The Linux community is a fascinating and powerful space.
When I joined the Ubuntu project approximately five years ago, I (vaguely at the time) understood that there was a profound sense of community and passion everywhere that is difficult to find in other spaces. My involvement has increased, and so has my understanding. I had thought of starting a blog as a means of conveying the information that I stumbled across, but my writing skills were very crude and regrettable, being in my early teenage years.
According to Nokia, it has redefined data centre fabrics with the launch of a new and modern Network Operating System (NOS) and a declarative, intent-based automation and operations toolkit.
This will allow Cloud and data centre builders to scale and adapt operations in the face of exponential traffic growth and constant change brought on from technology shifts like 5G and Industry 4.0.
The new Nokia Service Router Linux (SR Linux) NOS and Nokia Fabric Service Platform (FSP) were co-developed with leading global companies, including Apple.
Kernel developers appear to be eager to debate the merits of potentially allowing Rust code within the Linux kernel. Linus Torvalds himself has made some initial remarks on the topic ahead of the Linux Plumbers 2020 conference where the matter will be discussed at length.
In the mailing list thread when discussing Greg Kroah-Hartman's past comments on the Rust prospects for the kernel, it was mentioned that one of the conditions being sought is that it would effectively be disabled by default until there has been sufficient testing.
Merged overnight into the Linux kernel source tree are the new guidelines concerning the use of "inclusive terminology" for future code.
It was just one week ago that the inclusive terminology guidelines for the Linux kernel were first proposed to mixed reaction and have now been merged into the source tree after receiving enough approval of various upstream kernel maintainers.
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There are around 19.5k mentions of "slave" within the kernel source tree, mostly within the kernel networking code. The string "master" is mentioned some 26.9k times. For "blacklist" are around 888 mentions when checking in the current Git tree. Linux is currently at around 69.3k text files with around 3.54 million lines of code comments and 20.1 million lines of code (along with 3.6 million blank lines).
Linus Torvalds approved on Friday a new and more inclusive terminology for the Linux kernel code and documentation.
Going forward, Linux developers have been asked to use new terms for the master/slave and blacklist/whitelist terminologies.
We are pleased to announce that the Systems Boot and Security Microconference has been accepted into the 2020 Linux Plumbers Conference!
Computer-system security is an important topic to many. Maintaining data security and system integrity is crucial for businesses and individuals. Computer security is paramount even at system boot up, as firmware attacks can compromise the system before the operating system starts. In order to keep the integrity of the system intact, both the firmware as well as the rest of the system must be vigilant in monitoring and preventing malware intrusion.
As a result of last year’s microconference Oracle sent out patches to support Trenchboot in the Linux kernel and in GRUB2. An agreement was also reached on problems with TPM 2.0 Linux sysfs interface.
We are pleased to announce that we have added an additional track to LPC 2020: the GNU Tools track. The track will run for the 5 days of the conference.
If you are looking for the ASCII games on Linux, then you are in the right place. Who doesn’t love to play games? In this modern era, you have access to the various graphics-intensive games right into your mobile phone. If you own a latest-generation console or a monster gaming PC, then you are ahead of the time. You can play abundant games of different categories that almost look like real movies.
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Linux is not a gaming platform. The gamers always lean towards a PlayStation, Xbox, or a Windows machine. But the ASCII games library on Linux is huge. Although, these are not like those AAA titles that everyone wants to play. Rather, these games will bring you back to childhood.
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Well, trying to play modern games on Linux is not always possible. This is because of the lack of support. Besides, most of the Linux geeks use their Linux distros for their work purpose. Hence, if you want to try some games just for driving the boredom away, these can be some great options.
ASCII games on Linux don’t require that much CPU, GPU, or RAM to run. Instead, they are of just a few kilobytes of size. Moreover, some of the games mentioned above will remind you of your childhood. Lastly, if you think that we missed your favorite ASCII game to include in this list, just let us know in the comment section. Happy gaming!
Devolver Digital have confirmed the release date for Carrion, during the D3: Devolver Digital Direct pre-recorded press conference.
This “reverse horror game” has you become a The Thing style monster- reaching out and munching on the personnel of the facility keeping you captive. Eat, grow, and evolve to gain new abilities, to bring more terror to your prey.
For a game that’s nearly 20 years old, Super Smash Bros. Melee for the GameCube has still been a staple in the fighting game community. To this day some prefer Melee‘s more sophisticated mechanics over the other games in the Smash Bros. series; namely, L-canceling, wavedashing, being able to hog the ledge to prevent other recovering players from grabbing it, and other more complex additions. Brawl was too slow for some and introduced new mechanics that threw many veterans off. And even though Ultimate picked up the pace in terms of speed, the overall design of the game is to appeal to casual gamers; gamers who are new to the fighting genre. Fan-made mods like Project M and Project Plus have given players the itch that they wanted for Melee‘s mechanics, but as far as I know there’s no easy way to play online with other players.
Xfce is overall a great DE. It provides a very stable, feature-filled, and forthright experience. The customization options are high, and the configuration for keyboard shortcuts and an overall personalization is excellent. It can suit all kinds of people very well, those who don’t want to look around too much to do something, and those also who make their system truly theirs. Sadly, from a recent event, we have come to know that the development of Xfce has not been very active lately. We hope that the team gets a lot of support again, and we see more fantastic progress in the future.
Tons and tons of awesome new features and UI polish landed this week, alongside an equally weighty ton of important bugfixes.
While KDE Plasma 5.19 is already in fairly good shape with regards to its Wayland session, Plasma 5.20 is looking to offer even better support for this native Wayland environment along with many other enhancements.
KDE developer Nate Graham is out with his usual weekly summary of the development highlights for the week. This time around there are a fair number of Wayland fixes/improvements along with other work:
- Various enhancements to the Elisa music player.
Make sure you commit anything you want to end up in the 20.08 releases to them
We're already past the dependency freeze.
The Feature Freeze and Beta is this Thursday 16 of July.
Following Dan here’s the summary of what happened around KDE PIM in the last two months. While the focus was mainly on the 20.04.x maintenance releases and KDE’s source code hosting and review systems migrated to a Gitlab instance during that time, development continued at full steam with more than 1,800 changes by 34 contributors.
This write-up is in continuation of its previous partââ¬Å —ââ¬Å setting up basic container functionality.
In the past couple of weeks, we moved on from just adding children to actually repositioning them (child widgets of the container, NewWidget) when enough space is not available for all widget to fit in the given width. Though the grid structure is yet to put in place, the widget could be seen taking shape already (look at below gif).
This week we fixed some specific topics which were planned for the previous cycle. If anyone wants to contribute so see some of our “Builder wishlist” go there: Builder/ThreePointThirtyfive
Last time i had forgotten to mention the great work of our translation team which contributed various translations to Builder. Thank you!
This is my second post related to my project, Adding UFS2 file system in Haiku.
The Elive Team is proud to announce the release of the beta version 3.8.14
This new version includes: Kernel updated to 5.6.14 retrowave special theme themes, designs, icons improvements and more customizations included bootup with a much more friendly graphical menu, it now remembers your last selected OS, all the options are in the same menu instead of submenus, disabled useless recovery options, improved resolution, fixed wallpaper issue on encrypted installations SWAP space is much more performant now, feedbacks welcome
Lubuntu 19.10 (Eoan Ermine) was released October 17, 2019 and will reach End of Life on Friday, July 17, 2020. This means that after that date there will be no further security updates or bugfixes released. We highly recommend that you update to 20.04 as soon as possible if you are still running 19.10.
After July 17th, the only supported releases of Lubuntu will be 18.04, with LXDE, and 20.04, with LXQt. All other releases of Lubuntu will be considered unsupported, and will no longer receive any further updates from the Lubuntu team.
You can find instructions on how to upgrade your Lubuntu installation here at our manual page.
Last month, we found out FriendlyELEC was working on NanoPi NEO3, a tiny SBC powered by Rockchip RK3328 processor and made for headless applications and networked storage thanks to Gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0 ports, as well as a 26-pin GPIO header.
At the time, the board was still been finalized, but the company has now started to take orders for $20 and up depending on options which include a cute white enclosure...
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The Wiki has been updated as well, and the company provides both Ubuntu Core 18.04 based FriendlyCore, and OpenWrt based FriendlyWrt operating systems for the board with both relying on Linux 5.4.12 kernel. I’d also expect Armbian to eventually provide Ubuntu 20.04 and Debian 10 images.
This is my current setup for this article. I built little stage with Mario, and I have the camera with a lens, into my Pi, and a temp/humidity sensor hooked to it. It’s the same I used in my previous live stream with this camera.
In this article, we’ll learn:
How to set up Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera
How to configure the camera with V4L2
Take pictures with Raspistill Record video with Raspivid
I recently spotted on Twitter that Uputronics had launched a GPS/RTS Raspberry Pi Expansion Board, and that they were looking for worthy projects to test it. I thought our Galileo/GPS/BeiDou/GLONASS monitoring project galmon.eu might be worthy and Uputronics agreed.
Relevant for our purposes, this is an actual ‘timing receiver’. Any GNSS chip will get you a location, but some of them go the extra mile to also deliver a very stable clock signal.
The expansion board contains an u-blox M8 device, which also enables access to raw GNSS messages. This in turn allows projects like us to use such a device to do orbit determinations and quality measurements.
A lot of the Nix documentation seems to be aimed at a very particular kind of desktop user: someone who already has Nix installed! Such users represent an important use case, and the nix build configurations are easy enough to read. However, I definitely think there is on-boarding improvement work to be done in the Nix ecosystem.
