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06.25.19

Links 25/6/2019: Mesa Releases, Less Microsoft in Apache

Posted in News Roundup at 3:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

  • Server

    • Five Linux Server Administration Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

      In 2017, an employee at GitLab, the version control hosting platform, was asked to replicate a database of production data. Because of a configuration error, the replication did not work as expected, so the employee decided to remove the data that had been transferred and try again. He ran a command to delete the unwanted data, only to realize with mounting horror that he had entered the command into an SSH session connected to a production server, deleting hundreds of gigabytes of user data. Every seasoned system administrator can tell you a similar story.

      The Linux command line gives server admins control of their servers and the data stored on them, but it does little to stop them running destructive commands with consequences that can’t be undone. Accidental data deletion is just one type of mistake that new server administrators make.

    • Skytap Announces General Availability of IBM i in the Public Cloud, Leads Ecosystem to New Opportunities

      Skytap, a global, purpose-built cloud service, announces that its support for the IBM i operating system is now available in US-West, US-Central and EMEA-UK. Available for purchase in hourly, monthly and annual consumption models, this release broadens Skytap’s support for IBM Power Systems-based applications that can be developed, tested and run in production.

      In the 2017/2018 Logicalis Global CIO Survey, most CIOs indicated they are focused on digital transformation, with 44 percent citing complex legacy infrastructure as a main barrier in this transformation.

    • Instaclustr Releases Service Broker to Seamlessly Integrate Customers’ Kubernetes Applications within the Instaclustr Open-Source-as-a-Service Platform
    • MariaDB 10.3 now available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7

      Red Hat Software Collections supplies the latest, stable versions of development tools and components for Red Hat Enterprise Linux via two release trains per year. As part of the Red Hat Software Collections 3.3 release, we are pleased to announce that MariaDB 10.3 is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

    • Quarkus 0.17.0 now available

      Quarkus continues its cadence of delivering a release every 2-3 weeks. This latest release (0.17.0) contains 125+ changes that include new features, bug fixes, and documentation updates.

    • Recap of Kubernetes Contributor Summit Barcelona 2019

      First of all, THANK YOU to everyone who made the Kubernetes Contributor Summit in Barcelona possible. We had an amazing team of volunteers tasked with planning and executing the event, and it was so much fun meeting and talking to all new and current contributors during the main event and the pre-event celebration.

      Contributor Summit in Barcelona kicked off KubeCon + CloudNativeCon in a big way as it was the largest contributor summit to date with 331 people signed up, and only 9 didn’t pick up their badges!

    • The innovation delusion

      If traditional planning is dead, then why do so many organizations still invest in planning techniques optimized for the Industrial Revolution?

      One reason might be that we trick ourselves into thinking innovation is the kind of thing we can accomplish with a structured, linear process. When we do this, I think we’re confusing our stories about innovation with the process of innovation itself—and the two are very different.

    • Top Web Based Docker Monitoring Tools

      It is an open source platform and enables administrations to manage and run Docker in creation. It offers the whole program stack that is desired to achieve containers in production and it can be simply installed on any engine that can run Docker. After installation, all nodes can be easily configured and organized through the UI Web. You can get complex functions such as load and manage balancing out of the box after a few clicks.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 5.1.15

      I’m announcing the release of the 5.1.15 kernel.

      All users of the 5.1 kernel series must upgrade.

      The updated 5.1.y git tree can be found at:

      git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.1.y

      and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:

      https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s…

    • Linux 4.19.56
    • Linux 4.14.130
    • Introducing people.kernel.org

      Ever since the demise of Google+, many developers have expressed a desire to have a service that would provide a way to create and manage content in a format that would be more rich and easier to access than email messages sent to LKML.

      Today, we would like to introduce people.kernel.org, which is an ActivityPub-enabled federated platform powered by WriteFreely and hosted by very nice and accommodating folks at write.as.

    • Deprecating a.out Binaries

      Remember a.out binaries? They were the file format of the Linux kernel till around 1995 when ELF took over. ELF is better. It allows you to load shared libraries anywhere in memory, while a.out binaries need you to register shared library locations. That’s fine at small scales, but it gets to be more and more of a headache as you have more and more shared libraries to deal with. But a.out is still supported in the Linux source tree, 25 years after ELF became the standard default format.

      Recently, Borislav Petkov recommended deprecating it in the source tree, with the idea of removing it if it turned out there were no remaining users. He posted a patch to implement the deprecation. Alan Cox also remarked that “in the unlikely event that someone actually has an a.out binary they can’t live with, they can also just write an a.out loader as an ELF program entirely in userspace.”

    • Intel UMWAIT Support Queued For Linux 5.3 – New Feature For Tremont Cores

      Adding to the growing list of features for the upcoming Linux 5.3 kernel is now Intel UMWAIT support for better power-savings.

      UMWAIT is a new feature for Intel Tremont CPUs cores. UMWAIT can help enhance power savings during idle periods with “user mode wait” functionality. UMWAIT allows for monitoring a range of addresses in a lightweight power/performance state or an enhanced mode that can still help with conserving power but less so in order to offer lower latencies. UMWAIT is intended to be used as an alternative to kernel spinloops when needing to wait/sleep for short periods of time when the system is idle.

    • Linux 5.3 Kernel To Bring Ingenic KMS Driver, Rockchip RK3328 Support

      A final set of drm-misc-next Direct Rendering Manager driver changes were sent out at the end of last week as the remaining feature work now queued up for the upcoming Linux 5.3 kernel merge window.

      A new DRM/KMS driver coming with Linux 5.3 is the Ingenic KMS/DRM driver for supporting the Ingenic JZ47xx SoC hardware. This is intended to replace the existing Linux frame-buffer driver for the same hardware.

      For Linux 5.3 the driver is quite basic but there are plans by its developer to support multiple planes, IPU integration for colorspace conversion, up/down scaling, support for DSI displays, and TV-out / HDMI outputs.

    • Linux Foundation

      • Linus Torvalds Sees Lots of Hardware Headaches Ahead

        Linux founder Linus Torvalds, today at the KubeCon + CloudNative + Open Source Summit China conference, warned attendees that managing software is about to become a lot more challenging, largely because of two hardware issues that are beyond the control of DevOps teams.

        [...]

        In the meantime, Torvalds noted updates to the Linux kernel are still coming at a rate of every three months, and the Linux team is basically working on a six-month planning cycle—there is no master five-year plan the Linux team is working from. Roughly 1,500 developers work on contributions to the Linux kernel, with 100 maintainers overseeing the implementation of those contributions.

        Naturally, cybersecurity patches at the kernel level have significant implications for all of DevOps. Changes to the kernel need to be absorbed by all the various distributions of Linux, which in turn impacts all the stacks of software that depend on Linux. Jim Zemlin, executive director for The Linux Foundation, said that in the wake of the rise of these hardware issues and previous cybersecurity issues involving open source software such as the Heartbleed vulnerability, cybersecurity is the top priority for The Linux Foundation. As part of that effort, The Linux Foundation is researching various DevSecOps approaches to better securing the global open source supply chain, he said.

      • Linux Foundation to become home of WeBank’s FATE

        The Linux Foundation announced the inclusion of federated learning framework FATE into the organisation.

        The project has been contributed by Chinese digital bank WeBank, with organisations such as AI computing platform provider Clustar, e-commerce company JD.com’s subsidiary JD Intelligent Cities Research, and WeBank initiator Tencent already committed to the cause.

        Linux Foundation’s executive director Jim Zemlin explained the move in a canned statement, saying “A secure computing framework is critical for developers who are using data and models to build the latest applications across financial services, manufacturing, healthcare and more.”

      • MATRIXX Software Joins Linux Foundation Networking to Advance Next Generation of Telco Services

        MATRIXX Software, an innovation powerhouse committed to transforming global commerce, today announced it has joined Linux Foundation Networking (LFN) as a silver member. MATRIXX is participating in the foundation’s programs to provide guidance related to advancing a new generation of services inspired by web-scale best practices.

    • Graphics Stack

      • mesa 19.0.7
        Hi List,

I'd like to announce the availability of mesa 19.0.7. This is the last release
of the mesa 19.0 series, and all users are encouraged to migrate 19.1.x instead.

I'd like to apologize for the lateness of this release, in my defence I was on
vacation most of the 19.0.7 cycle and there were several patches that needed
backport.

There's nothing too crazy here for the final release of the series. It's pretty
spread across the system except for radv which had a number of small bug fixes.

Thanks again for the smooth sailing 19.0.x series, I'll see y'all again as
release manager in October for the 19.3 cycle.

Dylan

Bas Nieuwenhuizen (5):
      radv: Prevent out of bound shift on 32-bit builds.
      radv: Decompress DCC when the image format is not allowed for buffers.
      radv: Fix vulkan build in meson.
      anv: Fix vulkan build in meson.
      meson: Allow building radeonsi with just the android platform.

Charmaine Lee (1):
      svga: Remove unnecessary check for the pre flush bit for setting vertex buffers

Deepak Rawat (1):
      winsys/svga/drm: Fix 32-bit RPCI send message

Dylan Baker (4):
      docs: Add SHA256 sums for 19.0.6
      cherry-ignore: add additional 19.1 only patches
      Bump version for 19.0.7 release
      Docs add 19.0.7 release notes

Emil Velikov (1):
      mapi: correctly handle the full offset table

Gert Wollny (2):
      virgl: Add a caps feature check version
      virgl: Assume sRGB write control for older guest kernels or virglrenderer hosts

Haihao Xiang (1):
      i965: support UYVY for external import only

Jason Ekstrand (2):
      nir/propagate_invariant: Don't add NULL vars to the hash table
      anv: Set STATE_BASE_ADDRESS upper bounds on gen7

Kenneth Graunke (1):
      glsl: Fix out of bounds read in shader_cache_read_program_metadata

Kevin Strasser (2):
      gallium/winsys/kms: Fix dumb buffer bpp
      st/mesa: Add rgbx handling for fp formats

Lionel Landwerlin (2):
      intel/perf: fix EuThreadsCount value in performance equations
      intel/perf: improve dynamic loading config detection

Mathias Fröhlich (1):
      egl: Don't add hardware device if there is no render node v2.

Nanley Chery (1):
      anv/cmd_buffer: Initalize the clear color struct for CNL+

Nataraj Deshpande (1):
      anv: Fix check for isl_fmt in assert

Samuel Pitoiset (5):
      radv: fix alpha-to-coverage when there is unused color attachments
      radv: fix setting CB_SHADER_MASK for dual source blending
      radv: fix occlusion queries on VegaM
      radv: fix VK_EXT_memory_budget if one heap isn't available
      radv: fix FMASK expand with SRGB formats



git tag: mesa-19.0.7
      • Mesa 19.0.7 Now Available As The Last Of The Series

        Mesa 19.0.7 was released on Monday as the last Mesa 19.0 stable release, ending this quarterly update series from Q1.

        Mesa 19.0.7 is the end of the line and users are encouraged to move to Mesa 19.1 stable, which has been out since earlier this month. Mesa 19.2 is where all feature development is happening and it should be released around the end of August or more likely will end up being September due to blocker bugs often ending up delaying the releases.

      • Mesa 19.1.1
        Mesa 19.1.1 is now available.

In this release we have:

Mostly in fixes for different drivers (RADV, ANV,
Nouveau, Virgl, V3D, R300g, ...)

Also different fixes for different parts (Meson build, GLX,
etc).


Alejandro Piñeiro (1):
      v3d: fix checking twice auf flag

Bas Nieuwenhuizen (5):
      radv: Skip transitions coming from external queue.
      radv: Decompress DCC when the image format is not allowed for buffers.
      radv: Fix vulkan build in meson.
      anv: Fix vulkan build in meson.
      meson: Allow building radeonsi with just the android platform.

Dave Airlie (1):
      nouveau: fix frees in unsupported IR error paths.

Eduardo Lima Mitev (1):
      freedreno/a5xx: Fix indirect draw max_indices calculation

Eric Engestrom (3):
      util/futex: fix dangling pointer use
      glx: fix glvnd pointer types
      util/os_file: resize buffer to what was actually needed

Gert Wollny (1):
      virgl: Assume sRGB write control for older guest kernels or virglrenderer hosts

Haihao Xiang (1):
      i965: support UYVY for external import only

Jason Ekstrand (1):
      anv: Set STATE_BASE_ADDRESS upper bounds on gen7

Juan A. Suarez Romero (3):
      docs: Add SHA256 sums for 19.1.0
      Update version to 19.1.1
      docs: add release notes for 19.1.1

Kenneth Graunke (2):
      glsl: Fix out of bounds read in shader_cache_read_program_metadata
      iris: Fix iris_flush_and_dirty_history to actually dirty history.

Kevin Strasser (2):
      gallium/winsys/kms: Fix dumb buffer bpp
      st/mesa: Add rgbx handling for fp formats

Lionel Landwerlin (2):
      anv: do not parse genxml data without INTEL_DEBUG=bat
      intel/dump: fix segfault when the app hasn't accessed the device

Mathias Fröhlich (1):
      egl: Don't add hardware device if there is no render node v2.

Richard Thier (1):
      r300g: restore performance after RADEON_FLAG_NO_INTERPROCESS_SHARING was added

Rob Clark (1):
      freedreno/a6xx: un-swap X24S8_UINT

Samuel Pitoiset (4):
      radv: fix occlusion queries on VegaM
      radv: fix VK_EXT_memory_budget if one heap isn't available
      radv: fix FMASK expand with SRGB formats
      radv: disable viewport clamping even if FS doesn't write Z

git tag: mesa-19.1.1
      • Mesa 19.1.1 Released – Led By RADV & Intel Driver Fixes

        Mesa 19.1.1 is out as the first point release to this quarter’s Mesa 19.1 series that was christened earlier this month.

    • Benchmarks

      • Benchmarking The Experimental Bcachefs File-System Against Btrfs, EXT4, F2FS, XFS & ZFS

        Bcachefs is the file-system born out of the Linux kernel’s block cache code and has been worked on the past several years by developer Kent Overstreet. Our most recent benchmarking of Bcachefs was last year, so with the prospects of Bcachefs potentially being staged soon in the mainline Linux kernel, I ran some benchmarks using the latest kernel code for this next-generation file-system.
        Those unfamiliar with this copy-on-write file-system can learn more at Bcachefs.org. The design features of this file-system are similar to ZFS/Btrfs and include native encryption, snapshots, compression, caching, multi-device/RAID support, and more. But even with all of its features, it aims to offer XFS/EXT4-like performance, which is something that can’t generally be said for Btrfs.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Plasma 5.16.2 Desktop Environment Released with More Than 30 Bug Fixes

        Coming just one week after the first point release, the KDE Plasma 5.16.2 maintenance update is here to add yet another layer of bug fixes with the ultimate goal to make the KDE Plasma 5.16 desktop environment more stable and reliable for users. In particular, this second point release introduces a total of 34 changes across various core components and apps.

        “Today KDE releases a bugfix update to KDE Plasma 5, versioned 5.16.2. Plasma 5.16 was released in June with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience. This release adds a week’s worth of new translations and fixes from KDE’s contributors. The bugfixes are typically small but important,” reads today’s announcement.

      • Plasma 5.16.2
      • An easier way to test Plasma

        Having the Plasma and Usability & Productivity sprints held at the same time and place had an unexpected benefit: we were able to come up with a way to make it easier to test a custom-compiled version of Plasma!

        Previously, we had some documentation that asked people to create a shell script on their computers, copy files to various locations, and perform a few other steps. Unfortunately, many of the details were out of date, and the whole process was quite error-prone. It turned out that almost none of the Plasma developers at the sprint were actually using this method, and each had cobbled together something for themselves. Some (including myself) had given up on it and were doing Plasma development in a virtual machine.

        So we put some time into easing this pain by making Plasma itself produce all the right pieces automatically when compiled from source. Then, we created a simple script to install everything properly.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GNOME Shell 3.33.3

        GNOME Shell provides core user interface functions for the GNOME 3 desktop, like switching to windows and launching applications. GNOME Shell takes advantage of the capabilities of modern graphics hardware and introduces innovative user interface concepts to provide a visually attractive and easy to use experience.

      • GNOME Shell & Mutter See Their 3.33.3 Releases With Notable X11/Wayland Changes

        Arriving late, a few days after the GNOME 3.33.3 development snapshot, the Mutter and GNOME Shell updates are now available.

        The Mutter 3.33.3 window manager / compositor update is notable with preparations for running XWayland on-demand — a.k.a. just when needed for X11 client usage and not constantly. The Mutter update also now honors the startup sequence workspace on Wayland, fixes around fractional scaling, adds the new Sysprof-based profiling support, adds mouse and locate-pointer accessibility, consolidates the frame throttling code, improves screencasting support on multi-monitor systems, fixes running X11 applications with sudo under Wayland, adds initial KMS transactional support, and there are many bug fixes.

      • GStreamer Rust bindings 0.14.0 release

        Apart from updating to GStreamer 1.16, this release is mostly focussed on adding more bindings for various APIs and general API cleanup and bugfixes.

        The most notable API additions in this release are bindings for gst::Memory and gst::Allocator as well as bindings for gst_base::BaseParse and gst_video::VideoDecoder and VideoEncoder. The latter also come with support for implementing subclasses and the gst-plugins-rs module contains an video decoder and parser (for CDG), and a video encoder (for AV1) based on this.

      • Sysprof design work

        Since my last post, I’ve been working on a redesign of Sysprof (among other things) to make it a bit more useful and friendly to newcomers.

        Many years ago, I worked on a small profiler project called “Perfkit” that never really went anywhere. I had already done most of my UI research for this years ago, so it was pretty much just a matter of applying that design to the Sysprof code-base.

  • Distributions

    • 5 tiny Linux distros to try before you die

      There are plenty of Linux distributions out there to choose from when you’re deciding what to run on a daily basis, yet some are so small that they get little notice. But tiny Linux distributions are powerful innovations: having an entire operating system drive a computer with less than 1GB of storage and half as much RAM is the ultimate software hack.

      Tiny distros have many uses, such as…

    • Reviews

      • Zorin OS 15 Released – Based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Introduce Zorin Connect

        Zorin OS 15 is the latest release of Zorin OS, based on Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS with the HWE (Hardware Enablement) kernel and graphics stack from Ubuntu 18.10 (Cosmic Cuttlefish). using GNOME 3.30 as default desktop environment with refreshed and refined the look and feel of the Zorin OS desktop with a new, more welcoming desktop theme.

        A new and refreshed look was given to Zorin OS 15 with a beautiful and welcoming desktop theme that adapts throughout the day, switching automatically between the Light and Dark modes, while also offering users no less than six color variants. The new desktop theme also comes with new animations for a complete experience.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Service Pack 1 Officially Released, Here’s What’s New

        SUSE has announced the general availability of the first Service Pack (SP1) release for their latest and most advanced SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 operating system series.
        Released a year ago, the SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 operating system brought numerous new features and enhancements, along with an updated application delivery solution and software-defined infrastructure to help enterprises better adapt and transform their IT departments for their business models. Now, the first Service Pack release is here to further refine the world’s first multimodal operating system.

        “SUSE Linux Enterprise is a modern and modular OS that helps simplify multimodal IT, making traditional IT infrastructure efficient and providing an engaging platform for developers,” said Thomas Di Giacomo, SUSE president of Engineering, Product and Innovation. “As a result, organizations can easily deploy and transition business-critical workloads across their core on-premise and public cloud environments.”

      • openSUSE Tumbleweed vs leap: What is the Difference?

        Before talking about the differences between these versions of openSUSE, let’s have a brief look at its background and features. Earlier it was known as SUSE Linux but after a software company Novell acquired SUSE Linux in February 2004, Novell decided to release SUSE Linux Professional with 100% open source products, and as an open source project, this Linux got its prefix i.e Open. Later it split from Novell and became a separate brand.

        openSUSE inherits its properties from SUSE Linux Professional and the successor of the same. SUSE also offers open source-based enterprise-class OS known as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

        openSUSE Linux community is backed by the SUSE for further research and developments. It uses the easy-to-use YaST package management system and has great advantages for a small and medium-sized enterprise server. Using YaST2 can make the configuration of the server simpler and faster. SuSE Enterprise Linux can be used for large server systems too. When it comes to Linux, everyone knows that Linux is a very secure OS, and openSUSE is not an exception. Apart from the YaST Package manager, it also supports self-developed Zypper (ZYpp) and RPM. It uses KDE5 as the default desktop environment and also provides the GNOME, MATE, LXQt, Xfce…

        Now come to the main agenda of the article which is the difference between openSUSE Tumbleweed and Leap?

      • SUSE provides platform for cloud-native
      • SUSE Refines its Platform for Cloud-Native, Containerized Applications as Enterprises Move to Hybrid and Multi-Cloud

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 31 Looking At No Longer Building i686 Linux Kernel Packages

        Not to be confused with Ubuntu’s varying stance on dropping 32-bit packages beginning with their next release later this year, Fedora 31 now has a proposal pending to discontinue their i686 kernel builds but they will still be keeping with their 32-bit packaging.

        This Fedora 31 change proposal by Justin Forbes, one of Fedora’s kernel hackers, is just about ending i686 kernel builds beginning with this Fedora release due out in October. The i686 kernel-headers package would still be offered in order to satisfy necessary dependencies for 32-bit programs needing those headers. Of course, users will have to be running off a 64-bit kernel. All 32-bit programs should continue to work on Fedora 31.

      • Fedora Workstation 31 Is Looking Great With Many Original Features Being Worked On

        Fedora Workstation 31 is shaping up to be another exciting release for this Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution. As usual, a ton of original upstream features are being worked on for this innovative desktop/workstation Linux spin.

        Christian Schaller of Red Hat has once again written an in-depth blog post outlining the different improvements being pursued this cycle by various Red Hat developers.

      • Fedora booth at Red Hat Summit

        Red Hat Summit — the annual conference for Red Hat customers, partners, and open source contributors — took place last month in Boston, Massachusetts. Fedora had space in the Community Central booth on the expo floor and we had a lot of great conversations with our community.

        As you might expect, the attendees were familiar with open source and Fedora specifically. We got a lot of questions about Fedora Silverblue. Some people were enthusiastic users who have adopted it as their main desktop. Others had heard of it, but didn’t know the details. Fortunately, we were happy to share with them.

      • GNOME Classic Mode is Getting Some Overdue Improvements in Fedora 31

        Red Hat’s Christian F.K. Schaller shares word of several changes to the session in a summary of work that’s underway ahead of the next major release of Fedora.

        Now, at this point you might be trying to remember what the GNOME Classic session is. When I first read about these improvements I thought “Oh neat, he means GNOME Flashback!”.

        Nope.

        GNOME Classic is its own thing. While similarly minded it’s technically different to the GNOME Flashback session that’s readily available in most distros’ repos (including Ubuntu’s).

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Give Ubuntu an Electric-Blue Look with StarLabs’ Theme

            Fancy giving your Ubuntu desktop a dark, electric-blue makeover? If so, then Linux laptop seller StarLabs has you covered.

            The company (who I’l admit I hadn’t heard of until recently) joins a surfeit of British-based Linux laptop vendors, with StationX and the (fabulous) Entroware being the best known.

            But we’re not here to talk about systems, we’re here to talk themes!

            See, aside from selling a small range of (seemingly decent) laptops preloaded with a selection of Ubuntu-based Linux distributions, StarLabs also maintain their own theme.

            And i’m going to show you how to install it Ubuntu.

          • Ubuntu Has Started Work On A New Desktop Snap Store

            Ubuntu’s software stores / software centers have gone through several revisions over the years and now a new Snap Store is in development.

            Developers at Canonical have begun committing to a new Snap Desktop Store. The first code commits were only last week, so it’s not yet something for end-users to get all excited about but presumably they’ll be aiming for it to be in good shape by next year’s Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

          • Ubuntu 19.10 drops 32-bit images, pledges to maintain some packages after user outcry

            Ubuntu 19.10 is scheduled for release in October, though controversy is already brewing following Canonical’s abjectly poorly-communicated plans to stop providing new 32-bit x86 (i386) packages in new Ubuntu releases. This move will prevent users from installing Ubuntu on older computers, and using certain applications only provided in 32-bit versions.

            In fairness to Canonical, the first x86-64 processors will be 16 years old when Ubuntu 19.10 is released, and this is a reckoning that other Linux distributions—as well as Windows and Mac OS—will eventually face, as the amount of engineering time needed to protract legacy platform support is approaching the negative end of a cost-benefit analysis.

          • Ubuntu Will Provide Select 32-bit Packages For Ubuntu 19.10 And 20.04 LTS

            As a result of constant feedback from the open source community — specifically gamers, WINE users, and Ubuntu Studio users — Canonical has decided to change its plans regarding ditching the 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS.

            For those who don’t know, last week, Canonical announced that it’s going to completely abandon the support for i386 architectures in the Ubuntu 19.10 release. Due to the same reason, Canonical restricted the users from upgrading their 18.04 LTS installations to 18.10, so that they don’t end up running 32-bit applications on an interim release with just nine months of support.

          • The future of mobile connectivity

            Mobile operators face a range of challenges today from saturation, competition and regulation – all of which are having a negative impact on revenues. The introduction of 5G offers new customer segments and services to offset this decline. However, unlike the introduction of 4G which was dominated by consumer benefits, 5G is expected to be driven by enterprise use. According to IDC, enterprises will generate 60 percent of the world’s data by 2025.

            Rather than rely on costly proprietary hardware and operating models, the use of open source technologies offers the ability to commoditise and democratise the wireless network infrastructure. Major operators such as Vodafone, Telefonica and China Mobile have already adopted such practices.

            Shifting to open source technology and taking a software defined approach enables mobile operators to differentiate based on the services they offer, rather than network coverage or subscription costs.

          • Design and Web team summary – 25 June 2019

            This was a fairly busy two weeks for the Web & design team at Canonical. Here are some of the highlights of our completed work.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Statement by The Apache Software Foundation Board of Directors

    It is with a mix of sadness and appreciation that the ASF Board accepted the resignations of Board Member Jim Jagielski, Chairman Phil Steitz, and Executive Vice President Ross Gardler last month.

    As an ASF co-founder, Jim has held every officer position since the Foundation’s incorporation, with the exception of a one-year break in 2018. He has played a substantial role in the development and success of the organization and is a recognized advocate of Open Source at the developer and corporate levels.

    An ASF Member since 2005, Phil was instrumental in the adoption, growth, and ubiquity of Apache Java projects across many industries, most visibly financial services. He served as Vice President Apache Commons for four years, and as ASF Chairman August 2017 – May 2019.

    Ross has been championing The Apache Way to governments, corporations, and educational institutions for nearly two decades. Since becoming an ASF Member in 2005, he served as Vice President of Community Development (2009-2012), ASF Director and President (2015-2016), and ASF Executive Vice President October 2016 – May 2019.

    We laud their contributions to many of the ASF’s achievements over the past two decades [1]. Their motivation, vision, and passion is truly inspiring. Whilst we will greatly miss their day-to-day leadership at the executive level, we are heartened that the Foundation will continue to benefit through their participation as ASF Members.

  • Don’t make a FOSS: Apache Software Foundation Board bids farewell to co-founder and two big hitters [Ed: Richard Speed misses the point that those leaving were Microsoft employees and boosters inside Apache]

    To lose one board member may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness, but to lose three?

    The nature of the Board of Directors of open source foundations means churn is a normal part of life, indeed many open source board members can be swapped out at the whim of a community vote, as they should.

    However, the Apache Software Foundation saw three members of its board hand in their resignations last month: chairman Phil Steitz, executive vice president Ross Gardler and, perhaps most significantly, co-founder of the whole show Jim Jagielski.

    Jagielski had been approaching his quarter century of service and had enjoyed roles on the board including chairman and president over the years. He also laid claim to being the first new member after the original eight-member Apache Group.

    Gardler, who signed up to Apache way back in 2000, spent just over two-and-a-half years as executive vice president, is currently toiling away at Microsoft on the Azure Container Service, while Steitz, a veteran of American Express in the early part of the century, is vacating the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) Chairman’s chair after less than two years in the post.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • Hitting the Reset Button on Hadoop

      Hadoop has seen better days. The recent struggles of Cloudera and MapR – the two remaining independent distributors of Hadoop software — are proof of.

  • LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice 6.3 Beta2 ready for testing

      The LibreOffice Quality Assurance ( QA ) Team is happy to announce LibreOffice 6.3 Beta2 is ready for testing!

      LibreOffice 6.3 will be released as final in mid August, 2019, being LibreOffice 6.3 Beta2 the third pre-release since the development of version 6.3 started in mid November, 2018 ( See the release plan ). Since LibreOffice 6.3 Beta1, 226 commits have been submitted to the code repository and 106 bugs have been set to FIXED in Bugzilla. Check the release notes to find the new features included in this version of LibreOffice.

      LibreOffice 6.3 Beta2 can be downloaded from here, it’s available for Linux, MacOS and Windows. Besides, and it can be installed along with your actual installation.

  • Programming/Development

    • Fedora Update Week 23–24

      It’s been another two weeks, so time for another update. Package updates have been rather calm since the last post. I continue to work on adding R packages, and some new things, like glava, the OpenGL audio spectrum analyzer, which can produce cool things like…

    • util-linux v2.34 — what’s new?

      The code of the popular command lsblk(8) has been completely rewritten. The result is more extendible and readable code. Now lsblk(8) keeps all block devices tree in memory before it’s printed. It allows to modify and reorder the tree independently on the way how kernel (/sys filesystem) exports the tree to userspace.

    • libredwg-0.8 released

      This is a major release, adding the new dynamic API, read and write all header and object fields by name. Many of the old dwg_api.h field accessors are deprecated.

    • Reuven Lerner: Announcing: Python standard library, video explainer

      A month or two ago, I saw an online quiz that caught my eye: How much of the Python standard library do you know?

      Now, the “standard library” is the collection of modules and packages that come with Python. It constitutes the “batteries” that “batteries included” refers to in the Python world. And the standard library is big, with about 300 modules, each of which contains functions, classes, and values. Knowing the standard library, and how to use it, is essential to productive use of Python.

      And yet, a large number of the people responding indicated that they knew very little of the standard library. Which makes sense, given that each of us tends to focus on what’s important to our jobs.

    • Generating Random Data in Python

      In this course, you’ll cover several options for generating random data in Python, and then build up to a comparison of each in terms of its level of security, versatility, purpose, and speed.

    • New “-O1g” Optimization Level Proposed For The GCC Compiler

      A new “-O1g” optimization level has been proposed for the GNU Compiler Collection that would allow better performance but still relative ease for debugging the generated binaries.

    • Python: Vectors, Matrices and Arrays with NumPy

      In this lesson, we will look at some neat tips and tricks to play with vectors, matrices and arrays using NumPy library in Python. This lesson is a very good starting point if you are getting started into Data Science and need some introductory mathematical overview of these components and how we can play with them using NumPy in code.
      NumPy library allows us to perform various operations which needs to be done on data structures often used in Machine Learning and Data Science like vectors, matrices and arrays. We will only show most common operations with NumPy which are used in a lot of Machine Learning pipelines. Finally, please note that NumPy is just a way to perform the operations, so, the mathematical operations we show are the main focus of this lesson and not the NumPy package itself. Let’s get started.

    • KDAB at SIGGRAPH – 2019

      KDAB is sharing the Qt booth at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles. We’ll be showing some of our profiling and debugging tools as well as our latest QiTissue demo, a desktop Application developed for Quantitative Imaging Systems (Qi) to help cancer researchers efficiently handle gigabytes of data (see more about that here),

    • Jinja 2 Templates

      JInja2 is a widely-used and fully featured template engine for Python. Being modern it is hence also design-friendly language for Python, modelled after Django’s templates. Ansible uses Jinja2 templating to enable dynamic expressions and access to variables. Ansible controller, where JInja2 comes in picture, is where all the templating takes place before the command is sent and implemented on the target machine. Now, let us look at some syntax that will be helpful with Ansible.

    • Christopher Allan Webber: Let’s Just Be Weird Together

      Approximately a month ago was Morgan and I’s 10 year wedding anniversary. To commemorate that, and as a surprise gift, I made the above ascii art and animation.

      Actually, it’s not just an animation, it’s a program, and one you can run. As a side note, I originally thought I’d write up how I made it, but I kept procrastinating on that and it lead me to putting off writing this post for about a month. Oh well, all I’ll say for now is that it lead to a major rewrite of one of the main components of Spritely. But that’s something to speak of for another time, I suppose.

      Back to the imagery! Morgan was surprised to see the animation, and yet the image itself wasn’t a surprise. That’s because the design is actually built off of one we collaborated on together:

    • RcppTOML 0.1.6: Tinytest support and more robustification

      A new RcppTOML release is now on CRAN. RcppTOML brings TOML to R.

      TOML is a file format that is most suitable for configurations, as it is meant to be edited by humans but read by computers. It emphasizes strong readability for humans while at the same time supporting strong typing as well as immediate and clear error reports. On small typos you get parse errors, rather than silently corrupted garbage. Much preferable to any and all of XML, JSON or YAML – though sadly these may be too ubiquitous now. TOML has been making inroads with projects such as the Hugo static blog compiler, or the Cargo system of Crates (aka “packages”) for the Rust language.

      Václav Hausenblas sent a number of excellent and very focused PRs helping with some input format corner cases, as well as with one test. We added support for the wonderful new tinytest package. The detailed list of changes in this incremental version is below.

    • Things we learned about programming languages working on season three of Command Line Heroes

      One of the best things about working on a project like Command Line Heroes is that you get to learn a lot in the process. For example, while working on season three of Command Line Heroes (launching today!) we discovered a number of fun facts about programming languages that even we didn’t know before.

    • Explore the past, present, and future of Python on Command-Line Heroes

      A new season of the podcast Command Line Heroes launched today. I’ve grown to enjoy this series for both its deep storytelling and its excellent host, Saron Yitbarek. They also dive into fantastic themes, and this year is all about programming languages.

      The first episode of the new season explores Python, the language I’ve been spending more time on for data sciencey reasons. As a newer convert, I’ve wondered where the language, which is approaching its 30th anniversary, is headed.

    • Find Your Off-Ramp | Coder Radio 363

      We take on the issues of burnout, work communication culture, and keeping everything in balance.

      Plus Wes asks ‘Why Not Kotlin’ and breaks down where it fits in his toolbox.

    • Collections In Python | Introduction To Python Collections

      Python programming language has four collection data types- list, tuple, sets and dictionary. But python also comes with a built-in module known as collections which has specialized data structures which basically covers for the shortcomings of the four data types. In this blog, we will go through each of those specialized data structures in detail.

    • Swiss Perl Workshop 2019

      We are looking for speakers, if you have an idea for a talk or presentation then please submit a talk proposal. Because the venue has a few rooms we are also very open to any workshop-like ideas. This could be anything that 2-10 people can attend.

    • PerlCon 2019: Rīga, Latvia, 7–9 August

      PerlCon 2019 is the 20th edition of the annual European Perl Conference also known as YAPC::Europe and TPCiR.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Russian political scientist Valery Solovey says he lost his prestigious job in Moscow academia ‘for political reasons’

      Political scientist and historian Valery Solovey has left his position as the chair of the Public Relations Department at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). Solovey says he stepped down “for political reasons.” Though the decision was reached unofficially in late May, Solovey only announced it on June 19 in a Facebook post. Spokespeople for MGIMO have been guarded about the scholar’s departure. In his many lectures and public appearances, Valery Solovey has repeatedly predicted radical changes coming to Russia, such as Vladimir Putin leaving the presidency early, nationwide mass protests, and restrictions on Russians traveling abroad. Meduza’s Vladislav Gorin spoke to Solovey about being forced from MGIMO and his various prognostications, including his latest about a revolution coming next year to Russia.

      [...]

      Who was behind this meddling into academia? Solovey says he doesn’t know. It may have been the Foreign Ministry or it may have been the Kremlin, but he says he didn’t dig into the matter, in order to avoid “a messy trench war.” Solovey ties his ouster to the recent news that Moscow’s Higher School of Economics is disbanding its Political Science Department, which employs Alexander Kynev. Whoever has been orchestrating this academic purge, Solovey says, the “pressure” is never a direct order, but “happens in the form of persistent advice, opinions, and wishes.”

    • Universal solution will help grow tomatoes in the north and Arctic

      Staff of the TSU Biological Institute have developed a new solution concentrate for growing tomatoes without soil. This is optimal for critical farming areas—the northern regions and the Arctic. The biologists’ development differs from the many other compounds used for growing crops with the hydroponics method in that tap water rather than distilled water can be used in the preparation of the solution and aeration is not required, which simplifies cultivation and reduces the cost.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • The Insulin Racket

      In June 22, 2017, Alec Raeshawn Smith, a recently promoted restaurant manager with Type 1 diabetes, left his local pharmacy empty-handed. He’d gone in to pick up a month’s worth of insulin supplies, which he assumed would set him back around $1000—the amount he and his mother Nicole Smith-Holt had budgeted the month before when he turned 26 and, under Obamacare rules, had to drop off her insurance coverage.

      For Alec, that price was already steep: Even with his promotion, he was making $35,000 a year with no benefits. He and Smith-Holt had combed through Minnesota’s Obamacare marketplace for months in search of a decent plan, but the affordable ones all had sky-high deductibles. That meant that he’d be paying full price for his insulin for months before his junk insurance kicked in, on top of hundreds of dollars in monthly premiums—sucking up some 80 percent of his take-home pay once he paid the rent. So he made a rational decision: He’d go uninsured, save the cost of the premium, and just pay for his meds out of pocket, while racking up work experience that could serve as a springboard to a better position with health insurance.

      As it turned out, it wouldn’t have made a difference if Alec had been insured or not: The price of his insulin had apparently gone up again to $1300, which was more than he had in his bank account. Perhaps he felt embarrassed, too proud to borrow money so soon after finally moving out of his parents’ place. Perhaps he didn’t want anyone to worry about him, and figured he could keep his blood sugar down until payday.

      So he left. He never told his mother and he never told his girlfriend. Five days later, he was dead.

    • ‘Modified’: A Film About GMOs and the Corruption of the Food Supply for Profit

      Parts of the documentary Modified are spent at the kitchen table. But it’s not really a tale about wonderful recipes or the preparation of food. Ultimately, it’s a story of capitalism, money and power and how our most basic rights are being eroded by unscrupulous commercial interests.

      The film centres on its maker, Aube Giroux, who resides in Nova Scotia, Canada. Her interest in food and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) was inspired by her mother, Jali, who also appears throughout. Aube says that when her parents bought their first house her mother immediately got rid of the lawn and planted a huge garden where she grew all kinds of heirloom vegetables, berries, flowers, legumes and garlic.

      “She wanted me and my sister to grow up knowing the story behind the food that we ate, so our backyard was basically our grocery store,” says Aube.

      During the film, we are treated not only to various outdoor scenes of the Giroux’s food garden (their ‘grocery store’) but also to Aube and her mother’s passion for preparing homemade culinary delights. The ‘backyard’ is the grocery store and much of Giroux family life revolves around the kitchen and the joy of healthy, nutritious food.

      When GMOs first began appearing in food, Aube says that what bothered her mother was that some of the world’s largest chemical companies were patenting these new genetically engineered seeds and controlling the seed market.

      In the film, Aube explains, “Farmers who grow GMOs have to sign technology license agreements promising never to save or replant the patented seeds. My mom didn’t think it was a good idea to allow corporations to engineer and then patent the seeds that we rely on for food. She believed that seeds belong in the hands of people.”

    • Russian regulator finds drop in quality of Georgian wines days after anti-Russian demonstrations begin in Tbilisi

      Russia’s Federal Service for the Oversight of Consumer Protection and Welfare (Rospotrebnadzor) issued an announcement saying that the quality of Georgian alcohol products has been in decline for several years.

      According to the agency, the quantity of substandard Georgian alcohol nearly tripled to 203,000 liters between 2014 and 2018, necessitating new quality controls for Georgian imports to Russia. Data from Georgia’s federal wine agency indicates that almost half of Georgian wine exports go to Russia, and Russian federal data indicates that Georgia is consistently the third- or fourth-largest exporter of wine to Russia in the world.

    • UN Expert Warns Inequality and Austerity Are Intensifying Global Mental Health Crisis

      The United Nations’ top health envoy warned Monday that inequality and austerity are fueling a global mental health crisis that can only be solved by government interventions to reduce economic insecurity and increase funding for crucial public services.

      Dr. Dainius Pūrasa, a Lithuanian psychiatrist and the U.N.’s special rapporteur on health, said in an interview with The Guardian that purely “biomedical” approaches to treating mental illness are not sufficient because they ignore the social and economic conditions that exacerbate depression, anxiety, and other conditions.

    • ‘A True Public Health Emergency’: 70+ Medical Groups Sound Alarm on Climate Crisis

      “Climate change is one of the greatest threats to health America has ever faced—it is a true public health emergency,” the groups state. “The health, safety, and well-being of millions of people in the U.S. have already been harmed by human-caused climate change, and health risks in the future are dire without urgent action to fight climate change.”

      Referencing the impacts of climate-related events and air pollution that have already claimed lives, the groups “call on government, business and civil society leaders, elected officials, and candidates for office to recognize climate change as a health emergency and to work across government agencies and with communities and businesses to prioritize action on this Climate, Health, and Equity Policy Action Agenda.”

      In addition to averting thousands of deaths annually in the U.S., they note, a far-ranging approach to tackling the climate crisis will improve communities’ well-being as well as that of the planet.

      But, they warn, “Without transformational action, climate change will be increasingly severe, leading to more illness, injury, and death; mass migration and violent conflict; and worsening health inequities. By mobilizing climate action for health and health action for climate, the U.S. can reduce climate pollution and build healthy communities that are resilient in the face of climate risks.”

    • Americans Continue to Eat Processed Meat Despite Serious Health Warnings

      But new research shows that despite increasing evidence on just how unhealthy processed foods are, Americans have continued to eat the products at the same rate.

      A study published in the July edition of Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics looked at trends between 1999 and 2016.

      Data on nearly 44,000 people shows that over this timespan the amount of processed meat consumed by adults in the United States has remained unchanged.

      Consumption of healthier meat options such as fish and shellfish also stayed the same.

      If there’s a silver lining, it’s news that Americans are eating more chicken and less red meat than they used to.

      Given the acknowledged health risks of consuming processed meats, the data would seem to suggest that Americans are unaware of these dangers.

      [...]

      To understand what makes these meats so unhealthy, it helps to look at what’s in it.

      “A lot of it has to do with the actual components associated with the processing of red meat,” explained Kristin Kirkpatrick, MS, RDN, a licensed, registered dietitian who manages wellness nutrition services at the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute.

      One primary component of processed meat are nitrites and nitrates, components that prevent the growth of bacteria and add a salty flavor.

  • Security

    • Security updates for Tuesday
    • Sting Catches Another Ransomware Firm — Red Mosquito — Negotiating With “Hackers”

      ProPublica recently reported that two U.S. firms, which professed to use their own data recovery methods to help ransomware victims regain access to infected files, instead paid the hackers.

      Now there’s new evidence that a U.K. firm takes a similar approach. Fabian Wosar, a cyber security researcher, told ProPublica this month that, in a sting operation he conducted in April, Scotland-based Red Mosquito Data Recovery said it was “running tests” to unlock files while actually negotiating a ransom payment. Wosar, the head of research at anti-virus provider Emsisoft, said he posed as both hacker and victim so he could review the company’s communications to both sides.

      Red Mosquito Data Recovery “made no effort to not pay the ransom” and instead went “straight to the ransomware author literally within minutes,” Wosar said. “Behavior like this is what keeps ransomware running.”

    • Carbon Black adds Linux support and more to its endpoint protection solution

      Endpoint protection company Carbon Black is adding a number of features to its platform, including Linux support and Amazon Web Services and container protection.

      The cloud-native platform gives security and IT teams remote access to cloud workloads and containers running in their environment, making it easier to resolve configuration drift, address vulnerabilities in real time, confidently respond to incidents and demonstrate compliance with business policies and industry regulations.

      The cloud workload and container protection capabilities are available from the same universal agent and cloud-native platform protecting Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux endpoints.

      “The industry is quickly moving into the cloud era for endpoint protection and IT operations,” says Ryan Polk, Carbon Black’s chief product officer. “Carbon Black is proud to be at the front edge for cloud innovation and, with this latest release, our cloud-native EPP is now protecting some of the most important and emerging cloud real estate.”

      As well as supporting AWS workloads and nearly every Linux distribution released since 2011, Carbon Black’s platform extends direct access to more than 1,000 individual system artifacts across all major operating systems, including the ability to check the status of disk encryption, installed applications, kernel integrity, listening network ports, logged in users, OS versions, USB devices and more.

    • Top 10 Ethical Hacking Books

      Hacking is an ongoing process of information gathering and exploitation of any target. The hackers are consistent, practical and stay updated with daily appearing vulnerabilities. The first step to exploitation is always reconnaissance. The more information you gather, the better there are chances that you will make your way through the victim boundary. The attack should be very structured and verified in a local environment before being implemented on live target. The pre requisites are Networking skills, programming languages, Linux, Bash scripting and a reasonable workstation.Ethical hacking is the application of hacking knowledge for the benefit of society through good morals, and is usually defensive in nature, based on good knowledge of the core principles.
      Many books are available on hacking, but we will discuss today the top 10 which are appreciated and recommended by the hacking community. Note: The books are in no particular order.

    • Raspberry Pi used to steal data from Nasa lab [Ed: RasPi has a major new release (4), so MSBBC needs to spread some negative things/stories about it (googlebombing?). Microsoft failed to take over Raspberry Pi Foundation like it did OLPC. BBC (run by ex-Microsoft UK people) spreads anti-RasPi news belatedly (blaming it for something unrelated) only hours after a major product release.]

      A tiny Raspberry Pi computer has been used to steal data from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the space agency has revealed.

      An audit report reveals the gadget was used to take about 500MB of data.

    • VMware’s Dirk Hohndel On Container Security, Mental Health And Open Source
    • Trump Ponders Banning All Chinese-Made Gear From US 5G Networks [Ed: Mandating NSA back doors everywhere]

      We’ve already noted extensively how the “race to fifth generation wireless (5G)” is kind of a dumb thing. While 5G is important in the way that faster, better networks are always important, the purported Earth-rattling benefits of the technology have been painfully over-hyped. And they’ve been painfully over-hyped largely for two reasons: one, mobile carriers want to give a kick to stalling cellphone sales numbers, and network hardware vendors like Cisco want to drive the adoption of new, more expensive, telecom hardware.

      The “race to 5G” isn’t a race. And even if it were, our broadband maps are so intentionally terrible, we’d have no idea if and when we’d won it. Regardless, 5G has subsequently become a sort of magic pixie dust of tech policy conversations, justifying all manner of sometimes dubious policy. But the underlying desire to simply sell more kit has also infected the Trump administration’s protectionist attacks on companies like Huawei, which is based on about 40% actual cybersecurity concerns, and 60% lobbying efforts by US hardware vendors that don’t want to compete with cheaper Chinese hardware.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • ‘They Despise Diplomacy, and Thirst for War’: Iran Accuses Trump of Closing Path to Peace With New Sanctions

      Iranian officials warned Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s new economic sanctions targeting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and top diplomat Javad Zarif could vanquish the possibility of peaceful negotiations and move the two nations closer to an unnecessary military conflict.

      “Imposing useless sanctions on Iran’s supreme leader and the commander of Iran’s diplomacy is the permanent closure of the path of diplomacy,” said Abbas Mousavi, spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry. “Trump’s desperate administration is destroying the established international mechanisms for maintaining world peace and security.”

    • Instigators of a Persian Gulf Crisis

      Recent weeks have seen tensions between the United States and Iran soar, initially after a May 2019 incident in which four commercial vessels were struck in the Gulf of Oman (two Saudi oil tankers, one Norwegian and an Emirati ship), ebb thereafter and escalate yet again when a similar attack took place a month later on the Japanese Kokuka Courageous and Norwegian Front Altair tankers, also in the Gulf of Oman. Tellingly, when it appeared the war rhetoric had subsided after the first incident it quickly ratcheted up, and by several degrees, after the second, as if the May episode had failed to achieve its goal. President Trump’s apparent last-minute change of heart in calling off planned airstrikes when Iran downed a U.S. military surveillance drone last Thursday highlights the war footing Washington is on.

      Both tanker assaults were allegedly at the hands of Iran, that is, according to Saudi King Salman, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton, albeit by unclear means and for dubious reasons.

      It did not take long for doubts to surface as to why Iran would attack a Japanese tanker in the midst of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Tehran in an attempt to mediate between it and Washington. The suspect authenticity of a grainy video released by U.S. Central Command purportedly showing an Iranian patrol boat removing an unexploded limpet mine from the tanker also raised skepticism (the crew indicated they were hit by a flying object, not a mine).

      Putting sloppy, poorly designed “evidence” aside, recent history makes clear who the vested parties keen to stoke a manufactured hostility between Iran and its neighbors are. Indeed, one such actor has for decades used a comparable strategy of deliberate provocation to justify vicious military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, not unlike the agitation Iran is experiencing today.

      The Israeli tactic has always been to make conditions so intolerable and unsustainable that a response of some kind by the affected group becomes inevitable. Whether it had been to starve and strangle Gazans by a stifling land, sea and air blockade and in effect imprisoning its population (who then responded by firing rather symbolic, fertilizer-based rockets) or the nearly two-decade long occupation of southern Lebanon to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization and then Hezbollah, the approach always fails but not without great civilian casualty.

    • Trump May Already be in Too Deep to Avoid War With Iran

      President Trump’s last-minute change of mind over launching US airstrikes against Iran shows that a military conflict of some description in the Gulf is becoming highly probable. His hesitation was most likely less connected with an Iranian surface-to-air missile shooting down a US surveillance drone than with his instinct that militarising the crisis is not in America’s best interests.

      If Trump had not pulled back and the strikes against Iranian radars and missile batteries had gone ahead, where exactly would that have got him? This sort of limited military operation is usually more effective as a threat than in actuality. The US is not going to launch an all-out war against Iran in pursuit of a decisive victory and anything less creates more problems than it resolves.

      Iran would certainly retain post-strike the ability to launch pin-prick attacks up and down the Gulf and, especially, in and around the 35-mile wide Strait of Hormuz through which passes 30 per cent of the world’s oil trade. Anything affecting this choke point reverberates around the word: news of the shooting down of the drone immediately sent the price of benchmark Brent crude oil rocketing upwards by 4.75 per cent.

    • Trump Keeps Talking About the Last Military Standoff With Iran — Here’s What Really Happened

      Just before sunset on Jan. 12, 2016, 10 American sailors strayed into Iranian territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, a navigation error with potentially grave consequences. On their way to a spying mission, the Americans had set sail from Kuwait to Bahrain. It was a long-distance trek that some senior commanders in the Navy’s 5th Fleet had warned they were neither equipped nor trained to execute.

      Surrounded by four boats operated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the U.S. sailors, in two small gunboats, surrendered rather than opening fire. The officer in charge of the mission later said he understood that had a firefight erupted, it could well have provoked a wider conflict and scuttled the controversial nuclear deal the two countries were poised to implement in mere days.

      The Navy dialed up an elaborate rescue mission to free the sailors from tiny Farsi Island involving fighter jets and a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group. But the return of the sailors was ultimately secured peacefully. The nuclear deal went forward with the U.S. providing sanctions relief and unfreezing billions in Iranian assets in exchange for Tehran’s promise to curb its nuclear ambitions.

      President Donald Trump explicitly invoked the 2016 incident last week as he weighed actions against Iran amid rising tensions. Trump told Time magazine that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had mishandled the high-stakes confrontation, a mistake he would not make. “The only reason the sailors were let go is that we started making massive payments to them the following day,” Trump said. “Otherwise the sailors would still be there.”

      But a ProPublica investigation makes clear that Trump’s repeated claims about the captured sailors – Obama’s weakness; that the money was improper – obscure the more troubling realities exposed by the Navy’s 2016 debacle in the Persian Gulf. The Farsi Island mission was a gross failure, involving issues that have plagued the Navy in recent years: inadequate training, poor leadership, and a disinclination to heed the warnings of its men and women about the true extent of its vulnerabilities.

    • NIAC Statement on Trump’s Imposition of New Iran Sanctions

      Moments ago President Donald Trump signed off on an executive order imposing a new wave of sanctions on Iran following increased tensions between the U.S. and Iran last week. The sanctions target Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamanei and senior commanders from the Revolutionary Guard’s Navy, Aerospace, and Ground Forces, and aim to block Iran top leadership’s from accessing the international financial system.

    • Escalating “Crisis of His Administration’s Making,” Trump Imposes New Sanctions Against Iran

      After President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order imposing new economic sanctions against Iran, critics denounced the punitive measures as a dangerous intensification of the same “maximum pressure” strategy that pushed the U.S. to the brink of war in the first place.

      “Sanctions are what got us into this mess, more sanctions will not get us out of it,” Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), said in a statement. “Donald Trump needs to put his ego aside and abandon the ‘maximum pressure’ strategy that [national security adviser] John Bolton and [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo have foisted on the world.”

    • Trump Signs Order Imposing Sanctions on Iran Supreme Leader

      President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday targeting Iran’s supreme leader and his associates with financial sanctions, the latest action the U.S. has taken to discourage Tehran from developing nuclear weapons and supporting militant groups.

      The sanctions follow Iran’s downing of a more than $100 million U.S. surveillance drone over the Strait of Hormuz that has ratcheted up tensions. Trump pulled back from the brink of retaliatory military strikes on Iran last week, but is continuing his pressure campaign.

      The targets of the new sanctions include senior military figures in Iran, blocking their access to any financial assets under U.S. jurisdiction.

      “These measures represent a strong and proportionate response to Iran’s increasingly provocative actions,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

    • Giving Trump Credit (But Not Too Much) on Iran

      The Donald made the right call. Now that’s a rare statement. Calling off – or at least delaying – a military strike on Iran was prudent. Nevertheless, there was something deeply unsettling about the whole thing. The system is broken, perhaps irreparably.

      The president never even considered seeking congressional approval before playing emperor and unleashing death and destruction on a sovereign nation. Why would he? Essentially every president, since Truman, has done the same thing one time or another. Unilateral executive action has been the American norm pretty much since World War II wrapped up. Seen in this context, Trump isn’t so anomalous as many would like to believe. Korea kicked off the trend. But the Vietnam advisory mission, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Bosnia, Libya, and Syria – to name the highlights – were all undertaken without the constitutionally mandated consent of the legislature.

    • Bill Clinton in Kosovo

      The Balkans has often been prone to seizures of mysticism, glum prediction and predation. But one character felt at home as he addressed his audience in Kosovo, himself having been afflicted by a certain evangelical urge. This month, former US President Will Jefferson Clinton, keeping company with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, were rubbing shoulders with officials and stage hands in Pristina to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Kosovo intervention by NATO in March 1999.

      It was a chance Kosovo’s president Hashim Thaçi was not going to let pass. In being awarded the Order of Freedom, Clinton was all praise. “I think the whole world today with all this turmoil, can look to Kosovo as an example of a democracy and a commitment to prove, grow, and live in peace with one’s neighbours.” Being Clinton, his words have a profound lightweight quality, albeit dressed up as grave and morally hefty.

      Nonetheless, they struck the appropriate, ceremonial note. Thaçi glowed with appreciation. “We thank you for the just decision to stop the Serbian genocide during 1999. We are very grateful for the support of the US to Kosovo. The story of Kosovo is a story of joint success. You are our hero.”

      Clinton duly responded, expressing pride at having been the “president of the United States when you needed someone to stand up and say no more ethnic cleansing, no more people running out of their homes, no more killing innocent civilians, there’s got to be another way.”

    • Is Mexico Winding Down or Winding up the Drug War?

      As Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador begins transitioning his country away from its decade-long drug war, which has killed more than 100,000 Mexican citizens since 2006, officials in the Trump administration have remained largely silent about his moves. Washington is continuing its public relations strategy of saying very little about the war while helping Mexican security forces continue to fight it.

      The Trump administration’s silence, which has been enabled by a lack of coverage in the U.S. mass media, has not gone entirely unnoticed. Some members of Congress have begun to question the Trump administration’s strategy, arguing that the administration does not have an effective plan for winning the war.

      “We are whistling by the graveyard if we don’t address and talk about an effective strategy for crushing the drug cartels,” Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) said during a congressional hearing in April.

      To say that the Trump administration has simply been “whistling by the graveyard” as violence increases is not entirely accurate, however. Although the administration has kept mostly quiet about the growing violence, it has been working closely with Mexican military forces to crush the country’s drug cartels, exactly as Senator Johnson demanded.

    • Trump’s Return to Full-Spectrum Dominance

      The United States is formally committed to dominating the world by 2020. President Trump’s Space Directive-4, on the production of laser-armed combat aircraft as possible precursors to space weapons and the possibility of nuclear warheads being placed in orbit, moves the clock forward.

      An interesting and credible paper by T.J. Coles in CounterPunch recently reported that in 1997, the re-established U.S. Space Command announced its commitment to full spectrum dominance by 2020, which means military control over land, sea, air and space to protect U.S. interests and investments.

      Protecting means guaranteeing the operational freedom of U.S. investments, which in turn means “corporate profits.”

      The journalistic work explains that, in the past, the Army was deployed based on the interests of settlers who stole land from Native Americans in the genocidal birth of the United States as a nation.

      A National Defense University report recognizes that, by the 19th century, the Navy had evolved to protect the newly formulated “grand strategy” of the United States. In addition to the supposed protection of citizens and the constitution, the guiding principle was, and continues to be, “the protection of American territory … and our economic well-being.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Interior Department Putting Even More Effort Into Dodging FOIA Request

      The Department of the Interior is still trying to remove the word “freedom” from “Freedom of Information Act.” The first step is removing the word “information.”

      Earlier this year, the DOI tried to sneak past a rewrite of FOIA by hiding a request in the federal register. It would only apply to the DOI, hence the lack of legislative noise or heads up to the public. Under the guise of “ensuring compliance” with the law, the DOI wanted the power to unilaterally reject any request it found “burdensome.”

      Faced with an influx of requests, the DOI decided to double down on non-compliance. Rather than route more staff to the overburdened FOIA response team, the DOI decided it would be better served by tossing as many requests in the trashcan as possible.

    • Justices Side With Business, Government in Information Fight

      The Supreme Court sided with businesses and the U.S. government Monday in a ruling about the public’s access to information, telling a South Dakota newspaper it can’t get the data it was seeking.

      The justices ruled against the Argus Leader, which is owned by USA Today publisher Gannett and is the largest newspaper in South Dakota. The paper was seeking to learn how much money goes annually to every store nationwide that participates in the government’s $65 billion-a-year Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, called SNAP.

      The federal government initially declined the paper’s request for the information. In response, the paper sued, arguing that the data is public and shows citizens how the government is spending their tax money. The government lost in a lower court and decided not to appeal. But a supermarket trade association, the Virginia-based Food Marketing Institute, stepped in to continue the fight with the backing of the Trump administration, arguing that the information is confidential and should not be disclosed.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour Raises $21.5 Million to Fight Climate Crisis in Guitar Auction

      David Gilmour, guitarist, singer and songwriter in the rock band Pink Floyd, set a record last week when he auctioned off 126 guitars and raised $21.5 million for ClientEarth, a non-profit environmental law group dedicated to fighting the global climate crisis, according to CNN.

      The auction lasted more than eight hours and had bids from over 66 countries, according to Christies, the London-based auction house, which hosted the sale in New York City, as CNN reported.

    • David Gilmour puts his guitars up for auction, raises $21.5M for a climate change charity

      An auction of David Gilmour’s guitars has raised a lot of “Money” — to combat climate change.

      Christie’s auction house says it raised $21.5 million Thursday, selling off more than 120 guitars owned by the Pink Floyd guitarist, singer and songwriter. Proceeds went to ClientEarth, a nonprofit fighting climate change.

      The items included guitars by Fender, Rickenbacker, Ovation, Gibson, C.F. Martin and Gretsch, including guitar cases, a banjo and amps.

      A black Stratocaster — dubbed the “Black Strat” — was the top item and was snatched up for $3,975,000, a new world record for a guitar at auction.

    • CEO of Major Shale Oil Company “Has Second Thoughts” on Fracking Rush, Wall Street Journal Reports

      On Monday, the Wall Street Journal featured a profile of Scott Sheffield, CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources, whose company is known among investors for its emphasis on drawing oil and gas from the Permian basin in Texas using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

      Back in 2014, Sheffield told Forbes that he expected Pioneer could produce a million barrels of oil a day from the Permian basin by 2024 – up from 45,000 barrels a day in 2011.

      Now, Sheffield, who left the helm of Pioneer in 2016 and returned this February, says that those million-barrel-a-day plans are looking increasingly doubtful as the industry has struggled to prove to investors that it’s capable not only of producing enormous volumes of oil and gas, but that it can do so while booking profits rather than losses.

      “We lost the growth investors,” Pioneer CEO Scott Sheffield told the Journal. “Now we’ve got to attract a whole other set of investors.”

    • Trump Administration Buries Government-Funded Studies Showing Dangers of Climate Change

      The Trump administration ratcheted up its open hostility to climate science in a move that may hide essential information from the nation’s farmers.

      The administration put the kibosh on publicizing work done by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) own scientists that carried warnings about the long-term repercussions of the climate crisis, according to a report by Politico.

    • Ice-free Greenland possible in 1,000 years

      US scientists have just established that the long-term future may bring an ice-free Greenland, if melting continues at the current rate. By the year 3,000 it could simply be green, with rocky outcrops. Greenland’s icy mountains will have vanished.

      By the end of this century, the island – the largest body of ice in the northern hemisphere, and home to 8% of the world’s fresh water in frozen form – will have lost 4.5% of its ice cover, and sea levels will have risen by up to 33cm.

      And if melting continues, and the world goes on burning fossil fuels under climate science’s notorious “business as usual scenario”, then within another thousand years the entire cover will have run into the sea, which by then will have risen – just because of melting in Greenland – by more than seven metres, to wash away cities such as Miami, Los Angeles, Copenhagen, Shanghai and New Orleans.

      “How Greenland will look in the future – in a couple of hundred years or in 1,000 years – whether there will be Greenland, or at least a Greenland similar to today, it’s up to us”, said Andy Aschwanden, of the University of Fairbanks, Alaska geophysical institute.

    • Germany: Climate activists end coal blockade in Garzweiler

      Police have cleared 250 climate activists who stayed overnight at the Garzweiler brown coal mine in western Germany, officials said Sunday.
      However, some protesters were still blocking nearby train tracks that usually serve as a coal transport route from one of Germany’s biggest open-pit mines, near the cities of Düsseldorf and Cologne.
      Spokeswoman Kathrin Henneberger confirmed the protesters had now left the mine.
      “In the morning, there was a brief escalation with the police. Officers encircled a group, although all participants intended to clear the area around 10 a.m. as agreed and announced,” Henneberger told Germany’s dpa news agency.

    • Women are rising in the conservation movement, but still face #MeToo challenges

      The #MeToo movement has caused profound shake-ups at organizations across the U.S. in the last two years. So far, however, it has left many unresolved questions about how workplaces can be more inclusive and equitable for women and other diverse groups.

      In its latest twist, over the last month a series of top executives have exited The Nature Conservancy, the largest conservation organization in North America. They left after an internal investigation, prompted by sexual harassment and workplace misconduct accusations, which found that the organization’s culture “can make it difficult for women to thrive.”

      We have been studying women in conservation leadership for the past several years, and unfortunately this news didn’t shock us. Our research shows that harassment is one of many gender-related challenges that frequently confront women conservation leaders.

    • What’s Next for the Youth Climate Lawsuit

      On June 4, Andrea Rodgers was in the front row of attorneys sitting before a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court. The court session, held in Portland, Oregon, was to determine whether the climate change lawsuit (Juliana v. United States) brought by 21 young plaintiffs should be dismissed, as requested by the U.S. government, or go on to trial.

      It’s the latest of many delays for the lawsuit, which was first filed in 2015 by the then-youth plaintiffs. The judges’ decision on this most recent request to dismiss the case is expected sometime in the next few months.

      Rodgers is a senior attorney for Our Children’s Trust, the nonprofit based in Eugene, Oregon, that is supporting the young plaintiffs—the eldest of whom are now young adults while the youngest is 11—in making their case.

      They’re suing the United States government for endangering their future by supporting a fossil fuel-based energy system, despite knowledge of how that would contribute to the current climate disaster. Rodgers is also the lead attorney for climate-related suits on behalf of children in the states of Washington and Florida.

    • 70 Arrested at Extinction Rebellion Protest Demanding More Urgent Climate Coverage From New York Times

      Protesters briefly blocked traffic on Manhattan’s Eighth Avenue, between the Times building and the busy Port Authority Bus Terminal, The Guardian reported. Demonstrators staged a die-in on the street outside the paper’s headquarters. They also attached banners to the two buildings. The one affixed to Port Authority read “Climate Emergency,” and the banner suspended from the Times building read “climate change = mass murder,” with “change” crossed out and replaced with “emergency,” Reuters reported.

      “The lack of coverage of the climate crisis is completely unacceptable,” member of Extinction Rebellion’s press and fundraising teams Becca Trabin told The Guardian. “It’s a public safety crisis on a global scale.”

    • UPDATE 1-Police arrest 70 climate change protesters outside New York Times

      Police arrested 70 environmental protesters outside the New York Times headquarters who laid down in the street and climbed onto the building to demand the newspaper start referring to climate change as a climate emergency, police and media reports said.

      New York police arrested 67 people and Port Authority police arrested three others, a police spokesman said. Charges were pending.

      Protesters blocked the street by lying down in a “die-in” and affixed a banner to the skyscraper in midtown Manhattan saying “climate change = mass murder,” with the word “change” crossed out and replaced with “emergency,” according to pictures posted by the website of 1010 Wins radio.

    • Massive Fire at South Philadelphia Oil Refinery Injures Five

      A fire broke out at a Philadelphia oil refinery Friday morning, starting with an explosion so massive it was felt as far away as South Jersey and Delaware County, Pennsylvania, CNN reported.

    • Fire that engulfed Philadelphia refinery has been extinguished, officials say

      A fire that engulfed a Philadelphia refinery and sparked air-quality concerns has been extinguished, according to city officials.

      The fire at Philadelphia Energy Solutions was put out on Saturday afternoon, according to a statement on the city’s website.

      The fire began with an explosion on Friday morning from a vat of butane and propane. Residents reportedly felt the explosion in South Jersey and Delaware County, Pennsylvania, according to CNN affiliate WPVI.
      Emergency medical services treated one individual on the scene, according to Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel. Four employees also suffered minor injuries, and all were treated on-site by a company medical team, according to Philadelphia Energy Solutions.

      The fire sent large plumes of smoke into the sky that could be seen for miles. Emergency management officials initially asked people east of the fire to shelter in place, but the order was quickly lifted.

    • We Have Less Than a Millisecond Left

      We have less than a millisecond left.

      You see, the planet we call home has existed for roughly 4.55 billion years. But numbers that large mean almost nothing to me, nor to most people, so I choose to break it down. If we lay the age of the Earth out over a calendar year, that would amount to 518,264 years per hour or 144 years per second. So if we have 10 or 11 years until the point of no return, as climate scientists have repeatedly told us, that means we have a millisecond left before midnight in which to change our society completely to avoid turning the Earth into a piping hot fajita. (If you want to be more generous and instead look at how long modern homosapiens have been walking around, it’s 315,000 years. So if you lay that over a calendar year, we have roughly 15 minutes before the stroke of midnight to combat climate change. Not sure that makes me feel much better.)

      None of us should be thinking about anything other than climate change. We all kind of know it even if we think we don’t know it. Even people who deny climate change exists probably secretly know it. They’re just confusing what they want to be true with what they subconsciously know to be true. I did the same thing when I was a child and tennis legend Jimmy Connors lost in the semifinals of the 1991 U.S. Open after his monumental run at the ancient age of 39. (For an 11-year-old, 39 sounds pretty close to mummified.) I was certain Jimmy would be playing in the finals. I knew deep within my bones that Jimbo would dazzle us with diving volleys and mid-court passing shots in the championship match because how could the powers that be allow the only character America genuinely cared about to bow out before the finals? In my mind it was akin to killing off Iron Man halfway through the movie “Iron Man.”

      Jimmy Connors did not show up to the finals. Climate change is the only thing we should be thinking about.

    • Protecting the Great Burn

      The Great Burn is Missoula’s best kept wilderness secret, a landscape lost for more than 50 years from the devastating effects of the fire that bears its name. Its recovery has been nothing short of remarkable. Yet, the Burn is under fire once again, this time by off-road vehicles, snowmobiles and mountain bikes that threaten to steal the spirit of this fragile and wild landscape.

      With an administration dead set on exploiting our public lands, time is of the essence to ensure protection for perhaps our wildest and least protected stretch of proposed wilderness: the 1.9 million acres that straddles Montana and Idaho, known as the Great Burn and String of Pearls.

      Since 1964, wilderness lands have remained vital for recreation, the protection of species, as pristine waterways or as important connectivity for wildlife to continue to move and migrate without interference. Within the Great Burn there are bears, wolves, native mountain goats, wolverines and so many other special creatures that bring soul to these public lands owned by all Americans. Wildlife biologists have made clear; the Great Burn may well be one of the most important remaining habitats in the lower 48, especially when it comes to grizzly recovery.

      These lands are rich in old growth western-red cedar and Douglas fir; in some parts the cedars have been determined by the Forest Service to be more than 500 years old. These were the lucky strands that avoided fire.

      When President Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot set aside millions of acres for national forests, those who had been exploiting the public lands were enraged and senators in some Western states cut funding to the bone for the new agency and did all they could to ignore the peril they were creating.

      Today history is sadly repeating itself. The Forest Service is woefully underfunded; the current administration has done more to remove lands from protection than any in our history. There continues to be an outcry from a radical fringe to get rid of public lands and turn our wildest lands into a waste pit of extraction, trapping and a machine-driven chaos.

    • In Far-Reaching Plan, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee Proposes Radical Changes to Fossil Fuel Industry

      Washington Gov. Jay Inslee isn’t one of the top contenders for his party’s nomination for president in 2020, but his campaign, which focuses on climate change, is pushing to end U.S. fossil fuel dependence by hitting climate crisis-exacerbating companies where it hurts: the wallet.

      In Inslee’s “Freedom from Fossil Fuels” plan, the governor calls for ending subsidies for fossil fuels, ensuring any new energy infrastructure is put through a rigorous permitting process, and introducing fees for greenhouse gas emissions. The plan, which marks the most comprehensive approach to addressing the climate crisis presented by a 2020 Democrat to date, is part of what Inslee described in comments to HuffPost reporter Alexander Kaufman as working “in the only time period that’s consistent with our survival in the world.”

      “This will get us off fossil fuels in the only time period that’s consistent with our survival in the world as we know it,” said Inslee. “Don’t expect these people to go easily.”

      Inslee’s plan shows how the conversation around climate is moving, said Julian Brave NoiseCat, Green New Deal Strategy director for Data for Progress. NoiseCat told environmental news outlet Earther Monday that the plan’s “move toward an investment and accountability framework is a very notable paradigm shift.”

    • Hey, Oregon Senators: You Can’t Run Away From Climate Change

      This week Oregon stands on the cusp of approving historic cap-and-invest legislation, HB 2020, that experts have said will help grow the Oregon economy. After three years of legislative consideration, numerous studies, hearings, public meetings and debate, the Oregon House approved the legislation decisively (36-22) on June 18th, and the bill moved to the Senate Floor, where a vote was expected on June 20th.

    • Jay Inslee’s Latest Climate Plan Targets the Fossil Fuel Industry

      In his latest bid to be the 2020 climate candidate, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee unveiled a plan Monday to target the fossil fuel industry by both phasing out extraction and making it pay for the damage it has already done.

      The plan would end subsidies for oil, natural gas and coal companies, ban drilling on federal lands and waters, phase out fracking and institute a “Climate Pollution Fee,” The Hill reported.

    • Inslee unveils plan to fight fossil fuel pollution, ban fracking

      Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), a 2020 presidential candidate, unveiled on Monday his plan for tackling fossil fuel pollution, including ending subsidies for oil and gas companies and phasing out fracking.

      The proposal, Inslee’s fourth plan for addressing climate change, calls for taking on the oil and gas companies he calls “the greatest and most powerful special interests that are holding back our clean energy future.”

      Even as candidates compete to showcase their environmental credentials, Inslee’s latest plan stands out in its attempt to tackle the source of emissions from what is now the largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions: transportation.

    • Plastics Pact announcement ‘wholly inadequate’, says Green Party deputy leader

      Amelia Womack, deputy leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, said:

      “Companies produce and sell about 76 kilogrammes of plastic that goes to waste each year in the UK for every women, man and child in the country.

    • Up in Arms: New Book Explores the Bundys, Militias and the Battle Over Public Lands

      When armed militants with a grudge against the federal government seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in rural Oregon back in the winter of 2016, I remember avoiding the news coverage. Part of me wanted to know what was happening, but each report I read — as the occupation stretched from days to weeks and the destruction grew — made me so angry it was hard to keep reading.

    • 77 Health Organizations Call for Climate Action to Fight Public Health Emergency

      More than 70 leading public health groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, agree that the climate crisis is also a health emergency.

    • ‘Historic moment’ for indigenous people at climate talks, new climate leader says

      Pasang Dolma Sherpa: Yes, this is a historic moment. When the UNFCCC was established in 1992, indigenous peoples did not have the same forum to interact.
      Now, the indigenous peoples’ continued hard work, their struggle, their work on the ground has been acknowledged and is reflected at the global level. And finally we have the platform, the facility working group, at the same level as said parties to present the important role of indigenous peoples.
      What is the state of rights for indigenous peoples right now?
      In the Paris Agreement as well as at COP24 [in Katowice], it’s explicitly stated that indigenous peoples’ rights be enshrined by the UNFCCC, particularly rights for protecting, enhancing and continuing with traditional knowledge and cultural practices in their territories.
      But these rights are hardly reflected at a national level. There are so many events in the name of conservation, in the name of protection of biodiversity, cultural practices. The role of indigenous peoples has hardly been acknowledged, when in fact indigenous peoples have been contributing to sustaining and managing and protecting the ecosystem’s biodiversity. This voice needs to be heard.

    • 10 things a committed U.S. President and Congress could do about climate change

      The federal government has available to it, should it choose to use them, a wide range of potential climate change management tools, going well beyond the traditional pollution control regulatory options. And, in some cases (not all), without new legislative authorization.

      There’s a big “if” behind that remark: It will take an exceptionally climate-savvy and climate-concerned Executive Branch to have the political will to initiate some of these steps. And there’s more: It likely will take supportive bipartisan majorities in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. More still: It will also take widespread and strong public support and citizen engagement, and, even then, strong leadership skills on the part of federal leaders.

