, where I had been staying with my sister for several months. A week-long transcontinental run brought me to a forest camp by the beach just north of town. After days of jangly winds roaring past my old car, the sound of the waves washed over me as an operatic choir rising and falling in irregular harmonies. The ocean was singing to me on my return. The last of a seven coast-to-coast jumps that took place over a course of 13 years, this return signified a decision to finally settle on the Pacific Coast.

    • MeduzaNo infighting here: Investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov says the Kremlin is punishing security officials for the bad intelligence that fueled the invasion’s early days. Now he’s a wanted man.

      Following the invasion of Ukraine, Russia militarized its approach to censorship. For more than three months now, it has been a felony to publish any information in the news media or on social networks that contradicts the Russian Defense Ministry’s propaganda. Investigative journalist and Russian security services expert Andrei Soldatov has tested these expanded limits on speech by reporting extensively on an alleged crackdown against a department within the Federal Security Service that provided Vladimir Putin with the bad intelligence that led the president to expect an easy campaign in Ukraine. Soldatov told Meduza that he believes the criminal case recently opened against him for spreading “disinformation” about the military is really the FSB getting back at him for exposing the agency scandal.

    • Meduza‘More than serious’: Russia threatens retaliatory measures after Lithuania bans transit of EU-sanctioned goods to Kaliningrad

      Moscow is threatening retaliatory measures in response to Lithuania’s ban on rail transit of EU-sanctioned goods to Russia’s far-western enclave of Kaliningrad. The restrictions, which began on Saturday, June 18, currently apply to coal, metals, cement, wood, construction materials, and advanced technology. Restrictions on the supply of petroleum products may be introduced in August.€ 

    • TruthOutNikole Hannah-Jones Calls for Reparations in Speech to UN General Assembly
  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Environment

    • Energy

      • [Old] The Christian case against Bitcoin and blockchain

        I’ve split what I want to say into two parts. This post deals with the claim that the challies.com article represents a genuinely Christian outlook on Bitcoin and blockchain. On closer inspection, I think in reality it represents a mostly misinformed and sometimes very naive understanding of both economics and technology, and then uses Christianised vocabulary to gloss over the problematic parts of Bitcoin.

        That may sound like a harsh assessment, but I will try to back it up below.

    • Wildlife/Nature

      • Counter PunchLogging Yosemite Will Make It More, Not Less, Vulnerable to Fire

        While it may seem counter-intuitive to some people, the truth is that the strong weight of scientific evidence and opinion indicates that removing live and dead trees from forests does not stop or curb wildfires, and often increases overall fire severity. In fact, more than 200 of the nation’s top climate scientists and ecologists recently concluded the following:

        We have watched as one large wildfire after another has swept through tens of thousands of acres where commercial thinning had previously occurred due to extreme fire weather driven by climate change. Removing trees can alter a forest’s microclimate, and can often increase fire intensity. In contrast, forests protected from logging, and those with high carbon biomass and carbon storage, more often burn at equal or lower intensities when fires do occur.

  • Finance

    • Counter PunchCan We Ever Retire to Greater Equality?
    • Counter PunchOnly Radical Changes Will Make Rents Affordable

      Social housing is not-for-profit affordable housing that includes the working and middle classes. Unlike social housing, public housing in the US shelters impoverished families in government-owned housing often without the funds necessary for maintenance, cleanliness, and safety.

      It is important to make rental assistance an entitlement because in the US three quarters of families eligible for rental assistance receive no government help. With these two strategies, the US can provide more affordable, high quality rental housing for all renters.

    • Common DreamsOpinion | Why Do Tens of Millions in US Support an Economic System That Doesn't Benefit Them?

      For nearly two centuries, literature from Marx and Dickens to Thomas Picketty and Barbara Ehrenreich has dissected and denounced the machinations of the greedy rich. Turn their pockets inside out, make them pay their fair share, and a more just society might be possible.€ 

    • The NationHow Bleak Is the Future of the Art World?

      While the goings-on of the art world might appear to be a secondary concern amid the various crises of capitalism we face, in Art in the After-Culture: Capitalist Crisis and Cultural Strategy, critic Ben Davis exposes the crucial ways art can absorb, reflect, and suffer from our system’s flaws. Davis—who is currently the national art critic for Artnet—uses the book’s eight essays to historicize and elucidate the balance of forces between art and capitalism. He muses on the way subjects like the overlapping cataclysms of climate change, the rise of conspiracy culture and AI-based art, and galvanizing social movements like Standing Rock and Black Lives Matter have posed new challenges to the ways we create and consume visual art. “The stakes are high for art,” Davis states plainly of the current state of the field, which he feels must “make the case for itself in a collapsing cultural space.”

