It’s missing so many keys. I know, that’s par for course with Apple, but when using Krita, a missing Insert key means no easy way to create layers. And there’s a lot of inconsistency between applications. In Terminal, you switch tabs with Control-Tab, in Firefox with Option-Command-Left/Right, in Qt Creator with Option-Tab. I haven’t figured out what it is in Kate. Navigating around text is also inconsistent between applications. And that means that I just never get any finger memory down: especially since I also use all other operating systems…
The window manager is also pretty primitive and needs help from an external utility called Rectangle.
And the permissions stuff is crazy. The wacom tablet driver needs permissions to use Accessibility — as does, for some reason Dropbox.
The hardware for the rest is fine… The screen is good, I don’t mind the notch since I run pretty much everything full-screen, all the time. Battery life is good, but not as good as the 13ââ¬Â³‘ battery life was.
As for the rest of the hardware, the screen is fine, I don’t mind the notch, because I pretty much always use all applications full-screen, because of how bad window management is compared to KWin, even with Rectangle.
What is the best Linux distro for gaming?
Spoiler alert: Microsoft's still the enemy.
What other distros should be in this series? Let me know below! We're taking a look at Peppermint OS since they have made the move from Ubuntu LTS to Debian Bullseye.
I'm announcing the release of the 5.18.12 kernel.
This, and the 5.15.55, 5.10.131, and 5.4.206 releases are only for those users of the drivers/mtd/nand/raw/gpmi-nand/gpmi-nand.c driver, to prevent known data loss issues with that codebase. If you don't use this driver, no need to upgrade.
The updated 5.18.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.18.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...
thanks,
greg k-h
The stable kernel updates that were due on July 14 have been delayed for several days, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman, due to problems that have come up with the Retbleed mitigation patches.
Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language. It was created by Guido van Rossum in 1991.
Python runs on Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS. Python can be used to develop desktop GUI applications and CGI scripts for the web. Also, it’s used for server-side scripting for Apache HTTP Server sites. Python is most popular for its elegance and simplicity.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install R Programming Language on Fedora 36. For those of you who didn’t know, R is an open-source programming language and free software environment for statistical computing and graphical representation created and supported by the R Core Team and the R Foundation. Developed by Robert Gentleman and Ross Ihaka in 1993, R is a free and open-source programming language that is mostly used in statistical computing, modeling, data analytics, and scientific research.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the R programming language on a Fedora 36.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Devolution remote desktop manager on Ubuntu/Debian desktop systems. According to Devolution’s page, Remote Desktop Manager allows you to centralize and secure access to all your remote connections, manage privileged credentials, configure your network for remote access, and restrict permissions to specific users. IT teams can use the integrated credential management features to store and manage account passwords, in addition to integrating existing password manager solutions directly into Remote Desktop Manager. User privileges and permissions can be easily managed using our role-based access controls, which can work with your active directory groups to help admins create a granular protection system. All of these systems can help enforce your least-privilege principles and protect sensitive data so you can comply with data security regulations.
I am a contributor to fedora-license-data upstream, and I investigated what will be the easiest way to build a new version of the Fedora package. I ended up using Packit for that. With just one command, it creates a pull request in src.fedoraproject.org.
I have recently deployed a published Node.js application via Amazon S3 static website hosting. After deployment, I noticed that we get the 404 error message while refreshing the pages. After a few searching, I got the reason behind it. I found that the application required a special configuration for routing like .htaccess in Apache servers. But here is the issue, we can’t use the .htaccess file with S3 static website hosting.
In this tutorial, we will discuss solving this issue with the options provides under the S3 configuration. Also, provide you with instructions to fix this issue for the users using the Cloudfront.
Pedals are a great way to control functions on your computer. You’re rarely using your feet for anything else, so they can handle some tasks, freeing up your hands. This Elgato Stream Deck controller from [DDRBoxman] does just that.
Today we’re releasing the second beta for Krita 5.1!
For the full list, check out the work-in-progress full release notes!
Or check out Wojtek Trybus release video!
CentOS (Community ENTerprise Operating System) also widely referred to as CentOS Linux, is a free and open-source community-developed Linux distribution that was based on RHEL. It is a no-cost RHEL build that was popular for handling production workloads and also as a desktop distribution.
For a long time, CentOS enjoyed a good run winning the adulation of thousands of Linux users until its sudden demise on December 31, 2021. CentOS 8 was unilaterally discontinued by RedHat in favor of CentOS Stream which is the upstream and current development branch of RHEL, thus marking the end of support for the CentOS Project.
AlmaLinux is a stable, robust, and community-driven Linux distribution that was originally created by CloudLinux as a successor to CentOS which turned End-Of-Life at the end of December 2021.
AlmaLinux is completely free and open source and places an emphasis on long-term stability and providing an enterprise-ready environment for handling production workloads. It is 1:1 binary compatible with RHEL and is a perfect solution for users who cannot afford to pay for an RHEL subscription.
Modernizing a portfolio of legacy applications presents some unique challenges in enterprise environments. In my first blog in this series, Modernization: Why is it important?, I recommended considering these two points when deciding whether to embark on a modernization project:
ABB and Red Hat today announced a global partnership to enable industries using ABB’s process automation and industrial software to scale rapidly and flexibly leveraging Red Hat’s industry leading enterprise platforms and application services built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
When IBM acquired Linux vendor Red Hat for $34 billion in 2019, Paul Cormier took the reins as Red Hat CEO. After three years, Cormier is now handing those reins over to a new leader.
Yesterday, Red Hat announced that long-time engineering leader at the company, Matt Hicks, will now be the company’s president and CEO. Cormier will move to the chairman role, where he will continue to be an active participant in the company’s activities.
Ericsson and Red Hat are working to validate the former’s cloud-native 5G core to work across the latter’s OpenShift software platform in a move similar to one struck by Ericsson earlier this year with Red Hat rival VMware.
Honoré LaBourdette, global VP at Red Hat, explained that the two vendors have validated services that support virtual evolved packet core (vEPC), 5G core, IP multimedia subsystem (IMS), operating support systems (OSS), and business support systems (BSS). The vendors noted that proof of concepts (PoCs) have been running with service providers.
The new agreement is billed as an expansion of ongoing work between Ericsson and Red Hat targeting the telecommunications space. It’s focused on making sure Ericsson’s services running as cloud-native functions (CNFs) can operate at scale for telecom operators using Red Hat’s OpenShift and OpenStack platforms to support their 5G network deployments.
The Fabric8 Kubernetes client has been simplifying Java developers' use of Kubernetes for several years. The 6.0.0 release represents a major body of work spanning about five months of effort in both the core of the project and in related utilities.
As a leadership and change consultant, I believe “The Great Resignation” is shorthand for the collective sigh (or perhaps scream) that’s emanated from management and HR offices across the country as they watch key employees leave the fold.
As study after study attempts to answer the “why," leaders are thinking more immediately about their approach to talent management and developing strategies to retain their top talent.
Another idea is surfacing, too: Individuals that have always been considered top talent may in fact be standing in the way of new talent, quirky talent, creative talent, quiet talent, or diverse talent. Firms that overhaul their talent-management strategy to better understand the traits, skills, and capabilities required to drive business objectives are often better able to identify individuals who meet key criteria and prioritize them for development opportunities.
vDPA device in userspace (VDUSE) is an emerging approach for providing software-defined storage and networking services to virtual machine (VM) and container workloads. The vDPA (virtio data path acceleration) kernel subsystem is the engine behind VDUSE. If you're not familiar with the vDPA kernel framework, please refer to our Introduction to vDPA kernel framework and vDPA bus drivers for kernel subsystem interactions blogs to become familiar with concepts such as vDPA bus, vDPA bus driver, and vDPA devices, as we assume readers are familiar with those topics in this blog.