      It’s not clear when or if that time will come, nor what kind of climate catastrophe could precipitate such a coming-together. It brings to mind a phrase often attributed, but with some uncertainty, to Winston Churchill: “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.”

  • Finance

    • Brief Impressions of the Japanese Conjuncture

      I was last in Japan 12 years ago. Japan is a study in contradictions.

      Economically, it should be regarded as a basket case. Japan’s 2019 debt-to-GDP ratio stands at 235.96% of its GDP.

      Even Greece, after a decade of troika (EU-IMF-ECB) “fiscal waterboarding”, has a ratio of 191.27%. The US’s ratio is at 108.02%, and the UK’s 85.92% (thereby giving lie to the Tory myth, in support of its austerity agenda, that the UK is “living beyond its means”).

      Japan, with greater debt levels than Greece and Venezuela, has however the same credit rating as the other major economic powers because of its large economy and stable political system. It would be an international economic pariah otherwise.

      The other factor causing a drag on Japan’s economy is its elderly population. Japan has over twice the number of centenarians per 1000 people than the US and UK: 48 per 1000 versus 21.5 (UK) and 22 (US).

      A 1998 United Nations demographic survey showed that Japan is expected to have 272,000 centenarians by 2050. Data recently released by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry showed that the 26.18 million people 70 or older accounted for 20.7% of Japan’s population.

    • Hopeful Things

      Abandoning religion wasn’t at all hard. I forgot the feasts, the priests, the dutiful drones, and the money-worshipping hordes of hypocrites that turned up and tuned out every Sunday, just as they had forgotten the Gospels and their communist implications – if ever they had read them. The decision to leave was political, not spiritual: any organised religion that supported capitalism – a system that by its fundamental principles thrives on inequality and exploitation, that reproduces itself through violence, that endlessly refines the means to render the human species extinct – must necessarily compromise its own fundamental principles.

      Right or wrong, that was my point of departure, a long time ago now. But despite my efforts, I found it devilishly difficult to drop the monstrously complex habit of praying. It is at times utterly exhausting: searching for ways to forgive your enemies, dead or alive, to find love in your heart and to send some sprinklings of goodwill in otherwise spiteful situations, to hate a person’s vile behaviour, but not the person. And if none of this is remotely possible, to focus on the context that created them – a very socialist take on the whole affair.

    • Why We Need to Break Up Big Tech

      The combined wealth of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Google’s Sergey Brin, and Larry Page is larger than the combined wealth of the bottom half of the American population.

      They are the leaders of a second Gilded Age – ushered in by semiconductors, software and the internet – which has spawned a handful of hi-tech behemoths and crushed competition.

      Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft now have the highest market values for all public corporations in America.

      As of today, only three countries in the world have a GDP higher than these companies’ combined market value of approximately 4 trillion dollars.

      America’s first Gilded Age began in the late nineteenth century with a raft of innovations – railroads, steel production, oil extraction – that culminated in mammoth trusts run by “robber barons” like J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and William Vanderbilt.

    • With Puerto Rico Still Waiting on Approved Emergency Food Aid, Sanders Condemns Trump for ‘Holding Funds in Red Tape Limbo’

      Amid reports that Puerto Rico has still not received the $600 million in emergency food stamp aid that President Donald Trump reluctantly signed into law more than two weeks ago, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday accused the White House of “holding the funds in red tape limbo” and said the money must be released “immediately.”

      Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, specifically called out U.S. Department of Agriculture chief Sonny Perdue and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney for withholding the funds as the people of Puerto Rico “are going hungry.”

      [...]

      “The situation is dire,” Glorimar Andújar Matos, secretary of Puerto Rico’s families department, told the Post. “Given Puerto Rico’s unfair treatment in federal programs, we are pushing to receive and utilize the funds as soon as possible.”

      The delay comes after Republican lawmakers and the Trump administration worked to block any new emergency funding for Puerto Rico. Trump reportedly told officials earlier this year that he “doesn’t want another single dollar” going to Puerto Rico despite the growing hunger crisis on the island.

      The president ultimately signed into law a $19 billion disaster relief package that included funds for Puerto Rico and U.S. states affected by hurricanes.

    • Ilhan Omar and Bernie Got It Right: Full Student Debt Cancellation Is the Best Approach

      Sen. Bernie Sanders, together with Representatives Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal, has introduced a dramatic reform package on college affordability. It goes far beyond anything proposed so far, both in its scope and in its potential to reshape the way Americans think about their society and government.

      One bill in the package, Rep. Omar’s Student Debt Cancellation Act, would cancel all outstanding student debt. That’s a $1.6 trillion burden affecting more than 45 million people. This bill will benefit people in all demographic groups, communities, and walks of life. That fact is illustrated by the fact that, as Sen. Sanders introduces the bill in the Senate, eight representatives of color (including Rep. Omar) will simultaneously introduce it in the House.

      The reform package also includes Sen. Sanders’ College for All Act, which provides tuition-free higher education to every qualified American without any additional work requirements, restrictions, or tests for family financial eligibility.

    • Sanders and Omar’s Plan Would Wipe Out Every Outstanding Student Loan

      Today, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota released a bill to cancel all student debt in the nation, called the Student Debt Cancellation Act. Sen. Bernie Sanders is also introducing companion legislation for complete student debt cancellation as a part of broader package he is introducing on college affordability. While Representative Omar’s Student Debt Cancellation Act isn’t the first bill ever to propose canceling all student debt, it comes at a time when wide-scale student debt cancellation as a policy proposal is finally being treated with the seriousness it’s always deserved.

      Representative Omar’s legislation would enact universal debt cancellation — which means every single outstanding student loan, federal or private, would be wiped out. The bill comes two months after presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a proposal to wipe out all student debt for 75 percent of borrowers. Omar’s bill goes further than Warren’s plan, which caps debt cancellation at $50,000. Over 7.8 million borrowers (17 percent of all student debtors) owe $50,000 or more on their student loans, according to data from the New York Fed Reserve. This includes many borrowers who’ve pursued graduate degrees, and not only lawyers and people with MBAs. The average debt load of those who completed a master’s of education degree from 2015-16 was $55,200; for a master of science, it was $62,300. And of those pursuing any kind of advanced degree, Black and Latinx graduates are the most likely to have borrowed $50,000 or more.

      There are also many parents like Christopher Raymond who’d benefit from universal debt cancellation. Raymond borrowed $136,000 toward his two children’s higher education using Parent PLUS loans. He’s not alone: As of 2014, 13 percent of parents with Parent PLUS loans owe more than $50,000, and 4 percent owe over $100,000. Those with high loan balances are also likely to struggle to repay: almost 30 percent of all dollars in default are held by borrowers who owe over $50,000.

    • Trump Attacks Federal Reserve Again, Wants Interest Rate Cut

      President Donald Trump is continuing efforts to pressure the U.S. central bank system, saying the stock markets and economic growth would be much higher if not for its actions.

      Trump says the Federal Reserve “doesn’t know what it’s doing” and raised interest rates too quickly.

    • Under Trump, Manufacturing Job Growth Slows to a Trickle

      Donald Trump put manufacturing jobs at the center of his economic platform in 2016. He endlessly harped on the loss of relatively good-paying manufacturing jobs.

      He blamed this job loss on “terrible” trade agreements and other countries “manipulating” the value of their currency to get an advantage in trade. He put China at the top of the list of bad actors, promising to declare them a currency manipulator on day one of his administration, which would directly lead to economic sanctions.

      While Trump has engaged in considerable bluster in his trade negotiations, they have not led to much of a payoff for U.S. manufacturing workers to date. At the most basic level, instead of shrinking, the trade deficit has gotten larger under Trump.

      In 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, the trade deficit was $502 billion. Through the first four months of 2019, the trade deficit was running at almost a $620 billion annual rate, more than $100 billion higher than the deficit Trump inherited.

      For all his screaming about currency manipulation, the value of the dollar relative to other currencies has barely changed since Trump took office. Needless to say, Trump did not declare China a currency manipulator on day one of his administration or on any subsequent day.

      While he has in fact started a trade war with China, currency values — which would directly affect our trade balance — are no longer a major issue of contention. Instead, Trump seems more focused on ensuring that China respects the intellectual property claims of Boeing and other multinational companies when they outsource factories to China.

      Although the story of negotiating whiz Trump winning terrific trade deals for U.S. workers has not quite panned out, he actually could point to an increase in manufacturing jobs under his watch. Manufacturing employment increased by 471,000 (3.9 percent) in the 28 months from January 2017 to May 2019.

    • Capitalist Workplaces Set Bosses Up to Be Authoritarian Tyrants

      Long before the growing interest in economic inequality facing contemporary capitalist societies, radical thinkers and union organizers were concerned about the authoritarian governance in workplaces. Unfortunately, this concern seems to have taken a back seat in political philosophy during the present era. Elizabeth S. Anderson, a professor of philosophy and women’s studies at the University of Michigan, is seeking to remedy this with her trenchant analyses of the coercive and hierarchical nature of capitalist firms and corporations. Her book Private Government offers an important reminder that bosses tend to be dictators and that workers’ lives are essentially at the mercy of private government.

    • UK Government’s Latest Take On Asset Forfeiture Is Pretty Much ‘You Can’t Afford That!’

      The UK government has adopted a spin on asset forfeiture so brazenly abusive of citizens, American cops are probably kicking themselves for not thinking of it first.

      Dutch law enforcement raised the bar for forfeiture-related audacity early last year when they promised to start taking the literal clothes off people’s back if it didn’t seem like they had the (legal) funds to afford high-end designer wear. Dutch officials said a lot of things about gaudy timepieces but made it clear shirts and pants might follow if deemed sufficiently expensive.

      The UK has this beat. As Walter Olson opines for the Washington Examiner, the UK plan does away with all the comparative politeness of American asset forfeiture. There will be no fishing expeditions masquerading as traffic stops. There will be no pre-dawn raids predicated on tips by informants whose trustworthiness is only exceeded by their willingness to commit crimes using taxpayer dollars.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Deep Fakes: Will AI Swing the 2020 Election?

      Imagine, on the day before the 2020 presidential election, that someone posts a video of the Democratic candidate talking before a group of donors. The candidate admits to being ashamed to be an American, confesses that the United States is a malevolent force in the world, and promises to open borders, subordinate the country to the UN, and adopt a socialist economic system.

      The video goes viral. It doesn’t matter that it sounds a bit suspicious, a candidate saying such things just before the election. A very careful observer might note some discrepancies with the shadows in the background of the video or that the candidate makes some oddly uncharacteristic facial expressions.

      For the average credulous viewer, however, the video reinforces some latent prejudices about Democratic Party candidates, that they never thought America was all that great to begin with and are not ultimately interested in making the country great again. And hey, didn’t Mitt Romney make a similar mistake by dissing the 47 percent just before the 2012 elections?

    • How the Media Will Pick the Next Democratic Presidential Candidate

      Democratic primary voters and caucus-attendees are of two minds about the 2020 presidential general election campaign.
      A majority of them want it to be like one of those hockey games where the players drop their gloves and start fighting the moment the puck is dropped. They want a candidate who welcomes a bench-clearing brawl with President Trump. And they want the melee to be about something big: an explicit and unapologetic liberal agenda, devoid of global-oney and neoliberal trims.

      At the same time, a greater majority of Democratic voters simply want to beat Trump and worry about the rest later. Anything that might endanger his defeat is therefore disqualifying. Whatever general-election voters in the key states need to hear to vote against Trump, that’s the Democratic platform.

      Back and forth it goes. The California State Democratic Party delegates boo Democratic presidential candidates who are critical of socialism. Joe Biden is talked up as the party’s surest bet in November 2020. Biden is lambasted for his past support of the Hyde Amendment. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth are described (again and again) as too liberal, a.k.a. “unelectable.”

      Enter the polls. Polls are the MRIs of “electability” and provide pseudo-scientific precision to forecasting future outcomes. They enable TV talking heads to winnow candidates out and, to paraphrase the late Senator Fred Harris, “winnow candidates in.”

    • How Immigration Changed A Small-Town Sweden That Never Existed

      How far can you stretch nostalgia before warm, harmless exaggeration transforms into weaponized dishonesty?

      This question is at the heart of a great deal of discussion on immigration in Europe, where the presence of new residents is often pitched by those opposed to immigration as ultimately undermining (and even eradicating) local history, cultures and traditions. Precisely what those local histories, cultures and traditions looked like before the arrival of immigrants, however, is far from agreed upon, and are very often altered and romanticized in the service of an anti-immigration agenda.

      Nothing better illustrates this dynamic than an opinion piece published a few days ago in the Swedish newspaper Göteborgs-Posten. In the article, the author recounted the tale of searching late one dark winter night (in the relatively small Swedish town of Gävle) for an open food store. She eventually managed to find a shop run by an immigrant, and noted that the store sold meat marked “Halal” in Swedish and Arabic, had “small animals” in the meat freezer and pickled vegetables she considered “inedible”. She ended up buying the only thing she felt comfortable eating: a box of instant macaroni.

      The author’s reaction to this entire incident?

      “I am in Sweden, a Sweden that doesn’t feel Swedish. And I don’t like it.”

      The piece played on the familiar clichés of lost local cultures and feeling like a stranger in your own land. But, it also touched upon nostalgia over the death of small-town community and identity: the “Mom ’n’ Pop” corner store selling local food being replaced by stores selling supposedly “exotic” foreign food; and, small communities, once bustling with people and businesses, now reduced to ghost towns housing immigrants.

    • Every Day Is World Refugee Day

      Last week the U.N. declared World Refugee Day to shine a light on the record, almost 26 million poor, brown, defenseless souls our monsters in power keep using as political pawns in an unconscionable “death by a thousand cuts.” It’s always good to remind us of the human misery at the edges of our privilege, but the crimes, alas, mount. The horrific tales emerging of the conditions of “some suburb of hell” where thousands are now incarcerated – concrete floors, packed bodies, freezing dog-pound-style detention pens, flu, lice, shit, vomit, trauma, hunger, sexual abuse and dear God sobbing children – were best if gruesomely embodied by the spectacle of demon DOJ lawyer Sarah “Eichmann” Fabian struggling to explain to horrified judges why children don’t need soap, beds or toothbrushes to be “safe and sanitary” as required by law. One helpful observer to Fabian, “Your room in hell is ready.” Finally, lest we forget, greedy people are making money from these atrocities, and they are part of a long historical arc – yes we have locked up many innocents before – proving that, “Once there are concentration camps” – yes they are concentration camps – “it is always probable that things will get worse.”

      Still, many are fighting back to assert the fundamental human rights of refugees. They are telling their stories and citing their too-often neglected accomplishments. They are declaring themselves safe spaces and sanctuary states, counties, cities. They are vowing, as Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker just did by signing several new laws, that private entities will not “profit off the intolerance of this president.” And they are finding new, humane ways to confront the crisis. Here in Portland, Maine, hundreds of new asylum seekers from Angola and the Congo just arrived en masse, bundled into buses from Texas after months making their harrowing way through South and Central America, mostly on foot. Portland has already absorbed several thousand African refugees and crafted an extraordinary, grassroots support network for them, but we’ve seen nothing like this – the big numbers at once, the horror stories, the desperation. Still, we have rallied. City and state officials found money, created decent shelter, reached out to other towns. People have raised over $400,000 and donated mountains of clothes, toys, baby food. African leaders organized volunteers, Angolan and Congolese women flocked to cook native meals, truckloads of diapers shipped, lawyers, doctors, translators stepped up. It’s neither easy nor complicated, but it’s doable. In the name of our common humanity, because this.

    • New Report Details the 15 House Democrats That Should Face Progressive Challengers

      As progressive candidates continue to announce their intentions to oust corporate Democrats, a new report names 15 House Democrats to unseat in primary challenges.

      Published Monday by the left-leaning group RootsAction, the new report is entitled Bad Blues: Some of the House Democrats Who Deserve to Be ‘Primaried.’

      The list, the report notes, “is by no means exhaustive—only illustrative.”

      “There may well be a Democratic member of Congress near you not included here who serves corporate interests more than majority interests, or has simply grown tired or complacent in the never-ending struggles for social, racial, and economic justice as well as environmental sanity and peace,” the report notes. “Perhaps you live in a district where voters are ready to be inspired by a progressive primary candidate because the Democrat in Congress is not up to the job.”

      Among the well-known names on the list: Rep. Eliot Engel of New York. He’s already facing two progressive challengers: educators Jamaal Bowman and Andom Ghebreghiorgis.

      Engel, the report says, has long been “affiliated with the corporate wing of the party” and is “notable for repeatedly breaking with his own party to support Republican foreign policy positions.” In Congress since 1989, Engel’s “support for hawkish Republicanism has continued into the Trump era.”

      Another primary-worthy House Democrat on the list: Illinois’s anti-choice Dan Lipinski.

    • Leader of Ingushetia resigns following extraordinary popular resistance to Chechen border deal

      Ingush government head Yunus-Bek Yevkurov announced his decision to resign before the end of his current term during a state-run regional television broadcast.

      “I have made the decision to request that President Vladimir Putin release me in advance from my duties as the head of the republic,” Yevkurov said, adding that he is “not blind” to the current political situaiton in his region. He argued that government, social, and religious organizations are all responsible for a state of division in Ingushetia.

    • Greed and Politics Should Not Drive Forest Policy

      The Custer Gallatin National Forest should withdraw its North Bridger Forest Health Project (2,296 acres of commercial logging, including 667 acres of clear-cutting). Despite the government’s claims, there is nothing particularly unhealthy about the public forest in and around Fairy Lake, Battle Ridge Campground and Brackett Creek.

      Yes, the snow is deep, growing season short and the soil is thin, but trees somehow make a living in challenging conditions. Clear-cutting in these amazing high-elevation, alpine environments demonstrates how far removed the Forest Service-USDA has become from the public values of a typical local resident. Most individuals and families who travel the short distance to the North Bridgers are expecting a quiet weekend of camping close to town, or a peaceful day of hiking, fishing, hunting or sight-seeing. These are the values important to locals. Out-of-town visitors come to enjoy similar experiences on their national forest. These are sacred places.

      It is self-evident that the Forest Service doesn’t value the forest in the same way. Why is this so hard for the Forest Service to understand? National (top-down) timber goals dominate the current system. Same as it ever was. Clear-cutting unroaded alpine forests defies common sense, is contrary to scientific knowledge, and lacks any sense of moral integrity to the public and the forestry profession. What a ridiculous place to manage a tree farm.

    • Elizabeth Warren’s Flawed But Well-Intentioned Proposal For Banning Private Prisons

      Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren published a policy proposal to ban private prison facility management and place stronger controls on the outsourcing of services in the criminal legal system.

      In making her case, Warren attempts to broaden the public’s limited understanding of privatization as a matter of facility management. She raises issues of extortion faced by prisoners and those who support them, and she highlights the growing lobbying influence of private companies searching for avenues to expand their reach into other areas of the system.

      “We need significant reform in both criminal justice and in immigration, to end mass incarceration and all of the unnecessary, cruel, and punitive forms of immigration detention that have taken root in the Trump administration,” Warren argues.

      Unfortunately, it does not seem that Warren’s proposal is adequate enough. Some of these issues relate to limitations any president faces in pursuing a top-down strategy on criminal punishment issues that are largely the purview of state and local governments.

    • New Draft of ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ Treaty Affirms Protection for Women and LGBTIQ Persons. The Fight Wasn’t Easy—and It Isn’t Over Yet

      When it comes to the letter of the law, a few words can mean the difference between having your rights protected – or not.

      Earlier this month, the International Law Commission (ILC) formally recommended a final draft of the new crimes against humanity (CAH) treaty for adoption by states—a treaty that promises to bring justice to victims of atrocities.

    • Most Democratic Candidates Still Afraid To Criticize Israel’s Violations Of Palestinian Rights

      The attitudes of Democratic voters toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have become decidedly more balanced in the past two decades. Favorable attitudes toward Palestinians are up while attitudes toward Israel appear to be in decline. While, overall views of Israel remain positive, substantial numbers of Democrats are opposed to Israeli policies – namely settlement construction and violations of Palestinian rights. Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is also viewed negatively by most Democrats.

      These shifts in opinion have placed many Democratic presidential candidates in a bind – especially those who have served in Congress or as Governors. As conscious as they may be of their base’s changing mood, they have also been schooled not to alienate pro-Israel donors or cross Israel’s lobbyists, who can, if aroused, distract their campaigns with a barrage of protests.

      It was against this backdrop that I watched the results of a months-long New York Times’ project in which they interviewed 21 of the Democrats running for president on a range of foreign and domestic policy issues that will confront the next president. There were questions on Afghanistan, handguns, health care, immigration, and the death penalty.

    • Trump’s swamp people: Shockingly, the administration’s vetting process was a total mess

      think most people believe that one of Donald Trump’s most important pledges during the 2016 campaign was to “Drain the swamp,” a slogan that has become one of his followers’ favorite chants. But unlike “Lock her up” or “Build the wall,” Trump didn’t even launch that phrase until Oct. 18, 2016, just a couple of weeks before the election.

      It was formally introduced with great fanfare in a speech on the eve of the first general-election debate in which he presented his “ethics reform” program.

    • To Create a New Deal That Works for Everyone, We Must Shun Centrism

      History has a way of crashing into itself on occasion. Former Vice President Joe Biden’s unrepentant praise for a white supremacist segregationist last week — which, according to the presidential candidate, was taken out of context and is not actually a reflection of his hidebound mid-20th century worldview so stop saying that — caused a multi-car pileup in history’s HOV lane. Untangling the wreckage informs us on not just where we’ve been, but where we could be headed in 2020.

      Biden’s kind words for Sen. James O. Eastland (D-Mississippi), one of the most ruthless defenders of Jim Crow in the South, ripped the scab off some uncomfortable truths regarding the Democratic Party, the New Deal, and institutional racism. Biden summoned Eastland into his argument as a means of praising a time when lawmakers could “get things done” even with terrible people in a bygone era of “civility.”

      As much as it was just and proper to confront Biden’s serial talent for missing the point, particularly when he summoned the racist slur “boy” with no apparent sense of its vicious context, the fact remains that the Democratic Party mollified its segregationist wing in order to pass the New Deal. By doing so, they deliberately left Black citizens out of the equation, even as they enacted new laws and regulations that remade the U.S. economic and political landscape.

      Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s ambitious program, enacted in pieces over several years to end the long slog of the Great Depression, changed the way the country lived and worked. Minimum wage and child labor laws, protections for bank customers and new muscle for unions, strong stock market regulations, and new infrastructure for plumbing and electricity remade the nation from coast to coast and border to border. The establishment of Social Security meant that for many people, growing old did not have to mean growing destitute, and laid the groundwork for Medicare and Medicaid, two of the most successful government programs ever put forth.

      In passing his slate of reforms, however, Roosevelt placated the segregationist wing of his party, represented toward the end of his long administration by men like James Eastland. Many Black workers were denied the benefits of Social Security and the bargaining power provided by the National Labor Relations Act so Southern oligarchs could maintain their pool of cheap Black laborers. Black people were likewise denied government mortgage subsidies granted by the Federal Housing Act, also at the behest of those same Southern oligarchs.

    • Buttigieg Criticized at Emotional Town Hall After Shooting

      Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg faced criticism Sunday from angry residents of South Bend, Indiana, at an emotional town hall meeting a week after a white police officer fatally shot a black man in the city where he is mayor.

      Buttigieg (BOO’-tuh-juhj) said he would call for an outside investigation of the shooting of 54-year-old Eric Logan by Sgt. Ryan O’Neill.

      The 37-year-old mayor said he would send a letter to the federal Department of Justice’s civil rights division and notify the local prosecutor that he’d like an independent investigator appointed. He conceded that his administration had failed on two key initiatives.

      “The effort to recruit more minority officers to the police department and the effort to introduce body cameras have not succeeded and I accept responsibility for that,” Buttigieg said.

      Prosecutors investigating said that the shooting was not recorded by O’Neill’s body camera.

    • Billionaires to 2020 Presidential Hopefuls: ‘America Has a Moral, Ethical, and Economic Responsibility to Tax Our Wealth More’

      “Those of us who have signed this letter believe it is our duty to step up and support a wealth tax that taxes us,” the letter reads. “It is a key to both addressing our climate crisis, and a more competitive, stronger economy that would better serve millions of Americans. It would make America healthier. It is a fair way of creating opportunity. And it strengthens American freedom and democracy. It is not in our interest to advocate for this tax, if our interests are quite narrowly understood. But the wealth tax is in our interest as Americans.”

      The letter is signed by 18 named individuals from 11 incredibly wealthy families, including Robert S. Bowditch Jr., founder of real estate development firm MB Associates, and his wife, Louise Bowditch; filmmaker Abigail Disney; philanthropist George Soros and his son Alexander Soros; Arnold S. Hiatt, chairman of the Stride Rite Charitable Foundation; Regan Pritzker, president of the Libra Foundation; and Liesel Pritzker Simmons and Ian Simmons, co-founders of the impact investment organization Blue Haven Initiative.

      “We thought it would be a good idea,” Ian Simmons explained to the Times. “Liesel and I decided to reach out to some other folks to see if they thought it was a good idea, too.”

    • An Open Letter To My Fellow American, Civil Servant Jared Kushner

      I do hope it’s okay with you that I dropped the salutation formalities. I just read in Medium an article by Aaron Gell, their contributing editor, titled Jared Kushner Was My Boss, so I really feel I personally know you now, plus, I’ve been writing about you for several months, so let’s be friends.

      I just read your Peace to Prosperity Economic Plan. I must give it to you. You did it. You produced 136 pages of nothing, in full color and with photos too.

      I read this on my veranda, the one facing the illegal Israeli settlement of Psagot across the valley. Every time I looked up to take a sip of water, I looked at the settlement lights glaring down on me and then looked down to your plan to see where it fits; I see it fits perfectly since you don’t even hint that it exists. I know, we Palestinians should not get bogged down with inconvenient facts on the ground.

      I really liked the part of the plan’s vision that notes that it can only be achieved, “following a peace agreement” and that “Only through peace can the Palestinians achieve prosperity.” You are spot on here, Jared, but isn’t that what the Palestinian leadership and people have been saying to you from the outset, show us the political parameters and then we can talk economy? Isn’t that how “business plans” are built; you ask about the applicable laws and regulations, then you build your plan?

    • Advocates Say Illinois Ban on Private Immigrant Detention Centers, a ‘Firewall’ Against Trump’s Attacks on Immigrants, Should Be Model for Country

      In addition to making Illinois the first state to outlaw private immigrant detention facilities, the state’s new legislation also prohibits local law enforcement agencies from engaging in federal immigration enforcement with ICE and allows undocumented and transgender students to receive Monetary Award Program (MAP) grants and other aid at public education institutions.

      “We will not allow private entities to profit off of the intolerance of this president,” said Pritzker. “We will not allow local police departments [to] act as an extension of ICE. And we will ensure that every student in this state who wants to go to college should be able to do so without saddling themselves with debt for the rest of their lives.”

    • EFF to the California DOJ: Enforce the Prohibition on Assisting Immigration Enforcement

      In response to the looming threat of mass deportations, EFF has sent a letter to California’s Department of Justice (DOJ) asking it to enforce the standing prohibition on using the state’s law enforcement network for immigration enforcement.

      In February 2019, the DOJ updated its regulations to prohibit federal agencies from accessing the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (CLETS) for the purposes of immigration enforcement. This change was part of the implementation of the California Values Act, a 2017 law that generally prohibits California law enforcement from using its resources to assist in deportation efforts.

      Databases can qualify as such resources. CLETS is a network that allows law enforcement agencies to search through a person’s criminal history, driving and parking violations, and driver license and vehicle registration. While the California Values Act made an exception for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) access to criminal histories to comply with federal law, all other uses should be off limits for immigration enforcement.

    • Hearing Wednesday: California Should Audit Use of License Plate Data

      Sacramento – On Wednesday, June 26, at 10 am, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will urge the Joint Legislative Audit Committee to approve an audit on the use of automated license plate readers (ALPR) by state law enforcement.

      ALPRs are camera systems that scan the license plates of vehicles in order to track people in real time and create search databases of driver’s historical travel patterns. As a mass surveillance technology, ALPR captures information on every driver, regardless of whether their vehicle is under suspicion. Several years ago, California lawmakers passed legislation to regulate ALPR use, including requiring publicly available usage policies and guidelines for how the information is accessed. State Sen. Scott Wiener, who previously supported EFF legislation to protect drivers’ from ALPR surveillance, filed the request for the audit.

      At the hearing Wednesday, EFF Senior Investigative Researcher Dave Maass will explain that many California law enforcement agencies are not complying with this law. Researchers have found that ALPR data is routinely shared with hundreds of other entities without safeguards or proper legal process. A probe by the California State Auditor will help the public and policymakers learn more about how state agencies are protecting their data.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Indian Gov’t Uses National Security Law, Bad Information To Block Twitter Accounts All Over The World

      US social media companies are continuing to act as proxy censors for governments around the world. This is adding some bizarre twists to stories of social media content takedowns as governments target posts by non-citizens located thousands of miles away.

      India may have abandoned a fake news law, but it still acting as though unverified news is a threat to national security. In a case covered by Kevin Poulsen for The Daily Beast, an American college student’s tweets were targeted by the Indian government, which claimed the student was engaging in spreading propaganda.

    • Supposedly Disadvantaged Conservatives Not Exactly Rushing To Support Josh Hawley’s Anti-Section 230 Bill

      Senator Josh Hawley’s ridiculous and unconstitutional bill to remove CDA Section 230 protections from internet giants was clearly designed to appeal to conservative voters who have been fed a nonstop myth that the big internet platforms are “targeting” them for their conservative views, when the reality is that the platforms are mostly targeting trolls, harassers, Nazis, and assholes. If those factors are disproportionately impacting Republicans, then perhaps that’s more an issue for the Republican party than the internet platforms.

      Either way, given that the myth that platforms are “targeting” conservatives has some traction, it seems likely that Hawley thought the conservative movement and conservative organizations would likely rush in to support his nonsense bill. It appears he miscalculated. FreedomWorks, the organization closely associated with the Tea Party movement put out a tweet mocking Hawley for thinking “conservatives are too stupid to realize he’s trying to kill free speech online.”

    • Congress Should Not Rush to Regulate Deepfakes

      The House Intelligence Committee held a hearing earlier this month examining the issue of “deepfakes,” a term coined to describe images or videos created with a machine learning algorithm that allows people to make false footage that appears real. There is real potential for fake or manipulated images or video to be dangerous or harmful. University of Maryland law school professor Danielle Citron pointed during her hearing testimony to the horrifying story of journalist Rana Ayyub. An online mob spread a false pornographic video featuring Ayyub’s image, forcing her to hide for her own safety. As a society, we must acknowledge the harmful uses of deepfakes and hold the people who produce them accountable for their actions. EFF has acknowledged the harms of online harassment—including how people use harassment to chill the speech of marginalized people. Yet Congress must tread carefully if it seeks to address the actual problem without censoring lawful and socially valuable speech—such as parodies and satires.

      Before Congress drafts legislation to regulate deepfakes, lawmakers should carefully consider what types of content new laws should address, what our current laws already do, and how further legislation will affect free speech and free expression.

    • Australia Says Media Companies Can Be Sued Over User Comments On Facebook

      It’s no secret that Australia has taken a very different view towards intermediary liability than the US, saying (for example) that search engines can be responsible for search results it had nothing to do with, and even that they can be held liable if you are offended by the images that show up next to yours in an image search. So perhaps the latest such case in Australia shouldn’t be a surprise. A court has ruled that media companies can be held liable for comments on their news stories. And not just the comments on their own pages… but on Facebook.

    • Don’t Shoot The Message Board: A Data Driven Look At The Impact Of Section 230 On Innovation And The Economy

      We’ve obviously been talking a lot about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act over the past few years — and it is often credited as being the most important law for the internet. Jeff Kosseff’s recent book calls it “the 26 words that created the internet,” while David Post once declared that Section 230 probably “created a trillion dollars or so of value.” We’ve talked a lot about how the real benefits of Section 230 are not to the internet companies themselves, but to the public’s free speech rights, but over the last few years it’s bugged me that there wasn’t a better attempt to measure the actual economic impact of Section 230 and other intermediary liability regimes.

      Today, in partnership with NetChoice, we’re launching our new report: Don’t Shoot the Message Board, that attempts to explore what the data shows concerning the economic benefits of Section 230. We chose the name because it’s perfectly fitting. Section 230 was, literally, written and pushed by (then) Reps. Chris Cox and Ron Wyden in response to the awful ruling in the Stratton Oakmont case, which suggested that any company hosting a message board could be found liable for any of the content on that message board. Similarly, the common phrase is “don’t shoot the messenger,” which is very much about not blaming the party merely delivering the message, as opposed to creating or causing the message. Putting liability on intermediaries is very much about blaming the messenger for actions of someone else.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Opinion: New generation of tech firms urges stronger privacy laws

      Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently wrote about the importance of privacy in the New York Times, joining Facebook and others as purported converts to the cause. But while Big Tech publicly claims a change of heart about consumer privacy, it is at the same time quietly attempting to dismantle California’s new privacy law before it even goes into effect. This kind of duplicity is why the tech industry is increasingly being viewed with suspicion.
      Last year California passed the California Consumer Privacy Act, which requires large companies to respect basic personal information rights.
      These include the rights of individuals to know what types of information about them are collected sold, or shared, and the right to stop businesses from trading their information.
      As an industry that depends on public trust and touts itself as improving our lives, we need to stop sharing intimate information with unscrupulous brokers and building systems that manipulate users’ preferences and actions. These are serious mistakes that may generate short-term profits but hurt consumers, our communities, and the industry as a whole.
      Secretly, our colleagues in Big Tech worry about privacy violations too. That’s why so many of them prohibit their own children from using the products and services they push on an unwitting public.
      We represent a new generation of privacy-focused companies that believe we should not build things we wouldn’t let our own kids use. We support strong privacy protections, not just token “regulation” that doesn’t really protect consumers. That’s why we (and others) have called on the legislature to actually strengthen California’s consumer privacy law.
      Big Tech, though? They’re calling for something else entirely: watering down California’s law as much as possible.
      For example, Big Tech has called for an exception for online advertising tracking and other changes that would narrow the range of information protected by the new law.
      They also successfully killed SB 561, which proposed that Californians should be able to hold tech companies accountable when they commit serious privacy violations, as well as AB 1760, the Privacy for All Act, which would have strengthened the CCPA in numerous ways.

    • The New Generation of Tech and Stronger Privacy Laws

      Read all about how Todd Weaver and Brendan Eich reject Big Tech’s efforts to weaken California’s privacy law.

      In a nutshell, what you can read in The Mercury News is how every Big Tech company seems to care about privacy now—while quietly attempting to dismantle the California Consumer Privacy Act before it even goes into effect. Why? California’s new privacy law requires large companies to respect basic information rights: what is collected, sold, traded or shared.

      Sharing intimate information and manipulating users’ choices and actions are serious mistakes.

      Our colleagues in Big Tech worry about privacy violations too… and that’s why so many of them don’t allow their own children to use the products and services they sell.

      Regulate us. Seriously.

      We don’t believe in building things we wouldn’t let our own kids use, and that’s why we want to strengthen California’s consumer privacy law. Our industry knows how to innovate and adapt, we thrive in the startup mindset of tackling new challenges, we know how to conquer what seems impossible. Regulation that helps civilians is critical; regulation that creates a barrier to entry for competition and protects technology giants is not.

    • “Somebody Is Going to Die”: Lawyer Describes Chaos, Illness & Danger at Migrant Child Jail in Texas

      Outrage is mounting over a shocking Associated Press report published late last week revealing that at least 250 migrant infants, children and teenagers have been locked up for nearly a month without adequate food, water or sanitation at a Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, near the city of El Paso. Lawyers who visited the facility described a scene of chaos and sickness, with children unable to shower or change into clean clothes for weeks on end. The AP report came the same week that the Trump administration argued in federal court that the government is not required to provide toothbrushes, soap or beds to children detained at the border, and as other reports found similarly squalid conditions at a number of immigration jails. We speak with Warren Binford, a lawyer who interviewed children detained at the Clint, Texas, facility.

    • Children Continue to Die in Government Custody, and DHS is Dodging Accountability

      In recent months, at least seven children have either died in custody or died after being detained by federal immigration agencies at the border. These children came to the United States desperate for shelter and safety, but found inhumanity and suffering, under our government’s care, instead.

      Their deaths reveal just how dire the conditions are under which U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are holding hundreds of children. Detention facilities are dangerously overcrowded, where migrants are forced to wear soiled clothes for days at a time. To make matters worse, CBP also appears to be holding children for extended periods of time in direct conflict with the Flores agreement, a set of legal guidelines that provide humane conditions for immigrant children in detention — guidelines the Trump administration is now attempting to dismantle, arguing in court that it doesn’t require CBP to provide basic toiletries to keep children clean.

      The government may argue that their hands are tied by a lack of resources, but the truth is that these horrors are simply the latest attempt to dehumanize asylum-seekers and migrants, including children, and deny them basic care and dignity.

      U.S. Border Patrol, the law enforcement arm of CBP, has more than doubled in staff and funding since 2003. CBP has dealt with even higher levels of border crossers arrivals in the past and has 17 times the budget it did in 1990.

      And yet, the department continues to have a heinous track record of rampant reported abuses in detention facilities, with adults dying on their watch as well as children, all with almost no accountability standards. There have been 97 fatalities at the hands of CBP agents since 2004, including the murder of Claudia Gomez Gonzalez, an unarmed, indigenous 20-year-old woman who was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent in May 2018.

      The department has had ample time and resources to figure out their processes and be more forthcoming with a plan to address influxes of asylum seekers, particularly families, at the U.S.-Mexico border. Yet, they continue to be opaque in their answers to members of Congress and push misleading data about border crossings.

    • If China Is A Glimpse Of Our Future Surveillance Nightmare, Maybe Hong Kong Shows How To Fight It

      Techdirt has been covering the roll-out of the extraordinarily comprehensive digital surveillance systems in China for many years. It’s hardly news that the Chinese authorities continue to deploy the latest technologies in order to bolster their control. Many of the same approaches to surveillance are being tried in the special administrative region of Hong Kong. A British colony for 156 years, it was handed back to China in 1997 on the understanding that there would be “one country, two systems”: Hong Kong would be part of China, but it would retain its very different economic and administrative systems for at least 50 years.

      Well, that was the theory. In practice, Xi Jinping is clearly unwilling to wait that long, and has been asserting more and more control over Hong Kong and its people. In 2014, this provoked the youth-led “Umbrella Movement”, which sought to fight interference by the Chinese authorities in Hong Kong’s political system. More recently, there have been even bigger protests over a planned law that would allow extradition from Hong Kong to China.

    • Why is the US government using social media to monitor the public?

      A series of recent reports—based on documents obtained from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filings and other leaked information—have revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is violating the First Amendment right to free speech and assembly by gathering social media data for surveillance purposes and targeting organizations and individuals for harassment, intimidation, deportation and arrest.

    • Ola Bini, Privacy Activist and Julian Assange Friend, Speaks Out After Release from Ecuadorian Jail

      Last week, an Ecuadorian judge ordered the release of Swedish programmer and data privacy activist Ola Bini, who spent more than two months in jail without charge. Bini is a friend of WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange. He was arrested in Quito on the same day that Assange was forcibly taken by British authorities from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. We speak with Ola Bini in Quito, where he remains under investigation for allegedly hacking the Ecuadorian government. He says, “Through the whole process, 70 days in prison, and all of the days since, we’ve been asking the prosecution to tell us what it is I have done. And they still have not actually given us any single answer.”

    • Targeted for Being a Friend of Julian Assange? Ola Bini Released After Two Months in Ecuadorian Jail

      Web-only conversation with Swedish programmer and data privacy activist Ola Bini following his release from over two months in an Ecuadorian jail. Bini was arrested on the same day that Julian Assange was forcibly taken by British authorities from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • How Moscow and St. Petersburg protested against police overreach and political repressions on June 23

      On June 23, demonstrators gathered around Russia to protest political repressions and police fabrication of criminal cases. In central Moscow, a march organized by the Libertarian Party and the Union of Journalists and Media Workers attracted between 1,800 and 3,900 people according to police and organizers, respectively. Six protesters, including artist Artyom Loskutov, were arrested at the end of the event. In St. Petersburg, protesters had not received a permit from local authorities, and three of them were arrested. Sasha Sulim and Pavel Merzlikin observed the day’s goings-on in Moscow and St. Petersburg, respectively.

    • Meet the Moscow teen trying to educate women about their rights when sexually assaulted, as she faces felony charges for protecting herself

      A 19-year-old woman in Moscow named Darya Ageniy has launched a new campaign on social media in support of victims of sexual violence. She says she survived an attack last summer in the city of Tuapse, where an intoxicated local man tried to rape her. In self-defense, Darya stabbed the man with a pencil sharpening knife, leading to an investigation in which she is a suspect. If convicted, she faces time in prison. The man in question denies forcing himself onto Darya, saying that he only wanted to read poetry to her. Meduza special correspondent Pavel Merzlikin spoke to Darya Ageniy about the felony case against her and about how her Internet project might change Russians’ perceptions of sexual violence.

    • Citing CIA’s Dark History, Librarians Protest Agency’s Recruiting at Their Conference

      A group of librarians demanded the American Library Association abide by its values on Friday as they staged a protest of the CIA’s presence and recruitment at the professional organization’s annual conference.

      At the convention, which is taking place June 20-25 in Washington, D.C., the CIA is among the hundreds of exhibitors.

      Being an exhibitor at one of its gatherings, the American Library Association (ALA) says, “provides the best and most comprehensive opportunity to reach decision makers in the library field.”

      The protesters say the CIA’s track record provides ample evidence it should not be provided that opportunity.

      “The CIA is recruiting at #alaac19,” said organizer and Library Freedom Project founder Alison Macrina on Twitter. “Everything they stand for is a violation of the values of librarianship, so we protested.”

    • The Largest Migrant Shelter Is a House of Horrors, Report Finds

      President Trump announced and then quickly called off Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids targeting undocumented immigrants this weekend, but it’s little relief for the migrants already in government custody.

      The Texas Tribune reported Sunday that the McAllen, Texas-area Customs and Border Patrol shelter, the largest of its kind in the U.S., was so overcrowded that immigrants were forced to sleep outside. Toby Gialluca, an immigration lawyer, told the Tribune the water in the facility “tastes like bleach,” adding, “It was so bad that the mothers would save any bottled water they could get and use that to mix the baby formula.”

      Children don’t have clean clothes, advocates say, and are not receiving sufficient medical care. “Unable to clean themselves, young mothers reported wiping their children’s runny noses or vomit with their own clothing,” the Tribune reported.

      The McAllen facility is separate from the Clint, Texas, one that most of the 300 children that were there were moved from, according to reports Monday from the Associated Press, via Texas station KVIA.

      “Basic hygiene just doesn’t exist there,” Gialluca told the Tribune. “It’s a health crisis … a manufactured health crisis.”

    • State Duma proposal would protect entrepreneurs from recent law criminalizing mafia leadership

      State Duma Deputy Rifat Shaikhutdinov has introduced a proposal to block a relatively recent law that penalizes organizing or participating in a “criminal community” from being applied in cases of financial crimes. The law in question, Article 210 of the Russian Criminal Codex, was designed to lock up those who hold a high rank in the Russian organized crime hierarchy even if they cannot be charged under other statutes.

    • Post Office loses bid to have judge in case removed

      A group of 557 former post office staff, including Telford’s Tracy Felstead, are taking legal action against the company in an attempt to clear their names.

      Miss Felstead, 37, from Brookside, was jailed for six months in 2001 after being convicted of stealing £11,500 when she was a 19-year-old counter clerk. She protests her innocence, and says a glitch with the Post Office’s Horizon computer system created the shortfall.

    • Horror At The Border

      While reading it, I realized I was painfully naive about what really goes on via CBP. It’s no man’s land for privacy and other rights — in a way that’s terrifying.

      I’ve said that the TSA (which is not security by any stretch of the imagination…missing 95% of mock weapons in tests) is really about obedience training for the American public, training us to be docile as our rights are yanked from us.

      I don’t know — but I have to wonder — if CBP has long been like this or has grown more and more Soviet Secret Police, etc., since the TSA was installed in airports across the country.

    • New Policy: Do Not Post In Support of Trump or his Administration

      We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy. Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy.

    • New Ban: Do Not Post In Support of Trump or his Administration

      We are banning support of Donald Trump or his administration on the RPGnet forums. This is because his public comments, policies, and the makeup of his administration are so wholly incompatible with our values that formal political neutrality is not tenable. We can be welcoming to (for example) persons of every ethnicity who want to talk about games, or we can allow support for open white supremacy. Not both. Below will be an outline of the policy and a very incomplete set of citations.

    • AOC Is Right — They’re Concentration Camps

      What, then, is the meaning of a phrase like “never again” when the institutions that proselytize it also argue that Holocaust memory cannot be sullied by the present tense? “Never again” is the common refrain that young Jews are taught, particularly by leaders at groups like the JCRC and tour guides at Yad Vashem. But by the time many of these young Jews become adolescent or twenty-something Jews, the mantra becomes a question: “Never again, for whom?”

      Rather than broaden the scope of the lesson to include injustices not committed by Nazis against Jews, Jewish institutions would rather instead police the boundaries of Holocaust memory. Jewish leaders like the JCRC, like Foxman, like Wolpe, and like many others, in giving the Republicans cover for such a putrid policy, have given their answer: Just us.

    • John Kiriakou: CIA Seeking More Impunity

      The CIA doesn’t care about a free press, though. The proposed provision in the authorization bill would save the CIA the trouble of having to explain itself to the likes of the media, to members of the congressional oversight committees, or even to the courts. And it raises far more questions than it answers. Why is such a provision necessary in the first place? What exactly is it supposed to protect? What was the precipitating event?

      There are, of course, no legitimate answers to those questions. No CIA officers have been exposed. None have been threatened. None have had their lives put in danger by unauthorized disclosures. That’s a red herring. This new provision is a power grab. It is an attempt to get a pass on crimes even before they’re committed. It’s prior restraint. It’s un-American and we have to fight it.

    • Report Says DHS Can’t Manage Internal Misconduct Because The DHS Just Doesn’t Do Anything About Internal Misconduct

      The long history of abuse and misconduct by DHS components stretches back for years. Agencies like ICE, CBP, and the TSA have never not been abusing their power to violate rights, circumvent the protections of the legal system, or just treat everyone like garbage for national security reasons.

      Why has nothing gotten better? Well, if you’re the DHS, you’ve tried nothing and you’re all out of ideas. The latest report [PDF] by the DHS Inspector General understates the issue. The title says the DHS needs to “improve” its oversight of misconduct and discipline. Start with the baseline low enough and any incremental forward motion is an improvement.

      Reading through the report, it’s apparent the DHS simply doesn’t care what abuses happen on its watch. No one in the agency — not even those specifically tasked with following up on allegations of misconduct — seems to think it’s their job to follow up on allegations of misconduct.

    • Aggression Detectors: The Unproven, Invasive Surveillance Technology Schools Are Using to Monitor Students

      Ariella Russcol specializes in drama at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens, New York, and the senior’s performance on this April afternoon didn’t disappoint. While the library is normally the quietest room in the school, her ear-piercing screams sounded more like a horror movie than study hall. But they weren’t enough to set off a small microphone in the ceiling that was supposed to detect aggression.

      A few days later, at the Staples Pathways Academy in Westport, Connecticut, junior Sami D’Anna inadvertently triggered the same device with a less spooky sound — a coughing fit from a lingering chest cold. As she hacked and rasped, a message popped up on its web interface: “StressedVoice detected.”

      “There we go,” D’Anna said with amusement, looking at the screen. “There’s my coughs.”

      The students were helping ProPublica test an aggression detector that’s used in hundreds of schools, health care facilities, banks, stores and prisons worldwide, including more than 100 in the U.S. Sound Intelligence, the Dutch company that makes the software for the device, plans to open an office this year in Chicago, where its chief executive will be based.

      California-based Louroe Electronics, which has loaded the software on its microphones since 2015, advertises the devices in school safety magazines and at law enforcement conventions, and it said it has between 100 and 1,000 customers for them. Louroe’s marketing materials say the detection software enables security officers to “engage antagonistic individuals immediately, resolving the conflict before it turns into physical violence.”

    • Methodology: How We Tested an Aggression Detection Algorithm

      This companion article to our main story describes the testing and data analysis ProPublica conducted for the Sound Intelligence aggression detection algorithm on the Louroe Digifact A microphone. Here, we discuss the data and methodology used for our research, as well as the results of our testing and analysis. Those results raise concerns about the device, particularly for the school environments for which it is marketed and sold.

      We first tested the device in simulated situations to measure its performance in real-world scenarios and collected spontaneous and simulated vocalizations from high school students. We then analyzed the types of sounds that the algorithm found to be aggressive and determined, for those sounds, some common audio characteristics. We view this analysis as an initial exploration of the algorithm, using sound it would likely encounter in operation, rather than a definitive evaluation.

    • Japanese-American Internment Survivors Protest Plan to Jail Migrant Kids at WWII Prison Camp

      Democracy Now! was there when five Japanese-American elders, survivors of U.S. internment camps, engaged in civil disobedience Saturday outside the Fort Sill Army post in Oklahoma, where the Trump administration plans to indefinitely detain 1,400 immigrant and refugee children starting next month. Fort Sill was an internment camp for 700 Japanese-American men in 1942. It was one of more than 70 sites where the U.S. government incarcerated about 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, including one of 14 U.S. Army bases. President Obama first used Fort Sill in 2014 to detain migrant children seeking asylum from violence in Central America. Descendants of internment camp survivors were also present at the peaceful protest. We feature a video report from Fort Sill and speak with Mike Ishii, co-chair of Tsuru for Solidarity. Ishii was at Fort Sill Army Base Saturday and helped organize the act.

    • U.S. Moves Migrant Kids After Facility’s Poor Conditions Exposed

      COMMENTS
      The U.S. government has removed most of the children from a remote Border Patrol station in Texas following reports that more than 300 children were detained there, caring for each other with inadequate food, water and sanitation.

      Just 30 children remained at the facility near El Paso on Monday, said Rep. Veronica Escobar after her office was briefed on the situation by an official with Customs and Border Protection.

      Attorneys who visited the Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, last week said older children were trying to take care of infants and toddlers, The Associated Press first reported Thursday. They described a 4-year-old with matted hair who had gone without a shower for days, and hungry, inconsolable children struggling to soothe one another. Some had been locked for three weeks inside the facility, where 15 children were sick with the flu and another 10 were in medical quarantine.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • The FCC Is Siding With Landlords and Comcast Over Tenants Who Want Broadband Choices

      In December of 2016, the city of San Francisco boldly enacted the “Occupant’s Right to Choose Communications Services Provider” ordinance (also known as Article 52) that hinders a payola scheme cooked up between big cable companies like Comcast and landlords. In just a few short years since its enactment, a great number of apartments in San Francisco have at least four options for broadband service, including affordable gigabit fiber service. Fearing that other cities would follow suit, a whole range of associations and corporations that represent landlords and the cable industry pushed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hard to block these local efforts. For a federal agency tasked with promoting competition, it shouldn’t be a close call to simply ignore these groups. But that is not what the FCC plans to do next month.

    • Robocalls Swamp Hospitals As The Trump FCC Pretends To Fix The Problem

      As we just got done explaining, the Pai FCC has been getting a lot of press for what it claims is a bold, new plan to help rein in the robocall menace by “suggesting” that carriers offer free robocalling tools by default, and recommending that they quickly adopt call authentication technology to thwart spoofing (faking the originating call number). But the Pai FCC proposal isn’t actually new, and offers absolutely no penalty for carriers that fail to comply.

      And while Ajit Pai has promised to hold carriers accountable if they don’t, there’s absolutely nothing in Pai’s tenure so far that suggests he’s actually capable of standing up to carriers. The press likes to beat around the bush on this front, but there are two major reasons this FCC hasn’t done more to thwart robocalls. One, carriers don’t want to have to pay for it, and the Pai FCC has proven to be a mindless rubber stamp to carrier interests. Two, a lot of “legitimate” telemarketing and debt collecting agencies utilize these exact same tactics, and the FCC doesn’t want to upset them either.

      What we get as a result is a government that pays a lot of lip service to the problem, but doesn’t actually do much of anything for fear of upsetting campaign contributors in the telecom and marketing industries. They’re quick to go after smaller robocall players that are easy to prosecute, but they’re terrified of holding larger, legitimate companies accountable for their own role in failing to implement technologies that could have put the problem to bed years ago. Again because while a lot of “robocalls” are perpetuated by illegal scam operations, a lot of them are perpetuated by industries using the exact same tactics (this 2018 testimony by Margot Saunders (pdf) explains this in great detail) to harass and spam consumers.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Qualcomm Faces Second EU Fine as Vestager’s Last Big-Tech Target

      Qualcomm Inc. faces another European Union antitrust fine a year after being ordered to pay 997 million-euro ($1.13 billion) penalty for thwarting rival suppliers to Apple Inc., according to three people familiar with the latest case.

      The chip giant may be fined as soon as next month, said the people, who asked not to be named because the process isn’t public. That would make it the last U.S. technology firm to get a large antitrust penalty from Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

      Vestager is due to step down later this year after punishing Google with more than $9 billion in fines and ordering Apple to pay more than 14 billion euros in back taxes. She warned in May she was “definitely not done yet” with big tech as she weighs potential new probes into Amazon.com Inc., Google and Apple.

      The EU’s current Qualcomm investigation targets 3G chips for internet mobile dongles sold between 2009 and 2011. Regulators allege these were sold below cost in order to push Icera, now owned by Nvidia Corp., out of the market. The EU took the unusual move of sending an extra antitrust complaint to Qualcomm last year to bolster its arguments of a “price-cost” test it used to show how far below cost the prices were.

    • Trademarks

      • Oops I Did it Again: Time to Register those Scandalous Marks

        In an interesting free speech opinion, the Supreme Court has sided against Congress and the USPTO — finding the statutory prohibitions on registering immoral or scandalous trademarks to be an unconstitutional limit on free speech. The decision here follows Matal v. Tam (2017) where the court similarly held unconstitutional a parallel provision restricting disparaging marks.

        Justice Kagan wrote the 6-person majority opinion that was joined by Justices Thomas, Ginsberg, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. The remaining justices agreed that the First Amendment requires the government to register immoral marks, but argued that at least some scandalous marks can be properly prohibited. In the minority viewpoint, the court should have narrowly construed that aspect of the statute to a Constitutional scope while retaining some of its effectiveness.

        This case involves the mark “FUCT” that Brunetti has been using for many years in association with his product line for wealthy rebellious skaters. However, when he decided to register the mark, the PTO rejected his application as directed toward immoral or scandalous matter as required by the Lanham Act. Brunetti appealed.

    • Copyrights

      • This is original broadcast, says the Finnish Market Court on IPTV transmissions

        Do collecting societies have standing to sue for copyright infringement and do internet access providers commit acts of communication to the public when they give access to their customers of TV programs that are also broadcasted simultaneously free to air?

        Both these issues were at the centre of a recent judgment issued by the Finnish Market Court.

      • Copyrighting the Official Annotated Statutes: Georgia v. Public.Resource.org

        The Supreme Court has granted certiorari in the important public access case of Georgia v. PublicResource.org Inc. The case focuses on Georgia official statutory code with official annotations (the “Official Code of Georgia Annotated” or “OCGA”). OCGA includes the statutes, section titles, statutory histories, guidance from the Georgia Code Revision Commission, judicial summaries, and opinions by the State AG, for example. PublicResources.org bought a copy of the OCGA, copied it, and uploaded it to the internet so that the public could have free access to the law. Georgia then sued for copyright infringement.

        The district court held OCGA copyrightable and the 11th Circuit reversed that decision — finding that the “government edicts doctrine” prohibits copyright in this case. One difficulty with with that doctrine is that it was last discussed by the U.S. Supreme Court 130 years ago in Callaghan v. Myers, 128 U.S. 617 (1888) and Banks v. Manchester, 128 U.S. 244 (1888).

        [...]

        OCGA is published by LEXIS, but its contents are particularly controlled by the Georgia General Assembly and the Commission (a division of the Assembly). The appellate panel found particularly that “the Commission exercises direct, authoritative control over the creation of the OCGA annotations at every stage of their preparation.”

06.24.19

Links 25/6/2019: Raspberry Pi 4, Ubuntu’s Change of Mind, Wayland’s Weston 6.0.1

Posted in News Roundup at 10:37 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Linux computer seller Star Labs now offering laptops with Zorin OS

      If you want a computer with a Linux-based operating system pre-installed, you can never go wrong with System76 or Dell. Of course, those two companies are hardly the only ones selling Linux-powered computers. For instance, the UK-based Star Labs also sells machines with Ubuntu and Linux Mint — two very good operating systems.

      Well, Star Labs has seemingly gotten the memo on how great Zorin OS is, as the computer seller is now offering laptops with that operating system pre-installed. Zorin OS is an operating system that is ideal for those that want to switch from Windows, so having it pre-installed gives a new option for those not prepared to install a Linux-based OS on their own.

    • One Mix Yoga 3 mini laptop demonstrated running Ubuntu

      If you are in interested in seeing how the Ubuntu Linux operating system runs on the new One Mix Yoga 3 mini laptop. You are sure to be interested in the new video created by Brad Linder over at Liliputing. “ I posted some notes about what happened when I took Ubuntu 19.04 for a spin on the One Mix 3 Yoga in my first-look article, but plenty of folks who watched my first look video on YouTube asked for a video… so I made one of those too.”

      The creators of the One Mix Yoga 3 have made it fairly easy to boot an alternative operating system simply by plugging in a bootable flash drive or USB storage device. As the mini laptop is powering up simply hit the delete key and you will be presented by the BIOS/UEFI menu. Simply change the boot priority order so that the computer will boot from a USB device and you are in business.

    • 189 Lives Changed – By Linux

      I’ve been at this business of putting Linux-powered computers into the homes of financially disadvantaged kids since 2005, one way or the other. That’s 14 years and north of 1670 computers placed. Throughout those years, I’ve shared with you some of our successes, and spotlighted the indomitable spirit of the Free Open Source Community and The Linux Community as a whole. I’ve also shared with you the lowest of the low times for us, and me personally.

      But through it all, Reglue has maintained our mission of placing first-time computers into the homes of financially disadvantaged students. By onesies and twosies mostly. A multi-machine learning center here and there, by far the greatest is the Bruno Knaapen Technology Learning Center. And as much of a challenge as that was, we have another project of even greater measure.

      If you don’t know who Bruno Knaapen is, I suggest you follow the link. Bruno will go down in history as a person who helped more people adapt to Linux than anyone, at any time. Bruno’s online contributions are still a treasure trove of Linux knowledge. So much, individuals pay out of their pocket to make sure that information remains available. Going down that list, you will come to understand the tenacity and knowledge that man shared with his community. I was one of those that learned at his elbow.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Going Linux #371 · Listener Feedback

      Bill continues his distro hopping. We discuss the history of Linux and a wall-mountable timeline. Troy gives feedback on Grub. Grubb give feedback on finding the right distribution. Highlander talks communication security and hidden files. Ro’s Alienware computer won’t boot. David provides liks to articles.

    • Linux Action News 111

      Ubuntu sets the Internet on fire, new Linux and FreeBSD vulnerabilities raise concern, while Mattermost raises $50M to compete with Slack.

      Plus we react to Facebook’s Libra confirmation and the end of Google tablets.

    • SACK Attack | TechSNAP 406

      A new vulnerability may be the next ‘Ping of Death’; we explore the details of SACK Panic and break down what you need to know.

      Plus Firefox zero days targeting Coinbase, the latest update on Rowhammer, and a few more reasons it’s a great time to be a ZFS user.

    • GNU World Order 13×26
    • LHS Episode #289: Linux Deep Dive

      Hello and welcome to Episode #289 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, LHS gets a visit from Jon “maddog” Hall, a legend in the open source and Linux communities. He discusses–well–Linux. Everything you ever wanted to know about Linux from its early macro computing roots all the way up to the present. If there’s something you didn’t know about Linux, you’re going to find it here. Make sure to listen to the outtake after the outro for 30 more minutes on Linux you problem didn’t know anything about. Thanks to Jon for an illuminating and fascinating episode.

    • Podcast.__init__: Behind The Scenes At The Python Software Foundation

      One of the secrets of the success of Python the language is the tireless efforts of the people who work with and for the Python Software Foundation. They have made it their mission to ensure the continued growth and success of the language and its community. In this episode Ewa Jodlowska, the executive director of the PSF, discusses the history of the foundation, the services and support that they provide to the community and language, and how you can help them succeed in their mission.

    • Full Circle Magazine: Full Circle Weekly News #136
    • Ubuntu Ex86s 32-Bit, OpenMandriva, Alpine, openSUSE, EndeavourOS, Regolith | This Week in Linux 71

      On this episode of This Week in Linux, we have a BIG announcement from Ubuntu to talk about that is bound to be polarizing. We’re also going to cover some other Distro News from OpenMandriva, Alpine Linux, openSUSE, EndeavourOS, and Regolith Linux. Then we’re going to check out some Hardware News from Pine64 for the…

    • Open Source Security Podcast: Episode 151 – The DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge with David Brumley

      Josh and Kurt talk to David Brumley. The CEO of ForAllSecure and professor at CMU. We discuss when David’s team won the Cyber Grand Challenge, what the future of automated security looks like, and what ForAllSecure is doing. It’s a fascinating window into the future of the industry.

    • Linux Gaming News Punch – Episode 18

      Coming in on the newly scheduled day of Monday, the weekly round-up podcast Linux Gaming News Punch Episode 18 is now here.

  • Kernel Space

    • Old Linus Torvalds is back: Linux page caching sparks ‘bulls**t’ outburst [Ed: Anti-Linux writers of the CBS tabloid ZDNet are mobbing Torvalds into silence again]

      But the Finnish-born Linux creator essentially told the Australian not to come the raw prawn.

      “You’ve made that claim before, and it’s been complete bullshit before too, and I’ve called you out on it then too,” wrote Torvalds.

      “Why do you continue to make this obviously garbage argument?”

      According to Torvalds, the page cache serves its correct purpose as a cache.

      “The key word in the ‘page cache’ name is ‘cache’,” wrote Torvalds.

    • Official x86 Zhaoxin Processor Support Is Coming With Linux 5.3

      Zhaoxin is the company producing Chinese x86 CPUs created by a joint venture between VIA and the Shanghai government. The current Zhaoxin ZX CPUs are based on VIA’s Isaiah design and making use of VIA’s x86 license. With the Linux 5.3 kernel will be better support for these Chinese desktop x86 CPUs.

      Future designs of the Zhaoxin processors call for 7nm manufacturing, PCI Express 4.0, DDR5, and other features to put it on parity with modern Intel and AMD CPUs. It remains to be seen how well that will work out, but certainly seems to be moving along in the desktop/consumer space for Chinese-built x86 CPUs while in the server space there’s the Hygon Dhyana EPYC-based processors filling the space for Chinese servers.

    • Linux Foundation

      • Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) Exam and Courses Are Now Offered Onsite in China in Local Language

        The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today is announcing the availability of Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) exam and corresponding Kubernetes Fundamentals course as in-country, instructor-led programs taught in Chinese.

        According to a Cloud Native Computing Foundation survey, 44 percent of Mandarin respondents are deploying Kubernetes. There is great demand in China and the overall Asia/Pac region for training courses that will help developers accelerate their work with Kubernetes and associated technologies.

        Since launching in 2017, the CKA exam has been taken by nearly 10,000 professionals around the world. Now it will be easier for Chinese users to take advantage of this offering with in-person instructors and in their local language. To register for the exam and courses, please visit: http://training.linuxfoundation.cn/

        “The Kubernetes administrator courses and certified exam are among the most popular training courses we offer,” said Clyde Seepersad, general manager, Linux Foundation training. “We’re now able to make the courses and exam available in Chinese with in-country exam delivery and instructors, which we hope will increase access and opportunity to learn and apply one of today’s most relevant and pervasive open source technologies.”

    • Graphics Stack

      • weston 6.0.1
        Weston 6.0.1 is released with build system fixes to smooth the
transition to Meson. Other miscellaneous bugfixes are also included.

Note that the PGP signing key has changed to 0FDE7BE0E88F5E48.

- (1):
      zunitc: Fix undeclared identifier 'NULL'

Alexandros Frantzis (1):
      clients/simple-dmabuf-egl: Properly check for error in gbm_bo_get_handle_for_plane

Antonio Borneo (2):
      clients: close unused keymap fd
      log: remove "%m" from format strings by using strerror(errno)

Daniel Stone (2):
      weston: Properly test for output-creation failure
      compositor: Don't ignore --use-pixman for Wayland backend

Fabrice Fontaine (1):
      Fix build with kernel < 4.4

Harish Krupo (4):
      meson.build: Fix warning for configure_file
      window.c: Don't assume registry advertisement order
      data-device: send INVALID_FINISH when operation != dnd
      Fix: clients/window: Premature finish request when copy-pasting

Kamal Pandey (1):
      FIX: weston: clients: typo in simple-dmabuf-egl.c

Luca Weiss (1):
      Fix incorrect include

Marius Vlad (3):
      meson.build/libweston: Fix clang warning for export-dynamic
      compositor: Fix invalid view numbering in scene-graph
      compositor: Fix missing new line when displaying buffer type for EGL buffer

Pekka Paalanen (7):
      meson: link editor with gobject-2.0
      meson: link cms-colord with glib and gobject
      meson: link remoting with glib and gobject
      meson: DRM-backend demands GBM
      meson: dep fix for compositor.h needing xkbcommon.h
      build: add missing dep to x11 backend
      libweston: fix protocol install path

Scott Anderson (1):
      compositor: Fix incorrect use of bool options

Sebastian Wick (1):
      weston-terminal: Fix weston-terminal crash on mutter

Silva Alejandro Ismael (1):
      compositor: fix segfaults if wl_display_create fails

Simon Ser (1):
      build: bump to version 6.0.1 for the point release

Tomohito Esaki (1):
      cairo-util: Don't set title string to Pango layout if the title is NULL

git tag: 6.0.1
      • Wayland’s Weston 6.0.1 Released With Build System Fixes & Other Corrections

        Weston 6.0 was released back in March with a remote/streaming plug-in and Meson becoming the preferred build system among other improvements. Weston 6.0.1 was released today by Simon Ser with various fixes to this reference Wayland compositor.

        Weston 6.0.1 is mostly made up of Meson build system fixes/improvements to ensure a good Meson experience. There is also a fix for building with pre-4.4 kernels and a variety of other smaller fixes.

      • OpenStack Stein feature highlights: vGPU support coming in Red Hat OpenStack Platform 15

        Red Hat is working on the next release of the supported enterprise distribution of OpenStack, Red Hat OpenStack Platform 15, based on the Stein community release. In this multi-part blog series, we’ll be examining some of the features that Red Hat and the open source community have collaborated on–starting with a look to future workloads, such as artificial intelligence.

        “How does OpenStack enable next generation workloads?” you ask. When it comes to computer-driven decision making, machine learning algorithms can provide adaptable services that can get better over time. Some of these workloads, such as facial recognition, require GPUs to ingest and process graphical data in real time. But the more powerful GPUs often used for machine learning and such are expensive, power-hungry, and can take up a lot of room in the servers’ chassis. When working with GPUs at scale, optimized utilization is key to more cost effective machine learning.

      • Panfrost Gallium3D Picks Up Yet More Features Thanks To Collabora’s Summer Internship

        Just a few days ago I wrote how the Panfrost Gallium3D driver continues making incredible progress for this community-driven, open-source graphics driver targeting Arm Bifrost/Midgard graphics. There’s yet another batch of new features and improvements to talk about.

        Most of this feature work continues to be done by Panfrost lead developer Alyssa Rosenzweig who is interning at Collabora this summer and appears to be spending most of her time working on this reverse-engineered Arm graphics driver supporting their recent generations of IP.

      • Vulkan 1.1.112 Released While Open-Source ANV + RADV Drivers Continue Marching Along

        Vulkan 1.1.112 was outed this morning as the newest documentation update to this high performance graphics and compute API.

        Vulkan 1.1.112 is quite a mundane update with just documentation corrections and clarifications this go around and not any new extensions. But at least the clarifications should help out some and other maintenance items addressed by this Vulkan 1.1.112 release. It’s not a surprise the release is so small considering Vulkan 1.1.111 was issued just two weeks ago.

    • Benchmarks

      • Benchmarking The Intel Performance Change With Linux FSGSBASE Support

        As covered last week, the Linux kernel is finally about to see FSGSBASE support a feature supported by Intel CPUs going back to Ivybridge and can help performance. Since that earlier article the FS/GS BASE patches have been moved to the x86/cpu branch meaning unless any last-minute problems arise the functionality will be merged for the Linux 5.3 cycle. I’ve also begun running some benchmarks to see how this will change the Linux performance on Intel hardware.

        See the aforelinked article for more background information on this functionality that’s been available in patch form for the Linux kernel going back years but hasn’t been mainlined — well, until hopefully next month. FSGSBASE should help in context switching performance which is particularly good news following the various CPU vulnerabilities like Meltdown and Zombieload that have really hurt the context switching performance.

  • Applications

    • Drawpile 2.1.11 release

      Version 2.1.11 is now out. In addition to bug fixes, this release adds one long awaited feature: the ability to detach the chat box into a separate window.

      Another important change is to the server. IP bans now only apply to guest users. When a user with a registered account is banned, the ban is applied to the account only. This is to combat false positives caused by many unrelated people sharing the same IP address because of NAT.

    • Drawpile 2.1.11 Released! Allow to Detach Chat Box into Separate

      Free collaborative drawing program Drawpile 2.1.11 was released day. This release features the ability to detach the chat box into a separate window.

    • Horde vs Roundcube vs Squirrelmail – Which Works Best

      Webmail is a great way to access your emails from different devices and when you are away from your home. Now, most web hosting companies include email with their server plans. And all of them offer the same three, webmail clients as well: RoundCube, Horde, and SquirrelMail. They are part of the cPanel – most popular hosting control panel.

    • Linux Package Managers Compared – AppImage vs Snap vs Flatpak

      Package managers provide a way of packaging, distributing, installing, and maintaining apps in an operating system. With modern desktop, server and IoT applications of the Linux operating system and the hundreds of different distros that exist, it becomes necessary to move away from platform specific packaging methods to platform agnostic ones. This post explores 3 such tools, namely AppImage, Snap and Flatpak, that each aim to be the future of software deployment and management in Linux. At the end we summarize a few key findings.

    • 5 Best and Free Desktop Email Clients for Linux and Windows

      If you are looking for free Email clients for Linux and Windows – here are 5 of them we list which you can try and consider for casual or professional uses.

      Web based email is popular today which can be accessed via browser or mobile apps. However, big and medium enterprises, generic users still prefers native desktop email clients for heavy and office uses. Microsoft Outlook is the most popular desktop email client which is of course not free and you have to pay huge licence fee to use.

      There are multiple options for free desktop email clients available. Here are the best 5 free and open source email clients which you can go ahead and try then deploy for your needs.

    • Proprietary

      • OnlyOffice Desktop Editors review – A challenger appears

        OnlyOffice Desktop Editors is definitely an interesting office suite. Unique, fairly stylish, with reasonably good Microsoft format compatibility – I’m not sure about the background image transparency, whether it’s a glitch, a bug or a PEBKAC. I also like the UI – minimalistic yet useful. Plugins are another nice feature, and you will find lots of small, elegant touches everywhere. With a free price tag, this is a rather solid contender for home use.

        But there were some problems, too. The initial startup, that’s a big one for newbies. Styles can be better sorted out, document loading is too slow, the UI suffers from over-simplification here and there, and the fonts need to be sharper and with more contrast, the whole new-age gray-on-gray is bad. Maybe some of these missing options are actually there in the business editions, and I’m inclined to take those for a spin, too. So far, I wouldn’t call this an outright replacement for Microsoft Office, but I’m definitely intrigued, and do intend to continue and expand my testing of OnlyOffice. Very neat. I suggest you grab the program for a spin, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • Oaths, coalitions and betrayal — some thoughts on Total War: THREE KINGDOMS

        Total War: THREE KINGDOMS was released in its all-caps glory about a month ago and saw a same-day Linux release thanks to porters Feral Interactive. The action this time around is centered in China during its fractious Three Kingdoms period of history that saw the end of the Han dynasty and warlords and coalitions battle it out for supremacy. More specifically, this Total War title also takes inspiration from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel and its larger-than-life heroes and villains. Developer Creative Assembly has put in plenty of time and effort to capture the feeling of both novel and the historical conflict.

        At the heart of this design philosophy is the option to play the turn-based campaign in Romance mode. Veteran players that have played other Total War titles such as the Warhammer entries may be familiar with the prominence that hero units and leaders have come to take in the series. Romance mode continues this trend by making it so the commanders of retinues are key to warfare. They lead troops, use abilities to buff allies and hamper enemies, can stand up to dozens of regular troops and fight duels with enemy commanders. A more classic mode, where regular troops feature more prominently, is also available but I spent the majority of my time with the game playing in Romance mode.

      • Open-world space arcade-action game “Underspace” is on Kickstarter with a Linux demo

        Oh goodie, more space action goodness! Underspace from Pastaspace Interactive is on Kickstarter looking for funding and it seems like quite a promising game.

      • Epic’s Tim Sweeney thinks Wine “is the one hope for breaking the cycle”, Easy Anti-Cheat continuing Linux support

        This is as a result of this article on Wccftech, which highlights a number of other interesting statements made by Sweeney recently. The funny this is, Valve themselves are helping to improve Wine (which Sweeney touches on below) with Steam Play (which is all open source remember) and a lot of the changes make it back into vanilla Wine.

      • Insurgency: Sandstorm for Linux not due until next year, with a beta likely first

        We’re in for a sadly longer wait than expected for the first-person shooter Insurgency: Sandstorm [Steam], as it’s not coming until next year for Linux.

        On a recent Twitch broadcast during the free weekend, it was asked in their chat “Linux will be released along with consoles or after?” to which the Lead Game Designer, Michael Tsarouhas said (here) “We haven’t really announced our Linux or Mac release either, but we will just have to update you later, right now we can say we are focused on the PC post-release content and the console releases.”.

      • Tense Reflection sounds like pretty original take on combining a shooter with a puzzle game

        Tense Reflection will ask you to think, solve and shoot as you need to solve puzzles to reload your ammo making it a rather unique hybrid of game genres.

        Developed by Kommie since sometime in 2016, the gameplay is split across three different panels you will need to switch between. A colour panel to pick the colour of your shots, the puzzle panel you need to solve to apply the colour and then the shooter to keep it all going.

      • The survival game ‘SCUM’ seems to still be coming to Linux, no date yet though

        SCUM, a survival game from Gamepires, Croteam and Devolver Digital that was previously confirmed to eventually come to Linux is still planned.

