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11.17.16

Battistelli Should be Made Redundant (Fired) Before All EPO Staff Becomes Redundant in a Defunct Office That Flagrantly Mocks the Law

Posted in Europe, Patents at 10:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Another troubling message from a victim of Battistelli reveals the depths of the boss’ depravity

Battistelli fired
A once-respected patent office is now ruined by a psychopathic, aggressive bully

Summary: False accusations, manufactured (by Team Battistelli) complaints, lies about the judgment, and secrecy by threats is now the ‘golden’ standard mastered by Battistelli, a liar and abuser so villainous that he deserves no place in society, let alone a well-funded patent office

THIS MORNING’S outline from IP Kat took stock of news regarding Laurent Prunier, whom Battistelli fired while defaming him in front of all staff — certainly a Battistelli classic. This is what IP Kat said:

Firings will continue until morale improves – Merpel revisits the EPO
Merpel growls in disappointment at the dismissal of Laurent Prunier, Secretary of SUEPO The Hague and member of the EPO’s Central Staff Committee.

Understanding of this case is crucial because it’s one of many; it’s part of a pattern which is bound to repeat until stopped.

Battistelli has since then added to his lies using a column at IAM, which is increasingly giving a voice to both sides (more so than before). IAM has thankfully given Prunier (i.e. the accused as well) an opportunity to respond (response behind a paywall, although there are ways for getting around it, at least temporarily). The key part says:

Dear Mr Wild,

As the person directly concerned, I am responding to Mr Battistelli’s letter to you and would appreciate if you could publish this answer so that your readers can be fully informed.

I deny having ever harassed or defamed anyone (nor have I seen any of my fellow colleagues, staff reps and/or SUEPO officials harassing or defaming anyone).

The alleged “victim” did NOT file a complaint against me. The person who filed it was a very close associate of Mr. Battistelli.

The staff representatives in the disciplinary committee have not found that I was guilty of harassment. That finding was 3:2, only by management side.

The easiest solution for the public to assess the truth vs. story-telling is for Mr Battistelli to lift the confidentiality he imposes on me and I will gladly publish all the documents.

Bien cordialement – Best regards

Laurent Prunier

A lot of the above seems familiar as political enemies are often eliminated in this way (someone from the past exploited to manufacture a highly distorted case without that someone’s will at all, only to be followed by mere illusion of justice). Several current examples come to mind, but these are outside the scope of this post (Wikileaks for instance).

The sheer abuse Battistelli subjects staff representatives to, not to mention the systematic harassment from this sociopath, urgently needs to stop. Where are those pet chinchillas of the Administrative Council? It’s clear that Battistelli metaphorically spits on them. He needs to be fired with immediate effect and forced to pay compensation to the Office he ruined. Take away his pension, too. See how he feels about it when he’s the one on the receiving end…

But how can Battistelli be so belatedly dismissed for his antisocial behaviour and violation of his own rules? “The alternative would be unworkable if any one country could effectively fire a president,” says the following new comment. To quote the whole comment:

While I share your pain, the system is of course designed so that a single person or country cannot interfere. The alternative would be unworkable if any one country could effectively fire a president. There are of course ways and means but that is like a policy of mutual destruction whereby no agreement or diplomatic post would be respected (head of the EPO is, I think, a diplomatic passport post). Countries are rightly wary of interfering in what are tacit reciprocal agreements of respect. The ability of a non-office country I.e. not NL, DE, BE to intervene is very limited in any case.

Today (actually bumped up in the news although it’s a little old), from Boult Wade Tennant comes this article “concerning disclaimers at the EPO” as it speaks of the process through which law firms and/or their clients (applicants) typically go along when attempting to be granted an EP. “When the claims of a European patent application or patent are amended,” it says, “the amended claims must satisfy Article 123(2) EPC in order for them to be allowable. Article 123(2) EPC specifies that the European patent application or European patent may not be amended in such a way that it contains subject-matter which extends beyond the content of the application as filed. The European Patent Office (EPO) is well-known for its strict approach in making this assessment. The “gold standard”, frequently cited in EPO case law, requires that an amendment can only be made within the limits of what the skilled person would derive directly and unambiguously, using common general knowledge, from the application as filed (see G 3/89, G 11/91, G 2/10).”

Well, “gold standards” are no more at the EPO. There’s just one man with a golden crown and he has already decided that the goal is to grant patents as much as possible, as quickly as possible, until it all runs out and examiners become redundant. █

Links 17/11/2016: OpenSUSE Leap 42.2, Microsoft E.E.E. on Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 8:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • What’s important in open source today

    Jono mentioned that it’s his goal in life to “understand every nuance of how we build predicable, productive, and accessible communities.” He says we are surrounded by communities. We have Wikipedia, the maker movement, and the public becoming the VC for crowdfunding. The data backs up this trend. Community growth participation is growing across industries. Using a commercial software methodology, it would cost over $10 billion to build Wikipedia and/or Fedora. Open source is not just a passing phase.

  • How to Avoid Burnout Managing an Open Source Project

    Regardless of where you work in the stack, if you work with open source software, there’s likely been a time when you faced burnout and other unhealthy side effects related to your work on open source projects. A few of the talks at OSCON Europe addressed this darker side of working in open source head-on.

  • Netflix’s Chaos Monkey Open Cloud Utility is Worth A Look

    Not many organizations have the cloud expertise that Netflix has, and it may come as a surprise to some people to learn that Netflix regularly open sources key, tested and hardened cloud tools that it has used for years. We’ve reported on Netflix open sourcing a series of interesting “Monkey” cloud tools as part of its “simian army,” which it has deployed as a series satellite utilities orbiting its central cloud platform.

    Netflix previously released Chaos Monkey, a utility that improves the resiliency of Software as a Service by randomly choosing to turn off servers and containers at optimized times. Then, Netflix announced the upgrade of Chaos Monkey, and Chaos Monkey 2.0 is now on github. Now, in an interview with infoQ, Netflix Engineer Lorin Hochstein weighs in on what you can get out of this tool.

  • Google Collects Open Artificial Intelligence Demos, Invites You to Contribute
  • Why design and marketing matter and what to do about it

    Rachel Nabors started off the second morning of All Things Open with a great talk about the need for designers in open source.

  • How to make your own ‘unexpected’ number generator

    I don’t generally use word processors or WYSIWYG applications, because they all tend to assume that you’re designing for a single output. However, for this project I was designing for a specific output; I wanted to produce a file that would be printable on a single US Letter and A4 sheet of paper, which would then be folded into a PocketMod, and carried in one’s wallet, or used as a bookmark in a gaming book. Having used it for professional print work at a former job and for some community conferences, I knew that Scribus was the tool for the job.

  • ARK Announces Official Open Source Release of ARK Blockchain Code on GitHub

    This is a paid press relase. CoinTelegraph does not endorse and is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy, quality, advertising, products or other materials on this page. Readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company. CoinTelegraph is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in the press release.

  • An introduction to open source GIS – Part I

    Geospatial information system (GIS) solutions make sense of location-aware data, turning it into usable insights in industries as diverse as energy, agriculture, transportation, manufacturing, finance, and all levels of government

  • ReactOS 0.4.3 Released

    The ReactOS Project is pleased to announce the release of another incremental update, version 0.4.3. This would be fourth such release the project has made this year, an indication we hope of the steady progress that we have made. Approximately 342 issues were resolved since the release of 0.4.2, with the oldest dating all the way back to 2006 involving text alignment.

  • ReactOS 0.4.3 Released, Fixes Over 300 Issues

    ReactOS 0.4.3 is now available as the newest version of this open-source OS that seeks to re-implement the interfaces of Windows.

    As described earlier, ReactOS 0.4.3 has a ton of changes. ReactOS 0.4.3 has many fixes/improvements to its kernel, less crashes in the Win32 subsystem, file-system fixes, a USB audio driver has been started, a basic filter driver added, TCP/IP fixes, improvements to kernel-mode DLLs, a rewritten WinSock 2 DLL, and much more.

  • ReactOS 0.4.3 Officially Released with New Winsock Library, over 340 Bug Fixes

    Today, November 16, 2016, the development team behind the ReactOS free and open-source computer operating system designed to be compatible with Windows applications and drivers, announced the release of ReactOS 0.4.3.

  • How to Choose Between Closed-Source and Open-Source Software

    When it comes to commercial and open source tools (i.e., paid and free software) the debate as to which category of software is better continues, leaving egos, careers, and forums in ruins. I personally think that it’s impossible to definitively prove that one class of software is the best for every situation. The best source code scanning tool in the world may not do a thing for you if it doesn’t run against your code.

  • Events

    • Blender enthusiasts gather for the 15th annual conference

      This year marks the 15th Blender Conference, held in Amsterdam around the last weekend of October every year. I’ve attended quite a few of these conferences, and each year feels better than the one before. If you’ve never attended the Blender Conference, allow me to set things up for you: By open source conference standards, it’s a pretty small event. But for events focused on a single open source program, the Blender Conference is pretty impressive. I think attendance this year clocked in right around 300 people, and tickets were sold out more than a month in advance.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Back End

    • Has Linux got OpenStack licked? The Vanilla ‘Plus’ strategy

      No man is an island, nor is OpenStack removed from the fates of two of its – until recently – best-known names.

      Hewlett-Packard Enterprise was once the largest single contributor to OpenStack. Now, HPE is getting rid of its OpenStack engineers as it turns over responsibility for its OpenStack work to MicroFocus under a deal announced in September.

      The ascent of OpenStack-consulting wunderkind Mirantis experienced a hiccup with its decision to unload 100 OpenStackers and reallocate another 100. Mirantis is understood to have let go devs working on the Solum platform-as-a-service and Savanna Hadoop-as-a-service projects it started in 2013.

  • Education

    • Moodle: An Open Source Community To Protect, Improve And Sustainably Benefit From

      Open Source communities are as vibrant as the participants within them – as with any community, your return is proportional to your investment. An example of someone who is intuitively aware of this is Bas Brands. In an interview for Moodlerooms’ E-Learn Magazine, he tells his experience of sustaining a lifelong relationship with Moodle’s Open Source community, while makes a name for himself and a learning company with alluring prospects.

  • Funding

    • Sauce Labs Raises $70M for Application Testing

      Open-source based testing vendor looks to accelerate its business with new funding.

      Before any company deploys any web or mobile app, it needs to test, and that’s where Sauce Labs fits in. Sauce Labs announced on November 15 that it has raised a $70 million series E round of funding. The new capital will be used to help Sauce Labs expands its go-to-market and engineering efforts.

      The new round of funding was led by Centerview Capital Technology, IVP and Adams Street Partners. Total funding to date for Sauce Labs now stands at $101 million.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • NVIDIA GCC Backend Gets Ready For OpenMP Offloading

      While GCC 7 feature development is officially over, one of the late patches to land for GCC 7.1 in trunk are improvements to the NVIDIA NVPTX back-end.

      The big code that landed today in GCC are all of the prerequisites for supporting OpenMP offloading with the NVPTX back-end. PTX is the IR used in NVIDIA’s CUDA that is then consumed by the proprietary graphics driver for converting this representation into the actual GPU machine code. The NVPTX back-end has been part of GCC for a while now as part of OpenACC offloading and now the recent focus on OpenMP offloading.

  • Public Services/Government

  • Licensing/Legal

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Data

      • EFSA models transparency with open source ‘Knowledge Junction’

        The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has made all its models from the last 15 years available on an open source platform called the Knowledge Junction, which also encourages external submissions of data, images and videos that could go on to be used by EFSA in its risk assessments.

    • Open Access/Content

      • Editorial: Groups make Strides with open source textbooks

        With college being as expensive as it is, the high price of textbooks has always been a problem for students. Books can increase the cost of college by thousands of dollars, which can be troublesome for those already struggling to make ends meet. However, groups on campus are making efforts to alleviate this problem and make affordable textbooks a reality. The UConn bookstore recently donated $30,000 towards addressing this concern. In addition, the Undergraduate Student Government has been working along with UConnPIRG to provide open source textbooks for the student body.

        The first major initiative was undertaken with chemistry professor Dr. Edward Neth, who teaches CHEM 1124, 1125 and 1126. Working with a $20,000 donation from the student government, Neth edited an existing open access textbook and adapted it for his classes. Other chemistry professors have begun using open source textbooks as well, and this has already saved students thousands of dollars.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Cypress Has Begun Publishing Broadcom Datasheets

        Earlier this summer Cypress semiconductor acquired Broadcom’s wireless “Internet of Things” business. With that associated IP, Cypress has begun making public NDA-free data-sheets on associated chipsets.

  • Programming/Development

    • Farewell to Rob Collins

      We would like to share with you the sad news, that Rob Collins has passed away earlier this month, on November 2nd, after a short but intense illness.

      Many of you may know Rob from the sponsored massage sessions he regularly ran at EuroPython in recent years and which he continued to develop, taking them from a single man setup (single threaded process) to a group of people setup by giving workshops (multiprocessing) and later on by passing on his skills to more leaders (removing the GIL) to spread wellness and kindness throughout our conference series.

    • Examining ValueObjects

      When programming, I often find it’s useful to represent things as a compound. A 2D coordinate consists of an x value and y value. An amount of money consists of a number and a currency. A date range consists of start and end dates, which themselves can be compounds of year, month, and day.

      As I do this, I run into the question of whether two compound objects are the same. If I have two point objects that both represent the Cartesian coordinates of (2,3), it makes sense to treat them as equal. Objects that are equal due to the value of their properties, in this case their x and y coordinates, are called value objects.

Leftovers

  • Hardware

    • Touch Bar MacBook Pro teardown finds some unpleasant surprises [Updated]

      Apple is selling two new computers that it’s calling MacBook Pros: one model without the new Touch Bar and one model with a Touch Bar. But according to a teardown of the Touch Bar model by iFixit, the differences don’t stop there. The Touch Bar has an entirely different motherboard, cooling system, and internal layout. Unfortunately some of those changes make it even more difficult to repair than its cousin.

      The Touch Bar MacBook Pro has a much larger cooling system than the non-Touch Bar model—it uses two fans instead of one, and the symmetrical and vaguely mustache-shaped logic board wraps around both of them. The odd layout (plus the need to make additional room for extra chips like the Apple T1 and the second Thunderbolt 3 controller) leaves less room for other things, and as a result Apple has soldered the SSD to the motherboard in the Touch Bar MacBook Pros, much as it has in the 12-inch MacBook.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Panel Explores Relation Between Plant Breeders’ Convention And Plant Treaty

      When countries belong to several international instruments, some aspects of those instruments may run contradictory to one another. A symposium held recently by the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) sought to explore the interrelations between the convention and the international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. Farmers’ rights lie at the intersection of the two treaties and while some find the treaties complementary, some others view them as contradictory on farmers’ rights. Meanwhile, farmers themselves have been blocked from participating in deliberations.

  • Security

    • Evolution of the SSL and TLS protocols

      The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol is undoubtedly the most widely used protocol on the Internet today. If you have ever done an online banking transaction, visited a social networking website, or checked your email, you have most likely used TLS. Apart from wrapping the plain text HTTP protocol with cryptographic goodness, other lower level protocols like SMTP and FTP can also use TLS to ensure that all the data between client and server is inaccessible to attackers in between. This article takes a brief look at the evolution of the protocol and discusses why it was necessary to make changes to it.

    • Press the Enter Key For 70 Seconds To Bypass Linux Disk Encryption Authentication
    • How to fix the Cryptsetup vulnerability in Linux

      Linux enjoys a level of security that most platforms cannot touch. That does not, in any way, mean it is perfect. In fact, over the last couple of years a number of really ugly vulnerabilities have been found — and very quickly patched. Enough time has passed since Heartbleed for those that do to find yet another security issue.

    • Get root on Linux: learn the secret password
    • Security advisories for Wednesday
    • The Web-Shaking Mirai Botnet Is Splintering—But Also Evolving

      Over the last few weeks, a series of powerful hacker attacks powered by the malware known as Mirai have used botnets created of internet-connected devices to clobber targets ranging from the internet backbone company Dyn to the French internet service provider OVH. And just when it seemed that Mirai might be losing steam, new evidence shows that it’s still dangerous—and even evolving.

      Researchers following Mirai say that while the number of daily assaults dipped briefly, they’re now observing development in the Mirai malware itself that seems designed to allow it to infect more of the vulnerable routers, DVRs and other internet-of-things (IoT) gadgets it’s hijacked to power its streams of malicious traffic. That progression could actually increase the total population available to the botnet, they warn, potentially giving it more total compute power to draw on.

      “There was an idea that maybe the bots would die off or darken over time, but I think what we are seeing is Mirai evolve,” says John Costello, a senior analyst at the security intelligence firm Flashpoint. “People are really being creative and finding new ways to infect devices that weren’t susceptible previously. Mirai is not going away.”

    • This $5 Device Can Hack Your Locked Computer In One Minute

      Next time you go out for lunch and leave your computer unattended at the office, be careful. A new tool makes it almost trivial for criminals to log onto websites as if they were you, and get access to your network router, allowing them to launch other types of attacks.

      Hackers and security researchers have long found ways to hack into computers left alone. But the new $5 tool called PoisonTap, created by the well-known hacker and developer Samy Kamkar, can even break into password-protected computers, as long as there’s a browser open in the background.Kamkar explained how it works in a blog post published on Wednesday.

    • Wickedly Clever USB Stick Installs a Backdoor on Locked PCs

      You probably know by now that plugging a random USB into your PC is the digital equivalent of swallowing a pill handed to you by a stranger on the New York subway. But serial hacker Samy Kamkar‘s latest invention may make you think of your computer’s USB ports themselves as unpatchable vulnerabilities—ones that open your network to any hacker who can get momentary access to them, even when your computer is locked.