We think Ubuntu Jammy is a future of Free and Open Source Software computing. With the default technology it implements --including GNOME, Pipewire and Snap-- and the OEMs availability quickly growing around, Ubuntu is one among few which sets the standard for FOSS computings and the others will surely follow. We recommend Jammy for any new user especially those with mid-high specifications and they can start the journey with Live USB first. The drawbacks are real, and there are few of them, but this release can be considered the greatest LTS ever. Kudos to Canonical and all Ubuntu developers! Congratulations to the community!
Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa“ is close to its final version with the release of beta versions of its spins. So here’s what’s new!
Linux Mint has proven itself as perhaps the best Ubuntu derivative throughout the years, and the distro has established a large user base.
As a result, it is increasingly the preferred choice for a desktop system among Linux users at the expense of Ubuntu, which has implemented controversial solutions in its latest releases.
That’s why each new version of Linux Mint is widely anticipated, and the upcoming 21 release is no exception.
ASRock Industrial has released the iEPF-9010S and iEP-9010E high-end, rugged Edge AIoT platforms powered by 12th Gen Intel Alder Lake S processors, equipped with up to 128GB RAM, 4G LTE, 5G, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity, and real-time TSN/TCC networking.
The I/O rich embedded computers are designed for highly demanding workloads and mission-critical industrial applications such as factory automation, machine automation, robotic control, AI-enabled AOI (automated optical inspection), autonomous vehicles, smart cities, and more.
Raspberry Pi’s are the single-board computers that are just like the desktop computers and laptops in working but they are the palm-size in physical appearance. Initially, it was released for teaching the usage of Desktop computers in educational institutions but later on, on the basis of its size and usage, it was being used in different projects of Electronics and IoT as a microcontroller.
To date, the Raspberry Pi foundation has released a number of models of Raspberry Pi, among which the top Raspberry models are being discussed in the guide.
To interface different sensors or devices with Arduino boards there are libraries used in the Arduino code that helps the microcontroller to recognize the devices attached with it. Moreover, libraries enhance the functionality of the Arduino boards in such a way that some extra functions can be performed through the microcontroller. Sometimes installing a library for any specific device might not work, or you need to install an updated version of that particular library. So, if you’re looking for a way to uninstall the library from the Arduino then read this guide as I have explained the process of uninstalling an Arduino library.
For people who suffer from hearing loss or other auditory issues, maintaining situational awareness can be vital for keeping safe and autonomous. This problem is what inspired the team of Lucia Camacho Tiemblo, Spiros Kotsikos, and Maria Alifieri to create a small device that can alert users to certain household sounds on their phone.
The team decided to incorporate embedded machine learning in order to recognize ambient sounds, so they opted for an Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense. After recording many samples of various events, such as a conversation, knocking on the door, the TV, a doorbell, and silence, they fed them into a tinyML model with the help of Edge Impulse’s Studio. The resulting model was able to successfully differentiate between events around 90% of the time.
Instructables users Monserrath Velasco and Santiago Guerra have created an LED matrix that not only features classic Pac-Man characters, but also shows the current ambient temperature by coding it as the Ghost’s color which ranges from blue (cold) to red (hot).
The matrix itself was fashioned out of several WS2812B LED strips, which contain a total of 71 individually-addressable LEDs. After soldering them together using some wire and gluing them to a cardboard backing, the team connected the strip to an Arduino Uno along with a BME280 environmental sensing module. The final component was a single momentary pushbutton switch that gives users the option to change between the Ghost and Pac-Man figures.
The modern Web is crap, because it’s unusable if you value your sanity. Mr. Garrett claims he’s a Open Source developer, but at the same time uses platforms that don’t even allow you to read his blog without proprietary software (JavaScript programs are usually proprietary software), images (bandwidth hog), and other nasties.
[...]
Much of “the news” is credibility zero these days, especially the ones you don’t pay for. I’ve noticed the ones that have their hands out and paywalls actually have better stories that usually have some point to them once I get past the paywall. NPR takes so much money from people like Bill Gates, and outfits like Microsoft, Amazon, Walmart, Koch Industries, Exxon, and more and gives them shout outs while you’re in the car using them for background music.
“This article about Amazon workers trying to organize brought to you by the company that is threatening them for organizing. Amazon…..When you need a tuba, some blu ray discs, and three packages of chocolate covered cherries at 4 AM….Amazon.”
I’m very concerned with what’s happening to “the news”, at least as much as “the Web”. They’re in a state of terminal rot and corruption to the point where it’s almost a gift that you can’t read some of this bullshit in a way that preserves some of your sanity.
For example, many are reporting that Senator Joe Manchin of Virginia is blocking a new spending deal because he’s “worried about inflation”.
What they’re not reporting on is that taxing the rich to reduce the federal deficit would LOWER, not increase, inflation. By refusing to tax the rich, the Senator from West Virginia is forcing the federal government to create and borrow money, INCREASING the inflation he is complaining about, to spare unproductive billionaires like Elon Musk and Bill Gates and Warren Buffett from having to pay taxes.
More alarming, however, is the fact that there’s more “Billshit” than ever in the news this week.
A total “Billshit” overload.
Tor Browser 11.5 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and also from our distribution directory. This new release builds upon features introduced in Tor Browser 10.5 to transform the user experience of connecting to Tor from heavily censored regions.
We began reshaping the experience of connecting to Tor with the release of Tor Browser 10.5 last year, including the retirement of the Tor Launcher and the integration of the connection flow into the browser window. However, circumventing censorship of the Tor Network itself remained a manual and confusing process – requiring users to dive into Tor Network settings and figure out for themselves how to apply a bridge to unblock Tor. What's more, censorship of Tor isn't uniform – and while a certain pluggable transport or bridge configuration may work in one country, that doesn't mean it'll work elsewhere.
I always have too many tabs open — at any given time I have like 40 open. It’s the kind of thing, where you know when you have so many open that you can’t even see them. So, whenever, I accidentally close a tab, I tell myself, you know, maybe you weren’t going to read that long article in The Atlantic, anyway, or like maybe you weren’t actually going to apply for that fellowship and it’s good that the link is no longer just up there. Every time I accidentally close the tab I feel like it’s the universe telling me that it wasn’t meant to be and you’re free now.
LibreOffice application icons are undoubtedly awesome. But over the years they have become a bit dated and do not fit well into the zeitgeisty icon design. Plus, the set has no good main icon, which is in particular an issue on macOS where this icon is shown on the launcher bar.
Many proposals have been submitted and finally the TDF members elected one concept in a first poll. Now we like to involve the larger community into the design work. The question is whether icons should be flat or have some gradient. Please use the following link to vote.
The VLOOKUP spreadsheet function by default requires the searched data to be sorted, and in that case it performs a fast binary search. If the data is not sorted (for example if it would be impractical to have the data that way), it is possible to explicitly tell VLOOKUP that the data is not sorted, in which case Calc did a linear one-by-one lookup. And there are other functions such as COUNTIF or SUMIF that essentially do a lookup too, and those cannot even be told that the data is sorted and so they processed the data linearly. With large spreadsheets this can actually take a noticeably long time. Bugreports such as tdf#139444, tdf#144777 or tdf#146546 say operations in such spreadsheets take minutes to complete, or even "freeze".
If ever a writer was fated to bear a particular name, it was Fernando Pessoa. In Portuguese the word pessoa means “person”; in Latin it means “mask” or “character.” Pessoa spent his life adopting personas, masks, and characters from almost the moment he began his writing career. These alternative personalities were still Pessoa, even when he signed his works under a pseudonym. Many of his alter egos were poets like himself, although only a few were Portuguese. One was an anti-Fascist Italian critic, another a psychiatrist, a third studied engineering; the others included monks, an assistant bookkeeper, a 19-year-old hunchbacked girl who suffered from tuberculosis, a translator of Portuguese literature into English, an inventor and solver of riddles, a French satirist, a toga-wearing lunatic obsessed with Greece who lived in an asylum, and even a Voodooist. As Pessoa explained in 1928, “Pseudonymous works are by the author in his own person, except in the name he signs.” His works were what he called “heteronymous”; they were “by the author” but “outside of his own person. They proceed from a full-fledged individual created by him, like the lines spoken by a character in a drama he might write.” Pessoa’s heteronyms were people with birthdays and deathdays; they had the whole gestalt—passions, fears, dreams, and clearly traced literary paths. As for him, he was a fingidor: a feigner, a pretender, an impostor who believed he could do “more in dreams than Napoleon.”