    • TruthOutMany Nations Have Used COVID to Impose the Tyranny of Transnational Capital
  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Meduza‘A chance for revenge’: The rise and fall of ‘methodology,’ the school of thought that produced the idea of the ‘Russian world’

      The philosopher Georgy Shchedrovitsky and his pupils were the USSR’s first political consultants. Beginning in the 1960s, the so-called “methodologists” advised Communist Party apparatchiks, believing that they could change the society by “reprogramming” the minds of its people. In the 1990s, Shchedrovitsky’s disciples proposed the idea of the “Russian world.” Twenty years later, this concept entered Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical imagination, becoming a pretext for the invasion of Ukraine. Following the invasion, another “methodologist,” Sergey Kiriyenko, has become Putin’s point man in the Donbas. Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev tells the story of the rise and fall of “methodology.”

    • Counter PunchBoJo's Demolition of the Northern Ireland Protocol is Hypocrisy Run Wild

      The success of the peace process depends on British government neutrality between the Catholic/nationalist and Protestant/unionist communities, each of which number about one million people. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 (GFA) successfully institutionalised a complex balance of forces in which little could be done without nationalist and unionist cooperation.

      Power was shared not only within Northern Ireland but between outside players like the Irish Republic and the European Union, both of whom had a central role in the new order.

    • Common DreamsNeoliberal Macron Loses Parliamentary Majority as Mélenchon-Led Left Surges in France

      France's new left-wing coalition picked up enough votes during Sunday's legislative elections to help deny President Emmanuel Macron the absolute majority he needed to ram through his unpopular austerity agenda.

      Macron's neoliberal alliance Ensemble won the most seats in the National Assembly with 245 but fell well short of the 289 needed to control parliament.

    • The AtlanticSheryl Sandberg and the Crackling Hellfire of Corporate America

      Now we learn that Meta has been investigating Sandberg for possible misuse of company resources. The Wall Street Journal reported that some of her colleagues think she may have broken Securities and Exchange Commission rules by having Facebook employees work on her pet projects. These include her Lean In foundation; her second book, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy; and even her upcoming wedding, to a consultant named Tom Bernthal. (The Journal reported that a Meta spokesperson declined to comment and that a spokesperson for Sandberg denied that she had inappropriately used company resources in connection with her wedding.)

    • Ahram OnlineAl-Azhar calls for countries to enact laws criminalising Islamophobia

      The AOCE stated on its official Facebook page that it is making this call in response to increased hate speech against Islam and Muslims in many European societies.

    • John GoerzenLessons of Social Media from BBSs | The Changelog

      In the recent article The Internet Origin Story You Know Is Wrong, I was somewhat surprised to see the argument that BBSs are a part of the Internet origin story that is often omitted. Surprised because I was there for BBSs, and even ran one, and didn’t really consider them part of the Internet story myself. I even recently enjoyed a great BBS documentary and still didn’t think of the connection on this way.

      [...]

      Yes, it does. As he adds, “People aren’t the problem. The problem is the platforms.”

    • Telex (Hungary)Katalin Novák: There is a gateway connecting the President's Office and the Prime Minister's Office
    • Counter PunchChesa Boudin Did Not Lose . . . We Did

      I do not count angels on the head of a pin or belong to the cult of any personalities. As an anti-war activist, organizer, VISTA social worker and attorney of almost 40 years I’ve had a rare chance to walk the streets of challenge and the courts of dare. I have also been arrested a half dozen times, indicted in two countries, imprisoned in one and am currently banned by four international states. € This does not make me better, or stronger or wiser. . . let’s just say seasoned.

      Though my tactics and voice have varied depending on the fight and its venue, there is a steadfast understanding that has empowered my journey since my nose was first bloodied years ago by cop baton when, as a 16-year-old, I and others tried to seize the Brooklyn Bridge to say no to Vietnam. At its core, since the first slaver ship, small pox blanket and noose which hung women because we feared witches, this is a country of systemic and avarice greed, one in which the powerful, and those who envy or aspire to them, feed on people of color, on communities of poverty, on cadres of dissent. Nowhere is that more palpable and overarching and demanding of deep-seated fundamental change than it is with the criminal “justice” system. And that is why Chesa Boudin has been relegated to mere historical footnote of what might have been, instead of an imaginable pathway of what we could become.

