News Snapshot: The Decline of Civility
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-28 20:40:57 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-28 20:40:57 UTC
Summary: News from the past fortnight, for the most demonstrating lack of civil rights and sometimes disregard for human life
NDAA Indefinite Detention
-
TAC, which describes itself as “a national think tank that works to preserve and protect the principles of strictly limited government through information, education, and activism,” has drawn up model resolutions for any state, county, town or other political subdivisions whose leaders want to officially state their displeasure with federal military policy during the “war on terror.”
-
Although some self-described “conservatives” now claim that nullification is unconstitutional, others view nullification as a proper and constitutional approach for checking federal overreach and are working to apply this approach through state legislatures. Taking notice, the Wall Street Journal published an article on its website sketching the various efforts across the country to nullify unconstitutional acts of the federal government.
-
The controversial provision authorizes the military, under presidential authority, to arrest, kidnap, detain without trial and hold indefinitely American citizens thought to “represent an enduring security threat to the United States.” - See more at: http://www.libertynewsonline.com/article_301_34724.php#sthash.2MqOqgzr.dpuf
Rape
-
A 20-year-old Indian woman said she was gang-raped on the orders of a village council because she fell in love with a man from a different ethnic group, police said Thursday.
Police
-
Astonishingly, infuriatingly, two former Fullerton, California cops have been acquitted on all charges after savagely beating to death Kelly Thomas, 37, a mentally ill homeless man who died five days after being set upon by Manuel Ramos, Jay Cicinelli and four other officers. The attack, caught on surveillance video, led to days of protests, the recall of three City Council members and the resignation of a police chief whose department has a long history of violent abuse. Thomas' father Ron, a former deputy sheriff, said the defense "lied continuously" during the trial and the family will likely pursue civil charges in the death of his son, who a year after his death was cleared of the stupid bogus charges - trying to get into locked cars in a bus parking lot - police came up with in a pathetic attempt to justify their cold-blooded, fist-punching murder. Since the verdict, people have held vigils and protests at a makeshift memorial where Thomas died; one sign carries Thomas' picture before the beating and proclaims, "No one can hurt u now." Also, the FBI has said it will review the evidence for federal civil rights violations. There is both raw and shorter, edited video of the attack: It captures Ramos snapping on rubber gloves, smacking his fists together and sneering to Thomas, "See these fists? They're gonna fuck you up," followed, many vicious punches later, by Thomas writihing on the ground repeatedly crying out for help and his father. Warning: stomach-churningly graphic and heart-poundingly disturbing, all of it.
-
Houston resident Greg Snider claims he was arrested and held for more than an hour after local police mistakenly targeted him as a criminal, all for giving a homeless man a few quarters.
Snider said he had pulled into a local parking lot in order to make a phone call when a homeless man came up to him and asked for some spare cash. Snider claims he gave the man 75 cents and left to continue on his way.
"I had no idea at all what was about to happen," he told KPRC Local 2 News.
As soon as Snider merged onto a local freeway, however, police followed him with flashing lights and sirens, ordering him to pull over.
-
Oddly enough, cops (and lawyers for cops) from halfway around the world are no different than our local variety. This isn't solely an "American" problem. Excessive force is used, the victim complains, and once the court battle ensues, the justifications for the use of force are presented, which often sound completely insane to those not well-versed in the art of defending abusive cops.
Ukraine
-
Riot police brutally dispersed protesters from central Kiev in the largest operation since the latest outbreak of violence. Almost 200 officers have been injured over four days of scuffles. Two people were reportedly killed amid the crisis.
Surveillance
-
The security firm that conducts 45% of all background checks for potential U.S. government employees may have falsified hundreds of thousands of background checks over a four-year period.
UK
-
The question of whether or not citizens should be compelled to give up their passwords to law enforcement is not going to go away. What with different agencies in different countries attempting to do more searches of technology at borders, on the mainland, and around the world, the law is eventually going to have to settle whether these kinds of searches and forced compliance are in good standing with the fourth and fifth amendments of our constitution or the governing laws of other nations.
-
The Chief Inspector of UK Prisons has accused a privately run UK Immigration Detention Centre at London’s Heathrow Airport of ‘a shocking loss of humanity’ after a terminally ill dementia sufferer died in hospital, restrained in handcuffs.
Alois Dvorzak, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease spent the last five hours of his life in handcuffs, and passed away still wearing them. The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Nick Hardwick, write in his report:
-
The Department of Health has launched an investigation into claims that illegal abortions of female foetuses are taking place among some families living within ethnic communities in Britain who seek to ensure that they have sons.
-
The tobacco industry does it, the US Air Force clearly wants to ... astroturfing – the use of sophisticated software to drown out real people on web forums – is on the rise. How do we stop it?
-
The BBC seems happy to be used as a covert propaganda outlet by tobacco, fossil fuel and other controversial companies
-
Perhaps the most depressing aspects of the Snowden affair has been not the fact that everything we do online is being spied upon, but the fact that few people in the UK seem to care. That's partly because the UK is in it up to its neck, thanks to the complicity of GCHQ in most of the NSA's crimes, and partly because the UK government has been so mealy-mouthed in its response. Its claims that everything it has done has been lawful is based on the fact that the only law that regulates such online spying activity - the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act - dates back to 2000, and is so utterly out of date that it is trivially easy to circumvent its puny safeguards.
[..]
Again, you can see just how bold and specific the recommendations are. Moraes and his colleagues are to be congratulated for pulling together such a high-quality report, on a such a complex and evolving situation, in such a short time. Let's hope the European Parliament supports the conclusions, and the European Commission agrees to work towards their implementation.