It's hot and hazy as July rolls around. Growing up in the Baltimore swamplands, we used to say, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." Meaning that the humidity was harder to deal with than the feverish temperatures. At some point in my family, the phrase morphed into: "It's not the heat, it's the stupidity." At the time, we meant the antics of people when it gets hot, including public drunkenness, mishaps with fireworks, and fights over slights. (These days, sadly enough, you'd have to add to that list slaughtering people at a July 4th celebration with an AR-15-style rifle.)
Apple’s FaceID system uses infrared depth-sensing technology to authenticate people via their faces. It can also be used for simple 3D scanning, and [Scott Yu-Jan] found a better way to do that.
Have you ever wished you could peer inside a complex machine while it was still running? We sort of can with simulations and the CAD tools we have today, but it isn’t the same as doing IRL. [Warped Perception] made a see-thru jet engine to experience the feeling. The effect, we dare say, is better than any simulation.
Visual cryptography is one of those unusual cases that kind of looks like a good idea, but it turns out is fraught with problems. The idea is straightforward enough — an image to encrypt is sampled and a series of sub-pixel patterns are produced which are distributed to multiple separate images. When individual images are printed to transparent film, and all films in the set are brought into alignment, an image appears out of the randomness. Without at least a minimum number of such images, the original image cannot be resolved. Well, sort of. [anfractuosity] wanted to play with the concept of visual cryptography in a slightly different medium, that of a set of metal plates, shaped as a set of keyrings.
Oftentimes, we’ll find ourselves using an PC attached to a project for serial debugging. Other times, we’ll be squinting at a status LED trying to remember the flash code we invented. This embedded dashboard from [hgrodriguez] aims to land somewhere in the middle.
In the year since the United States blocked Mexicans from entering the country to sell their blood, the two global pharmaceutical companies that operate the largest number of plasma clinics along the border say they have seen a sharp drop in supply.
In a suit challenging the ban, the companies acknowledged for the first time the extent to which Mexicans visiting the U.S. on short-term visas contribute to the world’s supply of blood plasma. In court filings, the companies revealed that up to 10% of the blood plasma collected in the U.S. — millions of liters a year — came from Mexicans who crossed the border with visas that allow brief visits for business and tourism.
Predictably the U.S. health bureaucracy is slow out of the gate. Of the two monkeypox vaccines, the better one is in short supply. That’s the two-dose Jynneos vaccine, which the department of Health and Human Services is releasing, but so far less than a million shots. Meanwhile, states can request doses of an older smallpox vaccine, ACAM2000, from the national stockpile, which contains roughly 100 million doses. This vaccine features some lousy side effects, and those with heart disease or the immunocompromised should avoid it.
Plans to produce more Jynneos should have ramped up a month or two ago. They did not. They are only doing so now. Naturally demand outstrips supply, as monkeypox cases multiply, possibly exponentially. So far, the CDC reports a mere 600 plus cases in the U.S. with over 6000 worldwide. But unreported cases could be exploding. If this sounds like you’ve been here before, you’re correct. Think February 2020, as covid just got rolling, then rolling…then snowballing. Have federal agencies like the CDC, FDA and HHS learned from that miserable experience? So far prognostications don’t look good.
The Passenger Information List (PIL) or Passenger Manifest is a document which is provided to the crew prior to each flight. In its most basic form it will include passenger names and their seat numbers.
Various applications have now been developed which digitalise the PIL, hence it is often called the Electronic Passenger Information List (ePIL). These applications remove the need for a printed PIL, can be updated frequently and provide several functions to the crew which were unavailable using a paper PIL. Whilst an ePIL is more frequently used by the cabin crew than the pilots, it is common for them to be installed on EFB’s for pilots to use.
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 219. This version includes the following changes:
* Don't traceback if we encounter an invalid Unicode character in Haskell versioning headers. (Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#307) * Update various copyright years.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (webkit2gtk and wpewebkit), Fedora (curl, kernel, openssl1.1, php, subversion, xorg-x11-server, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Oracle (grub2), SUSE (gnutls, kernel, logrotate, oracleasm, p11-kit, and python-PyJWT), and Ubuntu (libhttp-daemon-perl and python2.7, python3.10, python3.4, python3.5, python3.6, python3.8, python3.9).
In episode 36 of the Enterprise Linux Security podcast, Jay and Joao record an episode live for the first time.
Apple AirTags are useful little devices. They essentially use iPhones in the wild as a mesh network to tell the owner where the AirTag is. Now, researchers have shown that it’s possible to clone these devices, as reported by Hackster.io.
That is exactly what happened in the case of Haitao Xiang. Mr. Xiang was under investigation by the FBI and Monsanto while he was living in St. Louis. But, instead of applying for a warrant, government officials waited until he was traveling internationally to seize his electronic devices in order to search them warrantlessly.€ €
EFF and the ACLU have filed an amicus brief in the case arguing against warrantless, suspicionless border searches of electronic devices like Mr. Xiang’s. As the brief states:
And it is exactly for this reason that border protection officers and customs officials must have a higher standard when they want to search an electronic device. EFF will continue to fight for the belief that digital rights do not end simply because a person approaches the border.
For millions of people in Russia, Telegram’s encryption makes it the last remaining avenue to communicate securely and access information freely — governmental attempts to seize platform data must be rejected.
Telegram is challenging the Russian government’s order to block and fine the messaging app for failing to provide information that would enable authorities to decode encrypted messages of six crime suspects. The company argues that, in effect, this means creating a backdoor mechanism for decoding all Telegram communications and threatening privacy and freedom of expression rights of all users. On June 10, 2022, Access Now, ARTICLE 19, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch, Privacy International, and Reporters Without Borders, filed a joint submission to the European Court of Human Rights.
“Journalists and activists in Ukraine and Russia are fighting to end this war. Platforms like Telegram are often their main source of communication, and they bear disproportionate risks if their identities and messages are revealed to Russian authorities,” said Natalia Krapiva, Tech Legal Counsel at Access Now. “Encryption is the last protective wall standing between at-risk advocates and the security forces seeking to silence them.”
The new proposal—championed by Mayor London Breed after November’s wild weekend of orchestrated burglaries and theft in the San Francisco Bay Area—would authorize the police department to use non-city-owned security cameras and camera networks to live monitor “significant events with public safety concerns” and ongoing felony or misdemeanor violations.
Currently, the police can only request historical footage from private cameras related to specific times and locations, rather than blanket monitoring. Mayor Breed also complained the police can only use real-time feeds in emergencies involving “imminent danger of death or serious physical injury.”
[...]
Cagle said San Francisco Supervisors have received "hundreds and hundreds and hundred of messages in just the last few days" from residents who oppose the proposal. And he pointed to a survey [PDF] of 372 likely voters, commissioned by the ACLU, that found 60 percent of San Franciscans oppose letting the police use private cameras to monitor people.
In a joint letter [PDF], 17 organizations including the ACLU of Northern California, EFF, social justice center GLIDE, and the San Francisco Public Defender's Office, urged the Board of Supervisors to oppose or "significantly amend" the policy, which they say will "allow the SFPD to engage in unprecedented live surveillance" via thousands of private cameras.
Access Now applauds the U.S. House of Representatives in passing U.S. Representative Tom Malinowski’s amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that will make it difficult for a U.S. company to buy a firm blocklisted on the U.S. Entity List. The decision came yesterday in response to U.S. defense contractor L3Harris Tech’s attempt to acquire sanctioned spyware maker NSO Group, which ultimately failed thanks to White House opposition.