        They never gave a date for the Linux release and they still aren’t, but the good news is that it still seems to be in their minds. Writing on Steam, a developer kept it short and sweet by saying “Its not to far” in reply to my comment about hoping the Linux version isn’t far off. Not exactly much to go by, but it’s fantastic to know it’s coming as I love survival games like this.

      • In the real-time strategy game “Moduwar” you control and change an alien organism

        I absolutely love real-time strategy games, so Moduwar was quite a catch to find. It seems rather unique too, especially how you control everything.

        Instead of building a traditional base and units, you control an alien organism that can split and change depending on what you need to do. It sounds seriously brilliant! Even better, is that it will support Linux. I asked on the Steam forum after finding it using the Steam Discovery Queue, to which the developer replied with “Yes, there will be a Linux version, that’s the plan. Thanks :)”.

      • Steam To Drop Support For Ubuntu Linux

        While the number of gaming titles being made available on Linux is increasing each month, it’s widely accepted that gaming remains one of the weakest points of all Linux based operating systems. There are options like Pop!_OS, Manjaro, etc., that deliver considerably better performance, but they’re also heavily dependent on the Valve-owned Steam game distribution platform.

        Just recently, we reported Ubuntu’s plans to completely drop the support for 32-bit packages. Earlier, during the Ubuntu 17.10 development cycle, Canonical announced its plans to ditch the 32-bit installation images. Along the similar lines, Canonical had also disabled the upgrades from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to Ubuntu 18.10.

      • Steam is dropping support for Ubuntu, but not Linux entirely
      • Steam ending support for Ubuntu over 32-bit compatibility
      • Out of Steam? Wine draining away? Ubuntu’s 64-bit-only x86 decision is causing migraines

        Canonical’s decision to effectively ditch official support for 32-bit x86 in Ubuntu 19.10 means the Steam gaming runtime is likely to run aground on the Linux operating system – and devs say the Wine compatibility layer for running Windows apps will be of little use.

        As a result of the changes, Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais confirmed on Twitter: “Ubuntu 19.10 and future releases will not be officially supported by Steam or recommended to our users.” This is because Steam relies on 32-bit x86, aka i386, support for running older games that are 32-bit-only. Without official 32-bit x86 support in Ubuntu, Valve is walking away from the Linux distro.

      • Ubuntu Compromises on 32-Bit App Support

        Canonical, the developer of Ubuntu, has backtracked on an earlier announcement that Ubuntu 19.10 will no longer update 32-bit packages and applications, announcing today that Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 will support select 32-bit apps.

        The news follows Valve and the developers of Wine, an open source compatibility layer for running Windows apps on other operating systems, saying they would stop supporting Ubuntu completely.

      • Steam to End Support for Ubuntu

        Canonical’s decision to stop updating 32-bit libraries has seen Valve react by stating Ubuntu will no longer be officially supported from Ubuntu 19.10 onwards.

      • Valve to drop Steam support for Ubuntu Linux

        Valve has announced it is pulling support for its Steam digital distribution platform on Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux operating system, after the company revealed plans to drop 32-bit support.

        Valve’s interest in Linux is storied and ongoing: While the company focused, naturally enough, on Windows for the launch of its now-ubiquitous Steam digital distribution platform, the company announced Linux support in 2012 and launched in in 2013 via Canonical’s Ubuntu Software Centre. When Valve announced its own Linux-based gaming operating system in 2013, it extended its efforts with the operating system; Steam Play, launched late last year, allowed Steam for Linux to play Windows games through a compatibility shim dubbed Proton.

        Now, though, Valve has indicated that it is to drop support for the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution – though not Linux in general – over maintainer Canonical’s decision to stop developing 32-bit libraries.

      • Steam will no longer be officially supporting Ubuntu for future updates

        Valve‘s video game megastore Steam will no longer be supported for Linux operating systems after October of this year.

        Announced by Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais on Twitter, the company will officially be dropping support for future versions of the Linux distro.

        Those who frequently use Ubuntu will have until the OS’ next update, 19.10, to move another OS before Valve’s services become unsupported. The update is planned to release on October 17th, just four months away.

      • Ubuntu 19.10 looks DOA for gamers, with Valve dropping support for the OS

        Apple, Canonical and Microsoft may have switched to distributing 64-Bit OSs a few years ago, but Mac OS X, Ubuntu and Windows all still support the 32-bit architecture. Microsoft integrates Windows 32-bit on Windows 64-bit (WoW64) for example, while the current version of Ubuntu still supports 32-bit. That is, until now.

        Starting with 19.10 Ubuntu will contain only 64-bit code, with Canonical removing all 32-bit support. In short, no 32-bit applications will run on future versions of Ubuntu. This may not seem noteworthy considering that developers have had years to upgrade their software to 64-bit. However, Ubuntu 19.10 and newer will prevent even 64-bit applications from executing any 32-bit libraries or packages.

      • Steam is boiling as Ubuntu turns half its library into vapourware

        GAMING PORTAL Steam has announced it will ditch official support for Linux Ubuntu starting with the next release.

        Last week, Canonical announced it would not be offering 32-bit builds of its software in future, and Steam responded with an almighty “erm – no”.

        Steam has pledged to do everything it can to avoid leaving anyone in the lurch but will be moving its attention to a yet-to-be-determined alternative Linux flavour soon.

        The big problem for Steam is that so many of its classic games were only ever made available in 32-bit. By dropping support for the ageing architecture, it is essentially putting Steam in a position of borking half of the games in its library, whether that be by hiding them in the GUI or having them throw up an error code. Either way, it’s not a good look.

        Although there are lots of options, alternative operating systems, custom builds, emulators and so on, it’s not the same as having an out-of-the-box experience.

      • Canonical Assures Users 32-bit Apps Will Run on Ubuntu 19.10 and Future Releases

        Last week, Canonical announced that they will completely deprecate support for 32-bit (i386) hardware architectures in future Ubuntu Linux releases, starting with the upcoming Ubuntu 19.10 (Eoan Ermine) operating system, due for release later this fall on October 17th. However, the company mentioned the fact that while 32-bit support is going away, there will still be ways to run 32-bit apps on a 64-bit OS.

        As Canonical didn’t give more details on the matter at the time of the announcement, many users started complaining about how they will be able to run certain 32-bit apps and games on upcoming Ubuntu releases. Valve was also quick to announce that their Steam for Linux client won’t be officially supported on Ubuntu 19.10 and future releases, so now Canonical has clarified the situation a bit saying only updates to 32-bit libraries are dropped.

      • Steam Linux likely to not support future versions of Ubuntu

        Steam’s Linux version will not support future versions of popular and newbie-friendly distribution Ubuntu, Valve have said. The news came after Ubuntu’s makers said they’d drop 32-bit as of the next big release in October, which sounded like it would leave the great many 32-bit Steam games unplayable. Valve said they were now planning to “switch our focus” to another Linux distro. Ubuntu have since pivoted to say they’re not dropping 32-bit, they’re just going to stop updating it, which is better but still a bit of a dead end.

      • Steam is Dropping Support of Ubuntu Soon

        If you use Linux-based operating system Ubuntu to play games on Steam, you might want to think about an alternative solution. As per a tweet from Valve coder Pierre-Loup Griffais over the weekend, future versions of Ubuntu will not be officially supported by Steam, nor will it be recommended to users as a compatible OS.

        The first version of Ubuntu to not be supported will be 19.10, which is scheduled to release on 17th October. That means Ubuntu users have just shy of four months to enjoy official Steam support before it’s a thing of the past.

      • Steam to drop support for Ubuntu but Linux users shouldn’t panic yet

        The majority of the time that Linux gets dragged in the spotlight is when there are high-profile security bugs that remind people how Linux practically runs the world behind the scenes. This time, however, the controversy is ironically around one of the operating system’s weakest points: gaming. A Valve developer just “announced” on Twitter that the company will be dropping support for future releases of Ubuntu and, as expected, it has driven Linux users into a slight frenzied panic.

      • Out of Steam, Wine draining away? Ubuntu’s 64-bit only decision is causing problems

        Canonical’s decision to cease development of 32-bit libraries in Ubuntu 19.10 “eoan” means it won’t support Steam gaming runtime and devs say the Wine compatibility layer for running Windows apps will be little use.

        The Steam news was reported on Twitter by Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais, who said “Ubuntu 19.10 and future releases will not be officially supported by Steam or recommended to our users.”

        Ubuntu has caused anxiety with its announcement that “the i386 architecture will be dropped” in the next release. Some presumed this meant i386 libraries would not be shipped at all, meaning that no 32-bit applications would run.

      • Valve Says Steam for Linux Won’t Support Ubuntu 19.10 and Future Releases

        Valve’s harsh announcement comes just a few days after Canonical’s announcement that they will drop support for 32-bit (i386) architectures in Ubuntu 19.10 (Eoan Ermine). Pierre-Loup Griffais said on Twitter that Steam for Linux won’t be officially supported on Ubuntu 19.10, nor any future releases.

        The Steam developer also added that Valve will focus their efforts on supporting other Linux-based operating systems for Steam for Linux. They will be looking for a GNU/Linux distribution that still offers support for 32-bit apps, and that they will try to minimize the breakage for Ubuntu users.

      • I am running Steam/Wine on Ubuntu 19.10 (no 32-bit on the host)

        I like to take care of my desktop Linux and I do so by not installing 32-bit libraries. If there are any old 32-bit applications, I prefer to install them in a LXD container. Because in a LXD container you can install anything, and once you are done with it, you delete it and poof it is gone forever!

        In the following I will show the actual commands to setup a LXD container for a system with an NVidia GPU so that we can run graphical programs. Someone can take these and make some sort of easy-to-use GUI utility. Note that you can write a GUI utility that uses the LXD API to interface with the system container.

      • Steam to Soon Drop Support of Ubuntu

        The all-powerful folks over at Valve have announced that Steam will soon not support the Linux-based operating system Ubuntu. Starting from the upcoming version 19.10, all future versions of Ubuntu will not be supported and also won’t be recommended to users as a compatible OS.

      • Canonical backtracks on pulling 32-bit support from Ubuntu Linux

        Last week, Ubuntu announced it would end support for 32-bit applications, starting with its next release.

      • Ubuntu Reverses Decision, Says It Will Continue To Support 32-bit Apps

        Canonical has issued a statement on Ubuntu’s 32-bit future — and gamers, among others, are sure to relieved!

        The company says Ubuntu WILL now continue to build and maintain a 32-bit archive going forward — albeit, not a full one.

        In a response emailed to me (but presumably posted online somewhere) the company cite “the huge amount of feedback this weekend from gamers, Ubuntu Studio, and the WINE community” for persuading them to change track.

        That outcry, almost unparalleled in Ubuntu’s history, resulted in Valve, makers of the hugely popular games distribution service Steam, announcing that it would not support future Ubuntu releases.

        This, combined with worries from users relaying on legacy applications or Windows-only software ran through WINE, has resulted in a change of plans.

        Accordingly, Canonical says it “…will build selected 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS,” they say.

        Notice the word “selected” there. It seems the full 32-bit archive we enjoy now wont stick around, but a curated collection of libraries, tooling and other packages will be made available.

      • Raspberry Pi 4 on Sale Now, SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Service Pack 1 Released, Instaclustr Service Broker Now Available, Steam for Linux to Drop Support for Ubuntu 19.10 and Beyond, and Linux 5.2-rc6 Is Out

        Valve developer announces that Steam for Linux will drop support for the upcoming Ubuntu 19.10 release and future Ubuntu releases. Softpedia News reports that “Valve’s harsh announcement comes just a few days after Canonical’s announcement that they will drop support for 32-bit (i386) architectures in Ubuntu 19.10 (Eoan Ermine). Pierre-Loup Griffais said on Twitter that Steam for Linux won’t be officially supported on Ubuntu 19.10, nor any future releases. The Steam developer also added that Valve will focus their efforts on supporting other Linux-based operating systems for Steam for Linux. They will be looking for a GNU/Linux distribution that still offers support for 32-bit apps, and that they will try to minimize the breakage for Ubuntu users.”

      • Canonical foolishly backpedals on 32-bit packages in Ubuntu Linux

        Having an open mind and admitting when you are wrong is a noble quality. Those that are stubborn and continue with bad ideas just to save face are very foolish. With all of that said, sometimes you have to stick with your decisions despite negative feedback because you know they are right. After all, detractors can often be very loud, but not necessarily large in numbers. Not to mention, you can’t please everyone, so being indecisive or “wishy-washy” in an effort to quash negativity can make you look weak. And Canonical looks very weak today.

        When the company announced it was planning to essentially stop supporting 32-bit packages beginning with the upcoming Ubuntu 19.10, I was quite impressed. Look, folks, it is 2019 — 64-bit processors have been commonplace for a long time. It’s time to pull the damn 32-bit band-aid off and get on with things. Of course, there was some negativity surrounding the decision — as is common with everything in the world today. In particular, developers of WINE were upset, since their Windows compatibility layer depends on 32-bit, apparently. True Linux users would never bother with WINE, but I digress.

      • Ubuntu Reverses Decision, Says It Will Continue To Support 32-bit Packages

        Canonical has issued a statement on Ubuntu’s 32-bit future, saying it will continue to build and maintain a 32-bit archive going forward.

      • Canonical have released a statement on Ubuntu and 32bit support, will keep select packages

        It seems Canonical have done a bit of a U-turn on dropping 32bit support for Ubuntu, as many expected they would do. Their official statement is now out for those interested.

      • Ubuntu Changed their stand in dropping support of 32-bit i386 Packages

        Ubuntu gave a press release about their stand for 32-bit i386 packages. They will be building selected 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS. But not a full one.

        Last week, Canonical announced that they will completely dropping support for 32-bit (i386) hardware architectures in future Ubuntu Linux releases, starting with the upcoming Ubuntu 19.10 (Eoan Ermine) operating system.

        After this announcement, many of the users started complaining about how they will be able to run the 32-bit apps and games on upcoming Ubuntu releases.

        At the same time, after three days. Valve announced that Ubuntu 19.10 and future releases will not be officially supported by Steam or recommended to their users.

        They will evaluate ways to minimize breakage for existing users, but they will switch to a different distribution, currently TBD.

        Ubuntu has reversed their decision based on the community response.

      • Statement on 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS

        Thanks to the huge amount of feedback this weekend from gamers, Ubuntu Studio, and the WINE community, we will change our plan and build selected 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS.

        We will put in place a community process to determine which 32-bit packages are needed to support legacy software, and can add to that list post-release if we miss something that is needed.

        Community discussions can sometimes take unexpected turns, and this is one of those. The question of support for 32-bit x86 has been raised and seriously discussed in Ubuntu developer and community forums since 2014. That’s how we make decisions.

      • Ubuntu To Provide Select 32-Bit Packages For Ubuntu 19.10 & 20.04 LTS

        It looks like my info from this weekend was accurate, “I’m hearing that Canonical may revert course and provide limited 32-bit support.” Canonical issued a statement today that they indeed will provide “selected” 32-bit packages for the upcoming Ubuntu 19.10 as well as Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

        Canonical announced that as a result of feedback, they “changed our plan and build selected 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS…We will put in place a community process to determine which 32-bit packages are needed to support legacy software, and can add to that list post-release if we miss something that is needed.”

      • Canonical returning 32-bit Ubuntu Linux support after gaming uproar

        At first glance, Canonical dropping support for 32-bit Ubuntu Linux libraries looked to be interesting — the end of an era — but of no real importance. Then, Canonical announced that, beginning with October’s Ubuntu 19.10 release, 32-bit -computer support would be dropped. And both developers and users screamed their objections.

        Canonical listened and has changed course. “Thanks to the huge amount of feedback this weekend from gamers, Ubuntu Studio, and the WINE community, we will change our plan and build selected 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS.”

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • 0.4.1 Release of Elisa

        Elisa is a music player developed by the KDE community that strives to be simple and nice to use. We also recognize that we need a flexible product to account for the different workflows and use-cases of our users.

        We focus on a very good integration with the Plasma desktop of the KDE community without compromising the support for other platforms (other Linux desktop environments, Windows and Android).

        We are creating a reliable product that is a joy to use and respects our users privacy. As such, we will prefer to support online services where users are in control of their data.

      • Krita Interview with Chris Tallerås

        My name is Chris Tallerås and I’m a 23 year old dude from the Olympic city of Lillehammer in Norway and I do political activism traveling the country to fight the climate crisis and to advocate free culture/free, libre & opensource software in our kingdom.

        [...]

        Maybe later in 2017. I was getting tired of Windows and wanted to get into Linux…

  • Distributions

    • Reviews

      • Review: Clear Linux and Guix System 1.0.1

        Clear Linux is a rolling release distro that places a strong emphasis on performance. The distribution focuses on providing optimizations for Intel (and compatible) CPU platforms and often scores well in benchmark tests.

        I previously experimented briefly with Clear Linux in 2017 and found it to be very minimal in its features. The distribution presented users with a command line interface by default and, while it was possible to install a desktop environment from the project’s repositories, it was not focused on desktop computing. These days Clear Linux is available in several editions. There are separate builds for command line and desktop editions, along with cloud and specially tailored virtual machine builds.

        I downloaded the distribution’s live desktop edition which was a 2.2GB compressed file. Expanding the download unpacks a 2.3GB ISO. It actually took longer for me to decompress the file than it would have to download the extra 100MB so the compression used on the archive is probably not practical.

        Trying to boot from the live desktop media quickly resulted in Clear Linux running into a kernel panic and refusing to start. This was done trying version 29410 of the distribution and, since new versions come along almost every day, I waited a while and then downloaded another version: Clear Linux 29590. The new version had an ISO approximately the same size and, after it passed its checksum, it too failed to boot due to a kernel panic.

        I have used Clear Linux on this system before and, though it technically utilizes an AMD CPU, that was not an issue during my previous trial. The current situation does make me wonder if Clear Linux might have optimized itself so much that it is no longer capable of running on previous generation processors.

    • New Releases

      • IPFire 2.23 – Core Update 134 ready for testing

        The Linux kernel was vulnerable for two DoS attacks against its TCP stack. The first one made it possible for a remote attacker to panic the kernel and a second one could trick the system into transmitting very small packets so that a data transfer would have used the whole bandwidth but filled mainly with packet overhead.

        The IPFire kernel is now based on Linux 4.14.129, which fixes this vulnerability and fixes various other bugs.

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • SUSE CaaS Platform 4.0 Beta 3 is out!

        SUSE CaaS Platform 4.0 is built on top of SLE 15 SP1 and requires either the JeOS version shipped from the product repositories or a regular SLE 15 SP1 installation.
        Please note that SLE 15 SP1 is now officially out! Check out the official announcement for more information.
        Thus you should not use a SLES 15 SP1 environment with the SLE Beta Registration Code anymore. Because the SLE Beta Registration Code has expired now, but you can either use your regular SLE Registration Code or use a Trial.

      • SUSE Provides Platform for Cloud-Native, Containerized Applications as Enterprises Move to Hybrid and Multi-Cloud

        As businesses are transforming their IT landscapes to support present and future demands, SUSE® is providing the foundation for both their traditional and growing containerized workloads with the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Service Pack 1.

      • SUSE Enterprise Storage 6 Now Available

        With the current increase in data creation, increased costs and flat to lower budgets, IT organizations are looking for ways to deploy highly scalable and resilient storage solutions that manage data growth and complexity, reduce costs and seamlessly adapt to changing demands. Today we are pleased to announce the general availability of SUSE Enterprise Storage 6, the latest release of the award-winning SUSE software-defined storage solution designed to meet the demands of the data explosion.

      • What’s New for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for Arm 15 SP1

        Happy Birthday! It’s been 1 year since we introduced the world’s first multimodal OS supporting 64-bit Arm systems (AArch64 architecture), SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for Arm 15. Enterprise early adopters and developers of Ceph-based storage and industrial automation systems can gain faster time to market for innovative Arm-based server and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for Arm is tested with a broad set of Arm System-on-a-Chip (SoC) processors, enabling enterprise-class security and greater reliability. And with your choice of Standard or Premium Support subscriptions you can get the latest security patches and fixes, and spend less time on problem resolution as compared to maintaining your own Linux distribution.

      • Are you ready for the world’s first Multimodal Operating System

        Today, SUSE releases SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Service Pack 1, marking the one-year anniversary since we launched the world’s first multimodal OS. SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP1 advances the multimodal OS model by enhancing the core tenets of common code base, modularity and community development while hardening business-critical attributes such as data security, reduced downtime and optimized workloads.

      • The future of OpenStack?

        Before we can answer these questions, let’s take a look at its past to give some context. Since its original release in 2010 as a joint venture by Rackspace and NASA, and its subsequent spin-off into a separate open source foundation in 2012, OpenStack has seen growth and hype that was almost unparalleled.
        I was fortunate enough to attend the Paris OpenStack Summit in 2014, where Mark Collier was famously driven onto stage for a keynote in one of the BMW electric sports cars. The event was huge and was packed with attendees and sponsors – almost every large technology company you can think of was there. Marketing budget had clearly been splurged in a big way on this event with lots of pizazz and fancy swag to be had from the various vendor booths.
        Cycle forward 4 years to the next OpenStack Summit I attended – Vancouver in May 2018. This was a very different affair – most of the tech behemoths were no longer sponsoring, and while there were some nice pieces of swag for attendees to take home, it was clear that marketing budgets had been reduced as the hype had decreased. There were less attendees, less expensive giveaways, but that ever-present buzz of open source collaboration that has always been a part of OpenStack was still there. Users were still sharing their stories, and developers and engineers were sharing their learnings with each other, just on a slightly smaller scale.

      • SUSE Academic Program to be present at 2019 UCISA SSG Conference

        Engaging with the community has always been important for SUSE and this is no different for our Academic Program. That is why next week, the SUSE Academic Program is excited to attend and participate in a three day event hosted by one of the most respected networks in UK education.

      • Harnessing hybrid cloud for HPC

        As a grizzled veteran of the IT industry, I have been involved in many high performance computing (HPC) projects over the years, both from a hardware and software perspective. I have always found them to be intensely interesting mainly because the projects were deeply scientific in nature, whether it be decoding the human genome, designing better, more efficient vehicles or even deep space research.
        What’s different now is the emergence of HPC into the mainstream. Instead of it just being the preserve of academics, scientists and other boffins, normal commercial organisations are trying to harness the power of HPC to solve their business issues, notably through its application to AI and Machine Learning.
        As today’s technology creates vast hordes of unstructured data, unlocking the business value therein has become a key competitive advantage and almost the Holy Grail of Digital Transformation for many organisations. HPC has a key part to play in this as deriving insight from large data sets has been a major component of scientific research for many years.

      • Building Nonstop Data Access

        The traditional way we think of data is as something that’s stored and then used later, like electricity in batteries. But today, data is always flowing, and constantly in use, much more like the electricity you pull from a grid than the energy you store in a battery. In the old days, you could wait a day, even a week, to get ahold of data. Today, it needs to be there at the flip of a switch.

    • Fedora

      • On the Road to Fedora Workstation 31

        So I hope everyone is enjoying Fedora Workstation 30, but we don’t rest on our laurels here so I thought I share some of things we are working on for Fedora Workstation 31. This is not an exhaustive list, but some of the more major items we are working on.

        Wayland – Our primary focus is still on finishing the Wayland transition and we feel we are getting close now, and thank you to the community for their help in testing and verifying Wayland over the last few years. The single biggest goal currently is fully removing our X Windowing System dependency, meaning that GNOME Shell should be able to run without needing XWayland. For those wondering why that has taken so much time, well it is simple; for 20 years developers could safely assume we where running atop of X. So refactoring everything needed to remove any code that makes the assumption that it is running on top of X.org has been a major effort. The work is mostly done now for the shell itself, but there are a few items left in regards to the GNOME Setting daemon where we need to expel the X dependency. Olivier Fourdan is working on removing those settings daemon bits as part of his work to improve the Wayland accessibility support. We are optimistic that can declare this work done within a GNOME release or two. So GNOME 3.34 or maybe 3.36. Once that work is complete an X server (XWayland) would only be started if you actually run a X application and when you shut that application down the X server will be shut down too.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Tails 3.14.2 is out

          This release is an emergency release to fix a critical security vulnerability in Tor Browser.

          You should upgrade as soon as possible.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Canonical Releases Linux Kernel Security Patch for 64-Bit PowerPC Ubuntu Systems

            Affecting the Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo), Ubuntu 18.10 (Cosmic Cuttlefish), and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) operating systems, the new Linux kernel security patch fixes a vulnerability (CVE-2019-12817) on 64-bit PowerPC (ppc64el) systems, which could allow a local attacker to access memory contents or corrupt the memory of other processes.

            “It was discovered that the Linux kernel did not properly separate certain memory mappings when creating new userspace processes on 64-bit Power (ppc64el) systems. A local attacker could use this to access memory contents or cause memory corruption of other processes on the system,” reads the security advisory.

          • Canonical backtracks on i386 packages

            Canonical has let it be known that minds have been changed about removing all 32-bit x86 support from the Ubuntu distribution.

          • Create Minimal Debian Upstream Images with Debos and Armbian

            Armbian provides lightweight Debian or Ubuntu images for various Arm Linux SBC…

          • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 584

            Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 584 for the week of June 16 – 22, 2019. The full version of this issue is available here.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Events

    • Video from KubeCon 2019: Red Hat in Barcelona

      From May 21-25, Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage rolled into KubeCon Europe 2019 in Barcelona, Spain, a rare chance to bring different parts of the Red Hat community together from across Europe and the U.S. While there, we took the opportunity to sit down with members of the teams that are shaping the next evolution of container native storage in Red Hat OpenShift and throughout the Kubernetes ecosystem.

      We’ve put together highlights from Barcelona, where you’ll see what happens when you gather 7,700 people from the Kubernetes ecosystem in one place. You’ll also hear from members of Red Hat’s team in Barcelona—Distinguished Engineer Ju Lim, Senior Architect Annette Clewett, Rook Senior Maintainer Travis Nielsen and others—about what’s exciting them now, and what’s ahead.

    • Bassam Tabbara: Next 10 Years Should Be About Open Cloud

      During KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, Barcelona, we sat down with Bassam Tabbara – CEO and founder of Upbound to talk about the company he is building to make the next decade about Open / Open Source Cloud, breaking away from the proprietary cloud. Tabbara shared his insights into how AWS, Azure and the rest leverage open source technologies to create the proprietary clouds. He wants to change that.

    • Kiwi TCMS: Kiwi TCMS is OpenAwards 2019 Best Tech Community Winner

      Kiwi TCMS is the winner at OpenAwards’19 category Best Tech Community! Big thanks to the jury, our contributors and core-team and the larger open source and quality assurance communities who voted for us and supported the project during all of those years.

  • LibreOffice

  • BSD

    • Glen Barber: Statement regarding employment change and roles in the [FreeBSD] Project
      Dear FreeBSD community:

As I have a highly-visible role within the community, I want to share
some news.  I have decided the time has come to move on from my role
with the FreeBSD Foundation, this Friday being my last day.  I have
accepted a position within a prominent company that uses and produces
products based on FreeBSD.

My new employer has included provisions within my job description that
allow me to continue supporting the FreeBSD Project in my current
roles, including Release Engineering.

There are no planned immediate changes with how this pertains to my
roles within the Project and the various teams of which I am a member.

FreeBSD 11.3 and 12.1 will continue as previously scheduled, with no
impact as a result of this change.

I want to thank everyone at the FreeBSD Foundation for providing the
opportunity to serve the FreeBSD Project in my various roles, and their
support for my decision.

I look forward to continue supporting the FreeBSD Project in my various
roles moving forward.

Glen
    • FreeBSD’s Release Engineering Lead Departs The Foundation

      Well known FreeBSD developer and leader of their release engineering team, Glen Barber, has left the FreeBSD Foundation but will continue working on FreeBSD as well as coordinating its releases.

      Glen Barber has decided to take up a position at BSD-focused Netgate. Serving as an engineer at Netgate, Glen will continue to be engaged with upstream FreeBSD as well as working on pfSense. Netgate is the provider of various secure network offerings, including pfSense and their premium TNSR firewall/router/VPN platform

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • The need of US OSS for the programs [Ed: What an awful article. Original? Plagiarism? Even the encoding is all wrong.]

      A wide range of sorts of OSS licenses exist. In any case, there are basic traits among most OSS licenses. Two of the principle normal qualities are that: (1) beneficiaries can uninhibitedly utilize, change and convey the product; and (2) the source code (for example the comprehensible code) is made accessible to empower the activity of these rights. This recognizes OSS from restrictive programming. With exclusive programming licenses, ordinarily duplicating, altering or redistributing is disallowed and just the item code (i.e., the machine meaningful code or ‘gathered structure’) is circulated. The centrality of this is to adequately adjust the product, an engineer commonly would need access to the source code.

  • Programming/Development

    • binb 0.0.4: Several nice improvements

      The fourth release of the binb package just arrived on CRAN. binb regroups four rather nice themes for writing LaTeX Beamer presentations much more easily in in (R)Markdown. As a teaser, a quick demo combining all four themes follows; documentation and examples are in the package.

    • Watermarking photos? “I can do that in Python!”

      The Python Image Library (PIL), although not in the standard library, has been Python’s best-known 2-D image processing library. It predated installers such as pip, so a “friendly fork” called Pillow was created. Although the package is called Pillow, you import it as PIL to make it compatible with the older PIL.

    • EuroPython 2019: Schedule is online

      Please make sure you book your ticket in the coming days. We will switch to late bird rates next week.
      If you want to attend the training sessions, please buy a training pass in addition to your conference ticket, or get a combined ticket. We only have very few training seats left.

    • Mike Driscoll: PyDev of the Week: Geir Arne Hjelle

      This week we welcome Geir Arne Hjelle (@gahjelle) as our PyDev of the Week! Geir is a regular contributor to Real Python. You can also find some of his work over on Github. Let’s take a few moments to get to know Geir now!

    • Python’s Mypy–Advanced Usage

      In my last article, I introduced Mypy, a package that enforces type checking in Python programs. Python itself is, and always will remain, a dynamically typed language. However, Python 3 supports “annotations”, a feature that allows you to attach an object to variables, function parameters and function return values. These annotations are ignored by Python itself, but they can be used by external tools.

      Mypy is one such tool, and it’s an increasingly popular one. The idea is that you run Mypy on your code before running it. Mypy looks at your code and makes sure that your annotations correspond with actual usage. In that sense, it’s far stricter than Python itself, but that’s the whole point.

      In my last article, I covered some basic uses for Mypy. Here, I want to expand upon those basics and show how Mypy really digs deeply into type definitions, allowing you to describe your code in a way that lets you be more confident of its stability.

    • One Of AMD’s Leading LLVM Compiler Experts Jumped Ship To Unity

      AMD has lost one of their leading LLVM compiler developers as well as serving as a Vulkan/SPIR-V expert with being involved in those Khronos specifications.

      Neil Henning has parted ways with AMD and is now joining Unity Technologies. Neil was brought to AMD to improve the performance of their LLVM compiler, in particular their LLVM Pipeline Compiler (LLPC) used by the likes of their official AMD Vulkan driver in order to make it competitive with their long-standing, proprietary shader compiler currently used by their binary graphics drivers. While at AMD, he was able to increase the performance of their LLVM shader compiler stack by about 2x over the past year. He also implemented various Vulkan driver extensions into their stack.

    • Intel Is Working On A New ‘Data Parallel C++’ Programming Language

      ntel has been working on its OneAPI project for quite some time. The company has now shared more details of the software project — including the launch of a new programming language called “Data Parallel C++ (DPC++).”

    • 6 Best Data Science and Machine Learning Courses for Beginners

      Many programmers are moving towards data science and machine learning hoping for better pay and career opportunities — and there is a reason for it. The Data scientist has been ranked the number one job on Glassdoor for last a couple of years and the average salary of a data scientist is over** $120,000** in the United States according to Indeed.

      Data science is not only a rewarding career in terms of money but it also provides the opportunity for you to solve some of the world’s most interesting problems. IMHO, that’s the main motivation many good programmers are moving towards data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

    • Find the smallest number within a list with python

      In this example, we will create a python function which will take in a list of numbers and then return the smallest value. The solution to this problem is first to create a place holder for the first number within the list, then compares that number with other numbers within the same list in the loop. If the program found a number which is smaller than the one in the place holder, then the smaller number will be assigned to that place holder.

    • Basic Input, Output, and String Formatting in Python

      To be useful, a program usually needs to communicate with the outside world by obtaining input data from the user and displaying result data back to the user. This tutorial will introduce you to Python input and output.

      Input may come directly from the user via the keyboard, or from some external source like a file or database. Output can be displayed directly to the console or IDE, to the screen via a Graphical User Interface (GUI), or again to an external source.

    • Want to level up your Python? Join Weekly Python Exercise, starting July 2nd

      Let’s face it: Stack Overflow has made developers’ lives easier. Almost every time I have a question, I find that someone on Stack Overflow has asked it, and that people have answered it, often in great detail.

      I’m thus not against Stack Overflow, not by a long shot. But I have found that many Python developers visit there 10 or even 20 times a day, to find answers (and even code) that they can use to solve their problems.

    • Introducing pytest-elk-reporter

      Few years back I’ve wrote a post about how I’ve connected python based test to ELK setup – “ELK is fun”, it was using an xunit xml, parsing it and sending it via Logstash.

      Over time I’ve learn a lot about ElasticSearch and it’s friend Kibana, using them as a tool to handle logs. and also as a backend for a search component on my previous job.

      So now I know logstash isn’t needed for reporting test result, posting straight into elasticsearch is easier and gives you better control, ES is doing anything “automagiclly” anyhow nowadays.

Leftovers

  • Microsoft bans its employees from using Slack, Google Docs, and more

    Keeping your company’s data safe can be tricky when your competitors are begging you to put all your conversations, projects, and hard work right into the palms of their hands.

    To make sure its competitors aren’t able to look behind its tightly drawn curtains, Microsoft has a list of online services that it forbids its workforce to use, according to a report from GeekWire. They’re familiar names for most modern professionals: Slack, Google Docs, and Amazon Web Services (among others).

    Despite the popularity of some of these services that allow for easy communication between employees and data storing and sharing, Microsoft wants to make sure everybody is keeping all their information in-house with its own programs. Actually, not even all of its own programs are safe, as the Microsoft-owned GitHub is also off limits.

  • What are you working on this summer?

    Tell us about your summer project by taking our poll. Plus, read what our writers are working on.

  • [Mozilla] Emily Dunham: More on Mentorship

    Last year, I wrote about some of the aspirations which motivated my move from Mozilla Research to the CloudOps team. At the recent Mozilla All Hands in Whistler, I had the “how’s the new team going?” conversation with many old and new friends, and that repetition helped me reify some ideas about what I really meant by “I’d like better mentorship”.

  • Science

    • Asteroids, SUSE and Protecting the Planet

      Asteroid Day is a global awareness campaign where people from around the world come together to learn about asteroids, the impact hazard they may pose, and what we can do to protect our planet, families, communities and future generations from future asteroid impacts. Asteroid Day takes place on June 30, the anniversary of the largest impact in recent history, the 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia. That asteroid decimated about 800 square miles (to put that in perspective, greater London is about 600 square miles). It’s estimated that a Tunguska-level “city-killer” asteroid hits the Earth every 500 years. So, while there is nothing to lose sleep over, it’s imperative that we are aware and have a plan.

  • Security

    • Daniel Stenberg: openssl engine code injection in curl

      This flaw is known as CVE-2019-5443.

      If you downloaded and installed a curl executable for Windows from the curl project before June 21st 2019, go get an updated one. Now.

    • Fedora’s GRUB2 EFI Build To Offer Greater Security Options

      In addition to disabling root password-based SSH log-ins by default, another change being made to Fedora 31 in the name of greater security is adding some additional GRUB2 boot-loader modules to be built-in for their EFI boot-loader.

      GRUB2 security modules for verification, Cryptodisk, and LUKS will now be part of the default GRUB2 EFI build. They are being built-in now since those using the likes of UEFI SecureBoot aren’t able to dynamically load these modules due to restrictions in place under SecureBoot. So until now using SecureBoot hasn’t allowed users to enjoy encryption of the boot partition and the “verify” module with ensuring better integrity of the early boot-loader code.

    • Fedora 31 Will Finally Disable OpenSSH Root Password-Based Logins By Default

      Fedora 31 will harden up its default configuration by finally disabling password-based OpenSSH root log-ins, matching the upstream default of the past four years and behavior generally enforced by other Linux distributions.

      The default OpenSSH daemon configuration file will now respect upstream’s default of prohibiting passwords for root log-ins. Those wishing to restore the old behavior of allowing root log-ins with a password can adjust their SSHD configuration file with the PermitRootLogin option, but users are encouraged to instead use a public-key for root log-ins that is more secure and will be permitted still by default.

    • Warning Issued For Millions Of Microsoft Windows 10 Users

      Picked up by Gizmodo, acclaimed Californian security company SafeBreach has revealed that software pre-installed on PCs has left “millions” of users exposed to hackers. Moreover, that estimate is conservative with the number realistically set to be hundreds of millions.

      The flaw lies in PC-Doctor Toolbox, systems analysis software which is rebadged and pre-installed on PCs made by some of the world’s biggest computer retailers, including Dell, its Alienware gaming brand, Staples and Corsair. Dell alone shipped almost 60M PCs last year and the company states PC-Doctor Toolbox (which it rebrands as part of ‘SupportAssist’) was pre-installed on “most” of them.

      What SafeBreach has discovered is a high-severity flaw which allows attackers to swap-out harmless DLL files loaded during Toolbox diagnostic scans with DLLs containing a malicious payload. The injection of this code impacts both Windows 10 business and home PCs and enables hackers to gain complete control of your computer.

      What makes it so dangerous is PC-makers give Toolbox high-permission level access to all your computer’s hardware and software so it can be monitored. The software can even give itself new, higher permission levels as it deems necessary. So once malicious code is injected via Toolbox, it can do just about anything to your PC.

    • Update Your Dell Laptop Now to Fix a Critical Security Flaw in Pre-Installed Software

      SafeBreach Labs said it targeted SupportAssist, software pre-installed on most Dell PCs designed to check the health of the system’s hardware, based on the assumption that “such a critical service would have high permission level access to the PC hardware as well as the capability to induce privilege escalation.”

      What the researchers found is that the application loads DLL files from a folder accessible to users, meaning the files can be replaced and used to load and execute a malicious payload.

      There are concerns the flaw may affect non-Dell PCs, as well.

      The affected module within SupportAssist is a version of PC-Doctor Toolbox found in a number of other applications, including: Corsair ONE Diagnostics, Corsair Diagnostics, Staples EasyTech Diagnostics, Tobii I-Series Diagnostic Tool, and Tobii Dynavox Diagnostic Tool.

      The most effective way to prevent DLL hijacking is to quickly apply patches from the vendor. To fix this bug, either allow automatic updates to do its job, or download the latest version of Dell SupportAssist for Business PCs (x86 or x64) or Home PCs (here).

      You can read a full version of the SafeBreach Labs report here.

    • TCP SACK PANIC Kernel Vulnerabilities Reported by Netflix Researchers

      On June 17th, Researchers at Netflix have identified several TCP networking vulnerabilities in FreeBSD and Linux kernels.

    • DNS Security – Getting it Right

      This paper addresses the privacy implications of two new Domain Name System (DNS) encryption protocols: DNS-over-TLS (DoT) and DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH). Each of these protocols provides a means to secure the transfer of data during Internet domain name lookup, and they prevent monitoring and abuse of user data in this process.

      DoT and DoH provide valuable new protection for users online. They add protection to one of the last remaining unencrypted ‘core’ technologies of the modern Internet, strengthen resistance to censorship and can be coupled with additional protections to provide full user anonymity.

      Whilst DoT and DoH appear to be a win for Internet users, however, they raise issues for network operators concerned with Internet security and operational efficiency. DoH in particular makes it extremely difficult for network operators to implement domain-specific filters or blocks, which may have a negative impact on UK government strategies for the Internet which rely on these. We hope that a shift to encrypted DNS will lead to decreased reliance on network-level filtering for censorship.

    • OpenSSH adds protection against Spectre, Meltdown, RAMBleed

      OpenSSH, a widely used suite of programs for secure (SSH protocol-based) remote login, has been equipped with protection against side-channel attacks that could allow attackers to extract private keys from memory.

    • How to take the pain out of patching Linux and Windows systems at scale

      Patching can be manually intensive and time-consuming, requiring large amounts of coordination and processes. Tony Green gives the best tips.

    • Removal of IBRS mitigation for Spectre Variant2

      As the Meltdown and Spectre attacks were published begin of January 2018, several mitigations were planned and implemented for Spectre Variant 2.

    • Go and FIPS 140-2 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

      Red Hat provides the Go programming language to Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers via the go-toolset package. If this package is new to you, and you want to learn more, check out some of the previous articles that have been written for some background.

      The go-toolset package is currently shipping Go version 1.11.x, with Red Hat planning to ship 1.12.x in Fall 2019. Currently, the go-toolset package only provides the Go toolchain (e.g., the compiler and associated tools like gofmt); however, we are looking into adding other tools to provide a more complete and full-featured Go development environment.

      In this article, I will talk about some of the improvements, changes, and exciting new features for go-toolset that we have been working on. These changes bring many upstream improvements and CVE fixes, as well as new features that we have been developing internally alongside upstream.

    • Check your password security with Have I Been Pwned? and pass

      Password security involves a broad set of practices, and not all of them are appropriate or possible for everyone. Therefore, the best strategy is to develop a threat model by thinking through your most significant risks—who and what you are protecting against—then model your security approach on the activities that are most effective against those specific threats. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has a great series on threat modeling that I encourage everyone to read.

      In my threat model, I am very concerned about the security of my passwords against (among other things) dictionary attacks, in which an attacker uses a list of likely or known passwords to try to break into a system. One way to stop dictionary attacks is to have your service provider rate-limit or deny login attempts after a certain number of failures. Another way is not to use passwords in the “known passwords” dataset.

    • Security updates for Monday
    • OpenSSH code gets an update to protect against side-channel attacks

      Last week, Damien Miller, a Google security researcher, and one of the popular OpenSSH and OpenBSD developers announced an update to the existing OpenSSH code that can help protect against the side-channel attacks that leak sensitive data from computer’s memory. This protection, Miller says, will protect the private keys residing in the RAM against Spectre, Meltdown, Rowhammer, and the latest RAMBleed attack.

      SSH private keys can be used by malicious threat actors to connect to remote servers without the need of a password. According to CSO, “The approach used by OpenSSH could be copied by other software projects to protect their own keys and secrets in memory”.

      However, if the attacker is successful in extracting the data from a computer or server’s RAM, they will only obtain an encrypted version of an SSH private key, rather than the cleartext version.

    • Bird Miner cryptominer targets Macs, emulates Linux [Ed: This is actually malware that spreads itself using proprietary software and not about "Linux"]

      A new cryptominer, dubbed Bird Miner, has been spotted in the wild targeting Mac devices and running via Linux emulation under the guise of a production software tool.

    • Linux Admins! Grab Our Free Tool To Protect Against Netflix SACK Panic

      Your Linux boxes may be vulnerable to TCP networking vulnerabilities that can lead to a remote DoS attack.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran”

      Was the U.S. spy drone that Iran shot down On Thursday, June 20th, in international airspace, or was it over Iranian airspace as Iran insists? Flight coordinates in strategic locations are easy to access, but that misses the point altogether. Here is the point:

      The U.S. has acted belligerently and violated the most basic tenets of the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter by abrogating its responsibilities under the Iran nuclear deal, then punishing the Iranian people collectively with economic sanctions that affect their ability to live their lives in a nation not at war. The U.S. has sent masses of troops to the Middle East to ready for war against Iran and has made charges that are unproven that Iran attacked oil tankers. The U.S. has waged a propaganda war against Iran through the words of both Pompeo and Bolton. Donald Trump has added to the verbal assault by his mercurial threats of war (illegal under the UN Charter) and the reality of the economic sanctions that his administration has put in place against Iran.

      Further, in order for war to be declared, there must be an actual threat against a nation and that threat has not been substantiated. That premise, the basis for accepted rules or laws of war, is thousands of years old. The people and government of the U.S. do not stand in harm’s way by the alleged actions of Iran against the oil tankers and spy drone and no ally of the U.S. suffers any of those same consequences. Neither the governments of Great Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, and others are in any danger from the actions that Iran has taken in the face of grave threats of force and real economic threats from the U.S. and others in the West.

    • The Question of Character

      Every now and then, I feel myself compelled to write something I know that the majority of my readers will not agree with. That is because I do not go along with left wing groupthink any more than I go along with the line of the Establishment. I do not subscribe to a set of opinions. but attempt to consider every question afresh.

      Wikileaks is much criticised for having published the leaked Hillary and Podesta emails, thus having “caused” Trump. At its extreme, this involves the entire evidence free “Russiagate” paranoia. I find myself criticised for my association with Julian Assange on these same grounds.

      The major answer to this is that it would have been morally wrong to conceal the evidence of Hillary’s wrongdoing, her associations with the Saudis and the Bankers, and particularly the rigging of the primary elections against Bernie Sanders by Hillary and the DNC. If I was accused of association with concealing all that, I would not be able to defend Wikileaks. Another part of the answer is that I am not sure any of this much affected the actual votes cast. But the most important bit of the answer is that I am not sorry that Clinton lost and Trump won.

      I say that with apologies to all my American friends who are suffering from Trump’s harsh domestic policies and his version of the “hostile climate for immigrants” which we have long suffered in the UK. I do not underestimate the harm done by Trump’s penchant for trade wars, or his blindly pro-Israel policies and gestures, nor the continuation of the Saudi anti-Shia alliance.

    • Yankee Worship of Bombings and Endless Wars

      “From Syria to Yemen in the Middle East, from Libya to Somalia in Africa, from Afghanistan to Pakistan in South Asia, all forming a U.S. air curtain descending on a huge swath of the planet with the declared goal of fighting terrorism. Its main method is summed up in surveillance, bombardments and more constant bombardments. Its political benefit is to minimize the number of “United States boots on the ground” and, therefore, American casualties in the never-ending war on terrorism, as well as public protests over Washington’s many conflicts. It’s economic benefit: plenty of high-performance business for arms manufacturers for whom the president can now declare a national security emergency whenever he wants and sell his warplanes and ammunition to preferred dictatorships in the Middle East (no congressional approval required). Its reality for several foreign peoples: a sustained diet of bombs and missiles “Made in the USA” that explode here, there and everywhere.

      This is how William J. Astore, a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel and now a history professor, interprets the cult of bombing on a global scale that he views in his country, as well as the fact that U.S. wars are being fought more and more from the air, not on the ground, a reality that makes the prospect of ending them increasingly daunting, and finally asks: What is driving this process?

      “For many of America’s decision-makers,” Astore says, “air power has clearly become a sort of abstraction. “After all, with the exception of the September 11 [2001] attacks by four hijacked commercial airliners, Americans have not been the target of such attacks since World War II. On the battlefields of Washington, the Greater Middle East and North Africa, air power is almost literally always a one-way street. There are no enemy air forces or significant air defenses. The skies are the exclusive property of the U.S. Air Force and its allies, so we are no longer talking about “war” in the normal sense. No wonder Washington’s politicians and military see it as our strength, our asymmetric advantage, our way of settling accounts with wrongdoers, real and imaginary.

    • The Antiwar Movement No One Can See

      When Donald Trump entered the Oval Office in January 2017, Americans took to the streets all across the country to protest their instantly endangered rights. Conspicuously absent from the newfound civic engagement, despite more than a decade and a half of this country’s fruitless, destructive wars across the Greater Middle East and northern Africa, was antiwar sentiment, much less an actual movement.

      Those like me working against America’s seemingly endless wars wondered why the subject merited so little discussion, attention, or protest. Was it because the still-spreading war on terror remained shrouded in government secrecy? Was the lack of media coverage about what America was doing overseas to blame? Or was it simply that most Americans didn’t care about what was happening past the water’s edge? If you had asked me two years ago, I would have chosen “all of the above.” Now, I’m not so sure.

      After the enormous demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the antiwar movement disappeared almost as suddenly as it began, with some even openly declaring it dead. Critics noted the long-term absence of significant protests against those wars, a lack of political will in Congress to deal with them, and ultimately, apathy on matters of war and peace when compared to issues like health care, gun control, or recently even climate change.

      The pessimists have been right to point out that none of the plethora of marches on Washington since Donald Trump was elected have had even a secondary focus on America’s fruitless wars. They’re certainly right to question why Congress, with the constitutional duty to declare war, has until recently allowed both presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump to wage war as they wished without even consulting them. They’re right to feel nervous when a national poll shows that more Americans think we’re fighting a war in Iran (we’re not) than a war in Somalia (we are).

    • Iran—Who and Where is The Threat?

      The official US narrative on Iran is that it is an escalating threat to “peace and security” in the Middle East and must be stopped. Step by step, with Mike Pompeo and John Bolton—two war maniacs—taking the lead, the Trump administration has sought to destabilize Iran with sanctions, if possible bring about regime change, and if necessary provoke actions by Iran that will provide a pretext for war. If this sounds similar to the nonexistent Gulf of Tonkin “incident” in 1964 and the false pretenses behind the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, it should. Only this time around is even more dangerous and more preposterous.

      Journalists and Congress members have been pestering Trump and his aides with questions about their determination to go to war with Iran. Trump, typically, tells reporters to wait and see, stymieing them. They should be asking different questions, such as: What threat does Iran pose to US interests? Why shouldn’t Iran’s actions be considered responses to the US policy of “maximum pressure”? The answers to these two questions are clear: Iran is doing nothing that constitutes a new threat to US or any other country’s interests, and Iran’s latest actions—even if Tehran is responsible for the attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf and the downing of a US drone—are best understood as responses to US provocations.

      What I believe we are now witnessing is the result of the ascendance of the hardliners on both sides. US policy since the appointments of Pompeo and Bolton and withdrawal from the nuclear deal has energized their counterparts in Iran—the Revolutionary Guards, certain military leaders, and others long opposed to the nuclear deal and now able to show that the Americans are completely untrustworthy.

    • The West’s Disgraceful Silence on the Death of Morsi

      Ye Gods, how brave was our response to the outrageous death-in-a-cage of Mohamed Morsi. It is perhaps a little tiresome to repeat all the words of regret and mourning, of revulsion and horror, of eardrum-busting condemnation pouring forth about the death of Egypt’s only elected president in his Cairo courtroom this week. From Downing Street and from the White House, from the German Chancellery to the Elysee – and let us not forget the Berlaymont – our statesmen and women did us proud. Wearying it would be indeed to dwell upon their remorse and protests at Morsi’s death.

      For it was absolutely non-existent: zilch; silence; not a mutter; not a bird’s twitter – or a mad president’s Twitter, for that matter – or even the most casual, offhand word of regret. Those who claim to represent us were mute, speechless, as sound-proofed as Morsi was in his courtroom cage and as silent as he is now in his Cairo grave.

      It was as if Morsi never lived, as if his few months in power never existed – which is pretty much what Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, his nemesis and ex-gaoler, wants the history books to say.

      So three cheers again for our parliamentary democracies, which always speak with one voice about tyranny. Save for the old UN donkey and a few well-known bastions of freedom – Turkey, Malaysia, Qatar, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood-in-exile and all the usual suspects – Morsi’s memory and his final moments were as if they had never been. Crispin Blunt alone has tried to keep Britain’s conscience alive. So has brave little Tunisia. Much good will it do.

    • Eve of Destruction: Iran Strikes Back

      Like everyone else who can say “Gulf of Tonkin,” “Remember the Maine,” and “Iraqi WMDs,” my instinctive reaction to the attacks on two tankers, a month after explosions hit four oil tankers in the UAE port of Fujairah, was: “Oh, come on now!” We know the United States, egged on by Israel and Saudi Arabia, has been itching to launch some kind of military attack on Iran, and we are positively jaded by the formula that’s always used to produce a justification for such aggression.

      It seemed beyond credibility that Iran would attack a Japanese tanker, the Kokuka Courageous, at the moment the Prime Minister of Japan was sitting down with Ayatollah Khamenei in Tehran. After all, Iran is eager to keep its oil exports flowing, so it would hardly want to so flagrantly insult one of its top oil customers.

      Nor did it seem to make sense that Iran would target a Norwegian vessel, Front Altair. That tanker is owned the shipping company, Frontline, which belongs to Norway’s richest man (before he moved to Cyprus), John Fredriksen. Fredriksen made his fortune moving Iranian oil during the Iran-Iraq war, where his tankers came under constant fire from Iraq, and were hit by missiles three times. He became known as “the Ayatollah’s lifeline.” Furthermore, as the Wall Street Journal reports, Fredriksen’s Frontline company has continued to help Iran move its oil in a way that evades sanctions. A friendlier resource Iran has not. This is the guy Iran chose to target, in another gratuitous insult?

    • Sorting Out Reality From Fiction About Venezuela

      Last April marked a special anniversary for Cuba but one that we should all reflect upon given the current events in Latin America, particularly in Venezuela. In mid-April 1961 three cities in Cuba were bombed at the same time from the air. Immediately the US government claimed that Cuban defectors carried out the action with Cuban planes and pilots. The media quickly “confirmed the actions”.

      These were false flag attacks organized by the US.

      In a large mass rally in Havana the next day Fidel Castro pronounced a very important speech where he called John Kennedy and the media liars. That was the speech where Fidel declared the “socialist character” of the Cuban revolution. [1]

      US interventions, military and parliamentary coups have been relentless before and since in Latin America. Often they are preceded by outright disinformation in order to misrepresent events and demonize the target government as a prelude to legitimize a more aggressive intervention.

      Fast-forward to the 21st Century, pan quickly over the Middle East, and zoom into our Western hemisphere today and you will see Venezuela. Not the country that most Venezuelans want you to see, but the country that the US government and its allies – Canada at the forefront – want you to see. Reportedly, one that needs a regime change.

      The level of disinformation about Venezuela has been widely exposed by political analysts like Dan Kovalik [2] and media groups like Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), which indicated that corporate media in the United States has undertaken “a full-scale marketing campaign for regime change in Venezuela”. [3]

      In an article last April Time magazine said, “Venezuelans are starving for information”. To which VenezuelaAnalysis.com responded that, “Creative reporting about Venezuela is ‘the world’s most lucrative fictional genre’ “, and it goes on to show how there are three private TV channels, a satellite provider that covers FOX News, CNN and BBC. Anti-government print media is also widely accessible as well as online outlets. [4]

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Pursuit of profit won’t solve climate crisis

      Resolving the climate crisis demands radical political change, a British author argues: the end of free market capitalism.

      You could turn the entire United Kingdom into a giant wind farm and it still wouldn’t generate all of the UK’s current energy demand. That is because only 2% of the solar energy that slams into and powers the whole planet on a daily basis is converted into wind, and most of that is either high in the jet stream or far out to sea.

      Hydropower could in theory supply most of or perhaps even all the energy needs of 7 billion humans, but only if every drop that falls as rain was saved to power the most perfectly efficient turbines.

      And that too is wildly unrealistic, says Mike Berners-Lee in his thoughtful and stimulating new paperback There Is No Planet B. He adds: “Thank goodness, as it would mean totally doing away with mountain streams and even, if you really think about it, hillsides.”

    • Majority of Americans Know Fossil Fuel Companies Drive Climate Change, Should Pay for Damages

      The majority of Americans say fossil fuel companies should pay for damage caused by climate change, according to a recent poll released by Yale University on Wednesday.

      Researchers asked 5,131 Americans how much they think global warming is harming their local communities, who they think should be responsible for paying for the damages, and whether they support lawsuits to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for those costs.

    • Cigarette Waste: New Solutions for the World’s Most-littered Trash

      By now it’s no secret that plastic waste in our oceans is a global epidemic. When some of it washes ashore — plastic bottles, plastic bags, food wrappers — we get a stark reminder. And lately one part of this problem has been most glaring to volunteers who comb beaches picking up trash: cigarette butts.

      Last year the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy reported that cigarette butts, which contain plastic and toxic chemicals, were the most-littered item at their global beach cleanups.

      Trillions of butts are tossed each year. So what’s being done about it?

    • How Mountain Bikes Threaten Wilderness

      Mountain Biking is a significant threat to our wildlands—both in designated preserves like national parks, wilderness areas, and the like, but also Wilderness Study Areas (WSA) and roadless lands that may potentially be given Congressional protection under the 1964 Wilderness Act.

      Wilderness designation is one of the best ways to protect biodiversity, watersheds, wildlife habitat, and natural ecological processes. And in this day of climate change, protecting forests, shrublands, deserts, and grasslands in our national wilderness system is also one of the best ways to store carbon.

      Lest we forget, there is a finite amount of public land that can qualify for wilderness designation. If we must err on one side or the other, we ought to err on the side of protecting our wildlands heritage.

      It is important to note that recreation is not the same as conservation. In any dispute about whether to increase recreational use/access or place limits on recreation, protection of wildlife and wildlands should always receive top priority.

      One of the philosophical values of wilderness is the idea of restraint. When we designate a wilderness area, we as a society are asserting that nature and natural processes have priority, and we accept limits on ourselves. It is a lesson that is increasingly important for all to learn in an age of climate change, population growth, biodiversity loss, and other major environmental issues.

      In a world filled with such vexing and overwhelming issues, worrying about bicycles on trails can seem trivial and inconsequential. But it’s important to note that bicycles and other mechanical conveyances, and the lack of commitment to personal restraint that it can foster is indicative of the broader challenges facing society. Namely, how do we live on this planet without destroying it? Self-control and restraint will be critical to our future.

    • The Gallatin Forest Partnership and the Tyranny of Ego

      We all have egos that we erect to circumscribe and reify the “self,” or so I have been told. Some scholars have gone so far as to argue that our lives consist of little more than obsessively hitting the world’s feeder bar to obtain emotional and material rewards for the ego, not unlike rats in a gigantic elaborate maze. Even so, this fundamental premise obscures important distinctions between motivations that literally arise from different portions of our brains, as well as from our narratives about who we are, what’s important, and why. And such distinctions matter when it comes to the consequences of our actions for both ourselves and others.

      [...]

      For the last four-plus years the vast 3.1-million acre Custer-Gallatin National Forest of Montana has been in the process of revising its Forest Plan. This process will eventually produce an authoritative Record of Decision that determines what people will or will not be able do with specific parcels of the Forest; essentially, a land use plan with legal teeth. In certain places people will be able to ride mountain bikes, in other places, they won’t; likewise for Off-Highway-Vehicles, or OHVs. And, so on, for timber harvest, livestock grazing, camping, hang-gliding, or generally running amuck.

      These planning processes are invariably contentious as stakeholders strive to have their interests codified in the Forest Plan. Some of this struggle plays out in public, in the press or through formal processes eliciting public input. Some plays out in a more overtly political way, often behind closed doors or in the muddy waters of far-off Washington, DC. In the aftermath, litigation is not uncommon. The Forest Service is invariably caught in the middle in ways that deplete morale, amplify anxiety, and jeopardize careers—at least for the proximally-involved personnel.

    • Pickin’ and Choosin’ the Winners and Losers of Climate Change

      The official government pickin’and choosin’ of the winners and losers of climate change already has begun.

      If you’re still in the tribe that thinks climate change is maybe not a thing, or a thing that might happen a hundred years from now, perhaps you might like to consider this: everyone else is already moving beyond that debate and starting to pick and choose who’s gonna be saved and who’s not, who’s gonna be a winner and who’s gonna be a loser. If you want to have anything to say about which of those two camps you get slotted into, maybe it’s time to reconsider your position.

      The New York Times reported (June 19) that two federal government agencies are now developing rules for giving out billions of dollars in grants to help cities and states defend themselves from the destructive effects of climate change.

      Since we live in nonsense times, of course this is happening while the Republican President and his minions are denying that climate change is even happening, and the leadership of the Democratic Party is refusing to allow its leading presidential candidates to engage in public debate about it so it won’t become a major issue in the 2020 campaign. Tra lala lala lala

      And now the bad news. The experts say that there won’t possibly be enough money to defend all the places that need defending. That’s where the pickin’ and choosin’ comes in.

  • Finance

    • The Old Japan Disaster Horror Story

      A theme often repeated in the media is that Japan is suffering terribly because of its low birth rates and shrinking population. This has meant slow growth, labor shortages, and an enormous government debt.

      Like many items that are now popular wisdom, the story is pretty much nonsense. Let’s start at the most basic measure, per capita GDP growth. Yeah, I said per capita GDP growth because insofar as we care about growth it is on a per person basis, not total growth. After all, Bangladesh has a GDP that is more than twice as large as Denmark’s, but would anyone in their right mind say that the people of Bangladesh enjoy a higher standard of living? (Denmark’s GDP is more than twelve times as high on a per capita basis.)

      On a per capita basis, Japan’s economy has grown at an average annual rate of 1.4 percent since the collapse of its stock and real estate in 1990. That’s somewhat less than the 2.3 percent rate of the U.S. economy, but hardly seems like a disaster. By comparison, per capita growth has averaged just 0.8 percent annually since the collapse of the housing bubble in 2007 in the United States.

      But per capita income is just the beginning of any story of comparative well-being. There are many other factors that are as important in determining people’s living standards. To take an obvious one that gets far too little attention, the length of the average work year has declined far more over this period in Japan than in the United States.

    • Financed by Tax on Wall Street Speculators, Sanders Plan Would Wipe Out All $1.6 Trillion in US Student Loan Debt

      “This is truly a revolutionary proposal,” Sanders told the Washington Post, which reported the details of the Vermont senator’s bill late Sunday. “In a generation hard hit by the Wall Street crash of 2008, it forgives all student debt and ends the absurdity of sentencing an entire generation to a lifetime of debt for the ‘crime’ of getting a college education.”

      Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, will introduce his proposal alongside Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who plan to unveil the Student Debt Cancellation Act and the College for All Act in the House.

      “I am one of the 45 million people with student debt—45 million people who are held back from pursuing their dreams because of the student debt crisis,” Omar tweeted Sunday. “It’s why I’m proud to stand with Sen. Sanders and Rep. Jayapal to pass college for all and cancel student debt.”

      The three lawmakers will introduce their proposals in a press conference Monday morning outside the U.S. Capitol building.

    • Facebook’s Libra Isn’t a “Cryptocurrency”

      In mid-June, Facebook — in cahoots with 28 partners in the financial and tech sectors — announced plans to introduce Libra, a blockchain-based virtual currency.

      The world’s governments and central banks reacted quickly with calls for investigation and regulation. Their concerns are quite understandable, but unfortunately already addressed in Libra’s planned structure.

      The problem for governments and central banks:

      A new currency with no built-in respect for political borders, and with a preexisting global user base of 2.4 billion Facebook users in nearly every country on Earth, could seriously disrupt the control those institutions exercise over our finances and our lives.

      The accommodation Facebook is already making to those concerns:

      Libra is envisaged as a “stablecoin,” backed by the currencies and debt instruments of those governments and central banks themselves and administered through a “permissioned” blockchain ledger by equally centralized institutions (Facebook itself, Visa, Mastercard, et al.).

      To put it a different way, Libra will not be a true cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Ether. Neither its creation nor its transactions will be decentralized and distributed, let alone easily made anonymous. A “blockchain” is just a particular kind of ledger for keeping track of transactions. It does not, in and of itself, a cryptocurrency make.

      In simple terms, Libra is just a new brand for old products: Digital gift cards and pre-paid debit cards.

    • Burning Down the Future

      The hulk of Grenfell Tower, its charred sides covered by sheets of white plastic, stands as a mute and ominous testament to the disposability of the poor and the primacy of corporate profit. On June 14, 2017, a fire leaped up the sides of the 24-story building, clad in highly flammable siding, leaving 72 dead and 70 injured. Almost 100 families were left homeless. It was Britain’s worst residential fire since World War II. Those burned to death, including children, would not have died if builders had used costlier cladding that was incombustible and if the British government had protected the public from corporate predators. Grenfell is the face of the new order. It is an order in which you and I do not count.

      I walked the streets around the tower on the two-year anniversary of the fire with Kareem Dennis, better known by his rapper name, Lowkey (watch his music video about Grenfell)—and Karim Mussilhy, who lost his uncle, Hesham Rahman, in the blaze and who has been abruptly terminated from two jobs since the disaster apparently because of his fierce public denunciations of officials responsible for the deaths. Families, some wearing T-shirts with photos of loved ones who died in the conflagration, solemnly entered a building for a private memorial. A stage was being prepared for a rally that night a block from the tower. It would draw over 10,000 people. Flowers and balloons lay at the foot of the wall that surrounds the tower. Handwritten messages of pain, loss and love, plus photos of the dead, covered the wall. The demolition of Grenfell Tower will take 18 more months as each floor is methodically dismantled.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • The Journalist as Hemorrhoid

      Occasionally I am subject to the hysterical stupidity of cable news, as when, for example, my father and I spend time together. He is 80, and likes to watch drivel such as CNN, Bloomberg Business and the like. It is always a stunning experience to see the performing monkeys who masquerade on camera as journalists, since I get to see it so rarely.

      First off, on this miserable morning of June 20, is the perfumed cheerleading squad at Bloomberg, who are prattling on and on about an IPO by a tech company called Slack. “We are on tenterhooks,” the little minstrels tell us. Me too – I’m waiting for the moment when someone blows up Bloomberg Business with a Molotov cocktail. But alas, it doesn’t happen, and onward they race, in rapt attention to issues of total insignificance (this Slack being a company that…well, I don’t know what it does, but it probably doesn’t feed, clothe, or house the poor and the needy, or protect wild creatures and wild places, or educate our children – it probably does something totally useless, which is the reason the IPO is doing so well and the executives will be multimilllionaires by day’s end).

      Click – now we are at CNN, where the bloviators are delving into the question of whether we should attack Iran over its downing of one of the United States’ pieces of flying junk (a drone, apparently – or so the government and media inform us). The matter at hand – the only matter for the folks at CNN – is one of expedience, the utilitarian value of a military response, the “cost” to the United States in treasure and manpower, the “value” of the diplomatic and political “gain” of such an attack. We are talking about war here; we are talking about murder, though nothing of that is said. We

    • BorisGate is Beneath Us

      There had apparently been reports of a loud argument, banging and yelling etc. The police talked to both the people present and then left. No one was detained, charged, cautioned. Legally speaking, there was no incident. It would not warrant a mention most of the time.

      However, the same neighbours who called the police also recorded the argument and sent the recording to The Guardian.

      The Guardian, who have all the class of the Daily Mail, but none of the honesty, duly published it. Red banner. Shrieking tabloid headline. At least The Sun admits what it is.

      And so we have Borisgate, or rather #BorisGate.

      Boris refused to answer questions about the incident the next day, and Jeremy Hunt has been piling on the pressure to produce “an explanation”. Apparently “we had a row, it’s none of your business” isn’t enough of an explanation.

      Hunt’s obsession with this topic is understandable, he’s massively trailing in the leadership contest and needs all the ammunition he can get his hands on.

    • Revisiting Morality in the Age of Dishonesty

      If Donald Trump actually follows through on his recently tweeted promise that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “will begin deporting the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States … as fast as they come in,” what will you do?

      According to the faith I was raised with I hope I would act according to the lessons found in the parable of the Good Samaritan. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus told of a traveler who was beaten, stripped, and left naked waiting for death. People who claimed to be great believers avoided this victim, but it was the Samaritan who stopped and freely rendered aid—selfless altruism. Charity, compassion, and forgiveness are the highest values I was raised with. I do my best to dedicate myself to their service, and I’m sure I’m not the only one left in a bind: what will I do?

      Recent stories tell of modern day Samaritans rendering aid to travelers (some seeking asylum, some trying to immigrate legally, some illegally…) at great risk. The case of Scott Warren in Arizona presents offering humanitarian aid as a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison; but there is no verdict, the jury is hung. His specific crimes are putting out food and water, and pointing directions (actions consistent with No More Deaths, a part of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson), which appears reflect values just like I was raised with. Do I have the strength to follow my religious convictions, even in the face of criminal prosecution like Warren has?

      Our current context should make us struggle no matter how much we think we’ve figured out. The case against Food Not Bombs taught us–after some alarming incidents to the contrary–that feeding the homeless is an act of protected expression, but with migrants the acts of feeding and pointing direction could invoke serious punishment. Do you love your Mexican or Central American neighbor enough to risk prosecution?

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Failing to Identify Real Party In Interest was Excusable Error that Did Not Reset Petition Filing Date

      With regard to the PTAB guidance, the court noted that such guidance was “non binding” [upon whom?] and that the Board had allowed several petition corrections without changing the filing date.

      Why Do It? – Privileged: The gaping hole in in the analysis is any discussion of why MSD did not name its parent company who was being sued for infringement as a real party in interest.

      In the IPR, Merck’s attorneys (who represented both companies) indicated that they had intentionally omitted MCI as a real-party-in-interest, but did not explain their actions other than: “privileged legal strategy immune from discovery” (although this is in quotes, it is my paraphrasing). The key patent-related reason here that comes to mind is that – at the time – Merck thought it might get around IPR estoppel by having its subsidiary file the petition. It was not until more than a year later that Merck agreed that both companies would be bound by any resulting estoppel.

      Appealable: The patent challenger also argued that the issue here is not appealable because it is tied to institution. On appeal, the Federal Circuit ducked that issue and instead held that the case is affirmed whether or not it is appealable. (Interesting jurisprudence dance on this one).

    • Power Integrations, Inc. v. Semiconductor Components Industries, LLC (Fed. Cir. 2019)

      Power Integrations owns U.S. Patent Nos. 6,212,079 and 8,115,457, among others. Fairchild Semiconductor filed two ex parte reexamination proceedings challenging claims of the ’079 patent in 2005 and 2006; the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office confirmed the patentability of the claims in September 2009. Two months later, in November 2009, Power Integrations sued Fairchild for infringement of the ’079 patent and the ’457 patent (and one other patent not at issue here). In March 2014, a jury found that Fairchild infringed claims of the ’079 patent (but no claims of the ’457 patent), and that the infringed claims were not invalid. The jury awarded $105 million in damages. Fairchild moved post-trial for a new trial on damages, the District Court granted the motion, and the jury on re-trial awarded damages of $139.8 million.[1] Fairchild appealed on both liability and damages; the Federal Circuit affirmed the finding of infringement but vacated the damages award because the entire market value rule should not have been applied and remanded the case for further proceedings.

      Just prior to the damages re-trial, in November 2015, Semiconductor Components (which did business as ON Semiconductor) agreed to merge with Fairchild. The Fairchild-ON merger did not close quickly. Instead, in March 2016, ON filed a petition for inter partes review of claims of the ’079 patent (including all of the claims that had been found infringed by Fairchild). Five months later, ON filed an IPR petition related to the ’457 patent. The Fairchild-ON merger then closed just four days before the IPR related to the ’079 patent was instituted on September 23, 2016.

      [...]

      Notably, while the Federal Circuit panel (Chief Judge Prost and Judges Reyna and Stoll) held that privity can be determined at least as late as the time of institution, it left open the possibility that later events could be relevant to the determination of privity.[6] Of course, the reasoning of the opinion — based on the express language of the statute — would be contrary to an extension of the time bar to any time after institution of review. But given the extreme circumstances of the Power Integrations case, the Federal Circuit did not want to cut off the possibility that privity would not have applied if the Fairchild-ON merger had closed five days later. Thus, it is possible that post-institution facts could still be relevant to determining whether an IPR is time-barred, in addition to the certainty that all pre-institution circumstances are to be considered.

Links 24/6/2019: Linux 5.2 RC6, Skrooge 2.20.0, ZFS vs. OpenZFS

Posted in News Roundup at 1:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Hardware Review – The ZaReason Virtus 9200 Desktop
    • Chrome OS 76 will disable Crostini Linux backups by default

      Essentially, this is still a work in progress feature. And I shouldn’t be terribly surprised by that, even though in my experience, the functionality hasn’t failed me yet.

      That’s because we know that the Chromium team is considering on a way to backup and restore Linux containers directly from the Files app on a Chromebook. That proposal is targeted for Chrome OS 78, so this gives the team more time to work that out, as well as any other nits that might not be quite right with the current implementation.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 5.2-rc6
                    
      eally was hoping that we'd continue to have an increasingly quiet
      
              
      and shrinking rc series. But that was not to be.
      
              
      rc6 is the biggest rc in number of commits we've had so far for this
      
              
      5.2 cycle (obviously ignoring the merge window itself and rc1). And
      
              
      it's not just because of trivial patches (although admittedly we have
      
              
      those too), but we obviously had the TCP SACK/fragmentation/mss fixes
      
              
      in there, and they in turn required some fixes too.
      
              
      Happily we did pick up on the problem quickly - largely thanks to the
      
              
      patches making it into distro kernels quickly and then causing
      
              
      problems for the steam client of all things - but it's still something
      
              
      that doesn't exactly make me get the warm and fuzzies at this point in
      
              
      the release cycle.
      
              
      I'm also doing this rc on a Saturday, because I am going to spend all
      
              
      of tomorrow on a plane once again. So I'm traveling first for a
      
              
      conference and then for some R&R on a liveaboard, so I'm going to have
      
              
      spotty access to email for a few days, and then for a week I'll be
      
              
      entirely incommunicado. So rc7 will be delayed.
      
              
      I was thinking that I timed it all really well in what should be the
      
              
      quietest period of the release cycle for me, and now I obviously hope
      
              
      that last week really was a fluke.
    • Linux 5.2-rc6 Released With Steam Networking Fix – The Biggest Post-RC1 Release

      However, he did express optimism still over Linux 5.2 in today’s rc6 announcement, “With all that out of the way, I’m still reasonably optimistic that we’re on track for a calm final part of the release, and I don’t think there is anything particularly bad on the horizon.”

      One important fix merged last night was fixing the kernel issue that was causing Steam network connection issues. That fix has also already been back-ported to maintained stable kernel trees.

    • Linux Foundation

    • Graphics Stack

      • AMD Sends In Navi Support & Other Remaining AMDGPU Changes For Linux 5.3

        On Saturday night AMDGPU/Radeon DRM maintainer Alex Deucher sent in the final batch of feature updates to DRM-Next that is targeting the upcoming Linux 5.3 kernel.

        This final batch of changes is on top of multiple earlier rounds of work already queued in DRM-Next for vetting in the weeks until the Linux 5.3 merge window in early July. Most notable with this final batch of work is the Navi 10 (Radeon RX 5700 series) support.

  • Applications

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • Steam Will No Longer Support Ubuntu : Valve

        Ubuntu users are having a bad week as now Valve says that steam won’t support Ubuntu any more. Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais revealed this shocking news in this tweet.

      • EA calls loot boxes ‘surprise mechanics’ and compares them to Kinder Eggs

        Confusion was a theme—over language, games, the questions—with highlights including one MP asking if Epic can close down text messages. He meant chat, but for a moment Epic’s representatives struggled to explain that they don’t have control over SMS. Later, Fortnite gets compared to a casino.