War on Dissidents
-
One year ago this month, the young Internet freedom activist and groundbreaking programmer Aaron Swartz took his own life. Swartz died shortly before he was set to go to trial for downloading millions of academic articles from servers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology based on the belief that the articles should be freely available online. At the time he committed suicide, Swartz was facing 35 years in prison, a penalty supporters called excessively harsh. Today we spend the hour looking at the new documentary, "The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz." We play excerpts of the film and speak with Swartz’s father Robert, his brother Noah, his lawyer Elliot Peters, and filmmaker Brian Knappenberger.
[...]
"It’s just incomprehensible, the notion that Aaron should be a felon and go to jail for something that was clearly not illegal, and he did nothing wrong. He was innocent. And to be railroaded on this basis was a complete distortion and corruption of the criminal justice system."
-
An internal Walmart memo was leaked yesterday, describing how to discourage workers from coming together for action. This document, leaked by Anonymous “Hacktivists” demanded absolute loyalty to Walmart. It further instructed that any and all signs of worker discontent be reported to supervisors immediately.
Prohibition
-
The chief of operations at the United States Drug Enforcement Agency said only last week that increased efforts as of late to legalize marijuana across the country is scaring his fellow officials at the DEA. Others, however, have a much different take.
-
So, the state of Ohio conducted a little experiment Thursday: Can you execute someone using just two drugs?
And the result? Why, yes you can. But it wasn’t quick, and it may not have been painless.
First, a little background.
The executed man, Dennis McGuire, was convicted in 1994 of raping and murdering Joy Stewart, 22, who was eight months' pregnant. And he eventually confessed to the crime. So there’s no doubting his guilt.
Bahrain and Turkey
-
Out of the 745 “sporadic protests” recorded by the Liberties and Human Rights Department in Al Wefaq Society (Bahrain’s major opposition party), more than a half were suppressed by security forces, according to the organization’s report released Thursday.
Crackdowns on protests were accompanied by arrests, with 183 rally participants ending up behind bars, including 31 children.
-
A Turkish police officer who sprayed tear gas in the face of a woman wearing a red dress at an anti-government protest faces prosecution and a possible jail term, a legal source has said.
-
The one person and movement that continues to baffle the U.S. government is a powerful Turkish Muslim cleric who is a threat to the current Turkish government -- from his 26-acre retreat in Pennsylvania, WikiLeaks recently revealed.
WikiLeaks
-
Recently, Bill Keller, former executive editor of the New York Times, and Glenn Greenwald, the lawyer/blogger/journalist who broke the Snowden NSA story discussed opinions on the ethics and methods of journalism.
-
The Sam Adams Asso€ci€ates for Integ€rity in Intel€li€gence (SAAII) have voted over€whelm€ingly to present the 2014 Sam Adams Award for Integ€rity in Intel€li€gence to Chelsea (formerly Brad€ley) Manning.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Representing and Speaking for Animals
- If I ever choose to take this matter to tribunal with animals-centric NGOs on my side, it'll get some press coverage for sure
- Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux", Slop Images in VentureBeat, Linux Foundation Spam Made With LLM Slop and Slop Images
- The only relief or upside - if any exists - is that the pace of slop was down a bit this week
-
- Financiers and Sponsors of the Slop Hype (Pyramid Scheme Waiting to End, Bubble That Will Inevitably Implode)
- It's also burning the planet
- Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux", Google Helps Ponzi Schemes and Slopfarms in Google News
- Slopfarms are a real pain
- Gemini Links 29/08/2025: Retiring at 62 and URL Filtering HTTP(S) Proxy on Qubes OS
- Links for the day
- Links 29/08/2025: Lisa Cook Sues Convicted Felon and Backdoor Mandate in UK Resisted
- Links for the day
- Links 29/08/2025: Arti 1.5.0, War on Public Health (CDC), and Slop 'Bros' Made to Pay for Their Mass Plagiarism
- Links for the day
- No, 4Chan is Not Fighting for You by Lawyering Up Against Ofcom (UK)
- Don't mistake proto-fascists for people who "fight for you". They don't.
- Downlplaying the Impact of "UEFI 9/11" is a Losing Strategy
- we won't publish much whilst on holiday
- In Many Places in the World Vista 11 "Market Share" is Going Down, Not Up
- In some countries Windows is already down to third place or lower
- More Microsoft-Connected Layoffs, at Least Third Time This Month! (Also Another Death on Campus)
- Microsoft as a "gaming" company is where studios, projects, games, and even developers come to die
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 28, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, August 28, 2025
- Gemini Links 29/08/2025: Poems, Games, and Java 25 Performance
- Links for the day
- Links 28/08/2025: Greenland 'Interferences' by US and Skinnerboxes to Get Banned in Korean Schools
- Links for the day
- Richard Stallman (RMS) Talk in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress Will be Remote
- This past week RMS received lots of accolades online
- The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives): Free Software is Putin, Hence Evil and Dangerous
- The current editor in chief is an American Microsofter, the previous one went to work for Google (US)
- Links 28/08/2025: Chatbots Distorting/Fabricating History and Also Driving Suicide
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 28/08/2025: Back in Japan and Why "Hacker News" Sucks
- Links for the day
- A Much-Needed Wake-up Call to Users of Wordpress.com, Blogspot, Substack and All Those Other Outsourced (and Centralised) Platforms
- There are several lessons in there
- The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
- In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
- Open Source Initiative (OSI) Resists Software Freedom, Even by Attacking Its Own
- The OSI is compromised
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
- Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
- Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
- Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
- Links for the day
- Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
- Vista 11 is going down rather than up
- Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
- Links for the day
- 12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
- There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
- More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
- Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
- Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
- Links for the day
- Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
- The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
- GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
- Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025