    • How does your encrypted Linux system respond to the Cryptsetup bug?

      In all three case, the encrypted system partition is still encrypted, so you data is still save. However, as detailed in the bug report, unencrypted partitions, like ones mounted at /boot and /boot/efi (on UEFI systems) might still be open for exploitation. But how far can an attacker go on such system, when the system partition is still encrypted? Not far, I hope.

      A bug always has a solution, and in this case, the authors provided an easy-to-apply workaround. I’ve expanded on it a bit in the code block below. If after applying the workaround you discover that it does not work, welcome to the club. It didn’t work on all the encrypted systems I applied it on – Ubuntu 16.10, Manjaro 16.10, and Fedora Rawhide. By the way, all three distributions were running either Cryptsetup 1.7.2 or 1.7.3.

    • Holding down the Enter key can smash through Linux’s defenses
    • 7 open source security predictions for 2017

      Everyone uses open source. It’s found in around 95 per cent of applications and it’s easy to understand why. Open source’s value in reducing development costs, in freeing internal developers to work on higher-order tasks, and in accelerating time to market is undeniable.

      The rapid adoption of open source has outpaced the implementation of effective open source management and security practices. In the annual ‘Future of Open Source Survey’ conducted earlier this year by Black Duck, nearly half of respondents said they had no formal processes to track their open source, and half reported that no one has responsibility for identifying known vulnerabilities and tracking remediation.

      The flip side of the open source coin is that if you’re using open source, the chances are good that you’re also including vulnerabilities known to the world at large. Since 2014, the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) has reported over 8,000 new vulnerabilities in open source software.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Vladimir Putin orders Russia to withdraw support for International Court amid calls for Syria air strikes investigation

      Vladimir Putin has signed an order to have Russia withdrawn from the International Criminal Court (ICC) amid calls for his military to be referred over air strikes backing President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the annexation of Crimea.

      The President instructed Russia’s foreign ministry to notify the United Nations of the country’s refusal to be subject to the body’s activity on Wednesday, following the same move by Gambia, South Africa and Burundi.

    • Anifah to attend emergency OIC meeting on Saudi Arabia missile attacks

      A Malaysian delegation led by Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman will be attending the Emergency Meeting of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers to be held in Makkah, Saudi Arabia tomorrow (Nov 17).

      The Foreign Ministry said the Yemeni Houthi missile attacks on Saudi Arabia on Oct 9 and 27 was up for discussion in the Emergency Meeting.

      “Malaysia’s participation at this meeting is an affirmation of its solidarity with Saudi Arabia in the wake of the missile attacks.

      “Malaysia hopes that the ongoing conflict in the region will be resolved through peaceful means,” the ministry said in a statement today.

    • Netanyahu Advances Submarine Deal – and His Lawyer Represents the Germans Behind It
    • Damn the torpedoes
    • Report: Netanyahu’s personal lawyer said to be behind German submarine deal
    • NSA undoes media spin on submarines
    • Iran deal critics to Trump: Please don’t rip it up

      President-elect Donald Trump spent much of his campaign railing against the Iran nuclear deal, even raising the possibility of scrapping the agreement immediately upon taking office.

      But many of the deal’s most ardent critics are now saying: “Slow down.”

      As the reality of Donald Trump’s White House win sinks in among nuclear deal opponents, some are insisting that pulling out of the agreement is unwise. Instead, they say, Trump should step up enforcement of the deal, look for ways to renegotiate it, and pursue measures to punish Iran for its non-nuclear misbehavior. Such a multi-pronged, get-tough approach may even give Trump cover to fend off any criticism he may get for keeping the deal.

    • Trump could face a nuclear decision soon

      I was the former nuclear missile launch officer who in October appeared in a TV advertisement for Hillary Clinton, saying: “The thought of Donald Trump with nuclear weapons scares me to death. It should scare everyone.” The ad featured various quotes from Trump’s campaign rallies and interviews, in which he says, among other things: “I would bomb the shit out of ’em,” “I wanna be unpredictable,” and “I love war.” As I walked through a nuclear missile launch center in the ad, I explained that “self-control may be all that keeps these missiles from firing.”

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Guy FOIAs NSA for Area 51 Docs, Finds Diner

      Area 51 will probably always be a part of science folklore, even if the truth about the legendary site is probably much more boring than many anticipate.

      Turns out, when the intelligence community is talking about Area 51, it’s actually referring to a military dining facility, according to years long Freedom of Information Act request with the NSA.

      “3 years to declassify Area 51 Intellipedia entry—and I discover it’s a dining hall at [Fort] Bliss?” the owner of The Black Vault, an online depository of FOIA requests, tweeted on Tuesday.

    • WIPO To Use Creative Commons Licences For All Of Its Publications

      The UN World Intellectual Property Organization, the foremost international body for intellectual property rights, today announced that it will make all of its publications available under Creative Commons licences – which said it helped to develop along with other organisations. The move, made along with a wide range of other major international organisations, is an effort to make its publications as widely accessible as possible, an indirect nod to the limiting nature of copyright.

    • WIPO study shows growth of women inventors [Ed: way to distract from WIPO’s horrible abuse of women and men]

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Opponents of Dakota oil pipeline protest across USA

      Opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline protested in Canada and cities around the USA on Tuesday, from San Francisco to Washington, D.C.

      Tuesday was recognized as a “Day of Action” by opponents of the 1,172-mile, 30-inch diameter underground pipeline planned to deliver crude oil from production areas in North Dakota to Patoka, Ill. The pipeline would cross through land considered sacred by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and environmentalists worry about how the pipeline might affect water quality.

      Former Democratic presidential candidate and independent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders joined demonstrators outside the White House on Tuesday evening. In a tweet, he encouraged President Obama to “stop this pipeline anyway you can. Declare Standing Rock a national monument.”

    • Trump Has Declared Climate War. But My Generation Will Win.

      Donald J. Trump’s positions on climate change amount to a declaration of war on young people like me. But millennials have a stronger position in this fight than it may first appear.

      There is no way to sugarcoat the consequences of what happened on Election Day. Mr. Trump is a disaster for the planet. His plan to “cancel” America’s adherence to the Paris climate agreement and accelerate fossil fuel production threatens to destroy global momentum on climate change. At the international climate talks now taking place in Marrakesh, Morocco, American environmentalists cried upon learning of Mr. Trump’s victory.

      “Without U.S. action to reduce emissions and U.S. diplomatic leadership, implementation of Paris will surely slow,” Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton, told The Associated Press. Keeping the increase in global warming to below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), which most scientists believe is the tipping point for catastrophic changes to the earth’s natural systems, “would become impossible,” Professor Oppenheimer said.

    • Are We All Screwed If the US Leaves the Paris Climate Agreement?

      The Paris climate agreement, a historic international treaty to curb global greenhouse gas emissions, has only been in effect for 12 days. But if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his campaign promise to “cancel” the agreement, America’s participation in the pact could be halted before it begins.

      In the wake of the election, there’s been a lot of speculation as to what could happen if the US reneges on their promise. Like all presidents before him, not everything Trump promised on the campaign trail will come to pass. But when a man who has said climate change is a hoax created by the Chinese government (a comment he later said was a joke) is elected to the White House, you might want to take his stated intentions on a major climate agreement seriously.

    • Saudi Arabia And Russia To Meet Ahead Of OPEC Meeting

      Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih and his Russian counterpart Alexander Novak are said to be heading to Qatar later this week for an unscheduled meeting, according to industry sources quoted by Reuters. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) is meeting in Doha, and though OPEC’s de factor leader Saudi Arabia is not a member of the gas forum, OPEC’s Algeria, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, the UAE, and Venezuela are.

      According to Reuters sources who had spoken on the condition of anonymity, the Saudi minister was expected to meet other OPEC ministers, and maybe Russia’s Novak, this coming Friday.

    • Saudi Arabia Warns Trump Not To Block Oil Imports

      Saudi Arabia has had a bad week: the kingdom, having spent tens of millions in “donations” to fund not only the Clinton Foundation which is now irrelevant, but also allegedly to sponsor 20% of Hillary’s presidential campaign, has suddenly found itself with no “influence” to request in exchange for its “generosity.” Instead, it is forced to engage in something it loathes: open diplomacy.

      As a result, its first attempt at engaging with the US president-elect, amounts to what is effectively a thinly veiled threat wrapped as a warning. As the FT reports, “Saudi Arabia has warned Donald Trump that the incoming US president will risk the health of his country’s economy if he acts on his election promises to block oil imports.”

    • Oil Fades After Iraq, Iran And Nigeria Oil Ministers All Decide To Skip OPEC Doha Meeting

      In yet another sign that behind the frequently blasted OPEC headlines meant to suggest a sense of OPEC unity yet which do nothing more than incite a short squeeze (as even Morgan Stanley has now admitted), there is far less cohesion, moments ago we learned that Nigeria’s Oil minister Emmanuel Kachikwu is the latest to skip this week’s Doha meeting scheduled for November 17 and 18. Earlier today we found that Iraq’s oil minister would likewise bypass the energy talks this week in Qatar, where rival producer Saudi Arabia plans to hold talks with Russia on possible collective action to limit production. Earlier today Bloomberg reported that his Iranian counterpart is also said to be giving the meeting a miss.

      Iraq and Iran both want exemptions from any OPEC cuts in output, putting pressure on Saudi Arabia, the producer group’s biggest member, to bear the brunt of a possible reduction. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has yet to find a way to finalize a preliminary deal it reached in September to curtail supply, ending a two-year policy of pumping without limits.

    • Climate change a Chinese hoax? Beijing gives Donald Trump a lesson in history

      China has rejected Donald Trump’s claims that climate change is a Chinese hoax, urging the US president-elect to take a “smart decision” over his country’s commitment to the fight against global warming.

      Trump, who is the first self-declared climate change denier to lead one of the world’s top emitters, has dismissed global warming as “very expensive … bullshit” and claimed the concept “was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive”.

      But speaking at UN climate talks in Marrakech on Wednesday, China’s vice foreign minister, Liu Zhenmin, pointed out that it was in fact the billionaire’s Republican predecessors who launched climate negotiations almost three decades ago.

      “If you look at the history of climate change negotiations, actually it was initiated by the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] with the support of the Republicans during the Reagan and senior Bush administration during the late 1980s,” Liu was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.

      The IPCC was set up by the UN Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in 1988 in a bid to better understand and respond to the risks of climate change. It received the 2007 Nobel peace prize for helping build “an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming”.

  • Finance

    • Snapchat Parent Files for $25 Billion IPO

      Snap Inc. has confidentially filed paperwork for an initial public offering that may value the popular messaging platform at as much as $25 billion, a major step toward what would be one of the highest-profile stock debuts in recent years.

    • The great CETA swindle

      On both sides of the Atlantic, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the EU and Canada is hugely controversial. A record 3.3 million people across Europe signed a petition against CETA and its twin agreement TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership). European and Canadian trade unions, as well as consumer, environmental and public health groups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) reject the agreement. Constitutional challenges against CETA have been filed in Germany and Canada and the compatibility of CETA’s controversial privileges for foreign investors with EU law is likely to be judged by the European Court of Justice.

      The controversy has also reached governments and parliaments. Across Europe, more than 2,100 local and regional governments have declared themselves TTIP/CETA free zones, often in cross-party resolutions. National and regional parliaments, too, worry about CETA, for example in Belgium, France, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Ireland, and the Netherlands. In October 2016, concerns in four sub-federal Belgian governments (led by Wallonia) over the agreement’s negative impacts, and in particular its dangerous privileges for foreign investors, nearly stopped the federal government from approving the signing of CETA.

    • Lessons from the Barroso affair: How to reform Commission ethics

      Following the revelation that former Commission President Barroso would join Goldman Sachs International, Juncker had to be prodded long and hard before passing the case on for assessment at the Commission’s ad-hoc ethics committee. At the start of November, the committee published its opinion, criticising Barroso’s lack of judgment regarding his new roles as chairman and adviser at the bank.

      And yet, the committee failed to find sufficient evidence that a breach of the ethics requirements in the European Treaty had occurred.

      Juncker is now proposing an extension of the cooling-off period for outgoing presidents from 18 months to three years. Anticipating that this may not sit well with other Commissioners, he has insisted he would still subject himself to this longer period of abstinence, even if his colleagues were to object to the change of rules for ex-presidents.

      It is, of course, positive to see the Commission finally accepting that there is a problem with its ethics rules. But Juncker’s proposal is yet another example of the Commission’s highest level insisting on regulating itself, and, after months of ignoring the public outcry over Commissioners’ scandals, it does too little to prevent future cases.

    • ‘Monster’ at the Berlaymont

      Martin Selmayr is admired, despised and feared. What’s clear: He’s the most powerful EU chief of staff ever.

    • Obama calls for ‘course correction’ to share spoils of globalisation

      Barack Obama has given a rousing defence of the virtues of democracy and warned that a backlash against globalisation is boosting populist movements around the world, in what was billed as his last public address abroad.

      Speaking near the Acropolis of Athens, the outgoing US president said that democracy – like the version invented by the ancient Greeks “in this small, great world” – might still be imperfect, yet for all its flaws it fostered hope over fear.

      “Even if progress follows a winding path – sometimes forward, sometimes back – democracy is still the most effective form of government ever devised by man,” Obama said.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • The Clinton Campaign Was Undone By Its Own Neglect And A Touch Of Arrogance, Staffers Say

      In the closing weeks of the presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton’s staff in key Midwest states sent out alarms to their headquarters in Brooklyn. They were facing a problematic shortage of paid canvassers to help turn out the vote.

      For months, the Clinton campaign had banked on a wide army of volunteer organizers to help corral independents and Democratic leaners and re-energize a base not particularly enthused about the election. But they were volunteers. And as anecdotal data came back to offices in key battlegrounds, concern mounted that leadership had skimped on a critical campaign function.

      “It was arrogance, arrogance that they were going to win. That this was all wrapped up,” a senior battleground state operative told The Huffington Post.

      Several theories have been proffered to explain just what went wrong for the Clinton campaign in an election that virtually everyone expected the Democratic nominee to win. But lost in the discussion is a simple explanation, one that was re-emphasized to HuffPost in interviews with several high-ranking officials and state-based organizers: The Clinton campaign was harmed by its own neglect.

    • Americans Throw Their Support Behind The Free Press

      Donald Trump railed against the “failing” New York Times throughout the 2016 election, and days after winning the presidency claimed the paper was “losing thousands of subscribers” for its “very poor and inaccurate” election coverage.

      Not so, says the Times. The paper has picked up new subscribers to both its print and digital editions at four times the normal rate, according to spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades-Ha.

      The Times is one of several publications to tout increased paid readership or donations in the aftermath of Trump’s victory. The uptick in subscriptions is a bright spot amid a flurry of unflattering post-mortems on the media’s role in propelling Trump to become the Republican nominee and general uncertainty about the industry’s influence going forward.

    • Republicans Stole the Supreme Court

      We are already hearing from Republicans and Democrats in leadership positions that it is incumbent on Americans to normalize and legitimize the new Trump presidency. We are told to give him a chance, to reach across the aisle, and that we must all work hard, in President Obama’s formulation, to make sure that Trump succeeds. But before you decide to take Obama’s advice, I would implore you to stand firm and even angry on this one point at least: The current Supreme Court vacancy is not Trump’s to fill. This was President Obama’s vacancy and President Obama’s nomination. Please don’t tacitly give up on it because it was stolen by unprecedented obstruction and contempt. Instead, do to them what they have done to us. Sometimes, when they go low, we need to go lower, to protect a thing of great value.

    • FBI Director Comey’s credibility issues go beyond presidential politics to 9/11 panel

      FBI Director James Comey’s credibility is under heavy fire due to his headline-making public statements about the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton that have entangled the bureau in presidential politics.

      Republicans howled in July when Comey publicly declared he wouldn’t recommend criminal charges against Clinton for her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. Over the weekend, Democrat Clinton reportedly told supporters she blames her surprising loss to President-elect Donald Trump on Comey’s announcement 11 days before the election that he had restarted the email probe, as well as his announcement two days before the election that an examination of newly discovered emails had not changed his July findings.

    • Federal prosecutors launch probe of law firm over donations

      Federal prosecutors in Boston have opened a grand jury investigation into potentially illegal campaign contributions from lawyers at the Thornton Law Firm, a leading donor to Democrats around the country, according to two people familiar with the probe.

      The US attorney’s office is one of three agencies now looking into the Boston-based personal injury firm’s practice of reimbursing its partners for millions of dollars in political donations, according to the two people. The law firm has insisted that the donations were legal, but, soon after the Globe revealed the firm’s practice, politicians began returning hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.

    • Apocalypse Then, and Now, Cracker Revolution Edition

      These things have been ongoing for the past 15 years. Obama prosecuted more dissidents, er, “whistleblowers,” than all previous presidents combined, and he did by calling them spies under the 1917 Espionage Act. The NSA as state security has been monitoring you under two administrations.

      Militarized police forces received their tanks and other weapons from two presidents. All of the terrible events that lead to Black Lives Matter took place before the election, and the killers were for the most part left unpunished by both the judiciary for criminal murders, and by the Federal-level Department of Justice for violation of civil rights. Unlike during the 1960s when the Feds stepped in and filed civil rights charges to bust up racism among local and state governments, the last two administration have not.

      When people do bad things and know they’ll get away with them, that is “normalization,” not just some hate words we have sadly all heard before.

      As for war and fracking, um, the U.S. has been engaged in global wars for 15 years, and set the Middle East on fire. Fracking has been destroying our nation for years, and oil dumped into the Gulf back in 2010.

      Fascism did not start on November 8. We have been living in a police state of sorts for some time before you all discovered it will start next year.