“Spyware is used to invade the personal lives of people across the globe, eroding privacy, and risking lives,” said Jennifer Brody, U.S. Policy and Advocacy Manager at Access Now. “This amendment sends a clear message from the U.S. government: surveillance tech’s unchecked rule is coming to an end.”
It’s not a pretty story.
The F-Word Taboo
After firing several blasts of shots toward the school, the Uvalde shooter enters the building. It’s now 11:33 in€ the morning. By this time, several more 9/11 calls have alerted the police to a shooting incident at the school. A school security camera records the shooter as he saunters down the hallway, pauses briefly to peer around a corner, runs a hand through his hair, then continues down the hall toward classrooms 111 and 112.
At this point, a young boy wearing glasses comes out of the bathroom on the left side of the hall, freezes when he sees the shooter open fire, then runs back into the bathroom.
A lawsuit filed Thursday with a Michigan appellate court aims to preemptively block Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley from appearing on the state's general election ballot, citing his embrace of and active participation in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The lawsuit, submitted by retired attorney and registered voter Lee Estes, argues that Kelley should be barred from the general election ballot "because he has 'engaged in insurrection' in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore is ineligible to serve as a candidate for governor for the state of Michigan."
Leaked audio of Steve Bannon published€ earlier this week by Mother Jones confirms that days before the 2020 presidential election, Republican incumbent Donald Trump planned to prematurely declare victory on the night of November 3 regardless of whether it was true.
"What Trump's gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He's gonna declare victory. But that doesn't mean he's a winner," a chuckling Bannon told a group of associates on October 31, 2020.€ "He's just gonna say he's a winner."
Progressive campaigners rebuked members of Congress who on Wednesday night voted down a pair of amendments to the latest National Defense Authorization Act that would have significantly limited the U.S. military budget.
"Despite the outcome of today's vote, it's never too late for members of Congress to come to their senses and budget for our actual needs over weapons-makers' wants."
As U.S. President Joe Biden visits the Middle East this week, three senators introduced a joint resolution to end the United States' involvement in the Saudi-led war on Yemen.
"This war has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis today and it is past time to end U.S. complicity in those horrors."
With such language crowning the efforts of the Allies, the Axis powers – certainly Germany and Japan – could continue fighting the war of extermination, aware that no terms they could submit would be taken seriously.€ There would be no compromise in this existential confrontation.€ It made the Allied advance in Western Europe slower and enabled the Soviet Union to expel German forces and duly occupy most of Eastern Europe.€ It made negotiations about whether Japan would retain its emperor on surrendering nigh impossible, leaving the route open for the use of atomic weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The supply of weapons to Ukraine in its efforts against Russia has become a zealous mission that will supposedly achieve victory. Messianic impulses tingle and move through the Washington and London establishment, with some echo in Warsaw and the capitals of the Baltic states.€ An air of unreality – be it in terms of negotiating the future of Ukrainian territory under Russian occupation – fills such corridors of power.
Rifles for colonizing. They were the preferred weapons of the westward expansion of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs). The Conquest of the West was no simple advance through wild, unpopulated territory. It required the dispossession, mainly by rifleshot, of dozens of indigenous nations over millions of square kilometers of land.€
Rifles for decimation. Once conquered, the native people tended to rebel, from the Powhatans on the East Coast as early as the 17th century, to the various Plains Indians, such as the Cheyenne and the Sioux, as well as the Apaches and Comanches in the Southwest. They ended up decimated, virtually annihilated. The 1890 massacre of the Sioux at Wounded Knee is still solemnly commemorated today.
Zero House Republicans on Wednesday supported a measure requiring the Pentagon and federal law enforcement agencies to publish a report on countering white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity in their ranks.
Rep. Brad Schneider's (D-Ill.) amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for€ fiscal year 2023 directing the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Defense "to publish a report that analyzes and sets out strategies to combat white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity in the uniformed services and federal law enforcement agencies"€ passed€ in a party-line 218-208 vote.
Rep. Ilhan Omar warned Wednesday that a provision buried in the sprawling National Defense Authorization Act would bar the Pentagon from distributing aid to the people of Afghanistan even as they're engulfed in a massive humanitarian emergency following two decades of deadly U.S. occupation.
"Afghanistan is facing one of the most horrific humanitarian crises on the planet," Omar (D-Minn.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote on Twitter. "We should be doing everything in our power to deliver humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people, not needlessly limiting the aid we can supply."
A Google search discloses that 108 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes and another 144 have outlawed it in law or in practice.€ Fifty five countries still use it to discipline those who have committed certain offenses. We are among the fifty five. Although we executed 11 people in 2021, we try to be reasonable in its application. € € Proof of that€ is shown by two cases that have gone through the courts in the last two years.€ Both of them arrived in the court system because of what has proved to be a very tricky problem. In 2021 the problems involved Richard Moore in South Carolina and Michael Mance in Georgia.€ Both concerned the proper way to execute someone sentenced to death.
At the time of his conviction South Carolina generously permitted someone in Mr. Moore’s position to choose which of the two state authorized methods of execution he would like to have applied to the€ event.€ The choices were between (a) the electric chair or (b) lethal injection.€ In the case of a prospective decedent who declined to choose, the default was (b).€ Mr. Moore declined to choose and his failure to choose meant the default would apply and he would be put to death € by lethal injection.€ There were, as it turned out, € no drugs available for lethal injection so the state was unable to execute Mr. Moore who had, as it were, the last laugh.€ His laughter was, however, cut short by the South Carolina legislature. It promptly added the firing squad as the default execution method instead of lethal injection and said that newly enacted method applied to Mr. Moore. € Some may think it strange that a state can effect a change in how the death penalty is applied after the date it has been imposed but that is, apparently, not an issue.€ Thanks to some additional appeals Mr. Moore has now filed, how he will be executed is, as of this writing unknown.€ The issue is now before the South Carolina Supreme Court.
The Senator’s aide obliged me. The chances of any bill passing both chambers of Congress that would trim the Pentagon budget by 10%, according to the aide, were zero. When I asked if this was because the public perception was that we needed this amount to defend the country, the aide responded that it was not only the public perception but the reality. The Senator was convinced, as were most in Congress, that the Pentagon’s threat assessments were accurate and reliable (this despite the Pentagon’s history of failed forecasting).
As described to me, the military assesses threats across the globe including such countries as China and Russia, then designs a military strategy to counter those threats, works with weapons manufacturers to design weapons to integrate into that strategy, then produces a budget based on that strategy. Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, overwhelmingly approve the budget. After all, it’s the military. They clearly know the business of war.
Like thousands of others in the military and elsewhere throughout the US bureaucracy of war, our fathers were family men. Each engaged in their way with their children, their wives and their lives at home. They enjoyed vacations with us, they scolded us when we didn’t measure up and they supported our childhood interests. Meanwhile, they went to work and figured out ways to kill people. All in the name of an ideology sold as democracy but actually just twentieth century imperialism. Craig McNamara’s response to his father’s work expanding and defending the war was similar to mine. We both became fervent opponents to it. Like me, the younger McNamara expressed his opposition to the war at first through symbolic protest—hanging antiwar posters on his wall, reading pacifist literature and attending protests. Ultimately, his antiwar activities and understanding turned radical, as did mine. Violent protests and an anti-imperialist analysis replaced peace signs and black armbands. Like millions of others, we realized the war on the Vietnamese was not a mistake, but a matter of policy; a policy founded in a lust for empire.
When the politics of revolution became too much, Craig McNamara left for Latin America. By then his father was no longer part of the government. Instead, he was on the board of the World Bank devising development plans for the Global South. Of course, these plans were designed to benefit Washington and Wall Street, not the people of the nations the World Bank claimed to be developing. Indeed, while the younger McNamara was living in Santiago, Chile during the heady days of the socialist Allende government, his father was working with some of the very people who were organizing Allende’s bloody downfall. Craig describes reading the newspaper and finding out his father (who was unaware of his son’s presence in the city) was meeting with various officials, capitalists and others in another part of the city. He weighed contacting his father, but decided against it. After all, what would he have to say?