      • Lutris is an excellent gaming platform!

        In Linux, typically, when there’s a solution to a problem, there are seven other solutions to the same problem. But not so when it comes to Linux gaming. Here, we only have several incomplete solutions to a rather big problem. Steam did massively improve the situation, and it looks like the most mature and likely technology slash software to bring parity to the Linux gaming scene. Still, it’s not a perfect fix.

        There are many Linux games that don’t quite fit the Steam category [sic]. You have old games, indie games with their distribution channels, Windows games that need WINE, and so forth. If you want to have all these under a single umbrella, there isn’t really a solution. Well. Maybe. A challenger appears: Lutris. Let’s have a review.

      • Valve looking to drop support for Ubuntu 19.10 and up due to Canonical’s 32bit decision (updated)

        Update: Canonical are now saying 32bit libraries will be “frozen” and not entirely dropped.

      • Rumour: Ubuntu NOT Dropping 32-bit App Support After All?

        That’s according to Canonical’s Steve Langasek, the author of the original “end of 32-bit support” mailing list post that led to a colourful parade of opinions from users, developers and software projects over the past few days..

        Reaction to the mailing list post’s implication that Ubuntu will no longer support 32-bit apps culminated in a dramatic decision by Valve, who say Steam for Linux will not support Ubuntu 19.10.

        Now, in a forum reply on the Ubuntu Discourse, Langasek appears to row back on the notion that 32-bit libraries will be removed wholesale in the ‘Eoan Ermine’, writing:

        “I’m sorry that we’ve given anyone the impression that we are ‘dropping support for i386 applications‘. It is simply not the case. What we are dropping is updates to the i386 libraries, which will be frozen at the 18.04 LTS versions.”

      • Would Steam Losing Ubuntu Support Make You Switch Distro? [Poll]

        Gamers the globe over were left open-mouthed by a Valve developer’s tweet that Steam for Linux is dropping support for Ubuntu as of the next release, Ubuntu 19.10.

        That snippet of shock followed an announcement by Canonical developers that there’d be no traditional access to 32-bit libraries in the next short-term release of the famed Linux distro.

        While confusion remains as to Canonical’s exact plans for the 32-bit Ubuntu archive — going away entirely? Just being frozen? Something else? — many Ubuntu users have taken to social media to state that if Steam goes from Ubuntu, so will they.

        Would a lack of official support for using the world’s biggest games distribution platform and shop store front on Ubuntu be enough to make YOU switch distro?

      • Ubuntu is dropping support for 32-bit apps and games, so Steam is dropping support for Ubuntu

        Canonical’s Ubuntu operating system is one of the biggest names in desktop GNU/Linux. But if you plan to play PC games on Linux, you might want to start looking around for a different Linux distro.

        Ubuntu developer Steve Langasek announced last week that starting with Ubuntu 19:10, which comes out in October, Canonical would no longer provide 32-bit builds of applications and libraries. This being Linux, there will be workarounds — but many existing apps may not work out of the box anymore.

        Case in point: a number of games from GOG cannot be installed on a pre-release version of Ubuntu 19:10. So it’s not all that surprising that a developer for Valve says that now that Canonical is dropping support for 32-bit software, Valve’s Steam game client is dropping support for Ubuntu.

      • Steam will stop supporting Ubuntu Linux over 32-bit compatibility
      • Canonical’s Decision To Drop 32-Bit Support In Ubuntu Upsets The Linux Gaming Community

        The future of Linux gaming sure is going to be interesting, as Canonical has announced this week that it’s going to be scrapping 32-bit support with Ubuntu 19.10. This was something considered last year, and clearly, even after all of the debate about whether or not it should happen, Canonical feels it’s best to pull the plug and look to the future.

        There are some problems with that, but before we go further, we do want to make clear that this decision is Canonical’s own. The myriad spins based on Ubuntu could take it upon themselves to continue supporting 32-bit libraries. For gamers, what this move means is that Ubuntu is no longer going to be the de facto “simple” choice for Linux gaming.

      • Steam will not support Ubuntu 19.10 onwards

        It is only a few days since Canonical announced that it was dropping support for 32-bit packages as of Ubuntu 19.10. The fall out from this is now being felt.

        While there were many developers who were not happy with the decision, Linux-based gamers are now likely to be more than slightly annoyed. Steam has announced that “Ubuntu 19.10 and future releases will not be officially supported by Steam or recommended to our users”.

      • Ubuntu Developer Talks Down Impact Of 32-Bit Changes For Ubuntu 19.10

        Following Valve saying they won’t be officially supporting Ubuntu 19.10 and Wine developers questioning their Ubuntu 32-bit builds following the announcement this week of not providing new 32-bit packages for new Ubuntu releases, longtime Ubuntu developer and Canonical employee Steve Langasek is trying to provide some clarity into the situation.

      • Steam Is About to Drop Official Support for Ubuntu

        Valve is dropping official support for Ubuntu 19.10 and future releases for its mega-popular Steam video game distribution platform, per Engadget, as the upcoming version of the OS will eliminate updates to 32-bit x86 components. According to Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais, the company will “evaluate ways to minimize breakage for existing users,” though it will also be focusing on “a different distribution, currently TBD.”

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KStars v3.3.1 is released

        KStars v3.3.1 is released for Windows, MacOS, and Linux on all platforms (Intel/AMD and ARM). This is yet another maintenance release with a few new experimental features and addons.

      • KDE Usability & Productivity: Week 76

        Week 76 in KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative is here! This week’s progress report includes the first several says of the Usability & Productivity sprint, and as such, it’s absolutely overflowing with cool stuff!

      • KDE’s Night Color Feature Being Ported From Wayland To X11

        It’s another busy summer in the KDE space with a nice mixture of bug fixes and features being pursued for KDE Frameworks, KDE Plasma, and KDE Applications.

        One new feature coming is a back-porting of their night color feature from Wayland to X11. KDE, like many other desktops these days, has offered a “night color” option that adjusts the gamma ramp for the display output. This feature has just been supported on Wayland given that’s their focus moving forward, but with no major blockers in supporting the feature on X11, that is now being addressed. This X11 support for the night color feature is coming for Plasma 5.17.

      • Skrooge 2.20.0 released

        The Skrooge Team announces the release 2.20.0 version of its popular Personal Finances Manager based on KDE Frameworks.

      • New website for Konsole

        The content could probably still need some improvements, so if you find typos or want to improve the wording of a sentence, please get in touch with KDE Promo. The good news is that you don’t need to be a programmer for this.

        [...]

        The new website uses Jekyll to render static html. Because the layout and the design aren’t unique to konsole.kde.org, I created a special Jekyll located at invent.kde.org/websites/jekyll-kde-theme, so that only the content and some configuration files are located in the websites/konsole-kde-org repository. This make it easier to maintain and will make it easier to change others website in the future without repeating ourself.

        This was a bit harder to deploy than I first though, I had problem with installing my Jekyll theme in the docker image, but after the third or fourth try, it worked and then I had an encoding issue, that wasn’t present on my development machine.

      • Crazy Last Weeks

        Last weeks have been crazy for me. Since the GSoC began, I have been rushing everything related to university and my life to dedicate exclusively to the development. Besides the two classes I was taking, Static Code Analysis and Approximation Algorithms, I had my obligatory teaching internship in Project and Analysis of Algorithms for the postgraduate program, where I was responsible for creating and evaluating assignments for 50+ students and answering general questions.

        [...]

        I am using as my environment the Qt Creator, and I am focusing in the algorithm for creation of specific graph classes inside the generategraphwidget. I have already implemented algorithms for Paths, Complete and Complete Bipartite graphs, besides fixing some details here and there. These modifications are still only in my local machine, as I am having some problems pushing the commits (I must be doing something wrong in my configuration).

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Nordic Theme on Ubuntu Desktop GNOME 3

        Nordic is currently ranked #10 most popular GTK3 theme on OpenDesktop.org. This article exposes this theme beauty and explains how to install every component on Ubuntu 18.04. You can practice the installation procedures on other distros as long as it uses GNOME 3 as the user interface.

      • Andrei Lisita: Something to show for

        Unfortunately along with the progress that was made we also encountered a bug with the NintendoDS core that causes Games to crash if we attempt to load a savestate. We are not yet 100% sure if the bug is caused by my changes or by the NintendoDS core itself.

        I hope we are able to fix it by the end of the summer although I am not even sure where to start since savestates are working perfectly fine with other cores. Another confusing matter about this is that the Restart/Resume Dialog works fine with the NintendoDS core and it also uses savestates. This led me to believe that perhaps cores can be used to load savestates only once, but this can’t be the problem since we re-instantiate the core every time we load a savestate.

        In the worst case we might just have to make a special case for the NintendoDS core and not use savestates with it, except for the Resume/Restart dialog. This would sadden me deeply since there are plenty of NintendoDS games which could benefit from this feature.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • OSMC’s June update is here with Kodi v18.3

        Team Kodi recently announced the 18.3 point release of Kodi Leia. We have now prepared this for all supported OSMC devices and added some improvements and fixes. Here’s what’s new:

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • CERN Goes Open Source

    The European Organisation for Nuclear Research, CERN, is stopping using Microsoft products in favor of open-source.

  • CERN ditches Microsoft for open source

    The Large Hadron particle collider operator says no to Microsoft’s licensing fees increase.

  • A comparison of open source, real-time data streaming platforms

    A variety of open source, real-time data streaming platforms are available today for enterprises looking to drive business insights from data as quickly as possible. The options include Spark Streaming, Kafka Streams, Flink, Hazelcast Jet, Streamlio, Storm, Samza and Flume — some of which can be used in tandem with each other.

    Enterprises are adopting these real-time data streaming platforms for tasks such as making sense of a business marketing campaign, improving financial trading or recommending marketing messages to consumers at critical junctures in the customer journey. These are all time-critical areas that can be used for improving business decisions or baked into applications driven by data from a variety of sources.

  • Amphenol’s Jason Ellison on Signal Integrity Careers and His Free, Open Source PCB Design Software

    Ellison, Senior Staff Signal Integrity Engineer at Amphenol ICC, gives his insight on the importance of networking, giving to the EE community, and his open-source signal integrity project.

    How does signal integrity engineering compare to other EE fields? What are open-source resources worth these days? What makes for a good work life for an engineer? Learn this and more in this Engineer Spotlight!

    Jason Ellison started down the path to becoming an electrical engineer because someone told him it was “fun and easy if you’re good at math.” In this interview with AAC’s Mark Hughes, Ellison—a Senior Staff Signal Integrity Engineer at Amphenol ICC—describes how his career has grown from these beginnings into the rewarding and diverse work of signal integrity engineering.

  • Cruise open-sources Webviz, a tool for robotics data analysis [Ed: Releasing a little tool that's part of proprietary software so that it 'feels' more "open"]

    Cruise, the self-driving startup that General Motors acquired for nearly $1 billion in 2016, generates an enormous amount of data by any measure. It orchestrates 200,000 hours of driving simulation jobs daily in Google Cloud Platform, spread across 30,000 virtual cars in an environment running on 300,000 processor cores and 5,000 graphics cards. Both those cars and Cruise’s fleet of over 180 real-world autonomous Chevrolet Bolts make thousands of decisions every second, and they base these decisions on observations captured in binary format from cameras, microphones, radar sensors, and lidar sensors.

  • EWF launches world’s first open source blockchain for the energy industry

    The Energy Web Foundation this week announced that it has launched the world’s first public, open-source, enterprise-grade blockchain tailored to the energy sector: the Energy Web Chain (EW Chain).

    More than ten Energy Web Foundation (EWF) Affiliates — including utilities, grid operators, and blockchain developers — are hosting validator nodes for the live network, according to the company.

  • Pimcore Releases Pimcore 6.0, Amplifying User-Friendly Digital Experiences Through Open Source

    Pimcore, the leading open-source platform for data and customer experience management, has released the most powerful version of the Pimcore platform, Pimcore 6.0. The updated platform includes a new user interface that seamlessly connects MDM/PIM, DAM, WCM, and digital commerce capabilities to create more advanced and user-friendly experiences quickly and efficiently.

  • VCV Rack reaches version 1.0.0: free and open-source modular synth gets a full release

    VCV Rack is a free, open-source modular software synth that’s been gaining ground for a couple of years, but only now has it reached the significant milestone of version 1.0.

    Designed to replicate the feeling of having a hardware modular synth on your desktop, VCV Rack enables you to add both free and paid-for modules, and now supports polyphony of up to 16 voices. There’s MIDI Output, too with CV-Gate, CV-MIDI and CV-CC modules enabling you to interface with drum machines, desktop synths and Eurorack gear.

  • Flying Above the Shoulders of Giants

    Thanks to open-source platforms, developers can stand on the shoulders of software giants to build bigger and better things. Linux is probably the biggest…

  • MIT Researchers Open-Source AutoML Visualization Tool ATMSeer

    A research team from MIT, Hong Kong University, and Zhejiang University has open-sourced ATMSeer, a tool for visualizing and controlling automated machine-learning processes.

    Solving a problem with machine learning (ML) requires more than just a dataset and training. For any given ML tasks, there are a variety of algorithms that could be used, and for each algorithm there can be many hyperparameters that can be tweaked. Because different values of hyperparameters will produce models with different accuracies, ML practitioners usually try out several sets of hyperparameter values on a given dataset to try to find hyperparameters that produce the best model. This can be time-consuming, as a separate training job and model evaluation process must be conducted for each set. Of course, they can be run in parallel, but the jobs must be setup and triggered, and the results recorded. Furthermore, choosing the particular values for hyperparameters can involve a bit of guesswork, especially for ones that can take on any numeric value: if 2.5 and 2.6 produce good results, maybe 2.55 would be even better? What about 2.56 or 2.54?

  • Open-Source Cybersecurity Tool to Enhance Grid Protection

    A revolutionary new cybersecurity tool that can help protect the electric power grid has been released to the public on the code-hosting website GitHub.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • Databases

    • Deeper into the data fabric with MongoDB

      However, to gain access to rich search functionality, many organisations pair their database with a search engine such as Elasticsearch or Solr, which MongoDB claims can complicate development and operations — because we end up with two entirely separate systems to learn, maintain and scale.

  • LibreOffice

    • Microsoft Office vs LibreOffice

      Microsoft Office and LibreOffice are both excellent office suites, but how can you be sure which is right for you? On the surface the two look very similar, but there are some important differences to bear in mind when making your decision.

    • Florian Effenberger: LibreOffice Adoption Is Growing Globally

      During the openSUSE Conference in Nuremberg, Germany, we sat down with the executive director of The Document Foundation. We talked about the evolution of LibreOffice to cater to new users and devices. We also talked about other activities of the foundation beyond managing the LibreOffice community. We also touched upon the importance of diversity and inclusion

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU APL 1.8 Released

      I am happy to announce that GNU APL 1.8 has been released.

      GNU APL is a free implementation of the ISO standard 13751 aka.

      “Programming Language APL, Extended”,

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Data

      • DoD’s Joint AI Center to open-source natural disaster satellite imagery data set

        As climate change escalates, the impact of natural disasters is likely to become less predictable. To encourage the use of machine learning for building damage assessment this week, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute and CrowdAI — the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint AI Center (JAIC) and Defense Innovation Unit — open-sourced a labeled data set of some of the largest natural disasters in the past decade. Called xBD, it covers the impact of disasters around the globe, like the 2010 earthquake that hit Haiti.

        “Although large-scale disasters bring catastrophic damage, they are relatively infrequent, so the availability of relevant satellite imagery is low. Furthermore, building design differs depending on where a structure is located in the world. As a result, damage of the same severity can look different from place to place, and data must exist to reflect this phenomenon,” reads a research paper detailing the creation of xBD.

        [...]

        xBD includes approximately 700,000 satellite images of buildings before and after eight different kinds of natural disasters, including earthquakes, wildfires, floods, and volcanic eruptions. Covering about 5,000 square kilometers, it contains images of floods in India and Africa, dam collapses in Laos and Brazil, and historic deadly fires in California and Greece.

        The data set will be made available in the coming weeks alongside the xView 2.0 Challenge to unearth additional insights from xBD, coauthor and CrowdAI machine learning lead Jigar Doshi told VentureBeat. The data set collection effort was informed by the California Air National Guard’s approach to damage assessment from wildfires.

    • Open Access/Content

      • Open-source textbooks offer free alternative for UC Clermont students

        Some UC Clermont College students are avoiding paying hundreds of dollars for textbooks — and getting the content for free — thanks to online open-source textbooks, a growing trend among faculty at the college and throughout higher education.

        UC Clermont Dean Jeff Bauer, who is also a professor of business, said the benefits of open textbooks are many. “All students have the book on the first day of class, it saves them a lot of money, and the information can be accessed anywhere, anytime, without carrying around a heavy textbook,” Bauer said. “They don’t need to visit the bookstore before or after each semester to buy or sell back books, either.”

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Open Source Computer Controlled Loom Knits Pikachu For You

        The origin story of software takes us back past punch card computers and Babbage’s Difference Engine to a French weaver called Joseph Marie Jacquard.

      • Successful open-source RISC-V microcontroller launched through crowdfunding

        X-FAB Silicon Foundries, together with crowd-sourcing IC platform partner Efabless Corporation, launched the first-silicon availability of the Efabless RISC-V SoC reference design. This open-source semiconductor project went from start of design to tape-out in less than three months employing the Efabless design flow produced on open-source tools. The mixed-signal SoC, called Raven, is based on the community developed ultra-low power PicoRV32 RISC-V core. Efabless has bench-tested the Raven at 100MHz, and based on simulations, the solution should operate at up to 150MHz.

      • Open Hardware: Open-Source MRI Scanners Could Bring Enormous Cost Savings

        Wulfsberg explore the possibilities of open source MRI scanning. As open-source technology takes its place around the world—everywhere from makerspaces to FabLabs, users on every level have access to design and innovation. In allowing such access to MRI scanning, the researchers realize the potential for ‘technological literacy’ globally—and with MRIs specifically, astronomical sums could be saved in healthcare costs.

        The authors point out that medical technology is vital to the population of the world for treating not only conditions and illnesses, but also disabilities. As so many others deeply involved in the world of technology and 3D printing realize, with greater availability, accessibility, and affordability, huge strides can be made to improve and save lives. Today, with so many MRI patents expiring, the technology is open for commercialization.

  • Programming/Development

    • What’s the Most Secure Programming Language?

      WhiteSource recently put out a report, taking a deeper dive into the security of the most popular programming languages.

    • SD Times Open-Source Project of the Week: Plum UI Kit

      The mobile framework NativeScript team is releasing a new open-source project this week designed to help developers style their applications. The team calls the Plum UI Kit a “kitchen sink native app” meant to provide common app scenarios with copy-and-paste abilities.

    • Kedro Open Source library For Machine Learning

      A new open source development workflow framework for creating machine learning code has been released. Kedro has PySpark integration and an SDK for working with datasets.

      Kedro has been developed by QuantumBlack, an analytics firm acquired by McKinsey’s in 2015, and the name Kedro derives from the Greek word meaning center or core. Kedro helps structure your data pipeline using software engineering principles. It also provides a standardized approach to collaboration for teams.

    • Prisons Are Banning Books That Teach Prisoners How to Code

      According to public records obtained by the Salem Reporter, the Oregon Department of Corrections has banned dozens of books related to programming and technology as they come through the mail room, ensuring that they don’t get to the hands of prisoners.

    • Oregon prisons ban dozens of technology and programming books over security concerns

      Chan said he understands security concerns for books related to hacking, but they often see introductory or basic books disallowed.

    Leftovers

    • Yle ends Latin news service

      Latin teachers often harvest Nuntii Latini for teaching material, as audio and transcripts of shows dating back to 2011 are available online.

    • Science

      • Russian Academy of Sciences archive reopens after debts forced it to close in March

        The archive’s financial trouble began in 2018 when the umbrella agency above it, the Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations, was liquidated, leaving ARAN to join the Education Ministry’s budget. That budget did not include funds for paying off the archive’s debts, including a large dept to the company Stroimonolit, which is designing a new building for the archive in St. Petersburg. The 1.064 billion-ruble ($16.9 million) contract for that project was signed in 2015, but the archive was unable to pay even for initial blueprints. Stroimonolit ultimately sued the archive and won.

    • Hardware

      • The U.S. blacklists five Chinese supercomputer firms, including AMD joint venture THATIC

        The U.S. Department of Commerce is responsible for the entity list, which includes companies where the agency says there is “reasonable cause to believe…have been involved, are involved, or pose a significant risk of being involved in activities that are contrary to the national security or foreign policy of the United States.”

        U.S. companies are forbidden from doing business with and supplying components to companies placed on the entity list, although exceptions can be granted. Though China has developed its own microprocessors, that means U.S. companies would be forbidden to ship PCs and other components to members on the entity list. Many supercomputers, for example, use Nvidia GPUs.

      • U.S. Blacklists More Chinese Tech Companies Over National Security Concerns

        The Commerce Department announced that it would add four Chinese companies and one Chinese institute to an “entity list,” saying they posed risks to American national security or foreign policy interests. The move essentially bars them from buying American technology and components without a waiver from the United States government, which could all but cripple them because of their reliance on American chips and other technology to make advanced electronics.

      • Western Digital Freezes Out Huawei, Which Braces for Massive Sales Drop

        The damage to Huawei keeps on spreading. Last week, Western Digital CEO Steve Milligan announced his company had stopped doing business with the embattled Chinese manufacturer. It’s the latest blow to Huawei’s business after the US announced sanctions against the company last month.

        While Huawei accounts for less than 10 percent of Western Digital’s revenue, Milligan told Nikkei that the firm represents a “meaningful customer.” WD is apparently considering applying for permission to continue doing business with Huawei from the US government. In April, Huawei and WD had signed a declaration of intention to strengthen their partnership across hard drives and non-volatile storage technologies, but that partnership is now effectively on hold due to the US findings.

        In late May, I wrote a story exploring what CPU architectures Huawei might be able to use for future designs if it was cut off from chips by manufacturers like ARM. According to a discussion of this issue published by former US assistant secretary of export administration Kevin Wolf, this is a complex question. US export law forbids the export of any technology with more than a trivial amount (de minimis) of US-based technology built into it.

    • Health/Nutrition

      • Air Pollution, the Invisible Enemy

        U.S. News & World Report spoke with Gardiner over the telephone to discuss what countries get right and wrong in tackling air pollution, and what the future of our air may look like. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

      • India’s Sixth-Largest City Is Almost Out of Water

        As much of India bakes in a deadly heat wave, the country’s sixth largest city is running out of water, Time reported Thursday.

        In Chennai, home to nearly 4.6 million people, four major reservoirs are running dry. The monsoon has been delayed, and rainfall has fallen 99 percent in the region from June 1 to 19, while temperatures have reached 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

      • This Indian City Is Running Out of Water, Impacting 4.6 Million People

        The sixth-largest city in India is running out of water for nearly 4.6 million people

      • Fake Food, Fake Meat: Big Food’s Desperate Attempt to Further the Industrialisation of Food

        Food is not a commodity, it is not “stuff” put together mechanically and artificially in labs and factories. Food is life. Food holds the contributions of all beings that make the food web, and it holds the potential of maintaining and regenerating the web of life. Food also holds the potential for health and disease, depending on how it was grown and processed. Food is therefore the living currency of the web of life.

        As an ancient Upanishad reminds us “Everything is food, everything is something else’s food. “

        Good Food and Real Food are the basis of health .

        Bad food, industrial food, fake food is the basis of disease.

        Hippocrates said “Let food be thy medicine”. In Ayurveda, India’s ancient science of life, food is called “sarvausadha” the medicine that cures all disease.

      • Refusing to Comply With ‘Dehumanizing’ Rules Any Longer, Missouri’s Last Abortion Clinic Defies Regulators

        Days before Missouri’s Republican government is set to decide whether it will renew the license of the state’s only remaining abortion clinic, doctors at the facility have announced they will no longer comply with state restrictions and guidelines they deem “unethical,” harmful, and medically unnecessary.

        Planned Parenthood of St. Louis said Wednesday that it would stop performing pelvic exams on patients receiving abortion care 72 hours before the procedure, in addition to standard exams doctors perform at the time of an abortion. The extra pelvic exams were mandated by the state health department last month.

        Clinic medical director Dr. David Eisenberg told CBS News that he had determined in recent weeks that the exams were having a harmful effect on his patients.

        “[Patients] are being victimized by a state regulatory process that has gone awry. It is not making them healthier, it is not making them safer, it is only victimizing them,” Eisenberg said. “Over the last few weeks, I have new evidence to say that 100 percent of the patients who I’ve taken care of who’ve undergone this inappropriate, medically unnecessary, unethical pelvic exam have been harmed by that.”

      • Study Confirms GOP Medicaid Work Requirements Succeeded in Taking Away People’s Healthcare, But Did Nothing to Boost Employment

        The first major study of new Medicaid work requirements confirmed that the warnings of critics were correct: requiring program recipients to work serves only to take healthcare away from vulnerable communities, while doing nothing to promote employment.

        Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health released a report Wednesday on the work requirements, which went into effect in Arkansas in 2018. One of President Donald Trump’s signature healthcare policies, the program demanded that Medicaid recipients work at least 80 hours per month or participate in job training, or risk losing their health insurance.

        The program, which is now on hold following a federal judge’s decision in March, resulted in nearly 20,000 low-income Arkansas residents losing their health coverage.

      • The AMA Is on the Wrong Side of History on Medicare of All

        What does the American Medical Association (AMA) have in common with Sen. Mitch McConnell?

        Both refuse to support Medicare for All, the single-payer universal health care program proposed by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal. On June 11, the AMA underscored that opposition, taking a formal vote at their annual conference in Chicago.

        A recent poll reveals that 70 percent of Americans favor Medicare for All, yet the AMA’s position suggests that a majority of doctors do not. In fact, 56 percent of doctors expressed support for single-payer health care in a separate poll.

        In response to the AMA, medical students and younger physicians are joining organizations like Physicians for a National Health Program, a leading organization in the single-payer movement for decades. The organization’s student affiliate, Students for a National Health Program (SNaHP), decided to confront the AMA directly at this year’s annual meeting.

        The AMA has a long record of being on the wrong side of history. They refused to admit Black physicians up until the civil rights era, effectively blocking their ability to get residency appointments and ensuring the maintenance of Jim Crow segregation in health care. They also voiced strong opposition before the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, calling those programs “socialized medicine.”

      • Organic California 2050: Bob Cannard’s Crusade for a Toxic Free State

        Crops begin with seeds and so do ideas. To thrive, they both need friendly environments and human beings who nurture them. Bob Cannard has been planting seeds and harvesting crops for the last four decades. So, it ought not to be surprising that he’s planted the seed of an idea that would transform farming and agriculture in California, where it’s a multi-billionaire-dollar-a year-industry dependent on toxic chemicals.

        Cannard wants California to ban all chemical pesticides and herbicides by the year 2050. With help from Karen Lee and Nellie Praetzel, he has just launched an organization and a movement to liberate the whole state from products like Roundup, which has been shown to cause cancer in human beings.

        Over the past decade, over one million pounds of chemicals have been used in Sonoma County. During the same time period, about 86 million pounds of chemicals have been used in California. The whole state has been poisoned, to say nothing about the nation and the globe itself.

      • The Movement to Expand Medicaid in Southern States Is Growing

        North Carolina activists held 22 simultaneous vigils across the state earlier this month to remember the thousands of people who have suffered and died in the state for lack of health care and to call on Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper to veto any state budget proposal passed by the Republican legislature that does not include Medicaid expansion. A few days later, at a summit on the opioid crisis, leaders with the state Department of Health and Human Services cited expanding Medicaid as the most important step to reduce opioid addiction and deaths.

        The calls show how the effort to expand Medicaid has continued in the 14 states — eight of them in the South — where Republican legislatures and governors have refused to extend health care access to more low-income people under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

        “People are dying across North Carolina each and every day we fail to expand Medicaid,” said attorney Jackie Kiger at a vigil in Asheville. “More than a thousand people die each year.”

        The benefits of Medicaid expansion are extensive and well-documented: more timely treatment of Black cancer patients, decreased infant mortality rates, fewer deaths from cardiovascular conditions, more accessible treatment for opioid addictions. Still, state legislatures refused federal money to expand Medicaid, leaving 2 million people nationwide in the coverage gap, meaning they earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to qualify for ACA Marketplace premium tax credits.

        And 90 percent of those in the coverage gap live in the South, where just five states have expanded Medicaid under the ACA. Arkansas was one of the first to do so when then-Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, signed the state’s expansion plan into law in 2013, giving about 250,000 low-income residents access to insurance. Last year Arkansas implemented a work requirement for Medicaid recipients, but it has since been blocked twice by the federal government. Kentucky adopted its Medicaid expansion plan in January 2014 via an executive order by then-Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat. Like Arkansas, Kentucky attempted to implement a work requirement, but it was struck down by a federal judge. Current Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican, has threatened to dismantle the entire expansion if Kentucky can’t impose a work requirement.

    • Security

      • [Attackers] Used Two Firefox Zero Days to Hit a Crypto Exchange

        Luckily, not only did Coinbase and an outside researcher notice the bugs, but Coinbase picked up on the attack before any money could be stolen or the network could be infiltrated.

      • Romanian hospitals, affected by ransomware attack [iophk: "Windows TCO"]

        Four hospitals in Romania have been affected by the BadRabbit 4 ransomware, the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) announced. One of the hospitals is the Victor Babeş Infectious Diseases Hospital in Bucharest. The other hospitals are located in Huşi, Dorohoi and Cărbuneşti.

      • Cyber-attacks on hospitals most likely come from China, SRI says

        The specialists with the Cyberint National Centre with the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) suspect that the recent attacks on hospitals in Romania come from China, service representatives say, quoted by digi24.ro.

        “Regarding the cyber-attacks on hospitals, the Cyberint National Centre suspect the attackers are of Chinese origin. The time interval was considered, when the Chinese hackers are active and the clues left along with the ransom requests,” SRI says in a release.

      • Five Romanian hospitals targeted by cyber attack [iophk: "Windows TCO"]

        Five hospitals in the Romanian capital Bucharest are the target of a cyber attack. Various Romanian media report this. Opposite the news platform Stiri Lazi, the Romanian Minister of Health has announced that patients will be affected by the attack.

      • Open source vs proprietary password managers [Ed: If it's proprietary software, then you can never trust what it's doing with all your passwords; it can compromise everything you have. Like putting a bandit in charge of guarding a neighbourhood]

        Nowadays, we all have huge numbers of subscriptions to online accounts and services. For those accounts to be secure, each one of them must have a unique, robust password. What’s more, truly strong passwords must be complicated, which means that they are extremely difficult to remember.

      • Cyber Militia Launches Non-Profit to Share Technology [Ed: The NSA uses the term "Cyber Militia"; what a bunch of thugs.]

        RockNSM is a network security monitoring platform that uses open source technologies, such as CentOS, which is an operating system derived from the RedHat enterprise-level open source system. RockNSM formed the basis for a Task Force Echo network anomaly detection system used for real-world cyber operations.

      • Linux Kernel “LOCKDOWN” Ported To Being An LSM, Still Undergoing Review

        It didn’t make it for the Linux 5.2 kernel and now it’s up to its 33rd revision on the Linux kernel mailing list… The “lockdown” patches for locking down access to various kernel hardware features has been reworked now and is a Linux Security Module (LSM) as it still tries to get enough endorsements to be mainlined.

        The Lockdown effort has been most recently led by Google’s Matthew Garrett and with this 33rd revision he reworked the code to serve as an LSM module. The Lockdown functionality prohibits writing to /dev/mem, restricts PCI BAR and CPU MSR access, doesn’t allow kernel module parameters that touch hardware settings, drops system hibernation support, and disables other functionality that could potentially change the hardware state or running Linux kernel image.

      • IPFire 2.23 – Core Update 133 has been released

        This update brings many updates on the core libraries of the system. Various changes to our build system are also helping us to build a more modern distribution, faster. The toolchain is now based on GCC 8.3.0, binutils 2.32 and glibc 2.29 which bring various bugfixes, performance improvements and some new features.

        Although these might not be the most exciting changes, we recommend upgrading as soon as possible since this is essential hardening for backbone components of the user-space.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • ‘Rare Piece of Good News for the People of Yemen’ as UK Court Finds Weapons Sales to Saudis Unlawful

        The judgment (pdf) came in response to a judicial review brought by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT)—joined by Amnesty International, Rights Watch U.K., and Human Rights Watch. Amnesty’s Lucy Claridge called the ruling “a rare piece of good news for the people of Yemen.”

        “We welcome this verdict,” CAAT campaigner Andrew Smith said in a statement, “but it should never have taken a court case brought by campaigners to force the government to follow its own rules.”

        “The Saudi Arabian regime is one of the most brutal and repressive in the world, yet, for decades, it has been the largest buyer of U.K.-made arms. No matter what atrocities it has inflicted, the Saudi regime has been able to count on the uncritical political and military support of the U.K.,” Smith added. “The arms sales must stop immediately.”

        Claridge celebrated the ruling as “a major step towards preventing further bloodshed,” and noted that “this is the first time that a U.K. court has acknowledged the risks of continuing to lavish Saudi Arabia with military equipment for use in Yemen.”

      • UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia unlawful, court rules as war in Yemen rages on

        The ruling will not halt British arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which is deeply involved in the civil war in Yemen, but it does mean the British government “must reconsider the matter,” the court ruled.

      • U.K. Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia Ruled Unlawful As Donald Trump Prepares to Veto Senate Resolutions Against Weapons Sales

        The judges accused Ministers Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt, and Liam Fox of having illegally authorized weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in 2016 without assessing whether the sales would pose a risk to civilians or have other humanitarian consequences. The ruling requires the U.K. government to suspend all new arms sales to Saudi Arabia until it can review its processes.

      • US ‘launched cyber-attack on Iran weapons systems’

        The cyber-attack disabled computer systems controlling rocket and missile launchers, the Washington Post said.

      • After Drone Shootdown, U.S. Struck Iranian Computers

        Officials say U.S. military cyber forces earlier this week launched a retaliatory cyber strike against Iranian computer systems amid escalating tensions between the two countries.

        Three U.S. officials tell The Associated Press that the operation on Thursday evening disabled Iranian computer systems that controlled Iran’s rocket and missile launchers.

        The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Yahoo News first reported the cyber strike.

      • ‘These Are Huge Checks Being Written to Boeing and Lockheed’: Rep. Rashida Tlaib Rips Endless War Budget as House Passes $733B in Military Spending

        “These are huge checks being written to Boeing and Lockheed Martin, when we should be cutting checks to everyday people struggling to make ends meet,” said Tlaib, one of just seven Democrats to vote against the trillion-dollar spending measure.

        The other House Democrats who voted against the measure were Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Denny Heck (Wash.), Collin Peterson (Minn.), and Ben McAdams (Utah). View the full roll call here.

        In a tweet following Wednesday’s vote, Tlaib wrote, “Giving our military industrial complex another $733B windfall doesn’t bring [Michigan's 13th congressional district] closer to economic opportunities we need.”

        “We deserve better than to come second to for-profit defense spending that doesn’t make our nation any safer,” the Michigan congresswoman wrote.

      • Because ‘Drums of War Are Beating,’ Bernie Sanders Says Everything Must Be Done to Prevent US Attack on Iran

        As Common Dreams reported on Friday, progressive anti-war critics have sounded the alarm over the Trump administration’s claim that it has outright authority to launch offensive strikes against Iran. While Trump admitted Friday that he called off a bombing raid just minutes before it was set to begin—a claim and timeline of events that new reporting has now called into question—Sanders argues that the U.S. Constitution is explicit in stating that the executive branch does not possess such power.

        “The constitution is very clear: it is Congress, not the president, who decides when we go to war,” wrote Sanders. “It is imperative that Congress immediately make it clear to the president that taking us into hostilities with Iran without congressional authorization would be both unconstitutional and illegal.”

      • Pentagon Releases, Then Deletes, Document Detailing Use of Nuclear Weapons to Restore ‘Strategic Stability’ for US Military

        The U.S. military appears to believe it can somehow prevail in a nuclear war, according to a Pentagon document that was briefly made public, and has plans for using atomic weapons in “small and limited” capacities in order to create “strategic stability” for itself in the world.

        The document, Nuclear Operations (pdf), describes the current political and military environment and the challenges faced by the Pentagon in strategizing how to most effectively deploy nuclear weapons in war. It was first reported on by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), which downloaded and released the document on June 19.

        The Pentagon published the document on June 11 and removed it earlier this week. In a statement to The Guardian, a Defense Department official said the document was made private “because it was determined that this publication, as is with other joint staff publications, should be for official use only.”

        “Using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability,” the document reads. “Specifically, the use of a nuclear weapon will fundamentally change the scope of a battle and create conditions that affect how commanders will prevail in conflict.”

      • Peace Advocates Praise Senate for Voting to Block ‘Brazen Power Grab’ by Trump to Sell Saudis More Weapons

        The GOP-controlled Senate considered 22 resolutions of disapproval—one for each weapons contract the administration tried to push through.

        A small number of Senate Republicans joined with Democrats to pass the measures: 20 that were voted on collectively passed 51-45, and the other two passed 53-45. See the full roll call votes here. The resolutions now head to the Democrat-held House, where they are expected to pass.

        Although President Donald Trump may veto the resolutions if they reach his desk—as he did in April with a War Powers resolution approved by Congress—critics of U.S. complicity in the Saudi and UAE coalition’s war in Yemen still welcomed the Senate votes as, in the words of Peace Action’s Paul Kawika Martin, “yet another rebuke to this administration’s reckless foreign policy in the Middle East.”

        By approving these resolutions, Martin said Thursday, “Congress is forcing the president to either stop arming countries that are using U.S. weapons to starve the people of Yemen, or issue more vetoes and defend the indefensible. If Trump does veto these resolutions, Congress should vote to override in order to help bring the terrible war in Yemen to an end.”

      • US and Canada Back the White Supremist Minority in Venezuela

        Slavery was officially abolished in all of the Americas in the 19th century. The history of slavery in the Caribbean and Latin America has left a legacy of prejudice, discrimination and class conflict, which has largely gone unresolved.

        Different skin complexions of Latin Americans are due mostly to various mixtures of European, Spanish and Indigenous bloodlines.

        The darker the skin color, along with other ethnic features, the more there is of discrimination in education, employment, and opportunity.

        Discrimination against blacks and people of color perpetuates poverty and class conflict. In Venezuela, as elsewhere in the Caribbean and Latin America, political power, commerce and wealth is largely in the hands of a minority of upper-class elites, whom are mostly whiter and lighter than those with darker skin complexion.

        One can get a sense of how much class and race affect Latin American society by watching Spanish language movies and soap operas. Below are just two examples below: the setting for the TV series “The White Slave” is 19th century Columbia; and the setting for “Teresa” is contemporary Mexico.

        Hugo Chavez and his successor Maduro are exuberantly despised by the elite white-supremacist minority. They still call Chavez negro, savage, monkey and ape. Maduro gets the same; and the media never fails to remind the public that he was a former bus driver, which is code for “low-class”.

        Maduro is proud of his humble beginning as a bus driver and his Afro-Indigenous ethnicity. Chavez was proud of his poor Afro-Indigenous background too, and his final resting place is in the barrio where he and Maduro came from.

      • Palestinians Dismiss Economic Portion of Kushner Plan as Dead-on-Arrival Failure

        The economic proposal purportedly designed to help foment Israeli-Palestinian peace and made public over the weekend by Jared Kushner, top advisor and son-in-law to President Donald Trump, fell predictably flat as Palestinians rejected it immediately as not tethered to reality and an insult to those who continue to struggle while living under the U.S.-backed military occupation of the Israelis.

        Part of what has become know as Kushner’s “Deal of the Century” proposal to end the Israel-Palestine conflict, it was treated as largely unserious by Palestinians and those who advocate for their liberation.

      • White House Unveils Palestinian Economic Plan

        The Trump administration on Saturday unveiled a $50 billion Palestinian investment and infrastructure proposal intended to be the economic engine to power its much-anticipated but still unreleased “deal of the century” Middle East peace plan.

        The scheme, which calls for a mix of public and private financing and intends to create at least a million new jobs for Palestinians, was posted to the White House website ahead of a two-day conference in Bahrain that is being held amid heavy skepticism about its viability and outright opposition from the Palestinians.

      • Forget Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century.’ Israel Was Always on Course to Annexation

        When Israeli prime ministers are in trouble, facing difficult elections or a corruption scandal, the temptation has typically been for them to unleash a military operation to bolster their standing. In recent years, Gaza has served as a favourite punching bag.

        Benjamin Netanyahu is confronting both difficulties at once: a second round of elections in September that he may struggle to win; and an attorney general who is widely expected to indict him on corruption charges shortly afterwards.

        Netanyahu is in an unusually tight spot, even by the standards of an often chaotic and fractious Israeli political system. After a decade in power, his electoral magic may be deserting him. There are already rumblings of discontent among his allies on the far right.

        Given his desperate straits, some observers fear that he may need to pull a new kind of rabbit out of the hat.

        In the past two elections, Netanyahu rode to success after issuing dramatic last-minute statements. In 2015, he agitated against the fifth of Israel’s citizens who are Palestinian asserting their democratic rights, warning that they were “coming out in droves to vote”.

      • No War With Iran

        We’re dangerously close to an all-out war with Iran — and it makes absolutely no sense.

        President Trump is waffling on whether to take military action against Iran in reaction to the downing of a U.S. drone in the Gulf of Oman this week, an incident about which not all the facts are known.

        This follows months of bellicose rhetoric by Trump’s war cabinet, which has been engaged in a cycle of escalation by imposing devastating economic sanctions and moving troops and ships toward Iran. Clearly, they’re grasping for any reason to keep escalating, even recycling the same unverified claims that were used to justify the Iraq invasion 16 years ago.

        Any military strike by the United States could quickly lead to a situation where no one is able to stop a full-blown war, even if we don’t want one.

        And today, we need you to take action: Can you call the White House to demand no military retaliation, and contact your representative to demand they speak out NOW to say NO WAR WITH IRAN?

        It should never be this easy for the White House to launch our country into war. But here we are.

        We’re now 18 years into seemingly endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have cost almost $6 trillion, killed at least 480,000 people already, and devastated entire communities for generations.

        At a time when the United States should be winding down our global military presence by deeply cutting Pentagon spending for a moral budget that works for all, starting a new war with Iran would be catastrophic.

        The best time for ordinary people to influence our government in moments like this is before the bombs start dropping.

      • Dear Trump: Iran doesn’t Have a Military Nuclear Program and Gave up Bomb-Making Potential

        Julian Borger at The Guardian reports that Trump said Saturday to reporters, “They’re not going to have a nuclear weapon. We’re not going to have Iran have a nuclear weapon. When they agree to that, they’re going to have a wealthy country. They’re going to be so happy, and I’m going to be their best friend. I hope that happens.”

        Trump can’t get the conservative script right to save his life. The argument warmongers made for breaching the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) was that it did not address a range of Iranian behavior beyond nuclear matters, such as its military intervention in Syria or (they allege) Yemen, or its ongoing work on ballistic missiles, or its support for Hizbullah in Lebanon.

        Few argued that the JCPOA was useless in deterring Iran from making a nuclear weapon. Some worried about a 15 year sunset provision to the deal, but it was envisioned the UN inspections would continue.

        Trump is now citing Iran’s non-existent bomb-making as the reason for his breach of the treaty and not mentioning any of the things the hawks mind.

        Iran isn’t making a bomb and gave up 80% of its civilian nuclear enrichment program in the JCPOA.

      • Trump Delays Nationwide Deportation Sweep

        Lawmakers are mulling whether to give $4.6 billion in emergency funding to help border agencies struggling to manage a growing number of migrants crossing the border. The measure passed committee on a 30-1 vote. The bipartisan vote likely means that the Senate will take the lead in writing the legislation, which needs to pass into law before the House and Senate leave for vacation next week.

        Pelosi called Trump on Friday night, according to a person familiar with the situation and not authorized to discuss it publicly. The person spoke on condition of anonymity.

      • Trolling America, Trump Pins Tweet Showing Him Staying in Power Until… Forever

        Amid actual fears that President Donald Trump would not cede the White House even if impeached, voted out in 2020, or following a second term—the president on Saturday was actively trolling the people of the United States with a tweet pinned to the top of his Twitter page suggesting that he would stay in power until the year… well, forever.

      • Common Dreams
        The Redeeming Power of Love

        She was a mentally challenged woman yelling and cursing at passersby. We were a group of children, teasing and yelling at her. Fortunately, she didn’t pay any attention to our bad behavior. That we were children being silly or that the incident happened a long time ago, however, doesn’t diminish my responsibility, or my sense of guilt. If anything positive came out of that experience, however, it is that it made me more aware of the suffering of others, particularly those suffering from mental illness.

        I thought about this incident that happened so long ago in my hometown in Argentina during a recent visit to my family. I had gone with my brother and two sisters for a short trip out of the city, just to relax and reaffirm our family bonds, so necessary after living apart for almost 50 years, despite yearly visits to my country.

        My brother had taken us to a dam located not far from the city, surrounded by beautiful hills where we could have our afternoon tea and chat at leisure. I treasured those moments because they are so rare as to make them very special to me.

      • Any Dem Who Wants to Be President Should Reject War with Iran, Not Hide Behind Process Criticisms

        On the evening of June 20, Donald Trump reportedly gave initial authorization to launch strikes on Iran, then revoked the order at the eleventh hour. The move—which was the latest action in a long-simmering campaign to wage war against Iran—was falsely framed by the Trump administration as retaliatory: Earlier on the same day, reports surfaced that a U.S. Navy surveillance drone violated Iran’s airspace border, prompting the Revolutionary Guard to shoot it down, which Trump called “a big mistake.”

        The previous week, shepherded by neocon National Security Advisor John Bolton, the administration alleged, with no conclusive evidence, that Iran was responsible for attacks on two commercial oil tankers near the Gulf of Oman on June 13. This occurred just over a year after the Trump administration withdrew from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal, putting the U.S. on a path to greater aggression towards Iran.

        Iran has denied the Trump administration’s oil-tanker claims, which remain unsubstantiated. On June 14, the U.S. military released indistinct video footage, which the U.S. military insisted showed an Iranian military patrol boat approaching one of the tankers. The Pentagon followed this with additional “clearer” photos meant to “prove” Iran’s involvement in the attack, and claimed that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) removed an unexploded limpet mine from one of the ships, yet failed to prove that these mines were even attached to the ship. Further, the head of the Japanese company Kokuka Sangyo Co., which owns one of the ships, contradicted the U.S. military’s allegations.

        The crisis, fueled by the Trump administration’s bellicose rhetoric and dangerous provocations, has offered a glimpse into the foreign-policy platforms of some of the leading 2020 Democratic hopefuls. The responses of these candidates—Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders—ranged from expressing skepticism about the U.S. narrative on Iran’s actions and condemning “forever wars” to handwringing about whether Trump is following the right process for starting a war and reinforcing the White House narrative that Iran as a “threat.” While Sanders appears to adopt the strongest and most morally informed oppositional stance, Warren trails just behind him, owed to her slightly weaker legislative record on Iran. Meanwhile, candidates like Harris and Biden, who continue to espouse rhetoric about the supposed national security threat posed by Iran and focus more on procedural critiques, rank among the weakest.

      • Listening for Immigration at the Democratic Presidential Debates

        If you’ve been repelled by the family separations and other immigration-related cruelties perpetrated by the Trump administration, and if you plan to watch either or both of the upcoming Democratic presidential debates, please listen carefully – not just to what the candidates are saying, but how they’re saying it: how they frame the issues. Will they present immigration as a discrete set of concerns (“fixing our broken immigration system”), or will they describe it in relation to broader historical struggles, distinctly American struggles, for human rights? It’s possible that if any candidates are willing to articulate a broader story, they may find themselves in a stronger position against Trump – and, possibly, on a stronger footing for leading the nation.

        Consider, for example, the issue of voting rights and the current conflict over the 2020 census. For some time, the Trump administration has been trying to add a citizenship question to the census, and recently it was revealedthat a Republican strategist, Thomas B. Hofeller, played a significant role in urging this change as a way of giving a “structural electoral advantage” to Republicans and “non-Hispanic whites.” The Census Bureau’s own experts estimatedthat up to 6.5 million people, representing households that included noncitizens, would not respond to a census questionnaire that included a question about citizenship. The result would be significant shifts in electoral representation.

        This attempt to skew representation, based on the precarious status of millions of undocumented people in the U.S., is not unconnected to a larger effort to suppress votes, particularly of people of color. One can look, for example, to the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that states with histories of discriminatory practices would no longer need federal clearance to make changes in voting policies. Six years later, legal battles continue over Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial election, battles in which allies of defeated Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams cite many practices (voter purges, precinct closures, absentee ballot cancellations) that they claim blocked many African-Americans from voting. The battle over the census is certainly an immigration battle, but as an electorally related issue, it is not a stand-alone concern.

        Or consider the issues of racism and xenophobia. Though many opponents of Trump’s immigration policies portray the U.S. as “a nation of immigrants,” such portrayals often don’t go very far in accounting for the racism and prejudice that have riven American immigration history since the nation’s founding. Nor do they acknowledge the work of countless activists who struggled in courts, in print, and in other venues to resist, for example, the racism of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, or the racially based immigration quotas of the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, quotas not overturned until the mid-1960’s. If candidates are unwilling to acknowledge this history, they’ll be less able to describe the broader pattern of Trump’s statements and actions. This is a president who, in 2017, described white nationalist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia as including “some very fine people.” This is the same individual who declared his candidacy in 2015 by railing against Mexico for sending us “rapists,” drugs, and crime. The cruel effects of the administration’s policies (deaths in detention, family separation, children in cages) flow from an inexorable, dehumanizing logic of white supremacy.

      • Key Witness in Navy SEAL Case Stuns Court by Taking Blame

        When prosecutors called a special forces medic to testify, they expected him to bolster their case against a decorated Navy SEAL accused of stabbing an Islamic State fighter in his care.

        Corey Scott delivered in part, saying Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher unexpectedly plunged a knife into the adolescent detainee in 2017 after treating his wounds in Iraq.

        But the government was floored by what came next: Scott took the blame for the killing, saying he suffocated the boy in an act of mercy shortly after Gallagher stabbed him.

      • On the Alleged “Preciousness of Life”

        In the United States, if one only stops to think about it, this contradiction is glaring. For instance, is human life’s alleged precious worth even relevant to the behavior of the “Defense” Department, which until 18 September 1947, was more accurately named the War Department? American military operations in countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq—almost always sanctioned by sanctimonious leaders citing firsthand knowledge of God’s will—have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the post-9/11period, and of course, that is on top of previous episodes of 20th century mass slaughter in Southeast Asia and Central America. The assumption that all this bloodletting was and is carried on in defense of the USA is so far-fetched as to be beyond credence. Today the United States aids in the killing of civilians in Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and Palestine. Based on practice, Washington’s denial of life’s preciousness seems without end.

        I was about to add that this disregard for human life is expressed most readily when the victims are innocents of other nationalities. However, upon consideration, this simply is not the case. The U.S. has laws and a powerful lobby that insist on the American citizen’s right to possess the means to slaughter its own innocent population. The lobby we are speaking of here is the National Rifle Association (NRA).

      • Jon Gold – The Continuing Lies and Unanswered Questions of the 9/11 Attacks

        Then we air Jon Stewart’s June 10 speech to a House committee, shaming it for neglect of 9/11 first responders’ illnesses. Finally, “flag burner” Joey Johnson describes a new legal victory, and his underlying political philosophy.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • Chelsea Manning Is a Political Prisoner. Release Her Right Now.

        Whistleblower and human rights advocate Chelsea Manning has now been imprisoned for 100 days, and faces outrageous fines that have already forced her to lose her apartment and will soon bankrupt her –– for mounting a principled opposition to testifying before a Grand Jury. Digital rights group Fight for the Future, which has long supported Chelsea and led many campaigns demanding her release from prison, issued the following updated statement, which can be attributed to Deputy Director, Evan Greer (pronouns: she/her)…

      • Episode 33: Assange show as Spy or journalist?

        On this episode of Along the Line, Dr. Dreadlocks Nicholas Baham III, Dr. Nolan Higdon, and Janice Domingo outline Facebook’s history and analyze Julian Assange of Wikileaks and the ways in which he has been portrayed in the media. ATL’s Creative Director is Jorge Ayala. ATL’s Assistant Creative Director is Dylan Lazaga. Mickey Huff is ATL’s producer. ATL’s engineer is Janice Domingo.

      • Is Socialism Possible in America?

        The U.S. government has charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 (extended by the Sedition Act of 1918). The act targeted “whoever, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information to be obtained is to be used to the injury of the United States”; and to prohibit forms of speech that were judged “any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States … or the flag of the United States.”

        The law was promoted by Pres. Woodrow Wilson to suppress growing resistance to U.S. entry into WW-I. The repression of dissent took two forms. One included blocking the mail distribution of allegedly subversive publications like the Socialist Party’s American Socialist, the IWW’s Solidarity and even a 1918 issue of The Nation. The second involved the arrest, trial and imprisonment of people who voiced opposition to the war effort, including the draft; the most notable arrest concerned Eugene V. Debs, the head of the Socialist Party, who received a 10-year sentence. At trial, he declared, “I believe in free speech, in war as well as in peace. If the Espionage Law stands, then the Constitution of the United States is dead.” Most troubling, the Espionage Act set the stage for theimplementation of the Red Scare and the Palmer Raids that led tothe deportation of suspected “aliens”; the U.S. government deported 250 aliens included Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.

        In the century since the adoption of the Espionage Act, the U.S. government has repeatedly employed the act – and subsequent supplemental acts – to suppress dissent or activities claimed to be a threat to national security. During World War II, the U.S. government employed the act a number of times. One involved Elmer Hartzel, a World War I veteran who distributed pamphlets calling for the U.S. to stop fighting the Nazis and wage war against American Jews; the Supreme Court found that while the material were “vicious and unreasoning attacks on one of our military allies, flagrant appeals to false and sinister racial theories, and gross libels of the President,” it did not violate the Espionage Act. However, the act was used to censor the mailing permit of Father Charles Coughlin’s weekly – and anti-Semitic — magazine, Social Justice.

      • Lawyers Say 250 Migrant Children Being Held in Dangerous Conditions

        A traumatic and dangerous situation is unfolding for some 250 infants, children and teens locked up for up to 27 days without adequate food, water and sanitation, according to a legal team that interviewed dozens of children at a Border Patrol station in Texas.

        The attorneys who recently visited the facility near El Paso told The Associated Press that three girls, ages 10 to 15, said they had been taking turns watching over a sick 2-year-old boy because there was no one else to look after him.

    • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

      • When water demand rises, this Montana town invests in forests

        New York is the poster-city example in this country. Twenty years ago, the city engaged in a wrenching political battle over whether to build a $6 billion water filtration plant that would cost $300 million per year to filter water for the city. Instead it gambled and spent $2 billion to protect the forested watershed in the Catskill Mountains, 125 miles away, the source of 90% of the city’s water. It was a bold and controversial decision – and it worked.

        “Here we are, 20 years later they have been meeting the safe drinking water standards through tropical storms and superstorms,” says Paul K. Barten, one of the junior architects of the original Catskills program who now chairs a current National Academy review of the system. “It has become an international example of what watershed protection can accomplish.”

      • The Growing Case to Ban Fracking

        “There is no regulatory framework for fracking that will keep the toxins out of air and water, or will protect the climate from carbon and methane releases. It can’t be done. It can’t be made safe. Like lead paint, we finally have to ban it.”

        So concludes Sandra Steingraber of Concerned Health Professionals of New York in an interview. She is one of five authors of a newly released compendium of scientific and media findings on the dangers of shale gas development her group coauthored with Physicians for Social Responsibility.

        This report is the sixth in a series that looks at peer-reviewed scientific articles, as well as government reports and investigative stories, on the wide variety of harms created by the fracking industry. The reports examine the human rights implications of poisoning drinking water with fracking chemicals; the heavy climate impacts of methane release, in both the extraction and transportation of fracked natural gas for export; the industry’s weak record on worker safety; and increased earthquake activity in communities near fracking operations.

      • How the Media Misrepresents the Debate Over the Green New Deal

        A recent Politico article about the Green New Deal resolution put forward in February by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) features many grumblings from blue-collar union members about the potential economic disruption and the loss of jobs — even though the resolution calls for union rights and a federal jobs guarantee for workers. The article opens with Robbie Hunter, the president of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, which represents 450,000 construction workers and apprentices, who is leading a union-led advocacy campaign called #BlueCollarRevolution. A drastic shift away from oil industry jobs in California, Hunter contends, could “export our jobs, while doing nothing for the end game, which is the environmental.”

        The Green New Deal resolution calls for an economy-wide mobilization to achieve a national transition to a zero-carbon future within a decade. The proposal has sparked a vibrant conversation in Congress and throughout the country, resonating with grassroots environmental groups and challenging lawmakers to start talking seriously about decarbonization. Yet despite massive public support, the resolution was predictably stymied in Congress, and has faced skepticism within the Democratic Party and labor movement. Nor has the resolution been greeted with universal praise by the Democratic Party or labor unions. But while some unions express reluctance to hop on the green bandwagon, there’s more to the story than “environmentalists versus blue-collar workers.” Organized labor does not speak with a single voice on climate policy, though the whole movement has deep stakes in the politics of decarbonization, as working-class people’s lives and livelihoods are most vulnerable to climate change.

        Jessica Levinson, a law professor who serves on the Los Angeles Ethics Commission, warns in the Politico piece that the Green New Deal “really divides the Democrats on a fault line, which is more of the elites against the working class Democrats who are concerned about losing their jobs.” The article suggests that 2020 presidential hopefuls should be wary of alienating the working-class base — a segment that lost many voters to Trump in 2016, particularly white, working-class voters — by pushing too hard for the Green New Deal.

        So a policy agenda intended to address an existential crisis for the world’s environment is framed within the familiar dichotomy between burly blue-collar construction men and tree-hugging liberal elites. It’s a classic American trope that hearkens back to the faux populism of Nixon’s “hardhat” marches against “hippies” during the Vietnam War. Nevermind the fact that the labor movement today is driven by workers in the service industries, women, people of color and immigrants. The media regularly flattens the labor movement into a one-dimensional depiction of a Fordist industrial laborer, frozen in time.

      • In the Face of Climate Collapse, We Need the Wisdom of Elders

        I am steadily on the lookout for leveraging forces that can lift us out of heavy stuck loops, onto new ground. Often these are less obvious elements. One that has been underestimated is the presence of “elders,” whose presence calls us back to a bedrock sense of self and right relationship to the Earth.

        We are up against a systemic reality in the U.S. regarding older Americans as they are abandoned in policy and practice on a national scale. Attacks on Social Security, Medicare, etc. are attacks on elderly people. Turning our view of eldership on its end is a beginning place to shift this utter disregard.

        I am writing to those who are searching for a place from which to understand the disruption at hand and what is behind it, and also to those who want to respond in a way that provides a soft landing as systems collapse, while growing us into the human beings that we rightly are. Perhaps that “place” is under the wing of an elder who might offer shelter and inspiration, who has direct relationship with the spiritual reality that sits behind the concrete world, who is steadily available as a source of sanity and guidance.

        Western society has dishonored, colonized and often annihilated Indigenous cultures that revere true elders — people who know how to initiate successors into their full stature, whose communities revolve around their counsel. Largely bereft of this wisdom and direction, many of us are faced with the necessity of growing our own elders, and living into that potential ourselves. We are having to create our own pathways and initiations into this rightful alternative to simply getting old.

        Truthout’s Dahr Jamail will be writing the sequel to this piece, which will include the voices of several Indigenous elders who currently carry great weight. In recent months, I too, have been graced by the presence of Stan Rushworth, an elder of Cherokee heritage, author of Going to Water: The Journal of Beginning Rain, and Professor of Native American Literature at Cabrillo College in California. Stan maintains traditional ceremony, “which is for me, the root of it all.”

      • Cognitive Dissonance: Canada Declares a National Climate Emergency and Approves a Pipeline

        On June 18, the government of Canada declared a national climate emergency. The next day, the same government approved the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion (TMX), which will be able to move almost 600,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta to the Port of Burnaby in British Columbia.

        If this seems like a contradiction, you are not alone.

      • ‘Fund Climate Solutions, Not Endless War’: 22 Arrested Demanding US Build Windmills, Not Warships

        The protest took place outside the General Dynamics-owned Bath Iron Works (BIW) where some of the U.S. Navy’s most advanced and lethal warships are built. The group blocked traffic near the shipyard as buses carried guests to a ceremonial “christening” of a new Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer.

        Holding signs that read, “Tell Congress: Fund Climate Solutions, Not Endless War” and “Bring Our War Dollars Home,” supporters of the action stood on sidewalks nearby as those who risked arrest were taken into custody by local police.

        The protest in Bath was a much smaller direct action than what the world also witnessed on Saturday—when thousands of people from across Europe mobilized in Germany to shut down that nation’s coal industry, storming an open-pit and occupying railway tracks to a major power station—but the message was quite the same: a call for drastic and immediate action to end the world’s reliance on fossil fuels in order to build a more sustainable and peaceful world.

      • ‘Report the Urgency! This Is a Climate Emergency!’: 70 Arrested Outside New York Times Demanding Paper Treat Climate Like the Crisis It Is

        Hundreds of people descended on the headquarters of the New York Times on Saturday to demand the “paper of record” drastically improve its coverage of the global climate crisis and specifically demanded its reporters refer to the situation as a “climate emergency” in alignment with what the world’s scientific community is warning.

        Coordinated by Extinction Rebellion NYC, 70 people were reported arrested after the group staged a sit-in on Eight Avenue in midtown Manhattan in order to bring attention to the failure of the paper—and that of the journalism industry overall—to adequately report on the global urgency of skyrocketing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, rapidly warming oceans, and all the associated perils that result. The group hung banners in front of the Times building as well as from the Port Authority Bus Terminal on the other side of the street.

        Standing on the street corner, scores of people repeated the chant: “Report the urgency, this is a climate emergency!’

      • Devastating Rain Spells Are on Their Way

        Canadian scientists have examined an exhaustive collection of rain records for the past 50 years to confirm the fears of climate scientists: bouts of very heavy rain are on the increase.

        They have measured this increase in parts of Canada, most of Europe, the U.S. Midwest and Northeast, northern Australia, Western Russia and parts of China.

        From 2004 to 2013, worldwide, bouts of extreme rainfall rain increased by 7%. In Europe and Asia, the same decade registered a rise of 8.6% in cascades of heavy rain.

        The scientists report in the journal Water Resources Research that they excluded areas where the records were less than complete, but analyzed 8,700 daily rain records from 100,000 stations that monitor rainfall worldwide. They found that from 1964 to 2013, the frequency of catastrophic downpours increased with each decade.

      • Facing the Climate Emergency: Grieving The Future You Thought You Had

        Where do you see yourself in 10 years? In 20? Perhaps you plan to be advancing in your career, married, with children or retired, living near the beach, traveling often. Whatever it is—have you factored the climate crisis into it? In my experience, most people have not integrated the climate emergency into their sense of identity and future plans. This is, a form of climate denial. The vast majority of Americans—especially educated, successful, powerful, and privileged Americans—are still living their “normal” lives as though the climate crisis was not happening. They are pursuing their careers, starting families, and even saving for retirement. They know, intellectually, that the climate crisis is real, but they have not faced that reality emotionally, they have not grieved the future they thought they had, and consequently, they have not been able to act rationally or responsibility.

        Thankfully, this is starting to change. Thanks to the efforts of the School Strikers, The Climate Mobilization (the organization which I founded and direct), Extinction Rebellion, the Sunrise Movement, leaders like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, authors like David Wallace Wells, and many more, people are increasingly confronting the terrifying reality of climate truth, and looking for help processing and making sense of what they find.

        After you acknowledge the apocalyptic scale and speed of the climate emergency, you must allow yourself time to grieve. There are so many losses: the people and species already lost, your sense of safety and normalcy.

      • From Galápagos to Guam: US Military Bases are a Threat to Local Communities

        I’m from Guam; one of the countless islands of the Pacific used by the United States military as a base. At just 8 miles wide and 30 miles long, about a third of our island is covered by military installations with more build-up expected. My family and my community know all too well what being used as an airfield means. 52,000 veterans have organized into the group Agent Orange Survivors of Guam to lobby for benefits related to their exposure to the infamous herbicide while serving in the Pacific.

      • Global Warming, Carbon Dioxide and the Solar Minimum

        Even before the UN-initiated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) formed in 1988, the common assumption was that carbon dioxide was thekey greenhouse gas and that its increases were the driving force solely responsible for rising climate temperatures.

        At that time, anthropogenic (human caused) GW was declared to be the existential crisis of our time, that the science was settled and that we, as a civilization, were running out of time.

        [...]

        As Earth’s evolutionary climate cycles observe the Universal law of the natural world, the Zero Point Field, which produces an inexhaustible source of ‘free’ energy that Nikola Tesla spoke of, is the means by which inter stellar vehicles travel through time/space. The challenge for ingenious, motivated Earthlings is to harness and extract the ZPF proclaiming a new planetary age of technological innovation with no rapacious industry, no pollution, no shortages, no gas guzzlers and no war.

      • US military is huge greenhouse gas emitter

        British scientists have identified one of the world’s great emitters of greenhouse gases, a silent agency which buys as much fuel as Portugal or Peru and emits more carbon dioxide than all of Romania: the US military.

        Ironically, this agency is acutely aware that the climate emergency makes the world more dangerous,

        increasing the risk of conflict around the planet. And simply because it is conscious of this risk, it is ever more likely to burn ever-increasing levels of fossil fuels.

        The US military machine, with a global supply chain and massive logistical apparatus designed to confront perceived threats in war zones around the world, if it were a nation state, would be 47th in the global league tables for greenhouse gas emissions from fuel usage alone.

      • Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing

        Spending time in natural environments can benefit health and well-being, but exposure-response relationships are under-researched. We examined associations between recreational nature contact in the last seven days and self-reported health and well-being. Participants (n = 19,806) were drawn from the Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment Survey (2014/15–2015/16); weighted to be nationally representative. Weekly contact was categorised using 60 min blocks. Analyses controlled for residential greenspace and other neighbourhood and individual factors. Compared to no nature contact last week, the likelihood of reporting good health or high well-being became significantly greater with contact ≥120 mins (e.g. 120–179 mins: ORs [95%CIs]: Health = 1.59 [1.31–1.92]; Well-being = 1.23 [1.08–1.40]). Positive associations peaked between 200–300 mins per week with no further gain. The pattern was consistent across key groups including older adults and those with long-term health issues. It did not matter how 120 mins of contact a week was achieved (e.g. one long vs. several shorter visits/week). Prospective longitudinal and intervention studies are a critical next step in developing possible weekly nature exposure guidelines comparable to those for physical activity.

      • Two Hours a Week in Nature Can Boost Your Health and Well-Being, Research Finds

        New research has given credence to the age-old wisdom that spending time outside is good for you. A study recently published in Nature’s Scientific Reports journal found that people who spend at least 120 minutes in nature per week have higher odds of reporting better health and psychological well-being.

      • Spending minimum two hours weekly in nature tied to good health, wellbeing

        People who experience nature for at least 120 minutes per week are more likely to report good health and psychological wellbeing, a large UK study suggests.

        Researchers found that it didn’t matter how participants achieved their total time outdoors, whether in one long stretch or several short visits, but the greater the weekly “dose” of nature exposure up to about 300 minutes, the bigger the benefit.

        “Doctors (and patients) are often quite aware that spending time in natural environments might be good for people’s health, but the question that keeps coming up is, ‘How much is enough?’” said lead study author Mathew White of the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter Medical School in the UK.

      • A weekly goal of two hours of “nature time” improves health and wellbeing

        The idea that spending recreational time in natural settings is good for our health and wellbeing is hardly new. Parents have been telling their kids to “go play outside, it’s good for you” for generations. Now, colleagues and I have published a study in the journal Scientific Reports which suggests that a dose of nature of just two hours a week is associated with better health and psychological wellbeing, a figure that applies to every demographic we could think of (at least in England).

      • How Much Nature Is Enough? 120 Minutes a Week, Doctors Say

        It’s a medical fact: Spending time outdoors, especially in green spaces, is good for you.

        A wealth of research indicates that escaping to a neighborhood park, hiking through the woods, or spending a weekend by the lake can lower a person’s stress levels, decrease blood pressure and reduce the risk asthma, allergies, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, while boosting mental health and increasing life expectancy. Doctors around the world have begun prescribing time in nature as a way of improving their patients’ health.

        One question has remained: How long, or how frequently, should you experience the great outdoors in order to reap its great benefits? Is there a recommended dose? Just how much nature is enough?

        According to a paper published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, the answer is about 120 minutes each week.

        The study examined data from nearly 20,000 people in England who took part in the Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment Survey from 2014 to 2016, which asked them to record their activities within the past week. It found that people who spent two hours a week or more outdoors reported being in better health and having a greater sense of well-being than people who didn’t get out at all.

      • Thousands of Fossil Fuel “Observers” Attended Climate Negotiations – UNFCCC Data 2005-2018 COP1-COP24

        The collection of Global Climate Coalition (GCC) documents we compiled and released this April reveal that the organization had a singular focus, slowing down or derailing the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations process and “tracking” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), undermining the scientists’ message of urgency. In the GCC meeting minutes and press releases we see numerous interventions at the UN meetings along with strategies, budgets and debriefs.

        Se we decided it would be interesting to compile every fossil fuel company and trade group delegate who ever attended UNFCCC meetings. This research debuted in an Agence-France Press AFP piece and on Yahoo News this week during a UNFCCC meeting in Bonn, Germany.

        Non-governmental organizations like the GCC (or Greenpeace) have to gain accreditation with the UN in order to send “observers” to the meetings. Both the individual corporate members of the GCC (like Exxon) and the trade association members of the GCC (like the American Petroleum Institute) sent large delegations to UNFCCC meetings. These employees of oil companies, electric utilities, auto companies and corporate trade associations wore UNFCCC badges that obscured their true corporate employers to attendees, national delegates and media at the meeting.

      • Because ‘Another World Is Possible,’ Tens of Thousands of Activists Stage Climate Mobilizations in Germany

        Chanting “we are unstoppable, another world is possible,” thousands of activists in Germany set off Friday to occupy a coal mine as tens of thousands of other demonstrators mobilized in a separate German city as part of the swelling “Fridays for Future” climate actions.

        Activists Organizers with Ende Gelände (EG) mobilization say that roughly 4,000 people departed their protest camp in the western city of Viersen to head to the Garzweiler surface mine, operated by energy company RWE, some 12 miles (20 kilometers) away.

        “Today we set out with thousands of people towards a future without fossil fuels, without exploitation, and without this destructive quest for infinite economic growth,” said EG spokesperson Sina Reis, in a statement.

      • Massachusetts Energy Secretary Engaged in Enbridge Facility Review While Negotiating Job With Project’s Consultant

        While still in office, Massachusetts’ former energy and environmental secretary Matthew Beaton, who recently left his post for the private sector, took part in discussions about a natural gas project involving his new employer, DeSmog has found.

      • After Oregon Republicans Scurry Off to Avoid Voting on Climate Bill, Governor Sends State Police to Bring Them Back

        The prospect of mitigating the climate crisis sent Oregon state Senate Republicans scurrying into hiding Thursday, fleeing a vote that would place strong restrictions on emissions in the state.

        On Friday, Governor Kate Brown ordered the Oregon State Police to locate the 11 senators and bring them back to do their jobs.

        “I am authorizing the state police to fulfill the Senate Democrats’ request,” said Brown in a statement. “It is absolutely unacceptable that the Senate Republicans would turn their backs on their constituents who they are honor-bound to represent here in this building. They need to return and do the jobs they were elected to do.”

        State GOP lawmakers disappeared from the capital on Thursday rather than vote on the bill, denying the state Senate the 20 members it would need for a quorum. There are 18 Democrats in the chamber, 11 Republicans, and one vacant seat. The Republican flight came after Brown, on Wednesday, threatened to send police to force the senators into session.

        In response to Brown’s ultimatum, state Senator Brian Boquist, a Republican from Tillamook, appeared to threaten the lives of any police officers that might come to arrest him.

      • A Climate Bill Sets Off Tumult: Republicans Flee, Police Follow

        ensions boiled over in the Oregon Capitol this week as Republican state senators vanished in an effort to delay a vote on a climate change bill they oppose. On Thursday, Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, ordered the state police to find them and bring them back.

        It was only the latest chapter in a season of partisan division and frustration in the nation’s statehouses, where, for the first time in more than a century, all but one state legislature is dominated by a single party. In Oregon, where Democrats dominate both chambers, Republicans were unapologetic about their efforts to slow the state’s adoption of an emissions-reduction program by disappearing — and keeping the Democrats from having enough lawmakers present to call a vote.

        Brian Boquist, one of the Republican senators who went missing, issued what sounded like a warning to any police officer who might try to arrest him.

      • Oregon GOP lawmakers who fled capitol to avoid climate bill vote face $500 daily fines

        The Republican state lawmakers in Oregon who skipped town this week to avoid voting on a climate bill are reportedly facing fines if they don’t return to the state Legislature soon.

        According to a local NBC station, the state senators will be fined $500 for every day they don’t show to vote on the bill beginning Friday. Supporters have reportedly raised over $6,000 to help the Republican lawmakers cover the costs of the fines through a GoFundMe campaign.

        Although the bill has already passed the Democratic-controlled state House and is poised to pass the state Senate, where Democrats also hold the majority, a number of Republican lawmakers have fled the state to deny their colleagues a quorum in the upper chamber.

      • Governor sends police after GOP senators who fled Capitol

        Oregon Gov. Kate Brown deployed the state police Thursday to try to round up Republican lawmakers who fled the Capitol to block a vote on a landmark economy-wide climate plan that would be the second of its kind in the nation.

        Minority Republicans want the cap-and-trade proposal, which is aimed at dramatically lowering the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, to be sent to voters instead of being instituted by lawmakers — but negotiations with Democrats collapsed, leading to the walkout, Kate Gillem, a spokeswoman for Senate Republicans said Thursday.

      • Oregon Republicans Flee Climate Bill, Police Follow

        Oregon republicans fled their state rather than do anything to stop the climate crisis. The state republicans abrogated their duties as elected officials and ran away since they don’t have the votes to stop a landmark bill that would make Oregon the second state to adopt a cap-and-trade program to curb greenhouse gas emissions, as Vice News reported.

        Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a democrat, who will sign the bill into law once it is passed, ordered the state police to apprehend the Republican lawmakers who fled the Capitol. Although Oregon State Police can force any senators they find into a patrol car and bring them back to the Capitol, the police intend to use polite communication and patience rather than force, the agency said in a statement, according the AP.