    • Carl Icahn Confirms 2 Trump Cabinet Contenders on Twitter

      Longtime Donald Trump supporter and activist investor Carl Icahn confirmed on Tuesday that the president-elect is looking at Wall Street veteran Steven Mnuchin as his choice for treasury secretary and billionaire Wilbur Ross for commerce secretary.

    • Trump’s vast web of conflicts: A user’s guide

      Donald Trump’s new hires should brace themselves for a full immersion in government ethics school.

      They’re going to need it given the president-elect’s sprawling business empire and his lack of interest in selling off his companies and properties outright.

      The Republican’s appointees will be running departments and agencies with direct ties to their boss’ businesses and wider political interests, from an IRS audit into his tax records to National Labor Relations Board enforcement of cases involving his hotel workers to the FBI’s investigation into the suspected Russian cyberespionage aimed at influencing an election that Trump just won.

      Unlike past presidents who took office with considerable wealth, from George H.W. Bush to John F. Kennedy, the setup Trump is creating for his financial assets — leaving his three oldest adult children and a “team of highly skilled executives” in charge while he’s in the Oval Office — appears likely to expose large numbers of people the president hires to an unprecedented set of conflicts spanning his entire federal government.

    • Jesse Jackson: Obama should pardon Hillary Clinton

      Speaking at President Gerald Ford’s alma mater, The Rev. Jesse Jackson called for President Obama to issue a blanket pardon to Hillary Clinton before he leaves office, just like Ford did for Richard Nixon.

      Stopping short of saying Clinton did anything wrong, Jackson told a large crowd of University of Michigan students, faculty and administrators gathered at daylong celebration of his career that Obama should short-circuit President-elect Donald Trump’s promised attempt to prosecute Hillary Clinton for use of a private e-mail server.

      “It would be a monumental moral mistake to pursue the indictment of Hillary Clinton,” Jackson said. He said issuing the pardon could help heal the nation, like Ford’s pardon of Nixon did.

    • It’s Worse Than You Think

      Widespread social unrest will ignite when Donald Trump’s base realizes it has been betrayed. I do not know when this will happen. But that it will happen is certain. Investments in the stocks of the war industry, internal security and the prison-industrial complex have skyrocketed since Trump won the presidency. There is a lot of money to be made from a militarized police state.

      Our capitalist democracy ceased to function more than two decades ago. We underwent a corporate coup carried out by the Democratic and Republican parties. There are no institutions left that can authentically be called democratic. Trump and Hillary Clinton in a functioning democracy would have never been presidential nominees. The long and ruthless corporate assault on the working class, the legal system, electoral politics, the mass media, social services, the ecosystem, education and civil liberties in the name of neoliberalism has disemboweled the country. It has left the nation a decayed wreck. We celebrate ignorance. We have replaced political discourse, news, culture and intellectual inquiry with celebrity worship and spectacle

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Megyn Kelly’s Cautionary Tale of Crossing Donald Trump

      The Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly has spent the better part of the last year living in the main gladiator pit of 2016, becoming as much a target for Donald J. Trump as any of his opponents and emerging as a pivotal figure in the forced resignation of the Fox News Channel chairman Roger Ailes, whom she accused of sexual harassment.

      On Tuesday, she was in her office at the Fox News headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, taking stock, preparing for the next phase — a Trump presidency — and warning fellow journalists to look at her experience during the campaign as a potential cautionary tale.

      “The relentless campaign that Trump unleashed on me and Fox News to try to get coverage the way he liked it was unprecedented and potentially very dangerous,” she said, casual but animated behind her translucent desk. If he were to repeat the same behavior from the White House, she said, “it would be quite chilling for many reporters.”

    • Twitter suspends American far-right activists’ accounts

      Twitter has suspended the accounts of a number of American “alt-right” activists hours after announcing a renewed push to crack down on hate speech.

      Among the accounts removed were those of the self-described white-nationalist National Policy Institute, its magazine, Radix, and its head Richard Spencer, as well as other prominent alt-right figures including Pax Dickinson and Paul Town.

      Spencer, who according to anti-hate group SPLC “calls for ‘peaceful ethnic cleansing’ to halt the ‘deconstruction’ of European culture”, decried the bans as “corporate Stalinism” to right-wing news outlet Daily Caller.

      “Twitter is trying to airbrush the alt right out of existence,” Spencer said. “They’re clearly afraid. They will fail!” Members of the Reddit forum r/altright called the move a “purge”.

    • Booming e-business and tight censorship: China wants to have the internet both ways

      Liu Yunshan, the No. 5 in the Politburo Standing Committee and in charge of ideological control, doesn’t look like an internet guru or a man who can influence the future of one of humanity’s great inventions.

      Yet the 69-year-old senior cadre will be the keynote speaker at the third World Internet Conference, an event organised by the Chinese government.

    • China holds ‘World Internet Conference’ as censorship intensifies

      As China hosts execs from global tech companies at its World Internet Conference, human rights advocates are warning that online censorship in the country is only getting worse.

    • Satan, sex and censorship: 17 banned album sleeves

      As so often, The Beatles led the way. Barely a month before Lennon’s “bigger than Jesus” comments got their records burned in America, The Beatles almost pole-axed their “lovable Moptops” image with the sleeve for a US-only album, Yesterday… And Today. Satirising their US label’s latest mincing of their UK records into an extra LP, the Fabs kitted themselves up as butchers for the cover, chopping up dolls with gleeful grins. The Beatles as a premonition of Alice Cooper was all too much, and quickly recalled copies had an innocuous publicity pic glued over the grisly bloodbath.

    • AZERBAIJAN: Raids, fines enforce state religious censorship

      Police and officials of the State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations have raided at least 26 shops and six homes in October and early November across Azerbaijan to seize religious literature being distributed without the compulsory state permission. Some book sellers have already been punished. All the literature seized from shops appears to have been Muslim.

      Not one State Committee official in Baku or in branches around the country, police officer or court would discuss these raids, literature seizures or punishments with Forum 18.

      The “Expertise” Department at the State Committee in Baku – which implements the state censorship – told Forum 18 on 16 November its head Nahid Mammadov was out of the office and no-one else could speak for the department. Asked about the many raids, the man simply said that everything done was “in the law”. The man who answered the phone of State Committee official Aliheydar Zulfuqarov – who participated in raids on shops in the southern town of Masalli (see below) – put the phone down when Forum 18 introduced itself. The State Committee press office told Forum 18 its head, Yaqut Aliyeva, was away until 18 November and no-one else could speak to the press.

    • TUSC vindicated in censorship protest

      As the democratic credentials of ‘official politics’ are being increasingly questioned, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) recently chalked up a modest victory against establishment efforts to prevent alternative voices from being heard.

    • Southampton Labour must bin Tory cuts!
    • Professor compiles list of fake, misleading ‘news’ websites

      An assistant professor’s list of fake and misleading websites, many of which have driven the dialogue of politics this election season, is going viral after being published this week.

    • Trump Supporters Warn of Censorship, Suggest Alternatives, In Battle Over Fake News Sites

      On Tuesday Twitter announced it was rolling out new tools for reporting abuse on its network and later that day it suspended numerous “alt-right” accounts. Then Facebook came under fire after a report exposed it knew how to combat fake news articles, but did not tackle the problem for fear of conservative backlash. Facebook has since removed ads from fake news sites and a “rogue” team allegedly been put in place to take on fake news. Google, who was criticized for fake news filtering onto its front page, is also taking action to ensure more real reporting from credible outlets is highlighted. On the surface this news seems positive, but to some Donald Trump supporters this news means one thing: censorship.

    • Breitbart and Private Eye among websites accused of false, misleading, clickbait or satirical ‘news’

      The spread of fake online news has itself been hitting headlines in recent weeks, with accusations flying that such content may have helped sweep Donald Trump into the White House.

      Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor of communications and media at Massachusetts’s Merrimack College, has created a list of websites as a teaching resource for her students, which categorises websites and organisations that publish “false, misleading, clickbait-y, and/or satirical ‘news’ sources.”

    • Here are all the fake ‘news’ sites to watch out for on Facebook
    • Fed up with phony news? College professor creates list of ‘false, misleading, clickbait-y’ sites
    • How to break it to your friends and family that they’re sharing fake news
    • Fed up with fake news, Facebook users are solving the problem with a simple list
    • This List of Fake News Websites Proliferating on Facebook Is Staggering
    • Twitter’s Misbegotten Censorship
    • Could alt-right account bans spell the end of Twitter?
    • Twitter suspends prominent alt-right accounts
    • Twitter Suspends Accounts Affiliated With Alt-Right
    • Twitter Suspends Alt-Right Accounts, Promises Tools To Fight Abuse
    • Q&A: The science of online censorship

      Information doesn’t flow through the internet as freely as it seems. Depending on which country you live in, you may see different content on a webpage—or no content at all. As the internet has become the most important public space for everything from protest movements to pornography, governments around the world have started locking it down. And that has given rise to a new field of research: the science of censorship. ScienceInsider caught up with Phillipa Gill, a computer scientist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, to find out what’s cooking in this online cat and mouse game. She spoke to us yesterday from the Internet Measurement Conference in Santa Monica, California, which she co-chaired. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

    • Chief Censor says his office’s work is now more important than ever

      A century ago, viewing a picture of a woman’s exposed decolletage was considered a “grave danger” to the average person’s moral health.

      “Suggestive” or violent images – laughably tame by today’s standards – were quickly sliced from incoming films by New Zealand Government censors. They were the moral guardians of what the country viewed.

      Today, as censorship in this country celebrates its centenary, critics are asking – is there even any point?

    • Pressure grows on Facebook over censorship

      Palestine Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, Color of Change, 18MillionRising and Dream Defenders also signed the letter, which specifically points to the disabling of Palestinian journalists’ accounts and the removal of Black activists’ content as examples of Facebook’s censorship.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Liberals need to stop carping about Saudi Arabia. In a dangerous world, our allies cannot be saints

      Among the many conflicts marked during this year’s Remembrance Day commemorations, the ceremony to mark the 25th anniversary of the First Gulf War provided a timely reminder of what can be achieved when nations work together.

      In an age when the very notion of military intervention has become anathema for political elites on both sides of the Atlantic, the highly successful 1991 campaign to liberate the Gulf state of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s illegal annexation marked a high point in relations between the West and its Arab allies.

      Western forces, it is true, were responsible for conducting most of the operation. But the supporting role provided by Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, which actively facilitated the formation of a 500,000-strong foreign army on its soil, was invaluable.

    • Indonesia Says Jakarta’s Christian Governor Is Suspected of Blasphemy

      Indonesia was thrown into turmoil on Wednesday after the National Police named the Christian governor of the country’s capital a suspect in a blasphemy investigation over comments he made about the Quran. Outrage over those remarks set off bloody street protests this month.

      The governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, Jakarta’s popular leader, has been barred from leaving the country as the authorities continue their investigation of him, Tito Karnavian, the national police chief, said at a televised news conference.

      Mr. Basuki, who is known as Ahok and is running for re-election in February, has been a political target of radical Islamic organizations since taking office in 2014. Some of those groups seized on comments he made in September to a group of fishermen, in which he lightheartedly cited a Quran verse that warns against taking Christians and Jews as friends.

    • UK woman ‘gang-raped’ in Dubai now faces jail for ‘extra-marital affair’ in Sharia arrest

      The 25-year-old is not allowed to leave the country after claiming she was attacked by two UK men last month.

      The situation is not uncommon in the middle-eastern country that prohibits women from being alone with men who they are not married or directly related to.

      Under Sharia law, adultery can be substantiated through a confession or if four people witnessed the offence and testified before the court.

      The men are understood to have flown back to the UK.

    • British woman who says she was gang raped arrested on ‘extra-marital sex’ charges in Dubai as attackers go free

      A British tourist has been arrested and charged with illegal “extra-marital sex” in Dubai after telling police she had been gang raped.

      The 25-year-old woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was on holiday in the United Arab Emirates when she was allegedly attacked by two British men last month.

      When she reported the rape at a police station, she was allegedly arrested for breaking Emirati laws against extra-marital sex, while her attackers have since flown home to the UK.

    • Here are the devastating capabilities of the weapons Obama will leave behind for Trump

      Even the extreme legal theories of the George W Bush administration were mild compared to some of the “compromise” positions Obama’s DoJ argued for, and now Donald J Trump gets to use those positions to further its own terrifying agenda of mass deportations, reprisals against the press, torture and assassination, and surveillance based on religious affiliation or ethnic origin.

      When it came to things like closing Guantanamo, Obama argued for limits on establishing offshore black-sites and military tribunals, but refused to shut the door on them. So maybe Trump won’t be able to use Gitmo to house the people he has kidnapped by his CIA, but he can use the legal authority that Obama argued for to set up lots of other Guantanamos wherever he likes.

      Likewise torture: Obama decided that it was better to move and and bury the CIA torture report, and had his DoJ block any attempt to have torture declared illegal, which would have given people opposing Trump’s torture agenda with a potent legal weapon that is now unavailable to them.

      Obama argued that the president should be able to create kill lists of Americans and foreigners who could be assassinated with impunity, and argued against even judicial review of these lists.

    • A Message to President-Elect Trump About Upholding Freedom in the Muslim World

      President-elect Donald Trump, the American people voted you as the future 45th President of the United States and entrusted you with many missions and responsibilities. As head of a great democracy you will be the defender of what the forefathers of the American nation cherished the most: liberty and freedom of speech for all the citizens irrespective of their origin, religion, wealth or social status.

    • Rutgers Lecturer Forcibly Sent For Psych Evaluation By NYPD For Some Tweets About The Election

      As you may have noticed, a lot of people have opinions on the election that just happened. And, many people are using social media to express those opinions, for good or for bad. Some people are excited, some people are angry. And no matter which side you fall on, you should recognize that expressing opinions on social media is protected (and should be encouraged as part of a healthy political process involving public discussion and debate). Kevin Allred, a lecturer at Rutgers University, is definitely on the side of folks who aren’t happy with the results of the election. And, like many, he’s been tweeting about his opinions on the matter. Having read through his Twitter feed, it doesn’t seem all that out of the ordinary from stuff that I’ve seen from others. In fact, I’d argue that it actually seems fairly tame.

      Either way, last night he Tweeted that the NYPD had come to his house because the police at Rutgers believed he was “a threat” based on some of his tweets. There were two tweets in particular. One was about burning a flag in protest and the other was a rhetorical question about the 2nd Amendment.

      [...]

      Allred blames Trump for this — and while we’ve made it clear that we’ve got lots of concerns about Trump’s views on free speech, Trump isn’t exactly directing police to pick up people for various tweets. But the whole situation is extremely disturbing nonetheless. It’s frightening how little law enforcement seems to recognize or care about the First Amendment.

    • Chelsea Manning Petitions Obama for Clemency Before Leaving Office

      Imprisoned Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning is petitioning President Obama to grant her clemency before he leaves office. Manning is serving a 35-year sentence in the disciplinary barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after being convicted of passing hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks. She has been subjected to long stretches of solitary confinement and for years was denied gender-affirming surgery.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • FCC abides by GOP request, deletes everything from meeting agenda

      The Federal Communications Commission has deleted every major item from the agenda of its monthly meeting, apparently submitting to a request from Republicans to halt major rulemakings until Donald Trump is inaugurated as president.

      Republicans from the House and Senate sent letters to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler yesterday urging him to stand down in his final months as chairman. The GOP pointed out that the FCC halted major rulemakings eight years ago after the election of Barack Obama when prompted by a similar request by Democrats.

    • GOP tells FCC to just stop what it’s doing until Trump is inaugurated

      Republicans in Congress have urged the Federal Communications Commission to avoid passing any controversial regulations between now and Donald Trump’s inauguration as president. If FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler complies with the request, it could prevent passage of rules designed to help cable customers avoid set-top box rental fees—and any other controversial changes.

      “Leadership of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will soon change,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, wrote to Wheeler yesterday. “Congressional oversight of the execution of our nation’s communications policies will continue. Any action taken by the FCC following November 8, 2016, will receive particular scrutiny. I strongly urge the FCC to avoid directing its attention and resources in the coming months to complex, partisan, or otherwise controversial items that the new Congress and new Administration will have an interest in reviewing.”

  • DRM

    • Bug Related To HDCP DRM Is Giving New Playstation PS4 Pro Owners Headaches

      Sony recently released the slightly-more powerful Playstation 4 Pro console, a beefier version of its existing PS4 console that brings 4K and HDR functionality to customers with 4K sets. 4K was already proving to be a bit of a headache for early adopters, many of whom didn’t realize that in order to get a 4K device to work, every device in the chain (particularly their audio receiver) not only needs to support 4K and the updated HDMI 2.0a standard for HDR (high dynamic range), but HDCP 2.2 — an updated version of the copy protection standard used to try and lock down video content.

      HDCP has always been a bit of a headache, like so much DRM usually causing consumers more trouble than it’s worth, and then being ultimately useless in trying to prevent piracy that occurs anyway. The latest incarnation of this issue appears to be plaguing PS4 Pro owners, who are plugging their $400 console into their expensive new receiver and 4KTV only to find that the unit doesn’t work as advertised.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • The CJEU decision in Soulier: what does it mean for laws other than the French one on out-of-print books?

        As reported by this blog through a breaking news post, yesterday the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued its decision in Soulier and Doke, C-301/15.

        This was a reference for a preliminary ruling from the French Conseil d’État (Council of State) and concerned the compatibility with EU law [read: the InfoSoc Directive] of the 2012 French law to allow and regulate the digital exploitation of out-of-print 20th century books.