So, will I ever go back? I don't think so! This router was so cheap (~$40) and the Raspberry Pi 3B+ is so powerful that I get amazing performance throughout my entire apartment. If it ever breaks, the Pi will be trivial to replace. I am really happy with what I created. Even if this little project isn't original, it solves a real problem in my day-to-day life.
In terms of NixOS as a Linux distribution, I think I now am totally on board. Nix has so many incredible advantages that (as a control freak who builds his own WiFi router) I just can't ignore or give up. The feature of Ubuntu that was keeping me on that distribution for so long was that "it just works" ۩ ۨ.
But Nix "just works" too. The only catch is that you need to know what "it" is that you want working ahead of time. I am also comfortable with responsibly using environments, so I think that increases my willingness to jump into a new OS framework. I am a little worried about moving from Ubuntu to Nix on an existing machine, but that is what external hard drive backups are for!
Seven-segment displays are normally diminutive items, able to show info from a clock or other device, in a size that’s easily tucked away when not needed. Jegatheesan Soundarapandian’s single-digit display, however, is just the opposite standing at nearly seven feet tall.
The project is constructed out of cardboard, with a PVC spine for extra strength. Inside, addressable LED lighting illuminates each segment under Arduino control, with an HC-05 module used to interface with an Android app. Two 18550 batteries provide power for the unit, along with a DC-DC voltage regulator to supply the strip with 5V.
Last month, it was discovered that Google was hard at work on bringing Android’s answer to AirDrop, Nearby Sharing, to Chrome OS and Google Chrome for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Now the feature has begun to appear for some on Chrome OS Canary.
The biggest clue comes from an official Reddit post by Android's engineering team, who said the upcoming version of the mobile platform will finally address a major OEM excess: background app restrictions.
Android allows vendors to set their own background policy, choosing when to kill processes running in the background. As you’d expect, the actual execution varies wildly between OEMs. It is a fragmented space: running on multitude of different devices, under various manufacturer skins, or even as forks, such as Amazon’s Fire OS.
One site, Don’t Kill My App, tracks policies between manufacturers. Chinese manufacturers — like OnePlus and Huawei — are the most aggressive. Google’s own-brand Pixel and Nexus devices, as well as those from Nokia and Sony, are the most laissez-faire.
But it matters, because background kills can have drastic implications, including notifications being delayed and apps misbehaving.
Writing in an AMA, the Android engineering folk described background kills as a “complicated topic,” itself compounded by the extensive independence enjoyed by manufacturers.
“We are updating the Compatibility Definition Document (CDD) for Android 11 to make sure device manufacturers are alerting users of app restrictions in a timely manner,” they said. “Not only does this help educate users about what is happening to their apps, but it also allows users to override the restriction if they choose to.”
Project-Open or ]project-open[ is a free open source Enterprise Project Management solution. It's designed and developed by a Frank Bragmann who studied business management and complex project management.
The project has been around for long time and it is widely used by hundreds or enterprises around the world in different sectors.
Project-Open has a lot of features in the form of modules, which give you the ability to customize the system by choosing the modules that you need only, and doesn't force you to install the whole system. You can add modules later as your business grows. It also has a comprehensive online Documentation.
Teleport is an open source, modern drop-in replacement for OpenSSH, which supports Kubernetes in addition to SSH. Teleport removes the need for VPNs, comes with a beautiful new Web UI, and provides seamless access to all cloud environments and edge devices. Teleport is incredibly easy to set up and use.
Shortly after the move of Toolbox to the containers organization on GitHub I started working on rewriting Toolbox from Shell to Go (one of goals of my Internship at the Desktop Team at Red Hat).
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You may ask: “Why didn’t you use Python? It’s used a lot in Fedora”. The answer is: “We can’t really.” We want Toolbox to be used in Fedora CoreOS which doesn’t ship Python.
While Mozilla has been gradually enabling WebRender out-of-the-box in more Windows configurations with succeeding Firefox releases, up to now there hasn't been much visible effort in getting WebRender enabled out-of-the-box for any Linux configurations. But fortunately that is finally changing.
Linux users have been able to opt-in to this generally faster code path via MOZ_WEBRENDER=1 among other WebRender tunables within Firefox. This is for the GPU-based Rust-written rendering engine available within Firefox currently and also at the heart of their Servo effort. But as more Firefox installations on Windows have been seeing WebRender enabled, Linux users have not.
The RC1 candidate of LibreOffice was recently released. Soon after, something odd was discovered in the About LibreOffice window. It seems the developers had tagged that release candidate as a Personal Edition.
What did this mean?
Of course speculation is running amok with rumors that LibreOffice is no longer going to be free. After all, the open source office suite has always been free and never before hinted at ever not being free. Yet, there was that oh-so-obvious change in the About dialog indicating something was amiss. After all, it's a pretty easy conclusion to draw when said dialog clearly states (Figure A): "The Personal Edition is supported by volunteers and is intended for individual use."
On March 30, 2020, the ACM announced that its digital library would be open access for three months. During that time, every conference paper, journal article and book chapter published by the ACM was free to the general public. They didn’t even require a login. The reason to open the digital library was a good one: most people who use it get access through where they work, either in industry or academia. Because of the global pandemic, most people who use it are now working at home, outside of the network which allows them access.
I hoped it would remain open. I shared URLs to papers on the Digital Library on forums, in emails and even in source repos knowing everyone could access the papers at the moment, and hoping that would continue. I even let myself think it was likely that those making the decisions at the ACM would see that this free access had become a public good. I was wrong. On schedule, the ACM Digital Library closed again on June 30, 2020.
It should have remained open. First, because the global pandemic is not over, and few people who read computer science research papers are back at work. Most people who work in the software industry are still at home, and there is still uncertainty about what will happen in American colleges and universities in the next school year.
But more importantly, the ACM Digital Library should have remained open because the most comprehensive repository of computer science research should be freely available to all.
Born-again open-source fan Microsoft is celebrating 25 years of PHP by, er, pulling its support for the scripting language that is beloved (or dreaded) by server operators the world over.
Microsoft engineer Dale Hirt confirmed the change on the PHP mailing list, warning that the Windows behemoth was not "going to be supporting PHP for Windows in any capacity for version 8.0 and beyond."
Current versions, 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4, will continue to receive support as per the community's cadence, which sees around two years of bug squashing followed by a year of security fixes. PHP 7.4 emerged last November, so Microsoft's benevolence should last until 2022 at which point the plug will be pulled.
Register reader Alain Williams, who tipped us off to Hirt's posting, remarked: "I suspect that it means that Microsoft will not provide any resources to make PHP 8 work but expect others to do so instead."
After thanking the Microsoft gang for its work over the years, PHP 8.0 Release Manager Sara Golemon said: "I won't say I'm not bummed," before expressing the hope that some sort of alternative might be worked out by the end of the year, when version 8 is due to drop.
Hello PHP Internals,
My name is Dale Hirt and I am the project manager for PHP inside Microsoft.
We currently support PHP with development and build efforts for PHP 7.3, and PHP 7.4. In addition, we help with building PHP 7.2 on Windows when security fixes are required..
However, as PHP 8.0 is now ramping up, we wanted to let the community know what our current plans are going forward.
We know that the current cadence is 2 years from release for bug fixes, and 1 year after that for security fixes. This means that PHP 7.2 will be going out of support in November. PHP 7.3 will be going into security fix mode only in November. PHP 7.4 will continue to have another year of bug fix and then one year of security fixes. We are committed to maintaining development and building of PHP on Windows for 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4 as long as they are officially supported. We are not, however, going to be supporting PHP for Windows in any capacity for version 8.0 and beyond.
Motivation ===
Over the last decade we have developed an interactive, interpretative C++ (aka REPL) as part of the high-energy physics (HEP) data analysis project -- ROOT [1-2]. We invested a significant effort to replace the CINT C++ interpreter with a newly implemented REPL based on llvm -- cling [3]. The cling infrastructure is a core component of the data analysis framework of ROOT and runs in production for approximately 5 years.
Cling is also a standalone tool, which has a growing community outside of our field. Cling’s user community includes users in finance, biology and in a few companies with proprietary software. For example, there is a xeus-cling jupyter kernel [4]. One of the major challenges we face to foster that community is our cling-related patches in llvm and clang forks. The benefits of using the LLVM community standards for code reviews, release cycles and integration has been mentioned a number of times by our "external" users.
Last year we were awarded an NSF grant to improve cling's sustainability and make it a standalone tool. We thank the LLVM Foundation Board for supporting us with a non-binding letter of collaboration which was essential for getting this grant.
Background ===
Cling is a C++ interpreter built on top of clang and llvm. In a nutshell, it uses clang's incremental compilation facilities to process code chunk-by-chunk by assuming an ever-growing translation unit [5]. Then code is lowered into llvm IR and run by the llvm jit. Cling has implemented some language "extensions" such as execution statements on the global scope and error recovery. Cling is in the core of HEP -- it is heavily used during data analysis of exabytes of particle physics data coming from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and other particle physics experiments.
Plans ===
The project foresees three main directions -- move parts of cling upstream along with the clang and llvm features that enable them; extend and generalize the language interoperability layer around cling; and extend and generalize the OpenCL/CUDA support in cling. We are at the early stages of the project and this email intends to be an RFC for the first part -- upstreaming parts of cling. Please do share your thoughts on the rest, too.