      • Oregon Republicans Literally Fled the State Rather Than Vote on a Climate Bill

        And the governor sent the state police to drag them back to Salem.

      • People Are Wearing Data Charts to Visualize the Climate Crisis

        For Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading, the solstice also provides the perfect opportunity to raise awareness about human-driven climate change.

        Hawkins is the lead scientist behind #ShowYourStripes, an interactive tool that enables users to generate colorful graphics representing over a century of temperature measurements. Colder years are color-coded blue, while hotter ones are red.

      • Elizabeth Warren thinks corruption is why the US hasn’t acted on climate change

        Warren, isn’t making climate change the centerpiece of her agenda nor placing it in a “environmental” silo. Instead, she is using different parts of her agenda address climate. She is making the policy case that climate change is a national security concern, an economic threat and opportunity, and the consequence of a violation of public trust.

        That’s because Warren doesn’t see climate change itself as the central problem; rather the problem is money in politics. “The reason the United States is where it is on climate is corruption,” Chris Hayden, a spokesperson for the Warren campaign, told Vox. “We need to rein in the economic and political power of Big Oil to get serious about addressing climate change – which is why the first thing Elizabeth would do as President is pass her anti-corruption bill which would end lobbying as we know it.”

      • In a bid to avoid climate vote, Oregon Republican Senators cross state lines, go into hiding, threaten to murder cops, as white nationalist paramilitaries pledge armed support

        Oregon’s legislature is about to vote on a piece of climate change cap-and-trade legislation that the Democratic majority are likely to win, so to avoid the vote, 12 Oregon state senators have gone into hiding, thus depriving the senate of the necessary quorum.

      • Oregon Republicans are on the lam to avoid voting on a major climate change bill

        Democratic Gov. Kate Brown authorized state police to find the lawmakers and bring them back. They are each being fined $500 for every day there aren’t enough senators for a vote. (So far, it’s been two days.) Oregon State Police said they are also coordinating with law enforcement agencies in nearby states to find the Republicans.

      • Oregon Police Working To Retrieve State GOP Lawmakers Avoiding Vote On Climate Change

        Well, let’s start with the fact that Democrats have supermajorities in both chambers here and the governor’s office. So, you know, they’ve been pretty successful this session at pushing through some very big bills. And now they are hoping to pass one of the more sweeping climate change policies in the country. It’s a cap and trade program that would make Oregon only the second state after California to do so. But Republicans feel like this could be really detrimental to their mostly rural districts. And they’ve been trying to do anything they can to keep the bill from passing, at least in its current form. Democrats needed two Republicans to conduct business in the Senate, so this walkout effectively freezes things.

      • Oregon Senate Republicans leave the state to avoid climate bill vote [iophk: "An apparent R sedition"]

        In response to the walkout, Senate President Peter Courtney formally requested Democratic Gov. Kate Brown to dispatch Oregon State Police troopers to round up the missing Republican Senators.

        Brown quickly granted that request. “It is absolutely unacceptable that the Senate Republicans would turn their back on their constituents who they are honor-bound to represent here in this building,” she said in a statement. “They need to return and do the jobs they were elected to do.”

      • Oregon Governor Orders State Police to Find GOP State Senators Avoiding a Climate Vote

        On Thursday, the Democrat governor of Oregon ordered state troopers to find the 11 Republican state senators and take them back to the capitol. The senators went into hiding to stop the state’s senate from reaching the quorum needed to vote on a carbon cap and spend bill, the Oregonian reported. If passed, the bill would set statewide greenhouse gas emissions reductions goals and charge polluters for their emissions.

      • California Legislators Urge Caution, but Greenlight a Plan That Could Lead to the Widespread Use of Forestry Offsets

        California legislators gave regulators at the state’s Air Resources Board approval to endorse a plan that could lead to the widespread use of forest preservation offsets, but not without committing to “vigorous and proactive monitoring,” a note of caution inspired, in part, by a recent ProPublica investigation that showed how these carbon credits have not provided the emissions cuts they promised.

        In a letter from an ad-hoc workgroup to the board, four assembly members noted the scientific problems highlighted in the story, which make it hard to accurately quantify how much carbon is being offset by preserved forests.

        The Tropical Forest Standard — a blueprint for how carbon offsets could be awarded for intercontinental programs — would raise the stakes for such projects, allowing them to be used to fulfill government mandates. Experts say other countries will adopt the standard if the California board votes to endorse it later this year.

      • History Proves We Can’t Count on the Democratic Party for a Green New Deal

        In 1966, the civil rights movement, in ways similar to the climate justice movement today, was at an impasse, confronting vast societal disparities of wealth and power. “A Freedom Budget for all Americans,” issued by leaders of the civil rights movement, called on the federal government to implement programs that would eliminate poverty in 10 years through jobs, education, housing and health care programs.

        Today, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has proposed a Green New Deal, with similarly broad universal social and environmental justice ambitions — and the stakes for the U.S. and global working class and the planet are dire.

        To discuss the historical lessons from the 1966 Freedom Budget and prospects for a Green New Deal, Truthout spoke with historian and labor activist Paul Le Blanc, co-author (along with Michael Yates) of A Freedom Budget for All Americans: Recapturing the Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in the Struggle for Economic Justice Today. A lightly edited transcript follows.

      • Scientists Are Stunned by How Rapidly Ice Is Melting in the Arctic

        June has set a record low of Arctic sea ice, while the extent of melting across the Greenland Ice Sheet this early in the summer has never been seen before.

        Recently, temperatures in parts of Greenland soared to 40 degrees above normal, while open water (not covered by sea ice) is already being observed in places north of Alaska where it has seldom, if ever, been observed.

        The current sea ice coverage in the Arctic is the lowest ever recorded for mid-June.

        Rick Thoman, a Fairbanks-based climatologist, told The Washington Post that the loss of sea ice over the Chukchi and Beaufort seas of Alaska’s northern coast is now “unprecedented.”

        Scientists have long been warning that what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. Some liken the situation to what happens when a refrigerator door is left open. The cold air that is usually contained within the Arctic region of the planet is now often being displaced by high-pressure zones in the Arctic, all of which is then being augmented by human-caused climate disruption. This has resulted in lower-than-normal temperatures across much of the central and eastern United States in early June, while the Arctic was baking under abnormally high temperatures that have facilitated the unprecedented melting of ice across so much of the region.

      • Permafrost Collapses 70 Years Early

        Fasten your seat belt! Global warming is on a rampage.

        As a consequence, many ecosystems may be on the verge of total collapse. In fact, recent activity in the hinterlands surely looks that way. Over time, the backlash for civilized society, where people live in comfort, could be severe, meaning extreme discomfort.

        But still, nobody knows when or how bad it’ll get. As it happens, an ongoing climate catastrophe, like the show-stopping catastrophic collapse of permafrost in the Canadian High Arctic (more on this later) is hard evidence that climate scientists have been way too conservative for far too long. Evidently, they never expected climate change to hit with the force of a lightening bolt.

        Still in all, and in fairness, climate scientists have been warning about the dangers of global warming for decades. Now, it’s happening, in spades. It should be noted that America’s politicians are guilty of ignoring warnings by their own scientists. Those warnings officially started 31 years ago when Dr. James Hansen, then head of NASA Institute for Space Studies, testified before the Senate, “Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate,” NY Times d/d June 24, 1988.

        The NYT article of 31 years ago went on to say: “If the current pace of the buildup of these gases continues, the effect is likely to be a warming of 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit from the year 2025 to 2050, according to these projections. This rise in temperature is not expected to be uniform around the globe but to be greater in the higher latitudes.” Hmm, that’s where the permafrost is located.

        Global warming is prominent throughout the North. Ergo, climate news doesn’t get much worse (well, actually, it could, and will) than the collapse of permafrost in the Canadian High Arctic’s extreme coldest region:

        “Observed maximum thaw depths at our sites are already exceeding those projected to occur by 2090.” (Source: Louise M. Farquharson et al, Climate Change Drives Widespread and Rapid Thermokarst Development in Very Cold Permafrost in the Canadian High Arctic, Geophysical Research Letters, June 10, 2019).

      • ‘Our Climate Is Breaking Down. Business As Usual Is Over’: Campaigners Interrupt Televised Speech of UK Treasury Official

        The Greenpeace UK activists targeted the speech being given MP Philip Hammond, Chancellor of the Exchequer and a Tory in the House of Commons representing Runnymede and Weybridge, at the annual dinner in which government officials offer their view of the nation’s economic outlook.

      • ‘We Are Unstoppable, Another World Is Possible!’: Hundreds Storm Police Lines to Shut Down Massive Coal Mine in Germany

        Hundreds of climate activists stormed a massive open-pit coal mine in Germany on Saturday, entering a standoff with police inside the mine while thousands of others maintained separate blockades of the nation’s coal infrastructure as part of a week-long series of actions designed to end Europe’s dependency on fossil fuels.

        Coordinated by the Ende Gelände alliance, the campaigners targeting the Garzweiler mine in the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia as they evaded security forces across roads and fields before reaching the pit and descending its banks.

      • An EU proposal to slash carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 was blocked by four countries

        The European Union has failed to set a firm deadline to end its contribution to climate change, after a group of central and eastern European countries blocked a proposal to slash EU carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

        Leaders of the bloc’s 28 member states agreed instead on Thursday to start working on “a transition to a climate-neutral EU.”

        A majority of EU nations were hoping for a much more robust version of the plan. Earlier proposals envisioned a strict road map of how to reach net zero emissions, and a hard 2050 deadline. Such deal would have been notable for its sheer scale — more than 500 million people living in the EU would have been affected by it.

      • Four states block EU 2050 carbon neutral target

        Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Estonia prevented the EU from adopting a clear long-term climate neutrality goal at the summit in Brussels on Thursday evening (20 June).

        The central and eastern European leaders could not get behind a draft text which said the EU should take measures “to ensure a transition to a climate-neutral EU by 2050″ – a date too specific for them.

        Poland was leading the opposition, with support from the Czech Republic and Hungary.

      • E.U. Leaders Fail to Strengthen Climate Target

        European Union leaders failed to reach an agreement Thursday on a proposal to reduce their net carbon emissions to zero by 2050.

        Elections were held in the 28-member bloc in May, and leaders are in Brussels this week to set an agenda for the European Parliament’s next five-year term. The document will include broad guidelines on key issues facing the union, including migration, living standards and climate change.

      • EU Leaders Fail to Set 2050 Carbon Neutrality Deadline

        Western European leaders German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron had wanted the bloc to agree to an ambitious target ahead of a major UN climate summit in September. But leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary refused to sign any document with a 2050 date. It was also unclear if Estonia would have committed to the deadline, the EU Observer reported. Poland gets around 80 percent of its electricity from coal, The New York Times reported, and the countries were concerned such a timeline would disproportionately impact their economies.

      • Oregon Governor Kate Brown Signs Five-Year Fracking Ban Bill

        In contrast with California where every bill to ban or impose a moratorium on fracking has been defeated under heavy political pressure by Big Oil, Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed into law a five-year ban on fracking for oil and gas exploration and production on June 17.

        HB 2623, sponsored by Rep. Julie Fahey and Sen. James Manning, received final approval by the state legislature on June 5. The bill previously banned fracking for 10 years, but the Senate reduced that ban to five years.

        The House concurred in Senate amendments and repassed the bill. The votes were: Ayes, 40; Nays, 19–Barker, Barreto, Bonham, Boshart Davis, Evans, Findley, Keny-Guyer, Leif, McLane, Nearman, Noble, Post, Reschke, Sanchez, Smith G, Sprenger, Stark, Wallan, Wilson; Excused for Business of the House, 1–Rayfield.

        The controversial process to extract oil and gas has poisoned drinking water and caused widespread health problems in other states, according to fracking opponents. It has has been banned in Vermont, New York, Maryland, and Washington.

      • Former Shale Gas CEO Says Fracking Revolution Has Been “A Disaster” For Drillers, Investors

        Steve Schlotterbeck, who led drilling company EQT as it expanded to become the nation’s largest producer of natural gas in 2017, arrived at a petrochemical industry conference in Pittsburgh Friday morning with a blunt message about shale gas drilling and fracking.

        “The shale gas revolution has frankly been an unmitigated disaster for any buy-and-hold investor in the shale gas industry with very few limited exceptions,” Schlotterbeck, who left the helm of EQT last year, continued. “In fact, I’m not aware of another case of a disruptive technological change that has done so much harm to the industry that created the change.”

        “While hundreds of billions of dollars of benefits have accrued to hundreds of millions of people, the amount of shareholder value destruction registers in the hundreds of billions of dollars,” he said. “The industry is self-destructive.”

      • Green MEP says community energy report demonstrates failures of government policy

        Alexandra said: “The report describes 2018 as “a year of uncertainty and challenge”.

        “There’s only one source of that uncertainty, the total failure of government policy to engage with the needs of this crucial part of the renewables sector that is also an essential part of strong, resilient local economies right across the country.

        “Community energy should be at the heart of the government’s policy, but like the whole renewables and energy efficiency sector it has been trapped in an uncertain policy environment, given limited encouragement then all too often had the rug pulled out from under its feet, as with the sudden ending of the feed-in tariff.”

      • Congressional Dems Investigating Why Big Oil Is ‘Only Winner’ in Clean Car Standard Rollbacks

        House Democrats in the Energy and Commerce Committee are actively investigating the oil industry’s role in shaping the Trump administration’s proposed rollback of greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards for cars and light duty trucks.

      • Climate action: Can we change the climate from the grassroots up?

        More and more people are demanding that investors, such as faith-based organizations and pension funds, withdraw their financial support from fossil fuel projects. The global divestment movement has convinced over 1,000 institutions to commit to divesting from oil, coal and gas companies. This translates to almost $8 trillion (€7 trillion) less in assets from fossil fuel investments.

        “The momentum has been driven by a people-powered grassroots movement, ordinary people on every continent pushing their local institutions to take a stand against the fossil fuel industry and for a world powered by 100% renewable energy,” the NGO 350.org says.

      • Clean Power Overtaking Fossil Fuels in Britain in 2019

        The milestone has been passed through the end of May this year. National Grid said that clean energy had slightly outpaced fossil fuels, 48 percent to 47 percent for coal and gas. The other five percent is chalked up to biomass burning, which has the potential to be carbon-neutral. The transformation reflects the growing unpopularity of coal energy, as the public increases its appetite for wind and solar power, according to the BBC.

        The UK has a long and storied history with coal, which was home to the world’s first coal-fueled power plant in the 1880s. Coal was the island nation’s dominant electricity source for the next century, which led to economic leaps, but also dangerous air quality.

        In a sign of the times, British politicians shunned coal and made the UK the first G7 country to commit to net-zero emissions by 2050. That target compels Britain to invest heavily in low-carbon power and to make drastic reductions in fossil fuel use, according to Reuters.

      • Clean power to overtake fossil fuels in Britain in 2019

        Britain, the birth place of coal power, is set this year to use more electricity from zero-carbon sources such as wind, solar and nuclear than from fossil fuel plants for the first time, the country’s National Grid said on Friday.

      • Clean electricity overtaking fossil fuels in Britain

        The milestone has been passed for the first five months of 2019.

        National Grid says clean energy has nudged ahead with 48% of generation, against 47% for coal and gas.

        The rest is biomass burning. The transformation reflects the precipitous decline of coal energy, and a boom from wind and solar.

        National Grid says that in the past decade, coal generation will have plunged from 30% to 3%.

        Meanwhile, wind power has shot up from 1% to 19%.

        Mini-milestones have been passed along the way. In May, for instance, Britain clocked up its first coal-free fortnight and generated record levels of solar power for two consecutive days.

      • Another Reason to Protect Elephants: Frogs Love Their Feet

        Some of the tiniest creatures in Myanmar benefit from living near the largest species in the area.

        Newly published research reveals that frogs are laying their eggs in the rain-filled footprints of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), which then provide a safe home for growing tadpoles. The footprints eventually fade away, but they last for a year or more on the forest floor and can serve as important habitats during dry seasons and even as “stepping stones” between frog populations.

      • Water-filled Asian elephant tracks serve as breeding sites for anurans in Myanmar

        Elephants are widely recognized as ecosystem engineers. To date, most research on ecosystem engineering by elephants has focused on Loxodonta africana and Loxodonta cyclotis, and the role of Elephas maximus is much less well-known. We here report observations of anuran eggs and larva in water-filled tracks (n=20) of E. maximus in Myanmar. Our observations suggest that water-filled tracks persist for >1 year and function as small lentic waterbodies that provide temporary, predator-free breeding habitat for anurans during the dry season when alternate sites are unavailable. Trackways could also function as “stepping stones” that connect anuran populations.

      • A Democratic Think Tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, Is Promoting Pushback Against Climate Lawsuits

        As part of a growing trend of lawsuits over climate change impacts, cities and states across the U.S. are seeking damages from oil, gas, and coal companies whose products drive the crisis and which for years evidently engaged in disinformation and denial campaigns to stall climate action.

        Now the fossil fuel industry is pushing back, taking a page out of Big Tobacco’s playbook to rein in that liability litigation, and getting help from an unexpected source.

        Behind the scenes, politically affiliated groups are quietly providing support. One of the outfits promoting the efforts to counter the slew of climate lawsuits is none other than the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), a center-left Washington, D.C.-based think tank with links to the Democratic party.

    • Finance

      • Libra, a Cyberpunk Nightmare in the Midst of Crypto Spring

        It’s an ELE, an Extinction Level Event for the old financial world order. When historians look back they may just point to this moment as the catalyst.

        But what does the future look like? How does it all play out?

        Are we racing towards a financial renaissance or a cyberpunk nightmare of oligarchical mega-corporations ripped from the pages of William Gibson?

      • Facebook’s Libra Crypto Coin: 5 Things We Know, and 5 We Don’t

        The world’s largest social media company published a 12-page white paper on Libra and has more than 20 partners for the project. But there are still many questions. After a week of analysis, here’s what Bloomberg reporters and editors know about Libra, along with key unknowns that remain: [...]

      • Green Party co-leaders reflect on third anniversary of Brexit referendum

        With tomorrow marking the third anniversary of the Brexit referendum, the co-leaders of the Green Party have reflected on two key aspects of the last three years.

        Sian Berry said: “Our politics has become entangled in what has been rightly described as Brexit chaos over the past three years.

        “We could, and should, have been dealing with the fast-rising issues of poverty and homelessness, with the collapse of bus services and the causes of the filthy air we breathe, with the state of our nature-deprived countryside and the struggles of our small farmers to survive.

      • Mobilizing the Poor People’s Campaign

        This week in Washington, the powers that be are hearing from a vital new democratic force in this country.

        For three days, the Poor People’s Campaign will bring poor and low-wage Americans to the nation’s capital to call for a moral renewal in this nation. They will question many of those who are seeking the Democratic nomination for president. Congressional hearings will showcase their Poor People’s Moral Budget.

        Their actions should be above the fold of every newspaper in America; they should lead the news shows and fill the talk shows. A movement for common sense and social justice is building, putting every politician on notice: lead or get out of the way, a new moral majority is building and demanding change.

        As the co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign, the Rev. Dr. William Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, write in their forward, this movement is not partisan. It calls not for liberal or conservative reforms, but for a moral renewal. It is not a deep-pocket lobby. It is mobilizing the 144 million Americans who are poor or one crisis away from poverty into a “new and unsettling force” to “revive the heart of democracy in America.”

        This movement launched on Mother’s Day in May 2018. In 40 days, it triggered 200 actions across many states with 5,000 nonviolent demonstrators committing civil disobedience, and millions following the protests online. Forty states now have coordinating committees build a coalition of poor people and people of faith and conscience across lines of race, religion, region and other lines of division.

      • No Dare Call It Austerity

        Trump’s 2020 budget proposal reflects another significant increase in military spending along with corresponding cuts in spending by Federal agencies tasked with the responsibility for providing critical services and income support policies for working class and poor people. Trump’s call for budget cuts by Federal agencies is mirrored by the statutorily imposed austerity policies in most states and many municipalities. Those cuts represent the continuing imposition of neoliberal policies in the U.S. even though the “A” word for austerity is almost never used to describe those policies.

        Yet, austerity has been a central component of state policy at every level of government in the U.S. and in Europe for the last four decades. In Europe, as the consequences of neoliberal policies imposed on workers began to be felt and understood, the result was intense opposition. However, in the U.S. the unevenness of how austerity policies were being applied, in particular the elimination or reduction in social services that were perceived to be primarily directed at racialized workers, political opposition was slow to materialize.

        Today, however, relatively privileged workers who were silent as the neoliberal “Washington consensus” was imposed on the laboring classes in the global South — through draconian structural adjustment policies that result in severe cutbacks in state expenditures for education, healthcare, state employment and other vital needs — have now come to understand that the neoliberal program of labor discipline and intensified extraction of value from workers, did not spare them.

        The deregulation of capital, privatization of state functions — from road construction to prisons, the dramatic reduction in state spending that results in cuts in state supported social services and goods like housing and access to reproductive services for the poor — represent the politics of austerity and the role of the neoliberal state.

      • Facebook’s Authoritarian Money Grab

        “Don’t be surprised,” said Terence Ray, one of the hosts of the Whitesburg, Ky.-based podcast “The Trillbillies,” “if Mark Zuckerberg starts trying to pay his employees in ‘Facebook Bucks.’” Ray made that comment in late May during a Means TV segment on the history of company money, or scrip, which was used throughout the 19th and 20th centuries by mining and logging companies in the United States. In some cases, scrip was still changing hands decades after it was made officially illegal by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

        Lo and behold, not one week later, the business press began reporting that Facebook would, within the month, announce its own new proprietary cryptocurrency. What’s more, the tech giant would perhaps even “allow employees working on the project to take their salary in the form of the new currency,” a proposal of, at very least, dubious legality in the United States.

        The actual announcement came this week—and it was more banal, stupid and terrifying than I had imagined.

        This new currency, dubbed “Libra,” is, in the first place, not a currency. A consortium of investors—banks, credit card companies, venture capitalists, etc.—will pool millions or billions of dollars in order to purchase a “reserve” composed of “low-volatility assets, such as bank deposits and short-term government securities in currencies from stable and reputable central banks.” While the Libra will not be “pegged” to any particular currency—set, for example, to a fixed rate against the dollar—this reserve will be structured to “minimize volatility, so holders of Libra can trust the currency’s ability to preserve value over time.” This scheme stands in sharp contrast to something like bitcoin, whose wildly fluctuating values are purely speculative and whose only supposedly intrinsic value is an enforced scarcity: There can never be more than 21 million of its units.

      • Sharia Law makes a comeback in Canada

        Two Muslim men – an activist turned Shariah mortgage seller and an Islamic cleric who sold his Islamic seal of approval on such mortgages – were acquitted on Friday of a dozen criminal charges by an Ontario Superior Court judge who validated aspects of Sharia law in reaching her decision. Justice Jane Ferguson described the trial as a “huge learning curve in Islamic finance.”

      • Elon Musk Is Gaslighting America

        “What we found was that, under pressure to meet its production goals, it was really leaving safety, worker safety, by the wayside, and had prioritized cranking out cars as fast as possible, and left its workers dealing with all kinds of serious injuries. And then was actually trying to hide those injuries in order to make its safety record look better.”

        The revelations should have jolted Musk and California officials to take a deeper look into the company’s operations, but quite the opposite took place. While state officials did in fact grill Tesla after the investigative reports were published, according to Evans, they are mostly afraid regulating the company could push Tesla—with its factory and the jobs it creates—out of the state. As for the CEO, he had a response that anyone reading any news about the arrogant tech baron might expect.

        “The company and its supporters, and Elon, sees this all as sort of an attack on him and on the company—that people want to see it fail,” Evans tells Scheer. “[Tesla] went as far as to say that [the Center for Investigative Reporting” is] an extremist organization … working on a disinformation campaign. [Musk] went on to attack journalists in general for being beholden to the fossil fuel industry because of advertisements, and gthat that’s why journalists are out to get Tesla.

        “When someone pointed out that, hey, over here at the Center for Investigative Reporting we don’t even have advertisements, we’re a nonprofit, he went on Twitter and he called us just a bunch of rich kids from Berkeley who took their political science professor too seriously. That was his diss.”

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • AOC Is the Trump-Era Hero We Need

        On Monday evening, President Trump pressed send on a tweet declaring that in the next week, ICE would begin removing “the millions of illegal aliens” who are in the United States. This, of course, was not true. ICE deports about 7,000 immigrants per month, which is rather short of the roughly 10.5 million undocumented immigrants currently residing in the United States. The tweet, coming two days before Trump’s big reelection rally, seemed tailor-made to send Democrats into paroxysms of rage and force us into a law-and-order debate in which we stand on the side of the lawbreakers.

        [...]

        The way that AOC pulled off this feat is worth examining. Her tactics actually were quite Trumpian. First, she expertly stoked the flames of outrage. Not only did she label detention centers as concentration camps but she added “never again” to underscore the Nazi connection. Republicans, who can never resist a chance to take AOC’s bait, predictably pounced. This controversy set the cable news trap, and soon political panels were debating the meaning of concentration camps instead of having to engage with Trump’s law-and-order framing. As David Rothkopf pointed out, if you are explaining why your policies aren’t as bad as Auschwitz, you are losing. AOC, for her part, doubled, tripled and then quadrupled down, offering scholarly articles on concentration camps and retweeting Jewish people who lauded her comparison.

        Some Democrats were comfortable with the comparison and some were not. Even Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told CNN, “I have not used that word.” But that’s not the point. Whether it was 4-D chess or just an instinctive knack for the modern media landscape, AOC forced the debate that she wanted to have — and it was a good debate for Democrats. After all, there is no Democrat who would not concede that the conditions in which we hold migrants are abhorrent.

      • Activists Step Up Trainings in Wake of Deportation Threats

        Ceci Garcia believes that if her husband had a better understanding of his rights, he would have avoided deportation to Mexico after telling a suburban Chicago police officer during a 2012 traffic stop that he was living in the U.S. illegally.

        “He failed to remain silent,” said the U.S. citizen mother of five. “He proceeded and told the truth.”

      • Yes, Liz Cheney, AOC is right that US is Running Concentration Camps for Refugees

        Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been under fire for an Instagram message she sent out in which she characterized the holding facilities for refugees and other undocumented entrants into the US run by ICE and by private companies (for which it is a $2 billion a year industry) as “concentration camps.”

        Human rights groups are speaking of a systematic violation of basic human rights of these immigrants. Note that it is perfectly legal for people to seek refugee status in the United States, and that the court system determines if they will be awarded that status. Trump is now trying to intimidate INS agents into not forwarding cases to the judges. It is illegal for people to simply migrate without documentation into the United States, but the US has been dealing successfully with that phenomenon for years, deporting some 400,000 people a year. In the past decade, more Mexicans have left the US than have come in, and Trump’s anxiety is one more appropriate to the 1980s and 1990s. A majority of Americans favor immigration and 70% say being welcoming of people of other cultures is key to their idea of America.

      • A Brief History of US Concentration Camps

        Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has ignited a firestorm of criticism, from both the left and the right as well as the mainstream media, for calling US immigrant detention centers “concentration camps.” To her credit, Ocasio-Cortez has refused to back down, citing academic experts and blasting the Trump administration for forcibly holding undocumented migrants “where they are brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying.” She also cited history. “The US ran concentration camps before, when we rounded up Japanese people during World War II,” she tweeted. “It is such a shameful history that we largely ignore it. These camps occur throughout history.” Indeed they do. What follows is an overview of US civilian concentration camps through the centuries. Prisoner-of-war camps, as horrific as they have been, have been excluded due to their legal status under the Geneva Conventions, and for brevity’s sake.

      • 19 States Still Allow Schools to Beat Their Students

        Mississippi is one of 19 states that still allow corporal punishment in school, with more than 70 school districts still practicing it. Lafayette County, where I grew up, recently discussed the possibility of removing it. Not everyone supported the idea.

        “Just having it in the policy and some students knowing they might get paddled might keep them from doing things they shouldn’t,” said board member Mike Gooch at the meeting. “I know it did for me.”

        But the last 20 years of psychology (along with the American Academy of Pediatrics) says otherwise. No data have demonstrated a connection between corporal punishment and corrective behavior at all, other than an “increased immediate compliance” that also increases aggression and anti-social behavior, often to lifelong effects.

        Let’s not be misled by the language: Corporal punishment isn’t a euphemism for disciplinary action. It’s a euphemism for beating children.

        And in the case of Lafayette County, it’s not just children — it’s the youngest and most vulnerable children. According to Superintendent Patrick Robinson, Lafayette High School hasn’t used corporal punishment in over a decade, but the district’s elementary schools used it “about eight or nine times” last year.

        That’s actually pretty low for Mississippi, which sees about seven of its public school students paddled every year. That’s the highest rate in the 19 states that still practice it, altogether recording a total of 163,333 beatings in the 2011-12 school year.

        Our students already have to worry about AR-15s. Do we really need them worrying about wooden paddles, too?

      • At South Carolina Convention, Sanders Hammers Centrist Democrats

        Bernie Sanders is striking back at a centrist Democratic group he says is dismissing him as an “existential threat” to the party’s 2020 hopes.

        The Vermont senator and second-time presidential candidate hammered Third Way as a corporate-financed group as he spoke Saturday at the South Carolina Democratic convention.

        Some of the group’s members have garnered fresh attention for warming toward liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren. She is perhaps Sanders’ biggest threat for support on the Democrats’ left flank.

        Sanders argued Saturday that he can win a general election against President Donald Trump not by winning over the middle of the traditional electorate but instead by attracting millions of new voters. “We defeat Trump by running a campaign of energy and enthusiasm that substantially grows voter turnout … in a way we have never seen,” he said.

      • Brian Mier on Brazilian Political Scandal

        New revelations from Brazil: Whistleblower-leaked records show the anti-corruption crusade, called Car Wash or Lava Jato, that put popular ex-president Lula da Silva in prison and paved the way for fascist president Jair Bolsanaro—all while being celebrated in the US corporate press—was actually, as critics contended, less interested in corruption than in keeping Lula’s Workers Party out of power. It’s a story about what investigative journalism can reveal…and about how elite media can try and cover it right back up. Journalist Brian Mier has lived in Brazil for more than 20 years. He’s co-editor at Brasil Wire and author of the new book Year of Lead: Washington, Wall Street and the New Imperialism in Brazil.

      • Could ‘Deepfakes’ Help Swing the 2020 Election?

        Imagine, on the day before the 2020 presidential election, that someone posts a video of the Democratic candidate talking before a group of donors. The candidate admits to being ashamed to be an American, confesses that the United States is a malevolent force in the world, and promises to open borders, subordinate the country to the UN, and adopt a socialist economic system.

        The video goes viral. It doesn’t matter that it sounds a bit suspicious, a candidate saying such things just before the election. A very careful observer might note some discrepancies with the shadows in the background of the video or that the candidate makes some oddly uncharacteristic facial expressions.

        For the average credulous viewer, however, the video reinforces some latent prejudices about Democratic Party candidates, that they never thought America was all that great to begin with and are not ultimately interested in making the country great again. And hey, didn’t Mitt Romney make a similar mistake by dissing the 47 percent just before the 2012 elections?

        The video spreads across social media even as the platforms try to take it down. The mainstream media publish careful proofs that the video is fabricated. It doesn’t matter. Enough people in enough swing states believe the video and either switch their votes or stay home. It’s not even clear where the video came from, whether it’s a domestic dirty trick or a foreign agent following the Russian game plan from 2016.

      • Diary: Party of Quartz

        It’s 2019 and General Andrew Jackson is at it again, campaigning for American hearts, today more like a rough ghost riding the bodies of almost all Democrat contenders. There’s a problem, again, this time. Except for Bernie Sanders and his band of leftist and centrist catalysts being managed by mainstream Democrat Campaign Manager, which I have purposely caps locked, Faiz Shakir from Harry Reid’s old office the ACLU and Nancy Pelosi’s, the DNC has lost the ability to relate polis and politics to culture, and as many writers today exclaim, it is the main reason for its demise. For all its inabilities to organize around poverty, feminism, and other catastrophic realities, its biggest downfall is its inability to organize around catastrophic thought and the catastrophic imagination, that of most poor, working, and middle class Americans and one they share with many upper middle class and upper class Americans. It does this by, again, pushing aside classic and contemporary thought, making it an apoetic, aliterate party of glossy progression, a consolidation effort.

      • At European Parliament, PT accuses the US of coordinating Lava Jato

        On Thursday, June 18th, PT Congressional leader Paulo Pimenta accused the United States of coordinating the corrupt Lava Jato investigation which, as the Intercept has now revealed through publishing leaked social media conversations between task force members, actively worked to protect conservative politicians from the investigation while removing former President Lula from the 2018 elections and helping elect right wing extremist Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency.

        In a blatant quid pro quo, Lava Jato task force leader Sérgio Moro was given a key cabinet position by Bolsonaro.

        The Brazilian lawmaker presented European Union Parliament with 13 archives documenting illegal US collaboration in the investigation, saying that “there is already a strong suspicion, based on facts, that Operation Car Wash was politically instrumentalized in order to produce objectively harmful effects on Brazil.” The report is reproduced in its entirety here.

      • Why Jair Bolsonaro’s new security policy endangers the lives of black and marginalized women

        Today, Brazil is the highest ranked country in the world for homicides and murders by firearm and fifth for female homicides. Black women fall victim particularly often to gun murders: In 2016, 66% of all women killed by a firearm were of color.

        While Brazil’s militarized approach to public security has systemically contributed to civilian victimization in armed operations, justified through an “us or them” war rhetoric in the combatting of drug traffic, the Bolsonaro administration has introduced several modifications to the current public security policy which have the capacity to take the already alarming levels of violence against black women and favela residents to a new record level.

        These measures boil down to two significant changes in the current legislation: the flexibilization of the legal requirements for purchasing and carrying firearms, implemented through two presidential decrees, and the relaxation of the penalties for excesses committed by security agents, presented in the context of a measure package for public security and currently in progress in the Brazilian Congress.

      • Biden Is Being Biden. That’s a Risk.

        I get what Joe Biden was trying to say, but I’ll never understand how he tried—and utterly failed—to say it.

        Yes, there was a time when the Senate was a chummy men’s club whose members, on some issues, put collegiality ahead of ideology. Yes, I see how the Democratic front-runner might want to hold out the hope, however slim, of a return to the days of “civility” when political foes could find common ground. Yes, I know that Biden is still Biden, which means you never know what might come out of his mouth.

        But no, no, a thousand times no, you don’t name former senators James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia in your fond reminiscences of the good old days. There are plenty of conservative Republicans whom Biden might have cited. He didn’t have to dredge up two vicious Dixiecrat racists who devoted their long careers to denying African Americans basic civil and human rights.

        That’s what Biden did, however, at a fundraiser Tuesday in New York City. After recalling that he had served in the Senate with segregationists Eastland and Talmadge, Biden went on: “Guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today, you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.”

        When a passel of his opponents for the Democratic nomination pounced on the remarks and called for an apology, Biden was initially defiant. “Apologize for what?” he said to reporters Wednesday. “There’s not a racist bone in my body; I’ve been involved in civil rights my whole career. Period. Period. Period.”

      • A Lobbyist Raising Money for Biden Is Fighting Measures to Crack Down on Foreign Election Influence

        This article was produced by Sludge, an independent, ad-free investigative news site covering money in politics. Click here to support Sludge.

        As former Vice President Joe Biden campaigns to become the chief executive of the United States government, he is getting help from someone who is working to block reforms aimed at reducing the influence of foreign corporations on U.S. elections and policymakers.

        Biden’s first presidential campaign fundraiser this year, held in April at the Philadelphia home of Comcast’s top lobbyist, David Cohen, was hosted by a cast of Democratic Party high rollers including Ken Jarin, co-leader of government affairs at corporate lobbying firm Ballard Spahr. Among the clients of the lobbying team Jarin leads at Ballard Spahr is the Fair FARA Coalition, a mysterious trade group representing U.S. subsidiaries of major foreign companies. The coalition opposes proposals to make lobbyists for U.S. subsidiaries of foreign-owned companies register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires far more rigorous disclosure than domestic lobbying reports demand.

        Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, special counsel in Ballard Spahr’s government relations and public policy division but not part of its Washington, D.C. lobbying team, also hosted the event. Cohen was formerly Rendell’s chief of staff and chair of Ballard Spahr.

        In an email to potential donors, Cohen said that Jarin, Rendell, and former Ballard Spahr partner Charisse Lillie, now a vice president at Comcast, are part of a new “Philadelphia finance leadership team” he put together. Cohen encouraged those attending the fundraiser to contribute the maximum allowed amount of $2,800. On the day of the fundraiser, Biden raised $6.3 million.

        In early January, Philadelphia-based Ballard Spahr set up a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying shop, co-led by Jarin, and hired three lawyers and two lobbyists from Nossaman LLP who brought over the Fair FARA Coalition as a client.

      • Congressional Interns and Congress Redirections—A Meeting

        On a beautiful, breezy day last week, I spoke to a roomful of Congressional summer interns working in the House of Representatives. The subject was “Corporate Power, Congress and You.” (“You” referred to the interns as the citizenry).

        I noted that they were a special group because they were willing to spend an hour listening to a talk about corporate power. I told them about how small groups of ordinary citizens became leaders in the nuclear arms control movements, the anti-tobacco drives, and consumer rights movement. I also talked about the expansion of equal rights and opportunities for people with disabilities. I took note that many of them in the room – women and people of color— would not be there if not for their predecessors’ tireless efforts to advance civil rights.

        No more than one percent of Americans – sometimes far less – made the many advances in peace and justice take hold, backed by a growing public opinion.

      • Donald Trump Accused of Sexual Assault by 24th Woman

        Advice columnist and journalist E. Jean Carroll publicly accused President Donald Trump of sexual assault on Friday.

        Carroll is the 24th woman to accuse the president of assault, harassment, or molestation.

        In an excerpt from her upcoming book, “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal,” published on New York magazine’s website, Carroll described Trump pushing her into a dressing room at the department store Bergdorf Goodman 25 years ago, hitting her head against a wall, holding her against the wall, and forcibly penetrating her…

      • Donald Trump Is America’s Shadow

        We are a nation that elected a man who in less than two and a half years has sullied our reputation across the world while here at home enabling our baser instincts to mug and molest our better angels.

        The concept of decency is not one he knows or possesses within himself. His lack of it has helped reignite a contagion of hatred and intolerance, ratcheted up by Internet trollery, that largely lay dormant but now spreads once again like a toxin through the body politic.

        Because of him this is not an America made great. It is instead a nation struggling with basic human decency, whether at the camps and cages of our southern border or along the corridors of Congress, where too many once rational members have succumbed to the siren call of cynical opportunism and demagoguery.

        Conservative analyst and former White House adviser Peter Wehner writes in the New York Times, “… In their ferocious defense of the president, Trump supporters are signaling that decency is a form of weakness, that cruelty is a welcome and highly effective political weapon and that the low road is the preferred road. At one point, Republicans were willing to tolerate Mr. Trump’s brutish tactics and reprehensible character as the price of party loyalty; today many of them seem to relish it. They see the dehumanization of others as a form of entertainment.”

        Fortunately, the black hole in this president’s soul has not succeeded in sucking everyone into the void; a majority refuse to share his lawless disdain for doing the right thing or thinking of anyone but himself. Nor do we ascribe to the ends-justify-the-means sentiments of people like that Trump supporter who told MSNBC, “I think he’s a despicable human being. But he’s done a lot of good things for the country.”

      • Forget Bernie vs. Warren. Focus on Growing the Progressive Base and Defeating Biden.

        A few days ago, I shared what I thought was a fairly innocuous observation about a fundamental difference between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Warren spends most of her campaign unpacking and explaining detailed policy proposals, many of them excellent, while Sanders splits his emphasis between his own strong plans and his calls for the political revolution he has consistently said will be required for any substantive progressive policy wins.

        “Smart policies are very important,” I tweeted. “But we don’t lose because we lack smart policies, we lose because we lack sufficient power to win those policies up against entrenched elite forces that will do anything to defeat us.”

        Within seconds, I was in the grip of a full-on 2016 primary flashback. I was accused of being a shill for Bernie and an enemy of Warren (I’m neither). My feed filled up with partisans of both candidates hurling insults at each other: She gets things done, he is all talk; she’s a pretender, he’s the real deal; he has a gender problem, hers is with race; she’s in the pocket of the arms industry, he’s an easy mark for Donald Trump; he should back her because she’s a woman, she should back him because he started this wave. And much more too venal to mention.

        I immediately regretted saying anything (as is so often the case on that godforsaken platform). Not because the point about outside movement power is unimportant, but because I had been trying to put off getting sucked into the 2020 horserace for as long as possible.

        Liberals in the U.S. often say the Trump presidency is Not Normal. And yeah, it’s a killer-clown horror show. But the truth is that from most outsider perspectives, there is nothing about U.S. politics that is normal — particularly the interminable length of campaigns. Normal countries have federal elections that consume two, maybe three months of people’s political lives once every four to five years; Canada caps federal campaigns at 50 days, Japan at 12. In the U.S., on the other hand, there’s a total of about nine months in every four-year cycle when politics is not consumed by either a presidential or midterm horserace.

      • Here’s What Neoliberal Democrats Who View Bernie Sanders as an ‘Existential Threat’ Have Yet to Realize

        Over the past few days, the mainstream Democrats’ war on Bernie Sanders has come out of the closet. Recent articles in Politico and the Guardian, detail how centrist organizations like Third Way have been pushing the narrative that Sanders is unelectable. The reason, according to Third Way leaders and other neoliberals, is the dreaded label of “socialist.”

        There’s two things wrong with this premise.

        First, Sanders has been a nationally known figure since 2015, and the label hasn’t hurt him much. He still polls better against Trump than any Democrat except Biden—and they’re essentially tied at the moment in a race with Trump. And make no mistake, with Biden’s record of coddling Wall Street and big banks, backing the Iraq War, and a history of racist and sexist remarks, it’s Biden who is frighteningly unelectable. He’d face the same fate as Hillary Clinton in 2016 if he got the nomination, because the vast majority of voters hold more progressive views and a centrist candidate just can’t generate the turnout Democrats need to win.

        Yes, Republicans and a few older folks see the term “socialist” as a non-starter, but more people view capitalism negatively and many young people see socialism as a positive. Sanders himself has done a good job of defining exactly what democratic socialism is, and it lines up well with what voters say they want.

      • Primary challengers looking to repeat AOC magic face uphill battle in 2020

        After a midterm cycle featuring a number of high-profile upsets, a few House Democrats are already facing primary challengers in advance of 2020. But candidates looking to repeat the success of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) or Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) have a tough path forward.

        Incumbents nearly always have an advantage when it comes to fundraising, and a new policy from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee makes it more difficult for primary contenders to find consultants and contractors. Still, several challengers think they have what it takes to pull off upsets of their own.

        Justice Democrats, the group that propelled Ocasio-Cortez to power, is backing two candidates so far: middle school principal Jamaal Bowman, who declared his challenge to Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday, and 26-year-old lawyer Jessica Cisneros, who announced last week that she will challenge longtime Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas).

      • ‘Completely Horrific’: Journalist E. Jean Carroll Becomes 24th Woman to Accuse Trump of Sexual Assault

        The excerpt published in New York details numerous encounters Carroll had with “hideous men” during her childhood, adolescence, and adulthood—including one with former CBS executive Les Moonves—as she embarked on a career as a journalist and the author of the “Ask E. Jean” column at Elle.

      • Landmark Istanbul Mayoral Loss a Blow to Turkey’s Erdogan

        The opposition candidate for mayor of Istanbul celebrated a landmark win Sunday in a closely watched repeat election that ended weeks of political tension and broke President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party’s 25-year hold on Turkey’s biggest city.

        “Thank you, Istanbul,” former businessman and district mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, 49, said in a televised speech after unofficial results showed he won a clear majority of the vote.

        The governing party’s candidate, former Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, conceded moments after returns showed him trailing well behind Imamoglu, 54% to 45%. Imamoglu increased his lead from a March mayoral election by hundreds of thousands of votes.

        Erdogan also congratulated Imamoglu in a tweet.

        Imamoglu narrowly won Istanbul’s earlier mayor’s contest on March 31, but Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, AKP, challenged the election for alleged voting irregularities. He spent 18 days in office before Turkey’s electoral board annulled the results after weeks of partial recounts.

      • ‘For What?’ Joe Biden Refuses to Apologize After Praising Segregationist Senators

        Under pressure from rival 2020 Democratic presidential candidates and civil rights advocates to apologize for praising the “civility” of two notorious segregationist senators, former Vice President Joe Biden refused to do so on Wednesday, insisting that he has nothing to apologize for.

        “Apologize for what?” Biden asked after reporters called attention to Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-N.J.) statement demanding an “immediate” apology.

        “Cory should apologize,” Biden said before attending a fundraiser in Chevy Chase, Maryland. “He knows better. There’s not a racist bone in my body. I’ve been involved in civil rights my whole career. Period. Period. Period.”

      • Hope Hicks Rebuffs Questions on Trump White House

        Former top White House adviser Hope Hicks refused to answer questions related to her time in the White House in a daylong interview with the House Judiciary Committee, dimming Democrats’ chances of obtaining new or substantive information about President Donald Trump in their first interview with a person linked to his inner circle.

        Frustrated Democrats leaving the meeting Wednesday said Hicks and her lawyer rigidly followed White House orders to stay quiet about her time there and said they would be forced to go to court to obtain answers.

        House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said Hicks’ lawyers asserted the White House’s principle that as one of Trump’s close advisers she is “absolutely immune” from talking about her time there because of separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches. Nadler said that principle is “ridiculous” and Democrats intend to “destroy” it in court.

        Nadler said the committee plans to take the administration to court on the immunity issue, and Hicks’ interview would be part of that litigation.

      • On the Morning Consult Poll, Margins of Error, and the Undecideds in the Democratic Primary

        Morning Consult regularly has Joe Biden a fair bit higher than every other polling firm at this point, and, as they usually have had throughout the 2020 Democratic primary cycle to date, also have Bernie Sanders a little higher than the average.

        Morning Consult also has, by far and away, the largest sample size each week, with a reported margin of error (MOE) of 1%. So, is Morning Consult or its MOE wrong? Or are all the other polling firms missing something that Morning Consult is onto with its large sample size and, per my diving into their full tables has sent to me over the course of three weeks around Biden’s entry into the race, fair weighting of a broad array of demographics?

        Based on data in the chart below and further explanation below, I think neither view is quite wrong. It’s just that Morning Consult is mishandling undecided voters in a way that over estimates Biden’s share and, to a lesser extent, Sanders’ share. (MC in the chart = Morning Consult; DK = Undecided or Don’t Know respondents.)

        I wrote about this problem (and proved absolutely correct) ahead of the UK General Election in 2017 here. And I spent a bit of time on it for this 2020 Democratic cycle in this article, but without the specific focus on Morning Consult.

        When polling firms simply flush “undecided” or “don’t know” voters from their sample and then report the findings without any other adjustments, they automatically boost the leader an extra amount, and where the lead is already big, the problem becomes even worse. Now, I am not sure if this is what Morning Consult is doing (they failed to respond when I asked, even though they’ve graciously sent along their cross tabs on two other occasions).

      • AMLO in Office: From Megaprojects to Militarization

        Many on the left, both in Mexico and abroad, welcomed the new president of Mexico, hoping that his progressive rhetoric of a “fourth transformation” augured a new era of positive change in Mexico. Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) even convinced a number of Indigenous resistance groups that his administration would be favorable to their struggles against the neoliberal extractivist megaprojects that are devastating their lands.

        Indigenous rights supporter Richard Gere recently met with AMLO in the National Palace, and even Noam Chomsky spoke up favorably after a meeting with AMLO during his campaign last year.

        Obrador’s “National Development Plan,” unveiled in January, reads like a leftist dream come true, criticizing neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus, promoting renewable energy and agricultural independence, and, of course, championing the poor and dispossessed. The plan was promoted as a moral regeneration, and even invoked the ethics of “leading by obeying” (mandar obedeciendo), a famous Zapatista phrase that encapsulates their dedication to self-government from below.

        Six months on, he has proven that nothing could be farther from the truth.

        In practice, AMLO’s presidency is a continuation of the neoliberal regime and of the clientelism that has characterized the Mexican government for ages. Like so many governments before it, the AMLO administration is using government handouts to divide communities and to undermine autonomous organizing efforts that threaten the capitalist class protected by AMLO.

        Groups that have been most vocal against AMLO include the Zapatistas, the National Indigenous Congress (the CNI), the Movement in Defense of Land and Territory, and the many local-led resistances that have so far stood in the way of dozens of destructive capital projects.

      • GOP Lawmakers Try to Squelch Voter Initiatives in 16 States

        Arkansas voters have been active in recent years, passing ballot initiatives that legalized medical marijuana, raised the minimum wage and expanded casino gambling.

        That hasn’t gone over well with Republicans.

        Arkansas’ GOP-dominated Legislature has taken steps this year that will make it harder to put such proposals before voters, and they are not the only ones.

        Florida, North Dakota, South Dakota and Utah also have enacted restrictions on the public’s ability to place initiatives on the ballot. In Michigan, the state’s top election official is being sued over Republican-enacted requirements that make it harder to qualify proposals for the ballot.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Media freedom is almost over. Only one thing can save Julian Assange from dying in prison.

        Anyone who wants to uphold the right for journalists to expose the worst excesses of governments should be very concerned. The only way to uphold this right is if the public do not stand for the criminalisation of journalism.

        In order to do this, we must separate the man from the issue of press freedom. The US indictments are not about allegations of sexual assault in Sweden, which Assange should face separate proceedings for. They are specifically concerned with WikiLeaks publishing documents exposing war crimes that the US would have preferred to remain under wraps. Such as the US indiscriminately gunning down journalists in Iraq and tens of thousands of unreported civilian deaths. Whatever you think of Assange, what’s at stake is our ability to hold governments to account.

      • Ecuador Ends ‘Arbitrary’ Detention of Swede Linked to Assange

        The court will require Bini to periodically appear before authorities and banned him from leaving the country as investigations continue over his alleged [computer] attacks.

      • The Guardian’s direct collusion with media censorship by secret services exposed

        Last week, independent journalist Matt Kennard revealed that the paper’s deputy editor, Paul Johnson, was personally thanked by the Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice (or D-Notice) committee for integrating the Guardian into the operations of the security services.

      • Analysts Skeptical of Turkey’s Vow to Protect Free Speech

        “More than 150 detained journalists are currently in prison, and more than 500 lawyers are in prison. If you want to start reform, your priority must be releasing these people who are arrested for doing their job,” Ok added.

      • Digital sleuths alarmed after Twitter cites Indian law violation

        It took Ryan Barenklau a few moments to figure out why Twitter was sending him an email saying he had violated Indian law.

        “My first thought was, ‘Huh? I’m an American citizen,’” the 21-year-old Texas resident said. “My company is an American LLC. How can Indian law apply to me inside the United States?’

        Barenklau, who tweets about geopolitics and international affairs from his company’s verified Twitter account, The Strategic Sentinel, is a part of the internet’s open source intelligence community. Better known as OSINT, it is made up of digital detectives who use online tools and public information for investigative purposes.

        It wasn’t long until others in Barenklau’s orbit started getting similar emails from Twitter. Six OSINT accounts either received warnings from Twitter about violating Indian law or were suspended.

        In recent years, some OSINT groups have emerged as respected investigative outfits. The best known group, Bellingcat, gained international attention for its investigations into the use of weapons in the Syrian civil war and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine in 2014. In February, OSINT sleuths descended on claims by India that it had shot down a Pakistani F-16 fighter jet and poked holes in the government’s narrative by analyzing photos and videos posted online.

      • India forced Twitter to suspend open source intelligence handles: Report

        A popular US news website reported on Tuesday that the Indian government had forced Twitter to take action against a number of handles that disseminate ‘open source’ intelligence (OSINT).

        OSINT is information of a political or military nature gathered via commonly available tools such as travel trackers, social media or news media. At least four Twitter handles were suspended over the weekend, but restored following an outcry.

        Writing in the Daily Beast, journalist Kevin Poulsen claimed a student of a college in Texas had received a notice from Twitter after the Indian government complained his tweets were a “national security threat”.

      • Guardian Continues to Promote “Progressive” Censorship

        There’s a lot of talk about “free speech” being under threat these days, with reports of de-platforming at universities, academics losing their jobs because of their political opinions, artists and celebrities getting “cancelled” over an off-colour joke, an even vaguely non-PC opinion, or just supporting Donald Trump.

        The entire reason this website exists is the sheer amount of censorship in both corporate media and social media.

        We have an archive dedicated to it, that doesn’t include even half of 1% of the deleted comments on The Guardian alone.

        Rather notably the US is trying to extradite (and perhaps execute) a man for simply telling the truth.

        You’d be forgiven for thinking that free speech was, indeed, under attack.

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Complainants call on ICO to take action against adtech sector

        “The ICO has clearly indicated that the sector operates outside the law, and that there is no evidence the industry will correct itself voluntarily. As long as it remains doing so, it undermines the operation and the credibility of the GDPR in all other sectors. Action, not words, will make a difference—and the ICO needs to act now.”

        Ravi Naik, solicitor for the complaints and for Dr Johnny Ryan’s simultaneous complaint before the Irish DPC, said:

        “Between the ICO’s report and the actions of the DPC, there can no longer be any question; AdTech cannot comply with the GDPR. We welcome the ICO’s findings and look forward to the Commissioner taking concrete steps to prevent further violations of individual rights. It is time for action.”

      • Age Verification delay is an opportunity to fix privacy in porn block

        “While it’s very embarrassing to delay age verification for the third time, this is an opportunity for the Government to address the many problems that this ill-thought through policy poses.

        “Age verification providers have warned that they are not ready; the BBFC’s standard to protect data has been shown to be ineffective.

        “The Government needs to use this delay to introduce legislation that will ensure the privacy and security of online users is protected.”

      • When AI-enhanced customer service is on the line, so is your privacy

        All the kinds of algorithmic analysis of personal data and voice patterns described above could be fed not to a human representative, but to a computer-based one along the lines of Google Duplex. Its voice, “character”, and approach could be exactly tailored to each individual, even their current mood, as indicated by continuous AI analysis of their voice patterns during a call. This kind of real-time personalization is likely to reinforce the well-known ELIZA Effect, whereby people already tend to ascribe human-like capabilities to computers. The fact that such an AI-based system would seem strangely sympathetic, and to know everything about us – even our deepest fears and unspoken secrets – is likely to reinforce that sense. As a result, some people may unconsciously trust such an interlocutor, and discuss their wants and needs more openly, without reserve. Views about whether that is a good thing are likely to vary…

      • [Compromise] of U.S. Border Surveillance Contractor Is Way Bigger Than the Government Lets On

        Even as Homeland Security officials have attempted to downplay the impact of a security intrusion that reached deep into the network of a federal surveillance contractor, secret documents, handbooks, and slides concerning surveillance technology deployed along U.S. borders are being widely and openly shared online.

        A terabyte of torrents seeded by Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDOS)—journalists dispersing records that governments and corporations would rather nobody read—are as of writing being downloaded daily. As of this week, that includes more than 400 GB of data stolen by an unknown actor from Perceptics, a discreet contractor based in Knoxville, Tennessee, that works for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and is, regardless of whatever U.S. officials say, right now the epicenter of a major U.S. government data breach.

      • Australian Internet pioneer says future does not look so bright

        “Today – let’s see, awesome compute power in my pocket, high-speed mobile communications, Wi-Fi in planes, driverless cars, cashless money, automated trading, death of newspapers, death of television networks, death of the telephone and telephone companies, death of the bricks and mortar shop, huge displacement of the labour force as we shift from primary and secondary production to a service-based economy, new forms of labour exploitation with the so-called gig economy, and an entire new economy based on surveillance capitalism.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Gig economy transforms Finnish labour

        The Finnish Construction Trade Union told Yle that the job Laura was offered could be classified as slave labour. The median wage for a painter is 16.81 euros per hour.

        Becoming a sole trader left Laura with 2,500 euros in debt which she plans to begin paying off in August.

      • Pakistani Christian couple facing death over ‘blasphemous texts’ to finally get court hearing

        He allegedly showed the text to two other mosque clerics before approaching his counsel for legal proceedings. Then, he and his lawyer claimed they both then received more blasphemous messages. However, the texts were alleged to have been written in English, and both Shafqat and Shagufta are illiterate and neither have a knowledge of English or its alphabet.

      • Qatari Shari’a Professor Ahmad Zayed: Christians Can Run For Office, But Muslims Forbidden From Voting For Them

        Ahmad Zayed, a professor of shari’a at Qatar University, said in a June 12, 2019 debate on Al-Araby TV (U.K.) that Islamic law permits non-Muslims to run for office, but that it is impermissible for Muslims to vote for non-Muslim candidates, since shari’a says the ruler must be a Muslim. Qatar-based Saudi academic Raed Al-Samhouri also participated in the debate.

      • Assange, the AFP and the crime of dissent

        And this Kafkaesque scenario leads us back to the undeniable truth about the press raids: they were designed to have a chilling effect, in a similar manner to that of Julian Assange’s incarceration. Indeed, these closely timed crackdowns are a warning to all that journalism is now a crime.

      • Facebook blocks ad for PES meeting in Paris to defend Assange

        Apart from the US government itself, the French government is among the most closely tied to Facebook censorship. Last November, as “yellow vest” protests against social inequality began in France, Macron hailed France’s World War II-era fascist dictator Philippe Pétain as a great soldier and launched an unprecedented collaboration on social media censorship with Facebook. Countless “yellow vest” social media posts have been deleted since, as police detained over 7,000 protesters in the largest wave of mass arrests in metropolitan France since the Nazi Occupation.

      • Poor treatment of Assange

        Egypt is a dictatorship and Britain a parliamentary democracy, but the treatment of each prisoner seems to be the same.

      • Hong Kong protests: “I’m witnessing the fall of the city I love”

        Minnie’s family, most of whom are members of the Communist Party, still live in Shanghai. She says her father didn’t worry when she moved to Hong Kong. “In the mainland we always imagined that people in Hong Kong and Taiwan were all together, that we are all brothers and sisters. No way that they would not love their country!” But Chinese students are watched when they travel. During the Occupy Central pro-democracy protests in 2014, she wrote two Facebook posts praising the discussions at one of the camps. “Hardly anyone ‘liked’ them. But months later my father told me, ‘I know what you did in Hong Kong.’” Two national-security officers had visited his home and shown him the posts. They told him that she was producing propaganda as part of the core group of protestors. “I wasn’t, but he believed them over me.” Minnie says Shanghai has changed since her childhood: “In recent years the space for free speech is tightening.” Since Xi Jinping became president in 2012, the Communist Party has stepped up its campaign against liberal values, and many people suspected of dissent have been arrested.

        This time she hasn’t told her family about the protests, although she has posted status updates on Facebook with images of the hunger strike. “I don’t want to make my family worried, and I don’t want to spend too much extra energy arguing with them.” Some of her old friends call her a traitor. “They say ‘don’t forget you are from the mainland.’ But in Hong Kong I am regarded as a brainwashed mainlander who has been civilised into Hong Kong ways!”

      • For this grandmother and grandson, speaking Ojibway is ‘an act of defiance’

        The pair’s first two-week Ojibway language course took place in May, a project jointly run by Algoma University and Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig, an Indigenous education institute. About two dozen students from Ontario and Manitoba attended the immersion program, offered at introductory and intermediate levels.

        They spent much of their time outside in an open-air lodge, learning traditional activities, like how to catch, fillet and smoke a fish, to more mainstream ones, like driving a car, grocery shopping and arguing an opinion — all in immersive Ojibway.

      • Supreme Court Undermines Religious Neutrality In Permitting Giant Governmental Cross

        The decision ignores our constitutional commitment to official religious neutrality.

        Today, the Supreme Court announced that a governmental display of a 40-foot-tall Latin cross as a war memorial for all veterans does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The decision ignores our constitutional commitment to official religious neutrality and is a slap in the face to non-Christian veterans. There is, however, a small silver lining: The opinion itself was narrow, making clear that the ruling is not an invitation for government officials to erect new religious displays.

        In American Legion v. American Humanist Association, the court concluded that the Bladensburg Cross — originally built to honor a Maryland county’s World War I dead — is constitutional for a combination of reasons, including its nearly hundred-year history and the court’s belief that the cross has somehow taken on an “added secular meaning when used in World War I memorials.” But there are several flaws in the court’s reasoning.

        First, in his opinion for the majority, Justice Alito cites the rows of white crosses that memorialize fallen American service members in World War I cemeteries overseas. Yet those crosses are tied to the individual faith of each soldier. Notably, the graves of Jewish service members in those cemeteries are marked with the Star of David, not a Latin cross. That’s because the Latin cross is inextricably linked to the Christian belief in the crucifixion of Jesus, the resurrection, and the promise of eternal life—a point emphasized in friend-of-the-court briefs filed by both the Baptist Joint Committee and the American Jewish War Veterans for the United States of America. As Justice Ginsburg explains in her dissent, the Latin cross is an “exclusively Christian symbol.” It is “not emblematic of any other faith,” and it certainly has “never shed its Christian character.”

        Second, the Bladensburg Cross does not stand as a memorial to fallen World War I soldiers alone. Although the cross was erected in the 1920s on private land as a World War I memorial, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission went out of its way in 1961 to acquire the cross and the land on which it sits — for the purpose of preserving the monument and, purportedly, to address traffic-safety concerns. But the Commission wasn’t satisfied with merely maintaining the cross’s connection to World War I; instead, it spent $100,000 renovating the monument, and then, in 1985, held a religious ceremony featuring prayer by a Catholic priest to rededicate the cross to veterans of all wars.

      • Corporate Pride is Cheap

        The satirical website McSweeney’s recently published a piece called “My Coming Out Story, Sponsored by Bank of America.”

        Anyone who has been to an LGBTQ Pride celebration (or seen Pride-themed ads on Facebook) will immediately get it: Corporations are falling over themselves to wrap themselves in rainbows, because they see Pride as a corporate branding opportunity.

        Let me be clear: The greatest struggle of my life is not a corporate branding opportunity.

        A lifetime of feeling different and wrong and dating people I’m not attracted to because I think it’s the only way to live — and only getting to fully inhabit my true self starting in my late 30s after years of therapy — has nothing to do with selling toothpaste, beer, or bank accounts.

        Years ago, I got a degree in marketing. In our senior capstone class, we learned that you can either change your product so it’s more in line with what people want, or you can change people’s impression of your product so that they think it is.

        Slapping a rainbow on your brand constitutes the latter. I want to see more of the former.

      • As Trump Tweets Hateful Threats, States are Protecting Immigrant Rights

        This week, President Trump kicked off his re-election campaign by tweeting a threat to deport millions of immigrants, apparently referring to his administration’s plans for mass raids on families across the country. Meanwhile, news continues to break about what his administration is already doing, as dizzying as it is horrifying: A six-year-old girl dying in the Arizona desert on the way to seek asylum, a premature baby languishing at a border holding site, a trans woman dying from pneumonia after asking to be deported rather than remain in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention without proper medical care.

        What’s remarkable is that in the midst of the extreme rhetoric and reality, people across the country are finding common ground on immigration. In at least seven states, grassroots activists have quietly built coalitions necessary to enact pro-immigrant rights laws, many of which will limit the Trump administration’s ability to carry out its threats to deport millions.

      • American History for Truthdiggers: The Reagan Revolution

        It was no accident. Indeed, candidate Ronald Reagan knew exactly what he was doing. It was August 1980, at the height of presidential election fever. Visiting Mississippi, once a symbol of the solid Democratic South, Reagan chose the Neshoba County Fair for a key campaign speech. To beat incumbent President Jimmy Carter, he would have to turn the Deep South Republican. The fair was in the same county as Philadelphia, Miss., and only seven miles from that town, forever associated with the murder of three civil rights activists (one black and two white) just 16 years earlier. It was a bold move by Reagan. Stepping up for the occasion, he railed about big government and thundered in ever-so-coded language, “I believe in states’ rights.” In a state that still proudly flew the Confederate Battle Flag, no doubt the mostly white crowd of some 15,000 knew, and loved, the racial undertones of such a statement. The states’ rights mantra had long amounted to little more than a justification of racism by another name. The only right many states tended to focus on was their right to suppress black voting and maintain the segregation of public life.

        Reagan’s performance at the fair was an insult to the memory of the once vibrant civil rights movement. And it was understood as such.

        The tactic worked. Reagan all but swept the South in the 1980 race, and the region has essentially remained Republican ever since. (Among Southern states, only West Virginia and Georgia went for the Georgian who occupied the Oval Office.) The Sunbelt, that vast southern expanse from Florida to California, would prove to be a stronghold of Republican loyalty for decades to come. Though President Richard Nixon inaugurated the Republicans’ “Southern Strategy,” it was Reagan who perfected it.

        The presidency of Reagan, like that of many of the chief executives of the United States, was complex. He was undoubtedly conservative and had run to the right of his primary opponents in 1980. Political ideology aside, he was an astute politician, willing to compromise and never so doctrinaire as liberals feared. On foreign policy he could shift from hawk to dove on a dime, exuding “toughness” but also, at times, demonstrating restraint. He cut taxes and some social programs but was smart enough not to dismantle the highly popular Social Security and Medicare programs, held dear by liberals before and afterward. Though far more ideological than Dwight Eisenhower and—even—Nixon, he was at root a pragmatist. For the left, he was ultimately something much scarier than those two earlier Republican presidents: a charming, effective and highly popular figure of the right. He bent with the prevailing winds and harnessed their energy in continuing the gradual rightward policy shift that had been occurring since the end of the presidency of Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson.

      • America Was Never Great. Behind the Flag Is a Harrowing History.

        Arguing that “America was never great” is more than controversial in Trump’s United States: Disputing the idea that the U.S. is the greatest nation on Earth and has done only good has become a dangerous act.

        Krystal Lake — a Black woman who wore a hat with the words “America Was Never Great” at the Home Depot where she worked — received death threats on social media in response to her small symbolic act in defiance of Trump’s racist campaign. The online rage was triggered because she dared challenge the myth of American innocence — the idea that the U.S. has been a benevolent force in the world.

        In their new book, American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News — From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror, authors Roberto Sirvent and Danny Haiphong map the power of ideology. In 21 essays that span the media’s reaction to 9/11 to the multi-cultural patriotism of the Broadway show “Hamilton,” they show how American exceptionalism and innocence has warped our culture. It is a tour de force of scholarship that takes Karl Marx’s call for a “ruthless criticism of the existing order” and brings it up to the present.

        It also is a harrowing read. After the last essay, one sees the massive violence hidden by media. It is like peeling back a Band-Aid with the U.S. flag on it and seeing an ugly wound that never healed. Scraping off ideology leaves one face-to-face with reality and empowers us, the readers, to change it.

      • ‘Not On Our Watch’: Rights Groups Rally to Help Immigrant Communities Ahead of Reported Weekend Raids by ICE

        Ahead of raids the Trump administration is reportedly set to begin on Sunday, rights groups on Friday urgently circulated information to immigrant communities and families nationwide to ensure their rights are known and protections are in place.

        Three officials with knowledge of Trump’s directive to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told the Washington Post that up to 2,000 families facing deportation orders could be targeted in 10 major cities, including Houston, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, Denver, New York, New Orleans, Atlanta, Baltimore, San Francisco, Newark, and Washington, D.C.

        The news of the planned raids comes days after the president threatened that he would soon begin deporting “millions” of undocumented immigrants.

        To prepare communities, groups including United We Dream and Raices posted on social media information about immigrants’ rights.

        If ICE agents come to an immigrant’s home, one infographic made by the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) read, he or she should not open the door. Instead, families should demand to see a warrant for arrest and exercise their right to remain silent and speak with a lawyer.

      • America Must Make Amends for the Horror of Slavery

        Juneteenth is a celebration of freedom. The name comes from a combination of the two words in the date, June nineteenth. On that day in 1865, 250,000 slaves in Texas were freed by a Union Army general who had arrived with troops in Galveston the day before. The Civil War had ended more than a month earlier, but word of the war’s end took time to reach parts of Texas. By the end of 1865, the 13th Amendment had been ratified, formally outlawing slavery across the United States.

        It was an incredible victory, but the trajectory of systemic racism in the United States did not end there, as we know all too well. Indeed, the real-world impacts of slavery on today’s African American population were front and center in Washington, D.C., this week, as historic hearings and public gatherings convened to discuss, debate and organize around reparations and poverty, and to offer a vision for a more just and equitable nation.

      • Ta-Nehisi Coates: Reparations Are Not Just About Slavery But Also Centuries of Theft & Racial Terror

        On the heels of Wednesday’s historic hearing on reparations, we speak with renowned writer Ta-Nehisi Coates on the lasting legacy of American slavery, how the national dialogue about reparations has progressed in the past five years and his testimony in favor of H.R. 40, which took direct aim at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Coates says, “It is absolutely impossible to imagine America without enslavement.”

      • Alabama Prisoners On Hunger Strike Demand Justice Department End Brutal And Inhumane Treatment

        Four Alabama prisoners are on hunger strike at the Limestone Correctional Facility in protest against corruption, abuse, and a lack of accountability for inhumane conditions in the state prison system.

        The hunger strike is a response to a call to action from a coalition of prisoner rights groups, including the Free Alabama Movement (FAM) and Unheard Voices O.T.C.J., as well as incarcerated activists Kinetik Justice and Swift Justice.

        Five prisoners were on hunger strike initially. One prisoner, Kenneth Traywick Jr., began his strike on June 12 and ended it this week when the Alabama Department of Correction (ADOC) agreed to transfer him to another facility.

        The other four prisoners launched their strike on June 14. As of this report, they are still refusing meals.

        The prisoners issued a list of six demands. The first demand is for the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) to take action against Alabama for the Eighth Amendment violations they uncovered in an investigation published at the beginning of April.

        “As the DOJ has so far failed to pursue action by way of a lawsuit against the ADOC, those who have confined loved ones argue that their inaction is proof that the DOJ does not believe incarcerated individuals in the ADOC are worth protecting,” the activists declared in a statement to the press.

      • ‘Not One More Dollar’: Even as Trump Postpones Raids, Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib Vow to Oppose All Funding for ‘Hateful Border Agenda’

        In a joint statement, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)—all freshman who have been outspoken in their criticism of both the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB) and the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agencies—denounced the president’s planned raids which reports indicated would take place in 10 major cities across the U.S. beginning on Sunday.

        “The Trump Administration would rather criminalize immigrants, separate families, and detain refugees than practice empathy and compassion,” the group of four lawmakers said. “Recent reports of a massive deportation operation, targeting thousands of immigrant families in major cities across the country are further evidence that this President will stop at nothing in order to carry out his hateful agenda.”

        As immigrant rights groups mobilized to provide resources to targeted communities ahead of the expected raids—and several mayors of the cities thought to be prime targets said they would not participate carrying them out—Trump took to Twitter on Saturday afternoon to say that, “at the request of Democrats,” he was suspending the raids at least temporarily.

      • Beware of the “Easy” Way to Build Power. It Must Begin With Organizing.

        The sad outcome of the United Auto Workers campaign at Volkswagen reminded me of when I entered the labor movement 15 years ago.

        Back then the national leaders of the Service Employees (SEIU) had diagnosed labor’s big problem: we weren’t organizing fast enough. As the percentage of unionized workers in the U.S. slipped, so did unions’ influence.

        If only we could regain sufficient union density, these leaders said, we would have power. Then we could start winning gains for members and change the political climate.

        Their strategy to organize faster was to lower the bar—convince bosses to stay neutral, so that workers could win union recognition without a fight. Often this neutrality was bought by giving up rights and benefits in advance.

        But I always wondered, if you won a union without building enough workplace power to fight your boss, how much would you really be able to win going forward? And would workers want to join such a weak organization?

        Since then bosses have mostly lost interest in neutrality. Unfortunately, unions haven’t lost interest in shortcuts. The UAW counted on a speedy election instead of arming workers to fight.

      • Normalizing Atrocity

        This week President Trump vowed mass arrests and the removal of “millions of illegal aliens” by early next week. These proclamations have become increasingly normalized in an age where his absurdities are spouted daily, but this is the kind of rhetoric which often precedes atrocity. “Mass arrests” of millions of people is the kind of language that communicates the naked aggression of the state against the “other.” It permits a sweeping dehumanization of entire groups. That they are non-violent or paying taxes is of no consequence. They are “aliens” who must be “removed,” extracted from the so-called “legal” population by any means. In the last 20 years this has generally meant people of color, especially those with non-Anglo surnames. Yet, in response to this latest threat I saw a comment from one American liberal which read “meh, the logistics of doing something like this are enormous.” In other words, “it can’t happen here.” History begs to differ.

        Thousands of socialists and leftists were marched into stadiums in Chile in the 1970s and gunned down, tortured, or disappeared in a country with a much smaller military than the US. Between 1965 and 1966, at least a million communists, or those believed to be communists, were hunted down and brutally murdered in Indonesia by rightwing death squads and the police. And millions of Jews, Roma, communists, homosexuals and the disabled were persecuted, rounded up and sent to concentration camps in the 1930s and 40s in Germany and Nazi occupied countries, where most perished at a time when many ordinary people thought “the logistics” of doing something like that were too “enormous” to be fathomed, much less carried out. And each atrocity was preceded by the rise of a pernicious fascism and the language of dehumanization by leaders.

      • Police drug division chief in Moscow suburb arrested for drug possession and falsifying a criminal case

        Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Ponkratov, who leads the police anti-narcotics division in Ramensky, a suburb of Moscow, has been arrested on charges of falsifying a criminal case, possessing drugs, and overstretching his authority, Kommersant reported.

      • Putin says he’s against relaxing Russia’s drug laws

        During his annual televised call-in show on June 20, Vladimir Putin said he opposes an initiative to relax Russia’s criminal laws against illegal narcotics. At the same time, the president stressed the need to strengthen control over the actions of police in this area, to avoid more “cases like with the journalist,” referring to the recent arrest of Meduza special correspondent Ivan Golunov.

      • Race, Identity and the Political Economy of Hate

        Several theories have been put forward to explain the schisms roiling American politics. The least contentious, meaning the one not obviously intended to produce a political result, is that a battle is underway within the oligarch class. Given the role of security and surveillance state officials, the precise alliances driving the split— if the term is accurate, aren’t clear. An alternate explanation is that a defense of the existing order is underway. The latter has been put forward in terms approximating a ‘redneck rebellion.’

        Class analysis— the search for economic explanations of political outcomes, is antithetical to the American conception of the social order. The redneck rebellion thesis— that hateful hillbillies too stupid to land jobs in the ‘knowledge economy’ are inflicting their own deficiencies on the hardworking and deserving classes through racist violence, has led the mainstream news (and left analysis) for three years now. Not spoken publicly is that blaming down absolves the powers-that-be for five decades of malgovernance.