    • Counter PunchU.S. Senate – From Partisan (GOP) Swamp to a Bipartisan Graveyard for Democracy

      “Nonsense,” says veteran Rep. John Larson (D-CT). The Democrats can hold public hearings, report bills to the Senate floor and then make the Republicans filibuster. Let the GOP sweat a days-long filibuster of a bill establishing a $15 minimum wage. Imagine the national TV coverage with Democrats rebutting the cruel or lying orations by megamillionaire Senator Mitch McConnell and his minions.

      As has been the practice for years, the Republican minority members in the Senate merely sent the majority leader an email threatening a filibuster (“extended debate” is the euphuism) and the majority leader placed the bills from the House in limbo.

    • Misinformation/Disinformation

      • OracJustin Bieber: His Ramsey Hunt syndrome is not due to vaccines!

        I must admit that I never thought that I’d be writing about Justin Bieber on€ SBM€ for any reason, but such are the strange times that we live in today that I find myself doing just that. Sure, I could imagine Bieber being featured on this blog for being yet another celebrity spreading antivax misinformation, for example, but to my knowledge I’ve never heard of him doing that. Also, being the old fart that I am, I must confess that I’m not a Belieber and never have been. Such is life. However, over the weekend Bieber’s name started bubbling up on my social media feeds, with fans sharing a video that posted to Bieber’s Instagram feed, which I’ll repost here:

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • UnHerdThe new war on Islamism

      Over that summer, Submission, a 10-minute film that I co-created with Theo van Gogh, was aired on the taxpayer-funded VPRO channel in Amsterdam. I had pulled four very explicitly misogynistic verses out of the holy book, which Theo then inscribed on the bodies of women who acted out the selected verses. After a series of threats, Theo was murdered by a radical Islamist fanatic. Warned that I would be next, I went into hiding.

      Dutch society got the message: Submission was pulled and since then nothing of any significance critical of Islam’s founding father or holy book has been aired or exhibited by any mainstream Dutch outlet. Two years later, the message was driven home in another small European country when Flemming Rose, the editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, solicited drawings of the prophet Muhammad after a Danish school teacher wrote a children’s book on the prophet but could find no illustrations for it. After Rose published them, both he and one of the illustrators, Kurt Westergaard, received credible death threats.

  • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

    • CPJTaliban forces beat journalist Reza Shahir, charge 3 others over corruption reporting

      The Taliban fighters left him unconscious in the street and took his mobile phone, Shahir told CPJ. Shahir previously worked as a reporter for the local broadcaster Rahe Farda TV, before the Taliban beat and detained him in April; since then, he has worked as a freelancer, he said.

      Separately, on May 4, the Taliban prosecutor’s office in Faryab province detained and questioned Firoz Ghafori, Mosamem, and Olugh Beig Ghafori for about three hours, and then released them on bail after charging them with criminal insult, according to media reports and Firoz Ghafori, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.

    • VOA NewsFemale Asian Journalists Face Harassment in Allegedly Beijing-backed Campaign

      Threats of violence and rape. Accusations of being a traitor. Insults regarding appearance. Asian journalists covering politics or human rights in China, especially women, risk a barrage of online assault every time they hit publish.

      Top China journalists and other China analysts are facing an "ongoing, coordinated and large-scale online information campaign” on Twitter, according to an Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) report, which says women of Asian descent facing the worst of the vitriol.

      The think tank, based in Australia’s capital of Canberra, determined that the inauthentic Twitter accounts behind the operation are likely another iteration of “Spamouflage,” a pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) network that Twitter attributed to Beijing in 2019.

    • Counter PunchPredictable Monstrosities: Priti Patel Approves Assange’s Extradition

      Patel, for her part, was never exercised by the more sordid details of the case.€  Her approach to matters of justice is one of premature adjudication: the guilty are everywhere, and only multiply.€  When it came to WikiLeaks, such fine points of law and fact as a shaky indictment based on fabricated evidence, meditations on assassination, and a genuine, diagnosed risk of self-harm, were piffling distractions.€  The US Department of Justice would not be denied.

      “Under the Extradition Act 2003,” a nameless spokesman for the Home Office stated, “the Secretary of State must sign an extradition order if there are no grounds to prohibit the order being made.€  Extradition requests are only sent to the Home Secretary once a judge decides it can proceed after considering various aspects of the case.”

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Project CensoredThe Misconceptions, Corporatization, and Radical Roots of Pride - The Project Censored Show

      Produced by Eleanor Goldfield, Co-Host and Associate Producer.

    • Common DreamsOpinion | As a Former Refugee, I Want Safety for Everyone—No Matter Where They Are Fleeing From

      Most refugees do not want to leave their homes.