Moving Parts of Cling Upstream ---
Over the years we have slowly moved some patches upstream. However we still have around 100 patches in the clang fork. Most of them are in the context of extending the incremental compilation support for clang. The incremental compilation poses some challenges in the clang infrastructure. For example, we need to tune CodeGen to work with multiple llvm::Module instances, and finalize per each end-of-translation unit (we have multiple of them). Other changes include small adjustments in the FileManager's caching mechanism, and bug fixes in the SourceManager (code which can be reached mostly from within our setup). One conclusion we can draw from our research is that the clang infrastructure fits amazingly well to something which was not its main use case. The grand total of our diffs against clang-9 is: `62 files changed, 1294 insertions(+), 231 deletions(-)`. Cling is currently being upgraded from llvm-5 to llvm-9.
A major weakness of cling's infrastructure is that it does not work with the clang Action infrastructure due to the lack of an IncrementalAction. A possible way forward would be to implement a clang::IncrementalAction as a starting point. This way we should be able to reduce the amount of setup necessary to use the incremental infrastructure in clang. However, this will be a bit of a testing challenge -- cling lives downstream and some of the new code may be impossible to pick straight away and use. Building a mainline example tool such as clang-repl which gives us a way to test that incremental case or repurpose the already existing clang-interpreter may be able to address the issue. The major risk of the task is avoiding code in the clang mainline which is untested by its HEP production environment. There are several other types of patches to the ROOT fork of Clang, including ones in the context of performance,towards C++ modules support (D41416), and storage (does not have a patch yet but has an open projects entry and somebody working on it). These patches can be considered in parallel independently on the rest.
Extend and Generalize the Language Interoperability Layer Around Cling ---
HEP has extensive experience with on-demand python interoperability using cppyy[6], which is built around the type information provided by cling. Unlike tools with custom parsers such as swig and sip and tools built on top of C-APIs such as boost.python and pybind11, cling can provide information about memory management patterns (eg refcounting) and instantiate templates on the fly.We feel that functionality may not be of general interest to the llvm community but we will prepare another RFC and send it here later on to gather feedback.
Extend and Generalize the OpenCL/CUDA Support in Cling ---
Cling can incrementally compile CUDA code [7-8] allowing easier set up and enabling some interesting use cases. There are a number of planned improvements including talking to HIP [9] and SYCL to support more hardware architectures.
The primary focus of our work is to upstreaming functionality required to build an incremental compiler and rework cling build against vanilla clang and llvm. The last two points are to give the scope of the work which we will be doing the next 2-3 years. We will send here RFCs for both of them to trigger technical discussion if there is interest in pursuing this direction.
Collaboration ===
Open source development nowadays relies on reviewers. LLVM is no different and we will probably disturb a good number of people in the community ;)We would like to invite anybody interested in joining our incremental C++ activities to our open every second week calls. Announcements will be done via google group: compiler-research-announce (https://groups.google.com/g/compiler-research-announce).
Many thanks!
David & Vassil
Not to be confused with Clang as the well known C/C++ compiler front-end for the LLVM compiler, Cling is a separate project as an interactive, JIT-based C++ interpreter. Cling has been in development for years and at least partially is looking to upstream where possible back into LLVM.
Cling has been years in the making as a C++ interpreter and serving other interesting LLVM-based use-cases like JIT'ing NVIDIA CUDA code. Now though to help foster its development and making use of a recent grant, the developers behind Cling are looking to upstream the code where possible.
The Synopsys DesignWare ARC HS is designed for high performance embedded environments with the 32-bit HS5x and 64-bit HS6x series. Synopsys has long offered their own GNU toolchain builds to support the DesignWare ARC hardware on Linux while now the mainline support is in good shape with glibc for the ARCv2 ISA having been mainlined. Though do note it's ARCv2 and not the latest ARCv3 ISA.
Let’s have a thought experiment. Assume there is an Open Source-licensed Perl module published on CPAN that you care about, and that hasn’t had any updates in a very long time - what are your options?
In this blog post, I’ll take a dive into this problem, and use the Geo::Postcodes::NO module as an example. As of this writing, the module version is 0.31, and it’s most recent release was in September 2006.
[...]
Contribution information for the module is missing (or at least, less than expected). The author ARNE has offered his email address, and after a quick search one can find his Github page. He hasn’t published this module there, though. If we are going to contribute with this, then just adding a CONTRIBUTING.md file is a probably a good place to start. If the module you are looking for has the same problem, then check out it’s “How to contribute” page on MetaCPAN (you can find a link to it in the menu there).
There’s another issue though – we can’t offer a pull-request! At best we can send a patch(1) file attached to an email. While this is a bit old-school and should still work (assuming the author accepts those), there might be better options available.
In Chapter 3 on Page 87, the book refers to the Google Correlate service. However, as of December 2019, the service has been shutdown. Since the chapter requires you to download a CSV formatted data, it is no longer possible. However, you can instead download a version of the data that I had used 5 years back when writing the book from here.
Learnt about Class Attributes and Inheritance, today.
Born in 1929, the masterful composer Ennio Morricone, who died this week at the age of 91, made his entrance into the world just after the advent of synchronized cinematic sound. The Jazz Singer had come out just two years earlier. Over a life that spanned the history of the movie soundtrack, Morricone shaped the combined arts of music and image as few others have or will.
Milton Glaser, the world-famous graphic designer and longtime friend of The Nation, died last week at the age of 91. As The New York Times noted in its obituary, he was someone who “changed the vocabulary of American visual culture” over the course of his storied career.
A few decades ago Bob Dylan took Joyce Carol Oates for a ride and she almost never came back, but when she did she dedicated a creepy short story to him, “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” A girlygazer past his prime (i.e., over 30) pretends to be of teenage vintage to lure a pretty waywarder into his vehicle, there’s resistance, at first, then one day … see story title.
“How can we formulate strategy in the face of uncertainty?,” asks Learning from the Future, a recent Harvard Business Review article by Peter Scoblic, in its opening sentence. Answering this question has never felt more urgent as leaders prepare for the future. “Even before the Covid-19 crisis, rapid technological change, growing economic interdependence, and mounting political instability had conspired to make the future increasingly murky.” Uncertainty was already all-encompassing.
“And then the pandemic hit.”
When the present resembles the past, we can calculate the probability of future outcomes by analyzing past historical data. That’s how insurance companies accurately predict the life expectancy of different people based on age, gender, general health, behavioral traits like smoking and drinking, etc. But the situation is very different when the present doesn’t resemble the past. “Uncertainty stems from our inability to compare the present to anything we’ve previously experienced. When situations lack analogies to the past, we have trouble envisioning how they will play out in the future.”
Military strategists first developed scenario planning in the 1950s to help them envision the impact of a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union, - something that was clearly way beyond anyone’s experience. The object of scenario planning is to assemble all known facts, trends, and other information and use them to create a number of alternative stories rich in detail, typically three or four, about plausible future outcomes along with the development paths and key events that led to such outcomes. Altogether, the scenarios should span the scope of possible futures, although the actual future will likely include events from each scenario.
The United States Fish & Wildlife Service faced a difficult problem. The Northern Spotted Owl was vanishing from the forest, in spite of being listed as threatened, in 1990, under the Endangered Species Act, assigned critical habitat on public lands, and special protections related to the activities of local timber companies. Its numbers had continued to drop at a rate of 4% a year. Now suspicion was turning to the Barred Owl, whose assertive appearance in the Pacific Northwest could be causing the decline. So eight years ago the United States Fish & Wildlife Service convened a study group, to discuss the moral and practical dimensions raised by this imminent peril.
Every day with this virus in the physical classroom is like spinning the cylinder and pulling the trigger.
For some international students, the recent ruling by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on international student visas is, at best, a major inconvenience. However, for Syrian students like Ralph Estanboulieh and Abdullah Bannan, who are currently enrolled as undergraduate students at Harvard College, the ruling could be life or death.
"ICE's arbitrary new policy is irrational and xenophobic, and risks the health of students, faculty, and staff."
More than 80 members of Congress late Thursday demanded that the Trump administration immediately withdraw a “cruel, senseless, and xenophobic” directive that would strip international college students of their visas to study in the U.S. if their fall coursework is moved entirely online due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Charter schools across the country tapped the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for what could have been more than $1 billion, according to a preliminary analysis of Treasury Department data.
The U.S. would have to double its daily testing rate in order to control the coronavirus, and even more testing would be needed to suppress the outbreak.
It is time for America to create a Medicare for All health system.€
In the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in June Medical Services v. Russo, five justices struck down an abortion restriction that would have made the procedure almost impossible to obtain in Louisiana. The law—which was, as Justice Stephen Breyer put it, “almost word-for-word identical” to a law struck down by the court in a 2016 decision, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt—required abortion providers to obtain admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. In its 5-4 decision, the court held that the Louisiana law must also be struck down because the requirement, which would have closed all but one clinic in the state, was a significant obstacle to people seeking abortions.
Some political issues are hard to wrestle with. Some are easy. Legalizing marijuana is easy.
Pastor Tony Spell speaking at the “Save America” rally in Baton Rouge on July€ 4.
As policymakers consider what could be the last COVID-19 relief package this year, they should respond to the alarming rise in the number of children who aren’t getting enough to eat by increasing SNAP (food stamp) benefits, which would minimize COVID-19’s lasting impact on a generation of children.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, revealed this week that he has not briefed President Donald Trump on the spread of the disease in nearly two months.