        Most people don’t have the time or resources to make their own determinations regarding official claims. This creates ‘information asymmetry’ where the facts needed for critical analysis are often controlled by people with political agendas. And in less conspiratorial terms, newsrooms have been gutted by oligarchs for economic gain. When tied to psychological triggers, facts that are superficially plausible can be made into truths no matter how contrary to actual evidence they may be.

        The redneck rebellion thesis is particularly insidious in this way. It’s barely contentious today to point out that both mainstream political parties have been ‘captured’ by economic interests. And until 2016, it was broadly conceded that neoliberalism had created an economic divide between the few who benefited from it and the many whose lives had been diminished. The people on the losing end didn’t become loathsome racists and fascists until the political establishment needed to defend its realm.

      • Supreme Court Tosses Man’s Murder Conviction Over Racial Bias

        The Supreme Court on Friday threw out the murder conviction and death sentence for a black man in Mississippi because of a prosecutor’s efforts to keep African Americans off the jury. The defendant already has been tried six times and now could face a seventh trial.

        The removal of black prospective jurors deprived inmate Curtis Flowers of a fair trial, the court said in a 7-2 decision written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

        The long record of Flowers’ trials stretching back more than 20 years shows District Attorney Doug Evans’ “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals,” with the goal of an all-white jury, Kavanaugh wrote.

      • Sweatshops Don’t Just Exist Overseas — They’re Here in the US Too

        New Labor Forum Editor’s Note: The more things change, the more they stay the same. To a surprising extent, the super exploitation of early 20th-century garment workers lives on, not just in Dhaka and Guangzhou, but also in the U.S., garment sweatshops continue to spring up in immigrant-dense, urban peripheries, perhaps nowhere as much as in L.A. County, the setting of this “Working-Class Voices” essay. Just as in the past, these mostly immigrant, female workers labor under the grind of the “piece rate” system rather than receiving hourly wages; they make clothes for big name brands but work for largely unregulated subcontractors; and often toil behind locked exits, under dire conditions. The decline in private-sector union density, entrenched obstacles to new organizing, and the underfunding of agencies charged with monitoring labor law compliance go a long way to explain this harrowing back-to-the-future scenario.

        I come from Indonesia, where I was a garment worker. In 2003 I traveled to Malaysia, because it was hard for me to find a job in Indonesia. There was upheaval with a lot of factories burning and demonstrations in my country. At first I had a three-year contract and worked as a garment worker for the same company I had worked with in Malaysia. Once my contract ended I began work as a domestic worker. For nearly five years I worked for one employer who, in 2007, sent me to L.A. to work with her daughter. But what that family promised — earnings of a thousand dollars a month, one bedroom, and one day off per week — never came true.

        In L.A. I worked the equivalent of thirty eighteen-hour days and was only paid $200 per month with no bedroom or paid days off provided. They said, “Hey, you have to pay for everything when you come here.” They took my passport and wouldn’t let me talk to anyone. At the time I didn’t speak English. The employer said, “Because you don’t speak English I’ll only give you $200.” I was very sad because it’s not what was promised. I left my son in Indonesia to come to the U.S. I thought it was a good opportunity for me, but when I came here I felt trapped.

        I decided to run away, but I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t have no money. Nothing. I only had my clothes that I was wearing. I ran a mile away from her house to Bloomingdale’s to a pay phone and called Maria. Maria worked before me in my employer’s house. She’s the only person I knew. But Maria spoke Spanish, and I didn’t speak it at the time. It wasn’t clear to her when I said, “Hey help me, help me.” I didn’t understand what she said, and she didn’t understand what I said. She was afraid maybe the former employer would call the police to get her. So she called her brother Pedro, and he picked me up to go to Maria’s house. I started a new life in L.A. from Maria’s house and then in another host’s home.

      • Surviving the Mediterranean Sea Amid European Refugee Crisis

        Emmanuel Freedom is a refugee. He’s 22 years old and has been living in Malta for the last 18 months. As night falls on the island, he heaves a sigh of relief. He considers every day to be a victory, a promise for a brighter tomorrow.

        Although he looks far older than his years, his facial expression is soft, even fragile. He is constantly wary of his surroundings, but he smiles often with a faraway look in his eyes. An undocumented worker, he usually finds employment as a day laborer, working odd jobs in construction, painting or repairs.

        Shy at first, Freedom slowly recounts his story. He talks of fleeing persecution in his hometown back in Nigeria and of the dangers that he encountered on the journey to Europe. It’s a unique story, but also one that exemplifies a shared resilience amid untold suffering.

        As a refugee in Malta, Freedom belongs to a wider group of men, women and children. His story represents this community, one that has grown accustomed to living under the shadow of anonymity.

      • State-by-State the War on Cannabis is Ending

        Judging by its first six months, 2019 has been a banner year for marijuana policy reform.

        Most notably, lawmakers in Illinois legalized the commercial production and retail sale of cannabis to adults. The state is the 11th to legalize the use of marijuana by those over the age of 21, and it’s the first to pass such a measure with a statehouse vote (rather than a public initiative).

        “Illinois is going to have the most equity-centric law in the nation,” Governor J.B. Pritzker announced. “For the many individuals and families whose lives have been changed — indeed hurt — because the nation’s war on drugs discriminated against people of color, this day belongs to you.”

        Illinois is far from alone. Several other states have also approved measures in recent weeks to significantly reduce marijuana penalties.

        In New Mexico, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed legislation reducing first-time penalties for low-level possession from a criminal misdemeanor — punishable by up to 15 days in jail — to a “penalty assessment,” punishable by a $50 fine. Similar decriminalization legislation in Hawaii awaits Governor David Ige’s signature.

        In North Dakota, lawmakers reduced penalties involving the possession of both cannabis and cannabis paraphernalia from a criminal misdemeanor to an infraction. In Colorado, they reduced felony marijuana penalties to misdemeanors.

      • Slamming ‘Corruption’ That Has Allowed Rampant Abuse, Warren Releases Plan to Ban Private Prisons

        Calling the federal government’s close ties with for-profit prison operators “corruption,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren released her plan to ban private prisons should she win the presidency in 2020.

        The Massachusetts Democrat’s proposal focused on the massive growth in the private prison industry over the last two decades. In that time, the government has turned a blind eye to human rights abuses within private detention centers, the price gouging companies like Core Civic and Geo Group subject inmates to, and as lawmakers have enriched their campaigns through their relationships with those companies—making the enforcement of any restrictions impossible.

        “We didn’t get here by chance,” Warren wrote in a Medium post. “Washington works hand-in-hand with private prison companies, who spend millions on lobbyists, campaign contributions, and revolving-door hires—all to turn our criminal and immigration policies into ones that prioritize making them rich instead of keeping us safe.”

        Warren explained how she would ban private, for-profit prisons; stop contractors from charging fees for essential services; and ensure oversight of how detention centers operate.

        The senator wrote that after ending all contracts between the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and other public entities with private prison operators, she would cut federal public safety funding for states and municipalities unless they agreed to use the money for publicly-run prisons only.

      • Nigel Farage’s Grand Tour of Sabotage

        He is all about being the romantic saboteur. He is destructive, hates the business of a steady vocation, and the idea of being desk bound. Little details trouble him; an indignant bigger picture is enthralling. Bomb throwers tend to be of such ilk, taking shots at the establishment, courting potential voters over a pint, and railing against non-representative elements in politics. But Nigel Farage and his recently arrived Brexit Party can unimpeachably claim to be vote getters.

        Along with others, some of whom have been resurrected in the stagnant pools of Brexit – take the near-dead and now very revived former conservative MP, Ann Widdecombe – he has animated the corpse people and zombie faithful keen to attack the satanic heart of the EU. Last month, in Peterborough, he told some 1,500 Brexiters about the broader mission at hand. “This fight now is far more than just leaving the European Union. This is a full-on battle against the establishment.” This battle has also struck a Trumpist note, with Farage reserving special salvos for the BBC.

        So far, the attack mounted by the collective that is the Brexit Party has worked; with a four-month old entity, Farage forged ahead in elections held by the very same entity he despises. In doing so, he also convinced many from the UK Independence Party, the right wing anti-immigration party he used to lead, to join in. In the European elections last month, the Brexit Party won a stonking 29 seats against the Liberal Democrats with 16, Labour 10, the Greens seven, the Tories four, the SNP three, and Plaid Cymru and the DUP with one each.

        Farage put the successes down to an elementary theme: “With a big, simple message – which is we’ve been badly let down by two parties who have broken their promises – we have topped the poll in a fairly dramatic style. The two-party system now serves nothing but itself.” Despite doing well, Farage was careful to avoid drawing attention to another result: 40 percent of the UK European vote went to parties who are against Brexit, with 35 percent favouring it.

        The reading from Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable was bound to be at odds with Brexiter enthusiasts. For Cable the result showed that there was “a majority of people in the country who don’t want to leave the European now”.

      • Native People: Changing Our Ways of Seeing

        In the early 1960s while a student at the University of British Columbia I became fascinated with the study of cultural anthropology. Anthropology, for me, held up a “mirror for man.” It challenged us to see ourselves in the experience of others of different colour, to respect different ways of seeing values, kinship systems and social organization. But, I soon discovered, it was not easy to grasp who Natives were and how they understood themselves in their world of constant change, upheaval and intense traumatic suffering.

        Indians had long filled a pathetic imaginative space for the dominant culture. Their cultures had been steadily eroding, at best hanging on in museum-like reservations or, perhaps worse, living only in anthropological displays. Anthropologists rushed out into the field to record the dying languages and capture fragments of once proud, beautiful but now vanishing people. Anthropologists were the saviours of non-western cultures.

        I moved out of the schoolbook world of the University of British Columbia in the summers of 1963 and 1964 to travel up the North West Coast to see for myself the magnificent cultures of the Tsimshian, Tlingit, Haida, Kwakiutl and Coast Salish. My teachers (famous scholars like Harry Hawthorn, Wilson Duff and Wayne Suttles) had taught me to appreciate the meaning of majestic totem poles, the wonders of North West Coast mythology and art, the mysteries of the potlatch and the profound native sensitivity to land and sea. They presented me with powerful images of cultures as integrated, meaningful wholes.

      • How a Russian lawmaker’s perceived arrogance provoked violent clashes outside Georgia’s Parliament building

        In Tbilisi late on June 20, several thousand people joined a protest at Georgia’s Parliament building. As many as 10,000 people filled the square outside the legislature. Activists protested against the “Russian occupation” of Georgia, demanding the resignation of Parliament Speaker Irakli Kobakhidze, as well as the heads of Georgia’s Interior Ministry and State Security Service. After an hour, when their demands were not met, demonstrators started storming the Parliament building.

      • Photos from the June 20 protest outside Georgia’s Parliament in Tbilisi

        Late on June 20 in the center of Tbilisi, an unannounced protest broke out at the steps of Georgia’s Parliament building. Thousands of people took to the streets, following a speech by Russian State Duma deputy Sergey Gavrilov, who enraged the country’s opposition parties by sitting in the parliamentary speaker’s chair and speaking in Russian during a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of Orthodoxy. After activists demands for the resignations of several top state officials went ignored, protesters tried to storm the Parliament building, prompting the police to resort to tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons. Roughly 70 people were reported injured.

      • Putin temporarily blocks passenger flights to Georgia

        Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed an order forbidding passenger planes from flying between Russia and Georgia following an outbreak of mass unrest and anti-Russian protests in Tbilisi. Beginning on July 8, Russian airlines will not be permitted to transport passengers from Russia to Georgia.

      • A new documentary film shows the Ivan Golunov case through the eyes of those at its epicenter

        With his arrest in early June 2019, investigative journalist Ivan Golunov became a symbol in Russia of resistance to police misconduct. His case was perhaps the first time in the country’s modern history that civil society forced the law-enforcement system to retreat. Over the five difficult days it took to free Ivan, no one was closer to him, his family, and Meduza’s editorial staff than documentary filmmaker Sergey Erzhenkov and the camera crew who assisted him. In this new film from the “Black Flag,” we bring you the Golunov case through the eyes of those who were at the epicenter of these events.

      • Trump’s Persecution of His Investigators Follows Authoritarian Playbook

        The Justice Department’s decision to interview top CIA officials as part of an effort to investigate the reasons for looking into Russian interference in the 2016 election will alarm people who understand President Trump in the broader international context of authoritarians’ recent successes in undermining democratic governments.

        In functioning democracies with independent prosecutors, investigations occur when evidence of serious wrongdoing exists, not when powerful politicians wish to question conclusions they find politically damaging. No evidence exists of any wrongdoing by those investigating Russia’s support for Trump.

        Law enforcement officials have a responsibility to investigate evidence of foreign interference in U.S. elections. The investigation of the investigators sends a message that civil servants doing their job and uncovering evidence of foreign interference risk harassment and damage to their careers. This is alarming, as leading experts have shown that Russian President Vladimir Putin has made undermining Western democracy a major goal — a goal advanced by securing Trump’s election.

        The investigation reflects Trump’s frequently expressed desire to persecute his opponents. He signaled this desire during the campaign when he led chants of “lock her up” against Hillary Clinton, even though no law forbids use of a private email server and a government investigation found no basis for criminal prosecution.

        Since then, Trump and his associates have asked the Department of Justice to prosecute not only Clinton, but also James Comey, John Kerry, Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland, and to investigate Joe Biden. Trump has also encouraged prosecutors not to go after Republicans committing crimes, lest their prosecution damage the Republicans’ electoral chances.

      • Putin’s 2019 ‘Direct Line,’ in a nutshell Russia’s president spoke on national TV for four hours, but you can read this summary in five minutes

        If someone says they’re earning below the minimum wage (by the way, we’ve raised it to the subsistence minimum), then you need to check if that person is working part time. A few years ago, earnings dropped because of economic shocks — not just the sanctions, but also because of falling prices on our raw materials. Falling earnings are primarily due to borrowed credit. We’ve already taken measures to raise wages, and the average pay is rising.

      • Putin’s ‘Direct Line’ earns lowest Moscow TV ratings in six years

        Moscow TV ratings for Vladimir Putin’s “Direct Line” event with Russian voters have fallen to their lowest level since 2013, preliminary data from the data firm Mediascope showed. 6.8 percent of the city’s population was found to have watched the program, and they accounted for 52.5 percent of TV viewers in that time slot.

      • Militia Threat Shuts Down Oregon Statehouse

        The president of the Oregon Senate ordered the state Capitol to close on Saturday due to a “possible militia threat” from right-wing protesters as a walkout by Republican lawmakers over landmark climate change legislation dragged on.

        Republican state senators fled the Legislature — and some, the state — earlier this week to deny the majority Democrats enough votes to take up the climate bill, which would dramatically reduce fossil fuel emissions by 2050. It would be the second program of its kind in the nation after California if passed.

      • Migrant Children Imprisoned in Texas Detail Border Patrol’s “Level of Inhumanity”

        Warren Binford, a law professor at Williamette University who was part of the team that visited the facility, told AP that children her team interview were so tired they were falling asleep at the tables and chairs in the interview room.

        “We’ve seen the worst conditions that we’ve seen in the last three years of conducting these visits,” said Binford.

        “Many of them have not been bathed, many of them talk about how hungry they are,” she added.

        Binford also said that the conditions at the Ursula Detention Center in McAllen, Texas that her team visited the week before were no better for the children there.

        Children that the lawyers spoke to described how they were being forced to care for the young children in the center, including a two-year-old who was not speaking and being cared for by three young girls after an agent asked a group of children, “Who wants to take care of this little boy?”

      • Floridians Are Suing a Cop Fired for Planting Drugs in Their Vehicles

        In October 2017, Derek Benefield was driving in the Florida Panhandle’s Jackson County when he was pulled over for allegedly swerving into the opposite lane. Once at the car, sheriff’s deputy Zachary Wester claimed to smell marijuana and conducted a search of the vehicle, which, he reported, turned up methamphetamine and marijuana. Despite insisting the drugs weren’t his, Benefield, who was already on probation, was arrested, charged $1,100 in fines and court fees, and sentenced to one year in county jail.

        Benefield was seven months into his sentence when, in September 2018, the state attorney’s office dropped his case and those of 118 others. Largely thanks to the diligence of one assistant state attorney, Wester was suspected of routinely planting drugs during traffic stops over his two years in the department.

        Last month, Benefield and eight others filed a federal lawsuit accusing Wester and two other deputies of planting drugs and making illegal arrests, and the Jackson County sheriff’s office of negligence. The suit accuses all the defendants of violating the individuals’ civil and constitutional rights through illegal search, seizure, detention, prosecution, and incarceration. The plaintiffs’ attorney, Marie Mattox, told The Appeal the suit represents “only the tip of the iceberg,” and she plans to add another 18 to 20 plaintiffs. At least 37 people have filed lawsuits against Wester at the state level. The sheriff’s office declined to comment on the lawsuit.

        A criminal investigation into Wester’s behavior was opened last August by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, but no charges have been filed. Mattox said that, for the first time, three of her clients were subpoenaed for interviews in connection with that investigation in early June.

      • Hong Kong Protests Flare Again Over Extradition Laws

        More than 1,000 protesters blocked Hong Kong police headquarters into the night Friday, while others took over major streets as the tumult over the city’s future showed no signs of abating.

        The latest protest came after a deadline passed the previous day for the government to meet demands over highly unpopular extradition bills that many see as eroding the territory’s judicial independence.

        Police called for the demonstrators to disperse but did not immediately take firm action to remove them.

      • Hong Kong is Far From China’s Biggest Problem

        One country, two systems. One event, two interpretations. The crisis in Hong Kong was sparked by chief executive Carrie Lam’s efforts to champion an extradition bill that would allow both residents and visitors to be sent to China for trial.

        It backfired. Beijing is furious for two reasons. First the massive demonstrations it ignited and secondly the central government insists it gave no instruction or order concerning this issue. It looked, Beijing officials insist privately, that Lam was trying to curry favour and had overstepped the mark. This was not a prime example, according to this narrative, of Beijing again trying to stamp its authority on Hong Kong.

        The mountains are high and the emperor is far away. This is an old saying in southern China. But the reverse is also true. From Beijing, Hong Kong is far away. Antigovernment protests in the former British colony are not a cause for emergency meetings though Lam’s future is under serious discussion.

        At the time of the rain-drenched handover in the summer of 1997, Hong Kong accounted for about 20 percent of China’s GDP. Today it accounts for 3 percent. This statistic does not cause sleepless nights in Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound off Tiananmen Square. If anything, it provides reason for a good night’s sleep. It proves, from Beijing’s perspective, not Hong Kong’s decline, but the healthy development of the national economy. The Hong Kong economy has grown since the handover but China’s growth has been supercharged.

        This is the crux. China’s economy has to keep growing, not just for the betterment of the people but to ensure stability.

        Human rights are viewed through a different prism in China than in the West. The imposition of, and here it gets complicated, what China considers the West considers as human rights, is feared. Support for the corrupt regimes of South Vietnam, the Philippines under Marcos and the so-called War on Terror are a small but telling sample and proof, in Beijing’s eyes, of a less than fully altruistic approach to human rights by Washington.

        Many in China believe that without strong central government the country would descend to mass violence and disintegration. This does not let the government off the hook. Chinese people want corruption to be tackled with greater determination and focus. They want to be rid of the scourge of pollution, linked to corruption through the bribing of officials. They want the ruling party to be more accountable. What they do want from the West is teachers, engineers, specialists and trade.

        The unwritten deal between the government and the people is you will be better off, leave the politics to us.

      • Federal police find violations in local counterparts’ handling of Golunov arrest

        Ivan Golunov was released on June 11 after the attempted drug distribution charges against him were dropped for lack of evidence, but the case under which he was charged lives on as a vehicle for police to investigate where the drugs came from. The case materials were transferred today to citywide prosecutors in Moscow for later transfer to the federal Investigative Committee.

      • My Grandmother’s 20-Year Fight for Prison Phone Justice

        Imagine having to choose between purchasing groceries or making a phone call to speak with your incarcerated loved one this week. That’s the dilemma facing thousands of families across the country bearing the burden of high-cost prison phone calls.

        In states like Arkansas, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, it can still cost up to $24 for a 15-minute phone call with someone detained at a jail — a plight poignantly dramatized in Ava DuVernay’s new series about the Central Park jogger case, “When They See Us.” In the series, DuVernay shows us how varied levels of contact and access impacted the now-exonerated men at the heart of the case differently over the course of their years of imprisonment.

        This continued injustice is why, for more than 20 years, my grandmother, Martha Wright-Reed, fought the prison phone industry for affordable phone rates. Now, I am working to keep up the fight.

        My own incarceration was the initial motivation for my grandmother’s struggle for phone justice. However, over time, we realized this fight was much bigger than us; it was about keeping families together across the United States. We also knew that lowering the price of long-distance calls was only one aspect of this ongoing battle.

        My grandmother’s perseverance and commitment finally bore fruit in 2013 when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced they would cap long-distance prison phone rates. I couldn’t have been more proud of my grandmother, who, in her final years, achieved such tremendous change.

        This past week, Sen. Tammy Duckworth introduced the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act to continue my grandmother’s legacy by pushing for fairer prison phone rates across the country. This legislation would restore the FCC’s authority to regulate the prison phone industry and cap the rate of prison phone calls from state and local prisons.

      • “Willful Recklessness”: Trump Pushes for Indefinite Family Detention

        At the Greyhound bus station in San Antonio, Texas, you can easily spot the mothers and children who were released by immigration authorities from a facility run by the private prison company CoreCivic. The women wear what amount to prison uniforms: dark-wash jeans, pastel or red t-shirts or sweatshirts, and generic tennis shoes. Their sons and daughters, ranging from infants to tweens, all wear similar shirts and shoes with maroon sweatpants.

        One mother, named Corina, ran her fingers through her 10-year-old son’s hair as he leaned on her shoulder this past Saturday and waited for a bus to Oklahoma, where their sponsor lives. It was the next step of their journey to escape violence in Guatemala. Earlier in June they had been taken into custody by U.S. Border Patrol agents in South Texas, and crowded into an outdoor pen known as a perrera or “kennel,” where they were fed baloney sandwiches twice a day and slept on the ground. Then they were bussed to the sprawling 2,400-bed South Texas Family Residential Center in the small town of Dilley, and held 11 days in a room with two other families.

        “Compared to the border, it was much cleaner,” she said Saturday, through an interpreter. “We had food and we were able to sleep,” even though at night dozens of lights illuminate what is currently the largest family detention center in the United States.

        When pressed to describe what she might change about their time at the facility, she said only that she wished they had been held there for “menos tiempo”—“less time.”

    • DRM

      • Green Party co-leaders back call for ‘right to repair’

        Green Party co-leaders Sian Berry and Jonathan Bartley will today jointly be signing the Manchester Declaration calling for a “right to repair” for consumers.

        They will be joined by a representative from the Restart movement at the “Library of Things” – a community-focused lending library of useful appliances and tools – in the Upper Norwood Library.

        Jonathan Bartley said: “We all know how annoying it is when an appliance that we know used to last for decades dies after a few years, when a new computer won’t work with an older printer, when an expensive kitchen appliance becomes useless for the want of a minor part.

        “As consumers, we should have the right to goods made to last, designed so that if an element goes wrong it can be repaired (ideally at home or at a repair cafe), that parts will be available when needed and documentation available to assist the repairer.

    • Intellectual Monopolies

      • Trademarks

        • China introduces ‘intent to use’ to combat trade mark squatting in its recent law amendment

          For the first time, China introduces the concept of ‘intent to use’ into the trade mark application procedure. The new law requires that “Bad faith trade mark applications filed without intent to use shall be refused”. Procedurally, this clause becomes a legal ground for trade mark opposition and invalidation.

          It’s clear that the “intent to use” requirement is introduced to combat trade mark squatting, which has been a long-standing problem for brand owners. There is even plenty of ‘professional’ trade mark squatters, individuals and organisations alike, which scan the market and register trade marks in large quantities, without any intent to use them and rather sell them to brand owners for profit later on.

          China has acknowledged the problem since the third amendment of the China Trade Mark Law in 2014, and gradually increased the ease of opposing or invalidating such bad faith trade mark applications. However, non-use cancellation remains the best way to remove such trade marks from the Registrar. The problem is that it only applies to trade marks which have been registered for over 3 years.

          Therefore, the “intent to use” requirement is a significant step forward to deter trade mark squatting. Brand owners can now oppose any pending trade mark applications, or invalidate any registered trade mark that is less than 3 years old, based on the lack of intent of use. This means that trade marks can be challenged on the ground of ‘use’, either intent to use or actual use, at both the application and registration phase. Detailed guidelines are yet to be rolled out regarding, for example, what evidence satisfies intent to use. However, it’s likely that they will be based on and adapted from the ‘intent to use’ rules of other jurisdictions, including the USA.

      • Copyrights

        • RIAA Targets Large Polish File-Hosting Site Chomikuj

          The RIAA has obtained a subpoena from a court in the United States ordering Cloudflare to reveal the personal details of the operator of a large file-hosting site. In its native Poland, Chomikuj (hamster) is a hugely popular platform but according to Google the site is also ranked fifth in the world when it comes to DMCA complaints.

        • Rightsholders Want to Completely Delist ‘Pirate’ Domains From Search Results

          In a closed-door meeting this week to discuss the formation of a new anti-piracy law, rightsholders in Russia proposed that pirate sites should be completely delisted from search results, rather than just links to specified content. Internet companies are said to be against the measures, despite agreement on other fronts.

        • Spain’s Pirate Site Blocklist Expands Following Hollywood Complaint

          Following a complaint from major Hollywood studios including Disney, Paramount, Sony, and Universal, a Spanish court has ordered several ISPs to block several Spanish-language pirate sites. The MPA stresses that the ISPs are not accused of any wrongdoing, but their cooperation, voluntary or through the court, is needed to help deter piracy.

    06.22.19

    Links 23/6/2019: Wine 4.11, FreeBSD 11.3 RC2

    Posted in News Roundup at 9:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

    GNOME bluefish

    Contents

    GNU/Linux

    • Desktop

      • You Can Now Buy Linux Notebooks Powered by Zorin OS from Star Labs

        The makers of the Zorin OS Linux operating system announced today that they partnered with a computer manufacturer to offer users notebooks powered by Zorin OS. The wait is over, as Zorin OS has partnered with Star Labs, a UK-based computer manufacturer specialised in selling Linux-powered notebooks, to offer you two new laptops running the latest version of Zorin OS, fully customized and optimised for these powerful and slick notebooks. “Creating a Linux desktop experience that’s accessible to everyone has always been our mission at Zorin OS,” reads today’s announcement. “Today we’re taking the next step in this mission by making Zorin OS easier for the masses to access: on new computers powered by Zorin OS.”

      • Star Labs Offering a range of Linux Laptops with Zorin OS 15 pre-installed

        Recent days many people are interested to buying a Linux pre-installed laptops because most of the developers are working in major applications which are running in Linux operating system. It’s not limited to only developers and many others are buying Linux pre-installed laptops because Linux desktop operating system are gaining more popularity in recent days. Hence, many computer manufactures are bundling flavours of Linux with their laptops. There are 20+ manufactures are currently offering a laptops with Linux pre-installed especially Ubuntu, LinuxMint, etc,. But Star Labs is not limited to offer only the above three distributions and you can install much more Linux distros in their hardwares.

      • Running Ubuntu on the One Mix Yoga 3 mini laptop (video)

        The One Mix Yoga 3 is a small laptop that features an 8.4 inch touchscreen display and a convertible tablet-style design. It ships with Windows 10, but one of the first things I tried doing with the tablet was to boot a GNU/Linux distribution. I posted some notes about what happened when I took Ubuntu 19.04 for a spin on the One Mix 3 Yoga in my first-look article, but plenty of folks who watched my first look video on YouTube asked for a video… so I made one of those too.

      • Google to Abandon Tablets in Favor of Chrome OS Laptops

        One reason that Google is moving away from tablets has to do with the fact that they are just not selling all that well.

    • Server

      • Top 500 Supercomputers of the World are Linux-Based, Reveals TOP500 53rd Edition

        The 53rd edition of Top500 is here with an interesting commonality among all the top 500 supercomputers.

      • Fedora BoF at Red Hat Summit

        Every year, Red Hat holds a conference for customers, partners, and open source contributors — Red Hat Summit.This year’s was last month, in Boston, Massachusetts, and of course Fedora was there. We had our booth in the “Community Central” area of the expo floor, and ran a birds-of-a-feather (BoF) session for open discussion with community members. I was joined by Brian Exelbierd, Ben Cotton, Adam Šamalík, and a dozen members of the Fedora community. We used a “lean coffee” format to drive the topics, letting the attendees propose and vote on what we discussed. (It’s basically the same format we use for Fedora Council’s open floor meetings, but in person rather than via IRC.) I expected a lot of questions about the new features of Fedora 30, which was released eight days before. But the community members who came to the BoF seemed pretty well-informed on this. Instead, the most-voted topic was Fedora Modularity.

      • Introducing Volume Cloning Alpha for Kubernetes

        Kubernetes v1.15 introduces alpha support for volume cloning. This feature allows you to create new volumes using the contents of existing volumes in the user’s namespace using the Kubernetes API.

      • How Dell EMC and Red Hat work together on joint solutions

        From virtualization and cloud to enterprise IT optimization and performance, Red Hat and Dell EMC deliver open, cost-effective and highly reliable solutions. Our jointly designed and architected solutions blend the best of Red Hat technology with Dell EMC’s customer-driven innovation to create solutions and services that address real-world needs.

      • Red Hat signs off last set of numbers before it is likely gobbled by IBM

        With the EU tipped to approve IBM’s $34bn slurp of Red Hat next week, the open-source software house started Q1 of fiscal ’20 with double-digit hikes in sales and profit, though its top line fell short of analyst estimates. The US regulatory authorities have already given Red Hat the thumbs-up to be consumed by something Big and Blue, but the EU is scheduled to make a decision on 27 June, the last day of Red Hat’s EMEA Partner knees-up. In what could be its last set of results before it is assimilated into IBM’s Hybrid Cloud unit, Red Hat said revenue for the quarter ended 31 May was up 15 per cent year-on-year to $934m, 0.3 per cent below consensus. Broken down, subscription was up 15 per cent to $815m and services were up 17 per cent to $119m. Subscription for infrastructure-related sales was $580m, up 11 per cent, and Application Development stuff was $235m, up 24 per cent. Deferred revenues rose 17 per cent to $2.8bn. “Our large deal momentum remained strong,” Eric Shander, exec veep and CFO, said in a statement. “We doubled the number of deals over $5m and saw 15 per cent growth in the number of deals over $1m.” The record also included Red Hat’s largest storage and hyperconverged sale – for more than $15m – and got sign-off for a $5m piece of OpenStack business.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Talk Python to Me: #217 Notebooks vs data science-enabled scripts

        On this episode, I meet up with Rong Lu and Katherine Kampf from Microsoft while I was at BUILD this year. We cover a bunch of topics around data science and talk about two opposing styles of data science development and related tooling: Notebooks vs Python code files and editors.

    • Kernel Space

      • Linux 5.1.13

        I’m announcing the release of the 5.1.13 kernel. All users of the 5.1 kernel series must upgrade. The updated 5.1.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.1.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s…

      • Linux 5.1.14
      • Linux 4.19.54
      • Linux 4.19.55
      • Linux 4.14.129
      • Linux 4.9.183
      • Linux 4.4.183
      • ‘Bulls%^t! Complete bull$h*t!’ Reset the clock on the last time woke Linus Torvalds exploded at a Linux kernel dev

        Linux kernel chieftain Linus Torvalds owes the swear jar a few quid this week, although by his standards this most recent rant of his is relatively restrained. Over on the kernel development mailing list, in a long and involved thread about the functionality and efficiency of operating system page caches, firebrand-turned-woke Torvalds described Aussie programmer Dave Chinner’s arguments in the debate as “bullshit,” “complete bullshit,” and “obviously garbage.” To be fair to the open-source overlord, this is a far less personal attack than previous outbursts, such as the time he slammed “some security people” as “just f#cking morons,” or that unforgettable straight-to-the-point detonation: “Mauro, SHUT THE F**K UP.”

      • It Looks Like PulseAudio 13.0 Will Be Releasing Soon

        It’s been a year since the release of PulseAudio 12 and even eleven months since the last point release but it looks like the next PulseAudio release will be out very soon. The next PulseAudio release has been under discussion with the sorting out of when the release will take place and any blocker bugs. As it stands now, there is just one blocker bug remaining and that is addressing a regression.

      • A One Line Kernel Patch Appears To Solve The Recent Linux + Steam Networking Regression

        As a follow-up to the issue reported on Friday regarding the latest Linux kernel releases causing problems for Valve’s Steam client, a fix appears pending that with changing around one line of code does appear to address the regression. Linus Torvalds got involved and pointed out a brand new kernel patch that may solve the issue. That patch was quickly reaffirmed by Linux gamers as well as prominent Valve Linux developer Pierre-Loup A. Griffais.

      • Linux Foundation

        • Important, but obscure, sysadmin tool osquery gets a foundation of its own

          But users think osquery’s founder, Facebook, has been neglecting osquery. Going forward, Facebook has turned osquery over to The Linux Foundation. There, engineers and developers from Dactiv, Facebook, Google, Kolide, Trail of Bits, Uptycs, and other companies invested in osquery, will support it under the new foundation: The osquery Foundation. That’s a good thing because while you may not have heard of osquery, many major companies, such as Airbnb, Dropbox, Netflix, Palantir, Etsy, and Uber, rely on it. This project needed a new lease on life. How does it work? Osquery exposes server operating system as a high-performance relational database. This allows you to write SQL-based queries to explore operating system data and low level system information. In osquery, SQL tables represent abstract concepts such as running processes, loaded kernel modules, open network connections, browser plugins, hardware events or file hashes.These are kept in a SQLite DBMS.

      • Graphics Stack

        • More AMD Navi GPUs show up in a Linux driver

          A since-deleted commit for a Linux driver update hints at 4 new AMD Navi GPUs.

        • Libdrm Picks Up Support For AMD Navi

          As another one of the prerequisites for landing the AMD Radeon RX 5000 series “Navi” support in Mesa, the libdrm bits have just been merged. Libdrm is the Mesa DRM library that is needed for sitting between the Linux kernel Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) interfaces and the user-space components (depending upon the driver, as is required by like RadeonSI). Libdrm also ends up being used by the DDX drivers like xf86-video-amdgpu and other components as well depending upon the driver. As of a short time ago, the Navi bits landed in libdrm Git. The Navi support here isn’t all that exciting and mostly boilerplate code for a new generation for a new family ID, a new member for a tile steering override for GFX10, GDDR6 as a new video memory type, and the largest addition is simply the new tests for VCN 2.0 video decode support.

        • Linux display driver code hints that more AMD Navi GPUs are coming

          Currently, only three have been revealed: the Radeon RX 5700, Radeon RX 5700 XT, and the 50th Anniversary Edition Radeon 5700 XT. The Linux code contains references to Navi 10, Navi 12, Navi 14, and Navi 21. All we know so far is that Navi 10 refers to the GPU found at the heart of the Radeon RX 5700 graphics cards. As such, the other Navi bits could be more upcoming variants of the new Radeon RX cards, or perhaps mobile or professional workstation cards. All we’ve got to go on at the moment is guesswork. There’s also another GPU spelt out in code as “NV_UNKNOWN = 0xFF”. Somewhat ironically, we also have no idea what the unknown card might be; perhaps it’s another Radeon GPU or something completely different.

        • Linux driver hints that more AMD Navi GPUs are on the way

          So far, AMD has only officially announced three Navi models, the Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700, along with a 50th Anniversary Edition of the former. It’s a safe bet there will be additional models, though, and perhaps soon, based on a breakdown of a recent Linux display driver update. Twitter user and frequent hardware leaker APISAK called attention to the updated driver code. The original reference has since been taken offline, though not before a screenshot was grabbed.

        • Mesa 19.1.1 release candidate
          Hello list,

The candidate for the Mesa 19.1.1 is now available. Currently we have:
 - 27 queued
 - 0 nominated (outstanding)
 - and 0 rejected patch


The current queue consists mostly in fixes for different drivers (RADV, ANV,
Nouveau, Virgl, V3D, R300g, ...)

The queue also contains different fixes for different parts (Meson build, GLX,
etc).

Take a look at section "Mesa stable queue" for more information


Testing reports/general approval
--------------------------------
Any testing reports (or general approval of the state of the branch) will be
greatly appreciated.

The plan is to have 19.1.1 this Tuesday (25th June), around or shortly after
10:00 GMT.

If you have any questions or suggestions - be that about the current patch queue
or otherwise, please go ahead.


Trivial merge conflicts
-----------------------
commit 25a34df61439b25645d03510d6354cb1f5e8a185
Author: Kenneth Graunke 

    iris: Fix iris_flush_and_dirty_history to actually dirty history.

    (cherry picked from commit 64fb20ed326fa0e524582225faaa4bb28f6e4349)


Cheers,
    J.A.
        • Mesa 19.1.1 Is Coming Next Week With A Variety Of Fixes

          Debuting two weeks ago was the Mesa 19.1 quarterly feature update while due out early next week is the first bug-fix point release. Mesa 19.1 is a huge update over 19.0 and earlier. Mesa 19.1 brought multiple new Gallium3D drivers as well as a new Vulkan driver (TURNIP), performance optimizations, new Vulkan extensions, mature Icelake support, and a variety of other features as listed in the aforelinked article.

    • Applications

      • Top 20 Best Linux Video Conferencing Software in 2019

        Technology has brought our world closer by curating out a continuous set of innovative tools. Video conferencing solutions are great examples of this fact. They allow individuals or businesses to conduct seamless communication across the globe without experience the limitation of geographical distance. They can be used for both one to one and group communications. The latter makes them a suitable choice for freelance business owners or corporations who have employees or agents all over the world. Linux, being the industry leader in powering corporate systems, offers a plethora of robust Linux video conferencing software that enables trouble-free video conferencing.

      • Stellarium v0.19.1 has been released!

        Thank you very much to community for bug reports, feature requests and contributions!

      • Stellarium 0.19.1 Released with A Large List of Changes

        Free-software planetarium Stellarium 0.19.1 was released today with numerous bug-fixes, updates, and improvements.

      • Instructionals/Technical

      • Wine or Emulation

        • Wine-Staging 4.11 Released With Its 800+ Patches On Top Of Wine

          Just hours after releasing Wine 4.11, the team maintaining the experimental/testing version of Wine — Wine-Staging — issued their release with more than 800 patches re-based on top. Wine-Staging 4.11 is at 818 patches on top of upstream Wine, which is lower than previous releases thanks to a number of patches getting upstreamed this month.

        • Wine Announcement
          The Wine development release 4.11 is now available.

What's new in this release (see below for details):
  - Updated version of the Mono engine, including Windows.Forms.
  - More DLLs are built as PE files by default.
  - Faster implementation of Slim Reader/Writer locks on Linux.
  - Initial support for enumerating display devices.
  - Various bug fixes.
        • Whose Wine is it anyway? Wine 4.11 is out

          It’s not quite the the Wine o’clock news but it will do, Wine 4.11 is officially out. The Wine team continues progressing on and it’s looking tasty.

        • Wine 4.11 Brings Ability To Enumerate Display Devices, Updated Mono

          Wine 4.11 is out tonight as the latest bi-weekly development release for running Windows games/applications on Linux and other platforms. With Wine 4.11 is initial support for enumerating display devices. In particular, a Xinerama display device handler is added to the Wine X11 driver and the ability to handle display device changes. Wine 4.11 also ships with an updated version of the Mono engine, more DLLs are now built as PE files by default (continuing a recent trend), there is a faster implementation of slim reader/write locks on Linux, and various bug fixes.

      • Games

        • Play Ascii Patrol Game in Linux Terminal!

          Typing a command in the Linux terminal is one of the exciting things. We are like a king who is giving orders to his soldiers to do certain things. Terminal on Linux has many benefits when you understand the commands that exist. In addition to executing a command, we can play games at the terminal. Playing games on the Linux terminal is one of entertainment. There are many Terminal-based games that you can play on the Linux terminal, one of which is Ascii Patroll. This game is inspired by the classic game “Moon Patrol”, and we can run it on the CLI.

        • Steam Won’t Support Ubuntu 19.10 and Future Releases

          Do you use Steam on Ubuntu? You may have to switch to a new Linux distro in the future. A Valve developer announced that Steam won’t officially support Ubuntu 19.10 or future releases. Ubuntu-based Linux distributions are also affected. This is all because Canonical announced plans to drop 32-bit packages and libraries from Ubuntu 19.10. These packages enable 32-bit software to run on 64-bit versions of Ubuntu. While most Linux applications will get along just fine, this is a huge blow to Valve’s Steam. Many Linux games on Steam are only available in 32-bit form—they work on 64-bit Linux distributions, but only with the 32-bit libraries. As Phoronix recently pointed out, this also affects the Wine compatibility layer that allows running Windows software on Linux—Wine won’t be able to run 32-bit Windows software anymore. Steam’s compatibility layer for running Windows games on Linux would also not work for 32-bit games.

        • Steam will no longer support Ubuntu, say Valve

          The move, not unexpected, follows Ubuntu’s decision to stop providing 32-bit packages in its archives, beginning with the upcoming Ubuntu 19.10 release. Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais, who works on the massively popular game distribution platform, says in his tweet that Ubuntu 19.10 and future releases “will not be officially supported by Steam”. And he adds that Steam will no longer recommend Ubuntu to its users. That’s a big deal as Valve has officially supported Ubuntu since the launch of Steam for Linux back in 2012. But going forward the company will instead advise would-be Linux gamers to switch to a different Linux distribution.

        • Valve Will Not Be Officially Supporting Ubuntu 19.10+

          The planned dropping of 32-bit support on Ubuntu saga continues… Well known Valve Linux developer Pierre-Loup Griffais has said they plan to officially stop supporting Ubuntu for Steam on Linux.

        • Valve looking to drop support for Ubuntu 19.10 and up due to Canonical’s 32bit decision

          Things are starting to get messy, after Canonical announced the end of 32bit support from Ubuntu 19.10 onwards, Valve have now responded. [...] I can’t say I am surprised by Valve’s response here. Canonical pretty clearly didn’t think it through enough on how it would affect the desktop. It certainly seems like Canonical also didn’t speak to enough developers first. Perhaps this will give Valve a renewed focus on SteamOS? Interestingly, Valve are now funding some work on KWin (part of KDE).

        • What are you playing this weekend and what do you think about it? It’s mostly Dota Underlords for me

          Let’s lighten the mood a bit shall we? It’s question time here on GamingOnLinux! Let’s have a talk about what you’ve been playing recently. I will of course go first: Dota Underlords. I have quite the sweet spot for it already, even though I’m absolutely terrible at it. This might be the game to finally get me to kick my unhealthy Rocket League obsession, which is amazing considering how radically different they are. I adore strategy games though and unlike normal Dota, I don’t need to think ridiculously quickly. Since you don’t need any kind of reflexes for it, sitting back and relaxing with the Steam Controller is another reason I quite like Dota Underlords. In the evenings on weekends especially, I can be quite the lazy-gamer, so anything that allows me to kick back with it is likely to get my vote. After only being out for a few days, it’s already annihilated the player record for Artifact. Artifact’s all-time high was only just over 60K whereas Underlords has sailed past 190K, although that shouldn’t be too surprising since Underlords is free and isn’t rammed full of micro-transactions (yet?) and it helps being on mobile as well of course (According to one of the SteamDB folk, the mobile players are being counted too).

        • Canonical Developer Tries Running GOG Games On 64-Bit-Only Ubuntu 19.10 Setup

          In response to the decision to drop 32-bit x86 support beginning in Ubuntu 19.10, Alan Pope of Canonical and longtime Ubuntu member decided to try running some GOG games under an Ubuntu 19.10 daily build that he configured to remove the 32-bit packages ahead of the actual removal. Unfortunately, his experience didn’t go so smoothly. While Valve has the resources to come up with an effective solution to bypass the Ubuntu archives doing away with 32-bit packages on Ubuntu 19.10, the smaller outfits like GOG may have a more difficult time especially with not being as centralized as Steam. Pains could be involved at least in the short-term for those wanting to enjoy their 32-bit-focused games on newer Ubuntu releases.

        • Results of testing games on 64-bit only eoan (19.10)

          These don’t seem to be true for the limited testing I did. I would urge more testing and feedback. I’m also keen to hear if my testing strategy is flawed in any way. Bear in mind I’m trying to approach this from a “normal user” point of view who wants to download and run a game they already had in their collection, or a new title they just bought. I have a few (50) games in GOG that I have purchased over the years. I only had time to select a few at ~random. I picked 5 which gave me a representative sample of relatively modern stuff mixed with retro games, and a good mix between native Linux and native Windows titles.

        • What deals Linux fans should look out for this weekend

          Here’s a little rundown of some good deals going for Linux users, if you’re after something new come and have a look. That is, if you can pull yourself away from the free Dota Underlords from Valve which is currently pulling in masses of players (over 150K right now!).

        • Streets of Rogue, one of my favourite games is leaving Early Access on July 12th

          I don’t know where to start with Streets of Rogue, it starts off pretty tame and as you get further into it the whole game just becomes mental. What is it? Well, it’s hard to properly pin it down to a genre because it’s such a tasty mix. It takes inspiration from games like The Binding of Isaac, Nuclear Throne and Deus Ex to create something entirely unique. It all takes place in a procedurally generated city, one where anything can happen. One minute you’re stick in the middle of rival gangs, another you’re being chased by cannibals. The AI interactions can be seriously amusing too, very fun to mess with them.

        • You can now try the pre-release demo of the brutal roguelike Jupiter Hell for the weekend

          ChaosForge are giving you a chance to play the demo of Jupiter Hell before everyone else, just for the weekend. What is it? A crowdfunded turn-based sci-fi roguelike with modern 3D graphics and an incredible atmosphere. Seriously, while it is turn-based it has the ferocious intensity of a real-time game, it’s pretty amazing. It’s one I personally pledged towards, although I’ve been given earlier access by the developer. I’ve had a seriously good time with it, as shown off before multiple times here on GamingOnLinux (like here and here).

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Latte and “Flexible” settings…

          Following Latte and a “Shared Layouts” dream, today I am going to present you all the new settings pages for upcoming v0.9 and the approach used for them. In following screenshots you can find Basic and Advanced pages for docks and panels.

        • Plasma Vision

          The Plasma Vision got written a couple years ago, a short text saying what Plasma is and hopes to create and defines our approach to making a useful and productive work environment for your computer. Because of creative differences it was never promoted or used properly but in my quest to make KDE look as up to date in its presence on the web as it does on the desktop I’ve got the Plasma sprinters who are meeting in Valencia this week to agree to adding it to the KDE Plasma webpage.

        • Day 26

          I’m in the end of my semester at college, so I need to split my time with GSoC and my college tasks, so now I’m going slowly but on the next month I have my vacation and I’ll have all of my time dedicated to it. My menthors have helped me a lot so far, and I would like to say thanks for the patience, and say sorry for KDE for my initial project and for waste the first weeks on a thing that didn’t produce anything.

        • LabPlot getting prettier and also support for online datasets

          Hello everyone! I’m participating in Google Summer of Code for the second time. I’m working on KDE’s LabPlot, just like last year. I’m very happy that I can work again with my former and current mentor Kristóf Fábián, and with Alexander Semke, an invaluable member of the LabPlot team, who is like a second mentor to me. [...] We had to create metadata files in order to record additional information about datasets, and also to divide them into categories and subcategories. We use a metadata data file which contains every category and subcategory and a list of datasets for every subcategory. Additionally there is a metadata file for every dataset containing various data about the dataset itself. In the “Datasets” section we highlight every dataset the metadata of which is locally available (in the labplot directory located in the user’s home directory). When the user clicks on the “Clear cache” button every file is deleted from the above mentioned directory. The “Refresh” button provides the possibility to refresh the locally available metadata file, which contains the categories and subcategories. In order to make possible the import of datasets into LabPlot, and saving them into Spreadsheets I had to implement a helper class: DatasetHandler. This class processes a dataset’s metadata file, configures the Spreadsheet into which the data will be loaded, downloads the dataset, processes it (based on the preferences present in the metadata file) then loads its content into the spreadsheet.

        • Valve Is Funding Improvements To KDE’s KWin & More Work On X.Org

          As some good news this week amid all the 32-bit Linux gaming drama this week and the networking snafu… Valve is now funding another developer to work on upstream open-source code, in particular on the KDE side this time with a developer who had been working for Blue Systems. Longtime open-source developer Roman Gilg is now working under contract for Valve. He will be focusing on “certain gaming-related XServer projects and improve KWin in this regard and for general desktop usage.” On the KDE side with KWin he’s working on some improvements for both X11/Wayland paths, including a reworking of the compositing pipeline. With the reworked compositing pipeline it could allow for separate CPU threads per display outputs, better vblank handling, and other benefits.

        • Support for Jupyter notebooks has evolved in Cantor

          Hello everyone, it’s been almost a month since my last post and there are a lot of changes that have been done since then. First, what I called the “minimal plan” is arleady done! Cantor can now load Jupyter notebooks and save the currently opened document in Jupyter format. Below you can see how one of the Jypiter notebooks I’m using for test purposes (I have mentioned them in previous post) looks in Jupyter and in Cantor.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • GNOME Asia Summit 2019 Announced for GNOME 3.36 “Gresik” Desktop in Indonesia

          Every year, the GNOME developers and contributors gather together for the GUADEC (GNOME Users And Developers European Conference) and GNOME Asia Summit events to plan the next major release of their beloved, open-source desktop environment for Linux-based operating systems. While the GUADEC 2019 conference will kick off this summer between August 23rd and 28th, in Thessaloniki, Greece, for the upcoming GNOME 3.34 “Thessaloniki” desktop environment, the GNOME Asia Summit 2019 event will take place between October 11th and 13th, 2019, in Gresik, Indonesia.

        • Will Thompson: Rebasing downstream translations

          At Endless, we maintain downstream translations for an number of GNOME projects, such as gnome-software, gnome-control-center and gnome-initial-setup. [...] Whenever we update to a new version of GNOME, we have to reconcile our downstream translations with the changes from upstream. We want to preserve our intentional downstream changes, and keep our translations for strings that don’t exist upstream; but we also want to pull in translations for new upstream strings, as well as improved translations for existing strings. Earlier this year, the translation-rebase baton was passed to me. My predecessor would manually reapply our downstream changes for a set of officially-supported languages, but unlike him, I can pretty much only speak English, so I needed something a bit more mechanical. I spoke to various people from other distros about this problem.1 A common piece of advice was to not maintain downstream translation changes: appealing, but not really an option at the moment. I also heard that Ubuntu follows a straightforward rule: once the translation for a string has been changed downstream, all future upstream changes to the translation for that string are ignored. The assumption is that all downstream changes to a translation must have been made for a reason, and should be preserved. This is essentially a superset of what we’ve done manually in the past. I wrote a little tool to implement this logic, pomerge. Its “rebase” mode takes the last common upstream ancestor, the last downstream commit, and a working copy with the newest downstream code. For each locale, for each string in the translation in the working copy, it compares the old upstream and downstream translations – if they differ, it merges the latter into the working copy.

        • GNOME 3.33.3 Released, Kernel Security Updates for RHEL and CentOS, Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu 19.10 Dropping 32-Bit Support, Bzip2 to Get an Update and OpenMandriva Lx 4.0 Now Available

          GNOME 3.33.3 was released yesterday. Note that this release is development code and is intended for testing purposes.

    • Distributions

      • Kali Linux sets out its roadmap for 2019/20

        Offensive Security, the team behind the security-focused, Debian-based, penetration testing Linux distro Kali Linux. has set out the roadmap for the operating system for the months ahead. This is the first time such a roadmap has been shared for Kali Linux, and it gives us a good idea of what to expect between now and 2020. The team says: “normally, we only really announce things when they are ready to go public, but a number of these changes are going to impact users pretty extensively so we wanted to share them early”.

      • Enso OS, A Desktop Mix between Xubuntu and elementary OS

        Enso OS is a relatively new GNU/Linux distro based on Ubuntu with XFCE desktop coupled with Gala Window Manager. Looking at Enso is like looking at a mix between Xubuntu and elementary OS. It features a Super key start menu called Panther and a global menu on its top panel, making the interface very interesting to try. This overview briefly highlights the user interface for you.

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • Fedora

        • Fedora 30 Elections Results

          The Fedora 30 election cycle has concluded. Here are the results for each election. Congratulations to the winning candidates, and thank you all candidates for running in this election!

        • FPgM report: 2019-25

          Here’s your report of what has happened in Fedora Program Management this week. Elections have concluded. Congratulations to the newly-elected candidates. I have weekly office hours in #fedora-meeting-1. Drop by if you have any questions or comments about the schedule, Changes, elections, or anything else.

        • Pooja Yadav: Fedora Pune Meetup

          Last Saturday(June,15) , we had Fedora Pune Meetup with Fedora-30 release celebration. When I reached the venue, people were already present there and were ready to start the event. We started according to the agenda with our first talk from Pravin Satpute on Fedora-30 features which was great, as people were really interested in knowing the new features added.

      • Debian Family

        • Debian vs. Ubuntu: Best Linux Distro for Laptops, Desktops, and Servers

          There is a seemingly endless list of distributions to choose from if you’re interested in Linux. That said, one of the most popular distributions is Ubuntu. If you’ve heard of Linux, chances are you’ve heard of Ubuntu. You may have heard that Ubuntu is based on another distribution, Debian. Which one should you choose? Is it a matter of preference, or is easy distribution better suited to different use cases?

        • Derivatives

          • Canonical/Ubuntu

            • Ubuntu 19.10 Dropping 32-bit Support Leaves Developers Fuming

              There will be no 32-bit support at all in Ubuntu 19.10. This is problematic for developers of Wine and Steam and gaming on Ubuntu might be in trouble.

            • Ubuntu is dropping i386 support and WINE developers are irked

              As of version 19.10, Ubuntu will no longer support i386. With the arrival of Eoan Ermine, Ubuntu is severing 32-bit ties, and some developers are concerned. The move is not entirely unexpected. The Ubuntu developers had previously said it would make an i386 decision in the middle of 2019. That time having rolled around, the Ubuntu engineering team says that it “has reviewed the facts before us and concluded that we should not continue to carry i386 forward as an architecture”. WINE developers are among those unhappy with the decision.

            • Ubuntu Officially Announced it’s Dropping Support for 32-bit Packages Going Forward

              Ubuntu has officially announced about dropping the support for 32-bit (i386) systems going forward, starting with the upcoming Ubuntu 19.10 release. The 32-bit architecture is used in many Intel and Intel-compatible CPUs. It’s refereed as i386 in Ubuntu, Debian and some other Linux distributions. Many peoples prefer to use the more generic name called “x86” for 32-bit. 32-bit packages were designed especially for legacy hardware’s that only runs a 32-bit operating system, which isn’t popular anymore. No manufacturers have produced any 32-bit computer hardware for desktop / laptop for last 10 years and it was made during the last decade. Most of the major Linux distributions (Red Hat) and software vendors (lack of support in the upstream Linux kernel, toolchains, and web browsers) were already dropped support for 32-bit.

            • Snappy Allow Users to Install Multiple Versions of the Same Snap App

              Portable packaging formats were gained lot of popularity in recent days. Snappy is one of the portable packaging format, which was created by Ubuntu. It brings new features called parallel install, which allow us to install multiple version of the same snap app on system. It could be very helpful for developers to test the difference between multiple version of the packages. You should enable this feature with snap to use, to enable this option is a fairly simple task. This option is available from version 2.36 on-wards.

    • Devices/Embedded

    Free Software/Open Source

    • Good List of 5 Open Source Remote Desktop Software

      First, you should know that in order for two machines to communicate together, they need what’s known as a “protocol”. A remote desktop protocol is a way of transferring the instructions from one computer to another so that you can graphically control the other system. There are many famous remote desktop protocols, such as RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) which is a proprietary protocol designed by Microsoft and implemented in its Windows operating system, and the VNC (Virtual Network Computing) protocol, which is a free and open source protocol to do the same task, and you can additionally connect to the remote host via SSH, NX protocols and others. Now, away from protocols, you’ll of course need a program to access the remote desktop. In general, people are using the proprietary TeamViewer program to do that. But there are many other open source alternatives to TeamViewer that you can use.

    • Welcoming the newest Collaborans!

      For many, June 21, day of the Solstice, is a day of celebrations. At Collabora, we’re also celebrating, as we take a moment to welcome all the newest members of our engineering and administration teams who’ve joined over the last year! Comprised of some of the most motivated and active Open Source contributors and maintainers around the world, Collaborans share an enduring passion for technology and Open Source, and these new joiners are no different.

    • Events

      • Montreal Python User Group: Montréal-Python 75: Funky Urgency

        The summer has started and it’s time for our last edition before the seasonal break. We are inviting you for the occasion at our friends Anomaly, a co-working space in the Mile-End. As usual, it’s gonna be an opportunity to discover how people are pushing our favourite language farther, to understand how to identify bad habit of most programmers and to have fun with data! Join us on Wednesday, there’s gonna be pizza and we’re probably gonna continue the evening to share more about our latest discoveries.

      • More foss in the north

        This year, midsummer is on June 21, which marks four months from the first foss-north event outside of Gothenburg. That’s right – foss-north is going to Stockholm on October 21 and the theme will be IoT and Security. Make sure to save the date! We have a venue and three great speakers lined up. There will be a CFP during July and the final speakers will be announced towards September. We’re also looking for sponsors (hint hint nudge nudge). Now I’m off to enjoy the last hour of midsummer and enjoy the shortest night of the year. Take care and I’ll see you in Stockholm this autumn!

      • Open Source, Digital Transformation And Grape Up: Roman Swoszowski

        We sat down with Roman Swoszowski, co-founder and VP of Cloud R&D at Grape Up to get a better grip of the problems companies face and how Grape Up help these companies using Open Source technologies.

    • Web Browsers

      • Mozilla

        • TenFourFox FPR15b1 available

          In honour of New Coke’s temporary return to the market (by the way, I say it tastes like Pepsi and my father says it tastes like RC), I failed again with this release to get some sort of async/await support off the ground, and we are still plagued by issue 533. The second should be possible to fix, but I don’t know exactly what’s wrong. The first is not possible to fix without major changes because it reaches up into the browser event loop, but should be still able to get parsing and thus enable at least partial functionality from the sites that depend on it. That part didn’t work either. A smaller hack, though, did make it into this release with test changes. Its semantics aren’t quite right, but they’re good enough for what requires it and does fix some parts of Github and other sites.

    • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

      • Cockroach and the Source Available Future [Ed: The proprietary software giants-funded pundits like PedMonk on the openwashing agenda ("Source Available"... like "Shared Source" or "Inner Source"). What a crock.]

        Earlier this month, the database company Cockroach Labs relicensed its flagship database product. This is notable for two reasons. Most obviously, the company is following in the footsteps of several of its commercial open source database peers such as Confluent, Elastic, MongoDB, Redis Labs and TimescaleDB that have felt compelled to apply licenses that are neither open source nor, in most cases, traditionally proprietary. But the relicensing of CockroachDB is also interesting because this isn’t the first time the company has applied such a license. In January of 2017, Cockroach Labs announced the introduction of what it called the CockroachDB Community License (CCL). To the company’s credit, in the post announcing this new license, it took pains to make it clear that the CCL, while making source code available, was not in fact an open source license because it restricted redistribution. The CCL essentially enforced a two tier, open core-type business model, in which a base version of the database was made available under a permissive open source license (Apache) while certain enterprise features were made available under the CCL, which essentially requires users of these premium, enterprise-oriented features to pay for them. With its recent relicensing, the original dual core model has been deprecated. Moving forward, CockroachDB will be made available under two non-open source licenses – which, as an aside to Cockroach, presumably means that section 1B of the CCL probably needs to be updated. The CCL will continue to govern the premium featureset, but the original open source codebase will moving forward be governed by the Business Source License (BSL). Originally released by MariaDB, the BSL is a source available license; a license that makes source code for a project available, but places more restrictions upon its usage than is permitted by open source licenses.

      • Cloudflare’s random number generator, robotics data visualization, npm token scanning, and more news

        Is there such a thing as a truly random number? Internet security and services provider Cloudflare things so. To prove it, the company has formed The League of Entropy, an open source project to create a generator for random numbers. The League consists of Cloudflare and “five other organisations — predominantly universities and security companies.” They share random numbers, using an open source tool called Drand (short for Distributed Randomness Beacon Daemon). The numbers are then “composited into one random number” on the basis that “several random numbers are more random than one random number.” While the League’s random number generator isn’t intended “for any kind of password or cryptographic seed generation,” Cloudflare’s CEO Matthew Prince points out that if “you need a way of having a known random source, this is a really valuable tool.”

    • Funding

      • Open Source Slack Alternative Mattermost Gets $50M Funding

        Mattermost, which presents itself as an open source alternative to Slack raised $50M in series B funding. This is definitely something to get excited for. Slack is a cloud-based team collaboration software that is mainly used for internal team communication. Enterprises, startups and even open source projects worldwide use it interact with colleagues and project members. Slack is free with limited features while the paid enterprise version has premium features. Slack is valued at $20 billion in June, 2019. You can guess the kind of impact it has made in the tech industry and certainly more products are trying to compete with Slack.

    • BSD

      • FreeBSD 11.3-RC2 Now Available
        The second RC build of the 11.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available.

Installation images are available for:

o 11.3-RC2 amd64 GENERIC
o 11.3-RC2 i386 GENERIC
o 11.3-RC2 powerpc GENERIC
o 11.3-RC2 powerpc64 GENERIC64
o 11.3-RC2 sparc64 GENERIC
o 11.3-RC2 armv6 BANANAPI
o 11.3-RC2 armv6 BEAGLEBONE
o 11.3-RC2 armv6 CUBIEBOARD
o 11.3-RC2 armv6 CUBIEBOARD2
o 11.3-RC2 armv6 CUBOX-HUMMINGBOARD
o 11.3-RC2 armv6 RPI-B
o 11.3-RC2 armv6 RPI2
o 11.3-RC2 armv6 PANDABOARD
o 11.3-RC2 armv6 WANDBOARD
o 11.3-RC2 aarch64 GENERIC

Note regarding arm SD card images: For convenience for those without
console access to the system, a freebsd user with a password of
freebsd is available by default for ssh(1) access.  Additionally,
the root user password is set to root.  It is strongly recommended
to change the password for both users after gaining access to the
system.

Installer images and memory stick images are available here:

https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/ISO-IMAGES/11.3/

The image checksums follow at the end of this e-mail.

If you notice problems you can report them through the Bugzilla PR
system or on the -stable mailing list.

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing
system, use the "releng/11.3" branch.

A summary of changes since 11.3-RC1 includes:

o Updates to the ixl(4) and ixlv(4) drivers.

A list of changes since 11.2-RELEASE is available in the releng/11.3
release notes:

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.3R/relnotes.html

Please note, the release notes page is not yet complete, and will be
updated on an ongoing basis as the 11.3-RELEASE cycle progresses.

=== Virtual Machine Disk Images ===

VM disk images are available for the amd64, i386, and aarch64
architectures.  Disk images may be downloaded from the following URL
(or any of the FreeBSD download mirrors):

https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/VM-IMAGES/11.3-RC2/

The partition layout is:

    ~ 16 kB - freebsd-boot GPT partition type (bootfs GPT label)
    ~ 1 GB  - freebsd-swap GPT partition type (swapfs GPT label)
    ~ 20 GB - freebsd-ufs GPT partition type (rootfs GPT label)

The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image
formats.  The image download size is approximately 135 MB and 165 MB
respectively (amd64/i386), decompressing to a 21 GB sparse image.

Note regarding arm64/aarch64 virtual machine images: a modified QEMU EFI
loader file is needed for qemu-system-aarch64 to be able to boot the
virtual machine images.  See this page for more information:

https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm64/QEMU

To boot the VM image, run:

    % qemu-system-aarch64 -m 4096M -cpu cortex-a57 -M virt  \
	-bios QEMU_EFI.fd -serial telnet::4444,server -nographic \
	-drive if=none,file=VMDISK,id=hd0 \
	-device virtio-blk-device,drive=hd0 \
	-device virtio-net-device,netdev=net0 \
	-netdev user,id=net0

Be sure to replace "VMDISK" with the path to the virtual machine image.

=== Amazon EC2 AMI Images ===

FreeBSD/amd64 EC2 AMIs are available in the following regions:

  eu-north-1 region: ami-091a9d377d956c519
  ap-south-1 region: ami-0fa381eb7dd65b236
  eu-west-3 region: ami-0888c48fcbc7ec3b9
  eu-west-2 region: ami-01d9ee1b7ba0aaf87
  eu-west-1 region: ami-072313e0a896f9fc3
  ap-northeast-2 region: ami-081a9854f2575823e
  ap-northeast-1 region: ami-027ab7629095b2419
  sa-east-1 region: ami-0ed1e9346b072b7fa
  ca-central-1 region: ami-0effcf973bbde0b80
  ap-southeast-1 region: ami-06fc8fd0e39f4a6e8
  ap-southeast-2 region: ami-0e68f9d80df9828aa
  eu-central-1 region: ami-042016143d5bf5261
  us-east-1 region: ami-0ad4a06d874497067
  us-east-2 region: ami-0efb20b4a888c1bd1
  us-west-1 region: ami-0b5b96c925cec68fe
  us-west-2 region: ami-0f672651aa001cc97

=== Vagrant Images ===

FreeBSD/amd64 images are available on the Hashicorp Atlas site, and can
be installed by running:

    % vagrant init freebsd/FreeBSD-11.3-RC2
    % vagrant up

=== Upgrading ===

The freebsd-update(8) utility supports binary upgrades of amd64 and i386
systems running earlier FreeBSD releases.  Systems running earlier
FreeBSD releases can upgrade as follows:

	# freebsd-update upgrade -r 11.3-RC2

During this process, freebsd-update(8) may ask the user to help by
merging some configuration files or by confirming that the automatically
performed merging was done correctly.

	# freebsd-update install

The system must be rebooted with the newly installed kernel before
continuing.

	# shutdown -r now

After rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to install the new
userland components:

	# freebsd-update install

It is recommended to rebuild and install all applications if possible,
especially if upgrading from an earlier FreeBSD release, for example,
FreeBSD 11.x.  Alternatively, the user can install misc/compat11x and
other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted
into the new userland:

	# shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove
stale files:

	# freebsd-update install
      • DragonFly BSD 5.6.0 released, which brings performance improvements and improved virtual memory system

        Improved UEFI framebuffer support. Major updates to the radeon and ttm (amd support code) drivers. Also, a major deadlock has been fixed in the radeon/ttm code. Hammer2 filesystem sync code has been rewritten to significantly improve performance. Also, improved sequential write performance. Improve umount operation. Added simple dependency tracking to prevent directory/file splits during create/rename/remove operations, for better consistency after a crash. Added MDS mitigation support for the Intel side-channel attack. It should be enabled by the user, and also requires an Intel microcode update to supports it.

      • OpenBSD Adds Initial User-Space Support For Vulkan

        Somewhat surprisingly, OpenBSD has added the Vulkan library and ICD loader support as their newest port. This new graphics/vulkan-loader port provides the generic Vulkan library and ICD support that is the common code for Vulkan implementations on the system. This doesn’t enable any Vulkan hardware drivers or provide something new not available elsewhere, but is rare seeing Vulkan work among the BSDs. There is also in ports the related components like the SPIR-V headers and tools, glsllang, and the Vulkan tools and validation layers.

      • SSH gets protection against side channel attacks

        Implementation-wise, keys are encrypted “shielded” when loaded and then automatically and transparently unshielded when used for signatures or when being saved/serialised.

        Hopefully we can remove this in a few years time when computer architecture has become less unsafe.

      • doas environmental security

        Ted Unangst (tedu@) posted to the tech@ mailing list regarding recent changes to environment handling in doas (in -current): [...]

    • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

      • Programming/Development

        • Setting up dev environment for SciPy

          I got an email from someone pretty recently who wanted to setup a dev environment for SciPy. He had made changes to the source code of SciPy and now wanted to test if his changes were working or not. He had gotten so far without actually testing the code. In this post I will share details on how to setup a dev environment the right way. I will focus mainly on Mac OS. Firstly, go to the GitHub repo and try to figure out the dependencies for the project. Normally they are listed in the readme file. If they are not listed there then you just try installing the package/libary and the errors in the terminal will give you a clue as to what you are missing. I did that and figured out that I needed Fortran compiler, Cython and NumPy.

        • Peter Czanik: Insider 2019-06: Python; Google Stackdriver; elasticsearch-http(); a year of syslog-ng; Red Hat Summit;

          Sometimes getting log messages into the desired format can be a problem, but with syslog-ng you can use Python to get the exact format you need. The syslog-ng Python template function allows you to write custom templates for syslog-ng in Python. In this blog post, I will show you a simple use of the Python parser: resolving IP addresses to host names. I will also show you the logger method, a nice new feature that enables you to log to syslog-ng’s internal() log source instead of writing logs from Python to stdout. This way you can follow what your Python code is doing even if syslog-ng is running as a daemon in the background.

        • Creating a new Flask project with pipenv
        • Building Restful API with Flask, Postman & PyTest – Part 2
        • Segfaults and Twitter monkeys: a tale of pointlessness

          For a few years in the 1990s, when PNG was just getting established as a Web image format, I was a developer on the libpng team. One reason I got involved is that the compression patent on GIFs was a big deal at the time. I had been the maintainer of GIFLIB since 1989; it was on my watch that Marc Andreesen chose that code for use in the first graphics-capable browser in ’94. But I handed that library off to a hacker in Japan who I thought would be less exposed to the vagaries of U.S. IP law. (Years later, after the century had turned and the LZW patents expired, it came back to me.) Then, sometime within a few years of 1996, I happened to read the PNG standard, and thought the design of the format was very elegant. So I started submitting patches to libpng and ended up writing the support for six of the minor chunk types, as well as implementing the high-level interface to the library that’s now in general use. As part of my work on PNG, I volunteered to clean up some code that Greg Roelofs had been maintaining and package it for release. This was “gif2png” and it was more or less the project’s official GIF converter.

        • AArch64 support for ELF Dissector

          After having been limited to maintenance for a while I finally got around to some feature work on ELF Dissector again this week, another side-project of mine I haven’t written about here yet. ELF Dissector is an inspection tool for the internals of ELF files, the file format used for executables and shared libraries on Linux and a few other operating systems. [...] ELF Dissector had its first commit more than six years ago, but it is still lingering around in a playground repository, which doesn’t really do it justice. One major blocker for making it painlessly distributable however are its dependencies on private Binutils/GCC API. Using the Capstone disassembler is therefore also a big step towards addressing that, now only the use of the demangler API remains.

        • Weekly Python StackOverflow Report: (clxxxiii) stackoverflow python report
        • denemo @ Savannah: Release 2.3 is imminent – please test.
        • Arguments | Another way to work with user inputs – Part 7
        • Call for setting up new obfs4 bridges

          BridgeDB is running low on obfs4 bridges and often fails to provide users with three bridges per request. Besides, we recently fixed a BridgeDB issue that could get an obfs4 bridge blocked because of its vanilla bridge descriptor: <https://bugs.torproject.org/28655>

          We therefore want to encourage volunteers to set up new obfs4 bridges to help censored users. Over the last few weeks, we have been improving our obfs4 setup guide which walks you through the process: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/PluggableTransports/obfs4proxy>p>

      • Standards/Consortia

      Leftovers

      • Science

        • Selection for Facial Features in Domestic Dogs: The Evolution of Cuteness [Ed: This is an interesting article even though the author is a reckless, loud proponent of patents on life and nature (as if humans deserve monopolies on animals' DNA etc.) ]

          As explained in the paper, “[t]he AU101 movement causes the eyes of the dogs to appear larger, giving the face a more paedomorphic, infant-like appearance, and also resembles a movement that humans produce when they are sad” (P. Ekman, W. V. Friesen, J. C. Hager Facial Action Coding System: The Manual (Network Information Research, Salt Lake City, UT, 2002)). The authors’ (and others’) hypothesis is that these adaptations elicited caregiving from humans, resulting in a selective advantage. There is some modern evidence supporting this theory; for example, dogs that expressed this facial movement were more likely to be rehomed from shelters. There is also some support for the notion that this type of facial expression may be important in dog-human communication. The authors describe the results of their comparative anatomical studies between domesticated dogs (Canis familiaris) and gray wolves (Canis lupus). These results included facial dissection and comparison of dogs and wolves and then the authors quantified wolves’ and dogs’ AU101 facial movements for frequency and intensity during social interactions. Generally, the facial musculature is the same between the two species, except for the area around the eye. In dogs, the levator anguli oculi medialis muscle (LAOM) was “routinely” present, whereas in wolves there were fewer muscle fibers and much more connective tissue in this area. In addition, wolves “sometimes” had a tendon where the LAOM was expected to be, and as a consequence the wolf was much less able to form expressions around the eyes than the dog. The authors specifically noted that “wolves have less ability to raise the inner corner of their brows independent of eye squinting relaxation—the anatomical basis for the difference in expression of the AU101 movement.”

      • Hardware

        • Huawei Sues Over U.S.’s Seizure of Telecommunications Gear

          Huawei, China’s largest smartphone maker, said it’s been waiting for nearly two years for a decision by the U.S. Commerce Department on whether the unspecified equipment can be moved back to China. The hardware had been in the U.S. for testing, according to the company’s lawsuit.

      • Health/Nutrition

        • “No evidence” that fracking can be done without threatening human health: Report

          A group of doctors and scientists have released a report highlighting that 84 percent of studies published from 2009-2015 on the health impacts of fracking conclude the industry causes harm to human health. The report, published by two groups, Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York, sites an earlier literature review that found 69 percent of studies on water quality during the same time period found evidence of or potential for fracking-associated water contamination, and 87 percent of studies on air quality found “significant air pollutant emissions” associated with the industry. The new report looks at 1,778 articles from peer-reviewed medical or scientific journals, investigative reports by journalists, and reports from government agencies on fracking. Fracking is another name for hydraulic fracturing, which is a process of extracting natural oil and gas from the Earth by drilling deep wells and injecting liquid at high pressure. “When we first started issuing this report in 2014, we predicted we’d eventually see health impacts based on what we saw happening to air and water,” Sandra Steingraber, a professor of Environmental Studies and Sciences at Ithaca College and one of the lead authors of the study, told EHN. “Now we’re beginning to see actual evidence of human harm.”