    • Common Dreams'Totally Unacceptable': US Rejecting 90% of Afghans Seeking Asylum Under Humanitarian Program

      As a coalition of human rights groups on Monday implored the international community to do more to help Afghan refugees, new reporting revealed that the United States is rejecting the overwhelming majority of Afghans seeking to enter the country under a humanitarian program—including relatives of those who aided the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of their country.

      "My family is in extreme danger."

    • TruthOutWorkers in Maryland Vote to Form First Apple Store Union in US
    • Scheerpost‘We Did It!’ Workers in Maryland Vote to Form First US Apple Store Union

      “This victory shows the growing demand for unions at Apple stores and different industries across our nation,” said the head of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace…

    • The NationThe Long, Troubled History of the Supreme Court—and How We Can Change It

      By now, it should be abundantly clear that our antiquated Constitution, written over two centuries ago by white men to govern a small, slave-dependent republic huddled along the Eastern Seaboard, does not meet the needs of the sprawling, multiethnic, and complicated country that we have become.1This article has been adapted from From Parchment to Dust: The Case for Constitutional Skepticism, by Louis Michael Seidman (The New Press). Copyright 2021. Reprinted here with permission.

      For anyone who doubts this proposition, consider the following facts. In two out of the last six presidential elections, a candidate became president even though he lost the popular vote. Virtually all of the money and attention in presidential elections are devoted to a tiny number of swing states that determine the outcome. The Constitution vests in state legislatures the power to appoint presidential electors whether or not they are chosen by a popular majority—a power that Donald Trump tried to take advantage of in 2020, and may well take advantage of in 2024.2

    • Counter PunchOur Bodies, Societies and Planet Are Inflamed for the Same Reasons

      Patel is a widely published author, perhaps best known for his New York Times and international bestselling book, The Value of Nothing. He is also a filmmaker as well as a research professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. Marya is an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), whose research investigates the intersections of social structures and illness, and the impacts of the culture of colonialism on health. She is also executive director and board chair for the Deep Medicine Circle, a women of color-led, worker-directed 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the San Francisco Bay Area, focused on decolonizing farming and restoring relationships with nature through food.

      Recently, Marya and Patel coauthored the book Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice, published in 2021 through Macmillan.

    • Vanguard NGAttack On Churches: 35 pastors abducted/killed in 17 months

      It’s quite a herculean task to get one’s head around how many Christians have been attacked, abducted and killed already in 2022. Though one might hear about individual events like the Owo church attack, it is quite tough to get a sense of the scale

    • JURISTAfghanistan dispatch: Hindu and Sikh minorities leave under pressure of threats and attacks

      Law students and lawyers in Afghanistan are filing reports with JURIST on the situation there after the Taliban takeover. Here, a law student in Kabul reports on Taliban pressures on minority Hindu and Sikh populations. For privacy and security reasons, we are withholding our correspondent’s name. The text has only been lightly edited to respect the author’s voice.

    • Common DreamsOpinion | A Juneteenth Story of Family History, Music, and 'Where I Got My Name'

      Before there was a vaccination, the only Covid-19 medicine I had for the isolation of the lockdown periods was making music with my oldest friend, Daniel Rapport. We have been friends since we were born, formed a band in high school, and now have an acoustic blues duo, The Blue Tide. We have long drawn our inspiration from the Mississippi Delta blues, with Daniel playing acoustic and slide guitar and me on harmonica. As Covid-19took off, with the death toll rising and all of us sheltering in place, I was able to connect (remotely at first, then later in person) and overcome the loneliness by writing lyrics about the pandemic and pairing them with the guitar licks Daniel was writing. During this time we experienced the uprising for Black lives of 2020 and raging climate change-induced wildfires that filled the air with thick plumes of smoke—and so we began writing songs about the overlapping pandemics of Covid-19, racism, and the climate crisis.

    • Democracy NowHarvard’s Deep Ties to Slavery: Report Shows It Profited, Then Tried to Erase History of Complicity

      In the final part of our Juneteenth special broadcast, we look at Harvard University’s recent report detailing the school’s extensive ties to slavery and pledged $100 million for a fund for scholars to continue to research the topic. The report documents dozens of prominent people associated with Harvard who enslaved people, including four Harvard presidents. Harvard commissioned the study in 2019 as part of a wave of schools reckoning with their pasts and the ongoing legacy of racial discrimination. “Harvard’s ties to slavery begin with the founding of the institution,” says MIT historian Craig Steven Wilder, author of “Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities.” Wilder says that while this history is not new, Harvard worked for decades to erase its complicity in slavery. “We’re really only beginning to reconcile and to really struggle with the deep ties that this institution has to slavery,” he adds.