      • Police Raid Pirate Site & Seize 60 Servers Following MPAA Complaint

        A complaint from the MPAA has led the cyber-crime division of Ukraine’s National Police to raid FS.to, one of the country’s most popular pirate sites. Thus far 60 servers have been seized and 19 people have been arrested, but police fear the site could reappear since some individuals are on the run and a mirror site may be standing by in Russia.

      • “Anti-Piracy Outfit Impersonates Competitor, Steals its Clients”

        Two employees of anti-piracy outfit MarkScan have been arrested by Indian police. The men are accused of masquerading as competing anti-piracy firm Aiplex, informing its clients via a fake website that the company was shutting down, and suggesting MarkScan as an alternative. The CEO of the company was allegedly in on the scam, which is still under investivation.

11.16.16

Amid Scapegoating, Union-Shaming and Gagging by Battistelli, SUEPO’s Prunier Provides More Details on Union Busting at the EPO

Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:26 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The naked emperor continues to show his true colours

Naked Trump

Summary: The authoritarian boss of the EPO, who tried to prevent his victims from speaking out about how they had been abused by him (using revocation of their pension as a threat), causes even greater anger within the Office, stirring up fresh conversations about how to remove him

THE EPO has gotten so bad that we’ve lost sight of the USPTO. The EPO is now an international scandal and we have begun approaching the world’s leading media, which ought to cover it like it covered FIFA, VW (Dieselgate), and so on.

In response to defamatory union-shaming by Battistelli (echoing/mirroring what he so stridently did to a judge) and some utterly tasteless comment from an anonymous coward, Prunier has just published another comment to clarify the following points:

As the person directly concerned, I am responding to anonymous who posted on Sunday, 13 November 2016 at 07:30:00 GMT

1) I deny having ever harassed or defamed anyone (nor have my other fellow staff reps or SUEPO officials unfairly sanctioned or to be sanctioned, since several are still targeted).

2) The alleged victim did NOT file a complaint against me. The person who filed it was a very close associate (and protégée) of Mr Battistelli.

3) The staff representatives in the Disciplinary Committee have not found that I was guilty of harassment. That finding was 3:2, only by management side.

It is therefore quite inappropriate for you to hide behind anonymity to give credit to Battistelli’s smear campaign without being in possession of any relevant information.

The easiest solution for the public to assess the truth vs. story-telling, is for Mr Battistelli to lift the confidentiality he imposes on me and I will gladly publish all the documents.

Other new comments rightly express worry that nothing can stop Battistelli because the system is broken, partly because he himself broke it. One person wrote:

How does a “President of the Boards of Appeal” fit this paragraph of Article 10 EPC?

Uneasily I would say.

The fact is that the position of the “President of the Boards of Appeal” doesn’t exist under the terms of the primary law of the EPC.

It has been created under secondary legislation at the level of the Implementing Regulations.

In CA/D 6/16 the Admin Council decreed that Rule 12 should be replaced by the following new Rules 12a, b, c and d:
Rule 12a – Organisation and management of the Boards of Appeal Unit and President of the Boards of Appeal
Rule 12b – Presidium of the Boards of Appeal and business distribution scheme for the Boards of Appeal
Rule 12c – Boards of Appeal Committee and procedure for adoption of the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal and of the Enlarged Board of Appeal
Rule 12d – Appointment and re-appointment of the members, including the Chairmen, of the Boards of Appeal and of the Enlarged Board of Appeal

These new Rules entered into force on 1 July 2016.
They still don’t appear to have been published in the official online version of the Implementing Regulations.

But who cares about such fine points of detail nowadays … ????

Another person wrote:

“Battistelli is not doing what the Council wants. I asked what the Council can do and apparently the Council cannot do much because of the 3/4 of the votes clause. I said Battistelli just needs 10 countries to stay forever and follow his plans and nobody raised a credible objection. …
So let us imagine that Battistelli stays another few years to continue his plans. The Council cannot do much because of this blocking minority. What would the effect be? What would the European Patent system look like in, say, 2 to 4 years?”

Not so simple.

Without a 3/4 majority Batty cannot be replaced and can sit tight.

However, as shown in October a simple majority (i.e. 50%+) would suffice to prevent him from “following his plans”.
Thus, if a simple majority of the states decided to oppose him they could block any further action on his part.

Such a scenario would result in a stalemate situation rather than BB simply continuing his plans.

He would continue to sit on his throne but wouldn’t be able to enact any further “reforms”.

Not sure if we are heading in that direction but it is one possibility.

“I guess that the money the the European Patent Office funnels into the National Patent Offices is enough a reason to keep the ministers shut,” the following comment said; it resembles the hypothesis that delegates have their votes 'bought' by Battistelli. Here is what the comment said:

“He would continue to sit on his throne but wouldn’t be able to enact any further “reforms”.

No further “reforms” certainly, but he still would be able to fire people at will to put the AC under pressure and in an embarrassing situation – as it did with Prunier when the AC denied him the last “reforms” he had submitted.

It’s absolutely incomprehensible that no single European minister responsible for IP is intervening in a situation like this when the president of an international organization that is supposed to be under their control is totally going rogue …

I guess that the money the the European Patent Office funnels into the National Patent Offices is enough a reason to keep the ministers shut …

Disgusting.

In the coming days or weeks we are going to leak yet more documents and we are going to share some of them with leading journalists. It’s time for the whole world to see what happened to the EPO under the leadership of this naked emperor. As always, more leaks are very much welcome and encouraged, at the very least to help Battistelli with his goal of “transparency” (with which comes accountability). █

Don’t Believe the Lies; Microsoft Hates Linux and Merely Pulls E.E.E. Tactics Against It, Including .NET Promotion

Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 6:58 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Making GNU/Linux work the ‘Microsoft way’ so as to give Microsoft greater control

‘We had some painful experiences with C and C++, and when Microsoft came out with .NET, we said, “Yes! That is what we want.”‘

–Miguel de Icaza, now Microsoft employee

Summary: A warning about lots of prepared (in advance) Microsoft brainwash, or intentionally misleading material that strives to portray Microsoft as a friend of GNU/Linux even though the company actively attacks GNU/Linux and tries to bring the competitor under its own control

WHILE we prefer to focus on the EPO and the US patent system’s software patents (the USPTO still grants them, but courts barely tolerate these), something happened today which we cannot simply brush off and ignore.

“It’s all about proprietary software. There’s nothing to celebrate here.”If one believes the lie, Microsoft now “loves Linux” and has officially joined the Linux Foundation. I have already responded to that over at Tux Machines where I also included many dozens of links to today’s nonsense (reproduced below), which was virtually everywhere. Remember these were quietly prepared in coordination with Microsoft/Linux Foundation before the announcements were actually made. It’s a well-orchestrated PR blitz that came out within an hour or two, reaching a lot of news channels simultaneously and drowning out opposition/scepticism. Almost all the links are there, except newer ones that we’ve found since, e.g. [1, 2] (it is a multi-faceted E.E.E. move that serves to also impose .NET and proprietary SQL Server on more users). There are reactions on the Web from pro-GNU/Linux people who are not so easily fooled or mesmorised by the torrent of Microsoft propaganda, delivered primarily by Microsoft-friendly writers who got groomed and prepared for it at least a day in advance (one writer accidentally published his article half a day too early and quickly took it down, he told us). There is relevance to patents, as one Red Hat employee put it: “I do wonder what #Microsoft joining #Linux foundation means wrt to those 250+ patents #Microsoft licenses to #Android OEMs.”

Compare that to optimism from those who got paid to write Microsoft-friendly puff pieces in a Windows site lately. No doubt there will be a lot more puff pieces about it in the coming days, maybe also some editorials critical of the move (I got approached for comments).

It is not a “love affair” but an attack on GNU/Linux, a classic E.E.E. move. It is imposing .NET on us, too. It’s all about proprietary software. There’s nothing to celebrate here. It’s not a victory for the Linux Foundation but a defeat; they finally sold out as Microsoft bought them off for just half a million dollars (slush funds to Microsoft).█

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Microsoft Steps Up Its Commitment to Open Source

    Today The Linux Foundation is announcing that we’ve welcomed Microsoft as a Platinum member. I’m honored to join Scott Guthrie, executive VP of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise Group, at the Connect(); developer event in New York and expect to be able to talk more in the coming months about how we’ll intensify our work together for the benefit of the open source community at large.

  2. Microsoft Joins The Linux Foundation As A Platinum Member
  3. Microsoft’s Linux love affair leads it to join The Linux Foundation

    No, this isn’t The Onion and it’s not April Fool’s Day. Microsoft has joined The Linux Foundation.

    Microsoft announced that it was joining forces with The Linux Foundation at the Microsoft Connect developer event in New York.

  4. Microsoft announces the next version SQL Server for Windows and Linux
  5. Microsoft joins The Linux Foundation as a Platinum member
  6. Microsoft joins the Linux Foundation
  7. Microsoft—yes, Microsoft—joins the Linux Foundation
  8. THE END TIMES ARE HERE: Microsoft embraces Google, Apple, Samsung and even Linux in one go
  9. Microsoft’s open source love fest continues as it joins Linux Foundation
  10. Microsoft Goes Linux Platinum, Welcomes Google To .NET Foundation
  11. Microsoft joins Linux Foundation in another nod to open-source code
  12. Microsoft Is Joining the Linux Foundation
  13. Microsoft Joins Linux Foundation
  14. Microsoft joins Linux Foundation in another step toward greater openness
  15. Microsoft joins the Linux Foundation, 15 years after Ballmer called it ‘cancer’
  16. Microsoft joins the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member, Google joins .Net community
  17. Microsoft is now a Linux Foundation Platinum Member
  18. That’s an expensive Linux install! Microsoft gives the Linux foundation $550000
  19. Microsoft joins the Linux Foundation because 2016 isn’t weird enough already
  20. Microsoft just got its Linux Foundation platinum card, becomes top level member
  21. 4 no-bull takeaways from Microsoft joining the Linux Foundation
  22. Microsoft announces the public preview of the next release of SQL Server on Linux and Windows
  23. Microsoft Joins Linux Foundation, Google Joins .NET Community
  24. Microsoft just joined the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member
  25. Linux has won, Microsoft joins the Linux Foundation
  26. Microsoft is joining the Linux foundation as a platinum member
  27. Microsoft joins Linux Foundation, Google added to .NET community
  28. Microsoft seeks to grow Azure platform with products, partnerships
  29. Microsoft Joins Linux Foundation As Platinum Member
  30. Microsoft Fortifies Commitment to Open Source, Becomes Linux Foundation Platinum Member
  31. Microsoft contributes to open ecosystem by joining Linux Foundation and welcoming Google to the .NET community
  32. Linux Academy Partners with Microsoft Visual Studio Dev Essentials Program
  33. Microsoft Joins the Linux Foundation as the World Remains the Right Side Up
  34. Hell freezes over as Microsoft joins the Linux Foundation
  35. Microsoft Joins Linux Foundation as a Platinum Member
  36. Microsoft Connect: Visual Studio 2017, SQL Server v.Next for Windows and Linux and More
  37. SQL Server joins the Linux party, new preview comes to Linux and Docker
  38. Microsoft joins The Linux Foundation
  39. Google joins .Net Foundation
  40. Microsoft and Google bury the hatchet in one small way
  41. Google joins Microsoft’s .NET Foundation
  42. Microsoft announces Visual Studio for Mac, preview of the next SQL Server with Linux and Docker support
  43. Microsoft’s SQL Server Next for Linux, Windows hit public preview [Ed: Proprietary software with surveillance is not a gift]
  44. Google signs on to the .NET Foundation as Samsung brings .NET support to Tizen

    Microsoft is hosting its annual Connect(); developer event in New York today. With .NET being at the core of many of its efforts, including on the open-source side, it’s no surprise that the event also featured a few .NET-centric announcements…

  45. Samsung launches Visual Studio Tools for Tizen preview, lets developers build apps with .NET
  46. Microsoft joins the Linux Foundation, welcomes Google to .NET community
  47. Microsoft releases SQL Server Preview for Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux
  48. Microsoft says Linux is no longer ‘cancer,’ joining Foundation
  49. Samsung Joins Microsoft .NET, C# Developers to Build Apps for Tizen Devices

The EPO Lowering Patent Quality, Accused of Issuing Invalid Patents, and Promoting Software Patents (Hence Trolls)

Posted in Asia, Europe, Patents at 6:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The future of the EPO is like that of a pipeline/production line, totally drunk on “production” (quantity, not quality)

Very drunk

Summary: The EPO under Battistelli is increasingly just a pipeline of bogus/low-quality patents which fuel patent trolling all around the world and also in Europe (harming the European economy)

THE EPO under Battistelli’s awful leadership gradually becomes more software patents-friendly, whereas the USPTO is moving away from such patents. Such is the nature of the Office under Battistelli, the man who will be remembered as the person who brought down the whole Organisation, severely punishing staff that dared warn about it.

Software patents at the EPO should not be allowed, yet in two counties/continents that forbid these (India also) the EPO keeps promoting these. We have mentioned this many times before, especially last month. Today the EPO did it again and also today an article was published by Tufty The Cat (quite well known in patent circles). “The EPO issues invalid patents too,” said the headline and here is what the body said:

The sole drawing of the patent is shown here on the right. Basically, the patent claims a hairdressing salon in a shipping container (or some other kind of mobile structure) with a window cut into it. This is not, however, even the broadest claim. Claim 9 defines “A mobile structure for a hairdressing salon according to one of claims 1 to 7″. According to the usual EPO interpretation of the word “for”, this would cover any shipping container.

How this application got through the EPO system is at the moment quite beyond me. From a quick review of the prosecution file though, it seems that the examiner was persuaded that adding a window made the invention allowable over US 2006/137188 A1. Just in case anyone has any doubt about whether the invention is novel, let alone inventive, there is prior art in the form of shipping containers repurposed as hair salons such as this article from 11 June 2011 (before the 23 August 2012 priority date of the patent). For further avoidance of doubt, the internet archive wayback machine (which is normally accepted by the EPO as evidence of publication date) confirms that the article was available on 16 June 2011. One of the photographs in the article, shown below, seems to have everything required according to claim 1. Incidentally, the search that led me to this took about five minutes.

The subject of awful patent scope and EPO disregarding the instructions from politicians was discussed in Dutch Parliament yesterday. We have received more information since then and also engaged in a short discussion on the subject with the politician in question. One EPO insider said to us that a “similar debate should simultaneously take place in Germany, Austria and Belgium.”

Speaking of the EPO pushing software patents not only into Europe but potentially India too, see this new article from Jack Ellis at IAM. One patent maximalist said that “Dolby Selects India for Asserting Patents Against Chinese Companies,” but the actual headline is “Dolby is the latest foreign patent owner to select India for asserting against Chinese companies” and it shows a Western company playing a proxy game with patent predators in India (also see IAM’s remarks on this Harman acquisition):

Dolby has reportedly sued Oppo and Vivo in the Delhi High Court, accusing the two Chinese electronics and smartphone manufacturers of failing to pay appropriate royalties for use of its patented technologies. Dolby follows Ericsson in seeking to assert its rights in India, something that may indicate that the jurisdiction is growing in importance from an IP strategy perspective.

BGR India reported on Friday that the Delhi High Court had issued an order relating to cases that the audio technology company had filed against a number of defendants, including Oppo, Vivo and their parent firm BBK Electronics, as well as a number of affiliated local entities. IAM contacted Dolby on this matter, but the company declined to comment.

“Dolby follows Ericsson,” says the above and as we noted last year, Ericsson, a European company, officially brought patent trolls to Europe (to London in fact). █

Links 16/11/2016: X.Org Server 1.19, Firefox 50

Posted in News Roundup at 8:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • 75,000 children in Nigeria could starve to death within months, says UN

      In Nigeria, 75,000 children risk dying in “a few months” as hunger grips the country’s ravaged north-east in the wake of the Boko Haram insurgency, the United Nations warned on Tuesday.

      Boko Haram jihadists have laid waste to the impoverished region since taking up arms against the government in 2009, displacing millions and disrupting farming and trade.

      Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, has reclaimed territory from the Islamists but the insurgency has taken a brutal toll, with more than 20,000 people dead, 2.6 million displaced, and famine taking root.

      UN humanitarian coordinator Peter Lundberg said the crisis was unfolding at “high speed”.

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Donald Trump’s Drone War

      My new book, The Drone Memos, will be published by The New Press today. The Guardian is running a 4000-word slice of the 20,000-word introduction on its website this morning. The introduction is unsparing in its criticism of the Obama administration. I argue that the administration claimed too much power, and that its efforts to shield that power from congressional, judicial, and public review were irresponsible and short-sighted. I blame the administration for normalizing extrajudicial killing and for turning over to the next administration authorities that are breathtakingly broad and not subject to any meaningful constraint that can’t be lifted by a stroke of the next president’s pen.

      I began writing the introduction a year ago and finished it several months ago, when the world looked very different than it does today. I have complicated feelings about the release of the book at this particular historical moment. Obama has been a great president in many ways, and the United States is a stronger, more humane, and more just country now than it was when he took office. If Donald Trump tries to fulfill even a small fraction of his campaign pledges, the next four years will be a true test of our democratic institutions, and I’m sure I’ll look back on the Obama years nostalgically.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Trump’s Denial of Catastrophic Climate Change Is a Clear Danger

      Donald Trump’s stunning victory has left millions in dread and moved thousands into the streets. Fear has spread among immigrants and Muslims. The 20 million who have received health insurance under Obamacare worry about Trump’s vow to repeal it. The media speculate about what he might do: Will he really tear up the Iran nuclear deal or order the CIA to start torturing people again? But it is Trump’s denial of catastrophic climate change—he has repeatedly said he considers it a “hoax”—and his vow to reverse all of the progress made under President Obama to address it that pose some of the most chilling and potentially irreversible threats.