COVID denialism in the US is problematic to say the least. The nation is facing a public health crisis that’s far worse than it needs to be, as shown by the examples of countless other nations around the world that have largely suppressed the first wave. In fact, the US is one of the most dangerous places to be for this pandemic.
More than 130,000 dead, over three million confirmed cases in the U.S. The actual final numbers will be, with absolute certainty, a lot worse. The antithesis of a corrective response by the Trump administration now looks exactly like a deliberate attempt to seize the day and get rid of as many of us as possible.
Communities with large Black and Hispanic populations stand to be hit hardest by the compounding threats of extreme heat and COVID-19.
You better not cough, You better not sigh. You better not sneeze, I’m telling you why: COVID-19’s coming to town.
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to light the importance of wild places in all our lives. Yet the Trump administration is intent on their destruction through unmitigated extractive uses such as oil and gas development, mining, logging and grazing to benefit private industries.
As one critic of the White House pointed out this week, keeping the top public health expert off the air makes sense if the goal is "not public safety but to avoid making the president look bad—no matter the cost."
Public health experts, unaccustomed to the spotlight, have really taken a beating lately. As they tirelessly work to unravel the mysteries of the Covid pandemic (and are increasingly burning out), the president of our country has constantly attacked and undermined them—and, lately, so have corporate media.
“Stable genius” Donald Trump knows as much about schools as he does about epidemiology.
As Brazil faces the world’s second-worst COVID-19 outbreak after the United States, Trump ally and far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has tested positive, after months of downplaying the severity of the pandemic. Brazil has gone almost two months with no health minister. “Bad political leadership is a major risk factor for the spread of the pandemic,” says leading Brazilian epidemiologist Cesar Victora, who coordinates the International Center for Equity in Health at the Federal University of Pelotas.
As Brazil faces the world’s second-worst COVID-19 outbreak after the United States, Trump ally and far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has tested positive, after months of downplaying the severity of the pandemic. Brazil has gone almost two months with no health minister. “Bad political leadership is a major risk factor for the spread of the pandemic,” says leading Brazilian epidemiologist Cesar Victora, who coordinates the International Center for Equity in Health at the Federal University of Pelotas.
In defense of a controversial policy to send COVID-19 positive patients from hospitals into nursing homes, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s health department issued a report on Monday saying that the directive did not significantly contribute to the nearly 6,500 deaths that have occurred to date in homes across the state.
Howard Zucker, commissioner of the New York State Department of Health, said at a news conference that sickened staff members were the chief source of infection for residents at the state’s more than 600 nursing homes. He said some 37,500 workers at the homes — nurses, administrators, maintenance staff — had tested positive for the virus since the pandemic began to sweep through the state.
HOUSTON — Houston hospitals have been forced to treat hundreds of COVID-19 patients in their emergency rooms — sometimes for several hours or multiple days — as they scramble to open additional intensive care beds for the wave of seriously ill people streaming through their doors, according to internal numbers shared with NBC News and ProPublica.
At the same time, the region’s 12 busiest hospitals are increasingly telling emergency responders that they cannot safely accept new patients, at a rate nearly three times that of a year ago, according to data reviewed by reporters.
Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) has reported that the coronavirus was the main cause of death among 7,444 people in Russia in May 2020.
In June 2020, mortality rates in multiple Russian regions increased significantly against the backdrop of the ongoing coronavirus epidemic, according to statistics from civil registry offices, Open Media reports.€
New numbers on the global AIDS epidemic show some big successes, such as fewer deaths and new infections. But there are also some tragic failures: Only half the children with HIV, the virus that causes the disease, are getting treatment.
“We are making great progress against the HIV epidemic ... but the bad, bad news is that kids are lagging behind,” said Dr. Shannon Hader, deputy executive director of UNAIDS. The United Nations agency reported last year's numbers Monday at the start of an international AIDS conference.
Progress against HIV also is being hurt by another infectious disease — the new coronavirus. Four years ago, the United Nations set goals for limiting HIV infections and improving treatment by the end of 2020, and all will be missed because the coronavirus pandemic is hurting access to care, the report concludes.
“We were already off track for the 2020 targets, but COVID-19 is threatening to blow us completely of course,” said UNAIDS’ executive director, Winnie Byanyima.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Africa is reaching “full speed,” the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief said Thursday, while a South African official said a single province is preparing 1.5 million graves.
Just a day after confirmed coronavirus cases across Africa surpassed the half-million milestone the total was over 522,000 and climbing, with more than 12,000 deaths. With testing levels low, the real numbers are unknown.
South Africa has the most confirmed cases with over 224,000, and for the first time Gauteng province — home to Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria — has the country’s most cases with over 75,000, or 33%.
At least eight Mississippi lawmakers have tested positive for the coronavirus after working several weeks in a Capitol where many people stood or sat close together and did not wear masks.
Among those who have publicly acknowledged having COVID-19 are Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the 52-member Senate, and House Speaker Philip Gunn, who presides over that 122-member chamber.
The state health officer, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, said Tuesday that there are also at least 11 other suspected cases of the virus among legislators and Capitol employees. In addition, Dobbs said the virus is spreading in social gatherings across the state. Dobbs said, for example, he was told about teenagers having a party on a Pearl River sandbar in Jackson during the July 4 weekend and about people going without masks in restaurants and other public settings.
Colorado could take coronavirus patients from overtaxed Arizona hospitals where the pandemic is raging, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis' office said in a Wednesday statement to The Gazette.
Arizona health officials said that state's daily case count spiked by more than 3,600 patients Wednesday, with 109,000 sickened there during the pandemic. More than 90 percent of Arizona's available intensive care unit hospital beds were in use Wednesday.
Apple is an early adopter of the innovative technology, deploying the solution within its cloud operations in its data centers €· Nokia redefines openness, application development flexibility, robustness and operational tools for rapidly building and confidently operating data center networks at scale Nokia has redefined data center fabrics with the launch of a new and modern Network Operating System (NOS) and a declarative, intent-based automation and operations toolkit.
This will allow cloud and data center builders to scale and adapt operations in the face of year-over-year exponential traffic growth and constant change brought on from technology shifts like 5G and Industry 4.
Clearview AI -- the facial recognition service that gives all kinds of entities access to billions of face images scraped from the web -- is suddenly scaling back on its aggressive expansion plans. Once the plaything of billionaires, the unproven AI has been sold to retailers, fitness centers, police departments, and a handful of human rights violators.
France plans to implement an age verification system for pornography and expand website blocking powers to punish non-compliant websites. The new law would grant the French audiovisual authority, CSA, the power to verify that adult websites are properly implementing age verification. Should a website be found not to be out of compliance, court orders could be used to block the website at the French internet service provider (ISP) level. The bill was passed by French Parliament on July 10th, 2020.
Ebay's case was extreme, but big corporations actually have a long history of trying to silence critics, by any means necessary. Tesla is currently accused of harassing an employee named Martin Tripp, who made the mistake of speaking to reporters about problems at Tesla's factory in Nevada. According to a whistleblower, Tesla security contractors hacked into Tripp's phone, followed him, and ultimately passed local police a false tip saying he was planning a mass shooting at the Tesla factory. Tripp eventually had to move to Hungary "out of fears for his family's safety."
The 13-lakh strong Army has directed all its officers and soldiers to delete their Facebook and Instagram accounts as well as over 80 apps from their mobile phones by July 15.
Citing security considerations and leakage of sensitive data, the Army said those who do not follow the order will face strict action. The outlawed apps include the 59 ones with Chinese links, including TikTok, which were banned by the Union government recently.
While other countries, like India and China, effectively block applications frequently, the U.S. has not done so before.
Security concerns about TikTok are almost always tied to its ownership by Chinese company ByteDance. A Chinese intelligence law requires Chinese companies and citizens to disclose sensitive data to the government.
Microsoft Corp.’s LinkedIn programmed its iPhone and iPad applications to divert sensitive information without users’ knowledge, according to a class-action lawsuit.
The apps use Apple’s Universal Clipboard to read and siphon the data, and can draw information from other Apple devices, according to the complaint filed Friday in San Francisco federal court. The privacy violations were exposed by Apple and independent program developers, according to the suit.
Facebook is considering banning political advertising across its network before the November general election, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions, after facing intense pressure for allowing hate speech and misinformation to flourish across its site.
The decision has not been finalized, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were confidential, and the company could continue with its current political advertising policy. Discussions on potentially banning political ads have simmered since late last year, they said, as insiders weighed the idea while reaching out to political groups and candidates for feedback.
There’s not much detail about the policy, but based on Bloomberg’s report, the blackout would be brief — a matter of days before election day in November. Facebook has previously allowed users to “turn off” political ads and added disclosure requirements, and it’s attempting to provide reliable information with a voting hub. But it’s stopped short of banning the ads themselves, in contrast with its rival Twitter, which announced a political ad ban last year.
The corporate press exploded recently with the dubious story that Russia paid the Taliban bounties to kill U.S. soldiers. This volcanic claim came without one quote for attribution. All sources were anonymous. The New York Times broke the story, but the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and CNN quickly followed suit, boasting that they had confirmed this tale. They had not. They simply parroted the same murky, unnamed, security state sources.
How the House Armed Services Committee, in the middle of a pandemic, approved a huge military budget and more war in Afghanistan.