    • The NationKeeping Juneteenth Radical

      The federal government’s embrace of Juneteenth is an occasion for both celebration and concern. Activists invested in the freedom of Black Americans rightly fear that the holiday will become commercialized and stripped of its radical, somber meaning. Finding ways to keep the spirit of Juneteenth alive will be crucial now that it’s inked its spot on calendars as America’s 11th federal holiday.

    • Common DreamsOpinion | Why Juneteenth Celebrations Should Acknowledge the 13th Amendment

      On June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill establishing Juneteenth as a Federal Holiday. Signed into law a year after the brutal murder of George Floyd and the chorus of calls for a racial reckoning that followed, the Juneteenth holiday not only acknowledges the delayed fulfillment of equality for African Americans, but, according to President Biden, the nation's burgeoning commitment to restorative justice.

    • Democracy Now“No Atonement, No Repair”: Watch Nikole Hannah-Jones Call for Slavery Reparations in Speech to U.N. General Assembly

      In March, the United Nations marked the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of The New York Times’s groundbreaking 1619 Project, addressed the U.N. General Assembly. As part of our Juneteenth special, we air her full address. “It is time for the nations that engaged in and profited from the transatlantic slave trade to do what is right and what is just. It is time for them to make reparations to the descendants of chattel slavery in the Americas,” Hannah-Jones said. “This is our global truth, a truth we as human beings understand with stark clarity: There can be no atonement if there is no repair.”

    • Counter PunchThe Activist’s Antidote: A Conversation About Depression, Hopelessness, & Burnout
    • TruthOut“Mental Health Units” in Prison Are Solitary by Another Name, Activists Say
    • Democracy NowJuneteenth Special: Historian Clint Smith on Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

      In a Juneteenth special, we mark the federal holiday that commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned of their freedom more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. We speak to the writer and poet Clint Smith about Juneteenth and his new book, “How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.” “When I think of Juneteenth, part of what I think about is the both-handedness of it,” Smith says, “that it is this moment in which we mourn the fact that freedom was kept from hundreds of thousands of enslaved people for years and for months after it had been attained by them, and then, at the same time, celebrating the end of one of the most egregious things that this country has ever done.” Smith says he recognizes the federal holiday marking Juneteenth as a symbol, “but it is clearly not enough.”

    • ScheerpostMichael Moore: The Graduate

      In the face of injustice, I turned my head the other way.

    • ScheerpostMichael Moore: Lift Every Voice: Thoughts from a Juneteenth Holiday

      By Michael Moore Juneteenth greetings, my friends. On this episode of Rumble with Michael Moore, I celebrate and reflect on this important new holiday and the opportunity it provides to teach the r…

  • Monopolies

    • Patents

      • Counter PunchThe Global South in the WTO: Time to Go on the Offensive

        The WTO is in a comatose state, and a key reason for this has been the angry reaction of the governments of the global North to the ability of governments of the global South and their civil society allies to fend off demands for more concessions from the US and other developed countries that had originally intended the organization to be the prime instrument of prying open the economies of the South and integrating them more fully to a global economy dominated by northern transnational corporations.

        The WTO was a key agency of corporate-driven globalization.€  Globalization has, however, been shown to be a fragile order fraught with many deep-seated structural weaknesses, such as collapsing global supply chains, that have been exposed by the “perfect storm” of Covid 19, the war in Ukraine, inexorably rising oil prices, global warming, and other contingencies.€  As deglobalization gathers momentum, developing countries must move from a purely defensive to an offensive strategy at the WTO, taking advantage of the crisis of the organization, especially its moribund dispute settlement system, to take back the concessions it made to the global North during the Uruguay Round.€  Regaining the policy space abolished by these concessions will be essential to developing countries if they are to adjust effectively to the emerging new global order.

    • Copyrights

      • Torrent FreakJudge Recommends $150k Piracy Judgment Against Torrent Site Operator

        The makers of the film "Hellboy" have scored a preliminary victory in Hawaii's federal court. After a three-year legal battle, Magistrate Judge Kenneth Mansfield now recommends granting a $150,000 default judgment against the foreign operator of the defunct torrent site MKVCage.

      • Torrent FreakNitro IPTV Loses $100m Piracy Lawsuit Leaving Hollywood Studios Fuming

        A US court has ordered the former operators of pirate IPTV service Nitro TV to pay more than $100m in piracy damages to broadcaster DISH. While the defendants are likely to be somewhat upset, major Hollywood studios are absolutely fuming. Despite their lawsuit against Nitro being filed months earlier, it's still not over, allowing DISH to strike first against any available cash.



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