    • Noam Chomsky: Donald Trump’s election will accelerate global warming and humanity’s ‘race to disaster’

      The renowned American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky has warned the US Republican party is now “the most dangerous organisation in world history” because of the denial of climate change by President-elect Donald Trump and other leading figures.

      Following the US elections, Professor Chomsky said it appeared humans planned to answer what he called “the most important question in their history … by accelerating the race to disaster”.

      Mr Trump has already appointed a prominent climate change denier to run his transition team covering the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and other advisers include people with close links to the fossil fuel industry.

  • Finance

    • Michael Gove raises question of ‘quickie divorce’ for UK from EU

      Michael Gove, the former cabinet minister and leading Brexit campaigner, has pressed experts on how the UK could achieve a “quickie divorce” with the EU regardless of the economic consequences, as he raised concerns that civil servants were over-complicating the process.

      The ex-justice secretary, who led the Vote Leave campaign with Boris Johnson, questioned why the UK cannot just leave the EU without having settled its future relationship with the bloc after having sorted out “housekeeping” related to outstanding payments.

      Speaking at the newly formed Commons Brexit committee, he said there was a tendency for civil servants to think any problem requires more civil servants and suggested “Occam’s razor” should be applied, implying the simplest solution is the best one.

    • EU-US trade deal “not realistic” under Trump presidency, says Germany

      There is no chance of completing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) under US president-elect Donald Trump, a senior German official has said.

      “We don’t harbour any hopes of a transatlantic trade deal,” the unnamed official told the Guardian, adding: “That’s not realistic.”

      Along with the UK, Germany has been the main supporter of TTIP in Europe. Now that the UK is set to leave the European Union after June’s Brexit vote, the admission by Germany that TTIP is not going to happen is effectively the death-knell for the deal.

      But the comments are hardly surprising in the wake of the earlier news, reported by Ars, that the US would abandon the similar Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP). However, Germany’s acknowledgement represents a huge setback for the European Commission, which was still trying to persuade Trump to proceed with TTIP last week.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Google Gets a Seat on the Trump Transition Team

      Google is among the many major corporations whose surrogates are getting key roles on Donald Trump’s transition team.

      Joshua Wright has been put in charge of transition efforts at the influential Federal Trade Commission after pulling off the rare revolving-door quadruple-play, moving from Google-supported academic work to government – as an FTC commissioner – back to the Google gravy train and now back to the government.

    • Was Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s Attack Dog, Paid Illegally?

      A campaign watchdog group filed a complaint with federal election officials that alleges Stephen Bannon—recently named one of Donald Trump’s top White House advisers—may have gotten paid illegally during Trump’s campaign by pro-Trump billionaires.

      And now, a new set of Federal Election Commission filings that haven’t yet been reported on may give the group’s case some additional heft.

      At issue are payments of nearly $200,000 that a super PAC called Make America Number 1 made to a company tied to Bannon. On Aug. 17, Bannon left his post as chairman of Breitbart News and became the Trump campaign’s CEO. Available FEC filings show the campaign didn’t pay Bannon a salary. Larry Noble, General Counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, said he believes the super PAC covertly paid Bannon for his campaign work through his moviemaking company. Neither the super PAC nor Bannon provided a response to Noble’s comment.

    • GOP rushes to embrace Trump

      Some Republicans acknowledged there had been a sea change since Trump surprised Democrats and some in his own party by defeating Hillary Clinton.

      Republicans on Capitol Hill “are so excited. People are coming up to me, telling me they’ve been with Trump since day one,” Collins explained to reporters.

      “And I kind of look and say, ‘Well, OK, if you say so.’

      “Donald Trump has accomplished for us something no one thought possible. … Everything is red, and we’ve got four solid years to get this right.”

      After winning the GOP nomination to be Speaker for the next two years, Ryan gave yet another shout-out to Trump — the second of the day.

    • How Bannon flattered and coaxed Trump on policies key to the alt-right

      Soon after terrorist attacks killed 130 people in Paris last year, Donald Trump faced sharp criticism for saying the United States had “no choice” but to close down some mosques.

      Two days later, Trump called in to a radio show run by a friendly political operative who offered a suggestion.

      Was it possible, asked the host, Stephen K. Bannon, that Trump hadn’t really meant that mosques should be closed?

      “Were you actually saying, you need a [New York City police] intelligence unit to get a network of informants?” Bannon asked. He continued: “I guess what I’m saying is, you’re not prepared to allow an enemy within . . . to try to tear down this country?”

    • Let Them Eat Facts: Why Fact Checking Is Mostly Useless In Convincing Voters

      Last week I wrote a bit about the ridiculous and misguided backlash against Facebook over the election results. The basis of the claim was that there were a bunch of fake or extremely misleading stories shared on the site by Trump supporters, and some felt that helped swing the election (and, yes, there were also fake stories shared by Clinton supporters — but apparently sharing fake news was nearly twice as common among Trump supporters than Clinton supporters). I still think this analysis blaming Facebook is wrong. There was confirmation bias, absolutely, but it’s not as if a lack of fake news would have changed people’s minds. Many were just passing along the fake news because it fit the worldview they already have.

      In response to that last post, someone complained that I was arguing that “facts don’t matter” and worried that this would just lead to more and more lies and fake news from all sides. I hope that’s not the case, but as I said in my reply, it’s somewhat more complicated. Some folks liked that reply a lot so I’m expanding on it a bit in this post. And the key point is to discuss why “fact checking” doesn’t really work in convincing people whom to vote for. This doesn’t mean I’m against fact checking, or think that facts don’t matter. Quite the reverse. I think more facts are really important, and I’ve spent lots of time over the years calling out bogus news stories based on factual errors.

    • Let’s Get Uncomfortable, Election Edition

      For the people now protesting, good for you to make your views known. It is important.

      May I also suggest you use the remaining time to protest Obama’s refusal to prosecute torture, curtail the NSA, fail to close Gitmo, his jailing of whistleblowers, his decision not to use his Justice Department to aggressively prosecute police killers of young Black men under existing civil rights laws, his claiming of the power to assassinate Americans with drones, and his war on journalists via gutting of FOIA?

      Because silence on those issues means Trump inherits all of that power.

      May I also suggest volunteering for some of: homeless shelters, LGBTQ and vet’s crisis lines, Planned Parenthood, Congresspeople who will work for these causes, ACLU, Occupy (who addresses the economic inequality that drove many Trump voters) and the like?

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Home Secretary signs Lauri Love extradition order

      The Home Secretary Amber Rudd has signed an order for Lauri Love to be extradited to America where he’s accused of hacking into US government computer networks.

    • Chelsea Manning petitions Obama for clemency

      The legal team for Chelsea Manning, imprisoned WikiLeaks whistleblower, has petitioned US President Barack Obama to reduce her prison sentence to time served. Chelsea has already spent six years in confinement, longer than any other US leaker in history. In 2013, she was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted on several counts under the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

    • Harsher Security Tactics? Obama Left Door Ajar, and Donald Trump Is Knocking

      As a presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump vowed to refill the cells of the Guantánamo Bay prison and said American terrorism suspects should be sent there for military prosecution. He called for targeting mosques for surveillance, escalating airstrikes aimed at terrorists and taking out their civilian family members, and bringing back waterboarding and a “hell of a lot worse” — not only because “torture works,” but because even “if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway.”

      It is hard to know how much of this stark vision for throwing off constraints on the exercise of national security power was merely tough campaign talk. But if the Trump administration follows through on such ideas, it will find some assistance in a surprising source: President Obama’s have-it-both-ways approach to curbing what he saw as overreaching in the war on terrorism.

    • Chagos Islanders denied right to return home

      The long-awaited decision – expected to cause enormous disappointment – follows more than 40 years of campaigning, court cases and calls for the UK to right a wrong committed by Harold Wilson’s Labour government.

      Hundreds of Chagos islanders living in the UK and Mauritius have been waiting for an announcement for more than two years. But cost, economic viability and objections from the US military have been significant obstacles.

      It is expected that the British government will provide a further package of compensation to the islanders and that the announcement will be accompanied by an official apology for the forced movement of 1,500 people. Half of the exiles have since died.

    • Government set to make announcement on plight of exiled Chagos Islanders

      The government is expected to make an announcement about the resettlement of Chagos Islanders who were expelled 40 years ago to make way for a US air base.

      Chagossians were forced to leave the territory in the central Indian Ocean by 1973 to make way for a major US air base on Diego Garcia.

      The expulsions are regarded as one of the most shameful parts of Britain’s modern colonial history and a lengthy campaign has taken place to give Chagossians the right to resettle in the British territory.

      In June, former residents of the islands lost their legal challenge at the Supreme Court.

      But the Foreign Office is now understood to be preparing to make an announcement on the Chagos Islands, also referred to as the British Indian Ocean Territory.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • How Trademark Law Harms Peoples’ Lives and Wealth

        Trademark, copyright, and patent law are three segments of the same basic concept: protecting businesses from unlawful use of their property. Unfortunately, a system that arose during Roman times has not been satisfactorily updated for the digital age. Particularly with issues regarding patent and trademark law, updates will be necessary to make sure that laws remain enforceable and do their work of protecting businesses.

        [...]

        In the United States, patent laws date back to Colonial times and the United States Constitution. Patents have been viewed favorably and unfavorably at different times in American History. In general, during healthy economic times, patents are viewed as driving investment, innovation, and economic growth. During depressions, patents are viewed as economically unhealthy, and geared towards creating monopolies.

        While patent law has worked to prevent inventors for many years, in 2011, This American Life did an episode of their show on a particular Silicon Valley phenomenon called “patent trolls.” Patent trolls are companies which do not conduct any kind of business of their own, but simply buy patents from inventors, and then threaten companies which are using those patents with lawsuits. Since American courts have been very pro-patent since the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act of 2011, companies generally have no choice but to pay the patent trolls fees, or stop using patented technology.

        According to Perry Clegg, founder of Trademark Access, patents are actually hurting innovation and harming economic growth. “Because so many technological developments piggyback on each other, it is sometimes impossible to create the next big innovation without incorporating previously patented technology.” When big innovations were decades apart, this might not have made as much difference. At the rapid pace of modern technological development, patent trolling can discourage companies from innovating, if they feel it likely that they will have to pay exorbitant fees to companies who exist only to prosecute based on perceived infringement.

        [...]

        Trademark and patent laws must be updated
        A generation ago, it was mostly big businesses that were concerned about protecting patents and trademarks. Now, as many more small companies are entering the technological fray, it is necessary for patent, trademark, and copyright laws to be updated to keep up with the digital times.

        Especially as we move towards the age of the Internet of Things, these changes will only continue to accelerate. If government officials are not careful, outdated laws run the risk of stifling growth and harming innovation.

    • Copyrights

11.15.16

Links 15/11/2016: “498 out of 500 of the Speediest Computers on the Planet Are Running Linux”

Posted in News Roundup at 5:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • ARK Crew Releases Open Source Code on GitHub

    ARK Crew, developers of the new ARK cryptocurrency ecosystem, has announced the release of its open source code on GitHub. The source code launch was set to coincide with the platform’s first developer-focused bounty program, designed to encourage others to participate in the review and provide feedback on the project.

  • Editorial: What Does Open Source Mean to You?

    The same goes for the large amount of open source JavaScript projects available to us developers. Whether they are intended to help you build amazing apps, or as a learning resource to help you level up your skills, these are all projects, supported and maintained by the community. Thanks to the collaborative nature of open source, you’re free to download and modify any of them and, most importantly, to contribute any changes you make back to the project itself.

    I love open source and I’m thankful for it. It’s an integral part of working on the internet, but one which it is all to easy to overlook. That’s why I’m happy that we’re dedicating a whole week’s worth of articles to the subject. Talking of which, let’s look at what we have in store…

  • ‘World’s first Open Source SDN and NFV Orchestrator’ demonstrated at Operations Transformation Forum

    Huawei demonstrated the OPEN-O Sun, said to be the world’s first Open Source SDN and NFV Orchestrator, at the Operations Transformation Forum 2016 in Wuzhen, China.

    The forum brought together industry leaders from around the world to discuss the transformation of digital operations and share best practices. Helen Chen, leader of the OPEN-O Integration Project noted that the OPEN-O Orchestrator will soon be commercially available.

  • What to do about free riders in open organizations and communities: Addressing open source’s free rider problem

    For advice on addressing this problem, Jonathan suggests we look to ecosystem management, “an industry in itself, with its attendant experts, who write books and speak at conferences.” I recently read one of the seminal books in this area, Governing the Commons, by Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom, and I’d like to offer some initial thoughts on how it might apply to open organizations and open source sustainability.

    [...]

    Free-riding in open source communities leads to overworked and underpaid individuals, and eventually to burnout. It’s bad for people, and it’s bad for projects. It’s a problem we need to address. Ostrom shows us how to tackle the problem with a methodical approach to institutional design and analysis. Open organizations that steward open source software projects have much to learn from her, while recognizing that we will need to adapt her recommendations to fit our situation.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Back End

    • What’s In Store for Cloud Computing, Apache CloudStack in 2017?
    • Apache jclouds 2.0, a Java Multi-Cloud Toolkit, Arrives

      Over the past several months, we’ve taken note of the many open source projects that the Apache Software Foundation has been elevating to Top-Level Status. The organization incubates more than 350 open source projects and initiatives, and has squarely turned its focus to data-centric and developer-focused tools in recent months. As Apache moves these projects to Top-Level Status, they gain valuable community support.

      Apache also incubates a number of interesting cloud-centric projects. Now, it has announced the availability of Apache jclouds v2.0, which is a Java multi-cloud toolkit.

  • Databases

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GCC 7 Feature Development Ends

      GCC 7 feature development is officially over with the development phase entering stage three now where the focus is on bug-fixing.

      While GCC 7 feature development has ended, Red Hat’s Jakub Jelinek wrote in this latest GCC status report, “Patches posted early enough during Stage 1 and not yet fully reviewed may still get in early in Stage 3. Please make sure to ping them soon enough.”

  • Public Services/Government

    • Parliament: Navarre should move to use open source

      The Parliament of Navarre, one of Spain’s autonomous regions, wants the region to switch to free and open source software. A resolution urging the government to draft a migration plan was adopted by the Parliament on 27 October.

    • [Older] Uncle Sam launches open source trove of government code

      The United States government has made good on its policy of requiring agencies to release 20 per cent of their bespoke code as open source by making code.gov live, complete with lots of code.

    • Hungary aims to get rid of IT vendor lock-in

      Hungary’s central government wants to reduce its dependency on a handful of IT vendorsm. To begin with, a decision taken last week aims to reduce the use of a proprietary office productivity suite by 60 % in 2020. The government also wants to improve its procurement of IT solutions in order to to create business opportunities for small and medium-sized companies.

    • Russian Bill Makes Free Software a Public Priority

      The draft, approved by the Russian Federation’s Duma (lower chamber) in mid-October, requires the public sector to prioritise Free Software over proprietary alternatives, gives precedence to local IT businesses that offer Free Software for public tenders, and recognises the need to encourage collaboration with the global network of Free Software organisations and communities.

    • Russian Bill makes Free Software a Public Priority

      Legislators have drafted a bill that will boost Free Software on multiple levels within the Russian Federation’s public sector.

      The draft, approved by the Russian Federation’s Duma (lower chamber) in mid-October, requires the public sector to prioritise Free Software over proprietary alternatives, gives precedence to local IT businesses that offer Free Software for public tenders, and recognises the need to encourage collaboration with the global network of Free Software organisations and communities.

      The text enforces prioritising Free Software over proprietary alternatives by requiring public administrations to formally justify any purchase of proprietary software. The purchase will be considered unjustified if a Free Software solution exists that satisfies the list of technical specifications and standards. In addition, all IT purchase agreements in the public sphere must be registered in a dedicated registrar and detail the overall quantity and price of both purchased proprietary and Free Software.

  • Licensing/Legal

    • Open source licenses are shared resources

      One can easily see examples of software as a shared resource, whether shared by a few people or a few million people. Of course, these shared resources are not always as fully appreciated as they should be. They can pass underappreciated until drama such as a security vulnerability draws attention and illuminates the importance of what is being shared.

      But a license? A shared resource?

      Yes, open source licenses are shared resources. And, they, too, may be underappreciated until a vulnerability is exploited. Legal documents (contracts, licenses, whatever they may be called) are typically unique to each commercial enterprise. Certainly, there is some commonality. Lawyers adapt from what others have done. Patterns are followed. Text is reused.

    • Building Out an Open Source Project? Your License Matters

      It was only a few years ago when Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst made the prediction that open source software would soon become nearly pervasive in organizations of all sizes. That has essentially become true, and many businesses now use open source components without even knowing that they are doing so.

      As businesses adopt open source platforms such as OpenStack and Hadoop, they are complementing them with their own open source projects.For these reasons and other ones, it is more important than ever to know your way around the world of laws and licenses that pertain to open source software. Leaders of new projects need to know how to navigate the complex world of licensing and the law, as do IT administrators. Here is our newly updated ollection of resources to help you navigate the world of open source laws and licenses.

      We’ve rounded up some resources on open source, licenes and the law, as seen in this post, but the topic remains a moving target. Did you know that there is an official, free journal dedicated to open source law? It’s the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review, and it’s worth looking into.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Boundless Launches GIS Products Based on Open-Source, Data-Rich Future

      In a proprietary, license-based model, users might need to pay more to scale up their operations. For some, the extra costs might mean going through a procurement cycle, which takes time and resources.

    • Free and open sewing patterns gain popularity

      About two months ago, I started rewriting the entire Makemypattern.com codebase. I am using this opportunity to implement some improvements and features that were difficult to implement in the existing backend. But my main reason is that I am going to make all of my code available as open source. And for that, I need to make it easy for others to extend and adapt the code.