One man reacted to emergency and the other one didn’t. The two men are Richard Feynman, the highly revered Nobel Prize winning nuclear physicist, and 22-year old David Livingston, Senior Airman and missile repairman who was killed in the Titan II nuclear missile accident at Damascus, Arkansas. Focusing on two men is not to describe “human nature” or masculinity or to diagnose psychopathology. It is to look at a case of nuclearism, at what went wrong, what could have been different, and what in these men’s characters interfaced with society. People now face at least four emergencies: nuclear, climate, pandemic, racism. Handling extreme threat means recognizing that there is an emergency to people’s lives, directing all attention to how to prevent or mitigate or prepare for it, and urgently prioritizing the saving of lives. An adult reaction to emergency would include realistic fear, concern for oneself and others, a rational sense of time, and single-minded focus.
For those of you still trying to rinse off the neighbor’s patriotic glitter from the July Fourth weekend, I can’t recommend highly enough the new book by Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. Even as a long-time anti-imperialist critic of US foreign policy, I found this book eye-opening and paradigm shifting. I’ll never be able to look at the USA in quite the same way again.
The Kateri Peace Conference, which has been held in upstate New York for 22 years,€ will be held online this year, allowing anyone in the world who can get online to attend and hear from and speak with such wonderful U.S. peace activists — (Hey, World, did you know the U.S. had peace activists?) — as Steve Breyman, John Amidon, Maureen Beillargeon Aumand, Medea Benjamin, Kristin Christman, Lawrence Davidson, Stephen Downs, James Jennings, Kathy Kelly, Jim Merkel, Ed Kinane, Nick Mottern, Rev. Felicia Parazaider, Bill Quigley, David Swanson, Ann Wright, and Chris Antal.
Land seizures, annexations, and conquest. These are words axiomatic to the state of Israel. In the main, the state has maintained an uncomfortable position based on patience and attrition. We have waited this long; you will wait longer. Be it dispossessed Palestinians and their aspirations for state recognition or what are loosely described as the objections of the “international community”, Israel has imperial staying power. Be patient, and the rage over the abuse of Palestinians will die down.
The first indelible image of the war in Afghanistan for many Americans was probably that of CBS anchorman Dan Rather, wrapped in the voluminous drapery of a mujahedin fighter, looking like a healthy relative of Lawrence of Arabia (albeit with hair that seemed freshly blow-dried, as some viewers were quick to point out). From his secret mountainside “somewhere in the Hindu Kush,” Rather unloaded on his audience a barrowload of nonsense about the conflict. The Soviets, Rather confided portentously, had put a bounty on his head “of many thousands of dollars.” He went on, “It was the best compliment they could have given me. And having a price put on my head was a small price to pay for the truths we told about Afghanistan.”
Congresswoman's call, says one rights advocate, "is an important acknowledgment that civilians unlawfully harmed have a right to redress."
The Dutch government is planning to file a lawsuit against Russia at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in July 2014, Reuters reports.
There is a possibility of a global "drone power club" emerging, said U.N. special rapporteur Agnes Callamard.
The biggest of the many moral blind-spots that mar the politics of the Democratic Party is American imperialism.
It was June 20th and we antiwar vets had traveled all the way to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the midst of a pandemic to protest President Trump’s latest folly, an election 2020 rally where he was to parade his goods and pretend all was well with this country.
The€ Washington Post€ has taken its Cold War campaign against China, Russia, and Iran to a new level.€ In the Sunday edition of its Outlook section, the€ Post€ gave front-page coverage to long articles by former ambassador Michael McFaul and former€ New York Times’ writer Tim Weiner to trumpet Russia’s “constant aggression” and its “brutal Cold War rules.”€ There was no hint whatsoever of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to improve Russian-American relations over the past two decades, and no suggestion that the actions of the United States over the past 25 years have significantly contributed to the poor state of relations between Moscow and Washington.
If all carbon dioxide emissions were immediately and permanently shut off in the year 2020 (with 417ppm of CO2 presently in the atmosphere), when would the natural uptake of CO2 by Earth’s vegetation (primarily, at first) bring the CO2 concentration down to its “ancient” level of 280ppm?; and when would the average global surface temperature return to its 1910 level (the “ancient” level, with 0€°C of global warming)?
We should not be propping up a dying industry.
Critics have charged that "it's appalling to see Trump's EPA using the coronavirus as an excuse not to protect Americans from polluters."
These outcomes are stunning blows to the oil and gas industries, as well as President Trump’s anti-environment agenda, which has consistently pushed for the expansion of pipeline projects. On-the-ground protests have helped center pipeline resistance in our political discourse about Indigenous sovereignty and climate justice, and these lengthy legal battles are making serious inroads into stopping their expansion.
Here’s a brief look at the status of these legal challenges to pipeline expansions and what this week’s news might mean for the environmental movement going forward.
We must consume less. We must change€ everything we know.
"The North Atlantic right whale is the€ world's first€ large€ whale€ species nearing extinction. Its extinction is entirely preventable."
The first time I read Jeremy Brecher’s classic work of labor history, Strike! was the summer of 1974. I had picked up the book the previous fall at a bookstore servicing the college community at the University of Maryland in College Park. My other purchase that day was Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It’s funny what one remembers. I was working as a short-order cook at a local IHOP in 1974 and if any place needed some justice for its workers, that IHOP certainly qualified. Not that anything like that was going to happen, but it was nice to fantasize. Brecher’s tales of strikes and militant labor actions by workers demanding respect, fair wages, and union representation fired me up almost as if I were participating in the events he describes.
Axel Honneth writes a lot. A very great deal, in fact. He is now considered the leading figure in the third generation of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Over the last two and half decades, Honneth has stirred up a few storms when he opened up new areas of inquiry in Critical Theory and Marxian studies. Critical theory now understands that contemporary (and historical) social movements and conflicts cannot be comprehended in terms of either material interests or self-preservation alone. Workers’ movements in the nineteenth and early twentieth century were infused with a moral concern for the dignity of human beings.
The coronavirus has exposed the failures of the global economic system. Here’s a post-pandemic alternative.
Well, it’s over. After nearly a century of self-promotion, the American Dream has been officially declared over.
"If California is serious about addressing racial and income inequities, we must create a banking system that centers people not profits."
The coronavirus crisis has pushed state and local governments to the edge of a budget cliff; some have already started their tumble into the abyss. State tax revenue dropped by almost 50 percent in April compared to a year earlier as businesses shuttered and people delayed paying taxes. Meanwhile, these governments are spending vastly more to meet residents’ increased health and economic needs.
The pandemic has claimed nearly 15 million U.S. jobs. Meanwhile, high flying financial traders are making a killing off the market volatility caused by the crisis. A new House bill would tax Wall Street windfalls to guarantee good jobs for people in high unemployment areas.
About 75 percent of Americans trusted the federal government to “do what is right” when polled during most of the last years of the Eisenhower administration and early years of Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency.
As we reported earlier this week, the U.S. Justice Department has been sitting on mountains of evidence against Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex-trafficking operation and his co-conspirators since July of 2006 when the Palm Beach, Florida Police Chief, Michael Reiter, handed a deeply investigated case against Epstein and his co-conspirators over to the FBI.
They say coronavirus doesn’t discriminate, that it puts us all at risk, that it dictates an equally threatening future for all humankind. But the measures that have been implemented in Central America to deal with the pandemic are proof of the monumental, pre-existing inequality of our societies, and how quickly the neoliberal capitalist system takes advantage of sexism, misogyny, racism and all phobias against the “other” to reproduce and strengthen its dominion over the vast majority of beings on this planet and the planet itself.
Three airline industry companies slated to receive $338 million in public money designed to preserve jobs in the hard-hit industry have laid off thousands of workers anyway, according to Treasury disclosure filings and public layoff data.
Democrats of the Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi variety – Wall Street, “corporate” Democrats — eager to hold onto power and to make the world safe for the overripe capitalist system they, along with Republicans, superintend are riding high right now.
In a pair of 7-2 rulings, the Supreme Court rejected President Trump’s claim of absolute immunity under the law. The court ruled a Manhattan grand jury could have access to the president’s tax returns, but it remains unlikely any of Trump’s tax records will be seen before the election. “Legally, Trump had a big loss,” says investigative reporter David Cay Johnston, founder and editor of DCReport.org. “Politically, he got a big win out of this court.”
The Supreme Court issued its highly anticipated decisions yesterday in two cases concerning oversight, presidential immunity, and the balance of powers. Both cases address whether subpoenas seeking financial information about President Donald Trump’s business dealings, including his personal tax returns, can be enforced.
The court held in one case that subpoenas in a criminal investigation into Trump’s business dealings by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance can be enforced. The court’s decision in the second case, concerning congressional subpoenas to the president’s shadowy longtime accounting firm, was more complex. That case will go back down to lower courts with a four-pronged test created by Chief Justice John Roberts that aims to preserve Congress’ authority to conduct oversight while ensuring they don’t abuse those powers.
Boris Johnson, the UK premier, may face a humiliating day in court over his plans to save the country’s economy from the Covid-19 crisis.
I have written many times that I thought the focus on wealth inequality, as opposed to income inequality, was misplaced. There are many practical, political, and legal problems associated with taxing wealth that are considerably smaller when we talk about altering the economic structures that redistribute so much income upward.
"Senate Republicans have blocked nearly every effort to help states safely administer their elections this fall. It's hard to see their opposition as anything other than blatant voter suppression in the middle of a pandemic."
The notion of "America First" hasn't protected us but instead has wrecked national security.