U.S. President Joe Biden said in an interview aired Wednesday that he would be willing to go to war with Iran to prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon, a position that drew condemnation from advocacy groups and foreign policy analysts who questioned the moral, strategic, and legal bases for such a stance.
"It makes absolutely zero sense that he won't delist the IRGC to prevent an Iranian nuke but would launch a war to prevent an Iranian nuke."
Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister of Japan, was shot in the back. Murdered in cold blood. It was an act of depravity carried out in broad daylight on July 8 at a campaign rally in the ancient city of Nara, Japan’s first established capital. Gun deaths in Japan are incredibly rare. In all off 2021 there was just one.€ Gun ownership in the country, per head of population, is the lowest of members of the G7, at just 0.3 per 100 people.
Handguns are banned but weapons can be purchased, under strict guidelines, for hunting.
Tokyo, Japan—In the days following the assassination of Shinzo Abe on July 8, heartfelt tributes to the late former prime minister filled television screens, showing fellow party members speaking tearfully in front of reporters and his supporters laying flowers at the site where he was shot. Even the mainstream newspapers, which had been more critical of Abe prior to his death, remembered him as a leader who, despite being controversial, was fiercely determined.
The public expects cops to be better people than they are. Maybe they have the same weaknesses but having the training and experience to overcome them. But when you’re a cop, you’re encouraged to turn interactions into altercations and solve most problems with violence. And when all else fails, you can always just lock someone up. Is it any wonder law enforcement is home to an alarming number of domestic abusers?
“The American Century Is Over.” So claims the July 2022 cover of Harper’s Magazine, adding an all-too-pertinent question: “What’s Next?”
Sue Ann Martinson explores the many ways that the U.S. military contributes to the existential threat of climate change.
Political squabbles and personal conflicts nearly cost Evgeny Prigozhin his prized position in Vladimir Putin’s circle of trust. Over the course of the war in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry has gradually erased the boundaries between mercenaries and the military. The armed forces essentially commandeered the recruiting network built by the Wagner Group (the private military company that Prigozhin finances) and largely excluded the organization itself from the initial invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Russian army and other mercenary groups performed so poorly on the battlefield, however, that Moscow eventually called on Wagner’s regulars, restoring Prigozhin to the president’s good graces.
Russia’s first military draft of 2022 will end on July 15. Since it began on April 1, enlistment offices have largely avoided using Chechen War-era methods of rounding up draftees, but that doesn’t mean they haven't broken laws. Protecting young people from forced recruitment is becoming increasingly difficult; if an enlistment office is given instructions to send a specific person to the army, there’s effectively no way to prevent the person from having to serve. Meduza looks at how Russia’s most recent conscription has played out.
A Russian missile strike in the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia killed at least 21 people, including three children, and injured dozens more, according to Ukraine's State Emergency Service. At least 42 people are still missing, 91 people have sought medical treatment, and 52 have been hospitalized —€ 34 of them in critical condition. 55 buildings and 40 vehicles were damaged.
While biking around Novocherkassk, it’s near Rostov and was once the capital of the Don Cossacks, I thought about the destiny of many Cossacks at the end of World War II.
I first became aware of their fate in the 1970s. In those years my father made business trips to London, and often he would bring back books that were not published in the United States.
These operations initially began during the de-Nazification of post-war Germany but, as the Soviet Union began to pose a serious threat to America’s European influence, shifted to anti-communism under the pretense of creating a space in which artistic-intellectual activity could exist free from authoritarian interference. During this time, the American State organized and funded conferences, literary magazines, libraries, publishers, writers, and translation programs. It also ran parallel operations targeting art, theatre, cinema, science, and journalism.
The culmination of America’s Cold War cultural operations was the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which has been described as both the cultural counterpart to the Marshall Plan and as a cultural NATO. The CCF organized, funded, and directed cultural activities and publications in an attempt to establish a global network of sympathetic artists. Whereas the Marshall Plan focused upon economic liberalisation, the CCF focused upon intellectual liberalisation, establishing what was purported to be an ideology-free zone in which artistic freedom was able to exist. In reality, it was a space in which American State ideology was continuously reproduced, serving to bolster and secure American hegemony.
Saleemul Haq, the director of the€ International Center of Climate Change and Development, is from Bangladesh. He is a veteran of the UN climate change negotiations. When Haq read a tweet by Marianne Karlsen, the co-chair of the UN’s Adaptation Committee, which€ said€ that “[m]ore time is needed to reach an agreement,” while referring to the negotiations on loss and damage finance, he€ tweeted: “The one thing we have run out of is Time! Climate change impacts are already happening, and poor people are suffering losses and damages due to the emissions of the rich. Talk is no longer an acceptable substitute for action (money!)” Karlsen’s comment came in light of the treacle-slow process of€ agreement€ on the “loss and damage” agenda for the 27th Conference of Parties or COP27 meeting to be held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November 2022.
In 2009, at COP15, developed countries of the world had agreed to a€ $100 billion€ annual adaptation assistance fund, which was supposed to be paid by 2020. This fund was intended to assist countries of the Global South to shift their reliance on carbon to renewable sources of energy and adapting to the realities of the climate catastrophe. At the time of the Glasgow COP26 meeting in November 2021, however, developed countries were unable to meet this commitment. The $100 billion may seem like a modest fund, but is far less than the “Trillion Dollar Climate Finance Challenge,” that will be required to ensure comprehensive climate action.
The jury deliberated for nearly three days before announcing a verdict. Judge Jesse M. Furman in the Southern District of New York did not schedule a sentencing date because there are other charges pending against Schulte.
Environmentalists implored President Joe Biden on Thursday not to go through with a reported ploy to approve climate-damaging fossil fuel projects in a bid to secure Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin's support for limited renewable energy funding, warning that such a deal would be a net negative for the planet.
Mitch Jones, managing director of policy at Food & Water Watch, said that "there is abundant evidence that incentivizing cleaner energy technology while also advancing new dirty energy projects does not reduce climate pollution."
Sudd is Africa’s largest freshwater wetland at roughly 3,500 square miles in an otherwise dry region of South Sudan. It’s under threat by a megaproject named Jonglei Canal that has the potential to devastate this ecological gem.
According to conservationists: “Even a partial loss of the Sudd would be an ecological disaster, desiccating the world’s second largest swamp and ending seasonal flooding of the surrounding grasslands, which comprise Africa’s largest intact area of savannah.” (Source: Will Nile Canal Project Dry Up Africa’s Largest Wetland? Grist, July 8, 2022)
Desperately needed support from UN agencies (World Food Programme (WFP), UNHCR and UNICEF) is limited due to lack of donations from member states. WFP have been forced to halve food rations due to the “lowest levels of funding on record”. Leading to what UNICEF describe as a “humanitarian catastrophe……. Urgent aid is needed to prevent parts of the region sliding into famine.” The disruption caused to supply chains and food production by the war in Ukraine is adding to the crisis, dramatically increasing food prices and limiting availability.
The region’s agriculture has been decimated by year on year rising temperatures and decreasing rainfall. Food insecurity, in a region with some of the poorest people in the world, is intensifying with the threat of famine looming, and food prices have sky rocketed. Livestock has perished – in Ethiopia alone 2.1 million livestock have died and 22 million are at risk, emancipated with little or no milk production – the primary source of nutrition for young children.
“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is only halfway descriptive of the planet’s current water situation. Water is drying up everywhere; oceans and rivers are becoming more polluted and poisoned; watersheds are being drained at a phenomenal rate to meet the needs of industry, sports, and agriculture. Quality drinking water, especially in developing countries, is becoming a major challenge. And everywhere, good water, access to which should be a human right, is becoming expensive and privately owned.
First, the basic facts on the global water crisis, as provided by UNICEF...