      With a mission that is not merely about making patterns anymore, I also feel like a name change was needed. So when I finish my rewrite, I will relocate to Freesewing.org, which is free as in beer and free as in speech.

  • Programming/Development

Leftovers

  • How Google changed itself for India in a ‘mission to connect the world’

    Alphabet Inc’s Google is ready to spend billions to get millions of Indians online– through a slew of India-specific products and initiatives – to stay relevant in the world’s fastest-growing internet economy.

    With 350-million internet users, India has already surpassed the US, and the number is expected to double by 2020. Around 15,000 new Indians log onto the internet every day, fitting perfectly in Google’s scheme of the “next billion internet users” gambit to acquire new customers.

    But this wasn’t the case three years ago, not until smartphones burgeoned and a large number of people started accessing the Net through their phones.

    All that makes India more important for Google, especially after China, which has the maximum number of internet users globally, closed its doors the American internet firm.

  • Science

    • The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think

      One of usability’s most hard-earned lessons is that you are not the user. This is why it’s a disaster to guess at the users’ needs. Since designers are so different from the majority of the target audience, it’s not just irrelevant what you like or what you think is easy to use — it’s often misleading to rely on such personal preferences.

      For sure, anybody who works on a design project will have a more accurate and detailed mental model of the user interface than an outsider. If you target a broad consumer audience, you will also have a higher IQ than your average user, higher literacy levels, and, most likely, you’ll be younger and experience less age-driven degradation of your abilities than many of your users.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Flint mayor asks for state of emergency renewal over water crisis

      Mayor Karen Weaver has asked for a renewal of the state emergency it was declared nearly one year ago over Flint’s water crisis.

      A resolution is on the agenda for Flint City Council members to approve or deny the request at Monday evening’s meeting as the declaration is due to expire Nov. 14.

      “Mayor Karen W. Weaver has stated that it imperative that Flint’s state of emergency remain in place until the city of Flint’s drinking water is deemed safe to drink without a filter,” states the resolution.

    • Congress begins lame duck session, with Flint water crisis funding on the agenda

      Michigan’s senior U.S. Senator says there are some things that Congress has to address when it returns to work this week.

      Sen. Debbie Stabenow says her top priority during Congress’ lame duck session will be lining up federal money for Flint.

      “We have a promise that was made to me by the Speaker of the House and the Republican Majority Leader that before the end of this year we would pass the money that’s critical to fixing the pipes in Flint,” says Stabenow.

    • VW admits Audi automatic transmission software can change test behavior

      Last week, a German newspaper reported that Audi was hiding emissions-cheating software in its automatic transmissions. I don’t know why it took a whole week, but Volkswagen finally came around to admitting as much.

      “Adaptive shift programs can lead to incorrect and non-reproducible results” in emissions tests, Volkswagen told Reuters on Sunday. Software in the AL 551 automatic transmission may detect testing conditions and shift in a way that minimizes emissions, only to act “normally” out on the road. Much like Dieselgate’s defeat device, that leads to higher-than-imagined pollution, which could be in excess of legal limits.

      Audi’s AL 551 can be found in both gas and diesel vehicles, including the A6, A8 and Q5.

    • WTO ‘Paragraph 6’ System For Affordable Medicine: Time For Change?

      A range of practitioners and representatives in the manufacture of medicines, intergovernmental officials, academics and civil society representatives last week gave diverse views on the effectiveness of a waiver to international trade rules intended to ease shipments of affordable medicines to low-income countries.

      Alongside the first day of the 8-9 November World Trade Organization Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the intergovernmental South Centre held a side event to discuss experiences in the implementation and the effective functioning of the system.

    • New MSF survey: Thousands of kids dying in northeast Nigeria

      Thousands of children have died of starvation and disease in Boko Haram-ravaged northeastern Nigeria, Doctors Without Borders said Tuesday quoting a new survey that is forcing Nigerian officials to stop denying the crisis.

      The Paris-based organization hopes that official recognition of the calamity in which “thousands are dying” will help bring urgent aid before older children also start dying, Natalie Roberts, emergency program manager for northeast Nigeria, told The Associated Press.

      A survey of two refugee camps in the northeastern city of Maiduguri shows a quarter of the expected population of under-5 children is missing, assumed dead, according to the organization. Under-5 mortality rates in the camps are more than double the threshold for declaring an emergency, Roberts said in a phone interview from Paris.

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Monday
    • How to Secure Your Ubuntu Network

      In 2016, keeping your Ubuntu network secure is more important than ever. Despite what some people might think, there’s much more to this than merely putting up a router to protect a network. You must also configure each of your PCs properly to ensure you’re operating within a secure Ubuntu network. This article will show you how.

    • Linux Foundation Back Reproducible Builds Effort for Secure Software

      Building software securely requires a verifiable method of reproduction and that is why the Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative is supporting the Reproducible Builds Project.

      In an effort to help open-source software developers build more secure software, the Linux Foundation is doubling down on its efforts to help the reproducible builds project. Among the most basic and often most difficult aspects of software development is making sure that the software end-users get is the same software that developers actually built.

    • Boy, 17, admits TalkTalk hacking offences

      A 17-year-old boy has admitted hacking offences linked to a data breach at the communications firm TalkTalk.

      Norwich Youth Court was told he had used hacking tool software to identify vulnerabilities on target websites.

    • Upgrade for KDE neon Security Issue

      Last month we moved the neon archive to a new server so packages got built on our existing server then uploaded to the new server. Checking the config it seemed I’d made the nasty error of leaving it open to the world rather than requiring an ssh gateway to access the apt repository, so anyone scanning around could have uploaded packages. There’s no reason to think that happened but the default in security is to be paranoid for any possibility.

    • Security B-Sides conferences attract growing information security crowd

      The Security B-Sides DC conference is part of the B-Sides movement, which was created to provide a community framework to build events for and by information security practitioners. Alex Norman, the co-director of Security B-Sides DC, tells us how he wants to expand information security beyond security professionals, and to involve a larger, more diverse community.

    • Major Linux security hole gapes open

      An old Linux security ‘feature’ script, which activates LUKS disk encryption, has been hiding a major security hole in plain sight.

    • A Linux Exploit That Uses 6502 Code

      With ubiquitous desktop computing now several decades old, anyone creating an operating system distribution now faces a backwards compatibility problem. Each upgrade brings its own set of new features, but it must maintain compatibility with the features of the previous versions or risk alienating users. If you are a critic of Microsoft products for their bloat, this is one of the factors behind that particular issue.

    • Cryptsetup Vulnerability Allows Easily Getting To A Root Shell

      CVE-2016-4484 was disclosed on Monday as a Cryptsetup issue that allows users to easily gain access to a root initramfs shell on affected systems in a little over one minute of simply hitting the keyboard’s enter key.

      This Cryptsetup vulnerability is widespread and easy to exploit, simply requiring a lot of invalid passwords before being dropped down a root shell. The data on the LUKS-encrypted volume is still protected, but you have root shell access. The CVE reads, “This vulnerability allows to obtain a root initramfs shell on affected systems. The vulnerability is very reliable because it doesn’t depend on specific systems or configurations. Attackers can copy, modify or destroy the hard disc as well as set up the network to exflitrate data. This vulnerability is specially serious in environments like libraries, ATMs, airport machines, labs, etc, where the whole boot process is protect (password in BIOS and GRUB) and we only have a keyboard or/and a mouse.”

    • CVE-2016-4484: Cryptsetup Initrd root Shell
    • Security updates for Tuesday
    • Super Mari-owned: Startling Nintendo-based vulnerability discovered in Ubuntu

  • Defence/Aggression

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Assange Is Questioned in London Over Rape Accusation in Sweden

      Six years after the Swedish authorities opened an investigation into a rape accusation made against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, he was questioned about the matter on Monday.

      The questions were prepared by prosecutors in Sweden, where an arrest warrant for Mr. Assange was issued in 2010, but were posed by a prosecutor from Ecuador under an agreement the two countries made in August. Ecuador granted Mr. Assange political asylum in 2012, and the interview occurred at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. Mr. Assange has lived in the embassy since June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over the rape accusation.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Thanks to Donald Trump, China just won the global green technology sector

      There’s no denying who the king of technology in the 20th century was: America. But the 21st century poses new challenges that must be met by the rise of the green technology and green energy sectors across the globe. And whatever country is producing the best green tech solutions is in the pole position to spring to the top of the 21st century technological heap.

      America’s election of Donald Trump virtually guarantees that country will be China.

      To be fair, China was already ahead of the US on this front. It began investing big in green tech more than a decade ago, and it is now the world’s leading investor in green energy. Last year alone, China invested more than US$100 billion in green energy – that’s more than double what the US invested – and that number is expected to grow. Trump or no, there’s a good chance China would have won this race. But the US, the second-biggest global investor, was in a better position than any other single nation to challenge China on this front.

    • Floridians Wonder How President-Elect Trump Will Deal With Their Rising Seas

      Mar-a-Lago, President-elect Donald Trump’s signature piece of property in the South, is just 70-miles north of Miami in Palm Beach, a mostly upscale barrier island. But the residence and private club is likely to be affected by the rising tides and increasingly powerful hurricanes that now regularly batter the coast of Florida.

      Miami and nearby coastal towns in Florida are, and will be, impacted by changes in our climate—the sea levels in just the past decade rose at double the rate of the entire century before, according to the World Resource Institute. But in the end, Floridians chose noted climate change-skeptic Donald Trump as their future leader.

  • Finance

    • EU ministers to discuss plan to charge Britons to visit Europe after Brexit

      A European plan under which Britons will face a £10 charge to travel to the EU after Brexit is to be discussed by interior ministers this week.

      The plan for a European version of the US visa waiver programme has already won the backing of the British diplomat now in charge of European security.

      Sir Julian King, the European commissioner for the security union is to give evidence to peers on Tuesday. He has described the plan as “a valuable additional piece of the jigsaw” in the war against international terrorism.

    • Why India wiped out 86% of its cash overnight

      On 8 November, Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave only four hours’ notice that virtually all the cash in the world’s seventh-largest economy would be effectively worthless.

      The Indian government likes to use the technical term “demonetisation” to describe the move, which makes it sound rather dull. It isn’t. This is the economic equivalent of “shock and awe”.

      [...]

      These may be the largest denomination Indian notes but they are not high value by international standards – 1,000 rupees is only £12. But together the two notes represent 86% of the currency in circulation.

      Think of that, at a stroke 86% of the cash in India now cannot be used.

      What is more, India is overwhelmingly a cash economy, with 90% of all transactions taking place that way.

      And that is the target of Mr Modi’s dramatic move. Because so much business is done in cash, very few people pay tax on the money they earn.

    • Donald Trump victory wipes $1 trillion off value of global bond markets

      Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the US presidential election wiped more than $1 trillion (£800bn) off the value of global bond markets in two days.

      President-elect Trump has pledged to massively increase infrastructure spending, which has caused a big shift away from the safety of government debt and into the shares of companies who may cash in on any spending bonanza. The wider stock market has also risen on the back of investors’ predictions of increased growth.

      Turning on the government spending taps would push up inflation, meaning that the already meagre returns on US bonds would head into negative territory, adding more reasons to sell and move into riskier assets.

    • 7 WTF Ways Famous Companies Rip You Off Every Day

      There’s a righteous, almost smug satisfaction to buying something cheap. It feels like we’re sticking it to the big companies by denying them those extra ten cents per unit on a box of Kit Kats. However, no one loves a bargain more than the businesses themselves. That usually takes the form of tax evasion and poor wages, but sometimes they like to get … creative.

    • Baby dies after Indian hospital refuses to accept parents’ money because of country’s new cash note ban

      A baby died when a hospital in India refused to accept a deposit paid in banknotes which were withdrawn from circulation the day before.

      Police said they are investigating a doctor in a Mumbai suburb who allegedly turned away a couple with a premature baby because they did not have the correct currency.

      Kiran Sharma gave birth to a boy around one month early on 9 November and was rushed to Jeevan Jyot Hospital in Govandi to the east of the city, reported The New Indian Express.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • VP Elect Mike Pence Goes To Court To Keep His Emails Secret

      The circumstances are different, but the general principle is the same — and there’s a really important issue at stake when it comes to FOIA and public records issues. The background is fairly convoluted, but here’s a quick summary. After President Obama announced a plan to defer enforcement of certain immigration laws for certain individuals, a few states were upset about it, and Texas and Indiana (where Pence is governor) sued the President. Pence hired an outside law firm to handle the case, and a local lawyer thought this was a waste of taxpayer funds. The lawyer filed public records requests to get access to emails about the decision to hire the law firm and to find out the costs to taxpayers.

      Pence’s office released some emails, but they were apparently redacted in places — and in one case an email referred to an attached white paper that was not included. The lawyer who filed the request, William Groth, went to court to demand that the Pence administration reveal the full email with the attached white paper. The Pence administration has argued that it’s not subject to public records requests as “attorney-client” work material — but also that the courts are not allowed to question what the government chooses to release or redact under public records laws. A lower court agreed — following an Indiana Supreme Court ruling saying that the courts cannot “meddle” in public records decisions by the legislative or executive branch due to “separation of powers.” That’s a bizarre reading of the law that seems to actually turn the concept of separation of powers on its head, as it kind of destroys a key part of that separation: the checks and balances of the three branches of government.

    • Your Government Wants to Militarize Social Media to Influence Your Beliefs

      A global conference of senior military and intelligence officials taking place in London this week reveals how governments increasingly view social media as “a new front in warfare” and a tool for the Armed Forces.

      The overriding theme of the event is the need to exploit social media as a source of intelligence on civilian populations and enemies; as well as a propaganda medium to influence public opinion.

      A report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) last month revealed how a CIA-funded tool, Geofeedia, was already being used by police to conduct surveillance of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to monitor activists and protesters.

      Although Facebook and Twitter both quickly revoked Geofeedia’s access to their social feeds, the conference proves that social media surveillance remains a rapidly growing industry with no regulatory oversight. And its biggest customers are our own governments.

    • Remember when they told us Hillary, not Bernie, would beat Trump?

      If the Democrats continue to front establishment candidates while the establishment’s cherished beliefs continue to crumble, they will continue to lose.

      American politics now: the anti-establishment, white-nationalism troll party and the pro-establishment party that thinks you’ll vote for them because you fear white supremacists more than you hate the trolls.

      American politics tomorrow, if we address ourselves to the work at hand: the terrified troll white-nationalist party versus the party of hope, change and rebuilding: “dismissing a major indicator of popularity like polling—a key tool of campaign journalism in virtually all other contexts—due to vague, handwaving claims of unvettedness comes across as far more a convenient talking point than an earnestly arrived-at conclusion.”

    • Interview: Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein On Clinton’s Loss To Trump

      When the liberal class heard news media report Donald Trump won the Electoral College vote, numerous people experienced meltdowns that involved blaming anyone and everyone but Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. In particular, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was one of the targets, even though the math did not point to Stein as a culprit for the outcome.

      MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow wailed, “If you vote for somebody who can’t win for president, it means that you don’t care who wins for president.” It not only displayed the prejudice many liberals have against allowing more choices and more voices in presidential elections, but it also exemplified a denial among liberal pundits. They reflexively lashed out at Stein or Bernie Sanders in order to ignore their failure to recognize how Trump had a strong chance all along to win because voters were fed up with the neoliberal economic policies of Democrats.

      For this week’s “Unauthorized Disclosure,” the show returns with an interview with Jill Stein. She highlights what her campaign managed to accomplish. She looks back on smears she faced, such as the idea that she was anti-vaccine and says she views it as a “sign of the media’s weakness and also their fear and our strength.” Then, she shares how she was never confident Clinton would win the election and addresses the denial among Democrats, who do not want to confront the reality of what happened. She also lists off a number of initiatives and efforts she plans to help support in the aftermath of the election.

    • Julian Assange, Whose Wikileaks Played a Pivotal Role in US Election, Faces Possible Criminal Trial

      I sit in the tiny conference room adjoined to Julian Assange’s tiny living space in Ecuador embassy. I always feel a bit restless and nervous waiting for him. I worry how he’s coping. I realize how difficult it must be, to be here for years every day looking at these same walls, not feeling the sunshine.

      Just then the cat pops in, making me feel more at ease. He has full reign. He is on the table sniffing the muffins and rubbing up against me purring and maybe a little disappointed that everything I’ve brought is vegan.

      Next, the big man walks in, wearing a Sea Shepherd tshirt and jeans, a bit disheveled. It’s early but he manages a smile. He’s got a long day ahead.

    • Julian Assange calls for leaks on Trump after claims Wikileaks attacked Hillary Clinton

      The online group was grilled by users of Reddit in a questions and answer session on the online debating forum.

      WikiLeaks became a focal point during the election campaign.

      It published thousands of internal Democrat National Council emails, and more recently thousands more from the hacked email account of the Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta.

      Some Reddit users appeared suspicious Wikileaks had an agenda to get Donald Trump elected.

    • WikiLeaks informant Chelsea Manning asks Obama to cut her 35-year prison sentence to time served

      The Lawyer of Chelsea Manning, a former US soldier who is currently serving a prison sentence for disclosing secret diplomatic and military documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, has put forth a petition requesting President Barack Obama to grant clemency and reduce the rest of her 35-year sentence to the more than six years she has already served.

      Manning’s punishment is the longest period of incarceration awarded to any leaker in American history.

    • Anti-Semitic incidents stoke fear among Jews after Trump win

      A synagogue in Montana wants police protection after Nazi fliers were delivered nearby following Donald Trump’s election win. Anxiety is now growing among American Jews after Trump appointed an alleged anti-Semite as one of his closest advisors on Sunday as the number of hate incidents continues to rise across the US.