As a Marxist agitator and lowlife who wants to, as Trump puts it in a recent teleprompted fascist address, “tear down our statues, erase our history, and indoctrinate our children” I feel obliged to make some remarks—to all the impressionable children of the world—about the moron president’s ringingly stupid statement last week under Mt. Rushmore:
It’s hard to pick out the highlights of the trump’s endless production of verbal flatulence.€ Two recent examples offer the opportunity.
"It's time to break with the past and build toward a new, progressive vision of U.S. foreign policy."
“Bubonic Plague Found in a Herder in Inner Mongolia, China Says,” read the New York Times headline (7/6/20). “A city put control measures in place after one confirmed case of the disease, which caused the Black Death in the Middle Ages,” the subhead elaborated. The story’s lead described the case as “a reminder of how even as the world battles a pandemic caused by a novel virus, old threats remain.”
Jon Stewart’s new Hollywood film,€ Irresistible,€ is getting mixed reviews as a broad satire of big money in politics and the political consulting racket. But it’s well worth watching just because of the timeliness and relevance of its other subject matter—the Democratic Party’s frantic recruitment of veterans to run for public office.
The above quote is an assessment of George W. Bush by Joe Biden.
"It built a secret supply chain for the lethal drugs so that participating companies wouldn't face public pressure to have nothing to do with this barbarity."
Ed Sanders, the irrepressible poet and pacifist, rises early every morning, reads CounterPunch, writes verses and works on his glyphs (rhymes with cliffs) which combine images and texts and that have a long history that goes back to the ancient Egyptians and perhaps before them. A student of both Greek and Latin with an innate curiosity about U.S. and world history, Sanders is a kind of walking/talking glyph who receives dozens and dozens of requests for interviews to talk about Charles Manson, the Fugs (the band which he cofounded in 1964 with Tuli Kupferberg), sex, drugs, Jimi Hendrix, Neal Cassady and much more.
It was June 20 and we anti-war vets had traveled all the way to Tulsa, Okla., in the midst of a pandemic to protest President Trump’s latest folly, an election 2020 rally where he was to parade his goods and pretend all was well with this country.
The neoliberal logic of everything for the rich is now so deeply embedded in American political economy that its base assumptions appear untouchable, except in rare and extraordinary circumstances. With the Covid pandemic exacerbating the current crisis of capitalism, political and economic defense mechanisms make restoring the people and institutions that created the crisis appear to be the only alternative (once again) to solving it. And from the potential victory of a social democratic program five months ago, electoral choice is now between a right-wing demagogue and the chief architect of the carceral state, militarization of the police and liberal obeisance to capital.
Officials in Russia’s Khabarovsk Territory have conducted searches targeting multiple Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) members, reports the faction’s regional duma leader, Sergey Zyubr.
I know what you are thinking: “Yet another article on social media where some dude is going to yap about polarization and algorithms, and what it all means for the state of our democracy.” I don’t think the problem is that complicated.
Over the past two years, a growing and somewhat unconventional faction of leaders on the American right have caught the attention of the press. This faction — who often refer to themselves as either the “new populist right” or “national conservatives” — includes, most notably, Tucker Carlson at Fox News and Senators Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton. It also features several lower-profile but increasingly prominent journalists and authors, such as Julius Krein (founder and editor of American Affairs), Oren Cass (founder and executive director of American Compass) and Saagar Enjeti (host of “Rising” at The Hill).
In a new book, Mary Trump — the president’s niece — describes Donald Trump as a “sociopath” who grew up in a dysfunctional family that fostered his greed and cruelty. Donald Trump’s younger brother, Robert, is seeking to block the sale of the book on the grounds that it violates a confidentiality agreement, but publisher Simon & Schuster says 600,000 copies of the book have already been distributed ahead of its July 14 publishing date. Investigative journalist David Cay Johnston, who has reported on Trump for three decades, says the book is “very, very important” and helps to answer how Trump got to the White House.
On January 9, 2020, Ambassador Karen Pierce—the United Kingdom’s permanent representative to the United Nations—spoke at a meeting on the UN Charter. “Nobody could accuse the founding members of a lack of ambition when they drafted the Charter,” Ambassador Pierce said. “But at times, the United Nations has often suffered from an almost unbridgeable gap between the power of its central vision and the actual actions it has been able to carry out.” Ambassador Pierce said that she did not just mean that the United Nations’ agencies had failed, but that the member states had failed as well. The 1945 charter, she said, “makes very clear the emphasis on states to cooperate, to harmonize actions to attain common ends.”
Built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I on the site of a church commissioned by Constantine, founder of Constantinople, the Hagia Sophia has hovered over the historical capital of the eastern Roman Empire since 537. Early visitors were awestruck, especially by the basilica’s central dome, covered with millions of shimmering gold tiles. “We did not know where we were, in heaven or on Earth,” envoys from Kievan Rus reported in the tenth century.
Crusaders plundered the cathedral in 1204, making off with its gold, silver and relics, many of which ended up in Venice. Similar scenes ensued in 1453, when the Ottoman army captured the city—the “red apple” at the end of the world, they called it. Mehmet, their 21-year-old sultan, marched into the cathedral, pouring dust over his head as a sign of respect, and immediately ordered its transformation into a mosque. Nearly five centuries later it was modern Turkey’s secular founder, Kemal Ataturk, who had the shrine converted into a museum. Christian mosaics covered up with plaster saw the light of day for the first time since the Ottoman conquest.
Goya Foods, whose products are a staple of American households, became the target of a boycott and considerable backlash on Friday after its leader praised President Trump during a visit to the White House.
Bob Unanue, the president of Goya Foods, was at the White House on Thursday to announce that the company would donate one million cans of chickpeas and another one million pounds of food to food banks in the United States as part of the Hispanic Prosperity Initiative, an executive order from Mr. Trump that was created to improve access to educational and economic opportunities.
I’m a reluctant participant in the debate over free speech and the alleged threat of “cancel culture.” I’ve hesitated to join in part because these controversies seem like a rehash of the earlier sterile arguments in the 1980s and ’90s about political correctness. In the brouhaha over both PC and cancel culture, there’s been a disheartening reliance on ridiculously overheated metaphors (guillotines and gulags always in the wings) and bogus anecdotes. In 1991, Dinesh D’Souza, already a notorious charlatan, snookered many liberals, including, sadly, the great historian C. Vann Woodward, with his book Illiberal Education, which offered a fundamentally dishonest account of many controversies, including curriculum changes at Stanford and the Guatemalan civil war.
Earlier this week I wrote about the open letter that was published in Harper's, signed by around 150 very prominent writers/thinkers. My response to it was to heavily criticize both the premise and the specifics in the letter, and to argue that it sought to do the very thing it claimed to be against. That is, it presented itself as support for free speech and counterspeech, and against attempts to shut down speech -- and yet, almost all of the (deliberately vague) examples they pointed to were not examples of shutting down speech, but rather examples of facing consequences from speech and counterspeech itself. The open letter could -- and in many cases was -- read to basically say "we should be able to speak without professional consequences."
Harper’s Magazine’s July 7th “Letter on Justice and Open Debate” is making its rounds in popular political discourse, and takes aim at the “PC” “cancel culture” we are told is being fueled by the most recent round of Black Lives Matter protests. This cancel culture, we are warned, is quickly and perniciously taking over American discourse, and will severely limit the free exploration of competing viewpoints.
You can imagine my chagrin when I discovered that Harper’s, a magazine that I have subscribed to since the early 80s, provided a platform for “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.” The open letter was a denunciation of “cancel culture” in the name of liberal values as if angry Tweets by mostly powerless young people had anything to do with state-sponsored censorship. Although I will say more about how and why this letter materialized, it is worth pointing out that one of its signatories is Cary Nelson, a professor emeritus at the U. of Illinois. In 2013, the board of trustees sent Steven Salaita a letter stating they were hiring him for a job teaching American Indian studies. Behind the scenes, Nelson and major donors connected to the Israel lobby had already begun a campaign to persuade the board to rescind the offer because of Salaita’s pro-Palestinian views. He had already resigned a tenured position when the board caved into Zionist pressures. That left Salaita unemployed. Today he drives a school bus and will likely never teach again.
America magazine has been at the forefront of the efforts to silence such discussion by demonizing and stigmatizing those who engage in it. And now they want the bishops to speak out? The bishops know better. If they do, they’ll be denounced as “Islamophobic” themselves, probably by America magazine among others, and may even be disciplined by that learned imam Pope Francis, who has enforced the false claim that Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists far more stringently than he has defended any actual element of Catholic faith. Whisper anything to the contrary and the U.S. Catholic Bishops will move ruthlessly to silence you. They’re going to speak out now? You’re dreaming, America mag, and you’re to a large extent responsible for the present situation.
"It is appalling that the€ VOA's new boss could be so reckless about the safety of journalists," said PEN America.
Arrested on July 7, 2020, on suspicion of committing treason, Roscosmos communications adviser and former Kommersant and Vedomosti correspondent Ivan Safronov was vetted repeatedly by the intelligence community to do his job. His most recent background check was in May 2020, when he started at Russia’s space agency. He was also screened as a journalist when working with the Defense Ministry and in the Kremlin press pool. Meduza explains who vetted Ivan Safronov and how.