This is especially true here in the United States, as it was in post-World War I Germany’s nurturing the rise of Naziism and its demonic voice, Adolph Hitler, the consummate outsider who managed to crawl up the mountain to ascend its peak. The core disabling affliction of the United States in the 21st Century is an energized and armed extreme right-wing and a listless, passive center, a development lamented by liberals who would sell their souls long before parting with their stocks and bonds, all for a non-voting seat at various illiberal tables of power. This lack of humane passion at the political center serves as a reinforcing complement to the violent forces of alienation waiting around the country for their marching orders, as the January 6th insurrectionary foray foretells. Together these contrasting modes of ‘citizenship’ signal the death of constitutional democracy as it has functioned, with ups and downs, flawed by slavery, genocide, and patriarchy at birth, indeed ever since the republic was established in 1787 as ‘a more perfect union.’ In 2022 a fascist alternative is assuming institutional, ideological, and populist prominence with active support of many American oligarchs who fund by night what they disavow when the sun shines (again recalling the behavior of German industrialists who thought of Hitler as their vehicle, whereas it turned out the other war around).
This contemporary political ordeal is systemic, and not only the sad tale of American moral, economic, and political decline, temporarily hidden from public awareness by an orgy of excess military spending that has lasted for decades, a corporatized, compliant media, diversionary exploits abroad, and a greedy private sector that grows bloated by arms sales and a regressive tax structure, Pentagon plunder, and its profit-driven regimen. What may be most negatively revealing is the failure to take account of geopolitical failure or sanctified domestic outrages (mass shootings in schools and elsewhere with legally acquired weapons suitable only for organized military combat). It is time to link the inability to mount any serious challenge to the tyranny of the Second Amendment as interpreted by the IRA in cahoots with Congress and the Supreme Court, cowing much of the public to sullen sense of silent hopelessness. Even before these hallowed institutions acquired their Trumpist edge, they shied away from constructing rights as if they were aware of the violent societal and ecological fissures tearing up the roots of bipartisan civility. The moral rot is less the work of the sociopaths among us than it the outcome of a two-party plutocratic dynamic that is controlled by infidels and their bureaucratic minions who either actually like the way things are working out or feel impotent to mount a challenge with any chance of enacting benevolent change.
A 25-year-old college graduate is struggling to pay back his student loans. He gets a call from his sister breaking the news that their mother was just killed by a drunk driver. Before they can lay her to rest, they receive a bill from the government, demanding thousands of dollars. What for? To cover the cost of the parental leave benefits their mom took during their first few months of life.
Amid fears by progressive economists that the U.S. Federal Reserve will move the country closer to a recession by raising interest rates, a new poll published Thursday revealed that American voters overwhelmingly oppose a call by former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers to tackle inflation by effectively taking jobs from millions of people.
"Larry Summers' cure for fighting inflation is worse than the disease itself."
The global economic outlook has "darkened significantly," with the world facing an elevated risk of a recession within the next year, the head of the International Monetary Fund warned Wednesday.
"Multiple crises facing the world have intensified."
Thousands of Hungarian workers are protesting€ against legislation that would increase the tax rate for small businesses, passed earlier this week by the ruling Fidesz party. Around half a million individuals used the popular simplified tax regime, KATA. According to new rules, workers paying KATA will have to look for other solutions from September 1 since the legislation tightens the eligibility for the simplified tax regime.
Protesters have blocked traffic in the heart of Budapest, on the Erzsebet Bridge that connects the Buda and Pest on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
Sen. Bernie Sanders took to the Senate floor Wednesday to criticize fellow members of Congress for working to approve billions of dollars in handouts to major corporations as the country is embroiled in a worsening cost-of-living crisis, a deadly pandemic, and an intensifying climate emergency.
"This may be a radical idea in the halls of Congress, but no, I do not believe that this legislation should approve a $10 billion bailout for Jeff Bezos."
I’ve lived on the streets, been in Hollywood films, owned my own footwear service, rubbed elbows with a Saudi Prince, and even sung for Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago — while in and out of homelessness. I’ve also been to federal prison and battled substance abuse.
In some ways, I’ve lived an unusual life. But with€ 140 million Americans poor or low-income, there’s nothing unusual about growing up in a broken home, enduring homelessness, or ending up in the criminal justice system.
President Biden has set out on his travels to Saudi Arabia. The implications of the trip for the intertwined issues of human rights and energy policy are dire.
The strict European hierarchy
The European Union is run on a day-to-day basis by Germany for German interests. Except when it’s kowtowing to American interests. An academic literature (played up by The Economist in 2013) has Germany as ‘reluctant hegemon’ – just so much palaver. Yet for this crucial issue of Ukraine, German leaders have failed to look not only after the interests of Europe over which it exercises tutelage but those of Germany itself.
This is a country where you’re never more than 15 minutes from both an Amish farm and an abandoned factory. This is a country where people hunt to put food on the table and not to prove how big their dick is. This is a country where diversity means that every skinny Black dude on the wrong side of town has a fat hillbilly baby-mama with a couple of beautiful caramel children in tow. This is a country of doublewides with rainbow flags and ranch homes with Blue Lives Matter signs. This is a complicated and often contradictory state but it’s also a state with a lot more heart than brains and it’s a state that has been repeatedly raped by Washington for that honorable flaw. A place where all the factory workers now cut their paychecks at growing prisons filled with their opioid-addicted children who sought to erase themselves after coming home from the latest bipartisan forever war.
This is how Pennsylvania became Trump Country and this is what the smug wonks on CNN will never grasp about the MAGA sickness. Once again, I’ve never been to Alabama, but the people who live between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia didn’t vote for Trump because they’re racist or sexist even if he clearly is. They only got on board with that orange motherfucker when they saw how uncomfortable he made elitist little shits like James Carville. The people I know who voted for Trump knew full well that they were casting a ballot for a lecherous cretin they wouldn’t let within fifteen feet of their daughters but as far as they were concerned, they weren’t just voting for a man who macks on his own offspring, they were voting to throw a screaming orange brick through the White House window. MAGA was their revenge against a bipartisan political machine that fed our state to NAFTA and the Iraq War.
On most Fridays, Hungary’s Prime Minister gives an interview on one of the state-owned radio stations. Since the independent media has not had a chance to interview him for many years, these weekly radio interviews are the only opportunity to find out what the leader of the country thinks about current events, how he sees his opponents and any issues at hand.
Pundits are focused on Joe Biden's tanking poll numbers, while progressives continue to be alarmed by his dismal job performance. Under the apt headline "President Biden Is Not Cutting the Mustard," last week The American Prospect summed up: "Young people are abandoning him in droves because he won't fight for their rights and freedom." Ryan Cooper wrote that "at a time when Democrats are desperate for leadership—especially some kind of strategy to deal with a lawless and extreme Supreme Cour—he is missing in action."
Yes, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema team up with Republicans to stymie vital measures. But the president’s refusal to issue€ executive orders€ that could enact such popular measures as canceling student debt and many€ other policies€ has been part of a derelict approach as national crises deepen. Recent events have dramatized the downward Biden spiral.
Biden’s slow and anemic response to the Supreme Court’s long-expected€ Dobbs€ decision overturning€ Roe v. Wade€ spotlighted the magnitude of the stakes and the failure. The grim outlook has been underscored by arrogance toward progressive activists. Consider this€ statement€ from White House communications director Kate Bedingfield last weekend as she reacted to wide criticism: “Joe Biden’s€ goal in responding to€ Dobbs€ is not to satisfy some activists who have been consistently out of step with the mainstream of the Democratic Party. It’s to deliver help to women who are in danger and assemble a broad-based coalition to defend a woman’s right to choose now, just as he assembled such a coalition to win during the 2020 campaign.”
Just weeks ago, states could implement at least some common-sense limits on carrying guns. Public school employees couldn’t impose their religious practices on students. And the EPA could hold back our climate disaster by regulating planet-heating carbon emissions from coal plants.
Thanks to an appalling power grab by the Supreme Court’s conservatives, all that’s been demolished too. And they’ve hinted that the right to€ take contraception, marry someone regardless of your sexual orientation, and€ even to choose your own elected representatives€ could be next.