        • To Keep A Light On: First Responder Luis Alvarez Enters Hospice Care

          Luis Alvarez, the retired New York City cop and former 9/11 First Responder who last week joined Jon Stewart to testify before Congress the day before he was scheduled to undergo his 69th round of chemotherapy, has entered hospice care for the Stage 4 liver cancer he developed working at Ground Zero. A former bomb squad detective and father of three sons, Alvarez evidently contracted his cancer as a member of the “bucket brigade,” trying to salvage the remains of other NYPD and FDNY members; he retired in 2010 and said he felt “blessed” he only got sick “16 years after the fact.” Alvarez traveled to D.C. last week with other First Responders and their families to urge Congress to provide longterm funding for the 9/11 Victim’s Compensation Fund, which is running short on money and declining new claims. Also testifying were Stewart, who raged at lawmakers to “do your job,” and John Feal, who’s attended 180 funerals for colleagues and who blasts years of unconscionable stalling by Mitch McConnell and the GOP that have required sick people to keep taking trips to D.C. that are “brutal” for them.

      • Security

        • CentOS 7 and RHEL 7 Get Important Linux Kernel Update to Patch SACK Panic Flaws

          The new Linux kernel security updates patch an integer overflow flaw (CVE-2019-11477) discovered by Jonathan Looney in Linux kernel’s networking subsystem processed TCP Selective Acknowledgment (SACK) segments, which could allow a remote attacker to cause a so-called SACK Panic attack (denial of service) by sending malicious sequences of SACK segments on a TCP connection that has a small TCP MSS value. “While processing SACK segments, the Linux kernel’s socket buffer (SKB) data structure becomes fragmented,” reads Red Hat’s security advisory. “Each fragment is about TCP maximum segment size (MSS) bytes. To efficiently process SACK blocks, the Linux kernel merges multiple fragmented SKBs into one, potentially overflowing the variable holding the number of segments.”

        • OpenSSH gets protection against attacks like Spectre, Meltdown, Rowhammer, and Rambleed
        • Ubuntu Linux Gets Intel MDS Mitigations for Intel Sandy Bridge CPUs, Update Now

          Canonical released another update for the intel-microcode firmware for all supported Ubuntu Linux operating systems to address recent Intel MDS (Microarchitectural Data Sampling) security vulnerabilities. Last month on May 14th, Intel published details about four new security vulnerabilities affecting several of its Intel microprocessor families. The company released updated microcode firmware to mitigate these hardware flaws, which quickly landed in the software repositories of all supported Ubuntu releases, but only some of the processor families were supported.

        • Kiwi TCMS 6.10

          We’re happy to announce Kiwi TCMS version 6.10! This is a small security and improvement update.

        • Linux Cryptominer Uses Virtual Machines to Attack Windows, macOS [Ed: This is simply malware that people download and install on their machines, but hey, let's blame something else on "Linux"]

          A new cryptocurrency mining malware dubbed LoudMiner uses virtualization software to deploy a Linux XMRig coinminer variant on Windows and macOS systems via a Tiny Core Linux virtual machine.

        • Report confirms shift of botnet attack focus to Linux, IoT [Ed: A ‘report’ shifts focus from Microsoft Windows back doors (which are causing huge damage at the moment) to “Linux” (usually just machine with default password unchanged)]
        • Botnets shift from Windows towards Linux and IoT platforms [Ed: Microsoft money has poisoned and polluted corporate media (advertising money) to the point each time it covers "Linux" it's either a story about Linux being dangerous or a story about Vista 10 (WeaSeL)]
        • Free proxy service found running on top of 2,600+ hacked WordPress sites [Ed: Considering there are many millions of WordPress sites, many of which aren't patching properly, this is only expected and it's the fault of their administrators]
        • Four CVEs Describe SACKs of Linux and FreeBSD Vulnerabilities [Ed: When searching news for "Linux" these days almost half the results are about security because corporate media chooses to focus on nothing else, even obsessing over the same story for weeks]

           Four new CVEs present issues that have a potential DoS impact on almost every Linux user.

        • Remote Desktop Protocol

          As with any piece of software, bugs arise sooner or later. A critical security exploit allowing a man-in-the-middle- style attack was discovered in RDP version 5.2. In 2012, another critical vulnerability was discovered to allow a Windows computer to be compromised by unauthenticated clients. Version 6.1, found in Windows Server 2008, revealed a critical exploit that harvested user credentials. More recently, an exploit discovered in March 2018 allowed remote code execution attack and another credential- harvesting scenario.

        • Electronic Health Records at 26 Hospitals Hit by Two-Hour Outage [iophk: "Windows TCO"]

          Universal, which manages more than 350 health-care facilities in the U.S. and U.K., declined to specify the technical issues or say how many patient records were affected. The problem lasted for less than two hours and the affected hospitals have returned to normal operations, said Eric Goodwin, chief information officer of the King of Prussia, Pennsylvania-based company.

        • DevSecOps: 4 key considerations for beginners

          Security used to be the responsibility of a dedicated team in the last development stage, but with development cycles increasing in number and speed, security practices need to be constantly updated. This has led to the rise of DevSecOps, which emphasizes security within DevOps. Companies need DevSecOps to make sure their initiatives run safely and securely. Without DevSecOps, DevOps teams need to rebuild and update all their systems when a vulnerability is found, wasting time and effort.

        • OpenSSH to Keep Private Keys Encrypted at Rest in RAM

          A commit for the OpenSSH project adds protection for private keys in memory when they are not in use, making it more difficult for an adversary to extract them through side-channel attacks leveraging hardware vulnerabilities. OpenSSH is the most popular implementation of the SSH (Secure Shell) protocol, being the default solution in many Linux distributions for encrypting connections to a remote system.

        • OpenSSH adds protection against Spectre, Meltdown, Rowhammer and RAMBleed attacks
        • GNU Bash Unsupported Characters Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Vulnerability [CVE-2012-6711]

          A vulnerability in the lib/sh/strtrans.c:anicstr function of GNU Bash could allow an authenticated, local attacker to execute code on a targeted system.The vulnerability is due buffer errors within the lib/sh/strtrans.c:anicstr function of the affected software. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by providing print data through the echo built-in function. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute code on the targeted system.GNU Bash has confirmed this vulnerability and released a software patch.

        • Daily News Roundup: Malware in Your Pirated Software

          Researchers at ESET and Malwarebytes have discovered crypto mining malware hidden in pirated music production software.

        • A Method for Establishing Liability for Data Breaches

          Last month, the First American Financial Corporation—which provides title insurance for millions of Americans—acknowledged a cybersecurity vulnerability that potentially exposed 885 million private financial records related to mortgage deals to unauthorized viewers. These records might have revealed bank account numbers and statements, mortgage and tax records, Social Security numbers, wire transaction receipts, and driver’s license images to such viewers. If history is any guide, not much will happen and companies holding sensitive personal information on individuals will have little incentive to improve their cybersecurity postures. Congress needs to act to provide such incentives. The story is all too familiar, as news reports of data breaches involving the release of personal information for tens of millions of, or even a hundred million, Americans have become routine. A company (or a government agency) pays insufficient attention to cybersecurity matters despite warnings that the cybersecurity measures it takes are inadequate and therefore fails to prevent a breach that could be remediated by proper attention to such warnings. In the aftermath of such incidents, errant companies are required by law to report breaches to the individuals whose personal information has been potentially compromised. Frequently, these companies also offer free credit monitoring services to affected individuals for a year or two.

      • Defence/Aggression

        • Pentagon launched secret digital strike on Iranian spy group: report

          U.S. Cyber Command launched a retaliatory digital strike Thursday night against an Iranian spy group responsible for last week’s bombings of two oil tankers, Yahoo News reported, citing two former intelligence officials.

        • Open Source Investigators Set Their Sights on Saudi Airstrikes in Yemen [iophk: "open source intelligence"]

          In Yemen, both the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi rebels have been accused of violating international law by targeting civilians. Thousands of civilians have been killed since war broke out in the country in 2015. The Saudi-led coalition, which is mainly supplied by the United States and the United Kingdom, has been accused of responsibility for the majority of those deaths.

      • Report: US Planning “Massive” Airstrike On An Iranian Facility

        According to a new article from English-language Israeli publication The Jerusalem Post, the Hebrew-language Israeli publication Maariv has reported that diplomatic sources in the UN are assessing a US plan to conduct a “massive” airstrike on “an Iranian facility linked to its nuclear program” in response to alleged attacks on two sea vessels in the Gulf of Oman. “The sources added that President Trump himself was not enthusiastic about a military move against Iran, but lost his patience on the matter and would grant Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is pushing for action, what he wants,” The Jerusalem Post reports.

      • Gulf of Oman: International Context

        It is now clear that the US has manufactured a false case against Iran for the two-tanker sabotage incident in the Gulf of Oman on 13 June. Evidence of Iranian guilt so far offered by the US is flimsy and contestable: but Mike Pompeo does not seem to care, continuing to press for alliance solidarity no matter what. Of this solidarity there has been remarkably little, even five days later. The general refrain of ‘we would like to see more of the evidence’ is polite dipspeak for ‘we think you are lying’. Trump has reluctantly backed the false US story, but with evident lack of enthusiasm. He would no doubt like to sack his irresponsible lieutenants Pompeo and Bolton, but they currently seem invulnerable, with the power of the military-industrial –national security Deep State at their backs. Trump, a helpless passenger President, will have little room to move towards detente with Xi or Putin at Kyoto G20 (28-29 June). Both leaders have pretty much written the US off as a serious negotiating partner for now.

      • As Trump Claims Power to Bomb Iran at Whim, Anti-War Voices Say: ‘Where Is Congress?’ and ‘Peace Begins With Us’

        In response to Trump’s behavior, progressive Democrats running for president were among those denouncing the fact that he had come within just minutes of ordering a strike that would have sparked untold death and damage. “A war with Iran would be a disaster and lead to endless conflict in the region,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, on Friday morning. “Congress must assert its constitutional authority and stop Trump from going to war.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), also running for president, tweeted: “Donald Trump promised to bring our troops home. Instead he has pulled out of a deal that was working and instigated another unnecessary conflict. There is no justification for further escalating this crisis—we need to step back from the brink of war.”

      • Here’s What Trump’s Fox News Cabinet Wants Him to do About Iran

        President Donald Trump is getting divergent views from the trusted members of his Fox News cabinet about how to respond to rising tensions between the United States and Iran — but almost all of them support some sort of military strike on Iranian targets. In recent months, an escalating pattern of tit-for-tat maneuvers has drawn the two nations closer to direct military confrontation. On Thursday night, in response to what the U.S. says was Iran downing an unmanned American surveillance drone in international waters, Trump reportedly ordered a retaliatory military strike on Iranian targets. He then reversed his decision while the operation was underway. Several senior administration officials, including national security adviser and former Fox News contributor John Bolton, a longtime Iran hawk, reportedly favored a military response. But top Pentagon officials (echoing many external national security experts) reportedly warned that even a limited U.S. military strike could trigger an Iranian escalation, leading to a wider conflagration that might spiral out of control. This reported divide among the president’s official advisers is being mirrored in the advice he is receiving through his television set. Fox’s hosts and guests are an important source of information for Trump, who watches hours of coverage each day and often tweets about segments that catch his eye, and their opinions can shape his worldview and actions.

      • After Approving Strike on Iran Backed by Bolton, Pompeo, and Haspel, Trump Reportedly Called Off Attack at Last Minute

        That’s according to the New York Times, which reported that as late as 7 pm Thursday, “military and diplomatic officials were expecting a strike, after intense discussions and debate at the White House among the president’s top national security officials and congressional leaders.” “The operation was underway in its early stages when it was called off,” the Times reported. “Planes were in the air and ships were in position.” Iranian officials told Reuters Friday that Tehran received a message from Trump “through Oman overnight warning that a U.S. attack on Iran was imminent.” Citing anonymous senior administration officials involved in or briefed on the plan to attack Iran, the Times reported that it is “not clear whether Mr. Trump simply changed his mind on the strikes or whether the administration altered course because of logistics or strategy. It was also not clear whether the attacks might still go forward.”

      • ‘War Is Hell’: As Survivor of Conflict, Rep. Ilhan Omar Makes Impassioned Case Against US Attack on Iran

        “Mr. President, as a survivor of war, I want to tell you: going to war does not make you strong. It makes you weak,” Omar wrote in a series of tweets. “Sending teenagers to die, or return with lifelong wounds seen and unseen, does not make you a bigger person. It makes you smaller. Risking a regional or even global armed conflict does not strengthen our country. It weakens us.” Omar was among a chorus of progressive voices denouncing the Trump administration’s march to war, but the Minnesota Democrat’s personal story as the first Somali refugee ever elected to Congress made her opposition to war with Iran uniquely compelling. “I have seen firsthand the effects of war. Even in the best of cases, it never has the outcome you expect,” Omar wrote. “War is death, displacement, and terror. War is hell.”

      • Back from Iran War Brink: Trump wants to Walk back Iran Crisis that He created with Severe US Sanctions

        The warmongers on Trump’s national security team apparently convinced him to set in motion an aerial strike against Iran Thursday in retaliation for the downing of a US drone over waters claimed by Iran. Then at the last minute, Michael D. Shear, Eric Schmitt, Michael Crowley and Maggie Haberman at the NYT report, Trump seems to have listened to generals who warned him that things could spiral out of control, even into war. He issued a stand down order. At least for now. It isn’t even clear that there was a casus belli. On domestic issues, the US press is locked into an one the one hand, on the other hand disastrous story-telling mode that has enormously benefited those pushing falsehoods such as that cigarettes don’t cause cancer or putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere does not cause global heating.

      • The Exceptionally American Historical Amnesia Behind Pompeo’s Claim of ‘40 Years of Unprovoked Iranian Aggression’

        Someone attacked two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman last week. The Trump administration wants the world to believe that Iran is the culprit. Yet there is no serious evidence that Tehran was behind the attacks on the Norwegian and Japanese ships. Not only is there no proof of Iranian involvement, such an attack by Iran makes no sense at all. Japan and Iran are friends. Just last month, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — who was visiting Tehran during the tanker incident — affirmed this friendship in the presence of Donald Trump during the US president’s recent state visit to Japan. Most importantly of all, the crew and owner of the Japanese tanker attacked in the gulf vehemently reject the US claim that the vessel was damaged by a mine, asserting instead that a “flying object” struck the ship. Still, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iran for what he called a “blatant assault” on the tankers. Pompeo also said that the attacks “should be understood in the context of 40 years of unprovoked aggression” against the US and other “freedom-loving nations” by Iran. There is no such history. Iran hasn’t started a war since the mid-19th century, when it was still the Persian Empire. The true context which must be understood is one of a century of US and Western exploitation of Iranian people and resources, and decades of US threats and aggression against Iran that once reportedly included a plan to stage a false flag attack very similar to last week’s tanker incident.

      • As Trump Says “You’ll Soon Find Out” About Attack on Iran, Congress Urged to Act Immediately to Avert War

        “Congress needs to grill the administration about how retaliatory strikes could spiral into lethal war,” Jon Rainwater, executive director of Peace Action, said in a statement. “As importantly, Congress needs to bar the door to war and make clear that there is no authorization for any military strikes against Iran.” “Donald Trump and [national security adviser] John Bolton can’t be trusted in such a dangerous situation and they may need to be pushed kicking and screaming towards deescalation,” Rainwater added. “We need to return to diplomacy to deescalate the situation and address the substantive issues behind this conflict. Many of us predicted that walking away from the Iran deal would lead us to the brink of war. The window for averting war is closing but it’s not too late to step back and pursue a more sober path.” Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, echoed Rainwater, saying in a statement that “Congress needs to step in and make clear that Trump does not have authorization to start a new war.” “There is still time for Trump to defuse tensions with Iran and put to rest this manufactured crisis,” Abdi said. “Rather than opt for the military options that Bolton will undoubtedly propose, Trump should seek out third party mediators who can help deescalate and bring the U.S. and Iran back to the negotiating table.” The anti-war groups’ warnings came after Trump told reporters in front of the White House that they will learn shortly whether he plans to launch a military strike against Iran after it downed a U.S. surveillance drone. Iran said the drone violated its airspace.

      • Iran Had the Legal Right to Shoot Down US Spy Drone

        The New York Times is reporting that on June 20, President Trump ordered military strikes against Iran to retaliate for its shootdown of a U.S. drone, but then pulled back and didn’t launch them. Officials told the Times that Trump had approved attacks on Iranian radar and missile batteries. Trump tweeted, “We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.” Nevertheless, shortly after midnight on June 21, Newsweek reported that regional U.S. military assets have been put on 72-hour standby. On June 19, an Iranian surface-to-air missile shot down an unmanned U.S. surveillance drone. The White House claimed that its drone was at least 20 miles from Iran, in international airspace, while Iran maintains the drone was in Iranian airspace. Iran presented GPS coordinates showing the drone eight miles from Iran’s coast, which is inside the area of 12 nautical miles that is considered Iran’s territorial waters under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. Iran has the legal right to control its own airspace. The United States has no lawful claim of self-defense that would justify a military attack on Iran.

      • Accusing US of ‘Intrusion’ Into National Airspace, Iran Shoots Down American ‘Spy’ Drone

        “There was no drone over Iranian territory,” Navy Captain Bill Urban, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, told The Associated Press. U.S. military officials claimed the drone was operating in international airspace when it was shot down, Gizmodo reported. The incident comes amid dangerous military tensions between the U.S. and Iran, as the Trump administration attempts—on the basis of flimsy evidence—to blame the Iranians for attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman last week. European nations have expressed skepticism about the U.S. narrative, as has the Japanese operator of one of the damaged tankers. As Common Dreams reported, the Trump administration is paving the way behind the scenes to launch an attack on Iran without congressional approval, sparking alarm and opposition from progressive lawmakers. Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, chief commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, said the “downing of the American drone was a clear message to America.” “Our borders are Iran’s red line and we will react strongly against any aggression,” Salami said. “Iran is not seeking war with any country, but we are fully prepared to defend Iran.”

      • U.S. Prepped for Iran Strike Before Calling It Off

        The United States made preparations for a military strike against Iran on Thursday night in retaliation for the downing of a U.S. surveillance drone, but the operation was abruptly called off with just hours to go, a U.S. official said. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the operation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the targets would have included radars and missile batteries. The New York Times reported that President Donald Trump had approved the strikes, but then called them off. The newspaper cited anonymous senior administration officials.

      • Donald Trump Owns This Iran Crisis

        The warmongers on Donald Trump’s national security team apparently convinced him to set in motion an aerial strike against Iran on Thursday in retaliation for the downing of a U.S. drone over waters claimed by Iran. Then, at the last minute—according to reporting by Michael D. Shear, Eric Schmitt, Michael Crowley and Maggie Haberman at The New York Times—Trump seems to have listened to generals who warned him that things could spiral out of control, even into war. He issued a stand-down order. At least for now. It isn’t even clear that there was a casus belli. On domestic issues, the U.S. press is locked into an on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand, disastrous, story-telling mode that has enormously benefited those pushing falsehoods, such as that cigarettes don’t cause cancer or putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere does not cause global heating.

      • House Democrats Repeal 9/11 Authority for Forever Wars

        Three weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), a law that gave the president the authority to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against “nations, organizations, or persons,” involved in the 9/11 attacks. The AUMF helped launch the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. On Wednesday, 18 years after it was passed, House Democrats passed an appropriations bill that includes a provision that would repeal the AUMF, HuffPost reports. Reporters Matt Fuller and Amanda Terkel note that three presidents have invoked the AUMF for more than three dozen military engagements in 14 countries. While some House members, notably Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., oppose the bill, it took a Democratic majority in the House and the possibility of the Trump administration using it as a justification for war with Iran for the repeal vote to succeed. The administration has launched attempts to demonstrate links between Iran and al-Qaida. As Charlie Savage writes in The New York Times, “In public remarks and classified briefings, Trump administration officials keep emphasizing purported ties between Iran and [al-Qaida].” They’ve done so “despite evidence showing their ties aren’t strong at all. In fact, even [al-Qaida’s] own documents detail the weak connection between the two,” Vox’s Alex Ward reports.

      • Iran Shoots Down U.S. Surveillance Drone, Heightening Tensions

        Iran’s Revolutionary Guard shot down a U.S. surveillance drone Thursday in the Strait of Hormuz, marking the first time the Islamic Republic directly attacked the American military amid tensions over Tehran’s unraveling nuclear deal with world powers. The two countries disputed the circumstances leading up to an Iranian surface-to-air missile bringing down the U.S. Navy RQ-4A Global Hawk, an unmanned aircraft with a wingspan larger than a Boeing 737 jetliner and costing over $100 million. Iran said the drone “violated” its territorial airspace, while the U.S. called the missile fire “an unprovoked attack” in international airspace over the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf and President Donald Trump tweeted that “Iran made a very big mistake!”

      • War Begets War . . . And Nothing Else

        Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran . . . Thanks, John McCain! Let’s mix a little humor in with war. It’s so much easier to take when we do. By the way, have you noticed that we’re always on the verge of war? “The bombing will be massive, but will be limited to a specific target.” So said a U.N. diplomat recently, according to the Jerusalem Post. Guess which country he was referring to. An act of war is how we “send messages.” So the Trump hawks (this term may or may not include Donald himself) are thinking — if the paper’s sources have any credibility — of bombing an Iranian nuclear facility as an act of punishment because Iran “has announced that it intends to deviate from the nuclear agreement signed in 2015 and to enrich uranium at a higher level than the maximum it has committed to within the framework of the nuclear deal.” This is all hush-hush, of course. War has to be planned in secret. The public’s role is definitely not to be part of the debate in the lead-up process or to question the facts that justify taking action. Its role is to cheer loudly when the hostilities begin, fervently hating the specified enemy and embracing the new war as a necessary, last-resort action to protect all that we hold dear. Its role is definitely not to question war itself or to bring up the inevitability of unintended consequences, whether that be the death of babies or the poisoning of the environment. Its role is not to suggest that creating peace is essentially the opposite of waging war, or to cry out: “War-making must be renounced. It is past time for the paradigm shift. We have one planet and we must see ourselves as one and we must take a stand.” These are the words of Dud Hendrick of Veterans for Peace, and I pause here and let the words settle — in all their complexity — into the collective consciousness.

      • Iran ‘Violates’ Nuclear Deal, After US ‘Withdraws’

        Quick question: Does the US ever break, breach or violate its international agreements? Apparently not, according to US coverage of Iran’s recent announcement that it intended to go beyond the limits of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in enriching uranium for its civilian nuclear program (frequently mischaracterized as a nuclear weapons program in media coverage). Reading corporate media’s inversion of reality, it’s hard to escape the impression that while Iran betrays its international agreements, the US just leaves them behind. An Associated Press report carried by USA Today (6/17/19) was headlined: “Iran Says It Will Break Uranium Stockpile Limit in 10 Days,” and reported that Iran’s announcement indicated its “determination to break from the landmark 2015 accord,” while noting that “tensions have spiked between Iran and the United States,” partly because the US “unilaterally withdrew” from the landmark agreement. Note that the US rejection of its obligations under the deal is referred to in neutral terms—Washington “withdrew”—while Iran’s response to US nonobservance gets negatively characterized as a “break”—a pattern that persists throughout the coverage.

      • The Art of Shaping Memory

        How best to describe the recently completed allied commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of France? Two words come immediately to mind: heartfelt and poignant. The aged D-Day veterans gathering for what was probably the last time richly deserved every bit of praise bestowed on them. Yet one particular refrain that has become commonplace in this age of Donald Trump was absent from the proceedings. I’m referring to “fake news.” In a curious collaboration, Trump and the media, their normal relationship one of mutual loathing, combined forces to falsify the history of World War II. Allow me to explain. In a stirring presentation, Donald Trump — amazingly — rose to the occasion and captured the spirit of the moment, one of gratitude, respect, even awe. Ever so briefly, the president sounded presidential. In place of his usual taunts and insults, he managed a fair imitation of Ronald Reagan’s legendary “Boys of Pointe Du Hoc” speech of 1984. “We are gathered here on Freedom’s Altar,” Trump began — not exactly his standard introductory gambit. [...] If the purpose of Trump’s speech was to make his listeners feel good, he delivered. Yet in doing so, he also relieved them of any responsibility for thinking too deeply about the event being commemorated. Now, let me just say that I hold no brief for Josef Stalin or the Soviet Union, or Marxism-Leninism. Yet you don’t need to be an apologist for Communism to acknowledge that the Normandy invasion would never have succeeded had it not been for the efforts of Marshal Stalin’s Red Army. For three full years before the first wave of G.I.s splashed ashore at Omaha Beach, Russian troops had been waging a titanic struggle along a vast front in their own devastated land against the cream of the German military machine. One data point alone summarizes the critical nature of the Soviet contribution: in May 1944, there were some 160 German divisions tied up on the Eastern Front. That represented more than two-thirds of the armed might of the Third Reich, 160 combat divisions that were therefore unavailable for commitment against the Anglo-American forces desperately trying to establish a foothold in Normandy. As has been the custom for quite some time now the German chancellor, representing the defeated enemy, attended the D-Day anniversary festivities as an honored guest. Angela Merkel’s inclusion testifies to an admirable capacity to forgive without forgetting. Russian President Vladimir Putin did not, however, make the guest list. In liberal circles, Putin has, of course, made himself persona non grata. Yet excluding him obviated any need for Trump and other dignitaries in attendance to acknowledge, even indirectly, the Soviet role in winning World War II. Although the Red Army was never known for finesse or artfulness, it did kill an estimated four million of Merkel’s countrymen, who were thereby not on hand to have a go at killing Donald Trump’s countrymen. If war is ultimately about mayhem and murder, then the Soviet Union did more than any other belligerent to bring about the final victory against Nazi Germany. Without for a second slighting the courage and contributions of our Canadian, Polish, Norwegian, and Australian comrades — bless them all — it was the Red Army that kept General Dwight Eisenhower’s expeditionary command from being pushed back into the Channel. In other words, thank God for the godless communists. So, however heartfelt and poignant, the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings was an exercise in selective remembering and convenient forgetting. It was, in other words, propaganda or, in contemporary parlance, fake news. The deception — for that’s what it was — did not escape the notice of Russian commentators. Yet members of the American media, otherwise ever alert to Trump’s sundry half-truths and outright deceptions, chose to ignore or more accurately endorse this whopper.

      • The Selling of the War on Iran

        But instead of ending on that note I’m going to bring up another event that directly relates to all of the above, and that is the tragedy of 9-11. Some have been conditioned to dismiss “conspiracy theories” and automatically switch off their cognitive functions but I’d encourage you to not hit that switch and read some of the links I’ve hyperlinked below. Over the past 18 years a great deal of new information has been gathered regarding 9-11 and where it points to is very chilling to say the least. The war that is about to be waged against Iran makes perfect sense if you bother to come up to speed regarding the latest evidence on 9-11. Take a few minutes and read the articles I’ve linked to. Make up your own mind. You will very quickly understand what’s been going on these past 18 years and why Iran is being targeted. Only through knowledge and dialogue can we bring about peace. Allowing ourselves to be manipulated is a recipe for war. Below is the conclusions I have reached. After you have read the articles I’ve linked to see if you agree with it or not. 9-11 was a Cheney-Bandar Bush-Netanyahu operation with Bin Laden as the patsy. The motivation was for the Project for Greater Israel, with “a request” for a “new Pearl Harbor” detailed in Project for a New American Century. With Libya, Syria, and Iraq destroyed now they are coming after Iran. Wake up people, before they get away with another tragic nightmare.

      • Trump Pulls Back from Iran Attack as Bolton & Pompeo Continue to Push for War

        After threatening to strike Iran in retaliation for shooting down an unmanned U.S. drone, President Trump reportedly approved, and then abruptly called off, military strikes. The move came after the operation was already underway in its initial stages, with warships and planes already being put into position. We go to Tehran to get response from Mohammad Marandi, a professor at the University of Tehran who was part of the nuclear deal negotiations in 2015. We also speak with CUNY professor and historian Ervand Abrahamian, author of several books about Iran. Whether or not Trump wants war with Iran doesn’t ultimately matter, says Abrahamian. “The long-term agenda in the White House” from Bolton, Pompeo and others is much more aggressive. “They want basically the destruction of the Islamic Republic.”

      • The US as Rogue Nation Number 1

        President Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are saying that they have proof that Iran blew holes in two oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz linking the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, and so, we’re being told in a report in the Jerusalem Post and earlier in Newsweek magazine, they are considering, along with Pentagon brass, having the US launch an intense missile attack on Iran’s main uranium refining plant. There’s a lot of breathless, exciting reporting about this prospect in the US media, with some news organizations talking enthusiastically about the idea, and with others opposing it, but their opinions on the matter are in either event, based only upon the question of whether or not Iran can be proven to have been behind the attack on the tankers, or on whether or not Trump can launch such a war without advance Congressional approval. European countries’ leaders — with the exception of in Britain — are saying that there’s no solid evidence pointing to Iran. And many US news organizations appear to agree. So does Japan, whose flag one of the damaged ships flies and whose leader was in Iran meeting leaders there at the time of the alleged attacks (which seems rather unlikely as an Iranian strategy!). But none of them — critics or opponents of a US attack on Iran — are raising a more significant question: Does the US have any legal or even moral right to launch a war against Iran if Iran does not pose an “imminent threat” to the US, to US interests or to US allies whom it has an obligation to defend. The answer is a resounding “No!”

      • Trump’s Sanctions are Sadistic and Spiteful

        The history of sanctions is grim, and it is generally acknowledged that they penalize ordinary people to an unjustifiable degree. It is difficult to forget the excruciating pronouncement by Madeleine Albright, President Clinton’s Secretary of State, when she was ambassador to the UN and commented on their effects in Iraq in the 1990s, in the run-up to the US invasion. In a media interview her questioner said that in Iraq “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Albright replied, “I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.” Her noxious statement was largely ignored by Western mainstream media which was being ramped up to support the invasion of 2003, by which time, the citizens of Iraq had been viciously punished by a bunch of foreign bigots who had reduced the country to a societal shambles. In his 2006 book ‘A Different Kind of War’ the former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, Hans Von Sponeck, wrote that “Communicable diseases in the 1980s not considered public health hazards, such as measles, polio, cholera, typhoid, marasmus and kwashiorkor, reappeared on epidemic scales.” The commentator Gilles d’Aymery warned that the book “is not for the faint-hearted reader. The wrenching suffering of the Iraqi people it recounts cannot be read without feeling ill to the point of nausea and experiencing a deep sense of anger and outrage, as well as immense sadness, by the unfathomable tragedy that befell this peaceful people — mere pawns sacrificed on the checkerboard of great gamesmanship between an authoritarian government fallen out of grace and the parochial interests of a few Western nations.” So one would think that the US Establishment might have realized the extent that sanctions inflict suffering on innocent people, and in one instance this was so, because President Obama began to relax sanctions on Cuba, whose people have been ferociously targeted by Washington’s Best and Brightest for almost sixty years. The anti-Cuba campaign began in 1959 when Fidel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista, who was totally corrupt and supported by the US. Castro was regarded as an enemy, not because he was brutal, which he undoubtedly was, but because in 1960 he nationalized US-owned businesses, including casinos owned by Mafia mobsters. This sparked the April 1961 Bay of Pigs attack by CIA-sponsored Cuban exiles, authorized by President John F Kennedy. It took only three days for Castro’s forces to wipe out the would-be invaders, then, as the BBC records, “The CIA began to make plans to assassinate Castro as part of Operation Mongoose. At least five plans to kill the Cuban leader were drawn up between 1961 and 1963.” And to complement this righteous crusade, in 1962 Kennedy ordered sanctions prohibiting all trade and communication with Cuba.

      • Japanese and German Doubts on U.S. Drumbeat Towards Iran War

        Japan since 1945 has been the most abjectly deferential of U.S., even more so than the U.K. Tokyo rarely strays far from Washington’s line on any global issue. It notoriously supported the Iraq wars if 1991 and 2003-present, both based on lies. Japan’s loyalty, like Britain’s is strategic; while all alliances with the U.S. are promoted as based on “common values” they are mainly based on capital and global capitalists’ needs. Both the U.K. and Japan are for the time being part of the U.S. imperialist camp, under strong pressure to side with it when it decides to provoke war. When George W. Bush turned to Tony Blair’s Britain and asked for support for a war on Iraq, Blair became Bush’s poodle. The slavish cooperation with the U.S. in that disastrous, criminal war remains a matter of national shame. Germany and France avoided that by noting that the U.S.’s case was weak if not based on fabrications. They showed it is possible for major allies to defy the U.S., (although recall how enraged members of Congress were at France’s betrayal). Last week two tankers were attacked in the Gulf of Oman and the U.S. immediately blamed Iran. Almost immediately British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt declared: “We are going to make our own independent assessment, we have our processes to do that, (but) we have no reason not to believe the American assessment and our instinct is to believe it because they are our closest ally.” The German foreign minister Heiko Maas on the other hand, responding to U.S. “evidence,” stated blandly, “The video is not enough. We can understand what is being shown, sure, but to make a final assessment, this is not enough for me.” Maas visited Tehran last week to try to mediate between the U.S. (which wants conflict with Iran) and Iran (which wants to avoid conflict).

      • America’s Respectable War Criminals

        A Boston Globe story highlights Wellesley College alumnae Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton’s return to the College for their 60th and 50th respective reunions. The story states that “their early days at Wellesley College were marked by uncertainty and feeling out of place.” But they “overcame their trepidation and went on to illustrious careers including serving as the country’s top foreign diplomat under different presidents.” Wellesley College president Paula A. Johnson asked them questions for over an hour, with the audience giving “Albright and Clinton an enthusiastic reception, including three standing ovations.” What created the enthusiastic response? Albright and Clinton “urged the audience to speak up and take action to protect democracy from the threat of fascism under President Trump.” (“At Wellesley, Madeleine and Hillary Clinton encourage protest, political action.,” By Laura Crimaldi, June 9, 2019) “Speak up and take action to protect democracy.” Okay. The country certainly needs to be protected from “the threat of fascism under President Trump.” But such honoring of Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton’s “illustrious careers” is quite a commentary on The Boston Globe and Wellesley College and the selective morality of many Americans. Trump can serve to distract attention from war crimes committed by other, respectable, U.S. political leaders, among them Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton. Consider Madeleine Albright. The U.N. imposed draconian sanctions on Iraq, pushed by the U.S. and Britain after it invaded Kuwait. Before that, in 1989 Iraq was reported to have “one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world, as well as universal, free healthcare and education.” (“Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq,” johnpilger.com, 1-15-05) Iraq’s remarkable health was due to President Saddam Hussein nationalizing the country’s vast oil resources, and investing certain of its revenue in the Iraqi people. This policy did not set well with Western oil corporations, which saw Iraq’s bountiful oil reserves as a gold mine to be controlled and tapped.

      • Wake Up, Damn it!

        I see great cities like Homs in Syria, reduced to horrifying ruins. I see Kabul and Jalalabad in Afghanistan, fragmented by enormous concrete walls intended to protect NATO occupation armies and their local puppets. I see monstrous environmental devastation in places such as Indonesian Borneo, Peruvian gold mining towns, or the by now almost uninhabitable atoll island-nations of Oceania: Tuvalu, Kiribati or Marshall Islands. I see slums, a lack of sanitation and clean drinking water, where the boots of Western empires have been smashing local cultures, enslaving people and looting natural resources. I work on all the continents. I never stop, even when exhaustion tries to smash me against the wall, even when there are hardly any reserves left. I cannot stop; I have no right to stop, because I can finally see the pattern; the way this world operates, the way the West has been managing to usurp it, indoctrinate, and enslave most of the countries of the world. I combine my knowledge, and publish it as a ‘warning to the world’. I write books about this ‘pattern’. My most complete, so far, being the 1,000 pages long Exposing Lies of The Empire. Then, I see the West itself. I come to ‘speak’, to Canada and the United States, as well as Europe. Once in a while I am invited to address Australian audiences, too. The West is so outrageously rich, compared to the ruined and plundered continents, that it often appears that it does not belong to the Planet Earth.

      • “Enlisted at 17”: Legend, Trope, or War Story?

        The idea that America sends its kids off to war caught my attention twenty years ago while working on a book. Then, it was common to hear or read that “the average of our soldiers in Vietnam was 18.” That never sounded right to me because one had to be 18 to be drafted and was not subject to call-up for six months. Allowing for some time lag between that date, draft-board proceedings, induction, basic training, leave time, and shipment to Vietnam, most of the youngest arrivals in Vietnam would have been 19 or older. Many draftees, like me, had years of deferment for college and teaching before induction. I was nearly 25 before being reclassified 1A for the draft and turned 26 while in Vietnam in 1969. More soldiers in Vietnam, officers, career NCOs, and Guard and Reservists among them, were still older—too old and too numerous for the average age of those serving in that war to be 18. And seventeen? A November 10, 1965 New York Times story headlined “Vietnam Duty at 17 Barred” reported that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the day before, had ordered military services to stop sending 17-year-olds to Vietnam and pull out those who were there.

      • The Douma Gas Attack: What’s the Evidence It was a False Flag?

        On April 7, 2018, a chlorine chemical attack reportedly left 43 people dead in Douma, a city of over 100,000 people in the Ghouta region to the east of Damascus. I use the word reportedly since Assad and Putin both denied a day later that anybody had died. Propaganda networks for the two leaders called the grizzly video evidence for such an attack as a carefully staged performance akin to how some conspiracy theorists describe the Apollo moon landing. Among the outlets arguing for a “false flag” incident was One America News Network, an ardently pro-Trump cable news station that was granted a permanent seat in the White House’s news briefing room and whose White House Correspondent, Trey Yingst, was one of the top five most called upon reporters covering the Trump Administration. Not to be outdone, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson opined: “All the geniuses tell us that Assad killed those children, but do they really know that? Of course they don’t really know that. They’re making it up. They have no real idea what happened.” Was this false flag supposed to provoke a “humanitarian intervention”? Consider what happened after Khan Shaykhoun was subjected to a sarin gas attack just about a year earlier. Donald Trump ordered the navy to fire Cruise missiles at Shayrat air force base in Syria but only after alerting the Russians about the impending attack. The runway was not damaged—something that was never even part of the plans—and jets and helicopters took off a few hours afterward. According to Wikipedia, even the Russian defense ministry said that the “combat effectiveness” of the attack was “extremely low” and that only 23 missiles out of 59 fired hit the base, destroying six aircraft. It did not know where the other 36 landed. Russian television news, citing a Syrian source at the airfield, said that nine planes were destroyed by the strike but that they were inoperative at the time. This time Trump did not even bother with a slap on the wrist over the Douma attack. In July 2017, Trump had cut off aid to Syrian rebels entirely. He also ordered a freeze on funding to the White Helmets, the first responder group that Vanessa Beeley and Max Blumenthal regard as part of a Salafist terror network. So, any concerns about a false flag incident triggering a major regime change operation in Syria could only be raised by people who are not persuaded by facts or logic. On March 1, 2019, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) issued a report that concluded that a chlorine gas attack did take place but, as is customary in its investigations, did not place blame. Since it found evidence that two weaponized chlorine tanks penetrated a building from above, one might surmise that the regime was to blame, especially since it had been using chlorine bombs repeatedly in the past two years. Likely, the goal was not to kill people but to terrorize them. Chlorine gas can make you very sick in open spaces but generally will not kill you. It was the misfortune of the 43 people in a Douma tenement to be on the lower floors on April 7, 2018. They were trying to avoid conventional bombs, not a gas attack. When one of the tanks was detonated in a rooftop terrace, the chlorine gas seeped to the lower floors with a devastating effect. (Unlike most gases, chlorine is heavier than air and travels downward.)

      • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

        • Survey sees biggest US honeybee winter die-off yet

          Winter hit U.S. honeybees hard with the highest loss rate yet, an annual survey of beekeepers showed.

        • ‘Governments and Corporations Were Figuring Out a Way to Behave With Impunity When It Comes to Oil’ – CounterSpin interview with Sandy Cioffi on oil in Nigeria

          Janine Jackson: A recent report in the Guardian, based on internal documents from the Mobil Foundation—the philanthropic arm of Mobil Oil Company—shows how the foundation named a certain Dr. David Page in its decision to fund a marine research lab at Bowdoin College, writing that it could “assure rapid response to any possible Mobil spill events.” Five years later, after a Mobil “spill event” in Nigeria, Dr. David Page was being quoted in the New York Times—identified as a professor and “American oil spill expert.”

        • What the ‘Fossil Fuel Economy Looks Like’: Demands for Climate Justice After Explosion Rocks Philly Oil Refinery

          The flames erupted at roughly 4am at Philadelphia Energy Solutions’s (PES) refinery complex, which triggered a temporary shelter-in-place order. Philadelphia Fire Department Deputy Fire Commissioner Craig Murphy, speaking to the press at about 7am, said that a vat of butane had caught fire, though the company later said that it was “mostly propane,” that was burning. “PES said there were three separate explosions that ‘impacted’ a unit that produces alkylate, which is used to boost gasoline octane,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Four workers suffered mild injured and were treated on site, the company added. “The refinery processes approximately 335,000 barrels of crude oil per day (42 U.S. gallons per barrel), making it the largest oil refining complex on the U.S. Eastern seaboard,” the company website states, adding that the facility “strives to be a good neighbor in our surrounding community.” It is also “the largest single source of particulate pollution in the Philadelphia area even when there isn’t an emergency,” NBC10 reported.

        • Trump’s Plan to Save Coal Country Will Actually Hurt It

          The Trump administration has replaced President Obama’s signature climate effort with new rules for power plants that are widely seen as a lifeboat for the nation’s struggling coal industry. Environmentalists have promised to challenge the rollback in court, arguing that Andrew Wheeler, the former coal lobbyist President Trump installed at the helm of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is ignoring the growing climate crisis along with the deadly health impacts of burning coal for electricity. Analysts are already debating whether President Trump’s replacement will be enough to rescue the coal industry, because market forces and the public’s desire for cleaner energy are already pushing the energy sector away from coal at a rapid pace. Coal continues to be the largest source of greenhouse gases in the electricity sector. Thanks to the controversial fracking boom, coal is already struggling to compete with a glut of cheap natural gas — which the Trump administration has fully embraced, along with domestic oil. Renewable energy technology continues to improve and become more affordable nationwide, and with climate crisis looming, many observers see renewables as the future of energy. This explains why environmentalists and energy industry analysts — not to mention most Democratic presidential hopefuls — say Trump’s attempt to extend the life of the coal power industry with regulatory maneuvers is not only bad for the environment and public health, but also bad for workers and the economy. Trump has built a strong following in coal country, but his policies could actually hurt the same workers he claims to be helping. “Sadly, the Trump administration’s futile and cynical attempt to prop up the coal industry — instead of pushing for renewable energy investments in coal country — will hit coal miners and their families the hardest,” said Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook, in an email. Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), a nonpartisan group of clean tech business leaders, estimated last year that the Clean Power Plan could create 560,000 jobs and add $52 billion to the gross domestic product by 2030 while developing alternatives to coal. Trump’s policy, on the other hand, is largely aimed at keeping existing jobs in place. The health and climate benefits of the Clean Power Plan alone were projected to reach $55 billion to $93 billion by 2030, according to the Obama EPA. This dwarfs the annual “net benefit” of $120 million to $730 million projected for Trump and Wheeler’s replacement, the Affordable Clean Energy Rule (ACE).

        • The Dangerous Methane Mystery

          The East Siberian Arctic Shelf (“ESAS”) is the epicenter of a methane-rich zone that could turn the world upside down. Still, the ESAS is not on the radar of mainstream science, and not included in calculations by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and generally not well understood. It is one of the biggest mysteries of the world’s climate puzzle, and it is highly controversial, which creates an enhanced level of uncertainty and casts shadows of doubt. The ESAS is the most extensive continental shelf in the world, inclusive of the Laptev Sea, the East Siberian Sea, and the Russian portion of the Chukchi Sea, all-in equivalent to the combined landmasses of Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy and Japan. The region hosts massive quantities of methane (“CH4”) in frozen subsea permafrost in extremely shallow waters, enough CH4 to transform the “global warming” cycle into a “life-ending” cycle. As absurd as it sounds, it is not inconceivable. Ongoing research to unravel the ESAS mystery is found in very few studies, almost none, except by Natalia Shakhova (International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska/Fairbanks) a leading authority, for example: “It has been suggested that destabilization of shelf Arctic hydrates could lead to large-scale enhancement of aqueous CH4, but this process was hypothesized to be negligible on a decadal–century time scale. Consequently, the continental shelf of the Arctic Ocean (AO) has not been considered as a possible source of CH4 to the atmosphere until very recently.” (Source: Natalia Shakhova, et al, Understanding the Permafrost–Hydrate System and Associated Methane Releases in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, Geosciences, 2019) Shakhova’s “until very recently” comment explains, in part, why the IPCC does not include ESAS methane destabilization in its calculations. Meanwhile, Shakhova’s research has unearthed a monster in hiding, but thankfully, mostly in repose… for the moment. Still, early-stage warning signals are clearly noticeable; ESAS is rumbling, increasingly emitting more and more CH4, possibly in anticipation of a “Big Burp,” which could put the world’s lights out, hopefully in another century, or beyond, but based upon a reading of her latest report in Geosciences, don’t count on it taking so long.

      • Finance

      • Chip stocks fall after Commerce Dept bars 5 more Chinese companies from buying US parts
      • The Paywall Conundrum: Even Those Who Like Paying For News Don’t Pay For Much News

        For years, we’ve tended to mock newspaper paywalls — not because we don’t want to see news publishers get paid (that would actually be good!), but because it just doesn’t seem like a really sustainable way to build a news product for nearly every publication. In other words, nearly all media paywalls are destined to fail — often spectacularly — because they can’t generate nearly enough paying subscribers. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. Large general interest news sites like the NY Times and the Washington Post seem to have made it work. Small, narrowly focused sites can sometimes get by as well — if their content is unique and special enough. But most general interest news sites are unlikely to be able to make it work — and a new study drives home that point. Even for people who like paying for news, they tend to only pay for one news subscription. Really.

      • Have you heard about Silicon Valley’s unpaid research and development department? It’s called the EU.

        Today, the EU acts like an unpaid research and development department for Silicon Valley. We fund startups, which, if they’re successful, get sold to companies in Silicon Valley. If they fail, the European taxpayer foots the bill. This is madness.

      • Walmart Got a $2.2 Billion Tax Cut. Now It’s Laying Off Workers

        Walmart announced it will lay off hundreds of workers in North Carolina despite receiving billions in tax cuts that the Republican Party and President Trump claimed would spur job growth. The giant retailer will lay off about 570 employees and close its corporate office near the Charlotte airport, despite signing a 12-year lease just four years earlier, the Charlotte Business Journal reported. The work done at the Charlotte facility will be outsourced to a firm in Arkansas, according to the report. Layoffs are expected to begin in September and continue into 2020. “This was a difficult decision that affects friends and associates we care about deeply,” the company said in a statement to the Charlotte Business Journal. “We appreciate their important contributions, and we’re committed to handling every transition over the next seven months smoothly and respectfully. We are maintaining a corporate presence in Charlotte. As our company continues evolving, we’ve said we must strike the right balance between managing the needs of our business, our associates and our customers.” The layoffs come as Walmart reaps billions in tax cuts thanks to the 2017 Republican tax cuts. Walmart saved $1.6 billion through the first three quarters of 2018, The New York Times reported in December, and experts say the tax law will save the company $2.2 billion in taxes per year, roughly a 40 percent cut from past years.

      • Trump Administration Wants to Redefine the Poverty Line, Shrinking Public Aid

        In early May, the Office of Management and Budget announced that it was seeking public comments on a proposal to change how inflation and the consumer price index are calculated, and, by extension, how poverty rates in the United States are estimated. The federal poverty line measure was developed in the early 1960s by a Social Security Administration economist named Mollie Orshansky. It has gone through numerous tweaks over the 56 years since then, but the basic premise has always held: it is calculated assuming particular spending patterns on goods, ranging from food to housing to fuel to clothing, that a family needs to purchase to have even a modicum of economic security. The poverty line is modified depending on the size of the family. In the U.S., the line isn’t varied by geographic region, but it is updated yearly based on changes in the Consumer Price Index — basically, the rate of inflation. So ingrained is the poverty measure in our discussion of politics, of inequality, of economic vibrancy, that we have, over the decades, come to think of the statistic as something absolute; when we say that 12.3 percent of Americans, or nearly 40 million people, currently live below the poverty line, we assume that means something incontrovertible; that 40 million of us are poor and the rest of us aren’t. But of course, in reality, there’s no such absolute divide. Poverty measures are inherently impressionistic, based on a series of assumptions about how people spend their money and what constitutes basic need, and, as importantly, how they substitute one good for another when there are selective price spikes affecting certain goods and services. There are economists who spend their entire careers crafting their own estimates of how consumers behave as these prices subtly shift. But amid the din of competing data, one thing stands out: Experts on poverty, from organizations as diverse as the Center for American Progress to the National Academy of Sciences believe that the measure is actually far too conservative. They say the “basic needs” that the poverty line considers are outdated — not fully factoring in things such as recent increases in the costs of housing and medical care, or the importance of access to technologies such as the internet and cell phones in the modern era. As a result, they say, the real poverty rate in America is actually considerably higher than the official numbers suggest. Now, however, the Trump administration looks set to head off in the exact opposite direction. It has come up with a proposal to measure inflation by a “chained consumer price index,” which will most likely take millions of people who were previously considered by the government to be living in poverty, and declare that suddenly, magically, they are no longer poor.

      • Facebook co-founder: Libra coin would shift power into the wrong hands

        Regulators should not underestimate the digital currency’s disruptive potential

      • Facebook Co-Founder Says Libra Project Will Have A ‘Frightening’ Impact

        Chris Hughes, the co-founder of Facebook, thinks that the newly unveiled cryptocurrency Libra will have a “frightening” impact on the economy — by shifting power from central banks to corporations. Earlier this week, Facebook unveiled its global digital coin, which will be managed by the Libra Association and circulated through a wallet named Calibra.

      • There Is No Green Revolution Without Tax Justice

        The “green wave” recorded during the European elections on 26 May should give Europe momentum. It is now time we oppose our determination to build a social, democratic and ecological Europe, against the withdrawal desires of nationalists and Eurosceptics, or the temptations of the status quo offered by Conservatives and Liberals. The strong mobilisation of young people for the climate gives me particular hope for the future. In France and Germany, the Greens were the highest-ranked party among the 18-34 demographic in this election. And though high school students cannot yet vote, they are already expressing their willingness to defend their future on the streets during the climate marches. As my mandate as a European MP ends after ten years of fighting, I want to tell these young mobilised people that it is up to them to take up the torch. I also want to convince them that for a greener Europe, we need more tax justice.

      • Thus Spoke the Bond Market

        The titles of a few recent articles give some idea about what has been going on in the bond market lately: “The Bond Market Is Giving Ominous Warnings about the Global Economy” (Irwin 2019), “History Tells Us Why the Fed Should Take the Inverted Yield Curve Seriously” (Coppola 2019), “Donald Trump’s Beautiful Economy is Now on Full Recession Alert” (Evans-Pritchard 2019), and “Investors Could Tip the US Economy against Themselves: There’s Risk for a Self-fulfilling Cycle of Market Instability and Economic Disruptions” (El-Erian 2019). It is likely that Friday, 31 May 2019 will be considered to be one of the milestones of the ongoing global financial crisis that started in the summer of 2007. It is because, in a sequence of two tweets on Twitter, President of the United States (US) Donald Trump declared that 5% tariffs would be imposed on all goods coming into the US from Mexico, until the time the inflow of illegal Mexican migrants stopped. This, as the ongoing US–China trade war that started early in 2018 had already escalated in May 2019. On the same day, although there was no mention of the “r-word,” JP Morgan economist Michael Feroli said that he expected the US central bank, the Federal Reserve (Fed), to lower key lending rates two times later this year: one quarter-point cut in September, followed by another quarter-point cut in December. And on the same day, citing the same expectation because of growing risks to the economy from trade tensions, JP Morgan analysts revised down their year-end targets on 2-year Treasury yields to 1.40% from 2.25% and on 10-year Treasury yields to 1.75% from 2.45%. On Sunday, 2 June 2019, President Trump summarised the current state of the trade war in a sequence of three tweets. Also, on 2 June 2019, Morgan Stanley released a research note in which its chief economist Chetan Ahya argued that a recession could begin in nine months if President Trump pushes to impose 25% tariffs on an additional $300 billion of Chinese exports and China retaliates with its own counter-measures. He wrote: “With the latest developments suggesting that trade escalation is still in play, the impact of trade tensions on the global cycle should not be underestimated.” Recall that only three months ago (Öncü 2019), while many had been admitting the possibility of a global slowdown, there had been a near consensus that a global recession was nowhere near the horizon. So the Morgan Stanley research note was a major change of mind by a major global financial player.

      • What the US Women’s Soccer Team Wants

        The Women’s World Cup is now underway. Taking place in France, the tournament features 24 of the best women’s national teams throughout the world. It’s also a stage for widespread gender discrimination. Prior to the tournament, the distribution of tickets was absolutely botched by the infamously incompetent folks at FIFA. And here in the United States, a lawsuit by our women’s national team marked the run-up to the tournament. That lawsuit, filed by 28 players and the union that represents them, alleges widespread discrimination against women players by the United States Soccer Federation, even after a recently ratified collective bargaining agreement. Players say they’re consistently denied equal pay, promotion, and playing and travel conditions compared to the men’s team. Their suit comes on the heels of a 2016 complaint by five members of the women’s team — Hope Solo, Carli Lloyd, Megan Rapinoe, Becky Sauerbrunn, and Alex Morgan — with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which detailed similar complaints. Elsewhere, the reigning World Female Player of the Year, Ada Hegerberg of Norway, elected not to play for her national team in this World Cup because of mistreatment by the Norwegian Football Federation that left her mentally broken and depressed. That’s even after Norway became the first country to pay men and women players the same amount. [...] Women are still only paid around 81 percent of what men make for comparable work. And a lack of access to parental leave, reproductive health care, and affordable child care puts them at a further disadvantage. The members of the women’s national team are lucky enough to be a part of a union. Studies show that unionization helps narrow the gender gap by giving workers more leverage against discrimination and other abuse. The U.S. women’s team is fighting the same battle as millions of workers. The rest of us should support their lawsuit, their union, and others like it across the country.

      • The Art of Trade War: Is Trump Winning His Trade War against China?

        President Trump is a villain, almost cartoonish in his malignance. He’s a heel. He might as well be tying kidnapped maidens to train tracks and twirling his wispy mustache. He’s the antagonist whose death later in the movie you hope will be epic, horrifically brutal, and deeply satisfying. And, so, we carry over our emotional responses to this Oval Office carbuncle into our politics. We root against Trump because we want to see him burn. We expect his policies to be failures because they’re concocted by oily ghouls in expensive suits who often have little understanding of anything beyond their own enrichment. And yet, as political observers, we must also confront the unsettling truth that sometimes Trump’s tactics can be successful. Indeed, in some ways he has rewritten what success can look like for a US president. Rather than being measured in stability and capable stewardship of the US Empire in service to the ruling class, Trump has used confrontation and destabilization on the global stage to enrich those sectors of capital that rely on him for survival – Big Oil being the prime example – while charting a path toward the prize he lusts after above all others: recognition as a legitimate and successful president. And this confrontational, and perhaps somewhat successful, approach is best exemplified by his trade war with China. [...] Some might argue that the trade war is equally impacting the US, and that Trump will pay a political price for doing so. And, indeed, that seems to make sense on its face. Recent figures released by the US Department of Labor show signs that the US economy is also taking a hit with payroll increases missing forecast targets and wages remaining stagnant despite historically low unemployment figures, including real unemployment which stands at 7.1% (lowest since December 2000). But the trade war with China is not about these minor skirmishes, it’s a siege. Trump thinks he can outlast the Chinese, force them to blink, and translate that into political currency. He might not be wrong. As US companies begin to feel the true impacts of the tariffs, their response could be a bad sign for Beijing. In May, a NY Times op-ed cited Kelly A. Kramer, chief financial officer for telecom equipment giant Cisco, as telling investors that the company had “greatly, greatly reduced” its exposure to China. Similarly, the President and CEO of a large electronics supplier for outdoor equipment indicated that the increase to 25% tariffs has forced him to look at Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea for potential replacement suppliers. “I was thinking this is a short-term issue that will go away…[but] I don’t think you can rationally think that any more [sic],” he explained. Trump may be correctly relying on the fact that the US economy can withstand whatever pain China can dish out longer than China’s economy can withstand Trump’s policies. Call it the Deer Hunter approach to global economic hegemony.

      • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

        • The US-UK “Special Relationship” is a Farce

          But what, then, explains Labour governments also falling in line with US foreign policy? In the case of Tony Blair, it was simply a matter of him being a right-wing infiltrator who hijacked the Labour Party to serve the same interests represented by the Conservative Party. But for previous Labour leaders, the answer to this question is a bit more complex. As both the sole remaining superpower and the largest economy in the world, the US has had huge economic as well as political influence over Europe since the end of the Second World War. The US’s huge import market has given it immense buying power that exerts enormous economic pressure on European exporters. They need their governments to be on friendly terms with the US government, which largely acts as the political wing of corporations and financial capital, in order to maintain access to the huge North American market. Furthermore, European governments have been subservient to Washington via its preferred international organizations, especially the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In 1976, for instance, the Labour government of James Callaghan was offered a loan from the IMF on the condition of enacting austerity measures. In spite of fierce opposition from the labor movement his party was founded to represent, he followed IMF dictates. (Ironically, this was the direct cause of the “Winter of Discontent” of the late 1970s – not, as is often falsely claimed, his initial (mildly) left-wing policies.) Washington has used this imbalanced economic relationship to demand obedience to its foreign policy. And European government have, for the most part, been too scared to ever test whether or not Washington is bluffing. In short, successive UK governments have seen themselves as having two options vis-a-vis relations with the US – either to kowtow to Washington and stay afloat in the global economy or else sink. Whether the choice was actually this binary is, of course, somewhat of an academic question at this point. Perhaps it was a necessity of the power structure of the Cold War era or perhaps it was a case of an overly meek Labour Party failing to stand up to Washington. But either way, in the here and now there is a huge opportunity for a change of course. Though the Cold War is over, US power is also in decline. Any remaining lipstick on the ugly face of US neoliberal imperialism was washed away by the election of Donald Trump, who personifies the fascist trajectory that it had long been taking. Though the US has long been one of the most hated countries in the world, his presidency has plunged its image and reputation to new depths of acrimonious scorn across the globe. Furthermore, several developments in global affairs have brought the primacy of US power into question. From the failure of the US-instigated coup attempt in Venezuela (supposedly the US’s “backyard”) to the refusal of European governments to cooperate with the Iran nuclear deal withdrawal, there are growing signs that US power might be on the wane. Above all, the rise of Russia and China as major players on the world stage who are consistently willing to take an independent approach signals a seismic shift in global power relations. In Latin American and Africa, they have proven themselves as more neutral actors who, unlike the US, will happily invest without attaching political strings – as has so long been Washington’s modus operandi.

        • The Intellectual Origins of the Trump Presidency and the Construction of Contemporary American Politics

          It is foolish to think that Trumpism and Trumpistas are merely a product of personality. To believe that is to assume that Donald Trump is sui generis, elected under unique circumstances and that the politics and polices produced under him are tied to him. Believing that means also that once Trump leaves office, be in 2020 or beyond, Trumpism will end. Yet the reality is that Donald Trump is merely the figurehead for Trumpism and Trumpistas. All three are the product of a series of forces that made his presidency and policies possible. The roots of Trumpism are long and deep, and contrary to what some sarcastically may think, there are the intellectual foundations that set the conditions for Trump’s election and his subsequent presidency. The intellectual roots of Trumpism need to be distinguished from other social forces that have made Trump a persona of the times. A Freudian social psychological analysis of Trumpism would perhaps explain the misogynist and hyper-masculine nature of the movement whereas theories of spatial geography and sociobiology could uncover the roots of the nativism and racism. Neo-liberal economic theory amply would capture the way global and state restructuring of the economy since the 1970s have contextualized the anxieties of Trumpistas, making the racist, protectionist, and misogynist rhetoric of the president so appealing to them. All these are antecedent causes for the movement known as Trumpism. But there are also intellectual theories that underpin the Trump presidency and the political power which he leverages, and which precludes the constitutional concepts of checks and balances and separation of powers from doing their job. Unlike during the Nixon presidency when constitutional norms prevailed over partisanship, the Trump presidency is defined by the failure of these norms to work. When candidate Trump proclaimed that: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” he might as well have said he would not lose any Republican support in Congress. Despite overwhelming evidence in the Mueller Report that Trump has abused his authority, as well as other clear instances where he has run roughshod on congressional and constitutional norms, the Republicans in both Houses stand firmly behind, making impeachment an impractical check upon him.

        • The Pope is Wrong on Argentina

          When Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the new Pope after the resignation of his German predecessor, a wave of euphoria shook Argentina. He was not only the first Latin American Pope but also a beloved member of the Argentine Catholic Church. Bergoglio was well-known and respected because of his work as cardinal. At present, however, his indirect participation in Argentina’s politics has tarnished his image to some extent. Bergoglio had a difficult relationship with former Argentine presidents Néstor Kirchner and his wife, Cristina. In one of his homilies, he questioned “the exhibitionism and the strident announcements of the rulers,” in a message that indirectly pointed at Néstor. Later, he was frequently at odds with Cristina Kirchner, who succeeded her husband after his death. Bergoglio’s and Cristina’s relationship continued to deteriorate when Bergoglio supported the country’s farmers, who opposed a government levy against their exports. The confrontation between Bergoglio and Cristina Kirchner reached its climax in 2010 with a same-sex marriage bill. Argentina was the first country in Latin America to allow same-sex marriage, a decision which the Catholic Church strongly opposed. Government criticism was swift after his appointment to the Papacy in March 2013, going so far as disseminating stories about his alleged collaboration with the military junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. Government opponents, on the other hand, joyously celebrated his appointment, not only because an Argentine had been elected Pope but also because he was seen as a powerful government antagonist in a country where Catholicism is the predominant religion.

        • Trump’s Russian Problem

          In two and a half years, Donald Trump and his national security team have managed to worsen virtually every aspect of American national security policy. Trump has bullied and harangued our traditional West European allies and, as a result, bilateral relations with Britain, France, and Germany have become more difficult. France, Germany, and even Japan have begun to rethink their security policies because of the uncertainty that surrounds dealing with the Trump administration. President Barack Obama left Trump a path for dealing with traditional foes in Cuba and Iran, but the president has made these issues far more problematic and, in the case of Tehran, raised the specter of confrontation. The most bizarre development has been the contradictory handling of the Russian problem, which finds Russian-American relations returning to a Cold War paradigm. Trump campaigned on the basis of stabilizing and strengthening relations with Russia. Nevertheless, he appointed national security teams devoid of experience in conceptualizing and implementing diplomacy. General officers dominated his first national security team; key figures opposed to Russia and to arms control were appointed national security adviser, secretary of defense, and director of homeland security. Only former secretary of state Rex Tillerson had a resume that suggested an interest in a conciliatory relationship with Russia, but Trump and Tillerson were at odds from the start, and the role of the Department of State is severely limited in the Trump administration. The second round of national security appointments produced greater mediocrity. National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have no appreciation for the importance of diplomacy; they would have been far more comfortable in the Cold War era. Civilian leadership at the Pentagon has never been weaker, and whoever is in command will lead an organization that has never promoted better relations with Russia or the pursuit of arms control, which was central to creating stable bilateral relations between Washington and Moscow in the 1970s and 1980s. The Trump administration, moreover, walked away from two seminal arms control agreements (e.g., the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Iran nuclear accord), and has no plans for pursuing disarmament.

        • The Biden Question

          Perhaps because it is easy to spell and comprehensible even to toddlers, the word “sad” turns up often in our president’s tweets. The word has lately become useful too in descriptions of the political scene in the Trump era. Here it is in a sentence: “It is sad that the question ‘why not Biden?’ has to be asked.” The answers are so numerous and so obvious that in a happier political environment, no one would ever bother to ask. However, in our political environment, it is urgent that the question be addressed, and that even obvious answers be made explicit. This makes it easier to identify what actually is of interest in Biden’s entry into the 2020 presidential race. For a start, remember the old saw, sometimes attributed to Einstein, that insanity is making the same mistake over and over, thinking, for no good reason, that the result will be different the next time around. If the idea is to elect Democrats, then doing the same thing over and over isn’t always as much of a mistake as might appear; representatives of the party’s dead center do sometimes get their candidates elected, and the donors behind them do often get what they want. However, for Democratic voters and others whose goals include halting and, whenever possible, reversing the rush towards nuclear and environmental catastrophes, advancing liberty, justice, and social solidarity on a domestic and international scale, and promoting democracy — governance of, by, and for the people – at all the interstices of social and political life, it is a different story. For them, insanity is everywhere. It practically defines Clintonite politics. Biden would never have gotten anywhere without it.

        • “So Happy”: The Trump “Boom,” the Nation’s Despair, and the Decline of Joe Biden

          A common media narrative on Donald Trump is that he foolishly fails to run on his greatest strength, the economy. Instead of smartly trumpeting his leading political asset, the “booing” economy, the story runs, Trump stupidly rails against immigrants. Trump has often seemed to (well) trump what would seem to be his best political card with wild Bad Grandpa rants against diverse targets and enemies, immigrants above all.

        • When Putin was asked about today’s ‘gang of patriots,’ he went after the ‘gang’ that governed Russia before him (forgetting his own résumé)

          During his latest “Direct Line” call-in TV show, Vladimir Putin noticed a question displayed on screen that read, “Where is this gang of patriots from United Russia [the country’s ruling political party] leading us?” The president decided to answer the question, telling viewers, “So there’s no impression that we’re avoiding tough political questions.” In his response, however, Putin spoke mainly about the difficulties Russia endured in the 1990s, arguing that some people in power during that era should be held responsible for this.

        • Time to Drop Out? Poll Shows 72% of Democratic Voters Think There Are Too Many Candidates Running for President

          With the first 2020 presidential primary debate less than a week away, new survey data released Friday suggests the vast majority of Democratic voters believe at least some of the candidates in their party’s crowded 24-person field should drop out of the race. According to a Hill-HarrisX poll, 72 percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent voters feel there are “too many” candidates vying for their party’s presidential nomination. Just 16 percent of respondents said the number of candidates is “about right,” and 12 percent said there are “too few” candidates in the race. [...] The new Hill-HarrisX poll comes as Democratic candidates struggling to crack one percent in national polls are facing pressure from fellow Democrats to quit the race and possibly mount a run for Senate. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told The Hill that the “clock is running out for people who have not demonstrated any ability to mount a serious presidential bid to help make a real difference in their country by helping to turn the Senate.” According to reporting from The Hill earlier this month, “Democrats facing a steep uphill climb to win back the Senate want Beto O’Rourke to reconsider his long-shot bid for president and take another look at running for the Senate in Texas, especially if his White House bid fails to pick up momentum.”

        • The White Man’s Biden

          The Democrats have a problem. Some unreconstructed ghosts from the party’s gruesome racist past are rattling their chains, thanks to yet another very public blunder by former Senator and Vice President Joe Biden, the seeming frontrunner in the 2020 presidential race. Biden, who apparently hasn’t met a vicious conservative he doesn’t like and respect, stepped on a whole series of rakes over the last several days, and his standing as the establishment pick for the nomination is setting the party up for another calamity at the polls. Biden attended a big-dollar fundraiser at the Carlyle hotel in New York on Tuesday, one of several he graced with his presence that day. While unspooling his boilerplate spiel about “civility” and working with hidebound Republicans who are really great you guys, trust me, Delaware’s erstwhile favorite son got lost in the weeds of history, white supremacy and institutional racism. “I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” said Biden in an ersatz Southern accent. “He never called me ‘boy.’ He always called me ‘son.’ Well, guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished.” There is quite a bit to unpack here, so let’s take it from the top. Sen. James Eastland (D-Mississippi) was an unvarnished racist and white supremacist, born to wealth, who lived on a massive cotton plantation and devoted his life to maintaining Jim Crow. With his fat cigar and benighted views, Eastland was for many long years the living essence of institutionalized, violent white power in the U.S. “He often appeared in Mississippi courthouse squares,” wrote The New York Times in its obituary for Eastland after his passing in 1986, “promising the crowds that if elected he would stop blacks and whites from eating together in Washington. He often spoke of blacks as ‘an inferior race.’” Biden apparently hasn’t met a vicious conservative he doesn’t like. The Times obituary was a polite rendering of some very bleak history. “The South will retain segregation,” Eastland proclaimed in 1956. “The governor of a sovereign State can use the force at his command, civil and other, to maintain public order, and prevent crime and riots. He can use these forces to prevent racial integration of schools if this is necessary, under the police power of the State, to prevent disorder and riots.” Biden’s own staff even thought praising Eastland was an incredibly bad idea. “Aides said they had urged Biden to find a less toxic example,” reports The Washington Post. And then, there is the matter of “boy.” When used against Black men, “boy” is a racist pejorative slur meant to insult and diminish their standing as a free adult. When used against white men like Biden, “boy” is merely a noun with no ghastly history attached. Joe Biden missed the point completely, again.

        • There Are No Democratic Adults in the Room

          “It’s 2016 All Over Again.” So claims the title of a recent column by Peter Nicholas in The Atlantic. By “2016 all over again,” Nicholas means that Donald Trump, now president, has expressed a willingness to accept campaign help from a foreign power in the 2020 election. The president’s comments upset Nicholas. “A simple idea,” he writes, “underpins the nation’s democratic tradition: Americans elect America’s leaders. But that notion at times seems lost on Trump. His comments to ABC, for one, echoed remarks he made almost three years ago, when he famously called on Russia to help recover 30,000 emails deleted from Clinton’s private server.” [...] That proved a decent forecast for the Obama administration. The party continued its drift rightward, Republicans exploited the public’s broader feelings of abandonment and betrayal, and Democrats managed to depress and demobilize their own base. Hillary Clinton’s listless 2016 campaign then added insult to the injury of financial globalization and deindustrialization by casting white, flyover voters as culturally backward “deplorables.” Clinton neglected public policy to a shocking degree, eschewing even the pretense of progressivism. It was a doomed strategy in an anti-establishment election year shaped by widespread popular alienation and anger. The masses were in no mood for centrist equivocation amid a weak recovery from a Great Recession caused by financial sector culprits who were opulently bailed out by a Democratic administration that had little to offer the working-class majority. The progressive-populist Bernie Sanders, running in accord with majority progressive opinion, would have defeated Trump. But the Clinton machine and its allies in corporate media and the Democratic National Committee rigged the primary campaign against Sanders, the party’s best hope.

        • Sergey Gavrilov, the Russian lawmaker who sparked outrage and protests in Tbilisi, says he was framed by ‘radical liberals’ and ‘fake news’

          It’s completely obvious that this is a prearranged provocation by Georgia’s radical liberal anti-patriotic forces. The attacks on the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of Orthodoxy were used as a pretext to try to discredit Orthodoxy, seize the Parliament, and launch a coup d’état. We conducted the assembly meeting correctly. I sat where the hosts invited me to sit. I can work from side stool if need be — I’m a modest man, and I’m not seeking any honors here. We have witnessed extremist activity. Dozens of people took to the streets with earlier prepared banners against Russia, its president, and Orthodoxy. Many Georgian media outlets systematically disseminated fake news that I took part in the fighting in Abkhazia.

        • The Race for the White House

          With an approaching election, we will start with the Democrats. No less than twenty current or former elected officials have tossed their hats into the crowded ring, each, apparently, feeling that he or she is the natural leader to usher the nation out of the dark days of Donald Trump. [...] In any normal society, any one of the above-mentioned candidates could be selected by drawing straws, and would be expected to soundly defeat the current incumbent. Donald Trump’s record as president is hardly sterling: he has withdrawn from several international treaties, thus violating both international and domestic law (things he seems to hold in complete disdain), thus reducing the security not just of the U.S., but of the entire world. He has rolled back environmental protections; given enormous tax breaks to the people and corporations that least need them, while basically ignoring those that do; he has made racism fashionable again, and endorsed misogyny, Islamophobia and homophobia. He has alienated the U.S. closest and oldest allies (not necessarily a bad thing in the big picture), and brought the world closer to war than it’s been in recent memory. Would not the average person vote for ANYONE to rid the nation and the world of such a menace? One might possibly be excused for electing him in 2016; Clinton is one of the most polarizing candidates since the days when George Washington was accused of chopping down a cherry tree. But after two years, surely, even Joe Biden is a better choice for president (disclosure: this writer has no intention of voting for any of the candidates currently vying for the Democratic nod; he is more than happy to find a third-party candidate to support with his time, money and vote). In an ideal world, some Democrat would capture the imagination of the Party. He or she would boldly discuss policies the people want: domestically, he/she would propose sensible gun control; health care for all; racial equality; significant investment in schools and infrastructure. On the world stage, this imaginary candidate would promise an end to support of apartheid Israel; the closing of the nearly 1,000 U.S. military bases around the world; an immediate end to the war in Afghanistan; the rejoining of the Paris Climate Accord, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the nuclear missile treaty with Russia (INF).

        • The Staggering Frontrunner Status of Clueless and Shameless Joe Biden

          Joe Biden just put a spotlight on his mindset when he explicitly refused to apologize for fondly recalling how the Senate “got things done” with “civility” as he worked alongside some of the leading racist lawmakers of the 20th century. For Biden, the personal is the political; he knows that he’s virtuous, and that should be more than good enough for African Americans, for women, for anyone. “There’s not a racist bone in my body,” Biden exclaimed Wednesday night, moments after demanding: “Apologize for what?” His deep paternalism surfaced during the angry outburst as he declared: “I’ve been involved in civil rights my whole career, period, period, period.” [...] Said Biden at a New York fundraiser Tuesday night: “Well guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished.” To Biden, any assessment of his past conduct that clashes with his high self-regard is unfair; after all, he really means well. On the campaign trail now, his cloying paternalism is as evident as his affinity for wealthy donors. Biden shuttles between the billionaire class and the working class—funded by the rich while justifying the rich to everyone else. His aspirations are bound up in notions of himself as comforter-in-chief. “I get it, I get it,” Biden said during his brief and self-adulatory non-apology video in early April to quiet the uproar over his invasive touching of women and girls. He was actually saying: I get it that I need to seem to get it.

        • The Mad King in His Time

          The country is divided as to whether President Donald J. Trump is a mad king. If he is indeed mad, then this even divide is more than scary. What is the reasoning that accommodates madness? What sort of times can we be living in? Perhaps his madness doesn’t matter if your stock portfolio is doing well. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren as president and any other candidate “gone left” seem not to be as favorably inclined to the amassing of wealth as the madman now in office. This madman, after all, will not push the private health care industry, along with the obscenely and immorally lucrative Big Pharma, aside nor the global warming fossil fuel industry. When the opportunity arises President Trump will not appoint Liberals/Progressives/”Socialists” to the Supreme Court. He’s not going to raise taxes to save, I mean “reform,” anything with the word “public” in it. And he’ll require professional vitae from any immigrant seeking asylum. In short, he may be a mad king, but he’ll keep private enterprise, privatization and all things private private. He’ll keep the country white, safe, armed and great again. He’ll keep the phenomenal wealth piling up at the top out of the hands of The People, meaning all those not able to afford the $200,000 for Mar- a- Lago membership. If you don’t have a stock portfolio loaded with fossil fuel and health care stock, you may still warm to the private not public view of things. Private is you, personally. Your personal freedom grounded in personal choice, your choice grounded in your total individual autonomy. Your fight for individual freedom is a fight to hold on to your guns, your own personally chosen doctors, your own freedom to be charitable when and to whom you choose rather than allow the Federal Government to financially aid those outside your field of choice.