“No-one should make any judgement about Julian Assange without watching this short and powerful film.”€ (Peter Oborne, journalist and broadcaster)“This film is shocking, a real wake-up call. It should be watched by anyone concerned about human rights, the moral responsibilities of democratic states and the importance of justice for all individuals.”€ (John McCarthy, author & broadcaster)“A powerful film that makes you think twice about Julian Assange.”€ (Peter York, author & broadcaster)€ The premiere of John Furse’s myth-busting new documentary ‘NOT IN OUR NAME: The Psychological Torture of Julian Assange’ (24 mins) is taking place on Tuesday July 14th at 6.00pm at a special Zoom Forum organised by Don’t Extradite Assange campaign.This revelatory film shows how WikiLeaks founder Assange is a victim of prolonged psychological torture, an abuse of human rights and international law recognised and classified by the United Nations (UN).In February 2020 the UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) published a landmark report on psychological torture. It was written by their Special Rapporteur on Torture Professor Nils Melzer.Melzer had been responsible for reporting to UNCHR on the world-famous case of Assange. He’d been asked by Assange’s defence team to investigate the condition of a man who for 9 years had been the target of US authorities for publishing a treasure trove of US intelligence files given to the online publisher by whistleblower Chelsea Manning.Once he started to look into the case he realised that “When you scratched the surface things didn’t add up.” His findings were explosive.In the film we discover how a sustained assault on his credibility as a journalist and publisher and a deliberate enterprise to break his psychological and physical health has developed.‘NOT IN OUR NAME: The Psychological Torture of Julian Assange’ is a film that will confound viewers just as the UN Special Rapporteur was confounded when he discovered the truth behind the headlines.Don’t Extradite Assange info: http://www.dontextraditeassange.comThe Courage Foundation: https://www.couragefound.orgClick here to watch the trailer.Click here to register for the event.
I am prepared to die, if it comes to it. I look ahead, and all I see is suffering. But what is the point of good health in life, if I cannot be home?
We may know where one is, we may regularly pass by one, but most of us will never go to prison. Dark Islands of Confinement, existing in a space separated from the rest of society, where men, women and youths are locked up, often poorly treated, seldom rehabilitated.
In spite of Trump’s evident erratic administrative style and his disastrous mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. president continues to have significant support among whites, especially whites with no college. This suggests that at the present time in the United States there are significant ideological obstacles to the formation of a national popular consensus for progressive social change. Progressives and liberals can attain narrow electoral majorities, with the blue states having a slightly larger representation in the national government than the red states. But a narrow electoral majority is not sufficient for the forging of the national consensus necessary for overcoming the present destructive political and cultural division of the nation.
"These statues stood as a reminder to Black and brown people of white supremacy and injustice long after the physical chains of slavery. By tearing them down, we're sending a message about our communities' needs. We ask, which side are you on?"
“This monument will never be desecrated,” Donald Trump bloviated at his second rally during the COVID-19 pandemic, a 4th of July white supremacy-fest held in the shadow of Mount Rushmore. The mask-less crowd roared its approval. This is his response to a nation roiled by the dual crisis of an unprecedented pandemic and the racial reckoning rumbling through our nation in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. In a time of unparalleled crisis, he chooses to make a promise to our nation. But not a promise to use his office to defend the country from a virus that has killed more than 130,000 of our fellow citizens, nor a promise to protect the livelihoods of millions who have lost their jobs during the pandemic. Not a promise to confront systemic and institutionalized racism. And certainly not a promise to defend our elections from foreign interference. No, Trump’s promise is to defend the Confederacy and the Lost Cause. Maybe Stephen Miller can find him a portrait of Jefferson Davis to replace the one of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office? But then again, Steve Bannon probably didn’t tell Trump who Jefferson Davis was.
As the winds of change whip through the world of sports, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) remains a windless desert full of dry-husk ideas that appear brittle amid today’s zeitgeist of principled athlete activism. While other sports leagues—like the National Women’s Soccer League—are making space for their athletes to express political dissent, the IOC is lagging behind, digging in its heels to argue that politics and the Olympics don’t mix.
Don’t think that the President of the United States is a racist, catering to the worst elements in American society. Trump’s racism is a matter of record and every supporter, business tycoon and apologist knows this is a fact. He is a close to an American dictator that the United States has had in modern history; Benito Mussolini, to be exact, mixed with a with a sprinkling of the Adolf Hitler’s philosophy. Trump’s racism extends to corporate boardrooms, financiers and others who have gotten rich of his tax cuts and the trillions doled out by the Federal Reserve to salvage US business during the Pandemic of 2020.
I should be such a happy Queer, shouldn’t I? At least that’s what I’m told. After all, aren’t all the other Queer folks just so goddamn happy? The ones on TV certainly appear to be, and even the ones I know seem to agree that shit’s getting better and I suppose in many respects it is. Then why do I find myself feeling like a genderfuck Charlie Brown every July, once the parades have gone home? This year’s Pride Month seemed particularly festive, even with the much hyped specter of COVID lurking just behind every glory hole. After all, 2020 marked the 5th year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to essentially legalize gay marriage across all 50 states and the 5th year anniversary of the Democrats pretending they were for it all along. It also marked another landmark decision from the Supreme Court this year to recognize that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 actually applies to us. Yet, whenever people ask me about these winds of change, my response always leaves them flummoxed and disjointed, like they expect me to slap my hands together like an excited seal and my refusal to perform as expected makes me jaded, ungrateful, contrarian, and a bunch of other adjectives which give people a very PC way to accuse me of being a bad Queer.
On Tuesday morning, Steve Tompkins presided over a town hall event at the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department in Boston. The participants were Senator Ed Markey and Representative Joe Kennedy III, candidates in the September 1 primary that will effectively decide November’s Massachusetts Senate race. The audience consisted of Suffolk County inmates, who addressed the sheriff with deference as they approached the podium to pose their questions. One of the candidates was Tompkins’s sometime-boss: The Kennedy campaign appointed him as an adviser in early June, having secured his endorsement in October 2019.
"Beforehand I would say that staying in the U.S. was my first option for my career. Now, being honest, Canada, Europe, and New Zealand and Australia seem like a much better choice."
Very few California law enforcement agencies welcomed a new state law that finally lifted the ordained opacity that shielded misbehaving cops from the public's scrutiny. The law that went into effect at the beginning of 2019 gave California residents access to records dealing with misconduct, use-of-force, and other "bad apple" behavior for the first time in decades.
Two-thirds of the American people say that President Donald Trump is doing a poor job handling both the coronavirus pandemic as well as race relations in the United States.
As we reported here earlier, the Supreme Court is examining a CFAA case that could have far-reaching implications for… well, just about anyone who uses any online service, website, platform, or device. The case deals with a cop who abused his access privileges to run unapproved searches of government databases in exchange for cash. Obviously, this is far from an ideal case to argue against overbroad readings of an overbroad law. But, given the abuses perpetrated under this law, non-ideal cases will have to do if we don't want to be turned into criminals by generous judicial interpretations of the phrase "unauthorized access."
Along The Line is a non-profit, education-based podcast that provides listeners with context and analysis about various critical and contemporary issues and topics. Hosted by Dr. Nolan Higdon, Dr. Dreadlocks (Nicholas Baham III), and Janice Domingo. ATL’s Creative Director is Dylan Lazaga. Mickey Huff is ATL’s producer. ATL’s engineer is Janice Domingo. Adam Armstrong is ATL’s webmaster. Along the Line is brought to you by The Media Freedom Foundation. Listen to our previous content at https://www.projectcensored.org/atl/ Along the Line is a proud member of the Demcast Network. https://demcastusa.com/ Listen to Along the Line on these platforms: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3E5JGKCDVVePzxQxFY7jJg?si=jd65roYdQwWYA00TC9K6tg Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/along-the-line/id1447780425?mt=2 Follow us on Twitter: ATL Official Twitter – https://twitter.com/alongtheline2 Dr. Nolan Higdon – https://twitter.com/Nolan_higdon Dr. Nicholas Baham III – https://twitter.com/doctordredlocks Janice Domingo – https://twitter.com/j_nice44 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alongthelineshow/ RSS feed: https://www.projectcensored.org/feed/podcast/along-the-line Send us an email: [email€ protected] Check out these books: The Anatomy of Fake News by Nolan Higdon – https://www.projectcensored.org/product/the-anatomy-of-fake-news-a-critical-news-literacy-education-pre-order-singed-copy/ United States of Distraction by Nolan Higdon and Mickey Huff – https://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100388060 Support Along the Line and Project Censored: https://www.projectcensored.org/support/
Less than a week before George Floyd was laid to rest in a Pearland, Texas, cemetery, a California-based risk analysis company published a report highlighting how three major Houston-area petrochemical plants — about 20 miles due east of Floyd’s burial site — were unprepared to deal with the increasing incidence of severe weather linked to climate change. “The estimated damage of extreme flood events at the three facilities will balloon by 3-8 times within the next decade,” the report stated. Presently, models show a 100-year caliber flood resulting in 35-40 percent of the facilities being inundated by water. Due to factors like sea level rise, the same caliber storm is estimated to inundate 80 percent of the operations by 2030. And that estimate was a low-ball figure. The report acknowledged it didn’t take into account the risk of exposing surrounding communities to hazardous materials.
LGBTQ activist and artist Yulia Tsvetkova has been fined 75,000 rubles (approximately $1,437) for “promoting non-traditional sexual relationships among minors” — a violation of Russia’s so-called “gay propaganda” law.€
In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that much of eastern Oklahoma, constituting nearly half the state, is Native American land, recognizing a 19th century U.S. treaty with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump nominee, joined the court’s liberal wing in a narrow 5-4 ruling that found state authorities cannot criminally prosecute Indigenous peoples under state or local laws. The court’s bombshell decision — which also impacts the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Seminole Nations — is a major victory for Indigenous sovereignty and treaty rights. “It’s a landmark case, and probably the most important Indian law case in the last half a century to come down from the court,” says lawyer Sarah Deer, a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma and a professor at the University of Kansas. “The language of the decision itself goes far beyond Oklahoma.”