    • Did the WikiLeaks Email Dumps Cost Hillary the White House? [Ed: falsely blames it all on Russia, without evidence]
    • Pain Management

      The only thing that will save us from a populist racist oligarch demagogue is a populist anti-racist anti-neoliberal progressive with a mobilized movement behind them and serious contenders up and down the ticket.

    • Sanders backs Trump protests, questions Electoral College
    • Amid DNC Reckoning, Ellison Emerges as Progressive Antidote to Trump

      Amid the growing post-election call for a “reckoning” within the Democratic Party, Rep. Keith Ellison on Minnesota has swiftly emerged as the favored progressive choice to lead that transition.

      “Liberal lawmakers and advocacy groups have started plotting a major overhaul of the Democratic National Committee (DNC),” the Washington Post reported late Thursday, with the first step being a replacement for the embattled interim chair Donna Brazile.

      The progressive flank of the party has largely placed the blame for the stunning election loss on the DNC and its elitist leadership, which they say is out of touch with the Left’s grassroots base, which wants to see a renunciation of corporate influence.

    • Maine became the first state in the country Tuesday to pass ranked choice voting

      Amid a national vote that rocked the political world Tuesday, voters in Maine narrowly approved a measure that supporters say will be respectively disruptive to the state’s political status quo.

      With 98 percent of the vote reporting in the state, 52 percent of voters approved a ballot question making Maine the first state to implement ranked choice voting, a fundamental reform of how voters literally fill out their ballot.

      In a ranked choice vote system, rather than simply voting for one candidate, voters rank their candidates by preference—first, second, third, and so on.

    • Maine Passes Ranked-Choice Voting

      Maine residents have approved a ballot question that will allow voters to rank their choice of candidates.

      Under the election overhaul, ballots are counted at the state level in multiple rounds. Last-place candidates are eliminated until a candidate wins by a majority.

    • Stephen Bannon and Reince Priebus to lead Trump’s White House

      Donald Trump has named Reince Priebus as his White House chief of staff, rewarding a loyalist to his party and its long-serving chairman by making him his top aide in the Oval Office. But he also named Steve Bannon, the head of his campaign and of the far-right website Breitbart, as his “chief strategist and senior counselor”.

      The statement announcing Trump’s decision named Bannon first, despite the vague title of his role. It said he and Priebus would work as “equal partners”.

      “Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory,” Trump said. “Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again.”

    • Trump appoints Chief of Staff, chief strategist

      “I am thrilled to have my very successful team continue with me in leading our country,” Trump said in a statement.

    • Denying climate change is only part of it: 5 ways Donald Trump spells doom for the environment

      If the world’s governments don’t prevent the planet’s surface temperature from increasing more than 2°C, then life on Earth will become a difficult proposition for many humans, animals and plants. Glaciers will melt, sea levels will rise, crops will fail, water availability will decrease, and diseases will proliferate. Some areas will experience more wildfires and extreme heat; in others, more hurricanes and extreme storms. Coastal cities and possibly entire nations will be swallowed by the sea. There will be widespread social and economic instability, leading to regional conflicts.

    • Trump seeks top-secret security clearances for his kids

      President-elect Donald Trump is seeking top-secret security clearances for his adult children, CBS News reported Monday.

      CBS News said the real estate mogul has asked the White House if he can obtain such clearances for Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr., as well as his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

      But a transition team official told the presidential pool reporter Monday night that the president-elect did not request such a step and said the Trump children have not started filling out paperwork for such clearances.

    • I actually have something I would use the Department of Education to do. It would be to monitor our institutions of higher education for extreme political bias and deny federal funding if it exists.
    • Donald Trump ‘will consult Nigel Farage before Theresa May’ on UK policy proposals, says Aaron Banks

      Donald Trump will run policy proposals affecting the UK past Nigel Farage before consulting Theresa May, a Ukip donor has claimed.

      Mr Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon will “run ideas” past interim Ukip leader Mr Farage, prominent Ukip donor Aaron Banks told the Daily Telegraph.

      “There is no doubt about it that Steve Bannon will talk to Nigel Farage before any other British politician and run stuff by them,” Mr Banks said.

    • Playtime is over

      Well, I was optimistic. The tea party radicals have gone nuclear, but I wasn’t counting on a neo-Nazi running the White House, or on the Kremlin stepping in …

      Let me explain.

      A few years ago, wandering around the net, I stumbled on a page titled “Why Japan lost the Second World War”. (Sorry, I can’t find the URL.) It held two photographs. The first was a map of the Pacific Theater used by the Japanese General Staff. It extended from Sakhalin in the north to Australia in the south, from what we now call Bangladesh in the west, to Hawaii in the east. The second photograph was the map of the war in the White House. A Mercator projection showing the entire planet. And the juxtaposition explained in one striking visual exactly why the Japanese military adventure against the United States was doomed from the outset: they weren’t even aware of the true size of the battleground.

      I’d like you to imagine what it must have been like to be a Japanese staff officer. Because that’s where we’re standing today. We think we’re fighting local battles against Brexit or Trumpism. But in actuality, they’re local fronts in a global war. And we’re losing because we can barely understand how big the conflict is.

      (NB: By “we”, I mean folks who think that the Age of Enlightenment, the end of monarchism, and the evolution of Liberalism are good things. If you disagree with this, then kindly hold your breath until your head explodes. (And don’t bother commenting below: I’ll delete and ban you on sight.))

      The logjam created by the Beige Dictatorship was global, throughout the western democracies; and now it has broken. But it didn’t break by accident, and the consequences could be very bad indeed.

      What happened last week is not just about America. It was one move—a very significant one, bishop-takes-queen maybe—in a long-drawn-out geopolitical chess game. It’s being fought around the world: Brexit was one move, the election and massacres of Dutarte in the Philippines were another, the post-coup crackdown in Turkey is a third. The possible election of Marine Le Pen (a no-shit out-of-the-closet fascist) as President of France next year is more of this stuff. The eldritch knot of connections between Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Da’esh in the wreckage of Syria is icing on top. It’s happening all over and I no longer think this is a coincidence.

    • Looking for someone to blame? It’s not third parties

      As news of Hillary Clinton’s shocking loss sinks in, many Clinton supporters looking for someone to blame are pointing fingers at a familiar scapegoat: people who voted outside the two-party system.

      Pundits are already trying to blame Libertarian Gary Johnson and me, the Green party candidate, for Trump’s win. For example, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow concocted a scenario in which by taking every Stein vote and half of Johnson’s votes, Clinton could have grabbed enough states from Trump to eke out an electoral college win, a story repeated by CNN. Unwilling to accept that Clinton didn’t motivate enough voters to win the presidency, and explore the reasons why, many pundits are instead looking to put responsibility for the loss onto others.

      First the facts: if every single Stein voter had voted for Clinton, Clinton still lost.

    • Why Are Liberals Blaming The Green Party For Trump?

      The Green Party’s showing in this year’s election was strong but not significant enough to reach the desired 5%. It was more like 1%. Still, the Stein Baraka ticket garnered more than 1.2 million votes nationwide. That’s a big bump from the last Green Party presidential ticket in 2012 which won less than half a million votes.

      Already some liberal pundits, shocked by the election of Donald Trump have begun blaming the Green Party for Clinton’s loss. The New York Times’ Paul Krugman tweeted on election night, “Jill Stein managed to play Ralph Nader. Without her Florida might have been saved.”

    • A road map Hillary Clinton did not follow to the White House

      We know this because Wikileaks founder Julian Assange came into possession of it along with tens of thousands of other emails to and from Clinton’s strategist Podesta, and spread them across the internet.

      Huma Abedin’s email revealed no high drama or internal backbiting, and so it did not grab headlines during the campaign. It simply noted that she had met with Smith, a San Francisco political consultant, and she attached a memo, titled thoughts.doc. Written by Smith, it maps out a strategy, though not one followed by Hillary Clinton.

      Smith and his firm, SCN Strategies, are among the most successful Democratic campaign firms in the state and country. In 2008, he ran Clinton’s 2008 winning primary campaigns in California and Texas. And in 2014, he was making a pitch for a position in Clinton’s 2016 campaign; he didn’t get it.

      “Today, you are a fully known quantity and a second-time candidate for President of the United States,” Smith wrote, setting forth how Clinton might announce her candidacy and frame her campaign. “As such you will be expected to have a clear and deep rationale for your candidacy from the first day of the campaign.”

    • Donna Brazile says CNN should have let her ‘defend myself’ following Wikileaks email

      Donna Brazile, the interim chair of the Democratic National Committee and former CNN contributor, went after her former employer at an event at a women’s college in Virginia Monday, blaming them for “ripping me a new one” instead of allowing her to defend herself after it appeared she tipped off Hillary Clinton’s campaign to town hall questions.

      Brazile, who had been a contributor and commentator at CNN for 14, resigned from the network earlier this year after WikiLeaks published hacked emails that showed Brazile tipping off Clinton’s campaign in advance to at least two questions the Democratic presidential nominee could be asked at upcoming town hall events.

      “CNN never gave me a question,” Brazile said at a talk held at Hollins University, according to The Roanoke Times. “I wish CNN had given me some other things, like the ability to defend myself rather than ripping me a new one.”

      Brazile did not deny the allegations that she had emailed two questions in advance, but she said she “never got on Clinton’s campaign airplane or prepped the candidate for any of the debates,” according to the Roanoke Times. When the network cut ties with Brazile permanently, it said the company was “completely uncomfortable” with the revelations and asserted that it had not provided questions to Brazile in advance.

    • Rep. Keith Ellison Enters Race for DNC Chair With Strong Support

      Rep. Keith Ellison formally announced his candidacy Monday to be the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a race that has taken on unusual importance as the party looks for someone to lead its efforts to rebuild after last week’s devastating loss to Donald Trump.

      Ellison, a progressive who backed Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in the presidential primary, enters the potentially crowded race as the clear favorite thanks to early backing from a number of leading Democrats.

      “It is not enough for Democrats to ask for voters’ support every two years. We must be with them through every lost paycheck, every tuition hike, and every time they are the victim of a hate crime,” Ellison said in a statement announcing his bid. “When voters know what Democrats stand for, we can improve the lives of all Americans, no matter their race, religion or sexual orientation. To do that, we must begin the rebuilding process now.”

    • More than half of arrested anti-Trump protesters didn’t vote

      More than half of the anti-Trump protesters arrested in Portland didn’t vote, according to state election records.

      At least seventy demonstrators either didn’t turn in a ballot or weren’t registered to vote.

      KGW compiled a list of the 112 people arrested by the Portland Police Bureau during recent protests. Those names and ages, provided by police, were then compared to state voter logs by Multnomah County Elections officials.

      Records show 35 of the protesters arrested didn’t return a ballot for the November 8 election. Thirty-five of the demonstrators taken into custody weren’t registered to vote.

    • D.C. Area High School Students Walk Out Of Class To Protest Trump

      A day after hundreds of students staged a peaceful protest at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, another large protest is taking place in the District.

      Hundreds of students walked out of school at Woodrow Wilson Senior High School, in the Tenleytown neighborhood, Tuesday morning in protest of President Elect Donald Trump.

    • President Trump’s Cabinet Will Be Filled With Deplorables

      There are 67 days until Donald Trump’s inauguration, a fact that seems to have surprised the president-elect – who reportedly never thought he’d remain in the race past October 2015 – as much as anyone. According to the Wall Street Journal, not only was Trump “surprised by the scope” of the president’s duties when President Obama explained them to him in private last week, but his aides were unaware they would need to hire an entirely new White House staff.

    • The Election was Stolen – Here’s How…

      On Tuesday, we saw Crosscheck elect a Republican Senate and as President, Donald Trump. The electoral putsch was aided by nine other methods of attacking the right to vote of Black, Latino and Asian-American voters, methods detailed in my book and film, including “Caging,” “purging,” blocking legitimate registrations, and wrongly shunting millions to “provisional” ballots that will never be counted.

      Trump signaled the use of “Crosscheck” when he claimed the election is “rigged” because “people are voting many, many times.” His operative Kobach, who also advised Trump on building a wall on the southern border, devised a list of 7.2 million “potential” double voters—1.1 million of which were removed from the voter rolls by Tuesday. The list is loaded overwhelmingly with voters of color and the poor. Here’s a sample of the list

    • ‘Trump lookalike’ chef slams media coverage of beating

      TV chef Anders Vendel said in a Facebook post that he was beaten up by three men, two of whom bound his arms behind his back, while the third beat him in the face. He estimated that he was punched twenty times in the face, which took place at 4am in central Malmö on Saturday.

      The attack left him with a broken nose and extensive bruising around his right eye, mouth and jaw.

      In the Facebook post, which has since been deleted but has been widely cited by populist media including Russian state propaganda channel RT, Vendel had said the men thought he resembled the US President-elect. He also said they were Muslim.

      But in a comment to The Local on Monday, the chef said the way his case was being used abroad was “scary.”

      Headlines in RT, the Daily Mail and various other global media emphasised the attackers’ supposed religion. None of them had spoken to the chef.

      “I was angry, hurt and humiliated when I wrote what I was thinking at the time,” Vendel said.

    • Trump’s victory comes with a silver lining for the world’s progressives

      The election of Donald Trump symbolises the demise of a remarkable era. It was a time when we saw the curious spectacle of a superpower, the US, growing stronger because of – rather than despite – its burgeoning deficits. It was also remarkable because of the sudden influx of two billion workers – from China and Eastern Europe – into capitalism’s international supply chain. This combination gave global capitalism a historic boost, while at the same time suppressing Western labour’s share of income and prospects.

      Trump’s success comes as that dynamic fails. His presidency represents a defeat for liberal democrats everywhere, but it holds important lessons – as well as hope – for progressives.

      From the mid-1970s to 2008, the US economy had kept global capitalism in an unstable, though finely balanced, equilibrium. It sucked into its territory the net exports of economies such as those of Germany, Japan and later China, providing the world’s most efficient factories with the requisite demand. How was this growing trade deficit paid for? By the return of around 70 per cent of the profits made by foreign corporates to Wall Street, to be invested in America’s financial markets.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Spies Use Tinder, and It’s as Creepy as You’d Think

      On September 4, a group of young activists planned to attend a demonstration against Interim President Michel Temer in the city center of São Paulo. They never made it. Their group had been infiltrated by an Army Captain Willian Pina Botelho—via Tinder.

      Surveillance and infiltration are not new tactics, but the ACLU revelation last month that Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook had been sharing data with surveillance service Geofeedia reminds us that the internet is bringing it to whole new levels. The story of the “Tinder infiltrator” serves as a reminder for a generation of young activists who are organizing online: don’t stop organizing, but be vigilant.

    • Comey Can’t Say How Often Encryption Thwarts Investigations, But Probably A Lot

      FBI Director James Comey believes encryption is perhaps the biggest threat to public safety yet. So big, in fact, that he can only engage in hyperbole about it. There’s been very little done to quantify the problem, even by the agency that seems to fear it most.

      In 2015, Comey told senators that a “vast majority” of devices seized by US law enforcement “may no longer be accessible” due to encryption. Comey has a very strange definition of “vast majority,” as Marcy Wheeler points out.

    • US Secrecy Prevails In German Constitutional Court

      The German constitutional court has rebuffed a second complaint seeking to allow oversight bodies to see the US National Security Administration (NSA) selector list.

      The list was pushed by the NSA to its German sister organisation BND to crawl through data traffic intercepted at the DeCIX, an internet exchange point in Frankfurt and traffic-wise the largest peering platform worldwide.

    • 1ST LEAD Court: Germany does not have to hand over NSA list of spying targets By Friederike Heine, dpa

      The list of so-called “selectors” – telephone numbers, email and IP addresses – was handed to Germany‘s foreign intelligence agency BND by the National Security Agency (NSA) with the aim of spying on German and European targets.

    • The German government won’t have to disclose who it spied on with the NSA
    • German court’s ruling on mass spying is a victory for the BND and NSA
    • German court rejects opposition’s bid for disclosure of NSA spy targets
    • German Constitutional Court rules out access to NSA’s ‘selectors’ list
    • Court rejects case to reveal more on US spies in Germany
    • CIA, NSA ordered to reveal to judge whether they were involved in Occupy Philly surveillance

      A federal judge has ordered the CIA and the National Security Agency to disclose to him whether they were involved in spying on Occupy Philadelphia protesters during their monthlong demonstration at what is now Dilworth Park five years ago.

      Responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by a lawyer for the demonstrators, U.S. District Judge Berle M. Schiller gave the agencies until early next year to submit a list of any records detailing the agencies’ potential surveillance activities, along with a justification of why those documents should be withheld from public disclosure.

      Schiller said he would rely upon that list to determine whether to release such documents or whether he would need to examine such records in person before making his decision.

    • Federal Contractor Collected Pay From NSA, OPM for Hours He Didn’t Work: Prosecutors
    • Apps for Communicating and Organizing in the Age of Trump

      On January 20, Donald Trump will gain control over the most powerful surveillance system in history. Worried? Here are some steps you can take to protect yourself.

      The U.S. government has a long history of targeting activists. Agents spied on Martin Luther King Jr., bugging his hotel rooms in an attempt to find out personal information which could be used to discredit him. More recently, the FBI spied on Black Lives Matter activists.

      U.S. intelligence agencies have unprecedented power to gather information on millions of American citizens. This information includes our communications, banking info, and web browsing data. We know that the National Security Agency (NSA) collects data on who you talk to, when, and where you call from.

    • Donald Trump is about to control the most powerful surveillance machine in history

      The US intelligence agencies are among the most powerful forces to ever exist, capable of ingesting and retaining entire nations’ worth of data, or raining down missiles on targets thousands of miles away. As of January 20th, all that power will be directly answerable to Donald Trump.