        • The Last White House Press Secretary

          It is a Washington, D.C., custom that a flak jacket be hung in the closet of the White House press secretary’s office. A relic of the Vietnam War era, the jacket is one of those Beltway affectations delightful to those in power’s orbit and largely incomprehensible to the rest of us slobs. Such is the battle the White House press secretary must wage each day, the jacket tells those who’d take the job; it’s like withstanding anti-aircraft fire over North Vietnam, dealing with these unceasing journalistic hacks who make your life hell just because they can’t do anything else for a living. What a scream. Never mind that much of the press secretary’s job is spent doing things like lying about putting actual soldiers in real flak jackets over real enemy fire, to kill or be killed. That’s not so cute to think about. The tradition that an outgoing press secretary leave a note in one of the flak jacket’s pockets for the incoming press secretary is similarly and infuriatingly detached from reality. As with so many American political norms, it reveals that bipartisanship is alive and well, despite furious argument to the contrary—that the defining self-identification for successful political hacks is not “Republican versus Democrat,” but “us versus them.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders has been something of a relief. As odd as it is to admit, I will miss her after her departure as Trump’s press secretary at the end of June, ahead of a likely run for governor of Arkansas. But in the same way that surviving a near-death experience can foster great personal growth and a newfound appreciation for life, so too has Sanders done the country a great service. By being the very best press secretary a president has ever had, Sanders has revealed just how worthless the position is—and how unceasingly evil the job must be, by its very nature. With the possible exception of Ari Fleischer, who served under George W. Bush, Sanders may be the single most loathsome human being to ever occupy the position. She possesses a fundamental disdain for the truth, an outright contempt for the journalists ranged before her and an uncanny ability to never break the character of a cold, uncaring cipher, bored with whatever question has been posed to her.

        • THE “CENTER” OF AMERICAN POLITICS IS ON THE LEFT

          Donald Trump, Fox News, and Republicans in Congress label proposals they disagree with “fringe,” “radical,” or “socialist.” Well, let’s see where the American people actually stand: On the economy,76 percent of Americans favor higher taxes on the super-rich, including over half of registered Republicans. Over 60 percent favor a wealth tax on fortunes of $50 million or more. Even Fox News polls confirm these trends. What about health care? Well, 70 percent want Medicare for All, which most define as Medicare for anyone who wants it. 60 percent of Republicans support allowing anyone under 65 to buy into Medicare. 92 percent want lower prescription drug prices. Over 70 percent think we should be able to buy drugs imported from Canada. On family issues, more than 80 percent of Americans want paid maternity leave. 79 percent of voters want more affordable child care. And that includes 80 percent of Republicans.

        • Impeach Trump

          A year ago I referred to Donald Trump’s cozy relationship with Russia and the possibility that he has been compromised by his financial and commercial ties to Moscow. As a matter of fact, at that time some well-informed people did call it treason. He’s acting like “a Russian mole,” wrote conservative columnist Max Boot. “America is under attack and its president absolutely refuses to defend it. Simply put, Trump is a traitor and may well be treasonous,” argued New York Times op-ed writer Charles M. Blow. The former CIA director, John Brennan, tweeted that “Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous.” And John McLaughlin, former acting director of the CIA, called Trump an “agent of influence” for Russia in an interview with MSNBC. But Trump survived these charges, and many others that, over the course of his campaign and presidency, many of us thought would prove his undoing: the Hollywood video on groping women, the racist comments on Mexican-Americans and Muslims, the payoffs to cover up affairs, the unwillingness to outright condemn neo-Nazis, the invitation to the Russians to get Hillary Clinton’s 30,000 emails, the mass incarcerations of migrants, the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel, and the constant deference to Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian leaders. Still Trump stands, damaged but capable of inflicting great damage and even getting reelected.

        • That Mark Field Feared a Terrorist Attack is Clearly a Lie – or He Is Dangerously Insane

          There is zero history in the UK of personal violence or terrorist attack by climate change protestors and nobody could claim they had a reasonable fear that a climate change protestor was carrying a weapon – something which has simply never happened. I could equally rationally grab Mark Field by the throat any time I saw him, and claim he might have been carrying a concealed weapon because he is a Tory MP. His excuse is a complete and utter nonsense, a post hoc effort at justification. He only had a genuine fear of her carrying a weapon if he is suffering from a serious psychological derangement, and one dangerous to the public. Unlike Mark Field, I happen to have led a life involving real danger, and had guns pointed at my head in both Uzbekistan and Liberia, whilst in the service of the UK. But in my sixty years I have never once raised my hand in anger to a woman. Field’s unprovoked attack was cowardly and ungentlemanly in the extreme (and I really do not care if you find my attitude outdated or not).

      • Censorship/Free Speech

        • Facebook Reverses Ban on Led Zeppelin ‘Houses of the Holy’ Art: Exclusive

          Over the years, the art from Led Zeppelin’s 10-times platinum-selling fifth studio project has been used as a feature photo with more than 30 UCR stories. This was the first time Facebook has intervened.

        • Tech journalists troubled by Assange computer intrusion charge

          The Trump administration’s decision to charge Julian Assange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act has generated significant controversy. One legal expert described it as “crossing a “constitutional Rubicon.” CPJ warned that the indictment could be the opening salvo in a broader attack on First Amendment journalistic protections. The 18th charge against Assange–of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)–has garnered far less attention. Yet technology journalists and legal experts interviewed by CPJ since the charge was first publicized in April shared significant concerns about the law, and their growing fear that it could be used to implicate journalists in the criminal activities of their sources.

        • Ecuador judge frees Swedish programmer close to Assange; probe continues

          But Ola Bini, a 36-year-old software developer who has lived in Ecuador for five years, remains under investigation in the case and will be barred from leaving the country, according to the court ruling.

        • ‘Self censorship is a bigger sin than censorship’ – veteran Singapore print editor PN Balji

          In an interview with Mumbrella’s Ravi Balakrishnan, PN Balji – a veteran of Singapore print media and author of the recently launched book ‘Reluctant Editor’ – discusses journalism in the city state

        • How Ethiopia Controls the Internet

          A week later, internet service reportedly returned, but such moves by the Ethiopian government are not new, according to a report on internet freedom in the East African country and in dozens of other countries. The government has several strategies it employs when it wants to silence people online, according to the report, titled “Freedom on the Net 2018″ and published by Freedom House, a nonprofit based in Washington that advocates for democracy and releases an annual analysis on internet freedom around the world.

        • Ethiopia’s bid to become an African startup hub hinges on connectivity

          The country of 105 million with the continent’s seventh largest economy is revamping government policies, firing up angel networks, and rallying digital entrepreneurs.

          Ethiopia currently lags the continent’s tech standouts—like Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa—that have become focal points for startup formation, VC, and exits.

          To join those ranks, the East African nation will need to improve its [Internet] environment, largely controlled by one government owned telecom. Last week Ethiopia’s government shut down the internet for the entire nation.

        • Why the internet’s most important law exists and how people are still getting it wrong

          Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is one of the internet’s most important and most misunderstood laws. It’s intended to protect “interactive computer services” from being sued over what users post, effectively making it possible to run a social network, a site like Wikipedia, or a news comment section. But in recent years, it’s also become a bludgeon against tech companies that critics see as abusing their power through political bias or editorial slant. Just this week, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced a major (and highly unpopular) amendment, claiming Section 230 was designed to keep the internet “free of political censorship.”

          But that’s just not what happened, says US Naval Academy professor Jeff Kosseff, author of the recent book The Twenty-Six Words that Created the Internet. Twenty-Six Words is a nuanced and engaging look at the complicated history of Section 230, which was put forward as an alternative to heavy-handed porn regulation and then turned into a powerful legal shield through a series of court rulings.

        • Guy Pushing Hawley’s ‘Viewpoint Neutrality’ Concept In The Media Used To Write For White Supremacist Site

          Senator Josh Hawley’s law to wipe out CDA 230 protections for internet platforms unless they apply to the FTC for a special certificate, which they can only get if they show ‘clear and convincing evidence” that their moderation practices are “politically neutral,” is dumb in many, many ways. But one of the most ridiculous parts is that it literally requires internet platforms to give extra weight to Nazis, and to punish any site that does not give the Nazis a platform.

        • Sen. Hawley’s “Bias” Bill Would Let the Government Decide Who Speaks

          Despite its name, Sen. Josh Hawley’s Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act (PDF) would make the Internet less safe for free expression, not more. It would violate the First Amendment by allowing a government agency to strip platforms of legal protection based on their decisions to host or remove users’ speech when the federal government deems that action to be politically biased. Major online platforms’ moderation policies and practices are deeply flawed, but putting a government agency in charge of policing bias would only make matters worse. The bill targets Section 230, the law that shields online platforms, services, and users from liability for most speech created by others. Section 230 protects intermediaries from liability both when they choose to edit, curate, or moderate speech and when they choose not to. Without Section 230, social media would not exist in its current form—the risks of liability would be too great given the volume of user speech published through them—and neither would thousands of websites and apps that host users’ speech and media. Under the bill, platforms over a certain size—30 million active users in the U.S. or 300 million worldwide—would lose their immunity under Section 230. In order to regain its immunity, a company would have to pay the Federal Trade Commission for an audit to prove “by clear and convincing evidence” that it doesn’t moderate users’ posts “in a manner that is biased against a political party, political candidate, or political viewpoint.”

        • Before Demanding Internet Companies ‘Hire More Moderators,’ Perhaps We Should Look At How Awful The Job Is

          While it was a powerful and wonderfully written piece, as we noted in February, this wasn’t new to people following the space closely. There had been previous academic papers, a documentary, and even a big guest post here at Techdirt that highlighted some of the working conditions concerns of those in content moderation jobs. Well, now, Newton is back with another powerful and heartbreaking story of more (former) Facebook moderators revealing the truly awful working conditions they faced. It opens with the story of a content moderator who died on the job of a heart attack at 42 years of age. And then discusses details revealed by many more content moderators, all of whom broke NDAs they signed to tell this story (good for them in doing so — such NDAs should not be allowed)…

        • UK May Have Finally Ditched Its Absurd Porn Filter Plan

          As we’ve noted for years, internet filters don’t work, routinely censor legitimate content by mistake, and implementing them is a massive waste of money, time, resources, and precious calories. In the UK, that’s been a lesson that has been painfully difficult to learn. The UK has long implemented porn filters in a bid to restrict anybody under the age of 18 from accessing such content. New age verification controls were also mandated as part of the Digital Economy Act of 2017. But as we’ve previously noted, the UK government has seen several fits and starts with its proposal as it desperately tries to convince the public and business sectors that the ham-fisted effort was going to actually work. Back in April, the UK government announced that after numerous delays the program would effectively be taking effect July 15. Under the proposal, websites that failed to comply with the country’s age verification program face fines up to £250,000, risk being taken offline, or may lose access to payment services. Randy folks who wanted to view some porn were to be redirected to a special subsite where they’d be prompted for an email address and a password, before verifying your age using a driving license or a passport. They’d then, theoretically, happily be passed off to compliant porn websites.

        • Explainer: How Letting Platforms Decide What Content To Facilitate Is What Makes Section 230 Work

          There seems to be some recurrent confusion about Section 230: how can it let a website be immune from liability for its users’ content, and yet still get to affect whether and how that content is delivered? Isn’t that inconsistent? The answer is no: platforms don’t lose Section 230 protection if they aren’t neutral with respect to the content they carry. There are a few reasons, one being constitutional. The First Amendment protects editorial discretion, even for companies. But another big reason is statutory, which is what this post is about. Platforms have the discretion to choose what content to enable, because making those moderating choices is one of the things that Section 230 explicitly gives them protection to do. The key here is that Section 230 in fact provides two interrelated forms of protection for Internet platforms as part of one comprehensive policy approach to online content. It does this because Congress actually had two problems that it was trying to solve when it passed it. One was that Congress was worried about there being too much harmful content online. We see this evidenced in the fact that Section 230 was ultimately passed as part of the “Communications Decency Act,” a larger bill aimed at minimizing undesirable material online.

        • Google CEO Admits That It’s Impossible To Moderate YouTube Perfectly; CNBC Blasts Him

          Over the weekend, Google CEO Sundar Pichai gave an interview to CNN in which he admitted to exactly what we’ve been screaming over and over again for a few years now: it’s literally impossible to do content moderation at scale perfectly. This is for a variety of reasons: first off, no one agrees what is the “correct” level of moderation. Ask 100 people and you will likely get 100 different answers (I know this, because we did this). What many people think must be mostly “black and white” choices actually has a tremendous amount of gray. Second, even if there were clear and easy choices to make (which there are not), at the scale of most major platforms, even a tiny error rate (of either false positives or false negatives) will still be a very large absolute number of mistakes. [...] Of course, what no one will actually discuss is how you would solve this problem of the law of large numbers. You can break up Google, sure, but unless you think that consumers will suddenly shift so that not too many of them use any particular video platform, whatever leading video platforms there are will always have this general challenge. The issue is not that YouTube is “too big to fix,” but simply that any platform with that much content is going to make some moderation mistakes — and, with so much content, in absolute terms, even if the moderation efforts are pretty “accurate” you’ll still find a ton of those mistakes. I’ve long argued that a better solution is for these companies to open up their platforms to allow user empowerment and competition at the filtering level, so that various 3rd parties could effectively “compete” to see who’s better at moderating (and to allow end users to opt-in to what kind of moderation they want), but that’s got nothing to do with a platform being “too big” or needing “fixing.” It’s a recognition that — as stated at the outset — there is no “right” way to moderate content, and no one will agree on what’s proper. In such a world, having a single standard will never make sense, so we might as well have many competing ones. But it’s hard to see how that’s a problem of being “too big.”

        • E-Commerce review: Opening Pandora’s box?

          The next important battle for our rights and freedoms in the digital sphere is looming on the horizon. While the public debate has recently focused on upload filters for alleged copyright infringements and online “terrorist” content, a planned legislative review will look more broadly at the rules for all types of illegal and “harmful” content.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • As The DOJ Continues To Complain About Encryption, Cellebrite (Again) Announces It Can Crack Any IPhone

          It was announced very publicly. This wasn’t a press release sent only to government agencies or the byproduct of leaked internal documents. It was announced on the company’s Twitter account, letting everyone know Cellebrite is apparently beating almost every device maker at their own encryption game. Like GrayKey’s offering, Cellebrite’s updated encryption-breaker is hardware that can be used on site by purchasers, allowing law enforcement agencies to perform their own cracking and extraction. Sure, the flaws used to bypass device security will be patched, and Cellebrite and its competitors will keep digging around in device hardware/software to find holes to exploit. The security vs. insecurity war will continue. But for all the weak arguments made by the head of the FBI — especially the ones about Apple, etc. “profiting” from locking out law enforcement — it would seem companies like Cellebrite are more likely to directly profit from device encryption. Encryption on phones is a standard offering, not a selling point. Tools that break encryption? Now, that’s where the real money is.

        • California’s ISP Deregulation Law Allows Recording VoIP Calls without Consent

          The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been opposing A.B. 1366, legislation by Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, which would renew a law that effectively shields a huge part of the telecommunications industry from state and local regulation. Comcast and AT&T law backed this law, Public Utilities Code Sec. 710, in 2012—and are backing its renewal now. Renewing this law would reaffirm that state and local governments cannot regulate VoIP—a term used to refer to any technology that allows you to use the Internet for voice communication or receive telephone calls over the Internet—for another decade. We oppose A.B. 1366, largely because of the damage the existing law has done to the state and local government’s ability to promote competition and access for broadband access, but many other problems are present due to this law. Religious groups and human rights groups have also raised concerns with how deregulating VoIP will harm inmates in prison who need to stay in contact with their families. AT&T has asserted it is not subject to state oversight when building our Next Generation 911 emergency system, simply because it uses broadband. And it now appears that the law also makes it legal for Internet companies to record your calls without your permission, as long as they use VoIP.

        • Amazon gets U.S. patent to use delivery drones for surveillance service

          Amazon.com Inc is exploring using drones not just to deliver packages but also to provide surveillance as a service to its customers, according to a patent granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The delivery drones can be used to record video of consented user’s property to gather data that can be analyzed to look out, say for example, a broken window, or a fire or if a garage door was left open during the day, the patent described. According to the patent, the surveillance function of the drone can be limited through geo-fencing, a technology used to draw a virtual boundary around the property under surveillance. Any image or data that the drone captures outside the geo-fence would be obscured or removed.

        • On Edward Snowden’s birthday, know how he became NSA’S ‘whistleblower’

          And on June 5, 2013, The Guardian published the secret documents obtained from Snowden. After this, The Guardian and The Washington Post published the information on PRISM (an NSA program that allows real-time information collection electronically).

        • Minnesota Cop Awarded $585K After Colleagues Snooped on Her DMV Data

          When Krekelberg asked for an audit of accesses to her DMV records, as allowed by Minnesota state law, she learned that her information—which would include things like her address, weight, height, and driver’s license pictures—had been viewed nearly 1,000 times since 2003, even though she was never under investigation by law enforcement. In fact, Krekelberg was law enforcement: She joined the Minneapolis Police Department in 2012, after spending eight years working elsewhere for the city, mostly as an officer for the Park & Recreation Board. She later learned that over 500 of those lookups were conducted by dozens of other cops. Even more eerie, many officers had searched for her in the middle of the night.

      • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Maryland ‘peace cross’ can stand on public land, U.S. high court rules

        A 40-foot-tall (12 meters) cross-shaped war memorial standing on public land in Maryland does not constitute government endorsement of religion, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in a decision that leaves unanswered questions about the boundaries of the U.S. Constitution’s separation of church and state. The justices were divided on many of the legal issues but the vote was 7-2 to overturn a lower court ruling that had declared the so-called Peace Cross in Bladensburg unconstitutional in a legal challenge mounted by the American Humanist Association, a group that advocates for secular governance. The concrete cross was erected in 1925 as a memorial to troops killed in World War One.

      • On the ground during violent clashes with police at Tbilisi’s anti-Russian protest

        On the evening of June 20, on Shota Rustaveli Avenue in central Tbilisi, just outside the Georgian Parliament building, at least 10,000 people gathered for a protest. They didn’t leave until after midnight. The cause of the unrest was a speech in Parliament by Russian State Duma deputy Sergey Gavrilov, who sat in the speaker’s chair and spoke Russian, before he was interrupted by Georgia’s opposition. Demonstrators later burned Russian flags and called Russia an occupier. When activists tried to seize the Parliament, police responded harshly, firing tear gas and rubber bullets. Hundreds of people, including dozens of police officers, were injured. On special assignment for Meduza, journalist Maria Latsinskaya explains what happened that night in Tbilisi, and how there’s now talk of another revolution on the horizon.

      • Anti-Russian protest erupts in Tbilisi, after Russian delegation addresses Georgian Parliament

        The television station Rustavi-2 reports that police fired rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowd of protesters, causing multiple severe injuries. According to the Russian news service Interfax, several dozen people have been injured in clashes with the police.

      • Years Ago, the Border Patrol’s Discipline System Was Denounced as “Broken.” It’s Still Not Fixed.

        Perhaps the most far-reaching idea was to reclassify the more than 40,000 Border Patrol agents and customs officers as “national security employees,” just as all FBI agents and employees at a number of other Homeland Security agencies currently are. Taking away their status as civil servants, the thinking went, would make it easier to fire corrupt and abusive employees. It was, to be sure, an extreme measure. But the panel, a subcommittee of a larger Homeland Security advisory council, had been created late in President Barack Obama’s second term because U.S. Customs and Border Protection seemed in crisis, and the panel subsequently determined that the agency was plagued by a system that allowed bad actors to stay on the payroll for years after they’d engaged in egregious, even criminal, misconduct. Because of civil service protections, a Border Patrol agent who’d been disciplined for bad behavior could challenge his or her punishment through four rounds of escalating appeals before taking the case to an arbitrator or a federal hearing board. And the panel — headed by William Bratton, who had run police departments in Boston, New York City and Los Angeles — was deeply concerned about the persistent strain of lawlessness among CBP employees. In a preliminary 2015 report, the panel had noted that “arrests for corruption of CBP personnel far exceed, on a per capita basis, such arrests at other federal law enforcement agencies.” CBP, the panel’s members concluded, was “vulnerable to corruption that threatens its effectiveness and national security.”

      • Women’s Group Responds to New Trump Rape Accusation

        Earlier today, reports surfaced that Donald Trump sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll in a dressing room at the New York City department store Bergdorf Goodman over two decades ago.

      • E. Jean Carroll: “Trump attacked me in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman.”

        The Elle advice columnist says the assault took place in Bergdorf Goodman.

      • Hundreds picket in Moscow for three sisters facing up to 20 years in prison for killing their violent, abusive father

        On June 19, Muscovites took to the streets to support the Khachaturyan sisters, who were 17, 18, and 19 years old when they were arrested in July 2018. The three young women killed their father, and they do not deny it. Maria, Angelina, and Krestina took that step because Mikhail Khachaturyan abused them verbally, physically, and sexually for years on end. Investigators are framing the case as a conspiracy to commit murder, but the defense has countered that the sisters had to act in self-defense. Meduza special correspondent Kristina Safonova was on the scene of the pickets against the case.

      • A conversation with Chechen human rights leader Oyub Titiev, now released on parole following a dubious drug conviction

        Oyub Titiev, who leads the Chechen branch of the human rights center Memorial, was released from prison on June 21. In March 2019, he was sentenced to four years in a penal colony for drug possession. Titiev has denied the charges and said the case against him was fabricated. In early June, a defense petition for Titiev to be released on parole was approved. Meduza special correspondent Sasha Sulim spoke with Titiev shortly after his release.

      • Trump Prepares to Open New ‘Captured Children’ Facility in Texas as Hundreds of Rights Groups Call for Decriminalizing Migration

        A facility to house over 1,000 undocumented children is set to open Monday in Carrizo Springs, Texas—just days after almost 250 groups called on Congress to decriminalize migration and chart a new course for the country’s border policies. The Carrizo Springs concentration camp, which was initially built by Stratton Oilfield Systems as worker housing, will be run by Texas non-profit BCFS Health and Human Services for the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). BCFS runs child detention centers for the federal government in Tornillo, Texas, roughly 489 miles from the Carrizo Springs facility. HHS spokesperson Victoria Palmer confirmed to Common Dreams that the agency was using Carrizo Springs as a camp to hold children. “All children will be sheltered in hard-sided structures at the Carrizo Springs facility,” said Palmer. “Semi-permanent soft-sided structures will be used for support operations.”

      • They Are Concentration Camps — and They Are Also Prisons

        The words “Holocaust” and “concentration camp” were trending on Twitter on Tuesday. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had referred to the prison camps that migrant children are being kept in as “concentration camps,” and a virtual war erupted. The feigned outrage of conservatives was loud. Some argued that the Holocaust was a singular event, to which no parallel should be claimed. Meanwhile, many historians and people personally connected to the Holocaust insisted that the comparison was valid. As a Native writer and a Jewish writer, respectively, whose ancestors and cultures were subject to attempted state-sanctioned annihilation, we are not opposed to people using the words “concentration camps” to describe the camps in which migrant children, teens and adults are being caged. The words accurately apply, and we should not hesitate to use Holocaust comparisons in appropriate situations like this one. However, if we stop at analogies that are suggestive of a faraway time and place, we are disregarding a wide web of interconnected atrocities that impact millions of people right now in the United States. We have both spent many years struggling, organizing and writing against the prison-industrial complex, a many-tentacled system of death and destruction. It’s a system that extends well beyond the walls of the buildings formally known as “prisons” and “jails,” where over 2 million people are trapped, some of them spending decades and even lifetimes behind bars. It extends to the estimated 200,000 people shackled with electronic monitors, imprisoned in their homes. It extends to the euphemistically named “juvenile detention centers” — really, youth jails and prisons — where children are abused, locked in solitary confinement, and torn from those they love. (Family separation is a longstanding feature of the prison system.) The prison-industrial complex extends to the people indefinitely incarcerated in “civil commitment centers” and psychiatric hospitals, and in military prisons; and it extends to the youth trapped in the punitive and racially biased “child protective services” net. It extends to policing, a violent practice of capturing, harming and sometimes directly killing large numbers of disproportionately Black, Brown, trans and/or disabled people. The prison-industrial complex also extends to another immense punitive, violent institution: the U.S. immigration system, which hosts its own wide network of jails (usually labeled “detention centers”). The migrant camps in which children are being incarcerated are concentration camps — and they are also prisons. We must hold these dual, overlapping realities in our minds, as we strive to comprehend the interrelated horrors to which the United States — not just Trump, but the United States — subjects millions of people every day.

      • The Redemptive Essence of History

        Many people think they have no use for history. Too often this is because the history people are taught in schools and the media just doesn’t ring true. History does not tell the truth; at least not the whole truth. Nor is history only in the telling. It is also in who is doing the telling. Traditionally, those doing the telling have been the rulers and their sycophants. Despite this, there is a people’s history that somehow gets handed down through the generations. In recent years, there have been numerous attempts to make that people’s history available to the broader public. Naturally, those attempts are under constant attack. Consequently, attempting to tell the story of those who are oppressed is not only a challenge to compile, it is often also a challenge to publish. Ben Dangl is a historian and journalist. His work focuses mostly on Latin America. More specifically, he reports on the role of social movements in that region, most often those movements in Bolivia. Bolivia is a nation currently governed by a government that came to power because of certain social movements among its people. In the years since the rise of that government, Bolivians and others around the globe have watched as the Bolivian people engage in an ongoing experiment in popular rule. This experiment has been mostly successful despite interference from the United States, other nations, and the entitled right wing of the country. Dangl’s previous books—Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia and Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America—examine the Bolivian experience and related movements in other nations in the region.

      • Their Father Speaks Spanish. Their Foster Parents Raised Them to Speak Slovak.

        For generations, Illinois’ child welfare agency has failed to adequately serve Spanish-speaking families with children in its care. WHEN HIS SON WAS BORN IN 2014, Jorge Matias held the infant in the hospital and sang him the lullabies he had learned as a child in Guatemala. He teased the boy’s mother that he would raise their son to speak Spanish, and one day the two of them would talk in secret around her. But the boy was born with heroin in his system and, when it cleared from his body, Illinois child welfare officials placed him in a foster home. To get his son back, Matias had to complete a long list of requirements, including ending his relationship with the boy’s mother, a heroin addict. Matias visited the boy at his caseworker’s office, changed diapers and learned to prepare a bottle. He documented his son’s growth with photos and videos on his cellphone.

      • Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates Makes the Case for Reparations at Historic Congressional Hearing

        On Wednesday, a subcommittee of the House Judiciary held a historic hearing on reparations for slavery—the first of its kind in over a decade. Wednesday’s hearing coincided with Juneteenth, a day that commemorates June 19, 1865, when slaves in Galveston, Texas, finally learned that the Emancipation Proclamation had abolished slavery. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the transatlantic slave trade. Lawmakers are considering a bill titled the “Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.” It was introduced by Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston, after former Congressmember John Conyers had championed the bill for decades without success. The bill carries the designation H.R. 40, a reference to “40 acres and a mule,” one of the nation’s first broken promises to newly freed slaves. Ahead of the hearing, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago, for whom none of us currently living are responsible, is a good idea.” Award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates testified at the historic congressional hearing on reparations and took direct aim at McConnell.

      • The Danger of Poeticizing Horror While Bearing Witness

        Poet Carolyn Forché first visited El Salvador in 1978 when, in the words of her self-ascribed mentor Leonel Gómez Vides, its peace was “the silence of misery endured.” The country was on the precipice of a deadly civil war during which more than 65,000 people were killed or “disappeared” by a regime supported by the United States. Forché opens her recent memoir, “What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance,” which reflects on those visits (she traveled there repeatedly between 1978 and 1980), with a description of finding the dismembered body of a man: “The parts are not quite touching, there is soil between them, especially the head and the rest. […] Why doesn’t anyone do something? I think I asked.” Forché was in El Salvador on a Guggenheim fellowship to work with Amnesty International. The resulting eight poems, published in the collection “The Country Between Us” (1981), are brutal in their stark depictions of rape, mutilation, torture, and horror. “Go try on / Americans your long, dull story / of corruption, but better to give / them what they want: Lil Milagro Ramirez […] who fucked her, how many times and when,” she writes in “Return,” in which she tries to explain to her friend Josephine something of what she learned in El Salvador. In “The Colonel,” a colonel empties a bag of human ears “like dried peach halves” onto the dinner table, then ironically tells her, “Something for your poetry, no?”

      • I’M A JOURNALIST BUT I DIDN’T FULLY REALIZE THE TERRIBLE POWER OF U.S. BORDER OFFICIALS UNTIL THEY VIOLATED MY RIGHTS AND PRIVACY

        I SHOULD HAVE kept my mouth shut about the guacamole; that made things worse for me. Otherwise, what I’m about to describe could happen to any American who travels internationally. It happened 33,295 times last year. My work as a journalist has taken me to many foreign countries, including frequent trips to Mexico. On May 13, I was returning to the U.S. from Mexico City when, passing through immigration at the Austin airport, I was pulled out of line for “secondary screening,” a quasi-custodial law enforcement process that takes place in the Homeland Security zone of the airport. Austin is where I was born and raised, and I usually get waved through immigration after one or two questions. I’m also a white man; more on that later. This time, when my turn came to show my passport, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer was more aggressive than usual in his questioning. I told him I’d been in Mexico for seven days for work, that I was a journalist, and that I travel to Mexico often, as he could see from my passport. That wasn’t enough for him, though. He wanted to know the substance of the story I was currently working on, which didn’t sit right with me. I tried to skirt the question, but he came back to it, pointedly. [...] A bespectacled supervisor named Lopez made an appearance. In a polite back-and-forth, I learned that I was not under arrest or suspected of any crime, and my citizenship was not in doubt, but if I didn’t answer the question asked by the “incident officer,” I wouldn’t be allowed into the United States. He handed me some brochures and left the room. Moncivias was joined by an Anglo officer named Pomeroy, who had a shaved head and looked a little older. They stared at me expectantly. “Fine,” I said. “For the last six months, I’ve been doing an investigative journalism project to determine which restaurant has the best guacamole in all of Mexico.” Moncivias didn’t miss a beat. “And what restaurant is that?” “El Parnita, on Avenida Yucatán in Mexico City,” I told him, truthfully. The flippancy would cost me. From then on out, the officers made it clear that I was in for a long delay. When I saw how mad they were, I lost interest in the principle of the thing. In reality, I didn’t care if they knew what the story was about. The draft was done, and my editors had a copy. All I cared about was getting home to a cup of coffee, a sandwich, a shower, and my bed. In an effort to smooth things over, I said that if they really had to know, I was finishing up a story for Rolling Stone about some guys from Texas and Arizona who sold helicopter machine guns to a Mexican cartel and that I’d been in Mexico City to interview a government official who, for understandable reasons, didn’t want his name bandied about. I apologized for my grouchiness, blaming it on the stress of travel. Cooperation didn’t earn me any leniency. Next up was a thorough search of my suitcase, down to unscrewing the tops of my toiletries. That much I expected. But then a third officer, whose name was Villarreal, carefully read every page of my 2019 journal, including copious notes to self on work, relationships, friends, family, and all sorts of private reflections I had happened to write down. I told him, “Sir, I know there’s nothing I can do to stop you, but I want to tell you, as one human being to another, that you’re invading my privacy right now, and I don’t appreciate it.” Villarreal acknowledged the statement and went back to reading. That was just the beginning. The real abuse of power was a warrantless search of my phone and laptop. This is the part that affects everyone, not just reporters and people who keep journals.

      • Intellectual Monopolies

        • Fed. Cir. Spots Weak Claim Construction Arguments

          Activision won its inter partes review (IPR) challenge that ended with the Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB) finding obvious claims 1-11 of GAT’s U.S. Patent 8,253,743. The patent here covers a method for customizing game characters. The method begins with shopping for an avatar – via an “avatar shop”; then, a set of “game item functions” are combined with the avatar (via layers). A game item function might be “a function for attacking or defending other gamers” or perhaps “a function for charging cyber money.” Once these “game functions” are added to the avatar, it becomes a “GAMVATAR.” Figure 5 of the patent (below) explains the equation: Avatar + Item (function) = Gamvatar. The infringement lawsuit involving the ‘743 was administrative closed after the PTAB decision here. [...] So, obviousness affirmed. Everyone keep making your characters (I mean gamvatars).

        • Heightened Written Description Standard for Reissue Patents

          The courts agreed that, in this situation, the broadened scope that includes an arbor-less device was not apparent from the “face of the instrument” — i.e., in the text of the original patent application. A written description requirement: The patentee had presented expert testimony that a person of skill in the art would understand that the arbors were optional components of the assembly. Taking that evidence as true, the Federal Circuit found it insufficient to save the claims because the test is whether the new claim scope is written down in the specification. In essence, this is a heightened written description test, not a test of enablement. Query: How would our patent system adjust to applying this written description standard in all cases, not just reissues?

        • After Decades Of Demanding China ‘Respect’ US Patent Law, Senator Rubio Pushes Law That Says US Can Ignore Huawei Enforcing Patents

          For well over a decade we’ve discussed the short-sightedness of the US repeatedly demanding that China “respect” US intellectual property, because China has only turned that around on the US, and used Chinese patents as a way to block American competitors from entering the Chinese market. Things seemed to go up a notch recently, after the US government expanded its attempts to block Huawei from the US market, and Huawei suddenly remembered it owned a shit ton of patents and started demanding Verizon pay on the order of a billion dollars or face patent infringement claims. As we discussed, Huawei was just following the established playbook of using the US’s bizarrely stupid obsession with “patents” against the US itself. Hilariously, Huawei’s CEO was just recently quoted as insisting that the company would not “weaponize” its patents, at the same time that it was clear that that’s exactly what Huawei is doing. Of course, as we’ve learned over the years, patents are designed to be weaponized and are frequently used as weapons against innovation. In response to all of this, rather than recognizing that our over emphasis on patents (and our demands that China “respect” those patents) might be a big part of the problem, Senator Marco Rubio, has submitted an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would literally block Huawei from enforcing its patents in US courts.

        • Trademarks

          • Caterpillar Now Going After All The Cats For Trademark Cancellations

            A couple of weeks back, we discussed the story of Caterpillar Inc., famous manufacturers of tractor equipment, deciding to bully Cat & Cloud Coffee, makers of you’ll-never-guess-what, all because the former had long ago trademarked “CAT” as a truncated brand. At issue specifically is Cat & Cloud’s use of the word “cat” on clothing and merchandise it sells, with Caterpillar claiming there is the potential for public confusion with its own clothing and merch lines. This is, of course, plainly ridiculous. There is no overlap in the branding and nobody is going to confuse the tractor folks with the coffee folks. Others pointed out that there are tons of other companies out there that sell apparel and/or merch while holding trademarks that incorporate the word “cat.” If those other companies are allowed to exist, why not Cat & Cloud? Caterpillar Inc. heard you dear friends, but its response is probably not the one you were hoping for.

          • Battle brewing between independent coffee shop & construction giant heats up

            The battle brews on against a small coffee shop and the construction giant Caterpillar, over the name “cat”. Jared Truby, co-owner of Cat & Cloud Café in Santa Cruz has been in a state of disbelief since last August when their independent shop was slapped with a legal petition to cancel their trademark by heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar.

        • Copyrights

          • Mexico first to ratify USMCA trade deal, Trump presses U.S. Congress to do same

            By a vote of 114 in favor to 4 against, Mexico’s Senate backed the deal tortuously negotiated between 2017 and 2018 after Trump repeatedly threatened to withdraw from NAFTA if he could not get a better trade agreement for the United States.

          • Mexico becomes first country to ratify USMCA trade deal via Senate vote

            Mexico on Wednesday became the first country to ratify the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) agreed last year by the three countries to replace the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

          • Court Orders Danish ISPs to Block Copyright-Infringing News Site

            For the first time ever, a Danish court has ordered a local ISP to block access to a news site. ‘The World News’ republishes hundreds of thousands of articles from third-party news sites. The website aims to combat ‘fake news,’ but according to publishers and the court, it infringes the publishers’ copyrights in the process.

          • Book review: Copyrighting God

            The rise and growth of artificial intelligence has revived discussions on copyright in content produced by non-humans. Andrew Ventimiglia, author of Copyrighting God, reminds us that non-human creations, such as those attributed to supernatural spirits, have held a long-standing place in the landscape of copyright (here). Going further, the author argues that claims to copyright in religious texts have actively shaped American copyright law, not least because of the Church of Scientology’s courtroom activism. Read on for more. As hinted by its snappy title, the book focuses on a specific type of non-human creation: texts claimed to have been transmitted to humans by God or other transcendent beings. Ventimiglia tracks the copyright strategy of four American religious organisations: the Urantia Foundation, the Christian Science Church, the Worldwide Church of God and the Church of Scientology.

      06.21.19

      Links 21/6/2019: GNOME 3.33.3, 32-Bit Support Further Neglected, DragonFlyBSD 5.6.1 Released

      Posted in News Roundup at 1:10 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

      GNOME bluefish

      Contents

      GNU/Linux

      • Wayfire Brings Compiz Bling Back to the Linux Desktop

        Miss those crazy Compiz effects of old? If you’re a Linux user of a certain vintage you likely do — but hey: nothing is gone forever in open-source! Wayfire is a promising open-source project attempting to resurrect some of the Compiz-era coolness and bring to the modern Linux desktop via Wayland. We’re talking wobbly windows, over the top window animations, and, of course, a revival of the famous 3D cube — but all implemented in a way that doesn’t demand oodles of system power. In fact, Wayfire aims to be lightweight in performance but a heavyweight in eye candy — which is pretty sweet!

      • Cool Sites That Discuss About Linux, Ubuntu, and Foss!
      • Pinebook Pro, the $199 Linux Laptop, Gets Keyboard & Bluetooth Spec Bumps

        Pine64, the company behind a range of popular single-board computers, have shared some more details on the upcoming PineBook Pro Linux laptop. [...] As well as working on the PineBook Pro the fine Pine64 folks are also working on a $79 Linux-based tablet with detachable keyboard: the PineTab. And, like its clam-shell cousin, it too is getting an upgrade of over what was originally planned. The PineTab will now ship with 64GB eMMC (up from 32GB). It’ll also boast an M.2 adapter for user expansion and connectivity options…

      • Desktop

        • The 2019 System76 Oryx Pro, Full Review!
        • Google won’t be making its own Android or Chrome OS tablets any more

          A spokesperson from Google said: “Chrome OS has grown in popularity across a broad range of form factors and we’ll continue to work with our ecosystem of partners on laptops and tablets. For Google’s first-party hardware efforts, we’ll be focusing on Chrome OS laptops and will continue to support Pixel Slate.”

        • Google’s officially done making its own tablets

          A couple of clarifying points here: First, none of this has any impact on Pixel phones. Pixel phones and Pixel computers are two different departments, and the roadmap in question is related exclusively to the latter. (The same applies to the various Google Home/Nest products. What we’re talking about today has absolutely zero impact on any that stuff.)

          And second, when Google talks about a “tablet,” it means a device that detaches completely from a keyboard base or doesn’t even have a physical keyboard in the first place — not a swiveling two-in-one convertible like the Pixelbook. The Pixelbook, with its attached keyboard and 360-degree hinge, falls under Google’s definition of “laptop.” Blurred lines, baby.

      • Server

        • CNCF Releases Kubernetes 1.15

          SUSE congratulates the Kubernetes team for the release of Kubernetes 1.15. This new release focuses on two themes: Continuous Improvement and Extensibility. In regard to Continuous Improvement, the project has focused not just on features, but on the rest of the product development process: improving test coverage, ensuring that current stable features do not “decay” as new capabilities are added, maturing existing features, and cleaning up the bug backlog.

        • Red Hat’s last quarterly report?

          Soon, IBM will complete its acquisition of Red Hat for $34-billion. But, Red Hat’s not resting on its laurels waiting. The company announced its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2020 ended May 31, 2019. With first quarter total revenue of $934 million, up 15 percent year-over-year in USD, or 18 percent in constant currency, Red Hat did quite well. Still, Wall Street expected Red Hat to report net income of $162.4 million, or 87 cents a share, on sales of $931.6 million after the market closes on Thursday, based on a FactSet survey of 14 analysts. In reality, Red Hat GAAP net income for the quarter was $141 million, or $0.76 diluted earnings per share. Non-GAAP adjusted net income for the quarter was $186 million, or $1.00 diluted EPS. Not bad. Not bad at all.

        • Linux Runs on All of the Top 500 Supercomputers, Again!

          As per the latest report from Top 500, Linux now runs on all of the fastest 500 supercomputers in the world. The previous number was 498 as remaining two supercomputers ran Unix. Top500 is an independent project that was launched in 1993 to benchmark supercomputers. It publishes the details about the top 500 fastest supercomputers known to them, twice a year. You can go the website and filter out the list based on various criteria such as country, OS type, vendors etc. Don’t worry. I am going to list some of the most interesting facts from this report. But before let’s discuss why Linux is the preferred choice of an operating system for supercomputers.

        • How a service mesh helps manage distributed microservices

          A service mesh brings security, resiliency, and visibility to service communications, so developers don’t have to

        • RHEL 8: ‘the foundation for digital transformation’
        • 7 infrastructure performance and scaling tools you should be using

          Sysadmins, site reliability engineers (SREs), and cloud operators all too often struggle to feel confident in their infrastructure as it scales up. Also too often, they think the only way to solve their challenges is to write a tool for in-house use. Fortunately, there are options. There are many open source tools available to test an infrastructure’s performance. Here are my favorites.

        • Future of CRDs: Structural Schemas

          Authors: Stefan Schimanski (Red Hat) CustomResourceDefinitions were introduced roughly two years ago as the primary way to extend the Kubernetes API with custom resources. From the beginning they stored arbitrary JSON data, with the exception that kind, apiVersion and metadata had to follow the Kubernetes API conventions. In Kubernetes 1.8 CRDs gained the ability to define an optional OpenAPI v3 based validation schema. By the nature of OpenAPI specifications though—only describing what must be there, not what shouldn’t, and by being potentially incomplete specifications—the Kubernetes API server never knew the complete structure of CustomResource instances. As a consequence, kube-apiserver—until today—stores all JSON data received in an API request (if it validates against the OpenAPI spec). This especially includes anything that is not specified in the OpenAPI schema.

        • Redis 5 now available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7

          Red Hat Software Collections supply the latest, stable versions of development tools for Red Hat Enterprise Linux via two release trains per year. As part of the latest Software Collections 3.3 release, we are pleased to announce that Redis 5 is now generally available and supported on RHEL 7. The new Red Hat Software Collection includes Redis 5.0.3. Redis 5 is an open source in-memory data structure store, used as a database, cache and/or message broker. This version provides multiple enhancements and bug fixes over version 3.2 distributed with an earlier Red Hat Software Collections release. Most notably, the redis-trib cluster management tool has been implemented in the Redis command-line interface. The primary addition in Redis 5 is Streams—a new log-like data structure for storing multiple fields and string value with automatic sequencing. For detailed changes in Redis, see the upstream release notes for version 4.0 and version 5.0.

        • Mentoring new system administrators

          While this article is geared toward senior system administrators taking a more active role in the development of newer team members, those readers who are new might find interest in a different view of the world of working with newer systems administrators. As a system administrator who has been in the role for a long time, it’s easy to shake a proverbial cane at those newer team members who bother you with inane questions lacking the technical detail needed to provide a complete answer. It would be so easy to gruffly utter a few words to get them to go away, or point out the lack of specificity of the question in such a way as to make them feel so small that they won’t talk to you again. I’ve been there, and—being frank—done exactly that. I was recently reading a discussion forum where there was an administrator who appeared inexperienced and, apparently, all on his or her own to figure things out. That caused me to think back to my first system administration job, and realize how thankful I am that when I started, I had someone senior who was willing to invest time in helping me become better. This better didn’t come in the form of drilling me with commands or syntax, but with a more Socratic method to help me develop skills that I use almost every day. When I first started with the group, whenever I hit an issue, I would go down to Chris’ office with my notepad and pencil and ask him about the problem (sometimes multiple times a day). After about a week of this, I came into his office, as usual, to ask about a system call or something. He didn’t look at me and put his hand up, signaling me to stop. After he finished whatever it was he was working on, he turned to me and said, “What research have you done about this question? Man pages? Google searches? -h output?” I said, “No, I just came down here to ask you.”

        • SUSE now member of iRODS, Sponsor of User Group Meeting

          This month, SUSE became a member of the iRODS (integrated Rule-Oriented Data System) consortium which is an open source data management software used by research organizations and government agencies worldwide. [...] iRODS UGM will host 25+ presentations from the user community and the core development team, including use case presentations, live demonstrations, and open discussions about requested iRODS features. They anticipate an audience of 150 participants representing dozens of academic, government, and commercial institutions.

      • Audiocasts/Shows

        • Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo: S12E11 – 1942

          This week we’ve been to FOSS Talk Live and created games in Bash. We have a little LXD love in and discuss 32-bit Intel being dropped from Ubuntu 19.10. OggCamp tickets are on sale and we round up some tech news. It’s Season 12 Episode 11 of the Ubuntu Podcast! Alan Pope, Mark Johnson and Martin Wimpress are connected and speaking to your brain.

        • Episode 21: From Mac to Linux

          Katherine Druckman and Doc Searls talk to Linux Journal Editor at Large, Petros Koutoupis, about moving from Mac to Linux.

        • Delete Your Community | User Error 68

          Two #AskError specials in a row! Advice for our younger selves, leaving communities, our listening habits, and hoarding. Plus the most serious question that’s ever been asked on the show, and more.

      • Kernel Space

        • Graphics Stack

          • Google’s Graphics API Debugger 1.6 Adds Stadia Support

            Google’s GAPID, also known as the Graphics API Debugger, continues serving as an interesting open-source and cross-platform Vulkan debugger. On Thursday version 1.6 of GAPID was released. The GAPID 1.6 release adds Stadia support so developers working on porting their games to run on Google’s cloud gaming service can use GAPID for debugging any Vulkan problems.

          • Intel Graphics Driver Ready For HDR Support In Linux 5.3, Other Last-Minute Features

            While there still is a few weeks until the Linux 5.2 kernel will debut and thus the opening of the Linux 5.3 merge window, due to DRM-Next halting new feature code from merging prior to that point, in preparation Intel open-source developers sent in their final batch of feature work aiming for Linux 5.3. Intel developers already had sent in multiple feature updates for 5.3 while Wednesday was their last scheduled update.

          • RadeonSI Gets Some Tidying Ahead Of Navi/GFX10 Support (Radeon RX 5700 Series)

            Well known open-source AMD developer Marek Olšák sent out a set of eight RadeonSI Gallium3D patches this morning that appear mostly mundane and namely come down to some minor code alterations. This work though is in stepping towards the actual Navi/GFX10 support we expect to be dropped incredibly soon. The eight patches alone aren’t anything to get excited about just prep work. At least the eighth patch for renaming/re-documenting cache flush flags does make mention of changes with the GFX10 hardware.

        • Benchmarks

          • Optane SSD RAID Performance With ZFS On Linux, EXT4, XFS, Btrfs, F2FS

            This round of benchmarking fun consisted of packing two Intel Optane 900p high-performance NVMe solid-state drives into a system for a fresh round of RAID Linux benchmarking atop the in-development Linux 5.2 kernel plus providing a fresh look at the ZFS On Linux 0.8.1 performance. Two Intel Optane 900p 280GB SSDPED1D280GA PCIe SSDs were the focus of this round of Linux file-system benchmarking. EXT4, XFS, Btrfs, and F2FS were tested both on a single Optane SSD and then in RAID0 and RAID1 with two of these high performance drives. Additionally, ZFS On Linux 0.8.1 was tested on this system both with a single drive and in RAIDZ. For putting the Optane SSD performance in reference, there is also a standalone result provided of a Samsung 970 EVO 500GB NVMe SSD with EXT4. In case you missed out earlier Optane 900P benchmarks on Linux from 2017, see them here for this still very competitive SSD. While there are now the 905P SSDs, the 900P models remain available and cheaper hence why going for those when picking up two of them for this round of Linux RAID testing. All of the file-systems were tested using the Linux 5.2 Git kernel and running with their stock/default mount options. The EXT4/XFS/F2FS RAID was tested using Linux MD RAID while the Btrfs and ZFS RAID were using their file-system’s native RAID capabilities.

          • The Latest Linux 5.2 + Mesa 19.2 Radeon Performance Against NVIDIA With Mid-Range GPUs

            With the Linux 5.2 kernel a few weeks out from its stable release and now being in the middle of the Mesa 19.2 development cycle for the RADV Vulkan and RadeonSI OpenGL drivers, here are some fresh results looking at the latest open-source AMD Radeon Linux graphics driver stack compared to the latest NVIDIA proprietary graphics driver. In this article the focus is on the mid-range (Polaris) line-up against the NVIDIA competition while similar tests on the high-end are currently being carried out. These mid-range Linux GPU gaming benchmarks are intended to provide some fresh figures with the current open-source RadeonSI/RADV performance compared to NVIDIA. Beyond the upcoming high-end tests, next month of course is the Radeon RX 5700 series launch where we’ll be providing launch-day Linux benchmarks. The mid-range cards tested for today’s comparison included the Radeon RX 560, RX 570, RX 580, and RX 590. On the NVIDIA side was the GeForce GTX 1060, GTX 1650, GTX 1660, and GTX 1660 Ti.

      • Applications

        • Linux productivity: Why it’s needed and the top 10 apps

          People choose Linux for a variety of reasons, be it as hobby machines, trying out new things, or due to professional requirements. It’s becoming easier than ever to use a Linux OS, with positive news coming out every day, such as Chromebooks being able to run Linux apps and new Linux distributions coming out weekly. All of this is leading to more Linux adoption across the world, from offices to home computers.

        • Goodvibes – internet radio player

          Why do I love internet radio? There’s no sign-up or subscription charges. There’s a huge range of stations available from around the world. If you like classical music, pop music, folk music, news, talk radio, and much more, internet radio has something for everyone wherever you live (providing you have a net connection). I hope you’ve enjoyed my reviews of internet radio players. These reviews examined odio, Shortwave, Radiotray-NG, PyRadio, StreamTuner2, and Curseradio. I’ve been dabbling with another internet radio player, which carries the moniker Goodvibes. Goodvibes is billed as a lightweight internet radio player offering a simple way to access your favorite radio stations. Goodvibes is written in C and builds with Meson. The core building blocks are provided by GLib, the HTTP segments are handled by LibSoup, the audio part is delegated to GStreamer, and the graphical user interface is written with GTK+.

        • Why this developer wrote a quick and responsive music player

          I wrote recently that “GogglesMM has been one of my favorite players for quite some time now.” So, when I was thinking about interviewing developers who build and maintain open source music players, Sander Jansen came quickly to mind. Sander is the developer and maintainer of Goggles Music Manager (GogglesMM), a very fine open source music player that’s particularly well-suited to getting the music stream from the computer to the digital-analog converter (DAC) in a very transparent fashion. In my first article in this series, I interviewed Juan Rios, creator of the Guyadeque music player; the following is an edited version of my conversation with Sander.

        • Top 10 screenshot and image annotation tools for Linux you should try out

          From explaining some little thing to our friends or colleagues, to keeping the evidence of some important thing we come across in our digital lives, we all take screenshots once in a while, and sometimes, we even need to take screenshots back-to-back for certain requirements. Most operating systems we come across has some inbuilt tools to capture screenshots, but sometimes we need something more than just what the inbuilt tool has to offer. Depending upon the platform, we can all download some programs to capture screenshots in exactly the way we want, but choosing the best one isn’t going to be a piece of the pie. So if you are on Linux, which is a complex platform for most users, you will also need a decent screenshot capturing tool for your requirements. Talking about Linux, which is open-source, each distribution, aka. distro, come with its own screenshot capturing tool, and you might not be satisfied with the default one. In most cases, the default screenshot capturing tool will not offer all the functionalities you need from it, and that is the point when you need a better one.

        • Tauon Music Box is a Minimally Minded Music Player with Neat Micro Modes

          The app is not trying to compete with the full-blown, feature-filled, all-in-one music apps like Rhythmbox, Amarok and Guayadeque. And I’m not spotlighting it because I think it’s the best music player for Linux. Instead, the app serves a niche and ticks a few boxes (minimal, lightweight, responsive design) that make it worth knowing about. Built in Python, Tauon uses the proprietary BASS Audio Library for playback. This decision won’t be everyone’s cup of tea (and earlier versions used FFMPeg) but it does mean the app is able to play pretty much anything you throw at it, including Flacc.

        • Proprietary

          • Vivaldi browser blocks abusive ads, improves profile management and more

            At Vivaldi, we continue to focus on our two hallmarks – privacy and customization. We are always looking to enhance what a browser should provide, and the latest version of Vivaldi has a handful of new features that do just that. We’ve improved security by blocking advertisements on sites with abusive ad practices. There are new ways to navigate quicker, customize user profiles along with overall improvements that add more flexibility to Vivaldi’s intuitive user interface.

          • Vivaldi 2.6 Released with Improved Security & User Profile

            Vivaldi web browser released new stable version 2.6 today with improved security, profile management and more.

          • Browse the Web More Securely with Vivaldi Browser 2.6

            Vivaldi 2.6 released with improvements and new features. Vivaldi is free and open source cross platform web browser. Vivaldi is fairly new in web world where Chrome, Firefox, Opera are already playing. Vivaldi is a Chromium based browser targeted to the technical users than generic users having a minimal UI, icons and tabs. Here’s a quick rundown of Vivaldi’s features.

          • Vivaldi to give abusive sites the middle finger with built-in ad blocking

            Amid Google’s huffing and puffing over ad blockers, an update to Chromium-based browser Vivaldi puts privacy squarely in its sights. The release, version 2.6, is not quite the feature-fest of previous builds, but contains a couple of standout tweaks to please those fed up with advertisers and online trackers, and others who like things just so.

        • Instructionals/Technical

        • Games

          • Vengeful Heart, a revenge-themed visual novel styled like old PC-98 visual novels

            It takes something a little different to get me interested in a Visual Novel since it’s not my usual preference and Vengeful Heart is one such game. It’s a tale of capitalism, companionship and cyberpunk with a focus around revenge. Built with Ren’Py, Vengeful Heart has a seriously good style going for it based on the classics from the PC-98, a retro line-up of Japanese 16-bit and 32-bit personal computers manufactured by NEC.

          • The Latest Linux Kernel Appears To Be Causing Connectivity Issues For Steam

            If you are planning to enjoy some Linux gaming this week via Steam, you may want to think twice about upgrading to the latest Linux kernel Git code or even the newest stable point releases. A number of Steam Linux users are reporting of connection troubles when upgrading to the latest Linux kernel releases, including the likes of Linux 5.0.0-17 on Ubuntu or 5.1.12-arch1-1-ARCH on Arch Linux, among other kernel combinations and distributions. A number of users are reporting issues with connecting to Steam following a kernel upgrade in recent days.

          • New website, new company, new partners, new code

            As a freelancer I am contracted by Valve to work on certain gaming-related XServer projects and improve KWin in this regard and for general desktop usage. In the XServer there are two main projects at the moment. The technical details of one of them are currently discussed on a work-in-progress patch series on Gitlab but I want to write accessible articles about both projects here on the blog as well in the near future. In KWin I have several large projects I will look into, which would benefit KWin on X11 and Wayland alike. The most relevant one is reworking the compositing pipeline. You can expect more info about this project and the other ones in KWin in future blog posts too.

          • Survival adventure game ‘Failed State’ has entered Early Access

            After a promising demo way back in 2017, Failed State has finally entered Early Access on Steam with same-day Linux support.

          • Himno – The Silent Melody announced, as a standalone combat expansion of the first peaceful game

            After the success of the peaceful platformer Himno, David Moralejo Sánchez and GrabTheGames have now formally announced the next game Himno – The Silent Melody. I was very impressed with the atmosphere in the original, but I couldn’t help wanting to fight something so it sounds like Himno – The Silent Melody is exactly what I want from a sequel.

          • Event Horizon – Frontier will have you continually upgrade and defend a space station

            Pavel Zinchenko’s new game Event Horizon – Frontier looks like a pretty sweet mix of 2D space action, with base defence and it’s releasing soon with Linux support. It’s set in the same universe as the previous game, Event Horizon, which was released late last year which also has Linux support.

          • Cecconoid, an 8-bit inspired “flick-screen” twin-stick-shooter that looks awesome is coming to Linux

            Developer Triple Eh (previously made Lumo), are now working on an 8-bit inspired twin-stick shooter called Cecconoid. It’s soaked in retro and it looks awesome!

          • Albion Online’s seventh major post-launch update ‘Percival’ to launch on July 10th

            Albion Online is going to get bigger once again and the Percival actually sounds like it’s going to be pretty good, especially if you’re a solo player. For starters, the new randomized dungeon feature is finally going to have a version for solo players! Just like the version for groups they will spawn at random throughout the world of Albion. You will be able to use dungeon maps to unlock higher tiers, for a bigger challenge and better loot too. That makes me happy, as Albion is far too geared towards bigger groups, nice to see solo players get some attention this time.

          • War not bloody enough? The Reign of Blood DLC for Total War: THREE KINGDOMS might change your mind

            Creative Assembly has announced the Reign of Blood effects pack that’s coming to Total War: THREE KINGDOMS and it looks quite brutal. The developer says it will enable you to experience “the battlefields of ancient China in gruesome detail” if that’s your thing. For the campaign it will include event-pictures depicting blood and gore, along with blood effects for battle-resolution combat animations between characters. For the battles it will add dismemberment, charred bodies, blood spray and…you get the idea.

          • Sweet survival base-builder ‘MewnBase’ has another update out, continues looking fun

            Not as serious as other survival games, MewnBase from developer Cairn4 has a sweet style and you’re a space cat because why not.

          • Daedalic Entertainment’s new RTS “A Year Of Rain” will be coming to Linux

            This is really exciting news, as a huge fan of such RTS games, Daedalic Entertainment’s “A Year Of Rain” looks really good and it turns out they’re going to support Linux. Interestingly, back when it was first announced in March I did email Daedalic to ask about Linux support. They told me then, that they didn’t really have any answer on it. However, it seems things have changed and they’ve decided Linux will be supported. On Steam, the developer said it’s planned and it seems it may even happen during the Early Access period.

          • Evan’s Remains, a beautiful-looking puzzle platformer with visual novel elements plans Linux support

            Evan’s Remains from Matías Schmied and Whitethorn Digital is a new one to capture my interest. Blending a rather atmospheric puzzle platformer, with a little visual novel flair and it’s planned for Linux.

          • Dota Underlords from Valve is now in open beta for Linux, mobile too

            Valve are doing some really impressive work with Dota Underlords, their new strategy game that everyone can now try. As a quick reminder on the gameplay: you go through rounds, picking heroes and placing them on the board, then you fight against the choices of other players and neutral enemies for loot. The actual battles are done by AI, with the tactical part based on your choices and positioning. You lose health based on the amount of enemy heroes left if they beat you and it’s the last player standing to win. It’s free and will remain free to play, with some sort of optional Battle Pass likely to come for cosmetic items in future. They have a lot more planned for it including: daily challenges, a level up system, a tournament system, seasonal rotation for heroes and more. They said that during the Open Beta Season, it will regularly see new features and updates.

          • Colourful city-builder ‘ISLANDERS’ has officially released for Linux and it’s really lovely

            I don’t think I’ve hit the buy button on Steam that quickly in a while, as ISLANDERS, a colourful city-builder is now officially out for Linux. Developed by GrizzlyGames, ISLANDERS is a minimalist strategy game for those who don’t have hours to invest in resource management. Released back in April, the Linux version arrived yesterday along with a big update that also adds in a Sandbox Mode and the ability to undo your last building placement which sounds handy.

          • Roguelike deck-building game ‘Nowhere Prophet’ releasing on July 19th, looks very interesting

            Deck-building card-based games really are all the rage now! I’m okay with this, as I love them and I am excited to see what more developers do with it. Nowhere Prophet is one that looks great and it’s out next month. Developer Sharkbomb Studios and publisher No More Robots have now confirmed the release date of July 19th. We got confirmation back in April, that Linux will be supported too. Set on planet Soma, this science-fiction post-apocalypse game mixes in two distinct modes of play. The first is the travel system, with you facing encounters across a procedurally generated map (so the game is different each time). If you enter combat, it switches into the turn-based card game mode.

          • Dead Cells “Fear The Rampager” update is live and it continues being awesome

            Still one of my top games, Dead Cells just got another big free update “Fear The Rampager” so it’s time to jump back in for one more run. The big addition this time is the introduction of The Rampager. A new foe to challenge you that’s currently haunting a variety of biomes in Boss Stem Cell 3 and higher.

          • Heroes of Hammerwatch updated and the Witch Hunter expansion is out now

            Crackshell have expanded their rogue-lite action-adventure game Heroes of Hammerwatch with a free update along with the great sounding Witch Hunter expansion. First up, the free update available for everyone adds in a few new features including new dungeon mechanics, companions, new drinks and a new statue if you have the Pyramid of Prophecy DLC. Additionally the free update has some performance improvements, more chest room variations, enemies can now be killed by poison and plenty of other balance changes.

          • My Friend Pedro | Linux Gaming | Ubuntu 18.04 | Steam Play

            My Friend Pedro running through Steam play.

      • Desktop Environments/WMs

        • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

          • The [kdenlive] Titler Tool – Onward with the 3rd week

            Hi! It’s been 3 weeks (more than that actually, couldn’t update yesterday due to some network glitches I was facing here) and the progress so far has been good – let’s get into it! In the last week’s blog, I had reasoned why the rendering part is being developed as a library rather than directly starting the work with the framework (MLT) and the one advantage, was that the testing process becomes a whole lot easier. And that’s exactly what I have been doing the last week – writing the test module for the library, i.e. writing unit tests and it has been quite interesting as it gave me a perspective on how the code can break at points. The crucial concept of unit tests is to be able to make sure that there is no regression – meaning your code will do some particular things that it is supposed to do when we know it works, and at whatever point in the future, it will for sure do these certain things when it is working – Nice, eh? Unit testing, as the name suggests, is testing of the units – we take each functional unit of a code (or simply a function/method) and we test certain characterstics and make sure that these conditions are fulfilled. An example being that I can pick from one my unit tests is the the case of the method QmlRenderer::initializeRenderParams(…)

        • GNOME Desktop/GTK

          • GNOME 3.33.3 RELEASED!
            GNOME 3.33.3 is now available. Please try it out, test it, improve it.

I'm the one sending this email but this release has really been made
thanks to the others members of the Release Team; thanks Matthias,
Abderrahim and Michael Catanzaro! (and of course you developers for
release new versions of the modules)

If you want to compile GNOME 3.33.3, you can use the official
BuildStream project snapshot. Thanks to BuildStream's build sandbox, it
should build reliably for you regardless of your host system:

https://download.gnome.org/teams/releng/3.33.3/gnome-3.33.3.tar.xz

The list of updated modules and changes is available here:

https://download.gnome.org/core/3.33/3.33.3/NEWS

The source packages are available here:

https://download.gnome.org/core/3.33/3.33.3/sources/

WARNING!
--------
This release is a snapshot of development code. Although it is
buildable and usable, it is primarily intended for testing and hacking
purposes. GNOME uses odd minor version numbers to indicate development
status.

For more information about 3.33, the full schedule, the official module
lists and the proposed module lists, please see our 3.33 wiki page:

https://www.gnome.org/start/unstable

Cheers,
Javier Jardón
GNOME Release Team
          • GNOME 3.33.3 Released With Sysprof Profiling Integration, Other Improvements

            GNOME 3.33.3 is out this morning as the latest development release in the trek towards the very exciting GNOME 3.34 desktop update due out this September. Notable to GNOME 3.33.3 is the Sysprof profiling integration working its way through the key components like GJS and GTK. This Sysprof profiling integration is for developers to ultimately help optimize GNOME for better performance for end-users.

          • GNOME’s Mutter Begins Landing Transactional KMS Support

            Adding to the excitement of GNOME 3.34 and the many changes being worked on is Mutter seeing the initial merging of transactional kernel mode-setting (KMS) support. This effort that has already been going on for months is about adopting a transactional API for Mutter so that it can make use of the Linux kernel’s atomic KMS API. All of the key Linux DRM/KMS drivers these days support the atomic API (and is a requirement for merging of new drivers) but so far not many Linux desktop user-space components have switched over to using the new APIs.

          • A Quick Look at GNOME Shell 3.34’s Newly Improved Theme

            GNOME’s design team have made a number of changes designed to bring the shell theme in sync with the default Adwaita GTK theme, which was dramatically revamped for the release of GNOME 3.32 earlier this year. The improvements headed to the desktop are likely to feature in the upcoming GNOME 3.34 release, due September. Just don’t get too excited.

      • Distributions

        • Kali Linux Vs. Linux Mint: Which One Should You Pick?

          At the end of it, it comes down to not only the user’s preference but also the use-case. Mint has many advantages, being easy-to-use, low-powered, accessible and easily installable. However, it does come with the pitfalls of Ubuntu-based distributions such as network settings being saved or noisy traffic on networks. On the other hand, Kali has a high number of advantages for those looking to use an OS for hacking and penetration testing. It comes with a steep learning curve and is definitely not made for everyone. However, its set of tools and utilities, along with its base architecture security, is paramount to hackers. All in all, it depends on what the user is using it for. In case of looking for a Linux distro similar to Windows in properties and use-case, Linux Mint is recommended. For a robust platform used for penetration testing and hacking, Kali Linux is robust and dependable.

        • Reviews

          • With Regolith, i3 Tiling Window Management Is Awesome, Strange and Easy

            Regolith Linux brings together three unusual computing components that make traipsing into the i3 tiling window manager world out-of-the-box easy. Much of the focus and attraction — as well as confusion — for newcomers to the Linux OS is the variety of desktop environments available. Some Linux distributions offer a range of desktop types. Others come only with a choice of one desktop. i3 provides yet another option, but it is a much different choice that offers an entirely new approach to how you interact with the operating system. Window managers usually are integrated into a full-fledged desktop system. Window managers control the appearance and placement of windows within the operating system’s screen display. A tiling window manager goes one step further. It organizes the screen display into non-overlapping frames rather than stacking overlapping windows. The i3 tiling window manager in Regolith Linux serves as what essentially becomes a standalone pseudo desktop. It automatically arranges windows so they occupy the whole screen without overlapping.

        • New Releases

          • Security-Oriented Alpine Linux 3.10.0 has been released and check what’s new

            Alpine Linux community proudly announced the new release of Alpine Linux 3.10.0 on 19 June, 2019. It’s a first stable release of v3.10 series. Alpine Linux is a security-oriented, lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and busybox.

          • Security-Oriented Alpine Linux Receives Serial & Ethernet Support for ARM Boards

            Alpine Linux 3.10.0 has been released and it is now available as the latest and most advanced stable version of the security-oriented operating system based on the musl libc libraries, and using the powerful and open-source BusyBox utility for general system administration. It brings the cross-desktop LightDM display manager, the Ceph distributed object store and file system, and iwd (iNet wireless daemon) as a replacement for wpa_supplicant, though Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) support isn’t working in this release. It also adds serial and Ethernet support for ARM boards.

          • Kwort Linux 4.3.4 is out, check what’s new

            Kwort Linux team proudly announced the new release of Kwort Linux 4.3.4 on 16 June, 2019. It’s CRUX-based distribution featuring with Openbox window manager and offering a own package manager called kpkg. Kwort is a modern, small (included only useful applications) and fast Linux distribution that is designed especially for power users as it doesn’t offer any installer script. And users needs to follow the official instruction to install the system manually.

        • Screenshots/Screencasts

          • MX GNU/Linux, A Desktop Mix of Mepis and Antix without Systemd

            MX is an interesting desktop GNU/Linux based on Debian but without Systemd. It’s powered with simple and user friendly interface thanks to XFCE Desktop. It’s actually very lightweight, shipped with a lot of MX own tools (including remastering and tweaking ones), available in 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. The latest version, MX-18 “Continuum”, equipped with ability to search and install Flatpak applications. Last but not least, MX exists as collaboration between two big communities, Mepis and antiX, hence the name MX since 2008 up to today. I hope you enjoy my overview below introducing several good points of MX.

        • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

          • OpenMandriva Is Also Making Plans To Move Away From 32-Bit Support

            In addition to Ubuntu planning to drop 32-bit packages with their 19.10 release, the OpenMandriva development team is another high profile Linux distribution drafting plans to eliminate their 32-bit support. OpenMandriva’s plans to drop 32-bit are much more conservative than Canonical with planning for these changes by the October release of Ubuntu 19.10. In the case of OpenMandriva, they will gradually reduce their exposure to 32-bit in hopes of weening users to 64-bit where possible.

          • OpenMandriva Lx 4.0 released, here are the new features

            OpenMandriva LX is a free Desktop Operating System that was created to capture the interest of first time and advanced users alike while still stimulating their creative developmental minds. OpenMandriva has announced the release of their latest build, called OMLx 4.0 which comes with new and exciting changes. With this release, users will see several significant changes that are readily visible, and many changes that are not immediately visible.

        • Fedora

          • Making Fedora 30

            Although Fedora 29 released on October 30, 2018, work on Fedora 30 began long before that. The first change proposal was submitted in late August. By my count, contributors made nine separate change proposals for Fedora 30 before Fedora 29 shipped. Some of these proposals come early because they have a big impact, like mass removal of Python 2 packages. By the time the proposal deadline arrived in early January, the community had submitted 50 change proposals.

        • Debian Family

          • Debian GNU/Linux port for RISC-V 64-bits: Why it matters and roadmap

            Last month, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo, a Debian contributor and developer talked about the Debian GNU/Linux riscv64 port at the RISC-V workshop. Debian, a Unix-like operating system consists of free software supported by the Debian community that comprises of individuals who basically care about free and open-source software. The goal of the Debian GNU/ Linux riscv64 port project has been to have Debian ready for installation and running on systems that implement a variant of the RISC-V (an open-source hardware instruction set architecture) based systems. The feedback from the people regarding his presentation at the workshop was positive. Earlier this week, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo announced an update on the status of Debian GNU/ Linux riscv64 port. The announcement comes weeks before the release of buster which will come with another set of changes to benefit the port.

          • Debian GNU/Linux riscv64 port in mid 2019

          • Derivatives

            • Tails 3.14.1 is out

              This release is an emergency release to fix a critical security vulnerability in Tor Browser. It also fixes other security vulnerabilities. You should upgrade as soon as possible.

            • Canonical/Ubuntu

              • I386 architecture will be dropped starting with eoan (Ubuntu 19.10)

                Last year, the Ubuntu developer community considered the question of whether to continue carrying forward the i386 architecture in the Ubuntu archive for future releases. The discussion at the time was inconclusive, but in light of the strong possibility that we might not include i386 as a release architecture in 20.04 LTS, we took the proactive step to disable upgrades from 18.04 to 18.10 for i386 systems, to avoid accidentally stranding users on an interim release with 9 months of support instead of letting them continue to run Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with its 5 years of standard support. In February of this year, I also posted to communicate the timeline in which we would take a final decision about i386 support in 20.04 LTS, namely, that we would decide in the middle of 2019. The middle of 2019 has now arrived. The Ubuntu engineering team has reviewed the facts before us and concluded that we should not continue to carry i386 forward as an architecture. Consequently, i386 will not be included as an architecture for the 19.10 release, and we will shortly begin the process of disabling it for the eoan series across Ubuntu infrastructure.

              • Canonical planning to drop 32bit support with Ubuntu 19.10 onwards

                As you might have heard by now, Canonical has made the decision to drop 32bit support from Ubuntu 19.10 onwards. Writing on the mailing list, as well as this post on Ubuntu’s Community Hub, Canonical gave a reminder that the decision isn’t coming without warning. It was proposed last year and it was followed up with another post detailing a final decision to be made in the middle of 2019. So here we are, the decision seems to have been made. The problem isn’t hardware, as likely around 99% of people nowadays have a 64bit capable computer. Going by our own statistics, from what 2,254 users told us only 4 are using a 32bit Linux distribution. The issue then, is mainly software and libraries needed to actually run 32bit applications. This is where it sounds like there’s going to be plenty of teething issues, with a number of people not too happy about the decision.

              • Wine Developers Appear Quite Apprehensive About Ubuntu’s Plans To Drop 32-Bit Support

                It’s looking like the plans announced by Canonical this week to drop their 32-bit packages/libraries beginning with Ubuntu 19.10 will be causing problems for the Wine camp at least in the near-term until an adequate solution is sorted out for providing their 32-bit Wine builds to Ubuntu users. Wine and Steam are among the few prominent Linux software packages still prominently living mostly in a 32-bit world. Valve certainly has the resources to come up with a timely solution especially with Ubuntu being the most popular Linux distribution used by Steam and they can move on with shipping their own 32-bit Steam Runtime libraries and other changes as needed. For the upstream Wine project it might be a bit more burdensome providing 32-bit Wine packages for Ubuntu.

              • Wine Developers Concerned With Ubuntu Dropping 32-bit Support With Ubuntu 19.10

                Ubuntu’s solution for using Wine on 32-bit going forward, which is to publish applications as snaps, or use an Ubuntu 18.04 LTS based LXD container that has full access to multiarch 32-bit WINE and related libraries, was also discussed by the Wine developers, with Vincent Povirk of CodeWeavers saying that there’s no point putting much effort into this temporary solution. The maintainer of the Wine OBS repository also mentioned that he has no interest in maintaining so many libraries. So what’s the solution for all of this? Not building Wine packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and later releases, or using the Steam runtime for the Wine packages seem to be the answers, but no final decision has been made yet. Ubuntu is not the first Linux distribution to go with 64-bit only releases. openSUSE leap did this as well, but it continues to provide all the 32-bit libraries needed to build and run Wine. From what the Ubuntu announcement and FAQ says about dropping the 32-bit x86 architecture, it’s looks like there are no plans for doing something similar in Ubuntu.

              • Parallel installs – test and run multiple instances of snaps

                In Linux, testing software is both easy and difficult at the same time. While the repository channels offer great availability to software, you can typically only install a single instance of an application. If you want to test multiple instances, you will most likely need to configure the remainder