St. Petersburg’s Manege Central Exhibition Hall launched a new exhibition on July 6, titled “As they see us. A portrait of Russia by the Magnum Agency.” The display features the work of famous documentary photographers such as Henri Cartier Bresson, Robert Capa, Eve Arnold, Thomas Dworzak, and others, who took photographs in the USSR and Russia between 1947 and 2020. The exhibition at the Manege — expertly curated by photo historian Nina Gomiashvili — includes 265 works from 39 Magnum Agency photographers, some of which are being shown to the public for the very first time.
Administrators at a St. Petersburg school called the police claiming that one of their students was responsible for raising a LGBTQ pride flag in front of the building on July 9, the St. Petersburg-based outlet Bumaga (“Paper”) reports.
A 16-year-old boy in Kalamazoo, Michigan, died this spring after workers pinned him to the floor at the residential facility where he lived — after he’d thrown a sandwich at lunch. While held on the ground, he told them: “I can’t breathe.”
At least 70 people have died in law enforcement custody in the last decade after saying the words “I can’t breathe,” a recent New York Times investigation found. But just as adults have died after being restrained, so have children.
Reverse warrants are being challenged in a criminal case involving a bank robbery in Virginia. These warrants (also called "geofence warrants") work in reverse, hence the nickname. Rather than seeking to search property belonging to a known suspect, investigators approach Google with a demand for information on all cellphones in a certain location at a certain time and work backwards from this stash to determine who to pursue as a suspect.
And attacks on these might come in many forms, and take on many different names, but they’re still dangerous regardless of the clothes they wear.
So let’s focus on that—the principles and those who are attacking them—not the left/right name-calling on the random item of the week.
The audit, which was the culmination of two years of examination of the social network, was another signal of how power by the largest tech companies is increasingly under scrutiny. Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon are all facing questions over how they are wielding their influence and what effects it has had. Later this month, the chief executives of all four companies are set to testify in front of Congress.
But the report was especially devastating for Facebook, because its executives had pointed to it as a sign that the company was seriously grappling with the content of its site.
On June 26 the Central Lombok regent, Moh. Suhaili Fadhil Thohir, instructed all female Muslim civil servants to wear a “cadar” (or “niqab”) Islamic face covering instead of a face mask as part of the battle against the coronavirus pandemic. He also suggested holding a contest for the best niqab.
Iran's Human Rights Organization (IHR) announced on Thursday, July 9, that authorities have executed a prisoner in Mashhad Central Prison for "drinking alcohol."
Citing the prisoner's attorney, the Norway-based IHR confirmed that the man was hanged early Thursday, without giving his name. Some Iranian activities on social media said his name was Morteza Jamali and he had two children.
Arghya Sengupta: It is important first to clarify whose rights we are talking about. If it is the right of (these) Chinese companies, then of course, these rights have been affected. If it is the rights of Indian individuals who use platforms like TikTok either to run their business or to just become popular, I don’t think there is a rights violation there. I can do the same thing by moving to another platform.
We've repeatedly noted that while Huawei certainly engages in some clearly sketchy shit (like many modern US telecom giants), the evidence supporting the Trump administration's global blacklist of the company has been lacking. Despite more than a decade of accusations and one eighteen month investigation that found nothing, the Trump administration still hasn't provided any public evidence supporting the central justification for the global blackballing effort (that Huawei works directly for the Chinese government to spy wholesale on Americans).
Despite Silicon Valley's liberal reputation, its biggest companies aren't finding a lot of outspoken allies on the left. Many progressive groups have called for greater regulation or antitrust action against the companies, including some calls to break them up.
It's typical in antitrust matters for liberals to take aim at big corporations and conservatives to defend them. What's new in this case: Tech also has prominent critics on the right, including the president and the attorney general.
Agritech businesses will be considering how best to protect their rights following a recent ruling that plants and animals produced by traditional breeding methods cannot be patented.
The decision issued by the Enlarged Board of Appeal at the European Patent Office (EBA) is contrary to previous decisions the EBA has issued on the patentability of conventional breeding processes. That the EBA – the EPO's highest board of appeal – has reversed its previous approach is perhaps surprising, but is thought to be as a result of political pressure from farmers and breeders, who consider that patents on plants obtained from such methods will have a huge impact on their business operations. However, the decision is likely to be viewed with some concern by businesses in the agritech sector who will be wondering how innovation in this field can be protected.
[...]
However, the decisions in Broccoli II and Tomato II led to disappointment amongst farmers and breeders, who viewed the decisions as putting unnecessary hurdles in the way of conventional breeding activities.
This article discusses aspects of ex parte appeals of patent applications before the European Patent Office (EPO). A patent applicant may appeal an examiner’s decision on refusing to grant a patent application to the EPO Board of Appeals. Four points of consideration related to the EPO appeal process are discussed below.
First, similar to the USPTO appeal process, patent applicants may consider the tradeoffs in pursuing the appeal process. In circumstances where an examiner is firmly entrenched in its positions, the appeal process provides patent applicants an opportunity to address the examiner’s positions before the EPO Board of Appeals. Patent applicants must file a notice of appeal within two months of the date of notification of the decision of first instance being appealed. Within four months after the date of notification of the decision, patent applicants must file a written statement setting out the grounds of appeal. The Board closely review the records—including the written statement submitted by patent applicants—to determine the reasonableness of the examiner’s arguments. But, the time and costs associated with the appeal process should also be considered when deciding to pursue the appeal process.
Second, patent applicants may consider filing a divisional application during the appeal process. The EPO Board of Appeals provides a preliminary opinion on decisive matters to the appealed matter at least four months in advance of oral proceeding, thus providing patent applicants an opportunity to gauge the likelihood of success of the appeal. If the likelihood of success appears low based on the preliminary opinion, patent applicants may consider filing the divisional application before oral proceeding. If patent applicants forego oral proceedings, they can recover 50% of the appeal fee.
EPO Opposition & Appeal –Practical Advice from the Mitscherlich ExpertPriority does not Extend to Equivalents of a Described EmbodimentMitscherlich PartmbBGermany, July9, 2020The European Patent EP 2 090 050 B1had been attacked by various oppositions, inter alia under the opposition ground of Art. 100(a) EPC (lack of novelty/inventive step). One of the documents, E19, cited by the Opponents appeared to be a document under Art. 54(3) EPC. That document E19claimed 8 (!) priorities with filing dates before and afterthe priority date of the opposed patent.The Opponents argued that one of the priorities having a filing date before the priority date of the opposed patent would be valid for the relevant subject-matter of the opposed patent, and that E19 would thus be novelty destroying . Document E19, however,described a first and a secondembodiment. Only the second embodiment was allegedlynovelty destroying, whereas the first embodiment was not.Thorough examination of theone allegedly valid priority of E19revealedthat this priority only disclosed the first embodiment, but not the second embodiment. TheBoard of Appealfurther noted thatthe first embodiment of E19 appears to bean equivalent of the second embodiment of E19, but that a priority claim does not extend to equivalents of an embodiment described in a priority document (cf. BoA T 685/90). The Board of Appeal thus came to the conclusion that E19 was not novelty destroying.
The group formerly known as Lady Antebellum contends in the suit that it has the legal trademark on the name, and that it is seeking no damages from her but is merely asking the Tennessee court to establish that both artists can share the moniker. In a statement, the band said negotiations broke down after White’s new intellectual [sic] property [sic] attorneys asked the country trio for $10 million.
White confirms asking for $10 million in the Vulture interview, and writer Andrea Williams lays out what her intentions had been if the settlement had been agreed to.
Writes Williams, “White says that it was simply a request for the necessary resources to support herself and, perhaps more importantly, the entire Black community. Her plan, she told me, was to use $5 million to rebrand, to start over as an artist with more than 20 years in the game — but without the high-powered label and management machine of a Lady Antebellum. The other $5 million was to be donated to the charities of her choice, including organizations that provide support to other independent Black artists.”
To help showcase their work, we’re excited to introduce our blog series and social media initiative: CC Network Fridays. At least one Friday a month, we’ll travel around the world through our blog and on Twitter (using #CCNetworkFridays) to a different CC Chapter, introducing their teams, discussing their work, and celebrating their commitment to open!€
A federal court in Utah has ordered the company behind the movie "Criminal" to pay $4,420 to an accused 'pirate'. The filmmakers sued the man for illegally downloading their movie through BitTorrent, a claim that was dropped soon after the defendant fought back.
Five individuals who administered a ring of 20 pirate sports streaming sites have been found guilty of intellectual property offenses by a court in France. The action, originally filed by Canal+ and beIN Sports, with assistance from local anti-piracy outfit ALPA, resulted in a 12 month prison sentence for the group's leader.
There is obviously a great deal of action going on currently in the streaming world, spurred on in part by the COVID-19 crises that has many people at home looking for fresh content. Between the attempts to respond to social movements and tamp down "hateful" content to changes to the competitive landscape, streaming services are having themselves a moment. But with the sudden uptick in popularity comes a new spotlight painting a target on streaming platforms for everyone from scammers to intellectual property maximilists.