Bennett’s coalition government consisted of eight parties, welding together arguably one of the oddest coalitions in the tumultuous history of Israeli politics. The mishmash cabinet included far right and right groups like Yamina, Yisrael Beiteinu and New Hope, along with centrist Yesh Atid and Blue and White, leftist Meretz and even an Arab party, the United Arab List (Ra’am). The coalition also had representatives from the Labor Party, once the dominant Israeli political camp, now almost completely irrelevant.
When the coalition was formed in June 2021, Bennett was celebrated as some kind of a political messiah, who was ready to deliver Israel from the grip of the obstinate, self-serving and corrupt Netanyahu.
Biden argued that “fundamental freedoms are always on the agenda when I travel abroad, as they will be during this trip, just as they will be in Israel and the West Bank.”€ But Biden’s endorsement of Israeli national security policy in the wake of Israeli responsibility for the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh is particularly ill-timed.€ Similarly, Biden is ignoring his intelligence community in going hat-in-hand to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for increased oil production in view of MBS’s responsibility for the sadistic killing of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashogghi.€ The Biden-MBS photo op will be particularly disheartening.
U.S. handling of Israel resembles Trump’s handling.€ There has been no challenge to Naftali Bennett’s aggressive settlements program on the West Bank, and no restoration of the modest relations that once existed between the United States and the Palestinians.€ The Trump administration bestowed legitimacy on the settlements, and his policy is still in place.€ Biden indicated he would reopen the U.S. consulate to the Palestinians in Jerusalem, but Israeli pressure blocked that move.€ Similarly, the Palestinian mission in the United States closed by Trump remains unopened by Biden.€ Biden’s essay falsely claimed that he “rebuilt U.S. ties with the Palestinians.”
It absolutely galls me that we must read The Times and the other major dailies in this manner. You can wring the truth out of them with effort, though often this is impossible. And the truth here is they are not telling us the truth as they purport to report Ukraine.
For a few months now, we’ve been following this nonsense story, driven almost entirely by executives at the GOP’s favorite digital marketing (read: spamming) operation, that Google is censoring political spam from Republicans. This was all based on either an incompetent, or deliberate, misreading of a study, which did find that an untouched Gmail account sent more GOP political spam to the spam folder than Democratic spam.
It’s no secret that Donald Trump’s Trump Media and Technology Group — which was launched with big plans, but so far only has a total flop of a barely used social media app, Truth Social, to show for it — was struggling. But then came the news that the ponzi-scheme-esque reverse merger deal was actually leading to serious legal investigations, and it appears that Trump and some of his friends may have decided it was perhaps better to take a more “hands off” approach.
The Russian authorities can now designate anyone they consider under “foreign influence” a “foreign agent” — even without evidence of the receipt of foreign funding. In addition, those blacklisted as “foreign agents” are now banned from teaching at state and municipal schools, receiving government financial support for creative projects, and selling goods and services to the state. What constitutes “foreign influence” remains unclear.€
Following growing criticism against Meta’s efforts to contain the spread of hate speech and incitement to violence, it released its first annual Human Rights Report, which includes a brief section reporting on the Meta commissioned independent human rights impact assessment (HRIA) for India. In a stark contrast to the reporting on country specific HRIAs released so far, the reporting on India seems perfunctory and non-reflective of the inputs provided by several civil society organisations who participated in the assessment. Furthermore, Meta fails to publish the full report of the HRIA which leads to concerns around transparency and accountability.
How many times have you shared a link today? How many times have you used a search engine to look for information? We use links and snippets to gain and share information so often that we don’t even think about it. It’s an essential component of the internet, so intrinsic that an internet without links simply doesn’t work. For this reason, it’s alarming that certain members of Congress are pushing “link tax” proposals, like the Journalism Competition Preservation Act (JCPA), that will monetize links in a way that changes how this essential internet infrastructure works.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who heads the nine-member panel, came close to blaming the former president for staging the violent attack with help from the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers gangs.
“Donald Trump summoned a mob to Washington, D.C., and ultimately spurred that mob to stage a violent attack on our democracy,” he said.
The win is not only good for those who would speak up against the powerful, it’s also a great example of how EFF’s patient work in the courts over many years can pay off. In fact, we were pleasantly surprised by the number of cases that EFF has been involved in that were relied upon by the Court.
By our count, the order cites eight cases that EFF participated in, either as counsel or as amicus curiae—and quite a few where we filed multiple briefs, participating at multiple levels of the judicial system. Not bad for an opinion that runs barely 15 pages long. The cases stretch across the issues, with several on copyright-specific John Doe cases (In re Verizon; In re DMCA Section 512(h) Subpoena to Reddit), a couple on copyright itself (Google v. Oracle; Kelly v. Arriba Soft), and some focusing on fair use (Lenz v. Universal; Dr. Seuss v. ComicMix). There are also a couple where we helped behind the scenes but ultimately did not file a brief.€
All in all, the case cites over 17 years’ of work by EFF lawyers who helped to carefully build the legal foundations that the Court relied upon. The earliest cases cited here by the Court were decided in 2003, and the latest were in 2021. We weren’t alone in this—our friends at Public Citizen had a huge role in developing this caselaw, as did the ACLU, EPIC, and many private attorneys over the years. But EFF’s mark is unmistakable.
It is outrageous that you have imprisoned WNBA basketball player, Black woman, U.S citizen, and player for your Russian teams, Brittney Griner on trumped up charges of possession of marijuana and held her in prison since February 17, 2022. This is a clear violation of her civil and human rights, as well as a moral, tactical, and strategic catastrophe for you. Admit your mistake and free her now. We call on the U.S. and Russia to not negotiate an exchange of prisoners because Ms. Griner is not a spy but a friend of Russia who you have cruelly terrified, imprisoned, and persecuted. Free Brittney Griner now.
Why was Ms. Griner in Russia? Because she is a women’s basketball superstar so underpaid in the U.S. that she—like others—must also play in Russia to supplement her income. Ms. Griner has played in Russia for the last seven years, “earning over $1 million per season—more than quadruple her WNBA salary.” At a time when Russia is treating professional women’s basketball players better financially than they are treated in the US, and in turn they are choosing to play in your country, it is outrageous that you would persecute her. Free Britney Griner now.
The Supreme Court's disastrous rulings on prayer on public school property and abortion rights have finally focused proper attention on the role of religious extremism in undermining democratic self-rule. For decades, not only has it been underestimated, most of the media has misunderstood Christian fundamentalism's goals.
Nearly four years after a woman ended an unwanted pregnancy with abortion pills obtained at a Phoenix clinic, she finds herself mired in an ongoing lawsuit over that decision.
A judge allowed the woman’s ex-husband to establish an estate for the embryo, which had been aborted in its seventh week of development. The ex-husband filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the clinic and its doctors in 2020, alleging that physicians failed to obtain proper informed consent from the woman as required by Arizona law.
This is a breaking story… Please check back for possible updates...
Democratic leaders and reproductive rights advocates swiftly blasted anti-choice Republican lawmakers on Thursday after U.S. Sen. James Lankford blocked a bill intended to protect the right of pregnant people across the country to travel for abortion services.
Indiana's Republican attorney general sparked widespread outrage on Wednesday night by launching an investigation into a doctor in his state who recently provided legal abortion care to a child rape victim from Ohio.
"They're either actively trying to get her killed, or just don't give a damn that they're putting her in danger."
A nonpartisan group of legal experts warned Thursday that the "logic" of the U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization—which stated that the right to abortion cannot be protected under the 14th Amendment because it is "not deeply rooted in the nation's history and tradition"—puts the country on a "dangerous backward path."
"The requirement that rights be 'deeply rooted' is a sleight of hand that, if adopted more broadly, would sabotage the developing body of civil rights."