      It’s still early, but a picture is starting to emerge of how the president-elect could use those powers — and it’s not a pretty sight. Since the September 11th attacks, the US government gives the president almost unlimited discretion in matters of national security, with few limitations or mechanisms for oversight. That includes NSA surveillance, as well as the expanding powers of the drone program. And from what Trump has said on the campaign trail, his targets for using those powers may cut against some of America’s most important civil rights.

    • Shazam Keeps Your Mac’s Microphone Always On, Even When You Turn It Off

      What’s that song? On your cellphone, the popular app Shazam is able to answer that question by listening for just a few seconds, as if it were magic. On Apple’s computers, Shazam never turns the microphone off, even if you tell it to.

      When a user of Shazam’s Mac app turns the app “OFF,” the app actually keeps the microphone on in the background. For the security researcher who discovered that the mic is always on, it’s a bug that users should know about. For Shazam, it’s just a feature that makes the app work better.

    • A 10-Digit Key Code to Your Private Life: Your Cellphone Number

      The next time someone asks you for your cellphone number, you may want to think twice about giving it.

      The cellphone number is more than just a bunch of digits. It is increasingly used as a link to private information maintained by all sorts of companies, including money lenders and social networks. It can be used to monitor and predict what you buy, look for online or even watch on television.

      It has become “kind of a key into the room of your life and information about you,” said Edward M. Stroz, a former high-tech crime agent for the F.B.I. who is co-president of Stroz Friedberg, a private investigator.

      Yet the cellphone number is not a legally regulated piece of information like a Social Security number, which companies are required to keep private. And we are told to hide and protect our Social Security numbers while most of us don’t hesitate when asked to write a cellphone number on a form or share it with someone we barely know.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Saudi bans schools from marking non-Islamic holidays

      Saudi education ministry has warned international schools from marking non-Islamic occasions, such as Christmas and New Year, the media reported on Monday.

      The ban includes forbidding those schools from providing holidays on such occasions or changing the dates of exams to suit them, Xinhua news agency reported.

    • Spokesperson Maryam Namazie wins 2016 International Secularism (Laicite) Prize

      This is a time where “solidarity” is no longer an act of defending revolutionaries but fascists; where there is always support for Islamist projects like Sharia courts, the burqa, gender segregation, apostasy and blasphemy laws – whether de jure or de facto – but never for those who refuse to be silenced, erased and “disappeared”.

      It’s a time when “progressive” all too often means protecting regressive identity politics, which homogenises entire communities and societies, and deems theocrats as the sole legitimate arbiters and gatekeepers of “community” values.

      It’s a politics of betrayal – devoid of class struggle and political ideals – which sees any dissent through Islamist eyes and immediately labels it “Islamophobic” and blasphemous.

      We are called “aggressive apostates”, “fundamentalist secularists”, “native informants”, “inflammatory”. We are accused of violating the “safe spaces” of Islamists on universities and even “inciting hatred”.

    • Blasphemy: How Kano mob murdered my wife in my presence – Husband

      Pastor Mike Agbahime, husband of Bridget Agbahime who was killed by an irate mob in Kano for alleged blasphemy has finally spoken up on the events that lead to his wife’s death.

      Agbahime in an interview with The Punch blamed Kano Governor Umar Ganduje for paving the way for the release of the arrested suspects.

    • Mauritanian clerics urge for blogger’s death penalty to be applied

      Muslim clerics in Mauritania on Sunday urged the authorities to execute a blogger who was sentenced to death in 2014 for apostasy after writing a blog post on Islam and racial discrimination.

      Mohamed Ould Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir’s article touched a nerve in Mauritania, a West African country with deep social and racial divisions. He was tried for apostasy and received the death penalty despite having repented and saying his article was misunderstood.

      According to the U.S.-based Freedom Now rights group who provide Mkhaitir with legal counsel, the blog post appears to have been the first he published. Prior to his arrest he worked as an engineer for a mining company and was not an activist, Freedom Now said on its website.

    • Delta: Police Raid Baby Factory in Oshimili Council, Arrest Six Pregnant Wome

      Police have raided a baby factory and arrested at least six pregnant women who are allegedly planning to sell their newborn babies after delivery in Delta State.
      The police said the arrest was made in Okwe community, Oshimili South Local Government Area of the state in Nigeria’s South-South region.
      They revealed that a victim, Blessing Aondoseer, had reported that her husband allegedly connived with some people to take away her two weeks old baby.

    • Freedom House warns that internet privacy is eroding fast

      INDEPENDENT WATCHDOG Freedom House has issued its 2016 report along with a chilling warning that internet privacy is becoming something of an oxymoron.

      Freedom House is based in Washington and deals with how countries handle and provide the internet and technology to citizens. We imagine that it is currently hiring. The Freedom On The Net report said that freedom has declined for the sixth year in a row.

    • The Way to Stop Trump

      The stunning upset election of Donald Trump has left many Americans wondering what has become of their country, their party, their government, even their sense of the world. Purple prose has been unleashed on the problem; comparisons to fascism and totalitarianism abound. Commentators claim that Trump’s election reflects a racist, sexist, xenophobic America. But we should resist the temptation to draw broad-brush generalizations about American character from last Tuesday’s outcome. The result was far more equivocal than that; a majority of the voters rejected Trump, after all. There is no question that President Trump will be a disaster—if we let him. But the more important point is that—as the fate of American democracy in the years after 9/11 has taught us—we can and must stop him.

      The risks are almost certainly greater than those posed by any prior American president. Trump, who has no government experience, a notoriously unreliable temperament, and a record of demagoguery and lies, will come to office with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, and, once he fills the late Antonin Scalia’s seat, on the Supreme Court as well. His shortlist of Cabinet appointees offers little hope that voices of moderation will be heard. Who, then, is going to stop him? Will he be able to put in place all the worst ideas he tossed out so cavalierly on the campaign trail? Building a wall; banning and deporting Muslims; ending Obamacare; reneging on climate change treaty responsibilities; expanding libel law; criminalizing abortion; jailing his political opponents; supporting aggressive stop-and-frisk policing; reviving mass surveillance and torture?

      Whether Trump will actually try to implement these promises, and more importantly, whether he will succeed if he does try, lies as much in our hands as in his. If Americans let him, Trump may well do all that he promised—and more. Imagine, for example, what a Trump administration might do if there is another serious terrorist attack on US soil. What little he has said about national security suggests that he will make us nostalgic for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

    • Chuck Schumer: The Worst Possible Democratic Leader at the Worst Possible Time

      When Barack Obama leaves the White House, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer will almost certainly be elected Senate minority leader — and therefore become the highest ranking Democratic official in America.

    • Prosecutor Shuts Down New Orleans Cop’s Attempt To Charge Arrestee With Hate Crime For Insulting Responding Officers

      The Louisiana legislature decided to help out its most underprivileged constituents — law enforcement officers — by making it a felony to “attack” them using nothing more than words.

      When New Orleans police officers arrived at the scene of a disturbance to arrest an intoxicated man for banging on a hotel’s windows and harassing the employees, the situation devolved into the totally expected.

    • Hate Crimes Are Up — But the Government Isn’t Keeping Good Track of Them

      In 2015, the authorities in California documented 837 hate-crime incidents, charting a surge in offenses motivated by religious intolerance toward Muslims and Jews, while crimes against Latinos grew by 35 percent.

      Last week, shortly after Donald J. Trump was elected the country’s next president, the Southern Poverty Law Center put up a form on its website encouraging people to share details about potential hate crimes. By the next day, they’d received about 250 reports – more than they’re used to seeing in six months.

      Then on Monday, the FBI released its latest national tabulation of hate crimes, data that showed an overall uptick of 6.8 percent from 2014 to 2015. The accounting, drawn from information passed on to the bureau by state and local law enforcement agencies, charted a 67-percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes.

    • Self-styled ‘Sharia patrol’ allegedly launch brutal attack on girl for ‘not wearing HIJAB’

      In the horrific footage from Vienna, Austria, the youngster is seen being violently attacked by a group of girls and a boy in what is believed to be a “Sharia patrol”.

      In this clip, she keeps her hands in her pocket and takes the savage beating, despite breaking her jaw in two places and blood dripping from her face.

      The group is reported to have said in the video: “She has pulled the headscarf down, demolish her!”

    • Lauri Love faces hacking trial in US after UK signs extradition order

      Love’s family plan to appeal against the decision. The 31-year-old—who has Asperger’s syndrome—faces up to 99 years in prison and fears for his own life, his lawyers have said.

      A home office spokesperson told Ars: “On Monday 14 November, the secretary of state, having carefully considered all relevant matters, signed an order for Lauri Love’s extradition to the United States. Mr Love has been charged with various computer hacking offences which included targeting US military and federal government agencies.”

      Rudd considered four so-called legal tests of the Extradition Act 2003: whether Love is at risk of the death penalty; whether specialty arrangements are in place; whether Love has previously been extradited from another country to the UK, thereby requiring consent from that country; and whether Love was previously transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.

      However, the home secretary concluded that none of these issues applied to Love.

    • Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s ex-president, says successor Temer took bribes

      Brazil has been plunged into a fresh bout of political uncertainty after lawyers for former president Dilma Rousseff presented evidence suggesting her successor, Michel Temer, accepted bribes from a construction company.

      If accepted the documents filed with the supreme electoral court raise the possibility of the 2014 presidential election being declared invalid due to campaign funding violations, which could force Temer from office.

      The two politicians were running mates in 2014 but have since become bitter enemies. Rousseff, of the Workers party, was impeached and removed from the presidency in September on charges of window-dressing government accounts. She has levelled accusations of treachery at her replacement, Temer, of the centre-right Brazilian Democratic Movement party.

    • Hate crimes against Muslim Americans increased by 67 percent in 2015, says FBI

      Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said, ‘We saw a spike in anti-Muslim incidents nationwide beginning toward the end of 2015. That spike has continued until today and even accelerated after the election of President-elect Trump’

    • Jews Aren’t An SJW-Approved Minority
    • U.S. Muslims make up only one percent of the population, but file 40% of workplace discrimination complaints

      Even outside of fear of drawing an Islamist attack, avoiding conflict with Muslim employees affects both the company’s ‘inclusive’ image, and its liability to lawsuits by activist groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). When special interest activist groups put pressure on businesses to give into their demands businesses often (depending on the issue/s) concede rather than face bad publicity. Businesses placating to Muslim demands is one of the objectives of the Hamas-affiliated CAIR. Masquerading as a civil liberties organization for Muslims, CAIR, as mentioned in the video, pressures businesses into accommodating the most trivial of Muslim practices advocated for in sharia law.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Decentralization – a deep cause of causes you care about deeply

      Decentralized and distributed networks are, quite simply, fundamental; everyone is affected in many ways by the degree of distribution — not least one’s personal agency, the development of our societal structures, and our impact on this planet’s living systems.

      As we instrument the planet, as we build out a pervasive computing environment, as increasingly little ‘undigital’ remains, ensuring the decentralized and distributed nature of that digital infrastructure is nothing short of mission critical. We must resist the easy short-term temptations of centralization to avoid its longer-term miseries.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • South Centre, FAO Sign Agreement Promoting Tech Transfer, Innovation

      The intergovernmental South Centre and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation have signed a five-year agreement to help the global south fight malnutrition, reduce poverty, and address climate change consequences. The memorandum of understanding was signed on the margins of the recent climate change discussion held in Marrakesh.

    • Countries Asked To Revise IP Laws Preventing Implementation Of Farmers’ Rights [Ed: Treating people like farming slaves and perpetuating poverty by imposing ‘IP’, then calling them “pirates”.]

      Global Consultation on Farmers’ Rights took place in Bali, Indonesia from 27-30 September and was co-organised by the governments of Indonesia and Norway. The secretariat of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) engaged in the preparatory process, according to the treaty’s website.

      The consultation was attended by 95 participants from 37 countries, from all the seven regions of the FAO, according to a source. Participants came from governments, academia, international organisations (such as the ITPGRFA, the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants [UPOV], and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity), non-governmental organisations (such as Oxfam, the Development Fund, and SEARICE), and farmers and farmers’ organisation (such as la Via Campesina), the source said.

    • Copyrights

      • Toto, I Don’t Think We’re In The Public Domain Anymore

        Long-time readers may remember our coverage of a slow-moving copyright case over public domain images from The Wizard of Oz and other movies. In brief: back in 2006, Warner Bros. sued vintage/nostalgia merchandise company AVELA, which had obtained restored images from old promotional posters for the films and was selling them for T-shirts and other products. Nobody disputed that these specific images were in the public domain, because the promo materials had not been registered for copyright even though the films were — but Warner claimed that the images nevertheless infringed on the copyright in the characters established by the film. The court originally sided with Warner in full, but on appeal found that the exact two-dimensional reproductions of the images on T-shirts and the like were not infringing, but instances where they were combined with text and other images or used to create three-dimensional models were, and awarded some pretty huge damages. To complicate matters, there’s also a trademark claim wrapped up in all this. There was another appeal, and now a court has upheld the ruling and the damages, giving movie studios another weapon in their war on the public domain (here’s a PDF of the full ruling).

        Now, there are a lot of layers here, and I’m going to focus on The Wizard Of Oz, since it provides the most interesting example. The 1900 book is in the public domain. The 1939 movie is still under copyright held by Warner. The associated 1939 promo materials were not registered (a requirement at the time) and are in the public domain. And many characters and other elements of the movie are also covered by trademark, also owned by Warner. Absolutely none of these facts are in dispute — but put them all together and you have a giant mess that illustrates the flimsiness of the idea/expression dichotomy, and how something can supposedly remain in the public domain while being gutted of all its usefulness to the public.

      • Donald Trump Parody Results in Clockwork Orange Copyright Suit

        A YouTube parody which hoped to provide a satirical take on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has ended in a lawsuit. Hugh Atkin portrayed elements of Trump’s efforts in the style of and alongside images from A Clockwork Orange. Now the Australian is getting sued in the United States for copyright infringement.

      • U.S. Copyright Office Undecided About Future of DMCA Takedowns

        The U.S. Government’s Copyright Office has launched a new consultation seeking guidance on the future of the DMCA’s takedown process and safe harbor. Through a set of concrete questions, they hope to find a balance between the interests of copyright holders, Internet services and the public at large.

Violations of Human Rights at the EPO in the Name of Fraud Prevention

Posted in Europe, Fraud, Patents at 1:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Very convenient a guise

Elmer news
Whistleblower ist weder Datendieb noch Erpresser

Summary: Whistleblowers at the EPO cannot speak and surveillance reaches extraordinary levels, the excuse being security, stability, justice and so on (surveillance classics)

EARLIER this year we wrote about rumours of fraud at the EPO and not too long ago we became witnesses to the pretext of “fraud” as as exploited to spy on staff and grossly violate their privacy or data security (in a way that no member state would tolerate). The members of the GCC who are members of the CSC wrote the following text: “We obviously do not support fraud and so consider it perfectly legitimate that some controls (checks and balances) are introduced in order to detect and/or prevent fraud also in the field of the healthcare insurance. However, this raises an additional big concern linked to the new contract and its external administrator: fraud control measures and the possible involvement of the EPO’s Investigation Unit. We are completely kept in the dark as to how the EPO intends to put in practice these controls. What will be the role of Cigna who are obviously best positioned (access to the data) to detect fraud)? Are they bound to respect national laws? What will be the role of the Investigative Unit? How will the different parties cooperate? How will medical secrecy be preserved? Which laws will apply at which steps? Why does the Office not collaborate with (local) national prosecutors since this would be compatible with Article 20, EPC? Not only have none of these questions been answered, we have not heard about any safeguards. We fear that this is an area that may raise serious problems in the future with possible damage to the EPO’s reputation. Although we have not been required to give an opinion despite the blatant impact that this new contract will have on staff employment conditions, we nevertheless recommend that the President should not implement the planned modifications as long as a joint Committee has not been established.”

“The way things work at the moment is a recipe for disaster because the Office already fails to attract top talent — the very kind of talent which it takes to deliver a good service and justify the high fees associated with EPs (grant, renewal, search etc.).”We often wonder how many violations it would take for Eponia to finally come under proper scrutiny from member states (beyond a slap on the wrist, at the very least a fine). The way things work at the moment is a recipe for disaster because the Office already fails to attract top talent — the very kind of talent which it takes to deliver a good service and justify the high fees associated with EPs (grant, renewal, search etc.). To make matters worse, a lot of key staff has been leaving and continues to leave the Office (the growing numbers of departures that we see are irrefutable). A new comment in IP Kat asked: “What would the European Patent system look like in, say, 2 to 4 years?” Here is the full comment:

“Anonymous” from Saturday, 12 November 2016 is trying to change the subject, isn’t he/she? The facts are quite simple: Battistelli got instructions from the Council not to fire staff members before new regulations are passed and did just the opposite.

That is the real problem here.

Battistelli is not doing what the Council wants. I asked what the Council can do and apparently the Council cannot do much because of the 3/4 of the votes clause. I said Battistelli just needs 10 countries to stay forever and follow his plans and nobody raised a credible objection. I don’t see how a ministerial conference could solve that problem.

So let us imagine that Battistelli stays another few years to continue his plans. The Council cannot do much because of this blocking minority. What would the effect be? What would the European Patent system look like in, say, 2 to 4 years?

It will be morally — maybe also fiscally — bankrupt (it’s said to be operating at a loss), more so assuming Battistelli continues along the same trajectory which renders examiners redundant in just two years. Will it be folded onto EUIPO? Serious intervention is needed to ensure that the EPO doesn’t just become a relic or a fossil from the past. The way things stand, based on what we are hearing from insiders, there is no promising future for the EPO (if any future at all). █

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