On July 8, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that directed the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to take steps to protect and expand access to medical abortion and contraception while ensuring that patients are eligible to obtain emergency care. In addition, the order seeks to push back against threats posed by surveillance in states outlawing abortion by directing federal agencies to take additional actions to protect patient privacy. The order was in response to a two-week pressure campaign by leftists who were frustrated by the Democratic Party’s tepid response the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the 1973 Roe V. Wade ruling protecting abortion rights for women. Many threatened that they would not fund or vote for the Democratic Party unless leaders took action.
The ways in which this pressure moved Biden from inaction to an executive order illustrates what activist scholars such as historian Howard Zinn long argued: one can’t be neutral on a moving train and change only occurs through sustained protest and agitation from the citizenry. Indeed, Lawrence O‘Donnell explained that when he worked for the Democratic Party, they ignored the demands from the left because many were never willing to actually withhold their votes on election day– ultimately succumbing to the fear tactics of the party’s ongoing “vote blue no matter who” propaganda campaign. As Biden’s recent executive order illustrates, those seeking to codify abortion rights need to agitate and annoy Democratic leadership to take aggressive action.
The Republicans are focused on anger with high inflation. Non-Trumpian conservative adjunct lecturer at Hillsdale College, Henry Olsen, wrote in his€ Washington Post column€ that inflation is even worse than the official numbers suggest. Citing statistics from an€ American Farm Bureau Federation survey, he sees prices for goods people regularly purchase rising much faster than for things they don’t.€ For instance,€ food used at home rose by almost 12 percent over the past year; eggs in particular cost more than 32 percent. These numbers are real and alarming.
Democrats, on the other hand, are highlighting the large demonstrations resulting from€ SCOTUS overturning Roe v. Wade. Pro-choice€ organizers said there were more than 380 protest events in cities including Washington DC, New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago against the decision to€ eliminate a woman’s constitutional right to determine if she wants to be pregnant.
Barely a month ago we lived in a world where all Americans had the right to decide for themselves whether to continue a pregnancy. For much of the country, that’s now history.
Janine Jackson: “The Lonely Chief: How John Roberts Lost Control of the Court.” That was the plaintive headline of Politico’s June 25 report explaining that Roberts, along with his “middle of the road” approach on abortion, would likely be a casualty of the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health ruling.
Ebb and flow of the class struggle in Latin America
The tidal metaphor describes the shifting constellations of governments in what Washington long considered its exclusive domain ever since the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. The Pink Tide is a reaction to and a struggle against neoliberalism, which is the contemporary form of capitalism. The Pink Tide first entered its flow phase in 1998 with the election of Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela. What followed was truly a sea change with a developing expression of sovereignty and independence. An alphabet soup of regionally integrated entities arose: ALBA, UNASUR, MERCOSUR, Petrocaribe, CELAC, etc.
This pointed insult was shouted without a trace of irony through a chain-link fence toward a group of nuclear weapons opponents last Tuesday by a military guard equipped with binoculars and wearing a camera strapped around his neck.
The protest group was at the perimeter of Büchel Air Force Base in west-central Germany on July 12, the 205th anniversary of the birth of Henry David Thoreau — the naturalist and theorist of conscientious defiance of illegitimate authority.
While we were just discussing how everyone occasionally gets reminded that for many digital goods these days you simply don’t actually own what you’ve bought, all thanks to Sony disappearing a bunch of purchased movies and shows from its PlayStation platform, this conversation has been going on for a long, long time. Whereas the expectation by many people is that buying a digital good carries similar ownership rights as it would a physical good, instead there are discussions of “licensing” buried in the Ts and Cs that almost nobody reads. The end result is a massive disconnect between what people think they’re paying for and what they actually are paying for.
Netflix thinks that the solution to its financial woes is a deal with Microsoft to put ads into your TV shows.
Netflix is in major financial crisis. They’re doing huge layoffs. They’ve spent years mismanaging the platform and have only themselves to blame.
Even though the DRM is malicious, and encourages people to be jerks who can’t share with their friends, it’s not the cause of their financial problems.
Back when it wasn’t so expensive and had shows that people wanted to watch, people would pay the money to subscribe and then keep paying, usually even if there wasn’t anything on that they wanted to watch that month.
However, with the state of the economy being pretty lousy, and hyperinflation causing people to struggle to put food on the table, and gas in the gas tank, Netflix seems to have figured out what the solution is to losing a million subscribers per annum.
No, the solution is not canceling all the good shows, it’s not raising the price another $3-4 a month every year; it couldn’t possibly be paying $50 million for a documentary about Michelle Obama that nobody wants to see. But they’ve done all of this.
Following a complaint from Japanese publishers and a criminal process in China, a man in his thirties has been sentenced for operating MangaBank, a massive manga piracy site that shut down in 2021. Local authorities found no copyright infringement in China but accepted that the man's behavior ran contrary to the right of communication to the public.
The RIAA is no stranger to sending takedown requests. In most cases, these notices target pirated content but more recently the group has been defending its members against "infringing" Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain name sales on OpenSea. The NFT marketplace complied with the request and pulled the auctions, including that of RIAA.eth.
Now mind you, I don't mean the kinda clarity like a "moment of clarity" in the vain an alcoholic would (which I am btw I'm 5 years clean off drink (still smoke up 420 tho)), but instead is a sort of renewed outlook on what it is exactly I should be focusing on and how I should take action in one area or the other. I've, maybe, not been the most personable friend right now. Went through a bit of a breakdown among a circle of people i'm close with, over things we wouldn't have known of the other or have even talked about , yet at the same time maybe should've at more appropriate times much earlier smfh.
At the library today I came across a picture book about terraforming. The subtitle of the book was something along the lines of "let's make a new Earth!" The book explains how we could terraform Mars to replace the planet we are destroying. It begins by showing Earth in the year 2070, and how by then it is already barely inhabitable because of our highly pollutant ways of life. But, rather than changing our ways of life, heck, LETS TERRAFORM ANOTHER PLANET!
A road trip marred by stultifying standstill delays provided most of yesterday's sensory bang for the buck.
Sitting there with the guitar (I was a passenger the first half), I remembered past thoughts on automobile brake lights as another key intelligence indicator for me - specifically, more brake usage suggesting lesser grokking prowess with respect to the likes distance, velocity, and mass in a time(ing) context.
School is a funny environment. You are forced into it; you are surrounded by other kids who just happen to be there. Later, college is not that different. From this limited pool, you pick some friends, and you make some enemies. You are stuck together, and you see each other every day.
As you get older, some of your old friends remain close. You still spend free days and weekends together. Maybe even find ways to work together. And thank god you no longer have to deal with the jerks.
[...]
Maybe you check in on facebook or whatever, every so often, and smile when you see them doing something fun. Maybe they hate social media, or maybe you do. Maybe you exchange a few words, but somehow that just does not do the trick. You promise to get together soon, and then there is more stuff to take care of, and more time passes.
This article shows you several practical examples on how to perform various backup operations of MySQL/MariaDB databases using the mysqldump command and also we will see how to restore them with the help of mysql and mysqlimport command in Linux.
mysqldump is a command-line client program, it is used to dump local or remote MySQL databases or collections of databases for backup into a single flat file.
When I started drinking tea a couple of years ago, I remember having read somewhere that you can get hot water for tea just about everywhere in asian countries like Japan or China. The people there use to prepare their thermos flask with a first infusion of Sencha or Gunpowder in the morning, and then simply refill the flask with hot water over the course of the day. The tea leaves obviously remain in the flask all day. Getting several infusions out of good quality tea leaves is not a problem at all.
this was prompted by a particular gemlog, but being in these... idk, modern tech / web critical circles i've seen this type of thing a lot, and have always had rather strong feelings about it, so may as well just write something now.
Here is a draft for a protocol named PTPDT, an acronym standing for Pen To Paper Data Transfer. It comes with its companion specification Paper To Brain.
The protocol describes how a pen can be used to write data on a sheet of paper. Maybe it would be better named as Brain To Paper Protocol.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.